February 4th, 2007 sunday
February 4th, 2007

Birthdays: Francois Rabelais, Big Bill Haywood, Fernand Leger', Charles Lindbergh, the Agha Khan, Betty Friedan, Rosa Parks, Alice Cooper, Dan Quayle, Ida Lupino, Conrad Bain,George Romero, Lisa Eichhorn, Oscar De La Hoya, Clyde Tumbaugh - the amateur astronomer who discovered the planet Pluto in 1930.

1703- THE 47 RONIN- A Japanese story that has inspired hundreds of play novels and films.The Lord of Ako, Asano Nagori quarreled with Kiru, the chief of protocol for the Shogun and struck at him with his sword. To attack a representative of the Shogun was an insult no matter how justified so Nagori was ordered to commit suicide (seppuku) and his samurai declared Ronin, or discharged freelancers. The Ronin banded together to plan their revenge. They ambushed Kiru and placed his severed head on the grave of their master. Then they sat in his house to quietly await judgement. After consulting several Shinto bishops the Shogun could see no dishonor in what they did, so instead of executing them as criminals on this day they were allowed to all commit suicide, which they all did unquestioningly. Their gravesite is a popular shrine in Japan today and an example of spotless dedication to duty.

1826- James Fenimore Cooper’s novel “The Last of the Mohicans” was published. The character of wild frontiersman Natty Bumpo called Hawkeye has been referred to as the first American superhero.

1961- United Artists released the Misfits, the last film of stars Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift. John Huston directed and Arthur Miller wrote the screenplay. The film flopped in its initial run but has since gained classic status.

1968- Old beatnik Neal Cassady was found dead in Mexico. Cassady was not an intellectual but his wild non-conformist lifestyle was the inspiration for his companion author Jack Kerouac to write his greatest novel " On the Road'. While Kerouac disliked hippie kids Cassady in 1967 drove the first Hippie Bus filled with LSD advocates like Ken Kesey. Jacques Kerouac also died in the same year 1968 of advanced alcoholism.

1983- Pop singer Karen Carpenter died of anorexia-nervosa. She was 32 and only weighed 77 pounds. Her death brought to national prominence how the social pressure to stay thin could lead to this deadly condition.

2003-Legendary rock and roll producer Phil Spector allegedly shot and killed his girlfriend B-Movie actress Lana Clarkson at his LA mansion. Spector created the Wall of Sound concert technique and produced for the Beatles among many others. Clarkson was the Barbarian Queen and appeared in Scarface and Fast Times At Ridgemont High. The few days before, Phil Spector said to the British Daily Telegraph, "I don't know, genetically, whether or not that had something to do with what I am or who I became. I would say I'm probably relatively insane, to an extent. I take medication for schizophrenia, but I wouldn't say I'm schizophrenic. I have a bipolar personality, which is strange.”


Birthdays- French King Charles VI the Mad –1380, Felix Mendelson, Horace Greely, Gideon Mantell 1790-pioneer British fossil hunter that named the Iguanadon, Pretty Boy Floyd, Gertrude Stein, illustrator Norman Rockwell, James A. Michener, Joey Bishop, Shelley Berman, Victor Buono-King Tut on the Batman TV show, Blythe Danner, Morgan Fairchild is 57, Nathan Lane is 51

1862- President Lincoln received a message from the King of Siam offering him Siamese war elephants to help him win the Civil War. He politely passed on the offer.

1889-THE BANDIT QUEEN- Today outlaw Belle Starr was shotgunned out of the saddle by an old boyfriend. She usually shot them first. Originally named Myra Belle Shirley, she pursued a career as an outlaw and had two children, one by Cole Younger, another by a member of the James Gang. Rustler, gunfighter, prostitute, sideshow performer-she said: "Let's just say I'm a woman who's seen a lot of the world."

1913- Federal Income Tax Amendment ratified.

1920- The play Beyond the Horizon premiered. The first hit of a young man who tried to drink himself to death, but instead became a playwright- Eugene O’Neill.

1930- Roy Disney signed a deal with M. George Borgfeldt Co. of New York to sell figurines of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Disney merchandising is born! The first Mickey dolls were made one by one by the mother of Looney Tunes director Bob Clampett.

1945- Walt Disney’s the Three Caballeros premiered.

1948- The first Cadillac’s with big rear tail fins were produced.

1953- Jacques Cousteau, inventor of the Aqua Lung published the Silent World, and later made a film version of the book with Louis Malle.

1959-"The Day the Music Died" The first Rock & Roll tragedy. Top pop stars Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson died in plane crash. They were on tour and Holly chartered the small plane so they could get to Fargo, North Dakota in time to get his shirts cleaned. Waylon Jennings was supposed to join them, but he gave up his seat to Richardson because Richardson was running a fever and didn’t want a long cold bus ride. As they left Richardson teased Jennings:” Hope your bus doesn’t freeze.” And Jennings joked:” Hope your plane doesn’t crash.” The plane was called the American Pie, which inspired a Don McClean’s hit song “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie.”

1962- John F. Kennedy signed the trade embargo act against Cuba, banning all trade with Fidel Castro’s regime. White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger recalled how the night before JFK had him go around Washington DC and buy up all the Havana cigars (Monte Cristos) he could for the White House humidor. It’s still in effect today.
HEY WASHINGTON! FIDEL'S ALMOST DEAD, I WANT MY COCHIBAS BACK, DAMN IT!

1973- Richard Nixon, the last liberal US President (?), signed the Endangered Species Act into law.

1989- Swiss firm L'Oreal/Nestle bought animation studio Filmation from Westinghouse and shut it down laying off 229 artists the day before a new federal regulation requiring a company give it's employees 60 day notice before closing went into effect. Filmation created the HeMan, ShreRa and Fat Albert TV shows. The last company doing all phases of Saturday morning children's cartoons in America disappears.


February 2, 2007 friday
February 2nd, 2007



This Tuesday Feb 6th is the LA Premiere of Flock of Dodos at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood! I will be on stage afterwards with the filmmaker Randy Olsen and the Amazing Muffy Moose, the mom of the filmmaker, who steals the movie. Tickets still available!

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Birthdays: Tallyrand, Charlie Halas a co-founder of the NFL, James Joyce, Ayn Rand, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifitz, Abba Eban, Farrah Fawcett, Garth Brooks, Christie Brinkley, Tommy Smothers, Stan Getz, James Dickey, Liz Smith, Elaine Stritch, Brent Spiner, Shakira

Happy Groundhog Day. This morning if Paxatawney Phil sees his shadow it means 6 more weeks of winter.

In ancient Rome it was the day for the lesser Eleusinian Mysteries. Part of the ceremony was you were given a bowl of wine with certain herbs in it. After drinking it you saw the gods. In 1946 Dr Albert Hoffman experimenting to find the nature of these herbs isolated LSD.

1910- D.W. Griffith's' In Old California', sometimes called the first Hollywood film.

1922- the novel "Ulysses" is published. James Joyce had finished the book months earlier but delayed publishing until his birthday, when it would be 2/2/22, which he considered lucky.

1922-Twenty one year old Walt Disney founds Newman's Laff-O-Grams in Kansas City.

1957- Elizabeth Taylor married producer Mike Todd. Todd was killed in a plane crash a year later. Taylor has said Todd was the only one of her many husbands she ever truly loved.

1961- In a little Greenwich Village nightclub called the Blue Angel a young stand up comic got his first debut. His name was Woody Allen

1963- In England singer Helen Schapiro was on tour. On the lower end of her program card was a new band called the Beatles.

1966- Woody Allen married Lousie Lasser.

1979- Lead singer for the punk band Sid Vicious found dead of a drug overdose. The 21 year old was awaiting trial for the stabbing death of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen.
1985- O.J. Simpson married Nicole Brown Simpson.

2006-The Cartoon Riots. A Danish newspaper printed a political cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with his turban shaped like a bomb. This so offended the Moslem world that rioting broke out in Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and European capitols. Grenades were thrown at Danish embassies and Danish nationals made to flee.


Today Mark Mayerson turned me on to a new website called Ad Verbatims. It invites commerical professionals to send in some of the stupider notes or critiques that they've received from clients. Very funny and chillingly familiar to any of you who've ever had to deal with client notes. For anyone whose ever heard " I don't know what I want, but I don't want that!" Here's an example:

#383- "It needs to EXPLODE off the page! It needs FIREWORKS and COLOR! LOTS of colors! And exclamation points! Be creative. I could have done what you sent me on my own computer. The 14pt type is so small. I mean, you guys are the experts..."


The site boasts that recently ADWeek Magazine listed it among the TEN GREATEST OFFICE TIMEWASTERS on the web.

http://adverbatims.blogspot.com

Enjoy!


February 1st, 2007 thurs.
February 1st, 2007

Birthdays: Victor Herbert, Langston Hughes, Renata Tebaldi, Clark Gable, John Ford, George Pal, Terry Jones, Jim Thorpe, Sherman Helmsley, Lisa Marie Presley, Garrett Morris, Boris Yeltsin, Pauly Shore, Sherilyn Fenn

Welcome to February from Februarius, named for Februus, a Sabine god of the underworld called the Purifier. There's another theory that this month is named for Febis, the Latin for fever, this being a time in the Roman climate when fevers were most common.

1887- California land Developer Harvey Wilcox takes out a county deed for a new ranch he calls 'Hollywoodland' after the name of an estate his wife admired back in Connecticut. It gave its name to the new Los Angeles town- Hollywood.


1893- In New Jersey Thomas Edison and his engineer W. K. Dickson build the FIRST MOTION PICTURE STUDIO in New Jersey. It was covered with black tar paper and nicknamed"The Black Mariah" because that was the nickname of police paddy wagons that it resembled. When Edison invited cartoonist James Stuart Blackton to film his lightning sketches in the Black Mariah, it also became the first Animation Camera Settup.
It's debatable how much of the inventing effort was more Dickson than Edison. Edison was only marginally interested in the movies. He was more concerned with the problem of how to extract New Jersey iron ore from rocks using electromagnets. Dickson worked himself into the hospital to make the studio work, resenting Edison’s apathy. Finally he started experimenting on his own. When Edison found out, he fired him.

1915-The Fox Film Company formed (Later Twentieth Century Fox).

1964- Indiana Governor Matthew Walsh declares that the Rock & Roll song “Louie-Louie” by the Kingsmen was pornographic and should be banned. The FCC investigated and their conclusion was that the “lyrics are unintelligible at any speed”. The song remained a major hit. In the 1980’s several schools in Northern Cal held Louie-Louie Marathons-96 straight hours of Louie-Louie played by Punk bands, polka bands, string quartets, folk trios and marching bands. Whoah whoah, Me gotta go-yo,yo yo yo.

1990- Siegfried & Roy open their exclusive show at the Mirage Casino in Las Vegas. They and their white tigers have performed for Hollywood stars, presidents and Pope John Paul II. One Vegas columnist notes: “When Elvis performed in Vegas there were some empty seats. But there are nothing but full houses when Siegfreid & Roy perform.” The act was finally ended by Roy’s being wounded by a tiger in 2003.

2004- At a Superbowl live halftime show pop star Justin Timberlake pulled the bra cup off of singer Janet Jackson exposing her right breast with a starburst stud on it . Named “the Wardrobe Malfunction”, the incident sent America into another one of its periodic paroxysms of Puritan outrage, that the rest of the world finds so amusing.


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