January 14, 2009

20 Men I Admire


Keith at The Dino Lounge has come up with a pretty cool meme. Says Keith:

This is called the 20 Men I Admire Meme. The title pretty much says it all. I decided to pick entertainers of the past (some of these men are still living), but other bloggers could pick men of any era.

Make sure you post these rules when you participate in this meme. Here are the rules:

A. Link back to the blog that tagged you.

B. Link back to the originator of this meme, which is The Dino Lounge.

C. Create your own list of 20 men that you admire and post them on your blog.

D. Tag 5 other people to particpate in this meme.

E. If you like, please let The Dino Lounge know that you've participated in this meme so he can check out your posting and comment on it. Thanks.


I'll tag the following individuals, all of whom will meet with varying degrees of bad luck should they break the chain choose to not participate. Actually, I'm tagging a few sites that don't do this type of post, so I do not expect them to follow up.

1. He who tagged me, the hardest working pop culture blogger in show business, Gilligan at Retrospace. Little buddy has done some of the most original posts in existence. If you think you have a unique idea for a post, forget about - he's already done it!

2. Mr. Dante Fontana at PCL LinkDump, an inspiration to pop culture bloggers around the world, and one of the first.

3. Rich at fourfour. He is a talented writer with an amazing work ethic, who is also maddeningly creative and funny as hell. He was an early inspiration for me to try my hand at doing a blog, and one of the first "big blogs" to link to me.

4. Cathy at cityrag. Again, an inspiration to begin a blog of my own. My original "vision" for this blog was an East Texas cityrag. I just couldn't live up to it. Two of the greatest experiences I've had being a blogger occurred on two separate occasions when she linked to my Ocean's 11 and Tony Rome posts. I was surprised I could fit my head through the door the morning after those days.

5. Finally, Gunnar and Sherry at Eccentric Roadside, who share my love of "the road," and all the cool things awaiting discovery out there, upon it.

And now, the 20 Men I Admire, not so much ordered as they are categorized:

My Father

Abraham Lincoln

Thomas Jefferson

Raymond Chandler

Philip Roth

John Steinbeck

Kurt Vonnegut

Alfred Hitchcock

Stanley Kubrick

William Christenberry

John Lennon

Paul McCartney

Oscar Peterson

Duke Ellington

Dave Brubeck

Prince

James Dean

Peter Sellers

Prison Mike, a.k.a., Steve Carell

Francis Albert Sinatra

6 comments:

Keith said...

Hey there. Thanks for participating. I loved your list. You had some great choices up there. It's been interesting to see the different men that people have put on their lists.

Video Zeta One said...

Thanks for the free Retrospace propoganda; usually I have to threaten people to get such positive spin.

Anyway, I enjoyed your take on the meme. Mine (not suprisingly) was not exactly a list of intellectuals (although, I hear Barry Gibb is quite the polymath). Grapes of Wrath is my favorite novel of all time, so I was happy to see ol' Steinbeck up there. One of these days I'd like to have a blog where I can discuss more cultured topics; however, I barely have time for Retrospace - and a discussion on the works of Salinger just wouldn't quite fit.

But I digress. Enjoyed the list!

Chris said...

No prob, Keith. Great idea for a meme!

I doubt that's true, gill. And it's not propaganda. Stick to Retrospace - culture is a lot less "popular" than pop culture. People want to be entertained.

Believe it, or not, I just read Grapes of Wrath for the first time a month ago. I did not want it to end. His Travels with Charley was also an awesome read. I just reread Cannery Row, and was thrilled to discover Steinbeck wrote a sequel to it called Sweet Thursday.

Video Zeta One said...

Of course, Of Mice and Men is also fantastic, but the final dialog of Tom Joad is (in my humble opinion) among the best in literature.

Leigh said...

Great list. I'd add George Gershwin, Mozart, and Benny Goodman.

Mark Twain in the literary category. Jane Austen. Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson. Ray Bradbury, too.

Jefferson, plus Adams, Madison, Monroe, Washington, and Franklin (can you tell I'm reading American history right now?) And, of course, Ghandi and King.

Also Darwin, Einstein, and Newton. Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Richard Dawkins, Steve Gould. (I'm doing science, too.)

Chris said...

Leigh-I considered Gershwin. I guess I should have, but at the moment I thought "men I admire" (in order to come up with this post) strangely enough, MLK or Gandhi didn't come to mind. I guess they are something other, more than simply "admirable." I also didn't want to come off as too intellectual or bookish, so I held off on the inclusion of more authors, lest I come off as too poindexterish (which I probably am - I used the word "lest" for Christ sake). The originator of the meme has Hugh Hefner and Dean Martin, both who I considered. I felt I deviated enough by including Lincoln and Jefferson!