Last week Pat and I were invited to be on the jury of the Animatu Festival, in Portugal. It was in the city of Beja', about 90 minutes from Lisbon.

2007 Grand Prize winner Neibla- Fog, by Mexican animator Emilio Ramos. courtesy of Emilio Ramos

Portugal is relatively new to the animation scene, but everyone was on hand to celebrate, and see new short films. In addition to the work of local artists and students we saw shorts from France, Taiwan, Australia, England, Germany, Estonia and the USA. Awards were given in categories like 3D, 2D, Machinima ( manipulated photographic imagery), Motion Control, Mobile Phone, and Best Portuguese films. The theater was named the Pax Julia, after the original Roman name for the city founded by Julius Caesar in 45BC.
Click on an image to enlarge-

Pat with festival bus

Pat and I with Festival Director Marco Taylor

Lunch with Portuguese animators. Wine and lots of fried pork!

With the festival mascot. Fortunately, it didn't follow us around.

2008 Grand Prize winner Ossudo by Julio' Alves

typical Portuguese animation studio

Statue commemorating Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso

A very funny film from Argentina, Lagrimas Demasiado Tarde (too late for tears) by Pablo Polledri

Our Wonderful Nature by Tomer Eshed from Germany

Merchandise, Animatu

Pat wrestles the flower centerpiece during her talk

More fried pork!

Pat and I had a great time, we saw lots of fun new films, and we made a lot of new friends. Thanks to everyone for making us so welcome. Obrigado!
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Question: Why is staying away from school called playing hooky?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: In 1770, the largest city in the British Empire was London. What was the second largest?
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History for 10/22/2008
Birthdays: Sarah Bernhardt, Timothy Leary, Franz Liszt, Doris Lessing, Joan Fontaine, Derek Jacobi, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum, Annette Funicello, Brian Boitano, Catherine Deneuve is 65

1660- Edward Hyde the Earl of Clarendon was a staunch supporter and adviser to King Charles Ist and his son Charles II. This day upon learning that his daughter Anne had been seduced and made pregnant by James the Duke of York the aforesaid earl humbly petitioned King and Parliament to please cut off his daughters head! Boy, when daddy gets angry! King Charles II dismissed the affair as much ado about nothing.

1746- The Royal College of New Jersey chartered- it was later renamed Princeton.

1805-After the naval Battle of Trafalgar the shot up English and French fleets were scattered by a violent three day ocean storm. Admiral Nelson's dead body had been sealed in an upright barrel of brandy for the trip back to London. After four days his body released some pent up gasses that suddenly popped the lid off the barrel. Must have scared the hell out of the guard on duty.

1843- THE GREAT DISSAPPOINTMENT- American preacher William Miller working with the books of Daniel and Revelations in the Bible calculated the exact date of the Messiah’s return and the End of the World to be Oct. 22nd 1843. A highly publicized newspaper and lecture campaign got the American public so worked up that many didn’t bother to plant crops. Banks noticed businessmen returning monies they swindled from former partners. On the appointed day Miller and thousands of followers withdrew to pitched tents outside Rochester New York to await the Rapture. They waited all day and all night and by dawn most went home disappointed and feeling a bit foolish.

1883- First performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera House. It was Gounod’s Faust with soprano Christine Nillson and tenor Italo Campanini. The opera Faust was so popular and played so often, the Met was nicknamed the Faustspeilhaus instead of Festspeilhaus. ( yuk,yuk, yuk! that's a XIX Century opera joke.....uh....ahem....)

1900-Two bicycle repairmen from Ohio named Orville and Wilbur Wright build a large glider and fly it .They choose the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk North Carolina to test their glider because the winds were strong and they would crash in something soft. The airplane was still three years in the future but this was their first test of their prototype double winged plane design.

1903- Tom Horn, considered the Last of the Western Outlaws, was hanged in Wyoming for the murder of Willie Nickel. The era of the gunslinger ends with him.

1923- THE TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL hearings began. By World War One the U.S. Navy had refitted it's battleships from coal to diesel fuel engines, so maintaining a strategic petroleum reserve became as serious as nuclear stockpiles are today. The Secretary of the Interior Albert Ball arranged for some reserved oil rich areas of Teapot Dome Oklahoma and California transferred from the Navy Department's jurisdiction to his department of the Interior, so he could 'lease them' to oil magnates James Doheny of Doheny Drive fame, and Harry Sinclair. They in turn gave him a fortune in stock and other monetary kickbacks. Ball became the first senior cabinet officer to go to jail. It took years for the scandal to wind through the courts and blackened the last days of President Warren Harding's administration. The same room the senate hearings took place later saw the Watergate hearings, Oliver North's Iran-Contra, Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky hearings.

1934- Bank Robber James" Pretty Boy" Floyd killed in a furious gun battle with the F.B.I. He had told his father months before:" Pa, when ah go, I’m gonna go down in lead!" Floyd was considered a "dust bowl robin hood" for leaving food and money on doorsteps of destitute farmers. One story had him steal a pie cooling on a windowsill pput replacing it with a $50 bill. In Woody Guthrie's "Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd" He says:" You may call me an outlaw, but one thing that I have known. I've never seen an outlaw drive a family from their home."

1938-THE BIRTHDAY OF THE XEROX COPY- Chester Carlson working with an amateur chemistry set behind a beauty parlor in Astoria Queens creates the first xerox copy. He took his invention to Edison, G.E., RCA and IBM who all rejected it. Finally a little firm that produced photographic paper for Kodak called the Haloid Company bought it. They later changed their named to Xerox.

1939- The first televised football game-The Brooklyn Dodger's 23 Philadelphia Eagles 14.

1962- Twentieth Century Fox mogul; Daryl Zanuck fired long suffering director Joe Mankiewicz off of the editing of the spectacle Cleopatra. Mankiewicz had shot a 6 hour movie he wanted shown as two films. Zanuck wanted one big movie at half that size. After a lot of embarrassing feuding in the press Zanuck rehired Mankiewicz and he recut Cleopatra,. It became one of the biggest flops in Hollywood History.

1962- After it looked like a news leak would make the news public anyway, President John Kennedy goes on national television and tells the American public about the CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. 54 B-52 bombers with 4 Hydrogen bombs each took off to fly within two hours of their Soviet targets. 134 Titan missiles were armed.
Both sides wrestled with the temptation to do a 'First-Strike', meaning the side that hit first without warning just might knock out enough of the enemies nukes to limit the damage and “megadeaths” to his own side. Secretary of State Dean Rusk recalled: "I'd wake up in the morning and the first thing I'd think was, I'm alive, Khruschev didn't do it today." In Moscow Khruschev grimly joked:" With the time difference Kennedy works while I sleep and I work while he sleeps, hmph, maybe soon we'll both be sleeping..."

1962- At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis a stand up comic named Vaughn Meador recorded a comedy album called The First Family. It made lighthearted fun of John F. Kennedy and his White House. The record became the fastest selling hit of the pre-Beatles era, 7.5 million copies. Jackie called Meador a rat but JFK thought it was funny and gave out copies as Christmas presents, even though he said Meador’s impersonation sounded more like Ted Kennedy than him.

1967- In Oakland black militants Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and H.Rap Brown form the Black Panther Party of Self Defense. ---------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday’s Question: In 1770, the largest city in the British Empire was London. What was the second largest?



Answer: Philadelphia, Pa.