The Best Day to be Born: July 20, 1969

I’m not one to brag, but I have to say that July 20, 1969 was the best day ever to be born.

The day men first landed and walked on the moon.

The moon, bitches.

The coolest thing humans have accomplished. Ever.



I guess there are some moments that rank up there. The day we discovered fire. The day we invented the wheel. But no one’s around anymore who could have been born on those days.

Nothing else in the last 50, 100 years even comes close. Maybe the day Born to Run was released. I’m not knocking V-E Day and V-J Day--those were definitely good days. I don't mean to diminish those accomplishments. But to my mind, what was on the great continuum of human history but a momentary pause in the slaughter just doesn’t rise to the level of LANDING AND WALKING ON THE FUCKING MOON. Plus V-E and V-J Days wer two separate days, instead of one big day. I’m just saying.

The only downside to being born on the day humans landed on the moon is that growing up I always assumed it was just the beginning of amazing space-y things I would see in my lifetime, a new era full of travel to other to other planets, robot servants, photon torpedoes, and princesses in metal bikinis. Maybe that era is still coming, but I’m 41 now, and at least so far, the future ain’t what it used to be. Hell, it’s 2010, which was supposed to be The Year We Make Contact. Where the hell’s the contact? And where’s my goddamn flying car?

I don’t even understand what the space program is doing anymore. Are we going to Mars or not? Personally I never get tired or hearing President Kennedy’s line about going to the moon and doing the other things, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Really one of the best lines of all time. Maybe I should get an alarm clock that plays that every morning. It’d help get the day started off right.

So let’s have a concise statement about what we’re doing, President Obama, and wrap it up in some soaring rhetoric. We can’t afford to wait even if we’re broke. As Bruce says, hard times come, and hard times go, but the human adventure is just beginning (actually the last part was from Star Trek). Don’t listen to those stuffy assholes who whine about how we have all these other problems that need to be solved before we do space. Did early humans delay their descent from the trees because members of their tribes were ill? Did the first civilizations put off their work on inventing the wheel by 50 years because they hadn’t solved the problem of poverty? Hell no! Actually I don’t really know, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t. Yeah, we have lots of issues. We’re really screwed up, all of us. But we can still do space. We have to do space. As I’ve said before, we’ve got to get out of here.

In all seriousness, while I enjoy bragging that July 20, 1969 was definitely the best day to be born, I didn’t do anything other than enter this world, whereas Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins took us to another. A big shout out to them, and also to every man and woman, every astronaut and astronaut’s wife and engineer and contractor and public relations officer and custodian, every Congressman and Senator and public official, everyone both sung and unsung in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs who made a contribution to the Coolest Thing Ever.

Now let’s go to Mars. And make those flying cars. I’m getting old.