Clicky
-
-
Birthday Meme
Mt. Vesuvius
So, my friend Alison just posted an interesting exercise on her blog. Here’s the deal, straight from her page:
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.
5. Post it.
So, here’s what I came up with! My birthday is Aug 24.
Events:
79 – Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash. [For some reason, I’ve known this for a very long time. Guess someone felt compelled to tell me thousands of people DIED on my birthday. Or maybe I read it in a kid book. I dunno.]
1690 – Calcutta, India is founded. [Neat given I have Indian in me three generations ago from my mom’s side.]
1992 – Hurricane Andrew hits South Florida. [I live in Florida. Hmm.]
Birthdays:
1929 – Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 2004)
1973 – David Chappelle, American actor and comedian
Death:
1595 – Thomas Digges, English astronomer (b. 1546) [A popularizer of science; one of the first people to write, in English, that there are “a multitude of stars extending to infinity in all directions.”]
Pretty nifty! What happened on your birthday? -
A History of Violence
Tom and Edie Stall share a stressful moment in A History of Violence
Rented A History of Violence on Saturday night. This is easily one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. It is entirely character driven. Canadian writer/director David Cronenberg, better known for his unusual explorations of sexuality (Crash, no relation to the racial drama of the same name) and corporeal being (eXistenZ) has produced what you might call a more “normal” film in A History, except for the fact that it could hardly be called that because it’s so exceptionally well done. In the film, Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen, Lord of the Rings) — a happily married, community-respected, small business owner in a small town — is visited by two strangers who insist he is someone else, someone with a past and someone nothing like who his wife Edie (Maria Bello, Thank You for Smoking) and kids know. It’s a great film with a large amount of heart, without being saccharine. Recommended. 8.5/10.
