What person or persons have influenced you the most? Family member? Celebrity? Philosopher?

My dad.

I have a few influences.

-George Harrison
-Thomas Edison
-Mark Twain
-Richard Dawkins
-Jimmy Carter

Hotei Ushu



Here painted by Miyamoto Musashi.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr showed me a different way to look at life. Breakfast of Champions literally changed the way I looked at and thought about the world.

I have given away dozens of copies of the book over the years. My own private insurgency against the constant propaganda.

I've actually had bosses who taught me a lot, some of them teaching evil, most of them character and integrity. I'm afraid that the one or two best among them I didn't really appreciate until a couple of years after we were no longer working together.

I've also felt that a handful of comedians, filmmakers and authors have really opened my eyes to some points of view and work ethics that I've absorbed by osmosis.

Same here. I have known many people who were not nearly as fortunate as I was in the Dad category. I truly feel very lucky to have been raised by such a man.

Gotta add Jesus, an Army Captain who's name I'll withhold, Tim Leary, Albert Hoffman, Rock n Roll music and a Sudanese gentleman named Mutasem. Just to name a few.

Everyone in some way influences me. Either there is something about them I admire and wish to emulate, or they serve as a warning.

Way too many for me to mention. Of all, I worked the hardest to be as different from my father as I could possibly be. Except for his story telling skills.

Who I am today I owe to the Ol Man, I just hope my children feel the same way about me.

Several.

I am rather fond of Jurgen Habermas, though.

Also, Bertrand Russell.

And, Walter Benjamin.

Those would be three off the top of my head.

Actually, George Carlin had a lot of influence. He could articulate my beliefs in a manner a lot better than I could. I'm going to miss him.

Jesus, as I understand him to have been. Meaning his teachings of love, not judging, how little money means to the soul. So basicaly not he jesus you see in most christian churches.

Walter "sweetness" Payton was a major hero of mine growing up

also have learned from and admired most of my bosses and teachers in life.

Im sorry, I have to ad the Beatles, the music of my life.

I have only one hero left, RANDI. Obama might be one, we will see. Randi is the only person I have seen in a long time, stand up to the oppression and win. Everyone else has sold us out for a paycheck.

Wow this is a tough one, I'd have to say my Uncle Bob, badass in WWII, my uncle Steve "Poppa wheelie" a badass carpenter, and a bunch of cowboys I worked with who I've since forgotten their names (sorry), and lately Major Richard D. Winters of the 101st Airborne 506th PIR Easy Company, of Band of Brothers fame. I have talked to and exchanged correspondence with him for years. A man of integrity and guts. My dad and I see exactly the opposite on every single thing we ever discuss, mostly because he thinks he's right always, my mom is finally figuring this out.

Mostly though, my wife, she's awesome.

My dad was watching Band OF Brothers, I asked him if it was weird to watch his division on tv, he looked at me and nodded yes. He was in the Philippines to see bulldozers bury thousands of Japanese. He was then a Rock soldier in Korea. He is one bad ass muther.

RL- Yeah they all seem to have been in their day. My Uncle Bob, who I grew up next to and saw every day of my life, had like 40 pieces of shrapnel in him when he died. He worked everyday in agriculture or constuction and I never heard him complain. The guys he worked with gave him a wide berth, not for his temper, just because he was tough as nails. If he said do this, you did it, or else.

Kudos to your pop, they are the Greatest Generation.

Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, David McReynolds, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman, Salvador Dali, Andre Breton, Rene Magritte, Claude Debussy, Charles Baudelaire, Theodor Herzl, my Rabbi, my parents, my 12th grade English teacher, Howard Dean, Douglas Adams, Monty Python, Eddie Izzard, to name a few.

Sinister--I loved my 8th grade English teacher, until I found out he was screwing one of my fellow classmates, and I lost it. Talk about hero gone bad. A bummer. BTW he was found guilty and fired and imprisoned.

Oh, and I remember another teacher who I looked up to, who quit teaching, became a cop, and was caught screwing a minor. Fired, imprisoned. Shit and I lived in conservative area, go figure...

I hate to state the obvious but....

Ub--- Yeah, point well taken, you're right, so much.

Every night at about 10 pm when I would turn off the last couple of lights at 5th Street Chevron, I would realize I was but minutes away from what I had been looking forward to all day...

I loved it so much I forced myself to only read 10 pages a day so that it would last longer...First I would pickup my bag of chocolate covered peanuts, go home (a garage really, off of my brothers main house) and settle in for a night of candy, " Breakfast of Champions" and Sgt. Bilko...

But first, I had to get my mind right, of course....

Ah yes, the simple pleasures of life.

My writing teacher in college is my hero. After a year-long writing group, which I was a part of, she developed an interesting short-story, which she later turned into a published book, which was then turned into a movie.

But, really, that was Ben Parker, wasn't it? Or am I misremembering?

Yes, Ben Parker said it.

Thinking about this I still have one person I looked up to that I still respect. You have to understand, I live in California, I have been union pretty much all of my life, and during this part of life, the unions have dropped the ball. First we were fighting the non-union, then union members started their own companies in the non-union sector, and won a lawsuit that really messed things up for us. Most union members from that point on just looked out for themselves. Then there was Ronnie Raygun that put a silver bullet in us. The unions did not back the air traffic controllers so things really went down hill. During all of this time there was a teacher named Rubin Garcia. He was my mentor, he is rotten. I was working on a prison, putting in copper for the Wayside Correctional Facility in Valencia. It was a 2 story climb down a ladder to get to the bottom of a piping shaft. One day he climbed down and stood there and looked at me. I asked, "What up boss?" He said nothing and climbed back up the ladder. A few minutes went by when the most disgusting smell made my nose close. I looked up the pipe shaft and yelled, "YOU ASSHOLE!" He taught me how to read plans and draw them as well. What ever he ate that day, OMG! He has never done anything but earned my respect.

I have to admit - I have a thing about Tobey Maguire in spandex.

I have no room to laugh...

But it's his mind you're interested in, right?

No.

I look pretty good in spandex.

Everyone else seems to have just one, but i have a list. I guess I'm just susceptible to influences.

My parents. For everything
My older brother, who I feel close to and who is a good guide even though I will never meet him.
My partner, who while only a couple of years older than I am is centuries ahead of me in maturity and wisdom

And in no particular order...

Han Suyin
Yuan Mei
Zhou Enlai
Gore Vidal
Bishop John Shelby Spong
Mishima Yukio, even though i don't think he would have had much use for me

i didn't think so. We're on the same page on that one

I absolutely agree Spex. All three films have been great "message" movies beyond being your typical superhero popcorn action flicks.

IMHO, while it is Uncle Ben that delivers the critical message of film one, Aunt May delivers the ones for films two and three.

"I believe there is a hero in all of us ... " ... right out of Joseph Campbell, a message for why the hero archetype matters, and why people, maybe especially children, need Spider-Man.

("They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way.")

And in film three, "revenge is like a poison ... it consumes us from within..."

Note that everyone who pursues revenge in that film is either destroyed or harmed by it. Only those who renounce it escape.

My heroes? My sons... My mentors? My sons...they taught me so much while I was raising them, they still do.

My dad.

I value my privacy so I will only say that my dad is a cornerstone of not only what I believe but also what is possible.

A local politician. Tom Gill - former Lieutenant Governor. He gave me the best political advise about how and why we need to engage people. He told me to go out and look for the most forsaken of all people. Tell that person he or she is valued and that I earnestly find out what his or her concerns are. The most moral, idealistic and practical advise for grass roots politics.

I know how you feel.

Thank you Seeker1.
I'm a big Joseph Campbell fan too.