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Pastimes : 100 Acre Wood -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lost1 who wrote (3085)	1/28/2003 2:59:41 PM
From: Lost1	Respond to of 3287

No argument: They believe in fishing By John Kelso AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, January 28, 2003 There's something a little fishy about Mark and Paul VanMiddlesworth's new product. The two St. Stephen's School honor roll students have come up with a little fish-shaped emblem you can put on the trunk of your car that says, simply, "5LB. BASS." The idea is to make sport of the theological debate on the back ends of cars. You've seen it: One guy driving down the road has a Christian fish on his car. Another guy coming down the highway counters with a salamander-shaped thingy decorated with legs and the name Darwin. Fifteen-year-old Mark VanMiddlesworth has a marketing scheme that he hopes will sell his "5LB. BASS" alternative. He figures if his fish ticks off enough people, it could take off like a, well, 5-pound bass. "We're hoping that people who really get offended by this buy a bunch and burn 'em," Mark said. This kid will be working for GSD&M before it's over. Mark doesn't think the back of an SUV is the proper place to be arguing about which came first, the chicken or the egg. The motto on the "5LB. BASS" emblem says it all: "Let's quit arguing and start fishing." Both Mark and Paul are avid fishermen. "I think it's pretty crazy," Mark said. "It's just a fish, and they're using it to argue theology on the trunk of the car, of all places. And this shows a fish is just a fish. It shouldn't be used to argue theology and religion. If people would use the fish to just go fishing, the world would probably be a better place, and much less car wrecks." The idea to create a plastic "5LB. BASS" thingy for your auto was born when Paul, Mark's 13-year-old brother, and Rex, their dad and an Austin lawyer, were returning from a successful fishing trip on Lake Travis. Paul and Rex noticed an abundance of fish designs on the backs of vehicles. "The two pondered why so many people felt compelled to argue ideology and science on their car trunks -- and how the fish got pulled into the argument anyway," says a marketing blurb about the emblem. "My brother said all it made him think of was catching a fish," Mark recalled. The family sat down and scribbled possible designs. "We plan to form a corporation if we make enough money to warrant it," Mark said. There was some jockeying over what the fish emblem should say exactly. Paul had his own agenda. "His idea was '7 3/4-pound bass,' " Mark said. "Because that's the largest he's caught." The family had 500 of the trunk plates made up, and they're available at www.5lbbass.com, as well as a few stores. "My dad has sold a couple at his office," Mark said. "It's real easy to sell something to people if they work for you." The investment to get the fish swimming was "somewhere like around $700 with the Web site and everything," Mark said. "My dad invested in it. Me and my brother were actually too cheap to give money to it, so we just worked hard." Mark isn't sure how his "5LB. BASS" would play at school. "I don't think I've told any of my teachers," he said. "I don't know how well it would go over at an Episcopal school." But he's thinking big. "We've actually given a couple away just so people can see them," he said. "The only way to tell if they're going to go national is to get 'em out there and see what the reaction is." And the worse, the better.