Big day for birthdays, today.

My friend Martin turns 40 today.  I’ve known him since we were both 13.  Weird.

It’s also my nephew Jack’s birthday, and for the nth consecutive year I have totally failed to get him a present or a card on time.  He is always very understanding about this, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.  So Happy Birthday, Jack.  Hope all’s well.  I’ll get something to you soon, honest.

It also would have been Dizzy Gillespie’s birthday today.  Often hailed as the father of modern jazz trumpet, he’s best known for helping give birth to bebop, along with a certain Charles Parker.  He’s also largely responsible for much hipster iconography, with the whole shades, beret, and goatee thing he had going on.  In later years he was instrumental in bringing Cuban rhythms into the jazz mainstream.  And he was possibly the most loved musician of his generation.  Quite a guy.

Since neither Jack nor Martin are ace trumpet players, it falls to Diz to provide today’s musical entertainment.  Check it out.  This is a fabulous, pared-down version of Tin Tin Deo, the classic tune written by Chano Pozo.

In other news, on the way to drop the kids off at school this morning, I passed a car with the license plate: MR LUVA.