They have to be famous people, but they don’t have to be actual entertainers. They could be people who have caused events that led to you being very entertained. Like WWII buffs can thank Hitler and people who like nuclear physics can thank Einstein.
Try to pick five that if they had never existed, your life would be significantly more boring.
Here is my list in no particular order:
Johnny Cash - He hasn’t left my play list since I listened to him in 2003.
Quentin Tarantino - Pulp Fiction made me realize that I really love good movies. I spent a good portion of my life watching movies after that.
Cecil Adams - I would say that roughly 70% of my time on the internet is spent reading the SD column or the SDMB.
**Jerry Seinfeld ** - Must have watched every episode at least five times.
Shigeru Miyamoto - If I never got my hands on Super Mario Brothers, who knows what I could have been doing all those hours I spent playing video games.
Dave Chapelle Even though his show was fairly short-lived, it did entertain me greatly, and continues to do so in re-runs.
Matt GroenigThe Simpsons and his other work have amused me for years and years.
Cecil Adams Bow to the master.
(As a group) My boys. Two smart-assed teenagers, and one 8-year-old that’s hilarious in his own right, and I am constantly laughing my ass off. It keeps growing back, though.
Jim Henson - Started entertaining me when I was born and still does, long after he’s dead.
Adrian Edmonson - Had I not found him (and the rest of The Young Ones) I’d be completely without 50% of my favorite tv shows and movies.
Paul McCartney & John Lennon - Both responsible for my love of music.
Matt Groenig - Do you know how many hours of The Simpsons there are to be had? And Futurama? Not to mention the fact that he brought back animation to prime time which led to many more exciting things.
Stephen Spielberg/John Williams/George Lucas - What can I say? I’m a child of the 80’s
Eddie Izzard - My favourite stand up comedian. I still laugh my ass off every time I watch his concerts on dvd even though I already know the punchline.
Matt Groening - Simpsons, Futurama.
Queen - Who doesn’t like Fat Bottomed Girls?
Weird Al Yankovic - Who doesn’t like Melanie?
George Lucas/Steven Spielberg - I grew up watching their movies and I when I’m bored nowadays, either Star Wars or Indiana Jones will be my dvd of choice to kill some time.
Joel and Ethan Coen - I love almost all of their movies (not a huge Ladykillers fan) but for my money, Fargo is the perfect movie.
1b. Steven Spielberg - Do I really need to list? Animaniacs (producer), Back to the Future trilogy (producer), Indie, Jaws, ET, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, and the list goes on and on. He wasn’t involved in Fargo so he couldn’t be number one all by himself but his overall body of work has him deserving a tie.
Larry David - Seinfeld is my all time favorite show and Curb is easily in the Top 10. I love Jerry but Larry David is the man.
Beethoven - What can I say, he’s fun to listen to.
Hans Zimmer - I’ve listened to the score for Batman Begins about 100 times and I never get tired of it. I had to make a choice between him and James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer was responsible for Gladiator and was not involved, in any way, with Dreamcatcher so he came out on top.
U2 - easily the most emotionally moving rock & roll music I’ve heard. Hearing them on the classic rock station sandwiched between the likes of Aerosmith and Kansas is like taking a long, cool drink of water in a fart-baked hot car in an Okechobee summer.
E. Gary Gygax - I definitely second Oakminster on this one. My preference is for the multitudes of fantasy novels and computer RPGs based on his initial ideas.
Carl Hiaasen - He has become my favorite author, with his many Florida-based crime/comedy novels which celebrate my home state and rail against those who have ruined it. Sorry, Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, et al, Carl entertains me more than you guys.
John Ford - I’m a total sucker for his sentimental movies. They’re mostly great, too.
Marie-Antione Careme - credited with the invention of haute cuisine and one of the biggest names in Pastry Chef lore.
Left off the list: Chris Carter (I’m still pissed about that flat ending of X-Files), Richard Pryor (my favorite stand-up comedian, even better than Rodney Dangerfield), Aaron Copland (Appalachian Spring is my favorite piece of music), Alan Moore (loved Swamp Thing and V for Vendetta), Joss Whedon (I’ll miss Firefly terribly).
J. Michael Straczynski - Babylon 5 is, IMO, the best Sci-Fic series made, and I could watch the DVDs for a long time over and over again.
Joss Whedon - I’m a Whedon fan, I admit, but I try not to be preachy about it.
Gary Gygax - I wouldn’t have thought of him on my own, but reading it here made me realize how much time and energy (and money,) I have sunk, and will most likely continue to sink, into D&D.
Weird Al - If I had to pick just one artist to listen to for the rest of my life, he wins, hands down.
Give me my video games, TV shows, and music, and I’m all set. Most of mine have already been mentioned:
Brad McQuaid. Dude owes me six or seven years of my life. Nah, I’d just waste them playing even more EQ (now EQII).
Shigeru Miyamoto. What I play when I’m not playing EQII.
Matt Groening. But only for Futurama.
Hugh Laurie.
Damon Albarn. I used to claim to be a Graham Coxon fan, but it’s Damon who has me hooked. He’s the reason I own every b-side Blur ever made, he’s the reason I love Gorillaz, he’s the man with all the catchy hooks. And he *still * has me buying his albums 14 years after first hearing his work. As someone with an easily bored and often fickle ear, that’s pretty impressive. For me.
Tough to narrow it down to five, but I’ll do my best.
George S. Halas - He gets the lions share of the credit for the formation of the NFL and as an added bonus founded my Bears. The fruits of his labor include the NFL and by extension Fantasy Football, Tecmo Bowl, Madden Football, MNF, The Super Bowl and cheerleaders. So many of my favorite things.
Matt Groening - Yeah, this has been pretty well covered.
JRR Tolkien - Surprised I’m the first to mention him so far. The books and movies are obvious credits, but personally his books are the one which broke my school induced hatred of casual reading. I give him credit for every great book I’ve enjoyed since.
Larry Flynt - Bear with me on this one. I can give him credit for bringing porn to the masses, and I’d be lying if that didn’t bring me a reasonable amount of enjoyment, but in the bigger picture I think he loosened the grip of the religious right on the media. Many of the blue comics and otherwise risque movies and TV shows can probably thank him for being able to be shown at all. Hell even the primetime sit-com owes something to him. You might instead credit Hugh Hefner as his predecessor for bringing down walls and kick-starting the sexual revolution but I think Flynt was a little more of an activist against censorship.
Bill Gates - I’m just gonna give him credit for all the joy computers bring. From the internet to email to games to message boards to instant messaging. I spend an inordinate amount of time on this MB and instead of crediting Cecil I’m going with Gates just cause I’d have probably found a different venue without Cecil. Without Windows who knows how usable todays computers would be. If you wanted to stretch the argument you might even be able to give him credit for things like the iPod and personal computing devices like modern cell phones and PSPs.
Robyn Hitchcock - Has anyone else here seen him live? Unique chap, his brain is probably in sideways.
Richard Feynman - For the squigly diagrams if nothing else.
Douglas Adams - Actually these days I read PTerry having long worn out Hitchhikers (and the later books aren’t very good) but I still sometimes listen to the original radio shows.
Neil Gaiman - Sandman.
Blimey five doesn’t go far does it? See also: Chuck Berry, The Beatles, Syd Barrett, J. S. Bach, John Carmack, Ridley Scott, William Gibson, Werner Von Braun (for the Apollo project, not the V2, in case you were wondering) and Tex Avery
Mark Twain - A mixture of serious and comic Lewis Carroll - Nothing to add. Spike Milligan - Another mixture. Ayatollah Khomeini - Unintentionally funny. Peter Sellers - The best of the original Lady Killers.
Spike Milligan - everything he ever did, and goodness was that a lot: scripts, books, poems, radio acting, silly songs, tv comedy. A total polymath and one of the funniest people ever to have lived; yet a deeply emotional person, able to express the horror of war and of his mental illness. One of the few people for whom the epithet genius is not hyperbole. I miss him every day. Ricky Gervais - up to the last series of Extras, everything he ever did. Larry David - just brilliant. Joni Mitchell - been listening to her music for 35 years now, and it still isn’t stale. Sebastian Faulks - a toss-up between him, Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, William Boyd, Patricia Highsmith (for shits and giggles) and Pat Barker, but Mr Faulks wins because I’m a completist and have read everything he ever wrote.
J.R.R. Tolkien - Can’t read him today, hobbits bores me, but I don’t know how I would have survived my teens without The Lord of the Rings.
Robert Plant et al - Led Zeppelin really got me going for a few wild years.
Carl Gustav Jung - Might seem strange, but between 1990 and 1995 pretty much read nothing but. Now, that’s an adventure for you! (Though it requires a Sanity Check, Cthulhu-style.)
Elvis Presley - Always returns to the King; he just makes me feel good.
Eddie Izzard - Until I saw him, I thought standup comedy meant somebody making dull jokes about milk and everyday boring stuff, and/or compensating lack of good jokes with screaming and shouting.
