Happy Beer-D to you!

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Yes, it's that time of the year again---the 140th day of the year, to be precise. On this day in history, a green morsel of life emerged into the world, both bilious and blue. The folded ears made me think I'd spawned a Vulcan Emissary (details not clear). The little fellow took to the soil quickly, though, and honors us with his presence for the 27th year in a row, excluding gestation.

As befits a gentleman whose breakthrough appearance into the world was fraught with thrills and peril, like being the 10 cm peg wrenched from a 9 centimeter... well, you understand... May 20 throughout history has exuded a certain black-metal miasma.

Who among you wouldn't want to have been born on the same day as the Cambodian National Day of Hatred, I ask you? Not brutal enough? Then how about the 1940 Grand Opening of a certain unspeakable enterprise in Poland? (Too metal?) Something more slapstick, maybe, like that time in 1896 when a six-ton chandelier at the Paris Opera fell on a crowd below, the bad news being that one person died and the good news being that only one person died. (Had it been an Acme safe, no lives would have been lost.)

But would a bunch of lightweight entertainers really be preferable to the commemoration of evil and mayhem, if it were you who was born on this day in history? Well, pick your poison: David Hedison, 1927 (Captain Crane on the Seaview); Ron Reagan, 1958 (son of That Guy); or Bronson Pinchot, 1959 (nuff said).

No, that can't be nuff said: there are Jimmy Stewart, 1908; and Honore de Balzac, 1799 (badass French realist author).

Now, the boy has only himself to blame for these birth date historical associations. He insisted on prying his way out 3 weeks early. Had he waited until June 10, as expected he'd have less ignoble birthday mates, such as Gustave Courbet, The Howlin' Wolf, Saul Bellow, Maurice Sendak, E.O. Wilson, and Judy Garland (as opposed to Cher). But Beer-D has a highly developed sense of the unjust and the absurd, so I think it's likely that he planned it this way and he likes it just fine. Happy Birthday, Little Man.