The Animation Show, as I've probably said before, is my favorite venue for animated shorts. It's the best-run and best-programmed festival of its kind. The new edition has just premiered and it includes my new short "Hot Dog". In May I flew to Chicago for the premiere of the Animation Show. Robert May and Rebecca Moline were having the event at the famed Music Box cinema. It was a great crowd and they loved the program because this edition is made up of entirely funny films. Yeah!

Afterwards, I flew to Seattle for the West Coast premiere of "Idiots and Angels". I haven't been to the famous Seattle Film Festival for a long time. It was great to return to one of the oldest and largest festivals in the country. It's extremely well run and the cinemas were packed with fans.

I was able to check out some of the other premieres in Seattle. "American Teen" is an excellent documentary about high-school kids in Ohio that takes a look at their personal and romantic lives. I was originally scheduled to do the animation for the film but I was smack in the middle of finishing "Idiots and Angels" so I had to pass on the project. The animation that they chose was pretty good.

When I returned to New York, I was finally able to catch up on my film viewing. I liked "Iron Man" a lot. I also enjoyed "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" except near the end where they go underground to discover the aliens. It got very boring, though I particularly liked the attack of the billion red ants.

I saw "Kung Fu Panda" (DreamWorks), directed by my buddy Mark Osborne. I thought it was excellent entertainment - great action, humor, backgrounds and storytelling. My only complaint was that the characters were uniformly badly designed.

I did a weekend at the celebrated MOCCA Arts Festival at the Puck building. I've been away from this event for a number of years because it conflicted with Annecy, but this year they were on different dates, so I had a table at MOCCA. It took place during one of the hottest weekends of the year. As all of the exhibitors were lined up outside to register, some guy had collapsed from a heart seizure and hit his head on the concrete steps of the entrance. So we all waited for the ambulance to pick him up. I guess he recovered and actually attended the festival with massive bandages around his cranium.

Then I was honored to get the Cartoonist of the Year award from the MOCCA organization. I was happy that Signe did my introduction and Lawrence Klein, the father of MOCCA was there. There were a lot of wonderful artists that I got to hang out with: Gary Panter, Mo Willems, Art Spiegelman, Francois Mouly and Linda Barry, who I've known for a long time. Also, Charles Burns, who I just met. He's one of the star artists of a new French film called "Peur du Noir" (Fear of the Dark). And we discussed adult animation.

To complete the circle with MOCCA near the end of the final day there was a fire emergency. We all had to exit the building on a hot humid day as the firemen went through the entire structure, only to find out that it was a false alarm. That night I caught a plane to the Annecy Animation Festival in the French Alps.

Annecy was screening the European premiere of "Idiots and Angels". Since I was doing a panel for MIFA (the industry side of the festival). They put me up in a fancy yet unfinished hotel very close to the festival.

Opening night was the screening of "Waltz with Bashir" which was the hit of Cannes this year. It was a wonderful, emotional, beautifully-realized animated documentary feature. However, I don't know if people in America want to see the killing and raping of innocent Palestinians in Lebanon. It's a very expressive film that everyone should see, but the subject matter is just too dark for the general American audience.

I've been going to Annecy since 1985, and over the years I've built up a real reputation. In fact, some people call me the "unofficial mayor of Annecy". So I was very excited about the premiere of "Idiots and Angels". The problem was, for some reason they programmed the kiddie features at night and my big show was at 10:30 am. So even though the film was sold out, there were a lot of empty seats because the audience was partying the night before. That's OK though, we still had a great applause and I think the audience enjoyed the film.

Some of the other features in competition there were "Lucky Luke", "Peur du Noir", "Sita Sings the Blues" by Nina Paley and "Nocturna" from Spain.

One of the highlights for me was hanging out with Richard Williams, one of the judges. He is, of course, famous for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "The Thief and the Cobbler" fiasco. Richard Williams had an exhibit there and I helped him and Mo, his wife, bring it down. While they were packing the art, he related all of these great stories about legendary animators he knew or worked with - such as Art Babbit, Milt Kahl, Preston Blair, Robert Zemeckis and others. It was a real fascinating look into my animation heroes and Richard was so generous to share these thoughts.

The following Friday night, Nik and Nancy Phelps joined me in presenting the third exciting year of Annecy Plus, where we screen the best short films that were not accepted into the Annecy competition. Of course, we featured the "Annecy Plus Band" starring Nik Phelps, Rolfe Bechler and surprise guest David Silverman on tuba. The films were loudly applauded, thanks to projectionist Jonas Reaber and the guys at the Bistro for their wonderful support.

Saturday was the day for relaxing, picnics, playing in the lake and getting ready for the big closing night ceremonies, which was a grand event. Serge, as usual, was a marvelous M.C. for the Indian-motif awards show.

The New York features scored big time. Nina Paley and her film "Sita Sings the Blues" won best feature and my film "Idiots and Angels" won the special distinction award. I was joined on stage by my producer, Biljana Labovic, and all of the other winners. It was very exciting. Afterwards at the party I got a "congrats" from all of the judges including my old pal, Portlander Matt Groening.

This prize in Annecy is very important because a lot of distributors and buyers of films need to see awards to convince them if the film is any good. In fact, right now I'm in the frustrating process of trying to find a distributor for the film. It's exasperating, because all of the reviews for "Idiots and Angels" have been so stellar and yet the distributors are very reluctant to pick up the film. I don't know if they are afraid of adult animation or what. It's a mystery to me. That's why for me the fun part is making the film and the least fun part is selling the film. I guess I'm destined to always be an underground cult director.

So in my eternal search for distribution, I went to the celebrated and historic Edinburgh Film Festival. I've been there before and always had a great time. One of my more memorable evenings was having dinner with my long time heartthrob Jacqueline Bisset. This year "Idiots and Angels" was quite the success - packed houses, fawning audiences, and great reviews. But the highlight was my visit to Django Studios, where the genius director Sylvain Chomet is making an animated feature called "The Illusionist" (temporary title) from Jaques Tati's unproduced screenplay. I had to sign a four-page waiver that said I couldn't disclose any information about the film, but I can tell you it looks fantastic!

The most recent film I've seen was "Wall-E", the famed Pixar feature from Andrew Stanton.I love all of the Pixar features and I believe that they are one of the key elements to this second Golden Age of animation we are going thru. However, I was disappointed in "Wall-E". In a sense, it's a very bold, almost experimental film. In fact, the first 20 minutes of the film has no plot, no conflict and no story arc. The story itself is very minimal and not that engaging. On top of that, it's very anti-American.

The whole film is like one big expansion of "Luxo Jr." - a lot of machines acting like humans. But far be it for me to critique Pixar. The reviews for the film have been unanimously positive and the box office has been boffo. And who am I but a minor animator with maybe one-thousandth of the audience of Pixar.

The cartoon for this installment is from page 44 of my "Sloppy Seconds" book. It's called "Lampshade Chic". I actually came up with this idea in the 70's. I believe I was at a party at my friend Rose's apartment and she had a lot of wild and crazy lamps mostly from the 60's. The connection between drunken guys with lampshades on their heads just seemed natural.