10 Men I Admire Most - Part 2

George Lucas

This diminutive soul has the heart of an independent film maker and the finances of a small country. He has brought us the most known series of fictional movies of our time. The Star Wars saga spans generations and has given birth to entire new processes and movie capabilities. George ran into problems when making movies and simply treated them as opportunities. People would say you can't do that George and he would find out why not, and fix it.

Determination and sheer willpower to succeed have allowed him the luxury of being able to control his vision from start to finish (even if that vision has needed laser surgery - see Star Wars episodes 1 & 2). His movies have undergone many, many drafts and finally were born in the way he wanted them to be. He is the ultimate perfectionist and has gone back to tinker with the previous films so that he can fix all the things he didn't like back then, but hadn't the technology to fix.

Now that he's got the movies off his mind he wants to get back to making movies his way. I can only hope this means more writing like THX 1138. Make it like you want it George and damn the industry. Keep up the good work.

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Albert Einstein

Not only is he the fellow who came up with the theory of relativity but he also is one funky fellow. Known to have a good sense of humor he was a well learned scientist whose theory turned the world of physics on its ear. He also was a man of strong conviction. When the war was looming in Germany where he was he took a vocal stand against it and took some serious heat. Before the second war, as fascism loomed, he took a look at what was happening and bailed to the US where he told the president that if they didn't sort out the nuke then the Germans would. He helped the design and implementation of it.

His unique way of looking at things was apparent when he talked to people. When he was asked to describe the difference between telegraph and radio transmission he said
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

My all time favorite quote is a tie between

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

and the equally poignant

"If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."

Whichever you prefer there is no doubting that the world is a much changed place from having hosted the likes of dear Mr. Einstein.

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Homer J Simpson

How can you not admire this oaf. My co-workers actually say that they think as a parent I am a terrifying combination of this yellow man and Red Foreman. I'm not sure on the other guy but I take special honor in being compared to Homer. Sure he's an oaf, and sure he's clueless, but the man's love for his family is so strong that if the world were full of Homer Simpsons it would be physically perilous and emotionally comforting.

What's wrong with approaching anything in life with the zeal and energy that he pours into his half baked schemes? I think nothing personally. He loves his wife and loves his kids and is opinionated but deep down he really is a nice guy. It sort of gives us all hope for a better tomorrow.

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Muhammad Ali

What's not to like about a man that is so strong in his beliefs that he'd sacrifice his livelihood to stand up for them. It's hard to believe that it all began with a stolen bike, but in 1954 (Cassius Marcellus Clay as he was known then)his bike was stolen when he was at the Columbia Auditorium. He found Joe Martin (a cop at the time) and told him he was going to "whup" the thief once he found out who they were. Martin had a chuckle and told young Cassius that he should learn how to box first.

After only a few weeks he had his first fight and won.

After going on to win the gold medal in the Rome Olympics in 1960 he went on in the sport despite critics complaining about his style and skill. These "experts also didn't approve of his skills outside of the ring. His proclamations of his greatness, his casting off of his "slave name" and adopting of his Muslim name by which we know him today, his on the fly poetry (Maybe he's the very first freestyle rapper). They figured with his style and attitude he wouldn't last too long. Like many of the others on my list, he too was irreverent and enjoyed life to the fullest. When asked about his devotion to Islam and his conversion he replied that he was going to have four wives: one to shine his shoes, one to feed him grapes, one to rub oil on his muscles and one named Peaches. The beginning of his career was pretty low key in terms of attendance. People were rooting for Sonny Liston (a thug from the mob camp of boxers) to give Ali the whupping they felt he deserved.

Then came the Vietnam War. His defiance of the draft had him stripped of his title and took him out of fighting for 3 1/2 years when he should have been at the top of his game. He simply shook off the dust and took his title back from George Foreman in the "Rumble In The Jungle" down in Zaire. Sadly this career and the love of it went too far and he took a thrashing late in his career. As a result of the drubbing and a long battle with Parkinson's, the once verbal athlete now says very little and moves much slower than he did in the ring once long ago. Yet still he appears in public. Most would run and hide from the world once losing that much of their faculties. He opened the 1996 Atlanta Olympics to a thunderous greeting from the masses. He is still active to this day.

He is no longer in the sport but he still is in the hearts of many of us today. We may never see the likes of him in the ring again, but there will always be the memories.

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And now....

the moment you've all been waiting for...........

The man I admire most of all is........
My Dad!

After being born in Blackburn, England and mucking about in textiles for a while he decided to uproot himself and try out life here in the frozen wastes of Canada. He hadn't been here long when his eye was caught by a little lady in the plant and shortly after they married. While I was a wee lad my Dad worked two jobs about 1 hour apart from one another so that my Mom could be at home and raise my brother and I. Even though this would mean that he would be home for about 87 hours or so, he still always made an effort to be with us. We regularly went camping and fishing and never felt as though our Dad was far away.

It is my theory that there is nothing that cannot be fixed by him as no matter what we would hand him, and no matter how many pieces we handed it to him in, he would always manage to hand it back to us in working order. When I was younger (and coincidentally he was too) it was never uncommon to see a car (or two) with a pair of legs (or a few) sticking out from underneath them growing in the driveway.

From him I received my stunning figure and good looks, wild hair and deranged sense of humor without which I would be as entertaining as reality shows are actually real. Growing up on a steady diet of mutated nursery rhymes, British comedies and almost every different type of music under the sun, I think I beat the odds and didn't do too poorly. As a result of those types of input I should be an insane DJ at a gay bar with a penchant for drag and a skewed sense of the world around me. Thank god I'm not a DJ!!!

The years have rolled by and we have our own separate lives now but we still hang out together when possible (which is never enough). Life has tried to swat him with an erratic ticker and a stroke but he's still going strong. He always jokes that he'll be gone soon but the rest of us think we'll have to beat him to death when we get sick of his jokes (uh oh, that's pretty much now - maybe we'll just wait and let life do the dirty work).

That's all for the admiration society. Feel free to do 10 of your own and let the world know who is responsible for inspiring you to be the unbalanced lunatic you are today!!