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Thread started by katiepoche at 04.23.08 - 11:09 pm
Here are some epic failures I like a lot. Knew from the git they'd not make it in the established art world, so they made their own. Now they're all famous and shit.
I ran into him once. I mean literally. Full-force, body slam, on the way out of my college's student center. He was on the way to a hard-won radio interview, I was on the way to dying of shame.
This is a thread for people who should, by all accounts, be EPIC FAILURES but who made their EPIC FAILS into EPIC WINS. Maybe I didn't make that clear.
The lawn chair pilot, a true beautiful loser. In 1982 this guy tied a bunch of helium weather balloons to a lawn chair, strapped himself to the chair with a pellet gun (for altitude control) and a CB radio, and took a ride over San Pedro and Long Beach at 16,000 feet until he started to black out. Then he lost the gun. Somehow he got back down alive, and the FAA ended up fining him or something. He killed himself in 1993.
It's funny...I'm trying to thing of more people like Jandek, or Daniel Johnston. It's seems easier to think of quirky musicians, for some reason--or otherwise artists. Maybe Harry Crumb could be an example (although I'm not to big of a fan of Harry Crumb's artwork). What other types of people, besides musicians and artists, might fit this description? I like the question this thread poses. Something to keep in mind...
So, this mathematician Georg Cantor spent a lot of time trying to prove this thing called the "Continuum Hypothesis". He went crazy a couple times and basically everyone thought the math he was doing was
a) nutso
b) worthless
OR
c) not rigoress
Anyway, this super absolutist dickwad Kronecker, who was fucking brilliant, basically kept Cantor from getting the job he wanted, and may have been responsible for some of his psychotic breaks.
Anyhow - turns out the Continuum Hypothesis cannot be proven true, and cannot be proven false . . . which is totally weird and inconceivable for mathematicians of the day. So basically Cantor spent a ton of his time working on a mathematical problem that has no solution, WILL NEVER HAVE A SOLUTION, and he went crazy and got fucked over for it.
Also, turns out he was waaay smarter than these other shitheads.
-Well, if that equation was one step closer to a fully-functioning StarGate, then he would've received Medals of every conceivable type.
But hey, don't listen to me now, I'm just a trucker/gate-keeper that knows enough math to survive and not get laughed at.
Now, back to the egg-he...er, I mean exceedingly talented, number-crunch-aholics.
This remains one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. It's an EPIC FAIL because it's (mostly) a hoax, but for some reason that I can't quite pin down, the reality doesn't change my opinion one bit.
Pripyat is real, and the Elena's history of Chernobyl is mostly real, but her story of how she got there is mostly fake. She was part of an organized tour and brought along a motorcycle helmet for show.
In a similar vein, some German kids ditched out of a tour a few years ago to paint some graffiti in Pripyat. I don't think the graffiti itself is mind-blowingly impressive or anything, but the act was badass and in some ways really profound.
I was thinking about this thread. I was thinking about other people that fit the description. And, I clicked on it and looked at the picture on the first post.
In the butterfly picture, I saw Harmony Korine.
Harmony Korine--man, do I have some fucked up second hand stories, from old San Diego friends of mine, about this guy.
Anyway, he is still alive (this is an accomplishment itself, I think). And, he has a new film that will drop in independent theaters on March 2, in the U.S. I have read that it isn't as tonally dark as his previous movies like gummo, Julien Donkey Boy, etc. I have read that it is a bit warmer (maybe optimistic?) than his other films.
I think the name of the film is "Mister Lonely." I look forward to seeing Werner Herzog make a small appearance. He has made short appearances a couple of Korine's other movies.
But, to think of Harmony Korine as a beautiful loser (in the way that we have defined it above) may be a bit premature. Hopefully he doesn't continue to try to swindle his friends into sending him money to Europe for his drug habit. And, hopefully he won't have to live off of his producer's money for the next film.
I wish there were more of that site. Though those are real, actual EPIC FAILZ. Hindenberg? Oh the humanity. But these EPIC FAILZ are stealth successes.
Alex, your math dude failed in his lifetime. But if the math he was working on is studied today, isn't that a kind of success? A greater success, perhaps, than he could have achieved if he were successful in his lifetime.
There was actually an advance screening of Mr. Lonely on Monday. I didn't go, but the movie definitely seems to be filled with beautiful losers (trailer), compared to the general fucked-upedness of Gummo.
I finally watched Into the Wild on a plane yesterday. Personally, I thought the guy was just kind of a moron, but they made a movie of his life and stuff, so I guess that at least makes him a beautiful loser. And any activity that results in death has epic fail written all over it, really - well, except maybe suicide.
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Here are some epic failures I like a lot. Knew from the git they'd not make it in the established art world, so they made their own. Now they're all famous and shit.
JANDEK
The 
OMG duster slippers for cats.