How to Live Like Howard Hughes

Howard R Hughes greatly valued his privacy, even to the extent of buying up all copies of interviews he'd given in magazines and burning them. In the last twenty-odd years of his life, he did want anyone to see him and became the world's richest and most famous recluse. However, after he died, the truth came out. It is commonly thought that Hughes suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), but even that doesn't explain some of his behavior.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A truckload of Kleenex
• Another truckload of yellow legal pads
• At least one overpaid personal aide to cater to your every whim
• More painkillers than can knock out an elephant, including Valium, codeine and Librium
• Barcalounger
• Movie projector
• Television
• Telephone
• Ruler
• Pens

I'm Howard Hughes, the Avaitor

1. Go through fourteen head injuries over a twenty year lifespan. Contract and suffer through incurable recurring syphillis. Although these are not necessary in order to live like Howard Hughes, they do make the following steps seem a lot more sensible.

2. Gather supplies, medicines and assistants and move into a big hotel room. See nobody and only communicate with people by the telephone.

3. Make the aides blacken the windows by either painting them black or covering them with cardboard or plywood.

4. Wake up at noon, take painkillers and immediately watch movies, stacking and restacking boxes of Kleenex in particular geometric formations.

5. Be sure to write at least one barely comprehensible memo detailing a vital procedure the staff needs to do correctly, such as how to open doorknobs. Take more painkillers.

6. Receive only meal of day. Measure steak, peas and chocolate cake to see that they are in correct proportions. Send back if the steak or cake is not the right dimensions. Separate all large peas from small peas and eat only the small peas. Send back food that is the wrong size. Take more painkillers.

7. Conduct business by telephone, including calls to stockholders and lawyers. Take more painkillers.

8. Read through reports of everybody that you want spied on. Take more painkillers.

9. Watch more television. If you don't like what's playing on at three in the morning, buy the television station so they can show movies all night. Take more painkillers. Fall asleep with television on or not. If you need to be moved, have an aide carry you.

Tips & Warnings

• Eating is optional.
• Using a toilet is optional.
• Travel only in the dark, when no one can see you.
• Have more than one doctor in order to get more prescriptions.
• Always have the prescriptions written out for assumed names.
• Have at least one of your aides write down absolutely everything that you do, even though you value your privacy.
• If anyone walks into the room, covering your privates with a napkin or Kleenex is optional.
• Don't own any clothes. And don't bother washing the pajamas or bathrobe you may have. Just burn them.
• Don't have a permanent address. Just keep moving from hotel to hotel.
• Don't use a bed. You've got the Barcalounger.
• Don't bathe, trim your nails or shave.

Resources

• Roger Tolces and Howard Hughes
• The Secret Life of Howard Hughes