Crazy Awesome/Real Life: Difference between revisions
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* [[wikipedia:Molasses Gang|The Molasses Gang]] was a gang from New York during the 1870s. They would ask the owner of the shop to fill their hat with molasses (saying it was a bet to see how much would fit). When the hat was full the gangster would shove the hat onto the shop owner and take what they wanted with no resistance. Also [[Refuge in Audacity]], they were able to do it for six years because nobody took them seriously.
* Mark Cuban took a desire to follow Indiana Hoosier basketball from Dallas and turned it into a multi-billion dollar internet business. Then he got out of that business just before the bubble burst. Then he lives out every sports fan's dream by buying his favorite team just because he doesn't like how it's being run. Within a couple of years he turns the Dallas Mavericks from the NBA laughingstock to a contender and, eventually champions. Oh, and he's still willing to act like a die-hard fan in the stands even though the league can fine him for his remarks.
** He once remarked that he wouldn't let a particular NBA ref [[Burger Fool|run a Dairy Queen]], a major fast food burger/dessert restaraunt chain in the U.S. In response, Dairy Queen offered to let him work for them for a day. [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|And he did]].
*** Turns out that preparing a soft-serve cone properly is [[Surprise Difficulty|harder than it looks.]] [[Money, Dear Boy|Due to the crowd he drew in]] thanks to his local celebrity status, Dairy Queen didn't mind that he couldn't figure out the softserv.
** Following the 2011 Mavericks win, he submitted a picture of the team hoisting aloft the championship trophy as evidence against a lawsuit claiming he had mismanaged the team.
* Since we talking about basketball, we can mention Dennis Rodman...
* [[wikipedia:Phillippe Petit|Philippe Petit, tightrope walker.]]
** When the documentary on him won an Oscar, he balanced the statue on his chin. A+
* [[wikipedia:Ned Kelly|Ned Kelly]], Irish-Australian bushranger; he and his gang made a last stand against policemen wearing ''home-made body armour'' that protected their heads and chests. Kelly reportedly only went down when the policemen shot his [[Weaksauce Weakness|unprotected legs]], and had twenty-eight gunshot wounds.
** he survived that gunfight...only to be sentenced to be hanged after the judge delivered the sentence he told the judge he'll be seeing him in hell... about 2 weeks after Ned Kelly was hanged the judge died.
* If [[Top Gear]] is to be believed, Finnish drivers are ''fucking crazy''! (Though, admittedly, crazy by necessity.) Yet that is ''exactly'' why they're such good racing drivers.
* John "Doc" Holliday was once an ordinary dentist from Georgia. Then he contracted tuberculosis. He headed out west, believing the dry climate would be good for him and, no longer fearing death, became a card player and a gunfighter.
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* Canadian [[wikipedia:Gilles Villeneuve|Gilles Villenueve]] was the embodiment of this trope in racing driver form. Why? Look [http://youtu.be/9SmrV-FFC1w here] & [http://youtu.be/cnpf_9bAUu8 here] and deny it.
* French climber [[wikipedia:Alain robert|Alain Robert]] climbs tall buildings as a hobby, including most of the world's tallest high rises. Without any safety whatsoever. He's regularly arrested as a result of his antics. The most incredible thing is that the man suffers from permanent vertigo. A condition he got as a teenager, by falling from a height of 15 meters and surviving. Twice in the same year.
* Skippy, of [https://web.archive.org/web/20131109164111/http://skippyslist.com/list/ Skippy's List]: The 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army.
{{quote|
58. The following words and phrases may not be used in a cadence—Budding sexuality, necrophilia, I hate everyone in this formation and wish they were dead, sexual lubrication, black earth mother, all Marines are latent homosexuals, Tantric yoga, Gotterdammerung, Korean hooker, Eskimo Nell, we've all got jackboots now, slut puppy, or any references to squid.
72. May not wear gimp mask while on duty.
100. Claymore mines are not filled with yummy candy, and it is wrong to tell new soldiers that they are. }}
** Any chance he knows [[SCP Foundation|Dr. Jack Bright]]?
** One of Skippy's friends gives this really important piece of advice.
{{quote|
* ''The King of Bling! The Ayatollah of [[
** For clarification on how crazy awesome the man is, go to his other Wiki page, and try to read the whole thing. You'll be exhausted before you finish the wrestling section, let alone his music, acting, writing, hosting, etc., etc., etc. Either he never sleeps or he's figured out a way to have 36 hours in a day.
* [[wikipedia:Nikola Tesla|Nikola Tesla]] is ''the'' [[Mad Scientist]]. Works include: [[Lightning Can Do Anything|the Tesla Coil,]] [[When Things Spin, Science Happens|the AC Polyphase Electric Motor,]] [[Frickin' Laser Beams|a frickin]] [[Death Ray|DEATH RAY!]] [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and being obsessed with pigeons]].
** Mark Twain frequently volunteered to test his inventions and offered to help sell his [[Death Ray]]. Words can't describe how much [[Crazy Awesome]] is contained in that pairing.
* Kevin Johnson, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzbczT6TLi8 Godzilla Theater]
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* French composer [[Erik Satie]] (d. 1925), whose works for piano include titles such as: Gnossiennes, Gymnopedies, Three Pear-shaped Pieces and Dressed As A Horse, and who collected umbrellas and pianos in his tiny, one-room appartment, where he never let anyone else in.
** He also composed a piece called Vexations. Consisting of two bars of music with instruction to repeat it 840 times, it takes around 24 hours to perform. At least one pianist attempting a solo performance [[Brown Note|started panicking and hallucinating]] before quitting:
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*** And then, of course, someone chose it as an ''example file'' for musical software (ScalaMIDI library).
** Evidently Satie was, constitutionally, an austere minimalist:
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* [[Billy Bob Thornton]]: Firmly believes he was [[Benjamin Franklin]] in a past life, and he directed ''[[Sling Blade]]'', and was [[Ugly Guy, Hot Wife|married for two years]] to...
* [[Angelina Jolie]], herself a little bit of [[Crazy Awesome]].
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* Joe Davis. Part scientist, part avant-garde artist. To quote a ''[[Cracked.com]]'' article featuring him: "He has a map of the Milky Way broken down into a series of base DNA pairs, and is coding it into transgenic lab-mice. He insists on landing microbes like Marlin... because he considers it "only sporting". In protest of what he viewed as censorship, Davis beamed his own, female-friendly version of the famous Arecibo Message toward a distant star cluster. He stuck microphones inside the vaginas of the entire Boston Ballet, and shot the sound of them contracting into space." Just to give Carl Sagan the finger!!! He also is building "a memorial for hurricane victims that happens to be a 10-story tall tower in Mississippi that harnesses the excess electrical nitrogen in the air brought on by lightning storms and fires it back into the storm in the form of a giant laser."
** The laser does nothing, incidentally. He just wanted to shoot a laser at storms.
* The Chinese Cavalry of 1967. Shooting when riding horses is okay for any cowboy, but how about firing [[More Dakka|AK and RPD Machineguns]]? When Charging [[The Deadliest Mushroom|a MUSHROOM CLOUD]]? Go watch the last minutes of ''Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie''. It's filmed by those cavalrymen themselves.
* Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear Navy. Well known for making candidates endure such crazy trials as conducting interviews in total darkness, trying to balance on a chair with one of its legs shortened, and berating them for anything short of an A in technical courses. Then, there was this one time when the Senate called him in to testify because they were concerned about the safety of Naval nuclear power, which he personally demonstrated by [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|drinking a glass of a reactor's primary coolant on the floor of the US Senate.]]
** One story is of him interviewing a potential Nuc officer by taking him to lunch, then telling him to leave about ten seconds after the food arrived. Why? Becuase the guy reached for the salt shaker before tasting his food to varify it need salt.
** To this day, Rickover remains the record-holder for longest time spent on active duty in the US military: over 60 years. And that "father of the nuclear Navy" bit? He did most of the work himself, while [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]] after [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]] stood in his way. As a boy, he quit his job in order to go talk to politicians and wound up going to the Naval Academy because of it, and thenceforth never let "rules" stand in his way.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20101130151727/http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2147416/Shark-pulls-surfer-along-in-water.html This]. '''''He rode a god-damn shark like a surfboard!'''''
* Chef Jose Andres, molecular gastronomist (think [[Mad Scientist]]/[[Mad Artist]] chef), known for [[Deconstructing]] food such as the "blasphemous" clam chowder (all the ingredients are more or less whole and separate, and the potato chowder is actually a foam).
** Along those lines: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSRbcqFS5Gw Heston Blumenthal]. His efforts include a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4HFu_bkUak bowl of fruit (where all the fruit is made of meat)], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwfpJJEkmjU Dormouse Lollipops] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc4B_LFF-DM Frog Blancmange]. And those aren't the weirdest ones...
*** No, that would probably be something like the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2pfhD1Bu4g Absinthe jelly powered by vibrators]
* Speaking of clam chowder, [http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=2499 Ivar Haglund], a Seattle businessman, was unquestionably out of his damn mind and ''very'' successful at it. He parlayed a third-rate aquarium into a wildly successful chain of restaurants, owned one of the local TV stations (and took advantage of that fact to give himself a show singing Norwegian folk songs for an hour each week), and bought the Smith Tower (at one point, the tallest building west of the Mississippi River). His publicity stunts bordered on legendary; having a wrestling match between a retired boxer and an octopus, putting a baby harbor seal in a baby carriage and taking it to see Santa, taking advantage when a train car full of syrup sprung a leak in front of his restaurant by racing out with pancakes, [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009889864_ivar18m.html putting billboards] ''underwater'' in case the "flying car future" [[Crazy Prepared|also came with personal submarines]] (which was only discovered ''years'' after his death), encouraging his patrons to feed the seagulls, running for office ''and getting elected'' as a joke, and peppering his advertisements with a [[Hurricane of Puns]]. He died very wealthy, and the chain of restaurants bearing his name is still thriving.
* [[Richard the Lion Heart]] was highly determined in fighting [[The Crusades]] in any way possible. It was said that he would snipe enemies from high walls, while in a stretcher!
** He died after his army had taken a castle, but hadn't yet cleared it. He decided to tour the castle walls without wearing chainmail, and when he saw a 13 year old boy shooting arrows at him, he applauded the kid's spirit. Then one of the arrows hit him, the wound got infected and on his deathbed he ordered the kid to be brought to him so he could forgive him and give him a reward for valor.
*** [[Like Father, Like Son|He got it from his mom]], [[wikipedia:Eleanor of Aquitaine|Eleanor of Aquitaine]]. She was more Awesome than Crazy, and a side order of [[Refuge in Audacity]] when you consider women had no legal standing in the era. Insisted on joining her first husband on a Crusade tour, marched with the vanguard, and [[What Could Have Been|argued for a plan that would have caught the Muslim army off-guard, possibly winning the Second Crusade]]. (Louis ended up throwing her in prison instead and got his ass handed to him with his bad tactics) She brought the beginnings of Admiralty Law with her to France and England, and actively helped (and/or encouraged) her sons' revolt against her husband, leading to ''another'' period of house arrest. She ruled England as regent when her son was off Crusading, and personally traveled to Germany to bail him out when he was captured.
* [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37710921/#storyContinued This student], who expressed his displeasure with the [[All Bikers Are Hells Angels|Hell's Angels]] by throwing a [[Precious Puppies|puppy]] at them and fleeing the scene in a stolen ''bulldozer''.
** You mean [http://www.cracked.com/article_18646_the-5-most-insane-improvised-weapons-that-were-animals_p2.html Testosticor Fantastiballs.]
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* [[wikipedia:Milton Erickson|Milton H. Erickson]]. Check the stories about how he told a woman who felt ill about her in-laws' visits to ''vomit in their presence'' and cured a man of his fear of elevators by instead making him scared of ''the operator girl kissing him''. Oh, and then there's the part about where he survived polio because he overheard the doctors telling his mom he'd be dead by morning and ''[[Determinator|he just outright refused to let that happen]]''.
* [[wikipedia:Camillo Benso, conte di Cavour|Camillo Benso, conte di Cavour]], the Italian Bismarck, had a penchant for holding diplomatic negotiations in airless rooms with either no windows or ones that could not be opened. With the temperature always ''slightly'' too warm. After having eaten/while eating garlicky food (or sometimes just plain garlic). And he was physically [[Large and In Charge|quite intimidating]]. The result? He typically got what he wanted in these negotiations, and got it rather quickly.
* Neopagan Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (born Timothy Zell). [https://web.archive.org/web/20100818191705/http://www.sideshowworld.com/interview-OZ.html The man made real life unicorns!]
* Phil Spector. While unquestionably a lunatic, as the many friends and prostitutes whom he shot at will attest to, he is rightfully a legend as a music producer and songwriter. Any Phil Spector story, from someone who knows, will be attached to a comment about how he changed music.
* [[Misha Collins]] - [http://twitter.com/MISHACOLLINS just check his twitter-feed.]
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** [[Chuck Norris]] '''''wishes'''''!
* 2nd Lt. [[Audie Murphy]] is the most decorated American soldier of WWII and the ''epitome'' of crazy awesome! Just read his Medal of Honor citation:
{{quote|
** By the way he had malaria at the time. [https://web.archive.org/web/20081019024219/http://www.cs.amedd.army.mil/samc/SAMSAMC.htm And that's not even all he did]
** When they went to make a [http://www.cracked.com/article_17019_5-real-life-soldiers-who-make-rambo-look-like-pussy_p2.html movie] about Audie Murphy, they cast... [[As Himself|Audie Murphy]]. And they had to ''tone down'' how ludicrously awesome he was because he was afraid it would come off as ''[[Reality Is Unrealistic|too unbelievable]]''.
* [[Matt Smith]] once played with Orbital. What song? [[Crowning Music of Awesome|The Doctor Who theme, of course.]] [[Mind Screw|That's right, the Doctor performed his own theme song.]]
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* [[wikipedia:Troy Hurtubise|Troy Hurtubise]]: Inventor, [[Canada, Eh?|Canadian]], and [[Mad Scientist|lunatic]]. He invested two decades and tens of thousands of dollars developing the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPS2l5fQ55A&feature=related Trojan] armor to protect coalition soldiers (such as his own brother) from I.E.D.s. The Trojan is based on armor he developed for fighting [[Everything Is Worse With Bears|bears]], with input in equal amounts from real-life soldiers and the [[Halo]] games. He bankrupted himself developing it, and has thus far failed to attract the interest of any government. Yet in live fire tests, the Trojan has been strapped to a lump of wet clay, taken multiple rounds at point-blank range from a 9mm pistol, a .357, and a 12-gauge shotgun, without so much as a dent in the clay underneath (which he then demonstrated was soft enough for his finger to gouge a fissure into). Just in case there's still doubt as to whether or not he's worthy of the [[Crazy Awesome]] tag, it should be noted that the Trojan armor includes a solar-powered air-conditioned helmet.
** In order to test another one of his inventions, the heat-resistant clay he calls "fire paste," Hurtubise smeared it on his own face, let it dry, and then aimed a blowtorch at it. For ten minutes.
* Melvyn Foster. He was a cabby that was accused of being the [[Green River Killer]]. However, he was trying to protect the prostitutes and runaways from people like Gary Ridgeway. He spent time in prison for other crimes and this lead to his conversion of him trying to protect those less fortunate than himself. He was sort of Jesus with a really bad temper.
* [[wikipedia:Henry E. Emerson|Lieutenant General Henry "Gunfighter" Emerson]] was undoubtedly eccentric and his activities somewhat questionable by conventional thinking (he tried to make new sports out of basketball or soccer by fielding battalions or brigades instead of just a standard team, and this was just of many examples). But he was dedicated to the morale and welfare of his soldiers, and by all accounts he did an excellent (if eyebrow raising) job at making his soldiers feel like they could take on the world.
* [http://www.acepilots.com/usn_ohare.html Butch O'Hare]. Granted, the guy was Irish, so it comes with the territory, but anyone who takes on eight enemy fighter planes single handed has got to be worth mentioning here. (Technically, he was supposed to have backup, but his wingman's guns jammed.) First US Navy Ace of WWII. And that airport in [[The Windy City]]? Totally named after him.
* [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wGr8njEWjtI/TTtkLIzCCEI/AAAAAAAAQxc/T_2d-Euqy8E/s1600/Peter%2BD%2B.%2Blw%2B.%2Bviking%2Bwedding.jpg This] wedding cake. Quoth [http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2011/01/sunday-sweets-fun-wedding-cakes.html Cake Wrecks]:
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* [[Joan of Arc]] managed to convince a group of dispirited French soldiers, and the ''king of France'', that the visions she'd been recieving since 12 weren't something they burned you as a possessed person for in those days, but in fact were the real deal, and she proceeded to live up to the hype by kicking the English out of half of France, leading the final charge at Orleans ''with an arrow in the neck.'' And she did this [[Badass Pacifist|while being a sworn pacifist.]] She carried the banner into battle instead, one of the most dangerous jobs on the field as you literally have a flag over your head screaming "shoot me please!" Even when captured she managed to stave off heresy accusations despite [[Kangaroo Court|being an illiterate peasant faced with cutthroat clergy with enough trick questions to fill a test paper.]] In the end they only nailed her with an excuse to send her to the pyre because she wore mens clothes, primarily to stave off rapists, and even then they had to apparently steal her normal clothes and leave her with a choice between going nude or wearing mens clothing. Bear in mind this terror of English-occupied France was a ''teenage peasant.''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131215231358/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/15/John_Brown_Painting.JPG John Brown] the abolitionist. Favored a type of rifle known as the Bible, and split five slaveholders' heads open with a BROADSWORD. When he was caught and had to be put to death by the North, he quietly told his captors that all he wanted to do was help those who couldn't be helped and if he had to be put to death, then so be it.
* Frank Frakking [[Zappa]]. Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Rodan, Diva. Watch Out Where The Huskies Go And Don't You Eat That Yellow Snow. Billy the Mountain. Magdalena. Poofter's Froth Wyoming Plans Ahead. We're Only In It For The Money. Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Prevention. Ship Arriving Too Late To Save a Drowning Witch. Lumpy Gravy. Brown Shoes Don't Make It. Absolutely Free. And before anything else, he was noted for a phone conversation with Edgar Varese while still a teen, and serving ten days in jail (before he became famous) for producing an "obscene" audio recording--an experience for which he never forgave the Los Angeles Police Department. And yet, dying of cancer, he managed to come across as almost saintly. He is missed. God almighty, he is missed.
* [[MS Paint Adventures|Andrew Hussie]] puts an ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20110510034444/http://www.formspring.me/mspadventures/q/182810348053629836 insane]'' amount of work into ''[[Homestuck]]'', purely [[Doing It for the Art|for the art]]. Considering that ''Homestuck'' itself is more or less Crazy Awesome: The Series, not to mention what Hussie's earlier work is like, it makes one wonder...
* From the memoir ''Tokyo Vice'' by Jake Adelstein, it mentions that one group of thieves in Japan used little stickers of smiley faces and [[Hello Kitty]] to cover up the holes they drilled in a wall when doing a job so no one would no anything was amiss.
** Adelstein himself could be considered an example of this trope, since he's a Jewish-American journalist that resides in Tokyo, works for a Japanese newspaper, and wrote the biggest exposé in recent history on the Yakuza and is still very much alive!
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** Hell, Just Steve Blum in general. Look at that list of characters he voiced half of them are Crazy Awesome on their own right.
* Edward Teach, better known as the pirate Blackbeard. He put ''smoldering coals'' in hs beard just to scare the living hell out of people. The man took 20 slashes, 4-6 gunshot wounds, and a decapitation to finally die, and when he did it's said his headless body started swimming circles around the ship.
** "Stuck lit matches under his hat" stunt, aside of intimidating look, was practical (if unsafe) in the era of black powder — readily available fire for cannons and grenade fuses. Another famous and practical (before invention of revolvers) quirk was wearing "three brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like bandoliers".
* [[wikipedia:Project Excelsior|Joseph]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20131122042919/http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-most-badass-man-vs.-nature-showdowns-ever-photographed_p2 William] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=QxfdC7U_mgQ Kittinger].
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