Anton Gully: Man of Mystery

In almost a year of blogging I have encountered a lot of interesting characters, but none with a more mysterious aura than Anton Gully, Esq. I began following his Urban Fantasy Experiment in May of 2009 and continue to read his fiction at The Black Dogs Reading Room and always learn useful, interesting, water-cooler worthy insights something from the information he imparts at Flash B*stard.

Anton’s warm generosity and gentle, dare I say even Mother Theresa like, approach to his art and his fans led me to conclude that it was high time to recognize Anton in some fashion for his heady accomplishments. We at Land’s Edge first considered throwing a belated Bar Mitzvah or perhaps a debutante’s ball in his honour. However our Canadian sensibilities and our wallet kicked in, realizing that he would throw a hissy fit and sic his lawyers on us be extremely embarrassed by all of the attention. So we settled on sending him a slightly used greeting card, some stale gum we found in the bottom of a desk drawer and honouring the man with a tribute befitting his god like status in the webosphere-- this simple blog posting.

Our attempts to interview Mr. Gully in Belfast by telephone have been fruitless. So, after conducting my own exhaustive research and enlisting the aid of others who purport to know Mr. Gully well, (those few who are not currently traveling with Cirque du Soleil or the World Midget Mud Wrestling Federation), I decided to make up any stuff that I couldn’t verify. My intrepid staff of thousands hundreds three, cast our nets far and wide to question writers and readers in our respective circles of friends (Note to friends: please don’t feel left out if you did not receive a call as we had thousands hundreds twenty four people to interview.) And after months of poking and prodding, here, with as much confidence in its veracity as a man of mystery like Anton is likely to be profiled, my Land’s Edge staff and myself wish to present to you, our friends, the six things we have discovered about Anton Gully…

1. Anton is a man of the people. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. According to our sources he has had a varied career including: chicken plucker, dog walker, pastry chef, sword swallower, and when he was younger, both a fluffer for the porn industry and Wee Willy Wilson’s stand in body double.

2. The way in which Mr. Gully currently whiles away the hours when he’s not drinking or writing, or writing while drinking is still a mystery. Various sources gave us conflicting information. So is Anton a rich man or a poor man; a jet setting financial wizard or a scullery maid at the Moonlite BunnyRanch in Nevada? Land’s Edge staff contacted five of Anton’s intimates. Each swore for a fact that they knew him to be:

• A Chinchilla Farmer


• Man servant to Michael Caine


• A chicken sexer, i.e. he who sorts through baby chicks to determine gender


• Obituary writer for the Belfast Telegram


• Personal Assistant to Paul Reubens (aka Pee Wee Herman)--Anton started out as his driver, worked his way up to dresser, and eventually became Mr. Reuben's right-hand man.
  

3. In a drunken stupor, Anton recently telephoned me here in Newfoundland after one of his famous Friday night outings to the finer pubs and nudie bars in Belfast. During a profanity-filled rant about the state of the geriatric health care system in his country, he let slip that the surname ‘Gully’ was in fact his real name, not a pseudonym as he always claims. It is a close kept family secret that his great-great-great-grandfather had been a prominent Member of Parliament. Those of you who have followed me for a while may recall that I am something of a genealogist. It did not require much effort on my part to dig up information on John Gully (1783-1863): former British MP, pub owner and champion bare-fist boxer.

4. The only living relative of Anton’s we could locate was his cousin Pablo Gully in Galway, Ireland whom Anton once described to me as the ‘black sheep’ of the family. Long time readers of this blog may recall Pablo’s comments regarding the viral rumours blazing across the Internet trumpeting Mr. Gully’s death by bovine in January, 2010. You can link to his comments here from my previous blog posting.

Pablo’s hat, dark sunglasses and moustache can’t hide the Gully family resemblance. Land’s Edge researchers who in a completely unrelated matter recently threatened Pablo with deportation, spoke with Pablo. Once confronted with the family’s trademark pasty skin, beaky noses and pointed chins Pablo tearfully confessed that both he and Anton were the love children of actor Klaus Kinski. The lovely Nastassja Kinski is therefore their half-sister!

This writer fully understands and respects Ms. Kinski’s reluctance to have that little known fact publicized. As a matter of fact Ms. Kinski’s lawyers contacted this writer before publication and asked that this information not be released to the public, but they didn’t offer enough money I felt I was honour bound to report the revelation.

5. When looking into Anton’s jet setting reputation and his oft alluded to “trips to france”, an unnamed American source reported to us that Anton Gully keeps a mistress at an undisclosed location. The young beauty stated, “I hear Anton’s a very wealthy man. He flies to America twice monthly and goes south for sex.” Anton himself has bragged about his, how shall we say, manly endowments. You can link to that bragging here in the comments of a blog he once followed.

6. And finally, when contacted in Dublin, a bitter Guinness spokesperson who wished to remain anonymous told me that Anton Gully is in fact the Dos Equis beer guy (shown right) as seen in the popular television commercials.

Strangely enough, Gully (shown left) looks like a cross between Nick Nolte and Land’s Edge own Alan Davidson…but Mr. Gully notably lacks Alan’s roguish good looks, sparkling blue eyes and of course his trademark shamrock tattoo on his left butt cheek (the right butt cheek has the lion rampant).

We hope that you have enjoyed this little glimpse into man of mystery, Anton Gully. And if anyone has 100% proof positive photographic evidence of Anton’s current occupation that they’d like to share with this humble blogger, let me just say that I still have some gum left in the bottom of the drawer. And I can be very generous with it if needs be. [nudge nudge wink wink] I'd like to thank the Land's Edge staff for working tirelessly this past May Day weekend, missing the maypole and Morris dancing festivities. Also, special thanks to Karen Schindler, for no particular reason.