WA2K Radio is now on the air

And Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover.

Happy 75th Birthday to Hal Linden (Barney Miller):



Remembering that Pittsburgh guy, Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood) (1928-2003), loved by everybody, with the exception of my daughter who thought he was just too sweet to be true. (lol)


Be sure to see his sweater on display when you visit the Smithsonian.

Some other entertainment celebs born on this date were Edgar Buchanan, Ozzie Nelson, Spike Lee, Holly Hunter, Carl Reiner, Jerry Reed, William Hurt, - lots of famous people for Bob to choose from the list.

Concluded.

and, Raggedy. Didn't Vera do "You'd be So Nice to Come Home to."?

Ah, there's Barney. I enjoyed that show. Wasn't there a character on there named Plato?

My husband liked the piano player behind Mr. Rogers. Anyone surprised?

Well, whether or no, here's the fire song:

Lyrics
Song: You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To Lyrics


Verse:

It's not that you're fairer
Than a lot of girls just as pleasin'
That I doff my hat
As a worshipper at your shrine
It's not that you're rarer
Than asparagus out of season
No, my darling, this is the reason
Why you've got to be mine

Chorus:

You'd be so nice to come to
You'd be so nice by the fire
While the breeze on high, sang a lullaby
You'd be all that I could desire

Under stars chilled by the winter
Under an August moon burning above
You'd be so nice
You'd be paradise, to come home to and love

Vera did sing "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To", Letty, and Dinah Shore had a big hit with it during WWII.

Vera also had hits with "Auf Wiedersehn", When the Light Go On Again (All over the world), "From the Time You say Goodbye (until the time you say Cheerio); and "You'll Never Know" (the song Alice Faye made famous).

I don't remember "Plato", but there was a "Wojo" and "Chano" on Barney Miller. I liked "Fish".

I'm not surprised about the piano player, Letty. Mr. Rogers had some good talent on his show.

Let's see folks, I do believe that the guy who was nicknamed Plato was the one who knew everything.

Ah, yes, Raggedy. Wojo. He was the Polish guy. My word, I had forgotten Fish. Wasn't he in The Godfather?

Let's do You'll Never Know, now. <smile>

This version by Michael Buble:


You'll Never Know

You'll never know just how much I love you,
You'll never know just how much I care.
And if I tried
I still couldn't hide
My love for you
You ought to know
For haven't I told you so
A million or more times?

You went away and my heart went with you
I speak your name in my every prayer
If there is some other way
To prove that I love you
I swear I don't know how
You'll never know if you don't know now.

California Girls Lyrics
Beach Boys

Well East coast girls are hip
I really dig those styles they wear
And the Southern girls with the way they talk
They knock me out when I'm down there

The Mid-West farmer's daughters really make you feel alright
And the Northern girls with the way they kiss
They keep their boyfriends warm at night

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls

The West coast has the sunshine
And the girls all get so tanned
I dig a French bikini on Hawaii island
Dolls by a palm tree in the sand

I been all around this great big world
And I seen all kinds of girls
Yeah, but I couldn't wait to get back in the states
Back to the cutest girls in the world

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls

I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the...)
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the...)

Ovid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Publius Ovidius Naso (Sulmona, March 20, 43 BC - Tomis, now Constanta AD 17) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. Ranked alongside Virgil and Horace as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature, Ovid was generally considered the greatest master of the elegiac couplet. His poetry, much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, had a decisive influence on European art and literature for centuries.

R. J. Tarrant offers the following assessment for the importance of Ovid:

From his own time until the end of Antiquity Ovid was among the most widely read and imitated of Latin poets; his greatest work, the Metamorphoses, also seems to have enjoyed the largest popularity. What place Ovid may have had in the curriculum of ancient schools is hard to determine: no body of antique scholia survives for any of his works, but it seems likely that the elegance of his style and his command of rhetorical technique would have commended him as a school author, perhaps at the elementary level.1

Ovid wrote in elegiac couplets, with two exceptions: his lost Medea, whose two fragments are in iambic trimeter and anapests, respectively, and his great Metamorphoses, which he wrote in dactylic hexameter, the meter of Virgil's Aeneid and Homer's epics. Ovid offers an epic unlike those of his predecessors, a chronological account of the cosmos from creation to his own day, incorporating many myths and legends about supernatural transformations from the Greek and Roman traditions.

Augustus banished Ovid in AD 8 to Tomis on the Black Sea for reasons that remain mysterious. Ovid himself wrote that it was because of an error and a carmen - a mistake and a poem (Tr. 2.207). The error itself is uncertain. Ovid may have had an affair with a female relative of Augustus, or withheld knowledge of such an affair. The carmen, however, is probably his Ars Amatoria, a didactic poem offering amatory advice to Roman men and women, which had been in circulation for several years.

It was during this period of exile -- more properly known as a relegation -- that Ovid wrote two more collections of poems, called Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, which illustrate his sadness and desolation. Being far away from Rome, Ovid had no chance to research in libraries and thus was forced to abandon his work Fasti. Even though he was friendly with the natives of Tomis and even wrote poems in their language, he still pined for Rome and his beloved third wife. Many of the poems are addressed to her, but also to Augustus, whom he calls Caesar and sometimes God, to himself, and even sometimes to the poems themselves, which expresses his heart-felt solitude. The famous first two lines of the Tristia demonstrate the poet's misery from the start:

Parve -- nec invideo -- sine me, liber, ibis in urbem:

ei mihi, quod domino non licet ire tuo!

Little book -- and I won't hinder you -- go on to the city without me:

Alas for me, because your master is not allowed to go!

Ovid died at Tomis after nearly ten years of banishment.


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

Henrik Ibsen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Henrik Johan Ibsen (March 20, 1828 - May 23, 1906) was an extremely influential Norwegian playwright who was largely responsible for the rise of the modern realistic drama (dubbed "the father of modern drama"). It is said that Ibsen is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare. Despite spending much time in exile, living in Germany and Italy, Ibsen is held to be the greatest Norwegian author of all times, being celebrated as a national symbol by Norwegians, and as one of the most important playwrights in world history.

His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when Victorian values of family life and propriety largely held sway in Europe and any challenge to them was considered immoral and outrageous. Ibsen's work examined the realities that lay behind many façades, possessing a revelatory nature that was disquieting to many contemporaries.

Ibsen largely founded the modern stage by introducing a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. Victorian-era plays were expected to be moral dramas with noble protagonists pitted against darker forces. Every drama was expected to result in a morally appropriate conclusion, meaning that goodness was to bring happiness, and immorality only pain. Ibsen challenged this notion and the beliefs of his times and shattered the illusions of his audiences.


Family and youth

Henrik Ibsen was born to Knud Ibsen and Marichen Altenburg, a relatively well-to-do merchant family, in the small port town of Skien, Norway, which was primarily noted for shipping timber. He was a descendant of some of the oldest and most distinguished families of Norway, like the Paus family. Shortly after his birth, however, his family's fortunes took a significant turn for the worse. His mother turned to religion for solace, while his father declined into a severe depression. The characters in his plays often mirror his parents, and his themes often deal with issues of financial difficulty as well as moral conflicts stemming from dark private secrets hidden from society.

At fifteen, Ibsen left home. He moved to the small town Grimstad to become an apprentice pharmacist and began writing plays. In 1846, he fathered an illegitimate child with a servant maid whom he rejected. Ibsen came to Christiania intending to attend university, but cast off the idea, preferring to commit to writing. His first play, the tragedy Catilina (1850), was published under the pseudonym Brynjolf Bjarme, when he was only 22, but it was not performed. His first play to see production was The Burial Mound (1850), however, it did not receive much attention. Still, Ibsen was determined to be a playwright, although he was not to write again for some years.


Life and writings

He spent the next several years employed at the Norwegian Theater in Bergen, where he was involved in the production of more than 145 plays as a writer, director, and producer. During this period he did not publish any new plays of his own. Despite Ibsen's failure to achieve success as a playwright, he gained a great deal of practical experience at the Norwegian Theater, experience that was to prove valuable when he continued writing.

Ibsen returned to Oslo in 1858 to become the creative director of Oslo's National Theater. He married Suzannah Thoresen the same year and they gave birth to their only child, Sigurd. The couple lived in very poor financial circumstances and Ibsen became very disenchanted with life in Norway. In 1864 he left Oslo and went to Italy in self-imposed exile. He was not to return to his native land for the next 27 years, and when he returned it was to be as a noted playwright, however controversial.

His next play, Brand (1865), was to bring him the critical acclaim he sought, along with a measure of financial success, as was his next play, Peer Gynt (1867), to which Edvard Grieg famously composed the incidental music.

With success, he became more confident and began to introduce more and more his own beliefs and judgments into the drama, exploring what he termed the "drama of ideas". His next series of plays are often considered his Golden Age, when he entered the height of his power and influence, becoming the center of dramatic controversy across Europe.

Ibsen moved from Italy to Dresden, Germany in 1868. Here he spent years writing the play he himself regarded as his main work, Emperor and Galilean (1873), dramatizing the life and times of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate. But although Ibsen himself always looked back on this play as the cornerstone of his entire works, very few shared his opinion. And his next works would be much more acclaimed.


Ibsen moved to Munich in 1875 and published A Doll's House in 1879. The play is a scathing criticism of the traditional roles of men and women in Victorian marriage.

Ibsen followed A Doll's House with Ghosts (1881), another scathing commentary on Victorian morality, in which a widow reveals to her pastor that she has hidden the evils of her marriage for its duration. The pastor had advised her to marry her then fiancé despite his philandering, and she did so in the belief that her love would reform him. But she was not to receive the result she was promised. Her husband's philandering continued right up until his death, and the result is that her son is syphilitic. Even the mention of venereal disease was scandalous, but to show that even a person who followed society's ideals of morality had no protection against it, that was beyond scandalous. Hers was not the noble life which Victorians believed would result from fulfilling one's duty rather than following one's desires. Those idealized beliefs were only the Ghosts of the past, haunting the present.

Society's criticism of Ibsen was raised to a fever pitch at this point, but Society itself was losing its control over the mass of people, most of whom didn't live in the rarefied air of the Victorian Gentleman. They wanted to see Ibsen's plays because he showed what so many of them already knew to be the reality. The tide had turned.

In An Enemy of the People (1882), Ibsen went even further. Before, controversial elements were important and even pivotal components of the action, but they were on the small scale of individual households. In An Enemy controversy became the primary focus, and the antagonist was the entire community. One primary message of the play is that the individual, who stands alone, is more often "right" than the mass of people, who are portrayed as ignorant and sheeplike. The Victorian belief was that the community was a noble institution that could be trusted, a fiction Ibsen challenged.

The protagonist is a doctor, a pillar of the community. The town is a vacation spot whose primary draw is a public bath. The doctor discovers that the water used by the bath is being contaminated when it seeps through the grounds of a local tannery. He expects to be acclaimed for saving the town from the nightmare of infecting visitors with disease, but instead he is declared An Enemy of the People by the locals, who band against him and even throw stones through his windows. The play ends with his complete ostracism. It is obvious to the reader that disaster is in store for the town as well as for the doctor, due to the community's unwillingness to face reality.

As audiences by now expected of him, his next play again attacked entrenched beliefs and assumptions -- but this time his attack was not against the Victorians but against overeager reformers and their idealism. Always the iconoclast, Ibsen was as willing to tear down the ideologies of any part of the political spectrum, including his own.

The Wild Duck (1884) is considered by many to be Ibsen's finest work, and it is certainly the most complex. It tells the story of Gregers Werle, a young man who returns to his hometown after an extended exile and is reunited with his boyhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal. Over the course of the play the many secrets that lie behind the Ekdals' apparently happy home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "Summons of the Ideal". Among these truths: Gregers' father impregnated his servant Gina, then married her off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child. Another man has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime the elder Werle committed. And while Hjalmar spends his days working on a wholly imaginary "invention", his wife is earning the household income.

Ibsen displays masterful use of irony: despite his dogmatic insistence on truth, Gregers never says what he thinks but only insinuates, and is never understood until the play reaches its climax. Gregers hammers away at Hjalmar through innuendo and coded phrases until he realizes the truth; Gina's daughter, Hedvig, is not his child. Blinded by Gregers' insistence on absolute truth, he disavows the child. Seeing the damage he has wrought, Gregers determines to repair things, and suggests to Hedvig that she sacrifice the wild duck, her wounded pet, to prove her love for Hjalmar. Hedvig, alone among the characters, recognizes that Gregers always speaks in code, and looking for the deeper meaning in the first important statement Gregers makes which does not contain one, kills herself rather than the duck in order to prove her love for him in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Only too late do Hjalmar and Gregers realize that the absolute truth of the "ideal" is sometimes too much for the human heart to bear.


Probably Ibsen's most performed play is Hedda Gabler (1890), the leading female role being regarded as one of the most challenging and rewarding for an actress even in the present day. There are many similarities between Hedda and the character of Nora in A Doll's House.

Ibsen had completely rewritten the rules of drama with a realism which was to be adopted by Chekhov and others and which we see in the theater to this day. From Ibsen forward, challenging assumptions and directly speaking about issues has been considered one of the factors that makes a play Art rather than entertainment.

Finally, Ibsen returned to Norway in 1891, but it was in many ways not the Norway he had left. Indeed, he had played a major role in the changes that had happened across society. The Victorian Age was on its last legs, to be replaced by the rise of Modernism not only in the theater, but across public life.

With a stellar career behind him, the likes of which few authors or playwrights ever see, Ibsen passed away after a series of strokes in Kristiania in 1906 at the age of 78. He did particularly well in his last words, with his nurse assuring a visitor that the playwright was a little better, only for Ibsen to splutter "On the contrary" - and die. Ibsen was a great influence on many intellectuals and activists of his time, for instance anarchist Emma Goldman and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.

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

Hey, Try. Did you know that The Beach Boys were so impressed with The Four Freshmen. (four guys that sound like a million) that it's difficult to tell the difference sometimes?

Hey, Florida girls ain't bad.<smile>

In a few secs, I'll play a song by those fellows.

Edgar Buchanan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Edgar Buchanan (born March 20, 1903; died April 4, 1979) was an American actor with a long career in both movies and television, but is probably most familiar as Uncle Joe Carson from the Petticoat Junction and Green Acres television sitcoms of the 1960s. As Uncle Joe "who is moving kinda slow", he took over as proprietor of the Shady Rest Hotel following the death of Bea Benaderet, who had played Kate Bradley.

Born in Humansville, Missouri, he was originally a successful dentist before becoming interested in acting.Among the movies he made were Penny Serenade with Cary Grant, Benji, McLintock! with John Wayne, Cheaper by the Dozen, and Tombstone, the Town Too Tough to Die. Other television shows included Hopalong Cassidy, Judge Roy Bean and The Rifleman.

Buchanan died in Palm Desert, California and was interred in the Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.


Trivia

Buchanan and one of the other stars of Petticoat Junction appeared together in the movie Benji. The other "star" was none other than Higgins, the unnamed "dog" from the sitcom, who was the star of the movie and a sequel, For The Love of Benji. Higgins was found in an animal shelter and trained by Frank Inn, who also trained Arnold Ziffel (the pig) and all the other animals used on the Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres sitcoms.

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

Ozzie Nelson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Oswald George "Ozzie" Nelson (March 20, 1906 - June 3, 1975) was an American entertainer who originated and starred in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet radio and television series with his wife and two sons.

The second son of Swedish parents, he was born in Jersey City, New Jersey and raised in the affluent suburb of Ridgefield Park, where the street of the high school he attended is now named after him. He became an Eagle Scout at thirteen and in adult life a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America. He graduated from Rutgers University, where he played football despite his slight build, and entered law school. While in college, he played in a small band and coached football to earn money. But when faced with the Depression, he turned to music as a full-time career.

Ozzie started his entertainment career as a band leader. He formed and led the Ozzie Nelson Band, and had some limited success. He made his own 'big break' in 1930. The New York Daily Mirror ran a poll of its readers to determine their favorite band. He knew that news vendors got credit for the newspaper for unsold copies by returning the front page and discarding the rest of the issue. Gathering hundreds of discarded newspapers, the band filled out ballots in their favor. They edged out Paul Whiteman and were pronounced the winners.

In October 1935 he married the band's vocalist Harriet Hilliard. The couple had two children. David, born in 1936, became an actor and director. Eric ("Ricky"), born in 1940, became an actor and singer.

In the 1940s Ozzie began to look for a way to spend more time with his family, especially his growing sons. Besides band appearances, he and Harriet had been regulars on the Red Skelton's radio show. He developed and produced his own radio series, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. The show went on the air in 1944, with the sons played by actors until 1949, and in 1952 it moved over to television. The show starred the entire family, and America watched Ozzie and Harriet raise their boys.

In 1973 he published his autobiography, "Ozzie" (Prentice Hall, ISBN 0136477682). Ozzie, who had suffered from recurring malignant tumors in his later years, died of cancer at age 69 and is interred with his wife and son Ricky in the Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

For his contribution to the television industry, Ozzie Nelson has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6555 Hollywood Blvd. He has an additional star with his wife at 6260 Hollywood Blvd. for their contribution to radio.

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

Michael Redgrave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave (March 20, 1908 ?- March 21, 1985) was an English actor and the son of the Australian silent film star Roy Redgrave and the actress Margaret Scudamore. Born in Bristol he graduated from Cambridge University and was briefly a schoolmaster at Cranleigh school in Surrey before becoming an actor in 1934. His first major film role was in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes in 1938.

Redgrave moved to Hollywood after a successful career in the British theatre. His first major American role was opposite Rosalind Russell in Mourning Becomes Electra in 1947, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In the early 1950s, he starred in the films The Browning Version (1951), The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) and 1984 (1956).

Redgrave was knighted in 1959 and was married to the actress Rachel Kempson for fifty years (from 1935 until his death). He is the father of actor Corin Redgrave and actresses Lynn Redgrave and Vanessa Redgrave, as well as the grandfather of the actresses Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson, Jemma Redgrave and actor Carlo Nero (son of Vanessa and Franco Nero).

He died in a Denham nursing home from Parkinson's disease in 1985, the day following his 77th birthday.

His play The Aspern Papers, based on the novella by Henry James, was successfully staged on Broadway in 1962, with Dame Wendy Hiller and Maurice Evans. The 1984 revival in London's West End featured his daughter, Vanessa Redgrave, along with Christopher Reeve and Dame Wendy Hiller, this time in the role of Miss Bordereau.

He is also the author of four books:

* The Actor's Ways and Means
* Mask or Face
* The Mountebank Tale
* In My Mind's Eye


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

Vera Lynn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Dame Vera Lynn, DBE (born March 20, 1917) is a British singer whose career flourished during World War II, when she was nicknamed "The Forces' Sweetheart". She is best known for the popular song "We'll Meet Again", written by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles. She is one of the last surviving major entertainers of the war years.


Biography

Lynn was born Vera Margaret Welch in East Ham, London. Later she adopted her grandmother's maiden name Lynn as her stage name. She began singing at the age of seven. Her first radio broadcast, with the Joe Loss Orchestra, was made in 1935. At this point she was being featured on records released by dance bands including Loss's and Charlie Kunz's. In 1936 she made her first solo record on the Crown label, "Up the Wooden Hill to Bedfordshire". This label was soon swallowed up by Decca. After a short stint with Loss she stayed with Kunz for a few years during which she waxed several standards. She later moved to the aristocrat of British dance bands, Bert Ambrose.

Lynn married clarinettist and saxophonist Harry Lewis in 1939, the year World War II broke out. In 1940 she began her own radio series, "Sincerely Yours", sending messages to British troops stationed abroad. In this radio show she and a quartet performed the songs most requested to her by soldiers stationed abroad. She also went into hospitals to interview new mothers and send messages to their husbands overseas. She toured Burma and gave outdoor concerts for soldiers. In 1942 she recorded the Ross Parker/Hughie Charles song "We'll Meet Again" while making the film of the same name. The nostalgic lyrics ("We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day") had a great appeal to the many people separated from loved ones during the war, and it became one of the emblematic songs of the wartime period.

After the war, her "Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart" became the first record by a British artist to top the US charts, doing so for nine weeks, and she appeared regularly on Tallulah Bankhead's US radio programme "The Big Show". "Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart", along with "The Homing Waltz" and "Forget-Me-Not" gave Lynn a remarkable three entries on the first UK Singles Chart, a top 12 (which contained 15 songs owing to tied positions).

Lynn's career flourished in the 1950s, peaking with "My Son, My Son", a number-one hit in 1954. It was co-written by Eddie Calvert. In early 1960, Lynn left Decca Records, with whom she had been for nearly 25 years, and joined EMI. There, she recorded for EMI's Columbia, MGM and HMV subsidiaries.

Lynn was appointed an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 1969 and a DBE (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1975. She sang outside Buckingham Palace in 1995 in a ceremony marking the golden jubilee of VE Day. Lynn, then 78, decided to go out on a high and this is her last known public performance. In 2002 at the age of 85 she became the president of the cerebral palsy charity SOS and hosted a celebrity concert on their behalf at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.

In 2004 abstract body artist Joanna Jones received permission and a grant to use the White Cliffs of Dover as the location for one of her body paintings. Dame Vera spoke out against this, stating: "I don't see how it can be publicity for Britain - it might be publicity for the artist. People coming to Britain, especially for the first time, expect to see the white cliffs of Dover, they don't expect to see an art display do they!" [1]

England's VE Day ceremonies in 2005 included a concert in Trafalgar Square in which Vera Lynn made a surprise appearance. She made a speech praising the veterans and calling upon the younger generations to always remember their sacrifice.

"These boys gave their lives and some came home badly injured and for some families, life would never be the same. We should always remember, we should never forget and we should teach the children to remember."

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

We'll Meet Again


Written by: Hughie Charles

Written by: Ross Parker

Arranged by: Robert Farnon

From the Film: Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Label: Reprise Records

Recorded: June 14, 1962 (London)

--------------------------------------------------------



We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,

Bit I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

Keep smiling through just like you always do,

Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.

So will you please say hello to the folks that I know, tell them I won't be long.

They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go, I was singing this song.

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,

But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

Carl Reiner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Carl Reiner (born March 20, 1922) is a Jewish-American actor, film director, producer, writer and comedian. He is the father of actor and director Rob Reiner, and husband of Estelle Lebold Reiner, a minor comic actress best known as the lady who says "I'll have what she's having" at Katz's Delicatessen in When Harry Met Sally... after Meg Ryan's phony orgasm scene.

Born in the Bronx, New York, Reiner was educated at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and served in the United States Army during World War II. He later performed in several Broadway musicals, including Inside U.S.A., and Alive and Kicking , and had the lead role in Call Me Mister. In 1950, he was cast by Max Leibman in Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, and worked alongside writers such as Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen. He also worked on Caesar's Hour.

Reiner was frequently seen or heard playing the straight man to Mel Brooks' "2000 Year Old Man" character.

In 1961, Reiner created The Dick Van Dyke Show. In addition to usually writing the show, Reiner occasionally appeared as temperamental show host "Alan Brady", who ruthlessly browbeats his brother-in-law (played by the late Richard Deacon). The show ran from 1961 to 1966.

Reiner began his directing career on the Van Dyke show. His first feature was an adaptation of the play Enter Laughing (1967). Probably the best-known film of his early directing career was the cult comedy Where's Poppa (1970), starring George Segal and Ruth Gordon.

Reiner played a large role in the early career of Steve Martin, by directing and co-writing four films for the comedian; The Jerk in 1979, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid in 1982, The Man with Two Brains in 1983, and All of Me in 1984. In 2000 Reiner was honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In 2001, he played the character of Saul Bloom in Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven and its 2004 sequel. In 2004 he voiced the lion Sarmoti in the animated TV series Father of the Pride.

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

Fred Rogers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Rev. Frederick McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 - February 27, 2003) was the host of the internationally acclaimed children's television show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, in production from 1968 to 2001. Mister Rogers, as he became known to millions of viewers, was an ordained Presbyterian minister who lived and worked in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area for most of his life.


Life and Career

Rogers was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles (50 km) southeast of Pittsburgh. Following secondary school, he studied at Dartmouth College in Hanover between 1946 and 1948 before transferring to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. He received a BA in music composition there in 1951. In 1954, he began working at WQED Pittsburgh as a puppeteer on a local children's television series, The Children's Corner. For the next seven years, he worked with host Josie Carey in unscripted live TV, and developed many of the puppets, characters and music used in his later work, such as King Friday the XIII, and Curious X the Owl.

During this period, for eight years he gave up lunch breaks to study theology at nearby Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He had planned to enter seminary after college, but had been diverted into television. Rogers, however, was not interested in preaching, and after his ordination as a Presbyterian minister in 1962, he was specifically charged to continue his work with children's TV. He had also done work at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Child Development.

In 1963, Rogers moved to Toronto where he was contracted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ("CBC") to develop a 15 minute children's television program: 'MisteRogers', which would be Fred's debut in front of the camera. The show was a hit with kids, but only lasted for three seasons on the network. Many of his famous set pieces such as the trolley, Eiffel Tower, the 'tree', and 'castle' were all created by designers at the CBC. While on production in Canada, Fred brought with him his friend and understudy Ernie Coombswho would go on to create "Mr. Dressup" a very successful and long running children's show in Canada which in many ways was similar to the Rogers' program.

In 1966 he acquired the rights for his program and moved the show to WQED in Pittsburgh, incorporating parts of the CBC program into the new show he developed for the Eastern Educational Network to cities including Boston, Massachusetts, Washington, DC and New York City. Distribution of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood began on National Educational Television on February 19, 1968. The following year the show moved to the PBS network, where it continues today in syndication. The last set of new episodes was taped in December 2000 and began airing on August 2001. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood has the distinction of being the longest running program on PBS.

Rogers is quoted as saying, "I got into television because I hated it so. And I thought there was some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen."

After returning to Pittsburgh, Rogers was an active congregational member in the Sixth Presbyterian church of Pittsburgh. He succumbed to stomach cancer a short time after his retirement at the age of 74. His remains are entombed in a family crypt in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

Each show began the same way, with Mister Rogers coming home and singing his theme song, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" and changing into sneakers and a zippered cardigan sweater. One of these sweaters is on display at the Smithsonian Institution, a nod to Rogers' influence in American culture.

The show's target audience was chiefly pre-school children and featured none of the animation or fast pace of Sesame Street. Rogers composed all the music for his show. A typical episode might see him have an earnest conversation with his television audience, interact with live guests, take a field trip to a nearby place like a bakery or music store, or watch a short film on "Picture Picture," where typically the subject matter was a video short of how some inanimate object works or is manufactured. Each show always included a session with the puppets of Rogers' "Neighborhood of Make-Believe." The neighborhood featured a trolley (with its own chiming theme song), a castle and various citizens of the kingdom, including King Friday the XIII. Often, the make-believe sessions allowed further development of thematic elements that were being discussed in Mister Rogers' "real" neighborhood. Typically, each week's worth of shows explored a major theme, such as going to school for the first time.

Rogers was concerned with teaching children to love themselves and others. He also tried to address common childhood fears with comforting songs and skits. For example, one of his famous songs explains how you can't be pulled down the bathtub drain?-because you won't fit. He even once took a trip to the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh to show children that a hospital is not a place to be afraid of. During the Gulf War, he assured children that all children in the neighborhood would be well cared-for, and asked parents to promise to take care of their children. The still timely and reassuring message was aired again by PBS during the media storm that preceded the military action against Iraq in 2003.

Guests on the show ranged from cellist Yo-Yo Ma to actor and bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno of TV's The Incredible Hulk. Guests were often surprised to find that Rogers was a perfectionist who did not allow ad-libbing; he thought children were people and deserved shows as good as anything else on TV.


His gentle manner has been lampooned by some comedians, notably a parody called "Mister Robinson's Neighborhood," on Saturday Night Live by Eddie Murphy in the 1980s. Rogers found the routine funny and affectionate (see [[1]]). When Murphy and Rogers finally had the opportunity to meet, Eddie embraced Rogers and respectfully pronounced him "the real Mister Rogers." Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio broadcasts also ran parodies of Rogers.

On the eve of the announcement that Mister Rogers' Neighborhood would cease production of new episodes, TV Guide interviewed Rogers and led the story with an anecdote. Apparently, Rogers had been driving the same car for years, an old second-hand Impala. Then it was stolen from its parking spot near the WQED studio. Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by local news outlets, and general shock swept across town. Within 48 hours the car was back in the spot where he left it, along with a note saying "If we'd known it was yours, we never would have taken it!" (see[2]).

Rogers' show won four Emmy awards, including one for lifetime achievement. The show also received a Peabody Award in 1968.

Rogers appeared as a guest on some other shows, for example on the children's show Arthur, where he played himself (though he was an aardvark, like Arthur).


Mister Rogers and the VCR

During the controversy surrounding the introduction of the household videocassette recorder, Rogers was involved in supporting the manufacturers of VCRs in court. His 1979 testimony at the trial level of the case that became known as Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. noted that he did not object to home recording of his television programs, as, for instance, by families in order to watch together at a later time. This testimony contrasted with the views of others in the television industry who objected to home recording or believed that devices to facilitate it should be taxed or regulated.

The Supreme Court considered the testimony of Rogers in its decision that held that the Betamax video recorder did not infringe copyright. The Court stated that his views were a notable piece of evidence "that many [television] producers are willing to allow private time-shifting to continue"; it even quoted his testimony in a footnote:

"Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the 'Neighborhood' at hours when some children cannot use it ... I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the 'Neighborhood' off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the 'Neighborhood' because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been 'You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.' Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important."

The Home Recording Rights Coalition later stated that Rogers was "one of the most prominent witnesses on this issue."


Mister Rogers and PBS Funding

In 1969 Rogers appeared before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Communications, which was a subcommittee of the Committee of Commerce. His goal was to support funding for PBS, in response to significant proposed cuts. In about fifteen minutes of testimony, Rogers spoke of the need for social and emotional education that public television provided. He passionately argued that alternative television programming like his Neighborhood helped encourage children to become happy and productive citizens, sometimes opposing less positive messages in media and in popular culture. He even recited the lyrics to one of his songs.

The chairman of the subcommittee, John O. Pastore, was not previously familiar with Rogers' work, and was sometimes described as gruff and impatient. However, he reported that the testimony had given him goosebumps, and declared, "Looks like you just won the twenty million dollars." The following congressional appropriation, for 1971, increased PBS funding from $9 million to $22 million.

Speeches, Honors, and Memberships

* In 1972 Rogers was the commencement speaker for the graduation ceremony at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
* In 1992, Rogers received a George Foster Peabody Award "in recognition of 25 years of beautiful days in the neighborhood."
* On July 9, 2002, Fred Rogers received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to children's education. "Fred Rogers has proven that television can soothe the soul and nurture the spirit and teach the very young," said President George W. Bush at the presentation.
* In 2002 Rogers gave the Commencement Address at Dartmouth College (see [3]).
* In 2003, a month before his death, Rogers was a Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade, serving with Art Linkletter and Bill Cosby.
* On March 4, 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Resolution 111 by a vote of 412-0 honoring Rogers "for his legendary service to the improvement of the lives of children, his steadfast commitment to demonstrating the power of compassion, and his dedication to spreading kindness through example."

On March 5, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed S.Con. Resolution 16 to commemorate the life of Fred Rogers.
"Fred gave so many people similar gifts, and he did it merely by speaking to them in an open, honest, non-threatening way;" Teresa Heinz said. "He never condescended, just invited us into his conversation. He spoke to us as the people we were, not as the people others wished we were."

* On May 2, 2003, the International Astronomical Union announced that an asteroid, known as #26858, had been named "Misterrogers." The announcement was made by the director of the Henry Buhl Jr. Planetarium & Observatory at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh. The science center worked with Rogers' Family Communications, Inc. to produce a planetarium show for preschoolers called "The Sky Above Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," which plays at planetariums across the United States.
* Rogers was a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity.



Family

Fred Rogers is survived by his wife Joanne Rogers, their two sons and two grandsons, according to his Web site.


Trivia

* In the Internet meme, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, Mr. Rogers is the ultimate winner of the showdown.

* In an episode of Family Guy, Mr. Rogers is killed by Stewie in a dream, and then comes back disguised as Lois to kill Stewie. This is also however revealed to be a dream.

* A sweater Mr. Rogers wore is on display at the Smithsonian.

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

Hal Linden
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Hal Linden (born Harold Lipshitz on March 20, 1931 in New York City) is an American actor and television director. He is best known for his portrayal of the title character in the television comedy series Barney Miller (1975-1982). More recently he has appeared in small roles in movies. He began his career as a saxophone player and leader of dance bands.

Linden chose his stage name after spotting a gas storage tank with the word "Linden" (as in Linden, New Jersey) written on it in huge letters?-"large enough for a big star".

Linden is currently the national spokesperson for the Jewish National Fund. He also played "The Dean" in the Christian movie Time Changer.

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

Bobby Orr
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Robert Gordon "Bobby" Orr, OC (born March 20, 1948 in Parry Sound, Ontario) is a retired Canadian ice hockey defenceman and is considered by many to be one of the greatest hockey players of all time.


Playing career

Born in Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada, Orr's ice hockey talents were evident at a very early age, and he was signed by Boston Bruins' scout Wren Blair at the age of twelve. As a 14-year-old he played for the Oshawa Generals in the junior league Ontario Hockey Association, competing against eighteen, nineteen and twenty-year-olds. National Hockey League rules dictated that he could not join the Boston Bruins before reaching eighteen. His third season he led the Generals to the OHA championship, and in his final season with Oshawa he averaged two points a game. Prominent Toronto lawyer Alan Eagleson negotiated his first contract with the Bruins. At the time it made Orr the highest-paid player in league history.

In his first professional season ?- although missing nine games with a knee injury presaging such woes throughout his career ?- he won the Calder Memorial Trophy as outstanding rookie and, while the perennially-cellar dwelling Bruins finished in last place that season, sparked a renaissance that propelled the Bruins to make the playoffs the following twenty-nine straight seasons, a North American professional sports record. New York Rangers' defenseman Harry Howell, the winner of the Norris Trophy as the league's best defenseman that season, famously predicted that he was glad to win when he did, because "Orr will own this trophy from now on."

Injuries limited Orr to just 46 games in the 1968 season, but he registered an amazing +65 for a resurgent third place team and won the first of eight straight Norris trophies. In 1970 he did the unthinkable, doubling his scoring total from the previous season to score 120 points, six shy of the league record and becoming the first (and to date, only) defenseman in history to win the Art Ross Trophy as the league's leading scorer. Besides the Norris and Art Ross, Orr also captured the first of his three consecutive Hart Trophies as regular-season MVP and he later win the Conn Smythe Trophy for his playoff heroics, being the only player in history to win four major NHL awards in one season. He went on to lead the Bruins in a march through the playoffs that culminated on May 10, 1970 when he scored one of the most acrobatic goals in hockey history to give Boston its first Stanley Cup in 29 years. The subsequent image of Orr flying through the air, his arms raised in victory ?- he had been tripped by Blues' defenseman Noel Picard at the moment of shooting ?- became a prize-winning photograph and is arguably the most famous and recognized hockey image of all time.

The following year, 1971, in a season where the powerhouse Bruins shattered dozens of league offensive records, Orr finished second in league scoring while setting records that still stand for points in a season by a defenseman and for plus/minus. He would lead the Bruins to the Stanley Cup again the following season, leading the league in scoring in the playoffs en route to his second Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, but his knee woes would take an increasing toll thereafter.

Orr revolutionized the game of hockey, creating a new breed of defenseman with his offensive role. His speed, most notably a rapid acceleration, and his open ice artistry electrified fans as he set almost every conceivable record for a defenseman. Despite being limited by knee injuries which would later force him to retire early, he dominated the National Hockey League during his career. In a shortened career, he still won the James Norris Memorial Trophy as the league's most outstanding defenseman eight times, more than any other player in NHL history.

In 1976, despite several knee operations that left him playing in severe pain, Orr was named the most valuable player in the Canada Cup international competition.

At the end of the 1976 season, Orr's contract was over and the Boston Bruins needed to renew it. The Bruins offered Orr a lucrative contract, including over 18% ownership in the Bruins organization. However, Eagleson, who by this time was doubling as Orr's agent and executive director of the NHLPA, falsely told Orr that the Chicago Black Hawks had a better deal, something that was not revealed for a number of years. It later emerged that Eagleson had very good relations with Chicago's management, and frequently acted contrary to the interests of his clients in favour of teams whose management he favoured.

Orr subsequently signed with Chicago, but his injuries rendered him too severely hurt to play, and ?- after playing in only 26 games over the next three seasons ?- retired in 1979. Famously, he never cashed a Chicago pay cheque, stating that he was paid to play hockey and would not accept a salary if he wasn't playing.

Orr retired having scored 270 goals and 645 assists in 657 games, adding 953 penalty minutes. At the time of his retirement, he was the leading defenseman in league history in goals, assists and points, 10th overall in assists and 19th in points. The only players in league history scoring more points per game than Orr are Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Mike Bossy.




Retirement



Forced to retire after more than a dozen knee operations, the mandatory three-year waiting period was waived and in 1979 he was enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame at age 31. He was the youngest player to be inducted and one of only ten players to get in without having to wait three years. He has been honoured with his name recorded on Canada's Walk of Fame.

A museum exists in his honour in his home town of Parry Sound called the Bobby Orr Hall of Fame. In 1979 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, and was voted the greatest athlete in Boston history in the Boston Globe newspaper's poll of New Englanders, beating out Ted Williams, Bill Russell, Carl Yastrzemski and Bob Cousy.

Orr later played a role in the exposure of Eagleson's misconduct over the years. It eventually turned out that Eagleson had used the NHLPA pension fund to enrich himself over the years, in addition to misleading his clients about contract terms. He was convicted in American and Canadian courts and sentenced to 18 months in Canadian prison, of which he served six months. Orr, who once considered Eagleson a big brother, was one of several players who threatened to resign from the Hall of Fame if Eagleson wasn't removed. Eagleson resigned from the Hall soon after his conviction in 1998.

Subsequent to his playing career, Orr served briefly as an assistant coach for Chicago, and as a consultant at various points to the NHL and the Hartford Whalers, spending the bulk of his retirement years as a Boston-area bank executive. He is currently a player-agent. Every year, Orr coaches a team of top CHL players against a similar team coached by Don Cherry in the CHL Top Prospects Game.


Career achievements and facts

* Currently 6th all-time by a defenseman in career goals, 11th in career assists and 9th in points.
* Currently 51st overall in league history in career assists and 80th in career points.
* Besides the Stanley Cup, captured the Norris Trophy, Art Ross Trophy, Hart Trophy, and Conn Smythe Trophy in 1970, the only player in history to win four major NHL awards in one season.
* Awarded the Calder Memorial Trophy in 1967.
* Named to the NHL First All-Star Team in 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975.
* Named to the Second All-Star Team in 1967.
* Awarded the James Norris Trophy in 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975.
* Won the Art Ross Trophy in 1970 and 1975.
* Awarded the Hart Memorial Trophy in 1970, 1971 and 1972.
* Awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1970 and 1972.
* Stanley Cup winner in 1970 and 1972.
* Played in the NHL All-Star Game in 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973 and 1975.
* NHL Plus/Minus leader in 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974 and 1975.
* Awarded the Lester B. Pearson Award in 1975.
* Named the Canada Cup Tournament MVP in 1976.
* Awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy in 1979.
* Received Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" award in 1970.
* Voted second greatest hockey player of all time by an expert committee in 1997 by The Hockey News.


Records

* Most points in one NHL season by a defenseman (139; 1970-71).
* Most assists in one NHL season by a defenseman (102; 1970-71).
* Highest plus/minus in one NHL season (+124; 1970-71).
* Tied for most assists in one NHL game by a defenseman (6; tied with Babe Pratt, Pat Stapleton, Ron Stackhouse, Paul Coffey and Gary Suter).
* Held record for most assists in one NHL season from 1971 to 1981 (102; broken by Wayne Gretzky).
* Held record for most goals in one NHL season by a defenseman from 1971 to 1986 (37 in 1971, broke own record in 1975 with 46; broken in 1986 by Paul Coffey).


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

William Hurt
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Hurt (born March 20, 1950) is an Academy Award-winning American actor.


Early life

Born in Washington, D.C., Hurt is the stepson of Henry Luce III (the son of the founder of Time Magazine). Hurt graduated from Middlesex School in 1968 where he was the Vice President of the Dramatics Club and had the lead role in several of the school plays. His high school yearbook predicted, "With characteristics such as these, you might even see him on Broadway." Hurt attended Tufts University and studied theology, but turned instead to acting and joined the Juilliard Drama School.

Career

Hurt appeared first on stage, only later turning to film. He received the Academy Award for Best Actor for Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1985. He received two additional nominations, one for Children of a Lesser God (1986) and one for Broadcast News (1987).

Often cast as intellectuals, Hurt has put this to good use in many films like Lost in Space and The Big Chill, but he's also effective in other kinds of roles like I Love You To Death, and 2005's A History of Violence as a strange mobster, a role for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He can also be seen in Syriana.

Private life

Fluent in French, Hurt maintains a home outside Paris. He has a daughter with actress Sandrine Bonnaire and a son with Sandra Jennings. He was previously married to Mary Beth Hurt from 1971 to 1982 and lived with Marlee Matlin for a period in 1986. Hurt has two sons from his 1989-92 marriage to Heidi Henderson.

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

Spike Lee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Shelton Jackson Lee (born March 20, 1957 in Atlanta, Georgia), better known as Spike Lee, is a controversial film director, producer, writer, and actor noted for his many films dealing with social and political issues. He is also a distinguished documentarian and teaches film at New York University.


Biography

Born in Atlanta, Lee moved with his family to Brooklyn when he was a small child. In Brooklyn he attended John Dewey High School. Lee studied film at Clark Atlanta University before receiving his B.A. in Mass Communications from Morehouse College and, in 1982, a Master of Fine Arts from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

At their best, Lee's films are penetrating and energetic portraits of people and places, interweaving psychology and context, time and place. Lee's movies have examined diverse and complex issues, ranging from race relations, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and political issues. Many of his films include a distinctive use of music. Spike Lee's father, Bill Lee, is a jazz bassist and responsible for the music in some of Spike's films, including Mo' Better Blues starring Denzel Washington.

Lee's films have garnered considerable critical acclaim. Film critic Roger Ebert has described Spike Lee as one of the greatest filmmakers in America today. Lee's film Do the Right Thing was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1989. His documentary 4 Little Girls was nominated for the Best Feature Documentary Academy Award in 1997.

Trivia

* Always credits his films as "A Spike Lee Joint".

* In Paris, France, in 2003, Lee received an honorary Cesar Award for Lifetime Achievement in the film industry.

* He is a big fan and admirer of fellow New York City film director Martin Scorsese. Lee was particularly appalled at how Scorsese's classic Raging Bull was passed over for the Best Picture Oscar for Ordinary People.

* Lee's classmate in Tisch School of the Arts was Oscar-winning director Ang Lee. The Taiwanese director once worked on the crew of Spike Lee's thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.

* In 2003 Lee sued the Spike TV television network claiming that they were capitalizing on his fame by using his name for their network. The claim was settled out of court.

* Lee also appeared in the documentary Hoop Dreams, giving a lecture to young African-American students getting a college sponsorship for their basketball talents.

* His production company is 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, named after the "40 acres and a mule," that was promised to the freed African American slaves in 1865.

* Lee is also famous for directing a series of Nike commercials featuring Michael Jordan, which helped establish Jordan as a highly successful commercial pitchman. In several of the commercials, Lee also played his alter ego of Mars Blackmon, a character he created for his first major film, She's Gotta Have It.

* Lee received death threats, allegedly from the Nation of Islam, over his 1992 biopic Malcolm X. The threats prompted Lee to remove scenes in which the NOI is depicted as plotting the murder of Malcolm X.

* He is a well-known and highly visible fan of the NBA's New York Knicks, a team he has supported since childhood. Lee has courtside seats, and had several famous verbal run-ins with ex-Indiana Pacers star Reggie Miller. On April 5, 2005 after Miller's last game at the Knicks home court Madison Square Garden, Miller and Lee hugged each other.

* Lee's sports interests are not limited to basketball. In 2005, he became a season ticketholder for Inter Milan, one of the strongest football (soccer) clubs in Italy and Europe. Lee is also shown at Yankee Stadium with a Yankee hat on. [1] He has also publicly stated an affection for Arsenal Football Club in London and has a close relationship with its captain Thierry Henry. [2]

* Was voted the 48th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

* He was name-checked by Atlanta rappers Dem Franchise Boys in their 2005 single "I Think They Like Me".

* Spike was used as a character on an episode of Crank Yankers.

* Spike made a guest appearance on a A Tribe Called Quest music video called "Scenerio".


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

Holly Hunter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Holly Hunter (born March 20, 1958 in Conyers, Georgia) is an Oscar-winning American film actress.


Career

Hunter's first starring role in films came in 1987's Raising Arizona. That year, she also starred in Broadcast News, for which she earned an Oscar nomination for the Best Actress. In 1993, she won the Best Actress Oscar for The Piano and showcased her skill with the piano by playing all the elaborate pieces on the score herself. That year, Hunter was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Firm. In 2004, she earned another Best Supporting Actress nomination for Thirteen and voiced a star role in the hit animated film The Incredibles. Hunter has also appeared in several television films and has earned two Emmys.


Relationships

Hunter was married to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski from May 20, 1995 until their divorce on December 21, 2001. Since 2001, she has been in a relationship with British actor Gordon MacDonald, with whom she co-starred in By the Bog of Cats in a 2001 run at the San Jose Repertory Theater, and later in a 2004 West End production. In January 2006, Hunter's publicist announced that the couple had welcomed twins; Entertainment Weekly later reported that the twins were boys.

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

Kathy Ireland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Kathy Ireland (b. Katherine Marie Ireland on March 20, 1963 in Santa Barbara, California) is an American supermodel, actress, author, and entrepreneur. She once had a line of clothing sold by Kmart. For a while, she hosted a segment on viewer mail and fitness tips on TV's BodyShaping.

Ireland has a modest number of television and movie acting appearances to her credit, including roles in Side Out, Mr. Destiny, Loaded Weapon 1 and Necessary Roughness. She is the author of Powerful Inspirations: Eight Lessons That Will Change Your Life.

Although she once supported a pro-choice approach to abortion policy, Ireland switched her views after reading biology books owned by her physician husband. Now a pro-life activist, she challenged Bill Maher's position on abortion during an appearance on Politically Incorrect. Ireland has stated, "[A]t the moment of conception, a life starts. And this life has its own unique set of DNA, which contains a blueprint for the whole genetic makeup. The sex is determined. We know there's a life because it's growing and changing."

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