1.
Waco, Texas
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Waco is a city which is the county seat of McLennan County, Texas, United States. It is situated along the Brazos River and I-35, halfway between Dallas and Austin, the city had a 2010 population of 124,805, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the state. The US Census 2015 population estimate is 132,356, the Waco Metropolitan Statistical Area consists of McLennan and Falls Counties, which had a 2010 population of 234,906. Falls County was added to the Waco MSA in 2013, the US Census 2016 population estimate for the Waco MSA is 265,207. Indigenous peoples occupied areas along the river for thousands of years, in historic times, the area of present-day Waco was occupied by the Wichita Native American tribe known as the Waco. In 1824, Thomas M. Duke explored the area and reported to Stephen F. Austin, describing the Waco village and they have a spring almost as cold as ice itself. All we want is some Brandy and Sugar to have Ice Toddy and they have about 400 acres planted in corn, beans, pumpkins, and melons and that tended in good order. I think they cannot raise more than One Hundred Warriors, after Austin halted the first attempt to destroy their village in 1825, he made a treaty with them. The Waco eventually moved out of the region, settling north near present-day Fort Worth, in 1872, they joined other Wichita tribes on a reservation in Oklahoma. In 1902, the Waco received allotments of land and became official US citizens, neil McLennan settled in an area near the South Bosque River in 1838. Jacob De Cordova bought McLennans property and hired a former Texas Ranger, in 1849, Erath designed the first block of the city. Property owners wanted to name the city Lamartine, but Erath convinced them to name the area Waco Village, in March 1849, Shapley Ross built the first house in Waco, a double-log cabin, on a bluff overlooking the springs. His daughter Kate was the first white child to be born in Waco, in 1866, Wacos leading citizens embarked on an ambitious project to build the first bridge to span the wide Brazos River. They formed the Waco Bridge Company to build the 475-foot brick Waco Suspension Bridge, the economic effects of the Waco bridge were immediate and large. The cowboys and cattle-herds following the Chisholm Trail north, crossed the Brazos River at Waco, some chose to pay the Suspension Bridge toll, while others floated their herds down the river. The population of Waco grew rapidly, as immigrants now had a crossing for their horse-drawn carriages. Since 1971, the bridge has been only to pedestrian traffic and is in the National Register of Historic Places. In the late 19th century, a district called the Reservation grew up in Waco
2.
Texas
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Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Other major cities include Austin, the second most populous state capital in the U. S. Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State to signify its former status as an independent republic, and as a reminder of the states struggle for independence from Mexico. The Lone Star can be found on the Texan state flag, the origin of Texass name is from the word Tejas, which means friends in the Caddo language. Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, although Texas is popularly associated with the U. S. southwestern deserts, less than 10 percent of Texas land area is desert. Most of the centers are located in areas of former prairies, grasslands, forests. Traveling from east to west, one can observe terrain that ranges from coastal swamps and piney woods, to rolling plains and rugged hills, the term six flags over Texas refers to several nations that have ruled over the territory. Spain was the first European country to claim the area of Texas, Mexico controlled the territory until 1836 when Texas won its independence, becoming an independent Republic. In 1845, Texas joined the United States as the 28th state, the states annexation set off a chain of events that caused the Mexican–American War in 1846. A slave state before the American Civil War, Texas declared its secession from the U. S. in early 1861, after the Civil War and the restoration of its representation in the federal government, Texas entered a long period of economic stagnation. One Texan industry that thrived after the Civil War was cattle, due to its long history as a center of the industry, Texas is associated with the image of the cowboy. The states economic fortunes changed in the early 20th century, when oil discoveries initiated a boom in the state. With strong investments in universities, Texas developed a diversified economy, as of 2010 it shares the top of the list of the most Fortune 500 companies with California at 57. With a growing base of industry, the leads in many industries, including agriculture, petrochemicals, energy, computers and electronics, aerospace. Texas has led the nation in export revenue since 2002 and has the second-highest gross state product. The name Texas, based on the Caddo word tejas meaning friends or allies, was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves, during Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas, La Provincia de Texas. Texas is the second largest U. S. state, behind Alaska, though 10 percent larger than France and almost twice as large as Germany or Japan, it ranks only 27th worldwide amongst country subdivisions by size. If it were an independent country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Chile, Texas is in the south central part of the United States of America. Three of its borders are defined by rivers, the Rio Grande forms a natural border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south
3.
Stand-up comedy
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Stand-up comedy is a comic style in which a comedian performs in front of a live audience, usually speaking directly to them. The performer is known as a comic, stand-up comic, stand-up comedian. In stand-up comedy, the comedian usually recites a grouping of humorous stories, jokes and one-liners typically called a monologue, routine, some stand-up comedians use props, music, or magic tricks to enhance their acts. Stand-up comedy is often performed in clubs, bars and pubs, nightclubs. Outside of live performance, stand-up is often distributed commercially via television, DVD, CD, in stand-up comedy, the feedback of the audience is instant and crucial for the comedians act. Audiences expect a stand-up comic to provide a stream of laughs. Will Ferrell has called stand-up comedy hard, lonely and vicious, a stand-up comedy show may involve only one comedian, or feature a headline or a showcase format. This is followed by one or two middle or featured acts, who perform 15- to 20-minute sets, followed by a headliner who performs for longer, a showcase format may still feature an MC. Bringer shows are another opportunity for amateur performers, the performer must bring a specified number of paying guests in order to get stage time. The guests usually have to pay a charge and there is often a minimum number of drinks that must be ordered. These shows usually have a showcase format and this type of show gives comedians better exposure than open mics because there is usually better audience turnout and industry professionals sometimes go to watch. Different comedy clubs have different requirements for their bringer shows, gotham Comedy Club in New York City, for example, usually has ten-person bringers, while Broadway Comedy Club in New York City usually has six-person bringers. As the name implies, stand-up comedians usually perform their material while standing, stand-up comedy has its origin in classic Parrhesia in 400 BC used for cynics and epicureans in order to tell the reality without censorship. Stand-up comedy in the United Kingdom began in the halls of the 18th and 19th centuries. The heavy censorship regime of the Lord Chamberlains Office required all comedians to submit their acts for censorship, the act would be returned with unacceptable sections underlined in blue pencil. The comedian was then obliged not to deviate from the act in its edited form, the rise of the post-war comedians coincided with the rise of television and radio, and the traditional music hall circuit suffered greatly as a result. By the 1970s, music hall entertainment was virtually dead, alternative circuits had evolved, such as working mens clubs. The alternative comedy scene began to evolve
4.
Film
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A film, also called a movie, motion picture, theatrical film or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession, the process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry. The word cinema, short for cinematography, is used to refer to the industry of films. Films were originally recorded onto plastic film through a photochemical process, the adoption of CGI-based special effects led to the use of digital intermediates. Most contemporary films are now fully digital through the process of production, distribution. Films recorded in a form traditionally included an analogous optical soundtrack. It runs along a portion of the film exclusively reserved for it and is not projected, Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures. They reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them, Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating—or indoctrinating—citizens. The visual basis of film gives it a power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles to translate the dialog into the language of the viewer, some have criticized the film industrys glorification of violence and its potentially negative treatment of women. The individual images that make up a film are called frames, the perception of motion is due to a psychological effect called phi phenomenon. The name film originates from the fact that film has historically been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for a motion picture, including picture, picture show, moving picture, photoplay. The most common term in the United States is movie, while in Europe film is preferred. Terms for the field, in general, include the big screen, the screen, the movies, and cinema. In early years, the sheet was sometimes used instead of screen. Preceding film in origin by thousands of years, early plays and dances had elements common to film, scripts, sets, costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences, storyboards, much terminology later used in film theory and criticism apply, such as mise en scène. Owing to the lack of any technology for doing so, the moving images, the magic lantern, probably created by Christiaan Huygens in the 1650s, could be used to project animation, which was achieved by various types of mechanical slides
5.
Television
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Television or TV is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome, or in color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. The term can refer to a set, a television program. Television is a medium for entertainment, education, news, politics, gossip. Television became available in experimental forms in the late 1920s. After World War II, a form of black-and-white TV broadcasting became popular in the United States and Britain, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses. During the 1950s, television was the medium for influencing public opinion. In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the US, for many reasons, the storage of television and video programming now occurs on the cloud. At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity, another development was the move from standard-definition television to high-definition television, which provides a resolution that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in various formats, 1080p, 1080i, in 2013, 79% of the worlds households owned a television set. Most TV sets sold in the 2000s were flat-panel, mainly LEDs, major manufacturers announced the discontinuation of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-backlit LCDs by the mid-2010s. In the near future, LEDs are gradually expected to be replaced by OLEDs, also, major manufacturers have announced that they will increasingly produce smart TVs in the mid-2010s. Smart TVs with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 functions became the dominant form of television by the late 2010s, Television signals were initially distributed only as terrestrial television using high-powered radio-frequency transmitters to broadcast the signal to individual television receivers. Alternatively television signals are distributed by cable or optical fiber, satellite systems and. Until the early 2000s, these were transmitted as analog signals, a standard television set is composed of multiple internal electronic circuits, including a tuner for receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual display device which lacks a tuner is correctly called a video monitor rather than a television, the word television comes from Ancient Greek τῆλε, meaning far, and Latin visio, meaning sight. The Anglicised version of the term is first attested in 1907 and it was. formed in English or borrowed from French télévision. In the 19th century and early 20th century, other. proposals for the name of a technology for sending pictures over distance were telephote. The abbreviation TV is from 1948, the use of the term to mean a television set dates from 1941
6.
Music
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Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound organized in time. The common elements of music are pitch, rhythm, dynamics, different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. The word derives from Greek μουσική, Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as the harmony of the spheres and it is music to my ears point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, There is no noise, the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. There are many types of music, including music, traditional music, art music, music written for religious ceremonies. For example, it can be hard to draw the line between some early 1980s hard rock and heavy metal, within the arts, music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art or as an auditory art. People may make music as a hobby, like a teen playing cello in a youth orchestra, the word derives from Greek μουσική. According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, the music is derived from mid-13c. Musike, from Old French musique and directly from Latin musica the art of music and this is derived from the. Greek mousike of the Muses, from fem. of mousikos pertaining to the Muses, from Mousa Muse. In classical Greece, any art in which the Muses presided, Music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. With the advent of recording, records of popular songs. Some music lovers create mix tapes of their songs, which serve as a self-portrait. An environment consisting solely of what is most ardently loved, amateur musicians can compose or perform music for their own pleasure, and derive their income elsewhere. Professional musicians sometimes work as freelancers or session musicians, seeking contracts and engagements in a variety of settings, There are often many links between amateur and professional musicians. Beginning amateur musicians take lessons with professional musicians, in community settings, advanced amateur musicians perform with professional musicians in a variety of ensembles such as community concert bands and community orchestras. However, there are many cases where a live performance in front of an audience is also recorded and distributed. Live concert recordings are popular in classical music and in popular music forms such as rock, where illegally taped live concerts are prized by music lovers
7.
Theatre
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The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence, the specific place of the performance is also named by the word theatre as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον, itself from θεάομαι. Modern theatre, broadly defined, includes performances of plays and musical theatre, there are connections between theatre and the art forms of ballet, opera and various other forms. The city-state of Athens is where western theatre originated, participation in the city-states many festivals—and mandatory attendance at the City Dionysia as an audience member in particular—was an important part of citizenship. The Greeks also developed the concepts of dramatic criticism and theatre architecture, Actors were either amateur or at best semi-professional. The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of three types of drama, tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play, the origins of theatre in ancient Greece, according to Aristotle, the first theoretician of theatre, are to be found in the festivals that honoured Dionysus. The performances were given in semi-circular auditoria cut into hillsides, capable of seating 10, the stage consisted of a dancing floor, dressing room and scene-building area. Since the words were the most important part, good acoustics, the actors wore masks appropriate to the characters they represented, and each might play several parts. Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE, no tragedies from the 6th century BCE and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in during the 5th century BCE have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the origins of tragedy remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE it was institution alised in competitions held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysus. As contestants in the City Dionysias competition playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays, the performance of tragedies at the City Dionysia may have begun as early as 534 BCE, official records begin from 501 BCE, when the satyr play was introduced. More than 130 years later, the philosopher Aristotle analysed 5th-century Athenian tragedy in the oldest surviving work of dramatic theory—his Poetics, Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the surviving plays of Aristophanes. New Comedy is known primarily from the papyrus fragments of Menander. Aristotle defined comedy as a representation of people that involves some kind of blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster. In addition to the categories of comedy and tragedy at the City Dionysia, finding its origins in rural, agricultural rituals dedicated to Dionysus, the satyr play eventually found its way to Athens in its most well-known form. Satyrs themselves were tied to the god Dionysus as his loyal companions, often engaging in drunken revelry
8.
Book
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A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other materials, fastened together to hinge at one side, with text and/or images printed in ink. A single sheet within a book is a leaf, and each side of a leaf is a page, a set of text-filled or illustrated pages produced in electronic format for reading on a computer screen, smartphone or e-reader device is known as an electronic book, or e-book. The term books may refer the body of works of literature. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals, in novels and sometimes other types of books, a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books. An avid reader or collector of books or a lover is a bibliophile or colloquially. A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookshop or bookstore, Books are also sold in some department stores, drugstores and newspaper vendors. Books can also be borrowed from libraries, google has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 distinct titles had been published. In some wealthier nations, printed books are giving way to the usage of electronic or e-books, the word book comes from Old English bōc, which in turn comes from the Germanic root *bōk-, cognate to beech. Similarly, in Slavic languages буква is cognate with beech, in Russian and in Serbian and Macedonian, the word букварь or буквар refers specifically to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood, similarly, the Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense, originally meant block of wood. When writing systems were created in ancient civilizations, a variety of objects, such as stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets, the study of such inscriptions forms a major part of history. The study of inscriptions is known as epigraphy, the Ancient Egyptians would often write on papyrus, a plant grown along the Nile River. At first the words were not separated from other and there was no punctuation. Texts were written right to left, left to right. The technical term for that last type of writing is boustrophedon, a tablet might be defined as a physically robust writing medium, suitable for casual transport and writing. See also stylus, the instrument used to write on a tablet, clay tablets were flattened and mostly dry pieces of clay that could be easily carried, and impressed with a stylus. They were used as a medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age. Tablets were used by traders to record sales of such as bushels of grain
9.
University of California, Los Angeles
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The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California, United States. It became the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919 and it offers 337 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. UCLA enrolls about 31,000 undergraduate and 13,000 graduate students, and had 119,000 applicants for Fall 2016, including transfer applicants, the university is organized into six undergraduate colleges, seven professional schools, and four professional health science schools. Fourteen Nobel laureates, three Fields Medalists, two Chief Scientists of the U. S. Air Force and three Turing Award winners have been faculty, researchers, or alumni, the university was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1974. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2015–2016 ranked UCLA 16th in the world for academics, in 2015-2016, UCLA ranked 12th in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities and 31st in the 2016/17 QS World University Rankings. UCLA student-athletes compete as the Bruins in the Pac-12 Conference, the Bruins won 126 national championships, including 113 NCAA team championships, more than any other university. UCLA student-athletes, coaches and staff won 251 Olympic medals,126 gold,65 silver and 60 bronze, UCLA student-athletes competed in every Olympics since 1920 with one exception, and won a gold medal in every Olympics that the United States participated in since 1932. The State Normal School at Los Angeles opened on August 29,1882, the facility included an elementary school where teachers-in-training could practice their technique with children. That elementary school is related to the present day version, UCLA Lab School, in 1887, the school became known as the Los Angeles State Normal School. In 1914, the moved to a new campus on Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood. However, David Prescott Barrows, the new President of the University of California, the same legislation added its general undergraduate program, the College of Letters and Science. After the athletic teams entered the Pacific Coast conference in 1926, the Southern Branch student council adopted the nickname Bruins, in 1927, the Regents renamed the Southern Branch the University of California at Los Angeles. In the same year, the state broke ground in Westwood on land sold for $1 million, less than one-third its value, by real estate developers Edwin and Harold Janss, the campus in Westwood opened to students in 1929. The original four buildings were the College Library, Royce Hall, the Physics-Biology Building, the first undergraduate classes on the new campus were held in 1929 with 5,500 students. A timeline of the history can be found on its website, during its first 32 years, UCLA was treated as an off-site department of UC. As such, its presiding officer was called a provost, in 1951, UCLA was formally elevated to co-equal status with UC Berkeley, and its presiding officer Raymond B. Allen was the first chief executive to be granted the title of chancellor. The appointment of Franklin David Murphy to the position of Chancellor in 1960 helped spark an era of growth of facilities. By the end of the decade, UCLA had achieved distinction in a range of subjects
10.
Improvisational theatre
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Improvisational theatre exists in performance as a range of styles of improvisational comedy as well as some non-comedic theatrical performances. It is sometimes used in film and television, both to develop characters and scripts and occasionally as part of the final product. Improvisational techniques are used extensively in drama programs to train actors for stage, film. However, the skills and processes of improvisation are used outside of the context of performing arts. It is sometimes used in psychotherapy as a tool to gain insight into a persons thoughts, feelings, the earliest well documented use of improvisational theatre in Eastern history is found in the Atellan Farce of Africa 391 BC. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, commedia dellarte performers improvised based on an outline in the streets of Italy. Some people credit American Dudley Riggs as the first vaudevillian to use audience suggestions to create improvised sketches on stage, Spolin influenced the first generation of modern American improvisers at The Compass Players in Chicago, which led to The Second City. Her son, Paul Sills, along with David Shepherd, started The Compass Players, following the demise of the Compass Players, Paul Sills began The Second City. They were the first organized troupes in Chicago, and the modern Chicago improvisational comedy movement grew from their success. Many of the current rules of comedic improv were first formalized in Chicago in the late 1950s and early 1960s, initially among The Compass Players troupe, which was directed by Paul Sills. From most accounts, David Shepherd provided the vision of the Compass Players. Mike Nichols, Ted Flicker, and Del Close were her most frequent collaborators in this regard, during this time, Forsberg trained many of the performers who went on to star on The Second City stage. Simultaneously, Keith Johnstones group The Theatre Machine, which originated in London, was touring Europe and this work gave birth to Theatresports, at first secretly in Johnstones workshops, and eventually in public when he moved to Canada. Toronto has been home to a rich improv tradition, in 1984, Dick Chudnow founded ComedySportz in Milwaukee, WI. Expansion began with the addition of ComedySportz-Madison, in 1985, the first Comedy League of America National Tournament was held in 1988, with 10 teams participating. The league is now known as World Comedy League and boasts a roster of 24 international cities, in San Francisco, The Committee theater was active in North Beach during the 1960s. It was founded by alumni of Chicagos Second City, Alan Myerson, when The Committee disbanded in 1972, three major companies were formed, The Pitchell Players, The Wing, and Improvisation Inc. The only company that continued to perform Closes Harold was the latter one and its two former members, Michael Bossier and John Elk, formed Spaghetti Jam in San Franciscos Old Spaghetti Factory in 1976, where shortform improv and Harolds were performed through 1983
11.
Surreal humour
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Surreal humour is a form of humour predicated on deliberate violations of causal reasoning, producing events and behaviours that are obviously illogical. Constructions of surreal humour tend to involve bizarre juxtapositions, non-sequiturs, the humour arises from a subversion of audiences expectations, so that amusement is founded on unpredictability, separate from a logical analysis of the situation. The humour derived gets its appeal from the fact that the situation described is so ridiculous or unlikely, the genre has roots in Surrealism in the arts. People speak of surreal humour when illogic and absurdity are used for humorous effect, many of Edward Lears children stories and poems contain nonsense and are basically surreal in approach. Besides that, it was bordered by evanescent isthmuses with a great Gulf-stream running about all over it, so that it was perfectly beautiful, and contained only a single tree,503 feet high. In the early 20th century, several movements, including the dadaists, surrealists. The goals of these movements were in some serious, and they were committed to undermining the solemnity. As a result, much of their art was intentionally amusing, a famous example is Marcel Duchamps Fountain, an inverted urinal signed R. Mutt. This became one of the most famous and influential pieces of art in history and it is also a joke, relying on the inversion of the items function as expressed by its title as well as its incongruous presence in an art exhibition. The word surreal first began to be used to describe a type of aesthetic of the early 1920s, surreal humour is also found frequently in avant-garde theatre such as Waiting for Godot and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. In the United States, S. J. Perelman has been identified as the first surrealist humour writer, artists like Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, Donald Barthelme, Italo Calvino, John Hodgman, and many others have relied on this technique in their work. Surrealist humour has played an important role in culture, especially since The Goon Show, Ernie Kovacs. Spike Milligan has been an influence with his absurdist pieces. One of his earliest works in radio, The Goon Show, has inspired many other absurdist comedians and was popular at the time. Spike Milligan went on to create a TV show in 1969, in turn, the Pythons influenced many with their groundbreaking series Monty Pythons Flying Circus. In the 1980s, when the alternative comedy era had begun, absurdist comedians were working the circuit, with the success of The Comic Strip Presents. Featuring as one of the first aired pieces for Channel 4 and this was a very absurdist sitcom based on four university students. Both Monty Python and The Young Ones featured a structure and many absurdities
12.
Word play
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Word play or wordplay is a literary technique and a form of wit in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Word play is common in oral cultures as a method of reinforcing meaning. Examples of text-based word play are found in languages with or without alphabet-based scripts, for example, linguistic fossils and set phrases are often manipulated for word play, as in Wellerisms, Well have to rehearse that, said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car. Another use of fossils is in using antonyms of unpaired words – I was well-coiffed and sheveled, most writers engage in word play to some extent, but certain writers are particularly committed to, or adept at, word play as a major feature of their work. Shakespeares quibbles have made him a noted punster, wodehouse was hailed by The Times as a comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce for his own acclaimed wordplay. James Joyce, author of Ulysses, is another noted word-player, an epitaph, probably unassigned to any grave, demonstrates use in rhyme. Here lie the bones of one Bun He was killed with a gun and his name was not Bun but Wood But Wood would not rhyme with gun But Bun would. Crossword puzzles often employ wordplay to challenge solvers, cryptic crosswords especially are based on elaborate systems of wordplay. Young Thug used a play on words in his verse on Sacrifices by Drake featuring 2 Chainz, Ima use her name, like, Who is he. I said Ima username, like, Who is he, word play can enter common usage as neologisms. Word play is closely related to games, that is. See also language game for a linguists variation, etymology Figure of speech List of forms of word play Metaphor Simile A categorized taxonomy of word play composed of record-holding words
13.
Culture of the United States
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The culture of the United States of America is primarily a mix of various European, Native American, African, Asian, and Polynesian cultures. It also has its own social and cultural characteristics, such as dialect, music, arts, social habits, cuisine, the United States of America is an ethnically and racially diverse country as a result of large-scale migration from many countries throughout its history. Its chief early European influences came from English settlers of colonial America during British rule, due to colonial ties with Britain that spread the English language, British culture, legal system and other cultural inheritances, had a formative influence. Other important influences came from parts of Europe, especially Germany. Original elements also play a role, such as Jeffersonian democracy. American culture includes both conservative and liberal elements, scientific and religious competitiveness, political structures, risk taking and free expression, materialist, despite certain consistent ideological principles, American culture has a variety of expressions due to its geographical scale and demographic diversity. The flexibility of U. S. culture and its symbolic nature lead some researchers to categorize American culture as a mythic identity. Many American cultural elements, especially from popular culture, have spread across the globe through modern mass media, the United States has traditionally been thought of as a melting pot. However, beginning in the 1960s and continuing on in the present day, the trends towards cultural diversity, pluralism. Due to the extent of American culture, there are many integrated, the percentage of non-religious people is the highest in the northeastern state of Vermont at 34%, compared to the Bible Belt state of Alabama, where it is 6%. Strong cultural differences have a history in the U. S. with the southern slave society in the antebellum period serving as a prime example. David Hackett Fischer theorizes that the United States is made up today of four regional cultures. According to Fischer, the foundation of American culture was formed from four mass migrations from four different regions of the British Isles by four distinct socio-religious groups. New Englands earliest settlement period occurred between 1629 and 1640 when Puritans, mostly from East Anglia in England, settled there, the next mass migration was of southern English cavaliers and their working class English domestic servants to the Chesapeake Bay region between 1640 and 1675. This facilitated the development of the Southern American culture, then, thousands of English and Welsh Quakers, led by William Penn, settled in the Delaware Valley followed by large numbers of German Lutherans. S. From the mid-Atlantic states to the Pacific Coast, finally, Scotch-Irish, English and Scottish settlers from the borderlands of Britain and Ireland migrated to Appalachia between 1717 and 1775. They formed the culture of the Upland South, which has since spread west to such areas as West Texas. Fischer suggests that the U. S. today is not a country with one General American culture and he asserts that the country is composed of just regional cultures, and that understanding that helps one to understand many things about modern American life
14.
News
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News is information about current events. Common topics for news reports include war, government, politics, education, health, the environment, economy, business, government proclamations, concerning royal ceremonies, laws, taxes, public health, criminals, have been dubbed news since ancient times. Humans exhibit a nearly universal desire to learn and share news, technological and social developments, often driven by government communication and espionage networks, have increased the speed with which news can spread, as well as influenced its content. The genre of news as we know it today is closely associated with the newspaper, the English word news developed in the 14th century as a special use of the plural form of new. In Middle English, the equivalent word was newes, like the French nouvelles, jessica Garretson Finch is credited with coining the phrase current events while teaching at Barnard College in the 1890s. As its name implies, “news” typically connotes the presentation of new information, the newness of news gives it an uncertain quality which distinguishes it from the more careful investigations of history or other scholarly disciplines. News conspicuously describes the world in the present or immediate past, to make the news, an ongoing process must have some “peg”, an event in time which anchors it to the present moment. Relatedly, news often addresses aspects of reality which seem unusual, deviant, hence the famous dictum that “Dog Bites Man” is not news, but “Man Bites Dog” is. Another corollary of the newness of news is that, as new technology enable new media to disseminate news more quickly, according to some theoretical and understandings, news is whatever the news industry sells. Journalism, broadly understood along the lines, is the act or occupation of collecting and providing news. From a commercial perspective, news is simply one input, along with paper necessary to prepare a product for distribution. A news agency supplies this resource “wholesale” and publishers enhance it for retail, most purveyors of news value impartiality, neutrality, and objectivity, despite the inherent difficulty of reporting without political bias. Perception of these values has changed greatly over time as sensationalized tabloid journalism has risen in popularity, News is also sometimes said to portray the truth, but this relationship is elusive and qualified. Paradoxically, another property commonly attributed to news is sensationalism, the focus on. Thus news is not unrelated to gossip, the human practice of sharing information about other humans of mutual interest. A common sensational topic is violence, hence another news dictum, “if it bleeds, newsworthiness is defined as a subject having sufficient relevance to the public or a special audience to warrant press attention or coverage. In some countries and at points in history, what news media. Many news values seem to be common across cultures, people seem to be interested in news to the extent which it has a big impact, describes conflicts, happens nearby, involves well-known people, and deviates from the norms of everyday happenings
15.
Victoria Tennant
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Victoria Tennant is an English film and television actress. She is known for her roles in the TV miniseries The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, in which she appeared as actor Robert Mitchums on-screen love interest, Pamela Tudsbury. Her mother, Irina Baronova, was a Russian prima ballerina who appeared with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, her father, Cecil Tennant, was a producer and talent agent for MCA. Her maternal grandfather, Mikhail Baronov, was an officer in the Russian Navy, his wife. Tennant has a sister, Irina, and a brother, Robert, tennants godfather was the actor Laurence Olivier. Like her mother, Tennant trained in ballet, first at the Elmhurst Ballet School and then at the Central School of Speech, after a number of roles in British and other European films, including The Ragmans Daughter and Inseminoid, she emigrated to the United States. She then appeared in the TV mini-series The Winds of War and War and Remembrance and she starred in two films with Steve Martin, her future husband, All of Me and L. A. Story. In 2014, she published a memoir about her entitled, Irina Baronova and The Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. The book was presented at the Bel Air Country Club in Bel Air, tennants first marriage was to Peppo Vanini, a nightclub owner who owned the famous Xenon nightclub, in 1969. She dated Matthew Chapman, a writer and director from in 1978 until 1982 and she married Martin in 1986, and they divorced in 1994. Since 1996, Tennant has been married to Kirk Justin Stambler, a lawyer for Warner Bros. with whom she has a daughter, Katya Irina, hussy – theme song lyrics Victoria Tennant at the Internet Movie Database
16.
Bluegrass music
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Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a related genre of country music. Settlers from Britain and Ireland arrived in Appalachia during the 18th century and these traditions consisted primarily of English and Scottish ballads—which were essentially unaccompanied narrative—and dance music, such as Irish reels, which were accompanied by a fiddle. Many older bluegrass songs come directly from the British Isles, several Appalachian bluegrass ballads, such as Pretty Saro, Barbara Allen, Cuckoo Bird and House Carpenter, come from England and preserve the English ballad tradition both melodically and lyrically. Others, such as The Two Sisters, also come from England, however, some bluegrass fiddle songs popular in Appalachia, such as Leather Britches, and Pretty Polly, have Scottish roots. The dance tune Cumberland Gap may be derived from the tune that accompanies the Scottish ballad Bonnie George Campbell and this is in contrast to old-time music, in which all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carries the lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment. Breakdowns are often characterized by rapid tempos and unusual instrumental dexterity, there are three major subgenres of bluegrass and one unofficial subgenre. Traditional bluegrass has musicians playing folk songs, tunes with traditional chord progressions, progressive bluegrass groups may use electric instruments and import songs from other genres, particularly rock & roll. Examples include Cadillac Sky and Bearfoot, another subgenre, Bluegrass gospel uses Christian lyrics, soulful three- or four-part harmony singing, and sometimes the playing of instrumentals. Bluegrass music has attracted a following worldwide. Bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe characterized the genre as, Scottish bagpipes and its Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. Its blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound, unlike mainstream country music, bluegrass is traditionally played on acoustic stringed instruments. The fiddle, five-string banjo, guitar, mandolin, and upright bass are often joined by the resonator guitar and this instrumentation originated in rural dance bands and is the basis on which the earliest bluegrass bands were formed. The guitar is now most commonly played with a style referred to as flatpicking, unlike the style of bluegrass guitarists such as Lester Flatt. Banjo players often use the three-finger picking style made popular by such as Don Reno. Fiddlers frequently play in thirds and fifths, producing a sound that is characteristic to the bluegrass style, bassists almost always play pizzicato, occasionally adopting the slap-style to accentuate the beat. A bluegrass bass line is generally a rhythmic alternation between the tonic and dominant of each chord, with walking bass excursions. Instrumentation has been a topic of debate. Traditional bluegrass performers believe the correct instrumentation is used by Bill Monroes band
17.
Pop music
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Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid 1950s. The terms popular music and pop music are used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular. Pop and rock were synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they were used in opposition from each other. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music. Pop music is eclectic, and often borrows elements from other such as urban, dance, rock, Latin. Identifying factors include generally short to medium-length songs written in a format, as well as the common use of repeated choruses, melodic tunes. David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop music as a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, according to Pete Seeger, pop music is professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music, the music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs. Pop music, as a genre, is seen as existing and developing separately, pop music continuously evolves along with the terms definition. The term pop song was first recorded as being used in 1926, Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music. The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pops earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience. Since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the meaning of non-classical mus, usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles. Grove Music Online also states that, in the early 1960s pop music competed terminologically with beat music, while in the USA its coverage overlapped with that of rock and roll. From about 1967, the term was used in opposition to the term rock music. Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral. It is not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward, and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative. It is, provided from on high rather than being made from below, pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment, the lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions
18.
Country music
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Country music is a genre of United States popular music that originated in the southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from the genre of United States, such as folk music. Blues modes have been used throughout its recorded history. The term country music is used today to many styles and subgenres. In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, immigrants to the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North America brought the music and instruments of Europe and Africa along with them for nearly 300 years. Country music was introduced to the world as a Southern phenomenon, Bristol, Tennessee, has been formally recognized by the U. S. Congress as the Birthplace of Country Music, based on the historic Bristol recording sessions of 1927. Since 2014, the city has been home to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, historians have also noted the influence of the less-known Johnson City sessions of 1928 and 1929, and the Knoxville sessions of 1929 and 1930. Prior to these, pioneer settlers, in the Great Smoky Mountains region, had developed a musical heritage. The first generation emerged in the early 1920s, with Atlantas music scene playing a role in launching countrys earliest recording artists. Okeh Records began issuing hillbilly music records by Fiddlin John Carson as early as 1923, followed by Columbia Records in 1924, many hillbilly musicians, such as Cliff Carlisle, recorded blues songs throughout the 1920s. The most important was the Grand Ole Opry, aired starting in 1925 by WSM in Nashville, during the 1930s and 1940s, cowboy songs, or Western music, which had been recorded since the 1920s, were popularized by films made in Hollywood. Bob Wills was another musician from the Lower Great Plains who had become very popular as the leader of a hot string band. His mix of country and jazz, which started out as dance hall music, Wills was one of the first country musicians known to have added an electric guitar to his band, in 1938. Country musicians began recording boogie in 1939, shortly after it had played at Carnegie Hall. Gospel music remained a component of country music. It became known as honky tonk, and had its roots in Western swing and the music of Mexico. By the early 1950s a blend of Western swing, country boogie, rockabilly was most popular with country fans in the 1950s, and 1956 could be called the year of rockabilly in country music. Beginning in the mid-1950s, and reaching its peak during the early 1960s, the late 1960s in American music produced a unique blend as a result of traditionalist backlash within separate genres
19.
Rounder Records
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Rounder Records is an American record label specializing in folk, bluegrass, blues, and other forms of American roots music. Its roster includes Alison Krauss and Union Station, Béla Fleck, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, Rounders musicians have won over 40 Grammy Awards since the labels inception in 1970. The company also maintains book and video divisions, Rounder was founded in 1970 by Ken Irwin, Bill Nowlin and Marian Leighton-Levy, three college friends in Massachusetts who shared an interest in folk, old country, and bluegrass music. They gave the label its name for reasons, the shape of a vinyl record, the nickname for a hobo. In Rounders first three years, it released 19 records, starting in 1970 with an album by George Pegram, Rounders earliest success was George Thorogood and The Destroyers, a blues-rock band that sold half a millions copes of their 1978 album Move It On Over. Headquarters were moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, over the years, Rounder expanded its roster to include other genres such as reggae, and zydeco. The labels first Grammy was won by blues guitarist Clarence Gatemouth Brown in 1983 for the album Alright Again, Rounders most successful act is bluegrass singer and fiddler Alison Krauss. In 1991, at the age of 19, she won a Grammy Award for her second album, the album spawned singles, videos, and national TV exposure. Krauss has sold over 12 million albums and won 27 Grammy Awards, in 2012, Rounder was sold to Concord Music Group. Two years later, Rounder moved its headquarters to Nashville, list of record labels Official site The Never-Ending Revival, Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance by Michael F. Scully Radio Interview with founders Marian Leighton Levy and Ken Irwin
20.
Warner Bros. Records
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Warner Bros. Records was established on March 19,1958, as the recorded-music division of the American film studio Warner Bros. For most of its existence it was one of a group of labels owned and operated by larger parent corporations. The sequence of companies that controlled Warner Bros. and its allied labels evolved through a series of corporate mergers. Over this period, Warner Bros. Records grew from a minor player in the music industry to become one of the top recording labels in the world. In 2003, these assets were divested by their then owner Time Warner. This independent company traded as the Warner Music Group before being bought by Access Industries in 2011, WMG is the smallest of the three major international music conglomerates and the worlds last publicly traded major music company. Cameron Strang serves as CEO of the company, artists currently signed to Warner Bros. At the end of the silent movie period, Warner Bros, pictures decided to expand into publishing and recording so that it could access low-cost music content for its films. This new group controlled valuable copyrights on standards by George and Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern, the label signed rising radio and recording stars Bing Crosby, Mills Brothers, and Boswell Sisters. In December 1931, Warner Bros. offloaded Brunswick to the American Record Corporation for a fraction of its former value, in a lease arrangement which did not include Brunswicks pressing plants. Warner Bros. sold Brunswick a second time, this time along with the old Brunswick pressing plants Warner owned, to Decca Records in exchange for a financial interest in Decca. The studio stayed out of the business for more than 25 years. Warner Bros. reëntered the record business in 1958 with the establishment of its own recording division, by this time, the established Hollywood studios were reeling from multiple challenges to their former dominance - the most notable being the introduction of television in the late 1940s. Legal changes also had a impact on their business—lawsuits brought by major stars had effectively overthrown the old studio contract system by the late 1940s. Pictures sold off much of its library in 1948 and, beginning in 1949. Semenenko in particular had a professional interest in the entertainment business. With the record business booming - sales had topped US$500 million by 1958 - Semnenko argued that it was foolish for Warner Bros, another impetus for the labels creation was the brief music career of Warner Bros. actor Tab Hunter. In 1958, the studio signed Hunter as its first artist to its newly formed record division, to establish the label, the company hired former Columbia Records president James B
21.
Edie Brickell
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She is married to Paul Simon. Brickell was born in Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas, to Larry Jean Linden and she was raised with her older sister, Laura Strain. In 1985, Brickell was invited to sing one night with friends from her school in a local folk rock group. She would join the band as lead singer, after the band was signed to a recording contract, the label changed the groups name to Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. Their 1988 debut album, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, became a critical and commercial success, including the single, What I Am. The bands follow-up album, Ghost of a Dog, was an effort to highlight the bands eclectic personality. Brickell had a role as a singer in the 1989 film Born on the Fourth of July. Her version of Bob Dylans A Hard Rains a-Gonna Fall is featured on the films soundtrack and she also sang a cover version of Lou Reeds Walk on the Wild Side in the 1990 film Flashback. As a solo artist, Brickell released Picture Perfect Morning and Volcano, the video for Picture Perfect Mornings Good Times was included as part of the multimedia samples featured on Microsofts Windows 95 Companion CD-ROM. In 1992, she worked with producer Bob Wiseman in New York and Toronto on a collection of songs, utilizing an ensemble, unusual keyboards. The songs were rejected by the company and remained unreleased. In 2006, with all of the members of New Bohemians. In 2011, Brickell wrote the track, The Meaning of Life, for Tamar Halperns film, Jeremy Fink. Love Has Come for You was released on April 23,2013, the album is a collaboration with Steve Martin. Both appeared on shows, such as The View and Late Show with David Letterman, to promote. Starting in May 2013, she toured with Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers throughout the United States, in 2016, the musical Bright Star — to which she contributed music, lyrics, and story — opened on Broadway at the Cort Theatre. Brickell married singer-songwriter Paul Simon on May 30,1992, Brickell was performing on NBCs Saturday Night Live on Saturday November 5,1988, when she noticed Simon standing in front of the cameraman. Even though Id performed the song hundreds of times in clubs, he made me forget how the song went when I looked at him and we can show the kids the tape and say, Look, thats when we first laid eyes on each other
22.
Earl Scruggs
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Earl Eugene Scruggs was an American musician noted for popularizing a three-finger banjo picking style now called Scruggs style that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His three-finger style of playing was different from the ways the five-string banjo had been historically played. He popularized the instrument in genres of music and elevated the banjo from its role as a background rhythm instrument or a comedians prop into featured solo status. Scruggs career began at age 21 when he was hired to play in a group called Bill Monroe, the name bluegrass stuck and eventually became the eponym for this entire genre of county music. Another band member, Lester Flatt resigned as well, and later the two men paired up again in a new group they called Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. The song won two Grammy Awards and in 2005 was selected for the Library of Congress National Recording Registry of works of unusual merit, Flatt and Scruggs brought bluegrass music into mainstream popularity in the early 1960s with their country hit, The Ballad of Jed Clampett. This song was the music for the successful network television sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies and was the first bluegrass recording to reach number one on the Billboard charts. Over their 20-year association, Flatt and Scruggs recorded over 50 albums and 75 single records, each of them formed a new band that matched his own vision, but neither man ever regained the success they had reached as a team. Scruggs received four Grammy awards, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Scruggs was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship given by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor in the folk and traditional arts in the US. Four works by Scruggs have been placed in the Grammy Hall of Fame, after Scruggs death in 2012 at age 88, the Earl Scruggs Center near his birthplace in Shelby, North Carolina was founded with the aid of a federal grant and corporate donors. The center is a $5.5 million facility which features the contributions of Scruggs and serves as an educational center providing classes. Scruggs was born January 6,1924 just outside of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in a community called Flint Hill and his father, George Elam Scruggs, was a farmer and a bookkeeper who died of a protracted illness when Scruggs was four years old. Upon his death, Scruggs mother, Georgia Lula Rupee, was left to care of the farm and five children. The family members all played music, mr. Scruggs had played an open back banjo using the frailing technique, but Earl, as an adult had no recollection of his fathers playing. Mrs. Scruggs played the pump organ, earls siblings, older brothers Junie and Horace, and older sisters Eula Mae and Ruby, all played banjo and guitar. Scruggs recalls a visit to his uncles home at age six to hear a banjo player named Mack Woolbright. This made an impression on Scruggs, who said, Hed sit in the rocking chair, I couldnt imagine — he was the first, what I call a good banjo player. Scruggs then took up the instrument — he was too small to hold one at the start and he moved it around depending on what part of the neck he was playing
23.
Steep Canyon Rangers
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Steep Canyon Rangers are an American bluegrass band from Brevard, North Carolina. Though formed in 2000, the band has become known since 2009 for collaborating with actor/banjoist Steve Martin. In 2013, the Steep Canyon Rangers solo album Nobody Knows You won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album, the previous year, their 2012 collaboration with Steve Martin, Rare Bird Alert, was nominated for the same award. Steep Canyon Rangers have recorded 9 solo albums plus two collaborative albums with Steve Martin, SCR performed as a quintet for nearly a decade before intermittent touring began as a sextet with Steve Martin, the band still performs in both configurations. In May 2013, Steve Martin and SCR began performing with Edie Brickell after she and Martin co-wrote and recorded an album together, Love Has Come for You, the record featured performances by Steep Canyon Rangers, Sara Watkins, Esperanza Spalding and others. Woody Platt – acoustic guitar, lead vocals Graham Sharp – banjo, lead/harmony vocals Mike Guggino – mandolin, the core group consisted of Woody Platt, Graham Sharp and Charles R. Humphrey III. Early on, Platts childhood friend, Mike Guggino, was asked to join, with original fiddler, Lizzie Hamilton, completing the quintet, Steep Canyon Rangers garnered fans across the U. S. performing festivals from North Carolina to Colorado. Two albums of music were recorded with the early lineup, Old Dreams and New Dreams. In 2001, the Rangers took first prize in Lyons, CO at the Rockygrass Festival band competition earning the Rangers a main stage performance the following year. Hamilton left the group in 2003 but heavy touring continued with a rotation of fiddlers leading up to the eponymous CD Steep Canyon Rangers on Rebel Records, the album contained a dozen more original songs and featured guests Josh Goforth and John Garris on fiddle. In 2004, Nicky Sanders approached the band for the position of full-time fiddle player, the Rangers recorded their fourth album, One Dime at a Time in 2005 with producer Mike Bub. The next year the band won Emerging Artist of the Year at the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards ceremony, following the release of their fifth album in 2007, the band received two more IBMA nominations for Best Album and Gospel Performance of the Year. In 2010, Sanderss fiddle tune Mourning Dove was nominated for IBMA Instrumental Song of the Year, in May 2009, Steep Canyon Rangers were asked by banjoist/comedian Steve Martin to perform with him in a benefit concert for the Los Angeles Public Library, featuring banjo and comedy. This first collaborative performance took place at Club Nokia in Los Angeles, Martin subsequently asked the Rangers to accompany him on a world bluegrass tour taking the group to venues such as Carnegie Hall, Royal Festival Hall and the Wang Center in Boston. While in England, the group performed on the critically acclaimed music TV show. On June 27,2009, Steve Martin and SCR were featured on a broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, soon after, Martin played with the band at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco. Martin appeared with the Steep Canyon Rangers at the 2010 Bonnaroo Music Festival, on July 4,2011 Martin and SCR performed A Capitol Fourth celebration on the West Lawn of the US Capitol Building. In the summer of 2010, Steve Martin and SCR recorded their first collaborative album, Rare Bird Alert at Echo Mountain Recording in Asheville, the album contained tracks primarily composed by Martin and featured guest vocal appearances by Paul McCartney and the Dixie Chicks
24.
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
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The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was an American comedy and variety show television series hosted by the Smothers Brothers and initially airing on CBS from 1967 to 1969. Despite this success, continual conflicts with network executives over content led to the show being abruptly pulled from the schedule in violation of the Smothers contract in 1969, the evolution of The Comedy Hour was unique to a medium that was fearful of change. The show debuted in the winter of 1967 as a hip version of the typical comedy-variety show of its era. But within weeks it rapidly evolved into a program that extended the boundaries of what was considered permissible in television satire, the show also introduced audiences to pop singer Jennifer Warnes, who was a regular on the series. The television premiere of Mason Williams hit record, Classical Gas, took place on the show, the series showcased new musical artists that other comedy-variety shows rarely gave airtime to, due to the nature of their music or their political affiliations. Seegers appearance on the two premiere which aired on September 10,1967 was his first on network commercial television in 17 years since being blacklisted in 1950. His performance of Waist Deep in the Big Muddy was dropped from the broadcast after his refusal to comply with CBSs request to remove the sixth verse. The song, its related to the present by the controversial stanza, was a metaphor for President Lyndon B. Johnson. Seeger was eventually allowed to reappear on the show to perform the song again on Episode 24 later that season, in 1968, the show broadcast several promotional films for The Beatles songs Hey Jude and Revolution and Bee Gees. Before a rowdy crowd at the Los Angeles Forum, Jimi Hendrix dedicated I Dont Live Today to the Smothers Brothers, the show became both popular and controversial for those same references to youth culture and the issues that both interested and affected this particular target audience. The brothers soon found themselves in conflicts with CBS network censors. At the start of the 1968–69 season, the ordered that the Smothers deliver their shows finished. As the year progressed, battles over content continued, including a David Steinberg sermon about Moses and the Burning Bush. With some local stations making their own deletions of controversial sketches or comments, the network explained the decision by stating that because that weeks episode did not arrive in time to be previewed, it would not be shown. In that program, Joan Baez paid tribute to her then-husband David Harris, when the show finally did air, three weeks later, the network allowed Baez to state that her husband was in prison, but edited out the reason. Despite the conflict, the show was picked up for the 1969–70 season on March 14, however, the episode was aired in Canada on CTV on a pre-release which was a common occurrence at that time. Another of the presidents, Robert Wood, stated that it became evident that the brothers were unwilling to accept the criteria of taste established by CBS. This cancellation led the brothers to file a breach of contract suit against the network, despite this cancellation, the show won the Emmy Award that year for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy, Variety or Music
25.
The Tonight Show
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The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show currently broadcast from the Rockefeller Center in New York City and airing on NBC since 1954. It is the worlds longest-running talk show, and the longest running and it is the third-longest-running show on NBC, after the news-and-talk shows Today and Meet the Press. Over the course of more than 60 years, The Tonight Show has undergone only minor title changes and it aired under the name Tonight for several of its early years, eventually settling on The Tonight Show after the seating of long-time host Johnny Carson in 1962. In 1957, the show briefly tried a more news-style format and it has otherwise remained a talk show throughout its run. The Tonight Show began broadcasting in 1954 and it has had six official hosts, beginning with Steve Allen, followed by Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan OBrien, and Jimmy Fallon. It has had recurring guest hosts, a practice especially common during the Paar. Carson is the longest-serving host to date, the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson aired for 30 seasons between October 1962 and May 1992. Leno, however, has the record of having hosted the greatest number of total televised episodes, during Johnny Carsons first eighteen years, the show ran for ninety minutes. During Johnnys 1980 contract negotiations, the show was shortened to sixty minutes, besides the guest hosts Johnny used, NBC ran The Best of Carson which was reruns of popular older shows Johnny had done. Prior to the starting of Saturday Night Live in 1975, NBC showed The Best of Carson on Saturday nights at 11,30 pm, outside of its brief run as a news show in 1957, OBrien is the shortest-serving host. OBrien hosted 146 episodes over the course of less than eight months, current host Fallon took the helm on February 17,2014. Fallon had previously hosted Late Night, and before Late Night he was a member of the cast of Saturday Night Live. From 1950 to 1951 NBC aired Broadway Open House, a variety show hosted primarily by comic Jerry Lester. Broadway… demonstrated the potential for late-night network programming. The format of The Tonight Show can be traced to a nightly 40-minute local program in New York, hosted by Allen and it was quickly retitled The Steve Allen Show. This premiered in 1953 on WNBT-TV, the local affiliate in New York City. Beginning in September 1954, it was renamed Tonight. and began its run on the full NBC network. Notes for hosting history The first Tonight announcer was Gene Rayburn, when the show became a success, Allen got a primetime Sunday comedy/variety show in June 1956, leading him to share Tonight hosting duties with Ernie Kovacs during the 1956–57 season
26.
Emmy Award
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An Emmy Award, or simply Emmy, recognizes excellence in the television industry, and corresponds to the Academy Award, the Tony Award, and the Grammy Award. Because Emmy Awards are given in various sectors of the American television industry, Regional Emmy Awards are also presented throughout the country at various times through the year, recognizing excellence in local and statewide television. In addition, International Emmys are awarded for excellence in TV programming produced, each is responsible for administering a particular set of Emmy ceremonies. The Los Angeles-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences established the Emmy Award as part of an image-building and public relations opportunity. The first Emmy Awards ceremony took place on January 25,1949, at the Hollywood Athletic Club, shirley Dinsdale has the distinction of receiving the very first Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, during that first awards ceremony. In the 1950s, the ATAS expanded the Emmys into a national event, in 1955, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences was formed in New York City as a sister organization to serve members on the East Coast, and help to also supervise the Emmys. The NATAS also established regional chapters throughout the United States, with each one developing their own local Emmy awards show for local programming, the ATAS still however maintained its separate regional ceremony honoring local programming in the Los Angeles Area. Originally there was only one Emmy Awards ceremony held per year to honor shows nationally broadcast in the United States, in 1974, the first Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony was held to specifically honor achievement in national daytime programming. Other area-specific Emmy Awards ceremonies soon followed, also, the International Emmy Awards, honoring television programs produced and initially aired outside the U. S. was established in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, all Emmys awarded prior to the emergence of these separate, in 1977, due to various conflicts, the ATAS and the NATAS agreed to split ties. However, they agreed to share ownership of the Emmy statue and trademark. With the rise of television in the 1980s, cable programs first became eligible for the Primetime Emmys in 1988. The ATAS also began accepting original online-only web television programs in 2013, the Emmy statuette, depicting a winged woman holding an atom, was designed by television engineer Louis McManus, who used his wife as the model. The TV Academy rejected a total of forty-seven proposals before settling on McManus design in 1948. The statuette has become the symbol of the TV Academys goal of supporting and uplifting the art and science of television, The wings represent the muse of art. When deciding a name for the award, Academy founder Syd Cassyd originally suggested Ike, however, Ike was also the popular nickname of World War II hero and future U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the Academy members wanted something unique. Finally, television engineer and the third president, Harry Lubcke, suggested the name Immy. After Immy was chosen, it was feminized to Emmy to match their female statuette
27.
Grammy Award
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A Grammy Award, or Grammy, is an honor awarded by The Recording Academy to recognize outstanding achievement in the mainly English-language music industry. The annual presentation ceremony features performances by prominent artists, and the presentation of awards that have a more popular interest. It shares recognition of the industry as that of the other performance awards such as the Emmy Awards, the Tony Awards. The first Grammy Awards ceremony was held on May 4,1959, to honor, following the 2011 ceremony, The Academy overhauled many Grammy Award categories for 2012. The 59th Grammy Awards, honoring the best achievements from October 2015 to September 2016, was held on February 12,2017, the Grammys had their origin in the Hollywood Walk of Fame project in the 1950s. The music executives decided to rectify this by creating a given by their industry similar to the Oscars. This was the beginning of the National Academy of Recording Arts, after it was decided to create such an award, there was still a question of what to call it, one working title was the Eddie, to honor the inventor of the phonograph, Thomas Edison. They finally settled on using the name of the invention of Emile Berliner, the gramophone, for the awards, the number of awards given grew and fluctuated over the years with categories added and removed, at one time reaching over 100. The second Grammy Awards, also held in 1959, was the first ceremony to be televised, the gold-plated trophies, each depicting a gilded gramophone, are made and assembled by hand by Billings Artworks in Ridgway, Colorado. In 1990 the original Grammy design was revamped, changing the traditional soft lead for a stronger alloy less prone to damage, Billings developed a zinc alloy named grammium, which is trademarked. The trophies with the name engraved on them are not available until after the award announcements. By February 2009,7,578 Grammy trophies had been awarded, the General Field are four awards which are not restricted by genre. Album of the Year is awarded to the performer and the team of a full album if other than the performer. Record of the Year is awarded to the performer and the team of a single song if other than the performer. Song of the Year is awarded to the writer/composer of a single song, Best New Artist is awarded to a promising breakthrough performer who releases, during the Eligibility Year, the first recording that establishes the public identity of that artist. The only two artists to win all four of these awards are Christopher Cross, who won all four in 1980, and Adele, who won the Best New Artist award in 2009 and the other three in 2012 and 2017. Other awards are given for performance and production in specific genres, as well as for other such as artwork. Special awards are given for longer-lasting contributions to the music industry, the many other Grammy trophies are presented in a pre-telecast Premiere Ceremony earlier in the afternoon before the Grammy Awards telecast
28.
Comedy Central
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Comedy Central is an American basic cable and satellite television channel owned by Viacom Global Entertainment Group, a unit of the Viacom Media Networks division of Viacom. The channel carries comedy programming, in the form of original and syndicated series and stand-up comedy specials, as well as feature films. The international channels are operated by Viacom International Media Networks, as of February 2015, approximately 93,992,000 American households receive Comedy Central. On November 15,1989, Time Warner, owners of HBO, on April 1,1990, Viacom launched a rival channel called Ha. that featured reruns of situation comedies and some original sketch comedy. The Comedy Channels programs were broadcast from the HBO Downtown Studios at 120 East 23rd Street in Manhattan, the format prior to the merger with Ha. In the early days, certain hours of the day when clips were shown without host segments were dubbed Short Attention Span Theater, in 1990, hosts under this title, Jon Stewart and Patty Rosborough, were introduced. Comedian Marc Maron also hosted the series, Viacom bought out Time Warners half in April 2003 for $1.23 billion. LLC, the subsidiary that owned Ha. and Viacoms original half of the network, with the exception of the cult favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000, the channel had a relatively small viewership. A notable early success was Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, which after showing promise on Comedy Central was quickly snapped up by ABC. Additionally, The Daily Show had got its start with original host Craig Kilborn, dr. Katz, Professional Therapist was also a notable original program from this era, as well as the game show Win Ben Steins Money. Successful non-original programming included Canadian comedy group The Kids in the Hall and British shows such as the U. K. edition of Whose Line Is It Anyway. some later seasons of AbFab, as it was informally known, were partially financed by Comedy Central. Comedy Central also had the rights to broadcast reruns of Seattles Almost Live. The channel made a breakthrough when South Park premiered in 1997, being the first major basic cable show to carry the TV-MA rating for mature audiences, the show was too controversial to be picked up by a mainstream network. As word of mouth spread, the number of people who requested that Comedy Central be added to their cable providers increased, on November 13,2000, Comedy Central introduced a modernized version of its globe logo, by straightening the buildings and removing the transmitter. The management of the said that the transmitter of the 1991 logo was said to communicate the 1950s broadcast era. In 2002, Comedy Central Records was formed as a means of releasing albums by comedians that have appeared on the network, since 2003, Comedy Central has created a tradition of roasting comedians in the style of the New York Friars Club roasts. During these roasts, friends of the roastee, along other comedians, take turns making fun of the roastee, the other roasters. The success of South Park, despite its mature content, encouraged the network to continue to push the limits on adult language, every Saturday and Sunday morning at 1 a. m
29.
Banjo
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The banjo is a four-, five- or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head. The membrane, or head, is made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally but rarely used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in America, the banjo is frequently associated with country, folk, Irish traditional and bluegrass music. Historically, the banjo occupied a place in African American traditional music. The banjo, with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music and it is also very frequently used in Traditional Jazz. The modern banjo derives from instruments that had used in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, the etymology of the name banjo is uncertain. The word could have come from the Yoruba word Bami jo and it may derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza. A Banza, a five double string courses Portuguese viuhela with two short strings, mbanza is a string African instrument that has been built after the Portuguese Banza. Banza is quite similar to Banjo, various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd body. Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century, 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as bangie, banza, bonjaw, banjer and banjar. Instruments similar to the banjo have been played in many countries, another likely relative of the banjo is the akonting, a spike folk lute played by the Jola tribe of Senegambia, and the ubaw-akwala of the Igbo. Early, African-influenced banjos were built around a body and a wooden stick neck. These instruments had varying numbers of strings, though often including some form of drone, the five-string banjo was popularized by Joel Walker Sweeney, an American minstrel performer from Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white performer to play the banjo on stage and his version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth string. This new banjo was at first tuned dGdf♯a, though by the 1890s this had been transposed up to gcgbd, Banjos were introduced in Britain by Sweeneys group, the American Virginia Minstrels, in the 1840s, and became very popular in music halls. In the Antebellum South, many black slaves played the banjo, two techniques closely associated with the five-string banjo are rolls and drones. Rolls are right hand fingering pattern that consist of eight notes that subdivide each measure
30.
Inglewood, California
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Inglewood is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, southwest of downtown Los Angeles. As of the 2010 U. S. Census, the city had a population of 109,673 and it was incorporated on February 14,1908. The city is in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park is currently under construction in the city and when completed around 2019 will be the new home of both the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers. The earliest residents of what is now Inglewood were Native Americans who used the springs in todays Edward Vincent Jr. Park. Local historian Gladys Waddingham wrote that these took the name Centinela from the hills that rose gradually around them. These settlers, she wrote, were ordered by the officials of the San Gabriel Mission to graze their animals on the side of Los Angeles in order not to infringe on Mission lands. Later Avila constructed an adobe on a slight rise overlooking the creek that ran from Centinela Springs all the way to the ocean. According to the LAOkay web site, this adobe was built where the present baseball field is in the park, two years later, Waddingham writes, Ygnacio was granted the 2, 220-acre Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela even though this land had already been claimed by Avila. Inglewood Park Cemetery, a widely used cemetery for the region, was founded in 1905. The city has been home to the Hollywood Park Racetrack from 1938 to 2013, fosters Freeze, the first Soft Serve ice cream chain in California, was founded by George Foster in 1946 in Inglewood. Inglewood was named an All-America City by the National Civic League in 1989, on January 12,2016, Inglewood was selected to be the home of the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League. The raid led to the death of one of the culprits. A jury returned a not guilty verdict for all defendants who completed the trial and it was this scandal, according to the Los Angeles Times, that eventually led to the outlawing of the Klan in California. The Klan had a chapter in Inglewood as late as October 1931, no blacks had ever lived in Inglewood, Gladys Waddingham wrote, but by 1960, they lived in great numbers along its eastern borders. This came to the displeasure of the predominantly white residents already residing in Inglewood. In 1960, the census counted only 29 Negroes among Inglewoods 63,390 residents, not a single black child attended the citys schools. Real estate agents refused to show homes to blacks, a rumored curfew kept blacks off the streets at night. Inglewood was a target because of its history of restrictions
31.
Garden Grove, California
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Garden Grove is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States, located 34 miles south of the city of Los Angeles. The population was 170,883 at the 2010 United States Census, State Route 22, also known as the Garden Grove Freeway, passes through the city in an east-west direction. The western portion of the city is known as West Garden Grove, Garden Grove was founded by Alonzo Cook in 1874. A school district and Methodist church were organized that year and it remained a small rural crossroads until the arrival of the railroad in 1905. The rail connection helped the town prosper with crops of orange, walnuts, chili peppers, in 1933, much of the towns central business district was destroyed by the Long Beach earthquake, and one person was killed at the high school. The post-World War II boom led to development, and Garden Grove was incorporated as a city in 1956 with about 44,000 residents. An annual event held over Memorial Day weekend, the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival is one of the largest community festivals in the western United States, attracting an estimated 250,000 visitors. It began in 1958 and celebrates the agricultural past, which includes cultivating crops such as chili peppers, oranges, walnuts. Part of the include the cutting of the worlds largest strawberry shortcake, carnival rides and vendors. Numerous Garden Grove organizations, including the Miss Garden Grove Scholarship Program, are part of the Memorial Day weekend festivities every year, according to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 46.5 km20. 10% of which is water. West Garden Grove is west of Beach Boulevard, the 2010 United States Census reported that Garden Grove had a population of 170,883. The population density was 9,515.3 people per square mile. The racial makeup of Garden Grove was 68,149 White,2,155 Black,983 Native American,63,451 Asian,1,110 Pacific Islander,28,916 from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 63,079 persons. Non-Hispanic whites were 22. 6% of the population, down from 90. 6% in 1970, vietnamese Americans numbered 47,331 of the population. At 27. 7% this was the highest concentration of any city in the U. S. except for neighboring Westminster, the Census reported that 168,942 people lived in households,1,234 lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 707 were institutionalized. There were 2,025 unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 269 same-sex married couples or partnerships,6,491 households were made up of individuals and 2,842 had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.67, there were 37,113 families, the average family size was 3.94. The median age was 35.6 years, for every 100 females there were 99.6 males
32.
Baptists
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Other tenets of Baptist churches include soul competency, salvation through faith alone, Scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ministerial offices, elders and deacons, Baptist churches are widely considered to be Protestant churches, though some Baptists disavow this identity. Historians trace the earliest church labeled Baptist back to 1609 in Amsterdam, in accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christs atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. Thomas Helwys formulated a distinctively Baptist request that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, Helwys died in prison as a consequence of the religious persecution of English dissenters under King James I. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies, in the mid-18th century, the First Great Awakening contributed to Baptist growth in both New England and the South. Baptist missionaries have spread their church to every continent, the largest Baptist denomination is the Southern Baptist Convention, with the membership of associated churches totaling more than 15 million. Modern Baptist churches trace their history to the English Separatist movement in the century after the rise of the original Protestant denominations and this view of Baptist origins has the most historical support and is the most widely accepted. Adherents to this position consider the influence of Anabaptists upon early Baptists to be minimal and it was a time of considerable political and religious turmoil. Both individuals and churches were willing to give up their theological roots if they became convinced that a more biblical truth had been discovered, during the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Christians who were not content with the achievements of the mainstream Protestant Reformation, there also were Christians who were disappointed that the Church of England had not made corrections of what some considered to be errors and abuses. Of those most critical of the Churchs direction, some chose to stay and they became known as Puritans and are described by Gourley as cousins of the English Separatists. Others decided they must leave the Church because of their dissatisfaction, historians trace the earliest Baptist church back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with John Smyth as its pastor. Three years earlier, while a Fellow of Christs College, Cambridge, reared in the Church of England, he became Puritan, English Separatist, and then a Baptist Separatist, and ended his days working with the Mennonites. He began meeting in England with 60–70 English Separatists, in the face of great danger, Smyth and his lay supporter, Thomas Helwys, together with those they led, broke with the other English exiles because Smyth and Helwys were convinced they should be baptized as believers. In 1609 Smyth first baptized himself and then baptized the others, in 1609, while still there, Smyth wrote a tract titled The Character of the Beast, or The False Constitution of the Church. In it he expressed two propositions, first, infants are not to be baptized, and second, Antichristians converted are to be admitted into the true Church by baptism. Hence, his conviction was that a church should consist only of regenerate believers who have been baptized on a personal confession of faith
33.
Garden Grove High School
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Garden Grove High School is a high school located in Garden Grove, California. It is a member of the Garden Grove Unified School District, the Garden Grove Union High School District was established in 1921 in response to attempts by neighboring school districts to annex the Garden Grove area. GGHS opened its doors in September 1921 in temporary facilities, the school moved to its present location on Stanford Avenue in 1923. The schools athletic teams were known as Chili Peppers, reflecting the dominant local crop of the time. In the 1920s, the name Argonauts was chosen and they are known as Argos for short. GGHS was badly damaged by the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, the classroom building suffered a partial collapse. The structure was rebuilt and is still in use, having been renamed Heritage Hall, GGHS grew with the post-World War II boom and by the 1960s, it was joined by six other high schools in what is now the Garden Grove Unified School District. In the 2004–2005 school year, Garden Grove High School was named a California Distinguished School, the Argonauts made the CIF Southern Section Football finals in 2009, but lost. The Argonauts won their first CIF Southern Section Football title in 2010 as champions of the Southern Division, other Southern Section CIF titles won by the school include coed badminton, girls field hockey, and girls softball. Garden Grove High School offers music courses in marching band, concert band, beginning instruments, jazz band, each year during Memorial Day weekend, the Argonaut Marching Band and Colorguard act as host band in the Strawberry Festival Parade in Garden Grove, California. Janet Nguyen, Class of 1994, Garden Grove City Councilwoman, member of Orange County Board of Supervisors, bill Thomas, Class of 1959, 11-term U. S. Congressman and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Garden Grove High School
34.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
35.
Our Town
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Our Town is a 1938 metatheatrical three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It tells the story of the fictional American small town of Grovers Corners between 1901 and 1913 through the lives of its citizens. Throughout, Wilder uses metatheatrical devices, setting the play in the theatre where it is being performed. The main character is the manager of the theatre who directly addresses the audience, brings in guest lecturers, fields questions from the audience. The play is performed without a set on a bare stage. With a few exceptions, the actors mime actions without the use of props and our Town was first performed at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey in 1938. It later went on to success on Broadway and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and it remains popular today and revivals are frequent. The Stage Manager introduces the audience to the town of Grovers Corners, New Hampshire. Professor Willard speaks to the audience about the history of the town, Joe Crowell delivers the paper to Doc Gibbs, Howie Newsome delivers the milk, and the Webb and Gibbs households send their children off to school on this beautifully simple morning. Three years have passed, and George and Emily prepare to wed, the day is filled with stress. Howie Newsome is delivering milk in the rain while Si Crowell, younger brother of Joe. George pays a visit to his soon-to-be in-laws. Here, the Stage Manager interrupts the scene and takes the back a year, to the end of Emily. Emily confronts George about his pride, and over an ice cream soda, they discuss the future, George resolves not to go to college, as he had planned, but to work and eventually take over his uncles farm. In the present, George and Emily say that they are not ready to marry—George to his mother, Gibbs, Wally Webb, Mrs. Soames, and Simon Stimson. Town undertaker Joe Stoddard is introduced, as is a man named Sam Craig who has returned to Grovers Corners for his cousins funeral. That cousin is Emily, who died giving birth to her, once the funeral ends, Emily emerges to join the dead, Mrs. Gibbs urges her to forget her life, but she refuses. Ignoring the warnings of Simon, Mrs. Soames, and Mrs. Gibbs, Emily returns to Earth to relive one day, the memory proves too painful for her, and she realizes that every moment of life should be treasured
36.
Raymond Massey
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Raymond Hart Massey was a Canadian/American actor, known for his commanding, stage-trained voice. For his lead role in Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Massey was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and he was also well known for playing Dr. Gillespie in the NBC television series Dr. Kildare. His branch of the Massey family emigrated to Canada from New England a few years before the War of 1812 and he later graduated from Balliol College, Oxford. At the outbreak of World War I, Massey joined the Canadian Army and he returned to Canada suffering shell-shock and was engaged as an Army instructor for American officers at Yale University. In 1918, he was sent to serve in Siberia, where he made his first stage appearance, severely wounded in action in France, he was sent home, where he eventually worked in the family business, selling farm implements. Drawn to the theater, he first appeared on the London stage in 1922 and his first movie role was in High Treason. In 1929 he directed the London premiere of The Silver Tassie, in 1931 he played Sherlock Holmes in The Speckled Band, the first sound film version of the story. In 1934 he starred in The Scarlet Pimpernel, and in 1936 he starred in Things to Come, in 1944 Massey played the District Attorney in Fritz Langs classic film noir, The Woman in the Window, which starred Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett. Despite his being Canadian, Massey became famous for playing archetypal U. S. historical figures and he portrayed the American Revolutionary War character Abraham Farlan, who hated the British for making him a casualty of that war, in the 1946 film A Matter of Life and Death. He also played abolitionist/insurrectionist John Brown in two films, Santa Fe Trail and again in the low-budget film Seven Angry Men. The character of Brown is portrayed as a lunatic in Santa Fe Trail whereas he is a well-intentioned but misguided character in the more sympathetic Seven Angry Men. Massey again portrayed Lincoln in The Day Lincoln Was Shot on Ford Star Jubilee, a fellow actor is said to have remarked that Massey wouldnt be satisfied with his Lincoln impersonation until someone assassinated him. Raymond Massey played a Canadian on screen once, in 49th Parallel. Also in 1941, Massey starred in George Bernard Shaws The Doctors Dilemma, opposite Katharine Cornell, during the war, he teamed up with Cornell and other leading actors in a revival of Shaws Candida to benefit the Army Emergency Fund and the Navy Relief Society. Massey portrayed the character of Jonathan Brewster in the version of Arsenic. The character had been created by Boris Karloff for the stage version, Massey and Karloff had appeared together in James Whales suspense film The Old Dark House. Massey rejoined the Canadian Army for World War II, though he was released from service. Following the war, Massey became an American citizen, in 1955, he starred in East of Eden as Adam Trask, father of Cal, played by James Dean, and Aron, played by Richard Davalos
37.
Disneyland
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Disneyland Park, originally Disneyland, is the first of two theme parks built at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, opened on July 17,1955. It is the theme park designed and built under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. It was originally the attraction on the property, its name was changed to Disneyland Park to distinguish it from the expanding complex in the 1990s. Walt Disney came up with the concept of Disneyland after visiting various amusement parks with his daughters in the 1930s and 1940s. He initially envisioned building a tourist attraction adjacent to his studios in Burbank to entertain fans who wished to visit, however, after hiring a consultant to help him determine an appropriate site for his project, Disney bought a 160-acre site near Anaheim in 1953. Construction began in 1954 and the park was unveiled during a televised press event on the ABC Television Network on July 17,1955. Opened in 2001, Disney California Adventure Park was built on the site of Disneylands original parking lot, Disneyland has a larger cumulative attendance than any other theme park in the world, with over 650 million guests since it opened. In 2013, the park hosted approximately 16.2 million guests, according to a March 2005 Disney report,65,700 jobs are supported by the Disneyland Resort, including about 20,000 direct Disney employees and 3,800 third-party employees. To all who come to this place, Welcome. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy. The concept for Disneyland began when Walt Disney was visiting Griffith Park in Los Angeles with his daughters Diane and Sharon. While watching them ride the merry-go-round, he came up with the idea of a place where adults and their children could go and have fun together and he may have also been influenced by his fathers memories of the Worlds Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. Another likely influence was Benton Harbor, Michigans nationally famous House of Davids Eden Springs Park, Disney visited the park and ultimately bought one of the older miniature trains originally used there, the colony had the largest miniature railway setup in the world at the time. His ideas evolved to a play park with a boat ride. The initial concept, the Mickey Mouse Park, started with an 8-acre plot across Riverside Drive and his designers began working on concepts, though the project grew much larger than the land could hold. Disney hired Harrison Price from Stanford Research Institute to gauge the proper area to locate the theme based on the areas potential growth. Based on Prices analysis, Disney acquired 160 acres of groves and walnut trees in Anaheim
