It looked like fun to do and it turned out to be a lot of fun: flying a remote controlled helicopter. The are hard to control, and if you lose control, they break easily.
Having seen that and ignoring the crashing part, it still looked like fun. And smaller RC heli’s don’t break so easily anymore, and with gyros built-in nowadays, they are reasonably stable to fly. And the very small ones (like 20cm rotor diameter) are so light, if they fall on the floor, they don’t damage anything severely and don’t get damaged.
I got mine from http://www.hobbyking.com (look for the HK-190 for surprisingly cheap US$30). It’s certainly not high end and not collective pitch, but at that price, who’s to complain? Get some extra batteries (the 160mAh Turnigy are ok).
It’s as much fun as I expected!
Lots of resources available on the web. Example is http://www.rchelicopterfun.com/ and http://rchelicopterguide.blogspot.com/2009/08/beginner-rc-helicopter-flying-training.html and http://www.swashplate.co.uk/ehbg-v17/ehbg_index.html and there are many more.