Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic and essayist. He is best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time, which explores involuntary memory and was published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. Proust was one of the wordiest men in literature: “The length of individual Proustian sentences, snakelike constructions, the very longest of which, located in the fifth volume, would, if arranged along a single line in standard-sized text, run on for a little short of four meters and stretch around the base of a bottle of wine seventeen times,” wrote Alain de Botton. The reclusive Proust wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of his epic novel while bedridden. Proust was born on this day in 1871.
Heidi and I visited Proust’s grave in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris last October during our trip to Europe. A visitor had charmingly set out a tea cup and saucer for him. Oh, the involuntary memories elicited by the cue of tea biscuit dunking. Proust is one of Heidi’s favorite dead people, though that list is quite long.
Danny Heep is a retired Major League Baseball (MLB) outfielder. He played for five different ballclubs during his 13-year career (1979-1991): the Houston Astros, New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves. Heep won two World Series championships, with the New York Mets in 1986 and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1988. He had the exceptionally trivial honor of being the the first DH (designated hitter) in a World Series to have the initial “DH.” Heep was also the 4000th strikeout victim of Nolan Ryan on July 11, 1985. He was born on this day in 1957.
Note: Danny Heep’s career achievements notwithstanding, the real reason for this character is because I wanted to create pixel art of the fantastically ugly 1980 Tucson Toros uniforms. In 1980, the Toros were a Triple-A minor league baseball team affiliated with the Houston Astros. These hilariously hideous uniforms were Tucson’s take on the “tequila sunrise” jerseys worn by the Houston Astros (see: Nolan Ryan). Since Heep had the best MLB career of any player on the 1980 Toros roster, he gets this pixel art (dis)honor. This is character #7 in my ugly uniform series.
Derek Jeter is an American baseball shortstop who has played 18 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees. A five-time World Series champion, Jeter is regarded as a central figure of the Yankees during their success of the 1990s and 2000s. He is the Yankees’ all-time career leader in hits (3,304), games played (2,585), stolen bases (348) and at bats (10,551). His accolades include 13 All-Star selections, five Gold Glove Awards, five Silver Slugger Awards, two Hank Aaron Awards and a Roberto Clemente Award. Jeter has been one of the most heavily marketed athletes of his generation. He was born on this day in 1974.
Sixto Rodríguez (also known as Rodríguez or Jesús Rodríguez) is an American folk musician based in Detroit, Michigan. His music career initially proved short-lived with two little-sold albums in the early 1970s and some brief touring in Australia. Unbeknownst to Rodríguez, however, his work became extremely successful and influential in South Africa, where some of his songs served as anti-apartheid anthems. In the 1990s, determined South African fans managed to find and contact him. Their story is told in the 2012 Academy Award winning documentary film Searching for Sugar Man, which helped revive Rodríguez’s career and gave him a measure of fame in his own country, at 70 years old.
Both Cold Fact (1970) and Coming from Reality (1971) are fantastic studio albums with beautiful, poetic lyrics. I can’t believe they weren’t hits among the folks who bought records by Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Beatles in the 1970s. Both Rodríguez albums were re-released in 2012. I think Rodríguez’s “Cause” is one of the greatest songs of all time. And Searching for Sugar Man is a heartwarming movie that tells the incredible true story of Rodríguez, a remarkably humble man and the greatest 1970s rock icon who never was.
Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express, which consists of stories about two different lovesick Hong Kong policemen, is one of my three favorite post-1980s films. (The other two are David Lynch’s Lost Highway and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s The City of Lost Children.)
Spud Webb is a retired American professional basketball player. At only 5′ 7″ tall, he played point guard in the NBA for 12 seasons, primarily for the Atlanta Hawks and Sacramento Kings. Webb is notable for winning the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk Contest (over teammate and defending champion Dominique Wilkins) despite being one of the shortest players in NBA history and being unable to palm the ball. Since Webb made his NBA debut in 1985, only two players have been shorter: Earl Boykins (5′ 5″) and Muggsy Bogues (5′ 3″).
As a short kid who loved basketball, I was in awe of Spud Webb’s NBA success and dunking ability. Webb had a 42-inch vertical leap, minimum. I used to pretend to be him (when I wasn’t playing Air Jordan or Wilkins) as I dunked ferociously on our eight-foot basketball hoop in the driveway and made up Slam Dunk scores.
Elizabeth Warren is an American bankruptcy law expert, Harvard Law School professor, and the U.S. Senator-elect for the state of Massachusetts, having defeated incumbent Senator Scott Brown in the 2012 election last week. Her work as a national policy advocate led to the conception and establishment of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011. She is a frequent subject of media interviews regarding the American economy and middle-class personal finance.
I suspect Warren may be a leading Democratic presidential candidate in the 2016 election (though she may wait until the 2020 election because Hillary Clinton will surely be running in 2016). This feisty, good-hearted advocate for middle-class consumers won her Senate seat by defiantly campaigning against the big banks and lobbyists “who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs.”
Dikembe Mutombo is a 7′ 2″ Congolese American and former NBA player. He played for six teams during his 18-year career (1991-2009), most notably the Denver Nuggets and the Atlanta Hawks. “Mt. Mutombo” is one of the greatest shot blockers and defensive players of all time, winning the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award four times. He ranks second to Hakeem Olajuwon on the NBA’s career blocked shots list. Mutombo is a member of the Luba ethnic group and speaks nine languages. A well-known humanitarian, he started a foundation to improve living conditions in his native Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997.
This is 8-bit Mutombo in a “rainbow” Nuggets uniform (a style that lasted 11 years, from 1982-1993). Those uniforms remind me of the Atari 2600 version of Vanguard, a blocky, rainbow shooter that was originally released in 1982, the very same year as Denver’s rainbow jerseys—coincidence? Mutombo is character #5 in my ugly uniform series. The NBA’s 2012-13 regular season began on Tuesday, October 30, 2012.
John Elway is a retired National Football League (NFL) player. He played his 16-season career for the Denver Broncos (1983-1998). At the time of his retirement, Elway had the most victories by a starting quarterback and was the second most prolific passer in NFL history. He led the Broncos to five Super Bowls, winning his last two (1997 and 1998).
Note: Elway is famous for “The Drive,” which was a 98-yard, game-tying touchdown drive in the 1987 AFC Championship Game against the Cleveland Browns. Watch a recap of his clutch performance. Don’t forget that Elway is also Eric Cartman’s father.
Barry Sanders is a retired National Football League (NFL) player. He played his entire professional career as a running back for the Detroit Lions. Sanders surprisingly retired after only 10 seasons (1989-1998), leaving the game just short of the all-time rushing record. He is one of the greatest and most elusive running backs of all time.
Diana, Princess of Wales, was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, and member of the British Royal Family. She was also known for her fundraising work for international charities. Lady Di remained the object of worldwide media scrutiny during and after her marriage, which ended in divorce in 1996. Media attention and public mourning were considerable after her death in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997.
Note: Diana’s 8-bit outfit is her iconic “Elvis” dress, made by Catherine Walker for her 1989 trip to Hong Kong. The silk dress had a standup collar and was embellished with pearls and sequins.
Michael Phelps is an American swimmer and the most decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals. He also holds the all-time record for gold medals with 18. In winning eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Phelps took the record for the most first-place finishes at any single Olympics. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, he won four golds and two silver medals.
Carl Lewis is an American former track and field athlete, who won 10 Olympic medals, including nine gold. His career spanned from 1979 to 1996, when he last won an Olympic title and subsequently retired. Lewis was a dominant sprinter and long jumper who topped the world rankings in the 100 meters, 200 meters and long jump events frequently.
Ernest Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His minimalist style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. In 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He was born on July 21, 1899 and committed suicide in 1961.
Bill Cosby is an American comedian, actor and television producer. During the 1980s, Cosby produced and starred in The Cosby Show (1984-1992), which is considered one of the decade’s defining sitcoms. He is also known for The Electric Company, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and A Different World. Cosby is a notable spokesman for Jell-O and other products. He was born on this day in 1937.
Margaret Court is an Australian former tennis player who won 24 Grand Slam singles titles, including 11 Australian Open titles, during her career in the 1960s and 1970s. She’s one of the greatest women’s tennis players of all time. Court is also a Pentecostal minister famous for abrasive, bigoted statements against gay marriage and homosexuality, which she recently called an “abomination” in an interview.
Note: This is 8-bit tennis character #1 of 5 for French Open week.
Helen Keller is an American author and political activist. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how Keller’s teacher broke through the isolation and helped her learn to communicate is the basis for the play and film The Miracle Worker. A prolific author, Keller was outspoken in her opposition to war and campaigned for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights and socialism.
Helen Keller is one of a trio of American women activists (along with Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman) that recently appeared to my girlfriend in a dream.
Happy Presidents Day! I think we’re supposed to be observing George Washington’s birthday today. Though some say the holiday is meant to commemorate all U.S. Presidents, or at least honor Washington and Abraham Lincoln and/or Thomas Jefferson. Whatever. I still have to go to work today. As the Good Doctor would say, “Mahalo.”
A Serbian-American inventor, mechanical engineer and electrical engineer. He is known for many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism. Tesla’s patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems and commercial electricity. He invented the radio, experimented with wireless electricity and designed a death ray. He died on this day in 1943.
I love this Funny or Die episode about Nikola Tesla and the evil Thomas Edison: “This is awful. I am inventing electricity and you look like an asshole.” Tesla was a badass.
A retired American boxer. Iron Mike is a former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and holds the record as the youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF world heavyweight titles. He also spent years in prison for rape, bit off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear during a fight, declared bankruptcy and is generally nuts. He is slowly fading into Bolivian.
Marcel Proust – No. 645
Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic and essayist. He is best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time, which explores involuntary memory and was published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. Proust was one of the wordiest men in literature: “The length of individual Proustian sentences, snakelike constructions, the very longest of which, located in the fifth volume, would, if arranged along a single line in standard-sized text, run on for a little short of four meters and stretch around the base of a bottle of wine seventeen times,” wrote Alain de Botton. The reclusive Proust wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of his epic novel while bedridden. Proust was born on this day in 1871.
Heidi and I visited Proust’s grave in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris last October during our trip to Europe. A visitor had charmingly set out a tea cup and saucer for him. Oh, the involuntary memories elicited by the cue of tea biscuit dunking. Proust is one of Heidi’s favorite dead people, though that list is quite long.