As the sun began setting over the Intramural Field and the heat began to fade, professors and students alike could be seen stretching and lacing up their cleats.

Conversations could be heard regarding the World Cup, Premier League and geographic information systems.

This was the scene preceding the Denis Cosgrove Von Humboldt Futbol Tournament, an annual soccer tournament hosted by and for the geography department.

Each spring for the past four years, geography Professor Thomas Gillespie has organized the tournament, which took place Wednesday and Thursday.

“It’s spring, we’ve all been working so hard, and it’s a good time to blow some steam off,” Gillespie said.

The tournament, which runs for two days, is open to everyone in the geography department, including undergraduate students, graduate students and professors. Participants compete in five-on-five games in a World Cup-style bracket.

“There’s nothing more geographical than the World Cup which comes up this summer,” Gillespie said.

Gillespie said that given UCLA’s diversity, he thought it would be fun to assemble teams of people representing their homelands. Players represented 20 different countries ranging from Luxembourg to Japan. One undergraduate student even proudly listed his country of origin as the state of Texas.

Team names were also as original and diverse as the players on the teams. Timur Hammond, a third-year geography graduate student, named his team The Whirling Dervishes in reference to his Turkish heritage.

Andrew Fricker, a third-year geography graduate student and captain of GOALDAR, named his team after the work he does with LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging),

Names such as Humboldt’s Homies, a reference to the von Humboldt Chair of Geography, as well as Slaves to Satellites, a reference to the department’s work with satellite image systems, showed off the participants’ ties to the geography department.

With both students and faculty competing together on the same teams, the tournament provides a unique opportunity for students and professors to meet and interact with each other in a non-academic setting.

“It’s kind of exciting because ... (professors) play too,” said Edgar Onofre, a fourth-year geography/environmental studies student. “It lets you see a different side of professors that you’re not used to when you’re taking classes with them.”

Although the majority of the participants are students, the professors who do play have been known to display soccer skills as sharp as their intellect.

Hammond said Professor Marilyn Raphael scored a hat trick the first year she played in the tournament. “We have our eye out for her,” Hammond said. “We don’t let her get all three goals anymore.”

While the emphasis of the tournament is on participating in a recreational sporting event with fellow geographers, there was no lack of competitive excitement this year.

In Wednesday’s preliminary round, both games ended in a tie in regulation and had to be decided by penalty kicks. On Thursday, Humboldt’s Homies defeated Slaves to Satellites to secure third place, leaving GOALDAR to face off against The Whirling Dervishes in the championship game.

As the evening wore on, the championship game remained knotted at one apiece until the last minute of play. It was then that fourth-year geography student Theodore Conrad punched in the deciding goal amid a storm of players in front of the net to give GOALDAR the lead and the championship.

This year, first place received signed books by world-renowned professor Jared Diamond, while second and third place were awarded with a combination of UCLA clothing. Win or lose, most participants appeared to enjoy the tournament as they joked, smiled and high-fived each other after the championship game.

“You come out here, you have a lot of fun,” Onofre said. “You also meet a lot of new people too. It’s a good thing.

Gerard Butler, Steve Carell, Mandy Moore and Tom Hanks are just some of the well-known voices of this year’s animated films, but the true stars of the Annie Awards are the animators. The 38th annual Annie Awards ceremony will recognize various achievements in animation this Saturday in Royce Hall.

This year’s awards will be hosted by the comedic voice actor Tom Kenny, known for his animated role as SpongeBob SquarePants.

Though they had a small start in 1972, the Annie Awards have since grown to a larger venue, run by the International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, and are now a red carpet event.

In addition to the important names in the animation industry, some recognizable actors such as Billy Crystal and Seth Green have made past appearances as presenters at the award ceremony. The Annie Awards not only recognize the large productions in animation, but they also award the individuals behind the scenes, according to ASIFA President Antran Manoogian.

“Animation people have always been the anonymous gnomes behind the scenes,” ASIFA Vice President Tom Sito said. “Out front there would be Walt Disney or a larger-than-life spokesperson, but they would always talk about Walt’s anonymous elves in the background. Well, we (animators) don’t want to be anonymous – we like a little attention once in a while.”

The Annie Awards are commonly referred to as “the Oscars for animation” because the program is dedicated to animation, much as the Academy Awards are dedicated to live action. According to UCLA animation Professor Chuck Sheetz, it is nice to have more than a couple of awards for animation.

“Animation is an art form to itself,” Sito said. “It’s not just a trick or a technique or a software packaging, … it’s a performance art. … The people who dedicate their lives to creating these performances deserve to be recognized for their outstanding achievements as artists.”

UCLA alumni from the animation department have been nominated in past years, but this year there are no nominees from UCLA.

UCLA alumnus Mike Anderson won an Annie Award in 1997 for his work directing on “The Simpsons.” The physical award itself is a working zoetrope, a machine that spins around a series of static images – a tribute to the early stages of animation.

“It’s nice to see my peers get saluted for the great work that they have done,” Sito said. “It’s a chance to meet a lot of colleagues in the industry, and we get to put on tuxedos and act like grown-ups for one night.”

Anderson said he remembers working with animator Brad Bird, who will be recognized this Saturday for his lifetime contribution to animation with the Winsor McCay Award. Bird directed “Ratatouille,” “The Incredibles” and worked with “The Simpsons.”

“There is so much going on in the contemporary animation world that people in the middle of their careers, like Matt Groening and Brad Bird (are being awarded). These are people that haven’t retired – they have a long stretch ahead of them still, and I think that’s exciting,” Sheetz said.

Animation has grown immensely over the years, and Sheetz recalled that there was once a time when the five films nominated for Best Animated Feature were some of the only animated features of the year. The list of nominations celebrates all categories of animation ranging from film to television to video games.

Some of the nominated works include major films such as “Tangled,” “Despicable Me,” “How To Train Your Dragon” and other animated works such as “Futurama” and “Adventure Time.”

“If it weren’t for the Annie Awards, there would be a lot of animation that just goes unrecognized,” Anderson said. “It’s all things animation all night, and this is the one place you will find that.”
The military’s statement was the clearest elaboration yet of its plans for Egypt, as the country’s opposition forces, from the Muslim Brotherhood to labor unions, seek to build on the momentum of the protests and create a democratic system with few parallels in the Arab world. The moves to suspend the constitution and to dissolve parliament, chosen in an election deemed a sham even by Mr. Mubarak’s standards, were expected. The statement declared that the supreme command would issue laws in the transitional period before elections and that Egypt’s defense minister, Field Marshal Tantawi Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, would represent the country at home and abroad, in a sign that the 75-year-old loyalist of Mr. Mubarak had emerged to the forefront. Protesters — and some classified American diplomatic cables — have dismissed him as a “poodle” of Mr. Mubarak’s. But some senior American officers say he is a shrewd operator who played a significant role in managing Mr. Mubarak’s nonviolent ouster.

The military’s communiqué was welcomed by opposition leaders as offering a specific timetable for transition to civil rule. Ayman Nour, a longtime opponent of Mr. Mubarak, called it a victory for the revolution, while youthful leaders, some of whom met in downtown Cairo on Sunday night to chart a path forward in negotiations with the military, described it as a concrete step.

“The statement is fine,” said Ahmed Maher, a leading organizers. “We still need more details but it was more comforting that what we heard before.” Another organizer, Ahmed Zidan, said it met “90 percent of the demands” of the demonstrators.
 

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