Hopefully all of you are free tomorrow, because we are having a party. A big one. See, in addition to being the anniversary of the release of Ghostbusters, June 7th is also a pretty wild day in celebrity birthdays. I’ve listed a bunch of the most notable ones below. Please feel free to scroll down and peruse the collection at your leisure. As for me, I need to print out invitations and rent out the local fire hall. Oh, and I need somebody to bring soda and potato chips.
This party is gonna be awesome.
Prince – 55
The Purple One turns 55 tomorrow. When I first saw that I thought to myself “Hmm, maybe that’s why he showed up at the French Open this week carrying a damn scepter. Because it’s his birthday.” This is insane. Prince does not need an excuse to show up anywhere carrying a scepter. In fact, there’s an important lesson we can learn here: Live every day like it’s Prince’s birthday.
Anyway, it’s also a good excuse to watch the video I embedded above of Prince and a slew of other famous musicians performing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” during George Harrison’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2004. You want an idea how much of a star Prince is? He hides all the way off to stage left — to whatever degree one can hide in a red cowboy hat — and waits. And waits. And waits. And then he steps into the spotlight just short of 3:30 mark and proceeds to lay waste to everyone and everything with a three-minute guitar solo. Prince is the greatest.
Allen Iverson – 38
Speaking of undersized whirlwinds with a flair for the dramatic, it’s also Allen Iverson’s birthday. My advice: Celebrate by watching hours and hours of YouTube clips of him in his prime, and then round up all your people and go drop $3,000 at the nearest TGI Friday’s. It’s how AI would want it.
Liam Neeson – 61
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THE INCOMPARABLE LIAM NEESONS.
Dan Harmon pointed this out on Twitter a week or so ago, but Liam Neeson has quietly had a Nicolas Cage-ish film career. He doesn’t have quite the quality or the deep reserve of truly bonkers performances that Cage does (who does, really?), but Liam Neeson was in both Schindler’s List and Battleship. Don’t sleep on him when you talk about a nutty résumé.
Bill Hader – 35
Bill Hader actually got his birthday present a few weeks ago, when he signed a deal to create and star in his own show for HBO. Good for him. His inclusion on this list also brings up a very important question that just dawned on me this very instant: Do you think Prince has seen a Stefon segment? Like, a single one? Because if he has, I have about a thousand more very important questions I need to ask.
Discussion topic: Do you think Prince and Stefon would be friends?
Bears Grylls- 39
Bear Grylls seems like the kind of guy who does something completely reckless on his birthday. That’s not exactly a stretch of a thought experiment, seeing as Bear Grylls does reckless things pretty much non-stop, but I feel like he really steps it up for special occasions.
FRIEND: Hey Bear, got any big birthday plans?
BEAR GRYLLS: Yeah, I’m gonna parachute into a tiger sanctuary at dawn and stay there until midnight. Just me and the tigers. Man versus beast. As nature intended thousands of years ago. I’ll probably have to drink my own urine to survive. It’s gonna be a rush!
FRIEND: … oh.
Iggy Azalea – 23
It’s been a good year for Iggy Azalea, as Josh documented earlier in the week. And it’s gonna be hard to top it, considering she already managed to do something only the Beatles had done before. I have no idea if she’ll still be a notable June 7th birthday, oh, say, eight years from now, but it’d be hard not to include her today.
Additional note that I’m putting here for no good reason: Tomorrow is also Dave Navarro’s birthday. Dave Navarro does not get a picture.
Tom Jones – 73
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It must be weird to be Tom Jones. He’s had a 50 year career in music and remains a sex symbol for a certain crowd well into his 70s, but all most people from my generation really know him for is (a) making the song that Carlton danced to on Fresh Prince, and to a lesser degree (b) making the song at the center of John Mulaney’s excellent “The Best Meal I Ever Had” bit. I wonder how he feels about that. I like to think it makes him quietly furious when everyone does the Carlton dance at his concerts. I don’t know why I feel that way. Maybe I hate Tom Jones and want to see him upset? Man, I hope not.
Michael Cera – 25
Want a fun visual? Picture an actual birthday party attended by all the people I listed above, then picture Michael Cera showing up and trying to talk to all of them. Hilarious.