It might get old if you look like a celebrity or famous athlete. Just sharing their name might be tiring. It would probably be like that commercial of the middle-aged white guy named Michael Jordan — anytime he makes a reservation or his name goes before him, people are excited, then when he shows up, they look disappointed and say, “Oh.” But if you look like someone famous, you might get stopped all the time in public for autographs, then people are disappointed when they realize you aren’t that person.
Allen Heckard knows how that feels. People mistake him for Michael Jordan because of his looks, even though he’s 4 inches shorter. He says this happens two or three times a day, and eventually he got to the point where he said, “Enough is enough. I can’t take it anymore.”
So what would you do? He says he’s changed his appearance some, but it didn’t work. So he filed a lawsuit against Michael Jordan and Nike, claiming he is owed $832 million for 15 years of harassment by the public. I wonder how he came up with that figure. Needless to say, he didn’t win.
Heckard afterward said, “It’s not about the money. A man has to have principles to stand on.” That’s some principles if they’re worth $832 million! If he’s just wanting to retire and stay home most of the time, he could’ve asked for a lot less money and still accomplished that.
Sometimes you have to wonder what people were thinking…
If you want an iPhone/iPod dock that looks cool, for men, here’s what you need.
Each model is built out of a solid block of aluminum, and they’re based on the exhaust manifold of a car engine. It’s called iXoost, which comes from the English pronunciation of the word “exhaust”. They feature several speakers, including a 140W subwoofer.
I haven’t heard one of these, but I would like to — unless I have to pay for it. The starting price is $6200. I think it looks awesome, but I suspect the WAF (Wife Approval Factor) would be considerably less than favorable.
You can find more info at the iXoost website, and you can even customize your own on this page.
There are now candles with scents aimed at men, who might not be interested in collections like “Water Inspirations” or “Citrus Passions”.
YANKEE CANDLE COMPANY, INC
Man Town™ – Escape to the man cave with this masculine blend of spices, woods and musk.
First Down™ – This combination of orange, patchouli, vetiver and leather is as exciting as game day.
Riding Mower™ – Hot sun. Cool breeze. And the intensely summery scent of freshly cut grass.
2 x 4™ – The warm, unmistakable scent of freshly planed wood and sawdust evokes a sense of confidence and quality.
Apparently this is for real, even though it sounds like a parody. They cost $27.99 each. I’m no marketing expert, but men typically don’t buy candles to start with, and that seems like a high price to gain entry into this market (if such a niche exists).
I don’t have any review samples, but let’s consider the candles anyway, just based on the descriptions. I’m not sure I’d want one that smells like a man cave. Let’s think about this logically. If a man is single, his bachelor pad may already smell like a “man cave”. And if he’s single, he likely isn’t buying candles. If a man is married, he probably already has several years’ supply of candles at his house, and his wife likely would not approve of these smells anyway.
There is a nice aroma of a freshly-mowed yard, but I’m not sure I’d want that in the house. Plus, you get that every week or so anyway from mowing the yard.
Some guys might like the 2×4 scent, but I doubt it evokes “a sense of confidence”. I don’t know about the First Down scent, either, but I’m fairly certain a candle won’t be “as exciting as game day”. That’s some marketing malarkey! But this is no review, because I haven’t tried them. Nor do I plan to, because I’m married and I never buy candles anyway. But if you have experience with these, let us know.
There’s a lot of strange stuff out there in the world and on teh internets. That’s no surprise to you. But this is one of the weirdest stories I’ve ever come across.
A Dutch artist named Bart Jansen had a cat named Orville (which is ironic, as you will see) who died after being hit by a car. So he mourned for a while, then converted his dead cat into a helicopter. This isn’t just art — it actually flies. He calls it the Orvillecopter, and describes it as “half-cat, half-machine”. (You could also call it the cat-mobile.) It is literally a taxidermied cat with a propeller attached to each paw and an engine in his stomach, and it is controlled via a remote control.
The artist’s statement says he focuses on the meeting-point between technological progress and human error. I suppose it’s better to wax philosophical about turning your dead cat into a helicopter rather than doing it just because you can. Although I wonder if he came up with that saying before or after this art project. Whatever…
The artist says about his cat “he received his wings posthumously” and “now he is flying with the birds — the greatest goal a cat could ever reach!” (I’m sure there are more puns to be had at this, but that’s enough for this post.)
Of course this “art” has sparked outrage among some animal rights groups. The owner clearly says no animals were harmed for this project, which technically is true. Nonetheless, some people will get offended at anything. At an art fair showcasing Orvillecopter, some anonymous animal rights activists wrote graffiti saying “Kill the animal killers”. Apparently they don’t know the story. That’s like those people (sometimes called trolls) who leave hateful comments without even reading the article. Another activist said the artist should be thrown in a vat of manure when he dies. So is the message that you should do something mean to someone if you disagree with them on ethical issues? Isn’t that highly ironic (and hypocritical)?
Personally, I wouldn’t do this to a family pet. But if he’s going to do it, he might as well go all out. He should make the blades as transparent as possible and have the stand fold up underneath. Then it would look like just a flying cat. He could also consider mounting water pistols on it, to shoot people or animals while dive-bombing them.
If you want to see the Orvillecopter in action, flying around and terrorizing cows, here’s a video (which even features the theme song from Airwolf*):
* Some of you may not know about Airwolf. It was a TV show in the ’80s that featured a secret high-tech military helicopter tricked-out for fighting criminals, who usually flew helicopters, too. I don’t know if the show has aged well (I’ve never seen reruns of it), but as a kid, I thought it was cool. There was cool music and sound effects, and there was usually real explosions. There’s not enough TV sitcoms these days that feature explosions… But I digress… Here’s a brief introduction to Airwolf.
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