Today is the 81st birthday of the congressman Barney Frank. The world is a better place because he is in it.

Today is the 149th birthday of the ballet dancer and founder of Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev. To be able to see those performances in the 1920s Paris with collaborations between Debussy, Matisse, Miró, Picasso and Stravinsky. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

Thirty-two years ago today, the film Heathers premiered. I have seen this film more times than I can even guess, I know every single line of dialogue. It You have to watch this film.

Sixty-one years ago today, the film Please Don’t Eat The Daisies premiered. It is a hilarious feel-good Doris Day film at the height of the mid-century coolness. You have to see this film.

Today is the 168th birthday of the artist Vincent van Gogh. My first exposure to him was through a monthly calendar that my mom gave me as a kid. I used to buy postcards of his work and use them as bookmarks. I still stumble across them now and then inside old books. Later, I ‘discovered’ his earlier skull series and they replaced the sunflowers as my favorites. If you get a chance, there is a series on Netflix called “Raiders of the Lost Art” episode 3 titled “van Gogh’s Guardian.” It focuses on his sister-in-law, her dedication to his art after his death, and her brilliant and deliberate distribution of his art that has made him the famous artist that he is today. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

Today is the 103rd birthday of the entertainer Pearl Bailey. My family and I saw her perform in Disneyland in 1981. She left behind an impressive amount of work. The world is a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss that she has left.

Sixty-two years ago today, the film Some Like It Hot premiered. It’s got everything: jazz music, mobsters, trains, cross-dressing, Marilyn Monroe. This movie is considered one of the very best comedy films of all time and for good reason, it is hilariously written Dna directed by Billy Wilder. I am pretty sure this is another film my mother showed to us for the first time, maybe when it was on PBS. You need to see this film.

Today is the 114th birthday of Swifty Lazar.  I am a sucker for a person in a pair of gigantic glasses (think of Iris Apfel (minus the MAGA hat) and Carrie Donovan) and in a strange turn of events, my original post about Swifty is the most-visited post I have ever had.  This is all due to the Howard Stern Show mentioning him and his glasses and linking to my blog from their blog for visual reference. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

This episode is also available as a blog post.

Today is the 116th birthday of the zoologist Marlin Perkins. I remembered watching his show every Sunday and falling in love with giraffes. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

This episode is also available as a blog post.

Thirty-five years ago, the film Rad premiered. It has a huge discrepancy between critic reviews and fan reception. The critics hated it and after it was released on VHS and Laser Disc in 1986, it stayed in the top-ten rental charts for the next two years. It is not great or even good, but it is very 80s and spoke to a specific group of kids at that time. It is available on various streaming services and you can even listen to the soundtrack on iTunes.