text:
"There was a 'House Full' sign outside the cinema and David was very excited. He insisted on taking a photo of me next to the sign. He said, 'This is wonderful! You just don't know how wonderful this is!'" Farrell adds: "I think he knew it was good, but I think he'd made good things before that had just fizzled out."
Chariots of Fire would not fizzle out. Over the year that followed its limited release in the U.K., word-of-mouth enthusiasm fueled by critical acclaim in the United States would carry it to the Academy Award for Best Picture, one of four Oscars and countless other prizes it would go on to win around the world.
Three decades on, this story of race and religion, individual conscience and team loyalty, centered on the 1924 Summer Olympic Games, seems faintly quaint. Like a bottle bobbing up greenishly out of the past, it hymns the old virtues of honor and self-sacrifice with a fervor unalloyed by irony. That alone would single it out amidst the flotsam of 3-D blockbusters and teen comedies on any beach it might wash up on today. That it still resonates owes something to the passion that went into its making, but it is also about timing, and the echoes between then and now.
Chariots of Fire is a supremely escapist movie, and in 1981 there was plenty to escape. Just like today, daily life in Great Britain was darkened by anxiety, unemployment, and riots in the streets. There was a royal wedding to divert the masses—for Kate and William read Charles and Diana—and the U.S. public delighted in the royal dress-up as much as the Brits. It says it all that the two songs that seemed to be playing everywhere that year in Britain were Vangelis's elegiac theme music for Chariots of Fire—which would also top the U.S. charts after its Oscar triumph the following year—and The Specials' "Ghost Town," a haunting anthem for a collapsing society inspired by the sight of old women selling their possessions on the streets of Glasgow.
And just to underscore the parallels between the times, by an odd coincidence, the success of Chariots 30 years ago was mirrored last year by that of another nostalgia-laced, Oscar-winning movie focused on Britain's ruling class, The King's Speech.
But on that March evening in 1981, Farrell and Puttnam parted ways with only an inkling of what was to follow. For the latter, the movie's fate, and his with it, must even then have seemed to be hanging in the balance.
IT HAD BEEN PUTTNAM'S PROJECT FROM THE START, THREE LONG years before. Laid up with the flu in a rented house in Hollywood, where he was a producer with Casablanca Filmworks, he had reached for the one book on the shelf that looked interesting, a history of the Olympic Games up until 1948.
Here, he stumbled across a paragraph about Eric Liddell, the Scottish sprinter who had refused to run on a Sunday and had switched from the 100 meters to the 400 meters to win gold at the Paris Olympics. Looking back now, he says it had "echoes of everything I was looking for."
Puttnam, 37, was one of Hollywood's rising stars. He had earned respect with a number of imaginative projects from Bugsy Malone, a gangster movie made with child actors, to Ridley Scott's Napoleonic-era debut, The Duellists. He had also scored a worldwide hit with Midnight Express, which starred Brad Davis as an American drug smuggler tossed into the unwelcome embrace of a sadistic Turkish prison warden.
The film's caricature brutality won few marks for subtlety but proved to be box-office gold, with moviegoers cheering as Davis's character takes violent revenge on his persecutors. Puttnam was shocked by the audience's enthusiastic reaction to what he had imagined, when it was filmed, to be a chilling scene.
"I had had success with Midnight Express, but it was not the type of film I'd come into the industry to produce," he says now. "In this story [of Eric Liddell], I saw something not dissimilar to A Man for All Seasons," the tale of Thomas More's refusal to set aside his conscience by agreeing to the divorce of serial wife-botherer Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon.
Puttnam has an idealistic, almost romantic view of what movies can achieve. As he said of A Man for All Seasons in a 1988 PBS interview: "The cinema allowed me for one moment to feel that everything decent in me had come together." His movies after Chariots reflected that view of the transforming power of moviemaking, from the quixotic environmentalism of Local Hero to the redemptive power of friendship in The Killing Fields and the crisis of conscience at the heart of The Mission.
For Puttnam, filming Liddell's story would send a flare into the Hollywood sky, a declaration of principle in a fickle universe. "It answered questions I was asking myself: What was I doing in this business? Could I really make a movie like this?"
Seized by the story, he searched for more. "I wrote to the Amateur Athletic Association of England, which sent me three huge scrapbooks covering 1922, 1923, and 1924, with a note saying, 'Please return after use.'" The story of Harold Abrahams, the Jewish sprinter running as much against anti-Semitism as his athletic rivals, emerged as a parallel tale to Liddell's Christian journey. Puttnam's contract with Casablanca had ended, and he returned to the U.K., determined to develop the film on his own.
Puttnam needed a scriptwriter and chose Colin Welland, an ebullient English writer and TV actor—who also appeared in the 1971 hit movie Straw Dogs—who combined a love of sport with the mordant wit and class consciousness of his native North of England, the country's industrial heartland. "English writing at the time was very cool," says Puttnam, "but Colin was about passion." Welland's script would win an Oscar and produce one of the more memorable acceptance speeches in history, with Welland roaring gleefully, "The British are coming!"
Welland threw himself into his research, scouring the archives of the British Film Institute for period clips of the runners and interviewing survivors of the events or their relatives, anyone who might have a story to tell. He also had the luck that would accompany the movie from day one. An ad in The Times of London turned up a box of letters written home by Aubrey Montague, who raced in the 3000-meter steeplechase in Paris. The letters, read by Nicholas Farrell as Montague, became almost verbatim the film's voice-over, with Welland changing only the greeting to Mum and Pa, Mummy and Daddy being a little too fey for the present day. By the end of 1979, he had produced a 25-page treatment, tentatively titled Runners.
TO DIRECT, PUTTNAM TAPPED HUGH HUDSON, ONE OF A string of British ad men who would make the jump to feature films in those years. Hudson, who had also made documentaries—his rarely shown Fangio, on the life of the Argentinian race-car driver Juan Manuel Fangio has cult status among gearheads—and had worked as second unit director on Midnight Express, was known as a bravura visual stylist.
But Puttnam also had other reasons for his choice. Hudson was a reluctant product of the upper classes, an alumnus of Eton College, no less. "Hudson's firsthand experience of a 'class-bound society,'" says Puttnam, "gave the film its authenticity." His distaste for the arrogance of privilege gives the movie an anti-establishment edge that was only reinforced during filming.
The Cambridge colleges where Abrahams ran and studied recoiled when they saw the script and refused Hudson access. "Gonville & Caius said anti-Semitism didn't exist at the college in the 1920s," Hudson says, still furious three decades on. "Trinity implied the same. Of course it exists. I can be critical because I've seen it at close quarters. I lived among those people."
For the athletes, Hudson and Puttnam chose to cast promising unknowns, the dew still on them, whom they would then surround with experienced pros. Casting began in 1979, and the older parts duly went to some of the great names of the English screen and stage: John Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson as the sneeringly anti-Semitic Cambridge University masters; Ian Holm as Abrahams's pugnacious running coach Sam Mussabini.
Hudson's confidence in them freed him to concentrate on his young charges, in whom he saw something of Abrahams and Liddell. "You felt that trepidation in the young actors. They were trying to do things in their lives, trying to become somebody." He was counting on that restless ambition emerging on-screen.
He remembers seeing Ben Cross, who would play the notoriously prickly Abrahams, in the musical Chicago, "and I liked all that angst and aggression, the chip on the shoulder of an outsider." Ian Charleson would have the fearsome task of playing Liddell, a man widely regarded as a secular saint, without making him dull or preachy. "He had a smallish part in Piaf," says Hudson, "and about halfway through David and I looked at each other and said, 'He's the one.' He could play anything."
Before final approval, though, they had to go through a different audition, at Chiswick Stadium in West London. Tom McNab, who coincidentally had won the Eric Liddell Memorial Trophy for best junior athlete in Scotland before becoming a top triple jumper and then a British Olympic coach, was drafted in as script adviser and consultant. "David said, 'Your job is to make sure the athletics look real. If it doesn't, we're stuffed.'"
The first look at the "31 skinny actors" who turned up in Chiswick was not encouraging. Hudson describes the audition as "a shambles." Sent out to run around the track, some of the actors stomped off in disgust after a few yards; others were parting with their breakfast after a few more. McNab, who had to choose potential Olympians, albeit 1924 Olympians, from this motley crew, sounds horrified still: "They weren't like American actors. I mean, Burt Reynolds was a halfback. Paul Newman drove race cars. Robert Redford was a good skier. But these [British] guys did for sport what Quasimodo did for coat hangers. They'd clearly never done anything. I picked out Ben Cross and Ian Charleson, and I heard Hugh and David let out sighs of relief. They were the ones they wanted."
Casting Lord Lindsay, the aristocratic hurdler, was even more difficult. A rising Scottish actor came down from Edinburgh to audition. According to McNab: "We put a hurdle up and he paled visibly. He refused to go over it. If he'd been a horse, you'd have shot him." Eventually, "they found Nigel [Havers], who looked as if he could hurdle. He didn't show fear of it, anyway." Havers, who had been playing blue bloods all his life, got the part.
As training began, there were a few early shudders about the actors' fitness—McNab says Charleson turned up at his house for the first time "and he'd pulled a muscle running for a bus!"—but excess of zeal seems to have been more of a problem. "I was doing 10-mile runs at one point," says Farrell, "getting a bit overkeen, and I sprained my foot. Tom said, 'Calm down.'"
Fitness wasn't the only issue. They had to look like athletes—a little easier task when their models were the gifted mortals of 1924. As Havers says: "You could get away with a certain physique." Where they could, the filmmakers made it easy on them. Though McNab says Havers was a competent hurdler, the obstacles in the film were 2'6" high rather than the regulation 3'.
The young actors turned up twice a week for training at Wormwood Scrubs Stadium in West London, hard by a notorious prison. Still unpaid, they arranged their schedules around collecting unemployment and whatever work they could find. They got by, though. And they got competitive. "They were like athletes in many ways," says McNab, "insecure, all about performance." He adds: "Most of these guys had athletic ability they had never tapped. Ben Cross got to the point that he thought he was fast. He said, 'What do you think I could run for the 100 meters, 11 flat?' I said, 'You'd be lucky if you could run 12.6.' I put a veteran female runner against him. She was over 50 and she slaughtered him over 40 yards. He never mentioned it again."
Havers, meanwhile, took a tumble while showing off his hurdling technique to Cross. He dislocated a shoulder and, as he waited in agony for an ambulance, realized with a sinking feeling that he had also broken a wrist. A cast would have ruled him out of the movie, so he taped it and disguised it with a sweater and later a huge wristband. Havers says, "The wrist never really recovered." But as shooting began, he was on the set.
After three months of boot camp, they all were. A fitter, faster bunch than when they started, they'd become a tight-knit group. They were friends, and it shows on-screen. As Havers says: "We were like a little Olympic outfit ourselves, a very close group. We forgot about the camera being on us. Hugh just let it roll."
FINANCING THE MOVIE POSED PROBLEMS OF A DIFFERENT order. Puttnam and Hudson may have been sold on the treatment, but it was tough to persuade anyone else to share their enthusiasm. (British film company Goldcrest did put up some money to help pay for the development of the script, but Hudson says, "It was the best investment they ever made. A few thousand dollars and they've been claiming the film as theirs ever since.")
Their first big break came at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. As Puttnam and his former business partner, Sandy Lieberson, then president of 20th Century Fox, were falling asleep in a shared bedroom, Puttnam told him the story line of the movie. Lieberson liked it enough to put up half the $5.5 million Puttnam needed. The other half was tougher.
Hudson says: "The American studios rejected it. Why? Because the two main characters barely meet. There is no shoot-out at the end. They support each other because they are both running for Great Britain." He adds that after weeks touring the U.S. in a fruitless search for finance, "I remember sitting with David in a hotel room almost weeping. It seemed impossible to get anybody to understand why this was a film worth investing in."
Puttnam says it reached the point where "we were thinking of pulling the plug. That or remortgage the house. My wife said, 'Don't think twice. Just do it.' Luckily it didn't get to that." By 1981, Allied Stars, a British production outfit owned by Egyptian mogul Mohamed Al Fayed, agreed to stump up the other half.
There were strings attached. Fox, which Puttnam says developed cold feet about the movie after Lieberson left the company, demanded two American "marquee names" for the cast. And Allied Stars wanted a producer's credit for Al Fayed's son Dodi, who would later acquire a tragic kind of fame when he died in a Paris car crash alongside Princess Diana. Naturally enough, after more than a year searching for investors, Puttnam was not about to quibble over these details.
Finding a U.S. distributor was no less difficult. In a 25th anniversary film on the making of Chariots, Puttnam describes how the production head of one U.S. studio slipped out of a screening to answer the call of nature and failed to return. "We never saw him again." The head of sports for a major network, offered the project as a made-for-TV movie, "turned it down flat. He didn't want to buy it at any price. We were saved from going to TV because they didn't think it was good enough." Finally, Warner Bros. and Ladd Co. stepped in, treating it "like a newborn child."
It would still be a strain to bring Chariots in on budget, not least because producer and director were eager to give it an epic quality: They even took the cast to see Lawrence of Arabia before shooting began to show them the emotion and sweep they were after. Hudson kicked in ?70,000 of his own money to see it through preproduction. And Cambridge's late refusal to cooperate meant they started filming with a key sequence unbudgeted and unscheduled. "In my weekly progress reports [to Fox]," says Puttnam with a smile, "I somehow managed to evade the issue."
WELLAND'S JOB WAS TO CRAFT A WINNING STORY OUT of great raw material. It was not to make a documentary. The finished script included a string of elisions and inventions for dramatic effect, most significantly that Liddell discovered that the 100-meter heats were on a Sunday only as he was taking ship for France. In fact, he knew months before and trained for the 400 meters instead, though he was as much of an outsider in reality as he was in the film.
Abrahams, meanwhile, had already won his 100-meter gold before he was run down by Paddock, Scholz, and, yes, Liddell in the 200 meters, the only time they ever raced each other, whatever the movie says. Capturing the blue-ribbon event after he had lost once made for a redemptive climax, and better cinema.
More significant is the question of Abrahams's portrayal as a Jewish outsider running as much against anti-Semitism as his opponents. Though he seems to have encountered anti-Jewish hostility along the way, and to have drawn motivation from it in his running, he also went on to become a pillar of the English establishment—as did his two very successful, very sporting brothers—and in many ways the consummate insider. Not only did he convert to Catholicism in 1934, but as a U.K. athletics administrator, he argued against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin to the consternation of many British Jews.
As for Sam Mussabini (real name, wonderfully, Scipio Africanus Mussabini), who in Ian Holm's brilliant hands almost steals the picture, McNab says that, while Mussabini was a fine conditioner and motivator, "he had no idea at all technically. He believed in forward-leaning all through the race, not just at the start. And he believed in a cross-arms movement, like a walker." Abrahams seems to have ignored him on both counts. As McNab says, he also "talked very matter-of-factly" about several supplements that might raise an eyebrow today: strychnine for dulling fatigue; cocaine lozenges as a stimulant.
It was, of course, a very different time in athletics. In Britain, not long before, the idea of training at all would have been seen as dreadfully poor form by the sport's upper-class custodians. And as McNab says, in 1924 coaching at the amateur level was almost nonexistent, and diet barely figured. "You ate what was put in front of you. Mostly it was university students competing because they were better fed than working-class lads. Any professional training was very much about the professionals."
Scotland was one of the hotbeds of professionalism, with large crowds flocking to watch, and bet on, the sprinters. McNab himself was once suspended by the amateur authorities after competing, and winning ?10, at a Scottish meet, and the sporting year still features handicapped professional races.
In Mussabini's day, McNab says, "They'd give you purges to clean out your stomach, and laxatives like Black Jack that would have gone through you like thunder. It was what they did with animals." Long-term health was irrelevant: "The pros were competing for big money, so they were peaking for one event at a time." Mussabini, who in real life was introduced to Abrahams by Liddell, "adopted a lot of the attitudes of the pros."
Ian Holm threw himself into the role, grilling McNab for hours about coaching, adding small touches to build the character. A very private man, Holm declined to be interviewed for this story, but McNab says it was he who thought of holding his cane above Abrahams's knees to force him into that high prancing gait designed to help him shorten his stride. Nicholas Farrell also recalls the scene "in that garret flat (in Paris) when he hears Harold Abrahams has won. He said to Hugh, 'Keep the camera running,' and at the end he grabs his hat and punches his hand through it. He took you with him as an audience completely."
CHARIOTS OF FIRE WAS SHOT IN LESS THAN THREE MONTHS under intense pressure, cast and crew constantly on the move between locations. With money tight, the shooting schedule had to be completed each day because they could not afford overruns. Thankfully, the locations made this possible. Hudson says, "We were in Scotland, which is a wonderful place to film: There is usually a filtered sun, constant changing of the light, and the most spectacular terrain. And then there was Cambridge, which is beautiful."
Barred from Trinity College, Hudson shot the Great Court Run, with Harold Abrahams beating Lord Lindsay to become the first man ever to make it around the inner courtyard before the clock tolls 12, at his old alma mater west of London. Eton's quad was dangerously tight, McNab says. Thankfully nobody was hurt, though history was a little roughed up. In actuality, Trinity's Great Court Run was first managed by one Lord David Burghley in 1927 (see "Who Beat the Clock?," above). A year later Burghley won the Olympic 400-meter hurdles in Amsterdam. He was the basis for Nigel Havers' character, but it seems he refused to allow his name to be used in the film because, always the competitor, it had him losing to Abrahams.
The filmmakers stayed lucky, even when luck seemed to have deserted them. Hudson remembers shooting that signature, and much-parodied, opening scene, actors and local athletes cut slow-motion running along a beach at St. Andrews in Scotland to the Vangelis theme tune (this before lolloping, to the horror of golf purists, across the fairway of the famous Old Course).
Hudson shot it to music. "I wanted the camera crew to get a feeling of movement, of this posse of greyhounds moving down the beach." The day was, he says, "Absolutely flat, dead, but as luck would have it, there was a scratch on the lens. We had them running through freezing water, and they had to come back and do it again. Luckily the next day was rougher, with a shifting sky and whitecaps on the water." It turned prose into poetry. "As Eric Liddell would have said, 'God was with us.'"
They were just as blessed shooting the movie's climactic scenes at the Paris Olympics. They found an old stadium a ferry-ride from Liverpool and transformed it, with scaffolding and flags and cutouts of spectators, into the Stades Colombes. They also wanted live bodies, 7,000 of them, for the main grandstand.
They advertised locally for extras on a holiday weekend, offering the chance to win prizes—including a Fiat car—to anyone who showed up and stayed until 5 o'clock. "Shooting on a holiday was very expensive, but we needed a crowd," says Hudson. "We had a start time of 9 o'clock, and at 8:45 the stadium was still empty. We looked at each other and said, 'This is a disaster,'—Puttnam calls it 'one of the most terrifying moments of my life'—and then we started to see them coming over the brow of the hill, in tens and then hundreds and then thousands."
About 2,500 turned up. They were given period hats and programs to wave, and Hudson and his crew took all the long shots and wide shots they needed. There was no CGI in those days, and in places it shows, but they had their Olympic Games. The Fiat was drawn for, and won, and the winner eventually tracked down. The rain, miraculously, held off, and the cast and crew came back for the close-ups the following day.
There was the odd mishap along the way. McNab recalls that they wanted to show pole-vaulters, "but steel poles weren't used until 1948. They found a bamboo pole that hadn't been used for 40 years, and got this good 4.40-meter pole vaulter who ran up and put the pole in the hole and the whole pole exploded."
They were a week setting up the stadium, with McNab showing the actors how to behave, digging holes for their feet in the cinder track with a trowel. Charleson had been working on Liddell's running style, head thrown back to the heavens and arms flailing as he approached the tape. Hudson says Liddell's sister Jennie later praised the portrayal, "but said the one thing we got wrong was that Eric never ran like that with his head back. 'You made him look very odd,' she said. But that was the one thing we did know," because there is the film to prove it.
Charleson, who had become wholly absorbed in the part, retreating to a cab to rewrite a postrace sermon in a way that captures Liddell's quiet appeal perfectly, concluded that when his head went back and he powered for the line, he was surrendering to faith, or as the film has it "to divine inspiration."
McNab sees it more prosaically. "When Liddell got tired, he started to roll about. You try to hold your shape through the whole race. When you start to lose it, the force goes all over the place. It was more divine desperation than divine inspiration."
BY THIS TIME, THE AMERICANS HAD ALSO ARRIVED. BRAD Davis and Dennis Christopher were hot properties at the time, Davis for his starring role in Midnight Express and Christopher for the cult bike movie Breaking Away. Puttnam says they agreed to work for little more than expenses.
"When David Puttnam called, you answered," says Christopher, adding that, "Frankly, I would've signed on to be John Gielgud's dresser." The two young stars arrived before they were due to start filming, riding up to Liverpool on the train from London. Davis was to play the flamboyant Charley Paddock, Olympic gold medalist and world record holder in the 100 meters, instantly recognizable for his trademark leap for the tape at the end of a race, in many ways the sport's first superstar.
(An alumnus of legendary coach Dean Cromwell's track program at USC and a virtual professional in an amateur world, Paddock appeared in a string of Hollywood movies after Paris, was engaged to silent film star Bebe Daniels, and was almost banned from the 1928 U.S. Olympic team for writing newspaper stories about his meets and appearing as himself on-screen. He would have merited a movie of his own.)
Davis, though, whose hard-partying lifestyle was beginning to overwhelm him and who was eager to soften his public image, wanted Dennis Christopher's less extrovert role as fellow sprinter Jackson Scholz. They discussed the switch on the train, but almost missed Liverpool, falling asleep and "almost having to jump off" before it hauled them back to London.
With time on their hands, and aided and abetted by Dodi Al Fayed, who Christopher says was very excited to be hanging out with his well-known American stars, they partied heavily enough to be ejected from two hotels before taking up residence in an unrestored wing of the landmark Adelphi, "a ghost city of a hotel where we could cause as much trouble as we wanted without anyone knowing."
McNab recalls his first impression when they arrived on set: "They were nice guys, but it wasn't going well. I said to David Puttnam, 'They don't seem to be listening to me. It's not that they're doing anything bad, but you'd need a Ouija board to get through to them.' He said, 'Don't worry, I'll sort it out.' And the next day they were fine." The partying was officially over.
Nicholas Farrell remembers Davis being very fit, for all the carousing. "He did a handstand and had someone hold his ankles, and he did push-ups in a handstand. I thought, That's taking it a bit far." Christopher confirms that "Brad was very gung-ho.
He really wanted to get into the thing. I'd already done this. I knew you can't turn yourself into a champion in two weeks."
He also knew a little bit about filming a race from Breaking Away, most obviously that what they were filming wasn't a real race. "At the beginning it was a pissing contest. Everyone wanted to show what they could do. I thought, Bollocks to this." He approached the cinematographer, David Watkin: "I'd say, 'Where does the frame end?' He'd say, 'That post.' So I put myself in a position where they'd fire the gun, the race would start, and I'd have the lead I needed."
Sadly, with cuts to be made, much of Davis's and Christopher's contributions never made it on-screen (nor did a shipboard romance for Eric Liddell). Originally, Christopher says, the rivalry between Brits and Yanks was more explicit. There was also more humor, with Paddock smuggling a flapper and a case of champagne into his quarters in two steamer trunks, and the U.S. coach lecturing sternly on the importance of a sex-free run-up to the Games. "We signed on to play Americans with a significant part in the movie," Christopher says. But the final version was "cut down because of time, for marketing purposes." As he also concedes: "Their main responsibility was to tell Ben and Ian's story."
According to Nigel Havers, one famous scene survived the cut only after he pleaded for it to be reinstated. It has Lindsay training in the sumptuous grounds of his stately home, the hurdles erected by the side of a lake and topped with champagne glasses. McNab says the aim was to show how "the upper classes busted their balls at everything they did, but they didn't want it to show. There always had to be a feeling of effortlessness." He suggested showing blood on the hurdles from the inside of Lindsay's ankle, a common hurdling injury. That didn't fly. "I said, 'What about putting matchboxes on the hurdles?'" as Burghley reportedly did. "But Colin said, 'No, that's far too mundane. We'll use champagne glasses.' We had to tape them to the top of the hurdles, which was fairly plebeian." Sadly, the champagne never arrived either. The beverage that Lindsay worked so hard to avoid spilling "was warm ginger beer."
THE MOMENT THE MUSIC STARTED," SAYS NIGEL HAVERS, "people moved forward in their seats." The Chariots of Fire theme, composed by Vangelis, was so critical to the feel of the movie that Hudson says "it was almost like another character in the film." The original idea was to use Vangelis's "L'Enfant"—which would underpin the romantic tension in The Year of Living Dangerously a few years later—but the Greek composer swore he could do better and went away to try.
"David and I gave him the chance," says Hudson, "but then he would have to come and play it to David. It was a kind of challenge." Shortly after, says Hudson, Puttnam and his wife were dining out in London when an excited Vangelis, who had tracked them down to the restaurant, "tipped up in his big Rolls Royce and asked them to come out. They climbed into the Roller, and he played his music over its big speakers. It blew them away." Hudson adds that "Vangelis told David, 'My father is a runner, and this is an anthem to him.' So there was a personal reverberation running through it." It was one of the first electronic sound tracks, and it won Vangelis an Oscar.
Almost everyone who worked on the movie seems to have won out somehow. The young actors, middle-aged now, remember it a little wistfully as a golden experience. "I thought every film after would be like this, but it wasn't," Havers says. "It was a very happy time. We ended shooting at Eton with the run against the clock. It was a beautiful midsummer day. I kept saying to Hugh, 'Are you sure you don't want to do another take?' And he'd say, 'No, I think I've got it.' I didn't want it to end."
Farrell says Puttnam's sense of mission helped convince them they had been part of something unrepeatable: "The delightful thing about the man is that he is so passionate. It seemed to me that he was always there in a constructive way. There was no sense of, 'Oh, my God, the producer.'
"When we finished filming," Farrell continues, "Puttnam sent every member of the crew, from the scaffolders to make-up people, a personal letter saying how he didn't think we'd get there and that, though it may not amount to anything, just looking at it, he feels proud. Then he took some points of profit and divided it about 140 ways, saying that everyone would get a tiny share of any profit, if it ever goes into profit. And for two decades, those checks came in—not huge but not unsubstantial." This, says Farrell, at a time when most producers were hiring armies of accountants to massage the numbers so their films would apparently never make money.
Chariots of Fire grossed more than $58 million in the U.S. alone, 10 times its budget, with Warner Bros. Entertainment marketing it cannily to every demographic they could find. Hudson says they even pushed it to churches as a Christian morality tale for the modern age. Its appeal is more universal than that.
Eric Liddell had died in 1945, in a Japanese concentration camp in China, where he had returned years before to work as a missionary. But when Colin Welland began his research in 1978, Harold Abrahams had only just passed away.
Welland went along to the memorial service, which inspired the opening scene of the movie. It returns to that London church at the close, with a stooping Nigel Havers telling a cadaverous Nicholas Farrell: "We ran them off their feet." But Hudson says that he and Puttnam were determined not to end the picture with "an old man in a memorial service."
Instead, they very deliberately bookended the movie with the boys on the beach in 1923, running through the surf and into the future, their lives ahead of them. It was about "the wind, the sea salt, and the pure physical joy of being young. It makes you want to run, and what could be better than that?"
Who Beat The Clock?
IN OCTOBER 2007, Sam Dobin heard the last chime of 12 a split-second after crossing the finish line in the courtyard of Trinity College, Cambridge. It was the moment he entered history as only the second man to finish the Great Court Run before the clock tolled its last.
The run that forms a centerpiece of Chariots of Fire was filmed at Eton College, but the traditional course takes runners approximately 370 meters around the Trinity courtyard. Its origins are obscure—hardly surprising since the college was founded by Henry VIII back in 1546—but for decades it has been run by optimistic freshmen on matriculation day. They run to win, but better still to make it round before the courtyard clock strikes the final note of 12, a time that varies between 43 and 44.5 seconds, depending on when the clock was wound.
Dobin was a 19-year-old student. Today, an economics teacher and athletics coach, he recalls that night's unrestrained celebration, the media swarm that had him waking at all hours for interviews with Australian radio, and details that disappeared from news accounts.
For one thing, he says, he did not run the same race as Lord David Burghley, who managed the feat in 1927 and went on to win Olympic 400-meter hurdle gold in Amsterdam the following year. Until recently, Dobin says, "You had to stick to the paving. Now they allow you to cut across the cobbles, which makes for curved corners rather than right angles."
Which makes Burghley's feat amazing, he says, even more so since "the rumor is he did it at midnight" as they used to before the dead hand of safety regulations outlawed it (though well-oiled students, pursued by college staff, still try), and probably after a big meal and a few drinks. Olympians Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram tried the same course in 1988, for charity and quite sober, and failed.


text:
Just a quickie to let you all know of the great service I've had from the Scottish reseller www.360tacticalvr.com. I first contacted them just before Christmas to inquire of NN5 availability to be told that they were out of stock until the New Year BUT that I could have an NN3 loan unit over the holidays. What service.
I've now taken delivery of the NN5 and can't wait to get out there with it.
Brendan MacNeill. Edinburgh. Scotland. UK.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Lockey® Digital Systems, Inc warrants to the original purchaser of this Digital Door Lock Keyless Access Control that, should it prove defective by reason of improper workmanship and Lockey® Digital Systems, Inc. will replace or repair, at Lockey® Digital Systems, Inc.'s potion, this lock at no charge if shipped prepaid with dated proof of purchase during the warranty period to:
Do NOT return the lock to the retailer where the lock was purchased.
All Warranty work must be sent to: (Proof of Purchase Must Be Included) Lockey® Warranty 116 W. Michigan Avenue Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858
THE WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER defects caused by modifications, alterations, repairs or service by anyone other than Lockey® Digital Systems, Inc. physical abuse to, or misuse of the product or its operation in a manner contrary to instructions. WARRANTY IS VOID if silver screws are removed or tampered with from the back of combination side of Lock. If any type of lubricant, oil, grease or any other substance is placed within the Lockey® Digital Door Lock, the Warranty will be Void. Under no circumstances shall Lockey® Digital Systems, Inc. be liable to purchaser or any other person due to any special or consequential damages, whether arising out of breach of warranty, breach of contract or otherwise, including but not limited to, loss of property resulting from the failure of security or any other cause. Any lock that has been abused beyond the point of normal wear and tear will not be repaired. Lockey® Digital Systems, Inc. does not warrant this lock from damage due to improper installation, or against the consequences of use for which this lock was not designed. Warranty does not cover key override locks.
If the deadlocking spring latch or adjustable deadbolt fails, please send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com parts will be sent to you at no charge. Please include your name, address and the model of your lock as well as the size of the latch (2 3/8" or 2 3/4"). If the entire lock is sent to Lockey®Digital Systems, Inc. and only the latch/deadbolt is needed and the mechanics of the lock are in good working condition, the customer will be charged shipping/c.o.d charges to get the lock back.
WARRANTY is for Mechanical defects to the lock. Although Lockey® Digital Systems, Inc. uses only the finest protective coatings, finishes have their limitations due to natural elements and causes beyond the control of Lockey® Digital Systems, Inc. Wear to the finish is not considered to be a defect. Any express warranty not provided in this document and any remedy for breach of contract which, but for this provision might arise by implication or operation of law, is hereby excluded chant ability and of fitness for a particular purpose are expressly limited to a term of five years. This warranty also excludes all costs arising from installation and removal.
Exclusions: Locks manufactured prior to 2000 have no warranty coverage.
For questions concerning your warranty, please email: firstname.lastname@example.com
© 2000-2016 Build.com. All Rights Reserved.


text:
Laid-Off Professionals Find a Haven in Franchises
As the franchise market struggles through a tough economy, professional-services chains are surging ahead of the pack.
These chains, which handle white-collar jobs like career coaching and banking services, have boosted their number of outlets by 2.2% over last year. That's tied for first place among 10 industry sectors in a recent International Franchise Association report. Professional services also showed the best employment growth in the survey, at 3.5%.
Big Gains
Meanwhile, the sector hit close to $145 billion in output, a measure roughly equivalent to sales—an increase of 5.5% over last year.
Why all the activity? The poor economy is giving the sector a boost.
With financing tight and people's bank accounts depleted, professional-services franchises look much more affordable for prospective franchisees than their retail counterparts. Fees to launch a professional-services franchise can range from under $500 to $30,000, far less than the hundreds of thousands of dollars often required for a restaurant or retail location. "The total get-in is lower and it's an easier return on investment," says Jeff Johnson, founder and chief executive of the Franchise Research Institute, which provides confidential opinion research to franchisers.
Another factor: Owners of these franchises need to have expertise in the field—and there are plenty of white-collar workers out there who have been downsized or who aren't satisfied in their current positions. "Middle-management and upper-management folks are looking for some type of business opportunity, and they might have just a little bit of cash to invest," Mr. Johnson says.
Flexible Setups
Likewise, potential owners know the labor market is full of white-collar workers to staff the businesses. And the chains can often offer flexible work arrangements as an inexpensive inducement to workers.
For instance, one selling point at Mom Corps Inc., which offers professional flexible staffing and consulting services, is that its outlets employ mothers looking to get back into the workforce on their own schedules.
Allison O'Kelly, founder of the Atlanta-based chain, says she fields anywhere from 10 to 50 inquiries a week from prospective franchisees. Currently, the chain has only 15 outlets, but Ms. O'Kelly says she's ready to pick up the pace of awarding franchises.
"We want to make sure [potential owners] are the right fit for us and that they will be successful in this business," she says.
Ms. Garone is a writer in Alameda, Calif. She can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.
- 7


text:
Terry Adams is the kind of omnivorous music fan who's always eager to hear every new thing, and soak up every little nuance of pop culture. That's the sort of disorder that often leads folks to become music writers, but Adams took a better path, founding the group NRBQ back in 1966.
NRBQ, with its latest album "Brass Tacks" just released on June 17, swings through the area this weekend, with a Friday show at The Met Cafe in Pawtucket, and a Saturday show at The RegattaBar in Harvard Square. Both shows will also feature The Whole Wheat Horns augmenting the quartet.
Adams is the only original member in the current lineup of NRBQ (originally intended as an abbreviation of New Rhythm and Blues Quartet), but the band sounds as if all four members had been there from the start. Guitarist/vocalist Scott Ligon and drummer Conrad Choucroun have been with the band for seven years, while bassist Casey McDonough joined in 2012.� The new album's dozen cuts include ten new songs, with six either written or co-written by Adams. Ligon and McDonough wrote two songs each, and also collaborated with Adams on another.
The new album is certainly congruent with NRBQ's past work, in that the unifying principle of the music is that anything goes in terms of possible influences, and their special brand of rock 'n' roll touches upon every potential form of roots music.� While that approach might suggest chaos is always an option, NRBQ has for decades crafted appealing and upbeat music, with witty lyrics that often provide intelligent commentary on contemporary life.
Adams noted that he feels a real kinship with Ligon, and the guitarist has said he felt he was mant to be in this band, even when he saw them for the first time as a teenager. Ligon penned the tune that opens the album, the 1950-60s-sounding pop number "Waitin' On My Sweetie Pie." Adams' keyboards on the song sound like a calliope, lending it all a surreal, playful tone.
"Whenever Scott and I get together it somehow comes outy sounding like that," Adams laughed from his Chicago home. "Scott and Casey also really sound like that. But that's a simple song, and those are always the hardest ones to get a good take on. Scott and I have been working together for eight years now, and three studio albums, as well as one under my name, and I believe he has a real feel for what I've been doing all these years. And, of course, Casey had worked with Scott for a long time before joining us, so we have really good, strong ties."
"When it comes to the drummer, Conrad Choucroun, we'd known him since he was 19," Adams added. "Tom Ardolino (original NRBQ drummer and longtime Adams pal, who died two years ago) had even said a few years ago, 'if anything ever happens to me, that's the guy to get.' So everyone in the band now has a real solid tie to the music."
It's especially crucial that everyone in NRBQ be simpatico, because of the band's approach to music. Just as any kind of coloring might show up in a composition, a live performance is not strictly bound by those compositions. NRBQ's attitude is much more of a jazz approach than most pop bands, but it just comes down to an openness, a willingness to explore a bit.
As Adams has said previously, "As for the sound, my teenage culture has been in the music since I started the band. Sun Ra and the Three Stooges, it all makes sense to me."
"I was talking about the overall culture, and absorbing all of that stuff as a kid," Adams said, commenting on his own words. "Musically, of course it all started out with Bo Diddley and guys like that, but also Sun Ra and jazz people, who were also on the radio back then, and rockers like Duane Eddy. Those are all influences on me and it all comes out in the music I write. Somehow, out of the combination of all these influences, you get an artistic identity of your own."
If that mixmaster of influences produces a sound that straddles genres, or goes beyond genres, that's so much the better, the way Adams sees it.
"I never believed an artist signs up to go into a pre-existing concept," said Adams. "That reminds me of elementary school, where they have everyone line up in neat lines. I was always the kid who turned sideways, anything to make sure I did not conform. My view of influences, musical and otherwise, is that if you let everything in, everything comes out in what you create."
One of the most stunning examples of that philosophy on the new album is "Places Far Away," a song Adams wrote when he was 15, where some listeners have noted a Sun Ra tinge. The song deftly combines pop and avant-garde elements; it could be a film noir soundtrack with odd tangents, as if the hero turned a corner and met Laurel and Hardy.
"Back home in Louisville, I did not do well taking piano lessons," Adams explained. "They did not inspire me, but starting about 1963 I began studying with a composer. I wanted to make music that would do to people, what it does to me. So instead of toiling over piano books, I was composing every week. I didn't have lyrics to that one until years later, but my aim was to focus on song structures, and making something that lasts."
"It is funny you compare that to a movie soundtrack," Adams added. "I appeared in the film "Short Cuts," years ago, and we also made a lot of music for the soundtrack. I actually threw that tune in, so it is in 'Short Cuts,' although totally uncredited."
Another notable new cut is "Love This Love We Got," a slightly skewed love song with strutting piano, almost like Randy Newman visiting New Orleans.
"That's the first time in NRBQ history we have two piano players on the same song," said Adams with a chuckle. "Scott joined me on piano on that one, and we finished it in 15 minutes. I think I'm in the left speaker, and Scott's on the right. We're the rocking version of Ferrante and Teicher now!"
The new album is packed with hidden pop gems, like the lilting, Beach Boys-like love song "Sit In My Lap," the mock panic of "I'm Not Here," or Adams' barbed take on credit cards, "Greetings from Delaware."
"One of the best things about this band is that I have the luxury of having better singers than I am," said Adams of 'Sit on My Lap.' "Scott has a beautiful voice, and a real feel for my work, so it is easy to write for someone like that. 'I'm Not Here' is just about a guy who wants to get away for a few minutes of peace and quiet. As a touring musician, you need credit cards for checking into hotels and so on, so I have gotten a lot of 'Greetings from Delaware' and they are not always the most friendly messages. I think a lot of people can relate to that. And that song's chorus has a definite echo of the old '60s pop tune, "Please Please Mr. Postman," where you're almost pleading with the mailman--'don't come to my box!"
Adams and NRBQ haven't played Boston a few years, and this will be their maiden RegattaBar gig. Both shows this weekend should feature plenty of songs new and old, even their gliding '60s rock treatment of the old Rodgers and Hammerstein classic "Getting to Know You." Just don't expect everything to sound just like it does on record.
"I'm not happy unless I'm doing something new," said Adams. "It's like that when we play. We like the risk of random chances happening in our music, so there are no really strict arrangements. Making the music too predictable takes the fun out of it. A lot of people say that makes us a rock band with a jazz attitude, and it has always been that way."
The Met Cafe is located at 1005 Main St. in Pawtucket, and Friday's show is scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m. with all tickets $20. (Call 401-729-1005 or check www.themetri.com for more information) The RegattaBar is located in the Charles Hotel at One Bennett St., Harvard Square in Cambridge, and Saturday's show is slated for 7:30 p.m., with all tickets $25. (Call 617-395-7757 or check www.regattabarjazz for more information).


text:
Did you arrive here looking for Loulou Loves You?
Thank you so much for your support. Those 6 years were such a wild and exciting adventure, but it became time for me to evolve to new projects and fulfill dreams that had been in the pipeline even before fashion stepped in.
I am so excited to be working with clients for Holistic Empowerment Coaching, Tarot Reading and running events and workshops.
For more information please visit my about page or contact me.


text:
13 Best Anti-Aging Skin Care Products
From creams to serums and powders, these are the anti-aging skin care products our readers say are so worth the investment
Why it's great: Readers remember relying on Neutrogena products for their acne-prone teenage skin, and now they find themselves using the brand's eye cream to fight fine lines and wrinkles. "Not only are lines no longer a problem, but there is a new clarity and brightness to my eye area," one reviewer notes.
Agree? Disagree? Write your review for Neutrogena Rapid Wrinkle Repair Eye Cream here.
Buy Now on Amazon
*At time of publication
SEE NEXT PAGE: Best Anti-Aging Product No. 4: Elemis Pro-Collagen Marine Cream, $128
Older comments
The philosophy turbo booster c powder is one of the products that I must have at all times. I'm an aesthetician and my clients love it.
by Debb42 Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 07:47AM Report as inappropriate
vuery good
by alwafi28 Saturday, May 4, 2013 at 09:37AM Report as inappropriate
Maybe I'll try Burt's Bees
by Zeaundra Friday, May 3, 2013 at 03:22PM Report as inappropriate
I am definitely buying that Philosophy.
by Lamexicana1 Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 01:07PM Report as inappropriate
would like to try these
by butterfly11 Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 06:25PM Report as inappropriate
i am goirng to try
by gomie1964 Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 11:12AM Report as inappropriate
I would love to try the La Mer line but it's way out of my price range it always has great reviews :(
by kiminsc Wednesday, April 3, 2013 at 06:03AM Report as inappropriate
I have used wei 7 day face repair it works just wish i had more
by collinstexaskim Monday, April 1, 2013 at 09:15PM Report as inappropriate
I wish I had the money to spend on a $100+ or $200+ skin cream. I might try the Olay Regenerist, the Boots or the Burt's Bees as they are more in my price range.
by purple9a Friday, March 15, 2013 at 08:39PM Report as inappropriate
by gomie1964 Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 11:47AM Report as inappropriate
to top


text:
News about Feet, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.
Canada: Another Human Foot Washes Ashore
The foot was found by a hiker on Vancouver Island's Botanical Beach and was the 13th to wash up on British Columbia's shoreline since 2007.
February 11, 2016, Thursday
MORE ON FEET AND: British Columbia (Canada) , Feet , Canada , Vancouver Island (British Columbia) , Deaths (Fatalities) , Sneakers
Ask Well: Does Foot Size Affect Running?
A reader asks: How does foot size affect running efficiency? Is there an advantage that counteracts the additional weight of a larger foot?
November 6, 2015, Friday
A Beneficial Evolutionary Step for Chameleons
The lizard has five digits, but in each hand and foot, these digits are split into two "bundles" that makes living in trees easier for them.
September 22, 2015, Tuesday
MORE ON FEET AND: Chameleons , Joints (Body Part) , BMC Evolutionary Biology (Journal) , Feet
The Inexorable Forces of Nail Growth
It's like the movement of a tectonic plate at the end of your finger, or toe.
August 25, 2015, Tuesday
MORE ON FEET AND: Nails (Body Part) , Hands , Feet , Biology and Biochemistry
Reflexologists Are Squeezed by Cheaper Competitors and State Rules
Certified reflexologists deplore storefront practitioners who have less training and states that require reflexologists to be licensed as massage therapists.
July 23, 2015, Thursday
MORE ON FEET AND: Feet , Massage , Alternative and Complementary Medicine , States (US) , Accreditation , Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Voting With My (Ugly) Feet?
After a snub against women who wore flats at the Cannes Film Festival, a writer looks back on a lifetime of missteps in cruel-fitting shoes.
June 7, 2015, Sunday
MORE ON FEET AND: Shoes and Boots , Feet
Digital Skills: D.I.Y. Manicures and Pedicures
How to master the care of your fingers and toes from the comfort of home, without grappling with guilt.
May 21, 2015, Thursday
MORE ON FEET AND: Nails (Body Part) , Beauty Salons , Cosmetics and Toiletries , Feet
Ask Well: Plantar Fasciitis Relief
If you have stairs or a sturdy box in your home, along with a backpack, timely relief for plantar fasciitis may be possible.
September 15, 2014, Monday
Ask Well: The Problem With Bunions
Non-surgical treatments can reduce the pain or discomfort from a bunion and keep it from worsening.
August 29, 2014, Friday
MORE ON FEET AND: Feet , Surgery and Surgeons
Should Runners Get Pedicures?
Lost or discolored toenails are part of being a dedicated runner. Can anything be done to prevent this?
June 12, 2014, Thursday
MORE ON FEET AND: Beauty Salons , Feet , Nails (Body Part) , Running
Rss Feeds On Feet
Subscribe to an RSS feed on this topic. What is RSS?
Get Alerts On Feet
Receive My Alerts e-mails on topics covered on this page.More Alerts >>


text:
From the United States Department of Veterans Affairs:
World War I - known at the time as "The Great War" - officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the eleventh month. For that reason, Nov.11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of "the war to end all wars."
In November 1919, President (Woodrow) Wilson proclaimed Nov. 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations "
The original concept for the celebration was for a day observed with parades and public meetings and a brief suspension of business beginning at 11 a.m.
The United States Congress officially recognized the end of World War I when it passed a concurrent resolution on June 4, 1926, with these words:
Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and
Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and
Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared Nov. 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.
An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday-a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as "Armistice Day." Armistice Day was primarily a day set aside to honor veterans of World War I, but in 1954, after World War II had required the greatest mobilization of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen in the Nation's history; after American forces had fought aggression in Korea, the 83rd Congress, at the urging of the veterans service organizations, amended the Act of 1938 by striking out the word "Armistice" and inserting in its place the word "Veterans." With the approval of this legislation (Public Law 380) on June 1, 1954, November 11th became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.
Later that same year, on Oct. 8, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first "Veterans Day Proclamation" which stated: "In order to insure proper and widespread observance of this anniversary, all veterans, all veterans' organizations, and the entire citizenry will wish to join hands in the common purpose. Toward this end, I am designating the Administrator of Veterans' Affairs as Chairman of a Veterans Day National Committee, which shall include such other persons as the Chairman may select, and which will coordinate at the national level necessary planning for the observance. I am also requesting the heads of all departments and agencies of the Executive branch of the Government to assist the National Committee in every way possible."
Veterans have made this country what it is - the greatest in the world.
Those who have served, are serving or will serve are far better than I. Being in the military is something that never interested me whatsoever.
My father and uncle served in the Army.
But, that was still no motivation for me to do the same.
Being a member of our military takes someone who is willing, who will sacrifice and who is selfless.
I think I am that way with my family, but the selfless part has a lot to be desired.
It takes a special person to fight for our freedons.
Thank you to all.
I have often wondered how and why an American flag is folded the way it is.
So, I visited www.usflag.org.
The flag folding ceremony represents the same religious principles on which our country was originally founded. The portion of the flag denoting honor is the canton of blue containing the stars representing the states our veterans served in uniform. The canton field of blue dresses from left to right and is inverted when draped as a pall on a casket of a veteran who has served our country in uniform.
In the Armed Forces of the United States, at the ceremony of retreat the flag is lowered, folded in a triangle fold and kept under watch throughout the night as a tribute to our nation's honored dead.
The next morning it is brought out and, at the ceremony of reveille, run aloft as a symbol of our belief in the resurrection of the body.
The first fold of our flag is a symbol of life.
The second fold is a symbol of our belief in the eternal life.
The third fold is made in honor and remembrance of the veteran departing our ranks who gave a portion of life for the defense of our country to attain a peace throughout the world.
The fourth fold represents our weaker nature, for as American citizens trusting in God, it is to him we turn in times of peace as well as in times of war for His divine guidance.
The fifth fold is a tribute to our country, for in the words of Stephen Decatur, "Our country, in dealing with other countries, may she always be right; but it is still our country, right or wrong."
The sixth fold is for where our hearts lie. It is with our heart that we pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The seventh fold is a tribute to our Armed Forces, for it is through the Armed Forces that we protect our country and our flag against all her enemies, whether they be found within or without the boundaries of our republic.
The eighth fold is a tribute to the one who entered in to the valley of the shadow of death, that we might see the light of day, and to honor mother, for whom it flies on mother's day.
The ninth fold is a tribute to womanhood; for it has been through their faith, love, loyalty and devotion that the character of the men and women who have made this country great have been molded.
The 10th fold is a tribute to father, for he, too, has given his sons and daughters for the defense of our country since they were first born.
The 11th fold, in the eyes of a Hebrew citizen, represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon, and glorifies, in their eyes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The 12th fold, in the eyes of a Christian citizen, represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies, in their eyes, God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.
When the flag is completely folded, the stars are uppermost, reminding us of our national motto, In God We Trust.
After the flag is completely folded and tucked in, it takes on the appearance of a cocked hat, ever reminding us of the soldiers who served under Gen. George Washington and the sailors and marines who served under Captain John Paul Jones who were followed by their comrades and shipmates in the Armed Forces of the United States, preserving for us the rights, privileges, and freedoms we enjoy today.
(Mathison, a Weirton resident, is the sports editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times and can be contacted at email@example.com)


text:
NEW YORK— Deloitte reported a decline in its monthly consumer spending index, as consumers were weighed down by a sharp rise in unemployment claims.
The Deloitte Consumer Spending Index, which tracks consumer cash flow as an indicator of future consumer spending, fell to 2.66%, from a gain of 3.29% in April. The Index is comprised of tax burden, initial unemployment claims, real wages and real home prices.
"The labor market indicators are the primary cause of weakness in the Index, however the economy is up against other temporary headwinds that suggest weak growth may persist for the near term," said Carl Steidtmann, Deloitte's chief economist and author of the monthly Index. "Rising food and energy prices continue to hurt real wages, which combined with Americans' insecurities about the job market, compound the pressure on consumer spending."


text:
I put a sheet of tinfoil at the bottom of my oven to catch crumbs because I cook pizzas on the rack all the time. This is ruining my pizzas though, because when the top is done the dough is still gooey. Should I raise the pizza higher? Use a different material? I donno if a pizza stone is an option... I often get papa murphies pizzas which say to cook in the tray and are usually quite large (16"), but am willing to try breaking the rules if someone has some good experience with other methods.
I would probably go ahead and get a pizza stone. Even if you don't want to bake your pizza on it, you can just keep on the floor of your oven (unless you have exposed coils/burners there, in that case, go with the lowest rack).
The pizza stone is easier to clean, and as an added bonus, it'll improve your oven by keeping a more even temperature in there.
Tinfoil is reflective so it bounces the radiation part (probably not the convection) of the heat transfer back to its source. That's why tinfoil is used to protect meats from browning in the oven and also the reason why the thermos flask inside walls are mirrored (or plated? ... my English is awful)
You may experiment with a thin sheet of another (probably ferrous and non-reflective) material, taking care of heating it in the oven very well before putting your pizza in.
This is an example of the correct use of tinfoil,
In my house we use a pizza stone all the time. Pizza, biscuits, bread. It's the only way to get our oven to cook the top before the bottom side is blackened. It cleans very easily too. Much like cast iron, it becomes seasoned and is as good as non-stick by now.
It will take longer to cook. Where the time on pizzas before was roughly 13 minutes and the bottom would be the most cooked, now it takes 16 minutes and everything is cooked evenly.
Coincidentally, I just saw this question after putting a pizza in the oven. 9am is a good time for pizza.
Use parchment paper, instead of tin foil.


text:
- Gift Cards
- Gift Ideas & Promotions
- The Day Spa @ Home
- Face
- Body
- Beauty Essentials
- FAQs
Our Price:£37.40
Quantity: 40ml
Deeply soothing, intensely protective and restorative skin rescue treatment. Gentle Meadowfoam and Tamanu Oils help diminish redness to soothe minor irritations and chapped skin. Skin-softening Evening Primrose, Manuka Oil and Shea Butter, create a powerful barrier against environmental elements to lock in moisture and protect.
Key results:
Thank you for getting in touch with us. A member of our team will respond to you as soon as we can.


text:
Main Content
Get your young fan geared up to witness the Oklahoma State Cowboys finish their season in style when they stake their claim for the 2011 Fiesta Bowl title in this Bound tee. Featuring distressed "Fiesta Bowl" lettering printed over a team name football field graphic on the front, this tee will have your fan ready to cheer on the Cowboys long before they take the field!
- Lightweight ribbed T-shirt
- Officially licensed collegiate product
- Rib-knit collar
- Screen print graphics
- Short sleeve
- Screen print graphics
- Imported
- Brand: Tri-Lakes Sportswear
Other Customers also liked:
Special event items are produced by manufacturers only after the outcome of a game or event. These are advanced sale items and will ship immediately after they are received in our warehouse.
Manufacturer direct items are shipped directly from the manufacturer. These items are not available for international or expedited shipping.
Customized items can be personalized with options such as your name, your favorite number, and/or designs. Some options may be limited by league rules.


text:
It's Library Card Sign-up Month
September is Library Card Sign-up Month.
"Make sure your child has the most important back-to-school supply of all - a library card," said Jennifer Cesta, public relations coordinator for the Public Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County.
The library system joins the American Library Association and public libraries nationwide to observe this month, according to Cesta.
"Throughout September, library branches will host a variety of activities for all ages. Visit the library's newly revitalized website, www.steubenvillelibrary.org for a list of these programs, download an ebook or browse our collection of more than 7 million items and growing," Cesta said.
Library cards are free to Ohio residents.
"Stop in the main library in downtown Steubenville or one of our branches in Adena, Brilliant, Dillonvale, Tiltonsville, Toronto, Schiappa in Steubenville or the bookmobile," she said.
Youth essay
contest detailed
The Knights of Columbus, Steubenville Council 472, is sponsoring a youth essay contest.
All Catholic students in public, private and parochial schools in grades eight through 12 are invited to participate in the 2013 Knights of Columbus Catholic Citizenship Essay Contest.
Students are encouraged to write a 500-750-word essay on the theme of "The Importance of Religious Freedom."
All contestants on the local level are recognized for their participation in the contest with prizes awarded to the winner in each class. Winners will go on to compete in the district, state and international competitions.
For entry forms and information, contact Dave Antonelli at (740) 264-5614.
Band changes rehearsal location
Rick Hicks, director of the Tri-State Community Band, has announced that the band has changed the location of its rehearsals from Harding Middle School to the Steubenville High School band room.
Rehearsals are held each Thursday beginning at 7:30 p.m., and membership is open to any musician in the Tri-State Area.
Flag retirement
ceremony set
The Wintersville Woman's Club, in partnership with Boy Scouts' Cub Pack No. 415 and Troop No. 415, will again participate in a flag retirement ceremony on Sept. 15 at 2 p.m. at the Wintersville Fire Department parking lot.
The public is invited to attend as well as bring any worn/frayed American flags to the Wintersville Volunteer Fire Department. The flags will be properly destroyed. Flags can be brought that day or dropped off ahead of time at the fire department.


text:
CGI Boobs: 7 Special Effects The Stars Want to Keep Secret
#3. Jennifer Connelly's Tear in Blood Diamond (2006)
Suppose that you have a crucial emotional shot of Jennifer Connelly looking distressed while talking on a mobile phone. You were happy with her performance at the time, but in the context of the film, you realize she needs to take it to a whole new level of distress. If you were George Lucas or the lady that wrote Twilight, the solution would be pretty simple: you would just dub in a line where Jennifer Connelly states, "I am distressed! Very, very distressed!" Meanwhile, directors capable of understanding human emotions might dial that back a few notches and simply add a digital tear rolling down her cheek.
That's only the tip of the iceberg as far as performance alterations. As the linked article mentions, "Visual effects experts privately admit to changing actors' expressions: opening or closing eyes; making a limp more convincing; removing breathing signs; eradicating blinking eyelids from a lingering gaze; or splicing together different takes of an unsuccessful love scene to produce one in which both parties look like they are enjoying themselves."
In the future, if technology advances far enough, we could see a visual effects equivalent of the Auto-Tune, software that could add any emotion to any actor, possibly spelling the end of ironically enjoying Keanu Reeves performances, which would be a shame.
#2. Brandon Routh's "Bulge" in Superman Returns (2006)
Superman's main features were always supposed to be his chiseled face, his spit-curl and the big S symbol on his chest, and not his genitals. During production of the Superman Returns movie, Brandon Routh's mighty package allegedly became a distraction.
Shape and size became vital issues within the costume department, and digital effects were considered to reduce the size of the package in post-production. After a great deal of discreet work, children everywhere were saved from learning that men and women are different. And that some men are way different.
There is no indication of what "inside source" originally leaked the "Superman's dong is just too huge" rumor, but in our minds we picture a shadowy, Brandon Routh-shaped informant.
On the side of equal opportunity, Lindsay Lohan's breast size was allegedly reduced in Herbie: Fully Loaded, preserving one audience segment while alienating another. Lending credence to that rumor is the fact that Lola VFX, a well-known digital cosmetic enhancement shop, worked on the film.
Music videos are also a lucrative area for post-production fixes, one of the most unfortunate being adding digital panties to Carmen Electra in a Li'l Kim video after an unintentional flash.
#1. Kevin Bacon's Penis in Hollow Man (2000)
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the family-friendly modifications in Superman Returns and Herbie, we have Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man, based on the classic H.G. Wells novel The Invisible Rapist. It attempts to answer the age-old question: What would you do if you were a huge jerk that was able to become invisible? It's an important philosophical question that apparently can't be answered without showing penis. Like, a lot.
Kevin Bacon gets to showcase his manhood in possibly more ways than any other film has ever showcased a wiener. Whether it be plain old nudity, or heat vision swinging dong...
... or skinless man dong...
... or underwater dong...
... or shaking-off-water dong...
... or dong passing through smoke.
Now, the dong passing through smoke is barely visible, but it's important to take note of, because Verhoeven very specifically instructed artists to ensure it was visible. It was vital to him that Kevin Bacon's invisible penis be apparent in as many shots as possible.
While the heat vision shot only involved taking regular footage of Kevin Bacon walking around naked and running it through a filter, the water shots and the smoke shots specifically required an entire CG Kevin Bacon to be built, with CG joints and controls on every part of the body, including the penis, all controllable by animators, allowing them to increase penis swing on the smoke shot, for example, if necessary. And Verhoeven felt it was necessary.
Rumors also indicate that Kevin Bacon himself, after viewing some of the shots, discreetly requested some modifications using the universal language of dong description: he nodded toward the dong, held his hands some distance apart and then increased the distance.
We can laugh, but what man reading this wouldn't have done the exact same thing?
And check out some movies where a little CG was desperately needed, in The 5 Most Half-Assed Monsters in Movie History. Or find out about Hollywood is using more than just CGI to rip you off, in 5 Innovative Ways Hollywood Is Screwing You Over.
And head over to Cracked.com's Top Picks to see evidence that we don't need CG effects to enhance our dongs.


text:
I am using OpenBox WM and I am looking for some simple dock application (that could be used along with OpenBox) that has this icon "pinning" feature. It can also be a panel. So far I have found this:
Docky - it's fine but it needs compositing manager
wbar - compiles but isn't working for me (does not appear), and I am not sure if it has the "pin" feature
Any other tools that can do this?


text: Haymitch Albernathy, played by the amazing Woody Harrelson, becomes a pot bellied drunk. You wonder why the victor of the 50th Hunger Games would be such a drunken slob. After 2 weeks of his victory, Haymitch's mother, younger brother, and girlfriend were killed by President Snow, as punishment for Haymitch using the force field to his advantage killing one of the opponents leaving him the victor. That murderous act could take the life out of anyone. So this tutorial is in tribute to one of the engaging characters of this already popular movie and bestselling book. I wanted to treat you in this "Hunger Games" tutorial. You can draw Haymitch's 3/4 view, profile or both. I just want you to have fun. Let me know what you experienced by commenting, faving and voting. Much love to you all. I cannot wait to hear from you.


text:
ShopHDE has the 6" 150mm LCD Display Stainless Steel Caliper for $20 - $9 off with coupon code benmay12sdj345 [Exp 5/19, 100 uses] = $11 with free shipping. Has both metric and SAE markings on the body while the LCD can switch between SAE and metric at the touch of a button. All orders ship free from U.S. warehouse.
Deal has expired


text:
55558 | 0
viewer: 55558 | love: 0
Toko Merah or the Red Shop is one of the oldest buildings and best preserved in present day Old Batavia. Recently restored by its present owners the PT Perusahaan Perdagangan Indonesia (PT.PPI) - a conglomeration of state-owned enterprises for Trade, - the Red House has been reopened for meetings, conventions and art exhibitions.
Located at Jalan Kali Besar Barat 107, along the once busy Ciliwung river, in the subdistrict of Roa Malaka, West Jakarta, Toko Merah was originally the home of Willem Baron van Imhoff, who later became Governor General of the East India Company from 1743-1750.
In its long history, the building was converted into a maritime academy from 1743-1755, the first and most prestigious maritime academy in the Far East at the time, then it became a Guest House for high ranking officials (Heerenlogement) from 1787 – 1808.
One famous guest here was Willian Bligh, commander of the Bounty, whose deputy staged a mutiny on board ship on 28 April 1789.
This event was made renowned through the film Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins as William Bligh and Mel Gibson as deputy commander Christian Fletcher.
In 1851 the building was bought by a Chinese trader who painted the brick walls completely red. Hence the building was known as the Red Shop or Toko Merah. The red color dominating both its exterior as well as its interior.
During this period, the building became the center of slave trade in this Dutch colony. Traces from this period in history can be seen in the names of surrounding districts, such as Manggarai, for example, which was the village for slaves from Flores, Kampung Bali for those from Bali and Kampung Ambon from Ambon in the Moluccas, and others.
Later in the 1900s, the Borneo Compagnie established itself in Toko Merah, and later again it was taken over by Jacobson van den Berg, one of the 5 largest companies in the East Indies.
In the 18th century, ships could sail into the Ciliwung at Kali Besar (meaning the Large River), and dock right in front of the row of shops here, loading and unloading their precious ware. This area was then a "Central Business District" of the time, with busy traffic on land as well as on the river. Nowadays, though, with the silting of the river, no boats can enter the Kali Besar although on land traffic remains heavy.
At the time, it was said that Toko Merah had 6 boats of its own, and had available 8 carriages with 8 pairs of horses in stables at the back of the building.
Toko Merah, in fact, comprises two buildings joined together under one roof. The building has, therefore, two entrance doors. Its twin ground floor has a wide open area, ideal for conferences, art and jewelry exhibitions and weddings. Its upper floor with its large oopen rooms are ideal for official meetings.
Toko Merah is built in 18th century Baroque architecture as can be seen from its cornice elements and tall windows. Its ornamentation is a mix of classic European and Chinese décor, where its Baroque staircase is most impressive.
Since Kali Besar forms part of Jakarta's present-day China Town, there are plenty of large and more modest hotels to be found at Mangga Besar and around Mangga Dua. Here are a few: Amaris Hotel Mangga BesarJalan Mangga Besar Raya No.7-11,Jakarta 11180 - INDONESIAPhone: (62-21) 6262908Fax: (62-21) 6262907Email: email@example.com: http://www.amarishotel.com Sparks Hotel, GlodokJalan Mangga Besar Raya 42Phone: +62 21 625 2534 Fax: +62 21 625 2570Email: firstname.lastname@example.com: http://www.sparks-hotel.com Plaza Hotel, Mangga DuaKomp. Mangga Dua Plaza, Jakarta Pusat Email: email@example.com :021 9777 4848 Best Western Mangga DuaJalan Mangga Dua Abdad IIIPhone: +62 21 6122 999Fax: +62 21 6220 1133Website:http://www.bwmanggaduahotel.com/ Mercure Jakarta Kota Hotel Jl. Hayam Wuruk 123, Mangga Besar, JakartaPhone: (+62)21/6248680Fax. (+62)21/6008441Eamil: firstname.lastname@example.com Le Grandeur – Mangga Dua Jl. Mangga Dua RayaPhone: (62-21) 612 8811Fax: (62-21) 612 8822Website: http://jakarta.legrandeurhotels.com/ Jayakarta Hotel, Mangga BesarJl. Hayam Wuruk 126, Jakarta 11180Phone:+62 21 649 0101-02Fax:+62216598395Email: firstname.lastname@example.com Website: http://www.jayakartahotelsresorts.com/ Ibis Mangga Dua Jalan Pangeran Jayakarta 73 Phone: (+62)21/6250101Fax: (+62)21/6250505Website:http://www.ibishotel.com


text:
Restore wellness in both body and mind with one of our luxury spa treatments. You'll unwind in a calming environment, where our experts provide expert advice as part of an array of therapies and treatments. De-stress and take time to restore positivity at Champneys.
Whether you seek a spa day of pampering, an overnight retreat or alternative therapies, Champneys offers a diverse array of wellness solutions. Choose from body treatments such as floatations and wraps to detoxing and nutrition advice among a wealth of other treatments, all tailored to meet your exact needs.
Live life with vitality and feel uplifted at Champneys, the British 'gold standard' for health and wellbeing. Take a look at the treatments and services available below at our health spas in Tring, Forest Mere, Henlow and Springs, and book your rejuvenating spa break or day today.
Spa treatments can only be booked if you have a stay or day package too. Login to My Champneys if you wish to add treatments to your exisiting booking.


text:
Our Publications
- Aspen
- Atlanta
- Chicago
- Dallas
- The Hamptons
- Hawai'i
- Houston
- Los Angeles
- Miami
- New York
- Orange County
- San Diego
- San Francisco
- Scottsdale
- Washington, D.C.
Home › Scene › 'Tis the Season ›
'Tis the Season
THE PARTY To help kick off the holiday shopping season, Folli Follie threw an in-store party for enthusiastic customers and faithful fans, offering a sneak peek of new items from their latest collection. THE PLAYERS Folli Follie General Manager Susanna Tan, Alyson Okamura, Janell Nohara, Shin Ho, Nicholas Haigler, Sarah Rose THE SCENE After sipping on prosecco and perusing the latest jewelry, watches and other accessories, guests gathered for the evening's raffle. The top items on this much-awaited gift list were a lust worthy wallet and a watch, which went to two happy recipients. Photography by Shaun Goo/IMF Visions


text:
ITALIAN CHOPPED With artichoke hearts, cucumbers, plum tomatoes, red peppers, cannellini beans, kalamata olives, parmesan and balsamic vinaigrette.
WEDGE With tomatoes, bacon, gorgonzola and ranch dressing.
BUFFALO CHICKEN With tomatoes, cucumbers, cheddar, bleu cheese dressing and gorgonzola.
STRAWBERRY WALNUT With chicken, feta and low-fat blueberry-pomegranate dressing.
CHICKEN SCAMPI Chicken, tomatoes, basil, garlic and white wine sauce with vermicelli.
DEEP DISH MAC & CHEESE Our decadent mac & cheese in a mini deep dish pan.
TORTELLONI GRATINATI Cheese tortelloni tossed with seasoned plum tomatoes and alfredo sauce; topped with mozzarella and baked in a deep dish pan.
BAKED ZITI & SAUSAGE Ziti and sausage in a tomato cream sauce topped with mozzarella and baked in a deep dish pan.
CHICAGO CLASSIC DEEP DISH A small plate version of our famous Chicago Classic Deep Dish with sausage, mozzarella, chunky tomato sauce and romano.
ROASTED EGGPLANT, SPINACH & FETA FLATBREAD Half a traditional or five grain flatbread with spinach, eggplant, sun-dried and plum tomatoes, caramelized onions, pesto, feta and mozzarella.
PEPPERONI DEEP DISH A small plate Prima Pepperoni with chunky tomato sauce, mozzarella and romano.
Add A Mini Sweet(price and participation may vary)
- Hot Chocolate
Brownie Sundae
- Granny Smith
All American
- Chocolate Peanut
Butter Cup
- Macadamia Nut White Chocolate Chunk Deep Dish Cookie Sundae