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At the beginning… Inception, Genesis and the End of Time: Film History at its Best.
*Spoiler alert: according to your level of intelligence, this blog post may or may not give away the ending. Then again, if you've ever seen a Christopher Nolan film and know a little bit of film history, you have nothing to fear. Fredric Jameson's notion of pastiche is at work here and there is no way you won't guess what's coming. If you don't have a film education, maybe you will get one from reading this blog. Perhaps you can also benefit from Nolan's layers of dream… I choose to think of them as layers of homage or intelligent plagiarism; you choose which is the misnomer*
Where does one even start talking about a film titled Inception? The connections to beginnings are endless: from Ellen Page's Juno and her troubled portrayal of the creation of a life to Joseph Gordon Levitt's Tom, who fails to launch of an (in-plot) epic love story in (500 days of) Summer, Inception bursts with associations to foundation and origin. Oh, and it does so in its storyline too. Ok, since you insist in discussing the intra-plot intricacies, why not say what this film is really about: endings, or the difficulty of success when attempting to achieve them. Nolan is a crafty, young filmmaker. The end of his career is nowhere in sight. However, his opening sequence is dreadfully prophetic in showing a wrinkled Ken Watanabe remembering 'better' times. Time is at the crux of Nolan's film: whether the one that has elapsed, or the one that will. Of particular interest is the present time, the 2 ½ hours that transpire as our eyes remain affixed to the screen watching a curious broken time/space continuum that unfolds in front of us linearly in life but not so on screen, and that may make the weak hearted question if it really does… or even what world we are living in. This "Matrix effect" is achieved in a not-so-similarly racially charged manner. Far from the progressive black savior who enlightens Neo (beginning again!) into the path of truth, Nolan's film regresses to post WWII notions of the "yellow peril".
In Inception, Saito (played by Ken Watanabe) is evil, manipulative and extortive, a real exponent of the 'Nippon terror' that flooded the US in the 1940's. This villain makes our beautifully white-faced hero enter a dangerous ring of corruption, and for his own attempt to plant an idea in Cobb's head or claim supremacy over a member of the land of the free, he must be punished with death. We have seen this story before… many many years ago.
Is Saito (Ken Watanabe's character) a Japoteur?
And not just once, as his ailment translates to each and every single layer of the "dream".
In addition to race, this film also scores points in the gender arena. Nolan may have learned the teachings of David Mamet, who in the film The Spanish Prisoner educates audiences of the devilish quality of the female gender.
The film's tag line: "Can you really trust anyone?"
The answer is no, especially if she is a woman. Remember the "Femme Fatales" of film noir?
Like Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon's character in The Spanish Prisoner), Marion Cotillard's Mal is as evil as Brigitte Helm's Hel/Robot in Metropolis. With a short name that in a different language can be associated with evil, the two latter women exemplify the evil that Ricci artfully conceals. Can you trust anyone?, Mamet asks. Dom Cobb and his subconscious representations of Mal prove that old noir adage that women are dangerous even in dreams. But luckily for us females, films and dreams are not real. The pervasive patriarchal structure of the allegedly "real world" unfortunately is. Will we ever wake up from it? Let's spin a dreidel, shall we?
The totem dreidel in Inception
Centuries ago, philosophers wondered about the dreamlike quality of life. Calderon de la Barca and Descartes explored this notion in print, sparking endless pages of discussion. Many Earth rotations later, the so-called "Dream Factory" continues to do so, in updated ways. David Mamet circa 1987 in House of Games, and David Fincher after him in (the almost remake) 1997 The Game have posited that maybe life is some sort of entertaining ludic fantasy.
David Fincher and his notion of a game.
The structure of the unsettling final plot point has been explored ad nauseam by directors throughout the history of film. As a new chapter is being penned, Christopher Nolan's name seems to appear written in indelible ink, and rightfully so. His intervention provides a crack at the age-old question but presents it in a novel way hence ensuring his page will not be ripped out of the Film 101 manual. In the long list of quotes on his IMBD page, he tells the world that "The term 'genre' eventually becomes pejorative because you're referring to something that's so codified and ritualized that it ceases to have the power and meaning it had when it first started. What I'm trying to do is to create modern equivalents that speak to me of those tropes that have more of the original power." But indeed he is not the first who has tried to repackage film noir, though he may be one of the few that have succeeded. Looking at the bare bones of Nolan's film and the predicament it poses, Inception is a long-treaded story with a shiny exterior, an absolutely brilliant execution of a clichéd desire to travel through time and beat death. Ending at the beginning, life is a circle. Sometimes, it can also be a dream.
Marion Cotillard. Enough said.
As a mere audience member (and perhaps a little bit of film academic mixed in to bring out flavor), I can only wish that while the credits of my life roll against the background of a black screen, Edith Piaf's voice reminds me of Marion Cotillard's overall fabulousness. And maybe of a mysteriously abandoned Dior handbag.
Seen above is one of the four episodes created for a Dior campaign (one of which was directed by Olivier Dahan in a noir style, also responsible for "La Vie En Rose"). Shanghai, intrigue, a rarified atmosphere and lots of blue seem to line up perfectly with David Lynch, director of the short embedded here.
Michael, Michael, Michael… why the male privilege?
Oh, Michael. It's not that your name has a legacy of royalty. Nope, not that. It's not that you are the cutest big band singer, and quite possibly the hottest crooner to ever walk this Earth (ok, except for Jakob Dylan, but I digress). It's not even that you are dating an Argentine actress and model who is 12 years your junior. I love your voice, I love your songs, you're easy on the eyes… you really have it all. But that video… oh, Michael, that video. It just, let's say, enrages me. Let me backtrack and explain a little more thoroughly what I am talking about here.
Crazy Love, Michael Buble's new album, hit the stores in October 2009. Finally aware of the release of a much anticipated record, I awaited his soft voice in tunes that had earlier been graced by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Brook Benton, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison and others. Between his caressing of notes with his vocal chords and his charming looks, this man is a feast for the senses. Therein lies the pleasure of the modern art of the music video. So far so good, and his track record made me believe that I was safe clicking on the new audiovisual Youtube link. Previously, I had always loved his videos. The video for "Home" showcased his girlfriend at the time in a story of how much he misses her, and the one for "Everything" was absolutely adorable. However, the one for my favorite track of the new album, "Haven't met you yet", not so much.
The video takes place at a grocery store, or as highlighted by the sign above the door, a market. This already gives us a hint of what the video will be about: Michael shopping for something, in this case, a woman. The analogy of groceries/commodities/you name it with a human being, especially of the female denomination provides, at the outset, the sense that something problematic is about to take place. The opening sequence, right after the establishing shot, shows a succession of: bananas, hands, cream puffs, yogurt and melons. Ok, call me dirty, but it is really not too hard to see the sexual implications of all this. To add insult to injury, as Michael's soft voice lulls us with the lyrics "I'm not surprised, not everything lasts", Michael shops in the frozen foods section, and later his video features a store clerk pricing canned goods. As his 22 year-old girlfriend enters the frame, also grabbing something from the freezer, the chilling message I take away from these images has to do with preserving looks, avoiding ageing and being frozen in time. All that matters in this market is to have the most appealing packaging, to be appealing. As the butcher wields his knife, we are introduced to the idea that this store really is a meat market.
While Michael waltzes down one of the aisles with a giant phallus, and other men blow on theirs (trumpets and other miscellaneous instruments), we are reminded of who really reigns supreme in this diegetic world. As the store patrons dance unprompted, confetti and all, the heteronormative patriarchy crucial to musicals of the 1950's resurfaces in this modern context, one in which the male lead can sing big band music wearing sneakers. This patriarch, one that stands in all his Canadian whiteness, has conquered the Latin American woman, the locus of exoticism that has no other purpose in life than to turn herself over to the colonial power. Even the end of the video cannot alleviate this strong message. When Michael 'wakes up' from his musical reverie, he sees his dream woman entering the store. Firstly, the ability to conjure up the female he has imagined places him at a prime position as a creator, or somebody who, much like Scottie in Vertigo, can 'make' a woman exactly how he wants her. Secondly, her lack of agency throughout the whole video (he is the one speaking and singing, and she is not able to even mimic the sound of a word) also plays into this male dominated diegesis. And finally, her entrance into the store suggests that the place of the market, in which the female is a commodity, is simply inescapable.
What Buble's video tells us, whether we like it or not, is that male privilege, money and fame can buy everything, maybe even a young, sought after female actress and model. I wish he would remember that Beatles cover he reprised in his 2005 album It's Time. As much as you want to believe the contrary, the old adage still holds true: money CAN'T buy you love.
The Parts to the Whole: Community and Dismemberment in Seven Pounds
Centuries ago, Jean-Jacques Rousseau envisioned a world in which men could coexist happily and flourish through communitarianism. So did Karl Marx. And so did Tim Thomas, the protagonist of Gabriele Muccino's Seven pounds, whose concept of sharing did not involve democratic forums a la Rousseau or a denouncement of the atomizing effects of capitalism a la Marx. Tim's notion seems born out of a "one with the Universe structure" in which life ends but begins through the dismembering of his body that will endure in the physicality of others. His heart goes to Emily, a kind and open young woman born with a congenital failure, and his eyes go to Ezra, a blind and slow to anger gifted pianist. Other than a woman who is the recipient of Tim's worldly possessions, the other beneficiaries remain more obscure that the aforementioned characters. In this way, Tim's self and body become ubiquitous, occupying different spaces at the same time and able to defeat death by providing a fuller life to those who ail. Through these unusual actions, Tim's vision is one that liberates the body from its prison, an ideal that allows humans to flourish through dispersion in a great time where the technologies that span the globe have managed to make the planet more interconnected.
Many would object to the technological era that has enveloped the present, claiming that its advances have alienated humankind by allowing an illusion of self-sufficiency thwart face-to-face interaction. However, Muccino circumvents this issue allowing us to understand that technology has facilitated that connection: Tim speaks to Ezra on the phone, and conveys to Emily that she is the recipient of a new heart through a pager. Technological mediation either becomes a lifeline or the passage to a fuller life. However, this technology means nothing without the human component. Doctors cannot "fix" an unfit or incomplete body: the heart and the eyes that Tim provides are the real salvation. The interesting complication of this film resides in the character who receives Tim's possessions. While health ailments follow the aforementioned model, human created problems such as a broken family (due to an abusive partner) are not mediated by technology but by heartfelt handwritten words and the gifting of material items. It would seem like this film is advocating for a return to those Rousseaunian values of community, or perhaps even a normative desire to believe in said philosopher's state of nature. While technology and progress mediates nature's faults, human conflict must be resolved through the traditional moral values of generosity and material detachment.
Believing in rescuing the old values in addition to his defense of technology, the director also advocates for an intelligent use of both. After all, Tim is the one who fixes Emily's vintage press that others were unable to repair, while also "fixing" Emily, Ezra and others with his dismemberment and detachment. He is the vehicle of Rousseau's communitarian values as much as he is the one character that finally understands (after his partner's death) what it really means to strike a balance between human relations and an intelligent use of modern technology.
By donating 7 pounds of flesh, Tim can right a wrong, or so the director believes. The protagonist's life is redeemed in this second chance: donating his organs and possessions gives him a different yet newfound life, a ubiquity that his dispersed self (body and possessions) weaves into a web. The interwoven humanity, best personified in that hug between Emily and Ezra in the last frame of the film, defends the Internet culture in which each hub connects to another and closes the distance across the world. The important thing to remember is that, despite threats like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, computers and any other technological advances are created and operated by human beings and without people loving, caring for themselves and others, and forming communitarian networks humans are unable to see and feel, to live a rich, long and full life.
Even though some lives may be cut short, such as Tim's wife's (who dies in a car accident he causes) the protagonist chooses to stage his death at the hands of nature: electrocution with a jellyfish. Once out his body, his organs will have a new beginning not fraught with thoughts of guilt or pain, but a Benthamian perspective of making the maximum number of people happy at the expense of the fewest, or in this case simply compensation with one pound of flesh for each death that he has caused. Muccino tells us clearly that, when used in the right way, the eyes and heart can and should be tools for good, aided by both technology and nature. This balance is imperative to achieving human flourishing.
Though Seven Pounds is not a great film, it is one that helps to gain perspective on our historical moment, of a world in which technology and its threats have been used both for progress and destruction, a planet where fear and war have atomized the world into distrustful nations, these nations into populations and populations into individuals. If every life lost upon the misuse of technology were to be compensated, no scale would be able to bear the weight. Seven Pounds provides a small-magnitude example of how this world can become an ideal place, just like Rousseau planned centuries ago. The scale that weighs those pounds of flesh seems to bear a resemblance to that being held by the blind, stoic trademark statue of justice. Perhaps what this film proposes, and what is in order in today's reality, is stepping on that scale to see what kind of a balance we have created.
Oh '08!
I refute the claim that 2008 was bad. Sure, there wasn't the stunning pair of There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men, but there were some fine films – a lot of them much smaller on the release scale. My short list follows, with even shorter commentary. If I could summarize what I love about all these films, it would be the directors. I admire them for the strong and difficult choices they made, often resulting in opposing moods and tones that I've never seen sutured together so beautifully.
- Teeth – Pitch perfect in tone, this movie was smart, steadily directed (especially for a first feature), and downright hilarious.
- Waltz with Bashir – One of the most stunning explorations of memory and forgetting ever to play upon the screen. A perfect union of content and style.
- Synecdoche, New York – The simple fact that Kaufman can always blow my mind puts him up here. I'll be coming back to this movie for a long time because it bent my brain in a way that only Lynch's 'Mulholland Dr' ever has.
- Mister Lonely – Almost like a beautiful collection of short stories, every scene in this movie stood alone as a tiny film. Gorgeously shot and flawlessly cast.
- In Bruges – A film that turned out to be far deeper than it's advertisements led on, I was hugely impressed by the film's flips between the darkly comic and the religiously existential.
- The Dark Knight – It's like Nolan made an action movie out of Soren Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling". I've been quietly suposing that the man might be the reincarnation of Hitchcock, and now I'm just gonna come out and say it. (Plus, Ledger is bat-shit crazy).
- Up the Yangtze – Another documentary snuck its way in here, but well deserved. A heart breaking and quiet observation of a singular incidence of suffering in the massive devastation that is the Three Gorges Damn Project.
- The Wrestler – Aronofsky said that in his previous films he, "used the camera like a paintbrush. Here, I tried to use it more like a camera". Aside from Rorke's fantastic performance, I appreciate Aronofsky for boldly trying new things, new styles, and new formats (super 16!). Many directors are too chicken shit to stray from the style that made them famous, so props to Darren for mixing it up.
- WALL-E – There may or may not be complaints about the second half of this film, but the simple fact is that I was screaming with laughter for the first 30 minutes or so, and still giggling continuously after that. Plus, any movie that can make me feel intense empathy for a steel box wins something in my book.
- Vicky Cristina Barcelona – Woody Allen is smart and funny again! Yay!!
Editor's Note: The rest of our team's thoughts on the 2008 roster in future posts.
Once More Without Feeling!
With Sundance closing its curtains, the crowd-pleasing premiere of Marc Webb's 500 Days of Summer, starring indie darlings, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel (a festival regular and go-to-muse) marked the first stop on our 162 days to the film's release on July 24. Ironically publicized as "not a love story," and decked with linguistic magnets like "postmodern" and "indie," this Fox Searchlight soon-to-be hit solidly caters to the lofty expectations of its vintage-groomed fans. Teaser already displays all the self-incriminating evidence:
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While most reviewers have found the Morgan Freemanish narration to be irritating, mechanically heralding "500 Days of Summer" at least 4 times (discounting subliminal echoes), I view this gesture by whoever made this trailer to be a giddy, uproarious send-up to the frothy romantic inquiries of Jean-Luc Godard, whose political ambitions were better explored in his earlier studies of male-female relationships as doomed transactions between need and desire, tedium and escape, Marx and Coca-Cola. Before embarking on his iconic Breathless, Godard was head of PR at Twentieth Century Fox's Paris office for two years. No wonder he was so meticulous when it came to his future ad campaigns: leaving behind a unmistakable fingerprint on every poster printed and every teaser shown. Witness the assault of primary colors dropped on the viewer in the much iconic preview to Contempt, lead by an equally bold duet of voices listing all those moments one demands from art cinema: an unfulfilled caress, a forlorn glance, a cameo by Fritz Lang, and by default, those same qualities found in the budding business of trailers-as-art: black intertitles w/flashing words, and random clips from the feature film. Spot something similar?
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Much credit must be given to the lost heritage of 60s and 70s advertisements produced in the post-studio-system Hollywood, characterized by a stoic, fatherly voice-of-God inviting us to view the latest gritty entry of urban corruption and social unrest. Repeating the title of the film excessively with in-between montages consisting of purely outrageous scenes, pins the perfect mental memo for any moviegoer who wants to have his camp and eat it too. With the corninest of strategy and the best of focus-group psychology, how could anyone fall into the cracks of amnesia? Most of these enduring titles also happen to be in the new classics canon including West Side Story, Don't Look Now, Strawdogs, and Klute.
Circling back to 300 Days, why the anachronistic homage to a forgotten practice, distancing your core audience with the most "annoying" of marketing weaponry, when kids these days are more prone to easy breezy wit over heavy meta in-joke? Given the sums of money Fox Searchlight poured into their yearly investments, it's almost granted that the trailer acts as an invitation to the film's reportedly unconventional time-skipping structure, a disciplinary device to assuage familiarity through readymade musical popcoctions, and what a hypnotic song–-Sweet Disposition by Australian band Temper Trap—is, washing away the initial discomfort with a Greatest-Hits reel of contemporary rom-com's triad of affections and affectations: boy, girl, photogenic city. Last year: Nick and Norah's NYC, Micah and Jo's San Francisco. This year's crime-free lovers' spot: Tom and Summer's Los Angeles.
As a sidenote, we will be returning to the indefinable figure of the Indie Darling, a kept creature of her times, from Anna Karina to Zooey Deschanel. In a future post, spurred by an unsatisfactory aftertaste of Andzrej Wajda's New Wave feature, Innocent Sorcerers, we hope to dig not deeper behind the surface, but let that surface says something about our investigation. For those of you who have seen this film, keep those thoughts in mind.
Repeat as Needed: Love and Death in Grey's Anatomy
"Eroticism is assenting to life even in death."
– Georges Bataille
"Have you ever had mindblowing sex, the kind of sex that makes you just want to DIE?"
– Izzie Stevens to Cristina Yang, Grey's Anatomy 5×10
Ahh it feels good to be back. For our religious followers, you already know that after the Grey's Anatomy Dogville finale of last season, I have jumped back on board the medical drama's bandwagon. I have renewed my addiction to the show, unfortunately (or fortunately?) for reasons based on comedic moments and fruitful interpretations of the unbelievably ridiculous story lines, instead of the original merits of the show. As the season continues after its winter break, I thought it would be appropriate to do a mid-season recap on the thematic depths Crossroads-writer/Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes has delved into these past 12 episodes. Might I say that Ms. Rhimes did not reach her peak in this season when borrowing a little melodrama from the Danes.
When the show began in 2005, the initial premise was to create a medical drama that emphasized the relationships amongst the characters as opposed to the actual medicine and surgeries. As described in an initial review of the show by the New York Times, Grey's Anatomy was to be an ER meets Sex and the City show, without veering to close to the romance-based General Hospital or the purposely extreme Nip/Tuck. The introductory scene of the show set the tone as it illustrated the typical "Morning After" scene with boy and girl awkwardly saying goodbye, with Rilo Kiley's Portions for Foxes playing in the background. Introducing itself as the un-medical medical drama, Grey's Anatomy opened its doors to a little more cushion to stretch the believability of stories the show decided to tackle. Attendings sleeping with interns? No problem. Booty calls in the on-call room as quintuplets stand on the brink of life and death nearby? Bring it on. By setting a show in a medical environment, the testing waters between life and death will always be present. Given its specific premise, these matters of life and death that occur weekly with the given patients of the week are paralleled with the love lives of the show's doctors.
For the most part due to the definition of love and passion provided by the popular rom coms out there, the search for love and its final attainment revolves around life. Fresh flowers, birds chirping, clouds parting to allow sun to shine. However, Grey's Anatomy takes a different approach. Seminary dropout-turned archivist/philosopher Georges Bataille discussed that it is not beaming life that is present with sex, but rather death. To Bataille, true eroticism exists only though the ultimate attainment of some kind of death. Now in its fifth season, Grey's Anatomy has decided to test the boundaries it set with its previous four seasons by truly focusing on this single thematic relationship of passion and death.
First, there is the storyline causing the most ranting, so much so that ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson had to publicly defend it: the Izzie and Denny storyline. It is not enough that Denny appears to toy with Izzie's heart. The show takes the ultimate leap by giving Izzie the opportunity to consummate her relationship with her dead fiance. Death is no longer an obstacle for this relationship. If anything, judging Izzie's conversation with Christina about a "kind of sex that makes you just want to die" and the noises from Izzie's bedroom that caused McDreamy to ask "Who's making a porno in Izzie's room?," death does a body good.
Second, there are the nicknames of characters and couplings, both born in the show and within the fan forums, that are death related. There's Meredith as "Death" and Sadie as "Die." There's also the phonetic similarity between the death-related term "murder" and the fan-created shipper term for the coupling of Meredith and Derek, "MerDer," that cannot be ignored.
"Pick Me. Choose Me. Love Me."
Lastly, there is the show's use of repetition for dramatic effect in any scene pivotal in a given relationship. Each "I care about you", "Teach me", or "I love you. I freakin' love you, " is repeated with fervor, stabbing the recipient of the words until they succumb to the loving, pleasure-filled pain. A new, positive meaning is brought to the phrase "beating a dead horse."
"I care about you. I care about you. I care about you."
"Teach Me. Teach Me. Teach Me."
In an act of approval for his choice of Meredith as partner, Mama Shepherd in the most recent episode tells her son, McDreamy, in the most recent episode, "You see things in black and white. Meredith doesn't. You need a spoonful of that." With ghost sex story lines and dramatic repetitions of love proclamations, Grey's Anatomy has illustrated that the existence of love within life and death is not black and white, but Grey.
A Brother From Another Planet?
About sixty years ago, Antoine de Saint Exupery created a fantasy in which a Little Prince hopped from planet to planet in his search for happiness. Much more recently, another member of the royal enclave (the king of pop) was engaged in a different kind of meandering: race hopping. From black to white, Michael Jackson not only traveled in his own life, but also in the diegetic world of his video clip "Black or White". Whereas the Little Prince promised to never forget what he learned from a fox he had domesticated, Michael Jackson seems to have forgotten what every member of the imaginary royalty should know: the tenet that "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye". "Black or white" opens with an aerial shot of the suburb and home that we will later familiarize with, hence introducing us to the space as coming from the sky. The departure of the hopping and exploration of the diverse worlds that inhabit Planet Earth (as opposed to the diverse planets that compose our universe) is a white middle class suburban home, which sets the norm of our reality. In this home, the father, mother and son seem to have assumed primary psychic roles, which become reversed when the son blasts off his father to the other side of the world. The repressive patriarchal authority, in contrast with the Little Prince, is transported against his will to a world of Otherness. His voyage, in turn, leads the audience to a different double journey: that of the King of Pop walking from frame to frame into stereotypically depicted cultures, and that of Michael's own real life travel, from blackness to whiteness. This double journey, as the images that compose the video indicate, takes on certain implications about racial difference and its importance in terms of white supremacy.
The representation of a number of diverse racial groups is what makes this video so unique. However, these representations are fraught with a "flawed mimesis" (Stam and Spence 881), stereotypes, and a certain colonial sensibility. In the introduction to his book Orientalism, Edward Said claims that the presence of a division, "as both geographical and cultural entities […] sectors as "Orient" and "Occident" are man-made" (5) By extension, I would like to argue that the video "Black or White" creates several imaginary geographies, adjudicating to each one a stereotypical image that when placed opposite whiteness can be redefined to mean 'otherness'. This project becomes apparent during the first racial representation, that of the African Natives. The scantily clad men in painted faces are about to kill an animal, responding to their savage and primitive calling. However, out of nowhere, they begin dancing with Michael in a highly choreographed manner. He is within them, trying to blend his difference by yelling a guttural sound, but failing as his western clothing denounces him. Through the attempt to erase difference but by highly stereotyping the natives, the image is then in crisis: the imaginary African continent and its people as a locus of otherness conflicts with the blurring of the distinction with whiteness, because according to his own words "it don't matter if you're black or white".
Enter the eroticized Asian female. These women move in perfect unison, wearing oriental outfits and moving in constrained and very slight movements, as they portray the essence of the truly feminine, "passive, subservient, dependent" (Marchetti 115). The male gaze within the diegetic world not only complicates this representation in terms of race, but also in terms of gender, as these women become highly sexualized racial bodies. As he continues to screen hop, Michael encounters the far West, with its Indians in red face and cowboys that shoot guns without a purpose. Herein lies an invocation to the most racially troublesome genre of American culture: the western. Michael interacts with the Indians like he belongs, and nobody looks at him any different, despite the long withstanding antagonistic relationship between whites and native Americans set up by westerns such as The Searchers (John Ford, 1956).
Another locus of erasure of racial differences is Michael's encounter with a traditionally clad Hindu woman, dancing in the middle of the streets of an industrialized India. The imaginary absence of borders manifests itself through the action and setting, as their dancing nonchalance suggest that, contrary to reality, the middle of a well-populated street is removed from dangers.
Many parallels run through these representations of the diverse cultures. Firstly, Michael seems to blend with the ones who accompany him in the frame, even though he leaps out of the screen for the audiences who see him as different. Secondly, he seems to be able to adapt quite well to each race through dance, which suggests his dexterity in the art of bodily adaptation and race hopping. Nevertheless, this argument becomes more complicated when taking into account the last stop on his diegetic culture trip: the Russian white Cossacks. This particular segment is the only one he can complete in its entirety and in perfect unison with his screen partners. This feat suggests perfect harmony with his fellow white dancers, inducting him, according to the video's discourse, into The 'Hall of Whiteness'. The white snowflakes falling only add to the sentiment of absence of color that permeates the screen.
Furthermore, as the scene converts into a snow globe, a small hand holds it in its grasp. The camera pulls back to reveal a white baby sitting on top of the world, who right in front of a black infant shakes the snow globe that has captured Michael's reality. Almost like a justification, these two babies are evocative of the Clark Doll Study, an experiment which asked children to choose between a white and a black doll in terms of their preference. Just as the study reveals, and as Michael represents, whiteness equals desirability. This not-so-novel discovery as a result of white supremacy explains why the snow globe resides on the white baby's hand, conferring him and agency the black baby cannot have. The white baby is, in this world of binary divisions, the one that gets to hold the globe. The exposure of this experiment almost validates Michael's escape from blackness, but also endorses the idea of whiteness as the top of the food chain, or literally in this video, as the agent in control on top of the world.
The same can be said about Michael's trip to the flame of the Statue of Liberty. His positioning on top of one of the tallest structures of the world reinforces his status of privilege as a white male, but also stands as an emblem of the Ellis Island culture, that of the American Dream. In the United States, the land of possibilities, one can become whoever he or she wants to be. America becomes the place of dreams and reinvented identities, a space where most fantasies can become a reality because of that 'freedom'.
It would seem that only white people are in the privileged position to say that skin color does not matter. "I'm not going to spend my life being a color", he sings, mainly meaning that the prism by which we should evaluate people is not race, but equality. However, the suggestion of the erasure of color leads us to conjecture that whiteness is the ideal. Michael, occupying his throne near the crown of the Statue of Liberty, asserts this statement through more than his lyrics. His costume choice for this video becomes an interesting one to analyze: a white shirt, paired with black pants. If we were to deconstruct it, we would find that the whiteness of his outfit resides on top of the black, signaling the order of hierarchy of race, but also occupies the top portion of his body, the one valued because of intellect and reason, while the black one covers the bottom half, the portion that contains the genitalia and is often associated with the sexualized and the primitive. We can see this clothing choice as a reflection of cultural stereotypes: the rational and civilized white is above the primitive and hypersexualized black. Being that this is a video to try to disavow racial stereotypes and racial differences, the clothing selection surfaces as a huge oversight, or a fraught choice.
Whereas this video was released to repudiate certain racist accusations towards Michael Jackson, the image tells us a different story. Even though the video promises to challenge ruling discursive assumptions about race, it ends up reaffirming the status quo of white supremacy. The morphing of the faces that ends the musical portion of the video, as well as the transformation of Michael's face through plastic surgery manipulation seems to suggest that the King of Pop is not looking to join the Little Prince on his quest of returning to the Earth to live happily ever after. Instead, it seems that he has reached the point of no return, and as his hopping from identity to identity progresses, his highly morphed body better suits a space within this galaxy, but out of this world.
Works Cited
Marchetti, Gina. Romance and the "Yellow Peril": Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Said, Edward. Orientalism. 1978. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Random House, 1994.
Stam, Robert and Louise Spence. "Colonialism, Racism an Representation: An Introduction" in Film: Psychology, Ideology, and Technology. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. 6th Ed. New York : Oxford University Press, 2004. pp 877-891.
Graphically Challenged: Why Covers do Matter
Better famously known through its abridged snippets scattered among the master theses and PhD dissertations in collegiate dungeons around the world, the Ur-essay of all aesthetic manifestos still retains is ever mystical aura. A perpetually renewable source of enlightenment, Walter Benjamin, as pop historian Howard Hampton, rightfully notes, "has become become a convenient, all-points totem, one who blessing and validation are sought through the offerings of a host of supplicants…in this shopworn, once-upon-a-time-academe form, he stands for an indivisible synthesis of blissful disenchantment and unshaken theoretical faith." Despite Benjamin's dying belief that the age of Fascist fetishization has passed, that we should acquire a richer visual literacy unfettered by commerce and prestige, he couldn't have imagined the marketing battle between publishing rivals for his 1935's "Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (a second, much longer variant from the famous, widely circulating first edition, "…Age of Mechanical Reproduction).
Two editions released and refurnished this year, conspicuously with dissimilar translations in each, but ultimately (over)determined by their physical allure, their pulpy facade vulnerably exposed to the discerning consumer. Which book will be adopted, which book will be put to sleep in the inventory storeroom?
Intellectually-speaking, means I'm here for the "official" version (the right side, by Harvard University Press), this newly extended essay ("Reproducibility") ventures into more prodigious discussion of film as a medium that can liberate art from its confined spaces to even more confining spaces, from museums to bedrooms, from Dennis Hopper to Joe the Plumber. Despite its fawning, tasteful cover, I'm sold only because it will bear me future fruits of critical rigor, as it attempts to say something about the insidious nature of repetition with the floating cartoon heads of the dead Frankfurt bookworm. Thanks to Kevin from HUP for pointing out that the cover art was an original from Ralph Steadman, known for his collaborations with Hunter S. Thompson.
To the left side is something else altogether, a dilapidated curiosity shop that rings true to its title, a familiar version, like a baby blanket, I've encountered so many times in all my undergraduate classes. Yet, it keeps me coming for more, with the outside matching the thematic aspirations of its insides. Radical to the end, old-fashioned only by appearance, the design (for "Reproduction") captures the author as a brand, the modern equivalent of aura, a work of art itself thanks to the printing revolution. Replicating the experience of reading itself, as the same book is multiplied in the mind as many, the trompe-l'oeil of a cover unveils the material act of holding a book, with its stubborn dimensions and the endless row of spines awaiting at the library shelves. It thrives on minimalist simplicity and renews the reader's interest in the cosmopolitan writer's prismatic observations, contradictory projections, and his weary, utopian voice, alive through the incantation of reading, albeit still full of glory and melancholy.
Like many unsung anti-heroes of any industry, the cover designer's work exhibits the same fate as Poe's purloined letter, open to the world, but everyone only noticing the "author," (the director) the one whose existence rests on a prominent name, horizontally slashed on the surface. The success of one does not mark the success of the other, but the failure of either will lead both to the trenches of obscurity. In a parallel manner, taking a quick browse through the Criterion Collection yields an even more difficult decision. Since the auteur mantle is already a given, the real question lies in the search for the other auteur, literally, the winning poster child on the DVD.
In this post, my initial interest of these two books, sharing the same author, but lacking identical appeal, will now funnel down to a self-motivated promotion of graphic extraordinaire, industry-secret typographer, David Pearson, who is the executive designer of the Penguin Classic branch, which includes this new edition of Benjamin's essay in novella form as part of their GREAT IDEAS series. Surgically beautifying the so-called masterworks of literature, Pearson may have already carved his own legacy among the great morticians of cultural remains.
Excuse my Slumdog Rage
FIRST HATER POST, oh the carnage
It seems futile to barricade the top ten lists of 2008 from the inspirational puppy-dog-eyes of the Hollywood/Bollywood brainchild, Slumdog Millionaire, another lucrative product from the folks who have succeeded, much like the Disney Channel, to clone a progeny of audience favorites (Juno, Little Miss Sunshine), which makes the job of any ghost reviewer easier by dutifully proclaim "It's this year's _______." When all the independent sidearms of the top studios have been liquidated to only a footnote in history, Fox Searchlight endures as it funds and buys out the better-tested of the best, safety features, that is. Radical risk-taking isn't exactly part of the mission statement of the company, and their acquisitions have come to mirror each other in tonality and predictability, in which those legal last rites of the rolling credits should be appended to "All characters are purely fictional and frictionless."
With the announcement from the National Board of Review that Slumdog Millionaire is supposedly the BEST FRAKKIN' FILM of the Year, a no-surprise shrug was my first reaction, followed by an angry realization that a smug shutter would suffice instead. Sharing Meg's initial and permanent assessment of our screening at Telluride, Slumdog's only salvageable virtue lies in its ingenuity to wed MIA's gangbang hum-a-thon, "Paper Planes" into the movie's soundtrack, after a gleeful sham marriage of a teaser from Pineapple Express. Not once of course, but twice, including a DFA remix of the song, in a subsequent lull moment after a frenetic montage of the brothers' joyous robberies aboard a luxury train across India, keep those Marc Jacobs' limited edition LV trunks close to you at all times. Otherwise, the film suffers not from ADD, in threading together the lead character's rags-to-riches flashbacks with utmost pandemonium editing, but OCD, carefully cleaning up the beautiful mess with a single-minded goal to get the boy his girl, these damaged goods are back together at last.
With the majority of its defenders celebrating its lush, odorous in-your-face imagery of contemporary India coupled with a national fable of upward mobility both idealized and envied, how could a small minority of critics muster their intellectual weaponry at such a PC crowd-pleaser of a tale of two cities, Mumbai, loud and dangerous, recent Terrorist events have only reinforce the social reality of racial tensions, and Mumbai, ambitious, modern, and Western-friendly, recent retaliation to the attacks have also indicated. The only offensive line of reasoning would lead to nowhere but the emotional indifference that possessed me at the time of my viewing, an unimpressive impression. With the exception of the MIA song that highjacked my feet off the ground, this Bollywood-lite musical was made for those who don't really want to see a full-blown Bollywood spectacle nor the American epic poems of the 50s or 60s, their length and majesty truncated for the 120-min threshold of the action thriller. Australia falls on the other end, too much with too little to say.
With the DGA deciding its next saint coming early 2009, Danny Boyle may find himself accepting that honor and delivering what his auteur admirers would find consistently fitting into a future retrospective, but for me, Mr. Boyle is basically paying back Fox Seachlight the loan he borrowed for his flopped pet project, Sunshine, a sci-fi rumination on human-termite existence. Perhaps, one could fault this no-holds-bar acceptance of Slumdog as a cultural symptom of our downtrodden times, when happy endings sloppily hemmed together stand for larger wish fulfillments of a quick-bailout kind, from the government, or from media giants that finance get-rich schemes like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?".
Has 2008 begotten such an impoverished roster of cinematic candidates that we must crown a pauper in place of a prince?
UPDATE: As much as I despise Slumdog Millionaire, discovering that Paste Magazine awarded its top prize, in a bold, but deeply calculated move, to Nandita Das's Firaaq is equally distressing. I prefer the inauthentic audacity of the former over the authentic affectations of the latter. Please, has the same plague afflicting the Academy in 2005, when Crash triumphantly crashed Brokeback party, returned in a more menacing form? Say it aint so.
"ALL I WANNA DO…is take your money" YES, so close your wallet and watch this clip, IT IS THE MOVIE.
8…8 1/2…9…
Yesterday, on Good Morning America, during Britney's performance of her new single, "Circus," also the title of the latest effort to reboot her career, I notice the familiar tune of Nino Rota's score for Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963) as the opening and closing bookends for the song. Transporting us to some carnivalesque wonderland because you know…Fellini/Rota equals garish circus freaks and a barely sweating ringmaster attempting to sell the greatest show (I mean, preview) on earth, Britney is less of a performer than she was before, now a vampish marionette in the grand tradition of female has-beens, like Lola Montes and Mariah Carey, wearing her setbacks as pity points for fans' financial support. By even comparing herself to the incredibly cluttered yet fluidly warm style of the late Italian master is more insulting if it was an intentional homage than simply browsing through Itunes for mood music.
To her credit, Britney revived my interest for Rob Marshall's film adaptation (filming in the UK, due out 2009) of the Tony Award-winning musical, Nine (also thanks to Meg!), simply due to its stellar casting stunt alone: Daniel Day-Lewis, as the womanizing (ha, Britney) artist Guido with writer's block, Nicole Kidman as his on-and-off again muse, Claudia, Judi Dench as the witty French reporter, Lilianne, Marion Cotillard as his faithful wife, Penelope Cruz as the voluptuous dim-witted mistress Carla, Sophia Loren as his Mamma only in memory, Kate Hudson as a composite character of American/European socialites parading around the set, and of course, the Duchess herself, Fergie as Guido's first sexual conquest, a misunderstood monster of a whore Saraghina. Even though the film is adapted from a theater show and not directly a remake of the original Italian film, creating a compare/contrast profile chart of the character/actors gives us however, tiny of a clue, that Marshall is referring to both sources for his project rather than the musical itself (look at the exact hair styles!) and hopefully unlike its dour box office cousin, The Producers, another film-to-musical-to-film inbred, Nine should absorb or borrow the exuberant energy that made 8 1/2 a sensational box-office draw of its time, a classic in the kooky genre of films about films, transforming the behind-the-scenes of the production process into an exquisite confrontation between fantasy and memory, the tempting desire to let go and the stubborn will to create meaning.
As the reigning discourse around the word, "adaptation" brings to mind, the embarrassing accusations that the "film" didn't do this or that justice to the "book," or what I think is inevitably an impossible endeavor, one could distill the situations or more crucially, the sensual essence of the source, while taking liberties with how an actor will improvise spontaneously with words and gestures, or how a whole scene could be shot from a perspective that goes beyond what the book can imagine. Upon digging through the photo archives of 8 1/2, who could have known that Sophia Loren, visiting the set of the original film, would star in its redo's remake. If originality is inherent in the original, could originality be transferable to a copy, cutting its ties to the original, plain and simple? I find it better to move away from the iron curtain of fidelity and towards a more conducive discussion around intertextuality. Excuse my academic jargon, but the term means what it says, suggesting the play of allusions and references that one cultural object refers to another. Rather than speaking in ad finitum about a singular piece, the plenitude of experiences between texts bring us closer to dissecting changing attitudes about times present and past, and how subjective interpretations are being filtered as objective criticism. If professional and amateur critics like to spin personal anecdotes only for the sake of attention, followed by defending their preferences through external standards of good taste, than for better or worse, in the probing spirit of 8 1/2, to think about the trivial and profound relations from one book to another, from one film to another, would surrender the human ego to the witness stand as its own judge and prosecutor…the artist have already sold his soul to the devil, it's a matter of how long he can keep it.
Britney's "I'll just wiggle around the playpen" routine, listen for the beginning:


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I'm Brandy, nice to meet you! I am a mommy, a girlfriend, I have a pug-mix, and I like to toddle around in the kitchen and do crafts. I'm a huge advocate of Pinterest, where I pretty much get all my inspiration! I'll attach my link once I'm done with my introduction..
I live in Portland, Oregon; born and raised and I'll probably never leave. I'll be position mostly of recipes I have tried(and failed), crafts I do, and child care information. Please take part in my journey.

subset: commoncrawl


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The National Party caucus today suspended Maurice Williamson, although the MP refused to take part in the discussion about his fate.
Party leader Bill English announced the decision, which was taken on a vote by MPs.
The Pakuranga MP has been punished for criticising Mr English's performance, which he blames for National's poor support in opinion polls.
He repeated his criticism before and during National's annual conference 10 days ago, angering his colleagues who accused him of media grandstanding.
Mr Williamson attended the caucus for only three minutes, telling his colleagues he had not been given details about what was to be discussed and would not take part.
Mr English told reporters it was now up to National's governing board to decide what to do about Mr Williamson.
The board is due to meet on Thursday to consider cancelling his membership.
Mr English told reporters: "The National Party caucus today voted to suspend Maurice Williamson, the MP for Pakuranga, pending hearings by the National Party board."
He said previous efforts had been made to resolve the situation, including offering Mr Williamson promotion in the caucus ranking.
Mr English confirmed that Mr Williamson's actions at the annual conference had been the catalyst for today's decision.
Mr Williamson said he would make no further comment after releasing the brief statement he made to the caucus.
If the party's board cancels Mr Williamson's membership, one of the options he has will be to resign his seat in Parliament and contest a by-election as an independent.
Mr English said today the caucus was not concerned about that.
Mr English said many New Zealanders were worried about the path the Government was following.
"We believe that the concerns of the country are much more important than the views of one person who has been suspended from caucus. We are anxious to get on and talk with the public," he said.
Asked whether he accepted Mr Williamson's view he had not been consulted, Mr English said caucus was master of its own destiny.
"Maurice Williamson had notice of the motion caucus would be discussing and had the opportunity in the caucus to speak to that motion in detail," he said.
"He apparently had taken legal advice to the contrary, but the caucus has followed the process that the caucus was free to determine."
The party would initiate its process on Thursday, he said.
He was sure it would follow all the right legal advice.
Many of the legal issues were sorted out when Winston Peters was expelled from the party in the early 1990s "so it's pretty well-trodden ground".
The suspension means Mr Williamson is out in the cold, unable to take part in any parliamentary business.
He will still be considered a National MP, with his salary and allowance unaffected.
But it will be a lonely life in Parliament if he decides to stay on and fight the suspension through litigation, which appeared to be the most likely course he would follow.
Mr English said the courts could not look into the proceedings of caucus, and the party would run proper hearings in accordance with its constitution.
The suspension would last as long as it took the party's board to complete its deliberation on complaints from party members and the caucus motion.
Mr English was comfortable that the party would be able to resist any legal challenges from Mr Williamson.
He said the courts had ruled in the past that judges could not look into the affairs of a caucus.
Mr English said the caucus vote was by secret ballot.
"But I can say from the discussions that it was unanimous or near-unanimous".
He confirmed the possibility of a by-election in Pakuranga had been discussed by the caucus.
"If there is any possibility of it we will be extremely well-prepared for it," he said.
"It would give us the opportunity to campiagn for three to four weeks in Auckland on issues where we believe the public are greatly concerned."
Mr English said Mr Williamson had resisted every attempt to reconcile the issue, which had included offers of substantial promotion and portfolios he was interested in.
"What you have seen today is the end of the road," he said.
"This isn't about the leadership or the criticism of the leadership. This has been about whether or not one person will sign up to the team.
"The party conference was like the team going along to the big game to find that one person actually intended to play for the opposition."
Mr Williamson was a capable and talented MP, and it was unfortunate those talents would would not be used.
"I have known him for 13 years as an MP," Mr English said.
"I know what he is capable of...it's very unfortunate he was not able to offer those talents to the team."
When Mr Williamson's suspension takes effect on Thursday, Parliament will have two MPs without a caucus.
ACT's Donna Awatere Huata has been under suspension since January.


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I, Bob Stanton and/or Tracie Locke, of The Lamoille Area Professional Development Academy, hereby accept the site map {file_links}, as presented to me by Union Street Media, today, July 21, 2014, as the final navigation and information structure that will be used for my site through launch.
With this sign off, I permit Union Street Media to move forward into the design and content portions of the process. I fully understand that any revisions I request to the site map after this sign off may result in incremental costs above the high end of my initial contract budget and extend the timeline of my project.
Note: Once the site has launched, you will have complete control of the navigation and can make edits such as adding, deleting, renaming, and reordering main and sub-navigation items at will.


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This section provides a general overview of the tax issues you'll face as either an importer or exporter. To ensure that you comply with Canadian and foreign tax laws, however, it is imperative to obtain advice from qualified accounting and legal professionals.
Goods and services that are normally subject to GST or HST may be untaxed when exported from Canada; in this case, they are referred to as "zero-rated" goods or services.
The simplest case is when you deliver your products to a purchaser outside Canada. In this situation, they are automatically zero-rated and you do not charge GST/HST to the purchaser. If you deliver them to a purchaser inside Canada, however, they are zero-rated only if certain conditions are met. A full list of these conditions is available on the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) web site.
The first step in tax compliance is to determine the landed cost of your imports. This will allow you to calculate the taxes you'll have to pay on the goods.
To determine the landed cost of imported goods, you must classify them properly according to the Harmonized System (HS) as described in the section "Classification and Valuation." This allows you to:
Most goods imported into Canada are subject to the federal GST, which is calculated at the rate of 5 per cent of the duty-paid value of the shipment. This tax must be paid at time of entry and is collected at the border, unless the goods are going directly to a bonded warehouse. In this case, the GST is collected when the goods leave the warehouse and become eligible for sale in Canada. For more details, refer to the CRA's GST/HST Instructions for Importers and Exporters.
Several provinces have combined the GST with their provincial sales taxes on various categories of goods, thus creating a Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). If you are GST-registered, then you are automatically HST-registered and must charge accordingly when selling to a customer in a participating province. On most commercial imports, however, only the federal (GST) portion of the HST is applied to the sale.
Many imported goods are not taxed under the GST or HST. Among them are:
As described in the section "The importer of record," non-resident importers (NRIs) are companies located outside Canada that supply goods to Canadian purchasers, but take full responsibility for the Canadian customs transactions involved in delivering those goods. This means that they pay all duties and taxes at the time the goods enter Canada, thus freeing the Canadian purchaser from these responsibilities.


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BlackBerry has updated its free BlackBerry Bridge application so that users can connect the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to its new BlackBerry 10–running smartphones, the BlackBerry Z10 and the still-weeks-away Q10.
The PlayBook's OS and BlackBerry 10 have their foundations in the QNX software that Research In Motion—as it was known before the Jan. 30 announcement that it had changed its name to BlackBerry—purchased in April 2010, and the tablet has been called a stepping stone and a precursor to BlackBerry 10.
BlackBerry Bridge version 3.0 enables a user to share his or her phone's Internet or Intranet connection with the PlayBook; to use a BlackBerry 10 phone as a remote control for the PlayBook, including when the tablet is connected to a TV via High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI); open bookmarks and files on the BlackBerry 10 Share framework; and access all of the smartphone's files through the PlayBook's File Manager application.
"Our work is not done, and we will keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible between BlackBerry 10 devices, and beyond," Andrey F., on the company's software product management team, wrote Feb. 6 in a post on the Inside BlackBerry blog. "I can't wait to share with you more updates on how BlackBerry Bridge will continue to evolve in the future!"
Further reading
Introducing BlackBerry 10 and the new smartphones in New York Jan. 30, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said that the company is working on a BlackBerry 10 upgrade for the PlayBook.
"We're working on BlackBerry 10 software for all the PlayBooks that are out there," said Heins.
He added that BlackBerry will definitely continue to work in the tablet space, "But we are looking at specific services," he explained. "We want to provide a value proposition that is not just the hardware but has value on top of it."
That said, new hardware is also in the works.
"I've asked my teams to build another one," Heins told Reuters, according to a Feb. 5 report, adding that he needs it to make money. "If the hardware doesn't provide the margins I need," said Heins, "then it makes no sense doing it."
He has continued to reiterate that what BlackBerry is building is bigger than any one device.
"We intend to lead the movement from mobile communications to true mobile computing," Heins said during his Jan. 30 presentation. Listing the growing areas of our lives that we'll soon be wirelessly connected to, from homes and cars to our health care records, Heins said, "Wherever you are [that is where BlackBerry will be]. This is the promise of the BlackBerry 10 platform."
Heins and Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben repeatedly tried to make clear all that the company accomplished in deciding to build a new from-scratch platform, instead of adopting an existing one—many analysts, during the long, slow development of BlackBerry 10, believed it should just have adopted Android. The platform, the BlackBerry executives said, will last the company through its next decade, and is powerful enough to act as the brain behind a computing setup. Soon, a user will be able to dock a BlackBerry 10 device, connect it to a keyboard, a mouse and a screen, and be relieved of the need for a desktop.
Boulben told Reuters that vision "is going to start to materialize this year."


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Some dresses adorned with special quotations.Doriyaan wear New Year evening dresses in 2014 are looking beautiful ornament of bright colors like red, green blue, black and so on. Doriyaan perfect for you if you like to wear fashionable clothes for your wardrobe.All new designs have tried to highlight only within the newest and latest fashion in India,Pakistan, America ,Asia, USA,UK , Canada, Australia and other countries . For more below on this page go down and take a look at the collection of fashion products and brands, visit our web site: http://www.hello1fashion.com


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If I asked, "Did you have a favourite teacher growing up?" I bet you'd have one teacher that immediately comes to mind; after all, most of us spend 14 years of our youth surrounded by educators. Teachers are an integral part of a child's emotional and intellectual development. They are our safety net, tutors, support systems, educators and so much more. Kobo went on the hunt to find a teacher that was anything but ordinary. Someone unconventional, who pushes the boundaries and encourages children to develop the skills that they need to pursue their wildest dreams, in and out of the classroom.
Kobo sat down with Allie Sutton, an Ontario Certified Teacher who received both her Bachelor of Education in the primary/junior division and Bachelors of Arts Honours in Global Development. She has taught overseas in Sweden, provided rigorous health education programs in Northern Canada and Guyana, and is now settled back in her home base of Toronto where she works with kids in several capacities to say the least.
Here is what Allie had to say about her journey as a teacher:
What inspired you to become a teacher (other than the awesome holidays)?
Truly, I became a teacher to have a lasting impact on a child's development. I want to create a community where children feel safe to explore and be themselves, take risks in their learning, develop positive self-esteem and feel real empathy for others. To have a true impact on student's wellbeing, one must be there, each and every day, good days and bad, to grow with and support each individual in their academics and beyond.
How does reading and a child's development intersect?
I believe a little self-discovery and growth lies in each book we read.
Reading holds the potential to activate our imagination and expand our understanding of the world. It allows us to see a different perspective, to travel through time and to imagine surroundings we may not be able to immediately explore.
How can parents encourage reading?
A trip to the library! I hope I'm not the only one who finds libraries fun, and odds are, if you're reading this, you do too. You can turn these trips in to outings or even rewards; play in the park, go for walk, stop for a treat. Surrounding kids with reading material, whether it is at home or at your local library. Remind kids that books are there for their enjoyment, their adventure, and their learning.
As kids develop new hobbies and interests, you can find books that support their learning and interests. My childhood bedroom could have been mistaken as a store for figure skating and dolphin books. Selecting materials that expand and build on interests wouldn't hurt either.
And finally, lead by example. Let your kids see you enjoying books, podcasts, recipes and magazines. Maybe even share your favourites with them from when you were a similar age.
Apart from books, how can one inspire their kids to read?
There are endless amounts of reading material the moment we step out the door. My personal favourite are restaurant menus, probably because we are often rewarded with food. Reading storefronts and street signs are also valuable, encouraging kids to make sense of signs to build visual literacy comprehension and street smarts.
Do handwritten letters qualify as untraditional reading material now? I had a couple of pen pals as a child, and while none were too long lasting, nothing was more exciting than receiving and reading a letter in the mail. I personally enjoyed reading novels that read like letters or diaries. This satisfied the nosey side of my personality without having to invade anyone's privacy.
Switch on those subtitles when watching a TV show or movie. Seeing the text along with the dialogue can improve recognition of sight words and assist in learning new words.
If your child is struggling with reading, how can parents help?
There is often pressure regarding what children should be reading at certain milestones. Ignore that status quo! Continue reading together, and reading what interests your child.
If your child is experiencing frustration with reading, reach out to their teacher for support. Parents and teachers can collaborate to find the best way to support the child's learning, inside and outside the classroom.
What is one book you think every child should read?
The Harry Potter series. I may be biased though; this was my favourite growing up. That being said, there are reasons why J. K. Rowling's series is a world famous best seller amongst all ages. I was first introduced to Harry Potter in grade four, when a teacher candidate began reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone aloud to my class. Her time in our class was done before we got to the ending. So I finished the rest of the book with my mom at home, reading it aloud before bed. I was hooked. There are tons of books out there to meet the needs of different kids at different stages.
So parents, encourage your kids to read what they want, and keep in mind, reading is a gift that keeps on giving.


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NEWARK – Kelvin Villa pitched six solid innings, allowing just one earned run while striking out seven to earn his first victory and newly signed Pablo Ozuna had a successful debut, collecting three hits and three RBI, leading the Newark Bears to a 7-3 victory over the Long Island Ducks Thursday night at Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium.
Villa (1-3) continued his fine pitching since signing with the Bears two weeks ago. The left-hander has struck out at least seven batters in all four of his starts with Newark. He has now struck out 35 batters in just 21 innings with the Bears.
Ozuna, signed earlier in the day, is a former major leaguer who played for the Marlins, Rockies and White Sox during his career, had a single in his first at-bat with the Bears, then had an RBI single in the second to give the Bears the lead for good. Ozuna also delivered the key hit in the Bears' two-run rally in the seventh, a bases-loaded single that plated two runs, increasing the lead to 7-2.
Long Island scored an unearned run against Villa in the top of the second. Robinson Cancel singled, stole second and came around to score on a throwing error, giving the Ducks a 1-0 lead. Kennard Jones, who was one of three Newark representatives in last Tuesday's All-Star game, belted a two-run homer to cap a four-run second inning against Ducks starter and loser Rick Bauer (3-9). In that rally, James Cooper was hit by a pitch and Todd Jennings walked, one of the four walks that Jennings drew in the game. Gabe Suarez drove in the first run with an infield groundout and Ozuna followed with his first run-scoring hit to push the lead to 2-0. Jones then followed with his homer to left, his third of the season.
The Bears then increased the lead to 5-1 in the fifth inning when Jennings drew a bases loaded walk, scoring Brian Barton, who led off the inning with a double. The Ducks then scored a run in the sixth inning on Matt Esquivel's sacrifice fly, scoring Ray Navarrete, who earlier singled.
After Villa left, the Bears received solid relief pitching from Vince Perkins, Greg Reinhard and Michael Nix, who each tossed an inning to preserve the win.
The Ducks scored a run in the ninth on an RBI single by Erick Monzon, his third hit of the game. Monzon's single scored Matt Cavagnaro, who doubled.
The series rolls on between Newark and Long Island on Friday night. Game time is set for 7:05 p.m., with the gates of Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium opening at 6:05 p.m. The Bears are hosting Ticket Amnesty Night, which means that all unused tickets can be exchanged for premium box seat tickets as they battle the Ducks. Any ticket will be accepted, from Devils to Nets, Yankees to Mets and even old Bears tickets from this season or seasons past.
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text:
— Meaningful differences between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.
— Hurricane collision with New York City would be an expensive catastrophe.
— A defense of Rick Perry's higher education reforms.
— $400 to fix an 8 year-old refrigerator and you can buy a new fridge for $493.20 these days.
— The future of journalism — cars can run on recycled newspaper.
— Travis Waldron gets ready to launch the ThinkProgress fashion vertical.
— "So what can be done now? Probably nothing." I disagree, but I enjoy a good dose of bracing pessimism.
— Neighbors not excited about construction of new immigrant detention centers.
— Prime Minister Naoto Kan resigns.


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With great sadness, I learned today that Julian Bond had passed away yesterday at the age of 75.
I had the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Bond on a couple of occasions, via eamail, several years ago while researching his his grandfather, Dr. James Bond.I have read several of the main stream media reports on Julian Bond's passing, but no one has mentioned the remarkable linage of the Bond Family. Julian Bond was a remarkable person. His accomplishments were way beyond what I could ever hope to achieve, and those accomplishments were built on the success of his father (Horace Bond) and grandfather's (James Bond) work. The contribution that this family has made to the fight for racial equality cannot be rivaled. Here is short essay about the Bond family.
James Bond, who was born a slave in 1863 Kentucky, and later graduated from Berea College to become a successful teacher and minister.
James Bond, grandfather of Julian Bond, was an 1892 graduate of Berea and later served as a College Trustee from 1896 – 1914. During his career he was pastor at churches in Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia and was a professor at Fisk University. As financial secretary of Berea he was a principal figure in raising money for Lincoln Institute, a school initiated by Berea College in 1910 after Kentucky's Day Law denied African Americans the right to attend Berea, and served as Lincoln's first financial agent when it opened in 1912. His children, including the late Horace Mann Bond, Julian Bond's father, attended Lincoln Institute. As a Rosenwald Foundation fellow, H. M. Bond conducted research used by the NAACP in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case. Horace Bond went on to earn a doctorate and was a distinguished educator serving as president of two colleges and later as dean of the School of Education at Atlanta University.
Dr. James Bond, a Kentucky champion of education in the latter part of the 19th century, and the early part of the 20th, became a successful teacher and minister. He taught African American soldiers to read and write at Camp Zachary Taylor while working for the YMCA in Louisville.
James Bond was born a slave in Woodford County, Kentucky in the year of 1863 near Lawrenceburg. His mother, Jane Arthur and their family were emancipated two years later at the end of the Civil War.
In 1879, James was enrolled in school in Berea, and in 1886, entered Berea College and graduated in 1892 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He was one of only 2000 African Americans with a college degree in the United States at that time. He also served as a Berea College Trustee from 1896 to 1914.
He later enrolled in Oberlin College in Ohio and studied ministry, graduating with a Bachelors Degree of Divinity in 1895, and his Doctorate from Berea in 1901. He later became the pastor of church in Birmingham, Alabama, and later assumed the position of Pastor at The Howard Congregational Church in Nashville, Tennessee. He then joined the teaching facility as a professor at Fisk Theological Seminary.
While in Nashville, Dr. Bond became an out spoken advocate for the repeal of laws that enforced segregation in the city in the late 1890's. His work in this endeavor gained him great respect among the African American community in Kentucky and the surrounding states.
In 1906, Dr. Bond returned to Kentucky where he worked as the financial secretary at Berea and was later the main influence behind the creation of the Lincoln Institute, an all African American School built near Shelbyville, Kentucky.
The Lincoln Institute was founded in 1909 due to the "The Day Law", which was written and directed specifically at Berea College. The interracial college was the target of the times, where in whites focused on removing all the African Americans from the college. The Day Law was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1904, and mandated the segregation of all higher educational institutions.
Dr. Bond and Mr. Kirke Smith joined the campaign to raise the funds necessary to build a new school for the African American students put out by the finding. Dr. Bond and Mr. Smith were instrumental in securing a $200,00.00 grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, and along with contributions from other individuals, they raised the $400,00.00 necessary to start the school.
After many legal battles, and some violence from people opposed to the construction of an all black school in Shelby County, Ky, the construction began in 1911 and the first students were enrolled in October of 1912.
Dr. Bond worked at the Lincoln Institute as the financial director until 1917, when the outbreak of World War 1 took the United States into new territory. Br. Bond had volunteered for the Chaplains Corp, but due to his age (54), he was not accepted for active duty. However his service was far from unneeded. He was offered a position of the Service Director for the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) at Camp Zachary Taylor.
Dr. James Bond at Camp Zachary Taylor 1918
Dr. Bond worked with the United States Army, and through the services provided by the YMCA, which had seven facilities at various places in the camp, he organized and taught literacy and writing classed to African American soldiers. The YMCA Services Program also included counseling, emergency services and recreation for the men stationed there.
After the War ended, Dr. Bond was appointed Kentucky Secretary for the black YMCA's. He also held the position of Kentucky Director of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. While working for the YMCA and the state of Kentucky, he traveled throughout the state, helping communities establish and organize programs of interracial communication and cooperation. He held some of the first interracial meetings of white and black citizens where open discussions were held on topics of mutual problems in an interracial setting. Both the Southern Regional Council of Atlanta and the Kentucky Council on Human Relations were based on the work of Dr. Bond and his programs at the YMCA and Commission on Interracial Cooperation.
Dr. Bond's youngest son, Horace Mann Bond, held a doctorate and was president of two colleges and also served and dean of the School of Education at Atlanta University. Horace M. Bond was also a main contributor to the research of the Supreme Court Case, Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954.
Horace Bond
His grandson, Julian Bond was Chairman of the NAACP and a professor at the American University in Washington DC, and at the University of Virginia.
We will miss Julian Bond, and wish to extend our sympathy to the family, along with the gratitude for the contributions your family has made to this nation in the struggle for equality for everyone.


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Good evening dear friends. I hope you are doing fine!
I am so late with this post! So many distracting thigs were going on these past few days :(( But I hope it will be getting better!
In any case I want to share with you my latest project for 613 Avenue Create. As always it is 'Anything goes' but with optional twist this time - Create Your Own Challenge.
And here is my project:
It is another ATC which i have created as a tag. I really enjoy to create them lately!
These cute dragonflies and the sentiment are from Magnolia stamps. I also used gold pearls and ribbon from my stash. I created a bow with a twine.
So here it is. I hope you like this ATC. Maybe I will do some more in the nearest future so do not be surprised:))
Do not forget to visit our blog and enjoy the beautiful works of our ladies from design team!
Thank you for stopping by and as always all the comments are welcome.
Have great evening!
I want to participate with this card:
Craft Your Passion - #313
Crafting from the heart - #113
Inspiration Destination - #87
Crafting With Friends - #21
Creative Fingers - #109
Brown Sugar Challenge - #199
Simply Magnolia - Anything goes


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Spring is here and the smell of grilled food soon will be wafting through the air.
If you'd like to learn more about grilling a tasty steak, burger, chop or kabob, North Dakota State University can help.
NDSU meat science faculty are partnering with food science faculty and the NDSU Extension Service to hold 12 BBQ Boot Camps throughout the state this spring and summer.
The BBQ Boot Camp will introduce people to new cooking methods and practices. The program also will cover topics such as meat cut selection, methods and theories of cooking, food safety and variations in barbecuing practices, such as using rubs, marinades and seasonings. In addition, participants will receive information on current topics in the pork, beef and lamb industries, including research, teaching and Extension activities at NDSU.
"BBQ Boot Camp is a unique opportunity to explain and discuss current topics in the food industry at the grass-roots level, all while having a lot of fun with barbecue," says David Newman, NDSU Extension swine specialist.
Meat cut selection will emphasize value cuts, which are considered excellent for barbecuing if people use proper cooking methods. Meat selection education also will include information on typical retail cuts.
Food safety education will cover pre-cooking, cooking and post-cooking issues such as proper cooking temperatures and the use of a meat thermometer. Instructors also will analyze the differences among smoking, gas and charcoal cooking methods and help participants understand how the compositional differences in meat animal species, cooking temperatures and humidity affect the success of barbecuing.
The dates and locations of the camps and the Extension agent to contact are:
- June 10 – Wahpeton, Dale Siebert, (701) 642-7793
- July 1 – Lisbon, Brian Zimprich, (701) 683-6128
- July 7 – New Rockford, Tim Becker, (701) 947-2454
- July 9 – Carrington, Wendy Becker, (701) 652-2581
- July 14 – New Salem, Vanessa Hoines, (701) 667-3340
- July 16 – Beulah, Craig Askim, (701) 873-5195
- July 23 – Williston, Mary Froelich, (701) 577-4595
- July 31 – Jamestown, Eunice Sahr, (701) 252-9030
- Aug. 4 – Bismarck, Cathy Palczewski, (701) 221-6865
- Aug. 6 – Dickinson, Kurt Froelich, (701) 456-7665
- Aug. 10 – Cando, Crystal Martodam, (701) 968-4362
- Aug. 12 – Pembina County (location to be announced), Helen Volk-Schill, (701) 265-8411
Each camp will run from 5 to about 8:30 p.m. The cost is $30 per person. Participation will be limited to 60 people at each camp.
For more information or to register for a camp, call the contact person for the camp you'd like to attend.
The North Dakota Pork Producers Council, North Dakota Lamb and Wool Producers Association, North Dakota Beef Commission, Northern Plains Distributing Inc. and Cloverdale Foods are helping sponsor the camps.


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The first day of Spring is quickly approaching. Normally I would be more excited, but winter here seems to be dragging on and on. No real "spring" is on the horizon. Temperatures here are in the 30's and below all week, but we're surviving. We're planning on more sewing, crafts, and lazy afternoons!
At the beginning of March we started our wheat grass in hopes that it would be ready to go for Easter. 9 days later, the blades were more than a couple inches long!
We used Delia's method for soil-less wheat grass. It was a bit high maintenance the first few days, having to rinse the wheat a few times a day. But fun to watch. This is the wheat on day 5, just after it came out of the jars.
And by day 8, here's what we had! Beautiful long blades of green grass.
The roots of the grass had grown right into the paper towels, so all I had to do was cut the rugs of grass into circles and place them in our pots. I found these pots at Ikea for $1 each, then filled them each half way with rocks.
You can still see the wheat berries down by the roots.
I thought the grass would look good under our Easter egg garland. We come up with a new method to decorate eggs every year then string them all together for display. I'm still trying to decide what to do this year...
So now I have something beautiful and green to look at when I look out the window! Although we won't see the real stuff for some time now. Until then, this will have to do.
And I just found out that my pictures that I linked from Flickr are not working with Pinterest. Grrrr. So I'm going to try to load them right onto blogger and hope that that works. Sorry for the inconvenience!
**Update: Unfortunately, about a week after we had this beautiful green grass, it all died from mold. And I'm not quite sure how we could have avoided it. So no green grass for Easter. Although the process of growing the grass from wheat was fun to watch, next year we might just go with plain old grass seeds planted in soil.


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When it comes to gift-giving, if the thought of wrapping an item that came off of a shelf holding rows of identical products is uninspiring, opt for customizable gifts instead. These creative DIY crafts and products that can be personalized make it easy for either a gifter or a recipient to put a special touch on an object.
To aid consumers in the customization process, this year, brands like eos and Oreo have really gone above and beyond when it comes to personalization. Oreo's festive holiday packaging can be completely customized, while eos is now selling three-packs of lip balms that come with decorative ornamentation.
3D printing has also been a huge help in bridging the gap between a retailer's need to productionize and a consumer's desire to personalize.
45 Novel Customizable Gifts
More Stats +/-
Customizable Electric Scooters
3D-Printed Gold Jewelry
Customizable Cosmetics Packaging
Floral 3D-Printed Jewelry
Customized 3D-Printed Accessories
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This article is one of 350,000 experiments. We use crowd filtering, big data and AI to identify insights.


text: This is an old revised table generation patch. The old patch didn't generate large enough tables and thus some samples failed. (http://klif-e.mos.net.au/videos/extr.wmv). <http://klif-e.mos.net.au/videos/extr.wmv> With this patch the decoding time on my test sample went down from about 13.6 -> 13.0 secs. Around a 5% improvmement in decodetime. Unfortunaly I'm not sure how large the tables need to be so I just set a size I thought would be safe. With the extr sample I got a maximum index of 131. MvH Benjamin Larsson -- new tiny signature -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: wma_table.patch URL: <http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/attachments/20060819/458642b3/attachment.asc>


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On Your Marks, Get Set, Go!
Did you have the opportunity to watch the recent Summer Olympics on TV? The games were thrilling as always. And so many great athletes stood out such as gymnasts Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman, volleyballers Misty May Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings, swimmers Michael Phelps and Missy Franklin, and runners Usain Bolt and Oscar Pistorius.
While watching the track competition, I took note of the runners just before their races started. The TV cameras zoomed right in for the close-up shots of their faces. You could see that they were getting into the zone of high performance.
Then came the three commands we are all so familiar with, On Your Marks, Get Set, and Go. It occurred to me that these three steps form a part of the leadership process.
On Your Marks - This first command says to the runner, Get in your lane. Get on your starting spot. This in essence is the leadership property of alignment. Getting into the right place to perform.
Watching the high diving competition, especially the synchronized divers, inspired this blog post. The synchronized pairs were extraordinary. Not only is the high board 3 stories above the pool, but the teams must dive in unison with the utmost precision. Talk about alignment!
Get Set - The second command tells the runner to assume the starting position. This is the leadership property of focus. You can see the intense focus in their bodies and in their faces.
After many of the races, the sportscaster on the scene would interview some of the athletes. I remember one such interview with swimmer Missy Franklin where she was asked how she transforms from the chatty and fun loving girl we see before the races to the intense competitor who wins the gold. Her answer: she focuses.
Go - Then the third command signals the take off. This is the leadership property of execution. Like an arrow shot from a bow, the runners dash from their starting spots, legs, arms, and hearts pumping round the track.
But there is a fourth step, a step that precedes the three above. It's the step that prepared these men and women physically, mentally, and emotionally to compete on the world stage. It's the step I would call Design and it represents the leadership property of planning & preparation. Planning and Preparation includes a great deal, such as goal setting, communicating, training, and building a team. It also includes commitment and perseverance.
South African sprinter Oscar Pistorious, one of the most notable competitors of the 2012 games, is a great example of this fourth leadership property. He runs on artificial legs. Born with a severe deformity in both limbs, he had to undergo surgery at a young age which left him without lower legs and feet. Despite this disability, he demonstrated his ability to run! Now known as "the Blade Runner," Pistorius runs on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And he is among the fastest people on Earth. What an extraordinary example of the human spirit's determination to overcome adversity. And the importance of commitment and perseverance.
It occurred to me that organizational leaders can take a page from these top performers.
Like the high divers, when you ascend the ladder to that diving board, you had better be sure that that is where you want to go. You had better be sure that you have a Plan and have Prepared yourself. That you and your team are well Aligned with a clear goal that all understand. That you are able to Focus when the time comes to bring your "A" game. And that you Execute with excellence for the sake of your customers and your company.
Posted by Terrence Seamon on Wednesday August 15, 2012


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A colleague of mine sent me the link to a new website. I will let their description do the talking but it looks promising.
We are a group of recent architecture school graduates. We know what it's like to be in studio all night, working, trying to find that spark of inspiration. We know how great of a help it is to be able to talk to people about your ideas, to get feedback, see how their design process works, and what you can learn from them
With that in mind, we started this website. Even though your review might be over, there's still more you can learn from your project, more you can implement in your next iteration. We want to create a space where you can share your work with an infinitely large community, like a studio with an ever growing student body. Show your stuff after your review, get feedback your critics might have missed, learn what someone else might have done to take the project in a different direction.
Right now, that is our goal here, to create a space where we can share projects and learn from each other. We have other ideas, and a broader scope for the future, but for the time being, we want to help get your projects out there, and help you with your projects.
I encourage you all to check it out (especially other students like myself).
Thanks for the link Dave!


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Four changes have been made to the Scotland under-18 team to face Wales at Noceto, Italy tomorrow (Saturday 18 April, kick-off 4pm local time, 3pm BST).
Outside backs Jamie Forbes (George Watson's College), Chris Bloomfield (Hymers College) and Danny Gilmour (Stirling County) come in at full-back, wing and outside-centre while Robbie Boswell (Stirling County) starts on the blind side flank.
The youngsters lost to England (75-0) on Wednesday and now must pick themselves up in time for tomorrow's Welsh challenge.
Scotland team manager, Euan Kennedy, said: "We performed well for 25 minutes in the first-half against England and played the type of game we need the guys to play for the entire game. It's up to us to build on the positives from that period and rise to the next challenge.
"Wales will be tough up front and are battle hardened through the strong Welsh under-18 league. They're quite big but their defeat to Ireland (22-15) was relatively error strewn so we're looking to cut the errors out of our game and capitalise on any made by the Welsh."
Scotland under-18 to face Wales under-18 at Noceto, Italy on Saturday (kick-off 4pm local time, 3pm BST)
15 Jamie Forbes (George Watson's College)
14 Chris Bloomfield (Hymers College)
13 Danny Gilmour (Stirling County)*
12 Craig Jackson (Melrose Wasps)
11 Courtenay Morrison (Dollar Academy)
10 Gregor Hunter (Gala Wanderers / Galashiels Academy)*
9 Sean Kennedy (Stirling County)
1 Ross Turner (Fettes College)
2 David Cherry (Merchiston Castle School) CAPTAIN
3 Colin Phillips (Stewart's-Melville College)
4 Robert McAlpine (The Glasgow Academy)*
5 Michael Roy (Musselburgh)
6 Robbie Boswell (Stirling County)
8 Andrew Kirkland (Glasgow Hawks)*
7 Duncan Finnie (Stewart's-Melville College)
James Tyas (Brighton College)
Steve Quigley (St Mary's College)
Mathew Bradford (Allan Glen's)
Richard Ferguson (Melrose Wasps)
Gary Lowrie (Hawick Wanderers)
Callum Wishart (Dollar Academy)
Steven Turnbull (Whitecraigs)
Stuart Edwards (Stirling County)
Glen Bryce (Stirling County)
Michael Doneghan (Stewart's-Melville College)
Henry Oliver (Merchiston Castle School)
• Member of National Academy supported by AIS (Area Institute of Sport)
Martin Currie sponsor all of the Scotland age-grades
5 Nations under-18 Festival
Match day 3: Saturday 18 April
Wales v Scotland, Noceto (kick-off 4pm local time, 3pm BST)
England v Ireland, Colorno (kick-off 4pm local time, 3pm BST)
Head coach – Grant McKelvey
Assistant coach – Graham Marshall
Assistant coach – Alex Duncan
CPD coach – Simon Cross
Strength and conditioning coach – Val Houston
Team manager – Euan Kennedy
Assistant manager – John Manson
Team doctor – Mike Proudfoot
Physio – Nicola McGuire
Video analyst – Murray Craig
Team administrator – Ann McKinsley
Media manager – Michael James


text:
|Unsigned cover design for Columbia MX-258
Beethoven: Sonata No. 5 in D Major, Op. 102, No. 2
Gregor Piatigorsky, cello; Ralph Berkowitz, piano
Recorded June 6, 1945
Columbia Masterworks MX-258, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 39.14 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 30.53 MB)
Brahms: Sonata No. 2 in F Major, Op. 99
Gregor Piatigorsky, cello; Ralph Berkowitz, piano
Recorded May 28, 1947
Columbia Masterworks ML-2096, one 10-inch LP record
Link (FLAC files, 66.00 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 44.94 MB)
Almost twice as much music was recorded by Piatigorsky for Columbia as was actually released. There were unissued versions of the Grieg, Debussy and Barber sonatas - this last-named, Columbia actually went so far as to assign a set number for (MM-737), and both Piatigorsky and Barber were eager to have it released. My guess is that a suitable filler side could not be agreed upon. These sonata recordings finally saw the light of day in 2010, with the issue of a six-CD set by West Hill Radio Archives, a set that is indispensable for lovers of Piatigorsky's art, and which, when last I checked, was being sold at Berkshire Record Outlet at a reduced price.


text:
- Get link
- Other Apps
- AnonymousFebruary 9, 2016 at 12:51 AM
That looks delicious! I love anything pizza so I can't wait to try this recipe out for the next superbowl hahaReplyDelete
Oh my goodness! I love the look of these, and they also look super easy to make! So yummy. My family doesn't watch football, but we do love food. ;)ReplyDelete
We've done something like that! They're so much fun to make!ReplyDelete
Ooo I make similar types of these and my husband love it!! I use the Pillsbury croissant rolls instead! It's so yummy and easy!! =)ReplyDelete
Melanie | Blog: Toots + Dill
YUMM. It's like a mini calzone. And I LOVE calzones.ReplyDelete
I love pizza and this seems easy and yummy :)ReplyDelete
The sauce looks so good! Always looking for new treats to make at home.ReplyDelete
These look unbelievably DELICIOUS!! Definitely trying these out next time as a quick but yum appetizer.ReplyDelete
I need to try this with the kiddos. This looks so good!!ReplyDelete
Good lordy do I need to make these! YUM!ReplyDelete
Gosh! They look so delicious. I'm sure I need to give them a try or make something similar. They're looking like small bombs of happiness, to be precise. Wink.ReplyDelete
Noor | Noor's Place
Oh this looks so good! Thanks!ReplyDelete
These look SO delicious!ReplyDelete
Oh my! These need to get in my belly! I love pizza. && I LOVE biscuits.. well bread in general! I need to make these.ReplyDelete
These look absolutely yummy!ReplyDelete
OH YUM! We whip up Dustin's Spinach Dip for Football! It's so easy and SO good! I could eat it by the bowl full! I'm already looking forward to the new Patriot's season (and hoping that we can finally move on from Deflategate)ReplyDelete
xo, Chelsie @ Hey There, Chelsie
That looks so easy and so tasty!!ReplyDelete
This comment has been removed by the author.ReplyDelete
These look amazing- the perfect snack the whole family will love, and something I can throw together pretty quickly! Thanks so much for sharing with us at Delicious Dish Tuesday last week! I'm a bit late (oops) but I wanted to stop by and let you know I'm featuring this as my favorite for this week's DDT! Please feel free to stop by and grab the "Featured Favorite" button, and please share more fab recipes! <3 Happy Tuesday!ReplyDelete


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This content has been marked as final. Show 2 replies
Re: how do I free up drive space on Solarwinds serveracmtix Jul 19, 2017 9:52 AM (in response to firstname.lastname@example.com)
Do you have your MS SQL database located on the same server as your solarwinds main poller?
Re: how do I free up drive space on Solarwinds serversmoked_angus Sep 12, 2017 5:30 PM (in response to email@example.com)
Look at Windows general cleanup procedures, but as my solarwinds platform grew, I also had to add space to the C:\ drive as well. Watch your databases and APEs as well.