BACK to Blog Posts

P-p-p-puhl-LEASE!I want a Twentieth Anniv Crew Reunion!

2008 is the twentieth anniversary of the breakthrough film WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? All year plans have flown around Disney and the Academy to do some kind of reunion tribute. But as the schedule for the remainder of the year fills up, nothing seems to have gelled. At SIGGRAPH, Don Hahn and I reconnected and re-affirmed our determination to get something together.

Stay Tooned for October! And I'm saying it now to start the ball rolling. Next year Ariel, the Little Mermaid will have her Twentieth Birthday!

--------------------------------------------------------
Quiz: What does it mean when you call someone a Svengali?

answer to yesterday’s question below- What is mean when you speak in a pejorative sense?
---------------------------------------
History for 8/16/2008
Birthdays: Fess Parker, Karl Stockhausen*, George Meany Charles Bukowski, Menachim Begin, Otto Mesmer the creator of Felix the Cat, Myron Grim Natwick the creator of Betty Boop, Hal Foster the creator of Prince Valiant, Alex Raymond the creator of Flash Gordon, Kathie Lee Gifford, Eydie Gorme, Bill Evans, Leslie Ann Warren, Angela Bassett, Julie Numar, Robert Culp, James Cameron is 54, Bruce Beresford, Madonna Louise Ciccone is 50

*Stockhausen was an atonal composer who's music was not to everyone's taste. Once when he was late on writing a new concerto for a concert he placed a piece of paper on a window and traced the pattern of stars, drew musical bars over the dots and had it performed. Eyewitnesses said it was awful. Someone asked Sir Thomas Beecham" Have you ever heard any Stockhausen? " He replied:" No, but I think I stepped in some back there."

Today is the Feast of St. Roch, who had a heavenly inspired dog to lick his sores and cure him of the Black Plague.

1805- In the camp at Boulogne Napoleon held a grand military ceremony for his Grande Armee’. To the thundering beat of 1,300 massed drums he personally awarded medals to worthy common soldiers. The secret to Napoleons leadership was a special bond between him and his men that was unique to his time. In an world of aristocrats who considered the common people scum Napoleon walked casually among his soldiers like an equal, stopping to share a roast potato or a dirty joke in rough soldiers language. He called them his children. He had an uncanny memory and read the personnel rosters of his 350,000 man army once a month to update himself on his men’s achievements.

1858- Queen Victoria sent the first transcontinental wire message to President James Buchanan via Cyrus Field's incredible UNDERWATER TRANSCONTINENTAL CABLE, stretching from London to New York. After great fanfare about progress and a new era in communications it broke down, as well as the next several tries to fix it. Just hours after the first message a fisherman pulled it up in his net, thought it was the tail of a sea serpent and cut off a chunk to take home and brag to his friends. Other attempts were ruined when technicians tried to correct the faintness of the signal by boosting the voltage beyond the safety range of the insulation-Zapp! Direct transcontinental communications didn't really become a reality until wireless broadcasting. But the who-ha over this scientific marvel did inspire author Jules Verne to write "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

1877- BIRTHDAY OF THE WORD-"HELLO". In a letter dated today Thomas Edison wrote to the first president of AT&T about how people should initiate conversation on the new telephone machine. A genteel Victorian would think it impolite to speak until spoken to. Edison explained that the results of sonic tests proved the old English fox hunting call "Halloo!" was most audible over great distances. Alexander Graham Bell, an old navy man, always thought the right way to start a phone conversation was to say "AHOY!", but hello won out. In most languages around the world the word hello is the same. It was the only English word Sioux Chief Sitting Bull ever learned. He loved to grab your hand and pump it vigorously while saying:" HELLO, HELLO!"

1896- Four miners find gold in Bonanza Creek in the Klondike. The Yukon Gold Rush begins.

1938- Blues legend Robert Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband in Three Forks Mississippi.

1942- Happy Birthday Mighty Mouse. Terrytoon's short: "The Mouse of Tomorrow".

1954- First issue of Sports Illustrated.

1969- “ Hey Man, we’re gonna serve breakfast in bed for 500,000” So was hippy Wavy Gravy’s announcement on the second day of the Woodstock Rock Concert. He said this was the day Americans learned to eat Granola. It was ladled out en masse in paper cups and has been a diet staple ever since.

1976--Apple Computers was founded by two college dropouts- Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, in a California garage.

1977- E-DAY in Memphis. 42 year old Elvis Presley, donuts and Pizza Hut box in hand, died sitting on the toilet. He was reading a book, the Historic Search for the Face of Jesus.

1985- On her birthday, Madonna married Sean Penn.

1987- The Harmonic Convergence- Another one of these celestial events that the mainstream media trumpeted as the end of everything. All nine planets of our solar system were in perfect alignment and the subsequent gravitational forces were supposed to knock the Earth into the Sun or something or other, that would send us to Hell in a Handbasket. Lots of New Age types flocked to occult sites like Mt. Shasta and Stonehenge to meditate on the End of All Things. So what happened? Well, we're all still here, ain't we...?

1991- The original Shamu the Whale died of respiratory failure at age 16.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Quiz: What is mean when you speak in a pejorative sense?

Answer: When you speak of someone or something in a critical way. You express your disapproval.


RSS