Popeye the Sailor Man is a cartoon fictional character, created by E. C. Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and theatrical and television animated cartoons. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre in 1929; Popeye became the strip’s title in later years. In 1933, Fleischer Studios adapted the Thimble Theatre characters into a series of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. These cartoons proved to be among the most popular of the 1930s, and the Fleischers—and later Paramount’s own Famous Studios—continued production through 1957.
Tori Amos is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and composer. She is a classically trained musician and has a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Amos won a full scholarship to the Peabody Institute at age five and was expelled at age 11. She originally served as the lead singer of short-lived 1980s pop group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s. Amos has since become one of the world’s most prominent female singer-songwriters and has received eight Grammy nominations. Early in her solo career, she was one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument. Amos has sold more than 12 million albums worldwide. She was born on August 22, 1963.
Polly Jean Harvey, known as PJ Harvey, is an English musician and singer-songwriter. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments. Harvey began her career in 1988 when she joined local band Automatic Dlamini. In 1991, she formed an eponymous trio and released two studio albums, Dry (1992) and Rid of Me (1993) before the trio disbanded. As a solo artist Harvey has released six studio albums, including To Bring You My Love (1995), Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000) and Let England Shake (2011). She began recording her ninth studio album earlier this year. Harvey was born on October 9, 1969.
Maya Lin is an American designer and artist who is known for her work in sculpture and landscape art. She first came to fame at the age of 21 as the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) in Washington, D.C. Her minimalist design aroused controversy but has become very popular with the public over the years. Lin is one of just 13 “groundbreaking Americans” featured in Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters, a children’s book by United States President Barack Obama. She was born on October 5, 1959.
Note: After checking the list of people featured in Obama’s children’s book, I realized that Maya Lin is character #13 of 13, thus completing my Of Thee I Sing 8-bit series. Mission accomplished.
Faheem Najm, better known by his stage name T-Pain, is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer and actor. His discography includes Rappa Ternt Sanga (2005), Epiphany (2007) and Thr33 Ringz (2008). T-Pain has earned two Grammy Awards alongside artists Kanye West and Jamie Foxx. T-Pain is the founder of the record label Nappy Boy Entertainment, established in 2005. He is known for using and popularizing the Auto-Tune pitch shift effect. From 2006 to 2010, T-Pain was featured on more than 50 chart-topping singles, including Flo Rida’s “Low” and The Lonely Island’s “I’m on a Boat.” T-Pain was born on September 30, 1985.
Brigitte Bardot is a French former actress, singer and fashion model. She was one of the best known sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s and was widely referred to by her initials. During her career in show business, she starred in 47 films, performed in several musical shows and recorded over 60 songs. Bardot started her acting career in 1952 and became world-famous in 1957 with the controversial film And God Created Woman. She later starred in the 1963 film Contempt by Jean-Luc Godard. French photographer Sam Lévin was instrumental in creating Bardot’s image, particularly with The Towel Session shoot in 1959. Bardot caught the attention of French intellectuals and was the subject of a famous essay, Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome by Simone de Beauvoir. Bardot retired from the entertainment industry in 1973. After her retirement, she established herself as an animal rights activist. During the 1990s, she generated controversy by criticizing immigration and Islam in France and has been fined five times for inciting racial hatred. Bardot was born on September 28, 1934.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his best known) and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with age and despair. He was born on September 24, 1896 and died on December 21, 1940.
The Mount Union Purple Raiders mascot, MUCaw, is NCAA Division III pixel art mascot #3 of 449. Mount Union has appeared in 10 consecutive NCAA Division III Football Championships (Stagg Bowls), winning four. Since 1993, Mount Union has appeared in the national championship game a record 18 times, winning 11. The football team has won 94 consecutive regular season games and has posted a 204-1 regular season record since 1994. (View reference images.)
Banksy is a pseudonymous English graffiti artist, political activist, film director and painter. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humor with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls and bridges of cities throughout the world. Banksy’s work grew out of the Bristol underground scene. Observers have noted that his style is similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris. Banksy’s first film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, billed as “the world’s first street art disaster movie,” made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. In August 2015, Banksy opened Dismaland, a theme park-styled art installation in the UK that is scheduled to run until September 27, 2015.
Jack Vigliatura was the vocalist for For Squirrels, a Florida-based alternative rock band. The band was founded in 1992 by Vigliatura and two childhood friends who had gone off to college together at the University of Florida. Their single “Mighty K.C.” was a minor radio hit, but the band is perhaps most remembered for the tragic touring van accident and claimed the lives of founding members Vigliatura and bassist Bill White, along with tour manager Tim Bender. On the way home from a show in New York, the band’s tour van blew a tire and overturned on Interstate 95 in Georgia. The accident happened less than a month before the release of Example (1995), right as the band was on the cusp of national recognition. After recovering from serious injuries, the two surviving members changed the band’s name to Subrosa and ultimately disbanded in 2001. Vigliatura was born on December 20, 1973 and died on September 8, 1995 at age 21.
It’s been exactly 20 years since the tragic tour van accident. As a high school student just a few years younger than the band members, I remember hearing about the accident on the radio while flipping through CDs at a local music store. You just never know what’s going to happen in life. To get a sense of what the band was like, watch the live performance (and Vigliatura’s mid-song emotional breakdown) of an early version of “Mighty K.C.” in Miami Beach on May 27, 1994. The song is about Kurt Cobain and the many suicides by fans following his death (which went under-reported by the media for fear of escalation). I love this song so much but it always hurts to listen to, especially considering that the lyrics seem to foreshadow the death of Vigliatura and the band the following year. You should also listen to my favorite track “Disenchanted” (and their full album), if you haven’t. ♥ “Into the great unknown / Things are gonna change in our favor.”
Jane Addams was a pioneering American social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women’s suffrage and world peace. In an era when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified themselves as reformers and social activists, Addams was one of the most prominent reformers of the Progressive Era. She campaigned for better social conditions and led investigations into child welfare, local public health and education. She introduced the idea of the settlement house to the United States, co-founding Hull House in 1889. In 1920, she co-founded the ACLU. In 1931, she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the U.S. Addams was born on September 6, 1860 and died on May 21, 1935.
Doug Martsch is an American singer and musician. He is best known for his distinctive vocals and guitar-playing style in the band Built to Spill. Martsch’s first band was Farm Days in the early 1980s. His second band was Treepeople, with whom he released three albums and two EPs. He has been the lead singer and guitarist of Built to Spill since 1992. Built to Spill has released released eight full-length albums, including this year’s Untethered Moon (2015). Martsch was born in Twin Falls, Idaho in September 1969.
Lufkin is a large stuffed ape I was given as a baby in 1979. A gift from my uncle, he’s one of my most beloved childhood toys. Lufkin’s body type strongly suggests that he is a gorilla, despite his chimpanzee-like ears. He was handmade by a South Dakota artist and sold at a craft fair in Aberdeen, SD. Lufkin came with an adult-size red cap, which he wore for my entire childhood. His name comes from this red Lufkin cap, which had an embroidered Lufkin measuring tools patch on the white polyester front, with red mesh and a snapback adjustable strap in back. We have always pronounced the gorilla’s name “Loofkin,” I suppose because my parents didn’t know much about the measuring tools company. The gorilla is now one of my two-year-old daughter Ramona’s favorite toys/pillows, though we’re not sure where his red trucker hat is these days.
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926). This was followed by The House at Pooh Corner (1928) and two children’s verse books. All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. In the 1940s, Agnes Brush created the first plush dolls with Pooh in his red shirt. Rights to Winnie-the-Pooh were first licensed to Walt Disney in 1961. Disney has released numerous animated productions starring Pooh and related characters, including theatrical featurettes, television series, and direct-to-video films, as well as theatrical feature-length films.
A stuffed Pooh Bear from my 1980s childhood is one of my daughter’s favorite toys. She also believes that old Pooh and Baby Margot are some kind of inseparable team. It’s sweet. I am often reminded of the final passage of On the Road by Jack Kerouac: “So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”
Robert Diggs, better known by his stage names RZA and Bobby Digital, is an American music producer, multi-instrumentalist, author, rapper, actor, director, composer and screenwriter. A prominent figure in hip-hop, RZA is a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan and its de facto leader. He is a cousin of GZA and late band-mate Ol’ Dirty Bastard. RZA has produced almost all of Wu-Tang Clan’s albums as well as many Wu-Tang solo and affiliate projects. In addition to the Wu-Tang Clan and his solo releases, RZA was also a founding member of the horrorcore hip-hop group Gravediggaz where he used the name the RZArector. He has acted in numerous movies and TV series, including Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) and American Gangster (2007). He has also written, arranged and/or produced music for more than 40 film soundtracks. RZA directed, co-wrote and starred in The Man with the Iron Fists (2012). He was born on July 5, 1969.
Gary Grice, better known by his stage names GZA and the Genius, is an American rapper and songwriter. A founding member of the hip-hop group, the Wu-Tang Clan, GZA is known as the group’s “spiritual head,” being both the oldest and the first within the group to receive a record deal. He has appeared on his fellow Clan members’ solo projects, and has maintained a successful solo career since the release of his critically acclaimed solo album Liquid Swords (1995). An analysis of GZA’s lyrics found that he has the second-largest vocabulary in hip-hop music, behind Aesop Rock. GZA was born on August 22, 1966.
Awesome Baby is the unholy combination of a baby’s head on the body of an octopus—plus the baby has a mohawk, a Fu Manchu mustache and sunglasses. It’s difficult to explain exactly how this character arose in my household, but I can say that it was created piecemeal over many days by my two-year-old daughter Ramona. My wife Heidi and I regularly draw pictures for Ramona at her request, often on her Fisher-Price magnetic doodler. We have drawn countless sea creatures, including octopuses and squids, as well as human babies and many other things. At some point, and in some order, my daughter became very interested in mustaches, sunglasses and different hairstyles. Eventually, her combined requests consistently guided us to create the monstrous creature she refers to as Awesome Baby, who is mostly orange (pronounced “ohn-mo” by Ramona, despite her linguistic advances). She loves him so much.
Update: Heidi posted pen-and-ink illustrations of Awesome Baby and Baby Margot on her Tumblr blog.
Margot is my two-year-old daughter Ramona’s favorite baby doll. This 9.5-inch Babi Corolle doll was a gift from my dad. As a Corolle product, the doll’s given (slave) name is Miss Grenadine’s Heart. She has a soft body and wears a sewn-on raspberry-colored dress with an embroidered heart and a lavender collar. She also wears sewn-on lavender shoes and a raspberry-colored cap. Her face is vanilla-scented, which I have come to believe teaches children cannibalism, because it smells delicious. Also, Ramona conceives of “Margot” as a type of person, rather than a specific individual. Hooded cartoon characters, other dolls, and sometimes even humans fall into the category of “Margot” and are differentiated by their color (e.g., Blue Margot, Pink Margot). But this is the original Margot.
Margaret Hamilton is a computer scientist, systems engineer and business owner. She was Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo space program. In 1969, in a critical moment of the Apollo 11 mission, Hamilton’s team’s work prevented an abort of landing on the moon. She was 32 years old when the Apollo Lunar Module landed on the moon while running her code. She designed software robust enough to handle buffer overflows and cycle-stealing, which was instrumental in the success of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Hamilton is also credited with coining the term “software engineering.” In 1986, she became the founder and CEO of Hamilton Technologies, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company was developed around the Universal Systems Language, based on her paradigm of Development Before the Fact (DBTF) for systems and software design. Hamilton was born on August 17, 1936.
Jack Vigliatura – No. 915
Jack Vigliatura was the vocalist for For Squirrels, a Florida-based alternative rock band. The band was founded in 1992 by Vigliatura and two childhood friends who had gone off to college together at the University of Florida. Their single “Mighty K.C.” was a minor radio hit, but the band is perhaps most remembered for the tragic touring van accident and claimed the lives of founding members Vigliatura and bassist Bill White, along with tour manager Tim Bender. On the way home from a show in New York, the band’s tour van blew a tire and overturned on Interstate 95 in Georgia. The accident happened less than a month before the release of Example (1995), right as the band was on the cusp of national recognition. After recovering from serious injuries, the two surviving members changed the band’s name to Subrosa and ultimately disbanded in 2001. Vigliatura was born on December 20, 1973 and died on September 8, 1995 at age 21.
It’s been exactly 20 years since the tragic tour van accident. As a high school student just a few years younger than the band members, I remember hearing about the accident on the radio while flipping through CDs at a local music store. You just never know what’s going to happen in life. To get a sense of what the band was like, watch the live performance (and Vigliatura’s mid-song emotional breakdown) of an early version of “Mighty K.C.” in Miami Beach on May 27, 1994. The song is about Kurt Cobain and the many suicides by fans following his death (which went under-reported by the media for fear of escalation). I love this song so much but it always hurts to listen to, especially considering that the lyrics seem to foreshadow the death of Vigliatura and the band the following year. You should also listen to my favorite track “Disenchanted” (and their full album), if you haven’t. ♥ “Into the great unknown / Things are gonna change in our favor.”