Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Fight Like a Handsome Man – Inside the Male Model Fight Club

Posted: 26 Sep 2012 03:23 AM PDT


It’s called Friday Night Throwdown, but most know it as the male model fight club, an unlicensed underground event that puts pretty boys in the ring with street fighters and real boxers. As you can imagine, models almost never win.

"I think it's hilarious that the whole point of their being is to make money off what they look like, yet they'll come throw down for a couple of hundred bucks," one of the Friday Night Throwdown organizers says about the pretty boys who sign up to get their asses kicked for around $150. But for the people doing the fighting in the ring, the event is no joke. “I definitely tell everybody, 'This is no bullshit. You're about to get in front of 800 people. Get ready—and if you don't, it's still going to be entertaining for you to get your ass beat,'" the organizer says. And most of the models involved in this underground phenomenon take that advice very seriously. They train hard, and the fights have gotten more intense during the last two years that Friday Night Throwdown has been taking place in various downtown New York warehouses. It’s in the models’ financial interest to put up a good fight, because if the crowd likes them, they might get invited back and paid double or triple what they earned the first time. Still, despite their best efforts, only one male model has actually won a fight against a hardened fighter.

Photo: Photo Thug Life

"The models that are doing this are basically the wild models," says a Throwdown fighter, who’s also a model himself. “Everyone's loving you, taking pictures of you. You walk around the streets of New York, and people stop you, like, 'Yo, you're the kid from fight night, right?'" Some of them don’t actually need the extra money, they just want to prove that despite their being paid just for good looks, they can also throw and take punches. But, truth be told, no super models of the fashion world have ever taken part in the crazy event. Most are just guys who book campaigns erratically, and don’t really rely on their modelling careers to pay the bills. Still, an event organizer says one of the most popular male models around right now came to watch the action one night and said that although he can’t risk injuring himself right now, he would love to fight at one point. “But when we find the right time and I stop modeling for a little while," he explained, "I want to fight. I'd love to do this."

Photo: Photo Thug Life

The only model who has ever won a fight in Friday Night Throwdown is 20-year-old “Rockstar” Charlie. He has won all of his previous five fights in the circuit, but it’s worth mentioning he has eight years of boxing training under his belt, and he only took up modeling after he got involved in the event. A contact from Throwdown introduced him to an agent at Ford, another booked him for a show with Bijules, and it looks like his career is slowly picking up. Still he’s not worried about fighting injuries, on the contrary. "I wouldn't mind if my face looked more like a boxer's. It would give me some more character. I'm just like, 'Come on, break my nose!'" he says.

Photo: Photo Thug Life

It might sound silly, but this is a real fight club. Broken noses, black eyes and swollen faces are very common during Friday Night Throwdown events, but the models don’t mind, they’re finally being taken seriously as men. In fact, the fighting gets so violent that venue owners often threaten to call the cops, in fear they might be held accountable should something happen to one of the fighters.

 

If you’re curious about when and where the next Throwdown will take place, just keep an ear to the streets, or better yet keep an eye on Facebook. “Even the underground illegal scene is deep addicted to that Facebook shit,” an event goer told Vice Magazine.

Source: NY Mag

Fight Like a Handsome Man – Inside the Male Model Fight Club was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Lucky Norwegian Family Wins National Lottery Every Time Mother Gives Birth

Posted: 26 Sep 2012 02:06 AM PDT


“This is completely insane… we don’t even play the lottery that often,” 29-year-old Hege Jeanette Oksnes said after her family won their third national lottery jackpot in the last six years. The most bizarre thing is it always happened after she gave birth to a child.

Just last week, Tord, Hege Jeanette’s 19-year-old brother won 12.2 million crowns (S$2.6 million) in the national Norwegian lottery, adding to the Oksnes family’s growing wealth. Previously, Jeanette herself won 8,2 million crowns ($1,4 million), and her father 12 million crowns ($2,1 million), playing in the same lottery. Three members of the same family winning the lottery in the last six years doesn’t happen very often, but after connecting the dots, the Oksnes have apparently identified what makes them so incredibly lucky. The first two times they won the lottery it happened just hours after Jeanette gave birth, and the third time stroke of luck occurred three months after she had her third child. The young mother told AFP she has three brothers who have yet to win the lottery and they asked her to have at least 10 other children. But after three children, Jeanette thinks it may be time to call it quits. ”My husband thinks we have enough money now,” she says.

Despite having more money than the average person, Hege Jeanette Oksnes still kept her old job, serving hot-dogs at a petrol station, and even though she bought new cars with her winnings and did a bit of travelling, she keeps most of her winnings in the bank, hoping to find a dream property to build a new house. The Norsk Tipping AS lottery company told the Associated Press it has seen cases where one person has won the lottery twice, but never three members of the same family winning separately in such a short period of time.

via BBC, Today Online

Lucky Norwegian Family Wins National Lottery Every Time Mother Gives Birth was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Man Builds UFO House to Prove His Ex-Girlfriend Wrong

Posted: 26 Sep 2012 12:50 AM PDT


Thinking of going to Roswell in the hopes of spotting a UFO? Don’t bother, just head out to the southern coast of Puerto Rico where you’re guaranteed to see one. It may not be able to fly, but it’s bizarre shape and colorful decorations make it quite a sight.

58-year-old Roberto Sanchez Rivera has been planning his unique UFO house for about 40 years. In a perfect world, I’d be saying his inspiration for the project was love, but this is the real world and Roberto’s true motivation was sweet revenge. In his youth years, when he was just a dreamy, artistic student from a poor family, he courted a girl by sending her love notes decorated with drawings of UFOs, and telling her he would one day build a UFO-shaped house. Not the usual pick-up lines, that’s for sure, but he eventually made her his girlfriend, if only for just three months. After she broke off their relationship, the girl’s mother told Rivera it was because she thought he would never amount to anything in life. Rather than crying his heart out, drowning his sorrow in booze or burying himself in work, the man started plotting his revenge. The truth is he was so devastated that he even contemplated suicide, but then he said "No, I'm going to show her, this person, I'm going to work that much harder to show her who I am."

Photo: New York Times

He studied industrial design and fine arts, thus earning the skills he needed to actually build the UFO house he bragged about to his ex-girlfriend, and even picked out the perfect location, on top of a hill near the highway, so if she would ever pass through there she couldn’t miss it. "He wanted to do it in a certain spot, so that if she were to travel she would see it day in and day out and regret those words," Maria Martinez, Rivera's current girlfriend told the New York Times. Although he eventually married another woman (whom he has since divorced) he never gave up on his dream of building the unusual residence. In 2002, he bought the piece of land in the southern part of Puerto Rico, for $95,000, and in a few years time he managed to fulfill his dream, building a $150,000 house using discount-store knickknacks and discarded auto parts.

Photo: New York Times

The craziest part of this story is Roberto Sanchez Rivera’s revenge plan actually worked. Although he wouldn’t reveal her identity, the ingenious builder says he once got a call from his  ex-girlfriend, while he was still working on the house. She even came down for a tour of the unfinished living space and she was so impressed that she wanted to get back together with him. Only now, it was Rivera who was no longer interested. He had gotten the sweet revenge he had dreamed of for so many years.

Photo: Nice Decors

Now that the ugly goal has been met, Rivera can finally focus on the architectural wonder he has manged to create. The incredibly resourceful builder used every piece of scrap he could find and turned into a piece of decoration for his offbeat UFO house. Those metallic boxes on the flying saucer's dome, which might be mistaken for some complex communications system are actually cheap ashtrays from the dollar store, and the light fixtures on the base of the house are $1,99 salad bowls. Inside, the living room shades are made from car seat belts, the fountain in the living room is made of old utensils, pots and pans, and many light fixtures are actually just refurbished old car parts.

Photo: Nice Decors

Roberto Sanchez Rivera told the New York Times that his house is about following your dreams and proving all the doubters wrong. He also pointed out “that you should never say to any human being, 'You can never accomplish anything in life.'”

 

Man Builds UFO House to Prove His Ex-Girlfriend Wrong was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

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