When everyone — including you — jokes that you have a secret volcano lair, it’s probably more than likely some other off-colour remarks might find their way out of your mouth. A new book about Elon Musk contains at least two dozen such statements. If even a third of these are true, he’s probably even smarter than we thought.
Ashlee Vance is the author of the superbly well-timed Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, the new book out this week about everyone’s favourite battery-makin’ billionaire. The Washington Post gave it a read and plucked out 22 incredible Musky nuggets from his employees, ex-wives, and parents (who, coincidentally, were worried about how much time he spent staring off into space — space! — and took out his adenoid glands thinking it would improve his hearing).
We know Musk has a pretty decent sense of humour, so some of these might be a little tongue-in-cheek. The one story that everyone seems to be sharing right now is the one I kinda do not believe? Musk supposedly reamed an employee via email for skipping a work event to be present at the birth of his child (I mean, I assume was a man he got mad at and not a woman?). But a few other stories just sound like typical Musk we’ve come to know and love.
His ex-wife thinks of him as a cyborg
“I do think of him as the Terminator. He locks his gaze on to something and says, ‘It shall be mine.’ Bit by bit, he won me over.” — Justine Musk, Elon’s ex-wife [I think “It shall be mine” is actually attributed to Wayne Campbell, but OK]
He has a great pickup line
“I believe the second sentence out of his mouth was, ‘I think a lot about electric cars.’ And then he turned to me and said, ‘Do you think about electric cars?’ ” — Christie Nicholson, who met Musk at a party
He’s a billionaire hobo
“He’s kind of homeless, which I think is sort of funny. He’ll email and say, ‘I don’t know where to stay tonight. Can I come over?’ I haven’t given him a key or anything yet.” — Google’s Larry Page
He wants to put a roller coaster in Tesla’s factory
“Everybody around here has slides in their lobbies. I’m actually wondering about putting in a roller coaster — like a functional roller coaster at the factory in Fremont. You’d get in, and it would take you around [the] factory but also up and down. Who else has a roller coaster? … It would probably be really expensive, but I like the idea of it.” — Elon Musk
He let a knife thrower throw knives at balloons held between his legs
“I’d seen him before, but did worry that maybe he could have an off day. Still, I thought, he would maybe hit one gonad but not both.” — Elon Musk
What do you think? Were his words taken out of context or is this the Real Musk™? Head on over to let us know if you’ve gotten any similarly frightening emails from your boss.
Picture: Arthur Mola/Invision/AP