Living Large in the Big City. Had a nice time at NYU Tisch School of the Arts talking with students. I also stopped in to the Strand Bookstore in Greenwich Village to see my book in the stacks. I loved to go browsing there as a student years ago. It is a great rush to have something of my own there. Makes the last four years of rewrites and footnoting and rejections from publishers somehow worthwhile.

Then spent the day with Emily Hubley going over artwork and photos from the careers of her parents, John and Faith Hubley. John saved a lot more Walt Disney material than I expected. More about that later.

Down to Lombardi's on Spring Street in the Little Italy section of Manhattan for dinner. For those who don't know its significance, it is called the Oldest Pizza Parlor in the USA. Gennaro Lombardi brought his family recipe over from Italy in 1897 and began making them for the public in 1905. His brick oven is still the one used today for my dinner. Wow. Like Dali' said, it ain't Art unless you can eat it!
courtesy American Heritage Magazine

QUIZ What is a Pizza Margherita and why is it called that? answer below-

Tomorrow a visit to the School of Visual Arts animation department.
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Birthdays: Jean Baptiste Lully, William Blake, Frederich Engels, Brooks Atkinson, Berry Gordy the founder of Motown Records, Randy Newman, Anton Rubinstein, Ed Harris is 56, Paul Schaefer, Laura Antonelli, Joe Dante, Michael Ritchie, Jon Stewart is 44, Anna Nicole-Smith is 39

1922- The first Skywriting display. Former RAF pilot Cyril Turner wrote HELLO USA , CALL VANDERBILT 7-200 in the skies above New York City. 47,000 people immediately telephoned the number.

1925- First radio broadcast from the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville.

1947- Disney's cartoon "Chip and Dale".

1948- Hopalong Cassidy premiered on television.

1981 - Moviestar Natalie Wood drunkenly toppled off her yacht near Catalina Island and drowned. Her husband,Robert Wagner and friend Christopher Walken, were onboard having an argument and unaware of her predicament. Wood had once confessed to a friend that she had a horror of drowning.
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QUIZ:
What is meant by a Pizza Margherita?

ANSWER: The second king and queen of Italy after modern unifiication were Umberto Ist and Queen Margherita. They spent their coronation year, 1880, touring aroung Italy. When going through Naples, the cooks there wanted to present the queen with a pizza decorated with the colors of the Italian flag. So it was Tomatoes for the Red, Mozzarella for the White and Oregano for the Green. The queen loved it, and to this day a plain pizza with no extra toppings is called a Margherita.