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IN MY BELLY, NATURALLY!
Happy National Tortilla Chip Day! Meredith and I started celebrating early when I whipped up some loaded nachos for dinner last weekend. Interested parties should reply to this email to request a pic of that epic platter, but I can't be held responsible if seeing it leads to the ruination of any carb-related New Year's resolutions that are still persisting.
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Today's famous birthday boys/girls/persons are as follows:
• Writer and anthropologist Wilhelm Karl Grimm, born this day in 1786! Wilhelm was one half of the literary duo that brought us the famed compilation Grimms' Fairy Tales. Thanks for the nightmares, Bill!
• Actor Abraham Charles "Abe" Vigoda, born this day in 1921! The son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Mr. Vigoda studied acting in college thanks to the G.I. Bill upon returning from active military service during World War II. Key roles: Salvatore Tessio in The Godfather, Phil Fish in police sitcom Barney Miller and its spinoff Fish, and assorted random cameos as himself on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Abe was also the subject of countless celebrity death hoaxes from 1982, which became a running joke on late night talkshows until his actual passing in 2016.
• Actor, producer, director, and activist Edward James Olmos, born this day in 1947! Mr. Olmos has an extensive filmography, including appearances in Miami Vice (the original), Battlestar Galactica (the remake), Blade Runner (both original AND the 2049 sequel), and Stand and Deliver. Fun fact: one of the students of high school math teacher Jaime Escalante, whom Edward played in Stand and Deliver, was Sergio Valdez. Mr. Valdez is currently an engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and helped lead a team that was part of the Perseverance rover project that just landed on Mars last week. Cool!
• Apple co-founder and CEO Steven Paul Jobs, born this day in 1955! Even if you've never owned an Apple product in your life, Jobs' expertise as an industrial designer influenced a lot of modern technology over the decades, from personal computers that could fit on a desk, mass-use of computer mice instead of keystroke commands, smartphones, and laying the groundwork for those wonderful Pixar movies we've all been enjoying over the last 25 years.
• Comedian Mitchell Lee Hedberg, born this day in 1968! Though his predilection for hard drugs ended up cutting his life short, his deadpan delivery of non sequiturs, one-liners, surreal scenarios, and use of wordplay still never fails to elicit a giggle or ten out of me.
OK, OK...you've waited long enough. It's link time!
1. Artist Valeriano Fatica can't stop cutting the cheese!
OK, so maybe "chiseling" is the better verb to use here, but I couldn't resist. Fatica has made a name for himself by demonstrating his sculptural prowess on unconventional materials, including coffee beans, fruits, and cheese.
2. WoofBowl — a food truck for pups!
On the one hand, any opportunity to admire happy pups is one we should relish. On the other hand, indulgent weirdness like this is probably why the rest of the world hates us.
This is both adorable AND depressing AND relatable AND I want so much more of it in my eyeballs.
4. This is kind of an oldie, but it's DEFINITELY a goodie!
Way back in 2015 we met some puppeteers who were trying to get a live action show featuring a guy and his shark roommate made. This was the unaired pilot, and it STILL cracks us up; why it never got picked up for a full season is beyond me. Guess it was just ahead of its time. I know it's not exactly new, but it was a struggle to find five links to uplifting content this week, between the humanitarian crisis in Texas and the grim pandemic milestone we just passed. Watch this, chuckle, and for goodness' sake stay home and wear a damn mask!
Certainly there's nothing wrong with a little shameless self-promotion amongst friends?
ASKING FOR A FRIEND (IT ME...I'M THE FRIEND)
Happy Random Act of Kindness Day! I suppose I'm already well on my way as far as celebrating goes by sharing all the fun links below with you free of charge, but then I also acknowledge that it's hardly random, as I imagine it's come to be expected of our Wednesday emails at this point. Oh, well. Guess we'll just have to settle for habitual kindness instead.
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Today's famous birthday boys/girls/persons are as follows:
• Actor Lou Diamond Phillips, born this day in 1962! Sure, he may be best-known for roles in "serious" films like La Bamba, Stand and Deliver, and Young Guns I & II, but in my humble opinion the two best movies he's ever graced with his presence are the imaginatively-titled Bats — because who doesn't love watching millions of CGI bats terrorize a small Texas town? — and Demon Wind (uncredited), which is pretty much without peer as far as low-budget straight-to-VHS horror movies about backwoods demonic infestations go.
• Basketball player of some note Michael Jeffrey Jordan, born this day in 1963! Mr. Jordan is a 6x NBA champion, 6x NBA Finals MVP, 5x NBA MVP, 14x NBA All-Star, and 2x Olympic gold medalist. Best not to look at his baseball stats, though...
• Actress Denise Richards, born this day in 1971! Sure, Ms. Richards may have made a name for herself in 90s blockbusters like Starship Troopers, Wild Things, and The World Is Not Enough, but all the cool kids know that her best film is 1994 black comedy sci-fi horror Tammy & The T-Rex. It's a classic tale of boy meets girl, boy gets brutalized and left for dead by girl's psychotic ex, boy's brain is transplanted into animatronic tyrannosaurus rex by mad scientist (played by Bernie from Weekend At Bernie's, naturally), boy/rex goes on vengeful stomping/chomping killing spree, only to be reunited with girl at the end of the movie as a disembodied brain to live happily ever after. You know — the stuff of TRUE ROMANCE.
• Aging punk Billie Joe Armstrong, born this day in 1972! Mr. Armstrong continues to churn out pop-punk nuggets as the lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter of Green Day.
• Actor Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt, born this day in 1981! One of the few former child stars — A River Runs Through It, Angels in the Outfield, 3rd Rock from the Sun — to successfully transition to adult stardom — 50/50, (500) Days of Summer, Don Juan, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, etc.
OK, OK...you've waited long enough. It's link time!
Normally this sort of whimsical, tiny home, goat-owning vagabond stuff grates on my nerves, but every day that goes by I get one step closer to just packing it in and fleeing to the desert to live among the bats, scorpions, and lizards. So while I loathe it, I also kinda get it and am not-so-secretly jealous.
Tom Bob documents his brightly-colored re-imaginings of sewer covers, ventilation grates, drain pipes, and more on Instagram, and they're lovely!
3. This website helps those of us pining for the good ol' days.
And by "good ol' days" I mean "back when we gathered mask-less indoors and paid folks to make and bring us fancy delicious adult beverages." I Miss My Bar pairs a great playlist with sliders that allow users to adjust ambient bar noise to their desired volume level as a way to simulate being in a bar. Will it replace the real thing? No. But will it (briefly) trick you into believing that you're wearing something other than sweatpants while you knock back that sad excuse for a cocktail on your couch? Maybe!
You are? Well you're in luck, then! Dark Corners Reviews on YouTube recently released a super-cut of the ten best stop-motion monsters that horror/sci-fi/fantasy legend Ray Harryhausen ever created!
Video editor Khalid Shahin and his sister Jameelah did whatever the video editing version of crate-digging is and found the perfect Beavis voiceover tracks to pair with scenes from late-80s cartoon The Legend of Zelda. I think you'll agree with me that moving forward you will only ever hear Beavis's voice when you see Link speak.
Boredwalk Community: Flipping the Bird to Imperialist Monuments
1. What's your actual day job and what's your dream day job?
I’m a part-time performer (music, poetry, comedy), part-time youth mentor (performing/creative arts), and a part-time manager at a used bookstore. Pretty much a retail grunt that gets to do some cool stuff on the side. All in all, not a bad lot.
My dream jobs have always been English Lit Teacher (corny, I know, but I’m a masochist) and Magician/Comedian/Clown, sort of like The Amazing Johnathan but without all the rampant later-in-life drug binges (also corny, sure, but also, I suppose, because I’m a masochist).
2. What keeps you up at night?
I don’t know, I guess the muffled screams I hold inside as I lie there, wondering if death will sweep in during the night and take me while I slumber, like an idiot, oblivious to the reaper’s touch?
That or the sound of my ceiling fan. It makes this weird noise that sounds like a kid with metal teeth trying to tell me something in a language I can’t understand; I like the cool air while I sleep, though, so I leave it on.
3. If you could have any super power what would it be and why?
Well, I’m definitely not one of those sickos who’d choose invisibility, so I’d have to say invulnerability or, more specifically, immortality — so I could watch all other life eventually grind to a halt as the stars flicker out and see the heat death of the universe as it brings me, eventually, the peace of infinite quiet.
AHEM, I mean, flight, right? Everybody wants to fly.
4. You can curse your nemesis with a minor annoyance for eternity; what do you choose?
Ohhh, this is a good one and I have an UNHEALTHY amount of ideas, but the one I’m going to settle on here is…
Any time they press the button to unlock their car door, they accidentally press the button to lock it right as they’re about to pull the handle, so it doesn’t open — their hand yanks from the handle all stupid like and it hurts a little. (Ed. note: the specificity and relative innocuousness of this is oddly soothing.)
5. What experience do you most want to cross off your bucket list?
I want to take a photo flipping the bird to all dated, racist, and imperialist monuments in the US.
I’ve got about half a dozen under my belt, including the Washington Monument, the IMF, and the White House (and let me tell you, LOTS of the people walking by did NOT like what I was doing with my trip to DC, lol).
what I was doing with my trip to DC, lol).
6. What's the most useful piece of advice you've ever received?
I didn’t receive it directly, but I got a lot of great advice from the books I read. Something that has long remained at the forefront of my mind, though, is the sentiment from Kurt Vonnegut:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
7. What is a surprising fact about you?
I don’t know, hmm, that I’m 37 years old, maybe? Most people don’t think I look as old as I am and, while that feels like it should always be a good thing, it’s sometimes kind of annoying! Ha!
It’s also strange to look at myself in the mirror and know I’m closer to the natural end of my life than I might appear to be. I guess it’s difficult to think of what about me is surprising, since I’m kind of frighteningly transparent, lol.
8. Clear up a misconception (about your job, where you are from, some other topic you know a lot about).
I’m a huge advocate for comics and poetry, so a misconception shared by the two that I often find myself positioned against is that they are narrow mediums; that comics are all superheroes and kid stuff, that poetry is either stuffy and academic or nothing more than unsuccessfully-pithy Instagram posts —
Both so varied and wide and sweeping that I believe everyone can connect to something in those mediums, if they’re just introduced to it. Comics are everything from drama to sci-fi, memoir to journalism, comedy to educational. Poetry is as diverse as language and can be found everywhere: in the songs we love and, probably, in the notebooks of your friends that keep their notebooks hidden.
I’m all over social media and way more active on the internet than I probably should be, but I’m @smokerbuddy (Instagram and Twitter), MondernLit on YouTube, and Melchor Sahagun III (Facebook). I post performances and original work, info for events I host, radical left observations about the state of our country, and lots of jokes that I hope are funny.
Find me, friend me, let me annoy you, whatever works!