Mickey Mouse

Piney Run Park will again offer pontoon rides on the lake during the summer. Programs are available for all age groups.Registration is required for all rides, and payment is due within one week of registration.The park's policy is to notify participants as soon as possible in the event of a cancellation. If inclement weather appears suddenly, participants will be notified at the park.If a program is canceled because of bad weather or lack of people, credit will be given. Registrants who cancel at least 24 hours in advance will be given credit for another program.

WHAT DO Mickey Mouse, Snow White, "Rhapsody in Blue," "The Great Gatsby" and "Gone With the Wind" have in common? They all faced expiration of their copyrights.But Congress has ridden to the rescue of entertainers, Hollywood conglomerates and heirs to literary and recorded works. It passed a bill extending the current 75-year copyright protection to 95 years. So Mickey Mouse's clock won't run out in 2003 -- followed by Snow White, Goofy and Dumbo -- but in 2023 instead.That aligns U.S. copyrights with European standards.

Sharon Lee Kaiser, 56, a former Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer, died Jan. 6 in Long Beach, Calif., after a battle with cancer. Her path to fame was paved by her mother, who answered a casting call for Disney's "The Mickey Mouse Club." Winning over hundreds of children, Ms. Kaiser became one of 39 Mouseketeers on the show between 1955 and 1959.Pub Date: 1/14/98

No need to travel to Disneyland to see Mickey Mouse or his lovable, larger-than-life friends. Some of them will be at a nearby park this weekend.Four Disney feature films will be the highlight of "Disney Channel PremEARS in the Park" at Gunpowder Falls State Park in Chase tonight through Sunday. Park visitors will view each film on a 30- by 40-foot screen equipped with Mickey Mouse ears. Pack a picnic for the family, participate in activities and events like the Crayola coloring tent and Disney's Dance-Along.

ONE MAN'S SINNER is, apparently, another man's savior. Just a week before the Southern Baptists declared moral war on Walt Disney Co. for its "gay-friendly" policies, New Yorkers were giddy that Disney had transported its "electric parade" from Disney World to Central Park to promote its new animated kids' movie, "Hercules." In New York's view, Disney helped clean up notorious Times Square with its retail and theater projects.Family values, like beauty, are obviously in the eye of the beholder.

NEW YORK - Not so long ago, a skinny kid who used to be me would walk these neon-soaked streets at 3 a.m. - mind racing, heart thumping, eyes darting, pointed finger jammed into coat pocket, as if packing more than a pen.And muttering, to no one in particular.Maybe, I reasoned then, if the psychos at the crossroads of depravity sized me up as one of them, they would leave me alone.When in New York, especially Times Square . . .On good nights, the journey lasted just long enough for me to scamper from the West 43rd Street newspaper building, where I interned, to a cab on Seventh Avenue.

When is a valentine not a valentine? When it is a "sailor's valentine," which was not meant to be given as a gift on Feb. 14.The so-called sailor's valentine was a shallow wooden box that was filled with shells placed in geometric patterns. The boxes were usually octagonal, but some were rectangular or circular.The seashell collages were made as souvenirs sold to visitors on tropical islands. Sometimes the name of the island or affectionate greetings were worked into the shell pattern.Because sailors often brought the boxes back from trips as gifts for loved ones, collectors refer to them as "valentines."

Mickey Mouse is said to be one of the best known "faces" in the world.But Mickey has changed through the years. His eyes are no longer huge circles as they were in 1928, or pie-cut as they were in 1934. His nose is shorter, and his teeth have disappeared.Some things haven't changed. For instance, the cartoon Mickey still has four fingers on each hand.Mickey Mouse was such a hit when introduced in 1928 that he was featured on toys made the next year in the United States and abroad. European toy makers did not pay for rights and made many unauthorized toys featuring a five-fingered Mickey with teeth.

Piney Run Park will again offer pontoon rides on the lake during the summer. Programs are available for all age groups.Pontoon programs for children and an adult are:Mickey Mouse Pontoon. Bring a favorite Mickey Mouse or wear a Mickey outfit. 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. June 13, 20, 27; July 11, 18, 25; Aug. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29. Fee is $2.Animal Friends Pontoon Picnic, with a favorite stuffed animal and story, at noon and 1 p.m. June 20, July 18 and Aug. 1, 15, 29. Fee is $2.FYI Cruise for all ages offers information about the park, lake and wildlife during a 90-minute ride.

WHAT MAKES JOE GO? That may be the most compelling question about Joe Camel. The legal questions, of course, must be settled following the Federal Trade Commission's about-face decision to go after R. J. Reynolds' cartoon pitchman.But it is hard to fathom why the cigarette maker would weather so many years of abuse over Joe Camel -- unless the character has helped attract young customers, as critics charge.Other advertisers have backed off campaigns that became too engulfed in firestorms of their own making -- Calvin Klein and Benetton come to mind.

John W. McGrain, former secretary of the Baltimore County Landmarks Preservation Committee and official county historian since 1998, was an 8-year-old living in Ashburton when the world veered toward war in 1939. Reflecting on those Depression years the other day, McGrain said that by the mid-1930s, "all kids knew about the approaching war." Bubble gum packages came with "war cards depicting the Japan-China War; families gathered around the Philco in the living room to listen to Hitler's rantings on the radio."

VIRGINIA DAVIS, 90 Walt Disney's first star Virginia Davis, who appeared in Walt Disney's pioneering "Alice" films, has died at age 90. The Walt Disney Co. said Ms. Davis died at her home Saturday in Corona, Calif., of natural causes. Ms. Davis was hired by Disney in 1923 when he was a struggling filmmaker in Kansas City, Mo., and later worked with him in Hollywood. She was the first of several girls to have the title role in the series of "Alice" comedies that ran from 1923 to 1927.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- Mickey Mouse was listening to Eminem on her iPod as she warmed up on the practice putting green Sunday morning. Candie Kung walked by and made note of the familiar scene. "Did you sleep here last night?" Kung asked. Eun Hee Ji (known to fellow South Korean players as Mickey Mouse) said, no, she didn't spend that much time on the green, but seemed to always run into Kung for some reason. Kung was at the practice green again later, waiting as Ji made the definitive putt of the women's golf season.

The legend goes that when Walt Disney looked for a distributor for his Mickey Mouse cartoons, mogul Louis B. Mayer reacted with horror at the amiable rodent. How could you turn a mouse into a comic hero? Pregnant housewives would stare at the creature on the screen and miscarry right in the theater, Mayer predicted. Of course, Mickey eventually became the mascot and mainstay of Disney's own studio. So it's poetic justice that the art of upsetting conventional wisdom with original ideas has fallen to Disney's heir, John Lasseter, the creative chief of Pixar and the head of Disney animation.

Dawn Shipley and her boyfriend waited until midnight Friday and then left their West Baltimore house. The couple was eager, her family said, to withdraw money from an ATM because Shipley's boyfriend's welfare check had just cleared. He took out the money, and she went to a bar and bought some cigarettes and maybe some beer, according to family members. About an hour later, about 1 a.m. Saturday, somebody shot and killed Shipley. She fell to the ground, bleeding on the sidewalk of the 500 block of Brunswick St. It is just blocks away from her home.

WITH THE exception of reigning sovereigns (including the pope), presidents and cardinals, introductions made between strangers abide by these rules: Youth is introduced to age - `Strom Thurmond, may I present Doogie Howser?' Men are introduced to women - `Dame Edna, this is Count Victor Grezhinski.' Lower ranks are introduced to higher - `Colonel Sanders, this is Sgt. Bilko.' Individuals are introduced to groups - `Mickey Mouse Club, this is Britney Spears.'" Such tongue-in-cheek witty info is from the new and delightful Schott's Miscellany almanac for 2008, by Ben Schott.

THE WORLD COULD HAVE BEEN HIS. International fame. Academy Awards. Theme parks. Television shows. His face on watches. His ears on hats instead of those of that ... that ... mouse. If not for a little underhanded dealing and a lot of gamesmanship nearly 80 years ago, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit could have supplanted Mickey Mouse as a true American icon. Instead, Oswald became a background character in animation history until this month, when the Walt Disney Co. reacquired the rights to Walt Disney's first animated character from NBC Universal, which had held the exclusive rights since 1927.

You silly rabbit, Michaels is for NBC. Al Michaels officially made his move yesterday, when NBC announced he would become the play-by-play voice of the network's new Sunday night NFL package this fall. But after Michaels initially had committed to continue on Monday Night Football as it moved from ABC to ESPN, the all-sports network and the Walt Disney Co. didn't just let him walk away from his contract. No, they kicked some tail. Some cottontail. As part of the deal releasing Michaels, ESPN received: Rights to Friday coverage - for which it paid - of the next four of golf's Ryder Cups, along with extended highlights.

There will soon be a new intersection of sports and pop culture in Baltimore. Yellow Kid, Batman and Mickey Mouse will be there, along with all their cartoon friends, because comic entrepreneur Steve Geppi is finally building his museum. For years, people have told Geppi to expand his Diamond International Galleries of pop culture, replete with historic cartoon art, so that everyone could enjoy the characters America grew up with. Geppi, a part-owner of the Orioles and publisher of Baltimore magazine, decided that now was a good time.

BURBANK, Calif. - Walt Disney Co. directors tapped President Robert A. Iger yesterday to succeed Chief Executive Michael D. Eisner, writing the final chapter for an often stormy 21-year reign during which the company mushroomed from a moribund studio into a global entertainment giant. The selection ended a high-profile search for a new leader for the fabled company, which has been under siege by critics who wanted to hasten Eis- ner's departure. He will remain until Sept. 30, and then Iger will take the helm of a conglomerate that has more than 100,000 employees, a global theme park empire, a library of such classic films as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the ESPN sports broadcasting juggernaut, the ABC network and the cartoon character Mickey Mouse.