Who2 — the Album!
It looks as if we finally have a date for the release of The Who’s new album, titled (remarkably) Who2. Pete Townshend says in this interview that October 23 is the magic day.
Biographies
John Ford’s Extra Year
A recent letter from a reader in Maine questioned our birth date for director John Ford. We had 1895, but after some detailed review we now think the reader was right: Ford was born in 1894.Ford himself, it seems, liked to claim 1895 as his date of birth. That being the case, it’s no surprise that many sources online and off list his birth date as 1895. But the case for 1894 has been pretty well settled in the last two decades by some thoughtful biographers.
Superman and Grayson
A new Superman film opens this week in U.S. theaters: Superman Returns, starring newcomer Brandon Routh as the Man of Steel.However, Who2 tech guru Mike Duffy points out a superhero movie that never got made and still looks great: Grayson. It’s one fan’s heroic take on Batman’s “faithful ward,” Dick Grayson.
50 Cent Turns Thirty-One (?)
Our friends at Answers.com asked us to look into the real age of Curtis Jackson, AKA 50 Cent. We have his birth year as 1975, while many other sources say 1976.
‘Brangelina’ and ‘Frelanor’
Now that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have had their baby, let’s put an end to the tabloid naming of celebrity couples — in this case, Brangelina.The absurd trend started with Bennifer for Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, and reached its artistic peak with TomKat for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Brangelina is just grasping at straws.
Shakira’s Birthday
We’ve had some trouble pinning down the birth date of Latina superstar Shakira. Many good sources list her as February 9, 1977, but other sources, just as good, have her as February 2, 1977.
Who2’s New Look
Who2 adopted a brand new look on April 2nd. We hope you like it.This is our first redesign in over two years, and it accomplishes several important tasks for us. We finally have one standard template for all of our profiles, loops, and related pages. This will help readers understand and use Who2 more easily.We’ve chosen new colors and a new, more readable typeface. Headlines are now in a more attractive (we might even say stylish) sans-serif typeface.
Is the ‘Death’ Field Ghoulish?
A Who2 user writes:”I was looking at a profile of an actor… the name is irrelevant. In the “vital statistics” category you list birthday, birthplace, and DEATH. The actor is very much alive, as the death section did not have a date under it.
Susan Lucci, Class of 1964
An alert reader recently suggested that we had Susan Lucci’s birth year wrong.Lucci, who has played Erica Kane on TV’s All My Children for the last three decades, once said in an interview in Cigar Aficionado that she enjoys being mysterious about how old she is, so we knew we’d have our work cut out for us.
What Was Stevie Wonder’s Birth Name?
Who do you believe: Stevie Wonder or his mother?A few weeks back we profiled Stevie Wonder, the old-school musical giant whose latest album, A Time To Love, won six Grammy nominations. There was one sticking point: his name. The Stevie Wonder stage name is no mystery — he got it when he signed with Motown as a child whiz kid and began performing as Little Stevie Wonder. (A few years later he dropped the “Little,” but the Wonder stuck.)