title: Fred Allen

text: The show that became "Town Hall Tonight" was the longest-running hour-long comedy-based show in classic radio history. In 1940, Allen moved back to CBS Radio with a new sponsor and show name, "Texaco Star Theater", airing every Wednesday at 9:00 pm ET on CBS, then Sundays at 9:00 pm in the fall of 1941. By 1942, he shortened the show to half an hour, at 9:30 pm ET—under network and sponsor edict, not his own. He also chafed under being forced to give up a "Town Hall Tonight" signature, using barely known and amateur guests effectively, in favor of booking more recognizable guests, although he liked many of those. Guests included singers from Kingston, New York, the original woman behind the "Aunt Jemima" on pancake boxes, and singer Donald Gardner, from Saugerties, New York.


title: Fred Allen

text: Allen held himself personally responsible for the show's success, devoting much of his time to writing and rewriting routines and scripts. The overwork took a heavy toll on his health. His condition was diagnosed as hypertension, and he was forced to take more than a year off.


title: Fred Allen

text: Concurrent with his radio duties, Allen made occasional motion pictures, appearing in seven full-length features and three shorts between 1929 and 1952. His first film, filmed by Paramount Pictures at its New York studio, was "The Installment Collector" (1929), a nine-minute adaptation of one of his vaudeville acts, in which he remits a succession of personal articles to an insistent debt collector. Allen followed this with two shorts for Vitaphone, also filmed in New York. Allen's first feature film was the 1935 Dick Powell musical comedy "Thanks a Million", which "The New York Times" reviewed, naming only Allen in their headline. 1940's "Love Thy Neighbor" played off the comic feud with Jack Benny. His sole leading role was as flea circus impresario Fred F. Trumble Floogle, in the frenetic "It's in the Bag!", a loose adaptation of Ilf and Petrov's novel "The Twelve Chairs".


title: Fred Allen

text: In 1945 "The Fred Allen Show" returned to NBC, Sunday nights at 8:30 p.m. EST. Standard Brands' Blue Bonnet Margarine and Tender Leaf Tea, and later, Ford Motor Company, were the sponsors for the rest of the show's run. (Texaco revived "Texaco Star Theater" in 1948 on radio, and more successfully on television, making an American icon out of star Milton Berle).


title: Fred Allen

text: Allen again made a few changes, including the singing DeMarco Sisters, to whom he'd been tipped by arranger-composer Gordon Jenkins. "We did four years with Mr. Allen and got one thousand dollars a week," Gloria DeMarco remembered. "Sunday night was the best night on radio." Sunday night with Fred Allen seemed incomplete on any night listeners didn't hear the DeMarco Sisters, whose breezy, harmonious style became as familiar as their cheerfully sung "Mr. Al-len, Mr. Alll-llennnn" in the show's opening theme. During the theme's brief pause, Allen would say something like, "It isn't the mayor of Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga, kiddies." That device became a signature for three of the four years.


title: Fred Allen

text: The other change, born in the Texaco days and evolving from his earlier news spoofs, proved his most enduring, premiering December 6, 1942. The inspiration for the mythical Main Street of "Allen's Alley" came from the small-town heartland folks who were often profiled in the newspaper columns written by O. O. McIntyre (1884–1938), one of the most popular columnists of the 1930s with some seven million readers.


title: Fred Allen

text: "Allen's Alley" followed a brief Allen monologue and comic segment with Portland Hoffa ("Misssss-ter Allll-llennnn!"), usually involving gags about her family which she instigated. Then a brief music interlude would symbolize the two making their way to the fictitious Alley.


title: Fred Allen

text: The segment was always launched by a quick exchange that began with Hoffa asking Allen what he would ask the Alley denizens that week. After she implored him, "Shall we go?" Allen would reply with cracks like, "As the two drumsticks said when they spotted the tympani, let's beat it!'"; or "As one strapless gown said to the other strapless gown, 'What's holding us up?'"


title: Fred Allen

text: A small host of stereotypical characters greeted Allen and Hoffa down the Alley, discussing Allen's question of the week, usually drawing on news items or popular happenings around town, whether gas rationing, traffic congestion, the Pulitzer Prizes, postwar holiday travel, or the annual Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus visit.


title: Fred Allen

text: The Alley went through a few changes in the first installments. Early denizens included sarcastic John Doe (John Brown), self-possessed Senator Bloat and town drunk Sampson Souse (Jack Smart), dimwitted Socrates Mulligan (Charlie Cantor), pompous poet Falstaff Openshaw (Alan Reed), and wry Jewish housewife Pansy Nussbaum (Minerva Pious). By 1945, Pious and Reed were joined by two new Alley denizens: Parker Fennelly as stoic New England farmer Titus Moody, and Kenny Delmar, the new show's announcer, as bellowing Southern senator Beauregard Claghorn. Pious is credited with bringing Delmar to Allen's attention. Delmar based the blowhard character on a real-life person he had encountered while hitchhiking in 1928; Delmar had originally named the voice characterization "Dynamite Gus." Within weeks, Claghorn became one of the leading comedy characters of radio as listeners across the country began quoting his catchphrases: "Somebody, Ah say, somebody knocked"; "I'm from the South, Suh"; "That's a "joke," son"; and "Pay "attention," boy!" Claghorn served as the model for the Warner Bros. cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn, who first appeared the following August in the Oscar-nominated "Walky Talky Hawky".


title: Fred Allen

text: Other characters had catchphrases that were almost as famous as Claghorn's, such as Titus Moody's "Howdy, Bub", and Falstaff Openshaw's "That is precisely why I am here." Mrs. Nussbaum always greeted Allen by saying, "You were expecting maybe...", and then she would mispronounce the name of a glamorous film star, such as "Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra Bankhead?" The Alley sketches made only one further cast change, when Peter Donald's chipper Irishman Ajax Cassidy succeeded Reed's Falstaff.


title: Fred Allen

text: Despite the ethnic diversity, the Alley characters seemed less citified and more akin with O. O. McIntyre's small-town America. Allen's topical humor is sometimes thought an acquired taste for audiences curious about his generation of radio stars; Dunning has written that when he "went into topical humor, he may have forfeited his only opportunity to be the Mark Twain of his century. He had flashes of undeniable brilliance. But the main body of his work deals with the day-to-day fodder of another time, and sons have seldom been amused by the embarrassments or tragedies of their fathers."


title: Fred Allen

text: But others find many parallels to today's world and its absurdities. The "Allen's Alley" stereotypes make some cringe, as Allen biographer Robert Taylor noted (in "Fred Allen: His Life and Wit"), but others find them lancing more than lauding stereotypes, letting listeners make up their own minds about how foolish they could be. "Interestingly enough," wrote Frank Buxton and Bill Owen in "The Big Broadcast 1920-1950", "[Claghorn, Nussbaum, Moody, and Cassidy] were never criticized as being anti-Southern, anti-Semitic, anti-New England, or anti-Irish. The warmth and good humor with which they were presented made them acceptable even to the most sensitive listeners."


title: Fred Allen

text: Allen employed a writing staff but they served as his sounding boards and early draft consultants as much as actual writers; it was Allen who had the final edit and rewrite of each week's script, working as long as 12 hours a day on ideas or sketches. His ad-libbing ability caused many a show to fade away behind the ending network identification, because Allen often ate up air time. It was not as unusual for him as for others to sign off with "We're a little late, so good night, folks." Allen's habit of signing off late affected fellow former vaudevillian Phil Baker, whose quiz show "Take It or Leave It" immediately followed the Allen show. Baker hatched a comic plan to remedy the situation. He kept track of how much time he was losing to Allen over a period of a few months, and when the total reached 15 minutes, Baker barged into the studio 15 minutes earlier than scheduled—while Allen was on the air—and took over the show, welcoming the audience to "Take It or Leave It." Allen, aghast but amused, surrendered the microphone to Baker. Allen's parting shot was, "I'll write a letter to Senator Claghorn about this!"


title: Fred Allen

text: Allen also "died" more eloquently than other radio comics, particularly in the later years. When a joke was greeted with an awkward silence, Allen would comment on the lack of response, with his ad-libbed "explanation" almost always funnier than the original joke, a technique later adopted successfully by Johnny Carson.


title: Fred Allen

text: "The Fred Allen Show" was radio's top-rated show of the 1946–47 season. Allen was able to negotiate a lucrative new contract as a result not only of the show's success, but thanks in large measure to NBC's anxiety to keep more of its stars from joining Jack Benny in a wholesale defection to CBS as well as to retain their services for their rapidly expanding television programming. The CBS talent raids broke up NBC's hit Sunday night, and Benny also convinced George Burns and Gracie Allen and Bing Crosby to join his move.


title: Fred Allen

text: But a year later, Fred Allen was knocked off his perch, not by a talent raid but by a show on a third rival network, ABC (the former NBC Blue network). The quiz show "Stop the Music", hosted by Bert Parks (debuted 1948), required listeners to participate live by telephone. The show became a big enough hit to break into Allen's grip on that Sunday-night time slot. At first, Allen fought fire with his own kind of fire: he offered $5,000 to any listener getting a call from "Stop the Music" or any similar game show while listening to "The Fred Allen Show". He never had to pay up, nor was he shy about lampooning the game-show phenomenon (especially a riotous parody of another quiz show Parks hosted, lancing "Break the Bank" in a routine called "Break the Contestant" in which players didn't receive a thing but were compelled to give up possessions when they blew a question).


title: Fred Allen

text: Unfortunately, Allen fell to number 38 in the radio ratings, his fall compounded by the rise of television in many major cities. By this time, he had changed the show again somewhat, changing the famed "Allen's Alley" skits to take place on "Main Street," and rotating a new character or two in and out of the lineup. He stepped down from radio again in 1949, at the end of his show's regular season, as much under his doctor's orders (for Allen's continued hypertension) as because of his slipping ratings. He decided to take a year off, but it did more for his health than his career; after the June 26, 1949 show, on which Henry Morgan and Jack Benny guested, Fred Allen never hosted another radio show full-time again.


title: Fred Allen

text: Good friends in real life, Fred Allen and Jack Benny inadvertently hatched a running gag in 1937 when a child prodigy, violinist Stuart Canin, gave a very credible performance on the Allen show, inspiring an Allen wisecrack about "a certain alleged violinist" who should hide in shame over his poor playing. Allen often mentioned his show-business friends on the air ("Mr. Jacob Haley of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts" was Allen's way of saying hello to his pal Jack Haley), and on the Canin broadcast Allen knew Benny would be listening. Benny, according to Allen biographer Taylor, burst out laughing, then responded in kind on his own program. The rivalry gag went on for a decade and convinced some fans that the two comedians really were blood enemies.


title: Fred Allen

text: The Allen-Benny feud was the longest-playing, best-remembered dialogic running gag in classic radio history. The gag even pushed toward a boxing match between the two comedians and the promised event was a sellout, though the match never occurred. The pair even appeared together in films, including "Love Thy Neighbor" (1940) and "It's in the Bag!" (1945), Allen's only starring vehicle, also featuring William Bendix, Robert Benchley, and Jerry Colonna. He also starred with Oscar Levant in 20th Century-Fox's anthology film "O. Henry's Full House", in "The Ransom of Red Chief".


title: Fred Allen

text: Some of the feud's highlights involved Al Boasberg, who is credited with helping Benny refine his character into what may have been America's first stand-up comedian. Boasberg was well known behind the scenes as a top comedy writer and script doctor, but he seldom received recognition in public. He worked, uncredited, on many films (including the Marx Brothers' hits "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races"). Steaming mad because of his long battles for recognition, Boasberg was said to have delivered a tirade that ended up (in slightly altered form) in an Allen-Benny feud routine:


title: Fred Allen

text: ALLEN: Why, you fugitive from a Ripley cartoon ... I'll knock you flatter than the first eight minutes of this program.


title: Fred Allen

text: ALLEN: Why, if I was a horse, a pony even, and found out that any part of my tail was used in your violin bow, I'd hang my head in my oatbag from then on.


title: Fred Allen

text: Benny's side of the feud included a tart interpretation of Allen's "Town Hall Tonight" show, which Benny and company called "Clown Hall Tonight." A signature element of the feud was that, whenever one guested on the other's shows, the host would tend to hand the guest the best lines of the night. (Both Benny and Allen revealed later that each man's writers consulted with each other on routines involving the feud.)


title: Fred Allen

text: They toned the gag down after 1941, though they kept it going often enough as the years continued, climaxing on Allen's May 26, 1946 show, in which a sketch called "King for a Day," satirizing big-money game shows, featured Benny pretending to be a contestant named Myron Proudfoot on Allen's new quiz show.


title: Fred Allen

text: ALLEN: Tomorrow night, in your ermine robe, you will be whisked by bicycle to Orange, New Jersey, where you will be the judge in a chicken-cleaning contest.


title: Fred Allen

text: BENNY: Now "wait" a minute! (total audience hysteria and laughter, as Benny's pants are literally removed)


title: Fred Allen

text: Allen and Benny couldn't resist one more play on the feud on Allen's final show. Benny appeared as a skinflint bank manager and mortgage company owner bedeviling Henry Morgan. Typically, Allen handed Benny the show's best crack: ""Nobody" ever made me "this" cheap on my "own" program!"


title: Fred Allen

text: Benny even used the feud on his TV show, when Fred Allen appeared as a special guest in 1953. The program depicted Benny and Allen as rivals for the sponsor's favors. When the sponsor pointed out that Benny was also a musician, Allen countered with a passage on his clarinet.


title: Fred Allen

text: As Benny said in his co-memoir, "Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story", "[T]he sky was the limit. Or rather, the mud was the limit."


title: Fred Allen

text: Benny was profoundly shaken by Allen's sudden death from a heart attack in 1956. In a statement released the day after Allen's death, Benny said, "People have often asked me if Fred Allen and I were really friends in real life. My answer is always the same. You couldn't have such a long-running and successful feud as we did, without having a deep and sincere friendship at the heart of it."


title: Fred Allen

text: Allen may have battled censors more than most of his radio contemporaries. "Fred Allen's fourteen-year battle with radio censorship," wrote the "New York Herald-Tribune" critic John Crosby, "was made particularly difficult for him by the fact that the man assigned to reviewing his scripts had little sense of humor and frankly admitted he didn't understand Allen's peculiar brand of humor at all." Among the blue pencils, according to Crosby, were:


title: Fred Allen

text: "Allen not only couldn't poke fun at individuals," Crosby wrote. "He also had to be careful not to step on their professions, their beliefs, and sometimes even their hobbies and amusements. Portland Hoffa was once given a line about wasting an afternoon at the rodeo. NBC objected to the implication that an afternoon at the rodeo was wasted and the line had to be changed. Another time, Allen gagged that a girl could have found a better husband in a cemetery. (The censor) thought this might hurt the feelings of people who own and operate cemeteries. Allen got the line cleared only after pointing out that cemeteries have been topics for comedy since the time of Aristophanes." Allen's constant and sometimes intense—as well as often ridiculous—battles with censors may have aggravated his longtime problems with hypertension.


title: Fred Allen

text: After his own show ended, Allen became a regular attraction on NBC's "The Big Show" (1950–1952), hosted by Tallulah Bankhead. He appeared on 24 of the show's 57 installments, including the landmark premiere, and showed he had not lost his trademark ad-lib skill or his rapier wit. (The show's head writer, Goodman Ace, later told radio host Richard Lamparski that Allen's lucrative NBC contract was a large factor in getting him on the show, though Allen also wrote the segments on which he appeared and consulted with the respected Ace and staff on other portions of the show.)


title: Fred Allen

text: In some ways, "The Big Show" was an offspring of the old Allen show; his one-time "Texaco Star Theater" announcer, Jimmy Wallington, was one of "The Big Show's" announcers, and Portland Hoffa made several appearances with him as well. On the show's premiere, Allen – with a little prodding from head writer Goodman Ace – could not resist one more play on the old Allen-Benny "feud," a riotous parody of Benny's show called "The Pinch Penny Program."


title: Fred Allen

text: It was also on "The Big Show's" premiere that Allen delivered perhaps his best-remembered crack about television: "Well you know television's a new medium. And I have discovered why they call it a medium – because nothing is well done." That did not stop the Museum of Broadcast Communications from considering Allen "the intellectual conscience of television." Aside from his famous crack about not liking furniture that talked, Allen observed that television allowed "people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything."


title: Fred Allen

text: NBC insisted on Allen trying to adapt his radio show for television. He proposed bringing "Allen's Alley" to television in a visual setting similar to "Our Town". NBC apparently rejected the idea out of hand. "Television is a triumph of equipment over people," Allen observed after that, "and the minds that control it are so small that you could put them in the navel of a flea and still have enough room beside them for a network vice president's heart."


title: Fred Allen

text: In 1950 NBC launched the live comedy-variety series "The Colgate Comedy Hour", using rotating hosts instead of a regular master of ceremonies. Fred Allen was one of the original hosts, and appeared five times before dropping out in April 1951. The next effort, the Goodson-Todman production "Judge for Yourself" (subtitled "The Fred Allen Show"), was a game show incorporating musical acts. The idea was to allow Allen to ad-lib with guests à la Groucho Marx but, as author Alan Havig wrote, the star was "lost in the confusion of a half hour filled with too many people and too much activity." The complicated format had to be revamped in the middle of the run. The revised premise had Allen interviewing three panelists, who would listen to three new popular songs and vote for the one they thought had the most potential. Then came a comedy series, "Fred Allen's Sketchbook," which did not catch on.


title: Fred Allen

text: Allen credited Goodson and Todman for "keeping me alive" in show business. He landed a two-year stint as a panelist on the CBS quiz show "What's My Line?" from 1954 until his death on March 17, 1956. In July 1955 he took a week off from the show to have an emergency appendectomy. Allen's seat on the panel was taken by radio and TV humorist Robert Q. Lewis. The following week, Allen returned to the program—as the mystery guest. After the blindfolded panelists asked several questions, Lewis smiled and said, "I know who it is. Thank you for letting me work tonight!" Allen joked about the operation: "It was an emergency. The doctor needed some money hurriedly."


title: Fred Allen

text: Allen also spent his final years as a newspaper columnist/humorist and as a memoirist, renting a small New York office to work six hours a day without distractions. He wrote "Treadmill to Oblivion" (1954, reviewing his radio and television years) and "Much Ado About Me" (1956, covering his childhood and his vaudeville and Broadway years, and detailing especially vaudeville at its height with surprising objectivity); the former—which included many of his vintage radio scripts—was the best-selling book on radio's classic period for many years. After the frustrations and failures of his attempts to succeed on television, the popularity of "Treadmill" revealed Allen's potential as a literary humorist.


title: Fred Allen

text: Taking one of his regular late night strolls up New York's West 57th Street on Saturday night, March 17, 1956, Allen suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 61. A popular myth repeated for many years, first published in "The New York Times" story appearing the day after Allen's death, was that he had died while walking his dog. However, biographer Robert Taylor later revealed that Allen had never owned a dog. Allen died before he could complete the final chapter of his memoirs, and as a result the book was published as he had left it. He was a tireless letter writer, and his letters were edited by his wife into the publication of "Fred Allen's Letters" in 1965.


title: Fred Allen

text: During the following night's regular Sunday broadcast of "What's My Line?" at 10:30 p.m., barely 24 hours following Allen's death, host John Daly preceded the program with a special message to the viewing audience. He stated that earlier in the day the producers had considered replacing the regular game play with a special memorial episode, but Allen's wife Portland Hoffa stated that she preferred the show be conducted as it always had been, indicating that this is what Allen would have wanted. The program then proceeded as normal, but with a noticeably subdued tone. Steve Allen (no relation) took Fred's chair on the panel. During the final ninety seconds of the program Steve Allen, Arlene Francis and Bennett Cerf (whose eyes began to tear) gave brief but heartfelt tributes to Fred. A somber Dorothy Kilgallen thanked Steve Allen for stepping in and helping them to carry on at a difficult moment; a similar on-air farewell would air after Kilgallen herself died unexpectedly in 1965.


title: Fred Allen

text: Allen has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: a radio star at 6713 Hollywood Boulevard and a TV star at 7001 Hollywood Boulevard. Allen was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1988. A pedestrian passageway in the Boston Theater District, designated "Allen's Alley", also honors his memory.


title: Fred Allen

text: Allen's widow, Portland Hoffa, married bandleader Joe Rines in 1959 and celebrated a second silver wedding anniversary well before her own death of natural causes in Los Angeles on Christmas Day, 1990. Allen and Hoffa are buried alongside each other in section 47 at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York. Both Allen's real and stage names are engraved on the headstone.


title: Fred Allen

text: Several late-'30s Warner Bros. "Merrie Melodies" cartoon shorts feature parodies of Allen. Friz Freleng's "Toy Town Hall" (1936) is a spoof of Allen's "Town Hall Tonight", with toys that come to life in a boy's dreams and put on a variety show. Frank Tashlin's "The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos" (1937) features a Fred Allen fox screaming "Why doesn't somebody "tell" me these things!", hinting about his heated feuds with censors who were often at the last minute forcing script changes on his show because of its content. And Tex Avery's "Thugs with Dirty Mugs" (1938) features the main character addressing the audience and showing them his Fred Allen impersonation in one scene.


title: Fred Allen

text: In "Action Comics" #50 (July 1942), Superman quips, "Fred Allen would get a kick out of this!" as he hops on to the side of a moving train.


title: Scatology

text: Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (and thus where it has been), health and diseases such as tapeworms.


title: Scatology

text: A comprehensive study of scatology was documented by John Gregory Bourke under the title " Rites of All Nations" (1891), with a 1913 German translation including a foreword by Sigmund Freud. An abbreviated version of the work was published as "The Portable Scatalog" in 1994.


title: Scatology

text: The word derives from the Greek ( ) meaning "dung, feces"; "coprology" derives from the Greek of similar meaning.


title: Scatology

text: In psychology, a scatology is an obsession with excretion or excrement, or the study of such obsessions.


title: Scatology

text: In sexual fetishism, scatology (usually abbreviated "scat") refers to coprophilia, when a being is sexually aroused by fecal matter, whether in the use of feces in various sexual acts, watching someone defecating, or simply seeing the feces. Entire subcultures in sexuality are devoted to this fetish.


title: Scatology

text: In literature, "scatological" is a term to denote the literary trope of the grotesque body. It is used to describe works that make particular reference to excretion or excrement, as well as to toilet humor. Well known for his scatological tropes is the late medieval fictional character of Till Eulenspiegel. Another common example is John Dryden's "Mac Flecknoe", a poem that employs extensive scatological imagery to ridicule Dryden's contemporary Thomas Shadwell. German literature is particularly rich in scatological texts and references, including such books as Collofino's "Non Olet". A case which has provoked an unusual amount of comment in the academic literature is Mozart's scatological humour. Smith, in his review of English literature's representations of scatology from the Middle Ages to the 18th century, notes two attitudes towards scatology. One of these emphasises the merry and the carnivalesque. This is found in Chaucer and Shakespeare. The other attitude is one of self-disgust and misanthropy. This is found in the works of the Earl of Rochester and Jonathan Swift.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Geoff Keighley () is a Canadian video game journalist and television presenter. He was most known for hosting the video game show "GameTrailers TV", and for co-hosting the now-defunct "G4tv.com". Keighley is also a freelance writer whose work has appeared in "Kotaku", among other publications. Keighley was the executive producer of the Spike Video Game Awards, and has served as the executive producer and host of The Game Awards since its inaugural show in 2014. He has also hosted the E3 Coliseum event at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Keighley was born in 1978 and grew up in suburban Toronto. Both of Keighley's parents were executives at IMAX (and remain there as of 2022), with which came with membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Through his parents, he gained an appreciation of the Oscars and awards shows in general. He and his younger brother were exposed to computers and video games at a young age, both becoming fans of the medium. As a teenager, Keighley started "GameSlice" in 1996, a website for game reviews and journalism.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Keighley's foray into video game reporting and presentation had been through "Cybermania '94: The Ultimate Games Awards", the first video game awards show broadcast on television. Keighley was fourteen at the time, but, though his father's connections, was brought in to help write lines for the celebrity hosts to read. The show was not considered successful, aimed more for comedy than celebration, but from it, Keighley was inspired to develop some type of equivalent of the Academy Awards for video games in his career.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Keighley entered into the University of Southern California in 1997 to obtain a business degree. During that time, he pitched to "GameStop" a series of long-form articles to delve into the development of some popular games, inspired by VH1's "Behind the Music". His first such work was "Blinded by Reality: The True Story Behind the Creation of "Unreal"", covering the development of "Unreal". He had been able to get access to some of the behind the scenes at Epic Games as he had been friends with Epic's co-founder Mark Rein during his youth in Toronto. Other such works Keighley wrote for GameSpot included deep dives into the development of "Daikatana" and "Metal Gear Solid 2". Through these reports, Keighley gained numerous contacts with development studios, including open access to Valve. Following his business degree, Keighly entered into law school, inspired by a "Time" reporter suggesting he write in the crossover area of business and video games. Around this time in 2002, Keighley also began writing articles for "Entertainment Weekly" and "Fortune", and was also brought as a co-host of "The Electric Playground" alongside Tommy Tallarico by the show's creator Victor Lucas.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Spike TV brought on Keighley to host his own show, "GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley" in 2003. He was also involved in other video game-related projects on television. On Comcast's G4 network, he appeared as the network's lead anchor for its E3 press conference coverage, interviewing CEOs from companies like Sony and Electronic Arts. For MTV he created the concept and produced (with LivePlanet) "Gears of War: Race to E3" and "Gears of War: Race to Launch", two specials that took viewers inside the development of the hit Xbox 360 game from Microsoft. And in 2007, the Discovery Channel aired a five-hour documentary on releases including those of such companies as World of Wonder Productions, based on a treatment by Keighley, who also served as consulting producer. Geoff has also hosted and co-produced a number of video game launch specials for Spike TV, including "Madden NFL 08 Kickoff" featuring a performance by Ozzy Osbourne and "Halo 3: Launched!" featuring a performance by Linkin Park. He was also interviewed on what became a controversial Fox News segment on "Mass Effect", and was later praised by gamers online for being the only one on the show who had actually played the game.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Keighley had also come under some negative perception by gamers in 2012 after he was presenting information about "Halo 4" while sitting among stands advertising Mountain Dew and Doritos products. Several people critiqued this presentation as a sign of a lack of journalism standards, and the scenario became known as "Doritosgate" within the gaming community while Keighley was derogatorly called "Doritos Pope". Eurogamer's Robert Florence criticized Keighley's presentation and the state of game journalism at that time: "Geoff Keighley is often described as an industry leader. A games expert. He is one of the most prominent games journalists in the world. And there he sits, right there, beside a table of snacks. He will be sitting there forever, in our minds. That's what he is now. And in a sense, it is what he always was." The event led to Keighley reviewing his current career.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Keighley was invited by the producers of Spike's Video Game Awards program to help with the programming from 2006 onward. In 2013, Spike changed the format of the show and rebranded the awards as the VGX Awards. To Keighley, the format became more commercial and promotional rather than a celebration of video game achievements, and coupled with the ridicule he faced from Doritosgate in 2012, he opted to leave the show.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Through 2014, he funded his own efforts to put together a new awards show, gaining the support of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo as well as major publications and industry leaders. Keighley thus established The Game Awards which were first presented in December 2014, and which Keighley remains the primary host.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Keighley had been a participant of E3, the annual video game trade show, since its start, and starting in E3 2017, Keighley had arranged and hosted the E3 Coliseum, a live-streaming event running over the course of E3 that brought in developers and publishers at E3 for interviews and other discussions. However, with the Entertainment Software Association making significant changes to the format of E3 2020 (prior to its cancellation due to the COVID-19 pandemic), Keighley stated he will not be organizing an E3 Coliseum event nor attending the show for the first time in 25 years.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: With E3's cancellation among other several other trade shows and events like Gamescom from the pandemic, Keighley worked with several major publishers and video game industry leaders to launch the first Summer Game Fest from May to August 2020. During this period, Keighley helped developers and publishers present game announcements and other presentations, along with Steam and Xbox to provide game demos during this period. Summer Games Fest was also held in 2021 and 2022 as a virtual event with plans to expand to an inperson event in 2023 which will place in direct competition with E3.


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Keighley's GameSpot articles since evolved into a series of articles "The Final Hours", where he has in-depth access to the various studios near the end of a development period and write in depth about the process as the game is nearing completion. In more recent years, these articles are released as mobile apps. In a July 2008 interview on "The Jace Hall Show", Keighley spoke about the importance of this process, stating "There's such a lack of investigative journalism. I wish I had more time to do more, sort of, investigation. Really dig into some of these bigger issues, so I could look at like, the 'Red Ring of Death' problem. That's never really been properly reported about, like what really happens."


title: Geoff Keighley

text: Keighley appeared as a holographic character in the game "Death Stranding". A mask of Geoff Keighley's face was also added to the video game "Among Us". In August 2021, Geoff Keighley was cast as Uncle Theodore in "Muppets Haunted Mansion". Keighley also had a brief cameo role in "The Matrix Resurrections", as a game awards presenter.


title: Kuala Lumpur City F.C.

text: Kuala Lumpur City Football Club, known simply as KL City FC, is a Malaysian professional football club based in Kuala Lumpur. The club competes in the Malaysia Super League, the top level of Malaysian football, and was founded in 1974 as Federal Territory by the Kuala Lumpur Football Association (KLFA). It was later renamed Kuala Lumpur FA and Kuala Lumpur United, before renaming to its current name in 2021.


title: Kuala Lumpur City F.C.

text: Kuala Lumpur City won two Malaysian league titles, four Malaysian Cups, three Malaysian FA Cups, and three Malaysian Charity Shields. It also played in the group stages of the Asian Club Championship on two occasions.


title: Kuala Lumpur City F.C.

text: Following its founding, a fierce rivalry developed between Kuala Lumpur and Selangor mainly due to their geographical location. The battle between these two teams is often referred to as the Klang Valley Derby, which was renewed in the 2010 season after Kuala Lumpur ended a seven-year spell in the second-tier with promotion to the Malaysia Super League. Kuala Lumpur were relegated to the second-tier Malaysia Premier League in 2012 and the following year, in 2013, Kuala Lumpur were relegated to the third-tier Malaysia FAM League for the first time in its history.


title: Kuala Lumpur City F.C.

text: Kuala Lumpur had its most successful period in the late 1980s when they won the national league twice, in 1986 and 1988. They also won the Malaysia Cup for three consecutive years (1987, 1988 and 1989). The team enjoyed considerable success in cup competitions in the 1990s, winning the Malaysian FA Cup in 1993, 1994 and 1999. Kuala Lumpur won the Malaysian Charity Shield on three occasions, in 1988, 1995 and 2000.


title: Kuala Lumpur City F.C.

text: In September 2020, the club was privatized in accordance to the privatization process by the Football Association of Malaysia and was renamed as Kuala Lumpur United. In December 2020, Stanley Bernard was named the new CEO of the club.


title: Kuala Lumpur City F.C.

text: In March 2021, prior to the 2021 Malaysia Super League season, the team changed its name to Kuala Lumpur City. During the same season, Kuala Lumpur City defeated Johor Darul Ta'zim 2–0 in the final of the 2021 Malaysia Cup, winning the cup for the first time in 32 years.


title: Stand by Me Doraemon 2

text: Netflix acquired distribution rights to the film outside Asia (despite it streaming in Asian Netflix as a non-Netflix Original) and was released on December 24, 2021, on the streaming platform. It is the sixth highest grossing animated film of 2020.


title: Stand by Me Doraemon 2

text: Nobita - following his previous movie adventure - has managed to change his future for the better, making Shizuka marry him. Taken by despair, however, he decides to return to the past to re-meet his beloved grandmother, who died when he was still in kindergarten and whom he was really fond of. The grandmother is happy that Nobita came back in time to be with her, and confides in him a great desire: to meet his future bride. Meanwhile, the Nobita of the future, who is about to marry Shizuka and crown his "dream of happiness", is seized by a panic attack and flees into the past to see Doraemon again, fearing that he is not the right person for Shizuka.


title: Stand by Me Doraemon 2

text: However, the duo of Nobita and Doraemon is involved in a series of mishaps in the future, as well as the present, in order to fulfill Grandma’s wish of seeing Nobita's bride. What takes place, is a roller coaster of emotions, fun and suspense.


title: Stand by Me Doraemon 2

text: It was originally scheduled to release in theaters on 7 August 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film was temporarily removed from the release schedule, and was replaced by "" (which had been postponed from a previous March release). The film was then postponed to 20 November 2020 when it was given a theatrical release in Japan. The film was released in Indonesia on 19 February 2021, Malaysia on 5 March 2021 and India on 4 September 2022. Netflix released an English dub in Japan on 6 November 2021 featuring role reprisals of the cast of Bang Zoom! Entertainment's English dub of the 2005 anime. Netflix also released both the English and Japanese dub (with subtitles for each) worldwide on December 24, 2021.


title: Stand by Me Doraemon 2

text: Debuting on 416 screens with limitations on seating capacity due to COVID-19 pandemic, "Stand by Me Doraemon 2" earned $3.7million on 305,000 admissions in its first weekend and ranked number-two on Japanese box office.


title: LA Fitness

text: LA Fitness (doing business as LA Fitness International LLC) is an American gym chain with more than 700 clubs across the United States and Canada. The company was formed in 1984 and is based in Irvine, California.


title: LA Fitness

text: LA Fitness was founded in 1984 by founder Chinyol Yi and Louis Welch in Los Angeles, California. Through the mid-1990s, the company expanded by acquiring under-performing fitness clubs in southern California, and by developing, opening and operating newly constructed properties.


title: LA Fitness

text: In 2007, the company expanded outside of the United States by acquiring six fitness clubs in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, the company acquired ten locations in Phoenix from Pure Fitness Arizona. Within a year, all but one of the former Pure Fitness clubs were closed.


title: LA Fitness

text: In the 2009 Collier Township shooting, also referred to as the LA Fitness shooting because it took place in an LA Fitness health club in Collier Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, four people were killed.


title: LA Fitness

text: On November 30, 2011, the company completed the acquisition of 171 clubs, for $153M, from Bally Total Fitness. LA Fitness then began closing some former Bally Fitness clubs near existing LA Fitness facilities and remodeling others.


title: LA Fitness

text: On July 2, 2012, the company completed the acquisition of all 33 Lifestyle Family Fitness Clubs in Florida. According to Lifestyle CEO, Stuart Lasher, "we evaluated our option to remain an independent company or to sell to a larger organization. After careful consideration, the board of directors has made the decision to sell all of the Lifestyle Family Fitness clubs in Florida to LA Fitness."


title: LA Fitness

text: On December 23, 2013, LA Fitness announced the acquisition of The Buffalo and Rochester Athletic Clubs in western New York.


title: LA Fitness

text: On December 30, 2013, they completed the acquisition of all 10 Vision Quest Sport and Fitness clubs in the greater Seattle area.


title: LA Fitness

text: Starting in 2018, LA Fitness offers high-intensity interval training classes at certain renovated clubs for a separate fee, incorporating heart rate monitors by Myzone.


title: LA Fitness

text: In early 2020, LA Fitness launched their new down market Esporta Fitness brand (intended to compete with high volume low price gyms such as Planet Fitness), and rebranded several former LA Fitness locations as Esporta Fitness.


title: Gabriela Silang

text: María Josefa Gabriela Cariño de Silang (; 19 March 1731 – 20 September 1763) was a Filipino military leader best known for her role as the female leader of the Ilocano independence movement from Spain. She took over from her second husband Diego Silang after his assassination in 1763, leading her people for four months before she was captured and executed by the colonial government of the Captaincy General of the Philippines.


title: Gabriela Silang

text: Gabriela Silang was born in Barangay Caniogan, Santa, Ilocos Sur to a Spanish Ilocano father named Anselmo Cariño, a trader who ferried his wares from Vigan to Abra along the Abra River and a descendant of Ignacio Cariño, the first Galician from Spain to arrive in Candon, Ilocos Sur in the late 17th century. Her mother was a Tinguian who was from a Tinguian barrio in San Quintin, Abra (now Pidigan).


title: Gabriela Silang

text: She received a Catholic upbringing from the town's parish priest, and attained elementary level education at the town's convent school. After being separated from her parents early in her childhood, she was raised by a priest, who eventually arranged a marriage between her and the wealthy businessman. They married in 1751, and he died three years later.


title: Gabriela Silang

text: After being widowed by her first husband, Gabriela met future insurgent leader Diego Silang and married him in 1757.


title: Gabriela Silang

text: In 1762, as part of what would later be known as the Seven Years' War, the Kingdom of Great Britain declared war on Spain, and captured Manila, resulting in the British occupying the city and nearby Cavite. After the capture of Manila, an emboldened Diego sought to initiate an armed struggle to overthrow Spanish functionaries in Ilocos and replace them with native-born officials. He joined forces with the British, who appointed him governor of Ilocos on their behalf. During this revolt, Gabriela became one of Diego's closest advisors and his unofficial aide-de-camp during skirmishes with Spanish troops. She was also a major figure in her husband's co-operation with the British.


title: Gabriela Silang

text: Spanish authorities retaliated by offering a reward for Diego’s assassination. Consequently, his two former allies, Miguel Vicos and Pedro Becbec, killed him in Vigan on May 28, 1763.


title: Gabriela Silang

text: After Diego's assassination, Gabriela fled to Tayum, Abra to seek refuge in the house of her paternal uncle, Nicolás Cariño. There, she appointed her first two generals, Miguel Flores and Tagabuen Infiel. She later assumed her husband's role as commander of the rebel troops and achieved a "priestess" status amongst her community and followers. Her popular image as the bolo-wielding "La Generala" on horseback stems from this period.


title: Gabriela Silang

text: On September 10, 1763, Silang attempted to besiege Vigan but the Spanish retaliated, forcing her into hiding. She retreated once more to Abra, where the Spanish later captured her. On September 20, 1763, Silang and her troops were executed by hanging in Vigan's central plaza.


title: Gabriela Silang

text: She is remembered as the “Joan of Arc of Ilocandia” The Order of Gabriela Silang is the sole third class national decoration awarded by the Philippines whose membership is restricted to women. The organisation and party list Gabriela Women's Party ("General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership, and Action"), which advocates for women's rights and issues, was founded in April 1984 in her honour. The BRP Gabriela Silang (OPV-8301) is named after her. Asteroid 7026 Gabrielasilang, discovered by Eleanor Helin at Palomar in 1993, is named in her honor. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 November 2019 ().


title: Gabriela Silang

text: A list of the closest-living relatives of Gabriela Cariño Silang through her paternal uncle, Nicolas Cariño:


title: Gabriela Silang

text: Some of Silang's living relations still reside in the ancestral house at the Cariño family seat of Tayum. The house, now a museum and art gallery called the "Casa Museo Cariño", is maintained by Rosarito A. Cariño. Among the rooms on display is the bedroom of Gabriela Cariño Silang while she used the house of her uncle, Nicolas Cariño, as her headquarters when she fled after Diego's murder in 1763.


title: 2020–21 Juventus F.C. season

text: The 2020–21 season was the 123rd season in the existence of Juventus and the club's 14th consecutive season in the top flight of Italian football. In addition to the domestic league, Juventus participated in this season's editions of the Coppa Italia, the Supercoppa Italiana, and the UEFA Champions League. The season covered the period from 1 September 2020 to 30 June 2021. On 25 November 2021, an eight-episode docu-series called "All or Nothing: Juventus", which followed the club throughout the season, by spending time with the players behind the scenes both on and off the field, was released on Amazon Prime.


title: 2020–21 Juventus F.C. season

text: ! colspan="18" style="background:#dcdcdc; text-align:center"| Players transferred/loaned out during the season


title: Javonte Williams

text: Javonte Williams (born April 25, 2000) is an American football running back for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at North Carolina and was drafted by the Broncos in the second round of the 2021 NFL Draft.


title: Javonte Williams

text: Williams attended Wallace-Rose Hill High School in Teachey, North Carolina. As a senior, he rushed for 2,271 rushing yards and 27 touchdowns. He committed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his only FBS offer. He graduated as his school’s valedictorian.


title: Javonte Williams

text: As a true freshman at North Carolina in 2018, Williams played in 11 games, rushing 43 times for 224 yards and five touchdowns. As a sophomore in 2019, he played in all 13 games and shared carries with Michael Carter. He ran for 933 yards on 166 carries with five touchdowns. Williams returned to North Carolina in 2020 and again shared carries with Carter. Throughout the 2020 season, Williams was statistically one of the top running backs in the country. Williams' name was mentioned during the season as a "dark horse" candidate for the 2020 Heisman Trophy. Against Miami (FL), Williams and backfield counterpart Carter combined for an NCAA-record 544 rushing yards as a duo in the Tar Heels' 62–26 blowout victory. Williams and Carter were both named to the 2020 Pro Football Focus First-team All-America at the running back position. PFF also named him the 2020 ACC Football Player of the Year with a record-breaking 95.9 PFF rushing grade, the highest rushing grade in a single season since the site began covering college players.


title: Javonte Williams

text: Williams was selected by the Denver Broncos in the second round, 35th overall, of the 2021 NFL Draft. Williams signed his four-year rookie contract with Denver on July 23, 2021.


title: Javonte Williams

text: Heading into his first training camp, Williams competed with Royce Freeman and Mike Boone for the backup running back role. After the Broncos released Freeman during final roster cuts, they officially named Williams the backup running back, behind veteran starter Melvin Gordon.


title: Javonte Williams

text: Williams made his NFL debut in the Broncos' Week 1 victory against the New York Giants, recording 14 carries for 45 yards. Williams scored his first professional rushing touchdown against the New York Jets in Week 3, as the Broncos won the game 26–0. In Week 9, against the Dallas Cowboys, he had his first game going over 100 rushing yards with 111 on 17 carries. Williams received his first career start in Week 12 against the Kansas City Chiefs, as he replaced an injured Melvin Gordon. Williams finished the game with 23 carries for 102 yards, six receptions for 76 yards and a receiving touchdown, though the Broncos lost the game 22–9.


title: Javonte Williams

text: Overall, Williams finished his rookie season appearing in all 17 games (one start) and recorded 203 carries for 903 yards (4.4 YPC) and four rushing touchdowns plus 43 receptions for 319 yards and three receiving touchdowns.


title: Javonte Williams

text: During Week 4 against the Las Vegas Raiders, Williams went down with a knee injury and left the game. It was later revealed that he suffered tears to the ACL, LCL, and posterolateral corner. The injury prematurely ended his 2022 season.


title: Rory Scovel

text: Rory J. Scovel (born August 6, 1980) is an American comedian, actor, and writer. He released his first stand-up comedy album "Dilation" in 2011. He has since released the stand-up specials "The Charleston Special" (2015), "Rory Scovel Tries Stand-Up for the First Time" (2017), and "Live Without Fear" (2021).


title: Rory Scovel

text: As an actor, he began his career on as part of the main cast on the sitcoms "Ground Floor" (2013–2015) and "Those Who Can't" (2016–2019), co-starred in the romantic comedy film "I Feel Pretty" (2018), and also appeared in and wrote for the comedy series "The Eric Andre Show" (2012–2016). In the 2020s, he created and starred in his Comedy Central series "Robbie" (2020) and currently stars in the Apple TV+ series "Physical" (2021–present).


title: Rory Scovel

text: Rory J. Scovel was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on August 6, 1980. He has six siblings. He played basketball, tennis, and soccer as a child, and has described himself as hyperactive and a class clown. He attended St. Mary's Catholic School, then Christ Church Episcopal School, from kindergarten through eighth grade. He graduated from Greenville Senior High School in 1999. Scovel spent one year attending the University of Central Florida before enrolling at University of South Carolina Upstate, from which he graduated with a communications degree in 2003. While there, he played Division II soccer.


title: Rory Scovel

text: Scovel first performed comedy in December 2003 at an open mic night in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He had just graduated from college and was working as a cameraman at the local television stations WSPA. The following year, he moved to Washington D.C., where he performed for three years. He then moved to New York City, where he performed for three years until he moved to Los Angeles, where he now lives.


title: Rory Scovel

text: In 2006, Scovel participated in the Seattle International Comedy Competition; he made it to the finals.


title: Rory Scovel

text: In 2010, he performed his first set for a late night show on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon". The following year, Scovel performed on "Conan" with comedian Jon Dore using the premise that the show had accidentally booked two comedians; Scovel would go on to perform on and be interviewed by Conan many times in the following decade. Scovel also released his first stand-up album with Stand Up! Records, "Dilation". Scovel and the record were named by "The Huffington Post" as one of fourteen in their "Guide To New Comedy Albums of 2011".


title: Rory Scovel

text: In 2012, Scovel was named among the 10 Comics to Watch by "Variety" magazine. In April of that year, his half-hour set was featured on Comedy Central's "The Half Hour". In 2013, he performed a show at the performance venue at Third Man Records, Jack White's record label. The live show was recorded to tape and transferred to vinyl. There is no digital version of this recording. White would later executive produce Scovel's 2017 special for Netflix.


title: Rory Scovel

text: In 2015, Scovel taped his first hour-long stand-up special at the Woolfe Street Playhouse in Charleston, South Carolina; the special was aptly named "Rory Scovel: The Charleston Special". In 2017, his next special, "Rory Scovel Tries Stand-Up for the First Time", was released by Netflix.


title: Rory Scovel

text: Scovel has opened for comedians such as Louis C.K., Nick Swardson, and Daniel Tosh. He has performed at the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival, the FYF Fest in Los Angeles, the Vancouver Comedy Festival, the Del Close Improv Marathon in New York, the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, and the Chicago Improv Festival.


title: Rory Scovel

text: Scovel's breakthrough acting role was as Harvard in the TBS sitcom "Ground Floor." He was a main character for both seasons of the show, which aired from 2013 to 2015. Following the cancellation of "Ground Floor", Scovel joined the main cast of "Those Who Can't", which began airing on TruTV in 2016, reprising his role as Principal Quinn from the 2013 Amazon film of the same name. He had various small acting and voice acting roles throughout the 2010s, including recurring roles on MTV's "Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous", NBC's "Undateable", and TBS' "Wrecked". Scovel had a small role in Demetri Martin's indie comedy film "Dean". He had a supporting role in the 2017 wide-release comedy "The House". Notably, he starred as the main love interest in the 2018 Amy Schumer comedy film "I Feel Pretty".


title: Rory Scovel

text: Scovel was part of the writing staff for the second and fourth seasons of "The Eric Andre Show", which aired in 2013 and 2016, respectively. He was featured in the show's "New Years Eve Spooktacular" as well as an episode in season two where he played the fictional Chef Rory Scovel.


title: Rory Scovel

text: In November 2018, it was announced that Comedy Central had green-lit an eight-episode scripted television series produced, co-written, and starring Scovel, called "Robbie". In a February 2020 interview, Scovel disclosed that the show had been produced and was looking for a distributor. On May 6, 2020, Comedy Central announced that "Robbie" would premiere later that week. The show premiered on May 7, 2020, at which time Comedy Central released the series in its entirety on its streaming platform and YouTube. "Robbie" is Comedy Central's first binge-release. Recently, Scovel played the lead in the Chris Blake quarantine comedy, "Distancing Socially" filmed remotely using the iPhone 11. The film was acquired and released by Cinedigm in October 2021.


title: Rory Scovel

text: Since 2018, Scovel has co-hosted "The Pen Pals Podcast" with fellow comedian Daniel Van Kirk. Scovel has appeared on several popular podcasts, including "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" with Conan O'Brien, "Comedy Bang! Bang!" with Scott Aukerman, "Doug Loves Movies" with Doug Benson, "Sklarbro Country" with The Sklar Brothers, "The Nerdist Podcast" with Chris Hardwick, "You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes", Maximum Fun's "Stop Podcasting Yourself", "The Dead Authors Podcast" with Paul F. Tompkins, "The Dollop" live at the 2016 Riot LA Comedy Festival with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds, "The Todd Glass Show", and "WTF with Marc Maron", "Mega", and "Films to Be Buried With with Brett Golstein".


title: Rory Scovel

text: Scovel is married to actress Jordan Boughrum. They live in Los Angeles, where their daughter was born in 2015.


title: Monique Alexander

text: Monique Alexander is an American pornographic actress, nude model, and 2017 AVN Hall of Fame inductee. Alexander has also been an advocate for free speech and sex education, and has appeared on "Fox News" and in a debate at Yale University addressing these topics. In addition to her pornographic work, she has had several cameo appearances in mainstream films and television shows.


title: Monique Alexander

text: Alexander began working in the adult industry as a stripper in Sacramento when she was 18 years old to supplement her daytime earnings as a receptionist. She started performing in adult films in 2001 beginning with a girl-girl scene. In addition to a catalog of solely girl-girl hardcore work, she appeared in a handful of softcore erotic films produced by HBO and Cinemax such as "Hotel Erotica", "The Sex Spa", "Sex House", and "Voyeur: Inside Out".


title: Monique Alexander

text: Alexander was a contract girl for Vivid Entertainment from 2004 to 2009. After years of appearing only in girl-girl scenes, she began appearing in boy-girl scenes in 2005, including an interactive DVD and a feature role with Rocco Siffredi in Vivid's "Lexie and Monique Love Rocco". She was a Trophy Girl at the 2002 AVN Awards ceremony in Las Vegas.


title: Monique Alexander

text: Alexander appeared in a mainstream film entitled "Spider's Web" with Stephen Baldwin and Kari Wuhrer in 2002.


title: Monique Alexander

text: Alexander made a cameo appearance in the Season 3 finale of the HBO series "Entourage". In 2007, she became a sports reporter on National Lampoon Comedy Radio's "The Phil Show".


title: Monique Alexander

text: Alexander was invited to the Fox News show "Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld" to discuss a nonpartisan study that found that abstinence-only programs for teens do not work, whereas safe sex education programming was highly successful. Alexander discussed what being a Vivid Girl meant to her as well as her preference for hands-on sex education, with the segment airing on November 10, 2007. On February 15, 2008, she and Ron Jeremy represented the industry in a debate at Yale University against pornography opponents Craig Gross (founder of the XXX Church) and Donnie Pauling, a former porn producer, and the debate was aired on ABC's "Nightline".


title: Monique Alexander

text: In 2017, Alexander starred in a public service campaign encouraging parents to discuss sexual health education with their children, noting that children are likely to see pornography at some point in their childhood, and need to be informed that what is portrayed in pornography is an unrealistic representation of sexual behavior.


title: Carl Ruiz

text: Carl Albert Ruiz (April 4, 1975 – September 21, 2019), also known as Carl "The Cuban" Ruiz, was an American restaurant owner and celebrity chef, best known as a judge on various US cooking competition television series on Food Network, such as "Guy's Grocery Games."


title: Carl Ruiz

text: Ruiz was born on April 4, 1975, in Passaic, New Jersey, to Yezzid and Elisa Ruiz. His father was Colombian and his mother Cuban. His brother George credits their mother and grandmother's cooking for inspiring Carl. He attended the Collegiate School. He was a classically-trained chef who graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education, in New York City.


title: Carl Ruiz

text: Ruiz worked as a sous chef at Dish, a restaurant in Clifton, New Jersey, before being hired as executive chef at Sabor in North Bergen, New Jersey circa 2002. In July 2002, he was hired by the new owner of Stephen's Cafe of North Bergen as a consulting chef for a relaunch of the operation. Ruiz relocated to New York City as the first decade of the 21st century came to a close, working as an executive chef at Son Cubano, a short-lived Cuban restaurant on West 27th Street in Manhattan. The 80-seat restaurant featured live Cuban music and a night club atmosphere.


title: Carl Ruiz

text: By 2011, Ruiz was executive chef at Brick Oven in Morristown, New Jersey. Together with his then wife, Marie Riccio, on October 10, 2011, Ruiz opened an Italian deli and cafe, Marie's Italian Specialties, in the Hickory Square Mall in Chatham Township, New Jersey. This cafe was memorably referred to by one food reviewer as "the type of deli you might have visited as a child when visiting your grandmother's house — if your grandmother lived in Hoboken or Jersey City in the 1950s."


title: Carl Ruiz

text: It was through this restaurant, and its distinctive food, that Ruiz first made the acquaintance of celebrity chef Guy Fieri. Fieri filmed an episode of his popular Food Network television show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" featuring Marie's Italian Specialties in October 2012, with an initial air date of January 21, 2013. Fieri would ultimately feature the restaurant twice on the show, boosting the popularity of the nine table deli as well as Ruiz's professional profile. Ruiz was later hired to be a judge on other shows starring Fieri, including "Guy's Grocery Games" and "Guy's Ranch Kitchen".


title: Carl Ruiz

text: Ruiz and Riccio subsequently divorced, with Riccio retaining Marie's Italian Specialties following the split. In June 2019, Ruiz opened a new restaurant specializing in authentic Cuban fare, called La Cubana, in the Meatpacking District of New York City. Ruiz held the position of Executive Chef at the new eatery. Through connection to his high-profile friend Fieri, Ruiz would become a frequent guest on the Sirius XM radio show "Opie and Anthony" and its successor, "The Opie Radio Show", along with Sherrod Small and Vic Henley. Following that show's cancellation, Ruiz would continue to be a regular on the Opie Radio podcast until the time of his death.


title: Carl Ruiz

text: Ruiz was well known as a judge on "Guy's Grocery Games", and he also won the most as a competitor raising money as part of various tournaments. His humor and wit made him a fan favorite.


title: Carl Ruiz

text: Ruiz died in his sleep on Saturday, September 21, 2019, aged 44. The cause of death was determined to be atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. He was visiting friends in Bel Air, Maryland, when he died.


title: Vail Resorts

text: Vail Resorts, Inc. is an American mountain resort company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. The company is divided into three divisions. The mountain segment owns and operates 40 mountain resorts in four countries, Vail Resorts Hospitality owns or manages hotels, lodging, condominiums and golf courses, and the Vail Resorts Development Company oversees property development and real estate holdings.


title: Vail Resorts

text: Vail Resorts was founded as Vail Associates Ltd. by Pete Seibert and Earl Eaton in the early 1960s. Eaton, a lifelong resident, led Siebert (a former WWII 10th Mountain Division ski trooper) to the area in March 1957. They both became ski patrol guides at Aspen, Colorado, when they shared their dream of finding the "next great ski mountain." Siebert set off to secure financing and Eaton engineered the early lifts. Their Vail ski resort opened in 1962. George N. Gillett Jr. purchased Vail Associates in 1985. Vail Associates changed its name to Vail Resorts and went public in 1997 after Gillett Holdings went bankrupt. Apollo Management, headed by Leon Black, bought the company out of bankruptcy and took Vail Resorts public, controlling Vail Resorts until 2003, when Apollo divested itself of controlling interest. The skating rink at Beaver Creek, Colorado, was named the Black Family Skating Rink after Leon Black.


title: Vail Resorts

text: Rob Katz, a former executive at Apollo, ran Vail Resorts as CEO until November 2021, when he was appointed executive chairperson of the board. Kirsten Lynch, the company's former chief marketing officer, then took over as CEO.


title: Vail Resorts

text: Some of Vail Resort's acquisitions have fueled anger among local residents. Locals complain that the Vail's pass structure caters to wealthy international pass holders and reduces access to nearby residents; additionally, residents have seen their cost-of-living increase following Vail's takeovers.


title: Vail Resorts

text: In 2001, Vail Resorts acquired the luxury hotel chain RockResorts, which contributed substantially to their brand recognition. RockResorts was named after its original owners, the Rockefeller Family. As of January 2017, the properties include:


title: Vail Resorts

text: All of the company's retail operations are run by a smaller company, [Vail Resorts Retail, VRR], of which Vail owns 70%. The owners of the other 30% are the Gart Brothers, specifically Tom Gart, Ken Gart and John Gart. The Gart family have been in the sporting goods business for 3 generations and were the former owners of Gart Sports, the large chain of sporting goods stores in the western US. Gart Sports was sold by the Gart family in the 1990s and then recently sold again to Sports Authority, which discontinued the use of the Gart Sports name in 2006. In 2010, Vail completed the buyout of the Specialty Sports Venture brand and is now the 100% owner of all SSV operations. In addition to all of the ski shops in the Vail Resorts portfolio of ski areas, the SSV chain of stores includes Bicycle Village in Denver, Colorado Ski & Golf, Boulder Ski Deals, Aspen Sports, Telluride Sports and Mountain Sports Outlet in Summit County and Glenwood Springs and many others. SSV is reportedly the largest Trek bicycles dealer in the world.


title: Vail Resorts

text: Vail Resorts also owns just over 50% of Slifer Smith and Frampton (SSF), the largest real estate brokerage company in the Vail region, controlling over 70% of the real estate transactions in the market. Slifer, Smith and Frampton was called Slifer, Smith and Frampton/Vail Associates Real Estate, but they dropped the "Vail Associates" name in 2003. The founders of SSF are Rod Slifer, a former ski instructor who was recently the mayor of the Town of Vail, Mark Smith, a real estate broker/turned developer who currently also runs East West Partners with Harry Frampton, who was the former President of Vail Associates and currently owns East West Partners. East West Partners has built most of the large building that make up the Beaver Creek Village, including the Marketplace Building, Village Hall and One Beaver Creek. Not to be confused with East West Resorts, a separate property Management Group.


title: Vail Resorts

text: Vail Resorts Development Company (VRDC) is the wholly owned real estate development company that Vail Resorts uses to develop all of its company-owned real estate, other than the projects that East West Partners develops. VRDC developed Bachelor's Gulch, one of the most upscale, ski-in/ski-out resorts in the business with its own Ritz Carlton and just over 100 slopeside mansions. President Gerald Ford kept his ski house in the Strawberry Park section of Beaver Creek, which is between Beaver Creek and Bachelor's Gulch. Arrowhead is the third "peak" in the heavily promoted "village to village ski experience" in which you can ski from Beaver Creek to Bachelor's Gulch to Arrowhead and back again. Arrowhead was a separate ski area unrelated to Beaver Creek for years before they were finally bought by Vail Associates in the early 1990s. VRDC also developed "club" division of Vail Resorts, including the Beaver Creek Club, the Arrowhead Alpine Club, and Game Creek Club (in Vail). VRDC also developed Red Sky Ranch in Wolcott (approximate west of Beaver Creek), which includes two golf courses and many million dollar golf course homes. All of these clubs are now operated by the "Mountain Division" of Vail Resorts.


title: Vail Resorts

text: Vail Resorts operates 41 ski resorts in the United States, Canada, Australia and Switzerland including, notably, the Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Crested Butte ski areas in Colorado, and Northstar California, Kirkwood Mountain Resort, and Heavenly Mountain Resort on the California-Nevada border. They also acquired the largest ski resort in North America: Whistler Blackcomb, located in British Columbia, Canada. Vail Resorts offers a variety of multi-resort season passes under the Epic Pass program. The Epic Pass also has partnerships that allows access to several other resorts in the US, Canada, Japan, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. Vail Resorts acquired the Grand Teton Lodge Company within the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming in 1999. The GTLC properties include the Jenny Lake Lodge, Jackson Lake Lodge, and Colter Bay Village.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The national flag of Bhutan () is one of the national symbols of Bhutan. The flag features a Chinese dragon ("druk" [Wylie 'brug] in Dzongkha, the Bhutanese language) from Bhutanese mythology. This alludes to the Dzongkha name of Bhutan – "Druk Yul" (འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, 'brug yul, lit. "Dragon Country" or "Dragon Kingdom") – as well as the Drukpa Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, which is the dominant religion of Bhutan.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The basic design of the flag by Mayum Choying Wangmo Dorji dates to 1947. A version was displayed in 1949 at the signing of the Indo-Bhutan Treaty. A second version was introduced in 1956 for the visit of Druk Gyalpo Jigme Dorji Wangchuck to eastern Bhutan; it was based upon photos of its 1949 predecessor and featured a white Druk in place of the green original. The Bhutanese subsequently redesigned their flag to match the measurements of the flag of India, which they believed fluttered better than their own. Other modifications such as changing the red background color to orange led to the current design, in use since 1969. The National Assembly of Bhutan codified a code of conduct in 1972 to formalize the flag's design and establish protocol regarding acceptable flag sizes and conditions for flying the flag.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The current flag is divided diagonally from the lower hoist-side corner, with the upper triangle yellow and the lower triangle orange. Centred along the dividing line is a large black and white dragon facing away from the hoist side. The dragon is holding a "norbu", or jewel, in each of its claws. The background colours of the flag, yellow and orange, are identified as Pantone 116 and 165 respectively. Equivalents of these shades and the white of the Druk are specified by various other codes according to particular matching systems as indicated below.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The dimensions of the flag must maintain a 3:2 ratio. The following sizes have been declared standard by the Government of Bhutan:


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: According to "The Legal Provisions of the National Flag of the Kingdom of Palden Drukpa as Endorsed in Resolution 28 of the 36th Session of the National Assembly held on June 8, 1972", and as restated in the Constitution of 2008, the yellow signifies civil tradition and temporal authority as embodied in the "Druk Gyalpo", the Dragon King of Bhutan, whose royal garb traditionally includes a yellow kabney (scarf). The orange half signifies Buddhist spiritual tradition, particularly the Drukpa Kagyu and Nyingma schools. The dragon spreads equally over the line between the colors. Its placement in the center of the flag over the dividing line between the flag's two colors signifies the equal importance of both civic and monastic traditions in the Kingdom of Druk (Bhutan) and evokes the strength of the sacred bond between sovereign and people. The dragon's white color signifies the purity of inner thoughts and deeds that unite all the ethnically and linguistically diverse peoples of Bhutan. The jewels held in Druk's claws represent Bhutan's wealth and the security and protection of its people, while the dragon's snarling mouth symbolizes Bhutanese deities' commitment to the defense of Bhutan.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The Centre for Bhutan Studies and GNH Research, an independent Bhutanese research centre, in 2002 issued a paper (henceforth the "CBS document") that is the only readily available account from Bhutan of the historical development of the national flag. The document draws heavily on first-hand accounts obtained through interviews with individuals personally involved in the creation and modification of the flag in Bhutan, from the late 1940s until the adoption of the current flag around 1970. This report is therefore a significant primary source for information about the history of the Bhutanese flag. But in the description of the flag from 1949, the document is not in complete accord with photos of the flag (as discussed below), making it difficult to interpret some of the document's assertions. As a record, however, of the few primary sources remaining – namely, the people involved in the flag's history and the handful of existing government records – it represents a valuable source of information about the otherwise poorly documented evolution of the Bhutanese flag.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The CBS document states that the first national flag was designed upon the request of Jigme Wangchuck, the second Druk Gyalpo of the 20th-century Kingdom of Bhutan, and was introduced in 1949 during the signing of the Indo-Bhutan Treaty. While the document does not provide an illustration of the original design, black-and-white photographs taken at this historic event provide images of the first Bhutanese flag at the ceremony.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The design of the flag is credited to Mayum Choying Wangmo Dorji in 1947. Lharip Taw Taw, one of the few painters available to the royal court at the time, is said to have embroidered the flag. Druk was colored green in accordance with traditional and religious references to "yu druk ngon ma" (), or "turquoise druk". Today, a modern reproduction of this historic original (with several significant changes influenced by the modern flag) is displayed behind the throne in the National Assembly Hall in Thimphu.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: According to the CBS document, the original Bhutanese flag was a bicolour square flag divided diagonally from the lower hoist to the upper fly. The field of yellow extended from the hoist to the upper fly, and the red field extended from the fly end to the lower hoist. In the centre of the flag, at the convergence of the yellow and red fields, is a green Druk, located parallel to the bottom edge and facing the fly.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: However, the CBS document does not illustrate the early versions of the flag and its description of the 1949 flag is not entirely consistent with the photos surviving from 1949. It describes the flag as "square", while the proportions of the flag in the photographs appear closer to 4:5. The document describes the dragon as "facing the fly end", while the dragon visible in the photos faces the hoist. The dragon is described as "parallel to the fly" (meaning, according to a diagram in the document, parallel to the length along the bottom edge of the flag), while the dragon in the photos appears to have a slightly rising vertical slant. The dragon is described as "green", but the shade in the photos, if indeed green, must be very pale.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: Western flag books until after 1970 generally show the Bhutanese flag closely resembling the 1949 photos.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The second version of the national flag was developed in 1956 for the visit of the third Druk Gyalpo Jigme Dorji Wangchuk to eastern Bhutan. During the trip the Druk Gyalpo's Secretariat began to use flags of a new design based upon a photograph of the first national flag of 1949, with the colour of the dragon changed from green to white. The retinue of the Druk Gyalpo included a convoy consisting of over one hundred ponies; a small version of the flag was placed on the saddle of every tenth pony, and a large flag approximately in size was flown in the camp every evening, hoisted to the sound of a bugle.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: Beginning in the late 1950s, Dasho Shingkhar Lam, former Secretary to Jigme Dorji Wangchuck and Sixth Speaker of the National Assembly (1971–74), was requested by the king to make several modifications to the flag; he is responsible for its current design, which has remained unchanged since 1969. The king was reportedly dissatisfied that the early square Bhutanese flags did not flutter like the rectangular Indian flag displayed on the visit of an Indian official to the country. The standard measurements of the flag of Bhutan were thereafter altered to resemble the flag of India, which was 9 feet by 6 feet.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: In another change, the dragon, which had formerly been placed in a roughly horizontal position in the center of the flag, was repositioned to spread out over the diagonal dividing line between the background colours. This change sought to avoid having the dragon "face the earth" when the flag was hanging limp. Bhutanese artist Kilkhor Lopen Jada painted a new design for the druk in which the curves of the dragon's body are relaxed to create a somewhat longer and more gently undulating shape.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The CBS document states that the king ordered the colour of the lower half changed from red to orange "sometime in 1968 or 69."


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The Bhutanese flag was flown abroad beside another nation's flag for the first time in 1961 during a state visit to India by Jigme Dorji Wangchuck. This visit inaugurated a new level of relations between the two countries.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: On 8 June 1972 the National Assembly of Bhutan approved Resolution 28, bringing into effect National Flag Rules drafted by the Cabinet. The rules have eight provisions covering the description and symbolism of the flag's colouring, fields and design elements. Other rules relate to the size of the flag as well as flag protocol including the appropriate places and occasions for flying the flag and who may display the flag on cars. In general, the flag is given as much respect as the Bhutanese state and the head of state. As in the United States Flag Code, no other flags must be placed higher than the Bhutanese flag, the flag cannot be used as a cover or drape (with some exceptions) and the flag must not touch the ground. Other provisions include prohibitions on including the design in other objects or in a logo. Exceptionally, the flag may be used to drape coffins, but only those of high-ranking state officials such as ministers or military personnel.


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: The 1972 rules also provide that "every dzongkhag [district headquarters] will hoist the national flag. Where there are no dzongkhag, the national flag will be hoisted in front of the office of the main government officer".


title: Flag of Bhutan

text: Officials above the rank of minister are allowed to fly the flag at their residence provided they do not live near the capital. The tradition of flying the national flag in front of government offices had not existed in Bhutan prior to 1968 but was decreed standard practice by the Druk Gyalpo after his Secretariat was moved from the city of Taba to Tashichho Dzong in that year. The only flag day prescribed in the 1972 rules is National Day, which is held annually on December 17. National Day commemorates the crowning of Ugyen Wangchuck as the first king of Bhutan on December 17, 1907.


title: Pasargadae

text: Pasargadae (from Old Persian "Pāθra-gadā", "protective club" or "strong club"; Modern Persian: "Pāsārgād") was the capital of the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great (559–530 BC), who ordered its construction and the location of his tomb. Today it is an archaeological site and one of Iran's UNESCO World Heritage Sites, about to the northeast of the modern city of Shiraz.


title: Pasargadae

text: Pasargadae was founded in the 6th century BCE as the first capital of the Achaemenid Empire by Cyrus the Great, near the site of his victory over the Median king Astyages in 550 BCE. The city remained the Achaemenid capital until Darius moved it to Persepolis.


title: Pasargadae

text: The archaeological site covers 1.6 square kilometers and includes a structure commonly believed to be the mausoleum of Cyrus, the fortress of Toll-e Takht sitting on top of a nearby hill, and the remains of two royal palaces and gardens. Pasargadae Persian Gardens provide the earliest known example of the Persian "chahar bagh", or fourfold garden design (see Persian Gardens).


title: Pasargadae

text: The remains of the tomb of Cyrus' son and successor Cambyses II have been found in Pasargadae, near the fortress of Toll-e Takht, and identified in 2006.


title: Pasargadae

text: The Gate R, located at the eastern edge of the palace area, is the oldest known freestanding propylaeum. It may have been the architectural predecessor of the Gate of All Nations at Persepolis.


title: Pasargadae

text: The most important monument in Pasargadae is the tomb of Cyrus the Great. It has six broad steps leading to the sepulchre, the chamber of which measures 3.17 m long by 2.11 m wide by 2.11 m high and has a low and narrow entrance. Though there is no firm evidence identifying the tomb as that of Cyrus, Greek historians say that Alexander believed it was. When Alexander looted and destroyed Persepolis, he paid a visit to the tomb of Cyrus. Arrian, writing in the second century CE, recorded that Alexander commanded Aristobulus, one of his warriors, to enter the monument. Inside he found a golden bed, a table set with drinking vessels, a gold coffin, some ornaments studded with precious stones and an inscription on the tomb. No trace of any such inscription survives, and there is considerable disagreement to the exact wording of the text. Strabo and Arrian report that it read:


title: Pasargadae

text: The design of Cyrus' tomb is credited to Mesopotamian or Elamite ziggurats, but the cella is usually attributed to Urartu tombs of an earlier period. In particular, the tomb at Pasargadae has almost exactly the same dimensions as the tomb of Alyattes, father of the Lydian King Croesus; however, some have refused the claim (according to Herodotus, Croesus was spared by Cyrus during the conquest of Lydia, and became a member of Cyrus' court). The main decoration on the tomb is a rosette design over the door within the gable. In general, the art and architecture found at Pasargadae exemplified the Persian synthesis of various traditions, drawing on precedents from Elam, Babylon, Assyria, and ancient Egypt, with the addition of some Anatolian influences.


title: Pasargadae

text: The first capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Pasargadae lies in ruins 40 kilometers from Persepolis, in present-day Fars province of Iran.


title: Pasargadae

text: Pasargadae was first archaeologically explored by the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld in 1905, and in one excavation season in 1928, together with his assistant . Since 1946, the original documents, notebooks, photographs, fragments of wall paintings and pottery from the early excavations are preserved in the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. After Herzfeld, Sir Aurel Stein completed a site plan for Pasargadae in 1934. In 1935, Erich F. Schmidt produced a series of aerial photographs of the entire complex.


title: Pasargadae

text: From 1949 to 1955, an Iranian team led by Ali Sami worked there. A British Institute of Persian Studies team led by David Stronach resumed excavation from 1961 to 1963. It was during the 1960s that a pot-hoard known as the Pasargadae Treasure was excavated near the foundations of 'Pavilion B' at the site. Dating to the 5th-4th centuries BC, the treasure consists of ornate Achaemenid jewellery made from gold and precious gems and is now housed in the National Museum of Iran and the British Museum. It has been suggested that the treasure was buried as a subsequent action once Alexander the Great approached with his army, then remained buried, hinting at violence.


title: Pasargadae

text: After a gap, work was resumed by the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization and the Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée of the University of Lyon in 2000. The complex is one of the key cultural heritage sites for tourism in Iran.


title: Pasargadae

text: There has been growing concern regarding the proposed Sivand Dam, named after the nearby town of Sivand. Despite planning that has stretched over 10 years, Iran's own Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization was not aware of the broader areas of flooding during much of this time.


title: Pasargadae

text: Its placement between both the ruins of Pasargadae and Persepolis has many archaeologists and Iranians worried that the dam will flood these UNESCO World Heritage sites, although scientists involved with the construction say this is not obvious because the sites sit above the planned waterline. Of the two sites, Pasargadae is the one considered to be more threatened. Experts agree that the planning of future dam projects in Iran will merit an earlier examination of the risks to cultural resource properties.


title: Pasargadae

text: Of broadly shared concern to archaeologists is the effect of the increase in humidity caused by the lake. All agree that the humidity created by it will speed up the destruction of Pasargadae, yet experts from the Ministry of Energy believe it could be partially compensated for by controlling the water level of the reservoir.


title: Pasargadae

text: Construction of the dam began 19 April 2007, with the height of the waterline limited so as to mitigate damage to the ruins.


title: Pasargadae

text: In 1930, the Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira published a poem called "Vou-me embora pra Pasárgada" ("I'm off to Pasargadae" in Portuguese), in a book entitled "Libertinagem". It tells the story of a man who wants to go to Pasargadae, described in the poem as a utopian city, having the children learned in the school about this "utopic city created by Manuel Bandeira". Manuel Bandeira heard the name Pasargadae for the first time when he was 16 years old, reading a book by a Greek author. The name of the field of the Persians reminded him of good things, of a place of tranquillity and beauties. Years later, in his apartment, during a moment of sadness and anxiety, he had the idea of “vou-me embora pra Pasárgada” (I'm off to Pasargadae) and then created the poem, which surrounds the great part of the Brazilian population’s imagination to this day.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna (born 1 May 1932) is an Indian politician who served as Minister of External Affairs of India from 2009 to October 2012. He was the 16th Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1999 to 2004 and the 19th Governor of Maharashtra from 2004 to 2008. SM Krishna had served as the Speaker of the Karnataka Vidhan Sabha from December 1989 to January 1993. He was also a member of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha at various times from 1971 to 2014.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: S. M. Krishna is son of S.C. Mallaiah. He was born to a Vokkaliga family in a village named Somanahalli in the Maddur Taluk of Mandya district, Karnataka. He completed his Bachelor of Arts from Maharaja's College, Mysore and obtained a law degree from University Law College, which was then known as Government Law College in Bangalore. Krishna studied in the United States, graduating from the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and The George Washington University Law School in Washington D.C, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. Soon after his return to India, he was elected to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly in 1962.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: He is married to Prema. They have two daughters. His daughter Malavika Krishna was married to the Late V. G. Siddhartha, a businessman and the founder of Cafe Coffee Day.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: At the dawn of his political life, he released his biography "Smritivahini" in the presence of many dignitaries. He has penned many interesting incidents including Veerappan Kidnapping of Rajkumar during his tenure as the chief minister. He has also quoted that the former prime minister of India and national president of Janata Dal (Secular) H. D. Devegowda had strong plans of joining Indian National Congress twice during the period of National emergency.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: Krishna started his electoral political career in the year 1962 by winning Maddur Vidhana Sabha seat as an independent, defeating the prominent politician from Indian National Congress K V Shankar Gowda for whom Jawaharlal Nehru had campaigned. . Then he joined Praja Socialist Party, but lost from Maddur in 1967 to Congress' M M Gowda. He won the by-poll for Mandya (Lok Sabha constituency) in 1968 when the sitting MP died, defeating the Congress nominee.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: In 1968 he was influential in reconciliation between members of the Indian National Congress and Praja Socialist Party. He served three terms as an MP from the Mandya constituency of Karnataka starting from 1968 by-poll as a socialist. His next two terms were as a Congressman, winning elections in 1971 and 1980. Mandya has remained a Congress stronghold, represented in Lok Sabha later by his political proteges like Ambareesh and Divya Spandana (also known as Ramya). S M Krishna resigned from Lok Sabha in 1972, and became MLC in Karnataka and was appointed a minister by Devaraj Urs.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: After he went back to Lok Sabha in 1980, and he served as minister under Indira Gandhi between 1983–84. He lost from Mandya Lok Sabha seat in 1984, and it is unclear if he served as a minister between 1984 and 1985 under Rajiv Gandhi. Later, he became a member of the Rajya Sabha in the years 1996 and 2006. He was member of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly and council at different times. Between 1989 and 1993 he was Speaker of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly and Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1993 to 1994.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: In 1999, as Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president, he led his party to victory in the assembly polls and took over as Chief Minister of Karnataka, a post he held until 2004. He was also instrumental in creating power reforms with ESCOMS and digitization of land records (BHOOMI) and many other citizen friendly initiatives. He encouraged private public participation and was a fore bearer of the Bangalore Advance Task Force. He later became the Governor of Maharashtra.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: Krishna resigned as Governor of Maharashtra on 5 March 2008. It was reported that this was due to his intention to return to active politics in Karnataka. President Pratibha Patil accepted his resignation on 6 March.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: Krishna entered the Rajya Sabha and subsequently took the oath of office as Union Cabinet Minister of External Affairs in the Council of Ministers under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 22 May 2009. In his tenure as the external affairs minister, he visited a number of countries including Tajikistan in 2012 to strengthen economic and energy ties.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: Krishna resigned as External Affairs Minister on 26 October 2012 indicating a return to Karnataka state politics.


title: S. M. Krishna

text: Krishna resigned as a member of INC on 29 January 2017 quoting that the party was in a "state of confusion" on whether it needed mass leaders or not. He also complained of having been sidelined by the party and that the party was "dependent on managers and not time-tested people like [himself]". After speculations on his joining the Bharatiya Janata Party, he formally joined the party in March 2017.


title: Maha (film)

text: Maha is a 2022 Indian Tamil-language crime thriller film written and directed by U.R.Jameel and produced by Mathi Azhagan under the production company Etcetera Entertainment. The film stars Hansika Motwani in her 50th film, with Srikanth, Manasvi Kottachi, Sujith Shankar, Thambi Ramaiah and Karunakaran in prominent roles along with Silambarasan played an extended cameo appearance. This film is edited by John Abraham JR and the music is composed by M. Ghibran.


title: Maha (film)

text: The film was announced on 2019, and released on 22 July 2022 with three years delay and postponed for many times. The film opened mixed to negative reviews from critics and audience and hence, turn out to be a box office failure.


title: Maha (film)

text: The film begins with Maha complaining to her boyfriend, Malik about some men harassing her. Those men pull up in front of them causing Malik to fight them. The scene then switches to a man who sits in front of girl who is unconscious in a room full of blood. The police then find the 8 year old's corpse in front of a building. Another girl is kidnapped and murdered, her corpse is found. Maha has a daughter, Aishu who she sends to school. A doctor suggests to ACP Vikram the killer to be a possible doctor as he has erased all semen from the girl's body after raping her multiple times. Alex Pandian, a constable is assisting ACP Vikram with the case.


title: Maha (film)

text: While Aishu is returning home, the school bus stops due to repairs. The bus conductor walks with Aishu to drop her home, but halfway through he has to go back so Aishu walks the rest of the way by herself. Maha realises Aishu isn't home and asks at the school about Aishu. When Maha reaches the bus conductor and driver's home, they have absconded. Aishu has been kidnapped and held by the killer. Maha complains to ACP Vikram about her missing daughter. While the killer distracts Maha by calling her to go somewhere, he enters her house to delete CCTV footage. Maha receives a phone call telling her to bring cash to a building.


title: Maha (film)

text: One month later, Alex Pandian's grand daughter goes missing. Alex Pandian's daughter goes to a building with cash, only for the killer to take the money and attempt to escape. Vikram catches the killer and opens his mask to reveal Alex Pandian's face. The scene cuts back to Maha standing at the top of the building looking down and smiling. The movie shows Maha's flashback where Malik and her are in love. Malik is a pilot who leaves for his job when Maha finds out she is pregnant. Maha waiting eagerly to tell Malik the happy news, finds out the plane Malik was flying went missing in the Arabian Sea. The scene then flashes back to Maha grieving over her daughter's death.


title: Maha (film)

text: Maha inquires the police about her daughter's case but they chase her off. Maha decides to find her answers by herself and bribes a policeman to give her all the case details. Through this, Maha realises the CCTV footage taken from her house does not match with the one she has. ACP Vikram inquires Alex Pandian who reveals, one day when ACP Vikram was investigating Maha's case, he found his son's car on the road and found Aishu in the trunk. He calls Maha to tell her to go the building and takes Aishu with him and leaves Aishu in the building. Aishu not fully awake, walks over the edge and falls to her death. Alex, not wanting his son to get caught, did this. Maha listens to the recordings when the killer spoke to her again and again. In the background of the recordings, she hears a mosque and train. Maha goes into Matthew's shop, the killer, to ask about train tracks nearby not realising Alex Pandian's granddaughter is inside. As Maha leaves she hears the sound she heard on the recording and the train passing by. She finds out Aishu's phone has been turned on and realises Matthew is the killer. Matthew and Maha fight where Maha is extremely injured but succeeds in beating him and eventually kills him. ACP Vikram arrives with police force.


title: Maha (film)

text: This is Hansika Motwani's 50th film and Mohamaad Ghibran's 25th film as composer. Sanam Shetty, Srikanth, Karunakaran and Thambi Ramaiah were chosen for important roles in the film.


title: Maha (film)

text: The music of the film was composed by Ghibran. The entire soundtrack album was released on 12 July 2022. The lyrics for the songs are written by Viveka, Madhan Karky and Soundara Rajan.


title: Maha (film)

text: The film was released by theatrically worldwide on 22 July 2022, after so many delays and postponements.


title: Maha (film)

text: The post-theatrical streaming rights of the film were acquired by Aha, and will be streamed on 5 August 2022.


title: Maha (film)

text: Logesh Balachandran of "Times of India" gave 1.5 out of 5 and wrote "In short, Maha is not as effective as it wants to be." S. Subhakeertana of "OTT Play" rated the film 1 out of 5, stating that "The ending of the film might frustrate the viewer as it offers no catharsis. The story equally leaves you untouched because it does not care to rise above stereotypes." "Dinamalar" rated the film 1.5 out of 5.


title: Marcelito Pomoy

text: Marcelito "Lito" Castro Pomoy (born September 22, 1984) is a Filipino singer, known for his ability to sing in both tenor and soprano. He is the grand winner of the second season of "Pilipinas Got Talent". In 2019, he took part in "" finishing fourth overall.


title: Marcelito Pomoy

text: Pomoy was born in Imus, Cavite and raised in Bislig, Surigao del Sur, both of which are in the Philippines.


title: Marcelito Pomoy

text: When he was young, his father was incarcerated while his mother left him alone with his younger sibling and went to Manila. He was later adopted by a police officer and did odd jobs when he was a teenager. Later on, both his biological father and mother had separate families of their own.