Marc Blucas b. 1972 (They, Buffy)
Amanda Peet b. 1972 (2012, Gulliver’s Travels, The X Files)
Konstantin Khabenskiy b. 1972 (Night Watch, Day Watch, World War Z, Wanted)
Kyle Richards b. 1969 (Halloween, The Watcher in the Woods)
Shelly Sweeney b. 1966 (Godzilla: Final Wars, Godzilla 2000, Godzilla vs. Destroyah, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla)
Melanie Hill b. 1962 (Merlin, Stardust, From Hell)
Felix Silla b. 1937 (Batman Returns, Spaceballs, Star Trek, Return of the Jedi, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Brood, Battlestar Galactica, Demon Seed, Planet of the Apes, The Addams Family)
Rod Taylor b. 1930 (The Time Machine, Colossus and the Amazon Queen, Twilight Zone, World Without End)
Jerome Bixby b. 1923 died 28 April 1998 (writer, Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Fantastic Voyage, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, The Man From Earth)
Robert C. O’Brien b. 1918 died 5 March 1973 (writer, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH)
Not a lot of huge stars on today's list. The most familiar faces might be Amanda Peet for younger folks and Rod Taylor for the geezers, but the Picture Slot goes to Felix Silla, a little person actor who spent most of his career stuck inside costumes, most notably Twiki on Buck Rogers and Cousin Itt on The Addams Family. Jerome Bixby wrote the story for It's a Good Life on Twilight Zone and the episodes Day of the Dove, Requiem for Methuselah, By Any Other Name and Mirror, Mirror on the original series of Star Trek.
Many happy returns of the day to living on today's list and to Jerome Bixby and Robert C. O'Brien, thanks for the memories.
Prediction: "I have no doubt that early in the 20th Century, trains will be running regularly at an average of 60 mile per hour… there will be a number of trains on some of the greater roads whose schedule time will call for as much as 100 miles per hour… a traveler in the early in the next century will be able to have breakfast in New York City and his evening dinner in Chicago.”
Reality: Not by AMTRAK. The fastest trip is the Lake Shore Limited at 19 hours and 13 minutes and it runs from New York at 3:40 pm and arrives at 9:45 in the morning.
In 1893, the railroads had a stranglehold on long distance travel even greater than the fossil fuel companies' stranglehold on cheap energy today. Webb doesn't speculate about how trains will have competition from other inventions and I would be very surprised if he did. It is remarkable and disappointing how completely America gave up on major railroad innovation in the 20th Century and that the truly modern rail systems are in Europe and Japan now. Just as remarkable and disappointing is how industrial innovation in this field is now such a contentious political issue, with conservatives treating high speed trains as an evil liberal plot.
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
I don't always repeat a prediction from the same day last year, but when I do... it's usually an important plot point.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
One more credit for the list: Jerome Bixby also wrote "The Man from Earth" (produced after his death), about a professor who, during a going away party, tells his friends that the reason he's leaving is that he's 14,000 years old and people are starting to notice he hasn't aged. Is he lying? Crazy? Or telling the truth? It's a small movie with character actors in most of the roles, including Tony Todd, William Katt, Richard Riehle and John Billingsley. I liked it.
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