Birthdays Today

The great British novelist Evelyn Waugh was born today in 1903.  Waugh wrote a lot of funny books -- including the great satire of journalism Scoop, which tells the story of William Boot, an innocent hick who writes essays about the habits of the badger.  Through a series of accidents and mistaken identity, Boot is hired as a war correspondent for a Fleet Street newspaper and sent to the fictional African country of Ishmaelia to cover an expected revolution.   Hilarity, as they say, ensues.

Although Waugh was a great comic novelist, his best novel is, of course, Brideshead Revisited, which in my view is the best short novel in the English language of the 20th Century.   Yes, better than The Great Gatsby.  

Brideshead Revisited was also made into what for my money is the best of all the BBC Masterpiece Theater productions, starring a very young Jeremy Irons.   Here's a clip, which makes me want to watch the whole thing again:

It is also Francis Bacon's birthday today, the great modern painter, born in 1909.   His work is very painful, but to me also very beautiful, as in this 1971 self-portrait:

Also with birthdays today are two men who, in different ways, have made all of our lives much, much better, Jonas Salk (1914), the discoverer of the polio vaccine, and Bill Gates (1955), the founder of Microsoft.  

Finally, today is also the birthday (1943) of the single songwriter who has done the most to make my life miserable, Randy Newman, the composer of the hit single, "Short People":

This is the sort of thing that gave a 5'6" guy like me a complex when it came out in the middle of freaking college! Thanks, Randy, thanks a lot.

But seriously, buy and read Brideshead Revisited.  Then go watch the BBC mini-series.   You won't regret it.