A Twitterbot that tweets images of Bob Ross captioned with random lines from Blake's monologue in Glengarry Glen Ross. It is a humorous juxtaposition. The bot is live at twitter.com/glengarrybob.
I was folding laundry when the phrase "Glengarry Bob Ross" occurred to me, and it made me laugh. It's an easy laugh imagining this sweet, goofy man saying these terrible things, but there's more to it than that.
Blake is an easy character to admire. He's handsome, he's stylish, he's very successful, and he's commanding. His philosophy is simple and brutally fair. He is a winner in a world of losers. Whenever I watch his monologue, I want to be like him. Who wouldn't? His watch costs more than my car.
But consider Bob Ross. When I was a kid, my grandmother watched his show, and she painted along with him, every week. It's at the center of my childhood. Bob Ross is known and admired for his sweetness. He brought happiness, and nothing but happiness, for the eleven years his show was on television, and in all the years since.
Thinking about Bob Ross makes me a little ashamed of admiring Blake, and I like to think about that sometimes. What is your version of success, and by whom is it measured?