Thinks happen: Just a few birthdays.

Fearless Fosdick was three things:
It was a comic strip.
It was a comic strip parody of ANOTHER comic strip: Dick Tracy
It was a comic strip that appeared WITHIN another comic strip: Li'l Abner

Today is the birthday of Fearless Fosdick, Li'l Abner's ideel; both the creations of the controversial and onery cartoonist Al Capp. Mr. Fosdick is 65.

For the rest of the story click on the panel at the left to take you to the fine website "Did You Know" and an excellent coverage of this super-hero...(read as "Stupor-Hero")

Or there is a shorter bio here...

Read here about the ill-fated TV series depicting this comic strip within a comic strip parody of another comic strip.

Some other notable birthdays today:

1930 Sonny Rollins
I saw Sonny Rollins perform at the Ottawa Jazz Festival in 2001. I was working as a volunteer in the Musician's Hospitality Room at the Ramada Inn where all the festival performers stayed. I met him briefly on an elevator going up to the Hospitality Room floor. He performed at the evening show in Confederation Park. He did not participate in the jam session late that night. Of course he was seventy-one at that time.

1936 Buddy Holly
Do you know where you were when the music died? I read it in the local newspaper the next morning.

1942 Garrison Keillor...Well, depending on the source, his birthday might also be August 7...er, stay tuned...

I could write volumes about listening to Keillor's radio show, "Prairie Home Companion" Saturday evening on PBS. I have listened to the program faithfully since I first heard it back in 1989. I used to faithfully record the two hour program so that I could listen to them over and over. (Which, of course, I never did.) If you have not heard a segment called "News from Lake Woebegone" you have my sincerest sympathy.

The program is on the non-commercial Public Broadcast System so Keillor makes up his own commercials. He features Bertha’s Kitty Boutique, Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery and The Fear Monger Shop. There’s also Be-Bop-A-Re-Bop Rhubarb Pie and Be-Bop-A-Re-Bop Frozen Rhubarb Pie Filling and The “Catchup” Advisory Board. And of course the show’s opening sponsor, Powder Milk Bisquits, in the blue box with the brown stains that indicate freshness. "Made from whole wheat raised in the rich bottomlands of the Lake Wobegon river valley by Norwegian bachelor farmers; so you know they're not only good for you, but pure ... mostly,"