Question: What is the origin of the term- to be well-heeled?

Yesterdays Question Answered Below: What does it mean to be “long in tooth”?
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History for 12/5/2008
Birthdays: Pope Julius II, Martin Van Buren, Walt Disney , Fritz Lang, Eugene Debs, George Armstrong Custer, Little Richard Penniman, Strom Thurmond, Otto Preminger, Lin Piao, Calvin Trillin, Joan Didion, Jim Plunkett, Jose Carrerras, Margaret Cho is 41, Frankie Muniz is 23

1212-THE WONDER OF THE WORLD.- Fredrick II Hohenstaufen became Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation at 18. The son of Henry VI the Lion, Freddy was called "stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis” The Marvelous Transformer and Wonder of the World.

1484- Pope Innocent VIII raises the practice of Witchcraft from a minor sin to a major heresy. Included in the definition of witchcraft is any remaining vestiges of local animist customs, herbalism or treating illnesses with home grown medicines. He ordered the Holy Office of the Inquisition to look into all cases. From 1484 to 1750 maybe 200,000 people died in Europe and America. As late as 1784 a woman in Belgium was executed for bewitching a child.

1704-In Hamburg towards the end of the opera Cleopatre composer Georg Frederich Handel and soloist Johann Mattheson start bickering over who should bow and receive the audiences applause. As the curtain came down and the cheers rang out Handel and Mattheson started furiously wrestling over the harpsichord. They then rushed out into a snowy public square and fought with swords. The audience followed them and cheered on this unique encore. Neither was hurt in the end and they even made up over their next opera.

1766- London auction house Christies held it’s first auction.

1791-MOZART DIED- The 35 year old composer was slaving away on a commission for a Requiem Mass when he died of scarlet fever and kidney failure complicated by exhaustion and alcoholism ( and he didn't work in animation ) Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave and when his wife came to mourn him a few days later nobody could recall where he was buried. But the financial woes of his wife Constanze are exaggerated. Within a few years she was loaning money to relations. Constanze, the aunt of composer Carl Maria Von Weber and Mozart’s pupil Sussmeyer finished the Requiem.


The theories about Antonio Salieri poisoning him out of jealousy or the FreeMasons doing him in began only a few years later. Schiller wrote a play in 1817 called Mozart & Salieri where he has Salieri doing the dastardly deed. In 1827 one of Beethoven's pupils wrote the Maestro about going up to the sanitarium to visit the ancient composer: "Salieri is in one of his fits again, shouting “I killed Mozart! Mozart forgive me!”"

1791- First Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton presented his Report on Manufactures to Congress. This was considered a revolutionary document because here was this illegitimate snob from Martinique telling his half wild nation of farmers and trappers with dead raccoons on their heads that their future lay in developing heavy industry closely regulated by a strong centralized government. Thomas Jefferson among many others thought it was a big mistake, but modern scholars declare The Report on Manufactures as the true beginning of the US economy.

As for it's end...hmmmm.. what's in the News, today..?

1854- Aaron Allen of Boston patented the theater chair that folded up so you could exit.

1912- New York Hat directed by D.W. Griffith premiered. The first movie script written by Anita Loos, then 19. She became one of the finest Hollywood screenwriters ,who penned films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

1933- Prohibition is repealed in the U.S. Interestingly enough the final state to ratify the repeal amendment was Utah. My grandmother recalled a parade of beer trucks going down Broadway being cheered like Lindbergh's return. She jumped on the running board of one to hoist a stein with young congressman Fiorello Laguardia and Al Smith.

1941- Marshal Zhukov commenced the first Soviet counterattack since the Nazis invasion began in June. As the Red Army pushed them back from the outskirts of Moscow the Germans first came up against the new Soviet T-34 Stalin Tank, one of the most successful tanks of World War Two. German tankman Heinz Guderian said to a colleague” I have just seen a most amazing tank, and if the Russians are mass producing them we may lose the war!”

1941- Admiral Halsey moved his carrier fleet- USS Lexington & Enterprise out of Pearl Harbor to go on maneuvers. They would not be there for the Japanese attack on Pearl. This is why Admiral Yamamoto was disappointed with the battle’s final results.

1945- Flight 19, a routine training patrol of 5 Navy Avenger torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale at 2:00PM and flew into the Bermuda Triangle. Two hours later the commander radioed that his compass and backup compass had failed and his position was unknown. The 14 men and their planes were never seen again. In the next few months hundreds of planes and ships searched the waters for some signs of wreckage but nothing was ever found.

1951- Shoeless Joe Jackson died. The most powerful baseball batter of his age, he taught Babe Ruth how to hit. But he was implicated in the Black Sox scandal of 1919 and permanently banned from baseball. He worked in a hardware store near his rural Georgia home.

1952- The Abbott and Costello Television Show premiered. Where’s Hilary, Mr Fields and Stinky? “ Niagara Falls! Slooowwlly I turn! Step by Step! Step by Step!”

1953- Josef Stalin died. He was in a coma after a stroke but his doctors were too terrified to treat him. Before he died he was preparing a new purge aimed at doctors. Nikita Khruschev recalled those last days:” The secret police would knock on your door and drag you off in the dead of night. When you said goodbye to your family you didn’t know if it was to go to be shot or that Comrade Stalin just wanted someone to watch an old movie with him. You know, one does not do one’s best work under such conditions..”

1974- The Seattle Seahawks football team formed.

1974- The BBC aired the last Monty Python show.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to be “long in tooth”?

Answer: From my buddy Bob F: Horses' teeth grow constantly, to be worn down by chewing their feed. As the horse gets older and eats less, the wear diminishes and the teeth get longer. A horse's age can be determined by the length of its teeth. An old horse is often referred to as "long in the tooth." This was also a way of describing someone who was past their prime.


Horse traders were known to file down the teeth of older horses to get a better price. Much like setting back the odometer on a used car.

Question: What does it mean to be “long in tooth”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: In the 1930’s, most of the Hollywood studio moguls were Jewish. Only one was not. Who was it?
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History for 12/4/2008
Birthdays: Chief Crazy Horse, Samuel Butler*, Thomas Carlyle, Lillian Russell, Vasilly Kandinsky, Buck Jones, Wink Martindale, Max Baer Jr.,Robert Vesco, Charles Keating, Wally George, Deanna Durbin, Pappy Boyington, Horst Bucholtz, Former South Korean Prime Minister Noh Tae Yoo, Jeff Bridges is 59, Marisa Tomei is 44, Tyrah Banks is 35, Johnny Lyon- 1948 of the band Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Jay-Z

*"Life is one long process of getting tired."- Samuel Butler

963AD- Pope John XII was beaten to death by the husband of a woman he was sleeping with. In Nominae Patrie- OUCH!..Et Filiae..OUCH!…Et Spitritu Sanctam..OUCH!

1154- Nicholas Breakspeare elected Pope Adrian IV, so far the only Englishman ever made pope of the Roman Catholic Church..

1534- Ottoman Turkish Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent occupied Baghdad.

1655- Jews had been expelled from England since 1291. This year Oliver Cromwell convened a conference at Whitehall to consider re-admittance of Jews into English society. Cromwell’s Puritans had great sympathy for “God’s chosen People” and one Roundhead legislator even proposed moving the Sabbath Day back to Saturday. But there was still too much anti-Semitic resistance to make the re-admittance official. Despite the failure of the government to make a decision from this time without official sanction Jews began returning to and settling in England. They were allowed their own Jewish Burial Ground in 1657 and in 1715 Solomon Medina became the first Jewish person to receive a knighthood.

1657-Painter Rembrandt van Rijn was evicted from his home. His kept out of debtor’s prison when his daughter and son-in-law auctioned most of his possessions to pay off his creditors.

1674- HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHICAGO! French missionary Jacques Marquette dedicated a mission house and trading post that will eventually become Fort Dearborn, then the Windy City. But who invented deep-dish pizza?

1777- Ben Franklin and the American commissioners in France were in despair. Nothing but bad news about British victories, and the French government was complaining about American privateers attacking British ships in French waters. Even sympathetic French newspapers called the American cause lost. Today with playwright-spy Pierre DuBeaumarchais in attendance, a courier from across the sea arrived. Jonathan Austin delivered the news of the Battle of Saratoga. That a British General Burgoyne and his entire army were defeated badly. Immediately the French, Dutch and Spanish governments started calling the Americans “our friends”, and began discussing an alliance.

1783- WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL- The American Revolution now ended, George Washington bid farewell to his officers at a dinner at Fraunces Tavern in New York. Creole cook Samuel Fraunces "Black Sam' was later invited by Washington to become the first presidential chef. The tavern is still there on the corner of Water and Pearl Streets.

1791- The London Observer, called the oldest continually published newspaper in the world, first published. True, the Times was begun in 1788 but t had a spotty release it’s first few years while it’s publisher would be thrown in prison for libel.

1829- The British in India abolished the custom of suttee- that a widow throw herself on her husbands funeral pyre and die also.

1875- William Marcy “Boss Tweed” escaped Ludlow Street jail and fled to Cuba. He had been the corrupt boss of New York City politics throughout the 1860s and 70s. He was rearrested in Spain by a Spanish policeman who spoke no English. When asked by American diplomats the Spaniard said he saw a newspaper cartoon by Thomas Nast of Tweed in prison garb with his hands on two young boys so he thought he was a kidnapper! Tweed was brought to justice by the one crime he probably never did.

1881- First issue of the Los Angeles Times.

1909- The first Canadian Football League championship the Grey Cup, U of Toronto defeated Toronto Parkdale 26-6

1915- HENRY FORD'S PEACE SHIP-The great industrialist was a livelong pacifist and was horrified by the carnage of the Great War. On this day he equipped a large yacht with neutral diplomats and other famous personages like Thomas Edison and sailed to Europe. Pundits had fun mocking his homespun naiveté' and local lunatics like Urban Ledoux, aka Mr. Zero, jumped into New York Harbor and swarm alongside the ship "to ward off hostile torpedoes." Ford docked in Oslo harbor hoping to use his influence to get the Kaiser, Czar and the other crowned heads to a bargaining table like some kind of board of directors negotiation. Nobody would meet with him. Young N.Y. politician Fiorello LaGuardia noted: "The only boy he managed to save from the trenches was his own son!"

1916-RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK KILLED- Several Russian noblemen resolve to rid their country of this Siberian peasant mystic who held such power over the Tsar and his family that he could dismiss government ministers at will. He once had an entire army offensive redirected because he was negotiating to buy the real estate they planned to fight over. A first cousin of the Czar, cross dressing Prince Youssuppov invited Rasputin to a late night party. He had a record player with Yankee Doodle playing in another room to convince the monk that a party indeed was in progress. Youssuppov gave Rasputin a glass of cyanide laced vodka. Rasputin drank it and finished the bottle. Then the conspirators rushed out, emptied a revolver into him, beat him with chains and heavy silver candlesticks, rolled him up in a rug and stuffed him into the ice clogged Neva River.

The official coroner's report said he had drowned. Shortly before his death Rasputin wrote a prediction in a letter to the Czar saying that 'if the peasants, my brothers, kill me, then you, Czar of Russia, have nothing to fear. But if your relatives kill me, not you nor any one of your family will remain alive longer than two years." Rasputin's prediction was off by about four months. Nicholas II and his 400 year old dynasty fell ten weeks later. The entire Imperial Family were murdered in July 1918.

1919- President Woodrow Wilson left the US by battleship for Europe to help chair the Versailles Peace Conference ending the Great War. Once there he surprised people by refusing to visit the battlefields and tour the horror and devastation. He said:” They want me to see red as they do. But I feel at least one of us should remain impartial.”

1927- The Cotton Club opened as a speakeasy nightclub in Harlem. Owners were New York ganglords Owney “The Killer” Madden and George “Big Frenchy” DeMange. Duke Ellington’s orchestra highlighted the opening night. When other gangsters tried to open a rival The Plantation Club Owney had his henchmen demolish the place. The Cotton Club was one of the great centers of the Harlem Renaissance, but African Americans were segregated from eating or drinking at the tables. Even W.C. Handy was once refused.

1931- James Whale’s macabre masterpiece film “Frankenstein” opened at the Mayfair theater in NY. English actor William Henry Pratt renamed Boris Karloff played the monster.

1932-BEFORE RUSH AND O’REILLY-“Good Evening Mr & Mrs North and South America and All the Ships at Sea! Let’s Go To Press!” Newspaper columnist Walter Winchell began his famous radio broadcasts on the NBC Blue Networks. Winchell became one of the most powerful voices in American society and politics for 23 years, later a strong voice of Anti-Communism and supporter of Joe McCarthy.

He once revealed his secret of his rapid fire delivery. Before a broadcast he would drink a large amount of water and the need to urinate made him talk faster.

1941- As Admiral Nagumo's carrier fleet approached Pearl Harbor, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox assured news reporters : "No matter what happens, the US Navy will not be caught napping !"

1941- film "Mr. Bug Goes to Town"-opened. Max Fleischer's last gamble to keep up with Disney and keep his studio alive. However the events of Pearl Harbor three days later not only sink the American Navy, but also Hoppity's box office and Paramount puts Max out of business.



1948- “Hey...Stella !! A Streetcar Named Desire opened on Broadway with Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy.

1950- President Truman gives General MacArthur in Korea direct orders not to open his big mouth and make any more public statements about the conduct of the war without checking with Washington first ! MacArthur was used to being on his own during World War Two and as proconsul of occupied Japan and didn't fret about being his own diplomatic corps as well as general. But now everything Dugout Doug said got him into trouble. He had been making statements in press that the U.S. should expand the Korean War into Communist China and Russia and he warned the Chinese that if they didn’t quit he planned to rain Atomic Fire upon their cities.

1952- A killer smog sickens thousands in the London area. Around 8,000 people become ill. London bans the use of coal, peat and wood fires to heat homes. A deadly smog covered Los Angeles in 1956 and accelerated the demand for development of unleaded gasoline.

1955- French mime Marcel Marceau appeared on American TV for the first time.

1958- Cocoa Puffs cereal invented.

1961- Someone at the Museum of Modern Art in NY noticed that they had hung Henri Matisse’s painting Le Bateau upside down. It had been that way for two months and until now nobody had noticed.

1963- The first Instant Replay camera used at a football game. It was an Army-Navy game.

1978- After the murder of Mayor Robert Mosconi, Dianne Feinstein became the first female Mayor of San Francisco.

1988- Actor Gary Busey almost died in a motorcycle accident on Olympic Blvd. In Los Angeles. He was not wearing a helmet and suffered massive head trauma. He later claimed to have an out-of-the-body experience at the scene.

1993- Rocker Frank Zappa died of prostate cancer at age 52.
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Yesterday’s Question: In the 1930’s, most of the Hollywood studio moguls were Jewish. Only one was not. Who was it?

Answer: Darryl F. Zanuck of Twentieth Century Fox was of Dutch-Methodist ancestry.

Thinking back on Roger Rabbit turning 20 this year,it spawned a lot of new work and new movies. After Ralph Bakshi got the funding to make Cool World, he said to me and Dave Spafford - Thank God for that F**kin Rabbit!!


Jacques Muller scene

But what of the artists? I was reminded of what a great crew that was. And what happened to them?

Don Hahn, Andreas Deja, Nik Ranieri, Jacques Muller, Raul Garcia, Dorse Lanpher, Vera Lanpher and James Baxter returned to LA to work for Disney. Others went with Dick to work on the Thief, and many others were organized by Robert Watts and Steven Speilberg into Amblimation Studio. In 1995, Amblimation was brought to LA to become part of the nucleus of Dreamworks Animation.

James Baxter of course created the animation of Rafiki, Quasimodo and the animated parts of Enchanted and the Furious Five in Kung Fu Panda.

Simon Wells and Phil Nibbelink directed American Tale II Fieval Goes West. Simon went on to DreamWorks and co-directed Prince of Egypt and directed The Time Machine. Phil led the animation team on ILM's llive action Casper movie, and animated an entire film by himself- Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss.

Raul Garcia directed an award winning short The Telltale Heart, and is about to premiere his feature The Missing Lynx.

Roger Chiasson now is co owner with his brothers Claude and Pierre of the Canadian studio Yowza.

Uli Meyer and Chuck Gammage also head successful animation studios.

Dave Spafford and Dale Baer had successful studios for a time.

Mark Kausler animated for Disney and on the first season of Ren & Stimpy.

Max Howard organized Disney Orlando, Warner Bros Animation and produced Igor.

David Bowers co-directed Flushed Away, and is now directing Astro Boy.

Rob Stevenhagen is a co-director of Tales of Despereaux.

Steve Hickner worked at Disney, Amblimation, DW co-directed Prince of Egypt and Joseph.

Howie Parkins became an top director on the Simpsons.

Shelley Page did BGs for Amblimation, then to Dreamworks as a recruiter, and now she has a neat gig flying around the world doing recruiting for DW.

I noticed our Production Person, Patsy DeLord, credited on hit films like Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill.

Roy Naisbitt, who worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Thief, is now retired, I believe.

Bridgette Hartley, John McCarthy, Joe Ranft and Stan Green have passed away.

Of course, there were many more people I didn't mention, but were there also. Joe Haidar, Pete Western, Roger Way, Pete Gambier, Irene Coulofilis, Elaine Koo, Hugh Workman, Cal Leduc, Rej Bourdage, Paul Steele, Sylvia Pompeii, Alain Costa, Mark Gordon Bates, Alan Simpson, Keith & Emma, Nik Fletcher, Chris Knott, Holly Haidar, Alvaro Gaivoto, Rob Newman, Gary Mudd and many, many more. Poor Roger, Jessica and Baby Herman never got their sequel, but we all got many chapters added to our careers. As they had told us, Your Futures are Assured!

Back at our Premiere at Radio City Music Hall, Robert Zemeckis marveled at the close-knit nature of the animation crews. It is one of the positives of our business. I recall fondly my Raggedy Crew, my Osmosis Crew, my Nelvana crew, my Beauty & Beast crew.

But I will always remember our Disney UK crew, the denizens of Camden Town. In spirit here's another Pint raised to you at the Edinburgh Castle, another burger at Ruby in the Dust, another Chef in the Box! Ppppuhhhlease!!

Raul Garcia Scene

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Question: In the 1930’s, most of the Hollywood studio moguls were Jewish. Only one was not. Who was it?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Did a Nazi ever head the United Nations?
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HISTORY FOR 12/3/2008
Birthdays: French King Charles VI the Well-Loved 1380, Gilbert Stuart, Sven Nykvist, Joseph Conrad real name Josef Korzeniowski, Jean Luc Godard is 78, Nino Rota- film composer, Jim Backus- voice of Mr Magoo, Maria Callas, Larry Parks, Charles Pillsbury, Mitsuo Fuchida the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, Darryl Hannah is 48, Katerina Witt, Brendan Fraser is 40, Julianne Moore is 48,Amanda Siebert is 23, Andrew Stanton is 43.

Happy Ozzy Day! Ozzie Ozbourne is 60- ”I never set out to be a businessman. I just wanted to have fun, f—k chicks and do drugs.”

749AD- This is the Feast of Saint John Damascene. He’s the saint who’s called the Father of Christian Art, because he theologically argued a way for artists to avoid the “Graven Images “ hitch in the Ten Commandments and make paintings of Jesus and the Saints.

1919- Impressionist painter Pierre August Renoir died of old age. Suffering from arthritis that left him unable to paint with his hands, Renoir used a bit that held the brush in his teeth.

1925- GEORGE GERSHWIN PLAYS CARNEGIE HALL. Gershwin always wanted to be taken seriously as a composer and not just a Tin Pan Alley pop-song writer. While in Paris he met Maurice Ravel, but instead of giving him advice Ravel said: "You make HOW much from your songs? Maybe I should learn from you!" When he asked to be Arnold Schoenberg's pupil, Schoenburg told him :" Why do you want to be a bad Schoenburg when you're already such a good Gershwin?"

1931- Happy Birthday Alka Seltzer!

1934- Lee Blair, Disney artist and brother of Preston Blair, Disney artist, married Mary Browne Robinson, Disney artist. She became the most famous of them as Mary Blair.

1941- After clandestine diplomatic initiatives to raise the U.S. oil and steel embargoes fail, The Japanese High Command radios it's carrier fleet out in the Pacific: "Climb Mount Niitaka". This code meant go forward with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Admiral Nagumo orders resumption of radio silence and turns his fleet South-SouthWest towards Hawaii.

1944- A Nazi newspaper published on this day features a photo of a young Austrian S.S. officer with his commander in Greece. After the war the commander was hanged as a war criminal. The young man became Secretary General of the United Nations, President of Austria, and winner of a Nobel Peace Prize- Kurt Waldheim.

1956- British and French forces evacuate Egypt, where they had been since 1799.

1967- Dr. Christiaan Barnard of Capetown performed the first heart transplant.

1968- Elvis Presley opened in Las Vegas to rave reviews and packed houses. It marks the beginning of his comeback and his transition from thin, black leather-jacketed youth to fat, rhinestone jumpsuit, half tinted sunglasses, karate-swinging middle age.

1974-A 40 foot long inflated pig broke away from its’ tether at a Pink Floyd photo shoot and became a hazard to civil aviation. The AeroPork was lost to radar at an altitude of 8,000 feet.

1984- An accident at a Union Carbide facility in Bhopal, India filled the air with poison methyl isocynate gasses that killed 10,000 people and blinds or otherwise injured a further 200,000. Saintly Mother Theresa shows a controversial side of her nature when she publicly encouraged Indians to accept the disaster as God’s Will. No one from Union Carbide was ever tried or convicted for the tragedy.

1991- Hulk Hogan defeated Undertaker to become WWF champ for the 4th time.

1997 – 56 year old Darlene Gillespie, an original member of the Mickey Mouse Club, was busted in LA for a securities fraud scheme. She later developed multiple schlerosis.

1997-Basketball star Latrell Sprewell lost his $32 million contract with the Golden State Warriors for trying to strangle his coach P.J. Carlesino. So he goes to the NY Knicks.

2004-The Ukranian Supreme Court ruled the recent presidential election invalid. Moscow and hardline Kiev Gov’t supported Victor Januscowicz followers committed widespread acts of voter fraud, then suppressed any news reports. The story was revealed to the world by a heroic sign language translator for the deaf. While the state approved news anchor reported the elections on the evening news the translator, Tania Dmitriovna, signed “EYERYTHING YOU HAVE JUST HEARD IS A LIE! YUSCHENKO IS OUR TRUE PRESIDENT! THIS IS PROBABLY THE LAST TIME YOU WILL EVER SEE ME..” The word spread spawned weeklong mass demonstrations and international pressure that compelled the government to redo the election.
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Yesterday’s Question: Did a Nazi ever head the United Nations?

Answer: Dr. Kurt Waldheim was Secretary General of the United Nations 1972-1981 and President of Austria 1986-1992. As a young man, he was an officer in the Wehrmacht (The Nazi Army) in occupied Greece and Yugoslavia. He insisted he was drafted and did nothing to be ashamed of. But his unit hanged resistance fighters and his commander was prosecuted as a war criminal. See above, 1944

Check out Animation World Network today. They just put up Andrew Farago's article on the 20th anniversary of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? Farago and Bill Desowitz interviewed James Baxter, Don Hahn, Ken Ralston, Dick Williams and me. I lent them a couple of images from the time as well. http://www.awn.com

Pete Weston put up a lot of Roger crew photos on his facebook page-

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=52058&l=d44f0&id=558932749

His recollection of names is much better than mine. I only remember people who wore white wigs and have been dead for two hundred years!


I apologize to all me Roger buddies that we were never able to get together for a good crew reunion in LA this year. I talked planning with a few key folks, and for months we threw around plans to get the MP Academy, the El Capitan, the AFI and other venues. Alas, nothing seemed to gel in time. Right now there is a twentieth commemoration in of all places, the Musee' Bande Dessinee' ( comic strip museum) in Anghouleme, France. The reception is being held in a chateaux designed by Leonardo da Vinci! Ppppuh-uleaze!!!

Actress Kathleen Turner recalled she was 8 months pregnant while doing Jessica's voice.

Oh, well, we did something on the tenth anniv. Maybe we'll save it for the 25th!
In the meantime, See you in ToonTown!

p.s.- Next year is the 20th Anniv of The Little Mermaid! Let's start planning something!
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Question: Did a Nazi ever head the United Nations?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who first said:” I’d rather have him on the inside of my tent pissing out, rather than on the outside pissing in”, and who was he talking about?
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History for 12/2/2008
Birthdays: George Seurat, Charles Ringling, Julie Harris, Gianni Verasce, Ray Walston, Alexander Haig, Monica Seles, Cathy Lee Crosby, Lucy Liu is 40, Britney Spears is 27

1494- Now that the Medici Dukes were driven out, mystical monk Savonarola proposed to the people of Florence that they create a Republic ruled by God’s Law. Savonarola ruled Florence like a Christian Ayatollah. He led big public spectacles where in large bonfires Florentines burned “vanities” like makeup, wigs, art and books and tried to live a religious life. Eventually, it all got so boring they burned Savonarola instead, and recalled the Medicis.

1804- NAPOLEON CROWNED EMPEROR OF FRANCE .The 35 year old little corporal from Corsica who spoke French with an Italian accent, had piercing gray eyes, and if he liked you, showed his affection by giving your ear a tug, crowned himself Emperor of the French. He had the Pope dragged up from Rome to Notre Dame for legitimacy, but in a moment of planned theater Napoleon took the crown and crowned himself.

1805- THE SUNRISE OF AUSTERLITZ- At a small village in what is now the Czech republic, Napoleon defeated the combined armies of the Tsar of Russia and Emperor of Austria in one spectacular battle. Tolstoy called it The Battle of the Three Emperors. As much as he was a strategist, Napoleon was a great analyst of human character. Based on his opinion of his opponent’s personalities he predicted exactly how the battle would go, two weeks before he lured them into it. The defeat of the Allies was total and climaxed by the French artillery blowing holes in a frozen lake the Russians were trying to escape over, drowning hundreds. Within days they sued for peace and the war ended. Napoleon's take on events: "Ah, que Belle Journee'." - What a nice day it's been."

1823- U.S. President James Monroe published the Monroe Doctrine, saying all the European empires then coveting lands in the Western Hemisphere should butt out or the Good Ole U.S. of A would have something to say about it! Shortly afterwards Britain extended its claim on Western Canada and seized the Falkland Islands, France entered Mexico and Russia pressed it's claim on Alaska.

1845- President James K. Polk re-affirmed the Monroe Doctrine and announced it would be the policy of his administration to get Texas and California from Mexico and Oregon from the British. He called such continental expansion America’s “Manifest Destiny.”

1854-Napoleon III was Napoleon's nephew and since 1848 legally elected President of the Second French Republic. But he decided that he wanted to be an Emperor like his uncle so he seized dictatorial power on the anniversary of Austerlitz and locked up all dissenters like Victor Hugo, Alex DeTocqueville and cartoonist Honore' Daumier (gotta watch them cartoonists...)

1859- John Brown hanged- He said nothing on the scaffold but left a prediction on a slip of paper :".. I now believe that the sins of this nation have become so great that the cannot be excised but by a great spilling of blood.."

1863- The dome of the U.S. Capitol completed as the Goddess of Freedom is hoisted up into place.

1877- Camille Saint Saens opera “Samson & Dalila” premiered in Weimar.

1896- We remember Wyatt Earp as the Marshall of Dodge City and gunfighter of the OK Corral gunfight. He was better known to his people of his own generation as the referee of the Fitzsimmons-Sharkey Heavyweight Championship prizefight. After leaving Tombstone Arizona, Wyatt Earp drifted to San Francisco where his skills as a fight referee were called upon for this last of the big bare-knuckle bouts. He enraged the public when he declared the fight for Sharkey in the 3rd round after Big-Bob Fitzsimmons couldn't stop bleeding. More people were out to kill him over this decision than were ever out to get him when marshal of Dodge City. He quickly pulled up stakes and went to the Yukon for the gold rush. He was all but forgotten until a cheap book called Wyatt Earp Frontier Marshal published in 1920 made him famous.

1901- Mr. King Gillette invented the safety razor.

1942- THE FIRST CONTROLLED NUCLEAR CHAIN REACTION.-The concept of a fission reaction had been theorized by Einstein and Bohr in 1939. Under a squash court at the University of Chicago a team of physicists led by Enrico Ferme began a chain reaction in a uranium pile and stopped it again, producing a few watts of energy. To celebrate they produced a bottle of Chianti and some paper cups. No toasts were made to man's entrance into the Atomic Age. Tennis courts are still there and the Regenstein Library was built on the site where to this day the lowest basement registers off the scale on Geiger counters.

1954- Senator Joseph McCarthy’s fall from power became complete. The Senate voted to censure him for Misconduct Unbecoming a Senator. He died of alcoholism in 1957.

1993- NASA astronauts do a series of space walks from their shuttle to adjust the Hubble space telescope. The Hubble cost billions of dollars but was sent into orbit with a flaw in it’s lenses. It was nearsighted. The spacewalk in effect gave the Hubble a set of glasses to see better the furthest details of deep space.

1994- LA jury found Heidi Fleiss ‘The Hollywood Madam” guilty of running a high priced prostitution ring.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who first said:” I’d rather have that old man on the inside of my tent pissing out, rather than on the outside pissing in”, and who was he talking about?

Answer: It was President Lyndon B. Johnson, speaking of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
By the 1960’s the crusading head of the FBI had aged into a power-mad anachronistic embarrassment. For instance, Hoover ignored the Mafia, while he was convinced the entire Civil Rights Movement were paid agents of Moscow.
The Kennedys hated him and tried to replace him. but Hoover had so much dirt on their sexual exploits, they dared not. When LBJ came into office and was advised to retire the Old Man, that quote was his response. Nixon left him alone as well. J. Edgar Hoover died in office at age 77, in 1972. After him, a law was immediately passed that all future FBI directors be limited to one ten year term.

Don't like it? Well, I just so happen to have here a file on you..

Me old comrade in arms Steve O. Moore has the december issue of his online animators gazette FLIP up now. http://www.flipanimation.net/flipcover.htm

This issue features reminiscences of two of the most famous holiday specials of all animation:" THE GRINCH WHO STOLE CHRISTMAS" and A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS.

Check it out.

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Question: Who first said:” I’d rather have him on the inside of my tent pissing out, rather than on the outside pissing in”, and who was he talking about?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: How old is the Earth? (discounting Bishop Ussher and his calculation of Genesis)
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History for 12/1/2008
Welcome to Decembrius, month number 10 to the Romans who only had ten months in their original calendar. It’s the same Latin root as Decimate, Dime, Decimal and Dixie.

Birthdays: Woody Allen is 73, Richard Pryor, Mary Martin, Cyril Ritchard, Dick Shawn, Bette Midler is 63, Lee Trevino, Charlene Tilton, Lou Rawls, Marshal Gyorgi Zhukov, Admiral Stansfield Turner, Rex Stout the creator of Nero Wolfe Mysteries, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Colombian DrugLord Pablo Escobar, Treat Williams, Carol Alt, Sarah Silverman is 36

WORLD AIDS DAY- established by the UN in 1987. The lights on Broadway and in Washington D.C. will be dimmed tonight to mark the occasion.

659 AD-Today is the feast day of Saint Eligius of Limoge, a goldsmith and mint master to Merovingian King Dagobert who started the art of Limoge enamels.

1521- Pope Leo X died after getting overheated attending celebrations of the defeat of French forces in Milan. He was 45. Some thought he was poisoned, but he probably caught the malarial fever prevalent in Rome at the time. Leo was one of the great art patrons of the Renaissance and spent lavishly. “ God has given us the Papacy, so let us enjoy it” As soon as the Pontiff was cold Cardinals and bankers looted the Vatican treasury for all the money he borrowed from them, sending the Church into one of the worst financial crises in its’ history.

1805-THE MIDNIGHT CAMP AT AUSTERLITZ- The night before the big battle between French, Austrian and Russian armies on a cold little field in what would be the Czech Republic. Napoleon went on a midnight inspection of his troops. His tour turned into something akin to a homecoming football rally. The French soldiers cheered, lit torches, sang and partied around bonfires all night. Across the hills the enemy generals mistakenly thought all the activity meant Napoleon was breaking his camp to run away.

1835- Hans Christian Andersen published his first book of fairy tales.

1869- A Sir William MacDougal was sent by Ottawa to take over the administration of Prince Rupertland, now called the new Canadian province of Manitoba. His problem was the whole population of French trappers, Indians and half-breeds had already declared themselves the independent Metiz Republic under their leader Louis Riel. MacDougal had to sneak across the border from the U.S. at midnight. Avoiding Metiz patrols his party stopped at an abandoned Hudson's Bay trading post where they raised the Union Jack in the darkness and MacDougal read his Royal Proclamation to an audience of seven aides and two hunting dogs. Then they crept back over the border to the U.S. to a healthy dose of razzing from Yankee cowboys. The British Army arrived next spring and established order but by then MacDougal had been recalled.

1879-Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic opera HMS Pinafore opened. Sullivan conducted the orchestra while Gilbert was a choruster. “So Stick to your desk and never go to sea, and you will be the leader of the Queen’s Navy..”

1887- The first Sherlock Holmes mystery by Arthur Conan-Doyle "A Study in Scarlet" first published in Beatty’s Christmas Gazette.

1909- The Pennsylvania Trust Company invented the Christmas Club account.

1917- Father Flanaghan opened Boys Town west of Omaha Nebraska. A retreat for street kids.

1934- Josef Stalin's close confidant Sergei Kirov is assassinated in a Kremlin hallway by Lenoid Nikolayev. Stalin orders the GREAT PURGES of the thirties to begin. Later it came out that Stalin had ordered Kirov assassinated as an excuse. Exact figures are debatable but it is estimated millions were arrested and died. Stalin even had the wandering poor blind storytellers of the Ukraine rounded up and shot for fomenting anti-revolutionary ethnicity. Recently declassified private papers of Stalin revealed he admired Czar Ivan the Terrible and tried to learn from his example.

1938- Legendary filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein released in Moscow his film of Russian patriotism ALEXANDER NEVSKY, with soundtrack provided by Sergei Prokoviev.

1943- FDR, Churchill and Stalin conclude their first meeting in Teheran, Iran. The western allies passed supplies to Russia via the Persian Gulf through Iran. Roosevelt discussed the occupation zones of a defeated Germany by drawing lines in pencil on a map torn out of an old National Geographic magazine he found on a table.

1944- Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra premiered by the Boston Symphony and Serge Kousevitsky

1947- Alastair Crowley died. Called the “wickest man in the world” he fused several occult theologies like Bavarian Illumanism, Gnosticism and Numerology into his Abbey of Theleme. His own mother nicknamed him “the Great Beast.” In 1968 Alastair Crowley was portrayed on the cover of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album.

1949-Chunking, the last Nationalist capitol fell to Mao Tse Tung's Red Army.

1953- Ex- Esquire Magazine art director and frustrated cartoonist Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy Magazine. It featured a nude centerfold of actress Marilyn Monroe. She joked to the press “ I had nothing on but the radio!”


Hefner assembled the layout of the magazine on his kitchen table and borrowed money from his mother-in-law to pay for the printing. The first Playboy had no number or date, because Hef was certain he couldn’t afford to make an issue number two.

1955- ROSA PARKS, a black seamstress in Montgomery Alabama, refuses to give up her seat on a crowded bus and is arrested for violating the segregation laws. She was fined $10. At the time she said she was unaware that she was breaking the law, she was actually seated in the first row reserved for Colored passengers, but since the bus was crowded the driver insisted she give up her seat for a white man. This incident and the subsequent boycott is the spark of the great Black Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's.

1963- The NASA space facility at Cape Canaveral Florida was changed to Cape Kennedy in honor of slain president John F. Kennedy. The same day the Kennedy Family moved out of the White House so Lyndon Johnson could move in. Jackie Kennedy only returned to the White House once more in her life in 1971 and on the condition that it be in secret and no press be present. She even would tell D.C. taxicabs to avoid streets where she might accidentally get a glimpse of it.

1982- Dr. Barney Clark receives the first Artificial Heart. Part of the research development was credited to Paul Winchell, puppeteer and cartoon voice who created Jerry Mahoney, Knucklehead Smith, Dick Dastardly and a plastic heart valve. At first it was hoped these plastic valves could take the place of real hearts, but today they are mostly used for temporary relief until a human donor heart can be found.

1990- The tunnelers digging below the English Channel from France and England break through to meet in the middle and shake hands. A tunnel under the English Channel had been a dream since Napoleon in 1802.
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Yesterdays Question: How old is the Earth? ( discounting Bishop Ussher and his calculation of Genesis)

Answer: According to scientists, the latest estimates are the Earth is 4.5 to 6 billion years old.