September 18

Pardon the cartoony mood today; it'll make sense in a moment or two...

Lance Armstrong is celebrating another birthday today, which apparently doesn’t surprise anybody. If I was talking about any other cancer survivor, I’d be impressed. What impresses me is that he got third place in the Tour de France this year, and he still plans on competing in 2010. His naturally conceived son was born this year, too, which impresses me even more. Is there anything he can’t do?

Apparently, there is…

Ami Onuki is the pink-haired half of Puffy Amiyumi, a Japanese pop-rock duo that crossed over to the US via cartoons.

In Japan, they’re known simply as “Puffy;” they added the “Amiyumi” for international audiences, to avoid legal trouble with P-Diddy. The rest of the world knows them for singing the “Teen Titans” theme, and their own 2004 cartoon.
This summer, they released their latest album in Japan, along with a song for the new Naruto movie.

June Foray has been voicing cartoon characters since World War II. She worked in radio, then children’s records. In the 40’s, she voiced Lucifer the Cat for Cinderella – and modeled as a mermaid for Peter Pan. But she became the go-to female voice in the cartoon world for decades. She even does voice-over work for the occasional live-action feature (you can hear her in Pirates of the Carribean.)
But here’s a collection of Foray performances you may have seen, and you’ve probably heard:



Dee Dee Ramone (born Douglas Colvin) was a bass player and songwriter for the Ramones. He’s the one who read that Paul McCartney would sign into hotels as “Phil Ramon”, and added the “e” to the end. He wrote most of the band’s songs, and had the most personal problems; the story goes, he traded the rights to three of his songs for bail money.


Finally, today’s column is dedicated to my daughter Sam.


Tommorow: the Rolling Stones are killed...