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Robert Redford
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Birth name Charles Robert Redford, Jr.
Born August 18, 1936 (1936-08-18) (age 71)
Santa Monica, California
Spouse(s) Lola van Wagenen (1958-1985)
[show]Awards
Academy Awards
Best Director
1980 Ordinary People
Academy Honorary Award
2002 Lifetime Achievement
BAFTA Awards
Best Actor
1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ; Downhill Racer ; Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here
Golden Globe Awards
Most Promising Newcomer - Male
1966 Inside Daisy Clover
Best Director - Motion Picture
1981 Ordinary People
Cecil B. DeMille Award
1994 Lifetime Achievement
Screen Actors Guild Awards
Life Achievement Award
1996 Lifetime Achievement

Robert Redford (born Charles Robert Redford, Jr. on August 18, 1936),[1] is an American motion picture actor, director, producer, businessman, model, environmentalist, and philanthropist. One of Hollywood's biggest superstars, Redford's appeal has lasted several decades.




Biography

Early life

Redford was born in Santa Monica, California, to Charles Robert Redford, Sr., a milkman turned accountant, and Martha W. Hart. He has a half-brother, William, from his father's re-marriage. Redford graduated from Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles, California, in 1954 and received a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado, where he was a pitcher and a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. He lost the scholarship due to adolescent drinking, fueled in part by the death of his mother when Redford was 18. Redford was later a painting student at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and took classes in theatrical set design at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. He currently resides in Sundance, Utah.


Career


Redford is known for his roles in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jeremiah Johnson, All the President's Men, The Sting, The Natural, The Way We Were, Out of Africa, The Great Gatsby, and many others. Redford directed the films Ordinary People, Quiz Show, The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Horse Whisperer, The Milagro Beanfield War, and A River Runs Through It. He was also a producer on all except Ordinary People.


In 1980, Redford's directorial debut, Ordinary People, won him the Academy Award for Directing; his 1994 film, Quiz Show, was nominated for best director, but lost to Forrest Gump. Along with Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Richard Attenborough, and Kevin Costner, Redford is one of the few major actors to win an Academy Award for Best Director.

Once, according to screenwriter William Goldman, Robert Redford was described as "just another California blond?-throw a stick at Malibu, you'll hit six of him."[citation needed] He attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship but dropped out in 1957 to spend a year traveling and painting in Europe. Back in the States, he studied theatrical design and acting in New York.

In the late 1950s and early 60s, Redford appeared in numerous television shows, including as a "stooge" on the quiz show Play Your Hunch. Among his early appearances were The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (in three different episodes), Maverick, Naked City, Route 66 and Dr. Kildare. He won critical praise for In the Presence of Mine Enemies, an episode of Playhouse 90 (CBS, 1960). He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (ABC, 1962). Redford had made his Broadway debut in a small role in Tall Story (1959), following up with the shows The Highest Tree (1959) and Sunday in New York (1961). He enjoyed his biggest Broadway success as the stuffy newlywed husband of Elizabeth Ashley in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963).

Redford made his screen debut in War Hunt (1962), co-starring with John Saxon in a film set during the last days of the Korean War. This film also marked the debuts of Sydney Pollack and Tom Skerritt. After his Broadway success, he was cast in larger feature roles. He was a bisexual movie star who marries starlet Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover (1965) and rejoined her for Pollack's This Property Is Condemned (1966)?-again as her lover. The same year saw his first teaming with Jane Fonda (Arthur Penn's pallid The Chase, in which he was a fugitive on the run). Fonda and Redford were paired to better effect in the big screen version of Barefoot in the Park (1967), and were again co-stars in Pollack's The Electric Horseman (1979).

Redford?-already concerned about his blond male starlet image?-turned down roles in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate, holding out for George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) with Paul Newman. The film made him a bankable star and cemented his screen image as an intelligent, reliable, sometimes sardonic good guy. He became a huge matinee idol in the 1970s because of his blond pretty boy good looks whether he liked it or not.

As so often happens, his next few films, while not artistic losses, were hardly hits at the box office. Downhill Racer (1969), for which he served as executive producer, was a look at the world of competitive skiing; Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (1969), Little Fauss and Big Halsey (1970), The Hot Rock (1972) and the outdoors drama Jeremiah Johnson (both 1972) did little to augment Redford's stardom. His next real success came with the incisive political satire The Candidate (1972), which traded on his Golden Boy image to skewer Watergate-era Washington.

With the financial proceeds of his acting success, starting with his salaries from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Downhill Racer, Redford purchased a modest ski area just northeast of Provo, Utah called "Timphaven," which was renamed "Sundance" (over his initial objections). Redford's wife Lola was from Utah and they had built a home in the area in 1963. Portions of the movie Jeremiah Johnson (1972), a film which is both one of Redford's favorites and one that has heavily influenced him, were shot near the ski area.

He founded the Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Institute, Sundance Cinemas, Sundance Catalog, and the Sundance Channel, all in and around Park City, Utah, 30 miles (48 km) north of the Sundance ski area. The Sundance Film Festival caters to independent filmmakers in the United States and has received some recognition from the industry as a place to open films. The name Sundance comes from his character, the Sundance Kid. In addition, Redford owns a celebrated restaurant called Zoom, located on Main Street in the former mining town of Park City.

The year 1973 was a huge one for Redford, who starred in the high-profile The Way We Were and The Sting. The former teamed him with a glowing Barbra Streisand in a romance that spanned the years; the latter rejoined him with Newman in a crime comedy. About the first film, Redford joked, "nice Jewish girl gets nice blond WASP", and about the second, "nice Jewish BOY gets nice blond WASP." Already, Redford was known for bringing out the best in his co-stars?-his frequent pairings with Newman, Wood and Fonda worked superbly, and actresses such as Streisand, Faye Dunaway, Meryl Streep and Michelle Pfeiffer were rarely so relaxed or sensual as when playing opposite him.

During the years 1974-76, exhibitors voted Redford Hollywood's top box office name?-his hits included the glossy but impressive-looking The Great Gatsby (1974), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) and Three Days of the Condor (1975). The popular and acclaimed All the President's Men (1976), directed by Alan J. Pakula and scripted once again by Goldman, was a landmark film for Redford. Not only was he the executive producer and co-star, but the film's serious subject matter, the Watergate scandal, also reflected the actor's off-screen concerns for political causes.

In 1980, Redford's first outing as a director, Ordinary People, a drama about the slow disintegration of a middle-class family, won him an Oscar. Redford managed to get a powerful dramatic performance out of America's Sweetheart, Mary Tyler Moore, as well as superb work from Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton. He also starred in "The Natural" (1984), based on characters and situations from Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel by the same name,The Natural. The film won Redford new fans and more acclaim.

His second stint behind the camera would not be for another eight years with The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), a well-crafted?-though not popular?-screen version of John Nichols' acclaimed novel of the Southwest. Other directorial projects have included the successful period family drama A River Runs Through It (1992), based on Norman Maclean's novella, and the intelligent expose Quiz Show (1994), about the quiz show scandal of the late 1950's. Working from a screenplay by Paul Attanasio with noted cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and a strong cast that featured John Turturro, Rob Morrow and Ralph Fiennes. Redford's skill behind the camera earned him well-deserved praise. Redford hand picked Morrow for his part in the film (his only high profile feature film role to date), because he liked his work on Northern Exposure.

Besides his directing and producing duties, Redford continued acting as he entered middle age. He made a fine romantic lead opposite Meryl Streep in Sydney Pollack's Oscar-winning Out of Africa (1985). Although many critics complained that his portrayal of Isak Dinesen's lover was unrealistic, Redford's characterization was more substantial than the ghostly figure of Dinesen's book. After the box-office disaster of Havana (1990), he turned in amiable performances in the computer caper Sneakers (1992), the sexy drama Indecent Proposal (1993), with Demi Moore, and opposite Michelle Pfeiffer in the newsroom romance Up Close & Personal (1996). His good looks had weathered after years in the Utah sun and wind, but with kind lenses he could still romance younger actresses. Continuing in the romantic vein, Redford directed and starred opposite Kristin Scott Thomas in a strong adaptation of Nicholas Evans' novel The Horse Whisperer (1998). Like other of his directorial efforts, the film featured a strong cast in a drama that centered around a troubled family. His follow-up behind the camera, The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), suffered from a saccharine approach and a miscalculated performance from star Will Smith as a black caddy with mystical powers. Redford next returned to acting playing an aging CIA operative whose protégé becomes a hostage in Spy Game (2001).

Since founding the nonprofit Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah, in 1981, Redford has been deeply involved with independent film. Through its various workshop programs and popular film festival, Sundance has provided much-needed support for independent filmmakers. In 1995, Redford signed a deal with Showtime to start a 24-hour cable TV channel devoted to airing independent films?-the Sundance Channel premiered on February 29, 1996. Meanwhile, Redford continued his involvement in mainstream Hollywood movies, though projects became fewer and farther between. He appeared as a disgraced Army general sent to prison in the political thriller, The Last Castle (2001), directed by fellow political junkie Rod Lurie. Redford, a leading environmental activist, narrated the IMAX documentary Sacred Planet (2001), a sweeping journey across the globe to some of its most exotic and endangered places. In The Clearing (2004), an under-appreciated thriller co-starring Helen Mirren, Redford was a successful business man whose kidnapping unearths the secrets and inadequacies that led to his achieving the American Dream. Redford stepped back into producing with The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), a coming-of-age road film about a young medical student, Ernesto Guevera?-who later became celebrated revolutionary Che Guevera?-and his friend Alberto Granado. Five years in the making, Redford was credited by director Walter Salles for being instrumental in getting the film made and released. Back in front of the camera, Redford received good notices for his turn in director Lasse Hallstrom's An Unfinished Life (2005) as a cantankerous rancher who is forced to take in his estranged daughter-in-law (Jennifer Lopez)?-whom he blames for his son's death?-and the granddaughter he never knew he had when they flee an abusive relationship. Despite solid acting, the film, which sat on the shelf for many months while its distributor Miramax was restructured, was generally dismissed as clichéd and overly sentimental. Meanwhile, Redford returned to familiar territory when he signed on to direct and star in an update of The Candidate.

In 1995, Redford received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Bard College. In December of 2005, he received honors at the Kennedy Center for his contributions to American culture. The Honors recipients are recognized for their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts: whether in dance, music, theater, opera, motion pictures or television. Currently, he is the narrator for the Cosmic Collision movie at the Denver Nature and Science Plantetarium.

Despite a number of critically acclaimed roles, he has never won an Academy Award for acting (the closest he came was a nomination for The Sting). His only Oscar came for directing Ordinary People.


Personal life

Robert Redford is politically liberal, and has supported environmentalism and Native American rights.

Redford married Lola Van Wagenen on September 12, 1958. The couple had four children: Scott (born 1959 and died shortly after from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), Shauna (born November 15, 1960), David James (born May 15, 1962), and Amy (born October 22, 1970). They divorced in 1985. His companions since have included actress Sonia Braga (during 1988), Kathy O'Rear (from the late 1980s to 1995) and German painter Sibylle Szaggars (1996-current). Redford has four grandchildren and currently lives in Sundance, Utah.

His daughter Amy is set to direct her first feature film, an independent drama entitled The Guitar.[2] His other daughter Shauna is married to, and has two children with, Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser.

Patrick Swayze
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born August 18, 1952 (1952-08-18) (age 55)
Houston, Texas

Patrick Wayne Swayze (born August 18, 1952) is an American dancer, actor, singer and songwriter. His breakthrough role was as the dance instructor in the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, and he also had a hit with the 1990 film Ghost.





Biography

Early life

Swayze was born in Houston, Texas to Jesse Wayne Swayze and choreographer and ballet school owner Patsy Swayze. According to his website, he is part Apache. His brother, Don Swayze, is also an actor. Swayze attended St Rose of Lima Catholic School, Oak Forest Elementary School, Black Middle School, and Waltrip High School in Houston. For most of his life, he lived in the Oak Forest area. His formal dance training was at the Harkness Ballet and Joffrey Ballet Schools in New York City.


Career

Swayze's first professional appearance was as a dancer for Disney on Parade, then in the Broadway production of Grease, before his debut film role as Ace in Skatetown, U.S.A. (1979). He also appeared in the M*A*S*H episode "Blood Brothers" (Episode 9.18, 6 April 1981).

Swayze's first roles were in films such as The Outsiders (1983) and Red Dawn (1984) but his first major success was in the 1985 television mini-series North and South, which was set during the Civil War. His real breakthrough to stardom came with his performance as the dance instructor in the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, where his earlier ballet experience came to good use. He starred with Jennifer Grey, who had also co-starred in Red Dawn. Dirty Dancing was originally a low-budget project that was intended to only show in theaters for one weekend and then go straight to video, but it became a surprise hit, and achieved massive international success. It was the first film to sell one million copies on video, and as of 2007 has earned over $US 300 million worldwide and spawned several alternate versions ranging from a television series to stage productions to a computer game. Swayze received a Golden Globe Award nomination for the role, and also sang one of the songs on the soundtrack, "She's Like the Wind", which he had originally co-written with Stacy Widelitz for the film Grandview, U.S.A.. The song became a top-10 hit, and has been covered by other artists such as David Hasselhoff, and in 2006 was converted into a hip-hop version by Lumidee, who brought it to the top of the charts in Germany.

After the success of Dirty Dancing, Swayze found himself heavily typecast and appeared in a series of flops. In 1989,he recovered with the fan favorite Road House. However, his biggest hit came after,in 1990 He starred in what some consider his most famous film, Ghost, working with Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg.[1] This role had considerable cultural impact, and modern hip-hop lyrics routinely use the phrase "Like a Swayze", referring to that film (for more info, see the "Cultural Impact" section below).In 1991 he starred alongside Keanu Reeves in another major action hit, Point Break. In 1996, Swayze was seriously injured while filming the HBO Letters from a Killer in the Ione area, when he fell from a horse and hit a tree. Both of his legs were broken, and he suffered four detached tendons in his shoulder. Filming was suspended for two months, but the film finally aired in 1999. Swayze recovered from his injuries, but had trouble finding work until 2000, when he co-starred in Waking Up in Reno with Billy Bob Thornton and Charlize Theron, and Forever Lulu with Melanie Griffith.

He made the news again on June 1, 2000 when flying with his dogs in his twin-engine Cessna from Van Nuys, California to Las Vegas, New Mexico. The plane developed a pressurization problem over northern Arizona, and Swayze made a precautionary landing on a dirt road in a housing complex in Prescott Valley, striking a light pole (with his right wing) which he hadn't seen from the air. Swayze was unhurt, locked up the cockpit and left it parked in the subdivision. He took his dogs and obtained a ride from a passing vehicle, allegedly to telephone authorities. According to the police report, witnesses said that Swayze appeared to be extremely intoxicated and asked for help in removing evidence (including an open bottle of wine and a 30 pack of beer) from the crash site.[1] It was later determined that the alcohol in question was not in cabin but stored in external storage compartments inaccessible in flight and the alleged 'intoxication' was due to the effects of hypoxia during descent.

In 2001 he appeared in Donnie Darko, and in 2004 played Allan Quatermain in King Solomon's Mines; he also had a cameo appearance in the Dirty Dancing sequel, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, where he played a dance instructor.

He made his London stage debut in the musical Guys and Dolls as Nathan Detroit on July 27, 2006 alongside Neil Jerzak, and remained in the role until November 25, 2006. He had appeared on the Broadway stage in productions of Goodtime Charley (1975), and Chicago (2003).


Awards

Golden Globe Award nominations
Dirty Dancing (1987)
Ghost (1990)
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)

Personal life

Swayze has been married to Lisa Niemi since 1975. The couple have been together since Lisa, at 15, began dance lessons with Swayze's mother.

His father died of a heart attack. Swayze attended a clinic to overcome alcoholism after his sister Vicky committed suicide in 1994 using painkillers.[2] After initial recovery, he retreated to his ranches in California and New Mexico to breed Arabian horses. His best-known horse was the late Tammen, a chestnut Arabian stallion. He also follows several "spiritual" traditions. Brought up a Roman Catholic, he has also studied Bahai, Buddhism, and Scientology. He has also purchased many crystals[citation needed] for their alleged healing power.


Cultural impact

Swayze's name has become a commonly-used term in hip hop songs. Lyrics will use the phrase "...and I'm Swayze," meaning that the singer has become "like a ghost", or gone. This is a reference to the title character of Swayze's 1990 film Ghost. The first time this is known to have occurred was in the early 1990s, in a song by EPMD.[3] More recent usage is by such artists as The Notorious B.I.G. in the song "Runnin' (Dying to Live)". The expression has become such a hip hop staple that it was even used in the Saturday Night Live hip hop parody, "Lazy Sunday".

Swayze has also been referred to in other elements of popular culture. For example, the Trailer Park Boys character Julian is sometimes called Patrick Swayze due to a slight resemblance, and a history of having dressed up like Swayze to dance to the music from "Dirty Dancing". The Seattle indie rock band Kane Hodder has a song titled "I Think Patrick Swayze is Sexy". The television show Mystery Science Theater 3000, in the episode "Santa Claus conquers the Martians", has one of the MST3K characters writing a Christmas carol entitled "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas" as a tribute to his favorite Swayze (bad) movie: Road House. Swayze has been parodied in several strips of the online gaming comic Penny Arcade, where one of the characters indicates an obsession with Swayze and Dirty Dancing. And in an episode of Clerks: The Animated Series, Swayze is featured as a pet store employee, voiced by comedian Gilbert Gottfried.

Denis Leary
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Birth name Denis Colin Leary
Born August 18, 1957 (1957-08-18) (age 49)
Worcester, Massachusetts USA
Medium Stand-up, Music, Television, Film
Years active 1980s-present
Genres Observational comedy, Black comedy, Satire, Rant
Subject(s) Libertarianism, American culture, Drugs, Alcohol
Influences Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor
Spouse Ann Lembeck (married in 1982, present) 2 children
Notable works and roles Gus in The Ref
Diego in Ice Age and Ice Age: The Meltdown
Tommy Gavin in Rescue Me

Emmy Awards
Nominated: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (2004) for Rescue Me
Nominated: Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (2004) for Rescue Me
Golden Globe Awards
Nominated: Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama (2004) for Rescue Me

Denis Leary (born Denis Colin Leary on August 18, 1957) is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-nominated American actor, comedian, writer and director. He is known for his often angry comedic style and his frequent chain smoking. Leary displays an overt affinity for libertarianism.




Biography

Early life

Leary was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Irish Catholic immigrants John Leary (an auto mechanic) and Nora (a maid); Leary holds both Irish and American citizenship. He graduated from Saint Peter-Marian High School in Worcester. Through marriage, Leary is a distant cousin of talk show host Conan O'Brien,[1] and has jokingly said on Late Night with Conan O'Brien that "All Irish people are related." His name is often misspelled as "Dennis", instead of "Denis."


Emerson College

Leary is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston, where he was classmates with fellow comic Mario Cantone, who to this day remains his closest friend. Comedian Steven Wright and actress Gina Gershon also attended Emerson at the same time as Leary. At the school, he founded the Emerson Comedy Workshop, a troupe that continues to thrive on-campus to this day.[2] After graduating with the Emerson Class of 1979, he took up a job with the school teaching comedy writing classes and maintained the job for five years.[3] Leary was honored with an honorary doctorate and spoke briefly at his alma mater's undergraduate commencement ceremony on May 16, 2005.[4] During a December 2005 appearance at Emerson's Cutler Majestic Theatre he claimed that Emerson College "saved his life" by giving him direction and that throughout his career he's "never forgotten" the lessons he learned there. He also claimed that he was the reason Emerson students were no longer allowed on the roofs of the buildings at Emerson, referring to an incident following Game 6 of the 1975 World Series where he and some classmates allegedly poured a large bucket of ice water down onto a Cincinnati Reds fan on the sidewalk below.


Career

Leary started in career as a comedian in the notorious Boston comedy scene of the 1980s, where he hosted his own show at the underground club "Play It Again Sam". He also wrote and appeared on a local comedy series, Lenny Clarke's Late Show, hosted by his friend Lenny Clarke and written by Boston comedy writer Martin Olson. Leary and Clarke both spoke about their early affiliations and influences in the Boston comedy scene in the documentary film When Standup Stood Out (2006).

Leary first became famous through an MTV sketch in which he ranted about R.E.M. Several other commercials for MTV followed, in which Leary would rant at high speeds about a variety of topics. He has released two records of his stand-up comedy: No Cure For Cancer (1993) and Lock 'N Load (1997). In late 2004 he released the EP Merry F#%$in' Christmas, which included a mix of new music, previously unreleased recordings, and some tracks from Lock 'N Load.

In 1993, his sardonic song about the American lower-middle-class male, Asshole, achieved much notoriety. It was voted #1 in a major Australian youth radio poll (the Triple J Hottest 100) as well as reaching #2 in the singles chart in that country. The video also became a staple of MTV's late-night programming. Due to its explicit and controversial content, however, it received limited airplay on mainstream American radio stations. At the 2004 Comics Come Home in Boston, Massachusetts, Denis performed a new version of the song directed at the New York Yankees, and as the song concluded, Bronson Arroyo walked on stage with the World Series trophy. The song was also used as part of the Holsten Pils series of ads in the UK which Leary was participating in, with adapted lyrics criticizing a drunk driver.

Although he says he is most at home on stage doing stand-up, Leary has appeared as an actor in over 40 movies, including The Sandlot, Monument Ave., The Match Maker, The Ref, Suicide Kings, Dawg, Wag the Dog, Demolition Man, The Thomas Crown Affair and Operation Dumbo Drop. He has also starred in two television series, The Job and Rescue Me. In addition, Leary has provided voices for characters in animated films such as a saber-toothed tiger named 'Diego' in Ice Age and its sequel Ice Age 2 and 'Francis' in A Bug's Life. He has produced (and still produces) numerous movies, television shows, and specials through his production company Apostle; these include Comedy Central's Shorties Watchin' Shorties, the stand-up special Denis Leary's Merry F#$%in' Christmas, and the movie Blow. As a Boston Red Sox fan, he narrated the official 2004 World Series film. In 2006, Leary and Lenny Clarke appeared on television during a Red Sox telecast and, upon realizing that Red Sox 1st baseman Kevin Youkilis is Jewish, delivered a criticism of Mel Gibson's anti-semitic comments.[5][6] As a hockey fan, Leary also hosted the NHL video, NHL's Greatest Goals

In 2003, Comedy Central honored Denis Leary in the Comedy Central Roast of Denis Leary. Friend Jeff Garlin acted as roastmaster for Denis' roast. Roasters included Mario Cantone, Dane Cook, Lenny Clarke, Gina Gershon, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, Colin Quinn and Michael J. Fox.

Leary is now the star and co-creator of FX's Rescue Me. He plays Tommy Gavin, a New York City fire fighter dealing with alcoholism, family dysfunction, and other issues in post-9/11 New York City. Leary received Emmy nominations in 2006 and 2007 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his performance as Tommy Gavin.


Personal life

Denis Leary has been married to writer Ann Lembeck since 1982. They met when he was her instructor for an English class at Emerson College. They have two children, son John Joseph "Jack" (born 1990) and daughter Devin (born 1992). Lembeck published a memoir, An Innocent, a Broad, about the premature birth of their son on an overseas visit to England.

Leary is an ice hockey fan and has his own backyard hockey rink, with piping installed under the ice surface to help the ice stay frozen. His favorite National Hockey League team is the Boston Bruins.[7] He is also a die hard Boston Red Sox fan.


Leary Firefighters Foundation

On December 3, 1999, six firefighters from Leary's hometown of Worcester were killed in a massive warehouse fire. Among the dead were Leary's cousin, Jerry Lucey, and his close childhood friend, Lt. Tommy Spencer.[1] In response, the comedian founded the Leary Firefighters Foundation. Since its creation in the year 2000, the foundation has distributed over $2.5 million (USD) to fire departments in the Worcester, Boston, and New York City areas for equipment, training materials, new vehicles, and new facilities. Leary has close ties with 107.3 WAAF-FM, who in 2000 released the station album "Survive This!" Part of the proceeds from this album were donated to the Leary Firefighters Foundation.

A separate fund run by Leary's foundation, the Fund for New York's Bravest, has distributed over $2 million (USD) to the families of the 343 firemen killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks, as well as providing funding for necessities such as a new mobile command center, first responder training, and a high-rise simulator for the FDNY's training campus. This new fund was established because the families of the Worcester fire did not want to include New York families into the fund, as a result Leary created a separate fund for New York.

As the foundation's president, Leary has been active in all of the fundraising, usually presenting large checks and donated equipment personally. The close relationship he has developed with the FDNY, as well as individual firefighters across the New York/New England area, has resulted in Leary's most recent television show, Rescue Me, a Comedy-drama on FX. In the pilot episode of the show, he is seen wearing a Leary Firefighter Foundation 9-11 Memorial T-Shirt.





Accusations of Plagiarism

For many years, Leary had been friends with fellow comedian Bill Hicks. However, when Hicks heard Leary's 1992 album No Cure For Cancer, he felt Leary had stolen his act and material. The friendship ended abruptly as a result.[8] At least three stand-up comedians have gone on the record stating they believe Leary stole not just some of Hicks' material but his persona and attitude.[9][10][11][8] As a result of this, it is claimed that after Bill Hicks' death from pancreatic cancer, an industry joke began to circulate about Leary's transformation and subsequent success (roughly; "Question: Why is Denis Leary a star while Bill Hicks is unknown? Answer: Because there's no cure for cancer").[11]

During a 2003 roast of Denis Leary, comedian Lenny Clarke, a friend of Leary's, said there was a carton of cigarettes backstage from Bill Hicks with the message, "Wish I had gotten these to you sooner." This joke was cut from the final broadcast.[12]

The controversy surrounding plagiarism is also mentioned in American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story by Cynthia True:

Leary was in Montreal to host the Nasty Show at Club Soda and Colleen was coordinating the talent so she was standing backstage when she heard Leary doing material that sounded incredibly similar to old Hicks riffs, including his perennial Jim Fixx joke: ("Keith Richards outlived Jim Fixx, the runner and health nut dude. The plot thickens.") When Leary came offstage, Colleen said, more stunned than angry, "Hey, you know that's Bill Hicks' material! Do you know that's his material?" Leary stood there, stared at her without saying a word, and briskly left the dressing room.[13]
When asked about Leary, Hicks sarcastically told an interviewer: "I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did."[14]

In the August 2006 Playboy, an interviewer told Leary "Much has been written about you and comedian Bill Hicks...People have accused you of appropriating his persona and material." Leary replied:

" That's a great story that people like to latch onto...Very quickly we got New York club owners saying, 'You guys are too alike,' while Bill and I were saying, 'What are they ******* talking about?' It's the same approach to the subject maybe, but it's not the same act...But as I've said many times, a fable is sometimes better than the truth."[15]

Madeleine Stowe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Madeleine M. Stowe (born August 18, 1958) is an American actress. She was born in Eagle Rock, a working class suburb of Los Angeles, California, the eldest of three sisters. Her father was British, while her mother had immigrated from Costa Rica as a young woman. Her father suffered from multiple sclerosis.

At the age of 10, Stowe began taking piano lessons with the aim of becoming a concert pianist ?- and also as a way of not having to socialize with other kids. Her Russian-born music teacher Sergei Tarnowsky (he taught Vladimir Horowitz before immigrating to the US), clearly had faith in her, teaching her from his deathbed. But when he died at the age of 96, she quit ("I just felt it was time to not be by myself anymore") ?- and at 18 she went on her first date. She then studied cinema and journalism at the University of Southern California. Not overly interested in her classes, Stowe volunteered to do performances at the Solaris, a Beverly Hills theater, where a movie agent saw her in a play, and subsequently got her several offers of appearances in TV and films.

For nearly fifteen years Stowe appeared mostly in minor or supporting roles in movies and on TV. A few of her performances from this period became, however, well-known to the public, as was the case for Stakeout (1987), where she played opposite Richard Dreyfuss, and Revenge, (1990), which co-starred Kevin Costner. In 1992 Stowe finally landed a leading role in The Last of the Mohicans, which also starred Daniel Day-Lewis.

Thereafter, several major film roles followed. The next year, director Robert Altman cast Stowe in Short Cuts, in which she gave one of her most acclaimed screen performances as the wife of a compulsive lying and adulterous police officer played by Tim Robbins. The following year, Madeleine was a blind musician in the thriller Blink, co-starring Aidan Quinn (14 years earlier, she had a guest role as a blind painter in Little House on the Prairie[1]). The year after that, she was a sympathetic psychiatrist in the science-fiction movie Twelve Monkeys. Stowe postponed her acting career in 1996 in order to concentrate on motherhood. In 1998 she came back with The Proposition.

Stowe has been married to actor Brian Benben since 1982, after meeting when they acted in a TV film the previous year. The couple have a daughter, May (born 1996) and a son, and spend all their spare time on the ranch they own in Texas.

She most recently appeared in the Jeff Goldblum Detective Drama Raines on NBC

Only In America"

Only in America - can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.
Only in America - are there handicap-parking places in front of a skating rink.
Only in America - do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
Only in America - do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.
Only in America - do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
Only in America - do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.
Only in America - do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we will not miss a call from someone we did not want to talk to in the first place.
Only in America - do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
Only in America - do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures'
Only in America - do they have drive-up ATM's with Braille lettering.

King Of The Whole Wide World

A poor man wants the oyster
A rich man wants the pearl
But the man who can sing when he hasn't got a thing
He's the king of the whole wide world

Come on let's sing, sing brother sing
?'Cos the man who can sing when he hasn't got a thing
He's the king of the whole wide world

The rich man wants the princess
The poor man just wants a girl
But the man who can sing when he hasn't got a thing
He's the king of the whole wide world

Come on let's sing, sing brother sing
?'Cos the man who can sing when he hasn't got a thing
He's the king of the whole wide world

A poor man wants to be a rich man
A rich man wants to be a king
But the man who can sing when he hasn't got a thing
He's the king of the whole wide world

Come on let's sing, sing brother sing
?'Cos the man who can sing when he hasn't got a thing
He's the king of the whole wide world

Come on let's sing, sing brother sing
?'Cos the man who can sing when he hasn't got a thing
He's the king of the whole wide world
Of the whole wide world
Of the whole wide world

Feeling a bit under the weather, Bob and edgar. Back later to acknowledge your contributions.

Good morning WA2K.

Oh Letty, I'm so sorry to hear that you're not feeling well. Please take care.

Robert Redford; Patrick Swayze; Denis Leary and Madeline Stowe

Hey, dys. That must be some song you're listening to. Carmen McRae segueing into Cannonball? Wow!

edgar, as usual, that was one interesting song. Sorta reminds us of "freedom's just another name for nothing else to lose."

Hey, hawk. Thanks for the great bio's. I think that we know most of them, and our Raggedy has provided the finishing touch. Also smiled at your "Only in America" observations. Made me feel a little better.

As usual, our pretty puppy always gives our memory a nudge and I re-read Bob's bio on Dennis Leary because I was certain that I had heard music by that guy and when I did a search, I had. My word Dennis.

Well, I guess I can get by with playing this one, and it is funny, folks.

Fat and docile, big and dumb
They look so stupid, they aren't much fun
Cows aren't fun

They eat to grow, grow to die
Die to be et at the hamburger fry
Cows well done

Nobody thunk it, nobody knew
No one imagined the great cow guru
Cows are one

He hid in the forest, read books with great zeal
He loved Che Guevera, a revolutionary veal
Cow Tse Tongue

He spoke about justice, but nobody stirred
He felt like an outcast, alone in the herd
Cow doldrums

He mooed we must fight, escape or we'll die
Cows gathered around, cause the steaks were so high
Bad cow pun

But then he was captured, stuffed into a crate
Loaded onto a truck, where he rode to his fate
Cows are bummed

He was a scrawny calf, who looked rather woozy
No one suspected he was packing an Uzi
Cows with guns

They came with a needle to stick in his thigh
He kicked for the groin, he pissed in their eye
Cow well hung

Knocked over a tractor and ran for the door
Six gallons of gas flowed out on the floor
Run cows run!

He picked up a bullhorn and jumped up on the hay
We are free roving bovines, we run free today

We will fight for bovine Cfreedom
And hold our large heads high
We will run free with the Buffalo, or die
Cows with guns

They crashed the gate in a great stampede
Tipped over a milk truck, torched all the feed
Cows have fun

Sixty police cars were piled in a heap
Covered in cow pies, covered up deep
Much cow dung

Black smoke rising, darkening the day
Twelve burning McDonalds, have it your way

We will fight for bovine freedom
And hold our large heads high
We will run free with the Buffalo, or die
Cows with guns

The President said "enough is enough

These uppity cattle, its time to get tough"
Cow dung flung

The newspapers gloated, folks sighed with relief
Tomorrow at noon, they would all be ground beef
Cows on buns

The cows were surrounded, they waited and prayed
They mooed their last moos,
they chewed their last hay
Cows out gunned

The order was given to turn cows to whoppers
Enforced by the might of ten thousand coppers
But on the horizon surrounding the shoppers

Came the deafening roar of chickens in choppers

We will fight for bovine freedom
And hold our large heads high
We will run free with the Buffalo, or die
Cows with guns

good evening , funseekers :wink: !

i really was not looking for this song - but here it is , by the wonderful MISS PEGGY LEE !

Hey, hbg. Funny, I was just commenting on cat scratch fever and having a bit of fun with Stray Cat.

Love Peggy Lee, Canada, and that is one of her trade mark songs.

Back later as I am once again having trouble with our studio equipment.

Here's the song that I like by Miss Lee.

(Pass me by, pass me by, if you don't happen to like it, pass me by)
I got me ten fine toes to wiggle in the sand,
Lots of idle fingers snap to my command,
A loverly pair of heels that kick to beat the band,
Contemplating nature can be fascinating,
Add to these a nose that I can thumb, and a mouth by gum have I
So tell the whole wide world, if you don't happen to like it,
Deal me out, thank you kindly, pass me by.

Pass me by
Pass me by

If you don't happen to like me pass me by

I thought that I would never find that song, folks.

peggy lee had a special way of saying the word "FEEEVER" - as if it would never end - and yet it was always very soft !

and for a change RAY CHARLES sings (? :wink: )" 'DEED I DO" :

You're right about Peggy, hbg. She had a special style and a way of ending her music in another key, but as you say, softly. And I love that song by Ray, Canada.

Well, Lettylee must say goodnight. so I'll let this wonderful song do it for me.


And when I hear you call so softly to me,
I don't hear a call at all, I hear a rhapsody.
And when your sparkling eyes are smiling at me,
Then soft through the starlit skies, I hear a rhapsody

My days are so blue when you're away,
My heart longs for you, so won't you stay?

My darling, hold me tight and whisper to me
Then soft through the starry night, I hear a rhapsody

I hear my bed whispering my name soooo.

Goodnight, all

From Letty with love

Ogden Nash
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born August 19, 1902(1902-08-19)
Rye, New York
Died May 19, 1971 (aged 68)

Occupation Poet

Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 - May 19, 1971) was an American poet best known for writing pithy and funny light verse.





Biography

Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New York. His father owned and operated an import-export company, and because of business obligations, the family relocated often.

In 1920, Nash entered Harvard University, only to drop out a year later. He worked his way through a series of jobs, eventually landing a position as an editor at Doubleday publishing house, where he first began to write poetry.

In 1931 he published his first collection of poems, Hard Lines, earning him national recognition. Some of his poems reflected an anti-establishment feeling. For example, one verse, entitled Common Sense, asks:

Why did the Lord give us agility,
If not to evade responsibility?
When Nash wasn't writing poems, he made guest appearances on comedy and radio shows and toured the United States and England, giving lectures at colleges and universities.

Nash was regarded respectfully by the literary establishment, and his poems were frequently anthologized even in serious collections such as Selden Rodman's 1946 A New Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Nash was the lyricist for the Broadway musical One Touch of Venus, collaborating with librettist S. J. Perelman and composer Kurt Weill. The show included the notable song "Speak Low (When You Speak Love)." He also wrote the lyrics for the 1952 revue Two's Company.

Nash and his love of the Baltimore Colts were featured in the December 13, 1968 issue of Life Magazine. Several poems about the Baltimore Colts are matched to full-page pictures. The cover of the magazine reads, "My Colts / Versus and Reverses by Ogden Nash" and has the following poem:

Look at Number 53,
Dennis Gaubatz,
that is he,
looming 10 feet tall
or taller
above the Steelers'
signal caller...
Since Gaubatz acts like
this on Sunday,
I'll do my
quarterbacking Monday.'
Nash died in 1971 of Crohn's disease and is interred in North Hampton, New Hampshire. His daughter, Isabel, was married to noted photographer Fred Eberstadt, and his granddaughter, Fernanda Eberstadt, is an acclaimed author.


Bed Riddance, 1970 collection


Poetry style

Nash was best known for surprising, pun-like rhymes, sometimes with words deliberately misspelled for comic effect, as in his retort to Dorothy Parker's dictum, Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses:

A girl who is bespectacled
She may not get her nectacled
But safety pins and bassinets
Await the girl who fassinets.

He often wrote in an exaggerated verse form with pairs of lines that rhyme, but are of dissimilar length and irregular meter. Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man uses this device to good effect. He opens by noting

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant...
He develops this at some length, expounding on the superiority of sins of commission, because

You didn't get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill;
You didn't slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,
Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of things you haven't done...

Nash was very well-known for his limericks, such as this one:

There was a young lady called Harris,
that nothing could ever embarrass.
Til the bath salts one day
in the tub where she lay,
turned out to be plaster-of-paris!

The Carnival of the Animals

Ogden Nash has written humorous and probably the most popular poems for each movement of the Camille Saint-Saëns orchestral suite The Carnival of the Animals, which are often recited when the work is performed.


Other Poems

Nash was a baseball fan, and he wrote a poem titled "Lineup for Yesterday," an alphabetical poem listing baseball immortals. Two of the letters did not refer to players, however:

I is for Me,
Not a hard-hitting man,
But an outstanding all-time
Incurable fan.


and

Z is for Zenith
The summit of fame;
These men are up here,
These men are the game.



2002 USPS Ogden Nash Stamp

The US Postal Service released a stamp featuring Ogden Nash and six of his poems on the centennial of his birth on 19 August 2002. The six poems are "The Turtle," "The Cow," "Crossing The Border," "The Kitten," "The Camel" and "Limerick One." The stamp is also the first stamp in the history of the USPS to include the word "sex," though as a synonym for gender, not as the act. It can be found under the "O" and is part of "The Turtle". The stamp is the 18th in the Literary Arts series.


Quotations

Some of Nash's verses have almost become proverbial:

The Camel has a single hump,
The dromedary two,
Or else the other way around,
I'm never sure - are you?
The Lord in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why
The one-L lama, he's a priest
The two-L llama, he's a beast
And I would bet a silk pajama
There isn't any three-L lllama
(Nash appended as a footnote to this poem the comment "The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh." [1])
You can have my jellyfish
I'm not sellyfish
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree;
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all
(This a parody of the poem Trees by Joyce Kilmer)
The panther is like a leopard,
Except that it hasn't been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say ouch,
Better yet, if called by a panther,
Don't anther.
Philo Vance
Needs a kick in the pance

"On Ice-Breaking"

Candy is dandy;
But liquor is quicker
Once when interviewed on his arrival in San Francisco, he said:

May I boil in oil
And fry in Crisco
If I ever call
San Francisco 'Frisco'

Atypical of most Great Depression intellectuals, Nash, at times, espoused views critical of income redistribution:

Abracadabra, thus we learn
The more you create, the less you earn.
The less you earn, the more you're given,
The less you lead, the more you're driven,
The more you pay, the more they need,
The more you earn, the less you keep,
And now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to take
If the tax-collector hasn't got it before I wake.

James Gould Cozzens
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born: August 19, 1903
Chicago, Illinois
Died: August 9, 1978
Stuart, Florida
Occupation: Writer
Genres: Realism
Influences: W. Somerset Maugham

James Gould Cozzens (August 19, 1903 - August 9, 1978) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.

He is often grouped today with his contemporaries John O'Hara and John P. Marquand, but his work has generally been considered more challenging and less entertaining than theirs. He was quoted in a featured article in Time magazine: "I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up."





Biographical background

Born in Chicago, Illinois, he grew up on Staten Island. His father, Henry William Cozzens Jr., who died when Cozzens was 17, was an affluent businessman and the grandson of a governor of Rhode Island. His Canadian mother, Mary Bertha Wood, came from a family of Connecticut tories exiled to Nova Scotia following the American Revolution, so that he grew up in the privileged lifestyle that formed the background of his most acclaimed works.

An Episcopalian, Cozzens attended the Episcopal Kent School in Connecticut from 1916 to 1922, and after graduation went to Harvard University for two years, where he published his first novel, Confusion, in 1924. A few months later, ill and in debt, he withdrew from school and moved to New Brunswick, where he wrote a second novel, Michael Scarlett. Neither book sold well nor was widely-read, and to sustain himself, Cozzens went to Cuba to teach children of American residents, where he began to write short stories, and where he gathered material which eventually became Cock Pit (1928) and The Son of Perdition (1929). After a year he accompanied his mother to Europe, where he tutored a young polio victim to earn money.

He met Sylvia Bernice Baumgarten, a literary agent with Brandt and Kirkpatrick whom he married in December 1927 and who successfully edited and marketed his books. She was his apparent antithesis ?- Jewish and a liberal Democrat ?- but their marriage lasted successfully until both died in 1978. Except for military service during World War II, the Cozzenses lived in semi-seclusion near Lambertville, New Jersey and shied away from all but local contact. Other early novels include S.S. San Pedro (1931), The Last Adam (1933), and Castaway (1934).

Cozzens received O. Henry Awards for his short stories "A Farewell to Cuba" (1931) and "Total Stranger," published in the Saturday Evening Post on February 15, 1936, then went on to author two more highly-regarded novels. Ask Me Tomorrow (1941), and The Just and the Unjust (1942).

During World War II, Cozzens served in the U.S. Army Air Forces, at first updating manuals, then in the USAAF Office of Information Services, a liaison and "information clearinghouse" between the military and the civilian press. One of the functions of his office was in controlling news, and it became Cozzens' job to defuse situations potentially embarrassing to the Chief of the Army Air Forces, Hen. Henry H. Arnold. In the course of his job he became arguably the best informed officer of any rank and service in the nation, a major by the end of the war. These experiences formed the basis of his 1948 novel Guard of Honor, which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize.

His 1957 novel By Love Possessed became a surprise runaway hit, with 34 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, reaching Number One on September 22, 1957, three weeks after its release. (It was also the top-selling novel of 1957. See List of 1957 bestsellers.) The novel was also very loosely adapted into a film in 1961 starring Lana Turner.

In 1958, he relocated to another country home near Williamstown, Massachusetts. From 1960 to 1966 Cozzens was on the Harvard Board of Overseers' Visiting Committee for the English Department. His last novel, Morning, Noon and Night, was published in 1968 but sold poorly.


Style and themes

Cozzens was critically acclaimed from the beginning, but did not become a truly popular writer until later in his career. Philosophical in nature, his novels take place over the course of just a few days, exhibit little action, and explore a variety of concepts such as love, duty, racial sensitivities, and the law. Cozzens' novels disregarded modernist literary trends, and are characterized by the use of often unfamiliar, archaic words, traditional literary structures, and conservative themes. As a result many contemporary critics regarded his work as old-fashioned or moralistic, and he was viciously attacked as a reactionary by his harshest critics.

His prose is crafted meticulously and has an objective, clinical tone and subtle, dry humor. His work is at times complex, using mulit-level layering and double voicing as narrative techniques for expressing viewpoint. The central figures in his books are primarily professional, middle-class white men ?- assistant district attorney Abner Coates in The Just and the Unjust, doctor George Bull in The Last Adam, Episcopal priest Ernest Cudlipp in Men and Brethren, U.S. Army Air Forces general "Bus" Beal in Guard of Honor, and lawyer Arthur Winner in By Love Possessed, for example ?- who confront issues such as duty and ethics in their careers while at the same time attempting to reconcile these with the emotional demands of their personal lives, usually by compromising their principles. In almost every instance they are also archetypes of persons he observed in his own experience.

His biographer, Matthew Bruccoli, in describing the style of By Love Possessed, also identified characteristics of his mature works (particularly Guard of Honor), characteristics that reached their peak in the best-seller:

...long sentences, frequent use of parenthetical constructions, rhetorical questions, elaborate parallelism, inclusion of unfamiliar words, unacknowledged (classical) quotations, ironically intended word choices, a habit of following a formal statement with a clarifying or deflating colloquialism, polyptoton (repetition of a word in different cases and inflections, as in "result's result"), inverted word order, double negatives, the custom of defining a word or providing alternatives for it, and periodic sentences in which the meaning becomes clear at the end. The effect of these conjoined elements can be a deliberate density of expression...


Controversy and downfall

Cozzens eschewed both fame and publicity, to the point that he publicly stated he would refuse a Nobel Prize when speculation that he was under consideration became prominent. In 1957, however, he broke with his long-standing penchant for privacy (for which he was dubbed "the Garbo of U.S. letters" in the article that resulted) and granted Time magazine an interview over the objections of his wife as the basis for its cover article of September 2, 1957, marking the release of By Love Possessed, for which Cozzens had been nominated for a second Pulitzer.

Short-story writer and critic Patrick J. Murphy wrote that Cozzens' responses during the interview were verbalizations of his writing style, often tongue-in-cheek, using parody and sarcasm, quoting other works without attributation, punctuated by laughter. As sometimes happened with his prose, this style did not translate well into print, and the results were further distorted because the information was gathered by one reporter but the article written by someone different.

An immediate barrage of published reader letters attacked Cozzens as being a snob, an elitist, anti-Catholic, racist and sexist, criticisms that were soon picked up by acerbic critics including Irving Howe, Frederick Crews, and Dwight Macdonald, who excoriated him on the basis of the article without reading his work. He also became a symbol of "The Establishment" and the antithesis of the growing counterculture of the 1960s because his works negatively portrayed or lampooned those against authority and "the system".

Painted as hard right politically and conservatively religious (he was both apolitical and areligious his entire life), Cozzens attempted to counter the image but with little success, and forfeited whatever fan base he gained from By Love Possessed. His reputation was further lambasted in 1968 by critics of his final book (in particular John Updike), written for a youthful audience that had no interest in structured, complex style or themes that favored the notion of societal stability. As a result, sales of all his books suffered, and Cozzens virtually disappeared from the American literary scene for decades.

Johnny Nash
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johnny Nash (born John Lester Nash Jr, 19 August 1940, Houston, Texas) is an African-American pop singer-songwriter, best known for his 1972 hit, "I Can See Clearly Now".

Nash began as a pop singer in the 1950s. He also enjoyed success as an actor early in his career appearing in the screen version of playwright Louis S. Peterson's Take a Giant Step. Nash won a Silver Sail Award for his performance from the Locarno International Film Festival. He became famous for singing the theme song for The Mighty Hercules cartoon in the early 1960s (a song he also wrote). His biggest hits were the early reggae tunes "Hold Me Tight", "I Can See Clearly Now", and "Stir It Up", the last written by Bob Marley prior to Marley's international success. In the UK, his biggest hit was with the song "Tears on My Pillow" which reached number one in the UK Singles Chart in July 1975 for one week.

Nash was last active as a composer in the Swedish romance Vill så gärna tro (1971) in which he portrayed Robert. For many years he seemed to have dropped out of sight; however, in May 2006 he was singing again at Sugar Hill recording studio in his native Houston. Working with chief engineer Andy Bradley, he began the work of transferring analog tapes of his songs from the 1970s and 1980s to Pro Tools digital format.[1]

Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!
Jill St. John

Jill St. John (born August 19, 1940 in Los Angeles, California, United States) is a film and television actress. Born Jill Arlyn Oppenheim, she played her major film roles during the 1960s and early 1970s, including Barbara Tuttle in Jerry Lewis' Who's Minding the Store? and a turn as Bond Girl Tiffany Case opposite Sean Connery in the 1971 James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever. In the 1980's, she starred with Dennis Weaver on the short-lived soap opera, Emerald Point N.A.S. She played Deanna Kinkaid, Thomas Mallory's conniving former sister in law.

St. John continues to act, although her roles in the 1990s and 2000s have primarily been for television sitcoms and made-for-TV movies. In 1997, St. John had a guest appearance on the Seinfeld episode "The Yada Yada." St. John is also known for her very high I.Q. of 162 and for being admitted to the University of California, Los Angeles at the age of 14.

St. John has been married a total of four times:

Robert Wagner - (May 26, 1990 - present)
Jack Jones - (October 14, 1967 - 1969) (divorced)
Lance Reventlow - (March 24, 1960 - October 30, 1963) (divorced)
Neil Durbin - (May 23, 1957 - June 3, 1958) (divorced)
She has also dated Henry Kissinger, Frank Sinatra, and Sean Connery. Jill and Nancy Sinatra were high school classmates.

RIDDLES

Why did the nurse go to art school?
Because she wanted to learn how to draw blood!

What birds spend all their time on their knees?
Birds of prey.

What happened when the owl lost his voice?
He didn't give a hoot.

At what time of day was Adam created?
A little before Eve.

PUNS

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium
at large.

I still can't believe they're actually pressing assault charges
against me for biting and scratching. But I'm gonna fight those
charges tooth and nail. (J. Murphy from Ruminations)

Is it true that exits are on the way out?

Mr. Carrot crossing the road was hit by a car. The ambulance came
and
carried him to the veggie hospital. Mrs. Carrot arrived, and the
doctor said, "Yes, ma'am, he's going to live, but he'll always be
only a vegetable."

On her first day as a lifeguard she was still wet behind the ears.

Good morning WA2K listeners and contributors.

Well, folks, our hawkman is up early today. Thanks so much, Boston Bob, for the wonderful celeb background.

I believe we know most of them, but I had to go to our archives to recall Cozzens' book By Loved Possessed. I read that, but cannot recall the exact plot.

Ahhh, I really like Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now".

Funny funny puns and riddles, Bob, and I really could use that smile that touched my face.

Will await our phunny puppy before commenting further, however. Her photo's are always the key to memory.

Until that time, how about this sunrise song by Uriah Heep.

Sunrise, and the new day's breaking through.
The morning of another day without you.
And as the hours roll by
noone's there to see me cry
except the sunrise,
the sunrise and you.


Tired eyes drift across the shore.
Looking for love and nothing more.
But as the sea rolls by
noone's there to see me cry
except the sunrise,
the sunrise and you.

Sunrise, bless my eyes.
Catch my soul, make me whole again.
Sunrise, new day heed my song.
I'm tired of fighting and fooling around.
But from now until who knows when?
My sword will be my friend.
And I'll love you...love ya
for all of my time.

Sunrise, bless my eyes.
Catch my soul, make me whole again.

Bernie Shaw is the lead vocalist for that group, and he is from Vancouver, Canada. Isn't that amazing, listeners? A Canadian with an Irishman's name in a group patterned after a famous Brit's novel.