I'll take famous fathers for $200, Alex

Famous Fathers for $200: “Robin, Stefan, and Stella”
What are… famous kids with famous parents?

(photo from McCartney Fanclub)

• R&B star Robin Thicke is the son of Alan Thicke — you might remember him from that ground-breaking TV show “Growing Pains.”
• We have Stefan Kendal, legendary music producer Berry Gordon's son, to thank (or blame, depending) for the incessant chant "party in the house tonight" we've been hearing for over a year. Along with his son, Skyler Austen, he started that band LMFAO.
• Isn't there a saying about fashion and rock 'n roll? Hugely successful British designer Stella McCartney just happens to be the daughter of a member of a hugely successful British band, the Beatles' Paul McCartney.

Famous Fathers for $400: “Angelina, Sofia, and Anjelica”

What are… Oscar winning kids with Oscar winning parents?

(photo from E Online)

• Angelina Jolie won the Oscar for Best Actress for “Girl Interrupted” in 2000. Her father, Jon Voight, won the award in 1979 for Best Actor in the film “Coming Home.” Hard to say which one was better looking when they picked up the award.
• Sofia Coppola won an Oscar for her screenplay “Lost in Translation” in 2004. Her father, Francis Ford Coppola, has won five Oscars, including Best Director, Screenplay and Picture for “The Godfather: Part II” in 1975. Neither of them won any Oscars for "The Godfather: Part III."
• Anjelica Huston, who won the Best Actress award in 1986 for her phenomenal work in “Prizzi’s Honor,” gets Double, make that Triple, Bingo. Not only did her father, John Huston, win Best Screenplay and Best Director for "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" in 1949, but...
  Bingo #2: Anjelica is the only Oscar winner who is the grandchild of another Oscar winner. Her grandfather, Walter Huston won Best Actor in 1949 for “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” the same movie for which his father won those aforementioned two Oscars. (For all you yahoos out there who think the quote "badges? we don't need no stinkin' badges!" comes from "Three Amigos" — please watch "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," then get back to me.)
  Bingo #3: John Huston directed both his parent and his child to (in?) Oscar-winning performances; and he did it in two different movies, almost 40 years apart.

Famous Fathers for $600: “Ken, Mohammed, and Yannick”

What are… famous athletes with famous athletes for sons?

(photo from MLBlogs)

• World Series winner Ken Griffey and record-setting Ken Griffey, Jr. are the only father-son baseball duo to have played Major League Baseball at the same time (in 1989), on the same MLB team (in 1990) and the only pair to have to have hit back-to-back home runs in a game.
• Laila Ali knocked out her opponent in her first match in just 31 seconds — I guess she was learning about the butterflies and the bees from her dad, Mohammed Ali, when the rest of us were still on the birds and the bees.
• French Open champ Yannick Noah was the first Frenchman to win the French Open in 37 years when he triumphed at Garros in 1983. His son Joakim apparently prefers red balls to red courts — after helping his college team win two consecutive NCAA Championships, he was drafted into the NBA. Not too shabby.

Famous Fathers for $800: “Martha, Emma and Rashida”

What are… famous fathers that might surprise you?

(photo from Fanpop)

• The Carradines are the new Barrymores? Martha Plimpton, from “Raising Hope,” among other things is the daughter of Oscar-winning actor Keith Carradine, who, among other things, played the Sheriff in last year’s “Cowboys and Aliens.”
• Music legend Quincy Jones actress Rashida Jones' father (she of “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” fame). As if that weren't enough, Rashida’s mother is Peggy Lipton, the uber-cool 70s chick who starred in “The Mod Squad.”
• Emma Roberts (if you're over 35, that name may not mean much, but it will) has not only a famous aunt (Julia Roberts), her dad is Eric Roberts (remember “Star 80”? With Mariel Hemingway? Thought so.) I'm assuming you already know Julia and Eric are siblings.

Okay, is it just me, or does it seem as though famous fathers have a thing for girls' names ending in "A"? I mean, c'mon — AngelinA, EmmA, RashidA, AnjelicA, MarthA, SofiA, StellA? And I didn't even try to do that.

Oh, this old piece of geometry? Yeah, I own it.

Granted, I am not an intellectual property attorney, I'd rather see than be one, and I have never played one on TV.

Nonetheless, allow me to weigh in on the new patent Apple was just awarded — for the shape of the Macbook Air. That's right, Apple patented the wedge (known in some circles as... the triangle).

It appears that, for right now anyway, Apple's patent is limited to "ultrabooks," but with the ferocity that company's been showing recently in its pursuit of patent primacy, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that infringement warnings are to be served imminently on Renee Pascal, Bermuda, Pythagoras, traffic warning signs, and hapless first graders banging away in music classes everywhere.

You know, I seem to recall Smucker's attempt to patent the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Granted it was some horrible frozen round version (called an "uncrustable" of all names) of the classic, but at the end of the day, it was just a ravioli version of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich — so sayeth the Grand Poohbah Patent Examiner and so affirmed the all-mighty appeals court. Patent denied.

Because you can't patent PB&J, and I bet you can't patent ye olde right triangle either. But what do I know? I'm just a writer.

Try to remember

So, I don't know who Nat Gertler is, and I can't get to his (her?) page on Facebook (if you can, don't hold it against me — I have it on good authority I'm technologically cursed).

I'm reasonably confident, however, that she (he?) is responsible for this little goody about the late, great Kathryn Joosten, which, given I just attended a mega double-digit high school reunion, seemed particularly apropos as well as worth sharing.