Back in the day (we're talking 1989) my buddy Stack and I came up with something we called "The Bad List." It was a list of all things we thought were cool. Back then, when you saw something like a cool car, you would say "Man, that car's BAAiAD." The list included diverse things like people: Christopher Walken and Muhammad Ali; music groups like A Tribe Called Quest (that's right, I represented back then); and inane stuff like Mountain Dew and dualies. Anything that sparked creativity. Well, here's the first installment of the resurrected Bad list: A list of Badasses I know. It's not comprehensive, it's not ranked in order of badness, either. It's just a taste.
1. Anthony Bourdain - Travels all over the world, gets loaded with the locals, and eats good food. He once dedicated a show he did on Mexico to all of his Mexican employees at his restaurant, saying something like they formed the backbone of the restaurant industry. Congrats, you made the bad list, buddy.
2. Do you know who this guy is? If you don't you should be weeping, because you don't know one of the baddest badasses of all time. Aron Ralston was hiking out in Utah and, well, just read the Wikipedia excerpt:
Ralston, a student of mechanical engineering and French at Carnegie Mellon University, was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. At Carnegie Mellon, he served as a Resident Assistant, studied abroad, and was an active intramural sports participant. He left his job as a mechanical engineer with Intel in 2002 to climb all of Colorado's "fourteeners", or peaks over 14,000 feet high. While he was on a canyoneering trip in Blue John Canyon (near Moab, Utah), a boulder fell and pinned his right forearm, crushing it. After five days of trying to lift and break the boulder, a dehydrated and delirious Ralston bowed his arm against a chockstone and snapped the radius and ulna bones. Using the dull blade on his multiuse tool, he cut the soft tissue around the break. He then used the tool's pliers to tear at the tougher tendons. Although he didn't name which brand (other than to say it was not Leatherman), he did describe it as "what you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multi-use tool". After Ralston was rescued, his arm was retrieved by park authorities and removed from under the boulder. It was cremated and given to Ralston. He returned to the boulder and left the ashes there.BAM! One of the baddest badasses of all time. Think you could do that?
3. Bethany Hamilton. Probably the 2nd most badass of all badasses of all time. Another Wikipedia excerpt:
On October 31, 2003, Hamilton went for a morning surf along Tunnels Beach, Kauai with friends Alana, Byron and Holt Blanchard. Around 7:30 a.m., she was lying sideways on her surfboard with her left arm dangling in the water, when a 14 ft tiger shark attacked her, ripping her left arm off just below the shoulder. If the shark had bitten 2 inches further in, the attack would have been fatal. Bethany had lost 60% of her blood that morning. Her friends helped paddle her back to shore, and fashioned a tourniquet out of a surfboard leash around what was left of her arm before rushing her to Wilcox Memorial Hospital. Her dad was supposed to have a knee surgery that morning but she took his place in the operating room.
Despite the trauma of the incident, Hamilton was determined to return to surfing. Three weeks after the incident, she returned to her board and went surfing again. Initially, she adopted a custom-made board that was longer and slightly thicker which made it easier to paddle. She has observed that she has to kick a lot more to make up for the loss of her left arm. After teaching herself to surf with one arm, she has again begun surfing competitively. She is now back to using competitive performance short-boards again.
In 2005, with one arm, Bethany took 1st place in the NSSA National Championships, a goal she had been trying to achieve since before the shark attack.The only reason she ranks 2nd in my book is because she didn't amputate her own arm like Aron, but still was plenty badass enough to not only survive, but to attack the tiger shark, chewing all of the fins off of it with her teeth, then shoving the shark's head up its own ass, leaving it twirling around in a mad circle of misery for eternity. Bad. Ass.
4. You hipsters done shooting your wad over Amy Winehouse? Good, then meet Betty LaVette. She's the real deal. You want to sing the blues? You want soul? Then how about hearing it from someone who has been screwed over by industry people and dealt with hardship for OVER 40 YEARS. Most wussies like me would have quit a long time ago, becoming a plumber or an HVAC technician by now. Not her. She played every shitty hotel on earth for 50 bucks a night. She has soul, guts and heart. Put on one of her albums and you'll be weeping in your hands like a 4-year old who dropped their popsicle. Plus, she was born in Michigan, which adds badass points, as well as having a last name that includes the classic example of american power and iron: the Vette.
5. Bruce Lee - Here's a picture of Bruce handing Chuck Norris a plateful of his ass. There's no more to say. Let's move on.
6. John Cage - This guy had enough sack to put on a performance unveiling his brand new piano composition, in which he sat down at his piano and did jack shit for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Then he got up and left. If 10% of art students had this much guts, they would be revolutionizing art. Instead, they're ripping off Cy Twombly and Rauschenberg. John Cage: a real artistic badass.
7. Yep.
8. Eastwood. Yeah, a little typical to be on this list. But he's not on here because he was Dirty Harry, or because he was in all of the Spaghetti Westerns. He's on here because of Unforgiven. Not only does he play a reluctant badass, but his writing and directing reveals a character with human flaws and displays the frailty and sense of helplessness that comes with aging, overcome only by digging deep down to expose the badass that still lies beneath. That and the fact that he is a politician and an accomplished jazz pianist. Renaissance man. Badass.
9. Lauryn Hill - After spanking everyone with "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill," she stepped away.
"For two or three years I was away from all social interaction. It was a very introspective time because I had to confront my fears and master every demonic thought about inferiority, about insecurity or the fear of being black, young and gifted in this western culture. It took a considerable amount of courage, faith and risk to gain the confidence to be myself. I had to deal with folks who weren’t happy about that. I was a young woman with an evolved mind who was not afraid of her beauty or her sexuality. For some people that’s uncomfortable. They didn’t understand how female and strong work together. Or young and wise. Or Black and divine. People need to understand that the Lauryn Hill they were exposed to in the beginning was all that was allowed in that arena at that time. There was much more strength, spirit and passion, desire, curiosity, ambition and opinion that was not allowed in a small space designed for consumer mass appeal and dictated by very limited standards. I had to step away when I realized that for the sake of the machine, I was being way too compromised. I felt uncomfortable about having to smile in someone’s face when I really didn’t like them or even know them well enough to like them. I had to fight for an identity that doesn’t fit in one of their boxes. I’m a whole woman. And when I can’t be whole, I have a problem. By the end I was like, I’ve got to get out of here."
Badass move.
10. See the lady in the middle? Don't mess with her. Her name is Nell Hamm. Know what she did? She was hiking with her husband when a mountain lion attacked her husband. While the lion was eating his face and peeling back his cap, she picked up a 4-inch log and clubbed some lion ass - that is - when she wasn't stabbing it in the eye with a bic pen. She then strung it up and skinned it with her teeth, cut the strips of meat from its body and dried it on the open boulders, turning it into jerky which she then used to feed the mountain lion's children before stomping their colons and all future colons of that particular mountain lion family.
11. Peter Voulkos - In case you were clueless, the badass in the picture is shirtless and has a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was a famous ceramic artist. So famous he can stand around without a shirt on with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth while he tells an assistant what to do to his clay. I could tell you that he is the father of the abstract expressionist movement in clay, and that he started the ceramics culture in California when he had a ceramics firing in the parking lot of UC Berkely which prompted the fire department to show up, or that he once bribed an entire city council to commission him with a public sculpture by taking them out to a strip club and getting them drunk (the strip club had a high-wire act, too!) But that might take away from the badass picture you see above. Oh, and he was from Montana, which doubles his badass rating.
12. He is from Jersey. He is nicknamed the Boss. And in my opinion he stomps serious Bob Dylan ass. He is my hero and a hero for all blue-collar, working class people in America, because time and time again he stands up for us. He needs no name. He is the Boss.
13. The Zohan - Anyone who does push-ups without using his arms, catches flying things with his ass cheeks, sports the world's biggest bush, catches bullets with his nostril, and "services" old ladies at the salon while making them "silky smooth" is a badass. Bonus points for pounding rednecks and swimming like a dolphin. Supporting badass nomination for John Turturro, who sports his best role since "Jesus" from
The Big Lebowski.
That's all for now. Think you have a Bad List nomination? Send it to me or post it here and I'll consider it.
