I've heard through the grapevine that art director Walt Peregoy will be honored this year as a Disney Legend. Congratulations to Walt and his family! His design style on 101 Dalmations was inspired. We're all very happy for him.



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Quiz: What is nomenclature?

¬Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What does it mean when you call someone a Svengali?

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History for August 17th, 2008
Birthdays: Davy Crocket, Mae West, Marcus Garvey, Sam Goldwyn- original name Schmuel Gelbfisz, then Sam Goldfish, Monte Wooley, Maureen O’Hara, Boog Powell, Belinda Carlisle, Guillermo Vilas, V.S. Naipul, Donnie Wahlberg, Sean Penn, Robert DeNiro is 64

1661- THE PARTY. Armand Fouquet, the first minister of Louis XIV (the Sun King) decided to throw the ultimate party and invite his royal master. Fouquet's new chateau Vaux leVicomte was so lavish, the dinner for 6000 guests so exquisite, the gardens so beautiful and the entertainment was provided by the playwright Moliere. Everything was so all around superior to anything anyone had done that the King responded by having Fouquet relieved of his offices and thrown in the Bastille. It seems King Louis didn't like being upstaged by his servants. Fouquet's immodest ambitions were no help either, his motto was "To what heights may I aspire?" Louis wanted to arrest him on the spot, but his mother said to do so would spoil a really nice party. So he waited two weeks then sent his chief of Musketeers Comte D’Artangnan to arrest Fouquet, The king's new minister Colbert was much more discreet in his entertainments.

1908- D.W. Griffith signed a contract to begin directing movies for Biograph Pictures. He was paid $50 dollars a week plus royalties.

1941-Walt Disney and his artists leave on a goodwill tour of South America, underwritten by a $70,000 government grant. President Franklin Roosevelt was worried that some South American countries might be sympathetic to Nazis forcing the U.S. to worry about her backdoor. So FDR sent Nelson Rockefeller to give the Latin American countries whatever they wanted to keep them out of the world war. Among other things they wanted Donald Duck. It also helped settle the Disney animators strike at home, because without Walt boiling over, Roy could make a deal in private. The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos result.

1962- The Beatles replaced drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr.

1969- The closing day of the Woodstock Rock Concert, Three Days of Peace and Music. Jimmy Hendrix did his now famous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

1984- The Walt Disney Company informed it’s chairman Ron Miller that they wanted his resignation. Disney had fallen to 14th in film box office by then. Miller was Walt Disney's son-in-law and was once a professional football player. Within two years of Michael Eisner taking power Disney was number one.

1985-The Hormel Meat Packing Strike, severely threatening the worlds supply of SPAM.

1992- Famed film director Woody Allen admits he is having an affair with Soon Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his long time lover Mia Farrow. He is 60 and she is 21. But as the unrepentant Allen states: “The Heart wants what it wants.”
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean when you call someone a Svengali?

Answer provided by Prof Nancy Beiman in Toronto: Svengali was the hypnotist in the novel TRILBY from the 19th century. He hypnotized the titular artist's model and made her do things. Anyone who controls another person by suggestion or will power is still referred to as a Svengali. The novel also gave us the Trilby Hat. Which still, by the way, looks pretty good.

P-p-p-puhl-LEASE!I want a Twentieth Anniv Crew Reunion!

2008 is the twentieth anniversary of the breakthrough film WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? All year plans have flown around Disney and the Academy to do some kind of reunion tribute. But as the schedule for the remainder of the year fills up, nothing seems to have gelled. At SIGGRAPH, Don Hahn and I reconnected and re-affirmed our determination to get something together.

Stay Tooned for October! And I'm saying it now to start the ball rolling. Next year Ariel, the Little Mermaid will have her Twentieth Birthday!

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Quiz: What does it mean when you call someone a Svengali?

answer to yesterday’s question below- What is mean when you speak in a pejorative sense?
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History for 8/16/2008
Birthdays: Fess Parker, Karl Stockhausen*, George Meany Charles Bukowski, Menachim Begin, Otto Mesmer the creator of Felix the Cat, Myron Grim Natwick the creator of Betty Boop, Hal Foster the creator of Prince Valiant, Alex Raymond the creator of Flash Gordon, Kathie Lee Gifford, Eydie Gorme, Bill Evans, Leslie Ann Warren, Angela Bassett, Julie Numar, Robert Culp, James Cameron is 54, Bruce Beresford, Madonna Louise Ciccone is 50

*Stockhausen was an atonal composer who's music was not to everyone's taste. Once when he was late on writing a new concerto for a concert he placed a piece of paper on a window and traced the pattern of stars, drew musical bars over the dots and had it performed. Eyewitnesses said it was awful. Someone asked Sir Thomas Beecham" Have you ever heard any Stockhausen? " He replied:" No, but I think I stepped in some back there."

Today is the Feast of St. Roch, who had a heavenly inspired dog to lick his sores and cure him of the Black Plague.

1805- In the camp at Boulogne Napoleon held a grand military ceremony for his Grande Armee’. To the thundering beat of 1,300 massed drums he personally awarded medals to worthy common soldiers. The secret to Napoleons leadership was a special bond between him and his men that was unique to his time. In an world of aristocrats who considered the common people scum Napoleon walked casually among his soldiers like an equal, stopping to share a roast potato or a dirty joke in rough soldiers language. He called them his children. He had an uncanny memory and read the personnel rosters of his 350,000 man army once a month to update himself on his men’s achievements.

1858- Queen Victoria sent the first transcontinental wire message to President James Buchanan via Cyrus Field's incredible UNDERWATER TRANSCONTINENTAL CABLE, stretching from London to New York. After great fanfare about progress and a new era in communications it broke down, as well as the next several tries to fix it. Just hours after the first message a fisherman pulled it up in his net, thought it was the tail of a sea serpent and cut off a chunk to take home and brag to his friends. Other attempts were ruined when technicians tried to correct the faintness of the signal by boosting the voltage beyond the safety range of the insulation-Zapp! Direct transcontinental communications didn't really become a reality until wireless broadcasting. But the who-ha over this scientific marvel did inspire author Jules Verne to write "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

1877- BIRTHDAY OF THE WORD-"HELLO". In a letter dated today Thomas Edison wrote to the first president of AT&T about how people should initiate conversation on the new telephone machine. A genteel Victorian would think it impolite to speak until spoken to. Edison explained that the results of sonic tests proved the old English fox hunting call "Halloo!" was most audible over great distances. Alexander Graham Bell, an old navy man, always thought the right way to start a phone conversation was to say "AHOY!", but hello won out. In most languages around the world the word hello is the same. It was the only English word Sioux Chief Sitting Bull ever learned. He loved to grab your hand and pump it vigorously while saying:" HELLO, HELLO!"

1896- Four miners find gold in Bonanza Creek in the Klondike. The Yukon Gold Rush begins.

1938- Blues legend Robert Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband in Three Forks Mississippi.

1942- Happy Birthday Mighty Mouse. Terrytoon's short: "The Mouse of Tomorrow".

1954- First issue of Sports Illustrated.

1969- “ Hey Man, we’re gonna serve breakfast in bed for 500,000” So was hippy Wavy Gravy’s announcement on the second day of the Woodstock Rock Concert. He said this was the day Americans learned to eat Granola. It was ladled out en masse in paper cups and has been a diet staple ever since.

1976--Apple Computers was founded by two college dropouts- Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, in a California garage.

1977- E-DAY in Memphis. 42 year old Elvis Presley, donuts and Pizza Hut box in hand, died sitting on the toilet. He was reading a book, the Historic Search for the Face of Jesus.

1985- On her birthday, Madonna married Sean Penn.

1987- The Harmonic Convergence- Another one of these celestial events that the mainstream media trumpeted as the end of everything. All nine planets of our solar system were in perfect alignment and the subsequent gravitational forces were supposed to knock the Earth into the Sun or something or other, that would send us to Hell in a Handbasket. Lots of New Age types flocked to occult sites like Mt. Shasta and Stonehenge to meditate on the End of All Things. So what happened? Well, we're all still here, ain't we...?

1991- The original Shamu the Whale died of respiratory failure at age 16.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is mean when you speak in a pejorative sense?

Answer: When you speak of someone or something in a critical way. You express your disapproval.

SIGGRAPH 2008 wraps tonight. It was a lot of fun. Not as crowded as the Comicons are, but pretty interesting folks and topics.

The usual endless booths of Motion Capture demos with dancers in rubber suits with wires stuffed up their bums jumping around. Usually there is one or two really cool things to see. Last year it was the i-phone glass touch-screen the size of a coffee table. But I didn't see anything that unique this year. Perhaps I missed it.

I gave a talk and critiqued work at the FJORG! competition. Much bigger than last year. Lots of energy and excitement. Congratulations to Team Grojf, comprised of Jacob Patrick, John Nguyen, and Kevin Rucker, were chosen the winner for their film The Red Truck. The teams The Mexicutioners and The Fjantastic Fjorgers tied for second place, with Honorable Mentions awarded to teams Mouthful of Cookies and Trikings. These teams will all receive trophies and prizes. I expect the films will be up on U-Tube soon. The 2007 ones are there.

FJORG is an Iron-Chef like student competition for animators.
The winners were chosen from a field of 16 three-member teams that are given 32 straight hours to create character-driven film. This under extreme pressure, Lectures, distractions, Dragon Dancers, Mimes, and big crazy Vikings yelling Fjorg!!! at all hours. On Monday a horde of chanting, hairy-assed Vikings from Fjorg ran over to the Virtual Rome reconstruct and tried to sack it. Just like the Good Old Days!

all of us Fjorging last year in San Diego

Congratulations to Festival organizer Pat Beckman-Wells, Becky Wibel, Arno Kroner and all the team for another successful competition. Thanks also to Dreamworks, Disney and all the other sponsors. For such a crazy little idea, it's really grown in stature and adds a new level of energy to the halls.

On Weds, I chaired the Animation Mentor Salute to Frank & Ollie. That was a nice time,about 600 plus people attended the show. Andreas Deja did his overhead projector analysis of Frank & Ollies drawings. Randy Cartwright and Don Hahn had some fun anecdotes about them. Ted Thomas brought some fun outtakes of F&O flubbing lines and clowning spontaneously. It's still hard to fathom they are no longer around. I guess part of the process of aging, is you keep the voices of those no longer here, fresh within your mind. It's become quite a chorus up there. But they were all of a generation, the Golden Agers of Hollywood. We shall not see their like again.


Went to a few parties and caught up with old friends. Making a lot of contacts for my next book. Saw my old Taiwanese company Digimax, and saw what they were up to. Very happy to note that the short I directed for them, ADVENTURES IN THE NPM, won the Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Anime Festival.
That was a thrill for us all.
courtesy Flickr.com
I apologize to all my SVA alumni I missed the West Coast alumni bash at the Hotel Figueroa the other night. I was too worn out and was under the weather. What a wus!


Hope to see you at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans.

Quiz: What is mean when you speak in a pejorative sense?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Which is the current president of Georgia? Josef Djugashvili, Mikeil Shakaashvili. John Shalikashvili.
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History for 8/15/2008
Birthdays: Napoleon Bonaparte, Leon Theremin- inventor of that weird electronic musical instrument that is featured in all those 50s flying saucer movies, Samuel Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, King Frederick Wilhelm Ist of Prussia 1685, Lawrence of Arabia, Ethel Barrymore, Huntz Hall, Bill Baird, Julia Child, Edna Ferber, Sir Robert Bolt, Rose-Marie, Linda Ellerbee, Gene Upshaw, Oscar Peterson, Shimon Peres, Mike “Mannix” Connors is 83, Congressperson Maxine Waters, Anthony Andrews, Nicholas Roeg, Ben Afleck is 36, Debra Messing is 40

1057-Scottish king Macbeth is defeated and killed by Malcolm III Canmore at the battle of Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire. But did Burnham Wood move to Dunsinane?

1097- DEUS VOLT ! GOD WILLS IT! The First Crusade was announced at Clermont by Pope Urban VII. Christian Europe decided that the Holy places in Jerusalem should not be in Moslem hands. In his sermon the Pope addressed the assembled knights in their native French: "Christian warriors who continually seek pretexts for war and rape Rejoice! If you must have Blood, then bathe in the Blood of the Infidels, and Christ will count you among his Warriors! Soldiers of Hell, become Soldiers of the Living God!” They sewed small strips of red cloth in a cross on their left shoulders and began with a massacre of any Jews they could find. History is at a loss to find any comparable social phenomenon. It took Islam a generation to understand that this was a Christian Jihad (Holy war) declared on them. The Moslem Emirs were just as feudally divided as the European warlords until they united under the brilliant Kurd Sultan Sa’Allah-al-Dhin or Salladin.

1100s-1400s- PAX DEI- The Medieval Church tried to limit the carnage of knights fighting and feuding by declaring a Truce of God during Lent and this, the beginning of the harvest season. It sometimes worked, but slaying infidels was still okay year round. See above.

1620 - Mayflower sets sail from Southampton with 102 Pilgrims.

1794- The first U.S. coin minted in the United States, a silver dollar. Minting of colonial and state currencies had been going on in America for years, Continental Eagles and such. The word Dollar is derived from Thaler from JacobsThaler meaning from the Gift of St. Jacob , a Czech mountain valley where their were rich silver deposits.

1885- Sir Richard Burton completed his translation from medieval Persian of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. There had been earlier attempts like a French edition in 1809, but Burton’s edition introduced the west to Aladdin and his magic lamp, Sinbad the sailor and Sherherazahde.

1911- Proctor & Gamble introduced Crisco shortening.

1935- Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Pictures merge to become Twentieth Century Fox.

1935- Humorist writer Will Rogers and his pilot Wiley Post are killed when their small plane crashed in Barrow, Alaska.

1939 - In 1st night game at Comiskey Park, Sox beat Browns 5-2.

1947-"The Stroke of Midnight" India and Pakistan, the Jewel in the Crown, get their freedom from Britain after 300 years. The end of the Raj.

1948- Syngmun Rhee elected first president of the Republic of South Korea. The Russians saw this as a direct challenge to their hold over the North and quickly choose communist Kim Dae Jung as the leader of North Korea. What began as a postwar temporary partition of the Korean peninsula was made complete.

1958 - Buddy Holly wed Maria Santiago.

1960- The Congo ( Brazzaville) declared independence from France. It had been renamed Zaire for awhile but is back to the Republic of the Congo today.

1965- The Beatles play their largest U.S. concert yet, at New York's Shea Stadium.

1969-WOODSTOCK-Three Days of Peace and Music- The rock concert of the Century opened. The promoters, one of whom was heir to the Polident Denture Cream fortune, were hoping to host 50,000 people and launch a recording studio in the quiet New York farming town. What they got was 500,000 hippies and the social phenomenon that defined the Age. At one point the more conservative elements of the community got a court order to block the land to be used, but farmer Max Yasgur offered his cow farm for the site.
Up till then in the tumultuous 1960’s any gathering of young people that big meant violence and riot, and at one point New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller threatened to send in the National Guard. But the magic prevailed and there was no violence outside of 200 bad acid trips and one heroin overdose.
Richie Havens was the first act to play, he did six sets and kept stalling because the crowd was so immense they had to bring in the other bands by helicopter. When he ran out of songs to sing Havens started riffing any thing he could think of the top of his head. This way Havens created his most famous tune “Freedom” with added in spirituals like “Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child”. Drugs, sex and rock & roll flowed freely. At one point someone put LSD into the drinking water of the rescue helicopter pilot. He spent two hours flying in circles over the festival, thinking he was traveling over one huge expanse of people. One hippy had spent the entire night high on LSD. As he started to come down, the first thing he recognized in the dawns early light was Sha-Na-Na on stage doing 50’s Doo-Wop. He thought he had been sent to Rock Hell.

1971- President Nixon announced a sweeping economic package including taking the U.S. dollar off the Gold Standard. The world's most stable currency being so transformed created the wildly free-flowing currency market we have today. When warned of this consequence President Nixon is supposed to have replied: "I don't give a sh*t about the Lire." Today the dollar is a step up from cow chips against most world currencies.

1971- Bahrain declared independence from Britain.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Which is the current president of Georgia? Josef Djugashvili, Mikeil Shakaashvili. John Shalikashvili.

Answer: Now come on, not everyone at once- it’s Mikeil Shakaashvili, of course! General John Shalikashvili was US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs 1993-1997. Josef Djugashvili is better known by his alias- Josef Stalin.

QUIZ: Which is the current president of Georgia? Josef Djugashvili, Mikeil Shakaashvili. John Shalikashvili.

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Why are black crayon grease pencils called China Markers, in UK a Chinagraph?
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History for 8/14/2008
Birthdays: Steve Martin, Gary Larson, Erwin "Magic" Johnson, Lina Wertmuller, David Crosby, California bandit Triburcio Vasquez, Alice Ghostly, Buddy Greco, Nehemiah Persoff, The 20's Parisian nightclub singer Bricktop, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, C.S. Watson, James Horner, Wim Wenders, Emmanuele Beart, Halle Berry is 42

1281-A Pacific typhoon called by the Japanese the Kamikaze or The "Divine Wind" destroyed the Mongol invasion fleet of Kublai Khan as it approached the shores of Japan. The Mongols way of showing the Japanese that they meant business was as they captured small outer islands like Ryuku and Iwo Jima they crucified the civilians to the topmasts of their ships.

1457- The first printed Gutenburg Bible finished. One agent of Gutenberg's bringing the first shipment of bibles to Paris was arrested for witchcraft because locals thought it was humanly impossible for one person to make so many identical books without the aid of black magic.

1498 - Columbus explored the mouth of the Orinoco River in Venezuela .

1744- LOUIS LE BIEN AIMEE- Pleasure loving French King Louis XV had become gravely ill and was near death. His father confessor the Bishop of Soisson refused to give him the sacraments unless he banished his mistresses and reformed his sinful life. He did so and Louis health improved. He was so good the peasants began calling him Louis le Bien Aimee’- the Well Beloved. But boys will be boys. Louis grew bored with being a faithful sober husband. He soon called back his bimbos and banished the Bishop instead. Louis XV lived happy, if disreputably, to a very old age.

1781- George Washington and the Comte du Rochambeau had been debating whether to use their combined forces against occupied New York City or Lord Cornwallis army in Virginia. Today Washington received a letter from the Admiral DeGrasse that he was bringing his large French battlefleet with supplies and troops to meet them at the Chesapeake Bay. Washington knew this would be the last campaign since his French allies wouldn’t send any more help in 1782 and everyone was starting to listen to a rumor that the Czarina of Russia was offering to broker an international peace conference in Vienna. At this peace conference he was sure that among the crowned heads the idea of American Independence would be negotiated away. He resolved to accept the French plan to attack Cornwallis at Yorktown Virginia.

1784- On Kodiak Island Grigori Shelekov founded Three Saints Bay, the first Russian colony in the Americas. The Russians would continue to expand their trading posts and settlements until Russian America extended from Alaska to just north of San Francisco California.

1873 - "Field & Stream" magazine began publishing.

1922- 38 year old rising politician Franklin Roosevelt discovered the first signs that he had polio.

1928 - Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur's play" The Front Page," premieres in NYC. They later went on to become top comedy writers in Hollywood. MacArthur is the one who sent Hecht the famous cable from LA. "Hecht, some quick, fortunes to be made and the competition are idiots!- Mac" When MacArthur died he put on his tombstone the epitaph "Over My Dead Body!"

1935- President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the National Social Security Act. Considered the most successful US Federal social program ever, today there is great controversy over it’s financial overhaul. In 1972 young George W. Bush submitted a paper in his business class at Yale. It’s theme was that Social Security was a big commie mistake.

1939 - 1st night games at Comiskey Park -White Sox 5, Browns 2

1945-VJ DAY (Aug 15th in Japan) -President Truman announced the surrender sparking wild celebrations in allied cities like New York and London. In Japan citizens were politely asked to stand at attention by their radios as Emperor Hirohito explained to his people about the surrender. It is the first time they had ever heard his voice. At 3 am that morning 1,000 rebel Japanese troops attacked the palace trying to prevent the disgrace of the surrender announcement. They were fought off by the Imperial guard and the guard commander was killed. The speech was pre-recorded and went on anyway. Defense minister Anami committed Hara-Kiri while listening to the address. Gangs of angry kamikaze pilots wandered the streets looking for trouble. Their commanders had emptied the gas tanks of their planes to obey the Imperial edict.

1956- The Marilyn Monroe movie "Bus Stop" premiered.

1965 - Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" hits #1.FYI -their real names? Salvatore Bono and Cheriyn Sarkisian LaPierre.

1965- Jane Fonda married director Roger Vadim, who put the beautiful young blonde in naughty movies like Barbarella. His previous wife Bridgette Bardot was a beautiful young blonde that he put in naughty movies….hmm.

1980- SOLIDARNOSC!! - At a strike at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, Communist Poland the first mass peoples movement that would eventually topple European Communism was created. An electrician named Lech Walsesa climbed the fence and joined the strike, eventually becoming the leader of the movement Solidarity. He was a political prisoner, a Nobel Prize winner and eventually President of democratic Poland.

1994 – The world’s most wanted terrorist "Carlos the Jackal" was arrested in Khartoum Sudan when he entered a clinic to have a varicose vein removed from his testicle.

2126- Get your catchers mitts out! Comet Swift-Tuttle will pass very close by the Earth.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why are black crayon grease pencils called China Markers, in UK a Chinagraph?

Answer: They have nothing to do with the nation of China. In the early Twentieth Century, they were created to mark the prices on expensive china dishes being shipped. The marks wiped off the porcelain easily without leaving a stain.