Quiz: When you toast someone, why do we raise our glasses or cups and tap them together?

Yesterday’s question answered below. : What does it mean when you shout Amandla,?
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History for 1/10/2009
Birthdays: Ethan Allen, Marshal Ney, Frank James -Jesse's brother, Francois Poulenc, Ray Bolger (the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz), Al Goldstein the publisher of Screw Magazine, Stephen Ambrose, Sherrill Milnes, Pat Benatar, Sal Mineo, Jim Croce, Frank Sinatra Jr., Rod Stewart, Walter Hill, George Foreman, Linda Lovelace

50 B.C.- "ALEA JACTA EST!" After a lot of political maneuvering Gaius Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River near modern Rimini with his legions and began a civil war for control of the Roman Empire. Caesar had been ordered by the Senate to give up his army command in Gaul and not bring his troops down. Once stripped of command he could be open to lawsuits, investigation and criminal charges. Years before Scipio Africanis, the defeater of Hannibal, was ruined by his political enemies this way. So instead Caesar attacked. The Rubicon was the border between the outer provinces and the home territory of Rome. Since then, "Crossing the Rubicon" means committing to a course of action you cannot turn back from. Caesar said "Jacta esta alea" which means "The die is cast".

1529- Michelangelo elected to design the military defenses of Florence. They failed to keep out the enemy, but they must have looked really cool!

1538- Martin Luther declared that Purgatory doesn’t exist. " God in the Gospel of Mark has placed two ways before us- Salvation by faith or Damnation by unbelief.

1775- PUGACHEV’S RISING. Yemelian Pugachev was an illiterate Cossack. One day, for a laugh, his friends shaved his beard off while he was too drunk to notice. Without the beard they discovered he bore an amazing likeness to the Catherine the Great's dead husband, Czar Peter III. There was deep resentment in Russia among the common folk against the rule of Czarina Catherine. She was modernizing Russia against it's will and wasn't even Russian (she was a German princess). Pugachev declared himself the Czar Peter, back to reclaim his throne for the Muziks (peasants) and the Old Religion. Pugachev's Rising cost tens of thousands of lives before Catherine's armies stamped it out Today Pugachev was brought to Moscow in an iron cage, then beheaded. A comparable people's uprising would not be seen again until 1905.

1863- The world's first Subway Train line opened in London at Baker's Street Station.

1888-date of LOUIS LePRINCE's claim of a patent on Motion Pictures, predating Edison 1893 and the Lumiere Brothers1895. LePrince even had as proof film he shot of his mother, who died in 1887. Despite this, LePrince could get no one to take him seriously. One day he boarded a train from Dijon to Paris and disappeared from the face of the Earth.

1901- SPINDLETOP- BLACK GOLD, TEXAS TEA..- Conventional wisdom up till then was America’s oil reserves were chiefly around the Great Lakes and Pennsylvania. On this day Texas wildcat drillers strike oil in Beaumont Texas. The Spindletop gusher is so gigantic, 3,000 barrels an hour, it doubles the total U.S. oil production output overnight. Companies like Gulf and Texaco spring up to compete with industry leader Standard Oil (Exxon). The era of the Texas Oil Tycoons began and until they ran dry in the 1970s, America controlled 80% of the worlds petroleum output.

1917- Frontiersman and master showman Buffalo Bill Cody died at 70 of uremia poisoning. His last words after he was told his end had come was "Ah forget it boys, let's play a round of High-Five." Today his grave still overlooks the city of Denver.

1924- Columbia Pictures created, ruled by Harry Cohn, who's motto was "I don't get ulcers, I give them!"

1927- Fritz Lang’s masterpiece film Metropolis premiered.

1939- Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov sold his first story to Amazing Stories Magazine "Marooned off Vesta".

1941- The comedy play ARSENIC AND OLD LACE opened on Broadway. When buying the movie rights Warner Bros agreed to wait until the play ended it’s theatrical run. They thought plays usually are done in a few months. Arsenic and Old Lace ran until 1944.

1949- For years the recording industry had been working on ways to improve the 78 RPM record –RPM means Rotations Per Minute. RCA records announced the invention of the 45 RPM record. Columbia (CBS) had announced the LP 33 rpm record and originally offered to share the technology but RCA (NBC) was having none of it. But the 33 stored more music and could use old 78 rpm turntables adapted so the 45 soon became a vehicle for hit singles.

1958- Jerry Lee Lewis single "Great Balls of Fire" topped the pop charts.

1970-Masterpiece Theater debuted on US TV with Alastair Cooke. The first show was the BBC series the First Churchills. These shows were so popular that for awhile people thought PBS meant Preferably British Shows.

1992- The GREAT RUBBER DUCKY DISASTER- A North Pacific storm causes a ship to lose 29,000 bath toys overboard. They joined 61,000 Nike sneakers already bobbing in the water from a similar accident. Scientists used the rubber ducky migration to plot Pacific Ocean currents around Alaska.

1993- CAMILLAGATE- As speculation grew that the English Prince and Princess of Wales' marriage was on the rocks a London tabloid published tapes of phone conversations between Prince Charles and his long term mistress Lady Camilla Parker Bowles. The highly embarrassing transcripts included the Prince expressing a wish that he could be Ms. Bowles' tampon. Camilla's husband divorced her and Charles and Diana soon divorced as well. Within a year of Princess Diana's fatal auto accident Camilla resumed spending the night at Kensington Palace. Camilla and Charles married in 2005.

2004 NY based Writer and actor Spaulding Gray spent the day taking his kids to the movies. They saw Tim Burton’s Big Fish. Gray put is kids into a taxi home and from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal called his wife to say he would be home soon and that he loved her. Then he took the ferry, jumped into the harbor and drowned himself. He had waged a long battle with depression and his mother had committed suicide. His body did not resurface until March 9.
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Yesterday’s QUIZ: : What does it mean when you shout Amandla?

Answer: It is Zulu for Power, the rallying cry of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress during the fight against apartheid.

In honor of Elvis Presley's 74th Birthday yesterday, I hope you all had a peanut butter and banana sandwich fried in a stick of butter, and ate Pizza Hut from the box while seated on the toilet. Whooah!


The image of the Great Elvis Imperial Stormtrooper, who manifests himself every year at the San Diego Comicon. Long may he wave!


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QUIZ: What does it mean when you shout Amandla,?

Yesterdays’ question answer below- Why is the Devil always portrayed as playing a violin? Why not an oboe or tuba?
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History for 1/9/2009
Birthdays: Woody Guthrie, Richard Nixon, Ray Bolger, Roy Disney Jr., William Powell, George Balanchine, Judith Krantz, Bob Denver, Crystal Gayle, Joan Baez, Simone de Beauvoir, Sir Rudolph Bing, Herbert Lom, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joely Richardson

Festival of Janus, the namesake of January, Roman God of gateways and doors, not to be confused of course with Terminus, God of borders and terminal points, Lemintinus the God of thresholds and stoops. Cardea the Goddess of hinges or Forculus the God of the door leaves and sectioned doors.

1570- Ivan the Terrible, just getting the suspicion that the city of Novgorod may be plotting treason, surrounded the city and massacred 20,000 people. Afterwards he tells the survivors: " Forget your wrongs."

1768- Former English cavalry sergeant Phillip Astley combined trick riding in a tight circular ring with a clown and some jugglers and took it all on the road. The first Circus.

1769- Gaspar De Portola and Fra Junipero Serra set sail from Mexico to colonize California. The California coastline had been explored by Juan De Cabrillo, Francis Drake and others 250 years earlier. But since there were no gold-encrusted Aztec-type cities to plunder, it was quickly forgotten. Conquistadors don’t surf. The King in Madrid was finally moved to order the colonization of California to limit the encroachments of Russian fur trading settlements and English claims to Oregon territory.

1793- Aeronaut Jean Pierre Blanchard and his dog flew by hot air balloon from Philadelphia to Woodbury New Jersey. President George Washington was a spectator.

1825- KING CAUCUS- Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams have dinner.
The presidential election was deadlocked between Adams and Andrew Jackson with Clay a distant third. Andrew Jackson had won the popular votes, but the electoral votes were even. Over sherry Henry Clay offered all his electoral votes to Adams in exchange for the job of Secretary of State. So John Qunicy Adams won the presidency with the electoral votes of states like Kentucky where not one soul had voted for him. People were furious over the stolen election. In the next election Jackson won easily and began major reform of the electoral system. Judging by our problems these last elections, obviously the reforms didn’t go far enough. The public also remembered Clay's role and never voted for him for president ever again.

1847- THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES-after a small battle near San Gabriel Mission, Commodore Richard Stockton and the U.S. cavalry retake Los Angeles and end resistance by the native Mexican population 'the Californios' to U.S. rule.

1847- First U.S. governor of New Mexico territory Charles Bent is murdered and scalped by angry Indians after the U. S. conquering army had moved on. His trading post- Bent’s Fort, still stands today.

1857- The Fort Tejon earthquake shook Los Angeles This was the last major adjustment in Southern Cal of the great San Andreas Fault, an estimated 8.0 !

1914 -John Randolph Bray takes out patents on the principles of film animation: cycles, arcs, keys and inbetweens. He even tried to sue Winsor McCay, who had already been using them for years.

1924- The breakfast cereal Wheaties invented.

1936- Actor John Gilbert died of a heart attack after years of alcohol abuse. The accepted reason was he was a has-been silent film star who's voice was too thin and squeaky for talking pictures. Actually his voice wasn't too bad, some of it may of had to do with his punching Louis B. Mayer in the mouth when Mayer made a crude remark about Gilbert's sexual relations with Greta Garbo -something like "Why marry her when you're getting it anyway ?.."-BOP! . Mayer got up and screamed: "I'll ruin you if it costs me millions!"
Gilbert's fading popularity and decline into alcohol, as his second wife Virginia Bruce’s film career blossomed was the inspiration for "A Star is Born".

1939- Top Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin was hired by Walt Disney. He quit after two fruitless years, and left so angry he wrote a children’s book called the "Bear that Wasn’t" about his experiences. An early vice president of the Cartoonists Guild, he also joined the Mouse House to help unionize the studio. After a stint at Screen Gems, in 1945 Frank Tashlin went to Paramount’s live action division and became the director of the Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis comedies.

1959- The TV series Rawhide debuted, starring a young cowpoke named Clint Eastwood. President Lyndon Johnson and Ladybird were Rawhide fans.

1972- In a rare press conference by telephone from the Bahamas reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes declared the biography done of him by Clifford Irving was a total fabrication.

1976- First day of shooting in Philadelphia of the movie Rocky. It was the first movie to utilize the Steadicam, a system that balanced hand-held camera shots.

1987- THE OCTOBER SURPRISE- The Ronald Reagan White House released a memorandum from 1980 proving the sales of weapons to Iran did help bring about the release of American Embassy hostages. Even though the negotiation for the sale was begun under Jimmy Carter. The Ronald Reagan media spinners encouraged the idea that all the Old Gipper had to do was show up in the White House for the mad mullahs to release our people and hightail it outta’ town! Now the truth was out that Reagan and his people lied, but it was too late, and not enough of a sound bite for a dazed & confused public.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why is the Devil always portrayed as playing a violin? Why not an oboe or tuba?

Answer: Since the XVII Century, the violin was considered the most difficult instrument to play, it was known as the Devil's Instrument. Nicolo Paganini (1782-1840) was rumored to have sold his soul to the Devil since he played so well, and no one appeared to have ever heard him practice. He was kind of like an Elvis of the Romantic Era, to women very sexy in a dark and dangerous way.


Later when Gonoud's opera Faust came out in 1859, which was an international sensation, he had the Devil wield a mean fiddle. Liszt in the Mephisto Waltz and Saint-Saens in Dance Macabre all have the main theme begin with a solo violin, and before you know it, the Devil Went Down to Georgia.

The Disney classic film The Little Mermaid will celebrate it's twentieth anniversary this year. ASIFA/Hollywood will hold a panel, and other events will probably be announced as the year progresses.


Yeah, you pervs, she's legal age now...

I remember the huge arguments we had over that little bra strap on her top. Her clams were supposed to held on by magic, some argued the strap really makes it suggest lingerie, and hence lose it's innocence. But that opinion lost out to good old American Propriety.


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Question: Why is the Devil always portrayed as playing a violin? Why not an oboe or tuba?

Answer to yesterdays question below: Who’s foot became the measurement for THE foot? As in feet, inches.
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History for 1/8/2009
Birthdays: Elvis Presley would have been 74, Robert Schumann, Jose Ferrer, Shirley Bassey, Peter Arno, Yvette Mimieux, Larry Storch is 86, John Nierhardt, Bruce Sutter, Charles Osgood, Gen. James Longstreet, publisher Frank Doubleday, Steven Hawkings is 67, Saheed Jafray is 80, Soupy Sales,born Milton Supman is 83, David Bowie is 62

794AD The great monastery of Lindisfarne was sacked by Vikings.

871- Battle of Ashdown- English warriors of Wessex defeated a large force of Vikings led by Halfdan the Black, Bacsecg and Ivar the Boneless. On the English side second in command under his brother King Ethlered was future king Alfred the Great.

1297-MONACO FORMED- Francois the Cunning was the leader of the Grimaldis, a prominent Genoese clan. On this day he disguised himself as a monk and sneaked into Monaco castle where he stabbed the guards, then opened the gate for his troops. The Grimaldis became Princes of Monaco in 1659. In 1851 Prince Charles III Grimaldi opened the first gambling casino. In gratitude of it's success, the people named the hill town they lived in Mount Charles, or Monte Carlo. The Grimaldi family still rule Monaco today under their present Grimaldi- Prince Raynier II.

1642- Astronomer Galileo Galilei died at 77 of 'slow fever'. After being forced by the Holy Inquisition to recant his support of the theories of Copernicus in 1616 he lived under a loose house arrest. He became blind but he played his lute and still published scientific papers smuggled out to be printed in Holland. Other great thinkers like English poet John Milton could visit him. The Church admitted in 1837 that he may have been right about the Earth going around the Sun. The Vatican originally refused to allow him to be buried in consecrated ground, but relented in 1727 and he was moved to the Church of Santa Croce in Florence. During the move someone cut off three of his fingers for souvenirs. Two of the fingers were eventually recovered and his middle finger is displayed in the Florentine Museum of Science. It is displayed in the upright position.

1654- Hetman of the Ukraine, Bogdan Khmeilnitski pledged his loyalty and the loyalty of all Cossacks to the Russian Czar in Moscow.

There was originally no one race of Cossacks. The wild steppeland between the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Tatars of the Crimea and the Turkish Ottoman Empire was a refuge for criminals, runaways and fringe folks much like the American West or the Australian Outback. Cossacks formed communities adopting Turkish and Mongol dress and horsemanship and a fierce sense of independence.

Khemilnitski tapped into this independent streak to unite these disparate groups and used them to drive out the Polish Catholic overlords. He ruled the Ukraine like Oliver Cromwell in England. After several major wars maintaining a balance between the Poles, Turks and Russians Khmeilnitski decided to throw in his lot with the Czar.

After Bogdan’s death the furious Poles dug up his grave and threw his bones to the dogs, but the deed was done. The Ukraine and the Voivode of Ruthenia (Moldova-Byloruss) would stay a part of Russia until 1989. In 2004 much of the opposition in Viktor Yuschenko’s Orange Revolution began in the Cossack community.

1675- The first American Corporation chartered- The New York Fish Company.

1790- George Washington starts a custom of the President delivering an annual speech reporting on the nation's progress in the past year, later known as the State of the Union Address.

1814-"In Eighteen Fourteen we took a little Trip. With Colonel Andy Jackson down the Mighty Missa-sipp" BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. The Last engagement of the War of 1812 and the last battle fought between England and the United States was actually fought AFTER the peace treaty had been signed. Then it took two months to cross the Atlantic with the news, too late to stop the conflict. A large British invasion force composed of Wellington’s veterans was ordered to capture New Orleans and choke off American commerce on the Mississippi River.

General Andrew Jackson ( the fellow on your twenty dollar bill ) had a pathological hatred of anything English. When he heard of their landing he roared: "By Eternal God I will not have them sleeping on our soil!" He told the terrified New Orleanaise -still more French than American, that he would defend their city to the last, then burn it to the ground.

At Chalumette plantation the redcoats were met by Jackson's ragtag force of regulars, militia, Jean Lafittes pirates and slaves dug-in in a dry canal. Interestingly enough, the slaves proved to be the deadliest shots. Many slave families were denied meat for their diet but one or two men a family were allowed to keep a bird rifle to bring home small game. To them bullets were precious so they learned to make every shot count. At Chalumette they were given Kentucky long rifles with a range accuracy 300 yds. to the British "Brown Bess" musket 's 150 yds. The British grand assault never got within range before they were annihilated. It was all over in half an hour. Never mentioned except by one British sergeants memoirs was that the redcoats also had two regiments of black troops from the West Indies in their line of battle.

Their commander Sir Francis Packenham, was a brother-in-law to the Duke of Wellington. Wellington himself declined the American command as being militarily impractical. Had the Iron Duke accepted he might have beat Jackson but would certainly have missed the Waterloo campaign. Sir Francis Packenham caught a bullet between the eyes legend has it fired by a slave child. His body was shipped back to England sealed in a rum barrel. During the voyage home the barrels were mixed up and Sir Francis was tapped for the sailor’s rum rations. Upon arriving at Portsmouth his lordship had been reduced to brown sludge.

1856- Borax discovered in the California desert by Dr John Veatch. Now where’s that 20 mule team?

1889- Herman Hollerith received a patent for the electronic counting machine. The machine fed numbers onto punch cards and was used extensively in the U.S. census of 1890. In 1896 Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which later was renamed International Business Machines or IBM.

1904- Pope Pius X banned women wearing low cut dresses in front of clergy.

1918- THE FOURTEEN POINTS- President Woodrow Wilson had pondered the reason why the world had torn itself apart in World War One and how to stop future such conflagrations. He had his aide Colonel House chair a committee of a top intellectuals and jurists called the Inquiry. They came up with Fourteen Points to achieve lasting world peace. It asked for a lot of new ideas like people should be allowed to decide what country or government controlled them and freedom of the seas. Wilson made it the cornerstone of his foreign policy and planes dropped printed leaflets of the Fourteen Points on the Germans.

England & France were willing to use the document as propaganda, but were not interested in its ideas. French Premier Clemencau said:" God gave us Ten Commandments and we broke them. Wilson now gives us Fourteen Points. We will see."

1965- NBC TV premiered Hullabaloo, a Rock & Roll dance show with lots of mini-skirted go-go girls. ABC later came up with Shindig.

1973- Carly Simon got a gold record for "You’re So Vain".

1992- BARF! President George Bush Sr. projectile vomited on the lap of Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone in front of press cameras at a state dinner in Tokyo.

2002- Pres George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who’s foot became the measurement for THE foot? As in feet, inches.

Answer: Legend has that it was Frankish Emperor Charlemagne. That his thumb from the joint to nail was the inch, and the distance from his nose to the tip of his middle finger was the Yard. Other scholars say it was measured from Medieval King Henry Ist, but no one is really sure.

Quiz: Whose foot became the measurement for THE foot? As in feet, inches.

Answer: What is the origin of the phrase- He’s on the level?
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History for 1/7/2009
Birthdays: Jacques Montgolfier, Joseph Bonaparte- Napoleons older brother, St. Bernadette of Lourdes, Revolutionary War General Israel Putnam, Francois Poulenc, Butterfly McQueen, Adolph Zukor, Charles Adams, E.L. Doctorow, Jean Pierre Rampal, Millard Filmore*, Katie Couric, William Peter Blatty the author of Jaws, David Caruso, Nicholas Cage- originally Nicolo Coppola is 45

*HAPPY MILLARD FILLMORE DAY!!


Millard Fillmore is famous, if you could call it that, as Americas most irrelevant president err…So far. This day the Millard Filmore Society has a banquet in his birthplace of Buffalo, N.Y.

1610- Galileo aimed his telescope into the heavens and first noted moons of Jupiter- Ganymede, Io and Europa.

1785- Aeronauts Jean Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries crossed the English Channel in a gas balloon. To keep from crashing before attaining the French coastline they had to jettison most of their equipment, including silk covered oars intended to use to row through the air. Blanchard even threw his trousers overboard to lighten the load.

1789-THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION -Meaning when the electors nominated by the various state legislatures cast their votes .The Electoral College is a remnant of this. Popular elections really didn't catch on until the 1820's. At this time only white, male, landowning literate, freeborn men could vote, so out of a population of 4 million about 160,000 voted; in England at this time only 10% of the male population could vote.

George Washington won overwhelmingly over John Adams and John Hancock.

The first election also produced the first sore-losers. Hancock, who after all was the leader of Congress all through the Revolution and had that really big signature, was so disgusted that when Washington paid an official visit to his home state of Massachusetts, Hancock snubbed him. John Adams was annoyed about being only Vice President of a country he felt he invented under a man he felt he created. He was the one who suggested the big Virginian with the bad teeth head the army. John Adams hoped his position of Vice President would evolve powers not unlike an English Prime Minister, with the President a powerless figurehead. But Washington's annoyance with Adams ensured he, and consequentially all future vice presidents, would have little serious work to do, uh...except for Cheney...

1839- Frenchman Louis Daguerre announces the invention of Photography.( Just three weeks later on the 31st William Fox Talbot will say HE invented it first ). Despite the controversy of credit, the Daguerrotype photgraphic process becomes the popular system worldwide in the nineteenth century. The image of Lincoln on the five dollar bill is from a daguerreotype.

1894-" The Sneeze" The first motion picture film to be copyrighted by Thomas Edison and his engineer Canadian W.K.L. Dickson

1924- George Gershwin completed his Rhapsody for Jazz Orchestra, popularly called the Rhapsody in Blue. Ira Gershwin came up with the name after seeing a museum show of Whistler paintings with names like "Composition in Grey, Nocturne in Green," etc.

1926- George Burns married Gracie Allen.

1927- The first private telephone call from America to England.

1929-With the approval of Edgar Rice Burroughs, artist Hal Foster began drawing the Tarzan comic strip.

1934 –The First Buck Rogers adventures starring Olympic gold medal swimmer Buster Crabbe.

1935- Roger Sherwood’s play the Petrified Forrest opened to smash revues at the Broadhurst Theater on Broadway. Leslie Howard got great notices, but the real find was an obscure hard drinking actor with sad eyes playing the gangster Duke Mantee – Humphrey Bogart. In the audience was Jack Warner of Warner Bros, who decided Mr Bogart might just make it in motion pictures.

1942-BATAAN-Gen. Homma's Japanese army attacked Gen. Douglas MacArthur's American and Phillipino last stand defense line on the Bataan Peninsula. From today until late April,the American's wage a desperate fighting retreat against overwhelming Japanese forces down the Florida-shaped peninsula, hoping for reinforcements from America that would never come. They sang:

"We're the battling bastards of Bataan,
No moma, no papa, no Uncle Sam.
No aunts, no uncles, sisters or nieces;
no pills, no planes, no artillery pieces.
We're the battling bastards of Bataan,
And nobody gives a damn.."

MacArthur his long life would never forgive Franklin Roosevelt for his lack of support for the Philippines. When he heard of FDR’s death in 1945, the general ungraciously quipped: " He never told the truth where a good lie would do..."

1943- Nicholas Tesla died. The inventor of AC current, rotary field motors and the Tesla coil, in his last years he had been experimenting with telegraphy and trying to develop a death ray for the US Army.

1961- In Providence Rhode Island a bunch of kids were stopped by police for driving a round a neighborhood store suspiciously carrying guns and masks. One 21 year old who did three days in jail for carrying a concealed weapon later became a pretty good actor- Al Pacino.

1966- A hippie group from what would become Silicon Valley, called the Grateful Dead, got their first gig playing a club called the Matrix. They would be one of the most successful rock bands in history, only breaking up after the death of their leader, Jerry Garcia in 1995.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is the origin of the phrase- He’s on the level?

Answer: The symbol of the medieval guild that became the Freemasons was a builders level. Saying you were a member meant that you were honest, without quile and pure, on the level.

Amid Amidi on yesterdays' Cartoon Brew Blog did a thorough run down of all the cool new animation books that are going to weigh down our shelves and run up our Visa cards this year. Included is Disney Producer Don Hahn's two volumes of the lectures of Disney drawing tutor Walt Stanchfield.



Also John Canemaker's done a comparative history of two of Disney's great story artists, Joe Grant and Joe Ranft.

Check them out by going to my links.

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Quiz: What is the origin of the term “ He’s on the level”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Name the Three Kings. Los Tres Reyes
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History for 1/6/2009
Birthdays: St. Joan of Arc, Mountain man Jedediah Smith, Tom Mix, Alexander Scriabin, Gustav Dore', Loretta Young, Earl Skruggs. Carl Sandburg, Danny Thomas, Nancy Lopez, John DeLorean, Alan Watts, John Singleton, Rowan Atkinson, Anthony Minghella

Happy Feast Of Epiphany, Twelfthnight and The Eastern Orthodox Christmas.
Today is the end of the twelve days of Christmas when the Magi, the three kings- Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, visited the Holy Family. The Magi were the priestly caste of ancient Persia and the Zoroastrian religion. They were believed to predate the Persians and come from the Chaldaeans, the people who invented the western branch of the science of astronomy. The Maya and Chinese were doing astronomy on their sides of the world. A lot of the Magi ritual concerned observation of the stars. Some astronomers theorize the Star of Bethlehem was a rare planetary alignment that created a bright spot the Magi weren't used to or a close orbit of Jupiter. Others have calculated that there was a supernova around 6 BC which is more or less the right time, Jesus birth is by modern estimate around 4 BC. or Four before Himself. In many countries the Three Kings, not Christmas, is when children get their presents, because that’s when JC got his.

1759- George Washington and Martha Custis marry. Washington first loved another woman who refused him, a Sally Fairfax who married a prominent English loyalist plantation owner. They fled to Europe when the Revolution began and never returned. When George married Martha she was a very rich widow, but beyond childbearing years. This might have been a factor in Washington's decision later not to be King of America, for he would have no direct heirs. Imagine the complications in the young democracy trying to establish this concept of an elective President if there was a George Washington Jr. to contend with.
-Or a George W. Washington?

1842- THE RETREAT FROM KABUL - This day15,000 British troops and their dependants march out of Kabul, Afghanistan on the road to Jellallabad. They were attacked by Afghan Ghilzais tribesmen all along the route through the Khyber Pass. Only one man, regimental surgeon William Brydon,survived because he got lost on the road.

1872- Millionaire robber-baron Big Jim Fisk was shot dead by Ned Stokes, his rival for the affections of beautiful actress Josie Mansfield. It was one of the big scandals of the Guilded Age.

1912- Scientist Alfred Wegener presented his paper to the German Geological Society in Frankfurt. In it he theorized that the Earth’s continents are not fixed in place but moving. He named it Continental Drift. This was dismissed as nonsense until after WWII when submarines charting the ocean floor discovered tectonic plates. Today it is accepted that the continents move at the speed with which you grow a fingernail. About 6 feet a century.

1919- Teddy Roosevelt died peacefully at Oyster Bay ,N.Y. at 60. He was never expected to survive childhood asthma, was wounded in Spanish American War, thrown 40 feet in a streetcar wreck, got a dangerous leg abscess while on safari, almost died of malaria in the Amazon and was shot by an assassin while giving a political speech, which he finished anyway. His daughter Alice said: " The problem with daddy is at every wedding he wants to be the bride and at every funeral the corpse."

1945- First Pepe Le Pew cartoon, "Odorable Kitty". When the Warners producer who replaced Leon Schlesinger, Eddie Selzer, heard the plans to do a short about a skunk he thundered: "Absolutely Not! Nobody will like a cartoon skunk!" Chuck Jones recalled: "As soon as he said no, I knew we just had to do it." Selzer's final opinion:" Nobody'll laugh at that sh*t!" The short won an Oscar. Selzer later went on into network T.V.

1945- Navy Lt. George H. W. Bush married Barbara Pierce. Despite Barbara’s mother’s opinion of Bush “Singularly Unimpressive” Poppy Bush made Barbara First Lady and the mother of another president.

1949- Composer Leonard Bernstein noted in his diary that “JR (Jerome Robbins) called today with a novel idea- a modern version of Romeo and Juliet set in the slums.” At first the musical was going to be called East Side Story, then GangWay, finally West Side Story.

1956- Prince Rainier of Monaco announced his engagement to movie star Grace Kelly.

1962- Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent. This was the animated version of his popular puppet show.“So Long Kids,Wind Up Your Lids, We’ll look for You Real Soooooon.”

1975-“ Ease on Down the Road.-“ The musical The Wiz premiered on Broadway.

1993- Ballet star Rudolf Nureyev, the most famous male dancer since Nijinsky, died of HIV/AIDS.

1994- “WHY ME, WHY ME?” Shortly after a practice in a Detroit skating rink Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan was attacked by a man trying to smash her knees with a steel pipe. The man Derrick Smith later confessed to the FBI that he was paid $6500 to do the deed by Jeff Gilhooly, the ex-husband and manager of Kerrigan’s rival skater Tanya Harding. Despite all the intense media coverage in the end Kerrigan got one Silver medal, Harding nothing and the Olympic gold in Figure Skating went to Ukrainian Oksana Baiul, who was later busted for drunk driving.

1995- In another great leap forward for trash journalism CBS anchor Connie Chung gets Kathleen Gingrich, the mother of Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, to call First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton a “bitch”. In an earlier time such gutter utterances would have been politely edited, but this was given wide national coverage.

1996- In Gaza, Hamas leader Yahya Ayyash called the Engineer, dialed his cellphone and it blew his head off. It was a remote control bomb set by Israeli intelligence Mossad. 100,000 attended Ayyash’s funeral.
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Yesterday’s Question: Name the Three Kings. Los Tres Reyes

Answer: : Answer above- Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar or Baalshazzer.