Peter Benchley's idea for Jaws
Pete got the idea from great white shark attack off shore of Rhode Island in '64.  Jaws was the first book I ever read with a sex scene in it.  I think I was in the sixth grade...

Sandra Bullock
Sure she's had some stinkers, but Speed rocked and anybody who dances salsa and flamenco like she does has got something going on.

Longest surviving organ transplant
Kidney transplanted to Frenchwoman on Oct 17, 1964.  36 years and counting.

Sasha
L.A. painter/artiste and proprietor of a fine web site.  Although she says, "I'd Rather Eat Glass", I imagine she could be tempted towards other activities.

The Black Cat Pub
A nice smoky neighborhood tavern in Sellwood, Oregon with three shuffleboard tables, making it the official Push site of the famous Mike Lutz Putt, Bowl, and Push in 1994.  Few things smoother than a good glide to the edge...

Glenn Gould interruptus
The brilliant and troubled Canadian pianist who channeled Bach quit live performances at the height of his career in 1964 at age 32.  In high school I got his Little Bach Book on audiocassette from Columbia Records and listened to Goldberg Variations over and over and over

Arby's
Somehow this seemed the most "exotic" fast food restaurant growing up in Longview, Washington.  That great big cowboy hat sign probably did it.  Cathy worked at an Arby's in high school and won't go near another.  I, on the other hand, have no such aversion.

Dr. Fiona Hunger of Cambridge University
First biologist to discover evidence of prostitution in another species beside humans.  Penguins.  Only play for pay ever documented in the animal kingdom.  "There are no pimps.  The women choose to do it."

Les Mots
Jean-Paul Sartre's autobiography ("Words") for which he was awarded, but declined, the Nobel Prize for Literature.  You have to have serious existentialist cojones to turn down the Nobel Prize.  Jean-Paul had 'em. 

The Addams Family and The Munsters
This is just too weird.

Katherine Mayo
The winningest female jockey of 1996, critically injured at Portland Meadows in 1998 ending her career.

Moore's Law
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted in 1964 that the number of transistors on a silicon chip would at least double every 18 months.  So far he has been eerily accurate.  (Sometimes attributed to a talk he gave in 1965.  I'm not buying it.  He had this idea rattling around before that.)

John Cage of Ally McBeall
The whistling nose, the Barry White obsession, "taking a moment", the devastating closing arguments.  Oh, yes.  The Biscuit is truly Spawn.

St. Louis Arch
Designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, the Arch represents a gateway to the West at what was the jump off point for the Lewis & Clark Expedition.

Arvydas Sabonis
Once considered the best big man in the basketball world.  The Portland Trailblazers drafted him in 1986, just two years before he led the Soviet Olympic team to gold over the American team which featured Danny Manning and Mitch Richmond.  The Lithuanian finally became a Blazer in 1995 after spending 6 years in the Spanish league.  A truly great center alongside Drexler, Porter, and Kersey would have been a devastating combination against the Bulls in the 1992 NBA Championship.  Sabas was at the height of his powers.  Without him we nearly took Game 6 in Chicago.  With him there would have been a serious dent in the Bulls dynasty.

The Ford Mustang
Introduced 4 days before I was born on April 17.  Me and a co-worker were in New Orleans on business and were seated not far from the stage of a Bourbon Street bar, when a couple in their early 50's sat on our laps and beaded us.  The band was playing a kickass tune inspired by the car: "Mustang Sally". 

Molly Shannon
Noted for her parochial school diva spazoid Saturday Night Live character, Mary Katherine Gallagher, Molly is set to perform the role of Betty Lou Who in the new live action version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, due to be released in Fall 2000.

Spaghetti Westerns
Fistful of Dollars, a remake of Akira Kurosowa's "Yojimbo", was the first of a series of Western films shot in Spain in 1964 featuring an unknown actor named Clint Eastwood.

Dana Plato
Star of 70's sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, convicted of robbing a video store in 1991.  Died of a Loritab overdose just weeks after a Spring 1999 Howard Stern interview (which I heard most of).

Pretty Woman
Roy Orbison's classic track, not the movie, silly.

Mary Poppins
Back in my early work days, when things were slow my old friend Dave would occasionally break into a wistful "Chim-chiminy chim-chiminy chim-chim charoo" from the Disney film.  One of Dave's many fine qualities. 

The Mothers of Invention
Frank Zappa's band.  He's a composer dammit, not a rock star.  Just ask Moon Unit or Dweezil.

Annabella Sciorra
She once had Jungle Fever and lived in Copland.  Had to settle for only half a million for What Dreams May Come. 

The Palestine Liberation Organization
I hope to see some form of lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians in my lifetime.

Everybody Loves Somebody
Believe it or not, this smarmy Dean Martin song beat out the Beatles for the number one spot on the charts for just one week in 1964.  When I was very little, I remember his t.v. show which was very weird and playboyish.  His schtick was pretending he was drunk all the time which I found to be very creepy and not funny at all.  The books say that it was all an act and that he didn't drink that much.  Hmm...

Freedom Summer
In Mississippi, 3 organizations (SNCC, CORE, NAACP) came together to form 30 Freedom Schools to teach over 3000 people about black history and civil rights philosophy.  "Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So also were the homes of local African Americans involved in the campaign. That summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed. Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers and three men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on 21st June, 1964. This attempt to frighten others from joining the campaign failed and by late 1964 over 70,000 students had taken part in Freedom Summer."

Chris Farley
Another Saturday Night Live player who died of a drug overdose.  I'll never forget the first time I saw the sketch where he plays the freaky motivational speaker that warns kids to fly right or they'll end up like him "living in a VAN down by the RIVER!" 

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
This Rankin-Bass production is generally recognized (along with the Grinch That Stole Christmas) as the show that defined the holiday for a generation.

Matt Dillon
Starred in Drugstore Cowboy, easily one of the 10 best films shot in Oregon.  Directed by Portland's Gus Van Sant.

Recipe for a Black Hole
Roger Penrose proves that the key ingredient that must accompany an imploding star is the formation of an event horizon.  These two together will always form a singularity: the place of infinite mass and infinite gravity known as a black hole.

Hank Azaria
Born 4 days after me on April 25, Hank is best known for the plethora of Simpson's characters that he voices: Moe, Apu, Snake, Comicbook Guy, and about a million others.

A Great Escape
Fifty-seven East Berliners escape through a tunnel dug out under the Berlin Wall over a 2 day period.  This is the most that will escape together in the remaining 19 years of the boundary.

Adam Yauch
MCA of the Beastie Boys.  There was just too much music going on in 1986.  So when Licensed to Ill came out, I was just not ready for the Boys.  Now I'm cranking No Sleep Till Brooklyn in the car 14 years later and doing some serious head banging.  This puppy really holds up well.

Johnny Quest
This is one of those cartoons that you love or you just don't care.  I was never a big JQ fan, but I did dig the opening montage.

Jan Stracina
Born on my birthday, star of the 1996 Czech short film, "Almost Mating Time".

Gilligan's Island
Somehow, all these years later, that weird musical production of Hamlet set to the music of Bizet's Carmen keeps rattling around in my head...

Mr. Magoo
1964 was berry-berry good for Jim Backus.  In addition to his inimitable stylings as Thurston Howell III on Gilligan, he voiced this very odd, very near sighted cartoon character.

Jeopardy!
Alex, what is a year when a lot of really weird stuff happened?  I'll take Stupid Things Chris Has Done for 500.

National Geographic Specials
The other night I watched one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen on television.  It was a National Geographic Special that shows how a severe drought at a small section of an African river devastates the local wildlife.  The suffering and savagery were almost too much too watch as the creatures faded and turned on each other.  Everything died.

Eddie Vedder
Lead singer for Pearl Jam.  Sometimes Eddie sets up a little pirate radio station in the parking lot outside the venue they're playing.  I like that.

New York 1964 World's Fair
"Man in a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe."  Flushing Meadow in Queens.  Most European countries and the Communist bloc boycotted it because it wasn't actually the U.S. turn for a World's Fair.  It featured wacky stuff like the  PicturePhone, Dupont's "The Happy Plastic Family", General Motor's Futurama and a Saturn V rocket. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission had rejected a Fair proposal to build and operate a mobile nuclear fission plant at the Fair.