[drc]

Cobb is one of my favorite players, but because he was so dynamic and interesting, not because I we share the same views. Alter boys don't interest me as historical figures.

Joan of Arc is one of my favorite historical figures, not because I'm Catholic (which I'm not), but because she was such a complex, ambiguous and fascinating figure. She can be seen in many different ways.

The 20th century Austrian-American Princeton mathematician and logician Kurt Godel during his lifetime and today was regarded as one of the mental giants on the order of Einstein and Isaac Newton. Yet he was also mentally ill and did the most illogical, strange things. He was certain people were trying to poison him, he wore heavy fur coats on the hottest days of summer and kept open all the windows and doors of his house in winter. He also said he had mathematical proof of the existence of God, said the US Constitution could legally allow a dictator to come to power and didn't trust human logic. Easily one of the strangest, complex, contradictory, deep, enigmatic minds ever-- and, due to his published academic papers, no one questions that he was a genius.

Certain complex historical figures like those attract my interest more than Dick Clark and Pat Boone.

And, off the top of my head, the one autograph I'd most like to own? Anne Frank. She's one of my favorite ever people, and her diary is perhaps my favorite non-fiction book. I first read it as an adult and the whole thing fascinated me, she was such a talented writer, a wise thinker and a charming and lively personality. And, keeping in line with my post, she wasn't a two dimensional, goody two shoes-- she was a real person, a perfectly normal, funny and wise cracking, back talking to her elders, smart ass, hot headed, hold a petty grudge, thinks her neighbors are idiots, refuses to eat the vegetables (literally-- there's a passage about it), head strong, inappropriate jokes, thinks about boys half the time teenage girl.

If instead of the diary, an adult wrote her biography it would have sucked (and blowed), because they would have made her a two-dimensional instructional 'heroic' figure instead of the human being she was.

And, one of the more interesting tidbits I learned from her book: The Franks celebrated Christmas and exchanged Christmas presents. No doubt a cultural thing from having lived in Germany for many years. And, in keeping with the topic of this forum, a 1937 Anne Frank signed Christmas card exists. Someone discovered it just a few years back in a Dutch antique store.