Gay Talese is 80 today.

I mean, every birthday of any celebrity who peaked in fame years ago is an occasion to marvel at the passage of the time. But this should really, really make you feel very, very, very old: Ralph Macchio turns 50 today. (And Steve Vai is 51!)

The seven lion cubs at Washington, DC's National Zoo (four of whom we watched learn to swim last fall) are celebrating their first birthday this morning with individually wrapped "bloodcicles," which are just what they sound like. As an extra treat, zookeepers might also want to let them watch the new video for Wild Flag's "Romance," because it is totally excellent.

Jotham Sederstrom, 34, freelance reporter: On September 10^th, my friends took me out for birthday drinks in Chicago. I was out until three or four, I think, at a place called "The Hideout." Among other places. I didn’t wake up until about noon, at which point everything had changed. READ MORE

"It's a frozen lump of frozen gases and I suppose not a terribly friendly place. Let's wish it a happy birthday but perhaps let's keep as far away from it as we can as it won't give you a welcome." READ MORE

"Happy 53rd Birthday, Prince Rogers Nelson. You are definitely one of the world’s 'Favorite Blacks.' We know this not because of all the joy your music has brought your millions of fans. But because in 1985 you and your band, the Revolution, were presented the honor 'Favorite Black Album' at the American Music Awards (by Huey Lewis and Madonna, no less). The irony of this is that you didn’t even win that award for your raw-as-hell The Black Album (which didn’t come out till a few years later and scared all your pop fans who never heard Dirty Mind; we had to buy that shit on a bootleg cassette behind the counter at an 8th Street head shop like it was contraband). You won it for Purple Rain." READ MORE

As lead-ups to fortieth birthdays go, I recommend steering clear of subway preachers who forecast the Rapture for the very day you're most dreading. For 18 months now, End-Timers have been gathering daily, at the top of the stairway to the train I take home from work, to press “Judgment Day” tracts on unsuspecting commuters. I'm sure someone else, someone who lacked my fundamentalist baggage, would've laughed at the coincidence and shaken it off, but to me it felt personal when the men turned up there, with their pamphlets and placards and dire predictions, as though the God I grew up fearing and eventually turned my back on had orchestrated some final absurd cosmic joke. Of all the dates in all the centuries over more than two millennia, why May 21, 2011? READ MORE

Tracy died, you’ve surely heard, soon after a long-fought civil war. Happened this month. When it snows sometimes. Today is one of those times. Welcome to April. READ MORE

Hey! Awl-fave Erykah Badu turns 40 tomorrow! Happy birthday to her. She put out a new video a couple weeks ago, too, in case you haven't seen it. It sort of looks like what Terry Gilliam's storyboarding for the ministry of information scene in Brazil might have. (That style of animation is big in videos lately.) At the end of it, just as you'd expect, Erykah boards an ankh-shaped rocket and blasts off into outer space. Which is what everybody should do on their 40th birthday.