Not you, silly. Me! Well actually…my birthday isn’t until 25 August, but I was reminded of it this morning.

In my Boston University doctoral class, I had to make some comments about Leonard Bernstein, likely the most prolific and famous of all American composers of the 20th century, having written music not only for choirs and orchestras, but for the movies as well (West Side Story, On the Town, and others). Anyway, I remembered that Bernstein and I share a birthday, and it got me to wondering something of extreme import:

Who else has a birthday on 25 August? I must know. So I looked, and found an interesting mix of the ridiculous and the sublime…

Well, to start with, there’s Sean Connery. Not bad. Bernstein and Connery – and Rat Fink. Nice.

Then there’s Tim Burton, director of Sweeney Todd, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (see a pattern here? Heh.) and others.

Then there are the obligatory non-descripts I must mention: model Claudia Schiffer, actor Blair Underwood, and singer Elvis Costello (Did you know he was married to jazz singer Diana Krall? She reminds me somewhat of a young Lauren Bacall.).

Rounding out the list is celebrity cook Rachael Ray, talk show host Regis Philbin, singer Billy Ray Cyrus, and yay – how about this?

Monty Hall from Let’s Make a Deal! My sister and I always watched this show back in the olden days. I loved it. After earning his/her way to the final scene, a player would choose “door number one, door number two, or door number three.” Do you get a trip to Las Vegas, or a plastic piggy bank with 10 cents in it? Did you win a new car, or a goat for your back yard mowing? It was also the subject of endless scrutiny and arguments by mathematical statisticians on what the element of “randomness” suggested. I just thought it was good entertainment. Apparently, the producers of today’s Deal or No Deal agreed, because its premise is almost identical.

Then there’s the baddy. Gene Simmons of Kiss fame. Ugh. He gets no love from the Fink, because he’s an arrogant, misogynistic bag of pretentious, ugly slop. Barf.

Anyway, now you try it. Who’s got yer birthday?

….by reading the Fink?

As just about everyone knows by now, I have a hobby. Some people ski or knit or do woodworking or play Texas Hold ‘Em. My hobby is research. I’m a bona fide philomath. An info droid. A fact junkie. Geeky McGeekleman. I am, as my son jokingly calls me, the Queen of Useless Information.

Some unbelievable stuff happened in March, historically. Did you know that? Looky:

1968 – A group of American soldiers murdered 504 Vietnamese men, women and children in the village of My Lai. Although a military trial was mounted, not one of the 25 officers charged with the killings (and the subsequent cover-up) ever served a day in jail. This account of the My Lai Massacre will blow your mind.

1874 – Magician and escape artist Harry Houdini was born in Hungary. (Real name: Erich Weiss.) In 1926, a young man punched him in the stomach (a trick Houdini often played with people on the street to show he couldn’t be harmed by enormous blows to the abdomen), but Houdini was taken by surprise by the student and didn’t have time to tighten his muscles. His appendix exploded and he died a few days later, on Halloween.

1972 – The Watergate scandal broke in the Washington Post. It simultaneously ended the career of president Richard Nixon and propelled reporters Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward to superstardom.

2003 – The war in Iraq began when US troops crushed the regime of Saddam Hussein. (Has it really been that long?)

1977 – Two 747 jets collided on a foggy runway on the Canary island of Tenerife. Over 500 people died, making it the single worst crash in aviation history.

RF, canceling those plane reservations.