born 31 August 1970

Bill Gentry, Quantico, Virginia, extra

Chad Arganbright, Big Spring, Texas, short filmmaker

Debbie Gibson, Brooklyn, New York, musician/stage actress

Floortje Dessing, Heemstede, The Netherlands, TV travel show hostess

Greg Tharp, Houston, Texas, producer

Michael Rast, Graz, Austria, actor

Mona Lisa, Tacoma, Washington, porn star

Robin Brodsky, Brockton, Massachusetts, writer

Yvonne Haß, Winnenden, West Germany, actress

Zack Ward, Toronto, Ontario, actor

I can’t think of Today’s Winner without remembering my life at the time she emerged as a pop phenomenon. I was a Rockbottom stockboy. It was my first W-2-issuing job. (Rockbottom Stores, for those of my readers not resident in the New York suburbs in the 80s, comprised a medium-sized drugstore chain that was eventually ingested and shat out by Duane Reade.)

Not much happened in that job, as you might imagine. Here are a handful of the things I can recall:

- My boss, Kent, an Asian night school med student who would dispense sage and sardonic advice between cigarette breaks. I hear his voice in my head whenever I’m in the shampoo and makeup section of a large drugstore, or as Kent would call it, “HBA”. (For “health and beauty aids”.)

- Having a thug warn me away from a girl I was working my way toward, whose soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend was away at college. That was kind of awesome, actually. I believe I was minding my own business in the toy and game aisle when that happened. It might have been stationery, though.

- The massive cardboard-crushing machine. When the cardboard had been sufficiently compressed into enormous cubes, the stockboys had to tie the cubes into submission with wire, like hay bales. It was manly work. I enjoyed that part of it, even though the wire would occasionally damage your hands.

- Just the general sense working there gave me for the layout of one of those stores, any one, anywhere. It was like that Nabokov passage I dimly recall, where he’s talking about the ordering of the storefronts in the smaller Russian towns he envisions from his youth. There’s a logic hidden in the manner by which they organize themselves. The butcher and the blacksmith and the dry goods emporium spring up in legible fashion, similarly, in towns of like size many miles apart. You can observe that kind of thing wherever you go, once you’re looking for it.

No, wait, it’s actually Tiffany whom I can’t think of without remembering all of those things. Never mind.

born 30 August 1970

Boaz Rimmer, birthplace unspecified, Israeli actor

Brendan Minogue, Melbourne, Australia, brother of Kylie Minogue

Derek & Drew Riker, Chicago, Illinois, “The Amazing Race” contestants

Frank Falcone, Toronto, Ontario, actor

Heather Lere, Sherman Oaks, California, porn star

Joel Garbutt-Quistiano, Fresno, California, actor

Michael Wong, Ipoh, Malaysia, musician

Raina Al-Yassin, Kuwait City, Queen of Jordan

Robert Ketterer, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, extra

If, like Today’s Winner, you are the queen of a country, and have been since before you were thirty, I think it’s fair to say you have arrived.

born 29 August 1970

Alessandra Negrini, São Paolo, Brazil, actress

Amine Zary, Casablanca, Morocco, the Tunisian from “The X Files”

Arcie Miller, birthplace unspecified, American porn star

Chris Daugherty, West Jefferson, Ohio, “Survivor” winner

Christian Clarke, New Milford, Connecticut, assistant director

Darren T. Knaus, Whittier, California, stutterer/burger flipper

Derek Basco, Pittsburg, California, actor

Eddie Schmidt, birthplace unspecified, American documentarian

Gisela Gard, Düsseldorf, West Germany, actress

Jari Sinkonnen, Lappeenranta, Finland, heavy metal drummer

Michael Kyle Gregory, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, actor

Richard Kolnby, birthplace unspecified, Swedish actor

Sasa Gedeon, Prague, Czechoslovakia, writer/director

As single-role entertainment careers go, Today’s Winner’s is pretty hard to top for concision and mystery.

born 28 August 1970

Beatrycze Lukaszewska, Warsaw, Poland, actress

Dan Rosenberg, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, actor

Jake Carpenter, Fort Ord, California, actor

Loïc Leferme (died 11 April 2007), Malo-des-Bains, France, deep sea diver

Mark Borrelli, San Diego, California, photographer

Naughty Nina, Kampala, Uganda, MTV Europe VJ

Noel Donnellon, Dublin, Ireland, cinematographer

Odín Dupreyón, Mexico City, Spanish-language Muppet operator

Sherrie Krenn aka Sherrié Austin, Sydney, Australia, actress/musician

Steven McMichael, Englewood, California, stuntman

Even children’s television in Latin America is a little saltier that we are accustomed to here in our strait-laced country, if this photograph of Today’s Winner in action is any indication.

born 27 August 1970

Adam Lucas, birthplace unspecified, Australian short filmmaker

Ann Johnson, Raleigh, North Carolina, dance team stylist

Francesca Schiavo, Rome, Italy, actress

Gene Gabriel, New York, New York, actor

Gustavo Salmerón, Madrid, Spain, actor

Jason McCoy, Minesing, Ontario, self-portrayer

Jason Anyiam Okezie, birthplace unspecified, porn star Jake Steed

Jim Thome, Peoria, Illinois, major league slugger

Joy, Leanna, & Monica Creel, Los Angeles, California, actresses

Juana María Maroto, Mexico City, TV assistant director

Kelly Trump, Gelsenkirschen, West Germany, porn star

Kevin Castro, San Leandro, California, short filmmaker

Margot Demeter, Washington, D.C., actress

Matt Painter, Muncie, Indiana, basketball player

R. Lee Fleming, Jr., state of Texas, TV writer

Tony Canal, London, England, the black guy in No Doubt

Folks, let’s face it: we are living in a world where Today’s Winner might be in the top ten of all time home run hitters until the day we die. He’s already up in the rarified air above Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, and Ernie Banks, among others. He will finish his career no worse than eighth all time.

Now, he has a thirty-eight home run lead on Manny Ramirez. One supposes Manny may catch him, but it’s far from a guaranteed thing. Pujols can pass everyone who ever lived, not excluding A-Rod or Sadaharu Oh. But even just to pass Jim Thome, Albert has to stay alive and well to do so for five or six more seasons at the minimum, which history says is always harder than it looks.

Back down the list, Prince Fielder? Adam Dunn? Some kid coming up through the minors right now? I don’t know. The live-ball Canseco epoch is well dead and buried. Jim Thome is still here, still hitting home runs, and hasn’t been linked to any performance-enhancing substances stronger than chewing tobacco. As the glare and the haze of the present day clears, his Bunyanesque accomplishment will only expand in stature.

born 26 August 1970

Chris Sparks, Greensboro, North Carolina, musician

Craig Rondell, Los Angeles, California, stuntman

Deborah Young, Long Beach, California, writer

Maley May, Laoag City, The Philippines, associate producer

Marcelo Cosentino, Buenos Aires, Argentina, actor

Mark Benecke, Rosenheim, West Germany, forensic entomologist

Martin Lewis, birthplace unspecified, Australian actor

Melissa McCarthy, Plainfield, Illinois, actress

Nicholas Podbrey, Montreal, Quebec, special effects makeup coordinator

Raphaël Creton, Paris, France, photographer/child actor

I imagine the reality of life as a forensic entomologist is a good deal less action packed than the way it gets portrayed on television. But even so, it’s a pretty awesome job.

born 25 August 1970

Attila Király, Szeged, Hungary, actor/choreographer

Carlos Gómez Oliver, Mexico City, documentarian

Carlos Jimenez, New York, New York, property master

Claudia Schiffer, Rheinberg, West Germany, supermodel

David Aldrich, Wilmington, Delaware, actor

Doug Glanville, Teaneck, New Jersey, major league baseball player

Marta Plucinska, Poznan, Poland, producer

Matthias Opdenhövel, Detmold, West Germany, TV host/soccer stadium announcer

Robert Horry, Andalusia, Alabama, NBA basketball player

Ronald Waterreus, Lemiers, The Netherlands, soccer player

I am still finding it difficult to forgive Robert Horry for the role he played in breaking my heart in 1994.

Doug Glanville wrote a diverting series of New York Times opinion pieces last year.

Matthias Opdenhövel spent three seasons as the Mönchengladbach stadium public address man, which seems like an awesome job in any language.

But the winner is Claudia Schiffer. Did you know that she was never actually married to illusionist David Copperfield? For that fact alone, she gets big props (they were indeed “engaged” for most of the 1990s, but never actually tied the magic knot). No, in fact, she’s married with three kids to an up-and-coming Hollywood director. She is also the only actress in Hollywood history whose on-screen love interest was portrayed by Allan Houston.

born 24 August 1970

Cezary Ciszewski, Busko Zdrój, Poland, documentarian

Dan Henderson, Apple Valley, California, fighter

David Gregory, Los Angeles, California, prematurely grey press eminence

Eric Boring, Franklin, Pennsylvania, actor

Jason Reisig, San Francisco, California, animator

Katrien Vandendries, Veurne, Belgium, actress

Katrina Cook, Greenville, Texas, casting director

Kristyn Osborn, Magna, Utah, singer

Martin Bomke, Kiel, West Germany, film editor

Nicole Theriault, birthplace unspecified, American-born Thai singer

Sanjay Nair, Bombay, India, cinematographer

Shane White, Alexandria, Louisiana, video game storyboard artist

Thomas O’Neil Younkman, Los Angeles, California, sound effects editor

No winner today. I’m spent from yesterday’s overeffusion, and from a soccer game in which I played terribly; lacking the endorphin uplift that decent-to-excellent play (by my own spazzy standards anyway) provides, I find I am more tired and listless than usual this post-game.

I would, however, like to propose the following addition to the lexicon of our times:

When someone achieves a highly visible and coveted position, because the previous occupant of his office dropped dead in such a sudden and unexpected manner that there wasn’t time to adequately formulate a reasonable plan for succession, that’s henceforth to be known as “pulling a David Gregory”.

born 23 August 1970

Brad Mehldau, Jacksonville, Florida, musician

Daniel Gonzalez, El Paso, Texas, actor

Drew MacIver, Penang, Malaysia, actor

Gina Sigillito, Saint Louis, Missouri, girl at concert

Janne Sevtsenko, birthplace unspecified, Estonian actress

Jay Mohr, Verona, New Jersey, actor/comedian

Jeffrey Miller, Vernon, Connecticut, actor

Kai Holzapfel, Berlin, East Germany, actor

Krishna Kumar “Kay Kay” Menon, Thrissur, India, musician

Lester G. Reynolds, Kingsport, Tennessee, extra

Lisa Gal, birthplace unspecified, American cheerleader

Luis DeMatos, birthplace unspecified, Mozambique-born Portuguese magician

Marsha Wattanapanich, birthplace unspecified, German/Thai actress/singer

Natalya Petrova, birthplace unspecified, Russian actress

Nicholas Guilak, Houston, Texas, actor

Pontus Hjortén, birthplace unspecified, Swedish actor

River Phoenix (died 31 October 1993), Madras, Oregon, actor/musician/heartthrob/cautionary tale

Sung-jae Lee, Seoul, South Korea, actor

Tim Garrick, Cleveland, Ohio, writer

There are a couple of things I think we can all agree on about River Phoenix.

One, it’s a shame he died so young. Two, chicks dug him, and straight guys tolerated him just fine too. Gay guys, well, I mean, obviously, I guess, right? So he was an actor it was damn near impossible not to like. And yet there was something about the style of his Hollywood partyboy demise, coupled with Kurt Cobain’s rendezvous with a shotgun early the following spring, that has tempered River Phoenix’s posthumous adulation. Though he’s well though of, whenever he is thought of, he just isn’t thought of quite as much as you might have expected he would be, a decade and a half into his afterlife.

Opinions diverge from there. I’ve been quizzing friends about what kind of career Today’s Winner might have had, had an antidote for his lethal speedball been available. It’s very much in the eye of the beholder. While it’s universally acknowledged that the careers of a couple of actors would have taken a very different turn had he lived, if you look at that group, it only underscores how tricky it is to pin down what lay in store for an older River Phoenix.

First, you have the actual beneficiaries. Of the three roles the deceased was known to have been in line for, two ended up being snapped up by Leonardo DiCaprio, and one by Christian Slater. But each of those guys started out as one kind of thing, and each turned into quite another. That's the joy of watching young actors burn brightly in their twenties; you never know what species of creature any one of them might emerge as twenty years along. Compare, from a slightly earlier vintage, these guys.

This kid showed enough range in the eighties and nineties that I'm certain he could have turned into just about any kind of thing. Here are just a few of the parts I’d have been interested to see our honoree cast in.

Ichabod Crane

Smoochy The Rhino

Norman Bates

Craig Schwartz

Amsterdam Vallon

Fred Madison

Jennings

Jeffrey Goines

Russell Hammond

Not necessarily saying that the people who played these parts didn’t do an admirable job. Just recalling that every part that ever gets cast is at the expense of everyone else who might have played it.

Directors I would have liked him to work with, in roles unknown: Antonioni, Cronenberg, Harron, Jarmusch, Schrader, Spielberg, Waters

Impossible projects he would have been ideal for:

>A fiction film about the destitute gypsy existence of the Phoenix family in the Seventies, in which the adult Phoenix siblings would wander about the margins of the frame, occasionally remarking on the action

>Roger Avary’s unproduced screenplay about the young Salvador Dalí

>A biopic about Philip K. Dick’s five marriages, which would be shot on and off over the course of 25 or so actual years

There's a lot more to say on this subject, but essays and blog posts are not the same thing. So, shortly and sweetly, happy birthday kid. Glad you were born, sorry you died.

born 22 August 1970

Dirk Jacob, Berlin, East Germany, sound designer

Frederik Fernbrant, Helsingborg, Sweden, composer

Giada De Laurentiis, Rome, Italy, cooking show host

Gianluca Ramazzotti, Rome, Italy, actor

Jeff Griffith, Everett, Washington, assistant director

Judy Unger, New York, New York, actress

László Nagyidai, Jr., Budapest, Hungary, construction manager

Luz Elena González, Guadalajara, Mexico, actress

Tanja Karpela, Salo, Finland, minister of culture

Tímea Nagy, Budapest, Hungary, Olympic champion fencer

Tyce Diorio, Brooklyn, New York, dancer

Yakan Nabe, Tokyo, Japan, actor

I always felt that Today’s Winner looks the way Natalie Portman would look, were Natalie Portman Italian, and three dimensional. It’s a package: the cleavage, the lockjaw, the first grade teacher’s tone of voice. I can’t deny that she can be somewhat hypnotic in ten to fifteen minute increments: the crucial skill for food television. I guess we’re stuck with her, if the fact that she’s got a display case at the dumpy Target down my street is any indication.

born 21 August 1970

Adonis Jordan, Brooklyn, New York, NBA basketball player

Brent Hanley, Dallas, Texas, short filmmaker

Christine Fazzino, state of Connecticut, actress

Craig Counsell, South Bend, Indiana, major league baseball player

Diana Sno, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, actress

Erik Dekker, Hoogeveen, The Netherlands, cyclist

Kelli Sample, Gaithersburg, Maryland, assistant to Gil Junger

Len Simon, birthplace unspecified, Canadian animator

Marc Evan Jackson, Buffalo, New York, actor

Matheus Petinacci, Brasília, Brazil, actor

Murilo Rosa, Brasília, Brazil, actor

Samuli Putro, Helsinki, Finland, musician

Scott Grover, Glendale, California, producer

Steve Everitt, Miami, Florida, NFL football player

William Joseph Dunn, Teaneck, New Jersey, animation background painter

Well, I never much liked Craig Counsell, even though he had that hitting stance that made it look like the bat was dangling from a fishing line suspended from on high.

I’m going to say the winner has to be the man who made it to the NBA, one imagines, based solely on the fact that a name like his positively guarantees a person a career in professional basketball.

born 20 August 1970

Adrian Bower, Chester, England, actor

Agnieszka Maliszewska, birthplace unspecified, Polish extra

Asley Christofferson, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, cheerleader

Berna Laçin, Izmir, Turkey actress

“Bad Ass” Frank Prather, Bethesda, Maryland, actor

William Frederick Durst, Gastonia, North Carolina, a bald man seldom photographed hatless

Fredrik Hiller, Stockholm, Sweden, actor

Jim Thompson, Belfast, Northern Ireland, film editor

Marc Hosemann, Hamburg, West Germany, actor

Pam Carpenter, Mount Vernon, New York, actress

Patrick Cooley, Manhasset, New York, actor

Petter Lennstrand, birthplace unspecified, Swedish TV actor

Robin Ignico, Clearwater, Florida, actress

Sean Ryal, Chicago, Illinois, actor

I guess HBO is at some point going to come out with a Middlesex miniseries. Today’s Winner is from Izmir, in Turkey, where much of the early part of the book is set. I sure hope the TV program doesn’t shortchange too much of the Greeks-in-Turkey stuff in favor of Michigan, where the bulk of the action unfolds. Not that I didn't enjoy the Detroit parts; it's just that the two halves square up into a whole.

born 19 August 1970

Alex Alonso, The Bronx, New York, actor/producer

Cary Burch, Birmingham, Alabama

Joan Baptista Torrella, Sabadell, Spain, grandson of Josep Torella

Jordan Silver, Northampton, Massachusetts, TV producer

Joseph Antonio Cartagena, The Bronx, New York, rapper Fat Joe

Marco Castilla, birthplace unspecified, French sculptor

Mayumi Hasegawa, Hagi, Japan, actress

Oli Weiss, Herford, West Germany, film editor

Rob Heydon, Toronto, Ontario, commercial director

Santiago García, Buenos Aires, Argentina, documentarian

Sonny Anderson, Goiatuba, Brazil, soccer player

Terri Dawn Arnold, Sacramento, California, writer/director

Among the accomplishments of the people born in this year, I have learned, is a documentary Today’s Winner made, entitled “Lesbianas de Buenos Aires”. This achievement just barely edges out the “Rockaway/Lean Back” dance popularized by Fat Joe.

What I like about the description of “Lesbianas de Buenos Aires” is how earnest it sounds. Earnest documentaries can be fantastic or painful, but they stand or fall on their subject. This is one I would watch, mainly because I’m fascinated by the idea of Buenos Aires, and very much hope to visit there someday. And you can learn a lot about a city by studying the ways of its lesbians.

born 18 August 1970

András Gáspár, birthplace unspecified, Hungarian actor

Dave Rodriguez, New York, New York, writer/director

Dillon Day, state of Ohio, male porn star

Fabio Jafet, São Paolo, Brazil, documentarian

Greg Dean Schmitz, Falmouth, Massachusetts, critic

Jeff Roberts, Nuremberg, West Germany, cinematographer

Jens Peder Pedersen, Østerbro, Denmark, grip

Jessica Hester Hsuan, Hong Kong, actress

Kayla Quinn, Canoga Park, California, porn star

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Jersey City, New Jersey, Theo Huxtable

Michael Becker, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, producer

Rob Tode, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, extra

Scott Dorel, The Bronx, New York, writer/director

Xanaë Bove, birthplace unspecified, French actress/short filmmaker

Well, there can really be only one choice today; in a very big year for child stars, Today’s Winner is sure enough one of the biggest.

On a side note, I’m grateful to discover that one of his two namesakes is still living.

born 17 August 1970

Andrus Kivirähk, Tallinn, Soviet Union, Estonian writer

Denis Cviticanin, Zagreb, Yugoslavia, Croatian documentarian

István Kovács, Budapest, Hungary, boxer

Jim Courier, Sanford, Florida, tennis player

Jorge Posada, San Juan, Puerto Rico, major league baseball player

Julian H. Scaff, Stanford, California, artist/exile

Lawrence McGrandles, Jr., birthplace unspecified, Irish actor

Lori Barbieri, state of Texas, production manager

Mike Gasaway, Cleveland, Ohio, animator

Patrick Baker, San Francisco, California, honeywagon driver

Rupert Degas, London, England, actor

Satu Paavola, Nurmo, Finland, actress

Sôsoke Komori, Tokyo, Japan, actor

Tammy Townsend, Los Angeles, California, actress

Tony Rickardsson, Avesta, Sweden, motorcycle racer

Trevor Bajus, Syracuse, New York, artist/musician

Trevor Young, Amersham, England, digital compositor

I’ll always have a soft spot for Jorge Posada. I had my own cheer for him when I used to go to a lot of Yankee games. While waiting for the pitch, I’d begin to say the catcher’s name, holding steady on the first syllable: “Poooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…” – and then, when the pitch was thrown, I’d complete the name really fast – “…sada!!”

Needless to say, my cheer never caught on.

So Posada’s a winner today, for being a future Hall of Famer (maybe) and all-around decent guy. But his co-winner today is the guy who taught me about a type of vehicle I had never heard of before, one that’s crucial to movie production.