Say shipmates,

Did ya ever wonder what an animation director actually does? Do they sit in a folding chair with a megaphone and explain the motivation to Orcs and Funny Fish?

Well, I'm directing a ten half-hour episode TV series for PBS currently, I thought I'd give you a snapshot of my day today.

Currently- I have to get the first three reels of Show 105 to people who will conform my changes to the paper copy storyboard. We use the old cinema term "reels" for convenience, its really a digital file and I do my changes on Wacom tablet. Then I have to rush down to Hollywood by Paramount Studio to run the recording session of the last character for Show 106. Yesterday I ran the recording session in New York from a studio here in LA.

Show 106 is in rough storyboard right now. Show 101 is coming out of animation, Show 102 has been laid out, I need to approve models of bgs and props of Show 103 on an FTP site before those artists can continue.

Storyreels of show 103 and 104 were shipped to Washington for PBS to approve. I had a late meeting with my line producer Bill to go over the reels for Show 105. I need to complete the timings and notes for shipping this friday.

I received a first draft of show 107 and an outline for show 108. If I get half a minute I'll read them and send notes. I also have to meet this afternoon with the musicians who will be scoring the soundtrack.

So thats a typical schedule at the peak of production. This Fall the first shows will be in post production and I'll be in editorial and cueing sound effects as well. I oversee things right to the final mix session, which in some countries is called the Dub, or the Dubbing Session.

Then I rub my rabbits foot and light a candle under the statue of Our Lady of Peristance of Vision and hope people like it enough for a second season!

Birthdays: George Herriman the creator of Krazy Kat, Dorothy Parker, Ray Bradbury is 87, Claude DeBussy, Johnny Lee Hooker, Denis Papin 1647 inventor of the Pressure Cooker, Gen Stormin’Norman Schwarzkopf, Paul Molitor, Bill Parcells, Max Vilander, Carl “Big Yaz”Yazstremski, Dyanna Nyad, Deng Xiao Ping, Henry Cartier Bresson, Valerie Harper, Cindy Williams, Tori Amos

In Britain it is National Slacker Day: Stand Up for your Right to Sit Back Down!

565AD - St Columba reported seeing a monster in Loch Ness.

1558- When Antonio Carafa became Pope Paul IV he blamed the loss of half of Europe to Protestantism to the corruption of the Catholic Church. He attacked the dry rot with zeal. He started with a warning to all monks away from their monasteries without permission to return at once. This day he ordered the gates of Rome closed and all deadbeat monks still remaining be rounded up and sentenced to be galley slaves. He’s the Pope who ordered Vasari to paint pantaloons on Michelangelo’s nude of Christ in the Last Judgement.

1611- Galileo made a group of Venetian senators and noblemen climb to the top of Saint Marks Basilica in Venice to demonstrate his telescope.

1715 – Handel’s "Watermusic" premiered on the Thames River to mark celebrations of the Peace ending the War of Spanish Succession.

1806- elderly French painter Jean Fragonard died of a cerebral seizure after eating a large fruit ice on a hot day.

1849-The first aerial bomb attack. Austrian General Von Wintzingerode was at a loss at how to get at the besieged Italian city of Venice. The Venetian lagoon was too deep to wade across but was too shallow for battleships. Finally a Swiss mercenary suggested filling hot air balloons with troops and flying them over the city to drop explosives. Those little round black bombs with lit fuses you see in cartoons. A dozen balloons filled with grenadiers were launched aloft, but before they could do anything a stiff breeze blew them all to Yugoslavia. Doh! The first bombing by ariplane would be in 1912.

1882- American showman P.T. Barnum bought the largest elephant in the London Zoo. He created a new name for the beast- he called it a JUMBO. It was the highlight of his circus for years and after it was hit by a freight train and killed Barnum had it’s bones bleached and charged people admission to come look at it’s skeleton.

1901-The Cadillac Automobile Company formed. Named for the French explorer who founded Detroit, William De La Mothe-Cadillac.

1906 - 1st Victor Victrola manufactured, using Emile Berliners flat record turntable system. The Victrola was so cheap and easy to use it became standard in many homes and finished off any competition from Thomas Edison’s rival talking cylinder system.

1914- The Battle of Mons. British forces stop the German advance towards Paris and in so doing allow the main French army to win at the Marne. In a proclamation to his generals Kaiser Wilhelm bomabastically stated “Roll over this contemptible little British Army!” The term appealed to the Tommies and they nicknamed themselves “The Old Contemptibles” Also the German field general was General Von Kluck, who’s name rhymed with the Brit’s favorite expletive. As the marched through Belgian streets they sang “We don’t give a F*CK about old Von Kluck and all is F*CKING ARMY!”

1922- After World War One Lawrence of Arabia wrote home from Baghdad about the Postwar British occupation of Iraq:” The Public had been led into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady with-holding of information. The Baghdad comunique’s have been belated, insincere and incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told.”Aren't we glad things like that don't happen today, boys & girls?

1927- 200,000 people protest in Hyde Park London and around the world for clemency for convicted Italian immigrants Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vancetti. They were socialists who were convicted of murdering a store clerk in Massachusetts and became a radical cause-celebre. Letters demanding mercy came in from George Bernard Shaw, Helen Keller, Picasso, the Pope and more. Woody Guthrie wrote folk songs in praise of Sacco & Vancetti. The next day the State of Massachusetts electrocuted them anyway.

1939- The first aerosol spray can.

1953-The French government closed the Devil's Island prison colony.

1976- The protest at the Seabrook Nuclear Plant in New Hampshire. The birth of the U.S. anti-nuclear movement.

1984 - The Last Volkswagen Rabbit produced.

Congratulations to our friend and colleague Floyd Norman with being awarded with this year's Disney Legnd Award! Floyd is currently doing storyboards on our Car Talk cartoon show.
Such a mensch! Floyd, you rock! Now come in, I have more notes on your board.

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Birthdays: King Phillip II Augustus of France- 1165, King William IV of England- 1765, Aubrey Beardsley, Count Basie, Wilt (Wilt the Stilt) Chamberlain, Bugs Bunny director Isadore "Friz" Freleng* would be 101, Kenny Rogers, British Princess Margaret, Matthew Broderick, Clarence Williams III, Kim Catrall is 51. Carrie Anne Moss is 40

*Much of the character Yosemite Sam was modeled on Friz Freleng's personality. Like Sam, Freleng was short and red haired. His expressing frustration by stamping his feets while saying OOHHHHHH! was modeled on Freleng having a tamtrum at the moviola over some animators work.


1841 - John Hampton patented venetian blinds.

1858- The first Lincoln-Douglas debates. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas squared off in a series of open air debates for a congressional seat for Illinois. But the main subject was the slavery issue. Douglas, the 'Little Giant" won the election but the debates brought national attention to Lincoln. Douglas had even courted Lincoln's wife Mary before they were married. After Lincoln was in the White House Douglas was his strong supporter.

1863-THE LAWRENCE KANSAS MASSACRE – In the Western Border States the town of Lawrence Kansas was the center of pro-Union partisan Jayhawkers. Locals called it YankeeTown. Early in the morning this day Confederate guerrilla leader William Clark Quantrill led 450 hard-riding raiders from Missouri flying black flags into town. Quantrill's Raiders included young pups like Jesse James and Cole Younger. As the wild horsemen galloped up Massachusetts Avenue shooting and burning, Quantrill stood up in his saddle and shouted “Kill! Kill! Kill all the n**ger-loving Yankees!” There was no regular army there. They murdered 200 civilians, mostly defenseless old men and boys. A guerrilla named Rev Larkin Skaggs tore down the Stars & Stripes and dragged it behind his horse in the dirt and dung to the laughter of the troops. There were some regular Confederate officers present who were appalled at the carnage. They showed their unfired weapons to survivors to witness that they did not take part in the crimes. Rev. Skaggs was shot down by a Delaware Indian as he tried to ride out of town. The citizens dragged his scalped corpse up and down the main street shooting it and pelting it with stones. It was later tossed into a ravine for wild dogs to eat. Many people never recovered from the nightmare. In 1865 at the end of the Civil War, William Quantrill was brought down in a hail of bullets. The parson presiding over his funeral invited mourners to defecate on his grave.
Ain't American history fun, boys & girls?

1887- Mighty (Dan) Casey struck out at his last at bat with the NY Giants. The poem was written many years later.

1911- Café waiter Vincenzo Perruggia walked into the Louvre and stole the Mona Lisa. After trying to fence it for two years, he tried to ransom it back. In 1913 he was arrested and the painting recovered.

1912- Arthur Eldred of Oceanside New York became the first Eagle scout.

1922 - Curly Lambeau & Green Bay Football Club formed in 1919 was granted an NFL franchise. Foreigners have pondered the Great American Mystery: Why are the Packers the only US football team not situated near a major American City? That is because at a time when professional football was in it’s infancy a Green Bay meat packing company paid for the teams uniforms.

1929-Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo marry.

1926- Duck Soup, the first comedy short featuring the new team of Laurel & Hardy. Studio head Hal Roach put the Scottish Stan Laurel and Georgia born hoofer Oliver Hardy together and they became one of the greatest comedy teams in film history. The had collaborated on one film earlier called Lucky Dog. Their first feature was Pardon Us, done in 1930. The more famous film named Duck Soup was done by the Marx Brothers in 1934.

1935- Big band leader Benny Goodman was having a tough time. His band lost its radio gig when the show Let’s Dance was cancelled. So he and his musicians drove across the country in a small caravan of cars playing various venues on the road. They were told in small towns to stop playing that newfangled Swing music and stick to old standards. One manager in Denver told him:” Don’t you guys know any waltzes? ” By the time they arrived in Los Angeles this day they were thoroughly demoralized. But when they set up in the Palomar Ballroom in Hollywood the crowd was immense! And these kids wanted to jitterbug to the new Swing music! So hit it, Jackson, Awl Reet, Awl Reet!

1944- Moviestar James Cagney, star of Yankee Doodle Dandy, cleared of charges of Communism. The accusations probably had less to do with Cagney's politics and more to do with his union activism and his fighting in court the restrictive personal contracts studios put their stars under.

1967 –New York Mets second baseman Ken Harrelson became the first free agent.

1968- RUSSIAN TANKS CRUSH THE "PRAGUE SPRING' -Soviet forces destroy Alexander Dubchek's experiment of "Socialism with a Human Face." 650.000 Warsaw Pact troops moved into the small country from all sides. Some of the Red Army soldiers moving into Prague were from Asian Siberia and had never seen a western city before. Carlos Casteneda, who was there for a socialist progressive conference, recalled seeing a Soviet tank crash right through a department store glass window. The driver had never seen a glass window that large and didn't think anything was there. A Czech put a sign over the window frame : "NOTHING CAN STOP THE INVINCIBLE RED ARMY !"

1972 - Grace Slick was sprayed with mace by police after one of her band called the cops pigs.

1989- The Voyager II satellite spaceprobe flew by the planet Neptune. It was discovered Neptune had a faint ring like Saturn and rotated on it’s side- south-north instead of west to east. Scientists speculated the atmosphereic pressure to be so great that it could actually rain diamonds.

2003- A two week heatwave in Europe killed 10,000 in France alone. Most were elderly people sitting in their locked apartments without air conditioning while their families went on their august holidays. President Chirac was on holiday in Canada.

2017 - Next total solar eclipse visible from North America.

Birthdays: Sukenoba Nishikawa,H.P. Lovecraft, Art Tatum, Issac Hayes who wrote Shaft , Connie Chung, Jaqueline Susanne, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin- who co-wrote Stairway to Heaven, Joan Allen, Fred Durst, Alan Reed -the original voice of Fred Flintstone

480 B.C. -THE THREE HUNDRED SPARTANS- When Persian King Xerxes invaded Greece the King of Sparta Leonidas decided the best place to try and stop him was in the narrow pass of Thermopylae. But the Spartan senate and other allied Greek states refused to send troops until they completed the Olympic religious festival. It was forbidden for Greeks to wage war during the Games. So Leonidas hurried ahead the 300 Spartans and a thousand more allied troops to try and stall ten times their number. They were wiped out, but they bought enough time for the Greeks eventual victory. Later a monument was erected over their bones: O xein angellin Lakdaimoniois hoti tede keimetha tois keinon rhemasi peithomenoi- which means "Go Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that True to their Command, Here We Lie."
from the 1963 movie of the story. No androgynous giants with multi-piercings or CG ogres in this one

1882 -Peter Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" premiered in Moscow. The composer said of all his works the two pieces he liked the least were the 1812 Overture and the Nutcracker Suite. Overture 1812 was Richard Nixon’s favorite classical piece.

1896 – The Dial telephone patented. It was nicknamed the Gravediggers Dial because a funeral director invented it. It was the world standard until replaced by the touchtone button system in the 1980s. Even though the dial phone is a memory the words remain when we speak of "dialing up a number" or "dialing up someone’s website."

1940- In Mexico City exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky was assassinated. While writing at his desk he hacked to death with a small mountainclimbers pick.. His murderer Ramon Mercador- alias Jules Antoine, alias Jackson was paid by Stalin's agents. He got into Trotsky's household by dating one of the maids. It was rumored that part of the Stalinist cell in Mexico was famed painter David Siquieros. Trotsky was having an affair with famed painter Frida Kahlo. Leon Trotsky predicted Stalin would try to get him while the world's attention was distracted by the Hitler War. When Mercador was released from a Mexican prison Stalin presented him with the Order of Lenin.


1940- In a radio speech Winston Churchill praised the efforts of the Royal Air Force in fighting Hitler's bombers-"Never have so Many, owed so Much, to so Few.'

1953- The Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in Women first published. Alfred & Clara Kinsey’s study proved to the conservative American public that 50% of women had premarital sex, liked sex for more than just procreation and 25% had a extramarital affair. This document following his 1948 report on sexual behavior of men revolutionized social attitudes towards sex and feminism.

1971- THE ENEMIES LIST. FBI documents prove this day the Nixon White House began to covertly investigate journalist Daniel Schorr because of his anti-war editorials. President Richard Nixon kept an enemies list of people he imagined to be opponents to his administration. It began with obvious liberals like George McGovern and Ted Kennedy, then expanded as far as June Foray the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel.

1972- Star Hollywood directors Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich and William Freidkin announced a partnership in a new production company called "The Director's Company" Young punks Martin Scorcese, George Lucas and Steven Speilberg were also involved. The partnership lasted two years then collapsed.

1977- NASA launched the Voyager One probe towards the outer planets of our solar system. Among the things Voyager discovered was that Jupiter had many more moons than previously thought and had a ring like Saturn. Part of Nasas' program was an explanatory simulation film done totally on computer by Jim Blinn. The animation was so smooth and the graphics so breathtaking it expanded the use of the c.g.i. medium and inspired a new generation of digital artists.

1982- Ralph Bakshi's film Hey Good Lookin'.

1989- George and Joy Adamson, the naturalists who inspired the book Born Free, were murdered by Somali poachers in Kampi Ya Simba, Africa.

1991- Russian President Boris Yeltsin climbs onto a tank in front of the Russian Parliament and yells:" Come an get me!" Communist hardliner's attempt to regain power eventually fails.

1998- THE WAG THE DOG ATTACKS- After the Al Qaeda terrorist organization bombed US embassies in Africa the Bill Clinton administration looked for an opportunity to hit back. This day the CIA got word that senior Al Qaeda leaders including Osama Ben Laden were going to gather in a remote Afghan camp for a meeting. President Clinton ordered a spread of cruise missiles launched to kill them. The missiles hit their target but Ben Laden got away. In Washington the hostile Neo-Con media had a field day accusing the Clinton White House of making the strikes only to distract public attention from the Monica Lewinsky Sex Scandal. It alluded to a popular movie out at the time called Wag the Dog, where a scandal ridden president rigs a fake crisis to distract attention. Bill Clinton was stymied in any further efforts, and Osama Ben Laden lived on to plan 9-11.

1999- Planet Hollywood, the theme restaurant started by movie stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore filed for bankruptcy.

Quiz:

1.What do Rob Minkoff, Kevin Lima, Dan Bessie, Tim Burton, Frank Tashlin, David Swift, Jerry Reese, Doug Lefler, Simon Wells and John Bruno have in common?

2.Who was the earliest animation director to move into live action?

3.Who said "Doh" before Homer Simpson?

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B-Days: Orville Wright, Ring Lardner, Ogden Nash, Alfred Lunt, George Inesco, jockey Willie Shoemaker, Malcom Forbes, Tipper Gore, Gene Roddenberry, Silent film star Colleen Moore, Jill St. John, Ginger Baker drummer of Cream and Grand Funk Railroad, Dawn Steel, John Stamos, Peter Gallagher, Matthew Perry is 37, former President Bill Clinton is 60

1599- Spanish Conquistadors capture and burn Acoma pueblo in New Mexico east of modern Alberquergue. The Indian village on the sheer tabletop mountain reminded the Spaniards of attacking castles back home. After their victory they enslaved the population and burned the chief at the stake as a heretic. As the chief was roasting the monk Diego Las Casas started to feel guilty, so he urged the chief at his last moments to accept baptism. The chief called out through the flames:" No thank you, because then I would go to the Christian Heaven and meet even MORE of you people!"

1692- Salem Mass, The pilgrims executed four women as witches. One was an elderly senile woman who just looked scarey like a witch and another was a Caribbean servant named Tituba who liked to tell children ghost stories.

1848- The New York Herald published a story that President Polk confirmed that gold had indeed been discovered in California.

1886- Joseph Conrad got his British citizenship. The author of Nostromo, Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim was born in Poland as Jozef Konrad Korzenieowski, but he went into exile when his patriot father was arrested by the Czars police and sent to Siberia.

1909- The Brickyard is born. The first Indianapolis 500 autorace.

1929 the Amos and Andy show, voiced by two white actors, premiered on de radio.

1955 - WINS radio, announces it will not play "copy" white cover versions of black R&B . DJs must play Fats Domino's "Ain't It A Shame," not Pat Boone's. In 1957 Little Richards “Tuttie-Fruitie” never got higher than 17th in the Billboard Charts while Pat Boones version, by his own admission awful, went to number one.

1960- The Russians launched a Sputnik capsule into space with two dogs- Belka and Strelka, 2 rats and 40 mice. They recovered this orbiting zoo the next day. The first sending of life into space and returning them safely.

1973 - Kris Kristofferson weds Rita Coolidge.

1977- Groucho Marx , the last surviving Marx Brother, died at age 86. In his final years Groucho had rewrote his will in favor of his personal secretary Erin Fleming. After his death a furious legal battle opened between Fleming and the Marx children.

QUIZ ANSWERS-
1.- All are live action directors who began as animators.

2.- Gregory LaCava began as an animation director for the Hearst Studio INS in 1916-1918. He moved into live action and directed many famous films like My Man Godfrey(1936) and Stage Door(1938).

3.- James Finlayson. The bald little baggy pants comic in the mold of Chester Conklin or Snub Pollard played with Laurel & Hardy and the Little Rascals in a number of Hal Roach comedies in the 1930s.
Laurel & Hardy would push him over into a fountain or whatnot and he would wiggle his mustache at the camera and expound:" DOOOhhh- OH!"
Special Thanks to Mark Mayerson.