born 29 May 1970

Chris Blauvelt, Los Angeles, California, cameraman

Dana Modan, birthplace unspecified, Israeli actress

Devin Foutz (died 1 February 2007), Farmington, New Mexico, recording engineer

Dirk Leupolz, Freiburg, West Germany, composer

Donny Williams, Munster, Indiana, non-fiction TV writer/producer

Echo Valley, Columbia, South Carolina, ample-bosomed woman

Erik Rosenbluh, Louisville, Kentucky, film editor

Iratxe Labejo, Algorta, Spain, Basque actress

Jasna Palic, Zagreb, Yugoslavia, Croatian actress

Jean-Michel Portal, Paris, France, actor

Jens Kloppenborg, Århus, Denmark, TV journalist

Joey Ray, Boston, Massachusetts, porn star

Kim Durso, birthplace unspecified, American child actress

Nicole Deborde, Clearwater, Florida, criminal defense attorney

Peter Gasparino, Greenwich, Connecticut, wrestler

Quentin de Fouchécour, birthplace unspecified, Italian post-production supervisor

Radoslaw Górka, Kielce, Poland, cinematographer

Steve Fleming, Dublin, Ireland, publican

An honorable mention to Mr. Fleming, whose IMDb page seems to be little more than an advertisement for a bar he owns in the town where I was born. Have to check it out the next time I’m in the old diocesan seat.

But the winner, for an equally capricious personal reason, is the man from Freiburg. I spent parts of my first and second years on this earth in that city, and it gives me cause to wonder: what would it be like to go back there as an old man someday? Not that I’d recall anything specific from infancy, per se. It’s just that it was a venue for many of my formative experiences, and there has to be some sort of spirit still residing there that I’d be able to sense, somehow. Even the Wikipedia page conveys a little shiver of recognition to me. Something about those groovy gutters.