Congratulations to everyone involved in The 40th Annual ASIFA*East Awards. I attended several when I lived in New York. Screenings at Parsons, with Dick Rauh at the projector and Tissa whispering in the darkness:" Zee next feelm iz Horrybull!"
They were all great fun.



ASIFA/Hollywood in L.A. has had The Annie Awards since 1972. They were competitive for awhile, then became exclusively a lifetime achievement award for about 15 years. In 1989 Bill Kroyer, Antran Manogian, and I worked successfully to move the Annies back into competitive categories, to become the wonderful event they are today.

Part of my inspiration that I used in debate was my experiences at the ASIFA*East Awards. So, in that way the East competition has had a direct influence on the West one.

Thank You ASIFA*East, and enjoy your party.


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Question: Has anyone ever gone from President of the United States to Supreme Court Justice?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Today a news analyst made a pun about the Chrysler Bankruptcy situation. He called it Government by Fiat. Why is that funny?
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History for 5/3/2009
Birthdays: Niccolo Macchiavelli, Golda Meir, Sir Richard D'Oly-Carte, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Pete Seeger, Betty Comden, Doug Henning, Beaulah Bondi, Mary Astor, Sugar Ray Robinson, Alex Cord, 70’s singer Englebert Humperdinck, Dule Hill

328 A.D.- Discovery of the True Cross-According to medieval legend St. Helena the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great unearthed three old crosses on the Mount of Calvary. She tested it out by crucifying someone on it who gets up after three days. After all, it might have been someone else's cross! Byzantine Emperors carried the True Cross around and into battle like a flag until it was thought to be too precious to lose, so it was broken up and the wood distributed to the kings of Christendom. By Luther's time it was said so much of the Good Wood or Holy-Rood was around that if you got it all together you could build a nice house. The custom of saying "Knock on Wood" comes from touching the True Cross for luck.

1536- Huron Indian chief Donnaconna noticed that the French explorer Jacques Cartier and the other white men got excited whenever he mentioned gold or riches. So Donnaconna made up fantastic stories about a powerful kingdom upriver called Sanguenay, about where present day Ottawa is. He said the people were fabulously wealthy and had no anus's so they could only drink fluids. Cartier not only swallowed the gag, but he was so impressed he had poor Donnaconna kidnapped and brought to France to tell his stories to the king. The old Indian never saw home again.

1675- Massachusetts Puritans passed a law that church doors be locked during Sunday services. Too many people were leaving during long, boring sermons.

1702-William Hyde- Lord Cornbury arrived from England to be Royal Governor of colonial New York. This English aristocrat surprised the solid Dutch Calvinists of former Nieu Amsterdaam by his eccentric behavior. His favorite pastime was dressing up in ladies clothing and jumping out at people at night and pulling their ears. When in drag he bore an uncomfortable resemblance to England’s Queen Anne.



He later explained he dressed this way so the colonists could see what their queen in England looked like, but nobody believed him. There is today a painting of the Lord Governor in drag at the New York Historical Society . It was alleged that he was a fence for pirates and once asked the New York City council for money to repel a fictitious French attack which he pocketed and bought the land today called Hyde Park.

1812- A new poem called Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage became a huge hit in London and sold out in just three days. The author Lord Byron became the toast of London overnight. He said: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

1863-2nd Day Battle of Chancellorsville-Lee sent Stonewall Jackson 12 miles swinging around the Yankee Army flank to attack them from behind. Stonewall Jackson and his staff had ridden out beyond his lines to observe the Yankee preparations for tomorrow. He was riding back towards his own lines when a shot or two rang out. One officer cried Don't Shoot, We're Southerners,when a mass volley hit Jackson and several other officers." My boys, my own boys!" Jackson groaned. He died two weeks later.

1888- Poem "Casey at the Bat" published.

1948-THE PARAMOUNT DECISION- In 1938 the independent theater chains had brought suit in Federal court against the major Hollywood Studios over their monopolistic practices. Ten years and a World War later the Supreme Court ruled the Motion Picture Studios did constitute a monopoly and under the Sherman AntiTrust Act ordered them to sell their theater chains. One casualty of this rule was the short cartoon. Because theater managers no longer were forced to run a cartoon, newsreel and short with a feature (block-booking), they opted for the time to run more showings of the main feature.

1952, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma stepped out of a plane and walked to the exact North Pole, the first known person to do so. Commander Robert Peary claimed to have reached the Pole in 1909 as did others, but modern scholars think they were all off by several degrees.

1963- Birmingham police attack Civil Rights marchers with attack dogs and high powered hoses. The brutality was captured on nationwide TV. The images shocked the nation and President Kennedy, who had been assured by Governor George Wallace by phone that everything was under control. JFK resolved to fast track the Civil Rights Act through Congress..

1968- THE PARIS '68 REVOLT- Police are sent into the Sorbonne University in Paris to break up student demonstrations. The grounds of the university had never been violated by police, even during the Nazi occupation. This act enraged the student leaders who are joined by labor unions and there is fighting in the streets of Paris for the next three weeks that eventually brought down the DeGaulle gov't.



All night political meetings center in the Odeon theatre as the likes of Jean Paul Sartre and John Luc Goddard make intellectual manifestations of aesthetic freedom."The More I make Love, the More I make Revolution!" One of the student leaders was Daniel Cohn-Bedit "Danny the Red". Conservative media tried to draw attention to Cohn-Bendit’s Jewish foreign background . This caused an even larger angrier march of everyday Parisians and Unionists chanting: "We are all Jews!"

1969- Groundbreaking in Valencia for the California Institute of the Arts.

1971- National Public Radio’s news program "All Things Considered" goes on the air, the first national news program with women news anchors-Susan Stanberg leading.

1978- THE FIRST SPAM E-MAIL- Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp wanted to invite all the scientists and professors on the ARPANET system to an event. It was too much work to do one e-mail at a time so he devised a way to mail 600 people at once. So thank Gary that you get endless messages like "Biancas Bliss" and "Nigerian Bank Trustee offers you $300,000."

1979- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. The green grocers daughter called the Iron Lady dominated British politics for the next twenty years.

1985- The White House confirmed rumors that President Reagan would occasionally adjust his schedule on the advice of a San Francisco astrologer.

1997- The Chairman of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company tells a congressional committee cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears candy. -Uh-huh.

1999- Oklahoma City was hit by a force 5 tornado with wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour, the strongest ever recorded.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Today a news analyst made a pun about the Chrysler Bankruptcy situation. He called it Government by Fiat. Why is that funny?

Answer: A government fiat is an order or decree which may not be questioned. And of course Fiat is an Italian car company that is merging with Chrysler. And of course, the quickest way to lose the edge of a joke is to explain it. ( Thanks Dave)