21 September 2013

Birthdays
Christian Serratos b. 1990 (Twilight)
Maggie Grace b. 1981 (Lost)
David Wenham b. 1965 (Lord of the Rings)
Bill Murray b. 1950 (Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Zombieland)
Stephen King b. 1947 (Carrie, The Stand, The Shining, Under the Dome)
Jerry Bruckheimer b. 1943 (Armageddon, Pirates of the Caribbean)
Tracy Reed b. 1942 died 2 May 2012 (Dr. Strangelove)
Larry Hagman b.1931 died 23 November 2012 (I Dream of Jeannie)
H. G. Wells b. 1866 died 13 August 1946 (War of the Worlds, The Time Machine)

If the Picture Slot was chosen today based on influence in the genre, I'd have to give the nod to Wells, but we see his picture regularly enough, so I put up the picture of Stephen King instead. Any of the women on the list - Serratos, Grace or Reed - easily qualifies for the Pretty Girl = Picture Slot criteria. Maybe next year.

Many happy returns to the living on today's list. 
 

Predictor: James William Sullivan, American labor leader, making his predictions on the occasion of the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago.

Predictions: The future is a fancyland palace whose portals I cannot enter... yet, let us listen to today's visionaries and dreamers. For they are pleasing fellows.

One cent mail delivery across the country and free within counties... cheap national telegraph and telephone service... all the electors across the country will vote on the tariff, silver coinage, a national banking system and restriction of immigration... All railroads under a single management... the consolidation of all the coal industry, from extraction to delivery... national distribution of meat and oil... efficient public markets reducing the prices to the consumer by 20%.

Reality: For a labor leader, old Sully sure took the side of the vulture capitalists of his day way too often. I'd give him no points for the mail delivery or the election predictions, and industry consolidation didn't go quite as far as he predicted. Also, in 1893 he would have to be slightly askew to predict the telegraph would be on its way to obscurity within 100 years.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Sundays belong to Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, his famous but depressing work. The Fourth Martian Expedition is the one that finally survives, but even the reason for that is pretty grim.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!