Man Crush Revisited: The Hall of Fame

Well, it's finally happened. I've been doing this blog long enough that I can actually start doing posts about the posts that I have already posted. Enough time has lapsed. So, what I'll be doing over the next several weeks is revisiting a few lists (Man Crush, Cars, etc…) and updating them to reflect any changes/regrets/updates that may have come to pass in the time since they were posted.

First up will be the Man Crushes.

That list was made in early 2010, and now that over 3 years has passed, it could certainly use an update. My biggest issue with the original list was that I didn't know how to rank historical Man Crushes. Was the list a ranking of where these guys were at their very peak, when I was most in man-love with them? Or was it the way I felt at that very moment? I mean, in 1995, my love of Hakeem Olajuwon was a 10 out of 10. But, by 2010, he hadn't played a game in ten years. Sure, I still remembered him fondly, but since so much time had passed since his absolute peak, he had probably faded to a 4 or 5. When the list was being made, Robert Downey Jr. was fresh off Iron Man, and was riding an all-time high of around 7. So, do I put Hakeem ahead of Downey based on his peak of 10 vs Downey's 7, or should I have gone with the ranking as of the day the list was made (5 vs 7)?

In the end, I went with the latter. It made more sense, and felt like a better reflection of me at the time. But, every time I got to the Hakeem's, and Bill Murray's, and Jackie Chan's of the list - guys that I loved greatly, but hadn't been doing enough work to pop up on my radar in recent years - it felt weird to rank them so low on the list, knowing that at their peak, they would have been ranked much higher.

So, I've come up with a solution. Before I revise the list officially, I'm going to create a Man Crush Hall of Fame. This way, I can retire some of these names that really deserve to be on the list, but just aren't as active in my life as they once were. Then the Top 25 can return to being about fully in the moment, and these all-time great guys won't be relegated to the lower rankings that they really don't deserve.

Without further adieu: The Inaugural Class of the Man Crush Hall of Fame:

George Carlin
Jim Carrey
Jackie Chan
Gord Downie
Chris Farley
Michael Jordan
Shawn Kemp
Jason Lee
Bill Murray
Hakeem Olajuwon
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Jerry Seinfeld
John Stockton
Christopher Walken


Honourable Mentions:
(Guys that I came to love after learning about them long after their time had passed. Hard to say I had a Man Crush on them - hard to put them in the Hall of Fame as a result -  but easily would have been Man Crushes, had I been around/alive/aware of them during their peak, and therefore deserve mention)

Andre the Giant
Bill Hicks
Bruce Lee
Paul Newman
Ayrton Senna
Jerry West