Bobby Fischer Dies

[filkertom]

When I was growing up, I was something of a chess prodigy. Or at least I thought I was. Turned out I was just better than average. I remember a two-day tournament where, on the first day, I blasted through the competition, and apparently I was somewhichwayhow mathematically ranked as a master for a few hours, because that's all I faced on the second day and they put me in my place. It was a devastating, humbling experience, and probably one of the most important of my life, because it showed me that not only is there likely someone better than you, there's likely a lot of people better than you, so don't get too full of yourself.

Anyway. It was the perfect time to be a chess nut: 1972. Boris Spassky was the dirty lousy undeserving commie chess "champion", but we, the Good Guys, the U. S. of A.... we had Bobby Fischer. Who, it turns out, was not exactly hero material. But Godamighty the man could play chess.

Mr. Fischer has passed away at the age of 64. May he find the rest he never could while alive.

Who were your heroes when you were a kid? The ones who really influenced you? Mine were Doc Savage and Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Spock, but I never came close to achieving their emotional fortresses. (Thankfully, Mr. Fantastic showed me I didn't have to, and I could still get the girl.) Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, of course. You may not believe it, but Galen and Joseph Lister (I had a fantastic kid's biography of heroes of medicine). My school principal at the time of my tournament-chess days, Dr. Betty Ritzenhein. And then one year, tenth grade, everything changed: I heard the works of Cosby and Carlin, and I picked up books by two guys named Asimov and Ellison, and dubheach told me about this other guy named Tolkien....

Comments

[briansiano.livejournal.com]

My heroes? No particular order, in fact and fiction, and some with severe flaws: Harlan Ellison, Stanley Kubrick, Mr. Spock, Charles Darwin, Bertrand Russell, Yossarian, Martin Luther King, Harry Flashman, Stephen Maturin, Noam Chomsky, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Dortmunder, Parker, Rick Blaine, Orson Welles, Douglas Trumbull, Christopher Hitchens, Isaac Asimov, Vladimir Nabokov, Clarence Darrow, Abraham Lincoln, Robert Moses.

[ericcoleman]

Good to see there are still folks out there who remember Parker. I managed to actually impress Harlan Ellison just a little when he was at Minicon. He referenced a scene from one of the books, and I think I was the only one in the room who not only knew the scene, but in a great of detail as he did.

I need to get those out of storage.