title: Nue

text: In the "Tale of Heike", it is described as a Japanese chimera having the head of a monkey, the limbs of a tiger, the body of a Japanese raccoon dog and the front half of a snake for a tail. In other writings nothing is stated about its torso, so it is sometimes depicted to have the torso of a tiger. The "Genpei Jōsuiki" describes it as having the back of a tiger, the limbs of a tanuki, the tail of a fox, the head of a cat, and the torso of a chicken. Due to its appearance, it is sometimes referred to as a Japanese chimera.


title: Nue

text: It is said to make terribly eerie bird cry "hyoo hyoo" noises that resemble that of the scaly thrush. In the movie "Akuryōtō" (originally by Seishi Yokomizo), the catchphrase "nights where the nue cry are dreadful" refers to this fact. The nue is also said to have the ability of shape-shifting, often into the form of a black cloud that can fly Nue – Mysterious Mythological Shape-Shifting Creature Transforming Into A Black Cloud. The yokai is also thought to be nocturnal as most of its sightings happen at night. Its name written in kanji translates to "night" and "bird".


title: Nue

text: The nue is thought to have started appearing in the late Heian period. For a more precise dating, different sources claim different periods, like the Emperor Nijō period, the Emperor Konoe period, the Emperor Go-Shirakawa period, or the Emperor Toba period.


title: Nue

text: The visual appearance may be a combination of the animals in the Sexagenary cycle, with a northeast Tiger, a southeast Snake, a southwest Monkey, and a northwest Qian (Dog and Wild Boar).


title: Nue

text: Originally, the nue were stated to be a bird that resembles the green pheasant, but their precise identity is unknown. The 夜 within the 鵺 character is phonetic component and thus does not carry a meaning with it. The character 鵼 (kou or kuu) is determined to be a kind of strange bird. Due to the use of Man'yōgana, the historical spelling is known to have been "nuye". At this early time, although, it had a different semantic meaning. It referred to a bird known as White's thrush.


title: Nue

text: In Japan, they are considered a bird that makes cries at night, and the word can be seen in the "Kojiki" and the "Man'yōshū". The owner of this crying voice was traditionally described as a yellow-red bird as big as a Columbidae, but nowadays there is the accepted theory that it is the scaly thrush. Since the people of the Heian Period regarded the sorrowful sounding voices of this bird as an ill omen, they were considered to be a wicked bird,


title: Nue

text: and it is said that when the emperor or nobles heard its crying voice, they would make prayers that nothing disastrous would happen.


title: Nue

text: The monster in the "Heike Monogatari", in the end, was merely "something that cries with the voice of a nue, its true nature unknown", and was not given a name. But nowadays, this particularly famous monster is usually identified as a "nue".


title: Nue

text: The noh play "Nue", by Zeami Motokiyo, based on the setsuwa, the Heike Monogatari. They are a regular feature of the Kiri-noh (fifth performance of a noh).


title: Nue

text: Nue-harai Matsuri ("Nue-warding festival") – a festival performed every year on January 28 at the Izunagaoka Onsen in Izunokuni, Shizuoka Prefecture. Among other things the "nue-odori" (nue-dance) and the "mochi-maki" (mochi-scattering) are performed.


title: Nue

text: At Osaka Harbor, the Nue is used as a motif in its emblem design. From the legend of Nuezuka, it was selected for its relation to Osaka bay.


title: Nue

text: The "Heike Monogatari" and the "Settsu Meisho Zue" from the Settsu Province, tell the following tale of the killing of the Nue:


title: Nue

text: In the closing years of the Heian period, at the place where the emperor (Emperor Konoe) lived, the Seiryō-den, there appeared a cloud of black smoke along with an eerie resounding crying voice, making Emperor Nijō quite afraid. Subsequently, the emperor fell into illness, and neither medicine nor prayers had any effect.


title: Nue

text: A close associate remembered Minamoto no Yoshiie using an arrow to put a stop to the mystery case of some bird's cry, and he gave the order to a master of arrows, Minamoto no Yorimasa, to slay the monster.


title: Nue

text: One night, Yorimasa went out to slay the monster with his servant Ino Hayata (written as 猪早太 or 井早太), and an arrow made from an arrowhead he had inherited from his ancestor Minamoto no Yorimitsu and the tailfeathers of a mountain bird. An uncanny black smoke started to cover the Seiryō-den. Yorimasa shot his arrow into it, there was a shriek, and a nue fell down around the northern parts of Nijō Castle. Instantly Ino Hayata seized it and finished it off.


title: Nue

text: In the skies above the imperial court, two or three cries of the common cuckoo could be heard, and it is thus said that peace had returned. After this, the emperor's health instantly recovered, and Yorimasa was given the sword "Shishiō" as a reward.


title: Nue

text: There are several accounts of what was done to the nue's corpse. According to some legends, like the "Heike Monogatari", as the people in Kyoto were fearful of the curse of the nue, they put its corpse in a boat and floated it down the Kamo River. After the boat floated down the Yodo River and temporarily drifted upon the shore of Higashinari County, Osaka, it then floated into the sea and washed up on the shore between Ashiya River and Sumiyoshi River. It is said that the people in Ashiya courteously gave the corpse a burial service, and built a commemorating mound over its tomb, the "Nuezuka". The "Settsu Meisho Zue" states that "the Nuezuka is between Ashiya River and Sumiyoshi River."


title: Nue

text: According to the "Ashiwake bune", a geography book from the Edo period, a nue drifted down and washed ashore on the Yodo River, and when the villagers, fearful of a curse, notified the head priest of Boon-ji about it, it was courteously mourned over, buried, and had a mound built for it. It is further said that as the mound was torn down at the beginning of the Meiji period, the vengeful spirit of the nue started tormenting the people who lived nearby, and so the mound was hastily rebuilt.


title: Nue

text: According to the "Genpei Seisuiki" and the "Kandenjihitsu" the nue was said to be buried at the Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto Prefecture, and it is said that a curse resulted from digging it up in the Edo period.


title: Nue

text: Another legend relates the spirit of the dead nue turning into a horse, which was raised by Yorimasa and named Kinoshita. As this horse was a good horse, it was stolen by Taira no Munemori, so Yorimasa raised an army against the Taira family. As this resulted in Yorimasa's ruin, it is said that the nue had taken its revenge in this way.


title: Nue

text: Another legend says that the nue's corpse fell in the western part of Lake Hamana in Shizuoka Prefecture, and the legend of the names of places in Mikkabi of Kita-ku, Hamamatsu, such as Nueshiro, Dozaki ("torso"-zaki), Hanehira ("wing"-hira), and Ona ("tail"-na) come from the legend that the nue's head, torso, wings, and tail respectively fell in those locations.


title: Nue

text: In Kumakōgen, Kamiukena District, Ehime Prefecture, there is the legend that the true identity of the nue is Yorimasa's mother. In the past, in the era when the Taira clan was at its peak, Yorimasa's mother lived in hiding in this place that was her home land, and at a pond called Azoga-ike within a mountains region, she prayed to the guardian dragon of the pond for her son's good fortune in battle and the revival of the Genji (Minamoto clan), and thus the mother's body turned into that of a nue due to this prayer and hatred against the Taira family, and then she flew towards Kyoto. The nue, who represented the mother, upon making the emperor ill, thus had her own son, Yorimasa, accomplish something triumphant by being slayed by him. The nue that was pierced by Yorimasa's arrow then came back to Azoga-ike and became the guardian of the pond, but lost her life due to wounds from the arrow.


title: Nue

text: Other than these, in Beppu, Ōita Prefecture, it is said that there was a mummy of the nue in a theme park, the "Monster House (Kaibutsu-kan)" at the Hachiman Jigoku (one of the no-longer presently existing hot springs at the Hells of Beppu), and it was also said to be a precious treasure without parallel, but this theme park no longer presently exists, and the mummy's present whereabouts are unclear.


title: Patriarch

text: The highest-ranking bishops in Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church (above major archbishop and primate), the Hussite Church, Church of the East, and some Independent Catholic Churches are termed patriarchs (and in certain cases also "popes" – such as the Pope of Rome or Pope of Alexandria, and "catholicoi" – such as Catholicos Karekin II).


title: Patriarch

text: The word is derived from Greek πατριάρχης ("patriarchēs"), meaning "chief or father of a family", a compound of πατριά ("patria"), meaning "family", and ἄρχειν ("archein"), meaning "to rule".


title: Patriarch

text: Originally, a "patriarch" was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is termed patriarchy. Historically, a patriarch has often been the logical choice to act as ethnarch of the community identified with his religious confession within a state or empire of a different creed (such as Christians within the Ottoman Empire). The term developed an ecclesiastical meaning within Christianity. The office and the ecclesiastical circumscription of a Christian patriarch is termed a "patriarchate".


title: Patriarch

text: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are referred to as the three patriarchs of the people of Israel, and the period during which they lived is termed the Patriarchal Age. The word "patriarch" originally acquired its religious meaning in the Septuagint version of the Bible.


title: Patriarch

text: In the Catholic Church, the bishop who is head of a particular autonomous church, known in canon law as a church "sui iuris", is ordinarily a patriarch, though this responsibility can be entrusted to a major archbishop, metropolitan, or other prelate for a number of reasons.


title: Patriarch

text: Since the Council of Nicaea, the bishop of Rome has been recognized as the first among patriarchs. That council designated three bishops with this 'supra-Metropolitan' title: Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. In the Pentarchy formulated by Justinian I (527–565), the emperor assigned as a patriarchate to the Bishop of Rome the whole of Christianized Europe (including almost all of modern Greece), except for the region of Thrace, the areas near Constantinople, and along the coast of the Black Sea. He included in this patriarchate also the western part of North Africa. The jurisdictions of the other patriarchates extended over Roman Asia, and the rest of Africa. Justinian's system was given formal ecclesiastical recognition by the Quinisext Council of 692, which the see of Rome has, however, not recognized.


title: Patriarch

text: There were at the time bishops of other apostolic sees that operated with patriarchal authority beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, such as the Catholicos of Selucia-Ctesephon.


title: Patriarch

text: Four more of the Eastern Catholic Churches are headed by a prelate known as a "Major Archbishop," a title essentially equivalent to that of Patriarch and originally created by Pope Paul VI in 1963 for Josyf Slipyj:


title: Patriarch

text: Within their proper "sui iuris" churches there is no difference between patriarchs and major archbishops. However, differences exist in the order of precedence (i.e. patriarchs take precedence over major archbishops) and in the mode of accession. Whereas the election of a major archbishop has to be confirmed by the pope before he may take office, no papal confirmation is needed for a newly elected patriarch before he takes office. Rather, a newly installed patriarch is required to petition the pope as soon as possible for the concession of what is called ecclesiastical communion. Furthermore, patriarchs who are created cardinals form part of the order of cardinal bishops, whereas major archbishops are only created cardinal priests.


title: Patriarch

text: Minor patriarchs do not have jurisdiction over other metropolitan bishops. The title is granted purely as an honor for various historical reasons. They take precedence after the heads of autonomous churches in full communion, whether pope, patriarch, or major archbishop.


title: Patriarch

text: The pope can confer the rank of patriarch without any see, upon an individual archbishop, as happened on 24 February 1676 to Alessandro Crescenzi, of the Somascans, former Latin Titular Patriarch of Alexandria (19 January 1671 – retired 27 May 1675), who nevertheless resigned the title on 9 January 1682.


title: Patriarch

text: In theological and other scholarly literature of the Early Modern period, the title "Patriarch of the West" (Latin: "Patriarcha Occidentis"; Greek: Πατριάρχης τῆς Δύσεως) was mainly used as designation for the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over the Latin Church in the West. From 1863 to 2005, the title "Patriarch of the West" was appended to the list of papal titles in the "Annuario Pontificio", which in 1885 became a semi-official publication of the Holy See. This was done without historical precedent or theological justification: There was no ecclesiastical office as such, except occasionally as a truism: the patriarch of Rome, for the Latin Church, was the only patriarch, and the only apostolic see, in the "west".


title: Patriarch

text: The title was not included in the 2006 "Annuario". On 22 March 2006, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity offered an explanation for the decision to remove the title. It stated that the title "Patriarch of the West" had become "obsolete and practically unusable" when the term "the West" comprises Australia, New Zealand and North America in addition to Western Europe, and that it was "pointless to insist on maintaining it" given that, since the Second Vatican Council, the Latin Church, for which "the West" is an equivalent, has been organized as a number of episcopal conferences and their international groupings.


title: Patriarch

text: Though the formulation "Patriarch of the West" is no longer used, the pope in that role issues the "Code of Canon Law" for the Latin Church. During the Synod of Bishops on the Middle East in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appeared, as patriarch of the Latin Church, with the other patriarchs, but without the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, though he was present at the same synod.


title: Patriarch

text: Catholicose of the East is the title that has been held by the ecclesiastical heads of the Church of the East, the Grand Metropolitan of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, since AD. 280.


title: Patriarch

text: It refers to Patriarchs of the Church of the East, primate (Catholicos-Patriarch) of the Church of the East now divided into:


title: Patriarch

text: The title of "Patriarch" is assumed also by the leaders of certain Christian denominations, who are seldom in communion with none of the historic Christian Churches. Many, but not necessarily all such patriarchs are church leaders of the following Churches:


title: Patriarch

text: In the Latter Day Saint movement, a patriarch is one who has been ordained to the office of patriarch in the Melchizedek priesthood. The term is considered synonymous with the term evangelist, a term favored by the Community of Christ. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of the patriarch's primary responsibilities is to give patriarchal blessings, as Jacob did to his twelve sons according to the Old Testament. Patriarchs are typically assigned in each stake and possess the title for life.


title: Patriarch

text: The term patriarch has also been used for the leader of the extinct, dualist, heretical Manichaeist sect, initially based at Ctesiphon (near modern-day Baghdad) and later at Samarkand.


title: Shader

text: In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene - a process known as "shading". Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of specialized functions in computer graphics special effects and video post-processing, as well as general-purpose computing on graphics processing units.


title: Shader

text: Traditional shaders calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware with a high degree of flexibility. Most shaders are coded for (and run on) a graphics processing unit (GPU), though this is not a strict requirement. "Shading languages" are used to program the GPU's rendering pipeline, which has mostly superseded the fixed-function pipeline of the past that only allowed for common geometry transforming and pixel-shading functions; with shaders, customized effects can be used. The position and color (hue, saturation, brightness, and contrast) of all pixels, vertices, and/or textures used to construct a final rendered image can be altered using algorithms defined in a shader, and can be modified by external variables or textures introduced by the computer program calling the shader.


title: Shader

text: Shaders are used widely in cinema post-processing, computer-generated imagery, and video games to produce a range of effects. Beyond simple lighting models, more complex uses of shaders include: altering the hue, saturation, brightness (HSL/HSV) or contrast of an image; producing blur, light bloom, volumetric lighting, normal mapping (for depth effects), bokeh, cel shading, posterization, bump mapping, distortion, chroma keying (for so-called "bluescreen/greenscreen" effects), edge and motion detection, as well as psychedelic effects such as those seen in the demoscene.


title: Shader

text: This use of the term "shader" was introduced to the public by Pixar with version 3.0 of their RenderMan Interface Specification, originally published in May 1988.


title: Shader

text: As graphics processing units evolved, major graphics software libraries such as OpenGL and Direct3D began to support shaders. The first shader-capable GPUs only supported pixel shading, but vertex shaders were quickly introduced once developers realized the power of shaders. The first video card with a programmable pixel shader was the Nvidia GeForce 3 (NV20), released in 2001. Geometry shaders were introduced with Direct3D 10 and OpenGL 3.2. Eventually, graphics hardware evolved toward a unified shader model.


title: Shader

text: Shaders are simple programs that describe the traits of either a vertex or a pixel. Vertex shaders describe the attributes (position, texture coordinates, colors, etc.) of a vertex, while pixel shaders describe the traits (color, z-depth and alpha value) of a pixel. A vertex shader is called for each vertex in a primitive (possibly after tessellation); thus one vertex in, one (updated) vertex out. Each vertex is then rendered as a series of pixels onto a surface (block of memory) that will eventually be sent to the screen.


title: Shader

text: Shaders replace a section of the graphics hardware typically called the Fixed Function Pipeline (FFP), so-called because it performs lighting and texture mapping in a hard-coded manner. Shaders provide a programmable alternative to this hard-coded approach.


title: Shader

text: The graphic pipeline uses these steps in order to transform three-dimensional (or two-dimensional) data into useful two-dimensional data for displaying. In general, this is a large pixel matrix or "frame buffer".


title: Shader

text: There are three types of shaders in common use (pixel, vertex, and geometry shaders), with several more recently added. While older graphics cards utilize separate processing units for each shader type, newer cards feature unified shaders which are capable of executing any type of shader. This allows graphics cards to make more efficient use of processing power.


title: Shader

text: 2D shaders act on digital images, also called "textures" in the field of computer graphics. They modify attributes of pixels. 2D shaders may take part in rendering 3D geometry. Currently the only type of 2D shader is a pixel shader.


title: Shader

text: Pixel shaders, also known as fragment shaders, compute color and other attributes of each "fragment": a unit of rendering work affecting at most a single output pixel. The simplest kinds of pixel shaders output one screen pixel as a color value; more complex shaders with multiple inputs/outputs are also possible. Pixel shaders range from simply always outputting the same color, to applying a lighting value, to doing bump mapping, shadows, specular highlights, translucency and other phenomena. They can alter the depth of the fragment (for Z-buffering), or output more than one color if multiple render targets are active. In 3D graphics, a pixel shader alone cannot produce some kinds of complex effects because it operates only on a single fragment, without knowledge of a scene's geometry (i.e. vertex data). However, pixel shaders do have knowledge of the screen coordinate being drawn, and can sample the screen and nearby pixels if the contents of the entire screen are passed as a texture to the shader. This technique can enable a wide variety of two-dimensional postprocessing effects such as blur, or edge detection/enhancement for cartoon/cel shaders. Pixel shaders may also be applied in "intermediate" stages to any two-dimensional images—sprites or textures—in the pipeline, whereas vertex shaders always require a 3D scene. For instance, a pixel shader is the only kind of shader that can act as a postprocessor or filter for a video stream after it has been rasterized.


title: Shader

text: 3D shaders act on 3D models or other geometry but may also access the colors and textures used to draw the model or mesh. Vertex shaders are the oldest type of 3D shader, generally making modifications on a per-vertex basis. Newer geometry shaders can generate new vertices from within the shader. Tessellation shaders are the newest 3D shaders; they act on batches of vertices all at once to add detail—such as subdividing a model into smaller groups of triangles or other primitives at runtime, to improve things like curves and bumps, or change other attributes.


title: Shader

text: Vertex shaders are the most established and common kind of 3D shader and are run once for each vertex given to the graphics processor. The purpose is to transform each vertex's 3D position in virtual space to the 2D coordinate at which it appears on the screen (as well as a depth value for the Z-buffer). Vertex shaders can manipulate properties such as position, color and texture coordinates, but cannot create new vertices. The output of the vertex shader goes to the next stage in the pipeline, which is either a geometry shader if present, or the rasterizer. Vertex shaders can enable powerful control over the details of position, movement, lighting, and color in any scene involving 3D models.


title: Shader

text: Geometry shaders were introduced in Direct3D 10 and OpenGL 3.2; formerly available in OpenGL 2.0+ with the use of extensions. This type of shader can generate new graphics primitives, such as points, lines, and triangles, from those primitives that were sent to the beginning of the graphics pipeline.


title: Shader

text: Geometry shader programs are executed after vertex shaders. They take as input a whole primitive, possibly with adjacency information. For example, when operating on triangles, the three vertices are the geometry shader's input. The shader can then emit zero or more primitives, which are rasterized and their fragments ultimately passed to a pixel shader.


title: Shader

text: Typical uses of a geometry shader include point sprite generation, geometry tessellation, shadow volume extrusion, and single pass rendering to a cube map. A typical real-world example of the benefits of geometry shaders would be automatic mesh complexity modification. A series of line strips representing control points for a curve are passed to the geometry shader and depending on the complexity required the shader can automatically generate extra lines each of which provides a better approximation of a curve.


title: Shader

text: As of OpenGL 4.0 and Direct3D 11, a new shader class called a tessellation shader has been added. It adds two new shader stages to the traditional model: tessellation control shaders (also known as hull shaders) and tessellation evaluation shaders (also known as Domain Shaders), which together allow for simpler meshes to be subdivided into finer meshes at run-time according to a mathematical function. The function can be related to a variety of variables, most notably the distance from the viewing camera to allow active level-of-detail scaling. This allows objects close to the camera to have fine detail, while further away ones can have more coarse meshes, yet seem comparable in quality. It also can drastically reduce required mesh bandwidth by allowing meshes to be refined once inside the shader units instead of downsampling very complex ones from memory. Some algorithms can upsample any arbitrary mesh, while others allow for "hinting" in meshes to dictate the most characteristic vertices and edges.


title: Shader

text: Circa 2017, the AMD Vega microarchitecture added support for a new shader stage – primitive shaders – somewhat akin to compute shaders with access to the data necessary to process geometry. Similarly, Nvidia introduced mesh and task shaders with its Turing microarchitecture in 2018 which provide similar functionality and like AMD's primitive shaders are also modelled after compute shaders.


title: Shader

text: In 2020, AMD and Nvidia released RDNA 2 and Ampere microarchitectures which both support mesh shading through DirectX 12 Ultimate. These mesh shaders allow the GPU to handle more complex algorithms, offloading more work from the CPU to the GPU, and in algorithm intense rendering, increasing the frame rate of or number of triangles in a scene by an order of magnitude. Intel announced that Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs shipping in Q1 2022 will support mesh shaders.


title: Shader

text: Ray tracing shaders are supported by Microsoft via DirectX Raytracing, by Khronos Group via Vulkan, GLSL, and SPIR-V, by Apple via Metal.


title: Shader

text: Compute shaders are not limited to graphics applications, but use the same execution resources for GPGPU. They may be used in graphics pipelines e.g. for additional stages in animation or lighting algorithms (e.g. tiled forward rendering). Some rendering APIs allow compute shaders to easily share data resources with the graphics pipeline.


title: Shader

text: Shaders are written to apply transformations to a large set of elements at a time, for example, to each pixel in an area of the screen, or for every vertex of a model. This is well suited to parallel processing, and most modern GPUs have multiple shader pipelines to facilitate this, vastly improving computation throughput.


title: Shader

text: A programming model with shaders is similar to a higher order function for rendering, taking the shaders as arguments, and providing a specific dataflow between intermediate results, enabling both data parallelism (across pixels, vertices etc.) and pipeline parallelism (between stages). (see also map reduce).


title: Shader

text: The language in which shaders are programmed depends on the target environment. The official OpenGL and OpenGL ES shading language is OpenGL Shading Language, also known as GLSL, and the official Direct3D shading language is High Level Shader Language, also known as HLSL. Cg, a third-party shading language which outputs both OpenGL and Direct3D shaders, was developed by Nvidia; however since 2012 it has been deprecated. Apple released its own shading language called Metal Shading Language as part of the Metal framework.


title: Shader

text: Modern video game development platforms such as Unity, Unreal Engine and Godot increasingly include node-based editors that can create shaders without the need for actual code; the user is instead presented with a directed graph of connected nodes that allow users to direct various textures, maps, and mathematical functions into output values like the diffuse color, the specular color and intensity, roughness/metalness, height, normal, and so on. Automatic compilation then turns the graph into an actual, compiled shader.


title: David Belle

text: David Nicholas Williams Belle (born 29 April 1973) is a French actor, film choreographer and stunt coordinator. He is deemed the founder and leading pioneer of the physical discipline parkour, coining it based on his training and the teachings from his father Raymond Belle.


title: David Belle

text: Belle came to fame via his parkour videos and film appearances, such as "District 13", "", which were written and produced by Luc Besson, and the American remake "Brick Mansions". Belle has also consulted on the making of "Babylon A.D.", "", "Colombiana" and "The Family". He is the chair of the Parkour Committee of the International Federation of Gymnastics.


title: David Belle

text: Belle was born and raised in Fécamp, the son of Monique and Raymond Belle of Paris. His grandfather Gilbert Kitten, father Raymond, and brother Jean-François Belle were highly skilled rescuers in the Military Paris Fire Brigade. His father Raymond Belle was from Vietnam, and was of French-Vietnamese descent, while his mother Monique Kitten was of French and English ancestry.


title: David Belle

text: David Belle began developing parkour in Normandy while living with his grandfather, Gilbert. In 1984, at the age of 11, Belle moved to Lisses, France. He made close friends with a group of teenagers with similar physical passions who began training with him, transferring the techniques he learned in Normandy to an urban environment. Some of the friends that trained with David would later become known as the Yamakasi. Later in life, Belle spent time in the military and fire brigade with aspirations of following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps. David left soon after for personal reasons, as he felt the regimented life of the military was antithetical to his character. During his time in the Marines, he set the Regimental record for rope climbing (which was previously held by his father, Raymond) and earned a certificate of honor for his gymnastic abilities.


title: David Belle

text: Upon completing his national service, he worked in various professions including a warehouse worker, security guard and furniture salesman. He also spent 3 months in India studying kung fu. After his return he continued his training in parkour and filmed footage of his capabilities which he later turned into the famous "Speed Air Man" video. In 1997 the Stade 2 team were shown a video of Belle and decided to film the first news broadcast featuring him and the Yamakasi.


title: David Belle

text: In filming this news feature, the term Yamakasi was used for the first time in connection with the team. Belle did not approve of the name and felt like it did not give credit to his father, so he split from the group after the feature. Later Belle would go on to train other students who gave themselves the name 'tracer.' The spelling was later adapted to 'traceur', and has since been used to define a practitioner of parkour.


title: David Belle

text: Belle was first introduced to his acting career in a meeting with Hubert Koundé ("La Haine"), in order to discuss the success of parkour in cinema. He then began developing his acting ability with the play Pygmalion, and has since been successful in obtaining a number of roles mostly in French films and promotions. Belle has been featured in promotional videos for Tina Turner, and Iam. He has starred in "Les gens du voyages" and "Un monde meilleur", followed by "L'Engrenages" and "Femme Fatale", as well as "Les rivières pourpres 2", starring Jean Reno. After filming several more advertisements and promotions for the BBC, Nissan, Canon, and Nike, Belle was contacted by Luc Besson (director of "Nikita", and "The Fifth Element") regarding co-starring as lead actor with Cyril Raffaelli in the action movie "District 13", followed by the sequel "". Belle co-starred with Paul Walker in "Brick Mansions" (2014), a remake of "District 13".


title: David Belle

text: Belle largely stays out of the public spotlight. His last major appearance was when he appeared as a guest at the New Yorker Festival in 2007. Belle was interviewed for the parkour article "No Obstacles" written by Alec Wilkinson which was published in April 2007.


title: David Belle

text: Belle formerly endorsed the clothing company Take Flight, but decided to sever his ties to the brand because he disapproved of their business activities and motives.


title: Area codes 415 and 628

text: Area codes 415 and 628 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the city of San Francisco and its northern suburbs in Marin County (across the Golden Gate), and the northeast corner of San Mateo County in the U.S. state of California. Area code 415 was one of the eighty-six original North American area codes established in 1947, but modified in geographic configuration later. Area code 628 was assigned in 2015 to form an overlay in that numbering plan area in mitigation of central office prefix exhaustion.


title: Area codes 415 and 628

text: When the North American Numbering Plan was installed by AT&T for Operator Toll Dialing in 1947, the state of California was divided into three numbering plan areas (NPAs) arranged as geographical zones in the southern part, the central part, and the northern part of the state. Area code 415 was assigned to central California, south of area code 916, and north of area code 213. It stretched from Sacramento in the north to Bakersfield in the south.


title: Area codes 415 and 628

text: In 1950, the boundaries of the numbering plan area were redrawn to produce a division of the northern and central parts along a north-south-running dividing line. Numbering plan area 415 became the coastal region from the North Coast to the Oregon border, while 916 was redrawn to comprise the northeastern corner of the state. As part of this realignment, Sacramento was renumbered from area code 415 to 916, and Bakersfield to 213.


title: Area codes 415 and 628

text: With the preparations for nation-wide direct distance dialing (DDD) in the early 1950s, area code 318 was temporarily used in the San Francisco area, initially by customers in Englewood, New Jersey, participating in the first customer trials to reach the city, as well as some areas north of the Golden Gate. In 1953, the entire Bay Area was "reunited" in using area code 415.


title: Area codes 415 and 628

text: Area code 415 has been split three times due to the Bay Area's rapid economic growth and demand for telecommunication services:


title: Area codes 415 and 628

text: On February 21, 2015, the numbering plan area was transitioned to an overlay plan by adding area code 628 to the same service area for new numbers, making ten-digit dialing mandatory in the area, with eleven-digit dialing necessary from landlines.


title: Saint Roch

text: Roch (lived c. 1348 – 15/16 August 1376/79 (traditionally c. 1295 – 16 August 1327, also called Rock in English, is a Catholic saint, a confessor whose death is commemorated on 16 August and 9 September in Italy; he is especially invoked against the plague. He has the designation of Rollox in Glasgow, Scotland, said to be a corruption of Roch's Loch, which referred to a small loch once near a chapel dedicated to Roch in 1506.


title: Saint Roch

text: He is a patron saint of dogs, invalids, falsely accused people, bachelors, and several other things. He is the patron saint of Dolo (near Venice) and Parma, as well as Casamassima, Cisterna di Latina and Palagiano (Italy). He is also the patron saint of the town of Albanchez, in Almeria, southern Spain.


title: Saint Roch

text: Saint Roch is known as "São Roque" in Portuguese, as "Sant Roc" in Catalan, as "San Roque" in Spanish (including in former colonies of the Spanish colonial empire such as the Philippines) and as "San Rocco" in Italian.


title: Saint Roch

text: The chronology of the Saint's life is uncertain and full of legendary elements. According to his "Acta" and his "vita" in the "Golden Legend," he was born at Montpellier, at that time "upon the border of France," as the "Golden Legend" has it, the son of the noble governor of that city. His birth was accounted a miracle, for his noble mother had been barren until she prayed to the Virgin Mary. Miraculously marked from birth with a red cross on his breast that grew as he did, he early began to manifest strict asceticism and great devoutness; on days when his "devout mother fasted twice in the week, and the blessed child Rocke abstained him twice also when his mother fasted in the week and would suck his mother but once that day."


title: Saint Roch

text: On the death of his parents in his twentieth year he distributed all his worldly goods among the poor, entered the Franciscan Third Order, and set out as a mendicant pilgrim for Rome, although his father on his deathbed had designated him governor of Montpellier.


title: Saint Roch

text: Coming into Italy during an epidemic of plague, he was very diligent in tending the sick in the public hospitals at Acquapendente, Cesena, Rimini, Novara, and Rome, and is said to have effected many miraculous cures by prayer and the sign of the cross and the touch of his hand. At Rome, according to the "Golden Legend," he preserved the "cardinal of Angleria in Lombardy" by making the mark of the cross on his forehead, which miraculously remained. Ministering at Piacenza at the hospital of "Nostra Signora di Betlemme", he himself finally fell ill. He withdrew into the forest, where he made himself a hut of boughs and leaves, which was miraculously supplied with water by a spring that arose in the place; he would have perished had not a dog belonging to a nobleman named Gothard Palastrelli supplied him with bread and licked his wounds, healing them. Count Gottardo Pallastrelli, following his hunting dog that carried the bread, discovered Roch and brought him home to recover.


title: Saint Roch

text: On his way back to return incognito to Montpellier, he was arrested at Voghera as a spy (by orders of his own uncle) and thrown into prison, where he languished five years and died on 16 August 1327, without revealing his name.


title: Saint Roch

text: The townspeople recognized him as well by his birthmark; he was soon canonized in the popular mind, and a great church erected in veneration.


title: Saint Roch

text: The date (1327) asserted by Francesco Diedo for Roch's death would precede the traumatic advent of the Black Death in Europe (1347–49) after long centuries of absence, for which a rich iconography of the plague, its victims and its protective saints was soon developed, in which the iconography of Roche finds its historical place: previously the "topos" did not exist. In contrast, however, St. Roch of Montpellier cannot be dismissed based on the dates of a specific plague event. In medieval times, the term "plague" was used to indicate a whole array of illnesses and epidemics.


title: Saint Roch

text: The first literary account is an undated "Acta" that is labelled, by comparison with the longer, elaborated accounts that were to follow, "Acta Breviora", which relies almost entirely on standardized hagiographic "topoi" to celebrate and promote the cult of Roch.


title: Saint Roch

text: The story that when the Council of Constance was threatened with plague in 1414, public processions and prayers for the intercession of Roch were ordered, and the outbreak ceased, is provided by Francesco Diedo, the Venetian governor of Brescia, in his "Vita Sancti Rochi", 1478. The cult of Roch gained momentum during the bubonic plague that passed through northern Italy in 1477–79.


title: Saint Roch

text: His popularity, originally in central and northern Italy and at Montpellier, spread through Spain, France, Lebanon, the Low Countries, Brazil and Germany, where he was often interpolated into the roster of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, whose veneration spread in the wake of the Black Death. The 16th-century Scuola Grande di San Rocco and the adjacent church of San Rocco were dedicated to him by a confraternity at Venice, where his body was said to have been surreptitiously translated and was triumphantly inaugurated in 1485; the "Scuola Grande" is famous for its sequence of paintings by Tintoretto, who painted Roch in glory in a ceiling canvas (1564).


title: Saint Roch

text: It is known for certain that the body of Roch was carried from Voghera, instead of Montpellier as previously thought, to Venice in 1485. Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) built a church and a hospital in his honour. Pope Paul III (1534–1549) instituted a confraternity of St. Roch. This was raised to an archconfraternity in 1556 by Pope Paul IV; it still thrives today. Roch had not been officially recognized as yet as a saint, however. In 1590 the Venetian ambassador at Rome reported back to the Serenissima that he had been repeatedly urged to present the witnesses and documentation of the life and miracles of San Rocco, already deeply entrenched in the Venetian life, because Pope Sixtus V "is strong in his opinion either to canonize him or else to remove him from the ranks of the saints;" the ambassador had warned a cardinal of the general scandal that would result if the widely venerated San Rocco were impugned as an impostor. Sixtus did not pursue the matter but left it to later popes to proceed with the canonization process. His successor, Pope Gregory XIV (1590–1591), added Roch of Montpellier, who had already been memorialized in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for two centuries, to the Roman Catholic Church Martyrology, thereby fixing August 16 as his universal feast day.


title: Saint Roch

text: Numerous brotherhoods have been instituted in his honor. He is usually represented in the garb of a pilgrim, often lifting his tunic to demonstrate the plague sore, or bubo, in his thigh, and accompanied by a dog carrying a loaf in its mouth. The Third Order of Saint Francis, by tradition, claims him as a member and includes his feast on its own calendar of saints, observing it on August 17.


title: Saint Roch

text: The Catholic Church in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro venerates him as . Eponymous churches are numerous (cf. ) include the Church of St. Roch in Petrovaradin in Serbia.


title: Saint Roch

text: In India there is a Church in Kerala in the name of Saint Roch under the Thrissur Archdiocese called "St. Rocky's Church Pootharakkal". There is a huge statue of the saint about 24 feet in height (the first and only one in Asia). There is a special holy mass and Novena every Thursday.


title: Saint Roch

text: Following the Black Death, especially the Italian plague epidemic of 1477–79, new images of Christian martyrs and saints appeared and Roch gained new fame and popularity. The religious art of the time emphasized the importance of the saint to plague-ridden Christians.


title: Saint Roch

text: The new plague-related images of Roch were drawn from a variety of sources. Plague texts dating from ancient and classical times, as well as Christian, scientific and folk beliefs, all contributed to this emerging visual tradition. Some of the most popular symbols of plague were swords, darts, and most especially arrows. There was also a prevalence of memento mori themes, dark clouds, and astrological signs (signa magna) such as comets, which were often referenced by physicians and writers of plague tracts as causes of plague. The physical symptoms of plague – a raised arm, a tilted head, or a collapsed body – began to symbolize plague in post-Black Death paintings.


title: Saint Roch

text: Plague saints offered hope and healing before, during, and after times of plague. A specific style of painting, the plague votive, was considered a talisman for warding off plague. It portrayed a particular saint as an intercessor between God and the person or persons who commissioned the painting – usually a town, government, lay confraternity, or religious order to atone for the "collective guilt" of the community.


title: Saint Roch

text: Rather than a society depressed and resigned to repeated epidemics, these votives represent people taking positive steps to regain control over their environment. Paintings of Roch represent the confidence in which renaissance worshipers sought to access supernatural aid in overcoming the ravages of plague.


title: Saint Roch

text: The very abundance of means by which people invoked the aid of the celestial court is essential in understanding Renaissance responses to the disease. Rather than depression or resignation, people "possessed a confidence that put even an apocalyptic disaster of the magnitude of the Black Death into perspective of God's secure and benevolent plan for humankind."


title: Saint Roch

text: The plague votives functioned both to request intercessory aid from plague saints and to provide catharsis for a population that had just witnessed the profound bodily destruction of the plague. Showing plague saints such as Roch and Sebastian invoked the memory of the human suffering experienced by Christ during the Passion. In the art of Roch after 1477, the saint displayed the wounds of his martyrdom without evidence of pain or suffering. Roch actively lifted his clothing to display the plague bubo on his thigh. This display of his plague bubo showed that "he welcomed his disease as a divinely sent opportunity to imitate the sufferings of Christ… [his] patient endurance [of the physical suffering of plague was] a form of martyrdom."


title: Saint Roch

text: Roch's status as a pilgrim who suffered the plague is paramount in his iconography. "The sight of Roch scarred by the plague yet alive and healthy must have been an emotionally-charged image of a promised cure. Here was literal proof that one could survive the plague, a saint who had triumphed over the disease in his own flesh."


title: Saint Roch

text: F. T. Prince published a long monologue from the perspective of Saint Roch's dog entitled 'His Dog and Pilgrim' in his 1983 collection "Later On".


title: Saint Roch

text: In Albert Camus’ novel "The Plague", worshippers in the cathedral of Oran are seen gathered around the statue of Saint Roch.


title: Saint Roch

text: In "Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis, a medieval priest who tends to plague victims is named Father Roche.


title: Saint Roch

text: A 2012 Philippine fantasy teleserye, "Aso ni San Roque" (literally "Saint Roch's Dog"), depicts a dog from the statue of San Roque coming to life to serve as a guardian of a protagonist blind girl.


title: Blini

text: A blini (sometimes spelled bliny) ( pl., diminutive: блинчики, "blinchiki", dialectal, diminutive: млинчики, "mlynchiki") or, sometimes, blin (more accurate as a single form of the noun), is a Russian and more broadly Eastern European pancake traditionally made from wheat or (more rarely) buckwheat flour and served with smetana, tvorog, butter, caviar and other garnishes. Blini are among the most popular and most-eaten dishes in Russia.


title: Blini

text: In the West, blini traditionally refers to small (2-4 inches in diameter) savory pancakes made with leavened batter. In modern Russian, the term most often refers to pan-sized leavened thin pancakes, although smaller leavened pancakes are also called blini and were much more common historically.


title: Blini

text: Some English dictionaries record usage of the forms "blin" as singular and "blini" or "bliny" as plural, which corresponds to the original Russian forms, but other dictionaries consider this usage so rare in English that they do not mention "blin" at all and only record the widespread modern regular usage of "blini" for the singular and "blinis" for the plural. Some cookbooks and restaurants use "blin" and "blintchick" as in Russian to refer to crêpes.


title: Blini

text: Blintzes are an offshoot (an evolved or variant form) of blini. They are thin pancakes usually made of wheat flour (not buckwheat), folded to form a casing (as for cheese or fruit), and then sautéed or baked.


title: Blini

text: The Old Slavic term for the Russian pancakes was probably "mlinŭ," which transformed in Old Russian into "mlinъ, blinъ" (млинъ/блинъ), (cf. "mlynets’" (млинець), Ukrainian for "blin"). While the Russian word (plural of ') refers in modern Russian also to the introduced foreign pancakes in general; meanwhile the term ру́сские блины́ ' (Russian pancakes) is often emphasized in Russia for differentiation.


title: Blini

text: Aside from referring to pancakes, the word "" () is used as a linguistic signal in communications. It is used when a person talks to others and is searching for the right words or to express their dissatisfaction as a euphemism for "damn."


title: Blini

text: Blini were considered by early East Slavic people in pre-Christian times to be a symbol of the sun due to their round form. They were traditionally prepared at the end of winter to honor the rebirth of the new sun (Butter Week, or Maslenitsa, also called "pancake week"). The tradition of a dairy festival at that time of year was adopted by the Orthodox church as a way of using up dairy products before the start of Great Lent. This tradition is observed by Western Christians as Pancake Day. Drochena, a kind of blini, was also served at wakes to commemorate the recently deceased.


title: Blini

text: Traditional Russian blini are made with yeasted batter, which is left to rise and then diluted with milk, soured milk, and cold or boiling water. When diluted with boiling water, they are referred to as zavarniye bliny. A lighter and thinner form made from unyeasted batter (usually made of flour, eggs, milk, or soured milk, kefir, ryazhenka, varenets) is also common in Russia. Traditionally, blini are baked in a Russian oven. The process of preparing blini is still referred to as baking in Russian, even though they are nowadays pan-fried, like pancakes. All kinds of flour may be used, from wheat and buckwheat to oatmeal and millet, although wheat is currently the most popular.


title: Blini

text: A somewhat similar Jewish dish exists and is a very popular traditional Ashkenazi Jewish dish called blintz. Blintzes were popularized in the United States by Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Blintzes are a very important part of Jewish cuisine in some regions. They are traditionally served for several holidays in Judaism, such as Shavuot. Blintzes stuffed with a cheese filling and then fried in oil are served on holidays such as Hanukkah (as oil played a pivotal role in the miracle of the Hanukkah story) and Shavuot (when dairy dishes are traditionally served within the Ashkenazi "minhag"). Blini and blinchiki are ordinarily stuffed before being fried a second time, wrapped around a stuffing and eaten without refrying, or folded and eaten with a dip. Fillings include chocolate, mushrooms, meat, rice, mashed potatoes, and cheese.


title: Blini

text: Blini, or as they are known in Ukrainian, "mlyntsi", are a highly popular dish around Ukraine; the simplicity of making the thin pancakes, as well as the basic ingredients yet highly favourable taste, has led to the popularity of the dish. Mlyntsi have been eaten in Ukraine since pre-Christian times. Mlyntsi tend to be served in Ukraine with sour cream (Ukrainian: smetana) and caviar; they can also be served as a sweet dish by serving them alongside a fruit preserve or a sweet cream. The thin pancakes can also be stuffed with cottage cheese, chopped boiled eggs, mixed green onions, stewed cabbage, minced meat, mashed beans, mushrooms, fruit and berries, and raisins. However, upon being stuffed, the dish acquires a new title (), a fundamental dish of Ukrainian cuisine that is served all around the country with several regional varieties, for example, the Chernihiv style nalysnyky are marked by their mushroom and cabbage filling. The most popular form of nalysnyky served in Ukraine is those stuffed with cottage cheese and served with sour cream. Nalysnyky, as well as mlyntsi, are also served for special occasions such as Masnytsya, which may originally have been a pagan festival that celebrated the end of winter and the arrival of spring (the round yellow pancake most likely symbolising the sun), but has for a millennium been the time for using up dairy products before the beginning of Great Lent. Nalysnyky can be formed out of mlyntsi in several different shapes, including; tubes, envelopes, and even triangles. Some recipes call for the stuffed mlyntsi to be placed in an oven-proof dish and cooked in an oven.


title: Blini

text: They may be folded or rolled into a tube with sweet or salty fillings such as varenye, fruit, berry, mashed potatoes, quark, cooked ground meat, cooked chicken, salmon, chopped boiled eggs with green onions or chopped mushrooms.


title: That Is Mahalakshmi

text: That Is Mahalakshmi is an unreleased Indian Telugu-language comedy drama film directed by Prasanth Varma, produced by Manu Kumaran, and bankrolled by Taizoon Khorakiwala. The film is a remake of the 2014 Hindi film "Queen". The film stars Tamannaah, with Shibani Dandekar, Roopa Lakshmi, Samarth Ashok Hegde, Geetanjali and CVL Narasimha Rao in supporting roles.


title: That Is Mahalakshmi

text: In June 2014, Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, the producers of the Hindi film "Queen" (2014), made an official announcement that they hold sold the remake rights for the Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada versions of their film to Thiagarajan, who would make the films through his production studio, Staar Movies. Viacom put a caveat in the agreement that the principal photography of any of the films must start by 8 June 2017, else the rights would revert to Viacom. Soon after the announcement in June 2014, several Indian directors and actresses expressed their desire to do the film, but Thiagarajan maintained that no one had been finalised and that he was still considering his options. Thiagarajan announced his potential plans of casting Lisa Haydon to reprise her supporting role and for his son Prashanth to act in the film, but remarked that he was unsure if Prashanth would accept to play a character with "grey shades". Samantha held discussions about portraying the film's lead role during July 2014, but turned the film down after being unconvinced about the way the original script was set to be adapted into the South Indian languages.


title: That Is Mahalakshmi

text: After a period of inactivity and further media reports about the casting of the lead actress, Thiagarajan revealed in February 2016 that he had signed on Revathi to direct the Tamil version of the film, while Suhasini would work as the dialogue writer. Soon after, Nayanthara turned down the opportunity to work on the film citing scheduling issues during early 2016. In mid-2016, Trisha was also approached to play the lead role but conflicting schedules meant that she could not sign on to appear in the film. The media also linked actresses Parvathy and Nithya Menen to the lead role, but neither were signed on. During an interaction with the media in November 2016, Thiagarajan revealed that he had finalised Revathi to direct the Tamil and Malayalam versions of the film, while Anish Kuruvilla and Prakash Raj would make the Telugu and Kannada versions respectively. He added that Tamannaah would feature in the lead role of the Tamil version, while Amala Paul and Parul Yadav would reprise the role in the Malayalam and Kannada versions respectively. He also stated that Amy Jackson was signed on to feature in all four versions of the film in the role originally portrayed by Lisa Haydon. In April 2017, Tamannaah stated that the film was shelved, though Thiagarajan refuted her claim and stated that production would begin in May 2017. He revealed that talks with the actress to play the lead role had fallen through after a dispute over her remuneration for the lead role.


title: That Is Mahalakshmi

text: In June 2017, further confusion about the remake arose after two separate production houses apart from Thiagarajan's Staar Movies had claimed rights to the film. As per a contract signed on 30 July 2016, Staar Movies agreed to enter into a co-production agreement with Mediente International Films Ltd and Liger Commercial Brokers for the making of the films. However a mutual cancellation form was then signed between the parties on 5 April 2017 after Mediente allegedly failed to pay the consideration provided under the agreement. Then, as per a contract signed on 21 April 2017, Staar Movies agreed to assign the rights of all four South Indian versions of "Queen" to Golden Crab Film Production Ltd. In order to avoid the reversion of rights back to Viacom due to three years of inactivity, Staar Movies and Golden Crab swiftly began shooting the film on 17 May 2017 with a series of supporting actors including Nassar under the title of "Vaanil Thedi Nindren". However, on 3 June 2017, Staar Movies again assigned and transferred the remake rights of the film to Mediente and Liger, with the Kannada version of the film titled "Butterfly" featuring Parul Yadav, starting immediately with Ramesh Aravind taking over as director. Staar Movies then produced a declaration affidavit on 14 June 2017 that any agreement with Golden Crab Films was false.


title: That Is Mahalakshmi

text: Kajal Aggarwal revealed in August 2017 that she had agreed terms to play the lead role in the Tamil version of the film, which would also be directed by Ramesh Aravind and produced by Mediente, and that the film's shoot would begin in September 2017. In September 2017, it was revealed that Tamannaah would work on the Telugu version of the film which would be directed by Neelakanta. Amala Paul also opted out of the Malayalam version citing date issues and was later replaced by Manjima Mohan. Amy Jackson was initially in talks to play the role Lisa Haydon played in "Queen" however opted out due to unavailability of dates and creative differences. Filming began on 2 November 2017. Two months later, Neelakanta left the film, and was replaced by Prashanth Varma. However, Neelakanta soon decided to direct the Malayalam remake titled "Zam Zam".


title: That Is Mahalakshmi

text: The music of the film is composed by Amit Trivedi and lyrics are by Krishna Kanth. The songs were released under Zee Music Company on 1 September 2020.


title: John Sayles

text: John Thomas Sayles (born September 28, 1950) is an American independent film director, screenwriter, editor, actor, and novelist. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, for "Passion Fish" (1992) and "Lone Star" (1996). His film "Men with Guns" (1997) was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. His directorial debut, "Return of the Secaucus 7" (1980), has been added to the National Film Registry.


title: John Sayles

text: Sayles was born on September 28, 1950, in Schenectady, New York, the son of Mary ("née" Rausch), a teacher, and Donald John Sayles, a school administrator. Both of Sayles's parents were Catholic and of half-Irish descent. Sayles has referred to himself as a "Catholic atheist". He attended Williams College with frequent collaborators Gordon Clapp and David Strathairn, as well as his longtime partner, Maggie Renzi. Sayles earned a B.A. in psychology in 1972.


title: John Sayles

text: After college, Sayles moved to Boston where he worked a variety of blue-collar jobs while writing short stories for "The Atlantic". These writings culminated in his first novel, "The Pride of the Bimbos", published in 1975.


title: John Sayles

text: Like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, Sayles began his film career working with Roger Corman. In 1979, Sayles used $30,000 he earned writing scripts for Corman to fund his first film, "Return of the Secaucus 7". To make the film on a limited budget, he set the film in a large house so that he did not have to travel to or get permits for different locations, set the story over a three-day weekend to limit costume changes, and wrote about people his age so he could cast his friends in it. The film received near-unanimous critical acclaim at the time and has held its reputation. In November 1997, the National Film Preservation Board announced that "Return of the Secaucus 7" would be one of the 25 films selected that year for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.


title: John Sayles

text: In 1983, after the films "Baby It's You" (starring Rosanna Arquette) and "Lianna" (a story in which a married woman becomes discontented with her marriage and falls in love with another woman), Sayles received a MacArthur Fellowship. He put the money into the science fiction feature "The Brother from Another Planet", a film about a three-toed humanoid who escapes bondage on another world and crash-lands in New York harbour; because he is Africanoid in appearance, he finds himself at home among the people of Harlem, being pursued by European-looking alien enslavers men in black.


title: John Sayles

text: In 1989, Sayles created and wrote the pilot episode for the short-lived television show "Shannon's Deal" about a down-and-out Philadelphia lawyer played by Jamey Sheridan. Sayles received a 1990 Edgar Award for his teleplay for the pilot. The show ran for 16 episodes before being cancelled in 1991.


title: John Sayles

text: Sayles has funded most of his films by writing genre scripts, such as "Piranha", "Alligator", "The Howling", and "The Challenge" Having collaborated with Joe Dante on "Piranha" and "The Howling", Sayles acted in Dante's movie, "Matinee". Sayles gets the rest of his funding by working as a script doctor; he did rewrites for "Apollo 13" and "Mimic".


title: John Sayles

text: A genre script, called "Night Skies", inspired what would eventually become the film "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial". That film's director, Steven Spielberg, later commissioned Sayles to write a script (unused) for the fourth "Jurassic Park" film.


title: John Sayles

text: He has written and directed his own films, including "Lone Star", "Passion Fish", "Eight Men Out", "The Secret of Roan Inish," and "Matewan". He serves on the advisory board for the Austin Film Society.


title: John Sayles

text: Maggie Renzi has been John Sayles's long-time companion (and collaborator), but they have not married. Renzi has produced most of his films since "Lianna". They met as students at Williams College.


title: John Sayles

text: Sayles works with a regular repertory of actors, most notably Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, and Gordon Clapp, each of whom has appeared in at least four of his films.


title: John Sayles

text: In early 2003, Sayles signed the Not In Our Name "Statement of Conscience" (along with Noam Chomsky, Steve Earle, Brian Eno, Jesse Jackson, Viggo Mortensen, Bonnie Raitt, Oliver Stone, Marisa Tomei, Susan Sarandon and others) which opposed the invasion of Iraq.


title: John Sayles

text: In February 2009, Sayles was reported to be writing an HBO series based on the early life of Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The drama, tentatively titled "Scar Tissue", centers on Kiedis's early years living in West Hollywood with his father. At that time, Kiedis's father, known as Spider, sold drugs (according to legend, his clients included The Who and Led Zeppelin) and mingled with rock stars on the Sunset Strip, all while aspiring to get into show business.


title: John Sayles

text: In February 2010, Sayles began shooting his 17th feature film, the historical war drama "Amigo", in the Philippines. The film is a fictional account of events during the Philippine–American War, with a cast that includes Joel Torre, Chris Cooper, and Garret Dillahunt.


title: John Sayles

text: His novel "A Moment in the Sun", set during the same period as "Amigo", in the Philippines, Cuba, and the U.S., was released in 2011 by McSweeney's. It includes an account of the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 in North Carolina, the only coup d'état in United States history in which a duly elected government was overthrown.


title: John Sayles

text: Sayles's first published story, "I-80 Nebraska", won an O. Henry Award; his novel, "Union Dues", was nominated for a National Book Award as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award.


title: John Sayles

text: In 1983, Sayles received the John D. MacArthur Award, given to 20 Americans in diverse fields each year for their innovative work. He has also been the recipient of the Eugene V. Debs Award, the John Steinbeck Award and the John Cassavetes Award. He was honored with the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Writers Guild of America (1999).


title: John Sayles

text: Actors who have regularly worked with Sayles include Maggie Renzi, David Strathairn, Joe Morton, Chris Cooper, Mary McDonnell, Vincent Spano, Kevin Tighe, Josh Mostel, Tom Wright, Gordon Clapp and Angela Bassett.


title: Email marketing

text: Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.


title: Email marketing

text: Email marketing has evolved rapidly alongside the technological growth of the 21st century. Before this growth, when emails were novelties to most customers, email marketing was not as effective. In 1978, Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) sent out the first mass email to approximately 400 potential clients via the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). He claims that this resulted in $13 million worth of sales in DEC products, and highlighted the potential of marketing through mass emails.


title: Email marketing

text: However, as email marketing developed as an effective means of direct communication, in the 1990s, users increasingly began referring to it as "spam", and began blocking out content from emails with filters and blocking programs. To effectively communicate a message through email, marketers had to develop a way of pushing content through to the end user without being cut out by automatic filters and spam removing software.


title: Email marketing

text: Historically, it has not been easy to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns because target markets cannot be adequately defined. Email marketing carries the benefit of allowing marketers to identify returns on investment and measure and improve efficiency. Email marketing allows marketers to see users' feedback in real-time and monitor how effective their campaign is in achieving market penetration, revealing a communication channel's scope. At the same time, however, it also means that the more personal nature of specific advertising methods, such as television advertisements, cannot be captured.


title: Email marketing

text: Transactional emails are usually triggered based on a customer's action with a company. To be qualified as transactional or relationship messages, these communications' primary purpose must be "to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender" along with a few other narrow definitions of transactional messaging. Triggered transactional messages include dropped basket messages, password reset emails, purchase or order confirmation emails, order status emails, reorder emails, and email receipts.


title: Email marketing

text: The primary purpose of a transactional email is to convey information regarding the action that triggered it. But, due to their high open rates (51.3% compared to 36.6% for email newsletters), transactional emails are an opportunity to introduce or extend the email relationship with customers or subscribers; to anticipate and answer questions; or to cross-sell or up-sell products or services.


title: Email marketing

text: Many email newsletter software vendors offer transactional email support, which gives companies the ability to include promotional messages within the body of transactional emails. There are also software vendors that offer specialized transactional email marketing services, which include providing targeted and personalized transactional email messages and running specific marketing campaigns (such as customer referral programs).


title: Email marketing

text: Direct email involves sending an email solely to communicate a promotional message (for example, a special offer or a product catalog). Companies usually collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses to send direct promotional messages to, or they rent a list of email addresses from service companies.


title: Email marketing

text: There are both advantages and disadvantages to using email marketing in comparison to traditional advertising mail.


title: Email marketing

text: Opt-in email advertising, or permission marketing, is advertising via email whereby the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it.


title: Email marketing

text: A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter sent to an advertising firm's customers. Such newsletters inform customers of upcoming events or promotions, or new products. In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive the newsletter.


title: Email marketing

text: With a foundation of opted-in contact information stored in their database, marketers can send out promotional materials automatically using autoresponders—known as drip marketing. They can also segment their promotions to specific market segments.


title: Email marketing

text: The Australian Spam Act 2003 is enforced by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, widely known as "ACMA". The act defines the term "unsolicited electronic messages", states how unsubscribe functions must work for commercial messages, and gives other key information. Fines range with three fines of AU$110,000 being issued to Virgin Blue Airlines (2011), Tiger Airways Holdings Limited (2012) and Cellar master Wines Pty Limited (2013).


title: Email marketing

text: The "Canada Anti-Spam Law" (CASL) went into effect on July 1, 2014. CASL requires an explicit or implicit opt-in from users, and the maximum fines for noncompliance are CA$1 million for individuals and $10 million for businesses.


title: Email marketing

text: In 2002 the European Union (EU) introduced the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications. Article 13 of the Directive prohibits the use of personal email addresses for marketing purposes. The Directive establishes the opt-in regime, where unsolicited emails may be sent only with prior agreement of the recipient; this does not apply to business email addresses. The UK gives sole traders and members of unincorporated partnerships the same protection as private individuals.


title: Email marketing

text: The directive has since been incorporated into the laws of member states. In the UK it is covered under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 and applies to all organizations that send out marketing by some form of electronic communication.


title: Email marketing

text: The GDPR in 2018 imposed ""a number of new requirements on companies that collect, store and process personal data from EU users, which impacts email marketers"" - in particular, users' right to access information held about them; and the right to have all such information deleted at their request.


title: Email marketing

text: The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was passed by Congress as a direct response to the growing number of complaints over spam emails. Congress determined that the US government was showing an increased interest in the regulation of commercial electronic mail nationally, that those who send commercial emails should not mislead recipients over the source or content of them, and that all recipients of such emails have a right to decline them. The act authorizes a US$16,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient. However, it does not ban spam emailing outright, but imposes laws on using deceptive marketing methods through headings which are "materially false or misleading". In addition there are conditions which email marketers must meet in terms of their format, their content and labeling. As a result, many commercial email marketers within the United States utilize a service or special software to ensure compliance with the act. A variety of older systems exist that do not ensure compliance with the act. To comply with the act's regulation of commercial email, services also typically require users to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address, provide a one-click unsubscribe feature, and prohibit importing lists of purchased addresses that may not have given valid permission.


title: Email marketing

text: In addition to satisfying legal requirements, email service providers (ESPs) began to help customers establish and manage their own email marketing campaigns. The service providers supply email templates and general best practices, as well as methods for handling subscriptions and cancellations automatically. Some ESPs will provide insight and assistance with deliverability issues for major email providers. They also provide statistics pertaining to the number of messages received and opened, and whether the recipients clicked on any links within the messages.


title: Email marketing

text: The CAN-SPAM Act was updated with some new regulations including a no-fee provision for opting out, further definition of "sender", post office or private mail boxes count as a "valid physical postal address" and definition of "person". These new provisions went into effect on July 7, 2008.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Late Night is an American late-night talk and variety show airing on NBC since 1982. Four men have hosted "Late Night": David Letterman (1982–1993), Conan O'Brien (1993–2009), Jimmy Fallon (2009–2014), and Seth Meyers (2014–present). Each iteration of the show was built around its host, and maintained distinct identities aside from the title, timeslot, and network. The longest-serving host to date was O'Brien, who hosted "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" for almost 16 years, from September 1993 to February 2009.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: The show replaced "The Tomorrow Show", hosted by Tom Snyder (and later co-hosted by Rona Barrett), on Mondays through Thursdays. It did not expand to Fridays until 1987, when "Friday Night Videos" was moved back an hour to accommodate a five-day-a-week "Late Night".


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: "Late Night" originated from NBC's headquarters building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, inheriting Studio 6A from "Tomorrow" (it was also the studio for Letterman's morning program in 1980). The program ran four nights a week, Monday to Thursday, from the show's premiere in February 1982 until May 1987. Friday shows were added in June 1987 (NBC previously aired "Friday Night Videos" in the 12:30 am slot with occasional "Late Night" specials and reruns). Starting in September 1991, "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" was pushed back from 11:30 pm to 11:35 p


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: m, with Letterman starting at 12:35 am, at the request of NBC affiliates who wanted more advertising time for their profitable late newscasts.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: In mid-1993, E! Entertainment Television purchased broadcast rights to "Late Night". The network aired complete shows from various years five days per week from 1993 until 1996. Then Trio (owned by NBC) picked up reruns and showed them from 2002 until the channel went off the air in 2005.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: A number of programs were sold by GoodTimes Entertainment in 1992–93. These episodes were stripped of the series theme, open and close. No DVD release is currently scheduled (GoodTimes went bankrupt in 2005).


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: A total of 1,819 shows were broadcast during its eleven and a half year run (an episode on January 16, 1991, went unaired due to pre-emption for coverage the beginning of the Gulf War; the program had already been shot before word came out of Baghdad that United States airstrikes were beginning).


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Peter Ustinov was a guest on the one-shot "360-degree" episode, during which the show's image gradually rotated 360 degrees during the course of an hour.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Upon Johnny Carson's unexpected retirement from "The Tonight Show" in 1992, executives at NBC announced that Carson's "permanent guest host" Jay Leno would take over "Tonight", and not David Letterman. This was done against the wishes of Carson, who had always seen Letterman as his rightful successor, according to Worldwide Pants senior vice president Peter Lassally, a onetime producer for both men. NBC later claimed that Letterman's high ratings for "Late Night" was the reason it kept Letterman where he was. Letterman was bitterly disappointed and angry at not having been given "The Tonight Show" job, and, on Carson's advice, walked away from NBC after eleven years on "Late Night". CBS signed Letterman to compete directly opposite Leno's "Tonight Show" at 11:35 PM. He moved his show over to CBS virtually unchanged, taking most of the staff, skits, and comedy formats with him. However, NBC owned the rights to the "Late Night" name and much of the intellectual property created for the show, forcing Letterman to rechristen his show as "Late Show with David Letterman" and re-title many of its signature comedy elements. ("Viewer Mail" became "CBS Mailbag"; sidekick Calvert DeForest was no longer called "Larry 'Bud' Melman", but instead used his real name, etc.) However, some recurring elements, notably "Stupid Pet Tricks", actually dated from Letterman's earlier morning show. Those elements were Letterman's property, not NBC's, and carried over to the new show completely unchanged.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: NBC was faced with an unexpected need to replace not just Letterman, but "Late Night" itself. The network still owned the name, but needed to essentially build a new show from scratch. The show was first offered to Dana Carvey and Garry Shandling, both of whom turned it down.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels' company, Broadway Video, replaced Carson Productions and Letterman's Worldwide Pants as the show's co-production company, in partnership with NBC Studios. Michaels took a leadership role in redeveloping the show, and comedians Jon Stewart, Drew Carey, and Paul Provenza all auditioned for the hosting role. Michaels suggested to O'Brien, an unknown writer for "The Simpsons" and former writer for "Saturday Night Live", that he should audition for the job. Despite having "about 40 seconds" of television-performance experience as an occasional extra on "Saturday Night Live" sketches, O'Brien auditioned for the show on April 13, 1993. His guests were Jason Alexander and Mimi Rogers, and the audition took place on the set of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno". O'Brien was offered the show on April 26, 1993, and made his first meaningful television appearance later that day when Leno introduced him on "Tonight".


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: O'Brien's "Late Night" was rushed into production and debuted on September 13, 1993, with Andy Richter as O'Brien's sidekick. The premiere episode featured John Goodman (who received a "First Guest" medal for his appearance), Drew Barrymore, and Tony Randall. The episode featured a cold open of O'Brien's walk to the studio with constant reminders that he was expected to live up to Letterman, parodying a popular sentiment expressed in the media at the time. After seeming to be unaffected by the comments, O'Brien arrives at his dressing room and cheerfully prepares to hang himself. However, a warning that the show is about to start causes him to abandon his plans. The crowd for the first show mainly consisted of family members of the crew of the show so as to ensure a positive reception. The show remained in Studio 6A through O'Brien's tenure.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: O'Brien's on-camera inexperience showed and the show's first fourteen weeks were generally considered mediocre. O'Brien, an unknown, was constantly at risk of being fired: NBC had him renewing short-term contracts, thirteen weeks at a time. He was reportedly on the brink of being fired at least once in this period, but NBC had no one to replace him. The show, and O'Brien, slowly improved through experience, and the show's ratings gradually increased to a level which allowed O'Brien to secure a longer contract, and not have to worry about cancellation.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: On February 28, 1994, Letterman appeared on "Late Night" as O'Brien's only guest, marking Letterman's first appearance on an NBC talk show since his departure for CBS. During the interview, Letterman gave O'Brien positive reinforcement, telling him "there's nothing like this show anywhere on television" and that he was doing a terrific job as host. On May 20, 2015, during the opening monologue to his TBS talk show "Conan" aired just prior to the start of the final episode of "Late Show with David Letterman" marking Letterman's retirement as host, O'Brien directly credited Letterman's 1994 appearance with preventing "Late Night" from being cancelled by NBC.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: In 2000, Richter left "Late Night" to pursue his acting career. The show's comedy bits and banter had usually depended on O'Brien's interaction with Richter. O'Brien's wacky non sequitur comedy became more pronounced as he played all of his comedy and commentary directly to the audience instead of towards Richter. Bandleader Max Weinberg also became O'Brien's primary sounding board and comic foil in Richter's absence.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Ratings and reviews continued to improve for "Late Night", and in 2002, when time came to renew his contract, O'Brien had notable offers from other networks to defect. O'Brien decided to re-sign with NBC, however, joking that he initially wanted to make a 13-week deal (a nod to his first contract). He ultimately signed through 2005, indicating that it was symbolic of surpassing Letterman's run with 12 years of hosting.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: In 2003, O'Brien's own production company, Conaco, was added as a producer of "Late Night". The show celebrated its 10th anniversary, another milestone that O'Brien said he wanted to achieve with his 2002 contract. During the anniversary show, Mr. T handed O'Brien a chain with a large gold "7" on it.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: The show's house band was The Max Weinberg 7, led by E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg. The other six members were Mark Pender on trumpet, Richie "LaBamba" Rosenberg on trombone, Mike Merritt on bass, Jerry Vivino on saxophone and brother Jimmy Vivino on guitar, and Scott Healy on keyboard. James Wormworth served as backup drummer when Weinberg went on tour with Bruce Springsteen. With the departure of Andy Richter, Max Weinberg assumed a bigger role as an interlocutor for O'Brien's jokes. One common running gag was Max's awkwardness on camera and his apparent lack of chemistry with Conan. Weinberg was often used in sketches as well, which usually revolved around his purported sexual deviance (mostly a penchant for bedding barely legal groupies), although long running sketches also spoofed Max's lack of knowledge of current affairs.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Richie "LaBamba" Rosenberg was also used as the butt of many of Conan's jokes. These humorous sketches usually revolved around LaBamba's sizeable mustache, his poor acting skills, and his alleged inability to read sheet music. Mark Pender would often sing songs on the topic of a current event, which ended with him screeching uncontrollably and climbing the risers into the audience. All members of the 7 had successful side careers as studio musicians.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: As is common in the talk show format, The Max Weinberg 7 performed the show's opening and closing themes, played bumpers into and out of commercial breaks (they actually played through the entire break for the studio audience), and a short piece during O'Brien's crossover to his desk after his monologue (except for several months beginning in April 2008, where a commercial break was inserted at that point). The show's opening theme was written by Howard Shore and John Lurie (a finalist for the job as bandleader). The show's closing theme was called "Cornell Knowledge", and was lifted from Jerry and Jimmy Vivino's first album together. However, on "Late Night", it was played at a much quicker tempo than the album version.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: The band played a wide variety of songs as bumpers – usually popular music from a variety of eras. Weinberg sometimes took extended leaves of absence to tour with Bruce Springsteen as the drummer for his E Street Band. During his absence, temporary replacement drummers were hired (most commonly James Wormworth), and the band was led by Jimmy Vivino ("Jimmy Vivino and the Max Weinberg 7").


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Joel Godard, a long-time announcer for NBC shows, was the show's announcer and an occasional comedy contributor. These comedy bits usually revolved around Godard's supposed homosexual fetishes, deviant sexual habits, substance abuse, and suicidal tendencies. The humor came in part from Godard's delivery. No matter how depressing or deviant the topic being discussed he always did so in an exaggeratedly cheerful voice, and with a huge smile plastered on his face. Several sketches ended with Godard apparently committing suicide in his announcer's booth.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Members of the show's writing staff frequently appeared in sketches on the show. Among the most prolific were: Brian McCann (Preparation H Raymond, FedEx Pope, The Loser, Airsick Moth, Jerry Butters, Funhole Guy, Bulletproof Legs Guy, Adrian "Raisin" Foster, S&M Lincoln, etc.), Brian Stack (Hannigan the Traveling Salesman, Artie Kendall the Ghost Crooner, The Interrupter, Kilty McBagpipes, Fan-tastic Guy, Clive Clemmons, Frankenstein, Ira, Slipnut Brian, etc.), Jon Glaser (Segue Sam, Pubes, Awareness Del, Wrist Hulk, Ahole Ronald, Gorton's Fisherman, Jeremy, Slipnut Jon, etc.), Kevin Dorff (Coked-up Werewolf, Jesus Christ, Mansy the half-man/half-pansy, Joe's Bartender, Todd the Tiny Guy, etc.), and Andy Blitz (Awful Ballgame Chanter, Vin Diesel's brother Leonard Diesel, Slipnut Andy, Chuck Aloo aka the star of the "24" spin-off series "60"). Blitz went so far as to travel to India for one bit in which he carried his computer through the streets of India to get technical support firsthand from the telephone representative at NBC's technical help center. One of the show's graphic designers, Pierre Bernard was featured several sketches, such as: "Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage", and "Nerding It Up For Pierre".


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: "Late Night" employed a number of sketch actors, many of whom were frequently reused in different roles in different episodes. Several years before joining the cast of "Saturday Night Live", Amy Poehler often appeared as a regular in many sketches, she was best remembered for playing the role of Andy Richter's little sister, Stacy. Jack McBrayer frequently appeared as well. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog began as part of a sketch on "Late Night." Celebrities such as Dr. Joyce Brothers, Nipsey Russell, Abe Vigoda and James Lipton also made frequent cameo appearances in comedy sketches on the show at different periods.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Unusual for a late-night talk show, "Late Night" made frequent use of various costumed characters such as The Masturbating Bear, Robot on a Toilet, and Pimpbot5000. The humor in these sketches often derived from the crude construction of the characters' costumes as well as the absurdist nature of their conceptions. For example, Pimpbot5000 was a 1950s-style robot who dressed and acted in the manner of an exaggerated blaxploitation pimp, while The Masturbating Bear was a man in a bear costume wearing an oversized diaper who would inevitably begin to fondle himself to the tune of Aram Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" when brought on stage. Many of these characters did little more in their appearances than walk across the stage or be wheeled out from behind the curtain, but some had extensive sketches on the show.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: As part of O'Brien's 2004 contract renegotiation with NBC, he was tapped to replace Jay Leno as host of "The Tonight Show" five years later, in the summer of 2009. O'Brien's last "Late Night" was taped and aired on February 20, 2009. He indeed succeeded Leno and renamed the show "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" on June 1, 2009, and resigned as host just over seven months later, a result of the 2010 Tonight Show conflict.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: O'Brien's last season on "Late Night" attracted an average of 1.98 million viewers, compared to 1.92 million viewers for "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson".


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Executive producer Lorne Michaels said he wanted Fallon to be the new host dating back to the day that Fallon left "Saturday Night Live" in 2004, which occurred only a few months before O'Brien's departure was announced. According to Michaels:


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: During the years between Fallon's "SNL" departure and the announcement that he would take over "Late Night", Fallon concentrated on developing a feature film career, which Fallon himself said "really didn't work out that great."


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Fallon was announced as O'Brien's replacement in May 2008; at the time of the announcement, he was scheduled to debut in June 2009.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: To help him prepare for his new "Late Night" host role, Michaels had Fallon perform comedy in clubs and create a series of webisodes. A behind-the-scenes vlog documenting preparations for the new show launched on December 8, 2008, with new episodes being posted weeknights at 12:30 am ET.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Fallon's house band was hip-hop band The Roots, and his announcer was Steve Higgins, a producer for "Saturday Night Live". The show is produced by Lorne Michaels' Broadway Video in association with NBC's Universal Media Studios.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Upon Fallon assuming the hosting role, "Late Night" moved across the hall into Studio 6B, which had housed "The Tonight Show" under Jack Paar and then Johnny Carson. WNBC then used the space to originate its news broadcasts until shortly before "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" debuted. "Late Night" would move back to Studio 6A for the last few months of Fallon's tenure so that 6B could be renovated for "The Tonight Show"'s return to New York with Fallon as host.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Fallon premiered on March 2, 2009, with Robert De Niro, Justin Timberlake and Van Morrison appearing as his guests. Former "Late Night" host Conan O'Brien also made a cameo appearance.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: The "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" logo is based on the typeface Bureau Grotesque. NBC failed to correctly license the font program, causing them to be sued by the copyright holder of that program, Font Bureau, Inc. for software copyright infringement, although fonts alone cannot be copyrighted.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Fallon hosted his final episode of "Late Night" on February 7, 2014, when he welcomed Andy Samberg as his final guest. After a brief retrospective with Higgins about their time on "Late Night", the show ended with Fallon playing drums and singing backup to "The Weight" behind an ensemble of The Muppets. Upon the conclusion of the song, Fallon exited Studio 6A and walked silently down the hall to Studio 6B, through a door featuring his "Tonight Show" logo, where his cast and crew awaited him with an ovation.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: On May 12, 2013, NBC officially announced that Seth Meyers would become the new host of "Late Night" following Fallon's exit to preside over "The Tonight Show".


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Meyers' first episode of "Late Night" premiered February 24, 2014. His version of the show originates from Studio 8G in Rockefeller Center, previously home to "Jeopardy!" during its original run plus talk shows for Phil Donahue and Rosie O'Donnell, and NBC's coverage of the National Football League. It marks the first time that "Late Night" and "The Tonight Show" have been produced out of the same studio facility. In fact, Meyers' studio is directly above Fallon's, meaning that the shows cannot tape at the same time due to inefficient soundproofing and elevator capacities for audience members. "Late Night" begins taping at 6:30 PM, roughly thirty minutes after production of "The Tonight Show" wraps.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: Meyers' version of the show is orchestrated in the traditional late night talk show format. Each show usually begins with an opening monologue, then informal chatter at the desk, a comedy bit, celebrity guest interviews, and closing with a stand-up comedian or musical guest.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: The house band for Meyers' iteration of "Late Night" is "The 8G Band", led by eccentric actor/musician Fred Armisen, one of Meyers' former "Saturday Night Live" castmates. The two usually engage in a nightly exchange in which Armisen details (to great length) an absurd concept he has pioneered while Meyers plays the straight man and questions its validity. When Armisen is away from the show for various reasons (including to produce his television series "Portlandia"), he will sometimes appear in a taped comedy bit, and as with Weinberg's tenure, guest drummers or other performers will perform for the week with the 8G Band.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: As a tribute to the many NBC affiliates that air the show on a nightly basis, Meyers' desk features one coffee mug nightly sent by each NBC affiliate which sits to his left, which varies between featuring a station's logo or morning news imaging. Also on the desk is a Matryoshka doll in the style of Bill Hader's Stefon character with a veil embellishment, originally hand-crafted by Matryoshka artist Irene Hwang and commissioned for a "Saturday Night Live" crew holiday gift. Meyers and Stefon were "married" on "SNL".


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: One of the behind-the-scenes traditions of "Late Night" is the possession of a giant, plastic pickle by the current host. The pickle was originally sent to the "Late Night" offices by Letterman's staff for O'Brien and his crew, along with a note explaining that they had found the pickle in their offices when they began the show, it stayed there through their entire run, and it was only fitting that it remain there.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: When O'Brien went to host "The Tonight Show", he left behind the pickle for Fallon along with a handwritten note, reading in part: "Whenever you're done -- which won't be for a long time -- make sure you pass it on to the next sap. Knock 'em dead." Fallon first made public the pickle tradition in one of his regular video blog segments that led up to his "Late Night" premiere.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: During his final week hosting "Late Night" in early 2014, Fallon passed the pickle to Meyers during their interview, marking its first on-air appearance.


title: Late Night (franchise)

text: During Seth Meyers' run on March 18, 2015, the pickle makes a cameo during a skit called "Hannah Horvath Joins the Late Night Writing Staff", a character Lena Dunham portrays on the HBO TV series "Girls".


title: Snagglepuss

text: Snagglepuss is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character who debuted in prototype form in 1959 and established as a studio regular by 1961. A light pink anthropomorphic cougar sporting an upturned collar, shirt cuffs, and bow tie, Snagglepuss enjoys the fine things in life and shows particular affinity for the theatre. His stories routinely break the fourth wall as the character addresses the audience in self-narration, soliloquy, and asides. As originally voiced by Daws Butler, Snagglepuss seeks quasi-Shakespearean turns of phrase. Some of his campy verbal mannerisms became catchphrases: "Heavens to Murgatroyd!", "Exit, stage left!", and a fondness for closing sentences with the emphatic "even."


title: Snagglepuss

text: A pink mountain lion known as "Snaggletooth", featuring the eventual character's general manner and Bert Lahr-inspired voice but without collar or cuffs, first appeared on television in "The Quick Draw McGraw Show" in 1959. The character subsequently appeared in a supporting role in "Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy" and "Snooper and Blabber". Under the revised name Snagglepuss the character appeared in his own series of shorts in 1961 as a regular segment on "The Yogi Bear Show", featuring in 32 episodes. He later appeared in other Hanna-Barbera shows, including "Yogi's Gang" (1973), as a co-host in "Laff-A-Lympics" (1977–78), "Yogi's Treasure Hunt" (1985), and as a teenager in "Yo Yogi!" (1991).


title: Snagglepuss

text: Snagglepuss's appearance in a 1960s run of Kellogg's cereal television commercials prompted legal action by actor Bert Lahr, who said the similarity of the character's voice to his own could lead viewers to the false conclusion that Lahr himself had endorsed the product. As part of the settlement, the disclaimer "Snagglepuss voice by Daws Butler" was required to appear on each commercial. This made Butler one of the few voice artists to receive screen credits in a TV commercial.