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‘Rod the Builder’ gears up to take on another holiday challenge: Dominos

Rod Meloni prepares to battle 18-year-old dominos expert

DETROIT – Rod Meloni, or as we fondly call him the day after Thanksgiving, “Rod the Builder,” is gearing up to take on this year’s holiday challenge.

He has done plenty of cooking challenges, gift wrapping, setting up holiday lights, ice sculpting, IKEA room building, and he has tried to trim a tree. But this year, it’s all about what he can build just so he can topple it down: Dominos.

“I have always had a passion for creating things through various different outlets,” said 18-year-old Brady Dolan, who will be Rod’s competitor. “I like dominoes because it has both the aspect of creating something to be displayed, but also thinking about how everything is going to connect and how it’s all going to fall into one piece.”

Meloni wants Dolan to know his YouTube record is in no danger.

“The last thing in the world that I’m going to be able to do, is to do without knocking the middle of it down while I am setting it up,” Meloni laughed.

The two will each be creating a holiday-themed dominos creation with a Christmas tree, a gift and a snowman. Dolan and Meloni will have about two and a half hours to build before toppling the final product to see who did the better job.

Dolan told Local 4 he loves the experience of building dominos.

“It’s super peaceful to build it, and when it’s done, you get to watch all of your work go down and that celebration moment like, ‘This is something that I did,’” Dolan said.

Brady Dolan with a dominos display. (WDIV)

Dolan has been building dominos for about 12 years. He does a wide range of projects that can take just a couple hours to build to much longer. His personal record was two months on one build during 2020. He used 20,000 dominos.

He also has two Guinness World Record certificates on his wall from two projects he worked on, including one from earlier this year.

Dolan designed the domino build to give Meloni a blueprint to follow, and he will be there to answer questions. He even gave Meloni a starter kit to practice ahead of their competition.

You can watch Rod the Builder on Friday, starting at 4 p.m. on Local 4 News and ClickOnDetroit.com. The two will show off their creations on Local 4 News at 6 p.m.

Click here to check out Dolan’s work on YouTube.

Brady Dolan and a teammate working on a dominos display. (WDIV)
Brady Dolan and teammates working on a dominos display. (WDIV)
Brady Dolan working on a dominos display. (WDIV)

Here are two of Dolan’s competition videos: