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This past Saturday Art Leonardi, one of the last of the Termite Terrace Warner Bros animators, got us all down to the Warner Bros lot to participate in a holiday fair. The annual event helps Camp Ronald MacDonald to aid children with cancer. Art set up long tables and we spend the day drawing cartoon characters for the children. I couldn't stay long, but I put in an hour or so doing about a dozen drawings of Disney, Warners and an anime star named Ben 10. Thanks for whoever had that model sheet handy! There was a nice turnout of around fifteen of my fellow scribblers. It must have made Art happy, because he spends weeks before bugging us all to attend, like Father Duffy shaming you to go to Confession!

When I was a tiny tot, I went up to Milton Caniff at a National Cartoonists show in NY's Central Park and he drew me a picture. I never forgot it.

All of us professional cartoonists who endlessly headache over money, the business, deadlines and creative arguments would do well to do an event like this once and awhile. It's important to remember what a gift you have.

You can draw a picture, and make a sick kid smile.

Now, I'm not a very religious person, but I do know being an artist means you have a certain talent that was not given to everyone. Surrounded by so many other creative people in our industry, we forget sometimes how special it really is.

And doing something as simple as doing a cartoon to make a child forget his own problems even for a moment, is payback for Divine Providence giving you your livelyhood.

The Holiday Season is the time when we remember how fortunate we are, and that we should never take it for granted.

So there's your brief. This Holiday, use that talent you were given, and go make at lease one child happy.
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Quiz: Actor Lloyd Bridges’ sons, Jeff and Beau Bridges, both became actors, likewise Martin Sheen’s boys Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez. Debbie Reynold’s daughter is Carrie Fisher. Are there such dynasties in animation?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Who wrote the famous British hymn “Jerusalem”, featured in the film Chariots of Fire? Bring me my bow, of Burning Fire, Bring me my arrows of De-sire…
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¬History for 12/15/2008
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Nero, Roman Emperor Lucius Verus who was known for little else but his really swell haircut, Gustav Eiffel, J. Paul Getty, Jeff Chandler, Alan Freed, animator Ernie Pintoff, Helen Slater, Don Johnson, Stuart Townsend

1790- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has a farewell dinner for Franz Josef Haydn who was going to London for two years. Amadeus said:" Farewell Papa, I think we shall not see each other again in life. " Mozart was 34 and Haydn was 67, so he probably thought Haydn would go first. Mozart died a year later at 35 and old Haydn lived another fifteen years, dying in his 80s.

1791-The BILL OF RIGHTS was ratified and added to the U.S. CONSTITUTION- It was the brainchild of James Madison, who felt the Constitution was a bit vague on basic civil rights. Even so Patrick Henry thought it was still too weak.

1792- FOUNDING FATHERS SEX SCANDAL- In the dead of night George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton (that guy on your ten-dollar bill) was visited by a delegation sent by his political enemy, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson (that guy on your nickel). They included future president James Monroe and First Speaker of the House of Representatives Felix Muhlenberg.
They accuse Hamilton of having an extramarital affair with a certain Mrs. Reynolds, and that he even had her husband sent to prison to keep him out of the way! Hamilton admitted it all, but said he was being blackmailed by Mr. & Mrs. Reynolds. The accusers took pity and by “Gentleman's Agreement" for four years the scandal was hushed up. When at last it was made pubic in 1797 by a tabloid newspaper, it helped drive Hamilton from government office and discredit the Federalist Party, who lost the White House to Jefferson's democrats. Hamilton was furious that his secret was out and challenged James Monroe to a duel. The duel was solved peacefully by an arbiter, Aaron Burr, who himself would shoot Hamilton to death eight years later. Burr later became Vice President and Burr got to sleep with Mrs. Reynolds too!

1815- Giacomo Rossini received the commission to write a new opera based on Beaumarchais the Marriage of Figaro- The Barber of Seville.

1874- Hawaiian King David IV Kalakaou visited the White House and was received by President Grant.
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1890-SITTING BULL KILLED by government employed Indian agents. They had come to arrest him when they learned he planned to join the Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee. The Ghost Dance was a spiritual revival movement but the authorities overreacted in fear of a true-armed uprising. As Sitting Bull was led out of his cabin other Sioux tried to stop the Indian police and in the scuffle they shot Bull dead. In a macabre twist Bull's pony, who was a gift from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, reared up and started doing circus tricks when he heard the shots.

1893-Czech composer Anton Dvorak premiered a symphony he wrote while living in the Minnesota. The New World Symphony.

1899-Battle of Colenso-More Boer Woer. Britain had had so many early reverses in South Africa that Kaiser Wilhelm annoyed Prince Edward by saying:" You English are renown for your sense of good sportsmanship. Why don't you admit you're beaten and make the best of it? Rather like last year when the Australians beat you at cricket." Comments like this didn’t help Anglo-German relations. The British won the Boer War in 1901.

1911- King George V of England moved the capitol of India from Calcutta to Delhi and laid the foundation stones for a new Imperial City, New Delhi.

1939- The gala premiere of Gone With The Wind at the Loews Grand Theater in Atlanta Georgia. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh flew out from Hollywood and the Governor of Georgia declared it a state holiday.

1941- The American Federation of Labor announced there would be no strikes or other labor actions for the duration of World War Two.

1941- Lena Horne recorded her signature tune “Stormy Weather.”

1943- In Harlem jazz great Fats Waller died of alcoholism and heart failure. He was 39.

1952- British Fashion photographer George Jorgenson has the first sex change operation in Denmark and becomes Christine Jorgenson.

1954-“Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter” starring Fess Parker was featured on the Walt Disney TV show for the first time. The show created a mania for little kids, all wanting coonskin caps. “ Born on a mountaintop in Tenn- Ah- See..”



1964- Canada adopted the Maple Leaf flag. It did not completely replace the Dominion Flag until 1979.

1966-Walt Disney died at age 65. He was alone in the room at Saint Joseph's when he died. A heavy cigarette smoker- his favorites were Malboro and French Gitanes- he suffered from lung cancer and respiratory failure. Contrary to the legend that he's cryogenically frozen in a room in the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, he was cremated and interred at Forest Lawn. Or maybe that’s what he wants us to think?!

1967- Beverly Hills police chief C.H.Anderson assured the public that there are "No Hippie Pads in Beverly Hills". Chief Andersen said many oddball types arrested on the Sunset Strip and West L.A. are sent to Beverly Hills municipal courts for trial, but inhabitants need not fear an outbreak of long haired hopped up psychedelic speed freaks. Groovy!

1973- The American Psychiatric Association reverses its earlier position and announced the homosexuality is not a form of mental illness. Being gay before that meant your family could legally have you institutionalized and even lobotomized or electro-shocked.

1984- Gangster Paul Castellano had taken over the largest Mafia family in New York after the Godfather Carlo Gambino died. But he was having problems with his unruly lieutenant John Gotti. This day he was getting out his limo on a midtown Manhattan street to go to Sparks Steakhouse when he was shot dead by hitmen sent by Gotti. Instead of the dead of night on a lone wharf, it was done out in broad daylight and the killers just melted into the countless masses of lunch hour foot traffic on 5th Avenue. John Gotti took control of the Gambino family and ruled as the Dapper Don, until sent up the river for life in 1992.

1989- Colombian drug cartel leader Gonzalo Rodriquez Gacha “El Mexicano” was shot down in a furious gun battle with police. He had waged a war of terror with the Colombian authorities, bombing an Avianca airliner and blowing up the police headquarters in Bogota.

2008- As outgoing President Bush made a surprise appearance in Baghdad to tout his success in the region, an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at the presidents’ head, shouting “Here’s your thanks, you dog!” He missed. NY Yankees owner Hank Steinbrenner commented” His first throw was high and outside, the second was right down the middle, we could use him in a series against Boston.”

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Yesterday’s question: Who wrote the famous British hymn “Jerusalem”, featured in the film Chariots of Fire?

Answer: Poet, Artist and totally out-there mystic William Blake wrote a poem in 1806 about an apocryphal story that Jesus and Josef of Aramethea once traveled by ship to visit Glastonbury. This made England for a time Heaven on Earth! The Chariot of Fire is the way Elijah was taken up into Heaven. C. Hubert Parry set it to music during World War One and Sir Edward Elgar orchestrated it.

And did those feet in ancient time,

Walk upon England’s mountains green

And was the holy Lamb of God,

On England’s pleasant pastures seen

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?


Bring me my Bow of burning gold;

Bring me my Arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In England’s green and pleasant Land.


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