Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day: Hippo Birdie to James Dean, 80

February 8, 1931 to September 30, 1955. R.I.P.

If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live on after he’s dead, then maybe he was a great man.

Unlikely G and Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: God bless Bob Barker

(Please do.)

Major happy birthday wishes to superfly dope-fresh Unlikely G, Mr. Bob Barker. Never been a huge game show guy but I love the dude.

American readers might know that Bob Barker, the longest-running host of a game show ever (The Price is Right — one of my sorority sisters cleaned house on that show), ended every episode of his show with the sign-off line, “Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered,” a tradition his replacement after retirement, comedian Drew Carey, has continued. Thus I have a long association of spaying and neutering with Bob Barker. It’s an honor most would call dubious but I have a feeling that he would probably be quite happy with it. And today he turns 87!

Top five things you might not know about this gentle silver G:

Grew up on a reservation in South Dakota.

At 73, became the oldest MTV Movie Award recipient, winning Best Fight for his golf-course brawl with Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore.

Bowed out of longtime hosting duties for the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants when his request that the organization stop giving fur gifts was denied.

Gave $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation for the outfitting and secret launch of a ship (since renamed the MV Bob Barker) which interdicted the Japanese whaling fleet.

Has two notorious beefs: a) with the Qualla Boundary Cherokee over their treatment of bears in their zoo, the long public fights over which have resulted in Chief Michell Hicks threatening to ban the rabble rouser and PETA from the res; and b) with formerly close pal Betty White over the relocation of an elephant from Los Angeles to a sanctuary in San Andreas.

It seems argumentative and counterintuitive to fight, but if I have learned nothing else from the rap world, it is that BAMF’s gotta have beefs, and you must admire someone tenacious enough to keep up an argument with a fellow bad-ass like Ms. White. They are both good people who are genuine friends to animals, and I predict they will patch it up, if they have not already.

So send a big birthday wish in to the universe for Bob Barker, an old school Unlikely G from way back!

Per mi amico: Husbandoh, “‘Congradulations’ on your birthday” edition

Happy birthday, HRH.

I know it’s weird with us all in estrangement and the like, but the important thing I want you to remember is the time we went to Lucy’s Table and that one waitress who later opened a meditative health center with her husband dropped the champagne as she popped the cork and it spun in the air as it fell and it hosed down THE ENTIRE RESTAURANT in a ten foot radius and the windows and tables and all those third-wave anorexic hipster yippies were dripping with wine. We did that.

Then we went to sit outside with our dessert and that very nice but drunk as shit first-wave yippie lady told us about walking around naked in front of her son when he was young, and then she apologized to us at great length for her generation being poor stewards of the earth and they misspelled “Congratulations” in some kind of very expensive alcohol-and-caramel-dulce-de-leche reduction sauce on your flourless chocolate cake plate.

Sometimes I forget that through no deliberate actions of your own you are somehow elected by the forces in this universe to be a one-man wrecking-crew of every situation you enter. Thank you for being a genial agent of chaos akin to Pigpen, because the anxious uptight energy of my yin at that time deserved and needed that yang to grow and see that what we must always try to do in this world is to stop time and bring back what’s died and it is not a thing we can do alone.

Thank you for trying with me. Happy birthday.