The Most Interesting Man in the World | Big Simon

The Most Interesting Man in the World…

8ball

Have you ever climbed Mt. Everest? Parasailed across the English Channel?

Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

Is your life interesting?

If you haven’t seen the commercials for German beer Dos Equis, you should mosey over to YouTube and check them out. The ads star actor Jonathan Goldsmith, whose career is long and varied (under both that name and “Jonathan Lippe”, he has appeared in dozens of well-known series throughout the 70s and 80s), but otherwise unremarkable. Still, the brewery’s marketing folks would have you believe his character is The Most Interesting Man in the World. Just how is he interesting?

He has been known to cure narcolepsy… just by walking into a room.
His organ donor card includes his beard.
He lives vicariously through himself.
His reputation is expanding faster than the universe.

For me, the fixation with this kind of self-promotion started with the letter a young man named Hugh Gallagher sent in with a college application. He made wild claims like, “Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear”, “I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes”, and “I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening”. These Don Equis commercials only remind me of Gallagher’s sense of humor, and while they evoke a chuckle or a smile, they don’t seem to be the degree of concentrated mirth I get from the aforementioned essay.

Still, seeing just how intriguing this man of mystery might be, I’ve begun to wonder if I couldn’t be just as remarkable, if I really tried. Or if I marketed myself that way. Think of it – we could all be interesting! – all it would take is a few million to spend on advertising and a witty, even nonsensical line or three. Sure, the promotional funds might be a bit difficult to come by, but given time and effort, I’m certain we all have it in us to present ourselves as the most interesting people in the world. To that end, I present to you my own list of unverifiable, but utterly believable “facts”.

I run marathons backwards while playing classical overtures on my kazoo.
The FBI, the CIA, and Microsoft have all utilized my amazing skills at stealth ping pong.
I posthumously interviewed Flipper using a can of tuna and a Magic 8-Ball.
While on vacation in Japan, I glided from the peak of Mount Fuji to the center of Tokyo atop the world’s largest paper airplane.
I rarely misspell names. When I do, people usually change their names to match my spelling.
If I am cut, I bleed dark chocolate.
I have never weighed more than one hundred and eighty pounds. I simply wear a three hundred pound weight suit to stay in tip-top shape.
A single strand of my hair, tied around the wrist, guarantees virility.
I was adopted by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but ran away to avoid undue media attention.
After becoming stranded in a bus during a blizzard, I saved forty seven children, three teachers, and a school mascot with a roll of fishing line, two mechanical pencils, and a half eaten Big Mac.
I once borrowed a psychic’s powers and used them to find a lost wiener dog and a good source of gourmet ice cream.
My telephone number is “1″.
I don’t drive a car. I simply tell it where to take me.