Birthdays: King Edward Ist "Longshanks", John Wesley the founder of the Methodists, Igor Stravinsky, cartoonist Wally Wood, Ralph Bellamy, Mignon Dunn, Dean Martin, Barry Manilow, Joe Piscopo, Newt Gingrich, Martin Bormann, Jason Patrick, director Ken Loach, Greg Kinnear, Venus Williams.

1893- Cracker Jacks invented by RW Reuckheim. Their name came from someone sampling the caramel corn who exclaimed “These are Crackerjack!”- popular slang for something very good.

1919 - "Barney Google" cartoon strip, by Billy De Beck, premiered.

1940- As the Allied fronts in France crumbled before the Nazis onslaught and Paris was occupied and the invasion of Britain seemed. Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspired his demoralized people with his famous speech:”We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the hills and in the towns… we shall defend our island home. We shall Never Surrender!”

1946- The first mobile telephone was installed in an automobile in St. Louis, Missouri.

1950-Future attorney general and Senator Robert Kennedy married heiress Ethel Scheckter.

1952- Jack Parsons died in a massive explosion in his Pasadena kitchen. Parsons was a founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab and the Aerojet Corporation. One of the nations top rocket scientists, his research into fuels powered everything from world war two bazooka shells to the Space Shuttle booster engines. But Parsons also had a strange second life in the occult. He was a follower of Alastair Crowley, sometimes signed his name as AntiChrist and once tried to raise a demon in a sex ceremony. His close friends included writer Robert Heinlein and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. His mother committed suicide within hours of the explosion. No one is sure what caused the explosion that killed him, but he was cavalier in his use of dangerous materials “uh, could you hand me the Mayonnaise? It’s in the fridge between the C-4 and the Fulminate of Mercury.”

1964- The first Universal Studios tram car tour. Carl Laemmle had been inviting tourists in for a nickel to watch movies be filmed as early as 1915.

1968- Ohio Express’ single “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I got love in my Tummy” went gold.

1972- THE WATERGATE BREAK IN- President Richard Nixon's staff, trying to gain an edge on an upcoming election, hire men to break into Democratic National Committee's offices in the Watergate Hotel to steal election strategy documents. They had already broken in once before but the batteries on the wiretap they planted were defective so they wanted to replace them and copy some more documents. Hotel security guards caught three Cubans and a man named Frank Sturgis. One Cuban had, in his pocket, a check made out by a White House employee named E. Howard Hunt.
This "Third-Rate Burglary" and subsequent cover-up ulcerated into a major scandal that eventually forced the first ever resignation of a US president. In tapes, recorded at the time, President Nixon said: "nobody's gonna make a big deal that a Republican President broke into Democratic headquarters." President Lyndon Johnson had bugged the Republicans in 1967 and President Kennedy used the IRS to audit politicians he didn’t like but the general public didn’t know w that yet.

1990- The Battle of Century City- Police attack 500 supporters of striking building maintenance workers and janitors, mostly Central American immigrants trying to form a union.

1994- THE WHITE BRONCO CHASE- Movie actor and Hall of Fame football player O.J. Simpson was wanted for questioning about the grisly murder of his second wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her boyfriend Ron Goldman. This day OJ tried to escape. He and his friend Al Cowlings led police on a strange slow-speed pursuit for two hours around the freeways of Los Angeles as the world watched amazed on live television. He eventually was convinced to surrender. OJ Simpson was acquitted of murder in a controversial trial but found guilty in a civil wrongful death suit. Both trials polarized national opinions about race. Another suspect in the murder has never been found.

Birthdays: Stan Laurel, Willy Boskovsky, Joyce Carol Oates, Nelson Doubleday, Brian Eno, Martha Graham, Erich Segal, Jack Albertson, Helen Traubel, Ron LeFlore, Laurie Metcalf, Sonia Braga, Yasmine Bleeth, Disney animator Pete Burness

1657- First recorded mention in London of chocolate for sale. Cocoa or Tchocoaltl was served to Hernando Cortez by Montezuma in 1517 but it was pretty bitter stuff. The Maya also gave Europeans the first Vanilla beans. They tamed Chocolate with sugar and kept the formula a secret for 100 years. The Dutch figured it out and added milk for Milk Chocolate and Sir John Sloan the British chemist invented a formula as well.

1884 - On Coney Island Amusement Pier the Switchback Railway, the first roller coaster began operating.

1902- A musical play of L Frank Baum’s fantasy story the Wizard of Oz premiered at Chicago’s Grand Opera House. When Baum was writing down the stories at point he was stuck for a name for the magical kingdom. He looked down at his desk files that were labeled A-N and O-Z. Eureka!

1903 – The Pepsi Cola company forms.

1903-. As Henry Ford filed papers of incorporation of his Ford Automobile Company the first Ford automobiles go on sale at the Tenvoorde sales lot in Minnesota. The Tenvoorde is the oldest Ford dealership in the world and is still in business today, still run by the Tenvoorde Family.

1904- "Blume's Day" all the actions in James Joyce's "Ulysses" takes place on this one day in Dublin. This day Dubliners dress up as characters from the book and do readings.

1932- Broadway star Mae West heads for Hollywood to make movies.

1939- Bandleader Chick Webb died at age 30. Webb was an unlikely pop star, a hunchbacked, tuberculant little person who played drums, but his band the Chick Webb Orchestra pioneered the new Jazz form called Swing Music and inspired the Big Band Sound. One of Webb’s last actions before succumbing to his debilitating health problems was to make a star out of 19-year-old street singer named Ella Fitzgerald.

1943-54 year old actor Charlie Chaplin married his fourth wife 18 year old Oona O’Neill. In Hollywood Chaplin’s nickname was “Chickenhawk Charlie” for his fondness for barely legal girls.

1947 –The 1st regular broadcast network news show began-Dumont's "News from Washington".

1952- The CBS television comedy My Little Margie premiered. It starred Gale Storm and Charles Farrell.

1959- Actor George Reeves, who played the first television Superman, went upstairs during a dinner party and shot himself with a German Luger pistol. Actor Gig Young, who was a friend of Reeves said the actor 's career was going well and his love life was fine. He never believed the actor would shoot himself. Gig Young shot himself in 1981. Many of Reeves friends also wonder if it was a suicide because Reeves had been dating a socialite named who’s husband had mob connections. The bullet entrance wound didn’t have the customary powder burns of a suicide and there were other bullet holes in the floor and ceiling. Also the gun in Reeves hands had been wiped clean of fingerprints.

1961- Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "Psycho" premiered. “Oh Mother, what have you done?”

1967- The film “The Dirty Dozen” debuted.

1987- Italian porno star Ciccolina announced that since all politicians were whores and she was a whore she would run for office. This made sense to Italians who this day elected her overwhelmingly to a seat in Parliament.

1999- The founder of Britains Raving Monster Loon Party, Screaming Lord Sutch, was found hanged in his mother’s estate. It was ruled a suicide.

As the Annecy Animation Festival occurs in France this week, I wanted to recall an Annecy I attended twenty years ago- Annecy 87.

There are screenings held all day from morning to midnight shows, and an nighttime outdoor screening by the lake. But all who attend Annecy quickly learn the cool thing to do is not just attend screenings, but hang out at the brassieries with the animation crowd. Annecy is in the corner of France where it intersects with Italy and Switzerland. So foodwise, its the best of all worlds- French wine, Swiss cheese and chocolate, Italian dishes, -sweet! But it's the exchange of ideas that means more. At this first Annecy I got to hang with Borge Ring, Marc Davis, Bruno Bozzetto, Bill Littlejohn, June Foray, Kihajiro Kawamoto, Paul Dreissen, David Ehrlich, Howard Beckerman, Candy Kugel,and Bill Plympton. Charles Solomon, Pat and I got to share a fondue with Frederic Back. CLick to Enlarge-

" alt="" /> Ordering at the Bonlieu Brassierie in 1987 L-R Dutch Master Borge Ring, Bill Littlejohn, Me and Caroline Cruikshank.

" alt="" /> Our Nelvana reunion at the Bonlieu Center 1987-L-R Sito, Karen Munro, Bill Speers, Susa Caple, Scott Caple, Pat, Caroline Cruikshank, unknown.

[/img]Pat enjoying a solitary lunch- a jambon et fromage baguette- ham & cheese sandwich, by the base of the battlements of Annecy Castle.

Annecy Castle was not just a pretty little hilltop chateau, but it was a working stonghold where the medieval Dukes of Geneva would run to muster their forces whenever the people of Geneva got too uppity.
Napoleon worried about the loyalty of the people of Geneva-" In Geneve the people understand English, a little too well..." The fort was also the barracks of the Savoyard regiments of the French Army, who fought at Blenheim, Marengo, Sedan and Waterloo.

Merde! I'd rather be at Annecy getting wasted and watching cartoons!

In Roman times Annecy was the intersection of several main Roman Roads- the term Tre-Via is the origin of the term Trivia, because at such an intersection Roman travelors would leave notes and messages about the road ahead- Trivia notes.

So go to Annecy, drink some wine, and make some memories.

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Birthdays: Edward the Black Prince of England, Rachael Donelson Jackson- Andy Jackson’s First Lady, Edvard Grieg, Saul Steinburg, Mario Cuomo, Jim Varney, Wade Boggs, Waylon Jennings, Xaviera Hollander the Happy Hooker, Jim Belushi, Ice Cube, Courtenay Cox, Helen Hunt

Happy St. Vitas Day ! "If St. Vitas Day be rainy weather, twill rain for thirty days together."St. Vitus was the patron of epilepsy, and some extreme forms of seizure (chorea) was called "St. Vitus Dance".

1800- US Congress ordered the disbanding of the US Army as a waste of money.

1844- Mr. Charles Goodyear invents the vulcanization process, that keeps rubber from getting sticky in warm weather and brittle in the cold.

1846-The Oregon Treaty. The United States and Great Britain settle a dispute over exactly where the northwest border was between the U.S. and Canada. Despite President Polk’s belligerent campaign slogan “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!” a peaceful compromise was reached on the 49th parallel.

1849-Three months after leaving office President James K. Polk died. The President who fought the War with Mexico to get California and the southwest was a lifelong teetotaler and died of cholera from drinking tainted water. Sam Houston, who was one of the great alcoholic opium addicts of American history, said of Polk's death: " It’s the natural end of all Water-Drinkers!"

1932-The Bonus Marchers, twenty thousands of Depression-unemployed veterans, encamp around Capitol Hill and begin a silent barefoot protest march around Congress. Unlike the army and Government of the time they vote to abolish Jim Crow and completely integrate their ranks.

1938-Tha Fair Labor Standards Act passed.

1945- Judy Garland married director Vincente Minelli.

1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce married a stripper named Honey Stuart.

1955- DUCK & COVER. The US Government held Operation OPAL, the first nationwide Civil Defense alert drills. Not only did millions of school children have to jump under their desks to avoid imaginary Russian nukes but plans were made for commandos to grab the President, Congressional leaders, Supreme Court and even grab the Declaration of Independence and other valuable documents and whisk them out of endangered Washington D.C. to bunkers in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Top Russian officials said they learned a great deal about US intentions from observing these silly drills. President Eisenhower got a good laugh when the motorcade speeding him through the Virginia countryside was blocked by a heard of pigs. “Well, I guess that means we’re all dead boys!” The president joked.

1969- The country music comedy TV show Hee-Haw premiered as a summer replacement for the Smothers Brothers Hour. Hee Haw ran for two years with high ratings but CBS cancelled the show anyway. This was because CBS chief Bill Paley disliked country music and CBS had so many shows like Mayberry RFD, Beverly Hillbillys and Hee Haw that insiders joked that CBS stood for the Country Broadcasting System. Hee Haw had the last laugh going on to a successful syndication run until 1997.

1977- Everybody Disco! KC and the Sunshine band release “I’m your Boogie Man”.

1999- In San Diego Nicholas Vitalich was arrested for slapping his wife with a large tuna.

2002- Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones was knighted.

This week the Annecy Animation Festival is being held in France. Since 1961 Annecy has been animation's oldest and most prestigious festival.At least once in your professional life you should attend an Annecy Festival. For animation students and fans it is a wonderful opportunity to meet the most famous animation artists in the world, and tipple copious amounts of red wine with them. I have an article of Annecy memories in this months ANIMATION MAGAZINE, but here are some other images of the first Annecy Pat and I attended twenty years ago in 1987. Click on images to enlarge.

the castle gate in the canal that cuts through the old section of Annecy.


At this Annecy I got to know Disney legend Marc Davis really well. We became lifelong friends and he called me his "historian".

The award ceremony at Annecy. Frederic Back's The Man Who Planted Trees won the highest honors. Fyodor Khytruk was given a special lifetime award that was sculpted from a large block of lucite. It was so heavy poor Fyodor could barely hold it without help.

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DRAWING THE LINE received a great review from THE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM.(507, issue #114)
Reviewer John Newsinger called it " A marvelous book "
Something else to add to my F.B.I. dossier! Better send out for some more manila folders!
Thank You and Solidarity, Baby!

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Birthdays: Tomaso Albinioni, Senator Fighting Bob LaFollette,, Margaret Bourke-White, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sam Wanamaker, Dorothy McGuire, Burle Ives, Gene Barry, Jerzy Kosinski, Steffi Graf, Marla Gibbs

Happy Flag Day -in 1777 The Continental Congress orders the Stars and Stripes flag to replace the Cambridge Flag (The Tree and Stripes) and the Snake and Stripes and all those other things silly things and stripes as the U.S. Flag.

1816- Writers Shelley, Lord Byron and Mary Shelley were spending the summer at the Villa Deodati on Lake Geneva. This day among the revels, drinking, partner swapping and opium taking Byron suggested they all write a ghost story. They all tried but failed except for 19 year old Mary who invented the tale of a Swiss scientist who created an artificial man. She called it Frankenstein.

1822- Charles Babbage presented a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society in London proposing to build a "Difference Engine" a machine that could calculate equations and print the results-i.e. a computer. After ten years and a small fortune it never quite comes off.

1846-THE GREAT BEAR REBELLION- U.S. citizens living in Spanish California led by a school teacher named William Ide and Ezekiel Merritt declared themselves an independent country, not knowing that back east the U.S. government had already declared war on Mexico and annexed California to the U.S.. Remember information took months to get back East across Indian territory and burning deserts. The Anglo-Californians seized a Sonoma military post and arrested the owner of the largest hacienda in the area, a retired Mexican General named Mariano Vallejo. Ironically Senor Vallejo himself desired AltaCalifornia to have independence from Mexico City. They chose as their flag for the new republic the grizzly bear and the polar star, which is now the state flag. It wasn’t well drawn and a Mexican noblewoman watching the events thought the flag looked like a large towel with a red pig painted on it. US Col. John Freemont took over the Great Bear settlers and raised the US flag over the Presidio in San Francisco July 1st.

1941- First day shooting on John Huston’s film "The Maltese Falcon". It was Huston’s first director gig. After George Raft turned down the role of Sam Spade the lead went to an actor named Humphrey Bogart. He had started well as the hood Duke Mantee in Petrified Forrest but had since been typecast in character roles. At the time no one thought that Bogie was romantic leading man material. Bogart even had to wear his own suits on camera.

1951- Univac I, built by Dr John W, Mauchly and J. Prosper Eckert Jr. of the Remington Rand Company to be the first commercial built electronic computer, went on line for the census bureau in Philadelphia.

1954- The Eisenhower Administration ordered the adding of the words "Under God" to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. Francis Bellamy, who penned the original words, was a Socialist who would never have added them in his lifetime.

1957- Nelson Mandela married Winnie Mandela.

1962- Albert de Salvo, the Boston Strangler, killed his first victim.

1964- THE FIRST HIPPY BUS- Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, bought an old school bus, painted it psychadelic colors, took of troupe of 14 fellow free spirits called the Merry Pranksters and spent the next few months driving across the country taking LSD and staging Happenings in various cities and towns. The Bus’s name was Further and it’s driver was Neil Cassidy, friend of Beatnik author Jack Kerouac. A book documenting the escapades of the "hippy bus" was "The Electric Koolaid Acid Test.". Kesey became interested in LSD when he volunteered for a college program to experiment with the drug, secretly funded by the CIA. The Merry Pranksters were invited in 1969 to be the security for the Woodstock Rock Festival.

1966- The Vatican officially abolished the Index of Forbidden Books.

1977- The skinny Carnaby Street fashion model Twiggy Lawson got married to Michael Whitney.

1983- The Pioneer 10 space probe left it’s orbit around Jupiter and headed off into deep space. NASA lost all contact in 1997. Pioneer 10 is expected to reach the solar system of the star Ross 246 in the Constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 AD. Oh Boy, I can’t wait!

1989- Retired actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills policeman who was writing her a traffic ticket.

1995, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MP3. The researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS decided to use ".mp3" as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. Development on this technology started in 1987. By 1992 it was considered far ahead of its times. MP3 became the generally accepted acronym as the popular standard for digital music on the on the Internet."

2001- The Oxford English Dictionary admitted the slang expletive of Homer Simpson "DOH!" into its august pages.

2002- An asteroid the size of a football field bypassed the Earth by just 75,000 miles, about one fifth the distance to our moon. If it had hit us, the cataclysm might have rivaled the one that eliminated the Dinosaurs. Little was said about it in the media because it came from the direction of the Sun and was undetectable until almost on top of us. So sleep well tonight, modern science is on guard!

More Advice from the Old Masters-



Shamus Culhane (1908-1996) once sat me on his lap, took the Bourbon out of my hand, and told me- The biggest animation studio is two flops from disaster. One flop and they say- okay, we'll learn from this. But after the second flop, when you hear " We have to re-evaluate.." It means time to get your portfolio up to date."


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Birthdays: Harriet Beecher Stowe, W.B.Yeats, Red Grange, Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Sayers, Ralph Edwards, Tim Allen, Darla Hood, Malcom McDowell, Ally Sheedy, Simon Callow, Joe Roth, Christo, Paul Lynde-he of the Hollywood Squares and that utterly memorable TV show Dastardley and Mutley and their Flying Machines

1905- The workers of the Russian city of Odessa go on strike and the Tsar's troops shoot them down on the Odessa steps. This causes the Battleship Potemkin's sailors to mutiney. Twenty years later Sergei Eisenstein to make a famous film of the same name. Unlike the film the crew of the Potemkin didn't start a revolution, they just sailed their ship to Romania and asked for asylum.


1920-The US Government rules Americans cannot mail their children through the Parcel Post System.

1927- Wall St. tickertape parade for Lucky Lindy- Charles Lindbergh.

1941-The American Federation of Labor the AF of L called for a nationwide boycott of all Disney products and films. This was to support the Disney Cartoonists strike.

1942- President Roosevelt by executive order created the Office of Strategic Services or the OSS. Under director Wild Bill Donovan its job was to coordinate espionage and intelligence gathering against the Axis powers in cooperation with its British counterpart , the SOE. On the agencies personnel roster were experts from spymasters Bill Gates and William Casey to tourist book author Eugene Fodor and chef Julia Child. Child recalled the outfit was nicknamed “Oh So Secret!” and “Oh, So-Social” for all the society notables in it. After World War Two the OSS transformed into the CIA.

1958- rock & roll great Frank Zappa graduated Antelope Valley High School.

1978- Henry Ford II fired Lee Iacocca from the Ford Corporation. The creator of the Ford Mustang would later move on to run Chrysler. When asked why Ford said: “Sometimes you just don’t like somebody.”