How Cool Are We? Let Us Count the Ways!

We're just sayin'. Cuz we can. Cool. Us. Yep.

But how cool? you ask. Oh, let us count the ways ...

1) Cinema cool, No. 1:

Woody. Zombieland. Natch.

2) Cinema cool, No. 2:

Cougar. The Losers. He'll shoot ya, if you're a bad guy. Bang-bang, and like that. You'll never even know you're dead until you're, y'know, dead.

3) Cristo cool:

As in Cristo Redentor, of course. The big guy in the sky in Rio.

João Paulo and girlfriend Debora are here visiting the towering Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Brazil's trendsetting city. João Paulo is a fan of the original Real Deal Brazil hat design; Debora beautifully sports our Pretty Ugly style.

Our hats: handmade in Brazil and worn in Brazil, and believed in almost religiously by RDB fans everywhere!

4) Kringle cool:

Santa. Believe that.

5) Crazy cool:


The formidable Larry "Bug" Wooten, a native of Grifton, N.C., and an engineer and deckhand aboard the Capt. Ted tugboat out of Havre de Grace, Md., striking a Japanese-anime pose with Real Deal grace while docked in Woodbridge, Va., along the Potomac River.

"Go, go, Mecha Sheba!" Bug wrote us last year when this shot was taken, though being anime-unfamiliar, we have no idea what that means. It sounds really, really cool, though.

6) Camera cool:


Real Deal Brazil fan Brian Sampson of Fontana, Calif., getting a cool shot of himself getting a cool shot of himself while visiting the historic town of Tulum, Mexico, during a 2010 nine-day getaway to the Yucatan Peninsula with fiancée Irma Hernandez.

7) Camel cool:

And not that damn Joe Camel, neither (don't smoke, kids; really bad for ya.) A Real Deal camel.

Geologist Sam McKay of Norfolk, Va., and friend, in the sub-Saharan East African nation of Djibouti, doing cool geologist stuff. Djibouti, by the way, is a funny name to say. Djibouti. Like booty, but with a juh. Heh, heh. Funny is cool.

8) Cactus cool:

Where to start? There's just so much what the hell going on here. That's Texan and longtime RDB buddy Mack Simpson, post-tequila ritual in praise of, well, probably tequila. And with a piece of cactus on top of his hat on top of his head, because, well, why the hell not?

So did we already mention tequila?

9) Canine cool:

Jack, the Jack Russell. He was, in a word, cool. Sadly, he's not with us anymore. May he rest in peace, the hat-nabbing, spring-loaded lunatic. Bark on, little dude. Bark on.

10) Big-claw cool:

Real Dealer Jennifer Tyrell, hatted up and holding a tawny eagle at the Center for Birds of Prey in Charleston, S.C., where she works. She's holding a damn eagle, people. An eagle.

11) Big-cat cool:

Canadian world-traveler J.P. Zambo of North Vancouver, British Columbia, having a once-in-a-lifetime wildlife encounter in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, during one of the famous preserve's Lion Walks, in which the big African cats wander around you untethered and unbound.

Nice kitty! Cool kitty.

12) Kayak cool:


Natalie Sutton and her trusty RDB, paddling happy in Wekiva Springs State Park in central Florida, just north of her hometown of Orlando, and clearly a million miles from the no-smile-no-job Land of Mickey.

Real happy is, by the way, really cool.

13) Camping cool:


Darin Gagne of Manchester, N.H., took this 2011 camping shot (one of his two photos in this blog entry) at Boscawen, N.H., "alongside of the Mighty Merrimack River," he wrote us. Mighty cool, amigo.

14) 'Caching cool:

Geocaching, of course. Modern-day treasure hunting with a hand-held GPS device, a passion for the great outdoors and a willingness to get covered in mud and other nature gunk if the searching gets a bit off-road and bumpy. This charming group shot was taken at the 2011 edition of GeoWoodstock, geocaching's biggest annual event. A treasure-trove of Real Deal Brazil tarp hats!

15) Cartoon cool:


Manchester, N.H., Real Dealer and avid outdoors guy/geocacher Darin Gagne, photo-chronicling his "essentials" (minus beer, and a GPS, he notes): his Real Deal Brazil hat, his Jeep and, well, Goofy. "Goofy," Darin explains, "is what I am."

Goofy the blundering Disney dog is, of course, kinda cool. That said, Goofy is really pretty goofy, isn't he? Thus, being goofy itself must also be cool. That's just simple logic talking right there.

16) Cavortin' cool:

As in cavortin' all over the globe. Cuz we're the travel hat that actually feels like you're going somewhere and doing something. Travel as real life, in other words.

That's Easter Island in the photo, out there in the South Pacific. We chanced upon this pic in a 2011 Coastal Living magazine. What happened next they couldn't photograph, apparently. Those big-head statues got right up and beat hell out of that guy (in their defense, it's really rude to stare). Then they took his Real Deal Brazil hat. One of them's probably still wearing it right now ...

17) Kilimanjaro cool:

Joshua Corsa, then a medical student at East Carolina University in our own Greenville, N.C., in front of the iconic African mountain in Tanzania, summer 2010. "My hat and I have now traveled on three continents and Central America, and it hasn't even looked frayed," Joshua wrote us at the time. Oh, give us time, Josh! We're proud to say we'll fray one day. It's a great look for us. A damn cool one, if we do say so ourselves!

18) Guitar-chord cool:

Musician Rob Chism of Detroit, Mich., sporting his Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat on one of the many stages he's graced as a member of rock/country band the Chism Brothers. "You might want to add music to the list of destinations the Real Deal has traveled," Rob told us. Done!

19) Celtic kilted cool:

Houston, Texas-based Celtic rockers The Rogues, international road warriors of the first order. They ain't playin' your dear old auntie's beloved "Danny Boy" here, lads and lassies. These bad boys are a kick in the Irish arse. And just dig that Ghostbusters sporran! Who ye gonna call?

20) Craft-brew cool:

May we present our Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat and Craft Beer Cap Hat Band, enjoyed with a bottle of Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout. Which is, by the way, one very cool beer, especially when served not too cold.

21) Cerveza cool:

This little-slice-of-heaven postcard comes to us from Isla Mujeres, along Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The shot was taken by longtime Real Dealer and home-brewer Joel Benge, who hails from the Baltimore area.

A cold Dos Equis on a warm Mexican beach. Ahhh ...

Stay thirsty, indeed, my friends!

22) Cowboy cool:

In this case, that kinda famous mostly clothing-free one, in Times Square, New York City. He's got on a pair of undies, out of view. Tighty-whities, in fact. Because would a guy who bills himself as the Naked Cowboy be caught dead in boxers? Please.

23) Commitment cool, No. 1:

Do you take this Real Deal Brazil hat? I do, I do, I do! Kyle and Heather Bullock of Washington, N.C., tying the knot on the beach in Negril, Jamaica, May 2010.

24) Commitment cool, No. 2:

You're still the coolest thing ...

Spartanburg, S.C., residents Kerry and Larry Easler, celebrating their seventh wedding anniversary along the Blue Ridge Parkway in western North Carolina's picturesque swath of the Appalachian Mountains. This is the second marriage for them both.

The two, who also share a love of geocaching and ice hockey, met at a tailgate party for an East Coast Hockey League game. "Less than two years later," Larry wrote us, "I found myself proposing to her at center ice, in between periods, in front of over 5000 fans." Cool, in every single way!

25) Care-free cool:


That guy's eating a friggin' rainbow!

Chester Elizondo of San Antonio, Texas, April 2011, during a week of island-hopping in Puerto Rico with friends. Throughout his crew’s “exploration adventure," Chester sported his highly personalized Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat, its bendy brim sculpted by him into a unique style he dubs, appropriately, “The Chester."

As our cool Texan tells it: “I swam in that thing ... buried it in the sand ... stuffed it in my back pack ... had sex in it ... filled it with ice and used it as a small ice chest ... at one point it was my loin cloth while I chased a chicken naked down the beach (not sure how I ended up naked ... and the chicken was very very fast)."

26) Can-do cool:


The hat above belongs to David King of Pinewood, S.C. But it ain't just Dave's favorite head-topper; it's a wearable survival kit, too. Get this: Sewn into the brim is 12 feet of Para-Cord, the survivalist's friend. The cord itself houses several sewing needles, for possible clothing fixes and temporary medical self-repairs. Fitted inside the hat are 10 yards of 20-pound-test fishing line, four fishing hooks, a few Band-Aids and a tiny compass. And on the back there? A miniature flashlight.

"Nobody, and I mean NOBODY gets to wear my hat," sez Dave. "Not even just to try it on." We're cool with that!

27) Crocodile cool:

Apologies to the late, great Steve Irwin ...

And thanks, we think, to Real Deal Brazil fan Dylan Smith of Durham, N.C., who first pitched our boy Frank as Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee, at left, and then Hawaii Real Dealer Randy "Rancho" Francis ran with the idea and made his own take on it, at right, that's, even, well, crockier.

You people have too much free time, you know that?

28) Centurion cool:

We received this from an anonymous Real Dealer who does a lot of traveling. This shot, from a 2010 stop in Rome, came about when a couple of Italian guys dressed up as gladiators to score paid-for pictures with tourists were really taken with our journeyman's way-cool hat. One of the two kept motioning that he wanted to try on the RDB, and encouraged that his picture then be taken. He didn't even try to charge our traveler for the shot, which is just about unheard of anywhere near the coliseum. However, the wannabe centurion was not, reportedly, that keen on returning the hat when it was over.

Greed over a Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat: the real reason the Roman Empire fell?

29) Camo cool:

U.S. serviceman Trey Perry in early 2011, during his Afghanistan assignment. We're proud you chose us for your downtime headwear, soldier! Real damn Deal proud.

Salute!

30) Beach-cut cool:


Buff guy Michael Bowe-Rahming, officer and diver, U.S. Navy, on the beach at Agnone Bagni, Italy, August 2009. Mike and his family, among the finest folks on Earth, are still in Italy, where he's stationed.

Mike is cool. Italy is cool. And that hat? Oh, yeah! That pretty well covers it.

31) Coolin' out cool:


Our own Waylon Warren, on a Memorial Day 2011 pontoon-boat trip on eastern North Carolina's Albemarle Sound. It was major-league hot that day, and Waylon had the ingenuity to string a nylon parachute hammock under the boat's elevated center section, to where he was actually reclining in the tannin-dark water, fully in the shade. Not that he didn't manage a little sunburn before his trip that day was over, though the Jack Daniels, he told us, did help with the pain. "I started early," Waylon explained with a grin.

32) Damn cold cool:

The ever-globetrotting Gary Crawford of Greenville, N.C., hangin' with the weird tuxedoed birds on an island off of Antarctica. As in down there at the South Pole.

Gary's been to the other pole, too, the one way up north. The one with the weird lights in the sky. And Santa. Never forget Santa. Cuz Kringle, after all, is cool.

33) Need-a-cold shower cool:

We're not telling you who she is. Forget it. Go wander around back on our Facebook site, back quite a few months, and you might learn a thing or two about this Real va-va-voom Deal Floridian. But don't get too obsessed with the idea. That would be, y'know, uncool.

34) Kick-ass cool:

One of our all-time favorite customer pics. Scott Fortner of Mount Pleasant, Mich., who stands 7'1" and weighs in at about 550 pounds. Scott used to be a bar bouncer, till he got shot in the knee. He's on our side in the fight for cool. Which means we win.

35) Kickin'-cancer's-ass cool:

Rob Colby of Manchester, N.H., October 2010, early into his chemo treatments for Hodgkin's lymphoma. Rob's concern when all this life-changing stuff started? Not his inevitable chemo-caused sickness. Not even the nasty C word itself. His worry was about losing his hair ... because then his much-loved Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat would no longer fit him!

Rob ultimately lopped off all his hair – all two feet of it – and donated it to Locks of Love, the nonprofit group that provides hairpieces to underprivileged kids living with long-term medical hair-loss. Until his hair started growing back, he put padding in his hat to still be able to wear it.

We are humbled by such outrageously awesome cool.

36) Carpe diem cool:

Newport News, Va., Real Deal Brazil fan Glenn Woodell, during a short break from windsurfing off the wild-and-wooly Outer Banks of North Carolina. And yeah, you're looking at that photo right. One leg is a leg, the other is space-age metal, a prosthetic. A volunteer EMT who's also into drag racing, Glenn does the stuff that most people only talk about doing, and then don't do, yet without all the parts that most people have with which to not do it.

The guy's just a class act. Cool, cool, cool.

And if all that wasn't enough:

37) Chuck cool:

Yeah, Chuck.

And not Schwab, not hardly. And certainly not that round-headed kid in Peanuts. Chuck as in there is no chin behind his beard; there is only another fist.

Chuck as in he does not actually wear Action Jeans; Action Jeans cling to him in desperation, in fear he will choose Levis instead.

That Chuck.

Our great thanks to Real Deal Brazil fan Trevor Payne for this righteous bit of photo mischief. Sez Trevor: "It is NOT POSSIBLE to (be) cooler than Chuck Norris in a Real Deal Brazil Hat." Argue with that.

No, seriously. Argue with it. We dare ya.

38) ...