You may have already heard of Dude Perfect, a group of otherwise perfectly normal dudes who like to mess around with basketballs. More specifically, mess around with impossible-to-believe trick shots they practice, execute and video tape to share on YouTube.
Over two years, Dude Perfect has pulled off 99 oddball shots, from trampolines, off scoreboards, from long distances. And for their 100th, they enlisted the Goodyear blimp.
See the video by clicking here.
Now, before you brush this all off as great video editing, there was no editing. Everyone involved swears. It’s a clean, clear shot – actually shots from multiple angles – of a Dude Perfect member successfully sinking a shot from a moving blimp. Sweet!
The stunt was filmed at Goodyear’s main blimp hangar south of Akron on March 24, and, yes, it took a few passes. To eliminate landing and relaunching the blimp for each attempt, Dude Perfect brought along a bunch of basketballs; some 40 were loaded into the gondola to execute the shot.
They came at the basket from many angles, and while they don’t know how many attempts it took, the pure swish seen on the video was no trick. It was nuthin’ but net. And a pretty cool way to use a blimp.
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As you can see from this photo, Cincinnati-area dealer Tire Discounters really is a family-owned business. And you apparently don’t want to be invited to that Thanksgiving dinner!
The photo, by the way, was courtesy of safebraking.com, a cool new website that mixes important brake service tips and info with some off-kilter brake humor. Give it a look-see.
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Been on the road quite a bit lately, which is why this blog has been unkempt. Man, the weather turns and the weeds just pop up! Oh, that’s my lawn. Sorry.
Anyway, my last entry continued the saga of Colorado Tire Corp. (aka Washington Tire Corp. and American Tire Corp.), and how its listing of purported OE customers appears to be, shall we say, a wee bit short on reality.
It was suggested, though, by one blog reader that I lay off CTC/WTC/ATC and its leader Abraham Hengyucius (aka Hengyu Zhang, aka Abe Hengyucius, aka Abraham Zhang), because “everybody has right to exist in this world.”
The online comment accused me of running some kind of “cartel of some big players of tire industry who are trying to malign the image of some emerging OTR tire companies.”
First of all, nothing could be further from the truth. If I were involved in some cartel, I would not be tooling around in a second-hand 2004 Lancer. Cartel members get to drive far, far better vehicles.
And at this blog, we treat everyone and every company the same. We only single out those companies that single themselves out – good or bad.
Secondly, we totally, 100% agree with you. We should live and let live. Absolutely. CTC/WTC/ATC should be allowed to exist and complete in the North American tire industry, same as any other real company. And we invite them to do just that, and put their products lug-to-lug against any other sold in the U.S. or Canada. I’ll even attend the tests and write a story!
And we vow right here and now that we will aggressively go after Goodyear or Michelin or Bridgestone or any of the other “big players” or any company doing business in the North American tire industry whenever, among many other things, they misrepresent themselves to customers, refuse to admit what company(ies) produce(s) their products, lie to entire communities and local government bodies, play shadow games with their own corporate identities and/or those of their employees and management, make unsupported product performance claims, make wild claims of government support, make even wilder statements about competition, or use their efforts to “build” a billion-dollar tire plant as a means to gain EB-5 visas for purported investors or workers.
When any “tire company” does things like that, we will be on the case!
