Chris Mims (died 15 October 2008), Los Angeles, California, NFL football player
Dwayne Brieger, Corpus Chisti, Texas, actor Raven Kaylor
Emily Lloyd, London, England, actress
Esperanza Nicolás Torrejón, Madrid, Spain, production manager
Javier Liberman, Buenos Aires, Argentina, writer
Jawad Ahmad, Lahore, Pakistan, musician
Jerry Lamb, Hong Kong, actor
Joseph Casaliggi, Staten Island, New York, actor
Koichi Sakamoto, Tokyo, Japan, stuntman/producer
Lauren Brice, birthplace unspecified, American porn star
Natasha Gregson Wagner, Los Angeles, California, actress
Nicolas Winding Refn, Copenhagen, Denmark, writer/director
Ninel Conde, Toluca, Mexico, actress/singer
Russell Peters, Toronto, Ontario, Canadian content comedian
Yoshihiro Tajiri, Tokyo, Japan, The Japanese Buzzsaw
Here we have a tale of two starlets.
Emily Lloyd: I feel like I never actually saw her in anything but coming attractions.Which is fitting, because in the late eighties she was very much a Next Big Thing.It didn’t really happen for her.I wonder about the reasons.It just seemed like the wind left her sails in her early twenties the way a lot of actresses have happen to them in their middle thirties.You never know, though, how those apple-cheeked ingénues can come back around and have a sturdy later career.Look at…I don’t know, Angela Lansbury?
When you look at Natasha Gregson Wagner, it’s hard not to think of her mother first.The daughter was a sylphlike presence flitting about the edges of the indie-major film world, without ever quite landing a career-defining role.She’s now been reduced to steady guest appearances in TV dramas and the like.But there’s no shame in that.There’s a level solidity to her, despite the physical wispiness.
So those two are the primary co-winners, but the third winner is the one I really want to link you to.Check out these moves!
This one goes out to Today’s Winner’s agents, whose names are Jenny Varva and Aurora Lizardi.I can’t even believe either one of those names is real, let alone that they both are, and they’re in business together.California is full of strange and exotic women I’ll never meet.Fortunately, I was able to ensnare an unsuspecting one, who blithely migrated east.
In closing: Jenny Varva and Aurora Lizardi.That is all.
Greg Klein, Syracuse, New York, gratitude recipient
Jan Schepens, Mechelen, Belgium, actor
Jason Lamar King, Fort Worth, Texas, gaffer
Jeremy Tarling, London, England, child actor
Rachel Jacobs, Rexburg, Idaho, child actress
Rob Hayward, Phoenix, Arizona, actor
Sheri Moon Zombie, San Jose, California, wife of Rob Zombie
Tommy Herrera, Torrance, California, construction coordinator
Yukio Iketani, birthplace unspecified, Japanese gymnast
Today’s Winner is the pit reporter, in honor of Freeport Stadium, the origin of the distant roar of unmuffled engines on summer nights in my early childhood.
Bettina Mittendorfer, Griesbach im Rottal, West Germany, actress
Christian Hoffmann, Osnabrück, West Germany, lawyer
Jackie Guerrido, San Juan, Puerto Rico, meteorologist
Jimmy & Jeremy Squires, Naha, Japan, animators
Karel Janek, Prague, Czechoslovakia, writer/director
Kimi Webber, Osaka, Japan, script supervisor
Marc Guggenheim, state of New York, writer
Martin Brunnett, Ludwigshafen, West Germany, actor
Mathias Schöningh, Uelzen, West Germany, cinematographer
Tommy Brunswick, Detroit, Michigan, director/mother of three
The winner today is the Axis Powers, whose ex-member states account for more than half of today’s births.(That link, by the way, has to be the single most majestically written and laid-out Wikipedia article I have ever come across.Well done, internet.)
Ronnie E. Williams, Jr., Portsmouth, Virginia, digital compositor
Zsolt Dankó, birthplace unspecified, Hungarian assistant director
Credit is due to Today’s Winner for a number of reasons.For me, the thing I like best about her is the way she kept it Buffalonian so successfully for so long.(She’s based in New Orleans now.)
Brendan Whelan (died 19 January 2005), Dublin, Ireland, messer
Chris Tallman, Madison, Wisconsin, actor
Emmanuel Petit, Dieppe, France, soccer player
Jon Miller, Chillicothe, Ohio, title designer
Josef Lopez, Copenhagen, Denmark, lighting technician
Mike Matheny, Reynoldsberg, Ohio, major league catcher
Mystikal, New Orleans, Louisiana, rapper/sex offender
Rupert Penry-Jones, London, England, actor
Scot Armstrong, birthplace unspecified, American writer
Ted Alderman, Jackson, Mississippi, actor
When his song “Bouncin’ Back” played a major role in a recent episode of Treme, it had me wondering whatever happened to Today’s Winner.Turned out he and two members of his crew spent the last half a decade in prison for some bad nastiness with a woman.That’s not cool.Still, let’s hope that now, with his debts to society paid up, he can bring the word some more interesting music.The world is not kind to rappers over forty.
Ulf G. Dahlmann, birthplace unspecified, German historian
Unique Priscilla: that’s right, Unique Priscilla, Jakarta, Indonesia
To her Pulitzer Prize, Today’s Winner can add the approval of this website, to set beside her many other well-earned accolades.
True story: once, at a public gathering, she and I were chatting away on a subject of no great importance.All of a sudden, from the direction of the dance floor, came the chirpy synthesizer notes announcing the opening of this number.
“I’ve gotta go,” she said. “That’s my song.”And off she ran.
Nice short list today.There’s really no contest.I’m interested to learn that Today’s Winner attended the legendary High School for the Performing Arts.For many years, I worked very close to that school.I always wondered about the dynamic between that school, and the standard-issue public high school directly across the street.I wonder how many members of the LaGuardia Class of 1988 thought they’d be on this list someday, and, of those, how many actually are.Fervent dreams fade, contort, and deepen into this peculiar thing we call real life.
Dan Bylsma, Grand Haven, Michigan, NHL hockey player/coach
Darien Ross, birthplace unspecified, American female porn star
Eli Richbourg, Los Angeles, California, second unit director
Heather Kole, Chicago, Illinois, actress
June Summers, state of Florida, milfcore porn specialist
Khushboo, Bombay, India, actress
Minor Childers, Lexington, Kentucky, producer
Noriaki Saitô, Okayama, Japan, writer/director
Paulina de Labra, Mexico City, actress
Sally Ann Matthews, Oldham, England, actress
Takanori Nishikawa, Yasu, Japan, musician/actor
Victor Williams, Brooklyn, New York, actor
I’m singling out two winners today.One, for her long career in Indian film, and recent entry into politics.The other, for bringing the Stanley Cup back to Pittsburgh during his first season as coach.
Boris Pingovic, Sremska Mitrovica, Yugoslavia, Serbian actor
Cassandra, birthplace unspecified, Slovenian porn star
Daniel Kolarov, Bonn, West Germany, property master
Darren Gough, Monk Bretton, England, cricketer
Everett Lindsay, Burlington, Iowa, NFL football player
Jarod Pranno, Melrose Park, Illinois, disdainer of celery
John J. Gatpandan, Long Beach, California, producer
Karen Bukolt, Buffalo, New York, math teacher/actress
Michela Rocco di Torrepadula, Udine, Italy, princess/actress/Miss Italy 1987
Mike Compton, Richlands, Virginia, NFL football player
Miroslaw Oczkos, Swidnica, Poland, actor
Omri Levi, Berkeley, California, writer/director
Paul Love, province of Ontario, actor
Pierre Filmon, Angers, France, short filmmaker
Robert Armitage, Bristol, Connecticut, dancer
Rochelle Bostrum, birthplace unspecified, American actress
Sarah Prinkey, Wichita, Kansas, film editor
Tease Nightly, Augsburg, West Germany, porn star
What a voice on Today’s Winner.Plenty nice to look at as she is, it’s her voice that’s her meal ticket.“Archer” started out slow but became progressively, cascadingly hilarious, thanks in no small part to her role as the sumptuous cartoon buttkicker Lana Kane.
And though I am a stranger to the modern world of high concept video game spectaculars, I read where she was heavily involved in Halo: Reach, which debuted this week to the tune of a cool quarter billion or so in gross sales.This kind of thing has to have the whole movie business quaking in its collective boots.Actors smart enough to get on the right side of modern technology can still find a way to make a killing.This is an interesting career that, I’ll wager, holds several more left-field surprises in store.
Sean Farrow, Burnley, England, visual effects supervisor
Sean Walsh, Montreal, Quebec, documentarian
Vin Rock, birthplace unspecified, member of Naughty By Nature
Twonames I very much enjoy saying are the co-winners today.Makes me wish they were baseball players, and that Bob Shepard were still alive to enunciate their names, numbers and positions.(I see Crafty St. James as a backup catcher, and Rodrigo Valverde as a right handed relief pitcher.)
Nick Sagan, Boston, Massachusetts, science fiction writer (not by coincidence)
Rudy Balli, San Antonio, Texas, writer
Sandi Simcha Dubowski, Brooklyn, New York, documentarian
Today’s Winner is the Chupacabra!Accepting on behalf of the mythical Puerto Rican vampire creature, who enjoyed a brief vogue in popular culture around the turn of the century, is Today’s Surrogate Winner, who co-wrote the picture Troma threw together to cash in on the goat-sucking-monster craze.
Marios Thedosi, London, England, digital effects artist
Michael Cash Hornaday, birthplace unspecified, American actor
Michelle Ruben, Phoenix, Arizona, actress/model
Monette Richards, state of Ohio, frogmistress
Yola Berrocal, Ciudad Real, Spain, actress/model
A lot of questions with this group.
What is a frogmistress?
What is Phyllis Foundis’s big problem with coriander?
Is Yola Berrocal the Spanish Michelle Ruben, or is it vice versa?
While I await some answers to these questions, I’m going to nominate Today’s Winner, and not merely on the basis of his important-sounding name. He's been sound man for every Almodóvar feature since All About My Mother.
