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I learned today that the film I directed in Taiwan in 2006, ADVENTURES IN THE NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM was awarded Grand prize at the Tokyo International Animation Festival! The second prize was given to Ark, the film that won top honors at the 2007 SIGGRAPH. The film is 3D short about how the exhibits in Taipei's great art museum, the NPM, come to life after the museum is closed. It was a way to highlight the treasures of this great museum and introduce them to a new generation of art lovers.

Domo Arrigato to the Tokyo International Animation Festival.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmCP3Aep5XI&feature=related

My congratulations to Teddy Yang and all the Digimax gang!
Ho Shan Ku Faa!!

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Quiz: What is Cheerios named for? Mr Cheerio?

Yesterday’s answer below: Who is Bugs Bunny named for?
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History for 8/7/2008
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Constantius II, Revolutionary War General Nathanael Greene, Mata Hari, Rassan Rolling Kirk, Dr. Ralphe Bunche, Nicholas Ray, Dr. Richard Leakie, Grandma Moses, Alan Page, The Amazing Randi, David Duchovny, Billy Burke aka Glenda the Good Witch " Come out, come out. wherever you are..." Garrison Keillor is 66, Stan Freeberg- radio star and voice of Pete Puma is 82, Animator Rudy Ising, Charlize Theron is 33

1674-The Bagel is invented in Vienna. Some say the hole is a tribute to the stirrup of Polish warrior king Jan III Sobieski, more likely the hole was just so a street peddler could stack them on a stick.

1834 -Death of Joseph Jacquard, French silk weaver who invented the first loom capable of weaving patterns. Some say that the cards used in the Jacquard Looms were the inspiration for the computer punch card, a way of transmitting data, whether pulses of light or lengths of wool.

1882- The legendary Hillbilly Feud in Kentucky between the Hatfields and the McCoys began, supposedly over a prize hog. Ellison Hatfield was stabbed 26 times and shot in the back by Tolbert McCoy. The Hatfields then rounded up three McCoys and shot them execution-style. Over the next forty years over100 men women and children from both families would be killed in the argument.

1914 – The famous poster of Lord Kitchner pointing and saying "Your country needs you," spreads over UK. James Montgomery Flagg later copied the poster for the American version with Uncle Sam in a similar pose. Lord Asquith commented that by now the elderly soldier Kitchener made "a better poster than a leader."



1919- the First Actor’s Equity Strike.

1928- The US Treasury issued a smaller leaner dollar bill. Before this dollars were two times larger and wider than the ones we now use.

1931 - Leon Bismarck "Bix" Beiderbecke, jazz trumpeter died at 29 of drink and drugs. Bix along with his idol Louis Armstrong was considered one of the first jazz musicians to popularize the solo-riff, where in the body of a song the soloist would depart from the arrangement and improvise like a cadenza in classical music. His family in Davenport Iowa were horrified that their son dropped out of school to associate with Negroes and become a musician. Even after Bix was famous he returned proudly home only to discover his parents had stacked up every record he sent them in a box under the stairs. They never listened to a single one.

1933-The first "Alley-Oop" comic strip.

1942- GUADALCANAL BEGINS-10,000 Marines land on the Japanese held island in the first U.S. offensive of World War Two. Americans at home had to learn names like Tulagi, Savo, Gaivutu-Tanonbogo, Chesty Puller and Washing Machine Charlie as their loved ones slugged it out for six months in one of the most brutal battles of the Pacific War. The evenly matched Japanese and Americans went at each other with everything from bayonets to battleships. So many ships were sunk in the island’s lagoon that they nicknamed it "Ironbottom Sound".

1942-The first days aerial dogfights over Guadalcanal Japanese fighter ace Saburo Sakai won fame for shooting down his 58th,59th and 60th American planes. Then his Zero was badly shot up by Gruman F-4 Wildcats and Sakai was paralyzed on his left side and had one eye shattered by a bullet. Yet even in this state he managed to fly his smoking plane 500 miles to home base safely. In the air for 8 1/2 hours, he later said he would occasionally thrust a thumb into his eye wound to give himself a shot of pain to keep awake. Sakai survived, fought at Iwo Jima in 1944, volunteered for Kamikaze duty but flew back with honor when he could find no suitable targets. He survived the war and wrote a famous memoir- Zero Pilot.

1964-After the Tonkin Gulf Incident President Johnson asked for permission to act in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war. Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution 93-2 in the Senate and 410-0 in the House to accelerate the U.S. combat troops role in Vietnam. President Johnson used the hotline to the Kremlin for the first time to assure Premier Khruschev that the US did not plan to expand their role in IndoChina- (?) The American commitment goes from 30,000 to 450,000, trillions of dollars and eventually immolates Cambodia and Laos as well. Senator William Fullbright, later a great anti-war critic, was at this time an enthusiastic supporter. Congressman Mark Hatfield said : "I can’t get over the feeling we’re making a big mistake."

1970 - Christine Perfect McVie joins the band Fleetwood Mac.

1970 – The first computer chess tournament.

1974- French daredevil Phillipe Petit strung a tightrope between the two 110 story towers of NY’s World Trade Center and walked across it. As New Yorkers watched in amazement, Petit kept his concentration by carrying on a conversation with the buildings. In 2005 Animator Michael Sporn created an award winning film about the incident. The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.

1979- THE RUNAWAY WARS.-Hollywood Cartoonist’s Union strike against studios sending animation work overseas.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who is Bugs Bunny named for?

Answer: Looney Tune storyman Ben Hardaway was nicknamed Bugs, like famed Chicago Gangster Bugs Moran. When Hardaway requested a rabbit design for a new cartoon, designer Charlie Thornton made up a model sheet and labeled it Bugs’ Bunny.


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