Monday, August 17, 2015

17 August 2015

Birthdays
Daniel Huttlestone b. 1999 (Into the Woods)
Taissa Farmiga b. 1994 (American Horror Story)
Austin Butler b. 1991 (Arrow, Wizards of Waverly Place, Aliens in the Attic)
Rachel Hurd-Wood b. 1990 (Solomon Kane, Dorian Gray, Peter Pan)
Brady Corbett b. 1988 (Melancholia, Thunderbirds)
Ebon Moss-Bachrach b. 1978 (The Last Ship, Fringe)
Dana Daurey b. 1976 (Bewitched)
Donnie Wahlberg b. 1969 (Saw II, III & IV, The Sixth Sense)
Helen McCrory b. 1968 (Penny Dreadful, Hugo, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, Frankenstein [1994])
Andrew Koenig b. 1968 died 14 February 2010 (InAlienable, Deep Space Nine)
David Conrad b. 1967 (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Roswell)
Don McKeller b. 1963 (Blindness, eXistenZ, Last Night, RoboCop [TV])
Larry B. Scott b. 1961 (Super Force, Hard Time on Planet Earth, SpaceCamp)
Nicholas Bell b. 1958 (I, Frankenstein, Wicked Science, Attack of the Sabertooth, The Lost World, Chameleon, The Genie from Down Under 2, Dark City, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, Sky Trackers)
Tim Bagley b. 1957 (Zombieland [TV], Grimm, The Day After Tomorrow, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, The X Files, 3rd Rock from the Sun)
Gail Berman b. 1956 (producer, Alphas, Angel, Buffy)
Robert Joy b. 1951 (Defiance, Superhero Movie, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, The Hills Have Eyes [2006], Land of the Dead, Star Trek: Voyager, Fallen, The Dark Half, Maniac Mansion, Millennium, Amityville: 3-D)
Jennifer Rhodes b. 1947 (Charmed, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Night of the Demons 2, Quantum Leap)
Shane Briant b. 1946 (Farscape, The Lost World, Chameleon 2 and 3, Time Trax, Hawk the Slayer, Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, The Picture of Dorian Gray [1973])
Robert De Niro b. 1943 (Stardust, Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Frankenstein [1994], Brazil)
Franco Columbu b. 1941 (The Running Man, The Terminator, Conan the Barbarian)
Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman b. 1936 died 13 December 2007 (The X Files)
Sandra Harrison b.1935 (Blood of Dracula, Adventures of Superman)
Glenn Corbett b. 1933 died 16 January 1993 (Automan, Land of the Giants, Star Trek)
Harve Bennett b. 1930 (writer, Time Trax, Star Trek II, III, IV and V, The Bionic Woman, The Invisible Man)
Ted Hughes b. 1930 died 29 October 1998 (author, The Iron Giant)
Julianna McCarthy b. 1929 (Deep Space Nine, Starship Troopers, The Frighteners, Dark Shadows [1991], )
Julius Harris b. 1923 died 17 October 2004 (Eerie, Indiana, Darkman, Amazing Stories, The Incredible Hulk, King Kong [1976])
Maureen O’Hara b. 1920 (Bagdad, Sinbad, the Sailor)
Evelyn Ankers b. 1918 died 29 August 1985 (The Invisible Man's Revenge, Son of Dracula, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man)
John Brahm b. 1983 died 12 October 1982 (director, Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Undying Monster)

Notes from the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot. The previous Picture Slot folk are Glenn Corbett from Star Trek and Helen McCrory from Harry Potter. This year, I'm going with one of our two A-list stars (more on the second later in the post) in one of my favorite films Robert DeNiro as Tuttle in Brazil.

2. Spot the Canadians. Robert Joy and Don McKellar, neither easily spotted.

3. Nepotism, not much of a win. We have some siblings, Donnie Wahlberg and Taissa Farmiga, but I'm not sure they count. Poor Andrew Koenig is the son of Walter, but he committed suicide five years ago, so I hesitate to say it's "For The Win".

4. And special birthday wishes to... the other A-List movie star on the list, Maureen O'Hara, the archetype in Hollywood for the redhead who turns strong men into taffy with a glare and a turn of her lovely head. She turns 95 this year and all the rest of us are lucky she decided to come to our world.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list, most especially the low flying angel Maureen O'Hara, and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

Movies released
ParaNorman released, 2012
The Time Machine released, 1960




Predictor: OMNI Future Almanac, published in 1982

Prediction: Authors will enter their text either on a computer terminal linked by telephone (or other type of cable) to a publisher's central computer. The increasing mechanization of publishing will require that writers buy and use word processors to increase their productivity and have their texts be compatible with publishers' computer systems.

Reality: I don't exactly remember the last time a prediction was so good my first thought was "Well, fucking D'UH!" The thing is, in 1982 this was not a done deal. This prediction gets an unqualified A. I might even look to see if I sill have any gold stars handy.
 
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

The Commie John Langon-Davies has been exhausted and will be replaced by Robert A. Heinlein.
  
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

7 comments:

  1. Let's see... join 1982 I was still in engineering school, and as I recall the computer classes I took were either on BASIC terminals or doing FORTRAN using punch cards. Also, a bit of simple 10 digit machine language....

    So yeah, it was not an easy thing to predict. We didn't get our first Mac until 1989 or so....

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your vote of confidence here. That word processors would take off was a pretty good bet, but the "link by telephone" - a.k.a The Internet - was not in everyday usage yet.

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    2. Although even then I remember the device where you plugged a standard telephone receiver into a rubber doohickey to make some nefarious connection using black magic....It seemed dicey at best.

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    3. Also, for many years, "word processors" were considered to be also-rans with "typewriters". Missus Zombie kept a typewriter alongside her desk until like the year 2000. I dunno, maybe using Windows made her much more worried about the whole thing going pear-shaped....

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    4. I mocked OMNI Future Almanac when they said laserdiscs were the bomb, I have to give them credit for "oh yeah, and this Internet thing is going to be big".

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    5. In '79, I was typing out Fortran onto punch cards, and used a phone modem once to connect to a database of college courses listed by college. (Through an entirely different computer.)

      A year later, I was using a terminal of a Wang computer. I wrote a program in Basic to fool a friend into thinking his terminal was methodically erasing his files. I was probably on course to be a hacker, had I continued on into college.

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  2. As of a few years ago, you could still (and were expected to) make submissions on paper with double-spaced lines, in Courier. I imagine those dinosaurs are literally dying out, now.

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