From the March 4th edition of JAPAN TIMES online.

Future of 'anime' industry in doubt

Money, success elude; outsourcing, piracy abound

By ALEX MARTIN
Staff writer

After graduating from Tokyo Animator College, Yuko Matsui began working at a midscale animation production agency.

Two years later, she earns roughly ¥80,000 a month, averaging 10 hours a day doing the grunt work of filling out "in-between cels," drawings on transparent sheets used between key scenes to help create the illusion of motion.

Although she lives with her parents, she can't save any money and has given up on paying her national pension fees. Still, the 22-year-old apprentice considers herself better off than some of her peers who say they have to endure frequent all-nighters with few days off.

"There were seven others I knew who graduated with me at the same time, but three of them have already given up and quit," she said.

Matsui's story is typical of what many aspiring animators must face in a trade where only the best survive in a shrinking job market. And it's not just the employees who are hurting.

The deepening recession and rapid shift in the overall landscape surrounding the industry have caused many to fear for the future of one of the nation's most prized cultural exports.

"The global fan base for Japanese 'anime' is increasing, but with the old business model crumbling it isn't translating into profits," said Yasuo Yamaguchi, executive director of the Association of Japanese Animations.

For the past decade, the industry has been hammering out average annual sales of ¥200 billion in what experts described as an "animation bubble."

Yamaguchi predicted, however, that the industry's proceeds for fiscal 2008 ? which have yet to be calculated ? would be lower than 2007, when total sales dropped almost ¥20 billion from 2006, a record high year, according to AJA statistics.

"The financial crisis is forcing sponsors to cut down on television advertisement fees, and this in turn is shrinking the budgets for animations, pressuring everyone involved in the production," Yamaguchi said.

"I think we'll see a major decrease in the number of anime programs broadcast. Agencies dependent on television as a primary financial source will need to search for alternatives."

Besides the gloomy economy, the overwhelmingly adult content of recent television animation ? many featuring violent or highly sexual material and broadcast during late-night hours ? has played a part in limiting the audience and making both marketing and merchandising of anime-related products difficult.

Yoshihiko Noda, director of the media content division for ad agency Asatsu-DK, buys TV time slots for popular family programs such as "Doraemon" and "Crayon Shin-chan." He said these trends were a relatively recent phenomenon.

"The demographics of anime fans began shifting seven to eight years ago. Those who grew up watching cartoons became older, and began craving more 'otaku' (geek) and adult content," Noda said, noting such animation is mainly produced for DVD sales, with the late-night shows ? usually consisting of only 13 episodes ? used as bait to draw viewers into buying the full DVD set that comes with increased content and special features.

This lack of mainstream acceptability in anime content, combined with expensive title licenses and the exploding popularity of video-sharing sites, has helped erode the industry's distribution market in the West.

"Anime-related profits in the United States, especially DVDs, are dwindling," said Keisuke Iwata, director of animation channel AT-X.

"Thanks to megahits such as 'Evangelion' and 'Pokemon,' Japanese animation has fared well in the past. But it has already maxed out as an export industry," Iwata explained, adding that besides the lack of big-name titles and a decrease in overseas airplay in recent years, the greatest obstacle lies in the illegal Internet sites that provide free content.

"These sites upload programs almost immediately after they are broadcast in Japan," accompanied with "fan subs" ? English subtitles translated by fans," Iwata said. "This is causing a very big dent in sales."

To counter the trend, TV Tokyo tied up with popular San Francisco-based animation-sharing site Crunchyroll in January, offering some of TV Tokyo's popular titles in advertisement-free, high-quality format with subtitles for a monthly fee of $6.95.

Yukio Kawasaki, manager of TV Tokyo's animation business department, said the move was an attempt to create a legitimate distribution channel between animation producers and overseas fans, as well as a way to send out a message.

"Animation isn't free. It's the product of hard work and a lot of money, and we cannot continue producing quality content without the financial help from fans," Kawasaki said, explaining that if the strategy succeeds, they could expand by selling DVDs and comic books on the site, "like Amazon.com," and establish a valid business model.

Kawasaki said they have signed up more than 10,000 fee-paying members since the tieup began Jan. 8 and hope to reach 50,000 by the end of this year.

"We are seriously concerned that the industry will not survive if things go on like this," he said, acknowledging that whether their new plan succeeds or not, the structural issue undermining the industry will still exist.

"You've got to really love animation to be in this trade," said Takeo Ide, chief animator for the popular television series "One Piece."

Ide recalled how he used to make ¥70,000 a month in his rookie years, sharing a cheap apartment to get by before being assigned to draw the more pricey key frames ? drawings that define the starting and ending points of movements.

Ide's is a success story in an occupation that, according to a study conducted by the Japan Council of Performers' Organization, has an appalling turnover rate of 80 percent.

The study revealed that a single cel on average earns animators a meager ¥186.9. Considering how a grunt worker has to fill in 500 in-between cels per month for a television animation series, this means a monthly wage of ¥94,000 at best ? for an average of 250 hours of work ? until an artist gets to handle key frames or storyboards.

With an estimated 90 percent of in-betweens being outsourced overseas ? a result of the industry trying to squeeze out more content than it can from domestic hands ? there are also concerns that opportunities to nurture future generations of quality animators are being lost.

"Drawing in-between cels is hard work and it sure doesn't pay much, but it's still an important skill that every animator should learn," said Masayuki Kawachi, president of the All-Toei Labor Union.

Kawachi, who handles special effects at Toei Animation Studio, said that in the current situation, most of such work is done in countries like China and the Philippines.

"And with the recession eating away at production fees and forcing agencies to downsize or go bankrupt, young and aspiring animators can't find places to work," Kawachi said.

Reflecting such times, animation studio Gonzo, a well-known name in the industry, recently confirmed it plans to pare the number of contracted creators from 130 to 30 over the next five years.

The Japan Fair Trade Commission on Jan. 23 released a report on the state of the animation industry, listing several major concerns.

One is the lack of copyrights attributed to production agencies ? copyrights are divvied up among sponsors, a system widely criticized for robbing the actual creators of any secondary-use benefits, not to mention motivation.

Another is the popular practice of commissioning and recommissioning production work to smaller agencies that often leads to shady transactions.

Kawachi said such issues ? not new to the industry ? have largely been ignored in the past but will need to be dealt with one way or another if the industry hopes to remain the dominant force behind the global animation market.

In 2006, Kawachi's union, joined by the Federation of Cinema and Theatrical Workers Union in Japan, presented the culture ministry with a proposal on restructuring the animation industry, outlining main issues and suggesting solutions. Kawachi said they received no response from the government.

Yamaguchi of AJA, who also lectures on animation literacy at Nihon University's law school, predicts that in the end, quality, not quantity, will come to be emphasized.

"When we look at viewer ratings of animated television programs, we notice that the top slot is always dominated by 'Sazae-san,' the only program that is still produced using the traditional hand-drawn method," he said, adding that this trend could also be seen in last year's ¥15 billion-grossing hit "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea," a hand-drawn movie produced by Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli.

"In this age of mass production, when most animation is digitized, we need to consider the implications of such data," Yamaguchi said.

"I think we need to think, philosophically, about what our users really want."

Thank you Karl Cohen for making me aware of this article. For the complete story check out the Japan Times Online.

Quiz: The Defenders of the Alamo fought under a flag that was a Mexican tricolor with the date 1826 on it. What did that mean?

Yesterday’s Question: Why does the term “ I’m washing my hands of the matter” mean you absolve yourself of a responsibility?
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History for 3/4/2009
Birthdays: King Henry II Plantagenet, Antonio Vivaldi, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, Count Casimir Pulaski, Miriam Makeba, Nancy Wilson, Bernard Haittink, John Garfield, Knute Rockne, Chastity Bono, prizefighter Ray Boom-Boom Mancini, Patsy Kensit. Katherine O’Hara is 55, James Ellroy is 61

1152- Frederick Barbarossa made Emperor of Germany. Barbarossa means 'redbeard'. Barbarossa is the Richard Lionheart of Germany.

1517- HERNANDO CORTEZ LANDS IN MEXICO. With a hostile Viceroy of Cuba between him and Spain, and only 508 soldiers he resolves to attack the Aztec Empire of many millions. He even burns his ships to force his men to conquer or die.

1554- Queen Mary Tudor published a Royal edict repudiating her father Henry VIII’s religious reforms and restoring the Roman Catholic Faith to dominance in England. Protestantism and other “heresies” were forbidden. To those who didn’t agree she became Bloody Mary.

1647- As he realized he was losing the English Civil War, King Charles Ist sent his son Charles II and the rest of his immediate family abroad to Holland for safety. Today he saw them off. They would never see him alive again.

1681- King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn and his Quakers to found a colony in the New World-Penn wanted to name the new country "New Wales" because of its hills, but Charles disagreed. As a Quaker, Penn was too modest to have a whole colony named after him. Since the Merry Monarch was essentially paying off an old debt owed to Penn's father, Admiral Penn, who stayed loyal to him during Cromwell’s time, the king suggested the new colony be named after the FATHER. What else was there besides hills? Lots of forest-- mmm-- the King knew that woods in Latin is sylvania. Hey, how about Penn's Woods (honoring the FATHER, not son)-- thus was born Pennsylvania.. When His Majesty noticed the Quakers not removing their hats in his presence, King Charles removed his. William Penn asked: ”Sire, why dost thou remove thy hat?” The Merry Monarch replied:” Well, ONE of us is supposed to!”

1759- Madame la Pompadour secured the appointment of Etienne de Silhouette as Finance Minister. Silhouette tried to fix the chaotic economy of France by steep taxes of aristocrats and cutting back their privileges. Noblemen said they had been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. By November he was gone, people joking called him a shadow. Now the word silhouette means outline figure.

1791- Green Mountains, or in French Vermont territory became the 14th state. The first new state added to the original 13 colonies. Before then Vermonters had tried to be an independent country and once during the Revolution, Ethan Allen floated secret negotiations to sell Vermont back to the British.

TRADITIONAL PRESIDENTIAL INNAUGURATION DAY-1792-1933 "March Forth with a New President" (get it ?) Transportation being what it was in early America and the time it took to count votes and the Electoral College to ratify the election results, this seemed a convenient time. Inauguration ceremonies have been as simple as Tom Jefferson addressing a few guests indoors, then returning to have dinner by himself at Conrad's Tavern to George W. Bush's $40 million dollar 8 inaugural balls.
At Jefferson' inaugural John Adams was so mad he lost that he refused to attend the ceremony. Truman wouldn't speak to Eisenhower, Eisenhower wouldn't speak to Kennedy. In 1841 President William Henry Harrison insisted despite his great age on attending the ceremony without his hat and overcoat in the March chill and caught pneumonia and died a month later,the shortest term in office. His inaugural address was 2,000 words while George Washington's was 137. The wildest Inauguration was Andrew Jackson's in 1829. Common folks were invited into the White House and went wild breaking crystal, muddying the carpets and spitting tobacco juice on the floor, and the men were worse! Jackson jumped out of a back window to avoid being crushed and the butlers got the crowd out only by moving tubs of liquor onto the south lawn. At Abe Lincoln's second inaugural in 1865 he switched vice presidents. Outgoing v.p. Hannibal Hamlin encouraged new v.p. Andrew Johnson to calm his nerves with whiskey, knowing the man had a low tolerance for alcohol. So before Lincoln's beautiful speech 'With Malice Towards None, With Charity for All..." Johnson went up drunk- burbled incoherently and was seen dribbling on the Bible until Lincoln angrily ordered him pulled off the stage. In 1877 Rutherford Hayes wife "Lemonade-Lucy" banned all alcohol from the White House and it was said of the party:” Water flowed like Champagne!" In 1937 Franklin Roosevelt moved the inauguration date to the third week in January.

1836- The Mexican army of General Santa Anna had surrounded the little fort called the Alamo. Today Santa Anna held a council of war to decide what to do. Many of his officers were against an attack. The Texans were cut off with little food and there was no help coming. The fort had no real strategic importance. So why waste his men? But Santa Anna’s blood was up. He wanted to make an example of these “Yankee Land Pirates”. He ordered a grand assault on the Alamo as soon as the preparations were completed.

1861- THE STARS & BARS. During the Civil War the Confederate army was having a problem with their flag. Their first design so closely resembled the United States flag that soldiers had trouble distinguishing one from the other in heavy battle smoke. Creole General Pierre Gustav Toutant Beaureguard put the ladies sewing circles of New Orleans on the problem and they came up with the familiar Confederate Stars & Bars design that still flies over some errant Statehouses today. When Old Dixie was defeated the original prototype flag was smuggled out to Cuba, but was eventually returned and today is in the Museum of the Confederacy in New Orleans.

1887- William Randolph Hearst buys the little San Francisco Examiner and builds the Hearst newspaper empire. Hearst’s father was owner of the famed Comstock mine and thought his son crazy for wasting his time with the penny-paper business. Hearst died in 1951 at age 88, leaving an estate of $160 million. Today Hearst publications is still 15 magazines and broadcast networks..

1887- The first Daimler motorcar introduced in Essenlingen Germany- the Daimler Benzin Motorcarriage. Daimler’s chief competition was the motor company of Dr Carl Benz. In 1899 Austrian Emile Jellinek invested heavily in Daimler’s motorcars provided he name them for his daughter Mercedes. Mercedes and Benz merged in 1926 but the two founders- Gottfried Daimler and Carl Benz never met face to face.

1902- AAA the Auto Club founded.

1917- Jeanette Rankin became the first female member of Congress.

1924- The song “Happy Birthday to You” copyrighted by Claydon Sunny.

1933- Franklin Roosevelt gave his famous speech“The Only thing we have to fear is, Fear itself.”at his first inauguration.

1936- Screenwriter Dudley Nichols publicly refuses the Best Screenplay Oscar for John Ford’s “The Informer” as protest in support of the struggling Writer’s Guild.

1936- First flight of the German dirigible Graf Hindenburg.

1944- Louis Lepke Buchalter went to the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. Buchalter with Albert Anastasia headed the heavy enforcement arm of Lucky Lucciano’s New York Mafia Syndicate. Nicknamed “Murder Incorporated ”the Brooklyn gang committed at least 100 murders, including Dutch Schultz and Lucciano’s mentor Joe the Boss Masseria.

1946- Alex Raymond's comic strip 'Rip Kirby" premiered.

1952- Ronald Reagan married Nancy Davis at the Little Red Church on Coldwater Canyon blvd. in L.A. William Holden was best man.

1952- Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to his publisher:" I've completed a new novel. I think it's my best one to date." The Old Man and the Sea.

1956- Burger King introduced their signature hamburger the Whopper.

1958- U.S.S. Nautilus, first nuclear sub, reaches the North Pole under the ice cap. remember when the submarine ride at Disneyland was painted to look like the USS Navy subs and named for them ?

1960-Famed American opera baritone Leonard Warren collapses and dies on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in the 2nd act of Verdi's La Forza Del Destino.

1961- In the early stages of filming Cleopatra in London actress Elizabeth Taylor developed pneumonia and slipped into a coma. She would have died had not doctors at a convention at London’s Dorchester Hotel performed and emergency tracheotomy. When you seen the film today you can still see the tracheotomy scar at the base of her throat.

1976- Due to the intervention of San Francisco mayor George Moscone, the Giants will stay in city by the bay. In a last minute deal, the Stoneham family sells the team to Bob Lurie and Bud Herseth instead of the Labbatt's Brewery, which had planned to move the Giants to Canada.

1994- Basketball legend Michael Jordan comes to bat for the first time in a Chicago White Sox Baseball uniform. Jordan will give up baseball after one season and return to the NBA.

1991- During the Gulf War US troops destroy an Iraqi bunker concealing tons of deadly serin nerve gas. Estimates are up to 24,000 troops were exposed to the toxic release.

1994- comedian John Candy died of heart failure.

1997- The senate of Brazil allowed women to wear slacks to work.

2004- A New York court convicted interior decorating guru Martha Stewart of four counts of stock fraud. This was for dumping her stock in a pharmaceutical firm called InClone after getting an inside tip that their cancer cure didn’t work.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why does the term “ I’m washing my hands of the matter” mean you absolve yourself of responsibility?

Answer: The term was coined (according to the New Testament) by Pontius Pilatusn the Roman prefect of Judaea (AD 26 - AD 36), who presided over the trial of Jesus. When he offered to release a prisoner and the Jews supposedly picked Barabbas over Christ, insisting that the latter would be crucified, he didn't want to be responsible for the death of the man he thought was innocent. So he had an ewer and basin brought up, publicly and symbolically performed an ablution and declared : " I wash my hands of the blood of this Just !" The term was then adopted to absolve oneself from an objectionable matter beyond one's control.
I've never seen such a custom of substituting condemned prisoners or washing of hands in Roman custom before. Romans were sticklers for the rules, especially where it concerned disciplining provincial criminals. It might have all originated with St.Luke, writing 100 years after the fact, in cities like Alexandria where mob clashes between Jews and Nazarenes was commonplace. Scholars continue to argue.

I was just made aware of a neat website of photographer Richard Woolf.

Peter Lord on the set of Chicken Run. It is not one of Richard's images, but close.


Richard was a cameraman in England and he worked in LA for three years. I just helped him identify a few people in some photos. A lot of his photos are of the artists of the London animation scene, Nick Park, Oscar Grillo, Chuck Gamage, Russell Hall, John Halas and there are some Yanks and Canadian toonsters as well like Jules Engel, Mark Farquhar and Jamie Lopez. He took a number of images at the Looney Tunes Reunion picnic back in 1999.

Check out the Gallery Section, then click on the section for Animation People.

http://www.richardkeithwolff.co.uk

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Quiz: Why does the term “ I’m washing my hands of the matter” mean you absolve yourself of responsibility?

Answer to yesterdays question below: Why do so many English speaking people have the family surname Smith or Jones?
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History for 3/3/2009
B-Dayz: George Pullman of Pullman Railroad cars, General Matthew Ridgeway, Jean Harlow, Diana Barrymore, Akira Ifukube the composer of the music scores to movies like Godzilla, Tone Loc, Jacky Joyner-Kersee, James Doohan, Ronald Searle, Bruno Bozzetto, Will Eisner, Herschel Walker, George Miller, Miranda Richardson is 51

Happy Square Root Day! 3.3.9 The next one won't be until April 4thm 2016, or 4.4.16

1764- Elderly King Louis XV appeared before the regional Parliament of Paris and re-affirmed in France he was absolute master:” In My Person alone resides the Sovereign Power…to me alone belongs the legislative power, unconditional and undivided. My people and I are one, all public order emanates from me.” No representative government stuff like England was going to happen while he was around. King Louis all but ensured that France would change only from violent revolution.

1801- THE MIDNIGHT JUDGES-Outgoing President John Adams was a sore loser. He was outraged that he was not re-elected to a second term as President. He vented his frustrations by spending his last night as President signing dozens of Federal Judgeships and army officer commissions to members of his Federalist party. He then boycotted the inauguration and took his sweet time moving out of the White House, forcing Thomas Jefferson to spend his first night as President in a pub.

1842- Massachusetts created a law trying to limit the workday for children under twelve to twelve hours a day only, but it is considered too liberal to be enforced.

1849- The US Department of the Interior established

1863- President Lincoln signed into law the National Conscription Act (the Draft).
The Confederate States had already started drafting the previous year. Rich men could get out of the army by paying $300 for a substitute. J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller and Theodore Roosevelt's father took this way out. Harvard-Yale games and varsity boat races went on throughout the Civil War with no loss of players. This angered the poor that the war was a rich man's game. Riots broke out in several cities. A popular song of the day "We are coming Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand Strong" was changed to "We are Coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred Dollars More."

1875-Claude Bizet's opera CARMEN debuts. Parisians usually go to see comedies at the Opera Comique and most thought this would be about the adventures of a coquettish Spanish gypsy. Instead they saw one of the great dark dramas of opera, a story of sexual power and obsession. The shocking sight of a slutty gypsy smuggler getting knifed by a burnout soldier driven insane by sex was so upsetting it was booed and howled off the stage. Bizet never got over the fiasco, he died six months later. Carmen is now one of the world's most famous operas.

1875- HOCKEY- The first modern Hockey Game was played at the Victoria skating rink in Montreal Canada. No one is sure just how old hockey. In the 1700’s Micmac Indians played a game on bone skates using sticks and passed it on to the British garrison of Halifax Nova Scotia. The people of Windsor Nova Scotia claim hockey was invented there at Long Pond in 1844 from the Irish game of Stick & Ball. The first pucks were frozen horse droppings. No one is sure where the word Hockey came from, the nickname of some British officer or local schoolteacher perhaps.

1902-The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it's all right for the U.S. Government to ignore Indian treaties, if they do it in a nice way.

1931- Congress and President Hoover made the "Star Spangled Banner" officially the U.S. national anthem. The 1814 Francis Scott Key poem set to the English beer hall song "To Anacreon in Heaven" was sung since the 1850's, but this day it became official.

1934- Public Enemy #1 John Dillinger escaped from a Witchita jail by carving a gun out of soap (it was actually wood) and painting it with shoe polish. He said :"The jail hasn't been made that can hold me!"

1950-Paramount's "Quack-a-Doodle-Doo" The first Baby Huey cartoon.

1950-Don Herbert teaches millions of kids about science as televisions Mr.Wizard.

1973- THE BAR CODE. An ad-hoc committee of scientists from Proctor & Gamble and Nabisco and such announced the invention of the Universal Product’s Code- The Bar Code, that annoying little set of bars and numbers on everything you own or buy. No longer would stores have to close their doors periodically for inventory counting. But if you are a conspiracy fan its the way the Hidden Government and the guys in the black helicopters keep a record on everything you buy.

1991- L.A.P.D officers beat up drunk and disorderly driver Rodney King. King had previous convictions and was tazed several times with a an electric shock but still fought back at police, who seemed to go berserk on him with their clubs just as a witness caught the incident on videotape. The incident and trials caused a scandal in Los Angeles and later the largest civilian riots in U.S. history. The LAPD is one third the size of the NYPD yet receives three times the civilian complaints.

2001- Despite worldwide protests, the Taliban of Afghanistan began destroying their nations ancient giant stone Buddhas with dynamite and artillery, as graven images.
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Yesterdays question: Why do so many English speaking people have the family surname Smith or Jones?

Answer: During the Victorian Era, men wishing to avoid debtors prison or otherwise in trouble with the law took the King’s Shilling- i.e. joined the army or navy. When signing up they changed their names to avoid the local constable. The preferred alias was Smith or Jones. The armies that tramped over India and Africa contained an inordinate amount of Smiths and Jones’. This practice continued in the US Army during the Indian Wars.

Quiz: Why are so many people in English-speaking countries named Smith and Jones?
Where there a lot of blacksmiths in the Middle Ages?

Yesterdays Question answered below: Was George Elliot, author of Middlemarch and Silas Marner, actually a woman?
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history for 3/2/2009
Birthdays: Sam Houston, Alexander Graham Bell, Kurt Weill, Desi Arnaz ( Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III ), Ted Geisel aka Dr.Suess, Mikhail Gorbachov, Willis O'Brian, Moe Berg, Jon Bon Jovi, Karen Carpenter, Lou Reed, Jennifer Jones, John Cullum, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, Senator Russell Feingold, Javier Bardem is 40

1820- It had been thought in modern times that the Pyramids in Egypt were solid monuments with no chambers. This day Italian archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni discovered the long lost entrance to the Great Pyramid of Giza and explored it’s corridors and burial chambers.

1836- TEXAS DECLARES INDEPENDANCE FROM MEXICO. In 1821 the Mexican Congress had given Yankee settlers permission to live in the under-populated northern province of Teijas. Soon there were 3,000 Tejanos to 100,000 Yanquis living there. After a military coup in 1833 brought General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to power conditions in the outer provinces got harsh. Taxes were bad and the army sent to police them were drawn from the dregs, usually convicts. Mexico also wanted the American settlers to liberate their black slaves. When settlers leader Stephen Austin went to Mexico City to complain he was immediately jailed for fomenting insurrection. The Republic of Texas independence declaration was signed at Washington-on-the-Brazos. One of the signers there was John Wheeler Bunton, the Great Grand-Uncle of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson. Washington had had their eyes on Texas for years; some say Sam Houston had planned this move long ago with his mentor President Andy Jackson. But the Texas revolt was as much a revolt of the ethnic Mexican Teijanos as the gringos. Similar revolts broke out at the same time in California and Jalixsco, but we remember Texas mostly because it succeeded.

1917-CZAR NICHOLAS II ABDICATED THE THRONE OF RUSSIA with a note scribbled in pencil. He had tried to abdicate in favor of his younger brother Archduke Michael as regent for his son Alexis, and save the dynasty. But Michael wanted none of it and the revolutionary forces tearing at Russian society. He ignored his pleas. After 303 years the Romanov Dynasty was at an end.

1922- A 21 year old veteran named Walt Disney after getting out of the army began studying in the public library William Lutz's book "Motion Picture Animation and How it is Made". In Kansas City he and his brother Roy persuaded the owner of a small chain of vaudeville theaters to fund some cartoons. Today the Newman's Laff-O-Grams Company was formed. A year later the Disney brothers would move to Hollywood and start a new enterprise called the Walt Disney Company.

1923- THE FIRST TIME MAGAZINE. Founders Henry Luce and Claire Booth Luce were among the more powerful of the nations cultural elite. Conservative to the core -to the end of their days they thought Franklin Roosevelt and Civil Rights were big mistakes, they still experimented with LSD when it was thought by Harvard professors to be mind expanding. In the late 1980's the Time merged with Warner Communications to form Time-Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate.

1933- Movie "KING KONG" premiered at the new Radio City Music Hall in New York and the Roxy. Twas Beauty killed the Beast. No CGI around.

1940- SEABISCUIT-. The small ungainly race horse Seabiscuit had lost the Santa Anita Handicap Stakes twice and at 7 years old had ligament tears and was considered washed up. But he was entered one more time to try to win this race. The jockey Red Pollard was an alcoholic who had broken his leg and collarbone and was told he couldn’t walk, much less ride ever again. Today this unlikely duo raced one more time against odds more like a Hollywood movie than a stakes race. The biscuit not only won his last race, but set a track record, the second fastest time ever and the richest win for that time. It’s called one of the greatest comeback stories in sports history. When discussing the Sports Legends of the Twentieth Century- Ali, Ruth, Michael Jordan, Seabiscuit is the only non-human.


1960- Wilt Chamberlain ("Wilt the Stilt") scores 100 points in one game for the Philadelphia Warriors . Wilt averaged a phenomenal 55 points per game that year and the NBA instituted a number of anti-Wilt regulations to ensure guys under 6'2 could get back in the game, like offensive goal tending, etc. Wilt also claimed to have put his off the court time to good use. He claims to have made love to 3000 women during his pro career.

1961- Pablo Picasso married his second wife Jacqueline. He was 80, she was 35. Jacqueline cared for the increasingly reclusive artist and kept even his family at a distance. When Picasso died in 1973 she turned away many family members from the funeral. Jacqueline committed suicide in 1986.

1965- US military bombers do the first bombing raid inside of North Vietnam in a campaign that got the designation Rolling Thunder. Today Rolling Thunder denotes motorcycle clubs who rally once a year in Washington to demand veterans rights and an accounting for all remaining servicemen Missing in Action.

1971- Charles Engelhard died, a venture capitalist who’s wild investments and grand lifestyle made him the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s villain Auric Goldfinger.

1972- Pioneer 10 space probe launched. The first satellite to the outer planets, it sent back the first closeup photos of Jupiter in 1973 and left our solar system in 1983. It carries a plaque with a representation of men and women, a map of the Earth and Richard Nixon’s signature on it. It is in deep space now and will reach the star Ross 246 in the constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 A.D. Boy, I can hardly wait!

1976- Francis Ford Coppola began shooting his epic film“ Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines. The film was plagued by cost overruns, a typhoon and his Philippine Army helicopters frequently flying off to fight real guerrillas in the middle of shooting, but somehow it all got done.

1979- The Anglo-French Concord supersonic airliner service introduced. It was discontinued because of bad economics in 2003.

1982- Science Fiction writer Phillip K. Dick died of a stroke in Santa Ana California. The author of stories the movies Blade Runner, Minority Report and Total Recall were based. Dick said he was a times possessed by a superalien who appeared in his mind in a beam of pink light.His biography is entitled:" I am alive and you are dead..."


1989- At a photo session, NY Mets outfielder and recreational cokehead Darryl Strawberry threw a punch at the team's first baseman, Keith Hernandez. The scuffle started over comments about salaries and ended with the Straw walking out of camp. A sportswriter for Sports Illustrated describing the fight said" Darryl Strawberry finally hit his cut off man."
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Yesterday’s Question: Was George Elliot, author of Middlemarch and Silas Marner, actually a woman?

Answer: Yes. George Elliot’s real name was Mary Anne Evans 1819-1880.

Question: Was George Elliot, author of Middlemarch and Silas Marner, actually a woman?

Answer to yesterdays question below: Question: What is the name of Dante’s epic poem about the afterlife that contains The Inferno.
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History for 3/1/2009
Birthdays: Frederic Chopin, Glen Miller, Harry Belafonte is 82, David Niven, Robert Clary, Oskar Kokoschka, Roger Daltry, Robert Conrad, Deke Slayton, Yitschak Rabin. Catherine Bach, Timothy Daly, Chuck Zito, Ron Howard is 54

Welcome to MARCH from MARTIUS, THE MONTH OF MARS-so named because in ancient times it was the first month that was warm enough for armies to take the field and kill each other.
..yippee!

Various warrior societies held religious ceremonies to inaugurate campaigning season. In Rome, the Salian Priests would do a ceremonial dance with the magic shields of Mars the Avenger, dropped from heaven for Romulus. The Macedonians would split a dog in half lengthwise and parade the troops between the two halves, sort of going through the gates of Pluto. I hope the dog appreciated the symbolism...

86 BC. Roman legions of Lucius Cornelius Sulla recapture Athens from Mithradates the king of Pontus (a part of eastern Turkey). Mithridates was offering Rome it's most serious competition in the conquest game since Hannibal. Sulla was so angry that the Athenians had welcomed the enemy in, that he destroyed half of the city. He then saved the rest :"more in memory of her glorious past than her modern inhabitants." Mithradates was defeated and committed suicide. According to Plutarch, at one point Sulla's men captured a satyr (half man-half goat) in the precincts of the temple of Artemis. Sulla asked the supernatural creature about the future, but all it would do is whinny like a goat. So his men got rid of it.

589 AD- HAPPY SAINT DAVIDS’ DAY- This is the traditional date of the death of St. David, the patron saint of Wales. Called the Waterman, he was a Celtic monk, abbot and bishop who became the first archbishop of Wales. He was one of many early saints who helped to spread Christianity among the pagan Celtic tribes of western Britain. Welshmen celebrate today like the Irish celebrate St. Patrick, although with out the green beer.

1579- Sir Francis Drake on board the Golden Hind made the catch of his career. In the waters off Cartegena Columbia he attacked and captured one of the great Spanish treasure ships carrying Inca gold and silver from Peru. This one ship carried more wealth than the entire treasury then in Elizabeth’s England. And a fleet of these crossed the ocean twice a year. Drake instantly became a rich man. The galleon was called La Nuestra Senora De La Concepcion, but her crew nicknamed her “KaKaFuego” which some translate as “Spitfire”, but more closely means “Hot sh*t.”

1711- The first issue of England’s’ great periodical the Spectator first published. It was unique for a broadsheet in that it didn’t cover politics or doings at court but printed essays on social gossip, literary criticism, studies of manners and morals. It was said the Spectator helped begin the transformation of English gentry from ale-swilling philanderers to the well-bred, well-read snobs of the Victorian Era.

1777- Young artillery officer Alexander Hamilton was appointed to General George Washington’s personal staff. This marked the beginning of Hamilton’s personal relationship with Washington that would last throughout the war and his presidency. Hamilton was his constant consultant, advisor and may have written many of Washington’s speeches. There is a rumor that GW may even have been Hamilton’s father since his only trip outside the US was to visit Bermuda. Hamilton was born illegitimately on the Virgin island of Nevis, but beyond that no evidence has ever been substantiated.

1808- Parliament outlawed the overseas slave trade within the British Empire.

1912- Albert Berry completed the first parachute jump from an aeroplane in St. Louis Missouri

1917-Czar-Autocrat of all the Russias, Nicholas II rushed back to his rebellious capitol St. Petersburg in a private train. Today he was told the way was blocked by revolutionaries. His train backed up and was blocked again from behind by mutinous troops. His ministers advised that the army would no longer remain loyal and he may have to abdicate.

1930-Disney animator Ub Iwerks, the animator/designer of Mickey Mouse, quits the studio to set up his own place. Walt was stunned by the defection of one of his first employees and closest friends. Iwerks studio producing Flip the Frog Cartoons, will eventually fail and he'll return to Disneys to invent the xerox process. Iwerks partner was Pat Powers, who’s PowersCinephone was the process used to put sound on “Steamboat Willie”.Powers engineered the break when Disney refused to let him buy in to a co-partnership in Disney Studio.

1932- Museum of Modern Art in New York has first major retrospective of the style of architecture called "THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE" Steel girder frames with large windows for walls and no ornamentation. This style pioneered by Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Phillip Johnson. Called by critics "vertical ice cube trays" they now dominate the skylines around the world, making Moscow and Shanghai equally unrecognizable from Pretoria, or Newark, New Jersey.

1932-THE LINDBERGH BABY KIDNAPPING. The infant son of the famous couple was taken from his crib in their Princeton New Jersey home. Forensic science determined he was bludgeoned and buried shortly afterwards. But the kidnap plot went ahead for nine days. The kidnapper left behind a crudely written note asking for $50,000 dollars in small bills. Bruno Richard Hauptman, the man who was convicted and executed for the crime protested his innocence to the end, The New Jersey country sheriff in charge of the investigation was the father of future Gulf War general Norman Schwarzkopf.

1936- Max Fleischer's short cartoon"Snow White" (starring Betty Boop). Cab Calloway singing the "St. James Infirmary Blues" is a highlight.

1937- Connecticut issued the first metal license plates for autos.

1941- THE TRUMAN COMMISSION- Congress approved a designating a committee to investigate waste in defense appropriations. It was chaired by junior Missouri Senator Harry Truman. The Truman commission routed out corruption ad sweetheart deals among businessmen doing war work. The exposed waste, fraud, padding bills and corporations still doing business with the enemy. The Truman Commission saved America millions and made Harry Truman a national hero. No such committee was allowed for the Iraq War, and the result is billions in secret no-bid contracts, palettes of cash lost and $9 billion still unaccounted for.

1946-The National Cartoonists Society formed.

1951- Frank Sinatra was subpoenaed by the Senate Kefhauver Committee looking into the activities of the Mafia. In deference to Old Blue Eyes public persona, strings were pulled so he was allow to testify in his attorney’s private office high in 30 Rockefeller Plaza at 4:00 a.m.

1954- Puerto Rican Nationalists shoot 5 congressman on Capitol Hill. They opened fire from the visitors’ gallery down on the Congressman.

1961- John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps.

1961-The Ken Doll introduced.

1962- A huge tickertape parade in New York is held for astronaut John Glenn.

1966- The Russian probe Venera 3 landed on Venus. Although the Venera crash landed it was the first unmanned probe to land on the surface of another world.

1971- Radical Hippy Weathermen Movement planted a bomb in the men’s room of the US Senate. It exploded causing thousands of dollars in damage but hurting no one.

1975- The first Honda Civics arrive in the US.

1978- Unemployed auto mechanics Gatchko Ganas and Roman Wardas broke into the tomb of Charlie Chaplin in Vevey Switzerland and stole his remains. They tried to hold it for ransom. The body was recovered and the two losers were soon arrested. They were trying to make enough money to open a car repair garage in France.

1988- Apple introduced the first commercially available CD-ROM drive for your personal computer.
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Yesterday’s Question: Question: What is the name of Dante’s epic poem about the afterlife that contains The Inferno.

Answer: The Divine Comedy.