Missing student's body apparently found

DORADO, Kan. - The search for a missing college student who led a secret life as an Internet porn performer turned into a homicide case after her body was apparently found.

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Authorities said the preliminary physical description of the body found Thursday about 50 miles east of El Dorado matches that of Emily Sander, who was last seen leaving a bar here a week ago with a man who stayed in a motel room where police found large quantities of blood.

Investigators refused to give details about the state of the body or how it was found. Police Chief Tom Boren said the cause of death was not yet known. An autopsy was planned for Friday.

Sander's case drew wide attention after it was revealed that she appeared on a popular adult Web site under the name Zoey Zane. In some photographs, she appears merely scantily clad in lingerie or cowgirl outfits. Other pictures, some of which require viewers to pay for, are more explicit, showing her nude, fondling herself and posing with other women.

The 18-year-old Butler Community College student was last seen Nov. 23 with Israel Mireles, 24. Authorities are looking for him and his 16-year-old pregnant girlfriend.

The rental car the pair were driving was found abandoned Tuesday in Vernon, Texas, where Mireles has relatives.

"We got no information from them at all and very little cooperation," Boren said of Mireles' family.

The search for Sander gripped this small community, and the apparent discovery of her body left only memories to comfort her friends and family.

"She was probably the most independent girl I know," said Nikki Watson, a close friend. "She was so anxious to get out on her own and make something of herself. She was ready to take on life."

Former boyfriend Michael McAllister, 20, said Sander moved in with him when she was 17.

"It was the best time of my life, and I hope it was the same for her," McAllister said.

He helped her finish high school, and she encouraged him in college. They bought pink and white Denver Broncos jerseys for themselves and their dog, Zan, that they wore on game days. She loved to dance to hip-hop music.

"She wanted to choreograph music videos. That is the only reason she did the Internet thing ― to get a little exposure," McAllister said.

They broke up in September after she started posing for nude photos, he said.

Watson said the attention over Sander's Web site has upset her friends.

"She never referred to it as her porn site," she said. "It was just her Web site. She didn't make it into this big thing."

Police insisted that Sander's Internet activity had no connection to her disappearance. "The issue of the Internet and the spinoff of that has been literally crippling our investigation," Boren said.

The body was found as searchers on foot and all-terrain vehicles were checking the tall grass along each side of Highway 54 as they traced the route Mireles may have taken Saturday on the way to Baxter Springs to pick up his girlfriend.

Sander's grandmother, Shirley Sander, said the discovery of a body would "very definitely" bring closure to the family.

"We had to know one way or another," she said in a telephone interview

Calls in Sudan for execution of Briton

KHARTOUM, Sudan - Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."

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In response to the demonstration, teacher Gillian Gibbons was moved from the women's prison near Khartoum to a secret location for her safety, her lawyer said.

The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gibbons, who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation. She avoided the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.

They massed in central Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace, where hundreds of riot police were deployed. They did not try to stop the rally, which lasted about an hour.

"Shame, shame on the U.K.," protesters chanted.

They called for Gibbons' execution, saying, "No tolerance: Execution," and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad."

Gibbons' chief lawyer, Kamal al-Gizouli, said she was moved from the prison for her safety for the final nine days of her sentence.

"They moved this lady from the prison department to put her in other hands and in other places to cover her and wait until she completes her imprisonment period," he said, adding that she was in good health.

"They want, by hook or by crook, to complete these nine days without any difficulties, which would have an impact on their foreign relationship," he said.

Several hundred protesters, not openly carrying weapons, marched from the square to Unity High School, about a mile away, where Gibbons worked. They chanted slogans outside the school, which is closed and under heavy security, then headed toward the nearby British Embassy. They were stopped by security forces two blocks away from the embassy.

The protest arose despite vows by Sudanese security officials the day before, during Gibbons' trial, that threatened demonstrations after Friday prayers would not take place. Some of the protesters carried green banners with the name of the Society for Support of the Prophet Muhammad, a previously unknown group.

Many protesters carried clubs, knives and axes ― but not automatic weapons, which some have brandished at past government-condoned demonstrations. That suggested Friday's rally was not organized by the government.

A Muslim cleric at Khartoum's main Martyrs Mosque denounced Gibbons during one sermon, saying she intentionally insulted Islam. He did not call for protests, however.

"Imprisoning this lady does not satisfy the thirst of Muslims in Sudan. But we welcome imprisonment and expulsion," the cleric, Abdul-Jalil Nazeer al-Karouri, a well-known hard-liner, told worshippers.

"This an arrogant woman who came to our country, cashing her salary in dollars, teaching our children hatred of our Prophet Muhammad," he said.

Britain, meanwhile, pursued diplomatic moves to free Gibbons. Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke with a member of her family to convey his regret, his spokeswoman said.

"He set out his concern and the fact that we were doing all we could to secure her release," spokeswoman Emily Hands told reporters.

Most Britons expressed shock at the verdict by a court in Khartoum, alongside hope it would not raise tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain.

"One of the good things is the U.K. Muslims who've condemned the charge as completely out of proportion," said Paul Wishart, 37, a student in London.

"In the past, people have been a bit upset when different atrocities have happened and there hasn't been much voice in the U.K. Islamic population, whereas with this, they've quickly condemned it."

Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, accused the Sudanese authorities of "gross overreaction."

"This case should have required only simple common sense to resolve. It is unfortunate that the Sudanese authorities were found wanting in this most basic of qualities," he said.

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee, a political advocacy group, said the prosecution was "abominable and defies common sense."

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies, which represents 90,000 Muslim students in Britain and Ireland, called on Sudan's government to free Gibbons, saying she had not meant to cause offense.

"We are deeply concerned that the verdict to jail a schoolteacher due to what's likely to be an innocent mistake is gravely disproportionate," said the group's president, Ali Alhadithi.

The Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim youth organization, said Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir should pardon the teacher.

"The Ramadhan Foundation is disappointed and horrified by the conviction of Gillian Gibbons in Sudan," said spokesman Mohammed Shafiq.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, said Gibbons' prosecution and conviction was "an absurdly disproportionate response to what is at worst a cultural faux pas."

Foreign Secretary David Miliband summoned the Sudanese ambassador late Thursday to express Britain's disappointment with the verdict. The Foreign Office said Britain would continue diplomatic efforts to achieve "a swift resolution" to the crisis.

Gibbons was arrested Sunday after another staff member at the school complained that she had allowed her 7-year-old students to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Giving the name of the Muslim prophet to an animal or a toy could be considered insulting.

The case put Sudan's government in an embarrassing position ― facing the anger of Britain on one side and potential trouble from powerful Islamic hard-liners on the other. Many saw the 15-day sentence as an attempt to appease both sides.

In The Times, columnist Bronwen Maddox said the verdict was "something of a fudge ... designed to give a nod to British reproof but also to appease the street."

Britain's response ― applying diplomatic pressure while extolling ties with Sudan and affirming respect for Islam ― had produced mixed results, British commentators concluded.

In an editorial, The Daily Telegraph said Miliband "has tiptoed around the case, avoiding a threat to cut aid and asserting that respect for Islam runs deep in Britain. Given that much of the government's financial support goes to the wretched refugees in Darfur and neighboring Chad, Mr. Miliband's caution is understandable."

Now, however, the newspaper said, Britain should recall its ambassador in Khartoum and impose sanctions on the Sudanese regime.

___

More Young Americans Are Contracting HIV

FRIDAY, Nov. 30 (HealthDay News) -- In the 26 years since scientists first spotted AIDS in America, millions of dollars have been poured into outreach efforts aimed at keeping young people clear of HIV, the virus that causes the disease.

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But on the eve of World AIDS Day, a disturbing statistical fact has emerged in this country: The number of newly infected teens and young adults is suddenly on the rise.

And the question is, why?

According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2001 to 2005 (the latest years available), the number of new cases of HIV infection diagnosed among 15-to-19-year-olds in the United States rose from 1,010 in 2001, held steady for the next three years, then jumped 20 percent in 2005, to 1,213 cases.

For young people aged 20 to 24, cases of new infection have climbed steadily, from 3,184 in 2001 to 3,876 in 2005.

Experts say a number of factors may be at play, including the fact that many HIV-infected patients are now being kept healthy with powerful drugs -- making AIDS seem like less of a threat to young people than it did in the past.

"Certainly the 'scare factor' isn't there anymore," said Rowena Johnston, vice president of research at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) in New York City.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the ravages of AIDS were apparent to most Americans -- either on their TV screens as high-profile celebrities succumbed to the disease, or as individuals lost friends or family members to HIV.

"To see people looking gaunt, skinny and skeletal, and to know that they were going to be dead soon," Johnston said. "It had a sobering effect."

The advent of antiretroviral drugs in the mid-1990s changed all that, however. "These days, for the most part, you can look at a person and not know that they even have AIDS," Johnston said.

That's making HIV seem like less of a threat to young people, said Martha Chono-Helsley. She's executive director of REACH LA, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps disadvantaged youth understand and defend against threats like poverty, drug abuse and HIV.

"They're in this age group that feels they are invincible -- that it's never going to happen to them," she said. "Yes, they're getting all these messages from public schools on HIV and AIDS, but they've never actually seen what HIV has done, up close and personal."

Chris Blades, one of REACH LA's young, black "peer educators," said he's seen a kind of nonchalance towards HIV among the gay or bisexual men of color that he counsels.

"On a daily basis, they don't see their friends suffering from it, so it's not a major threat to them," said Blades, 21. "They're in that whole mindset of 'Oh, it can't happen to me, it will never happen to me.'"

But there has been a recent, troubling spike in new infections among gay men, young and old alike. According to the CDC, the rate of new cases of HIV infection linked to male-male sex held steady at around 16,000 cases between 2001-2004, then suddenly jumped to 18,296 in 2005.

Johnston and Chono-Helsley both point to advertisements for HIV-suppressing medicines as one possible contributing factor.

"In gay magazines, you now see [ads with] buff, handsome men climbing mountains, with some kind of quote about how 'I'm not letting HIV get in my way,'" Johnston said. "It sends the message that you, too, can be hot, buff and handsome, even with HIV."

Chono-Helsley agreed. "It's always these bright, healthy vibrant young men in these ads," she said. That could spur young gay men to relax their guard and take more risks, thinking that if they do contract HIV, "I only have to take a pill," she said.

The reality of living with HIV in America is much different, however, even when medication is working. According to Johnston, the side effects of powerful HIV-suppressing drug cocktails include fat redistribution (including unsightly "humps"), insulin resistance, higher cholesterol, increased risks for heart disease, and dangerous liver toxicities.

There's also the fear that, someday, HIV will develop mutations that render these drugs useless, triggering the re-emergence of AIDS, she said.

HIV continues to cut a wide swath through young men and women in the black community, too. According to the CDC, the number of new infections actually dipped slightly for black Americans between 2001 (20,868 cases) and 2005 (18,121 cases). However, black men are still six times more likely than white men to contract HIV, and black women are 20 times more likely to acquire the virus compared to white women.

The answers to that disparity lie mainly in economics, experts say.

"The young men that we work with are predominantly African-American, and HIV is not their No. 1 priority," said Chono-Helsley. "Often survival is their main priority -- where they are going to sleep tonight. They're kicked out of the house; they have substance abuse issues, they're in recovery."

Young black women can easily get caught up in similar problems, or are coerced into unsafe sex by their partners, she added.

Another trend -- soaring rates of methamphetamine use over the past five years -- may also be fueling HIV infection rates for both blacks and young gay men, the experts noted.

Too often, marginalized young people develop "a 'whatever' attitude -- whatever happens, happens," Chono-Helsey said.

Outreach aimed at HIV prevention remains important, of course. But one expert believes too much state and federal money is being funneled away from community outreach programs and toward "HIV Stops With Me" campaigns that focus on individuals already living with the virus.

"The message there is that, if I don't have HIV right now, then all I have got to do is avoid those people who have got it," said Carrie Davis, director of adult services at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Community Center in New York City.

She believes those types of messages allow uninfected people to shift the burden of responsibility from themselves to the HIV-positive, or to people they deem at high risk, such as gay men or drug abusers.

"I think it affects straight people, too, in that they absorb this 'magical thinking' -- that this is someone else's problem," Davis said.

So what doeswork to change attitudes and behaviors? That's a tough question, Chono-Helsley said, and the answer usually depends on particular contexts and communities.

"You really have to evaluate what methods you're using and think about the person as a whole, not just the infection," she said. "Because they've all heard 'use a condom, use a condom.'"

The right approach is key, Blades added. "If you deliver the message to them in a way that's not preachy or looking down on them, I think that's more effective," he said. "That's what we try to do - deliver HIV information in a way that will click in with them, so that they'll take home something that they didn't know the night before."

"One thing is for sure, we can't just shake our finger at young people and say, 'You're bad,'" Chono-Helsley said. "We have to be supportive. They're young, we've all been there, remember. You can save some, but you can't save them all."

Mother killed 2 in store bathroom

AUGUSTA, Ga. - A 22-year-old woman fatally stabbed her two young children in a convenience store bathroom Thursday, police said.

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A worker at Food Mart told police she saw Jeanette Michelle Hawes enter the restroom Thursday afternoon with the two children, a boy and girl, and then heard a scream, Richmond County Sheriff Ronnie Strength said.

The worker called 911, and when deputies arrived they forced the door open and found Hawes on the floor, holding a steak knife and covered in the children's blood, Strength said.

Jordon Hawes, 1, and Shakayla Hawes, 3, were pronounced dead upon arrival at the Medical College of Georgia Hospital. Both died of stab wounds to the chest, Chief Deputy Coroner Mark Bowen said.

Hawes was charged with two counts of murder and with possession of a knife during the commission of a crime. She was being held at the Richmond County jail.

Jail officials said they did not know whether Hawes had an attorney. A message seeking comment left late Thursday at the Richmond County Sheriff's Office wasn't immediately returned.

Store clerk Amanda Thomas said Hawes was a regular customer.

"Michelle went to the bathroom, and I heard the children crying," Thomas told WAGT-TV.

A moment later, Thomas said, "I heard a different sound that didn't sound right. I went back there to get the door opened and I couldn't get it opened and I didn't hear anything."

Duke scientists map 'silenced genes'

WASHINGTON - Remember biology class where you learned that children inherit one copy of a gene from mom and a second from dad? There's a twist: Some of those genes arrive switched off, so there is no backup if the other copy goes bad, making you more vulnerable to disorders from obesity to cancer.

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Duke University scientists now have identified these "silenced genes," creating the first map of this unique group of about 200 genes believed to play a profound role in people's health.

More intriguing, the work marks an important step in studying how our environment ― food, stress, pollution ― interacts with genes to help determine why some people get sick and others do not.

"What we have is a bag of gold nuggets," lead researcher Dr. Randy Jirtle said about the collection of "imprinted" genes. The team's findings were published online Friday by the journal Genome Research.

Next comes work to prove exactly what role these genes play. "Some will be real gold and some will be fool's gold," Jirtle added.

Usually, people inherit a copy of each gene from each parent and both copies are active, programmed to do their jobs whenever needed. If one copy of a gene becomes mutated and quits working properly, often the other copy can compensate.

Genetic imprinting knocks out that backup. It means that for some genes, people inherit an active copy only from the mother or only from the father. Molecular signals tell, or "imprint," the copy from the other parent to be silent.

Jirtle compared it to flying a two-engine airplane with one engine cut off. If the other engine quits, the plane crashes. In genetic terms, if one tumor-suppressing gene is silenced and the active one breaks down, a person is more susceptible to cancer.

Only animals that have live births have imprinted genes. It was not until 1991 that it was proved that humans had them. Until now, only about 40 human imprinted genes had been identified.

The Duke map verified those 40 and identified 156 more. Researchers fed DNA sequences into a computer program that decoded patterns pointing to the presence of imprinted genes instead of active ones.

Many of the newly found imprinted genes are in regions of chromosomes already linked to the development of obesity, diabetes, cancer and some other major diseases, the researchers reported. One, for example, appears to prevent bladder cancer. A second appears to play a role in causing various cancers and may affect epilepsy and bipolar disorder.

Scientists had thought imprinted genes would account for about 1 percent of the human genome. While scientists must double-check that the newly identified ones are truly silenced, the new map matches that tally.

"It's a fascinating paper," said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Volkow praised the new mapping method for speeding the slow discovery of these genes.

She said finding which genes are imprinted is important for a bigger question: How do behavioral or environmental factors tip the balance for someone who is genetically predisposed to a health problem?

Previous work by Jirtle and others shows the environment can reprogram how some genes operate, making them speed up or slow down or work at the wrong time. In a groundbreaking 2003 experiment, Jirtle fed pregnant mice different nutrients to alter the coat color of their babies. The feed affected chemical signals that control how hard a certain gene worked, determining when the babies had yellow coats like mom or brown ones.

"It's not just about the sequence of your genes, but how that sequence is turned on and off by environmental exposures that is likely to determine whether you will be healthy," Volkow said. Imprinted genes "are likely to be particularly susceptible to environmental factors."

Sometimes imprinting goes awry before birth, leaving a normally silenced gene "on" or silencing one that should not be. Faulty gene imprinting leads to some devastating developmental disorders, such as Angelman syndrome, which causes mental retardation.

Now a question is how imprinting may be changed to reactivate an imprinted gene after birth.

Men Talk More Than Women

Women may have a reputation as the chattier gender, but research into the matter shows that men may actually be a little more talkative than women―though it all depends on the situation.

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Psychologist Campbell Leaper of the University of California Santa Cruz conducted a review of research into the topic spanning from the 1960s to today and which is detailed in the November issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review. The studies Leaper examined looked at talkativeness and different types of speech under a range of social situations and comparing mixed-gender and same-gender conversations.


One clear point that emerged from all the studies was that the type of activity people were engaged in influenced how much they talked.


"So even though on the average we're finding a slight trend toward men being more talkative than women, we found larger differences when you looked at particular situations," Leaper said.


During decision-making tasks, men were more talkative than women, the studies showed, but when talking about themselves or working with children, women were more talkative than men.


Leaper said that these gender differences could have to do with differences in gender socialization; typically, women are socialized to be more comfortable talking about their feelings, while men are socialized to be dominant and take charge.


"One gender isn't inherently more talkative than the other, it's just that a lot of times it depends on the situation and gender role influences," Leaper said.


A recent study in the journal Science that recorded conversations of university students supports Leaper's idea, finding that on average, men and women used about the same number of words per day. (Leaper said that studies that used this measure of talkativeness tended to find less difference between men and women than studies that looked at how much time people spent talking. In these latter studies, men used up more time in the conversation than women, Leaper said.)


Talkativeness was also influenced by whether a person was talking to someone of their same gender or the opposite gender.


"Men tend to be more talkative than women, but particularly when they're interacting in mixed-gender settings," Leaper said, explaining that this could also be a result of men traditionally being socialized to dominate.


The situation was reversed when looking at different types of speech, specifically assertive (used to achieve dominance and goals) and affiliative (used to connect to others): differences emerged in how much these types of speech were used when comparing two men talking to each other to two women conversing than when a man and a woman were talking.


These differences have actually declined with time though.


"In terms of styles of communication, gender differences are decreasing," Leaper said. "My interpretation is that it reflects the historical changes in gender roles," with women coming into the workplace more and men being more open about their feelings.

jeff gerstmann

When deciding what game to spend their hard earned dollars on, players often turn to review sites for information if playable demos are not available. Naturally, one would hope that the writers for these review sites are remaining unbiased in their views of a game -- if it's wonderful, say as much, if it's flawed, point it out, and if it's absolute rubbish, leave it at the side of the curb for pickup.

Unfortunately, when the game in question is the same one that the front page of the website is devoting a banner ad and a full-background splash to, problems can arise. What began as a rumor across gaming forums worldwide last night has been all but confirmed early this morning -- GameSpot's editorial director, Jeff Gerstmann, has been fired for writing a negative review.

While the text-based review for Kane & Lynch: Dead Men certainly doesn't paint a sparkling picture of the game, it makes it seem like a AAA title compared to the brutally scathing video review. When many of the same written words are spoken, the context and inflection of "Kane & Lynch is an ugly, ugly game" and "if you have a chance to see it, take a look - but it's probably not worth the purchase" takes it down to a whole new (lower) level of garbage.

In a bit of prophetic cartooning, Penny Arcade posted a comic outside of their usual schedule (language may offend some) up last night, showing poor Mr. Gerstmann being asked if he understands the connection between the torrent of Kane & Lynch advertisements and the box of his possessions outside his locked office.

While Jeff has responded to Joystiq confirming his termination, he stated that he was "not really able to comment on the specifics of (his) termination" at this time. Joystiq has promised to continue digging, but already the Eidos forums have come under attack from legions of angry fans, which required them to be taken offline and restored to a snapshot from Thursday -- currently, some members are reporting that they are completely unable to post.

The Kane & Lynch user review score on GameSpot has also rapidly plummeted -- currently sitting at 3.9 -- as reviews of "1.0 - Abysmal" flood in from disgruntled users
Jeff Gerstmann
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Jeff Gerstmann
Born August 1, 1975 (1975-08-01) (age 32)
Los Angeles, California
Occupation Video Game Journalist
Nationality American
Website www.gamespot.com

Jeff Gerstmann (born August 1 1975) is the former editorial director of the popular gaming website GameSpot. He began working at GameSpot in the fall of 1996, around the launch of VideoGameSpot (back when GameSpot separated PC and console games into completely separate entities). He shared his thoughts on a variety of other subjects every Monday on his GameSpot blog. He has also been quoted by the New York Times as a video game expert,[1] and says that he owns over 2000 games [2].

Founding member of the bands Headboard, The Suburban All-Stars, and Midnight Brown, Gerstmann has an extensive musical career that has earned him a fair amount of musical fame.

Jeff was largely part of the audio section of GameSpot. Most of the background music or intro music for shows is provided by instrumental tracks from Midnight Brown. In older video reviews at the end of the video the numerical score would be announced, Jeff also provided the voice for these scores. Additionally, Gerstmann's vocal stylings can be heard on the theme songs for Time Trotters (A single episode live-action series that was later revived in animated form), GameSpot's game show, Button Mashing, and Indievelopment: a video documentary following Echelon Software's progress on their game Black Powder Red Earth.

Gerstmann also appeared on ABC's T.V. show, Good Morning America as a guest in September 1999 to discuss the launch of Sega's Dreamcast gaming console.

The first game system Gerstmann owned was a Fairchild Channel F which his parents, who own an auto-repair and tire business, bought opposed to the Atari 2600 as there were some educational games available for it. After being ruined in a flood, he then purchased an Atari home computer.[3]

He replaced Rich Gallup as the host of On the Spot.

Jeff Gerstmann is no longer an employee of GameSpot as of November 29, 2007. His email address with the site has been confirmed by moderators with GameSpot to be deactivated. The details of his departure are yet unknown.

Trivia
He enjoys the music of hard rock band Van Halen, as evidenced by "The Bad" section of his review of Guitar Hero[4] stating that it has no songs from the band. He also stated in the "Greatest Games of All Time" section covering Lode Runner that when he first played the game when at age nine, all he did that summer was listen to Van Halen while playing his Atari 800.[5].
Purchased Garou: Mark of the Wolves on the Neo-Geo for about $1200.[6]
Two films he enjoys are Heat (1995) and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), of which he bought an HD-DVD version before an HD-DVD player.
His favorite The Legend of Zelda game is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
In the credits of Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360, he is listed in the "Special Thanks" section as a beta tester.

zoe cruz

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile , Research) Co-President Zoe Cruz is retiring, the investment bank said on Thursday, as the subprime mortgage crisis ends a 25-year tenure for a woman who had been seen as the front-runner to succeed Chief Executive John Mack.

The resignation was part of a broad management shake-up at the second-largest U.S. investment bank. Walid Chammah and James Gorman were named co-presidents. Robert Scully, co-president with Cruz, is joining a new Office of the Chairman. Morgan Stanley's co-trading head, Neal Shear, is now chairman of the company's commodities business.

Cruz resigned three weeks after Morgan Stanley said it suffered $3.7 billion of subprime mortgage-related losses in September and October.


"Zoe clearly is accepting responsibility for the trading disappointment in the fourth quarter," said Brad Hintz, analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Morgan Stanley's shares are down 23 percent this year, a worse performance than its peers.

Cruz, 52, joined Morgan Stanley in 1982 as a foreign exchange trader and rose to become head of fixed income trading by 2000.

A source said on Nov. 9 that Mack had tapped Cruz as the leading candidate to succeed him, despite the write-downs that had been disclosed two days before.

Mack, 63, has a five-year contract that extends to 2010. He is not expected to leave Morgan Stanley any time soon, but his close links to Hillary Clinton, front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, have fueled speculation that he could become the next U.S. Treasury Secretary
Zoe Cruz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Zoe Cruz (born February 2, 1955) was appointed Co-President of Morgan Stanley on February 9, 2006. The announcement was made by John J. Mack, the chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley.

Cruz has a 24-year history with Morgan Stanley. She graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in Literature in 1977. She received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1982. She began her career at Morgan Stanley in 1982, becoming a Vice President in 1986, a Principal in 1988 and a Managing Director in 1990. From 2000 to 2005, she held the position of global Head of Fixed Income, Commodities and Foreign Exchange.

Cruz was a long time supporter of former CEO, Phil Purcell. She became an integral part of the leadership controversy at Morgan Stanley on March 29, 2005 when Purcell replaced then President Stephan Newhouse. Zoe Cruz and Stephen S. Crawford were named Co-Presidents. This controversial move led to a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal on March 31, 2005. The advertisement featured opposition to the company leadership by a group of dissidents known as the "Group of Eight". Several distinguished executives later left the firm amid speculation that they disagreed with the new management structure.

Phil Purcell announced his retirement on June 13, 2005 and John J. Mack was named successor. On July 11, 2005, Stephen S. Crawford resigned his position of Co-President "to pursue other interests". Cruz was subsequently appointed acting president. Her lengthy position as acting president led to much speculation about the future direction of the company. This appointment may silence rumors that the position was left open as a potential merger negotiation item.

Cruz is married to Ernesto Cruz, head of equity capital markets at the investment banking unit of Credit Suisse Group (CSR). Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) were principal underwriters of the 2004 Google IPO.

On November 29, 2007 Morgan Stanley announced that Zoe Cruz was resignig as co-president of the firm and that she would retire immediately.[1]

farmington new mexico

Two truckers report being shot at on highway in New Mexico The U.S. Postal Service is offering a $50,000 reward for information on the shooting of a trucker in New Mexico on Friday, Nov. 23.

Police say 53-year-old William Bamfield was southbound on U.S. Highway 550 about 60 miles north of Albuquerque around 7 p.m. Friday. Bamfield, who works for R&L Stageline, was pulling an unmarked mail trailer when he spotted a dark sedan parked on the northbound shoulder.

State police spokesman Sgt. Andrew Tingwall described what the trucker told him.

"As he passed the vehicle, the vehicle turned around and followed behind him. The truck driver stated that the vehicle drove to the right side of the truck as if he was going to pass and then someone from the vehicle shot what we believe to be four rounds, pistol rounds, medium caliber … into the truck cab," Tingwall told "Land Line Now."

"Apparently, 30 minutes earlier that day another semi truck around the same area on U.S. 550 was traveling northbound. ... The operator of that truck said somebody shot at his truck, but he continued driving up to Farmington where he reported the incident."

Officials reported that Bamfield was hit once in the thigh and was in the hospital in stable condition.

No one's in custody in relation to the shooting incidents, and police said they haven't had any other reports of shootings in that area.
FARMINGTON, N.M. (AP) - A car belonging to an 83-year-old man who was found shot to death in his home in Farmington, New Mexico, has been found in northern Arizona.

Sheriff's investigators in Farmington say the victim, Thomas Powell, had been shot once in the back of the head.

Powell's body was found yesterday by sheriff's deputies who were checking on him after receiving calls from friends who said they hadn't seen him recently.

Powell's car was found abandoned Wednesday along U.S. 89, some 30 miles north of Flagstaff.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

blumenthal

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - There's an agreement in principle between the state and the troubled Haven Healthcare nursing home chain to have a restructuring officer temporarily oversee some of the company's finances until a court hearing is held next month.

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says the agreement was reached after a day of hearings and negotiations. A document outlining the details of the agreement must be submitted to a federal bankruptcy court judge by Friday.

The restructuring officer would have the power to co-sign checks, co-approve financial transactions and approve any employee firings. The officer would also work with a new patient ombudsman, who is expected to be selected by Friday.




Blumenthal says the state still wants the court to appoint a trustee with broader powers to oversee operations at the nursing home chain. A hearing is scheduled for December 17.

Haven Healthcare has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and faces state investigations into allegations it misused millions of dollars in Medicaid funding. The company denies the claims.
State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal will argue in U.S. Bankruptcy Court today that a trustee should be appointed to immediately take over the operation of all Haven Healthcare nursing homes to enhance patient care and prevent top managers from further misappropriating funds.

After the nursing home chain filed for bankruptcy protection last week, Blumenthal announced he would seek to have a trustee appointed and alleged Haven Healthcare had diverted nursing home funds to invest in unrelated entities, such as a Nashville recording company.

"I have said and I will say again that the mismanagement and misuse of government funds could well have criminal ramifications," Blumenthal said Monday.



Video
Related links
A Courant Special Report: Haven Healthcare
No Haven For The Elderly
State Soft On Nursing Levels
Haven Debt Woes
Haven Healthcare: State Takes Action, Legislators Weigh In
Nursing Home Takeover Sought
Haven Healthcare: Violations By Location Multimedia
READER REACTION
Hundreds of readers have reacted to our Haven Healthcare series on the Topix message boards that appear at the end of each story.

To view those comments and leave some of your own, here are some short-cut links:

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3
RESOURCES
To research a nursing home's health care deficiencies, according to the most recent federal data, visit www.medicare.gov/NHCompare/home.asp

To research nursing homes in Connecticut that have faced major sanctions by the state Department of Public Health: www.ct.gov/dph/site/default.asp

Haven Healthcare Photos Photos
Consequences Of Understaffing Graphic
Fox 61 Video
>> State To Investigate
Haven Healthcare
Gov. M. Jodi Rell's letter to the to the commissioners of the departments of social services and public health

Statement of Haven Healthcare CEO Ray Termini Regarding Nov. 19 Comments By Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell & Attorney General Richard Blumenthal
Haven Healthcare Management Bankruptcy Filing
Blumenthal speaks to reporters Photo
'Attorney General's Press Conference On Haven Healthcare Video
Haven Sent Staff South
Blumenthal said in court documents that Haven Eldercare, the flagship of the many Haven Healthcare entities, loaned $8.9 million to Nashville-based Category 5 Records between November 2005 and July 2007. Ray Termini, chief executive officer of Haven Healthcare, launched the record label in 2005 and is also CEO of Category 5.

"The Haven entities have grossly mismanaged millions of dollars of governmental funds intended for patient care, including the diversion of federal and state money intended for patient care services to improper investments in a record company and personal real estate," Blumenthal stated in his motion for a trustee.

The intricate web of Haven entities is $46 million in debt, not including long-term loans and mortgages.

Haven Healthcare Management's chief financial officer, Michael Lipnicki, asserted in court documents that Haven Healthcare operates profitably, with pretax earnings for 2007 estimated to come in at $17 million.

Lipnicki said most of the company's financial problems stem largely from its goal of acquiring financially distressed nursing homes that are in bankruptcy or receivership and renovating and turning around those homes. In the interim, during renovations, those homes had negative cash flow, he said. Haven officials argue that a trustee is not necessary.

Haven Healthcare, in court documents, said the bankruptcy filing was precipitated by a combination of defaulting on a major pharmaceutical debt, the settlement of a negligence lawsuit, strong indications the state was considering placing some or all of its homes into receivership, and negative publicity from a three-day Courant investigative series on the firm.

The Courant reported that Haven Healthcare, which operates 15 homes serving about 2,000 patients in Connecticut, has been mired in spiraling debt and negligence lawsuits alleging egregious patient-care failures. The company also has been fined more than 45 times in the past three years for serious patient-care deficiencies ― at least 30 times by the state health department and 15 by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Failure by Haven Healthcare to make an agreed upon payment of $7 million to the pharmaceutical company, Omnicare, prompted Omnicare to serve a demand notice on Termini last week. Haven had agreed to pay Omnicare a total of $14 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the pharmaceutical supplier in December 2006.

"Finally, on Nov. 19, following the unfortunate timing of the Courant articles, Haven had a meeting with the [state] Office of Quality Assurance that left Haven with the concern the state might be contemplating the appointment of a receiver for Haven due to the recent publicity and to its perception that the dispute with Omnicare threatened Haven's viability," Lipnicki's affidavit states.

Filing for reorganization under Chapter 11 will allow Haven to hold certain creditors at bay and negotiate settlements with others.

Haven plans to stop making monthly payments totaling $84,000 to the Rev. Edward Doherty, founder of the Roncalli Institute and the nursing home chain that later became Haven Eldercare and Haven Healthcare. Attorney William McGrath Jr., who represents Doherty, Monday said he had no comment on Haven's intent to halt payments to Doherty, but would be in court today.

Doherty this month sought a court order that Termini turn over to him financial records of Haven entities in which Doherty still maintains an interest, in some cases up to a 40 percent interest. Doherty claims Termini used Haven assets for personal gain and committed "dishonest acts" in managing the corporation and its subsidiaries. A hearing on Doherty's petition is scheduled for Dec. 10.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell Monday asked Blumenthal to also seek the appointment of an ombudsman to monitor patient care at the homes.

"I want to be sure that all steps are being taken to prevent placing even a single patient in potential jeopardy," Rell said.

Blumenthal assured Rell such appointments are mandatory in bankruptcy matters involving long-term care facilities, and that Nancy Shaffer, the state's Long Term Care Ombudsman, has said she is willing to be appointed to monitor the 15 Connecticut homes. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Albert S. Dabrowski is expected to take up that issue in court today as well.

"Our priorities are patient care first, and preserving assets," Blumenthal said.

Haven officials also are asking Dabrowski to permit them to retain the Manhattan law firm of Moses and Singer to be their primary counsel in the bankruptcy proceedings. They list nine members of the firm, from partners to paralegals, who would be involved and their respective hourly rates. Collectively, the nine bill at $3,945 per hour, with hourly rates ranging from $200 to $750.

Read the Courant's special report on Haven Heathcare at www.courant

tuberville arkansas

Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville was sitting on a deer stand in rural Arkansas early this morning. Cell phones, of course, work even in deer stands if they're not too far out in the sticks.

Tuberville, who will be back in Auburn around lunchtime today, said he was incredulous when he learned after emerging from the woods Thursday night of the reports flooding out of Arkansas that he was on the verge of agreeing to become the Razorbacks' coach.

Tuberville didn't want to be quoted, but he had some strong words for those responsible for those reports. Neither he nor his agent, Jimmy Sexton, Tuberville said, has had any contact at all with Arkansas officials about the job vacated by Houston Nutt.

By the way, he and assistants Eddie Gran and Steve Ensminger were planning to hunt ducks but ended up hunting deer. Gran bagged a deer. The
FAYETTEVILLE ― Reliable but conflicting sources Thursday night paint a puzzle whether Auburn coach and Camden native Tommy Tuberville will or won't be the Razorbacks' next head football coach.

Some media and Internet outlets reported Thursday night that Tuberville likely will be named at the University of Arkansas to replace Houston Nutt.

ADVERTISEMENT

Some sources, while not claiming it's a done deal, said Thursday night Tuberville appears close to accepting a UA offer.

However other sources who have proven reliable in the past insist that Tuberville, because of hefty financial considerations (including a $6 million buyout) is not in the mix of coaches considered by incoming Arkansas athletics director Jeff Long.

Long doesn't officially replace retiring Arkansas athletics director Frank Broyles until Jan. 1, but was called upon by UA Chancellor John White to conduct the search to replace Nutt.

Nutt resigned Monday after 10 years coaching Arkansas and was named last Tuesday as the head coach at Ole Miss.

Ironically, Ole Miss is where Tuberville coached when he and Nutt were the coaches the UA Search Committee most considered before Nutt was named in December of 1997 to replace Danny Ford.

Tuberville's name has been bandied about this year when Nutt was just rumored to be leaving. He's been widely considered one Arkansas would seek once Nutt's resignation became official.

However during halftime of Wednesday night's Arkansas-Missouri basketball game, Long at a press conference seemed to dismiss Tuberville as a presently-considered candidate without mentioning him by name.

"I will say that many reports about an SEC West coach are extremely premature, not only premature but fantasy," Long said Wednesday night.

The Mobile Press Register reported Thursday that Auburn athletics director Jay Jacobs has not been contacted by Arkansas for permission to talk to Tuberville.

"I haven't been contacted by Arkansas," Jacobs told The Press Register, "and I can't imagine them hiring somebody without talking to me first."

Does he expect Tuberville to remain at Auburn?

"Yeah," Jacobs was quoted, "based on our conversation Tuesday, It was

bobby knight

Robert Montgomery (Bob or Bobby) Knight (born October 25, 1940, in Massillon, Ohio, U.S.), also known as The General, is the head men's basketball coach at Texas Tech. He was previously head coach at Indiana and at Army.

Knight has won more NCAA Division I men's basketball games than any other head coach. As of the 2007 NCAA tournament (March 27, 2007), that number stood at 890.

Knight has won three NCAA championships (1976, 1981, 1987), one National Invitation Tournament championship (1979), and led the U.S. Olympic basketball team to a gold medal (1984). This is considered collegiate basketball's Triple Crown.[1] Knight also led Indiana to 11 Big Ten Conference championships, and is a 4-time National Coach of the Year (1975, 1976, 1987, 1989).

Knight is one of NCAA Division I college basketball's most controversial coaches because of his behavior. He has thrown a chair across the court during a game, been arrested for physical assault, and has repeatedly displayed a combative nature during his encounters with members of the press. However, he is simultaneously commended for running clean programs (no Knight program has ever been sanctioned by the NCAA for recruiting violations) and his high percentage of graduating players.

Contents
1 Playing career
2 Coaching career
2.1 Army
2.2 Indiana
2.2.1 "Zero Tolerance"
2.2.2 Termination from Indiana
2.3 Texas Tech
3 Knight's basketball philosophy
4 Coaching victories and awards
5 Knight students
6 Controversies
7 Books about Bob Knight
8 Film and television
8.1 Knight School
9 Notes
10 References
11 External links



[edit] Playing career
Bob Knight began his career as a player at Orrville High School where he played football and basketball. He continued under Hall of Fame coach Fred Taylor at Ohio State University in 1958. He was a reserve on the Buckeyes' 1960 NCAA Division I national championship team, which featured future Hall of Fame players John Havlicek and Jerry Lucas. In addition to lettering in basketball at Ohio State, it has been claimed that Knight also lettered in football and baseball;[2] however, the official list of Ohio State football letter earners does not include Knight.[3] Knight graduated with a degree in history and government in 1962.


[edit] Coaching career

[edit] Army
After graduation in 1962, Bob Knight coached junior varsity basketball at Cuyahoga Falls High School in Ohio. After that, he accepted an assistant coaching position at Army in 1963, where, two years later, he was named the head coach at the relatively young age of 24. In six seasons at West Point, Knight won 102 games, with his first as a head coach coming against Worcester Polytechnic Institute. One of his players was Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski.

While at Army, Knight knew Bill Parcells, the future coach of the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Giants, the New England Patriots and the New York Jets. Knight is regularly seen wearing Cowboys apparel at Texas Tech.


[edit] Indiana
Knight was noticed as a rising star, and when Indiana University was seeking a new coach in 1971, they turned to Knight. Knight immediately endeared himself to the basketball-mad state of Indiana with his disciplined approach to the game[citation needed]. Educated in military history, Knight was given the nickname "The General" by former University of Detroit and Detroit Pistons coach-turned-broadcaster Dick Vitale.

Indiana reached the Final Four in 1973, losing to UCLA. In 1975, the Hoosiers were undefeated and the number one team in the nation, when leading scorer Scott May suffered a broken arm in a win over arch-rival Purdue. Indiana subsequently lost 92-90 to Kentucky in the regional finals of the NCAA tournament, with May playing with a heavily-braced arm.

In 1976, the Hoosiers were undefeated at 32-0 and won the championship, beating conference rivals Michigan 86-68. Immediately after the game, Knight lamented that "it should have been two." No Division I men's team has had an undefeated season since.

Knight's Hoosiers also won championships in 1981, with future NBA and Hall of Fame point guard Isiah Thomas, beating North Carolina 63-50; and in 1987 with guard Steve Alford, beating Syracuse 74-73 on a last-second shot by Keith Smart.

Indiana won the 1979 NIT championship, and Knight led the U.S. national team to a gold medal in the Olympic Games as coach of the Michael Jordan-led 1984 team (coaches do not receive medals in the Olympics). He also won eleven Big Ten Conference titles. Knight is one of only four coaches to win NCAA, NIT, and Olympic championships, joining Dean Smith of North Carolina, Adolph Rupp of Kentucky, and Pete Newell of California. Knight is the only coach to win the NCAA, the NIT, the Olympic Gold and the Pan-Am Gold.

The Indiana Hoosiers were undefeated in Big Ten Conference play from 1974 to 1976, and lost only one game during the period (the aforementioned regional final against Kentucky).

Knight failed to convince future NBA legend Larry Bird to stay at Indiana University.[citation needed] Bird, who was raised in the small southern Indiana town of French Lick, did not like the massive IU campus. He left Indiana University never having attended a single practice and returned home before later enrolling at the far smaller Indiana State University, where he would lead the Sycamores to the national championship game in the 1979 NCAA tournament, losing to Magic Johnson's Michigan State team.

In 1991, Bob Knight was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in his second year of eligibility. After Knight wasn't elected in his first year of eligibility, Knight told the committee to take his name off the list, but they denied his request. Knight has consistently had among the highest graduation rates among college coaches.[citation needed]


[edit] "Zero Tolerance"
On March 14, 2000, just before Indiana was to begin play in the NCAA tournament, the CNN/SI network ran a piece on Knight in which former player Neil Reed claimed he was choked by Knight in a 1997 practice. Knight denied the claims in the story.

On April 11, CNN/SI aired a tape of an IU practice from 1997 that showed Knight with his hand around the neck of Neil Reed.[1]

In May of that year, Indiana University president Myles Brand (currently executive director of the NCAA) announced that he had adopted a "zero tolerance" policy with regard to Bob Knight's behavior.


[edit] Termination from Indiana

Knight's dismissal led to a media storm of publicity including the cover of Sports Illustrated.
In September 2000, an IU freshman named Kent Harvey reportedly said, "Hey, Knight, what's up?" to Knight. According to Harvey, Knight grabbed him by the arm and berated him for not showing him proper respect. According to Knight, Harvey was exaggerating the incident[citation needed]; he only grabbed his arm and lectured him about manners and respect. Assistant coach Mike Davis supported Knight's statement. The Indianapolis Star published photos of Harvey with marks on his arm. No charges were filed against Knight for the incident.[citation needed]

Brand stated that this incident was only one of numerous complaints that occurred after the zero-tolerance policy had been placed on Knight. He asked Knight to resign on September 10. When Knight refused, however, he then relieved Knight of his duties immediately. That evening, a crowd of thousands of students swarmed Bloomington in protest.[4]

Harvey was supported by some and vilified by many who claim he intentionally set up Knight. Knight's supporters contend he was the victim of a media smear campaign organized by enemies in the IU administration and that the majority of Brand's reasons for firing Knight were not credible. However, Knight said he didn't think he was set up.

The following day, September 11, Knight said goodbye to a crowd of some 6,000 supporters at Indiana University. He asked that they not hold a grudge against Harvey and that they let Harvey get on with his education and his life.[5] Knight's firing made national headlines including the cover of Sports Illustrated and around the clock coverage on ESPN. It was also mentioned on major news programs such as CBS News and CNN.

Two years later, Knight sued Indiana University, claiming the university violated his employment contract. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.[citation needed]

BoBobby goes hunting with his buddy Bubba, and in a wild episode caught on video, his outbursts aren￯﾿ﾽt limited to a few stray pellets

November 30, 2007
BY GREG COUCH Sun-Times Columnist
Bobby Knight. Holding a hunting gun. Leaning against a pickup truck.

And a hillbilly comes up to him, yelling at him to move.

» Click to enlarge image

Texas Tech coach Bobby Knight.
(AP file)

RELATED STORIES
• Video: Knight's gun-wielding confrontation
I mean, really, where am I supposed to go with this? There is no punch line. It really happened. You need to see the video. It's on the Sun-Times site now, suntimes.com, and making the rounds.

Knight and a friend apparently were hunting doves, the symbols of peace, last month and got a little too close to some guy's house. The guy came out with his camcorder, and said:

''Pellets fell on m' house. I don't want no pellets landing on my house while I'm playin' in my swimmin' pool.''

Now, I probably shouldn't have called the guy a hillbilly. For all I know, he might be the CEO of IBM. But he sounds exactly like Larry, who had a brother Darryl and his other brother Darryl, on the old Newhart show. To hear him talk is to know that that swimmin' pool is more of a cee-ment pond.

Would you confront a gun-wielding Bobby Knight?

''I DIDN'T SHOOT ONCE IN THAT DIRECTION!'' Knight yelled back.

The guy's name is James Simpson of Lubbock, Texas, and he told police he had been struck in the neck and back by pellets after yelling at Knight. Unfortunately, he didn't get that on tape, if it really happened.

But Mary Ann Chumley, Simpson's neighbor, told the Associated Press that she had been struck on the foot by a stray pellet a day earlier, and that Knight had apologized for hunting too close to her barn.

Knight apparently was hunting with a buddy named Bubba.

Bob ''Bubba'' Curtis of Bob's Woodworks.

I'm not making any of this up.

''I asked you to move down. I don't call the police on nobody,'' Simpson said in the video.

''YOU DIDN'T ASK US TO MOVE DOWN,'' Knight yelled. ''YOU SWORE AND CUSSED AND ...''

''That's exactly what I said,'' Simpson yelled back. ''I'm asking you now to move down so the pellets don't land on my house again.''

''YOU ASK US POLITELY,'' Knight said. ''I'LL BE GLAD TO DO IT.''

Laugh if you can
I'm not making any of this up. Bobby Knight was lecturing someone on manners and on using bad language.

The guy was in the pool and pellets were falling. To me, that's reason enough to get uppity.

I'm supposed to offer perspective on events in the sports world. It's true that Knight can't stay out of trouble, even after being exiled to Texas Tech, where he now coaches. And a few years ago, he accidentally shot a man in the shoulder with pellets while hunting, and then apparently tried to cover it up.

The moral? I don't have one. Don't give Bobby Knight or Dick Cheney guns?

Face it, there is no lesson to be learned here. Knight is a spectacle. Just watch. Listen. Laugh.

I'll keep putting Knight's quotes in all capital letters.

''Just move down.''

''WE'LL DO THAT IF YOU DO IT POLITELY.''

''I already did politely.''

''NO, YOU DIDN'T. YOU'RE SWEARING AND CUSSING AND YELLING. I DON'T NEED THAT.''

The guy mentioned that he was taping, and Knight told him he didn't care. During the argument, the guy told Knight to quit moving his gun toward him. Knight said he wasn't moving the gun toward him. The guy told him it was on tape, but unfortunately the gun was out of the frame by then.

Knight dumped the gun in his truck and continued to argue.

''I DIDN'T SHOOT THAT. I CAN'T HELP THAT.''

''I'm askin' you to move down further. Go down to them trees down there. That's far enough away from my house.''

''WELL, WHY DO I HAVE TO MOVE WHEN I DIDN'T SHOOT AT YOUR HOUSE?''

It just gets sillier
Did you know I once called a psychiatrist to ask what's wrong with Bobby Knight's brain? The guy gave me some lengthy clinical term about the chemical composition of lobes, and then broke it down.

Put two decks of cards on a table. With one deck, you make a small amount of money or lose a small amount with each card you turn. In the end, you win out. With the other deck, you win big or lose big. In the end, you lose big. After a while, the subject figures out what's happening. But Knight would continue with the win big/lose big deck anyway.

''How 'bout if I come to your house and shoot and have pellets land in your backyard? You wouldn't like it.''

''I DIDN'T DO THAT.''

''You two are the only people out here shootin'.''

''WELL, MAYBE BOB DID IT.''

Now, this was interesting. Knight was blaming Bubba, his friend. Simpson said he wanted both of them to move.

''WELL, BASICALLY, WE DON'T HAVE TO.''

Knight argues like a fourth-grader. A fourth-grader with a gun.

I don't know where this fits in with chair-throwing, player-choking, assistant-coach punching and all the other stuff Knight has done. But guns, hillbillies, camcorders -- and all over shooting the symbol of peace.

I've always thought one thing for sure about Knight: It won't end well.

''And I caught ya stealin' catfish out of my pond.''

I'm not making this up. Not one word.


[edit] Texas Tech
After taking the next season off, all the while on the lookout for vacancies, Knight accepted the head coaching job at Texas Tech. At the press conference introducing him, Knight quipped, "This is the most comfortable red sweater I've had on in six years."

Knight quickly improved the program, which had not been to an NCAA tournament since 1996. He led the Red Raiders to postseason appearances in each of his first four years at the school (three NCAA Championship tournaments and one NIT). After a rough 2006 season, the team improved in 2007, finishing 21-13 and again making it to the NCAA Championship tournament, where it lost to Boston College in the first round. The best performance by the Red Raiders under Knight came in 2005 when they advanced as far as the Sweet Sixteen. In both 2006 and 2007 under Knight, Texas Tech defeated two Top 10-ranked teams in consecutive weeks. During Knight's first six years at Texas Tech, the Red Raiders have won 126 games, an average of 21 wins per season.


[edit] Knight's basketball philosophy
Bob Knight's motion offense emphasizes post players setting screens and perimeter players passing the ball until a teammate becomes open for an uncontested jump shot or lay-up. This requires players to be unselfish, disciplined, and effective in the setting and use of screens to get open. On defense, players are required both to tenaciously guard opponents man-to-man and to help teammates when needed, although Knight has also incorporated using a zone defense periodically after eschewing playing a zone for the first two decades of his coaching career. When the three-point line was instituted in 1986-87, Knight indicated "There are only three players in the Big Ten who can hit it, and I have two of them."


[edit] Coaching victories and awards
On January 1, 2007, at Texas Tech, Knight achieved his 880th career win, passing retired North Carolina coach Dean Smith for the most career NCAA Division I men's college basketball victories. The game was a 70-68 victory by the Red Raiders over the New Mexico Lobos. Knight trails both Adolph Rupp and Dean Smith in win differential, which is the difference between wins and losses and reflects Knight's lower lifetime winning percentage, as it took Knight 41 seasons and 100 extra games to achieve the record, compared with Smith's 36. However, Knight overtook Smith at a younger age. (He was also one of the youngest or the youngest to reach milestones 200 (age 35), 300 (age 40), 400 (age 44), 500 (age 48) and 600 (age 52).) Knight is also the only coach to win the NCAA, the NIT, the Olympic Gold, and the Pan-Am Gold.[6]

The Red Raiders' participation in the 2007 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament marked another record. With their inclusion as the #10 seed in the East Regional, Knight became the coach to lead his team to more NCAA Tournaments than any other.[6] However, the team lost to Boston College in the first round by a score of 84-75.

In 1987, Knight was the first person to be honored with the Naismith Men's College Coach of the Year Award. Five years later, he received the Clair Bee Coach of the Year Award. And, in 2007, he was the recipient of the Naismith Award for Men's Outstanding Contribution to Basketball.[7] Knight was nominated to receive a 2007 ESPY Award in the category of Best Record Breaking Performance but was not chosen as the winner.[6]


[edit] Knight students
A number of assistant coaches, players, and managers of Knight have gone on to be successful coaches. One of these is current Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski.

Main article: Coaching legacy of Bob Knight

[edit] Controversies
In 1979, Knight was arrested for assaulting a police officer during the Pan American Games in Puerto Rico. Knight was angry that a practice gymnasium was not opened to his team, which went on to a 9-0 record in the tournament. Knight was later convicted in absentia in a Puerto Rican court. However, the charges were later dropped when Indiana Governor Otis R. Bowen refused to cooperate in extraditing Knight to the island commonwealth.[8]
In 1985, Knight threw a chair across the court to protest a referee's call during a game against the rival Purdue Boilermakers.[9] Knight was suspended for one game and received two years' probation from the Big Ten Conference.
Women's groups nationwide were outraged by Knight's comments during an April, 1988 interview with Connie Chung in which he said, "I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it."[10] Knight's comment was in reference to an Indiana basketball game in which he felt the referees were making poor calls against the Hoosiers.
In a 1991 practice at Indiana, Knight lashed out at his team with the following tirade: "You don't wanna play, then I'm getting the fuck out of here. I mean, if you're not gonna cover Greg Graham; if you're just gonna let him drive by you; if the rest of you are gonna let him catch the ball outside the three second lane and drive all the way in here without one guy challenging him, then I'm leaving and you fucking guys will run 'til you can't eat supper. Now I'm tired of this shit! I'm sick and fucking tired of an 8-10 record! I'm fucking tired of losing to Purdue! I'm not here to fuck around this week! Now you may be, but I'm not! Now I'm gonna fucking guarantee ya, that if we don't play up there Monday night, you aren't gonna believe the next four fucking days! Now I am not here to get my ass beat on Monday. Now you better fuckin' understand that right now. This is absolute fucking bullshit! Now I'll fucking run your ass right into the ground! I mean I'll fucking run you, you'll think last night was a fucking picnic! I had to sit around for a fucking year with an 8-10 record in this fucking league! And I mean you will not put me in that fucking position again, or you will goddamn pay for it like you can't fucking believe! Now you better get your head out of your ass!"[11]
Knight allegedly kicked his own son, Patrick Knight, during a 1993 game (Knight claims he actually kicked a chair).[8]
Knight was shown berating an NCAA university volunteer at a 1998 news conference. The volunteer informed the press that Knight would not be attending the press conference, when he was actually only running a few minutes late and had planned on attending per NCAA rules. Knight was shown saying: "You've only got two people that are going to tell you I'm not going to be here. One is our SID, and the other is me. Who the hell told you I wasn't going to be here? I'd like to know. Do you have any idea who it was?...Who?...They were from Indiana, right?...No, they weren't from Indiana, and you didn't get it from anybody from Indiana, did you?...No, I -- I'll handle this the way I want to handle it now that I'm here. You (EXPLETIVE) it up to begin with. Now just sit there or leave. I don't give (EXPLETIVE) what you do. Now back to the game."[12]
In February 2004, Knight again made national headlines for a "verbal dustup" with then Texas Tech University Chancellor David Smith at a Lubbock supermarket. [13]
In March 2006, a student's heckling at Baylor University resulted in Knight having to be restrained by a police officer. The incident was not severe enough to warrant any action from the Big 12 Conference.[14]
On November 13, 2006, Knight was shown allegedly hitting player Michael Prince under the chin to get him to make eye contact. Although Knight didn't comment on the incident afterwards and as of yet hasn't done so, Prince, his parents, and Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers insisted that Knight did nothing wrong and that he merely lifted Prince's chin and told him "Hold your head up and don't worry about mistakes. Just play the game." Prince commented, "He was trying to teach me and I had my head down so he raised my chin up. He was telling me to go out there and don't be afraid to make mistakes. He said I was being too hard on myself."[8]
On October 21, 2007, James Simpson of Lubbock, Texas, accused Knight of firing a shotgun in his direction after he yelled at Knight and another man for hunting too close to his home.[15] Knight denied the allegations. An argument between the two men was recorded via camera phone and aired later on television.[16]

[edit] Books about Bob Knight
Books about Knight include "A Season on the Brink" (ISBN 0-02-537230-0) by John Feinstein, "Bob Knight: His Own Man" by Joan Mellen (ISBN 0-380-70809-4), and "Playing for Knight: My Six Seasons with Bobby Knight" (ISBN 0-671-72441-X) by former player and current New Mexico head basketball coach Steve Alford.

In 2002, Knight and longtime friend and sports journalist Bob Hammel wrote his biography, "Knight: My Story" (ISBN 0-312-31117-6.)

In Bob Knight, His Own Man, Mellen characterized Feinstein's book as being banal (21).

In 2006, an "unauthorized" biography on Knight, written by Steve Delsohn and Mark Heisler, was released. (ISBN 0-7432-4348-X)


[edit] Film and television
Blue Chips is a 1994 feature film about Pete Bell, a volatile, but honest college basketball coach under pressure to win who decides to blatantly violate NCAA rules to field a competitive team after several sub-par seasons. It starred Nick Nolte as Bell and NBA star Shaquille O'Neal as Neon Bordeaux, a dominating once-in-a-lifetime player Bell woos to his school with gifts and other perks. Several incidents in the film are clearly inspired by Knight's history. Current NBA guard Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway co-stars as another "blue chipper" recruited by Bell. NBA legend Bob Cousy plays the school's president. Knight himself has a cameo alongside other collegiate and NBA legends such as Larry Bird and Rick Pitino. ESPN writer Bill Simmons once wrote about the film, and stated that while the Bell character cheated, Knight would never have done so.

gary hoey

Grammy-nominated Godsmack frontman Sully Erna and a guitar hero pal partied with a Tyngsboro woman just days before she was allegedly slashed to death by her jealous husband, and both rockers have been questioned as part of the murder probe, the Herald has learned.

Erna, lead singer of the multi-platinum Bay State metal band, recently met Christine McGee and hung out with her and others on at least three occasions in the days leading up to her savage murder last week, according to Erna's manager, Paul Geary.

"She was pretty enamored with the whole thing. She was at his house and couldn't believe she was hanging around Sully," Geary said. "She was kind of like star-struck."

But Geary said Erna was not romantically involved with the 31-year-old McGee, and that the rocker met her through his musician pal Gary Hoey.

Hoey, a world-renowned guitar virtuoso with 13 albums under his belt, and Erna have both been questioned by police investigating the slaying, Geary and Hoey's lawyer, Andrew LaCourse, said.

Neither man is a suspect in the case. A spokesman for Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone declined comment.

Prosecutors say Jeffrey McGee, a wannabe rock singer, slashed his estranged wife's throat in front of their 3-year-old son in a Chelmsford apartment Nov. 20. McGee, 36, fled the scene with the toddler and intentionally drove into oncoming traffic, injuring himself and the boy, police say.

McGee, who is being held without bail on murder charges, had a turbulent history with his wife that included a 2003 domestic violence charge, court records show. He also filed for bankruptcy in 2005 after he racked up more than $48,000 in credit card debt and loans, according to filings.

His attorney, Thomas J. Ford, said he had no information on the couple's relationship. Jeffrey McGee's mother hung up on a reporter and Christine McGee's family could not be reached.

According to Geary, Hoey brought McGee to a party at Erna's New Hampshire house just days before the murder. Erna, 39, also met her at a club and a concert.

"He met her a couple of times but Sully didn't have that kind (romantic) of a relationship with her," he said.

Hoey, 47, grew up in Lowell and has toured with fellow guitar heroes Ted Nugent, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Peter Frampton. He's also a music producer and once played the national anthem at a Red Sox [team stats] game.

Erna, a Lawrence native whose band has sold more than 12 million albums, released an autobiography this year that details his legal scrapes, failed relationships, drug use and meteoric rise to fame.

He was also involved in a terrifying three-car pile-up in Chelmsford in April in which his Hummer rear-ended a woman's vehicle, leaving her seriously injured.

Geary said Erna was "freaked out" when he learned of the murder.

"Sully's got his own life, his own girlfriend and his own career," he said. "He doesn't want anyone to believe he was involved in this thing."

Gary Hoey

Fender Stratocaster
Massachusetts born and bred guitarist Gary Hoey often lingered outside Boston's renowned Berklee College of Music when he was fourteen years old, making friends and offering to pay for lessons. Realizing he should devote all of his time to music, Hoey dropped out of high school and began playing Boston's local clubs, teaching guitar to other budding young players as well. He auditioned for the infamous Ozzy Osbourne in 1988, when Osbourne was searching for a replacement for Jake E. Lee. Although the job went to Zakk Wylde, Hoey earned Osbourne's respect and admiration with his guitar playing ability and all-around professional manner

In 1990 he teamed up with singer Joel Ellis, bassist Rex Tennyson, and drummer Frankie Banali to form Heavy Bones. The band released their debut album in 1992 but broke up shortly thereafter.[1]

In 1993, he recorded the successful Animal Instinct album, which included a cover of the Focus hit Hocus Pocus. Not only did the hit rocket into the Billboard Top 5, outpacing all other singles as the most frequently played rock song of the year, but the album went on to reach classic rock notoriety. The successful Endless Summer II soundtrack soon followed. He went on to record an estimated twelve diverse instrumental albums, all electric guitar oriented. His 1996 release, 'Bug Alley', displayed added vocal ability that he has expanded on more recent albums. In the midst of this ride, Hoey undertook long radio station tours, during which he visited over 400 stations coast to coast. He has created music for ESPN's Summer X Games, No Fear, Disney, The San Diego Padres and many others. Hoey continues to tour extensively.

hoops of hope

Anorexics and others struggling with eating disorders are getting relief from clowning around, literally.

An unusual course in circus skills is helping people with disordered eating overcome their compulsive tendencies by juggling, tightrope walking and aerial swinging.

The world-first program aims to build trust and encourage patients, particularly those with anorexia and bulimia, reconnect with their bodies in a unique environment, says group co-ordinator Jani White, from Melbourne's NorthWestern Mental Health.

It also helps patients develop a healthier attitude to exercising, Ms White said.

"In recent years there has been an increase in the number of eating disorder patients for whom exercising excessively to achieve or maintain low weights has been a major problem," she said.

"Interventions to interrupt this compulsive cycle are recommended, but it presents a dilemma because moderate levels of exercise can be effective in promoting a sense of wellbeing and can be a great way to build social and recreational interests."

The pilot program uses performance circus skills - acrobalance, aerials, juggling and hula hoops - to help people build trust and learn positive risk-taking while also developing strength and flexibility.

"Learning and executing circus skills requires a lot of concentration," Ms White said.

"Unlike running on a treadmill, swinging from a trapeze or climbing a rope has an edge to it that demands attention."

She said three of the six patients enrolled in the pilot program have gone on to join mainstream exercise classes "with a new and clear understanding about the role of exercise, in both sustaining their illness and in treating it".

It is expected the program will be rolled out in Melbourne next year once ongoing funding is secured
Edinburgh, Scotland (Sports Network) - Hearts has endured a very inconsistent start to current season and is stuck in the middle of the league table in sixth place heading into Saturday's clash with league-leaders Celtic at Tynecastle Stadium.

Hearts has taken five points from its last three league contests, but that stretch includes an impressive 4-1 win against Aberdeen followed by a disappointing 1-1 draw with last-place Gretna.

The Edinburgh club had better be in top form on Saturday if they want to slow down a Celtic side that has won its last four games in all competitions. However, Hearts does not have to look too far back to find hope, as they were the last side to defeat the Glasgow club, taking a 2-0 win away from Celtic Park in the Scottish CIS Insurance Cup.

That game was a small measure of revenge from the first meeting in league play between the two teams, a 5-0 thrashing by the Hoops back in August.

While Hearts seem to still be searching for some consistency, Celtic has had no such difficulties in recent weeks. Manager Gordon Strachan's men have won two SPL contests since the loss to Hearts to move to the top of the table, but the team has also revived its hopes of advancing in the Champions League with two consecutive wins, including a last-gasp 2-1 win against Shakhtar Donetsk on Massimo Donati's stoppage-time goal.

"How did we win the game? The simple answer is with a huge heart," Strachan told the club's website. "It reinforced that technically one or two teams are better than us, but, in terms of spirit, we are as good as anyone."

That fighting spirit has taken Celtic to second place in Group D, just one point behind AC Milan. The Hoops now need just a draw at the San Siro next Tuesday to ensure a spot in the knockout round.

Celtic is playing with confidence at the moment, so the only hope that Hearts might have on Saturday is that Celtic might be looking past them and to their clash with Milan on Tuesday.

In other SPL play on Saturday, second-place Rangers host Kilmarnock with hopes of keeping up with the league-leaders, Inverness travel to Tannadice Park to face a Dundee United side that has won four of its last six games, while last- place Gretna visits Motherwell and St Mirren entertains Falkirk.

Sunday's lone contest features Hibernian, currently in third place and five points behind Celtic, visiting Aberdeen, who is coming off of a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Atletico Madrid in UEFA Cup play on Thursday.

rickrolled

Rick Astley
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Rick Astley
Birth name Richard Paul Astley
Born February 06, 1966 (1966-02-06) (age 41)
Origin Newton-le-Willows, St Helens, Lancashire, England
Genre(s) Pop
Blue-eyed soul
Dance
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter
Years active 1987�present
Richard Paul Astley (born February 6, 1966) is an English singer, songwriter and musician. He was born in Newton-le-Willows, St Helens, Lancashire, England. Astley currently resides in Richmond in Surrey with his Danish girlfriend, Lene Bausager, and their daughter, Emilie.[1]

Contents
1 Career
2 Discography
2.1 Albums
2.2 Singles
2.3 Compilations
3 See also
4 "Rick Roll"
5 References
6 External links



[edit] Career
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)

In 1985, Astley was playing the club circuit as a singer with a soul band named FBI, when he was seen by the record producer Pete Waterman and persuaded to come to London to work at the PWL recording studio. Under the tutelage of production trio Stock Aitken Waterman, Astley was taught about the recording process and groomed for his future career, supposedly starting off as the recording studio 'tea boy'. During much of his career prior to the proliferation of music videos, many listeners assumed he was black. In one instance, the comedic entertainer, Sinbad, discussed him with a talk-show host, expressing his surprise that Astley was not "one of the brothers."[citation needed] Even after his visual appearance, it was still popular belief that he was miming for a black American singer.[citation needed] His brother Mike Astley helped to refute this assertion.[citation needed]

His first single was the little-known "When You Gonna" credited to Rick & Lisa, but his first solo outing was "Never Gonna Give You Up," released in 1987. It became an immediate success, spending five weeks at the top of the British charts and becoming the year's highest-selling single. It was the first of 13 (world-wide) Top 30 hit singles for him. In that year he also made the single "Mi Amor", together with the Vanden Dungen band but this was not a great success, only about 10000 copies where sold mainly in Germany.

The album Whenever You Need Somebody also reached Number One in the UK, and the hit singles continued, including the title track and a cover of Nat King Cole's "When I Fall In Love."

On 12 March 1988, "Never Gonna Give You Up" had also topped the U.S. singles chart and was followed by a second U.S. #1 on 18 June with his second U.S. single release "Together Forever."

By the end of the decade, Astley had parted company with Stock Aitken Waterman. He achieved one more major success with the 1991 ballad "Cry For Help," which reached the Top 10 in both the UK and the U.S. It featured a gospel choir arranged by Andraé Crouch, who'd also been involved with Madonna's 1989 hit "Like A Prayer."

His next album Body & Soul was released in 1993. The album did not chart in the U.K. and managed to make The Billboard 200 peaking at a lowly #182. The two singles, The Ones You Love and Hopelessly performed very well on the adult contemporary chart, peaking at #19 and #4 respectively. Hopelessly also crossed over and peaked at #31 on the Top 40 Mainstream chart. For much of the 1990s and early 2000s, Astley remained largely out of the spotlight.

In 1991 the RIAA certified that two million copies of Whenever You Need Somebody had been sold. Total world sales of Astley's records (inclusive of singles, albums and compilation inclusions) have reached 40 million.

Almost 10 years after "Body & Soul", Rick finally returned to the music world and released "Keep It Turned On" in 2002. The album featured the single "Sleeping", which became a minor club hit, thanks to a set of remixes from U.S. house producer Todd Terry.

In 2005 Astley released the album Portrait in which he covered many classic soul standards such as "Vincent", "Nature Boy" and "Close To You".

In early 2006, Astley withdrew unexpectedly at the eleventh hour from appearing on the BBC TV celebrity/pro duets show Just the Two of Us after committing to the series. This led to criticism from those in the entertainment industry and media. His place was filled by opera singer Russell Watson, who eventually won the competition. The BBC failed to explain that Astley's withdrawal was due to his partner Lene Bausager being nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for her produced/directed film "Cashback". Astley would have missed a crucial part of the show by attending the awards ceremony and so withdrew before the show started its run.

Based on various music charts in the UK, U.S. and Canada, Astley has charted a grand total of 14 (different) hit singles and 6 (different) hit albums as of March 2006.

Astley is currently working as an auditor in the south east of England.


[edit] Discography

earl fatha

Happy Birthday" doesn't usually shoot electricity through an audience.

But then it isn't usually played - at least not in Dowagiac - with a New Orleans jazz flair by horn players parting the Dowagiac Middle School Performing Arts Center crowd like Saints Marching In.

Eighteen guest artists from all over the country converged in Dowagiac Nov. 4 to sit in with jazz legend Franz Jackson at the middle school Performing Arts Center.
Chicago jazz legend and Dowagiac resident Franz Jackson, Still Swingin' at 95, opened Sunday evening with "What a Wonderful World," then was joined by vocalist Judi K ("eight years with Franz were heaven for me"), trumpeter George Bean, trombonist Ed Bagatini, Tad Calcara, the principal clarinetist for the Utah Symphony in Salt Lake City, Hugh Leal on banjo, Jim Pickley on piano, Chris Carani on bass (his father also played with Jackson) and Hank Tausend, who played with Woody Allen's jazz band, on drums for Fats Waller's "This Joint is Jumpin'."

Master of Ceremonies Neal Tesser, Playboy's jazz critic from 1991 to 2002 and the first jazz critic for USA Today, played "traffic cop" for the constant shuffling of the "cast of characters" from 18 guest artists, such as flamboyant trumpeter Yves Francois Smierczak.

"Franz was instrumental in me playing jazz music," Smierczak told the Daily News. "One Christmas my father gave me a Roy Eldridge record. I went not only nuts over Roy, but over the tenor player. 'Who is that?' He encouraged me to play the plunger mute and growl, everything.

"We recorded a record together," said the musician who doffed his fedora to acknowledge applause or hung it from the bell of his horn.

"This is the most important thing I've done in the last three to four years of my life, maybe six or seven," said Smierczak, who has been on the Chicago jazz and blues scenes since the 1970s. He's French, but grew up in Africa.

"Certainly my favorite thing. Dowagiac probably doesn't realize that this is probably not only the oldest, but the greatest. It's a blessing that he's here and still doing it well. He's truly one of a kind, right up there with Webster, Young and Hawkins as the greatest tenor players who ever lived. I'm having a great time tonight."

Tesser offered the imagery of a slot machine jukebox. Pull the arm and it plays nothing but jackpots, with Jackson's tenor the calm eye of a sonic hurricane around which everything blew.

The opening lineup gave way to trumpeter Art Hoyle, trombonist Larry Dwyer on piano and Robert Cousins, 77, on drums for "(Take the) 'A' Train," Duke Ellington's theme song and now the official song of the New York City subway system.

So it went all night, through Jimmy Noone's "Apex Blues" and "Sweet Lorraine," "Honeysuckle Rose" sung by Crystal Ristow, "Lester Leaps In," Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz," "Exactly Like You" sung by Lisa Roti, Tishimongo Blues" (like the Elmore Leonard novel), "Perdido" (written by the Ellington musician who also penned "Caravan"), Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" and "Bill Bailey (Won'tcha Please Come Home)."

And that was just the first half.

After Mayor Donald Lyons presented Jackson with a key to the city, the pace picked up with "When the Saints Go Marchin' In," 1928's "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" sung by Ristow, "St. Louis Blues" (regarded as the first jazz composition for its New Orleans mixture of blues and Spanish tango), "Bourbon Street Parade," "S Wonderful," "Sweet Georgia Brown," "I'm Confessin' (That I Love You)" sung by Roti and the finale, "Chicago."

Eric Schneider, alto saxophone and clarinet, said the musicians were not flashing gang signs on stage, but trying to get New York and Chicago musicians in the same key. Holding up four fingers, or "grapes," means the number of flats - or the key of A flat.

A prodigy who started playing piano at 3, Schneider toured the world for four years with Earl "Fatha" Hines, who insisted on second billing on their album, "Eric and Earl." Schneider also toured two years with Count Basie and recorded three albums, including the Grammy Award-winning "88 Basie Street."

Schneider also played with Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., Benny Goodman, Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and Rosemary Clooney.

"It's always a privilege and a pleasure to be able to share the stage with someone who has contributed so much to Dowagiac," Mayor Lyons said. "But Mr. Franz Jackson, still swingin' at 95, contributed way more than just making our community a better place. He has made the world a better place."

The concert, a benefit for the Jazz Institute of Chicago, Dowagiac Dogwood Fine Arts Festival, Union High School Jazz Band and Encore Dance Company, lasted 3 1/2 hours even without an anticipated closing jam session.

"My dad got to see how much he means to musicians who are here appearing today - and to all of you, and I thank you," said Jackson's daughter and manager, Michelle Jewell of Niles, who organized the event sponsored by the Dogwood and Wood Fire Italian Trattoria, where Jackson plays.

"I can't tell you how thrilled I am that this all came together as beautifully as it did," she said.

Jewell narrated a slideshow, "A Short Version of a Long Life" about his remarkable eight-decade career which began at 16 in 1929 with stride pianist Albert Ammons and continued in the 1930s and '40s with Carroll Dickerson, Jimmy Noone, Walter Barnes, Roy Eldridge, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Carter, Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway and James P. Johnson. Jackson replaced Ben Webster in Henderson's and Eldridge's bands and won attention for big band composing and arranging for Benny Goodman, Calloway and Jack Teagarden for CBS.

Between tenures in Chicago, Jackson lived in New York and Sweden, performing, composing, arranging and directing bands.

Beginning in the late 1940s, he embarked on tours entertaining U.S. troops abroad with his USO band.

In 1957, he formed his own band, the Original Jazz All-Stars, which enjoyed a 10-year run at the Red Arrow Nightclub in Stickney, Ill. Jackson recorded seven albums during this period on his own label, Pinnacle Recordings.

Jackson, who was 76 when he earned a black belt in Tae Kwan Do, was interviewed by Dowagiac visitor Studs Terkel in 1997.

In 2002, he appeared on the "Prairie Home Companion" with Garrison Keillor.

The man who learned Chicago jazz from its originators was featured on the cover of Chicago Jazz Magazine in 2004 and in 2005 was honored as one of the five world's greatest living jazz saxophonists by the Jazz Institute of Chicago, which awarded him the Walter Dyett Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.

Jackson was nominated for the 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship and was featured at the 2007 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Bagatini, the trombonist, performs with the Dynabones and operates a music store in St. Joseph with his wife, Adrienne. Besides helping set the foundations for the band departments at Lake Michigan College and Lake Michigan Catholic Schools, he also performed with Benny Goodman, Patti Page and Vic Damone.

Bean played trumpet with the big bands of Stan Kenton, Harry James and Count Basie in the 1950s and performed with Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Nat "King" Cole, Tony Bennett and Mel Torme in the '60s.

Dwyer is assistant director of bands and director of jazz studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Hoyle performed with U.S. Air Force Bands from 1951-1955, appears on the "Super Fly" soundtrack and toured with Lena Horne, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Burt Bacharach, Peggy Lee and Henry Mancini, recorded with Quincy Jones, Woody Herman, Ramsey Lewis and Natalie Cole and performed with Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, Billy Eckstine, Dean Martin and Milton Berle.

Leal recorded a CD with Jackson at the 1998 Montreaux Detroit Jazz Festival.

Drummer Billy "Stix" Nicks, who used to sit in with Jackson at Fun Fest in downtown Dowagiac, played with Junior Walker and the All-Stars, including the hit "How Sweet It Is to be Loved by You."

Nicks has played the Apollo Theater and performed with Wilson Pickett, The Staples Singers, Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr., The Fifth Dimension, Marvin Gaye, Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight and the Pips, The Four Tops, the Isley Brothers, The Spinners, The Temptations, Jerry Butler and Adam West and Frank Gorshen (TV's Batman and the Riddler). Nicks was also a member of Dick Clark's national Band Stand TV show.

Pianist Jim Pickley, a regular with his trio at Wood Fire, led bands for five years on cruise ships and has performed with Clark Terry, Wynton Marsalis, Bill Watrous and Ed Shaughnessy. He is music director at our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Edwardsburg.

Jackson played on Roti's album. She sings in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and has performed in Europe, Asia and North, Central and South America.

Bassist Darrel Tidaback is from San Antonio, Texas, and now lives in South Bend, Ind., where he teaches at Indiana University South Bend, Saint Mary's College and Notre Dame. He has performed with Lionel Hampton, Rosemary Clooney, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Carol Channing and Mitzi Gaynor.

proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program) which services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server provides the resource by connecting to the specified server and requesting the service on behalf of the client. A proxy server may optionally alter the client's request or the server's response, and sometimes it may serve the request without contacting the specified server. A proxy server that passes all requests and replies unmodified is usually called a gateway or sometimes tunneling proxy. A proxy server can be placed in the user's local computer or at specific key points between the user and the destination servers or the Internet.

ChangeInternet.com is here for the purpose of anoymizing your internet surfing. An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy, is a tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable.It accesses the Internet on the user's behalf, protecting personal information by hiding the source computer's identifying information. This allows you to unblock and browse your favorites sites such as YouTube, FaceBook, and MySpace and best of all, it is absolutely free!

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biddleville nc

Biddleville
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Biddleville is the oldest surviving predominantly African-American neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is located two miles west of Uptown and Interstate 77 along Beatties Ford Road. Biddleville is home to Johnson C. Smith University, a historically black college once called the Biddle Institute, that was formed shortly after the Civil War to educate aspiring black preachers and teachers[1]. Biddleville arose as a supporting community of the Institute and was distinctly separate from Charlotte until it was annexed by the city in the early 1900s[2].

[edit] References
Nov 13, 2007 (The Charlotte Observer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- BVDRF | charts | news | PowerRating -- Neighbors of Belvedere Homes always envisioned more for their westside community than the business park planned on the site of the former public housing project.

Now, so do the developers.

The Charlotte Mecklenburg Development Corp. has purchased three old buildings on Rozzelles Ferry Road in front of the Stewart Creek Business Park tract to renovate for commercial and retail businesses.

Initially, the developers expected to demolish the buildings, said CMDC President Bob Sweeney. "But after talking to the neighborhood folks and Neighboring Concepts (an architectural, community planning and development firm), we determined they are very useable buildings."

The project got fresh support recently from the Urban Land Institute, an influential education and research organization.

Its Charlotte arm worked with CMDC through an internal group called the Partnership Forum to craft development recommendations, including The Next Big Thing idea of reusing the old structures as part of a commercial and retail services center.

CMDC believes it has space to add about 19,300 square feet of new buildings to the 19,800 square feet of existing structures, which include the landmark Belvedere Theater.

In addition, the planning collaborative envisions saving all the old oak trees on the 23-acre Belvedere Homes site -- another key wish of neighbors -- and creating a greenway on the flood plain along Stewart Creek.

That would give business park workers and neighborhood residents a walking and biking route to uptown or nearby Martin Luther King Park, Sweeney said.

Copier services, phone stores, storage facilities, shipping services and similar business likely would be attracted to the center to primarily serve tenants in the business park, he said.

Neighborhood services most likely would be provided nearby at West Trade Street and Bruns Avenue, where Neighboring Concepts plans a mixed-use project that could include residences, offices and shops, said partner Chris Ogunrinde.

The developers are doing a marketing study to determine the best combination of uses to serve the neighborhood, he said.

People in the nearby Smallwood, Biddleville and Seversville seem pleased with the direction of the planned redevelopment.

Lawyer and neighborhood leader Charles Jones calls it "a positive evolution of the community we invested in."

Jones, who has lived on West Trade Street for 60 years, said, "You couldn't drag me out with a team of Clydesdale horses."

Revitalization already is taking hold there. Several homes are being renovated, and developers are planning infill projects.

Belvedere Homes was so dilapidated and crime ridden that the housing authority won a grant in 2004 to demolish it.

Neighbors were delighted to see it go, Jones said, but they wanted to make sure they were included in discussions about the site's future.

As it turned out, "I was impressed with the collaborative process we were able to set up though the city, the chamber and the CMDC," he said. "We have assurances they will come back to the neighborhood to share and update us on progress."

Sweeney said CMDC will spend slightly more than budgeted to renovate the buildings in Stewart Creek Business Park, but it has arranged additional debt with Wachovia Corp. to cover the expense.

CMDC is a public-private partnership that includes the Charlotte Chamber, the city and the county. The governments are investing $950,000 each to help cover redevelopment costs of about $3.8 million.

The business park tentatively would have 14 tracts available for roughly 135,500 square feet of light industrial buildings.

Sweeney said the actual number of sites could be more or less depending on how purchasers want to develop the property. CMDC is asking $100,000 an acre. NAI Southern Real Estate is handling sales and marketing.

The city's economic development staff helped with a rezoning that was approved last month and is working with CMDC to complete purchased of land from the housing authority, which has agreed to sell it for the appraised price of just over $1 million.

A.C. Shull, program manager for special projects in the city economic development department, said the City Council is expected to take the final step to approve the city's investment Nov. 26.

The city then would purchase the land from the housing authority and transfer it to CMDC by the end of this month.

Sweeney said the developers plan to start rehabilitating the old buildings and begin work on the business park early next year.

It would resemble an earlier, slightly larger CMDC project: Wilkinson Boulevard Business Center on Wilkinson Boulevard between Steele Creek Road and Morris Field Drive.

But with an average size of about 12,500 square feet, buildings would be about half the size of those on Wilkinson Boulevard.

They also would be less industrial looking and include more brick to blend with the neighborhood and buffer it from heavy industrial development, Sweeney said.

When completed, planners estimate Stewart Creek Business Park could generate more than 125 jobs for the neighborhood.

Charlotte Mecklenburg Development Corp.

The Charlotte Chamber, the city and the county formed this nonprofit community development partnership in 1997 to change the environment in blighted corridors through real estate development.Officials believe it's unique in the nation in using low overhead, a volunteer board and chamber guidance to create a catalyst for commercial development.

The partnership finances its activities through the sale of properties, private donations, city/county grants and loans, private bank loans and federal funds leveraging.

Its projects include Wilkinson Park Business Center and City West Commons, a shopping center at West Boulevard and Remount Road in west Charlotte. The Belvedere Homes site redevelopment will be its third project.

Partnership Forum

Crosland LLC Chairman and CEO Todd Mansfield, also national Urban Land Institute chairman, mentored a ULI Charlotte Partnership Forum that examined the Belvedere Homes redevelopment plan, interviewed stakeholders and made recommendations on how developers might proceed.

Members of the team were selected from the Charlotte District Council's 200-member Young Leaders Group.

The Partnership Forum said in its project report that "the collective input" from the neighborhood and other participants inspired it to recommend a commercial/retail center and industrial services on the former 23-acre site of the Belvedere Homes public housing project.

"The site's boundaries are purposefully integrated into the surrounding neighborhoods, pulling people in whether on foot, bicycle or in automobiles, while respectfully diverting heavier traffic elsewhere," the report said. Doug Smith

tommy tuberville

Tommy Tuberville
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Tommy Tuberville
Auburn Head Coach Tommy H. Tuberville
Title Head coach
College Auburn University
Sport Football
Conference SEC
Team record 79-33
Born September 18, 1954 (1954-09-18) (age 53)
Place of birth Camden, AR
Annual salary $2.6 million/year[1]
Career highlights
Overall 104-53
Coaching stats
College Football DataWarehouse
Championships
1 SEC Championship (2004)
Awards
2004 Paul "Bear" Bryant Award
2004 Walter Camp Coach of the Year
Playing career
1972-1976 Southern Arkansas
Position S
Coaching career (HC unless noted)
1980-1984
1986-1993
1994
1995-1998
1999-present Arkansas St (DE/LB)
Miami (Assist.)
Texas A&M (DC)
Ole Miss
Auburn
Thomas Hawley Tuberville (born September 18, 1954) is an American college football coach and current head coach of the Auburn Tigers football team. Tuberville was the 2004 recipient of the Walter Camp and Paul "Bear" Bryant Coach of the Year awards for Auburn's 13�0 perfect season. He earned his 100th career win on October 6, 2007 in a 35�7 victory over Vanderbilt. He is also the only coach in Auburn history to beat Alabama six consecutive times.

Contents
1 Playing career
2 Coaching career
2.1 Early career
2.2 Ole Miss
2.3 Auburn
3 Head coaching record
4 Personal and community
5 References
6 External links



[edit] Playing career
A native of Camden, Arkansas, Tommy Tuberville played football in high school and lettered as a free safety at Southern Arkansas University where he played from 1972-1976.


[edit] Coaching career

[edit] Early career
Tuberville was an assistant coach at Arkansas State University. He then went through the ranks at the University of Miami, beginning as graduate assistant and ending as defensive coordinator in 1993. In 1994, Tuberville replaced Bob Davie as defensive coordinator under R. C. Slocum at Texas A&M University. The Aggies went 10-0-1 that season.


[edit] Ole Miss
Tuberville got his first collegiate head coaching job at the University of Mississippi. He took over a Rebel team under severe NCAA scholarship sanctions and was named the AP SEC Coach of the Year in 1997.


[edit] Auburn
He left Ole Miss following the 1998 regular season to take the head coaching job at Auburn University. In his tenure at Auburn, Tuberville has guided the Tigers to the top of the SEC standings, leading the Tigers to an SEC Championship and five Western Division titles (including outright championships in 2000 and 2004 and co-championships in 2001, 2002 and 2005). Under his direction, the Tigers have made seven consecutive bowl appearances including five New Year's Day bowl berths, and 1 SEC championship.


The Auburn Tigers were a perfect 13-0 in 2004 including the SEC title and a win over Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl. Coach Tuberville received Coach of the Year awards from the AP, the American Football Coaches Association, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association and the Walter Camp Football Foundation.

In 2005, despite losing the entire starting backfield from the unbeaten 2004 team to the first round of the NFL draft, Coach Tuberville led Auburn to a 9-3 record, finishing the regular season with victories over rivals Georgia and Alabama.

Under Tuberville, Auburn has a winning record against its three biggest rivals, LSU (5-4), Georgia (5-4), and Alabama (7-2). He has led Auburn to 6 straight victories over in-state rival Alabama, the longest win streak in this rivalry since 1982, which was the year Auburn broke Alabama's 9 year streak.

Tuberville has also established himself as one of the best big game coaches in college football, winning 9 of their last 11 games against Top 10 opponents (since the start of the 2004 season). In 2006, his Tigers recorded victories over two Top 5 teams who later played in BCS bowls, including eventual BCS Champion Florida. Tuberville has a 5-1 career record versus Top 5 teams, including 3 wins versus Florida.

Tuberville has coached 19 players who were selected in the NFL draft, including four first round picks in 2004, with several others signing as free agents. He has coached 8 All-Americans and a Thorpe Award winner (Carlos Rogers). Thirty-four players under Tuberville have been named to All-SEC (First Team). Eighteen players have been named All-SEC freshman. His players have been named SEC player of the week 46 times. He has also had 2 SEC players of the year and one SEC Championship
Tuberville?
By Tony Barnhart | Thursday, November 29, 2007, 07:42 AM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Five burning questions as we head into the last weekend of the regular season:

1. Is Auburn going to get a deal done with Tuberville? After beating Alabama for the sixth straight year and with an opening for a head coach at Arkansas and perhaps another one at LSU, you could say that Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville is dealing from a position of strength. But negotiations haven't gone all that smoothly. Tuberville wants more money for his assistants, who are underpaid compared to those at Alabama. He also wants an indoor practice facility, which is something Alabama has as well. If he is expected to compete with Alabama, Tuberville needs to be close to an equal footing with the Crimson Tide in these areas. Auburn's new proposal is supposed to come by Saturday. Tuberville will have until Dec. 31 to accept it.

2. Can a two-loss team get to the BCS championship? Probably not but the argument would sure be fun to watch. The only way to open that door would be for both No. 1 Missouri and No. 2 West Virginia to lose on Saturday. Missouri might lose to Oklahoma in the Big 12 championship game, but West Virginia is a 28-point favorite over Pittsburgh at home. But if it happens, and everybody else who plays on Saturday wins, you will see the mother of all PR campaigns late Saturday night among Georgia, Virginia Tech, LSU, Southern Cal, and Oklahoma. And what about 11-1 Kansas?

3. How bad is Matt Flynn's shoulder? The LSU quarterback reportedly took some snaps in Wednesday's practice but I hear that backup Ryan Perrilloux is getting a lot of work because, even if Flynn can go, he may not last long against the Tennessee defense on the artificial turf of the Georgia Dome. Perrilloux is an incredible talent but for every great play he makes, he usually makes at least one that will put the LSU defense in bad field position.

4. When does Arkansas play Ole Miss in 2008? Glad you asked. The game will be on Oct. 25 in Fayetteville, where I'm sure new Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt will be welcomed with open arms. It will be as much fun as the first time Auburn's Tommy Tuberville went back to Ole Miss. He won, by the way.

5. Does Hawaii still get a BCS bid if it loses? The No. 12 Warriors (11-0) won't be done with Washington (11:30 p.m. start) until the wee hours of Sunday morning. If Hawaii wins, it's a no-brainer. It will go to the Sugar Bowl. But if the Warriors lose will one of the BCS bowls take them just to keep peace

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November 29, 2007


Brett Favre won't have to visit the Big Ten's headquarters in Park Ridge to shoot the breeze with his new boss―but he might want to swing by Evanston.

The Green Bay Packers are targeting Northwestern athletic director Mark Murphy to be their next president, sources confirmed Wednesday.


The Green Bay Press-Gazette reported the team had begun contract negotiations with Murphy, the search committee's top choice. The team's 45-member board of directors will meet as early as Monday and is expected to approve the hiring.

Murphy declined to comment in depth Wednesday, saying, "I have tremendous respect for the Packers and I have to respect the process."

Earlier reports had pegged Murphy and Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany as two of the leading candidates.

Delany, however, said he had pulled out of the search about three weeks ago after having been offered a second interview.

"I declined on the basis that it could have gotten serious, and I wasn't prepared to get serious," Delany said. "When you get to that level, you better be ready to take the job."

Delany said he had not disputed the reports earlier because he could not be reached while on an extended Thanksgiving holiday in North Carolina. That led to speculation that he might be looking to leave the Big Ten after 18 years.

"All my friends are whipping me about it," he said.

Asked if he might be interested in seeking another challenge, Delany replied: "I like challenges. It seems like there are enough around here."

Delany said he didn't know Murphy was a candidate until he read a newspaper report last week.

"I have high regard for Mark," he said. "He's bright, well educated, a good football guy and a prince of a person. If there's a match there, it would be great for him and them."

If he goes, Murphy's four years as Northwestern's athletic director will be marked by his decision to hire former NU star Pat Fitzgerald after the death of Randy Walker, decent play on the football field, outstanding graduation rates, a stagnant men's basketball program, a flurry of success by the softball and women's lacrosse teams and new locker rooms for men's and women's basketball.

Murphy, 52, who was co-captain for two Super Bowl teams for the Washington Redskins, is well liked around campus and viewed as a strong fundraiser.

"A lot of guys don't make a big impact in just four years," Delany said. "But he has. Even though Mark is a low-key guy in every way, he's a very substantive man."

If Murphy goes to the Packers, NU President Henry Bienen is expected to conduct a national search for his replacement.


Rosy outlook?
Delany calls it a "worst-case scenario"―the prospect of the Rose Bowl bypassing Illinois in favor of another at-large BCS team, such as Georgia.

"My job requires me to envision every scenario, even the ones I don't like to envision, so I can be prepared to rebut them," he said.

Illinois needs to improve from 15th to 14th in the standings to become BCS-bowl eligible. With the four ranked teams directly in front of the Illini playing Saturday, breaking into the top 14 is nearly certain.

But Illinois also would need Oklahoma to beat Missouri in the Big 12 championship game, clearing a spot in the BCS title game for Ohio State.

USC can lock up a Rose Bowl berth by beating UCLA. But to hear Delany and Rose Bowl Chief Executive Officer Mitch Dorger tell it, there's no guarantee Illinois would be invited to Pasadena even with a top-14 finish and Ohio State out of the picture.

Dorger called the Rose Bowl's traditional desire for a Big Ten vs. Pac-10 matchup "a very important factor to us, but it's not the only factor. We're looking very hard at Illinois, but there are other options we are examining."

That said, Dorger called Illinois "an exciting team and good friends" and said two other facts help the Illini: They that haven't played in Pasadena since the 1983 season, and they were shuttled to the Sugar Bowl after winning the 2001 conference title.

"This time of year I hear from just about everyone that has a dog in the hunt or thinks they have a dog in the hunt," Dorger said. "I know how excited Illinois is. I've talked to those folks, and we know them well. They're high on our consideration list."

If Illinois makes the top 14 but doesn't go to Pasadena, the Fiesta Bowl becomes an enticing alternative. Fox Sports, which covets the Chicago market and will televise the game, would push for Illinois to play in Tempe. The Outback Bowl is no longer a possibility because Wisconsin accepted a bid WednesdayCowboys 37, Packers 27, Final
By Toni Monkovic

I'll try to fill in for Tom a little because he's preparing to write the game story for the newspaper.
Cowboys are moving the ball with a 27-24 lead and 11:30 left.
Second and 20: Romo completes two passes to Witten, and the Cowboys have a first down. The clock ticks down to under nine minutes.
A long pass by Romo, and after a delay, a flag comes out. The initial signal was no penalty. But pass intereference is the call, and Dallas will get the ball at the 5.
First and goal at the 5: First play is an incomplete pass to Crayton in the end zone. Second and goal: Barber gets only a yard. It'll be third and goal from the 4. TOUCHDOWN. PATRICK CRAYTON SCORES. That's four touchdown passes for Romo tonight. Dallas 34, Green Bay 24, midway through the final quarter.
7:46 to go: Green Bay will start at its 26, Aaron Rodgers at QB as Favre watches as a spectator with his injured right elbow.
Rodgers completes a short pass to Driver, gain of 6 or 7. Rodgers looking very comfortable. He scrambles nicely to the 45, a 13-yard gain. First down: Dumpoff to Driver, for a first down, gain of 12. Smells like prevent defense. Rodgers throws high and long to Jennings, Incomplete. No flag. Second and 10: Quick throw to the flat to Koren Robinnson, and he gets down to the Cowboy 35. Third and 1: Ryan Grant hits a wall at the line of scrimmage. It's going to be a close call on the spot. The Packers are short by three inches. What do you do here? Do they go for it? It looks like they're kicking it. It's a long one. 52 yards. IT'S GOOD. Mason Crosby makes it with plenty of leg to spare. Cowboys 34, Packers 27, 5:16 left.

Miles Austin with a nice return to the Dallas 35 with 4:57 to go. Barber doesn't get much; let's call it 3 yards. Completion to Witten, and he drags a Green Bay defender, Bigby, for extra five yards. First down. 3:24 to go. Handoff to Barber, and Bigby is called for a facemask. Penalties have killed the Packers.

Ball spotted at the Green Bay 26. Barber spins free for a gain of 6. Dallas is draining the clock. Green Bay calls its second timeout. The Packers are down to one timeout (plus the two-minute warning).
2:59 remaining: Barber again, gets down to the 16.
2:20 left: Handoff to Barber, but this time he only gets 2 yards, to the GB 14. And that takes us to the two-minute warning. Second down and 8. Barber gains 5 yards to the 9. Third down and 3. Green Bay calls its final timeout. Barber is stopped short of a first down after a gain of 2. A field goal here pretty much ends it. Nick Folk comes out on the field. A 25-yarder with 1:06 to go. THE KICK IS GOOD. Cowboys 37, Packers 27, 1:03 to go.
Aaron Rodgers has looked good, by the way, but the Packers couldn't stop Romo. The Packers have been hurt by injuries and they have been penalized for 147 yards, to Dallas's 45.
Green Bay starts at its 19. Rodgers completes a pass to Driver to the GB 35. 49 seconds to go. Completion of 9 yards to Jennings, to the GB 44. Rodgers then rushes up and spikes the ball. No timeouts for GB. Ruvell Martin falls down, and it's an incompletion. Fourth down now. ANOTHER INCOMPLETION. Rodgers rushed his pass to Morency, who was open but not ready for it. Dallas gets the ball on downs and will win this game. Here's the final kneel-down by Romo. Final score: Dallas 37, Green Bay 27.
The other final score: NFL Network 1, Viewers Zip. (Viewers and non-viewers are welcome to comment).
The Cowboys improve to 11-1 and cement their reputation as the N.F.C.'s favorite to be the Patriots' whipping 'boys in the Super Bowl. (New England has already beaten Dallas, 48-27, this season).
Green Bay is 10-2 and awaits the medical reports on Brett Favre. Update: Favre is telling reporters that he also separated his left shoulder, but he half-laughed it off ― it's the left shoulder, you sissies! ― and said he thought he'd be ready to play at Oakland (and keep his consecutive game streak going). He has a longer work week

the hostess with the mostest maxwell

Elsa Maxwell, The Hostess with the Mostest


Elsa Maxwell reigned as America's top party-giver in the mid-Twentieth Century. Labeled "The Hostess with the Mostest" by the press, her rise to command the ballrooms of New York, Vienna and London took her worlds away from her humble Iowa beginnings.

Elsa was Born in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1883, but moved to California as a small child. She left school at age 14 to work as a theater pianist and accompanist, though she had never had a formal music lesson. By 1905, she was on the road as an odd-jobs girl in a Shakespearean troupe, then moved on to the vaudeville stage, and eventually wound up working in South African music halls.

In her travels, Elsa met socially important people, and she began showing up at society soirèes in both the United States and Europe. By the end of World War I, she was giving parties for royalty and high society throughout Europe. She established herself as a premier hostess in 1919, when she staged an exquisite dinner at the Ritz Hotel in Paris for Arthur Balfour, England's secretary of foreign affairs. Later she would organize the International Motor Boat Races at the Lido in Venice and assist the Prince of Monaco in planning some of that country's most elegant hotels, restaurants and casinos.



Elsa Maxwell's parties were noted both for her chic guests and for the novelties she devised to keep them amused. She 's invented the "scavenger hunt," for example, a party game which swept to popularity in the 1930s. And she was fond of costume parties, often requiring her males and female guests to wear costumes of the opposite gender.

One of her guests, Elizabeth Varley, wrote about attending an Elsa Maxwell party while visiting with conductor Toscanini's daughters, Wally and Wanda:

"When it became known that La Maxwell would be giving a special party, everyone was clamouring for an invitation. I was one of the lucky ones, and on receiving the invitation learned that this was to be a fancy dress evening: men were to dress as women and vice-versa, in short a transvestite affair. This being Venice, on-one raised an eyebrow. Wally was vastly intrigued by the whole idea, and promptly set about organising costumes for her house guests. She decreed that Wanda and I should be dressed as rough sailors complete with 'six o'clock shadow' on our chins. Wally herself stuck to the feminine gender, appearing as a convincing 'Madame' of a low class sea front brothel. But there was one 'gentleman' who really stood out from the crowd and that was Marlene Dietrich, flawless in top hat and tails."

Elsa Maxwell returned to New York City in the early 1930s, and moved on to Hollywood in 1938. There she diversified her career, ultimately writing and appearing in several not-very-successful movies, authoring four books, penning a syndicated columnist, hosting her own radio show ("Elsa Maxwell's Party Line"), composing some 80 songs, and lecturing broadly. She also became a regular on Jack Paar's "Tonight" show late in her life, dispensing risquè gossip in her weekly appearances. And all the while she continued organizing parties for prominent social figures.

Elsa Maxwell, who never married, died in New York on November 1, 1963. Of her celebrity-studded life, she declared that it was "not bad, for a short, fat, homely piano player from Keokuk, Iowa, with no money or background, [who] decided to become a legend and did just that."

Elsa Maxwell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Elsa Maxwell photographed by Carl van VechtenElsa Maxwell (b. May 24, 1883, Keokuk, Iowa - d. November 1, 1963, New York City) was an American gossip columnist and author, songwriter, and professional hostess. Her parties for royalty and high society figures of her day earned her the nickname "the hostess with the mostest".

Maxwell is credited with the introduction of the scavenger hunt and treasure hunt for use as party games in the modern era ([1]). She appeared in the 1943 film, Stage Door Canteen, alongside Judith Anderson, Tallulah Bankhead, Katharine Cornell, Lynn Fontanne, Helen Hayes, Gertrude Lawrence, Alfred Lunt, Lord Menuhin, and Cornelia Otis Skinner.

In 1953, Maxwell published a single issue of her magazine, Elsa Maxwell's Café Society, which had a portrait of Zsa Zsa Gabor on the cover. Anne Edwards' biography of Maria Callas (Callas, 2001) claims both that Maxwell introduced Callas to Aristotle Onassis, and also that Maxwell was a lesbian who tried to seduce Callas herself. [citation needed]

brett favre injury

Brett Favre leaves Packers game against Dallas with elbow injury
8 hours ago

IRVING, Texas - Brett Favre was hopeful about extending his consecutive start streak after he left the Green Bay Packers' 37-27 loss at Dallas on Thursday night with an injured right elbow and separated left shoulder.

Favre was hit hard while throwing a pass that was intercepted in the second quarter, leaving his status for Green Bay's next game against Oakland on Dec. 9 and his NFL-record run of 249 straight starts in question.

"I think I'll be OK," said Favre, who was wearing a bandage over his right arm. "It's fortunate we have a few extra days off. I'll just rest and see."

Favre was hurt with 10:11 left before halftime when he was hit by cornerback Nate Jones. Terence Newman made a diving interception of the fluttering pass.

Favre grabbed his arm and flexed it while walking slowly to the sideline. He didn't even realize he injured his non-throwing shoulder until he went into the dressing room to have some work done on his elbow.

Aaron Rodgers, who was 18-of-26 for 201 yards, took over at quarterback on Green Bay's next possession.

With his right arm covered with a sleeve, Favre returned to the sideline after getting treatment and having an X-ray taken during halftime. He was still wearing his pads, but wore a baseball cap as he watched Rodgers run the Green Bay offence.

Favre said he suffered a similar nerve injury to his right elbow last season, leaving the Packers' 35-0 loss to New England at Lambeau Field. Rodgers relieved Favre in that game, but broke his foot.

He said he lost feeling in his fingers Thursday night and his elbow began to swell.

"I could grip a football," Favre said. "I didn't want to throw and have it go out the back. It wasn't worth the risk."

Favre didn't seem too concerned about the shoulder since that injury isn't to his throwing arm.

"It's one of those things you can shoot up and play with," Favre said.

Rodgers had played in only six games in two-plus seasons before Thursday night. He had thrown only two passes this season.

With 31 seconds left in the first half, Rodgers threw his first career touchdown pass, an 11-yarder to Greg Jennings that got the Packers within 27-17.

Newman's interception set up the Cowboys for Tony Romo's 10-yard touchdown pass to Terrell Owens that gave them a 27-10 lead.

IRVING, Texas ?The sight of Brett Favre holding his limp, lifeless right arm midway through the second quarter wasn't pretty Thursday night at Texas Stadium.

The Packers quarterback had just been blindsided by Nathan Jones, who was unblocked on a cornerback blitz and hit Favre as he released the ball.

The resulting interception was bad enough for the Packers, but it got worse when Favre was slow to get up, had trouble gripping a football and didn't return to field.

The damage report came after the game, when it was revealed Favre lost feeling and experienced swelling in his right elbow and tingling in his fingers.

"If anyone has ever hit their funny bone, imagine hitting it 10 times as hard with a hammer," Favre said in describing the injury after the Cowboys' 37-27 victory.

But wait, there's more. Favre separated his left shoulder on the play.

If ever Favre's streak of 249 consecutive games started (269 including playoffs) was in jeopardy, it would seem to be now.

But Favre, who sustained a similar injury to his elbow last year against New England, thinks that with an extra three days of rest, he can play against the Oakland Raiders a week from Sunday.

He answered the bell last year, just seven days after the Patriots game.

"It's a little more swollen than the last time but in a little different area," Favre said. "It kind of got the nerve, but not as direct as it was last time, so I think I'll be fine."

Leave it to the battered and bruised Favre, who hasn't missed a start in 15 years, to downplay his injuries. Favre said he played with a separated shoulder early in his career and sees no reason why he couldn't do it again.

Favre wasn't blaming anyone but himself for the play on which he got hurt.

"Clearly, that was my fault," he said. "There ain't too many times in my career that I can say that a guy came free (like that)."

It was a rough night all the way around for Favre, who before the injury completed just 5 of 14 passes for 56 yards. His quarterback rating was a meager 8.9, which broke his string of five consecutive games with a rating higher than 100.

Favre's biggest regret is that he couldn't finish what he started.

"I couldn't go back in the game," he said. "Believe me, I wanted to."

Although the Packers fought back valiantly from a 17-point second-quarter deficit behind backup Aaron Rodgers, their rally fell short.

Forget about the defeat for a moment, which dropped the Packers to 10-2 and all but guaranteed the Cowboys (11-1) the homefield advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.

The injury to Favre is paramount on the Packers' minds. He was having the best season of his 17-year NFL career. He had guided the Packers to their best start in 45 years.

Despite Favre's confidence, there is doubt about not only his availability, but his effectiveness should he return.

Rodgers looked impressive in guiding the Packers to a pair of long touchdown drives that cut a 27-10 deficit to 27-24. He looks like a keeper who one day soon could take over the starting job permanently.

Packers coach Mike McCarthy will have to think long and hard about resting Favre, particularly since the Packers have a 2?game cushion in the battle for a first-round playoff bye.

Based on Rodgers' solid performance, in which he directed three scoring drives, completed 18 of 26 passes for 201 yards and posted a 104.8 QB rating, it wouldn't be a stretch to see him lead the Packers to some victories in the final month of the season.

That would give Favre a chance to get himself healthy for the playoffs. But it also would end his amazing streak.

Mike Vandermause is sports editor of the Press-Gazette.

ancient greek olympics

Air China launches direct Beijing-Athens flights
Thursday, November 29, 2007; Posted: 07:17 PM

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ATHENS, Nov 30, 2007 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- AICAF | charts | news | PowerRating -- The first direct flight between Beijing and Athens by Air China arrived at Athens airport Thursday morning.

Chairman of Air China Ltd. Li Jiaxiang, Greek Tourism Minister Aris Spiliotopoulos and Greek Ambassador to China Michael Cambanis, among other passengers, were aboard the plane.

During the flight's departure ceremony, Li said both China and Greece boast ancient civilizations, and the direct flight will greatly promote their traditional friendly ties and enhance tourism between the two countries.

The launch of the direct route is good proof that the Chinese government and Air China attach great importance to developing a strategic partnership with Greece, he said.

Chinese Ambassador to Greece Luo Linquan, who attended the ceremony, extended his congratulations on the occasion, saying the direct flight is a tangible result of the increasing contacts between the two countries in every field, from politics and economy to culture and tourism.

Spiliotopoulos said the direct flight has opened another gate for people from Asia to Europe, which promotes the cooperation of tourism and other businesses between China and Greece.

The weekly services connecting Beijing to Athens depart from Beijing every Sunday and Wednesday and from Athens every Monday and Thursday.

Beijing will host the Olympic Games in 2008, and the Olympic flame will be lit in Greece, the birthplace of the Olympics
all Greek to pupils at Branscombe Primary School as they welcomed a story teller to the classroom.

The children took part in a Greek Day, last Thursday, to tie in with term's topic for key stage two pupils.

In the morning, the children had fun dressing up in ancient Greek outfits and in the afternoon storyteller, Steve Manning, paid the school a visit.

Headteacher Katie Gray said: "He showed the children the armour, weapons and shield that a Greek soldier, a hoplite, would have. Then he told a variety of Greek myths and carried out some drama with the children, where he was in the role as an Athenian soldier and the children were from Sparta."

Malachi, one of the pupils at the school, said: "I really enjoyed the day. My favourite part was when we were shown the large shield.

"It was amazing to know how much the shield meant to the hoplites."

Henry, another pupil, said: "I really enjoyed the talk on the Greeks. I learnt lots of Greek words."

The theme continued into the afternoon when the school staged an ancient Greek Olympics.

The children paraded down the new footpath to the village field with Olympic banners and took part in various activities including javelin throwing with sponge spears and chariot racing with bouncing space hoppers.

Mrs Gray said: "It was great fun. The children worked very well in their teams and gave lots of encouragement to each other.

"They really got into the spirit of the Olympics. All the children were presented with a medal and the overall winners were the Reef Knot team.

what literary character marries charles hamilton out of spite

With The Wind (1939) is often considered the most beloved, enduring and popular film of all time. Sidney Howard's script was derived from Margaret Mitchell's first and only published, best-selling Civil War and Reconstruction Period novel of 1,037 pages that first appeared in 1936, but was mostly written in the late 1920s. Producer David O. Selznick had acquired the film rights to Mitchell's novel in July, 1936 for $50,000 - a record amount at the time to an unknown author for her first novel, causing some to label the film "Selznick's Folly." At the time of the film's release, the fictional book had surpassed 1.5 million copies sold. More records were set when the film was first aired on television in two parts in late 1976, and controversy arose when it was restored and released theatrically in 1998.

The famous film, shot in three-strip Technicolor, is cinema's greatest, star-studded, historical epic film of the Old South during wartime that boasts an immortal cast in a timeless, classic tale of a love-hate romance. The indomitable heroine, Scarlett O'Hara, struggles to find love during the chaotic Civil War years and afterwards, and ultimately must seek refuge for herself and her family back at the beloved plantation Tara. There, she takes charge, defends it against Union soldiers, carpetbaggers, and starvation itself. She finally marries her worldly admirer Rhett Butler, but her apathy toward him in their marriage dooms their battling relationship, and she again returns to Tara to find consolation - indomitable.

Authenticity is enhanced by the costuming, sets, and variations on Stephen Foster songs and other excerpts from Civil War martial airs. Its opening, only a few months after WWII began in Europe, helped American audiences to identify with the war story and its theme of survival.

With three years advance publicity and Hollywood myth-making, three and one-half hours running time (with one intermission), a gala premiere in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, highest-grossing film status (eventually reaching $200 million), and Max Steiner's sweeping musical score, the exquisitely-photographed, Technicolor film was a blockbuster in its own time. A budgeted investment of over $4 million in production costs was required - an enormous, record-breaking sum. The film (originally rough-cut at 6 hours in length) was challenging in its making, due to its controversial subject matter (including rape, drunkenness, moral dissipation and adultery) and its epic qualities, with more than 50 speaking roles and 2,400 extras.

Various elements in the original novel had to be eliminated, and some characters, scenes, and events were either truncated, dropped, or modified:

Scarlett's first two children (Wade Hampton and Ella Lorena) were eliminated
In the novel, Charles Hamilton was in love with Honey Wilkes prior to falling in love with Scarlett; in the film, he was in love with India Wilkes
Rhett's scenes (and confessions) about being a blockade runner were minimized or cut out
the novel's love scenes (in particular, the "Paddock Scene") were more low-key
the character of the Atlanta prostitute Belle Watling was sanitized, and Rhett's finding of solace with Belle, after Scarlett vowed not to have any more children following Bonnie's birth, was also down-played
any episodes or mention of the Ku Klux Klan were dropped
Rhett's contempt for Ashley was softened
Rhett's last words in the novel: "My dear, I don't give a damn." In the film: "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." [Contrary to popular belief, it was not the film with the first use of the word 'damn' (the expletive had been said a year earlier in Pygmalion (1938) and variations, such as 'damned', were heard in other earlier films]
Will Benteen (Tara's "man of the house"), Rhett's sister Rosemary Butler, and Scarlett's uncle and lawyer Henry Hamilton were eliminated
On the night of the Shantytown raid, Melanie read from Charles Dickens' David Copperfield rather than from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables
A nationwide casting search for an actress to play the Southern belle Scarlett resulted in the hiring of young British actress Vivien Leigh, although over 30 other actresses (some well-known, and some amateurs) had been tested or considered including: Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, Susan Hayward, Loretta Young, Paulette Goddard, Margaret Sullavan, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Lana Turner, Joan Bennett, Mae West, Tallulah Bankhead, Jean Arthur, and Lucille Ball. Although MGM star Clark Gable was expected to play the role of the dashing war profiteer Rhett Butler, Errol Flynn, Ronald Colman, and Gary Cooper were also considered for the part. Author Margaret Mitchell told a reporter she favored Basil Rathbone for the male lead. The four principal stars were billed in this order: Clark Gable, followed by Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland, and then Vivien Leigh last with "...and presenting" -- that is, until she won the Oscar and it was changed to "starring."

The landmark film received tremendous accolades, more than any previous films to date: thirteen nominations and eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Victor Fleming - the only credited director), Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), a posthumous Best Screenplay (Sidney Howard, along with collaborative assistance from Edwin Justin Mayer, John Van Druten, Ben Hecht, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Jo Swerling) - the first post-humous winner of its kind, Best Color Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration, Best Film Editing, and Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel - the first time an African-American had been nominated and honored) and two honorary plaques, one for production designer William Cameron Menzies for the "use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood," and the other a technical production award for Don Musgrave for "pioneering in the use of coordinated equipment."

Many of the five nominations that lost were unexpected: Best Actor (Clark Gable who lost to Robert Donat for Goodbye, Mr. Chips), Best Supporting Actress (Olivia de Havilland who was competing against co-star Hattie McDaniel), Best Sound Recording, Best Original Score (Max Steiner), and Best Special Effects. Its record of ten Academy Awards wins held firm until 1959, when Ben-Hur (1959) won eleven Oscars. It was phenomenal that Gone With the Wind did so well, given that 1939 boasted some of the greatest American films ever made, including Ninotchka, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and Stagecoach.

Although almost half of the film was directed by Victor Fleming (45%) - who received screen credit, four other directors contributed various parts of the film: Sam Wood (15%), William Cameron Menzies (15%), 'woman's director' George Cukor (5%) - the first director, B. Reeves ("Breezy") Eason (2%), and the remaining from various second unit directors (18%). Menzies was placated with the credit: "Production designed by..." In the 30s, Selznick had already produced such prestige pictures and literary works for the screen, such as David Copperfield (1935), A Tale Of Two Cities (1935), Anna Karenina (1935), The Prisoner Of Zenda (1937), and The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer (1938), and at the time of Gone With the Wind's production, he was also preparing Rebecca (1940).

There was, naturally, a six-hour, soap-operish TV mini-series sequel titled Scarlett (1994), that was based on the follow-up novel by Alexandra Ripley, set partially in Ireland. It starred Joanne Whalley-Kilmer (as Scarlett), Timothy Dalton (as Rhett), Stephen Collins (as Ashley), and Barbara Barrie (as Pauline Robillard). Earlier, North and South (1985), with Patrick Swayze, Robert Mitchum, Kirstie Alley, Johnny Cash, Gene Kelly, Hal Holbrook - and others, and based on John Jake's best-selling book, was another attempt of a TV mini-series to recapture the magic of the ante-bellum period.

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In the opening credits, producer David Selznick's name appears: "Selznick International In Association with Metro-Goldwyn Mayer has the Honor to Present its Technicolor production of Margaret Mitchell's Story of the Old South." The title of the film "GONE WITH THE WIND" is displayed in gigantic, majestic words, each one individually sweeping across the screen from right to left above a red-hued sunset. As the titles and credits play, carefully-selected images of the Old South are portrayed as backgrounds - a green pasture with horses grazing, a river at night, magnolias, a mill constructed from bricks, slaves working in the fields, peaceful Southern plantations, the city of Atlanta, and a sunset.

The fanciful, introductory foreword to the film explains:

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...
Part One:

The film extends over a time period of twelve years in the life of narcissistic plantation belle Scarlett O'Hara, from the start of the Civil War through the Reconstruction Period, and covers her various romantic pursuits against the backdrop of historical events. The beautiful, but spoiled, pouting, high-tempered and strong-willed 16 year-old Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh), the eldest of three O'Hara daughters, lives an idyllic life at a North Georgian cotton plantation called Tara. [The fake front piece of the plantation house is all that really exists of the O'Hara home - also note that the door is off-center.] On the mansion's porch, in a beautiful white crinoline gown with ruffles, the headstrong young woman complains, in her first line, to suitor twins Brent and Stuart Tarleton (Fred Crane and George Reeves). She is sick of 'war talk' and all the disruptions caused by the turmoil of war:

Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war. This war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides, there isn't going to be any war...If either of you boys says 'war' just once again, I'll go in the house and slam the door.
She states a variation on her trademark line for the first time when asked if she is attending the neighboring Wilkes-Twelve Oakes plantation's barbecue the next day: "Why I hadn't thought about that yet. I'll, I'll think about that tomorrow." She teases the slavish beaux-admirers about whether they can waltz with her. Scarlett is stunned and dismayed to hear a secret rumor that the man she loves and obsesses about, the eldest Wilkes son Ashley, is planning to marry his demure, delicately aristocratic, sweet-natured cousin, Melanie Hamilton from Atlanta - a "goody-goody" according to Scarlett. Infatuated with him and unaccustomed to losing, she tries to convince herself: "It can't be true. Ashley loves me."

Her white-haired Irish immigrant father, prosperous plantation owner Gerald O'Hara (Thomas Mitchell) gallops wildly on horseback across the fields and jumps over fences to meet Scarlett who walks down to meet him in the late afternoon light at "quittin' time." [The white horse ridden by O'Hara was also used as the Lone Ranger's horse Silver in the 1938 and 1939 Republic serials of the legendary hero.] As they walk together, she again is told that Ashley's marriage to Melanie (a "pale-faced, mealy-mouthed ninny" in Scarlett's eyes) will be announced at the barbecue's evening ball. Her father wishes that his petulant daughter won't make a "spectacle" of herself, "running about over a man who's not in love with you." Scarlett's father believes she wouldn't be happy with Ashley anyway, and qualifies the characteristics important in a prospective mate: "Well, what difference does it make who you marry - so long as he's a Southerner and thinks like you?"

She complains to him about Tara as a place that doesn't mean anything to her. He reinforces for his short-sighted, headstrong daughter the value of "the land" and the priceless inheritance that Tara represents [a lesson that Scarlett never forgets during the ravages and blows of war].

Gerald: Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O'Hara, that Tara - that land doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land's the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts.
Scarlett: Oh, Pa. You talk like an Irishman.
Gerald: It's proud I am that I'm Irish, and don't you be forgetting, Missy, that you're half-Irish, too. And, to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them - why, the land they live on is like their mother. Oh, but there, there. Now, you're just a child. It'll come to you, this love of the land. There's no getting away from it if you're Irish.
Father and daughter are silhouetted as they stand beside a tree with a twisted, gnarled set of branches. A pulled-back camera view shows Tara and a colorful, flaming sunset sky. Max Steiner's musical score "Tara's Theme" swells magnificently.

Ellen Robillard O'Hara (Barbara O'Neil) comes home after acting as a mid-wife, returning from the bedside of her overseer's "poor white trash" mistress Emmy Slattery (Isabel Jewell), who has just given birth to a baby that "mercifully" died. The overseer Jonas Wilkerson (Victor Jory) asks her as she steps from her carriage: "We finished plowing the creek bottom today. What do you want me to start on tomorrow?" Ellen recommends to her husband that the overseer be dismissed promptly (and he is fired the next morning).

The O'Hara family, in a hushed, church-like scene lit by flickering candlelit, offers evening prayers. Still upset, Scarlett can only think about how to snare Ashley: "Ashley doesn't know I love him. I'll tell him that I love him, and then he can't marry..."

Preparing for the neighboring Twelve Oaks plantation's barbecue the next day, her shrewd, protective, tenacious and sassy slave Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) laces up a vain Scarlett as she holds onto one of the bedposts of her white ruffled tester bed. Mammy, never fooled by Scarlett's airs and tears, insists that Scarlett eat the food that she and simple-minded household servant Prissy (Butterfly McQueen) have prepared for her: "You's gwine eat every mouthful of this." Mammy chides her for choosing a green-sprigged muslin dress to wear that reveals too much skin:

You can't show your bosom 'fore three o'clock.
To no avail, Mammy vigorously lectures Scarlett: "If you don't care what folks says about this family, I does. I has told you and told you that you can always tell a lady by the way that she eats in front of folks like a bird, and I ain't aimin' for you to go to Mr. John Wilkes's and eat like a fieldhand and gobble like a hog." Hard-headed Scarlett's response is: "Fiddle-dee-dee." Scarlett believes Ashley will approve of her healthy appetite, but Mammy thinks she might as well give up on winning Ashley away from Melanie: "What a gentleman says and what they thinks is two different things. And I ain't noticed Mist' Ashley askin' for to marry ya." After Mammy has proved her wrong, Scarlett sits on the stairs of her bedroom stuffing her mouth with the "vittles."

Carriages draw up with guests in front of the pillared, Twelve Oaks plantation for the lavish Wilkes barbecue - a beautifully photographed scene. Exquisitely-costumed guests stroll on the lawn and inside the vast mansion, with a massive hallway and wide, graceful, double-curved staircase. The camera follows Scarlett through the door and into the hallway where she greets the gentlemanly, idealistic, scholarly and sensitive Ashley Wilkes, the aesthetic eldest son of Twelve Oaks patriarch John Wilkes (Howard Hickman). Ashley and Scarlett also greet his sweetheart, the shy Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland), Ashley's radiantly-pretty cousin. The quietly charming, sweet-natured Melanie is nothing but loving toward Scarlett: "I've always admired you so. I wish I could be more like you."

Scarlett greets two other gentlemen (in fact, her future first and second husbands), shamelessly flirting with Melanie's weakly brother Charles Hamilton (Rand Brooks), intended beau of cousin India Wilkes (Alicia Rhett), one of Ashley's sisters; and then with whisker-faced Frank Kennedy (Carroll Nye), beau of Scarlett's own sister Suellen (Evelyn Keyes).

[IMPORTANT - PLEASE NOTE: in Margaret Mitchell's novel, Charles Hamilton has an unspoken understanding of marriage with cousin Honey Wilkes, not with India Wilkes (who is engaged to marry Stuart Tarleton), prior to falling in love with Scarlett. After Scarlett flirts with Charles, he falls madly in love with her. At the BBQ, she accepts Charles' marriage proposal and agrees to marry the smitten man after Ashley rejects her for Melanie, and after being made fun of by Honey.]

As she ascends the staircase, Scarlett asks one of her girlfriends, Cathleen Calvert (Marcella Martin) to identify the "nasty dark one" [dark-haired and devilish-looking] that is standing alone at the foot of the staircase. Scarlett is told: "My dear, don't you know? That's Rhett Butler! He's from Charleston. He has the most terrible reputation." The dashing and charming Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), in his dramatic film entrance, is dressed in an elegant black suit - the roguish character exchanges a cool, challenging stare with Scarlett, attracted by her stunning beauty. She responds to his sexually attractive gaze as he undresses her with his eyes: "He looks as if - as if he knows what I look like without my shimmy."

In silhouette, Ashley and Melanie move toward French windows. When they are opened, the lawn is revealed outside filled with festive surroundings and guests. Lovingly, the pale, white-skinned Ashley speaks to her: "You seem to belong here. As if it had all been imagined for you." Melanie describes the aristocratic Southern style that she is marrying into: "It's more than a house. It's a whole new world that wants only to be graceful and beautiful." Even war won't damage their love for each other - she promises: "Whatever comes, I'll love you just as I do now until I die."

On the lawn at Twelve Oaks, Scarlett is surrounded by interested beaux, but not Ashley. During their naptime, Scarlett's sister Suellen teases her about her romantic interest: "How is Ashley today, Scarlett? He didn't seem to be paying much attention to you." In an upstairs bedroom, a black child fans the young, aristocratic ladies stretched out for afternoon naps. Scarlett sneaks down and hides on the stairs, trying to find an opportune time to speak to Ashley.

There is a heated debate going on among the gentlemen about the war. Excited and patriotic southerners boastfully predict a quick victory, led by Gerald O'Hara: "The Yankees can't fight and we can!" Ashley attempts to cool off the room full of Southern hotheads, hoping that the North will let the South leave the Union without war: "Most of the miseries of the world were caused by wars. And, when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were about."

The black sheep of a good family from Charleston, and turned out of West Point, Rhett expresses his lone dissent from the optimistic voices. He disagrees with the fervent patriotism of the Confederates: "I think it's hard winning a war with words, gentlemen...I'm saying very plainly that the Yankees are better equipped than we...All we've got is cotton and slaves, and arrogance." He realistically believes that the South's cause is doomed to failure because of its gradually declining resources - he spoils everyone's enthusiasm for war:

I seem to be spoiling everybody's brandy and cigars and dreams of victory.
In the famous library scene, Scarlett energetically corners a disinterested Ashley and declares her deep love for him. He expresses a brotherly love for her:

Ashley: Isn't it enough that you've gathered every other man's heart today? You've always had mine. You cut your teeth on it.
Scarlett: Don't tease me now. Have I your heart my darling? I love you. I love you.
Ashley: You mustn't say such things. You'll hate me for hearing them.
Scarlett: I could never hate you. And I know you must care about me. Oh, you do care, don't you?
Ashley: Yes, I do care. Oh, can't we go away and forget we ever said these things?
Ashley wishes that she had never professed her love for him. She is rudely startled and hurt when he announces his marriage to his cousin Melanie. But he doesn't want to hurt her: "Oh my dear, why must you make me say things that will hurt you? How can I make you understand? You're so young and unthinking. You don't know what marriage means." Ashley reaffirms his love and affinity to Melanie, a woman with a delicate, graceful nature like his own: "She's like me, Scarlett. She's part of my blood and we understand each other." With great ardor and vitality, Scarlett doesn't want to hear the truth: "But you love me!"

Ashley thinks he loves Scarlett, but he is extremely wimpish and inadequate in contrast to her harsher, more ruthless qualities. He vicariously envies her zest for life and simultaneously cools her off, expressing his fear of marrying her:

How could I help loving you - you who have all the passion for life that I lack? But that kind of love isn't enough to make a successful marriage for two people who are as different as we are.
She unfairly blames him for leading her on and then slaps him: "I'll hate you till I die. I can't think of anything bad enough to call you." Without any more discussion, Ashley stiffly walks from the room. In frustration, she throws a vase against the fireplace mantle.

Scarlett is surprised, embarrassed, and angered to see Rhett Butler rise from his hiding place behind the sofa - he is amused after overhearing the entire Ashley-Scarlett exchange and her importunate pleas, sarcastically commenting: "Has the war started?" Their first, fiery conversation and meeting is typical of their entire relationship in the film - a well-matched, sexually-electric, equally conscience-less bonding, but always tumultuously paired together. Rhett doesn't want to interrupt their "beautiful love scene," but promises to "keep her secret safe." Scarlett lashes back:

Scarlett: Sir, you are no gentleman.
Rhett: And you, miss, are no lady...Don't think that I hold that against you. Ladies have never held any charm for me.
To the tunes of "Dixie," a horseman arrives at Twelve Oaks with the news of the advent of the War Between the States, the firing on Ft. Sumter. The southerners mount their horses to go off to enlist and prepare for the conflict. Manipulatively and spitefully (while watching Melanie kiss Ashley farewell), Scarlett accepts an impulsive, impetuous proposal of marriage from Charles Hamilton, Melanie's colorless and shy brother, and steals him away from his beau Honey Wilkes. [See Important Note above.]

She marries out of spite and to stop the growing gossip about her obvious interest in Ashley. Charles and Scarlett, wearing an ivory silk gown, are married in the parlor at Tara, one day after Melanie's and Ashley's wedding. Charles (and Ashley) are due to leave in a few days for the war. As they part for the war, Charles misinterprets Scarlett's tears: "Don't cry, darling. The war'll be over in a few weeks, and then I'll be coming back to you."

Scarlett is quickly made a reluctant widow - Charles dies of pneumonia, following an attack of measles in a war training camp before reaching any battlefront. Inappropriately, Scarlett objects to wearing black mourning clothes in memory of her recently-deceased husband, and tries on a colorful bonnet. She reacts to the sad news, not seeing much future for a young, attractive widow and not feeling any grief. She tells Mammy:

I'm too young to be a widow.
She weeps to her mother, not about the loss of her husband, but about her boring future and the prospect of wearing black: "My life is over. Nothing will ever happen to me anymore." Her mother comforts her: "It's only natural to want to look young and be young when you are young."

Impatient with the lack of life at Tara, Scarlett has the option of visiting in Savannah or in Atlanta. A willful Scarlett decides to go to Atlanta to live with a frail Melanie and help Melanie's Aunt "Pittypat" Hamilton (Laura Hope Crews) take care of her as she awaits the birth of her first baby. Mammy shrewdly and accurately interprets Scarlett's real motives - to be closer to Ashley when he returns on leave from the war: "Savannah would be better for you. You'll just get in trouble in Atlanta...You know what trouble I's talking about. I's

emily sander

police struggle to identify a body found 50 miles east of El Dorado, Kansas as missing student Emily Sanders, family members say a body in the strange case of the student turned porn star would bring closure.
"We had to know one way or another," Sanders grandmother, Shirley Sander, said in a telephone interview with the Chicago Tribune.

It's been one of the most interesting cases to rock Kansas in years. Sander, who has been missing since Friday night, may have been leading a double life as a porn star under the name Zoey Zane.

Authorities said the body they found matches a preliminary description of the 18-year-old business managements student, who hasn't been seen since leaving the Retreat Bar in El Dorado Friday night with 24-year-old Israel Mireles.

Authorities have not indicated whether it is known if Sander left with Mireles willingly or was forced to accompany him from the bar.

According to report on WOAI.com, evidence found in a hotel room formerly occupied by Mireles, including a large amount of blood, prompted police to believe something violent occurred to Sanders in the room.

Despite media attention surrounding Sanders' double life, Police Chief Tom Boren insists there is no evidence to suggest her Internet persona had anything to do with Sanders' disappearance.

"The issue of the Internet and the spinoff of that has been literally crippling our investigation," Boren said.

A report from the Houston Chronicle yesterday suggested that Emily Sander may have been working as an internet porn star under the name Zoey Zane.

Photos of Zoey Zane seen on YourDailyGirls.com resembled the missing college student and Nikki Watson, a friend of Sander's, told the Associated Press that the two were indeed the same person.

"She enjoyed it. She is a young teenage girl and she wanted to be in the movies… she needed the extra money," Watson told the AP.

Some of the photos of Zoey Zane on YourDailyGirls.com show her posing in nude, lesbian-themed photos with two other women in Wizard of Oz costumes. The main web site with explicit photos and videos of Zane, www.zoeyzane.com, was taken down since rumors about Sander's double life began to circulate.

Mireles, meanwhile, has vanished along with his 16 year-old pregnant girlfriend, Victoria Martens. The couple's rental car was found abandoned in Vernon, Texas and police believe they may be headed for Mexico.

Investigators are asking anyone with information about the Emily Sander case to call them at Emily Sander case timeline
Major events in the disappearance of Emily Sander:

Friday: Emily Sander, 18, is last seen leaving the Retreat bar in El Dorado with Israel Mireles.

Saturday: Police find room splattered with blood at the El Dorado Motel, about a mile and a half from the Retreat bar. Mireles had been staying at that motel while he worked as a waiter at a restaurant next to the motel.

Also Saturday: Police find Sander's car parked at the bar. Meanwhile, police say, Mireles left Kansas for Texas on Saturday, taking his pregnant 16-year-old girlfriend with him.

Sunday: Police release photos of Emily Sander, Israel Mireles and his girlfriend.

Monday: Police announced they found "evidence" in Mireles' hotel room.

Tuesday: Police ask the public to help find a bedspread that went missing from the motel room on the night Emily disappeared. Witnesses who had seen the motel room said they saw "a lot of blood" in there.

Wednesday: Police in Texas find the rental car they say Mireles used to travel there. Also: Search teams walked along U.S. 54 in Greenwood County and in El Dorado near a bridge crossing the Walnut River.

Thursday: The body of a woman matching Sander's description is found along U.S. 54 Highway between El Dorado and Toronto.

polaroid dvd recorder

Stores Usher in Holiday Shopping Season
By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO � Nov 23, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) ― Shoppers ― shrugging off a spate of lead-tainted toy recalls and higher prices for food and gas ― jammed stores before dawn Friday to grab discounted TVs, toys and clothing for the official start of the holiday season, expected to be the weakest retail showing in five years.

Stores are counting on hordes of shoppers who have pulled back in recent months. Merchants need them to keep coming throughout the holiday season to make their sales goals.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, threw open its doors at 5 a.m., offering such specials as a Polaroid 42-inch LCD HDTV for $798 and a $79.87 Sony digital camera. From 5 a.m. to noon, Toys "R" Us Inc. offered 101 door busters on such toys as Mattel Inc.'s Barbie styling set and Hasbro Inc.'s FurReal interactive jungle cat toy. That's four times the number it offered last year.

J.C. Penney Co., which opened at 4 a.m., an hour earlier than last year, served up such deals as a leather massage recliner for $298.88, after a $50 mail in rebate. The original price was $799. Other deals include 50 percent off toys and board games.

"If they were selling it, we were buying it," Tom Shea, 23, said as he surveyed his purchases at a midtown Manhattan Best Buy store. He said he, some friends and a cousin were the first through the doors when the store opened at 4 a.m.

Shea, of Brooklyn, and two friends spent a total of about $2,500 on two laptop computers, an Xbox game console, a vacuum and several other items. They estimated they had saved about $1,500 ― after waiting for 35 hours outside the Fifth Avenue store to make sure they were first in line, he said.

"What people won't do to save 20 bucks," said Judy Fritz, 50. She was among those hoping to snare a bigger bargain ― a Microsoft Zune music player for $79.99, marked down from $199.99, until noon. The demand for the device was so brisk that Fritz feared the store might run out, even though it had been open for only half an hour.

The Las Vegas resident and her husband, Bill, had arrived with a game plan: "One person plants himself (in a line), and the other person hunts."

Shoppers from overseas were reveling in exchange rates that made discounts even deeper.

The dollar hit record lows against the euro Friday and reached their lowest point in 12 years against the yen.

"Everything is half price for us," Ashlee Clifford said, smiling, as she shopped at a Circuit City in Manhattan. Clifford lives in Northern Ireland.

She was unaware of the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy ― known in retail circles as Black Friday ― until she arrived in New York.

"It's absolutely madness," said Clifford, 26.

At 5 a.m. in the St. Louis suburb of Maplewood, hundreds of shoppers bundled against the cold stood in a line that snaked around the side of a Wal-Mart.

Inside, they picked up store maps directing them to the bargains.

Sheila Prater, 51, of University City, left about 20 minutes later with a $144 Magnavox DVD recorder as a gift for her husband and two HP deskjet printers, one for home and one for her daycare business. She said she paid $34 each for the printers.

But the shopping ritual was much calmer than it had been two years ago, she said.

"They just let them go like cattle," she said. "My heart didn't have to pump as fast this year."

Recognizing a potentially tough shopping season ahead, stores began discounting weeks ago, with such gimmicks as door busters and expanded hours. While top luxury stores like Saks Fifth Avenue continue to do well, merchants that cater to middle and lower income shoppers have suffered as consumers struggle with higher gas and food prices as well as a slumping housing market.

There are no new, must-have holiday items like Apple Inc.'s iPod, though certain products are doing well. At toy stores, Smart Cycle, from Mattel's Fisher-Price, and Jakks Pacific's EyeClops, a handheld device that magnifies objects, are among the early hits, though sales have been stymied by concerns over Chinese-made toys. At clothing stores, dressses have been a strong seller, according to Dana Telsey, CEO of Telsey Advisory Group, an independent research firm. In electronics, there are no new game consoles, though shortages of Nintendo's Wii, which made its debut a year ago, have kept shoppers alert to whatever has dribbled in.

While Black Friday is expected by some analysts to be the busiest day of the season, it's not a predictor of how retailers will fare in the season overall. In fact, the weekend only accounts for about 10 percent of overall holiday sales. But it does set the tone since what consumers see that day influences where they will shop for the rest of the year.

C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, noted that if shoppers walk into a store on Black Friday and like what they see, they will more likely go back during the Christmas season.

"This is their biggest chance to win at retail during Christmas season," Beemer said.

Last year, retailers had a good start during the Thanksgiving weekend, but many stores struggled in December and a shopping surge just before and after Christmas wasn't enough to make up for lost sales.

This year, analysts expect sales gains to be the weakest in five years. Washington-based National Retail Federation predicted that total holiday sales will be up 4 percent for the combined November and December period, the slowest growth since a 1.3 percent rise in 2002.

Holiday sales rose 4.6 percent in 2006 and growth has averaged 4.8 percent over the last decade.

Associated Press writers Adam Goldman in New York City, Betsy Taylor of St. Louis, Blake Nicholson in Bismarck, N.D., Ken Kusmer in Indianapolis

what does the military nickname g.i. stand for

No one actually knows. The best story I heard was that in WWII, soldiers where know as General Issue. "Joe" that's an American soldier. I guess it got compounded into GI Joe. Ok, the hard fact is that a soldier(i.e. person) is a piece of equipment to the military much like a tank or rifle. Every unit has it's own Table of Organization and Equipment(TO&E) allowing for a certain number of manpower and equipment. For example the TO&E for an Infantry Company may be 50 soldiers and 50 M-16 rifles. So if a soldier is lost for some reason because of being transfered or a casuality of war, you would order another soldier in the same fashion as you would order food or bullets through the supply sargeantElectronic edition | Subscribe to the paper Rocky Mountain NewsHome News Business Sports Entertainment Living Outdoors Opinion Multimedia Your Space Jobs Autos Homes Classifieds Shop Local Nation World Weather Traffic Education Politics Obituaries Special Reports Columns & Blogs Tech & Telecom Money & Markets Airlines & Aerospace Real Estate Energy Health Care Retail Skiing & Tourism More Business Special Reports Columns & Blogs Broncos Avalanche Nuggets Rockies Rapids College Fantasy Sports Racing Olympics Golf More Sports Rocky Preps Special Reports Columns & Blogs Movies TV Music Art & Architecture Theater Dining Nightlife Books Fun & Games Events More Entertainment Special Reports Columns & Blogs Health & Fitness Fashion Food Home & Garden More Living Special Reports Columns & Blogs Mountain Activities Escapes Hunting & Fishing Skiing & Snowboarding Camping Hiking More Outdoors Special Reports Columns & Blogs Editorials Letters to the Editor Speakout Poll Archive Special Reports Columns & Blogs Photo Archive Photo Galleries Video Audio & Podcasts Special Reports Front Page Gallery Your Photos Your Votes Polls YourHub.com
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Lucky or not, here are two heroes
WW II veterans get medals they earned in battle
Katie Kerwin Mccrimmon, Rocky Mountain News
星期六, 十一月 10, 2007

More Local NewsCoalition fighting sale of two hospitals
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Email this Print this Comments Change text size Subscribe to print edition iPod friendly Share this site Del.icio.us Digg Newsvine Lucky McGinty has lived a charmed life. On Friday, the nickname he earned as an -Army Air Corps bomber in World War II fit even better.

After 62 years, McGinty and fellow veteran Shep Waldman, also 83, finally received medals they had earned decades ago.

"I've been fortunate all my life," said McGinty, shocked and touched after the surprise medal ceremony sponsored by the Greatest Generations Foundation.

During his service as a staff sergeant from 1941 to 1945, McGinty was never injured despite flying 29 missions over -Nazi-occupied Europe. His buddies started calling him Lucky after he stood up to an abusive higher-up and didn't get court- martialed.

But the moniker was especially apt during one mission over Paris in 1943.

McGinty and his fellow airmen were trying to blow up a munitions factory on New Year's Eve. The French workers had been warned to leave. McGinty armed the bombs, but they failed to eject from the plane. Fearing the bombs would land on civilians or destroy the plane, McGinty straddled the open bomb bay as the plane flew at 20,000 feet and pushed the bombs out.

Now, he has a medal to mark his heroism and to share with his five children, five grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Waldman served as a staff sergeant in the Army from 1943 to 1945, surviving hand-to-hand combat and frigid conditions in the Battle of the Bulge, where he withstood more than a month without a proper coat, a change of socks or a warm meal. He participated in the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach and the Central Europe Campaigns, surviving several close calls. Once, while crossing a field near the Rhine, he dodged shrapnel spraying from anti-aircraft guns.

"The shrapnel was whizzing past my head. The next second, I could have had something blown out. I can't explain it," he said.

Another time, he was sneaking through a forest when he heard the click of an enemy soldier's machine gun. He was sure he was dead. But he hit the ground and pressed his body as deep into the snow as he could.

Waldman, who is Jewish, takes pride now in knowing he helped end Nazi rule. Back then, all he wanted to do was survive. He said the worst times were before the battles as the GIs rode in trucks to the front.

Waldman remembers another young man who told him, "I'm never going to make it."

Waldman tried to comfort the GI, but sure enough, the young man died two days later. Waldman had a different strategy. "I told myself, 'I am not going to get killed.' "

He returned to Denver, where he met his wife, had two children, and owned a jewelry store. He now has a great- grandchild on the way, along with a Bronze Star.

"This is just so unexpected," Waldman said.

He had been in such a hurry to get out of the Army in 1945 that he left without collecting his medals. And the Army never sent them. For the past couple years, Waldman has begun speaking about the agony of war in his work for the Greatest Generations Foundation. He has been telling stories that he never even told his wife. To his surprise, Waldman discovered that sharing his stories gave him great comfort.

"People should know what happened in the war," Waldman said. "How are they going to know unless we tell them?"

This Veterans Day, McGinty and Waldman will hold their newly-decorated chests just a little bit higher. McGinty never knew why he didn't receive his medals. He was from Philadelphia and moved to Boulder, then Denver. About seven years ago, he sent in his records but never heard back from the Air Force.

Friday's recognition of the men brought tears to the eyes of Brig. Gen. Eric Crabtree, who pinned the medals on McGinty.

"A number of people were never recognized," Crabtree said. "As we approach Veterans Day and look at the conflict in Iraq, the young men and women there are not that different from the young men who went off to England to fight in World War II."

Crabtree said that today's military heroes stand on the shoulders of giants.

"Lucky McGinty is one of those giants," Crabtree said.

McGinty received the Distinguished Flying Cross granted to those who distinguish themselves "by heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight." He also earned an Air Medal.

Lt. Col. Laura Clellan presented Waldman with his medals.

"If it weren't for what these guys did, I wouldn't be able to wear this uniform," Clellan

beatles song blues

Back in the 1960s, my older brother was the musical guru who pumped the Beatles, the Doors and Steppenwolf into my grade school-age gray matter.

But what was this new sound coming out of his 1969 Camaro's eight-track player? The Beatles' "Helter Skelter" had been rude, but this was unnerving, primeval, sinister.

Guitars like Mars the God of War wielding a cosmic chainsaw. A singer roaring like a lion that had swallowed razor blades, yelping, "Went a little walk downtown, messed and got back late. A note there waiting said, 'Daddy, I just can't wait. Bring it on home!' "

Despite my brother's urging, I shunned this band, this Led Zeppelin.

Four years later, I heard a voice on the radio cooing, "There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold . . ." I was stunned. These were the brutes who had bruised the blues on the songs "Whole Lotta Love" and "Bring It on Home." I explored this Led Zeppelin -- and became hooked. Even their brutish blues rock suddenly made sense.

Light and heavy. Sun and shadow. Orgiastic revelry and meditative introspection. The yin-yang of the universe was crystallized in Zep's music. Even in their very name.

Now, 27 years since Zep disbanded after the death of drummer John Bonham, Led Zep still rules. According to Guitar World magazine, a reunion concert set for Dec. 10 in London drew 120 million ticket applicants. The show will feature the three surviving founders -- guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant and bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones -- as well as Bonham's son Jason on drums.

A new best-of set, "Mothership," was released this month, as were remastered and expanded versions of the band's 1973 concert film and live album, "The Song Remains the Same." Rumors -- dreams, really -- abound that Zep will do a full-scale tour.

Does Led Zeppelin's mystique remain the same?

George Harrison overtly embraced cosmic beatitudes. U2 directly confronts God. Zep's mysticism is more subtle.

Yet such songs as "Going to California," "The Rain Song," "Kashmir," "Ten Years Gone" and, of course, "Stairway to Heaven" evoke pagan mysteries that infuse our walk upon this planet -- mysteries of death and rebirth, enlightenment, the quest to know the gods or the unknowable.

Yet, there are Bacchanalian reveries to be embraced in this life -- feasts of eros and sensual pleasures. And so the ancient Greeks depicted in their myths the frolics and follies of their gods and goddesses. Even the sacred texts of the ancient Hebrews rode an eros groove with the "Song of Solomon."

More than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Doors or any other band, Zeppelin embodied this most ancient mystery of the universe: the yin-yang dualities that pulse through every fiber of existence -- dualities that have fascinated everyone from the ancient Eastern sages to today's quantum physicists.

Light and heavy. Sun and shadow. Eros and enlightenment. Led Zeppelin.

Is there any more conflicting figure in the panoply of 20th century pop music than that of Frank Sinatra? There are perhaps a small handful of figures throughout the preceding hundred years to have had anywhere near as much of an impact on the world of music as Sinatra, certainly Cole Porter and George Gershwin, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Bob Dylan, but after a list like that, there just aren't very many figures who come anywhere near to approaching the confluence of this type of incredible talent and iconic presence. No, Sinatra was and remains a singular talent, a singer's singer, one of the few great interpreters of the "the great American songbook", and an electrifying performer who even managed to parlay his considerable charisma into a respectable Hollywood sideline. So why is it that, even after running down all these accomplishments in an attempt to come to terms with just how centrally important the man was to the evolution of popular music in America and the world, it still feels slightly unsatisfactory?

Despite all his deserved accolades, there remains something about Sinatra's character that seems to absolutely resist any kind of recontextualizing. His particular character was formed over the course of many decades of living directly in the public eye, a hyper-celebrity living in an era just before media saturation. It's not a little bit ironic that the same image that Sinatra so carefully cultivated over the course of many decades, the very same image which made him an icon of cool for the generation immediately following the Second World War, is also the image which largely serves as a barrier to any modern rapprochement with his life and work.


A Voice In Time (1939-1952)
(Columbia/RCA Victor/Legacy; US: 25 Sep 2007; UK: Import)
PopShop
AmazonIn the 1940s Sinatra was the original template for the phenomena of the teen idol. After the war's end and a brief creative recession in which he heroically did battle against the forces of stultifying novelty recordings which had infiltrated postwar American record stores (those with strong constitutions should track down "Mama Will Bark", his sole concession to this fashion), he returned to the spotlight with one of the most amazing second acts in American history. Along the way he established a template for sophisticated adult musicianship within a pop context, which has rarely if ever been matched in the many decades since.

But there is something hard and knotted at the center of Sinatra's story that can't quite be accounted for. Whereas all the great musical icons of the 20th century have been periodically rediscovered and reinterpreted by successive generations of fans, Sinatra has seemingly always been your dad's music, or even your granddad's music. The image in our collective memory of Sinatra at the height of his powers, rakish grin on his face and jaunty fedora set just slightly at a tilt, has long since passed out of the realm of sincere object of admiration and into the world of kitsch. Oh, sure, there have always been and probably always will be people who try to replicate some aspects of Sinatra's appeal, be it the fashion or studied nonchalance or the impervious, understated melancholy. But it would not be an overstatement to say that even the most accomplished of his followers have been set at slightly abstruse angles from the mainstream of contemporary culture.

The fact is, as much as his supporters may have tried to fight the fact, and as much as the man himself found the development absurd, sometime in the middle of the 1960s he ceased to be cool on a very profound level. His brand of confident, often abrasive masculinity and affected formality could not have been more at odds with the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. It wasn't just the invention of Elvis and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones that made Sinatra suddenly so passé, but a sea change in the whole of American culture. From that point on Sinatra was left to play catch-up. He had lost the kids, and he would never regain them. His audience grew older, his eccentricities grew more pronounced, and the ideological gap between him and the generations that succeeded him grew vast.



So here we are, almost 10 years following the great man's death, and he's still the subject of conversation. Perhaps the time has come when we might reasonably expect to be able to deconstruct the many different facets of this man's fascinating life, examining his indispensable contribution to music separate from his controversial and at times repellent public persona. By means of example I will offer up my mother. She's normally an open-minded person but she nevertheless absolutely refused to so much as tolerate Sinatra's voice under any circumstances. If a Sinatra track came on the radio, she would change the station. If the topic of Sinatra somehow came up over the course of the conversation, she would broadcast some manner of a caustic remark by way of the man's noted chauvinism, and considered the subject closed. This is not an unusual reaction among her generation, from my admittedly unscientific survey on the matter.

The fact is that Sinatra's reputation was a victim of the changing times, and I don't think it's possible to overstate the effect that this transition has had upon the perception of his music. Despite a lifetime's quiet advocacy of black musicians and black musical forms, he will always be remembered for the regrettably racist stage patter aimed at his friend and fellow Rat Packer Sammy Davis Jr. Despite the sensitive and soulful nature with which Sinatra tackled issues of love, romance, and sexual politics in his music, he will always be remembered as the avatar of a particularly 1950s brand of unthinking chauvinism.

At times it seems almost impossible to conceive of squaring the circle of these conflicting signals. It's not as if Sinatra is the only figure of towering significance in the music industry to have been a moderately unwholesome character in some aspects of his life. But Sinatra also had the bad taste to be almost wholly identified as a figure of the establishment. Elvis and the Beatles never really lost the patina of youthful rebellion that marked the earliest phases of their careers. Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday and Miles Davis and John Coltrane were all black musicians set in the context of a dominantly white cultural paradigm. Gershwin and Dylan were Jews, and Porter was (ostensibly) gay. It's obviously reductive to brand these extremely complex individuals as nothing more than the product of their ethnic, religious or sexual orientation, but at the same time it gets to the underlying point that each of these figures carried something in their background that served as a kind of hook on which they could hang their rebellious identification.

So much of 20th century cultural politics can be reduced to matters of identification and political conflicts, and it just so happens that Sinatra was and forever will be identified with the wrong side in almost every significant culture war. Whether or not he was a card-carrying member of the dominant establishment, according him the right and privilege to exercise casual sexism, unthinking racism and callow condescension towards the youth culture is almost beside the point. These are the associations that we as a culture carry in our collective memory in reference to Frank Sinatra. Whether or not they actually bear up to repeated scrutiny, it's hard not to wince a little at the accepted caricature of the man in his prime, clad in a dapper tuxedo, lowball glass of liquor in his hand, striding across the stage and making poor jokes at the expense of any hapless broads or long-haired hippies to happened to stumble across his radar screen. There's enough truth in that image to make even his most strident defenders pause a moment.



But we have come here today not to bury Sinatra but to praise him, and in so doing hopefully find a way past the impasse of many decades of accrued neglect. Certainly on paper the time is right for a Sinatra Renaissance. With the man dead almost 10 years now, many of the most controversial and indigestible aspects of his persona and career are beginning finally to fade into that long cultural twilight. Eventually the image of old Elvis, with his bloated sequined jumpsuits, banana and pickle sandwiches, and kitschy Vegas reviews, faded in such a way as to allow the eternally young figure of Elvis circa 1957 to re-inhabit the cultural imagination: brash, dangerous, artistically courageous and infinitely potent. Shouldn't it also be conceivable that we can also put aside our memories of Sinatra the institution, symbol of white male privilege and World War II-era cultural hegemony, in favor of Sinatra the artist, infallibly perfect singer and visionary artistic presence?

A Voice In Time can perhaps be seen as something of a tentative first step in this admirable direction. Certainly on the face of it this isn't an attempt to repackage and reconceive Sinatra for a new generation. The package itself is austere, respectful, and almost lethally classy. Like a Tiffany's jewelry box, the package presents Sinatra's material not as part of some living cultural heritage, but as a gilded, desiccated memento of the past. This is not perhaps the most auspicious format given just how strongly Sinatra has come to be identified with this brand of self-aggrandized historical significance. But then, it's probably true that a $50 box set aimed squarely at established collectors is hardly the most auspicious venue to begin a re-branding effort.

Be that as it may, the music here does a good job of stating its case totally separate from the fussy presentation. This is not Sinatra in his prime, the too-perfect demigod who ruled the roost of American popular music for roughly a decade and a half beginning in the early '50s and ending sometime after the ascent of the Beatles. This is the young Sinatra, the jazz singer who fought his way up from obscurity singing with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey's wartime big hands, who broke out of the established mode of mannered slow dance music to create for himself an improbable career as a universal heartthrob and slightly dangerous talent as a brash interpreter of popular song.

The four discs presented here arrange Sinatra's career in a roughly thematic arc, beginning with the most indicative material of the Big Band years before segueing into his mushrooming solo career and the creative adventurousness that defined the era immediately preceding his mid-'50s breakout period. Not exactly chronological, it still does a good job of presenting exactly how Sinatra's music evolved during the period in question, taking him from a precocious youth in giant suits (strikingly distinctive fashion choices which dimly anticipate David Byrne in Stop Making Sense), facing off against crowds of rapturous bobbysoxers, up to the point where he became something more: an artist of lasting import and impeccable taste.



In the beginning, Sinatra was little more than another cog in the finely tuned machines that were James and Dorsey's dance orchestras. The singer was much less prominent in these older compositions. The singer often didn't even begin until a half or two-thirds of the way through the song, leaving the bulk of the melody to be carried instrumentally, the lyrics being mere gilding. The singer was icing on the cake but given the strength of melodies like "Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread)" and "Blue Moon", it's hard to complain with the results.

But eventually someone had the bright idea to put the kid up front, and spruce up the Big Band repertoire with a handful of fleet swing numbers ("swing" being a relative term within the context of wartime pop, that is). Suddenly, it was madness. You can hear the crackle of electric change in the air. If you listen carefully to Elvis' Sun Sessions recordings, you can pinpoint almost down to the moment where Elvis and his band figured out the exact rhythmic combination required to create rock 'n' roll. It's a similar sensation here. At some point, Sinatra steps into the spotlight and out from behind a dominant bandleader, allowing his charisma to carry the material on its own merits. (Sinatra's arranger in the time immediately after he left Dorsey's orchestra, Alex Stordahl, was smart enough to step out of the way of a moving train.) This was a revolutionary move. Although few singers would ever equal Sinatra's presence, the centrality of his presence created the template, which all popular singers would follow from this point on. Yeah, even Elvis and Dylan.

Some of the tracks that made Sinatra's fame are probably not worth remembering in the same breath as his later work. There are a lot numbers culled from movie soundtracks and current Broadway scores, a few classics like "The Trolley Song" (from Meet Me in St. Louis), but also "It's Been a Long, Long Time", from 20th Century Fox's long-forgotten I'll Get By. It's the third disc that really showcases Sinatra's abilities by moving past this clutch of inferior material, and into the corpus of what is now known as the "great American songbook". These are the tracks that Sinatra would spend the rest of his life singing, "All of Me", "Body and Soul", "Begin the Beguine", "The Nearness of You". In most cases these aren't the most famous versions of these songs Sinatra would record but you'd hardly kick them out of bed for having cold feet, either. For instance, Sinatra first recorded "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" in 1947. Most people are probably familiar with the Nelson Riddle-produced version available on 1958's Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely. This version isn't as deep a reading as the later recording, but it's an interesting counterpoint nonetheless. His voice was rapidly maturing during this period, and while he didn't quite have the emotional range he later would, it's a remarkable performance nonetheless, evidence of a swiftly evolving artist coming into his own.

The final disc of these four is titled "The Shape of Things to Come", a reference to the period immediately after the purview of this box, which ends in 1952. The late '40s were a dark time for Sinatra. He was a serious artist whose teen-idol popularity had faded, leaving him the unsavory choice of recording insulting novelty singles (all the rage in those carefree days following the end of the war), or, well, not recording much of anything. Eventually, however, Sinatra made the jump from Columbia to Capital, where he teamed with Riddle to create some of the most sublime examples of traditional American pop ever recorded. (If that sounds like an exaggeration, go track down a copy of Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely.)



The conventional narrative creates a fairly clear demarcation between the Columbia and Capital periods in terms of the type of material he recorded, but this set makes it clear that he had been chafing to branch out for a long time. Columbia had little interest in releasing the kind of music Sinatra was recording. The national mood was upbeat, buoyant and musically silly, whereas Sinatra's muse was leading him into subsequently more melancholy and focused territory. Even the upbeat tracks like "The Birth of the Blues", which foreshadowed the compact, focused jazz of his Capital swing LPs, seems quite out of the ordinary in this loosey-goosey context. But then, the real lure is the ballads and torch songs he recorded here, between 1949-1952. These are the first real inklings of the pronounced artistry that would blossom at Capital, in the form of an enduring string of torch song albums that began with 1955's In the Wee Small Hours. So here we have "Autumn in New York", "Hello, Young Lovers", "I'm a Fool to Want You" which are downbeat tunes that may not have fit the national mood, but fit Sinatra's mood to a T. At the time this probably seemed like career suicide but Sinatra would have the last laugh.

With the passage of time, the noxious intergenerational politics surrounding Sinatra's life and legacy begin to fade. If nothing else, the old vanguard of cultural critics who championed Sinatra and his beloved, sometimes fatuously over praised "great American songbook" as bulwarks against the corrupting forces of rock and roll and longhaired hippies, are mostly gone. Popular songwriting didn't die with Cole Porter and the invention of the Beatles in America (although both occurred in 1964). Although Sinatra never really came close to anything resembling a true rapprochement with popular culture after around 1965, he was smart enough to see the value in George Harrison's "Something". This is the most important thing to remember: as silly as Sinatra the man and cultural icon could be, Sinatra the artist was rarely possessed of anything other than marvelous discriminatory taste. Forget the image of Sinatra, "old blue eyes" slouched under the lamppost, focus on Sinatra the voice.

A Voice In Time is a necessary artifact, from an era before Sinatra was invincible. There's vulnerability here, the occasional twinge of insecurity that propels these occasionally pro-forma tracks into something more, and it's the same vulnerability he would cultivate

latasha norman

Today Danny Bolden is doing the unthinkable. He?s preparing to bury the little girl he raised since she was just two years old.

Bolden is the stepfather of Jackson State University student Latasha Norman, who police believe was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Stanley Cole.

Cole, 24, remains in police custody. Details surrounding Latasha?s murder are not yet known.

Bolden described Latasha as a plant that he nurtured and watched grow for most of her 20-year life.

The junior accounting major was positive and ambitious. He always told her to get the most out of life and said she was strong.

?It just breaks our heart that Mr. Cole would do this to Latasha,? Bolden said.

Latasha had dated cole for more than two years, Bolden said. Cole had been over to Bolden?s home several times and had even shared a meal with the family.

Latasha was one of Bolden?s six daughters.

Bolden believes that Cole had been stalking Latasha for the past six months since she ended their relationship.

?He just couldn?t take rejection,? Bolden said.

The grieving father said he feels like Cole violated him by stealing Latasha from him.
Cole allegedly assaulted Latasha in a restaurant parking lot in October.

He was arrested yesterday while at a court appearance on a simple assault charge and later charged with Latasha?s murder.
?I didn?t know this abuse was going on,? Bolden said.

He added that he advises any young woman in an abusive relationship to get out of it.

?She (Latasha) thought she got out of it,? Bolden said. ?She moved on.?

A memorial for Latasha Norman is set for noon Monday in the Rose Embly McCoy Auditorium on the main campus of Jackson State University.

Latasha Norman's Boyfriend, Arrested and Charged for Murder, Leads Police to Her Body
Date: Friday, November 30, 2007
By: Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com

The body of a Jackson State University student missing since Nov. 13 has been found, and her boyfriend arrested and charged with murder, police said Thursday.

Latasha Norman, a 20-year-old accounting student from Greenville, Mississippi, was found dead in a wooded area on Brown Street near County Line Road in Jackson, said Sgt. Jeffrey Scott, spokesman for the Jackson Police Department.

"The agencies involved in this case worked very hard," Scott told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "Regrettably, it came to this outcome."

Norman's boyfriend, 24-year-old Stanley Dwayne Cole, is in the Jackson jail, being held without bond in connection with the death, Scott said. He did not give a motive for the murder.

Cole was arrested Thursday morning when he appeared in a Pearl, Mississippi courtroom on charges of simple battery involving an earlier incident with Norman, authorities said.

Investigators questioned Cole several hours, Scott said. Based on information from the interviews, authorities were able to locate the body, he said.

Cole also was a student at Jackson State, according to Anthony Dean, university spokesman.

Imagine being one of Latasha Norman's loved ones. Imagine the fear and worry of not knowing where she is, what's happened to her and if you'll ever see your daughter or sister or cousin again. Norman, a junior at Mississippi's Jackson State University, has been missing since Nov. 13.

Rebkah Howard doesn't have to imagine it. Tamika Huston, her 24-year-old niece, went missing in 2004 from Spartanburg, S.C. One year later, a man that Huston had been dating confessed to her murder and took police to her body.

Howard remembers well the fear, worry and sheer agony of trying to find out what happened to her niece. She also recalls the frustration of trying to get media coverage of Huston's disappearance.

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Howard said then and still says now that the media were slow to report about her niece's disappearance because she was black. She believes the same thing is happening with Norman's case.

"Latasha Norman's name is not a household name by any stretch of the imagination," Howard told me. "Yet, we're getting hourly updates about Stacy Peterson."

Peterson is the young white woman from Bolingbrook, Ill., who has been missing since Oct. 29. Her husband, Drew, a former Bolingbrook police officer, is a suspect.

Putting a racial context on these cases will make some of you bristle. But before you get too outraged, put "Stacy Peterson" in the Google search engine. You'll get more than 3,000 possible news stories. Google "Latasha Norman" and only 70 possible news stories pop up.

Still not convinced? Malcolm McMillin, Jackson's police chief, is. And he's white.

"As far as the interest by the national media in the story, I think race probably had an impact," McMillin told The Associated Press. "We're looking for the media to give this case as much exposure as it can so that we can develop some leads."

Let's be clear: Racial hatred isn't what we're talking about here. Indifference is today's culprit. When crime befalls a young white woman, it's considered an anomaly. When a young black woman is a victim, it's considered the norm - and consequently, not news.