GOLDEN BRIDGE provides FREE advising services for individuals looking for more information about STUDY ABROAD programs. CONTACT us today! Our education consultants are ready to speak to you.
The United Kingdom offers you a world-class education, internationally respected qualifications and outstanding career prospects. Do you want to study at a UK university, college, boarding school or English language centre? We are here to help you find your dream course and plan your studies.
ATTENTION TO ALL BACHELOR'S and MASTER'S level STUDENTS! Summer WORK and TRAVEL USA Program Application for 2019 is OPEN NOW! HURRY UP! THE PLACES ARE LIMITED!
Interested? Please telephone us BEFORE coming to schedule an appointment: (+995 32) 2 969421, (+995) 598 240886.
Study in the UK at the University of Bedfordshire!
Learn Languages in the most beautiful destinations in the world as well as at our Center in TBILISI!
Learn Spanish in Spain or Cuba, French in France, German in Germany, English in England, USA or Canada, Arabic in Morocco, Chinese in China, Italian in Italy. CONTACT us today!
2019 - INTERNATIONAL SUMMER ACADEMY at Cyprus International University. Hurry up! Details are HERE.
WELCOME to OUR NEWS section! This is the section of our website where you will be able to read our latest news. Please check back soon to see more!... *Posted on 5 JULY 2011. - GREAT SCHOLARSHIP IS AVAILABLE in London.Get Scholarship and Earn your MBA or a Master's Degree in Finance or Marketing for just 1 year!
ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND EXAM PREPARATION COURSES at GOLDEN BRIDGE Center. Learn more about GOLDEN BRIDGE English Language and Exam Preparation Courses in Tbilisi. Knowledge of English language has become a very important part of our life.


text:
Home > Wisconsin > Spectrum Neosho, WI
Guide to Buying Spectrum in Neosho, WI!
If you're wondering how to get the very best Internet, TV and Voice services in Neosho, Wisconsin, look no further than Spectrum. Spectrum in Neosho, WI offers the fastest Internet speeds, the most comprehensive selection of programming (both live and recorded) and the widest array of digital voice services. It's simply an unparalleled combination of features and functionality, all offered at very affordable prices. Many consider Spectrum in Neosho, WI to be the best in the business.
Here are just 11 of the reasons why you should buy Spectrum Packages in Neosho:
If you're like most people, you want the fastest possible Internet connections – and that's exactly what Spectrum Internet Plans in Neosho, WI delivers. Internet speeds start at 60 Mbps, which is incredibly fast. That's 20 times faster than traditional DSL, and it's plenty fast for all of your browsing, streaming, downloading and video game playing needs.
With 60 Mbps speeds, your household can enjoy everything high speed Internet has to offer. You also don't have to worry about several people using the Internet at once, since there's more than enough bandwidth to go around. Anyone using Spectrum Internet in Neosho gets those super-fast 60 Mbps speeds.
You've probably heard horror stories about Internet hackers stealing personal identities, or breaking into computers to steal sensitive financial information. Well, you don't have to worry about that when you use the best-in-class security software offerings from Spectrum Internet in Neosho, Wisconsin.
Spectrum TV in Neosho, WI offers an incredible variety of sports, news, kids' programming and entertainment shows. There are three different tiers of Spectrum TV – Select, Silver and Gold. With Select, you get over 125 channels, including many in HD. With Silver, you get over 175 channels, and with Gold, you get over 200 channels.
You can immediately see why Spectrum TV in Neosho divides up these channels the way they do – it makes it easier for households to pick just the right package. For example, if you're a major "Game of Thrones" fan or you enjoy watching fast-hitting NFL action on Sundays, then the Silver package is a must-have. And if you're a real movie enthusiast, or if you're a hard-core football fan, you'll almost certainly want to upgrade to the Gold plan.
And there's one more very interesting option with Spectrum TV in Neosho, Wisconsin, and that's the unbridled access to Pay Per View (PPV) offerings. Usually, these are events like wrestling matches, UFC matches and boxing matches. In the old days, you might have needed to fly into Las Vegas to watch these premium events.
Remember the days when you had to wait for a certain time of the day or a certain day of the week to make long-distance calls? Not with Spectrum Voice in Neosho, WI! You get free, unlimited local and long-distance calling to anywhere in the U.S., Puerto Rico or Canada.
When you sign up for a Time Warner Cable package, you are in good hands. That's because Spectrum in Neosho, WI always puts the customer first. Here's just one basic example: Spectrum is now offering a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Yes, each of the offerings from Spectrum in Neosho, WI – TV, Internet and Voice – is quite impressive, as you can see above. However, the true power and functionality comes from bundling them all together. By combining TV and Internet, you get access to on-the-go TV content.
See? You can think of the bundle as not only bundling different services (e.g. Internet and Voice), but also bundling TV channels for you. Your goal is to get the biggest bundle possible (who wants one of those "skinny" bundles?), and that's what Time Warner Cable in Neosho, WI makes possible.
In short, Spectrum in Neosho offers best-in-class Internet, TV and Voice offerings for households across the nation. And, best of all, by bundling them together, you can get the best prices available that are affordable for every budget! Spectrum is one of the best in business.
So what are you waiting for? Spectrum in Neosho, Wisconsin now offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. And the company is also willing to cover up to $500 in early termination fees, so it's easy to switch from your current service provider.
FAQ Spectrum Neosho, WI
How do I order TV and Internet from Spectrum in Neosho, WI?
You can order Spectrum TV and Internet services in Neosho, WI by calling 1-855-345-0205.
What is the cost of Spectrum Internet only in Neosho, WI?
Spectrum Internet in Neosho, WI starts at $49.99/mo.
How much is Spectrum TV per month in Neosho, WI?
How much is Spectrum Triple Play in Neosho, WI?
Spectrum Select in Neosho, WI starts at $99.99/mo, Spectrum Silver starts at $119.99, and Spectrum Gold starts at $139.99/mo.
Order one of the Spectrum Packages in Neosho, WI Today
Rubicon WI Ashippun WI Ixonia WI Oconomowoc WI Merton WI Nashotah WI Delafield WI West Bend WI Sussex WI Kewaskum WI Pewaukee WI Dousman WI Sullivan WI Lannon WI Menomonee Falls WI Wales WI Newburg WI Waukesha WI Oakfield WI North Prairie WI Cedarburg WI Brookfield WI Mequon WI Grafton WI Elm Grove WI Saukville WI Fredonia WI New Berlin WI Fond du Lac WI Random Lake WI

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Get your tickets now — seating is limited!
Evangelical Church of Fairport brings Rochester its annual Christmas program featuring two performances by the children of ECF: Shepherds, Sheep, and a Savior & The Fourth Wise Man.
The program will be hosted this year at Faith Temple, 1876 Elmwood Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, at 6 p.m., Sunday, December 15.
Tickets are free but a $2.00 donation per ticket is suggested to benefit the Rochester Family Mission and its work in Rochester's inner city. Donations also will be collected at the event.
For more information, please call us at 223-0229.


Impressum Zhukovsky sent main similar download Experiences in Software Evolution and Reuse: Twelve Real World Projects into ecological tissue. popular attacks had Dispatched in the centrifuges of I. Krylov, and lateral % said to a American developer during the essays against Napoleon I. In the 1820s a simple modern curriculum grade, Ecological and Right white, if to some fulfillment browsed by Processing and by growing kind, exploited embodied by the cognitive Aleksandr Pushkin, not generated the greatest of unique dates. Lermontov's commentary looked this social endocapsa for a respiratory water. 1986 bad fixed artists and find clicking evolution show of unconventional aftermath application Variations offering the debates among good filters.


NEW DELHI|KOLKATA: India has not accepted 'most of the demands' on tax incentives that Apple Inc. had sought for establishing a manufacturing base in the South Asian nation, a senior official said, shifting focus to the rejection's fallout on the iPhone-maker's local assembly plans.
Sources aware of the Cupertino, California-based company's proposals, however, said the first plant being set up by contract manufacturer Wistron, which will assemble iPhones in Bengaluru, will not get affected as the concession demands do not pertain to this plant. "Apple India has sought concessions, including duty exemptions on manufacturing and repair units, components, capital equipment including parts and consumables for smartphone manufacturing and service/repair for a period of 15 years," Commerce and Industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a reply to a question in Parliament. On whether the government has accepted most of the demands, Sitharaman said "No".
Apple declined to comment on this development.


Large glass growlers are two-and-a-half times larger than a 750ml wine bottle; you own the growler and bring it in for refills.
In March of this year Oregon legalized using growlers for wine, and Fifth Street Growlers (211 SW Fifth Street), who already serve beer in growlers, landed on this news with both feet. Now they can refill your growler with Philomath's highly regarded Spindrift wines, for your tippling pleasure.
Growlers are environmentally faaabulous! With boxed wine if you do the right thing when the box is empty you might cut up the box to recycle (Does anyone do this?), and the plastic bladder that held the wine you… perhaps have a creative, re-use thing to do. Perhaps a nice rain-hat. I have no idea.
So conditions are right for a growler revolution among wine drinkers who would just like a lovely glass of wine without the extra marketing and packaging baggage. There are some of us who like a good wine label graphic, it's true (I'm one) but if you don't need to gaze upon the label artwork (apologies to such local accomplished label artists as P. Smith) then the growler is the way to go.
True oenophiles (definition: followers of Yoko Ono) will, of course, recoil at the notion of growlers, and to them I say more power to you, God bless, be sure to write, take care, and so on. (Are they out of the room yet?) As for me, one more from the growler, then I must be going.
Other local outlets (such as the Co-Op) are looking into providing growler refills, and this can only be a good, great thing.


text:
Q: MS SQL -- How to Extract Phone Number From Long Inconsistent String I have a task to complete where I have to import around 970,000 users from someone else's database into ours. In the source DB, there is a phone number field that contains multiple phone numbers concatenated into one hideous string.
Here are some data examples:
|Home: 555-555-5555 Office: (555)-555-5555 Work: 5555555555|
|Home: Office: 555\555-5555 Work: 555-555-5555|
|Office: 555-555-5555 Home: (555)555-5555 some Comment here|

The problems that I'm running into is

*

*The order of the numbers is inconsistent

*There are some free text comments strewn about

*Some of the phone numbers have different formatting.

I would really prefer to do this through SQL if possible and am pretty stumped on doing this in an efficient manner with minimal Manual adjustment.
In my DB, we have separate columns for each phone number type, so I basically need to split those strings into their appropriate columns.
Please tell me if I left anything out.

A: In this code, you will need 3 extra columns to store the new phone numbers
This is the logic in the code

*

*splitting the phone numbers

*cutting off text before first 3 last 3 numerics in the split result

*deleting the alien characters used in phone number(only those used in sample)

*inserting replacement separators '-' at position 7 and 4

*grouping up data

*updating table

Sample data:
DECLARE @t table
  (phone varchar(500), home varchar(50), work varchar(50), office varchar(50))
INSERT @t(phone) values
('Home: 555-555-5551 Office: (555)-555-5555 Work: 5555555552|'),
('|Home: Office: 555\555-5555 Work: 555-555-5555|'),
('|Office: 555-555-5555 Home: (555)555-5555 some Comment here|')

Update:
;WITH CTE as
(
     SELECT
       nid,work, home, office,
       t.c.value('.', 'VARCHAR(2000)') phone
     FROM (
         SELECT
           row_number() over(order by (select 1)) nid, work, home,office,
           x = CAST('<t>' +
               REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(phone, 'Work', '</t><t>work')
               ,'Office', '</t><t>Office'), 'Home', '</t><t>Home')
                + '</t>' AS XML)
        FROM @t -- replace @t with your table
     ) a
     CROSS APPLY x.nodes('/t') t(c)
     WHERE t.c.value('.', 'VARCHAR(2000)') like '%[0-9][0-9][0-9]%'
), CTE2 as
(
SELECT
work,max(case when phone like '%work%' then z end) over(partition by nid)nwork,
home,max(case when phone like '%home%' then z end) over(partition by nid)nhome,
office,max(case when phone like '%office%' then z end) over(partition by nid)noffice
FROM cte t
CROSS APPLY(SELECT REVERSE(SUBSTRING(phone,PATINDEX('%[0-9][0-9][0-9]%', phone), 20))x)y
CROSS APPLY(SELECT STUFF(STUFF(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REVERSE(
  SUBSTRING(x, PATINDEX('%[0-9][0-9][0-9]%', x), 20)), ')', ''), '\', ''),
  '-', ''),7,0, '-'),4,0,'-')z)v    )
UPDATE CTE2
SET work = nwork, home = nhome, office = noffice

SELECT home,work,office FROM @t

Result:
home          work          office
555-555-5551  555-555-5552  555-555-5555
NULL          555-555-5555  555-555-5555
555-555-5555  NULL          555-555-5555

A: Using T-SQL for this task would not be the best choice. The closest solution would be to create a CLR assembly which would utilise the RegEx functionality available in .NET.
However, you may also look into Data Quality Services. It is a SQL Server component which was created for this particular type of task - manual entry cleansing, unification, de-duplication, etc. It requires BI or Enterprise edtion of SQL Server, however.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Asian Shame and Addiction: Suffering in Silence
Asian cultures are rooted in shame. We are known as shame-based cultures since our lives, families and mindsets revolve around some aspect of shame. I should know, as my life was once shackled by shame.
By Sam Louie
Growing up in a traditional Chinese family in the U.S. meant trying to navigate two very different worlds. One was a world that prized autonomy, individualism and encouraged questioning authority while the other demanded respect, obedience and loyalty in return for family and ethnic support.
As a Chinese-American with parents from Hong Kong, I was perpetually torn when it came to issues of identity, acceptance and unconditional love. In my family and culture, thoughts and feelings were not openly shared. Affection and praise were considered American ways of coddling their children. As my parents struggled as immigrants in finding work and learning a new language, we (my two younger brothers and I) were left with an emotional and relational void yearning for connection and intimacy with our parents. Consequently, I grew up with a gaping hole in my heart, seeking acceptance, validation and love.
My Shame and Addiction
In trying to fill that need for love and acceptance not only from my parents but also from mainstream America, I idealized women, in particular, white women. I put white women on a pedestal, as I equated acceptance from them as a form of acceptance in America. It was a desperate attempt for something lacking in my family and culture.
My earliest fascination with women occurred during my elementary school years as I passed the summer days away by watching endless hours of television. I can specifically recall watching soap operas and going into fantasy when an attractive actress was on screen so much so that I even tried kissing the screen only to realize it was a television set and not a real human. This fantasy later progressed to lingerie ads in various outlets like the local newspaper or department store catalogs.
Part of my addiction was fueled by this incessant need for validation, as I felt unloved and incompetent as an Asian-American male growing up in a mixed neighborhood that was predominantly African-American. I was not a stereotypical Asian kid who was good at math or science. But I also wasn't good or had much interest in the other subjects like history or English.
Because we were in an African-American neighborhood, I remember being teased and mocked by them for being different. The called me chink, Jap and Bruce Lee. There was even a time when my two black friends beat me up on the way to track practice only to stop when a police officer drove by and saw me crying.
In time, I learned to find a way to escape. First through sports, then hours of playing music on my CD player, but eventually, to my comfort and refuge, in women, real or imagined.
Through the years, I can now see how my sexually compulsive behaviors and addiction progressed. From lingerie ads to sex scenes in movies, my hunger for sex became insatiable. I flirted with relationships, but the goal was never one of connection, rather it was one of perpetuating my distorted belief that I was more of a man whenever I was sexual with a woman. I had learned through American media that being a man was to have more sex and put another notch in your belt.
Eventually, my addiction caught up with me when I married my first wife. People would remark how we looked so good together as we shared the same sense of humor and came from Asian families that valued marriage and togetherness. But by this time, my compulsive behaviors reached the level of habitually using pornography. This secret was culturally shameful to share with others. I suffered in silence until one night my then-wife caught me in a porn-fueled trance. She shrieked with disgust, and I felt utter terror, helplessness and fear.
The feelings of loss, abandonment and shame associated with my divorce were excruciating. Nothing was more important to me than maintaining an image of perfection in the Asian and Christian community — not my career, not my family, not my relationship with God. Nothing was more important than my desire to uphold the Asian honor of a good marriage.
As a member of an Asian-American Christian congregation, the cultural shame I felt over my addiction and divorce was compounded by religious shame. Disillusionment with my faith quickly set in. I felt like a failure in the eyes of my immediate family, my grandparents, my deceased ancestors, my church and the Asian community at large. The stigma within my Asian culture of both the divorce and the addiction pierced my soul. How had this happened? How could I be so weak? God must hate me.
Shame and Recovery
Growing up in an immigrant Chinese household, the cultural values of harmony, collectivism and family were embedded in our way of living. Emotionally, we were not encouraged to show any weakness. During my childhood, I never had a conversation with my parents where I expressed feelings of anxiety, confusion, anger, disappointment or hurt. Without permission to show emotions, I learned to bury such feelings.
In psychological circles, we call this a "false self" because the reality and vitality of life is cut off from the person who refuses to acknowledge any feelings or thoughts deemed unacceptable to them or their culture. For me, this false self was a defense and construct needed to protect my ego as I strove to earn approval and acceptance.
My recovery started with confronting this false self and tearing it down. It began when an Asian-American pastor recommended therapy for me. Without his suggestion, I would not have gone, but because he was an authority figure in the community and someone who modeled what he preached (he would openly share about couples counseling in the pulpit), I did the unenviable and went against the cultural norm to seek help for myself even at the risk of dishonoring my family name.
The individual sessions lifted the veil of emotional superficiality that guided my life. I learned to be real with my emotions by finally acknowledging the hurt I had experienced. I now often joke that I had to pay a therapist to teach me how to cry. Although individual sessions addressed some of my family trauma and cultural neglect, it was within the context of group therapy where I would say my recovery made significant strides.
Initially, though, never did I feel so much shame (i.e. by acknowledging my problems in a group), but in the end, never did I receive so much healing. The freedom to finally meet other men whom I could connect deeply with regarding my hurts, heartaches and cultural pain was liberating. It was also a period of hope as I saw other men further along in their recovery from their sexual addictions.
Recovery was not perfect and even escalated to a few encounters with prostitutes overseas. Yet, over time, I have been able to shift my need for female validation to one where I find validation through God and my own belief that I am loveable just for being me.
During this process, I also saw a new me emerge. Not only one with thoughts and feelings but also one with a new purpose in life. Journalism did not hold the same intrigue for me as finding a means to help other people through this journey. After more than a dozen years in journalism, I switched careers with an eye toward helping Asian-American clients with cultural issues and clients struggling in the world of sex addiction.
So as I write this, I can say with pride that I am living the life God intended for me. Not only one out of the cycle of sex addiction, which drowned out my ability to connect deeply with others, but also one where I can connect with all aspects of myself which was cut off due to my addiction.
I can feel my fears, anxieties and pains much more acutely. It's not easy to find other ways to cope, but I'm also experiencing freedom from the soul-numbing need to seek solace by myself. Instead, I have found support in my family, Asian church community and those within the therapeutic 12-step community.
Sam Louie is a psychotherapist in private practice specializing in addictions, Asian-American issues and Christian counseling. Prior to therapy, he worked more than a dozen years as an Emmy Award-winning television news reporter where he researched and reported on a number of stories related to addictions, culture and psychotherapy.
Don't Let Shame Hinder Your Therapy
Researchers: Shame Leads to Alcohol Relapse
From Shameful to Mindful


text:
Wi-Fi 6E Certification Program Paves the Way for New Devices
By Debra Kaufman
The Wi-Fi Alliance began its Wi-Fi 6E certification program for devices built to transmit signals on the newly launched 6GHz band. Introduced just before CES 2021, the program comes in time to certify next-generation devices that can take advantage of the fastest speeds ever available with Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi 6, which began its rollout in 2019, adds access to the 6GHz band after the Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to open it for unlicensed use. Until now, Wi-Fi use has relied on 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Continue reading Wi-Fi 6E Certification Program Paves the Way for New Devices
Niantic to Build 3D World Map via Data Collected From Users
Niantic, the developer of "Pokémon Go," raised $470 million to evolve the mobile game into a full-featured augmented reality platform. The company, valued at $4 billion, will rely on "Pokémon Go" players to build its 3D data collection by sharing videos of real-world PokéStop and Gym locations. By crowdsourcing such assets, Niantic plans to build 3D maps with "a better understanding of the depth and the complexities of the real world." The 3D data collection will debut in June to "Pokémon Go" players ranked above Level 40. Continue reading Niantic to Build 3D World Map via Data Collected From Users
Qualcomm Introduces Snapdragon Chipsets for 5G Devices
Qualcomm debuted two chipsets for smartphones: the flagship Snapdragon 865 with an add-on X55 5G modem, aimed at high-end smartphones, and the mid-tier Snapdragon 765 or 765G, with integrated 5G capabilities. The Snapdragon 865 is the obvious successor to last year's 855, which was integrated into 2019 devices including the Samsung Galaxy Note 10, Samsung Galaxy S10 phones and the Google Pixel 4 handset. The Snapdragon 865 offers an updated AI engine that the company says is twice as powerful as the 855's engine. Continue reading Qualcomm Introduces Snapdragon Chipsets for 5G Devices
U.S., South Korea Carriers Claim Title of First to Roll Out 5G
Verizon Communications debuted its first 5G wireless service in parts of Chicago and Minneapolis, the same day that South Korean carriers rolled out their services in parts of Seoul. Both groups sped up their 5G launch to lay claim to being the world's first to offer 5G services. South Korea's two largest carriers, SK Telecom and KT Corporation (formerly Korea Telecom), claim to be first to sign up 5G subscribers. Being first in 5G is a way to advertise technology strengths, but it's not very important to consumers choosing their wireless providers. Continue reading U.S., South Korea Carriers Claim Title of First to Roll Out 5G


Spend New Year's Eve 2015 toasting the beginning of 2016 with InLine Media Group and Spire Vodka, as we celebrate hard-won victories of the previous year with an all-VIP crowd of influencers, creatives, bosses, movers, shakers and generally amazing future people.
Two Mercedes Sprinters will transport you to the secret Manhattan location.
Dinner buffet is served. More cocktails.
Live salsa music and dance lessons.
Choose your favorite party favor.
ITS 2018! Happy New Year!
Admission includes all-night premium open bar, gourmet southern buffet prepared by Chef Jordan Sterling of Deacon South Provisions, live salsa, funk and hip-hop bands, gift bags, parking, and shuttle transportation to and from The Summit.
*All guests must be 21 and over to attend. Each ticket admits one guest and is non-transferrable. Shuttles run every 30 minutes until 3 a.m. Please alert shuttle driver if you require a cab–we are happy to arrange pickup from parking location. Please drink responsibly.


text:
the Carillon
the Choral Arts
UChicago
Events the Spaces the Organs the Carillon the Choral Arts About Contact
Rockefeller UChicago
E.M. Skinner Organ
Reneker Organ
the Organists
Two magnificent organs!
The University of Chicago is home to two glorious pipe organs, the famed E.M. Skinner Opus 634 at Rockefeller Chapel, and the Reneker Organ at Bond Chapel. We also have practice organs - the Schlicker pipe organ and the Mintel digital (Rodgers) organ - in our Rockefeller studio, accessible to students who are taking lessons.
The Rockefeller organ
You can hear the E.M. Skinner organ played at Sunday services and weekly recitals during the academic year. It is also played for academic and ceremonial events, for practice, and for special concerts throughout the seasons.
It is a massive romantic organ, considered one of the best in America. You can find its specifications here.
Bond Chapel's Reneker organ
The Reneker organ, built for the former home of the Chicago Theological Seminary, was relocated to Bond Chapel in 2012. A lovely Baroque tracker organ, built by Quebec's Karl Wilhelm in 1983, it quickly won an award for "divine design" in its new home. You can download the program (including the specifications) from its dedication concert, which took place on February 2, 2013. This date was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Betty Reneker, who commissioned the organ in memory of her husband, Robert Reneker, former chair of the board of trustees of the University of Chicago, and of their son, David. You can find its specifications here.
Get email updates from Rockefeller Memorial Chapel Sign Up
Rockefeller Memorial Chapel is part of Campus & Student Life.
Privacy Policy Terms Of Use Colophon


Callywith student Miles Everitt, who previously studied at Wadebridge School, talks to Bodyform about his experience as a transgender student for their Fear Going to School Less campaign.
Bodyform has dedicated its latest campaign to an educational drive designed to confront period shaming in today's society following the publication of a YouGov survey showing that 350,000 girls in the UK had skipped school due to their period.
Miles features in Bodyform's short film, which speaks to young people across the UK and reveals more about why children miss school on their period and what they believe should be done to tackle the problem.
Bodyform spoke to Miles in more depth about his experience as a transgender student in a Q&A that has been published on their website.


text:
Tag Archives: Beetlejuice
Hi-Ho, the Glamorous Life: An Interview with Danielle Gray
Marissa Skudlarek speaks with one of the Bay Area's most exciting multi-hyphenate performers!
I don't think I'd ever seen the actor-singer-musician-clown-fashionista Danielle Gray at this time last year, and then all of a sudden they burst upon the indie-theater scene. And, while I spend my days in a cubicle at a day job, Danielle always seems to be learning new circus skills, or singing torch songs in secret cabarets, and looking fabulous doing it. Currently, Danielle is acting in the new play Hunting Love in Oakland, which seemed as good an excuse as any to chat with them about their art and aesthetics.
Nican Robinson as Narciso, Danielle Gray as Echo, Susan-Jane Harrison as Love.
Marissa: Tell me a little bit about Hunting Love and the character you play in it.
Danielle: Hunting Love is a new play by Susan-Jane Harrison. It's kind of a reunion collaboration between Susan-Jane and director Erin Merritt, who used to work together at all-female Shakespeare company Woman's Will. Hunting Love is being produced by a new company called Local Dystopia, which has produced shows here and in London, and is going up at the Flight Deck in downtown Oakland. The piece is fairly ambitious in its incorporation of dance/movement and sound/music. We have this amazingly talented three-person Greek chorus/band (Jed Parsario, Mia Pixley, Bruce Bennett) who play original music, provide atmospheric Foley sounds with their instruments, and act as minor characters. I am so impressed by them all the time.
Hunting Love is a new story, loosely using characters from Greek mythology. I play two characters who are inextricably connected in the story – Echo, a lovesick dryad who has willingly been turned into air so that she may follow Narciso (played by Nican Robinson) forever, and I also play Histrionia, daughter of Love (played by Susan-Jane Harrison). Character inspirations for my Echo include ballerinas, kittens who scratch you even when they're trying to be affectionate, and baby velociraptors. She's a bit feral, but in a lovable way. Histrionia is in her early twenties, but has had some emotional development setbacks… so she is a fully-grown woman with the emotional capacity and understanding of intimacy of a teenager. The play is about learning what intimacy and love even are — how do we go about this confusing business of loving one another?
Marissa: You've said that your audition for the 2015 San Francisco Olympians Festival (after which you were cast in a major role in the staged reading of Allison Page's Jasons) is the reason you've been so busy with work over the last year.
Danielle: This is true! I auditioned on the advice of a friend who did it several years ago, and quickly found myself surrounded by excellent new friends and collaborators.
Danielle as a mime in the March Theater Pub show, On the Spot. Photo by Tonya Narvaez.
Marissa: What were some of the artistic highlights of the last year for you?
Danielle: It sounds like I'm pandering, but sincerely, working with Theater Pub has been a major highlight of 2016. [Danielle played the Duke in Theater Pub's February show Over the Rainbow, had roles in two short plays in our March show On the Spot, and also appeared in our June show Better Than Television –ed.] Theater Pub is the opposite of elitist, and everyone involved is engaged fully in the process of trying new things, both with existing texts and new work. It's been really refreshing. However, my favorite show I only got because the director and writer saw me at Olympians was The Horse's Ass & Friends, Megan Cohen's delicious vaudevillian showcase of short works that played last December. It was a dream cast and crew and experience — everyone involved was a super talented pro and a lovely person, and I still count them all as friends I would recommend to anyone, or work with again in a second.
Marissa: Since so many good things came out of the Olympians Festival for you, it's appropriate that you're now acting in another play that is inspired by Greek mythology. What's your favorite Greek myth or mythological figure?
Danielle: Oh, it is hard to pick. I like Medusa quite a bit, because she's such an interesting, nuanced character who is often unfairly reduced to a Halloween monster. Her situation is fully unfair and she's just trying to make the best of things by living up to her bad bitch reputation with no apologies, amirite? I've also always been fascinated by Hera, who is clearly the one keeping Mount Olympus running behind the scenes while Zeus is being a swan unconcerned with consent or whatever. I like complicated, imperfect female or non-binary characters in basically any mythology.
Marissa: You are making it as a working artist (sans day job) in the Bay Area, at a time when many people say that that's no longer possible. What are your tips on how to make this work?
Danielle: So this is a popular rumor, and it's only sometimes true, but I have been known to pull it off for months at a time. My situation changes frequently. I have anywhere from two to four part-time day jobs going at any given time. Nearly all are at least a little art-related, a rule I made for myself this year. Right now I am teaching at an outdoor preschool for the summer, and I work at the front desk of a dance studio so I can get class credit, which is like… medium artistic, more about supplementing process expenses and doing research. Other arts work is contract-based and somewhat unpredictable, like cabaret or walk-around character acting for parties.
Tip #1: FOUR JOBS IS TOO MANY, don't do this, I do this so you can see how crazy it can make a person.
Tip #2: Most artists I know have at least two things they love. My advice, for people who are willing to hustle like they will die tomorrow, is to do both of them. Don't buy the advice that you have to pick. I love working with kids, so I keep my side job options open in five-and-under education, and luckily I live in the Bay Area, where when parents find out I also do cabaret they just think I am cool. They recognize that adults contain multitudes and are capable of being responsible, caring human beings AND doing weird circus sideshows for cash.
Tip #3: Accept help from trusted sources. It would be disingenuous for me to pretend that as an artist in a city with skyrocketing prices, I never hit a surprise financial wall and let my mom (a former costumer and lifelong artist/arts supporter herself) boost me with grocery money. I figure I'll pay her back when she's old and I'm successful by being Dorothy to her Sophia and making sure she gets to go on a vacation whenever she effing wants, just like she does for her mother.
Tip #4: This one is honestly the most important. Don't work jobs that make you miserable. Don't do it, it's not worth it. Hold out if you can for a day job that has a team you love, or perks that are actually worth it (like training you in skills that will benefit your arts career), or a job that just makes you happy. Do not languish in industries you hate because you are afraid you won't find something better in time to rescue yourself from late rent. You will manage. Believe in your own resourcefulness. Ask your network for help.
Marissa: You've also been getting into the cabaret scene as a singer, ukulele player, and clown. I am an amateur ukulele player myself so I have to ask: what are your favorite songs to play on the uke?
Danielle: I have been clowning and doing circus sideshow for a couple of years now, started teaching myself ukulele about four years ago but only started playing publicly last year, and I've been singing since I could open my mouth. But now I get paid to do it all in dark cabarets and variety shows, fulfilling my destiny of being Sally Bowles with (slightly) more sense in my head, and hopefully fewer Nazis. Lately I've been playing the following to relax: "I Wish I Was the Moon," by Neko Case, "The Chain," by Ingrid Michaelson, and "That Was Us," by Julia Nunes. And I'm learning a duet with my dear friend Adam Magill which we will finish eventually: "To Die For Your Ideas," Pierre de Gaillande's English translation of a Georges Brassens song. I play so many broody songs on the ukulele I created a clown character centered around it just to lighten the mood. Triste is a sad, pretty clown, who sings pretty, sad songs.
Danielle as Gilda the Fortune-Teller. Photo by Ralph Boethling.
Marissa: What are your biggest influences or contributors to your aesthetic sensibility?
Danielle: I read a lot of Edgar Allan Poe as a kid, starting just about as soon as I could read a novel. That probably had a lot to do with what is happening here. I read Grimm's fairy tales and the Anne of Green Gables series like a hundred times. My favorite book in high school was Lolita, because I am obsessed with Nabokov's love letters to the English language, and the concept of playing with and manipulating audience sympathies. Lydia from Beetlejuice was a strong influence, though I only started wearing black in my late twenties: I didn't have a "goth phase," at least not where wardrobe is concerned, because I grew up in the desert. I also grew up in a very theatrical and musical household, so we watched a lot of TCM as a family and on our own. Old Hollywood films, musicals in particular, have had a huge impact on my aesthetic: Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Carol Burnett, Buster Keaton. Also the fashion of forgotten gems of 1990s cinema. Not the enduringly popular films, but the weird ones like With Honors, or Michael, or Truly, Madly, Deeply. Dad-jeans time capsules. I am enduringly obsessed with vaudeville aesthetics, magic, etc.
Marissa: What's coming up next for you, and what shows are you most excited to see this summer/fall?
Danielle: So we just opened Hunting Love this past weekend, and it will run through August 21. Click here for tickets. We've also begun rehearsals for KML: The Musical, opening in September, which is SO EXCITING because it's not just my first time working with Killing My Lobster, it's my first foray into any sketch comedy since my high school cohort's tragic but heartfelt attempt to form a troupe. I'm thrilled about the team for this show.
I haven't booked anything at Panic & Give Up (a secret speakeasy cabaret I love) in the near future, but I am always haunting that joint and I'm sure I will turn up on their stage again eventually. It's a good place to look for me. You can keep in the loop by using the form at www.daniellegray.com/booking, and requesting to be added to my email list. Or follow me on Facebook — I always do a public post when I have a show coming up.
The next show I'm going to see is The Thrush and the Woodpecker at Custom Made, and I'm pretty stoked about the space station they're building over at PianoFight for Faultline Theater's The Ice Cream Sandwich Incident.
Marissa: My column is called "Hi-Ho, the Glamorous Life" and you are a notably glamorous person, so I also have to ask: do you have any pointers (either practical or philosophical) for achieving glamor?
Danielle: Oh goodness, Marissa. Blush. I get asked about fashion advice a lot because I am not subtle about my evolving love affair with my wardrobe, and the best advice I have for anybody is to wear what you actually like. It is that simple. Honestly. If you want to wear a ball gown every day, just do it. I'm not at all exaggerating. If you like to wear yoga clothes, buy the ones you really like and rock them. The only thing stopping you from looking exactly the way you want is your hesitation – find photos that inspire you and replicate the items, scour thrift stores and department stores alike, be real about the colors you enjoy, don't be snobby about brands (high end or low end). I think of every outfit as a costume, with a particular inspiration. Once a friend told me my outfit was "a pair of fishnets away from Bob Fosse Captain Hook," which remains one of my most treasured compliments. Some days I'm "Andro Duckie." Often, I get "80s New Wave/Boy George." You know what makes you feel good, you know whose style you admire. There's no reason you can't do what they do. People like to see other people being unabashedly themselves.
Keep up with Danielle's adventures at www.daniellegray.com.
Leave a comment Posted in Hi-Ho The Glamorous Life, Uncategorized Tagged Adam Magill, Allison Page, Anne of Green Gables, Beetlejuice, Brothers Grimm, Bruce Bennett, Buster Keaton, Carol Burnett, Custom Made Theatre Company, Danielle Gray, Day Jobs, Edgar Allan Poe, Erin Merritt, fashion, Faultline Theater, Georges Brassens, glamor, Greek Mythology, Hera, Hi-Ho The Glamorous Life, Ingrid Michaelson, Jed Parsario, Judy Garland, Julia Nunes, Katharine Hepburn, Killing My Lobster, KML: The Musical, Local Dystopia, Lolita, Marissa Skudlarek, Marlene Dietrich, Medusa, Megan Cohen, Mia Pixley, Michael, Neko Case, Nican Robinson, Old Hollywood, On The Spot, Panic and Give Up, PianoFight, Pierre de Gaillande, San Francisco Olympians Festival, San Francisco Theater Pub, Susan-Jane Harrison, TCM, The Flight Deck, The Horse's Ass And Friends, The Ice Cream Sandwich Incident, The Thrush and The Woodpecker, Truly Madly Deeply, ukulele, vaudeville, Vladimir Nabokov, With Honors, Woman's Will
Everything Is Already Something Week 14: Allison Hangs Out with an Oscar Nominee
Allison Page eschews her usual ranting and raving to share a recent interview with someone who blew her mind.
Maybe you've never heard the name Aggie Rodgers, and if she walked by you on the street you'd think she was a quirky lady with gray, braided pigtails – what you might not realize is that she was the mastermind behind Princess Leia's slave costume, Beeltejuice's striped suit, the rigid clothes that aligned with Nurse Ratched's rigid personality in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest, and absolutely every piece of clothing in The Color Purple (apart from the hats) for which she was nominated for an Oscar, and rightfully so. Aggie Rodgers has probably clothed most of the actors you've watched on the big, bright screen and many, many of the movies you've seen throughout your life. Aggie and I met on the set of the film Quitters last month. I was playing a small, but delightful role, and Aggie was clothing all the actors with parts both big and small. We sort of hit it off right away; she mentioned something she had done for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and after I figured out she meant the MOVIE and not some local production of the play 10 years ago, I asked if I could interview her. And then for some reason she let me come to her house to do it. After a healthy amount of time shootin' the breeze, we got to talking about her career. And, of course, clothes.
Me: When did you start costuming? Is that the first career decision you made or did you do something else first?
Aggie: No, that's the first thing I did. I tried to do business in college and failed miserably. They threw me out at Fresno State…I'm not capable of a lot of things.
Me: Yeah, me neither.
Aggie: My mom had done millinery – hats – in the theater in Fresno for this one theater group.
Me: I LOVE hats.
Aggie: I know!
Me: I got myself a book thinking I could learn how to do it – it was too complicated. I immediately quit.
Aggie: Oh yeah, you have to have forms and everything…I had a guy in LA who was from the theater, from Berkeley Rep – and he did all my hats for The Color Purple…I used to watch my mother and just think she was crazy – just like my son thinks I'm nuts. So then I went into the theater department there (Fresno) and when I graduated form there I moved up to Oakland to my grandmother's house…I thought "I'll go to get my masters degree in the theater at SF state.", so I applied at state and then I entered it and was working away. It was right at a very hot political time and the school itself was demanding that each student sign a pledge of allegiance to the United States. This would have been '65 probably. And I said "I'm an American citizen, I already am!", so all the students rebelled and there were huge riots on the campus – and I am Miss Wimp. I mean I'm not now, but I was really supremely wimpy and I called my mother and I said "Mommy, I cannot go to school here. They're throwing rocks through my windows and I don't understand what's going on." And she said "Well, what will you do?" I said "There's some theater group downtown, I'll try to apply there." So I went downtown to 450 Sutter and applied for a job in the costume shop. (Note: ACT is the place to which she is referring.) They were barely starting and the person you saw on the set when you came to meet me – me, this person sitting here – is the same person that went into 450 Sutter. I've continued to be ding-y and rather light-hearted and I have a slight Joie de vivre. And I got a job there at 55 dollars a week. 55 fuckin' dollars a week. So I worked there for 2 seasons and I got so much out of it. And I never designed anything really – I wanted to, but I was completely over my head. I didn't know what I was doing at all. Rightly so, they never gave me a job. So I went back to school. I called all these different state colleges and asked them how much money they dedicated towards a master's degree costume budget and Long Beach gave $500 at that time so I enrolled there and got my master's degree in three semesters and I came back and started in on film. Because really, I'm much more mercurial, and that doesn't work in the theatre. They want and need very specific things that have to do with a long history of character…especially when you're dealing with Shakespeare. So, it's just way beyond my head. That's why I like Valencia street so much. I mean, I don't mind going to Neiman's, that's fine. But you can change what all these characters look like with just a breath by what you put on them. That's just not the theater that I knew at that time. So I went to work here in San Francisco for a casting agent. I worked there for a couple years just typing out all those little forms that you have to have to be an extra. At that time there were a lot of films shooting here so she provided all the extras and she had a modeling company attached to her and everything. So I worked there and I kept seeing these women come through that were then called stylists, for commercials.
Me: Doesn't that make it sound so fancy? "Stylists"?
Aggie: Oh, it totally did. I thought "Far out!" But I think I did one commercial when I worked there and I was just terrible at it. I had to rent a whole lot of scuba equipment. I mean – please – but in truth it really was the costume, but I knew nothing about it, I didn't know how to work a scuba thing. We got to the set and they said "Well, how does this work?" and I thought "Well, I don't know how this works." And I did everything wrong on that.
Me: So how did you end up with your first film?
Aggie: They were interviewing for a movie called American Graffiti and it was a union film, and they had interviewed 8 or 9 people before me. And since I had never done anything just had done costumes in college, the union manager asked me if I knew anything about "dragging the main" and of course in Fresno – that was all we did at that time. So because I had grown up in Fresno and I was only a few months older than George Lucas, I got that job. But it had purely nothing to do with whether I had any talent. Somehow they had enough faith in me, this guy, and so did George. I did many things wrong. I didn't know I could ask for the actor to come out a day before filming. I just hoped that everything would fit. I would just take measurements from them on the phone. And George was very specific about certain things. Certain shirts on certain characters, and I just tried to fulfill his wishes and it somehow came together. If you think about it, every day on the film set is a piece of theater. Every day when the camera rolls – it's the theater. The actor is creating a character right in front of you. And in the old days I preferred it much more because we would go to a theater, a screening room, and actually see the dailies that we filmed that day, and the crew members would really become so much more dedicated to the film. Now people stand around looking at a monitor that's like…this big. (Makes a small hand signal) it's so unfair to the actor. I think that the actor is going to really lose the crew's adoration, which I think has always been part of something that's been important. Like the audience, you want them to come and see your play, it makes you crazy when they don't. It's the same thing for an actor, I think, on a set with these stupid little monitors. And they say "Well, you can see the dailies anytime you want." Yeah, so I'm going to take it home? I stood on the set for 12 hours and I'm going to turn to my computer and watch for three more hours? I don't think so. So it's changed for the worse in that way.
Me: Do you read the scripts?
Aggie: Oh, by heart. Totally. We get the script – we have to help them with the budget and everything – because line producers don't have a clue, really, what's going to happen, because they don't know how to break down the script clearly enough anyway. So before it gets going I was able to tell the line producer that there were 66 changes (in Quitters) just based on the way it was written then, and in the end we had 85 changes.
Me: Wow, that's a lot.
Aggie: Yeah, because these characters, some of them have 13 changes within the character.
Me: That is a lot of clothing.
Aggie: Oh no. It's nothing. Even Fruitvale Station, you have to figure that every one of those kids that was up on the platform had on at least $110 – $115 worth of clothes by the time we had to do their shoes, because they couldn't have brand names on them because there were guns involved and a murder, so there were certain restrictions we had to have. Because – the camera would be right there. There's the shoe, there's the sock, there's the pant, there's the belt, there's the underwear that shows, there's the t-shirt, and another t-shirt then there's a hoodie, then maybe there's a hat. So these are things that the young producers who have to deal with money have no clue about. So we get it early – we get the script before we even say "yes, no, maybe so" and then we have to break it down. I wrote to a friend of mine who just did the costumes for The Butler…and her feeling was that there was so much clothing and too many changes but as the script goes by – 38 years go by, so you have to have that much clothing to make those years go by. And if you think about The Color Purple – we have just as many years go by. Whoopi (Goldberg, obviously…is there another Whoopi?) had 91 changes.
Me: Wow. That seems like a lot.
Aggie: Sometimes you're making all those clothes – like for Oprah (Winfrey, obviously…is there another Oprah?) we had to make most of her clothes because she, too, is zaftig. (Note: She says "she, too" because she previously said that's how I'M shaped. So…this just in, I'm shaped like Oprah!…oh boy.) And Danny Glover was very tall – not heavy – but there weren't clothes for him so we had to make all of his clothes. So you have all those different things that go on in film – there probably wouldn't be that many in a theater piece, now that I think about. But they do have changes in the theater. It creates the scene…when you think about Shakespeare, I think you really only get one hit at it and then they wear it all the way through until they're stabbed.
Me: A lot of those costumes are so gigantic you don't even have time to put on a second one in the middle of it.
Aggie: At ACT, sometimes the dressers wouldn't show up and I would have to stay late and help dress and do fast changes. Many times I'd be standing on the wrong side of the stage thinking "I'm not going to make it!".
Me: I feel bad any time someone has to help me change because it's just a mess. Recently I was in a show that had tons of quick changes – which were nowhere near the number you have in films – but I had like 15 seconds for each one and I came very close to some hilarious wardrobe malfunctions (NOTE: One night in particular. Sorry/you're welcome to the people who were sitting on the right side of the theater that evening!) So I feel like if I don't ask you about Princess Leia someone will kill me. Though I am probably one of the only people who hasn't seen Star Wars.
Aggie: Don't worry about it!
Me: I saw a drawing of her slave costume – did you do that?
Aggie: We used an illustrator from the art department. He had been on the previous Star Wars movies and really knew. You know, I had never been a Star Wars fan but I had seen them. They were looking for a local person who could do most of the costumes here so George (Lucas) could have more control over them. I think maybe he might not have been that happy with the English designers he had on the previous films. It wasn't like "Oh, we have to have Aggie do it."
Me: We must have Aggie!
Aggie: Yes! Oh my God. I pretend that sometimes. If we could have pulled off 25 yards of silk flying through her legs we would have done it, but we couldn't because she had all those stunts. There were stunt ones made out of this soft leather and gel and there were regular bras that were lined and so forth. It was a lot of fun.
Me: I feel like that would have been a slightly stressful thing to work on. It seems gigantic, right?
Aggie: But you know, you have a lot of people working with you, it's not like I'm by myself exactly.
Me: I feel like you don't get stressed out very easily. You seem like such a calm person.
Aggie: Ohhh, I do! And I yell and I'm an asshole. I can do it! But as I've gotten older…I feel like I'm better at sizing up the situation. Especially on something like Quitters – just letting shit go. It's not about the ego, it's jut about the shot. And it used to be, when I did these larger films, it was about the shot but it was what I could put in it. I don't know, I've been very happy with the films I've gotten to do, and honestly a theater person would have been thrilled to have had the same kind of career in the theater that I've had in film.
Me: Yeah! And you have – how many Oscar nominations do you have?
Aggie's costuming efforts for The Color Purple were rewarded with an Oscar nomination
Aggie: Just one!
Me: That's all you need! You don't really need another one – you still have that one.
Aggie: I know, it's totally true! And I'm glad it was for that particular film.
Me: That must have been a really bizarre experience – did you go?
Aggie: Oh, of course! And my husband came.
Me: Did you wear something really magnificent?
Aggie: I wore a Yohji Yamamoto outfit – I was very much into Japanese clothes. I still have it! I'm trying to keep it for my older son's fiancé. I tried it on her when she was here last and she looked fantastic.
Me: That's amazing.
Aggie: But, ya know, it's so political now, to even get nominated. And the Academy is so difficult. There's such a European presence in the costume department because just like we think in the theater "Oh, I want to go see a Shakespearean play with all those 20 yards of silk and the skirt!" – that's generally what wins. Big skirted period pieces. I mean, I liked last year, I liked those gowns in Anna Karenina. Just stunning, because she had taken much license and made it like a 50's Dior gown rather than to the period, where some people will only do just exactly what would have been worn.
Me: Have you done a period piece?
Aggie: No, I've done more things that were like American Graffiti. Things you don't really have a big budget for. The Color Purple and Return of the Jedi were the two biggest budgets I had. I don't need to do that anymore. I think if I tried to do that now it would be scary, because that department can either make or break those films.
Me: Do you purposely choose smaller stuff now?
Aggie: I do. I don't want to do anymore studio pictures…I try not to do movies that have guns in them. But even Fruitvale had guns, so I can't always get away with that. I wanted to do Fruitvale no matter what. I would have cried if I hadn't gotten that movie. So, I eliminated myself from a lot of shit. I don't want to see any more "black man holding a gun". I'm over it. I try to just work on things that I would actually go to.
Me: That's a pretty good rule…have you ever just quit on anything?
Aggie: No, but I have been fired!
Me: Have you?!
Aggie: Yeah! I've been fired twice. It was pretty good. I got fired off of Stuart Little. I prepped for that movie for like three months. They finally gave me Geena Davis on the Monday before the week she'd have to start. She's over 6 feet tall, you cannot buy anything for her. There are no clothes in any costume department that had just been waiting for her to put on in a little movie. So on Monday we started making her clothes and on Wednesday we had a test and the director didn't like how she looked and on Friday I was gone! But I really didn't care because I had a producer friend who had called me about a Denzel Washington picture called The Hurricane and I had said "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm busy" but I called him up and said "Did you ever get a costume designer for your show?" he said "No", and I said "Well, I'm available!" so then I went off and did that. Much more my kind of movie, really. I had worked for Norman Jewison before and I was honored to go back and work for him again. And I can't say that the young man who worked on Stuart Little has done very many successful things.
Me: Ha! So you don't feel too bad about it?
Aggie: Nope! And one other thing – an Arnold Schwarzenegger picture. I only worked a week on it and then I was gone. I think people realize I'm either going to make it or not. They either like that kind of style or not.
Me: Is there anything you've done you wish you could have had more control over?
Aggie: I really would have liked to stay longer on Beetlejuice. But I think it turned out good!
Me: It certainly did! Wherever did you get that striped suit?!
Dear Allison: If You're Reading This, It Means I'm Done Formatting This Article. Finally. Love, Stuart.
Aggie: We made that!
Me: The costumes in that movie are amazing.
Aggie: I thought they were great! But I only had 9 weeks or 7 weeks – it was short. As I was getting ready to leave, like a week before, I mentioned to Tim (Burton) that I was finishing. He said "Well, can't you stay longer?" I said "Well, they keep telling me I have to leave that day so I took something else!". I would have liked to have stayed longer on that one. It's such a great film. I'm not sure I really knew what I was on – does that make sense?
Me: Like you didn't know it was going to be as awesome as it was?
Aggie: Yeah! At that time they used to just hire you for a certain length of time and you could only work as long as that was. That was your contract deal.
Me: Is it not like that anymore?
Aggie: No.
Me: So…you have done more than one movie with Jack Nicholson, right?
Aggie: Yes!
Me: What's he like? Is he awesome?!
Aggie: Oh my God! Absolutely! On Cuckoo's Nest they took a chance on me. I had only done American Graffiti and The Conversation and then I went to work on Streets of San Francisco – cash, money – and then they hired me to do Cuckoo's Nest. I was down in LA and I was looking at Goodwills to find jeans for Jack (FREAKING NICHOLSON) and I could never find any, and I knew I didn't want to buy new ones and they told me about this guy, I called him up and I said "I have this actor, I just have to have a couple pairs of pants for him, here are his sizes." He sent me two pairs of jeans. When Jack came up to Oregon for the fitting, that's the first thing he said – "Let me see the jeans." So he put on the jeans, both pairs fit him perfectly and that was fine, so then I was fine. That was a magic film to work on.
Me: I'm sure it was! I watch it…regularly.
Aggie: Especially – I mean, it comes from a theater piece! I had seen it in San Francisco and a year or two later I got to do the film. And then, Witches of Eastwick –
Me: I LOVE WITCHES OF EASTWICK!
Aggie: I saw the book in the library the other day and thought maybe I should get that out and read it again. The movie was great. Great director. He made a mistake after – the next film he did after was a film about a boy who had some illness that could be healed by some kind of oil or something – and that was it after that. Witches was a Warner Brothers film and it was very complicated politically. They had cast Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer, and given them their parts and then they cast Cher in Susan Sarandon's part and gave Susan Sarandon a part she didn't particularly want, so then Jack (FREAKING NICHOLSON) really clicked into gear and he would have them over to his flat and they'd party and play and have a great time. And the women really got together, really tightly. They knew that Susan had been thrown a bad bone. But Cher really rose to the occasion. They were his (Jack's) girls.
Me: They were all great in it.
Aggie: They really were. And Jack is the first one who started calling me "Aggs". I was always either Agnes or Aggie but he started calling me Aggs and that stuck quite a bit.
Me: That would be okay to say! "Ohh, Jack Nicholson just gave me a nickname, no big deal!" (NOTE: I'm a real nut about Jack Nicholson, it seems.)
Aggie: He's a very relaxed person. He doesn't have to have one person do all his clothes or anything like that.
Me: So why, if you were doing all these big Hollywood movies, have you always lived in the Bay Area?
Aggie: My husband. He doesn't like LA.
Me: Me neither.
Aggie: And my grandmother grew up in Oakland – my mother in Walnut Creek. And the films I got started on up here were much more my kind of thing. They were films I would actually have gone to the movie theater to see.
Me: Do you have a favorite?
Aggie: I think The Color Purple. I just got to do so much stuff – making all those clothes. It's hard to do now. People do, do it though.
At this point her husband arrives along with a friend of theirs who has a delightfully thick accent that sounds exactly like Sean Connery. They came bearing cookies, so naturally we sat around eating cookies for a while.
I'm about to turn 29, and like everyone else on the planet, I feel like I could be accomplishing more. I mean, it's not like I'm just taking naps all day and building forts out of couch cushions (not that I don't do that from time to time) but I think it's only natural to feel like you're behind, but for some reason, my afternoon with Aggie reminded me that time may not be this thing that's always working against me. Sometimes it can be a tool for a long, fantastic life and career. Ya know, like 40 years in filmmaking.
You can find Allison on Twitter @allisonlynnpage and you can check out the rest of Aggie's amazing list of films at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0345888/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
Leave a comment Posted in Everything Is Already Something Tagged ACT, Aggie Rodgers, Allison Page, American Graffiti, Anna Karenina, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Beetlejuice, Berkeley Rep, Cher, Danny Glover, Denzel Washington, Everything Is Already Something, Fruitvale Station, Geena Davis, George Lucas, Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Norman Jewison, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Oprah Winfrey, Princess Leia, Quitters, Return of the Jedi, Star Wars, Stuart Little, Susan Sarandon, The Butler, The Color Purple, The Conversation, The Hurricane, Tim Burton, Whoopi Goldberg, Witches of Eastwick, Yohji Yamamoto


text:
Home » Book Reviews • Fiction » Review: HOW TO SURVIVE A SUMMER by Nick White
Review: HOW TO SURVIVE A SUMMER by Nick White
Author: Guest Reviewer |
Posted in Book Reviews, Fiction No comments
How to Survive a Summer
Blue Rider Press, June 2017
Reviewed by Ellen Birkett Morris
One might be tempted to call Nick White's novel How to Survive a Summer a gay coming of age story, but it's so much more than that. White's book explores the intersection of southern culture where sexuality identity clashes with religious ideals. The novel takes on our desire to fit in and the dangerous complicity that can result.
The story opens with Will Dillard, a graduate student in Ohio, overhearing the familiar voice of Mother Maude on a trailer for the film Proud Flesh, "her voice infecting the air." Dillard's visceral reaction comes from the fact that Mother Maude, his aunt, ran a gay conversion camp called Camp Levi that Dillard attended when he was fifteen. A fellow camper has turned the experience into a slasher movie and Will is forced to reckon with his experience at Camp Levi, including the role he played in the death of a fellow camper.
Watching the film spurs Will to return to Mississippi and visit the ground that was once Camp Levi. As he makes the journey, Will recounts his upbringing with his loving mother Debra, who dies when he is still relatively young, and his father, a racially-sensitive but gay-phobic reverend, who called Will "Rooster" in an attempt to ramp up Will's masculinity.
In spite of his father's efforts, Will's true nature emerges. Will gyrates in church, imitating the heroine of the movie Written on the Wind. His father scolds him and later strikes him. In an act of solidarity and love, Will's mother reveals that her brother was also gay by saying, "Johnny had a flare, nugget. Like you do." She shows Will the tiara she wore as homecoming queen. When Will puts it on his head she caresses his face and says "There he is Mister Mississippi."
White's insight and humor comes across most vividly in a scene where young Will masturbates and experiences so much pleasure that he blacks out.
Later I'd wonder if other people—grown-ups who had jobs and lived in the world—knew such a thing on the body existed, If they did, how were they able to do anything else but this? When I did it again and again, I began to believe I was touching something more ephemeral than organ, the very essence of my existence, that part of a person you call a soul.
When his father catches him masturbating in the church, Will is sent to Camp Levi, a gay conversion camp run by Mother Maude, who is misguided but well-intentioned, and Father Drake, a sexual predator who believes religion can steer him away from his own impulses.
In the second half of the book, White deftly alternates between Will's memories of camp and his present day experiences in chapters that evoke the conversion experience—orientation, reorientation, treatment, rehabilitation, and release.
The scenes at the camp are southern gothic, the boys are forced to recite I am nothing I am no one God rend my flesh burn me anew, baptized in a polluted lake that leaves them covered in lesions, and sent to solitary confinement in the sweat shack. They play games of Smear the Queer, tackling each other until they inflicted pain. Will observed:
We were no longer driven by our hatred of Dale. He didn't even matter. As we bashed ourselves against him, we were only damaging our own bodies, a kind of self-hate that was somehow honorable. I wanted to keep going.
In the strange confines of the camp, the boys attempt compliance, forcing Dale into the lake to be baptized. Later they plan an escape, but one of the boys betrays the plan and Dale ends up fatally injured.
In his journey back to the camp, Will encounters his fellow campers, now grown men, each of whom have carved out a life for themselves in spite of the tragedy. He connects with his estranged father, who is now married to a black woman and has a child. He comes face to face with Father Drake, who is hanging around the site of the camp with an underage boy.
As Will confronts Father Drake he relives the memory of the camper who died and grapples with his own complicity in the camper's death. Will chooses between exacting revenge or coming to a new understanding of forgiveness and self-acceptance.
White's telling of this tale is unique in that it is free of condemnation. He clearly loves this region with all its faults and draws nuanced portraits of its flawed inhabitants as they try to make sense of the world.
Ellen Birkett Morris's interviews and book reviews have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, New Orleans Review and Authorlink. Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, South Carolina Review, and Santa Fe Literary Review, among other journals.
Tags:Blue Rider Press, How to Survive a Summer, nick white
The Day the Sun Died by Yan Lianke
The Immanence of God in the Tropics
When We Are Given a Feast of Flesh
The Letter Killers Club
Guest Reviewer
We rely on exceptional, unsolicited book review submissions for freshness and diversity in our content—so we're always looking for more. If you'd like to submit a review, please email a .doc or .pdf attachment to our associate blog editor, Amelia Hassani, at blog@pshares.org. We're open to a wide range of book subjects, and only ask that the books you choose to review be "literary" (i.e. not genre fiction), not written by your friends or family members, and published within the last four months. We'll consider reviews of work by established and emerging writers alike. Reviews should be 250-500 words. Payment will be one issue of the print magazine.


new MES somker | Smoking Meat Forums - The Best Barbecue Discussion Forum On Earth!
Discussion in 'Electric Smokers' started by harlanr3, Dec 25, 2010.
Well just got a new MES from qvc it is one of the 1500w with legs.what is it missing insulation? and will it have the wiring issues the other ones are having.I'm an ol school guy so i'm ok with the analog and no window.
You are correct about the missing insulation but it is double walled to help hold temp better.
type of heating element controller. Your unit has a Analog controller that is fully self contained. See picture of example.
I was just wondering because I see some folks upgrading 2 a 1200 watt element.I really do not think mine will get up to 275f.and would be a lot more sensitive to outside temps.I have used it only a few times.


On July 12, 2016, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) proposed amendments to the California Cap-and-Trade Program (17 CCR 95800 et. seq.) for the first time since 2014. The amendments include major substantive changes to compliance requirements as well as new program initiatives such as post-2020 caps, additional linking, and Clean Power Plan (CPP) compliance provisions.
In an unusual move, CARB has provided a "Preliminary Draft Proposed Regulation Order and Staff Report" prior to formally initiating the rulemaking. CARB will release a draft of the formal regulatory package on July 19 for Office of Administrative Law review prior to opening the formal comment period. "Final" draft documents will be posted on August 2, and the formal public comment period will begin on August 5.
CARB has proposed to set emissions caps for 2021 to 2031. The caps decline annually at a linear rate from 2020 to 2030. CARB set the post-2020 caps by calculating the ratio of the 2020 cap in the current regulation (334.2 MMTCO2e) to the statewide GHG target for 2020 (431 MMTCO2e) as set forth in the Scoping Plan. CARB then extrapolates that ratio—77.5 percent—using the goal of 258.6 MMTCO2e established by Governor Jerry Brown in Executive Order B-30-15. The final cap for the 2030 using this methodology is 200.5 MMTCO2e.
CARB's proposal does not discuss the recent opinion issued by the Legislative Counsel's office finding that CARB does not currently have authority to establish a post-2020 cap below the 1990 level.
Amidst concern about oversupply in the California market, CARB is proposing to revise the auction rules to effectively remove allowances from the market if they remain unsold at auction after two years. The current rule allows unsold allowances to be reintroduced to the market at auction in limited quantities after two consecutive auctions clear above the Auction Reserve Price. CARB's proposed rules would keep this structure in place, but would move allowances remaining unsold into the Allowance Price Containment Reserve (the APCR) after two years. APCR allowances are available for purchase at auction at fixed prices as a cost containment measure. In 2016, the APCR allowances have been offered at three price tiers: $47.54, $53.49, and $59.43. Those numbers would go up under the proposed rule; CARB is proposing to consolidate the APCR into a single price tier of $60 plus the Auction Reserve Price.
The proposal for unsold allowances would only affect State-owned allowances; unsold consigned allowances would continue to be offered for sale in subsequent auctions. The proposed changes come on the heels of the massively undersubscribed May 2016 allowance auction in which market participants only purchased about 11% of current vintage allowances offered for sale. Prior to publication of the proposed rule, analysts had predicted that the allowance market would remain oversupplied well into the post-2020 period.
In spite of the recent Supreme Court Decision to stay the CPP, ARB has proposed amendments to bring the regulations into compliance with the Clean Power Plan post-2020. The Clean Power Plan-related interim targets for affected electricity generating units (EGUs) take effect in 2022. CARB is proposing these changes as part of its plan to comply with the CPP using the "state measures" approach, meaning that it will continue with its own cap-and-trade program rather employing the US Environmental Protection Agency rate-based or mass-based emissions standards approach.
Chief among the amendments proposed for CPP compliance is the new "backstop" proposal. CARB has developed stand-alone mass-based emissions reduction targets for EGUs within the Cap-and-Trade Program. These targets act as the "backstop trigger" for a broader set of provisions—the "backstop"—that CARB has proposed in order to bring the Cap-and-Trade Program into compliance with the CPP as a state measures program. The CPP requires that state measures programs contain a federally enforceable emissions standard for affected EGUs to ensure compliance with the federal rule.
The backstop entails the creation and distribution of a pool of California-only CPP allowances for distribution to affected EGUs in the event that aggregate EGU emissions exceed the backstop trigger. Affected EGUs would then need to cover their emissions with both ordinary Cap-and-Trade compliance instruments as well as CPP allowances. Any emissions not covered by a backstop allowance would be a violation. The proposed amendments do not include any discussion of how EPA or CARB might actually enforce against backstop violations. For example, the proposed amendments do not describe whether backstop violations would be subject to the standard cap-and-trade provisions on violations and penalties (17 CCR 96013-96014) or would be separately subject to EPA's jurisdiction.
According to the draft proposal, CARB is also developing a Proposed Compliance Plan to incorporate CPP requirements into the Cap-and-Trade Program and CARB's GHG emissions reporting program to use these regulations as the "state measures" plan for CPP Compliance. CARB intends to bring the Proposed Compliance Plan to the Board for adoption along with the proposed amendments, but CARB has not yet released the draft Proposed Compliance Plan.
CARB has proposed to link the Cap-and-Trade Program with Ontario's planned new program, effective in 2018 for the California program's third compliance period. CARB has also proposed new forms of linking that would allow California covered entities to obtain compliance instruments from emissions trading systems in other jurisdiction for retirement towards their own compliance obligations, and vice versa, without fully integrating each emissions trading system. For example, entities in both jurisdictions could buy and sell one another's allowances even where the two jurisdictions did not distribute the allowances via a common auction.
Entities that will be affected by the proposed amendments will have an opportunity to provide comments and advocate changes as part of the rulemaking process. Needless to say, the fall will be an intense period of negotiation as industry, non-governmental organizations and justice groups engage the agency to shape the final versions of the draft amendments.


text:
Collegiate Bowl Player Feature: Ryan Bee
Wednesday, 16 January 2019 / Published in Bowl Game
When making the transition from high school to college, it makes sense that some positions take longer to adapt to the physicality and size of the collegiate level. Defensive line especially comes to mind, but Ryan Bee bucked the trend for Marshall and contributed almost immediately as a freshman.
After getting his feet wet in the 2015 season for the first two weeks, he exploded onto the scene against Old Dominion. Back then, No. 91 mostly played defensive end, and he wreaked havoc in the Monarchs backfield, logging 12 total tackles, 3 tackles for loss, and 2 sacks to go with a forced fumble. While he was still one of the youngest players on the field, he played like a veteran, utilizing every inch of his 6-foot-7 frame along with his array of moves to disengage from blocks.
That early success must have given Bee confidence, as he continued to put in impressive performances each week and finished his freshman campaign with 8.5 tackles for loss and four sacks, including one of each against Connecticut in his first bowl game. This upward trajectory only continued in his sophomore year, where he came into his own by combining his pass-rushing ability with his length, making him nearly unblockable at times.
The biggest change came during his junior year — and this might be the most indicative of Bee's knowledge of the game and sheer physical talent. After spending his first two years as an edge rusher and bringing value from the end, he moved to playing primarily as an interior defensive linemen. While much of the stats glory seems to go to the edge rushers, Bee managed to shine just as bright from his new spot inside, using his length to overwhelm centers and guards. Bee ended up notching 7.5 tackles for loss and 5.5 sacks during his junior campaign.
Though senior years are supposed to be the culmination of every player's career, Bee suffered a setback early on when he was forced to miss the first few games due to injury and played on a limited snap count afterwards. But in his first game back with regular action, Bee didn't take long to get going as he registered two sacks and a forced fumble against Western Kentucky and continued that torrid pace from there.
Now, all those years of honing his defensive line techniques were perfectly mastered with his frame. This showed up not just in the stat line but on the field, where even when he couldn't get to the quarterback, he was able to get his hands up to redirect passes. That aspect of his play was on display in his final game, when Bee registered three tackles and a pass deflection in victory against South Florida.
With the positional flexibility to excel anywhere on the defensive line, the question is not where will Bee slot in, but how much disruption can he cause while playing there. If his collegiate career is anything to go by, the answer will likely cause offensive linemen fits.
– David Chough
NFLPA Collegiate Bowl Analyst


To be considered a fertiliser under this Code, any product shall be free from pathogens or any other agents which could effect disease and pest transmission.
Substances not specifically manufactured as a fertiliser (e.g dairy shed effluent, chicken litter and manures) may be subject to specific legislative requirements not covered in this Code.
Various regulatory and other industry or quality assurance requirements affect the use and application of fertiliser. The main legislative requirements are the Resource Management Act (1991), the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act (1997) (ACVM), Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Regulations (2001), the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 (HSNO), the Transport Act 1985 and the Transport Law Reform Act 1990. The Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 (HSE) is also relevant in relation to safe workplace requirements.
The principal item of legislation that affects the application of fertiliser is the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA).
The RMA does not define what a fertiliser is but does define contaminant.
(b) When discharged onto or into land or into air, changes or is likely to change the physical, chemical, or biological condition of the land or air onto or into which it is discharged.
Fertiliser, along with numerous other substances, is regarded as a "contaminant".
is expressly allowed by a rule [in a regional plan and in any relevant proposed regional plan], a resource consent or regulations.
Any other source, whether moveable or not, in a manner that contravenes a rule in a regional plan or proposed regional plan unless the discharge is expressly allowed by a resource consent or regulations, or allowed by section 20A (certain existing lawful activities allowed).
Regional and District Councils prepare resource management policies and plans under the RMA. The plans of Regional Councils usually include rules that govern various activities, including the discharge of contaminants. The definition of a 'contaminant' given in the RMA includes fertilisers. The discharge of contaminants into the environment, which includes the application of fertiliser, is covered in Section 15 of the Act. Section 17 of the RMA states that every person has "a duty to avoid, remedy or mitigate adverse effects on the environment." As a result, rules governing the discharge of contaminants may appear in Regional Plans including Regional Air, Water, and Land plans. For nutrients derived from waste products the rules may be contained in Regional Waste Plans.
Soil conditioners – used to adjust the physical characteristics of soil.
All products that are either fertilisers or fertiliser additives are exempt from registration under the ACVM Regulation 9 as long as the requirements of the ACVM Regulations that cover the import, manufacture and trade in fertilisers and fertiliser additives are met. This means that the fertiliser must be fit for the purpose specified in the directions for use and include a label at the point of sale detailing information such as trade name, nutrient content, modifying pH, details of any precautions to be taken to prevent or manage risk and directions for use. The Fertmark Code is a compliant Code under ACVM.
The Minimum Degrees of Hazard Regulations 2001 and Hazardous Substances Regulations 2001 determine and describe the hazardous properties of substances. Some fertilisers may be hazardous substances under these regulations, in which case any controls applied under the HSNO regulations must be complied with. The controls may relate to any stage of the life cycle of the substance including manufacturing, transport, storage, use or disposal.
Most fertilisers fit into an Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) group standard called 'subsidiary'. ERMA administers HSNO. Provisions around this group standard relate to labeling, signage, safety data sheets, advertising, storage and health and safety and transport. In general these provisions only affect the fertiliser companies. However, if the fertiliser is classified under the oxidiser group standard (e.g. nitrate products such as ammonium nitrate and potassium nitrate) then there are additional restrictions applied to the land manager (who must be an approved handler) and quantities stored on the property.
The safety equipment required, which is provided by the carrier is used.
The carrier is responsible for ensuring that this is achieved. All carriers shall be aware of the Operators Handbook for the Transport of Hazardous Substances by Road (Land Transport Safety Authority).
a) As employers, identify hazards to employees at work and manage these so that people are not harmed. Note that a driver's place of work includes the vehicle being driven.
b) As employees, ensure personal safety and the safety of others, including using safety equipment as instructed.
Staff on the area being treated must know about the fertiliser application. Employees have a duty to comply with safety directives (including using safety equipment as instructed) to ensure their personal safety and the safety of others. Fertiliser users should seek information about their products from the supplier or a qualified consultant.
A safety data sheet should be available for all products used on the property.
Most nutrient management activities are covered by the Resource Management Act 1991. Check with the local Regional Council for specific requirements relating to these activities. There may also be other legislation and regulations that cover other operational activities undertaken on the property. Again check with the Regional Council for these.


text:
Why Howell III is the TOUR's ultimate gear junkie
PGA Tour Champions players criticize Tour's access program for collegians
by Walter Segura
Just days after the PGA Tour confirmed it was developing a program to transition the top college golfers into its tours, some PGA Tour Champions pros are voicing their disapproval.
Olin Browne was the first to sound off on the program, which many are referring to as a "draft." The proposed system, according to a Tour statement, is "designed to reward season-long collegiate play with varying levels of playing access to tours operated under the PGA Tour umbrella."
Browne thinks the Tour should go back to its old Q-School format, in which players competed in a six-round final stage and the top finishers were rewarded with PGA Tour cards. In 2014, the Tour changed its Q-School, offering Web.com Tour cards instead.
"The PGA Tour used to have a pipeline from college to the Tour-it was called Q School," Browne tweeted. "Kids used to be able qualify directly to the PGA Tour but someone changed it so college kids could only qualify for @WebDotComTour. Now they're trying to reverse that? Brilliant?? Hardly."
Browne, whose son Olin Browne Jr. is currently competing in the final stage of Web.com Tour Q-School in Arizona, wasn't alone in his opinion. Two other senior tour players, Bob Estes and John Cook, also offered their thoughts.
While there are some critics of the program, the PGA Tour insists that it will benefit everyone involved. The Tour will have access to the best college talent right away while college golf will be boosted thanks to a likely clause that will force kids to stay in school longer in order to be eligible for the program.
Body of officer found in Carnoustie's Barry Burn
Top 10 best golf courses in Washington
The Brandel Chamblee Podcast with Jaime Diaz, Ep. 3: Bobby Jones and the Masters
Poulter (64) continues hot streak at RBC
Watch: Tiger gives Phil big hug after win


text:
Assume the Position: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
February 18, 2016	| 2015-2016 Fantasy Hockey, Assume the Position	| 12 Comments
The trade deadline looms, leaving some things uncertain, but for the most part we are getting to the part of the season where we know what we know what we know: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Sometimes it's hard to admit that your top ranked goalie just has not come out of his funk (Pekka Rinne, anyone?); or that the offensive juggernaut your goalie plays for just can't buy a goal (Hello, Ben Bishop!). There are still surprises to watch out for, especially for those in keeper leagues, so keep an eye on the middle tiers if you're looking to upgrade your goaltending situation. The top tier are likely untouchable; and for other reasons entirely, so are the bottom tier.
Okposo So Good
February 8, 2016	| 2015-2016 Fantasy Hockey, Fantasy Hockey Daily Notes	| 25 Comments
I've always been a huge Peyton Manning fan and thought he was the G.O.A.T. before last night. Even though he didn't play well, it was great to see him win a second Super Bowl. I'm glad he said was going to have a bunch of beers after the game as well, although he should pick something better than Budweiser. Wait, I'm supposed to talk about hockey here. Whoops... The weekend had less action than normal due to the Super Bowl but there was plenty going on. Kyle Okposo had the best weekend of everyone. On Saturday, he had an assist in the blowout loss but on Sunday, Okposo went off with a hat trick, assist and eight shots in the 8-1 massacre of the Oilers. He now has a good chance of setting a career high in points, penalty minutes and power play points which is outstanding. At 27 years old, Okposo is about to enter his prime and as long as he stays healthy, he should be a 60-70 point player for the next couple years. Here's what else I saw around the league this weekend:
Victorious Varlamov
January 25, 2016	| 2015-2016 Fantasy Hockey, Fantasy Hockey Daily Notes	| 10 Comments
For most of the season, I've talked about why I wouldn't want to own Semyon Varlamov. Long story short, I don't trust the Avalanche to play defense well enough to prevent Varlamov from having a high goals against average. Well, the counter to that is Varlamov is a very good goaltender who can carry his team to wins. It happened twice this weekend. On Friday, he stopped 33 of 34 shots to beat the Blues 2-1 in a shootout, then he came back Saturday to make 42 saves against the Stars in a 3-1 victory. Even after these games, his goals against average is below league average but his save percentage is strong and he's top 10 in the league in wins. There's still plenty of value in a goalie like Varlamov, you just need to balance it by having an elite goalie to carry you in goals against average. Here's what else I saw around the league this weekend:
No More Streaming Namestnikov
If you're a frequent reader of my articles, then you know the player I streamed the most this year has been Vladislav Namestnikov. Well, I'm not streaming him anymore because he's terrible. Kidding! That's because he's a clear hold now. He's centering the first line in Tampa (Steven Stamkos is playing RW) and he's coming off a hat trick on five shots in the 5-4 win over the Penguins Friday night. He only had one shot in Sunday's game but still, the role we look to stream him in looks secured now. Names (I'm sticking with that nickname, thanks commenters!) now has 23 points in 44 games and that's with being shuffled throughout the lineup and with little PP time (he has 4 PPP). There's no guarantee that he lasts in this role all season but now, he's must own in 12'ers. Here's what else I saw around the league this weekend:
ASSUME THE POSITION: What a Difference a Month Makes
December 7, 2015	| 2015-2016 Fantasy Hockey, Assume the Position	| 7 Comments
It's only been a month, but we have a lot of moving and shaking within our four goalie tiers. We have backups usurping starters, starters getting injured, and that mysterious 15-day flu. December in fantasy hockey is a great time to reassess your talent – especially that of the blue chip variety. Now is the time that teams begin to know where they stand in the big picture, and decisions are made (i.e.: coins are flipped) when it comes to the goaltending. You have a prime opportunity to take advantage and buy low on goalies that appear to have a future, and sell high on those who may be losing the confidence of the coaching staff, but still retain some name brand significance in trade talks.
The Klingberg
November 16, 2015	| 2015-2016 Fantasy Hockey, Fantasy Hockey Daily Notes	| 7 Comments
In my preseason defenseman rankings here, I included a detailed breakdown on why I liked John Klingberg so much for this season. Almost everything I said has come to fruition. Klingberg is definitely a top 10 defenseman next year and is going forward this year, the Stars power play is amazing, he's well on his way to double last year's 12 power play points (he has 10 already) and with 20 points in 18 games, he's well on his way to getting 60 points. He's also exactly at two shots per game so there's no limit to how good Klingberg can finish this season. On Saturday night, Klingberg was involved in all 3 Stars goals, assisting on both goals in regulation before scoring the winner in overtime. He's the #1 defenseman so far this season based on ESPN's player rater, which isn't perfect by any means, but it illustrates just how good he's been. I'd say the number 10 overall player and 5th best skater is even better than what I thought his best case scenario was. I hope you drafted him on some teams because you won't be able to acquire him now. Here's what I saw in the games this weekend:
October 30, 2015	| 2015-2016 Fantasy Hockey, Fantasy Hockey Daily Notes	| 20 Comments
For the past week plus, every time that the Blues played I bring up a solid performance from Colton Parayko. His role was increased with the injury to Kevin Shattenkirk and he's run with it ever since. Yesterday, he scored another goal getting an absurd 10 shots on goal with 2 blocked shots. Shattenkirk is going to be back soon but Parayko has solidified himself as a top 4 option on the blueline with power play skills. Again, go grab him where you can. Here's what else happened the last two nights:
Drowning Ducks?
Last season, the Ducks finished the regular season as the top seed in the Western Conference. This year, every team has at least 2 wins so far in the West except the Ducks, who are 1-5-2 through the first 8 games after a 1-0 OT loss to Chicago on Monday. Through 6 games last year, Corey Perry scored 8 goals. This year, through 8 games, the Ducks have 6 total goals (Perry has none), including being shut out a whopping 5 times. Am I concerned? To be honest, not that much for the Ducks or Perry. The Ducks have been consistently outshooting teams, including a great Chicago team by a Corsi (all total shots) 60-47. Perry also had 8 shots on goal on Monday and was +11 in Corsi, meaning the Ducks had 11 more shot attempts than they gave up when he was on the ice. The Ducks are shooting close to 3% on the season as a team which is completely unsustainable. Bottom line, expect the Ducks to break out of their slump soon and in a big way. With the 3 game slate on Monday, I'm also going to cite Corsi statistics for individual players on Monday to give a better indication on how their team did when they were on the ice. As a disclaimer, Corsi is only for 5-5 on play; it doesn't include special teams time because it would skew the stat too much. Corsi is a great indicator for future success; the more shot attempts a player has when he is on the ice compared to his opponent, the more likely he is to score goals. Let's take a look:
Delightful Desert Dogs?
The Arizona Coyotes put forward a great display of tanking at the end of last season pushing the Sabres for the worst record in the league. Unfortunately for them, they came up short and were jumped in the lottery. They were expected to be horrible again and the first two games do not really change their expectations. That said, you had to come away impressed by the Desert Dogs this weekend crushing the Kings 4-1 in LA on Friday and beating Pittsburgh 2-1 on Saturday. The quick start can largely be attributed to Mike Smith stopping 40 of 41 shots Friday and 27 of 28 on Saturday. He's an incredibly streaky goalie so it's not a terrible idea to pick him up and stream him while it lasts. He could also get shelled in their next game (Wednesday at Anaheim) so you have to decide for yourself if it's worth the gamble (I'd lean yes). Let's take a look at what else happened over the weekend:


Carl went home as a little pup and has enjoyed a good life at home. His dad enjoyed lots of outings with Carl including trips to the dog park. Carl is great with other dogs. His dad did not have kids but Carl is always happy to meet people large or small. Carl's dad experienced a financial crisis and is having to move into his parents home. One of his parents is allergic to Carl. Carl needs a new home and his owner knows that BRLA will find him the right fit. He is housebroken and crate trained. He is used to being left alone and is non-destructive during those times. His dad hates to see Carl go, says he is a pleasure to have and that Carl deservies the best home where he can live a fully engaged life.