Men of this caliber hard to find
Sept. 7, 2005

Here's a story about getting dope across the border – one dope at a time.

Last week, David Smith, of Half Way, Missouri, had himself shot from a cannon, across the border between Mexico and the United States, and into a net.

Note to Smith: Missouri is known as the "Show-Me State," not the "Show Me How Deranged You Are State."

Smith climbed into the cannon in Mexico Saturday afternoon, flashed his U.S. passport, and then was blasted across the border, where he landed in a net in San Diego.

If anyone ever deserved to be caught in a net, it's this guy.

The feat was the brainchild of Venezuelan artist Javier Tellez. Proving that fact is indeed stranger than fiction, Tellez organized the stunt with psychiatric patients at the Baja California Mental Health Center in Mexicali, Mexico.

Makes sense. If you want a smart idea, you work with smart people. If you want a crazy idea …

"David Smith is a metaphor for flying over human borders, flying over the law, flying over everything that is established," Tallez said.

Forget the metaphor talk. Anyone who willingly has himself shot from a cannon in a stunt dreamed up by mental patients is not a metaphor. He’s a lunatic.

Tellez said the project was about "dissolving borders" between the United States and Mexico and between mental health patients and the rest of the world.

It's also about dissolving borders between who's playing with a full deck and who's not.

Smith's son, David Jr., said they had U.S. Border Patrol approval for the stunt. "I had to have some kind of official OK high enough up to make sure he doesn't land in the U.S. and go to a federal penitentiary.” Had it been me, I would have been more worried about my dad going to a federal loony bin.

Tellez, 36, and the elder Smith worked closely on the backdrop, music, costumes and advertising for the project, which Tellez dubbed "One Flew Over the Void."

Too bad "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was already taken.