Happy Birthday, James Baldwin

    Happy Birthday, Mr. James Baldwin, sir!  Author of The Fire Next Time, which I believe I read in junior high a long, long time ago.  I was not aware of the above quote, but it seems extremely appropriate for this nation right now.

Happy Birthday Patrick Macnee (John Steed)

    Happy Birthday to Patrick Macnee, who portrayed the incomparable John Steed (alongside the most sexy Diana Rigg) in the 1960's British adventure/spoof TV show The Avengers.

    Yeah, I know I'm showing my age by thinking of the two heroes shown above when someone starts talking about "The Avengers", and not the freakish superheroes from the more-modern movie with the same name.

    But dammit, you young whippersnappers, the 1960's show was better!   😎

Happy Birthday, Willie Nile!

    70 years old today, and still rocking!  IMNSHO, one of the best, straight-up Rock & Roll musicians around today.  Sadly, he never seems to make it here to Arizona on the concert tours.

Happy Birthday, Ron Perlman

    Born 04/13/50.  And whom I will always remember for being in this fantastic movie: The City of the Lost Children.

Happy Birthday, Aldous Huxley!

    Born on 07/26/1894, Aldous Huxley is without a doubt, my favorite highbrow author.

    Bonus Trivia Question : On what day did Aldous Huxley die, and why does nobody remember that?  (Answer in comments)

Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla!

     Born 160 years ago today.

Birthday Thoughts

    Today's my birthday.  It's somewhat of a milestone, although I'll not say which one.  However, I will tell you that the above picture has relevance.

Happy Birthday, M.C. Escher

    Born June 17, 1898.

Happy Birthday Walt Kelly!

    Happy Birthday, Walt Kelly!  Born 25 August 1913, and creator of what is still my favorite cartoon strip, even after 45 years or so.

Happy Birthday, Erwin Schrodinger!

    Born on 12 August, 1887.

Happy Birthday, Davey Johnstone!

    Happy 62nd Birthday to Davey Johnstone.  He's been the lead guitarist for Elton John for most of the last 40+ years.  But he's also played with Alice Cooper, Meat Loaf, (Long) John Baldry, etc.  He can play rock, folk, bluegrass - guitar, mandolin, fiddle.  You name it, he can do it.

    In 1973, he put out a solo album - Smiling Face.  It's a superb LP, which inexplicably didn't sell worth a crap.  It's so rare that you can't find any YouTube videos of its tracks, and the CD version at Amazon is only available as an import, and costs (new) $101.01.  Sheesh.

    We saw Elton and Leon Russell a couple years ago during their Union tour, and Johnstone was there, rocking away.  So Happy Birthday, Davey!  I for one love your music.

   BTW, the title track was written for his (at that point in time) toddler son, who also made it onto the album cover.  Kewlness.

Happy Birthday, Doug Kershaw

    Born in 1936, and one of the finest fiddlers ever.  In the early 70's, he introduced us college-type hippies to Cajun Music.  Specifically, Orange Blossom Special.  And we dug it.

     Fame was fleeting;  Cajun music is really more akin to Country & Western than Rock & Roll and/or Folk Music.  But over the last ten years, I've hunted down, and digitalized, most of his LP's.

    I frankly am in awe of his musical talent.  There are a few videos of him on YouTube, but mostly live and homemade stuff.  Which is okay, cuz it's kewl to watch him shred that fiddle.  But someone really needs to post a bunch of his studio tracks.

    So HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DOUG KERSHAW.  Hope you celebrated it Cajun-style.

Happy Birthday, JRR !

    John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 121 years old today.  500 years from now, people will still be reading LOTR.  And Fifty Shades of Gray will be a lost manuscript.  

Happy Birthday Noam Chomsky !

       He's 84 years young today.  Linguist, Philosopher, Wit, and above all, Activist.  I am embarrassed to say I went for about 25 years thinking his first name was "Noah".  Which screwed up more crossword puzzles I was working on than I care to admit.

Happy Birthday, Jimi Hendrix

    He turned 70 today.  He ain't dead; that's just an urban legend.  Here's proof.

Happy 191st Birthday, Fyodor Dostoevsky

    I read The Idiot earlier this year.  It is an absolute masterpiece, and that's not even reading it in its native tongue.  He suffered through poor health, 4 years of exile & hard labor in Siberia (for revolutionary activities), and a lifelong gambling addiction.  Yet he is unparalleled in the literary world.  Born 191 years ago today (we're ignoring the Gregorian calendar), they don't make writers like this anymore.

Happy Birthday, Leonard Nimoy

    Happy Birthday, Mr. Spock.  81 years old today.  Wow.  Live long and prosper, dude!

Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens!

    Born exactly 200 years ago today.  I can't say that I've read a lot of his stuff, other than David Copperfield, which I trudged through in English class in high school.  But there's no arguing that he's one of the greatest authors of all time.

    And a major influence on the English language as well.  Here are a few of words that he either invented personally, or "saved" from the linguistic dustbin : butter-fingers, sawbones, messiness, spiflication, whizz-bang, seediness, unpromisingly, flummox, kibosh, devil-may-care, angry-eyed, hunger-worn, proud-stomached, fancy-dressed, coffee-imbibing, ginger-beery, copying-clerk, crossing-sweeper, tousled, boredom, rampage, casualty ward, allotment garden, footlights, fingerless, fairy story, messiness, natural-looking, squashed, tintack, spectacularly,confusingly, and last-but-not-least, dustbin.

    So Happy 200th Birthday, Mr. Dickens, sir!  I think I'll pick up one of your works the next time I'm at the used-book store.

Happy Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!

    Happy 212th Birthday to Edgar Allan Poe, whom I consider to be the greatest American writer of the 19th Century.  His style was original; he excelled at both novels and poetry; and he's a heckuva lot more interesting to read than Longfellow, Frost, or Whitman.  Indeed, Jason has waggishly bestowed honorary British citizenship on him, since to call him an American writer puts him in some pretty shoddy company.

    He had a rough childhood; did some strange things (like marrying his cousin when she was only 13 years old); and died prematurely under strange circumstances.  You can read all about it here.

     We'll leave you with this Trivia Teaser, that seems all too obvious but isn't :  What was Edgar Allan Poe's middle name?  Answer in the comments.

Happy Birthday, Noam Chomsky!

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

    Noam Chomsky is an activist, a linguist, an intellectual, and is 83 years young today.  His quotes (see above for an example) are pithy, witty, and very relevant to the world today.

    I became aware of him at an early age - but for a strange reason.  I have always done crossword puzzles, and "Noam" would often show up in a grid, with the definition something like "Writer Chomsky".   I'd usually try "Noah" for the answer, and of course it was slightly wrong.  For many years I wondered WTF this Chomsky dude was, and why he had such a strange first name.

    FWIW, "Noam" is actually his middle name.  His real first name is "Avram".