M. Ankcorn | D. Baloun | J. D’Anna | K. Casey | D. Eick | L. Laurier
D. Matles | Investor X | S. Ryder | B. Sidles | P. Sjoberg
Mark Ankcorn
Member since 1994
Group Rabbi, Group Counsel
Certifiably the only man on the planet who can lay claim to being both a successful bankruptcy attorney and an ordained Rabbi with blonde hair, Reb. Anckorn is one of EMBOW 144’s most valued and celebrated members. Both an esteemed advisor and a doggedly passionate investor, the Rabbi’s most treasured attribute is his willingness to allow other members to refer to him as “Master” when conducting club business.
The Rabbi has also been known to provide personal confessor services, and hushed rumblings from his inner circle persist to this day about the indispensible guidance he has provided over the years at critical moments to the likes of Bernie Madoff, Ted Bundy and Charlie Sheen.
The Rabbi makes his home in sunny San Diego with his wife and daughter, who are also permitted to call him Master (and contrary to popular reports, there remains no proof that the disparaging suffix “Bater” has been overheard on recent family outings by any snickering mouthy children or their friends).
The Rabbi holds Ivy League graduate degrees in several financial and theological disciplines including Nickel Regulation, Ming Dynasty Fleecing and Blasphemy.
The author of “The Beardstown Grannies Way, How to Ride Your Happy Unicorn to a Rainbow of Riches” and “PORTFOLIO OF LIES Pouring Warm Pink Zinfandel on the Beardstown Grannies Myth” (both still awaiting publishing deals), Mr. Casey has truly taken a random walk down Wall Street.
Having come a long way from early EMBOW 144 meetings, where he would repeatedly suggest that the club simply buy one share of Berkshire Hathaway and start drinking beer already (1995-2003), Mr. Casey now agrees that the club’s drunken strategy of buying Apple a bunch of times was probably almost just as smart.
It’s important to note that the wealth and acclaim that EMBOW 144 has brought Mr. Casey has not at all gone to his head. Every spring, he donates his furs and stoles from the previous society season to a local orphanage so that area children can be both warm and ironic.
As the second-hardest working member of EMBOW 144 (due to a highly improbable nine-member tie), Mr. Casey understands and appreciates the great responsibility that he shoulders as a pillar of EMBOW and the larger investment club community. Parvis e glandibus quercus, indeed.
In 2009, Eick – a television writer-producer and Mentor Emeritus to the Hollywood Coalition of Dwarven Amputees – inexplicably vanished shortly after being seen sprinting down Van Nuys Blvd. waving a box of Russell Stovers, pursuing a terrified blonde woman in a white corvette. Witnesses claimed they could overhear her screaming “I just want to be friends!” and Eick responding “This is me, being friends!”
Twenty-seven months later, the offices of EMBOW 144 received the following telegram:
THE FOOD IS MARVELOUS IN CUBA STOP.
SENIORITAS ARE PRICKLY WHEN OGLED IN ELEVATORS, JUST LIKE NORMAL WOMEN STOP.
REGARDS,
EICK
Whether the communiqué was actually from Eick, or sent by one of the many charlatans hoping to claim Eick’s inheritance from the estate of decorated war General Norman Schwarzkopf, remains a mystery. (It has recently been revealed that Eick never knew Schwarzkopf but was quite fond of his eldest daughter, Munchausen Schwarzkopf.)
Eick graduated from the University of Redlands in 1990 with a degree in Ventriloquism.
As earnest and sincere as they day he joined the Samurai – which he insists is a false rumor though it remains the subject of intense speculation throughout Waxahachie and surrounding areas – Lance (a 3rd-degree Shotokan Karate blackbelt) is EMBOW 144’s de facto Sergeant-At-Arms, counting as his inspirations Chuck Norris, Lucy Liu and the internet’s Karate Kyle (“They laughed at my acne. I laughed at their funerals.”).
A poet, an academic, and disarmingly peaceful and centered at first glance, in battle Lance’s transformation into a lethal weapon is instantaneous. His first strike is like a coiled cobra – sudden, deadly, and not nearly as funny as you might expect. When investment debates rage past the point of established decorum, Lance can always be relied upon to utter those three fateful words no one ever, ever wants to hear:
“Sweep the leg.”
It’s the first thing you will hear him say… before you never hear anything again.
Lance earned a scholarship in Duct Tape Artistry and graduated magna cum laude from the Quirky Billionaire School of the Dead.
Investor X serves as the club’s unofficial devils advocate. He enjoys debating for the sport, not necessarily for his underlying beliefs. He also has a mind like a steel trap when it comes to remembering lyrics to rap songs and the entire script of the movie Airplane, yet when it comes to club-related matters, he turns into “Mr. Short-Term Memory.”
A symbolic beginning to Investor X’s existence happened nine months before June 15, 1967, when, as a sperm, he swam around a diaphragm to win a bet with the other sperm. From that day forward he has been defying (and taking the money from) all of those who doubt him.
Raised on a commune, and later in Taos, New Mexico, Investor X developed an interest in unique activities that required skill, athleticism and agility. Among many interests, he mastered knife-throwing, unicycle-riding, and a freakish contortionist trick with a broomstick. When he realized these skills could be used to impress the chicks, he bypassed the circus and headed off to college.
At the University of Redlands he excelled with a double major in Mathematics and Barroom Pool Strategies, with a minor in Cross-Town Travel Under the Influence. His roommate, Skip, talked him into joining the track team as a pole vaulter, which resulted in a broken neck, three fused vertebrae and a lifetime of chiropractor bills. Skip would later be the Best Man in his wedding.
Investor X went on to earn a master’s degree in Mathematics Education from Stanford which he parlayed into a ski-instructor job in Big Bear, California. Working at the adaptive ski school at Bear Mountain, Investor X worked with skiers with disabilities. He would become one of the top adaptive instructors in the world, traveling around the U.S. and abroad helping other ski schools accommodate skiers with disabilities.
Today, Investor X is a successful real estate agent in the Big Bear community. He is married to the owner of local snowboard shop, Mrs. Investor X and they have two beautiful daughters, Investor Y and Investor Z.
Frank Barton Sidles II
Member since 2014
Paul “Skip” Sjoberg
Founding Member
As Treasurer for Life of EMBOW 144, Skip is the only one in the club who does any work.
Skip attended Mission Bay High School in San Diego, where he was a championship high-jumper and football videographer until he lost the camera halfway through the 1985 season. After that, Coach Matson had to ask the other team’s coach to borrow their film, which was embarrassing.
Skip went on to academic, athletic and beer-drinking excellence at the University of Redlands, where he came to know the rest of the guys in EMBOW 144. After a blurry summer of 1991 in Mission Beach, Skip went on to earn a Master’s degree in math at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Currently, Skip teaches math at Fullerton College where he is tenured faculty and therefore cannot be fired for any reason.
Along the way, Skip was smart enough to marry Teri Sjoberg. Teri is attractive, and therefore is the subject of a great amount of public ogling by a certain EMBOW President when he has been drinking. Skip and Teri have three great kids and some birds that Skip hates.