Hands on a Hard Body Contest

Festival Location: Longview, TX, USA

Festival State: Texan Festivals

Festival Type(s): Bizarre Festivals, Bizarre Sports Events, Car Shows

By: © Nelson Taylor 2009

Made famous by S.R. Bindler's uproariously funny documentary film by the same name, the Hands on a Hard Body is a contest of epic proportions. Each year since 1992, 24 contestants have been chosen out of a hopper at Joe Mallard Nissan in Longview. Individuals attempt to outlast the competition by standing under the hot September sun with one hand on the body of a brand new Nissan Frontier truck, without leaning. The record is 92 hours and 40 minutes. That's just 3 hours and 20 minutes short of four days! While there's a 5-minute break every hour and a 15-minute break every six hours, the contest is still a veritable mega-marathon, where physical strength, mental stability, diet and choice of footwear are major factors. As the 1994 winner Benny Perkins says in the film: "If you can't hunt with the big dogs, you get up on the porch with the puppies."

Philip Calhoun is the 1998 winner, the man who holds the record. "I stumbled up on the contest," he says. "My neighbor done it. And I'm telling you, once you get around it you kind of get attached to it." Calhoun came in second in 1993, though he didn't win a used truck, because that was before it was offered to the runner-up. "I learned from my mistakes the first go round," he says. To prepare for the 1998 contest, Calhoun admits to jogging and working out like a man possessed. Knowing how easy the mind can go, he did lots of research. "I started looking up stuff on the brain, on how to mentally prepare and what vitamins keep you clear headed." His diet, he decided, would consist of eating tuna fish every hour and rice now and then for a carb boost. "Tuna is pure protein," he says. "I knew that way I wouldn't have any waste in my system."

But no matter how hard you prepare, nothing can keep your blood pressure from rising and your ankles from swelling. To battle the pain in his ankles, Calhoun wore a pair of tight panty hose and took lots of Tylenol 3. But probably the biggest obstacle is the mind. "You get to a point where you forget what you're doing," Calhoun says. "And you hang on by people just telling you what to do." This is where a good cheering section becomes vital. Calhoun told his family friends that he could handle the first several days, but for the last two he would have to depend on their direction.

And as the mind goes the hallucinations come. And they come in waves -- some at 50 hours, some at 80 and so forth. One recent participant claimed to be working on his truck, another claimed to be pulling his girlfriend whose hair was caught in a fan. "When the last person before me dropped out," Calhoun says, "everybody had to come over and tell me it was over. And there I was thinking we was filming a movie." Then comes recovery. Calhoun's ankles remained black and blue for weeks. For 2-3 months afterward, Calhoun says, "I'd wake up in the morning with my hands on my bed, thinking I couldn't go to the bathroom until I heard the whistle."