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Just like Greg Gillis could convince me that PCs are cool, along comes another Microsoft commercial starring The Tron Guy and it has the opposite affect.  I’m selling my PC and buying a Mac.  Thanks Bill Gates!

“Without the networks and communities created by the PC, the world might never have even heard of the “Tron Guy” or internet phenomenons just like him,” so says the ad page. But here’s the thing – most people still look at this guy (can’t believe Microsoft couldn’t find a meme from 2008) not like he’s awesome for being a fat guy in spandex and “doing his own thing” but as a kinda pathetic.  Laughing at him, definitely not with him.

I will say, with him being from Minnesota, that state strikes me as something of a cultural oddity.  Can someone get Chuck Klosterman and Rex Sorgatz to co-author an anthropoligical study of the state?

Yup.  This is the world we live in folks.  Tron Guy, aka Jay Maynard, a 47-year-old Minnesota residence, tricked out an airplane to resemble his Tron unitard he wears.  So a guy who achieved quasi-geek-celebrity made news by buying an airplane and it was reported by media publications and then regurgitated on this blog.

So yeah, we realize we’re part of the problem.  But still, that photo just makes me chortle.  In fact coffee came out my nose this morning when I saw it.

“I wanted a design that would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that it was Tron Guy’s airplane,” Maynard said in a phone interview Thursday.

Maynard afforded the $140,000 plane with money from his computer consultant business.  Contrary to what many might assume, he has made very little off of his costumed appearances, other than infamy.