Peyton Manning is an American football quarterback for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League (NFL). A five-time NFL MVP, he played for the Indianapolis Colts for 14 seasons (1998-2011). Manning was chosen by the Colts with the first overall pick in the 1998 NFL Draft. His playing career and statistics have ranked him among the greatest quarterbacks of all time. From 1998 to 2010, Manning led the Colts to eight division championships, two AFC championships and one Super Bowl championship (Super Bowl XLI). Manning’s pre-snap routine has earned him the nickname “The Sheriff,” and he is one of the most recognizable and parodied NFL players (e.g., Manning Face). He was born on March 24, 1976.
Kyrie Irving is an American professional basketball point guard for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. He was born in Melbourne, Australia but grew up in New Jersey. He played collegiately at Duke University and was selected first in the 2011 NBA Draft by the Cavaliers. In the NBA, Irving has achieved a number of accolades including being the 2011-12 NBA Rookie of the Year and the 2014 NBA All-Star Game MVP. In the ongoing 2014-15 NBA season, Irving owns the top two highest-scoring games. On January 28, he scored 55 points against Portland, including 11 three-pointers. On March 12, he scored a career-high 57 points against San Antonio. Irving was born on March 23, 1992.
Anthony Davis, Jr., nicknamed “The Brow” for his trademark unibrow, is an American professional basketball power forward/center for the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans. In his one season of college basketball at the University of Kentucky, Davis was the consensus national player of the year. He was selected first overall in the 2012 NBA Draft by New Orleans, and is a two-time NBA All-Star. Davis won a gold medal on the U.S. national team at the 2012 Summer Olympics. He was born in Chicago on March 11, 1993.
Russell Westbrook Jr. is an American professional basketball point guard for the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder. He has established himself as one of the most athletic players in NBA history and attacks the basket relentlessly. Westbrook played college basketball for the UCLA Bruins and was selected with the fourth overall pick in the 2008 NBA Draft by the Seattle SuperSonics who then relocated to Oklahoma City six days later. Westbrook is a four-time NBA All-Star, and he was named the 2015 NBA All-Star Game MVP. He won a gold medal on the U.S. national team at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Kwaku Anansi is the West African spider god. He often takes the shape of a spider and is considered to be the spirit of all stories, as well as the god of lies and mischief. Anansi is one of the most important characters of West African and Caribbean folklore. He is the first spider, but often acts and appears as a man. The Anansi tales originated from the Ashanti people of present-day Ghana. The word Ananse is Akan and means “spider.” Anansi is depicted in many different forms. Sometimes he appears as an ordinary spider, sometimes he is a spider wearing clothes or with a human face, and sometimes he looks much more like a human with spider elements, such as eight legs.
Jaime Meline, better known by his stage name El-P (originally El Producto), is an American hip-hop recording artist, record producer, rapper and entrepreneur from Brooklyn. Originally a member of Company Flow, El-P has been a major driving force in alternative hip-hop for more than two decades. He is the co-founder, owner and CEO of the Definitive Jux record label. His solo albums include Fantastic Damage (2002) and I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (2007). El-P is also a member of The Weathermen and art collective Cardboard City (along with Cage, Shia LaBoeuf, Aesop Rock, Yak Ballz and others). In 2013, he formed the hip-hop duo Run the Jewels, with frequent collaborator Killer Mike, and has released two RTJ albums. El-P was born on March 2, 1975.
My favorite song from Run the Jewels 2 (2014) is the excellent final track, “Angel Duster.” Also, five years ago, I uploaded a 12-song Definitive Jux 2010 playlist to 8tracks. It’s a 2001-2009 retrospective of some favorite Def Jux tracks in response to El-P’s announcement that the label was going on hiatus and he was stepping down as artistic director. Feel free to listen to the playlist in honor of El-P’s 40th birthday. Or in honor of my 36th birthday, which is tomorrow.
Antoine “Fats” Domino Jr. is an American pianist and singer-songwriter. He released five gold records before 1955 and had 35 nationally charted hits. Domino has a music style based on traditional rhythm and blues ensembles of bass, piano, electric guitar, drums and saxophone. He was an important influence on the music of the 1960s and 1970s and was acknowledged as such by top artists, including John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Of French Creole background, Domino was born in New Orleans on February 26, 1928 and lives there to this day. He even tried to stay at home during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which heavily flooded his neighborhood.
Jim Brown is a retired National Football League (NFL) player and actor. He is best known for his record-setting nine-year career as a running back for the Cleveland Browns (1957-1965). In 2002, Sporting News named him the greatest professional football player ever. Brown is widely considered one of the greatest professional athletes in the history of the United States. Since 1964, he has appeared in over 40 films, including The Dirty Dozen (1967). In 1969, Brown starred in 100 Rifles with Burt Reynolds and Raquel Welch; it was one of the first films to feature an interracial love scene. Brown was born on February 17, 1936.
Pinocchio is a fictional character and the protagonist of the children’s novel The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883), by the Italian writer Carlo Collodi. Carved by a woodcarver named Geppetto in a small Italian village, Pinocchio was created as a wooden puppet, but dreamed of becoming a real boy. He has also been used as a character who is prone to telling lies and fabricating stories. Pinocchio has been called an icon of modern culture, and is one of the most reimagined characters in the pantheon of children’s literature. A well-known adaptation is the Walt Disney film Pinocchio (1940).
Klay Thompson is an American professional basketball shooting guard for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. He played college basketball for three seasons at Washington State University before being selected by Golden State with the 11th pick of the 2011 NBA Draft. In 2014, Thompson and teammate Stephen Curry set an NBA record with 484 combined three-pointers in a season as the pair were given the nickname the “Splash Brothers.” Thompson was named to the 2015 NBA All-Star Game, just days after a 52-point performance in which he scored an NBA-record 37 points in one quarter (he made all 13 of his shots, including nine from three-point range). Born on February 8, 1990, Thompson is the son of former NBA player Mychal Thompson.
Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world’s most well-known fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. Although he had little formal education, over his career he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas and hundreds of short stories and nonfiction articles. He also lectured and performed extensively, and campaigned vigorously for children’s rights, education and other social reforms. Dickens sprang to fame with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best known work of historical fiction. Other notable works include Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 and died on June 9, 1870.
The Toast King is a large, anthropomorphic slice of toast who rules over the Moon, following his principle that “heat induces royalty.” He wears a crown bearing the initials “TK,” and is often depicted holding a golden pitchfork with a speared knob of butter. The Toast King’s friends include Insanity Prawn Boy and Moon Keith Moon, and he claims to rule over Moon Hitler’s Nazi Moon Base. British animator Jonathan “Jonti” Picking, also known as Weebl, created the On the Moon cartoon series and the rest of Weebl’s Stuff. Some of Weebl’s most famous creations include Cat Face, Weebl & Bob and 2003’s “Badgers” (plus a slew of other repetitive, overstimulating cartoons set to dance music). Since the release of the first On the Moon Flash cartoon in November 2005, 24 episodes have been produced. The most recent episode was released in August 2013.
Richard Brautigan was an American novelist, poet and short story writer. His work often employs black comedy, parody and satire. He is best known for Trout Fishing in America (1967), In Watermelon Sugar (1968) and Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery (1975). Brautigan was born on January 30, 1935. Growing up, his family lived on welfare and moved about the Pacific Northwest before settling in Eugene, Oregon in 1944. In 1956, Brautigan left home for San Francisco, where he became involved in the counterculture, or Beat, scene. Many years later, on approximately September 16, 1984, he died of a self-inflicted .44 Magnum gunshot wound to the head, though his body was not discovered for almost six weeks.
Spoilsbury Toast Boy is a young slave who is forced to make “toasties” in a toast workhouse for the manipulative beetles that haunt his desolate world. The backwards-running animation series Spoilsbury Toast Boy is a horrific nightmare created by British cartoonist and musician David Firth, who also created Salad Fingers. One night an evil beetle kills Spoilsbury Toast Boy’s creepy grandmother by pushing her into a fireplace. Later, after beetles lure Toast Boy to a doctor’s appointment at 9:41, they brutally murder him with their “brain-fixing machine.” The first two Kafkaesque Flash cartoons were released in 2004 and a third (and final?) episode was released in 2005.
Salad Fingers is a thin, bald, hunchbacked human with light-green skin and long, strangely shaped fingers. He is mentally troubled and speaks with a distorted Northern English accent. Salad Fingers inhabits a desolate world, living alone in a small shack with the number 22 on the door. His “friends” are finger puppets—whom Salad Fingers introduces as Hubert Cumberdale, Marjory Stewart-Baxter and Jeremy Fisher. The animation series Salad Fingers is a creation of British cartoonist and musician David Firth. The first five Flash cartoons were released in 2004 and the series gained rapid Internet popularity in 2005. Five additional episodes were released between 2005 and 2013. You can watch the Salad Fingers full series (52 minutes) on YouTube.
P.S. David Firth was born on January 23, 1983. Today is his birthday.
Jeff Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania. Some critics view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance, while others dismiss his work as kitsch: crass and based on cynical self-merchandising. Koons has stated that there are no hidden meanings in his works, nor any critiques. In 2013, Koons’s Balloon Dog (Orange) sold for $58.4 million, becoming the most expensive work by a living artist sold at auction. Koons was born on January 21, 1955.
Note: It seemed fitting to model 8-bit Koons after his famous stainless steel Rabbit (1986), now owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. A balloon replica of Rabbit (which itself was an enlarged cast of an inflatable plastic toy) floated through Times Square during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 22, 2007.
Haruki Murakami is a contemporary Japanese writer. Murakami has been translated into 50 languages and his best-selling books have sold millions of copies. His most notable works include A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995), Kafka on the Shore (2002) and 1Q84 (2009-2010). He has also translated a number of English works into Japanese, from Raymond Carver to J. D. Salinger. Murakami’s fiction, still criticized by Japan’s literary establishment as un-Japanese, was influenced by Western writers from Chandler to Vonnegut by way of Brautigan. It is frequently surrealistic and melancholic or fatalistic, marked by a Kafkaesque rendition of the “recurrent themes of alienation and loneliness” he weaves into his narratives. Murakami was born on January 12, 1949.
Kim Jong-un is the supreme leader of the ironically named Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). He is the son of Kim Jong-il (1941-2011) and the grandson of Kim Il-sung (1912-1994). He was officially declared the supreme leader following the state funeral for his father on December 28, 2011. He is the third and youngest son of Kim Jong-il and his consort Ko Yong-hui. From late 2010, Kim Jong-un was viewed as heir apparent to the leadership of the nation, and following his father’s death, he was announced as the “Great Successor” by North Korean state television. Kim was born on January 8, 1983. At 32 years of age, he is the first North Korean leader born after the country’s founding and the world’s youngest head of state.
Nicolas Coppola, known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is an American actor and filmmaker. Notable films from early in his acting career include Raising Arizona (1987) and Wild at Heart (1990). Cage received an Academy Award for his performance as an alcoholic Hollywood writer in Leaving Las Vegas (1995) before coming to the attention of wider audiences with mainstream films such as The Rock (1996), Face/Off (1997), Con Air (1997) and City of Angels (1998). He earned his second Academy Award nomination for his performance as Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation. (2002). Since then, he’s been in a lot of bad movies, but recent highlights include Kick-Ass (2010) and Joe (2014). Cage was born on January 7, 1964.
Big Bunny is a 20-foot-tall, fuzzy pink rabbit with a dubious appetite. A group of three “tasty” children—Lulu, Suzy and Sam—and their “crunchy” dog Muffin meet Big Bunny in the forest. Created in 2001, Big Bunny was the second web series by Amy Winfrey, with Peter Merryman as the voice of Big Bunny. Winfrey is the creator of the Nickelodeon show Making Fiends, as well as the web series Muffin Films. Her most recent animation series include Squid and Frog and Fun with Cobra. Delicious.
P.S. Happy New Year! Christmas is over, but you can still play with the holiday characters.
El-P – No. 840
Jaime Meline, better known by his stage name El-P (originally El Producto), is an American hip-hop recording artist, record producer, rapper and entrepreneur from Brooklyn. Originally a member of Company Flow, El-P has been a major driving force in alternative hip-hop for more than two decades. He is the co-founder, owner and CEO of the Definitive Jux record label. His solo albums include Fantastic Damage (2002) and I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (2007). El-P is also a member of The Weathermen and art collective Cardboard City (along with Cage, Shia LaBoeuf, Aesop Rock, Yak Ballz and others). In 2013, he formed the hip-hop duo Run the Jewels, with frequent collaborator Killer Mike, and has released two RTJ albums. El-P was born on March 2, 1975.
My favorite song from Run the Jewels 2 (2014) is the excellent final track, “Angel Duster.” Also, five years ago, I uploaded a 12-song Definitive Jux 2010 playlist to 8tracks. It’s a 2001-2009 retrospective of some favorite Def Jux tracks in response to El-P’s announcement that the label was going on hiatus and he was stepping down as artistic director. Feel free to listen to the playlist in honor of El-P’s 40th birthday. Or in honor of my 36th birthday, which is tomorrow.