Yearly Archive: 2008

So say the NY Daily News and AHN.(With Beyoncé as Ginger!)Jossip helpfully suggests Christopher Walken as The Millionaire.

“The hamster has to run flat out for 45 minutes to shred one sheet of A4 paper.”Reports The Daily Telegram.

MTV suggests new names for Bristol Palin’s baby.

Energy Secretary nominee Steven Chu is Who2’s 3300th profile. His profile went live yesterday.More about this amazing man in a later blog post.

We’re getting lots of searches for actress Rebecca Romijn the last few days… presumably looking for this video.That’s her real-life husband, Jerry O’Connell, playing Mr. Romijn.

Who2 often gets letters meant for celebrities. Jesse Jackson and The Jonas Brothers seem to be favorites, but by far the greatest number of letters come in for Oprah.

Lots of people are talking about the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial on February 12th. But you don’t hear much about today being the 200th birthday of Andrew Johnson.(Well, there will be a cake at a Greenville shopping center.)

“I think we’ll all be glad when there’s no special interest in that restroom.”So says the PR man for the Minneapolis Airport. “One person had offered to buy the restroom stall for $5,000, Hogan said, but airport officials ‘don’t sell fixtures for novelty purposes.'”

Eric Mangini fired as coach of the New York Jets after three seasons.

Zorthian agreed to teach Feynman to draw, and Feynman agreed to teach Zorthian physics. The scientific instruction did not continue long, but Zorthian’s influences on Feynman led to the physicist’s life-long involvement in art making.One of 2008’s more interesting art displays: the Pasadena Armory Center’s exhibition on the art of physicist Richard Feynman, as influenced by muralist Jirayr Zorthian.

The world’s timekeepers are adding one extra second to 2008 — Wednesday at 11:59:59 PM in London, 6:59:59 pm in New York — “to help match clocks to the Earth’s slowing spin on its axis.”What will you do with that precious extra second?

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bündchen are engaged yet again. Fox Sports has decreed it.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as ‘low intensity conflict’. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom.

Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong has announced that his girlfriend, Anna Hansen, is expecting a child in June of 2009.

We’ve just posted a new profile of Timothy Geithner, nominee for Secretary of the Treasury under Barack Obama.Trivia tidbit: Both were born in August of 1961. Geithner on the 18th and Obama on the 4th.

So says Obama.He could have dunked on James Madison, at least.

After our earlier puzzlement over the birth name of Madeleine Albright, we wrote to the offices of her consulting firm, The Albright Group, asking for help.That letter has now been answered politely by Jen Friedman, director of communications. She writes:

A hooded burglar stole $2 million in jewels from Paris Hilton’s bedroom on Friday morning.Luckily, when the burglars broke in at 5 a.m., Paris wasn’t home.

We’ve just had an interesting exchange with Who2 reader Martin Bennett about the birth name of baseball legend Willie Mays. We had it listed as William Howard Mays, Jr., but Mr. Bennett wrote:Willie Mays was my boyhood hero and remains my all-time fave, so I’m writing this kind of in defense of him. You have his real first name as William… [but] he was actually named Willie (Howard Mays Jr.), not William.Upon further review, we think Mr. Bennett is right.

But if [George had] hung out for a while, had a few drinks in the Indian Club, dropped a couple dimes in the dance hall, maybe checked out the action at the burlesque, he would have gotten a whole new take on the situation. Pottersville has its problems… but compared to the snooze-inducing Bedford Falls, it jumps.Why Pottersville beats Bedford Falls in It’s A Wonderful Life.

…Emily Brontë, you one-novel-writing genius!

Mark Felt, the Watergate informant known as “Deep Throat” who helped uncover the lies and lawbreaking of Richard M. Nixon, has died. “Secret Tips Toppled Presidency” is how The Washington Post subheads its six-page obituary. The Post also has awesome Watergate story archives.

Best description yet of the hair of Rod Blagojevich.

Quite a story from ESPN about Julius Erving and tennis pro Alexandra Stevenson — his daughter from an affair with a sportswriter in the 1970s.

Is it Jerry Lewis’s Auschwitz tale The Day The Clown Cried? Or Sylvester Stallone’s planned biopic of Edgar Allan Poe?The Guardian adds ’em up.

Boy, this new Will Smith movie, Seven Pounds. The trailer surely is one of the more unsatisfying promos of 2008. And the title ain’t much help.Now I read the review and I still can’t tell what’s going on.

“Obama emerges as a liberal Reagan who can reunite America.” (Andrew Sullivan)”The similarities between Carter and Obama are considerable.” (NYO)”…arouses memories of a liberal Democratic president whom conservatives remember all too well — Woodrow Wilson.” (Human Events)From Bus Your Own Tray (via Wonkette).

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Voiced by Canadians, filmed in Japan.So popular there, they put his nose on the flag!

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of an American political dynasty, has decided to pursue the United States Senate seat being vacated by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. The decision came after a series of deeply personal and political conversations, in which Ms.

A warm-hearted revue by David Perdue.How else would we know that Charles Dickens “had more influence on the way that we celebrate Christmas today than any single individual in human history except one”? Or that Tiny Tim probably had a kidney disease that made his blood too acidic? Or that Ebenezer Scrooge has been played by both Mister Magoo and Scrooge McDuck?

Shrek the Musical.Broadway’s getting a “make-ogre.” Har.

Earlier we met the designer of the Obama campaign logo.Now here are the logo rejects.

The angel Gabriel is our newest profile, courtesy of editor Hans Holznagel. One surprising revelation: Gabriel had no trumpet.

Forget Poland — President Bush isn’t getting much love in Iraq, either.[Update: Shoe-tossin’ video from the BBC.]

Not much love for President Bush at UN climate change talks in Poland…Asked to sum up Bush’s record on the issue, France’s climate ambassador Brice Lalonde chose instead to pass on a story he had heard.A man comes to the White House asking to see Bush. “He doesn’t live here anymore,” he is told. The next two days he comes again asking the same question, and receiving the same answer.

That’s the wonderful title of a poem by Amiri Baraka, just profiled by Beat Poet Desk editor Paul Hehn.Baraka is a Marxist, an academic, the former poet laureate of New Jersey, and “has been railing against The Man his entire career, in university classrooms and in essays, poems and plays.”

Editor Paul Hehn, at the Hollywood Brunette Desk, points out our profile of Gretchen Mol, who played the late Bettie Page in the 2005 movie The Notorious Bettie Page.Here’s a shot of Mol as Paige:

“At three o’clock the following morning, on April 22, 1923, Edna gave birth to a baby girl. They named the child Betty Mae Page according to her birth certificate, but when she became old enough to write, the spelling changed to Bettie.”Notes on the birth name of pinup model Bettie Page, from Richard Foster’s 2005 book The Real Bettie Page.

Jolly old elf Santa has been ahead of steady reader favorite Shakespeare all month on our popularity list.No big surprise in late December, but Santa is showing early strength this year; normally he moves into the top five in the last week before Christmas.

Raven-haired pinup queen Bettie Page has died age age 85. Pneumonia, alas.Here’s a memorial video from the way-back machine. Good luck to you Ms. Page, wherever you are.

He has turned 65.That 1943 list has some surprising names: Arthur Ashe? Bobby Fischer?Janis Joplin died 38 years ago, and she’d still be only 65 this year?

Later on November 7, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH discussed the open Senate seat in a three-way call with JOHN HARRIS and Advisor B, a Washington D.C.-based consultant. ROD BLAGOJEVICH indicated in the call that if he was appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services by the President-elect, then ROD BLAGOJEVICH would appoint Senate Candidate 1 to the open Senate seat. HARRIS stated “we wanted our ask to be reasonable and rather than… make it look like some sort of selfish grab for a quid pro quo.”

Are you kidding? Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested at his house by the FBI this morning, possibly in his pajamas, at 6:15 am.The charge: Plotting to sell the state’s U.S. senate seat to the highest bidder. (That’s the seat being vacated by Barack Obama. Blagojevich has total power to appoint Obama’s successor.)

There’s just something funny about this photo series of Emma Watson, Dustin Hoffman, and a giant felt mouse.

Oscar De La Hoya, age 35, got clobbered over the weekend.

Rock god Jim Morrison wouldabeen hitting retirement age today at 65, and comedian Sam Kinison wouldabeen 55 today, if both hadn’t died young.

In her long, silent years at the Milstein Building at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital, and then at a nursing home on the Upper East Side, doctors said Mrs. von Bülow never showed any signs of brain activity; she was fed through a tube in her stomach. Yet there were always fresh flowers in her room, and photographs of her children and grandchildren sat on a bedside table.Good heavens: Sunny von Bülow has died in Manhattan at age 76.

Meg Guroff of Washington, D.C. has alerted us to her excellent site, Power Moby-Dick, which we’ve now linked from our own Moby-Dick profile.Power Moby-Dick adds helpful definitions and notes right alongside the full text of the book. So next to the famous opening, “Call me Ishmael,” we have the comment “Ishmael: A wanderer, the older son of the biblical Abraham.” And so on. It’s a big boost.

O.J. Simpson got it.

Barack Obama raised it.

The New York Times, 2008: “I just feel like I’ve come through a whole bunch of stuff,” she explained in the living room of her Upper East Side apartment… “But I have never felt better in my life. I feel free. I feel happy. I feel completely solid.”The Larry King Show, 2006:KING: First, let’s check on a couple of things.MINNELLI: OK.KING: How is your health?

“If two men declare the seat at the same time and neither agrees to abide in the back, they shall each kill one bullock and offer its head at the altar.”Who knew?

Times are tough all over.On the plus side: Fewer local jobs means more time to make toys, right?

It’s the second-biggest traffic-driver of the year on Who2: The annual Victoria’s Secret TV extravaganza. (The biggest traffic-driver is Black History Month, which — thank heavens — at least salvages our reputation as a thoughtful site.)

Heh! Dig this old trailer for the original Star Wars — “the story of a boy, a girl, and a universe.”

Woody Allen was born as Allen Stewart Konigsberg on this day in 1935. (Just a few weeks after Luciano Pavarotti!)

It will be announced today, says The Washington Post.[Update: Now confirmed.]Clinton will be the third woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state, after Madeleine Albright (1997-2001) and Condoleezza Rice (2005-present).

How concrete feels after you jet-pack across a 1053-foot-deep gorge.

Minnesota Public Radio has an enlightening display of challenged ballots from the Al Franken-Norm Coleman Senate recount.Included is a Coleman voter who also wrote in “Bachmen” (or “Bad men”?) and a Franken voter who wrote in “Lizard People.”(Lizardy hat tip: Swampland.)

Headline of the day.

Delware Governor Ruth Ann Minner has named Ted Kaufman to fill the Senate seat of Joe Biden.Kaufman is a longtime aide to Biden. He’ll serve until 2010, when a special election will determine who will hold the seat for the remaining four years of Biden’s term.

Ridley [Scott] is now officially attached to direct this collaboration between Universal and the games manufacturer Hasbro – Hasbro! Jesus wept! – and according to the Hollywood Reporter is planning to give it “a futuristic sheen along the lines of his iconic Blade Runner”. Really? Really?

Sasha and Malia Obama will attend Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C., the Obama family has announced.

Ms. Kurkova has not spoken publicly about how she came to have a smooth navel, and all her agent will say is “she’s not an alien.”The BBC has the scoop.

You know it’s a big story when the Daily News and the Daily Mail are both on the case.”It disappears in photos, so we keep a collection of belly button shots in different positions, and Photoshop them on to her whenever she’s doing a bikini picture.”

As the first African-American First Family, will they be criticized if they choose a black church, or if they don’t? If they choose a white pastor, or if they don’t?Tough choice.[ Update: And if they choose nothing at all? That gets reported, too. ]

Nifty interview with Sol Sender, the guy who designed the campaign logo for Barack Obama. Dude is a little dry, but it’s good to learn how these things happen.

“Ted was the big guy with the good hands, the man you wanted on your side. And Bobby was an absolute terrier, flinging himself around the lawn — and into the rose bushes — with abandon. ‘The games were tough if Bobby was playing… For Bobby, it was the Super Bowl. His tenacity — he played very hard.'”And Jack played quarterback for both sides.

The latest for your baby name parade.. (Born at the ER to the Stars!)

U.S Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed Thursday night while giving a speech in Washington, D.C.The Los Angeles Times reports that Mukasey “was about 15 minutes into his speech before a packed crowed at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the conservative Federalist Society when he appeared to hesitate, and then dropped to the floor.” This was about 10:20 pm Eastern time.

Fun new game lets you battle pigs with lipstick (on ice!) and navigate a “series of tubes.” It ain’t easy.Hey, how many video games did Dwight Eisenhower inspire?

Paris Hilton and Prince William? Fox News is on the case. But they’re joking, right?

85-year-old Senator Ted Stevens is out, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Challenger Mark Begich has a lead of 3,724 votes with about 2,500 left to count.Stevens still came within a whisker of being the first U.S. senator ever elected after being convicted of a felony. He’s been a senator since 1968.

Talk show host Larry King was born 75 years ago today.He was the first baby to be born with suspenders instead of an umbilical cord. His first words were, “How did it feel for you to give birth to me just now?”Others born that same year: Johnny Unitas, Yoko Ono and King Kong.

LIFE magazine and Google have teamed up to offer “millions of photographs from the LIFE archive” via Google search.

Mickey Mouse turns 80 today. 18 November 1928 is Mickey’s official birthday, according to the Walt Disney Company. That’s the date of the cheerful rodent’s first public appearance in the cartoon short Steamboat Willie (below).

“The fest wrapped up with the awarding of trophies. The man in the iron lung — who came as the incapacitated father of the brat who steals the Dude’s car — picked up his costume prize with a White Russian balanced on his apparatus, while the furthest-travelled award went to a Jesus from Croatia.”The Guardian on the just-completed Lebowski Fest 2008.

Reading that the best barbecue in Texas was at Snow’s, in Lexington, I felt like a People subscriber who had picked up the “Sexiest Man Alive” issue and discovered that the sexiest man alive was Sheldon Ludnick, an insurance adjuster from Terre Haute, Indiana, with George Clooney as the runner-up.I had warned the Texas Monthly crowd that if they were looking for confirmation of their ranking by an objective outlander, someone from Kansas City was not likely to provide it.

“I think we were just back into the routine. Our hopes are to just to keep the girls moving. It’s like okay, Daddy’s president-elect, okay, we can get to school by 10.”Jovial interview by 60 Minutes with Barack and Michelle Obama. They sure come off as a fun, connected couple.

Cruel, funny, probably true. February 17th is the Day of Confusion.

William Ayers appeared on the chat show Good Morning America today, talking about the fairly hysterical accusations that Barack Obama “launched his political career” in the Ayers living room.Campaign Boogeyman William Ayers Talks to GMA is how ABC News headlines its story, and it’s hard to tell whether that’s being ironical, aggressive, or just telling it like it is. Perhaps it’s always hard to figure that these days.

Barack or Vlad? (Or Nic?)

Best First Dog video so far: (Nice shout-out to Scrappy-Doo at the end, too.)

The Times of London is way, way on the James Bond bandwagon.Dig their giant 007 supersite. The map of Bond haunts is especially terrific. Ditto the reader’s guide to Bond and Ian Fleming.

He’s back!

Headline of the day on the First Dog watch.Here’s the photo.Some of them have mohawks.

I’m still steaming over the nutty code names the Secret Service has given to Barack and Michelle Obama. Renegade and Renaissance? Are you kidding me?Since the Obamas are occupied elsewhere these days, I am taking up the issue on their behalf.

Here’s a salute to the soldiers, sailors, generals, flyboys and even parachutists who got us to where we are today. Thanks, old friends.

Renegade. Renaissance. Radiance. Rosebud.Those, says the Chicago Tribune, are the Secret Service code names for Barack Obama and (respectively) Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama.

Michelle Obama’s big brother has a new job too.

Actress Doris Day and activist Dorothy Day have little in common besides similar names — and the challenges they pose to anyone trying to document the details of their early lives.The trouble spots are Doris’s name and age, and Dorothy’s daughter’s birthdate.

By popular demand, we’ve profiled the as-yet-unknown First Dog of the Barack Obama administration.Obama told his daughters Malia and Sasha in his election-night speech that they had “earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House.”This set off a public First Dog Frenzy, with a question about the dog even popping up at Obama’s first press conference on Friday.

Evangelist Billy Graham turns 90 today.”A blond, trumpet-lunged North Carolinian” Time called him in its 1949 article about his breakthrough “Christ for Greater Los Angeles” tent revival.

“Obama spent part of Thursday in Chicago making calls to world leaders.

So says a new biography of politeness pro Emily Post.

We missed it yesterday amongst the election hoopla: Kevin Jonas, of the teen band the Jonas Brothers, has turned 21.He’s now the only Jonas brother who can legally go out for a Flaming Dr. Pepper after a show. Not that he would, of course.

Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. Here’s a by-the-numbers look ahead at this historic event.{ 1 }   Obama will be the first president born in Hawaii. (Small surprise: Hawaii didn’t become a state until 1959. Obama was born in 1961.) { 77 }   Days until Obama’s inauguration on 20 January 2009.

All national networks are now reporting that Barack Obama has defeated John McCain and will be the next president of the United States.[Update: Here’s the transcript of his speech.]

Election Day also happens to be the birthday of Laura Bush. She’s 62 on this, her final birthday as First Lady.Mrs. Bush shares a birth year with Patty Duke, Dolly Parton and Gilda Radner.

Google Maps has a swell tool to help you find your polling place today.They’ll also tell you if state law permits you time off to vote. (Wyoming residents get one paid hour; Kentuckians get four!)

Barack Obama’s grandmother has died of cancer in Hawaii. Madelyn Dunham was 86. Details from The Honolulu Advertiser and The Chicago Tribune.

Polls continue to show a sizable lead for Barack Obama over John McCain. Now pundits are wondering about a replay of the “Dewey defeats Truman” scenario from 1948. For those unfamiliar, here’s a quick recap of that swell old story.

FiveThirtyEight.com has already been widely covered this election season. But in case you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a look in this final pre-election weekend.The site aggregates national political polls, with further analysis and commentary by Nate Silver. He’s an analyst for the stats-crunching site Baseball Prospectus, and he applies those same skills to competing polls.

Quite a story from the Austin American-Statesman.”Jones’ father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family… Jones says she cast her first presidential vote for Franklin Roosevelt, but she doesn’t recall which of his four terms that was. When she did vote, she paid a poll tax, her daughters said.”And yes, she says she’s voting Obama.

Porter’s legs were crushed by a horse in a riding accident in 1937. He named his injured legs “Josephine” (left) and “Geraldine” (right), and for the rest of his life got around with canes and braces. His right leg, Geraldine, was amputated in 1958.From our new profile of songwriter Cole Porter.

Britain’s Daily Telegraph has a funny slide show of George W. Bush looking silly.Perhaps The Telegraph has forgotten that they endorsed him four years ago.

We’ve been reading A Night in the Cemetery, and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense by the great Anton Chekhov… whom we didn’t know until just this minute wrote crime and suspense stories.

“The verdict throws the upcoming election into disarray. Stevens… must now either drop out or continue campaigning as a convicted felon.”More coverage from the Anchorage Daily News.

President Teddy Roosevelt was born this day in 1858.TR is part of an exclusive Who2 loop: Presidents Who Slugged Someone. Here’s a snippet:

Editor Paul Hehn, at the Modern Poetry desk, has posted a new profile of tricorn hat-wearing poet Marianne Moore.

…because she died five years ago, along with Warren Zevon and Keiko the whale.Ederle was a lot more famous than either of them in her day. She was the first woman to swim the 35 miles across the English Channel. She pulled herself across in 14 hours and 39 minutes on a summer’s day in 1926. (Top that, Keiko!)

“I’m not going to Vegas or anything like that.”-High School Musical heartthrob Zac Efron on turning 21 this weekend.

Congressional Quarterly has it.

“You’re right about Bayh’s birthplace and we’ve changed our bio accordingly. As you mentioned, Shirkieville is listed on most of the official sources, but Bayh’s own words provide the correct answer. Good catch.”Thanks to the staff of The Indianapolis Star for that new comment on our blog post, Shirkieville or Terre Haute?

Funny comment thread on this baseball report from The Washington Post.

Courtesy of Politico.

“I told my wife, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I really like the guy.”- Josh Brolin, talking to ABC News about playing George W. Bush in the upcoming movie W.

Bristol Palin’s boyfriend talks to the Associated Press.

Economist Paul Krugman, known for his twice-weekly columns (and blog) for The New York Times, has won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics.The prize comes with the traditional gold medal bearing the face of Alfred Nobel, plus a prize of 10 million Swedish kroner — about 1.4 million US dollars.

If Who2’s 100 Most Popular profiles list is any indicator of electoral votes, Barack Obama has the edge over John McCain. Obama has been a steady #1 for most of the last month, with McCain rarely at #1 or #2.Here’s the top 5 as of 8:00 am on October 8th, the morning after their second debate:1. Barack Obama2. Rihanna3. Sarah Palin4. Martin Luther King, Jr.5. John McCain

CNN has the transcript of the second McCain-Obama debate.

Happy 280th birthday to one of Who2’s favorite American heroes: Hard-riding Caesar Rodney.In July of 1776, with the Continental Congress wavering on the vote for freedom from Britain, Rodney made a heroic 80-mile horseback dash to Philadelphia to cast Delaware’s vote and help win the day for independence.

Ironical news of the day: Olympic champion and superathlete Misty May-Treanor has ruptured her Achilles tendon while rehearsing a rumba for Dancing With the Stars.Must have been the high heels. Or maybe she was regretting the outfits.

Photographer Michael Hughes blends souvenirs with the tourist spots that inspired them.The Guardian has more images.

It’s only four years since Rodney Dangerfield died? With all due respect (!), it seems longer. He and Ronald Reagan passed out in the same year, after all.Meanwhile, the pink Power Ranger is suddenly nearing 40.

O.J. Simpson found guilty on all 12 counts.Sentencing is December 5th and could put Simpson “away for life.”

Sorry for the political post — the Marge Gunderson reaction shots are just too funny to pass up.

Born on the very same day: Rev. Al Sharpton and the late, great blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.54 years ago today.

The O.J. Simpson robbery trial went to the jury today with those ringing words from his lawyer.It ain’t exactly “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit!” But then, there was only one Johnnie Cochrane.

Confirmed: It’s Fossett’s plane.”The crash looked so severe, I doubt if someone could have walked away from it,” says the sheriff.

A pilot spotted wreckage of an airplane near Mammoth Lakes last night, reports The Reno Gazette Journal.The wreckage could be the plane of Steve Fossett.

Has a hiker found the first firm evidence of missing pilot Steve Fossett?An FAA card, a pilot ID, and $1000 in cash were found by hiker Preston Morrow near Mammoth Lakes in California, says the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Happy birthday and warm wishes to President Jimmy Carter. He turns 84 years old today.Carter shares an exact birthday with a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Can you name that judge?

Gallant British admiral Horatio Nelson was born 250 years ago today in Norfolk, England.

The death of Paul Newman has opened up a big box of Newman memories. Here are some highlights.=> The LA Times has marvelous photos of Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward as a young couple.

Holy cow, it happened: Paul Newman died yesterday.

Ken Jennings, eternal Jeopardy maestro, reports on his blog that he went 24 of 38 on our recent are-you-ready-to-be-president quiz. 24 answers qualifies him for Honored Citizen status, and it’s also a scary good score. He had a close call on the Snickers question, sounds like. Thanks for the mention, Ken!

Jim Henson’s Muppets are “getting the Hannah Montana treatment” with today’s kiddies, says The New York Times.It never occurred to us that the Muppet Show Muppets were considered such separate entities from the Sesame Street Muppets. Says The Times:

Speaking as a former game show champ, I want my president to know a lot of facts. Rock-solid facts. World capitals, world leaders, currencies, the works.Not facts for their own sake, but because knowing facts is the residue of knowing a lot about the world and how it works. It’s a handy test for global savvy.

Entertainment Weekly cracks on stuntmeister David Blaine.[Update: The Times of London says Blaine is being “rubbished” over the breaks. And The NY Daily News suggests the stunt deserves “an asterisk.”]

Comedian Phil Hartman was born 60 years ago today.And it’s been 10 years now since he was killed, alas.

Fascinating: Law professor Lawrence Lessig dashes through the backgrounds of all the U.S. vice-presidents in history, comparing them to the experience of Sarah Palin.His conclusion: Palin has significantly less experience than any VP except Chester Alan Arthur and (arguably) Spiro Agnew.

Speaking of crazy endings, here’s the NFL version: the Dave Hampton game.

It was 100 years ago today.(And Three-Finger Brown was a minor footnote.)

Turns out Sen. Everett Dirksen never said “a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”(Great research. Who knew there was a Dirksen Center?)

Tom Felton, who plays “wicked little snot” Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, turns 21 today.Before Felton landed the part of Draco, he tried out for the hero roles of Harry and Ron. Judging from the photo on Felton’s official site, that’s hard to believe. With that widow’s peak and a name like Draco Malfoy, he should have a future as a James Bond villain.

Media note: I really look forward to Peter King’s weekly “Monday Morning Quarterback” column in Sports Illustrated online. (He’s an Ohio University boy!) And I also love how, in the year 2008, when you hear about a great play you can just jump to NFL.com and see the highlights immediately. Yes, I enjoy being in thrall to the NFL juggernaut, even if the business side of it is nasty and all. You’ve just got to appreciate their multimedia savvy.

“Taro Aso, a former foreign minister who delivers snappy speeches, reads Japanese ‘manga’ comics and talks tough about China, was selected Monday to be Japan’s next prime minister.”And!”A trim man who favors finely tailored suits, he is a former Olympian who competed in clay pigeon shooting in Montreal in 1976. According to the Japanese press, he used to travel to shooting practice in his Rolls Royce.”

Tzipi Livni is the new head of the Kadima political party in Israel. And she may be the country’s next prime minister.

So says Bill Dwyre of The Los Angeles Times, noting that Wie just made it through the first round of qualifying school.

“This the way the ad endsThis is the way the ad endsThis is the way the ad endsNot with a bang, but a whimper.”      -T.S. Ogilvy EliotThose weird Microsoft ads with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld are suddenly kaput.

The Daily Mail has photos of Angelina Jolie at age 16. (“Before the tattoos and vials of blood,” as they put it. Those Brits!)It is kinda remarkable how much she looks like Jolie of today. Crazy lips and all.

Heh! What would your name be?[Update: Turns out the system is borrowed from the Captain Underpants book series. Tip o’ the cap to Cousin Mike!]

We noticed yesterday that the Katharine Hepburn’s profile at the Internet Movie Database has this URL: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000031.Naturally we wondered what lucky actor was #0000001. It must be the greatest or the most popular actor of all time, right? Surprise! Hey, we love him, but… you know.

By popular demand, we’re now profiling the individual Jonas Brothers to go along with our profile of the entire group.First up is the youngest member of the band, singer Nick Jonas, who turns 16 years old today.The fan site Nick J Online has a typical fan’s wish for Jonas: “A VERY PRETTY AWESOME, SUPER AWESOME, SUPER DUPER, SUPER SWEET SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY!”

“Even before she died in 1971, Chanel had to witness her life turned into a Broadway musical. At first, she was thrilled that Hepburn would star in ‘Coco.’ When she learned it was Katharine and not Audrey, she was horrified.”Heh. We were wondering why Coco Chanel is so high on our Who Popular? list this weekend.

“Wallace is to literature what Robin Williams or perhaps Jim Carrey is to live comedy: a creator so maniacally energetic and amused with himself that he often follows his riffs out into the stratosphere, where he orbits all alone.”David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest, apparently hanged himself on Friday night.

Tina Fey made an encore performance on Saturday Night Live last night, spoofing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.The likeness was uncanny. The Chicago Tribune has details.

‘Gapper’ is our term for famous people whom we probably should have profiled long ago.Here’s a great one: John Maynard Keynes. Editor Paul Hehn, at the English economics desk, has just whipped up a nifty profile of Keynes, whose “notion that governments should intervene in times of market distress” seems awfully timely these days.

Boy, Bill and Jerry — we’re trying to go with the flow here, but we’re just not feeling it.Ballyhooed Microsoft ad number one had Gates and Seinfeld shopping at Shoe Circus alongside the “clowns” of the mall-going public.Now ad number two has them eating scalloped potatoes and sharing toothpaste with a working-class family who also seem to be clowns. Very unpleasant clowns at that.

“Dubbed the Walrus of Love, he enjoyed a virtual monopoly on pillow talk disco… His singularly deep voice caused his mother to scream with fright when it first broke at the age of 14.”So said the BBC about Barry White in its 2003 obituary. His voice was so seductive it could help sharks mate.

Cincinnati Bengal Chad Ocho Cinco may have a few old jerseys around soon.The NFL says that before the former Chad Johnson can wear a jersey with his new name, he has to buy out the entire nationwide stock of NFL-approved “C. Johnson” jerseys now in stores. At $48 each.

First there were reports of a stroke. Now the Associated Press says that Kim Jong-il may be paralyzed.

Speaking of James Bond… here’s the new longer trailer for Quantum of Solace, due out October 31st in the UK. (November 14th in the States.)

So we missed this back in May, on the 100th birthday of Ian Fleming.The Times (London-style) dished up a very slick feature called 100 Years of Bond. It mixes odd notes from Fleming’s life (f’rinstance, Winston Churchill wrote the Times obituary for Fleming’s dad in 1917) with his love affairs and then the release dates of the various James Bond novels and movies.

The Guardian speculates on the fate of Kim Jong-il.The operative question: “If he was dead, how could we tell?”

And you thought American politics was getting a little weird.

Rock ‘n roll butterfly Pamela Des Barres turns 60 today.

Sometimes the comic strip Pearls Before Swine just cracks me up.But yesterday’s strip was a double whammy. As editor Paul Hehn points out, Cuba’s Raul Castro actually did make an appearance, however oblique, in ‘Hi and Lois’ on the same day.

Update: Tom Brady is out for the season.

Tom Brady’s season may be over. The New England quarterback went down with a knee injury on Sunday.Before the game, The Boston Globe ran a retrospective that made Brady sound oddly like a missing antelope species which may no longer actually exist.

Richard I of England — Richard Lionheart to you and me — turns 851 today.He’s also called Richard the Lionhearted by some, and Coeur de Lion by the French.Earlier this year, the Daily Telegraph ran an odd little item about a night Richard spent in bed with Phillip II of France.

We’ve finally just seen Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. And what a laugh it was.We first read about the movie in a Vanity Fair article in 2004. The backstory, in brief: in 1981, after Harrison Ford wowed the world as Indiana Jones, a 10-year-old Mississippi kid named Chris Strompolos talked two friends into filming their own shot-by-shot version of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

“The spectacle of… watching the two eternally boyish, care-free retired zillionaires try on shoes leaves a bad aftertaste.”Harsh reviews for the new Bill Gates / Jerry Seinfeld ad for Microsoft.It’s a headscratcher, true enough.

Was John McCain standing in front of an accidental photo on national TV last night?The political blog Talking Points Memo is also on the case.

George Lazenby, the forgotten Bond, turns 69 today.It was ’69, coincidentally, when he played superspy James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. That was his only Bond film.He’s not the oldest actor to play Bond, not by a long shot. Sean Connery turned 78 in August, and Roger Moore turns 81 (!) next month. The current Bond, Daniel Craig, is a lad of 40.

“You know, I’ve been called a maverick; someone who marches to the beat of his own drum. Sometimes it’s meant as a compliment and sometimes it’s not. What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don’t work for a party. I don’t work for a special interest. I don’t work for myself. I work for you.”John McCain formally accepted the Republican nomination for president last night.

Paul Harvey is 90 years old.

“Charlie Brown has a big head, a little body and little feet. Normally, a human takes a step every 16 frames — about two-thirds of a second. But [Charles Schulz’s] characters would look like they were floating at that pace. After several experiments, I had them take a step every six frames — one-fourth of a second…

Courtesy of The Chicago Sun-Times, here’s the transcript of Sarah Palin’s speech to the Republican Convention last night.It seemed to go well. But did she really sneer at Obama’s work as a community organizer? “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” That’s one of the most mean-spirited comments I’ve ever heard in a political speech.

Taking things over the top: Levi Johnston, the boyfriend of Bristol Palin, will now attend the Republican National Convention.Bristol is the 17-year-old daughter of GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Bristol’s pregnancy has been a surprise story of the last few days, and Johnston is now being pulled into the spotlight as well.

Don LaFontaine, movie voiceover legend, has died. (At Cedars-Sinai, natch.)

Citizen astronaut Christa McAuliffe would be just 60 years old today. She was a 37-year-old schoolteacher from New Hampshire when she died in the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned…

Paul Newman, taking his Corvette out for the last time?Newman has not confirmed that he is ill — in June he insisted he was “doing nicely” — but the rumors keep circulating.(Thanks to editor Paul Hehn for the tip.)

Here are two new profiles just requested by our friends at Ask.com: songwriter Kara DioGuardi and teen actress Demi Lovato.

Small-town Wasilla, Alaska has had a lot of press since Sarah Palin became the running mate of John McCain. Palin played high school basketball in Wasilla, was Miss Wasilla of 1984, and was the city’s mayor from 1996-2002.But just how small is Wasilla?

Michael Jackson is 50 years old today.ABC News asks him about his AARP card… then shows how he might have looked now without all that surgery.

Sarah Palin, the first female governor of Alaska, is now the first female Republican candidate for vice president of the United States.John McCain’s aides made the announcement to reporters this morning.

The Democratic Convention is over and it’s official: Barack Obama is the first African-American presidential nominee of a major American political party. Congratulations to him.His website has the transcript and video of his speech from Denver’s Invesco Field.The Rocky Mountain News headline: ‘Obama accepts nomination, rocks Invesco.’

Gawker has the accidental obituary of Apple Computer head Steve Jobs run by the Bloomberg news service yesterday. At least Jobs got that rare opportunity to read his own obit. Many of the details are probably familiar to him already. It is interesting to see how placeholders are used in the pre-obit for the final missing bits of the story. (“He was TK”?)

Sports Illustrated has an underwater photo series that shows how Michael Phelps touched the wall 0.01 second before rival Milorad Cavic in the 100-meter butterfly.Even with the photos, and seeing the finish, Phelps still seems impossibly far from the wall when Cavic is just inches away. Quite a finish.

The Washington Post has two new stories on cartoonist Lynn Johnston. One talks about her krazy plan for starting For Better or For Worse over on September 1st, retelling the strip’s early storylines in “new-runs.” Lynn reports with pleasure that Farley the Dog, long dead, will be once again alive under the new plan. (Though presumably he’ll have to croak again in the future.)

Oh, come on: Cher as Catwoman in the next Batman flick?

“And you know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, even though he’d grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine.”Michelle Obama addressed the Democratic Convention last nightHere’s the transcript from The Denver Post.

“This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it, I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it. And we can do it again.”Ted Kennedy made a surprise speech to the Democratic Convention last night. CNN has the transcript.

Alas. The Daily Mail reports that Margaret Thatcher has been in mental decline since 2000.The Mail yesterday ran excerpts from a new memoir, A Swim-On Part in the Goldfish Bowl, by Thatcher’s daughter Carol.

The Democratic National Convention starts today in Denver, Colorado. For local coverage, try these special sections from The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News.And here’s the official site.

We saw Woody Allen’s film Vicky Cristina Barcelona this weekend and really dug it. It’s warm, thought-provoking, sensual, and you can’t beat the backdrop.

First we read it in The Sun.Now the Los Angeles Times confirms it: Celebrities like dopey glasses.

Last week, Jar Jar Binks.Now: Happy 74th birthday R2-D2 man!

It seems that Joe Biden can continue his run for senator from Delaware as well as be Barack Obama’s running mate.Biden has been a senator since 1972. He was reelected in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, and 2002… bringing him up for his seventh election in 2008. In some states he’d have to drop his Senate bid in order to run for vice president. But not in Delaware.

Delaware’s Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2008.Barack Obama announced Biden as his choice with an overnight text message to supporters and the press.

One more for the weird baby name brigade: Gwen Stefani and Zuma Nesta Rock.Born at Cedars-Sinai!

A North Carolina man has used a pink Barbie rod and reel to catch a record-breaking catfish. David Hayes landed the 21-pound fish on six-pound Barbie test line.

Nick Symmonds is out of the Olympics.

Seems like only a few years ago that Bruce Willis and Demi Moore were married and having kids.Now their daughter Rumer is playing a nerdy college coed in the movie The House Bunny.

A modest coincidence: Joe Biden and Evan Bayh — the leading candidates to be Barack Obama’s running mate — both have sons named after themselves and nicknamed Beau.Beau Biden (Joseph R. Biden III) was born in 1969 and is now attorney general of Delaware.

Runner Nick Symmonds won his quarterfinal heat in the Olympic 800 meters today. He’s through to a semifinal heat on Thursday.Alas, his teammates Andrew Wheating and Christian Smith didn’t make the cut.

Oh, dear. The lastest Bigfoot sighting turns out to be a hoax.

The Associated Press runs down the potential vice-presidential nominees.

Our new profile of Indiana Senator Evan Bayh lists his place of birth as Terre Haute, Indiana.

Actor Ahmed Best was born on this day in 1973.

A point of personal pride here: Nick Symmonds will run the 800 meters in the Olympics this week.

A few late follow-ups on recent news…

Can’t wait to see the new movie Man on Wire. It’s a documentary about Philip Petit, the daredevil who walked a high wire between the World Trade Center towers in 1974.

After 16 years as the beloved quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, Brett Favre has been traded to the New York Jets.Try the Milwaukie Journal-Sentinel for the latest notes from the Green Bay side, and Newsday for the New York take.

Actor Morgan Freeman is divorcing his wife just a few days after he suffered a near-fatal car accident, according to the Los Angeles Times.Nice photo selection to go with the story, there, LA Times.

You stud.

People magazine has published the first photos of Knox and Vivienne, the twin newborns of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the stubborn dissident who outlasted the Soviet Union, has died at age 89.His 1962 book A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, about a Soviet prison camp inmate, made him both famous and a favorite target of government authorities. (A mathematician and professor, he had already spent a decade in prison camps and then in exile in Kazakhstan.)

Brrrother. The tabloids are doing their best to reopen the Steve Fossett case, suddenly yakking about how Fossett may have faked his own death.

‘Gapper’ is our term for a profile we probably ought to have had long ago.

Can’t get enough of this charming video of the singer Feist on the new season of Sesame Street:If the tune sounds familiar, you may recognize it from the popular iPod Nano “a little video for everyone” commercial…

The terrific writer Joseph Mitchell was born 100 years ago today.Mitchell wrote with a “fondness for the eccentricities of New York life,” as The Associated Press put it in their 1996 obituary. His stories, mostly published in The New Yorker, are full of saloonkeepers, Bowery bums, oystermen and oysters, beefsteak cooks, crazy storytellers, and the uncream of Manhattan.

The Washington Post has concluded its 12-part series on the death of Chandra Levy and has named a suspect: a Salvadoran immigrant named Ingmar Guandique.

Randy Pausch, the professor whose frank and uplifting “Last Lecture” made him an unexpected public hero, has died at age 47.Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2006 and told he had 3-6 months to live. Soon after, he gave a funny, heartfelt last lecture to students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, on the topic of achieving childhood dreams.

We’ve just posted new profiles of two Olympic swimmers: Natalie Coughlin and Dara Torres.Couglin was the hit of the 2004 Athens Olympics, where she won five medals (two gold, two silver, one bronze). Torres won five medals at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 (two gold and three bronze).Torres is a wee bit more famous right now because she’s 41, the mother of a two-year-old, and has been semi-retired since her 2000 Sydney heroics. She’s the oldest swimmer ever to qualify for the Olympics.

Columnist Robert Novak has been cited by police after hitting a 60-something pedestrian in downtown Washington, D.C., according to Politico.The website says Novak tried to leave the scene but was stopped by a bicycle commuter, who blocked Novak’s black Corvette with his bike and dialed 911. “I didn’t know I hit him,” Novak reportedly said, although Politico also quotes the bicyclist as saying the pedestrian was “splayed across the windshield.”

Senator Barack Obama held a press conference today in Jordan after his visits to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Washington Post has the transcript.(Elsewhere, Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston offers Obama ten MIdeast traps to avoid.)

The date is set for Jay Leno’s forced retirement from The Tonight Show. His last day will be May 29th, 2009, and he’ll be replaced three days later by Conan O’Brien.

The Times of London offers up a list of eBay’s “10 most bizarre bits of political memorabilia.” Included are six snippets of graying hair from Lyndon Johnson (“comes with a notarized affidavit from the family of Steve Martini, White House barber”) and the coffee-stained to-do list of Jacqueline Kennedy.The stain is artfully described as being “perhaps from Mrs. Kennedy herself.”

Cheerful Hollywood parents give their kids inventive names like Knox and Sunday Rose. What about our gloomier celebs? A half-dozen ideas:Felicity AnginaEnnui BlueCreosoteMonday MorningMaginot LineBupkesAny other suggestions, commenters?

The Associated Press reports that “blissful newlywed” Greg Norman shot a surprising 70 on day one of the British Open, cheered on by his wife, Chris Evert.Wait, what? Chris Evert and Greg Norman are married?Apparently so. They married last month in the Bahamas. Both split recently from their previous spouses — Laura Andrassy for him, skiier Andy Mill for her.

South African leader Nelson Mandela is 90 years old today.

Not that it has much to do with biography (though we do have a profile of the corporate namesake), but we found it rather fascinating that Starbucks has released a complete list of the 600 stores it plans to close.We salute their transparency.

Weird tale of the day: The Joker, leering arch-enemy of Batman, is based on an actor from the movie Casablanca. No, not Ingrid Bergman.

Billy Joel is playing the last two concerts in New York’s Shea Stadium. It’s being torn down in a few months. Joel gets rave reviews in today’s Newsday and New York Times.

The Boston Globe offers up a photo essay of actors who had films released after their deaths.Including Bruce Lee (Enter the Dragon), Chris Farley (Beverly Hills Ninja) and, of course, Heath Ledger (Batman).

It’s not the most crucial issue of the day, we know, but: Have news reports garbled the weights of the Jolie twins, Knox and Vivienne? It looks like it from here.

“At 23, she exuded a blend of innocence and sensuality, but she was not a party girl. At heart, Chandra was a bit of a nerd.”The Washington Post has launched a major 12-part investigation of the 2001 murder of intern Chandra Levy.

Happy 90th birthday to three-time Academy Award winner Ingmar Bergman! He was born in 1918 and died just about this time last year.

[An update on the twins’ weights: 10 Grams of Baby Fat]The BBC, People, and Agence France-Presse all report that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are the proud parents of a new boy and girl.

“The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: ‘Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.’

Q: What’s it like to be called ‘The King’?A: I don’t know. I ain’t never been nothing else.The Kansas City Star interviews Richard Petty on the 50th anniversary of his first NASCAR race.

This wonderful clip has been making the rounds lately: Joe Cocker at Woodstock, with helpful subtitles.Thanks to Mark Evanier for the link.

The streak is over. Roger Federer had won five straight Wimbledon championships… until today, when Rafael Nadal beat him in a five-set thriller to claim the 2008 men’s singles title.

“My father expected me to be a professional man. The problem was, I hated school. I hated being told what to do. In the Boy Scouts I never got a single merit badge. In school my grades were terrible. I just didn’t want to be there. I just wanted to be on the radio.”–Rush Limbaugh, in a detailed new profile from The New York Times Magazine.

Turns out George W. Bush and Sylvester Stallone were born on the exact same day: 6 July 1946.Stallone was born in New York City, Bush in Connecticut.The Internet Movie Database claims that Stallone is one of Bush’s two favorite actors. The other? Chuck Norris.

Eating expert Joey Chestnut won the Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest in extra-horrifying fashion on Friday, beating former champ Takeru Kobayashi in a five dog eat-off.Both men finished the regular 10-minute competition with a total of 59 dogs. That led to extra franks, with Chestnut barely beating Kobayashi to the gullet.

Happy 100th birthday to Thurgood Marshall. The first black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was born on this day in 1908.(Why is he not on the Maryland state quarter?)

Religion and Romans editor Paul Hehn has posted a new profile of Flavius Josephus, the Jewish leader who was conquered by the Roman general Vespasian but then became pals with him anyway. (Conquerors were open-minded in those days.)

The trailer is out for the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace.[July update: The trailer was available on YouTube, but it’s been taken down. Now you can find it on the film’s official site.]

Comedian Dan Aykroyd turns 56 today, and it’s been 25 years since philosopher Buckminster Fuller died.

John McCain has a new campaign plane.

Country singer Tim McGraw threw a drunk fan out of a concert last week, and footage of McGraw rousting the guy is now a hit on YouTube. McGraw was singing “Indian Outlaw” at a concert in Washington state when he paused mid-song, called security to “get rid of this guy,” and then helped haul the cowboy-hatted fan onstage by his belt.

Good grief: It’s been three full decades since Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane was killed. (Others who died that same year: artist Norman Rockwell and Pope John Paul I.)

“It’s always good to be able to use the word ‘vermin’ in a song.”Apropos of nothing, here’s a wonderful interview with Alan Mencken and Stephen Schwartz, the composer and lyricist for the 2007 Amy Adams film Enchanted.

Microsoft co-founder and longtime chairman Bill Gates formally steps down from the company’s day-to-day operations today. He gave up his CEO post in 2000 in favor of Steve Ballmer, but has remained chief software architect. Gates will still be chairman of the board, but will devote most of his time to the Gates Foundation, his charitable group.

15 weeks have passed since the tabloids gave actor Patrick Swayze five weeks to live.Rumors of his death, etc.

Bloodhorse.com has a new photograph showing a loose shoe on Big Brown early in the Belmont Stakes. The shot, taken by Russ Melton, seems to show the shoe unhinged or bent downward on the horse’s right rear hoof.

President Grover Cleveland died 100 years ago today in Princeton, New Jersey.In a very modest coincidence, he and the late George Carlin both died at age 71, of heart failure, 100 years apart. And they shared the initials GC. (Lincoln-Kennedy it’s not, but still.)

That’s the title Newsweek gives to its before-and-after photos of the original Microsoft team, from 1978 to today. Included, natch, are moguls Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

Comedian George Carlin is dead at age 71. The New York Daily News reports that he died of heart failure on Sunday in Los Angeles.

Perhaps you’ve been wondering what skinny old Federalist Alexander Hamliton and skinny old golf champ Babe Zaharias had in common. Besides height, that is. (Both were 5’7″.) The answer: Both may have lied about their ages to seem like prodigies in their respective fields.

The Big Brown post-mortems continue, with dissatisfaction on all sides.”It just wasn’t Big Brown’s day,” said jockey Kent Desormeaux on Saturday. This a few days after trainer Rick Dutrow threw Desormeaux under the horse trailer, saying it was more or less all the jockey’s fault.

Countdown to Crawford is a brand-new blog from the Los Angeles Times, chronicling “the last days and the last actions of the Bush administration.” Interestingly, reporters have been blogging “in the dark” for the last month, trying out the new platform.

Here’s video (4 minutes) of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell interviewing Dr. Michael Newman after the autopsy on Tim Russert.

The LA Times offers a hard-hitting photo feature titled “Hollywood hunks before they were hot.”Still, these things are never quite resistable. And Edward Norton looks exactly the same.

Journalist Tim Russert has died in Washington, D.C. He was only 58.MSNBC reports that Russert “was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s Meet the Press broadcast when he collapsed” at the NBC News Washington bureau. That MSNBC article also has a link to Russert video clips and tributes from others.

A few days ago we mentioned that Rep. Ron Paul was still running for the Republican nomination for president — even though John McCain already had the nomination sewn up. Paul’s website even proclaimed “Now there are two!” with a graphic of him and McCain as the last men standing among the original 11 GOP candidates.

Happy birthday to the first President George Bush, who is 84 today. Bush was born in 1924 — along with Marlon Brando and Don Knotts.

The Los Angeles Times follows up (while not quite shooting down) rumors that Paul Newman is fading fast due to lung cancer.

Newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell would be 85 today — if not for his mysterious death in 1991. Maxwell was born in 1923, the same year as Ed McMahon and Norman Mailer.

Newsday reports that nothing seems wrong with racehorse Big Brown after his lackluster performance in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday. His owners have “ruled out pulmonary bleeding, mucus in the lungs and breathing problems caused by a displaced palate.”The Louisville Courier-Journal tosses out a few theories.

(Part of our ongoing series of excerpts from the official biographies of popular musicians.)

From 2007: The Village Voice asks theater pros to name the productions they wish they could have been there to see.

Mike Huckabee, Dennis Kucinich… remember those guys?With the final pairing set — John McCain vs. Barack Obama — here’s a quick look back on the fallen campaigners of 2008:

“Sergio Leone, who directed Eastwood in his breakthrough role in the Man With No Name trilogy of spaghetti westerns, said he liked the actor because he had only two expressions: ‘one with the hat, one without it.'”Funny aside from the new interview with Clint Eastwood in the British paper The Guardian.

“I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him.”

Top challenger Casino Drive is out with a bruised hoof. The rest of the Belmont Stakes field is suspect.

Call it a fist-bump, a knuckle-bump, or the more hipsterish “pound” — Obama and his wife shared one this week.And now, the obligatory over-analysis:

“I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party’s nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.”Senator Hillary Clinton, telling supporters that she will end her campaign and support her Democratic opponent, Barack Obama.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy. (The shooting happened on June 5th, and Kennedy died the next day.)The New York Times invited three of Kennedy’s children to share a memory of him. Their stories are naturally warm, but they’re also powerfully simple. If you don’t remember thoughtful idealism in American politicians, you can see it on display here.

“Because of you, tonight I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America.”So said Senator Barack Obama last night, after winning the Montana primary and (apparently) clinching enough votes for the Democratic nomination. If the delegate count holds up, he will face John McCain in the general election on 4 November 2008.

Senator Barack Obama has resigned his membership in Trinity United Church of Christ.The Chicago Sun-Times has the story. The paper also has the transcript of his Q&A with the press, with Obama speaking at length on the issue.

The Baltimore Sun has the complete (and lengthy) transcript of Scott McClellan’s interview with Keith Olbermann on the MSNBC show Countdown last night.

Rough week for stars of the 1960s. First it was Dick Martin and Sydney Pollack; now Harvey Korman has died at age 81.The LA Times, quoting Korman’s daughter, says the actor died of “complications from an abdominal aortic aneurysm that ruptured four months ago.”

Gossipeuse Cindy Adams can be insufferable, but she has a touching report today after flying Austrian Airlines (first class, she points out) with entertainers Siegfried and Roy.

Colorful Sporting News article today about golf great Jack Nicklaus. He’s still frank ‘n feisty.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan has a new book coming out Monday, titled What Happened.The website Politico got its hands on an accidental early copy, and broke the story yesterday that McClellan’s book has some not-so-nice things to say about George W. Bush.

Sharon Stone has a way of keeping herself interesting. Sometimes it’s by wearing a leopard-print dress, and sometimes it’s by insulting China.

Whoa! Film director Sydney Pollack has died of cancer. He was a very young 73.Pollack won Oscars for directing and producing Out of Africa in 1985. And he made the comedy hit Tootsie (with Dustin Hoffman dressed as a woman) in 1982.

The Naked Cowboy is in Ohio this weekend, appearing at the Taste of Cincinnati festival.He seems to be a complex figure. We can report from personal observation that the Cowboy has tattoos on each shoulder: Jesus on the left and Satan on the right.

This clip has been around awhile, it seems, but we just spotted it for the first time: Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards dealing with a fan who charges onstage.

Is film director Steven Spielberg obsessed with “the repairing of the fractured family”? So says Chicago Tribune pop critic Mark Cano:

We’re not sure if that’s surprisingly old or surprisingly young. (He is hosting The Price is Right, after all.)Drew Carey was born in Cleveland in 1958. (As an aside: that was just a few days before Annette Bening was born in Topeka.)

Last month’s gapper was a famous painter. This month it’s a famous composer: George Gershwin.

Here are some details about the malignant brain tumor of Senator Edward Kennedy.

The new Frank Sinatra stamp is here.

We’ve got a new profile of racehorse Big Brown, who won the Preakness with ease on May 17th. He’ll go for the Triple Crown on June 7th at the Belmont Stakes in New York.Big Brown is trying to become the first horse in 30 years to win the Triple Crown. Affirmed was the last horse to do it, in 1978.

Wow — it’s now been 18 years since Muppets creator Jim Henson died.

It’s been 24 hours of highly unusual retirements. Golf legend Annika Sorenstam said last night that she would quit golf at the end of the 2008 season. This even though she’s currently ranked number two in the world behind Lorena Ochoa of Mexico.

Pop star Stevie Wonder is only 58 today.

Presidential daughter Jenna Bush was married tonight to Henry Hager in Crawford, Texas, according to Reuters.Her twin sister Barbara Bush was the maid of honor.The news service notes, “A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on whether Bush would take Hager’s name or where the newlyweds would take their honeymoon.”

Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager has died in Germany at age 90. He was the last survivor of the July 1944 plot that came within a whisker of assassinating Adolf Hitler.

Filmmaker Wes Anderson — the quirky director of Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited — enters the last year of his 30s today. He’s 39.

Diane, you are truly a faithful reader and a goddess of proofreading. Never stop sharing!Those thank-you checks should clear customs any day now.

Late, great racehorse Barbaro was born five years ago today. Barbaro won the 2006 Kentucky Derby, but two weeks later he shattered his leg while running in the Preakness Stakes, the second race in the Triple Crown. Despite state-of-the-art treatment, he died in January of 2007 of laminitis. That’ the same crazy horse-hoof illness that got Secretariat.

Interesting story in The New York Times today about Ernie Chambers, the senior senator in Nebraska’s legislature. He’s being forced out by term limits after nearly 40 years in the legislature.

It’s the semiquincentennial of President James Monroe, born on 28 April in 1758.Monroe is remembered for a lot of things (including, endlessly, the Monroe Doctrine). But at Who2 HQ we tend to think of him as the first non-Founding Father president.

Happy 100th birthday, Edward R. Murrow.You stud.

Yikes! Actor Wesley Snipes given three years in prison for not paying his taxes.

Yesterday we were chatting about Wallis Simpson, the somewhat slippery woman for whom King Edward VIII gave up his crown.

Guy Trundle, Guy Trundle, Guy Trundle!Seductive king-buster Wallis Simpson died 22 years ago today. The anniversary is just a convenient excuse to shout “Guy Trundle” — the most deliciously seedy name in the history of romantic scandals.

Actor Ivan Dixon died last month, says the LA Times. We missed the story until just now.Dixon played “Kinch” on the series Hogan’s Heroes. But he had a fascinating (if less-heralded) career after that.On the trivia front: That Times obit says he also was the stunt double for Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones.

Happy birthday (probably) to William Shakespeare!

Hillary Rodham Clinton has won the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. With 99% of precincts reporting, she leads Barack Obama 55%-45%. See the final numbers at PennLive.

Pennsylvania’s day to vote has arrived. Here are a few places to look for results and breaking news:The combined political news page of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily NewsPrimary coverage from The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (and the paper’s Early Returns blog)

Naturalist and adventurer John Muir was born 170 years ago today, in 1838.Muir was an early explorer of California (on foot, incidentally) and was the force behind the creation of Yosemite National Park. He’s also the guy on the California quarter. (As an aside, see our own cranky take on quarters and heroes.)

New profile: The Jonas Brothers, a trio of musical brothers aged 16, 18 and 20. If you haven’t heard of them yet, you will: They’re on the Disney Channel’s ‘A’ list now. Opening for Miley Cyrus on tour last fall helped push their album Jonas Brothers to platinum status, and they have a made-for-Disney Channel movie in the High School Musical mode, titled Camp Rock, due out in June.

Is it OK to borrow that name from the NFL?Sean Preston has been tapped by President Bush to be head of Housing and Urban Development… for the next eight months.

British parents spend 30 million hours a year “agonising” over baby names, according to a new survey.The current hot names? Grace, Ruby, Jack and Thomas.

“…This is a quality which most great actors have, it’s a strange sort of personal unique style that goes into everything they do — like when Albert Finney sits down in a chair and drinks a bottle of beer, and, well, it’s just great and you think ‘God, I wish I could drink a bottle of beer like that.'”That’s director Stanley Kubrick, being interviewed by Terry Southern in 1962.

Martha Stewart’s dog has passed away. Stewart has photos on her blog.

“While UN ambassador, I wrote memos to President Clinton when I thought that the normal decision-making process needed a jolt. The papers were returned with Clinton’s comments scribbled on the side of the pages; at times, I felt as if I were back in school when I looked to see what the president had to say. Often, I didn’t learn much because Clinton’s writing is so tricky to decipher.

What is the real name of actor Thomas Haden Church?Frankly, we aren’t sure.We had just updated Church’s profile to include his role in the new movie Smart People when it occurred to us to double-check the alphabetization of his last name. We have him under ‘C’ for Church, but we had the sudden thought that it could be ‘H’ for Haden Church instead.

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Washington, D.C. today for a six visit. The Pope will celebrate masses in both Nationals Stadium and Yankee Stadium during his trip.

Who2 has 3124 profiles (at last count), but we don’t quite have everyone in the world. Yet.And every so often we discover a “gapper” — somebody you’d think should have been among the top 3124 personalities in world history, but who somehow fell through the gaps until just now.

Babe Ruth would probably have enjoyed the gag, though.

A real-life version of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine has come to Silicon Valley, says CNet.

Fans of the Amelia Earhart mystery will enjoy this FAQ entry from the Amelia Earhart Search Forum.It’s a detailed account of a 10-word radiogram message — ending “Love to mother” — that many have thought was sent by Earhart from a Japanese concentration camp in 1945. That was eight years after her 1937 disappearance.

Tiger Woods is the favorite as the annual Masters Tournament starts today in Augusta, Georgia.Golf legend Arnold Palmer hit the ceremonial opening tee shot which went “out of sight,” according to USA Today. (Fog helped.)

By the time she married Harding she’d already been abandoned by her first husband, Henry “Pete” DeWolfe, and left her baby son, Marshall, to be raised by her parents. She and Harding, a newspaper publisher in Marion, married in 1891 and Florence went to work managing his Marion Daily Star, from balancing the books to spanking the newsboys.That’s a selection from our lively new profile of Florence Kling Harding, the wife of President Warren G. Harding.

“I thought he was a tremendous satirist, and one of the darkest comics of the ’50s. People forget that, as well as Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, Tom Lehrer was being … ghastly. His material, his attitude toward the crowd, fantastic.”

A British jury has ruled that Princess Diana was “unlawfully killed” in 1997.The verdict doesn’t equate to murder. The jury determined that Diana and her companion, Dodi Al Fayed, were killed due to the “gross negligence” of driver Henri Paul (who had been drinking) and of the paparazzi who were chasing Diana’s car at speeds over 60 MPH.

We missed this a few weeks ago. Still scary. Who played the Easter Bunny in those films — Kenny Baker?

James Garner is 80. He was born this day in 1928 in Norman, Oklahoma. The city honored him with a 10-foot-tall bronze statue in 2006.Norman is also the proud birthplace of Vince Gill and Nim Chimpsky.

Is 50 Cent switching from Clinton to Obama?”I make mine the fast way, the ski mask way, make money, make money money money,” 50 Cent has rapped, espousing laissez-faire economic policy… Furthermore, 50 Cent is obviously a firm believer in Second Amendment rights.”

An irresistable Charlton Heston moment from Planet of the Apes.

“If Hollywood had a Mt. Rushmore, [Charlton] Heston’s face would be on it… He was a heroic figure that I don’t think exists to the same degree in Hollywood today.”-Publicist Michael Levine, quoted by the AP.This statement got us thinking. If Hollywood did have a Mount Rushmore, would Chuck Heston really be on it? (And where would they put it — next to the HOLLYWOOD sign?)

“If you see a little less spring to my step, if your name fails to leap to my lips, you’ll know why. And if I tell you a funny story for the second time, please laugh anyway.”That was actor Charlton Heston in 2002, announcing that he had “symptoms consistent with Alzheimer’s disease.”Heston died Saturday at age 84.

“As she entered the Senate and he left the political spotlight, the Clintons transformed themselves into a successful global brand.” – The Washington PostThey paid $33 million in federal taxes and gave $10 million to charity during that period, says the Post.

French writer Emile Zola had an unusual death. He died one night in 1902 when the bedroom chimney in his Paris apartment stopped working.Here’s how The New York Times reported it the next day, in a story titled “Emile Zola Dead From Asphyxiation”:

Keith Richards puzzles it out, courtesy of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.Richards and Mick Jagger star in the new concert documentary Shine A Light. Movie review here. (“Advisory: Keith Richards smokes.”)

Ever read Martin Luther King’s final speech in Memphis in April 1968?

Transportation roundup: Jerry Seinfeld has trouble with an Italian car; Naomi Campbell with a British plane.

Cartoonist Milton Caniff died on this day 20 years ago.

Actor Alec Baldwin, born in 1958. His first job was on the TV soap opera The Doctors in 1980. According to TV.com, The Doctors also helped launch the careers of Ellen Burstyn (1964-65) and Jonathan “Number One” Frakes (1977-78).

The FBI has confirmed that the parachute dug up in Washington last month was not D.B. Cooper’s. But it may be left over from the 1945 crash of a Marine Corsair.

Dr. Demento, the radio host who brought the world ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic, turns 67 today.Demento said in a 2000 interview that his show’s “all time most requested song is ‘Fish Heads’ by Barnes and Barnes.” Lightly disturbing video follows.

Speaking of April 1 jokes, the Museum of Hoaxes has ranked the top 100 April Fool’s Day hoaxes of all time.#6 is National Public Radio’s 1992 announcement that Richard Nixon was running for president again. His campaign slogan? “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.”

The parachute dug up in Washington State recently was not used by jumping skyjacker D.B. Cooper, according to the man who packed Cooper’s parachutes.The Associated Press quotes Earl Crossley, who has now examined the parachute: “Absolutely, for sure… The D.B. Cooper parachute was made of nylon. This 1945 parachute was made of silk.”

The BBC program Miracles of Evolution, hosted by Terry Jones, has announced the discovery of a remarkable colony of Antarctic penguins.The Daily Telegraph has the story.

Actor Christopher Walken turns 65 today.It’s also been 30 years since his Oscar-winning 1978 turn in The Deer Hunter.The IMDB puts his career tally at 110 film and TV appearances, and counting.

George W. Bush threw out the first pitch of the baseball season last night in Washington, D.C. This morning the hot question seems to be: Did he get booed or cheered?

Dith Pran, the Cambodian journalist who survived the massacres of the Khmer Rouge, and whose story was told in the book and movie The Killing Fields, has died at age 65. The cause was pancreatic cancer.Besides the obituary linked above, The New York Times coverage includes one of their “Last Word” videos of Pran, propped up on pillows, telling his story one more time.

With the recent addition of Cindy McCain, we now have profiles of all three of 2008’s potential presidential spouses: McCain, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.What to call Clinton if he becomes the nation’s first male First Lady? He himself has the best idea so far: “My Scottish friends suggested ‘First Laddy.'”

Perhaps we spoke too soon about the delights of having Karen Allen return to star opposite Harrison Ford in the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Wait… Julie Stiles is only 27 today?That means she was just 21 when she played a CIA operative in The Bourne Identity in 2002?Surprising. Of course, only in Hollywood could crucial national security issues be put in the hands of a callow 21-year-old who… oh, wait.Stiles, as an aside, was born the same year the Beastie Boys were founded.

Lovely, warmhearted George Vecsey column today about Bob Sheppard, the Yankee Stadium announcer since 1951.Sheppard is cagey about his age, but Vecsey notes that he played football at St. John’s from 1928-32. (Wikipedia claims Sheppard was born in 1910.) Still, he just signed a two-year contract with the Yanks.

“Choosing from the parachutes he had was like choosing whether to take a Cadillac or a Volkswagen to California… The one he didn’t use was padded and very good. The one he used would cut you in the crotch area when the parachute opened. It would have worked, but it wasn’t the best choice.”Skydiving instructor Earl Cossey, who packed the parachutes used by D.B.

A parachute that may have belonged to skyjacker D.B. Cooper has turned up in rural Washington state.The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the parachute was uncovered in rural Clark County, where kids found the parachute while playing in a recently-plowed field.

“Since the publication of Repetition, I’ve gone to bookstores to sign books and there’s a crowd of only young people. No old people. Let’s put it this way: I was once fashionable. And when I was in fashion, nobody read my books.”-“Anti-novelist” Alain Robbe-Grillet in a juicy 2003 interview with Bookforum.

St. Catherine of Siena was born this day in 1347.She arrived about seven years after bawdy author Geoffrey Chaucer, who then outlived her by 20 years. Saint Catherine herself died at 33.There must be a saying to fit that juxtaposition.

Last month we noted the remarriage of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, four months after his divorce from Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz.

“Look: I believe in Him. It’s that simple and that complex. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the God Man who came to earth, born as a tiny baby and then lived over thirty years in our midst. I believe in what we celebrate this week: the scandal of the cross and the miracle of the Resurrection.

Last week we mentioned Steve McQueen and his chase scene from Bullitt.

“Yes, Albany is a hotbed of furtive boom-chicka-boom.”The Washington Post, trying to get a handle on David Paterson’s first week as governor of New York.

“The new Dark Highland Green Bullitt… rides on five-spoke dark argent gray satin finished Euro-flange cast aluminum wheels featuring a polished machined lip that resemble early American-style mags. The special wheels are shod with ZR performance-rated rubber.”That’s The San Francisco Chronicle going all Euro-flange about a new replica of Steve McQueen’s Mustang from the 1968 movie Bullitt.

Scooter Libby has been disbarred due to his 2007 convictions for perjury and obstruction of justice.He can, however, apply for reinstatement in 2012.

Movie hound Nick Clooney on the making of Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver:Scorsese recruited Bernard Herrmann to write the musical score, even though the extraordinary composer-conductor was then terminally ill. At sixty-four, Mr. Herrmann had made his mark in radio, the concert stage, opera, and most notably, motion pictures. After a long stint at CBS — where he met a young Orson Welles — he began his movie music career at the top.

Philip Roth has hit the three-quarter-century mark.The author of Portnoy’s Complaint was born in 1933 — same year as Willie Nelson and Yoko Ono.

Delightful reminiscence of actor Raymond Burr, sent in by reader Susan Brown-Barbour:”I met Raymond Burr in 1976 in Landers, California at Gublers’ Orchids. I worked there as a laborer/fill in lead person. He was very much into orchids at this time, and came to check out 2 large greenhouses for possible leasing from the owners.

Here’s the full text of Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday in Philadelphia. Courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.

“The problem with reincarnation is that it’s hard to imagine what the storage medium for past lives would be. Not to mention the input-output device. I hesitate to rule it out completely, but I’d need pretty definite proof.”-Arthur C. Clarke, 1999

Anthony Minghella, the Oscar-winning director of The English Patient, has died at age 54.Early reports listed no cause of death. The BBC now says that he “suffered a fatal haemorrhage in London days after having surgery for cancer of the tonsils and neck.”

“As a kid, he was once caught having a crafty tab in the woods and frogmarched home by a family friend. His mother was furious with him. ‘And how working-class is this?’ he laughs, as he spins the Loachian tale. ‘When the woman had gone, my mother said to me, “If you’re going to smoke, you smoke in our house, not outside.”‘”-From a Sunday Times (UK) interview with actor Clive Owen

Editor Paul Hehn, manning the Fairy Tales and Air Power desk, has just profiled Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince.He passes along this odd little report from The Mail (UK) about a WWII Luftwaffe ace who loved Saint-Exupéry’s books — and just found out that he himself shot down the author in 1944.

David Paterson was sworn in as governor of New York today.Newsday has the story and the photos.

Sci-fi author William Gibson turns 60 today.He was 34 when he coined the term cyberspace and 36 when his groundbreaking novel Neuromancer was published in (ahem) 1984.

Ever want to hear Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” played on the Theremin? Here’s your chance.(Tip from Mike Duffy in the Who2 boiler room.)

Enchanted was the movie on Delta’s SFO-CVG flight today. Amy Adams is just terrific. I couldn’t stop smiling.And I was watching it without sound.

Fitness guru Jack LaLanne, still doing push-ups at age 93.(Side note: LaLanne was born the same year as the guru of anti-fitness, William S. Burroughs.)

The Washington Post remembers its coverage of the final days of poet Walt Whitman in 1891 (and 1892).Biography fans should visit the Post’s wonderful blog Post Mortem, source of the Whitman piece. Obituary writers Patricia Sullivan, Adam Bernstein and Matt Schudel use the blog to reflect on their craft and on the people they cover.

“The notion that it is of great advantage to me to be an African American named Barack Obama and pursue the presidency, I think, is not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public.”

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has resigned.Sort of. He is still governor, but announced today that he would step down next Monday, March 17th. (St. Patrick’s Day, coincidentally.) He’ll be replaced by the current lieutenant governor, David Paterson.

Singer James Taylor is 60.The fan site James Taylor Online is still a great source for Taylor-mation, 14 years (!) after it was created in 1994. Plenty of fan sites lose steam after a few years, but this one has been a “steamroller” right along.

According to his BBC obituary:”His first child drowned, at the age of three, in W.C. Fields’s swimming pool.”

We almost missed it: actress Sharon Stone turned 50 yesterday.It’s been 16 years since her star-making turn as the krazy platinum vixen Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct.

For news and commentary about Eliot Spitzer — aka “Client 9” — we recommend the Political Bulletin from U.S. News & World Report. They have copious links to all the krazy details of this story.

We’ve just published a new profile of New York’s lieutenant governor, David A. Paterson. The current governor, Eliot Spitzer, hasn’t said that he’s stepping down. But you never know.Paterson is an unusual guy: not only the first African-American lieutenant governor in state history, but also nearly blind since infancy. His dad, Basil Paterson, is also an old pol in New York and national Democratic circles.

A few quick notes on Schulz and Peanuts: A BiographyBy David MichaelisPublished in 2007 by HarperCollinsFans of cartoonist Charles Schulz have sometimes wondered why his strip Peanuts lost its starch in the 1970s.

We were in Miami or St. Thomas, hanging out on one of the aft decks at a bar, waiting to shoot. This guy came up — turns out he was some mid-level executive at Princess Cruises. He said, “I had to come over here and talk to you two guys because — how do I say this? — you guys have made me so rich! I can’t believe it! This show is such a hit! We’re all making so much money! My God!” He just went into this paroxysm of euphoria about how successful he was. Then he calmed down and said, “Sorry, sorry. Do you want a Pina Colada or anything?

Which actor is the all-time champ in box-office receipts? Based on the total gross income of all his films, that is.(Hint: It’s not Tom Hanks.)The answer here. The women’s champ is more predictable.

Nine years already since Stanley Kubrick passed on.Less surprising: 40 years since the release of his masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968.Later that year when Playboy asked him “What does it all mean?”, Kubrick had some suitably deep thoughts.

The last known survivor of American forces in World War One visited the White House his week. Dude is 107.

Stephen Schwartz, composer of Godspell and Wicked, turns 60 today.

Actor Patrick Swayze has pancreatic cancer but is “responding well to treatment,” according to Reuters.Swayze’s publicist refuted claims by The National Enquirer that Swayze had been given five weeks to live.

It’s been 45 years, amazingly, since the death of country singer Patsy Cline. That’s 1.5 times her own lifespan of 30 years.And it’s 26 years ago today for John Belushi. He was 33 when he died in 1982. (Side note: Ayn Rand died the very next day.)

(The first in a series of excerpts from the biographies of popular musicians.)Today: R&B singers Pretty Ricky.”Miami heat is nothing compared to Pretty Ricky’s scorching musical inferno. Not since the days of music legends like The Beatles, the Jackson 5 or more recently NSync has there been such a fevered pitch, creating hysteria and chaos when crowds glimpse brothers Spectacular, Pleasure, Slick Em and Baby Blue.”(From their official site.)

John McCain is the Republican nominee for president in 2008.

In the recent flap over Mick Jagger and the Hell’s Angels, we discovered this Q&A he did with BBC News readers last October. A sampler:Q: “I’d like to know if the Mick Jagger one sees on stage is the real persona or a caricature developed over time and influenced by what you think the public expect.”

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battle it out today in Texas and Ohio. The winner takes a big step towards the Democratic nomination.On the Republican side, John McCain has things pretty much sewn up.For good local coverage, try these elections pages of the Dallas Morning News and the Columbus Dispatch.

It seems a storm saved Mick Jagger from being assassinated by the Hell’s Angels in 1969.The Angels “were offended by Jagger’s effeminate dancing,” says Reuters.

Quick question: What actor is tied with Jack Nicholson for the most male acting Oscars in film history?(And the envelope goes to…)We mentioned Walter Brennan in an earlier post about Harrison Ford’s movie career and women (and hair). But we didn’t talk much about the man himself.

Alas, James Bond is back in his forties.March 2 birthday boy Daniel Craig was born in 1968. That’s still quite frisky, but as we pointed out a few years ago, Craig was the first under-40 actor to play Bond in 35 years. That helped make him a believably reckless and energetic Bond in Casino Royale.Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Harrison Ford’s krazy-hair appearance at the Oscars (in HD!) has us thinking about his leading-man status.Ford was born in 1942, so he’ll be straining the actuarial charts as a swashbuckler in this summer’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Fascinating news about Prince Harry’s secret posting to the front lines in Afghanistan. The BBC has full coverage.

Happy leap day! Wired magazine has a nifty piece on how Julius Caesar added the bonus day to February every four years.And how Pope Gregory XIII took back one leap day every hundred years or so.

William F. Buckley died on Monday at age 82. Here’s how obituary writers are summing up his life:”William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right’s post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House…” -The Associated Press

“They told me to guarantee she won’t grunt or she can’t play.”The sad words of Duncan Edwards, father of nine-year-old Lauryn Edwards, who’s been banned from her local tennis club for grunting. Lauryn says she’s just emulating her favorite player, “notorious grunter” Maria Sharapova.

Conservative commentator William F. Buckley has died at age 82. Reports The Washington Post: “His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley was found dead by his cook at his home in Stamford, Conn. The cause of death was unknown, but he had been ill with emphysema, she said.”

Fred Rogers, the star of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, died five years ago today.He’d still be only 79 now. He was born the same year as poet Maya Angelou, artist Andy Warhol, and revolutionary Che Guevara.

An exciting week for rapper Ja Rule. He’s a leap year baby, born 29 February 1976, so he’ll be celebrating his 8th natal day on Friday.He’s part of our fascinating quartet of February 29th babies — along with Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee, killer Aileen Wuornos (of Monster fame), and nutty prankster/painter Balthus.

“Two years and 142 cases have passed since Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas last spoke up at oral arguments,” reports the Associated Press (via CNN). “The last time Thomas asked a question in court was Feb. 22, 2006, in a death penalty case out of South Carolina.”

Ralph Nader announced today that he is running for president as an independent in 2008.Nader collected nearly 2.9 million votes as a Green Party candidate in 2000, and those mostly-liberal votes are generally considered to have cost Democrat Al Gore the election.Perhaps Democrats can take heart in 2008: Nader ran again in 2004 and collected only 465,000 votes.

The 2008 Academy Awards are set for tonight at 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific, and 3:00 Honolulu time.They’re called the 2008 Oscars although the films involved are, of course, from 2007. This is easy to understand now, but will cause confusion and mild irritation in years to come when biographers explain that actor X won a 2008 Oscar for film Y, then have to clarify that film Y was released in 2007.(Yes, it’s a pet peeve.)Here are the nominees for the acting Oscars:

Rumors of his death continue to be exaggerated. Abe Vigoda, star of Barney Miller and Fish, turns 87 this weekend.

A quiz for George Washington’s birthday: Which president had a gloomy, ne’er-do-well son named for Washington?Here’s the answer. And here’s the son.

Singer Jennifer Lopez has given birth to twins.According to People, “The babies were born early Friday [22 February] in Long Island, N.Y. The girl was born at 12:12 a.m. and weighed 5 lbs. 7 oz., and the boy followed at 12:23 a.m., weighing 6 lbs.”Lopez and her husband, Marc Anthony, have been married since 2004.

And what do you do with your spare time?

Singer Rihanna, of “Umbrella” and “Pon de Replay” fame, leaves her teens today. She’s 20.Guitarist Tony Iommi, of Black Sabbath (and missing fingers) fame, turned 60 yesterday.Happy birthday, kids!

“I will not aspire to nor accept — I repeat — I will not aspire to nor accept the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief.”Those are words of Fidel Castro in a letter released Tuesday, according to The Washington Post.

A side note on actress Molly Ringwald: Turns out her dad is a ragtime pianist with a rather witty home page at www.ringwald.com.”Throughout Ringwald’s musical career, he has always subscribed to the motto: If my music does not come up to your standards, lower your standards.”

Actress Molly Ringwald turns 40 today.Ringwald was born in 1968, so she really was 16 when she starred in her 1984 hit Sixteen Candles. That’s a rarity for Hollywood, which tends to cast older actors as its high-schoolers. (Most recently: Ellen Page doing a swell job playing 16 in Juno. Page turns 21 in three days.)

Which TV detective has appeared on eight different series in the last decade?

Steve Fossett was declared dead on Friday by Cook County (Illinois) Judge Jeffrey Malak. That allows Fossett’s widow, Peggy, to begin dealing with his estate.It also allows newspapers to print obituaries they’ve been holding since September. Here’s how Fossett is being described:

A Chicago probate court judge has declared adventurer Steve Fossett to be legally dead.Fossett disappeared in Nevada in September on what was supposed to be a brief flight in a single-engine plane. He and the plane have not been seen since.

The National Archives has uncovered a rare and rather shocking photo of Abraham Lincoln topless.The photo can be found here. (May not be suitable for all viewers.)The Archives also has a larger history of the photo. Happy Presidents’ Day!

Jimmy Hoffa may be 95 years old today.

Pitcher Roger Clemens, accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, testifies before Congress today.

Marisa Miller is the cover girl for the magazine’s latest swimsuit issue.The issue also includes shots of Indy car driver Danica Patrick.For more on Miller (and previous cover girls), see our feature on The Models of Sports Illustrated.

Whew: Barack Obama with 59% in Maryland, 75% in DC, and 64% in Virginia. Ongoing primary results from The Boston Globe and The Richmond Times-Dispatch.

So far today, 53 of our top 100 famous people are figures from black history.

A question we often get at this time of year: “Was Saint Valentine a real person?”The short answer: We don’t know, and nobody really does. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia says there were at least three different St. Valentines associated with February 14th.

August 20: Eric tells me about his summer with the Rolling Stones, or Ronnie Wood, mainly. He likes Ronnie — he’s good company and a laugh — but is more guarded about Jagger (very sharp business mind) and Keith (pleasant, but so doped-up Eric reckons he has only a year to live).A choice 1976 entry from Michael Palin’s Diaries 1969-1979, published in 2006.

Why is Tina Turner at the top of the Who Popular? list today?The 68-year-old “sizzled” while performing with Beyoncé at the Grammy Awards last night. According to Reuters, “By the end, Beyoncé looked exhausted, but Turner seemed ready for more.”

Actor Roy Scheider, star of the movies Jaws and All That Jazz, has died at age 75. The New York Post quotes his wife, Brenda, as saying Scheider died “of a staph infection, brought on by complications of the multiple myeloma with which he was diagnosed in 2004.”

We’ve been looking for a simple, up-to-date display of GOP and Democratic delegate counts. Turns out that Yahoo News has one: the Election 08 Political Dashboard.Click the “States” tab in the upper right to see a state-by-state breakdown.For those curious about so-called superdelegates, The Nation recently tried to explain the whole deal.

Actor Gary Coleman turns 40 today.Should we say “only” 40? Seems like he’s been around a lot longer than that. (Turns out he’s the same age as another great pop culture figure, Dr. Cornelius.)Speaking of sci-fi, Jules Verne today turns 180.

Benazir Bhutto was killed by a bomb, not by gunfire. That’s the conclusion of Scotland Yard, which has been investigating her assassination. Detectives decided that a gunman fired a shot and hen detonated a bomb, which killed Bhutto when the blast thrust her head against the roof hatch of her car.

“I must now stand aside, for our party and our country.”Mitt Romney is out of the presidential race.

The New York Times points out today that a sitting U.S. senator has not been elected president since 1960. This could be the year! John McCain (Arizona), Barack Obama (Illinois) and Hillary Clinton (New York) all seem to have a healthy shot.

Actor Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, according to a report by the New York medical examiner’s office. The Associated Press quotes the examiner’s office as saying Ledger died of “acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine.”

Shades of Tom Brady: Mitt Romney looked exceedingly clumsy as he lost Super Tuesday to John McCain, 9-7.

Tom Brady looked exceedingly clumsy as the New England Patriots lost Super Bowl 42 to the New York Giants, 17-14.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has married the model and singer Carla Bruni in Paris, report the BBC and the IHT.It’s Sarkozy’s third marriage. He and his second wife, Cecilia, were divorced last October, and he reportedly met Bruni shortly afterwards. He’s been president only since May, and already he’s been divorced, courted a new woman, and remarried.

Six more weeks of winter, says Punxsutawney Phil. Dude saw his shadow.We’ve learned to trust Phil. He is, after all, over 100 years old.Punxsutawney loves that groundhog. Even the local paper, The Punxsutawney Spirit, has a (Pilgrim?) groundhog in its logo.

Some truly inventive fun with album covers.(Props to Mr. Hehn for the link.)

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt say they have agreed to work together for 20 years. The three told Fortune magazine that they made the agreement before the company went public in 2004. Schmidt will turn 69 in 2024; Page and Brin will both turn 51.

When Rudy Giuliani called it quits On Wednesday afternoon, he also brought a merciful end to 2008’s clumsiest campaign URL: JoinRudy2008.com.No surprise: The four top remaining candidates all are masters of their own domains:MittRomney.comHillaryClinton.comJohnMcCain.com

It’s been 60 years since the 1948 death of Mohandas Gandhi.

Senator John McCain has won the Republican primary in Florida. Hillary Clinton won easily in the Democratic race.The St. Petersburg Times ia a good spot for local reporting on the Florida results.

Margaret Truman Daniel died on Tuesday after a brief illness. Here’s how some major papers sum up her life:”Margaret Truman Daniel, 83, President Harry Truman’s only child, a mystery novelist whose early efforts as a singer famously led her father to threaten an unkind critic with a punch to the nose…” -The Chicago Tribune

After Caroline Kennedy’s recent endorsement of Barack Obama, some blogs commented that Kennedy “dropped her married name” to give the endorsement. This aroused our curiosity.Who2 has itself always listed Kennedy by what we believed to be her legal name, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. (She married businessman Edwin A. Schlossberg in 1986.)

The newspapers of Perth, Australia — hometown of Heath Ledger — continue to offer heavy coverage of the actor’s death.PerthNow, the local NewsCorp website, has a very busy story archive, with recent reports suggesting Ledger may have died of natural causes.

Democrat Barack Obama has won his party’s South Carolina primary with 55 percent of the vote. Obama also won a symbolic victory in Sunday’s New York Times: Caroline Kennedy endorsed him in an op-ed piece titled “A President Like My Father.” She is the daughter of former president John F. Kennedy.

Maria Sharapova has won the 2008 Australian Open. She defeated Ana Ivanovic, 7-5 and 6-3. It’s her third major singles tennis title, after Wimbledon in 2004 and the U.S. Open in 2006.

Mary Lou Retton turns 40 today.She was the first woman to appear on the front of a Wheaties box, says the cereal’s fun facts page. It happened in 1984. Babe Didrikson was the first woman athlete to appear on the package — in 1935.

Sometimes it’s nice to remember the days when amateur athletes were top dogs.The New York Times reports on Joe Burk, who “won honors on Thames and Pacific.” Dude rowed and played football at Penn, was a single-scull champ afterwards, then won the Navy Cross on a PT boat in World War II.

With Jenna Bush engaged to be married, this seems like as good a time as any to clarify a fact about her past: Jenna and her twin sister Barbara were born in Dallas.

Stunning news from New York: actor Heath Ledger, the star of the movies Brokeback Mountain and A Knight’s Tale, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday afternoon.

Republican Fred Thompson has dropped out of the 2008 presidential race. The Washington Post has details.That leaves five serious contenders for the GOP nomination.

Factoid of the day: On the same day that Communist icon Vladimir Lenin died — 21 January 1924 — TV

Tom Brady and the New England Patriots are now one win away from the first 19-0 season in NFL history.The Patriots beat San Diego on Sunday, 21-12. That punched their ticket to Super Bowl XXXX-somethingorother on February 3rd, where they’ll play the New York Giants.

Actress Susanne Pleshette has died at age 70. She had surgery in 2006 for lung cancer.

A Rosa Parks mug shot?

Chess champ Bobby Fischer has died in his adopted home country of Iceland. Here are the opening lines from selected obituaries:”Bobby Fischer, the eccentric genius and high school dropout who became the only US world chess champion, has died in self-imposed isolation…” – The Financial Times

News reports say eccentric chess champ Bobby Fischer has died in Iceland at age 64.This video (5 mins.) captures the turmoil of Fischer’s 1972 win over Boris Spassky. Fischer won the championship, but never defended it and gave up his title in 1975.

Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book and Gunga Din, died on this day in 1936.The year is surprising. Kipling seems like a figure from the olde Victorian Age, not someone who was still alive when Woody Allen and Willie Nelson were lads.

The Library of Congress has dug up some new photos of President Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration.

Scholars at the University of Heidelberg say they have determined the true identity of the Mona Lisa “once and for all.”

Mitt Romney has won the Republican primary in Michigan, where his dad was once governor

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on this day in 1929. The birthday is celebrated publicly with a holiday next Monday.(As an aside: April 4th will be the 40th anniversary of his death. Had MLK lived, he’d be 79 years old today.)

Humphrey Bogart died 51 years ago today.

We recently wrote about the “ER to the Stars,” Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills.As if on cue, pop star Christina Aguilera and TV semi-star Nicole Richie gave birth there, “minutes apart,” on Friday. (Richie went first.)

Yesterday we mentioned that Sir Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong once traveled together to the North Pole.Now we find out that record-breaking pilot Steve Fossett was also on the same expedition. The Brisbane Times has more.

Americans are lucky to have Neil Armstrong as a native example of a rare specimen: the superbly modest hero. He mixed quiet determination with curiosity, nerve and good humor, and when he was done tackling the moon, Armstrong went back to Ohio and taught aeronautics.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the former beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest in 1953, has died.His home-country New Zealand Herald is a good place to start for news and tributes.

Donald Fagen, “reclusive avatar of High Pop,” turns 60 today.All About Jazz has a wonderfully detailed analysis of his new boxed set, The Nightfly Trilogy.

First she went YouTube. Now Canada’s National Post is having fun with reports that Queen Elizabeth II is “hooked” on Nintendo bowling.

Two plucky oldsters in Hell’s Kitchen ignored that good advice. The comment from New York cops: “Hell’s Kitchen has a rich history.”

Is it possible to have a “comeback” on the first day of an election? If so, Hillary Clinton and John McCain seem to have done so.

It’s Elvis Presley’s birthday — and he’d still be only 73 years old.He’s the same age as Ron Paul, Woody Allen, and Darth Vader.

As the candidates battle in New Hampshire, Dixville Notch battles its own rival.

News reports say that Nicolas Sarkozy, the just-divorced president of France, is just-maybe-possibly engaged to former model Carla Bruni.Journal di Dimanche has a photo set on Bruni. The paper broke the story yesterday, saying Sarkozy and Bruni might marry in February.

Brian Ingram, the 8-year-old who discovered a wad of D.B. Cooper’s cash in 1980, now has his own website: DBCooperMoney.com.He’s selling some of the bills on Ebay.

Mike Huckabee wins on the GOP side with 34% of the vote; Mitt Romney takes second with 25%.

Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien would be 115 today.Factoid: Dude was born in South Africa, 30 short years before heart-switching playboy Christiaan Barnard.

Nearly seven years have passed since intern Chandra Levy disappeared in Washington, D.C. Her remains were found a year later, but nobody has ever been charged with her murder. Now students at Bauder College in Atlanta will spend a year digging into the case, according to The Modesto Bee.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an extremely colorful report today on Sarah Jane Moore, who tried to shoot President Gerald Ford in 1975.

What a way to start the new year. Officials at Rawalpindi General Hospital now say that the chief of police prevented them from doing an autopsy on the body of Benazir Bhutto.The government apparently removed all medical records from the hospital immediately after Bhuttos death — and then told doctors to keep quiet.