Happy Birthday To Me!

Today is my 46th birthday, &, as usual, people who are far more accomplished & infinitely more important than I will ever be get the spotlight.  Happy MLK Day!

I share my birthday will lots of luminaries, whose work I appreciate & whose shadow I will always live under.  First of all, there's Lead Belly, whose birthday may also be January 23, but I'm glad to share it with those guys.  What a giant in the world of music!  More than an influence, Lead Belly appears to have been a force of nature!

There's also George Burns, a comedian so old & omnipresent through my youth & adolescence I'm still a little startled that he's no longer with us.

It's the birthday of Federico Fellini, a filmmaker whose works I should return to, whose magnificent creativity I could never hope to emulate.

& it's DeForest Kelley's birthday, & he is one of the main reasons I love Star Trek so much.  I know he was very beloved in his lifetime, but I always wanted to meet him & tell him how great he was.

The suave Slim Whitman was born this day.  I haven't explored his music much, though I have a couple of collections.  He's someone I associate with late-night television ads selling "greatest hits" packages from the 1970s & 80s.  Boy, I wish I could pull off that moustache.

Actress Patricia Neal was born on this day, & she's a familiar face in lots of old movies.  As was comedian Arte Johnson, whom I came to love from Laugh-In repeats I watched in my youth.  & then there's Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon & possessor of a great punch.  (You've seen the clip, right?)  & I deeply admire much of the work of the great David Lynch, also born of this day.

Finally - there's more of course, you can see the names of births & deaths & event from the day on Wikipedia, there's someone whose show I watch weekly whom I find admirable: Bill Maher.  He's such a fascinating figure, & one with whom I have some big disagreements - but I confess I respect him a lot.

The wife just said, "Too bad you don't believe in astrology."  I think, actually, my name added to this list of luminaries would only make me a non-believer if I did!