My top 5 Americans...

My friends love to ask interesting questions.

During the super dramatic "Night of Zach", otherwise known as SUPERBOWL XLIII, someone asked who people would choose as their top 5 Americans. When it got to me it was pretty hard, but I finally came up with my list. Enjoy.

Top 5 Americans:

1. Eddie Vedder: 

        Lead singer/songwriter of Pearl Jam.  His music is/was essentially the most important part of my teenage life. Before I had friends, a girlfriend, a dog, a semi-healthy relationship with my nuclear family -- I had Pearl  Jam. I had the knowledge from two biographies on Pearl Jam that Eddie Vedder was just as messed up as I was coming from a broken home where he despised his stepfather and buried himself in music as a way to cope with hating his family life. The lyrics of Pearl Jam's music, particularly on their first three albums was introspective and socially inquisitive all at the same time. Their songs covered topics as diverse as religion/God, domestic abuse, fatherhood, broken hearts, and politics. Before Christ and apart from my uncles, I would say that Eddie Vedder had the biggest influence on helping my teenage self become a man.

2. Stan Lee:

        Creator/co-creator of many of the greatest and most famous superheroes in the Marvel Comics Universe such as Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Daredevil and Doctor Strange. I fell in love with the X-Men. The X-Men were mutants, beings that were born with the "x-factor" which when they hit puberty developed into some power like teleportation, telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, shape-shifting, energy absorption, etc. I wanted to develop my secret innate ability and escape my boring, sad life. I never did, but thanks to the wonderful universe created by Stan Lee I could pretend and engage in a fantasy world for 32 pages.

3. FDR:

           Possibly the most important President of the United States of America (Lincoln was an opportunist and cared more about preserving the Union, please study your history books if you doubt me). Without the socialisitic programs that his administration started (revolutionary in American political history) the USA we live in now would not exist.

4. John Brown:

            Call him crazy, but he was a revolutionary. The man had integrity and he believed in his cause. It lead him to his death. I can get behind a man willing to die fighting against injustice.

5. MLK Jr.:

             The ballsiest and most important black American in U.S. History. He didn't use his race as a reason to get angry. He let other civil rights leaders be angry and bitter. He peacefully protested against the racism, inhumanity, Vietnam War (Conflict), and discretions between American ideals and American realities he saw all around him. The U.S. is by no means totally free of racism, but without the activism of MLK Jr. and his martyrdom, race relations would proably be somewhere back in the early 1970s.

So there you go.