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|Rick Shapiro Unfiltered Paradisiac Publishing
|The SpitTake
|Nick A. Zaino III
|April 4, 2012
|Rick Shapiro: A New Renaissance Cool
|Bisous Magazine
|William Conklin
|Summer 2012
|A Breath of Fresh Air
|Blindfold Magazine
|Michael Juliani
|Volume 7
All Articles regarding LOUIS CK'S TOMORROW NIGHT RELEASE
- Underground comic Rick Shapiro could be heading for more than 15 minutes of fame–courtesy of an HBO sitcom debuting in June and a book that acclaimed author Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is planning to write. Publishers began bidding last week on Ms. LeBlanc's proposal for Give It Up, which would focus on… Crain's New York Business
- Sounds like equal parts Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and Lou Reed. Shapiro is currently New York City's most lurid funnyman – A real star. NYPress
- "…Poised for the big leagues…searingly honest, the most transgressive comedian in America today….He's the toast of New York's Lower East Side underground scene" – Penthouse Magazine Larry "Ratso" Sloman
- "Downtown New York provocateur Rick Shapiro debuts with an CD of hard-edged, uncompromising stand-up comedy. As far from the mainstream as it is, "Unconditional Love" still manages to speak universal truths and expose many of our follies." – Billboard
- "…an explosive comedic talent, a sort of punk-rock, white Richard Pryor with a literary bent, part Iggy Pop, part Philip Roth."- New York Observer, Ryan Blitstein
- "Rick Shapiro is a top comedian." – Howard Stern
- "Rick Shapiro is bound for glory. He delivers an onslaught of ideas at breakneck pace that will leave your synapses spinning" – The Toronto Star
- "A surly quick-witted monologist – Aggressive, Manic, Brilliant!" – Icon Magazine
- "A frenzied, fanatically hilarious stage rant that borders on miraculous"- Now Magazine
- "The funniest, scariest, most verbally gifted human I have ever seen." – The Daily Glyph
- "NY's greatest underground comic."- Bowery Poetry Club
- "Best Manhattan Comic, Shapiro's approach to comedy sounds like equal parts Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and Lou Reed. Shapiro is currently New York City's most lurid funnyman – A real star" – NY Press
- "Poised for the big leagues…searingly honest, the most transgressive comedian in America today. He's hilarious" – Penthouse Magazine
- "Downtown New York provocateur Rick Shapiro debuts with an album of hard-edged, uncompromising stand-up comedy. "Unconditional Love" speaks universal truths and exposes many of our follies." – Billboard
- "Rick Shapiro is bound for glory. He delivers an onslaught of ideas at breakneck pace that will leave your synapses spinning" – The Toronto Star
- "His pointed observations on pop culture are pure brilliance" – Time Out New York
- "Dubbed the "James Joyce of Stand-up" because of his brilliant stream-of-consciousness comedy, Rick Shapiro is a walking, talking op-ed page, spewing forth wit, grit, and the real shit. If you like comics who take risks, you're gonna love this guy"– Paper Magazine
- "The CD, tightly produced by downtown performance scene guru Lach, assaults like a twisted-humor tornado." – Citysearch.com
- "The funniest man in America" – Cups Magazine
- "Rick Shapiro's brilliantly funny original style had them in like sardines. Who cares when you are laughing that much? You MUST check him out in the upcoming Chris Rock movie, find him in the East ViIlage and by his hilarious premier CD!"- The Comic Bible
I Think I Was The Only One to See The Ad…
…it was in such an odd place. Page 25 of The New York Daily News,
a tab I usually don't read on Saturday. But there it was, "Just Back From Edinburgh" underground comedy legend Rick Shapiro dong a one hour show at a place on W.24th St. called The Cutting Room. "Just back from Edinburgh"? Apparently the angriest comic in the world had been a hit at the famous "Fringe Festival" there. Anyway I rounded up a couple of friends and we had the most amazing time. I mean when people hear "angry comic' they usually think of the white-bread frat boy rants of Lewis Black on The Daily Show. Please. Rick Shapiro is a vicious, venemous, obscene, not politically incorrect but politically indefensible satanic god of anger. who makes Lewis Black look like Little Lord Fauntleroy. He makes The Aristocrats seem dainty. The slogan on his card: "more than wht you think you can handle".
Shapiro has been a kind of underground legend for a decade; I first saw him back in 2002 I think on the Loser East Side and I thought, oh thank god there's someone who hasn't caved to the Seinfeld-vanilla humor wave. The guy was out there, and so over the top in his venomous hatred of himself and everyone else in the universe that it was awesome. It helps that he seems to have spent some time as a male prostitute to pay for his heroin habit. But you get to see another side of the world from that perspective. Hearing him riff on his disgust is, you know, educational.
Well he's stayed true to his hateful truthfulness which is why he hasn't made it to national visibility with the dream—and the declaration of surrender—of just about all stand-up comics: the sit com. Just no way Rick Shairo's EXTREME obscenity, offensiveness, is going to make a tv series, although somebody should do a live unedited version of his show. Which left us all exhausted from laughter, horrified by the content, wrung out by the rage.
A few years ago the writer, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc was a guest at an NYU journalism school seminar I was teaching, and talked about how for years she wanted to do a book about this guy, Rick Shapiro. She wasn't sure what the source of her fascination was. I suggested to her that comics like Shapiro and his circle, in pushing the edge of the envelope are exploring the nature of human nature. They're analagous to the philosphers asking basic questions about human beings in the Athenian agora two and a half milennia ago. I hope she writes the book whatever take she has on it.
Google Rick Shapiro (he's on Myspace!) and find out when he's next coming to a venue near you. Warning: he's not only Not Safe For Work, he's not safe for Life, I think. He's not for everyone. I'm not endorsinghis worldview or how he expresses it. But you've got to admire the purity of his viciousness.
One look at Rick Shapiro and you can tell that he isn't lying when he talks about being an ex-rent boy and drug addict. His lived-in face exudes machismo, and his angry American comic schtick isn't a persona – Shapiro means business. His set is mixture of political insight, observations on his fellow Americans and utter filth under the guise of relationship advice. What sets Shapiro apart from his fellow angry comedians is his vulnerability; behind all the huffing and puffing is a poetic figure. Spend an evening in his company and you will experience the full gamut of emotions – from sadness to happiness to disgust – with massive belly laughs thrown in. Each show feels brand new and unique.
|Rick Shapiro's Edinburgh Day Out
Rick Shapiro eschews much of the traditional stand-up territory: there are no punch lines, no orthodox observational gags. References to his past as a heroin user and male prostitute are just as infrequent. While no doubt informing his comedy, it is never the focus, or the context. The main thread of his material is a shabby sexuality and a ubiquitous baying contempt for 21st century bourgeois society. As such, some of the tension in the room tonight is no doubt due to a cultural, even generational, gap.
The set itself is furious and varied. It pitches and sways between stream-of-consciousness delivery and Shapiro's eclectic cast of characters and costumes. Accompanied by an overhead projection of anarchic slogans and contrapuntal music, Avoidance Man ducks yet another crime-busting opportunity and, as he drapes a scarlet pashmina over one shoulder, declares: "Look at me; I'm…err…a girl." Anarchic stuff.
Baffling and uncompromising, Rick Shapiro's spitfire routine is probably aimed at the wrong crowd tonight. A barely half-full room struggles to generate any meaningful chemistry with the comic as he stalks the front row, deep-throating his microphone to the sound of machine-gun fire and coaxing intimate personal details from female members of the GRV's sparse crowd.
The man is a joy to watch, though. Indeed, as the show climaxes with a double-fisting montage set to a power-ballad soundtrack, it becomes clear that this is probably the only show at this year's fringe that will get worse as it becomes more polished.
|THE LIST, Issue 609: http://www.list.co.uk/article/11112-rick-shapiro/#comments
|Emma Lennox
Rick Shapiro is introduced as a man 'fighting himself', but for tonight's performance it's the theatre tech who is taking most of the comedian's acerbic blows. Trying to sync up highly designed video graphics with Shapiro's meandering mind is an impossible task and throughout the performance a bewildered audience is distracted by a bikini clad woman with a machine gun and a penguin. Whilst unexpected and bizarre, the relevance to his talk of fisting, blowjobs and the occasional political statement is never explained.
Shapiro isn't afraid to lay into his own shambolic approach when something takes a lead balloon dive, and to his credit, revealing the mechanics of the show works on an absurdist level. The comic's brutal honesty coupled with his wiry-framed physicality keeps the audience frightened but attentive. Walking into a Rick Shapiro show is like stepping into the New Jersey stand-up's stream-of-consciousness: it's not a pretty place but the manic energy will sweep you along.
Rick Shapiro: Wild Card, The GRV, Edinburgh Festival
As it was last year, Rick Shapiro's gig is a breath of fresh air, some randomness to balance the slickness of many other Fringe shows. The American comic is actually much more together than he has been in the past, though he maintains that rough-around-the-edges shtick.
He doesn't impress everyone: some women have previously expressed misgivings at his perceived misogyny. Tonight, the salaciousness is there in full measure. Shapiro loves women – he's just got a funny way (in both senses of the phrase) of showing it. His ideal woman could spout Nietzsche while wearing fishnet stockings. He doesn't like the word "whore"; he thinks prostitutes are goddesses for what they do, and describes the vagina as "full of rainbows and hope", comparing it to America's heartland as they are both places where "dreams are built and destroyed".
Shapiro constantly returns to this theme, his relationship with women; it leaves him with no real time to honour his prior assurance that the show "gets political". It doesn't matter: the few departures from the theme are merely punctuation marks, some of which include great, self-deprecating and highly illustrative lines such as: "Every night that punchline changes. I like the original but I can't remember it."
|Dominic Maxwell at The Green Room
Rick Shapiro has divided the room. This haggard New York comic must do that a lot. He rants, obscenely, not always coherently. He's frustratingly awkward and inspiringly direct. "It's another language I'm speaking," he rasps as some unhappy punters drift out from this attic sauna, "and it's called 'I don't care'."
Meanwhile, a pair of dazzled Americans clap Shapiro's every utterance as he pits his irate id against the mimsiness of modern life. "I hate talking and I can't shut up," he shouts, baseball cap on head, shirt hanging open, like some parody of a shabby comic genius. Shapiro goes from line to line with zero regard for dignity.
And he's kind of magnificent. He talks directly about sex and disparagingly about the niceties a straight man has to go through to get it. He screams at endemic softness — "I like to go into bookshops and shout: Self Help! Self Help!" — and moans at the way life asks you to dress yourself up in a bow. "Why can't I just be a guy?" he pleads.
He blurs the line between cutting the crap and crying for help. He is too self-knowing for this to descend into machismo. Shapiro knows the seedy underbelly of New York life from his years as a heroin addict and occasional male prostitute. Scary as he first appears, part of our discomfort is at the way he projects such vulnerability alongside such disdain.
As with Jerry Sadowitz, there is no distance between Shapiro and his material. Patience is required, though. He's strong on attitude, wilfully weak on focus. If you're a woman, get ready for some questions about your sex life. Yet, patchy and perverse though he is, his gnarly delivery is enthused with its own desperation. I didn't laugh a whole lot, yet I want to go back and see him again, soon.
Marking him out of five feels wrong — like marking my own blackened, twitching heart out of five. If he got his act together he would be the most complete comic on the Fringe. But he's been doing this stuff for years. I'm not sure that getting his act together will ever be part of Rick Shapiro's act.
|RICK SHAPIRO: An impressive shock-jock comic
|Mickey Noonan
Inventive: Rick Shapiro has the power to shock
New York comedian Rick Shapiro takes a while to warm up. But, my God, once he's in his stream-of consciousness stride, it's impressive.
Shapiro produces some of the most inventive filth you've ever heard. He makes the spiky likes of Doug Stanhope look like an Andrex puppy. Being a shock-jock comic is arguably trickier in Britain than in America. There, the word c*** is enough to elicit O-shaped mouths, whereas here, the response is relatively hard to provoke. It's a credit to Shapiro, then, that he has the power to shock us and be hilarious with it.
Yet it's his political invective that's his best material. Republicans and Democrats could easily be Tories and Labourites and he's savvy about how it works here. The man has a brain and he uses crudeness to underline points well worth making. A 50-minute slot clips his wings but this is the only chance you've got to see him in Britain. And you really should.
|Shambolic yet inspirational stand-up
|The List (Issue 583)
|Siân Bevan
Rick Shapiro is a five star comedian in a two star show. If you want structure, well thought-out lines, or even the assurance of sanity then look elsewhere. If, however, you're prepared to sit through ten minutes of shambolic mutterings as our hero decides what to be angry about next, then your patience will be rewarded. There are moments when Shapiro spews out a description of such brilliance, with the most beautifully evocative language that even a skit about fisting becomes an inspiring piece of comedy.
This is a man who'll do exactly what he wants; he'll tell you heartbreaking stories about his tumultuous life, then veer into a rant about girlfriends, Harry Potter or anything that crashes into his mind. If you're easily offended then, for the love of God, stay away. But if you like your comedy unreliable, but with moments that will make you grateful for having ears, then Rick Shapiro will take you by the scruff of the neck and entertain the socks off you. (Siân Bevan)
|He's got a lust for life
Rick Shapiro isn't a comic; he's a performance artist. It's a wanky thing to say and Shapiro's delivery is distinctly tongue-in-cheek, his face breaking into an enormous grin, his raspy New York drawl taking on a certain campness. It's true, though. The name might not ring bells in the UK, but in the States, Shapiro's hard-hitting, contentious, uproarious diatribes leave fellow stand-ups in awe, while his stint on HBO's adult sitcom Lucky Louie has finally made him a recognisable mainstream face, 20 years after he started out.
Talking to the man hailed as the godfather of America's underground comedy scene, whose Fringe dates are his first UK shows, leaves you in no doubt that what he's doing is an art form. Whether Shapiro is performing or simply being himself is a different matter. 'I don't know if it's me onstage or not,' he muses. 'I've got different facets and I want to use them all, so it is me. Now it's really become me. Although people say I've got a tender side, I don't really show it. So in the middle of yelling about stuff like the Harry Potter shit and all that shit, I throw in that I pet cats. You can't just write that; you actually have to pet the cats.
'I'm not into this whole manners thing when people are onstage,' continues the 48-year-old. 'Everyone tells stories like there's a way to tell a story. I don't know what a storyteller is. I don't understand the way they talk. Why are they speaking like we're having dinner somewhere with a linen tablecloth? I don't come from manners. I come from a slappy-ass family; they slap each other around. My family needs psychiatry but it's only me and my twin brother who go.'
And then he pauses for breath. Punctuation isn't Shapiro's bag when he's off on one; this stream-of-consciousness delivery has resulted in him being tagged the James Joyce of comedy. It's indicative of the way his brain works: out loud. There are no sacred cows he won't make into fillet steak, and he's equally open about his own life.
'I used to be a prostitute,' he says out of nowhere. 'I never got screwed or screwed them, but I would let them blow me because I'm really bad at giving blow jobs – because I'm straight. I had a drug problem and a money problem. I was going out with rich girls. I just moved to New York [from New Jersey] and, man, all those rich girls, I thought I better keep up. I better keep hustling.'
Though there's still an element of the hustler in Shapiro, the drink and drugs are a thing of the past and these days the only pimping himself out he does is onstage. Walk into a room with Shapiro, however, and he still looks wasted when, in reality, he's been clean for 20 years, and is working hard to be well.
'I'm on more drugs than when I was on drugs,' he deadpans. 'But they're doing good. I'm up and I'm doing shit. I was a big coke addict and even though I'm not on it now, I need to feel alive in my life; it's my roller coaster ride. You go to AA and they're like: "I'm OK today, I'm OK." OK? I want to give myself a ride in my life and so if you can jump on it, if you can get on my roller coaster, we can have a blast.'
That's where comedy comes in. It was a saviour for Shapiro. 'I gave up drugs and discovered I was a comic,' he explains. 'I would imitate everybody outside of AA and my sponsor told me I was a comedian. And comedy felt warm. People liking me felt warm.'
Shapiro carried on chasing the warmth, which led to some very long gigs. A 50-minute show is nothing for him; he's used to performing three-and-a-half hour slots at New York's Sidewalk Café, something he did every week for nine years. The thing is he needs a three-hour set. Shapiro's a formidable character with stuff to say. Passionately. Sit on the front row and you're likely to be covered in Shapiro spit or wind up eye to eye with the fella's manhood. He's uncompromising and might well ask if you've been 'incested'. Don't be too scared, though; he pets cats, too.
|A rant to remember
|The Independent
|Julian Hall
The Green Room must feel like a home from home to many of the American comics who are appearing there, resembling as it does some kind of underground New York art gallery. Coincidentally, it was at a benefit gig in CBGBs Gallery on the Bowery where I last saw Rick Shapiro in 2004. His ranty antics baffled the room so much so that Robert Newman, who was also on the bill, asked for a break so he could bring the energy back into the room before he went on.
Tonight Shapiro is as baffled as his audience was then, admitting "I'm not even here yet", but the erratic nature that made fellow American Doug Stanhope veer from genius to ludicrous last year is all part of the Shapiro shtick. Raddled and wiry, wearing a vest, a cap (initially) and a the close-shaven outline of a walrus-like moustache Shapiro looks like a cross between Easy Rider and Smokey and The Bandit.
"Leafy green veg, leafy green veg, mmm, leafy green veg, God I miss syphilis," begins Shapiro seemingly of nowhere, a stream of consciousness overflow that later leads into routines about food fads ("Upscale deli? It's just a deli. Upscale deli sounds like you are inviting the pig to be in your sandwich") and sex ("ever cheat on your girlfriend and it felt bad after about the 17th time?").
His other preoccupation is Republicans. "Sometimes you have to have 14 Vietnams in a row," he imagines one telling him to justify the Iraq war. Not that he holds out much hope that a change in administration will help, accusing both of the Democratic front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama of being "both white men".
Some audience members would probably have been surprised to learn that this grizzled, uncompromising character has already been reigned in by television, appearing in the Chris Rock collaborator Louis CK's HBO sitcom Lucky Louie, though it was cancelled after one season.
All the more reason, perhaps, for the extra bile he has for the entertainment industry, especially film, as he launches into a trailer announcer tirade: "Mark Wahlberg tries to act… Bruce Willis as Bruce Willis is Bruce Willis, Robin Williams will always be a self-parody." Unsurprisingly Harry Potter fans are not left unscathed either.
Despite his take-no-prisoners attitude, being locked in a small room with Shaprio is not quite as terrifying as one might imagine. He is reasonably lascivious towards female members of the audience but, like Jerry Sadowitz, gives the self-defence that he is really not that bad. After all, he pets cats. "Look, this is a petting movement," he says while moving his cupped hand from side to side, "that's real, you can't fake that."
Shapiro's first gig at Glasgow's Stand comedy club last week went down a storm, with one person left bent double, crying with laughter. There were no casualties tonight but Shapiro left an impression all the same.
|RICK SHAPIRO is unwell.
|Nick Garrard
There are no safe routines about airline food here: old Rick is made of darker meat
Somewhere between the demented spiel of a backstreet bum and the shirtless antics of a Funhouse-era Iggy Pop, Rick Sharpiro's lunatic ramblings dwell at the point in which comedy and horror collide. As he paces the tiny attic where he currently resides, locked away like the mutant twin of some cleaner, nicer stand-up, the audience visibly recoils. Throughout this evening's set, Shapiro will have only the most passing relationship with the stage. He prowls the aisle, hangs from the rafters ("I feel like Sarah Silverman's clitoris"), and flaps about like a man possessed, all the while scarcely pausing for breath. There are no safe routines about airline food here: old Rick is made of darker meat.
How to describe the experience without descending into sub-NME hyperbole? The man is without peer. He enters the stage in a flurry of papers and slurred quips. As his hour's end approaches, the audience have been dragged through a personal hell of psych-wards and treatments, bad drugs and worse, sex and treated to a musical finale as oddly moving as it is censor-batingly hilarious. Impossibly, we have been driven to tears of sinful laughter throughout, a boiling point of release that never lets up. Venues as small as these can be acutely claustrophobic, especially when the pace drops; nothing feels more awful than a shared silence. Yet, on those few moments when Shapiro pauses to refuel his reserves of dirty thoughts, we pause.
|Raw, honest, uncompromising…
|Steve Bennett
Raw, honest, uncompromising – those are the qualities the very best exponents of stand-up tend to display.
But even the most edgy of cult heroes usually bring at least some technique to their art; adapting the abrasive , antisocial elements of their personality into a form fit for public consumption, working on how best to phrase their angry thoughts into jokes.
Rick Shapiro has no such filter.
What you get is the real him, with messy, sprawling ideas, ill-directed fury and no editor on he says. He is spitting out his internal monologue, thinking on his feet but not necessarily thinking it through. He's probably the closest thing we have to Lenny Bruce – for good and for bad. There's an absolute integrity and candour to the set, but it's also all over the shop: sometimes pointless and waffly, sometimes revelatory.
It could be a car crash, and the thrill that he will finally topple adds to the uncomfortable excitement. We're slightly scared of this ranting lunatic with attention deficit disorder, stripped down to the waist and pacing through the room – some laughs are nervous, but plenty are genuine, too, as there's a savage, dark wit at the heart of his tirades.
His back story is that he was once a heroin junkie who turned to male prostitution to feed his habit and pay the $9-a-night cost of staying in hostel. In other hands, this could make for an archetypal redemption show, tightly directed, full of drama and pathos. In his, it's just another reason to be angry, a payoff to many a routine, barked out as a matter of fact to explain his rough edges, rather than seeking any sympathy.
If Iggy Pop did stand-up, he would be Rick Shapiro. He's surely the world's most feral comedian, and his electric, untamed energy should appeal to any hardcore stand-up fan seeking an extreme hit. Just don't expect a tight one-liner.
|A Tale of Two Comics
|the spectator (ONLINE)
|Ron Rosenbaum
Meet the anti-Seinfeld, Jerry's brilliant, twisted, evil twin.
You remember the two look-alike protagonists in A Tale of Two Cities, right? There's Sydney Carton, the misanthropic, dissipated, cynical drunk and nihilist who eventually transmutes his world-hating self-destructiveness into a final fatal act of nobility by substituting himself on the guillotine for his healthy hail-fellow look-alike with those unforgettable words, "It's a far, far better thing that I do. …"
But who was that other guy, the superbland fellow whose place Sydney Carton takes on the chopping block? Quick, remember his name?
It took me six hours or so to remember. I asked several friends, and they also came up blank. In part it's because, shamefully, soi-disant literary sophisticates rarely read the quite amazing Tale of Two Cities anymore, probably having had it ruined for them by high-school teachers, or, having seen it first through immature high-school eyes, look down on it, thereby leaving a terrible gap in their literary experience.
In any case, his name, the name of the fellow forgotten in favor of Sydney Carton, is Charles Darnay. Described by Dickens as someone who prospered due to "great perseverance and untiring industry." What a bore!
No wonder we prefer the literary company—and remember the name—of doomed Sydney Carton, the depressive, despondent, romantic road-to-ruin guy who asks the boring Darnay what he thinks of "this terrestrial scheme" and then explains that "the greatest desire I have is to forget that I belong to it." The whole "terrestrial scheme"!
I was thinking about the two Dickens characters as I was preparing to see Jerry Seinfeld's massively hyped new animated film, Bee Movie, and comparing my loathing for everything Seinfeldian—Seinfeld the show, Seinfeld the world's worst stand-up comic, Seinfeldian "observational humor" in general, the Seinfeldian blanding-out of American comedy and culture, even the ridiculous Seinfeld Porsche collection—with the experience of seeing a far, far better comedian a few weeks ago.
A far, far lesser-known comic, the corruscatingly obscene, vicious, bitter, self-loathing, world-hating Rick Shapiro. While Seinfeld spends his billions buying up Porsches and producing insipid children's movies that are childish rather than childlike (more on Bee Movie anon), Rick Shapiro was killing (as they say) in a half-filled comedy club called the Cutting Room in Manhattan before heading off to a prestigious series of gigs in, yes, Alaska. Frozen out of the big-money, big-time, big-name recognition game.
Shapiro's an underground legend among comedy aficionados, a man who's never—except as a minor character in a failed HBO sitcom (Lucky Louie)—made it onto national TV. And probably never will. He's just far, far too obscene and extreme.
Well, you say, there's a lot of obscene stuff on HBO and the like these days. True, and I'm someone who isn't easily shocked by that kind of thing, but when I first saw Shapiro back in 2001 or 2002 in a club on the Lower East Side, he had me reeling with shock, awe, and convulsive laughter.
I thought, Oh my God, this guy has reinvented obscenity. He'd taken it to new heights (or depths), broken through to a new dimension of filthiness, where it was suddenly, searingly, snarlingly fresh again. I can't hope to reproduce it verbatim. So, I suggest you go now to his MySpace page and sample some of the clips.
Are you back? Are you OK? Do you see what I mean? Part of what gives Shapiro his obscene authenticity is that it's not just coming out of his head, it's coming out of his hide. It's coming out of his uniquely obscene background, the years he put in as a junkie who traded sex for heroin on the streets of the pre-yuppified Manhattan's hooker 'hoods.
(Jerry Seinfeld grew up on the mean streets of suburban Massapequa, Long Island, and—I say this as a Long Islander myself—it shows. Even his fake Upper West Side was second-rate suburbia. Shapiro started out in suburbia, too, but he left the hive, you might say, in a way Seinfeld never did. And wherever you start from, if you end up "sucking cocks for smack," as Shapiro likes to put it, you really can't go home again.)
Although Shapiro has occasionally seemed on the verge of breaking out of the comedy club ghetto, something always went wrong in a Sydney Cartonish way. He's become a cult figure on YouTube, but it's unlikely he'll get the grail of most comics, the sitcom—and if he did, he wouldn't be Rick Shapiro anymore. Though being Rick Shapiro seems like a tough gig. The guy is angry at everything. Really, really angry. Contemptuous, disgusted, with all of us, in a Swiftian scatological way. (Maybe it's the ex-junkie moralist in him.)
So, maybe I should issue a disclaimer about those MySpace clips: I'm not endorsing or identifying with the politically, sexually, morally incorrect, and offensive sentiments you might find there. I'm angry, at times, yeah. But not that angry.
Shapiro's riffs are not only NSFW, they're NSFL—Not Safe For Life. They're unhealthy and often deeply disturbing. They're not about Seinfeld's quotidian "nothing," they're about a profound, nihilistic Nothingness. Hilarious, yes, exhilarating to hear someone say such uncompromisingly ugly truths, but it's a bitter brew: He makes the legendary Lenny Bruce sound as bland as Seinfeld the billionaire bore.
If Shapiro is the Sydney Carton to Seinfeld's Charles Darnay, does that mean he'll also prove more memorable? Seinfeld may never be forgotten, alas, although he certainly is forgettable. But I'd argue that Rick Shapiro will be remembered, if he stays alive at least a little longer, as more important. The Lenny Bruce of our time.
I'm not the only one who thinks this way. A couple of years after I first saw Shapiro, I invited talented writer Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of the justly celebrated Random Family (about the culture of poverty in the Bronx), to speak to a writing class I was teaching at NYU. She's legendary for her obsessive pursuit of her subjects. And to my astonishment, she told the class she had spent about three years following none other than Rick Shapiro around, thinking there had to be some kind of book to write about him and his world.
I was excited about the pairing of author and subject, but some of my students were puzzled, and—at the time—I think Adrian herself was a little puzzled by her fascination, and so I threw my two cents in: In some deeply disturbed but provocative way, you could compare Shapiro and his circle of extreme comics to the circle of philosophers—Socrates and his crew—who talked trash about the meaning of life on the Athenian agora more than two millennia ago.
Because both groups were exploring a kind of terra incognita, the nature of human nature, just how deep (or, in Shapiro's case, how dirty) one could get in analyzing (or, in Shapiro's case, anal-yzing) the human mind. Asking fundamental questions (or, in Shapiro's case, fundament questions) about the relationship between mind and body, self and soul.
I recently contacted Adrian, and she told me that after five years of following Shapiro around, she was completing a book about him for Random House. No Samuel Johnson could have a better Boswell.
I asked her why this snarling, foul-mouthed, misogynist, misanthropic, venomously sleazy, Ratso Rizzo-type engaged her interest. Here's what she wrote back:
His work implicates you. I doubt you can leave his show unaffected. His rendering of his dynamic and intricate experience of the world will make you laugh, but it requires you, blessedly, to think deeply and feel. As to my idea of a book about standup comedy—contemporary American masculinity—he's grappling dearly with all it means and can mean.
I think the key thing here is "he implicates you." Because for some—not me, of course—he touches a nerve by suggesting there's some of him in you. That horrifying recognition is why you laugh and why it's scary. Adrian's words suggest that it's possible to see Rick Shapiro's stage persona as a character he's playing, knowingly trying to implicate us by acting out our rage against the Seinfeldian hive. That, for instance, he's not misogynist, but about misogyny. He raises some of the questions that Sarah Silverman and Sacha Baron Cohen do in their work, but without any of the knowing winks that in one way or another let them off the hook. He plays on that knife edge of uncertainty: Is this him, can any human go so low, so entertainingly, or is he putting some of it on?
Anyway, when the publicity-industrial complex began gearing up to force-feed us Jerry Seinfeld's sickeningly sweet Bee Movie, I was thinking that Shapiro is the antidote—the quintessential anti-Seinfeld.
I have some history with Seinfeld. I used to ridicule him and his insipid show repeatedly in print, so much so that when NBC's Today Show did a special on the final episode, they had me on as the lone Voice of Dissent. And I heard from people who interviewed Seinfeld co-creator Larry David that he'd get apoplectic denouncing me. (Too bad, since I think David, freed from the simpering Seinfeld in Curb Your Enthusiasm, has become genuinely interesting.)
When the hype began for Bee Movie, I wondered if Seinfeld's trivializing inanity could do any more damage to the American psyche than it'd already done. And it occurred to me that rather than merely denounce Seinfeld, I should suggest an alternative, his evil twin, the Sydney Carton to his Charles Darnay, Rick Shapiro. That's me, always thinking positive.
When I say damage to the American psyche, am I exaggerating? Well, I don't know if you read Steve Martin's lovely recent memoir in The New Yorker. It was about how he became a comic before the comedy club revolution and how he participated in the birth of a new, original kind of American comedy that he and few others were exploring in the '60s and '70s. It was at once incredibly funny and incredibly silly, but also genuinely and provocatively philosophical.
But suddenly almost all that died, and I blame Seinfeld and the so-called "sweater comics" he inspired for killing it off with their smirking frat-boy blandness. Their idiot "observational humor" made a religion out of self-congratulation. Most of the Seinfeld show's humor was about making fun of anyone who was in any way "different"—immigrants, people with any kind of accent, any kind of idiosyncrasy, any kind of deviation from the Charles Darnay mold.
You could argue that a nation's character is defined at least in part by its sense of humor, and Jerry gave us the sense of humor of self-satisfaction. Anything that didn't fit the suburban Massapequa mindset was something to be held up for piddling laughs. He was so deeply in love, so deeply satisfied by his own trivial quirks that those who didn't share them were alien subjects of ridicule.
The promotional booklet really says it all. I'm not going to waste my time or yours reviewing this saccharine little animated fable which is NSFD (not safe for diabetics). Instead I invite you to stare at a drawing of Jerry's bee "Barry B. Benson," and tell me that you don't eventually see
Sitting through the movie and watching Seinfeld as that witless Seinfeldian bee is almost too painful an experience to remember. It's going to take me years to get over the PTSD (post-traumatic Seinfeld disorder). But I would like to briefly review the promotional booklet.
Now, I've been a movie columnist in the past, and so I've seen all kinds of film promotional booklets. But this is pretty astonishing. Sixty-four slick pages devoted to the film and the filmmakers, roughly 40 devoted to kissing Jerry's ass from every angle possible. Making him out to be the great genius of all time. On just one page, co-workers ooh and ah: "… he's so adept …"; "he always knows …"; "… always pitch perfect"; "It was incredible …"; "I've never seen people so excited to get into a room [with him]." The word amazing appears on just about every page.
But there was one rather revealing passage in the promo booklet that brings us back to Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay
it's when Seinfeld's Bee Moviecrew gets really deep and talks about the "philosophy" of the film in a section called "Thinking Bee." The film celebrates not bees who think, but a bee who learns the danger of thinking for himself, abandons his individuality, and becomes part of the hive mind, a cog in the honey-making machine.
Seriously, that childishly totalitarian sentiment is the "redemptive message" of the movie. Not bee yourself, but bee like everyone else. Very Massapequa. But that's our Jerry.
(By the way, the booklet goes into rhapsodies about how carefully they calibrated the color of the honey. But I have a feeling that if Rick Shapiro ever saw the honey in this movie, I'm sure he'd say that you can't watch it without thinking they've made it the exact same color as urine. And once you get into that mode the whole movie become incredibly funny, if not on its own shallow terms.)
In any case, here's Jerry getting all deep and serious in his shallow way about "Thinking Bee":
One of the things that you have to know about in the movie is that we talk about the fact that all bees, once they sting, that's it for them. You sting, your life is over. So it's a big step. You really have to control your temper. You don't just sting somebody because you get upset. You have to control yourself. Makes you really think about anger management doesn't it?
Well, that's one thing it makes you think about. But notice that he's all about control, control, control.
That's the great thing about Rick Shapiro. He'll never be a billionaire, he'll always be Sydney Carton, whose fame is only posthumous. But he's not afraid to get out of control, to sting us, and himself, to death. He don't need no stinking anger management. Anger management needs him.
It's a far, far better thing he does, than Seinfeld's puny comic mind could ever imagine.
|Feature: Rick Shapiro – Of Xbox and Ass
A frail figure who is, by his own admission, fighting an addiction to prescription downers so powerful they have him walking into walls
Within minutes of the tape rolling, it becomes apparent that this will be no ordinary interview; Rick Shapiro does not do sound bites. Wonderfully, miraculously, he is blessed with a brain that travels at a constant tangent, switching path as often as some fairytale traveler lost in a wild wood. Talk of psychic vibrations making his legs ache and ruminations on Hamlet ("Why is that ok? Cos it's a story with a moral? Well, I'm a walking story and I don't have a moral") and the relative merits of patricide all make for a conversation never less than 80% sidetracked – but what a wonderful track to follow.
Judging by the hype he seems to be generating here, Shapiro is a comic on the rise. A 20 year veteran of the US stand-up scene, his onstage candor and liking for extended set-pieces (for years he played sets upwards of 3 hours) have seen him compared to everyone from Richard Pryor to James Joyce. Like Richard Pryor, Shapiro draws on painful experiences to fuel comedy of the most personal kind: a former addict, prostitute and victim of childhood abuse, his set is peppered with anecdotes that tread the line between hilarity and pitch black pathos with a mesmerizing deftness. As a matter of fact, he takes exception to a review I published of his show, describing him as being made of 'darker meat' than most of the comics on show:
"I'm not aware of being 'dark'. It's just what I know. Recently I met this girl who was acting really nice, and she would call me up saying, 'I just feel like I can talk to you'…I said 'what's your real problem?' She said 'nothing, I just feel comfortable around you and I know that you were a prostitute but I want you to know it's all over and it's ok'. I thought…something's wrong here. She calls me up once a week and then finally she goes 'I used to be a call-girl and I'm ashamed.' I said, why are you ashamed of it? And she goes…'well, because it's wrong'. I said why's it wrong? It's not something that's right or wrong, it's something that you didn't want to do. I could easily agree, it is wrong, but what does wrong have to do with it when that's where your life went? Sure, there is a choice, but a lot of people who grew up as victims of abuse don't grow up with choice."
Though by his own admission a loner at heart, he has nonetheless won friends in high places. Chris Rock has been a vocal fan and Doug Stanhope has been known to pull stunts just to get him stage time – allotting him slots booked in his own name. His most vocal admirers highlight the feckless sincerity with which he performs. As well as this honesty, Shapiro is also noted for the level of literacy he brings to his shows. On the evening I saw him perform, he name-checked Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With A Thousand Faces, alongside such counter-cultural icons as Abbie Hoffman and Anais Niin. I ask him if these are figures with which he identifies:
"Am I counter culture? If you're talking about Nicole Ritchie and Paris Hilton, yeah sure, I'm against that. Who wouldn't be? There's so much more going on that we could deal with right now. What I am about is saying: 'why sit at home playing X-box when you could be eating ass? Why read Harry Potter when it's so obviously a franchise, sold to you in big franchise bookstores?' A bunch of kids sitting around a table saying 'Harry, you're so weird' – why can people not see how lacking that is in imagination?"
Big words, especially in the city that birthed the boy wizard, yet they seem utterly without bravado. A frail figure who is, by his own admission, fighting an addiction to prescription downers so powerful they have him walking into walls, Shapiro is inherently likeable. Very much the little boy lost. In the brief time I spend in his company a number of new friends wander over, visibly thrilled to see him. One even declares him her 'festival baby'. Most exciting of all is the lack of separation in his persona on and off the stage. I had dreaded that his act – so winningly genuine – would prove to be just that. With so many comics trading on a stage presence that in no way reflects their real selves, I dearly hoped that Shapiro's mix of befuddlement and rage would prove to be a genuine reflection of his own self. Was his apparent candour, I asked him, a career move?
"I can understand the arguments about people saying it's a career move, but you know what? I'm sorry. Let it be a career move – have a career that's such a huge dream, career move isn't a bad word."
Does he worry, then, that this kind of outsider stance is going to alienate him from potential audiences?
"If people would just say it, the stigmas and judgments of conversation would be gone. …'Oh, she's weird'…I know a girl who was in 6 foster homes: growing up, they threw meat over the fence to feed her. She has a performance room in L.A. They all say 'she's crazy', but now her room got picked up because she took so many risks…risk is in now…now they're all her friends but, when they hear about her history they all say 'she's a freak' Why? Because she happened to be born to a mother who gave her away? That makes her what? And, the guy who holds down a telemarketing job, all 'canIhelpyoucanIhelpyoucanIhelpyou'…he's not the freak?…What's what?"
Notoriously, sarcasm seldom registers on paper. Nor do silly voices – and Shapiro has a whole squirming inventory on show. The tyranny of print means that the humor at the heart of his comments might be lost but if you squint it's there, nonetheless, just a little angry, just a little sad, burning with a sense of indignation at the core.
|Lenny Bruce's Mild-Mannered Heirs
|Alexander Gelfand
Let's start this week with a pop culture quiz. Lenny Bruce was:
(a) A very funny guy
(b) A fearless champion of First Amendment rights
(c) God
To many of his devotees, the answer is "all of the above." You have to wonder, though, just how many of those who attended the second annual "Homage to Lenny Bruce & Free Speech" event at Gotham Comedy Club during the fourth annual Oyhoo Festival last month even knew who Bruce was — or how he became a symbol of constitutional freedoms.
Bruce's early bits were outrageously funny but hardly political. "Give up, Dutch, and we'll meet any reasonable demands you men want," the warden in his prison riot routine says, "except the vibrators." Yet as he was arrested over and over again on obscenity and drug-related charges in California, Illinois and New York, his performances became looser, angrier and more autobiographical. A compulsive provocateur, Bruce delighted in infuriating the very people who kept dragging him into court, thereby ensuring that they would never stop trying to shut him up.
By the end of his brief life — "One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That's obscene," sportswriter Dick Schaap wrote in eulogy — Bruce had become a martyr to the cause of free speech. He had also set the stage for such younger comedians as Richard Pryor and George Carlin, who showed a similar propensity to mine their lives for material, a disinclination to censor themselves and a gift for disguising social criticism as entertainment.
"He was really a force for exposing hypocrisy," Carlin said in a recent radio interview. (When Bruce was busted at the Gate of Horn in Chicago, Carlin, who was later arrested in Milwaukee for performing his own "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," was picked up for refusing to show ID.)
By that token, there wasn't much genuine homage going on at Gotham Comedy Club on October 24. There was, to be sure, plenty of obscenity, but much of it was swearing-as-crutch rather than swearing-to-upend-social-mores. That, of course, has become much harder since Bruce's day; when Bruce would swear onstage, his curse words had the force of genuine shock and rebellion. Thanks to him, they no longer do. One can hardly fault the organizers of the Oyhoo festival for tossing some comedy into their weeklong celebration of Jewish music and culture. And Bruce is certainly worthy of tribute: Few performers better embodied the easy wit and critical function of the Jewish comedic tradition. Yet, most of the comedians on the Oyhoo bill seemed lamentably tame by Bruce's standards — the result, perhaps, of a lack of boundaries left to push. (Having long ago become a standard comedic trope, Judaism itself seems to have lost its edginess. Bruce's Jewishness was a central theme in his comedy, a way of establishing himself as an outsider; for most of the Jewish comics who performed at Gotham, it was an afterthought.)
As Rob Tannenbaum, one half of the comedic pop duo Good for the Jews, pointed out, Bruce "went to jail nine times so that Bill Maher could say [one word; rhymes with "clock shucker"] on basic cable." Unfortunately, what Tannenbaum did not say — but what he probably knew, given the chill in the room — was that the word in question would never be as funny again, now that he could use it in purely ironic fashion.
There also were plenty of forays into such touchy subjects as religion, sex and race, occasionally bundled together in nods to Bruce's Jewish heritage. ("I am sexually attracted to Hasidic men," emcee Laurie Kilmartin said. "They look like superheroes to me.") But there was little in the way of genuine social satire of the kind that Bruce and Mort Sahl, his predecessor at San Francisco's hungry i, honed to such a fine point. After three or four comics in a row made eerily similar jokes about homosexuality, racial stereotypes and the n-word, it was hard not to suspect that they were less interested in skewering social conventions than in scoring easy laughs.
The closest thing to a Lenny Bruce moment occurred when Rick Shapiro took the stage. A former drug addict and prostitute who was once tapped to re-enact Bruce's 1961 Carnegie Hall show off-Broadway, Shapiro is capable of torrential stream-of-consciousness outpourings that evoke Bruce's own late-period rants. In 15 astonishing minutes, Shapiro recalled his troubled past, spanked both Republicans and Democrats for their hypocrisy, and performed a brilliantly debauched impersonation of oral sex using nothing but a microphone and his fecund imagination.
Shapiro was by far the most charismatic, the most gifted and the most transgressive performer onstage that night, and the only one who generated uncontrollable laughter while requiring his audience to think. Compared with him, the rest seemed like schoolchildren. And it was tempting to dwell on the vexed relationship between comic genius and personal suffering that Bruce himself helped fix in the public imagination — especially when so many of the other comics on the bill seemed intent on ramming home the point. "I'd read from my trial," Eugene Mirman said before launching into a mild bit about a speeding ticket, "but I've never been arrested."
Alexander Gelfand is a writer living in New York City.


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The overarching mission of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science is to serve society through education and scholarship within and across each of our disciplines: mathematics, mathematics education, and computer science. Specifically, our primary mission is to guide our students in the acquisition and development of a suite of skills necessary for the pursuit of a professional career in or further academic study of mathematics, mathematics education, and computer science. An additional mission of the department is to provide service and liberal studies courses for the broader university community, fostering critical and independent thinking, creative problem solving, and lifelong learning habits in all students. The department is committed to furthering the professional development of mathematics teachers throughout their careers and to provide leadership in mathematics education at all levels. Finally, in support of our educational efforts, the department fosters an atmosphere of inquiry and innovation through original contributions to each of the department's academic disciplines and their associated professions.
Computer science is the study of what is possible through computation. It is a rapidly changing field with a variety of exciting job opportunities. Computer science majors get substantial amounts of programming and problem solving experience, as well as significant internship opportunities. Writing software also offers ample opportunity for creative expression. A computer science degree provides a deep and thorough understanding of modern computers, from their theoretical limitations to the next great leap in their practical application.
The study of mathematics develops the critical and analytical skills needed in medicine, law, business, and industry and supports majors such as physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, sociology, geography, and engineering, among others. It provides an understanding of the contributions of mathematics to philosophy, the arts, science and technology, and provides an exciting intellectual experience.
Programs in secondary and elementary mathematics education prepare students for K-12 teaching and provide professional development for in-service teachers.
Successful completion of a computer science, mathematics or mathematics education major prepares students for graduate work in mathematics, mathematics education or computer science and for professions in statistics, actuarial sciences, applied mathematics, computer science and teaching.
- Actuarial and Risk Management Club (Beta Eta Chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma
- Computer Science Club (Student Chapter of A.C.M.)
- Elementary Education Mathematics Club
- Mathematics Club
To ensure student success, the department does not allow students to enroll in the same course more than two times. If a student must take a course for the third time, he or she must first take the prerequisite course(s) and obtain a grade of "B-" or better in each.
All non-teaching majors and minors offered by the department require a 2.00 or higher overall grade point average in required courses and a grade of "C" or better in each required course.
All students must pass prerequisite courses with a grade of "C-" or higher unless otherwise indicated.
Secondary Education Mathematics
Students with a major or minor in secondary education mathematics must maintain a grade point average of 3.0 or greater with no grade below a "B-" in the professional education sequence, the major and/or minors and required cognates combined.
Mathematics courses with a middle digit of "5" will not count toward the requirements of a non-education major or minor. Students pursuing minors in the department are urged to consult with their advisers in determining an appropriate selection of courses.
- Computer Science Major
- Embedded Systems
- Mathematics Major
- Mobile and Web App Development
- Secondary Education Mathematics Major


text: Straight Talk [Blu-ray] $3.49 $9.98 + Free* Shipping Amazon Coupons See Deal Flag this deal Edit deal What's the matter? Choose a reason Dead deal Duplicate Bad link Spam Inaccurate No value Alive again Comments (2) supercouponingmo Feb 05, 2013 Awesome Deal! Thanks for sharing! Reply Cancel plusit Feb 05, 2013 Saw Straight Talk on television long ago and wanted to see it again. Nice deal! Reply Cancel Load More Comments


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Al Qaida Claims Responsibility for Iraq Attacks
BAGHDAD (AP) - Al-Qaida's front group in Iraq has claimed responsibility for the latest wave of bloody attacks that killed 46 people in eight cities nationwide.
A statement posted today on a militant website says the Islamic State of Iraq wanted to prove how weak the Iraqi government's security plans are ahead of next week's Arab League meeting in Baghdad.
At least 46 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded in Tuesday's shootings and bombings, which took place over six hours.
Al-Qaida says its "Sunni lions" targeted the plan of the "fool government preparing" for the summit.
The Arab leaders' meeting is the first in Iraq in a generation. Iraq's government hopes it will be a chance to prove the country is moving toward normalcy after years of war.
Related Stories
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- Suicide Bomb Shootings Kill Nine in Northern Iraq
- Expert: Fla. Teen Attacker Mentally Ill, Not Responsible
- US steps up its domestic response to Ebola crisis
- UF professors in Brussels during terrorism attacks


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Trails at Georgia Veterans
Yucca Trace Trail
The Yucca Trace Trail is a hiking, biking nature trail which is approximately a mile in length. It features plants and wildlife of the dry ecosystem of the Atlantic Coastal Plain such as cork oak, fox squirrel, prickly pear, Spanish bayonet, red fox, wild strawberry, deer, opossum, brown thrasher, bluebird, blackberries, common persimmon, loblolly pine, slash pine, water oak, shortleaf pine, wild cherry, wild plum, huckleberry and honeysuckle. Access to the Yucca Trail can be obtained off the main park road right before the Resort or from the campground. Part of this trail winds it way through the disc golf course.
Lake Shore Trail
The Lake Shore Trail is a leisurely half-mile hiking, biking nature trail winding along the shores of Lake Blackshear and Gum Creek. It loops back within view of the SAM Shortline railroad tracks and returns to the start of trail. It is a wetlands trail which features the plants and wildlife of the wet ecosystem of the lake community such as bald cypress, cypress knees, wax myrtle, red maple, sparkleberry, sweetgum, alligator, beaver, great blue heron, red-headed woodpecker, wood duck, coot, jasmine, alder, mistletoe and pond turtles. Access to the Lake Shore Trail is across the street from the park Visitor Center, right at the bridge, beyond the fishing pier and picnic shelter.
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© 2017 - Georgia Department of Natural Resources


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The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod
ST. LOUIS, June 7, 2012—Concordia University, Ann Arbor, Mich., will become a part of Concordia University Wisconsin, Mequon, per an "affiliation agreement" recently approved by the Boards of Regents at each school and The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) Board of Directors.
The affiliation is "a truly historic event," according to Dr. Alan W. Borcherding, interim president of the Concordia University System (CUS). The Concordia University System includes 10 LCMS colleges and universities nationwide, including those at Mequon and Ann Arbor.
The new affiliation will not be official until the accrediting agency for both schools approves it. That approval is not expected until 2013. LCMS President Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison said the affiliation process between the two universities represents one of the largest and most significant collaborative efforts of LCMS districts, the Synod Board of Directors, the Concordia University System staff, and many others.
"First of all, the faculty and staff of Concordia University, Ann Arbor, are to be commended for their efforts fighting for years against difficult odds," Harrison said. "It became clear that Ann Arbor alone could not thrive, despite heroic efforts of the school's supporters.
"Concordia University Wisconsin has developed tremendous capacity in the past decade. In an act of collegiality and love for the church and the mission of higher education, Concordia University Wisconsin's leadership stepped into the gap at the request of the Synod, and is now sharing its capacity to grow and improve Concordia, Ann Arbor."
The new legal relationship is seen as beneficial to both schools: Concordia, Mequon (CUW), will broaden its reach into a new geographical area, while Concordia, Ann Arbor (CUAA) – which has struggled for years with financial, enrollment and administrative difficulties – will remain open and continue to provide LCMS higher education to students in the Upper Great Lakes region.
"From our perspective, the relationship is necessary because of the importance of maintaining our Lutheran higher-education presence in such an important geographic and demographic region," explained CUW President Dr. Patrick Ferry. "Lots of LCMS families live in the fairly near orbit of Concordia, Ann Arbor ... and the mission there is a vital one." Both schools will operate in their respective locations, but under the auspices of one Board of Regents: the CUW Board of Regents. A "Board of Overseers" will be appointed to handle certain CUAA matters locally.
Likewise, both schools will be led by one president: CUW President Ferry, who will spend time on both campuses. The plan calls for two leaders at CUAA to report to Ferry: a chief academic officer, who will handle all academic matters on the Ann Arbor campus, and a chief operating officer, who will be responsible for all non-academic matters there.
The schools will be restructured so divisions at CUAA will mirror those at CUW, with a "common core of coursework" for general studies at both universities. In the new structure, both universities would offer programs in Schools of Education, Business, and Arts and Sciences.
Each university will continue to have its own faculty and accreditation process, and CUAA graduates will have "Concordia University—Ann Arbor" named on their diplomas.
Randall W. Luecke, CUAA acting president and chief financial officer, said "it has been an incredible experience to watch the hand of God as He brought the leadership of Concordia University Wisconsin; the Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and English Districts; and The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod to an arrangement whereby God's mission can be continued here at Concordia University, Ann Arbor.
"With His grace and blessings, we will strive to continue to prepare young men and women for a lifetime of service to the church and to the world!"
For more information about LCMS colleges and universities, visit www.lcms.org/cus.
About The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), is a mission-oriented, Bible-based, confessional Christian denomination headquartered in St. Louis, Mo. Founded in 1847, the LCMS has about 2.3 million baptized members in more than 6,000 congregations and more than 9,000 pastors. Two seminaries and 10 colleges and universities operate under the auspices of the LCMS, and its congregations operate the largest Protestant parochial school system in America. The church broadcasts the saving message of Jesus Christ over KFUO Radio, and it has relationships and active mission work in 89 countries around the world. In the last five years, the LCMS has awarded more than $35 million through more than 900 domestic and international grants for emergency response and disaster relief. Today, the LCMS is in full doctrinal fellowship with 33 other confessional Lutheran church bodies worldwide and is a founding partner of Lutheran Services in America, a social ministry organization serving one in every 50 Americans. For more information, visit www.lcms.org.
Vicki BiggsDirector, Integrated CommunicationsThe Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod314-996-1236 | 314-556-3829 (mobile)
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text: So my age (37) caught up to my skating abilities and I broke my wrist a few weeks ago while riding with my son. I have never been a huge protective gear wearing guy but i think its time to get some wrist guards. Anyone have any first hand experience? Are the S-One Damage Control any good?


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[HETALIA] USxUK - Fanfic Recs
current mood: cold
This list for USxUK fics with them as nations. If you're looking for non-nation USxUK fics you can go here: [HETALIA] USxUK - AU Fanfic Recs
This list can contain any fic with America and England: from friendship/platonic to hinted romance to all out slash.
A is For by RobinRocks/robinrocks01
Rating: M
Summary: Alfie. Which Arthur totally called him last night. And thus begins Alfred's quest to get him to say it again.
Anatomically Correct by chibi_spork
Part 1 | Part 2
Rating: 18
Summary: Alfred wants to know which places in England the different parts of Arthur's body represent. Arthur wants to know whether this sudden interest is just a really weird kink. Lemon
Conquests of a Failed Gentleman by pippinssocks
Rating: T
Summary: Okay, seriously, this is the UN. Kindly keep all nymphomaniacs outside the building. America/England
Here I Am by mizumimi also posted at Mizu-Tenshi@FF
Rating: PG-15/T
Summary: AU-Swapping. Alfred and Arthur are lovers. America and England are definitely not. When England and Arthur somehow switch places, with no way to get back to their own world, both parties have to confront things they never wanted to admit. AlfredxArthur Implied USxUK
Highway Cloudbusting by stardropdream
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Sick of politics and business as usual, England decides to indulge a rare moment of spontaneity and go on a roadtrip. He should have known that America would want to tag along. And they both should have known that the trip would set them down a path they couldn't turn away from.
- Starswept(Sequel to Highway Cloudbusting)
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Just because you confess your feelings doesn't mean everything will fall into place from there - and England and America both have things they need to understand and accept about themselves and each other.
Meetings by saramon
Rating: M
Summary: In which America has to sit down and gets fidgety. And does fun things with England, like semi-consensually molest him.
Misplaced Soil by stardropdream
Rating: NC-17
Summary: An argument leaves England and America to reassess and redefine their "special" relationship, all the while England is stuck in a country he doesn't fully understand despite his best efforts.
Save a Horse, Ride a Gentleman by belanova_knight
Rating: NC-17
The United Kingdom wishes to re-establish trade routes with the United States. Alfred is a little more than willing to do so, and the reunion was a little more than what Arthur had bargained for. Cowboy!AmericaxGentleman!England. Smut ahoy! UKUS
Thanks for the Pranks by Car
Rating: T
Summary: Due to the overwhelming maturity of both nations, America and England find themselves in a different kind of war than they are used to...A prank war! Who will get the last laugh? "Mark my words, old man, this is war." "Bring it on, brat. Bring it on.
Separated by a Common Language, Indeed by ai_08
Rating: T
Summary: In which America gives England a condom and England is properly mortified. If by mortified you mean extremely interested. Based on the "rubber" comic. UKxUS, and pretty much the rest of the world as well.
Underneath by shiny_n_new
Rating: R
Summary: It was the look in his eyes that England couldn't forget. Dark!America
Don't You Know Which Clothes Even Fit Me? by CarbonBlack
Rating: T
Summary: When America is coerced into retrieving England from one of the last places in the world he expected to find the Brit, he sets out on a mission to experience and expose this interesting and strangely un-lame side of his former brother.
Lying in that Sound, Tonight by stardropdream
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Before the victory of the allies, before the United States of America joined the war, before Lend-Lease, before everything — there were just two nations, two men, who just refused to meet halfway until it was forced upon them.
New Horizons by Shatterdoll
Rating: M
America finds England to be just a bit...boring. When he finds a pocket watch that takes him back in time, however, a glimpse of the man England once was may change that. Pirate!EnglandxAmerica, Rated M for future chapters.
Pangaea by Narroch & RobinRocks
Rating: M
Summary: UKUS/USUK. On the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War, England and America disappear. From history.


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Mallary Darby took the ball into the circle for the Wolf Pack, going 3.2 innings, giving up five hits and one earned run in the loss.
The Broncos got their first run on two Nevada errors in the first, but Darby was able to hold them to no more, getting out of the top of the first without any further damage.
A pitchers dual through the first three and a half, the game was decided in a fourth inning that saw Boise State score 12 runs, 11 of them unearned.
Offensively, Nevada ended the day with four hits, and had chances to push runs across, including the fourth and fifth innings.
In the fourth, Britton Murdock stole second with two outs, but was stranded there when Megan Fincher hit a hard ground ball right at the Broncos third baseman Kelly Sweeny.
Boise State responded to the Pack's first threat of the afternoon in the top of the fourth by getting 12 in the bottom of the frame including a two-run home run to left field by Devon Bridges. The first batter of the frame, Allie Crump, reached on an error.
Boise State capitalized on that error, and Nevada's two others in the game, as all but one of their 13 runs was unearned.
The Pack put two runners on in the fifth, ending the inning with another hard ground ball to third.
Games two of the series will be played beginning noon Pacific time Saturday, with game three played immediately after, in a doubleheader format.


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Features in this issue
First Look: Brocade's SilkWorm Multiprotocol Router
Brocade Communications Systems' SilkWorm Multiprotocol Router links SAN islands with software-assignable ports that can communicate via three different ports.
Faster DB failover in view
Survey says: Heterogeneous fabrics still rare
How to select an SRM suite
Today's SRM tools offer a full menu of features, but before you dig in you need to know which are must-haves and which look tasty but provide little sustenance.
Think you're compliant? Prove it
Documenting compliance.
Four Gig: Hurry up and wait
Are cheap mirrors better than RAID?
Cheap mirroring vs. RAID.
Hands-On Review: Kashya KBX5000
Kashya Inc.'s KBX5000 appliance offers cost-effective and efficient replication for heterogeneous storage.
Storage bolsters blade servers
Tape price hikes looming
In the coming months, expect to pay more for tape cartridges.
Match snaps to apps
Snapshots are key to most shops' backup and recovery plans. But implementing them requires application analysis to determine the best type of snapshots to use and how often to take them.
Stress-free firmware upgrades
Firmware upgrades can be daunting, but you can take some of the fear and frustration out of the process by preparing detailed documentation of your storage environment.
Storage salaries edge up
Storage's second annual Salary Survey finds salaries and bonuses inching upward despite a still sluggish economy. Even with hiring remaining flat, 2005 looks promising for storage salaries.
Columns in this issue
IBM takes a step forward
Storage Bin: IBM takes a step forward
Data storage trends: Information lifecycle management
Looking forward to 2005
Snapshot: Remote mirroring for data
Do you mirror your data remotely?
A glimpse of the future
A glimpse of the future
The storage revolution
The storage revolution


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Round 1
Round 3
Round 4
21 Feb 2005 12:00AM | Michael Allen
20 Feb 2005 12:00AM | L.N.Beaton
20 Feb 2005 12:00AM | ESL
19 Feb 2005 12:00AM | ESL
19 Feb 2005 12:00AM | Steven
The Brisbane Broncos recorded a 10-point win over Canberra Raiders at GIO Stadium Canberra tonight -...
12 hours ago
Kyle Feldt was the hero as the North Queensland Toyota Cowboys accounted for the Penrith Panthers in...
14 hours ago
Gold Coast Titans star Jarryd Hayne has bounced back from a disastrous #Origin performance to guide ...
23 hours ago - 1 Likes
It wasn't what you'd call a great game of footy - but the Vodafone Warriors have come away with a so...
36 hours ago
Ahead of kickoff tonight, check out Rick Edgerton's preview of the second #Origin clash.
Join Justi...
4 days ago - 1 Likes
Good morning #NRL fans! Before we launch into the Sunday of footy ahead, we have a surprise for you!
RT @TheAdelaideOval: Official crowd: 21,492 NRL fans at #AdelaideOval tonight for #NRLRoostersStorm
11 hours ago | Tim Costello
12 hours ago | Robert Crosby
12 hours ago | Justin Davies
13 hours ago | Tim Costello
5 days ago | Tim Costello
Join our mailing list for all the latest news and views from the world of Rugby League.


text:
Painting a exterior fiberglass entry door
Hi all! First time posting here.
I installed a prehung exterior front door. They say the doors are pre-primed?.. I bought a gallon of "Behr Premium Plus" exterior similar-gloss enamel. Is this ok? Also i plan on using some 1-2-3 primer before painting. Any tips or suggestions? Thanks
It is always a good idea to coat even pre-primed doors as the primer sprayed on at the factory is usually put on as thin as possible. 123 will do fine I should think.
If you can and it is not a custom color mix, I would take the Behr back and get a better quality paint store, not box store, paint that will hold up better for an entry door. Otherwise apply two coats and hope for the best I guess.
You certainly do not need a gallon for a single door surface (or even both sides of it!). I hope the orange aproned minimum wage wonder boys and girls did not tell you so?! A quart would have been more than enough.
you painting the dog house also( the BIG one) ?:laughing:
as sd already said , get some real paint
Is it just me or does every noobie (no offense to new posters) insist on using Behr paint? Is the marketing machine that promotes that garbage really that good?
Yep go get you a 23.99 quart of RESILLANCE PUDDING and put that on. And dont forget the 25 dollar quart of Adhesion primer they will tell you to put on. What a joke.
The Behr Semi gloss will be fine for your front door. Wash, Prime, 2 coats. Enjoy your door and the money saved in your pocket.
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Every person dreams of having a wise, funny mentor who understands the challenges they face. I got to chat with a great one in Cathie Black. She was the head of Hearst Magazines, and managed the financial performance and development of some of the industry's best-known magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazaar, and O, the Oprah Magazine.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
She has been named one of Forbes' "100 Most Powerful Women" and Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" but she offers advice as if she were your best friend. In her book, Basic Black; the Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life) she offers invaluable lessons that will help you land the job, promotion, or project you're vying for. You'll find out how to handle interviews, which rules to break, and why you should make your life a grudge-free zone. Filled with surprisingly candid, personal stories and advice, this is maybe, the only career guide you'll ever need.
The question is, with the advent of technology, is there a role in the future for magazines? "Not if we stay the same," Ms. Black says. "That's what I think the world is all about today. It's about being open to change, open to rethinking things, it's about encouraging creativity and being very much a part of the digital space."
Ms. Black, and I'm using this term of respect because in a "live" interview I had with her on the phone, I referred to the woman who helped start Ms. Magazine with Gloria Steinham, as the "Chief Gal at Hearst."
How many shades of red can you imagine, rushing to my face ?
But, the consummate pro, she never skipped a beat and continued on as if she didn't hear my faux pas. She emphasizes that life isn't about reaching the top in everything you do, it's about creating a fully rounded existence, one that encompasses deep satisfaction with your personal life, work, and family.
And, forgiving people who often engage their mouth without consent of their brain.


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If you're looking for a healthy and simple snack, try these No-Bake Oatmeal Energy Bites. They taste like a yummy no-bake cookie, are fun to make, and most importantly – they are kid approved!
Oatmeal Energy Bites
Recipe adapted from AllRecipes.com
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup almond butter (or substitute peanut butter)
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/3 cup raw honey
1/4 cup ground flaxseed
Directions: In a large bowl, mix all ingredients together. Roll out teaspoon sized balls and place on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Freeze until set about one hour. Enjoy and keep leftovers in a Ziploc bag in fridge or freezer. Makes about 20-24 energy bites.
Personalize this recipe with add-ins such as raisins, dried cranberries, pumpkin, and dried cherries. I've also used ground bran cereal like Fiber One instead of flaxseed. These bites make a great afternoon snack and are also handy to take along when traveling.
Written by Lina for Hip2Save. Lina is a proud mom of 2 small kids who loves photography, all holidays, cooking, thrift store makeovers, bargain shopping, and DIY makeovers. Her goal is to create a beautiful life and stylish home on a dime! To see all of Lina's recipes created just for Hip2Save, click here.
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- 437002
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Product Information for Aten CE800B KVM Console Extender
Highlights for Aten CE800B KVM Console Extender
- Product Type:KVM Console/Extender
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The CE800B KVM console extender allows access to a computer or USB KVM from a remote console from up to 820ft. away. This extender is unique in that it not only supports Audio, but both units also support external USB mass storage compliant devices. Cat 5 (or higher) cable to connect the local and remote Units.
General Information
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text:
Viterra headquarters workers begin strike
By Allan Dowd
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Workers at Viterra Inc's headquarters went on strike on Monday to protest against the company's decision to institute a contract offer that had been voted down by unionized employees.
Nearly 200 workers at the Regina, Saskatchewan, head office of Canada's largest grain handler walked off the job, while more than 600 employees at grain elevators and other facilities across Saskatchewan took limited job action by refusing to work overtime or train replacement workers.
Viterra said its operations had not experienced problems because of the walkout.
"Things are going very well actually. We have not had any disruptions. The office is running very smoothly," said Colleen Vancha, vice-president of investor relations.
Representatives of the Grain Service Union (GSU) were not immediately available for comment.
Viterra said last week it would require the Saskatchewan employees to work under the terms of a contract offer that would link future pay raises to the employees and the company meeting performance goals.
The company called its action a "rotating lockout" but said no employees would barred from their jobs and those who failed to report for duty would be disciplined.
Viterra says the agreement could increase workers wages 27 percent over the next five years and is similar to the wage system used by its other workers. Continued...


text:
Step into the vibrant landscape and engage your senses
See the Trips ►
It's impossible to sleepwalk through vibrant Vietnam, where everything seems more vivid, more dramatic and yet more serene. The surprising contrasts—from cities bursting with modern and colonial architecture to the countryside's temple-dotted valleys and the coast's brilliant white-sand beaches—are all part of Vietnam's captivating tapestry. Our trips immerse you in the country's vivacious essence, so distinct that if tangible, you'd want to bottle it and take it home.
It's your vacation. Why not do it your way? Discover Vietnam with the friends and family you choose, moving at your pace, doing the things you love. Perhaps you're keen to focus on the many UNESCO World Heritage Sites, then savor sparkling city hotels and sophisticated restaurants. How about a homestay meal or a market tour and cooking class with a local master chef? A Mekong River cruise that combines all of Indochina or a focused exploration of Halong Bay? A little of everything? We'll make it happen, tapping into our deeply rooted regional expertise and our in-county connections. We may suggest timing your trip with a colorful festival, an art gallery showing, or the least touristed market for an experience that suits you perfectly. The possibilities are endless and we can't wait to get started dreaming up your Vietnam adventure.
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So rich is the history of West Indies fast bowlers that whittling any list down to a specific bowling attack is hugely problematic.
Even if the task were to select an all-time entire West indies team of pacemen, there would still be some notable omissions.
Let's start with the distinguished era of Learie Constantine, George Francis and Herman Griffith, through to Manny Martindale, Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith, to the formidable quartet of Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft (pictured, above).
Oh, and there's always Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh, Curtly Ambrose etc, etc, etc. One could go on and on. The conveyor belt of pacemen was seemingly endless.
Below are 10 of the best West Indies fast bowlers, and Cowers' final four-man selection (Lance Gibbs can provide us with some spin) is decided upon at the bottom of the page.
Now you are charged with compiling your ultimate West Indies pace attack! Who would make up your dream unit? Pick anyone, except perhaps Tino Best...
Wes Hall
Test caps: 48 - Wickets: 192 - Average: 26.38
Hall had one of the most intimidating approaches
Charlie Griffith
Test caps: 28 - Wickets: 94 - Average: 28.54
Exactly the same height as Hall, Griffith's speciality was his searing inswinging yorkers, which he delivered accurately to deadly effect. When not bowling toe-crushers, Griffith enjoyed bouncing batsmen out with utter disdain.
Andy Roberts
Test caps: 47 - Wickets: 202 - Average: 25.61
As deadpan as he was destructive, the gunslinger Roberts showed as much emotion when taking a wicket as he did when a batsman edged one behind for four runs. An interminable glare and a ruthless approach epitomised his game.
Michael Holding
Test caps: 60 - Wickets: 249 - Average: 23.68
Whispering Death used to ghost past the umpire with searing pace, kissing the turf, but all to the most savage effect. Holding delivered one over to Geoff Boycott at the Kensington Oval in 1981 which is simply frightening to watch.
Colin Croft
Test caps: 27 - Wickets: 125 - Average: 23.30
"Crofty would bounce out his grandmother if he thought there was a wicket in it," one of his team-mates once remarked. The paceman's often volatile short-pitched bowling was terrifying for batsmen, and he made a big mark in a short career.
Joel Garner
Test caps: 58 - Wickets: 259 - Average: 20.97
The Big Bird stood imperiously at 6'8" and seemed to deliver the ball from the clouds (well, above the sightscreen at any rate). Garner bowled at an alarming pace and with steepling bounce: his yorkers were also utterly devastating.
Malcolm Marshall
Test caps: 81 - Wickets: 376 - Average: 20.94
Marshall was perhaps the finest of West Indies' formidable fast bowlers of the 1980s, and possessed every attribute required to make him the complete paceman. Fierce pace, swing, a vicious bouncer and unerring accuracy.
Courtney Walsh
Test caps: 132 - Wickets: 519 - Average: 24.44
Walsh formed a quite superb partnership with Curtly Ambrose as the pair carried the West Indies bowling attack through the 90s with distinction. Uncompromising, unwavering and tireless, Walsh's longevity was as impressive as his bowling.
Curtly Ambrose
Test caps: 98 - Wickets: 405 - Average: 20.99
Ambrose was the most lethal pace bowler of his generation, with his celebrations more animated than his "Curtly talk to no man" dead expressions off the field. He ran through England with a memorable 6 for 24, and Australia with a 7 for 1 burst.
Ian Bishop
Test caps: 43 - Wickets: 161 - Average: 24.27
Serious back problems twice brought to a screeching halt one of the most exciting careers. A lovely run-up, beautiful side-on approach, swing and pace: Bishop had everything to his game, but an enforced change of action curtailed his assault.
Cowers' ultimate West Indies pace attack: Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Curtly Ambrose.
Who would your ultimate attack consist of? What combination do you think would be best for the perfect West Indies pace unit? Post your views below...
While we're all in the spirit of all things West Indies and all things fast bowling, why not check out the trailer for the documentary 'Fire in Babylon'...


text:
As in: The reason you're scared to reach into the kitchen drawer.
The fixes:
Place them in a drawer with knife guards. Protect knives―and your digits―with individual knife guards (from $2, various sizes available, kitchenworksinc.com). "You can stack them next to one another and they won't get damaged," says April Bloomfield, chef at the Spotted Pig, in New York City.
Hang knives on the wall. Short on drawer space? Hang knives on a wall-mounted magnetic strip "near where you're going to cut," says Jeffrey Elliot, executive chef for knife manufacturer Zwilling J. A. Henckels. "If you prefer a knife block, the slots should be horizontal so the knives slide in parallel to the counter rather than resting on the blade edges, which can dull over time."


text:
Harry Connick writes song for victim
NEWTOWN, Conn. — Harry Connick Jr. has written a song in honor of a 6-year-old girl killed in the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.
Connick this week released the song "Love Wins," dedicated to Ana Grace Marquez-Greene.
He says proceeds will go to the Ana Grace Fund set up to help the girl's family.
Connick played with the girl's jazz saxophonist father, Jimmy Greene, and sang at the funeral for Ana, one of 20 first-graders and six adults killed in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Greene is scheduled to receive the Governor's Arts Award at a ceremony today at the International Festival for Arts and Ideas in New Haven.
Greene, an assistant professor at Western Connecticut State University, has released a series of critically acclaimed albums andhas received numerous honors.
o o o
LOS ANGELES — Billy Ray Cyrus' wife has filed for divorce from the country singer after 19 years of marriage.
Court records show Tish Finley Cyrus filed Thursday in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences. She's seeking custody of their teenage child and spousal support.
It's the couple's second divorce attempt. Billy Ray Cyrus filed for divorce in 2010 but later withdrew the petition.
The couple issued a joint statement seeking privacy for their family.
They say they want to find a resolution that is in the best interests of their family.
The two got married in December 1993 and have three children together, including actress-musician Miley Cyrus.
Billy Ray Cyrus rose to fame in 1992 with his song "Achy Breaky Heart."
Celebrity website TMZ first reported the divorce.
o o o
NEW YORK — Beyonce has settled a New York City lawsuit that said she didn't play fair in a deal for a video game structured around her.
Court records show the case was closed Friday after the Grammy Award-winning singer and Gate Five LLC agreed to drop it.
A lawyer for Gate Five says the terms are confidential.
A lawyer for Beyonce hasn't returned a call seeking comment.
Gate Five had said Beyonce made a lucrative deal for a game called "Starpower: Beyonc←," then demanded a new agreement and abandoned the project.
The company says it lost its nearly $7 million investment and 70 people lost their jobs.
Beyonce's lawyers had said she was within her rights to get out of the deal because Gate Five didn't have needed financing.
o o o
LONDON — Prince Charles has visited his father Prince Philip in the hospital and reported that he is doing much better following his abdominal surgery.
Philip, who earlier this week spent his 92nd birthday in the hospital, received a flurry of family visits Friday. Charles and his wife, Camilla, arrived at the London Clinic shortly before his sons William and Harry joined them.
Earlier, Philip's granddaughters Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie also made a trip to see him.
Officials say that Queen Elizabeth II's husband is recovering well after the exploratory surgery last Friday.
He will continue to be hospitalized for several days before going into convalescence for about two months.
When asked by reporters waiting outside the clinic about his father, Charles smiled and said "much better."


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A: To remove an item from your cart, click the red "X" next to the name of the product you want to remove.
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