Twenty years ago, in a land far away...from LA, anyway........ A organization was formed in Brussels to advance and encourage European animated filmmaking. They called it CARTOON.

I was invited by my friends Jacques Muller and Shelley Page to one of the first events at the Gobelins Center in Paris in 1988. Back then Ed Jones and I were asked about a little film we had just finished called WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?. We had a press conference in a little cafe with Jacques Chirac having lunch in the next room. He wasn't French President yet, but was the Mayor of Paris. I was on my best behavior to use the silverware in the right order ( from the outside in). Then the journalist on my right from the magazine LePointe bobbled her fork and splashed us with gravy. Sito au jus! Later I got to tour the Ecole Grande Gobelins animation school and was asked by a Danish journalist if this new LITTLE MERMAID movie Disney was doing would be any good.



Since then CARTOON has held numerous events and symposia around Europe. In that time I've been invited back to be a keynote speaker at events held in Anghouleme France and Erfurt Germany.



It was a wonderful opportunity to meet a lot of animation artists from around the world and gain an understanding of the contemporary European animation scene. It makes you aware just what an international artform cartooning and animation is, and how much we cartoonists are all of the same crazy tribe. My thanks to Corrine Jeanart, Monsieur deBrocart, Tim LeBourgne and the late, great Pierre Aymar for all their great work on behalf of the organization.

BON ANNIVERSAIRE EURO/CARTOON!!

To read more about CARTOON visit their site- http://www.cartoon-media.be/

Quiz: Why is the smallest finger on your had called a Pinky?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: In New York City, people call the borough of the Bronx, The Bronx. No one calls the others The Brooklyn or The Manhattan. Why is it The Bronx?
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HISTORY for 2/21/2008
Birthdays: Leopold Delibes, C. Brancusi, Anais Ninn, W.H. Auden, Hubert de Givenchy, Era Bombeck, Sam Peckinpah, , Nina Simone, Robert Mugabe, Joe Oriolo, David Geffen, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kelsey Grammar is 53, Jennifer Love Hewitt is 29, Alan Rickman is 62

1838- The first telegraph message sent by Samuel Morse "What hath God wrought?" He strung electric cables up and down several floors of his art studio using wood stretchers normally used for oil paintings. Morse was an artist and never wanted to be an inventor, he just did it to finance his painting.

1848- THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO- In Brussels Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published their revolutionary work the Communist Manifesto, redefining history in terms of economic class warfare and creating the terms communist and communism. Interestingly enough they picked Brussels to publish because that year 1848 there were revolutions happening in most of the other cities in Europe. In the 1998 to celebrate it’s anniversary an international publishing conglomerate issued a deluxe designer edition complete with trendy graphics and gilt cover. What would Marx have thought?

1885- The completed Washington Monument was dedicated by Pres Chester Allan Arthur. Plans for the obelisk were first drawn up in 1792 by Pierre L’Enfant and the cornerstone laid in 1840 but construction was constantly suspended. For a time because of the Civil War, another time because strict Presbyterian workers refused to handle Italian marble blocks donated by the Vatican.

1901- Yankee outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with prostitute Hedda Place, sometimes called Mrs. Sundance, left New York City by ship for Latin America and hopefully a new life. They built a ranch in the Patagonian foothills of Argentina, but 4 years later took up their outlaw ways again, eventually fleeing to Bolivia. Hedda Place returned to the US and disappeared from history.

1916-VERDUN began- One of the most horrible battles in world history. World War One German commander Eric Von Falkynhen had planned to draw France into a battle that would ‘bleed her white”, but he wound up bleeding his German Army just as badly. German and French troops battled over some stone fortresses for ten months. Hundreds of thousands of men died in one battle. Names like Petain, Rommel, DeGaulle, the Red Baron, even Bavarian Lance-Corporal Adolf Hitler were all there. The French fired 1 1/2 million shells in this thirty mile square area and the Germans even more. Regiments would be marched into the trenches, blown to bits, then another marched in. One whole French regiment was buried alive by shellfire. Today in a shrine you can see their bayonets sticking out of the soil, still in a straight line waiting to attack.
In the fortresses like Donaumont and Vaux men fought underground in 12 foot high concrete tunnels in total darkness with grenades and flamethrowers, their ears bleeding from the concussions and choking on the fumes and stench of rotting corpses. The French commander of Douamount went mad after the war and shot himself. The surrounding countryside was turned into a shellhole pocked lunar hell. Frenchmen are still digging up unexploded bombs 90 years later. It is said even birds would not fly over Verdun and nothing could grow there. Even their monument by Rodin is macabre. The Verdun Tourist Office was trying to emphasize the positive sites of the city, like they are the birthplace of those candy-covered almonds you get at weddings.

1945-MARINES RAISE THE FLAG- During the Battle of Iwo Jima the Marines raise the flag on Mt. Suribachi. Associate Press photographer Joe Rosenthal takes the most famous image of the war. It's now the Marine monument at Arlington Cemetery. Actually, he photographed the second flag raising. The first was a small flag stuck on a piece of pipe to get the artillery below to stop shelling and to give the Marines pinned down on the beach some hope. The second larger flag raising was done for the press. It was still plenty dangerous, two of the six flag raisers were later killed in battle that same day. Rosenthal almost missed the shot because he turned around momentarily to see if he was in the way of another cameraman. Actor Lee Marvin was one of Marines in the furious fighting and was decorated for his gallantry. He was quoted as saying in an interview later the toughest most heroic Marine he saw that day on Suribachi was the man who ended his life as a kiddie show host- Bob Keeshan known as Captain Kangaroo- but that was a joke that has since become urban myth.

[Photographer Joe Rosenthal

1965- MALCOLM X was assassinated at the Audubon Meeting Hall in Washington Heights Manhattan. His last words were trying to quiet the crowd he was about to address-"Brothers, be cool." Three men then stood up and fired pistols and a shotgun killing him instantly. It has never been proven who ordered the killing.

1988- Televangelist Jimmy Swaggert tearfully confessed to his Baton Rouge congregation “Ah Have Sinned!!”. He had been busted for soliciting a prostitute. They forgave him, A year later he was busted again for the same reason but continues to preach morality on t.v. today.
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Yesterday’s Question: In New York City, people call the borough of the Bronx, The Bronx. No one calls the others The Brooklyn or The Manhattan. Why is it The Bronx?

Answer: In colonial times, Breucklyn was a Dutch village, but the rural areas above Manhattan were dominated by a large farm owned by a Danish man named Jonas Bronk.
So going to visit him and his family was going to see The Bronxs’. In 1819 when Mayor DeWitt Clinton was codifying the plans for New York City, he fixed the name of the area as The Bronx.

Question: In New York City, people call the borough of the Bronx, The Bronx. No one calls the others The Brooklyn or The Manhattan. Why is it The Bronx?

Yesterdays Quiz answered below: Political pundits say President Bush will be hung around John McCain’s neck like an albatross. What does that mean?
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History for 2/20/2008
Birthdays: Honore' Daumier, Nancy Wilson, Ansel Adams, Sidney Poitier, Cindy Crawford, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robert Altman, Roger Penske. Phil Esposito, Jennifer O’Neill, Ivanna Trump ("Ivanna More Money") Mike Leigh, Lili Taylor

1702-British King William III of Orange goes riding around Hampton Court when his horse Sorrel steps in a molehole and throws him. William of Orange suffered a broken collarbone but being already elderly, tuberculant and asthmatic, died within a week. Friends of his enemy the exiled Stuart King James II drank a toast to the 'Little man in the velvet coat', meaning the mole who dug the hole.

1816- "Fee-Garr-Row! Fig-Ar- Roww- Figaro-Figaro,Figaro,Figaro"- Giacomo Rossini's opera 'The Barber of Seville' premiered. Rossini endured bad press and heavy criticism at the time because the another opera of the Marriage of Figaro had just been premiered by Paisiello, an inferior composer who was much more popular than he.

1824- The first attempt to name and classify a dinosaur. At the Geological Society of London Dean Willliam Buckland announced the Megalosaurus or the Great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield . Based on a leg bone he estimated it at 40 feet long and a bulk larger than an elephant. Before Darwin the conventional explanation was that these fossils were the remains of dragons or creatures that perished in Noah’s Flood.

1845- The Battle of the Cahuenga Pass-Angry Spanish Californians led by Vaquero Juan de Alvarado clashed with the regular Mexican governor Miguel de Micheltorena. The only casualty was a mule. The story of Alvarado may be one of the origins of Zorro.

1925- Willis O’Brien’s silent movie the Lost World premiered. The stop motion animation of dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes issued in a new era of special effects films.



1936- The film “Follow the Fleet” premiered, with dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

1939- The American Nazi Party held their largest rally in Madison Square Garden in New York City. 20,000 Americans goose-stepped and Sieg-Heiled under a huge portrait of George Washington, while angry anti-Fascist and Jewish groups rioted outside. By 1941 most of the German American Bund dissolved. During the war 10,000 German Americans were interned along with the Japanese and Italians. Fritz Kuhn, the organizer of the rally was jailed for embezzling his organizations funds and deported to Germany in 1946



1962- "God Go with You, John Glenn !" Mercury -7 sends the first American into orbit.
Glenn later became a Democratic senator and in his 70’s went into space a second time on a space shuttle in 1998. His first words upon emerging from the space capsule were:”It was hot in there.” John Glenn was a combat Marine pilot, test pilot and astronaut but even he sometimes got the willies. In 1968 while traveling with the Robert Kennedy for President entourage their chartered plane hit turbulence. Bobby Kennedy undid his seat belt, stood up and said to the cabin “ I have an announcement- Colonel Glenn is Scared!”

2006- The animated film Wallace & Gromet: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, won the British Academy Award (BAFTA) for the best British Film of the year. It beat out the Constant Gardner, and Pride & Prejudice.
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Yesterdays Question: What does it mean to have an albatross around one’s neck?

Answer: In Samuel Taylor Coleridges’ epic 1798 poem Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, a young sailor finds himself on a cursed ship full of dead people. When he kills an albatross, considered bad luck, he is condemned to wear the dead bird around his neck as a reminder to all of his mistake. Since then, to have an albatross around ones’ neck is to have a constant public reminder of a mistake, when you’d much rather everyone forget it.

Quiz: Political pundits say President Bush will be hung around John McCain’s neck like an albatross. What does that mean?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: When you meet the President, what do you call him/her?
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HISTORY FOR 2/19/2007
Birthdays: Copernicus, Luigi Boccherini, Smokey Robinson, Andre Breton, Lee Marvin, Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Karen Silkwood, Paul Terry, Paul Krause, Merl Oberon, Amy Tam the author of the Joy Luck Club., John Frankenheimer, Jeff Daniels, Benicio Del Toro is 41, Hilary Duff is 22

Today is the Feast of Saint Wulfstan of Worchester

197AD- General Septimius Severus of the African Legions had seized control of the Roman Empire and had himself declared emperor. This day he defeated his last rival, Albinus ,the Commander of the legions of Gaul. He left Albinus’ dead body in front of his headquarters, where for fun he trampled it repeatedly with his horse and wiped his shoes on it before entering his office. This was before office desk Nerf-basketball was invented. Albinus‘ corpse layed around being torn by dogs and vermin for a week. Finally it stank so bad, it was flung into a nearby stream.

1674- The Second Treaty of Breda settled the Third Dutch War with England. As part of the settlement Holland gave up any chance of getting back her colonies in North America, now renamed by the English New York and New Jersey. Truth be told they weren’t bringing in any income anyway. They were considered of little value.

1847-“ ARE YOU FROM CALIFORNIA OR ARE YOU FROM HEAVEN?” The Donner Party found at last. The wagon train of settlers had been trapped in the High Sierra mountains of California near Lake Truckee in blizzard conditions with no food since last October 31st. Half the settlers were dead and the rest subsisting on cannibalizing the dead for food. This day a survivor named John Reed who got to safety returned with a rescue party from Sutter’s Fort. Of the 89 original settlers only 45 made it out alive. One opened a restaurant.

1878- Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.

1913- Crackerjacks start putting toy prizes in every box. The name Crackerjack for the caramel corn was named for the reaction of someone trying it for the first time- These are Crackerjack!

1920- THE MYSTERY OF ANASTASIA- This day came the first news reports that a emotionally disturbed young woman who tried to jump into a Berlin canal claimed to be the Archduchess Anastasia Romanov, youngest child of the Czar and Czarina of Russia. She somehow escaped the 1918 murder of her family and tried to prove it by recalling minute details about the Imperial household. She was called Anna Anderson and was the toast of New York and Parisian society for awhile. But unlike the Ingrid Bergman movie the Romanov family in exile never took her seriously and Anna eventually married and settled down. In 1991 extensive laboratory attempts to match her DNA with the Romanovs proved she was not the little archduchess.

1942-PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT signed Executive Order# 9066- The JAPANESE INTERNMENT ACT- All along the Pacific Coast first and second generation Japanese-Americans were uprooted from their homes and property and with what only they could carry were shipped off to camps in the desert. Few Japanese-Americans were interned in Hawaii however, because it would have seriously depleted the population. Many got no restitution for their lost property. America remembered how effective German agents were in the First World War, when bombs going off on Boston and New York waterfront docks was common. Throughout the Second World War no act of Japanese-American sabotage was ever recorded. Apologists would say it was because of the act. Although the F.B.I. kept tabs on German and Italian agents in U.S. and pro-Fascist groups like the American Bund flourished in the 30’s nothing like what happened to Japanese Americans occurred to them. Less than 10,000 were rounded up as opposed to over 100,000 Japanese Americans.

1945- THE INVASION of IWO JIMA-The nine mile square bit of barren beach cost over 50,000 lives. This island and Okinawa were the test cases to judge how fiercely the Japanese would fight for mainland Japan. Iwo Jima was the first island that wasn't conquered territory of some other people but was considered part of the home Japanese Islands, only 700 miles from Tokyo.

1944- Writer John Steinbeck asked that his name be taken off of the credits for the Alfred Hitchcock film version of “Lifeboat”. “In view of the fact that my script for the picture was distorted in production.”

1951-Poet philosopher Andre Gide died in Paris. Several things were quoted as his last words, my favorite is " Before you quote me, please make sure I'm conscious."

1954- The prototype Ford Thunderbird auto completed.

1960 - Bill Keane's "Family Circus" cartoon strip debuts.

1968- “ It’s a beautiful day in the Neighborhood…” Mister Roger’s Neighborhood debuted on National Education Television, later called PBS. Ordained Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers had been doing children’s shows similar in Pittsburgh and Canada since the 50’s but today was the start of his show that would run unchanged for thirty five years.

1985 - Mickey Mouse welcomed in China.

1995- Pamela Anderson married rocker Tommy Lee. On their honeymoon they shot that notorious video on Lake Powell.
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Yesterdays’ question: When you meet the President, what do you call him/her?

Answer: Shortly after the US constitution was finalized in 1787, a furious debate broke out over how to address the President. America had been a colony answerable to a king, so you called him Your Majesty, or Your Highness. General Washington and Martha were addressed as His Excellency and Lady Washington. But what to call this newfangled Chief Executive? Your Electoral Highness? Finally, after weeks of debate, the formula approved by Congress was simply “ Mr. President.” And maybe soon “ Madame President.”

Recently Maryanne Satrapi's Oscar nominated film PERSEPOLIS was screened in Teheran, Iran. How was it recieved? Better than 300 was.
http://www.irandokht.com/news/readnews.php?newsID=38492

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HAPPY U.S. PRESIDENT’S DAY-[ Up until the 1960s you got Feb 12th Lincoln’s Birthday and Feb 22nd, Washington’s Birthday off. I recall my mother buying us all a Brachs Milk Chocolate Axe with cherries studded into it. In 1970 President Nixon combined them both into one three day weekend with no emotional connection to anyone.
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Quiz: For U.S. President’s Day, when you meet the President, what do you call him? Now, keep it clean….

Yesterdays’ question answered below: Was Cyrano a real person?
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History for 2/18/2008
Birthdays: Queen Mary I Tudor -Bloody Mary, Pietro Guarnieri the violin maker, Harry Grover- Seeley one of the founders of Paleontology, Louis Tiffany, Andre Segovia, Wendell Wilkie, Billy de Wolfe, Enzo Ferrarri, Yoko Ono, Jack Palance, Milos Forman, Bobby Bachman of the Bachman Turner Overdrive, cartoonist Gahan Wilson,cartoonist Johnny Hart, Matt Dillon, John Travolta, John Hughes, Dr. Dre

1878- THE LINCOLN COUNTY WARS- John Tunstall, a Scottsman who gave a number of young cowboys work on his ranch in New Mexico, was murdered while his bodyguards were hunting wild turkeys. Tunstall was buried in his clan tartan kilt. This murder sparked a running gun battle between Tunstall's group led by his attorney John McSweeny, a town merchant named Murphy, rancher John Chisum and most of the county. One of Tunstall's hired hands turned this range war into a personal vendetta that would make his name famous- Billy the Kid.

1885-Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' published.

1888- The Hotel Coronado in San Diego Cal. opened for guests. It remains one of the largest remaining wood structures in the U.S.. Several presidents stayed there, the Duke of Windsor may have met Mrs. Simpson there and films like the Marilyn Monroe film Some Like it Hot and The Stuntman were shot there.

1930- The planet Pluto discovered- in 1909 Scientist Lord Percival Lowell had detected signs of a planet at the edge of our Solar System beyond Neptune but could not definitely confirm or identify it. They named it for the time being 'Planet X' The Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona had searched in vain for decades until Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tumbaugh, an amateur astronomer who was allowed to occasionally use Lowell’s telescope to justify the public grants they got. Lord Lowell had just passed away before the discovery he had dedicated his life to. Recently a consortium of scientists demoted Pluto from a planet back to just a big-ass asteroid status.

1950- First Mr. Magoo cartoon "Ragtime Bear".

1953- First 3-D movie "B'wana Devil" starring Robert Stack.

1970- The Chicago 7, Yippie leaders of the anti-war rioting in front of the Democratic presidential convention of 1968 were found innocent of all charges. David Dillinger, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Tom Hayden and the other guys. One of their offenses was trying to get a 250 pound pig onto the floor of the Convention so they could get it nominated for President.

1972- President Richard Nixon and Pat Nixon land in China.

1973- Richard Petty the Stock Car King won his first Daytona 500 race . He would go on to win 6 more and prove that NASCAR racing was one of America’s favorite though most underreported sports.

2001- Dale Earnhardt Sr, the reigning NASCAR racing car champion, died in a crash on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. His eldest son Dale Jr. placed second.
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Yesterday’s Question: Was Cyrano De Bergerac once a real person?

Answer: Yes. Cyrano de Bergerac-Servignan (1619-1655) was a poet in Paris who had a reputation as a duelist. One story attributed to him was when he was told that Moliere had plagiarized the second act of one of his plays, Cyrano replied:” Well, he has good taste.” The famous play about the guy with the ridiculously long nose who writes love letters for another man to woo his true love, was written by Edmund Rostand in 1897. We are the Cadets of Castel-Jaloux! Free fighters,free thinkers.."