The Space Shuttle that went into space today with the large Japanese laboratory carried an additional passenger. A Buzz Lightyear doll.

To Infinity and uh,...you know.

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Quiz- Yesterday in Hollywood there was a big fire on the Universal back lot. Why is the area where they film movies called Lots?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Movie companies tell us copying movies is piracy and bad. Was illegally pirating a movie ever a good thing?
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History for 6/2/2008
Birthdays: John Randolph, The Marquis DeSade, Martha Custis Washington, Thomas Hardy, Hedda Hopper, Sir Edward Elgar, Johnny Weismuller, Charlie Watts, Disney animation story artist Dick Heumer, Lotte Reinniger Marvin Hamlisch, Barry Levinson, Jon Peters, Dana Carvey, Garo Yepremian, Jerry Mathers the Beaver of the old t.v. show Leave it to Beaver is 64, Dayvid Haysbert, Lasse Halstrom

303 A.D.-Martyrdom of St. Elmo.The Emperor Diocletian had him starved, beaten with clubs, flogged with lead balled whips, rolled in tar and set on fire, roasted again in an iron chair, and he finally died after having his intestines wound out around a windlass. He is the patron saint of seafarers. When the blue electrical phenomenon appear on ship's masts during a storm is called "St. Elmo's Fire".

1453-At Breslau, Papal Legate John of Capistrano presided over the torture of six Jews. After they confessed to Jewish practices, he had them burned at the stake. After John died of natural causes the Protestants dug up his bones and threw them to the dogs. John was canonized San Juan Capistrano in 1690. A century later Franciscan monk Fra Junipero Serra named the picturesque little mission in California after him. And the swallows do migrate there.

1763- At the British Fort Michilimackinac near Lake Superior some Sauk and Chippewa Indians were playing lacrosse. While the British sentries were engrossed in the ball game Indian women gathered near the forts’ open gates. When one player hurled the ball up over the wall as a signal the women tossed concealed knives and tomahawks to the players who rushed the fort and massacred its garrison.

1780- THE GORDON RIOTS- Lord Gordon organized a public demonstration against a pending bill granting toleration of Roman Catholic worship in England. The mob marched on Parliament where went goes berserk and looted London for a week. Lord Gordon became the last nobleman executed in the Tower of London and Parliament passed the Riot Act. But his tactics scared Parliament from passing the bill. The Catholic Emancipation Bill would not be passed until 1834. From then on whenever an unruly crowd won't disperse shortly before the Authorities start shooting and clubbing people, they first read them aloud the Riot Act.

1886- President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in a White House ceremony. She was the daughter of his former law partner and Cleveland became her legal guardian after his death. Despite her being half his age and his earlier reputation for fathering cxhildren out of wedlock they were much in love and she especially charmed the American public. At age 21 she became the youngest woman to be First Lady. Songs were written for her and their first baby was honored with a candy bar- the Baby Ruth.

1896- Gugielmo Marconi took out a patent on wireless broadcasting - radio.
At the time his device could be heard from almost 12 miles away !

1920- Eugene O’Neill won a Pulitzer Prize for his first play Beyond the Horizon.

1928 - Velveeta Cheese created by Kraft.


Ain't the internet a scary place? courtesy thespoof.com

1940-Will Eisner's "The Spirit" comic first appears.

1961- Humorist writer George F. Kaufman died. He wanted put on his headstone:
"Over My Dead Body!"

1973- London animator Richard Williams closed down his Soho studio for a month so his staff could be lectured by Disney legend Art Babbitt.


The notes from these lectures have been xeroxed and rexeroxed and have become the most famous unpublished animation manual of all time. My fellow animators & I nicknamed it THE SECRETS OF LIFE AND DEATH, after the book of notes by Dr. Frankenstein in the monster movies.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Movie companies tell us copying movies is piracy and bad. Was illegally pirating a movie ever a good thing?

Answer: Once. The 1922 silent horror classic Nosferatu. Even though the filmmakers changed the name and the ending, it still looked enough like Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, that the late authors’ family sued for breach of copyright. The judge ruled for the family, and ordered all the prints destroyed. The only reason we any have copies of this landmark film is because of bootleg copies.

Max Shreik as Count Orlov in Nosferatu. Even 88 years later, it's still a really creepy movie if you never have seen it.

Quiz: What is a full-bird colonel?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is bilge?
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History for 7/1/2008
Birthdays: Louis Bleriot, Tommy Dorsey, George Sand, Charles Laughton, James Cagney, Princess Diana, Twyla Tharp, Carl Lewis, Jamie Farr, Sidney Pollack, Wally "Famous"Amos, Olivia DeHavilland is 92, Estee Lauder, Debbie Harry, Genevieve Bujold, Karen Black, Dan Ackroyd. Andre Crouch, Pamela Anderson is 41, Liv Tyler is 31

Welcome to July named for Julius Caesar. Before that the Romans called it month number five- "Quintilicus". They had a ten month calendar and ran out of names after Juno (June). So thank Julius Caesar that you don't have to celebrate the Fourth of Quintilicus.

330BC- Alexander the Great comes upon the body of his enemy Darius IV, the Great King of Persia. Darius was assassinated by several noblemen who thought it would make Alexander stop pursuing them. Alexander caught the assassins and had them executed. Their leader Bessus the Satrap of Bactria had his nose and ears cut off, then was tied by the arms to two bent trees that when released pulled his body apart.

1851-Painter James MacNeil Whistler applied to West Point Military Academy. After failing entrance exams he washes out and concentrates on becoming one of the most celebrated artists of the century. He later joked:" If silicon was a gas I’d be a major general by now!"

1858- Charles Darwin does a public reading of his theories on Evolution to the Linean Club in London.

1863- GETTYSBURG- the most famous battle ever fought on U.S. soil.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee decided to invade north into Pennsylvania and hopefully by threatening Philadelphia and Washington force peace talks. Union General Meade shadowed his movements. With all their cavalry away chasing each other the two large armies groped around blindly through the backwoods of Lancaster County. Rebel General Henry Heath stopped in the little crossroads town of Gettysburg to get shoes for his men. While there he ran into some blue uniforms up the street. "Go on boys, that's jes some Pennsylvania militia." Heath said. Actually it turned out to be the Yankee's elite "Iron Brigade". A nasty firefight brewed up and both armies started to boil into each other like a slow motion trainwreck. Union General Winfield Scott Hancock drew up his cannon in a hilltop cemetery for defense. The battle would last three days and Lee's defeat would be the turning point of the Civil War.
Through the screams and gunsmoke one could read a little sign on the Gettysburg Cemetery gate: " The Carrying or Discharge of Firearms on these Premises are strictly Prohibited".

1867-HAPPY CANADA DAY- By treaty Her Majesties North American Colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, Maritimes, Prince Rupert Land and diverse other holdings are incorporated as the Autonomous Dominion of Canada. This master plan to consolidate the British Empire's colonial administration was invented by Lord Caernarvon, who Queen Victoria nicknamed "Twitters."

1898- THE CHARGE UP SAN JUAN HILL. Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders take the Spanish fortifications on the two hilltops above the harbor of Cuba's second city, Santiago. His main attack was actually up Kettle Hill and the Rough Riders were on foot, and Teddy was not in charge, but it made great hardcopy. Roosevelt"s superior was elderly former Confederate General Fightin' Joe Wheeler, who occasionally mixed up calling the Spaniards-"Yankees". Teddy was so excited about being under fire that at one point he stopped before a trooper dying of a terrible abdominal wound, shook his hand and said: " Isn't this just a splendid day ?!" Equally engaged in the fighting was the U.S. Ninth Cavalry, the famed Buffalo Soldiers led by Lt. John Pershing, who because of his affinity for his black troops was already referred to as Blackjack Pershing. Artist Frederick Remington was there as a news correspondent as was author Stephen Crane and William Randolph Hearst. On the Spanish side was a young soldier named Pablo Castro, who’s son would be Fidel Castro.



1916- THE SOMME- During World War One while the French and Germans were stalemated at Verdun the British began the "Big Push" also known as the First Battle of the Somme. The British high command were so confident this attack would break open the stalemate and get them out of the trenches that they began training their men in open country tactics. But after four months of hell and one million casualties all they managed to do was move their trench line up just 5 miles. Twenty thousand men fell in just one day. The descendant of one veteran of the battle recalled his grandfather reached the German trenches and saw a dead Hun machine gunner knee deep in spent bullet cartridges. Young Captain Robert Graves was sent back to England for an operation on his deviated septum. He missed the attack while his unit suffered 60% casualties. Despite a terrible shrapnel wound later Graves survived to write books like " I Claudius". At one point he was in hospital with poet Wilfred Owen and A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh). Another lieutenant there named J.R.R.Tolkein was jotting down notes about old Norse-Celtic warriors and wizards for a future book. A documentary filmmaker was allowed to film the Somme assault but he had to stay so far away from the fighting that his best footage was re-staged later. Yet the finished movie 'Battle of the Somme" horrified the British public because no one had ever seen such ghastly scenes before, like a man killed on film going over the top -even though the scene was faked. The Somme became to the British psyche a symbol of pointless gallantry much as Vietnam became to Americans or Verdun to the French. Historian John Keegan said in retrospect the English sense of naïve optimism from the Victorian Era turned cynical after the Somme.

1941- Animation director Tex Avery stormed out of the Looney Tunes Studio when Jack Warner ordered cuts in the first Bugs Bunny cartoon, A Wild Hare. Boss Leon Schlesinger put him on a four week suspension without pay, but Avery had already lined up a gig at MGM.

1941- THE FIRST TV COMMERCIAL -During the live coverage of a Brooklyn Dodgers-Philadelphia Phillies baseball game the first FCC sanctioned television commercial aired. It was for the Bulova Watch Company.

1945- Bill Mauldin's wartime comic strip "Willie and Joe' ends it's run along with the European front line edition of Stars and Stripes magazine. Mauldin was once chewed out by General Blood & Guts Patton for making his GIs so slovenly and cynical. He felt it was a negative image of the American Fighting Man.

One of my favorites. "Hello, Artillery? I have a target for you, but you're going to have to be patient..."

Bill Mauldin's black & white brush work was amazing. Charles Schulz used to tell us " No one could draw mud and its effects better than Bill Mauldin." He was a great influence on cartoonists from Schulz to Oliphant. Unfortnately, when I finally met him in San Antonio a year before he died, age and hard living had debilitated his faculties, and he was pretty frail and incoherent. I wish I knew him in his prime.

1945- NY Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia read the Sunday comics section over the radio because of a newspaper strike.

1946- The first peacetime A-Bomb detonated in the Bikini Islands. The army wanted to study the effects of the bomb so they parked old German warships, buildings and dummys around it, as well as chained down animals. They soldiers nicknamed the bomb 'Gilda' after the Rita Hayworth movie. When Ms. Hayworth heard her name was being used to incinerate 1,500 innocent sheep, horses and elephants she collapsed in shock. The inhabitants of the island were removed and to this day the islands are uninhabitable. A cloud of radiation also killed the crew of a Japanese fishing boat in the area. But the island's name gave a neat idea to French designer Jacques Clauzel what to call his daring new ladies’ two-piece swimsuit.

1963-U.S. POST OFFICE introduced Zip Codes.

1970- Hanna & Barbera’s primetime animated series "Where’s Huddles?"

1972- Ms. Magazine started publication.

1981- The Wonderland Murders. Notoriously over-endowed porn star Johnny Holmes was implicated in a gangland murder. In a Los Angeles home known to be involved in drug dealing. four people were found beaten to death with a steel pipe. Holmes was picked up and tried as an accomplice but was acquitted. Hung jury.I’m sorry, I just had to say it! His fate hung in the balance! Okay, I’ll stop.



1996- the movie Dinosaur Valley Girls premiered.

1998- Barbara Streisand married James Brolin.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is bilge?

Answer: The lowest part of the bottom of the ship, where the two sides meet at the keel. In the old days leaking water, fuel oil, waste and other indescribable liquids would gather at the bottom- Bilge Water, and have to be pumped out- A Bilge Pump.

"Southern California is a great place, if you're an orange."
- Fred Allen

The Hollywood History seminars I've been attending at the Huntington Library wrapped up Saturday. More panels on the meaning of Citizen Kane, the rise of the Hollywood press and efforts to restore part of the original Santa Monica Beach house of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies. It's kind of funny calling it a beach house, since it was twice the size of the White House and decorated more opulently.

But the afternoon's highlight were the closing remarks of Historian Prof. Kevin Starr. No, he is not the Monica Lewinsky prosecutor, that's Kenneth Starr; he is the official chief librarian of the state and author of a series of books on California history like Embattled Dreams and Inventing the Dream. His topic was on his familiar theme of the social-cultural evolution of California and its future.

Prof Kevin Starr, courtesy of Stanford Univ.

Now any one who has met me in the past knows that regardless of how you judge my animation, you know I can tell a good history story. Well, try to imagine me sitting silently, mouth agape, listening to someone else!

I was transfixed at the bravura performance of this speaker. Prof Starr spoke with authority, exhibiting perfect pacing and clarity, moving rapidly, dropping an anecdote here, a cross reference there, occasionally gulping water without ever stalling his rhythm. And all the while holding 80 people enthralled for a full hour. Wow! That's a story teller! I bow to a fellow Jedi Master.

I felt like King Louie in Jungle Book. "I wanna be just like yoouuu..!"
His books are a great read too. Rich in intricate detail and anecdote. Funny how some shows inspire you to go home and draw. This one inspired me to go home and write!

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Quiz: Movie companies tell us copying movies is piracy and bad. Was illegally pirating a movie ever a good thing?

Yesterday’s Quiz: Why are some parts of a city like SF called The Tenderlion?
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History for 6/1/2008
Welcome to June, from Iunius, the month of Juno, queen of the Roman gods.

Birthdays: Brigham Young, Marilyn Monroe would be 81!, Pat Boone, Mikhail Glinka, Red Grooms, Karl Von Clausewitz, Andy Griffith, Morgan Freeman is 70, Nelson Riddle, Lisa Hartman, Cleavon Little, Frederica Von Stade, Powers Booth, Rene Aubergjenois, Lisa Hartman, Brian Cox, Josef Pujol *

*Pujol was famous throughout late Victorian Europe as Le Petomane- The Fartiste- who could fart musical melodies and snuff candles at great distances. He performed an entire evening’s concert for crowned heads and would finish by farting La Marseillaise.

1792- Kentucky Statehood. The lands of Kentucky were claimed at one point to be part of Virginia, claimed by Spain and groups of leathershirts (frontiersmen) even talked of founding an independent state called the Kingdom of Yazoo.

1813- In battle with a British warship, HMS Leopard, dying Captain Lawrence, of the U.S.S. Chesapeake, cried:" Don't Give Up the Ship!" They don't but he died anyway.

1876- Eighteen-year old Milton Hershey opened his first candy store. Hershey's goes on to become the largest candy maker in the U.S. The Hershey’s chocolate kiss is so named because the machine that creates the candy looks like it is kissing the conveyor belt.

1931- Swiss artist Albert Hurter joined the Disney staff, giving the look of cartoons like Snow White a more Germanic storybook look.

1933 - Charlie Chaplin wed actress Paulette Goddard

1936 - "Lux Radio Theater" moved from NYC to Hollywood.

1939- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUPERMAN- Joe Seigel and Jerry Shuster, two aspiring cartoonists in High School create a character called “Superman”. Jewish kids, they had read about the Nazis racial concept of the Aryan Superman. They wanted to show a Superman could be on the American side. On this day they sell all the rights to their characters to Detective Comics (D.C.) for $130. When the first megabudget Superman movie was being made in the 1976, Neal Adams and the National Cartoonist's Society pointed out that Seigel & Schuster were now on hard times. They never shared a nickel of the multi-millions their creation had generated. Seigel was blind and Schuster delivered sandwiches from a local deli. The publicity forced Warner Bros and DC Comics to award them and their families pensions for life.

1942- British actor Leslie Howard, who played Ashley in" Gone with the Wind " and Henry Higgins in the first film of "Pygmalion" joined the RAF as a fighter pilot in World War Two. This day he was shot down and killed by the Luftwaffe over the English Channel.

1961 - FM multiplex stereo broadcasting 1st heard

1966 - George Harrison is impressed by Ravi Shankar's concert in London.

1967 –The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the UK.

1968 - Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" hits #1

1979- Gannett News Services began USA Today, called by some critic's-'MacPaper'.

1980- Ted Turner started CNN news channel. Hard to believe now, but before Larry King, Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck, it delivered only hard news, every twenty minutes, 24 hours a day.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why are some parts of a city like SF called The Tenderloin?

Answer: In the 1870's New York and San Francisco city cops took bribes to leave big time gambling parlors and houses of ill repute alone. The neighborhoods with the most such establishments gave out the most money. When a NY cop named Clubber Williams demanded to be assigned to this lucrative beat, he supposedly said: I’ve been doing all the work to bring the beef in, but now I want some of the Tenderloin!” Since then these red-light naughty districts were known as the Tenderloin.