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Friends,
San Francisco (1955 Cinemascope film) [Free Download]
Keith Olbermann Special Comment On Gabrielle Giffords ShootingVIDEO: In Performance at the White House:
Below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
DUE TO LOCAL PROBLEMS THIS ISSUE WAS COPY AND PASTED WITHOUT EDITING:
Wednesday, October 1
7:30 PM
Make Your Voice Heard: The Intersection of Craft, Creativity, and ActivismActivists, artists, crafty folks: join us for a feisty, moderated discussion with KIM WERKER (Make It Mighty Ugly), LEANE PRAIN (Strange Material), BETSY GREER (Craftivism),and moderator RENA TAM (founder of Makeshift Society)
RENA TOM is the founder of Makeshift Society, a co working space that offers camaraderie and shared resources to creative freelancers, independent business owners and small teams in San Francisco and Brooklyn. She is also Market Editor at Anthology Magazine and a retail strategist for small-batch makers, brands, stores and organizations. Previously, she owned Rare Device, a bicoastal design-led boutique and art gallery. Rena and her various businesses have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Lucky, Real Simple, Food and Wine and Martha Stewart Weddings. Rena has also operated a successful jewelry design and invitation design business; during the first Web boom, she was a web content management consultant. She lives in San Francisco and on Twitter at @rena_tom.
BETSY GREER is a writer, a maker, and a researcher, and the author of Craftivism: The Art and Craft of Activism and Knitting for Good! A Guide to Creating Personal, Social, and Political Change Stitch by Stitch. She runs the blog www.craftivism.com and believes that creativity and positive activism can save not only the soul, but also the world. Betsy lives in Arlington, VA and can be found on Twitter @craftivista.
KIM PIPER WERKER is the author of Make It Mighty Ugly: Exercises and Advice for Getting Creative Even When It Ain’t Pretty. Kim teaches hands-on and discussion-based Mighty Ugly workshops and lecture-conversations that help people confront creative demons, experiment with new approaches to creative expression, and build confidence in what they make and do. She is also the author or coauthor of several crochet books, including Crochet Me and Teach Yourself Visually Crocheting. She lives in Vancouver, BC and on Twitter at @kpwerker.
LEANNE PRAIN is a knitter, author of Strange Material: Storytelling through Textiles and Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery, and co-author of Yarn Bombing: The Art of Knit & Crochet Graffiti (with Mandy Moore). A professional graphic designer, Leanne holds degrees in creative writing, art history, and publishing. She lives and crafts in Vancouver, BC and can be found at leanneprain.com or on Twitter @LeannePrain.
Thursday, October 2
7:00 PM
SHIPWRECK: Stephen King's ChristineGood theatre for bad literature? Marital aid for book nerds? A literary erotic fanfiction competition for the ages?
Shipwreck is all of these things.
Six Great Writers will destroy one Great Book, one Great Character at a time, in service of the transcendent and the profane (and also laughs). Marvel as beloved characters are plucked from their worlds and made to do stuff they were never meant to do in places they were never meant to see.
You choose the best Ship. The winning writer chooses their character for the next
Shipwreck, and returns to defend their title.All stories will be recited by Shakespearean Thespian in Residence, Sir Steven Westdahl, from his private chamber at Booksmith Castle, both to preserve the majesty of the written work and to ensure the honesty of the audience when voting for a winner.
This month's talent: Alitzah Oros, Molly Jane Rosen, Cameron Dunkley, Keith Wilsonand Shannon O'Malley of Gay Men Draw Vaginas, and 4-time champ Maggie Tokuda-Hall.
Tickets $10 (includes drinks) available in the store or at Brown Paper Tickets online. 21+, please. Buy your ticket ahead of time, and we'll reserve you a seat.
Launch Party! A NEW VOICES, NEW STORIES EVENING
Tuesday, October 7
7:30 PM
DIANE COOK
MAN V. NATUREThis American Life host Ira Glass writes, “What I like most about these stories is that many of them are dispatches from the end of the world, and it turns out to be a surprisingly familiar place.” Indeed, the fictional worlds that Diane Cook has created in her daring collection are both recognizable but also slightly askew. Unsettling and often menacing, these stories are also suffused with humanity and genuine emotion—and once you read them, they are impossible to forget.
Told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, Cook's stories expose unsuspecting characters and readers alike to the realities of nature, to the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive but survive. In “Moving On,” a widow is forced to relocate to a shelter with other widows until she can forget her spouse enough to move on and become another’s wife. In “Girl on Girl,” a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. And in the title story, a long fraught friendship comes undone when three old buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on.Other stories explore situations pulled directly from the wild, imposing on human lives the danger, tension, and precariousness of the natural world. In “The Not-Needed Forest,” which reads like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” crossed with Lord of the Flies, a pack of not-needed boys take refuge in a murky forest and play a game to determine which of them gets to eat his next meal. Helpless newborns are snatched by a man who stalks them from their suburban yards in “Somebody’s Baby.” And in “The Way the End of Days Should Be,” a man tries to preserve his pristine mansion as the world floods around him and refugees come knocking. Through these characters, Cook asks: What is at the root of our most heartless, selfish impulses? Why are people drawn together in such messy, complicated, needful ways? When the unexpected intrudes upon the routine, what do we discover about ourselves?
“MAN V. NATURE is as close to experiencing a Picasso as literature can get: the worlds in Diane Cook’s impressive debut are bizarre, vertiginous, funny, pushed to the extreme—but just familiar enough in their nuances of the human condition to evoke an irresistible, around-the-corner reality.” —Tea Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife
Diane Cook worked as a radio producer on This American Life for six years. She lived the past two decades in Chicago, New England, and Brooklyn and now lives in Oakland.
Wednesday, October 8
7:30 PM
KIM ADDONIZIO
THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONIn her new collection, gifted poet and novelist Kim Addonizio uses her literary powers to bring to life a variety of settings, all connected through the suggestion that things in the known world are not what they seem.
In “Beautiful Lady of the Snow,” young Annabelle turns to a host of family pets to combat the alienation she feels caught between her distracted mother and ailing grandfather; in “Night Owls,” a young college student’s crush on her acting partner is complicated by the bloodlust of being half-vampire; in “Cancer Poems,” a dying woman turns to a poetry workshop to make sense of her terminal diagnosis and final days; in “Intuition,” a young girl’s sexual forays bring her closer to her best friend’s father; and in the collection’s title story, a photographer looks back to his youth spent as a young illusionist under the big tent and his obsessive affair with the carnival owner’s wife.
Distracted parents, first love, the twin forces of alienation and isolation: the characters in THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS all must contend with these challenges, trafficking in the fault lines between the real and the imaginary, often in a world not of their making.
Kim Addonizio is the author of a previous story collection, In the Box Called Pleasure; two novelsLittle Beauties and My Dreams Out in the Street; five poetry collections; and two books on writing poetry. She recently collaborated with woodcut artist Charles D. Jones on My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits. She has received numerous honors for her writing, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and two NEA Fellowships, and was a National Book Award Finalist in 2000. She lives in Oakland and New York City and teaches private writing workshops in person and online. She plays harmonica with the word/music group Nonstop Beautiful Ladies and volunteers for The Hunger Project, a global organization empowering the poorest people in the world to end their own hunger and poverty.
Thursday, October 9
7:30 PM
MARLON JAMES
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS“The most original novel I’ve read in years…Astonishingly brilliant, it transported me back to the 1970s Jamaica of Michael Manley’s PNP, and the attempted assassination of Bob Marley by a cabal of Kingston gangsters and the CIA. It’s a vivid plunge into a crazed, violent and corrupt world, told through multiple narrators and executed with swaggering aplomb. On the downside, opening any book after this will be a little anticlimactic.” – Irvine Welsh
Unflinching in his examinations of race, violence, and sexism in the US and Jamaica, Marlon James illuminates dark and uncomfortable truths with wisdom, grace, and humanity. The New York Times Book Review praised his novel The Book of Night Woman as “Beautifully written and devastating writing in the spirit of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker but in a style all his own, James has conducted an experiment in how to write the unspeakable—even the unthinkable.”
In his spellbinding new novel A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS centers on the people involved in the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976, but spins outward to encompass a breathtaking array of voices: gang members, CIA agents, a Rolling Stone reporter, girlfriends, politicians, drug dealers, the children of the Kingston ghettos, even ghosts. This vast range of characters and dialects allows James to conjure all the individual lives touched by not only Marley’s assassination attempt, but by the sweeping US-Jamaica interchange of music, drugs, sex, violence and political machinations during the 1970s.
Written with depth, insight, authenticity and a mesmerizing mix of tenderness and startling brutality, A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS is a dazzling achievement by a writer of enormous power.
Marlon James was born in Jamaica, in 1970. He is the author of A Brief History of Seven Killings and The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. James lives in Minneapolis.
A LITQUAKE EVENT:
Tuesday, October 14
7:30 PM
Celebrate Shebooks and its special anthology (in a print edition!) of its best memoirs,WHATEVER DOESN'T KILL YOU.We're delighted to have these marvelous contributors in the house this evening:
Faith Adiele's acclaimed Meeting Faith tells her story of being the first black Buddhist nun in Thailand; she is the author of the Shebook The Nordic-Nigerian Girl's Guide to Lady Problems.
Lucy Bledsoe is an award-winning short story writer and author of the novel The Big Bang Symphony and the Shebook The Found Child.
Jane Ciabattari is the author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection Stealing the Fire and the Shebook California Tales.
Laura Fraser is the cofounder and editorial director of Shebooks, and the author of the ShebookThe Risotto Guru.
Mona Gable writes about women’s issues, health, science, travel, and international issues and is the author of the Shebook Blood Brother: The Gene That Rocked My Family.
Susan Ito is the author of the Shebook The Mouse Room. She coedited the literary anthology A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption and is a columnist and creative nonfiction editor at the online literary journal Literary Mama.
Mary Jo McConahay is an award-winning journalist, author of Maya Roads: One Woman’s Journey Among the People of the Rainforest, and the Shebook Ricochet: Two Women War Reporters and a Friendship under Fire.
Micah Perks is the author of a novel, We Are Gathered Here, and a memoir, Pagan Time, about growing up on a commune; her Shebook is Alone in the Woods.
Ethel Rohan is an award-winning short story writer, author of Goodnight Nobody and the Shebook Out of Dublin.
JOIN US TO LAUNCH THE BREWER'S TALE
A LITQUAKE EVENT
Wednesday, October 15
7:30 PM
WILLIAM BOSTWICK
THE BREWER'S TALE: The History of the World According to BeerWhile you drink or sip a beer, have you ever wondered what beer in the past tasted like? Beer critic William Bostwick uncovers the stories behind the brewers who have practiced their craft since the dawn of civilization -- farmers, priests, revolutionaries, and more -- in THE BREWER'S TALE, part travelogue, part history, part culinary adventure.
Beer by beer -- from Babylonian date-and-honey ale to shamanistic Viking grog -- Bostwick tells a history of the world through the brewer’s eyes, unearthing recipes from poems and potsherds to re-create these beers and their long-lost flavors. Jumping through time as he weaves ancient lore with today’s craft scene, Bostwick meets adventurous brewers -- some celebrated, others eccentric unknowns -- who share his path, trading insight, recipes, and ingredients like homegrown hops and wild, Nile Delta yeast. This is history told in the glass, from tongue-numbing mead to sour pediococcus-laced lambic
William Bostwick is the author of Beer Craft and writes about beer for the Wall Street Journal, GQ, and other publications. He is an avid homebrewer, former distiller’s apprentice, beekeeper, baker, and sometime bartender. He lives in San Francisco
Yep, there will be beer this evening!
Monday, October 20
7:30 PM
HECTOR TOBAR
DEEP DOWN DARK: The Untold Story of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them FreeOctober 13, 2014 will be the fourth anniversary of the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners trapped for 69 days in a collapsed gold and copper mine about 2,300 feet below the surface.
The rescue was witnessed around the world. Some of the miners have given interviews and several quick books came out immediately afterwards. However, the miners all agreed on Day 68 of their 69 day ordeal that they would wait to tell the full story of their survival to one writer for one book. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and novelist, Héctor Tobar, is the writer they chose and DEEP DOWN DARK is the book. The miners' experiences below, and the lives that led them there, is a saga not told until now.
For DEEP DOWN DARK, Héctor Tobar received exclusive access to the miners and their tales. These thirty-three men came to think of the mine, a cavern inflicting constant and thundering aural torment, as a kind of coffin, and as a church where they sought redemption through prayer. Even while still buried, they all agreed that if by some miracle any of them escaped alive, they would share their story only collectively/
The result is a masterwork of narrative journalism—a riveting, at times shocking, emotionally textured account of a singular human event. It brings to haunting, tactile life the experience of being imprisoned inside a mountain of stone, the horror of being slowly consumed by hunger, and the spiritual and mystical elements that surrounded working in such a dangerous place. Ultimately, it captures the profound way in which the lives of everyone involved in the disaster were forever changed.Héctor Tobar, now a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of The Barbarian Nurseries, Translation Nation and The Tattooed Soldier. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of the city of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children.
Tuesday, October 21
7:30 PM
An Evening with CHUCK PALAHNIUKFrom the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged American male psyche,BEAUTIFUL YOU is about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Sisters will be doing it for themselves. And doing it. And doing it. And doing it some more...Penny Harrigan is a low-level associate in a big Manhattan law firm with an apartment in Queens and no love life at all. So it comes as a great shock when she finds herself invited to dinner with one C. Linus Maxwell, aka "Climax-Well", a software mega-billionaire and lover of the most gorgeous and accomplished women on earth. After dining at Manhattan's most exclusive restaurant, he whisks Penny off to a hotel suite in Paris, where he precedes, notebook in hand, to bring her to previously undreamed of heights of orgasmic pleasure for days on end. What's not to like? This: Penny discovers she is a test subject for the final development of a line of sex toys to be marketed in a nationwide chain of boutiques called Beautiful You. So potent and effective are these devices that women by the millions line up outside the stores on opening day and then lock themselves in their rooms with them and stop coming out. Except for batteries. Maxwell's plan for erotically enabled word domination must be stopped. But how?
If you've experienced Chuck Palahniuk in person before, you know to expect an evening of storytelling fun and shock, of games and prizes, of participatory Q&A, of all-around entertainment. And if you're a new Palahniuk reader, plan to join the festivities to meet and hear Chuck and to celebrate the publication day of Beautiful You.
Chuck Palahniuk’s ten previous novels are the bestselling Fight Club, which was made into a film by David Fincher; Survivor; Invisible Monsters; Choke, which was made into a film by director Clark Gregg; Lullaby; Diary; Haunted; Rant; Snuff; and Pygmy. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees, a nonfiction profile of Portland, Oregon, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction.
7:30 PM at DNA Lounge (375 Eleventh Street, San Francisco)
$34 - one person, one book
$40 - two people, one book
Tickets available ONLY at DNA Lounge's box office.Note: you'll pick up your autographed copy of Beautiful You when you check in at the box office; there will not be a booksigning following the program.
Launch Party!
Wednesday, October 22
7:30 PM
ALEXIS COE
ALICE + FREDA FOREVER: A Murder in Memphis
in conversation with The Toast's Mallory OrtbergIn 1892, America was obsessed with a teenage murderess, but it wasn’t her crime that shocked the nation – it was her motivation. Nineteen-year-old Alice Mitchell planned to pass as a man and marry seventeen-year-old Freda Ward, but when their love letters were discovered, they were forbidden to ever speak again. Desperate and isolated, Alice pilfered her father’s razor, and on a cold winter’s day, she slashed her ex-fiancée’s throat. ALICE + FREDA FOREVER is a tragic love story with more than a hundred original illustrations of primary source letters, maps, historical documents, and more. It marks a seminal point in the history of same-sex relationships in the U.S., and is not to be missed.
“Alexis Coe rescues a buried but extraordinarily telling episode from the 1890s that resonates in all sorts of ways with today. That in itself would be an accomplishment. But this is a book that is truly riveting, a narrative that gallops. Lizzy Borden eat your heart out. Here’s a real crime of passion. Or was it? I dare you to pick this one up and try, just try to put it down.” — Peter Orner, author of Last Car over the Sagamore Bridge
Alexis Coe is a columnist at The Awl and The Toast. She has contributed to The Atlantic, Slate, The Millions, The Hairpin, LA Weekly, The Bay Citizen, Mission at Tenth, The Paris Review Daily, Los Angeles Review of Books and other publications. Before moving to San Francisco, she was a research curator at the New York Public Library, and a project-based oral historian at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Alexis holds an MA in history from Sarah Lawrence College and graduated from the honors college at UC Santa Barbara
Thursday, October 30
7:30 PM
WILLIAM GIBSON
THE PERIPHERAL
“Spectacular, a piece of trenchant, far-future speculation that features all the eyeball kicks of Neuromancer and all the maturity and sly wit of Spook Country. It’s brilliant.”
Cory Doctorow, bestselling author of Little Brother
and Homeland, co-editor of Boing BoingNew York Times-bestselling author William Gibson returns to fiction after four years with THE PERIPHERAL. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Gibson's award-winning debut novel, Neuromancer, which predicted, via his original concept of “cyberspace”, much of today’s Internet. He also conceptualized video games and the rise of reality TV long before they became ubiquitous. After setting his three most recent novels in our science-fictional present, Gibson ventures back the future with a high tech thriller that is also a murder mystery, a provocative social and political commentary, and a far-seeing introduction to the realm of advanced haptics (the science of adding tactile feedback to technological systems).
Flynne, a young woman from a decaying near-future American town, takes a temporary job testing a new computer game, or so she's told. While remotely operating a security drone over a futuristic version of London, she witnesses what she assumes is the simulation of a horrifying murder—or is it real? Soon she finds herself in the 22nd Century, virtually present in a hauntingly beautiful android drone, “a peripheral”, with the fate of her own “past” world depending on her.
William Gibson is the is the author of Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Liza Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History, and Distrust That Particular Flavor. Neuromancer was the first novel to win the three top science fiction prizes—the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award. He is also a recipient of the Ditmar, and Seiun awards, as well as the Prix Aurora. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife. It is an honor to have him return to The Booksmith.
The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes
http://media.causes.com/510213?p_id=44401190Tired of Talking to a Voice Robot? Want to Talk with a Human?:
Dial A Human - http://www.dialahuman.com/Women In The Arts - [Video] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDIoN-_Hxs
World Clock: http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf
Dear World:
We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced November 4.
Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we believe it to be fully functional as of January 20.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage. We look forward to resuming full service and hope to improve in years to come.
We truly thank you for your patience and understanding,
Sincerely,
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICAJUKEBOX - http://www.bobforrest.com/JukeBox.htm
[HUMOR/ETC. - LOCATED NEAR BOTTOM OF PAGE]
SOME INTERESTING GEOGRAPHY
Alaska
More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska .Amazon
The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% the world's oxygen supply. The Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that, more than one hundred miles at sea off the mouth of the river, one can dip fresh water out of the ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon river is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined and three times the flow of all rivers in the United States .Antarctica
Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country. Ninety percent of the world's ice covers Antarctica . This ice also represents 70% of all the fresh water in the world. As strange as it sounds, however, Antarctica is essentially a desert. The average yearly total precipitation is about two inches. Although covered with ice (all but 0.4% of it, i.e.), Antarctica is the driest place on the planet, with an absolute humidity lower than the Gobi desert.Brazil
Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.Canada
Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined. Canada is an Indian word meaning ' Big Village .'Chicago
Next to Warsaw , Chicago has the largest Polish population in the world.Detroit
Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M-1, so named because it was the first paved road any where.Damascus , Syria
Damascus, Syria, was flourishing a couple of thousand years before Rome was founded in 753 BC, making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in existence.Istanbul , Turkey
Istanbul (AKA Constantinople), Turkey , is the only city in the world located on two continents.Los Angeles
Los Angeles' full name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula -- and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size: L.A.New York City
The term 'The Big Apple' was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930's who used the slang expression 'apple' for any town or city. Therefore, to playNew York City is to play the big time - The Big Apple.There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland; more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy; and more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Ohio
There are no natural lakes in the state of Ohio, every one is man made.Pitcairn Island
The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn in Polynesia , at just 1.75 sq. miles.Rome
The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was Rome , Italy in 133 B..C. There is a city called Rome on every continent.Siberia
Siberia contains more than 25% of the world's forests.S.M.O.M
The actual smallest sovereign entity in the world is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (S.M. O.M.). It is located in the city of Rome, Italy, has an area of two tennis courts, and as of 2001 had a population of 80, 20 less people than the Vatican. It is a sovereign entity under international law, just as the Vaticanis.Sahara Desert
In the Sahara Desert , there is a town named Tidikelt, which did not receive a drop of rain for ten years. Technically though, the driest place on Earth is in the valleys of the Antarctic near Ross Island . There has been no rainfall there for two million years.Spain
SPAIN literally means 'the land of rabbits.'St. Paul, Minnesota
St. Paul, Minnesota , was originally called Pig's Eye after a man named Pierre 'Pig's Eye' Parrant who set up the first business there.Roads
Chances that a road is unpaved in the U.S.A: 1%, in Canada : 75%.Texas
The deepest hole ever made in the world is in Texas . It is as deep as 20 empire state buildings but only 3 inches wide.United States
The Interstate System requires that one-mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.Waterfalls
The water of Angel Falls (the World's highest) in Venezuela drops 3,212 feet. IT is 15 times higher than Niagara Falls
It has been said that one should learn something new every day.
Unfortunately, many of us are at that age where what we learn today, we forget tomorrow. But, give it a shot anyway!.All My Faves - http://www.allmyfaves.com/
FactCheck.org
Recent Postings - http://www.factcheck.org/just-the-facts/index.htmlTRIVIA
A friend of a friend of mine sent me this. Some interesting bits of trivia. Cheers, Marliese
Buddy Holly's backup band, the Crickets, got their name by flipping through the 'Insects' section of an encyclopedia. One of the names they rejected was 'The Beetles'. The Beatles chose their name in honor of The Crickets. And The Hollies chose their name in honor of Buddy Holly. And Badfinger's original name, The Iveys, was in honor of The Hollies.
Led Zeppelin's original name was "The New Yardbirds". Guitarist Jimmy Page had briefly been a member of the Yardbirds, and the band sprang out of an attempt to reform the band with new members.
Lynyrd Skynyrd named themselves after their high school athletic coach, Leonard Skinner, who'd told them that they'd never amount to anything.
"Mr. Mojo Risin'" (a phrase used in The Doors' song " L.A. Woman") is an anagram for Jim Morrison.
The Aerosmith hit "Walk This Way" was inspired by a gag in Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein"
The band Nirvana was originally called "Skid Row", the members somehow unaware of the very popular heavy metal band by that name. When they finally heard of the band, they changed their name to "Nirvana", and were promptly sued by the members of a practically unknown sixties band that had gone by that name.
-First choice for Terry Doolittle in "Jumpin' Jack Flash" was Shelly Long. Whoopi Goldberg got the part.
-First choice for Bernie Rhodenbarr in "Burglar" was Bruce Willis. Whoopi Goldberg got the part.
-First choice for Rita Rizzoli in "Fatal Beauty" was Cher. Whoopi Goldberg got the part.
-First choice for Deloris Van Cartier in "Sister Act" was Bette Midler. Whoopi Goldberg got the part.-First choice for the title role in "Carrie" was Carrie Fisher. Sissy Spacek got the part.
-First choice for Princess Leia in "Star Wars" was Sissy Spacek. Carrie Fisher got the part.The Professor on 'Gilligan's Island' was named Roy Hinkley. The Skipper was named Jonas Grumby. Both names were used only once in the entire series. Gilligan's full name was never revealed (even Bob Denver, who played Gilligan, was never told his full name, nor was he sure if Gilligan was his first or last name), though some insiders claim his name was supposed to be Willy Gilligan. And Mary Ann's last name was Summers, and Mrs. Howell's maiden name was Wentworth.
Hot water weighs more than cold water.
If a pin was heated to the same temperature as the center of the Sun, its heat would set alight everything within 60 miles of it.
If the Sun's energy output would decreased by one-tenth, the entire Earth would be covered in ice one mile thick; if the Sun's energy increased by 30 percent, all life on Earth would be burnt to a cinder.
If something were to happen to Washington, D.C., the city of Port Angeles, WA, would become our nation's capital.
If you ever need to call someone in Antarctica, the area code is 672.
In medieval England, beer was often served with breakfast.
Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts and white worms like fried pork rinds.
John Larroquette was the narrator of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
Leonardo DiCaprio's acting debut was on TV's 'Romper Room'.
Roald Dahl, the children's writer who wrote "Charlie And The Chocolate Factory" and "James And The Giant Peach", wrote the screenplay for "You Only Live Twice", the fifth James Bond Movie.
Female wrestlers are called "siffleuses"
Most tropical marine fish could survive in a tank filled with human blood.
Spiders never spin webs in structures made of chestnut wood. That is why do many European chateaux were built with chestnut beams - spider webs on a 50-foot beamed ceiling can be difficult to clean.
>From the same list with my own addition:
What do Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix, Kris Kristofferson, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Marvin Gaye, Michael Nesmith (of The Monkees), Bill Wyman (of The Rolling Stones), The Everly Brothers, and Gene Vincent all have in common that Rush Limbaugh, Bill Kristol, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby do not? They're veterans of course.
Underground Hour
Tuesdays 7 to 8 p.m.
http://ksfs.sfsu.edu/
MUSIC by MiKo
Paper Mill Creek Saloon, Forest Knolls, CA, - FREE - EVERY Tuesday, 8-11 PM, West on Sir Francis Drake, turn left at the Forest Knolls intersection (before Lagunitas). Thought for the day: Q What is the only food that doesn't spoil? A Honey ..via Michael Welch