Captain Dan, Energy Man

The sky continues to be the limit for Captain Energy Dan Mayer (pictured), the energy-drink guru-cum-reviewer-cum-designer whose August profile in Westword can be found here. The Associated Press recently penned a piece about the rise in popularity of energy drinks and their potential danger to youngsters who suck the sugary swill down by the caseful -- and who else but Dan the Man should appear in the article, discussing the trend and offering up drink reviews of the sort that can be found on his website. The Denver Post printed the article on the front of the Monday, October 30th issue -- complete with a picture of Dan on an inside page -- and the Rocky ran a truncated version of report as well. But by far the biggest exposure Dan received from the AP piece was Yahoo! picking it up and making it one of the top six stories on its site the previous day. Millions around the world logged on to check their e-mail Sunday night only to be greeted by Dan Mayer, arguably one of the top energy drink experts in the world.

"It started last night and the traffic has been through the roof," Mayer says of the recent buzz. "I've got five times the normal traffic on my website right now. I'm actually afraid to go to my server because I don't want to even give it one more hit to deal with."

And as for a planned collaboration with Damon Lawner, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur willing to back an energy drink of Dan's invention?

"We've talked a little more about it and we've actually come up with the angle of trying to make it the first community-designed energy drink," Mayer notes. "We want to have web-users give us feedback on flavors, the logo, all that stuff. The idea is still floating around, but ideally we would like to have something going by next summer."

Float on, Dan, float on. -- Adam Cayton-Holland