Who are your heroes?
 

Penn & Teller
Trey Parker & Matt Stone
LTC Erik Kurilla (as detailed by Michael Yon)

Single mothers who do a good job of raising their children are very high on my list. People who have every reason to be jaded yet remain positive and upbeat. People who take limited resources and overcome great resistence to accomplish great things. People who do not accept their limitations. People who forsake personal gain to right an injustice.

I don't have names for you but I see people like this from time to time and it is very inspiring.

Prince Lazarus Long
Princess Maureen
Dave Thomas
Wendy
Ray Kroc
Poet William McGonagall
PeeWee Herman

trent reznor
Cauchy
Fermat
Eisenstein
Einstein
Kepler
etc

my dad

awwwww :sniff:

Undertoad
footfootfoot's dad
:2cents:

Definitely my dad.

As a group, I would say my whole family. They rock!

Ronald Reagan
Penn Gillette
Richard "Dick" Bong
Bob Hoover
all the Mercury astronauts...heck ALL of the astronauts! Very brave people!
the first guy to eat an egg

We have a (now closed) airbase right here on the border of Grandview. We used to get a big kick out of the fact that they have street named after Richard Bong...Bong Avenue.

We were stoned hippies back then.

Dick Bong? Ace of Aces? Now that's funny.

My heroes tend to be simple people faced with unusual or difficult circumstances who tend to get little or no recognition for their actions. Cops, firefighters, people who make a positive difference in the lives of others.

And Gene Roddenberry.

;)

I have incredible respect and admiration for all of the faceless individuals who overcome odds or do a great job without ever being thanked, but to me a "hero" is someone who does something I can't, and does it right.

For example, I second Undertoad's listing of Matt Stone and Trey Parker, because they represent the epitome of moderate political/social views, but more importantly, they are truly successful at getting their opinions out there in a concise, intelligent, and palatable way. Unlike pundits, they genuinely have the ability to change people's minds with their medium, and they try to do it. They make a difference in a way I couldn't.

Darnit! How could I have forgotten Chuck Yeager, Gen, USAF, ret

I got to speak to him one day at a book signing on base...fascinating stories he had too. I could have sat and listened to him all day long.

Mine just posted.

Yep, dad.

When *we* were stoned hippies, much was made of the fact that West Chester PA has an intersection: High and Gay Sts.

Yep. You can come in High and go out Gay, or come in Gay and go out High.

They also build a water tower every time a virgin graduates.

So they don't have a water tower yet? :rolleyes:

MLK
Ice-T
my girlfriend

My late grandfather. He instilled in me some actual work ethic (which I sorely needed) and took the time to teach me his trade before he passed on. If I live my life to be half the man he was than I am doing good.

John Bender

Paul Rodgers.... until he started fronting for Queen. ( Who is currently on tour).

My Dad Master Gunnery Sergent James L. Bell USMC (Ret)
John Wayne
Ronald Reagen

Thanks Bruce,
he is my hero too.

Like all the tell all bios, I learned so much more about my Dad now that he's passed, and now that the shenanigans have begun.

More on that in another thread.

I need to think on this awhile.

I often muse on Jimmy Carter being the only US president who knew that "harass" was not two words. But that alone doesn't confer hero status.


A guy from my dad's neighborhood is a contender based on this one fact I know about him:

Every December 7th he'd go out to a Japanese restaurant and order a huge meal, drinks, dessert, etc. then he'd beat the check. There was something about that which was so quixotic, mad, futile, wrong, bizarre, hilarious, that it escapes any categorization.

Hawkeye Pierce
Nigel Tufnel
Oscar Madison

Mother Theresa and Mary Magdalene

All the people who gave the oath to serve their country in the armed services. Dead or alive.

And the inventors of the automatic weapon.

:)
Anyone that leaves this earth as they found it or better to the best of their ability...

and my mom... she's battled illness for over fifteen years now and has stayed positive and kind throughout... still thinking of others constantly... and never wavering in her fight...

Did I leave out Michael Merjeh?

Wow, what a pro.
A St. Louis-area UPS driver with almost 44 years and 4 million miles in his rearview mirror retired Friday with a flawless driving record.

Paul Desmond
Gerry Mulligan
Frank Zappa
Me First and Gimmee Gimmees

I've been lurking in this thread for awhile, so here goes. I guess that to me it would be someone who's kicked drinking, drugs what ever. And not turned into a flappin idiot, holy rolling ass hole.

Buster, I never knew there was such a creature ...

Short Answer: Thelonious Monk.

Long Answer:

In 1988, I was a young pianist quickly burning out on classical music. After studying for nearly a decade with half a dozen teachers, every note I played was a drudgery, a chore, and I began to hate piano. I spent a year working with Peter Yazbeck, a renowned artist whose sole focus was coaching young pianists to win international competitions, and they did win them, frequently, and I won them too, frequently. And I hated it.

I was only 13, and ready to quit.

For my 13th birthday, my Aunt Nancy performed a miracle. She raised me from the dead. She sent me 2 tapes - Wynton Marsalis’ “Standard Time”, and Thelonious Monk’s “The Composer”.

Monk. I remember listening to the tape the first time. Imaging that you had been training for 10 years to be a black and white photographer, and suddenly, instantly, for the first time, you saw the world in gloriously bright technicolor.

My mind exploded. My ears opened up. He made impossible leaps of angular logic. He drew melodic lines like a drunk man might stagger through a crowded subway car - with fits and starts, and violent bursts of dissonance and cognizance. His harmonic structures were a blur of colors, and seemed to be fit together only by being in parallel motion to other, more densely blurred tones.

Monk was, to a young and frustrated competitive classical pianist, like heroin. I bought every recording I could find. I studied his voicings, his impossibly dense coloration of scale groupings. I imitated his solos, trying to find the mysterious logic that pinned those notes to those chords.

The thing about Monk, the thing that a young pianist just entering his world would have to wait another 10 years to learn, is that nothing can be lifted from him. You can’t borrow his solo phrases, because they only make sense strung together in larger lines. You can’t borrow his melodic lines, because they only make sense within the tonal palate of his chord structures, those bizarre and impenetrable fortresses of tension that suffer no analysis. You can’t borrow his chord structures, because they only work properly when they follow the internal logic of his own devising, moving alternately in parallel motions or angular leaps.

My mentor, Phil Shackleton, moves effortlessly through musical constructs, giving cogent analysis of the functions and structures without ever diminishing the musicality of the overall effect. He loves music, passionately, and his analysis is an act of devotion.

He and I sat, once, when I was a student of his, at a piano in his office, and spent an hour analyzing 4 notes of a Monk piece. They come from a piece called “Rhythm-a-Ning”, and all four of them are wrong. They are wrong in every possible way. The harmonic structure is an F7 chord in the key of Bb, which is normally a very welcoming sort of chord - it allows all manner of vagrants and dissonant factions to sit at the table. In fact, the only two notes that aren’t welcome in a Dominant 7th chord are the Major 7th, and the 4th. So what does Monk do? Right toward the end of a phrase, he drops 4 big fat quarter notes that move from E - F# - G# - Bb (the major 7th, the flat 9th, the sharp 9th, and the fourth). It breaks every rule. If it appeared on a student project, they would fail.

And yet, it’s perfect. It’s right. When you hear him play it, he fits it together in the line, in the chordal structures, in the section, in a way that makes it inextricable.

I’m currently working my way back through his catalog, trying to fit my mind around what he did. I’m arranging that same piece, “Rhythm-a-Ning”, for two pianos, and I’ll be performing it with another teacher here at the University for an upcoming recital. The other prof is arranging a Bill Evans piece for us to do. I think he got the easier gig. I still, after 15 years with Monk, cannot find a handle for his work. I have no way to grasp a hold and move it around.

Nothing can be lifted from Monk. He’s not Parker, or Dizzy, or Miles, or Bill Evans. We don’t cop his lines or his voicings or his harmonic sense and speak his vocabulary with our voice, as a way of augmenting our own expression. He remains whole. He obviates our conventions for isolating the constituting pieces of his creative work.

He is whole. He is as he always was. So what do we do with Monk? On every list of influences I’ve ever drawn up, Monk is at the head of the list. The same thing is true of almost anyone who plays jazz piano; we all count him as an influence. But not in the way that we count Bill Evans or Duke Ellington. We don’t lift things from him. We don’t borrow from his vocabulary.

Monk means, to us, that art will always stand ahead of analysis. That creativity needs no rails to move forward. That to truly do something new sometimes requires us to be ignorant of what’s been done before, requires us to reform the raw materials with eyes squinted.

Most of all, Monk reminds us that any worthwhile act of creativity is always an act of rebellion. It is the violent overthrown of the banal, the shattering of safe harbors, and the full-throated cry of insatiable lust for human expression.

Wow. Nobody ever impacted me that way, I almost feel deprived. Your's is the story they should use when they try to sell young folks on heroes. I never believed in the concept when I was younger, but now I see the logic in it. Realizing this late, it still has value but is less life changing. I like where I am and certainly wouldn't give up the journey I took.

Hunter Thompson

my list is only half of peoples that were my heros.

On the day I posted, i was laying down typing on laptop, and punched some wrong keys and thats what came up.

I didn't include many....


What fucked me up. was I was trying to find the guy that stopped all the tanks in Begeing ,

the list other peeps i typed in got blown away by my premature ejacuheromines...

these things happen when you get old.

Nurse! Nurse, we need some help, here!

My older brothers served in Vietnam...
They are my heros.
My Mom.
my children.

@ Kitsune.............. lol, yeah, i felt like an idiot.

@ Fallenfairy.... i still live with survivors guilt. The war was bent, but the soldiers were true..

Jochser, and probably everyone else you've ever banned.

the Monk post is great. The Mr. and I were just talking the other night about how Monk is the King of "I meant to do that" He takes you right along with a mix of unquestioned confidence and risk. He changes your mind. Thats a great performer.

There is no doubt that Monk was a musical genius. He was also a bit strange. If you've ever seen the video that follows him on a concert tour, you know what I mean.

Monk scared me.

It wasn't until later when i listened/collected to his offsprings: (or maybe not) Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Roswell Rudd that i appreciated the roots of growing outside the box.

My fav cover of Round Midnight is by a solo t-bone player named Ron Wilson


My fav cover of "straight no chaser" is by Buddy Rich and another Leon Thomas (a jazz vocalist who sort of yodels)

Let's see..."reluctant member"...admires those who have been banned...obviously a disgruntled customer.

I assume you also eat at restaurants you hate and watch TV shows that repulse you? Married to someone you despise as well?

Those things would seem logical if you're posting on a board that you find offensive. So...how long have you been into self abuse, Mij? :lol:

Bill Nye, the science guy.

Did you say Bill Nye the science guy? I love Bill Nye the science guy.

(But not in that way)

Wow, sm, that was a awesome post.

I'll fess up to being an idiot and admit not knowing anything about Thelonious Monk. Please recommend a CD and I'll buy it and see what I've been missing.

And Stevonez, that was a nice tribute to your mother. Now that I think about it, my mother is one of my heros also. She raised three kids while married to a paranoid, sociopathic, career Army Command Sargent Major (like a Drill Sargent but worse) while moving around the globe every 18 months. She spent 33 years married to him for our benefit only to have to endure the humiliation of a divorce so he could take all the money they saved (a considerable sum) and marry a black widow (her prior 3 husbands met untimely demises) leaving her penniless. He joined the dead husband club two years later leaving everything to the black widow.

Since then, she has beaten not one, not two but three different cancers (breast, melanoma and some other one) and a hip replacement. And at 75, she can still whoop my butt. :)

*agrees with Beestie/Dev they both are on it*

Unless the woman is a bad person, mothers are always taken for granted... as are the grandmothers (although rumor has it, grandparents "spoil" the youngns more)

Yeah - me too... they all came home, thank God - but I am now 42, and when others bring it up in their presence- they look at me and say "not in front of the Baby"... it was an F'd up war and our Vets never get enough recognition.

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I think of people of means who work for the common good.

Princess Di
Bono
Ophra
The Gates

Probably not the greatest?? in the eyes of history but contemporary.

ooh
and Willie Nelson for research into alternate fuels. I think that is so cool and earth responsible. ( although I am not)

Did you know the Diesel engine was introduced at a World's Fair over 100 years ago, as an engine designed to run on vegetable oil that farmer's could produce themselves, from their own crops? Shortly thereafter the inventor, Diesel, was found floating face down in a river, and the new & imporved "Diesel Engine" was introduced, which ran on so-called "Diesel Fuel".

@ Flint
or at techies

... why didn't they kill Kesslar? (mispelled probly) Edison was known to be an asshole meg·a·lo·ma·ni·a..... he had the handle on New Yorks DC light/electric powers

(just curious)

Omigod, the passengers of Flight 93.

the person who finally terminates OBL.