Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Hal Ashby!

Hal Ashby's story is one of the great (ie tragic) rise and fall stories of Hollywood.

Born in 1929 in Ogden, Utah and raised as a Mormon, Ashby put his fucked up childhood this way:

"I was... the last of four children. Mom and Dad divorced when I was five or six. Dad killed himself when I was 12. I struggled growing up, like others, totally confused. Married and divorced twice before I made it to 21. Hitchhiked to Los Angeles when I was 17. Had about 50 or 60 jobs up to the time I was working as a Multilith operator at good old Republic Studios."

Ashby parlayed his various jobs at Hollywood studios (he started as a printing press operator at Universal) into being a freelance assistant film editor. While doing this, he made friends with an MGM messenger by the name of Jack Nicholson (who he would later direct in The Last Detail).

Talented, driven and weird, Ashby was soon a full-fledged editor, and it only took until his fourth movie to get his big break: editing Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night.

It's much more exciting edited together.

He won an Academy Award for editing the movie, and three years later he directed his first film, a Beau Bridges vehicle called The Landlord. The next year he released the tender/creepy story of a romance between an incredibly old woman and a teenager -- one of the great love stories of our time: Harold and Maude.

They bang. They bang hard.

Ashby made a number of noted (code for: I haven't seen them) films after Harold and Maude, including Shampoo, a movie about a hairdresser that stars Warren Beatty (the reason I haven't seen it should be fairly evident).

But before the decade was out, he managed to direct one of my very favorite movies, Being There, starring Peter Sellers in his last major role.

The story of a functionally retarded gardener whose generalized ramblings about plants and the seasons are mistaken for profundity, Being There cracked open the world of politics and celebrity in a hilariously bitter way, prodding us to pay attention to content rather than superficial assumptions about who someone is and how they look. The controversial ending (which I dare not give away), remains one of my favorite moments in the movies, since (in my reading of it) it plays the same trick on the audience that so far been played on everyone else in the movie. It's conceit dares you to look through it, and the implication is that if you don't, then you're no better than the dopes you've been snickering at the rest of the movie.

Sadly, Being There marked the effective end for Ashby. Though he had for most of his life been charitably described as an eccentric, he now began the slow slide into madness. Drugs and obsessive behavior began to take their hold. He refused to eat in front of other people. He began to take so long in the editing room several projects were taken away from him so they could be finished.

By the time he had straightened himself out, he was diagnosed with cancer that quickly spread throughout his body. He died on December 27, 1988.

But he left behind a series of totally unique movies (many of which, especially from his 1971-79 phase, I will surely get around to watching), filled with idiosyncratic characters, intelligent concepts and sly humor.

As a parting video, I present this funny scene from Harold and Maude.

Note: If you haven't seen this movie, this is one of Harold's fake suicides, which he stages to try to get a reaction out of his mother.

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Philo T. Farnsworth!

Farnsworth is not particularly remembered today, but he should be. Why? Because that picture up there, of the TV, he's responsible for it.

The TV, I mean. Not the picture.

What I'm trying to say is: Philo T. Farnsworth invented the television as we know it. As in, you know, came up with it.

Pretty cool, huh?

Well, it wasn't quite so cool for Philo, who eventually came to regard the TV as a monster that wasted people's lives (also known as "having fun"). Philo so despised television programming he wouldn't even have one in his house.

Oh, and he died essentially penniless. And is forgotten.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back to the beginning.

Philo Taylor Farnsworth was born in 1906 near Beaver City (in what we can only hope is called Coochie County) Utah. The town had been founded in 1859 by Farnsworth's grandfather on the orders of some person called Brigham Young. I believe they founded a University named after him or something.

When Philo was 12, his family moved to a ranch in Idaho four miles from the nearest school (this seemed a lot farther when even if you had a car -- which the Farnsworth's didn't -- it looked like this). A huge nerd, Philo was fascinated by electrons and electricity, and asked to take extra courses at the school in technology.

Well, that electronic stuff just made sense to ol' Philo. Watching a field being plowed when he was 14, Farnsworth dreamed up the the cold cathode ray tube, a device still in use in many TV's today.

You and I see a corn field. Farnsworth saw television.

Not unlike Doc Brown (who has a hilariously long Wikipedia entry), it took a few years (in this case, seven) before Philo had the money to build one.

Once he built it, he gave it a terrible name: the "Image Dissector." Televisions at the time used mechanical scanning devices known as "Nipkow discs" which were combined with photoelectric cells. Farnsworth's Image Dissector was completely electrical, and by 1929, two years after debuting it, he was making the best TVs on the planet.

Oh, and he was just 23.

Things probably would have ended pretty well for ol' Philo if it hadn't been for a man named David Sarnoff, the head of RCA at the time. Sensing the potential of television, he sent his chief engineer, Vladamir Zworykin, to take a tour of Philo's laboratory.

Impressed by what he saw, Zworykin cheerfully copied Philo's advancements and combined them with a design of his own called the Iconoscope.

Then, as you can probably guess, all hell broke loose.

I won't bore you with the boring details (since I have read them and can confirm they are indeed boring), but it took until 1935 before Farnsworth was awarded "priority of invention" for the electrical TV. Sarnoff and RCA appealed, but were eventually forced to pay Farnsworth $1 million in royalties.

But not for long. The patents for Farnsworth's major advancements expired shortly after WWII (when sales of TVs had been suspended). As soon as they did, RCA took control of the television business, and with a energetic public relations campaign, promoted Sarnoff and Zworykin as the "fathers of television."

Things kind of went downhill from there. Farnsworth began drinking. He suffered from depression. In 1947, his house burned down.

But he kept on inventing. By the time of his death, he held more than 300 patents, helping to create radar, infra-red night vison, air-traffic control systems, the electron microscope, baby incubators, and the astronomical telescope.

Oh, and he invented a process for nuclear fusion. But development went slowly, and when investors started cashing in their loans, Farnsworth went broke and died shortly after of pneumonia at the age of 64.

So there he was, one of God's own prototypes, and I think it's past time we celebrate Philo T. Farnsworth for giving us the opportunity to waste so much time. What would any of us do without him?

Oh, that's right.

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

(Thanks to all of you out there for your patience. After moving and then driving 20 hours across country without a break, I needed a few days off from everything but eating, shitting and sleeping. But now I'm back, and present without delay another entry in my Academy Award winning series on, you know, celebrity birthdays.) 

Happy Birthday, John Landis. 

Man, what the fuck happened to you? You used to be awesome. Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, Coming to America. All great movies. 

Then, uh, something happened, and you started making movies like Beverly Hills Cop III, The Stupids and the monumentally bad Blues Brothers 2000 (the subject of one of my Worst Movies... Ever entries). 

Landis was born in 1950 in Chicago, but grew up primarily in Los Angeles. He got involved in Hollywood as a teenager, beginning as a mail boy at 20th Century Fox. Working on Kelly's Heroes in Yugoslavia in 1969, Landis was promoted to assistant director after the original AD had a complete nervous breakdown and left the set. 

Apparently he didn't do a very good job, because he stayed for several years in Europe, working as everything from a dialogue coach to a stunt double (specializing in horse falls, which is, you know, what they generally have the really talented people do). 

Landis returned to the US in 1971 and made the movie Schlock, which is apparently well named, as it is known as a piece of shit. It took six years before Landis was allowed to direct again, this time turning in The Kentucky Fried Movie, written by Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers, who would later make Airplane!. 

Then things really began to heat up for Landis. His next two movies, 1978's Animal House and 1980's The Blues Brothers, were, you know, awesome. 

In 1982, while directing a segment of The Twilight Zone: The Movie, an explosion mishap on set combined with a helicopter crash resulted in the deaths of actor Vic Morrow (father of actress Jennifer Jason Leigh) and two child actors: Myca Dinh Le and Renee Chin-Yi Chen. Landis was subsequently sued for ignoring child labor laws and negligence, but was eventually acquitted. He later blamed the special FX man, a tactic he probably should have also tried on Beverly Hills Cop III. 

After this, Landis' career became more spotty, as he began to alternate really good movies (Trading Places, Coming to America) with mediocre to shitty movies (Spies Like Us, Three Amigos!). He also began directing humorless Michael Jackson videos like "Thriller" and "Black or White". 

Landis' career decline has never been able to be linked to anything in particular, like for instance brain surgery. But whatever it was, he just started to suck. 

As a result, Landis hasn't made a movie since 1998's Susan's Plan (no, I haven't heard of it either), working instead on TV documentaries and episodes of awesome shows like Honey I Shrunk the Kids: the TV Show. 

Yeah. 

Well, what can you do? Here's hoping Landis can return to making awesome, irreverent movies. But barring that, I'd rather him just not make any more movies at all. It's too painful. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Charlie Steiner!  

In keeping with the "theme" of this blog (click here for our Mission Statement), I generally try to keep the topic focused in one way or another on Hollywood. 

But in the high-volume business of internet blogtasticating, you're forced to break a rule now and then, especially if the rule is kind of stupid and you're the writer of the blog and the one who thought it up anyway. 

So that disclaimer brings us back to the great Charlie Steiner, the longtime ESPN broadcaster most famous not for his hard-hitting journalism, but for laughing uncontrollably pretty much every time he anchored Sportscenter. 

Charlie was born in 1949 in New York City. After graduating from a college I've never heard of, he eventually made his way up the radio ladder until he began work at what was then a piece of shit TV station called ESPN, in 1988. 

This is where he came to my attention, as there was a point in my life where I watched Sportscenter religiously. Charlie Steiner was my favorite anchor of Sportscenter in those days, mostly because, as you can see above, he inadvertently screwed up the show a lot. As a young kid who could barely pick his nose without falling off the couch, I could relate to that. 

Sadly, Charlie left ESPN in 2002 to move into baseball announcing full time, first for the Yankees and now for the Dodgers. And from my perspective, that means he's pretty much dead, since I care less about baseball than I do about the dietary habits of moray eels. 

But before Charlie left ESPN, he starred in some of the most hilarious commercials ever made, the original set of "This is Sportscenter" spots. So, for all you sports fans out there, I leave you with this: 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Herman Munster! 

You know, I hate doing that to Fred Gywnne (the guy who, you know, played Herman Munster). But I just can't help myself. When I think of Fred Gywnne, I think of Herman Munster. I mean, how could you not? 

Sorry, Fred. 

This is perhaps most unfortunate when reflecting on the fact that The Munsters only ran for TWO seasons (frankly, this fact shocked the hell of out of me). Given that Gywnne lived to be 66, this means that his time making The Munsters accounted for only 1.32% of his life. 

Ok, I'm 27 years old. 1.32% of my life accounts for about three and a half months. Thinking back on my life, I calculate this is approximately the amount of time I've spent picking my butt. 

So once again: Sorry, Fred. 

And it's not like Gywnne didn't do anything with the rest of his life. We're talking about a guy who graduated from Harvard and was the president of it's satirical Lampoon magazine (one of those things -- like being drafted in the NFL, I'm sorry I'll never get a chance to do). 

And beyond that, Gywnne served in the US Navy, acted on Broadway, had a recurring role on Car 54, Where Are You? (believe it or not, an actual popular show in the early 60s), The Phil Silvers Show, and acted in a bunch of other shows and movies (the role of the judge in My Cousin Vinny probably being the most famous). He also sang, wrote and painted (though honestly, who doesn't?). 

But The Munsters, yeah. The Munsters live on. Which means, of course, that Fred Gywnne lives on, because as accomplished as he might of been compared to the rest of us insignificant peons, he would still be nothing more than a fond memory to his loved ones if it wasn't for The Munsters (on an audition in 1984 -- 18 years after The Munsters left TV -- for a role on Punky Brewster, an auditioner actually referred to Gwynne as Herman Munster, causing Gwynne to walk out). 

Try as he did, though, Gwynne could never actual bring himself to hate the character, and he died of pancreatic cancer in 1993, shortly after completing work on My Cousin Vinny. 

So yes. The 6'5" Gwynne might have played a simple-minded oaf, but the reality was that he was actually a whip-smart oaf. And whatever sarcastic things you could say about The Munsters (and I could say plenty), there's one indisputable fact: he got to drive the coolest custom car ever featured on a TV show -- The Munster Koach: 

So adios, Fred. I could say a few things about what became of your, you know, career, but I hold back out of respect, and indeed I wish you a safe journey into that (hopefully) Munster-less beyond. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Jessica Hahn!

For those of you who don't remember Jessica Hahn, there are two things it's very important to keep in mind: 

1) Her huge red hair, and 2) Her even-more-huge breasts.  

Pictured: the least slutty picture of Jessica Hahn on the internet.

Oh, and there's that little matter of how she came to the spotlight -- the story of how, while working as a secretary for the TV show The PTL Club, televangelist Jim Bakker either raped her (her story), or, they had a wild night of passion that would even make God say, "Jim, you are the finest sexual beast I have ever created" (his story). 

Now, it would be wrong of me to take sides on this kind of thing. But here are a few facts to keep in mind. 

1) Bakker's church paid Hahn more than $250,000 to keep her story quiet (after the story broke, she was court ordered to pay most of the money back). 

2) Bakker's wife -- ie, a woman we can prove had sex with him consensually -- looked like this.

3) Even if Jessica Hahn had been killed by a robot sent back in time to prevent a human uprising, Bakker would still have had to resign in disgrace for fundraising irregularities, fraud and just generally being an asshole. 

4) After becoming famous, Hahn decided to pose for Playboy and live for a while in the Playboy mansion. 

5) And make 1-900 commercials (like the one above). 

6) And date Sam Kinison, a former preacher turned comedian and hedonist. 

7) And appear in a see-through top at a Howard Stern press conference. 

So what can I say? Jessica Hahn is one of those bizarre 80s spectacles whose story needs to be etched onto a satellite and hurled into space. Hopefully an alien civilization can find it and give us the punishment we so richly deserve. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, America! 

Ah, Independence Day, a movie about aliens that come to Earth to, uh... um. Yeah. I have no idea. I guess they just like shit blowed up.

Fun piece of trivia: The director of ID4, Roland Emmerich, is actually a native of Germany. He also directed the movie The Patriot, a Revolutionary War movie starting revolutionary war movie specialist Mel Gibson. 

Pictured: not a Scottish guy, either. 

But all kidding aside, I've always had a problem with July 4th being known as America's Independence Day. Sure, that's the day we sent off a letter to King George telling him, as Sam Seaborn says on The West Wing, to "bite me, if you please." 

But c'mon. Signing a letter doesn't make you independent. You've got to prove that shit, homey (ask them in South Carolina whether they celebrate December 20th as the Confederate Independence Day), and we didn't do that until Cornwallis sued for peace in Yorktown on October 19th, 1781. 

For me, calling July 4th Independence Day is like saying you've lost your virginity when you tell a girl on a Web cam that you'd really like to screw her. 

Sorry, America. But the proof is in the pudding. We weren't independent until we won, and we didn't win until October 15th. 

But that doesn't mean I hate the 4th. On the contrary, it's probably my favorite holiday, as it combines the three great American traditions: BBQ, booze and explosions. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Gary Busey! 

Full-time crazy person and part-time actor Gary Busey was born in Goose Creek, Texas in 1944, the son of a homemaker and a construction designer who claimed they were descendants of Martian colonists who had settled on Earth in the 1830s (OK, not really. But admit it, you thought it was possible). 

While on football scholarship to perennial powerhouse Pittsburgh State in Pittsburgh, Kansas, Busey became interested in acting, eventually transferring to perennial acting powerhouse Oklahoma State (motto: You Really Must Be Desperate). 

After finding work on television (including being the last person ever killed on Gunsmoke -- episode 300,000), Busey's big break came when, despite looking nothing like him, he landed the part of Buddy Holly in (you guessed it) The Buddy Holly Story (1978). 

Pictured: not Gary Busey

The movie garnered Busey an Academy Award nomination, and was followed by drug abuse (including famously snorting coke off his dog) and a string of fairly uninterrupted shit. The next movie he was in that anybody's heard of was 1987's Lethal Weapon, where, cast hilariously not against type, Busey played a crazy drug person who lights his wrist on fire for fun. 

Shortly after this performance, Busey was nearly killed after crashing his motorcycle. Failing to listen to what his mother had told him a thousand times, Busey wasn't wearing a helmet and smacked his skull on a curb. The resulting hole was about the size of a half dollar, but instead of letting the little demons and creatures crawling around in there out, the injury only made things worse, leading to brain damage and a complete loss of impulse control (a particularly bad condition to have when you're, you know, Gary Busey).  

Shocking, isn't it? He actually made me feel bad for Ryan Seacrest. I didn't think that was possible. 

Anyhow, Busey has somehow continued his pathetic career on the strength of his immense oddness. These days, he'll act in almost anything, from a part as a Jewish-American doctor who harvests organs to sell to rich patients in the Turkish film Valley of the Wolves Iraq, to supplying the voice to the titular character of  The Gingerdead Man, a hilariously bad 2005 horror movie where a psychopathic killer's blood is somehow dumped into a gingerbread mix, rendering the resulting gingerbread man (you guessed it) a psychopathic killer. 

The final battle is one of the most awesomely bad things ever. 

So Happy Birthday, Gary. I, for one, hope to never meet you. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Peter Lorre!

There has never been anyone in the movies quite like Peter Lorre. Born Lazlo Lowenstein in modern day Slovakia in 1904, the 5'5" Lorre carved out a singular niche as a creepy nervous villain -- the kind of guy you expect to find in a room full of scattered body parts. 

In 1933, in only his second movie, Lorre delivered a terrific performance in Fritz Lang's legendary M. Though I must say that in general I find M boring, Lorre is undeniably great in it, playing a creepy childlike child molester and murderer. In the last scene, where he's captured and confronted by the town, Lorre comes completely unhinged, terrified to the point he almost ceases to be human. 

Lorre fled the Nazis and moved to Hollywood in the late 1930s, eventually landing supporting roles in some of the best movies ever made (The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca) and some of the worst (Muscle Beach Party). Lorre was quickly teamed with 300-pound Sydney Greenstreet, a man so huge and evil looking his appearance was the original inspiration for the look of Jabba the Hutt (early on, Jabba wore a fez, the same way Greenstreet does in Casablanca). Appearing together in nine movies, Lorre and Greenstreet proved one of the great Bad Guy/Henchman combinations in movie history -- a kind of Laurel and Hardy, only sinister. 

Though he was at one point labeled by Charlie Chaplin the "greatest living actor" (presumably, while he was still alive), Lorre was typecast as a villain (co-starring in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a benign scientist, Lorre said that the octopus who attacks the ship had gotten the part usually reserved for him). Combined with health problems that eventually descended into an addiction to morphine and weight gain, this typecasting led to career decline after WWII. 

Lorre kept his sense of humor, however. Called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and report on anyone suspicious he had met since arriving in the United States, Lorre simply wrote down everyone he had ever met -- hundreds of names . Lorre also attended the funeral of former co-star Bela Lugosi in 1956. Upon seeing Lugosi was to be buried in his Dracula costume, Lorre turned to fellow attendee Boris Karloff and said, "do you think we should stab him in the heart, just in case?"  

Plagued by gall bladder difficulties and in generally bad health, Lorre died in 1964 of a stroke. Personally, I'll always remember him in Casablaca as the amoral Ugarte. 

Very Important News: 

"So, it turns out Michael Jackson didn't die of a heart attack. They say now it was food poisoning. Yeah, apparently they found 12-year-old nuts in his mouth." 

I'll admit that when told this by someone in a serious tone of voice, it took me several seconds to realize it was a joke. 

The identity of that person? 

You guessed it: Frank Stallone. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Errol Flynn! 

Known to most of the world as a non-jackass version of Robin Hood, Flynn gets mention on this blog not for his professional life (which was hilariously mediocre), but rather for being one of the most ridiculous men to ever live. 

Allow me to explain....

Born in 1909 in Australia, Flynn was the son of Theodore and Lily Flynn, a lecturer and (according to Wikipedia) a person not related to mutineers, respectively. 

Confused by this, the young Flynn quickly made a name for himself, getting kicked out of one school for fighting, and another for fighting and having sex (presumably not at the same time, though you never know).   

Whatever it was, by age 20 Flynn was already cooler than any of us could ever hope to be, and he eventually moved to New Guinea, where he tried his hand in the tobacco and copper mining businesses. However, since neither of these industries required his skills -- to be demonstrated later -- in extreme laziness and/or ability to seduce very young women, he failed. 

By the early 1930s, Flynn had moved to England, where not being able to find a respectable job, he began acting. Appearing first in pieces of shit, he eventually landed a starring role in Captain Blood (1935), a movie about a doctor who's falsely accused of being a pirate, and then, after thinking about it for a while, decides he doesn't mind being a pirate after all. Along the way, he stabs Basil Rathbone to death. 

The movie was an international smash hit (though having seen it, I can't imagine why), and Flynn quickly decided to take advantage of his newfound stardom by drinking and screwing young girls a lot. 

Shockingly, this behavior eventually caught up to Flynn when two (2!) underage girls accused Flynn of statutory rape in 1942. By then the hugely famous star of The Adventures of Robin Hood, Flynn found himself supported by groups like the American Boy's Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF), whose members began each meeting by imagining what Flynn's life was like and then fervently masturbating to it. 

In a trial that would have made the O.J. circus look like getting a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast, Flynn -- represented by superstar attorney Jerry Giesler -- was acquitted on all charges by the mostly-female jury, who were famously reduced to giddy laughter by his dashing, molester testimony. His ability to get away scot free (by claiming in part that the underage girls weren't "raped" because, after all, they totally wanted to do him) proved the origin of the phrase "In like Flynn" (from the Latin meaning "rapes teenagers and gets away with it"). 

Flynn, for his part, spent most of the trial flirting with an 18-year-old named Nora Eddington, who worked at a snack bar in the courthouse (he eventually married her, proving my long held theory: Nora Eddington was dumber than a tree stump). 

A famous alcoholic and hedonist, Flynn quickly ruined his looks and his health. Irritated with being given boring "swashbuckler" roles but unwilling to do anything strenuous about it, he eventually descended into relative professional obscurity. Banned from drinking on set on his later, crappier movies, he started injecting oranges with vodka and eating them between takes. 

Confronted about his ridiculous lifestyle, Flynn let everyone know exactly what his plan was: 

"I intend to the live the first half of my life. I don't care about the rest."  

After his totally unexpected divorce from Nora Addington, Flynn began dating 15-year-old Beverly Aadland, telling her he totally loved her and planned to marry her, though he almost certainly knew -- approaching age 50 and suffering from an enlarged heart -- that he was about to drop dead. 

Which of course he did, of a heart attack, less than four months after his 50th birthday. After the autopsy, the medical examiner said Flynn had the body of a 75-year-old man (which makes his relationship with Beverly Aadland that much creepier). 

Flynn's autobiography, originally titled In Like Me, but eventually released with the title My Wicked, Wicked Ways, was published posthumously. It's theme was captured in Flynn's last words: 

"I've had a hell of a lot of fun and enjoyed every minute of it." 

Apparently Flynn's friends agreed. They buried him with six bottles of whiskey. And a 16-year-old girl. 

You know, for good luck. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Basil Rathbone! 

Born in South Africa in 1892, Rathbone's given name was actually the even more hilarious Philip St. John Basil Rathbone. After serving England in World War 1, Rathbone became an actor, eventually becoming one of the great snits of the cinema, playing suave pussies almost exclusively. 

Being incredibly British, Rathbone also had a passion for fencing, which, when combined with his habit of playing bad guys, led to him being stabbed to death at the climax of many, many movies. 

In his long career, Rathbone would be stabbed countless times, including twice by Errol Flynn, despite the fact that Flynn could apparently only barely fence, preferring instead to screw teenagers. 

Attempting to spend a little less time on screen being a douche, Rathbone eventually took on the role of Sherlock Holmes in 1939's The Hound of the Baskervilles. The film was a success, to the point where he made 13 other Holmes films over the next six years. 

Somehow, this led to Rathbone being typecast as Holmes, which he came to resent (editor's note: tough shit). This amazing and completely unpredictable typecasting eventually led to a somewhat dimished career, as shown in this depressing video: 

So Happy Birthday to ya, Basil. Thanks for getting stabbed all those times. We had fun watching it. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Jurgen Prochnow! 

Look at you, you crazy Kraut! You're intense!

(pictured: Jurgen Prochnow smiling) 

Jurgen is quite possibly the most German man ever. He was born in Berlin. In 1941. Among his hobbies, he lists weight lifting. He has a brother named -- I shit you not -- Dieter (who may or may not like to touch monkeys). He has portrayed Kaiser Willhelm II, as well as characters named Gerhardt Dach, Klaus Woermann, and Mann am Stammtisch.

And, well, he's been in a few famous movies, too. You might remember him from such films as Beverly Hills Cop 2 (villain), Beerfest (villain), and Air Force One (villain). 

Oh, and he was also in Das Boot (literally, "the boot"), though I've never seen that. I'm pretty sure he was the captain, but I'll just assume the plot of the movie involves some kind of wacky scheme using alphabetized, terrorist beer to restore himself to power, only it doesn't work and he gets shot or something. Anyway, it sounds awesome! It's kind of a long movie, though, but the next time I have three or four days to spare, I'll definitely get on it!

So Happy Birthday, Jurgen. I see among your recent credits an episode of the TV show "Nachschicht" where you play a character named Friedrich Otto Winterstein. On behalf on everyone at Hollywood Humiliation let me just say: way to step out of your comfort zone. 

Celebrity Birthay Honorable Mention: 18th Century British politician James Cragg the Elder. This crooked politician made himself a fortune abusing his power and died in disgrace a month after his son -- the conveniently named James Cragg the Younger -- was born. 

A Question I Have About This: So... they're saying he's known as James Cragg the Older now, right? Not then? I mean, he died right after his son was born, so there's no way anyone calls him James Cragg the Elder until there's a James Cragg the Younger. To his friends, James Cragg the Elder was, you know, just Jim or Jimmy. Or even Jimbarino, if they weren't into the whole brevity thing. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Alex Mack! 

Err... I mean, Larisa Oleynick!

We all remember you, Larisa! You had that show, The Secret World of Alex Mack. 

And then, well, you disappeared! Maybe it was a side effect of getting that "weird chemical" dumped on you. For a while, sure, it must have been fun having all those powers, because after all, getting cool powers like telekinesis is usually what happens when people get weird chemicals dumped on them. 

Well, not really. But who would watch a show called The Horrible World of Chemical Burn Victim Alex Mack, right?

But now I get it. Yes. You probably developed cancer. I mean, let's face it, that "weird chemical" was probably radioactive waste. That's the only thing that could explain you getting those powers, and then cancer. Really, I've seen it in the movies before! But don't feel so bad. It wasn't your fault. The armored van they put that barrel of radioactive waste in was so crappy it's door wasn't built to withstand the shock of running over a curb and a fire hydrant. So, you know, I suppose it's a good thing they decided to drive it down a suburban street. 

But maybe you didn't get cancer. Maybe you just decided to disappear as a way of getting off your crappy show. I suppose that's better than what usually happens to the victims of radioactive waste in Hollywood -- becoming huge and menacing all of mankind. 

So Happy Birthday, Larisa. You'll show up again soon, breathing fire and withstanding the combined efforts of the world's military forces, only to be brought down by a lone scientist no one believes in. I've seen that one before, too. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

So my original plan was to break this thing up. After all, more happens everyday than just the birthdays of obscurely famous people. For instance, it's Canary Islands Day in, you guessed it, the Canary Islands. It's also the 155th anniversary of the Kansas/Nebraska Act, the passing of which helped usher in that most hilarious of all American chapters, the Civil War. 

But no. We won't have any of that today. And in fact, I'm even going to repeat myself a bit. Why? Because today is the birthday of another voice actor, the best and most famous of them all, the "man of a thousand voices." 

Mel Blanc. 

As a huge fan of Looney Tunes, I am, of course, a huge fan of Blanc's. Here he is on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, doing a few of his famous voices. 

It's particularly odd watching him do the goldfish, given that with those huge googly eyes and perfectly round head, he almost looks like a goldfish. Anyhow, the man did more than 400 voices in more than 5,000 cartoons. And by the looks of it, some medical student appears to have been interested enough in how he did it to peer down the man's throat with a camera. The result: 

Creepy. Anyhow, no snarky remarks. I love Mel Blanc. What a joy it must have been to have so pure and clear a purpose and life. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard!

Your name is awesome, and incredibly French sounding! Also, you fought for the South! In the Civil War! Those hicks must have thought you were quite a twee little bastard. 

But don't let that get you down. You have a pretty cool mustache. And also this guy, who has a creepy and irrational love for you: 

Fun Fact: If you turned that off part-way through, I wouldn't blame you. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Joe Alaskey!

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Jim Mora! You are 73. That is quite old! 

Fun Fact: The Colts actually made the playoffs that year.

Okay. Not really. 

Fun Fact 2: Mora has never won a playoff game as a head coach unless the team was made of plastic and competing in his bathtub.