Stop me if you’ve heard this, but people are different. The Cosmic Arbiter dispatches some of them to Earth with a handshake and an aspirin, others get a syringe full of adrenaline. Ergo, Mabel McButtonedup is content to play Sunday organ at the Church of Dubious Bliss while The Naked Cowboy belts out tunes in his underwear in Times Square. Remember Cal Ripken? He once played 2632 straight baseball games for the Baltimore Orioles without making a peep, whereas short-termer Mark Fidrych caused quite a stir over in Detroit, gallumphing around the mound like a giant crane while having avid conversations with himself or discussing critical interplanetary matters with the residents of dwarf star Edna. Joan Baez dutifully plucked her guitar and dispensed civilized wisdom for 60 years; Janis Joplin shot across the sky like a meteorite and crashlanded landed at age 27. Some people are born the next of kin to the wayward wind. Gogi Grant told me that.
Something Like A Hero
Mad Mike Hughes may be crazy as a bedbug but he’s having a lot of fun. Mike, you see, is a card-carrying member of the Flat Earth Society and he doesn’t believe in stuff just because everybody else says it’s so. “I don’t believe in science,” says Hughes. “I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air. I know about rocket nozzles and thrust, but that’s not science. That’s just a formula. There’s no difference between science and science fiction.”
Mike, a sprightly 61 years of age, decided awhile back that he’d build his own rocket and blast off into the sky with him aboard in an attempt to prove the Earth was flat. He didn’t say how the trip would prove anything, but that’s just Mike. Say what you will but there aren’t a lot of wackos running around who can build a rocket with $20,000 worth of scrap metal and launch it from a modified mobile home.
Now, when you want to do things like shooting off your own rocket, there are always spoilsports who will try to stop you. This is entirely reasonable. We can’t have rockets falling down in the middle of the Gay Pride parade or crashing into the mac-and-cheese table at the Adventist Church’s annual picnic. In Hughes’ case, the culprit was the Bureau of Land Management, which took a disliking to Mike’s initial flight path over public lands. Hughes agreed to alter the route, taking a more vertical profile.
On March 24, Mad Mike Hughes trooped out to the Mojave Desert in California, strapped himself into his big green rocket and blasted off. For a homemade job, things went quite well. The rocket shot up 1,875 feet into the sky, successfully deployed its parachutes and more or less glided back to Earth. The Associated Press said the stream-powered missile was able to get to 340 psi rather than the planned 350 and flew at a speed of 350 miles per hour. Hughes was mostly uninjured but said he “would feel it in the morning.”
In case you were wondering, Mike is fully aware his Mojave extravaganza will not convert a lot of people to his way of thinking. Fortunately for us, he is not stopping there. Nudged on the subject, he sits up straight and his eyes light up. He leans over to confess a happy secret. “I’m looking for a bigger rocket.”
Fear & Loathing
Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson was not sweet and cuddly. He was undependable as an employee, tentative as a friend and uncivilized in polite society. His work, though---ah, that cannot be ignored, even though much of it was done under the influence of alcohol or one or another of the countless drugs he consumed as a matter of course. Hunter did not just write the story, he often was the story.
While living in Kentucky as a young man, Thompson and some of his friends robbed the same gas station three nights in a row just to see if they could get away with it. When the local police surveilled the gas station the next night, Hunter and his friends robbed a liquor store instead.
In 1985, a millionaire named Floyd Watkins moved a few miles away from Thompson and began construction that wreaked havoc on the local ecosystem. The two men began feuding as Watkins showed little regard for nature or his neighbors. Then one night, the Watkins mansion was repeatedly shot into by various types of gunfire, which the victim traced back to Thompson. When questioned by police, Hunter claimed to be shooting at a rabid porcupine. He was never charged.
In 1974, Thompson and his illustrator, Ralph Steadman, were dispatched by Rolling Stone to Zaire to cover the Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, one of the strangest events in sports history, hosted by an eccentric African dictator, covered by the world’s top journalists and virtually impossible to get tickets for. Instead of going to the fight, Thompson swapped the priceless ducats for weed and set off into the jungle to find Nazi war criminal Martin Bormann and, if that didn’t work out, to search for pygmies.
After the fight was over, writers George Plimpton and Norman Mailer returned to the hotel to find Thompson floating naked in the hotel pool high as a kite and drunk on Wild Turkey. He had no idea who won the fight and didn’t care. He was more obsessed with sneaking some ivory he had bought back into the United States. When the stuff was confiscated by customs, Thompson charged past security, jumped over a desk, grabbed his bounty and ran for it, earning a brief jail sentence.
Hunter Thompson relied on different tools for his work than most of us. He famously advised us of his formula in a few words: “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone but they’ve always worked for me.”
The President Will See You Now….
Stanley Weyman was a benevolent impostor. He never pulled a con to steal a man’s money, just to evade the boredom of everyday life. Weyman’s career as an impostor began in 1910 when Stanley was only 20 years old. He decided he’d like to be the U.S. consul to Morocco for awhile. Having virtually no experience at this sort of thing, he was promptly arrested and charged with fraud. The punishment was light.
Stanley went on to become a foreign doctor, a lieutenant in the United States Army (and, just to show no favoritism, also one in the U.S. Navy), a consul for Romania, the personal physician of Rudolph Valentino’s widow, a journalist for the United Nations and even the Secretary of State.
Weyman’s crowning achievement came in 1921 when he posed as a State Department liaison officer to Princess Fatima of Afghanistan. Seems the princess wanted an official reception from the U.S. government but everyone was ignoring her. Stanley apologized on the government’s behalf for this outrage, asking the Afghanis for $10,000 to grease the wheels of recognition. Now if Stanley was a cad, a bounder, a true varlet, he would have taken the money and run. He did not. He used the funds to treat the princess and her entourage like….well….royalty, securing first-class transport and glowing accomodations in Washington, D.C. He also dropped a few names at the State Department and managed to secure a meeting between his client and the Secretary of State.
Working his way up the gullible chain, Stanley finally managed to get President Warren G. Harding to receive the princess, but the extensive visibility of this charade eventually cost him. The federales marched in and grabbed him, tossing The Great Pretender in jail for two years. Weyman smiled, did his time and expressed no regrets. “It’s been fun,” he told reporters. “I’ve traveled, met interesting people and enjoyed my life. Oh yes, and I’m always welcome in Afghanistan.”
The Great Impostor
Believe it or not, we had our own Great Impostor in Lawrence, Massachusetts, though not so benign as Stanley Weyman. His name was Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr., born in the city on December 12, 1921. Before anyone begins assassinating the character of Lawrencians, let it be known the Demaras had their origins somewhere in Quebec, a known hotbed of wackadoodlery. When Demara was a young eight years old, the family fortunes took a dive and the clan moved to a middle-class neighborhood on the other side of the tracks where Ferdie learned the meaning of austerity. He must have appreciated the experience because he ran off to a Trappist monastery at age 16, becoming Brother Marie-Jerome.
You know what they say about monasteries. All meditating and no play make Ferdinand a dull boy, which Demara had no desire to be. He bailed on the brethren and joined the U.S. Army, mistakenly looking for fun. One year of this kind of fun was all he could stand. Ferdie defected and fled back to Lawrence, facing possible charges for desertion. He took the name of an army buddy, Anthony Ignolia and inexplicably joined the Navy. Maybe he was looking for The Love Boat. Anyway, while stationed in Norfolk, Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr., alias Brother Marie-Jerome, alias Anthony Ignolia managed to come by some notes of Dr. Robert Linton French, a Navy officer and psychologist on prolonged leave. He then simulated his own suicide, leaving a small parcel with a few clothes by the water together with a farewell note.
Demara, now Dr. Robert Linton French, then entered the Gethsemani Trappist monastery in Kentucky. A year later, he emigrated to DePaul University in Chicago, studying theology, cosmology and epistemology with the recommendation of the monastery director. From that moment on, he started careers in colleges and universities, taught psychology, served as an orderly in a sanitarium and as an instructor in college. He finally was arrested for desertion in Seattle and sentenced to six years, but was paroled after 18 months.
Demara joined the Canadian Navy as Dr. Joseph Cyr, a trauma surgeon, during the Korean War. Sixteen Korean soldiers were brought onto the ship, all of them with serious injuries requiring immediate surgical intervention without which they would likely die. There was only one surgeon on the ship, the inimitable Dr. Cyr. Demara/Cyr disappeared into his room, studying the problems at exceptional speed. He returned, operated on all sixteen Koreans and none of them died. The achievement was celebrated in Canadian newspapers and the mother of the actual Dr. Cyr read about these miracles in amazement. She was pretty sure her son was still practicing medicine in Grand Falls. When the word got back to Demara’s ship, the HMCS Cayuga, Captain James Plomer, who had benefited from dental work done by Ferdinand, refused to believe he was not a doctor. The Royal Canadian Navy chose not to press charges and he returned to the United States.
Life Magazine offered Demara $2500 for his story, big bucks in those days, and very soon he became a celebrity. This new-found fame didn’t deter him from taking a job in Texas as a prison warden under the identity of Ben W. Jones. When a convict recognized him, he escaped in the middle of the night to Penobscot Bay as Martin Godgart, high-school teacher. Found out again, Demara spent six months in jail. Upon release, he became Frank Kingston, a caretaker for mentally disturbed patients.
In 1960, Tony Curtis played Demara in The Great Impostor, a movie based on Robert Crichton’s biography. At one time or another, Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. had also been a civil engineer, a sheriff’s deputy, a lawyer, a child-care expert, an editor and a cancer researcher. Ironically, he finished his career under his real name as a counselor at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles, forging a close friendship with the famous movie star, Steve McQueen. Demara delivered last rites to McQueen in November of 1980. He died himself on June 7, 1982 at the age of 60, due to the consequences of heart failure and complications from a diabetic condition.
Many people think of Demara as a scoundrel, a fraud, a man to be locked up in a keyless vault. To his fellow Lawrencians, of course, he is a sort of hero, a man who played his various roles well, aiding many, harming few. He made his own rules and overcame his early fears of a meaningless life. Reflecting on our lives, many us us wonder what life might have been like if we’d taken an alternate path. Ferdinand never had to worry about that one.
A Puzzle Within An Enigma Within….
Speaking of cosmic shenanigans, sometimes the heavens deliver to us a Special Bonus, a freak of nature, faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. Sometimes it’s Superman, but others it’s a Triple Crown winner for horseracing. It doesn’t happen often, a mere 12 times since Sir Barton started the ball rolling in 1919. Thirty-seven years passed between dances before American Pharoah proved the feat was still possible with a smashing victory in 2015. This Saturday at Belmont Park in New York, Bob Baffert’s Justify will make his own attempt at the brass ring. The race is a handicapper’s dream, being virtually impossible to call. But the nuns used to tell us when the going gets tough, the tough get going, so we’re not afraid. Once more, into the breach!
The Impossible Dream
Reasons why Justify will not win: (1) He’s worn out. The previous two battles have drained the tank, as they have done with many others. Three classic races in five weeks is one too many for any modern racehorse. (2) Most of his opponents are rested, a couple may be peaking. (3) Justify is unproven at the lengthy 1 1/2 mile distance of the Belmont Stakes. He barely held on in the much shorter Preakness three weeks ago. (4) Justify drew the 1 gate, the least preferred. If he breaks a bit slow, he’ll be surrounded by the field with no place to go. And the going may be slowest on the rail with rain expected for Saturday afternoon. Gee. Why bother to show up at all?
Despite all this, Justify is currently the 4-5 favorite, an overwhelming number. Much of this has to do with his opposition. There will not be a gateful of Secretariats meeting him at the post. There will, however, be a few solid performers. In handicapping a horse race, the first thing a bettor does is to separate the wheat from the chaff. Let’s start with the chaff.
Todd Pletcher’s Noble Indy, a speed horse, has no chance. His trainer may be incorporating him as a rabbit to aid the chances of a stablemate, Vino Rosso.
Bob Baffert’s Restoring Hope, who has only a maiden win to his credit, belongs elsewhere. Perhaps his connections believe the distance of the race and Belmont’s long stretch give their well-pedigreed candidate a chance. We beg to differ.
Free Drop Billy sounds like a loser. On Saturday, he will be a big one.
The best thing about Gronkowski is his name. He’ll get some play at the windows because of it. Whatever his odds are at post time, triple them and you’ll get a good idea of his chances. That said, Chad Brown is a dangerous trainer who doesn’t enter his horses in big races for the fun of it.
Blended Citizen was a recent winner of New York’s sometimes tough Peter Pan. This year’s race did not feature a reprise of the coming of Hindoo. Improving horse, but not up to winning this. Someone has to win, though, right? so let’s take a hard look at the remaining four challengers to the champ.
The Contenders
We wrote off Tenfold in the Preakness, but he charged up late to scare the top two. Now, he’s a leading candidate with many who see the extra furlongs and the long stretch as a major consideration. Tenfold is by Curlin, out of a Tapit mare, a perfect pedigree for the Belmont Stakes. Scary.
Vino Rosso was a hot pick in the Kentucky Derby, where he took the overland trail and finished poorly. Punters blamed it on the muddy track and he may get another one Saturday. Probably smart to keep him in your bet if the track is fast, risky otherwise. Trainer Wayne Lukas always seems to have something going on and this time it’s Bravazo, a fast-closing second in the Preakness. If we’re going to sneer at Justify’s chances to meet the three-race challenge, however, consider that Bravazo has the same issue. Hofburg, owned by Juddmonte Farms, trained by Bill Mott, sired by Tapit, is the hot horse for Saturday’s race. Ran into big traffic problems in the Derby and has been off on a five-week vacation. Fresh and dangerous. The Envelope, Please…. 1. Justify. I put him third in the Derby based on statistics that told a rough tale---that no horse unraced at two had won the Big race since the dawn of time. Justify upset that applecart so I won’t be deterred by the stats which illustrate that almost nobody ever wins the Triple Crown. He’s clearly the best horse of his generation, trained by the best conditioner of the era. Nobody will be running a 1:11 six furlongs in this race unless it’s Noble Indy. If that happens, rider Mike Smith must resist the urge to run with him. If that doesn’t happen, Justify will control the pace, a necessary tactic. The poor gate position should be of little consequence. Justify always breaks well and even if he doesn’t there’s plenty of time to correct matters. Hopefully, the rail will not be unduly deep. There’s simply no way to discern how much is left in Justify’s tank, and that’s the only thing which could beat him. I’m fearful it might but I have to stick with the best horse. 2. Hofburg. Ready to pick up the pieces if Justify falters. A son of the star sire Tapit, who has sired the winners of three of the last four Belmonts. 3. Tenfold. On the hunch that one of the two horses which ran in the Triple Crown will be affected by the tough schedule. It could go the other way, with Justify fading and Bravazo improving. Tenfold’s effort in the Preakness can’t be ignored and he’ll have plenty of time to make his run. 4. Bravazo. If Lukas’ horse was not compromised by the difficult schedule, he could win it all. Should prevail over Vino Rosso on the likely wet track. If the latter gets dry going, however, anything is possible. Winners who follow the above advice are requested to send Bill a small pie as a token of their appreciation. Losers are reminded that we have heavy security and Bill will be staying in the castle turret for an entire week. The moat has been refreshed with hungry alligators and all packages are opened by third-line personnel who have children and pets. That’s all, folks….
