I spent a wonderful evening watching my USC students' films at their annual show FIRST FRAME (formerly FIRST LOOK). A lot of alumni came to see the new films. Congratulations to all the filmmakers and their long suffering families! It was a great evening and I felt like Richard Dreyfus in Mr Holland's Opus. (sniff..sniff..)

Also, my UCLA student Erick Oh is premiering his film SYMPHONY Friday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. There will be 7 other films screened, but it seems like 'Symphony' is the only animation.You can check the specific schedule over here :
http://www.lacma.org/support/YDN.aspx


Ahh...my Children of the Dragon's Teeth! Go forth and Avenge me!Nyahaha!(mad doctor laff)
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Quiz: Who was Morpheus?

Question: Question: Which man rode which horse?
A-Alexander the Great, B-Napoleon, C-Robert E. Lee, D-Sheridan, E- Chevalier Roland.
A- Traveller, B- Beucephalus, C-Marengo, D- Veilleantif, E- Reinzi
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History for 3/6/2009
Birthdays: Michaelangelo Buonnarotti, Cyrano De Bergerac-Servignan, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, General Phil Sheridan, Lou Costello, Ivan Boesky, Ring Lardner, Gabriele Garcia-Marquez, Valentina Tereschkova the first woman in space, Tom Arnold, Kiri Te Kanawa, Rob Reiner, Alan Greenspan, DC Mayor Marion Barry, Stephen Schwartz, Shaquille O’Neal is 37, Ed McMahon is 89

1554- The future King of Spain Phillip II married the Catholic Queen of England Mary Tudor long distance, by proxy. When Phillip came to England and realized Mary had waited to long to have children and was now too old and ill he sent emissaries to see if her half-sister Elizabeth was interested.

1834- The Ontario settlement of York is incorporated as the new City of Toronto.

1836- THE ALAMO- The Mexican army of General Santa Anna overwhelmed a small garrison of rebellious Texans in an old mission. The tragic stand of 189 men led by colorful frontiersmen like Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie against 5,000 troops has become part of American mythology. That they ignored Sam Houston's direct orders to blow up the mission and join his main army with their valuable cannon is forgotten. Apologists contend that if they didn’t stall, Santa Anna's army he would have swooped down on Washington-on-the-Brazos and squashed the whole Texas Rebellion while they were still quibbling over their constitution.

...isn't that John Wayne..?

The attack began at 4:30 a.m. in the predawn darkness and was over in 90 minutes, a little after 6 a.m.. Jim Bowie was bayoneted in his hospital bed. The notes of a Texas officer named Dolson who interviewed a Mexican officer named Sanchez after the battle were discovered in 1961. It revealed that maybe Davey Crockett didn't go down heroically using his rifle "Old Betsy" as a club- like in the movies, but tried to surrender. His wife was Mexican and he was a politician after all. Santa Anna had him and any other surviving men shot. Sanchez could not confirm it was Crockett. We'll never know for sure. There were 16 Alamo survivors, the women and children and Colonel Travis' black servant Joe. Santa Anna made sure they were each given two pesos and a blanket and set free. The rally cry of Texans became Remember the Alamo!

1837- Col Travis black slave Joe fought on the barricades of the Alamo alongside his master. After the battle Joe was thanked for his services by being returned to Travis’ family in Alabama to remain a slave. On the one year anniversary of the battle Joe escaped to freedom. He remained in hiding for 30 years, long after the Civil War and Emancipation,, emerging for a newspaper interview in 1877.

1850- Gustav Flaubert was the French writer who was once tried for pornography for creating Madame Bovary. This day while in Egypt he visited the countries most famous belly dancing prostitute Kuchuck Hanem.

1853- Giusseppi Verdi’s classic opera La Traviata premiered at Teatro alla Fenice in Venice. It was based on Dumas novel Le Dame Aux Camelias. Verdi wrote in his diary about the premiere:" The evening was a disaster! Was it my fault or the fault of the singers? Only time will tell..."

1857- THE DREDD SCOTT DECISION.-One of the incidents leading to the Civil War and one of the most infamous court rulings in US History. A slave, Dredd Scott, sued in court for his freedom on the grounds that he no longer lived in a slave state, because his master had moved them to a neutral state. The Supreme Court of Justice Taney, whom the N.Y. Tribune had described as "5 slaveholders and two doughfaces", handed down the decision that not only was Scott still a slave ,but he and his descendants could never have rights of U.S. Citizenship, no matter where they lived. In effect, all Afro-Americans even if born free in the North were still not people but property. This idea exploded the already enraged public opinion in the North. Four years later the same justice Taney swore in Abraham Lincoln as president.

1899- The wonder drug of the age and the first patent medicine- Aspirin, is patented. Felix Hoffman isolated the compound salicin from ground willow bark, an old Indian pain remedy. Ancient Romans drank willow water for pain.

1917- Woman’s rights advocate Margaret Sanger is released from prison where she was jailed for trying to open the first Planned Parenthood/ abortion clinic. She married the inventor of the Three-In-One Oil Company and used to smuggle abortion medicines in cans of oil. During prohibition she smuggled diaphragms in cases of innocent illegal booze. She lived into the 1960s long enough to see the Birth Control Pill and the Women’s Movement.

1927- Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis opened in the US.

What's your problem with Motion Capture?

1936- Mr. Clarence Birdseye introduced frozen vegetables.

1944- The first great daylight bombing raid on Hitler’s capitol Berlin. In one of the largest air battles of World War Two 800 US B-17 and P-51s battled hundreds of Luftwaffe fighters. Over 80 US planes were shot down losing 690 airmen and 45 German but the message was sent: Berlin would now get the kind of destruction that Rotterdam, Warsaw and London got....

1966- William Frawley, the bald, gravel-voiced neighbor Fred Murtz on I Love Lucy, was staying at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. He went outside of the lobby, lit a cigar, and fell over dead of a heart attack.



1978- Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt was shot and crippled by a lunatic.

1979- The film The China Syndrome premiered. It was about an accident at an American nuclear power plant.. Three weeks later the Three Mile Island accident occurred, boosting the box office. " It's spooky, it's enough to make you religious" said star Michael Douglas.

1981- CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite retired. Dan Rather succeeded him after CBS learned ABC was offering Rather big buxs to jump networks. Roger Mudd, who was thought to be the real successor to Cronkites job, left the network to anchor the History Channel. Rather was the CBS anchor until 2004.

1989- Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications to become Time Warner, the largest media conglomerate in the world. They were bought by AOL in 2000 but AOL proved to be dead weight and they resumed control as TimeWarner in 2003.

1998- The Cohen Bros film, The Big Lebowski opened in theaters. The Dude Abides....
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Yesterday’s Question: Question: Which man rode which horse?
A-Alexander the Great, B-Napoleon, C-Robert E. Lee, D-Sheridan, E- Chevalier Roland.
A- Traveller, B- Beucephalus, C-Marengo, D- Veilleantif, E- Reinzi

Answer: A-B, B-C, C –A, D-E, E-D

Here is another nice photo from English photographer Richard Wolff.

Max Howard, Henry Selick and Jules Engel at the Cardiff Int Festival, 1993- click to enlarge

Richard has posted more images on his site-
http://www.richardkeithwolff.co.uk
check it out.

------------------------------------------------------------
Question: Which man rode which horse?
A-Alexander the Great, B-Napoleon, C-Robert E. Lee, D-Sheridan, E- Chevalier Roland.
A- Traveller, B- Beucephalus, C-Marengo, D- Veilleantif, E- Reinzi

Quiz: The Defenders of the Alamo fought under a flag that was a Mexican tricolor with the date 1826 on it. What did that mean?
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history for 3/5/2009
Birthdays: Henry III of England, Gionanni Batista Tiepolo, Explorer Le Sieur de Cadillac the founder of Detroit, Hector Villa-Lobos, Howard Pyle, William Oughtred 1574- inventor of the Slide Rule," Red Rosa" Luxemburg, Rex Harrison, Dean Stockwell, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andy Gibb, Samantha Eggar, Andrej Wajda, Fred Williamson, Penn Gillette is 54, Eva Mendes is 35

493 A.D. -BARBARIAN PEACE SUMMIT- Theodoric the Visigoth invited Odoacer, King of the Germans in Italy to a peace conference. On a pre-arranged signal two Goths held Odoacer's hands pretending to shake them, then Theodoric whipped out his sword and sliced Odoacer in half. He said of his swordstroke: "Surely the mother of this knave hath made him with gristle, for I find no bones in his body." Peace was achieved.

1496- English King Henry VIII hired Italian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) to go explore this New World that the Spanish were going on about.

1534- Famed Renaissance painter Correggio died when after an argument in the cathedral of Parma with his patrons paid him with sacks of pennies. He grew overheated carrying them all home and died of a fever at age 45.

1616- The Holy Office of the Inquisition published its verdict on the new scientific ideas of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. It read:"The idea that the Earth goes around the Sun is Foolish, Philosophically Erroneous and Heretical since it contradicts Holy Scripture. The idea that the Earth revolves on its axis is also Ridiculous and Heretical." Galileo’s writings were not removed from the Index of Banned Books until 1835.

1717- Giovanni Tiepolo joined the Guild of Saint Lawrence, the artists union in Rome.

1759- Francois Voltaire’s most famous satire on religion and hypocrisy- Candide- was published. It was immediately ordered publicly burned by the regional parliaments of Geneva and Paris. This only increased its popularity. To stay out of trouble Voltaire first refused to admit he was the author:" People must have lost their senses to attribute to me that pack of nonsense! I have, Thanks God, better occupations."

1770- THE BOSTON MASSACRE- A snowball fight near some British sentries turned into an ugly anti-British riot that made the redcoats open fire on the crowd. African American Crispus Attucks among several others were killed. Radical publisher Sam Adams inflated the incident into the Boston Massacre. The British authorities were accommodating enough to allow the soldiers put on trial in a colonial civilian court. The soldiers were defended by a young Boston lawyer named John Adams. They were all acquitted.

1836- At the Alamo, as the Mexican army of Santa Anna prepared for their final attack, legend has it Colonel Travis gathered the remaining defenders. He drew a line in the sand with his sword and asked all who wished to stay and fight to the bitter end to cross it. All crossed except an elderly Frenchman named Louis Rose, who slipped out through the lines to safety. Rose was a veteran of Napoleon's army and had fought at Moscow and Waterloo. I guess he felt he had made enough history for one lifetime. At dusk 16 year old rider James Allen slipped out of the Alamo to bring the doomed men’s last message to the outside world.

1853- Harry Steinway & Sons began their piano making company.

1863- The U.S. Army finally admits having the men do their own cooking was bad for morale, as well as their digestion. The first field kitchens with real cooks set up.

1868- Englishman C.H. Gould patented the first stapler.

1877- Rutherford Hayes inaugurated. Hayes was a Republican who became president while the Democrat Samuel Tilden really won the popular vote. His wife, Lemonade Lucy, banned hard liquor from the White House.

1913- The day after his inauguration, President Woodrow Wilson began filling his cabinet. Secretary of the Navy Dearing proposed as Assistant Secretary of the Navy a young New York assemblyman named Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wilson said:" Most Roosevelts I know try to run everything, but this fellow is a capitol idea!"

1922- F.W. Murnau’s eerie film Nosferatu premiered in Berlin.

1933- The day after his inauguration President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders a nationwide "Bank Holiday", a nice way of saying shut the whole darn system down to stop the panic and slide. One third of all U.S. banks had already collapsed. Roosevelt moved so fast, throwing program after program to combat the Great Depression, that his first 100 days in office became legendary, and now the media use it as a litmus to measure other presidents against.

1937- SPITFIRE. The first flight of Britain’s most famous fighter plane, the Supermarine Spitfire Mark II. Designer B.J.Mitchell fought red tape and outdated thinking on the army’s requisition board. He died of exhaustion and heart failure at 42, never knowing that his Spitfire would be the decisive tool in winning the air war over Britain and saving his country from Nazi invasion.

1963- Country singer Patsy Cline died in plane crash near Camden Tenn.(not Allegheny) Also killed were Country stars Cowboy Copas and Hacksaw Hawkins.

1973, New York Yankee pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson make a stunning declaration. The left-handers announce that they have traded wives, children, houses, even their family dogs.

1982-31 year old Comedian John Belushi died of drug overdose at Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Strip. He had done twenty heroin-cocaine speedballs in just 24 hours. A woman named Cathy Smith was charged with administering to him the fatal dose. Robin Williams was with him that night partying also but left early. Someone scrawled on Belushi’s tombstone :"You could have given us more laughs.....But NNNNOOOOOOOOOO !!"

1995- Vivian Stanstall, lead singer for the Bonzo Dog Band, died in a fire in his London flat. He had been smoking in bed.

2004- Communist China changes it’s constitution to say that private property is now OK.
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Yesterday’s Question: The Defenders of the Alamo fought under a flag that was a Mexican tricolor with the date 1826 on it. What did that mean?

Answer: The Mexican Congress passed a liberal constitution in 1826 that granted special status citizenship to the Yanquis of Texas. When General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna seized power in 1833 he suspended that constitution. The Texas rebels as part of their conditions, demanded the restoration of the constitution. Today Santa Anna would just write signing statements….

From the March 4th edition of JAPAN TIMES online.

Future of 'anime' industry in doubt

Money, success elude; outsourcing, piracy abound

By ALEX MARTIN
Staff writer

After graduating from Tokyo Animator College, Yuko Matsui began working at a midscale animation production agency.

Two years later, she earns roughly ¥80,000 a month, averaging 10 hours a day doing the grunt work of filling out "in-between cels," drawings on transparent sheets used between key scenes to help create the illusion of motion.

Although she lives with her parents, she can't save any money and has given up on paying her national pension fees. Still, the 22-year-old apprentice considers herself better off than some of her peers who say they have to endure frequent all-nighters with few days off.

"There were seven others I knew who graduated with me at the same time, but three of them have already given up and quit," she said.

Matsui's story is typical of what many aspiring animators must face in a trade where only the best survive in a shrinking job market. And it's not just the employees who are hurting.

The deepening recession and rapid shift in the overall landscape surrounding the industry have caused many to fear for the future of one of the nation's most prized cultural exports.

"The global fan base for Japanese 'anime' is increasing, but with the old business model crumbling it isn't translating into profits," said Yasuo Yamaguchi, executive director of the Association of Japanese Animations.

For the past decade, the industry has been hammering out average annual sales of ¥200 billion in what experts described as an "animation bubble."

Yamaguchi predicted, however, that the industry's proceeds for fiscal 2008 ? which have yet to be calculated ? would be lower than 2007, when total sales dropped almost ¥20 billion from 2006, a record high year, according to AJA statistics.

"The financial crisis is forcing sponsors to cut down on television advertisement fees, and this in turn is shrinking the budgets for animations, pressuring everyone involved in the production," Yamaguchi said.

"I think we'll see a major decrease in the number of anime programs broadcast. Agencies dependent on television as a primary financial source will need to search for alternatives."

Besides the gloomy economy, the overwhelmingly adult content of recent television animation ? many featuring violent or highly sexual material and broadcast during late-night hours ? has played a part in limiting the audience and making both marketing and merchandising of anime-related products difficult.

Yoshihiko Noda, director of the media content division for ad agency Asatsu-DK, buys TV time slots for popular family programs such as "Doraemon" and "Crayon Shin-chan." He said these trends were a relatively recent phenomenon.

"The demographics of anime fans began shifting seven to eight years ago. Those who grew up watching cartoons became older, and began craving more 'otaku' (geek) and adult content," Noda said, noting such animation is mainly produced for DVD sales, with the late-night shows ? usually consisting of only 13 episodes ? used as bait to draw viewers into buying the full DVD set that comes with increased content and special features.

This lack of mainstream acceptability in anime content, combined with expensive title licenses and the exploding popularity of video-sharing sites, has helped erode the industry's distribution market in the West.

"Anime-related profits in the United States, especially DVDs, are dwindling," said Keisuke Iwata, director of animation channel AT-X.

"Thanks to megahits such as 'Evangelion' and 'Pokemon,' Japanese animation has fared well in the past. But it has already maxed out as an export industry," Iwata explained, adding that besides the lack of big-name titles and a decrease in overseas airplay in recent years, the greatest obstacle lies in the illegal Internet sites that provide free content.

"These sites upload programs almost immediately after they are broadcast in Japan," accompanied with "fan subs" ? English subtitles translated by fans," Iwata said. "This is causing a very big dent in sales."

To counter the trend, TV Tokyo tied up with popular San Francisco-based animation-sharing site Crunchyroll in January, offering some of TV Tokyo's popular titles in advertisement-free, high-quality format with subtitles for a monthly fee of $6.95.

Yukio Kawasaki, manager of TV Tokyo's animation business department, said the move was an attempt to create a legitimate distribution channel between animation producers and overseas fans, as well as a way to send out a message.

"Animation isn't free. It's the product of hard work and a lot of money, and we cannot continue producing quality content without the financial help from fans," Kawasaki said, explaining that if the strategy succeeds, they could expand by selling DVDs and comic books on the site, "like Amazon.com," and establish a valid business model.

Kawasaki said they have signed up more than 10,000 fee-paying members since the tieup began Jan. 8 and hope to reach 50,000 by the end of this year.

"We are seriously concerned that the industry will not survive if things go on like this," he said, acknowledging that whether their new plan succeeds or not, the structural issue undermining the industry will still exist.

"You've got to really love animation to be in this trade," said Takeo Ide, chief animator for the popular television series "One Piece."

Ide recalled how he used to make ¥70,000 a month in his rookie years, sharing a cheap apartment to get by before being assigned to draw the more pricey key frames ? drawings that define the starting and ending points of movements.

Ide's is a success story in an occupation that, according to a study conducted by the Japan Council of Performers' Organization, has an appalling turnover rate of 80 percent.

The study revealed that a single cel on average earns animators a meager ¥186.9. Considering how a grunt worker has to fill in 500 in-between cels per month for a television animation series, this means a monthly wage of ¥94,000 at best ? for an average of 250 hours of work ? until an artist gets to handle key frames or storyboards.

With an estimated 90 percent of in-betweens being outsourced overseas ? a result of the industry trying to squeeze out more content than it can from domestic hands ? there are also concerns that opportunities to nurture future generations of quality animators are being lost.

"Drawing in-between cels is hard work and it sure doesn't pay much, but it's still an important skill that every animator should learn," said Masayuki Kawachi, president of the All-Toei Labor Union.

Kawachi, who handles special effects at Toei Animation Studio, said that in the current situation, most of such work is done in countries like China and the Philippines.

"And with the recession eating away at production fees and forcing agencies to downsize or go bankrupt, young and aspiring animators can't find places to work," Kawachi said.

Reflecting such times, animation studio Gonzo, a well-known name in the industry, recently confirmed it plans to pare the number of contracted creators from 130 to 30 over the next five years.

The Japan Fair Trade Commission on Jan. 23 released a report on the state of the animation industry, listing several major concerns.

One is the lack of copyrights attributed to production agencies ? copyrights are divvied up among sponsors, a system widely criticized for robbing the actual creators of any secondary-use benefits, not to mention motivation.

Another is the popular practice of commissioning and recommissioning production work to smaller agencies that often leads to shady transactions.

Kawachi said such issues ? not new to the industry ? have largely been ignored in the past but will need to be dealt with one way or another if the industry hopes to remain the dominant force behind the global animation market.

In 2006, Kawachi's union, joined by the Federation of Cinema and Theatrical Workers Union in Japan, presented the culture ministry with a proposal on restructuring the animation industry, outlining main issues and suggesting solutions. Kawachi said they received no response from the government.

Yamaguchi of AJA, who also lectures on animation literacy at Nihon University's law school, predicts that in the end, quality, not quantity, will come to be emphasized.

"When we look at viewer ratings of animated television programs, we notice that the top slot is always dominated by 'Sazae-san,' the only program that is still produced using the traditional hand-drawn method," he said, adding that this trend could also be seen in last year's ¥15 billion-grossing hit "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea," a hand-drawn movie produced by Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli.

"In this age of mass production, when most animation is digitized, we need to consider the implications of such data," Yamaguchi said.

"I think we need to think, philosophically, about what our users really want."

Thank you Karl Cohen for making me aware of this article. For the complete story check out the Japan Times Online.

Quiz: The Defenders of the Alamo fought under a flag that was a Mexican tricolor with the date 1826 on it. What did that mean?

Yesterday’s Question: Why does the term “ I’m washing my hands of the matter” mean you absolve yourself of a responsibility?
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History for 3/4/2009
Birthdays: King Henry II Plantagenet, Antonio Vivaldi, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, Count Casimir Pulaski, Miriam Makeba, Nancy Wilson, Bernard Haittink, John Garfield, Knute Rockne, Chastity Bono, prizefighter Ray Boom-Boom Mancini, Patsy Kensit. Katherine O’Hara is 55, James Ellroy is 61

1152- Frederick Barbarossa made Emperor of Germany. Barbarossa means 'redbeard'. Barbarossa is the Richard Lionheart of Germany.

1517- HERNANDO CORTEZ LANDS IN MEXICO. With a hostile Viceroy of Cuba between him and Spain, and only 508 soldiers he resolves to attack the Aztec Empire of many millions. He even burns his ships to force his men to conquer or die.

1554- Queen Mary Tudor published a Royal edict repudiating her father Henry VIII’s religious reforms and restoring the Roman Catholic Faith to dominance in England. Protestantism and other “heresies” were forbidden. To those who didn’t agree she became Bloody Mary.

1647- As he realized he was losing the English Civil War, King Charles Ist sent his son Charles II and the rest of his immediate family abroad to Holland for safety. Today he saw them off. They would never see him alive again.

1681- King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn and his Quakers to found a colony in the New World-Penn wanted to name the new country "New Wales" because of its hills, but Charles disagreed. As a Quaker, Penn was too modest to have a whole colony named after him. Since the Merry Monarch was essentially paying off an old debt owed to Penn's father, Admiral Penn, who stayed loyal to him during Cromwell’s time, the king suggested the new colony be named after the FATHER. What else was there besides hills? Lots of forest-- mmm-- the King knew that woods in Latin is sylvania. Hey, how about Penn's Woods (honoring the FATHER, not son)-- thus was born Pennsylvania.. When His Majesty noticed the Quakers not removing their hats in his presence, King Charles removed his. William Penn asked: ”Sire, why dost thou remove thy hat?” The Merry Monarch replied:” Well, ONE of us is supposed to!”

1759- Madame la Pompadour secured the appointment of Etienne de Silhouette as Finance Minister. Silhouette tried to fix the chaotic economy of France by steep taxes of aristocrats and cutting back their privileges. Noblemen said they had been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. By November he was gone, people joking called him a shadow. Now the word silhouette means outline figure.

1791- Green Mountains, or in French Vermont territory became the 14th state. The first new state added to the original 13 colonies. Before then Vermonters had tried to be an independent country and once during the Revolution, Ethan Allen floated secret negotiations to sell Vermont back to the British.

TRADITIONAL PRESIDENTIAL INNAUGURATION DAY-1792-1933 "March Forth with a New President" (get it ?) Transportation being what it was in early America and the time it took to count votes and the Electoral College to ratify the election results, this seemed a convenient time. Inauguration ceremonies have been as simple as Tom Jefferson addressing a few guests indoors, then returning to have dinner by himself at Conrad's Tavern to George W. Bush's $40 million dollar 8 inaugural balls.
At Jefferson' inaugural John Adams was so mad he lost that he refused to attend the ceremony. Truman wouldn't speak to Eisenhower, Eisenhower wouldn't speak to Kennedy. In 1841 President William Henry Harrison insisted despite his great age on attending the ceremony without his hat and overcoat in the March chill and caught pneumonia and died a month later,the shortest term in office. His inaugural address was 2,000 words while George Washington's was 137. The wildest Inauguration was Andrew Jackson's in 1829. Common folks were invited into the White House and went wild breaking crystal, muddying the carpets and spitting tobacco juice on the floor, and the men were worse! Jackson jumped out of a back window to avoid being crushed and the butlers got the crowd out only by moving tubs of liquor onto the south lawn. At Abe Lincoln's second inaugural in 1865 he switched vice presidents. Outgoing v.p. Hannibal Hamlin encouraged new v.p. Andrew Johnson to calm his nerves with whiskey, knowing the man had a low tolerance for alcohol. So before Lincoln's beautiful speech 'With Malice Towards None, With Charity for All..." Johnson went up drunk- burbled incoherently and was seen dribbling on the Bible until Lincoln angrily ordered him pulled off the stage. In 1877 Rutherford Hayes wife "Lemonade-Lucy" banned all alcohol from the White House and it was said of the party:” Water flowed like Champagne!" In 1937 Franklin Roosevelt moved the inauguration date to the third week in January.

1836- The Mexican army of General Santa Anna had surrounded the little fort called the Alamo. Today Santa Anna held a council of war to decide what to do. Many of his officers were against an attack. The Texans were cut off with little food and there was no help coming. The fort had no real strategic importance. So why waste his men? But Santa Anna’s blood was up. He wanted to make an example of these “Yankee Land Pirates”. He ordered a grand assault on the Alamo as soon as the preparations were completed.

1861- THE STARS & BARS. During the Civil War the Confederate army was having a problem with their flag. Their first design so closely resembled the United States flag that soldiers had trouble distinguishing one from the other in heavy battle smoke. Creole General Pierre Gustav Toutant Beaureguard put the ladies sewing circles of New Orleans on the problem and they came up with the familiar Confederate Stars & Bars design that still flies over some errant Statehouses today. When Old Dixie was defeated the original prototype flag was smuggled out to Cuba, but was eventually returned and today is in the Museum of the Confederacy in New Orleans.

1887- William Randolph Hearst buys the little San Francisco Examiner and builds the Hearst newspaper empire. Hearst’s father was owner of the famed Comstock mine and thought his son crazy for wasting his time with the penny-paper business. Hearst died in 1951 at age 88, leaving an estate of $160 million. Today Hearst publications is still 15 magazines and broadcast networks..

1887- The first Daimler motorcar introduced in Essenlingen Germany- the Daimler Benzin Motorcarriage. Daimler’s chief competition was the motor company of Dr Carl Benz. In 1899 Austrian Emile Jellinek invested heavily in Daimler’s motorcars provided he name them for his daughter Mercedes. Mercedes and Benz merged in 1926 but the two founders- Gottfried Daimler and Carl Benz never met face to face.

1902- AAA the Auto Club founded.

1917- Jeanette Rankin became the first female member of Congress.

1924- The song “Happy Birthday to You” copyrighted by Claydon Sunny.

1933- Franklin Roosevelt gave his famous speech“The Only thing we have to fear is, Fear itself.”at his first inauguration.

1936- Screenwriter Dudley Nichols publicly refuses the Best Screenplay Oscar for John Ford’s “The Informer” as protest in support of the struggling Writer’s Guild.

1936- First flight of the German dirigible Graf Hindenburg.

1944- Louis Lepke Buchalter went to the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. Buchalter with Albert Anastasia headed the heavy enforcement arm of Lucky Lucciano’s New York Mafia Syndicate. Nicknamed “Murder Incorporated ”the Brooklyn gang committed at least 100 murders, including Dutch Schultz and Lucciano’s mentor Joe the Boss Masseria.

1946- Alex Raymond's comic strip 'Rip Kirby" premiered.

1952- Ronald Reagan married Nancy Davis at the Little Red Church on Coldwater Canyon blvd. in L.A. William Holden was best man.

1952- Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to his publisher:" I've completed a new novel. I think it's my best one to date." The Old Man and the Sea.

1956- Burger King introduced their signature hamburger the Whopper.

1958- U.S.S. Nautilus, first nuclear sub, reaches the North Pole under the ice cap. remember when the submarine ride at Disneyland was painted to look like the USS Navy subs and named for them ?

1960-Famed American opera baritone Leonard Warren collapses and dies on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in the 2nd act of Verdi's La Forza Del Destino.

1961- In the early stages of filming Cleopatra in London actress Elizabeth Taylor developed pneumonia and slipped into a coma. She would have died had not doctors at a convention at London’s Dorchester Hotel performed and emergency tracheotomy. When you seen the film today you can still see the tracheotomy scar at the base of her throat.

1976- Due to the intervention of San Francisco mayor George Moscone, the Giants will stay in city by the bay. In a last minute deal, the Stoneham family sells the team to Bob Lurie and Bud Herseth instead of the Labbatt's Brewery, which had planned to move the Giants to Canada.

1994- Basketball legend Michael Jordan comes to bat for the first time in a Chicago White Sox Baseball uniform. Jordan will give up baseball after one season and return to the NBA.

1991- During the Gulf War US troops destroy an Iraqi bunker concealing tons of deadly serin nerve gas. Estimates are up to 24,000 troops were exposed to the toxic release.

1994- comedian John Candy died of heart failure.

1997- The senate of Brazil allowed women to wear slacks to work.

2004- A New York court convicted interior decorating guru Martha Stewart of four counts of stock fraud. This was for dumping her stock in a pharmaceutical firm called InClone after getting an inside tip that their cancer cure didn’t work.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why does the term “ I’m washing my hands of the matter” mean you absolve yourself of responsibility?

Answer: The term was coined (according to the New Testament) by Pontius Pilatusn the Roman prefect of Judaea (AD 26 - AD 36), who presided over the trial of Jesus. When he offered to release a prisoner and the Jews supposedly picked Barabbas over Christ, insisting that the latter would be crucified, he didn't want to be responsible for the death of the man he thought was innocent. So he had an ewer and basin brought up, publicly and symbolically performed an ablution and declared : " I wash my hands of the blood of this Just !" The term was then adopted to absolve oneself from an objectionable matter beyond one's control.
I've never seen such a custom of substituting condemned prisoners or washing of hands in Roman custom before. Romans were sticklers for the rules, especially where it concerned disciplining provincial criminals. It might have all originated with St.Luke, writing 100 years after the fact, in cities like Alexandria where mob clashes between Jews and Nazarenes was commonplace. Scholars continue to argue.

I was just made aware of a neat website of photographer Richard Woolf.

Peter Lord on the set of Chicken Run. It is not one of Richard's images, but close.


Richard was a cameraman in England and he worked in LA for three years. I just helped him identify a few people in some photos. A lot of his photos are of the artists of the London animation scene, Nick Park, Oscar Grillo, Chuck Gamage, Russell Hall, John Halas and there are some Yanks and Canadian toonsters as well like Jules Engel, Mark Farquhar and Jamie Lopez. He took a number of images at the Looney Tunes Reunion picnic back in 1999.

Check out the Gallery Section, then click on the section for Animation People.

http://www.richardkeithwolff.co.uk

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Quiz: Why does the term “ I’m washing my hands of the matter” mean you absolve yourself of responsibility?

Answer to yesterdays question below: Why do so many English speaking people have the family surname Smith or Jones?
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History for 3/3/2009
B-Dayz: George Pullman of Pullman Railroad cars, General Matthew Ridgeway, Jean Harlow, Diana Barrymore, Akira Ifukube the composer of the music scores to movies like Godzilla, Tone Loc, Jacky Joyner-Kersee, James Doohan, Ronald Searle, Bruno Bozzetto, Will Eisner, Herschel Walker, George Miller, Miranda Richardson is 51

Happy Square Root Day! 3.3.9 The next one won't be until April 4thm 2016, or 4.4.16

1764- Elderly King Louis XV appeared before the regional Parliament of Paris and re-affirmed in France he was absolute master:” In My Person alone resides the Sovereign Power…to me alone belongs the legislative power, unconditional and undivided. My people and I are one, all public order emanates from me.” No representative government stuff like England was going to happen while he was around. King Louis all but ensured that France would change only from violent revolution.

1801- THE MIDNIGHT JUDGES-Outgoing President John Adams was a sore loser. He was outraged that he was not re-elected to a second term as President. He vented his frustrations by spending his last night as President signing dozens of Federal Judgeships and army officer commissions to members of his Federalist party. He then boycotted the inauguration and took his sweet time moving out of the White House, forcing Thomas Jefferson to spend his first night as President in a pub.

1842- Massachusetts created a law trying to limit the workday for children under twelve to twelve hours a day only, but it is considered too liberal to be enforced.

1849- The US Department of the Interior established

1863- President Lincoln signed into law the National Conscription Act (the Draft).
The Confederate States had already started drafting the previous year. Rich men could get out of the army by paying $300 for a substitute. J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller and Theodore Roosevelt's father took this way out. Harvard-Yale games and varsity boat races went on throughout the Civil War with no loss of players. This angered the poor that the war was a rich man's game. Riots broke out in several cities. A popular song of the day "We are coming Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand Strong" was changed to "We are Coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred Dollars More."

1875-Claude Bizet's opera CARMEN debuts. Parisians usually go to see comedies at the Opera Comique and most thought this would be about the adventures of a coquettish Spanish gypsy. Instead they saw one of the great dark dramas of opera, a story of sexual power and obsession. The shocking sight of a slutty gypsy smuggler getting knifed by a burnout soldier driven insane by sex was so upsetting it was booed and howled off the stage. Bizet never got over the fiasco, he died six months later. Carmen is now one of the world's most famous operas.

1875- HOCKEY- The first modern Hockey Game was played at the Victoria skating rink in Montreal Canada. No one is sure just how old hockey. In the 1700’s Micmac Indians played a game on bone skates using sticks and passed it on to the British garrison of Halifax Nova Scotia. The people of Windsor Nova Scotia claim hockey was invented there at Long Pond in 1844 from the Irish game of Stick & Ball. The first pucks were frozen horse droppings. No one is sure where the word Hockey came from, the nickname of some British officer or local schoolteacher perhaps.

1902-The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it's all right for the U.S. Government to ignore Indian treaties, if they do it in a nice way.

1931- Congress and President Hoover made the "Star Spangled Banner" officially the U.S. national anthem. The 1814 Francis Scott Key poem set to the English beer hall song "To Anacreon in Heaven" was sung since the 1850's, but this day it became official.

1934- Public Enemy #1 John Dillinger escaped from a Witchita jail by carving a gun out of soap (it was actually wood) and painting it with shoe polish. He said :"The jail hasn't been made that can hold me!"

1950-Paramount's "Quack-a-Doodle-Doo" The first Baby Huey cartoon.

1950-Don Herbert teaches millions of kids about science as televisions Mr.Wizard.

1973- THE BAR CODE. An ad-hoc committee of scientists from Proctor & Gamble and Nabisco and such announced the invention of the Universal Product’s Code- The Bar Code, that annoying little set of bars and numbers on everything you own or buy. No longer would stores have to close their doors periodically for inventory counting. But if you are a conspiracy fan its the way the Hidden Government and the guys in the black helicopters keep a record on everything you buy.

1991- L.A.P.D officers beat up drunk and disorderly driver Rodney King. King had previous convictions and was tazed several times with a an electric shock but still fought back at police, who seemed to go berserk on him with their clubs just as a witness caught the incident on videotape. The incident and trials caused a scandal in Los Angeles and later the largest civilian riots in U.S. history. The LAPD is one third the size of the NYPD yet receives three times the civilian complaints.

2001- Despite worldwide protests, the Taliban of Afghanistan began destroying their nations ancient giant stone Buddhas with dynamite and artillery, as graven images.
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Yesterdays question: Why do so many English speaking people have the family surname Smith or Jones?

Answer: During the Victorian Era, men wishing to avoid debtors prison or otherwise in trouble with the law took the King’s Shilling- i.e. joined the army or navy. When signing up they changed their names to avoid the local constable. The preferred alias was Smith or Jones. The armies that tramped over India and Africa contained an inordinate amount of Smiths and Jones’. This practice continued in the US Army during the Indian Wars.