As the lazy summer days drag on some important dates to remember are coming closer.

On August 21st,to commemorate what would have been the 100th Birthday of Warner Bros cartoon director Isadore Friz Freleng, the website http://www.HellonFriscoBay.blogspot.com is holding a day long Freleng-For-All. People are invited to share their memories of Friz and their favorite Friz cartoons on their blogs and link to his site.

Also remember the Benefit for Cal Arts own Martha Baxton is in full swing. Donate, support, attend the party Sept 9th. Even if you didn't know her, you can check out the cool stuff piling up to auction. Maybe get yourself a bargain. Already listed is an Original Milt Kahl drawing from Disney's Robin Hood, tickets to Penn & Teller in Vegas, a computer, original artwork. HELLO? ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? I SAID, AN ORIGINAL MILT KAHL SKETCH!!.Try and buy one of those somewhere else and still afford a tank of gas. And the loot is only beginning to pile up! See you on the 9th. http://baxton.mrkurtnielsen.com


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Birthdays: Meriwether Lewis of Lewis & Clark fame , Austrian Emperor Franz Josef II, opera Heldentenor Leo Slezak, Shelly Winters, Caspar Weinburger, Roberto Clemente, Rafer Johnson, Enoch Light, Coco Channel, Roman Polanski is 73, Patrick Swayze, Madeleine Stowe, Christian Slater, Edward Norton is 37, Martin Mull, Egads, Robert Redford is 70!

1503-Pope Alexander VI the Borgia died. Some say he died of malaria , others that he poisoned himself accidentally while trying to poison someone else. The Borgia's enemies then take over the Vatican and end Caesar & Lucretia Borgia's reign of terror. The Pope had had seven children and at the time was sleeping with 16 year old Giulia Farnese whom he had painted as the Virgin Mary. People said the Alexander had sold his soul to the devil because at his death an ape appeared on his windowsill and water boiled in his mouth. Hmmm- proof enough for me. His 300 lb. corpse was so swollen with corruption that it had to be pounded into it's coffin with wooden wine corking mallets.

1937- The Toyota Automobile Company was established as an offshoot of the Toyoda Motorized Loom Works. They changed the name Toyoda to Toyota because a Shinto priest told them the name would be luckier.

1939- The movie the Wizard of Oz released and made a star of Judy Garland. Frank Morgan, ther actor playing the Wizard, needed to wear a shabby old coat so a studio costume designer went through some L.A. thrift stores until she found the good candidate. When Morgan looked in the lining he discovered the coat was previously owned by L.Frank Baum, writer of the Oz stories. Morgan was first president of the Screen Actor's Guild, but stepped down when he was considered 'too left' to work with the Roosevelt administration. Lyricist Yip Harburg ( Somewhere over the Rainbow ) was later blacklisted as a communist. "And yer little dog ,too!!"

1953- The first MacDonalds Franchise restaurant opened in Downey California.

1966- The Ice Slurpee was invented by two Dallas engineers for a failing Oklahoma ice cream store.

1977- The Xerox Company decided not to seriously market the Alto, the pioneering personal computer that had a graphic window interface and mouse long before anyone else. Xerox decided to stick with copying machines and disbanded their Palo Alto development team Xerox PARC. Most of their breakthroughs wound up in other computers like the Mackintosh and the IBM PC.

1977- The rock band the Police make their debut in a Birmingham nightclub. The lead singer Gordon Sumner started to get the nickname Sting from the black and yellow shirt he habitually wore.

1999- TV psychic Kriswell predicted this date would be the End of the World.

DRAWING THE LINE BOOK SIGNINGS Update:
USC- Seminar Weds Night Oct 18th at 6:30Pm
UCLA- Oct. 23rd 7:30PM, Bridges Auditorium.
Cal St. Fullerton- Oct 30th
Laguna College of Design Oct 25
and Woodbury College to follow!
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History for 8/17/2006
Birthdays: Davy Crocket, Mae West, Marcus Garvey, Sam Goldwyn- original name Schmuel Gelbfisz, then Sam Goldfish, Harry Hopkins, Monte Wooley, Maureen O’Hara, Boog Powell, Belinda Carlisle, Guillermo Vilas, V.S. Naipul, Jim Courier, Donnie Wahlberg, Sean Penn, Robert DeNiro is 63
courtesy freezeframes.com
1941-Walt Disney and his artists leave on a goodwill tour of South America, underwritten by a $70,000 government grant. President Franklin Roosevelt was worried that some South American countries might be sympathetic to Nazis forcing the U.S. to worry about her backdoor. Argentine president Juan Peron wanted to build a statue to Mussolini in Buenos Aires and many countries there had Wermacht advisors and offered safe harbors for Nazi U-Boats. So FDR sent Nelson Rockefeller to give the Latin American countries whatever they wanted to keep them out of the world war. Among other things they wanted Donald Duck. Federal mediators also felt they could better solve the Disney Studio Strike with Walt out of town. The American Federation of Labor had union picketers to greet Disney at several stops in Mexico and Buenos Aires, a fact not seen in the documentarys. The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos result.

1969- The closing day of the Woodstock Rock Concert, Three Days of Peace and Music. Jimmy Hendrix did his famous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

1984- The Walt Disney Company informed it’s chairman Ron Miller that they wanted his resignation. Disney had released the BLack Hole, Condorman and Herbie Goes Bananas, and fallen to 14th in film box office by then. Miller’s only qualifications to run a conglomerate other than being Walt’s son-in-law was he was a tight end for the LA Rams. Within two years of the Michael Eisner regime taking power Disney was number one.

1985-The Hormel Meat Packing Strike, severely threatening the worlds supply of SPAM.

1992- Famed film director Woody Allen admits he is having an affair with Soon Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his long time lover Mia Farrow. He is 60 and she is 21. But as the unrepentant Allen states: “The Heart wants what it wants.”

From the Now-I've-Seen-Everything-Department, this from a friend in Berlin:

http://www.chilloutzone.de/files/06071304.html

Adolf Hitler sitting on the toilet, in 3D animation, singing Gangsta rap!

I don't make the news, I just report it.

History for 8/16/2006
Birthdays: Otto Mesmer the creator of Felix the Cat, Myron Grim Natwick the creator of Betty Boop, Hal Foster the creator of Prince Valiant, Alex Raymond the creator of Flash Gordon, Kathie Lee Gifford, Bill Evans, Leslie Ann Warren, Angela Bassett, Julie Numar, Robert Culp, James Cameron, Bruce Beresford,Steve Carell, Madonna-real name Madonna-Louise Ciccone from Bay City Michigan is 48

Today is the Feast of St. Roch, who had a heavenly inspired dog to lick his sores and cure him of the Black Plague.

1877- BIRTHDAY OF THE WORD-"HELLO". In a letter dated today Thomas Edison wrote to the first president of AT&T about how people should initiate conversation on the new telephone machine. A genteel Victorian would think it impolite to speak until spoken to. Edison explained that the results of sonic tests proved the old English fox hunting call "Halloo!" was most audible over great distances. Alexander Graham Bell, an old navy man, always thought the right way to start a phone conversation was to say "AHOY!", but hello won out. It was the only English word Sioux Chief Sitting Bull ever learned. He loved to grab your hand and pump it vigorously while saying:" HELLO, HELLO!"

1896- Four miners find gold in Bonanza Creek in the Klondike. The Yukon Gold Rush begins.

1938- Blues legend Robert Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband in Three Forks Mississippi.

1942- Happy Birthday Mighty Mouse. Terrytoon's short: "The Mouse of Tomorrow".

1954- First issue of Sports Illustrated.

1965- The AFL, American Football League offered it’s first expansion franchise to a new team called the Miami Dolphins. The AFL merged with the NFL in the 80s.

1969- “ Hey Man, we’re gonna serve breakfast in bed for 500,000” So was hippy Wavy Gravy’s announcement on the second day of the Woodstock Rock Concert. He said this was the day Americans learned to eat Granola. It was ladled out en masse in paper cups and has been a diet staple ever since.
courtesy digitaltechnews.com
1976- THIRTY YEARS AGO-Apple Computers was founded by two college dropouts- Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, in a California garage.

1977- E-DAY in Memphis. 42 year old Elvis Presley, donuts and Pizza Hut box in hand died sitting on the toilet. That is, if you choose to believe he really died...?

1987- The Harmonic Convergence- Another one of these celestial events that the mainstream media trumpeted as the end of everything. All nine planets of our solar system were in perfect alignment and the subsequent gravitational forces were supposed to knock the Earth into the Sun or something or other that would send us to Hell in a Handbasket. So what happened? Bupkis.

1991- The original Shamu the Whale died of respiratory failure at age 16.

courtesy Asifa/Hollywood.org
I'd like to call to your attention the fellow who did the painting that graces the cover of my book DRAWING THE LINE. Patrick Mate' is a Frenchman who moved to Hollywood and animates for Dreamworks. His credits include films like Balto, Prince of Egypt, Sharktale and Over the Hedge. Once when animator Nancy Beiman was in town, Patrick and his wife Nina invited a bunch of us over for a party. When there I was impressed to see Patricks' other passion was doing paintings of famous people. He enjoys a form of stylized caricature similar to the caricaturist Kruger. I am thrilled to have his work on the cover of my book. His website had examples of his stuff as well as links to a number of other Invincible Gauls or animation. http://www.patrickmate.blogspot.com
courtesy patrickmate.blogspot.com
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History for 8/15/2006
Birthdays: Napoleon Bonaparte is 237, Samuel Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott,
T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, Ethel Barrymore, Huntz Hall,Bill Baird, Julia Child, Edna Ferber, Sir Robert Bolt, Rose-Marie, Linda Ellerbee, Oscar Peterson, Leon Theremin-inventor of that weird electronic musical instrument that is featured in all those 50s flying saucer movies, Maxine Waters, Nicholas Roeg, Ben Afleck is 35, Debra Messing is 39

778 AD.-Battle of Roncevaux or Roncesvalles. Legendary battle where Frankish Emperor
Charlemagne's top knights -the Palladins: Roland waving his sword Durandel,
Oliver and Ogier the Dane fell fighting the Moors. The battle was probably a small
rearguard skirmish with hostile Basques guerrillas but a poem about the incident
called the Song of Roland expanded it into an epic Christian battle against the
evil Moslem Moors, wizards and devils. The Chanson du Roland became top of the charts
in the Middle Ages. When William the Conquerer's Normans went into battle at
Hastings in 1066 William's minstrel Vailletan sang the Song of Roland at
full gallop while tossing his sword into the air and catching it like a parade drum major.

1057-Scottish king Macbeth is defeated and killed by Malcom III Canmore at the
battle of Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire. But did Burnham Wood move to Dunsinane?

1097- DEUS VOLT ! GOD WILLS IT! The First Crusade was announced at Clermont by
Pope Urban VII. Christian Europe decided that the Holy places in Jerusalem should
not be in Moslem hands. In his sermon the Pope addressed the assembled knights in
their native French:Christian warriors who continually seek pretexts for
war and rape Rejoice! If you must have Blood, then bathe in the Blood of the Infidels,
and Christ will count you among his Warriors! Soldiers of Hell, become Soldiers
of the Living God! They sewed small strips of red cloth in a cross on
their left shoulders and began with a massacre of any Jews they could find. History is at a
loss to find any comparable social phenomenon. It took Islam a generation to understand
that this was a Christian Jihad (Holy war) declared on them. The Moslem Emirs were
just as feudally divided as the European warlords until they united under the brilliant
Kurd Sultan Sa' Allah-al-Dhin or Salladin.

1848 - M Waldo Hanchett patents the dental chair.Cartoonist Al Hirschfield liked to draw while seated in a dentist chair in his study.

1885- Sir Richard Burton completed his translation from medieval Persian of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. There had been earlier attempts like a French edition in 1809, but Burton's edition introduced the west to Aladdin and his magic lamp, Sinbad the sailor and Sherherazahde.

1911- Proctor & Gamble introduced Crisco shortening.

1958 - Buddy Holly weds Maria Santiago.

1960- The Congo ( Brazzaville) declared independence from France. It had been renamed
Zaire for awhile but is back to the Republic of the Congo today.Remember at the end of Casablanca when Claude Rains says to Humphrey Bogart- "I have a cousin in the Free French garrison down in Brazzaville. I could arrange a passage..?"

1969-WOODSTOCK-Three Days of Peace and Music- The rock concert of the Century opened. The promoters, one of whom was heir to the Polident Denture Cream fortune, were hoping to host
50,000 people and launch a recording studio in the quiet New York farming town.
What they got was 500,000 hippies and the social phenomenon that defined the Age.
At one point the more conservative elements of the community got a court order to
block the land to be used, but farmer Max Yasgur offered his cow farm for the site.
Up till then in the tumultuous 1960s any gathering of young people that
big meant violence and riot, and at one point New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller threatened
to send in the National Guard. But the magic prevailed and there was no violence
outside of 200 bad acid trips and one heroin overdose.
Richie Havens was the first act to play, he did six sets and kept stalling because
the crowd was so immense they had to bring in the other bands by helicopter. When
he ran out of songs to sing Havens started riffing any thing he could think of the
top of his head. This way Havens created his most famous tune "Freedom"
with added in spirituals like "Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child".
Drugs, sex and rock & roll flowed freely. At one point someone put LSD into the drinking water of
the rescue helicopter pilot . He spent two hours flying in circles over the festival,
thinking he was traveling over one huge expanse of people. One hippy had spent the
entire night high on LSD. As he started to come down, the first thing he recognized
in the dawns early light was Sha-Na-Na on stage doing 50s Doo-Wop. He
thought he had been sent to Rock Hell.