Six degrees
Aayush Niroula
Jordan Belfort, the real wolf of Wall Street, was in town earlier this week to (perhaps ironically) deliver a corporate sermon about the secret to success. Jailed for 22 months in 2003 for fraud, Belfort aims to make “north of US$100 million” by December to pay restitution to his victims. After leaving prison, Belfort wrote two memoirs, which have since been published in 40 countries and translated into 18 languages. You could say Belfort owes it all to his cellmate. The former stockbroker was nudged to write his first book by his then bunk-mate, stoner-extraordinaire Tommy Chong …
Canadian comedian and counter-culture icon Chong – of Cheech & Chong fame – was arrested after his company got busted for selling glass bongs over the internet. In the sting, cops set up a fake account and placed large orders for various smoking devices. Of the 55 people arrested during the US$12 million Operation Pipe Dreams only Chong was handed a prison sentence, of nine months, after admitting to distributing drug paraphernalia, including 7,500 bongs and pipes. Perhaps his most famous smoking partner was British musician George Harrison …
Harrison and fellow Beatle John Lennon bonded over a stronger drug: LSD. He also converted to Hinduism while under the influence of acid. Harrison said, “The first time I had acid, it opened up something in my head … and I realised a lot of things.” The devotee of Indian mystic Paramahansa Yogananda let his spiritual side influence his musical philosophy, becoming a fan of the sitar, as well as other Indian instruments. The band’s sitar-lapped number Norwegian Wood provided the inspiration for a novel of the same name, by writer Haruki Murakami …
In a Paris Review interview, Murakami described his strict writing routine. He explained, “I mesmerise myself to reach a deeper state of mind.” The experimental Japanese author is also a keen runner of marathons, an endeavour he has likened to writing novels. And it was sport that led the Nobel-hopeful to literature, aged 29. Murakami was watching a baseball game one day when a player hit a double and he had an epiphany. He went home to start his first novel, which had no relation whatsoever to sports or epiphanies. The hitter in the field was Dave Hilton …
American baseball player John David “Skip” Hilton played for the San Diego Padres before going to Japan to join the Yakult Swallows. While Murakami is perhaps in his most Zen state when writing, Hilton apparently learnt to reach a “Zen-like mindset” while playing with the Swallows. Today, he runs a baseball school in Arizona. He is a native of Uvalde, Texas, which is also the birthplace of actor Matthew McConaughey …
After a string of beach-and-body romcoms, McConaughey struck gold at the Oscars this year with his role in the gritty Dallas Buyers Club. He also had a memorable cameo in another recent blockbuster, playing a coke-addled banker who thumps his chest while regurgitating a catchy, primeval tune as he tries to rouse a young Leonardo DiCaprio to moneydom. Apparently the scene was an impromptu recreation of his own prefilming ritual and was not in the screenplay of The Wolf of Wall Street, based on the life of Jordan Belfort.
