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Such a high note… when the staid ball finally touched down kicking off one of the more eventful years of my life, I was in the middle of a huge revelry at the Crawfords. I’d arrived several hours before with Elliot and Mitch in tow, and a decades worth of friends new and old were crowded in the basement.

Today is Andy Kaufman’s birthday.

He died on May 16, 1984, or twenty-two years, three months, and thirty days ago.

• I just want real reactions. I want people to laugh from the gut, be sad from the gut-or get angry from the gut.

– ALMANAC SAYS –
Ben Franklin born, 1706. Bridge game expert Norman Kay died, 2002.

– HAPPY BIRTHDAY –
Anton Chekhov and Andy Kaufman!

– PICTURE OF THE WEEK –
A beautiful goose.

– QUESTION OF THE DAY –
What symptoms do you show of being truly angry with yourself?

Part of the noir reading list I put together for my thesis with the help of Robert Polito and Jeffery Allen. As such, it was “required reading.”

This is actually the second of the “assigned books” that I picked up, but it has such an undeniable place in the canon that I feel I have to address it first.

Somebody was saying something about celebrity deaths coming in threes. This month we’ve had:

• Gerald Ford
• James Brown
• Saddam Hussein

1. Gerald Ford.

He was Michigan’s only president, originally from Grand Rapids, which is my mom’s hometown. He has also become un-controversial enough by now that just following his death his Wikipedia article is only “semi-protected.”

– IN THE ALMANAC –
Louis Riel, leader of Mètis resistance vs. Canada, hanged, 1885.
After black clouds, clear weather.

– HAPPY BIRTHDAY –
Lisa!

– QUOTE OF THE WEEK –
“There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.”

– ALMANAC SAYS –
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday (observed)

– NEWS OF THE WEEK –
New York Times: U.S. and Iraqis Are Wranging Over War Plans.

– QUESTION OF THE DAY –
How do you celebrate Martin Luther King day?

Tomorrow is the last day of Christmas, and Sunday marks the beginning of Winter Ordinary Time, or as our better halves ought to call it “Carnival.”

During the last couple weeks I have neglected to write about Christmas, the Epiphany, the birth of John the Baptist anyway.

To tell the truth, I don’t know how I feel about a troop increase.

If called out, to make up my mind and set aside the (many) reservations I have about my own opinion and the limitations of my knowledge, I would say I support a troop increase, but only as one aspect of an extensive overhaul of our relationship to the Middle East.

– ALMANAC SAYS –
America’s first public museum, Charleston Museum in Charleston, S.C., organized, 1773.

– COUNTRY OF THE WEEK –
The Cayman Islands (U.K. territory)

– QUESTION OF THE DAY –
I’m going to reiterate yesterday’s question… since only three people responded (and only one person actually answered the question).