Customer Tips: How to 'Zombify' Your RDB Tarp Hat

 

Pompton Plains, N.J., firefighter Ken Collucci happily came into possession of his second Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat recently. A longtime RDB fan, Ken knew that Real Deal hats tend to vary, often dramatically, from batch to batch; yet as fate would have it, his own second hat turned out to be pretty close in color to his first.

Ken obviously liked that color just fine (that's him at left in his well-worn original RDB). Just not twice over.

"Two hats of the same color?" he joked in his note to us outlining the steps he took to refashion the look of his second RDB. "NONSENSE!!! Options ... I like options! :)"

Ken had decided to go all Hollywood on his second hat, aiming to convert it to something close to the rich, dark hue of the iconic RDB of zombie-killer kingpin Tallahassee in the 2009 movie blockbuster Zombieland. 

He was, he said simply, gonna "zombify" his newest hat. 

Ken recognized that dyeing the hat alone wouldn't achieve quite the look he was after; actor Woody Harrelson's own movie RDB has, after all, a slight dull sheen to it, a cool quality created by the movie costuming department. So how could Ken achieve something similar to that?

"I figured a darker (hat) would look better after it was waterproofed," he told us. But a sprayed liquid like Scotchgard wasn't going to provide that little-extra-something effect; Ken instead chose beeswax, that age-old military method of waterproofing canvas.

So here are Ken's explicit instructions on proper hat zombification:

Items you will need:
An RDB Tarp hat (DUH!), RIT Dark Brown Liquid Dye (or any color of your choice), Kiwi Camp Dry Beeswax Waterproofer, a hair dryer or heat gun, a cold frosty alcoholic beverage.

To dye your hat:
In a large stock pot full of hot water, pour in half a bottle of the RIT dye and mix thoroughly. Pre-soak your RDB hat and (then) add it to the stock pot, making sure to saturate every inch of (the hat). Let it sit in the pot for 20-30 minutes, or until you reach your desired shade. Remove the hat and rinse with cold water and let dry overnight."

Ken's original RDB, at left, now his summer hat, and newer "zombified" addition.

Now on to waterproofing, which is apparently a slightly more complicated process than dyeing, involving soaking yourself a bit (!) as well to, y'know, get in the proper spirit of things.

Ken's waterproofing steps, including aforementioned "cold frosty alcoholic beverage":


To make your hat water-repellent:
1. Lay your hat out on an old towel or rag (using the good towels is NOT recommended). Drink for 3 seconds.

2. Using your fingers, slather copious amounts of beeswax into the brim, under the brim, and on the top of your hat. You do not need to slather up the inside of the hat. Drink for 3 seconds.
 

3. Work the beeswax in by hand until you have a consistent color and no clumps of wax visible. Drink for 3 seconds.

4. On a low setting, use a hair dryer or heat gun to melt the wax until it soaks into the hat. The towel will absorb any wax that seeps through. Drink for 3 seconds.

 
Let your hat sit overnight. Test your hat's repellency by using a spray bottle. Water should bead up on it. It is does, you have succeeded. Go have a beer!

Success! Ken's "zombiefied" hat, waterproofed.

"So far the waterproofing has been put to the test and it is holding up very well," Ken notes. "I have had to re-wax the seams when I realized I missed a few spots, but other than that, it's fine. Water beads up and runs off."

Zombies! Everywhere, Zombies! So This Halloween, Go Zombie KILLER Instead!

Zombies.


They’re soooo right now. You can send zombie greeting cards between hits on your zombie bong, scarfing Zombie Mints and looking altogether dead-ly in your zombie boxer shorts, wife beater and slippers. It’s a brave new corpsed-up world.

How zombified have things gotten, really? Google “zombie” paired with pretty much any other word, from A to, well, Zed, and you’ll get a legion of legitimate hits. “Zombie apple?" Ripe for the pickin’! "Zombie zeitgeist?” Well, duh! Just be prepared to unearth a little zombie kinkiness/nastiness as well. Because one Haitian voodoo daddy’s zombie cucumber is another person’s, um ...

So what’s a thoughtful tricked-out treatster to do this Halloween to stand out from the inevitable ratty horde of would-be rotting meatbags? Simple: Go the opposite of zombie! Get your dress-up on as the world’s most kick-ass zombie killer instead.

.

Rule Halloween night like a redneck king! Strut the zombie-choked streets as Tallahassee, the Twinkie-obsessed undead-dispatcher from the 2009 Hollywood smash hit Zombieland. See our simple costuming tips, immediately below.

rule #1: badass hat. The essential bit. For true Tallahassee attitude, only the right hatitude will cut it: Duding up in country-singer cowboy headwear is gonna miss the mark, podnah. The real thing, in this case, is the Real Deal Brazil, our genuine handmade-in-Brazil recycled-truck-tarp hat, chosen by Columbia Pictures’ costume department to give Tallahassee his crazy-ass sense of comic s***kicker cool. And once Halloween has melted back into the shadows, we’re confident your RDB hat will still be making mucho guest appearances atop your own crazy-ass cabeza.

rule #2: shades ’n’ scruff. Try the sunglasses-tree at just about any dollar store for suitable NASCAR-country-boy eyewear. And if you can’t muster up some fast whisker growth for a sloppy goatee, then dot your cheeks and chin with an eyeliner pencil for a quick patch of 5 o’clock hair-face.

rule #3: he-man neckwear. Wood beads, heavy chains, metal or fake-bone pendants. Kind of a Cracker Jacks-prize approach to men’s jewelry, really. Here again, any available dollar store should get you there.

rule #4: v-neck shirt. There’s something about a lowcut T-shirt that just says you’re badass. (Unless, of course, you’re a real lardass, and wearing sweatpants. Then it kinda says 3 a.m. Wal-Mart shopper instead.) Maroon is Tallahassee’s color, but any dark V-neck T should do the trick.

rule #5: leathers. You could probably pull off a jean jacket in a pinch, but Tallahassee is all about classic heavy leather, when he’s not seriously rednecking it up in snakeskin. Just not leather with too much sheen to it, and more motorcycle-style than bomber.

rule #6: the belt. Something with a big ol’ metal buckle.

rule #7: weapon holder, or (fake) weapon. The average leather gun holster is too small, but a leather sheaf for a long fish-filleting knife would do it, strapped to your belt, and then tied at the bottom around your left thigh with yet another belt. In the absence of that, just get yourself a toy rifle, or a toy AK-47, if such a thing is available at, y’know, Toy Guns ’R Us. The key word here is “toy.” Halloween surprise + packing real heat = bang, bang, someone’s bad-dead, not just funny-undead.

rule #8: classic denim. No designer “holes,” acid-washed streaks or black thread; the simple workin’ man’s denim-jeans standard, Levi’s, is best. To achieve that I’ve-just-endured-the-apocalypse feel, rub charcoal on your hands and then smear them on your thighs. You dirty little zombie-killer, you!

rule #9: boots. Cowboy, not biker. Suede or natural says serious boot-wearer, but snakeskin lends kick-ass redneck cred in a red-hot second.

other fun props. Jack Daniels bottle, Hostess Twinkies, banjo, long-handled pruning shears.*

* Note of caution: Hard liquor, mystery-cream-filled snack-cakes, poorly played bluegrass music and sharp garden implements can cause serious harm to the still-living.

Our Hats and Bags Are the Very Tarp of the Heap!

Real Deal Brazil founder Walter R. Perkins Jr. has a longstanding love affair with Brazil, and would likely find some excuse to get there even if work didn't periodically require it!

On his last trip there, Mr. P., as we all call him, got a couple snapshots of one of the coastal markets he likes to frequent, wandering around and looking at local wares. It was at just such a market in 2008 where Mr. P. chanced upon the prototype of our own distinctive headwear, which he later took to a remote inland town known for its hatmaking, employing a family sewing business there to modify the design into what has since become our classic Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat.

Coastal Brazilian market, No. 1.

Coastal Brazilian market, No. 2.

But Mr. P. returned from his most recent trip to the steamy south loaded down with a lot more than just photos and his usual stories to fill us with envy cuz we didn’t get to go with him! This time, he also brought with him a huge sheet of weathered old canvas truck tarp, that heavy, tightly woven cotton material at the very heart of what we do.

Our hats and bags are, of course, handmade from recycled tarps that once stretched across the beds of cargo trucks, like the ones in the photo immediately below.

Cargo trucks outfitted with protective canvas tarps.

In Brazil, the world’s fifth-largest country, most cargo is transported by trucks, their payloads frequently protected by such heavy canvas tarps, which wind up being pummeled by deluges of blinding rain, baked and broiled by scalding heat, whipped by harsh winds and assaulted by various road debris. By some estimates, there’s enough tarp barreling along Brazilian roads to cover the entire surface of the moon, and then some!

Above and below left, workers at the small São Paulo business that collects old truck tarps for us
to send to our sewing group in central Brazil.

In the last few years, enterprising small Brazilian businesses have begun buying up old tarps from trucking agencies, making all that road-seasoned canvas a bit more scarce than it used to be – though, happily, also helping to keep even more of it out of landfills. We work with a little company in Brazil’s largest city of São Paulo to secure recycled truck tarps for our RDB sewing group. (Click on the photo with the guy in the red shirt and all the bundled tarps, and check out the heels on our São Paulo business partner’s shoes; in Brazil, personal style never takes a holiday!)
 

The final photo, below, is of Mr. P. back in the U.S. of A., in hometown Greenville, N.C., holding up that recycled truck tarp he brought back from Brazil. (Note the cool printing on the tarp, which explains how snippets of Portuguese lettering and unusual graphics sometimes pop up on our hats and bags.)

Mr. P. back in the United States with a sheet of recycled Brazilian truck tarp.

The Real Deal Brazil – because one person’s old tarp is another’s new treasure!

You're Never too Young to Be the Real Deal!

It's that age-old question: Are people born the Real Deal, or are they instead raised that way? In the case of young Spencer Robert Gordon here, the answer would seem to be ... BOTH!

Spencer's photo came to us in an Aug. 18 e-mail from his mom, excited new Real Deal Brazil hat owner Debi Gordon of Voorhees, N.J. Debi writes:

"My family and I were in Nags Head (N.C., on the Outer Banks) this past week and we had an amazing time! Truly the best vacation ever…..for many reasons…one of them being , we walked into (local business) Nags Head Hammocks and were looking around and all of a sudden the hat caught our eyes! It is the most perfect hat for my husband and we also bought a bag …..then I went back and bought 3 more hats for our friends back home ."

Debi says of her son, age 3, and his borrowed RDB hat:

"He looks wonderful in it (yes even with the binky) and he truly is the real deal."

We couldn't agree more!

In closing, Debi adds:

"Thanks for all of your wonderful products we will be ordering more very soon."

We do so love a story with a happy ending!

A Real-Life Good-Time Recipe From the Nice Folks at The Real Deal Brazil

Hey you adult Real Deal Brazil party people! The next time you feel like vigorously killing some time (and, OK, a few brain cells), try this:

Fill a blender about half full of ice, crushed being best. Fill the rest of the way with chunks of fresh seedless watermelon. Add as much Malibu rum (the new Malibu Black, flavored with coconut, is dangerously tasty) as you feel safe with, then splash in about a half a cup of skim milk. Blend heavily. Pour. Hide your car keys, cuz you will drink more, and then probably more again. In fact, you may drink every damn bit.

Sharing is, of course, optional.

For a little extra appalling decadence, add whipped cream. A cherry. A slab of pineapple.

Whee! Summer's almost gone, but with this tasty newly improvised concoction (we just made it up this evening out of what was on-hand), you can serve up a little of the lazy season all year long.

It's kinda like the taste of a vacation to Florida, in a glass.

Lucky Winners of Our 2,000 Fans Contest

It's that magic time, Real Dealers!

Twenty winners were randomly drawn this morning from the 190 Real Deal Brazil fans who entered our 2,000 Fans Contest. Winners are listed below, in the order they were chosen at random-drawing site Random.org. We included current Facebook profile pics of each winner, cuz we're just like that.

Congrats to all you folks, and our sincere thanks to everyone who took part. Some of your answers were positively inspired (Kermit the Frog? Really? We love it!), and we'll definitely post several here in their entirety as soon as we get the chance.

Winners should drop a note to frabey@realdealbrazil.com before Friday, July 29, to secure their prizes. Subject line: I WON!

For the rest of you folks, rest assured, we'll be doing something new in the not-too-distant future to spread a few more hats around (it'll either be really obvious, or else it won't; we love us a good puzzle!). Cuz every now and then, a thank you from us to all of you is in order, for letting us continue to do what we do ...

And now, drumroll please ...

THE 20 REAL DEAL BRAZIL 2,000 FANS CONTEST WINNERS ARE:

1. Scotty Byard

2. Jonathan Will

3. Robert Fitzgerald

4. Brad Simmons

5. Peter J Murray III

6. Christopher Plyler

7. Anna Schubarth

8. Jed Mcilvain

9. Ted Stanley

10. Barry McCalla

11. Michael Carlson

12. Darin Gagne

13. John Carbaugh

14. Patrick Buttermore

15. Ken Collucci

16. Eric McWilliams

17. Jacob Martin Prater

18. Erik Allen Garrison

19. Buddy Lique

20. Rob Peck

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) ...