title: Reliant Robin

text: The Robin received another facelift in 1999, with the design executed by Andy Plumb, chief designer at Reliant at that time. This final version was launched boasting the biggest changes since the original launch, with completely new panels and Vauxhall Corsa front lamps. It was the first Robin to be designed with the use of a computer. An electric and a diesel version along with a pickup variant were conceptualised, but never made. A hatchback van was manufactured.


title: Reliant Robin

text: In 2000, it was announced the final Reliant Robin would be built after 65 limited editions were made. It was named the "Reliant Robin 65" and had a very high specification. All 65s had gold metallic paint, red and grey leather seats, red carpets, walnut dashboards, white dials, minilite alloy wheels, premium stereo systems, electronic ignitions and gold plaques on the dashboards which were individually numbered and bore the original owner's engraved name. The selling price was £10,000. The last Reliant Robin produced was given away by "The Sun" newspaper in a Valentine's Day competition in 2001.


title: Reliant Robin

text: Manufacturing of the Robin resumed under licence by B&N Plastics in July 2001. This firm was allowed to produce 250 cars a year, but it was stalled by problems and production faults and went into financial trouble after producing just 40 or so complete cars up to October 2002.


title: Reliant Robin

text: The BN-1 Robin was based on the Robin 65 limited edition, and featured all the expensive extras but with a more modern feature set. The car had a completely redesigned interior, with a new dashboard and interior in black. The body also received some under-the-skin features, including integrated fibreglass skims for the door hinges and a new whole-body fabrication process, which resulted in reduced weight. The revised car was reapproved, so that it was legal for sale in the UK.


title: Reliant Robin

text: The BN-2 Robin was a higher specification model, featuring higher-grade materials for the interior, a custom metallic paint finish, a radio-CD (instead of radio-cassette) and front electric windows, a first for the Robin.


title: Reliant Robin

text: The single wheel in the front is responsible for the steering, while the engine (also in the front) drives the rear axle. The Reliant Robin aimed to provide economical and predictable personal transport. The 850 cc engine gives an acceleration of 0 to 60 mph in 14 seconds and a top speed of 85 mph, they also give a very good economy figure of up to 70 mpg; the later Mk3 Reliant Robin was quoted to give 60 to 100 mpg.


title: Reliant Robin

text: Despite its size, by being a three-wheeler with an official mass below , the Robin could traditionally be driven by holders of a B1 category driving licence in the United Kingdom, and registered and taxed at motorcycle rates, which gave a saving of £55 a year over a conventional car. Up until 2001, the B1 licence entitlement was given to those who passed the category A motorcycle test, leading to the common misconception that people could drive a Robin on a motorcycle licence. Those passing their motorcycle test after 2001 could not drive a Robin, until the law changed in December 2012. As of 29 December 2012, tricycles such as the Robin no longer fall within the B1 category licence; in-line with European Union law, tricycles are now classified under the category A "motorcycle licence". As such, any person holding a "full motorcycle licence" may legally drive a Robin. As it was not the licence entitlement that changed, but rather the categorisation of tricycles into an existing category, the change applies to all holders of category A motorcycle licences, whenever they were obtained. Shortly after this an oversight was that a person with a full car licence could no longer drive a three-wheeled vehicle; this was then altered by the UK government after car companies which produce three-wheeled vehicles (such as Morgan) protested over the licensing changes, this resulted in car licence holders now being able to drive a three-wheeled vehicle, but an age limit of 21 was also added; this 21 or over age limit also applies to motorcycle category A licence holders.


title: Reliant Robin

text: Originally, it was possible to drive a three-wheeled Reliant with a motorcycle permit, as a full motorcycle permit included a B1 class endorsement, which gave a driver the right to drive vehicles with three or four wheels of up to 550 kg. However, the DVLA ceased to issue the B1 endorsement in 2001.


title: Reliant Robin

text: Interest in the Reliant increased once more after January 2013, when the licensing scheme was changed once again. From 2013, a holder of a full category A motorcycle licence over the age of 21 may drive a three-wheeled vehicle of any power. This age restriction applies to full Category B holders also. In a further change in 2014, the UK government created a new descriptor "motor tricycles with power output over 15kW" within the top-level category A (including its related driver age restriction of 21 years), into which the Reliant 3 wheeler range fits.


title: Reliant Robin

text: Because of these licensing changes, a Reliant Robin cannot be driven with a provisional licence; unless the driver meets certain disability criteria.


title: Reliant Robin

text: Reliant three-wheelers enjoy a special place in British culture, often as the butt of jokes, such as when Patsy Stone dismissively refers to Edina Monsoon's isolation chamber as resembling one in the TV series "Absolutely Fabulous". In the United Kingdom, the Robin is sometimes affectionately nicknamed the "Plastic Pig" because of its distinctive shape and fibreglass body shell. It is also often, and erroneously, referred to as the "Robin Reliant". Georgia Nicolson, the fictional heroine of Louise Rennison's "Confessions of Georgia Nicolson" book series aimed at teenaged girls, regularly makes fun of the family car, referred to as a "Robin Reliant".


title: Reliant Robin

text: Miss Shepherd owned one Reliant Robin in "The Lady in the Van", a 1989 book, 1999 play and 2015 film by Alan Bennett, a real-life portrayal of a case of Diógenes syndrome.


title: Reliant Robin

text: Perhaps two of the best known Reliants in British comedy are actually Reliant Regal Supervans—the dirty yellow van owned by the Trotter brothers in "Only Fools and Horses", and the light blue van that always ends up getting tipped over, crashed into, bumped out of its parking space etc. by a British Leyland Mini in "Mr. Bean".


title: Reliant Robin

text: Reliant Robins make semi-regular appearances on "Scrapheap Challenge", often stripped down to a light three-wheeled chassis. One team converted the car into a wheelie-racer.


title: Reliant Robin

text: The 2011 Disney film "Cars 2" features a French character named Tomber who is patterned on a Reliant Regal saloon car, though he also has been compared to a Robin. His name means "falling" in French, referencing the instability of three-wheel vehicles.


title: Reliant Robin

text: The 2018 music video for Rick Astley's "She Makes Me", from the album "Beautiful Life" prominently features a yellow Reliant Rialto.


title: Reliant Robin

text: The original American television series "Magnum P.I." features a Robin in the season 6 opener from 1985, titled "Deja Vu". Johnathon Quayle Higgins rents and drives one.


title: Reliant Robin

text: In the 2019 Amazon Prime Video series "Good Omens" Witchhunter Private Newton Pulsifer (played by Jack Whitehall) drives a robin's egg blue Robin.


title: Reliant Robin

text: On 18 February 2007 episode of "Top Gear" (series 9, episode 4), a Reliant Robin was used by Richard Hammond and James May in an attempt to modify a normal K-reg Robin into a reusable Space Shuttle. The booster rockets separated cleanly, but the fuel tank did not detach, and the Robin crashed into the ground. This launch was the "largest non-commercial rocket launch in European history".


title: Reliant Robin

text: In a subsequent episode of "Top Gear" (series 15, episode 1), a modified 1994 Reliant Robin was used by Jeremy Clarkson to drive 14 miles from Sheffield to Rotherham. He described driving it as dangerous as "inviting your mum 'round for an evening on chatroulette", and that the Robin "wasn't funny, it was a complete menace". During the segment, Clarkson rolled a specially side-weighted Robin at least six times. The following two episodes featured racing driver The Stig and Ken Block on their test track in Robins, and neither of them could finish a clean lap in the specially doctored Robin. Later on, Clarkson admitted that the Robin used in the show had the differential modified to allow "the poor little thing" to roll over easily. The car also had unequal sized wheels fitted creating an imbalance toward the driver's side.


title: Sine qua non

text: Sine qua non (, ) or condicio sine qua non (plural: "condiciones sine quibus non") is an indispensable and essential action, condition, or ingredient. It was originally a Latin legal term for "[a condition] without which it could not be", "but for...", or "without which [there is] nothing." Also, ""sine qua non" causation" is the formal terminology for "but-for causation."


title: Sine qua non

text: As a Latin term, it occurs in the work of Boethius, and originated in Aristotelian expressions. In Classical Latin, the form uses the word (from the verb , , to agree upon), but in later Latin the phrase is also used with , an error in translation as means "construction" and not "condition".


title: Sine qua non

text: It has passed from a merely legal usage to a more general usage in many languages, including English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.


title: Sine qua non

text: U.S. president Andrew Jackson once gave a toast on the occasion of his receiving an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, responding to his listeners, ""E pluribus unum", my friends. "Sine qua non"."


title: Sine qua non

text: In 1938, Jomo Kenyatta, the general secretary of the Kikuyu Central Association and who later became Kenya's first prime minister, wrote that the institution of female genital mutilation was the ""condicio sine qua non" of the whole teaching of tribal law, religion and morality". He was writing in the context of the missionaries' campaign against female genital mutilation to assert the importance of the rite of passage as an ethnic marker for the Kikuyu, the main ethnic group in Kenya.


title: Sine qua non

text: The phrase appears in the 1967 book on Dahomey culture by Melville J. Herskovits. He wrote about the need to learn the native language: "This does not mean that a knowledge of a native language is a "Sine qua non" in the study of all problems bearing on primitive cultures. By the use of interpreters and of well recognized and tested techniques, it is possible to obtain the information needed to discover, describe and understand the institutions of a people, and it is such technique that have been employed in this study."


title: Sine qua non

text: The term appears in the 1958 commentary on Article 59 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians during wartime. In this case, the use of "sine qua non" refers to the assurance for relief aid to go to the civilian population and not to be diverted toward "the benefit of the Occupying Power."


title: Sine qua non

text: In medicine, the term "sine qua non" (in contrast with "pathognomonic") is often used in regard to any sign, symptom, or finding whose absence would very likely mean absence of the target disease or condition. The test for such a sign, symptom, or finding would thereby have very high sensitivity and thus would rarely miss the condition and so a negative result should be reassuring since the disease being tested for is absent. Examples include:


title: Sine qua non

text: In legal matters, ""but-for"", ""sine qua non"", "causa sine qua non", or ""cause-in-fact"" causation, or "condicio sine qua non", is a circumstance in which a certain act is a material cause of a certain injury or wrongdoing, without which the injury would not have occurred. It is established by the ""but-for" test": but for the act having occurred, the injury would not have happened.


title: Sine qua non

text: The defendant's negligent conduct is the actual cause of the plaintiff's injury if the harm would not have occurred to the plaintiff "but for" the negligent conduct of the defendant. (Perkins)


title: Sine qua non

text: This type of causation is often contrasted with "substantial-factor" causation. The substantial factor test is used when there are multiple negligent tortfeasors which either (1) all caused the injury, in which case any and all of them are 100% joint and severally liable (treated as the group but suing the money) and the charged defendant would have to implead or sue the others to square the damages, or (2) only one could have actually caused the injury but they were all negligent in the same way and that one cannot be determined, in which case the burden shifts and any of them that cannot show their negligence was not the cause is 100% joint and severally liable. The purpose of this is allow the aggrieved party to get their damages, and make the negligent tortfeasors square up amongst themselves. See e.g. "Hill v. Edmonds" (N.Y., 1966); "Anderson v. Minneapolis, St. P. & S. St. M. Ry. Co." (Minn., 1920)


title: Sine qua non

text: In "Rogers v. Bromac Title Servs. LLC", the United States Fifth Circuit interpreted the language of the Jury System Improvement Act in prohibiting employers from terminating employees "by reason of" jury service as meaning "but-for" causation. That means that the employee must show that the termination of employment would not have occurred "but for" the jury service. That is a higher burden for the plaintiff employee than merely showing that the jury service was a motivating factor for the termination.


title: Miss A

text: Miss A (stylized as "MISS A" or "miss A", Hangul: ) was a South Korean girl group formed by JYP Entertainment. The group debuted in July 2010 with the single "Bad Girl Good Girl" as a quartet consisting of Fei, Jia, Min, and Suzy. Their debut song reached number one on the Gaon Digital Chart, which made them the first act ever to have their debut song reach the top of the chart, the song also became the best-performing single of 2010 on the chart.


title: Miss A

text: Their debut studio album, "A Class" (2011) produced two more number one songs, and their follow-up extended plays, "Touch" and "Independent Women Part III" (both 2012), proved furthermore success. Their second studio album, "Hush" (2013), was well received by critics, and its title track has been covered on numerous occasions by girl groups and on survival reality shows. This would be followed by a year-long hiatus, until the release of their third extended play, "Colors" (2015), which would go on to become their last release before disbandment. In 2017, " Billboard" ranked Miss A at number ten on their "Top 10 K-pop Girl Groups of the Past Decade" list.


title: Miss A

text: Member Jia left the group in May 2016, while member Min left the group in November 2017. In December 2017, JYP officially announced that Miss A has disbanded.


title: Miss A

text: Originally, the group consisted of five trainees who were formed by JYP Entertainment in 2010. They first appeared in Chinese variety shows performing dance routines and songs as the "Chinese Wonder Girls," with Woo Hyerim as a member, who was placed in Wonder Girls soon before Miss A's debut in order to replace Sunmi. In March 2010, fifteen-year-old trainee Bae Suzy joined the group which, then a trio became known as 'Miss A'. The group signed with the Samsung Electronics group in China and released a song used for the commercial called "Love Again" for the Samsung Beat Festival. Lee Min Young, a solo artist and a long-time trainee in America, also made a cameo appearance in the music video, and joined the group for their South Korean debut in April 2010.


title: Miss A

text: Miss A made their official debut in South Korea as a four-member group on July 1 with their single "Bad Girl Good Girl." The song was taken from their debut single album "Bad but Good". Miss A received first place in the on KBS "Music Bank", becoming the fastest girl group to take the #1 spot on a music show.


title: Miss A

text: The group also consequently got first place program "Inkigayo" from the SBS. On August 1, 2010, Miss A received their first "Mutizen" award on M.net's "M! Countdown". The song stayed as the number 1 song for four straight weeks, breaking the previous record set by Girls' Generation.


title: Miss A

text: The group later on made their comeback with their second single album called "Step Up" on September 26. The group promoted "Breathe" as the lead single for the single album and showed an "exotic and [...] doll-like transformation" that was completely different from their debut EP. The first performance was on "M! Countdown" on October 7. The group received first place on "M! Countdown" in the last week of October.


title: Miss A

text: In May 2011, Miss A released "Love Alone", a single from their unreleased album "A Class". "Love Alone" was used as a promotional song for Yuna Kim's ice show, and Miss A performed the song at the opening of "All That Skate Spring 2011".


title: Miss A

text: Miss A announced their comeback with their first full album called "A Class", which was released digitally on July 18, 2011. "A Class" consists of a mix of previously released hits and four new tracks, including the single "Good Bye Baby". The album has 13 songs. They started promoting "Good Bye Baby" on July 21, 2011, on M.net's "M! Countdown", followed by KBS's "Music Bank", MBC's "Show! Music Core", and SBS's "Inkigayo". On the following week of promotions, they won all awards from the shows.


title: Miss A

text: On September 30 of the same year, Miss A debuted in China with the release of a special edition of their first full album, containing a DVD with music videos, as well as Chinese versions of "Bad Girl Good Girl", "Breathe", "Good Bye Baby" and "Love Again". After the Chinese album release, it ranked #3 on Taiwan's G-Music Chart.


title: Miss A

text: Miss A announced their comeback in Korea with an EP called "Touch", released on February 20, 2012. On February 19, 2012, the music video was uploaded to YouTube through Miss A's official channel and gained over one million views in one day.


title: Miss A

text: "Touch", both the song and the album, peaked at #2 on Gaon Chart Digital Singles and Physical Albums rankings for the 4th week of February.


title: Miss A

text: Miss A started their promotions for "Touch" on February 23 on M.net's "M! Countdown" and on other music shows respectively. On February 29, Miss A won the Champion Song on MBC MUSIC's "Show Champion" with the song "Touch". On March 1, "Touch" also went to #1 on M.net "M! Countdown". On March 4, they won Mutizen on SBS's "Inkigayo" with "Touch". On March 7 Miss A won on jTBC "Music On Top".


title: Miss A

text: On March 22, popular Chinese video sharing site YinYueTai revealed Miss A's Chinese music video for "Touch". On March 23, Miss A released a Chinese version of the "Touch" album in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This album contains the Korean and Chinese version of "Touch" and also the music videos under the DVD version. After the release, "Touch" immediately topped Chinese online charts.


title: Miss A

text: The group wrapped up their promotions for the album by performing "Over U", another song from the album, on each music program during their last week.


title: Miss A

text: On October 8, 2012, Miss A announced their comeback with their fifth project album entitled "Independent Women Part III". The five-track mini-album was released on October 15. On October 16, Miss A were involved in a minor car accident. They were taken to a hospital, and continued their schedules with only a few hours delay. They began their promotions for its lead single, "I Don't Need a Man", on October 18. "I Don't Need a Man" was also included on Miss A's next album, "Hush".


title: Miss A

text: Miss A released their extended play "Colors" on March 30, 2015. This was accompanied by an online reality series, "Real Miss A". The music video for the lead single, "Only You", gained more than 2 million views on YouTube within 24 hours.


title: Miss A

text: Following the end of "Colors" promotions, Miss A became inactive indefinitely. In May 2016, Jia left the group; according to management, the other members were focusing on solo activities at the time. In November 2017, it was reported that Min had also departed from the group as her contract with JYP Entertainment had come to an end.


title: Wingstop

text: Wingstop Inc. is an American multinational chain of aviation-themed restaurants specializing in chicken wings. Wingstop locations follow a 1930s and 1940s pre-jet aviation theme.


title: Wingstop

text: The restaurant chain was founded in 1994 in Garland, Texas, and began offering franchises in 1997. As of 2022, Wingstop now has over 1,400 restaurants. The chain is headquartered in Addison, Texas.


title: Wingstop

text: In 2003, the chain was acquired by Gemini Investors, which sold it to Roark Capital Group in 2010. Wingstop went public in 2015.


title: Wingstop

text: Wingstop was founded in 1994 in Garland, Texas by Antonio Swad. The first franchised location opened in 1997, and by 2002 the brand claimed to have served two million wings.


title: Wingstop

text: Wingstop went global in 2010 with its first international restaurant opening in Mexico. It currently operates in nine countries.


title: Wingstop

text: Wingstop was the third-fastest-growing restaurant chain in the US from 2014 and 2016 as measured by both systemwide sales and unit growth, according to Nation's Restaurant News.


title: Wingstop

text: In 2015, Wingstop went public at an initial public offering price of $19 per share. That year, the franchise's profits more than doubled.


title: Wingstop

text: In 2019, Wingstop unveiled the tagline "Where Flavor Gets Its Wings". The next year, Wingstop launched national delivery with DoorDash and celebrated 25 years in business.


title: Wingstop

text: The menu consists of chicken wings, boneless wings, chicken sandwiches, and chicken tenders with various dips and sides. The flavors available in the US include plain, Hawaiian, Garlic Parmesan, Lemon Pepper, Mild, Original Hot, Hickory Smoked BBQ, Atomic, Mango Habanero, Cajun, Louisiana Rub, and Spicy Korean Q. In August 2022, the restaurant chain introduced chicken sandwiches which come in the same flavors that the wings are available in.


title: Wingstop

text: Previous U.S. market limited time offer flavors include Brazilian Citrus Pepper, Harissa Lemon Pepper, Ancho Honey Glaze, and "flavor mashups" consisting of a mix of two existing flavors during the brand's 25 Days of Flavor campaign in 2019, including Hot Lemon, Dragon's Breath, and more. In 2021, Wingstop brought back Hot Lemon, Lemon Garlic, and Bayou BBQ for a limited time.


title: Wingstop

text: Wingstop Charities are focused toward youth and their passions, ranging from education, arts, sports, career development and more.


title: Wingstop

text: The Wingstop Team Member Foundation is funded by employees and provides direct support to team members experiencing a financial hardship due to an emergency.


title: Wingstop

text: Wingstop opened its first international location in Mexico in 2011, where it now counts 21 locations. As of 2022, Wingstop has locations in the United States, Canada, France, Indonesia, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.


title: Wingstop

text: On June 21, 2021, WingStop announced a digital-only restaurant called ThighStop, which includes the same menu items as WingStop, but sells thighs instead of wings. The company cited cost-saving measures as the reason for the change.


title: Music for the Masses

text: Music for the Masses is the sixth studio album by English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 28 September 1987 by Mute Records. The album was supported by the Music for the Masses Tour, which launched their fame in the US when they performed at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The tour led to the creation and filming of the documentary/live album titled "101". This saw the band using heavy amounts of sampling, much like they did in their previous album "Black Celebration".


title: Music for the Masses

text: Considered one of the band's best albums, "Music for the Masses" was included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".


title: Music for the Masses

text: Daniel Miller, who had co-produced Depeche Mode's previous album, voluntarily stepped away from production duties for this album, citing the growing tension in the studio that they had experienced during the recording of "Black Celebration". With Miller's approval, the band co-produced the album with David Bascombe, who had previously worked as a recording engineer with Tears for Fears and Peter Gabriel.


title: Music for the Masses

text: Band members Andy Fletcher and Martin Gore both explained the album's title was conceived as a joke. Fletcher said, "The title's ... a bit tongue-in-cheek, really. Everyone is telling us we should make more commercial music, so that's the reason we chose that title." According to Gore, the title "was a joke on the uncommerciality of [the album]. It was anything but music for the masses!"


title: Music for the Masses

text: The megaphone (or its iconic representation) on the album's cover was used during the breadth of the album's release: at press events, on the covers of the album's singles, and during the tour. Alan Wilder gave credit to Martyn Atkins, who had been a longtime Depeche Mode collaborator, for the use of the megaphone. "[Martyn came] up with this idea of a speaker, but, to give the kind of ironic element which the title has, to put this speaker in a setting which wasn't really to do with the masses at all. It was, in fact, the opposite. So you end up with this kind of eerie thing where you get these speakers or megaphones in the middle of a setting that doesn't suit it at all, like a desert or whatever." The deserted natural setting in question was the Peak District.


title: Music for the Masses

text: An early alternative cover was rejected for the album. The rejected cover was also designed by Atkins and a test pressing copy was auctioned off by Wilder in 2011. It features a white-and-orange stylised design of the megaphone emitting sound waves.


title: Music for the Masses

text: In 2006, "Music for the Masses" became one of the first Depeche Mode albums (along with "Speak & Spell" and "Violator") to be released on a special two-disc SACD/CD Hybrid + DVD format, in the vein of their 2005 album "Playing the Angel", which had a limited edition SACD + DVD release. The format was the same as "Playing the Angel"s, the first disc had a special digitally remastered version of the album, while the DVD had the album on three formats (PCM Stereo, 5.1 surround sound and DTS 5.1) plus bonus tracks, and a documentary on the album. The re-release preserves the album as it was originally intended. Thus, the four bonus tracks do not appear on the SACD, but appear on the DVD. The DVD also features all B-sides from the "Music for the Masses" era, but unlike the album and the bonus tracks, the B-sides are only available in PCM Stereo.


title: Music for the Masses

text: The documentary, a 37-minute short film titled "Depeche Mode: 1987–88 (Sometimes You Do Need Some New Jokes)", is an extensive look at the album, featuring commentary from a wide variety of people, including the current Depeche Mode, former member Wilder, producer David Bascombe, Daniel Miller, Daryl Bamonte, Atkins (who came up with the loudspeakers idea for the cover), Anton Corbijn, and others. The documentary features new facts on the album, and also an extensive look at the film "101".


title: Music for the Masses

text: The re-release was released on 3 April 2006 in Europe. The US version was delayed to 2 June 2006 and is only available on a CD + DVD format, with no SACD. The DVD on all the versions are region independent however, so one can simply import the SACD version without worrying about the DVD being incompatible. The remastered album was released on vinyl on 2 March 2007 in Germany and 5 March 2007 internationally.


title: Music for the Masses

text: The album mostly received favourable reviews upon release. Robert Christgau complimented the abnormal road symbolism of the lyrics, particularly on "Little 15", and believed that apart from the sadomasochistic metaphors, Depeche Mode succeeded in turning "adolescent "Weltschmerz" into something catchy, sexy and seemingly significant". "NME" Jane Solanas felt Gore was "at his obsessive best" on "Music for the Masses", particularly on "Never Let Me Down Again", which she called "an intriguing masterpiece, combining homo-eroticism with drug euphoria." In a less enthusiastic review, Paul Mathur from "Melody Maker" was ambivalent towards the group's more mature, minimalist aesthetic and said although they had departed from their simpler pop sound, the record was "seamless, fluid, and, once the lights are out, particularly dull."


title: Music for the Masses

text: In a retrospective review, "Q" magazine found the narratives on "Music for the Masses" to be among Depeche Mode's most uncertain and contemplative, and that most of its songs were "real diamonds in the darkness ... this was the point at which Depeche Mode were first taken seriously." "Slant Magazine"s Sal Cinquemani said that "Music for the Masses" showed the gloomier side of the "post-punk synthpop" scene during the 1980s and was a success with both critics and consumers. "Alternative Press" called the record "articulate, intricate electronic music that lacked the tinny feel of DM's early synth pop". "Music for the Masses" was listed by "Slant Magazine" at number 75 on their list of "Best Albums of the 1980s". The album was also included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: Cake is a 2014 American drama film directed by Daniel Barnz, written by Patrick Tobin, and starring Jennifer Aniston, Adriana Barraza, Felicity Huffman, William H. Macy, Anna Kendrick, and Sam Worthington. It debuted in the Special Presentations section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: "Cake" received mixed reviews and was a box-office bomb, grossing $2.9 million against its $7–10 million budget. However, Aniston's dramatic performance received positive reviews and brought her a nomination at the Golden Globe Awards and another at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: A year after surviving a car accident that killed her son, former attorney Claire Bennett struggles with chronic pain, making her angry. Silvana, her housekeeper, caretaker and chauffeur, looks after all of her needs. Since the accident, Claire rides lying down while Silvana drives her everywhere.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: Her pain medication abuse stems from not accepting her son's death and the suicide of Nina, a member of her chronic pain support group. Claire distances herself from her husband Jason, eventually asking him to move out. She leaves the support group after describing Nina's suicide in detail. Addicted to alcohol and to the opioids percocet and oxycontin, she eventually has to resort to buying the drugs illegally in Tijuana. She dreams vividly and hallucinates about Nina.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: At her pool physical therapy Claire is uncooperative; her physical therapist informs the doctor she hasn't improved in six months, meaning her pain medication could get cut off. After her session, Claire jumps into the pool with body weights, seemingly to kill herself. She stays on the bottom for a long time before rising to the surface.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: At the threat of a lawsuit, Annette (the support group leader) gives Claire Nina's home address. Claire goes to the house, telling the occupant a lie about having lived there as a child. Nina's husband Roy, however, was tipped off by Annette and confronts her as she is leaving. She asks him what he would say to his wife now. He responds that he hates Nina for ruining his life and that of their son Casey. Bonding over their loss and isolation, Claire and Roy go to Nina's grave, where he hangs a wind chime. A few nights later Claire surprises him at home and takes Nina's leftover Percocet. Nina returns in Claire's dreams, chastising her for using people.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: During lunch with Roy and Casey, the man responsible for Claire's car accident shows up at her house to apologize, racked with guilt. She physically attacks him, releasing some of her pent-up anger. Afterwards, she inadvertently overdoses on the pain medication; realizing what has happened, she forces herself to vomit before passing out. Taken to the hospital, she dreams of Nina presenting her with a birthday cake with six lit candles, explaining that she feels guilty about not being able to make a homemade birthday cake for her son.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: Claire is discharged from the hospital and struggles to remain drug free. She asks Silvana to drive her to Riverside drive-in, where she had her first date with Jason. Wandering away, she lies down on the nearby railroad tracks and hallucinates a conversation with Nina, who gets Claire to admit she was a good mother. Claire hears Silvana calling her and when she gets up, Nina vanishes. Silvana, in Spanish, loudly criticizes Claire for abusing everyone and pushing away Jason, who is also suffering the loss of their son. She is interrupted when Claire notices the car has been stolen, forcing them to stay in a motel and get a rental to return to Los Angeles the next day.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: The next day Becky, a girl from Idaho on her way to Los Angeles, tries to steal Claire's purse. Claire brings her home to make her a homemade cake. Silvana later wakes Claire when she sees Becky has in fact stolen the purse, but has left a beautiful cake. Claire takes it to Roy for his son's birthday, as a way of thanking Nina. She and Silvana go to visit her son's grave, where Silvana hangs a wind chime in a nearby tree. On the ride home, Claire finally sits upright in the car.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: On February 10, 2014, it was announced that Jennifer Aniston would play the lead in "Cake". Daniel Barnz, the director, said "Of the zillions of Jennifer Aniston fans, I might be the biggest one of all. I've especially loved her more dramatic performances, and I can’t wait to watch her tackle a role that has such a brilliantly funny voice and so much raw pain (hats off to writer Patrick Tobin). I’m honored to be collaborating with Ben, Kristin and Courtney, and it’s exciting that Cake will be the first film under the Cinelou banner. It feels like we’re all taking a leap of faith together, and that’s pretty thrilling." On March 15, Mexican actress Adriana Barraza was also announced in the cast of the drama. The rest of the cast was revealed on April 1.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: "Cake" was released in select theatres on December 31, 2014 by Cinelou Films, before going on general release on January 23, 2015 by Freestyle Releasing. The film was released on DVD & Blu-ray April 21, 2015.


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 49% based on 133 reviews, with an average rating of 5.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Cake" finds Jennifer Aniston making the most of an overdue opportunity to test her dramatic chops, but it lacks sufficient depth or warmth to recommend for all but her most ardent fans." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 49 out of 100, based on reviews from 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Cake (2014 film)

text: At the Toronto premiere, the cast received a standing ovation. The performances of Jennifer Aniston and Adriana Barraza have been highly praised by some critics. Pete Hammond of "Deadline" described Aniston's performance as "heartbreakingly good... There are really no tricks to this performance. It's raw and real, poignant and unexpected." Clayton Davis of "Awards Circuit" spoke of Aniston's performance as "the single best performance by an actress this year... Aniston's performance is something that most actresses will pray to be able to achieve, but never come close." In his review for HitFix, Gregory Ellwood wrote that "Aniston makes you believe in Claire's pain. She makes you believe this character is at her lowest point and only she can pull herself out of it. There is no Oscar scene. There is no massive crying fit. It's a complete performance from beginning to end and she deserves the appropriate accolades for it." Of Aniston's performance, David Nusair of "Reel Film Reviews" wrote "...the actress steps into the shoes of her thoroughly damaged character to an often revelatory extent." Sheri Linden of the "Los Angeles Times" also spoke positively of Aniston's performance, writing "Aniston lends the role an impressively agonized physicality and brings ace timing to the screenplay's welcome gallows humor."


title: Chopped cheese

text: The chopped cheese, also known as the chop cheese, is a type of sandwich originating from New York City. Found in bodegas throughout Upper Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens it is made on a grill with ground beef, onions, and mixed in melted cheese and served with lettuce, tomatoes, and condiments on a hero roll. It is compared with the cheesesteak, cheeseburger, and a cheese sloppy joe, often thought of as a mixture of all three.


title: Chopped cheese

text: Though the chopped cheese sandwich gained significant media attention around 2018, the actual origins of the sandwich are up for debate. There is speculation that the sandwich was an adaptation of an Arabic specialty, (), which is essentially cooked chopped meat and vegetables served with Yemeni bread. Some have argued that it is a century-old recipe that has been "Columbused", while some think it is a more recent creation.


title: Chopped cheese

text: The chopped cheese has also made its way into hip hop culture, being featured in or the subject of many songs. Harlem rapper Cam'ron filmed his music video "Child of the Ghetto" at Hajji's Deli, which is largely considered the origin of chopped cheeses in NYC.


title: Chopped cheese

text: The sandwich has also been the topic of a documentary from website "First We Feast". The documentary "Hometown Hero: The Legend of New York's Chopped Cheese" discusses the origins of the sandwich and its cultural history. In the documentary, the sandwich is referred to as being legendary, and "Harlem's favorite".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: "Like a Virgin" is a song recorded by American singer Madonna from her second studio album of the same name (1984). It was written and composed by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg. After a demo recording sung by Kelly, it was played to Warner Bros. Records' Michael Ostin, who suggested Madonna record it. Recording took place at New York's Power Station, while production was in charge of Chic's Nile Rodgers. Rodgers initially did not want to record the song, as he felt it did not have a strong hook, but subsequently changed his mind. It was released as the album's lead single on November 6, 1984. A dance song with two hooks, Madonna sings in a high register while a continuous arrangement of synths are heard along the bassline. The song's lyrics are ambiguous, consisting of hidden innuendos and open to various interpretations.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: Upon release, "Like a Virgin" received positive reviews from music critics, who frequently singled out Madonna's vocals. It became her first number-one in the "Billboard" Hot 100, and topped the charts in Australia and Canada, while reaching the top ten elsewhere; "Like a Virgin" has sold over six million copies worldwide. The accompanying music video was directed by Mary Lambert, and showed Madonna sailing down the canals of Venice in a gondola, as well as roaming around a castle wearing a white wedding dress. The video received positive feedback; authors singled out the expression of Venetian vitality, and noted references to Saint Mark.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: Madonna has performed "Like a Virgin" in seven of her concert tours, the last being 2015–2016's Rebel Heart Tour; the song's performance at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards has been deemed a defining moment in pop culture, as well as one of the best performances in the show's history. "Like a Virgin" has been covered and parodied by a number of artists, including Elton John and "Weird Al" Yankovic. It's also been sung or referenced in feature films and TV shows such as "Reservoir Dogs" (1992), "Moulin Rouge!" (2001) and "Glee" (2010), among others. "Like a Virgin" has been recognized as one of Madonna's best songs, as well as the one that turned her into a superstar; "Like a Virgin" has also been credited with encouraging women and female performers from the time to embrace their sexuality.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: "Like a Virgin" was written by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly; the former had just begun a new relationship after a long rough period, and came up with the lyrics one day while driving a pickup truck around his father's vineyards in the Coachella Valley. Steinberg went on to reveal in an interview for the "Los Angeles Times" that the song was not written with a female singer in mind; it was inspired by how he coped with the difficult situation after ending a previous relationship. When he took the lyrics to Kelly, together they decided that it would be a sensitive ballad, but could not decide how to include the word "virgin" in it. Steinberg elaborated: "I wasn't just trying to get that racy word "virgin" in a lyric. I was saying [...] I've been battered romantically and emotionally like many people— but I'm starting a new relationship and it just feels so good, it's healing all the wounds and making me feel like I've never done this before". They then recorded a demo, with Kelly singing lead and Steinberg singing backup.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: After the demo was recorded, Kelly invited Warner Bros. Records A&R executive Michael Ostin to his house to listen to it. Ostin, who was set to meet with Madonna the following day, wanted to play the demo for her, as he believed the lyrics and groove were "perfect" for her; "when I played it [for Madonna] she went crazy, and I knew instantly it was a song for her and that she could make a great record out of it," Ostin recalled. In a 2009 interview with "Rolling Stone", the singer was asked by Austin Scaggs what were her first impressions after listening to the demos of "Like a Virgin" and "Material Girl"; she replied,


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: I liked them both because they were ironic and provocative at the same time but also unlike me. I am not a materialistic person, and I certainly wasn't a virgin, and, by the way, how can you be "like a virgin"? I liked the play on words; I thought they were clever. They're so geeky, they're cool. I never realized they would become my signature songs, especially the second one.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: In mid-1984, Madonna met with Nile Rodgers at New York's Power Station studio to start working on her second studio album; Rodgers put together an "economical" rhythm section, consisting of himself on guitars, Bernard Edwards from Chic on bass, and Tony Thompson on drums. According to author Fred Bronson, Rodgers did not want Madonna to record "Like a Virgin", as he felt the lyric "like a virgin" was not a "terrific" hook, nor an "all-time catch phrase". However, he began to have second thoughts after hearing the demo; "I couldn't get it out of my head after I played it, even though I didn't really like it [...] but it grew on me. I really started to like it. [...] But, my first reaction to it was, 'This is really queer'", Rodgers recalled. The producer then "handed [my] apology [to Madonna] and said, 'you know... if it's so catchy that it stayed in my head for four days, it must be something. So let's do it", thus the song was finally recorded. Madonna was very eager to release her work with Rodgers, despite "Borderline" being a top-ten hit at the time; "not that I didn't love Reggie Lucas and 'Borderline' [...] but the thing is, when I put out my first record it didn't really do that well. [...] So it kind of had a resurgence right at the time we were going to release 'Like a Virgin'", she recalled. Of the recording process, Billy Steinberg commented:


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: When Madonna recorded it, even as our demo faded out, on the fade you could hear Tom saying, "When your heart beats, and you hold me, and you love me..." That was the last thing you heard as our demo faded. [She] must have listened to it very, very carefully because her record ends with the exact same little ad-libs that our demo did. That rarely happens that someone studies your demo so carefully that they use all that stuff. We were sort of flattered how carefully she followed our demo on that.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: Jason Corsaro, the record's audio engineer, persuaded Rodgers to use digital recording, a new technique at the time which Corsaro believed was going to be the "future" of recording because test pressings always sounded consistent. To ensure this, Corsaro used a Sony 3324 24-track DASH recorder, and a Sony F1 PCM adaptor for the stereo mix; Madonna recorded her vocals inside a small, wooden, high-ceilinged piano room at the back of Studio C, also known as Power Station's "R&B room". Corsaro then placed gobos around her while using the top capsule of a stereo AKG C24 tube microphone, with a Schoeps microphone preamplifier and a Pultec equalizer; "that was part of the Power Station way — nothing was subtle and everything had a particular sound", the engineer recalled. Once the track was approved, Robert Sabino added the keyboard parts, playing mostly a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, as well as some Rhodes piano and acoustic piano; Rodgers also played a Synclavier. Madonna, although not required, was present every minute of the recording sessions and the mixing process, Corsaro commented: "Nile was there most of the time, but she was there all of the time. She never left".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: Composed as a dance-oriented song, the intro of "Like a Virgin" consists of two hooks. According to the sheet music published by Alfred Publishing Inc., it is written in common time, with a moderately groove tempo of 118 beats per minute; Madonna's vocals range from the tonal nodes of low-tone G to high-tone C. Rikky Rooksby wrote in "The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna" (2004) that the bassline on the intro is a re-working of the three-note bass motif present in the Four Tops' "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" (1965), where Chuck Berry provided the chord arrangement. The bassline shares similarities with Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" (1983), especially during the second verse. Madonna sings in her high register, while drum arrangement by Tony Thompson can heard alongside the bassline; this is supported by a synthesizer arrangement, giving it a circular progression through all the seven diatonic chords of I–IV–vii–iii–vi–ii–V–I. In the second chorus, the singer exclaims the title phrase, followed by a "Hey!" sung in falsetto; the outro has "breathless" ad-libs such as "can't you hear my heart beat... for the very first time?".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: Lyrically, "Like a Virgin" has been described as an "ode to a lover who makes the singer feel like new". Madonna commented: "I like innuendo, I like irony, I like the way things can be taken on different levels"; this statement highlighted the ambiguity of the lyrics of the song, which is hung on the word "like". According to Rooksby, the song can be interpreted in many different ways: actual virgins are encouraged to hold their compose before their first sexual encounter; in the case of men and more sexually experienced women, however, the lyrics talk about how they can re-live the feelings of their first sexual encounter.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: "Like a Virgin" was released as the album's lead single on November 6, 1984. Rodgers wanted "Material Girl" to be released as lead single but "Like a Virgin" was chosen instead, a decision Madonna herself found "quite controversial". Afterwards, the song was included on the singer's compilations, "The Immaculate Collection" (1990), and "Celebration" (2009). Upon release, "Like a Virgin" was met with generally positive reviews from music critics. On his of the singer, J. Randy Taraborrelli described it as a "coy song that suggested [she] really was a virgin - excited, sexy and willing". Author Thomas J. Ferraro called it "hilariously tongue-in-cheek". In "The History of American Pop", Stuart A. Kallen referred to it as "light and catchy, easy to dance to, and just plain fun". From AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine named it, along with "Material Girl", one of the album's "definitive statements" that "overshadow" the rest of the songs; Stewart Mason from the same website, felt it was "pure bubblegum fluff" and the song in which Madonna "sounds most like Marilyn Monroe". "Rolling Stone"s Debby Miller deemed it "terrific", and opined that, despite her "little-girl voice [...] when she chirps, 'You made me feel/Shiny and new/Like a virgin', [...] you know she's after something". The same magazine then said that, "even if the word 'virgin' is the only sexual reference in the lyrics, ['Like a Virgin'] still sounds saturated in lust". From "Billboard", Brian Chin praised the singer's "flawlessly phrased, witty" vocals and referred to the song as her "most pop-oriented cut yet". Kenneth Partridge, also writing for "Billboard", compared it to "Billie Jean" and referred to it as a "complex song about purity and sex". "Parade"s Samuel Murrian singled out "just how clever and skillfully constructed this song is".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: The staff of "Cash box" opined that, "though the hooks are not as interesting as on her previous singles, Madonna's voice is in full force". While Yahoo!'s Nicole Hogsett said it was a "flirtatious, innocent-sounding (yet not innocent at all) [...] undeniably fun discussion of love", "The Guardian" called it "saucy". Amy Davidson from Digital Spy praised its "instantly memorable" lyrics, and said it had "one of the best basslines in pop". For "The Arizona Republic", Ed Masley wrote that, "['Like a Virgin'] features young Madonna at her chirpiest" and, when compared to other singles such as "Justify My Love" (1990), it "does feel pretty virginal". "Stereogum"s Tom Breihan pointed out that "Rodgers' production and the Chic members' playing is sharp and in-the-pocket [...] [Madonna] projects personality all over it. But she also sounds tinny and small", ultimately concluding that it was a "pretty good" song. In less favorable reviews, "Entertainment Weekly"s Dave Karger felt it came off a bit repetitious and immature. The Backlot's Louis Virtel opined it's the Madonna song that has "aged [the] worst and most" since its release. Sal Cinquemani from "Slant Magazine" dismissed "Like a Virgin" as a novelty.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: On November 17, 1984, "Like a Virgin" debuted at number 48 of the "Billboard" Hot 100, and was the week's most added song to radio stations. One week later, the single entered the Dance Club Songs chart at number 26. On December 15, following the release of the "Like a Virgin" album, the song reached the Dance chart's first position, giving Madonna her second number one there after the "Holiday"/"Lucky Star" release from October 1983. Additionally, it was the sixth Dance Club number one produced by Nile Rodgers. After six weeks on the chart, "Like a Virgin" reached the Hot 100's top spot on December 22, tying Prince's "When Doves Cry" as the fastest-rising number one single of the year. With this feat, Madonna became the year's fourth female artist to top the Hot 100, following Deniece Williams, Cyndi Lauper and Tina Turner; "Like a Virgin" was the second number one by an act from Sire Records ―the other being "Pop Muzik" (1979) by M.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: On January 10, 1985, the song was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipping a million copies across the United States. Nine days later, after having spent five consecutive weeks on the Hot 100's first spot, "Like a Virgin" became the longest running number one for a female since "Flashdance... What a Feeling" (1983) by Irene Cara; it spent a total of six consecutive weeks at number one. "Like a Virgin" was also Madonna's first top-ten entry on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, peaking at 9. On "Billboard" Hot 100 year-end chart for 1985, "Like a Virgin" was placed at placed at two; on the Dance Club Songs year-end chart, it peaked at number three.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: In Canada, the single debuted in the 71st position of "RPM"s Top Singles chart on the week of November 24, 1984; it reached the top spot on January 19, 1985 and was ranked 35 on the magazine's 1985 year-end chart. In the United Kingdom, "Like a Virgin" debuted at number 51 on the UK Singles Chart on November 17, 1984, and reached the third position almost two months later; it spent two weeks at number three, and eighteen on the chart overall. It was the fourth best-selling song of 1984 in the United Kingdom, and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for shipment of 500,000 copies. According to "Music Week" magazine, over 768,129 copies of the single have been sold as of 2008. In Australia, "Like a Virgin" became Madonna's first number one song on the Kent Music Report chart; in New Zealand, it entered the charts on December 9, 1984, and peaked at number two, remaining on that spot for two weeks. "Like a Virgin" proved to be a success across Europe as well, peaking within the top ten of the charts of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland. It came in at number one on the European Hot 100 Singles chart. It was less successful in Japan, where it barely reached the top 20. According to Italian newspaper "Corriere della Sera", "Like a Virgin" has sold over six million copies worldwide.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: The music video for "Like a Virgin" was directed by Mary Lambert, who had previously worked with Madonna on "Borderline"; it was filmed on location in Venice and New York at a cost of $150,000, "way more than we'd ever spent on a video" according to Warner Bros. creative director Jeff Ayeroff. Shooting in Venice was Lambert's idea, as "[Madonna] singing in a gondola was the most outrageous thing I could think of". The visual interspersed footage of the singer as "a knowing virgin", dressed in a white wedding dress, with scenes of her "strutting" throughout Venice in a "sluttish getup". Also present are a male lion wandering through the streets, and a man in a lion's mask. Madonna herself explained the concept: "[Mary] wanted me to be the modern-day, worldly-wise girl that I am. But then we wanted to go back in time and use myself as an actual virgin"; she also recalled that, at one point, she was "leaning against this pillar with [the lion's] head in my crotch [...] I thought he was going to take a bite out of me".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: It begins with Madonna getting off a boat at the Brooklyn Bridge. The setting then moves to Venice, where a "flirtatious" Madonna watches the lion walk through the streets; she then walks to the beat of the music. Later on, the singer is seen walking through a "fairytale castle" dressed in a "virginal" white wedding gown. These scene are interspersed with shots of Madonna dancing suggestively on a gondola. Towards the end, the singer meets a man wearing a lion mask who carries her into a bed. In the final shot, the couple rides off together in a gondola, and the video ends with the New York skyline.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: "Like a Virgin" was added to MTV on the week of November 10, 1984. In 1986, the song's performance from the "" release was published as a video and nominated for Best Choreography at the MTV Video Music Awards. Five years later, the performance from the "" documentary was also released as a music video and received nominations at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. The official video can be found on Madonna's video compilations "The Immaculate Collection" (1990), and "" (2009).


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: The video was generally well received by critics. For "The Independent", Ben Kelly pointed out that, "her ambition is on full display [on the video]. As the camera cuts between her eyes and those of a lion, it's hard to tell who looks hungrier"; he named it one of Madonna's ten best music videos. "Like a Virgin" was considered the singer's eight best video by "Idolator"s Mike Neid, who referred to it as a "timeless release". Louis Virtel placed it in the 27th position of The Backlot's ranking of the singer's music videos. Ferraro called it "funny, funky and bright". Georges-Claude Guilbert, in "Madonna as Postmodern Myth" (2015), highlighted the "games with carnival masks, men, lions and 'werelions', [and] allusions to eighteenth-century practices", adding that it was an "extremely sexy" clip. Author Michael Campbell concluded that with the video, Madonna created "the formula that would set the tone for her subsequent work: combine provocative, shocking and controversial themes and images with bright, accessible music".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: Author Margaret Plant noted the expression of Venetian vitality in the video, writing that "old sacrosanct Venice was propelled into a pop world of high-energy gyration, and endless circulation". Tom Bromley wrote that the lion represented Saint Mark, the patron saint of Venice; Plant also noted references to Saint Mark, adding that Madonna appeared to "stretch the boundaries of tolerance in the video", since Saint Mark represented a time in Venice when acts such as homosexuality and fornication were a capital offense. Plant also wrote that the scene in which the masked man carries Madonna, symbolized an instance of the Saint taking the simulated Virgin: Madonna became a symbol for La Serenissima, the Republic itself. Andrew Greeley opined that the video "celebrates a powerful erotic fantasy", finding parallels to "the way we are in the presence of God [...] Is not the gentle care in which [Madonna's] lover treats her the way God alleges that he treats us?".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: On September 14, 1984, Madonna opened the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards ceremony with "Like a Virgin"; she initially wanted to perform with a full-grown Bengal tiger, but this idea was quickly nixed. Instead, she emerged from a 17-foot wedding cake, donning a white wedding dress with a bustier, pearls, rosaries, lace fingerless gloves, and a belt with a buckle that read "Boy Toy". During the number, she slithered and writhed across the floor, with her dress going up and her underpants showing. The singer explained that this was not intentional, as one of her shoes had come off at the beginning and she simply had tried to reach for it; "I thought, 'Well, I'll just pretend I meant to do this,' and I dove on the floor and I rolled around", she later recalled.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: MTV's Jessie Peterson opined that the performance put Madonna "on the map as Queen of Pop Music", and established the VMAs as "the place where water-cooler moments happen". Ian Anglis, on "Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time", saw the performance as Madonna's "coming-out party", further adding that it gave MTV "legitimacy when [it was trying] - by the roundabout means of award ceremonies and live music - to convince the world [...] of the worthiness of music video".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: For Courtney E. Smith, "although Cyndi Lauper took home the Moon Man for Best female video, [Madonna] made 1984 all about the 'Blonde ambition' [...] The act she put on that night convinced a lot of us that we shouldn't just buy in to her image, but that we wanted to [...] run out and buy a copy of her second album". Similarly, Tom Breihan pointed out that many of the performers and presenters were already established figures: Rod Stewart, Huey Lewis And The News, and David Bowie among others, yet, "all anyone remembers is Madonna singing 'Like A Virgin' in public for the very first time". For the staff of "Rolling Stone", it's a moment in pop culture "as indelible as the Beatles on Ed Sullivan". It was named one of the best performances in the show's history by "Slant Magazine" and "Billboard", with the singer's bridal look considered one of her most memorable and iconic.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: On May 16, 1984, Madonna performed "Like a Virgin" at artist Keith Haring's birthday party, which took place on New York's Paradise Garage; she wore a leather jacket personally painted by the artist, and sang on a brass bed covered with frilly material and strewn with white roses. It was also sung on promotional television appearances throughout late 1984 and early 1985. Furthermore, "Like a Virgin" has been performed on seven of Madonna's concert tours: Virgin (1985), Who's That Girl (1987), Blond Ambition (1990), The Girlie Show (1993), Confessions (2006), MDNA (2012), and Rebel Heart (2015―2016). On the first one, Madonna once again wore a white wedding dress and asked the audience if they wanted to marry her; she would then thrust her hips at their affirmative response, and sang a few lines from "Billie Jean". On his review of one of the San Diego concerts, Robert Hilburn felt the singer was "at her best when working off an idea or concept", citing the song's performance as an example. The performance was included in the VHS release "Madonna Live: The Virgin Tour", recorded in Detroit, Michigan. For 1987's Who's That Girl World Tour, the song was performed in a medley with "Material Girl" and "Dress You Up"; Madonna changed her clothes in an onstage telephone booth and emerged wearing a dress covered in toys, trinkets and other plastic paraphernalia. Halfway through, she bent over to revel a pair of lace panties, which she then threw into the crowd, and sang a fragment of "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)". Towards the end, she was joined by a young male dancer who acted as a bridegroom. The number was deemed one of the concert's strongest by the "Washington Post"s Richard Harrington. Two different performances can be found on the videos "Who's That Girl: Live in Japan", filmed in Tokyo on June, and "", filmed in Turin on September.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: On the Blond Ambition World Tour of 1990, Madonna sang a slowed version of the song with a Middle East theme. She wore a gold metallic corset with conical cups, designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, and sang on top of a red velvet bed flanked by two male dancers, also in conical brassieres. As the artist sang, she humped the bed and pretended to masturbate, while the dancers caressed her body and stroked their own brassieres. Greg Kot from the "Chicago Tribune" singled out the performance for being "both seductive and hilarious", while Richard Harrington said it was the concert's "only clear miscalculation, probably meant to shock, but [was] only distressing". Three different performances can be found in "Blond Ambition Japan Tour 90", taped in Yokohama, "Blond Ambition World Tour Live", taped in Nice, and in the documentary "Madonna: Truth or Dare". In Toronto, Canada, police threatened to arrest Madonna on obscenity charges, if she didn't alter the performance's masturbation sequence; the show went unaltered, and the singer later issued a statement saying she was willing to be arrested to protect her freedom to "express myself as an artist". The incident was referenced and can be seen in "Madonna: Truth or Dare". The song's performance on The Girlie Show (1993) took place in a Berlin cabaret setting; Madonna sang in a heavy German accent, pronouncing the word "Virgin" as ""Wurgin"", dressed in a look similar to that of Marlene Dietrich in the 1930 film "Morocco", consisting of top hat and tails. Guilbert highlighted the singer's "funny" accent during the number. The performance recorded on November 19, 1993, at the Sydney Cricket Ground, was included on "" home video release (1994).


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: In April 2003, while promoting her ninth studio album "American Life", Madonna did an impromptu acoustic rendition of "Like a Virgin" at New York's Tower Records. That same year, a medley of "Like a Virgin" and "Hollywood" ―from "American Life"― was performed by Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera during the MTV Video Music Awards. It began with Spears, dressed in a white wedding gown, emerging from a giant wedding cake ―a reference to Madonna's 1984 performance―, singing the song's first verse; then, a dark-haired Aguilera, also in bridal gear, began to sing the chorus. Madonna took the stage dressed as groom with black top hat and tuxedo, and began singing "Hollywood". The three women danced together across the stage, before ending the performance with two open mouth kisses. Sal Cinquemani opined that "[Madonna] rarely shares the stage with other stars, and for it to be Britney and Christina [...] was nothing short of surreal"; according to "Glamour"s Christopher Rosa, it was an "important moment in our nation's history", that "spawned an entire generation of gay men". On the Confessions Tour, Madonna, dressed in a "dominatrix equestrian" outfit, sang "Like a Virgin" on top of a black saddle as the backdrops flashed X-ray radiographies of the injuries she suffered on a horse-riding accident. The number was positively received by Liz Smith for the "Baltimore Sun", who named it one of the concert's best. The performance from the August 15–16 London concerts was included on the singer's second live album "The Confessions Tour" (2007).


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: On the Rome stop of 2008's Sticky & Sweet Tour, Madonna dedicated "Like a Virgin" to Pope Benedict XVI; she also did a capella renditions of the track on the Vancouver, Okland, and Buenos Aires concerts per the crowd's request; one of these performances was included on the "Sticky & Sweet Tour" live album release (2010). For 2012's The MDNA Tour, Madonna reworked "Like a Virgin" into a "gothic waltz", which she sang in bra and panties, backed by a piano player wearing a top hat. Halfway through, a male dancer put a corset around her waist and tightened the strings until she couldn't sing anymore. For "The Kansas City Star", Timothy Finn compared the rendition to the work of Leonard Cohen; according to Scott Marvis from the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette", the number saw Madonna singing in "her most seductive vocal". The performance of the song at the November 19–20, 2012 shows in Miami, at the American Airlines Arena, were recorded and released in the singer's fourth live album, "MDNA World Tour" (2013). A remix of the song with a "pulsing industrial beat" was created by French producer Denis Zabee, and performed by the singer on her Rebel Heart Tour (2015―2016); Madonna danced alone on the stage, doing moves similar to Michael Jackson's and, at one point, opened her blouse to show off her lingerie and cleavage. The number was positively received by Alex Needham from "The Guardian", who pointed out that Madonna sang the track "with all the allure and aggression with which she infused it when it was first released". The "New York Daily News" Jim Farber felt the singer danced "with a freedom and innocence that made her, at 57, seem once again new". The song's performance at the March 19–20, 2016 shows in Sydney's Allphones Arena was recorded and released on Madonna's fifth live album, "Rebel Heart Tour" (2017).


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: In 1985, The Lords of the New Church covered "Like a Virgin" for their compilation album "Killer Lords"; AllMusic's Gary Hill singled out the "funny and obnoxious" rendition. That same year, "Weird Al" Yankovic recorded "Like a Surgeon", a parody of the song, for his album "Dare to Be Stupid"; an acquaintance of Madonna, who happened to be friends with Yankovic's manager, suggested the idea, noting that it would not take long for Yankovic to satirize the song. The track received positive reviews, with AllMusic's Eugene Chadbourne deeming it "perhaps his best parody ever". "Like a Surgeon" peaked at number 47 of the "Billboard" Hot 100. Six years later, Scottish band Teenage Fanclub included a rendition of "Like a Virgin" on "The King" (1991), their second studio album.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: In 2002, French–Dutch group Mad'House did a Eurodance take on the song, that was included on their album "Absolutely Mad". "The Madonna Trilogy", a mashup of "Like a Virgin", "Lucky Star" and "Burning Up", was recorded by The Meat Purveyors. At the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, Katy Perry performed "Like a Virgin" alongside Travis Barker and DJ AM. Doda included "Like a Virgin" in the 2009 re-edition of her album "Diamond Bitch". Elton John sang the track at the 2010 Rock for the Rainforest concert. 2NE1 recorded the song for their album "Collection" (2012); that same year, JoJo sang it at a Harvard-Westlake School charity held at LACMA, and Peruvian singer Wendy Sulca recorded a spanglish version. In 2014, Cristina Scuccia, a nun who won that year's "The Voice of Italy" season, released a ballad rendition of the song as her debut single; Madonna herself praised Succia. Romanian singer Alexandra Stan recorded version the song with a new orchestration done by Chris Trace in late January 2017; In 2019, Big & Rich did a rendition of the song with an altered melody; that same year, Mötley Crüe covered the song for the soundtrack of "The Dirt".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: In 1985, Max Baer Jr. approached Kelly and Steinberg with a proposal to turn the song into a film, just as he had done with "Ode to Billy Joe" (1970), and even began negotiations with them. However, the ABC threatened to sue after hearing of the negotiations; lawyers claimed the songwriters had already agreed to sell the rights to the network for a television film. Baer subsequently sued ABC for interfering with his prospective economic advantage, and was awarded $2 million by a court, who agreed that the network had wrongly interfered with the producer's plans. During the opening scene of Quentin Tarantino's 1992 film "Reservoir Dogs", the character Mr. Brown (played by Tarantino himself) insists that "Like a Virgin" is "about a girl who meets a guy with a big dick"; when Madonna met Tarantino at a party after the film's release, she gave him an autographed copy of her album "Erotica", signing, "Quentin: it's about love, not dick". In Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge!" (2001), "Like a Virgin" was turned into a "delightful comic number" performed by Jim Broadbent. A sing-along of the track was performed by the titular character (Renée Zellweger) and a group of prostitutes at a Thailand jail in the 2004 film ""; four years later, in "The Becoming", the fourteenth episode of the fourth season of American medical drama "Grey's Anatomy", Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) hums the song while she removes the hearts of 50 cadavers. It was namechecked in the Train's "Hey, Soul Sister" (2009) with the lyric "I believe in you/Like a virgin you're Madonna". In "The Power of Madonna" (2010), fifteenth episode of American television series "Glee", "Like a Virgin" was sung by three couples played by Jonathan Groff, Jayma Mays, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Matthew Morrison, and Naya Rivera; the performance was praised by "Entertainment Weekly"s Tim Stack, who hailed it as "one of the more ambitious numbers of the night".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: "Like a Virgin" has been recognized as one of Madonna's best songs, as well as the one that turned her into a superstar. Samuel Murrian named it the singer's third greatest song, that marked "the moment she went from being a big star to being an icon". It was also named her third best by "Gay Star News" Joe Morgan. "PopMatters"s Enio Chola added that, "when ['Like a Virgin'] hit, [Madonna's] status was elevated to that of pop culture icon. [...] [it's] the song that defined for us who Madonna was (at the time) and would be turning into (in the near future)". Harrison Brocklehurst for "The Tab" referred to the song as one that "defined the genre"; he named "Like a Virgin" the singer's 18th best single. Sal Cinquemani named it "iconic", as well as "the first—if not "the"—signature song of her career".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: "Entertainment Weekly"s Chuck Arnold named it the second best song of Madonna's catalogue, as well as one of the best songs from the 1980s decade; a similar opinion was shared by Andrew Unterberger from "Billboard", who named it one of the decade's "defining" tracks, and the singer's 10th best. Writing for "Consequence", Allison Franks and Michael Roffman said it would always remain a "cultural artifact of the 1980s". Mike Wass from "Idolator" named it "one of the most iconic pop songs of all time". Matthew Jacobs added that it was the singer's most famous song, as well as a "staple at wedding receptions, on the airwaves and on lists of controversial moments in popular culture". Nicole Hogsett deemed it an "undeniable classic". "Like a Virgin" is one of the songs that "have come to define our times, influenced trends and triggered change in politics and culture", discussed in the 2003 documentary "Impact: Songs That Changed The World".


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: On an article celebrating the "Like a Virgin" album's 35th anniversary, John Murph noted that "white conservatives" made "a nationwide fuss" following the single's release. Family organizations criticized it, as they believed it promoted sex outside marriage and "undermined" family values, while others sought to ban it along with the music video. Despite its not being included on its "Filthy Fifteen" list, it has been argued that "Like a Virgin" is one of the songs that led to the creation of the Parents Music Resource Center in 1985. Benjamin Brand and David J. Rothenberg wrote in "Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and Beyond: Liturgy, Sources, Symbolism" (2016), that the song's lyrics, specifically the word "virgin", "seemed to violate a respected - if not revered - state in 1984, both in the physiological and Christological sense of the word". Carol Clerk noted that the song attracted an "unprecedented level of attention from social groups", something uncommon for a female singer; the author believed the public listened "superficially" to the lyrics, thus believed that they detailed or called on an "innocent's sexual initiation". She concluded by saying that, while one section of the population was outraged, others were taking joy at the "very notion of a virginal Madonna". The singer herself said she was surprised at the public's reaction; "everyone interpreted it as 'I don't want to be a virgin anymore. Fuck my brains out!'. That's not what I sang at all. 'Like a Virgin' was always absolutely ambiguous", she explained.


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: The term "Madonna wannabe" was created to describe the thousands of girls who tried to emulate Madonna's style; both Adam Sexton and William McKeen noted that most of the singer's admirers were young girls raised with an image of old-fashioned female stereotypes, and saw in the artist a role model, someone who "injects middle-class ideas of femininity with examples of what feminism means to her [...] equal opportunity". Madonna became the "last word in attitude and fashion. The epitome of cool". Enio Chola concluded that with the song, "[Madonna] became a liberating mainstream sexual force"; author Debbi Voller added that "Like a Virgin" gave rise to "the icon Madonna". According to Chuck Arnold, "Like a Virgin" paved the way for female artists to "unapologetically explore the sexual wilderness", adding that "no one had to "act" like a virgin anymore" following its release. On the same vein, Thomas Harrison wrote that the "sexually charged" imagery of the song and its video, encouraged other female performers to embrace their own sexuality. For "HuffPost", Caroline Sullivan pointed out that before Madonna, no other female singer had ever "shoehorned the subject virginity into a pop song so bluntly, or made it clear that no matter what you were - virgin or sexually experienced - it was absolutely fine". A similar opinion was shared by Jude Rogers from "The Guardian", who claimed that until Madonna emerged, "the V-word" wasn't used by female singers "unless they were singing Christmas carols". "Out"s Nathan Smith gave a detailed analysis:


title: Like a Virgin (song)

text: From a contextual perspective, another appeal of 'Like A Virgin' was the way it reconstituted sex in mainstream music within discourses of religion and innocence. In a decade plagued by mass hysteria because of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the way sex (for both heterosexual and homosexual couples) was characterized by illness, viral exchanges, and the threat of 'contamination'. Madonna's song moved away from discussing the seemingly abject nature of sex, in an epoch so preoccupied by the dangers of sex and illness. 'Like A Virgin' told women that they could be in charge of their erotic agendas, could, should, and would enjoy their sexual escapades, and did not even have to be virgins to do so. (Maybe just act a little virginal?)


title: Girlfriend

text: A girlfriend is a female friend, acquaintance or partner, usually a female companion with whom one is platonically, romantically, or sexually involved.


title: Girlfriend

text: In a romantic context, this normally signifies a committed relationship where the individuals are not married. Other titles for example ""wife"" or ""partner"" usually signify that the individuals are legally married or otherwise in a form of wedlock.


title: Girlfriend

text: In the context of a platonic relationship, the term is usually used to refer to female-female relationships. The two word variation "girl friend" (or even "friend girl") may be used to avoid implying a romantic or sexual relationship between the individuals.


title: Girlfriend

text: Partners in committed relationships are also sometimes described as a "significant others" or simply "partner", especially if the individuals are cohabiting.


title: Girlfriend

text: "Girlfriend" and "partner" mean different things to different people and the distinctions between the terms are subjective. How the term is used will ultimately be determined by personal preference.


title: Girlfriend

text: In 2005, a study was conducted of 115 people ages 21 to 35 who were either living with or had lived with a romantic partner. It notes that the lack of proper terms often leads to awkward situations, such as someone becoming upset over not being introduced in a social situation to avoid the question of their relationship .


title: Girlfriend

text: There exists some ambiguity between the terms "girl friend," or a friend who is female, and "girlfriend." The transition between the two is a significant aspect of adolescent development.


title: Girlfriend

text: Both forms of "girlfriend" and "girl friend" are used by different people to mean different things. For example, when the term "girlfriend" is used by a female about another female in a non-sexual, non-romantic context, the two-word form "girl friend" is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the sexual or romantic meaning. In this sense of its usage, "girlfriend" is used in terms of very close friends and has no sexual connotations, unless it, for example, is in the case of lesbian, bisexual or pansexual women. The term "girlfriend" is also used in LGBT communities and can refer to people of any sex or sexuality.


title: Girlfriend

text: The term "girlfriend" does not necessarily imply a sexual relationship, but is often used to refer to a girl or woman who is dating a person she is not engaged to without indicating whether she is having sex with them. With differing expectations of sexual mores, the term "dating" can imply romantic activity whereas simply using "friend" would likely avoid implying such intimacy. It is essentially equivalent to the term "sweetheart", which has also been used as a term of endearment. A similar relationship wherein there is no exclusivity is sometimes referred to by terms such as "friend with benefits".


title: Girlfriend

text: As of 2007, The "New York Times" style guide discouraged the use of the term "girlfriend" for an adult romantic partner: "Companion is a suitable term for an unmarried partner of the same or the opposite sex." The "Times" received some criticism for referring to Shaha Riza as the "girlfriend" of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz in one article about the controversy over their relationship. Other news articles in the "Times" had generally referred to her as Wolfowitz's "companion".


title: Girlfriend

text: The 2015 edition of the "New York Times Manual of Style" states, however, that the view on the term "girlfriend" as being informal is now relegated to the realm of traditionalism, and that it has become accepted to use "girlfriend" and "boyfriend" to describe people of all ages (with consideration given to the preferences of the people involved).


title: Girlfriend

text: The word "girlfriend" was first used in 1863 as "a woman's female friend in youth". In 1922, the word girlfriend was used to mean a man's "sweetheart".


title: Girlfriend

text: A similar, but not equivalent, concept is the more ambiguous "lady friend" – a companion of the female gender who is possibly less than a girlfriend but potentially more than a friend. That is to say, the relationship is not necessarily platonic, nor is it necessarily an exclusive, serious, committed, or long-term relationship. The term avoids the overt sexual implications that come with referring to a woman as someone's "mistress" or "lover". In that sense, it can often be a euphemism. The term can also sometimes be employed when someone simply does not know the exact status of a woman that a man has been associating with. For instance, tabloid headlines often note that a celebrity has been seen with a new "lady friend". "Lady friend" may also be used to signify a romantic relationship with an older woman, when the term "girl" as in "girlfriend" may be deemed age-inappropriate.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Clare of Assisi (born Chiara Offreduccio and sometimes spelled Clara, Clair, Claire, Sinclair; 16 July 1194 – 11 August 1253) was an Italian saint and one of the first followers of Francis of Assisi. She founded the Order of Poor Ladies, a monastic religious order for women in the Franciscan tradition, and wrote their Rule of Life, the first set of monastic guidelines known to have been written by a woman. Following her death, the order she founded was renamed in her honour as the Order of Saint Clare, commonly referred to today as the Poor Clares. Her feast day is on 11 August.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Clare was born in Assisi during the High Middle Ages, the eldest daughter of Favarone or Favorino Sciffi, Count of Sasso-Rosso and his wife Ortolana. Traditional accounts say that Clare's father was a wealthy representative of an ancient Roman family, who owned a large palace in Assisi and a castle on the slope of Mount Subasio. Ortolana belonged to the noble family of Fiumi, and was a very devout woman who had undertaken pilgrimages to Rome, Santiago de Compostela and the Holy Land. Later in life, Ortolana entered Clare's monastery, as did Clare's sisters, Beatrix and Catarina (who took the name Agnes and was later declared a saint herself).


title: Clare of Assisi

text: As a child, Clare was devoted to prayer. Although there is no mention of this in any historical record, it is assumed that Clare was to be married in line with the family tradition. However, as a teen she heard Francis preach during a Lenten service in the church of San Giorgio at Assisi and asked him to help her to live after the manner of the Gospel. On the evening of Palm Sunday, 20 March 1212, she left her father's house and accompanied by her aunt Bianca and another companion proceeded to the chapel of the Porziuncula to meet Francis. There, her hair was cut, and she exchanged her rich gown for a plain robe and veil.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Francis placed Clare in the convent of the Benedictine nuns of San Paulo, near Bastia. Her father attempted to force her to return home. She clung to the altar of the church and threw aside her veil to show her cropped hair. She resisted each attempt, professing that she would have no other husband but Jesus Christ. In order to provide the greater solitude Clare desired, a few days later Francis sent her to Sant' Angelo in Panzo, another monastery of the Benedictine nuns on one of the flanks of Subasio. Clare was soon joined by her sister Catarina, who took the name Agnes. They remained with the Benedictines until a small dwelling was built for them next to the church of San Damiano, which Francis had repaired some years earlier.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Other women joined them, and they were known as the "Poor Ladies of San Damiano". They lived a simple life of poverty, austerity and seclusion from the world, according to a Rule which Francis gave them as a Second Order (Poor Clares).


title: Clare of Assisi

text: San Damiano became the centre of Clare's new religious order, which was known in her lifetime as the "Order of Poor Ladies of San Damiano". San Damiano is traditionally considered the first house of this order; it may have been affiliated with an existing network of women's religious houses organised by Hugolino (who later became Pope Gregory IX). Hugolino wanted San Damiano as part of the order he founded because of the prestige of Clare's monastery. San Damiano emerged as the most important house in the order, and Clare became its undisputed leader. By 1263, just ten years after Clare's death, the order had become known as the Order of Saint Clare.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: In 1228, when Gregory IX offered Clare a dispensation from the vow of strict poverty, she replied: "I need to be absolved from my sins, but not from the obligation of following Christ." Accordingly, the Pope granted them the "Privilegium Pauperitatis" — that nobody could oblige them to accept any possession.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Unlike the Franciscan friars, whose members moved around the country to preach, Saint Clare's sisters lived in enclosure, since an itinerant life was hardly conceivable at the time for women. Their life consisted of manual labour and prayer. The nuns went barefoot, slept on the ground, ate no meat and observed almost complete silence.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: For a short period, the order was directed by Francis himself. Then in 1216, Clare accepted the role of abbess of San Damiano. As abbess, Clare had more authority to lead the order than when she was the prioress and required to follow the orders of a priest heading the community. Clare defended her order from the attempts of prelates to impose a rule on them that more closely resembled the Rule of Saint Benedict than Francis' stricter vows. Clare sought to imitate Francis' virtues and way of life so much so that she was sometimes titled "alter Franciscus", another Francis. She also played a significant role in encouraging and aiding Francis, whom she saw as a spiritual father figure, and she took care of him during his final illness.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: After Francis's death, Clare continued to promote the growth of her order, writing letters to abbesses in other parts of Europe and thwarting every attempt by each successive pope to impose a rule on her order which weakened the radical commitment to corporate poverty she had originally embraced. Clare's Franciscan theology of joyous poverty in imitation of Christ is evident in the rule she wrote for her community and in her four letters to Agnes of Prague.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: As Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II battled Pope Gregory IX for control of Italy during the Crusades era, separately in September 1240 and June 1241, a pair of armies attacked the monastery of San Damiano and the town of Assisi. Both targets were successfully defended as Clare prayed to Christ, present in the Blessed Sacrament.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: In her later years, Clare endured a long period of poor health. She died on 11 August 1253 at the age of 59. Her last words are reported to have been, "Blessed be You, O God, for having created me."


title: Clare of Assisi

text: On 9 August 1253, two days before her death, the papal bull "Solet annuere" of Pope Innocent IV confirmed that Clare's rule would serve as the governing rule for Clare's Order of Poor Ladies. Her remains were interred at the chapel of "San Giorgio" while a church to hold her remains was being constructed. At her funeral, Pope Innocent IV insisted the friars perform the Office for the Virgin Saints as opposed to the Office for the Dead. This move by Pope Innocent ensured that the canonization process for Clare would begin shortly after her funeral. Pope Innocent was cautioned by multiple advisers against having the Office for the Virgin Saints performed at Clare's funeral. The most vocal of these advisers was Cardinal Raynaldus who would later become Pope Alexander IV, who in two years time would canonize Clare. At Pope Innocent's request the canonization process for Clare began immediately. While the whole process took two years, the examination of Clare's miracles took just six days. On 26 September 1255, Pope Alexander IV canonized Clare as Saint Clare of Assisi. Construction of the Basilica of Saint Clare was completed in 1260, and on 3 October of that year Clare's remains were transferred to the newly completed basilica where they were buried beneath the high altar. In further recognition of the saint, Pope Urban IV officially changed the name of the Order of Poor Ladies to the Order of Saint Clare in 1263.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Some 600 years later in 1872, Clare's relics were transferred to a newly constructed shrine in the crypt of the Basilica of Saint Clare, where her relics can still be venerated today.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Clare was canonized on 26 September 1255 by Pope Alexander IV, and her feast day was immediately inserted in the General Roman Calendar for celebration on 12 August, the day after her death, as 11 August was already assigned to Saints Tiburtius and Susanna, two 3rd-century Roman martyrs. The celebration was ranked as a Double (as in the Tridentine Calendar) or, in the terminology adopted in 1960, a Third-Class Feast (as in the General Roman Calendar of 1960). The 1969 calendar revision removed the feast of Tiburtius and Susanna from the calendar, finally allowing the memorial of Saint Clare to be celebrated on 11 August, the day of her death.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Construction of the Basilica di Santa Chiara began a year after Clare's canonization, and her remains were transferred there on 3 October 1260 from the church of St George, also in Assisi. Her bones are now in the crypt at the Basilica, having been rediscovered in 1850.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: In art, Clare is often shown carrying a monstrance or pyx, in commemoration of the occasion when she warded away the invading soldiers of Frederick II at the gates of her convent by displaying the Blessed Sacrament and kneeling in prayer.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Pope Pius XII designated Clare as the patron saint of television in 1958 on the basis that when she was too ill to attend Mass, she had reportedly been able to see and hear it on the wall of her room.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: There are traditions of bringing offerings of eggs to the Poor Clares for their intercessions for good weather, particularly for weddings. This tradition remains popular in the Philippines, particularly at the Real Monasterio de Santa Clara in Quezon City and in the town of Obando, Bulacan. According to the Filipino essayist Alejandro Roces, the practice arose because of Clare's name. In Castilian "clara" refers to an interval of clear weather, and also to the white or albumen of the egg.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Many places, including churches, convents, schools, hospitals, towns, and counties are named for Saint Clare, Santa Clara, or other variants. Lake Saint Clair between Lake Erie and Michigan was navigated and named on her feast day in 1679. The Saint Clair River, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, and St. Clair County, Michigan were also consequently named for her.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Mission Santa Clara, founded by Spanish missionaries in northern California in 1777, has given its name to the university, city, county and valley in which it sits, nicknamed "Silicon Valley" since the 1970s. Southern California's Santa Clara River is hundreds of miles to the south and gave its name to the nearby city of Santa Clarita. The early California missions were founded by Franciscan Friars, who had a special devotion to Saint Clare. Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, celebrates its Santa Clara Feast Day annually on 12 August, as the feast was celebrated before the 1969 calendar change.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: The first convent in Cuba, Convento de Santa Clara de Asis, was dedicated to Saint Clare, as well as her namesake city and its cathedral, Catedral de Santa Clara de Asís. Columbus's ship known as "Niña", which visited Cuba twice, was officially named "Santa Clara".


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Clare is one of five characters in the oratorio "Laudato si'", composed in 2016 by Peter Reulein on a libretto by Helmut Schlegel, the others being an angel, Mary, Francis of Assisi and Pope Francis.


title: Clare of Assisi

text: Clare of Assisi is remembered in the Church of England and other churches of the Anglican Communion with a Lesser Festival on 11 August.


title: Christopher Mitchum

text: Christopher Mitchum (born October 16, 1943) is an American film actor, screenwriter, and businessman. He was born in Los Angeles, California, the second son of film star Robert Mitchum and Dorothy Mitchum. He is the younger brother of actor James Mitchum.


title: Christopher Mitchum

text: Mitchum appeared in more than 60 films in 14 countries. He appeared with John Wayne in the motion pictures "Chisum" (1970), "Rio Lobo" (1970), and "Big Jake" (1971). He was cited by Box Office magazine as one of the top five stars of the future and the recipient of Photoplay's Gold Medal Award for 1972. He won both The Golden Horse Award (1981) and The Golden Reel, Best Actor award (1988, Indonesia). He has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1978. He was the Screen Actors Guild national first vice president, in 1987–89 and a member of the SAG board of directors, in 1983–89.


title: Christopher Mitchum

text: Mitchum married Cynthia "Cindy" Davis in 1964. Together, they had children Bentley, Carrie, Jennifer, and Kian before divorcing in 1996. For four years in the 1990s, Mitchum was father-in-law to Carrie's husband, Casper Van Dien. Mitchum is the grandfather of Cappy Van Dien, Grace Van Dien, Allexanne Mitchum, Carrington Mitchum, and Wyatt Mitchum Cardone.


title: Christopher Mitchum

text: Mitchum has resided in the Santa Barbara, California area (Central Coast) since 1984. He ran unsuccessfully for the California State Assembly in 1998 and the U.S. House of Representatives, 24th Congressional District, in 2012 and 2014.


title: Christopher Mitchum

text: Mitchum has run once for the California State Assembly (35th District), and twice for the U.S. House of Representatives (California's 24th District). Since January 1, 2011, under California law, candidates are voter-nominated for state and federal offices; political parties cannot nominate candidates for office.


title: Christopher Mitchum

text: In 1998, Mitchum was the Republican nominee in the general election for the California State Assembly in the 35th district, which included portions of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, where he served on the Republican Central Committee (1998–2000). His opponents were Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson and Natural Law Party candidate Eric Dahl. Mitchum came in second behind Jackson with 44.5 percent of the vote to Jackson's 53 percent.


title: Christopher Mitchum

text: In 2012, Mitchum ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican candidate in California's 24th district (San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and part of Ventura counties), challenging incumbent Democratic Congresswoman Lois Capps. In the June 5, 2012 primary, he came in third, behind Republican Abel Maldonado and Capps, and ahead of Independent candidate Matt Boutté.


title: Christopher Mitchum

text: In 2014, Mitchum ran again for the U.S. congressional seat held by Representative Capps. He won the June 3, 2014, primary (running alongside four other Republicans, two additional Democrats, and an Independent candidate), coming in second behind Capps with 15.8 percent of the vote, and narrowly defeating Republican Justin Fareed by slightly over 600 votes. In the November 4 general election, Mitchum received 48.1 percent of the vote to Capps's 51.9 percent, in the closest race of Capps's entire congressional career.


title: Christopher Mitchum

text: Despite the close margin by which Mitchum lost to Capps, as well as the announcement that Capps would retire in 2016, Mitchum ultimately declined a third run for the same seat again, and instead endorsed Assemblyman Katcho Achadjian for the race to succeed Capps.


title: Christopher Mitchum

text: Mitchum has served on several organizations'boards of directors and has been a fundraiser for a number of charities.


title: Gish

text: Gish is the debut studio album by American alternative rock band the Smashing Pumpkins, released in May 1991 through Caroline Records. Frontman Billy Corgan has variously described "Gish" as a "very spiritual album" and "an album about spiritual ascension".


title: Gish

text: Despite initially peaking at only number 195 on the "Billboard" 200 upon its release, "Gish" received critical acclaim, with particular praise directed at the band's distinctive psychedelic sound. The album was eventually certified platinum (one million copies shipped in the US) by the RIAA. On April 1, 2019 "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked "Gish" the 32nd greatest grunge album of all time.