Thight For Thor Eyes
Celebrating a Deathday™: Fair-haired heavy-metal seafarer and long-winded key-stroker Thor Heyerdahl sailed off to that leather-appointed tiki hut in the sky on this day, April 17, 2002. Born in the faraway land of Larvik, Norway, the son of a bloody brewmaster named Thor, Heyerdahl got it in his head from a young age that he was somehow descended from the loins of the hammer-wielding Norse God of Thunder and Lightning. I don’t know what it is about blokes named after mythological creatures — Adonis, Hercules, Elvis — but it always triggers flights of delusion and bravado befitting a goddamned Jean “Clawed” Van Damme movie. ‘Twould be one thing if a lad named Thor grew up to become an actual hammer-wielder, which is to say a union Norwegian carpenter, but no, they’re always of the mind that they’re on an avenging conquest to save — or sail — the earth, whilst heading up a heavy metal band and “role playing” with their tattooed galfriends during the rainy season. I would caution any fathers-to-be flipping through one of those infernal baby-naming books to resist the temptation to bestow upon your offspring the name Thor. Not unless you hope to see him take leave of his senses and to the high seas on a series of rickety bamboo rafts, risking life and limb as a real-life Captain Bloody Nemo, albeit one given to snapping Polaroid Instagramatic™ photos and pounding away on a Smith Corona® portable for a propering record of the trip. Somehow Master Heyerdahl and his studded banana hammocks survived his underworldly adventures and he self-published a series of tomes, including "Kon-Tiki," "The Ra Expedition" and "The Adventures of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company," along with a vinyl record album entitled "Thrust." He lived to a ripened — which is to say, leathery — old age and enjoyed recognition from GoodReads®, That Metal Show™ and, naturally, boating enthusiasts in the Pacific region, with the likely exceptions of snooty Frenchman Jacques Cousteau and Lloyd Bridges, Sea Hunter and captain of the Argonaut. Happy Anni-Hearse-ary®, well-oiled and endowed Citizen Seaman!
