“This is bloody stupid.” The John Fairfax Appreciation Society

When he was 9 years old he was kicked out of the Italian Boy Scouts after settling a bout of fisticuffs by grabbing a gun and shooting up the campground. At 13 he left home in Buenos Aires for the Amazon jungle where he survived by trading jaguar and ocelot pelts. At 20 he decided on suicide by jaguar mauling, but at the last minute changed his mind and killed the jaguar. Finding himself broke in San Francisco he rode his bike to Guatemala and then did a stint on a Colombian boat before falling in with Filipino pirates in Panama, joining their crew and financing his life for a few years by smuggling contraband guns, whiskey and cigarettes. He read about Frank Samuelson and George Harbo’s renowned crossing of the Atlantic by rowboat and immediately knew that he could – and needed to – one up those wimps. He began training and in 1969 loaded up a pimped-out rowboat of his own with Spam, oatmeal and brandy and became the first person in recorded history to cross any ocean alone by rowing, setting off from the Canary Islands and landing 6 months later in Hollywood, Florida, declaring “This is bloody stupid” as he strode ashore atop his giant testicles.

His boredom was short-lived, and two years later he rowed across the Pacific from San Francisco to Hayman Island, Australia – a 361-day trip in which he was presumed lost at sea with his female companion (lesson learned from his 180 days of Atlantic celibacy 2 years earlier) and single-handedly battled a shark and won. He then settled into a comfortable existence earning his living as a professional gambler in Las Vegas, playing craps and baccarat and making James Bond’s geetus look shambolic and flaccid. He died near Vegas on February 8^th, 2012. There was no public funeral, as he never gave a shit what you or anyone else thought of him or his exploits in the first place, and he didn’t need you driving by his house messing up his super-tight lawn with your cheesy flowers and mandal footprints. He was John Fairfax, and he is a member of the highly revered and oft-feared Saudade Brothers Appreciation Societies.

 

(By the way, don’t believe these true facts? Check out some links below to see for yourself.)

Articles on the MAN from: The Washington Post, The Telegraph and The New York Times, from which I pirated almost this entire piece.