That’s the Big 6-0, Babe

Let’s start out this Thursday by wishing actor, musician, and college professor Avery Brooks a happy 60th birthday. The Indiana-born Brooks, who began his acting career on the stage, later brought to remarkable small-screen life author Robert B. Parker’s cultured thug, Hawk, in both Spenser: For Hire (1985-1988) and that series’ lesser spin-off, A Man Called Hawk (1989). Although some people may never associate Brooks with any role other than that that of Hawk (a character named earlier this year by TV Squad as one of “The Top 10 Toughest Bald Guys on TV,” and still worth revisiting in YouTube clips), he is also justly acclaimed for having played Captain Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.