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I will see UP this weekend. One thing I noticed during all the years of enjoying PIXAR films is the personal growth of all the artists there. I recall back in the early 90s' when all these young computer guys flocked up to the Bay Area, to work long hours and live on pizza and Diet Coke.

Their first big film TOY STORY, was about a bunch of young single guys hanging out, (plus Bo Peep and Mrs. Potatohead, of course.)

TOY STORY II was a young guy torn between girlfriend and family.

egads! Responsibility! courtesy Disney/Pixar

MONSTERS INC. was about a young daddy and a toddler.

FINDING NEMO was about a young daddy and a school age son

THE INCREDIBLES was about a Dad dealing with Middle Age disillusionment and alienation from their teenage kids.

Now UP is about a retired old man and a kid.

I'm wondering when I'm going to see the PIXAR dad as a three time divorcee' with a combover, riding a Harley, growling about alimony and shacking up with a High School Senior.



Bravo, Gang!
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Quiz: Are airplane black boxes, actually black?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Where is the oldest town in the continental USA?
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History for 6/4/2009
Birthdays: King George III, Alvah Bessie, Rosalind Russell, Gene Barry, Dennis Weaver, Robert Merrill, Bruce Dern, Andrea Jaeger, Dr Ruth Westheimer, Freddy Fender, Noah Wylie, Rachael Griffiths, Angela Jolie is 34

Happy Birthday to Youuuu

Happy Saint John the Baptist Day.

1070- THE BIRTHDAY OF ROCQUEFORT CHEESE. Legend has it on this day in the town of Roquefort a shepherd found in a cave some cheese he had been saving but had forgotten about. He noticed it was covered with mold but he was hungry and ate it anyway, and lo and behold, it tasted much better than before...

1259- Kubilai Khan, the grandson of the Genghis Khan, was elected council the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. Kubilai then shattered Mongol tradition by dividing the huge Empire into three pieces. His uncles Kaidu and Batu would rule the Mongol homeland and Western section (the Golden Horde) respectively while Kubilai preferred to rule China as it's emperor. In doing this he was acknowledging the reality that the master plan of Genghis for world conquest was unfeasible. The empire which extended from Korea to Budapest to Baghdad was unmanageable and would break up anyway. Kubilai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China would last. He was the Chinese Emperor who met Marco Polo.

1666- Moliere’s play "Le Misanthrope" premiered.

1717- FREEMASONS- The Grand Lodge of England was inaugurated in London on St John the Baptist Day. This is considered by some the birth of Freemasonry, but many alleged histories claim the practices of the Brotherhood of the Craft go back to ancient Egypt and was brought to England by the Knights Templar in the 1300’s. There is some validity to the reports of independent Lodges already existing in the 1630’s in England and earlier in Scotland. The Freemason movement spread throughout Europe and became an alternative to religion for many intellectuals in the 1700’s. Mozart, Haydn, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Casanova, Voltaire and many more were members.

1896-Henry Ford tests out his automobile with headlights in a nighttime drive around Detroit.

1916-THE HERO PIGEON OF VERDUN- During the horrific battle of Verdun the Germans had surrounded the French strongpoint of Fort Vaux. The fighting in the underground 15 foot high concrete tunnels of the fort was ghastly, men killed each other with hand grenades and flamethrowers at close quarters while groping through the blackness and gagging at the stench of rotting corpses. The French commander Captain Reynal, his telephone communications cut, sent his last carrier pigeon to get help. The pigeon, despite being badly gassed and perching on the roof of the fort for a little while, got through to the high command. Delivering his message like Phiddipides of Marathon he then fell over dead. Help never got through, and Captain Reynal had to surrender, but the dead pigeon was awarded the medal of the Legion d'Honneur. Go figure.

1916 - Mildred J Hill, one of the two Hill sisters who composed the song Happy Birthday To You, died at 56.

1919- The Women's Suffrage Act passes the Senate by one vote. A chorus of women in the visitor's gallery break into :"Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow". The deciding vote was cast by a Utah senator who wanted to please his mother.

1940- The last day of the Miracle of Dunkirk. British sea transports and small pleasure craft cross the English Channel and withdraw most of the British Army trapped against the sea. 280,000 British men and 100,000 allies were saved, 40,000 men go into captivity.

1942- The BATTLE OF MIDWAY. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto committed the bulk of his carrier force to destroy the American Navy once and for all. Recent research of Japanese Imperial files reveal he considered this step a prelude to the invasion of the Hawaiian Islands, which he hoped would force America to negotiate peace. But the path of Yamamoto’s fleet was revealed by the breaking of the top Japanese radio codes and the American fleet laid an ambush for him. It was a battle of carrier-based planes where the opposing ships never see each other. The famous suicide attack of TBY-8, was an attack of U.S. torpedo planes on the Japanese carrier fleet without fighter cover. Of 51 planes, 47 were shot down by faster more agile Zeros. But while the zeros were on deck getting refueled and rearmed a cloud of screaming Dauntless divebombers dropped out of the sky and blew Yamamotos four best aircraft carriers to bits- The Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu and Kaga. One American carrier the Yorktown was sunk. The Japanese fleet would never mount an attack of this size again. Its defeat was seen by the U.S. Navy as the turning point of the Pacific War.

1947- The film "A Miracle on 34th St." opened. Starring Maureen O’Hara, Edmund Gwen and 8 year old Natalie Wood.

1951- The Supreme Court upholds the anti-Communist Smith Act. This act stated you could be fired from your job or jailed even on a suspicion that you were a communist, no proof required.

1951- Tony Curtis married Janet Leigh. Besides proving Tony wasn’t gay the result was to produce Jamie Leigh-Curtis.

1965- The Rolling Stones release the single "Satisfaction".

1967- The television show "The Monkees" win the Emmy award for Best Comedy.
go figure... The producers of the Pre-Fab Four raise enough money and clout to fund later projects like the hit movie Easy Rider. This same ceremony saw Bill Cosby become the first African-American to win an Emmy, this for his role in the series I-Spy.

1977- The Apple II went on sale. It became the Model T of the cyberworld, the first successful mass marketed personal computer.

1989-THE TIENAHMEN SQUARE MASSACRE. Chinese army troops loyal to Deng Zhao Peng crush the student democracy movement in the center of Bejing. The demonstrations started around a funeral for Hu Yao Bang, a party premier who was ousted for his liberal democratizing policy. The crowds gathered in strength and militancy, students joined by workers and soldiers. There was a hope China’s ruling regime would fall to a "people-power" type revolution that had overthrown Marco’s Philippines and the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. But Premier Deng brought in soldiers from the rural provinces and brutally cracked down. No figures of total casualties exist but the figure ten thousand is thrown around as conservative. Incidentally this incident probably was the beginning of the world popularity of CNN news. Despite threats from commissars correspondent Mike Chinoy remained at his post and continued to broadcast when all other news teams had fled. Deng Zhao Ping’s name was a pun on the word for "little bottle" so people showed their resistance by smashing dozens of small bottles out on the street.

1990- The New York Daily News quietly discontinued its long running comic strip Ching Chow. Besides being ethnically offensive, the little one panel strip of a stereotype Chinese man with a long hair queue saying silly Confucian platitudes, also was the source of racetrack and numbers racket tips.

2003- Martha Stewart, the self-made millionaire leader of a home recipe empire, was indicted for insider trading.

2004- THE HOMEMADE TANK- In the small town of Granby Colorado, a muffler salesman named Jim Heemeyer got so annoyed at the town, that he welded iron plates on to a large bulldozer to create a kind of homemade tank. While policemen fruitlessly shot at his tank, he razed to the ground most of the public buildings before shooting himself. If you can’t fight City Hall, bulldoze it.
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Yesterday’s Question: Where is the oldest town in the continental USA?

Answer: St Augustine Florida was founded in 1515, more than a hundred years before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.


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