Now 99 years old, Vera Lynn might have plans to live until World War III. On a related note, “Vera” is a short song by Pink Floyd that appears on their 1979 album The Wall. The song is part of the classic rock opera that alludes to World War II, and the title is a reference to Vera Lynn. Pink Floyd are among my very favorite bands from my parents’ generation. Also, my very pregnant wife and I are expecting our second daughter any day now; Heidi is 39 1/2 weeks pregnant. By her own account, she’s either going to give birth really soon or we’re going to have a situation our hands not dissimilar to Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote.
My very favorite Astrid Lindgren stories are of the Tomten. In 2011, I created 8-bit versions of the Tomten and Pippi Longstocking. Five years later, I got around to creating their creator. Lindgren is the second Astrid character I’ve published in the past few weeks. The first was Astrid Kirchherr. In other news, my wife is now 39 weeks pregnant. We are expecting our second daughter very soon. Yesterday, being Independence Day, was a time for sparklers with Ramona, our two-year-old who will turn three in August. We almost named her Astrid.
David Bazan (born January 22, 1976) is an indie rock singer-songwriter from Seattle, Washington. Bazan was the lead singer and creative force behind the band Pedro the Lion and was the lead singer of Headphones. In early 2006, he began performing and recording under his own name. Bazan’s solo ablums include Curse Your Branches (2009), Strange Negotiations (2011) and last month’s Blanco (May 13, 2016). Blanco is made up of remixed and updated songs that were previously available in a limited series called Bazan Monthly: Volume 1 (2014) and Bazan Monthly: Volume 2 (2015). Even more recently, on Twitter, Bazan and TW Walsh (former Pedro the Lion bandmate) announced their new rock band, Lo Tom, with Jason Martin and Trey Many.
I’ve been listening to Pedro the Lion for many years, but I also really enjoy David Bazan’s new music. Three of the first four songs on Bazan Monthly: Volume 1 (“Impermanent Record,” “Deny Myself” and “Sparkling Water”) are particularly amazing—as well as “Oblivion” (which appears on both Volume 2 and Blanco). I’d like to make it to one of Bazan’s summer tour dates in Washington or Idaho—especially one of the shows with Laura Gibson, who is fantastic. The June 16 show (happening in two days) in Boise, Idaho has become the only possibility now because work commitments conflicted with the Washington dates. However, since my wife is 36-weeks pregnant with our second child, I am thinking hard about traveling to Idaho this week—though yesterday she told me to go as a Father’s Day present. (So I’m probably going.) On March 21, 2016, I was able see David Bazan play an acoustic house show in Eugene, Oregon, and I am grateful for that; it was an ideal mix of solo, Pedro the Lion and Headphones songs. But I still want to see Bazan and Laura Gibson on tour together.
Gary Coleman (February 8, 1968 – May 28, 2010) was an American actor, voice artist and comedian, best known for his role as Arnold Jackson in Diff’rent Strokes (1978-1986) and for his small stature as an adult. He became the most popular fixture of Diff’rent Strokes, enhanced by his character’s catchphrase “What’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” Coleman was described in the 1980s as “one of television’s most promising stars.” After a successful childhood acting career, Coleman struggled financially later in life. In 1989, he successfully sued his parents and business adviser over misappropriation of his assets, only to declare bankruptcy a decade later. Coleman died of epidural hematoma at age 42.
Lauryn Hill (born May 26, 1975) is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer and actress. She is best known for being a member of the Fugees and for her solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998). In high school, Hill was approached by Pras Michel to start a band, which his cousin, Wyclef Jean, soon joined. As the Fugees, they released the albums Blunted on Reality (1994) and the Grammy Award-winning The Score (1996). The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill received massive critical acclaim, but remains Hill’s only solo studio album. Soon afterward, Hill dropped out of the public eye, dissatisfied with the music industry and suffering with the pressures of fame. Hill has six children, five of whom are with Rohan Marley, son of reggae legend Bob Marley. In 2012, she pleaded guilty to tax evasion for failure to pay federal income taxes, and in 2013, served a three-month prison sentence.
Astrid Kirchherr (born May 20, 1938) is a German photographer and artist and is well known for her association with the Beatles, and her photographs of the band’s original members – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best – during their early days in Hamburg. Kirchherr is credited with inventing the Beatles’ moptop haircut although she disagrees. Kirchherr met artist Sutcliffe in Hamburg in 1960, where he was playing bass with the Beatles, and was later engaged to him, before his death in 1962. Although Kirchherr has taken very few photographs since 1967, her early work has been exhibited around the world, including at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She has published three limited-edition books of photographs.
My wife has a special affection for Stuart Sutcliffe and Astrid Kirchherr. As I was creating 8-bit Astrid, I was struck by how random the selection and order of my pixel art characters has been. It’s funny that after 990 characters, the only member of the Beatles I’ve created as pixel art is John Lennon (and that was back in 2011). Though I did create 8-bit Yoko Ono in 2015. This Beatles deficit wasn’t particularly deliberate; I guess I just haven’t yet been inspired to get around to the others. Anyway, here’s Astrid.
Sammy Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American entertainer. Primarily a dancer and singer, he was also an actor of stage and screen, comedian, musician and impressionist, noted for his impersonations of actors, musicians and other celebrities. Davis’s film career began as a child in 1933. In 1954, he lost his left eye in a car accident, and several years later, he converted to Judaism. In 1960, he appeared in the Rat Pack film, Ocean’s 11. After a starring role on Broadway in 1956’s Mr. Wonderful, he returned to the stage in 1964’s Golden Boy. In 1966 he had his own TV variety show, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show. As an African-American during the pre-Civil Rights era, Davis was a victim of racism throughout his life and was a large financial supporter of the Civil Rights movement. Davis had a complex relationship with the black community, and drew criticism after physically embracing President Richard Nixon in 1972. Davis was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP.
Edward “Duke” Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist and bandleader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over 50 years. Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward, and gained a national profile through his orchestra’s appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. Often collaborating with others, Ellington wrote more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, with many of his works having become standards. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and charisma, Ellington is considered to have elevated the perception of jazz as an art form. His reputation continued to rise after he died, and he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for music in 1999.
Lucille Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an American actress, comedian, model, film studio executive and producer. She was best known as the star of the self-produced sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy and Life with Lucy. Ball’s career began in 1929, when she landed work as a model. In the midst of her work as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures in the 1930s and 1940s, Ball met and married Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz. In 1951, she and Arnaz created the sitcom I Love Lucy, a series that would go on to become one of the most beloved programs in television history. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu Productions, which produced many popular TV series, including Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. Ball was nominated for thirteen Primetime Emmy Awards, winning four times.
Prince Nelson, known as Prince, was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and actor. He was a musical innovator and known for his eclectic work, flamboyant stage presence, extravagant dress and makeup and wide vocal range. His music integrates a wide variety of styles, including funk, rock, R&B, soul, psychedelia and pop. Prince has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He won seven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. In 1984, he released Purple Rain, which served as the soundtrack to his film debut of the same name and was met with widespread acclaim. Prince was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the first year of his eligibility. He was born on June 7, 1958 and died yesterday, April 21, 2016, at the age of 57.
Michael Render (born April 20, 1975), better known by his stage name Killer Mike, is an American hip-hop recording artist, activist and occasional actor from Atlanta, Georgia. Mike made his debut on “Snappin’ and Trappin’,” from Stankonia (2000) by Outkast. Mike has since released five full-length albums as a solo artist. In 2012, he released R.A.P. Music, produced entirely by American rapper-producer El-P. In 2013, the two subsequently formed a duo, branding themselves Run the Jewels, They have since released Run the Jewels (2013) and Run the Jewels 2 (2014), with Run the Jewels 3 forthcoming in 2016. Mike is also known as a social and political activist, focusing on subjects including social equality, police brutality and institutional racism. He has been featured in the films 20 Funerals, Idlewild and ATL.
Killer Mike has been a visible and vocal supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders during his 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. On November 23, 2015, Killer Mike sat down with Sanders in Atlanta to discuss topics ranging from gun control to democratic socialism. I enjoyed the entire hour-long conversation, but particularly part 3 of 6 about America’s rigged economy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Three months later, on February 16, 2016, Killer Mike gave a powerful eight-minute speech at the Bernie Sanders rally at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Mike and Sanders are good people genuinely trying to change our world for the better.
Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the 20th century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One’s Own (1929), with its famous dictum, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Woolf suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life, thought to have been what is now termed bipolar disorder, and committed suicide by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59.
Aretha Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Franklin began her career singing gospel at her father’s church as a child. In 1960, at the age of 18, Franklin embarked on a secular career. Following her signing to Atlantic Records in 1967, Franklin achieved commercial acclaim and success with songs such as “Respect,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Think.” These hits and more helped her to gain the title The Queen of Soul by the end of the 1960s decade. Franklin has won a total of 18 Grammy Awards and is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold over 75 million records worldwide.
Harper Lee, born Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016), was an American novelist widely known for To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Immediately successful, it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Though Lee had only published this single book, in 2007 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature. She was also known for assisting her childhood friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are loosely based on Lee’s observations of an event that occurred near her Monroeville, Alabama hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old. The novel deals with the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as depicted through the eyes of two children.
Note: Lee died in her sleep three days ago, on on the morning of February 19, 2016, aged 89. Last year another novel, Go Set a Watchman (2015), written in the mid-1950s, was controversially published as a “sequel,” though it was later confirmed to be To Kill a Mockingbird‘s first draft.
Jules Verne (February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. Early in life Verne wrote for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism in France and most of Europe. Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking between Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare.
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Oakland, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures in modernism in literature and art would meet, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound and Henri Matisse. Stein’s books include Q.E.D. (1903), Fernhurst (1904), Three Lives (1905-06), The Making of Americans (1902-1911) and Tender Buttons (1912). In the latter work, Stein comments on lesbian sexuality. In 1933, Stein published a kind of memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written in the voice of Alice B. Toklas, her life partner. As a Jew living in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, Stein may have been able to save her life and sustain her lifestyle as an art collector through the protection of powerful Vichy government official Bernard Faÿ.
Ellen DeGeneres is an American comedian, television host, actress, writer and producer. She starred in the popular sitcom Ellen (1994-98), and has hosted her syndicated TV talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, since 2003. Her stand-up career started in the early 1980s, culminating in a 1986 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. DeGeneres starred in several feature films during the 1990s and provided the voice of Dory in Finding Nemo (2003). During the fourth season of Ellen in 1997, she came out as a lesbian in an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Shortly afterward, her character also came out to a therapist played by Oprah Winfrey, and the series went on to explore various LGBT issues. DeGeneres was born on January 26, 1958.
Eartha Kitt was an American actress, singer, cabaret star, dancer, stand-up comedian, activist and voice artist. She’s known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 recordings of “C’est Si Bon” and the enduring Christmas novelty smash “Santa Baby.” In 1967, she starred as Catwoman in the third and final season of the television series Batman. Orson Welles once called her the “most exciting woman in the world.” Kitt began her career in 1943 and appeared in the 1945 original Broadway production of the musical Carib Song. In the early 1950s, she had six U.S. Top 30 hits, including “Uska Dara” and “I Want to be Evil.” In 1968, her career in America suffered after she made anti-war statements at an LBJ White House luncheon. Kitt was born on January 17, 1927 and died on December 25, 2008.
Michael Stipe is an American singer, songwriter, musician, film producer, music video director and visual artist. He was the lead singer of the alternative rock band R.E.M. from their formation in 1980 until their dissolution in 2011. The band was pivotal in the development of the alternative rock genre. R.E.M. released 15 studio albums, including Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992), as well as numerous live albums and compilation albums. Stipe was in charge of R.E.M.’s visual image, often selecting album artwork and directing many of the band’s music videos. Outside the music industry, he runs his own film production companies, C-Hundred (C-00) and Single Cell Pictures. Stipe is also noted for his social and political activism. He was born on January 4, 1960.
Note: The 8-bit blue unicorn/rainbow creature I’ve drawn to represent Scott C. is based on some of the smiling entities he painted for his Tender Times show in 2012. Almost everything he creates is smiling. Here’s a fun 8-bit showdown: Scott Campbell vs. Don Hertzfeldt.
Vera Lynn – No. 1005
Vera Lynn (born March 20, 1917), widely known as the “Forces’ Sweetheart,” is an English singer, songwriter and actress whose musical recordings and performances were enormously popular during World War II. During the war, she toured Egypt, India and Burma, giving outdoor concerts for the troops. The songs most associated with her are “We’ll Meet Again,” “The White Cliffs of Dover,” “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” and “There’ll Always Be an England.” She remained popular after the war, appearing on radio and television in the UK and the United States and recording such hits as “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart.”
Now 99 years old, Vera Lynn might have plans to live until World War III. On a related note, “Vera” is a short song by Pink Floyd that appears on their 1979 album The Wall. The song is part of the classic rock opera that alludes to World War II, and the title is a reference to Vera Lynn. Pink Floyd are among my very favorite bands from my parents’ generation. Also, my very pregnant wife and I are expecting our second daughter any day now; Heidi is 39 1/2 weeks pregnant. By her own account, she’s either going to give birth really soon or we’re going to have a situation our hands not dissimilar to Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote.