He’s gotta be strong, and he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight!”----Steinman & Pitchford
The Avengers are a big deal these days. Their Endgame movie is the highest grossing film of all time, earning just under $3 billion. That’s “billion,” with a b. Spiderman is still big and the new Superman film is raking it in, and we don’t care one whit. We couldn’t give you the maiden name of anyone in the Avengers, the Web-spinner is a silly kid and there’s no kryptonite left on Earth, so things are too easy for Superman.
Everyone was oohing and aahing about The Black Panther movie a few years ago, so we went to see it, and it was terrible. Worse even than Freddie Got Fingered (2001), The Last Airbender (2010) and Raise the Titanic (1980). Superhero movies these days are all about non-stop fighting with monsters or people from outer space like the Black Swan, who destroys universes because he’s bored. Galactus, Devourer of Worlds, was just a piker compared to this guy who is now being challenged by a team of utllity infielders called The Illuminati. Who cares?
We older folks need a real hero, a mean old cuss faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. After all, there are true villains in the world coming after our Medicare and Social Security, running our grape pickers out of town and setting the national guard on poor little Schenectady. This is a job for bad, bad ElderMan, baddest man in the whole damn assisted living facility…badder than old King Kong and meaner than a junkyard dog.
ElderMan could straighten things out in a hurry, smashing in the White House door and pulling out the President’s tonsils. Who’s going to stop him---the Secret Service? They couldn’t even shut down a punk kid from Bethel Park who couldn’t make the rifle team in high school. After that, he’d rush over to the Veep’s office, make him put on a tutu and spin him around DuPont Circle. No politician could survive the shame. Who’s next? That’s right, the milquetoast Speaker of the House, who is really Caitlyn Jenner in disguise. ElderMan has a special weapon he uses on fading hypocrites. He calls it his Stamp of Irrelevancy, which he plunks on enemy foreheads with all his might, sucking every smidge of credibility from his victims. After that, of course, he’ll have to go home for a Pabst Blue Ribbon to replenish his strength.
Think of all the good a hero like EM could do. His flock of histoplasmosis-ridden pigeons could be trained to leave a sea of poisonous droppings on the vehicles of Robert Kennedy Jr., Kristi Noem and Tom (the ICEman) Homan. His Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder Brigade (OCPDB) could eagerly scoop up messy Steve Bannon, tie him to a post and shave all the hair off his body, leaving him a laughingstock for the tough guys he seeks to impress. Best of all, Elderman’s occasional sidekick, Michael Demiurgos, The Archangel, could be summoned to battle Steven Miller, aka Satan, in a no-holds-barred, loser-leaves-town cage match on ESPN’s family of stations. One Tombstone Piledriver by The Archangel has been known to break necks and shorten careers and Michael would be such a topheavy favorite Vegas wouldn’t even have it on the books.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, you fools---it’s ELDER-man!” Helen Mirren could be Lois Lane.
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| Ashrita the Great |
Heroes
Etibar Elchiyev of Georgia once balanced 50 spoons on his body by using his secret weapon, his “magnetic skin.”
Ashrita Furman holds the world’s record for balancing a running lawnmower on his chin for over three and one-half minutes, easily outlasting Jay Leno.
Sanath Bandara of Sri Lanka once wore 257 t-shirts at the same time. Okay, so a few of them were quadruple extra-large.
In 2007, Kevin Shelley broke 46 toilet seats with his head in one minute., although the airport wasn’t very happy about it.
Wim (The Iceman) Hof owns the world record for being submerged in ice, clocking in at nearly two hours.
Japanese gazelle Kenichi Ito set a record for the fastest 100 meter dash on all fours with a spectacular time of 25.71 seconds. Try that sometime.
Peter the Great, the Russian tsar had a passion for dentistry, often pulling his own teeth or those of his unlucky courtiers. He kept his fabulous collection of not-so-pearly whites in a box on his mantle.
The Connecticut Leatherman, an eccentric vagabond of the late 1800s, walked a 365-mile circuit through New England every 35 days for roughly 30 years wearing a full-body leather suit. He rarely spoke, though an observer once heard him whistling the Bohemian Rhapsody.
Unlikely Heroes
The eccentric eighteenth-century American businessman Timothy Dexter, who prefaced his name with “Lord” to impress people, was famous in his day for apparently absurd business ventures which often bore fruit. Though barely educated or even literate, Dexter called himself “the greatest philosopher in the known world” and even built a statue for his garden to attest to the fact. The statue was a massive wooden structure which carried the inscription “I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western world.” In all fairness, Dexter also built 39 other statues of men like George Washington, William Pitt and Napoleon.
Dexter was born of poor but humble parents in 1747 in Malden, Massachusetts. He had little schooling and dropped out of school to become a farm laborer at the age of 8. At 16, he became a tanner’s apprentice and moved to Newburyport. In 1769, he married a rich widow named Elizabeth Frothingham and bought a mansion with her money. Dexter set up a shop in the basement, where he sold moosehide trousers, gloves, hides and whale blubber, while Elizabeth opened a shop which sold notions. You remember notions.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, Dexter purchased large amounts of depreciated Continental currency, virtually worthless at the time, but at war’s end redeemed by the new U.S. government at one percent of face value. Massachusetts, however, paid its own notes at par. Lord Dexter’s investment thus netted a sizeable profit with which he promptly built two ships and began an export business to the West Indies and Europe. Not bad for a grade school dropout.
His rivals, aware of his lack of education tried to bankrupt him, advising him to send bed warmers used in frigid Massachusetts in winter to the tropical West Indies. They laughed when he sat down to ship, but Dexter found a huge market for the bedwarmers when plantation owners bought them to use as ladles for the molasses industry. On a roll, he next sent woolen mittens, which Asian merchants scooped up to sell in Siberia.
Okay, his enemies, said. Let’s see if he can ship coal to Newcastle. As luck would have it, Dexter shipped during a miner’s strike and the cargo was sold at a premium. On another occasion, his rivals suggested he ship gloves to the South Sea Islands. Dexter’s ship arrived there just in time to sell the gloves to Portuguese merchants on their way to China. Is this beginning to look like the Roadrunner vs. the Coyote, or what? Lord D. exported Bibles to the East Indies and stray cats to Caribbean islands and again made a profit as Eastern missionaries needed the Good Books and the islands had a rat infestation. He also hoarded whalebones by mistake but wound up selling them as corset stays.
Through it all, Dexter’s rivals continued to ridicule him, but Timothy D. soon saw the value of cornering the market on goods others deemed worthless. He didn’t mind acting the fool. Snubbed by high society, Dexter bought an enormous house in Newburyport from socialite Nathanial Tracy and tried to emulate Tracy’s prominent mansion. He decorated the place with minarets, a golden eagle on top of the cupola, a mausoleum for himself and all those giant statues. Dexter also bought an estate in Chester, New Hampshire, where he asked to be called the Earl of Chester. Children who obliged got a quarter, adults got dinner and drinks.
Despite his lack of education, the Earl took it upon himself to write a book about his life called “A Pickle for the Knowing Ones” that contained 8847 words but no punctuation. Seeking to please, he followed up with a later edition, at the end of which were a vast array of punctuation marks, inviting readers to “peper and solt it as you please.”
Dexter staged a fake funeral to see for himself how people would react to his death. About 3000 people showed up to mourn. When he did not see his wife cry sufficiently, he revealed the hoax and after the ceremony whacked her with his cane. Concerned about his legacy, Timothy Dexter enlisted the services of Jonathan Plummer, fish merchant and amateur poet to write a remembrance in verse. Like so:
Most celebrated is his name;
More precious far than gold that’s pure,
Lord Dexter shines forever more.”
Antiheroes: Snap, Crackle & John Harvey Kellogg
John Harvey was director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. Then he invented corn flakes and life changed a bit. Kellogg became a holistic wellness freak and promoted a bizarre regimen, starting with the Yogurt Enema, which should be performed daily. Harvey had a special machine that could pump 15 quarts of water into a person’s bowels. He recommended a daily pint of yogurt, half to be eaten, half to be administered with the enema, which he believed would “wash out” intestinal bacteria. He also had a large number of vibrating machines, including a wooden vibrating chair that shook violently to “stimulate the bowels.” Hey, John Harvey---did you ever hear of Metamucil?
John’s fascination with the nether regions knew no bounds. He was a big foe of masturbation. Kelloggs’ Corn Flakes were actually invented to deter the practice. Supposedly, eating bland foods would not incite children’s passions whereas spicy or well-seasoned foods would cause an unhealthy reaction in their sexual organs. If the Corn Flakes didn’t work, he had other solutions. For boys, he advocated the tying of hands or putting a cage over their genitals, which was very inconvenient during Little League games. For girls, he recommended more barbaric surgical interventions or the application of carbolic acid to the clitoris. Good thing for him Gina Hawkins wasn’t around at the time.
All things considered, we’ll stick with Popeye.
That’s all, folks…
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
