Looking up...to

I was having a conversation with someone yesterday about the people we look up to and if they affect us with our decisions. I couldn’t really comment at the time because I was having trouble remembering who I actually looking up to. It is not that I have no one, I had just forgotten about them other than Optimus Prime and Hot Rod but then I was about 9.

The most obvious person that sprang to mind was Barack Obama. He truly is someone to look up to by many different types of people. The first black American president, great intelligence circulating around his mind and orator skills that would put Mel Gibson’s Braveheart speech to shame, and he is even left-handed. Millions of us wish to achieve only some of the success he has experienced and will continue to cast an eye over him as he makes his history as president. I just hope the health reform system he wishes to introduce does not enflame an enthusiasm to bring Sarah Palin back to challenge him in the next election. That entry is for another day.

For me in particular I aspire to master the oratory skills he possess, I’m completely in awe when he talks because of his manor of delivery.

And then I start to think of the next person I look up to and want to be and a smirk spreads across my face. I look up to Benicio Del Toro, for the work in the films he has done and for just being effortlessly ‘cool’. If I was to be a Hollywood filmstar, Del Toro would be it, I’d pick his type of films, dress like him, let the charisma seep out like he does and of course try and relive that encounter with Scarlett Johansson. As yet he’s never been a lead in a film (that I know of anyway) but that doesn’t matter because he probably doesn’t want to be and likes nothing more than getting involved in some gritty, unique and interesting project, film his part before disappearing again.

The person I have to say I idolise for their sporting achievements is Michael Jordan. To me he is the greatest athlete to have ever played sports. I do not think Pele, Jessie Owens, Usian Bolt (although he is making inroads), Roger Federer, Carl Lewis, Magic Johnson or Maradonna come close. The reason being that repeatedly and not just once, when he played for the Chicago Bulls and his team were down by a point with 3 seconds left on the clock the coach would call a time out or the ball would go out. Everyone knew who would get the ball, everyone was aware what would be attempted, especially the opponents. Yet somehow, Bulls would get the ball to Jordan who would dribble and fire a shot which would end up in the bucket. It was like witnessing the end of Teenwolf, over and over again but instead it’s an NBA playoff game and it’s real. It is that reason, the fact everyone knew he was going to get the ball, that fact he only had seconds to act and that he did it repeatedly that I rate him as the best sportsman ever.

And then I move onto the next person, and that is JK Rowling (Coldbrain I know you are either cracking up or rolling your eyes up as you read this). I cannot remember the amount of times I have just sat back and thought what she has produced is absolute mastery of imagination. It’s amazing. She has managed to take an idea from her imagination and constructed this story/saga full of intricate details that build upon the old cliché of good versus evil. It is like she had planned everything ten years before she started writing the first book. I could spend a month thinking up names and I would never come close to Sturgeis Podmore or Fenrir Greyback. It is all just amazing and I was a sceptic at the beginning who after reading the first two books still wasn’t feeling ‘it’, but by the third I was hooked. I am not sure if I will ever encounter something that contains so much imagination but then I never thought they’d be a better trilogy than Star Wars… and then Lord of the Rings came along.

Oh, I forgot, there was one other I look up to. He is Winston from Eastenders. How on earth does he manage to get by in life with his quarterly 3 second speaking appearances on Albert Square. I haven’t seen him on anything else, ever.

And in other news, I’m going to South Africa the end of this month for a month for an adventure. Well, I actually want to go whale watching so my entries may be a little thin over October.