Harbor Alumni Starts New Religion-
Fellowship of Fortuna
L.A.-based Gordy Grundy recently created it, which is based on luck and chance. Don't think of it as a cult, but rather a "co-ed fraternity."
By
ALEX CRAWFORD, Sports Editor

Newport Beach seems poised to become a Mecca of sorts for a new religious movement. They call themselves the Fellowship of Fortuna and leader/creator Gordy Grundy is a Newport Harbor High graduate. Grundy is a Los Angeles based arts columnist who is just putting the finishing touches on his work. He calls it a work in the school of Phenomenology, or creating a cultural phenomenon. The new art-centric religion is based on luck and chance. In the words of Grundy, “it’s a good luck cult.” They base their philosophical thought on the Newport aesthetic, wisdom learned from the two Dukes, John Wayne and Duke Kahanamoku.
The “Fortunates,” as followers are called believe in a “better than mantra” that states, “I want to leave everywhere I go, better than I found it. I want to leave everyone I meet, better for the encounter.”

At first glance this group seems like a new age religious movement or some kind of a cult. But the website states that it is neither a church nor a cult, rather a “co-ed fraternity.” Also, according to the website they have a car club, a yacht, a space and science senate, a surf team, and a sports team The Falcons of Fortuna.

With all these factions of the Fellowship it seems as if it is more than a cult or a religion. Is this all some kind of joke or fun fantasy that Grundy has of creating a community based on luck? It seems at first like all the ‘seminars’ and ‘clubs’ on the web page are just for show. But then something will happen that makes it seem more serious than that. The videos on Youtube are like Russian propaganda films with their “better than” mantra and their constant repition of “we all have luck.” More remains to be seen as this “good luck cult” is investigated further in part two of this story.

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Inside the Good Luck Cult; Part Two:
Interviewing the Fortuna Leader
After many warnings, an editor meets up with a supposed cult leader and learns that he's not so much of a creeper, but a talented artist...

By
ALEX CRAWFORD, Sports Editor

The Fellowship of Fortuna; on the outside it appears to be some form of a cult drawing followers in with the promise of good luck and good fortune. After the previous article on this subject, I was determined to find out what was really going on and I met with FoF (Fellowship of Fortuna) founder and leader Gordy Grundy, a Newport Harbor graduate as previously mentioned. When I told my classmates I was going to meet with the founder of a supposed cult, many people warned me to be cautious.

But Grundy is not the creepy cult leader you expect him to be. Born and raised in Newport, Grundy reminisces about pranks him and his friends used to pull at Newport Harbor back in the “good, old days.” He wore a blazer and a dress shirt both emblazoned with the FoF logo and explained to me “the Fellowship of Fortuna is not a religion or cult, but rather a way of looking at life…like Confucianism.” He calls it a “touchstone, designed to be used the same way one reads a daily horoscope. For the lift, the fun and the inspiration.” So all the crazy ideas people were getting about a cult leader form Newport and some crazy cult that meets in the backwoods of LA were not true.

The FoF is just a way of thinking and in many ways is an art movement. Contemporary Art Month named them the Peoples Choice Award Winner for Best Show. Not show as in TV show but show as in art show. In the show they had artwork promoting the Fellowship displayed. They had their first exhibit in Texas and it was a hit. In addition Grundy has made some pro-FoF videos and put them on Youtube.

But now Grundy explained that he wants to do a new type of show. He explained that it would be an empty room with a beer keg in the middle, and then on each wall there would be a flat screen TV and on each TV would be some kind of sing along song playing. So the whole basis for the art show would be to have people drinking, having a good time, and singing along to these original videos. Grundy told me that no one has really done anything like this before. “It’s going to get big. No one has ever seen anything like this.” Ms. Tulsa Kinney, editor of Artillery Magazine elaborated on this point saying “conceptually, Gordy Grundy's work has always been ahead of his time, often at odds with trends within the art world.” He even did a favor for us Harbor students and put some Newport-themed desktops up on the FoF website, FortunaNow.com. Just click on the little blue dot in the lower right hand corner.