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Webster Banker Named To Estate And Business Planning Council Board (posted 07/24/14 at 11:16am)
John M. Jezowski, senior vice president at Webster Bank, has been elected to the board of directors of the Estate and Business Planning Council of Hartford.
Webster Banker Named 'Investigator Of The Year' (posted 07/16/14 at 12:25pm)
Kim Syrop of Waterbury-based Webster Bank has been named Investigator of the Year by the Connecticut Chapter of the International Association of Financial Crime Investigators (IAFCI).
Smith, Serra Graduate From Conn. School Of Finance & Management (posted 04/24/14 at 12:28pm)
Norwich-based Dime Bank's Heather Smith, accounting supervisor, and Darlene Serra, benefits and payroll manager, recently graduated from the Connecticut School of Finance & Management.
Chelsea Groton's Assistant VP Named 'New Leader In Banking' (posted 03/04/14 at 12:36pm)
The Connecticut Bankers Association has named Chelsea Groton Bank's Beth Glynn a "new leader in banking" for 2014.
Chelsea Groton Banker Named To United Way Board Of Directors (posted 02/26/14 at 11:42am)
Denise Stapienski, assistant vice president of training and development at Chelsea Groton Bank, has been appointed to United Way of Southeastern Connecticut's board of directors and named co-chair of its community investments committee.
Litchfield Bancorp Employee Named United Way Campaign Volunteer Of The Year (posted 02/10/14 at 11:37am)
The United Way of Northwest Connecticut has named Litchfield Bancorp's Melissa Root its 2013 Campaign Volunteer of the Year.
Milford Chamber Of Commerce Honors Bergin (posted 01/21/14 at 12:17pm)
John Bergin, a senior commercial broker in Pearce Commercial Real Estate's Milford office, has been recognized by the Milford Chamber of Commerce.
Webster Banker Named 'Top 50 Advisor' (posted 12/27/13 at 12:25pm)
Ray Beloin, senior vice president and senior financial consultant for Webster Investment Services (WIS), has been named a top 50 bank advisor by a financial services magazine.
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Our latest review is of Danish author Peter Adolphsen's Machine, which came out last year from MacAdam/Cage.
Larissa Kyzer—who's reviewed a number of Danish and Scandinavian books for us—makes Adolphsen (and his work) sound really interesting, and, for lack of a better word, condensed:
Although Danish author Peter Adolphsen has made a name for himself as a formalist for whom economy is a virtue (to date his five novels and short story collections are less than 300 pages combined), "as a reader," one reviewer writes, "you feel you have covered a huge distance with him." Drawing comparisons to Borges and Kafka, Adolphsen has written parables and parodies, "ultrashort biographies," children's books, and a collection called En Million Historier (A Million Stories), which allows the reader to construct, well, a million stories, from ten pages of interchangeable two-line segments. Machine, Adolphsen's second novel to be translated into English, fits very well within this paradigm, spanning millions of years, several continents, the lives of three people, and one drop of gasoline within its brief 85 pages.
You can read the rest by clicking here.
The publisher's blurb for Oleg Pavlov's The Matiushin Case promises the prospective reader "a Crime and Punishment for today," the sort of comparison that is almost always guaranteed to do a disservice to both the legendary dead and the ambitious. . .
One hundred years have passed since the start of World War I and it is difficult to believe that there are still novels, considered classics in their own countries, that have never been published in English. Perhaps it was the. . .
In the London of Hédi Kaddour's Little Grey Lies, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan, peace has settled, but the tensions, fears, and anger of the Great War remain, even if tucked away behind stories and lies. Directly ahead, as those. . .
One of the greatest services—or disservices, depending on your viewpoint—Bertrand Russell ever performed for popular philosophy was humanizing its biggest thinkers in his History. No longer were they Platonic ideals, the clean-shaven exemplars of the kind of homely truisms that. . .
The best way to review Alejandra Pizarnik's slim collection, A Musical Hell, published by New Directions as part of their Poetry Pamphlet series, is to begin by stating that it is poetry with a capital P: serious, dense, and, some. . .
Upon completing Albertine Sarrazin's Astragal I was left to wonder why it ever fell from print. Aside from the location, Astragal could pass as the great American novel. Its edginess and rawness capture the angst and desires we all had. . .
When my eyes first crossed the back cover of Fabio Genovesi's novel Live Bait, I was caught by a blurb nestled between accolades, a few words from a reviewer for La Repubblica stating that the novel was, however magically, "[b]eyond. . .


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Spider Lashes
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Lights, camera, action! Get the party started with these dazzling Rhinestone lashes - the self-adhesive eyelashes have a band of rhinestones designed to sparkle and reflect your many attributes - he'll be spellbound!
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Circus Sweetie Clown Lashes
Make eyes at all the fellows when you clown around on Halloween. It's often said that the details make the difference - make a difference when you add these festive Circus Sweetie faux eyelashes to your costume. All eyes will be on you on Halloween.
Wet n Wild Femme Fatale Lashes
If you want to complete your dramatic makeup look this Halloween you need the Wet n Wild Femme Fatale Lashes. These gorgeously thick lashes will make your eyes pop.
Wet n Wild Red Glitter Lashes
These dramatic Wet n Wild Red Glitter Lashes are a perfect touch of glam to any devil, ring leader or Jessica Rabbit costume.
Red Glitter Lips and Lashes Kit
Hot lips, you hooligan! For a womens devil costume, these delightful lips and lashes are made to match. If you're ready to heat things up, then this fierce set is the right one, including the black lipstick, amazing red glitter gel and sassy red and black eyelashes with cosmetic adhesive. Add horns…
Wicked Queen Lash Kit
Master your evil glare wearing these intricately designed lashes! Wicked Queen Lash Kit includes nail polish, lipstick, 2 shades of eyeshadow and one set of eye lashes, so you'll be fully prepared for creating some malicious eye details.
Back Lash Appliance
Make yourself look like you've been through hell when you use this Back Lash Appliance to create or complete a gory costume of your own imagination!
Purple and Black Glitter Lips and Lashes Kit
The focal point of a womans vampire costume, this set brings sparkle and color to your wickedly fun night. The kit includes black lipstick, sparkling purple glitter gel and shimmering purple and black eyelashes with cosmetic adhesive. Add a pair of petite fangs and you're ready to take a bite out of…
Spider Mask
Go the extra mile with your spider costume on Halloween when you use this Spider Mask to complete the look! Creepy mask features several red eyes and a viscous mouth.
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Listening to spooky tunes has never looked so cool! The Spider Earbuds will freak out your friends and foes;these earbuds feature a creepy spider earbud.
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Weave a web of spooky decorations when you adorn your home with this super creepy Spider Baby. Every baby needs a home, and this little guy is no different. Static prop features red eyes and six appendages.
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Add the right kind of spooky flavor to your haunted house when you top a table with this Spider Candelabra. The all black metal candle holder features a creepy spider web design and a hanging mini spider.
Light-Up Spider
Add this creep critter to your giant spider web when you decorate with this awesome Light-Up Spider! With eyes that light up and patches of fur on legs, this spider is one that will keep you up at night!
Swamp Spider
Out of the swamps and into your house on Halloween, this Swamp Spider is a unique take on our favorite eight-legged critter. Ghostly white with tattered garb, you'll surely get a few screams when you decorate with this freaky prop!
Spider Necklace
Circle you neck with a spider filled choker and weave a web of dark mystery and devilish intent with this black choker Spider Necklace.
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Weave a web of Halloween fun when you add these spooky Spider pierced earrings to your costume; they feature a faux black onyx gem body.
Spider Tights
These fun, funky child Spider Tights make the perfect costume accessory for your Halloween costume! Double the fun with Halloween makeup and a costume wig. These seasonal leggings will be the hit of the party.
Brown Spider
Weave a web of Halloween fun when you decorate with this brown and black fake spider.
Deluxe Spider Web with 4 Spiders
Up the fear factor of your haunted house with this creepy black Spider Web! This Halloween decoration includes four freaky spiders and realistic webbing, sure to scare every guest who dares to enter.
Giant Spider Egg Sack
This is no itsy-bitsy spider!Giant spider egg sac with spider is terrifyingly realistic and a classic creepy Halloween decorating favorite. Imagine them crawling out to get you...they're eating me alive!
Red Spider Necklace
Nothing stirs up a scream like a creepy crawler! Wear this Red Spider Necklace with your witch or sorceress costume to finish a beautifully scary look.
Spider Sorceress Girls Costume
Spin your webs and magic in the Spider Sorceress Girls Costume. This webby witch wears a long hooded dress with purple insets featuring spider web details and a spider brooch.
Black Rhinestone Spider Necklace
Add some spidery style with the Black Rhinestone Spider Necklace. This necklace features a silver chain with a black rhinestone spider, incorporate into any witch costume (sold separately).


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Check it out! I couldn't have put it better than E.A. Hanks in her piece in Time Magazine — Enough With the Kooky Ingenues — Bring Back the Dame!]]>
Met Deb, 65-years-old and still getting all hot and bothered (but mostly hot) when she discovers a classic film she haven't seen before. Like me, she grew up crazy about old movies; turns out we'd both sneak out of our bedrooms as children to . . . → Read More: Guest Post: Ava Gardner and Me]]>
By Guest blogger Deborah Ingles Schwalbach
Met Deb, 65-years-old and still getting all hot and bothered (but mostly hot) when she discovers a classic film she haven't seen before. Like me, she grew up crazy about old movies; turns out we'd both sneak out of our bedrooms as children to go watch the "The Late Show" on an old black-and-white TV while everyone was asleep. And like me, Humphrey Bogart was her first crush, though unlike me, her first love was a dead ringer for Bogie. "When I hit Boston at the tender age of 18, and still 'innocent,'" says Deb, "the man was a dead ringer for him. Over 20 years older, a real "tough guy", right off the silver screen. He left me with my 'innocence' and the last words 'Bye baby, I'd like to run into you in 10 years.' My heart was broken." Deb truly believes she's been so influenced by these films that she "draws the people and situations into my life that mirror them" – and she " wouldn't have it any other way!"
Deb came upon The Lost Art of Being A Dame by chance, "always looking for another window into the fascinating and often overlooked 'films of yesterday."" Says Deb, "These films need to be recognized and preserved for their valuable contribution to film history …especially those DAMES!!"
Clearly Deb's a dame with taste, passion and experience, so I invited her to pen a guest post about one of her all-time favorite dames. She chose Ava. (Do you really need a last name?) Here's Deb's tribute:
She was the sex symbol who dazzled all sex symbols. She was the temptress who drove Frank Sinatra to the brink of suicide and haunted him to the end of his life. Ernest Hemingway saved one of her kidney stones as a sacred memento and Howard Hughes begged her to marry him – but she knocked out his front teeth instead." 1 WOW. I wish I had said that, and it was too great to leave out of my personal tribute to one of the real "dames" of all time, Ava Lavinia Gardner.
Born in poverty to a struggling family of tobacco farmers she rose in fame to become one of the most desirable women both onscreen and off. " She can't sing, she can't act, she can't talk, she's terrific!" 2 was Louis B. Mayer's reaction after viewing her screen test (her heavy North Carolina drawl made it almost impossible for her to be understood). But from that screen test a star was born.
I wanted to be Ava from the time I was old enough to watch her films. I loved her voluptuous figure and her dark looks. Sadly, I was a flat-chested, washed out skinny kid with dirty blond hair and curses of all curses, blonde eyelashes to match. I remember wearing a very tight sweater to junior high school one day, forgetting to "stuff" my bra, with disastrous results: one side of me completely "caving in" when a classmate accidentally bumped me in the hallway.
I fell in love with Frank Sinatra too, whom Ava "stole" from his wife Nancy. (But let's get real ladies and gents, no woman ever really "steals" a man — they go willingly.) I refused to wear shoes and took up walking barefoot most everywhere; I had heard Ava held the same preference. Humphrey Bogart, who starred with her in The Barefoot Contessa, once remarked that her character "Maria" was Ava in real life, rising to stardom yet in moments returning to her roots in rural life and "real" people.
She suffered so onscreen, as "Honey Bear Kelly" in Mogambo with Clark Gable; as Lady Brett Ashley in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises; as Cynthia Green in another Hemingway story, The Snows of Kilimanjaro; and as Maxine in my personal all-time favorite, The Night of the Iguana.
At only 19 she married Mickey Rooney, later Artie Shaw in 1945, and finally Frankie in 1951. She never had children; she became pregnant twice during her marriage to Sinatra, but terminated both pregnancies. "MGM had all sorts of penalty clauses about their stars having babies" she was quoted as saying. Such was the brutality of the "studio system" of the day. (Dixie's note: I'm not so sure that's really why she terminated the pregnancies. Lots of MGM stars, like Lana Turner for example, had babies while under contract.)
In 1990, with her health failing from emphysema, Ava died in London at the age of 67.
It's been years since I first adored her, but at 65 I still love her films. There is something immortal about her –her vulnerability always comes through, even in her "tough gal moments". And that alone, in my eyes, makes for a REAL "dame".
1. "Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing" by Lee Server @ www.amazon.com/Ava-Gardner-Love-is-Nothing
2 http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ava-Gardner
Thanks Deb! You're a darn fine dame yo'self!
I always thought Teresa Wright was talented and sweet, but kind of an ineffectual limp noodle. She plays the good girl well, and I guess that was my problem. Sure, her screen characters had pluck, but pluck is an anemic version of the charming ballsy-ness of a Stanwyck or the fearless hijinks Irene Dunne might throw down. In movies like The Best Years of Our Lives, I worried that, although clearly a better choice than skanky Virginia Mayo, super he-manly Dana Andrews would eventually tire of Teresa when ingénue curdled into insipid.
Well, I was wrong. Turns out Teresa Wright was smart, sassy, and not to be fucked with.
OK, picture this: It's the late 1930s and you're a young woman barely out of high school when talent scouts from the Goldwyn Studios spot you in a play and whisk you away to Hollywood, where you score a part in "The Little Foxes" with Bette-freaking-Davis, no less. You and I, we'd likely feel a mash-up of lucky, awestruck, terrified, intimidated, overwhelmed, grateful, and scared shitless. And don't forget, this is the 1930s when women were to be sometimes seen and never heard.
So — this key clause that Missy Wright made them put in her studio contract is all the more impressive:
"Miss Wright shall not be required to pose for photographs in a bathing suit unless she is in water. Neither may she be photographed running on the beach with her hair flying in the wind. Nor may she pose in any of the following situations: in shorts; playing with a cocker spaniel; digging in a garden; whipping up a meal; attired in firecrackers and holding skyrockets for the fourth of July; looking insinuatingly at the turkey for Thanksgiving; wearing a bunny cap with long ears for Easter; twinkling on prop snow in a skiing outfit while a fan blows her scarf."
In addition to it being a dame-irific move, it's also pretty hilarious. She not only doesn't want to be reduced to fodder for the cheesecake factory, she totally nails the stupidity of what she doesn't want to do with humor and charm and zero invective. This, girls, is how it is DONE. Like a boss, Teresa! Wow – like a BOSS.
I'd like to have been a fly on the set when, according to fellow dame and blogger Self-Styled Siren, Mr. Goldwyn, trying to loosen up Teresa while filming "The Little Foxes" called to her from behind the camera: "Teresa, let your breasts flow in the breeze!"
(My brain hurts just pondering what I would need to do to follow those instructions. Jump up and down? Unhook my bra and throw it behind me whilst laughing manically? Frankly, I'm stumped.)
The good news is: Teresa was nominated for Academy Awards for her first 3 films (The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver and Pride of the Yankees). She was the only actor ever to be nominated for an Oscar for her first three films. And until Jennifer Lawrence received her 3rd nomination in 2014, Wright held the record for youngest actor to receive three acting Oscar nominations. AND…her 4th movie was Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, where she got billing above Joseph Cotten! Then, a coupe of years later, she's the aforementioned goody-two-shoes homewrecker in Best Picture winner, The Best Years of Our Lives.
(A cute side note: Teresa was married to screenwriter Niven Busch, who wrote Duel in the Sun for his wife so she could depart from her girl-next-door roles and blow everyone's minds as the swarthy all-out seductive bad girl. But Teresa got pregnant and Jennifer Jones got the sizzling part. Jennifer was married to the producer David Selznick (quelle coincidence!), though David initially tried talking Busch into letting Teresa play the seductress. But the role called for a lot of physical action, so Teresa's husband refused. As he turned to leave the office, a disappointed Selznick exclaimed, "Dammit, Busch, she isn't the only one you screwed!")
Anyway, according to the Self-Styled Siren, Teresa's"insistence on establishing a foundation for her career through her performances and not through publicity photos was relatively unheard of in Hollywood at the time, and some skeptical fan magazines even speculated she was avoiding the cheesecake photographers because there was something physically wrong with her." (The photo above proves that was not true.)
But here's the bad news: Teresa's independence rankled studio heads, and Goldwyn fired her in 1948, claiming she was ""uncooperative" when it came to publicity. Rather than being upset, Wright was relieved:
"The type of contract between players and producers is, I feel, antiquated in form and abstract in concept. We have no privacies which producers cannot invade, they trade us like cattle, boss us like children."
Without studio backing, Teresa never did regain her earlier film success, and spent most of the rest of her career on Broadway and on TV. (In her last film role she was touching as Matt Damon's elderly landlady in John Grisham's The Rainmaker.)
Though she died in 2005, Teresa Wright leaves a truly stunning cinematic legacy of good roles in great films. But she's not only missed by movie aficionados. After cinema's Mrs. Gehrig was asked to throw out the first pitch at a game on July 4, 1998, she became an avid Yankee fan, and after she died, when the roll call of former Yankees who had passed on was announced, her name was among the ballplayers. (Aw!)
The last vestige of the big weekend Manhattan Flea Market, known as 'The Garage", is . . . → Read More: Flea-Smitten]]>
The thing about hearts that love a lot, they just keep breaking. And this time it's the ease and energy with which I love a lot of stuff a lot – weird, wonderful stuff – that's doing me in.
The last vestige of the big weekend Manhattan Flea Market, known as 'The Garage", is closing this weekend. Back when I first came to the city in the early 80s, it was a massive outdoor weekly event for me and hundreds of other New Yorkers. In a half-dozen or so parking lots in the heart of Chelsea, vendors would set up with all kinds of antiques, memorabilia, vintage clothing, furniture, art and multitudes of tchotchkes astounding in the variety of their kitschy cool specificity.
It opened early, but folks armed with flashlights would come while it was still dark, hoping to get the crème de la crap while the dealers were still setting up. For regulars like me, it wasn't unusual to spot famous habitués like Andy Warhol, Anna Sui, and various musicians, designers and models. I once spied market regular Greta Garbo, and even followed her for a few blocks, my heart beating fast with the surrealness of being only a few yards from the exploding Living Legendosity of it all.
Young, broke and wet behind the ears, I'd come all the way down from the Bronx to get old movie memorabilia, WWII-era dresses, and anything that was both really odd and really affordable. I especially loved the demented detritus that evinced some long ago individual's life, love or obsession. I also sought pieces of early 20th century pop culture that radiated the charm and innocence of bygone eras. My specialty was what I call "femorabilia" – vintage anything having to do with being, speaking to, or lusting after the female of the species. A series of 40s b/w photos of a woman fixing a bicycle and losing all her clothes in the process; a Hawaiian Girl lamp with the giant red light bulb nipples; dirty magazines almost sweet in their clueless corniness and relatively harmless horniness – I bought it all.
Back then, vintage clothes were relatively cheap. Sure, I might have been a muscular South Bronx grade school teacher in a Jewfro, but I could dress like Gloria Grahame, Lauren Bacall, or any of the chorines from Golddiggers of 1933. Gorgeous 40s cocktail dresses with sequins and rhinestones, fantastic rayon novelty prints, 50s felt circle skirt where the street lamp motif came with actual light up bulbs(!), and ornate western wear fit for a more flamboyant, floozy-er Dale Evans (in other words, me).
I'd even set-up there from time to time, to make cash when I was unemployed, and make friends when I wasn't. (I met one of my dearest pals, Coco, at my flea market booth.) I'd also taken to taking out-of-town guests to The Garage – everyone from my newly discovered half-sister Ann, to a pal who was a North Dakota delegate to the '92 Democratic convention. It was a landmark because in addition to the stuff for sale, the people were just as interesting and inviting. As dealer Larry Baumhor puts it:
"It was entertaining theatre, a community of artistic and creative people sharing a common bond, a cultural phenomenon. It's where eccentricities were nurtured, cherished, and admired. At the heart of the matter it was the friendships developed and the camaraderie enjoyed of both dealers and collectors week after week. This was our home, and this was our family. The buyers and sellers were eagerly seduced by the romance of nostalgia and the lure of discovery."
I've been going to the flea market with intermittent periods of regularity for almost 30 years. (Wow, that floors me.) Though I'm no longer as young, slim or hopelessly naïve as I once was, today I still feel exactly like that same awestruck little Southern girl who didn't know that what she liked (or dressed like) was at all strange. The only real way I know that decades have passed is the depth of the bond I feel with so many of the dealers who've become my friends, confidantes, and surrogate family over the years. They've seen me through being broke, and being heartbroke. They were there when I got married, got my dog(s), and got sick. They're my sisters, brothers, and one vendor, Miss Eve, has been like a mother to me. I love these people. My people.
It's the end of an era. I don't know what I'll do with my weekends now, but I still have my memories, and lots of stuff. All I have to do is look around my apartment and see the wacky and wonderful objets d'art I've procured over the years. (I only wish I still had all of them, but I'd need a MUCH bigger space, and a much skinnier body.) I'm older and wiser now and I realize I don't need to constantly add more artifacts to my already overblown collection. So what I'll really miss is the weekly dose of friendship, fun, and all the love. Those are the true treasures I've found all these years at "the flea."
A LOT of people come to me looking for help finding a job. They either contact me with a hidden agenda of wanting me to give them a job (fat chance), tell them about some incredible job somewhere for which they'd be perfect (fairly chubby chance), or help them craft their resume, LinkedIn profile or cover letter (be happy to).
What I've noticed over the years, aside from the fact that a lot people have a LOT of nerve, is that most of these poor job seekers are going about it all wrong. They are under the impression that what they need to do is contact lots of people and tell them all about how great they are and how fast they type and how well they did in school and use the words managed, and utilized and organized, and eventually someone will contact them and gush, "When can you start?"
Well, I've got news for these folks. There are, roughly speaking, 4 billion katrillion people out there who can manage and organize and utilize and do exactly what you did. Nobody cares. The best solution to the problem of getting a job is 50% stop thinking about yourself, and 50% really thinking about yourself. Here's what you do:
Think of Yourself as a Bar of Soap. Essentially, you need someone to buy Product You. You'll need to find out what a potential employer might need in a bar of soap aka Product You (we'll get to that in a minute) and what distinguishes you from all the other bars of soap out there.
You need to figure out your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). What makes you different, what do you bring to the table that separates you from the pack? Maybe you're bilingual, maybe you combine an inventive mind with a passion for measurable results, maybe you are an expert at X or are passionate about Y, but whatever it is, you need to make that clear in all your marketing stuff.
Have Marketing Stuff. Make what makes you uniquely awesome apparent in all the places employers and others might become aware of you. This includes your resume, your LinkedIn profile, your business card, and any other platforms you use to communicate who you are and what you bring to the table. All these "touchpoints" are opportunities to market yourself and should be treated as such. For example, your LinkedIn profile is not a resume. It's a place to succinctly and clearly convey what's special and unique and useful about Product You. It's more elevator pitch than book report. When people hire me to augment their LinkedIn pages, we explore how to put their best foot forward and what language and what aspects of their skill set and experience will resonate best with employers.
Think "How Can I Help?" Most of the people who come to me for help in getting a job talk endlessly about themselves and what they need when their focus should be on what a potential employer might need. Research what they're about, what they're doing now, what they'll be doing in the future. Instead of talking about me-me-me, ask questions so you can know what the employer needs and think about how you can make contributions concerning both their opportunities and challenges. How, specifically, can you be an asset? How can you help solve their problems, help save money, improve service, expand their customer base, convey their messaging, help with employees, the environment, their pro-social initiatives, etc.?
Getting back to the soap analogy, you don't know whether to talk about your antibacterial superpowers, moisturizing properties, organic ingredients or your fresh lemon-y smell if you don't know what the customer wants in a soap. Find out what your prospective employer needs so you can make your marketing messages relevant and powerful
Think Like a Consultant. Don't just think like an employee looking to get the best benefits package and flexible hours. Think about how to improve the impact, performance, effectiveness and value of the position. Let's say you're applying to be a cashier. If you were a consultant, what could the cashier do to make waiting in line better for both the store and the customer? How might the cashier improve customer service, increase sales, or save the store money?
Don't Be Generic. Now that you've given some thought to why you are the bar of soap they need, communicate your USP and how it can be of value. If you're applying for that cashier job, your cover letter might explain (briefly) how your experience, focus on customer satisfaction and attention to detail are well-suited to the position and would benefit the store. (The letter's job is to snag the interview, and once you're there you can share some concrete ways you'd rock the job if hired.)
Like most things in life, you get when you give. When you concentrate on how you can uniquely be of service, you're much more likely to demonstrate your value than if you just keep regurgitating the same old tired clichés about how you're a "people person" or an "effective manager." (As opposed to all those applicants who've explained how they don't get along with people and manage ineffectively.)
Understand your brand, and how it can make a difference, and you'll be in that new job daydreaming about retirement in no time!]]>
If you love classic movies — . . . → Read More: Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel (The Most Interesting Star You've Never Heard Of )]]>
What would you do if you had to choose between becoming a famous movie star or traveling the world with the love of your life? When she was just 20 years old, Ann Dvorak made just that choice, and it changed the course of her life.
If you love classic movies — and you love cool, confident chicks – trust me, you will love you some Ann Dvorak. (Most people pronounce it wrong, like d-VOR-ak, so I do too.) It takes beauty, brains and balls to be a successful movie actress, and Ann had all three. Unfortunately, where the smarts and the sultry all paid off, she turned out to be a little too smart and sulky for her own good.
I first became enamored of Ann after seeing the pre-code movie Three on a Match (1932). True, she does have the juicy part of a high society wife who gets sexually enthralled by Lyle Talbot, hooked on cocaine, slapped around by Humphrey Bogart, and writes in lipstick on her nightgown. But she plays it with the kind of honesty and ferocity that makes me love good pre-code movies so much. The movie also stars dame Hall of Famers Bette Davis and Joan Blondell, but the movie is all Ann's. (The only sour note is the cloying, randomly Southern accented voice of that annoying kid. You almost want to see him get killed. Hey, I said almost.)
Like me, writer, archivist and super cool chick in her own right, Christina Rice also fell under Ann's spell after seeing Three on a Match. But whereas I just became a fan and made a point never to fall under anyone's sexual spell (at least no one as douche-y as Lyle Talbot), Christina went on to become a collector and write Ann's long-overdue bio, Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel. I recently caught up with Christina to help combat this whole "forgotten" thing and tell us all about why Ann was so special, what made her a rebel, and the stiff price she paid for being one.
Tell us, in a nutshell, what's your book about?
Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel is about a Golden Age film actress who seemed destined to become a legendary movie star, but instead she followed her heart, fought the powerful studio system, and paid the consequences.
How'd you first get interested in Ann?
I initially became drawn to Ann when I was in college in the mid-1990s and watched the film Three on a Match. I ended up being blindsided by Ann's performance as a bored society woman who throws privilege away for drugs and hot sex with Lyle Talbot. Simply riveting. She was just as good in other films I came across like Scarface and G Men and I was baffled why she didn't become a bigger star. I didn't find much information about her at the time and after a while I figured if no one else is going to write a book about her, maybe it should be me. Of course I was in my 20s, very naïve, and had no clue that it would take 15 years to finish it!
What made doing a book on Ann so compelling? Why should people today care about getting to know Ann Dvorak?
Ann was a complex person who experienced a hell of a lot during her life, so her story can be interesting to someone who is not familiar with her films. She was born into show business by parents who were entertainers in vaudeville and early film, she was briefly a child actress and later a chorus dancer at MGM where she was mentored by Joan Crawford. She worked with some of the most prominent actors and directors of her day. In 1940, she traveled through hostile waters in order to join the British war effort as a correspondent, ambulance driver, and camp show performer, among other things. Her interests varied from bacteriology to hat-making, and she penned an 18-volume history of the world and made an audio-book of it! To top it all off, she was one hell of an actress.
Wow, she sounds like a dame and a half! It's a shame the book has to be subtitled the "Forgotten Rebel" Why isn't Ann more well-known today?
During the first half of 1932, Ann was in a position to become a very well-known film star. Her first credited role was opposite Paul Muni in Scarface where she was second-billed and generated enough buzz that the press dubbed her "Hollywood's New Cinderella." Warner Bros. became infatuated with her and paid a princely sum to Howard Hughes for her contract and gave her strong roles in Three on a Match and The Strange Love of Molly Louvain. While filming that latter title, she fell in love with co-star Leslie Fenton and eloped a few weeks later. Fenton was a freelance actor who loved to travel, so he didn't believe in long-term contracts. He also wasn't bothered by the fact that Ann DID have a contract with Warner Bros. and convinced her to walk out and go on an 8-month European honeymoon. The studio put her back to work when she returned, but they seldom gave her showcase roles after that. She was never able to regain that early momentum.
So she jumped ship after getting a contract to go away for a whole year, and complained a lot about her salary in the press, ostensibly to get Warner Bros. to pony up more so she'd come back from her "vacation." Is that why you call her a rebel?
Leslie Fenton convinced her to walk out on her contract and at that time her agent convinced her that complaining about her salary and bad-mouthing the studios was a wise idea, which it wasn't. Ann was only 20 at the time and heavily influenced by her husband, but at the end of the day Ann went along with it all and should probably shoulder most of the blame for tanking her own career.
The term "rebel" in the title mainly refers to Ann's 1936 court case where she tried to get out of her Warner Bros. contract, claiming they unlawfully suspended her. She did not win the case, though it's worth noting that she filed her suit prior to James Cagney and Bette Davis who were also Warner contract players who took the studio to court in 1936. Ann's actions must have played some role in influencing them, yet their actions are frequently noted by film historians, while Ann's efforts have been largely ignored.
What are some of the big takeaways from Ann's life story?
The biggest take away from Ann's story is probably – don't fuck with Jack Warner! Seriously though, I hope she will now receive credit for being one of the earlier contract players to take a studio to court and place her actions within the context of the suits that came after her, including Cagney, Davis, and even Olivia de Havilland in the 1940s.
I think it's also interesting to note that the question of "Can women have it all?" isn't a new concept and was something Ann struggled with. She wanted to be the good wife and the great actress and had trouble balancing both which is an unfortunate theme of many actresses of the time.
Tell us about Ann's movies. What are the "essential" Dvorak films one should check out?
Ann made over 50 films, but the standouts are sadly few and far between since she compromised her career so early on. Her performances do reveal an actress with a great deal of raw talent who could absolutely shine when working with a director like Howard Hawks or George Cukor. Her early films also reinforce a point we were already aware of – that pre-Code films are divine.
Scarface, Three on a Match, The Strange Love of Molly Louvain, and Heat Lightning are some of her strongest titles, which also happen to all be pre-Codes. Post-Code, I would suggest Housewife, G-Men, and Girls of the Road, and post-War choices are Private Affairs of Bel Ami, Our Very Own, and I Was an American Spy. An honorable mention is A Life of Her Own where Ann gives an Oscar-worthy performance in what find to be a fairly unwatchable movie.
Lastly, would you say Ann is a "dame"? If so, what makes her a dame (in life and on the screen)?
That's an interesting question. Ann always seemed to have an underlying air of refinement, so I have never thought of her as a dame in the way someone like Jean Harlow was. For example, in The Strange Love of Molly Louvain, she's quite good in the early part of the film as a jilted girl from the wrong side of the tracks mending her broken heart. Later on however, when she's verbally sparring with a fast talking reporter, played by Lee Tracy, I think she's less effective rattling off those "damey" lines than an actress like Joan Blondell or Glenda Farrell would have been. Still, anyone who could shine so brightly during the pre-Code era has got to have some dame in them!
Off-screen, it at first seems like Ann was very independent and quite the renegade what with walking out on her contract and later suing her studio. In reality, she was always very heavily influenced by the men in her life, so she's not quite the real life dame that contemporary Bette Davis was.
Christina, thank you so much for giving us your time – and for writing this amazing book! You are certainly a dame and half, and I'm not just saying that because you're my new girl crush and we have the same bangs. (Though that certainly doesn't hurt!)]]>
I learned about blow jobs from Charlie Chaplin. (Yes, that Charlie Chaplin.) I was about 12 and with my babysitting earnings I bought the book Hollywood Babylon. As a passionate old movie fan, and an adolescent girl with a filthy mind and an even filthier curiosity, a book like Hollywood Babylon was a dream come true. The book dealt with various Tinsel Town scandals, and while I now know that much of the book is just blatantly untrue and much is just based on gossip, at the time it was my bible, and I don't use that term loosely.
(What does all this have to do with Mary Astor? Don't worry, I'm getting to it. Just allow yourself to be bored by stories of celebrity blow jobs for now. Somehow try and muddle through.)
Hollywood Babylon was my bible because in addition to giving me all kinds of titillating secret stories about famous movie stars, it solidified a world view that had haunted little-girl-me for several years. Unfortunate and unseemly circumstances in my little-girl-life (which you can read about here, if you choose) had given me an unsettling perspective on the world, namely that all is not what it seems. I'm not talking about merely a there-is-no-Santa-Claus way; this was more in a Santa-Claus-ties-up-little-girls-at-the-North-Pole-and-lets-the-elves-do-horrible-things-to-them-with-candy-canes way. I loved my old movies and worshipped my movie stars and to read that this lovely ingénue did this, and this dapper gentleman liked to do that, well, it showed me all was not as nice, and a helluva a lot more lurid, than it seemed.
Which brings us to Mary Astor. (See, I told you.) The book had a whole chapter on Mary's 1930s custody battle and the infamous diary entries that came to light. If you aren't sure who Mary Astor is, she's most famous as Bogie's co-star in The Maltese Falcon and for roles in lots of classic films like Midnight, Dodsworth, The Palm Beach Story, The Great Lie, and Meet Me in St. Louis. She's also famous to me for being deflowered at age 15 by John Barrymore, but then that's because I read books like Hollywood Babylon as a child.
Mary was divorcing her second husband (a doctor she'd met when he treated her widow willies after her first husband died in a plane crash). In 1936 a custody battle over their young daughter ensued, and to help his case Dr. Thorpe busted out his wife's diary to show the court (And America when he leaked it to the press) that this Mary was no saint. Hollywood Babylon's tough investigative journalism brought to light these diary snippets:
His first initial is G, and I fell like a ton of bricks. I met him Friday. Saturday he called for me at the Ambassador and we went to the Casino for lunch and had a very gay time! Monday—we ducked out of the boring party. It was very hot so we got a cab and drove around the park a few times and the park was, well, the park, and he held my hand and said he'd like to kiss me but didn't.
Tuesday night we had a dinner at '21' and on the way to see Run Little Chillun he did kiss me—and I don't think either of us remember much what the show was about. We played kneesies during the first two acts, my hand wasn't in my own lap during the third. It's been years since I've felt up a man in public, but I just got carried away.
The public was dying to know to what "G man" this theatre-going lap belonged. Turned out the lap was none other than George S. Kaufman's. If you aren't sure who George S. Kaufman is, he's a kick ass writer, humorist, and member of the Algonquin Round Table. He's most famous for writing for the Marx Brothers and such classic plays as The Man Who Came to Dinner, Dinner at Eight, Stage Door and Pulitzer Prize-winning You Can't Take It With You. (He also wrote several screenplays including the 1954 A Star is Born and Academy Award-winning Gentleman's Agreement.) A hilarious introverted Jewish misanthrope (gee, what are the odds?), George S. was known to be a sort of "morose and intimidating figure uncomfortable with expressions of affection between human beings." Still, he was pretty successful with the ladies. (My favorite random factoid: In the 40s he had a big affair with Natalie "Lovey Howell" Schafer.) This may be a clue as to why G. was such a hit:
Afterwards we had a drink someplace and then went to a little flat in 73rd Street where we could be alone, and it was all very thrilling and beautiful. Once George lays down his glasses, he is quite a different man. His powers of recuperation are amazing, and we made love all night long. It all worked perfectly, and we shared our fourth climax at dawn. I didn't see much of anybody else the rest of the time—we saw every show in town, had grand fun together and went frequently to 73rd Street where he fucked the living daylights out of me.
Sixth-grade-me was more astonished that "People in the 30s cussed!' than by Kaufman's stamina. But it's what didn't astonish me that was telling. I wasn't the least bit surprised by Mary's randy recollections. In Mary's performances I could always sense the wild animal seething under that cool exterior. Whether she was the prim, repressed doctor's wife in Red Dust, the wholesome femme d'un certain âge in Dodsworth, or the composed noir shady lady with the horrible matronly 'do in The Maltese Falcon, I felt there was always this horny hunger and super raring-to-go-ness just under the surface. (And this was at a tender age when, if asked to describe what would constitute horny hunger, I wouldn't really have the vaguest idea what I was talking about. Maybe something along the lines of, "She really likes to kiss and make out" or "She looks like she goes to third base" – not having the slightest clue what third base was either.)
Turns out I was pretty on the money. Mary was a talented, successful actress but off-set she dealt with quite a few demons. She was an abused child, and she contended with widowhood, divorce and scandal all while still in her 20s. According to her daughter, Marylyn (the little girl that launched those steamy diary snippets), Mary attempted suicide at least 3 times, and she was not only a heavy drinker, "she did her share of heavy everything."
Some of her pain and experience she put on paper; in addition to two memoirs, Astor wrote novels with relatively lurid subject matter for the time. (For example, in A Place Called Saturday, a woman is raped, conceives a child, and refuses to have an abortion.) I prefer her memoirs, Mary Astor: My Story and A Life on Film, which are very readable and were best-sellers for a time. (The latter book has a chapter entitled, "What It's Like to Kiss Clark Gable" – so I mean, come on.)
But instead of her drinking and her diary, I remember Mary Astor as a remarkable actress who always made every part real and believable. Preternaturally mature-looking and sounding, she went pretty quickly from the ethereal long-haired ingénue who captured John Barrymore's, um, heart, to soignée ladies who knew what the wanted. She was touching in Dodsworth, hilarious in The Palm Beach Story, and hit just the right note as The Maltese Falcon's Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a woman with many layers and most of them phoney. I prefer to remember poor Mary as the divorcee in that last scene in Dodsworth, where she raises her arm up, up in unbridled joy. I felt that joy, and I only wish she could have, too.
Postscript: Mary claimed the diary entries leaked to the tabloids had been inaccurate. We'll never know; in 1952 a judge ordered the infamous journal burned.
Post-postscript: Yes, thanks to Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon I learned that Charlie Chaplin's teenage bride, Lita Ford, used her fella's requests for fellatio as grounds for divorce. She, and by she I mean her mother, wanted the world to know that the Little Tramp's wife was no tramp. (No, just a pure, innocent gold-digging nymphet.)]]>
Like the more well-known Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, Sippie Wallace was one of the most popular ladies who sang the Blues — in . . . → Read More: Sippie Wallace: A Mighty Tight Woman]]>
According to F. Scott Fitzgerald, "there are no second acts in American lives." Clearly, F. didn't know f—, and he certainly didn't know 1920s Blues singer and writer, "Sippie" Wallace.
Like the more well-known Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, Sippie Wallace was one of the most popular ladies who sang the Blues — in an era and genre in which women routinely outsold their male counterparts. Her career spanned seven decades and had a significant impact on two distinct blues movements separated by half a century. She was also unique among the ladies who sang the blues as she wrote her own lyrics, giving a voice to the female experience in more ways than one. "There isn't anything I sing about that hasn't happened to me," said Sippie, the author of such songs as "After I Was Loved My Eyes Flew Open Like an Electric Light". Almost a century ago, Wallace sang about things that wouldn't be discussed at American dinner tables until Monica Lewinsky hobbled on to the scene.
Most people I meet aren't aware that things were not so prim and proper back in the day. Take just a couple of Blues songs, like Cleo Gibson's "I've Got Ford Engine Movements in My Hips"; "I Let My Daddy Do THAT" by Hattie Hart; Margaret Carter's understandable plea, "I Want Plenty Grease in My Frying Pan"; and Clara Smith's lament, "Ain't Got Nobody to Grind My Coffee". (We've all been there.) Hell, as a teen back in the permissive 70s I was actually shocked when I heard Al Miller's tragic tale of woe, "I Found Your Keyhole Baby (But My Key Just Won't Go In)". And when it comes to dames, they don't get much dame-er – or game-er – than Sippie.
Beulah "Sippie" Thomas was one of 13 (yikes!) children, born November 1, 1898 in Plum Bayou, Arkansas – a place no doubt whose name sounds much more pleasantly pastoral than the reality. (Coincidentally, eighty-eight years later she died on November 1st as well.) Beulah got her nickname because she had almost no teeth until she was 3 and had to sip everything she ate. When she was still a child, the Thomases moved their weary loins and big brood to Houston where Sippie sang and played piano in the church where her father was deacon. But like many preachers' children before them, in the evenings the children would sneak out to tent shows. By her mid-teens, Sippie and her brothers Hersal and George were playing and singing the Blues in tent shows throughout Texas
Sippie got herself a solid following, and in 1915 she and George moved to New Orleans. (By the way, what's the most dangerous thing to be? One of Sippie's brothers! Hersal died of food poisoning at the tender age of sixteen, while George would die after being hit by a streetcar.) Two years later the woman who penned the ditty "A Man for Every Day of the Week" got married to Matt Wallace.
While in New Orleans Mrs. Wallace met Jazz giants like King Oliver and Louis Armstrong ,who were friends of her brother George. Before long Sippie went on the road and was in great demand as "The Texas Nightingale" on the Theater Owners Booking Association black vaudeville circuit. (Its acronym, TOBA, had performers describing it as "Tough on Black Asses.")
In 1923 she went to Chicago's toddlin' town and began performing in the cafes and cabarets. In 1923 she became an overnight success when she recorded her first record, "Up the Country", which sold more than 100,000 copies in the first three months. Sippie went on to record over forty songs between 1923 -29. In addition to her great women-centric lyrics, her records featured her pals who just happened to be the era's best jazz musicians; in addition to King and "Satchmo", her sidemen included people like Clarence Williams, Johnny Dodds and Sidney Bechet.
The bona fide Blues star's most popular recordings included "Special Delivery Blues" with Louis Armstrong, "Bedroom Blues" (written by George and Hersal Thomas), "I'm So Glad I'm a Brownskin","Mighty Tight Woman" and arguably her most famous tune, "Women Be Wise" – a warning about keeping your mouth shut when it comes to your man's bedroom prowess.
Successful as she was, in 1929 Sippie moved to Detroit and left show business in the early 1930s when the Blues craze died down, as did several relatives. She got religion and stopped doing secular music, concentrating on church music. But thirty-some years later Sippie had her Fitzgerald-poo-pooed second act. She launched a comeback in 1966 with fellow Texan and longtime friend, Victoria Spivey. She followed up an album with Spivey with Sippie Wallace Sings the Blues and Women Be Wise.
But, just as things were looking up, Sippie suffered a massive stroke in 1969. "It was six months before she could walk or talk," recalled her manager, "but the first thing she did was to play the piano." This Blues badass was not about to let a little thing like that stop her. "If I was in the middle of dying," said Wallace, "and someone said, 'Sippie, sing me a song,' I'd stop dying to sing that song." She was still in a wheelchair in 1972 when popular singer-guitarist Bonnie Raitt heard of her idol's recovery and urged that she be invited to perform at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival.
After majoring in African studies at Radcliffe, Bonnie Raitt had become a fixture on the folk/blues scene in Cambridge coffeehouses. In 1968, an album in a London record store featuring a photo of Sippie caught Bonnie's eye. "I saw the rhinestone glasses and the tiger-striped vest and said to myself, 'This woman really knows how to dress.'" (I would have fallen in love with her in that outfit, too. I get girl crushy feelings just thinking about it.) The two women met and really hit it off, culminating in the trans-generational soul sisters' duet on Sippie's Women Be Wise. In 1971 Bonnie recorded her own rendition of "Women Be Wise" and Wallace toured and recorded with her throughout the 1970s and 1980s, while also performing on her own. Bonnie helped Sippie score a recording deal with Atlantic Records and recorded an eponymous album that featured Raitt and was nominated for a Grammy in 1983 and won a W.C. Handy Award for "Best Blues Album" in 1984.
Bonnie really related to her friend's twin love of music…and men. "Sippie has always seen the struggle of the sexes with a sense of humor and compassion," explained Bonnie. "She knows that freedom is the name of the game even though women have always had to answer to men."
Sippie died on November 1st 1986, but her legacy lives on. Thanks to Ms. Wallace, millions of women like me know not to "Advertise our man" and are far better off for it.
I urge you to check out Ms. Wallace and Bonnie Raitt's version of these 2 Sippie songs:
Women Be Wise (lyrics by Sippie Wallace)
Women be wise, keep your mouth shut, don't advertise your man
Don't sit around gossiping, explaining what your good man really can do Some women nowadays, Lord, they ain't no good
They will laugh in your face, then try to steal your man from you Women be wise, keep your mouth shut, don't advertise your man
Your best girlfriend, she might be a highbrow, changes clothes 3 times a day
What do you think she's doing now, while you're so far away?
She's loving your man, in your own damn bedroom
You better call for the doctor, mama, try to investigate your head
Women be wise, keep your mouth shut, don't advertise your man
Don't sit around, girl, telling all your secrets,
Telling all those good things he really can do
If you talk about your baby, you tell me he's so fine
Lord honey, I just might sneak up and try to make him mine
Women be wise, keep your mouth shut, don't advertise your man.
Mighty Tight Woman (lyrics by Sippie Wallace)
I've come to you sweet man and I'm falling on my knees
I've come to you, pretty papa, falling on my knees
To ask if you ain't got nobody, kind darlin', take me please
'Cause I'm a mighty tight woman, I'm a real tight woman,
I'm a jack of all trades
I can be your sweet woman, also be your slave
I can do things so good, you will swear that I 'll behave
I hear ev'rybody saying that I'm tight in ev'rything I do
I've got all the men cryin' I'm a broad that will never be blue
All I want is a good man, and I will make him happy too
If you are a married man you ain't got no business here
'Cause when you out with me I might make your wife shed tears
'Cause I'm a mighty tight woman, and there is nothin' that I fear.]]>
After all, you seem sane (publicly). You think you're pretty cool (privately). But then, one day you wake up and somehow, it's happened. There's no use denying it. You've become crazy parrot lady. There's no escaping the fact I've become one of those women you read about, . . . → Read More: Unplanned Parrothood]]>
You never think it'll be you.
After all, you seem sane (publicly). You think you're pretty cool (privately). But then, one day you wake up and somehow, it's happened. There's no use denying it. You've become crazy parrot lady. There's no escaping the fact I've become one of those women you read about, often in conjunction with some sort of killing spree, or as the shut-in who dies and leaves 4 million dollars to her canary. I live with 2 dogs, 5 birds, and one husband. (I really should give him top billing.) But like most women who find themselves surrounded by friends with feathers, I'm hard to categorize. Mark Twain neatly sums it up this way:
"She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot."
He recognized that a woman who shares her life with parrots operates in that particular netherworld that lies between graciousness and flamboyance, between sweet and salty, between sharp-as-a-tack and completely out-of-her-fucking-mind. Parrot people are hard to pin down. Some obsess over one psittacine suitor (usually involves lots of baby talk) and some dress them up in outfits, posing them in little mise en scenes. (Don't believe me? Google Mrs. Ballard's Parrots. Really, do it right now.) Then there are some who never dreamed they'd live with a bird, find they can't stop at one, and soon their house is filled with feathers, fruit, and noise. (Lots of noise.) I'm one of those. I was actually a little afraid of birds. (Thanks a lot, Alfred.) But one day I found a cool vintage birdcage at the flea market, and on a whim I decided to get a little bird to go with it. This will be nice, I thought, kind of like a pleasantly chirping goldfish with blandly pleasant background noises. But parakeets are full of cheek as well as chirp. Smitty had lots of personality; she was smart, funny, and she clearly enjoyed interacting with me. I found out birds are not out to get you, nor are they brainless automatons. Birds are full of desires, strategies, fears and longings just like us. I got Smitty a parakeet pal to keep her company. Jonesy shared Smitty's cage, periodically regurgitating food into one another's mouths. (It's much more romantic than it sounds.) Then one day, while in the pet store to buy my birds some toys and food (but no clothes, I swear!), I fell for my darling little Buster. HARD.
You know those little cartoon bluebirds who fly around Snow White, helping her get dressed and fix her hair? That was my Buster, a tiny beautiful baby blue parrotlet with a cute little pink beak. How can I explain how this tiny creature with a brain the size of a chickpea made me feel such gigantic love? Like the animated staff who flit around Snow White, Buster followed me all over my apartment, perching on my shoulder to keep me company while I folded laundry, watching over me when I was sick, snuggling when I was sad, and he gamely watched hour after hour of Law & Order re-runs. Yes, I can't just watch just one Law & Order, and I apparently can't have just 3 birds. Next came Clementine, a very sweet Meyers parrot who lets you kiss and stroke her feathers, and likes nothing more than to tuck her head under her wing and fall asleep on your knee. Her hobbies are cleaning my teeth with her beak and chewing anything in sight. Then I got Butch. He's an African Grey, the smartest and best talker in the parrot kingdom, exhibiting the intelligence of a five-year-old child –and the tantrums.. Butch has sophisticated powers of reasoning, and not only speaks but communicates within context. He doesn't just say "Good-bye," he says good-bye only when you're actually leaving. He says "Fresh water!" when I change his bowl, and makes a labored sigh when I get up from a chair. He tattles on Clementine when she's chewing the couch, and reprimands our dogs with a stern "No barking!" (Butch also has a habit of saying "Goddamit!" and a resounding "FUCK!" whenever he, or anyone, drops something.) Also, some parrots also do this thing called "pair-bonding". They lock on to a companion bird, and from that point on only have eyes for him or her. Some birds in captivity will look to their human as their mate.
In other words, Butch thinks I'm his wife. He will only sit on my hand, will only let me kiss him, and sometimes he looks at me with a longing lovelorn look in those dinosaur eyes of his that only a wife could detect. (I confess, he often feels fairly husband-y to me, too.) Smart as the birds are though, it's important to remember that parrots, all parrots, are NOT domesticated animals. They are wild, no matter how many toys you buy them or curse words they pick up. Even the sweetest parrot will nip every once in awhile, and they don't need a reason. (I'm sure they have one, but it's seldom apparent.) When you live with a parrot, you need to expect the occasional "Here's what I think of your fancy-schmancy opposable thumb, asshole!" as their beaks let you have it. Then there's the noise. Make no mistake, the squawks can be ear-piercing, mind-rattling, and best-part-of-the-movie-interrupting. I'm at the point where I barely register their jungle-traversable chatter, but my husband – not so much. I tried sharing with him the Chinese proverb, "A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song," but somehow it falls on his (newly) deaf ears. Another downside to sharing one's life with birds is the relentless Sisophyean clean-up. Parrots are messy, they go to the bathroom everywhere, they'll shred anything within reach, and they toss their food around whenever the mood strikes. (Parrots may not have thumbs, but unlike most pets they can pick things up and hold them, and yes, throw them.) While I try to maintain a sort of Zen-like acceptance about the never-ending upkeep in keeping birds, I can fall to pieces when I contemplate auniquely parrot problem.
These birds are smart, sensitive creatures. They need affection and attention. Lots of attention. Parrots need companionship; they can literally die without it. Some owners neglect to think about this when taking in a bird, and thousands of poor parrots have literally gone mad from loneliness, pacing back and forth and muttering to themselves, and plucking out all their own feathers. (Some also pluck out of boredom, anxiety, or perhaps just the reality of their life of tedious, skyless incarceration.) In addition to my birds' loneliness and inherently unfair lives, I worry about where they'll go after I'm gone. Unlike most pets, parrots can live a very long time. Clementine may live another 25 years, while Butch's could live to be 75! My parrots will outlive me and I fret about who'll look after my birds in the manner to which they've become accustomed. Honestly, it keeps me up nights. Some women have "friends with benefits;" I have friends with feathers. One has erotic overtones, one has neurotic overtones, but in the end they're not that different. My parrots give me pleasure, they mess up my towels, and they often tell me what I want to hear. Emily Dickinson one said, "Hope is the thing with feathers." I have found that love can have feathers, and I'll say to you, just as Miss Dickinson wrote, "I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven."
The above article was originally published in The Gift Magazine]]>
Carole Landis is known primarily as the bosomy blonde movie star who offed herself over Rex Harrison. Of all the schmucks who've driven ladies to leap, the idea of killing yourself over a tool like "Sexy Rexy" seems especially senseless. But in Hollywood's Golden Years one of filmdom's most glamorous and popular stars did indeed end her life over that Doolittle douche.
Today not many people have heard of Carole Landis, but her story is one of Hollywood's most fascinating tales, with more twists and turns than her enviable curves.
Carole's story begins in Midwestern Gothic luridness with a steady stream of heartbreaking details that make you periodically have to stop reading and go, "Seriously?!", then sigh and warily dip in for more.
She was born Frances Ridste on New Year's Day in 1919 in the aptly named burg of Fairchild, Wisconsin, to a farmer's daughter and a "drifting railroad mechanic" who'd already abandoned the family before little Carole came along. (The "drifting railroad mechanic" wasn't a stable family man? Quelle surprise!) Her mother was no saint either; Charles Fenner, her second husband, and the man with whom she'd been having an adulterous affair, was most likely Landis's biological father. The youngest of five children, two of whom died in childhood, her early years were filled with poverty and sexual abuse.
Carole was such a beautiful infant she earned the nickname "Baby Doll". According to family sources, she was sexually molested by a relative for much of her childhood. Given young Baby Doll's shitty start in life, it's no surprise that Carole 1) seemed much older than her years, and 2) was interested in being in show biz. Little Carole covered her walls with photos cut from magazines of movie stars like Mary Astor and Clark Gable. At age nine, little Carole ran up on stage during a local talent show and started to sing. Using make-up tricks to hide her age, she started entering beauty pageants at the tender age of twelve! (She won a pair of silk stockings and an electric heater. Who says beauty can't buy you anything?)
In high school Landis often skipped class – "boy crazy " was the general consensus. "I always seemed so much older than the other kids my age," said Carole, "They seemed like tots."
She was ahead of her classmates and ahead of her time. As a teenager she tried to form an all female football team at school, but the principal stopped her because it was "unladylike". It's not surprising that Carole dropped out of high school at 15 to get her whole show biz thing underway. She worked as a hula dancer in a San Francisco nightclub, she sang with a dance band, and she worked at a hamburger stand, a department store, a movie theater. She dyed her hair blonde and changed her name to "Carole Landis" after her favorite actress, Carole Lombard. She eventually saved up $100 and hightailed it to Hollywood.
Her 1937 film debut was as an extra in the original film version of A Star Is Born. Next she found herself in various horse operas and an untold number of cheesecake photos. Eventually her cheesecakery paid off big; in 1940 studio head Hal Roach cast her as a scantily-clad cave girl in the original film version of One Million B.C.. Just as it would for Raquel Welch a quarter-century later, the movie made Landis a star. Soon, just as Clara Bow had been dubbed the "It Girl" and Ann Sheridan was crowned the "Oomph Girl", publicists gave Carole the title the "Ping Girl."
The Ping Girl moniker was attributed to a take-off on the popular motor oil ad at the time that claimed to take the 'ping' out of an engine and "make it purr".
Some claimed it was a mash-up of PIN-up Girl. Some say it alludes to Carole's erection-generating abilities, as in "I saw her and –ping!" Miss Hard-On of 1940 may have very well been aware of this etymology; once in an interview Landis said 'ping' was a term in Hollywood slang, but neglected to mention for what.
Most interesting to me about the whole "Ping Girl" thing was how brilliantly Carole (or possibly her PR folks) leveraged being against the sobriquet:
"I want a fair chance to prove myself something more than a curvaceous cutie. I want to get out of bathing suits and into something more substantial. Unfortunately the publicity department of my studio does not agree. They have conceived the brilliant idea of selling me to the public as 'the Ping Girl'. This flash of genius is to be illustrated with a series of pictures out of their files, suggestive of anything but acting talent."
Still, Landis was well aware that being pin-uppity had been her ticket to the big time:
"Leg art did the trick — naughty leg art, if you happen to look at it in that light. When the boys needed someone to pose in a skin-tight white bathing suit, go sleigh riding in shorts, or climb a ladder in a skirt, they'd yell, 'Get Landis!' That made everybody happy except, maybe, the goody-goods and the bluenoses, and I suspect they took a second peek now and then."
Like a lot of women, Carole had a lot of ambivalence about using her assets to get ahead. She posed for cheesecake photos by the thousands, but then resented all the attention they garnered.
"Heaven knows I want people to think I have sex appeal. But I also want to think I have something besides sex appeal."
God knows Carole was a smart cookie in every sense of the word. She loved to read, and was a fan of Ernest Hemingway, Noel Coward, and W. Somerset Maugham. (Hemingway gifted her with a set of personally autographed books.) But it was Landis's more physical charms that got her places, both on and off-screen. She scored a contract with Twentieth-Century Fox, and was involved with studio head Darryl Zanuck, though it's not entirely clear to me which came first, the chicken or the egg. She was in a series of successful films, playing second fiddle to Betty Grable in I Wake Up Screaming and Moon Over Miami. But she lost a pivotal role that ended up thrusting Rita Hayworth into stardom in the soapy bullfighter pic, Blood and Sand — very likely because she ended her affair with Zanuck. In fact, her ditching Darryl got her relegated to B pictures at the studio from then on.
When World War II came along, Carole traveled more than 125,000 miles, spending more time visiting troops than any other actress.
Landis dedicated herself to the war effort, taking time off from her career to tour the country selling war bonds and entertain soldiers all over the world — Australia, Brazil, Algeria, Bermuda, Scotland, England, New Guinea, Ireland, Guam, and New Zealand! She sang and jitterbugged with the boys, spent time visiting wounded soldiers, and wrote hundreds of letters to their families. Jack Benny said, "You soon forgot she was Carole Landis, the sex symbol, the Hollywood star, because she was a real human being and had a warm heart that spilled over with kindness."
In conjunction with her ability to make Privates' parts go 'ping', this no doubt added to her pin-up popularity with servicemen.
During a two-month tour of the South Pacific, Carole contracted malaria and amoebic dysentery. She almost died, and was hospitalized for weeks, never fully recovering from her illnesses. Landis became an Air Raid Warden, a commander in the Aerial Nurses Corps, and an honorary Colonel in the American Legion. Our girl even got her pilot's license and eventually flew for the Civilian Air Patrol! She went on to write several newspaper and magazine articles about her experiences during the war, culminating in the 1944 book (later made into a movie), Four Jills in a Jeep.
She was quite the trooper, but despite the Ping and pin-up, Carole never made it to the top. The closest she ever got to an Oscar is when, as a presenter at the 1941 ceremony, she caused a commotion when the slip fell out of her dress. (I told you she was a smart cookie.) She did make it to Broadway however, working with Jacqueline Susann in the 1945 musical fittingly titled, A Lady Says Yes. (In fact, Jacqueline and Carole said yes to Sappho; the two were lovers. In fact, the character of Jennifer North in Jacqueline Susann's infamous 1966 novel Valley Of The Dolls was based on our Baby Doll.)
"Let me tell you this: Every girl in the world wants to find the right man, someone who is sympathetic and understanding and helpful and strong, someone she can love madly. Actresses are no exception; the glamour and the tinsel, the fame and the money mean very little if there is hurt in the heart."
Carole just never got a break on the romantic front. Abandoned by both her stepfather and father, she spent most of her life desperately searching for a daddy. The "boy crazy" teen grew up to be crazy when it came to men. (And I guess women; let's not forget Ms. Susann.) In 1934, 15-year-old Landis married her 19-year-old neighbor, Irving Wheeler; the marriage was annulled a month later but after six months they remarried. But, they were divorced less than four years later when Irving named infamous director-choreographer Busby Berkeley in an alienation of affections lawsuit. Busby ended up proposing to Carole a year later, then broke it off. She went on marry "yacht broker" Willis Hunt, Jr. but ended up leaving him after 2 months. (She said he was "sarcastic". I shudder to think what shitty behavior came under that seemingly innocuous umbrella.) While touring for the troops, she met and married Army Air Corps Captain Thomas Wallace in London, divorcing him a couple of years later. In 1945, Landis married the extraordinarily named Broadway producer W. Horace Schmidlapp, but this marriage also only lasted a few years.
"Glamour girls are suckers! You might rightly hail me, 'Hi Sucker!' because, as the nicks on a gun indicate how many men a killer has got, nicks on the heart of a glamour girl indicate how many men she didn't get! There is very little I can do about it, either. Being a glamour girl doesn't help any. I can only do what other girls do, cry my eyes out at night, hope and pray, pretend I don't care, do the best acting job of my career for the benefit of friends and family, for the sake of my own pride."
A psychic once warned Carole that she "must beware of emotional entanglements with men you can't entirely possess." If only she'd heeded that warning.
You are probably most aware of actor Rex Harrison for his roles in My Fair Lady, Cleopatra and Dr. Doolittle. He came to Hollywood in the mid-forties and was almost immediately dubbed "Sexy Rexy" due to his philandering ways and the apparent hotness that made the fair ladies drop like flies. Sadly, one of those ladies was our poor Baby Doll. Married at the time to his second wife, actress Lilli Palmer, Rex broke Carole's heart when he wouldn't get a divorce. (Of his many marriages,Harrison said, "Wives are like gilt-edged stocks. The more you have, the greater your dividends.")
Someone commits suicide every 14 minutes; killing oneself is not uncommon. There are a lot of reasons people commit suicide, but for me it really boils down to one: a painful hopelessness that things won't get better. Maybe that's why it seems particularly tragic when someone with so much to give and look forward to snuffs out her life. It's so final. But the pain of heartache and loss can be hard to bear, and it can make sad and desperate girls do sad and desperate things.
Born on New Year's Day, Carole died on Independence Day, 1948. She was only 29. She spent her final night in this Earth with Dr. Douchebag, and the next day he was the one to discover her dead body on the bathroom floor. Harrison waited several hours before he called a doctor and the police. When the police arrived he insisted he was just friends with Carole. According to some sources, Landis left two suicide notes, one for her mother and the second for Harrison who instructed his lawyers to destroy it. (During a coroner's inquest, Harrison denied knowing of any motive for her suicide and of the existence of a second suicide note.)
Carole was interred in Hollywood's Forest Lawn Cemetery. The stars at her funeral included Van Johnson, Cesar Romero, Pat O'Brien, Rex Harrison, and his wife.
Whenever I'm tempted to look fondly on the parade of urbane and rakish rats that serially seduce girls on and off-the screen (I'm looking at you, Hugh Grant), Carole's story reminds me of the often tragic consequences of their charm.
I confess, as supercilious misogynist dicks go, I do love me some Henry Higgins. But aside from the fact that he punched Frank Sinatra in the face and once remarked that The Sound of Music was "The only time I've ever rooted for the Nazis", there's little to recommend Mr. Harrison. (Sometime look up how he left wife Lilli to hang with Kay Kendall, expecting to get back with Lilli after Kay passed away from cancer. Lilli wasn't into it.)
Landis's official web site — run by my pal, and Carole's great niece, Elizabeth Ann — questions the events of Landis's death and the coroner's ruling of suicide. The Landis family is convinced that Rex Harrison murdered her to avoid scandal surrounding the affair they'd been having. "Aunt Carole's death has haunted my family for 62 years, and knowing Rex Harrison never paid for what he did only makes it worse," explains Elizabeth Ann. "We may never know the truth about her death but we do know that the official version just doesn't make sense."
As far as I'm concerned, he's the culprit either way.
I just hope Carole Landis is somewhere, her warmth, feisty spirit, and erection-impelling ways intact. To paraphrase the classic 40s refrain, "And the Angels Ping…"


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Kyrgyz "Scorpion" special forces soldiers perform during the celebration of the 102nd anniversary of Russia's air force at the Russian air base in Kant, some 20 km outside Bishkek, on August 16, 2014. AFP PHOTO / VYACHESLAV OSELEDKOVYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images
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Welcome to the Wesley Guild website
Wesley Guild is a movement of young people within the Methodist Church of Southern Africa aimed at seeking and winning youth for Christ and His kingdom.
Wesley Guild Connexional Event
Wesley Guild Connexional Event: July 31st to August 4th 2013 "Wesley Guild forever, Sipheth'iagenda yeZulu", this was a countdown theme to the first Wesley Guild Connexion Event that was held in Port Edward in Southern KwaZulu-Natal. It was an event not to be missed as young people across the connexion prepared themselves for it saying 'in years to come we will tell our children we were there when it started'.
Northern Free State 2013 banner
NFS&L came out top in last branding, with this banner it was voted as the most creative district. We will run the competition again in 2014 and will anounce the winner on the 15th of October 2014. All the best to your creative teams as they prepare 2014 branding
Christian Service
Health Awareness Trip is a Community Development project that started operating in 2002 when Rosebank Wesley Guild visited Ngqamakwe in the Eastern Cape. They visited rural areas, helping the less fortunate and never looked back since then, to this day the project continues as they visit different places yearly. The initial focus area was HIV/Aids awareness and they later focused on Health Awareness issues in general.
Site still under construction, for more information email us at firstname.lastname@example.com


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A box of outdoor luxury
Rattan Direct's nine-piece Barcelona Rattan Garden Cube Set is a great summer buy with its rich chocolate mix weave and generous helping of 10cm-deep coffee cream and vanilla cushions. The company is offering readers a discount of £40, making it £659. This is a reduction of £719 from its original price. The waterproof set comes with four cube chairs and four footstools. Readers benefit further from a free luxury outdoor cover, worth £39. Dimensions: table, W120 x D120 H73; chairs, W59 x D59 x H69cm; footstools, W50 x D53 x H39cm. Matching parasols are also available to purchase separately. To claim, visit rattandirect.co.uk/alisonathome and quote code CUBE659, or call 0800 0141 42631 before August 31.


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Coming this Christmas! Chris Tomlin's "Glory in the Highest" - Today's Christian Videos
Press the button below if you liked this video! Thank you! =D
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Rifftrax Animated Intro
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Awesome Crossing.
*Heavy breathing*
Your are jesus!
thats exactly how animal crossing is.T^T
WEE WEE-*Dead* Damn, I love this guys work!


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The Sea of Marmara and the North Aegean Hotels
Grand Eceabat Hotel
At a Glance
- modern hotel with nice views
- central location
- friendly staff
- rooms facing ferry terminal can be noisy
Check Rates from our Partners
Grand Eceabat Hotel Review
Just steps from the ferry terminal, this hotel has enviable views of the Dardanelles from some rooms, and the stylish rooftop bar-restaurant is great for watching the sunrise and sunset. Soothing earth tones with green and blue accents predominate in the large, clean, well-equipped rooms. The proximity of the Eceabat ferry terminal makes it easy to explore the region, and RTL Tours are based here too.
- Address: Cumhuriyet Cad. 2/D, Eceabat, 17900
- Phone: 0286/814–2458
- Website: www.grandeceabathotel.com
- Location: Eceabat
Contact Information
- 33 rooms
- Rate includes breakfast.
- Credit cards accepted.
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I loved the Fred Thompson skit on Saturday Night Live.
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Myanmar (Burma)
Welcome to Bagan, Burma, home to the "world's largest and densest concentration" of Buddhist temples and pagodas. The archeologically rich town is just one of 10 little-known Asian cities you'll want to visit after admiring the photos on this list:
Hand in hand - IT WAS all toasts and effusions of mutual esteem when President Thein Sein welcomed Shinzo Abe to Myanmar's capital, Naypyidaw, on May 26th. Mr Abe was the first Japanese prime minister to visit the country since 1977.
Myanmars Moment? Eight reasons to be optimistic about Southeast Asia's rising tiger.
By Axel van Trotsenburg, World Bank Vice President for East Asia and Pacific: Keeping the hope alive in Myanmar
11 things to know before visiting Myanmar (Burma)
Sule Pagoda Street — the zero mile or the exact centre of Yangon (Rangoon) from which all distances in the city are measured.
Shwedagon Paya (Pagoda), Rangoon, Burma
The Ancient City of Bagan, Burma (Myanmar)
Bagan Temples, Burma
Hot air balloon above ancient temples of Bagan, Burma
Burma will allow private newspapers to publish daily editions next week for the first time in decades. Watch the video here:
Knitting Sweaters While Burma Burns - the angry cartoons of Harn Lay. This cartoon was inspired by Hillary Clinton's trip to Burma in late 2011, the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state to the country in more than 50 years.
1.2 km wooden footbridge (longest teak bridge in the world) built by the mayor U Bein salvaging the unwanted teak columns from the old palace during the move to Mandalay


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1 ...
... 25
Poovammal is an inmate of the special prison for women in Trichy. Her husband's name is Sudalai. Both are agricultural labourers. Poovammal got loan from the money lender. She is not able to pay the loan regularly. So the money lender came to their home and shouted at them using vulgar words. They got tensed and beat the money lender. He got severe injury and the police filed a case against both Poovammal and her husband Sudalai. They got punishment for 4 years. She completed her 3 years punishment.
It was in the prison, she met the counselor of New Life who visited the prisoners. She narrated her story to the counselor and was sharing her worry about her future once she gets out of the prison. She was counseled to undergo the livelihood training given by New Life.
New life conducted Sambrani (incense powder) stick making program. The training included the curriculum of making the incense powder sticks. The trainees were introduced to the raw materials used, where to purchase the raw materials and market it. A hand on training was given to make the stick. She attended the training with utmost interest. Poovammal will be released in one year and she says she will take up this as her livelihood option.
Dear Donors,
Greeting from New Life!
You would be happy to receive a positive note about the construction and its completion. The children are on vacation and will be back in the month of June. We are awaiting to see their faces bloom up on seeing the completed hall for their study and bed. You will also be happy to know that the new hall can accomodate few more children, which means your beloved New Life can support few more children in the home. You will receive an update on how many more children are admitted in our next correspondence.
Our board reviewed the progress in the construction and decided to spend a portion of the general fund to complete the plastering of the hall. You will appreciate our intention and am sure you know the constraints in spending the general fund which helps to meet our operational expenses to a capital expenditure. Hence I request your goodselves to continue supporting us and to spread words about our work to your relatives and friends.
Thank you for your continued support.
With regards
A Candle making training was organized by New Life from 30th January 2012 to 4th February 2012 for inmates of the Special prison for Women in Trichirappalli district, Tamil Nadu. The programme was inaugurated by Ms. Jayabharathi, superintendent of Special prison for women, Trichirappalli. 29 young and interested inmates were selected and training was given to them.
The curriculum of the training includes motivating the inmates, raw materials to be used, method of melting the wax, inserting the thread, demonstration of making the candle, hands on training on making the candle, front and back end tie ups available.
After the release the trainees can earn Rs. 200/- per day if they start doing this income generation activity. All the trainees are happy since the training is easily learnable and requires fewer skills. They are also happy that the capital required is very less and that they can earn on their own and can be independent.
Mrs.Sowndaram is going to be released in the month of June 2012. She was much interested in this training. She was arrested for her brother's daughter suicide. She is in the prison as a lifer. Her husband's name is Pandiyan. He is no more. She has one son; she tried to marry her brother's daughter (Priya) to her son. But she refused to marry him. Sowdaram got annoyed and scolded her using vulgar words. Priya could not bear the words and she committed suicide.
Priya's mother gave complaint against Sowdaram on the basis that she is the reason for Priya's suicide. In this case she got imprisonment as lifer. Her son is married now and he is not even willing to see her.
New life conducted Candle making program. Sowdaram will be released soon and she says she will take up this as her livelihood option. She is confident of earning a minimum of Rs.150 per day.
Such confidence is made possible only through the support of donors like you. Kindly support the program by spreading words to your friends and relatives. The donations given on March 14th, 2012 will be matched by globalgiving up to 30% and your beloved organisation has a chance to get the grant up to $1000
Thank you once again for the support


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Lunch with Mancubus
Mancubus's lunch gets rudely interrupted4.54 / 5.00 7,321 Views
Spelunker : Savlonic
Spelunker by Savlonic4.39 / 5.00 16,335 Views
'Chicken Castle'
The quest for a limbless pet.4.37 / 5.00 7,423 Views
Link's Triumph is the fourth & final episode of Read Only Memory Vol. 2. In this super quick short, Link faces the Aquamentis, the first boss from the original Legend of Zelda game.
I hope everyone enjoys the short. Thank you!
Edit: Thanks Tom & the NG team for fronting this so quickly! Awesome.
Awww why did it have to end, I found it fantastic.
Nice. I liked it when Link caught fire. I remember that Aquamentus. Not a bad animation of it.
I thought this was quite good - withholding the fifth star, I'd love to see this progress into more flashes about memorable moments in the Zelda games.
I remember that dragon just like in zelda 1
Awsome animation and wicked art, however this would be better if it was longer and had more meat and potatoes with it. Never the less, amazing it is! 5 all the way!