Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London in the early 1890s. Notorious for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde was one of the best-known personalities of his day. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his only novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry (the father of Wilde’s lover) prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for the “gross indecency” of having had sex with another man. Wilde was ultimately convicted and served a two-year prison sentence with hard labor in England. After his release, he lived the remainder of his life in self-imposed exile in Paris. Wilde was born on this day in 1854. He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46.
I find it interesting that on Wilde’s 1882 trip to San Francisco, the Irishman declared the city “where I belong.” Wilde sometimes mused about relocating to the American West. In October 2012, my wife Heidi and I visited Wilde’s tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris during our trip to Europe. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on his tomb was originally complete with male genitalia that have since been vandalized. In 2011, Wilde’s tomb was cleaned of the many lipstick marks left there by admirers, and a glass barrier was installed to prevent further marks or damage.
Thom Yorke is an English musician and artist who is the lead vocalist, principal songwriter, guitarist and pianist of the rock band Radiohead. Radiohead has released eight studio albums: Pablo Honey (1993), The Bends (1995), OK Computer (1997), Kid A (2000), Amnesiac (2001), Hail to the Thief (2003), In Rainbows (2007) and The King of Limbs (2011). Yorke mainly plays guitar and piano, but has also played drums and bass guitar (notably during the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions). In July 2006, he released his debut solo album, The Eraser, to critical acclaim. Yorke is also the lead singer of Atoms for Peace. He was born on this day in 1968.
I’ve been to a few Radiohead shows over the years. Having survived high school in the 1990s with the help of Radiohead CDs, their music will always be dear to my heart (particularly The Bends and OK Computer). I last saw Thom Yorke perform about a year ago. My wife Heidi and I were lucky to attend a Radiohead show at the Zénith de Strasbourg in France on October 16, 2012 during our 40 days in Europe. It was an amazing time.
Colin Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter for the indie folk rock band The Decemberists from Portland, Oregon. The most recent Decemberists studio album, The King Is Dead (2011), was the band’s sixth. In addition to vocals, Meloy performs with an acoustic guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki, harmonica and percussion. Meloy made his debut as a children’s writer in 2011 with Wildwood, illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis. The second novel in the series is Under Wildwood (2012). Meloy was born on this day in 1974.
Once my two-month-old daughter Ramona gets a little older, my wife Heidi plans to introduce Portland’s Forest Park to her as Wildwood. The Decemberists are one of our favorite bands. It’s nice to be able to see them play with some frequency, since we live in Oregon.
Hope Sandoval is an American singer-songwriter who is the lead singer for Mazzy Star and Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions. She grew up in a Mexican-American family in East Los Angeles, California. Reputed to have a shy personality, during live performances Sandoval prefers to sing in near-darkness with only a dim backlight. A new Mazzy Star album was released today, 17 years since the last one. Now there are four albums: She Hangs Brightly (1990), So Tonight That I Might See (1993), Among My Swan (1996) and Seasons of Your Day (2013).
Greta Garbo was a Swedish film actress and an international star and icon during Hollywood’s silent and classic periods. Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and received an honorary one in 1954 for her “luminous and unforgettable screen performances.” She is best known for starring in Anna Karenina (1935), Camille (1936) and Ninotchka (1939). In 1941, she retired at the age of 35 after appearing in 28 films. Although she was offered many opportunities to return to the screen, she declined all of them. Instead, she lived a private life, shunning publicity. She was born on this day in 1905.
Freddie Mercury was a British musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the rock band Queen. As a performer, he was known for his flamboyant stage persona and powerful vocals over a four-octave range. Mercury was born in Zanzibar in East Africa and grew up there and in India until his mid-teens. He has been referred to as “Britain’s first Asian rock star” and is widely considered one of the greatest male singers of all time. Mercury died of bronchopneumonia brought on by AIDS in 1991. He was born on this day 1946.
Jan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his surreal stop-motion animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay and many others. His feature films include Alice (1988), Faust (1994), Conspirators of Pleasure (1996) and Little Otik (2000). Švankmajer was born on this day in 1934.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a French film director. His feature films include Delicatessen (1991), The City of Lost Children (1995), Amélie (2001) and A Very Long Engagement (2004). Jeunet often uses wide camera angles and elaborate camera movements, and makes extensive use of color grading in order to give his movies the desired (often fantastic) ambiance. He was born on this day in 1953.
I have drawn 8-bit Jean-Pierre Jeunet wearing “the third eye,” which is a mechanical monocle from The City of Lost Children. These steampunk-style devices are worn by the Cyclops, a cult of blind religious zealots who kidnap children so that an aging scientist may steal their dreams. The City of Lost Children is one of my three favorite films of all time (the others being Lost Highway and Chungking Express).
Jhonen Vasquez is an American comic book writer, cartoonist and music video director. He was born to Mexican parents, raised in San Jose and is perhaps best known for creating the Nickelodeon’s animated series Invader Zim. Zim is a naïve but psychotic alien who tries to conquer Earth, but is always thwarted in a humorous manner. Vasquez also created the comic Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and its spin-offs, Squee! and I Feel Sick. Many of his creations are geometric in style and gothic in character. Vasquez was born on September 1, 1974.
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards and the Tony Award for Best Actress. Bergman is best remembered for her starring roles in Casablanca (1942) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946). She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute. Bergman was born on this day in 1915 and died in 1982 on her 67th birthday.
H. P. Lovecraft was an American author of horror, fantasy, poetry and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction. Lovecraft’s guiding aesthetic and philosophical principle was what he termed “cosmicism” or “cosmic horror,” the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds. Lovecraft is the originator of the Cthulhu Mythos story cycle and the Necronomicon, a fictional magical textbook of rites and forbidden lore. Although Lovecraft’s readership was limited during his lifetime, he is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. He was born on this day in 1890.
Note: Of course I replaced the head of 8-bit H. P. Lovecraft with that of his greatest creation, Cthulhu.
Orville Wright and his elder brother, Wilbur Wright, were the inventors of the world’s first successful airplane and are considered the “fathers of modern aviation.” The Wright brothers successfully conducted the first free, controlled flight of a power-driven airplane on December 17, 1903. Orville was the more mischievous of the two brothers and was also a champion bicyclist. Orville’s adventurous nature and drive to succeed combined with his brother Wilbur’s research skills to achieve what is considered by many to be the greatest, most influential accomplishment of the 20th century. Orville was born on this day in 1871 in Dayton, Ohio.
Note: Wilbur and Orville Wright resided in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in their youth.
Gary Larson is an American cartoonist. He is the creator of The Far Side, a surreal single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to over 900 newspapers for 15 years. The series ended with Larson’s retirement on January 1, 1995. His 23 books of collected cartoons have combined sales of more than 45 million copies. In an open letter, Larson famously asked his fans not to distribute his cartoons (which he called his “kids”) illegally on the Internet. He was born on this day in 1950.
I have depicted 8-bit Gary Larson as the red-haired fat kid from his The Far Side cartoons, though Larson is neither overweight nor has red hair. The Fat Kid was one of the many unnamed stock characters that regularly appeared in Larson’s comic, perhaps most famously in the Midvale School for the Gifted strip. When I was in junior high school in the early 1990s, I expressed my appreciation of The Far Side by making a pretty great (if I do say so myself) papier-mâché head of the Fat Kid for a Mardi Gras art project.
Alfred Hitchcock was an English film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939 and became a U.S. citizen in 1955. He directed more than 50 feature films in a career spanning six decades, including Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). Many of Hitchcock’s films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring voyeuristic depictions of violence, murder and crime. He is widely regarded as one of cinema’s most significant artists. Hitchcock was born on this day in 1899.
Josephine Baker was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress. Born in St. Louis, she became a citizen of France in 1937. Fluent in both English and French, Baker was an international icon, perhaps best known for her infamous banana dance. She was the first African-American female to star in a major motion picture, Zouzou (1934), integrate an American concert hall and become a world-famous entertainer. Baker is also noted for her contributions to the civil rights movement in the United States, for assisting the French Resistance during World War II and for receiving the French military honor, the Croix de guerre.
Note: Baker was offered the unofficial leadership of the civil rights movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., but turned it down.
Aldous Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He is best known for his novels, including Brave New World (1932), and a wide-ranging output of essays, including The Doors of Perception (1954). Huxley was a humanist, pacifist and satirist. He spent the later part of his life in Los Angeles and became interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism, in particular Vivekanda’s Neo-Vedanta and Universalism. Huxley is also well known for his advocacy and consumption of psychedelic drugs. He was born on this day in 1894.
Tom Robbins is a bestselling American author. He has written nine novels, and one collection, since 1971. His novels are “seriocomedies,” featuring complex, often wild stories with strong social and philosophical undercurrents, a satirical bent, and scenes extrapolated from carefully researched obscure facts. His 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was made into a movie in 1993 by Gus Van Sant. The Library of Congress states that Robbins was born on this day in 1936, though he claims he was born in 1932.
M.I.A. is the stage name of Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, an English recording artist, songwriter and visual artist of Tamil descent. Her compositions combine elements of electronic, dance, rock, hip-hop and world music. She has released three albums to universal critical acclaim: Arular (2005), Kala (2007) and Maya (2010). M.I.A.’s fourth album, Matangi, is due out this year. She is perhaps best known for her singles “Paper Planes” and “Bad Girls.” M.I.A. is the only artist in history to be nominated for an Academy Award, Grammy Award, Brit Award, Mercury Prize and Alternative Turner Prize. She was born on this day in 1975.
Note: This 8-bit outfit is the sheer polka-dot dress that a very pregnant M.I.A. wore while performing at the 2009 Grammy Awards on her baby’s due date. Also in 2009, People wanted to place her on their annual list of the world’s most beautiful people but she was the first person in the magazine’s history to decline, stating “Mother Teresa was never on the list.”
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio and television throughout much of the 20th century. During her long career, she made a total of 73 films, and was best known as Fred Astaire’s romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of 10 Hollywood musical films that revolutionized the genre. Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Kitty Foyle (1940) and was Hollywood’s highest paid star of 1942. She was married and divorced five times. During the last years of her life Rogers retired in Oregon and bought a ranch in the Medford area because she liked the climate. She was born on this day in 1911.
Ginger Rogers was one of the celebrities whose picture Anne Frank placed on the wall of her bedroom while in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam in 1943. That picture, along with other photos and newspaper cuttings of WWII-era stars and heroes, can still be seen on the walls of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Heidi and I and visited the Anne Frank House, located on the Prinsengracht canal, in October 2012. The experience elicited both fascination and sorrow; the building is charged with strong emotional energy.
Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet, diplomat and politician. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” During his lifetime, Neruda also occupied many diplomatic positions, served as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party, escaped into exile in Argentina, and later advised socialist President Salvador Allende. In September 1973, Neruda was hospitalized with prostate cancer at the time of the U.S.-backed Chilean coup d’état (the other 9/11) led by Augusto Pinochet. Neruda died suddenly of heart failure, but some suspect the junta had a hand in his death. Neruda was born on this day in 1904.
Note: In 2011, a Chilean judge ordered that an investigation be launched, following suggestions that Neruda had been killed by the Pinochet regime for his pro-Allende stance and political views. On April 8, 2013, Neruda was exhumed, 40 years after his death, to determine if he was poisoned. Last month, a court order was issued to find the man that prosecutors allege poisoned Neruda. Suspects include former CIA agent Michael Townley.
Oscar Wilde – No. 679
Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London in the early 1890s. Notorious for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde was one of the best-known personalities of his day. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his only novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry (the father of Wilde’s lover) prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for the “gross indecency” of having had sex with another man. Wilde was ultimately convicted and served a two-year prison sentence with hard labor in England. After his release, he lived the remainder of his life in self-imposed exile in Paris. Wilde was born on this day in 1854. He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46.
I find it interesting that on Wilde’s 1882 trip to San Francisco, the Irishman declared the city “where I belong.” Wilde sometimes mused about relocating to the American West. In October 2012, my wife Heidi and I visited Wilde’s tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris during our trip to Europe. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on his tomb was originally complete with male genitalia that have since been vandalized. In 2011, Wilde’s tomb was cleaned of the many lipstick marks left there by admirers, and a glass barrier was installed to prevent further marks or damage.