Rick III

Just a fish on land

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

Picture the smoke-hazed tents and dim electric glow of the 1920s American sideshow, and one man stood with his back to the crowd and still looked you straight in the eye.

His name was Martin Laurello, though the banners rarely used it.

They called him the Human Owl.

The Boy with the Revolving Head.

The Human Periscope.

Rubber Neck.

Head Turner.

Bobby.

The names changed with the town, but the act never did.

Born Martin Emmerling in Nuremberg around 1885, he had been a contortionist and balance artist in Europe long before the ocean crossing.

Some said a fall during a performance cracked something in his neck that never fully healed.

Others claimed he was born with a slight twist in the spine that most men would have cursed. Laurello treated it like a key. For three years he practiced turning his head farther and farther, forcing the vertebrae, stretching the muscles, using iron and leather straps when willpower alone was not enough. Inch by painful inch, the impossible became routine.

By the time he stepped off the White Star liner Olympic in 1921—traveling with Swiss giants and a five-hundred-pound Hungarian—he could rotate his head nearly one hundred eighty degrees.

He could stand with his body facing east and his face pointing west. He could walk forward while staring backward. He could drink a glass of beer with his chin resting above his shoulder blades.

He could not, however, smoke or take a full breath in that position. The crowd never seemed to mind the limitation.

At Coney Island’s Dreamland Circus Sideshow he first became the Human Owl. Later he worked the big top with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, then the winter dime museums—Hubert’s in New York, the traveling shows of T.A. Wolfe, and finally the gleaming Odditoriums of Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

There the posters declared him “the only one in the world who can walk straight ahead and look straight behind.”

Audiences lined up in the rain to watch a man in a plain white shirt turn his back on them and still meet their eyes.

He preferred the white shirt. It made the rotation cleaner, more surgical. Sometimes he would light a cigarette for show, only to extinguish it when the head locked into place.

Sometimes he simply stood there, hands in his pockets, face inverted, while the barker’s voice rolled over the gasps.

Fellow performers remembered him without romance. Percilla Bejano, the Monkey Girl, once said simply that he could put his head all the way around.

Others noted he trained dogs and cats to tumble for extra money when the head-turning alone was not enough to fill a week’s room and board.

Offstage the life was less miraculous. Marriages fractured. A second wife, Emilie Wittl, finally sent a telegram that reached the Baltimore police in April 1931. Officers found Laurello mid-performance, back to the audience, face locked toward them. When they stepped onto the platform to arrest him for abandonment, he turned his head the rest of the way and winked.

He died in 1955, the year the old midways were already fading into memory and television. The banners were folded, the white shirts packed away.

What remained were a handful of photographs—Laurello standing rigid, head reversed, eyes calm—and the stubborn fact that for a few decades a man from Nuremberg had made the human neck do something nature never intended, and charged admission for the privilege of watching it happen.

The Human Owl did not claim to be a miracle. He claimed only that he had practiced.

[Rick III @rickyfish7]

@BrianRoemmele Hello!

[Rick III @rickyfish7]

@BogdanPadua As a leader, what do you do once you know you have a B or C player?

[Rick III @rickyfish7]

@BrianRoemmele I sent an email last week to the Multiplex contact email in regards to my subscription but have not received a reply. May you help?

[Rick III @rickyfish7]

@shortkinghoeboy What’s the job?

[Rick III @rickyfish7]

@shortkinghoeboy Did it work

[𝗥𝗢𝗖𝗞𝗬 @TheWarKitchen]

We fly through the galaxy on this beautiful little rock

Which harvests so many of our dreams — that seem massive and eternal

Until we realise we’re just specks of dust

Nothing’s too serious

Nothing’s too important

Appreciate beauty before it’s all gone

I love life man🌞

[Anthony Pompliano 🌪 @APompliano]

Wealth building is a test of discipline, not a test of intelligence.

[Rick III @rickyfish7]

@APompliano Been with you since I was in high school and you were sub 1k followers. What a ride it has been, congrats and thank you Pomp!

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

A view.

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

“Our job is to have an answer”

[Trevor McKendrick @TrevMcKendrick]

Optimism isn’t about seeing a glass & thinking its half full.

Optimism is believing you have the agency to refill the glass.

[Wilson Hoyle @wilsonhoyle]

Water the bamboo! #believe #keepgrinding

[Dr. Cameron Maximus🤴🏻 🥷🏻 🧙🏻‍♂️ 🤵‍♂️ @DrCamRx]

@naval The beauty of happiness is that it’s positive sum: the happier you are, generally the better you treat others, and the happier they become too.

[Rick III @rickyfish7]

@erinnesselro Cutie, happy for you 🥺

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

Test of proposed Apple AR glasses in a grocery store.

[Rick III @rickyfish7]

@BrettKing @BrianRoemmele how is that?

[Rick III @rickyfish7]

@scottmelker Where is the best place to find a collection of your music?

[Usain St. Leo Bolt @usainbolt]

Social Distancing #HappyEaster

[Rick III @rickyfish7]

@timrbullard 18 years and a national lockdown 😟