But anyway, here's my list -- of people I'd want to be, mind you:
Winston Churchill
Every time I think I might like to run for some kind of public office, I think of the fishbowl that my life would be in and start to think that it'd be more trouble than it's worth. I mean, eventually someone would go back and find out about all the drinking and debauching in my past and end up revealing what a horribly irresponsible person I am. So I reckon the only way to have a career in public office and still be able to enjoy all those things is to a) be a political leader at a time before that sort of stuff started getting immediately dragged out into the open and b) be such a hero that nobody would've cared anyway. Voila: Winston Churchill, who held the UK together and made it a bulwark against the spread of the Nazi empire even while he was sucking down cigars and pickling his liver to within an inch of its existence. Oh, and annihilating pretentious dinner-party guests with cutting bons mots. Plus he got to be called "Sir," which is worth it right there.
Al Capone
Sharp dresser, very shrewd business mind, and OK, yeah, he killed quite a few people, but ultimately all he was trying to do was bring sweet, delicious bootleg liquor to a country that had been cruelly deprived of it by a tyrannical, nannying government. So if you think about it, he was really kind of a civil-libertarian folk hero. OK, maybe not, but nevertheless, the Geto Boys wrote a whole song about how good it feels to be a gangster, so who am I to argue with them?
Ian Fleming
When writing the most famous series of spy novels in the history of English literature qualifies as one of the least exciting things you've done in your life, you know you've lived said life to the fullest. Before he wrote 14 James Bond books (AND Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), Fleming lived an entire lifetime's worth of adventure leading the 30AU commando unit in World War II; while he was writing, he hung out with JFK, married a widowed baroness, and carried her off to a seaside villa in Jamaica. "I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much," he once said. "In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much." I have no idea what the Iron Crab is, but it sure sounds like Fleming got everything he wanted out of life before said crab finally took him down.
St. John the Apostle
He was BFF with Jesus and wrote part of the Bible. Nothing else comes close to having that on your résumé.
Orville Wright
Along with his brother, invented powered flight. That seems like a pretty significant contribution to civilization. I'm picking him over Wilbur because a) Orville got to fly the plane first; b) he kept most of his hair; and c) he had a truly kickass mustache. Sure, facial hair is less aerodynamic, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices.
Thought about putting Cleopatra on there just so I'd get to say "Hey, I got to see Cleopatra naked," but it would also involve sexual relations with quite a few caesars, and those guys were freaks. Not to mention it would all end with a snakebite. To live that eventful a life, only to meet your doom at the non-hands of a reptile, seems pretty bush.
So. Here be the Ten:
1. Genesis, "Invisible Touch"
2. Animotion, "Obsession"
3. David Cross, "Welfare Dentist on a Bender"
4. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, "Go Daddy-O"
5. Pet Shop Boys, "London" (Radical Blacklite edit)
6. The Chemical Brothers, "Not Another Drugstore"
7. David Holmes, "The Ballad of Sarah & Jack"
8. The Chemical Brothers, "Get Up On It Like This"
9. The Clash, "Janie Jones"
10. Downright, "Drinking the Dregs"
Your own Tens, and your lists of people whose lives you wouldn't mind Quantum Leaping into for a spell, are welcome in the comments.
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