Me back in my days as animation union president.

In response to my blog of a few days ago exhorting my fellow animation folks to attend a Guild nomination meeting, I got a few e-mails accusing me of being a lying hippocrite, a fascist martinet and troublemaker who runs amok in a non-union sweatshop ( all of my people including me are working union.) The wonderful thing about being a public figure with an opinion to give, is that no matter what you say, out of three thousand members, someone will always think you are completely evil, and like, full of canal water.

Oh well. All I can say is, at least it's only one letter in 200. If it was one in ten I'd be worried.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let's face
The Internationale unites the human race!

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Birthdays: Michel Caravaggio, Al Kapp the cartoonist creator of Lil Abner,Kickapoo Joy Juice, Fearless Fosdick and the Schmoo; William Paley chairman of CBS, Bridgette Bardot is 72, Marcello Mastroianni, Moon Unit Zappa, Ed Sullivan, Sylvia Kristel, John Sayles, Arnold Stang, J.T. Walsh, Janeane Garofalo is 43, Mia Sorvino is 40, Hillary Duff, Naomi Watts is 39

48 B.C.- Pompey the Great, fleeing Julius Caesar after he was defeated by him in battle in Greece, was assassinated by the Egyptians when he lands on their shore. The actually hired a Roman freelancer so he could get close to him. The Egyptians thought it would please Caesar to present him with his enemies head. When one of Pompey's supporters was approaching the coast by ship and saw Pompey's funeral pyre he knew their cause was lost. He said:" Even thou, Pompeius Magnus?" Pompey was the inspiration of the word Pompous. He insisted people call him Magnus-"the Great" while still a young man. Once when he was given the right to enter Rome in triumph in a chariot borne by four milk white horses, he demanded instead four milk white elephants! They compromised on one white elephant because any more couldn't fit under Rome's victory arches.

1043- Battle of Lyrskog Heath. King Magnus the Good of the Vikings defeats the Wends, a Baltic tribe. Magnus psyched out the enemy by taking off his chain mail armor and he put on a loud red shirt. He then ran ahead of his charging warriors swinging a large double bladed axe over his head in wide circles and crashed into the foe.

1216- CORONATION OF KING HENRY III- English King John Ist, aka John the Bad, John Lackland, John SoftSword, John the Total Loser, etc. was killed when an evil monk poured poisonous toad venom in his ear. His son Henry was left a situation that didn't make for a good coronation. The country was racked by civil war and invasion because of the dispute over the Magna Charter, the great document that granted broad ranging civil rights. Henry couldn't have his coronation at Westminster because London was occupied by a French army. He couldn't have the Archbishop of Canterbury preside over the ceremony because he was under house arrest in the Vatican, the Pope disliked the Magna Charter too. And to top it all off his father had lost the Iron Crown of Alfred the Great at the beach. Boy, what a downer of a party! Henry III would reign for 56 years and demand extravagance at all subsequent royal functions.

1542- The European Discovery of California- Juan de Cabrillo sailing up from Mexico stepped ashore at Cabrillo Point in San Diego Harbor. He had hoped that San Diego Bay would be the Straights of Anian, a mythical sea route back to the Atlantic that would be safer than Magellans Straights. All through the 1500’s conventional thinking in Europe was that America was a big island with sea routes all around it. California was supposed to be the Kingdom of Califa, the Amazons who wield Golden Swords- hmm maybe Juan was toking on one too many of those special tobacco pipes back in Mexico!

1774- Pennsylvanian Joseph Galloway proposed in the first Continental Congress that the solution to America’s problems with England was to petition the mother country for dominion status:” since the colonies hold in abhorrence the idea of being independent communities.” The Dominion idea was defeated by only one vote.

1781- Washington and Rochambeaus’ troops entered the siege trenches around Yorktown. They were amazed at the British army’s lack of activity. Lord Cornwallis knew he was being surrounded by land and sea for two weeks, yet he did nothing to break out of the trap. He decided to wait until his superior General Clinton would arrive with a rescue force. But Clinton was busy in New York entertaining King George’s younger son the Duke of York who was visiting America to buck up morale. No Blackwater then to protect him. Clinton’s relief force showed up to Yorktown two weeks late for Cornwallis’ surrender.

1864- CENTRALIA RAID- Confederate Guerilla "Bloody-Bill" Anderson stops a train of 150 disarmed Union recruits and has them all killed and scalped. Because of the chaos of civil war nobody noticed that this guy was a little nuts. He hung human hair on his saddle and galloped into battle weeping out loud as he fired his pistols. He would put a knot in the sash around his waist for every time he killed a Yankee. By the time Bloody Bill was finally gunned down his sash was full of knots.

1864- THE FIRST INTERNATIONALE opens. European and American trade unions hold a mass meeting in London with the goal of attempting to centralize the world struggle for labor rights. The meeting was soon sidetracked by radical and anarchist politics and disbanded in 1876. One positive accomplishment was a Frenchman wrote a melody for the meeting that has become the most famous song of revolution, "The Internationale". The Second and Third Internationales were more about communist politics.

1904- A woman is arrested on New York’s Fifth Ave for openly smoking a cigarette. Look how far we’ve come. One hundred years later anyone can be arrested for smoking a cigarette!

1918- From Imperial German headquarters General Ludendorf monitored the reports of his armies being driven back from their final defensive lines. Ludendorf closed his office door and went into a fit of hysterics- screaming about how the Kaiser, the Reichstag the Liberals and the Navy had ruined everything. Then after regaining his composure he calmly walked downstairs to a meeting with General Von Hindenberg and Kaiser Wilhelm. There he told them that hopes for winning the World War One were now kaput. The army was defeated, the people demand peace. Negotiations should begin immediately with the Allies based on American President Wilson's 14 Points. Hindenburg wept.

1924 -the first airplane flight around the world landed back at it's point of departure. Commander Leslie Arnold took off from Seattle with 5 converted torpedo bomber seaplanes. One crashed, another sank but the remaining three circumnavigated the globe.

1928-William Paley, son of a cigar manufacturer, became president of CBS broadcasting. He turns it into a corporate broadcasting giant and threw his support behind developing television and long playing records.

1950- In a media rich ceremony General Douglas MacArthur restored South Korean President Sygmun Rhee to his palace in liberated Seoul. The Marines complained that though they had done much of the house-to-house fighting they were left out of the ceremony by old Army man MacArthur. Tough old Colonel Chesty Puller looked at all the crisp Army MP’s standing guard. He growled to a correspondent “Today my First Marines took 25 combat casualties while these little cookies were still flying out from Tokyo!”

1960- Ted Williams hits a home run at his last at-bat. Number 521.

1961- Richard Chamberlain made a name for himself by playing the handsome Dr. Kildare on TV, Raymond Massey co-starred.

1961-The Hazel tv show with Shirley Booth premiered. Anyhting you say, Mister B...

1978- Pope John Paul Ist dies after only 34 days in office. The rumor was some sort of pills were found by his bedside. The Vatican refused any autopsy.

Doug Mayer, a very funny guy who is one of the main writers on the Car Talk (tentative title) series, has created a fun new way to tell John Ashcroft from Grover Norquist. Republican Flash Cards! Sort of a Field Guide to the ruling elite of our government. It's available now at stores, Amazon and Overstock.com. He says NAME THAT REPUBLICAN is guarranteed to produce hours of family fun, while getting your phone and e-mail listed by The Dept. of Homeland Security.

$9.95(cheap!) http://www.amazon.com/Name-That-Republican-Rogues-Rascals/dp/0811860078/ref=sr_1_1/105-6706800-2222869?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190931415&sr=1-1

Birthdays: Thomas Nast- famed XIX Century cartoonist who drew the first image of Santa Claus and created the Republican elephant and democratic donkey, Arthur Penn, Meatloaf, William Conrad, Dick Schapp, Samuel Adams -brewer and patriot ,cartoonist George Cruikshank, Jayne Meadows, Wilford Brimley, Shaun Cassidy, Greg Morris, Amanda Detmer, Avril Lavigne, Gwynneth Paltrow is 35.

1771-Young artist Francisco Goya enters a scholarship competition sponsored by the Academy of Parma. He lost to some obscure artist named Bettino. Judges say about his work: "Crude and ugly colors".

1934- “ I’M SICK OF THIS CAT & MOUSE GAME!” shouted Gangster Baby Face Nelson as he was cornered by two FBI agents on a rural road south of Chicago. While his gang and wife looked on in amazement Nelson boldly walked out in the open, down the middle of the road, his tommy gun blazing away at the G-Men. He killed them both but not before he was riddled with 17 bullets. He died the next day and was left in a ditch.

1935-13 year old singer Frances Gumm of the singing Gumm Sisters signed an exclusive contract with MGM Pictures. Louis B. Mayer changed Frances name to Judy Garland.

1938- Bob Hope first sang “Thanks For the Memory” on his NBC radio show. It became a hit his movie appearance in the film “The Big Broadcast of 1938.”

1944- Evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson died in hospital from an overdose of sleeping pills. She was 53. MacPherson was one of the most powerful evangelists of the 1920s with thousands of followers donating millions of dollars. Her continued success even after sex scandals prompted H.L. Mencken to declare that "there are morons per square mile in Los Angeles than any other place on Earth!"

1954- The Tonight Show premiered. Steve Allen hosted.

1961- Hanna Barbera's "Top Cat" show premiered. Do you remember the words to the theme song..? "Top Cat, the most effectual- Top Cat, who's intellectual: Close friends get to call him T.C., Providing it's with dignity. Top Cat, the indisputable leader of the gang... He's the Boss he's a pip, he's the championship, He's the most tip-top, Top Cat !"

1964- The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President John F. Kennedy. Today despite two investigations 8 out of 10 Americans still believe Oswald was part of a conspiracy. Even Lyndon Johnson had his doubts. Documents pertaining to the case, like Oswald's tax returns, and how he could re-enter the U.S. from Soviet Russia without a passport after renouncing his citizenship, are still kept top secret. Evidence like President Kennedy's brain disappeared from the lab and witnesses to contrary theories kept dying by causes like car accidents and karate chops. The young attorney who argued the "magic bullet" theory -that one bullet went through JFK, bounced, zipped through Governor Connolly, zinged back through Kennedy ,etc, and turned up undented in the governor's hospital bedsheets- is still in the senate today-Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Spector. Maybe we’ll know more when the CIA’s papers on the assassination are published in 2029 and Jackie Kennedy’s memoirs are unlocked in 2060. Oh Boy, I can’t wait!

1977- Bob McKimson, Warner director of countless Foghorn Leghorn shorts, falls dead of heart failure in front of Friz Freleng and Yosemite Sam animator Gerry Chiniquy while having lunch. Animator Ben Washam told me McKimson was one of the finest Bugs Bunny draftsmen. That he could draw Bugs from toe-to-toe without have to make a preliminary rough sketch first. That final morning animator Art Leonardi had asked Bob for a souvenir drawing, Bob did him a Bugs Bunny but as he was leaving Art reminded him that he neglected to sign it. Bob said as he walked out "Oh, I'll get to it after lunch..."

1989- The Japanese corporate giant Sony purchased Columbia and TriStar Pictures, starting a wave of Japanese investment in Hollywood.

2003- Hours after the seasons final concert, in the middle of the night, the historic bandshell at the Hollywood Bowl was demolished. After a long legal fight with preservationists the historic 1929 structure designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that Gershwin and Stokowski played in was replaced with a new shell promising better acoustics.

Commitment.

Trane- John Coltrane courtesy of umich.edu

Today I was in Dallas recording tracks for the opening of the Car Talk Show. Afterwards we all went out to a jazz club where a relative of our producer was playing with his combo.

It’s a Tuesday night, pretty late in a financial part of the city, so the audience was spare to none. Yet, the band were playing with such passion, as if the place was packed, standing room only. When I asked the pro musician with us, how does it feel to play to an empty room, he replied;” They don’t play to amuse the crowd, they play for themselves, for each other, for the love of music.”

I see why John Hubley loved watching jazz musicians so much. I sometimes love observing Jazz musicians when they are not playing themselves, but digging the music of other musicians. They close their eyes and lose themselves in the currents of sound. They immerse themselves in the music and float on its’ waves. And not just jazz. I saw Mtsizslav Rostropich doing the same during the sections of a cello concerto when he did not have to play. He sat with his eyes closed, an instrument himself, rocking to the waves of sound.

The difference between people who make good animation and great animators is much the same. There are plenty of people who know enough tricks to get by. But as musician C.P.E. Bach once said ” If you rely only on technique and tricks, you are no more a musician than a trained monkey.”

Real artists lose themselves in the work, They lose track of time. Dick Williams called it The Flow. You look up, and suddenly you notice the sun has gone down. The great artists sing from within their soul. They float upon the patterns of thought. Those who have, know what I am talking about.

I wish you all such a similar experience. I may not be the best natural talent, nor the smartest, but I have strived my utmost to use what talent I have been given to achieve that feeling. Regardless of the project or the deadline. I’m not doing it for the client, I’m doing it for me. It is using to the fullest the instrument God has put inside you.


History for 9/26/2007
Birthdays: George Gershwin, T.S. Elliot, John Chapman (also known as Johnny Appleseed)-1774, Winsor McCay-1869, Theodore Gericault -1791, Olivia Newton-John, Cheryl Tiegs is 60, Marty Robbins, Linda Hamilton, Pope Paul VI, Jack Lalanne is 95!, Melissa Sue Andersen, Phillip Bosco, James Cavaziel, Surena Williams

303a.d. -Feasts of Saints Cosmas & Damian . The Syrian twin doctors were nicknamed 'The Moneyless" and this was before HMO's. they were martyred by being crucified, stoned, shot full of arrows, beheaded, then they had to read their own prescriptions.

1650- A Spanish expedition under Don Pedro de Ursua left Peru for the deep Amazon. Lost in the limitless rainforest almost all his men die or go mad. The expedition at one point is taken over by a lunatic conquistador named Aguirre who declared himself 'Emperor of the Kingdom of El Dorado'! The incident is the subject of Werner Herzog's famous movie "Aguirre the Wrath of God".

1687- The Ancient GREEK PARTHENON IS BLOWN UP during a minor Venetian raid on Turkish held Athens. A random shell ignited a gunpowder magazine the Turks had been storing inside of it. For two thousand years the Greek masterpiece had survived mostly intact. Later on in 1801 English Lord Elgin will back up his frigate to the shore and pry off the frieze marble sculptures for his collection.

1739- THE WAR OF JENKINS EAR- A small war between England and Spain started when a Spanish warship stopped an English merchant ship and cut off the ear of the captain named Jenkins. Jenkins ran around Parliament loudly calling for war and waving his ear in a bottle of spirits. He wore his hair long so some doubted that it was his ear in the bottle.

1820- In Defiance Missouri 85 year old frontier scout Daniel Boone died of acute fever and indigestion from eating too many yams. He did all of his exploring without a compass. Someone once asked him - Didn't you ever get lost? He replied, No, but I was once bewildered for three days...

1835- Donizetti’s opera Lucia De Lammermoor premiered.

1863- In a secret meeting several top Confederate generals agree to petition President Jefferson Davis to have their army commander Baxton Bragg, removed for incompetence. This despite his just winning his greatest victory- Chickamaugua. Private soldiers like memoirist Sam Watkins reported that most of Bragg’s army hated him. But Pres Davis was probably the only man in the Confederacy who liked Bragg and kept him in command. Bragg humiliated the mutineers and the rest of his staff refused to talk to him. His next battle, Missionary Ridge, was a decisive defeat.

1887- Emile Berliner patented the gramaphone, rejecting Thomas Edison's cylinder in favor of a flat disc record on a turntable.

1892- The John Philip Sousa Band makes it's first public appearance.

1914- The Federal Trade Commission, or FTC created.

1918- THE MEUSE ARGONNE OFFENSIVE- To the rally cry of Marshal Foch “Everyone to the Battle!” the Allies began the final mass offensive from Belgium to Switzerland to finish the Germans and end World War One. The Big Breakout was done by the fresh American divisions thrown forward by Pershing into the Argonne forest. Led by colorful officers like Douglas MacArthur, the Boy Colonel, who led his men calmly across No-Man's Land without a helmet or gun and dressed in his West Point varsity sweater and cane. MacArthur also started an American military fashion of removing the gromet (wire reinforcement) from his officer's cap and let it slouch rakishly. Captain Harry Truman led his artillery battery as well. After fierce resistance the exhausted German lines finally caved in. The Offensive had started off in a dense fog. A whole Yank battalion got lost and surrounded by Germans. After being rescued they were hailed as the "Lost Battalion". Another American platoon met a stranger fate. They went off Indian style single file into the mist and disappeared completely. No bodies, no reports from enemy or civilians, none of them showed up in German P.O.W. camps after the war.
To this day they are still listed as "missing".

1926- Bullock's Wilshire department store opened. It's Tea Room quickly became the in place for Hollywood Society to see and be seen in.

1937- "Queen of the Blues" Singer Bessie Smith died after a car accident in Mississippi. She crashed her Packard into a parked car. She was 43. One account said she died because she was refused treatment in a segregated hospital but the truth was she was treated by a white doctor at the scene and sent to the nearest hospital, which was a black one.

1939- Nazi scientists led by Rudolph Heisenberg met to discuss how the fission of uranium could be used to create a super bomb. Meanwhile in America Hungarian scientist Dr. Leo Szilard was warning the US government that they better start an atomic program fast. Some say Heisenberg deliberated sabotaged his own experiments to ensure that Hitler would not get atomic weapons, others say that’s baloney and that he just went in the wrong direction.

1941- Max Fleischer's "Superman" cartoon debuts. They were much more expensive that the usual short cartoons- $90,000 to the usual $40,000, but Paramount wanted them.

1955- Eddie Fisher married Debbie Reynolds.

1957- The musical West Side Story opened. The legend goes composer Leonard Bernstein was in the hospital to be operated on for a deviated septum. While recuperating he ran into lyricist Steven Sondheim, who was also recovering from an operation. To pass the time while convalescing they started working on the idea of an updated Romeo and Juliet set to music. One early title discarded was Gang Way!

1960-THE FIRST NIXON-KENNEDY TELEVISED DEBATE. The first televised presidential debate that really ushered in the era of the "media-candidate". People who heard the debate on radio thought Vice President Nixon had won because he scored more points on issues. But far more who saw it on Television lauded Kennedy because of his cool, calm Presidential bearing as opposed to Nixon's pale sweaty-lipped nervousness. For years Nixon put down his electoral defeat to the fact that he refused stage makeup before going on camera .One New York Times analyst recently referred to Kennedy & Nixon as the Roadrunner & Wile E. Coyote of American politics.

1961- Nineteen year old folk singer Bob Dylan made his debut in a Greenwich Village coffee house Gerde’s Folk City.

1961- Fidel Castro gave a speech to the United Nations that lasted 4 and 1/2 hours.

1962-The Beverly Hillbillies debuts. The story goes that CBS mogul William Paley disliked farm-humor type shows and this was premiered behind his back while he was on vacation. It was the masterpiece of programming chief James Aubrey, nicknamed "the Smiling Barracuda". One wag said Aubrey deserved a statue because he was the first t.v. executive to realize that even if you put garbage on the tube people will watch it anyway. When Aubrey took over CBS they were doing "Playhouse 90" and when he left they were doing "Mayberry RFD".

1964-The premiere of Gilligan’s Island. The good ship Minnow was named for Newton Minnow, the FCC Chairman who first called television “A Vast Wasteland”.

1983- Filmation's "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe".The popular toy was originally supposed to be a product tie -in to the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Conan the Barbarian, but toy maker Mattell balked at the films R rated violence, so changed the toy's name. I Have The Powerrrrrr!!!

1987- A market research group called Q-5 tried to use a bank of computers to design the ultimate safe wholesome politically correct children's show. They came up with "The Little Clowns of Happytown"-. Of the 26 children's series in syndication it remained dead last in ratings, He-Man, Jem and G.I.Joe on top. The people have spoken.

1990- The Motion Picture Association changed the rating for the naughtiest movies from X to NC-17.

2004- Florida gets hit with it’s fourth hurricane in six weeks. Hurricane Jean killed 6 and caused billions in damage. The last time Florida was hit by that many hurricanes was in 1886.

I heard today that in Montreal there is a big international Visual Effects and Technology conference. At the hotel where many of the attendees are staying the WiFi broke down, and now no one can get internet access.
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Birthdays: William Faulkner, Jean Phillipe Rameau, Mark Rothko, Dmitri Shoshtakovich, Sergei Bondarchuk, Phil Rizzutto the Scooter, Bob MacAdoo, Heather Locklear, Scotty Pippin, Christopher Reeve, Mark Hamill, Glen Gould, Barbera Walters, Red Smith, Aldo Ray, Will Smith is 39, Michael Douglas 63 & Catherine Zeta-Jones-38

1066-Battle of Stamford Bridge -the warmup bout to Hastings and the last great Viking raid. The king of the Northmen Harald the Dragon or Hadradda landed an army at the old Roman city of Eboracum, now called in Norse Yoorvik or York. There he was met by the Anglo-Saxon army of King Harold Goodwinson. "Give us land." The Vikings said." We'll give you as much land as is needed to cover your bones!" said Harold, then defeated the Vikings in a huge battle. Harald the Dragon went down fighting as did his English ally Earl Tostig. Almost as soon as the fight was over the Saxons learned a new invasion force had landed in the south near Dover, the Normans under Duke William of Normandy. King Harold having to fight in north England then rush by forced marches down to the south to fight another big battle was a big factor in his eventual defeat by William the Conqueror.

1493- Christopher Columbus sailed from Cadiz for the New World on his second trip, this time with seventeen ships. He had been named by the King Governor General of the Indies and Admiral of the Ocean Seas.

1513- Vasco Nunez de Balboa emerged from the Panamanian rainforest to view the great expanse of the western ocean. He calls it "Pacific" the "Peaceful Ocean."

1525- THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG- German Emperor Charles V wanted his rebellious Princes to knock off all this Protestant Reformation stuff and stay Catholic like him. But they fought him all over Germany in the Schmalkalden Wars. Even his own sister joined the new faith. Finally Charles made a peace where all could have religious toleration- well, not really. It just said whatever your local prince said was the official religion, that was the official religion. Charles and his successor German emperors were never that powerful again. This was the first official state acknowledgement that more than one Christian faith now existed.

1690- The first American newspaper published in Boston; " Publick Occurances Both Foreign and Domestick, Issue Number One" There was no number two because the Lord Governor of Massachusetts colony promptly closed it down.

1777- British Lord Howe after defeating George Washington's army CAPTURED THE AMERICAN CAPITOL OF PHILADELPHIA. The rebel congress had picked up their impertinent little Declaration of Independence and hightailed it for Harrisburg.
It was the American's luck that at this time the colonies were so loosely knit and decentralized that losing the "nation's capitol" wasn't very important to anyone except Philadelphians. Town Loyalists had a field day routing out rebel sympathizers. Because the Quakers espoused non-violence everyone thought they were on the other side, so they were singled out for especially rough treatment- pelted with stones, tar & feathers, etc.
Lord Howe complained to London that by now he had defeated the American army several times and captured it's capitol yet the Rebellion showed no signs of dying out. America only had four major cities, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston and they all had been captured by His Majesties forces at one time or another. Except for little pirate John Paul Jones and a ship or two they had sunk most of the American Navy. But the Yankees wouldn’t give up. Obviously a military solution to the American problem was not the answer."I can only pacify the colonies if I had two soldiers for every colonist." London responded by replacing Lord Howe.


1789- James Madison proposed a series of ten amendments be added to the new Constitution guaranteeing basic personal freedoms, the BILL OF RIGHTS. This day it was approved by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

1828- Simon Bolivar the Liberator is confronted by assassins sent by his own vice president to kill him. They break in on him while he was in bed with his mistress, Manuela Spenz. Bolivar does not fight nor flee, he just stared them down, and the sheer force of his iron will compelled the cutthroats to flee in terror.

1840- Slavery outlawed in California- except.....Indian children were bought and sold for another ten years.

1887-The first Sears Catalog published.

1888- The beginning of the Sherlock Holmes adventure the Hound of the Baskervilles. Coming home from the Boer War, a Welsh doctor told Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle about the legend of a ghostly dog that haunts the moors of his native county.

1890- Spurred on by the writings of John Muir and John Wesley Powell, Congress created Yosemite National Park in California.

1911- Groundbreaking in Boston for Fenway Park.

1918- Brazil declared war on Austria. This was seen as purely ceremonial, the Great War was just about over.

1919- President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke after a speech at Pueblo, Colorado. For two months he lingered paralyzed while the Nation was run by first lady Edith Wilson. No one told the public or the Vice President. Their are many interpretations of how the government was run in those weeks. Edith claimed to be passing on Wilson's wishes to the government from his sickbed, but many thought Wilson was too incapacitated even for that and she was just doing it herself.

1933- Young writer John Huston was driving drunk on Sunset Blvd when he struck and killed a pedestrian. His father Walter Huston was a top movie star so to avoid scandal MGM head Louis B. Mayer paid $46,000 bux to cover it up. John Huston went on to become a great Hollywood director and screenwriter.

1953- Alfred Hitchcock wrapped filming on his only 3D film, Dial M for Murder.

1957- President Eisenhower sends the bayonet wielding 101st Airborne to enforce the integration of Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas after the governor refused to use the National Guard. Ike was not exactly colorblind himself but the Supreme Court ordered school desegregation, and to the old general orders were orders. Escorted by troops nine black students entered the school through hordes of jeering whites. One girl was spit on so many times she had to wring her dress out afterwards.

1965- The Beatles cartoon show premiered.

1974- THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT.- Scientists first warn that increased use of florocarbons and aerosol sprays will cause Ozone Depletion and global weather changes. Boy, good thing we jumped on that warning back then, boys & girls, else we'd have real hot summers and bad storms by now!

1980- John Bonham of Led Zeppelin was found dead of alcohol poisoning.

1984-THE RUBBERHEADS STRIKE- Disneyland workers including the actors who stroll the park in big Mickey and Goofy heads go on strike.

1988 – Former President Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy died. Billy Carter was one of the more embarrassing presidential relatives- he used his influence as a paid lobbyist for Khaddafy’s Libya and produced BillyBeer, undoubtedly the worst beer I ever tasted.