Quiz: What is the origin of the phrase- No Strings Attached?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is meant by saying you’re way out in the boondocks?
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HISTORY FOR 1/18/2008
Birthdays: Daniel Webster, A.A.Milne, Joseph Glidden, Oliver Hardy, Cary Grant real name Archibald Leech, Danny Kaye, Emmanuel Chabrier, Bobby Goldsboro, Pierre Roget (Roget’s Thesaurus), Ray Dolby (Dolby sound), John Boorman, Kevin Costner

In honor of Cary Grant’s Birthday (1904) One of his favorite poems was a bit of doggerel: "They bought me a box of tin soldiers,/I threw all the Generals away,/I smashed up the Sergeants and Majors,/Now I play with me Privates all day."

1787- Captain Cook lands at Kauai and "discovers" Hawaii. He named the place the Sandwich Islands after his boss John Montague the First Lord of the Admiralty the Earl of Sandwich. Montague was the gent that loved gambling so much he hated to be interrupted by dinner, so he'd just stick some meat between two slices of bread and went back to the card tables. The King of Hawaii Kamehameha III didn't think it was the spirit of Aloha to name his country after a catering truck food and after numerous squabbles between the sailors and natives Cook was killed . The ensign who rallied the shore party and got them safely home was the future Capt. Bligh.

1912- Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, "Scott of the Antarctic" reaches the South Pole to discover the Norwegian flag of Pier Ammundsen who got there first. Doh !

1949- Look Magazine published a photo essay called "Prizefighter". The photographer was a young kid from the Bronx named Stanley Kubrick. Mr Kubrick said he wanted to try filmmaking.

1953-The Hollywood Animation Guild chartered. Originally the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 839 signatories included Disney legends Milt Kahl, Les Clark, John Hench and Ken Anderson.

1962- THE FRENCH CONNECTION- NYPD cracked a drug ring smuggling heroin from South East Asia into New York via Marseilles. The French Connection bust nabbed $3.5 million in dope and made heroes out of the two detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grazzo. Egan joked to Grazzo:"I’ll betchya Paul Newman will play me and Ben Gazzarra you!" Actually Gene Hackman played Egan and Roy Scheider Grazzo in the Oscar winning 1971 film. Both cops retired from the force to make careers in show biz. Ironically while the film was being made the real heroin from the case disappeared from the NYPD evidence lockup and was replaced with bags of corn starch. It was never recovered.

1964-Plans are revealed for building New York City’s World Trade Center towers.

1977- The cult documentary PUMPING IRON premiered. Filmmakers George Butler and Rob Fiore maxed out his American Express card to the tune of $35,000 to bring this look at the little known world of professional body building to the screen. The film first brought to the public a charmingly confident Austrian body builder named Arnold Schwarzenegger who wanted to try acting someday. Also Lou Ferrigno who would also star in movies and as the TV Hulk. Many year later Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to buy the rights to the film so he could edit out the scenes of him smoking pot.

1978- In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, rock star Frank Zappa described most rock journalism as " People who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read."

1987- National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition premiered.

1990- In a room at the Vista International Hotel in Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry was videotaped by the FBI toking on a crack pipe with his mistress Rasheeda. Doh! He served time in jail but was re-elected mayor anyway.

1990- Rusty Hamer, who played Danny Thomas’ son in the t.v. show Make Room for Daddy, put a 357 Magnum to his head and pulled the trigger. He was 42.

2004- The I HAVE A SCREAM SPEECH. Democratic presidential challenger Howard Dean gave an address after losing the New Hampshire primary. Known for his energy, at one point he got so carried away he let out a jubilant yelp above the cheering throng. The media picked this up and played it to death. Soon it would be impossible to think of Dean as a serious candidate. Republican White House strategist Karl Rove later admitted it would have been much harder to defeat Howard Dean than John Kerry, but then there was that scream. Gov. Dean is currently national Democratic Party chairman.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is meant by saying you’re way out in the boondocks?

Answer: Me old pal T.Dan Hofstedt nailed this one. I’ll repeat part of his answer. it's origins come from a Philipino Tagalog word that means "mountains," which originally was applied to people who were from the "bundaks," or the "mountain people" or hicks....
During World War Two U.S. Navy men picked up the slang to mean being posted out to the most isolated, God-For-Saken place possible. So “they got me way out in the Boondocks.”

I just got this from Karl Cohen of ASIFA/San Francisco:

HEMA is a Dutch department store.
The first HEMA opened in 1926 in Amsterdam.
Now there are 150 stores all over Europe.

Take a look at HEMA's product page http://producten.hema.nl/
You can't order anything -- and it's in Dutch and in Euros-- but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens.

This company has a sense of humor and a great computer programmer.

Have your sound on. enjoy.
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From now on, every bit of news released about the WGA Strike will be calculated to ratchet up the pressure on one side or the other.

George Clooney and Tom Hanks released statements calling on the sides to go back to the negotiation table. More independent studios- Spyglass and Media Rights Capital have reached an agreement with the WGA.

Meantime the major studios have declared their Force Majeure clauses are now in effect. Force Majeure- French for Greater Force, is a clause in most contracts that absolves both sides from liability if a natural disaster, war or other force beyond their control stops things. So all the personal service contracts that existed between individual writers and their studios were declared null.
The studios have said to just about forget about any new TV shows this year. This does not effect my show CarTalk, which had wrapped writing when the strike hit. So we may have one of the only original shows out when it premieres in June.

No negotiations are planned, because the side that requests talks will be seen as the one that is capitulating. THis would be a good place for our entertainment industry Governor Arnold to intercede, but so far...silence.
So the standoff, and the hard times, goes on.
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Quiz: What is meant by saying you’re way out in the boondocks?

Yesterdays Quiz answered below: Which Senator looked at a line up of Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon and quipped: Look, it's See no Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil...?
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History for January 17, 2008
Birthdays: Benjamin Franklin, Max Sennett 1880, Al Capone, Ethan G. Hodell 1883- the inventor of the Tow-Truck, Constantin Stanislavsky, Moira Shearer, Shari Lewis, James Earl Jones is 77, Vidal Sassoon, Betty White is 86, Denny Doyle, Kevin Reynolds, Muhammad Ali is 68, Zooey Deschanel, Jim Carrey is 46

1836- Texas General Sam Houston orders Jim Bowie to go to the Alamo and blow it up. Then bring the soldiers and the valuable cannon back to the main army to fight Santa Anna. But once there, Bowie was convinced by William Travis to disobey orders and defend the Alamo to the bitter end.

1926- FATS WALLER KIDNAPPED-Harlem Jazz great “Fats”Waller was in Chicago for a gig. On the street several gunmen grabbed him and dragged him into their limo and sped off to the lair of mob boss Scarface Al Capone. When he arrived there the terrified Waller was reassured by Capone that as it was Big Al’s birthday all he wanted was for Waller to perform at his party. The bash lasted three days and the joint was really jumpin”! Waller left unharmed, and with a very fat paycheck as well, but resolved to stay in Harlem where it was safe.(-?).

1926-George Burns married Gracie Allen.

1929- The first appearance of the character Popeye the Sailor in the Thimble Theater comic strip.

1949- The first VOLKSWAGEN BEETLES arrive in North America. In 1934 Adolf Hitler asked Dr. Ferdinand Porsche to take some time off from building Panzer Tanks to develop a simple easy-to-maintain family vehicle for the average person- a People’s Car-Volk’s Wagon. After the war the cheap Volkswagen beetle became a favorite for Beatniks and the Hippies after them. It’s success as a design is marked by the fact as soon as Volkswagen discontinued the model in the 1980’s their share of the American market slumped behind Toyota and Honda, but reintroducing the Beetle in 1998 immediately placed Volkswagen back in the race for the top import.

1961- Frank Sinatra’s Ratpack had campaigned hard for their friend John F. Kennedy for president. Black entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. had worked particularly hard to help Kennedy win the African American vote. But Sammy had a preference for blond white actresses and had married one, May Britt in 1960. To fend off negative publicity this day JFK had his secretary Mrs. Lincoln telephone Sammy Davis and un-invite him to the President’s Inaugural Ball. We’re Liberal, but not that liberal. And uhh..thanks for the help. Dean Martin was so angry at this insult to his friend that he cancelled his appearance at the inaugural. In 1968 Sammy Davis angered the black community when he embraced republican Richard Nixon.

1961- President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell speech to the nation. He warned against the growing influence of the “Military Industrial Complex”.

1964- The first Porsche Carrera sportscar arrived in L.A..

1994-The Great Northridge Earthquake rocked Los Angeles. 61 deaths and 20 billion dollars in damage. It was officially listed as 6.8 on the Richter Scale, although many rumors persist that in some areas it was as high as 7.2 . The epicenter was in the San Fernando Valley's so the valleys two major industries, animated cartoons and pornography, were temporarily disrupted.
Joe Barbera and June Foray's homes suffered damage and the production of the Simpsons was suspended for a time. Cal Arts Animation school was moved to an army base and Disney's planned to send a helicopter shuttle to pick up animators stuck in Antelope Valley because the freeways had collapsed.

2000-A Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton was offered for sale on E-Bay.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which Senator looked at a line up of Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon and quipped: Look, it's See no Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil...?

Answer: Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole. He said it during ceremonies to dedicate the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Ca.

Quiz: Which Senator looked at a line up of Ronald Reagan,Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon and quipped: Look, it's See no Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil...?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Who first labeled Ronald Reagan’s ideas Voodoo Economics?
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History for 1/16/2008
Birthdays: Yukon poet Robert Service, Andre Michelin 1853 the pneumatic tire inventor, Ethel Merman, Dizzy Dean,, A.J. Foyt, Marilyn Horne, Sade, Aliyeah, Michael Wilding, Eartha Kitt, Debbie Allen, John Carpenter, Diane Fossey, Kate Moss is 34, Tsianina Joelson, Great animator-amigo Raul Garcia-Sanz is 50

1883- Moved to act by the assassination of President James Garfield by an unemployed civil servant, Congress passed the Pendleton Act. It created a rigid merit standards for government jobs and created the Civil Service Commission. Before this things ran as the "Spoils System"- after every election, hundreds of government jobs were given by the President and his party to party hacks and amateurs as payment for favors, much uhh..as do today.

1935- Ma Barker’s gang has a furious shootout with the FBI at Ocklawaha, Florida. Legend has it they found Ma's body with the smoking tommygun still cradled in her lap. Others say she was only an ignorant hillbilly lady traveling with the gang as a cover. Only one of Ma Barker's sons (Fred) was killed with her. Herman Barker committed suicide at Wichita, Kansas, August 29, 1927, after being blinded by police bullets in a gun battle in which he killed a policeman. Arthur "Doc" Barker was captured by the FBI in Chicago eight days before the shootout that killed Ma and Fred. He was killed attempting to escape from Alcatraz on January 13, 1939. Lloyd "Red" Barker was released from Leavenworth in 1939 after serving seventeen years of a 25-year sentence for mail robbery. He was murdered by his wife at their suburban-Denver home on March 18, 1949.



1936- the first racetrack photo-finish camera installed.

1936- Albert Fish, the Moon Maniac was executed at Sing Sing Prison. The 66 year old Fish had killed ten children and cannibalized their remains. He even went as far as to send a letter to the mother of his last victim describing how he had turned her daughter into a stew. The letter was traced back to him and he was arrested. He almost shorted out the electric chair because he kept his underpants filled with metal sewing needles. As he went to his death he told guards he was looking forward to the electric chair. "it is a thrill I never tried."

1938- Benny Goodman brought the new Swing Music to staid old Carnegie Hall. Count Basie and Harry James joined in to get the tuxedoed crowd dancing in the aisles, then afterwards they all went uptown to the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem to watch Count Basies band square off against the legendary Chick Webb. After this triumph Benny Goodmans’ band would never be the same- Lionel Hampton, Harry James and Gene Krupa all split off to form their own orchestras."That band I had the night I played Carnegie Hall was the best I think I ever had." Goodman said later.

1940- Lee Francis, then Hollywood’s top madam, was busted for prostitution.

1942-Actress Carol Lombard and her mother died in a plane crash in the Sierra Mountains while returning from a war bond drive. Her husband movie king Clark Cable was so disconsolate that he joined an airforce combat squadron instead of doing USO work and took dangerous missions trying to get killed.

1954-THE WAR ON COMICS- Senator Estes Kefauver chaired a U.S. Senate subcommittee to study juvenile delinquency. They conclude that one of the contributing factors to adolescent moral decay was four-color comic books. The probe was sparked by the publication of a book called The Seduction of the Innocent by Dr Frederic Wertham. It charged among other things that Batman & Robin were gay because when not fighting crime, Bruce Wayne & Dick Grayson lounged around all day in silk pajamas with no women around! Despite testimony by Walt Kelly, Milt Caniff, Al Capp and Bill Gaines 350 comic book companies including the EC "Tales from the Crypt" label were driven out of business. The strict comics-code was established. The comic book industry, which had been selling one million books a month, never regained that level of prosperity in the US again. Dr Wertham spent the rest of his life denying he was responsible for destroying the comic book industry. Estes Kefauver tried to run for President in 1959 but was defeated for the Democratic nomination by John Kennedy.

courtesy of spy.org

1962- Television pioneer Ernie Kovacs died when he plowed his Corvair into a tree at Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Blvds. Kovacs had a fondness for all night poker and vodka parties. Friend Jack Lemmon said Ernie was so fanatical for a good card game that once when over a friend's house no table large enough could be procured for a game, Kovacs ordered the front door taken off it's hinges and a tablecloth thrown over it so they could all play.



1962-First day of shooting on the film Dr No.

1970- Col. Mohammar Khaddafyi became premier of Libya, and he's still in power.

1974- Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws first published.

1979- Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi fled Iran in the face of the Ayatollah’s fundamentalist revolution.

1980-The silver market collapses, making the Hunt Brothers from two of the richest men in America to two of the poorest.

1991- GULF WAR I -U.S., French, British and Arab airforces begin attacking Iraqi-held Kuwait. Sadam, Wild Weazels, Gen Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, Republican Guards, Scuds, Smart Bombs and CNN's Peter Arnett hanging a mike out the window of his Baghdad office as the bombs rained down.

1995- The UPN Network (Universal-Paramount Network) began telecasting.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Sometimes rougher stuff is said in presidential primaries than in the final election. Who was it who first called Ronald Reagan’s ideas Voodoo Economics?

Answer: George H.W. Bush the Elder in 1980. Alexander Hamilton and John Adams loathed one another worse than their opponent Thomas Jefferson. Teddy Roosevelt referred to his fellow Republican William Howard Taft as a Puzzlewit and Fathead. Democrat Hubert Humphrey was the first to accuse John F. Kennedy’s father of Anti-Semitism and Al Smith accused Franklin Roosevelt of stealing his ideas for the New Deal. In 2000 Dan Quayle was harder on George W. Bush mocking his Compassionate Conservatism than AL Gore ever was. So, enjoy the U.S. primary season!

Quiz: Sometimes rougher stuff is said in presidential primaries than in the final election. Who was it who first called Ronald Reagan’s ideas Voodoo Economics?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Much is made today about Mitt Romney being a Mormon as was John Kennedy being a Roman Catholic. Has their ever been a President who was a Jehovah’s Witness?
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History for 1/15/2008
Birthdays: Dr. Martin Luther King, Moliere, Gamal Abdel Nasser, outlaw Cole Younger, Charro, Matthew Brady, drummer Gene Krupa, Lloyd Bridges, Mario Van Peebles, Josef Broyer the mentor of Sigmund Freud, Margaret O’Brien, Aristotle Onassis, Captain Beefheart, Dr. Edward Teller “father of the H-Bomb”.

1208-THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE- Count Raymond of Tolouse, son in law of King Pedro the Lecher of Aragon, was thought to be sympathetic to a heretical Christian cult called Cathars, from the French region of Albi (so Albigensians).They believed in a Zoroastrian dualism in direct conflict with the Church. When a papal representative named Peter De Castellan was sent from Rome to tell Count Raymond to knuckle under, he was assaulted. The Pope had previously sent St. Dominic to re-convert the Cathars but after ten years of preaching and fasting St. Dominic’s final conclusion was :”Someone should take a stick to those people!” So a crusade was declared not against Moslems in the Middle East or the Moors of Spain but against other Christians in the heart of France. The holocaust was terrible, for the first time the answer of how we tell the guilty from the innocent was :”Kill them all and God will recognize his own.” The leader of the crusade Simon de Monfort, had his head flattened by a catapult stone. His son went to England and started the House of Commons. Raymond of Tolouse’s descendant was Henri Tolouse-Lautrec.
The Holy Office of the Inquisition was invented to finish things off. The Cathar religion disappeared except for cult fans like Alastair Crowley and the author of the DaVinci Code.
One French medieval scholar, Zoe Oldenburg, said the Cathars believed you and I are in Hell right now. And if you’re good when you die you’ll ascend to the angels but if you were just okay you were born again and had to do another 80 years of zits and puberty until you got it right. If you were evil you came back as a lower life form like an asparagus fern or an animator or something....

Simon de Monfort doing his impersonation of Wiley Coyote

1829- The first of two commercial working railroad locomotives arrived in the U.S. from England. Named the Pride of Newscastle back home, it was renamed the America. The Stourbridge Lion followed in May. These two trains began the U.S. Railroad system.
Historian Stephen Ambrose noted that until this time society moved a the speed of a walking horse, that Washington and Jefferson could travel no faster than Socrates or Shakespeare did in their day.

1929- Most of the nations of the world sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which states that War is a Bad thing. Ten years later World War Two breaks out.

1935-The Tsuni Conference- Chinese Communists elect Mao Tse Tung (or MaoZseDong) as their overall leader.

1936-THE DGA- Several top Hollywood directors including Lewis Milestone, Ruben Mamoulian and William Wellman meet at King Vidor’s house and pledge $100 dollars each to form the Screen Director’s Guild, later the Director’s Guild of America. It was a risky thing to do, previous attempts to form a directors union were broken up with threats by the producers of perpetual blacklisting. Final recognition and contracts were signed by President Frank Capra in 1940. One provision insisted on in the contract was that the director’s credit be the final name in the opening titles before the movie began. And so it remains.

1947-”THE BLACK DAHLIA”- One of the most lurid murder cases in Los Angeles history. A little girl playing in a vacant lot discovered the remains of high priced prostitute Elisabeth Short, 22, who used to work the Biltmore Hotel. She was named the Black Dahlia because of the black pullover sweaters and black lingerie she favored. Her body had been sawed in half and completely drained of blood, and the initials 'BD' carved on her thigh. She showed signs of torture before death. The murderer was never found. The incident was the basis for a movie called “True Confessions” with Robert DeNiro and Robert Duval. The last detective on the case died in 2003.

1951- ILSE, THE SHE-WOLF OF THE SS. Ilse Koch was the wife of the commandant of Buchenwald Concentration Camp and every bit as sadistic as her husband. She participated in torture and experiments on inmates to turn them into soap and their skin into lampshades. This day in her second war crimes trial she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Sixteen years later in 1967 she committed suicide in prison. In the 70’s Roger Corman revived interest in her by creating an S&M porn film about her life. Star Dyane Thorne was a comedian singer who studied under Charles Nelson Reilly.

1967- THE FIRST SUPER BOWL- After a decade of professional football conference title games, the AFL and NFL combined to make a single championship game- Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10. The first Superbowl halftime show was not Janet Jackson or Justin Timberlake but two college marching bands. Super Bowl Game day in the US has become a holy day of obligation and people who don’t care for the sport suddenly find it less crowded at movie theaters and zoos.

1968- Jeanette Rankin, the 87 year old Congresswoman who voted against US participation in World War One and World War Two today led a protest against the Vietnam War.

1974- Eeehhhhhh-The first episode of Happy Days premiered with Ron Howard as Richie Cuningham and Henry Winkler as Da Fonz.

1983- Meyer Lansky, the elderly retired Mafia boss died of a terminal nosebleed.

1998- Investigators from special counsel Kenneth Starr’s office have their first meeting with President Bill Clinton’s tootsie Monica Lewinsky in the lobby of the Watergate Hotel. They tried to pressure the 25 year old to admit her affair. They verbally denigrated her when she asked that her lawyer or her mother be present. But the Bimbo from Beverly Hills High was smart. She held out for 8 months to get the immunity deal she wanted before speaking out about those snapped thongs and well placed cigars.
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Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Much is made today about Mitt Romney being a Mormon as was John Kennedy being a Roman Catholic. Has their ever been a President who was a Jehovah’s Witness?

Answer: President Dwight Eisenhower.

Animators back in Burbank are watching closely the progress of the Little Mermaid on Broadway, produced by their former feature animation chief turned impresario Tom Schumacher.

[From Reuters Jan 14th-The Little Mermaid Flounders on Broadway]

According to critics, the reported $15 million Broadway tale of a mermaid who wants to live among humans could go the way of Disney's "Tarzan," which closed in July after just 14 months due to poor reviews and ticket sales.

"Sadly, following the demise of the joyless green blob that was 'Tarzan,' 'The Little Mermaid' suggests that on Broadway, the Disney magic touch has gone numb," wrote New York Times critic Ben Brantley, calling the show a "musical blunderbuss."

While "The Little Mermaid" cast received warm reviews, the show's set and costumes were criticized.

"Underneath all this baroque ornamentation was a tiny, tinny little musical struggling for life," wrote the New York Post's Clive Barnes. It was "plastic, plastic everywhere, enough to lead you to drink."

Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News, wrote: "The production is busy, not exciting; mechanical, not magical."

http://www.reuters.com/article/stageNews/idUSN1129518820080112
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When Sebastian says:" Ariel, down here is your home!" Maybe he means animation.