Fish.  Fishy.  Something smells around here.

Indeed.  The fish course, and a second installment for the Main Course, include a famous Texan.  He is not from Dallas, but rather the El Paso area.  As he goes by Jay J. Armes, and has two hooks instead of two hands, even his name is fishy.

Jay J. Armes is a real person although that is not his real name.  He lost his hands in childhood via an explosion.  The details of the explosion change depending on who is telling the story, but the outcome was the same – his hands were amputated at an early age and he was given hooks in their stead.  He would go on to become a famous private investigator who was so larger-than-life, he had an action figure styled after him.  The action figure came with “interchangeable hands” that included suction cups for scaling walls and another that was a magnet for picking up metallic objects.  Real life is crazier than the toy knock-off:  Jay J. Armes had a prosthetic that also included a gun – a gun that would actually shoot real bullets.

And this is just the beginning.  From multiple alleged attempts on his life, to wild animals in his backyard, to telephones mounted in palm trees, to claims of speaking double-digit languages and dialects, the story gets crazier and crazier.  We will dig in with the Main Course.

Until then, if you can’t wait any longer, check out this Snap Judgment podcast about him.  http://snapjudgment.org/jay-j-armes-private-eye