Yes, the Animation exhibit at the Pacific Science Center is one big ad for Cartoon Network.

But it’s also educational. Really.

You see, animation (even CN’s unapologetically 2-D animation) involves a lot of math, geometry, spatial relationships, optical theory (”persistence of vision”), and maybe even a daub of artistry. And that’s even without CGI. (For the purposes of this exhibit, CN’s shows are billed as being produced in traditional cel animation; in reality, even something as simplistic-looking as Code Name: Kids Next Door uses a lot of digital compositing, coloring, and assembly.)

As we’d known for almost six months, Guiding Light shone for the last time on Friday, after 72 years on radio and TV.

The show’s finale, and the dozen or so episodes leading to it, comprised a relative whirlwind of happy-ending stories, salted only by the sudden death of one of the show’s villains and the unresolved fate of one of its heroes (last seen in a high-noon shootout with another villain). This spate of happily-ever-afters, while out of keeping with the show’s tradition of complicated tragedy, was still in keeping with the show’s (and the genre’s) other tradition of deux ex machina improbabilities.

As overall TV viewership drifts downward, and the old-line networks’ market share is further eroded by cable and other alternatives, we’re reaching a point when original scripted dramas for one-time, daytime-only airing become fiscally unfeasible. As I’ve written here before, this would result in losing the only U.S. TV genre to feature open-ended storylines with no season breaks. The only other products in this country to offer that type of storytelling are certain comic books and comic strips. Online “webisode” dramas could adopt open-ended formats, but so far none have.

…but retired from all public life? Ex-Seattleite cartoonist Ward Sutton ponders the possibilities.

Rick Anderson reports the post-print seattlepi.com will include unpaid contributions by ex-Mayor Rice and Congressman McDermott, among others. Brian Miller, meanwhile, snarkily suggests a surefire substitute for professional reporting—more cute kitten pictures.

Meanwhile, here’s how the NY Times, Bloomberg.com, and the Puget Sound Business Journal reported the grim news.

Slog keeps adding additional views on the disaster. Included: P-I art critic Regina Hackett (who’s moving on to ArtsJournal.com) taking one last potshot at “the we-precious-few tone of the Times, which rubs itself against the legs of the comfortably middle-class like a cat looking for a handout,” and a commenter who scoffs at the Times’ continuing plight: “The only problem with newspapers is that they are run by newspapermen. You’re the poster child. You guys pretty much fucked-up a monopoly by trying to defend it, instead of trying to leverage it.”

P-I business columnist “the 40 year old” Bill Virgin blames his bosses for not being nice enough to conservatives and for ignoring a lot of suburban issues. (The latter point may be valid; the P-I traditionally had more out-of-town readers than the Times, but lost that advantage in the past decade.)

The Times has confirmed that it’s keeping all of both papers’ subscribers. (Expect a lot of cancellation calls.) It’s also adding five P-I comic strips, including Pearls Before Swine and 9 Chickweed Lane; but it’s not adding any P-I writers, at least not yet.

The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons. This traveling exhibit is now on display at the Museum of History and Industry, which almost never acquires exhibits produced elsewhere. It’s got 150-some pieces of original art, most of which were in Steve Schneider’s coffee-table book That’s All Folks! The Carl Stalling Project CD plays on the PA. A mini-theater plays some of the Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection DVDs to adoring/adorable young’uns.

I’d seen most of the art pieces before in printed form. I wasn’t prepared for how small they were in real life. The ink lines on the cels were sometimes hair-thin; yet, when filmed and projected, these figures almost always moved in perfect flicker-free sequence. I left with more appreciation for the ladies of the studio’s ink and paint department, who turned the animators’ pencil drawings into what you saw on screen. They were expert craftswomen.

…today to Blossom Dearie, the legendary jazz artist of the lilting vocals and the assertive piano playing, as heard in dozens of albums and several Schoolhouse Rock shorts.

The P-I has dumped Bill Griffiths’ Zippy in favor of yet another demographic/domestic sitcom comic strip. The papers are full of those strips, but there’s only one Pinhead. The P-I tried to dump Zippy previously in ‘97, but reinstated the strip after massive reader response. Let’s do so again.

…some clever entrepreneur finally caught the idea of putting out officially licensed Popeye brand bagged spinach. It took another two decades for somebody else (specifically, Safeway (which, despite the oft-spread urban legend, IS NOT and NEVER WAS “owned by the Mormons”)) to come up with officially licensed Bugs Bunny carrots!

(Thanx and a hat tip to Matthew Hunter of Golden Age Cartoons.)

This year’s most famous (real) pregnant teen happens to live in a town that’s a homonym for the name of last year’s most famous (fictional) pregnant teen. The result, of course, is a Photoshopped movie poster advertising that quirky comedy hit, Juneau!

You may have heard of “Garfield Minus Garfield.”

That’s the Web site that takes Jim Davis’s iconic comic strip, removes the titular cat from all frames, and leaves behind “Jon Arbuckle… an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness.”

Well, now there’s going to be an official Garfield Minus Garfield book. It’s authorized by Davis and published by Garfield’s regular paperback licensee.