No. 165: MARK KRAM SR & MARK KRAM JR / My worship of the SI scribe landed me in a bed at the Hospital for Sick Children for three weeks. Decades later I befriended his son, another elite writer.
In an excerpt from my Audible memoir, I recount how love of sportswriting incapacitated me, leaving me unable to walk or even stand upright. There was no warning to avoid trying this at home.
Left to right, Lotus position to kneeling: Oom the Omniscient (né Pierre Bernard), who, according to Mark Kram, was “a yoga disciple who had been a curator to a mysterious love cult which wealthy women found irresistible—if not mysterious”; and Lou Nova, a health faddist heavyweight boxer from the 40s and an inventor who landed me in hospital for three weeks. The photo is from the mid-60s, when Nova, in a tuxedo rather than the loincloth above, was a lounge singer at a dingy Mexican resort.
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