Quiz: What is that little space between your nose and upper lip called?

Yesterday’s Question answered below. Which Statement is False?
------------------------------------------------------
History for 1/22/2008
St. Vincents Day- "If Vincents Day be Rainy Weather, shall rain then 30 days together.”

Birthdays: Sir Francis Bacon, D.W. Griffith, Charles Gordon Lord Byron, August Strindberg, Andre Marie Ampere (electric Amps), 1960’s UN Secretary General U- Thant, Ann Southern, Rosa Ponselle, Sam Cooke, John Hurt, George McManus, Joseph Waumbaugh, J.J. Johnson, Jim Jarmusch is 55, Linda Blair is 49, Piper Laurie, Diane Lane is 43

1555- THE FIRES OF SMITHFIELD. When Mary the Catholic daughter of Henry VIII became queen she at first tried to be lenient towards her Protestant subjects. But continuous plots by Protestant nobility and her own desire to restore England to the old faith hardened her heart. This day began the mass trials and executions of those accused of Protestant heresy. Six clergymen including the Bishop of Gloucester were sentenced and burned at the stake. Hundreds more would follow. Even Spanish King Philip II urged Mary to cool it. Mary’s executioners added a new twist to an old system of Burning at the Stake. If they pitied you, before lighting the bonfire a bag of gunpowder was stuffed between your legs so you could go out with a bang. Bloody Mary and her cruelty in the name of Roman Catholicism all but convinced the English people to stay Anglican.

1840- The first English colonists reach New Zealand. And no, they didn't immediately start making Hobbit movies.

1863- THE MUD MARCH- Union General Ambrose Burnside (who created the fashion for "side-burns") tried to avenge his humiliating defeat at Fredericksburg by a winter march up the Rappahannock River to maneuver around Robert E. Lee. In so doing he discovered why all pre-industrial age armies took the winter off.. Burnsides army was pelted by blinding sleet storms and bogged down in oceans of gooey mud. When Burnside finally called it quits he had as many casualties from sickness as had he fought a battle. A bitter army joke based on a children’s prayer went:
"Now I lay me down to Sleep, In mud that’s eighteen fathoms Deep."
"If you can’t see me when we Awake, please dig me up with an oyster Rake."

1901- Queen Victoria died after a reign of 64 years, the longest ever for a British monarch. When she assumed the throne at 19 in 1837 there were still many alive who remembered the Battle of Waterloo and white periwigs, and she died in a world of electric lights, autos and motion pictures. The current Queen Elizabeth II has to reign ten more years to catch her.

1912- The first bridgeway connecting Key West and the Florida Keys opened.

1918- A Manitoba judge tries to outlaw movie comedies, because they tend to make the public "too frivolous".

1930- Work began on the foundation of the Empire State Building in New York.

1938- On a bare stage, Thorton Wilder’s play Our Town premiered.

1947- Hollywood first commercial television station KTLA went on the air for regular broadcasting. At the time in all of LA there were only 350 TV sets.

1949- Mao Tse Tung (MaoZseDong) and the Communists capture Peiping (Beijing).

1949-Tex Avery’s cartoon "Bad Luck Blackie".

1950- Preston Tucker tried to compete with the big auto giants like Ford and Chrysler with his revolutionary designed Tucker Automobile. But the giants bogged him down in court with charges of fraud. This day he was acquitted of all charges but the legal expenses ruined him. Only 40 Tuckers were ever made. Francis Ford Coppola made a movie about his life.

1951- During Winter baseball tryouts a promising young left-handed pitcher from Cuba was scouted by the New York Yankees. But after losing a game for the Washington Senators and getting dropped from their roster he gave up on pro-sports to pursue other careers- Fidel Castro.

1959- Former 'Our Gang' child star Charles 'Alfalfa" Switzer was killed in a bar in Studio City. He pulled a knife on a man over a $50 debt on a hunting dog. The man then shot him. He was 32. According to fellow Little Rascal Darla Hood Switzer was a brute who bullied the other children and bitter his adult career never blossomed.

1968-T.V. comedy review show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In premiered. It launched the careers of Lilly Tomlin, Goldie Hawn and Eileen Brennan. You bet your sweet Bippy! Sockitotmesockitome...

1972- In an interview with Melody Maker magazine rocker David Bowie outed himself and said he was gay. Technically he would be bi-sexual since his wife Angela did catch him in bed with Bianca Jagger.

1975- Hollywood agents Ron Meyer and Michael Ovitz leave William Morris and form the Creative Artists Agency, or CAA.

1984- Amazon Indians attack an oil drilling crew with blow guns.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quiz: Which statement is false?
A) The song White Christmas was written by a Jewish man.
B) The song Dixie was written in New York City
C) The Gettysburg Address was not written by Abe Lincoln.
D) The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Socialist.

Answer: C.
Abe Lincoln did write the Gettysburg Address, but contrary to the legend he did not write it on the back of an envelope on the way to the event. He labored over it for awhile, and several rough drafts of the speech in pencil still exist. Hmm...FiveScore and Seven Years ago...? Nah.....uh......Sixscore and Twelve and a Half years ago......hmmm.....nope.

It's a slow day at CarTalk, a rainy and cool MLK Day in LA; but not as cold as the rest of the US, I saw the Giant-Packer game last night!
I was looking over some of my old posts and I was reminded of a funny site I once posted about. I think it's good enough to give you all a chance to see it again. A compendium of suggestive, mysogynist and just plain weird statements uttered by your favorite comic book characters. Enjoy. http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2007/03/top_15_unintent.html

courtesy vimo.com

This date marks exactly one year until this endless election is over and we inaugurate the 44th President of the United States. ...sigh.....God have mercy on the Republic!

-------------------------------------------
Quiz: Which statement is false?
A) The song White Christmas was written by a Jewish man.
B) The song Dixie was written in New York City
C) The Gettysburg Address was not written by Abe Lincoln.
D) The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Socialist.

Yesterday's Question answered below: Which director did the first Bugs Bunny cartoon? Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery or Frank Tashlin?
---------------------------------------------------
History for 1/21/2008
Birthdays: Leadbelly (Harlan Ledbetter),Thomas J."Stonewall" Jackson, J.Carol Naish, Tele Savalas, Christian Dior, Placido Domingo is 67, Wolfman Jack, Akeem Olajuwon, Paul Scofield, Robby Benson, Jack Nicklaus, Benny Hill, Emma Bunton- Baby Spice of the Spice Girls, Gena Davis

1198- THE THIRD CRUSADE DECLARED- In reaction to the news of Salladin's capture of Jerusalem, King Henry II of England, Phillip Augustus of France and Conrad the Emperor of Germany "take the Cross", decide to invade the Holyland. Henry died before the army departed and was replaced by his son Richard the Lionhearted. Every morning before breakfast and every night before retiring, all the knights of the Crusade would raise one steel-clad fist towards the east, and to the sound of massed trumpets they would shout: " AEIDEUVA, AEIDEUVA, SANCTUS SEPULCHORUM!!" "Help, Help to the Holy Sepulchre!".

1789- The first American novel published- The Power of Sympathy: An Epistolary Romance by William Hill Brown.

1793- KING LOUIS XVI GUILLOTINED- For three years since the Bastille fell the French King tried to play a constitutional monarch while conspiring with the other European monarchs to crush the French Revolution. It was a game that was too subtle for him. When foreign armies invaded France and declared their intention to remake Louis an absolute ruler, the revolutionary government condemned him to death. Citizen Capet, so named for an old family name of French kings, mounted the scaffold at Place de La Concorde currently where the U.S. Embassy is. He tried to speak to the people but the drummers were ordered to drown him out. As the blade fell his chaplain shouted: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven!" The revolutionaries then stuck his head between his legs and threw him in a hole. Where the site of the Chapel Expiatore is today. The court executioner, Charles Henri Samson, wore pistols under his coat in case people tried to rush the guillotine. He usually never felt remorse for his victims ( "I am not killing them, the State is" ) but this one bothered him. He stayed away from home for two nights and would later hide escaped political prisoners in his cellar.

1861- SECESSION! COLLAPSE! President-elect Lincoln was still packing his bags in Springfield and writing out the luggage tags in his own hand "A.Lincoln, White House, Washington, D.C.", while state after state of the South voted to leave the Union and join the new Confederacy. On this date Mississippi senator and former Secretary of War Jefferson Davis resigned from the Congress. As he left the Senate Georgia senator Robert Toombs declared out loud to the Speakers chair:" The Union sir, is Dissolved !" Toombs had to hire a carriage to take him South because his personal servants had run off to be free. The Mormons of Utah were in an open state of rebellion, New Jersey and New York City talked of secession, California talked of pulling out of the union and joining Oregon to make a new country called TransPacifica. American mercenaries under a renegade named Walker were trying to set up an independent country in Baja California. Crowds in Baltimore proclaimed Abe Lincoln would never get to Washington alive. Outgoing President James Buchanan said gravely: "I fear I may be the Last President of the United States..".

1916- The National Board of Review outlawed nudity in Hollywood movies.

1935- the conservation group The Wilderness Society created.

1938 -Max Fleischer tells his New York cartoon studio they are relocating to Florida.

1938- George Melies, the father of Motion Picture Special Effects, died selling chocolates in a Paris train station -Gare du Norde.

1958- BADLANDS- Teenagers Charlie Starkweather and Carol Ann Fugate kill her family and go on a Bonnie & Clyde style crime spree throughout Nebraska killing 11 people. When they were caught Starkweather pleaded self defense, even against the murder of Fugates infant baby brother. He went to the electric chair. Carol Ann Fugate did twenty years, yet always denied she was anything more than an unwilling accomplice. Starkweather had a 'James Dean-Marlon Brando' leatherjacket look and the two teen killers seemed to typify America's dread of juvenile delinquency and the 'degenerate Rock and Roll' culture of the 1950's. Their story inspired several films including 'Badlands" .

1991- Disney's Beauty and the Beast becomes the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday's Question: Which director did the first Bugs Bunny cartoon? Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery or Frank Tashlin?

Answer: This has always been a point of debate. The traditionally accepted version is that the first Bugs Bunny Cartoon was 1940's A Wild Hare directed by Tex Avery. But the prototype screwy wabbit appeared in an earlier form in 1938 Porky's Duck Hunt, directed by Bugs Hardaway,( apologies to Larry Loc,who pegged it first!) The model sheet of the anonymous character was labeled Bug's Bunny. The rabbit we all recognize was in a Wild Hare, and not called Bugs Bunny until 1941's Chuck Jones short Elmer's Pet Rabbit.

Question: Which director did the first Bugs Bunny cartoon? Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery or Frank Tashlin?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered : Why are Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes grateful to Edgar Allen Poe?
-------------------------------------------------------------
History for 1/20/2008
Birthdays: King Charles III of Spain, Richard Henry Lee- signer of the Declaration of Independence, Frederico Fellini, Patricia O’Neal, Mario Lanza, David Lynch, George Burns, DeForest Kelly, Edwin Buzz Aldrin the second astronaut to walk on the moon, Arte Johnson, Lorenzo Lamas, Bill Maher is 52, Rainn Wilson

1779- The English dramatic actor David Garrick died. Supposedly his last words were when asked “Is it hard to die?” Garrick replied:” Dying is not Hard. Comedy is Hard.”

1908- The Sullivan Ordinance barred women from smoking in public facilities. One hundred years later, nobody can smoke in public facilities!

1920- The American Civil Liberties Union founded by Roger Baldwin.

1924- WAR ON THE MAFIA- In 1924 the Mafia was almost completely destroyed. By who? Benito Mussolini. While not yet Il Duce but merely Italy’s Prime Minister Benito had had enough of the crime family clans in Sicily and sent a huge army to crush them. The blackshirted jackbooted regiments marched across the island arresting 11,000, with hundreds falling before firing squads. Mussolini declared victory and many of the surviving dons fled to America where Prohibition was providing great new opportunities for crooks.

1936- King George V of England died. In great pain from incurable cancer, only recently a doctor admitted getting instructions from Edward VIII to euthanize him with a strong shot of cocaine and morphine. The doctor timed his offing of the king so the news would be out with the morning newspapers instead of the trashier afternoon tabloids.
His Majesties last words were reported to be:" How goes the Empire? " He actually winced at the sloppy way the injection was done and said: " Oww! G--Damn You!".

1937- Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated for his second term after defeating Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas. He is the first president to be inaugurated in January instead of the customary March 4th. The Depression still raged despite all his efforts, he gives the inaugural speech decrying the rampant poverty in the U.S. "I see one third of the nation, ill-housed, ill-fed, ill-clothed, living in conditions far beneath the minimum standards we regard as decent, etc."

1938-The first true animator, Emile Cohl, died while headed for the Paris premiere of Disney's"Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". Cohl was so poor that the electricity in his flat had been turned off and the candles had ignited his beard. Angry he was never recognized in his time, he once said: "the French prefer their artists with marble and flowers on top." An Italian sculptor subscribed funds to build a statue to Cohl in Paris. Walt Disney and Dave Fleischer donated money. The sculptor took the money and skipped town, the statue was never built.

1949- FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover gave Shirley Temple a pen that shoots tear gas.

1953- The Birth of Little Ricky on the I Love Lucy show drew a larger viewing audience than the televised inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower.

1961- John F. Kennedy gave his famous inaugural speech:” Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Outgoing President Eisenhower disliked JFK and was angry that his election seemed a repudiation of his policies, so almost nothing was said between them in the limousine during the drive to the ceremony. John Kennedy also went through the day hatless, inaugurating the fashion. Before JFK, a man was not fully dressed without a fedora or cap of some sort.

1982- Rock star Ozzie Osbourne was hospitalized in Des Moines Iowa after biting the head off a dead bat thrown on stage during a concert. At another concert with Lou Reed, Ozzy picked up a straw filled with ants and snorted it up his nose so his kids could watch ants crawling out of his mouth, nostrils and tear ducts. ROCK AND ROLL BABY!!

1982- SONY introduced the Camcorder, the personal video camera.

1986- The worlds first computer virus, Brain, was sent out over the internet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday’s Quiz: Why are Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes grateful to Edgar Allen Poe?

Answer: In 1841 Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the first true detective story. It’s hero C. Auguste Dupin, was based on a real French policeman named Vidocq who adopted disguises to infiltrate criminal hangouts.

I just learned of the passing of veteran character actor Allan Melvin at age 84. Headlines just mention him as the butcher in the Brady Bunch, but he had a long pedigree in TV and TV Animation.
He was a regular on classic TV shows like Sgt. Bilko, Ben Casey and McHales' Navy, but at Hanna & Barbera he was the voice of MAGILLA GORILLA, H.R. PUFNSTUFF and one of the BANANA SPLITS.
He contributed his voice talents to other cartoons like DYNOMUTT, SECRET SQUIRREL, KWIKY KOALA, CHALLENGE OF THE GOBOTS, FOOFER, WACKY & PACKY, GUMMI BEARS, ELECTRO, HONG KONG PHOOEY, THE SECRET LIFE OF WALDO KITTY and many more. His file at IMDB reads like a digest of classic 1960s television.

Though I never met him, I worked on some of the stuff he voiced. And as a young sprout I certainly was entertained by him. So thank you Allan, for making us all smile!