Pissing It All Away
Happy New Year! To start it it off on a cheerful note, I would like to discuss people who pissed it all away. These are my three favorites.
1. Mike Tyson. You could argue that he was the best boxer in history; it's not a winning argument. But he could have been the best ever, and not just the best ever, but the best by a very wide margin. The closest analogue I can think of it Judit Polgar (back to chess in a bit - although she is criminally underappreciated, she was not only the best female chess player ever, she was twice as good as any other female chess player in history). Tiger Woods in his prime could be another example. Tyson could have been not just better than Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, pick your boxer, but he could have lapped them. So back to Tyson. He had every tool to be the best ever - the size, the strength, the work ethic, the psyche and the instinct. If you're not convinced, don't watch his fights - watch footage of him training at the age of 15, it's probably on YouTube somewhere. Your jaw will drop. So what happened? Some self-inflicted wounds, some things that really weren't his fault, and the pressures of fame and ego, for which he really can't be blamed either. He was taken advantage of by a lot of people, most notably Robin Givens and Don King. But, at the end of the day, he really did throw it all away.
2. Bradley Nowell. He could have been the best musician ever. The three Sublime albums are all we have, and that output alone makes him a legend. But he tossed it all away. Let me make an argument for which I will be in the minority. Kurt Cobain, like Brad Nowell, made music for about 5 years, also in the early 90's. Actually, Sublime t-shirts and Nirvana t-shirts are next to each other at Walmart, which I think both Bradley and Kurt would have found amusing, in different ways. But back to the comparison - Brad was a better singer, a better songwriter, and a much better guitarist. His lyrics may not have been as sharp, but they fit the band's ethos just as well. They died within two years of each other. So how to explain the disparity in critical acclaim - why is Nirvana considered to have changed the world? Well, Cobain was outwardly tortured while Bradley Nowell was inwardly tortured. Cobain explicitly let his demons out through the music, while Nowell could only allude to them. I forgot where this was going. Anyway, Bradley Nowell threw it all away. Their third album, released shortly after he died, is to me proof that he could have been so much more.
3. Bobby Fischer. He was always a little off. The legal counsel at my old job was in his class at Erasmus High in Brooklyn and we talked at length about Fischer, but he just confirmed everything that I already knew - he was always a little off. The stunts he pulled in the 1972 Reykjavik Finals were the most notable, but his behavior was strange throughout his career. Despite this, he was still the best ever. Chess is one part technical knowledge, one part knowledge of past matches, and one part artistry and innovation, and no human in history other Bobby Fischer was able to master all three. So what happened - how did merely offbeat turn into raving and drooling? Two answers - the pressure of fame and the pressure of chess. Fame - well, none of the people I've mentioned in this way-too-long post handled fame well. But playing chess at a high level for an extended period of time will exacerbate any pre-existing psychiatric issues. This is not even arguable - I could name two dozen chess masters off the top of my head who either committed suicide or died in asylums. Paul Morphy, the second-best American chess player ever, wound up wandering the streets of New Orleans naked. He died in a bathtub surrounded by women's shoes.
Hope you liked this. I did a lot of research. I did research because I consider myself an autodidact, I think that would be fair to say, and that's what I like to do. Almost every class I've ever taken, from grade school to my aborted Masters programs, I just completely lost interest. Everyone learns in a different way. You have to find your passion and dive in - last year was Microsoft Server and Network Administration, The Son of Sam case, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Existentialism, Linux distributions, Appalachia, Nazi Germany, Malcolm X, Synology OS (ok, that's technically Linux again), organized frauds and scams, and Pink Floyd's "Animals".
Wow, what a rambling pile of dung I'm about to post. Have a nice day.