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I'm 56 years old. Old enough to remember one president's assassination and another's resignation, black people getting beaten for insisting on the right to vote and later a black man being elected president, people walking on the moon, and more wars than I care to think about. A constant throughout my last 46 years has been Bob Dylan.
When I was a kid, my father would drive me and my siblings on Saturdays from Manhattan to Roosevelt Raceway on Long Island. We'd always stop at the same diner for a hamburger and iced tea. Each booth had its own jukebox. I'd flip through the rows of the juke and for a nickel I'd get the Four Seasons, "Little" Stevie Wonder, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and, of course, the Beatles.
As one of those kids in 1964 whose life trajectory had been irrevocably rerouted by the Fabs on The Ed Sullivan Show, I devoured every pop music magazine I could get. The hippest was Hit Parader, which, in addition to covering the British Invasion, Motown and surf music, covered the world of folk — including a rebellious protest singer named Dylan.
For my 10th birthday in '65, my folks got me a shiny new nylon-string acoustic guitar. Ed Sullivan, here I come! I learned basic chords and, with the help of a song folio of Bringing It All Back Home, I began applying my rudimentary chord knowledge to its contents. The only problem was I'd never actually heard the album, so I made up the melodies. But the words opened up a fantastic new world. "He said his name was Columbus/I just said good luck" was the funniest thing this 10-year-old had ever heard, a reminder of the sinking feeling that something was wrong in post-Camelot America and that it could be addressed with all the sneering impudence of youth.
I'd soon memorize every lyric on that album, including "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and after saving up my allowance (50 cents a week), I dropped a whopping $3.44 for a mono Bringing It All Back Home at Korvette's. Interestingly, my ersatz melodies weren't too different from the real ones.
After another Saturday jaunt that July, we stopped at the diner; as always, I checked out the juke. Hey, what's this? "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan. The nickel rolled into the slot and like millions of other kids, my life was never the same after hearing that first snare-drum gunshot that kicks off the party.
How does it feel? I can tell you this: Hearing "Like a Rolling Stone" for the first time is a feeling one doesn't experience often. It sounded like freedom.
Now a rabid Dylan fan, I found a paperback devoted to my guy called Folk-Rock: The Bob Dylan Story, by Sy and Barbara Ribakove ("With 16 pages of exciting photographs"). I read the book over and over again with a flashlight under the covers when I was supposed to be asleep. In it Dylan claimed he'd run away from home 15 times, and it was obvious to me that if I was to wander in his boot heels, I'd need to do the same. I spent five hours roaming around Greenwich Village in August 1967, only to be talked home by a kindly commune leader. The farewell note to my parents I'd left on my bed was not well received when I returned. I found out soon after that Dylan had in fact never run away and had embellished the accounts of his youth. I can personally attest that young people are impressionable. Thanks a lot, Bob!
Forty-four years have flowed under the proverbial bridge since then and he's still delivering the goods. Time Out of Mind, "Love and Theft," Modern Times and the appropriately titled Together Through Life are among the finest albums of the last decade-plus by anyone.
To celebrate Bob's 70th birthday, which is May 24, we've asked a gang of his fellow musicians, friends and fans to tell us stories and share their thoughts about him. Given that we're L.A. Weekly, we've encouraged tales of the Left Coast — after all, Malibu has been where our neighbor Bob Dylan has been getting his jury-duty notices for over three decades.
On behalf of everyone whose lives were enriched by your words, your music, your films, your art, your humanity: happy birthday, Bob. And I forgive you for getting me in hot water with the folks back in '67.
Sat., Dec. 18, 1965
Pasadena Civic Auditorium
"Joe, Evelyn and I went to see Bob Dylan tonight. He was TOO MUCH. He came out dressed in a brown and black houndstooth suit, all by himself. With just his guitar and harmonica, which was strapped around his neck. His skin looked like the color of sour milk and I have never seen anyone so skinny before. Evelyn was really digging it and I was glad. He ended the first part of the show with a song called 'Desolation Row.' It was really beautiful. I haven't any idea what it's about. His stuff is real hard to pin down.
There is a line in 'Desolation Row' that reminds me of Sioux Cameron, that line about her putting hands in her back pockets, BETTE DAVIS STYLE. Sioux Cameron has a skirt with back pockets. When he got through, you could have heard a pin drop. Then there was an intermission.
THEN. He came back with a group of about 5 guys. The organ player cracked me up because he had this HUGE forehead, matter of fact they were all pretty silly looking. The piano player had a hideous great hooter, to quote Paul McCartney's grandfather in that Beatles movie. They were all dressed in black, they looked like a bunch of Southern preachers. They stomped the floor to get the beat and then the first song started. It was about Juarez, Mexico.
Once the music started the weirdest thing started to happen, people started getting up and leaving. They didn't dig the ELECTRICITY. What a bunch of chumps, because Dylan and his group were ROCKING. There were these two guys sitting in front of me, one was tall and skinny and he looked like a jealous bird, the other guy wore glasses, and they jumped up in disgust and ran for the door. I thought, how could they walk out on something like what Bob Dylan was doing.
Meanwhile up on stage, Dylan was moving around like he was plugged into a HIGH TENSION WIRE. BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. The last song was 'Like a Rolling Stone,' number one on the Fab Chart last Summer. He kept shouting the words. 'HOW DOES IT FEEL?' over and over. Then just like [that,] Dylan and his Southern preachers were gone. Just like hazy smoke. It didn't feel real. I was moved, Evelyn was moved too.
As we were leaving, we ran into Greg Moore, Sioux Cameron, her sister, Cathy, Karen West, Gooler and Priscilla and we also ran into Harry Speer who had walked out. Everyone dug it the most except Harry. Everyone was going to smoke some pot. Hell, that stuff Dylan was singing about got me HIGH enough."
From Paul Body's journal, reproduced in his L.A. memoir Love Is Like Rasputin. Paul was 15 at the time.
Before B.B. King dubbed him Wavy Gravy, Hugh Romney was a Beat monologuist, Village character and friend of fledgling folkie Dylan. The maître d' at Woodstock, Hog Farmer and saintly clown teaches circus skills to underprivileged kids at Camp Winnarainbow and has helped fund 2 million Third World sight-saving operations (Seva.org). Mrs. Gravy is Jahanara Romney, who as Bonnie Beecher was a Minnesota flame of young Bob's.
Wavy Gravy: 116 MacDougal St. [in New York's Greenwich Village] was the Gaslight Café. I was a teenage beatnik readin' my poems there and became the poetry director. I talked to the lunatic who was runnin' the place. I said, "John, why don't we try some folk music between the poetry 'cause I think it would go over really good." And we tried it and the next thing ya know we're doin' a little poetry and a little folk music and it got so difficult because people used to line up four-deep around the block to look at beatniks.
Next thing you know I'm openin' for John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk and Peter, Paul and Mary and Ian and Sylvia and people of this ilk. I was at the Village Gate with Monk when Dylan came to me and said, "You must come back to the Gaslight — help save the Gaslight!" I was happy to do that. We had spent endless hours in this little room up above the Gaslight. There was a typewriter up there that Bob would use and he would write songs on it like "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall."
He'd talk about everything. His left foot was always bouncin' up and down at great rapid speeds. At one point he was gonna will me his boots and I think one of them would've been worn out. He was a blur. He had an opinion about everything. And it was usually glorious and fired at you with machine-gun rapidity. And funny, he was one funny dude. I absolutely adored him.
Billy James was Dylan and the Byrds' Columbia Records publicist at the beginning of their careers. After unsuccessfully trying to get the company to sign Lenny Bruce, Tim Hardin, the Mothers of Invention and Jefferson Airplane, he signed the Doors, jumped ship, took Morrison and co. with him and opened up Elektra's West Coast office. He's currently working on his memoir, Famous Dead People I Have Known and Liked.
Billy James: I was 28 or 29 and I was in the publicity department at Columbia Records in New York writing advertising copy, publicity bios, album liner notes and news releases. The brilliant John Hammond [the legendary producer who signed Dylan to the label] called me from the studio and told me he was recording someone he thought I might be interested in. He was right.
I was blown away. Dylan was probably the first white musician who sounded black to me. I was completely ignorant of rock & roll, so to whatever extent his style was influenced by rock & roll, that was new to me as well.
I was responsible for writing his publicity bio, so we rolled tape on my Wollensak. He sat there and told me these incredible stories about his imagined self. Having uncles who were gamblers and uncles who were thieves and joining the circus and the street singer Arvella Gray and somebody in Navasota, Texas, and playing piano for Bobby Vee — which, in fact, as far as I know, he did play piano for Bobby Vee. There was nothing about high school or college, his parents — just fabulous stories. I never did write the bio.
I got him his first national story in Seventeen magazine. It was a double-truck story, Dylan on one page and [TV heartthrob] Richard Chamberlain on the other. I had a "Bob Dylan Orientation Kit" that I would trot around to various journalists — but I can't remember what was in it! [Laughs] He was new and different for so many people — even though I locked right into his work right away, there were so many people who had difficulty getting it. At a Columbia Records convention I played a Dylan record for Tony Bennett. I said, "Tony, listen to the words" and Tony said, "Whatever happened to the music?" My way of explaining was to say listen to the words, listen to the man's brilliant use of the English language.
I fell in love with the Byrds partly because they were using Dylan lyrics, but also because of their folk music background. I became educated in the ways of rock & roll. Dylan played one public performance with the Byrds at Ciro's [at 8433 Sunset Blvd., current location of the Comedy Store in West Hollywood] in 1965. Those of us who had already embraced that melding of influences didn't think that much about it because each of those guys had folk music backgrounds.
Johnny Rivers is an L.A. treasure, the rocker who played at the opening of Sunset Strip institution the Whisky a Go Go and had a slew of hits in the 1960s including "Secret Agent Man," "Poor Side of Town," "Summer Rain," "Seventh Sun," "Memphis" and "Maybelline." In Chronicles, Volume One, Dylan singled out Rivers' cover of "Positively Fourth Street" — "I liked his version better than mine," Dylan wrote.
Johnny Rivers: When we opened the Whisky [Jan. 15, 1964], Bob came in there a few times. He was known as "that guy that wrote that song for Peter, Paul and Mary." I wasn't a big folk fan, I grew up in the rhythm & blues world out of Louisiana. I wasn't really aware of Bob's first couple of albums. I did hear "Blowin' in the Wind" by Peter, Paul and Mary — it was all over the radio. He seemed to be a nice guy and he'd come in and hang out, he would come upstairs to the dressing rooms where there was a pool table and shoot the bull with the guys in the band and whoever was hangin' out.
[About Dylan's endorsement of his "Positively Fourth Street" cover:] I think he's basically saying our backgrounds are similar, the kind of family life and environment we both came out of, although he was up in Minnesota and I grew up in Baton Rouge. We basically started around the same time and we're almost the same age. We both traveled, left our hometown to get stuff happening.
I had this feeling that in order for me to get anything goin' I had to get out of Baton Rouge. First off I went to New York City and met Alan Freed, who got me a recording deal for two or three single records and talked me into changing my name to Rivers from our family name, Ramistella — it's Italian. And of course with Bob, Dylan's not his real last name. We came out of that same world where you had to go out and make things happen.
And that's one reason I like "Positively Fourth Street" 'cause of that story about "When I was down, you just stood there grinnin'." Once you become successful, all these characters who were kickin' ya, makin' fun of ya, sayin' you'll never make it — all wanna become your buddy.
On Sept. 3, 1965, Dylan played the Hollywood Bowl with Al Kooper on organ, Robbie Robertson on lead guitar, Harvey Brooks on bass and Levon Helm on drums. Kooper would have many L.A. adventures with Dylan over the years, including the time Al got into Bob's limo in the mid-'80s and found himself face to face with Elizabeth Taylor. Here Kooper recounts his memories of that first trip in '65.
Al Kooper: At the tender age of 21, it wasn't merely my first trip to California but my first plane flight, as well as my first (and last) appearance at the Hollywood Bowl. Albert Grossman had a plane and he wanted the help to go on it. I refused, as it was a little plane and something ludicrous like a 40-hour flight with stops to refuel. I said, "I'm not doin' that." I flew first-class with Dylan and [Dylan's road manager] Bob Neuwirth — which was much nicer and quicker, so my bluff paid off.
So we took off and I was between Bob on the window and Neuwirth on the aisle. Dylan said, "Boy, you better keep your seat belt on, this is the worst flight I've ever been on." I'm a little nervous. I looked around and everyone was having their drinks and laughing, and I thought, "Oh, let's put Al on! Everything's fine."
When we got there, Neuwirth handed me a pull-over-your-head Halloween mask and said, "Put this on and follow me, we're gonna move fast." All three of us put our masks on, got off the plane and ran from the gate to the limo.
When I first started hanging out with Dylan and Neuwirth, I was a kid from Queens. I'd been in the music business but I was not as well-read and as tuned-in as they were. I sat there and observed, not saying a word, until I got my hip card punched. Neuwirth was a sartorial influence on all of us — Dylan included. The first place in L.A. they took me to was a store called De Voss [a fashionable '60s boutique that catered to the likes of Mick Jagger and the Mamas & the Papas], and it was between Sunset Plaza and Doheny on the right side of the street facing west. There went my salary. Just the most amazing shirts and those pseudo-cowboy hats that everybody wore, typified by David Crosby.
I spent a lot of money on shirts, in the day 50 bucks a shirt. From there came the famous polka-dot shirts. Bob had got one on an earlier trip, which he'd worn at Newport. There was one other clothing store we went to on Crescent Heights and Sunset that Lenny Bruce used to do radio ads for, called Zeidler & Zeidler. Bob would shop at those two places, ergo I would. There was of course Wallich's Music City on Sunset and Vine. It was fabulous because you could pull out a record and play it in a listening booth before you bought it.
It was a whirlwind thing — first to just fly, then to fly to Los Angeles and to live in Hollywood and to play the Hollywood Bowl. At Forest Hills [in Queens, N.Y.] they booed because they were told to by the press. Bob would come out and play an acoustic 45-minute set and of course everybody was fine with that. And then after intermission we'd come out and they'd start booing. "Like a Rolling Stone" was No. 1, so they sang along and then booed. It was unbelievable. We played three shows: Newport, Forest Hills and the Hollywood Bowl. The Bowl was the only place where nobody booed at anything, which led me to believe that this was the much hipper coast beyond a doubt. Not to mention De Voss.
The night of the show, Ben Shapiro threw a party for Dylan at his house. I went to that and chatted up this gal who became my first Hollywood date, as it were. It was Toni Basil [famous choreographer, Easy Rider actress and legendary singer of '80s hit "Mickey" (aka "Hey Mickey!")]. There was a trip to Dean Martin's house, which I did not attend, but Bob went.
For the last half-century, photographer Lisa Law has been one of the most respected soul catchers of the counterculture and its music. In 1966 she lived at the Castle, a palatial four-story residence in the Los Feliz area, with a ballroom and giant bay windows, embellished with wrought iron. Nico and the Velvet Underground, Barry McGuire and Severn Darden all stayed there. Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Owsley, Richard and Mimi Farina, Tiny Tim and Tim Hardin were frequent visitors.
Lisa Law: [In April 1966] I'd just moved into the Castle. Bob [Dylan] rented a room for two weeks just before the release of Blonde on Blonde and before his European tour started. He got the suite on the second floor and was writing songs. I was the housekeeper and chief cook and bottle washer and late evenings I would give him massages. He drank a lot of chocolate milk shakes, so I took it upon myself to feed him healthy dinners.
We went out shopping to Fred Segal on Sunset Boulevard. That is where he bought his polka-dot long-sleeved shirt — [the store] is still there. He was writing all the time. I photographed his desk with his typewriter. He didn't crumple papers up and throw them in the trash or I would've kept them! He would type a song and then write over it and add things. If you look at the books that show his writings, you can see the notations. People always ask me if he let me shoot pictures. He didn't stop me, but a couple times he'd make faces at me. He had a way of looking at me that was intimidating.
On April 8, 1966, we went to hear Otis Redding at the Whisky a Go Go. Taj Mahal opened for him [with Ry Cooder in the Rising Sons]. Bob, [then husband] Tom [Law] and I were in a booth, and Otis and his band blew me away, so I jumped up and shot lots of pictures, many of which were out of focus because Otis never stopped moving. We went backstage afterwards and Bob asked Otis if he wanted one of his songs for a new album. [Bob reportedly gave Otis an acetate of "Just Like a Woman."]
Wavy Gravy: I remember connecting with him in Sheridan Square [in New York in the early '70s] when I was writing my first book. I ran into him and we were gonna go to this apartment in Sheridan Square where friends of my wife who Bob knew all the way back to the University of Minnesota were. She was going there to tidy up and Bob and I were going to the smoke shop at the corner for matches and various combustibles when this guy screams, "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD" — then he comes running up. ... "ARE YOU ARE YOU ARE YOU ARE YOU REALLY ... WAVY GRAVY???" He's goin', "My girlfriend is never gonna believe this!" and I said, "I'd like to introduce you to my friend Bob." And he says, "Hi Bob — but seriously ... Wavy Gravy!" [Guffaws] It was wonderful. Bob got such a kick out of that, let me tell ya.
Though Jim Keltner was originally a jazz drummer, his résumé reads like a rock & roll wet dream. He's played with three-quarters of the Beatles and was "Buster Sidebury" in the Traveling Wilburys. Then there's Clapton and Cooder, Neil and Joni, various Stones — and Dylan. His first Bob session was the 1971 single "Watching the River Flow," and he's played with Dylan periodically ever since, including two years on the road from late 1979 through 1981.
Jim Keltner: [In 1973, Dylan was working on the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack.] It was a session for Bob at the original Warner Bros. Stage in Burbank, before it became the Clint Eastwood Scoring Stage. In those days it was a big room — a big soundstage. Also in those days they had big screens the musicians looked at, rather than little TV monitors like they do now. Everything was bigger than life. The drums were isolated in what they call the pillbox with a little window above the cymbals so you could see the screen. Otherwise, the rest of the room was dark, except for a little bit of light for somebody's music stand, and I couldn't see Bob from where I was.
I think we did two or three takes. After the first take, it was clear to me what the song was about, so in the intro I played a little stick thing that gives the impression of a pistol chamber bein' spun. Then we got into the song and watched the scene with the actress Katy Jurado — a real soulful face and big eyes. She was crying and Slim Pickens is down by the river dying and Bob is singing, "Mama come take these guns from me/I can't use 'em anymore." And the way he sang it, it just hit me, it really got me. I welled up and I started cryin' and I thought, "Good lord, what am I doin'? I gotta play this track! Bob's not into doin' extra takes because somebody cried and messed it up." All these things are goin' through my mind, in the meantime the song is goin' by and Bob's vocal — singin' those words, to that scene on the screen — just put me away.
By the time we were done with the song, it was the most amazing feeling. I knew right then that this was a first for me — I cried while playing the drums on a record. If you were to play that song for me right now, I'd well up.
Kinky Friedman is a country singer-songwriter, best-selling mystery novelist and former gubernatorial candidate in his home state of Texas. He was on the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1976.
Kinky Friedman: In 1973 at [Kinky's first L.A. show at] the Troubadour, Bob came in a white robe. He looked like a kleagle of the Minnesota Klan. And he was barefoot. It was very nice of him to come to the show. He liked one of my personal favorite songs, a song I've never recorded called "Carrying the Torch," which you think is about a girl back home who's carryin' the torch for you but really it's the Statue of Liberty and the drummer has American flags on the drumsticks at the end of the song. It's a patriotic crowd-pleaser — went very well on the Grand Ol' Opry stage, not so well at the Troubadour, but Bob liked it. So we're lookin' out the window and we notice he's got a limo out there in the alley. It was amazing: Somebody observed that he didn't have any shoes but he had a limo.
Los Angeles native Harvey Kubernik is a local authority on the history of rock & roll in this town. His most recent book is the acclaimed Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon.
Harvey Kubernik: [After an eight-year hiatus from touring, Dylan hit the road in 1974 with the Band.] I went to all three of the Dylan/Band shows at the fabulous Forum in Inglewood. At one of the shows I sat with Henry Mancini, literally if not in the front row, then row three. I thought, "What is Henry Mancini doing at a Dylan concert with the Band?" He was telling me about digging the group Cream and to be open-minded and that Dylan was a great lyricist. He might even have used the word hymnist. I didn't know what he meant.Everybody was bringing their own history to this gig. The projection on Dylan and the Band coupled with moxie and hustle of Bill Graham was really something. Weeks before the show, I was invited to an Elton John Rocket Records party near Tower Records on Holloway. Bill Wyman arrived with David Geffen. I had a chat with Geffen, who was very accessible. I thanked him for helping arrange this [Dylan] tour. I started realizing there's a promoter, there's an agent. Wow, there's people involved who do these things. Until then, you went to the Shrine Auditorium and you gave the girl behind the window a 10-dollar bill and she gave you change out of the cigar box and some Bazooka gum and you walked in. It was a world before Ticketmaster and Ticketron. It was [local record store] Wallich's Music City. You didn't buy days or weeks or months in advance. I realized the complexion of the concert game was changing in front of me.
An Oscar nominee for her role in Robert Altman's Nashville, Ronee Blakley continues to act and sing and is currently editing her second film as a director, One Blood.
Ronee Blakley: I was in New York doing press for the movie Nashville and staying at the Sherry-Netherland hotel, and David Blue was playing at the Other End on Bleecker Street. So I headed down and was by myself in the middle booth and David was onstage. I was harmonizing by myself from the back of the room, the way we used to do things like that. At the end of the show, Bobby Neuwirth said, "Ronee, there's someone I'd like you to meet ... Bob Dylan." [Owner] Paul Colby shut the club down and Dylan got onstage and started to play and I got onstage and started to play a little four-handed piano with him and we were having fun. People started coming into the club: [Mick] Ronson, [Roger] McGuinn, [Allen] Ginsberg. And Bob asked me to go on tour with him and I said I couldn't. And Neuwirth said, "NO??? Nobody says no to Bob Dylan!" I had to go because I had a tour beginning and I was set to meet my band in Muscle Shoals, Ala., the next day.
I went to Muscle Shoals and met with the boys and they said, "You've got to go on the road with him, it'll be better for all of us." I called Bob and I said the band said I could come and [he said] come back to New York. A limousine picked me up [in New York], took me to the studio and I recorded "Hurricane" that night and I still hadn't slept!
The Rolling Thunder Revue was an experience that could be placed in flashing neon lights in my life. It was just that great. Bob is exciting to work with. The intensity of his performance, the intensity of his vocals. The meaning, the passion, what lies behind the words. For one thing I happen to love his voice. Some people say as if it's a given [that] he doesn't have a great voice, but I disagree. I think he has a superb voice and what he does with it is great.
McGuinn once said he'd never seen Bob eat. How does he do what he does? I think he had a very nice meal and bottle of wine with [then wife] Sara, but I never saw him gadding about, even though we all saw each other every day. He doesn't hang out with everybody as much as others might like him to? Maybe that's true, but how else is he going to preserve what he's doing? He's a worker and he works hard and he's worked a long time. He's given us his life, his life energy, his life force, and we should be grateful.
Kinky Friedman: One of the best times I spent with him was in Mexico in 1976 on the island of Yelapa. They had no electricity on the island. We stayed there for two weeks. Bob, Louie Kemp, Gary Shafner and Dennis Hopper and there were several hundred townspeople. There was a big chess tournament in the square. Bob and Louie entered me as the American champ to play the Mexican champ and I won. And I wore the Jesus coat Bob had given me, this fancy Nudie's outfit [Bob's country music–style outfit with a huge Jesus Christ face on the back]. That was a great moment. It was downhill from there, unfortunately, as far as my chess career was concerned.
While we were on Yelapa, an interesting thing happened. We were walkin' on the beach, there wasn't anybody around, and Bob was wearing his black leather jacket. It was warm and he was feelin' a chill nobody else could feel maybe, I don't know. Strange northern behavior. Somebody had a guitar and a guitar case and they set it down. At one point Bob kinda wandered over there, sat down, took the guitar out kind of in a dream state, strumming to himself on this deserted beach. It was like a movie scene. I wandered off, came back 10 minutes later, the place was surrounded by people. So he just put the guitar away when too many people showed up. It reminded me of something he'd said, that he liked playing better when he actually played for people that weren't listening, in the very early days when people'd be eatin' their dinner or talkin'. He felt comfortable with that, more so than a bunch of mesmerized robots who loved him, or thought they did.
And then the incident on the plane was funny. We were flying Southwest Airlines at the last minute in Texas and there was no first class and Bob was sitting next to this young girl who, when she realized she was sitting next to Bob Dylan, she just totally jumped through her asshole for America. She was very excited and she starts screaming, "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT I'M SITTING NEXT TO BOB DYLAN! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!" That's when Bob turns to her and he says, "Pinch yourself."
One of the drummers on Empire Burlesque and Knocked Out Loaded, Don Heffington also played with Lowell George, Emmylou Harris, Lone Justice, Van Dyke Parks, Victoria Williams, Lucinda Williams, Dave Alvin and others.
Don Heffington: I was at the Power Station in New York in the middle of '84 recording with Lone Justice. Dylan had written a song for Maria McKee. I came in and Bob was in the back with Benmont [Tench] figuring out the chords. Bob had called Ronnie Wood down and we started workin' on some things, tryin' to arrange this tune. The first thing we did was a slow blues. He sang, but it was really kind of a guitar thing with him and Ronnie. We listened back to it and he looks up to me and says, "Man, this is the best you've ever played in your life!" [Laughs] I don't know if he'd ever even heard me before. He's a funny cat. Deadpan. You can't tell if he's kiddin' or not, but I think he usually is.
Later that year I came home [to L.A.] and there's this piece of paper, this note, kinda kicked halfway under the bed and it said, "Ira [Ingber] called and wants to know if you want to play with Bob Dylan." So we started going over to Bob's place and playin', he had a place at the beach. That went on for a while. He'd show up and we'd play for three, four hours straight. Very spontaneous.
He just wanted to jam, I guess. I remember he worked out a Jim Capaldi tune once — actually worked on it! He doesn't teach a band a song, he'll just play it. He knows a lot of chords and he's got an amazing ear. Very musical. I think he's a lot better musician than people give him credit for.
We went up there five or six times and then he wanted to go in the studio, Cherokee [Studios] on Fairfax, and we cut "Danville Girl." Later he did a bunch of overdubs and changed it into "Brownsville Girl." He wrote it with [playwright and actor] Sam Shepard. It's an interesting song in that the perspective shifts all over the place, it's kinda splintered. It shifts between past and present tense, first and second person. His approach was very spontaneous. He'd always be changin' things up. He'd have stuff written on paper bags or whatever. He'd take a break and come back and change things around.
But I still don't know whatever happened to the tape of that blues we did in New York. I'd like to hear it since apparently it's the best I ever played in my life!
Wavy Gravy: Before he did the Dylan and the Dead tour, he showed up at a Grateful Dead show, I think it was at the Kaiser. We were walkin' down the hall and suddenly there was Bob, so we sat down on the floor and started talkin' about old-time stuff, and at one point Bob says he'd like to come in and see the show, and I said, let me get some security guys, and he said, "No, no, I just wanna go in," and I said, "Well, OK." So we're sliding into the audience and he's doin' just fine and he's watchin' the show and the Dead are playin'. Then he puts his sunglasses on and everybody goes, "AHHHHHH! IT'S BOB DYLAN!" [laughs] and I had to get security guys to get him outta there in one piece! It was hilarious.
Johnny Rivers: We did Summerfest in Milwaukee about 15 years ago, he was on one stage and I was on another. He got done early, pulled his bus up behind ours, came into the dressing room for a while and we talked about our grandchildren! He asked me to play "Poor Side of Town" for him, so he sat over in the wings of the stage by himself in a chair, and it was about 120 degrees out and he had this sweatshirt on with a hood over his head. Nobody could see him except me and the guys in the band. [Laughs] When I played "Poor Side of Town" I just said this is for my friend Bob — no one knew who the hell I was talkin' about. After I finished the song he just got up and left. [Laughs]
Jim Keltner: One of my favorite times with Bob was on a [Traveling] Wilburys video shoot. It's not often that you get a chance to just hang out with Bob. He was held captive. We were standing in the dark watchin' Tom Petty do a scene. He'd told me something really interesting — it blew my mind — and I was gonna go tell Tom. Bob stopped me and he said, "Ya know, you don't have to go say everything you know all at once to everybody all the time." Years later I read that in [the Book of] Proverbs. It really stuck with me. People say how his songwriting changed their lives or whatever. I have some stories like that, too, but I've never told him. It's probably not necessary to tell him how he's affected my life. I think he probably knows.
In addition to Dylan's Oh Mercy (1989) and Time Out of Mind (1997), Grammy winner Daniel Lanois has produced Neil Young, Willie Nelson, U2, Emmylou Harris and Peter Gabriel and collaborated with Brian Eno. He's also currently working with his own band, Black Dub.
Daniel Lanois: The Oh Mercy sessions were very concentrated, it was a living-room environment, so we were able to focus on Bob's vocal. There was not a lot of hullabaloo in there, it was Bob and me and then we brought in additional players as we needed them. I made sure we had a really, really great vocal sound and that we caught the nucleus in a proper fashion. I just wanted to make sure Bob's voice sounded really good and the songs were coming across. We made a record next to the coffee machine. [Laughs] It was not a very illustrious setting. Walk in the door, have a seat, there's the coffee machine. When he wasn't recording Bob'd go over to the coffee machine, have a cigarette, touch up some of the lyrics, and that was pretty much it.
It was not difficult. Pretty much nose to the grindstone. We weren't in there for that long. We hit on something pretty early on that seemed to be full of fidelity and emotion. I was just sittin' there and thinking, wow, we're really doin' it. Other than be his friend and curator and bodyguard for excellence, most of it came from the man himself.
[Right before recording Oh Mercy] Bob was traveling with an aggressive, powerful trio, and I went to hear him in New Orleans and I had no connection with what was going on onstage. I had no criticisms toward those players [but] I didn't know what to do. I thought, "Is this where Bob is at? Is this the kind of record he wants to make?" We huddled up after that performance and I said to him I didn't think the songs we had entertained up to that point, I didn't think that particular band would work out. So I decided to strip it down — 'cause I wanted to hear Bob play. He's a really good player, ya know? He's a roaring piano player and I like his guitar playing a lot. He's got great rhythm and his phrasing relates to his playing, so I wanted to make sure that his playing was there connected with his vocal — the same kind of thing you get when you listen to his early records on his own. You don't think somebody should be beatin' on a drum. [Laughs] I wasn't that interested in a rhythm section for Oh Mercy, I just wanted to hear Bob.
The record's got a lot of emotions in it about travel and movement. It's got a little bit of running away with the circus in it. It's just got enough mystery to keep you comin' back. It's a hard thing to get, man. I wouldn't wish it upon anybody else. It's not good for dilly-dallying or thinking, "Oh, boy, let me work on a Dylan record and it'll be great!" [Laughs] It's a journey, man, it's an intense emotional journey.
Engineer, producer and motorcycle enthusiast Mark Howard twisted the knobs on Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind while his longtime collaborator Daniel Lanois produced. Howard also produced Marianne Faithfull and Lucinda Williams.
Mark Howard: We didn't know him on Oh Mercy, so he was testing us in a way. He didn't talk to me the first two weeks makin' the record or even acknowledge I was in the room. We only really hit it off 'cause I had motorcycles in those days, a bunch of old Harleys. He asked me to get him one, so we hit it off on a motorcycle level. I asked him about his [1966] accident when he was a kid and he came off that Triumph and got kind of spooked off bikes for a while. I think he rediscovered 'em just by hanging out with us and I got him this 1966 Electra Glide, first year of the Shovelhead, real amazing bike, baby blue and white. It was beautiful. He'd go riding every day on it. I think that's where he was doin' his thinkin'.
I've never seen anybody work so hard on lyrics in my life. He'll really concentrate on certain lines and think maybe that's giving the song away and he'll take the last line of the song and put it in the first part of the song and it kind of gives the song a bit of a twist and you can't figure out what it is he's talking about right away.
Strangeness does happen. [Laughs] If somebody walks into the room he doesn't know, he'll go into a character and hold out his finger to shake their hand. He has different characters. He's been perceived as a certain way his whole life, so he doesn't want to lose that mystery about him. But he's funny, he tells jokes just like anybody else.
Daniel Lanois: Time Out of Mind's got a lot of emotion in it too. Hey, when we work together, that's what we get. The challenges [recording Dylan] are the same as any other record: They have to be great. We can't be doing average work. Average is just not part of the equation. [On Time Out of Mind, for instance,] if you're going to be recording material that has a foot in tradition, you can't sound like a bar band. You have to reinvent a tone to a traditional way of speaking. For a bunch of guys to huddle up and play the blues is a yawn, in my opinion, unless it's multilayered and complex and the emotion has a reason to exist. These are the qualities I look for when I'm working with someone. I don't want to just be making a record of shuffles. The more forces you have in the room, the more things happen through osmosis. I think Bob really felt that there was something happening there he hadn't felt in a while.
Mark Howard: We mastered Time Out of Mind in L.A., and that's when he was very sick [Dylan contracted histoplasmosis, a life-threatening fungal infection, in 1997] and he was jacked up on whatever they were giving him. We'd be in the middle of mastering and I'd be getting phone calls at 3 in the morning, he'd change his mind on a song. "Ya know that song ''Til I Fell in Love With You'? Can we go in there and take the very last line and stick it in the first line of the song and put the first line at the end.' [Laughs] He'd come up with these crazy things. I didn't know if it was from his medication or he was just bein' really clever.
He does something I've never seen before. He writes his songs on a typewriter or they're just words in his head, and so he doesn't have any musical changes for them — they're just words. So when he goes in to record them, he's never played them before. He'll try doin' the song in C and he'd lower it and see how his voice sounds down lower. Every take that we'd do would be in a different key. For musicians it's difficult, it's like having to relearn the whole song again.
Arrangements, keys and lyrics [were developed while recording]. He wouldn't have many of the songs written down, there was nothing on paper — it was all in his head. Bob wouldn't wear headphones. I had to have a set of stereo speakers in front of him. From the time he walks in till the time he leaves, he's totally focused. He works hard on his lyrics — he'd have a piece of paper that had words every which way you can think of — upside down, sideways. If you looked at the paper you couldn't read it 'cause it didn't make any sense to you 'cause it's just words on paper. He had this system where he'd pull from it. A lot of people got their songs in their books. This guy's got 'em in his head and he's got these little road maps. It's funny — I asked him how he gets his ideas for songs and he said, "I walk around in crowds and I listen to what people are sayin'."
Actor, musician, photographer and artist Jeff Bridges played the role of the reporter Tom Friend in Masked and Anonymous, the 2003 film that starred and was co-written by Dylan.
Jeff Bridges: I got to play, hang out and act with him in this movie, Masked and Anonymous. Larry Charles, who created Seinfeld, is a big Bob fan, and Bob and Larry worked on this script for a few years. It was Larry's first film, and he encouraged me to participate as much as I could as far as all the acting stuff. We shot the whole thing on hi-def in about two weeks.
I can remember a day when Bob and I spent the day improvising together, which is basically kind of playing pretend like when you were a kid. They were around scenes that we were shooting in the movie, so we'd do it with the lines, then take the lines away and do it with the same kind of intentions the characters were having. I was kinda playing one of you guys, so to improvise on that is fun. [Laughs] We just jammed on these scenes and we had a great time. Bob really took to it.
I'm surprised more people didn't dig [the film]. It's like one of those epic Dylan tunes, but a filmed version. And the music in it is terrific. I've always admired him as an actor.
I can remember one day sittin' in my trailer waiting and there's a knock on the door and it's Bob and he says, "Hey, ya wanna pick a little bit?" [Laughs] Yeah! He came in, picked a few tunes. I'm a big fan of that song he did in Natural Born Killers — [sings] "See the pyramids along the Nile" — "You Belong to Me." I love his guitar playing in that, his whole delivery. So we played that and then I played him a song of mine. I can't remember everything we played, but just to be there [laughs] was like a dream come true. I was surprised my fingers were able to work.
The general impression I got from him was kind of an ancient child, a very wise ancient child. He had such enthusiasm and openness, yet he had this wizened feeling, very wise and very young all at the same time. His excitement about what we were trying was so fresh, he was so up for it.
Johnny Rivers: I always thought of Bob as the first rapper [laughs] and a song stylist. He had a sound in his voice that was very identifiable, just like Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley. I think Bob could've been a great interpreter of songs had he not written the songs he did, and probably would've been successful. You could tell he could really sing and hold notes, especially when he did that album with "Lay Lady Lay" where he changed the sound of his voice [Nashville Skyline]. The fact is that Bob had a better voice than most people give him credit for.
Lisa Law: When I saw him playing at the Grammys in February, he had 11 people in the band behind him [Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons] and he was singing and playing harmonica without his guitar. He was smiling! He's changing now — smiling more often. There was a period where he wouldn't look at his audience. He wouldn't relate to them whatsoever. He'd sing his songs in a way he never sang 'em before so the audience was confused. [Laughs] People would walk out of his concerts! Other times he'd really get down, really play, have fun and sing great!
The magic about Bob was that he always looked different and sang different. People used to call me: "Why is he doing this? Why is he doing that?" I would say Dylan's never going to be the same. He always changes. He always surprises you. That's who he is. The only thing that I don't quite understand about him is when this whole Iraqi war was going on and he had the opportunity in his concerts to sing his songs like "Masters of War," "License to Kill," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "With God on Our Side" and "Gates of Eden" — his antiwar songs — that he didn't lead the brigade against the war. He said he wasn't like that. He wasn't political. The audiences were ready to sing along with him.
Billy James: To this day people still get pissed off at things that Bob does. We have the shining current example of Maureen Dowd [the New York Times columnist who last month wrote a condemnation of Dylan's recent live appearances in China, calling him a "sellout"]. The blogosphere fucking exploded because of what she wrote. It comes from the enormous high regard that we have for those whom we idolize. When they don't fit our perception of them, we feel dismay or anger. We just freak out. And I include myself among them. As I emailed Ms. Dowd after she wrote that, I was puzzled when Bob did a commercial for Victoria's Secret. It just didn't fit my perception of the guy. Similarly when he was the opening act for Mandalay Bay, a new Las Vegas casino, I thought, "Bob? Las Vegas? I don't get it." But that says more about me than it says about Bob.
Jim Keltner: I was with a close friend who's a huge Dylan fan. It was in the papers recently how Bob had gone to Beijing. My friend was making this point how he was disappointed in Bob because the young Bob Dylan wouldn't have backed down when the Chinese government officials wanted to mess with his set list. I countered that it's probably true that the young Bob would've said, "OK, forget it." But the older and wiser Bob realizes that maybe he should take the opportunity to play in China and that the youth there — like youth everywhere — will want to dig deeper and find out what all the fuss is about. They would never have been able to at all had he said, "Forget about it, I'm not playin'."
Wavy Gravy: Bob broke the mold of songwriting. It went from "June-loon-spoon" to "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face." That's quite a jump. He's become really reclusive in his geezerhood. A lot of people really miss him. When he smiles onstage, it's maybe once a year and everybody goes berserk. I think he could use some more yuks and a little permission to move about without gettin' glommed on. That somehow comes with the territory when you get to be that famous. It came at him early on. Suddenly he was the pied piper, poet laureate of the generation and everybody thought that he possessed the cure to all their problems and could tell them how to run their life. He looked in the mailbox and there'd be five people in it. It got really hard to be Bob, so he had to shut himself off, and that's no fun.
Ronee Blakley: [With Dylan turning] 70 and with all of us aging — as we are right along with him — songs like "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there" ["Not Dark Yet," from 1997's Time Out of Mind] have so much meaning, because as we age we still need our heroes, our champions, our poets, our muses. We need people who tell us how it feels, so we can also feel. Even now, he's still doing it. He's still fresh because his take on everything is still immediate, intimate, personal, truthful. He can be harsh and he can be tender. Whatever it is, it still means something.
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Daniel Lanois: [With Dylan] you get the impression that something is speaking to you. I think that's the difference between art and entertainment, ya know? Entertainment you leave and say, "Wow, wasn't that great?" With art you leave and you think, I might want to change something about my life or how I view things philosophically. Bob has spoken to a lot of people over the years, and when that happens — when you touch a heart and provide some kind of life wisdom ... something as simple as "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," to look at poverty the way you've never looked at it before. To be sympathetic. That's the power of song and that's the power of Bob.
Kinky Friedman: Bob's 70 years old, but he writes at the 72-year-old level. In an age when the Internet and technology has made it almost impossible to be a hero, Bob remains one. That's very difficult to do. It's some of the obstacles he overcame and some of the failures and tragedies and challenges, how he handled all that, very much like he handled touring with the Band, people were booing him off the stage. He wouldn't let 'em do it, he would not leave the stage, he wouldn't succumb to it. That takes pawnshop balls. That's the way heroes have to be. And there won't be anymore because in the Internet world we all think we're music critics and guitar players and stars and I don't think there'll be a Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart or Bob Dylan. The culture has serious ADHD, as demonstrated by the rise and fall of Glenn Beck, for instance.
Bob remains a very mysterious and interesting cat and a hero. Those you can count on one hand. He's very much like Willie Nelson: If he stopped he would die. And if he doesn't stop, he's gonna keep goin'. So may the god of his choice bless him. He's been like a spiritual big brother to me. I've always looked up to him for wisdom and advice. To Bob on his birthday, I'd like to say, may the best of the past be the worst of the future. Shalom.
[Thanks to all our interviewed witnesses and to Larry "Ratso" Sloman, Mitch Blank, Lisa Finnie, Michael Ochs, Michael Hacker, Domenic Priore, Henry Diltz, Brad Elterman, Jean Sievers, Emily Aguilar, Richard Bosworth, Margaret Marissen, Jim Dickson (RIP) and Tiina Bockrath.]


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Corsair Dominator 2x2 GB DDR3 1600 Cas 8 Review
When the first i7 was released, it forced users to purchase DDR3 memory. The new i5s and i7s also use DDR3, but why not purchase new DDR3 memory while you're at it? That's at least what Corsair is thinking. That's right, Corsair has developped new dual-channel memory kits targeted at the new i5, and i7 CPUs. Today, we'll specifically be taking a look at the Corsair Dominator 2x2 GB DDR3 1600 Cas 8. While that name is quite a mouthful, it does give a lot of useful information. For instance, the memory runs at 1600MHz, the kit contains two 2GB sticks, and the CAS latency is 8. Plus, it makes the name longer so it sounds cooler.
Not only do these new modules have a very long name, they also utilize Corsair's innovative DHX+ memory cooling technology. Long story short, this should hopefully keep your modules cooler so you can push them further. Will Corsair's new memory perform well enough to justify an upgrade? Read on and let's find out.
Closer Look:
The Dominators were packaged in a slightly unusual way. Instead of the usual plastic packaging, the Dominators came shipped in a box. To me, this means one thing - it's much easier to open! The front of the box shows a picture of the Dominators installed on a motherboard. This gives a first hand look as to what the modules look like. As usual they have the extra fins that will help in dissipating more heat. The back of the box gives us some more information about the Dominators in six different languages. The back also gives us a brief description of how Corsair's DHX cooling works.
Opening the box reveals the Dominators protected in a plastic clamshell. Now we can see that the Dominators are slightly bigger then your average DDR3 memory modules. One of the main reasons for this is because of the massive heat spreader. This heat spreader is capable of the aforementioned DHX cooling, which stands for Dual-path Heat eXchange. I'm not entirely sure why they didn't call it "DPHE", but DHX works just fine. DHX cooling means that the heat spreader cools both the front and back of the memory ICs, and the front and back of the PCB. This makes for a very chilly set of memory. The rear end of the Dominator shows that the memory timings are 8-8-8-24, and that the Dominators run at 1.65V. This means the use of the Dominators on your X58 rig, as well as the newest P55 setups, will be where these modules shine with the voltage limit of 1.65V imposed by Intel.
Corsair has a way of making memory look cool. The Dominators follow a color scheme of black, with a touch of gold on the pins. Instead of the usual green color, the PCB is black, which matches the heatspreader quite nicely. Directly in the center of the heatspreader is Corsair's logo. Sticking out of the side of the heatspreader, you can see the DIMM's model number, which is fairly long. It also appears that the heatspreader is held together by screws rather then clips - or at least the fins appear to be attached by screws.
Taking a look at the side of the Dominators allows us to see just how large the heat spreader is. It appears to be much thicker than what you'd see on most modules. The fins also look smaller then what we usually see on Dominator-branded memory. Not to worry though, as they look like they can dissipate a massive amount of heat. We can clearly see that the fins are held in place by cap screws.
Now that we've familiarized ourselves with the modules, let's take a look at how they perform.

subset: commoncrawl


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Price: £0.90
* Limited time Discount, Buy it now!
This is a beautiful and life-like artificial jellyfish to decorate your fish tank. It has glowing effect, so it will look more beautiful in the dark. This jellyfish is great ornament for your aquarium.
Incredibly detailed imitation floating jellyfish
Moves by Water Current in tank
Attaches by thin invisible line and suction cup
Harmless to All Fish
For both fresh and salt water
Make of soft silicone
Line Length: Approx. 38cm / 15 inch (Maximum)
Diameter: Approx. 5cm / 2 inch
Full Length: Approx. 14cm / 5.5 inch
Color: Blue and clear/ Fuchsia and clear
Package Includes:
1 x artificial jellyfish


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Who would win this battle? It's your turn to vote and decide! You can't blame us for the outcome of this battle. It's all up to you and your fellow readers. Vote, get your friends and enemies to vote too. Base this on looks, costume, sex appeal, fighting prowess or hair color -- whatever you want. Just pick a side and vote!
You can click the voting link to check the results throughout the week. Then come back Monday, July 17 for the final results and the next round of voting.


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Organization awards over $6,000 in grants
The Beaumont Public Schools Foundation Inc. (BPSF) surprised seven Beaumont Independent School District staff members and three students by presenting them with grants totaling $6,022.80 during an award caravan Friday, Dec. 7.
BPSF board members distributed the awards by caravanning from campus to campus to give grant-winners a special gift and the materials requested in their respective grant applications.
The caravan started at Fletcher Elementary with staff member Amy Harris winning a grant in the amount of $220 for a subscription to the National Geographic Kids Magazine for her second grade students. Oaks Education Center school nurse Phyllis Smith received a grant for $725 in the form of modified weight training equipment for students with disabilities. Her goal was to improve the quality of life for students on her campus.
At the last stop on the caravan, Smith Middle School, five separate grants were issued to winners there. Grantees at Smith included teachers Sonya Akers and L'Tunya Bernard along with students Deja' Renae' Baloney, Dejia McCartney and De'Naja Copes. Bernard has won a total of six grants and has had 17 students win grants during her career. Bernard and her students focused on environmental issues. This semester she won for her project "The Red Planet Goes Green." Her students will take on the roles of scientists and mathematicians investigating the hardships that would be imposed if Earth were inhabitable. Bernard received a globe of Mars along with several other items to allow students to utilize high-order reasoning skills to construct simulation models bearing live plants, insects, worms and artificial light. The modules are used to compare Mars to Earth and are designed to help students understand the human impact on the environment and the necessity for a self-sustaining ecosystem.
"It's like Christmas," Bernard said of receiving the grant-funded supplies. "This class is trying to turn our school eco-friendly. … I was looking at Venus and Mars, which we would be most likely to inhabit after Earth. What would it take to make it livable?"
Baloney said her project was fun and could help prevent waste.
"Mine was 'Writing in Electricity,'" Baloney said. "You can write without a pen or a pencil."
For her grant, she received an electricity kit to demonstrate key concepts of electro-chemistry. Her project utilizes a copper pen rather than a traditional, disposable pen or pencil to follow the flow of electrons in the electrolysis of watery potassium iodide.
McCartney's grant focused on color electrolysis, and she received a color electricity kit to show fellow students color changes that occur in chemically treated water after inserting an electric card. Copes project was "Greenhouse and Global Warming." She received Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming kits, which would allow students to conduct research experiments to measure the amount of gases in the atmosphere and the effects on Earth's temperature.
"I am so happy and thankful," Copes said after being presented with her award. "We need to help prevent global warming."
BPSF collects funds for grants throughout the year during events like the Fiesta Breakfast on Oct. 30, which garnered almost $12,000 for the organization. During the fall and spring, the foundation distributes the grants to winning applicants. Staff and students of BISD participate in the competition to win materials for special school projects.


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Ashtray / Mid 20th Century
A ceramic ashtray advertising Black and White Scotch Whisky and featuring the iconic black and white Scottie dogs.
Condition: Good.
Size: 13cm x 13cm.
Our shipping costs are to the UK only.
We are happy to ship internationally.
Please contact us for shipping costs to other countries before you buy.
About vintage items
What makes a vintage piece special is its history – the dinks and dents, scuffs and scratches that show a life lived. If you are looking for something shiny and new, then vintage is not for you. We source beautiful items worldwide, clean and restore them ready for a new life.
If you have any questions about an item please get in touch before you buy.


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Rosace patchwork print stole
Rosace patchwork print rectangular scarf in silk with viscose tassels
€ Free
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Product details
100% silk; tassels: 100% viscose - Ready-to-wear print - Rectangular shape 135 x 190 cm Dry clean only Respect the cleaning instructions on the care label Avoid direct contact with make-up, perfume and oil-based substances Colour: green and multicolour Item code: FF0055-PN2-9G1
Crafted from luxurious silk crepon and finished with multicolour tassels, this lightweight scarf has an intricate rosace patchwork print borrowed from the Fall 2016 ready-to-wear collection. The green and multicolour palette will enhance the earthy, bohemian tones of the Fall collection. Chloé girls can wrap the rectangular scarf around the upper body to best display the opulent motif, or drape it effortlessly around the neck for an explosion of colour.
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Lisi Niesner / Reuters
Survivor Petro Mischtschuk, 87, from Ukraine, wears his old prisoner's garb as he stands near the memorial site of the Little Camp at Buchenwald.
Between July 1937 and April 1945, the Nazis imprisoned a quarter of a million people in the Buchenwald concentration camp, located near the German city of Weimar. Around 56,000 of them were killed before the camp was liberated by U.S troops on April 11, 1945.
68 years later, Reuters photographer Lisi Niesner interviewed some of the remaining survivors as they returned to Buchenwald to mark the anniversary of the liberation.
Lisi Niesner / Reuters
Victor Karpus, 88, from Ukraine, stood at the muster ground where inmates gathered at dawn each day for a roll call. Karpus was imprisoned in several camps including Buchenwald for a total of three years. He even once managed to escape from a camp but got captured and taken to Buchenwald, where he remained until its liberation.
"Work or die – it was impossible to get out from Buchenwald," Karpus says.
Lisi Niesner / Reuters
Lisi Niesner / Reuters
"To each his own": An inscription on Buchenwald's iron gate.
Eva Pusztai, 88, from Hungary, sat in a wheelchair in front of a reconstructed gallows. In July 1944 she was deported to Birkenau and six weeks later to Muenchmuehle, one of 136 satellite camps of Buchenwald.
The forced labor in the arms industry or the camp's stone quarry took the imprisoned to the brink of their physical abilities. "You got just enough food to survive. I lost a third of my weight and I was almost starving to death," she says.
"The employable have to be destroyed by work," she says, explaining the attitude of the Nazis to their prisoners. Her right eye filled up with a single tear that ran down her cheek, then she composed herself and smiled.
Lisi Niesner / Reuters
"Where is your god? Why he does not help you?" Jakob Silberstein, born in Poland in 1924, remembers the mocking of a high-level Nazi on Yom Kippur. He survived six years of captivity in Buchenwald and Auschwitz and witnessed brutal actions by the SS, being locked in a standing cubicle for a week, carrying stones and drinking rainwater for days.
He was standing inside the gas chamber at Birkenau when an SS man asked if any of the men were skilled laborers. "I stated I was an electrician, which luckily saved my life," he said. After the liberation he found out that none of his family or friends had survived the war. He now lives in Israel and tirelessly tells his story.
Lisi Niesner / Reuters
Lisi Niesner / Reuters
Urns are displayed in a room adjacent to the crematorium at Buchenwald.
Professor Elling Kvamme, 94, from Norway, stood at the site of Barrack Block 22. He was teaching medicine at a university in Oslo in 1943 when he was arrested for his connections with underground politics. "Students are always dangerous and the Nazis realized it very quickly," he explained.
He was forced to take part in the Nazi program of Germanization and had to work at the pathological facility in Buchenwald. Before the dead were cremated in an incineration system developed to veil the traces of murder, specimens were taken from their corpses for anatomical collections.
Lisi Niesner / Reuters
Vasile Nussbaum, 83, from Romania, spent a year in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. "Buchenwald was a sanatorium in comparison to Auschwitz" he recalls without hesitation.
Nussbaum revisits the site of the camp every year on liberation day. "You never know what's coming, today we are 83 years old and in the next year we are no more here", he says.
Lisi Niesner / Reuters
Barracks behind trees at Buchenwald.
Editor's note: Pictures taken between April 11-14, 2013 and made available to NBC News today. Read more at Reuters' Photographers Blog.


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|Caribbean Bay is part of Everland theme park. Here, not only can you enjoy swimming and water amusement rides, but you can also relax in hot spring waters all year round. The water park has various facilities, such as the indoor and outdoor pools, a spa, a sauna, a wave pool, and slides like the Water Bobsleigh. The water park is a favorite family destination. Caribbean Bay Water Park has been designed with a Caribbean theme, and it is the largest water park in the world. One of the most popular attractions in the water park is the Wave Pool where you can experience strong waves similar to those of the Caribbean Sea. The park's cutting-edge computer system creates waves of up to 2.4m.
* Caribbean Bay Spa
Caribbean Bay Spa contains various hot spring pools and sauna facilities. The Jasmine Tea Spa is believed to make women more beautiful, the Lemon Spa relieves fatigue, and the Jade-crusted sauna is also beneficial for your health. With the Caribbean Bay pass, you can use all these facilities.
- The health benefits of the Jasmine tea spa
The Jasmine Tea Spa relieves nervous tension, stress, and depression. Jasmine tea balances hormones, so the spa can alleviate menstrual pain, create a regular menstrual cycle, and improve fertility. It also reduces aches and coughs, and is great for dry, irritated skin.
- The health benefits of the mineral-rich hot spring water
It is beneficial for women's beauty, dry skin, reducing fatigue, aching muscles, and insomnia.
- The health benefits of the Jade-crusted sauna
It relieves fatigue and improves blood circulation.
- The health benefits of the Lemon spa
It is great for anti-aging and helps to release toxins from the body
* Miracle Spa: contains a salt sauna and a couple's footbath
- The footbath in the Miracle Spa has been specially designed for a couple. The bubble footbath is very relaxing, and it makes for a romantic date.
- In the salt-laden sauna, you can rub salt on your body and then sweat in the high temperatures. This expels toxins from the body. The salt-laden sauna is good for dry skin and is also beneficial for insomnia, neuralgia, lumbago, and stomach-related problems.
* Kid's Pool & Running Water Pool
The Kid's Pool is shallow and has been specially designed to ensure child safety. Its design is pastel-colored and inspired by children's books. There are various water toys available so children can have fun in the water. The infants' pool is even shallower, so parents can introduce their babies to water in a comfortable environment. Although the pool is very shallow for adults, it is a perfect place for parents and kids to have fun together.
You can float lazily along the running water pool, which has the ambience of the Caribbean during the 17th century. You can have a relaxing time floating past waterfalls and stone bridges.
*Relax Room and Sleeping Room: Take a nap here if you're tired out after all that fun in the water.
- Relax Room has massage machines and "relax capsules" for adults. Visitors can also receive an aromatherapy massage.
- In the sleeping room, there are about 50 beach chairs and 10 jade beds. Temperatures in the room remain warm and air purifiers provide clean oxygen, so this is the perfect place for a good sleep. Visitors can rent a large-sized towel here.
|Operating Hours
|10:30 - 19:00
▷ Click here for more details of the operating hours
|Admission Fees
|▷ Click here for more details of the admission fees
|Available Facilities
|Life vests, beach chairs, towels, lockers, etc, can all be rented for a security deposit and rental fee. The security deposit is returned to you upon your return of the rented items. Swimsuits and water caps are mandatory inside Caribbean Bay and can be rented from June to August. It is highly advisable to wear a safety vest when entering the Wave Pool and it is mandatory to wear a safety vest for inside the red line. The yellow line area is a place where frequent collisions happen.
|Local Transportation
|* By bus
# 5002 at Gangnam and Yangjae station, # 1500 at Seoul Nat'l Univ. of Education, # 6000 at Suwon station
2010년 8월 12일 목요일
Caribbean Bay
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Get a quote for waste management in Horsforth now by completing our quick and simple enquiry formGet your free quote
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NOTE: Once the portable drive is encrypted, it will only be accessible on computers that have PGP installed.
Encrypting a Portable Drive
- Open PGP Desktop and click PGP Disk on the left sidebar.
- Click Encrypt Whole Disk and then select the removable drive that you wish to encrypt.
- At the bottom of the window you will need to click the button next to New Passphrase User...
- When prompted, provide a username and password that will have access to the drive and then click OK.
- Now that a passphrase user is defined, you can click the Encrypt button at the top-right of the window; then click Yes to proceed
Using an Encrypted Portable Drive
You can use a portable drive that has been encrypted on any other computer with at least PGP Desktop 9.0 installed on it. However, you will still need to log in using your passphrase to access the drive's contents.
With the computer on and running, plug the device into any USB or Firewire port.
- PGP Desktop will start up automatically, and the login screen will prompt you for your passphrase. Enter your passphrase and begin working with the portable drive as you normally would.
- When you are done and all files on the portable drive have been saved and closed, be sure to exit the PGP Desktop before safely removing the device.
Unrecognized Device Errors
The message displayed below is what you will receive if the portable drive has enver been installed on the computer. Note that the message at the top of the window says "Unlock disk". This issue is easily resolved by waiting for Windows to install the device, unplugging the device and then reconnecting it.
The message below indicates that the device is installed and recognized correctly. Note that the top of this message box says "Unlock disk '
If you are still having issues with unlocking the device, please see the documentation under PGP-Support-General->Common Solutions to Password Related Issues for troubleshooting and recovery steps.


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Implementing/Using Oracle's Restore Point Functionality
Restore points allow DBAs to create a label for a particular moment in the timeline of the database, eliminating the need to delve into the details of SCNs or to attempt to calculate the exact time transactions are occurring. In addition, a specific type of restore point known as a Guaranteed Restore Point allows the DBA to ensure beyond any doubt that the database is able to flash back to a specific point in time (or even to any point in time between the guaranteed restore point and the current time with some additional configuration).
As we will see, restore points provide an invaluable tool that can be used to assist the DBA in application testing, guarding against failed batch updates, and anywhere else you'd consider using a conventional point-in-time recovery.
Restore Point Prerequisites:
COMPATIBLE initialization parameter must be > 10.2
Flashback Database Prerequisites:
Database must be configured for and running in ARCHIVELOG mode
Database must have configured and be using a FLASH_RECOVERY_AREA
Because restore points work hand-in-hand with the Flashback features introduced in Oracle 10g, many of the same prerequisites (above) apply to the configuration of restore points. I'll assume that the above parameters have been configured correctly, and move on to implementing and using both normal and guaranteed restore points.
To Enable Flashback Logging or Not
Because the restore point functionality works hand-in-hand with flashback database, it is advisable to enable flashback logging before beginning with the restore point functionality. Without this logging enabled, you will be unable to use flashback database to quickly return your database to the time specified by the restore point, except in the case of a guaranteed restore point (where you will lose the ability to restore the database to a point-in-time between the specified guaranteed restore point and the current time). You must also shut down and mount the database to create the first guaranteed restore point without flashback database enabled. To truly enjoy the functionality of restore points, as well as flashback database, it's vital to enable flashback logging (shown in Example 2).
Normal vs. Guaranteed Restore Point
There are two types of restore points that can be created, with differing levels of functionality. The Normal Restore Point simply allows the DBA to provide a name for the current state of the database, used instead of an SCN or timestamp for point-in-time recovery. A Guaranteed Restore Point also provides the ability to name the current state of the database, but allows for greater security in that the restore point will forever be available unless explicitly removed by the DBA, and also can provide the ability to flash back the database without first enabling flashback logging (albeit at a reduced level of functionality, discussed above in the "To Enable Flashback Logging or Not" section).
Examples: Using Restore Points
(Configuration for Examples)
To create the test user and test table used in the following examples, use the following SQL/PL SQL to create the user and insert 200 rows of sample data (code below assumes you have a USERS tablespace):
–Create user and grant necessary permissions
create user testuser identified by testuser;
grant create table to testuser;
grant create session to testuser;
grant create procedure to testuser;
grant execute on dbms_lock to testuser;
alter user testuser quota 5m on users;
–Connect as the newly created testuser and create the test table and logging table
conn testuser/testuser;
create table testuser.test (id int, name varchar2(5)) tablespace users;
create table testuser.logging (timestamp date, loginfo varchar2(15)) tablespace users;
–Insert sample data into the test table
i number(5);
for i in 1..200 loop
insert into testuser.test values (i, 'a'||i);
end loop;
{mospagebreak title=Example 1: Normal Restore Point – Flashback Logging Disabled}
In this simple example, we'll use a normal restore point to flash back a table to our testing starting point after it has been modified during the testing of a new procedure. For simplicity's sake, the procedure will only delete rows from our table, but it could just as easily have been performing complicated business logic. Because we have flashback logging disabled, it isn't possible for us to perform a flashback database (we'll receive a 'ORA-38726: Flashback database logging is not on.' if we attempt it).
Because we'll be using flashback table, we need to enable row movement for the 'testuser.test' table involved, in effect giving Oracle permission to modify the ROWIDs for the rows in our table when it moved things around during the flashback table.
SQL> alter table testuser.test enable row movement;
Table altered.
Create the 'process_data' procedure, representative of a new batch process we're testing:
SQL> create or replace procedure testuser.process_data is
2 begin
3 delete from testuser.test where id > 50;
4 commit;
5 end;
6 /
Procedure created.
Next, we'll create a normal restore point 'before_test1' to mark our starting point for testing. This will allow us to return to this point in time to make changes and retest our new batch process without having to note the SCN or guess at the timestamp:
SQL> create restore point before_test1;
Restore point created.
Next, we'll execute the "process_data" procedure. After the procedure has completed, we see that the data has been processed correctly, and only 50 rows remain in the testuser.test table:
SQL> exec testuser.process_data;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> select count(*) from testuser.test;
We've completed testing for the first iteration of our batch process. To allow testing of the procedure to run against the testuser.test table once again, we'll use our restore point to flash back the table to our starting point, and begin the subsequent rounds of testing:
SQL> flashback table testuser.test to restore point before_test1;
Flashback complete.
Once we've completed the testing and our restore point is no longer needed, we're free to drop the restore point from the database. Note that this step isn't actually required, as the restore points will automatically age out of the database, but it's probably a good idea to keep things as tidy as possible. We'll drop the restore point to minimize confusion:
SQL> drop restore point before_test1;
Restore point dropped.
{mospagebreak title=Example 2: Guaranteed Restore Point – Flashback Logging Enabled}
To illustrate the use of a guaranteed restore point, we'll use an example where we have a new batch process we're testing that will be moving to production in the near future, and would like to test multiple algorithms to determine the most efficient method for processing the data. We'll create a restore point before running the tests, enabling us to in effect "reset" the database back to the exact same point in time before each test.
This will make our testing much easier, ensuring that we're doing an apples-to-apples comparison of the algorithms while minimizing both the amount of work the DBA must do to restore the old data as well as the amount of time spent to do this restore.
Because we'd like to have the ability to utilize the full spectrum of functionality provided by restore points and flashback database, we'll enable flashback database now. Ensure the prerequisites have been met (both Restore Point Prerequisites and Flashback Database Prerequisites above), and use the following steps to enable flashback logging on your database:
oracle@dbatest:~> sqlplus / as sysdba
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.2.0 – Production on Tue May 27 10:18:42 2008
Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.2.0 – Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options
SQL> shutdown immediate;
Database closed.
Database dismounted.
ORACLE instance shut down.
SQL> startup mount;
ORACLE instance started.
Total System Global Area 159383552 bytes
Fixed Size 1259696 bytes
Variable Size 62916432 bytes
Database Buffers 92274688 bytes
Redo Buffers 2932736 bytes
Database mounted.
SQL> alter database flashback on;
Database altered.
SQL> alter database open;
Database altered.
After we've enabled flashback database, we'll create a second test procedure to "process" our data for this example. As in example 1, our procedure will make some basic manipulations on our data, which will represent a more complex business process. This time, however, our procedure will affect more than one table, allowing us to illustrate the effect of the more global flashback database (vs. the flashback table from example 1).
SQL> create or replace procedure testuser.process_data is
2 begin
3 insert into testuser.logging values (sysdate, 'Begin procedure');
4 delete from testuser.test where id > 50;
5 insert into testuser.logging values (sysdate, 'End procedure');
6 commit;
7 end;
8 /
Procedure created.
With our batch processing procedure compiled, we're ready to create a guaranteed restore point to "label" the current starting point for use later in flashing back the database:
SQL> create restore point before_test guarantee flashback database;
Restore point created.
As we've now tagged our current point in time, we'll execute the batch processing procedure, and verify that we have only 50 rows remaining in the testuser.test table, and that we've generated some logging in our testuser.logging table:
SQL> exec testuser.process_data(5);
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> select count(*) from testuser.test;
SQL> select * from testuser.logging;
——— —————
27-MAY-08 Begin procedure
27-MAY-08 End procedure
{mospagebreak title=Reset and Reopen}
Now that we've executed the first test of our new batch process, we need to "reset" the data back to how it appeared before running the test. We'll shut down and remount the database, then use the "flashback database" command to "reset" the database to our specified restore point:
SQL> shutdown immediate;
Database closed.
Database dismounted.
ORACLE instance shut down.
SQL> startup mount;
ORACLE instance started.
Total System Global Area 159383552 bytes
Fixed Size 1259696 bytes
Variable Size 62916432 bytes
Database Buffers 92274688 bytes
Redo Buffers 2932736 bytes
Database mounted.
SQL> flashback database to restore point before_test;
Flashback complete.
We've now "reset" the database back to the restore point. We need to re-open the database, but because we're essentially doing a point-in-time recovery, we need to use the "resetlogs" command to recreate the redo logs and create a new instantiation of the database:
SQL> alter database open resetlogs;
Database altered.
We can verify that we once again see 200 rows in the "testuser.test" table, that our "testuser.logging" table is empty, and that we're ready to test another iteration of our batch processing algorithm:
SQL> select count(*) from testuser.test;
SQL> select count(*) from testuser.logging;
Once we've completed our several iterations of testing, we're ready to remove the guaranteed restore point and free up whatever space the database used to manage the restore point. We accomplish this with the following:
SQL> drop restore point before_test;
Restore point dropped.
Restore points provide a means for a DBA to label a particular point-in-time in the timeline of the database with a user-defined name, without digging into the details of SCNs or timestamps. The guaranteed restore point takes this a step further, providing the ability to guarantee a flashback database is possible until the DBA decides it is no longer needed, along with the ability to perform a flashback database without enabling flashback logging (with a reduced level of functionality). In conclusion, restore points make an invaluable addition to the DBA's arsenal of tools, useful any time a point-in-time recovery is needed.
NOTE: All code tested and known to be working on Oracle 10.2.0.2, running on 32-bit SLES9 (linux).


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Silas Toball
Would you would like to know how to create this piece of art? We have a full step-by step tutorial of it in our new book: Digital Art Wonderland Creative Techniques for Inspirational Journaling & Beautiful Blogging Click on the following link to find out more and to get a signed copy!http://www.duirwaigh.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=793&Itemid=111
Express yourself with art journaling in the 21st Century! Combine online interaction with the mixed-media artist's love of art journaling- and you have the winning combination of Digital Art Wonderland. After an introduction on how digital applications are appropriate for the concept of journaling, you will be guided step-by-step through eight tutorials, each one giving them new techniques for not only scanning original art and doctoring it up digitally, but also the how-to for creating digital art from scratch. In addition, you'll be walked through the process of setting up a blog, adding personal design touches, networking with social media, designing with type, writing styles and more. Plus, for those of us who may not be into blogging, this book provides information on printing digital art.
About the Authors
The art of husband-and-wife team Angi Sullins and Silas Toball has been featured in several publications including Somerset Studio, Somerset Digital and Smashing Magazine. Angi and Silas are veterans in the digital art movement and their website (www.duirwaigh.com) and blogs have won numerous awards including Smashing Magazine's Top Fifty Blog Designs, Pixelatic's Top Stunning Websites, Blogosphere's Top 45 Most Creative Blog Designs and Inspiredology's Top Flourish Designs.- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For our gallery of inspirational and mytho-poetic art visit Duirwaigh Studios: http://www.duirwaigh.com/
After almost a decade of helping visionary artists find their niche, the couple now devotes their time to synergistic collaboration. Silas's focus is symphonic music composition and graphic arts, while Angi has turned her years as a muse into a thriving public speaking and writing career. Angi's first book Duirwaighs and Dreamfields: A True Fairy Tale is being released as an audio book soon, and her inspirational articles and essays can be found on Message from the Muse".
The dynamic duo also create inspirational films together and are the creative team behind A Knock at the Door – the little film that continues to make a big splash on the internet, having been seen by over three million viewers. Prepare to be dazzled! – Duirwaigh Studios
More links:
Message from the Muse - Angi's inspirational blog
Goblin Design - Silas' web site
Angi and Silas on DeviantArt
Artrock Covers - A side project about CD cover licensing


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Murdoch's Enemies
The wrong and the right reasons for hating the media mogul.
During Tuesday's parliamentary hearing, News Corp. CEO and Chairman Rupert Murdoch rope-a-doped his way through dozens of questions about the phone-hacking scandal. Questions he couldn't rope-a-dope, he deflected to his corner man, son James.
But Murdoch was eager to punch back when the questions interested him. About a fourth of the way through the three-hour-plus session, MP Jim Sheridan asked whom he blamed for the closure of News of the World and the collapse of Murdoch's bid for the 61 percent portion of satellite broadcaster BSkyB that he doesn't already own.
Perking up, Murdoch said:
A lot of people had different agendas, I think, in trying to build this hysteria. All our competitors in this country formally announced a consortium to try and stop us. They caught us with dirty hands and they built the hysteria around it.
It sounds like a paranoid's ravings, but Murdoch is absolutely right about the existence of a consortium of competitors. Executives representing the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Daily Mirror, the BBC, Channel 4,and the BT Group came together in October 2010 to lobby regulators against Murdoch's BSkyB bid. Their letter stated, "We believe that the proposed takeover could have serious and far-reaching consequences for media plurality."
The Financial Times didn't sign the letter but had editorialized (subscription required) in September 2010 about how the government must bring Murdoch "to heel" and block the takeover. The FT further speculated that fear of Murdoch's press power was deterring British politicians from investigating the scandal.
Much of those rivals' animus for Murdoch is due to his fiercely competitive ways. His restlessness, inventiveness, and risk-taking have driven them batty as he has upended business as usual time and again ever since he arrived in the U.K. in 1968. He's the man who broke the unions, who modernized newspaper production, and whose price-cutting forced other publishers to follow. He's the entrepreneur who took on billions in losses to start a U.K. satellite-broadcasting company. They hate him, in part, because they've never had the brains or the guts to compete against him.
Murdoch is also hated by government regulators who have sought to undo him and failed. One of Murdoch's biggest enemies included Vince Cable, the regulator in charge of assessing the mogul's fitness to purchase the remainder of BSkyB. Cable opposed the purchase but was removed from the BSkyB proceeding last December after he was caught on tape by undercover reporters saying he had "declared war on Mr. Murdoch." As Murdoch goes down, he should be proud of having made such wonderful enemies.
Other Murdoch enemies are petty ones he has created for reasons only his shrink could explain. Of his fellow London newspapermen, the genocidal tyrant once said, "I am sober after lunch, and in some parts of Fleet Street, that makes you a genius." Other Murdoch enemies hate him because he hates them and uses his publications to express that hatred. As Spectator columnist Alex Massie tells me, Murdoch despises all establishments and practically all institutions—the BBC, Parliament, the "royal" family, the New York Times, patricians, and practically anybody who doesn't conform to his populist self-image. "He respects brashness," Massie says, "and hates anything that smacks of patronizing." For this reason, among others, Murdoch adored Margaret Thatcher.
"He thinks of himself as the plucky, plain-speaking Australian taking on the establishment," Massie says, a role inherited from his father, Keith Murdoch, who stuck it to the British establishment during World War I with his report from Gallipoli. Rupert's veneration of his father explains why he, apropos of nothing, brought up Keith during the hearing, saying:
I just want to say that I was brought up by a father who was not rich, but who was a great journalist, and he, just before he died, bought a small paper, specifically in his will saying that he was giving me the chance to do good. I remember what he did and what he was most proud of, and for which he was hated in this country by many people for many, many years, was exposing the scandal at Gallipoli, which I remain very, very proud of.
Without getting into the journalistic merits of Keith Murdoch's work from Gallipoli, which are debatable, we can, as Massie says, understand it as one of the foundation myths of Australia, of brave and heroic Australian and New Zealand soldiers butchered because of the stupidity of their British commanders. It is a myth that Murdoch subscribes to.
A major difference between Keith Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch is that ease with which Rupert can turn a simple battle into Gallipoli and his every foe into stupid British commanders who must be broken. Murdoch delights in using his publications to punish enemies and reward friends. Take for instance, Murdoch's long-running feud with Mortimer Zuckerman, the real estate tycoon who owns the New York Daily News, the tabloid that competes against Murdoch's tabloid, the New York Post. Last year, Choire Sicha of the Awl documented a decade's worth of insults and vilifications the Post had sent Zuckerman's way. Sicha writes:
Over the last ten years, the New York Post has called Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman a cheapskate, a tyrant, an illegal maid-payer, a friend to unsavory characters, a bad businessman, a racist, a friend of terrorism, a firer of pregnant women, a publisher who uses his editorial page for the his own real estate interests, a constructor of dangerous buildings, the provoker of staff suicides, as well as wild-eyed, mercurial, panicky, a cheater of readers, a scoffer at laws, a "horrible, nickel-and-diming boss," and the publisher of boring publications.
Proving Murdoch's willingness to reshape an enemy into a friend if friendship proves expedient, Sicha's piece pointed to that day's Post, in which aneditorial applauded Zuckerman as a potential candidate for the U.S. Senate. In the Murdoch universe, this sort of instant turnabout is called a "reverse ferret."
The phone-hacking scandal has revealed the thinness of Murdoch's friendships in Parliament, but also the limits of enemy-making and reverse ferreting. Today, Murdoch's "friends" in U.K. politics are running from him as fast as they can, making the likelihood he'll ever enjoy his status as a backdoor man at 10 Downing Street very slim. The scandal, Rupert's doddering performance at the hearing, and the shuttering of News of the World may have defanged the Murdoch bite and can only embolden his many foes.
Murdoch's media empire, which once had such a reputation for ruthlessness, seems to have lost its will to fight. Not one of the seven defensive editorials and opinion pieces published this week about the scandal in Murdoch's U.S. flagship, the Wall Street Journal, has anyteeth. It's hard to inspire terror in your enemies when all you can do is gum them.
According to Roger Cohen, one of Murdoch's favorite sayings is "We don't deal in market share. We create the market." What's your favorite Murdoch saying? Send it to email@example.com. Become my frenemy by monitoring my Twitter feed. (Email may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For email notification of errors in this specific column, type teeth in the subject head of an email message, and send it to firstname.lastname@example.com.


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My hack site :) - testing HTML, hacks, widgets, etc. My real blog is at KITEBLOG
posted by kiteVC at 7:44 AM
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A hand me down that once belonged to Laird Hamilton - a 9.5 Naish AR5 - made its way to me in 2000 after a Baja wavesailing expedition. I've been hooked ever since. IKA Olympic Ambassador, venture capitalist and investor / director of disruptive technology companies. Along with Susi Mai one of the names behind the MaiTaiGlobal.
View my complete profile


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The chaps at Gizmodo have a new Photoshop contest and the submissions once again try to rip Microsoft. Original.
Michael Badgley named AFC special teams player of the week
18 minutes ago
tc1454.blogspot.com and tc1454.googlepages.com are not affiliated with Kenner/Hasbro or Lucasfilm Ltd. This site is maintained on a personal level and was created solely for the purpose of documenting and reporting on the proprietor's collection.
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All news, pictures, and information sent in to the site becomes property of "The Joey Mays Story" (tc1454.blogspot.com). You will be credited for your information.


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Hartsville, S.C.- Coker senior forward Henna Koponen (Vantaa, Finland) had a game high 24 points and 18 rebounds, but was unable to lead Coker to their first Conference Carolinas win of the season, as the Lady Cobras fell to the Erskine College Flying Fleet 79-67 on Monday night.
The loss drops the Lady Cobras to 0-4 on the year and 0-1 in the conference, while Erskine improves to 2-0 on the year and 1-0 in the conference.
Three members of the Fleet scored in double figures with Porsha Morgan leading the way with 23 points, follows by Audrrey Timmerman with 18 points and Neci Allen with 10 points. Elizabeth Tatum led Erskine on boards, grabbing nine rebounds, while chipping in nine points.
To accompany Koponen's outstanding play, Lotta Aaltonen (Rauma, Finland) scored 19 points and pulled down nine rebounds and Megan Thomas (Cresskill, N.J.) had 10 points.
It was closely contested first half, with Erskine taking a two point advantage into the locker room, but the Fleet turned up the intensity in the second half and outscored the Lady Cobras by 10 points to take the win.
The deciding difference in the game came from shooting as Coker shot just 29.9 percent from the floor compared to Erskine's 47.4 percent.
Coker returns to action after the Thanksgiving break to face Coastal Carolina University on Sunday, Nov. 29 at 2:00 p.m.


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Geoffrey Coates '89 Earns Professor Status at Cornellby Aaron Hunckler • January 9, 2006 Share:
Production and disposal of oil-based plastics: environmentally harmful.
Production and disposal of nature-based plastics: environmentally beneficial.
Discovering a way to make plastics from bio-renewable resources: sweet.
Geoffrey Coates, '89, and his Cornell University research team have found a way to produce plastics using oranges and carbon dioxide.
"We are really trying to do two things at once," Coates said. "We are trying to use renewable resources and we are trying to put those together to make plastics that when they are done being used they are biodegradable."
Many disposable plastic products made today can be traced back to oil as their primary source of carbon. Their synthesis produces carbon dioxide (CO2)—an environmentally harmful greenhouse gas.
Coates and his team have addressed this problem and have developed an alternative by making polymers using limonene oxide, derived from orange peels and CO2, and a catalyst.
"In our work we get these small molecules, such as like lactic acid or limonene and we look for ways to turn them into polymers," the Cornell pre-med chemistry professor said. "A polymer is a much bigger molecule. They are the result of hooking a bunch of little molecules together and it's not unlike putting beads on a string. The beads would be what we call monomers, the small molecules, and the chain of beads is the ploymner. These molecules don't just spontaneously hook themselves together; they require an external stimulus, which is known as our catalyst."
Coates' expertise lies in figuring out what catalysts will make these reactions occur.
Having earned his BA in Chemistry from Wabash, doctorate from Stanford, and extended postdoctoral research work with 2005 chemistry Nobel prize winner Robert Grubbs at the California Institute of Technology, Coates has had the opportunity to learn and work in exceptional company, himself included. Coates propelled himself to professor status in 2002 after just five years at Cornell. Typically it takes two or even three times as long.
"I got some really good students, projects worked really well and the department decided that I had done enough research to be given tenure," Coates said modestly.
Rapid advancement in any endeavor is usually correlated to a person's work ethic, skills and ability. Coates graduated summa cum laude with distinction in comps from Wabash and it was there that he received great preparation for future life.
"When I went to Stanford, I walked in day one and was petrified because there were kids there who went to Harvard, Princeton, and many other top universities," Coates recollected. "We all had to take standardized tests the first three days we were there…I took all three of the tests and not only passed them but on one of them I got the highest score of all the incoming students. Looking back to the Wabash education, it's an amazing education from day one until the comprehensive examinations. I think comps are something the school should hang onto, they are very unique and very valuable."
Hunckler is a free-lance writer based in Bloomington, Ind. Photos courtesy Cornell University.