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It's A Nice Day For A Green Wedding: Advice for the Socially Conscious Bride
by Jolene Rae Harrington, Director of Creative Content
When it comes to preserving Planet Earth, everyone wants to do the right thing. That's why so many of us recycle, buy organic foods, and don't dump anything toxic down the nearby storm drain. But when it comes to planning the Big Day, we worry that being environmentally correct will mean sacrificing our cherished wedding vision.
Luckily, you no longer have to wrestle with your conscience to have a celebration that is both beautiful and "green"—or at least, green-ish. Okay, so you might not be Judy Granola, determined to eradicate every aspect of her celebration tainted with anything unhealthy or consumeristic. But you're probably not Betty Bridezilla either, who wouldn't think of having a recycling bin if it clashes with her powder blue chair covers. The reality is that most of us have daily habits that range from environmentally correct to careless, usually depending on convenience. However, no matter where you are on the green spectrum, it's easy to make a few thoughtful adjustments that go a long way towards raising your green standard.
What is Green, Anyway?
"Green" is a concept of promoting balance between humanity and Nature. Greenies support products that are eco-friendly, produced in a socially responsible manner, and enrich local or indigenous communities. They endorse sustainable farming, with an emphasis on local and seasonal produce, which minimizes depletion of natural resources.
Does What I Do Really Matter?
Raising awareness, and doing it with grace, is one of the most meaningful contributions you and your groom can make. Consider that the U.S. wedding industry is a $70 billion a year business. Your event budget is part of one powerful lobby! Every time you question a product or service's environmental and social impact, you send a strong message to Corporate America. When you buy locally, you are countering corporate dominance.
You also have the ability to inspire. Your wedding is an outward expression of you and your groom's inner values. Not only is your green celebration a promise to care for each other throughout your lives, it's also a public commitment to nurturing the planet. As Michele Kozin, author of Organic Weddings puts it: "From backyard to black-tie, a wedding is the perfect opportunity to show family and friends the stylish side of environmental and social responsibility."
Save the Date…and the Planet!
Start with the invitations. Nowadays, there is a wide variety of recycled and tree-free paper, including handmade, colorful and artistic materials. Ask your stationer if they can print your invite using soy-based inks, which put less pollution into the waterways. By using reply postcards and nixing the inner envelope and tissue, you'll use less paper altogether while saving on cost.
You don't have to sacrifice glamour to both look good and do good! Erase the picture in your mind of a "Bride in Birkenstocks" with a wreath of dried flowers on her head. The modern bride wears her "green" with panache. Most designer gowns are already made of a natural fiber—silk! Other green—er, white—options are hemp/silk blends and organic cotton, which go well with Victorian, Renaissance, or garden weddings.
When shopping for your wedding dress, keep in mind the popular green adage "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle." Rent your formal wear instead of buying, and you'll save money and conserve resources at the same time. A simple and heartwarming way to "re-use" a dress is to tailor a hand-me-down to your modern sensibilities. Vintage is still hot, and bridal boutiques like "Paris 1900" in Santa Monica specialize in gowns and accessories delicately preserved from bygone eras. What better accompaniment to a vintage ensemble than estate jewelry? Often more interesting and less expensive than its modern counterparts, estate jewelry avoids the politically charged stigma sometimes associated with the mining of precious gems. If you inherited an engagement ring, it can be reset to suit your taste. (Or follow the newest trend in jewelry—cultured diamonds. They're socially acceptable and absolutely flawless!
You probably never thought of your wedding gown as "recyclable," but charitable organizations like Brides Against Breast Cancer sell quality secondhand gowns or new dresses donated by designers. Give them your own gown after the wedding (who really ever wears it again?) and you'll help raise money for a worthy cause. If you simply cannot bear to part with your dress, then use an enviro-safe dry cleaner.
Gifts That Keep On Giving
Another way to express your concern for the world around you is to choose an eco-aware gift registry. GreenFeet.com and Gaiam.com, to name a couple, offer green housewares, such as organic cotton bedding and barware made from recycled glass. Already have all the towels and toasters you need? Then ask your guests to contribute to your favorite cause. Attractive gift cards are available from charities like TreePeople and Heifer.org, which helps others help themselves by purchasing farm animals for needy families.
For wedding party gifts, order cuff links or jewelry from one of the many online sites that donate their proceeds is a good place to start. You might even "select a cause appropriate for each recipient":http://www.gearthatgives.com/. Does your maid of honor love elephants? Then a contribution to the World Wildlife Fund is just the ticket. Be sure to include a card that lets each recipient know you were thinking of them in this special way.
Why not forgo the candied almond wedding favors and give your guests something that will last: packets of wildflower seeds imprinted with your names and wedding date, or adorable miniature plantings, available from TreeInABox.com, also with personalization. Another option is to make a small charitable donation on behalf of each guest, perhaps printed on their place cards. The gesture is much more meaningful than chocolate kisses will ever be!
Setting the Stage
You don't have to be a hardcore Greenie to appreciate the allure of a wedding in the midst of rolling meadows, botanical gardens or forested hillsides. You can double your venue's green quotient by selecting a site managed by a non-profit organization that protects the land, such as the Santa Monica Nature Conservancy's Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve. Then there are the culturally enriching venues—historical societies, art galleries and museums—that are among the most interesting around. Wine and dine surrounded by exotic treasures from the Orient paintings at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, or sip champagne while taking in the 19th century artifacts at the Los Altos History Museum, and you're supporting community arts and education efforts.
Event locations are improving their ecological impact in other ways, too. One pioneering "earth first" venue is Oceano Hotel and Spa in Half Moon Bay, a Green Suites Certified Green Hotel which uses natural light and passive solar heating for their public spaces and an innovative environmentally sensitive cleaning technology. GreenHotels.com is another association that promotes water and energy conservation in the hospitality industry, and they even certify bed and breakfasts like Historic Sand Rock Farm. Their website lists questions to ask your prospective wedding sites to "evaluate their greenness":http://www.greenhotels.com/question.htm. This sort of dialogue is key to encouraging businesses to make enviro-friendly choices.
Wherever you wed, opt for a florist that uses locally grown flowers. (Imported flowers often come from pesticide-laden farms, endangering the workers and the land.) An alternative is to order from organicbouquet.com, the San Francisco-based company that sponsors eco-friendly growers in other parts of the world. (And did you know that organic flowers are longer-lasting?) When designing your arrangements, best to pick out flowers that are in season at the time of your event. For centerpieces, consider potted blooms or plants instead of cut flowers, or create an intriguing arrangement with candles, mirrors or crafts. Remember, less is more, especially in outdoor locations where the native flora and fauna provide natural adornment.
Eat, Drink and Be Healthy
It is always wise to put a vegetarian entree on your event menu, and if you want to do without meat altogether, well, your guests will hardly miss it. Acclaimed Chef Lynn Sheehan of Historic Sand Rock Farm points out that, "The culinary favorites of many ancient cultures are vegetarian dishes, so there is no need to serve faux-meat in order to satisfy your guests' taste buds: simply choose from among the rich variety of global cuisine!"
Other factors to consider are humane animal treatment, chemical additives and fishing practices. Back to Earth Organic Catering uses locally grown produce, free-range organic meats and sustainable seafood. They're a perfect example of a clever caterer that prepares savory dishes with earth-friendly ingredients.
Is it possible to host a restaurant rehearsal dinner or reception that's healthy and gourmet? Greens in San Francisco is known for their creative vegetarian cuisine that uses the finest seasonal organic produce. One of the Santa Cruz area's most popular eateries, the creekside Michael's on Main, is a Green Restaurant that features produce sourced from local farms; they also participates in the sustainable Fish Wise program. By patronizing such forward-thinking vendors, you are encouraging others to jump on the green bandwagon.
The best way to bring out the fresh flavors of your cuisine is to quaff fine wine, preferably organic and pesticide-free. Wines without added sulfites are not only healthier, but reportedly cause fewer hangovers! Popular organic California vintners include Bonterra and Frey, and more are popping up all the time. Many vineyards are improving their green grades by incorporating sustainable agriculture. With a little sleuthing, you can even find organic champagne or sparkling wine.
What's For Dessert?
Would you believe a vegan wedding cake? At Hannah's Edible Art in Marin County, Hannah customizes recipes according to dietary preferences. One of her popular offerings is a fruit sweetened cake made from whole wheat and roasted nut flour, and filled with seasonal fresh fruits. Also a hit is Hannah's fair trade/organic dark chocolate cake. Ask prospective bakers about their ingredients!
A hot cup of joe or fragrant tea is the ideal accompaniment to such delectable confections. The coffee you serve should not only be organic, but also "fair trade"—an official designation that means products are grown under working conditions that are healthy and safe and workers are adequately compensated. The soul-satisfying blends from "Zhena's Gypsy Tea":http://www.gypsytea.com/ in Ojai are exclusively organic/fair trade: Zhena recently went to India to personally verify the labor and environmental practices of her suppliers, from field to factory. (Added bonus—each tea tin comes with a palmistry reading, so how about making your wedding shower an exotic, gypsy-themed celebration?)
The After Party
A smidgen of pre-planning is all that's needed to prevent waste. After the last handful of rice is tossed, have your leftover food packaged and ready for pick-up by regional shelters or food banks. Not only will you enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that runaway teens and homeless veterans will share in the bounty, but you'll also earn a tax deduction. Also, ask your bridal attendants or venue coordinator to take your flowers to local hospitals, and you'll brighten up someone's day.
Green Getaways
Your first vacation as a married couple is a wonderful time to share your passion for the natural world, and have an out-of-the-box honeymoon as well. Spirited honeymooners are taking off on Eco-tours, defined as "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people." For a twist on the usual Hawaii honeymoon, the Sierra Club offers eco-outings like "Hawaii Cooks!" which leads you on authentic culinary adventures through the Lava Lands; or how about taking your beloved on an exotic Rainforest Tour. Sojourns like these will really make your photo album come alive.
Investing in The Future
So you've done it! With a little effort, you've created a unique wedding experience that has expressed your commitment to social responsibility and the natural world. Along the way, you have given Corporate America a nudge in the right direction, and become a role model for your friends and family. With each green step down the wedding aisle, you create a ripple of hope in the global continuum that flows from your hometown organic bakery all the way to a shade-coffee grower in Brazil. Years from now, when your children look at your wedding pictures, they'll learn an important life lesson: as the Great Law of the Iroquois Federation eloquently states, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the next of seven generations."


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It's not just that you prune — when you do it is important, too.
Knowing exactly when to prune is an important step in keeping plants healthy. Use our seasonal guide to plan your gardening calendar.More
Plant type: Ornamental grasses
Task: Cut as close to the ground as possible.
Tip: Tying the tops before cutting makes the job fast and easy.
Plant type: Semiwoody perennials (butterfly bush, Russian sage)
Task: Cut back to about 4" to produce strong new stems and the best flower display.
Tip: You can also cut these back anytime during the winter.
An Inside Look at the Barefoot Contessa's Barn

subset: commoncrawl


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This promotional beach mat will promote your company or event at the beach, park, or any outdoor event.
These beach custom blankets are water and sand resistant and fold up into a handy carrying case for easy storage.
Get wrapped up in our custom blankets for your next promotional campaign. ePromos has a variety of mats, throws and fleece logo blankets that can be imprinted with your company name or logo, and will provide maximum exposure for your business while they are being used. Leave a lasting impression on your clients with personalized fleece blankets that are perfect for the wintertime, or with beach mats for the summer.


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Anyone still in their 20s had better hurry up and make sure they have a good group of friends because it's believed that making friends over the age of 30 is a significant challenge. Why is it hard to make friends over 30? asked a New York Times writer who argues that close friends - "the kind you make in college, the kind you call in a crisis" - are in comparatively short supply for people in their 30s and 40s.
The reasons cited for this are: busier schedules, altered priorities and the fact that we become more discerning in our choice of friends. Evidently "it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other." Differences in professional status and income, partnering up with a significant other and having children are all circumstances that can impede our ability - indeed, even dampen our inclination - to make new friends.
Yet the lively comments section of that same article is rife with examples of people who have defied conventional wisdom in this regard: 73-year-old Viviana's new "BFF" is aged 83; Tsultrim's closest friends were acquired "at divorce time in my late 30s"; and most of Emoon's "current friendships began after age forty, quite a few after age fifty - and after age sixty". Bookseller had a pragmatic take on the subject: "it is indeed possible to make close friends later in life, but - like looking good - you have to work at it more than you did in college."
The idea that friendships gradually become more difficult to make has certainly gained traction. Depressing instructions on How to Make Friends in Your Thirties include: start a "30-something" Facebook group, join adult groups at church, take personal growth classes and take a vacation with a tour group. I think I'd prefer a state of perpetual friendlessness than try any of those things.
Not being a fan of either social media or dwelling on the past, I didn't find most of the advice in Adult Friendship 101: Tips for Making New Friends After 35 - which included "[c]onsider alternative resources like Facebook and Twitter" and "[r]evive friendships that may have been placed on the back burner" - to be especially helpful either. The gloomy outlook continues with Making Friends Post 20-Something is Harder Than Meeting a Mate in which the writer confessed to being on the verge of scouting for prospective friends at the grocery store. "Now that I'm married, in my early 30s, currently working from home and in a new city, never before has making friends been so challenging," she wrote.
Yet I wonder if this is just a great deal of angst over an issue that may not be particularly widespread. Despite not being the most sociable person on the planet, I made a number of close-enough-to-go-away-for-weekends-together friends in my 30s and 40s.
These women variously entered my life in their roles of: university course class-mates, tennis partners and fellow mums at school pick-up.
We may have begun as "situational friends" (this is an often derisory term for mere friends of convenience with whom you happen to share the same time and space) but the relationship eventually transformed into something deeper. I think the best friendships develop organically without conscious effort from either party. Unable to be forced or artificially created, true friendships are often a happy side-effect of simply living your authentic life. As the first Huffington Post article mentioned above prosaically, yet wisely, said: "You're most likely to find friends in social settings that are interesting to you."
Have you made close friends over the age of 30? Is it really more difficult than when you're younger? In what settings have you made these friends? What tips can you share for making close friends later in life?


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The contemporary motif from this elegant collection has timeless appeal. Robe Hook is constructed of the finest solid brass materials to provide a sturdy hook for your robes and towels. Hook is finished with our designer lifetime finishes to provide unparalleled performance


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Mao only has one chance left. She needs to win TEB with convincing mark. At least close or better than Ando's score, which is reasonable. Then she has to win the national, and she can still do it, even if she pop a jump. Just no splats.
Mao only has one chance left. She needs to win TEB with convincing mark. At least close or better than Ando's score, which is reasonable. Then she has to win the national, and she can still do it, even if she pop a jump. Just no splats.
Maybe a little but, she does have 2 Lutzs, 1 loop, Salcow and Toe. Her skating is a little stiff, but all her jumps are clearly good and deserve +GOE. Having 2 real Lutz with no 'e'dge call or < is always a big bonus. Lutz is the highest marke in term of base value this season that will be attempted by ladies. She doesn't have a Flip but the flip value is only 0.2 higher that loop so its almost the same. And she did 5jumping pass after bonus time.
Only her spins/spiral is medicore. But all her jumps are clean so it might affect her non jumps elements and boost up the +GOE a little.
Athough i love Agafanova I m not sure about her technique, but Tuktamisheva, Sotnikova, have very good jumps, maybe Ovcharova as well but i havent seen her this year,and I m fond of Radionova and Lipnitskaya, and dont know why Deeva didnt get any gp, I m pretty sure some of them will be fine in seniors.
I am officially a fan of Sofia B.
Here's a latest article about her (in Russian)
She wants to be like her idols Yuna and Volchkova.
I'm pretty sure that Yukari Nakano did the commentary for the Japanese broadcast. A bit stiff and formal, but glad to see her involved in some capacity.
The clilps that I saw were on this user's channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/fsvn01
Johnny Weir got to know Ksenia because they trained together.
Some of Miki's spins are excellent. Her camel spins are beautiful esp. in the current version where she follows them with the three illusion spins. I also love the new sit spin variation she's doing this season (her invention?) where instead of a "broken leg" her leg is held straight and high to the side. It looks exceptionally difficult and well done. This competition is hardly a good place to judge the spins that involve back-bending.
I was so impressed by her determination and consistency here, but it's a little scary to see her fighting what looks like serious back pain.
It would be so good to see her in choreography by someone other than Morozov. I've liked some of his work fine, but it seems he gives Miki the same program over and over to different music. He does not seem to be a musical choreographer, and that makes it hard to tell how musical Miki herself is.
She looks elegant in her black costumes this season. Unlike some posters, I like the wild touches on the SP costume (biker girl meets Chanel).
As far as the podium is concerned the skaters on those pedastills deserved their space.
But I'm wondering if Akiko and Ashley knocked off any hopeful Finalists?
^ If I understand right, I think Marakova and Leonova were in the running but their low placements here put them out of it.


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Enhance pride in your house with these curb appeal projects
When the snow melts and the grass grows green, it's a great time to take a look out your windows and see what the view of your home is offering your neighbors. Are there any areas of your landscaping or home's exterior that could use a bit of an upgrade to help boost your home's curb appeal?
Whether you intend to live in your home for several years, or have plans to list your house on the real estate market soon, enhancing your home's curb appeal can boost your enjoyment of the property and attract potential buyers.
Plenty of projects can improve the look of your home without requiring you to spend a fortune on remodeling, changing the siding, or landscaping the entire front yard. Here are a few ideas you can try on your house:
Upgrade the mailbox. Mailboxes over time can start to look dingy and rusted from being out in the elements. Building a permanent brick or stone structure to hold a mailbox can add appeal to your yard, and also help protect the metal mailbox from additional rusting.
Add or update the lights by your front door or along the driveway. A beautiful glow in the evenings welcomes visitors (and buyers) to your home, at the same time providing you with additional security. Many wall, overhead, post and hanging lights styles are designed to work outdoors to add panache to your home and landscaping.
Brighten up your landscaping and decorate your house with flowers and maybe even some new shrubbery. If you can, add window boxes of vine plants mixed in with colorful blooms. Decorate along the driveway or around the mailbox with small green bushes. If you have a walkway through the front yard, consider lining it with a small and attractive fence. Or add a few pots of pretty flowers next to the garage doors to splash around a little color.
Replace your old, leaky windows with new replacement windows. According to Remodeling magazine, installing low-maintenance replacement windows is ranked as one of the best home improvement projects for your money since they can help reduce energy bills and add instant appeal to your home.
Paul Delahunt, president of Renewal by Andersen, says of all the improvement projects a homeowner can start, window replacement is one that actually takes very little effort on the homeowner's part, but can make your house more beautiful and energy efficient – two benefits you can enjoy for many years to come.
"Our experts help homeowners every step of the way," says Delahunt. "By selecting a professional company that can handle their entire replacement project start-to-finish, homeowners can sit back, relax and let us do all the work."
Delahunt adds that new windows can also help with those dreaded spring cleaning projects. Since Renewal by Andersen windows are made with Fibrex® framing material, for example, they do not require upkeep such as ongoing scraping and painting**. He suggests visiting renewalbyandersen.com <http://www.renewalbyandersen.com/> to see how new, beautiful windows can elevate the look of your home.
Updating and enhancing the look of your home can do a lot for the pride you have in your home and for drawing prospective buyers if you decide to put your house on the market. Tackling some of these projects can go a long way in making your curb appeal stronger.
See the limited warranty for details.
"ENERGY STAR" is a registered trademark of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Renewal by Andersen" and all other marks where denoted are trademarks of Andersen Corporation. © 2011 Andersen Corporation. All rights reserved.


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huh ???
I do not like being called an "Evil Bastard". Could they not just say I was unlikeable or something like that.
huh ???
Wasn't me. I didn't do it.
I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. - Ayn Rand
More details please
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem" Ronald Reagan
She does not like drinking beer, and she don't like oil drillers. It is a little late in the game.
Hey brother my wife has complained about my beer drinking and said to me "I don't want to see beer in this house anymore!!!" So I bought a cooler, filled it and stuck it on the back porch. There are always ways to make it bearable for both of you. Stay strong.
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?" -Thomas Jefferson-
"Our rights come from our humanity and may not be legislated away -- not by a vote of Congress, not by the consensus of our neighbors, not even by agreement of all Americans but one." Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
Hell, my wife has called me worse than that!
I just let that shit roll off the top of my head. LOL
The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference- they deserve a place of honor with all that is good. George Washington
"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
George Washington
You guys know why divorce is so epensive? IT IS WORTH EVERY DAMN CENT!!
Was married for 26 years to a woman that no matter what I did it was wrong and anything bad that befell the family was ALWAYS my fault. We never had any money or food in the house for that matter. We did cunseling multiple times and finally...(Yeah I know, 26 years) I said enough already I want a divorce. Yeah it was rough on the kids at first. But when they realized much happier I was, and how much better it made their lives, things got better over time for them.
I understand trying to make it work, believe me I gave it my heart and soul for years and finally just became exhausted by it all. I doubt that anyone that knows me personally would call me a quitter. There just comes a time when you have to cut your losses and move on.
By the way, I am married again to what I fondly refer to as wife 2.0. Life is good, money isn't an issue anymore than any other family, and golly there is food in the cupboard, the fridge, and the freezer. We live by the philosophy of 3 personalities in a relationship. Me and the things I like to do that don't interest her, her and the things she likes to do that don't interest me, and the things we do together that make us a couple. If you destroy any leg of that triad the relationship is doomed.
Life's a crap shoot. Sometimes you say crap and sometimes you shoot. Make sure that you don't mess those 2 up!
Now it makes more senseShe does not like drinking beer, and she don't like oil drillers. It is a little late in the game.
But try to get on the forum when you start drinking, not when your finishing up
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem" Ronald Reagan


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an ache localized in the middle or inner ear that occurs after a lengthy or vigourous threesome. May be resolved by rubbing Peruvian balls over the irritated skin.
Heavens, that vigourous threesome I engaged in with EvelAlex and Skankalily last night plum wore me out - now I am showing symptoms of Michellinear Syndrome!
by Lily January 11, 2005


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One morning in the summer of 1950, Billy Wilder was sitting alone, eating breakfast and reading the Hollywood Reporter. His wife, Audrey, came into the room and asked:
"Do you know what day this is, dear?"
"June 30th."
"It's our anniversary."
"Please," Wilder said, "not while I'm eating."
And there you have him. Like most Wilder anecdotes, this tale has been told many times, and we have gone beyond the point of being able to ascertain whether it might actually be true. I guess you could ask the man himself, who is still alive at the age of ninety-five, but that would be no help; when it comes to spinning webs of Wilder mythology, he is by far the worst and most enjoyable offender. (Who else, reliving his career as a cub reporter in Vienna, would claim to have interviewed Richard Strauss, Arthur Schnitzler, and Sigmund Freud on a single day?) Still, if the facts don't fit the legend, print the legend and to hell with it; what matters about the breakfast story is that it sounds right—the wisecrack zipping across the room and drowning the crunch of toast.
And so the rumors accrue, hardening the image of Wilder the cynic, Wilder the man-hater and woman-scorner. Who else would bother to assert that his bad back, which has plagued him throughout his career, was brought on by an urge to make love in Viennese doorways, standing up? More to the point, who else would say so in front of his wife? Wilder was one of those steely souls, forged in the Hollywood of the thirties and forties, who were even tougher than the actors they were slated to direct. In 1960, the year of "The Apartment," he looked back on the duties of his chosen profession: "A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant, and a bastard." It's not affection that Wilder minds, I would imagine, but the fuss that is made of it—the anniversaries, the flowers, the song and dance. "Did you hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you," Jack Lemmon says, soft as a puppy, in the closing moments of "The Apartment." But Shirley MacLaine is having none of it: "Shut up and deal," she replies, addressing herself to the more pressing matter of gin rummy. She adores the guy, of course, and she has just run uptown to tell him so, but, still, there are limits. You have to keep the puppy on a leash.
There is only one catch in the Wilder world—not even a catch, perhaps, but an irony that is strong enough to crack his cool. People love his movies. Needless to say, Wilder himself had an explanation for this, as he did for everything else. "You know how it is," he told reporters in London in 1961. "You hate your dentist while he's pulling your teeth out, but the next week you're playing golf with him." Over and over, Wilder shows us mankind behaving badly, or using one another as props and pawns, or racing into follies from which there is no escape, and still, like sheep to the shearer, we come back for more. "Double Indemnity," "The Seven Year Itch," "Sunset Boulevard," "The Apartment": these are part of the basic lexicon of moviegoing. One picture, in particular, has become an icon. Last year, the American Film Institute invited its members to vote on the hundred best comedies ever made. The top spot went to Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot" (1959).
Everyone knows that these hundred-best lists are a bore. Not a fix, exactly, although the film crowd, like all social groups who are presented with a questionnaire, tends to repeat the conventional wisdom without troubling to think it through. Still, it would take a brave critic to dispute the status of "Some Like It Hot," just as it would take a historian of the highest subtlety and resourcefulness to explain, before a tribunal of his peers, why the most entertaining cultural spectacle of the last hundred years has been, by common consent, a pair of full-grown American males wearing falsies.
Falsehood, it must be said, is the fuel of this famous movie. It is rabid with deception, and all attempts to summarize the plot tend to skip one of the changes of costume, or of heart; not until I saw the film again recently, perhaps for the tenth time, did I notice that Jack Lemmon turns briefly into a bellhop. The roughest of outlines would go as follows: A pair of small-time jazz musicians—Joe, a tenor-sax player (Tony Curtis), and Jerry, a bassist (Lemmon)—are accidental witnesses to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Pursued by a big-time gangster (George Raft) and his hoods, they dress as women and join an allgirl band on a train to Florida. There Joe, who has become Josephine, makes one more switch, pretending to be an oil baron in order to woo the band's singer, Sugar Cane (Marilyn Monroe), née Kowalczyk. And Jerry, who has become Daphne, draws the attention of the insatiable Osgood (Joe E. Brown), a bona-fide millionaire with a mouth like a mailbox. It all ends well, with both couples heading for a moonlit yacht.
What more is there to say? Many filmgoers can recite lines from this picture more fluently than they can tell a story from their own past. The closing zinger—Daphne yanking off her wig and declaring herself to be a man, and Osgood replying, "Nobody's perfect," his beatific randiness intact—is the kind of thing that compilers of movie quotations slap on the covers of their books. Meanwhile, the traditional Wilder mischief has calcified into received opinion; when he said that Marilyn Monroe had breasts like granite and a brain like Swiss cheese, he must have realized that the line—one part idolatry to three parts slur—was here to stay, and it is true that Monroe's bosom, thrust in and out of the spotlight as she sings "I Wanna Be Loved by You" and "I'm Through with Love," has become as proud a feature of the American landscape as Mt. Rushmore. In fact, the whole film is a national treasure; you can look at it, but you can't touch.
Now a new angle has opened up. Just one warning: it'll cost you. A hundred and fifty dollars, to be precise, for which you get a book. "Billy Wilder's 'Some Like It Hot' " is the size of an old electric typewriter, and it weighs more than many common domestic animals. Spookier still, it is furrier than many common domestic animals, being covered in a lightly padded velvet the color of crème pâtissière. The title is picked out in orange leather lettering, as bold as a billboard, on the front cover; inside, you get colored production stills, dripping with Florida sunshine, plus full-page blowups of pencilled lines from the screenplay, and the effect is to seize an unsuspecting black-and-white comedy and propel it toward the status of Pop art. There are many books devoted to single films, but they tend to be unsmiling monographs, neatly nailing the work in question to the social history of its era; this book, by contrast, is more like one of Osgood's laughs—sinful, delirious, and loaded.
The publisher of this unusual volume is Taschen, which explains a lot. Benedikt Taschen is an outspoken German who started producing books in 1981, and who has since built up a catalogue so hip, so huge, and so hungry for taboo that you see people in Barnes & Noble make a beeline for the Taschen table and then sneak a glance around the store to make sure that nobody is looking. It goes without saying that you can't open a work entitled "1000 Dessous: A History of Lingerie" without being tapped on the shoulder by your fourth-grade teacher, whom you haven't seen in thirty years, and who once taught you the names of her favorite flowers. The thing about Taschen is that even the books that are about flowers bear a distinct fragrance of perversion; this fall sees the publication of "A Garden Eden: Masterpieces of Botanical Illustration," and a brief glance suggests that all those thrusting pistils should give the antique girdles and stockings a run for their money.
The Wilder book is split into three acts. The first section delves into the making of the movie and contains a facsimile of the final script, on aging buff paper, complete with holes punched at the edge. The second section is a sheaf of interviews with, among others, Wilder, Curtis, Lemmon, and Barbara Diamond, the widow of I. A. L. Diamond—Iz to his friends, and the co-writer on the movie. Diamond had no better friend than Wilder, nobody better qualified to match his smarts; as a team, they wrote a dozen films. ("Never a harsh word, twenty-five years of working together," Wilder once said, at a lecture. "We were like bank tellers." They finished the screenplay of "Some Like It Hot" four days before the end of the shoot.) The interviews are new, conducted over the last couple of years. This doesn't mean that the material itself is new—all concerned have taken the opportunity to buff their anecdotes, like silver, over time—but it's useful to find it packaged together, and even Wilder scholars should rejoice to find Tony Curtis, especially, in such brazen form. You can hear the wide Brooklyn bark as he remembers, only too vividly, the professional drag queen whom Wilder flew in from Berlin to act as tutor to his leads:
This guy told us to keep the cheeks of your ass tight. You tighten up—which you did if you were in the Navy anyway—and make one step good before the other. So when we started to put it together, it all became a very charming manner. I loved it . . . Jack was outrageous as a girl, he couldn't wait to go tromping out. I was more hesitant, I was more like Grace Kelly than like my mother. I was on track.
What's sweet about these recollections is that Curtis plainly took a genuine pride in his womanly appearance; even now, the wording ("a very charming manner") retains a feminine correctness that borders on the prim. Or at least it does until he gets to Marilyn's door, and to the little tailor who was busy with his tape measure, checking the statistics of the stars:
Anyway, he measured me, 16, 34, 43, 18, 19, 18 . . . and then he goes to Marilyn, this is all in the same day and this is the truth . . . He comes in to Marilyn's room and Marilyn had on a pair of panties and a white blouse and that's all. He put the tape around her legs, looked up at Marilyn and said, "You know, Tony Curtis has got a better-looking ass than you." She was standing there, she unbuttoned her blouse and said, "He doesn't have tits like these."
For once, I think we need these salty stories, because Monroe needs all the salt she can get. The Marilyn industry is so deeply soaked in her crackups—shaking the poor woman until we can hear the slosh of booze and the rattle of pills—that it's sobering to get back to the floozie with the forked tongue. If "Some Like It Hot" remains her best as well as her most celebrated film, that is because Wilder was lucky enough, and perceptive enough, to catch Marilyn when her balance was still intact. Wilder knew precisely how good a comedian she was, he knew the ratio of bite to fluff, and he saw that her pathos—which the public, avid for the crash of failing marriages, was increasingly keen to ascribe to her—wasn't worth a damn unless it came wrapped in shining lines. "That's the story of my life: I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop" is dangerously close to one of Marilyn's private confessions, but Wilder and Diamond give the image such a lick and a twist that it slots quite happily into the given scene—Sugar Cane chatting to the new girls on the train heading south, and taking a slug from the flask of bourbon that she keeps tucked into her garter. Shortly afterward, she jumps into bed with Jack Lemmon, just for comfort. Both are in nightgowns:
SUGAR: When I was a little girl, on cold nights like this, I used to crawl into bed with my sister. We'd cuddle up under the covers, and pretend we were lost in a dark cave, and were trying to find our way out.
JERRY: (mopping his brow) Interesting.
It's only when you read this in the Taschen book, as part of the printed screenplay, that you realize how fantastically dirty it is. (Dirtier, indeed, than it plays onscreen, where Lemmon adds a "very" and froths the line up with a giggle.) Somehow, under the camouflage of a joke, Wilder got that dark-cave stuff past the censors; if challenged, presumably, he could always claim to be unwise in the ways of symbolism. A lollipop was just a thing you sucked.
Taschen saves the best for last. The third section is a roundup of the global reaction to the movie, including a Mexican poster for "Una Eva y Dos Adanes" and a newspaper clipping announcing that, whatever some might like, it was too damn hot for the state of Kansas. (The authorities wanted to cut the smooch on the yacht between Curtis and Monroe, in which he feigns impotence and invites her to cure it, but United Artists said no.) Finally, tucked into the inside of the back cover is a scrappy-looking notebook: an exact reproduction of Marilyn's own shooting script. It is not very long—it contains only her lines, with the ends of the lines that precede them, so as not to confound her—and scrawled here and there are her frazzled, misspelled comments and jabs of self-persuasion: "what am I doing," "inocent," "Acting being private in public to be Brave." On the front, she put her name and address—"MARiLYN MONROE, GoLdWyN Studios, N. FORMOSA," in case the book got lost. Or, more likely, in case she got lost. Once, when filming "The Seven Year Itch," she arrived at eleven o'clock for an eight-thirty start; when Wilder wanted to know what had happened, she replied that she couldn't find the studio. "She'd only been under contract for six years," Wilder said later, with one of his dry grins. A particular line reading for "Some Like It Hot" required eighty-three takes, at the end of which he told Marilyn not to worry. "Worry about what?" she asked.
That sublime question hovers in the air, whenever "Some Like It Hot" is showing, as blithely as a bird. It's as if Wilder were daring us to give him a list of things—the dreadful evidence of the world—that are worthy of significant worry, and then swatting them aside. Remember, this is a film that looks on as a line of thugs commit multiple murder in a Chicago garage; Wilder shows only the thugs, however, not the jerking bodies, and thus gives us leave to laugh. The picture begins in death, with a respectful shot of a hearse, and ends in a double helping of love. Ed Sikov, in his clever, compendious biography of Wilder, quotes the director in one of his milder moods: "Movies should be like amusement parks. People should go to them to have fun."
The fun in Billy Wilder feels like an attack; sleeping around the office was never quite the same after "The Apartment," which—contrary to the charges of misogyny that have been laid at Wilder's door—passes much harder sentence on the guys than on the dolls. Yet, the more you learn of Wilder, the more you wonder whether his dialogue, as black and gleaming as wet ink, might not have been his first line of defense. Like half the great American directors, he was the pure product of Europe. Humphrey Bogart, who didn't take to Wilder on the set of "Sabrina," labelled him a "Prussian German." Even by Bogie's standards, this was wide of the mark, since Wilder was born a Polish Jew. He lived in Krakow, Vienna, and Berlin, where he made his name writing screenplays. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, Wilder moved to Paris: "It seemed the wise thing for a Jew to do." Less than a year later, as if the needle of his talent were seeking magnetic north, he came to America, bearing, according to Ed Sikov, copies of "Babbitt," "A Farewell to Arms," and "Look Homeward, Angel," and the sum of eleven dollars.
In 1945, he returned to Europe, in the uniform of a colonel; he was working for the Psychological Warfare Division, and one of his duties was to view and cut the footage that was coming in from the concentration camps. This was then shown to German audiences. He also had to screen performers for the revival of cultural events, a task that came to a head when Anton Lang, who had played the part of Christ in the Passion Play at Oberammergau before the war, and who had since joined the S.S., requested permission to take up the role once more. On one condition, Wilder said: "Use real nails." It may be disconcerting to find one-liners flourishing, even at their bitterest, in such ruined soil, but it is equally presumptuous to push the matter further; as far as Billy Wilder knows, his mother, stepfather, and grandmother died at Auschwitz, and nobody can tell such a man how he should or should not respond. If his first film after the war, a Tyrolian fantasy called "The Emperor Waltz," starring Bing Crosby in lederhosen, seems almost pathological in its urge to ignore suffering, so be it. With time, it seems that Wilder has returned to the scene of those crimes: he tried to buy the rights to the Thomas Keneally novel "Schindler's List," and there was even talk of his emerging from retirement to direct. When Spielberg's film was released, Wilder approved, and he used the occasion to write an article for a German newspaper, posing a quiet, unanswerable question to those who were tempted to doubt the existence of the Holocaust: "If the concentration camps and the gas chambers were all imaginary, then please tell me—where is my mother?"
For fans of his work, it is legitimate to ask whether Wilder's restive habits—the migrations of an orphaned cosmopolitan—somehow find their way into the movies. The heroes and heroines in his films may not go in for many changes of scenery, but is there not something obsessive in the ease, or the eagerness, with which they shift the landscape of their own lives, as if preparing at any instant to flee? First up is Ginger Rogers, who adopts the not altogether credible disguise of a twelve-year-old girl in "The Major and the Minor" (1942), Wilder's first film as an American director. Then we have Franchot Tone in "Five Graves to Cairo" (1943), pretending to be a waiter and being mistaken for a spy; Audrey Hepburn in "Love in the Afternoon" (1957), the ingénue who poses as a fur-lined sophisticate in the hope of snaring Gary Cooper; virtually the entire cast of "The Apartment" (1960), followed by Jack Lemmon again, in "Irma La Douce" (1963), playing a lowly French cop who passes himself off as an English lord. Finally, and most acridly, there is Kim Novak in "Kiss Me, Stupid" (1964), the hooker who becomes a temporary wife.
Wilder is not the first person to connect comedy with a taste for subterfuge, as anyone familiar with "Twelfth Night" can confirm. And Shakespeare has nothing to brag about, either, given that he lifted half the plot of "The Comedy of Errors" from a play by Plautus written in around 200 B.C. All we can say is that, if Wilder had a vested interest in shape-shifting, "Some Like It Hot" brings that interest to the boil. Joe and Jerry are not so much characters as quick-change artists with good musical technique, and the fluidity of their self-invention, like their sense of rhythm, confronts our feelings of dullness and stolidity and merrily blows them away. When they first decide to dress as women, the camera honors the outrageousness of the plan: no kooky shots of waxing and padding, no closeups of wig tape and tweezers, just a straight, no-bullshit cut to the railroad station and a hearty couple of broads. Wilder has always scorned what he calls the "fancy-schmancy," and "Some Like It Hot" takes a convoluted problem and lays it on us straight.
That is why all efforts to tease a deeper entanglement from Wilder's manic film are fated to fail. I looked up "Some Like It Hot" in a chunky, five-volume work entitled "International Dictionary of Films and Film-Makers," and came across these words:
When Joe tries to assert his masculinity with Sugar, Jerry insists he maintain his female identity. Aware of their dilemma, our pleasure becomes dependent on the ramifications of gender identification and sexual exposure.
As Osgood would say, "Zowie!" In fact, "Some Like It Hot" has almost nothing to tell us about transvestism, and surprisingly few suggestions on the topic of homosexuality. It really is about two men who put on women's clothes to save their skins, and it was part of Wilder's genius that he encouraged his leading men to push their faux girlishness in opposite directions—Curtis toward the demure, Lemmon head first into the lubricious and the loud. That way, we get no single statement on the pathology of cross-dressing, and we soon realize that we don't need one. Remember their heated exchange after Jerry gets engaged to Osgood:
JOE: Why would a guy want to marry a guy?
JERRY: Security.
Lemmon really whacks that second syllable, and backs it up with a sharp shiver of his maracas. (Wilder devised them as a prop; he needed something for Lemmon to be doing while the audience laughed, so that Curtis's next straight line would not get buried. Get that for confidence.) Jerry isn't lying, but he's not gay, either; strangely, "Some Like It Hot" only becomes truly fraught with sexual confusion if you try to decide what will happen after the end of the picture. Imagine all four of them chasing each other around the fo'c'sle.
So where does that leave Osgood's final, contented dictum: "Nobody's perfect"? As a universal truth, a withering Wilder glance at life beyond the movie theatre, it remains unimpeachable. As a wrap-up for "Some Like It Hot," however, it's less of a sure thing. Inside this picture, everybody is perfect. It goes without saying that nobody is good or morally deserving, unless you count the crumbling Sugar, yet all the dizzy men and women on display are allowed to fulfill the essential duties of their nature, to act as we would want them to act, and more than that we surely cannot ask. Wilder has often been disdained by critics for his misanthropy, a complaint that strikes me as absurd; if we were to start striking artists off the list because of the attitudes they happen to hold toward humanity, we would be left with very few. For one thing, there would be piles of Flaubert burning in the street. More pertinent is the question of what Wilder does with this narrow-eyed suspicion of his fellow-men, and the most vigorous reply is made by "Some Like It Hot." The movie holds itself between a sober recognition that none of us can be trusted and the more spirited, even stirring sight of lovers straining every sinew to break the cycle of disenchantment and keep their ridiculous promises. If that sounds tricky, you try straining a sinew in heels.
All of which means that "Some Like It Hot" is an object of beauty. Comedies, under Hollywood law, are not supposed to be beautiful, but Wilder's film, like "Sunset Boulevard" and "The Apartment," finds a balance between hope and despair, and that in turn translates into a Viennese play of shadow and gleam. ("I hate color," Wilder said, adding, "Even words sound phony when the picture is in color.") When the upright citizens of Kansas tried to ban "Some Like It Hot" because of the scene on the yacht, they didn't know what they were missing: not merely Monroe's astounding backless dress but the enticing glitter when she turns off the lamp—a thousand points of light, reflecting off the dress and the shelf of sporting trophies at the side. She is a trophy, too, but the gorgeousness of the scene makes her momentarily more precious than even Joe, with his fogged spectacles, could possibly know. Likewise, when Sugar thinks she has lost her millionaire, she takes her sadness out on a song, "I'm Through with Love," and Wilder lets her long vibrato—"For I must have you-oo-oo or no one"—ring and ripple around the movie, as if it could halt the merry-go-round of constant pursuit, and as if her yearning were more than a silly crush. The happy endings of "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment" are not tacked on as an afterthought or a sop; they inform us that good fortune, including the luck of requited love, cannot be relied upon to arrive like a train. It can only be grabbed in passing, at the last gasp.
Billy Wilder knows what happiness is; he once defined it as having a doctor who smokes four packs a day. When the profits of "Some Like It Hot" came in, he himself was handed $1.2 million, which in 1960 was a lot of dough. He bought himself two Paul Klees, an Egon Schiele, and a couple of Braques, to go with his Balthus and his Matisse: happiness you can stare at. Almost three decades later, he was asked, in all seriousness, whether he would have made movies if he hadn't been paid to do so. And Wilder, the man who has told more cold truths than many of us would care to hear, didn't hesitate for a second: "What do you think, I'm a sucker?" ♦


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Discussion in 'Photo & Video Gallery' started by ChevyFan, Sep 1, 2010.
Wow, can you say owned? Hard to be tough when you're spitting out teeth.
Good for him.
There is a whole backstory to this. That's not a guy that you want to mess with.
does that kid realize his story completely contradicts the video
Wow now ill be laughing all night.. That guy got his &%^% beat on TV!! Mabey that will teach some people to respect their elders?
and that old guy was a riot! just a crazy old dude...
Thanks for the laughs steve!!!
AWESOME! That was a really good laugh...thanks Steve....
Watched these awhile ago. Still laugh everytime I watch them.
Separate names with a comma.


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Looks like details of the long-awaited Mighty River Power float are set to be released on Monday with the Government raring to go after receiving the all clear from the Supreme Court.
Investors will be keen to know how much of the 49 per cent the Government is prepared to sell although market watchers believe it is likely to be close to, if not the full amount.
Mighty River's last valuation came in at $3.91 billion, which would value the highest possible float portion at $1.916 billion.
Demand is expected to be strong from both individuals and KiwiSaver funds so the price per share will likely be quite high - possibly in the $4 to $5 range.
The timetable will also be tight to get in ahead of Mighty River's full-year which ends on June 30.
That means the prospectus is likely to be out from early to mid-April.
The tight timeframe will also put pressure on other floats hoping to sneak in ahead of Mighty River. These include the backdoor listing of The Mad Butcher, set to go live in early April, and a proposed float of technology company Arria which has also been touted as an April listing.
The success of the Fonterra Shareholders' Fund, which listed on the stock exchange last year, and its Trading Among Farmers scheme has prompted the Government to look at whether other co-operatives may also like to move on to the exchange.
A document released by ministers this week entitled "Building Capital Markets" proposes to investigate the development of a specialist exchange for co-operatives on the NZX.
It states that: "New Zealand's co-operatives serve their owners well; however, some have difficulty accessing capital given the restriction on outside investors", and says that when seeking external capital co-operatives face a natural tension between satisfying the initial owners' desire to retain adequate control and convincing outside investors that the business will provide them with fair returns.
But the Government seems to have made a fatal error in making this suggestion - they haven't talked to the co-operative sector first.
Co-operative Business New Zealand executive director Ramsey Margolis says it's a nice idea but most co-operatives would say "thanks, but no thanks".
He says it's a myth that co-operatives can't get outside capital.
"If the business case is there co-operatives can get capital." And he reminds that not all co-operatives have done well through listing.
Kiwifruit co-operative Satara, which is listed on the NZAX, was hit hard by the Psa virus and is now going through a merger with rival co-operative Eastpack.
The concept seems to be more wishful thinking from those in the capital markets than the co-operatives. Stock Takes can see why outside investors would like a slice of the action - New Zealand's top 40 co-ops and mutuals pull in $40 billion in revenue a year and include the likes of supermarket group Foodstuffs, Mitre10 and fertiliser group Ravensdown.
Chorus shares fell back down below their listing price this week after news that it will cost another $300 million to build the country's ultrafast broadband network.
The Wellington-based company expects the total UFB build to be between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion, up from a previous range of between $1.4 billion and $1.6 billion.
Chorus listed at $2.94 in November 2011 after splitting from Telecom. The stock had regained some ground of late after being hit by Commerce Commission regulatory proposals but was back down to $2.89 on Wednesday. But the higher cost hasn't affected Morningstar's accumulate rating on the stock.
Morningstar analyst Michael Wu notes that the long-term value for Chorus depends on the demand for fibre services and it only sees this demand continuing to grow as internet users upgrade to higher data plans and switch to fibre. Chorus shares closed up 1c yesterday at $2.90.
Fisher Funds' acquisition of Tower's investment business this week has left a lot of unanswered questions.
The $79 million deal seems a good buy for Carmel Fisher's company as it will boost her market position in both KiwiSaver and the general fund management industry markedly.
But Fisher and her new 26 per cent shareholder TSB Bank have kept mum on the details, so it's unknown how much the bank has paid to buy into the fund manager and how much money the rest of the shareholders paid versus the extra debt it will draw on from the ANZ.
The figure will eventually come out in TSB's accounts but since the deal doesn't settle until April 2, and conveniently TSB's financial year finishes on March 31, it's going to be a long wait.
It's also not clear what TSB's long-term intentions are for the business. Asked whether TSB planned to buy up the whole of Fisher in the future chief executive Kevin Murphy said it was too early in its relationship with Fisher to comment.
"There is no long-term decision about what we do."
But Stock Takes finds that hard to believe. Banks and fund managers always have a plan for their investments - it's what they do.
There have long been rumours about Fisher Funds being a potential sharemarket listing - it's one of the reasons many believe there was a bust up between Fisher and her former chief investment officer Warren Couillault.
But Fisher scotched any suggestion of a listing this week saying: "That's not at all on the horizon. TSB would not like that."
A listing would open the door for foreign investors ruining its present marketing strategy of a Kiwi-owned business, built by Kiwis, for Kiwis.
Fisher's takeover of Tower also raises the question of how the two will be merged.
The two businesses have very different investment styles with Fisher known for her investment in small, higher-growth stocks and Tower as a value investor based on steady, well developed mid-to-large businesses.
That could mean Fisher keeps more of Tower's investment team on board.
It's difficult to invest large sums of money in small companies because it increases your risk if they fall over.
Fisher has also been seen as a boutique fund manager fighting against the behemoths of the banking and insurance industry but the David versus Goliath tactic is no longer going to work.
Fisher has admitted that keeping Fisher Funds' culture is going to be one of her challenges. One also has to wonder how efficient it will be having three separate offices - Fisher's in Takapuna and Tower's in Auckland and Wellington.
Fisher says she has taken over the leases of the Tower office space and has recently expanded her Takapuna offices to accommodate more staff if needed.
Stock Takes can't see Fisher giving up her beachside spot at Takapuna any time soon. Tower shares have barely changed on the news, dipping 1c on Tuesday when the deal was announced. They closed down 1c yesterday at $1.92.
It was a night for boutique fund managers to celebrate on Wednesday with three out of five of Morningstar's annual awards being taken out by smaller market players. Milford Asset Management took out the KiwiSaver award and the top fund manager gong while Fisher Funds won best domestic equities manager. Tyndall Investments took out best fixed interest and OnePath won the international equities category.


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STAYGOLD, Robyn, Spank Rock and Damien Adore - Backseat (live at P3 Guld Awards)
Preface: this is the best thing you will see and hear all day. After-preface: this is one of the finer collaborations/live performances you will see all year. Let's get on it.
Further proof of my undying love and affection for all things Swedish and electro/pop music-related, earlier this week a smashing mash of gifted musicians took the stage at the P3 Guld Awards.
STAYGOLD, no stranger to my writings, joined up with Spank Rock, Robyn and Damien Adore to perform the boys' original track, Backseat. The added vocals from our beloved songstress really heighten the passion in this funky jam!
I've got a super neat and tidy video of the performance below. Stay tuned for a tender embrace between Spank and Robyn at the 3:30 mark. How cute! I've had this on repeat all morning, and it's going to be on for the rest of the day. I guarantee it.
stream: STAYGOLD (Featuring Spank Rock And Damien Adore) - Backseat mp3: Pacific! - Hot Lips (STAYGOLD Remix)


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German Shepherd Dog Forums (http://www.germanshepherds.com/forum/)
- Puppy Behavior (http://www.germanshepherds.com/forum/puppy-behavior/)
- - Afraid of other dogs and people (http://www.germanshepherds.com/forum/puppy-behavior/392122-afraid-other-dogs-people.html)
Afraid of other dogs and people
I need help with Lola... I've be socializing her since I got her. I always take her out with me to Petsmart and take her on walks with me where I know they'll be other dogs and people. We haven't encountered a mean or unruly dog, as most of the people around here are very responsible when it comes to their dogs.
Lola gets along really well with my 9 year old mixed breed (who is about 85 pounds) and gets along with my sisters 10 year old rat terrier. She also gets along really well with my friends 3 year old lab. So I know she likes other dogs.
However, when we are hiking and run into other people and dogs she barks like crazy. Yesterday we ran into an older really friendly golden who was off leash on the trail we walk on. The owner was close by and we've seen this dog several times and I knew he was dog friendly and Lola wasn't phased by him before. But Lola freaked out!! The dog just smelled her and Lola started whining and cowering. I tried to say it's okay and pet her then gave her a treat once the owner came and got his golden, which now I'm not sure if I just reinforced that behavior. She also had done that behavior several weeks before with my friends 10 month old lab mix (which is huge and a little too hyper and not the best trained) but I figured that was because of the other dog coming on too strong. My friend got her dog crated and Lola hasn't seen him since.
Then there's the problem with people. Anytime we see people coming in our direction I always move over and have Lola sit. Some of the time she's really great and I reward her with a treat and we go on our way. However, the other times she'll bark like crazy at them! Even after they pass. Then she'll pull on the leash even though before we passed people she was fine.
I took her out about a week ago. I went for a run then came back to get her for a walk. As I was getting her a few of my running friends came up and Lola would not stop barking at them. She just sits there and barks at them. No lunging towards them or anything so at least that part is good. There's just no settling her.
I have her registered for obedience that was suppose to start today but was cancelled due to weather so we start next week. I'm afraid she's just going to go crazy with the other dogs.
I've given her treats and try to redirect her attention but no luck.
Any suggestions??
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Try and find the book Control Unleashed. There are a bunch of videos on YouTube too showing dogs learning the "Look at that" game from Control Unleashed.
I would keep her moving rather than wait for people to pass.
When you stand in one place the pup will naturally defend that space(for what ever reason) but if you keep moving then you are on neutral territory and it will be less likely to react. Get her mind into we're traveling no matter what the obstacle rather than here comes some load people what will I do.
Her barking is probably because she doesn't want people she doesn't know approaching her.
If people approach and then stare at her or try to rub her and say hey little girl, your so sweet, then your pup will bark more at them and want to meet them less as they have reinforced the mistrust. That is why it is easiest to keep going, most people don't know how to read a pup or interact with it. Easy way with strangers is no touch talk or eye contact.
Even when you encounter other dogs just keep going as if you don't see the other dog.
Males will get right in there and sniff a young female which can intimidate the female. Especially as a pup with a little socialization. Again she will bark to avoid this meeting.
When my female is on leash I don't like males getting within 2 meters of us. Basically if he gets into our space he thinks he can do what he wants. It may be to sniff. If my girl reacts badly, he gets excited, I can't do anything really. I have to deal with a situation. But if i use body language to tell him to not enter our space then I avoid the conflict. I show the male my girl is being protected so don't come near and I show my dog she is safe with me, win-win.
When she gets closer to heat time it gets more important to have this force field around you and a strong confident energy so you don't get into trouble with stray males.
Have you taught her "watch me" yet? It has been the single most effective tool in my working with my reactive guy. With a good watch me I can swiftly heel him out of situations that I have learned to predict will be a problem for him. Good face attention is really important in obedience work anyway.
Loose dog when mine is leashed? "Watch me" and turn the other direction OR move parallel with me between Huxley and the loose dog.
Runners or other groups likely to agitate? "Watch me" and move to the side and practice sits, stands, and downs ("puppy pushups")
You have to be aware of your surroundings but not reactive yourself. No tightening up on that leash. Use your happy voice and make yourself more interesting than anything else around. Keep stinky yucky treats on you for these situations.
Basically give the dog something else to focus on (you!) and another outlet for the energy (basic obedience skills) Be confident. Our dogs feed on what we emote.
Don't reward the behavior by soothing the dog. Try to avoid the functional reward too. This means you act before your dog has a chance to because if she is already going off and you move her away from what she is reacting to, that is a functional reward - meaning her barking/reacting worked as it got her away from what was making her uncomfortable. You really need to be aware of your surroundings, as I mentioned before, and find something that is good and correct for her to do before she can react poorly.
On a personal note, having BTDT myself, relax. Breathe. Have fun with your dog. I forgot that far too many times myself. These are hiccups in what will hopefully be a long and happy relationship with our dogs.
hth :)
Sorry I haven't replied sooner. I've read everyone's comments and have been trying to get her out more.
I've been working with keeping her moving past other dogs and that has been going great. She's been a little better with people as well. Though if we are stopped and people are around she'll just bark at them. (seems more of a protective bark and not a scared bark though, if that matters)
She started training at Michele Scarberry's on Monday. I don't think she did very well. She seemed really stressed and nipped at her brother (he's in the same class) as well as another dog. I'm hoping next week will be better. She did seem to relax towards the end of the training and started trying to sniff the dogs beside her.
I'm hoping this is just her being a puppy and not a nerves problem.
If she is anywhere between 7 months and 1.5 years it could very well be an extreme case of fear stage. Lots of positive interaction in situation you are both able to handle.
Never correct her for fear related behavior as it will get worse. Lots of good advice here.
She'll be 5 months tomorrow.
I try to keep her distracted while we pass others. Today we had a group of guys coming towards us while we were on our walk. My older dog walked right up to them but Lola was pretty defensive. We were in the woods and they had a 4 wheeler type vehicle collecting fallen trees and we could only squeeze past them. I don't blame her for barking at them, there were about 7 guys in hardhats with a big vehicle coming at us. I did get her around them as quickly as I could to minimize the interaction.
I just want to teach her to stop barking once I tell her enough.
Also, lately she hasn't been cowering. She'll back up towards me but no cowering.
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text:
|Re: st: Bootstrap and pweights
|Tue, 25 Oct 2005 06:16:08 -0500
Check out Jeff Pitblado's -bs4rw- for weighted bootstrap estimation. See: http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2005-09/msg00029.html Hope this helps, Scott ----- Original Message ----- From: Jann Ben <email@example.com> Date: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 5:36 am Subject: st: Bootstrap and pweights > Hi, the issue of using bootstrap techniques with weighted > data has been discussed several times on statalist. For > example, see > > http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2003-09/msg00180.html > http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2005-01/msg00218.html > http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2002-12/msg00348.html > > The basic message is that bootstrap cannot be used with > probability weights (pweights) in Stata. This is bad news > and I think it would be very valuable to change that. > > Do I understand right, that the only problem with using > pweights is that weighted sampling is not implemented in > Stata's -bsample- command? In other words: Is it true that > the bootstrap technique produces accurate results for > weighted data if the weights are accounted for via a > weighted sampling design? > > Furthermore: Is there a fundamental difficulty with > weighted sampling? (I.e. why is weighted sampling not > implemented in -bsample-?) How could weighted sampling be > implemented in -bsample-? (References?) > > Any help will be greatly appreciated! > > Thanks, > ben > > PS: Am I the only one who feels bothered by the no-pweights > restriction of the bootstrap command? Is it true that > -svy jackknive- could be an alternative? > * * For searches and help try: * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
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text:
JTF, Chevron confirm attack on facility
The Joint Military Task Force (JTF) and Chevron Nig. Ltd. have confirmed an attack on the oil company's facility by an unknown group.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)reports that an unknown group had claimed responsibility for an attack on Chevron oil pipeline on Jan. 8.
The group's action was supported by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which, however, said its members did not carry out the attack.
A JTF spokesman, Lt. Col. Timothy Antigha, said in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Port Harcourt yesterday, that there was a sabotage of Chevron pipeline in Delta.
''A joint reconnaissance by Chevron Nig. Ltd. and the Joint Task Force (JTF) have confirmed that indeed there was sabotage at Chevron pipeline between Makaraba and Otunana,'' he said.
He said the Delta Police Command and other agencies had commenced investigation to arrest those responsible for the sabotage.
'' In this regard, the JTF wishes to note that this is an isolated incident and therefore advises the media and the general public to ignore any misguided and attention-seeking individual or group clamouring to claim responsibility,'' he said.
Antigha said that investigations had commenced on the unfortunate shooting involving a JTF personnel in Escravos Delta, to unravel the cause of the incident.
'' The soldier will face severe sanctions if found culpable.
''The JTF commends the 3 Delta government and other peace-loving stakeholders who acted promptly to defuse tension over the issue,'' he said.


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