born 27 January 1970

Adam Brand, Perth, Australia, country musician

Al Whiting, Tucson, Arizona, actor

Amy Hargreaves, Rockville Centre, New York, actress

Brian Smith, Honolulu, Hawaii, writer

Cindy Cheung, state of California, actress

Corky Pigeon, Fresno, California, child actor: not, as I had hoped, an actual pigeon

Eric Milota, County of Los Angeles, California, child actor

Fabian Harloff, Hamburg, West Germany, TV actor

Fernando Vega, birthplace unspecified, Argentine sound man

Gerrick Winston, Chicago, Illinois, actor

Heather Nauert, Rockford, Illinois, Fox News anchorwoman

Ho Lim, birthplace unspecified, Korean actor

Jon Douglas Rainey, state of New Jersey, demonstrative burglar

Joseph Hampton, Urbana, Illinois, production assistant

Kevin Isola, Fort Irwin, California, actor

Can’t help awarding today’s prize to Amy Hargreaves, for being the only person in the entire Internet Movie Database who was born in the same place and in the same year as I was. To confirm that there was indeed only one person who met those specifications, I had to examine the entire all-time list of IMDb-ers that Rockville Centre has produced. Here it is.

Norman Barasch, 18 February 1922, TV writer

Benjamin De Mott, 2 June 1924 (died 28 September 2005), writer/professor

Doris Kearns Goodwin, 4 January 1943, historian

Joey Heatherton, 14 September 1944, actress/singer/dancer/what have you

Maralyn Hershey, 24 January 1949, police inspector/”Survivor” contestant

David James Carroll, 30 July 1950 (died 11 March 1992), Broadway actor

Alan Howard, 21 March 1951, child actor

Gary Marangi, 29 July 1952, NFL quarterback

Mark Hamlet, 5 February 1954, hand double to the stars

Jack Koenig, 14 May 1959, actor

Thomas R. Rodinella, 24 November 1959, editor/writer/director/producer/professor

Joe Fay, 17 January 1960, extra

Ken O’Brien, 27 November 1960, NFL quarterback

Chris McNamee, 5 January 1961, extra

Mark Allen Shepherd, 7 January 1961, painter/Morn of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”

Karen Velez, 27 January 1961, Playboy playmate

John Salvatore, 3 November 1961, extra

John Louis Fischer, 16 August 1963, extra

Billy Donovan and Tammy Parks, 30 May 1965, NCAA champion basketball coach and porn star, respectively

David S. Barron, 10 April 1966, cameraman

Matt Reeves, 27 April 1966, writer/director

John Vogt, 15 September 1966, production designer

Robert Kato DeStefan, 6 March 1967, costume and makeup man

Brian Cashman, 3 July 1967, New York Yankees general manger

Matthew Hastings, 21 October 1967, writer/director

Today’s Winner Amy Hargreaves (27 January 1970)

Eric P. Robinson, 19 June 1972, cameraman

Ralph Lambiase, 11 June 1974, makeup man

Seth Grahame-Smith, 4 January 1976, writer

Amy Rilling, 16 April 1976, ersatz restaurant hostess

Rory Albanese, 29 May 1977, “Daily Show” producer

Chris Bythewood, 1 October 1978, production assistant

June Diane Raphael, birthdate unspecified, comedian/actress

Colin McShane, 16 August 1980, singer-songwriter

Kenneth R. Frank, 14 November 1980, writer

Joe Pontillo, 9 December 1982, short filmmaker

Alison Whitney, birthdate unspecified, actress

Karen Ann Ryan, 19 January 1984, production assistant

Noelle Arzillo, 21 January 1984, actress

Brendan van Meter, 13 July 1984, balloon light technician

Rich Drezen, 4 February 1985, animator

Diana Rice, 24 October 1987, child actress

Ryan Balton, 13 September 1989, one-eyed jib assistant

Mitchell Ryan Rodriguez, 11 November 1992, child actor

Rather than anoint an all-time champion from this illustrious bunch, I’ll simply take a moment to single out a few names that for one reason or another belong to persons who have earned my respect.

First and foremost I respect the name of the one person on this list that I know, Colin McShane. For several years we worked in the same building, and I always found him to be an eminently good-humored human being. Also, he earned his lone credit on the IMDb as a voice in a video game, which is badass.

I respect Joey Heatherton for becoming wildly famous in the sixties, becoming a tabloid punchline in the seventies and eighties, posing for Playboy in the nineties, and then sufficiently disappearing from view that most people would be surprised to learn she was even still living, let alone only 65 years old. She was a TMZ/Perez Hilton-darling-type before any of those mechanisms were dreamt of. I respect her now for the low profile she’s been keeping in her older age, and I hope she’s not a total mess.

I respect Doris Kearns Goodwin for her keen good nature on talk shows; once in a while she is able to lend valuable perspective to current events. I wish more historians were given the chance that she has had to expound at length, connecting current events to the long arc of our common heritage.

One of Goodwin’s most appealing venues has been “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”; I respect Rory Albanese for being a longtime producer at that program, though the fact that he’s only still in his early thirties does rim my glass with a wee lime rind of envy.

I respect Brian Cashman, for getting in young, when Steinbrenner’s mind was taking its last licks; also for surviving the precarious pre- and early-A-Rod period in the middle of the last decade, when he almost lost his job. At the rate things are going, he might still be running the show in another twenty years.

I kind of respect Alison Whitney and June Diane Raphael for not disclosing their dates of birth to the world at large. Studying the contexts of their careers to date, however, I am confident I have placed them somewhere close to chronological correctness above.

I respect Benjamin DeMott, whose writings in Harper’s Magazine I have enjoyed through the years. I have no respect, however, for the blithe dismissiveness the late Mr. DeMott suffers at the hands of the owner/operator of this web address.

I respect Billy Donovan for having the hairstyle of an early nineties police detective. Also, if Wikipedia is to be believed, he has a son named Hasbrouck, which is bizarre but which I kind of hope catches on.

I have mixed feelings about Rockville Centre itself.