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editor
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 Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:07 pm Post subject: |
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The Small Bachelor
Paperback
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | "You out there, what's your name..."
"My name is - and always has been - Ferris, sir."
""Well, then, Ferris, listen to me and understand that I'm not the sort of many to stand any dashed nonsense or anything like that of any description whatsoever. Why, when this dear, good lady told you to let us out, did you reply'H'm'? Answer me that -- yes or not."
The butler raised himself on tip-toe again.
"The ejaculation was intended to convey doubt, your lordship."
"Doubt? What about?"
"As to whether I could see my way to letting you out, your lordship."
"Don't be a silly idiot. It's not so dark as all that."
"I was alluding to the difficulties confronting me as the result of the peculiar position in which I find myself situated, your lordship."
"What did he say?" asked the voice of Mrs. Waddington.
"Something about his peculiar position."
"Why is he in a peculiar position?"
"Ah! There you have me."
"Let me talk to the man."
"There was a scuffling noise, followed by a heavy fall and plaintive cry from a female in distress.
"I knew that chair would break if you stood on it," said Lord Hunstanton. "I wish I could have had a small bet on that chair breaking if you stood on it."
"Wheel the bed under the window," replied the indomitable woman beside him. She had lost an inch of skin from her right ankle, but her hat was still in the ring. (-- pgs. 191-192) |
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| Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | US weather futures warm to investors as hedge tool
Reuters
Oct. 16/06
By Sam Nelson
| Quote: | ...Weather futures traded in 2005 had a notional value of $36 billion and the volume increased 600 percent from 2004.
"The futures are traded electronically and the options are traded on the exchange floor, and most of the contracts are traded by energy companies and utility companies," she said.
CME weather contracts have been gaining traction rapidly the past several years, even though the CME is best known for its huge futures trading volumes in cattle, Euro dollars and the S&P 500 index. The CME currently lists weather contracts based on aggregate temperatures for 28 cities, including 18 in the United States, eight in Europe and two in Japan.
Each change, or tick, of one degree in a heating or cooling degree day represents a change of $20 for each contract owned. Several years ago, the tick used to be $100, but the CME lowered that to attract smaller traders, including grain traders.
"The volume has been growing. It's a newer market that kicked off in 1999 -- Enron is actually the one that kicked it off -- and the main contracts are traded on the CME," said Ben Smith, president of Denver-based First Enercast Financial. First Enercast is a daily energy and weather information service and offers real-time online weather futures prices on its Web site (http://www.enercast.com). "You're essentially trading the temperature, and companies that are affected by weather will participate. They essentially hedge their weather risk," Smith said. |
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:24 pm Post subject: |
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Over Seventy
An autobiography -- with digressions
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
Included in the complete:
Wodehouse on Wodehouse
Paperback
| Quote: | The news in my daily paper that in certain parts of Wales the latest craze is snail-racing has turned my attention to these gasteropods after months and months during which I don't suppose I have given more than a passing thought to them.
As a writer I have always rather kept off snails, feeling that they lacked sustained dramatic interest. With a snail nothing much ever happens, and, of course, there is no sex angle. An informant on whom I can rely says they are 'sexless or at least ambivalent.' This means, broadly speaking, that there are no boy snails and no girl snails, so that if you want to write a novel with a strong snail interest, you are dished from the start. Obviously the snail-meets-snail, snail-loses-snail, snail-gets-snail formula will not help you, and this discourages writers from the outset. Almost all we know of snails from English literature is Shakespeare's brief statement that they creep unwillingly to school.
But this snail-racing should mean a change for the better and give authors more of a chance. The way it works, I understand, is that each entrant pays a small fee and the owner of the first snail to pass the judges' box takes the lot. The runners have their owners' colours painted on their shells and 'are attracted to the winning-post by a pile of wet ivy leaves', with a delirious crowd, no doubt, shouting "Come on, Steve" or words to that effect. Any competent author ought to be able to make something of this...the hero's fortunes depending on the big race, his snail Forked Lightning trained to the last ounce, the villain sneaking into Lightning's stable to nobble him by sprinkling him with salt and substituting powdered sugar. There is surely a wealth of material here for something in the Nat Gould vein, and I shall probably have a go at it myself. (From Bridges, Snails and Meteorites at p. 99) |
More of the usual Wodehouse dry martini, straight up with a lemon twist.
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| Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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Tales from the Drones Club
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | 'Right,' said Charles Pikelet, satisfied. 'Here's my fifty. And we'll put the decision up to the policeman that's coming along. Hey, officer.'
'Gents?' said the policeman, halting. He was a large, comfortable man with an honest face. Bingo liked the look of him, and was well content to place the judging in his hands.
'Officer,' said Charles Pikelet, 'to settle a bet, is this baby here uglier than that baby there?'
'Or vice versa?' said Bingo.
The policeman brooded over the two permabulators.
'They're neither of 'em to be compared with the one I've got at home,' he said, a little smugly. 'There's a baby with a face that would stop a clock. And the missus thinks it's a beauty. I've had many a hearty laugh over that,' said the policeman indulgently.
Both Charles Pikelet and Bingo felt that he was straying from the point.
'Never mind about your baby,' said Charles Pikelet.
'No,' said Bingo. 'Stick closely to the res.'
'Your baby isn't a runner,' said Charles Pikelet. 'Only the above have arrived.'
Called to order, the policeman intensified his scrutiny. He looked from the one perambulator to the other, and then from the other perambulator to the one. And it suddenly came over Bingo like a cold douche that this hesitation could mean only one thing. It was not going to be the absurdly simple walk-over which he had anticipated.
'H'm!' said the policeman.
'Ha!' said the policeman.
Bingo's heart stood still. It was now plain to him that there was to be a desperately close finish. But he tells me that he is convinced that his entry would have nosed home, had it not been for a bit of extraordinary bad luck in the straight. Just as the policeman stood vacillating, there peeped through the clouds a ray of sunshine. It fell on Arabella Pikelet's face, causing her to screw it up in a hideous grimace. And at the same instant, with the race neck and neck, she suddenly started blowing bubbles out of the corner of her mouth.
The policeman hesitated no longer. He took Miss Pikelet's hand and raised it.
'The winnah!' he said. 'But you ought to see the one I've got at home.' (From Sonny Boy at pgs. 218-219) |
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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The Globe and Mail
Inferior daily trumpet in Frostback country
Israeli offers $1-billion for peace
By Luke Baker, Jerusalem
Dec. 7/06
p. A3
| Quote: | An Israeli businessman is offering the Palestinian prime minister $1-billion if he and his Israeli counterpart can sit down and reach a peace agreement.
An initial instalment of $100-million would be made if Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a leader of the Islamist militant group Hamas, and Israel's Ehud Olmert can just manage to start talking. But odds on the initiative succeeding would appear to be slim. Hamas advocates the Jewish state's destruction and Israel regards the movement as terrorist.
Billionaire businessman Avi Shaked, who made his fortune running Internet gambling sites, says he has lined up a consortium of international financiers who are ready to inject the money immediately if a deal is struck.
"The killing must be stopped," Mr. Shaked said in an interview yesterday, explaining a plan that he says even has the approval of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Mr. Shaked, 53, a supporter of Israel's centre-left Labour Party who has launched peace initiatives in the past, says his proposal could help create as many as a million jobs in the Palestinian territories.
He wants to bring the Palestinian economy up to Israel's standards, putting the sides on a level footing and doing away with the poverty that helps fuel the conflict. |
More on this intriguing gambler at his website, shvoong.com, an online collection of book abstracts not written by publicists.
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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Oliver Twist
Criterion Collection
DVD
| Quote: | (During a congenial game of chess):
Dr. Grimwig: Is Bedwin in the habit of counting the plate at night? Because if she doesn't find a tablespoon or two missing, I'll be content to eat my head, sir.
Mr. Brownlow: Your move.
Dr.: Where does he come from? Who is he? What is he? If that boy doesn't deceive you, my good friend, I'll eat my head and yours, too.
B: We shall see.
Dr.: We will. We will.
...(Mr. Brownlow gives his charge, nine-year-old Oliver, a package of books to return to the bookseller along with a fiver).
B: Let me see. He'll be back in 20 minutes at the longest.
Dr.: So you really expect him to come back, do you?
B: Well, don't you?
Dr.: No, I do not. The boy has a new suit suit of clothes on his back, a set of valuable books under his arm and a five-pound note in his pocket. If ever that boy returns to this house, sir, I'll eat my head. |
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| Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:26 am Post subject: |
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Atlantic Monthly
Magazine Subscription
BOOKS
Kiddie Class Struggle
One mom's breast-milk-curdling tour of lower education's higher end
By Sandra Tsing Loh
June, 2005
| Quote: | | Because, like many American mothers with children at home, I am a juggling, multi-tasking, somewhat less than full-time freelance employee, the hours I spent reading Camille Peri and Kate Moses's Because I Said So, Judith Warner's Perfect Madness, and Miriam Peskowitz's The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars also involved a lot of weeping in parking lots. In the spirit of motherly sharing, let me rush to explain why. It began with the - I thought simple - wish that our daughter attend kindergarten. In the strange voodoo that is California, although houses in our neighborhood have shot up to $500,000, the corner school's demographics are 95 percent Hispanic; 76 percent of the students are learning English as a second language, and 92 percent qualify for a free lunch. Like most families just one year into the crowded magnet system, we've been waitlisted for schools with more English speakers; any openings materializing locally will be assisted by lottery, the odds notoriously poor. (Opening paragraph at p. 105) |
'Strange voodoo' indeed for a modern Western democracy to relegate public education, one of the first tenets of liberty, surely, to a mere game of chance, although kids whose parents are rich or famous enough may opt out. The story is an excellent first-person account of a Lutheran private school kindergarten entrance exam which the author's daughter somehow failed and something called Academic Performance Index (API), a statistic which apparently measures out of a possible thousand each school's chances of producing Ivy-Leaguers. A school API of 810, for instance, is considered "UCLA-on-scholarship-ready."
More on the value of games in education:
The Immortal Game
A History of Chess
or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated
Our Understanding of War, Art, Science, and the
Human Brain
Hardcover
By David Shenk
| Quote: | | In New York, Chess-in-the-Schools, formerly known as the American Chess Foundation, had been offering free instruction to underprivileged New York City students since 1986. By 2005, thanks largely to support from New York philanthropist Lewis Cullman, they had a $4 million annual budget supporting fifty instructors in 160 schools. "Chess is not a game of luck," the foundation declared in its mission statement. "Children who practice and develop skills will reap rewards. The confidence they develop extends to other areas of their academnic and emotional lives... Our program has proven to be a cost-effective way to inspire and empower children to succeed, one move at a time." (From The Next War, p. 231) |
Poker at Harvard AND in elementary schools:
The Economist
Magazine Subscription
A big deal
Poker is getting younger, cleverer,
duller and much, much richer
Dec. 22/07
| Quote: | Parents are increasingly encouraging their children to play, he adds, because it is mentally more rewarding than video games and does not mix well with alcohol (at least if you care about winning). “When I started it was seen as a bit of an outlaw pastime, for rogues and cheats. Now it's a huge bottom-up movement,” he says.
It might seem a bit of a leap to go from here to putting poker on the curriculum. But some academics see it as a worthy subject of study. Chief among them is Charles Nesson, a professor at Harvard Law School. Earlier this year he founded theGlobal Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS), whose awkward name belies a clear set of goals: to highlight poker's role in teaching patience, strategy and money management, and in improving cognitive skills. “Poker offers metaphors for a range of life skills and could be a wonderful educational tool,” says Mr Nesson, who plays a regular game with other law professors, including Alan Dershowitz—though he has yet to play with Antonin Scalia, a Supreme Court justice known to have a fondness for poker.
Poker is, first and foremost, a game of managing resources, argues Mr Nesson, teaching a cautious approach to risk-taking, not recklessness. There is some evidence for this. One study, comparing experienced poker players with financial- market traders, found the players less likely to exhibit over-confidence.
An unlikely social-welfare tool
Determined to counter what he sees as the demonisation of poker by the American right, and the resulting squeeze on personal freedoms, Mr Nesson is working on a pilot programme to teach the game to disadvantaged children in schools in America and Jamaica. He muses about turning a property he runs in Second Life, a virtual world, into an online poker university. ...
Poker has long fascinated America's great and good, from politicians to generals to captains of industry. Presidents Roosevelt (both), Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon were all keen players. Nixon was famously good: most of the funding for his first congressional run came from poker winnings. Poker was said to have inspired cold-war tacticians. It is still a useful military motif: recall the playing cards used to represent Saddam Hussein and his most-wanted cohorts. Poker financed a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's start-up costs. Bill Gates once said he learned more about business strategy at the baize than in classrooms - though these days he apparently prefers the more stately game of bridge.
Not all famous players have made such good role models. As he partied away the declining years of his career, Errol Flynn incurred some excruciating poker losses, including, on one particularly bad night, a Caribbean island he had hoped to develop into a holiday resort. John Wayne had some shockers too, though in one memorable game he won Lassie from the canine star's desperate owner.
Getting serious
What Nixon, Flynn and Wayne have made of poker today? They would surely have marvelled at the transformation of "the cheater's game" into a multi-billion-dollar industry, pumping out new millionaires almost daily. Even they might have been shocked at the latest season of "High Stakes Poker," a television series in which players buy into each game for $500, 000 apiece and the winner takes home more than $5m.
They might, perhaps, have been disappointed that the game had lost some of its backroom edginess. Miss Obrestad's generation are more likely to put their excess winnings into tax-free bonds than blow them betting on a single round of gold, as Mr Brunson and his Las Vegas pals used to do in their madder moments. Still, those hoping to win over poker's skeptics will find no better example than young Annette, 15. She is stern, sober and chillingly focused on her game. She appears to be exceptionally good at it too. Either that or amazingly lucky. (-- pgs. 36-38) |
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| Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:29 am Post subject: |
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New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
Annals of Immigration
The Lottery
Once you have a green card, what next?
By Dan Baum
Jan. 23 & 30/06
| Quote: | | The official name of the program known as the Green Card Lottery in Peru - and in a hundred and seventy-six other countries - is the Diversity Immigration Visa Program. Of the more than two hundred visa types provided by the State Department, it is by far the oddest. While the vast majority of immigrant visas still go to people who suffer persecution or possess strictly prescribed qualifications - relatives already in the U.S., strategic skills, or great wealth - the only requirement for winning the Green Card Lottery, other than good fortune, is a high-school education or two years' experience in one of three hundred and fifty-three career categories ranging from anthropologist to housepainter to poet-and-lyricist. Fifty thousand diversity visas are made available each year; almost six million people applied to the program in 2005. Its future, however, is uncertain. Last month, the House of Representatives passed a border enforcement and immigration bill that included an amendment to abolish the Green Card Lottery. The Senate will consider that bill later this year. (-- p. 47) |
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:27 am Post subject: |
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The Atlantic
Magazine Subscription
Postcards from Tomorrow Square
By James Fallows
December, 2006
| Quote: | | ...A less attractive side of China's social bargain comes in public encounters. Life on the sidewalk or subway may have been what Thomas Hobbes had in mind with his "war of every man against every man." As technology, Shanghai's subway is marvelous; as sociology, it makes you despair. Every person getting on a subway understands that there will be more room if people inside can get off. Yet the more crowded the station, the more certain that there will be a line-of-scrimmage standoff as the people trying to surge in block those trying to escape. In a perverse way, I was relieved when I read that China's traffic-death rate per mile driven was nearly ten times as high as America's: I wasn't crazy in thinking that the streets were a reckless free-for-all. The writer Gwynne Dyer recently explained that such carnage is typical of cultures where virtually everyone behind the wheel is a "first-generation driver," raised with no exposure to traffic laws, defensive driving, or the damage cars can do. As more Chinese travel abroad as tourists, and China prepares to welcome more foreign travelers when the Olympics begin, the government has launched a "mind your manners" campaign urging people to stop "hawking" (noisily clearing their throats) and spitting on the street, to stop cutting to the front of lines, and to stop yelling at each other and into their mobile phones. Good luck! (-- pg. 109) |
Fresh insight from an objective, first-hand witness or predictable response by a typically-indoctrinated American?
More excerpts from the article at Impossible Odds.
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| Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:09 pm Post subject: |
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Vanity Fair
Magazine Subscription
Black Mischief
By Maureen Orth
February, 2007
| Quote: | Conrad Black, Canada's most famous non-citizen, is home again in Toronto, awaiting trial in Chicago in March on 14 counts of criminal fraud, racketeering, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and mail and wire fraud. Once the powerful chairman of the third-largest newspaper in the world, Hollinger International - at its peak the owner of the London Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Jerusalem Post, and more than 500 community newspapers in Canada and the United States - Black at 62 is facing a maximum of 101 years in prison, $164 million in fines, and forfeiture of assets in excess of $92 million. Apart from the criminal charges, Black is also facing numerous civil suits, including two major ones from Hollinger Inc., the Canadian holding company that controls more than 70 per cent of Hollinger International's voting stock. (-- p. 166)
... The criminal trial is scheduled to begin in March at the earliest, and the court has ruled that until then all discovery-related civil actions, including defamation *suits Black has brought against Henry Kissinger, other members of the board, and Richard Breeden, must be halted so as not to interfere with the criminal case. (-- p. 197)
Wrong Way:
The Fall of Conrad Black
Hardcover
By Jacquie McNish and Sinclair Stewart
... I had spoken to (Black's lawyer, 'Fast Eddie') Greenspan before Black so fervently decided to testify on his own behalf. Clearly Black's testimony was a delicate subject, and the only point where I found Greenspan at a loss for words. When I asked him if Black would take the stand, there was a long pause and then: "I'lll leave that alone." In their award-winning 2004 book, Wrong Way: The Fall of Conrad Black, Jacquie McNish and Stewart Sinclair report that Greenspan has made a deal with Black that every time Black, who is known for his rococco vocabulary, uses big words in the courtroom he will have to pay Greenspan - $50 for five-syllable words, $40 for four-syllable, $30 for three. "He talks like that when his shoes are off," Greenspan informs me. "But something goes with those words. There is an appearance of a pompous arrogance." (-- p. 198)
... Now a self-proclaimed freedom fighter, Black last fall went on the offensive. He began speaking - performing in public once again, using words like "fissiparous" (another $40 for Greenspan) from the podium and wowing Establishment audiences in Canada who are meant to feel that * he is being picked on by Uncle Sam... (-- p. 203) |
The Trials of Henry Kissinger
And now one more thanks to ex-pal, Black!
DVD
Globe and Mail
The lowdown for those betting on Lord Black - or against him
Nobody's Business
By Patricia Best
March 27/07
| Quote: | Want to bet Conrad Black will beat the charges of fraud and racketeering and such in Chicago? Apparently plenty of people do.
It's inevitable that American popular culture would give us a gambling website taking bets on the fate of Lord Black. And indeed ]BetUS.com, which claims to be a leading online sports gambling site, is taking bets on a series of questions related to Lord Black's criminal trial.
A spokesman told Nobody's Business that the lines are "very active, especially in Canada and Britain." On the question of whether Lord Black will be found not guilty on all charges, the odds posted on the site are 10 to 1. So if you think he'll get off and you're right, every $5 bet would yield $50, plus the original stake.
So, what are the odds of a mistrial being declared? According to the site, 30 to 1. On the question of whether Lord Black will regain his Canadian citizenship before the end of 2008, the odds are listed at 5 to 1 that he will, and at 1 to 10 that he won't. Will Lord Black be stripped of his peerage ("Lord title," the site calls it) by the end of 2009? The site is giving 50 to 1 odds on a "yes" wager.
Even Lord Black's personal life is fodder for a wager: BetUS.com isn't favouring divorce for Lord Black. On the question of the former media mogul's marriage to Barbara Amiel ending by the close of 2008, the site favours the union enduring -- the odds are 5 to 1 that it will survive and 1 to 10 that it won't. (Excerpt from the Report on Business, p. B2) |
All Financial Times News
Black takes a gamble with 'Fast Eddie'
By Stephanie Kirchgaessner
March 29/07
| Quote: | When Judge Amy St Eve last week sustained an objection from prosecutors during the questioning of a witness by Conrad Black's defence attorney, Edward Greenspan, the veteran Canadian jurist turned to his co-counsel with a perplexed look on his face.
"You lost," Edward Genson explained to his colleague, seemingly in jest.
The joke – if, indeed, it was a joke – was an apt one. In hiring Mr Greenspan, Lord Black has taken the unusual step of depending on an attorney to defend him against criminal fraud charges who, despite being the most famous defence lawyer north of the border, is not licensed to practise in the US. As a condition of the court's decision to allow "Fast Eddie", as he is known in Canada, to serve as Lord Black's counsel, the former media executive had to agree that, if found guilty, he would not appeal the verdict on the grounds of Mr Greenspan's lack of familiarity with US law. So far, the gamble appears to have been a risky one. Mr Greenspan, 63, who went to school with Lord Black's wife, Barbara Amiel, and co-wrote a book with her ex-husband, has been seen nodding off during the trial.
Missteps in his cross-examination of Gordon Paris, who took over Hollinger International after Lord Black was forced to resign, meant a crucial line of questioning was ruled out, and jurors never heard testimony that Mr Paris had once failed to report stock holdings to securities regulators. The testimony could have raised questions about Mr Paris or, at least, shown the jury not all omissions to the SEC are criminal.
...Potentially complicating the handling of Lord Black's case, some attorneys admit, is that Mr Greenspan is sharing the spotlight with Mr Genson, 65, who is equally famous in Chicago. While the two star attorneys appear to be in sync, experts say having "two captains" can strain a defence team by offering sometimes conflicting theories of a case.
Mr Genson's strength in the courtroom lies in being able to form a theory of the case that fits the evidence, and, says Hugh Totten, a Chicago lawyer, being able to bring out his client's shortcomings, as when he spoke of Lord Black's "arrogance".
"He is a pretty good strategist, but I wonder whether Conrad has not painted him in a corner, because by the time this got to Ed Genson, Conrad Black had already . . . taken a position on the big issues," Mr Totten says. |
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 10:30 am Post subject: |
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Western Living
Magazine Subscription
Food Scents
Why do certain odorous foods smell like sewage
to some and ambrosia to others? Apparently
when it comes to smelly food, stink is in the nose
of the beholder.
March, 2007
| Quote: | In the course of an ordinary 21st century urban life, I have consumed many things never air-freighted onto the menus of my parents' generation: things like deep-fried fish skeleton, sea urchin gonads, stinging nettles, grilled squid intestines and, in one memorable dessert, the visceral fat of frogs, although bravery points must be deducted because I assumed it was tapioca until I'd already finished most of it. I like to think I'm sort of adventurous, if not actually worldly. But I wasn't adventurous enough to try stinky tofu, and I came to regret it.
...She (Linda Civitello, author of Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People) thinks a lot of stinky food consumption can be explained in terms of national identity: "We eat this. They eat that." But even this theory can't explain Reykjavik's Stinky Food Festival, which would be like the Eurovision Song Contest except that instead of bad vocals it features traditional favourites like raw puffin, buried shark, pickled seal flipper, smoked sheep's head and stuffed cod liver. Buried shark, by the way, is just that: a shark, buried. The recipe takes a turn for the abnormal around the point at which it's left to rot, then dug up again and eaten, for reasons possibly best left unexplored. "Some of it has got to be the daredevil factor," said Civitello. "I wonder what percentage of people who eat this stuff are guys - young guys?" (-- pgs. 26-28) |
| Quote: | Cuisine and Culture
A History of Food and People
Paperback
By Linda Civitello
|
More Scandinavian gambles and gamblers.
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 10:48 am Post subject: |
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Black Cat, White Cat
VHS
We're not sure where this one is filmed, though there is one reference in the movie to the village of Surduk. Some reviews say France, others Germany and still others Bosnia, the birthplace of director/writer Emir Kusturica, a wild card with an unhealthy affinity for the grotesque and whose son reportedly, anyway, replaced his dad in the gypsy band behind the film's lively score.
In this scene, the master of ceremonies introduces gypsy revellers to a Leningrad cowgirl giantess of substantial hip whose real claim to fame is an unusual party trick. At about mid-song, she backs into a protruding railway spike nailed to a plank, extracting it from between those clever hips -- all without missing a note.
| Quote: | MC: Ladies and gentlemen, after a triumphant tour in North Africa, Asia and Australia, Black Obelisk is with us tonight, here on the peaceful banks of the Danube. This act is unique in the world. She'll pull a nail from a plank in a spectacular way! (Young Rambo pounds the nail into the plank, which is then carried to the stage). A sight that once seen is never forgotten. (Ida roams the waterside tavern taking bets).
Patron: I bet on the nail.
Ida: Your name? Anyone want to place a bet? (The crook, Dadan, puts some money down and gives Ida an unwelcome goose). Hands off! (She surveys the crowd for gamblers). Last chance! (The famous hips back up and quickly surround the ugly spike as she opens up in song, then voila! Another triumph). I love your big ass! |
More Gypsies!
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Last edited by editor on Fri Oct 19, 2007 12:29 pm; edited 6 times in total |
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 11:02 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Reuters Canada
Bet on for fate of Heather Mills' leg on dance show
March 12/07
| Quote: | An online gambling site is taking bets on whether Heather Mills' artificial leg will fall off during her upcoming appearance on Dancing with the Stars.
Mills, 39, the estranged wife of Beatle Paul McCartney, lost her left leg below the knee in a traffic accident in 1993. She is the first contestant on the hit ABC television show to compete with an artificial limb.
A week before Mills' March 19 debut, Antigua-based gaming site http://www.bodog.com opened bets on whether her prosthetic leg would fly off during a dance routine -- and made "no" a heavy favorite.
The site added that Mills' leg "must fall off, not be purposely taken off, during a dance routine for all Yes wagers to be graded a win."
Mills, a former model, has been upfront about her unique challenge. "It's very very unlikely my leg's going to fly off even though it would be quite funny to knock one of the judges out," she told U.S. celebrity TV show EXTRA last week.
"I'm hoping to show people that even with a prosthetic leg you can dance," Mills said.
Mills will be paired with professional dancer Jonathan Roberts on the dance contest show. Other celebrities in the season starting March 19 include female boxer Laila Ali, the daughter of Muhammad Ali, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus and Olympic speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno. |
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Free drinks for Heather the lion-heart either way!
| Quote: | Reuters
News Wire Service
Heather Mills knocked out of TV dancing contest
By Belinda Goldsmith
April 25/07
| Quote: | Heather Mills, the estranged wife of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, was voted off the hit television show "Dancing with the Stars" on Tuesday after winning widespread praise for performing with an artificial leg. Mills, 39, and partner Jonathan Roberts made it to the sixth week of the ABC network's knock-out competition which pairs celebrities with professional dancers, but a tumble on the dance floor last week had put them in the bottom two.
The show's three judges ranked Mills and Roberts fifth in the list of seven remaining pairs this week but a public vote, which counts for half of the rankings, went against them. Mills said she was not surprised to be voted off and even had a farewell speech on a piece of paper tucked inside her black, two-piece outfit.
"We knew we were going out," said Mills, who went on to thank her partner, the crew working on the show, and to urge people to become vegans. |
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editor
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:25 pm Post subject: |
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A Victorian Scrapbook
Hardcover
A wonderful picture book for rainy days.
By Cynthia Hart, John Grossman and Priscilla Dunhill
| Quote: | With steadily mounting wealth and seduced by the heady tenor of the times, Victorians flocked to gambling. Fortunes were won and lost overnight in high-stakes games of faro, poker, roulette, and all manner of sports events - boxing, horse racing, wrestling, sailing.
First "opening its doors to Satan" in 1819, when city fathers winked at billiards, unchaperoned dancing and private gambling, Saratoga Springs had no peer when it came to the social station and inventiveness of its gamblers. Millionaires at the Springs dreamed up a new gambling game called Flo-lo, in which each player would set a cube of sugar saturated with honey in front of him at the dining table, place his bet, then wait to see which cube would first attract a fly. With the arrival in 1861 of John Morrissey, a huge, brawling, handsome Irish immigrant boxer, gambling was eriously - and openly - launched. At his Matilda Street club, Morrissey took cash only and barred women and local citizens from gaming. He was enormously successful, he gave large sums to charity and closed his doors on Sunday, but no blueblood dowagers ever welcomed him and his dazzling dark-eyed bride across the thresholds of their Broadway mansions.
Morrissey, cut ot the quick, simply poured more energy into his trade. By the 1870s, rich carpetbaggers from the South, Nevada silver lode mining kings and the Eastern establishment industrial aristocracy all jostled for preferred places at his gambling events. Capitalizing on the Victorian appetite for sports, he built the Springs' first racetrack and sponsored boat racing on Lake Saratoga. Despite his efforts, Morrissey died at age forty-seven, porcine and worn out from overeating and other excesses, without ever having gained the social acceptance he so coveted.
His replacement was the dapper, elegant Richard Canfield, who came to be called the Prince of Gambling. Canfield bought Morrissey's club and redecorated it, much as it can be seen today, with red-flocked wallpapaer, moon-globe chandeliers, green satin draperies and cabbage-rose carpets. Importing the best chefs from France, he charged higher prices than New York's Delmonico's and Sherry's, and called his new place the Casino. Soon, ten gambling houses were imitating his success. The roulette wheels and dice clattered round the clock. Prodded by local citizens and sensing the circulation bonanza to be found in the high-life scandal of bluebloods, veteran newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer sent his star reporter, Nelly Bly, to expose the debaucheries of Saratoga. In August of 1894, the headlines of her story blazed across the pages of the New York World: "Money mad by night and day/Little children who play horses." The subhead was no less irate: "Reputable and disreputable women, solid merchants, bankers, touts, criminals and race track riff-raff crazed by the mania for gold."
The heyday would soon be over. (From Manly Pursuits at pgs. 101-104) |
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Last edited by editor on Fri Oct 19, 2007 12:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 10:03 am Post subject: |
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Blood on the Tracks
CD Audio
Bob Dylan
| Quote: | Shelter from the Storm
'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes an' blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed.
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
I've heard newborn babies wailin' like a mournin' dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love.
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an' they gave me a lethal dose.
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm." |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2788#2788
Last edited by editor on Sun Jun 28, 2009 1:39 pm; edited 9 times in total |
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