Pong, Betty, Lots of Students and a Festival

Last week I met with Chris Padilla, the guy who put on all the Animation Festivals in Laguna Beach back in the 70s and 80s. Chris was in town from Hawaii working a mega-cool project that I am not at liberty to talk about at the moment. Let me just say that he first contacted me about one of the films I was showing at the Stop Mo Expo. So his project does have something to do with stop motion.

I am in my office at Fullerton getting ready for office hours. I have 99 students now with I think another 2 or 3 in the process of adding. Tonight is their first quiz. Do not look forward to grading this baby but I did make them give me a TA.

This week is the judging for the Animation Educators` Forum / ASIFA-Hollywood Student Film Festival. The judges will be meeting with me at DreamWorks at 10 in the morning this Saturday.



I was at the 99 Cent Only store today and things are showing up in the 99 DVD racks. This week it is Atomic Betty. Also found a PC port of Pong. Atari has been porting their classic games for a while now and they have been showing up in the cutout rack at the 99 Cent store for the last 6 months.

Last Wednesday I was teaching my class about the Magnavox / Sanders Pong law suit against Atari. Atari lost on that one folks if you didn`t hear and videogame companies had to pay license fees to Magnavox / Sanders to the tune of 100 Million in a 10 year period. Something that Ralph Baer, the creator of the brown box that became the first videogame console, did not know until 2002. The lawyers wanted to keep it very quit for some reason