Tween Pop Stars, Cartoon Animals, Parody, and the Right of Publicity from the blog Law of the Game:  Video Games, Gambling, and Other Legal Discussions, Your Source for Video Game Law, attorney Mark Methenitis, editor-in-chief   A great deal of the jurisprudence on the issue can be traced back to Elvis.  After his death, mountain s of “commemorative" merchandise appeared, but none of it had his estate’s endorsement. So, some courts began to acknowledge that letting places like the Franklin Mint pay bills using Elvis’s face was not fair.  This has come up in the gamespace before, in cases involving Kurt Cobain in Guitar Hero 5 and the flash games involving politicians.  As usual, there is no hard and fast rule for how these suits play out, they are fact specific. Think of it like a trademark for a famous person’s likeness. Related to this is the Lanham Act, which codifies our national standards for trademark.  Trademarks can be infringed when someone creates a mark that is the same or confusingly similar.  This hinges on the “likelihood of confusion," or whether a consumer could see the allegedly infringing mark and assume the products or  services are from the trademark owner.  These cases will typically involve similar goods. For example, if you put an Apple logo on your laptops hoping they will sell faster, that is infringing.  Trademarks can also be diluted.  Dilution happens when someone uses a mark “in a way that would lessen its uniqueness."  http://lawofthegame.blogspot.com/2012/03/tween-pop-stars-cartoon-animals-parody.html

To "pay the piper" figuratively means to face the unpleasant results of your actions for something you have neglected to do especially after you promised to do it.  Basically, it means don't do anything unless you are willing to suffer the ill consequences of not living up to your part of the bargain.  The origin of that statement is quite interesting.  According to a legend, it was in 1284 that the town of Hamelin in Germany was suffering from a rat infestation.  A man dressed in pied (multi-colored) clothing appeared, claiming to be a rat-catcher.  He promised the townsmen that he could solve their problem with the rats.  The townsmen in turn promised to pay him for the removal of the rats.  The man accepted, and played a musical pipe to lure the rats with a song into the river where they drowned.  Despite his success, the people reneged on their promise and refused to pay the rat-catcher for his deed.  The man left the town angrily, but he promised to return later to retaliate for their failure to do what they had promised after he had done what he had promised.  Margaret Minnicks  Read the rest of the story at http://www.examiner.com/article/what-paying-the-piper-means

Scot is from an Old Norse word that meant a payment or contribution and which is linked to the modern French écot, a share of communal expenses, as in payer son écot, to pay one’s share.  It is a close relative of shot, which at one time could have the same meaning of a contribution or a share of expenses.  The expression scot free derives from a medieval municipal tax levied in proportional shares on inhabitants, often for poor relief.  This tax was called a scot, as an abbreviation of the full term scot and lot, where scot was the sum to be paid and lot was one’s allotted share.  (This tax lasted a long time, in some places such as Westminster down to the electoral reforms of 1832, with only those paying scot and lot being allowed to vote.)  So somebody who avoided paying his share of the town’s expenses for some reason got off scot free.  Scot was also used for a payment or reckoning, especially one’s share of the cost of an entertainment; when one settled up, one “paid for one’s scot”.  Again, someone who evaded paying their share of the tab got off scot free.  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sco1.htm

Among the oldest of all blinds were those made from strips of reed bound together, used by the Egyptians to shade their homes.  Venetian blinds, originally comprised of thin slats of wood (but now also available in metal and plastic), were advertised as a novelty in London by John Webster in 1767, but such blinds had actually been used for many centuries before this in Japan.  They are said to get their English name from the fact that it was Venetian traders who introduced them to Europe from Persia.  Wise Words and Country Ways for House and Home by Ruth Binney

Feb. 26, 2014  NEARLY TWO DECADES after he last sent Calvin and Hobbes exploring, Bill Watterson got an offer he decided not to refuse.  Web cartoonist Dave Kellett had done a voice-only interview with Watterson for his new comics documentary, “Stripped.”  Now, Kellett had an even bolder proposal:  Would Watterson — who retired his beloved “Calvin and Hobbes” strip in 1995 — consider providing the film’s poster art?  “Dave sent me a rough cut of the film and I dusted the cobwebs off my ink bottle.”  Soon, Watterson was rendering an image that never would have passed the syndicate censors during his “Calvin and Hobbes” days:  An adult springing to full-color life in all his dorsal nudity.  “The film is a big valentine to comics, so I tried to do something really cartoon-y.  I had thought of having it colored with off-registered printing dots like newspaper comics, but Dave asked if I’d paint it instead, and I think he made the right call.”  “Stripped,” by Kellett and fellow L.A.-based filmmaker Frederick Schroeder, features more than 60 cartoonists who talk about the state of the comic-strip industry.  In the film, Watterson eloquently speaks to the emotional bond that readers form with comic-strip characters as a function of the daily strip ritual.  In March, the work of Watterson and  “Cul de Sac” creator Richard  Thompson will go on exhibit in a two-man show at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at the Ohio State University in Columbus.  The “Stripped” DVD will be available April 2, 2014.  Michael Cavna  http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2014/02/26/bill-watterson-talks-for-documentary-cartoonist-offers-his-first-public-cartoon-since-ending-calvin-and-hobbes/?tid=hpModule_d39b60e8-8691-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394&hpid=z10

Pantomime developed from a type of traveling street theatre called Commedia dell'arte which came from Italy in the 16th century.  Commedia is a very physical type of theatre that uses dance, music, tumbling, acrobatics and buffoonery.  Commedia dell'arte troupes had a repertoire of stories that they performed in fairgrounds and market places.  Often the touring troupes were made up of family members who would inherit their characters, costumes, masks and stories from their parents or grandparents.  Commedia spread across Europe from Italy to France and by the middle of the 17th century began to be popular in England.  John Rich, actor-manager of the Lincoln's Inn Theatre (opened 1714) and The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (opened 1732), has been called the father of pantomime because he was the first to realise the potential of the Commedia characters.  Rich made Harlequin the star of the entertainments that he called pantomimes, and he developed the character into a mischievous magician.  Rich also developed the drama of the chase scenes.  For over 150 years Harlequin remained the star of the pantomime, and pantomime was dominated by the Harlequinade, a comic chase scene telling the story of Harlequin and Columbine.  The Harlequinade was in mime with music and lots of slapstick and tomfoolery.  Every pantomime had a Harlequinade as part of the bill.  The story of the Harlequinade had the same basic format; a chase scene where the two lovers, Harlequin and Columbine, are kept apart by the girl's father, Pantaloon, whose servants play tricks on him.  In the chase the two lovers are pursued by her father and his servant, Clown.  John Rich's Harlequin used a Slapstick or wooden bat which he would hit against the scenery to make the scenes change by knocking down a series of hinged flaps.  The chase scene would take the characters to many different locations all controlled by Harlequin's magic bat.  The locations of the chase were often places that people would recognise - named streets or areas of London for example.  They also included mythical locations.  The pantomime traditions of slapstick (meaning a certain type of clownish physical comedy), chases, speed and transformations were developed from Rich's Harlequinades.  Read more and see images at http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/e/early-pantomime/

Prefixes pan, panto and pant come from Greek for all, every, entire.  Find words beginning with the prefixes on six screens starting at http://wordinfo.info/units/view/2800/page:6/ip:2/il:P

Oscars 2014:  The complete list of nominees and winners by Tracy Brown  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/moviesnow/la-et-mn-oscars-2014-nominations-winners-list,0,6878721.story#axzz2uu4V7Pjo

Issue 1117  March 3, 2014  On this date in 1284, the Statute of Rhuddlan incorporated the Principality of Wales into England.  In 1913, thousands of women marched in a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C.  In 1931, the United States adopted The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem.