Future President Presidential Nominee Barack Obama turns 47 today, which happens to be around the of McCain’s great, great great-grandchildren. The candidate celebrated with events in Michigan and Boston, but not without his aides accidentally losing his gift.

Barack Obama’s aides have a better track record organizing his campaign than his birthday.

A gift they purchased for the Democratic presidential candidate, who turned 47 on Monday, went astray Sunday evening — left in the trunk of a taxi along with an aide’s suitcase.

“We got him a present that he really needs, and one of our guys was bringing it back and left it in the trunk of a cab last night,” communications strategist Robert Gibbs told MSNBC.

He said efforts were under way to recover the present, but was mum on exactly what the gift was.

Well, thats not too bad.  Bush managed to lose the hopes, dreams and souls of the entire population of the United States, Obama’s men just lost a scented candle and a day planner.

Today is my mother-effin’ birthday!!!!!!! Not just any birthday. Today I’m 24 on the 24th. I guess some people call that your “Golden Birthday” which is okay by me, because that means I get to make a bigger fuss of it. So here I sit in my “birthday cage” of pink and blue streamers, balloons littered all over my desk, feeling as special as ever and hoping these fools play this song at Chuck E. Cheese for me later tonight:

LOVE IN THIS CLUB from ( *_* ) on Vimeo.

Ok, time to get back to work.

Today, the great Trini Lopez turns 71. This Latin songbird had a voice that could serenade even the surliest trucker on earth, enjoying a career peak during the early and mid ’60s. My favorite Trini records would have to be Live At PJ’s vol 1 and 2 (but especially two) and the Latin Album. If you can dig on swinging 1960s pop with a south of the border twist, Trini Lopez is your man.

“One more time!”

Last week when I wrote about “Pancho and Lefty” I hadn’t realized that the man who made that song famous was having his birthday right around the corner. Today, American songwriter and Outlaw Country Music King Willie Nelson turns 75. NPR’s Fresh Air did a nice piece on Willie today, you can check it out here (audio available after 3 PM EST). They also played a portion of an interview and live set he did with Terry Gross from a few years back, and you can hear the whole thing here.

Willie Nelson will release a live album with acclaimed jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis on July 8th on Blue Note Records. Entitled Two Men With The Blues, the album was compiled from a two-night stand at the Lincoln Center in January of 2007. I got my advance press copy last week, and while the blues ranks kinda far down the list of my favorite genres, the disc is legit, showcasing two masters of American music. Here’s a teaser:

But seriously Leo, not a day over 530…

Born April 15th, 1452 in theregion of Florence, Italy, Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, or Leo as his close friends called him, grew from the illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant into a legitimate baller. Apart from his famous paintings, he was the epitome of the Renaissance Man: inventor, engineer, sculptor, military architect, code-breaker, buggerer of boys, philosopher, master of topographical anatomy and internationally recognized genius. I could make a list of his radical inventions and plans, notes and journals that are still used today, but that’s why we have wikipedia.

And by the way, happy Pesach er’rybody.

If you live in Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin, I want to wish you a happy Cesar Chavez day. For the rest of you, it’s time for some more education. Cesar Chavez was an American of Mexican descent who organized farm workers in order for them to earn better wages and work less hellacious hours. He, along with Dolores Huerta started what was to become the United Farm Workers.

Chavez took the lead of civil rights leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and utilized non-violent means to achieve direct results.

From the Wiki:

In 1965, Filipino American farm workers initiated the Delano grape strike on September 8, 1965, to protest in favor of higher wages. Six months later, Chávez and the NFWA led a strike of California grape pickers on the historic farmworkers march from Delano to the California state capitol in Sacramento for similar goals. In addition to the strike, the UFW encouraged all Americans to boycott table grapes as a show of support. The strike lasted five years and attracted national attention. When the U.S. Senate Subcommittee looked into the situation, Robert Kennedy gave Chávez his total support. This effort resulted in the first major labor victory for U.S. farm workers.

What might strike some as odd, Chavez was against illegal immigration, and for limiting legal immigration.

The UFW during Chávez’s tenure was committed to restricting immigration. César Chávez and Dolores Huerta fought a federal law that prohibited hiring illegal immigrants in 1973…

In 1969, Chávez and members of the UFW marched through the Imperial and Coachella Valleys to the border of Mexico to protest growers’ use of illegal immigrants as strikebreakers. Joining him on the march were both Reverend Ralph Abernathy and U.S. Senator Walter Mondale.[3] In its early years, Chávez and the UFW went so far as to report illegal aliens who served as strikebreaking replacement workers, as well as those who refused to unionize, to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Personally, I worked phone donations on behalf of the UFW as one of my first jobs out of High School. I then quickly discovered that, even when raising money for a good organization, telemarketing is the Devil’s instrument, and sales in general was not for me.

Here in Chico, the students often take Cesar Chavez day as a drinking holiday, and I’m pretty much against it. I mean, drinking on Cesar Chavez day is ten times better than picking grapes for 16 hours, but it still rubs me as wrong. I mean, that’s why we invented Groundhog Day.