Celebrities/VIPs/Luminaries whose names phonetically join in the middle

6-term Senator (and longtime chair of the Armed Services Committee) Carl Levin

Lydia Ansel, electric violinist

Vladimir Rosing, opera great.

“Rosing presented the English premiere of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades and introduced Tamaki Miura in Madama Butterfly, the first Japanese singer to be cast in that opera’s title role … Rosing recorded 61 discs for Vocalion Records in the early 1920s … Rosing left England for his first concert tour of the United States and Canada in November 1921. The tour generated an invitation to sing at a White House State Dinner held by President Harding … With his friends, writer William C. Bullitt and sculptress Clare Sheridan, Rosing organized the last concert of the tour in New York on March 10, 1922, as a benefit for Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration, raising money to help fight the terrible famine in Russia … Rosing remained popular as a recitalist in England, and he resumed giving concerts there upon his return in 1933. Rosing signed a new contract with the Parlophone Company and recorded 32 discs (with the new electrical method) between 1933 and 1937 … The British Music Drama Opera Company under the Rosing’s direction presented the world’s first televised opera, Pickwick by Albert Coates. The performance was a preview of the new company’s upcoming season at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden … On October 5, 1938, Rosing was back at the BBC for a live television broadcast of Pagliacci with his latest opera venture, the Covent Garden English Opera Company. Again, it was a preview of the upcoming season which opened with Faust on October 10, with Eugene Goossens conducting. Along with Rigoletto, Madama Butterfly, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Pagliacci and Cavalleria rusticana was an unfamiliar work, The Serf, by George Lloyd. After the London season, the company toured Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh.”

David Duchovny

David Durenberger, “the only Republican U.S. Senator from Minnesota to be elected to three terms … served as chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence and chairman of the Health Subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee, and was catapulted into leadership role in national health reform.”

Incidentally: how many Senators have been censured since way back in the 1700s? Well, it’s a real short list; you can count the number on both hands; Joe McCarthy was one of them, of course; but Durenberger, yeah, he managed it too.

Thomas Sowell, economist

Paul Lafargue, “revolutionary Marxist socialist journalist, literary critic, political writer and activist; he was Karl Marx’s son-in-law”. Wrote a number of works — including The Right To Be Lazy — and, “despite being in police custody, he was elected to the French Parliament for Lille, being the first ever French Socialist to occupy such an office.”

Arthur Rubinstein, pianist

Michel Legrand, composer (and three-time Oscar winner) is apparently on tour this year, with concert dates in Japan in July — and, after France in August, it’s set to be Michel Legrand and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: 60 Years of Music and Movies at the Royal Festival Hall in London in September; and so on, in one country or another, in October and November and December; and so on for next year…

The #1 film at the box office this past weekend — and who knows how long it’ll be there, but with $700,000,000+ it’s already the year’s biggest hit so far that doesn’t involve Wakanda — is the latest JURASSIC WORLD, which like its predecessor was written by Derek Connolly, who in between put his knack for ‘rampaging monster’ blockbusters to work on KONG: SKULL ISLAND.

But for all that, I’m not sure he’s ever yet gotten quite enough name-recognition to qualify for this; and so, in hopes of increasing the odds that I’m bumping the thread with something relevant, figure I’ll pair him with someone else I’ve wondered about: Joaquin Phoenix, who surely made it in his thirties when WALK THE LINE got him a leading-man nomination at the Oscars — and in his twenties, when his GLADIATOR performance got him a supporting-actor nod before that — but before all of that, I figure he made it back when he was getting movie-poster billing in SPACECAMP and RUSSKIES and PARENTHOOD as Leaf Phoenix. (Sure, he only got as far as getting nominated for a Young Artist Award for his TV-movie work then; but, still.)

Dominic Cooper, English actor currently appearing in Preacher on AMC.

He’s also about to appear in the latest Mamma Mia movie, as the guy who’s married to Amanda Seyfried’s character; but in real life, the guy who’s married to Seyfried is Tony-nominated actor Thomas Sadoski — currently on Life In Pieces, after years of other name-in-the-opening-credits work on primetime TV.

Philippe Petit has done plenty of — publicity stunts? Yeah, let’s say publicity stunts. Anyhow, the most famous of those is surely that time he managed a high-wire walk between the Twin Towers, which featured prominently in that recent biopic where Joseph Gordon-Levitt portrayed him — you know, not long after Man On Wire got awarded the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Spider Robinson

Bill Laimbeer

Greg Gutfeld (Fox News host)

Another guy who hosted his own TV show: Jack Carter, who got lured away from his job hosting Cavalcade of Stars for the DuMont Network — since NBC really wanted him to host, y’know, The Jack Carter Show. And in the years after, Carter would reliably get a gig hosting Texaco Star Theater, or guest-hosting The Tonight Show plenty of times, and so on; and got a healthy amount of name-on-the-poster roles when it came to movies, but, hey, 40 appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show didn’t just happen, is my point.

On national television tonight, Luis Severino is set to take the mound once again as the starting pitcher for the New York Yankees, and he’s making lots of headlines.

Yankees’ Luis Severino powers his way to 12th win, tops in majors

Is Luis Severino having the greatest pitching season in Yankees’ history?

Luis Severino may force bettors to change their whole approach

…and Luis Severino leads them to an 11-1 win. The guy’s a marvel.

At that, Lew Wasserman got an Oscar and a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and “was arguably the most powerful and influential Hollywood titan in the four decades after World War II”.

HAMILTON of course put Lin-Manuel Miranda on the map — but it also did wonders for Daveed Diggs, who got a Tony and a Grammy out of the deal.