Looking back on the ten years of IMAO, I have to say my favorite thing of all time from it was the t-shirt babe competition. Harvey put up the relevant links in today’s retrospective, but I thought I’d just go ahead and write my remembrance of it. Basically, the idea came about because I thought having a t-shirt model would help sell more t-shirt, but I also had the secondary idea of finding out whether I had any attractive readers to my blog who I could then totally hit on because they were already fans of mine. So I came up with the idea of a competition where the winner would do modeling photos of my t-shirts and get the prize of a hundred dollar shopping spree at ThoseShirts.com and a $100 cash (which was a lot of money back in 2004). It was a very scary idea because I knew it could turn out horribly, but somehow I got the courage to go through with it. It was pretty nerve racking when there were few entries at first, but as the deadline approached, many came in.
And then I saw her. And I was like, “Hands down; we have a winner.” But it wasn’t up to just me. To make it a real competition, there were nine judges including me, and each would pick five ranked entries, with five points going to their number one choices down to one point for the number five choices. I, of course, picked number SarahK as my number one choice, but the voting was pretty varied. When I added it up, SarahK won by but a single point. I don’t know what was wrong with the other judges. And who knows what would have happened if SarahK lost. But instead she won and then we started talking and eventually had a first date hiking the Grand Canyon and later got married and then had the cutest baby ever. I.e., my t-shirt babe scam totally worked as planned. It was well worth the one hundred bucks cash it cost me.
It should be noted that Harvey was one of the judges and didn’t vote for SarahK as any of his choices. She has hated him ever since and is every day like, “So when are you kicking Harvey off your blog?” And I’m like, “Soon.” But then I’d have to find in the blogging software how to remove his account and I’m just way too lazy.
Anyway, that’s the t-shirt babe story, and probably when IMAO jumped the shark since it’s widely believed that after I got married I became much less funny. But whatever. Screw you guys; I got a t-shirt babe.
Your honesty here is stunning, Frank.
But I still think you should run another contest and I’ll be the judge this time. Contestants over
304050 (no way over 60!) can send their pictures directly to me at jimmyneedsawoman@imdesperate dot com.Oh, hell. You’ll never do it again because then you’d be a polygamist!
Buttercup IS cute. But my granddaughter (20 months old) is the cutest baby ever. Then again, I may be affected by the “World’s Greatest Grandpa” sunglasses I’m wearing. 🙂
May I suggest that next time you consider going with a “WET T-Shirt Babe Contest”?
Short answer: sarahk was holding the gun in front of her rack and I couldn’t tell if she had the assets to fill out a t-shirt.
The full story of how I voted & why can be found here:
http://radio-weblogs.com/0126975/2004/05/09.html#a2200
That said, I’ve actually met sarahk, and she’s one of the sweetiest girls on the planet. Frank’s a lucky guy.
Oh, and she DOES have a nice rack 😉
BRB, when the current T-shirt Babe is his wife, and she handles firearms? I don’t suggest you suggest the Wet T-Shirt Babe Contest, not if you and Frank want to survive beyond the next 10 minutes or so.
Ogrrre – the other problem being that IMAO is a PG-13 blog. I don’t think wet T-shirts qualify.
And why, exactly, is IMAO a PG-13 blog?
Kids these days know more cr*p than we ever did, Harvey. (I don’t know why I used a ‘*’ there.)
Rating suggestions:
G – Good (could also be god-awful)
PG – Partially Good (see ‘G’ above)
PG-13 – if you’re under 13 and reading here, you live in a Conservative family
R – Restricted – get off my lawn, troll, standby for a ban hammer!
X – ussjimmycarter shenanigans with Rosie, Helen and Hillary. Ewwwww!
Jimmy – mostly it’s an attempt to keep IMAO safe to browse from workplaces with content filters.
I think I can speak for most here when I say that Mrs T-Shirt Babe is, by far, the better half of team single-character-last-name….
Frank, the t-shirt babe contest was awesome just because you had the chutzpah to actually do it. The fact that it actually succeded in the intended purpose of finding you a wife makes it about ten times more awesome.
I mean, if I heard of a movie where the plot was some guy was going to hold a “contest” to get chicks to send him photos of themselves so he could pick the hottest one to marry, I’d roundly criticize Hollywood for coming up with such a stupid, unbelievable premise.
Come to find out, it’s not a moive; it’s a true story. And even more ridiculous, it actually worked! I tip my hat to you, sir!
I love love stories. Especially this one. Tell it again next year! 🙂
I also like the PG-13ness of this place because it’s a road bump for potty mouths and I <3 diacritics.
Aw.
If it was a movie, I’d watch it.
(Will there be Dinosaurs with rocket launchers and Moon nuking in 3-D?)