title: White power skinhead

text: The central themes of white power skinheads revolve around "the ethnic war which will be waged in the future and the denunciation of a global Jewish conspiracy to promote miscegenation" (see White genocide conspiracy theory). The white power skinhead movement is generally associated with neo-Nazism, in part, this is due to its origins in the National Front and the British Movement, along with the presence of former Nazis (especially former members of the SS) who mentored members of nascent German racist skinhead groups in the 1980s–1990s. Historian John F. Pollard contends that "the racist skinhead ideology is fundamentally neo-Nazi in inspiration." Camus and Lebourg also argue that although not all racist skinheads can be classified as 'neo-Nazi', neo-Nazism remains hegemonic in the far-right skinhead movement. Scholars concede at the same time the difficulty of separating the public use of the provocative and subversive aesthetics surrounding Nazi symbols from actual belief in, and commitment to, Nazi ideology.


title: White power skinhead

text: The early-20th century Judeo-Bolshevik and Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theories have since evolved into the idea of a Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG), which claims that Jews secretly control the governments of Western states. Their attitude toward the Holocaust ranges from outright denial to minimization of the death toll, and even to glorifying the event in the lyrics of white power bands such as No Remorse or Warhammer. Nazi theories of Slavs as "Untermenschen" ('sub-humans') have been largely abandoned in favor of a more "inclusive" concept of white supremacy. American neo-Nazism and white supremacism largely helped "crystallize" the Nazi imagery and have had a powerful influence on the worldwide movement, as evidenced by the popularity of David Lane's Fourteen Words and William Luther Pierce's "The Turner Diaries", which some Combat 18 leaders regard as their "Bible".


title: White power skinhead

text: According to Camus and Lebourg, the Nazifying imagery of white power skinheads was "at first largely provocative", and sometimes a way for the proletarian youth "of responding to the sacralization of the memory of World War II". Pollard also notes that "adolescent rebellion", involving a desire to be different by rejecting prevailing societal norms by using shocking imagery (like the wearing of Nazi regalia by motorcycle gangs in the 1960s and punk rockers in the 1970s), probably plays some part in the decision to wear neo-Nazi or racist symbols, or even to adopt the ideas they embody. References to Nazism have also been less significant in countries like Italy or Hungary, where fascist figures like Benito Mussolini and Ferenc Szálasi still exert a strong cultural influence on the local far-right.


title: White power skinhead

text: White power skinheads see both the permissive society and the sexual revolution as "perversions", and they generally promote an image of "clean-living, drug-free, heterosexual, working-class males". Homophobia and rejection of any form of drug-taking (except tobacco and alcohol) are common traits found across skinhead groups. According to historian John F. Pollard, this "puritanical" stance takes its roots in the anti-permissive way of life of the original skinheads who rejected the mod and hippie subcultures.


title: White power skinhead

text: A central element of this puritanism is the skinhead idea of "naturalness"; their aim is to "eliminate all abnormalities like, homosexuals, lesbians and other kinds of 'sick' and 'deviant' people". Skinheads' opposition to abortion partly results from a backlash against feminism and the sexual revolution, and from a paranoid anxiety about the demographic decline of the white race embodied in the widespread slogan "9 per cent", meaning that only 9 per cent of the world's population is white by their own calculations.


title: White power skinhead

text: Women are a minority among the white power skinhead movement. In Britain, France and Germany, they rarely attend events. Female presence at gigs is however more frequent in Italy, and entire families have been seen attending the Aryan and Nordic Fest in the United States. Despite a widespread misogynistic culture and a general absence of commitment to female equality, some skinhead women have rejected the traditional gender roles and can act as aggressively as their male counterparts.


title: White power skinhead

text: Skinheads present themselves as an excluded or martyr group repressed by the "police state" of liberal democracies. Blood & Honour and Combat18 have promoted conspiracy theories about the death of Ian Stuart Donaldson, suggesting that he was the victim of a political "assassination". The common skinhead motto "hated but proud" expresses the closed, excluded, but feared lifestyle of white power skinheads.


title: White power skinhead

text: Odinism, the modern pagan religion reconstructed on the beliefs of Norse and Ancient Germans, is particularly popular among skinheads due to its warrior ethos. "Blood & Honour" magazine regularly points out that Odinism is a "religion of warriors", while Christianity is a "religion of slaves". In the United States, racialist pagan groups like the Odin Brotherhood or Wotansvolk have found some followers in the skinhead movement, and skinhead groups have also tended to revive Slavic paganism. Pollard says, however, "the appropriation of Odinist/pagan imagery and iconography by racist skinheads seems to be largely symbolic, rather than a serious attempt to adopt an alternative religion to Christianity." Also, Odinism and neo-paganism have been less popular in countries like Italy or Spain, where skinhead groups have maintained a cultural attachment to Catholicism.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; ; – 14 April 1930) was a Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist, and actor.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: During his early, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Russian Futurist movement. He co-signed the Futurist manifesto, "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste" (1913), and wrote such poems as "A Cloud in Trousers" (1915) and "Backbone Flute" (1916). Mayakovsky produced a large and diverse body of work during the course of his career: he wrote poems, wrote and directed plays, appeared in films, edited the art journal "LEF", and produced agitprop posters in support of the Communist Party during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. Though Mayakovsky's work regularly demonstrated ideological and patriotic support for the ideology of the Bolsheviks and a strong admiration of Vladimir Lenin, his relationship with the Soviet state was always complex and often tumultuous. Mayakovsky often found himself engaged in confrontation with the increasing involvement of the Soviet state in cultural censorship and the development of the State doctrine of Socialist realism. Works that criticized or satirized aspects of the Soviet system, such as the poem "Talking With the Taxman About Poetry" (1926), and the plays "The Bedbug" (1929) and "The Bathhouse" (1929), met with scorn from the Soviet state and literary establishment.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1930, Mayakovsky killed himself. Even after death, his relationship with the Soviet state remained unsteady. Though Mayakovsky had previously been harshly criticized by Soviet governmental bodies such as the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), Premier Joseph Stalin described Mayakovsky after his death as "the best and the most talented poet of our Soviet epoch".


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was born in 1893 in Baghdati, Kutais Governorate, Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire, to Alexandra Alexeyevna (née Pavlenko), a housewife, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, a local forester. His father belonged to a noble family and was a distant relative of the writer Grigory Danilevsky. Vladimir Vladimirovich had two sisters, Olga and Lyudmila, and a brother Konstantin, who died at the age of three. The family was of Russian and Zaporozhian Cossack descent on their father's side and Ukrainian on their mother's.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: At home the family spoke Russian. With his friends and at school, Mayakovsky spoke Georgian. "I was born in the Caucasus, my father is a Cossack, my mother is Ukrainian. My mother tongue is Georgian. Thus three cultures are united in me," he told the Prague newspaper "Prager Presse" in a 1927 interview. For Mayakovsky, Georgia was his eternal symbol of beauty. "I know, it's nonsense, Eden and Paradise, but since people sang about them // It must have been Georgia, the joyful land, that those poets were having in mind", he wrote later.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1902 Mayakovsky joined the Kutais gymnasium. Later as a 14-year-old, he took part in socialist demonstrations in the town of Kutaisi. His mother, aware of his activities, apparently did not mind. "People around warned us we were giving a young boy too much freedom. But I saw him developing according to the new trends, sympathized with him and pandered to his aspirations," she later remembered. His father died suddenly in 1906, when Mayakovsky was thirteen. (The father pricked his finger on a rusty pin while filing papers and died of blood poisoning.) His widowed mother moved the family to Moscow after selling all their movable property.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In July 1906 Mayakovsky joined the 4th form of Moscow's 5th Classic gymnasium and soon developed a passion for Marxist literature. "Never cared for fiction. For me it was philosophy, Hegel, natural sciences, but first and foremost, Marxism. There'd be no higher art for me than "The Foreword" by Marx," he recalled in the 1920s in his autobiography "I, Myself". In 1907 Mayakovsky became a member of his gymnasium's underground Social Democrats' circle, taking part in numerous activities of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which he, given the nickname "Comrade Konstantin", joined the same year. In 1908, the boy was dismissed from the gymnasium because his mother was no longer able to afford the tuition fees. For two years he studied at the Stroganov School of Industrial Arts, where his sister Lyudmila had started her studies a few years earlier.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: As a young Bolshevik activist, Mayakovsky distributed propaganda leaflets, possessed a pistol without a license, and in 1909 got involved in smuggling female political activists out of prison. This resulted in a series of arrests and finally an 11-month imprisonment. It was in solitary confinement in the Moscow Butyrka prison that Mayakovsky started writing verses for the first time. "Revolution and poetry got entangled in my head and became one," he wrote in "I, Myself". As a minor, Mayakovsky was spared a serious prison sentence (with associated deportation) and in January 1910 was released. A warden confiscated the young man's notebook. Years later Mayakovsky conceded that was all for the better, yet he always cited 1909 as the year his literary career started.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Upon his release from prison, Mayakovsky remained an ardent Socialist, but realized his own inadequacy as a serious revolutionary. Having left the Party (never to re-join it), he concentrated on education. "I stopped my Party activities. Sat down and started to learn… Now my intention was to make the Socialist art," he later remembered.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1911 Mayakovsky enrolled in the Moscow Art School. In September 1911 a brief encounter with fellow student David Burlyuk (which nearly ended with a fight) led to a lasting friendship and had historic consequences for the nascent Russian Futurist movement. Mayakovsky became an active member (and soon a spokesman) for the group (), which sought to free the arts from academic traditions: its members would read poetry on street corners, throw tea at their audiences, and make their public appearances an annoyance for the art establishment.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Burlyuk, on having heard Mayakovsky's verses, declared him "a genius poet". Later Soviet researchers tried to downplay the significance of the fact, but even after their friendship ended and their ways parted, Mayakovsky continued to give credit to his mentor, referring to him as "my wonderful friend". "It was Burlyuk who turned me into a poet. He read the French and the Germans to me. He pressed books on me. He would come and talk endlessly. He didn't let me get away. He would subsidize me with 50 kopeks each day so that I'd write and not be hungry," Mayakovsky wrote in "I, Myself".


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: On 17 November 1912, Mayakovsky made his first public performance at Stray Dog, the artistic basement in Saint Petersburg. In December of that year his first published poems, "Night" () and "Morning" () appeared in the Futurists' Manifesto "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste", signed by Mayakovsky, as well as Velemir Khlebnikov, David Burlyuk and Alexey Kruchenykh, calling among other things for... "throwing Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, etc, etc, off the steamboat of the modernity."


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In October 1913 Mayakovsky gave the performance at the Pink Lantern café, reciting his new poem "Take That!" () for the first time. The concert at the Petersburg's Luna-Park saw the premiere of the poetic monodrama "Vladimir Mayakovsky", with the author in a leading role, stage decorations designed by Pavel Filonov and Iosif Shkolnik. In 1913 Mayakovsky's first poetry collection called "I" () came out, its original limited edition 300 copies lithographically printed. This four-poem cycle, handwritten and illustrated by Vasily Tchekrygin and Leo Shektel, later formed Part One of the 1916 compilation "Simple as Mooing".


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In December 1913 year Mayakovsky along with his fellow Futurist group members embarked on the Russian tour, which took them to 17 cities, including Simferopol, Sevastopol, Kerch, Odessa and Kishinev. It was a riotous affair. The audiences would go wild and often the police stopped the readings. The poets dressed outlandishly, and Mayakovsky, "a regular scandal-maker" in his own words, used to appear on stage in a self-made yellow shirt which became the token of his early stage persona. The tour ended on 13 April 1914 in Kaluga and cost Mayakovsky and Burlyuk their education: both were expelled from the Art school, their public appearances deemed incompatible with the school's academic principles. They learned of it while in Poltava from the local police chief, who chose the occasion as a pretext to ban the Futurists from performing on stage.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Having won 65 rubles in a lottery, in May 1914 Mayakovsky went to Kuokkala, near Petrograd. Here he put the finishing touches to "A Cloud in Trousers", frequented Korney Chukovsky's dacha, sat for Ilya Repin's painting sessions and met Maxim Gorky for the first time. As World War I began, Mayakovsky volunteered but was rejected as 'politically unreliable'. He worked for the Lubok Today company which produced patriotic lubok pictures, and in the "Nov" (Virgin Land) newspaper, which published several of his anti-war poems ("Mother and an Evening Killed by the Germans", "The War is Declared", "Me and Napoleon" among others). In summer 1915 Mayakovsky moved to Petrograd where he started contributing to the "New Satyrikon" magazine, writing mostly humorous verse in the vein of Sasha Tchorny, one of the journal's former stalwarts. Then Maxim Gorky invited the poet to work for his journal, "Letopis".


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In June of that year Mayakovsky fell in love with a married woman, Lilya Brik, who eagerly took upon herself the role of a 'muse'. Her husband Osip Brik seemed not to mind and became the poet's close friend; later he published several books by Mayakovsky and used his entrepreneurial talents to support the Futurist movement. This love affair, as well as his ideas on World War I and Socialism, strongly influenced Mayakovsky's best known works: "A Cloud in Trousers" (1915), his first major poem of appreciable length, followed by "Backbone Flute" (1915), "The War and the World" (1916) and "The Man" (1918).


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: When his mobilization form finally arrived in the autumn of 1915, Mayakovsky found himself unwilling to go to the frontlines. Assisted by Gorky, he joined the Petrograd Military Driving school as a draftsman and was studying there until early 1917. In 1916 Parus (The Sail) Publishers (again led by Gorky), published Mayakovsky's poetry compilation called "Simple As Mooing".


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Mayakovsky embraced the Bolshevik Russian Revolution wholeheartedly and for a while even worked in Smolny, Petrograd, where he saw Vladimir Lenin. "To accept or not to accept, there was no such question… [That was] my Revolution," he wrote in "I, Myself" autobiography. In November 1917 he took part in the Communist Party's Central committee-sanctioned assembly of writers, painters and theatre directors who expressed their allegiance to the new political regime. In December that year "The Left March" (, 1918) premiered at the Navy Theater, with sailors as an audience.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1918 Mayakovsky started the short-lived "Futurist Paper". He also starred in three silent films made at the Neptun Studios in Petrograd he had written scripts for. The only surviving one, "The Lady and the Hooligan", was based on the "La maestrina degli operai" ("The Workers' Young Schoolmistress") published in 1895 by Edmondo De Amicis, and directed by Evgeny Slavinsky. The other two, "Born Not for the Money" and "Shackled by Film" were directed by Nikandr Turkin and are presumed lost.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: On 7 November 1918 Mayakovsky's play "Mystery-Bouffe" premiered at the Petrograd Musical Drama Theatre. Representing a universal flood and the subsequent joyful triumph of the "Unclean" (the proletariat) over the "Clean" (the bourgeoisie), this satirical drama's re-worked, 1921 version enjoyed even greater popular acclaim. However, the author's attempt to make a film of the play failed, its language deemed "incomprehensible for the masses."


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In December 1918 Mayakovsky was involved with Osip Brik in discussions with the Viborg district party school of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) (RKP(b)) to set up a Futurist organisation affiliated to the party. Named Komfut the organisation was formally founded in January 1919, but was swiftly dissolved following the intervention of Anatoly Lunacharsky.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In March 1919 Mayakovsky moved back to Moscow where "Vladimir Mayakovsky's Collected Works 1909–1919" was released. The same month he started working for the Russian State Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) creating—both graphic and text—satirical Agitprop posters, aimed mostly at informing the country's largely illiterate population of the current events. In the cultural climate of the early Soviet Union, his popularity grew rapidly, even if among the members of the first Bolshevik government, only Anatoly Lunacharsky supported him; others treated the Futurist art more skeptically. Mayakovsky's 1921 poem, "150 000 000" failed to impress Lenin, who apparently saw in it little more than a formal futuristic experiment. More favourably received by the Soviet leader was his next one, "Re Conferences" which came out in April.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: A vigorous spokesman for the Communist Party, Mayakovsky expressed himself in many ways. Contributing simultaneously to numerous Soviet newspapers, he poured out topical propagandistic verses and wrote didactic booklets for children while lecturing and reciting all over Russia.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In May 1922, after a performance at the House of Publishing at the charity auction collecting money for the victims of Povolzhye famine, he went abroad for the first time, visiting Riga, Berlin and Paris, where he was invited to the studios of Fernand Léger and Picasso. Several books, including "The West" and "Paris" cycles (1922–1925) came out as a result.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: From 1922 to 1928, Mayakovsky was a prominent member of the Left Art Front (LEF) he helped to found (and coin its "literature of fact, not fiction" credo) and for a while defined his work as Communist Futurism (). He edited, along with Sergei Tretyakov and Osip Brik, the journal "LEF", its stated objective being "re-examining the ideology and practices of the so-called leftist art, rejecting individualism and increasing Art's value for the developing Communism." The journal's first, March 1923, issue featured Mayakovsky's poem "About That" (). Regarded as a "LEF" manifesto, it soon came out as a book illustrated by Alexander Rodchenko who also used some photographs made by Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In May 1923 Mayakovsky spoke at a massive protest rally in Moscow, in the wake of Vatslav Vorovsky's assassination. In October 1924 he gave numerous public readings of the 3,000-line epic "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" written on the death of the Soviet Communist leader. Next February it came out as a book, published by Gosizdat. Five years later Mayakovsky's rendition of the third part of the poem, at the Lenin Memorial evening in the Bolshoi Theatre ended with 20-minutes ovation. In May 1925 Mayakovsky's second trip took him to several European cities, then to the United States, Mexico and Cuba. The book of essays "My Discovery of America" came out later that year.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In January 1927 the first issue of the "New LEF" magazine came out, again under Mayakovsky's supervision, now focusing on the documentary art. In all, 24 issues of it came out. In October 1927 Mayakovsky recited his new poem "All Right!" () for the audience of the Moscow Party conference activists in the Moscow's Red Hall. In November 1927 a play called "The 25th" (and based upon the "All Right!" poem) premiered at the Leningrad Maly Opera Theatre. In summer 1928, disillusioned with LEF, he left both the organization and its magazine.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1929 the publishing house Goslitizdat released "The Works by V.V. Mayakovsky" in 4 volumes. In September 1929 the first assembly of the newly formed REF group gathered with Mayakovsky in the chair. But behind this façade the poet's relationship with the Soviet literary establishment was quickly deteriorating. Both the REF-organized exhibition of Mayakovsky's work, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his literary career and the parallel event in the Writers' Club, "20 Years of Work" in February 1930, were ignored by the RAPP members and, more importantly, the Party leadership, particularly Stalin whose attendance he was greatly anticipating. It was becoming evident that the experimental art was no longer welcomed by the regime, and the country's most famous poet irritated a lot of people.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Two of Mayakovsky's satirical plays, written specifically for Meyerkhold Theatre, "The Bedbug" (1929) and (in particular) "The Bathhouse" (1930) evoked stormy criticism from the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. In February 1930 Mayakovsky joined RAPP, but in Pravda on 9 March, a leading member of RAPP, Vladimir Yermilov, writing "with all the authority of a 23 year old who had not seen the play but had read part of the script" categorised Mayakovsky as one of the 'petit bourgeois revolutionary intelligentsia', adding that "we hear a false 'leftist' note in Mayakovsky, a note which we know not only from literature...". This was a potentially deadly political accusation, in that it implied an intellectual link between Mayakovsky and the Left Opposition, led by Leon Trotsky, whose supporters were in exile or prison. (Trotsky was known to admire Mayakovsky's poetry). Mayakovsky retaliated by creating a huge poster mocking Yermilov, but was ordered by RAPP to take it down. In his suicide note Mayakovsky wrote "Tell Yermilov we should have completed the argument."


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: The smear campaign continued in the Soviet press, sporting slogans like "Down with Mayakovshchina!" On 9 April 1930 Mayakovsky, reading his new poem "At the Top of My Voice", was shouted down by the student audience, for being 'too obscure'.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: On 12 April 1930, Mayakovsky was seen in public for the last time: he took part in a discussion at the Sovnarkom meeting concerning the proposed copyright law. On 14 April 1930, his current partner, actress Veronika Polonskaya, upon leaving his flat, heard a shot behind the closed door. She rushed in and found the poet lying on the floor; he had apparently shot himself through the heart. The handwritten death note read: "To all of you. I die, but don't blame anyone for it, and please do not gossip. The deceased disliked that sort of thing terribly. Mother, sisters, comrades, forgive me – this is not a good method (I do not recommend it to others), but there is no other way out for me. Lily – love me. Comrade Government, my family consists of Lily Brik, mama, my sisters, and Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya. If you can provide a decent life for them, thank you. Give the poem I started to the Briks. They'll sort them out." The 'unfinished poem' in his suicide note read, in part: "And so they say – "the incident dissolved" / the love boat smashed up / on the dreary routine. / I'm through with life / and [we] should absolve / from mutual hurts, afflictions and spleen." Mayakovsky's funeral on 17 April 1930, was attended by around 150,000, the third largest event of public mourning in Soviet history, surpassed only by those of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. He was interred at the Moscow Novodevichy Cemetery.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Mayakovsky's suicide occurred after a dispute with Polonskaya, with whom he had a brief but unstable romance. Polonskaya, who was in love with the poet, but unwilling to leave her husband, was the last one to see Mayakovsky alive. But, as Lilya Brik stated in her memoirs, "the idea of suicide was like a chronic disease inside him, and like any chronic disease it worsened under circumstances that, for him, were undesirable... " According to Polonskaya, Mayakovsky mentioned suicide on 13 April, when the two were at Valentin Katayev's place, but she thought he was trying to emotionally blackmail her and "refused to believe for a second [he] could do such a thing."


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: The circumstances of Mayakovsky's death became a matter of lasting controversy. It appeared that the suicide note had been written two days before his death. Soon after the poet's death, Lilya and Osip Brik were hastily sent abroad. The bullet removed from his body didn't match the model of his pistol, and his neighbors were later reported to say they'd heard two shots. Ten days later, the officer investigating the poet's suicide was himself killed, fueling speculation about the nature of Mayakovsky's death. Such speculation, often alluding to suspicion of murder by State services, especially intensified during the periods of first Krushchevian de-Stalinisation, later Glasnost, and Perestroika, as Soviet politicians sought to weaken Stalin's reputation (or Brik's, and by association, Stalin's) and the positions of contemporary opponents. According to Chantal Sundaram:The extent to which rumours of Mayakovsky's murder remained widespread is indicated by the fact that even as late as the end of 1991 they prompted the State Mayakovsky Museum to commission an expert medical and criminological inquiry into the material evidence of his death kept in the museum: photographs, the shirt with traces from the gunshot, the carpet on which Mayakovsky fell, and the authenticity of the suicide note. The possibility of a forgery, suggested by [Andrei] Koloskov, had survived as a theory with different variants. But the results of a detailed hand-writing analysis found that the suicide note was undoubtedly written by Mayakovsky, and also included the conclusion that its irregularities "depict a diagnostic complex, testifying to the influence ... at the moment of execution ... of 'disconcerting' factors, among which the most probable is a psycho-physiological state linked with agitation." Although the findings are hardly surprising, the event is indicative of a fascination with Mayakovsky's contradictory relationship with the Soviet authorities which survived into the era of perestroika, despite the fact that he was being attacked and rejected for his political conformism at this time.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Mayakovsky met husband and wife Osip and Lilya Brik in July 1915 at their dacha in Malakhovka nearby Moscow. Soon after that Lilya's sister, Elsa Triolet, who'd had a brief affair with the poet before, invited him to the Briks' Petrograd flat. The couple at the time showed no interest in literature and were successful corals traders. That evening Mayakovsky recited the yet unpublished poem "A Cloud in Trousers" and announced it as dedicated to the hostess ("For you, Lilya"). "That was the happiest day in my life," was how he referred to the episode in his autobiography years later. According to Lilya Brik's memoirs, her husband too fell in love with the poet ("How could I have possibly failed to fall for him, if Osya loved him so?" – she once argued), whereas "Volodya did not merely fall in love with me; he attacked me, it was an assault. For two and a half years I didn't have a moment's peace. I understood right away that Volodya was a genius, but I didn't like him. I didn't like clamorous people ... I didn't like the fact that he was so tall and people in the street would stare at him; I was annoyed that he enjoyed listening to his own voice, I couldn't even stand the name Mayakovsky... sounding so much like a cheap pen name." Both Mayakovsky's persistent adoration and rough appearance irritated her. It was, allegedly, to please her, that Mayakovsky attended a dentist, started to wear a bow tie and use a walking stick.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Soon after Osip Brik published "A Cloud in Trousers" in September 1915, Mayakovsky settled in the Palace Royal hotel at the Pushkinskaya Street, Petrograd, not far from where they lived. He introduced the couple to his Futurist friends and the Briks' flat quickly evolved into a modern literary salon. From then on Mayakovsky was dedicating every one of his large poems (with the obvious exception of "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin") to Lilya; such dedications later started to appear even in the texts he'd written before they met, much to her displeasure. In summer 1918, soon after Lilya and Vladimir starred in the film "Encased in a Film" (only fragments of which survived), Mayakovsky and the Briks moved in together. In March 1919 all three came to Moscow and in 1920 settled in a flat at the Gondrikov Lane, Taganka.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1920 Mayakovsky had a brief romance with Lilya Lavinskaya, an artist who also contributed to ROSTA. She gave birth to a son, (1921—1986), later a Soviet sculptor. In 1922 Lilya Brik fell in love with Alexander Krasnoshchyokov, the head of the Soviet Prombank. This affair resulted in the three months rift, which was to some extent reflected in the poem "About That" (1923). Brik and Mayakovsky's relationships ended in 1923, but they never parted. "Now I am free from placards and love," he confessed in the poem called "For the Jubilee" (1924). Still, when in 1926 Mayakovsky was granted a state-owned flat at the Gendrikov Lane in Moscow, all three of them moved in and lived there until 1930, having turned the place into the LEF headquarters.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Mayakovsky continued to profess his devotion to Lilya whom he considered a family member. It was Brik who in the mid-1930s famously addressed Stalin with a personal letter which made all the difference in the way the poet's legacy has been treated since in the USSR. Still, she had many detractors (among them Lyudmila Mayakovskaya, the poet's sister) who regarded her as an insensitive femme-fatale and cynical manipulator, who'd never been really interested in either Mayakovsky or his poetry. "To me, she was a kind of monster. But Mayakovsky apparently loved her that way, armed with a whip," remembered poet Andrey Voznesensky who knew Lilya Brik personally. Literary critic and historian Viktor Shklovsky who resented what he saw as the Briks' exploitation of Mayakovsky both when he lived and after his death, once called them "a family of corpse-mongers."


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In summer 1925 Mayakovsky traveled to New York, where he met Russian émigré Elli Jones, born Yelizaveta Petrovna Zibert, an interpreter who spoke Russian, French, German and English fluently. They fell in love, for three months were inseparable, but decided to keep their affair secret. Soon after the poet's return to the Soviet Union, Elli gave birth to daughter Patricia. Mayakovsky saw the girl just once, in Nice, France, in 1928, when she was three.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Patricia Thompson, a professor of philosophy and women's studies at Lehman College in New York City, is the author of the book "Mayakovsky in Manhattan", in which she told the story of her parents' love affair, relying on her mother's unpublished memoirs and their private conversations prior to her death in 1985. Thompson traveled to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, looking for her roots, was welcomed there with respect and since then started to use her Russian name, Yelena Vladimirovna Mayakovskaya.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1928 in Paris Mayakovsky met Russian émigré Tatyana Yakovleva, a 22-year-old model working for the Chanel fashion house, and niece of painter Alexandre Jacovleff. He fell in love madly and wrote two poems dedicated to her, "Letter to Comrade Kostrov on the Essence of Love" and "Letter to Tatiana Yakovleva." Some argued that, since it was Elsa Triolet (Lilya's sister) who acquainted them, the liaison might have been the result of Brik's intrigue, aimed at stopping the poet from getting closer to Elli Jones and especially daughter Patricia, but the power of this passion apparently caught her by surprise.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Mayakovsky tried to persuade Tatyana to return to Russia but she refused. In the late 1929 he made an attempt to travel to Paris in order to marry her lover but was refused a visa for the first time, again, as many believed, due to Lilya's making full use of her numerous "connections". It became known that she "accidentally" read Mayakovsky out a letter from Paris alleging that Tatiana was getting married, while, as it turned out soon, the latter's wedding wasn't on the agenda at that very moment. Lydia Chukovskaya insisted it was the "ever-powerful Yakov Agranov, another one of Lilya's lovers" who prevented Mayakovsky's getting a visa, upon her request.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In the late 1920s Mayakovsky had two more affairs, with student (later Goslitizdat editor) Natalya Bryukhanenko (1905–1984) and with Veronika Polonskaya (1908—1994), a young MAT actress, then the wife of actor Mikhail Yanshin.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: It was Veronika's unwillingness to divorce the latter that resulted in her rows with Mayakovsky, the last of which preceded the poet's suicide. Yet, according to Natalya Bryukhanenko, it was not Polonskaya but Yakovleva whom he was pining for. "In January 1929 Mayakovsky [told me] he… would put a bullet to his brain if he didn't see that woman any time soon", she later remembered. Which, on 14 April 1930, he did.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Mayakovsky's early poems established him as one of the more original poets to come out of the Russian Futurism, a movement rejecting the traditional poetry in favour of formal experimentation, and welcoming the social change promised by modern technology. His 1913 verses, surreal, seemingly disjointed and nonsensical, relying on forceful rhythms and exaggerated imagery with the words split into pieces and staggered across the page, peppered with street language, were considered unpoetic in literary circles at the time. While the confrontational aesthetics of his fellow Futurist group members' poetry were mostly confined to formal experiments, Mayakovsky's idea was creating the new, "democratic language of the streets".


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1914, his first large work, an avant-garde tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky" came out. The fierce critique of the city life and capitalism in general was, at the same time, a paean to the modern industrial power, featuring the protagonist sacrificing himself for the sake of the people's happiness in the future.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In September 1915, "A Cloud in Trousers" came out, Mayakovsky's first major poem of appreciable length; it depicted the subjects of love, revolution, religion and art, written from the vantage point of a spurned lover. The language of the work was the language of the streets, and Mayakovsky went to considerable lengths to debunk idealistic and romanticized notions of poetry and poets.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: "Backbone Flute" (1916) outraged contemporary critics. Its author has been described as "talentless charlatan," spurning "empty words of a malaria sufferer"; some even recommended that he'd "be hospitalized immediately." In retrospect it is seen as a groundbreaking piece, introducing the new forms of expressing social anger and personal frustrations.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: 1917–1921 was a fruitful period for Mayakovsky, who greeted the Bolshevik Revolution with a number of poetic and dramatic works, starting with "Ode to the Revolution" (1918) and "Left March" (1918), a hymn to the proletarian might, calling for the fight against the "enemies of the revolution." "Mystery-Bouffe" (1918; revised version, 1921), the first Soviet play, told the story of a new Noah's Ark, built by the "unclean" (workers and peasants) sporting "moral cleanness" and "united by the class solidarity."


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1919–1921, Mayakovsky worked for the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA). Painting posters and cartoons, he provided them with rhymes and slogans (mixing rhythm patterns, different typesetting styles, and using neologisms) which were describing the currents events in dynamics. In three years he produced some 1100 pieces he called "ROSTA Windows".


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1921, Mayakovsky's poem "150 000 000" came out, which hailed the Russian people's mission in igniting the world revolution, but failed to impress Lenin. The latter praised the 1922 poem "Re Conferences" (), a scathing satire on the nascent Soviet bureaucracy starting to eat up the apparently flawed state system.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Mayakovsky's poetry was saturated with politics, but the love theme in the early 1920s became prominent too, mainly in "I Love" (1922) and "About That" (1923), both dedicated to Lilya Brik, whom he considered a family member even after the two drifted apart, in 1923. In October 1924 appeared "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" written on the death of the Soviet Communist leader. While the newspapers reported of highly successful public performances, the Soviet literary critics had their reservations, G. Lelevich calling it "cerebral and rhetorical," Viktor Pertsov described it as wordy, naïve and clumsy.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Mayakovsky's extensive foreign trips resulted in the books of poetry ("The West", 1922–1924; "Paris", 1924–1925: "Poems About America", 1925–1926), as well as a set of analytical satirical essays.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In 1926, Mayakovsky wrote and published "Talking with the Taxman about Poetry", the first in a series of works criticizing the new Soviet philistinism, the result of the New Economic Policy. His 1927 epic "All Right!" sought to unite heroic pathos with lyricism and irony. Extoling the new Bolshevik Russia as "the springtime of the human kind" it was praised by Lunacharsky as "the October Revolution set in bronze."


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In his last three years, Mayakovsky completed two satirical plays: "The Bedbug" (1929), and "The Bathhouse", both lampooning bureaucratic stupidity and opportunism. The latter was extolled by Vsevolod Meyerhold who rated it as high as the best work of Moliere, Pushkin and Gogol and called it "the greatest phenomenon of the history of the Russian theatre." The fierce criticism both plays were met with in the Soviet press was overstated and politically charged, but still, in retrospect Mayakovsky's work in the 1920s is regarded as patchy, even "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" and "All Right!" being inferior to his passionate and innovative 1910s work. Several authors, among them Valentin Katayev and close friend Boris Pasternak, reproached him for squandering enormous potential on petty propaganda. Marina Tsvetayeva in her 1932 essay "The Art in the Light of Conscience" left a particularly sharp comment on Mayakovsky's death: "For twelve years Mayakovsky the man has been destroying Mayakovsky the poet. On the thirteenth year the Poet rose up and killed the man… His suicide lasted twelve years, not for a moment he pulled the trigger."


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: After Mayakovsky's death the Association of the Proletarian Writers' leadership made sure the publications of the poet's work were cancelled and his very name stopped being mentioned in the Soviet press. In her 1935 letter to Joseph Stalin, Lilya Brik challenged her opponents, asking personally the Soviet leader for help. Stalin's resolution inscribed upon this message, read:Comrade Yezhov, please take charge of Brik's letter. Mayakovsky is the best and the most talented poet of our Soviet epoch. Indifference to his cultural heritage amounts to a crime. Brik's complaints are, in my opinion, justified...


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: The effect of this letter was startling. Mayakovsky was instantly hailed a Soviet classic, proving to be the only member of the artistic avant-garde of the early 20th century to enter the Soviet mainstream. His birthplace of Baghdati in Georgia was renamed Mayakovsky in his honour. In 1937 the Mayakovsky Museum (and library) were opened in Moscow. Triumphal Square in Moscow became Mayakovsky Square. In 1938 the Mayakovskaya Metro Station was opened to the public. Nikolay Aseyev received a Stalin prize in 1941 for his poem "Mayakovsky Starts Here", which celebrated him as a poet of the revolution. In 1974 the Russian State Museum of Mayakovsky opened in the center of Moscow in the building where Mayakovsky resided from 1919 to 1930.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: As a result, for the Soviet readership Mayakovsky became just "the poet of the Revolution". His legacy has been censored, more intimate or controversial pieces ignored, lines taken out of contexts and turned into slogans (like the omnipresent "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin shall live forever"). The major rebel of his generation was turned into a symbol of the repressive state. The Stalin-sanctioned canonization dealt Mayakovsky a second death, according to Boris Pasternak, as the communist authorities "started to impose him forcibly, like Catherine the Great did with potatoes."


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In the late 1950s and early 1960s Mayakovsky's popularity in the Soviet Union started to rise again, with the new generation of writers recognizing him as a purveyor of artistic freedom and daring experimentation. "Mayakovsky's face is etched on the altar of the century," Pasternak wrote at that time. Young poets, drawn to avant-garde art and activism that often clashed with communist dogma, chose Mayakovsky's statue in Moscow for their organized poetry readings.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Among the Soviet authors he influenced were Valentin Kataev, Andrey Voznesensky (who called Mayakovsky a teacher and favorite poet and dedicated a poem to him entitled "Mayakovsky in Paris") and Yevgeny Yevtushenko. In 1967 the Taganka Theater staged the poetical performance "Listen Here!" (), based on Mayakovsky's works with the leading role given to Vladimir Vysotsky, who was also much inspired by Mayakovsky's poetry.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Mayakovsky became well-known and studied outside of the USSR. Poets such as Nâzım Hikmet, Louis Aragon and Pablo Neruda acknowledged having been influenced by his work. He was the most influential futurist in Lithuania and his poetry helped to form the "Four Winds" movement there. Mayakovsky was a significant influence on American poet Frank O'Hara. O'Hara's 1957 poem "Mayakovsky"(1957) contains many references to Mayakovsky's life and works, in addition to "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island" (1958), a variation on Mayakovsky's "An Extraordinary Adventure that Happened to Vladimir Mayakovsky One Summer at a Dacha" (1920). 1986 English singer and songwriter Billy Bragg recorded the album "Talking with the Taxman about Poetry", named after Mayakovsky's poem of the same name. In 2007 Craig Volk's stage bio-drama "Mayakovsky Takes the Stage" (based on his screenplay "At the Top of My Voice") won the PEN-USA Literary Award for Best Stage Drama.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: In the Soviet Union's final years there was a strong tendency to view Mayakovsky's work as dated and insignificant; there were even calls for banishing his poems from school textbooks. Yet on the basis of his best works, Mayakovsky's reputation was revived and attempts have been made (by authors like Yuri Karabchiyevsky) to recreate an objective picture of his life and legacy. Mayakovsky was credited as a radical reformer of the Russian poetic language who created his own linguistic system charged with the new kind of expressionism, which in many ways influenced the development of Soviet and world poetry. The "raging bull of Russian poetry," "the wizard of rhyming," "an individualist and a rebel against established taste and standards," Mayakovsky is seen by many in Russia as a revolutionary force and a giant rebel in the 20th century Russian literature.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: Bernd Alois Zimmermann included his poetry in his "Requiem für einen jungen Dichter" ("Requiem for a Young Poet"), completed in 1969.


title: Vladimir Mayakovsky

text: There is a Mayakovsky monument in Kyrgyzstan, in a former Soviet sanatorium outside the capital Bishkek.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Blood on the Dance Floor was an American electronic music group from Orlando, Florida, formed in 2006. The group's longest standing lineup, from 2009 to 2016, consisted of Jesus David Torres also known as Dahvie Vanity (born 1984) and Jayy Von Monroe (born 1991). The group released nine studio albums before breaking up in 2016 following Von Monroe's departure. It was reformed by Vanity the following year, initially with Fallon Vendetta. After Vendetta's departure, Vanity became the sole member of the group. Since 2019, Vanity has performed under the name Kawaii Monster and most recently the Most Vivid Nightmares.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Around September 2006, Jesus David Torres, also known as "Dahvie Vanity", on his 22nd birthday, started a trio called Love the Fashion with Christopher Mongillo and Rebecca Fugate. The group was originally nothing more than a joke but soon developed into Blood on the Dance Floor in 2007. The group self-released their first album, "Let's Start a Riot", in April 2008. Not being able to tour, Mongillo and Fugate left the band while Vanity toured the Orlando, Florida area.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: During the recording of their second album, "It's Hard to be a Diamond in a Rhinestone World", Mongillo and Fugate left, and the band was picked up by producer and writer Rusty Wilmot. During the recording of this album, Garrett Marshal McLaughlin (Garrett Ecstasy) was recruited to do backup vocals and screaming. The CD was self-released in October 2008. Only 300 copies were made.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Vanity and Ecstasy recorded the singles "Siq With a Q" and "Suicide Club" as a duo in 2008, and released three extended plays over the first half of 2009, "I Scream I Scream", "OMFG Sneak Peak", and "Extended Play". The duo embarked on the OMFG Tour with other local bands Electric Valentine, Weston Buck, The Greenlight District, and The Crush in promotion of their upcoming album then titled "OMFG".


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: During the OMFG tour, Dahvie was arrested for sexual assault but was ultimately not charged, the tour continued and concluded without Vanity, Ecstasy left the band after accusing Vanity of being a sexual predator and was replaced by Jeremy Brian Griffis, known by his stage name "Jayy Von Monroe". Along with Von Monroe, Vanity and the group's new drummer and rapper, Nick "Nasty" Wenzel, released "Horrifically Delicious".


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Many of the songs originally recorded with Ecstasy intended for the upcoming album "OMFG" were re-recorded with new vocals by Von Monroe. The previous concept of the "OMFG" album was scrapped, and rebranded as "EPIC", set for release in 2010. The band went on tour over spring and summer 2010 to promote the release of "Epic". With Jeffree Star they recorded three songs for that album. However, the collaboration was short-lived because during the "Looking Hot & Dangerous Tour", Star had accused Vanity of being a pedophile and a predator, claiming to have witnessed questionable behavior. Star later chose to go back on his accusations and sweep what he claimed to have seen under the rug. He was then featured on their 2014 single "Poison Apple", from the album "Bitchcraft". As with the previous conflict with Garrett, the three singles featuring Jeffree's vocals were re-recorded with vocals by Von Monroe, and the original tracks were not featured on the final album.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: In October 2010, the album "Epic" charted No. 5 on the dance/electronic Billboard chart. The band headlined the Epic Tour and the Epic Tour Part II in support of the album.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Even before the release of "Epic", recording began for Blood on the Dance Floor's fourth album, "All the Rage!!". The duo collaborated with several artists for the album, including Lady Nogrady, JJ Demon, and Nick Nasty. The album was preceded by several singles to promote the release, including "Yo Ho", and "P.L.U.R.", and "Bewitched" which became the band's biggest hit to this day. The band later embarked on Warped Tour 2011 in June 2011, and released the album while on tour.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: A music video for their hit single from the album, "Bewitched", featured Nicole "Lady" Nogrady, who later said that she felt disrespected by the band during production of the album as well as on the music video, and found herself having to confront the band directly in order for her name to appear on the credits of her work with them. The song was subsequently performed by other female vocalists in place of Nogrady at live shows, and was re-recorded with vocals by Haley Rose for their 2013 acoustic album "Blood Unplugged".


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: The album peaked at No. 13 on the "Billboard" Top Electronic Albums chart. At the end of 2011, the duo headlined the All the Rage Tour and was planning the 'Tis the Season to be Killing Tour.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: In celebration of BOTDF's fourth anniversary, a digital compilation album entitled "The Legend of Blood on the Dance Floor" was set to be released on Halloween. The compilation's release date was pushed back, originally planned to be released as a CD, it was released as a SoundCloud playlist instead. The compilation features remastered versions of songs from the band's first four albums.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Blood on the Dance Floor's fifth album, "Evolution", was released on June 19, 2012 along with a deluxe edition that featured acoustic versions of two songs. Two music videos and four singles were released from the album.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: The album featured tracks in collaboration with Haley Rose, Amelia Arsenic, Shawn Brandon, Joel Madden of the band Good Charlotte, Elena Vladimirova, and Deuce.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: As a thank you to their fans they released the three-song free EP "Clubbed to Death!" on June 20, 2012, for free through an app on Facebook. Their sixth EP, "The Anthem of the Outcast", was released on October 30, 2012.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Rumors of a breakup in 2013 were proven to be a hoax. "Bad Blood" was slated for release in September 2013. On February 18, 2013, the lead single "I Refuse to Sink! (Fuck the Fame)" was released, followed by the second single, "Crucified by Your Lies", and a third, "Something Grimm", on July 2, 2013.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Andrew "Drew" Apathy joined in early 2014, and a new EP, "Bitchcraft", was released in June 2014. Their single "We're Takin over!" featuring Deuce was released February 7.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Blood on the Dance Floor released their first single off their EP "Cruel Pornography": "The Sexorcist". In August, they released their new project and started planning the "Reign of Blood" tour. On February 14, 2016, the band released the single "Safe Word" on iTunes.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: In April 2016, Blood on the Dance Floor announced a 24-date tour with Steven Joseph and BrokenCYDE. On August 17, BOTDF released their September 30-scheduled album "Scissors" on Apple Music.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: On September 14, 2016, Dahvie Vanity said that the group would be disbanding after one final tour as a result of Jayy's departure earlier that month. For a while afterwards, Vanity created and worked on a new project called Sinners Are Winners, releasing an EP titled "For Beginners" and full-length "The Invocation". Jayy Von Monroe also released a statement on his departure from the band after leaving stating that he was not paid for his time for the band and was forced to go on tour without treatment after his HIV diagnosis. Vanity denied these allegations in a video.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: In April 2017, Vanity announced that there would be a new member, and that Blood on the Dance Floor would be returning on May 5 of that year without Jayy Von Monroe. In May 2017, it was revealed that Dahvie's girlfriend, Fallon Vendetta, had temporarily joined Blood on the Dance Floor. With Vendetta, they released the singles "Resurrection Spell", "Love Like Voodoo", "Six Feet Under", "Yo Ho 2 (Pirate's Life)", "Ghosting" and "Destroy". Their album "Kawaii Monster" was released on October 31, 2017. "Kawaii Monster" pre-orders included a second disc, a remastered edition of "Let's Start a Riot". The band also released an exclusive EP: "You Are the Heart". In 2018, they released "Haunted", followed by "Cinema Erotica" and "You Are the Heart". Vendetta departed the group shortly afterward, leaving Vanity as the sole remaining member of the group.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: In 2019, shortly after the band's second break up, Vanity started a new project: Kawaii Monster. He released the songs "From Heaven to Hell", "Total Nightmare", "Dear Best Friend", "It's a Sunny Place for Shady People", "I Am With You", "Finding Blessings in Dark Places", "The Violet Flame", "It's All Just a Dream" and "Rage Against the Dying Light".


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: After a five-month break from making music, Vanity rebranded himself again as "The Most Vivid Nightmares" and released "Drowning in the Darkness" on November 13, 2020. He later released a second single: "Love Forever True". On January 1, 2021, Vanity released a new version of Blood on the Dance Floor's "Bewitched" as "Bewitched Reimagined" featuring singer Sammy Beare. As of 2022, Jayy Von Monroe has continued to work as a drag queen under the name "The Dahli" and Vanity has continued to release music and merchandise by himself under both "The Most Vivid Nightmares" and "Dark Arts Official".


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: The group's style has been described as having hypersexual lyrics combined with electronica or electronic music, but also heavily incorporates electropop, dance-pop, and crunkcore.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Vanity stated in an interview that Jeffree Star is a huge influence on Blood on the Dance Floor. Vanity also stated that he was inspired by Marilyn Manson in the past.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: Since the allegations first surfaced in 2009, at least 21 women have made sexual assault, child molestation, and rape allegations against Vanity. Former bandmates Garrett Ecstasy, who left the band in 2009, and Jayy Von Monroe, who left in 2016, have described Vanity as a sexual predator. In an interview with television journalist Chris Hansen, Jayy Von Monroe accused Vanity of abuse as well, stating that Vanity forced him to tour without his HIV medication which caused him to nearly contract AIDS. Von Monroe also stated that he later made a full recovery after leaving the band in 2016. Jeffree Star and New Years Day members Ash Costello and Nikki Misery have stated that they observed Vanity engage in questionable or illegal sexual behavior during one of the Vans Warped Tours and also during the "All the Rage Tour 2012" in support of their third studio album of the same name around the early 2010s. Many of the accusers were underage during the alleged attacks. In response to the allegations, Combichrist removed Blood on the Dance Floor from their tour in 2014. Merchandising website Big Cartel removed the band's products in 2018 in response to the allegations, while Spotify and Google Play removed the band's music in April 2019. Vanity has responded to the accusations on multiple occasions, usually with denial, threats or evasion.


title: Blood on the Dance Floor (band)

text: In early 2020, Hansen announced an investigation on Vanity, including having multiple interviews with those who claim Vanity abused or raped them. The FBI have confirmed that they are also currently investigating the allegations against Vanity.


title: Miniso

text: Miniso (; Japanese Hepburn: ; stylized MINISO, メイソウ) is a Chinese low-cost retailer and variety store chain that specializes in household and consumer goods including cosmetics, stationery, toys, and kitchenware. Its headquarters are in Liwan District, Guangzhou under its Chinese holding company Aiyaya. In 2016, the company's sales revenue reached $1.5 billion. In March 2019, Miniso began a collaboration with Marvel Entertainment to sell its branded products.


title: Miniso

text: Miniso has been criticized as a "copycat" for sharing an aesthetic similarity to Japanese variety stores such as Uniqlo, Muji and Daiso, as well as for being a Chinese retailer that markets itself as Japanese. Even so, Miniso has expanded outside of the Chinese market and operates 4,200 stores in Asia, Europe, Oceania, Africa, North America, and South America.


title: Miniso

text: In summer 2022 the company announced it would decrease Japanese-inspired products and branding following anti-Japanese sentiment in China.


title: Miniso

text: Miniso was founded in 2013 by Chinese entrepreneur Ye Guofu. Miniso's first store opened in China in 2013. The company claims that Japanese designer Miyake Junya co-founded Miniso, although local media reports in China and Japan have questioned Junya's existence. The company initially claimed to be a famous Japanese brand, despite operating in Mainland China under Chinese company Aiyaya with no outlets in Japan, Miniso has since expanded outside of China and opened over a thousand stores worldwide.


title: Miniso

text: In January 2017, Miniso announced that they were seeking to enter the North Korean market, opening their first store in Pyongyang four months later. According to "The Economist", the store was popular among the country's wealthy but only accepted foreign currency, including the U.S. Dollar, Chinese Yuan, and Euro as payment. Soon after opening, the company's Japanese branch came under pressure for violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 2321 prohibiting trade with North Korea, distanced themselves from the move, and blamed the Chinese offices for the decision. As a result of the controversy, Miniso promised not to ship any more products to North Korea and the Pyongyang store was rebranded as "Evolution".


title: Miniso

text: In August 2022 Miniso apologized for "wrong brand positioning and marketing" and said it would "de-Japanize" by March 2023.


title: Miniso

text: Miniso first established a retail presence in China, and the majority of its stores still operate there. Even so, it has pursued an aggressive expansion plan in countries connected with China's One Belt One Road economic policy, alongside other similar international retailers like Mumuso, XIMIVOGUE, YOYOSO, USUPSO and LÄTT LIV, with shopping malls sometimes having several rival stores. It first began expanding in Asia: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Nepal, Macau, India, Pakistan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, South Korea, North Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand and Bangladesh. Sales in one store in Vietnam on its opening day exceeded $10,000 in one hour. Miniso's store in Pyongyang was the first and only foreign-branded chain store in North Korea. It arrived in Australia in early 2017.


title: Miniso

text: On 27 May 2016, Miniso opened its first store in Seacon Square Srinakarin, Bangkok Operating under the name of MiniSo (Thailand) Company Limited which Singtai Trading Company Limited is the sole importer. Currently, in Thailand, Miniso has a total of 52 branches nationwide.


title: Miniso

text: In North America, Miniso currently operates several stores in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. On August 6, 2016, Miniso signed a Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation Agreement with an American partner to expand its retail operations to the United States. The first U.S. store opened in Pasadena in April 2017.


title: Miniso

text: In Central America, Miniso opened its first store in Panama. They had opened 4 stores by October 2018.


title: Miniso

text: In South America, Miniso opened its first retail store in Brazil in August 2017, it's second in Chile in December 2017, with plans to enter nearby Argentina soon. In May 2018, its first retail store in Peru was opened at Jockey Plaza Shopping Center. In Colombia it started operations with a double opening of two stores on August 30 in the city of Bogotá, by December 2018 they plan to open the first 15 stores in the country.


title: Miniso

text: In Europe, Miniso operate retail outlets in Spain, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Serbia, Armenia and Russia, among others.


title: Miniso

text: In Africa, Miniso first entered Morocco in early 2017 with 15 stores in multiple cities around the kingdom, South Africa in August 2017 and West Africa in Nigeria one month later. There are also stores in Kenya and in Kampala, Uganda. As of January 2018, Miniso operates two stores in Egypt.


title: Miniso

text: On the 1st of August 2018, Miniso opened the 1st store in Kuwait in the Avenues Mall Phase 4 ( The Forum ). On the 25th of September 2019, the 2nd store was opened in The Avenues Mall Phase 1. On the 3rd of March 2021, the 3rd store was opened in Marina Mall. On the 7th of July 2022, the 4th store was opened in Souq Sharq Mall.


title: Miniso

text: On September 1, 2018, Miniso opened two stores in Romania and plans to open 40 more stores nationwide.


title: Miniso

text: In June 2019, Miniso announced it would open 6 more stores in Israel bringing the total to 18 by the end of the year.


title: Miniso

text: On 8 November 2019, Miniso opened its first store in the United Kingdom, in Ealing Broadway, west London


title: Miniso

text: As of January 2020, Miniso has over 3,500 stores in 79 countries, with an approximate revenue of US$2.4 billion in 2019.


title: Miniso

text: In May 2021, Miniso opened its first store in Porto, Portugal and they also announced that they will open more than 20 stores all over the country.


title: Miniso

text: As of August 2021, Miniso has 4 stores in Oman, with 3 located in the capital Muscat and 1 store in Sohar.


title: Miniso

text: While Miniso is a Chinese company, its products are heavily influenced by Japanese design. Miniso's marketing strategy has been compared to Japanese retailers such as Muji and Uniqlo due to similarities in both store aesthetics, brand design, and inventory. Because of its Japanese-influenced branding strategy, the company's products have been criticized as "made in China to look Japanese", particularly when most of the company's stores are located in China, where people trust Japanese brands more than domestic offerings. It has also been criticized for affixing grammatically incorrect Japanese-language labels to many products, a consequence of using Baidu Translate to produce Japanese language copy, as admitted by Miniso's management.


title: Miniso

text: Nevertheless, because of Miniso's success in expanding its number of retail stores, AllianceBernstein, a global asset management company, called its market strategy a success by "filling a price-point niche left unaddressed by the Japanese formats it was imitating".


title: Miniso

text: IP collaborations, word-of-mouth, celebrity endorsements and the ability to launch viral products is at the basis of Miniso's success in China.


title: Hazal Kaya

text: Leyla Hazal Kaya (born 1 October 1990) is a Turkish actress. She is best known for playing the role of Nihal Ziyagil in the TV series "Aşk-ı Memnu", Feriha Sarrafoglu, "Adını Feriha Koydum" (2011–2012) and Filiz in "Bizim Hikaye" (inspired by the British TV show "Shameless") (2017–2019).


title: Hazal Kaya

text: Kaya was born in Konya, Turkey. She attended Gaziosmanpaşa elementary school and graduated in 2009 from the Liceo Italiano di Istanbul. She enrolled in Istanbul Bilgi University for her higher education. Her parents, who are both lawyers, divorced when she was 7 years old. She was introduced to the art and acting world at a very young age, and as a child she took ballet and violin lessons for 7 years. Kaya speaks Italian and English fluently, in addition to her native language Turkish. She was also said to be learning a fourth language, German.


title: Hazal Kaya

text: Kaya started her acting career in 2006 with TV series "Genco". She played the character of Özge (Gülay Erkaya). She had guest roles in fantasy series Acemi Cadı of Turkish version "Sabrina Teenage Witch", popular series Sıla, "Taşların Sırrı". In 2008, Kaya played Nihal Ziyagil in a modern-day adaptation of the novel "Aşk-ı Memnu", written by Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil. She had her cinematic debut in Selçuk Aydemir's movie "Çalgı Çengi" in 2011. At the same time she took lessons from Ayla Algan in drama. She then joined Ümit Çırak Modern Acting Techniques Workshop and took acting lessons from Ümit Çırak himself.


title: Hazal Kaya

text: Kaya played in the first two seasons of the TV series "Adını Feriha Koydum" (2011) as the lead character, Feriha Sarrafoğlu. She played the role of a porter's daughter trapped between two lives and falls in love with the most popular student at her university, a rich and handsome boy "Emir Sarrafoğlu" (Çağatay Ulusoy). The series had one of the highest TV ratings in Turkey. Later, together with her mother Ayşegül Kaya, she appeared in the commercials for Bingo. In the late 2012, she left the cast of "Adını Feriha Koydum" and starred in a new series called "Son Yaz Balkanlar 1912", portraying the character Emine. However, the series ended after a few episodes due to low ratings. She later appeared in the 2013 series "A.Ş.K" and played the character of Azra Özak, a tennis coach. That series also ended after 13 episodes. In 2015 she appeared in "Maral: En Güzel Hikayem", opposite Aras Bulut İynemli. She played the leading character Maral Erdem. Her latest TV show is "Bizim Hikaye" (in English: Our Story), which is the Turkish adaptation of the American TV series "Shameless". In this TV show Kaya plays "Filiz Elibol Aktan", opposite actor Burak Deniz. As of 2021, she shares the leading roles with Bugra Gulsoy and Ozan Dolunay in the TV series Misafir, an adaptation of the Japanese TV series Oasis. Since 2010, she appears as Behzat's dead daughter "Berna" in some episodes and film of hit crime series Behzat Ç..


title: Hazal Kaya

text: Kaya is one of Turkey's highest-paid actresses. Ichaps, having chosen the most important names of 2014 in many categories, included Hazal Kaya among the "most influential names in the world" and granted her the medal of international excellence in the category of artists. According to the results of a survey conducted on the United Arab Emirates-based MBC channels, which ranked Turkish series and special programs, she ranked 4th on the list of most admired Turkish women artists. At the same time, official surveys covering the August 2010 - August 2015 period, taken in 35 countries, placed her 6th on the list of 10 most popular actresses. She was also the only Turkish recipient of the "Lebanon Awards 2015" award. According to the results obtained from 35 countries between May 2011 and May 2016, Kaya was the 6th most popular actress. In May 2016, she rose to number five on the list. The website "World's Most Beautifuls" ranked her fifth on the list of 10 most beautiful women of 2016.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Josip Hrvoje Peruzović (October 14, 1947 – July 29, 2018), better known by his ring name Nikolai Volkoff, was a Yugoslav-American professional wrestler best known for his time in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). Although the character that Volkoff often portrayed was a villainous Russian, Peruzović originated from the former Yugoslavia in real life, now present day Croatia.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: In the 1970s, he was Bepo of the Mongols tag team, one of the masked Executioners and feuded with Bruno Sammartino over the WWWF World Heavyweight Championship as Volkoff. In the 1980s, he was known for his tag team with the Iron Sheik, with whom he won the WWF Tag Team Championship at the inaugural WrestleMania event.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: In 1990, he turned face and became a supporter of America, briefly feuding with former partner Zhukov and newly-turned Iraqi sympathizer Sgt. Slaughter. In 1994, after a hiatus, he returned as a destitute and desperate character, exploited by Ted DiBiase as the first member of his Million Dollar Corporation. He continued to wrestle in various promotions until his death in 2018.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Peruzović grew up in the Socialist Republic of Croatia, which was then part of Yugoslavia. His parents were Ivan and Dragica (née Tomašević). His brother is Croatian footballer Luka Peruzović. Despite what he sometimes claimed, his actual middle name was not Nikolai but Hrvoje, and his mother's maiden name was not Volkoff but Tomašević. These inconsistencies cast doubt on his ethnic background and seem to indicate a Croat ethnicity. His maternal grandfather Ante Tomašević was world champion in the Greco-Roman wrestling style at the turn of the 20th century. Ante was born in Cetina, a small village near Sinj, Croatia to Croatian parents Stipe and Katerina in 1872.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Peruzović was on the Yugoslavian weightlifting team until 1967, when he emigrated to Canada after a weightlifting tournament in Vienna, Austria. He received training in Calgary from Stu Hart, followed by his arrival in the United States in 1970. A fellow Croatian-native played the first Soviet Volkoff character in American pro-wrestling. Steve Gobb, born Gobrokovich, wrestled as USSR's Nicoli Volkoff in the 1960s before the character was picked up by Josip.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: While trying his luck as a wrestler in Calgary, Alberta, in 1967, he met the wrestler Newton Tattrie, who was wrestling for Stu Hart's Stampede Wrestling. During his 1963–1968 tour, Tattrie took Peruzovic under his wing as a protégé and trained the non-English speaking, 315-pound man to become a professional wrestler and tag team partner. When Tattrie left the territory in 1968 for the US, Peruzovic left with him, working in various territories for the National Wrestling Alliance including NWA Detroit, the International Wrestling Association and the National Wrestling Federation where they won tag gold.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: In 1970 he began wrestling in Vince McMahon Sr.'s World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) (currently known as WWE). Wrestling as "Bepo Mongol", managed by "Captain" Lou Albano and partnered with Newton Tattrie (as Geeto Mongol) as the Mongols, he captured the WWF International Tag Team Championship from Tony Marino and Victor Rivera on June 15, 1970. After losing the title to Luke Graham and Tarzan Tyler in a match over a year later that unified the WWWF International and WWWF World Tag Team Championship, Peruzovic left the WWWF and went on to singles competition under the name "Nikolai Volkoff".


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: In 1974, Volkoff returned to the company and appeared in a memorable match at a sold out Madison Square Garden and wrestled one of the sport's most famous champions, Bruno Sammartino. In 1976, he was masked as an Executioner as he became the third member along with Killer Kowalski and Big John Studd. They captured the World Tag Team Championship, but it was vacated due to a third member interfering. Later he reverted to the Volkoff name. During this time in the WWWF, Volkoff was announced as being from Mongolia. He had a very successful feud with Bruno Sammartino, which started when Volkoff attacked him during an interview segment. They sold-out arenas throughout the Northeast. During this tenure, he began crushing fresh apples with one hand as a sign of what he would do to his opponents. He later had a feud with Bob Backlund during Backlund's tenure as champion.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Late in 1974, Volkoff moved to the AWA where he wrestled under the name "Boris Breznikoff", managed by Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, he used the same gimmick with a different ring name. From 1977 to 1983 he wrestled in Japan for New Japan Pro-Wrestling and All Japan Pro Wrestling. In 1983, Volkoff wrestled for "Cowboy" Bill Watts in the Mid-South region. On October 29, 1989 he returned to AWA for a one night appearance as he lost to Ken Patera.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: In July 1984, Volkoff returned to the renamed WWF defeating S. D. Jones on Georgia Championship Wrestling and teamed with the Iron Sheik with the pair being managed by the "Hollywood fashion plate" "Classy" Freddie Blassie. It was at this point that Volkoff began to sing the national anthem of the Soviet Union before every match after which the Sheik would grab the microphone and proclaim "Iran number one, Russia number one" before exaggeratedly spitting after saying "USA", in order to gain even more heat for being foreign heels. The new team of Volkoff and the Iron Sheik captured the WWF Tag Team Championship from the U.S. Express (Mike Rotundo and Barry Windham) at the first WrestleMania, on March 31, 1985, after the Sheik had knocked out Windham with Fred Blassie's cane. After losing the title back to Rotundo and Windham three months later, Volkoff began to wrestle more in singles competition. He faced Hulk Hogan for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship on several occasions in 1985 and 1986 (including a flag match on "Saturday Night's Main Event II" at the Brendan Byrne Arena).


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Volkoff also feuded with former 82nd Airborne paratrooper Corporal Kirchner throughout 1985 and 1986, defeating him in a "peace match" on "Saturday Night's Main Event IV". Their feud ended when Kirchner used Blassie's cane to defeat Volkoff at WrestleMania 2 in another flag match during the Chicago portion of the event. In the fall of 1986, Volkoff's manager "Classy" Freddy Blassie sold half interest in his stable of superstars to the "Doctor of Style", Slick (kayfabe), giving Slick co-managerial rights to Volkoff. Blassie also shared the contracts of the Iron Sheik and Hercules. This was a storyline aimed at reducing the aging Blassie's active role, and the "Hollywood fashion plate" eventually retired in the fall of 1986 at the age of 68. Sheik and Volkoff feuded with WWF newcomer Jim Duggan for the majority of 1987, including Duggan running to the ring and stopping the Russian's singing before their match against the Killer Bees at WrestleMania III (Sheik and Volkoff won by disqualification when Duggan entered the ring while chasing Volkoff and then hitting the Sheik with his 2x4 while he had the camel clutch on "Jumping" Jim Brunzell).


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: In late 1987, Volkoff was teamed with Boris Zhukov, another alleged Russian (actually an American wrestler whose real name was James Harrell), to form the Bolsheviks. They feuded with WWF newcomers the Powers of Pain, losing to them at the inaugural "SummerSlam" PPV in 1988, however the Bolsheviks did not gain the success as did his partnership with the Iron Sheik. As they lost the public eye due to many losses, they eventually lost their manager Slick and were used as a comic relief team losing many matches to the Bushwhackers. The Bolsheviks never held any titles together, and are perhaps best remembered for being defeated in 19 seconds by the Hart Foundation at WrestleMania VI. Eventually, by 1990, the Bolsheviks split up. Volkoff publicly ended the partnership prior to a match where he confronted Zhukhov and then started singing "The Star-Spangled Banner", drawing loud cheers from the audience and turning babyface in the process.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: A short time after the Bolsheviks split, Volkoff became a face for the first time in his career. His gimmick was now that of a recent defector, he became very pro-west which led to a feud with Sgt. Slaughter who had an Iraqi sympathizer role and teamed with the former Iron Sheik, who had recently begun an Iraqi gimmick under the name Colonel Mustafa. After Volkoff's team defeated Slaughter's team at the 1990 Survivor Series (Tito Santana was the sole survivor), Volkoff left the WWF at the end of 1990. He made a brief return to compete in the 1992 Royal Rumble match, as well as to face Hercules in a house show match on January 29 in Lowell, Massachusetts.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: After leaving WWF, Volkoff began competing in the independent circuit. On May 3, 1991 he defeated his former Bolshevik partner Boris Zhukov for Trans World Wrestling Federation in Newington, Connecticut. On August 8, 1992 he went to Puerto Rico to wrestled for World Wrestling Council WCC 19th Anniversario 1992 losing to the Patriot. On April 4, 1993 he wrestled his former partner the Iron Sheik to a double count out at Wrestling in the USA event in Livingston, New Jersey.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: In 1992 he went to Eastern Championship Wrestling in Philadelphia where he feuded with Vladimir Markoff. On October 2, he lost to ECW Champion Don Muraco. He then returned to ECW on October 16, 1993 as he lost to Jimmy Snuka.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: He returned as a babyface to pin Barry Horowitz at a "WWF Superstars"/"All-American Wrestling" taping on July 6, 1993, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: On February 1, 1994, Volkoff began a full-time return to the WWF, making a ringside appearance at a Superstars taping in White Plains, New York during a match between Diesel and Mike Moraldo. For the next two months, Volkoff was shown in the crowd, until eventually he became a sympathetic heel by playing the whipping-boy of Ted DiBiase's Million Dollar Corporation. Volkoff had kayfabe fallen on hard times and was forced to take a job working for DiBiase and his new Corporation. As low man in the group he was forced to wrestle matches no one else wanted to or sent out to "soften up" opponents for other members of the stable as the sacrificial lamb of the group. The disrespect even extended to renaming him "Nickel & Dime" Volkoff and DiBiase forcing him to place a ¢ on his trunks where the Russian sickle once was along with a sign on his ring attire that read "Property of the Million Dollar Man". The final WWF match for Volkoff was on December 30, 1994 when he defeated jobber Bob Starr in a house show. Volkoff's final appearance was at the WWF's final show at the Boston Garden on May 13, 1995. During a match between Bam Bam Bigelow and Tatanka, Volkoff made an appearance to chase Tatanka's manager Ted Dibiase away. Following this last run in the WWF, Volkoff entered semi-retirement.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Volkoff made a brief cameo on an episode of "Shotgun Saturday Night" in 1997 where Todd Pettengill discovered him homeless sleeping in a box on the streets of New York City. He also appeared at WrestleMania X-Seven at the Astrodome in Houston in the gimmick battle royal which was won by the Iron Sheik. On November 30, 2001 he lost to King Kong Bundy at AAWA event in Jersey City, New Jersey. On February 3, 2005, Volkoff was announced as one of the WWE Hall of Fame inductees for the class of 2005. He was inducted on April 2, 2005 by Jim Ross at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. In 2006, Volkoff took part in the World Wrestling Legends pay-per-view "6:05 The Reunion". Managed by the Iron Sheik, he wrestled a match against Duggan. Before the match, he once again sang the national anthem of the Soviet Union and riled up the crowd. Volkoff made his first appearance on WWE television in over two years on the August 13, 2007 episode of "Raw" as a contestant on WWE Idol, a parody of "American Idol". Volkoff appeared alongside the Iron Sheik and Howard Finkel, although Volkoff was the only one who sang. Volkoff sang the Soviet Union national anthem, receiving boos from the crowd (despite being a babyface) and was insulted by judge William Regal, although judges Mick Foley and Maria both praised the performance. In response, Sheik, who was also insulted, went on a tirade until both he and Volkoff were escorted out of the building by security.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: The March 10, 2008, edition of "WWE Raw", featured rematches from previous WrestleManias. The Iron Sheik appeared along with Nikolai Volkoff to face off against the U.S. Express in a rematch from the first WrestleMania. However, the match never got started as Jillian Hall came out to interrupt Volkoff's singing so she could sing Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.", which the U.S. Express used as their ring entrance music in 1984–85. On the November 15, 2010, edition of "Raw", as part of the "old school" theme, Volkoff appeared with the Iron Sheik, singing the Soviet national anthem before being interrupted by Santino Marella and Vladimir Kozlov, the latter of whom then sung a duet with Volkoff of the Soviet national anthem. Afterwards, Volkoff worked for various independent promotions throughout North America. He remained popular on the autograph convention circuit. In June 2013 he threw out the first pitch at a Bowie Baysox baseball game and sang "God Bless America" after the pitch. In October 2013, he sang the Soviet national anthem at a show in New Jersey, after being introduced by Howard Finkel.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Volkoff lent his name to a forward for a fiction novel called "Only the Beginning" which is set in the 1980s and is about a girl's life during high school. While the book is not wrestling related, the author Jason Strecker was a personal friend of Volkoff's and in the foreword Volkoff responds to his friendship with the author along with the book's message of being of strong character and doing positive actions for others. The book also has a foreword by Jimmy Valiant. On the January 6, 2014, "Old School" episode of "RAW", Volkoff encountered Big E. Langston on his way to a match and sung him the Soviet national anthem, to which Langston smiled. Immediately after, Langston walked past fellow Million Dollar Corporation members, Ted DiBiase and Irwin R. Schyster. On the RAW Fallout segment following the September 8, 2014 "Raw", Volkoff appeared backstage with Rusev and Lana and sang the Soviet national anthem. On February 28, 2015, Volkoff appeared for the Superstars of Wrestling promotion in Bayville, New Jersey, where he teamed with ECW legend the Sandman to take on independent standouts Kentucky Bred – in a 3 on 2 handicap tag match. Before the match, Volkoff and Sandman sang the Soviet national anthem and proceeded to drink beer together. The duo squashed Kentucky Bred and then poured beer all over them.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: On March 21, 2015, Volkoff participated at a SICW event taking place on East Carondelet. Volkoff managed and mentored the team of younger wrestlers Ricky Cruz and Red River Jack, while also managing veteran wrestler "Cowboy" Bob Orton Jr. to take on the team of Chris Hargas, Bull Bronson, and Attila Khan. Volkoff and Orton appeared in their outfit and gimmick from their WWF days. The team of Volkoff, Orton, Cruz, and Jack came up victorious. On March 5, 2016, Volkoff showed up at Night of Legends at Billtown Wrestling in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, sang the American national anthem and teamed with Cash Money, who turned on him to give the win to Koko B. Ware and Jim Neidhart. On June 25, 2016 he wrestled his last match in Canada where he defeated the Messiah for Great North Wrestling in Pembroke, Ontario. On June 9, 2017, Volkoff wrestled for H2O Wrestling: 1 Year Anniversary in Willamstown, New Jersey as he defeated D. J. Hyde. On May 5, 2018, at the age of 70, Volkoff wrestled his final match, teaming with Jim Duggan to defeated the team of Mecha Mercenary and Nicky Benz for Battleground Championship Wrestling in Feasterville, Pennsylvania.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Peruzović met his wife Lynn in 1970, and became an American citizen that year. In Freddie Blassie's autobiography "Listen, You Pencil Neck Geeks", he describes Peruzović as a "good family man" who helped Blassie reconnect with a daughter from whom he had been estranged for many years. In a 2009 shoot interview released by Pro Wrestling Diary on DVD, Peruzović discusses his in-depth history with Freddie Blassie as well as helping Blassie re-connect with his daughter. During his career he was also known for his frugality, and traveled with a hot plate to avoid having to spend money on meals at restaurants.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Peruzović worked with the Baltimore County Police Athletic League kids programs. He previously worked as a code enforcement officer in Baltimore County.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Peruzović ran unsuccessfully in the 2006 Maryland Republican primary for state delegate in District 7 (representing parts of Baltimore and Harford County). He voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election.


title: Nikolai Volkoff

text: Peruzović died at home on July 29, 2018, at the age of 70, days after being released from a hospital in Maryland where he had been treated for dehydration and other medical issues.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: The rule of three is a writing principle that suggests that a trio of entities such as events or characters is more humorous, satisfying, or effective than other numbers. The audience of this form of text is also thereby more likely to remember the information conveyed because having three entities combines both brevity and rhythm with having the smallest amount of information to create a pattern.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: Slogans, film titles, and a variety of other things have been structured in threes, a tradition that grew out of oral storytelling. Examples include the Three Little Pigs, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and the Three Musketeers. Similarly, adjectives are often grouped in threes to emphasize an idea.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: The rule of three can refer to a collection of three words, phrases, sentences, lines, paragraphs/stanzas, chapters/sections of writing and even whole books. The three elements together are known as a triad. The technique is used not just in prose, but also in poetry, oral storytelling, films, and advertising. In photography, the rule of thirds produces a similar effect by dividing an image into three vertically and horizontally.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: A tricolon is a more specific use of the rule of three where three words or phrases are equal in length and grammatical form.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: A hendiatris is a figure of speech where three successive words are used to express a single central idea. As a slogan or motto, this is known as a tripartite motto.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: Many advertising campaigns and public information slogans use the technique to create a catchy, memorable way of displaying information. In marketing theory, American advertising and sales pioneer St. Elmo Lewis laid out his three chief copywriting principles, which he felt were crucial for effective advertising:The mission of an advertisement is to attract a reader so that he will look at the advertisement and start to read it; then to interest him, so that he will continue to read it; then to convince him, so that when he has read it he will believe it. If an advertisement contains these three qualities of success, it is a successful advertisement.Better-known examples include:


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: In comedy, the rule of three is also called a "comic triple" and is one of the many comedic devices regularly used by humorists, writers, and comedians. The third element of the triple is often used to create an effect of surprise with the audience, and is frequently the punch line of the joke itself. For instance, jokes might feature three stereotyped individuals—such as an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman; or a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead—where the surprise or punch line of the joke comes from the third character.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: The comedic rule of three is often paired with quick timing, ensuring that viewers have less time to catch on to the pattern before the punch line hits. As a whole, the comedic rule of threes relies on setting up a pattern of two items and then subverting viewer expectations by breaking that pattern with the third item. One particularly notable example comes from "The Dick Van Dyke Show" – "Can I get you anything? Cup of coffee? Doughnut? Toupee?"


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: Just like most comedic writing, the rule of threes in comedy relies on building tension to a comedic release. In the case of the rule of threes, tension is built with the first two items in the pattern and then released with the final item, which should be the funniest of the three. Most triples are short in length, often only two or three sentences, but the rule can also be implemented effectively at longer length as long as base formula is still followed.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: In storytelling, authors often create triplets or structures in three parts. In the rule's simplest form, this is merely "beginning, middle, and end", as expressed in Aristotle's Poetics.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: Vladimir Propp, in his "Morphology of the Folk Tale", concluded that any of the elements in a folktale could be negated twice so that it would repeat thrice. This is common not only in the Russian tales he studied but throughout folk tales and fairy tales: most commonly, perhaps, in that the youngest son is usually the third, although fairy tales often display the rule of three in the most blatant form. A small sample of the latter includes:


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: The use of a series of three elements is also a well-known feature of public oratory. Max Atkinson, in his book on oratory entitled "Our Masters' Voices", gives examples of how public speakers use three-part phrases to generate what he calls 'claptraps', evoking audience applause.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights activist and preacher, was known for his uses of tripling and the rule of three throughout his many influential speeches. For example, the speech "Non-Violence and Racial Justice" contained a binary opposition made up of the rule of three: "insult, injustice and exploitation", followed a few lines later by "justice, good will, and brotherhood". Conversely, segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace inveighed: "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" during his 1963 inaugural address.


title: Rule of three (writing)

text: The appeal of the three-fold pattern is also illustrated by the transformation of Winston Churchill's reference to "blood, toil, tears and sweat" (echoing Garibaldi and Theodore Roosevelt) in popular recollection to "blood, sweat and tears".


title: J. Michael Tatum

text: J. Michael Tatum is an American voice actor, ADR director and script writer working for Funimation/OkraTron 5000 And Bang Zoom! Entertainment who provides voices for a number of English versions of Japanese anime series and video games.


title: J. Michael Tatum

text: In 2005, Tatum ran into Funimation ADR director Christopher Bevins, who cast him as Rikichi in "Samurai 7". Tatum has been cast in several notable roles, including Kyoya Ootori in "Ouran High School Host Club", Sebastian Michaelis in "Black Butler", Tomoe in "Kamisama Kiss", France in "", Erwin Smith in "Attack on Titan", Okabe Rintaro in "Steins;Gate", Eneru in "One Piece", Tenya Iida in "My Hero Academia" and Rei Ryuugazaki in "Free! – Eternal Summer".


title: J. Michael Tatum

text: From January 2010 to January 2014, he hosted "That Anime Show" podcasts with friend and co-worker Terri Doty and ADR Engineer Stephen Hoff.


title: J. Michael Tatum

text: At the Florida Supercon 2015 panel, when he was asked what was his inspiration to go into voice acting, Tatum said that when he was young he had a speech impediment and his speech coach had him get involved in theater. As he was reciting and memorizing scripts, they noticed that his stuttering started to gradually disappear. He then got into drama and theater acting, and that voice acting is great in that it enables him to play more characters than on camera.


title: J. Michael Tatum

text: Tatum is openly gay. During a panel at Ichibancon 2014, he had said that he came out to his family during his college years, with his father having already known about his sexuality for some time. On October 16, 2018, he became engaged to his long-time partner and fellow voice actor Brandon McInnis in Paris. He resides in Los Angeles, California.


title: Big Brother (Australian TV series)

text: Big Brother Australia (also known simply as Big Brother) is an Australian reality show based on the international "Big Brother" format created by John de Mol.


title: Big Brother (Australian TV series)

text: Following the premise of other versions of the format, the show features a group of contestants, known as "housemates" who live together in a specially constructed house that is isolated from the outside world. The housemates are continuously monitored during their stay in the house by live television cameras as well as personal audio microphones. Throughout the course of the competition, housemates are evicted from the house - eliminated from the competition. The last remaining housemate wins the competition and is awarded a cash prize.


title: Big Brother (Australian TV series)

text: "Big Brother" was produced from 2001 and ran for eight seasons and a Celebrity edition on Network Ten before the network cancelled it in July 2008 after experiencing audience erosion and controversy. Big Brother returned in 2012 on the Nine Network. Nine's iteration of the series lasted 3 seasons and was not renewed beyond 2015. In 2019 the Seven Network picked up the series, which is produced by Endemol Shine Australia. All eleven previous seasons were produced by Endemol Australia and Endemol Southern Star. The twelfth season aired in 2020. The series was renewed for a 13th season in June 2020. Seven has also commissioned a new celebrity edition titled "Big Brother VIP" to air on 1 November 2021.


title: Big Brother (Australian TV series)

text: The Ten and Nine iterations of the series used a compound located at the Dreamworld theme park, on the Gold Coast, Queensland, as the "Big Brother House". It has since been abandoned and vandalised. In June 2019, the house was set ablaze and burnt down entirely. The entire compound was demolished by Dreamworld in August 2019. A new "Big Brother House" located on Sydney Harbour's North Head is used for Seven's iteration of the series in season 12, although this house has since been pulled down following season 13. The following VIP season was filmed at a newly built compound in Sydney Olympic Park. The Season 14 was too filmed at this location.


title: Big Brother (Australian TV series)

text: The series was renewed for a fifteenth season at Sevens 2023 upfronts in October 2022, under the title "Big Brother: House of Love".


title: Big Brother (Australian TV series)

text: Housemates must remain in the house at all times, with the aim of avoiding eviction from the house to be the last Housemate remaining to win a substantial cash prize at the end of the series. Alternatively, housemates can also be removed from the house if Big Brother feels this is necessary, and can voluntarily leave the show at any time. In order to support the housemates' well-being, all participants have access to psychologists and a doctor, at all times. Housemates are filmed 24 hours per day with edited highlights broadcast during prime time slots every evening.


title: Big Brother (Australian TV series)

text: While in the house, the housemates are under the watchful eye of "Big Brother" - the embodiment of the Show's Producers, who will act as an authoritative all-seeing voice of God to the housemates. Housemates are at all times under the control of Big Brother, a rule enforcing authority figure who monitors the behaviour of the housemates, set tasks and punishments and provides the mechanism for contestants to make external requests.