WA2K Radio is now on the air

Thanks, Mr. Wizard. I spent a good part of this early morning looking at the short stories, but I shall check out your link later.

Well, folks, how about a different poem by John Donne:

The Sun Rising

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys, and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear: "All here in one bed lay."

She is all states, and all princes I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compar'd to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy 's we,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.

-- John Donne

Letty, one motivation for my visit to Pohnpei, Micronesia was that i thought the Nan Madol ruins--which comprise about 100 artificial islands--



were likely the inspiration for the sunken city of R'lyeh in HPL's famous story, The Call of Ctulhu. of course, the actual edifices bear little resemblance to HPL's gothic description:



http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecallofcthulhu.htm

as Lightwizard mentioned, it's pretty cool that the entire HPL opus is available online at the above URL.

Lightwizard has kindly offered to allow me to tag along on his visit to the Ackerman mansion. perhaps i can be the WA2K photographer on the occasion; there's sure to be no shortage of astounding memorabilia.

Isn't our Mr. Turtle fun, folks? One gorgeous photo, m.d. and yes, we will expect shots of the Akerman Mansion, in glowing and horrific color.

Thanks for the excerpt, incidentally. Can't fault H.P. on diction, can we.

Good morning WA2K.

Wishing a Happy 61st to Steve Martin; 46th to Sarah Brightman and 40th to Halle Berry.

Well, there's our Raggedy, thank goodness. Hey PA, great pics as usual.

Funny song by Steve, folks:





Steve Martin: I'd like to talk seriously just for a moment. One of the great art exhibitions ever to tour the United States is the Treasures of Tutankhamen - or King Tut. But I think it's a national disgrace the way we have commercialized it with trinkets and toys, T-shirts and posters. And three months ago I was up in the woods, and I wrote a song. I tried to use the ancient modalities and melodies. I'd like to do it for you right now. Maybe we can all learn something.

(King Tut. King Tut.)
Now when he was a young man, he never thought he'd see
People stand in line to see the boy king.

(King Tut)
How'd you get so funky?
(Funky Tut)
Did you do the monkey?
(Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia
King Tut)

Now if I'd known they'd line up just to see him
I'd have taken all my money and bought me a museum.

(King Tut)
Buried with a donkey.
(King Tut)
He's my favorite honky
(Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia
King Tut)

(Tut! Tut!)
Dancing by the Nile!
(Disco Tut! Tut!)
The ladies love his style!
(Boss Tut! Tut!)
Walkin' for a mile.
(Rockin' Tut! Tut!)
He ate a crocodile.
(Oooooh, wah-ooooh)
He gave his life for tourism

Walter Scott
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (14 August 1771 - 21 September 1832) was a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet popular throughout Europe during his time. In some ways Scott was the first author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers all over Europe, Australia, and North America.

His novels and (to a lesser extent) his poetry are still read, but he is less popular today than he was at the height of his fame. Nevertheless many of his works remain classics of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley and The Heart of Midlothian.

Early days

Born in Edinburgh in 1771, the son of a solicitor, the young Walter Scott survived a childhood bout of polio that would leave him lame in his right leg for the rest of his life. To restore his health he was sent to live for some years in the rural Borders region at his grandparents' farm at Sandyknowe. Here he learned the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends which characterised much of his work. Also, for his health, he spent a year in Bath, England.

After studying law at the University of Edinburgh, he followed in his father's footsteps and became a lawyer in Edinburgh. As a lawyer's clerk he made his first visit to the Scottish Highlands directing an eviction. He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792. He had an unsuccessful love suit with Williamina Belsches of Fettercairn, who married Sir William Forbes.

Literary career launched

At the age of 25 he began dabbling in writing, translating works from German, his first publication being rhymed versions of ballads by Bürger in 1796. He then published a three-volume set of collected Scottish ballads, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. This was the first sign of his interest in Scottish history from a literary standpoint.

Scott then became an ardent volunteer in the yeomanry and on one of his "raids" he met at Gilsland Spa Margaret Charlotte Charpentier (or Charpenter), daughter of Jean Charpentier of Lyon in France whom he married in 1797. They had five children. In 1799 he was appointed Sheriff-Depute of the County of Selkirk, based in the Royal Burgh of Selkirk.

In his earlier married days, Scott had a decent living from his earnings at the law, his salary as Sheriff-Depute, his wife's income, some revenue from his writing, and his share of his father's rather meagre estate.

After Scott had founded a printing press, his poetry, beginning with The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805, brought him fame. He published a number of other poems over the next ten years, including the popular The Lady of the Lake, printed in 1810 and set in the Trossachs. Portions of the German translation of this work were later set to music by Franz Schubert. One of these songs, Ellens dritter Gesang, is popularly labeled as "Schubert's Ave Maria".

Another work from this time period, Marmion, produced some of his most quoted (and most often mis-attributed) lines. Canto VI. Stanza 17 reads:

Yet Clare's sharp questions must I shun,
Must separate Constance from the nun
Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
A Palmer too! No wonder why
I felt rebuked beneath his eye;
In 1809 his Tory sympathies led him to become a co-founder of the Quarterly Review, a review journal to which he made several anonymous contributions.

The novels

Walter ScottWhen the press became embroiled in pecuniary difficulties, Scott set out, in 1814, to write a cash-cow. The result was Waverley, a novel which did not name its author. It was a tale of the "Forty-Five" Jacobite rising in the Kingdom of Great Britain with its English protagonist Edward Waverley, by his Tory upbringing sympathetic to Jacobitism, becoming enmeshed in events but eventually choosing Hanoverian respectability. The novel met with considerable success. There followed a succession of novels over the next five years, each with a Scottish historical setting. Mindful of his reputation as a poet, he maintained the anonymous habit he had begun with Waverley, always publishing the novels under the name Author of Waverley or attributed as "Tales of..." with no author. Even when it was clear that there would be no harm in coming out into the open he maintained the façade, apparently out of a sense of fun. During this time the nickname The Wizard of the North was popularly applied to the mysterious best-selling writer. His identity as the author of the novels was widely rumoured, and in 1815 Scott was given the honour of dining with George, Prince Regent, who wanted to meet "the author of Waverley".

In 1819 he broke away from writing about Scotland with Ivanhoe, a historical romance set in 12th-century England. It too was a runaway success and, as he did with his first novel, he unleashed a slew of books along the same lines. As his fame grew during this phase of his career, he was granted the title of baronet, becoming Sir Walter Scott. At this time he organised the visit of King George IV to Scotland, and when the King visited Edinburgh in 1822 the spectacular pageantry Scott had concocted to portray George as a rather tubby reincarnation of Bonnie Prince Charlie made tartans and kilts fashionable and turned them into symbols of Scottish national identity.

Financial woes

Beginning in 1825 he went into dire financial straits again, as his company nearly collapsed. That he was the author of his novels became general knowledge at this time as well. Rather than declare bankruptcy he placed his home, Abbotsford House, and income into a trust belonging to his creditors, and proceeded to write his way out of debt. He kept up his prodigious output of fiction (as well as producing a non-fiction biography of Napoleon Bonaparte) until 1831. By then his health was failing, and he died at Abbotsford in 1832. Though not in the clear by then, his novels continued to sell, and he made good his debts from beyond the grave. He was buried in Dryburgh Abbey where nearby, fittingly, a large statue can be found of William Wallace?-one of Scotland's most romantic historical figures.

His home, Abbotsford House

When Sir Walter Scott was a boy he sometimes travelled with his father from Selkirk to Melrose, in the Border Country where some of his novels are set. At a certain spot the old gentleman would stop the carriage and take his son to a stone on the site of the battle of Melrose (1526). Not far away was a little farm called Cartleyhole, and this he eventually purchased. In due course the farmhouse developed into a wonderful home that has been likened to a fairy palace. Through windows enriched with the insignia of heraldry the sun shone on suits of armour, trophies of the chase, fine furniture, and still finer pictures. Panelling of oak and cedar and carved ceilings relieved by coats of arms in their correct colour added to the beauty of the house. More land was purchased, until Scott owned nearly 1,000 acres (4 km²), and it is estimated that the building cost him over £25,000. A neighbouring Roman road with a ford used in olden days by the abbots of Melrose suggested the name of Abbotsford.

Assessment

From being one of the most popular novelists of the 19th century, Scott suffered from a disastrous decline in popularity after the First World War. The tone was set early on in E.M. Forster's classic "Aspects of the Novel" (1927), where Scott was savaged as being a clumsy writer who wrote slapdash, badly plotted novels. Scott also suffered from the rising star of Jane Austen. Considered merely an entertaining "woman's novelist" in the 19th century, in the 20th Austen began to be seen as perhaps the major English novelist of the first few decades of the 19th century. As Austen's star rose, Scott's sank, although, ironically, he had been one of the few male writers of his time to recognize Austen's genius. Scott's many flaws (ponderousness, prolixity, lack of humor) were fundamentally out of step with Modernist sensibilities. Nevertheless, Scott was responsible for two major trends that carry on to this day. First, he essentially invented the modern historical novel; an enormous number of imitators (and imitators of imitators) would appear in the 19th century. It is a measure of Scott's influence that Edinburgh's central railway station, opened in 1854 for the North British Railway, is called the Waverley Station. Second, his Scottish novels followed on from James Macpherson's Ossian cycle in rehabilitating the public perception of Highland culture after years in the shadows following southern distrust of hill bandits and the Jacobite rebellions. As enthusiastic chairman of the Celtic Society of Edinburgh he contributed to the reinvention of Scottish culture. It is worth noting, however, that Scott was a Lowland Scot, and that his re-creations of the Highlands were more than a little fanciful. His organisation of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 was a pivotal event, leading Edinburgh tailors to invent many "clan tartans" out of whole cloth, so to speak. After being essentially unstudied for many decades, a small revival of interest in Scott's work began in the 1970s and 1980s. Ironically, postmodern tastes (which favoured discontinuous narratives, and the introduction of the 'first person' into works of fiction) were more favourable to Scott's work than Modernist tastes. Despite all the flaws, Scott is now seen as an important innovator, and a key figure in the development of Scottish and world literature.

Scott was also responsible, through a series of pseudonymous letters published in the Edinburgh Weekly News in 1826, for retaining the right of Scottish banks to issue their own banknotes, which is reflected to this day by his continued appearance on the front of all notes issued by the Bank of Scotland.

Many of his works were illustrated by his friend, William Allan.

Doc Holliday
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Henry "Doc" Holliday (August 14, 1851 - November 8, 1887) was an American dentist, gambler and gunfighter of the Old West frontier, who is usually remembered for his associations with Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.


Genealogy and education

He was born in Griffin, Georgia to Henry Burroughs Holliday and Alice Jane Holliday née McKey.

John's mother died on September 16, 1866, of tuberculosis, when John was 15 years old. Three months later, his father remarried Rachel Martin. Shortly after the marriage, the family moved to Valdosta, Georgia, where John attended the Valdosta Institute. There he received a strong classical secondary education in rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, history and languages?-principally Latin, but also French and some ancient Greek.

In 1870, 19 year-old John Henry left home to begin dental school in Philadelphia. On March 1, 1872, he received a degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. Later that year he opened a dental office with Arthur C. Ford in Atlanta.

Health

At birth he had a cleft palate and partly cleft lip. At two months of age, this defect was repaired surgically by John's uncle J.S. Holliday, M.D., and a family cousin, the famous physician Crawford Long. The repair left no speech impediment, though speech therapy was needed. However, the repair is visible in John's upper lip-line, in the one authentic adult portrait-photograph which survives, taken on the occasion of his graduation from dental school.

This graduation portrait (see above), taken at the age of 20, supports contemporary accounts that John had ash-blond hair and blue eyes. In early adulthood he stood about 5 feet 10 inches tall, and weighed about 160 pounds.

Not long after beginning his dental practice, Doc was diagnosed with tuberculosis. It is possible he contracted the disease from his mother. He was given only a few months to live, although it was thought that moving to the drier and warmer southwestern part of the United States might help to reduce the deterioration of his health.

Early travels and dentistry

His first stop west (September, 1873) was Dallas, Texas, where he opened a dental office at 56 Elm Street, about three blocks east of the site of today's Dealey Plaza. He soon began gambling, and realized this was a more beneficial source of income. He was arrested in Dallas (January, 1875) after trading gunfire with a saloon-keeper, but no one was injured and he was found not guilty. He had already moved his offices to Denison, Texas. After being found guilty of "gaming" in Dallas, Texas and fined, he had had enough, and decided to leave the state.

In the years that followed, Holliday had many more such disagreements, fueled by a hot temper and an attitude that death by gun or knife was better than that by tuberculosis. The alcohol which Holliday used to control his cough may also have contributed. There was also the practical matter that a professional gambler, working on his own at the edge of the law, had to be able to back up disputed points of play with at least a threat of force. Over time, Holliday continued traveling on the western mining frontier where gambling was most likely to be lucrative and legal. In coming years Doc was found in Denver, Cheyenne, and Deadwood, site of the gold rush in the Dakota Territory in the fall of 1876. It was possibly in Deadwood that winter that Doc first heard of Wyatt Earp, who was also there at the same time.

By 1877 Doc was back in Fort Griffin, Texas, where Wyatt Earp remembered first meeting him. The two of them began to form an unlikely friendship (Wyatt more even-tempered and controlled, Doc more hot-headed and impulsive). This friendship was cemented in 1878 in Dodge City, Kansas, where both Earp and Doc had traveled to make money from the gambling of the cowboys driving cattle up from Texas. Doc was still practicing dentistry on the side from his rooms in Dodge City, as we know from an 1878 Dodge newspaper advertisement (he promised money back for less than complete customer satisfaction), but this is the last known time he attempted practice. In an interview printed in a newspaper later in his life, he said that he only practiced dentistry "for about 5 years."

The dedicated gambler

In September, 1878 an incident occurred in which Wyatt, a deputy city Marshal, was surrounded by men who had "the drop" on him. Doc, coming up from another angle to cover the group with a gun, either shot one of these men or threatened to, and Wyatt afterwards always credited Doc with saving his life that day.

Professional comic Eddie Foy was a friend of Doc in Dodge City, and remembered Doc trying in 1879 to get him to join the "Royal Gorge War", a railroad right-of-way dispute into which the Santa Fe Railroad sent a private posse led by Bat Masterson. Foy said that he couldn't hit anything with a gun, and from his comedian's ear, we get the only known rendition of Doc's Georgia-accented speaking voice:

"Oh, that's all right. The Santy Fee won't know the difference. You kin use a shot-gun if you want to. Dodge wants a good showin' in this business. You'll help swell the crowd and you'll get your pay anyhow."

Tombstone, Arizona Territory

Main article: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Dodge was not a frontier town for long, and by 1879 became too respectable for the kinds of people who had seen it through its early days. For many, it was time to move on to places where money was being made and hadn't yet been reached by the civilizing railroad. Holliday by this time was as well known for his gunfighter reputation as he was for being a gambler, although the latter was his trade, and the former simply a reputation. Through his friendship with Wyatt, Doc eventually made his way to the silver-mining boom town of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in September 1880 (Wyatt had been there since December, 1879). There, Doc quickly became embroiled in the local politics and violence that led up to the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in October, 1881. Doc was certainly a key element in this.

The gunfight happened the next day following a late-night argument between Holliday and Ike Clanton, and it happened in the vacant lot and street immediately next to Fly's boarding house where Holliday had a room. The Clantons and McLaurys had collected in the lot before being confronted by the Earps, and Holliday must have thought they were there specifically to assassinate him. See O.K. Corral for details of this conflict.

Testimony from an eyewitness who saw the fight begin with a "nickle plated pistol" and a blast of unusual smoke, suggests that Doc could have started the gunfight, despite town marshal Virgil Earp's attempts to calmly disarm the cowboys. Ike Clanton was never hit. It is known that Holliday carried Virgil Earp's double-barreled short (messenger-type) shotgun into the fight, having been given the weapon just before the fight by Virgil, because Doc was wearing a long coat which could conceal it. Virgil took Doc's walking stick. By not going conspicuously armed Virgil Earp was seeking to avoid panic in the citizenry of Tombstone, and in Clantons and McLaurys.

The strategy failed, for while Virgil held up the cane, one witness saw a man who was almost certainly Doc poke a cowboy in the chest with the shotgun, then step back. Shortly thereafter, Doc certainly used this weapon to kill Tom McLaury, the only man to sustain shotgun wounds?-a fatal buckshot charge to the chest. This probably happened quite early in the fight, and for reasons of handling familiar to any shotgun user, before Holliday fired a pistol. Scenarios in which the slight and tubercular Doc held a pistol with one hand and a double-barrelled shotgun in the other during a gunfight (using the pistol first, then the shotgun, then the pistol again) do not seem likely.

Despite Doc Holliday's reputation for deadliness over the years, which has grown in the telling, Tom McLaury remains the only man that there is contemporary historical evidence that Holliday killed up to that point. There is little doubt that there were later victims of Holliday during the Earp Vendetta Ride, but evidence is sketchy.

Following an inquest and arraignment hearing that determined the gunfight was not a criminal act on the part of the Earps and Holliday, the situation in Tombstone grew worse when Virgil Earp was ambushed and permanently injured in December, and Morgan Earp ambushed by assassins and killed in March, 1882. After Morgan's murder, the Earps, their families, and Holliday fled town. In Tucson, while Wyatt, Warren Earp, and Doc Holliday were escorting the wounded Virgil Earp and his wife Allie back to California, they prevented another ambush and began the Earp Vendetta against the cowboys they believed were responsible for Morgan's death.

Earp vendetta ride

The lawless killing started with Frank Stilwell, a former deputy of Johnny Behan's, who was in Tucson to answer a stage-robbery charge, but who wound up dead on the tracks in the train yard near the Earps' train. What Stilwell was doing in the train yard has never been explained (he may have been waiting to pick up another man who was supposed to testify in his favor), but Wyatt Earp certainly thought Stilwell was there to do the Earps harm. In his biographies, Wyatt admitted shooting Stilwell with a shotgun, but along with Earp's two shotgun wounds, Stilwell was also found with three bullet wounds. Doc Holliday, who was with Wyatt that night, and said that Stilwell and Ike Clanton were waiting in the trainyard to assassinate Virgil Earp, is a prime candidate for the second shooter. Doc never directly acknowledged his role in Stilwell's killing, or those that followed.

After the Earp families had left for California and safety, Doc and Wyatt, along with Wyatt's younger brother Warren Earp and Wyatt's friends Sherman McMasters, Turkey Creek Jack Johnson and Texas Jack Vermillion, rode on a vendetta for three weeks, during which Curly Bill Brocius and at least two other men thought to be responsible for Morgan's death, were killed. Eventually, with warrants on six of the vendetta posse (including Wyatt and Doc) in the Arizona Territory for the killing of Stilwell, the posse moved to New Mexico, then Colorado, in mid-April, 1882. Along that journey, while in New Mexico, Wyatt and Doc had a minor argument, and parted ways before going separately to different parts of Colorado.

After the vendetta ride, neither Doc nor the rest of the vendetta party ever went back to Arizona to live. In Doc's case, Colorado refused to extradite him (due to lack of evidence) when he was arrested for the Stilwell killing in Denver in May, 1882 (Doc spent the last two weeks of that month in jail while that issue was decided). Doc and Wyatt would meet again in June of 1882 in Gunnison, after Doc was released. There is controversy about whether or not any of the Earp vendetta posse slipped briefly back to the Tombstone area to kill Johnny Ringo on July 12-13, 1882. Biographers of Ringo do not believe it is very likely.

Final illness

Holliday spent the rest of his brief life in Colorado. After a stay in Leadville, Colorado, he suffered from the effects of the high altitude, and his health and evidently his gambling skills began to deteriorate badly. In August, 1884, he shot Billy Allen, a man who was threatening him with a beating in the collection of a loan to Doc of just five dollars, which Doc didn't have the money to repay. (Holliday and Allen were not strangers, since the same Billy Allen in 1881 had testified unfavorably in the Spicer Hearing regarding the Earp's role in the O.K. Corral gunfight).

According to his own court testimony, given while pleading self-defense, Doc was then down to just 122 pounds in weight. Allen recovered from his bullet wound, which was to the arm (Doc had been tackled and prevented from doing worse), and the jury ultimately found Doc not guilty.

According to Wyatt's wife Josie/Sadie, Doc and Wyatt met for the last time in late 1885, in Denver, Colorado. Holliday by then was very ill, but still able to walk and gamble.

In 1887, now prematurely gray and ailing badly, Doc made his way to a hotel (the Hotel Glenwood) near the hot springs of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, hoping to take advantage of the reputed curative power of the waters. However, the sulfurous fumes from the spring may have done his lungs more harm than good, and Holliday eventually died in his hotel room, after being bedridden for two months.

In the end, it was tuberculosis that got Doc Holliday, at the age of 36. Fifteen years after the doctors gave him only months to live, he died peacefully in his hotel bed. There is controversy about whether he formally converted to Catholicism first. He is known to have seen a priest in his final illness, but it is known that his funeral services were conducted by a Presbyterian minister (Holliday's father was Presbyterian), which makes it less likely that Doc received sacraments as a Catholic. Doc had been raised as a Methodist by his mother, and attended Methodist services as an adult, but his friend and first cousin Martha Anne "Mattie" Holliday, with whom he regularly corresponded throughout his life, had years earlier become a Catholic nun, and this may have been an influence. Doc's long-time companion Big Nose Kate had also attended a convent school, and was probably Catholic. Kate helped care for Doc in the last months of his life, and was with him at the end.

Dying, Holliday asked for a drink of whiskey, and his reputed last words were "This is funny." Perhaps he was looking at his bootless feet. No one ever thought that he would die with his boots off, or in bed. Doc's dying words, however, are also a matter of speculation, and they are not reported by Kate or any contemporary account of his death.

Doc Holliday's grave is in Glenwood Springs cemetery. There is dispute about whether he is actually buried in his marked grave, or even in the cemetery itself. He died in deep winter when the ground was frozen and was buried the same day in what was probably a temporary grave. This grave may not have been in the old cemetery, which was up a difficult road on the mountain. It is thus possible his body was never later relocated, but the truth is not known, since no exhumation has been attempted. If Doc is not in Glenwood Cemetery, he may be in somebody's back yard in modern Glenwood Springs city, at a lower altitude.

What those who knew him said of his character

Doc was known to be literate, but due to loss and destruction of his personal letters by his family, no authenticated specimen of his writing survives. A few newspaper interviews survive, but must be viewed judiciously due to the journalistic license sometimes taken in the period. Various people who knew Holliday well have also left commentary:

In a (probably ghost-edited) article in 1896, Wyatt Earp had this to say about Doc Holliday: "Doc was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long lean ash-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a gun that I ever knew."

In a newspaper interview, Doc was once asked if his killings had ever gotten on his conscience. Holliday is reported to have said "I coughed that out with my lungs, years ago."

Big Nose Kate, however, remembered Doc's reaction after his role in the O.K. Corral gunfight. She reported that Doc came back to his room, sat on the bed, and wept. "That was awful-- awful," said Doc.

Life-long lawman Virgil Earp, interviewed May, 30 1882, in The Arizona Daily Star (two months after Virgil had fled Tombstone after Morgan Earp's death), summed up Holliday:

"There was something very peculiar about Doc. He was gentlemanly, a good dentist, a friendly man and yet, outside of us boys, I don't think he had a friend in the Territory. Tales were told that he had murdered men in different parts of the country; that he had robbed and committed all manner of crimes, and yet, when persons were asked how they knew it, they could only admit it was hearsay, and that nothing of the kind could really be traced to Doc's account. He was a slender, sickly fellow, but whenever a stage was robbed or a row started, and help was needed, Doc was one of the first to saddle his horse and report for duty."

Doc's "record" of violence

The real Holliday was more complex than Wyatt's summary. Wide ranging historical accounts have usually supported the belief that Holliday was extremely fast with a pistol, but his accuracy was not perfect. In his four known pistol uses in single combat, he shot one opponent in the arm (Billy Allen), one across the scalp (Charles White), and missed one man (a saloon keeper named Charles Austin) entirely. In an early incident in Tombstone in 1880 shortly after he arrived in town, a drunken Holliday managed to shoot Oriental Saloon owner Milt Joyce in the hand, and his bartender Parker in the toe (neither was the original man Doc quarrelled with). For this, Doc was fined for assault and battery (apparently a plea-bargain). There are no contemporary newspaper or legal records to match the many and always unnamed men who Doc is "credited" with shooting to death in popular folklore, and the same is true for the several tales of knifings credited to Holliday by early biographers. All these colorful stories may be viewed with skepticism.

Publicly Doc Holliday could be as fierce as was needed for a gambling man to earn respect. In January, 1882 he told Tombstone's Johnny Ringo (as recorded by diarist Parsons) "All I want of you is ten paces out in the street," and he and Ringo were prevented from having that kind of gunfight only by the Tombstone police (which did not include the Earps by this time), who arrested them both. Doc's exact role in the deaths of Frank Stilwell and the other three men killed on the Earp vendetta ride remains uncertain, but he was present at the events. As noted, Doc is another probable shooter of Stilwell (not much of a feat, however, since Stilwell had already taken two shotgun blasts from Wyatt). Doc certainly killed Tom McLaury, and either Doc or Morgan Earp fired the second bullet that ended the life of Frank McLaury. Although Frank McLaury was sometimes erroneously stated to have been hit by three bullets (this is based on the next-day news accounts in Tombstone papers), at the coroner's inquest Frank was found to actually have been hit only in the stomach (this happened early in the fight, therefore not from Doc) and in the neck under the ear; therefore either Doc or Morgan missed Frank completely at the end of the fight.

Biographer Karen Holliday Tanner states that of Holliday's 17 known and recorded arrests, only one was for murder (actually Tanner is incorrect, as Doc was arrested and jailed for murder in connection with both the O.K. Corral fight, and later for the murder of Frank Stilwell). However, in neither case was Doc successfully charged (the Spicer hearing was an indictment hearing, but it did not recommend indictment; any Stilwell indictment was quashed by Colorado's refusal to extradite). Of the other arrests, Doc pled guilty to two gambling charges, one charge of carrying a deadly weapon in the city (in connection with the argument with Ringo), and one misdemeanor assault and battery charge (his shooting of Joyce and Parker). The others were all dismissed or returned as "not guilty."

Whatever the facts, it seems that Holliday gained a deadly reputation and was a feared man during his lifetime.

Doc Holliday mythology

Some have claimed (on very thin circumstantial evidence) that Doc was involved in the August, 1881 death of Old Man Clanton (Ike and Billy Clanton's father) and four other cowboys in a canyon 100 miles from Tombstone, while the cowboys were driving cattle from Mexico. However Clanton's death in the so-called Guadalupe Canyon Massacre could just as well have been (and is usually assumed to be) a revenge-killing by angry Mexican cattle-owners who had recently been the target of rustlers (perhaps not the same men they later killed). Some have taken Doc's use of a walking stick on the day of the O.K. Corral fight (which he traded Virgil for the shotgun), to be evidence that Doc had been wounded, perhaps at the death of "Old Man" Clanton two months before. However, Doc was known to use a walking stick as early as 1877, since in that year he was arrested for using it as a club on another gambler, in a fight. On that occasion in 1877 Doc actually was wounded in the fight by gunfire, but there is no direct evidence that he was newly wounded in the Fall of 1881. Actually the cane was typical; Doc was physically frail through much of his adult life, and always carried a weapon of some kind-- usually several of them.

One of the better stories about Doc Holliday never happened (and the tale has made it into at least one movie). According to the Stuart Lake biography of Wyatt Earp (Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal), Holliday got into a fight with another gambler (one "Ed Bailley") in Fort Griffin, Texas, and knifed the other man to death as the man was drawing a gun on Doc. Held by the law and targeted for lynching, Doc was rescued from death by Big Nose Kate, who procured horses, set fire to a building as a diversion, and then drew a gun on the sheriff to allow Doc's escape.

The problem with this story is that no record of any such killing (or Bailey, the man supposedly killed) exists in news or legal accounts of the day. Additionally, Big Nose Kate herself, at the end of her life in 1940 (after the Lake biography of Earp had appeared in 1931 and by which time Kate would have had no reason not to tell anything but the truth about the event), explicitly denied that any such thing had ever occurred in Fort Griffin or anywhere else, and laughed at the idea of herself holding a gun on a sheriff. (Kate's refusal to embellish or even claim a part in a good story which centers around her, makes her simultaneous report of the action at the O.K. Corral gunfight, which she did claim to see, considerably more credible).

Sources

Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, Gary Stevens, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2006 (ISBN 13-978-0-471-26291-6; also ISBN 10-0-471-26291-9. This is the most complete and accurate biography available to date. It relies on information from the earlier Tanner work, plus a very complete review of period records.

Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, Karen Holliday Tanner, University of Omaha Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8061-3036-9. This is the first reasonably accurate biography of Holliday, by a family descendant with access to family records. Previous biographies (Pat Jahns' The Frontier World of Doc Holliday 1957, and John Myers Myers Doc Holliday 1955) make very little serious attempt at being historical accounts.

Doc Holliday in popular culture

Doc Holliday as portrayed by Val Kilmer in TombstoneThe very different personal characters of Holliday and Earp have provided contrast which has inspired historical interest. Holliday was nationally known during his life as a gunman, whereas Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at O.K. Corral became a part of folklore only following Stuart Lake's biography of Earp after Earp's death. As this fight has become one of the most famous moments in the American West, numerous Westerns have been made of it and the Holliday character has been prominent in all of them.

Holliday, related by marriage to Margaret Mitchell, was said by Mitchell to be the inspiration of the character Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind.

Holliday has influenced the fictional gamblers in many Westerns. He is possibly the role-model for the character of the cadaverous gentleman gambler Hatfield (John Carradine) in the classic 1939 Western film Stagecoach. There may also be some influence of the Holliday legend on another memorable character in the movie, a drunken doctor (Thomas Mitchell as Doc Boone won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for this role). Holliday may be the inspiration of the con-artist lung-cripple character Rizzo in the academy award-winning film Midnight Cowboy (In this film, Holliday's two real-life great loyal friends, the prostitute and the cowboy, have been combined into a single ambiguous character.)

Actors who have played Doc Holliday in name, include:

Walter Huston in The Outlaw, in 1943, a historically inaccurate film, but fun.
Victor Mature in My Darling Clementine, in 1946, a well-made yet highly inaccurate version directed by John Ford, with Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp. Writer Alan Barra's comment on this movie is that it shows Doc as he might have been, if he'd been a tough-guy from Boston: "Victor Mature looks about as tubercular as a Kodiak bear."
Kirk Douglas in Gunfight at the OK Corral, in 1957, with frequent co-star Burt Lancaster as Earp. Kirk Douglas steals the show, as Doc usually does when played off against the relatively humorless and righteous Earp.
Gerald Mohr and Peter Breck each played Holliday more than once in the 1957 television series Maverick.
Arthur Kennedy played Holliday opposite James Stewart as Earp in director John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn.
Anthony Jacobs in the 1966 Doctor Who story The Gunfighters
Jason Robards in Hour of the Gun, a 1967 sequel to the 1957 movie, with James Garner as Earp. This is the first movie to fully delve into the vendetta that followed the gunfight; both films were directed by John Sturges, but he was aiming for historical accuracy in this one.
Sam Gilman in the 1968 Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun". Gilman, who plays Doc as a physician, was 53 years old at the time he played this role. The real Holliday was 30 years old at the time of the Gunfight at the OK Corral.
Stacy Keach in "Doc", in 1971, in which the Tombstone events are told from his perspective, and which shows the Earps in an especially unforgiving light. In particular, the perverse image of Wyatt as homosexual pursuer of Doc may have been somehow influenced by the Midnight Cowboy film of just two years before.
Bill Fletcher in two episodes of the TV series, Alias Smith and Jones: "Which Way to the OK Corral?" in 1971 and "The Ten Days That Shook Kid Curry" in 1972.
Willie Nelson in the 1986 all-singer/actor TV remake of Stagecoach, this time replacing alcoholic Doc Boone with an actual "Doc Holliday" character (who is a medical doctor and consumptive). The role of Hatfield the gambler goes to Waylon Jennings.
Val Kilmer in Tombstone, in 1993. Several historians believe Kilmer caught Holliday's cheerful mix of despair and courage.
Dennis Quaid in Wyatt Earp, in 1994, a serious and detailed bio-epic of Wyatt's life. Quaid with the smaller role comes close to being a more interesting character than the movie's title protagonist.
Randy Quaid in Purgatory, a 1999 TV film about dead outlaws in a town between Heaven and Hell. The real boomtown Tombstone of the early 1880's was a place curiously out of place in time and culture; a perfect setting for such a fable.
Holliday is also remembered through the medium of computer games, paticularly in the fictional-future Fallout computer game series in which at least one character carries his name: "Doc Holliday" can be found serving as the local doctor in the frontier-mining town of Broken Hills. He is presented as being a very long-winded but useful doctor with ties to the former San Francisco. Unlike the real 'Doc' he is a non-violent and even-tempered man who is trying to unite the people and the mutants of the town peaceably.

Doc Holliday is also a brand of soda; it tastes something like Dr Pepper and is marketed as a sarsaparilla. Doc Holliday's image is used on it.

Holliday's image (or at least the picture most commonly used to represent Holliday) is also found on murals both inside and outside a well-known East Village bar in New York City called "Doc Holliday's Saloon" (see External Links below).

Doc Holliday was mentioned in the fourth Tremors film.

Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher Roy Halladay uses the nickname Doc or Doc Halladay.

Former WWE wrestler Mideon (Dennis Knight) has a tattoo of Doc Holiday on his bicep.

Steve Martin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stephen Glenn Martin (born August 14, 1945 in Waco, Texas) is an American comedian, writer, producer, actor, musician, and composer.

Early years

Martin was born in Waco, Texas to Glenn Vernon Martin, a real-estate salesman and aspiring actor, and Mary Lee Stewart, a housewife; the family was of English, Irish and Scottish descent and Martin was raised in Garden Grove, California.[1] As a teenager, Martin started out working at the Magic Shop at Disneyland, where he developed his talents for magic, juggling, playing the banjo, and creating balloon animals. He teamed up with friend and Garden Grove High School classmate Kathy Westmoreland to do a musical comedy routine, performing at local coffee houses and at the Bird Cage Theater in Knott's Berry Farm. Martin attended Santa Ana College at the same time as actress Diane Keaton.

Martin majored in philosophy at California State University, Long Beach, but dropped out. Nevertheless, his time there changed his life:

"It changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy. Something about non sequiturs appealed to me. In philosophy, I started studying logic, and they were talking about cause and effect, and you start to realize, 'Hey, there is no cause and effect! There is no logic! There is no anything!' Then it gets real easy to write this stuff, because all you have to do is twist everything hard?-you twist the punch line, you twist the non sequitur so hard away from the things that set it up, that it's easy... and it's thrilling."[1]
Martin's girlfriend in 1967 was a dancer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and helped Martin land a job as a writer for the program by submitting his work to the show's head writer Mason Williams. Williams initially paid Martin out of his own pocket. Along with the other writers for that show, Martin won an Emmy Award in 1969. Martin also wrote for John Denver (a neighbor of his in Aspen, Colorado at one point), The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. He also appeared on these shows, and numerous others, in numerous comedy skits.

Martin also performed his own material, sometimes as an opening act for groups such as The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and The Carpenters. He appeared at San Francisco's The Boarding House among other locations. He continued to write, earning an Emmy nomination for his work on Van Dyke and Company in 1976.

Becoming a household name

In the mid-1970s he made frequent appearances as a stand-up comedian on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. That exposure, together with appearances on HBO's On Location and NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL) (on which, despite a common misconception, he was never a cast member) led to his first of four comedy albums, Let's Get Small. The album was a huge success; one of its tracks, Excuse Me, helped establish a national catch phrase.

His next album, A Wild and Crazy Guy, was an even bigger success, reaching the #2 spot on the sales chart in the U.S., and featured another catch phrase (the album's title), this time based on an SNL skit in which Martin and Dan Aykroyd played a couple of bumbling Czechoslovakian playboys. The album ended with a song "King Tut", sung and written by Martin and released as a 45 RPM single; the single reached the top 40 in 1978. The song was backed by the "Toot Uncommons" (they were actually members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band). The album was a million seller.

Both albums won Grammys for Best Comedy Recording in 1977 and 1978.

In these and his two other albums, Martin's stand-up comedy was self-referential, sometimes self-mocking. It mixes philosophical riffs with sudden spurts of "happy feet", deft banjo playing with balloon depictions of concepts like venereal disease. His style is off-kilter and ironic and sometimes makes fun of stand-up comedy traditions. A typical gag might be interrupted for a sip from a glass of water, and just as he was about to speak again, he forcefully spits the water onto the floor.

Movie career

By the end of the 1970s, Steve Martin had acquired the kind of following normally reserved for rock stars, with his tour appearances typically occurring at sold-out arenas filled with tens of thousands of screaming fans. But unknown to his audience, stand-up comedy was "just an accident" for him. His real goal was to get into film.


Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink PantherMartin's first film was a short, The Absent-Minded Waiter (1977). The seven-minute long film, also featuring Buck Henry and Teri Garr, was written by and starred Martin. The film was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Short Film, Live Action. His first feature film appearance was in the musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, where he sang the Beatles' "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".

In 1979, Martin wrote and starred in his first full-length movie, The Jerk, directed by Carl Reiner. The movie was a huge success, grossing over $73 million on a budget of far less than that amount.[2]

Since then, Martin's film career could best be described as uneven. Though he has enjoyed a successful film career for longer than most other comic actors, his ouevre has not been consistently well received by critics.

But the success of The Jerk opened more doors for Martin. Stanley Kubrick met with him to discuss him starring in an early, screwball comedy version of Traumnovelle (Kubrick later changed his approach to the material, the result of which was 1999's Eyes Wide Shut). Martin was executive producer for Domestic Life, a prime-time television series starring Martin Mull, and a late-night series called Twilight Theater. It emboldened Martin to try his hand at his first serious film, Pennies From Heaven, a movie he was anxious to do because of the desire to avoid being typecast. To prepare for that film, Martin took acting lessons from the director, Herbert Ross and spent months learning how to tap dance. The film was a financial failure; Martin's comment at the time was "I don't know what to blame, other than it's me and not a comedy."

Martin was in three more Reiner-directed comedies after The Jerk: Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid in 1982, The Man with Two Brains in 1983 and All of Me in 1984, which remains perhaps the most critically lauded performance of his career. In 1986, Martin joined fellow Saturday Night Live veterans Martin Short and Chevy Chase in ¡Three Amigos!, which was directed by John Landis, and written by Martin, Lorne Michaels, and Randy Newman. It was originally entitled The Three Caballeros and Martin was to be teamed with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

In 1986, Martin was in the musical film version of the hit off-Broadway play Little Shop of Horrors (based on a famous B-movie), as a sadistic dentist, Orin Scrivello. The film also marked the first of three films which teamed Martin with actor Rick Moranis

In 1987, Martin joined comedian John Candy in the John Hughes movie, Planes, Trains & Automobiles. That same year, the Cyrano de Bergerac adaptation Roxanne, a film Martin co-wrote, won him a Writers Guild of America award and more importantly, the recognition from Hollywood and the public that he was more than a comedian.

Martin starred in the Ron Howard film, Parenthood, with Rick Moranis in 1989. He later met with Moranis to make the mob comedy My Blue Heaven in 1990 Two years later, in 1991, Martin starred in and wrote (L.A. Story) and was a member of the ensemble existentialist tragedy (Grand Canyon) that were both about life in Los Angeles.

In David Mamet's 1997 thriller, The Spanish Prisoner, Martin played a darker role as a wealthy stranger who takes a suspicious interest in the work of a young businessman (Campbell Scott). In 1999, Martin and Goldie Hawn starred in a remake of the 1970 Neil Simon comedy, The Out-of-Towners. 2003 made Steve Martin rank as 4th on the box office stars list, co-starring in Bringing Down The House and starring in Cheaper By The Dozen, each of which earned over $130 million at U.S. theaters. Both were family comedies.

In 2005, Martin wrote and starred in Shopgirl, based on his own novella. Martin played a wealthy businessman and longtime bachelor who strikes up a romance with a Saks 5th Avenue counter girl (Claire Danes). He also starred in Cheaper by the Dozen 2 that year. Martin's latest work was in the 2006 installment of The Pink Panther, starring as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau.

He will be lending his voice for DreamWorks Animations upcoming film Kung Fu Panda along with Jack Black, Ian McShane, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan, Daniel Craig and Lucy Liu.

Other work

Steve Martin and Donald Duck in Disneyland: The First 50 Magical YearsThroughout the 1990s, after Tina Brown took over The New Yorker, Martin wrote various pieces for the magazine. They later appeared in the collection Pure Drivel. He appeared in a version of Waiting for Godot as Vladimir (with Robin Williams as Estragon).

In 1993, Martin wrote the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which had a successful run in several American cities. In 2001, Martin hosted the 73rd Annual Academy Awards. Also in 2001, he played banjo on Earl Scruggs' remake of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown". The recording was the winner of the Best Country Instrumental Performance category at the following year's Grammys. In 2002, Martin adapted the Carl Sternheim play The Underpants, which ran Off-Broadway at Classic Stage Company. In 2003, Martin hosted the Academy Awards for the second time.

In 2005, Martin hosted a film along with Donald Duck, Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years, which shows at Disneyland until the end of Disneyland's 50th anniversary celebration in September 2006. Martin was also honoured in 2005 with a Disney Legend award, acknowledging Martin's early career at Disneyland and connections with The Walt Disney Company throughout his career.

Martin has guest-hosted Saturday Night Live 14 times, more than any other person. Martin has also written two novellas, Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company. Shopgirl was later turned into a film (see above).

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, Martin was voted amongst the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. On October 23, 2005, Martin was presented with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Art collection

Martin is an avid art collector, particularly modern American art, and a trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Martin's personal collection has at one time included the art of Georgia O'Keeffe, John Henry Twachtman, Richard Diebenkorn, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler, Edward Hopper, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, and Pablo Picasso.

In 2005, The Huntington Library in San Marino, California announced that Martin had pledged US$1 million over five years for the museum's American art collection.[3] Three-quarters of the gift will be used for exhibitions, with the remainder being used for acquisitions. Before he made his pledge, Martin loaned paintings to the museum, helped it acquire a sculpture by John Gregory, and sponsored an exhibition of "sugar paintings" by 19th century American artist Eastman Johnson. Jessica Todd Smith, the museum's American art curator, said Martin became an "enthusiastic" supporter of The Huntington after he visited the museum in 2002 while filming a movie nearby.[4]

Sarah Brightman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sarah Brightman (born 14 August 1960) is an English soprano and actress. She debuted with disco singles, achieved worldwide fame as a musical theatre performer and partner of theatre composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, and then established a position as a chart-topping classical crossover artist with former Enigma producer Frank Peterson.

Biography

Brightman was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire to Paula and Granville Brightman, the oldest of six children. Her ambition to be an artist was apparent from an early age; she took ballet lessons starting from age three and was an excellent student. At age eleven she attended a boarding school for stage; although she disliked the school, she remained enrolled. Brightman auditioned for London's Royal Ballet a few years later but was rejected.[1]

At age sixteen, in 1976, Brightman joined the dance group Pan's People. She later went on to lead Hot Gossip, a mixed dance act who appeared regularly on The Kenny Everett Video Show. The group, who were somewhat more 'raunchy' than Pan's People, had a chart-topping disco hit in this year with "I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper", wherein she first discovered her vocal talents. Brightman released several more disco singles in subsequent years, but none became as prominent.

In 1981, Brightman auditioned for a role in the then-new musical Cats and received the role of Jemima. It was there that she met her future husband, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. At the time, Brightman was married to another Andrew: Andrew Graham Stewart, a music manager. Lloyd Webber divorced his first wife, Sarah Hugill, to marry Brightman in 1984. She went on to star in a number of his musicals, including Song and Dance and Requiem.

Brightman achieved greater success with her starring role as Christine Daaé in Lloyd Webber's adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. Lloyd Webber refused to open The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway unless Brightman originated the role of Christine, which he had written specifically for her. Initially, the American Actors' Equity Association balked, due to their policy of hiring only Americans. Lloyd Webber had to agree to cast an American in a leading role in his next West End musical before the Equity would allow Brightman to appear, a promise he made good on with Aspects of Love. However, the two divorced amicably in 1990, effectively ending Brightman's stage career.

Brightman decided to pursue a solo career in Los Angeles. Inspired by the recent success of German band Enigma, she requested to work with someone from the group and traveled to Germany in 1991 to meet her future producer and boyfriend, Frank Peterson. Their first collaboration on a major label release (with A&M Records) was Dive (1993), a water themed pop album featuring the hit 'Captain Nemo'.

Fly (1995), a pop/rock album, propelled Sarah Brightman to fame in Europe with the hit 'A Question of Honour'. The song was introduced at the World Boxing Championship match between Germany's Henry Maske and Graciano Rocchigiani and featured a mix of dance music, rock elements, classical strings, and Brightman's operatic vocals from "La Wally".

Time to Say Goodbye (Con Te Partirò) was the second Brightman song debuted for Maske, this time at his retirement match. The duet with tenor Andrea Bocelli sold more than 4 million copies in Germany alone, the largest-selling single there to date, and a bestseller in numerous other countries. Indeed, a 1996 re-release of Fly contained this song as the first track.

Timeless (1997) contained 'Time to Say Goodbye' and other classically inspired tracks such as "Just Show Me How To Love You" (with José Cura) originally sung (by Dario Baldambembo) with the title "Tu Cosa Fai Stasera?", a cover of the Queen hit "Who Wants to Live Forever", and "Tu Quieres Volver", originally by the Gipsy Kings.

Subsequent albums included Eden (1998) and La Luna (2000), both in the classical crossover genre. Reviews were mixed - LAUNCHcast deemed Eden "deliriously sappy" [2], while All Music Guide called Eden "a winning combination" [3] and La Luna "a solid, stirring collection". [4]. Chart performance for both albums was more uniformly positive. Eden reached #65 on the Billboard 200 charts, and La Luna peaked at #17. In addition, both albums reached #1 on Billboard's classical crossover charts.

In 2001, Brightman released Classics, an album comprised of operatic arias and other classical pieces, including a solo version of Time To Say Goodbye. Many of the songs on this album were taken from her previous efforts. Reviews were somewhat better; Entertainment Weekly, although calling Brightman a "stronger song stylist than a singer", gave the album a grade of B-. [5]

Her 2003 album Harem represented another departure: a Middle Eastern-themed dance album. It peaked at #29 on the Billboard 200 charts, #1 on the Billboard classical crossover chart, and yielded a #1 dance/club single with the remix of the title track.

The albums Eden, La Luna, and Harem were accompanied by live tours which incorporated the theatricality of her stage origins. Brightman acknowledged in an interview, "They're incredibly complicated...[but also] natural. I know what works, what doesn't work, all the old tricks." [6] She currently has a new album in process.

Vocal Profile

Sarah is a versatile singer, able to switch from powerful Broadway belting as showcased on her Andrew Lloyd Webber material, to a pure sweet voice or a powerful operatic soprano. She accesses the whistle register by hitting a high E in the title song from The Phantom of The Opera. [7]

Halle Berry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Halle Maria Berry


Born: August 14, 1966
Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.

Halle Maria Berry (born August 14, 1966) is an Emmy, Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning American actress and former fashion model. In 2002, Berry won Best Actress at the Academy Awards for her role in Monster's Ball.


Biography

Early life and career

Berry's parents selected her first name from that of Halle's Department Store, which was then a local landmark in her birthplace of Cleveland, Ohio. She is the daughter of Judith Ann Hawkins, a Liverpudlian[1], and Jerome J. Berry, who is African American. Berry's maternal grandmother, Nellie Dicken, was born in Sawley, Derbyshire, England, while her maternal grandfather, Earl Ellsworth Hawkins, was born in Ohio.[2] Berry's parents divorced when she was 4 years old and she subsequently was raised by her mother, a psychiatric nurse. Her father was an orderly in the same psychiatric ward where her mother worked. Berry has an older sister, Heidi who was born two years before her.[3]

Berry was a popular student at Bedford High School and was a cheerleader, honor society member, editor of the school newspaper, class president and prom queen. She worked in the children's department at Higbee's Department store. She subsequently attended Cuyahoga Community College.

Before becoming an actress, she entered and won several beauty contests, including Miss Ohio USA, Miss Teen All-American, Miss USA (was first runner-up in 1986 to Christy Fitchner of Texas), and Miss World 1986 (as "Miss United States World", she placed sixth in a contest won by Trinidad & Tobago's Giselle Laronde.)








Hollywood career

In the late 1980s, she went to Chicago, to pursue a modeling career as well as acting. One of her first acting projects was a television series for local cable by Gordon Lake Productions called "Chicago Force."

Berry auditioned for a role in an updated Charlie's Angels television series by producer Aaron Spelling. At the time, Spelling wanted one of the "Angels" to be an African American woman. She did not get the role (because the project never materialized) but she impressed Spelling with her skills, who encouraged her to continue perfecting her craft.

In 1989, Berry landed the role of brainy Emily Franklin in the short-lived ABC television series Living Dolls (a spin-off of Who's the Boss?). Her breakthrough feature film role was in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever in which she played a drug addict named Vivian. Her first co-starring role was in the film Strictly Business. Another early role Berry played was the villain/friend in the Flintstones movie as "Sharon Stone", in a part rumored to have been intended for Sharon Stone (Berry would later co-star alongside Stone in Catwoman). In 1996, she played the role of Sandra Beecher in Race the Sun, which was based on a true story. The year before, Berry really caught the public's attention with her portrayal as a female biracial slave in the TV adaption of Queen: The Story of an American Family, by Alex Haley.

Berry is also known by many comic book fans for her portrayal of the regal mutant Storm in the movie adaptation of the popular comic book series X-Men (2000) and its successful sequels X2: X-Men United (2003) and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).

In late 2001, Berry appeared as Leticia Musgrove, the wife of an executed murderer, in the film Monster's Ball. The role earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress.

As Bond Girl Jinx in 2002's Die Another Day she famously re-created the scene from Dr. No, bursting from the surf - scantily clad - to be greeted by James Bond, as Ursula Andress did 40 years earlier.

In late 2003, Berry starred in the psychological thriller Gothika opposite Charles S. Dutton, which was the first film that she "carried," i.e., her role was the most important one in the film. Her next lead role was in the film Catwoman, for which she was awarded a "worst actress" Razzie award in 2005, which she actually accepted in person with a sense of humour and recognition that "to be at the top, you must experience the rock bottom".

She has recently wrapped (2006) filming the thriller Perfect Stranger with Bruce Willis and is next set to star in Things We Lost in the Fire with Benicio Del Toro.

Berry is also making a transition to behind the scenes work in film and television. She is working with author Angela Nissel to executive produce an HBO comedy series based on Nissel's two memoirs, The Broke Diaries and Mixed: My Life in Black and White.[4]

Berry has served many years as the face of Revlon cosmetics and was recently named the new face of Versace. She is featured in Maxim magazine's Girls of Maxim gallery. She is also one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood, commanding $14 million each for Gothika and Catwoman.


Personal life

Berry has been married twice. Her first marriage in 1992 to pro baseball player David Justice ended in a 1996 divorce due to alleged infidelity and incompatibility. Her second marriage in 2001 to musician Eric Benét has resulted in a 2004 separation (and 2005 divorce) allegedly due to Benét's infidelity. In 2004, after their seperation, Berry stated "I want love, and I will find it, hopefully". [5]

As of 2006, she is currently dating Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, who is nine years her junior. The couple met at a Versace photoshoot. After six months with Aubry, she stated in an interview "I'm really happy in my personal life, which is a novelty to me. You know I'm not the girl that has the best relationships". [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Berry recently revealed to Extra that she plans to adopt children. "I will adopt if it doesn't happen for me naturally", she said. "I will definitely adopt. And I probably will adopt even if it does happen naturally". It has since been speculated that Aubry, who lived in five foster families between the ages of 3 and 18, possibly inspired Berry's interest in adoption. [11]

When speaking on the likelyhood of future marriage, Berry stated "I want a relationship because I am a relationship oriented person. I just no longer need to do it the traditional way...That paper isn't as important as it used to be". [12] Later, she stated "I never want to be married again. I guess you could say I have bad taste in men. But I no longer feel the need to be someone's wife. I don't feel like I need to be validated by being in a marriage." [13]

When speaking on the subject of having her own biological child, Berry has recently indicated that she has given thought to Aubry being the father, but that it is too early for that level of commitment involving a biological child between them. She stated that they both share the same feelings against the need to be married, and she indicated this to be one of she and Aubry's many strong bonds with one another. She stated that both feel the need to commit to one person emotionally and physically, but neither feels the obligation to marry in order to make that commitment official. [14]


Film Awards

Berry won the best actress Oscar in 2002 for Monster's Ball, becoming the first African American woman to win this award. She won the award despite the fact that she had won far fewer critics awards than her main competitor that year, Sissy Spacek.
Berry won an Emmy and a Golden Globe in 1999 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her portrayal of Dorothy Dandridge in the HBO movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Interestingly, Dorothy Dandridge was the first African American woman to be nominated for a best actress Academy Award. Another similarity the two women shared was being born in the same hospital.
Berry "won" a Razzie for her infamously poor performance in 2004's Catwoman. She made headlines by accepting her award in person, an unusual gesture that was last performed by Tom Green in 2001. Berry accepted her award with dignity, saying, "When I was a kid, my mother told me that if you could not be a good loser, then there's no way you could be a good winner" but adding "I hope to God I never see these people again!" shortly afterward. At the podium, she appeared with her Razzie in one hand, and her 2002 Oscar in the other (see e.g. BBC News).
Halle Berry won The Hasty Pudding Theatricals Woman of the Year Award for year 2006.
Preceded by:
Julia Roberts
for Erin Brockovich Academy Award for Best Actress
2001
for Monster's Ball Succeeded by:
Nicole Kidman
for The Hours


Controversy

In February 2000, she was involved in a car accident when she struck another vehicle after running a red light and left the scene before the police arrived. Berry, who had sustained a head injury, later stated she had no recollection of the accident and pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge. She paid a fine, made restitution to the other driver, performed community services, and was placed on three years' probation.[citation needed]
Berry's portrayal of Storm in the X-Men films has provoked some criticism and controversy from fans of the series as well as critics. Some fans of the character of Storm refer to Berry as "HalleStorm" or "movie Storm". Furthermore, there was a rumor that Berry had said that because of a lack of roles for black actors, she was "reduced to" playing a comic book character. Berry and co-star Ian McKellen maintain that she was misquoted. [15][16]

Trivia

In 2003, Berry was named No. 1 in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women in the World poll.
In 2005, She was No.1 on VH1's top 50 Sexiest Bodies countdown.
She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1989.
Channel 4 reported in 2006 that Berry has 6 toes on her right foot. [17] [18] [19] [20]. However, she has since debunked that as the most unusual, and untrue, rumor circulating about her. (Interviewed on the WB11 Morning News, May 22, 2006)
Dated actor Rey-Phillip Santos.
Dated actor Michael Ealy, her co-star in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Her measurements are listed as 36C-22-37.
She had a kissing scene with Limp Bizkit frontman, Fred Durst, in one of their music videos.
She's a fan of Britney Spears. She almost kissed Spears (referred to the 2003 MTV VMA 'kiss' performance) when they did teaser commercial for Saturday Night Live. Both of them appeared on the show later that night.
Halle Berry was considered for roles in Gigli, Speed, Indecent Proposal, and What's Love Got to Do with It.
She played the lead in a mini-series about Dorothy Dandridge, who was the first black actress to be nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award.

Three Priests

Three priests were in a railroad station on their way home to Pittsburgh .
Behind the ticket counter was a very sexy, shapely, well endowed woman wearing a very tight, skimpy sweater.
She made the three priests very nervous, so they drew straws to determine who would get the tickets.
The first priest approached the window.
"Young lady, I would like three pickets to titsburg."
He completely lost his composure and fled.
The second priest goes to the window.
"Young lady, I would like three tickets to Pittsburgh and I would like the change in nipples and dimes."
Mortified, he too fled.
"Morons...." the third priest mutters and moves to the window.
"Young lady, I would like three tickets to Pittsburgh and I would like the change in nickels and dimes. And, if you insist on dressing like that, when you get to the pearly gates, St. Finger's going to shake his Peter at you."
They took the bus.

It's going to be in the next couple of weeks -- hopefully I won't be back-to-work full time but usually that means two weekdays off with art galleries.

Hey, hawkman. Glad you are back with us. Fabulous background, buddy, and of course, your Freudian slips are hilarious.

I was waiting for your bio on Sarah Brightman. Now I remember her well in the movie, Phantom of the Opera. Lovely voice and a marvelous actress.

From Sarah:

Let me dive in,
To pools of sin
Wet black leather on my skin
Show me the floor
Lay down the law
I need to taste you more

Refrain

Then I feel your sea,
Raining down on me
Can this be my Once In A Lifetime?
H***'s at heaven's doar
As I need you more
You know you're my Once In A Lifetime

When you take me,
You make me cry
Then I feel you satisfy
Show me the cage,
It's all the rage
Then lock it up

Refrain #2

Found a part of me,
that's a mystery
That will be just Once In A Lifetime
When the moon is high,
Passion never dies
Will you want me for all a Lifetime

Once In A Lifetime (3x)

Giving you my soul,
Letting you control,
Took away a part of my Lifetime
Memories of you,
Left me black and blue
Now I know you're Once In A Lifetime

Lw, thanks for the info. i ordered a copy of an Ackermanthology, so i can get an FJA autograph, or at least his initials.

Letty, i'm much obliged for being allowed to use the station as a message board.

We prefer to call it a typical radio interview, Yit and Wizard.<smile>

Music: Takis Mousafiris
Lyrics: Takis Mousafiris
Singer: Dimitris Mitropanos

Tell me where they sell hearts

Tell me where they sell hearts; I will buy one for you.
Tell me where they sell joys; I will buy two for you.
Tell me where they sell souls; I will buy one for you.
Also where they sell eagle's wings, I will buy two for you.

I want you to have to hearts; I want you to love double.
I want you to have two souls; I want them to be full of mint.
I want you to be an eagle.

Tell me where they sell hearts; I will buy one for you.
Tell me where they sell souls; I will buy two for you.
Also where they sell the Sundays, the feasts, the holidays.
Tell me where they sell joys; I will buy them all for you.

I want you to be an eagle, to fly at high dens.
You wine to be the sunlight as you will be treating the stars.
I want you to be an eagle.

Ellinas, Welcome back, Greece. What a nice surprise, button nose. <smile>

That song is delightful, dear, and I particularly like this stanza:



"I want you to be an eagle, to fly at high dens.
Your wine to be the sunlight as you will be treating the stars.
I want you to be an eagle."

An eagle in his aerie.

Good morning one and all.



So You Want To Be A Rock´n Roll Star
The Byrds

So you you want to be a rock´n roll star
then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
and take some time and learn how to play
And when your hair's combed right and your pants fit tight
it´s gonna be all right
Then it´s time to go down town
where the agent men won´t let you down
Sell your soul to the company
who are waiting there to sell plastic ware
And in a week or two if you make the charts
the girls'll tear you apart
The price you pay for your riches and fame
Was it all a strange game
You´re a little insane
The money that came and the public acclaim
Don´t forget what you are
You´re a rock´n roll star

Well, folks. There's our Try playing the Byrds. Certainly not Virginia Byrds, right?

Lots of number signs in those lyrics, honey. Is that really a part where your "hair's combed right."?

Here's another kind of bird:


GRATEFUL DEAD lyrics - "Bird Song"

All I know is something like a bird within her sang,
All I know she sang a little while and then flew on,
Tell me all that you know, I'll show you snow and rain.

If you hear that same sweet song again, will you know why?
Anyone who sings a tune so sweet is passin' by,
Laugh in the sunshine, sing, cry in the dark, fly through the night.

Don't cry now, don't you cry, don't you cry anymore.
Sleep in the stars, don't you cry, dry your eyes on the wind.

All I know is something like a bird within her sang,
All I know she sang a little while and then flew off,
Tell me all that you know, I'll show you snow and rain.