Ridley Scott has announced he will develop a movie version of the Parker Brothers classic board game Monopoly. It will be written by the scribe who did Corpse Bride.

At the same time Michael Bay is doing the big screen version of the Ouija Board, and someone else is making a movie of the board game Battleship.

Things like this make me question my choice of career.

We're already living in a large session of Chutes & Ladders...?

I want to write some more about directing on Osmosis Jones, but you're going to have to be patient with me. My publisher just cracked the whip and I got to get a good chunk of my manuscript done this week. So,for now I'm chained to me Microsoft Word till further notice.



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Question: What does it mean to “ turn the tables” on someone?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Is Barack Obama a Baby Boomer?
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History for 11/12/2008
Birthdays: Auguste Rodin, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, Bahi-ullah 1817 founder of the Bahii faith, Elizabeth Cadie -Stanton, Cecil B. DeMille, Edward G. Robinson, Jack Oakie, Kim Hunter, Shamus Culhane, Charles Manson, Neil Young, Edvard Munch, Al Michaels, Nadia Comenici, Tanya Harding, Dave Brain

1035- Canute the Great died. He was the Viking King of Denmark and England simultaneously. It was Canute who once tried to command the ocean tide to go out.
He got his feet wet.

1792- The Revolutionary French Republic issued a declaration that any other European kingdom that wants to overthrow their king and chop his head off is welcome to come join the fun and France will help.

1859- The first trapeze act was demonstrated at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris. The act caused such a sensation that the daredevil was immortalized by his tights becoming a fashion named in his honor- Jules Leotard.

1861- THE CURRAUGH CAMP AFFAIR- When 20 year old Edward the Prince of Wales went to Oxford he was kept on a short leash by his worried parents Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They expected his college life to be- well, Victorian. He was to reside off campus, limited his diet to bland foods and seltzer water and absolutely no smoking or carousing with women! This draconian regimen only stiffened Bertie’s rebellious nature.
When attending maneuvers in Ireland, he bunked with a company of hard drinking cavalry officers. Bertie was at last free to go wild. By unfortunate coincidence the gossip about the Prince’s all night drinking binges and bedding actresses reached his father just as Albert was showing the first signs of the typhoid fever that would kill him. For years afterwards Queen Victoria blamed her son for contributing to his father's death by breaking his heart. In his adult years King Edward VII was never without a cigar in his teeth, a girl on his lap and a drink in his hand.

1912- SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC- in the Antarctic this day the frozen bodies of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott and his men were found. He had lost his race to find the South Pole to Norwegian Piers Ammundsen then was stranded by a blizzard only 30 miles from his base camp on the Ross Ice Shelf. His last diary entry ( March 29th ) said "We are showing that Englishmen can still have a bold spirit, fighting it out to the end. This diary and our dead bodies will be the proof. I should like to write more but I haven't the strength..."

1917- At the first meeting of the Russian Duma since the Bolshevik Revolution Lenin and Trotsky revealed their radical plan to reform Russian Society into a Communist Worker’s State dominated by the Soviets -workers and peasants councils.

1918- The day after the Armistice ending World War One, dozens of German army regiments against orders began to march back across their borders in perfect order. Then defying the shouts and threats of their officers the men threw away their helmets and uniforms, disbanded themselves and went home.

1920- In the wake of the "Black Sox" Baseball scandal, the first rigged World Series, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis was elected first Commissioner of Baseball. He ordered all those involved in the scandal including Shoeless Joe Jackson permanently banned from baseball, even though they had been acquitted in a civil trial.

1923- In Clarksburg West Virginia a man shot his wife for smoking a cigarette.

1927- The Holland Tunnel completed. It runs under the Hudson River connecting New York and New Jersey. It’s not named for the Netherlands, but for the engineer Clifford Holland, who died shortly before it’s completion.

1933- Hugh Gray of the British Aluminum Company takes the first photographs of what he claimed was a monster in Loch Ness. He would be the first of many to have claimed to have seen Nessie.

1944- THE BATTLESHIP TIRPITZ is sunk. After the big battle with the Bismarck, Nazi admirals built an even bigger superbattleship, the Tirpitz. The allies however, found out through intelligence work when it would sail and attacked this one as soon as it left it's harbor. They pounded it with bomber and torpedo planes and midget submarines day and night until it rolled over and sank. Survivors recalled as the ship was sinking they could hear through the hull the sound of the doomed sailors singing "Deutschland Uber Alles". This caused a British Admiral to remark:" It's tragic that such men follow such a cause."

1946- Disney's "Song of the South" with William Baskett as Uncle Remus.

1955- This is the date Marty McFly returns to in the film Back to the Future and Back to the Future II.

1975- Portland Oregon had a large dead gray whale on it’s beach. It decided it would be easier to dispose if they blew it up. As an audience watched they stuffed it with half a ton of dynamite. The explosion drew cheers from the audience, then everyone ran for cover as they were showered by chunks of smelly blubber and guts.

1981- The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for the second time. First reusable spacecraft.

1990- Akihito became Emperor of Japan. His father Hirohito had been Emperor since 1927.

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Yesterday’s Question: Is Barack Obama a Baby Boomer?

Answer: Its open to discussion. The post World War Two baby boom is listed by some as lasting from 1946-1964. I always thought of the boom as ending with JFK’s election in 1960. Barack’s parents weren’t the World War Two generation but his grandparents. Still, I’ve heard him officially listed as a Boomer.

According to Animation Magazine, 14 animated features are qualifying for the Best Feature Oscar this year.

Bolt - Disney
Delgo – Fathom Studios
Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! – 20th Century Fox/Blue Sky
Dragon Hunters – Futurikon/Peace Arch
Fly Me to the Moon – Summit Ent./nWave
Igor – MGM/ Weinstein Co./Exodus
Kung Fu Panda – DreamWorks Animation
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa – DreamWorks Animation
$9.99 – Regent Releasing
The Sky Crawlers – Production IG./Nippon/Sony Pictures Classics
Sword of the Stranger (Stranger Mukoh Hadan) - Shochiku/Bones/Bandai
The Tale of Despereaux - Universal
WALL-E – Disney/Pixar
Waltz with Bashir – Sony Pictures Classics

Pixar vs. Disney, Dreamworks, Blue Sky and Mamoru Osshi and me old Roger Rabbit mate Rob Stevenhagen, and more. A real Battle Royale this year.
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Question: Is Barack Obama considered a Baby Boomer?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Is it Lasagne or Lasagna?
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History for 11/11/2008
Birthdays: Abigail Adams, Alexander Borodin, Fyodor Doestoyevsky, Gen .George “Blood & Guts” Patton, Pat O’Brien, Kurt Vonnengut, Rene Clair, Carlos Fuentes, Jonathan Winters, Stubby Kay, Fuzzy Zoeller, Demi Moore is 46, Leonard DiCaprio is 34

Today in the Middles Ages this was "Martinmass" the feast of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of France.

Happy Veterans Day in the U.S., Memorial Day in many European countries.

1534- The Parliament voted the Act of Supremacy, confirming that the King of England would be henceforth the Supreme Head of the Church in England breaking with the Catholic Church in Rome. They Christened the new faith The Church of England.

1668- Madamoiselle Du Parc was an beautiful actress who dumped Moliere and his comic company to become the mistress of the tragic playwright Racine, causing Moliere and Racine’s friendship to break. Plus Racine didn’t like the way Moliere’s actors did his plays. Three years later this day Mlle. Du Parc died under mysterious circumstances. Racine gave up his wild ways, got married and had a big family. In 1679 a notorious poisoner Madame Monvoisin claimed that Racine hired her to off his girlfriend! Was the French Shakespeare a Bluebeard or was La Voisin paid to slander him? The authorities considered arresting him, but King Louis XIV quashed the investigation because it would implicate the King’s favorite Madame de Montespan.

1887- THE HAYMARKET EXECUTIONS- Four leaders of an early American labor movement The Knights of Labor are hanged after being charged with responsibility for a bomb tossed at police during a demonstration in Chicago. Samuel Fielden, Adolphe Fischer, August Spies and Albert Parsons. It was never proven they actually had thrown the bomb, aww but they were a bunch of reds anyway...A later Chicago mayor ruined his political career when he proved publicly that the Haymarket defendants were innocent. Albert Parsons shouted as he dropped through the trapdoor:" Oh men of America, Let the Voice of the People be Heard!" They were demanding unheard of concessions like a six day work week and an eight hour day down from twelve to fourteen. A monument was erected in Haymarket not to Parsons but to the police. Hippies blew it up in 1968.

1918- ARMISTICE DAY- World War One ended. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month after 22 million dead, the guns of the Great War fall silent. In many countries this is the traditional Memorial Day, the American one in May is in honor of our Civil War. In a strange kind of salute when the word went down the battlelines that the ceasefire would take effect at 11:00AM, one minute before, thousands of cannons on both sides fired one last round simultaneously. One German machine gunner fired his last belt of bullets at the enemy. Then he climbed up on the trench parapet and in full view of both armies, he bowed deeply, turned and walked away.

1918- TOMMY GUNS- Sitting on a New York wharf forgotten and ignored was the first shipment of Thompson submachine guns, built for a war just ended. John Thompson was an inventor who tried to solve the problem of close hand-to-hand trench warfare by inventing a light mobile machine gun that could be a “trench-broom” –spewing 800 bullets a minute. Because it fired small pistol bullets it was called a “sub-machine gun”.
But the Great War was over and the U.S. Army wasn’t interested anymore, neither were most police departments. So in 1921 the Thompson Submachine Gun went on sale to the public as a “great home defense system”. The people who did buy them were the Mafia and the IRA. They nicknamed them Choppers, Chicago Typewriters and Tommy Guns. Al Capone’s men invented the novelty of hiding one in a violin case. Old John Thompson was shocked that his creation was loved by violent hoodlums and made incidents like the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre possible. He died in 1940 just weeks before the US Army would order thousands of his Tommy Gun to fight World War Two.

1920- On the second anniversary of the Armistice, the British entomb an Unknown Soldier to represent all war dead “A Soldier Whose Name is Known Only to God”. The French do it and the Americans think this a neat idea so do their own at Arlington in 1932. Adolph Hitler called himself the Unknown soldier of Germany, Now because of DNA identification identities of war dead will no longer be unknown. In 1998 the identity of the Unknown of the Vietnam War was discovered and the remains moved upon request of his family.

1925- Louis “Sachmo” Armstrong did the first recordings of his band the Hot Five. These records lift him from a local talent in Chicago and New Orleans to international stardom.

1925- The Nazis party formed a second para-military force to augment their stormtroopers (the SA) called the Schutz-Staffel or SS. Its leader was a one time chicken farmer named Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was heavily into the occult. He built officer training centers in a castle made up to look like King Arthur's round table and he encouraged Germans to conceive children in graveyards so the unborn children could absorb the spirits of dead German heroes.

1926- Route 66, the first interstate highway built for automobiles in the U.S. is started. (it will get finished in 1932) The World's first road exclusively for automobiles was opened in 1927, the Via Fiore Imperiale in Rome.

1932- The Girls Scouts first offered freshly baked cookies for sale. The proceeds went to purchase camping gear. In 1936, the Girls Scouts signed a contract with Keebler to bake and package the cookies.

1938- GOD BLESS AMERICA- Irving Berlin's song God Bless America sung for the first time by chubby chanteuse Kate Smith. Berlin had written the song in 1918 for a show but it didn’t fit in, so he threw it in a file cabinet and forgot about it. Twenty years later he revived the song for the effort to combat the Depression and it became a huge hit. Ever since 1942 there has been calls to have it replace the Star Spangled Banner as our National Anthem. In 1970 a frustrated DJ on hippy radical radio station WBAI promised to play Kate Smith’s God Bless America over and over again until people started calling in pledges to help the station. The phones soon started ringing. After the World Trade Center attack of Sept 11th 2001, the song again echoed from a thousand throats, even being sung in Berlin, Teheran and Moscow in sympathy

1938- TYPHOID MARY- On this day 68 year old Mary Mallon died in an asylum. She was a carrier of the disease typhoid fever and, in 1910, while being a cook in a hotel resort ,infected 1,000 people. Released from jail a few years later she had promised not to resume her former profession but soon was in the kitchen again and started the epidemic of 1915. She, herself, never contracted the disease.

1938- The first day of shooting on the film 'The Wizard of Oz". Judy Garland met 125 little people hired to be the Munchkins. Judy's energy was fading under the heavy work schedule so L.B. Mayer ordered her put on Benzadrine (speed) every morning and Valium pills to sleep. June Alysson, another young MGM actress at the time said: "The studio nurse would give it to you and tell you it was vitamins." Judy Garland became a heavy drug addict and died of an overdose in 1969 at 47 years old.

1940- The Birth of the Jeep. The army introduces its first General Purpose vehicle-G.P. or Jeep, a name coinciding with a character in E.C. Segar's Popeye cartoons.

1941- On the night before mobster Abe Reles, alias Kid Twist, was due to testify what he knew of the Mafia, he was thrown out of a Coney Island hotel window to his death. He was under Federal protection but, in 1962, Joe Valachi testified mobster Frank Costello had raised $100,000 to bribe the cops to do the deed themselves. A popular toast around Brooklyn those days was: “ Here’s to Abe Reles, a canary who could sing but not fly.”

1966- Gemini XII spacecraft went up into orbit. It was the last flight of the Gemini program and the first spaceflight of Buzz Aldrin who would later be the second man to walk on the moon.

1978- The renovated Hollywood Sign is unveiled. The second O was paid for by rock star Alice Cooper in memory of his idol, Groucho Marx.

1980- 'Heaven's Gate" Michael Cimino's $44 million dollar flop opened. Cimino originally said he could do the film for $8 million. Critic Pauline Kael said: "It's the kind of movie you want to deface. You want to draw mustaches all over it."
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Yesterday’s Question: Is it Lasagne or Lasagna?

Answer: In proper Italian it is Lasagne, the plural. Lasagana is one noodle. It’s like ordering a spaghetto, one strand of spaghetti.

How time flies. Ten years ago, 1998, I finished with Dreamworks SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON, and went to Warner Bros Animation to begin co-directing OSMOSIS JONES with Piet Kroon. I thank Amanda Seward of Warners for hiring me. Osmosis was one of the best first draft scripts I had read since Who Framed Roger Rabbit? And this was long before the Farrelly Bros were even mentioned for the live action sequences.
We split offices with Steve Oederkerk's remake of THE AMAZING MR LIMPETT (never made),
and we completed work in 2001 sharing pre-production offices with the first SCOOBY DOO movie.

Producer Zak Pen, screenwriter Marc Hyman, Piet Kroon and me in 1998. CLick to Enlarge

At Warner Features I inherited THE IRON GIANT crew, still reeling from the failure at the Box Office and the loss of Brad Bird to PIXAR; also some of the QUEST FOR CAMELOT CREW, still smarting from the trauma of, well..., working on Quest for Camelot. Although I could never replace Brad, and some always held that against me, I did what I could to make the project a special one.


An animation crew is like an army in a battle. Morale and talent and luck and teamwork are elements almost as vital as the project itself. If we could not give out the goodies and steady employment that Dreamworks and Disney could, we could at least make the project a fun atmosphere to work in. I recalled from Pat that many who worked on FERNGULLY loved working on that production. We did a lot of morale lifting and improving. In the end we had put together a great working team. I am happy that years later, many who worked on Osmosis, now recall our project fondly.

I had directed a lot of TV and was directing at Disney when I left with the first rebel group to Dreamworks. But Directing at Warners was a great experience, and working with a crew like that was a joy. Dennis Edwards, Aaron Parry and the production team made the project a lot easier than it might have been.

Piet and I revamped the storyboards and got a greenlight from the main lot to go ahead. Richard Williams once told me "sometimes the only thing that is as satisfying as doing the best work you can do, is to create an atmosphere where others can do the best work they can possibly do." Our climate let loose some great designers like Steve Pilcher and Tony Pulham, animators like Dean Wellins, Wendy Perdue, Darlee Brewster, Sidney Padua, Lennie Graves and Ricardo Curtis. Long before RATATOUILLE was on the menu, we let efx designer Michelle Gagne go wild with the 2D effects design. PLus a lot of great young folks like Peter Sohn, Andy Schmidt, Shane Prigmore and more who later went up to Pixar to sitteth at the right hand of the Brad to Maketh Heavenly stuff like THE INCREDIBLES. The rest of our 3D crew went on to SPIDERMAN II and LORD OF THE RINGS.

Editors like Lois Freeman Fox, Rich Deitel, Craig Paulsen, Julia Gray and Leslie barker. The wonderful Armetta Jackson reading endless tracks of Bill Murray throwing up on Molly Shannon. What a trooper! And my assistant- my go to person for everything, Glenda Winfield. There are many, many more folks I'd like to mention, but this would go on too long. Suffice it to say you all know what you did, and I will never forget you.

If Osmosis Jones did not make the kind of box office splash Incredibles or Kung Fu Panda did, I am grateful to all the fans who do love it. I hear a number of biology classes still use it today to illustrate some lessons. And the film turned into a pretty nice TV series. Although I didn't hear too much input from other studios, I notice with satisfaction they used a lot of my people afterwards.

I must admit directing such a big Hollywood film is a narcotic. You do crave doing it again and again. I envy all the new first time directors now plying the trade around town. I hope I get another chance, but if that is not meant to be, I am thankful for the chance I had. And who knows, If I am good and brush my teeth at night and say my prayers to OUR LADY OF PERSISTENCE OF VISION, maybe I'll get to work with such a talented team again.

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Question: Is it Lasagne or Lasagna?

Question: Why do so many men in the 1930s-40s have those little trimmed mustaches? Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Walt Disney?
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History for 11/10/2008
Birthdays: Mohammed, Martin Luther, William Hogarth, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Francois Couperin, King George II of England, Frederick Schiller, Claude Rains, Tim Rice, Richard Burton, Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, MacKenzie Phillips, Russell Means, Sinbad, Brittany Murphy, George Fenneman-Groucho’s TV announcer, Sue Kroyer, Kellie Bea Cooper

1770- Voltaire said:" If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

1778- John Paul Jones had been beached in France for nine months. At the height of the American Revolution he had been told to send away his ship USS Ranger to await a bigger better one from the French. But delay and red tape was making him crazy. Today his agents found him a new command- a fat, old, run down East India merchant tub named L’Duc du Durras. Jones fixed it up, and renamed her the USS BonHomme Richard after Ben Franklin’s international bestselling book. The frigate BonHomme Richard became the most famous ship in the young American Navy.

1782- English King George III wrote his Prime Minister Lord Shelburne about the recently lost American Revolution: " I should be miserable indeed if no blame for the dismemberment of America from this Empire not be laid at my door, however knowing that Knavery is so much a striking feature of it’s Inhabitants, it may Not in the end be such an Evil that they are now aliens to this kingdom."

1793- FESTIVAL OF THE GODDESS OF REASON- The radical French Revolutionaries had done away with the Catholic religion as a collaborator in tyranny, but they knew the common people wanted the consolation of religion. So they now substituted the worship of Reason in it's place. Today was the first festival of the Goddess of Reason held at Notre Dame with an actress personifying the new deity and chants and hymns and such silliness. It didn't last, it's inventor Pierre Chaumette was later guillotined for not being radical enough. When Napoleon came to power he restored normal Catholic worship although the French army permitted no chaplains.

1865- During the Civil War Swiss immigrant Henry Wirz was the Confederate commander of the infamous prison Andersonville where thousands of Yankee prisoners starved and perished. On this day he became the first military officer ever hanged for war crimes. He was also the first person to use the excuse "I was only following orders."

1871- STANLEY FINDS LIVINGSTON- No one in England had heard from the famous African explorer-missionary Dr David Livingston for three years and he was feared dead. Henry Morton Stanley undertook the expedition partly as a publicity stunt funded by the Josef Pulitizer’s New York World newspaper. After one year of wandering through the jungle Stanley came upon the old missionary on the shores of Lake Tanganyika near Ujiji. Stanley introduced himself by saying: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley also proved Speeckes theory of the source of the Nile River as Lake Victoria Nyanzaa.

1885- Gottfried Daimler invented the first motorcycle.

1917- The Voting Rights for Women Movement or Suffragettes began a dramatic all day protest in front of the White House. Every time a protestor was arrested and dragged off another would take her place. By the days end 41 women were arrested.

1918- After abdicating the German Empire Kaiser Wilhelm finally decided he didn't want to stick around and maybe end up shot like his cousin Nicky the Russian Czar. So in the middle of night the German Imperial family slipped away by secret train and crossed the border into neutral Holland. The Hohenzollern Family, which had ruled since 1685 was now gone. Wilhelm’s first words when reaching the Castle of Daun were: "I should now like a strong hot cup of English tea." Remember his mother was Queen Victoria's daughter and he spoke perfect English. Kaiser Wilhelm lived in exile for the rest of his life, refusing Adolf Hitler’s offer to return in 1934. He died of old age in 1940.

1918- The Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary and Empress Zita abdicate. Elderly Emperor Franz-Joseph II helped start World War One and then he conveniently died. His young grandnephew Karl tried to handle a bad situation he had no control over. He even attempted a peace overture behind the Kaiser's back as early as 1916. Ironically the Austro-German High Command helped to fund Russian revolutionaries like Lenin. German money paid the printing costs for Pravda. After taking power in Petersburg Lenin immediately had soviet-style revolutionary cells set up in Vienna and Berlin. Like in Germany riots convulsed Austrian cities and whole armies were leaving their trenches and walking home. The Imperial Hapsburg family, which had reigned in Europe uninterrupted since 1265, piled into limousines and sped off for Switzerland before the Viennese Workers Soviet Committee could arrest them. Like the Kaiser, they too had heard how the Russian Czar and his whole family had been put up against the wall and shot. So they preferred not to suffer a similar fate. The Republics of Austria and Hungary were declared. In 2004 Pope John Paul II made Kaiser Karl I a Saint.

1950- Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" The first Herman and Katnip cartoon.

1951- The first long distance telephone call without needing an operator to make the connection.

1969- The children’s education show SESAME STREET premiered on PBS TV. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird and Mr Hooper.

1971- The US table tennis team arrived in Red China for a tour. Ping-Pong became an unlikely diplomatic tactic to begin the warming of relations between China and the US.

1975- S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sinks at Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior, drowning all 29 crew members and causing a famous 70's folk song to happen.

1977- Pope Paul VI announced that Catholics who remarried or married Protestants were no longer automatically excommunicate. But gay people....?

1981- Innovative French film director Abel Gance died at age 92. Shortly before his death he saw his great widescreen movie Napoleon restored by British historian Kevin Brownlow and produced by Francis Ford Coppola with a live audience. At Radio City Music Hall, Brownlow stretched a telephone cord out on stage so the old man could hear the wild cheers of the NY audience.

1982- The Vietnam Veterans Wall Monument designed by Maia Lin opened to the public in Washington D.C,

1995- Carolco, the Hollywood studio that produced many Arnold Schwarzenegger hits like "Total Recall" declared bankruptcy after producing $115 million dollar megaflop "Cutthroat Island".
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Yesterday’s Question: Why do so many men in the 1930s-40s have those little trimmed mustaches? Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Walt Disney?

Answer: Called The Continental or the After-8, the fashion was first set by early movie star Douglas Fairbanks, and further propagated by top nightclub Latin bandleaders like Xavier Cugat. Other cinema stars like John Gilbert, Gilbert Roland and Ronald Colman followed, and soon every leading man needed a pencil thin mustache to look cool. Clark Gable’s mustache even had it’s own name- Sir Sharpness.

After World War Two the style went out of fashion, except for John Waters and George Clooney.
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Just in case you wondered when you watch the Oscars in February, when does the Academy actually vote on stuff? Well, first round judging and screenings are going on right now. Yesterday 70 members of the Hollywood animation and short film branch sat through 40 shorts, over nine hours of viewing. New York and London have scheduled their sessions as well.

Bob Kurtz jokes that marathon sessions like that can lead to a case of animation-poisoning. Break out the vitamin A and resin eye bags. Judgings for the Annie Awards are going on as well. There are more elimination rounds until the final Oscar ballots are mailed Dec 26th.
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Question: Why do so many men in the 1930s-40s have those little trimmed mustaches? Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Walt Disney?
What does it take to be In like Flynn?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why are barber poles white with a red spiral stripe?
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History for 11/9/2008
Birthdays: English King Edward VII, Confederate Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill, Stanford White, Marie Dressler, Ed Wynn, Claude Rains, Ann Sexton, Spiro Agnew, Tommy Dorsey, Dr. Carl Sagan, Whitey Herzog, Dorothy Dandridge, Hedy Lamarr, Dr. Herbert Kalmus the inventor of Technicolor film, Lou Ferrigno, Sisqo

In ancient Rome this was the Feast of Mania, like the Greek Anthesterion it was a time when the Gates of Underworld were said to be open and the shades of the dead could visit their old haunts. This is where we get the word Maniac.

64BC- Marcus Cicero delivered the first of his great speeches against Catiline, a Roman noble he accused of gathering an army of the disaffected to overthrow the Roman Republic.

1699- According to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, this was the day Lemual Gulliver was shipwrecked on the island of Liliput.

1781- Shortly after the Battle of Yorktown, George Washington watched his stepson Jackie Custis die of camp fever or meningitis. For a time Washington would not believe that his victory at Yorktown had ended the Revolutionary War. He kept nagging his French allies for a new attack on Charleston South Carolina, while the British were only focused on getting out. One British officer serving in America wrote home- I wish Columbus had never discovered this place!”.

1799- THE COUP OF THE 18TH BRUMAIRE- Napoleon seized power in France. The name referred to the date in the French Revolutionary calendar. The little general began by giving a speech in the National Assembly denouncing the Jacobin menace and the need to restore order. Throwing around the term Jacobin then was akin to calling people Terrorists today. However he was never as good a political speaker as he was a soldier. The senior politicians recognized baloney when they heard it and mobbed him. His brother Lucien who was a senator pulled him out of the crowd. So Nappy called in his troops and cleared the hall, pushing some senators out of the windows, it was a one-story building so the effect was purely symbolic. At 2:00 AM a small group of friendly senators were convened to vote to create a leadership system of three Counsels with Nappy to share power, but he soon outmaneuvered the other two. Napoleon became dictator of France and declared the French Revolution complete. “I am the Revolution!” He was 31.

1872- The Great Fire of Boston. Much of the city center was destroyed because an equine virus, The Great Epizootic, had killed off the horses of the fire brigades.

1875- A treaty had declared all of the Sacred Black Hills of South Dakota to be protected Indian land “ So Long as Grass grows and Water Flows.”But prospectors supported by General George Custer had discovered gold in those hills and a gold rush began, Indians or not. This day a confidential memo from Supreme Commander of the U.S. Army Phil Sheridan with President Ulysses Grant’s approval ordered the frontier cavalry to cease preventing settlers and gold prospectors from moving into the Black Hills. This memo in effect violated the Indian Treaty of 1868 and would lead to Custer's Last Stand next June.

1906- President Teddy Roosevelt departed on board the battleship Louisiana to go inspect the Panama Canal dig. TR is the first sitting U.S. President to travel abroad.

1911-The first Neon sign illuminated.

1918- KAISER WILHELM ABDICATED the collapsing German Monarchy . A curious fact was that no Tommy, Doughboy or Poilu ( the nicknames for British, American and French soldiers) in World War One ever made it to Berlin, much less entered Germany. The German war machine collapsed from within- bread riots, the economy in shambles, The entire Navy mutinied, Bolshevik Worker’s Soviets were set up in eleven cities including Cologne, Munich and Hamburg..
At first the Kaiser hoped to first sign the peace with the victorious Allies then use the German army to put down the riots and restore order. But changed his mind when 40 combat officers selected at random said 38 to 2 that they would refuse to kill other Germans to save his monarchy. Even then leaders resorted to polls. “What about the Fananeider-the German Soldiers Oath to die for the Monarchy?! “he asked General Von Groener. “Sire, today the Oath is just some empty words!” Even the Kaiser’s personal bodyguards were setting up a Revolutionary Workers Committee. So rather than wind up arrested and maybe even shot like his cousin the Czar of Russia, Wilhelm abdicated.

1918- Meanwhile Berlin was in a confused panic, monarchists fighting communists in the streets. Chancellor Prince Max of Baden said to Reichstag leader Fritz Ebert:” I hand over to you the care of the German Empire.” Ebert replied:” I have lost two sons to that Empire.”
Social democrat Karl Scheiderman was having lunch at the Reichstag when he was told the German Bolsheviks Karl Leibknecht and Red Rosa Luxemburg were about to publicly announce a soviet-style state. Scheiderman got up from his soup, walked out on the balcony and declared the Republic of Germany. Fritz Ebert became it’s first President.

1923- THE BEER HALL PUTSCH-Adolf Hitler's first attempt at a revolution styled to coincide with Napoleon's anniversary of coming to power in 1799. Old German war hero General Ludendorf stood by him in support. The coup attempt was easily put down by Munich police and Hitler only spent a year under house arrest. Hitler had a long memory. Eleven years later in 1934 when dictator Hitler was purging his stormtroopers he remembered to look up the same Munich constable who had him arrested and had the man shot.

1928- Anthropologist Margaret Mead arrived in Ta’u, Samoa to begin work on her book “Coming of Age in Samoa” which will have a great effect on how people raise their children.

1935- An aggressive group of labor unions led by United Mine Workers leader John L. Lewis break away from the AF of L and form the Congress of Industrial Unions or the CIO. The AFL and CIO reunited in 1951.

1937- KRYSTAL NACHT- In Paris an angry German-Jewish exile shot and killed a German diplomat named Ernst Von Rapt. Ironically Rapt was anti-Nazi and was being watched by the Gestapo. Back in Germany the Nazis use this incident to order the mass destruction of 191 synagogues and 1,000 Jewish businesses. Then the Jewish community was ordered to pay fines up to $40 million to pay for the damage. The name Crystal Night pertains to the sound of smashing glass in the streets. German boxing champion Max Schmelling was the media idol of Aryan Superiority for defeating American Joe Louis. One thing no one knew was that Schmelling concealed two Jewish boys from danger on Krystalnacht and had them smuggled out of the country. In 1961 Schmelling was invited to a testimonial in his honor at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas, now owned by one of those boys.

1964- Johnny Hart's first "Wizard of Id" comic strip published.

1953- Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died of alcohol poisoning and liver failure in New York after downing 18 straight shots of whiskey. There's actually some debate as to whether or not Dylan Thomas intended to drink himself to death. Scholars have recently suggested that he was a diabetic and died of hypoglycemia. Whatever the actual agent of Thomas' demise may have been, the coroner wrote on his death certificate under the cause of death heading, "Insult to the brain."

1965- "WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT?" The first Great East Coast Blackout. A transformer near Rochester shorts out and the surge overloads station after station until the entire eastern seaboard from Boston to Delaware is in darkness for 12 hours. ( nine months later there was a notable rise in the birthrate, I guess there was nothing else to do....).

1966- In London Beatle John Lennon went to an art exhibit and met a Japanese avant garde photographer named Yoko Ono.

1981- The Screen Actor's Guild under President Ed Asner votes emergency moneys for striking PATCO air traffic controllers fired by the former SAG president, now U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

1979- National Public Radio goes on the air. The first US national news show with women as anchor reporters.

1989- THE BERLIN WALL OPENS UP. The East German authorities back down as the people (guards included) dance and sing on the hated symbol of Cold War division. A student points up at the t.v. cameras and triumphantly shouted: "Look, the Whole World is Watching !" Some West German politicians drove to the scene of the spontaneous demonstration and they tried to get everyone to sing patriotic songs like "Deutschlandlied", but the crowd drowned them out dancing to the theme from the movie:"GhostBusters".
The next day people found the streets covered in banana peels. It was the first thing East Germans bought in the west, and they ate their bananas as they window shopped.

1995- PLO leader Yassir Arafat had been warned it wouldn’t be wise to attend the funeral of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Ytschak Rabin, killed on Nov 5th. This day he secretly sneaked into Jerusalem to make a courtesy call on Leia Rabin at her apartment to express his condolences. It was the first time the Jerusalem born Arafat had ever visited Israel.

2004- The Jones Soda Pop Company of Seattle announced its new creation – Mashed Potato Flavored Soda. This was to follow up on their success last year of Roast Turkey and Gravy Soda.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why are barber poles white with a red spiral stripe?

Answer: Up until the Twentieth Century barbers did minor surgeries, bleeding and dental work. The red and white symbolized bloody bandages.