For those of you in animation with staff jobs, tomorrow is the last day before the Big Holiday Break! And if you are made to work next week, your employer should understand that even if your ass is in the chair, your head and heart will already be far away on break regardless.

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QUIZ: Which TV Christmas Special was first? A)A Charlie Brown Christmas, B) Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol, C) The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, D) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Yesterday’s question answered below: Why is Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, important to the way we celebrate Christmas?
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History for 12/18/2008
Birthdays: Antonio Stradivari, Karl Maria Von Weber, Ty Cobb, George Stevens, Ozzie Davis, Diane Disney-Miller, Anita O’Day, Paul Klee, Betty Grable, Willy Brandt, Keith Richards, Leonard Maltin, Alyssia Sanchez-Vaccario, Ray Liotta, Katie Holmes, Brad Pitt is 45, Steven Spielberg is 62

1679- THE ROSE ALLEY AMBUSCADE- Writer and critic John Dryden was walking in the Rose Alley in Covent Garden when a group of thugs jumped him and beat him up. They had been hired by The Earl of Rochester because of a satirical essay making fun of him was attributed to Dryden. Other writers like Voltaire suffered similar attacks from aristocrats who couldn’t take a joke.

1757- Frederick the Great’s army besieged the Fortress city of Breslau in Silesia. The Austrian garrison’s commander General Sprecher posted placards throughout the town threatening with death anyone who breathed a word of surrender- then he surrendered.

1783- The American Revolution now over, George Washington appeared before Congress in Philadelphia to resign his army commission and go home to Mount Vernon. The president of Congress was Thomas Mifflin, his former aide who Washington sacked for his trying to go behind his back. This moment was when George Washington parts company with most conquerors like Cromwell, Napoleon and Castro. He had power, but then walked away. Kings George III and Louis XVI were amazed when they heard the news: That Washington, the great generalissimo, the most powerful man in the Americas, would give up his power so lightly in order to return to his farm like some legendary Roman -Cinncinnatus, to be exact. Washington was called out of retirement five years later to be the first U.S. president.

1787- New Jersey named the third state.

1812-NAPOLEON'S RETREAT FROM MOSCOW ENDS -Napoleon reached Paris by sled after racing ahead of his shattered army to prop up his tottering regime.
Of Napoleon's 600,000 troops that invaded Russia less than 60,000 frozen wretches came out. Insanely brave Marshal Ney was the last invader to recross the border. Alone, with bullets whistling past his ears, he calmly crossed the burning Neiman River bridge, stopping to pick up abandoned muskets to fire them at the Russians. After he fired a last shot, he threw the empty rifle at them. When Napoleon got to his palace at Saint Cloud he was so dirty from the trip the guards didn't recognize him and wouldn't let him in. His first official acts after the public announcement of the Russian Campaign’s disaster was ordering the Paris ballet dancers to dance barelegged instead of in tights. While that topic dominated gossip, his second act was to give the French people a big tax cut. Watching Louis XVI lose his head in the Revolution, gave Nappy a healthy if cynical respect for the anger of the average citizen.

1912- THE PILTDOWN MAN- An announcement was made, of a find, in a peat pit, in England, of the remains of a human ancestor between ape and man, the so-called "Missing Link". The skull had canine teeth like an animal but it had an enlarged cranium like a man and was buried with primitive tools. This find was made at the time Darwin’s Evolutionary theories were being hotly debated. The authenticity of the Piltdown Man was thrown into question in 1949. When modern dating techniques were perfected, by 1953, the Piltdown Man was officially declared a hoax. The remains were too modern to be ancient and the canine teeth had filed down by tiny files. It is generally believed that a practical joker named Martin Hinton at the British Museum of Natural History may have been the perpetrator.


1919- in France Composer Cole Porter married divorcee Linda Thomas. They stayed together all their long lives, even though she always knew that he was gay .

1931- Gangster Jacky "Legs" Diamond had a penchant for recovering after being shot repeatedly by pistols and shotguns. It was said he had so much lead in him he could attract a magnet. Today someone finally shot him down and he didn't get up.

1937- Mae West does a comedy routine on national broadcast radio with Don Ameche about Adam and Eve that was considered so racy CBS banned her from their network.
At the same time she got fined by the networks for joking about ventriloquist puppet Charlie McCarthy:" Hmmm…he’s all wood and a yard long!"

1939-Max Fleischer's animated classic “Gulliver's Travels”. To me the best use of motion capture to date.

1956- TV Game show To Tell the Truth made its debut. Bud Collier hosting, and panelists like Kitty Carlisle, Bennett Cerf, Orson Bean and Dorothy Killgallen as panelists.

1960- An eccentric man named Jerry Garcia was dishonorably discharged from the army. He had done things like drive a tank into a field then walk away. He was AWOL 8 times in one year. After leaving the army Jerry Garcia became a hippie musician in San Francisco and in 1966 formed the rock band the Grateful Dead.

1961-" In the Jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps to-night…a winoweh, etc. " this song by the Tokens goes to #1 in pop charts.

1966- Chuck Jone's 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' premiered.

1975- Rod Stewart announced he was leaving the band Faces for a solo singing career.

1978- SAG strikes Hollywood again, for residuals. (again...)

1984- Chris Guest married Jamie Lee Curtis at Rob Reiner’s house .

1997- Saturday Night Live Comedian Chris Farley was found dead in his Chicago apartment in the Sears Tower, surrounded by empty food containers and porn magazines. The chubby 31-year-old had been partying for 17 straight hours doing cocaine, heroin, vodka and crystal-meth. His last words were to an exhausted prostitute:" Please don’t leave me.". Chris Farley was scheduled to be the voice of the character Shrek; Mike Myers now took over. He had also optioned a script to play the serious biography of silent star Fatty Arbuckle. Farley idolized the late John Belushi, who had also died of drugs and hard living at age 31. One writer recalled Farley drunk, throwing chairs and tables around in his hotel room, then he turned to him and asked innocently:" Do you think Belushi is in heaven?"

1998- TEN YEARS AGO- Dreamworks first animated feature the “Prince of Egypt”, or, as it was known in Hollywood,"The Zion King".


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Yesterdays Question: Why is Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, important to the way we celebrate Christmas?

Answer: Albert was THE trend-setter for genteel society in the Victorian Era. When he wore sideburns, everyone had to wear them, and when he wore a tuxedo jacket at dinner, everyone else had to also. So when he insisted the Royal Palace adopt his German custom of a family Christmas Tree, the custom was set, not only in the British Empire, but for all us Americans who doted on everything British.

Christmas trees had been introduced to Britain earlier by George III’s wife Queen Charoltte, and to America by the Hessians. But the practice didn’t become regular in the English speaking world, until Victoria & Albert made it so.