littlestar

on 1010blog, kwc posted about "a site to demonstrate what slothful wastes we have made of our lives"... here's the link:

Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age

At age 23:
- John Singleton directed his first film, "Boyz 'N the Hood."
- T. S. Eliot wrote "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
- John Keats wrote "Ode on a Grecian Urn," which ends with the lines, "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. "
- English poet Jane Taylor wrote "Twinkle, twinkle, little star."
- Margaret Mead traveled to the South Seas as part of a "giant rescue operation" to study primative cultures before they perished.
- Russian-American pianist Vladimir Horowitz made a spectacular concert debut when, impatient with the conductor's slow pace, he ran away from the conductor's tempo and finished Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 several bars ahead of time.
- Novelist, playwright, and short-story writer Carson McCullers wrote her acclaimed first book, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
- Truman Capote published his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.
- Jack Nicklaus became the youngest golfer to win the Masters.
- Francois-Louis Cailler manufactured the world's first eating chocolate to be commercially produced.

i'm only envious of the last one. actually... i'm not envious. i'm just thankful. :) a toast to francois-louis cailler~!

i don't think that this site is as effective as it could be. after all, listing just the 8 things for your age doesn't really convey how slothful you were being because it hasn't listed the bzillion other things that other people did before your age.

for instance,
At age 5:
- Actress Shirley Temple received an honorary Oscar.
- Mozart began composing minuets. Once when a second violinist failed to appear for a string quartet performance, Mozart took his place, even though he'd never seen the music.
- Yo-Yo Ma started playing Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. His father told him always to play a movement of Bach before bedtime, to assuage fear, hunger and loneliness.
- Pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski played the Bach Inventions from memory.
- Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
- Ukrainian composer Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev composed his first piano work.
- American actress Helen Hayes made her stage debut.
- Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha gave her first public concert.
- Chilian pianist Claudio Arrau made his recital debut with pieces by Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann.
- Russian composers Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff began studying piano (separately).

i find that much more impressive that the accomplishments at my age of 23. :)

i mean... geez, at the age of 1:
- Jazz drummer Bernard "Buddy" Rich first appeared in his parents' vaudeville act.
- By this age, Christian Friedrich Heinecken had read the Pentateuch.

i think i'd just figured out how to walk and eat solid food by 1.

**wow, this is my 99th post. what should i do for my 100th? shoudln't be something special?

dang, i must've had a ton of crap to say to get this far. :)