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Blog Posts from August 2008:

Aug 31st, 2008 sun
August 31st, 2008

I've been adding my complete resume history to my Bio section. Check it out.

Question: What is a Stoic?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why do Americans celebrate Labor Day this weekend, while it is May 1st in the rest of the world?
History for 8/31/2008
Birthdays: Caligula 12AD*, Commodus 161AD, Amilcare Ponchielli, Eldridge Cleaver, Buddy Hackett, James Coburn, Itshak Perleman, Van Morrison, Arthur Godfrey, Debbie Gibson, Richard Baseheart, Rocky Marciano. Alan J. Lerner, Dan Rather, Maria Montressori (of the Montressori Method of education), Daniel Saroyan, Richard Gere, Chris Tucker











1946- Looney Toon short 'Walky Talky Hawky' the first Foghorn Leghorn. The character was based on a Fred Allen radio character Senator Clayton Langhorn that poked fun at bombastic Southern conservative politicians.

1948- Disney's 'Melody Time' premiered.

1948- Movie star Robert Mitchum was busted for smoking pot with a blonde in the Hollywood Hills. This would have normally smoked his career but the new postwar outlaw, noir attitude was in vogue and bad-boy Mitchum emerged from jail more popular than ever.


1964 - Ground is broken for Anaheim Stadium, future home of the California Angels



1997- PRINCESS DIANA OF WALES died after a high speed car crash in Paris. Her Mercedes had been trying to avoid paparrazzi hounding her and her current boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed, the son of the Egyptian tycoon owner of Harrods. The drivers body tested above normal for alcohol and drugs. Princess Di was 36. Britain reacted with an outpouring of grief not seen since the death of Nelson. The rapacious British paparazzi worked overtime to absolve themselves of hounding the poor woman to death. Rupert Murdoch personally flew to London to direct the spin campaign defending his papers. Part of their tactics was to point out that the Queen didn’t make a true statement of regret until the following Thursday, almost a week after the accident. I was in Spain on the day of the crash and the late edition London Evening Standard printed before news of the tragedy had the headline: DI & DODI’S BONKING BONANZA!

2001- The NY Stock Exchange tries to avoid a Recession and bolster growth by getting Michael Jackson and Jerry Lewis to ceremonially open trading sessions. Didn’t work.

Answer: Samuel Gompers, the head of the American Federation of Labor, lobbied for a holiday to celebrate the American worker that was free of the Lefty-Socialist connotations of May Day. It was agreed it would be nice to have at least one national holiday in between the 4th of July and Thanksgiving. So in 1894 Pres, Grover Cleveland created the holiday at the end of August. Then he ordered the army to shoot down striking railroad workers and their families.

Daily Show Obama Spoof
August 30th, 2008

The Daily show did a very funny Barack Obama bio film, borrowing heavily from the Circle of Life song in Disney's The Lion King. I noticed that when they superimposed his face over the baby Simba drawing, they didn't have to change the ears. Enjoy.

August 30th, 2008 sat
August 30th, 2008


Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Why are the political polar extremes called Lefties and Rightists?
History for 8/30/2008





1867- At the University of Göttingen, Albert Niemann isolates the chemical elements of the Columbian coca plant and named the substance Cocaine.

1880- Diablo, chief of the Cibecue Apaches, was killed fighting the White Mountain Apaches.



1945- THE AMERICAN SHOGUN- Gen. Douglas MacArthur lands on mainland Japan as military governor. After the ceasefire was announced, there still was a lot of distrust on both sides, and in the streets of Japan gangs of outraged youths and kamikaze pilots fought loyal troops trying to restart the war. Into this turmoil General MacArthur and his staff flew in alone ahead of any other allied occupying troops. He even ordered his staff to leave their pistols behind to show their fearlessness to the Japanese. He also wanted to get there before Admiral Nimitz and the Navy got there first and stole his spotlight.
In a sight that alarmed his staff as MacArthur drove to Yokohama the road was lined on both sides with 30,000 crack Japanese troops standing silent with fixed bayonets.
They were not threatening but saluting their new Shogun. They even faced backwards from the road not looking at MacArthur, a gesture of respect reserved only for the Emperor.
While the still new Truman administration concentrated on Stalin and postwar Europe MacArthur was left with a free hand to reshape Japanese society as he saw fit. He used the power of unquestioning Japanese social discipline to give women the vote, form labor unions and rewrite their constitution, setting the basis of Japanese democracy.







Yesterday’s Question: Why are the political extremes called lefties and rightists.

Answer: During the French Revolution, when the French formed their first parliament, the Legislative Assembly, the more conservative royalists sat on the right side of the hall, and the radical deputies sat on the left side. These designations as terms soon became fashionable in England and America.

Besides my USC and UCLA commitments, I just started teaching a class at Woodbury College in Animation History. I took it on from Charles Solomon when he went on a sabbatical.

Egads! Sito now being paid to tell history stories? Yes We Can!
I hope everyone has a nice and safe, Labor Day Holiday!

Quiz: Why are the political polar extremes called Lefties and Rightists?

Question: Okay animation buffs, during World War Two, when Jack Mercer was drafted into the army, who supplied the voice for Popeye?
History for 8/29/2008
Birthdays: King James II Stuart, John Locke, Oliver Wendel Holmes Sr., Jean Dominique Ingres, Charlie Parker, Preston Sturges, Ingrid Bergman, William Friedkin is 70, Dinah Washington, George Montgomery, Slobodan Milosevic, Robin Leach, Richard Attenborough is 85, Donald O’Connor, Elliot Gould, Rebecca DeMornay, Joel Schumacher, choreographer Mark Morris, Charles Kettering inventor of the automobile ignition, Sen. John McCain is 72, Michael Jackson The King of Pop is 50.

1776- The Long Island Campaign ends. George Washington's army was humiliatingly defeated in open battle by the British regulars, driven off Brooklyn Heights and pinned up against the East River. All night the fishermen of Marblehead Massachusetts succeeded in ferrying the remainder of his troops across to Manhattan while the British Navy sat strangely inactive around Staten Island. Even the weather helped with a thick fog that shrouded all activity until 8:00AM in the morning. A Loyalist homeowner named Mrs. Rapalie sent her slave to warn the British that the rebels were getting away. The man was intercepted by some German Hessians who couldn’t understand any thing he said in his thick Brooklyn-Colonial accent, so they arrested him as a spy.


1889 - 1st American Intl pro lawn tennis contest -Newport RI.

1893- Whitcomb Judson invented the zipper.

1896- Chop Suey invented in New York City.

The first ticker tape parade.

1925 - After a night on the town, Babe Ruth shows up late for batting practice Yankee manager Miller Huggins suspended Ruth & slapped a $5,000 fine on him. Whenever the Yankees were on the road and were safely winning a game Ruth would take himself out of the lineup early so he could scout out a good bar for the team to go to later.



1953-Warner's "Cat Tails for Two" introduces Speedy Gonzales. Years ago I met an old animator named Frank Gonzales who claimed the character was named for him. Warners had a drawing quota for assistants and Frank was always first done and out of his chair to go flirt with the ink & paint girls. The other guys would say:" There goes "Speedy" Gonzales again. When Chuck Jones & designer Hawley Pratt were thinking of new characters, the rest as they say, was history.




1974- THE RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE- Prizefighter Mohammed Ali wins back his heavyweight crown from George Foreman in a wild showbiz event set up in Kinshasa, Zaire. While the African government was trying to use the press attention to highlight the modern society they had developed, Ali was making jokes about witchdoctors, missionaries in stewpots and other cliches. "Tonight they'll be a thousand guys named Mohammed out there rooting for me, and another thousand guys named Ali rooting for me, but their won't be anybody else out there named George Foreman!" Foreman left boxing, became a minister, then returned in his 40’s to win the heavyweight crown and a fortune when most athletes are retired.

1989 -Hotel millionaire Leona Helmsley had said : "Only little people pay taxes". This day she was sentenced to four years in prison and fined two million dollars for 33 counts of income tax evasion. Leona died in 2007 and left the bulk of her estate to her lapdog.



Answer: The old sailor’s salty mumbles were done by Mae Questel, the voice of Olive Oyl and Betty Boop.

August 28th,2008 thur
August 28th, 2008

Last night the Academy we saw a Centennial Celebration of Animator/Producer George Pal.
Hungarian-born Pal is well known for his Puppetoons shorts, then in the 1950s went into producing popular sci-fi and fantasy films like DESTINATION MOON (1951), TOM THUMB (1958), WHEN WORLD'S COLLIDE (1951), THE SEVEN FACES OF DR LAO, The TIME MACINE (1960), The WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM (1962) and the great WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953), with those cool martian ships of Albert Nozaki's.

courtesy of Bob Baker Marionettes.

Director Joe Dante hosted a panel that included Barbara Eden (still looks good!),Bob Baker who passed on a job animating at Disney when he heard Pal was doing puppets; Anne Sullivan, and Russ Tamblyn (when you're a jet, you're a jet all the way..) I never got to ask him how he liked starring in the English parts of the Japanese film DESTROY ALL MONSTERS... Gene Barry wanted to make it but was too ill. Barbara Eden told how in the 60s a fire destroyed Pal's Bel Air home. Among the damage, his special Oscar for Destination Moon was melted. Even though it was replaced by the Academy, Pal kept the melted lump of metal in a cup on his desk. No one really had a bad story about Pal. I remember when the Animation Guild began a concerted drive to organize Hollywood animators, Walter Lantz and George Pal were the first employers to enthusiastically sign up.

There were two beautiful prints of puppetoons- RHYTHM IN THE RANKS, and JOHN HENRY AND THE INKY POO. Original puppets of Jasper and the Screwball Army were on display. I was amazed at how small they were. They also ran one of his rare 2D animated commercials from 1935. This one for radio tubes. The evening ended with a screening of WAR OF THE WORLDS in it's original 1:3:3 ratio. All the Paul Frees dialogue was great.

Happy 100th George Pal!


Yesterday’s Answer Below: What is the difference between Taiwan and Formosa?
History for 8/28/2008
Birthdays: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leo Tolstoy, George Villiers the Duke of Buckingham- minister of James I, O'Flagherty, Donald O'Connor, Charles Boyer, Karl Bohm, Bruno Bettleheim, Ben Gazzara, Jack "King" Kirby, Janet Evans, Ron 'Louisiana Lightning' Guidry, Jason Preistley, Daniel Stern, Shania Twain, Charles Solomon

79 a.d.- POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM DESTROYED BY MOUNT VERSUVIUS -The great volcano errupted burying the two Roman cities. The Emperor Titus rushed a fleet commanded by the natural scientist Pliny to rescue as many as he could. Pliny was overcome by the sulphurous fumes and died. His son, Pliny the Younger, watched it all and wrote a moving account of the tragedy in his 'letters'. Pliny is probably the first on-the-scene eyewitness account in world history. Scientists have been digging at the site of Pompeii since it's rediscovery in 1726, but estimates are there's as many as 30,000 skeletons still buried.




1830 - 1st locomotive in US, "Tom Thumb," runs from Baltimore to Ellicotts Mill.
.By 1835, the B &O was exclusively a steam affair.

1837 - Pharmacists John Leah & William Perrins invent Worcester Sauce.









Yesterday’s Quiz: What is the difference between Taiwan and Formosa?

Answer: They are the same place. Taiwan is the original name of the island in Mandarin Chinese. Formosa was the name given it by Portuguese mariners, and was so noted in European maps and atlases. Ilha Formosa means Beautiful Island. Taiwanese call themselves ROC, Republic of China. For the anti-Communist Nationalist forces that were driven off shore by Mao in 1949. Mainland China considers Taiwan a renegade province.