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General Information
- Name: Masjid Muqbil Bin Hadee
- Type: Mosque
- Address: 2735 W Allegheny Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19132, USA
- City/Locality, State: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Established: Unknown
- Madhab (School of thought): Sunni
- Language Services: English
Local Date/Time Now
Jul 12, 2020 06:06 AM
(Timezone: America/New_York, Daylight Savings Time is in effect)
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Odhu (wash)
- Adequate Odhu (wash) facilities
- Restrooms are available
- Shower facility may not be available.
- Nearby streets parking only
- Parking may be easily available
Facilities for Women
- Prayer space available in completely separate prayer hall.
- Odhu facilities available.
- Restrooms available.
- Shared entrance.
Wheelchair accessiblity
- Prayer area is accessible
- Odhu area accessibility is unknown.
- Restrooms may not be accessible.
- Street parking may be accessible.


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LAKE COUNTRY - New Democratic Party leader Adrian Dix rolled his campaign into the Okanagan Sunday to announce a suite of boutique policy changes aimed at helping the province's agricultural sector.
"I think it's fair to say that agriculture has not been top of mind for the government over the last number of years," said Dix, standing in a 12-acre orchard of Ambrosia apples in a riding held by Agriculture Minister Norm Letnick.
Dix said the promises - which would cost $24 million over three years - would include reviving the Buy BC program first introduced by the New Democrats in the 1990s, but cancelled by the BC Liberals in 2001. He said an NDP government would also implement a plan to increase the amount of locally-grown food served in the province's hospitals.
"We know, you know, that the time you need the best quality of food is when you're sick," Dix told a group of supporters, saying his government would mandate health authorities to increase the amount of local food in hospitals by five per cent.
Dix also said an NDP government would cut the cost of alcohol made by artisan B.C. distilleries.
He said an NDP government would significantly lower the mark-up applied to such products by the province's Liquor Distribution Branch, bringing it to 129 per cent from 170 per cent. The move — which would apply to about 100,000 of the 50 million bottles of spirits sold in B.C. each year — would bring the rate in line with that now charged on wine.
The new lower rate would apply to companies using 51 per cent or more of B.C. raw agriculture materials.
At the same stop, Dix also announced a program to help B.C. growers renew and replant their orchards to ensure they are growing the highest quality crop.
The move would extend a temporary program announced by the BC Liberal government in 2012, as well as adding other related supports.
Dix was expected on Sunday night to hold a rally in Vernon with five candidates from across the Okanagan, all of whom are running in ridings traditionally held by the BC Liberals.
"I've come here 30 times over the last couple of years as leader of the NDP," said Dix, explaining he hopes to make gains in the traditionally Liberal friendly Okanagan.
"I fully expect to win seats in the Okanagan, that's why I'm here (Sunday) on the first week of the campaign."
Lovejot Sidhu, whose father owns the apple orchard where Dix made Sunday's agriculture announcement, welcomed the moves.
"It's good to get that direct support from the provincial government. It's been hard, the last couple of years here," he said.
Growers in Washington State enjoy government subsidies, the NDP said Sunday, adding those growers have flooded the B.C. marketplace with lower priced produce.
"It's overpowering us. It's hard to compete with them with prices dropping," said Sidhu.
"It's good to have a government that will help us in the future."
Jeet Dukhia, president of the BC Fruit Growers Association, said Sunday's announcements were a "very good start" but added he wanted to see more details.
"Our budget is the lowest in the country. We want to see that budget come up to national levels," said Dukhia.
Buy BC - a program to help market B.C. grown products — was first launched under the NDP in 1993 as a way of promoting B.C. agricultural products.
The BC Liberal government killed the program in 2001, almost immediately after taking office, citing a need to reduce spending.
Reached by phone while campaigning in his riding, Agriculture Minister Letnick said the BC Liberals significantly increased agriculture funding in its recent budget, adding measures such as $20 million in carbon tax relief for farmers and greenhouse growers, and an additional $4 million over three years for increased oversight of the Agricultural Land Reserve.
"This year's budget alone it's gone up by 20 per cent," he said. "I don't know of any other ministry that got a 20 per cent lift."
Letnick also said the BC Liberal government announced a $2 million buy local campaign in 2012, and that it has promised during this election to add another $2 million to the program.
"The advantage our program has over the Buy BC program is that our program is 50 cent taxpayer collars, matched by 50 cent industry dollars," said Letnick.
"Their program is just throwing more government money at an issue. There's quite a difference in philosophies."

subset: commoncrawl


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It's a key ingredient to any good party—the cocktail. But what's the best way to streamline serving drinks to a thirsty crowd? For those of us who want to spend more time mingling and less time mixing, batching out cocktails ahead of time is a good option. Here are a few pro tips to help you do it right.
Know your proportions. You don't have to be a math major to mix up recipes large enough to serve a crowd. But instead of busting out the calculator, break the drink down by proportions. "It's the easiest, most effective way to ensure your bigger-batch cocktails taste the way they were intended," says Chicago-based cocktail consultant Todd Appel. Think about it: how quickly can you multiply 3/4 ounces by 12 and then convert that into cups? Not so easy, right? Instead, think about ingredients in terms of their proportions in the finished drink—for example, a cocktail comprised of 1 1/2 oz., 3/4 oz, 3/4 oz. breaks down into a ratio of 2-1-1. Once you figure that out you can easily apply the same proportions to ounces, cups, gallons, etc., making even on-the-fly mixing a cinch. "Even if you only have a juice glass on hand," adds Appel, "if you know the proportions you can mix the drink without exact quantities." Talmadge Lowe, the Los Angeles-based cocktail caterer behind Pharmacie, also puts the proportions principle to practice and lets guests customize their own cocktail once he has the base of the drink built. His suggestion? Batch out a pitcher of Whiskey Sours with 1 part each of whiskey, fresh lemon juice and simple syrup, then put out several different flavors of bitters for guests to dash into their own drinks.
Consider punch. "By design, punches are meant to be batched," says co-founder of San Francisco-based Bon Vivants cocktail company, Josh Harris. "The proportions are measured out for you," he says, "and they eliminate the added step of someone having to shake and strain each drink." Simply build the punch in a large punch bowl, add a large ice block, and let guests serve themselves. Both this Barbadian Gin Punch and this Groom's Fish House Punch are designed with crowds in mind. "With punch," says Harris, "you can just set it and forget it."
The dilution debate. Depending on who you ask, you'll get a different response on whether or not to add water to a pre-batched cocktail to account for the dilution of ice that comes from shaking or stirring a single drink. Some bartenders argue that dilution simplifies batching cocktails like Manhattans and Negronis and eliminates the need for each to be individually stirred with ice—just combine ingredients, add water, chill and serve. If you do go this route, you can determine the amount of water to add by weighing a single serving of the cocktail you're planning to pre-batch before and after you've stirred with ice—the difference in weight is the amount of water that makes it into the finished drink. From there you can multiply by servings you're planning to batch and add accordingly. In the opposite corner, other bartenders will argue that not only can adding water quickly lead to mathematical error (making for a messy, and expensive mistake), but the cocktail won't be as cold as it would be if stirred with ice.
Avoid eggs. Unless you're mixing up a big batch of egg nog, reserve eggs for single-serving drinks. They require an armload of shaking to incorporate into a batch of drinks and might separate from the rest of the ingredients.
Use flavored syrups and teas. Want a quick and easy way to infuse layers of flavor into your pre-batched drinks? The answer for Harris is simple—simple syrups. "You're probably already making a simple syrup," says Harris, "so why not throw in some fresh mint or some other herb for added flavor?" Teas are another great way to amp up the nuance. "We add tea in all our big-batch recipes," says Harris, "they offer both dilution and flavor." Not to mention the end results will impress your guests. "Think about it," Harris says, "you start with a Gimlet as your base and can quickly turn that into a combination of gin, citrus, mint syrup and maybe a chamomile tea."
Save sparklers for last. Want to serve a festive fizzer? Just because you're mixing things up ahead of time doesn't mean you have to nix the bubbly. "Anything with bubbles—like sparkling wine, club soda and tonic —will go flat," says Talmadge, "so add those in right before serving." But if chilled ahead of time and poured at the very last second, bubblers can add a spritzy finish to big-batch drinks.


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John Holmstrom talks about founding and editing 'Punk,' the chronicle of late-'70s New York
In the summer of 1975, John Holmstrom saw the Ramones at CBGBs and bought the Dictators' debut album Go Girl Crazy!
These experiences, as he recounts in the new book The Best of Punk Magazine, out now, "totally rewired my mind."
At the time, Holmstrom was a 21-year-old student at the School for Visual Arts in Manhattan. His high school classmate Eddie "Legs" McNeil—who would later co-edit the bestseller Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk—was living at a hippie film commune on 14th Street called Total Impact, and directing the occasional feature-length porn film. But that Fall, their mutual friend Ged Dunn Jr. arrived in town with $5,000. Newly flush, the three men decided to start a magazine dedicated to rock & roll. This, they believed, would grant them scene cred and, more importantly, give them an excuse to hang out with the Dictators.
Punk's first issue—released in November 1975 and printed on four sheets of folded tabloid newsprint—featured interviews with Lou Reed and the Ramones. Holstrom contributed a salty editorial entitled: "Death to Disco Shit! Long Live the Rock!" and McNeil starred in a photo comic in which he fails to pick up girls outside CBGBs.
The style—raw, messy, witty, inappropriate—nailed the essence of the burgeoning punk scene. James Wolcott, writing in the Village Voice, called Punk "the ululations of the new zeitgeist."
"Just a few weeks ago, I'd been a nobody," Holmstrom recalls in the book. "Now, I was the editor of the hottest magazine in New York."
Punk released just 17 issues before finally flaming out in the summer of 1979, weighed down by overhead costs and a lack of newsstand sales. But in those years, it both captured and shaped the rise of punk in New York City. In the book, Holstrom and his co-editor, Bridget Hurd, have collected the best comics, artworks, rants and photographs that Punk published. An introduction by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein precedes dozens of off-color interviews with artists like Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Brian Eno, and the Clash. Holmstrom strings it all together by supplying the highly amusing back-stories behind each issue.
I spoke with Holmstrom recently by phone to discuss the meaning of punk (and Punk), the inspiration for the magazine, what it was like to interview Lou Reed at CBGBs in 1975, and more.
Punk went out of business over 30 years ago. Why is this book coming out now?
I've been trying to get this out for 10 years. There was a failed collaboration between Legs and me, and a failed attempt to pitch the book in 2008, after the economic meltdown. It was supposed to come out a year ago, but I had to get permission from everybody for every photo and drawing, and then scan everything and track down all the original artwork. It took me longer to do this book than to put out the magazine!
Some people think you invented the term "punk" as it's now understood. What was the status of the word when you started Punk?
Punk rock already existed, but I think we helped define what it meant. I was a fan of punk rock in '74. Alice Cooper was on the cover of Creem that year as "Punk of the Year." I was a big fan of the Stooges, MC5, the New York Dolls, and it was those trashier, grungier, hard rock glam bands that were punk. Glam started to turn punk around '74. There was a turn to this sound and look that wasn't on most people's radar. Legs thinks the name for the magazine came out of his love for "Kojak" and gangster movies, where cops call the bad guys "punks." The truth is, I'd asked him: What do we call a magazine about punk rock? And he said: Why don't you just call it Punk?
And yet Legs left the magazine after the first issue.
The original idea was to have a film company and magazine together. But where the film company quickly fell apart, the magazine took off like a rocket. Legs wasn't a magazine or music guy, he was a film guy. At the time he was doing these public service announcements and anti-cigarette commercials, one of which involved him pretending to shoot up with a cigarette, equating smoking with heroin. Which is ironic because he's the biggest cigarette smoker in the world. We don't talk anymore, but the last I heard he's still at three or four packs a day.
Why do you think the magazine caught on so quickly? Within a couple weeks, you guys were the biggest deal in town.
We were at the right place at the right time, and I knew it. There'd been a few articles about bands like Television and the Ramones, and CBGB's was also just starting to take off. CBGB's fascinated everyone at the time because it was on the Bowery. People were afraid to go there. There were bums drinking at the bar, begging for change outside. But we captured the moment, I guess. We got the CBGB's door girl, Roberta Bayley, to shoot our photos. She was an amateur photographer but she took the earliest group shots of the Ramones, one of which wound up on the cover of their first record. Mary Harron [director of I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho] did her first interview ever with the Ramones for issue one.
And you did your first interview with Lou Reed, which must have been interesting.
I'd actually tried to interview the Ramones at CBGBs a few minutes before, but it didn't really work out. Then somebody told me Lou was there. I was this dumb kid, but for some reason he let me hang out with him all night. He wasn't exactly friendly, and I kept waiting for him to say 'OK, put away the recorder.' But he didn't. I'd recently bought Metal Machine Music [Reed's notoriously cacophonous, experimental fifth solo album] in quadrophonic sound, so you could listen to it on four speakers, and Lou tried to buy it from me. He also offered to buy my reel-to-reel tape recorder, which he was impressed by. But when he saw himself on the cover of the magazine a couple weeks later, he really liked it. He called me up about it.
Did you guys think you were making a music magazine or an art magazine, or something in between?
Musicians played rock & roll. So what we wanted to do was make a magazine that was rock & roll, instead of being about rock & roll. I wanted the visual equivalent of rock & roll. Back then, rock & roll was being used to describe bands like Air Supply and Simon and Garfunkel and all these horrible soft rock bands. To me that was just pop music. But punk was faster and louder and more like the original rock & roll that scared people in the '50s. Growing up in the '50s, rock music was a menace. And so were comics. Rock & roll was bad for you, and comics rotted your brain, so I thought: What about a comic book about rock & roll?
Despite being the most talked about magazine in 1976, Punk struggled for the rest of its four-year run. Why was it so hard to keep it afloat?
Glenn O'Brien, a writer for Interview who later became an editor at High Times, once said that Punk was "the most important magazine in the world for one year." Our first issue got a glowing write-up in England's New Musical Express. It was selling out in London, where people paid the equivalent of about 12 bucks an issue. But it was tough to get the newsstand guys in the states to display it. Then the English punk scene exploded with the Sex Pistols and the Clash, and suddenly the Brits were bored with the USA's brand of punk. This was also during the Carter administration. Carter, who was a Southern Baptist, is said to have walked onto the White House lawn and said, "We have to stamp this punk rock thing." I voted for Reagan because I hated Jimmy Carter so much.
But you had still plenty of supporters in New York.
We did. At our peak, for Issues 7 and 8, we were printing 20,000 copies. A guy named Tom Forcade, an underground journalist and activist, was helping us distribute it nationally. Tom was a huge fan of punk. He founded the Yippies, and when they stopped being radical enough he started the Zippies. He also founded High Times. He once threw a pie in the face of the chairman of the Committee on Obscenity and Pornography. Anyway, Tom was going to start a distribution press to help magazines like Punk, Interview and Trouser Press get on newsstands. But then somebody shot Larry Flint, who distributed Hustler and High Times, and that screwed up their cash flow. Issue 18 got pulled off the press by the owner of the company. Then everybody started dying. Tom killed himself. Sid killed Nancy, then Sid killed himself. All the bands were breaking up. Around 1979 I remember Joey Ramone saying to me 'We're the last rock & roll band left!' We didn't know about the hardcore scene yet or the West Coast bands. Some people blamed the death of punk on Punk. When it died, we thought that was the end. But, of course, it was really the beginning.
John Holmstrom will appear to launch 'The Best of Punk Magazine' at Powerhouse Arena on January 11 from 6–8 p.m.
All images by Roberta Bayley, courtesy 'Punk' magazine.


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The worst invasion of army worms in decades has reduced Liberia's farms to ruins in a matter of days. Now the worms are menacing neighboring countries.
Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said her country would be doing aerial spraying of the army worms, but it may be too late to prevent their spread to Sierra Leone and Guinea. The worms are actually a breed of caterpillars that can lay 500-1000 eggs at a time - which means they can devastate an entire crop in 48 hours. And it's not just crops that are affected. Streams and ponds that locals depend on for water have been completely polluted by worm feces.
This story is similar to ones we've heard recently about jellyfish swarms.
It's unclear whether the army worm invasion is simply a cyclic infestation or whether there might be other environmental causes. In the meantime, Johnson-Sirleaf has asked for aid from the U.N. to combat the creatures, whose destruction of the food and water supplies have already affected hundreds of thousands of people.
via BBC News


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Ed D. Louie (pseudonym)
Written by:
IMDB page:
Click here
NOTE: Although my review contains no "adult" content (i.e. pornography), some of the sources quoted in this article include strong language and sexual references. For the purposes of journalistic candour, all are reproduced here in their full, unexpurgated form. Reader discretion is advised.
Are you curious about HIS sexual life? If this ad is a little too coy about giving away exactly whose sexual life it is referring to, let me spell it out for you: J-E-S-U-S - H - C-H-R-I-S-T.
But this isn't just any old scandal-baiting religious art-flick, no siree. Look a little closer, at the strapline under the title: "X-Rated... All Male Cast".
That's right boys and ghouls, Him was a hardcore gay porno... about Jesus.
Oddly enough, despite the explosively controversial potential of the subject matter, surprisingly little is known about the film. It seems to be an example of a truly "lost" movie; to all appearances, it has fallen off the face of the Earth, with nary a dusty bootleg videotape or a scratched-up old film print having shown up to prove it ever existed. Indeed, there are some who maintain it never did, but, by piecing together all known information on the film, as well as dabbling in a little original research of my own, I reckon I've proven the naysayers wrong. Him did exist, and it may still be out there... somewhere.
The film's first, and to date only, mainstream media exposure didn't come until 1980, in Michael and Harry Medved's book The Golden Turkey Awards. In this book and its sequels, the Medveds would hand out "Golden Turkeys" to films, in numerous categories, that they considered to be of particularly low quality. In the first book of the series, Him appears as the winning nominee in the "Most Un-Erotic Concept in Pornography" category and is described as follows:
This innovative film, designed exclusively for gay audiences, goes into excruciating detail concerning the erotic career of Jesus Christ. The ads for the film show the face of The Savior (with a cross glistening in one eye) while the headline inquires "Are You Curious About HIS Sexual Life?" Filmmaker Ed D. Louie satisfies that curiosity by showing us that the Son of Man was a voracious homosexual. (After all, why did he spend all that time hanging around with the Apostles?) The central character of the film is actually a young gay male in contemporary America whose sexual obsession with Jesus helps him to understand the "hidden meaning" of the Gospels.However, on the very first page of the book, the Medveds proclaim: "Over 425 actual films are described in this book, but one is a complete hoax. Can you find it?"
For sheer tastelessness, this film has no equals. In one scene, our homosexual hero goes to his local priest to confess his erotic fixation on Jesus Christ. The priest sits in the confessional, listening to the young man breathlessly elaborating his perverted fantasies, while taking advantage of the situation to reach under his cassock and masturbate grotesquely on camera. This charming episode surely marks one of the absolute low points in the history of American cinema. Those pathetic few who might want to see Him ought to come to the theater dressed in plain, brown paper wrappers, that hopefully cover their eyes along with the rest of their faces.
This statement has prompted many to believe that Him was the fake film in question, to assume that it never actually existed outside the pages of the book. Likely, given the uniquely obscure and outlandish nature of the alleged picture (in comparison to other films featured in the book), any Golden Turkey readers whose interest might otherwise have been piqued into researching further would have come up against this mention of a hoax, put two and two together, and declared that the end of the issue. Possibly, this goes some way towards explaining why such little interest and controversy surrounds the matter today.
The big spanner in this theory, however is Dog of Norway; a supposed boy-and-his-dog film nominated in a different category, illustrated with a "screenshot" that is, in actuality, a photograph of the Medveds' pet pooch who also appears with them on the "meet the authors" page. Dog of Norway is the true fake. This is quickly backed-up by a simple Google search which turns up no relevant results, except those that specifically connect the title with the Medveds' hoax.
Nevertheless, there has been grumbling from some of the more conspiratorially-minded denizens of the interwebs about the motives the Brothers Medved might have had in including (and, according to some, fabricating) Him in The Golden Turkey Awards. Not as part of a jovial game, in this case, but in furthering an ulterior agenda. Dog or no dog...
These days, Michael Medved is better known for being a cultural firebrand and religiously-motivated right-wing political crusader than he is for reviewing films. Of course, there is nothing a conservative media commentator loves more than a good, old-fashioned furore to help whip up support for their personal brand of "family values", and on the surface Him - with its magic trinity of sacrilege, homosexuality and pornography - reads almost like a pre-packaged moral panic in a (conspicuously absent) film can. All in all, a little too perfect, according to some suspicious souls. Could it really be that Medved invented the movie, gruesome details and all, to help surreptitiously plant the seeds of righteous protest against the "liberal" media of his day? There have been other, more recent, hoaxes about gay Jesus films. Most of these appear to have gestated in America's bible-belt, and have been propagated across the face of the earth via waves of angry chain emails (Snopes has an excellent article on these, although their reference to Him could do with updating, as we shall soon see). Whether we look upon these panics as the fruition of Medved's "secret scheme" or more simply as evidence of the politically emotive power of such claims, they do seem to help the conspiracy theorists' case. But, as with everything surrounding this movie, look a little closer and another layer of the onion peels away:
The first problem with the "conspiracy theory" is timing. The book was first published in 1980 and, although Medved began to voice his political support for the Republican party in this year, he did not become a true fire-breathing political commentator until much later. Secondly, Medved is devoutly Jewish, so his alleged motives for trying to rile specifically the Christian Right into a religious frenzy just don't seem as clear and characteristic as they might at first glance. Moreover, if the description of the film was intended to be inflammatory, it was planted in the wrong place; latterly, Medved has proven himself to be an expert at targeting his intended audience (his talk show on the Salem Radio Network has been ranked as the eighth-most listened-to in the USA), and even in the 1970s Medved was already a seasoned author and journalist who would have had no problem with getting his message out via a more suitably conservative channel than a humour book aimed at transgressive movie buffs.
Of course, not one of these points actually disproves the "Medved Conspiracy" and, in the absence of any actual prints, images, footage, reviews, or (apparently) anyone who had actually seen the damn movie, for the longest time the only things inquisitive folks had to go on were the unsupported claims of the Medveds and pure speculation. It wasn't until the mid-2000s that new information would start to bubble up from the depths of the internet.
In 2003, the now-defunct Pimpadelic Wonderland, a site dedicated to 1970s psychotronica, included Him on a list of lost films, and featured what appeared to be an actual newspaper ad-slick for the film (the one reproduced at the top of this page). The text itself simply states: "Yes, this gay porn take on the life of Christ does (or at least did) actually exist!". Given the address of the cinema mentioned - the 55th Street Playhouse, a small arthouse theatre-cum-porno fleapit, now long defunct - it seemed likely that the ad originated in one of several mainstream newspapers in the New York City area that were regularly publishing advertisements for adult films at the time. Unfortunately, the image was presented out of context with no additional information on its source. Short of catching a plane to New York and trawling though newspapers on microfiche, there was no way of corroborating the ad's authenticity. (You can see an archive of Pimpadelic Wonderland's lost film list here).
Others since claimed to have seen similar ads for the film in own local papers, including The Ottawa Citizen. According to contributors to the 55th Street Playhouse page on Cinema Treasures, the film may have played there for as long as two months and was later shown at the South Station Cinema in Boston. One poster, "Samschad", even quotes a Variety review dated April 17, 1974:
Pic depicts graphic sex acts involving Jesus Christ and includes a scene in which a priest is seen masturbating while listening to a confession. The gay-oriented film is about a young man with a sexual obsession for Christ.This would be a groundbreaking discovery if only the review was verifiably real. Unfortunately, no such write-up existed in Variety's extensive online archive. Had it been omitted or overlooked, or was Samschad lying? One step forward, one step back...
Then, out of the blue, in December 2005, "Billy A. Anderson", a contributor to the Mesmerize forums, uploaded a full, detailed review of Him by Al Goldstein, editor of Screw, from the April 29, 1974 edition of that magazine:
DIRTY DIVERSIONSUntil now, the Screw article has been the strongest piece of available evidence supporting the existence of the film. Granted, it was not an actual scan of the page, simply a typed-out re-quoting of the text, but where it differed from the Variety review was in the fact that it appeared on a message forum where its poster is a respected and long-standing contributor and who, it would seem, is unlikely to jeopardise his reputation by fraudulently referencing non-existent information from a checkable source. Furthermore, the discussion is linked to by both Him's Wikipedia and IMDB pages, receiving a relatively high volume of traffic from these sites, and the review has also been re-posted in various other message boards, so it seemed fair to assume that, in the five years since its re-appearance, someone with access to back issues of Screw would have come forward to debunk the Goldstein review, if it was a hoax. In any case, there was absolutely no reason to believe Billy A. Anderson was trying to scam us.
By Al Goldstein
Queen of the Jews
A bizarrely engrossing new film called HIM, playing at the 55th St. Playhouse, between 6th and 7th Avenues, has more to recommend it than some of its mismatched shots, mishmash editing and cheap budget would have allowed. I sat in the theatre next to the delicious Marcia Bronstein, editor of BITCH, so much of my enthusiasm for this film may simply have been the proximity of my thighs to hers. Then again it may have been the vividly poetic photography that loudly proclaimed in favor of cocksucking, ass fucking and other lofty pursuits of this downtrodden group of perverts.
The plot of HIM theoretically is about a faggot who is preoccupied with Christ and constantly has sexual reveries about balling that great Son of God. The plot might have worked, had it been explained to the viewer, but the movie begins inexorably slowly and, for its first 40 minutes, it consists of some solid hard-core in the gay vein and the meaning of the title HIM eludes the spectator. Only deeply into the film does one get the necessary material to permit the audience to comprehend the meaning of the plot. By then it's too late and you really don't give a shit, which is a shame, since so much of this film transcends most of the porno pap that permeates our perimiters.
I thought I had seen everything, but this movie brings in a whole new battery of barnyard banterings, from the opening credits, which are played against a stiff cock being licked by a very pretty white pussycat, to a delicious decadent sequel where a guy fucks a vacuum cleaner with such love that I started to hum, "I want a vacuum cleaner just like the vacuum cleaner that married dear old dad." As they say on Fire Island, it was one of the more legendarily meaningful relationships of last summer, and a blowjob par excellence. Another torrid little scene had a priest jerking off in his confession box as he listened to the tawdry and tear-stained confession of the wandering faggot. The sex on the cross, in particular the graphic anal probings, which is not unlike a World War II boat launching depth charges, was exciting, and, of course, the hot searching lips of Marccia waxing poetic over my body kept me truly excited. At least I thought it was Marcia. Then when I looked down I saw it was the manager of the theatre.
HIM is a hymn to sodomy and the other brazen activities that mark the twilight world of perversity with so much pain and prurience, yet to those who are not so frightened by any blemish on their masculinity and can respond to the heated sensuality of another human being, it's a film that will be innervating and titillating.
Mr. Goldstein's "Peter Meter" Rating of the film, from 0-100 %
Which leaves Al Goldstein himself. A love-him or hate-him character, Goldstein is well known for being... well, a bit of a rogue. It doesn't stretch the bounds of credulity very far to picture him slipping fake reviews into his magazine for shits and giggles. I have attempted to contact Mr. Goldstein by email, regarding Him, but received no reply. Failing that, I tried my best to research Marcia Bronstein and Bitch magazine, in the hope that she may have followed up with a review in her publication. Sadly, Bitch went out of business soon after it launched, and precious little in the way of information on the magazine exists today.
So was the whole kitt'n cabootle Goldstein's invention, which subsequently escaped into the wild, and picked up by the Medveds? Unlikely perhaps, given the other information available, but not entirely outwith the realm of possibility. Until now.
The impasse may finally be at an end. New information has come to light, thanks to the wonders of Google News Archive, a recent spin-off of Google News and Google Books. The site allows searchable access to the digitized back issues of various newspapers which providers have chosen to make available.
Among them is The Village Voice, the famous arts oriented alternative weekly based out of the Greenwich Village district of New York. While preparing to write this article, and speculatively browsing through issues of The Village Voice from around the period of March-May 1974, I uncovered not only another review of the film, but a whole series of different large-format advertisements for Him, some including actual screenshots from the film!
From The Village Voice, April 11th 1974 (click):
So there we have it, it would seem that reasonable doubt has been quashed - the Medveds, Al Goldstein, Pimpadelic Wonderland, Billy Anderson and the guys on Cinema Treasures - they are all vindicated. Both the Variety and Screw reviews are quoted in the ads, and I was also able to track down the source of the Time quote, which is, to my knowledge, the first time that publication has been drawn into this search.
Whew! God knows, as a straight male, I never imagined I would ever spend so much time trying to prove the existence of some gay porn! Now only one question remains: where the hell is it now!?
More investigation is required, and perhaps you can help. Do you have any info on the subject that I haven't covered here? Maybe you saw Him on its release in New York, or elsewhere? Perhaps you saw a copy on video years ago (was this thing ever even released on video?) or hell, maybe you were involved in its production, or know someone who was (someone made this movie)? If you know anything, I'd love to hear from you so drop me a line via the comments box below.
The hunt goes on...
Having read this article, "Billy A. Anderson", credited above as the "re-discoverer" of Al Goldstein's Him review, contacted me and very kindly supplied some photographs of the pages in question (available here and here). In the very same issue of Screw, he also uncovered some new information on the 55th Street Playhouse (pic available here), including, perhaps crucially, the fact that it seems to have shown films exclusively in 16mm format, which helps narrow down the search for any would-be film detectives out there...
More info from Billy Anderson. By perusing the pages of The Village Voice and The New York Times for ads, he has definitively pinpointed the exact start and end dates of Him's theatrical run at the 55th Street Playhouse. It played from 27th March to 23rd May 1974, a total run of over eight weeks! Here is an ad for the same theatre, from the preceding day, advertising a "Jaguar film festival", and here is a familiar ad from the 27th, Him's opening day. Finally, here is an ad from the last day of Him's run (note the small print beneath the Cowboy and the Old Man ad: "Last times: Ed D. Louie's Him"). Kudos, once again, to Billy for his perseverance and inquisitiveness.
A couple of weeks ago, a man named Vinny Parrillo saw this article and contacted me to say that his late partner, New York muralist Tava (aka. Gustav Von Will), was the actor who portrayed Jesus in the film. He was kindly able to provide me with a photograph - either a production still or a frame from the actual movie - of Tava as Jesus carrying the cross through Manhattan. I have censored the image here to comply with Google's Blogger content guidelines.


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Even if the St. Louis Rams wind up drafting Johnny Manziel, they aren't about to embarrass their starting quarterback in public.
The team hosted its annual pre-draft event Wednesday night for season-ticket holders, a gala that saw coach Jeff Fisher stand beside Sam Bradford on stage and tell more than 2,000 attendees: "Sam's our guy."
How to watch the NFL draft
Fisher has emerged this week to back his quarterback multiple times in public, words that conflict with rampant whispers that St. Louis has eyes for Johnny Football, the electric playmaker out of Texas A&M.
Or do they? Longtime beat writer Jim Thomas of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was told Bradford was "informed about the Manziel smokescreen by the Rams before the fact."
NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport chimed in Thursday to counter that report, saying the team never warned its starter about a Johnny Football smokescreen. They did let him know that there would be talk of St. Louis trading Bradford, while assuring him that it wasn't true.
The Rams might ultimately take a quarterback, but the team under Les Snead has a history of shopping the No. 2 selection. They did that two years ago with the Washington Redskins and appear open to doubling down Thursday night.
Of course, Snead also risks becoming the guy who passed on Robert Griffin III and Manziel, a distinction that won't be easy to explain away if Bradford fails to develop into a difference-maker in 2014.
We'll find out tonight how St. Louis really feels about its young -- and expensive -- starter.


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With less than three months left this year, it's looking increasingly likely that 2012 will go down as the warmest year on record in the continental United States.
January-September was already the warmest first nine months, according to temperature data released Tuesday by the National Climatic Data Center.
Moreover, six of eight scenarios charted by the center have 2012 ending warmer than any other year in records that go back to 1895. The only scenarios where that would not happen are if the last quarter is among the 10 coldest on record.
Last month was the 23rd warmest September on record and, more significantly, marked "the 16th consecutive month with above-average temperatures for the Lower 48," the center said in its monthly State of the Climate Report.
January-September temperatures averaged 59.8 degrees Fahrenheit -- 3.8 degrees F above the 20th-century average.
This year has already seen the warmest March and July on record, and, except for September, every other month was in the top 20 warmest, weather.com noted.
Looking ahead, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center last month posted its three-month outlook, citing "enhanced chances for above normal temperatures from the Southwest through the Great Plains to the Northeast."
Weather.com meteorologist Nick Wiltgen noted that only eight of the past 117 years have had an October-December cold enough to drag the U.S. average in 2012 below the "warmest year" record now shared by 2006 and 1998.
In September, Wiltgen calculated that through August "the odds of not surpassing the warmest year on record are about 13 percent."
Now, he tweeted on Tuesday, those odds are about 7 percent.
More content from NBCNews.com:
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- Cook County, Ill., considers 'violence tax' on guns, ammo
- 1 in 5 Americans is not religiously affiliated, survey finds
- Deadly crossing: Death toll rises among those desperate for American Dream
- Video: Mexican authorities arrest suspect in tourist murder
Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook


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Who Is Sarah Palin?
Posted by Sarah Palin Web Brigade on March 14, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Who Is Sarah Palin?
Last month, I read Lorenzo Benet's unauthorized biography of Sarah Palin, "Trailblazer," and this week I watched John Ziegler's complete interview with Sarah Palin.
The question I asked myself after finishing both is the same question I've been asking myself since August 29, 2008: Who is Sarah Palin?
Many who know her say that she is exactly the person that she appears to be. And, yet, no one is ever quite what they appear because they appear to be many things to many people. A person as complex and intriguing as Sarah Palin is certainly not that simple. However, complexity does not imply cunning or deceptive manipulation. A person can be honest, straightforward, and completely without guile and yet still be complex.
I've been fascinated by biographies and biography writing my entire life. One my favorite books on the topic is Janet Malcolm's "The Silent Woman." Malcolm tries to get to the truth behind the poet Sylvia Plath, and in my opinion comes closer than anyone else, by revealing the agendas of the biographers writing about Plath. Every biographer molds the biographical subject to fit a vision or agenda. Recognizing that is key to reading a biography objectively. We sign on to the biographer's vision, and we allow ourselves to either agree or disagree with that vision.
Lorenzo Benet's "Trailblazer" was compelling, but no thanks to any talent on his part. It was compelling because Palin is compelling. Benet is not a particularly gifted or imaginative writer. The book is little more than a compilation of various news stories supplemented by interviews. That's certainly not a bad thing. All modern mass market biographies are little more than Nexus Lexus compilations.
Benet is at his best writing about Palin's years as a mayor because he can understand "mayor stuff." He clearly doesn't understand Palin's work at the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (AOGCC) or the issues that propelled her gubernatorial bid and her work as governor. He is a People Magazine writer after all. I find this weakness amusing because the very people who criticize Palin for being an intellectual light-weight would probably have a hard time navigating the complexities of her job as the governor of our largest energy producing state.
It's clear that "Trailblazer" was not written by an Alaskan, just as it's clear that Kaylene Johnson's Palin biography was. Johnson is at her finest in the chapters beginning with Palin's chairmanship at the AOGCC and ending with her gubernatorial victory because those chapters describe the events that defined Palin as Alaska's Joan of Arc. Johnson's biography, like all biographies, constructs a vision of the biographical subject; and Johnson's vision effectively evokes the sense of excitement and optimism that Palin inspired in ordinary Alaskans.
Benet doesn't really get that far, but "Trailblazer" isn't a complete waste. The supplemental interviews he conducted with key figures in Palin's life are worth the cover price. His best interviewee, in my opinion, is Judy Patrick. She provides crucial insight into Palin's years as a mayor. Many stories and rumors which were only partially understood are given clear context.
All of this is well and good. We could learn all of it from the articles currently in print. But who is Sarah Palin? Neither Johnson nor Benet's biographies satisfied me, and Ziegler's extensive interview only intrigued me more.
If you'll indulge me, I'd like to take my stab at a biographical sketch of the good Guv. It won't be exhaustive. I will no doubt return to various themes over time. But here's a first draft. And it is really only a draft. I haven't resolved the mystery of her entirely — no one can or perhaps should — but here's what I think.
Let's start with her childhood, which is the most crucial section of any biography, and with Sarah Louise Heath Palin we see a childhood that would be quite foreign to most of us. I must commend Benet on his chapter dealing with her early years in Skagway and Wasilla. He really does paint a portrait of Little House on the Tundra.
When Michelle Obama spoke of her childhood in her DNC convention speech, she recalled watching "The Brady Bunch." Sarah Palin isn't big on watching TV because she never was. Her parents didn't encourage it. She grew up as an outdoorsy girl in a world where the outdoors was vast and wild. It's difficult for those of us in the Lower 48 to imagine the vastness of Alaska. The Mat-Su Valley, where Palin spent most of her childhood, is the size of West Virginia. And there were only 400 people living in Wasilla when her family moved there in 1969. Subsistence really was a part of their lifestyle then. That's how they ate. They had a garden for vegetables, and they hunted and fished.
If there is one figure in Sarah Palin's life who I think had the most formative influence on her, it is her father, though he balks at any suggestion that he still has influence on her today. Johnson noted:
When his daughter became governor, Chuck [Heath] found it immensely amusing that acquaintances asked him to sway Sarah on particular issues.
He says he lost that leverage before she was two.
Chuck Heath is everyone's favorite middle school science teacher. His home is an amateur natural history museum filled with fossils and skulls and antlers. Far from being "anti-intellectual," Sarah Palin was raised in a home where science was valued and children were expected to bring home good grades and go to college after high school.
Chuck taught his daughter discipline and determination, as well as a love of the outdoors. He treated his son and his daughters the same, and taught them all to be self-reliant — in hunting, fishing, and sports.
He was her high school track coach, and he pushed her harder than the other kids because he didn't want to be perceived as showing her favoritism. He was so hard on her that another kid once said, "I'm glad I'm not your daughter."
The only journalist who seemed to "get" Palin was the Washington Post's Sally Jenkins, perhaps because Jenkins' background was in sports writing, and she was able to understand the quiet strength, stoic determination and "non-intellectual" intelligence that defines Sarah Palin's world. She wrote:
Chuck Sr. drove Palin hard, both as a father and a coach. "She gets her steel, her competitiveness, from him," says Marie Carter Smith, who was the school statistician. Chuck ran alongside on training runs for miles, barking maxims he picked up in his own career as a high school football player in Idaho, under a farm legend named Cotton Barlow. "Lead by example, not with your mouth," he said. Or: "Run through it! The more pain you're feeling, the more it will show in the performance."
When Chuck chewed her out like a football player, she stared back at him and nodded. "She just looked me straight in the eye, didn't talk back or anything," he says. "It's a wonder she didn't whack me."
By all accounts, Palin didn't need an external motivator. She understood she wasn't a gifted athlete, so she decided to be a tireless worker. "She ran her guts out," Smith says. And she did it with an obvious edge. "She was small and thin and active," Heather remembers. "There was no slacking when that girl was practicing or competing."
Her sister Heather noted that Sarah was "the strong, quiet one," in the family.
And here we have the first incongruity in the popular perception of Palin.
It seems astonishing, but it is a fact that everyone who knew Sarah Palin growing up describes her as shy and reserved. They also say that she was disciplined, determined, goal oriented, unflinchingly upbeat, and even a natural leader at times, but all agree that she was shy and unassuming. The Sarah Palin who burst confidently onto the national stage like a heroine of old was not the quiet girl who grew up in a small town tucked between two mountain ranges in a distant valley far removed from the avenues of power.
It turns out that the woman who has been mocked for supposedly not reading any newspapers was actually a bookworm. Johnson noted:
From the time she was in elementary school, [Palin] consumed newspapers with a passion. "She read the paper from the very top left hand corner to the bottom right corner to the very last page," said [her sister] Molly. "She didn't want to miss a word. She didn't just read it — she knew every word she had read and analyzed it."
Still, no one ever thought that politics was in her future. Her future husband said she was shy in high school and not someone he would have pictured having a political career. Her mother said the same:
"She didn't talk about politics or getting into politics," said her mother, Sally Heath, adding that her daughter back then was "never one to be in the limelight."
She was a good student in college, but did not stand out. "She was quiet, she took notes, didn't speak unless she was called on," according to one classmate. She was even described as "almost a wallflower type". But her shyness wasn't weakness. Her friends recognized an inner strength:
Palin was a calming presence who offered to pray for her when [college classmate Stacia Crocker] Hagerty had boyfriend troubles. "She was so 'steady Eddie,' so rock solid," Hagerty said. "She didn't make a big deal out of things like other people did. She talked about politics and history and what was going on in the world. I was like, whatever, I don't care about that stuff."
It would appear that she was always "intellectually curious".
According to one leftist narrative, Palin has an "Evita" complex and was always plotting to get away from her hick town upbringing to do bigger and better things. I found no proof of that. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite. She loves Alaska, and when she went away she was homesick. One college friend noted that she would "gaze out their window missing Alaska's sunsets."
She didn't set out to conquer the world. But she did have a competitive streak, despite her shyness:
Her old high school basketball coach had this to say about her:
"We called her Little Sarah. She was sort of a quiet type person, but she was really a competitor and wanted to do her best in anything she went to do," said Jerry [Russell, her basketball coach].
Jerry says Sarah Heath was usually timid, but he remembers a time when he put Sarah on the bench for not doing as she was told.
"And she turned around and looked at me, and said, 'You're always telling us that if we see the opportunity to score, to take it, and that's what I did, so put me back in.' It was so out of character for her, I had to turn my head because I just couldn't keep from laughing," Jerry said.
But he says Sarah became more outgoing in high school, even becoming known at "Sarah Baracuda" on the basketball team, and her team went on to win the state championship.
"She played that game on a fractured ankle," said Jerry.
She was short and scrappy and not a natural athlete. She had to work hard to achieve. She didn't have an overarching ambition in life. Instead she pursued modest goals, one after the other, and built up her confidence. The first goal was winning the state championship, and she succeeded against all expectations. She would later say, "I know it's hokey, but basketball was a life-changing experience for me. It's all about setting a goal, about discipline, teamwork and then success."
Winning that championship was indeed a defining moment for her. The Wasilla Warriors were the scrappy underdogs. They were mocked by the big city team. They were underestimated. And yet they won. This theme would be replayed over and over in her life.
Her next goal was to pay for college, and in order to do that she needed scholarship money. And here we come to an episode in Palin's biography which she would no doubt wish to forget, but which her critics use as a source of endless mockery: the beauty pageants.
Sally Jenkins' noted:
In between semesters [Palin] did her famous stint as a beauty queen, which she mainly did for the money. The interesting thing about that is, at roughly the same time, she worked in a fish cannery to make extra money. Glamor and fish slime. Quite a contrast. And somehow very her.
It was never really her thing.
It was the prospect of tuition money, friends said, that led her to compete as Miss Wasilla in the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant — a little surprising, perhaps, since she "wasn't a high-heels kind of girl," as one competitor put it, and found the swimsuit competition "painful," according to her mother.
Yes, I can see that it was painful. In the photo of her swimsuit competition, her shoulders have that slight hunch of a modest girl who feels exposed. And here we have another striking incongruity about Sarah Palin. Lorenzo Benet reveals that she was never the prettiest girl in class. Her future husband thought she was, but he appears to have been struck by love at first sight. As an adolescent she was regarded as rather "dumpy" with her thick black glasses. Sarah Palin was the geeky/jock girl, not the beauty queen type.
I think the reason why she is not vain about her looks is because she doesn't see herself as beautiful. She sees herself as a jock. Her classmates say that she was never the "coquette" — she was the tomboyish girl who could talk to the boys about sports and fit in just fine.
She's one of those extraordinary people who grow more attractive with age, but that doesn't seem to have changed her perception of herself. She doesn't behave like a beauty queen. This is why I don't understand women who find her looks "threatening". The truest sign of vanity is someone who is demeaning to those who are less attractive. Sarah Palin is not that person. Not by a long shot. She was not the "mean girl" in high school. She might have many shortcomings but vanity is not one of them.
No woman who is vain about her looks would dress as…well…oddly…as Sarah Palin occasionally does. (Her "square-ness" endears her to me even more. God bless her.)
It's true, folks. She hates shopping. She said so in no uncertain terms in a Q&A with the ADN during her gubernatorial race:
ADN: Tell us one thing even your closest friends don't know about you.
PALIN: My disdain for shopping is pretty extraordinary.
Diane Osborne, one of the sponsors of the Miss Alaska pageant, didn't think the soft-spoken, unobtrusive, agreeable young Sarah Heath had a prayer of winning the pageant:
"I kind of worried about how she would do up there on stage," Ms. Osborne said. "You have to have a certain go-get-'em to get up there and stand up for yourself, and she came across as such a shy, sweet girl."
Never underestimate her determination. The shy girl pulled it together. She was the second runner up. She got some scholarship money and moved on to the next thing.
Around that time, her college friends discover that she had a hidden talent:
Ketchum discovered…that Palin was a natural in front of a camera, a quality that helped her land her first post-college job as a weekend sports reporter at an Anchorage television station. For a journalism class, they videotaped themselves giving a 30-minute speech for classmates to critique.
"She didn't have the kind of fear most kids would have had," Ketchum said. "I could barely handle it."
She didn't stand out among her college professors, but she managed to snag two good internships with local television stations by sheer determination. She was "a go-getter," according to her academic advisor at the University of Idaho, Roy Atwood:
"She may not have stood out as a brilliant student that people remember well in class, but her record suggests she was a student who went way above and beyond and maintained a sense of drive and initiative that was rare," Atwood said.
She eventually landed a great job at the Anchorage station KTUU as a sports broadcaster. She got good at it. She probably could have gone all the way with it if she wanted to. But she didn't. She decided it wasn't for her. She left to raise her kids.
You'll notice that her family members say that they didn't know that she was interested in politics. That's not surprising really. They also say that she was quiet as a child and that she has always been a very private person. Palin and her husband, Todd, are both quiet and private people. She once said of her husband: "There's that saying, 'Still waters run deep.' That's Todd." That's her too.
It's quite likely that she never mentioned her interest in politics to anyone. Perhaps she never fully articulated it to herself. But she must have thought about it.
The question remains, Why politics? This is where we unlock another key to Sarah Palin's personality. It's an aspect of her life which is both deeply personal to her, and yet something which she's perfectly comfortable speaking about. I'm referring to her simple spiritual faith as (to use her own words) "a bible-believing Christian."
I find a great many similarities between Sarah Palin and Ronald Reagan. There are the obvious similarities: Like Reagan before her, Palin is a gifted public speaker and a former small market sports broadcaster. But there is another less obvious, but integral, similarity: Both Palin and Reagan inherited their simple and solid faith from their mothers.
When Reagan was a boy, his mother gave him a work of religious fiction — a Christian novel used for evangelization. Reagan biographer Edmund Morris described it:
[Reagan] happened to read a novel which his mother had picked up somewhere called "That Printer of Udell's." It's the story of a young man born in a rather ugly industrial midwestern town, who discovers through a series of bitter experiences with an alcoholic father… that he has got the gift of oratory. And through his good looks and his voice and his convictions he manages to create a whole social movement in this town. The young man, Dick Falkner, goes off to Washington to take his message to the world. [Reagan] went to his mother when he finished that book, and he said, "I want to be like that man, and I want to be baptized."
Young Reagan, whose own father was an alcoholic, obviously identified with the main character. Like Palin, his career path had twists and turns — through sports broadcasting and acting — before he eventually made his way into politics. I doubt if anyone suspected he would be president someday, but the inclination and the calling was always there. His boyhood writing reveals his fascination with politics and even a tell-tale desire to be president one day. His mother's faith instilled him with a sense of destiny about his place in the vast cosmic scheme of things. There was no hubris in this; it was a matter of one's calling, and, as Sarah Palin would later say, you pursue your calling with a "servant's heart."
At a young age, Sarah Palin first contemplated her calling. Benet notes:
Pastor Riley [of Palin's childhood church] and his wife like to tell the story of how the church's former youth pastor, Theren Horn, would remind his adolescent charges that God has a specific calling for them — teaching, parenting, medicine, or politics. Sarah heard the same command, and Horn's mention of politics stuck in her head. Years later, after Horn had moved to Minnesota and was back in Wasilla for a visit, Sarah, then the city's mayor, reminded him of the lesson and said, "I was called to politics, and that was the direction I took."
When she was recruited to run for city council, she took up the charge with all the conviction of her calling. Her sister Heather recalled, "I remember asking her why she was doing this, and Sarah said, 'I have something to offer, and I want to help. I have some great ideas and a lot of community support.'"
The good old boys who recruited her for city council expected her to sit back and follow their lead. The situation reminds me of the film "Protocol." They expected her to be the Goldie Hawn character, but just like Hawn's character in the film, Palin proved that she wasn't an airhead. Beneath the cheery exterior was a smart and principled politician.
She got into a fight with fellow council member Nick Carney because he wanted to pass a city ordinance mandating garbage pick-up, and his company was the only garbage removal outfit in town. It was an obvious conflict of interest. He recused himself from the vote, but he allowed himself to be called as an "expert witness" to testify on the merits of adopting the ordinance. He was testifying on behalf of his own company for his own financial gain before his colleagues on the council. But he saw no conflict of interest. Palin did. She said that citizens should be allowed to decide whether they want to haul their own garbage to the dump or be forced to pay for the service. Her stubborn insistence on little issues like this didn't go over well with the good ole boys.
There was also the little matter of Mayor Stein's sense of entitlement. The citizens had voted for term limits, but Stein didn't feel that they applied to him because the law was passed after he was elected. That might have been legally true, but he was disregarding the spirit of the law. Palin challenged him at a time when Republicans nationwide were taking back government. This was the era of the "Contract With America," and Sarah Palin was riding that wave with a message of fiscal responsibility. But the real secret to her success was that she went, literally, door to door campaigning. There's a reason why vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was a natural at the rope-lines — mayor candidate Sarah Palin had a lot of practice at retail politics.
Her critics now make the absurd claim that she started some kind of right-wing "whisper campaign" during her first mayoral race. This is utter nonsense. The only thing being "whispered" was the fact that this smug Cosmo Spacely look-a-like had a sense of entitlement and was planning on building some Taj Mahal city hall for himself and a history museum worthy of a city ten times the size of Wasilla.
The Benet book is especially helpful when it comes to separating fact from fiction in this period of her life. Our leftwing media somehow dug up every Palin critic out there and gave them a microphone. Most of them were from her years as mayor. The media provided no context to their accusations. They just presented them as fact, and when challenged they would claim that the local newspaper backed them up. Well, the local newspaper hated Palin when she first became mayor because the editors were friends with the former administration. The paper delighted in attacking Palin on any pretense until it became clear that such a strategy was not good for business.
Everything Palin critics fired at her ended up backfiring on them. Like all smug bullies, they retreated when the person they were attacking fought back. Bullies are always rendered impotent when their erstwhile victims are no longer afraid. Palin fought back, and they soon retreated.
She had many pitched-battles, and if anyone questions her conservative principles, I recommend that they read the chapters in Benet's book covering her years as mayor. She had to make tough decisions in order to keep her promise of "more efficient government." You can't enact real reform without upturning some apple carts. Entrenched interests and bureaucratic entitlements are hallmarks of every city hall.
Take for example Palin's battle over Wasilla's historical museum. It was run by a curator and three old ladies, much beloved by the community, but they ran it very inefficiently. Palin asked them to cut $32,000 from their $200,000 budget, and she left it up to the old ladies to decide how to do it:
"Sarah liked them, we all did, and we didn't want to get rid of them," said [Judy] Patrick. "We asked them to decide how to [make the cuts]. We didn't care how they did it — one could leave, or they could work part-time. But we were portrayed as being mean, and once again it became a personal attack."
Palin made a reasonably request — the sort of tough request a reformer has to make. But instead of cutting back their hours or working with her to find efficiencies, the three old gals decided to all quit in order to make "a political statement." They broke out their violins and gave their sob stories to the press, and Palin looked like a heartless meanie. But she didn't back down:
"I think everyone was in agreement that there were ways to make the museum more efficient, to spend taxpayers' dollars wiser over there," Sarah said to the Anchorage Daily News, noting the cost of the museum based on foot traffic was around $25 per visitor. "If you talk to someone in Wasilla about where they want their tax dollars to go, nine out of ten say, 'Fix my road. I still don't have water in my area. And protect our lakes with a sewer system.'"
With the old gals gone, Palin hired a new curator and a part-time employee, cut back the museums hours, created an annual community holiday celebration sponsored by the museum (to generate revenue and interest), opened new exhibits, and brought it all under budget. The new curator wrote, "[Palin] wanted the history of Wasilla preserved, but with fiscal responsibility."
Of course, the old curator, John Cooper, couldn't get to a microphone fast enough to holler about Sarah Palin the minute she sky-rocketed to national fame:
Cooper weighed in from Hawaii, saying he felt his support of [former mayor] Stein and his proposed expansion of the museum led to his dismissal. He packed up his family and moved out of state. "Our lives were really coming together in Wasilla, and Sarah Palin tore it apart," Cooper said recently from his home in Hilo, Hawaii. He told a reporter in September 2008, that he was a "casualty of Sarah Palin's rise to political prominence."
Friends, Cooper deserved to be a political casualty. I want Sarah Palin to be president because I want the Coopers in Washington, D.C. to be slain. I want their political heads stuck on pikes and paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue to the howls of a braying peasant mob. Why do I feel such contempt for this sniveling sanctimonious taxpayer-leech? Judy Patrick explains:
Patrick said John Cooper was a good example of Sarah's attempt to keep costs under control. "He was making $70,000 a year, and they would get something like one or two visitors a month in the winter. He wanted [to build] a big fancy museum, but we're talking about Wasilla, Alaska, here. We wanted to turn it into a seasonal museum. She wanted to streamline government and consolidate departments. We were looking for ways to be more efficient."
And without that intractable leech, she did make it more efficient. Palin learned quickly that you can't waste your time trying to win over obstructionists. You cut them off. You want to know why Alaska is littered with the bodies of her political opponents? Because she cut them off in order to get the job done.
Palin is a woman of action. She doesn't suffer fools. There was an anecdote in Sally Jenkin's profile of Palin that seemed to capture this aspect of her personality perfectly:
A few years ago, [Chuck Heath] watched [Sarah Palin] pilot her husband Todd Palin's commercial fishing boat in a storm. Todd was working at his oil-field job on the North Slope, and Palin and her father had been fishing on Bristol Bay. "It was the toughest work I've ever done, and it wasn't only hard, it was dangerous," Chuck says. At the end of the run, they had to get the boat on a trailer amid crashing surf. As cold, metallic-sheened waves tossed the trawler around, Chuck quailed.
"I'm not doing that," he said.
"Get out of the way," Palin said. "I'll do it."
She did.
"Get out of the way, I'll do it." That could be the motto of Palin's political career.
The City of Wasilla had been talking about building an indoor sports complex for years. In a state that loves sports, the winter months are limiting. But what private company would invest money in something like that for such a remote city? No one. It was something the community would have to do themselves if they really wanted it. Palin got it on the ballot and convinced voters to temporarily increase their sales tax to pay for it. There were twists and turns to the sports complex saga, but it did get built. And the community loves it. And every year it gets closer to paying for itself.
Everything in her life is based on incremental steps. She was term-limited out of her job as mayor, and she decided to run for lieutenant governor. She lost, but came in a close second despite being outspent four to one and running against well-known state officials.
This is where her biography approaches what I consider the first of the two great tests of her character.
She caught the eye of the new governor, Frank Murkowski, and he appointed her to a plum position as the ethics chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (AOGCC). It was her first big six-figure job. Once again, the good ole boys expected her to be the Goldie Hawn character in "Protocol," and once again, they were gravely mistaken. We all know the story of how she blew the whistle on Randy Ruedrich, the chair of the Alaska GOP and a fellow member of the AOGCC. Part of her job as the ethics chair was to verify that no wrongdoing was taking place. As one friend, David Murrow, explained:
Once a year all political appointees in Alaska are required to sign a conflict of interest statement. Part of the statement requires commissioners to report any violation by their colleagues. Sarah felt she had no choice but to tell the truth about Reudrich's abuses, even though she would be turning in a fellow Republican. In the days following her allegations many who follow Alaska politics (myself included) thought Sarah had committed political suicide. But her courageous stand against corruption endeared her to the citizens of Alaska.
Those are the facts. She gave up the job and turned in the leader of her own party, who would later pay the largest ethics fine in the state's history. She had seemingly committed "political suicide." It's dangerous to double-cross the crooks in a crooked state. Palin's critics now laughably suggest that she quit in order to make herself look good. Yeah, that's like saying that a firefighter ran into a burning building to rescue an infant because he knew he would get a medal! The firefighter had no idea whether or not he would survive the fire, and Sarah Palin had no idea whether or not she would survive her whistle-blowing.
Let's look at what her actions must have cost her at the time to consider what it took to quit. She and her husband had recently built a new home. She brought home the larger salary. They were no doubt counting on that money. If she quit, there was no guarantee that she would ever work in the public sector again. In fact, it was almost certain that she wouldn't, and she might even be black-balled in the private sector as well because Alaska is a small state, and everyone knows everyone. You cross swords with a powerful man, and you make a lot of enemies.
But she did the right thing. She passed the test.
Her gubernatorial race has been written about elsewhere, so I won't recount it, suffice to say that she was underestimated yet again and she proved her critics wrong.
Now let's examine the next great test of her life. It was a phone call she received from her doctor in the fall of 2007, telling her that her unborn child had Down Syndrome. She was a busy woman, the governor of her state, the mother of four. How in the world would she have time to raise a baby with Down Syndrome? No one other than herself and her doctor knew about the pregnancy. She could have quietly had an abortion, and no one would have been the wiser, and there are many people who wouldn't think badly of her for doing so.
But Palin seems to see every human existence as part of the cosmic plan, and she couldn't end an existence, even though she was terrified of the challenge. Her husband told her, "We shouldn't be asking, 'Why us?' We should be saying, 'Well, why not us?'"
Indeed, Palin is uniquely suited to raise a child with special needs because she has a special appreciation for the sentiment behind the words, "Blessed are the meek."
Benet notes that Palin's sympathies always run with the underdog, the ordinary man, the meek who are supposed to inherit the earth.
As governor, she told the graduating class of her high school alma mater:
"For those of you feeling like you're middle of the road, lost in the crowd — that's most of us." Every graduate "has a specific destiny," even the most "undistinguished student has an important role in the final cosmic calculus. Seek what it is you are created to do," she said. "Nothing is an accident."
A woman who believes such things was meant to raise a child like her little Trig. A crusty cynic like me was moved to tears at seeing a brief video clip from her interview with Matt Lauer. It showed Palin, obviously just home from work, holding her baby with her husband standing next to her, and both of them were beaming at that little boy as if he was the best thing in the world. The love there was so obvious it took my breathe away. Ninety percent of Down Syndrome babies are abort. Ninety percent. I imagine that the parents of those lost children can't bear to look at the Palins. Sarah Palin re-ignited the culture wars just by showing up.
And show up she did. We learned during the campaign that one of her favorite movies is "Rudy," and when asked her favorite part of the film, she said the very end "where he gets to run out on the field and he gets to participate and make a difference."
That day in Dayton, they played the theme music from "Rudy," and Sarah Palin "ran out on the field" at the end of a tangled two year campaign and got to participate and make a difference.
We should always ponder what it is that motivates our leaders to lead. What drives them? It's a serious question that should be asked of every leader or potential leader because a leader driven by base motives is a dangerous one.
What motivates Sarah Palin? I think she revealed it in that answer about her favorite film: "to participate and make a difference" — to fulfill her part in the "final cosmic calculus." She was called to politics, and that's where she toils with a "servant's heart."
We should not be deceived by the apparent ease with which she gave her RNC speech. We all marveled at it and thought she was some kind of moose hunting wonder woman.
She's not a super heroine. She's disciplined. I see the old clips of her early years as a weekend sports anchor, and then I see her now, and I realize that she has worked to be as good as she is. I see her working a room and a rope line like a pro, and I think of her shyness and wonder how she overcame it.
She wasn't afraid to give that speech at the RNC. Her confidence is astonishing, and I think it's something she fought hard to achieve.
She seems to posses the double-edged asset and weakness of every driven person. She has extraordinary reserves of energy, but when they're unfocused she can seem almost hyperkinetic. She wastes no time. She works late and rises early. "Todd jokes I can sleep when I die," she says.
Her husband understands her better than anyone and is naturally very protective of her. He knows how gifted she is, and yet he must also understand her weaknesses. Her friend and aide Kris Perry also understand this. During the campaign, Newsweek noted:
Next to Todd, says one former aide who did not want to be named discussing sensitive personnel matters, Perry was the person most responsible for "creating a sense of peace around Sarah." Despite recent media reports of a wild temper, those who know Palin say she is more prone to anxiety and frantic overdrive than tantrums. "She's the world's worst multitasker," says the aide. "She'll have a cell phone in one hand, the BlackBerry in the other while she is reading two position papers. You have to tell her prior to the debate, 'Put that down, breathe deep.' They [the McCain staff] are not going to know that."
Right before the vice presidential debate, the LA Times ran a story on Palin that relied heavily on two anonymous campaigns aides from her gubernatorial race. Their comments were unwittingly amusing to me because they were familiar. They could easily have been written by anonymous Reagan aides in the 1980s.
Palin, the former aides said, had a sharply limited attention span for absorbing the facts and policy angles required for all-topics debate preparation. Staffers were rarely able to get her to sit for more than half an hour of background work at a time before her concentration waned, hindered by cellphone calls and family affairs. "We were always fighting for her attention," said one of the aides.
"If you can sit her down, she has a talent for listening to a policy presentation that is so boring it would bring tears to your eyes," the aide said. "Then — boom — she will nail it down to its essence."
In her memoir of her days in the Reagan administration, "What I Saw at the Revolution," Peggy Noonan wrote:
Those who grew impatient with [Reagan] or frustrated or resentful tried to cover it up. But sooner or later – and you really saw this in the Reagan years – what they were thinking could be seen in a sentence shot out, in a look or a shake of the head. They were thinking something like what Sergeant Warden said of the captain in From Here to Eternity: "He'd choke on his own spit if I weren't here to clear his throat for him." They'd say, with a certain edge, "The president isn't a detail man" (the fool doesn't know Antarctica's the one on the bottom!); they'd say, "The president is a big picture man" (He wouldn't know a fact if it ran up his nose!). You could see it in Deaver's book, all the unexpressed hostility seeping out in those 'The president of course has an amiable temperament, but he's usually content to allow someone else to make the decisions' sentences.
Even Palin's enemies admit that she's positively "Reaganesque" in her ability to win over voters.
And like Reagan after his primary defeat in 1976, Palin lost a race and was sent home to heal.
We shouldn't overlook how hard her defeat must have been for her. Her critics see her as some sort of Nixonian character filled with class resentment. But that's not true. I don't think that's who she is.
That sad night of November 4, 2008, I watched her closely. The look on her face was familiar, but it was weeks before I made the connection.
A shy girl of humble origin from the back of beyond with no obvious distinction other than courage, determination and faith.
Am I describing Sarah Palin? No, actually, I'm describing Joan of Arc. But the description fits our Joan of Arc of the Tundra quite well.
The look on her face that night reminded me of a scene in Jacques Rivette's film "Joan the Maid." On the final day of the Battle of Orleans, Joan removed herself to the quiet shade of a tree and poured out her pain and frustration to God. She was recovering from an arrow wound that nearly killed her earlier that day. Her face was pale, her expression weary and stoic, as she said, "I have no strength. I ache. I am sick. I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do."
She rested a while, and then she got her answer. Before evening fell, she rode back to the battlements, lifted her banner high, rallied her weary soldiers and told them, "When my banner touches the walls, victory shall be ours." And before the sun set, the Maid of Orleans was victorious.
Our Alaskan Joan prays before her battles too:
I know He hears me when I just call out to Him, which I do a lot. Oh, yes, I pray. I talk to God every day. I've put my life, so I put my day, into God's hands, and I just ask for guidance and wisdom and grace to get through one situation after another.
She fought valiantly and was wounded. She told Ziegler:
Throughout the entire campaign we were quite insulated and isolated from what was going on in the world of the media. We would catch snippets here and there either on the campaign bus or looking at a headline in a newspaper as we walked by and we would see some coverage that way, but we were quite isolated really from what was being said about our candidacy in the media… Once I returned from the campaign, got back home, and then realized what had been said throughout, it was very overwhelming and very disappointing.
But she is not whining about it — that would be a capital offense in her mind:
[I] try not to personalize it, or sound whiny about it or sound like I am a victim, I don't want to participate in that.
She admits that she was naïve in thinking that her opponents would play by the Marquis of Queensbury Rules. In an interview with LaDonna Hale Curzon, Ziegler said:
The only thing I would say about [Sarah Palin] — and she acknowledges this twice in my interview — is that she's a little bit on the naïve side… probably not so much anymore, but… I think that people are naïve either because they're stupid, which clearly she's not, or because they are a good person and they just can't understand how much evil is potentially possible in others.
In this weakness she is also like Reagan, whose son described him as a guy "who always thinks the best of people":
[He] can't believe that anybody who's… ever met him would ever want to do anything bad to him, would ever want to go behind his back, would ever want to stab him in the back… that's just not within his realm of thinking. He just can't conceive of it.
Reagan had his Nancy to watch his back. I think Palin has her Todd for that role.
And now she begins the slow process of healing and regrouping. Make no mistake, the beating she took during the campaign was wounding. She's not as confident as she once was. You can see it in the difference between her pre-campaign interviews and her post-campaign interviews. There's a stuttering nervousness about her now. She's trying to get back on her game. We built her up to be wonder woman, but she's really something much more admirable and courageous — she's the shy girl who used discipline and determination to conquer her reticence, who set incremental goals for herself and distinguished herself in the service of her community despite being dismissed by people who thought they were her betters.
Joan of Arc used to say, "I would much rather be home sewing by the fire with my mother" than leading armies. Sarah Palin would probably rather be home reading to her kids than giving interviews.
She's lost some of her self-assurance. She's even cautious with the ankle-biting back benchers in Juneau now. But in time, she'll heal — though I'm sure she was harder on herself than any of her critics were. How do I know this? Call it a hunch. She used to stand silent and unflinching as her father chewed her out over a poor performance on the track field. Imagine how she must have chewed herself out over her performance in that interview with you know who.
She told Charlie Gibson last September that she felt a huge responsibility not to "let women down" during the election. I think that, more than anything else, is what lead to the tears on election night — the fear that she had let women down. I don't think she let anyone down. I think we let her down. Our "Mrs. Smith" was ready to go to Washington, but instead of rallying behind her, many of us watched silently as she fainted on the Senate floor, and worse yet — some of us joined the crooks and the cynics who laughed at her fallen form.
The most interesting and revelatory part of the Ziegler interview, to me, was when she said:
I've questioned — when I've taken the time to even question, because I'm busy as a governor and busy as a mom, and I don't want to have to spend too much time trying to figure out "what the heck just happened" via the media in these last few months — but when I do take the time, I have not concluded yet in my own mind what has taken place. Has this been an exercise — again being under such a microscope and so scrutinized — was that sexism? Was that political? Was this an issue of class differences? What has it been? Obviously something big took place in the media and in many in mainstream media deciding that we're going to seek and we're going to destroy this candidacy of Sarah Palin because of what it is that she represents — not me personally, not the mom from Wasilla, Alaska — but what it is that she represents in a conservative movement.
You represent us, Sarah. That's what you represent in a conservative movement. When they attacked you, it felt like they were attacking us because you're one of us. That's why so many of us believed in you almost instinctively.
Ziegler asked her if she would she do it again? Oh, yes, it's her calling:
There is great need for reform… and if there is an opportunity that I could seize to help, I would do it again — just, you know, [I've] got to keep growing that thick skin and try not to personalize the attacks too greatly — very tough to do when the attacks come on my family though. That's just inherent, I think, in any mom, but I'd do it again if there was opportunity to help.
And what about us, her loyal foot soldiers? What can we do in the meantime to help our Arctic Joan of the Arc?
She sent out a call to arms for us:
I wish that there was opportunity for people — especially in the Lower 48 — to look at my record and my administration's record — what we were able to accomplish here…those things that I have done in my administration… I wish people in the Lower 48 who perhaps would be tempted to be influenced by this media saying that we're just incompetent or ill-intended up here — I wish that they could just see our record, let it speak for itself, and perhaps believe the facts there versus being sucked into believing what it is that too many in the mainstream media would want them to believe.
C4P has your back, Governor.
And when you finally ride out from the north with your banner lifted high, we'll rally.


text:
(The Root) — Somali-Canadian rapper K'Naan recounts his voyage from a modest childhood in Mogadishu, Somalia, to the top of Canadian rap stardom in a new minidocumentary, which complements the release of his sixth studio album, Country, God or the Girl, which came out on Thursday.
K'Naan returns to Somalia for the first time since he and his family left for North America 20 years ago. Rekindling a love for his native country, the rapper discusses how the nation has helped to influence his music. Rapper Nas also had an influential part in K'Naan's childhood and career, helping the rapper learn English verse by verse and rhyme by rhyme.
The MC also discusses his most popular hit, "Wavin' Flags," and how a studio collaboration with pop star Bruno Mars revived the shelved song, which became a promotional anthem for the 2012 FIFA World Cup.
Watch the seven-minute minidocumentary at Rolling Stone, and find K'Naan's Country, God or the Girl online and in stores now.
Previous recommendation: President Obama's 'Second Coming?'
Got ideas for The Root Recommends? Send them to firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
The Relationship Photographer
>> Monday, July 11, 2011
This post is my next in the series on bloggers who are my very good friends. I wanted to highlight their work as they are all diverse in the content of their focus as well as dynamic in their expertise. Today I am presenting Tonya who is dear friend and enjoys capturing intimate moments of children and couples. I like to call her "Le Photographer de Relations". She is really good at capturing those tender moments.
Tonya is a very warm and caring person who by nature is fun loving, and enjoys life. She sees the world through a creativity that goes beyond most and you can see her gift of viewing the world through her photography lens. Thanks Tonya for your friendship. You are really an amazing person and true artist.


text:
Displays a list of replication slaves currently registered with
the master.
SHOW SLAVE HOSTS requires the
REPLICATION SLAVE privilege.
SHOW SLAVE HOSTS should be executed on a
server that acts as a replication master. The statement displays
information about servers that are or have been connected as
replication slaves, with each row of the result corresponding to
one slave server, as shown here:
mysql> SHOW SLAVE HOSTS;
| Server_id | Host | Port | Master_id | Slave_UUID |
| 192168010 | iconnect2 | 3306 | 192168011 | 14cb6624-7f93-11e0-b2c0-c80aa9429562 |
| 1921680101 | athena | 3306 | 192168011 | 07af4990-f41f-11df-a566-7ac56fdaf645 |
Server_id: The unique server ID of the slave server, as configured in the slave server's option file, or on the command line with
Host: The host name of the slave server as specified on the slave with the
--report-hostoption. This can differ from the machine name as configured in the operating system.
User: The slave server user name as, specified on the slave with the
--report-useroption. Statement output includes this column only if the master server is started with the
Password: The slave server password as, specified on the slave with the
--report-passwordoption. Statement output includes this column only if the master server is started with the
Port: The port on the master to which the slave server is listening, as specified on the slave with the
A zero in this column means that the slave port (
--report-port) was not set.
Master_id: The unique server ID of the master server that the slave server is replicating from. This is the server ID of the server on which
SHOW SLAVE HOSTSis executed, so this same value is listed for each row in the result.
Slave_UUID: The globally unique ID of this slave, as generated on the slave and found in the slave's