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Our macro team has spent considerable time highlighting why staying < 300,000 won't happen forever. Unless, of course, it's different this time.
Employment is #LateCycle. Period.
Click to enlarge
Our macro team has spent considerable time highlighting why staying < 300,000 won't happen forever. Unless, of course, it's different this time.
Employment is #LateCycle. Period.
Well, that was certainly a well-timed, centrally-planned, market bounce by the Chinese! If you:
The Shanghai Composite Index bounced +5.8%, its biggest daily gain in six years. (It only needs another +37% to get back to 1-month breakeven.)
Meanwhile, the Veep of Public Security in China (Meng Qifeng) actually called the people who sold at 59X earnings "hostile short sellers." Huh? We have a feeling the guys without high-school educations really aren't that sophisticated.
My take is simple: China was a pump and dump. Period.
In other news, China's economic data? It still stinks. Producer prices -4.6% y/y in June.
On a final note, hats off to Allstate CEO Tom WIlson who appeared on Maria Bartiromo's show with me this morning. Here's what he had to say about Beijing:
"The problem with China is nobody believes the numbers. I think sometimes they just make it up."
Takeaway: Auto furloughs and holidays make the usefulness of this morning's data debatable. That said, the June Challenger data on energy is notable.
Initial jobless claims rose by 15k to 297k in the latest week, though it appears to be due at least partly to the dual volatility of the July 4th holiday and summer auto furloughs, as unadjusted claims in Michigan more than doubled while those from Ohio were up 50%. We'll reserve judgement until we see the next few weeks of data.
The chart below shows that indexed claims in energy heavy states fell in the week ending June 27th while rising for the country as a whole. The spread between the two series tightened from 24 to 15.
Meanwhile, courtesy of our Macro team, the chart below shows the Challenger job cuts announced for June running at close to zero for the energy sector for the first time in 7 months. Meanwhile, the total ex-energy climbed slightly in June.
The Data
Prior to revision, initial jobless claims rose 16k to 297k from 281k WoW, as the prior week's number was revised up by 1k to 282k.
The headline (unrevised) number shows claims were higher by 15k WoW. Meanwhile, the 4-week rolling average of seasonally-adjusted claims rose 4.5k WoW to 279.5k.
The 4-week rolling average of NSA claims, another way of evaluating the data, was -10.9% lower YoY, which is a sequential deterioration versus the previous week's YoY change of -12.6%
Yield Spreads
The 2-10 spread fell -9 basis points WoW to 165 bps. 3Q15TD, the 2-10 spread is averaging 170 bps, which is higher by 12 bps relative to 2Q15.
Joshua Steiner, CFA
Jonathan Casteleyn, CFA, CMT
Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough handpicks the "best of the best" long and short ideas delivered to him by our team of over 30 research analysts across myriad sectors.
Takeaway: In the wake of Greek drama, investors pulled funds almost indiscriminately and parked cash in money market funds last week.
Investment Company Institute Mutual Fund Data and ETF Money Flow:
Investors reacted to Greek drama in the 5-day period ending July 1st by pulling funds from all asset classes except for international equity mutual funds and parking +$13 billion in money market funds. The withdrawals included -$5.5 billion of outflows from active domestic equity mandates, the 18th consecutive weekly outflow from the asset class. Active domestic equity has now lost -$61.3 billion in withdrawals in 2015, pushing 2015 year-to-date outflows lower than 2012. By this time in 2012, domestic equity funds had lost -$58.9 billion. This now makes 2015 the worst fund flow year for domestic equity from 2007 onward. We maintain our Short/Avoid recommendations on the most impacted domestic equity managers, T. Rowe Price (TROW) and Janus Capital (JNS).
In the most recent 5-day period ending July 1st, total equity mutual funds put up net outflows of -$3.4 billion, trailing the year-to-date weekly average inflow of +$369 million and the 2014 average inflow of +$620 million. The outflow was composed of international stock fund contributions of +$2.1 billion and domestic stock fund withdrawals of -$5.5 billion. International equity funds have had positive flows in 48 of the last 52 weeks while domestic equity funds have had only 10 weeks of positive flows over the same time period.
Fixed income mutual funds put up net outflows of -$2.4 billion, trailing the year-to-date weekly average inflow of +$2.2 billion and the 2014 average inflow of +$929 million. The outflow was composed of tax-free or municipal bond funds withdrawals of -$861 million and taxable bond funds withdrawals of -$1.5 billion.
Equity ETFs had net redemptions of -$4.3 billion, trailing the year-to-date weekly average inflow of +$2.1 billion and the 2014 average inflow of +$3.2 billion. Fixed income ETFs had net outflows of -$268 million, trailing the year-to-date weekly average inflow of +$867 million and the 2014 average inflow of +$1.0 billion.
Mutual fund flow data is collected weekly from the Investment Company Institute (ICI) and represents a survey of 95% of the investment management industry's mutual fund assets. Mutual fund data largely reflects the actions of retail investors. Exchange traded fund (ETF) information is extracted from Bloomberg and is matched to the same weekly reporting schedule as the ICI mutual fund data. According to industry leader Blackrock (BLK), U.S. ETF participation is 60% institutional investors and 40% retail investors.
Most Recent 12 Week Flow in Millions by Mutual Fund Product: Chart data is the most recent 12 weeks from the ICI mutual fund survey and includes the weekly average for 2014 and the weekly year-to-date average for 2015:
Cumulative Annual Flow in Millions by Mutual Fund Product: Chart data is the cumulative fund flow from the ICI mutual fund survey for each year starting with 2008.
Most Recent 12 Week Flow within Equity and Fixed Income Exchange Traded Funds: Chart data is the most recent 12 weeks from Bloomberg's ETF database (matched to the Wednesday to Wednesday reporting format of the ICI), the weekly average for 2014, and the weekly year-to-date average for 2015. In the third table are the results of the weekly flows into and out of the major market and sector SPDRs:
Sector and Asset Class Weekly ETF and Year-to-Date Results: In sector SPDR callouts, investors defensively contributed +8% or +$365 million to the long treasury TLT ETF. Additionally, the industrial XLI ETF experienced withdrawals of -$334, -5% of its market cap.
Cumulative Annual Flow in Millions within Equity and Fixed Income Exchange Traded Funds: Chart data is the cumulative fund flow from Bloomberg's ETF database for each year starting with 2013.
Net Results:
The net of total equity mutual fund and ETF flows against total bond mutual fund and ETF flows totaled a negative -$5.1 billion spread for the week (-$7.7 billion of total equity outflow net of the -$2.7 billion outflow from fixed income; positive numbers imply greater money flow to stocks; negative numbers imply greater money flow to bonds). The 52-week moving average is +$1.4 billion (more positive money flow to equities) with a 52-week high of +$27.9 billion (more positive money flow to equities) and a 52-week low of -$18.3 billion (negative numbers imply more positive money flow to bonds for the week.)
Exposures: The weekly data herein is important for the public asset managers with trends in mutual funds and ETFs impacting the companies with the following estimated revenue impact:
Jonathan Casteleyn, CFA, CMT
Joshua Steiner, CFA
Well-timed centrally planned market bounce by the Chinese (if you A. aren't allowed to sell and/or B. could go to jail for doing so, that'll work) – they called sellers "hostile short sellers", but we have a feeling the guys without high-school educations aren't that sophisticated. The Shanghai Composite Index bounced +5.8%, it only needs another +37% to get back to 1-month breakeven.
Greek banks are now closed until Monday (the stock market too) – and, again, that's clearly one way for central planners of risk to stop markets from going down - #halt them! We care a lot more about levels here in the DAX, CAC, IBEX (and way too bullish 2nd half 2015 European growth estimates) than the "off the lows moves".
WTI Oil bounced +1.1% but is still down -16% since the May "inflation is back" highs. If you're looking for compromise in Europe, we think that = Down Euro, Up Dollar, Down Oil (down Junk Bonds, EM, etc.) so keep this ongoing #deflation of the reflation in focus – bounces have been selling opportunities.
**The Macro Show - CLICK HERE to watch today's edition at 8:30AM ET with Director of Research Daryl Jones and Macro Analyst Ben Ryan.
Company | Ticker | Sector | Duration | ||
We're all-in on Kate Spade at current levels. The Hedgeye Retail team believes that comps are accelerating into the double digits in 2H, and we think that KATE's margin guidance for this year will prove conservative. Ultimately, we think that numbers this year are 10% too low – a delta that widens to 20%+ next year, and to 50%+ by 2018 when we think KATE has $2.50 to $3.00 in earnings power. Using decelerating multiples as growth accelerates and the P&L matures gets us 50%+ upside in a year and a 2-3-bagger by 2018. |
Our Gaming, Lodging and Leisure team reiterates its high-conviction thesis on Penn National Gaming. PENN remains one of our favorite names on the long side. It maintains the best new unit growth story in domestic gaming. PENN's property in Massachusetts has had an excellent start. We expect June to be as strong as May, setting up Q2 to be estimate-beating quarter for PENN. |
The Hedgeye Growth, Inflation, Policy (GIP) model is signaling a move into QUAD 3 for the second half of 2015. This is a set-up for the domestic economy where growth is slowing and inflation is accelerating. We reiterate our intermediate to long-term bullish bias on long-duration Fixed Income and gold. Our back-testing results cast a favorable outlook for Long-Term Treasuries, REITs, and Gold with a favorable set-up as seen in the first three charts below. When growth is slowing (QUAD 3 and QUAD 4), long term rates tend to move lower. The logic is simple:
VIDEO: A Demographic 'Train Wreck' In China https://app.hedgeye.com/insights/45106-mccullough-a-demographic-train-wreck-in-china… via @hedgeye
No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.
Andrew Carnegie
81% of MCD restaurants are franchised, with a goal to move to a 90% franchise system. MCD receives two payments from franchisees, Royalty (~4% of sales) and Rent (~9% of sales, when MCD owns the real estate).
Editor's Note: This is a brief excerpt and chart from today's morning strategy note written by Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough. Click here to learn more about subscribing.
* * * * *
...One of my Canadian buddies (and top competitors) was nice enough to acknowledge that yesterday and throw in the towel on the "reflation and global growth is back – so buy the Industrials and Financials" call.
Cheers to that and the following YTD returns at the sub-sector level for classic #LateCycle S&P sectors:
This indispensable trading tool is based on a risk management signaling process Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough developed during his years as a hedge fund manager and continues to refine. Nearly every trading day, you'll receive Keith's latest signals - buy, sell, short or cover.


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Items where Kingston Author is "Jamel, Joanna"
Group by: Item Type | No Grouping Jump to: Article | Conference or Workshop Item Number of items: 13. ArticleJamel, Joanna (2014) An exploration of rapists' motivations as illustrated by their crime scene actions: is the gender of the victim an influential factor? Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 11(3), pp. 276-298. ISSN (print) 1544-4759 Jamel, Joanna (2014) Do the print media provide a gender-biased representation of male rape victims? Internet Journal of Criminology, pp. 1-13. ISSN (online) 2045-6743 Jamel, Joanna (2011) An investigation of the incidence of client-perpetrated sexual violence against male sex workers. International Journal of Sexual Health, 23(1), pp. 63-78. ISSN (print) 1931-7611 Jamel, Joanna (2010) Researching the provision of service to rape victims by specially trained police officers: the influence of gender - an exploratory study. New Criminal Law Review, 13(4), pp. 688-709. ISSN (print) 1933-4192 Jamel, Joanna, Bull, Ray and Sheridan, Lorraine (2008) An investigation of the specialist police service provided to male rape survivors. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 10(4), pp. 486-508. ISSN (print) 1461-3557 Conference or Workshop ItemJamel, Joanna (2013) Praxis: the policing response to transphobic hate crime in London. In: 'Sexuality in theory and practice' Mid-term conference of the European Sociological Association Sexuality Research Network; 14 - 15 Jan 2013, Kingston upon Thames, U.K.. (Unpublished) Jamel, Joanna (2012) Theoretical perspectives on the policing of transphobic hate crime in London. In: 68th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology: Thinking about context: challenges for crime and justice; 14 - 17 Nov 2012, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.. (Unpublished) Jamel, Joanna and King, Andrew (2011) Policing diversity and engendering the confidence of the Transgender community: an exploratory study. In: Eleventh International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations; 20-22 Jun 2011, Cape Town, South Africa.. (Unpublished) Gaffney, Justin, Jamel, Joanna and Kowalski, Christopher (2010) Contemporary harm reduction & support service needs of male sex workers in the UK: the Sohoboyz Male Sex Worker Needs Assessment and Skills Development Programme. In: Harm reduction: the next generation; 25 - 29 Apr 2010, Liverpool, U.K.. (Unpublished) Gafney, Justin and Jamel, Joanna (2009) Findings from male and trans sex worker on-line survey. In: UK Network of Sex Work Projects (UKNSWP) Annual Conference: Research, practice and funding: how to survive in the current climate; 22 Oct 2009, Manchester, U.K.. (Unpublished) Jamel, Joanna, Bull, Ray and Sheridan, Lorraine (2009) An investigation of the prevalence of client-perpetrated sexual violence against male sex workers in the commercial male sex industry. In: 1st Global Conference - Good Sex, Bad Sex: Sex Crime, Law and Ethics; 4 - 6 May 2009, Budapest, Hungary. (Unpublished) Jamel, Joanna, Bull, Ray and Sheridan, Lorraine (2008) Do the print media provide a gendered representation of rape? In: 18th Conference of the European Association of Psychology and Law; 02-05 Jul 2008, Maastricht, Netherlands. (Unpublished) Jamel, Joanna, Bull, Ray and Sheridan, Lorraine (2007) Researching the provision of service by specially trained police officers to male rape victims: an exploratory study. In: 7th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology; 26 - 29 Sep 2007, Bologna, Italy. |

subset: commoncrawl


text: Hair Good Enough For Kurt CobainBrian Ashcraft5/18/10 2:00amFiled to: The Prince of PersiaChesty jakeJake GyllenhaalCultureHollywoodMusicFilmMovies108EditPromoteShare to KinjaToggle Conversation toolsGo to permalink You gotta give Prince of Persia star Jake Gyllenhaal credit. That's some great hair. So great that perhaps it, not Jake, could star in a biography film about Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Advertisement "I don't know if I'd be the right choice — but the hair from Prince of Persia could translate somehow," the actor tells music source NME. "We could just bleach it!"Of course the actor is not confirming that he will be in a Kurt Cobain flick — this is hypothetical territory! Gus Van Sant, known for Drugstore Cowboy, has already made a Kurt Cobain-esque flick called Last Days.Previously, Gyllenhaal revealed that the developed arm muscles by washing his hair. Wonder what he'd develop if he bleached his hair? The Kurt Cobain Story starring Jake Gyllenhaal's bleached locks, that's what. Jake Gyllenhaal and his unbleached hair star in the big screen version of video game The Prince of Persia. Advertisement Jake Gyllenhaal: 'I could bleach my hair to play Nirvana's Kurt Cobain' [NME]Reply108 repliesLeave a reply


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Welcome to the Borough of Ringwood Community Services. This section of our website is your portal to a variety of general services that support our overall quality of life and facilitate your access to useful information without having to visit multiple websites. As always, we are open to receiving your comments and suggestions about additional content that we can provide to assist you in your basic research needs. Please use the "Contact Webmaster" feature to send a message about your ideas. If you are new to the area, see our New Residents Handbook for important information.


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How the Tonys Were the Anti-Oscars in the Best Possible Way
The less invested in the winners that you were, the more you could enjoy Broadway being Broadway.
I didn't attend the Tonys — I prefer to experience shared cultural moments (awards ceremonies, inaugurations, targeted assassinations) the way nature intended, via telecast — but so far, I'm noticing a steep enjoyment gradient between those who were in the Beacon and those who watched on TV. Inside the theater, the near-total lack of upsets appears to have had a tranquilizing effect: The Book of Mormon swept, as expected; down-home denimist Franny McDormand was strange and surly (and triumphant), as expected; Mark Rylance was gnomic and bizarre (and triumphant), as expected. (Although it'd be nice to see the final vote tally: I'm guessing Joe Mantello — who looks discomfitingly similar to Rahm Emmanuel on TV — was within spitting distance of nabbing Best Actor in a Play.) And host Neil Patrick Harris's final rap-wrap (flash-written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and his In the Heights director, Thomas Kail) seems to have drawn mostly approving golf claps. (Same with the "Broadway Highlander" face-off between NPH and Hugh Jackman, and the David Javerbaum–assisted opening number, "It's Not Just for Gays Anymore.")
But from the outside and through the tube (and the YouTube), the show played very differently. It was a sort of anti-Oscars: The less invested you were in the outcomes of individual races and the overall state of your fantasy ballot, the more fun you probably had. It wasn't about the winners and losers this year — there were basically no real surprises there. A few disappointments, of course: Personally, I think War Horse, gorgeously realized as it is, had no place in the winner's circle, especially in such a strong field of real, sinewy new plays: The choice was pure commercial calculus. (Which will, no doubt, pay off: The show's tour is selling out, and anyone who lays eyes on Joey, the equine puppet, seems to fall instantly in love. He shows well on video, obviously, and even a brief glimpse of him during the ceremony seems to have set hearts aflutter across the airwaves.) And did Mormon's Scott Pask really need a win for Scenic Design, in a category that included the exciting newcomer Donyale Werle, creator of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson's chaotic indie-rock-histori-kitsch bricolage? Couldn't Best Orchestrations have gone to the meritorious team from Catch Me If You Can?
These are questions for theater insiders and aisle-seat gremlins to argue over, for months and years to come. But that's not what this ceremony was all about. This was about effective diplomatic overtures to the Other America, along with a show of strength. Beneath the jokes about how hetero-mainstream commercial theater in NYC has become, there was signal after signal that Broadway will remain Broadway, without making excuses for itself. No Green Day, no Bret Michaels, no desperate Glee pandering, no karaoke renditions of "Hound Dog": This year, the Tonys celebrated musical numbers that actually sound like Broadway musical numbers and performers who came across as actual stage-trained performers, because they are. (It's worth noting that the most dead-boring moment of the night was the glacial ballad from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, "If the World Should End." When you can't deploy your best numbers because they're too tech-dependent, what kind of message does that send?) "It's Not Just for Gays Anymore" may have been the opening number, but "I Believe (in Broadway)" was the underlying message. Along with a challenge: Tell us this isn't working.
One final note: The Tonys, far more than the Oscars, are a precious archived commodity. As theater geek after theater geek will tell you, spotlight moments from Tonycasts past are what sold them on the art form in the first place. And this year, enhanced TV production values helped spawn a host of YouTube moments that'll live forever. Andrew Rannells's steely strong delivery of Mormon's "I Believe," a nicely captured rendition of "Side by Side" by the all-star Company cast, a hellzapoppin' "Anything Goes," and, perhaps most memorable, a bang-up "Brotherhood of Man," performed by an ever-more-ferocious Daniel Radcliffe and the cast of How to Succeed This is the kind of stuff that'll have a multiplier effect on future theatergoers, more so than any traveling pony show.
Related: The Five Most Notable Tonys Moments [Vulture]


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Students from two local schools may have been building things with their LEGO pieces, but they weren't playing around. They were creating prize-winning robots. Robotics teams from Gainesville Middle School and Lakeview Academy have come out on top in various portions of the First LEGO League 2011 Food Factor Challenge. "They're judged on several different areas," said Lynn Zottnick, one of the coaches for the three, Lakeview Academy teams. "One area is the robot game. Another area focuses on team work and then the final part is their research project." Each year, the challenges are based on different, real-life scientific subjects. Previous challenges include: Mission Mars, City Sights and Volcanic Panic. At the state-level competition last month, the Gainesville Middle group, team Robopachyderms, won the Mechanical Design Award. That award is presented to the team "that designs and develops a mechanically sound robot that is durable, efficient and highly capable of performing challenge missions." During the robot game, each team was given 2 minutes and 30 seconds to complete tasks like removing LEGO-sized pieces of "bacteria" from food storage areas. "Our goal at the beginning was just to get seven tasks done, but we've gotten like 10 or 11, so we were very happy about that," said Sidney Cochran, one of two "board runners" for Gainesville Middle. "Sometimes when the mission wouldn't work, we'd be kinda bummed, but then we'd keep going and say "Oh, we'll get it next time.' You get three chances at the board and then they take your best score out of all your runs." Even though they didn't qualify for the national-level competition, Gainesville's coach, Dawn Watkins is still impressed with her students' performance. "I spent first two weeks at the beginning of the year teaching them how to program the robots, but then, the wonderful thing about these kids is they just took it from there," Watkins said. "I can open the door and let them in and they make it happen. We've been in the top of every group we've gone to — their robot finished sixth overall (at state) — which is amazing for a first year program." Lakeview's Orange Lions team earned the Innovative Solution Award at the state competition, which was held at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta. The innovation award is given to a team with an "exceptionally well-considered and creative" solution for the group's researched problem. For the project-portion of the competition, the fifth- through eighth-grade members of the Orange Lions decided to focus on hand sanitizing during food preparation. "The problems we discovered were food handlers with unclean hands and (people who) would wash their hands but not thoroughly enough, so it would still spread contamination," said Nicholas Mulka, member of the Orange Lions. "Our solution to the problem was to create a bracelet that would use plasma technology to sanitize your hands at certain intervals of time. The electrically charged ions (in the plasma rays) kill the bacteria on your hands. "In some hospitals, they have some prototypes of plasma sanitizers, so it has been proven to clean hands." For their project, the students consulted with various experts in the food industry and researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The students' project was so feasible, their Georgia Tech mentor's encouraged them to pursue a patent for their idea. According to Zottnick, they've submitted the paperwork. They've also entered the project for consideration for the Global Innovation Award with the First LEGO League. Part of the competition requires the group to gain community support through an online voting system. "Out of 140 global submissions, (on Friday we were) in 26th place. You can vote once daily, per computer," Zottnick said. "If they win, they will be connected with experts in marketing and product development to help them take their product to market." Although Lakeview's Blue Lions team didn't pick up a state-level prize, they did earn a Champion's Award at the regional competition back in December. For their research project, the group created a "Gluten Buster," which was designed to help people with Celiac's disease avoid gluten-laden foods. "Whenever they go out to eat, they tell their server they're allergic to gluten and they have to trust the restaurant when they say there's no gluten in their food," said Jackson Pratt, a Blue Lion. "The Gluten Buster would scan their meal. If the indicator light turns green, it's safe. If it turns red, it has gluten and they shouldn't eat it." The school's White Lions team didn't get to compete at the state-level competition, but they designed an indoor garden box for apartment dwellers who lack access to an outdoor garden. Although they've reached their finish line for this year's competition, the students are already turning their sights toward next year. "Next year's challenge has a senior citizen's theme," said Pratyusha Karnati, a member of the Gainesville Middle team. "It's dealing with the challenges they face, so we were thinking of going to the retirement center to talk with them about some of their problems to help us prepare." The team is also working to learn more about how their robots work and how to incorporate more components like sensors. "One of our goals for next year is making it to state again and getting in the top three," said Michelle Razo, Gainesville Middle team member. "So we have to start practicing now. We want to be ready."


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Scorsese has taken a risk with Casino. It's a story about the Mob, so it invites comparison with the brilliant Goodfellas, and very few people thought that movie could use a 30-minute trim. The film also rides entirely on its story-line. There are no sympathetic characters here. De Niro, Pesci and Stone are all cut from hard steel. It's hard to care about what happens to any of them.
Casino is set in Las Vegas, the year is 1973. Hustling bookie, Sam "Ace" Rothstein, has been hand-picked by the Mid-west Mafia to run its casinos, all built with money from the corrupt Teamsters Union. As Rothstein makes it big, his best friend arrives to carve out a piece of the action, using brute force.
Nicky Santoro (Pesci) is an explosive study in heartless violence. He kills before dinner but still has a good appetite, and his idea of love is shoving a woman's head in his lap. Pesci is good, but then he rehearsed the role in Goodfellas and won an Oscar. Scorsese's direction keeps Pesci to that standard but adds nothing new, even when Pesci hits the sack with Stone, who plays Ginger McKenna, Rothstein's wife.
This unlikely match takes place as Rothstein and Santoro are on the verge of war, a conflict that turned Las Vegas upside down. For Scorsese, that was the central appeal of a screenplay which is based on real life, the story of Frank Rosenthal and Anthony Spilotro. "It's the oldest tragedy in the world," explains Scorsese. "People doing themselves in by their own pride and losing paradise. If they handled it right, they would still be here."
Scorsese should know that's nonsense. He's romanticising the Mob and the film suffers for it; the Las Vegas Mafia were not like cowboys of the old West, although Scorsese likes to pretend they are. "It's like the end of the Wild West," he says.
Scorsese's direction aims to recreate Seventies Las Vegas in faithful detail. Laid against the MTV visual styles of Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction and Oliver Stone in Natural Born Killers, Casino's high realism seems old-fashioned. The result is an absence of irony. Where the movie succeeds as a reproduction, it fails as drama.
So what about Sharon Stone in this company? Hollywood insiders say she was not the first choice to play McKenna and Stone admits she was nervous. "I started out in a state of abject terror. I could barely speak," says Stone - although for the Basic Instinct star this was a dream realised. "When I first worked with an acting teacher, I said my ambition was to work with Robert De Niro," gushes Stone. "To do that with Martin Scorsese as well, it was just amazing."
Stone regards Casino as a potential turning point in her career. "My previous roles have been too shallow," she says. "I knew I had abilities that I hadn't yet had the chance to demonstrate." I am curious about that. I ask her what those abilities are and how Scorsese forced them to surface. "That's hard to describe," she says. "Working with Marty is such an organic experience." Like an afternoon in the potting shed, maybe?
The purpose of Stone's character is to drive De Niro's Rothstein crazy. She does this by getting drunk, going down on Nicky Santoro, screaming a lot and smashing up his car. Stone compares her performance to that of Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which is a stretch.
When De Niro finally tires of her antics and throws her out, we're surprised he was restrained for so long. This is not an example of the realism found in the rest of the movie, which is based on the novel Casino by Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy, the book that inspired Goodfellas. Pileggi's Rosenthal beats Geri McGee on a regular basis. In the great American tradition of petty hoods, Rosenthal breaks his wife's ribs and still expects blow- jobs. That's not how they scripted Rothstein for the movie.
Pileggi wrote the screenplay with Scorsese and says the decision to play down the spousal abuse was deliberate. "We didn't feel we needed to show all the beatings to prove it was a violent relationship," says Pileggi. But no beatings? In a movie where Pesci cracks a guy's skull in an industrial vice until his brains and eyeballs pop out? Do we need to see that kind of torture to know the Mafia are violent people?
One suspects other motives - that a wife-beating Mafia king is harder to romanticise, and that's what Scorsese wanted to do with Rothstein and this period of American history. For a start, Scorsese is actually nostalgic for the Seventies and its music. Casino is full of the decade's hits and fashions, making the Mafia antics seem jaunty. "What these guys do is morally wrong, but the film doesn't say that," says Scorsese. "These guys are just really working stiffs. They understand that if you cross a certain line it's death. But that's 'business'. In that world, it's normal behaviour. Las Vegas is a different place now, it's somewhere for tourists."
Stone has also bought this line. "Las Vegas has less glamour now. It has become more accessible," she says. "The old style had more charm." Although now there are fewer midnight burials in the desert.
The film could still be outstanding if the relationship between De Niro and Pesci was powerful enough. Scorsese is famous for making his actors improvise before the cameras roll. Both De Niro and Pesci say this is the best experience their profession can give. "It's very creative and collaborative between the three of us," says Pesci. "Working with Rob is like breathing in and out, and Marty is probably the best director I've ever worked with."
Even so, the De Niro/ Pesci interaction only catches fire on two occasions. For the rest of the time it's hard to imagine they were ever friends. The excessive use of voice-overs doesn't help. Most of the time Rothstein and Santoro just seem like the natural enemies they were in real life.
With these stars and this director, Casino has built up large expectations, but film-making does not stand still. Much has changed in this genre since Goodfellas, and audiences look for more than the painstaking recreation of period. Here Scorsese proves again that nobody can capture a moment in time so well, but in this case one wonders why he bothers. Casino is Seventies Las Vegas, but so what?
Scorsese has described this project as "operatic" and the opening sequence, which is wonderful, is almost enough to justify the claim. Elsewhere Casino gets trapped in its own assumptions and Scorsese's realism fails him. There's too much gloss, and the spiritual seediness of his characters is not fully expressed until the very end - which takes too long to arrive.
n 'Casino' is premiered at the London Film Festival on Sunday, 7pm. Booking: 0171-928 3232
- More about:
- Gangster Films
- Las Vegas
- Martin Scorsese
- Sharon Stone


text: Untouchable politics and politicians since 1956 Kanshi Ram: from BAMCEF to the Bahujana Samaj Party Kanshi Ram was born in 1934 as a Raedasi Sikh, a community of Punjabi Chamars converted to Sikhism. The family had 4 or 5 acres of land, some of it inherited and the rest acquired through government allocation after Independence), a small landed background is characteristic of many Scheduled Caste legislators but remains a comparative rarity for Dalits in general. Kanshi Ram's father was himself 'slightly' literate, and he managed to educate all his four daughters and three sons. Kanshi Ram, the eldest, is the only graduate. He was given a reserved position in the Survey of India after completing his BSc degree, and in 1958 he transferred to the Department of Defence Production as a scientific assistant in a munitions factory in Poona. Kanshi Ram had encountered no Untouchability as a child, and overt discrimination was not a phenomenon within the educated circles of his adult life. But his outlook underwent a sudden change in 1965 when he became caught up in a struggle initiated by other Scheduled Caste employees to prevent the abolition of a holiday commemorating Dr Anibedkar's birthday.'4 During this conflict Kanshi Ram encountered a depth of high-caste prejudice and hostility towards Dalits that was a revelation to him. His almost instant radicalisation was completed soon after by a reading of Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste: he read the book three times in one night, going entirely without sleep. Kanshi Ram's introduction to the political ideas of Ambedkar - he has never been attracted to Buddhism - was through his Mahar Buddhist colleague and friend at the munitions factory, D. K. Khaparde. Together the two of them began formulating ideas for an organisation to be built by educated employees from the Scheduled and Backward castes. Such an organisation would work against harassment and oppression by high-caste officers, and also enable the often inward-looking occupants of reserved postions to give something back to their own communities. So Kanshi Ram and Khaparde began to contact likely recruits in Poona. At about this time Kanshi Ram abandoned any thought of marriage, largely because it did not fit into a life he now wanted to dedicate to public con-cerns. He had also quite lost interest in his career, though he continued in the job until about 1971. He finally left after a severe conflict over the non-appointment of an apparently qualified Scheduled Caste young woman. During this conflict he had gone so far as to strike a senior official, and he did not even bother attending most of the ensuing disciplinary pro-ceedings. He had already made up his mind to become a full-time activist, and the movement was by then strong enough to meet his modest needs. In 1971 Kanshi Ram and his colleagues established the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and Minorities Employees Welfare Association, which was duly registered under the Poona Charity Commissioner. Their primary object was: To subject our problems to close scrutiny and find out quick and equitable solu-tions to the problems of injustice and harassment of our employees in general and the educated employees in particular. Despite the Association's inclusive reach, its aggressively Ambedkarite stance ensured that most of its members were Mahar Buddhists. Within a year of its establishment there were more than one thousand members and it was able to open an office in Poona: many of the members were from the Defence and Post and Telegraph Departments, and their first annual conference was addressed by the then Defence Minister, Jagjivan Ram. Kanshi Ram's next organisational step was to create the basis of a national association of Scheduled Caste government servants. As early as 1973 he and his colleagues established the All India Backward and Minority Employees Federation (BAMCEF), and a functioning office was established in Delhi in 1976. BAMCEF was relaunched with greater fanfare on 6 December 1978, the anniversary of Ambedkar's death, with claims of two thousand delegates joining a procession to the Boat Club Lawns in New Delhi (BAMCEF Bulletin April 1979). Although the stated objects of the new organisation were essentially the same as those of the earlier body, the rhetoric had grown bolder. It was not merely the oppressors who came in the line of fire, but also many of the reserved office holders too: As all the avenues of advance are closed to them in the field of agriculture, trade, commerce and industry almost all the educated persons from these [oppressed] communities are trapped in Govt. services. About 2 million educated oppressed Indians have already joined various types of sobs during the last 26 years. Civil Service Conduct rules put some restrictions on them. But their inherent timidity, cowardice, selfishness and lack of desire for Social Service to their own creed have made them exceptionally useless to the general mass of the oppressed Indians.The only ray of hope is that almost everywhere in the country there are some edu-cated employees who feel deeply agitated about the miserable existence of their brethren. (BAMCEF Bulletin 2 1974) By the mid-1970S Kanshi Ram had established a broad if not dense network of contacts throughout Maharashtra and adjacent regions. During his frequent train trips from Poona to Delhi, he adopted the habit of getting down at major stations along the way - Nagpur, Jabalpur and Bhopal, among others - to contact likely sympathisers and to try to recruit them to the organisation (Kanshi Ram Interview: 1996). Once he had moved to Delhi he pushed into Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, as well as further into Madhya Pradesh. Parallel to his work among edu-cated employees Kanshi Ram was also contacting a wider audience with simple presentations of Ambedkar's teachings. Thus in 1980 he put together a roadshow called 'Ambedkar Mela on Wheels'. This was an oral and pictorial account of Ambedkar's life and views, together with con-temporary material on oppression, atrocities and poverty. Between April and June 1980 the show was carted to thirty-four destinations in nine States of the north. Jang Bahadur Patel, a Kurmi (Backward Caste) and President of the Uttar Pradesh Branch of the Bahujana Samaj Party until late 1995, recalls meeting Kanshi Ram for the first time when he brought his roadshow to Lucknow (Interview: 25 November 1995). Kanshi Ram talked persuasively about how Ambedkar had struggled for all the down-trodden classes, and how the Scheduled Castes, Tribes and also the Backwards and Minorities were all victims of Brahminism. Because of their weight of numbers, these people had the potential to convert them-selves from 'beggars to rulers'. It was all a matter of organisation. Patel immediately joined BAMCEF, though he was in a distinct minority as a non-Untouchable: Untouchables constituted about 90 per cent of the membership, with the other io per cent being split between tribals and Backward Caste people. BAMCEF's motto, 'Educate, Organise and Agitate', was adopted from Ambedkar, and its activities were formally divided into a number of welfare and proselytising objects. But increasingly Kanshi Ram's agita-tional activities were leading him into politics. By the late 70S he was no longer content with being the leader of reserved office holders, a class for whom he had less than complete respect. Kanshi Ram's first attempt to create a radical political vehicle capable of mobilising the larger body of Dalits was the Dalit SoshitSamaj Sangharsh Samiti (DS4) formed in 1981. This was conceived as a political organisation parallel to BAMCEF: it shared the same President in Kanshi Ram, the same office, and many of the same members. DS4 was a quasi- rather than fully fledged political party, partly because government servants were forbidden to take part in electoral politics. But DS4 made little concrete progress, and late in 1984 Kanshi Ram took the plunge and formed the Bahujana Samaj Party (a variant on the name of Phule's nineteenth-century organisation). Inevitably, this caused major strains in BAMCEF ranks. Their agitational activities had placed many of his colleagues from the Poona and early Delhi periods in a delicate position as government servants and, in any case, the political loyalty of many of them was to the several strands of the Republican Party. There were also strains arising from Kanshi Ram's will to total domination of all three organisations. And the need for money was rising with the push into politics: one of the Maharashtra workers recalls delivering Kanshi Ram a purse of forty thousand rupees collected from Maharashtra in 1984. These several strains grew more severe over the next two years, and early in 1986 a major split took place. Kanshi Ram announced at that time that he was no longer willing to work for any organisation other than the Bahujana Samaj Party. His transition from social worker to politician was complete. Kanshi Ram is more an organiser and political strategist than an innov-ative thinker or charismatic public speaker. While his Ambedkarite ideol-ogy has remained constant and lacking in any innovation, there has been a progressive sharpening of his rhetoric. The early issues of BAMCEF's monthly magazine, The Oppressed Indian, were full of his didactic exposi-tions of Ambedkar's views on Indian society. These have now given way to simpler formulations, repeated in numerous newspaper accounts and both public and private speech. The central proposition is that Indian society is characterised by the self-interested rule of io per cent over the other 90 per cent (the bahujan samaj or common people). Although the ruling io per cent is composed of several castes, they derive their legiti-macy and ruling ideology from Brahminism. All the institutions of society reflect this ruling ideology and distortion, including the press. These institutions can therefore be termed Manuwadi (after the great Brahmin-inspired text) or Brahminwadi. In the marketplace of elections, such simplicity has been further reduced to crudeness and epithet. A slogan coined after the formation of DS4 was, 'Brahmin, Bania, Thakur Chor, Baki Sab Hem DS-Four'. Loosely translated, this rhyme states that Brahmins, Banias and Rajputs are thieves, while the rest of society are their victims. The epithets reached their height during the election cam-paign for the UP Assembly in 1993, the most notorious being: 'Tilak, Taraju, Talwar. Maaro Unko Joote Char'. This slogan, with its insistent rhythm in Hindi, advocates that Brahmins, Banias and Rajputs, each identified by a slighting term, be beaten four times with a shoe - a tradi-tionally demeaning form of punishment because of the ritual impurity of leather. While Kanshi Ram and Mayawati denied authorship of such slogans, they served as a simple and dramatically offensive marker of the party's ideological position. Kanshi Ram's strategy and his larger understanding of social change are now considerably evolved. He no longer believes in the primacy of social reform. Rather, expenditure of effort on any object other than the capture of government is seen to be superfluous. It is administrative power that will bring about desired social change, not vice versa. So he declines to spell out policies on basic issues such as the liberalisation of the Indian economy or on land reforms. His view is that such issues are irrelevant to the project of gaining power, and that the appropriate poli-cies will fall into place once power is attained. His picture of India is of a kind of holy war on the part of the bahujan samaj against their Brahminwadi oppressors. In the context of this war debates about policy are almost frivolities. This is a stance of pure fundamentalism, but it also frees him to engage in the most ruthless pragmatism in the name of capturing power. Consistent with this stance, Kanshi Ram has become increasingly critical of the institution of reservation in government employment. Reservation is a 'crutch' - useful for a cripple, but a positive handicap for someone who wants to run on his own two feet (Kanshi Ram interview:1996). He now throws off the line that once the bahujan samaj get to power throughout India, it will be they who can condescend to the Brahmins by giving them reservation proportional to their own meagre population. There is more than a little bravado in this, but there is no doubt that Kanshi Ram is now hostile to the system of institutional preference that was the indispensable basis of his own personal and polit-ical career. It seems that he believes that reservation has now done enough for the Scheduled Castes. He notes that of some 500 Indian Admin-istrative Service (LAS) Officers in Uttar Pradesh, 137 are from the Scheduled Castes. By comparison, there are only seven lAS officers from the Backward Castes, six of them Yadavs (Hindustan Times, 6 April 1994). His point is not that there are now too many Scheduled Caste officers -their number conforms strictly to the legal quota - but too few from the Backward Castes. He apparently assumes that the capture of political power will automatically transform the composition of the bureaucratic elite. The Bahujana Samaj Party first made headway in Punjab, Kanshi Ram's home State, but his primary political task was to wean the Chamars of Uttar Pradesh from Congress. It was Kanshi Ram's fortune that he built the party at the historical moment that the long-term Congress decline became a landslide. The formal entry of his party into Uttar Pradesh was in a by-election in 1985 for the Lok Sabha seat of Bijinor, in which its candidate was Mayawati. She is a Jatav (or Chamar), the daughter of a minor government official in Delhi, and had completed a BA and LLB from the University of Delhi. Mayawati had made contact with Kanshi Ram in 1977 while she was a student, and had gradually been drawn into his organisation. Her opponents in Bijinor included Ram Vilas Paswan - the two have had poor relations since this contest - and Meira Kumar, Jagjivan Ram's daughter, representing Congress. Rajiv Gandhi was at the height of his popularity at the time, and Meira Kumar won the seat easily. But by 1989 the Bahujana Samaj Party had put in five years of solid organising work in UP and also in the neighbouring regions of Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Delhi, and parts of Haryana. And mean-while the Congress Party had slumped in popularity. Kanshi Ram had prepared the ground carefully. He had selected organisers and candidates from a variety of social backgrounds. One of his organisers was Dr Mahsood Ahmed, a temporary lecturer in history at Aligarh Muslim University. Mahsood had become disillusioned with Congress when Indira Gandhi made her infamous tilt towards the Hindus in the early 1980s (Mahsood interview: 27 November 1995). He joined BAMCEF and then switched to DS4 in 1983 as a full-time organiser and fund raiser. Mahsood was later put in charge of the whole of eastern Uttar Pradesh for the Bahujana Samaj Party. The years of organisation bore fruit in 1989 and 1991. In the four State Assembly and Parliamentary (Lok Sabha) polls for Uttar Pradesh between 1989 and 1991 the Bahujana Samaj Party's share of the vote varied only marginally between 8.7 and 9.4 per cent. But this impressive vote produced a disappointing number of seats - in 1989 the party won thirteen out of 425 State Assembly seats, and in 1991 it won twelve. The party won only two Parliamentary seats in 1989, and one in 1991; Kanshi Ram himself subsequently won a by-election from UP in 1992. Both the strength and the weakness of the party is that its primary 'vote bank', the Chamars, are relatively evenly spread across the State. This spread gives the Bahujana Samaj a chance in a large number of seats, but also make it logically impossible to win even a single seat without strong support from other communities. Although it has attracted a measure of Muslim, Backward Caste and other Scheduled Caste support, it has encountered considerable resistance in these target communities. We need to look more closely at this problem. First, there is the question of why the majority of Jatavs of western UP deviated from their kinfolk in the eastern part of the State, and continued to vote Congress in 1989 and 1991. The answer to this question is not entirely clear. Some have blamed the result on the poor organising capac-ities of Mayawati - she was in charge of this region - but the deeper reason may be the Jatavs' historical association with B. P. Maurya. In a move of some desperation, Congress resurrected the 70-year-old Maurya as one of four national Vice-Presidents in the run-up to the 1996 elections. But by then Mayawati had become an electorally popular figure in eastern UP. As to the Scheduled Castes other than the Chamars/Jatavs, only Pasis appear to have voted for Kanshi Ram's party in large numbers. The Valmikis (formerly known as Bhangis) voted solidly for the BJP in the 1993 Assembly elections, and the sole Valmiki in the Lok Sabha elected in 1991 represented the BJP (though in 1980 he had been elected for the Janata Party). Mangal Ram Premi MP - his biography is sketched in chapter 8- accounts for the Valmiki support of the BJP by simply advert-ing to the community's dislike of the Chamars (Interview: 4 November 1995). The Chamars are more numerous, better educated and more successful in acquiring reserved positions than the Valmikis, and this tends to produce resentment. Many of the Dhobis too have recently voted for the BJP. In short, Kanshi Ram's party has not solved the problem of how to mobilise all or even most of the Scheduled Castes. The problem that dogged Ambedkar has thus repeated itself in Uttar Pradesh, though Kanshi Ram's Chamars are both more numerous and numerically more dominant among the Untouchables than were Ambedkar's Mahars in the western part of the country. Among Backward Castes, Kanshi Ram's strongest support has come from the Kurmis. In Bihar, this is an upwardly mobile peasant commu-nity responsible for several of the worst atrocities against Dalits. But in Uttar Pradesh the Kurmis are comparatively low on the scale of prosper-ity. Moreover, they have had a history of anti-Brahmin radicalism - Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur remains a source of inspiration to some of them. And a sprinkling of them had been members of the Republican Party. The Kurmis could see advantage in being associated with a party that was not dominated by the more numerous Yadavs (whose firm affiliation is with Mulayam Singh's Samajwadi Party). As to the large number of other Backward Castes in UP, over the last several years there has been an intense three-way tussle between the BJP, the Bahujana Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party to capture their support. All three have had some success, but perhaps the larger part of this vote is a floating one that will flow with the main political current of the time. The last community to consider is the Muslims. In the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Masjid the Muslims have been politically leaderless. They have shunned Congress for what they see to have been its culpable failure to prevent the demolition of the mosque, and have given considerable support to Mulayam Singh's Samajwadi Party and some support to Kanshi Ram. Thus in the municipal elections of Uttar Pradesh in November 1995 and in the national and UP elections of 1996 it seems that UP Muslims were prepared to vote for whichever party was locally the strongest anti-BJP force. In short, the politics of post-Congress Uttar Pradesh are currently cast largely in terms of community vote banks. Political strategy is a matter of positioning one's party so as to retain one s core vote bank and also attract others at the margins. At least as much as any other player, Kanshi Ram has adapted to this game with calculating skill. Prev Next |


text: This topic is currently marked as "dormant"—the last message is more than 90 days old. You can revive it by posting a reply. 1wisewoman... because I think there's a big difference between 20 and 29. I've made a few guesses about you peeps and I'd like to know if I was right :-P I'm 24. 3philosojerkWhat an eeeevil question! What if I don't want people to know how close I am to being no-longer-qualified for this group? :( (I'm 28, btw) 4rainbowdarlingYou were a twenty-something when you joined so that has to count for something, right? 6StarGazer72I'm still 24 for exactly two months. Then I'll hit my quarter-century mark. Everyone's been telling me it's a hard birthday (I'm supposed to have my life figured out by now??), but it hasn't gotten to me yet. 18wisewomanI didn't have guesses for all of you because I haven't seen you all posting much, but I was very close with philosojerk (I knew you had to be older than me). And aznstarlette, littlebookworm, and weener, that's pretty close to where I placed you too. frogbelly, somehow I thought you were older. Just being nosy... :-) 20philosojerkI was very close with philosojerk (I knew you had to be older than me) !!! I'm not really sure how to take that, wisewoman! ;) 21frogbellyOh, no! I'm even sounding old now. I'm going to go ahead and assume it's because I sound so mature and knowledgeable - not because I sound crotchety. haha. 23aznstarlettewow i thought mid to late 20s was only considered old in my native land (the Philippine Islands). i told my aunt that i probably wouldn't get married and have kids for another ten years and she responds, "...but you're going to be an old maid then!" . . . don't you all know that 30 is the new 20? ;) 24poetontheoneI'm almost 19... but mentally I'm in my 20s or 30s so that has to count in some way. haha. 25wisewomanphilosojerk and frogbelly, my guesses as to your age were entirely complimentary, I assure you. Either that or I'm just feeling immature :-P 27LheaJLoveI'm 23... pretty eager to be 24, because this year has been the worst! What do you say guys? Did you think I was younger, older... or about 23? 28snoopy205I'm 27, and don't feel too much like an old man, though I've been in the university for almost 10 years (BA and PhD), and my hair has been going gray since I turned 20... 30jordan7hmI'm 24; a couple months away from 25. It's maybe a sign of age, or maybe mental incapacity, that I wasn't 100% on this, and had to make sure I wasn't still 23. It's not just women that don't want to get old. It's looking more and more like I won't be a millionaire by 27 and that bums me out a bit. Also bumming me out about the age thing is that everyone I know has suddenly become an adult, and I guess I have too. I'm pretty sure there's been a mistake somewhere, or that I'll wake up out of this dream and find I'm late for the bus to high school or something.. 31dreamlikecheeseI'm 23 now....and it's bumming me out a bit to think that I only have another 18 months before I'm too old to be nominated for the "Young Australian Of The Year" awards.....I'll have to do something soon! :) 35CurrLee33Hello! I just joined the group. I am 23 (24 in February) and I am a current MLIS grad. student. 42fyrefly98Yeesh, I'm 26, nearing 27, and all of the 22-ish folks griping about how old they are is making me feel ancient. :) 43rainbowdarlingIt's a bit of an odd concept, people my age thinking they're old. To me, old is, you know, 70. At that point, I think I can safely say "Gosh, I'm old" and not have people balk at me. Myself, I feel very young and I'm always afraid that folks will hold that against me as a result. 44The_Kat_CacheOh, I'm sure everyone here recognizes that they're not old. With any luck, all of us will survive 50 more years. At least for me, feeling old is a function of where I'm at in life. I had a few personal setbacks, so I'm not where I want to be and I feel I'm behind on certain milestones (getting married, working in my chosen career field or at least being in the final years of graduate school, maybe starting a family). Add to that that I'm taking classes with 19-20 year olds... it doesn't help the feeling that I'm out of place. 46StarGazer72It seems like we have a lot of February birthdays around here. :) I'm another February person, Valentine's Day, to be exact. When are all of yours? 49beschrich39> Hi Estelle - I'm a PhD student in the English Department at Indiana (my first year there). 55StarGazer72#54 - ;-P Look, now we're the same age, for about a month and a half. And since I didn't get to see you, Happy Belated Birthday. 58onetrooluff>51 BlondeBibliophile: 777Penny, I just turned 28 on the 23rd of December! :D Man... I was kind of expecting more people to be on the latter end of their 20s... or at least some kind of balanced number of people. *goes to sit with philosojerk and nmelcher, the only other 28-year-olds so far* 61saholc First MessageJust joined--I'm 27. Anyone else thought they'd lose that feeling that they are missing something by now? 64Allama> 61 I think I know what you mean, Scotty. It sounds like a train of thought my mind has followed, anyhow. Being an "adult" always sounded like it would bring some kind of sense of having finished something, perhaps as though passing some milestone would complete you, but once you get there it's just, well, a matured continuation of your earlier life. 66emmie-loulouSaid it in another post but will be 29 in march.........does that make me the oldest? AArrrrggggghhhh! Actually i feel quite privileged! Somebody has to be older than me surely? 67Evensong2911 First Messagei'm 22, but i go from feeling 8 to feeling 40. my guess is that comes with the time? 68Allama> 67 Yeah, I suppose it does. I'll be 22 as well soon, and on some days I feel like an old crone while others I feel like a naive child. 70HelloAnnieI'm Annie and I'm getting closer and closer to not being able to be in this group anymore! I'm 28 and turn 29 in July. I married young (at 20), so I've always felt older than my years. And no, we don't have any kids! :) 71nmelcherThat's me, philosojerk, onetrooluff, emmie-loulou, and blissfulwitch in the 28 Club. Hooray to the Cusp of Thirty! :) 75PandorasRequiem28. That means I get to sit at the "grown ups" table?? lol. Pass me some spiked punch and lets get this party started. 76pretend2fly First Messagei'm 20! i'll be 21 on july 21... pretty exciting =) i just joined the group today btw. 78AllamaI'm not sure what the "official" word from the group's creator is, but I would think not. An Honorary 20-something, you could be. :-) 83whitewavedarlingI just turned 27, but if I'm not in teacher-mode, I act more like the four year old that cat years would have me being--well, reversed. 85pretend2flyi agree... theres definatly a big difference between 20 and 29... i'm 20 and my boyfriend is 29... lol i joke that he's an old man. but i like it =) 88dancingstarfishhey come on people! 20 something is still young. Think about it.. at 50 you'll be what.. only half done with your life (barring random twists of fate)? we got a long way to go, we're all babies even if we feel ancient :) Anyway, thats what i keep telling myself cuz sometimes I feel old and i'm 23. haha 89StarGazer72My friend (who is a year younger than I am) makes fun of me every year for being "over the hill." She decided she would spare me this year, since I was hitting my quarter century mark. ;-D 91leahmarjorieI'm 22 and I discovered my first gray hair yesterday!?! NOOO!!!*gulps* There. Now I feel better. :-) 92punkypowerAfter this summer I'll have to move to the 30-something LT'ers. At least people tell me I still look like I'm in my teens. I feel like I'm in my teens. That's not always a good thing, though! :Þ 93dancingstarfish>leah, gray hair at 22? what kind of stressful life do you lead? lol, you need a regular spa day or something. 94ArmyAngel1986Leah, when I was 20 I was getting my hair done at a salon, and my friend (who is also my hair stylist), stopped what she was doing to pluck out my first gray hair! It just runs in some people's family I guess, because my parents both starting graying around 19, as did my grandparents and great-grandparents. 95wisewomanI've been discovering bright white strands on my head the past few months. Not too many, but they certainly stick out against brown hair. And I'm turning 25 in April... 96The_Kat_CacheEh, I've got y'all beat. I had my first gray hair at 14. At 26, I now have a somewhat obvious gray streak near my bangs. But I think it looks cool, so no complaints. 97leahmarjoriedancingstarfish, well, there aren't many apparent stresses in my life really, so I'm figuring either it's genetics or I'm a neurotic mess. ;-) Although either way a regular spa day sounds great, lol. Anyway, it's nice to see that this isn't so very uncommon. I'm still hoping it was just a random gray hair and that I don't see another for some time to come, but if not I'll deal with it. :-) 98whitewavedarlingI met my boyfriend when he was 26, and he already had little gray hairs in his goatee around the corners of his mouth--he doesn't like them so much, but I think they're adorable. Sometimes I wish I had a few--every semester I walk into the classroom, and it takes a good five minutes before the students believe I'm their teacher. (I'm told I can pass for 17 unless I'm trying to look older). 99wisewomanI'm the same, whitewavedarling. I was booksaling with a friend Saturday (she's 18), and we met a librarian at one of the sales who knows her from school. I think the librarian thought I was a fellow student, lol. 100LostMuse22 and no gray hairs (yet). Slowly going brunette though - was much more of a blonde as a teen. 102shootingstarr7100> I was also blonde as a child and through my teens. I started going brunette just before I turned 21, and have found that I prefer it to being blonde. Do you like the change, or do you wish you were still more blonde? 103LostMuse102> Hm, I liked being blonde actually. Not that there's anything wrong with brunette, I just am used to not being one (how's that for a weirdly phrased sentence). But I have long hair so the transition is not over yet. I refuse on principle to dye it. 104AllamaI grew up as a blonde, too, though it became slightly darker as I aged and was more of a dirty blonde by the time I was in junior high. It turned brown on me very quickly, right around my 20th birthday. I like it better this way, actually, and even dye it darker than it is naturally. 106LunatykI've just entered this 20-somethingness a few months back so I'll be here for the next 9 and a half years... 108emmie-loulou91> I thought i had found a few grays hairs, i'm 29, but then realised it was gloss paint that hadnt quite washed out properly....LOL! Plus i dye my hair so i wouldnt be able to tell if it was naturally going grey or not! Nothing wrong with a few grey streaks though :) 109parelle*waves* I've seen this group around (and some of the people in it) but haven't joined it before. I'm errrr... 24 and 2 months. Gosh, I feel old! 110GreySkyEyes21, almost 22. I'm actually sort of excited to not be 21 anymore, there are too many implications with the age :) 113dancingstarfishhaha I got carded today at a bar for the first time in a couple years. Made me feel good. Weird thing is, I'm at the point where I don't expect to be carded anymore so it took me a second to realize he had asked for my ID. must have looked odd! 115StarGazer72#111 - try being 25 and still getting asked if you're in high school!! No one ever thinks I'm as old as I am. Which might be a problem when I start teaching college freshman in the fall. ;-D 117ambushedbyasnail116 - Yeah, that's what I said to the lady who carded me. She said, "You're very young-looking, Maria," and I said, "I guess that'll be a good thing when I'm older." Meanwhile I'm wanting to wring her neck and yell, Do I look like I was born in fucking 1990? 124leahbirdI will be 26 in a few months. Funny enough, I remember thinking I was SOOOO old when I was 23 (I spent that whole birthday in bed being mopey), but somehow my 25th, the dreaded quarter century, revived me and now I don't feel old at all. Some days I wish I wasn't still getting carded for beer and cigs because I look too young, and other days I'm unhappy that I'm 25 and still don't have a "real, grown-up job," but mostly I'm just happy to be in my 20s and finding my path! YAY 20s! 125TimiHolla! Just joined the group. 25, will be 26 in October. I don't feel old, but my siblings keep saying things like, 'Timi! You're old'. It's possible they do that 'cos I remain an absolute brat (I take after my dad). Muah ha ha! 126RicechexI am 26... And it didn't bother me until I filled something out and had to check the age box that said: 26-34 34!!! No no! Not ready for the 30's!! I felt all cool and hip when I could still check that 18-25 box. I was still able to dream about how there was the chance people would think I was 18, 19, even 20. Now I'm just on the downhill slide toward 30... *Slams brakes as hard as she can* 127lettersonpages26 here. Unfortunately...I am 3 years older than my wife, and she is the oldest of her siblings. I'm 8.5 years older than her little brother! I find myself wondering if I was like that when I was 18! Punk kids :) 128wisewomanMy husband's four years older than me, and... *does the math*... 16 years older than my youngest sister. 129mountebankI'm brand new to LibraryThing (and this group!) but alas, I'm 28: "too early seen unknown, and known too late." I'll look forward to making the most of my short time here, then. :) 130ArmyAngel1986Ricechex, my brother is 4 years older than me. When I was 19, he took me to get my driver's license. While he was in the waiting area, two different people said this to him: "It's so sweet of you to bring your wife to get her license!" And: "It's so sweet of you to bring your daughter to get her license!" I think there's something about the 20s that lets people be whatever age they want to be! (or maybe some people are just clueless? lol) 131thatguyzero@ ArmyAngel1986: (or maybe some people are just clueless? lol) Growing up, people would occasionally ask my mother if my sister and I were identical twins. People are clueless (although it was sweet of him to bring his sister to get her license.) 132RicechexOh wow. Now I don't feel so bad. LOL. My brother and I occassionally get that, although he is 4 years younger than I am. We both have toddlers and if we go anywhere with them, people assume we are married. *Shrugs* We did have one person who asked if our kids were twins... My daughter is almost 2 and his son just turned 1. They are nowhere NEAR the same size, but people figure 2 young people plus 2 toddlers equals twins apparently. *Grabs a yellow piece of plastic* Here's your sign. CLUELESS! 133whitewavedarlingWhen I was eighteen I was at a pancake house with a friend my age (guy) and another friend (girl) two years younger. Nathan had just been at church so he was all dressed up, and when us girls went to the bathroom our waitress told him how sweet he was to bring his daughters out for a late snack of desert. He was upset. 134veevoxvoomWhenever my stepbrother, who's 21, goes out with my two other stepbrothers (ages 10 and 7), he often gets mistaken for their father. It's quite funny but it does upset him. Him: Do I really look like their father? Me: Of course not. Him: Reaallly? Me: Look at it this way. At least people think you are attractive enough to find someone willing to bear your children. 135Allama> 134 That's a good way to defuse the situation! I'm going to have to remember that. My brother and I have the problem of people assuming we're a couple when we go out in public, too. He's only 2 years younger than I am and he looks VERY much like me so we always thought everyone could see that we were siblings... up until the fateful day when first we were told how cute we are together. *washes eyes with bleach* 136kiri_wren27 (birthday is Feb 3) but I don't feel old! (even with the occasional gray hair I find) Life is just getting started and at the height of fun for us latter-20-somethings! I must admit it is sometimes weird to see so many of my peers getting married and having kids 'already', though 137tyroeternal>134 veevoxvoom: I have a similar issue to that too. I'm 22 and my soon-to-be step son is nearly 10. Most people seem to assume that I am much older than I actually am. I am waiting for someone to accidentally assume that we are brothers, but I guess my ordering him around gives it away. :P 138sonyagreenI did a quick find for 29, and I think I may be in the running for oldest (it all depends on emmie-loulou). I'm going to be 30 in February. My hubs is going to turn 30 this weekend, so we're celebrating by going to an All Tomorrows Parties! Yeaaaaah - screw you 30! We still drink and say fuck! Also, I need to buy him a soldering iron - any ideas where I can get one that is less crappy than the one I bought him at Radio Shack for $8 and doesn't work for crap? Also, is it a bad idea to give someone an upgrade gift? Leave a comment on my profile, so we don't muddy the age thread. 139kiwiflowaI'm new to this group. I'm 23 and will be 24 in December. I've noticed that from 22 onwards the 'memorable' age's have gone. Until then if someone asked me my age I knew instantly in a flash because each number was a milestone... now I've slipped in the 22+ where they seem to morph into eachother and no one really cares - 23/24 whats the difference? lol. 140frogbellyI've already posted here, but I will be 28 in about three weeks. I don't mind being almost thirty except that I'm starting to feel that pressure from the family to settle down and procreate. I read something somewhere about how single women are venerated in other parts of the world, particularly Catholic communitities where virginity is so prized and in more matriarchal societies, but in the American South, we just die on the vine. ha 143beatlemoonHello all! Just joined this group a few days ago. I'm another 'older' twenty-something; 27 turning 28 in a few months. I feel like I'm closer to 67, though, and not because of the gray streak in my hair, which I'm actually quite fond of. :-/ 150beautifulmuseHi all *waves* I've been in this group for a while but haven't posted yet, I'm 24. People often think I'm younger, which can get annoying. When I was 20 or 21 I got carded for a rated-R movie! Thankfully that never happened again, so maybe I've finally started to look my age =) 151leahbird>>150 beautifulmuse: beautifulmuse, don't feel bad it happens to me too. when i was standing in line to vote the other day the older lady behind me asked if this was the first election i was voting in. I had to tell her no, that it was in fact my 3rd election and that i was 2 days shy of turning 26! alas, it gets tiresome. but one day i will appreciate it. 156haidiwNobody knows me here because I've only just joined, but I had my 23rd birthday two weeks ago, and I still think I'm 22. 157DevourerOfBooks>156 haidiw:, Don't feel bad, my birthday was over a month ago, and I keep forgetting that I'm 26 now. Actually, it seems that for the last few years, whenever someone has asked my age I've had to stop and think about it. 163dancingstarfishI always forget I'm 24. Its weird, I feel like I'll be 22 forever, thats the age that seems to stick with me. People ask.. how old are you? and I have to think for a moment. I guess I look like a dumbass, but the past couple years passed so quickly its hard to believe. 164kaitlynmeans24 as of last month, new to the group, and keep accidentally telling people I'm 23 (but secretly wishing I were still 22). Nice to know that's a common problem! 165readerbabe1984I'm 24 and about to graduate from college. I definately needed the extra few years in school to do some serious growing up. Even though I've matured considerably I don't exactly feel like an adult. It doesn't help that I'm extremely short and get mistaken for a teenager constantly. Is anyone else having trouble comming to grips with the adult thing? 167emmie-loulou>138 sonyagreen: Sonyagreen beats me i'm afraid as I am not 30 til March (a whole month afterwards!!) LOL...... Goodness, the BIG 30! Oh well, there's no stopping it. At least when I get to 30 I wont have to worry about it anymore, I can occupy my time worrying about other things......Like reaching 40!!!! Hehehe. xx 168elliepottenI'm 21, forced to leave uni thanks to illness and still beating it back in my attempt to get back to 'normality'. On the plus side, I have the time to read loads... Plenty of years left with you guys yet, mwahahaha. 172TheOnlyMebecause I'm now reading the posts... #11- I still swear I'm 15 most days. Best year of my life so why the heck wouldn't I want to keep reliving it? #165- you mean its NOT normal to still be in school at that age? I'm screwed LoL I am SO not an adult and my mother is perfectly willing to let me still be a kid (most of the time) perfect example, living at home rent free. #150 and 151 - I'm in the same boat! I'm 5 foot with a baby face. If I don't puff my chest out and wear a push up bra (on top of what nature gave me thank you!) I can eat off the kiddie menu! Apparently it is now NORMAL for 12 yr olds to have boobs. I find this disturbing. The odd thing is, at 11 and 12, my parents had to PROVE my age to eat off the kids menu, now I have to PROVE my age not to be offered the kids menu. *hides* #143 - can you convince my 57 yr old mother that its ok to be a little grey? She has lovely silvery grey hair and yet, she goes platnium blonde and swears its natural. #132 - My brother is umm.. gee, he just turned 29! I had to think about that, but anyhoo, people always think we're an item when, well, we look more like fraternal twins. It's pretty disturbing. I guess its because he gives me rides places since parking is a nightmare at school and work and public transpo is the pits. I just find it disturbing. We were out eating once during a summer festival and a local photographer wanted to take our pic... asked us TO KISS! and he's like... jeez man, she's my sister! The look of utter revolt on both of our faces was beyond amusing... and surprisingly, when I'm with cousins that I look NOTHING like and we are... I guess some would say affectionate - hugs when departing and since I'm not a native NYer, they'll often grab my hand to pull me through a crowd - NO ONE has EVER thought we could be an item... I attribute it to the fact that I'm short and chubby and all three of my cousins are tall and gorgeous and I wish I weren't related to them LoL Yes, I can talk... I've learned to accept it, you should too. ^_^ 173elliepotten>172 TheOnlyMe: - Sometimes I voluntarily eat off the kiddy menu - I always looked a bit young for my age but if the restaurant doesn't question it, the kiddy menu is always full of comfort food, less money for a really filling meal, and you can get away with ice cream with Smarties on it - what's not to love?! And sometimes *whispers trade secret* you get a wordsearch to do in that boring bit when you're really hungry and every table's meal but yours is coming spilling out of the kitchen... I guess I can talk too! 174DevourerOfBooks>173 elliepotten: in that boring bit when you're really hungry and every table's meal but yours is coming spilling out of the kitchen... That's the time books were made for! 175TheOnlyMe#173 - I've learned to appreciate it more recently I suppose. I sometimes just ask for the kiddie menu at Friendly's since the portions are better for me and they all know me LoL Plus, its a placemat and comes with crayons for coloring. #174 - I am not fortune enough to always be able to carry a book and sometimes, when you're with friends, its more fun to compare amusing pictures (especially in the self portrait section of the Friendly's kid's menu) than sit and be all anti social while in a social setting LoL #173 again - Talking is good! 176Ambrosia4I'm 22 as well, the challenge threads dominate my talk listings, so I didn't even see this thread until now! 178elliepotten>174 DevourerOfBooks:/5 - Talking is definitely preferable in social gatherings - but at least with kiddy puzzles you can quietly and unobtrusively do them in those little intervals when talk drifts off into your mum's week at work or something - you know, those moments when the 'grown ups' start talking boring stuff... Plus, to my horror, I realised recently that my ability to read determinedly in loud and distracting places is waning, nooooooooo! 179laurenlynnedI know this topic is almost a month old, but I figured I'd post anyway...I'm 20, I'll be 21 at the end of April. 183waterLILY808My birthday was yesterday, and the night before I turn to my husband and say "wow tomorrow I'll be 24!....no wait, that's not right, I'll be 22.......noooo I'm 22 right now so I'm turning 23 *wails* what's wrong with me?!?" I'm glad to see that it's a common issue among 20-somethings. 184miamismartgirl09Happy Belated birthday waterLILY808! I just turned 22 on the 21st of February and I have to agree with many of the postings here. I don't feel any older, like I did when I turned 21 (b/c I could drink in the bars now). 185ut.tecum.loquererI'm 23 now and about to graduate with my masters--which is terrifying cuz now I'll have to get a job and be an adult! Eek! 186BBGirl55curently 25... 26 in 6 weeks and 5 days! #185 - I graduated at 23 I'm still not grown-up! 188BooGirlI am 21 and currently i have a huge urge for scare the sh*t out of you stories...I don't know what brought it on but after numerous reccomendations I am reading Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. If you have any reccomendations send me a comment! I'm looking for the most scary, can't sleep with the light off book I can find! 189ambushedbyasnail#188: Okay, I've got two. First, kind of pathetic. I had this book called Chillers for Christmas. It's a short story collection and there was one in it called "The Uninvited." Used to keep me up for days. Second, Wait Till Helen Comes. Children's book, but still absolutely terrifying. I read it all the time when I want to get myself good and freaked out. 193nykolaibasketI saw this group and had to join before it was too late! I turn 30 (blech) in June. I feel like I'm 18 though! When I was 25 I got asked at the local supermarket, if my daughter had worked there (in the past). I'm thinking "I don't have kids, and if I did it would be highly unlikely that I gave birth at age 9!" Also last year, when I was 29 I was shopping for a dress to wear in a wedding. The clerk (who had to be within a few years of my age) asked if I was the mother of the bride or the groom! I nearly cried... But some of the teens that come to my teen programs at the library where I work think I'm like 23.....which is awesome! 195Ricechex@193 - I love how people never seem to be able to guess ages. I've had people tell me off while I'm working (I work at a gas/mechanic's station) for not being in school (because they thought I was 16 or 17 - I'm 27). I've also had people ask me what grades my 'other kids' are in, and what school, etc (I have one child - she's 2 & 1/2, and is definitely not in school). When I tell them I don't have any other kids, they ask, "Why did you have this one so late?" To which I usually respond, "I wasn't aware that having a child at 24 is now considered late." They usually blush and mumble something about having to go. *sighs* Gotta love it. 199muttix3I'll be 26 in a couple weeks. I'm freaking out over it. I don't know why and I've only felt so after I turned 25 but for some reason, 26 is a big birthday for me. I feel like at 26 I should be this adult that I don't feel I reflect in all areas of my life. I'm still working at a "job" instead of having a "career", etc. 200wisewomanI'm 26 today, happy birthday me! :) I know what you mean, muttix. 26 is no longer mid-twenties. It's creeping up on late twenties... 201l-mo#200 I turned 26 2.5 weeks ago and I feel like I'm on the fast track to 30. It was much nicer being 25. 203ElizabethPotterIt occurred to me...all these age groups have ages and not years attached to them. In a few years those who created this group will be too old for it. It will be taken over by those who are definitely teenagers right now... 208paixeWoot 22. Yep. I like it because it's made out of 2 2s. And 2 is my favorite number. Does anyone else have favorite numbers? 209divinenanny25, halfway point for me. Or, third of the way I hope. And according to my partner, I am only a quarter of the way done. Oy. 210rcgamergirlI'm 24, and will be starting grad school this fall. Almost everyone I've seen from my high school class is married and has children. I find it kind of frightening. 211ambushedbyasnail#210 - Are we the same person? Actually no, my old classmates don't all have kids yet... there was the first string of marriages after high school, and now we're hitting the second string, post-college. Anyway, I think my main point is, hells yeah being 24 and starting grad school! (I'd say "rock on" but I think that'd be over the top.) 212honeydew69862004I just turned 23 and i've got a 4yr old and a new baby on the way. so i'm looking for some way to relax and keep in touch with the world when i go onto maternity leave in a couple of months. i'm hoping that this site will help me keep reading since i've gotten too lazy with it. 213rcgamergirl#211 Glad I'm not alone ^_^ I'm sure it's a similar situation for my class; I've only seen a few of my old classmates and only those that stayed near home. 215Lilly14182I'm glad to see I'm not the only one feeling old at 27! I, too, get mistaken for 18...which is fantastic when beginning a new school year when the students don't believe I'm their teacher. I like to think it's because I'm still young at heart! 216meags222Lilly- I just turned 27 and this was the first birthday where I felt a little old. I'm definitely closer to 30 than I am to 20. That being said, I still get ID'd to buy scratch tickets and in Canada you only have to be 18 to get them. HaHA funny thing, I'm a teacher too. I have this piercing in my ear and the students always want to know about it. Different generation of teachers I guess, the older ones don't tend to have many piercings. 219SuperfoxHey everyone, I've just joined LibraryThing and it's awesome to see so many bibliophiles around my age! =) Though I'm still only 20 so, is it okay for me to be here..? =P 220jessuncwI'm new to LibraryThing and am excited to find this group! I just turned 26, which I'm not sure how I feel about since I'm now closer to 30 than 20 :) 221divinenannyI just turned 26 myself... It's all downhill from here I am sure! I mean, 26 is 30 rounded up. And when you thirty, I mean, thirty-five is not a very long way away. 35 is almost 40.... 222SlySionnachI just joined the group, as I've come back to LT after a forced break (aka college thesis time). I'm 22 and a half. Almost 23. 224ambushedbyasnailNOOOOO I can't remember how old I am! Anyway, it's my half-birthday! I think I'm 24 and a half. But it could be 23. Definitely not 25 yet, I know that much. As you can see, the dementia's setting in early. 225divinenanny#224, call it Part-timers. That's when you remember some, but not all, of what you were meant to say or do ;) 233Ape232: I know how you feel! At the family Christmas dinner this year, there was a cousin there I hadn't seen since she was in diapers. She's a teenager now, and I said "Look how big you are, I haven't seen you since you were ~this~ little!" ... I remember when I was a kid and hearing that from all the "old people" at all the family reunions. Oh no, I've become one of the "old people!" =P 234Tallulah_RoseI'm newby here and still 20, so on the very edge of the group, but will be 21 in 4 weeks time. 235miamismartgirl09I'll be 23 in...exactly 21 days. But the other day, for a bit, I thought I was going to be 24. I couldn't remember my own age for a sec! TODAY'S MY BIRTHDAY! 238Tallulah_Rose#236 asukamaxwell Turned 21 3 days ago, getting old, too ;) (Seems we have the same birthdate) So from me a happy belated birthday as well! 242pokarekareanaThis thread has just made me realise that I was two-fifths of the way through my twenties three weeks ago. I think I had my argh-I'm-old! crisis at 21, and still maintain that 22, 23 and 24 don't feel as old as 21 does. I imagine 25 will be different, but I've still got over eleven months to worry about that. 243Sutpen21 was different because, speaking as an American, drinking isn't fun in the same way anymore. When you're under 21, it's always a little tough to get alcohol, and sort of thrilling to get drunk at parties. Yeah, if you drink for...say...5 years years before you turn 21, it's not going to feel as transgressive a few years after you start, but I did always get a little thrill from it. Now that I'm 23, I feel like I shouldn't be drinking at all anymore, haha. 244pokarekareana>243 Sutpen: - Aww, we become legal at 18, so the main challenge for underage Brits is trying to convince your parents that you're sober and that you've only been to the cinema. Yes, cinemas where everything stinks of smoke and you slur your speech.. jusht a little bit. 245QuiteTheHumanYeah, it's 19 here...in Canada...well, in my province anyhow. Some are 18. I think the only year I was really a drinker was the year before I turned legal...but I think the fact that I'd started Uni and moved away from home had something to do with it too. Also. I'm 26. 246ambushedbyasnail245 - You just reminded me of my teen years... I live six minutes from the Quebec border, and since their drinking age is 18, and ours is 21, people used to go up there to drink. They called it "going camping." I never went, but now, every time I hear someone talk about camping - like, legitimate tents and trail mix - all I can think is "Oh, you're going to Canada to get drunk?" 247QuiteTheHumanGlad to assist in nostalgia. People here (BC) used to head for Alberta when they were 18 to "camp" in the same way. Apparently that one year just wasn't worth the wait. 248VivalaErinI am 24; be 25 in October and still in school. But at least I'm acquiring multiple degrees 249pokarekareanabibliolee8 - I'm in the same boat as you, although I'm younger by four months. I shall hopefully have acquired enough degrees by January to have multiples before I'm 25. Ooh err, missus. (I didn't realise how bad that sounded until I'd written it, honestly.) 250corneggsI'll be 22 in two months. For people in the latter half (I really don't know how else to put it), which part of your 20's did you prefer? 255pokarekareanaYou know the worst thing? I was 21 when this thread was started, and I'm now 24. The original poster, who was 24 at the time, is now about 27. You know what that means? Yeah, I'll be 27 one day too. 256sfriceI'm a 24 year old bibliophile with a couple of grey hairs. Thats a scary thing in my opinion. 257girlfromshangrilaYou think that's scary? I'm on my way to 27 and already have grandchildren!! Seriously. My cat had a litter of kittens a couple of weeks ago. Triplets, no less. By the time I'm 30, my grandchildren will already have grandchildren. {{shudders}} 263girlfromshangrila262: Please, stop! I can't think of anything else just now: I turned 26 yesterday. *sigh* It's official. As of today, I stopped having birthdays. I declare myself unsubmissive to the inexorable passing of the years and will remain 26 'til I die! 266katie4098I'm 24. I've been dreading birthdays since I was 21. I have a little bit of Peter Pan in me... 268girlfromshangrilaHeck, they started being exciting after 18! Although, in my country, you become 'legal' at 18, so that might explain the three-year difference. Anyway, the point is moot since, like pokarekareana's grandmother, none of us will ever turn 30. 275Ricechexsarah-e: I keep saying I'm 27, despite having been 28 for 5 months. My brain refuses to acknowledge it, I think. ^_^ 276DanielClausenWow, what a question...I'm in denial at 28. I told my girlfriend one time that from this year onward, I'll start to go backward...which would make me 19 at heart. Other aspects of my personality have turned into a crabby old man. I've always hated pop music, but now I think that pop music is proof that the younger generation is entirely inferior to ours. I find myself shaking my hand vengefully at younger people. 277sarah-e>Ricechex - I've never had a firm grasp on my own age, or if I've already had my birthday for the year. I keep telling people 27 is the oldest I've ever been and I don't get so much as a pity laugh. >Daniel - Your comment makes me think I wouldn't be included in your "younger people." I remember overhearing the comment "You're so young you think 30 is old" and marking the moment when I stopped feeling young :) 278DanielClausenI just feel weird having a generation younger than me so different that I can actually ridicule them. I never thought I would be the one shaking my fist at the youngsters. 281corneggsDanielClausen: Not only a generation younger but a few years younger makes a lot of difference! No offence to anyone who likes JB, the first time I went into my 18-year-old roommate's room and I saw that she had a Justin Bieber poster hanging on her wall, I thought, "Age gap completed." 283VivalaErin281 and 282> I've already gotten to the point where my satellite radio stays on the 80s and 90s channels. This new music that my 18 year old students listen to is terrible! 284girlfromshangrila# 283: My thoughts exactly! Younger friends have given me this nickname: 90's girl. It feels so weird to me that the music I thought absolutely cool and groundbreaking is at least 10 years old now. Every time I realize this, I feel a little older. :-( 286iatethecloudsforyou22 with a 1 year old. curious about other young people who are bibliophiles. contact me if you have similar literary interests or for any other reason 292jbfideidefensorI am currently 23, and - like Madcow299 was when he joined - an MDiv student, though at a different seminary. 293Sara.FralingerI am newly 23. It's my lucky number so I'm looking forward to it. I think it's pretty neat that so many of us have joined a site like this. It makes me happy to know so many of my peers are still book readers! 295Rosa_SaksI'm 27, turning 28 in October. Guess I'll have to switch group in a couple of years ;-) 301heidioI will be 28 on the 28th of Aug. I guess it is good I joined this book group because I will get kicked out in 2 years. 305Kira.BurgoyneHi, there! I'm new to to the group (nice to meet you all), and I will be 24 in exactly 10 days. :) And now I feel old. Not sure why that makes me feel old. *shrugs* Join to post | Group: 20-Something LibraryThingers573 members 1,462 messages You must be a member of this group to post. AboutThis topic is not marked as primarily about any work, author or other topic. Touchstones |


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Victor�s six elected town officials were sworn in at a ceremony on Tuesday, Dec. 31. The event, which took place at Town Hall, was officiated by Victor Town Justice Reid Holter.
Sworn in for his third term as supervisor was Republican John Marren Jr., who was first elected in 2008 to complete the term of former supervisor Leslie Bamann. He won elections again in 2009, 2011 and 2013. Marren, who faced off against Democrat John Accorso in 2011, ran unopposed this year.
In the 2015 election, the candidate who wins the supervisor seat will serve a four-year term, thanks to a referendum passed in 2013 to extend the supervisor�s term of office from two to four years.
Republican Town Clerk Debra Denz also ran unopposed for her position, and was sworn in to serve in the role she has held since January 2000. Denz is a member of the New York State Town Clerks Association.
Republican newcomers Carl Herke and Dan Crowley replaced Jack Dianetti and Jeff Cody on the Town Board. Dianetti and Cody, both Republicans, did not seek reelection.
Highway Superintendent Mark Years, also a Republican, launched his first full term. Years was appointed to the position in January 2013 to fill out the term of his predecessor, Troy Paige, who was named Ontario County highway superintendent.
The ceremony was followed by light refreshments, and then an informal gathering at Mickey Finn�s�restaurant in Victor.
Victor swears in all-Republican team
Jan 3, 2014 at 11:50 AM