dual personalities

Tag: birthdays

January 16, 2013

Fun facts to know and tell

by chuckofish

For his gallantry at San Juan Hill, his commanders recommended Theodore Roosevelt for the Medal of Honor.

TR_San_Juan_Hill_1898

He was not awarded the medal at that time, but 100 years later in the late 1990s, Roosevelt’s supporters again took up the flag for him. On January 16, 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded Theodore Roosevelt the Medal of Honor posthumously for his charge up San Juan Hill, Cuba, during the Spanish–American War. Roosevelt’s eldest son, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., received the Medal of Honor for heroism at the Battle of Normandy in 1944. The Roosevelts thus became one of only two father-son pairs to receive this honor (the other pair being Arthur and Douglas MacArthur).

If I ever knew that, I had forgotten it. I am glad to know that T.R. got his Medal of Honor. I suggest a toast to him tonight!

Today is also the birthday of Robert W. Service, the Bard of the Yukon (January 16, 1874 – September 11, 1958).

Robert_W._Service

When I was in Middle School, I was a big fan of Robert Service. (Yes, I was really cool.) I asked for and was given his collected poems for Christmas. I memorized large portions of my favorite poems, including “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.”

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.

Margaret Rutherford gave a dramatic recitation of the aforementioned poem in Murder Most Foul. Priceless. Here it is (with Italian subtitles!)–watch the whole thing! (Si. Si. Prego.)

Have a great Wednesday!

3 Comments
January 8, 2013

Happy birthday to the King

by chuckofish

As if you didn’t know, Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer, actor and cultural icon. Today is his birthday, so I thought I ought to give him a shout out.

Elvis in a green shirt

Elvis in a green shirt

Because we had a tendency to laugh at practically everything when I was growing up, we laughed at Elvis. But my mother (of all people) always defended him and gave him credit for really being able to sing. She was also, truth be told, kind of fond of his movies, as am I. If there was an Elvis movie on TV, you better believe we watched it. My favorite is Viva Las Vegas with Ann-Margret, his perfect (if you ask me) partner.

viva-las-vegas

Over the years I have come to appreciate Elvis as a cultural icon/entertainer and I would never laugh at him now. Back in the 1990s when the boy’s junior choir went to sing in Memphis, our family went along as “chaperones”–mostly so we could go to Graceland, which is really a very nice home (atrociously decorated).

When I worked at a private school in Richmond, Va in 1979, I had an occasion to go to a party at the boarding department secretary’s home. She and her husband were big Elvis fans and had turned one room into something like a shrine to their hero. (Remember–this was just two years after Elvis had died.) They were perfectly serious and the wound was fresh. I would never have laughed at them.

Anyway, some years after that I saw the classic episode about Elvis on Designing Women, where the ladies, talked into going by Charlene, make the trek to Graceland and Julia hears a sad story from a trucker named Vern. It reminded me of the Charlene-like secretary.

I know now that Elvis was just a broken human being like the rest of us, who liked to sing hymns and eat peanut butter sandwiches and who was awfully good-looking and had amazing hair. And, by the way, E.P. phone home!

TCM is showing Elvis movies all day today, including the aforementioned Viva Las Vegas at 1:15. Unfortunately, I will be at work, but maybe I’ll manage to see a little of Love Me Tender when I get home. The schedule is here.

P.S. Roll, Tide, roll!

 

7 Comments
November 13, 2012

Happy birthday, Gerard Butler

by chuckofish

Gerard Butler (born 13 November 1969) is a Scottish actor who has appeared in an unusually varied array of films, most of them pretty bad. If he weren’t so darn good looking, I wouldn’t have suffered through half of them.

That may sound harsh, but really, think about it. Have you seen Lara Croft Tomb Raider, The Phantom of the Opera, 300, P.S. I Love You, Nim’s Island…the list goes on and on. I did like Machine Gun Preacher , and The Game of Their Lives was shot in St. Louis and was about a (true) St. Louis story, so it was bearable.

However, Gerard has made one movie that has redeemed his whole career and gives us hope for his future: Dear Frankie.

Dear Frankie (2004) is a film directed by Shona Auerbach and starring Emily Mortimer, Gerard Butler, and Jack McElhone. The screenplay by Andrea Gibb focuses on a young single mother in Scotland whose love for her son prompts her to perpetuate a deception designed to protect him from the truth about his father. It truly is a gem, and Gerard Butler is just right in the part of “the stranger” who pretends to be Frankie’s father. Would that he would play a few more parts in movies like this!

So I suggest we all watch Dear Frankie in honor of Gerard’s 43rd birthday. Have your Kleenex handy, because it’s a weeper (despite the feel-good cover art). I put it in the same category as Fried Green Tomatoes, another favorite of mine, which I cannot watch 10 minutes of before I am hopelessly weeping. Let me hasten to say, this is not a bad thing. Maybe what we need is a good cry.

Happy birthday, Gerard!

5 Comments
October 17, 2012

Happy birthday, Marshall Mathers!

by chuckofish

Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), better known by his stage name Eminem (often stylized as EMINƎM) and by his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter, and actor. And he turns 40 today!

And, yes, I am a big fan. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. I think Em is a latter-day poet and an example to all frustrated, unhappy, unchallenged kids in bad family environments who need to express their anger and channel their emotions into a creative outlet like writing. Using their words, as teachers have been saying for years, instead of violence. He is the real deal.

I suggest we all watch 8 Mile in honor of his birthday. This is a great movie, directed by the talented Curtis Hanson in 2002. It is not just a “rap-version of Saturday Night Fever“, a movie I despise. Eminem is really good in this movie and very appealing. I also have to hand it to him for not wanting to be a movie star and for turning down all offers to make more movies.

This is not to say that I didn’t feel like Ned Flanders at a Chris Rock concert while watching this movie. And I am no fan of rap or hip-hop. No, I am not. But Eminem works hard at his craft. I can appreciate that. He bettered himself. I like to think that under the vulgarity and the bravura is a fine young man who wants to do the right thing.

Happy Birthday, Marshall!

15 Comments
September 11, 2012

Happy birthday, cupcake of love

by chuckofish

Our cupcake, daughter #1, celebrates her birthday today.

From the beginning she was beautiful,

2 weeks old

opinionated,

and surrounded by really cool guys.

She was always a glamor girl.

As the oldest child, she was the trail blazer and looked up to by her younger siblings. She still is.

Have a great day, darling girl. Your country mouse mother can’t wait to visit you in the Big City later in the week!

Please Note: Lots of interesting people were also born on this day as well: Mungo Park, D.H. Lawrence, Tom Landry, Earl Holliman, Brian De Palma, Leo Kottke, Moby, Harry Connick, Jr., Ludacris. Hats off to all of them!

7 Comments
September 3, 2012

The fairy coach awaits

by chuckofish

Since daughter #2 left and took with her a large bookcase, leaving a large empty space in her room and a large amount of unwanted books, I have been busy packing up her books. I decided to bring up a bookcase from the basement and fill it with my own books. This meant going through more books and separating them into give-away and keep piles. In this complicated process I have re-discovered some good books that were down in the basement. One of them is the Parables of Kierkegaard, which my sister (and dual personality) gave me back in 1980 for my birthday.

Stuck inside this book was a card with the above picture on it. Inside she wrote:

Happy Birthday Darling Adorable Sister!

Here is a little something just pour vous that I know you will really relate to. I confess that I stole a few peaks at it and I could become quite interested. You must tell me all about it.

I apologize for the recycled Easter paper but you know about deprived school children.

Doesn’t this card remind you of mommy? I think it looks just like her.

Have a happy B-day–don’t get too drunk but just think–next year at this time you’ll be a married woman and I’ll have to send you cookbooks and kitchen utensils!

Well, I must away–the fairy coach is awaiting and fizzy fuzz, Pompey, Pete and Robert Preston are getting restless.

I can’t wait to see your face and sparkling ring-finger again!

Love and Theologians,
YS

How perfect is that? The Kierkegaard is pretty good too. (But I don’t recall getting any cookbooks and/or kitchen utensils.)

7 Comments
July 20, 2012

Happy birthday, Natalie Wood

by chuckofish

Doesn’t everyone love Natalie Wood?

Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents. She made her film début a few weeks before turning five during a fifteen-second scene in the 1943 film Happy Land. In 1947 she appeared in two favorites of mine, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Miracle on 34th Street. A few years later at age 15 she starred with James Dean in the classic Rebel Without a Cause, uttering the immortal line, “I love somebody. All the time I’ve been… I’ve been looking for someone to love me. And now I love somebody. And it’s so easy. Why is it easy now?” Somehow she made you believe it.

And the next year she appeared in John Ford’s The Searchers with John Wayne. Indeed, she had quite a career, despite not really being a very good actress. Frequently the studio powers-that-be had her playing Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Italians–I suppose because of those big brown eyes–and she was never very good at faking accents. But there was just something about Natalie you had to like.

She died much too young (and tragically) in 1981. Rest in peace, Natalie. May light perpetual shine upon you.

Natalie with Steve McQueen in “Love With the Proper Stranger”–a good Friday movie pic, don’t you think? Steve is better than usual in this movie, and he is always great.

7 Comments
July 4, 2012

I hear America singing

by chuckofish

As you know, the United States Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on this day in 1776. In our family we have always made a Big Thing about the 4th of July, because we are a patriotic family (of course) and because it is our brother’s birthday.

We always had a shindig (with favors) and set off firecrackers galore and other explosives. We blared Sousa marches from our open windows. Normally a quiet, reserved family, we were LOUD.

Sadly, we are experiencing a drought this year in our flyover state and so we will not participate in any of these fun activities. We may play some patriotic tunes inside this year, but God forbid we should open a window! The temperature is broiling out there. And we won’t be setting off any of our own fireworks either as there is a serious danger of fire due to the dryness issue. Almost all the local displays are canceled. Sigh. Only the big one on the big river will go on.

We will be sure to tip a glass or two, however, in toasts to our absent family and especially our absent bro who turns 61!

Since July 4 will be celebrated indoors this year, we will no doubt spend it watching movies first enjoyed with our brother: Stagecoach, Tall in the Saddle, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, How the West Was Won, El Dorado, The War Wagon…Sounds good to me.

It is also, we should note, the birthday of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804), Stephen Foster (1826), Calvin Coolidge (1872), Louis B. Mayer (1882), and Stephen Boyd (1931)! Reason enough (and more) to party hearty.

P.S. I’ll be wearing my flag pin, made by daughter #1 years ago at Philmont. I know you’re jealous.

3 Comments
July 3, 2012

Sibs

by chuckofish

My dual personality wrote about our brother the other day, posting some pictures from her graduation weekend back in 1981(!). Here is another photo of the three of us just before we were about to leave for Bradley International Field in Hartford in our brother’s blue station wagon (the “Blue Goose”). We look a little worse for wear, don’t you think? We’d probably been up late celebrating. We were some wild and crazy guys back then.

7 Comments
June 22, 2012

Somewhere over the rainbow

by chuckofish

On this day in 1969 Frances Ethel Gumm, better known as Judy Garland, was found dead in the bathroom of a rented house in Chelsea, England of an “incautious over-dosage of barbiturates”. She was only 47, but she had been working for over 40 years.

On June 26 Garland’s remains were taken to New York City, where an estimated 20,000 people lined up for hours at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan to pay their respects. James Mason gave a eulogy the next day at her funeral, an Episcopal service.

Recently I happened to watch The Wizard of Oz on TCM for the umpteenth time. It really is one of the best movies ever made. Definitely on my Top Ten list. It should have won Best Picture in that year of years 1939, but, of course, it lost to the over-blown and over-esteemed Gone With the Wind. This movie has everything, including a flyover state tornado! Everyone in it is perfect from the smartest, bravest dog ever in movies (Toto) to the Munchkins to Billie Burke as Glinda and Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West to the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman and Cowardly Lion. The sets, the music. And 17-year-old Judy Garland as the brown-eyed Dorothy Gale: Wonderful.

Much has been written about the sad life of Judy Garland and her misbegotten career in Hollywood. She only made about 30 movies, but she will be remembered forever for a handful of really good movies and one great one: The Wizard of Oz. Everyone should own it and watch it once a year. Remember in the old days when they would broadcast it on Thanksgiving night? We looked forward to it every year, and always watched it. For a long time Danny Kaye introduced it and warned people not to adjust their televisions when the screen suddenly turns to color when Dorothy wakes up in Oz. Genius. Of course, we never had a color TV growing up, so our mother had to explain to us what happens in the movie. I never saw it on the big screen–it must have been magical.

Anyway, watching The Wizard of Oz would be a good way to honor the great Judy Garland today. May light perpetual shine upon you, Judy.

6 Comments