It's the George Foreman iGrill, model number GIPOD200. (Did I miss the 100 model?) Okay, on closer examination, it's a George Foreman grill that you can plug more or less any MP3 player into. But the ad and the model name namecheck iPod by name. Built in speakers and amp, too. Gotta love that. You could go to George's site to see it yourself, but I've been thoughtful enough to save you the trip by pasting the picture here:
My favorite part is "Knockout tunes! Knockout the fat!" at the bottom.
He's such a sweet guy now...and maybe he was a sweet guy then...but I've never seen anybody hit harder than George Foreman in his prime.
Uhm, you kids know he was a boxer, right?
One of his biggest fights, the one documented as "The Rumble in the Jungle" in the fantastic documentary "When We Were Kings," resulted in a hard loss to then-underdog Muhammed Ali -- one of only 5 in a career that included 68 knockouts in 76 fights. These weren't against palookas either -- back then, heavyweight championships meant something serious. These guys were arguably the most respected athletes in the world.
One of George's most famous victories came in the first HBO boxing transmission, with Howard Cosell's call becoming, as Wikipedia reminds us, one of the most famous of all time: "Down goes Frazier!, Down goes Frazier!, Down goes Frazier!" George knocked him down 6 times, with the last blow actually lifted Frazier's feet off the floor. Gotta give our man Joe credit for getting up all six times before the fight was declared a technical knockout. Another non-palooka: "Smokin' Je" Frazier knocked Ali out in the 11th round in "The Fight of The Century," which I think probably was...although I didn't see them all.
Since he retired, my favorite thing about George isn't the grill. It's that he named all five of his sons....George.
BTW, little known fact about me: I used to box. Loved it. Nothing brings clarity like being punched in the face. A finite number of times I suppose.
