1 August 2014

 Birthdays
Sasha Jackson b. 1988 (Dominion, Attack of the 50ft Cheerleader, The Witches of Oz)
Max Carver b. 1988 (The Leftovers, Teen Wolf, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn)
Monserrat Lombard b. 1982 (The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Hyperdrive)
Miracle Laurie b. 1981 (100,000 Zombie Heads, Dollhouse)
Jason Momoa b. 1979 (Game of Thrones, Conan the Barbarian [2011], Stargate: Atlantis)
Kris Holden-Ried b. 1973 (The Listener, Lost Girl, Underworld: Awakening, Habitat)
Charles Malik Whitfield b. 1972 (Sleepy Hollow, Warehouse 13, Supernatural, Seven Days)
John Carroll Lynch b. 1963 (Paul, Carnivale, Star Trek: Voyager, From the Earth to the Moon)
Adrian Dunbar b. 1958 (The Quatermass Experiment [2005 TV])
Taylor Negron b. 1957 (Vamps, Wizards of Waverly Place, Good vs Evil, Faerie Tale Theatre)
Lewis Smith b. 1956 (Avalon: Beyond the Abyss, Beauty and the Beast, Badlands 2005, The Man Who Fell to Earth [TV], Buckaroo Banzai)
Annabel Jankel b. 1955 (director, Super Mario Bros., Max Headroom)
David Calder b. 1946 (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The Mists of Avalon, Jason and the Argonauts [2000 TV], Star Cops, Superman)
Giancarlo Giannini b. 1942 (Dracula [2002], Dune [2000 TV], Mimic)
Terry Kiser b. 1939 (The Huntress, Lois & Clark, Tammi and the T-Rex, Incredi-Girl, Mannequin: On the Move, Hard Time on Planet Earth, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, Knight Rider, Automan, Manimal, Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land, Looker, Gemini Man, The Invisible Man)
Dom DeLuise b. 1933 died 4 May 2009 (Stargate SG-1, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, 3rd Rock from the Sun, SeaQuest 2032, Spaceballs, Haunted Honeymoon, Amazing Stories, The Munsters)
Paul Lambert b. 1922 died 27 April 1997 (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Automan, Planet of the Apes, The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Men Into Space)
Arthur Hill b. 1922 died 22 October 2006 (Tales of the Unexpected, Prototype, Tomorrow’s Child, Revenge of the Stepford Wives [TV], Futureworld, The Andromeda Strain, The Invaders, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea)
J. Lee Thompson b. 1914 died 30 August 2002 (director, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes)
Henry Jones b. 1912 died 17 May 1999 (Arachnophobia, Project U.F.O., The Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Girl with Something Extra, Project X, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, Bewitched, Twilight Zone)

Welcome to a new month. Last year, I showed my Whedonverse nerd tendencies and out a picture of Miracle Laurie in the Picture Slot, and this year I was leaning towards Jason Momoa, Khal Drogo on Game of Thrones. But with further research, there are a lot of great Oh That Guy actors on the list today and Henry Jones is one of my favorites. He's the guy on the right talking to Orson Bean in the Twilight Zone episode Mr. Bevis.

I should say as a movie fan that John Carroll Lynch may be my favorite of all the people on this list, most notably for work in Fargo, Zodiac and Gran Torino. But none of those movies is genre, so his chance to be in the Picture Slot next year is slim.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

Movies released
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor released, 2008
The Omega Man released, 1971

Predictors: ESPN's panel of baseball experts

Prediction: The teams that will make the playoffs in 2014

Reality: This is the last report until season's end when we will really know the situation. The underlined teams are exactly as predicted.


American League
Division winners
Red Sox (currently in fiffh)
Tigers (currently leading)
Athletics (currently leading)
Wild Card teams
Rays (currently in fourth, nowhere near playoffs)
Rangers (currently in fifth, nowhere near playoffs)

National League
Division winners
Nationals (currently in first)
Cardinals (currently in second, but just barely not in playoffs)
Dodgers (currently in first)
Wild Card teams
Braves (currently in second and in playoffs)
Pirates (currently in third)


The prediction got better since June, most notably in the National League. In the American, all they got right is the Tigers and A's and the odds of the Red Sox, Ray or Rangers pulling out of their nosedives looks unlikely. The improvements are in the National League, where the Dodgers caught the first hot, now cold Giants and the Cardinals are catching up with Brewers. The prediction in the National League still has a chance to be 100% correct. The American League prediction is very unlikely to get better than the current 40% right.




Final update at season's end.

This month's splash illustration
I woke up this morning trying to think about what should be the new illustration at the top of the page and I decided to Google 'atomic age', assuming that would give me a lot of mid 20th Century stuff. I found this ad that ran in the Sunday color comics in newspapers for an atomic "bomb" ring you could get for just 15 cents and a boxtop from Kix cereal. Wow, for the price of a comic book you could see genuine atoms split to smithereens!


Here's a page where all the text is large enough to read, so you can learn "How Tommy Thwarted the Enemy Agents".

This splash page illustration will give me a smile over the next 31 days and I hope you like it too.

Regular commenter Zombie Rotten McDonald wonder if there were pictures of the product lying around on the Internets and sure as shootin', there were. When you took off the red "bomb casing", you could look through a small plastic lens at scintillations caused by polonium alpha particles striking a zinc sulfide screen.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Dale Brown predicts danger ahead in 1994.


Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!