Land of the Free, Home of the Brave

Today marks the 23rd year that I’ve lived in Canada, I arrived here from Scotland in 1983 on an Air Canada L-1011 [C-FTNL], with Captain J.P. McDonald at the helm. My sister was only a few months old and I was a just a kid.

A lot of people don’t realize how thankful I am to be a Canadian. Our national anthem and our flag represent the values and the kindness that Canadians in general portray. It’s our diverse culture and ability to keep social values of the old land and mix them with the new values learned here that makes Canada such a fantastic place to live.


We settled in a small town outside of Toronto and while it was only a few hours to the big city, it seemed as though we were worlds apart. The first few years were rough. A chubby brown kid with a Scottish accent doesn’t really take well around small town Ontario. But I survived. I made a lot of friends before leaving to make my mark on the world, many of them whom are still my friends today.

The hotel that we stayed at during the first few weeks was on a river. I loved to fish but never had much luck catching anything but tadpoles in Scotland. My Dad, knowing that I was itching to catch a fish, took a sewing kit from my Mom, bent the needle and made a hook. He then took a cork and made a float for me and gave me some bread for bait. After a bit of trial and error I was able to get the bread to stay on the hook when I threw the line in the water. The water was so clear that I could see the fish swimming around. I can still remember watching a sunfish slowly move up and take my bait.

It was one of the happiest moments of my life and also my first day in Canada.

YOUR HAIR SUCKS! AND YOU STINK!

“YOUR HAIR SUCKS…” Is the trademark to RUDEMAN hair products. So naturally when I saw this I thought “F- Them! My hair doesn’t suck! I hardly have any hair!” Then the next part “AND WE KNOW YOU STINK” really hit home, well, because I probably do stink!

The “Shampoo Bar” which is a big black bar of shampoo is supposed to fix my hair by getting rid of any grimy greasy hair product without stripping colour, while leaving a nice scented aroma of coffee and mint. I like coffee, and mint is refreshing and tasty.

Coming from a family of scientists, I decided to create my own very scientific study. I grew my hair longer than it has ever been to 1.75”. Next order of business was to gel up my hair, I looked for the strongest stuff, I ended up using Goldwell’s extra hold gel and then used a Goldwell shaping stick to really stick my hair down the same company makes a shaping agent, so I used that too. I made sure there was a lot of coverage as well. After all, this is an experiment…

Now that my hair was properly knackered, I took to the streets. I spent an entire day walking around downtown Toronto collecting all the pollution I could get into my hair. I then drove a few hours outside of town and built a bonfire. I made sure that I stood downwind of the smoke in order to get that stinky deep rooted smell of smoke in my hair and my body. I also smoked a cigar and took a moment to reflect about my experiment and how proud my parents would be at my new found scientific interests. At that moment I remembered that RUDEMAN says it’s for ALL hair, so I rubbed some sun block lotion on my arms and bug spray on my legs. There, that should do it!

To recap: I now have long hair, gelled, full of pollution, fire smoke and cigar smoke. My arms are covered with sun block lotion and my legs have been doused with bug spray and to top it off, I got kerosene on my hands when I was trying to light the bonfire.

If the smell won’t catch your attention when I walk by, then nothing will.

After working all that crap into my hair I asked several friends to smell me, they wouldn’t. The first part of the experiment has been completed. Now I need to shower.

The RUDEMAN Shower Bar is made from 8oz of professional quality shampoo, so it lathers up quickly and believe it or not the coffee/mint scent is quite pleasing. After thoroughly lathering my hair…ALL of it. I rinsed off the shampoo and dried myself. My hair was squeaky clean, in fact, it made a squeaking noise when I rubbed it. There was not a slight bit of grease or residue to be noticed. I felt refreshed, but the smell of smoke from the bonfire still lingered. Needless to say my friends didn’t have a problem smelling me to verify that I did in fact smell “not as bad”.

For a shampoo bar that was tested on Rock Stars not animals, I was quite impressed. Not only does the big black shampoo bar look mean, it acts mean too!

Now for a bit of niceness, RUDEMAN Inc. has offered to give the first 10 people to email us with their postal mailing address will get a bar sent to them free! No joke! Only from your friends at RICH GUY ;) Congratulations to all those who sent in their addresses your soap should arrive in a few weeks!

Another day at the races!

I went and checked out “Racing Steve” at the Mosport International Raceway today. Racing Steve Langford has become a friend over the past few years that he’s been racing at Mosport and I thought I should at least go and see if all this racing talk I hear on Friday nights is for real.

I figured it would be fun to spend the day with my grandfather too, so together we drove to the track.

I’ve had some good memories at the Bridgestone Racing Academy where I did the week long racing school and a lot of them started coming back as I watched the F2000 cars zip past me. I think I might take up the sport again! Check out the Bridgestone Racing Academy’s website if you are interested in learning to race, I highly recommend it. Racing Steve wasn’t full of talk though, during qualifying he was lapping the entire field and would have had pole position had he not spun the car on an overtaking maneuver, close call though luckily nobody was injured. During the race he held off his competitors and was able to finish 2nd after dropping to 3rd for one lap. He was also able to complete the fastest lap of the race and maintained his points leader standing.

A frightening thought, if Racing Steve wins the championship this year we’ll have to call him “The Champ”!

Nintendo Wii

I was able to test the Nintendo Wii yesterday. I’m not much of a gamer, in fact I’ve not played a video game since 1992. But the Wii is quite cool. It has a wireless controller that connects with the main unit via Bluetooth. The controller also detects motion and speed allowing you to play games such as baseball and tennis as though you were holding the racket or bat. There was also a demo where you are able to control a symphony as though you were the maestro.

The picture is a bit dark, buy you can see how the player is in the same position as the character on screen.

You can read more about the Nintendo Wii when we feature it in September right here on RICHGUY.COM.

GIRLS of RICH GUY

The past few days I’ve been shooting “RICH GUY’S GAL OF THE WEEK” it’s a segment we’re launching in September. I’m quite excited about it since it somewhat diverts a bit from our core business of “The Toys and Joys of Life” but still meets our readers request for more women. Trying to be a bit different we’re aiming at using natural women, without performance enhancing implants or injections.

A lot of people think that staring at women all day would be a fantastic job, others think it would be like working at a movie theatre or amusement park with the joyous effect lost amongst the work. For me, it’s a bit of both. Some days it’s exciting where we have a really beautiful model and others it’s as boring as watching paint dry. For me, it’s more along the lines of being a fantastic job.

I’m lucky to work with one of the best photographers in the business, Mark L. Craighead, who I am almost sure has made some deal with a higher power in order to capture what he captures. He’s got a great eye for scenery, so you’ll see a lot of our photos happening outside of the studio on location.

I’d love to hear your feedback on this.

The Grand Prix, Italy Weekend

How can I explain the weekend I had? It started off with burgers and cigars at Gerti’s patio in downtown Peterborough, Ontario and ended up in Little Italy (Toronto) watching the madness unfold as Italy won the World Cup. In between was a bit of a mess. I’ll do my best to recount the moments that I can make public. All I can say is that it was a great spectacle that I doubt I can capture with words or pictures.

First of all, to call “Indy” the Grand Prix is just a stupid marketing tactic. I don’t like it and many others felt the same way. I arrived at the host hotel with my buddy Jimmy at 11:45, we picked up our media passes and went to the media shuttle that transported us to the front gates of the race. First order of business was to go to the Media Centre and see if any of my colleagues were floating around. I didn’t see anyone I recognized. Neither did Jimm. Each year there’s a hot tasty lunch, this year there were some sandwiches and soda. After eating we went outside to see the Atlantic cars head out for qualifying. Jimmy and I split up. As I made my way through the pits I ran into Paul Newman giving a few words of inspiration to Sebastien Bourdais. I was able to snap a few good shots during qualifying.

Paul Newman & Sebastien Bourdais

Grand Prix = Beautiful Women

Canadian Forces CF-18

A.J. Allmendinger waiting for results

Paul Tracy in Turn 1

Pit Stop

Paul Tracy getting in his car

Paul Tracy, a little older/heavier

Formula Atlantic car zooming by

On race day I was a bit tired, actually deliriously tired. The night before consisted of an impromptu visit to the Niagara Fallsview Casino, with pit stops in Burlington to visit one of my RICH GUY models (Lisa Ricciotti), Hamilton (we took a wrong turn) and then back to Toronto. Jimmy was awestruck that I doubled my money at the casino. It felt good to win for a change!

Anyway, back to the race. The Canadian Air Force’s CF-18’s did a fly-by after the national anthem was sung. And it was on! The cars went zoom for a few laps and I felt that I had seen enough. In previous years the teams had given us tickets to see the race, this year we couldn’t get a good enough vantage point to make it worthwhile to stick around. Especially not when the world cup was being played. Regardless, I knew that Mark L. Craighead was getting all the choice shots in Turn 1. Walking back to the media shuttle I ran into an old friend and incredible musician Ian Sattler, whom I hadn’t seen in 4 years. That made the day at the Grand Prix worthwhile.

The next order of business was Italy vs. France for the World Cup.

Thank goodness it was a nice day. Without rain the patios were filled to the max. Every single bar, restaurant and hole in the wall was filled with people watching the game. I saw a patio with 3 plasma screen TV’s and people standing about watching. So I stood on the corner between Filippo’s and The Rushton in Little Italy, watching the last seconds of the battle for world soccer dominance. And there it erupted. The penalty kick that put mayhem and madness all through the streets of Italian neighbourhoods worldwide. People started running in the streets, one man stopped a bus others jumping with the Italian flag. Then it calmed down for a moment as the medals were handed out and after that, well, I’ll let you download the video from my cellphone, you’ll need a 3gp codec to view it or just enjoy the pictures I took.

Letters to the Editor Answered

It’s been a slow week, Canada day was on Saturday and Independence Day was on Tuesday, this leaves me with very few products sitting around to review and not much stuff to talk about.

I thought it would be both funny and informative to take a moment and reply to some of the emails that I’ve been receiving from people around the world. Some of these questions are legitimately interesting and others are just plain stupid. I hope you can tell them apart.

What is your favourite Cigar?
- Anything created by the Fuente family is perfect for my tastes. The 8-5-8 and Opus X brands really make my happy. For Cuban cigars, I generally smoke Montecristo #2 and Jose Piedra.

How often is your blog updated?
- Whenever I feel inspired or motivated to write about something. This usually happens every other day, but sometimes it could happen two consecutive days, sometimes like this week it’s not happened at all.

Are you married? Do you have Children? Are you Single? Will you take me out?
- Nope. Nope. Yep. Nope.

I’d like to have you over for dinner, what do you like to eat?
-My favourite food is Steak. Medium Rare. But I can cook that at home, so I’ll have to decline your invitation. Sorry

I have a business idea that I’d like to pitch to you, how can I do that?
- You can’t. I’m quite busy with my own projects. And no, MLM is not something I’m interested in.

I want to model in your magazine.
- Excellent! We’re launching a RICH GUY GAL OF THE WEEK segment in September, please send your photos to casting@richguy.com someone will get back to you within 24 hours.

Do you keep all the stuff you review?
- Sometimes. If I really like something I’ll keep it. Most of the time we either donate the product or sell it on eBay and donate the proceeds.

I heard that RICH GUY donates money to animal shelters…
- Yes, that is true, however, we allocate most of our donations to programs that help humanity and human interests in locations that have neither social programs or ability for educational advancement.

Would you like to come to my wedding?
- No.

You mentioned in your past entry that you’ve been a pilot since 17 is that true?
- Yes, it’s true. If it wasn’t then I wouldn’t publish that!!!

Do you have any siblings?
- Yes. I have a brother and a sister, both are brilliant in their respective fields and have caused me many hours of aggravation from people asking why I’m not as brilliant as they are.

Did you go to College?
- Yes. It was the single biggest waste of time of my life.

I heard in an interview somewhere that you had failed high school English…
- Yep. Aye Shooore DID!

Ok, that’s enough Q & A for this week. I receive hundreds of emails and look through each and every one of them, so send away and maybe your question will be answered next time!

8 second soda mix

Every once in a while a product shows up at the office that has some sort of cool factor. The Soda Club Soda Maker is one of those, not for any sort of ingenuity or originality in the product, in fact I had a soda maker when I was 10. The thing that makes this product cooler than others it’s is ease of use, doesn't need batteries and the flavours that come with it are tasty. Oh, and it looks space age too.

Out of the box I was able to make Apple & Peach and Diet Grapefruit soda within 8 minutes. That included reading the instructions. Now that everything is set up, it takes me less than 30 seconds to make a Litre of soda. And it only costs about a 50 cents a litre.

There are a variety of flavours. Cola, Vanilla Cola, Orange & Mango, Fountain Mist and an energy drink that tastes like Red Bull.

I’m not kidding you, this stuff is easy to make. It’s also a heck of a lot cheaper than buying the name brand stuff and it tastes just as good.

www.sodaclubusa.com