Appearances

This guy J Allard (yeah, he goes by the affected name J without even a period) has been in the news a bit lately because he just quit or was fired from Microsoft, where he was a bigwig in the department that created the Xbox and the Zune (our family owns both of those products). He first came to my attention a few years back during the launch of the Xbox 360 because at some MTV event he infamously wore a sport coat over a hooded sweatshirt. Which seemed to most observers to be an absurd, maybe even pathetic, attempt to merge his middle-aged corporate self with a youthful-hipster image that MS desired in the person who would be pitching the Xbox 360.

The picture below is of J Allard as I've always known him: too-hip clothes and the shaved pate of a bald guy who doesn't want to appear to be a bald guy.


Kinda looks like a jerk. But whatever, he's a bigwig in the cutthroat world of consumer electronics. What do you expect?

Then I saw this picture, of J Allard before he got famous.


Besides leaving me with a vague feeling of depression, this contrast between the two pictures made me wonder whether this was a conscious decision on his part -- a midlife crisis, perhaps -- or direction from his people.

I imagine myself as the earlier J, a smiling goof in a plaid shirt (essentially what I am now), and then one of my bosses saying, "Andy, you need to spruce up the image a little bit. You're the face of the Xbox. Go to the mall. See what the kids are into, what they're wearing, what their hair is like. Try to skew a little younger."

And me thinking to myself, "I got it! A sportcoat over a hoodie!"