Who's your favorite insufferable asshole/true genius?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Can be in any area--music, drama, literature, politics, what have you.

[HopeHoops]

1. PeeWee Herman

Actually, I can't stand him so there's the "insufferable asshole" part.

[Dr. Strange]

2. Well, let's see...

music: Chuggo
drama: Val Kilmer
literature: (tie) Harlan Ellison/Gore Vidal
politics: Jesse Ventura
the Lounge: MrCoffee

[TZ]

5. Dude.

If we are talking about insufferable assholes and music...I'm thinking about a certain mancannon player..although of course the genius part is rather dubious...:rofl:

[skygazer]

3. Besides myself?

Roger Waters.

[Orrex]

44. He's much less of an asshole than he used to be.

I'd hate to think that he's mellowing with age, but his assholery doesn't seem to have the fire that it once did. I mean, when did he last spit in the face of a fan?

[Chan790]

4. Julian Schnabel

[Flaxbee]

46. Agreed.

Boggles the mind.

[SteppingRazor]

6. Bill Maher's a good example. Also Lou Reed, and Bob Dylan to some extent. n/t

[Rosie1223]

7. Oprah n/t

[edbermac]

8. Bobby Fischer.

Greatest chess player ever, prima donna supreme, lunatic anti-semite despite both parents Jewish heritage.

[Captain Hilts]

14. GREAT selection! A true crazy maniac and genius who beat the commies at their own game!

[old mark]

9. Bob Dylan. Personally, he is very hard to tollerate, but he's got the talent.

Piccasso, too.

mark

[graywarrior]

27. Same here.

Dylan.

[flvegan]

10. Dr. Strange, in all of the above.

[Midlodemocrat]

11. +1

[Graybeard]

12. Danny Kaye.

I love his movies. 'The Court Jester' is in my top 10 favorites and his work with the United Nations and other charities was admirable. But read the biography, "Nobody's Fool" and insufferable asshole perfectly describes him.

[Captain Hilts]

15. But people liked him. There's a really funny story of Eleanor Roosevelt and him....

they were talking in the 1950s - in reference to his UN work, I believe - and he told her he had something to confess. "Well, okay..." said Eleanor. He told her how on a tour of the White House in the '40s, as part of the group of Hollywood fundraisers for the March of Dimes, he'd departed from the tour group when they were at the pool. He opened a closet and saw a bathrobe hanging there with 'FDR' embroidered on it. He put it on an pranced around a bit. ER laughed and said she still had that very bathrobe and would Kaye like to have it? He did, and she gave it to him.

I kinda hope the thing with Laurence Olivier is true.

[Captain Hilts]

13. Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, Spencer Tracy, John Lennonnot many women on my list...hmmm.nt

[Mad_Dem_X]

16. Sean Penn. n/t

[mitchum]

17. Tie between Lou Reed and the late Miles Davis

[Deep13]

18. Hard to say, as there are so few geniuses in the world.

Newton comes to mind.

[Burma Jones]

19. Beethoven

[TrogL]

20. Me

[mitchum]

21. Also, Klaus Kinski for acting and Faulkner for lit

[KamaAina]

22. Roman Polanski

:hide:

[Odin2005]

42. Oh, you're bad, Kama!

:rofl:

[cemaphonic]

23. Wagner certainly fits.

I wouldn't really say he is my favorite, as late Romanticism is just about my least favorite era in music, but he definitely was a visionary genius that had a huge cultural impact.

[DerekG]

24. Harlan Ellison

Greatest fantasist of the last century, but...

[REP]

28. Another vote for Ellison

He has apologized for some of outstanding accomplishments of assholery, and it's so transparent where it comes from it's almost possible to feel - well, not pity, but something more like mercy - until one contemplates being innthe same room with him. Still one of my favorite writers, whose work means a great deal to me.

[rurallib]

25. Lou Dobbs

well he's half qualified.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

26. Lou

[Steely_Dan]

29. Bill Mahr (sp)

[Tabasco_Dave]

30. John Lennon and Jim Morrison

From what I've read about him he wasn't a nice guy. Edit to add Jim Morrison to the list

[Manifestor_of_Light]

40. The Lennon biography that came out last year is excellent.

And exhaustive. I thought there was nothing more to learn about John, but I was wrong. It's an over 800-page book and I read it in three days.

John Lennon:The Life, by Philip Norman.

Quote from a review by the TImes of London:


The fact that Norman has had the blessing and full co-operation of Yoko Ono means that he is not short of new things to say about the relationship which, according to popular writ, broke up the world’s favourite pop group. He argues convincingly that, far from being an opportunistic schemer, the high-born, wealthy Yoko was reluctant to take up with the Beatle she regarded as her social and artistic inferior, and whose crude sexual foreplay — employing the Beatles’ roadies to cart her off to a bed in a flat near the Abbey Road studio — she initially rejected.

The most interesting part of Lennon’s complicated life on which Norman sheds fresh light is the troubled relationship with his seaman father, Alfred. Usually seen as an absconding rascal, Alf emerges here as a stoic victim of the caprices of his serially unfaithful wife and volatile son. He tried to hang on to John, offering to take him to New Zealand after Julia walked out on their marriage; and when he finally re-established contact with his Beatle son, he seems not to have expected anything much in the way of help, despite being broke and virtually jobless. Like just about everybody else in John’s family and life, Alf was, in his way, a remarkable man. At 54, he successfully romanced a 19-year-old girl, whom he married and had two sons with. Shortly after this, in what was to be their final meeting, John unleashed the fury he had long nurtured for his hapless dad and threatened to have him killed. The statement a terrified Alf filed with a solicitor in the event of this threat being carried out is one of the most moving and scary pieces of Lennon’s sprawling legacy. It is greatly to Norman’s credit as a biographer that he does justice to all of it in a book whose 854 pages simply fly by.

[enigmatic]

31. It's gotta be Lou

[jgraz]

32. Miles Davis

[MilesColtrane]

36. +1

[jgraz]

37. I have this feeling you're a Miles and Coltrane fan

I don't know where I got it from... just a feeling.

:P

[Tikki]

33. As a little girl, I wanted to marry Oscar Levant...

My mother nearly had a stroke when I told her that....Of course, I
didn't marry anyone like Oscar Levant...but, I still appreciate his
biting humor and grand talent.


Tikki

[Manifestor_of_Light]

39. Crazy as hell, but brilliant.

Oscar Levant is one of the true great smartasses of history, along with Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain.


"They threw me out of the mental hospital. I was making the other patients depressed." -- Oscar Levant

[Blue_Tires]

34. Lakers Head Guru Phil Jackson

the 'genius' label is debatable of course, but he's good at what he does...but to me, personally, he is insulting on so many levels it's borderline real-life satire...to say nothing of the fact that for a self-described Zen follower, he's incredibly smug, self-important, egotistical, and just an all-around fuckwit gobshite....

[ZombieHorde]

35. Marquis de Sade first, then Aleister Crowly second. nt

[femmocrat]

38. Lewis Black. n/t

[Odin2005]

41. Dr. Greg House!

Both genius and insufferable asshole! :rofl:

[SoxFan]

43. Prince

Yeah, he's a diva, and as weird as the day is long, but anyone whose material can work for Cyndi Lauper, The Waterboys, The Bangles, and Sinead O'Connor has something going for him!

[Gormy Cuss]

45. Anthony Bourdain

for favorite insufferable asshole...
Glenn Gould for insufferable asshole/true genius.

[Jamastiene]

47. Johnny Rotten