I feel like I can almost just copy and paste the entry for Da Vinci and put it here. Whatever. Michelangelo ALSO had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle named after him, who was alot less of a dick than Leonardo, who always behaved like he had a stick jammed up his ass.
Michelangelo is probably best known for painting the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, pictured in slightly PhotoShopped form above, which is pretty awesome in and of itself, but he also sculpted the famous statue of the Biblical king, David as well as the almost as famous and equally sublime Pieta. He also did a really cool sculpture of Moses, and (I did not know this until doing a bit of research for this post) he also was the architect who designed St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
That's it. Law school is taking alot out of me, and I'd really rather get through the list so sorry if these posts are becoming somewhat short. Next on the list is number 62, the man all (straight) men wish they were.
The funniest man in the funniest comedy troupe of all time, John Cleese comes in at number 64 of this list. I am sorely tempted here to go off on a tangent here about something like a man with a tape recorder in his nose. Instead I will mention here that Cleese was one of the funniest guests ever on The Muppet Show. Furthermore.... well, just watch this clip right here:
If that doesn't get you on this list, I don't know what will. Oh and he also did the Ministry of Silly Walks, the sketch about the fish called Eric, the Cheese Shop sketch, and of course the immortal Dead Parrot sketch.
Next time I post, it'll be about number 61 on the list, a guy who painted a really cool ceiling once.
You know what? Fuck Michael Jackson. I am so outraged about that goddamn diaper commercial, that Michael Jackson is getting stricken from the list. Can I do that? Sure. Why? Because it's my blog and Jacko's a douchebag for selling out the Beatles to sell bags for baby shit.
I'm replacing him here with Sir George Martin, CBE. If you've never heard of him, you've certainly heard the music he's produced before. He was the closest thing there ever was to a Fifth Beatle. Martin produced all of the Beatles' albums except for Let It Be, and that turned out to be an absolutely terrible fucking record, thanks to Phil "I allegedly murdered a struggling actress" Spector (might be able to strike the allegedly any minute now!).
And it's not like George Martin was just pushing buttons either. Where Lennon and McCartney were the raw writing talent of the band early on, Martin was the technical expert. None of the Beatles could read or write music and alot of the later stuff was jotted down by Martin and arranged for classically trained musicians to play. Some of his most notable stuff is playing the baroque sounding piano solo in "In My Life," arranging the orchestral build up in "A Day in the Life," and the circus music in "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite."
Also George Martin is a knight. A fucking knight. Suck it, Michael Jackson, you turd.
By the way, the John Cleese post will get done when I have time.
So I'm watching television the other day and a commercial for diapers comes on. The music being used: "All You Need is Luvs." That's right, they bastardized a simple, elegant, anti-war/bigotry/everything wrong with the world song to sell disposable diapers. Now I have never been the sort of person to denounce artists for using their music in commercials, even if it is rather tacky (Bob Seger and John Mellencamp, I'm looking at you!). But this is the bottom of the barrel. In my honest opinion, "All You Need Is Love" is probably the best thing, lyrically, that Lennon ever wrote and the fact that it's being used in a commercial for a product designed to hold baby piss and shit is personally offensive to me.
Now lest either one of my readers get offended and angry at Sir Paul, Ringo, Yoko, or Olivia, bear in mind that the Beatles and their survivors don't hold the rights to the vast majority of their songs. For that we can actually blame none other than Michael Jackson, the little boy-diddling fuck. As a matter of fact, when Paul tried to buy the rights to the songs when they came up at auction, Jacko outbid him and proceeded to allow Nike to use "Revolution" to sell shoes, something that outraged Paul and led to a falling out between the two musicians.
Come to think of it, it's probably a really bad idea to feud with Paul McCartney. Think about it-- he has most famously and publicly feuded with Michael Jackson and Phil Spector and look what happened to both of those assholes.
Anyway, this whole advertisement thing annoyed me, and got me thinking-- Have you ever been offended by a song you like alot in a commercial? The other one that comes to mind that could have pissed alot of people off was Nike using "Spirit in the Sky," a song about dying in Viet Nam and going to heaven to meet Jeebus, for a football commercial. Feel free to post in the comments... please?
He is the biggest box office draw ever, having had movies that he starred in gross more money combined than any other actor on the planet, living or dead. Harrison Ford has shown TONS of range, playing, to wit:
An ass-kicking galactic smuggler (Han Solo)
An ass-kicking archaeologist (Indiana Jones)
An ass-kicking President of the United States (in Air Force One)
An ass-kicking robot bounty hunter (Blade Runner)
An ass-kicking doctor who totally didn't murder his wife. Tommy Lee Jones doesn't care. (The Fugitive)
An ass-kicking cop playing an ass-kicking Amish (Witness. I swear I'm not making that up)
Okay so maybe he doesn't have that much range. But when I was a kid I frigging idolized Indiana Jones. I remember when we went to MGM Studios when I was a little boy, I bought a genuinely and officially licensed Indiana Jones fedora. Man I felt so cool having adventures in the yard wearing that thing. Also I always thought it was really cool how Indy could talk without really moving his lips at all.
In fact, Harrison Ford SHOULD be alot higher on this list, considering that he was in the three Star Wars movies that actually mattered AND that he was Indiana Jones. But he's gotten old, he's lost a bit of his touch, and more important (and embarrassingly) he has made a string of gawdawful movies the last ten years or so, including Firewall, Holywood Homicide, and, perhaps worst of all, K-19: The Widowmaker. God damn, Widowmaker was terrible.
Next time on the list, something completely different. A man sitting at a desk announcing complete non sequiteur comedy sketches.
Now I know I haven't put a lot of artsy fartsy types on this list-- in fact I haven't put any at all so far. Pablo Picasso, for example, will not be on this list. To be one of the 100 Greatest Human Beings Who Ever Lived, you have to do much more than paint pretty pictures! You have to uhmmm... be like this guy, or that guy, you know.... class all the way.
But here's Da Vinci, so I know you're wondering-- Djmmm, have you gone all soft on us here? And the answer, I assure you, is "No, no I have not." Because Leonardo Da Vinci was much more than a great painter who had the stick-in-the-mud ninja turtle named after him. He was a fuckin' genius.
He was born in 1452 and died in 1519 and in those 67 years he was THE Renaissance Man. He was a painter, sculptor, engineer, and anatomist among other things. He designed a fucking helicopter in the 16th century. Keep in mind that the man died almost 400 years before the Wright Brothers came along and had they're little flight at Kitty Hawk. Among other ideas he came up with that were way ahead of his time were plate tectonics, solar power, internet porn, calculators, baseball, and tanks. WARNING: Two of the preceding assertions may not be true.
If all of this wasn't enough the man was also a brilliant artist who created three of the most famous images in the Western canon-- this, this, and this. That last one has been kind of the inspiration for a shitty book about Jesus boning Mary Magdalene or some other such nonsense. I don't know, because I haven't read it. I have better things to do with my time, like say, writing this shittier and irregularly updated blog.
Okay enough with the serious honest to goodness great people and back to the People Who Are Great Because This Is My Blog and I Say So. Next on the list will be number 65, the coolest and baddest 65 year old working action star ever, the subject of man crushes all over America and a sexy sexy man.
He has directed The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. Those four movies alone ensure that he is in the Pantheon of Great Directors and puts him on this list. The reason that he's not any higher on this list than 67? Jack. What an abortion of a movie that was. See I bet you thought I was going to say The Godfather Part III. And yes, that was terrible and nearly ruined the series. But, as Meat Loaf (or, as the New York Times calls him, Mr. Loaf) once sang, "Two out of three ain't bad."
The first two Godfather movies were possibly the two greatest films ever made and both are almost certainly in the top five, if one was being particularly harsh. Interestingly, Coppola was almost fired from directing the original because Paramount, and Robert Evans specifically, was unhappy with some of his casting decisions. In particular, Evans hated the casting of Pacino as Michael Corleone and referred to him as "that midget, Pacino." Let that sink in for a moment.
It is staggering to think of who MIGHT have played Michael in the film:
Ryan O'Neill
Robert Redford
Robert DeNiro
James Caan
Dustin Hoffman
Martin Sheen
In fact, just watch.
Also considered to play the role of the Don, were Spencer Tracy and Laurence Olivier. Luckily, Coppola stuck to his guns, casted Pacino and Marlon Brando, and created a masterpiece.
Now that I have established his greatness, I must proceed to rip Francis Ford Coppola a new one. I mean, there's Jack, a movie about a boy who ages at four times the normal rate. So the protagonist, at the age of ten, looks like Robin Williams (poor kid). An abomination, it pushed Robin Williams toward making more sentimental drivel like Bicentenial Man, which, if you think about it, is just Jack but the opposite. For this alone, Coppola deserves some scorn.
And then there is the thorny issue of Godfather Part III. It wasn't a bad movie. Really. It just didn't live up to the expectations created by its predecessors, which were two of the greatest films ever created. Still, Coppola deserves some criticism for casting his daughter, Sofia, in a central role as Michael's daughter Mary. To be fair, the first two films were made with a measure of nepotism when Coppola cast his sister, Talia Shire in the role of Connie. The difference is that Shire is a competent actress and, despite the fact that Sofia had been in the original film as the baby in the baptism scenes, well Sofia Coppola was a gawdawful actress. Her woodenness more or less ruined the movie and Francis Ford Coppola deserves a big wagging finger of shame for that.
On the other hand, according to George Lucas, Coppola is the inspiration for the character of Han Solo in Star Wars. So that's some redemption.
Also at the Oscars this year, in the picture above, Coppola wore a blue tie with his tuxedo and somehow managed to make George Lucas look well-dressed, which is a real accomplishment.
Next on the list, one of history's true Renaissance Men-- an artist, engineer, mathematician, inventor, and musician. Sadly, of late his name has been appropriated for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, a shitty novel, and a shittier Tom Hanks movie.
P and F are getting married. After knowing each other a grand total of six months. The headline says it all people. At least if they get divorced in a few years, F will have a close friend who is an attorney. That is if they last to summer of 2010 when I (hopefully) pass the bar. Jesusfucking Christ this is a terrible idea.
I was just at Blockbuster and saw the above magazine cover staring up at me. It was absolutely frightening. I felt the need to share this with you. Why is 50 so angry? It's like he doesn't even really want to be on the cover of Vibe and would much rather prefer showing off his lovely garden on the cover of Redbook.
