Jay Leno, a real hero, refuses to go back to work even though NBC is talking of replacing him for the duration.

The Writers' Strike is now entering it's second week and more TV shows are shutting down. No new talks with management are scheduled. Animated shows like Family Guy and the Simpsons that use WGA contract writers will be shutting down for awhile soon.

To those involved- a word of advice from someone who has walked a few picketlines in my day. When it becomes a tense waiting game between you and the producers, try not to get too carried away with enforcement, penalties and hunting down people going back to work. As people watch their savings drain and need someone to blame, we too often turn on each other, who is more "for-the-cause?

Believe me, it's not worth it and it just builds bad blood between union members. George Washington said "flogging a soldier just makes a bad soldier." You'll never build lasting loyalty by bringing your friends up on charges. Never lose sight of the fact of who the real enemy is. Lead by example like Jay Leno does.

Again, best of luck!

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Quiz: Who was the original “ Good Time Charlie?”

Answer to yesterday’s question below- which President was originally born William J. Blythe IV?
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History for 11/12/2007
Birthdays: Auguste Rodin, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, Bahi-ullah 1817 founder of the Bahii faith, Elizabeth Cadie -Stanton, Cecil B. DeMille, Edward G. Robinson, Jack Oakie, Kim Hunter, Shamus Culhane, Charles Manson, Neil Young, Edvard Munch, Al Michaels, Nadia Comenici , Tanya Harding, Dave Brain, Ryan Gosling is 27, Anne Hathaway is 25

1035- Canute the Great died. He was the Viking King of Denmark, Scotland and England simultaneously. It was Canute who once tried to command the ocean tide to go out. All he got was wet.

1792- The Revolutionary French Republic issued a declaration that any other European kingdom that wants to chop their king’s head off, is welcome to come join the fun.

1859- The first trapeze act was demonstrated at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris. The show caused such a sensation that the daredevil was immortalized by his tights becoming a fashion - Jules Leotard.

1861- THE CURRAUGH CAMP AFFAIR- When 20 year old Edward the Prince of Wales went to Oxford he was kept on a short leash by his worried parents Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They expected his college life to be- well, Victorian. He was to reside off campus, limited his diet to bland foods and seltzer water and absolutely no smoking or carousing with women! This draconian regimen only stiffened Bertie’s rebellious nature. When allowed to attend maneuvers in Ireland and bunk with a company of hard drinking cavalry officers he was at last free to go wild. By unfortunate coincidence the gossip about the Prince’s all night drinking binges and bedding actresses reached his father just as Albert was showing the first signs of the typhoid fever that would kill him. For years afterwards Queen Victoria blamed her son for contributing to his father's death by breaking his heart. In his adult years King Edward VII was never without a cigar in his teeth, a girl on his lap and a drink in his hand.

1912- SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC- in the Antarctic this day the frozen bodies of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott and his men were found. He had lost his race to find the South Pole to Norwegian Piers Ammundsen then was stranded by a blizzard only 30 miles from his base camp on the Ross Ice Shelf. His last diary entry ( March 29th ) said "We are showing that Englishmen can still have a bold spirit, fighting it out to the end. This diary and our dead bodies will be the proof. I should like to write more but I haven't the strength..."

1918- The day after the Armistice ending World War One, thousands of German army soldiers against orders began to march back across their borders in perfect order. Then defying the shouts and threats of their officers, the men threw away their helmets, guns and uniforms, and quietly walked home.

1920- In the wake of the "Black Sox" Baseball scandal, the first rigged World Series, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis was elected first Commissioner of Baseball. He ordered all those involved in the scandal including Shoeless Joe Jackson permanently banned from baseball even though they had been acquitted in a civil trial.

1927- The Holland Tunnel completed. It runs under the Hudson River connecting New York and New Jersey. It’s not named for the Netherlands, but for the engineer Clifford Holland, who died shortly before it’s completion.

1933- Hugh Gray of the British Aluminum Company takes the first photographs of what he claimed was a monster in Loch Ness. He would be the first of many to have claimed to have seen Nessie.

1946- Disney's "Song of the South" with William Baskett as Uncle Remus.

1955- This is the date Marty McFly returns to in the film Back to the Future and Back to the Future II.

1975- Portland Oregon had a large dead gray whale on it’s beach. It decided it would be easier to dispose if they blew it up. As an audience watched they stuffed it with half a ton of dynamite. The explosion drew cheers from the audience, then everyone ran for cover as they were showered by chunks of smelly blubber and guts.

1990- Akihito became Emperor of Japan.

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Yesterday’s question-
Which President was originally born William J. Blythe IV?

Answer: Bill Clinton. Three months before he was born his father was killed in an automobile accident. Bill’s mother Virginia registered his name at birth as William Jefferson Blythe after he late husband. A few years later she married Roger Clinton, and Bill changed his name, legally at age 15.

QUIZ: To continue the U.S presidential theme, which President was originally born William J. Blythe IV?

Answer to yesterday’s question below-
Which U.S. President was originally named Leslie Lynch King?
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History for 11/11/2007
Birthdays: Abigail Adams, Alexander Borodin, Fyodor Doestoyevsky, Gen .George “Blood & Guts” Patton, Pat O’Brien, Kurt Vonnengut, Rene Clair, Carlos Fuentes, Jonathan Winters, Stubby Kay, Fuzzy Zoeller, Demi Moore is 45, Leonard DiCaprio is 33

Today in the Middles Ages this was "Martinmass" the feast of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of France.

Happy Veterans Day in the U.S., Memorial Day in many European countries.

1534- The Parliament voted the Act of Supremacy, that the King of England would be the Supreme Head of the Church in England, breaking with the Catholic Church in Rome. They Christened the new national faith The Church of England or C.of E.

1887- THE HAYMARKET EXECUTIONS- Four leaders of an early American labor movement The Knights of Labor are hanged after being charged with responsibility for a bomb tossed at police during a demonstration in Chicago. Samuel Fielden, Adolphe Fischer, August Spies and Albert Parsons. It was never proven they actually had thrown the bomb, but hey, they were a bunch of reds anyway...A later Chicago mayor ruined his political career when he proved publicly that the Haymarket defendants were innocent. Albert Parsons shouted as he dropped through the trapdoor:" Oh men of America, Let the Voice of the People be Heard!" They were demanding unheard of concessions like a six day work week and an 8 hour workday down from twelve. A monument was erected in Haymarket not to Parsons, but to the police. Hippies blew it up in 1968.

1889- Washington State admitted into the union.

1918- ARMISTICE DAY- World War One ended. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns of the Great War fall silent. It sounds poetic but it was just a coincidence, the opposing sides had been negotiating since the 8th. In many countries this is the traditional Memorial Day, the American one in May is in honor of our Civil War. In a strange kind of salute when the word went down the battlelines that the ceasefire would take effect at 11:00AM, one minute before thousands of cannons on both sides fired one last round simultaneously. One German machine gunner fired his last belt of ammunition at the allied trenches, stood up in front of everyone, bowed like an actor, turned and walked away. World War One's final tally was 22 million dead, almost 13-20% of the young male population in France, Germany and England. In only 7 months of actual fighting 200,000 American died – as opposed to 58,000 in 8 years in Vietnam and four thousand in Iraq. Soldiers came home speaking of Screaming Mimies, shellshock, wearing wristwatches instead of pocket watches and wearing trenchcoats, as Thomas Burberry’s rainproof overcoat became known. From now on meteorologists would refer to large weather patterns as Fronts, from the days when weather predictions effected military planning.

1918- TOMMY GUNS- Sitting on a New York wharf forgotten and ignored was the first shipment of Thompson submachine guns, built for a war just ended. John Thompson was an inventor who tried to solve the problem of close hand-to-hand trench warfare by inventing a light mobile machine gun that could be a “trench-broom” –spewing 800 bullets a minute. Because it fired small pistol bullets it was called a “sub-machine gun”.
But the Great War was over and the U.S.Army wasn’t interested anymore, neither were most police departments. So in 1921 the Thompson Submachine Gun went on sale to the public as a “great home defense system”. The people who did buy them were the Mafia and the IRA. They nicknamed them Choppers, Chicago Typewriters and Tommy Guns. Al Capone’s men invented the novelty of hiding one in a violin case. Old John Thompson was shocked that his creation was used by hoodlums and made incidents like the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre possible. He died in 1940 just weeks before the US Army would order thousands of his Tommy Gun to fight World War Two.


1925- Louis “Sachmo” Armstrong did the first recordings of his band the Hot Five. These records lift him from a local talent in Chicago and New Orleans to international stardom. According to close friends Sachmo was a lifelong marijuana smoker. He called Pot his “antidote to racism”. Gives new meaning to the song “Laughing Louie”.

1926- Route 66, the first interstate highway built for automobiles in the U.S. is started. (it will get finished in 1932) The World's first road exclusively for automobiles was opened in 1927, the Via Fiore Imperiale in Rome.

1932- The Girls Scouts first offered freshly baked cookies for sale. The proceeds went to purchase camping gear. In 1936, the Girls Scouts signed a contract with Keebler to bake and package the cookies.

1938- GOD BLESS AMERICA- Irving Berlin's song God Bless America sung for the first time by chubby chanteuse Kate Smith. Berlin had written the song in1918 for a show but it didn’t fit in so he threw it in a file cabinet and forgot about it. Twenty years later he revived the song for the effort to combat the Depression and it became a huge hit. Ever since 1942 there’ve been calls to have it replace the Star Spangled Banner as the National Anthem. In 1970 a frustrated DJ on hippy radical radio station WBAI promised to play Kate Smith’s God Bless America over and over again until people started calling in pledges to help the station. The phones soon started ringing. After the World Trade Center attack of Sept 11th 2001 the song again echoed from a thousand throats, being sung in Berlin, Paris, Teheran and Moscow in sympathy.

1938- TYPHOID MARY- On this day 68 year old Mary Mallon died in an asylum. She was a carrier of the disease typhoid fever and, in 1910, while being a cook in a hotel resort ,infected 1,000 people. Released from jail a few years later she had promised not to resume her former profession but soon was in the kitchen again and started the epidemic of 1915. She, herself, never contracted the disease.


1938- The first day of shooting on the film 'The Wizard of Oz". Judy Garland met 125 little people hired to be the Munchkins. Judy's energy was fading under the heavy work schedule and MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer called her a “fat monster”. So he ordered her put on Benzadrine (speed) every morning and Valium pills to sleep. June Alysson, another young MGM actress at the time said: "The studio nurse would give it to you and tell you it was vitamins." Judy Garland became a heavy drug addict and died of an overdose in 1969 at 47 years old.

1940- The Birth of the Jeep. The army introduces its first General Purpose vehicle-G.P. or Jeep, a name coinciding with a character in E.C. Segar's Popeye cartoons.

1941- On the night before mobster Abe Reles, alias Kid Twist, was due to testify what he knew of the Mafia, he was thrown out of a Coney Island hotel window to his death. He was under Federal protection but, in 1962, Joe Valachi testified mobster Frank Costello had raised $100,000 to bribe the cops to do the deed themselves. A popular toast around Brooklyn those days was: “ Here’s to Abe Reles, a canary who could sing but not fly.”


1978- The renovated Hollywood Sign is unveiled. The second O was paid for by rock star Alice Cooper in memory of his idol Groucho Marx.

1980- 'Heaven's Gate" Michael Cimino's $44 million dollar megaflop opened. Cimino originally said he could do the film for $8 million. Critic Pauline Kael said: "It's the kind of movie you want to deface. You want to draw mustaches all over it."

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Answer to Yesterday’s Quiz:

Quiz: Which U.S. President was originally named Leslie Lynch King?

President Gerald Ford. 1913-2007. Ford was born Leslie Lynch King in a basement apartment in Omaha Nebraska. His parents divorced soon after. In 1915 His mother remarried to a paint salesman named Gerald Rudolph Ford. He adopted his stepson and renamed him Gerald R. Ford Jr. They kept this secret from him until at age 17, he found out when a stranger drove up to him at a sandwich shop and said:
" Hi. I’m Leslie, your father.”

former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner told Fox News Neil Cavuto on Nov. 8th that he felt that the writer's strike was "stupid" and "misguided"; that the writers are striking over profits that don't exist yet.

This is the simplest explanation of the writer's reasons they are out on strike I've seen yet. Thanks to J Tucker for showing it to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ55Ir2jCxk

When I was union president I loved when executives said things like that. It made my membership angrier and more united in their resolve to continue the fight than anything I could have said. Or perhaps this was Michael's intent all along? As Fats Waller said: One never know, do one?

Quiz: Which U.S. President was originally named Leslie Lynch King?

Answer to yesterday’s question below? When was IN GOD WE TRUST, first put in US money?
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Birthdays: Mohammed, Martin Luther, William Hogarth, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Francois Couperin, King George II of England, Frederick Schiller, Tim Rice, Richard Burton, Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, MacKenzie Phillips, Russell Means, Sinbad, Brittany Murphy, George Fenneman-Groucho’s TV announcer, animator-teacher Sue Kroyer, Kellie Bea Cooper

1770- Voltaire said:" If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

1775- The U.S. Marine Corps founded. Marines were originally the sharpshooters who climb up ships rigging during a sea battle and shoot down on the enemy decks. They have the nickname Leathernecks because part of their early uniform was a stiff leather collar worn under their cravat to ward off cutlass blows and "keep in the head up in a good military bearing."

1782- English King George III wrote Prime Minister Lord Shelburne about the recently lost American Revolution: " I should be miserable indeed if no blame for the dismemberment of America from this Empire not be laid at my door, however knowing that Knavery is so much a striking feature of it’s Inhabitants, it may Not in the end be such an Evil that they are now aliens to this kingdom."

1871- STANLEY FINDS LIVINGSTON- No one in England had heard from the famous African explorer-missionary Dr David Livingston for three years and he was feared dead. Henry Morton Stanley undertook the expedition partly as a publicity stunt funded by the Josef Pulitizer’s New York World newspaper. After one year of wandering through the jungle Stanley came upon the old missionary on the shores of Lake Tanganyika near Ujiji. Stanley introduced himself by saying: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

1885- Gottfried Daimler invented the first motorcycle.

1917- The Voting Rights for Women Movement or Suffragettes began a dramatic all day protest in front of the White House. Every time a protestor was arrested and dragged off another would take her place. By the days end 41 women were arrested.

1950- Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" The first Herman & Katnip cartoon.

1951- The first long distance telephone call without needing an operator to make the connection.

1969- The children’s education show SESAME STREET premiered on PBS tv. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster,, Big Bird and Mr Hooper.


1971- The US table tennis team arrived in Red China for a tour. Ping-Pong became an unlikely diplomatic tactic to begin the warming of relations between China and the US.

1975- S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sinks at Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior, drowning all 29 crew members and causing a famous 70's folk song to happen.

1977- Pope Paul VI announced that Catholics who remarried or married Protestants were no longer automatically excommunicate.

1981- Innovative French film director Abel Gance died at age 92. Shortly before his death he saw his great widescreen movie Napoleon restored by British historian Kevin Brownlow and produced by Francis Ford Coppola with a live audience. Bronlow stretched a telephone cord out on stage so the old man could hear the wild cheers of the audience.

1982- The Vietnam Veterans Wall Monument designed by Maia Lin opened to the public in Washington D.C,

1995- Carolco, the Hollywood studio that produced many Arnold Schwarzenegger hits like "Total Recall" declared bankruptcy after producing $115 million dollar megaflop "Cutthroat Island" with Geena Davis.

2002- The Battle for Tora Bora ended. The U.S. and Afghani military had Osama Ben Laden cornered in a mountain stronghold and was slowly blasting him out. On a captured Al Qaeda communicator they could hear Ben Laden apologizing to his men for leading them into a trap. But the U.S. soldiers there were refused the final reinforcements needed to finish him off. The reason given was the need for the buildup for the invasion of Iraq. The final attack was entrusted to poorly trained Afghan mercenaries who let Osama and a thousand Al Qaeda fighters slip into Pakistan. This is of course, unless you believe that Osama was indeed killed here, and all the poorly made recordings that have surfaced since are fakes. History will tell, eventually.
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Answer to Yesterdays Quiz:

When was IN GOD WE TRUST, first stamped on US money?

Answer: appeals to put the Deity on money first began in 1861. The motto In God We Trust was written by Francis Scott Key in an unused verse of the Star Spangled Banner. Although approved in 1864 the motto appeared sporadically over the years. Not until the conservative Republican Congress under President Eisenhower ordered it in 1957 wa sit a regular feature on money. Before this we had mottos like Join or Die, for the colonies; E Pluribus Unum, One people united, and The Union Must Be Preserved.

The English Prince of Wales had Dieu et Mon Droit, God and My Rights, German soldiers had stamped on their beltbuckles Gott

My old comrade and fellow pencil-pusher Michael Sporn is having a retrospective of his films this week at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. On Monday he will be interviewed on stage by historian John Canemaker. Check his site listed on my links for the details.

It is an interesting part of growing older when you see friends you hung out with and got drunk with, one day having retrospectives in a museum. While I wrestle with my mortality, Michael Sporn has been making wonderful films in New York for the last twenty five years. Many folks recall fondly getting their first jobs under his aegis and learning the animation ropes.

My favorite films of his are the William Steig projects like Dr DeSoto and the Amazing Bone. I recall when I was heading story on SHREK at Dreamworks, when the topic of what the production design of the picture should be, I would say, "why not DO STEIG?" After all, IT'S HIS STORY!" The others would look at me like I had grown another head.

from the amazing bone, courtesy michaelspornanimation.com

So, thank you Mike for bringing Steigs' intriguing and whimsical style to the screen, among many others, and keeping a big viable studio going in the home of Max Fleischer and John Hubley. Congratulations, Slava and Vivat! I'll stand behind you in the chariot holding the laurel wreath, and mumbling the ancient device- Remember thou art but a Man!

I urge anyone in the area to run don't walk to go see it!
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Today's Question: How long has the motto IN GOD WE TRUST been stamped on U.S. money?

Answer to yesterday' question: What is a Smart Aleck? below.
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history for 11/9/2007
Birthdays: English King Edward VII-Bertie, Stanford White, Marie Dressler, Ed Wynn, Claude Rains, Ann Sexton, Spiro Agnew, Tommy Dorsey, Dr. Carl Sagan, Whitey Herzog, Dorothy Dandridge, Dr. Herbert Kalmus the inventor of Technicolor film, Lou Ferrigno, Sisqo

In ancient Rome this was the Feast of Mania, like the Greek Anthesterion it was a time when the Gates of Underworld were said to be open and the shades of the dead could visit their old haunts. This is where we get the word Maniac.

64BC- Marcus Cicero delivered the first of his great speeches against Catiline, a Roman noble he accused of gathering an army of the disaffected to overthrow the Republic.

1699- According to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels this was the day Lemenual Gulliver was shipwrecked on the island of Liliput.

1799- THE COUP OF THE 18TH BRUMAIRE- Napoleon seized power in France. The name referred to the date in the French Revolutionary calendar. The little general began by giving a speech in the National Assembly denouncing the Jacobin menace and the need to restore order. Throwing around the term Jacobin then was akin to calling people Al Qaeda today. However, he was never as good a political speaker as he was a soldier. The senior politicians recognized baloney when they heard it and mobbed him. His brother Lucien who was a senator pulled him out of the crowd. So Nappy called in his troops and cleared the hall, pushing some senators out of the windows, it was a one story building so the effect was purely symbolic. At 2:00 AM a small group of friendly senators were convened to vote to create a leadership system of three Counsels with Nappy to share power, but he soon outmaneuvered the other two. Napoleon became dictator of France and declared the French Revolution complete. “I am the Revolution!” He was 31.

1872- The Great Fire of Boston. Much of the city center was destroyed because an equine virus, The Great Epizootic, had killed off the horses of the fire brigades.

1875- A treaty had declared all of the Sacred Black Hills of South Dakota to be protected Indian land “ So Long as Grass grows and Water Flows.”But prospectors supported by General George Custer had discovered gold in those hills and a gold rush began, Indians or not. This day a confidential memo from Supreme Commander of the U.S. Army Phil Sheridan with President Ulysses Grant’s approval ordered the frontier cavalry to cease preventing settlers and gold prospectors from moving into the Black Hills. This memo in effect violated the Indian Treaty of 1868 and would lead to Custer's Last Stand next June.

1888- The last victim of Jack the Ripper found. 25 year old prostitute Mary Kelly. After her murder the Ripper attacks ceased as mysteriously as they had started.

1911-The first Neon sign illuminated.

1918- KAISER WILHELM ABDICATED the collapsing German Monarchy . A curious fact was that no Tommy, Doughboy or Poilu ( the nicknames for British, American and French soldiers) in World War One ever made it to Berlin, much less entered Germany. The German war machine collapsed from within- bread riots, the economy in shambles, The entire Navy mutinied, Bolshevik Worker’s Soviets were set up in eleven cities including Cologne, Munich and Hamburg..
At first the Kaiser hoped to first sign the peace with the victorious Allies then use the German army to put down the riots and restore order. But changed his mind when 40 combat officers selected at random said 38 to 2 that they would refuse to kill other Germans to save his dynasty. Even then leaders resorted to polls. “What about the Fananeider-the German Soldiers Oath to die for the Monarchy?! “he asked General Von Groener. “Sire, today the Oath is just some empty words!” Even the Kaiser’s personal bodyguards were setting up a Revolutionary Workers Committee. So rather than wind up arrested and maybe even shot like his cousin the Czar of Russia, Wilhelm abdicated.

1928- Anthropologist Margaret Mead arrived in Ta’u, Samoa to begin work on her book “Coming of Age in Samoa” which will have a great effect on how people raise their children.

1937- KRYSTAL NACHT- In Paris an angry German-Jewish exile shot and killed a German diplomat named Ernst Von Rapt. Ironically Rapt was anti-Nazi and was being watched by the Gestapo. Back in Germany the Nazis use this incident to order the mass destruction of 191 synagogues and 1,000 Jewish businesses. Then the Jewish community was ordered to pay fines up to $40 million to pay for the damage. The name Crystal Night pertains to the sound of smashing glass in the streets. German boxing champion Max Schmelling was the media idol of Aryan Superiority for defeating American Joe Louis. One thing no one knew was that Schmelling concealed two Jewish boys from danger on Krystalnacht and had them smuggled out of the country. In 1961 Schmelling was invited to a testimonial in his honor at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas, owned by one of those boys.

1964- First "Wizard of Id" comic strip published.

1953- Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died of alcohol poisoning and liver failure in New York after downing 18 straight shots of whiskey . There's actually some debate as to whether or not Dylan Thomas intended to drink himself to death. Scholars have recently suggested that he was a diabetic and died of hypoglycemia. Whatever the actual agent of Thomas' demise may have been, the coroner wrote on his death certificate under the cause of death heading, "Insult to the brain."

1965- "WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT?" The first Great East Coast Blackout. A transformer near Rochester shorts out and the surge overloads station after station until the entire eastern seaboard from Boston to Delaware is in darkness for 12 hours. (nine months later there was a notable rise in the birthrate, there was nothing else to do....).

1966- In London Beatle John Lennon went to an art exhibit and met a Japanese avant garde photographer named Yoko Ono.

1981- The Screen Actor's Guild under President Ed Asner votes emergency moneys for striking PATCO air traffic controllers fired by the former SAG president, now U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

1979- National Public Radio goes on the air. The first US national news show with women as anchor reporters.

1989- THE BERLIN WALL OPENS UP. The East German authorities back down as the people (guards included) dance and sing on the hated symbol of Cold War division. A student points up at the t.v. cameras and triumphantly shouted: "Look, the Whole World is Watching !" Some West German politicians drove to the scene of the spontaneous demonstration and they tried to get everyone to sing patriotic songs like "Deutschlandlied", but the crowd drowned them out dancing to the theme from the movie:"GhostBusters". The next day people found the streets covered in banana peels. It was the first thing East Germans bought in the west, and they ate their bananas as they window shopped.

2004- The Jones Soda Pop Company of Seattle announced its new creation – Mashed Potato Flavored Soda. This was to follow up on their success last year of Roast Turkey and Gravy Soda.
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YESTERDAY'S QUIZ
QUESTION: what is a smart-aleck?

ANSWER: The Vice President of the Confederate States, Alexander Stephens (1812-1883), was reputed to be a brilliant debater in Congress. He was so quick-witted, people referred to Smart- Alex, or Aleck, so it came to be a name for a quick witted wiseass.

Mark Mayerson reported recently on his blog that my old boss Disney CEO Michael Eisner has bought the Topps Chewing Gum company, and wants to merchandise the cartoon character Bazooka Joe. I thought it was a gag at first, but the story is confirmed by the Beat and USA Today. Michael is quoted as saying ” It won’t be Raiders of the Lost Ark…. but Bazooka Joe is my new Mickey Mouse!” Uh, huh…okay...

http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com





Going tonight to see PBS animation producer Linda Simenski be awarded the Discovery Award by the Zimmer Children's Museum Foundation. Congrats Linda!
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QUIZ: What is origin of the term, a smart-aleck?

Yesterday's Question answered below:

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history for 11/8/2007
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Nerva, Bram Stoker, Sir Edmund Halley, June Havoc, Margaret Mitchell, Joe Flynn- the cranky Captain Binghampton in the 60’s TV comedy McHales Navy, Ricky Lee Jones, Bonny Raitt, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, Ester Rolle, Katherine Hepburn, Parker Posey, Gretchen Mol, Tara Reid

1519- Spanish Conquistador Hernan' Cortez first met the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II. Cortes was guided by Malinche', the "Pocahontas of the Aztecs". This noblewoman guided Cortez's little band into the heart of the empire. Conquistador Bernal Diaz described how after dinner the Spaniards were given tobacco pipes to smoke, but a special pipe with different tobacco was given to Montezuma, after smoking it "The Emperor became merry, as we do when drunk with wine.." Cortez was also offered vanilla beans and a cup of chocolate, then a bitter brew called Tchocolatl.

1789- Elijah Craig first distilled whiskey from Indian corn and strained it through a wool blanket. He lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky, so the stuff soon became popularly known as Bourbon.

1793- In one of the positive results of the Reign of Terror, the French Revolutionary Government opens the royal art collection of the Louvre to the public as a museum.

1805- Lewis and Clark stand on the sand at the Pacific Ocean near the mouth of the Columbia River.

1880- Famous actress Sarah Bernhardt made her American stage debut in La Dame aux Camelias. She made a further ten tours of the US, all billed as Farewell Appearances.

1887- Dentist-gunfighter Doc Holliday dies of tuberculosis or consumption at 35. He knew he had it for a long time, and in those days it was considered fatal and incurable. Some say this knowledge is what made him such a bold pistolero. But unfortunately for him, he won all his gunfights and died in bed anyway. His last words after taking a shot of whiskey were:" Well, I'll be damned!"

1910- Patent for the first electric bug-zapper. FHZZZZITT !

1910- Congressman Victor Berger of Wisconsin became the first Socialist to be elected to Congress. Revisionist histories since the Red Scares and the Cold War tend to ignore the achievements of the American Socialist Party. But in the first decades of the 20th century a number of big city mayors and congressmen were socialists. In the 1912 presidential election when Woodrow Wilson won by a slim one million votes third party socialist Eugene Debs polled over a millions votes.

1923- When it sounds like they would be found out early Nazi leader Adolf Hitler put into motion his attempt to overthrow the German government. Because they started in a beer hall in Munich the coup is called the Beer Hall Putsch.

1926- New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote the hit song: "Will You Love Me in December like You do in May? ", met chorus dancer Betty Compton at the musical "Okay" and fell in love. His romancing his mistress openly in front of New York Society, not to mention in front of his wife, is the scandal of the Roaring 20's. Forced to resign as mayor after a probe unearthed volumes of corruption within his administration Jimmy tried once more to run for mayor against Fiorello Laguardia in 1933. But he was blocked by the Roman Catholic Cardinal of New York and NY Governor Franklin Roosevelt, who had just become president and found Walker an embarrassment. Jimmy Walker and Betty Compton lived in Europe for the next ten years. In 2000 married NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani lost the chance to run for the US Senate in part because he made open appearances at shows and dinners with his girlfriend.

1929- New York’s Museum of Modern Art opened.

1943- The first one man show of American abstract painter named Jackson Pollock. Pollock later created his brushless dripping form of painting that earned him the nickname:”Jack the Dripper”.

1950- In Korea two Chinese MIG fighters tangled with US Sabre jets. The first jet-to-jet dogfight.

1952- The Supreme Court upholds a 1922 ruling that Baseball a sport, not a business. Therefore it is exempt from anti-trust laws.

1965- The Days of Our Lives soap opera first premiered on TV.

1966- Former actor and SAG president Ronald Reagan elected Governor of California.
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YESTYERDAY'S QUIZ:

QUESTION:On Hollywood movie sets, what are Honeywagons?

ANSWER: Multiple mobile dressing rooms that go on location. They got that named because they were originally the dressing rooms for the many leggy showgirls of the big Busby Berkeley musicals.