Friday, November 29, 2013

29 November 2013

Birthdays
Don Cheadle b. 1964 (Iron Man 2 & 3)
Tom Sizemore b. 1961 (Strange Days, Red Planet)
Kim Delaney b. 1961 (Mission to Mars, Darkman II)
Hinton Battle b. 1956 (Buffy)
Jeff Fahey b. 1952 (Planet Terror, The Lawnmower Man, Under the Dome, Revolution, Lost, Darkman III)
Madeleine L'Engle b. 1918 died 6 September 2007 (A Wrinkle in Time)
C.S. Lewis b. 1898 died 22 November 1963 (Narnia, The Screwtape Letters)

The living on today's list are actors, the dead are writers, and I decided the Picture Slot should go to Madeleine L'Engle, the writer whose work I like best. Next year I might go fanboy and put up a picture of Hinton Battle from the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I make no promises. C.S. Lewis is part of an odd bit of obituary trivia, dying on one of those days when there actually was a Group of Three with himself, J.F.K. and Aldous Huxley.

Many happy returns to the living on the list.

Predictor: Billy Graham at the 1998 TED talk

Prediction: "The future will be wonderful, but I won't be here to see it."

Reality: Well, it's fifteen years later and the Reverend Graham is still here, so he still got to see some future. He also predicted we were about to go to war with Iraq as of February 1998, and since we bombed them in December 1998, he gets a half point for that. For an actual war, we'd have to wait for Graham's pal George W. Bush to be elected, for us to be attacked by Islamic extremists and for us to blame Saddam Hussein for the attack on some of the flimsiest evidence in recorded history.

He was 80 when he gave this talk and he made a list of ways he was slowing down. I'm not 60 yet and I understand the diminishing abilities thing, I just don't gripe about it in public much past the occasional "Jeez, I'm old". Some might say it would be unfair of me to call the Reverend Graham a whiny little name-dropping drama queen, but then again, it's not fair to the world that Billy hasn't taken his no account son Franklin aside and told that turd to keep his racist pie hole shut.

Yes, life is unfair in many ways.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Back to 1893 to hear from a captain of industry whose name has survived to this day.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

3 comments:

  1. A wrinkle in Time is a simply classic book.

    ...wasn't Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2 also?

    Also, C.S. Lewis was responsible for the Silent Planet trilogy. Ostensibly sci fi, at least.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheadle's C.V. is updated. With the writers, I always pick and choose.

      Thanks, ZR.

      Delete
    2. fair enough. Although Out Of The Silent Planet had a certain charm (part of which may be its brevity), the subsequent books were... umm, kind of preachy.

      Delete

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