WA2K Radio is now on the air

Ghost Riders in the Sky=a lullaby
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=69623&highlight=

Everyone should visit dys' exploration into the world of lullaby's, listeners. Music should begin at home, I think.

When we think about enslaved folks singing to lighten the load of work and loss of freedom, it becomes insightful, because out of misery came glory.

As I have said before. the only purely American music is jazz, no matter what form it takes.

Remembering this song, folks.

Marty Robbins Lyrics - Riding Down The Canyon Lyrics

When evening chores are over
At our ranch house on the plains
And all I've got to do is lay around
I saddle up my pony and go ridin' down the trail
To watch the desert sun go down

Ridin' down the canyon
To watch the sun go down
A picture that no artist 'ere could paint

White faced cattle lowin' on the mountain side
I hear a coyote winnin' for it's mate
Catcus plants are bloomin', sagebrush everywhere
Granite spires are standin' all around

I tell you, folks, it's Heaven
To be ridin' down the trail
When the desert sun goes down.

dj, that's one that can be read as lyrical poetry, but is enhanced by the melody.

Ansel Adams
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 - April 22, 1984) was an American photographer, known for his black and white photographs of the California's Yosemite Valley.

Adams was also the author of numerous books about photography, including his trilogy of technical instruction manuals (The Camera, The Negative and The Print). He co-founded the photographic association Group f/64 along with other masters like Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham and others.

He invented the zone system, a technique which allows photographers to translate the light they see into specific densities on negatives and paper, thus giving them better control over finished photographs. Adams also pioneered the idea of visualization (which he often called 'previsualization', though he later acknowledged that term to be a redundancy) of the finished print based upon the measured light values in the scene being photographed.


Life


Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco, California in an upper-class family. When he was four, he was tossed face-first into a garden wall in an aftershock from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, breaking his nose. His nose was never repaired and appeared crooked for his entire life.

He became interested in photography when his Aunt Mary gave him a copy of "In the Heart of the Sierras" [1] while he was sick as a child. The photographs in the book by George Fiske piqued his interest enough to persuade his parents to vacation in Yosemite National Park in 1916, where he was given a camera as a gift.

Adams disliked the uniformity of the education system and left school in 1915 to educate himself. He originally trained himself as a pianist, but Yosemite and the camera diverted his interest toward photography. He later met his future wife, Virginia Best, in Yosemite. She was known to be particularly camera shy. Adams long alternated between a career as a concert pianist and one as a photographer.

At age 17 Adams joined the Sierra Club, a group dedicated to preserving the natural world's wonders and resources. He remained a member throughout his lifetime and served as a director, as did his wife, Virginia. Adams was an avid mountaineer in his youth and participated in the club's annual "high trips", and was later responsible for several first ascents in the Sierra Nevada. It was at Half Dome in 1927 that he first found that he could make photographs that were, in his own words, "...an austere and blazing poetry of the real". Adams became an environmentalist, and his photographs are a record of what many of these national parks were like before human intervention and travel. His work has promoted many of the goals of the Sierra Club and brought environmental issues to light.

Photographs in Adams' limited edition book, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, along with his testimony, are credited with helping secure the designation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon as national parks in 1940.

During World War Two Adams worked on creating epic photographic murals for the Department of the Interior. Adams was distressed by the Japanese American Internment that occurred after the Pearl Harbor attack. He was given permission to visit the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the Owens Valley, at the foot of Mount Williamson. The resulting photo-essay first appeared in a Museum of Modern Art exhibit, and later was published as Born Free and Equal: Photographs of the loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California.

In 1952 Adams was one of the founders of Aperture.

Adams was the recipient of three Guggenheim fellowships during his career. He was elected in 1966 a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1980 Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Publishing rights for the Adams' photographs are handled by the trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.

The Minarets Wilderness in the Inyo National Forest was renamed the Ansel Adams Wilderness in 1984 in his honor. Mount Ansel Adams, a 11,760' peak in the Sierra Nevada, was named for him in 1985.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams

Pierre Boulle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Pierre Boulle (20 February 1912 - 30 January 1994) was a French novelist.

Born Pierre-François-Marie-Louis Boulle in Avignon, France, he trained as an engineer. From 1936 to 1939 he worked as a technician on British rubber plantations in Malaya. At the outbreak of World War II Boulle enlisted with the French army in French Indochina, and after German troops occupied France he joined the Free French Mission in Singapore.

He served as a secret agent under the name Peter John Rule and helped the resistance movement in China, Burma and French Indochina. In 1943 he was captured by the Vichy France loyalists on the Mekong River. While a prisoner, he was subjected to severe hardship and forced labour. He was made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance.

For a while after the war, he returned to work in the rubber industry but moved back to Paris, where he began to write. Using his experiences in the war, he wrote The Bridge over the River Kwai which became a multi-million worldwide bestseller, winning the French "Prix Sainte-Beuve". The book was a semi-fictional story based on the real plight of Allied POWs forced to build a 415-km (258-mile) railway which became known as the "Death Railway" and passed over the bridge. 16,000 prisoners and 100,000 Asian conscripts died during construction of the line. His character of Lt-Col. Nicholson was not based on the real Allied senior officer at the Kwai bridges, Philip Toosey but was reportedly an amalgam of his memories of collaborating French officers. David Lean made Boulle's story into a motion picture - entitled Bridge on the River Kwai - that won several Oscars including the 1957 Academy Award for Best Picture.

In 1963, following several other reasonably successful novels, Pierre Boulle published his other famous novel, first published in France as La Planète des Singes, and a year later in the United Kingdom in an English translation entitled Monkey Planet - later to be known as Planet of the Apes. In 1968 this story was made into another Oscar-winning film, starring Charlton Heston.

Pierre Boulle died in Paris, France on 30 January 1994.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Boulle

Gloria Vanderbilt
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Gloria Laura Vanderbilt (B. February 20, 1924) is a member of the prominent United States Vanderbilt family. She is an accomplished artist, actress, and socialite most noted as a spokeswoman for designer blue jeans.

Vanderbilt is the only child of American railroad heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880-1925) and his second wife, Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan (1904-1965).

She became heiress to a four million dollar trust fund on her father's death, when she was two years old. The rights to control this trust fund while Vanderbilt was a minor belonged to her mother. The child, therefore, became the subject of a custody battle in a famous and scandalous trial in 1934. Testimony was heard depicting her mother as an unfit parent. The testimony included charges of her mother's intention to marry a German prince. A maid testified to seeing the glamorous widow Vanderbilt bathing her feet in Champagne and gave evidence of an apparent lesbian relationship with a member of the British royal family (the Marchioness of Milford Haven (née Nadjeda, Countess Torby). Vanderbilt's mother eventually lost custody to her sister-in-law Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney but litigation continued.

Vanderbilt married Hollywood agent Pasquale DiCicco ("Pat" DiCicco) in 1941; they divorced in 1945. Her second marriage, to conductor Leopold Stokowski on April 21, 1945 produced two sons, Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski (born 1950) and Christopher Stokowski (born 1955); they divorced in October 1955. Her third marriage took place on August 28, 1956 to director Sidney Lumet; they divorced in August 1963. Her final marriage to author Wyatt Emory Cooper took place on 1964; they had two sons, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper (1965-1988), and CNN reporter and news anchor Anderson Cooper (born 1967). She also has had close relationships with the photographer Gordon Parks and the cabaret singer Bobby Short, as well as Frank Sinatra and numerous other prominent figures, according to her several candid memoirs.


Vanderbilt studied art at the Art Student's League in New York City. She became known for her artwork, giving one-woman shows of oil paintings, watercolors, and pastels. This artwork was adapted and licensed, starting about 1968, by Hallmark (a manufacturer of paper products) and by Bloomcraft (a textile manufacturer), and Vanderbilt began designing specifically for linens, china, glassware and flatware. During the 1970s, she licensed the use of her own name on lines of fashion eyeglasses, perfume and clothing. Initially, her involvement in clothing consisted of putting her name (in place of the previous brand name, "Lucky Pierre") on a line of blouses produced by the Murjani Corporation. In 1979, Murjani proposed launching a line of designer jeans carrying Vanderbilt's brand. They were more tightly fitted than other jeans of the time, with the heiress's name in script on the back pocket. Vanderbilt appeared in a series of television ads promoting the product. The designer label flourished, with the Gloria Vanderbilt swan logo eventually appearing on dresses and perfumes as well.

She is a great-granddaughter of Union general Hugh Judson Kilpatrick and a niece of Thelma Morgan, Viscountess Furness, who was the mistress who preceded Wallis, Duchess of Windsor in the affections of Edward VIII of the United Kingdom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Vanderbilt

I have a large Adams photo on my living room wall, it is a scene of an old adobe catholic church at Ranches de Taos New Mexico in moonlight. It is enchanting.

Robert Altman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Robert Bernard Altman (born February 20, 1925) is an American film director known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective.

His films M*A*S*H and Nashville have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Early life and career

Altman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of wealthy, insurance man/gambler Bernard Clement Altman (who came from an upper-class German-American family) and Helen Mathews, a Mayflower descendant of English and Scottish ancestry. His family was devoutly Catholic. Altman attended Rockhurst High School and Southwest High School in Kansas City, and was then shipped off to Wentworth Military Academy in nearby Lexington, Missouri, where he attended through junior college. In 1945, at the age of 20, Altman enlisted in the Army Air Forces and was a pilot of a B-24, dropping bombs over enemy territory, for the remainder of World War II. It had been while training for the Air Force in California that Altman had first seen the bright lights of Hollywood and became enamored of the movieland. Upon his discharge in 1946, Altman began living in Los Angeles and tried out a number of schemes to position his foot firmly in Hollywood's door.

Altman tried acting briefly, appearing in a nightclub scene as an extra in the Danny Kaye vehicle The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He then wrote a vague storyline (uncredited) for the United Artists picture Christmas Eve, and sold to RKO the script for the 1948 motion picture Bodyguard, which he co-wrote with Richard Fleischer. This sudden success encouraged Altman to move to the New York area and forge a career as a writer. There, Altman found a collaborator in George W. George, with whom he wrote numerous published and unpublished screenplays, musicals, novels, and magazine articles. Altman was not as successful this trip, but back in Hollywood, he tried out one more big money-making scheme. He invented a strange dog-tattooing system for canine identification and invested a lot of his and his friends' money into a company called "Identi-Code." As one of their publicity stunts, Altman and his associates even tattooed President Harry Truman's dog, while Truman was still in the White House. However, the company soon went bankrupt, and in 1950 Altman returned to his friends and family in Kansas City, Missouri, broke and hungry for action, and itching for a second chance to get into movies.

Industrial film experience

In 1950 there were no film schools, but at the age of 25, Altman hit upon the next best thing. He joined the Calvin Company, the world's largest industrial film production company and 16mm film laboratory, headquartered in Kansas City. Altman, fascinated by the company and their equipment, started as a film writer (even though the writing he had done was with collaborators who did most of the real work), and within a few months began to direct films. This led to his employment at the Calvin Company as a film director for almost six years. Until 1955, Altman directed 60 to 65 industrial short films, usually made to promote a business, a service, or a government function, earning $250 a week while simultaneously getting the necessary training and experience that he would need for a successful career in filmmaking. The ability to shoot rapidly, on-schedule, and work within the confines of both big and low budgets would serve him quite well later in his career. On the technical side, he learned all about "the tools of filmmaking": the camera, the boom mike, the lights, etc. Although the Calvin Company never intended themselves to be a substitute film school, evidently they were, not only for Altman, but for a great number of other young filmmakers in the area.

However, Altman soon tired of the industrial film format, and kept grasping for more challenging projects. He would occasionally leave for Hollywood and try to write scripts, but then return months later, broke, to the Calvin Company. According to Altman, each time the Calvin people would drop him another notch in salary. The third time, the Calvin people declared at a staff meeting that if he left and came back one more time, they were not going to keep him.

First feature film

In 1955, Altman left the Calvin Company, not ever intending to return. He was soon hired by Elmer Rhoden Jr., a local Kansas City movie theater exhibitor, to write and direct a low-budget exploitation film on juvenile crime, titled The Delinquents, which would become the first feature film ever to be directed by Robert Altman. Altman wrote the script in one week and filmed it with a budget of $63,000 on location in Kansas City in two weeks. Rhoden Jr. wanted the film to kick-start his career as a film producer. Altman wanted the film to be his ticket into the elusive Hollywood circles. The cast was made up of the local actors and actresses from community theater who also appeared in Calvin Company films, Altman family members, and three imported actors from Hollywood, including the future Billy Jack, Tom Laughlin. The crew was made up of Altman's former Calvin cohorts and the local friends with whom Altman planned to make his grand "Kansas City escape." In 1956, Altman and his assistant director Reza Badiyi left Kansas City for good to edit The Delinquents in Hollywood. The film was picked up for distribution for $150,000 by United Artists, who released it in 1957, grossing nearly $1,000,000 with it.


Television work

The Delinquents was no runaway success, but it did catch the eye of Alfred Hitchcock, who was impressed and called up Altman to direct a few episodes of his Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series. From 1958 to 1964, Altman directed numerous episodes of numerous TV series including Combat, Bonanza, and Route 66.


Film career continues

Altman then mucked his way through several years of struggle after quarreling with Jack Warner and it was during this time that he first formed his "anti-Hollywood" opinions and entered a new stage of his filmmaking. He did a few more feature films without any success, until 1969 when he was offered the script for M*A*S*H, which had been previously rejected by several other directors. Altman did direct the film, and it was a huge success, both with critics and at the box office. Altman's career took firm hold with the success of M*A*S*H, and he followed it with many other similar, experimental films which made the distinctive "Altman style" well-known.

As a director, Altman favors stories showing the interrelationships between several characters; he states that he is more interested in character motivation than in intricate plots. As such, he tends to sketch out only a basic plot for the film, referring to the screenplay as a "blueprint" for action, and allows his actors to improvise dialogue. This is one of the reasons Altman is known as an "actor's director," a reputation that helps him work with large casts of well-known actors.

He frequently allows the characters to talk over each other in such a way that it's impossible to make out what each of them are saying. He notes on the DVD commentary of McCabe & Mrs. Miller that he lets the dialogue overlap, as well as leaving some things in the plot for the audience to infer, because he wants the audience to pay attention. Similarly, he tries to have his films rated R (by the MPAA rating system) so as to keep children out of his audience--he does not believe children have the patience his films require. Such a tendency sometimes spawns conflict with movie studios, who do want children in the audience because of the size of the demographic.

Altman is a man who makes films when no other filmmaker and/or studio would. He was reluctant to make the original 1970 Korean War comedy M*A*S*H because of the pressures involved in filming it, but it still became a critical success. It would later inspire the long-running TV series of the same name.

In 1975, Altman made Paramount's Nashville, a semi-musical with a political theme set against the world of country music. Nearly all of his co-stars wrote the songs for the film (one of which won an Academy Award).

The way Altman made his films initially didn't sit well with audiences. In 1976, he attempted to find some of his artistic freedom by founding the original Lions Gate Films. The handful of films he made for the company include A Wedding, 3 Women, and Quintet.

In 1980, he attempted a movie musical for Disney and Paramount, a live-action version of the comic strip/cartoon Popeye (which starred Robin Williams in his big-screen debut). The film did make money, but it was seen as a failure by some critics. During the 1980's, Altman did a series of films, some well-received (the Richard Nixon drama Secret Honor) and some critically panned (O.C. & Stiggs). He also garnered a good deal of acclaim for his presidential campaign "mockumentary" Tanner '88, for which he earned an Emmy Award.

Altman's career began to reach his peak when he directed 1992's The Player for New Line subsidiary Fine Line Features. A satire on Hollywood and its troubles, it was nominated for three Academy Awards, including one for Best Director (Altman). Although it did not win any awards, Altman at last got the acclaim his body of work seemingly deserved.

After the success of The Player, Altman directed 1993's Short Cuts, an ambitious adaptation of several short stories by Raymond Carver, which portrayed the lives of various citizens of the city of Los Angeles over the course of several days. The film's large ensemble cast and intertwining of many different storylines harkened back to his 1970s heyday, and earned Altman another Oscar nomination for Best Director. It was acclaimed as Altman's best film in decades (Altman himself considers this, along with Tanner '88, his most creative work) and, along with The Player, cemented his reputation as one of America's best filmmakers.

Working with independent studios such as Fine Line, Artisan (now Lions Gate, ironically the studio Altman helped to found), and USA Films (now Focus Features), gave Altman the edge in making the kinds of films he has always wanted to make without outside studio interference. Altman is still developing new projects today, including a movie version of the public radio series A Prairie Home Companion.

After 5 nominations for Best Director and no wins, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will award Altman an Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement on March 5, 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Altman

Sidney Poitier
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


His Excellency Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE (born February 20, 1927) is a Bahamian American actor. He has been hailed as a breakthrough star whose acclaimed performances, which consciously defied previous racial stereotyping, gave a new dramatic credibility for Black actors to mainstream film audiences in the Western world.

He was born in Miami, Florida to Bahamian parents and grew up in poverty on Cat Island in the Bahamas. His breakout role was that of one of a classroom of incorrigible high school students in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle. Remarkably, nobody seemed to notice Poitier was 27 at the time of filming. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the 1963 film Lilies of the Field and was the first actor of African descent to win this award. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II (by right and recommendation of his Bahamian citizenship) in 1974. In 2000 he received the Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and in 2002 he received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

He acted in the first run of A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway in 1959, and in its Hollywood adaptation in 1961.

Married first to Juanita Hardy from April 29, 1950 - 1965, and he is currently married to Canadian-born former actress Joanna Shimkus since January 23, 1976. He has 4 children by his first marriage and 2 children by his second marriage.

In addition to authoring This Life (1980) and The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (2000). He is mentioned extensively in John Guare's play Six Degrees of Separation, as one of the characters (falsely) claims to be his son.

Poitier was appointed a Knight of the British Empire in 1974. As a citizen of the Bahamas, which recognizes the British monarch as head of state and uses the British Honours System, this is a substantive (rather than honorary) knighthood. He is thus entitled to use the title "Sir", although chooses not to do so. Poitier has also served as non-resident Bahamian ambassador to Japan (since April 1997), and to the United Nations (UN) Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In these diplomatic roles, the Bahamian Ministry of Foreign Affairs refers to him as "His Excellency Sir Sidney Poitier" [1].


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Poitier

Amanda Blake
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Amanda Blake (born February 20, 1929; died August 16, 1989), was an American actress.

Born Beverly Louise Neill in Buffalo, New York, she was a telephone operator before taking up acting. She became best known for her 19-year role as Kitty Russell on the long-running series Gunsmoke. Miss Kitty was owner/operator of the Long Branch Saloon from which she dispensed wisdom, whiskey, and an ongoing-nongoing mystery relationship with Dodge City Marshall Matt Dillon (played by James Arness).

She was elected to the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

After "Gunsmoke," Blake went into semi-retirement at her home in Phoenix, Arizona, taking on only a few film or TV projects. A lover of animals, she joined with others to form the Arizona Animal Welfare League in 1971, today the oldest and largest "no-kill" animal shelter in the state. In 1985, she helped finance the startup of the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) and devoted a great deal of time and money in support of its efforts, including traveling to Africa.In the early 1980's Amanda was diagnosed with AIDS. It is unclear how she contracted it but reportedly she blamed her fifth husband, who was reportedly bisexual, with giving it to her. He died of the disease shortly after their marriage.

Blake died in Sacramento, California at the age of 60 from a type of viral hepatitis brought on by AIDS; she had previously battled cancer and was considered to be in remission. The media was originally told her cause of death was cancer, but in 1991, it was revealed that she really died of AIDS.

In 1997, the "Amanda Blake Memorial Wildlife Refuge" opened at Rancho Seco Park in Herald, California. The refuge is a PAWS sanctuary for free-ranging African hoofed wildlife, most of whom were originally destined for exotic animal auctions or hunting ranches.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Blake

Richard Beymer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Richard Beymer-1961
Enlarge
Richard Beymer-1961

Richard Beymer (born February 20, 1938 in Avoca, Iowa) is an American actor.

Beymer and his family moved to Los Angeles, California in 1940 where he began his acting career in 1949 in television. In the 1950s he began appearing in films and achieved success in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and West Side Story (1961) before sharing a 1962 Golden Globe award as "Most Promising Newcomer" with Bobby Darin and Warren Beatty.

During this time he was involved in a relationship with the actress Sharon Tate, and was responsible for the beginning of her film career when he introduced her to his agent. Beymer achieved a notable success in the film The Longest Day (1962) before his career went into decline.

He returned to prominence with a featured role in the television series Twin Peaks in 1990. In addition to his work in films, Beymer has frequently appeared in guest roles in television series. These include three appearances on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as Li Nalas.

Beymer also appeared as Dr. Matthew Sheridan with Yasmine Bleeth in 1996 in the made-for-TV movie The Face which was also known as A Face to Die For.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Beymer

West Side Story - One Hand, One Heart Song Lyrics
TONY: (Spoken) I, Anton, take thee, Maria . . .

MARIA: (Spoken) I, Maria, take thee, Anton . . .

TONY: For richer, for poorer . . .

MARIA: In sickness and in health . . .

TONY: To love and to honor . . .

MARIA: To hold and to keep . . .

TONY: From each sun to each moon . . .

MARIA: From tomorrow to tomorrow . . .

TONY: From now to forever . . .

MARIA: Till death do us part.

TONY: With this ring, I thee wed.

MARIA: With this ring, I thee wed.

TONY (Sings)
Make of our hands one hand,
Make of our hearts one heart,
Make of our vows one last vow:
Only death will part us now.

MARIA
Make of our lives one life,
Day after day, one life.

BOTH
Now it begins, now we start
One hand, one heart;
Even death won't part us now.

Make of our lives one life,
Day after day, one life.
Now it begins, now we start
One hand, one heart,
Even death won't part us now.

Sandy Duncan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Sandy Duncan (born February 20, 1946 in Henderson, Texas) is an American singer and actress of stage and television. Her most notable trademarks were her pixie blonde hairdo and her perky demeanor.

She is most famous for the title role she played in the 1979 Broadway adaptation of Peter Pan. Other credits include My One and Only and Chicago.

In 1970, she was named one of the "most promising faces of tomorrow" by TIME magazine. In 1971, she starred in the television series Funny Face (later renamed The Sandy Duncan Show). Her performance as Missy Anne Reynolds in the miniseries Roots earned her an Emmy Award. It was then that she went back to Broadway for many years. In the 1970s, she was treated for a tumor behind her left eye. She lost the sight in the eye but she is still able to move it normally. It was rumored that the eye had to be removed and was replaced with a prosthetic, a rumor that gained so much press attention that it was parodied by a punk rock group who called themselves Sandy Duncan's Eye and in an episode of Family Guy in which Peter Griffin reflects on his low-paying job of being "Sandy Duncan's glass eye."

In 1987, she joined the cast of the sitcom The Hogan Family (which was previously titled Valerie) after Valerie Harper left the show abruptly. She filled the role of mother as Sandy Hogan, the patriarch's sister. In 1988, she did the first three Barney and the Backyard Gang videos as Michael and Amy's mom. Today, she has been in many traveling stage productions, including The King and I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Duncan

Kelsey Grammer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Allen Kelsey Grammer (born February 20, 1955 in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands) is an American actor, director, and writer best known for his 20-year portrayal of psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane on two different sitcoms, Cheers and Frasier.


Professional career

Grammer, who came to public attention in the classic TV sitcom Cheers, was able to successfully spin off his character, Dr. Frasier Crane, into a television series in its own right, named Frasier. Originally intended as a minor recurring role on Cheers, the part of Dr. Frasier Crane originally was to be played by John Lithgow, but Grammer got the role when Lithgow became unavailable.

Grammer won a number of Emmys and Golden Globes for his work on Frasier. He was the first American actor ever to be nominated for multiple Emmy awards for portraying the same character on three different television shows (Cheers, Frasier, and Wings). His US$1.6 million per episode salary for Frasier was the highest in the history of American television at the time, and his 20-year run playing Dr. Frasier Crane ties a record set by James Arness in playing Marshall Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke from 1955 to 1975.

Grammer's trademark smooth, deep voice makes him popular for voiceover work. He has provided the voices of Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons, "Stinky Pete the Prospector" in Toy Story 2, and the title character in the short-lived animated series Gary The Rat. He was also the voice of Vlad in the Fox animated movie, Anastasia. He sang the title theme for Frasier, starred in the film "Down Periscope", and also guest-starred in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect", as the captain of a Starfleet vessel, the U.S.S. Bozeman. His voice style was imitated for the character of Murcuremon in Digimon Frontier.

His most recent work is on Fox's The Sketch Show. While he does appear in some sketches, his role is similar to that of a host. He also produces the UPN sitcom Girlfriends. His next roles will be Dr. Henry McCoy a.k.a. Beast in the third X-Men movie and the mysterious Marvin in The Fairly OddParents Movie (a role resembling one of Mom's henchmen in Futurama).

Personal life

Grammer has been married three times. His first marriage to dance instructor Doreen Alderman spanned eight years, from 1982 to 1990, and produced one child, a daughter named Spencer. His second marriage, to stripper Leigh-Anne Csuhany, lasted one year (1992-1993). Grammer claims she was abusive and that, after talk of divorce, she attempted suicide by overdosing on Tylenol and wine, which resulted in the miscarriage of their child. Since August of 1997, Grammer has been married to Camille Donatacci, a former nude model. They have a son and a daughter together via a surrogate mother. Grammer has one additional daughter, Greer, born in 1992, with hair and makeup stylist Barrie Buckner.

Born in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, Grammer moved to New Jersey with his mother after his parents' divorce. In 1968, when Kelsey was 13, his father, whom he had only met twice, was murdered on the front lawn of his home in the Virgin Islands; in 1975, his sister was raped and murdered after leaving a Red Lobster restaurant in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Kelsey, who was 20 at the time and enrolled in the Juilliard acting program, stopped attending classes and was expelled. In 1980, his twin half-brothers were killed in a shark attack while SCUBA diving.

In 1998, Grammer filed a lawsuit against Internet Entertainment Group, which Grammer claimed had stolen from his home a videotape of him having sex with a woman. IEG countersued Grammer, denying they were in possession of such a tape, and Grammer's suit was eventually dropped.

Grammer began drinking at age 9 and became a frequent abuser of alcohol. In 1988 he was sentenced to 30 days in jail for drunk driving and cocaine possession. He was again arrested for cocaine possession in August 1990 and sentenced to three years' probation, fined $500 and given 300 hours' community service. In January 1991 he was given an additional two years' probation for violating his original probation through additional cocaine use. In September 1996 he flipped his car while under the influence of drugs or alcohol and subsequently checked in to the Betty Ford Clinic for 30 days.

In the mid-'90s Grammer was accused of statutory rape by the parents of his child's 15-year-old babysitter, but a New Jersey grand jury declined to indict due to lack of physical evidence.

After publishing his autobiography, So Far... in 1995, he was sued by a former girlfriend for defamation of character and invasion of privacy.

Grammer says he constantly has supernatural experiences.


Politics

In September of 2003, Grammer expressed an interest in running for the U.S. Senate from California during an appearance on Hannity & Colmes. While remaining vague about his particular political beliefs, he said he would likely run as a Republican, though he says he's not conservative (although his character Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons is quite a hardcore Republican). "I consider myself a centrist, I suppose, but I basically believe in trying to preserve as much opportunity for the individual, as long as that individual chooses to work as hard as he can". Oddly enough, the next open Senate seat belonged to Barbara Boxer, the only Democrat Grammer ever donated money to.[1]

He declared in 2005 that he was the "only person in Los Angeles" to support President George W. Bush.

Grammer has appeared on Sean Hannity's syndicated conservative radio program. He was offered a job as a guest. He did not turn it down.

Grammer was also a celebrity guest at the first swearing-in ceremony of President George W. Bush.
[edit]

Quotes

* "I dreamt that Frasier was over and was on this Sketch Show."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelsey_Grammer

Kurt Cobain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kurt Donald Cobain
Born
February 20, 1967

Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 - ca. April 5, 1994) was the lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the Seattle grunge band Nirvana. He served not only as the band's frontman, but as its "leader and spiritual center" [1]. With the band's success, Cobain became a major national and international celebrity, an uncomfortable position for someone who claimed to be "ill at ease with fame and ill-equipped to handle the responsibility that accompanies success" [2].

Cobain and Nirvana were highly influential, popularizing what came to be known as "grunge music". In 1991, the arrival of Cobain's best known song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", marked the beginning of a dramatic shift of popular music away from the dominant genres of the 1980s: glam metal, arena rock, and dance-pop. The music media eventually awarded "Smells Like Teen Spirit" "anthem-of-a-generation" status [3], and, with it, Cobain ascended as the reluctant "spokesman" for Generation X.

Among other well known Cobain songs are "Lithium", "About a Girl", "Polly", "In Bloom", "Come As You Are", "Heart-Shaped Box", "All Apologies", and the controversial "Rape Me".


Early life

Cobain was born to Don and Wendy Cobain in the Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington, and spent his first six months living in Hoquiam, Washington before the family moved to Aberdeen. By most accounts, his early life was happy, and he lived as a part of the typical American family, which grew to include sister Kimberly in April of 1970.

He began developing an interest in music early in his life. According to Kurt's Aunt Mari, "He was singing from the time he was two. He would sing Beatles songs like, 'Hey Jude.' He would do anything. You could just say, 'Hey Kurt, sing this!' and he would sing it. He had a lot of charisma from a very young age." [4]

Around the age of seven, he began to idolize stuntman Evel Knievel. Hoping to someday become a stuntman himself, a young Cobain could often be seen diving from the rooftop of his house onto a bed of pillows and blankets below. During this time, he was prescribed Ritalin for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); years later, his wife Courtney Love blamed Ritalin for his addiction to heroin.

Cobain's life was turned upside down at the age of eight when his parents divorced in 1975, an event which he later cited as having a profound impact on his life. His mother noted that his personality changed dramatically, with Cobain becoming more withdrawn. In a 1993 interview, Kurt noted, "I remember feeling ashamed, for some reason. I was ashamed of my parents. I couldn't face some of my friends at school anymore, because I desperately wanted to have the classic, you know, typical family. Mother, father. I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that." [5] After a year spent living with his mother following the divorce, Cobain moved to Montesano, Washington to live with his father, but after a few years his youthful rebellion became too overwhelming, and Cobain found himself being shuffled between friends and family.

At school, Cobain took little interest in sports or most academics, focusing only on his art courses. He was friends with a gay student at his school, sometimes suffering bullying at the hands of homophobic students. That friendship, along with his small stature, led some to believe that he himself was gay. Although he once claimed in an interview with The Advocate that he was arrested for spray-painting a pro-gay slogan on a bank, Aberdeen police records show that the phrase he was arrested for in 1986 was actually "Ain't got no how watchamacallit." [6]

In a February 1992 interview with The Advocate, Cobain admitted that he thought he was gay while in high school and stated, "I could be bisexual. If I wouldn't have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle." When Nirvana appeared on Saturday Night Live in January of 1992, Cobain and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic jokingly "made out" during the cast and crew farewells as the credits rolled. (Cobain and Novoselic bobbed their heads back and forth wildly as if in rapture; Novoselic and Dave Grohl subsequently repeated the gesture.) The segment was cut from the show on further airings, replaced by the closing credits from the rehearsal taping, and never aired again.

As a teenager with a chaotic home life growing up in small town Washington, Cobain eventually found escape through the thriving Pacific Northwest punk scene, going to punk rock shows in Seattle. Cobain formed a lifelong friendship with fellow Montesano musicians The Melvins, whose music later heavily influenced Nirvana's sound. Cobain had a small "K" inside a shield tattooed on his forearm, the insignia of Olympia, Washington, label K Records, largely chosen for the coincidental ellipsis of his name.

In his youth, Cobain spent much time reading in the local library, discovering such literary figures as S.E. Hinton and William S. Burroughs, whose cut-up technique Cobain occasionally utilized to write lyrics for some of Nirvana's songs. Cobain eventually had the opportunity to record with Burroughs a spoken word with guitar improvisation piece called The Priest They Called Him, whose words were originally one of Burroughs' short stories from The Exterminator. Other literary works which impacted Cobain's philosophy included the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, and Perfume by Patrick Süskind, as well as works by Samuel Beckett, Charles Bukowski, Jon Savage and Camille Paglia.

Two weeks before his graduation, Cobain dropped out of high school after realizing that he did not have enough credits to graduate. His mother gave him an ultimatum: either get a job or leave. After a week or so, Cobain found his clothes and other belongings packed away in boxes. Forced out of his mother's home, Cobain often stayed at friends' houses and sneaked into his mother's basement every now and then. Cobain later claimed that when he could not find anywhere else to stay, he lived under a bridge over the Wishkah River (at Young Street), an experience that inspired the Nevermind track "Something In The Way". (In the June 2005 issue of Guitar World, Novoselic claimed that Cobain never really lived there, saying, "He hung out there, but you couldn't live on those muddy banks, with the tides coming up and down. That was his own revisionism.")


Nirvana

Main article: Nirvana (band)

Cobain received his first guitar from his uncle at age 14, choosing it over a bicycle. From there, he tried to form bands with friends, generally noodling on songs by AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. In high school, he often found himself without anyone to jam with, as none of his friends had any particular musical talent. Later in high school, Cobain met Novoselic, a fellow devotee of punk rock. A few years later, Cobain tried to convince Novoselic to form a band with him by lending him a copy of a home demo recorded by Cobain's earlier band, Fecal Matter. After months of prodding, Novoselic finally agreed to join Cobain, forming the beginnings of Nirvana.

For the first few years of their playing together, Novoselic and Cobain found themselves host to a rotating list of drummers. Eventually, the band settled on Chad Channing, with whom Nirvana recorded the album Bleach, released on Sub Pop Records in 1989. Cobain, however, became dissatisfied with Channing's style, eventually leading the band to Dave Grohl. With Grohl, the band found their greatest success via their 1991 major-label debut, Nevermind.

Cobain struggled to reconcile the massive success of Nirvana with his underground roots. He also felt persecuted by the media, comparing himself to Frances Farmer, and harbored resentment for people who claimed to be fans of the band but who completely missed the point of the band's message. One incident particularly distressing to Cobain involved two men who raped a woman while singing the Nirvana song "Polly". Cobain condemned the episode in the liner notes of the US release of the album Incesticide: "Last year, a girl was raped by two wastes of sperm and eggs while they sang the lyrics to our song 'Polly.' I have a hard time carrying on knowing there are plankton like that in our audience. Sorry to be so anally P.C. but that's the way I feel."


Marriage


Cobain first encountered Courtney Love at a concert in 1989. More than a year later, after learning from Grohl that she and Cobain shared mutual crushes, Love began pursuing Cobain. After a few weeks of on-again, off-again courtship, the two found themselves together on a regular basis, often bonding through drug use.

Around the time of Nirvana's 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live, Love discovered that she was pregnant with Cobain's child. A few days after the conclusion of Nirvana's Australian tour, on Monday, February 24, 1992, Cobain married Love on Waikiki Beach, Hawaii. On August 18, the couple's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born. The unusual middle name was given to her because Cobain thought she looked like a bean on the first sonogram he saw of her. Her namesake is Frances McKee of The Vaselines, of whom Cobain was a big fan.

Love was somewhat unpopular with Nirvana fans. Her harshest critics cited Cobain's total devotion to her, combined with what they saw as her domineering personality and inferior musical talent, as evidence that she was merely using him as a vehicle to make herself famous; critics who compared Cobain to John Lennon were also fond of comparing Love to Yoko Ono. Rumors persist to this day that Cobain wrote most of the songs on Love's breakthrough album Live Through This. However, except for a rough mix of "Asking for It" that contains Cobain singing backing vocals, there is no evidence to prove the assertion.

At the same time, at least one Hole song was written by Cobain but credited to Hole. The song "Old Age" appeared as a B-side on the 1993 single for Beautiful Son. Initially, there was no reason to believe it was anything other than a Hole-penned song. However, in 1998, a boombox recording of the song performed by Nirvana was surfaced by Seattle newspaper The Stranger. Eventually, Novoselic confirmed that the recording was made in 1991 and that "Old Age" was a Nirvana song, leading to more speculation about Cobain's involvement in Hole's catalog. Nirvana had even attempted to record "Old Age" during the sessions for Nevermind, but it was left incomplete as Cobain had yet to finish the lyrics and the band had run out of studio time. (The incomplete recording appeared on the 2004 compilation With the Lights Out.)

In a 1992 article in Vanity Fair, Love admitted to using heroin while (unknowingly) pregnant, an admission that seriously damaged her public standing. While Cobain and Love's romance had been something of a media attraction before the article was published, they found themselves constantly hounded by tabloid reporters, many wanting to know if Frances was addicted to drugs at birth. The notoriety of the article even resulted in child welfare services launching an investigation into the couple's fitness as parents. The investigation was eventually dismissed, but not without a significant amount of legal wrangling. Love, along with Cobain, claimed that Vanity Fair took her words out of context.


Musical influences

Cobain was a devoted champion of early alternative rock acts. He would often make reference to his favorite bands in interviews, often placing a greater importance on the bands that influenced him than on his own music. Interviews with Cobain were often littered with references to obscure performers like The Vaselines, The Melvins, Daniel Johnston, The Meat Puppets, The Pixies, Young Marble Giants, The Wipers, and The Raincoats. Cobain was eventually able to convince Nirvana's record company, Geffen Records, to reissue albums by The Raincoats and The Vaselines.

Cobain also made efforts to include his favorite performers in his musical endeavors. In 1993, when he decided that he wanted a second guitarist to help him on stage, he recruited Pat Smear of the legendary L.A. punk band The Germs. When rehearsals of three Meat Puppets covers for Nirvana's 1993 performance for MTV Unplugged went awry, Cobain placed a call to the two lead members of the band, Curt and Cris Kirkwood, who ended up joining the band on stage to perform the songs.

Where Sonic Youth had served to help Nirvana gain wider success, Nirvana attempted to help other indie acts attain success. The band submitted the song "Oh, the Guilt" to a split single with Chicago's The Jesus Lizard, helping Nirvana's indie credibility while opening The Jesus Lizard to a wider audience.

One of Cobain's earliest and most important musical influences was none other than The Beatles; Cobain expressed a particular fondness for John Lennon, whom he called his "idol" in his journals, and even admitted that the song "About a Girl" was essentially his attempt at writing a Beatles song. He also found himself heavily influenced by punk rock, and often credited bands such as Black Flag and the Sex Pistols for his artistic style and attitude.

Even with all of Cobain's indie influences, Nirvana's early style was clearly influenced by the major rock bands of the 70s, including Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and KISS. In its early days, Nirvana made regular habit of playing cover songs by those bands, including Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" and "Dazed and Confused", and a studio recording of KISS' "Do You Love Me?"

There were also earlier influences: Nirvana's MTV Unplugged concert ended with a haunting version of Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night"; while critic Greil Marcus suggested that Cobain's "Polly" was a descendent of "Pretty Polly", a murder ballad that might have been a century old when Dock Boggs recorded it in 1927.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Cobain

*On their anniversary night, the husband sat his wife sat down in the
den with her favorite magazine, turned on the soft reading lamp,
slipped off her shoes, patted and propped her feet and announced that
he was preparing dinner all by himself.
"How romantic!" she thought.
Two-and-a-half hours later, she was still waiting for dinner to be
served. She tiptoed to the kitchen and found it a colossal mess.
Her hurried husband, removing something indescribable from the
smoking oven, saw her in the doorway. "Almost ready!" he vowed.
"Sorry it took me so long but I had to refill the pepper shaker."
"Why, honey, how long could that have taken you?"
"More'n an hour, I reckon. Wasn't easy stuffin' it through those dumb
little holes."

Well, folks, it was dys and Ansel who became sanwiched this time.

Hey, Boston Bob. Always good to see and hear our hawkman and his bio's.

I am always enchanted by some of the background, listeners, as are we all, but I need more time to review the transcripts.

In the interim, how about this Simpson song:

Bart: [to the tune of the Colonel Bogey March]
Lisa, her teeth are big and green.
Lisa, she smells like gasoline.
Lisa, da da da Disa.
She is my sister, her birthday, I missed-a.

That's tragic news about Richard Bright. I've been trying to place him, but have had no luck locating a picture of him at Google

Happy Birthday to Mr. Poitier:

I'm not feeling "The heat of the night" here...

<winks at Francis>

Raggedy, I don't know the man either, but was intrigued with his roles in those movies.

In looking at Bob's bio about Ansel Adams, I tried to find a selection that I recall about, "I Am a Camera".

"I am a camera with its shuter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed." (from Goodbye to Berlin, 1939)
Christopher Isherwood was born in Disley, Chesire, as the son of an army officer, who was killed in World War I. The family had lived in the neighboring village of Marple since the sixteenth century, when, as successful farmers, they were able to buy 'The Hall' - an Elizabethan mansion - standing in a big waterlogged park. In his childhood Isherwood travelled around with his father's regiment. In 1914 he was sent to St. Edmund's preparatory school, where he made friends with the future poet, W.H. Auden. Later he wrote in LIONS AND SHADOWS (1938): "I had arrived at my public school thoroughly sick of masters and mistresses, having been emotionally messed about by them at my preparatory school, where the war years had given full licence to every sort of dishonest cant about loyalty, selfishness, patriotism, playing the game and dishonouring the dead." Isherwood studied at Repton School and in 1925 at Corpus Christi Cambridge, without taking a degree. After Cambridge he worked for a time as a secretary to André Mangeot, a French violinist, and earned also his living as a private tutor. From 1930 to 1933 he taught English in Germany. Isherwood's first novel, ALL THE CONSPIRATORS, appeared in 1928. It was followed by THE MEMORIAL in 1934, both exploring the English middle-class world in the 1920s.

Well, Francis. Do you know the theme song to "In the Heat of the Night"?


Did Poitier win the oscar for Lilies of the Field? I loved that movie.

HERE IS THE NEWS FROM THE BBC................

Sad news has just come in that Arthur, the world's only Human Chameleon, has passed away.
Apparently, he tried to crawl across a tartan rug and died of exhaustion.

A London woman has just given birth to a set of quads. According to medical experts, this only happens once in one million six hundred thousand times. Her gynaecologist has said that the couple had been trying for ten years, which works out to roughly 3076 times per week.


There was a strange happening during a performance of Elgar's "Sea Pictures" at a concert hall in Bermuda tonight, when the man playing the triangle disappeared.

Finally, here is an emergency message for seven honeymoon couples in a hotel in Peebles: breakfast was served three days ago.