There’s a whole bunch of birthdays today, but they are all overshadowed by one, a true giant, one of my most admired humans: the great, the only, the wonderful Dizzy Gillespie, who would be 101 if he were alive today. I was fortunate enough to have seen him play perhaps 40 or 50 times with various lineups in various cities, and met and chatted with him often. The first time I met him, I was a starstruck 15 year old, and he put me at ease immediately. He was not only the greatest jazz trumpeter ever, he was a great human being: witty, ebullient, and kind, on top of his monumental talent. I mourned him greatly when he died, which was far too soon.

Huh, I wonder who’s cutting up onions?

OK, we’re all here for the news, right? So let’s get to it.

In Great Britain, protesters are on the march, this time demanding a “people’s vote” on Brexit, as opposed to the last vote which apparently wasn’t done by people .

Among the celebrities involved are actor Steve Coogan, chef Delia Smith and Dragons’ Den star Deborah Meaden.

It is thought that thousands of students will take part, many of whom were too young to have their say in the 2016 referendum. Hilary Gyebi-Ababio, a third year student at Bristol University, told Sky News: “I was three days shy of voting against Brexit, but I feel now that if we do get a people’s vote, I would be getting my voice back because I really feel like I lost it during the campaign, which is ridiculous.”

Good to know that their college students are as retarded as ours.

There’s starting to be a bit of buzz about one of Team Blue’s actually interesting presidential prospects, Tulsi Gabbard. She has Occasional Cortex’s good looks but an actual brain behind it.

Gabbard won her House seat in 2012 and became the first Hindu to serve in Congress. She has distinguished herself with an anti-interventionist approach to foreign policy and the Middle East, and a progressive populist economic policy that has earned her praise from the likes of Sanders and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

That really is a conundrum for me- would I be willing to vote for someone with a heinous approach to economics in order to achieve a non-interventionist foreign policy? And I truly don’t know the answer. It would be great if we could get both sensible economics and sensible foreign policy, but I’m not seeing that happen.

Speaking of Occasional Cortex, she continues to be the gift to team red than keeps on giving. Because Global Warming is exactly like Hitler.

“When we talk about existential threats, the last time we had a really major existential threat in this country was around World War II, so we’ve been here before, and we have a blueprint of doing this before. None of these things are new ideas, but we have is an existential threat in the context of war,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We had a direct existential threat with another nation and at this time it was Nazi Germany and Axis, who explicitly made the United States as an enemy, and what we did was that we chose to mobilize our entire continent and industrialize our entire continent, and we put hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, to work in defending our shores and defending this country.”

I don’t know why people think she’s stupid.

I have a personal credo: everything is better with monkeys. But apparently, this sentiment is not universally shared nor universally reciprocated.

Mr Singh’s brother Krishnapal told The Times of India : “Monkeys threw more than 20 bricks at Dharampal on Thursday. “Thrown from quite a height, the bricks were enough to kill him. These rogue monkeys are the real culprits and must pay for it.”

Mr Singh’s family has lodged a formal complaint and named monkeys as the accused but police insisted they cannot prosecute monkeys and have declared Mr Singh’s death was an accident.

OK, I got nothin’.

I’m as much of a practical joker as the next guy, but sometimes it just goes a bit far.

Surgical oncologist John Ashcraft says colon cancer is a tough subject for many to talk about and the giant inflatable colon is a great conversation starter.

It is 10 feet long, weighs 150 pounds and is valued at $4,000. It is owned by the Cancer Coalition, which hosts walking and running events under a campaign called “Get Your Rear In Gear.”

The fact that I was in the area at the time of this theft is purely coincidental.

Now this is an interesting story: Canada seems to have run out of weed.

Police were called to help shops struggling to handle long queues and with frustrated people unable to buy cannabis.

Bill Blair, a former Toronto police chief who has led the government’s legalisation programme, told public broadcaster CBC the country was unable to supply enough to meet demand. “We expected, you know, certain strains might run out and there would be a bit of a run on supply,” he said.

My financial advice: buy stock in Tim Horton’s and any company selling poutine.

Today’s choice for Old Guy Music is, of course, inevitable.