Saturday, January 10, 2015

10 January 2015

 Birthdays
Emily Meade b. 1989 (The Leftovers, Fringe)
Alex Meraz b. 1985 (Twilight Saga)
Josh Ryan Evans b. 1980 died 5 August 2002 (Poltergeist: The Legacy)
Sarah Shahi b. 1980 (Supernatural)
Antonio Cupo b. 1978 (Supernatural, Taken, Andromeda, Dark Angel, The Immortal [2000 TV])
Kathrin Kuhnel b. 1988 (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters)
Trini Alvarado b. 1967 (Fringe, The Frighteners)
Tony Gardner b. 1964 (Cockneys vs Zombies, Jekyll, My Parents are Aliens)
Julie Moran b. 1962 (Independence Day, Xena, Hard Time on Planet Earth)
Mark Venturini b. 1961 died 14 February 1996 (Space Rangers, Knight Rider, Return of the Living Dead, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning)
Evan Handler b. 1961 (Lost)
Janet Jones b. 1961 (The Beastmaster)
Fran Walsh b. 1959 (screenwriter, The Hobbit, King Kong [2005], Lord of the Rings, The Frighteners)
James Lapine b. 1949 (playwright, Into the Woods)
Lally Cadeau b. 1948 (ReGenesis, Twilight Zone [1989], Videodrome, Threshold [1981])
Teresa Graves b. 1948 died 10 October 2002 (Old Drac)
Jeff Jones b. 1944 died 19 May 2011 (artist)
Shelly Novack b. 1944 died 27 May 1978 (Kolchak: The Night Stalker)
William Sanderson b. 1944 (True Blood, Lost, Cyber Wars, The Low Budget Time Machine, Jumanji [TV], Babylon 5, The X-Files, Mann & Machine, Sometimes They Come Back, Mirror Mirror [1990], The Twilight Zone [1988], Knight Rider, Blade Runner)
Walter Hill b. 1942 (producer, Prometheus, Aliens vs. Predator, Perversions of Science, Bordello of Blood, W.E.I.R.D. World, Tales from the Crypt)
Sal Mineo b. 1939 died 12 February 1976 (Escape form the Planet of the Apes, The Immortal [1971 TV])
Douglas Hickox b. 1929 died 25 July 1988 (director, The Giant Behemoth, Theatre of Blood)
Bernard Lee b. 1908 died 16 January 1981 (Moonraker, A Christmas Carol [1977 TV], Beauty and the Beast [1976 TV], Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, The Champions, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors)
Ray Bolger b. 1904 died 15 January 1987 (Battlestar Galactica, Babes in Toyland, The Wizard of Oz)
Francis X. Bushman b. 1883 died 23 August 1966 (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Batman, The Phantom Planet)

Notes on the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot. The blog began in January 2013 and in the first few months, I often had very short birthday lists. Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson's collaborator, got the nod in 2013 and William Sanderson was featured in 2014. I'm of the opinion that Sanderson is the only actor on this list with an iconic genre role, so instead I honor James Lapine, playwright of Into the Woods. I use the poster from the original Broadway cast here. I did see the recent movie version and enjoyed it, but all good stills had the word "Disney" plastered on them, and I want to give that company as little free publicity as possible. 

2. Wait... she's dead? Doing the research each morning is an exercise in mortality. While all the people on the list born before World War I saw a fair number of birthdays, then we have the deceased starting with director Douglas Hickox, born in 1929.

Douglas Hickox: dead at 59
Sal Mineo: dead at 37
Shelly Novack: dead at 34
Teresa Graves: dead at 54
Mark Venturini: dead at 35
Josh Ryan Evans: dead at 22

Josh Ryan Evans was a little person actor. He died of heart failure at 22, very sad. The two names I knew here without prompting are Sal Mineo and Teresa Graves. I remembered that Mineo died young, but I never processed that Teresa Graves was gone. It's like fresh news, and bad fresh news at that.

3. The Museum of the Hard to Believe: The Canadian actor who was never on Supernatural. On a lighter note, we have two young actors who were on Supernatural, but neither was born in Canada. Our sole representative from The Great White North is Lally Cadeau, who worked with Canadian director David Cronenberg.

4. Hey... no Star Trek! If you look over at the labels, you'll see that Star Trek shows up more than a hundred times more than the second most popular label Whedonverse. But we do get days with no actors or writers from Star Trek celebrating birthdays, and today is one of those days.

5. MST3K. I didn't realize how long Francis X. Bushman worked. He was a huge star in the 1920s, but just a working actor once talkies came in. He was in The Phantom Planet, which Mike and the bots skewered in Season 9.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list, and to the dead, thanks for all the memories. Too many of you were gone too soon.


Predictor: Edwin Checkley, (1847-1911) physical culturalist, asked to predict the world of 1993 in honor of the 1893 Columbian Exhibition.

Prediction: It gives me great satisfaction to predict that a marked change will take place in the science of medicine. By 1993 doctors will prescribe no more than one third of the drugs they now think necessary. The true relation of the muscular system, and their combined influence on the nervous system, will become more fully and generally understood. The combined action of the patient's mind and muscles will be depended on to prevent, allay and cure disease, instead of drugs.

Reality: Umm... not so much. It was a little surprising to find a bodybuilder among the "prominent Americans" asked to predict the future in 1893, but there were a lot of health fads at the turn of the century, John Harvey Kellogg and his corn flakes among the best known. What Checkley couldn't foresee was how much better medicine would become in the 20th Century, since much of what was prescribed in his day is considered quackery today. There is more to his prediction, but it's mostly just nagging, not unlike Jack LaLanne was in modern times. To LaLanne's credit, he lived to be 95, while Checkley didn't make it to 65.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Our "new" regular Sunday predictor will be well known to regular readers of the blog and to science fiction fans in general. A hint? Sensible or ridiculous. (Spoiler: mostly ridiculous.)


Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

1 comment:

Traveler! Have you news... FROM THE FUTURE?