Senin, 30 Januari 2012
Tukaran Link Dofolow dan Nofollow Blogspot
Pengalaman ini membuat Saya harus menulis Artikel agar sobat Blogger Pemula seperti kami ini tidak dicurangi dan segera Cek Partner Tukar link Sobat. Tukar menukar link menjadi bagian penting yang kadang tidak bisa kita pisahkan dari dunia blog.
Apa magna dari Dofolow dan Nofollow sudah pernah kami posting dalam blog ini. Dilema Tukaran Link ini kami posting hanya buat para teman pemula dalam
Minggu, 29 Januari 2012
Batasan Kepadatan Kata Kunci Setiap Artikel
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Sangat penting hubungannya dengan optimasi SEO pada artikel, sehingga artikel dapat dikatakan SEO Friendly, tapi selain Optimasi SEO Keyword itu membuat Template Blogspot
Newt n' Herm: Coming Soon to the Hell Octoplex
Newt n' Herm: Coming Soon to the Hell Octoplex
It was absolute genius. I knew it the moment I thought of it. Oh I know, I know that's not the humblest of statements, but hell I'm pretty damn sure Edison, Einstein and Leonard Bernstein all knew when they were on their game, so why not me? When the moment comes, you don't mistake it for anything else. One may only have four or five such moments in one's life, when you just know that your thoughts have aligned pertfectly with the universe. Aiin't life grand?
The moment the news came across that Herman Cain had endorsed Newt Gingrich - as a Presidential candidate NOT as a fellow skirt hound - I knew that there was high comedy to be made of this pairing. The man who wants a village on the moon, with the man who never saw a moon he didn't like. I want the film rights.
Now one might think that this is just another flash-in-the-pan story in this the most Gods Must be Crazy as Fruit Bats election year, but I'm willing to wager this one's got legs. Never in my living memory of American politics, nor any era I have ever read about, there has never been such a bizarre set of characters being taken...seriously. People are going to want to look back on this the way they do the Alamo or Pearl Harbour or the day Kennedy was shot and seek answers to why this atrocity occurred.
Truly, something has been slipped into the water of the ocean body politic. Vast swaths of the Democratic Party, such as it is an that being a collective group dominated by amnesiacs who have forgotten their liberal history, don’t trust Obama one little bit. That swath is composed of the non-amnesiacs. Still, he’s the horse they’re riding and if he doesn’t win in November I’ll eat my Aunt Nancy’s Ottoman. Cat fur included.
In response to which the Republicans have offered comedy. The leading contender is Romney whose policies as Governor of Massachusetts closely parallel the present-day domestic policies of Obama, is a former executive with an investment bank in a year when that is not the most charmed of professions in the public view. And he’s going to win the nomination.
Well who else would? Certainly not Gingrich. Good God, Howard Dean screams once and is vanished, while Gingrich gurgles on about things he will accomplish in his second term. So he wants to hold his own option to renew, as it were. You want the good stuff, you elect me twice. No, he is much better remembered for his part in this nearly hallucinogenic cast of characters. The only writer in history capable of properly capable of recording this circus was Lewis Carroll.
Which is why it should be a movie. See it! Say it! Feel the words! Feel that smile starting on your face! Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer proudly present:
Newt n’ Herm: Cruisin’ 4 Chicks
All right, we may not get The New Yorker crowd but the late Pauline Kael might well have loved it. Better yet is the marketing line: “You can’t spell GrOPe without the GOP!”
Effectively we’re talking about Duck Soup meets Life of Brian in sheer anarchic comedy. Better yet, it’s Springtime for Hitler. (Now fess up - you’ve always wanted to see the full show, not just the one chorus number and Dick Shawn writhing around the stage. Don’t even talk to me about the plodding re-make unless it’s to say, ‘Wasn’t that a plodding remake?’)
The plot’s easy enough to understand. In the post-2012 election period, we follow these two randy geezers - one black and one white are as metaphorically as tied together as Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier were by handcuffs in The Defiant Ones. We follow them as they follow through on their greatest desire - to have it off with more women than Frank Sinatra ever dreamt of. And they aren’t fussy. If it moves they groove.
The problem of course is that they’re terrible at it. No one wants to sleep with the geezers. They’ve lost. Finally they go to their god, as played by Henry Kissinger to ask what to do. He reminds them that ‘Power is an aphrodisiac’. Without being close to power, a wheelbarrow of oysters, ginseng and Just for Men isn’t going to get it done. So what woman then becomes a viable target?
Hilary Clinton. Bill’s agreeable. He even lets them know when he’ll be out of the country and how to mix Hilary’s favourite relaxant of Crown Royal and four cubes of ice. Their pursuit of Hilary leads to such hijinx, why even the cat will laugh! that will get the Facebook crowd in the door. The other marketing line:
Even Your Cat Will Laugh!
You know how Facebook people love to share pictures of cats. I suspect it’s because dogs mean you have to step outside regularly, often at the dog’s persuasive insistence.
Newt n’ Herm need to have dog. They’ll name him Hound. Would you expect anything else? The dog’s voice will be portrayed by Burt Reynolds. Or Shatner. Bill Shatner is always gold in bizarre situations. We can give the dog a toupee. That would work for both casting ideas; just need to change the style of the canine cranium covering.
And more on the casting! For Herman Cain there only is one choice: Eddie Murphy. He may have already done research into the character. I must do some heavy-duty research by checking the archives of TMZ and Gawker to find out. (I guess he probably wouldn’t take the part if we had a joke about transvestite hookers. Maybe it can be something that happens to Newt. That way Herm laughing at him would get the marks in the audience nudging each other and whispering, ‘that’s an inside joke eh?’)
As for Newt - a bit tougher. Finally a friend of mine on Facebook - who as she has to make a living in this world may not wish to be personally associated with this insanity - suggested Seymour Philip Hoffman. Works for me. It takes a strong man to play a slug.
Now on to the strong women. Every major woman’s part has to be played by a current or retired women’s wrestler. I’m very fond of the wrestling profession and these women deserve their red carpet night. And they can definitely act. Many of them have had to pretend tan attraction to Vince McMahon on television.
There are five million individuals a week who watch wrestling on television, yes to this day. Get those five million out to buy a ticket plus an equal number there for the comedy and curiousity and we’re in profit. While we’re at it, let’s get the great Mick Foley in the cast as Newt n’ Herm’s chauffeur. Every time the aging bromancers get in the car, Foley’s in a different character.
For the part of Hillary Clinton? It has to be wrestler April Hunter. We’re going to need someone good-looking who can also throw Newt n’ Herm through a table at the end of the picture. Then we cut to Kissinger doing the Porky Pig line: ‘Dot’s awl Volks!’
Now that’s a movie!
It was absolute genius. I knew it the moment I thought of it. Oh I know, I know that's not the humblest of statements, but hell I'm pretty damn sure Edison, Einstein and Leonard Bernstein all knew when they were on their game, so why not me? When the moment comes, you don't mistake it for anything else. One may only have four or five such moments in one's life, when you just know that your thoughts have aligned pertfectly with the universe. Aiin't life grand?
The moment the news came across that Herman Cain had endorsed Newt Gingrich - as a Presidential candidate NOT as a fellow skirt hound - I knew that there was high comedy to be made of this pairing. The man who wants a village on the moon, with the man who never saw a moon he didn't like. I want the film rights.
Now one might think that this is just another flash-in-the-pan story in this the most Gods Must be Crazy as Fruit Bats election year, but I'm willing to wager this one's got legs. Never in my living memory of American politics, nor any era I have ever read about, there has never been such a bizarre set of characters being taken...seriously. People are going to want to look back on this the way they do the Alamo or Pearl Harbour or the day Kennedy was shot and seek answers to why this atrocity occurred.
Truly, something has been slipped into the water of the ocean body politic. Vast swaths of the Democratic Party, such as it is an that being a collective group dominated by amnesiacs who have forgotten their liberal history, don’t trust Obama one little bit. That swath is composed of the non-amnesiacs. Still, he’s the horse they’re riding and if he doesn’t win in November I’ll eat my Aunt Nancy’s Ottoman. Cat fur included.
In response to which the Republicans have offered comedy. The leading contender is Romney whose policies as Governor of Massachusetts closely parallel the present-day domestic policies of Obama, is a former executive with an investment bank in a year when that is not the most charmed of professions in the public view. And he’s going to win the nomination.
Well who else would? Certainly not Gingrich. Good God, Howard Dean screams once and is vanished, while Gingrich gurgles on about things he will accomplish in his second term. So he wants to hold his own option to renew, as it were. You want the good stuff, you elect me twice. No, he is much better remembered for his part in this nearly hallucinogenic cast of characters. The only writer in history capable of properly capable of recording this circus was Lewis Carroll.
Which is why it should be a movie. See it! Say it! Feel the words! Feel that smile starting on your face! Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer proudly present:
Newt n’ Herm: Cruisin’ 4 Chicks
All right, we may not get The New Yorker crowd but the late Pauline Kael might well have loved it. Better yet is the marketing line: “You can’t spell GrOPe without the GOP!”
Effectively we’re talking about Duck Soup meets Life of Brian in sheer anarchic comedy. Better yet, it’s Springtime for Hitler. (Now fess up - you’ve always wanted to see the full show, not just the one chorus number and Dick Shawn writhing around the stage. Don’t even talk to me about the plodding re-make unless it’s to say, ‘Wasn’t that a plodding remake?’)
The plot’s easy enough to understand. In the post-2012 election period, we follow these two randy geezers - one black and one white are as metaphorically as tied together as Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier were by handcuffs in The Defiant Ones. We follow them as they follow through on their greatest desire - to have it off with more women than Frank Sinatra ever dreamt of. And they aren’t fussy. If it moves they groove.
The problem of course is that they’re terrible at it. No one wants to sleep with the geezers. They’ve lost. Finally they go to their god, as played by Henry Kissinger to ask what to do. He reminds them that ‘Power is an aphrodisiac’. Without being close to power, a wheelbarrow of oysters, ginseng and Just for Men isn’t going to get it done. So what woman then becomes a viable target?
Hilary Clinton. Bill’s agreeable. He even lets them know when he’ll be out of the country and how to mix Hilary’s favourite relaxant of Crown Royal and four cubes of ice. Their pursuit of Hilary leads to such hijinx, why even the cat will laugh! that will get the Facebook crowd in the door. The other marketing line:
Even Your Cat Will Laugh!
You know how Facebook people love to share pictures of cats. I suspect it’s because dogs mean you have to step outside regularly, often at the dog’s persuasive insistence.
Newt n’ Herm need to have dog. They’ll name him Hound. Would you expect anything else? The dog’s voice will be portrayed by Burt Reynolds. Or Shatner. Bill Shatner is always gold in bizarre situations. We can give the dog a toupee. That would work for both casting ideas; just need to change the style of the canine cranium covering.
And more on the casting! For Herman Cain there only is one choice: Eddie Murphy. He may have already done research into the character. I must do some heavy-duty research by checking the archives of TMZ and Gawker to find out. (I guess he probably wouldn’t take the part if we had a joke about transvestite hookers. Maybe it can be something that happens to Newt. That way Herm laughing at him would get the marks in the audience nudging each other and whispering, ‘that’s an inside joke eh?’)
As for Newt - a bit tougher. Finally a friend of mine on Facebook - who as she has to make a living in this world may not wish to be personally associated with this insanity - suggested Seymour Philip Hoffman. Works for me. It takes a strong man to play a slug.
 |
| Or, you know, if Disney has alternative castings in mind... |
Now on to the strong women. Every major woman’s part has to be played by a current or retired women’s wrestler. I’m very fond of the wrestling profession and these women deserve their red carpet night. And they can definitely act. Many of them have had to pretend tan attraction to Vince McMahon on television.
There are five million individuals a week who watch wrestling on television, yes to this day. Get those five million out to buy a ticket plus an equal number there for the comedy and curiousity and we’re in profit. While we’re at it, let’s get the great Mick Foley in the cast as Newt n’ Herm’s chauffeur. Every time the aging bromancers get in the car, Foley’s in a different character.
For the part of Hillary Clinton? It has to be wrestler April Hunter. We’re going to need someone good-looking who can also throw Newt n’ Herm through a table at the end of the picture. Then we cut to Kissinger doing the Porky Pig line: ‘Dot’s awl Volks!’
Now that’s a movie!
Sabtu, 28 Januari 2012
Aku Pelacur, tapi Bukan Wanita Panggilan
Cerpen. Jangan membayangkan sosokku seperti pelacur pada umumnya, yaitu dengan pakaian sexi dan menggoda, aku berpenampilan sangat sopan dan tampak sangat religi, aku juga tidak akan bisa di temukan di panti pijat atau di rumah bordil, carilah aku di rumah ibadah di sebuah gereja, karena aku aktivis di sana, dan aku juga ikut bergabung dengan anggota paduan suara dan selalu menyanyikan
Daftar Situs Pembuat Logo Cantik
Setelah kita Membuat Blog Gratis di Blogger dalam rangka mendesain blog kita ada kalanya kita memerlukan bantuan beberapa situs layanan dan bantuan software yang lain seperti untuk mencari Kode Warna yang pernah kami posting sebelumnya.
Kali ini kami akan memberikan beberapa alamat situs yang bisa membantu kita dalam membuat logo yang akan kita pergunakan.
Ada beberapa Situs Online yang
Jumat, 27 Januari 2012
Let's Talk About Depression
Politics for Joe
January 27, 2012
By: Hubert O’Hearn
For: Lake Superior News
On Depression
This is a different sort of political column. We’re not going to be discussing who’s going to win the NDP leadership, what Stephen Harper may or may not be doing to the country, or the ways in which Northwestern Ontario is treated like a feeder colony by the government at Queen’s Park. All worthy topics; just not right now.
You see, we’re going to talk about politics right at its most absolute root level - the individual. That’s you and me and that guy I see out the window shoveling off his front steps. Politics is a discussion amongst individuals for the purpose of creating a state that is more perfect, safer and healthier than it is today. It is a discussion about health. So let us look at health today and in particular the issue of Depression.
Click.
You don’t want to read about that.
Of course you don’t. Depression is after all a condition described thusly by Clinical Psychologist Marie Murray in the Irish Times:
DEPRESSION depletes those who suffer from it. The weight of it, the lack of energy, the light gone out of life drains happiness away. There is anxiety and emptiness. There is loss of everything that was once enjoyed. There are feelings of failure, social withdrawal and loneliness, listlessness and isolation, and those terrible twin emotions of helplessness and hopelessness. Everything seems to be pointless including living.
Often there are physical pains, headaches, stomach aches, the exhaustion of disturbed sleep, feelings of being unwell, of a body in too much misery with a mind that is racing in never-ending circles of despair.
So why on Earth do I want you to read about it, think about it, perhaps even act upon it? After all, how many people are we talking about here?
Statistics are notoriously difficult to compile on this subject, mainly because sufferers actually have to seek treatment in order for inclusion in the number. By that standard, there are 9 million Depressed individuals in the U.S. That would be about 2.5% of the population, give or take. On the other hand, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association, 36% of Canadians admit to having suffered from Depression themselves. Assuming that the mental health of Americans and Canadians is roughly the same - I see no reason for a huge divergence there - what do those numbers tell us? Less than 10% of the people with a debilitating illness seek professional diagnosis and treatment.
Wow.
But then, what is Depression? How is it different from just ‘having a bad day’ or being ‘down in the dumps’? Before we proceed, I want you to do something. And I really really want you to do this because my gut tells me it might save some lives. I want you to take the Depression test at Depressionhurts.ca The link will take you straight there. I’ll be here when you get back.
How did you do? What was your impact score? I’m going to share mine with you: 7 out of 10 which rates as High Impact. It used to be even higher and not very long ago at all it was 9. Yes, I suffer from Depression.
What Depression is, according to the World Health Organization is:
a common mental disorder that presents with depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, low energy, and poor concentration. These problems can become chronic or recurrent and lead to substantial impairments in an individual's ability to take care of his or her everyday responsibilities. At its worst, depression can lead to suicide, a tragic fatality associated with the loss of about 850 000 lives every year.
Depression is the leading cause of disability as measured by YLDs and the 4th leading contributor to the global burden of disease (DALYs) in 2000. By the year 2020, depression is projected to reach 2nd place of the ranking of DALYs calcuated for all ages, both sexes. Today, depression is already the 2nd cause of DALYs in the age category 15-44 years for both sexes combined.
It’s all around us. The ex-NHLer Wade Belak committed suicide because of it. The manager of the Wales national football team Gary Speed committed suicide because of it. Maybe someone you know who wasn’t a famous athlete committed suicide because of it.
And yet we don’t talk about it. Colleagues and co-workers will regale you with tales of toothaches, backaches, headaches and heartaches; Depression? Not a word. The stigma seems to be that Depression is something you should be able to ‘get over’ as though there is an internal Cheer Up! switch that can be turned on at will.
The nefarious aspect is that in some ways that light switch does exist. This is why the suicides of people like Belak or Speed come as such a shock. The day before he was found hanging in his garage, Speed had been on a UK football telecast, laughing, joking, doing analysis, looking and sounding great! How can that possibly be? Was it all just an act?
It’s not an act. It is a different reality. Talk show host Dick Cavett talked about it in his book Caveat Cavett. He would do an episode of his show, be affable, quick and funny...then go home and be absolutely numb. He realized after a time, and novelist William Saroyan had the same experience, that there were months of his life that he could not recall. During the taping of the show, Cavett’s mind was on that, not on himself. Gary Speed’s mind was on football. After the show was over, the thoughts return to the self and the sickness resumes its dominant place.
The CTV television network is doing a very good thing this February 8th. The host of TSN’s Off the Record, Michael Landsberg will be hosting and appearing in a documentary called DARKNESS AND HOPE: DEPRESSION, SPORTS AND ME. This is part of Bell Let’s Talk Day; a day devoted to discussion of this topic. And yes, Landsberg too has suffered from Depression.
Here’s the last thing to share with you, direct from my own battle. You may not know you have Depression until you’re deeply into it. If you break your arm, you know it right away; your consciousness however tends to hide away. Just be aware that if you have experienced a major life trauma (and this is my story, not everyone’s) that can trigger Depression. The best advice I can give to you is to expect it. So if you lose your job, your spouse, someone near to you dies or becomes seriously ill, expect Depression. Go for help right away before it grabs you by the throat and starts pulling you down under the dark water. If you don’t become Depressed - great. I couldn’t be happier for you and I couldn’t care less that maybe you’ve contributed a couple of thousand dollars to Ontario’s deficit by seeking unneeded treatment. I’d rather have you alive.
February 8th. Don’t forget that date. I know I can’t.
Kamis, 26 Januari 2012
Mengatur Lebar Header, Halaman Posting dan Sidebar
Mengatur blogspot baik berupa lebar header, Halaman Posting dan besaran Sidebar sepertinya banyak para blogger melakukannya.
Blogspot Pemula sudah pernah posting artikel Mengenal Struktur Dasar Template Blogspot kali ini kita akan coba mulai mengutak-atik nya, mengatur agar sesuai dengan keinginan kita, yah paling tidak supaya lebih enak dilihat.
Mengatur lebar header, halaman posting
Cerahkan Hidup Dengan Mencintai Diri Sendiri
Motivasi Hidup. Ada beberapa orang yang terlalu memaksakan opini mereka. Beberapa dari kita begitu terpengaruh olehnya sehingga kita sulit mendengar kata hati kita sendiri.
Lakukan hal berikut ini, agar Anda dapat mengembangkan kepercayaan diri, menunjukkan diri Anda yang sebenarnya, dan berhenti membenci diri sendiri.
1. Berhenti cemaskan pendapat orang lain
Berhenti cemaskan opini dan
Nabi Idris dan Pedoman Hidup
Nabi Idris a.s adalah keturunan keenam Nabi Adam, putera dari Yazid bin Mihla'iel bin Qoinan bin Anusy bin Syith bin Adam a.s dan dia adalah keturunan pertama yang dikurniakan kenabian setelah Adam dan Syith.
Nabi Idris a.s mengikut sementara riwayat bermukim di Mesir, di mana ia berdakwah untuk agama Allah mengajarkan tauhid dan beribadah menyembah Allah serta memberi beberapa pedoman
Selasa, 24 Januari 2012
Manfaat Blogwalking Untuk Optimasi Blogspot
Untuk melengkapi bagian dari postingan kami terdahulu tentang cara Membuat Recent Comment yang telah kami posting dengan dua cara yang berbeda yaitu : Recent Comment Bawaan Blogspot dan satu lagi Recent Comment Dengan Java Script, kali ini Blogspot Pemula mencoba memaparkan Manfaat Blogwalking Untuk Optimasi Blogspot.
Sudah menjadi rahasia umum, salah satu hal penting yang kita harapkan
Senin, 23 Januari 2012
Puisi Doaku Malam Ini
Doaku Malam Ini
Malam kian meninggi,
Fajar bersiap menanti pergantian,
Hawa dingin pun tak terelakkan,
Merasuk di setiap celah pori-pori kulitku.
Hati yang masih berteman sepi,
Tepiskan sejuta mimpi yang tertinggal,
Rasa sesal pun mulai merambah pikiran,
Sepenggal kisah masa lalu masih membekas.
Ku rebahkan diri dalam kelelahan,
Berharap malam memberikan jawaban,
Ku
Minggu, 22 Januari 2012
Bumi Semakin Tua
Lelaki itu terlihat gelisah, menatap awan yang mulai berubah kelabu, dari balik jendela. Gerimis mulai berjatuhan membasahi tanah dan pepohonan di halaman rumahnya yang terbuat dari anyaman bambu. Bau tanah basah yang menyerebak di udara, tidak mengurangi kegelisahannya. Bahkan semakin menjadi, ketika awan menumpahkan air yang tak sanggup lagi ditampungnya. Hujan turun dengan derasnya,
Sabtu, 21 Januari 2012
Membuat Recent Comment Dengan Java Script
Setelah pada postingan awal kita membuat Recent Comment Post with Feed Blogspot kini kita lanjutkan dengan membuat Recent Comment With Java Script.
Sript ini Blogspot Pemula Ambil dari Blogger kolom-tutorial.blogspot.com/ (kalau Salah mohon koreksi). Sebelum dan sesudahnya Blogspot Pemula mengucapkan terimakasih kepada pemilik script.
Seperti yang telah kita ketahui jika recent comment
Kamis, 19 Januari 2012
Cerpen Ayanti
Ayanti
Ayanti sudah tak lagi ingin menangis. Ia seperti telah kehabisan air mata. Ia kini mencoba ikhlas dan pasrah. Tangisan darah sekalipun takkan mengembalikan Sudigdo anaknya, Joyce menantunya, juga Magda dan Mega –dua cucu yang amat disayanginya.
Keempatnya telah terbang bersama angin dan iring-iringan awan yang lalu niskala di birunya langit, gumam Ayanti. Mungkin juga mereka telah
Corporatism and the Media (Part One)
Corporatism and the Media
Inside Television 587
Publication Date: 1-20-12
By: Hubert O’Hearn
Radio, as a mass market phenomenon and television as similar essentially began their mass market lives in or about 1918 0r 1945 respectively. From there and until at least the late 1980s when cable TV started to dominate the broadcast version, radio and television were broadcast (a key term) free to anyone who had the necessary hardware and knew which direction to aim the antenna.
Let us flash forward shall we, in Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine for those with a cultural memory long enough to get the reference? Here we are in 2012 , where in the US ESPN has just passed the 100 million home threshold. Put another way, 100 million home snow pay an average of $4.68 per month for the privilege of watching ESPN, whether they want to or not. So, the dominant sports network gets about half a billion per month or 6 billion a year in revenue, before it has produced a moment’s worth of programming. Nice work if you can get it.
So, as John Prine sang, just what is the hole in the arm where all the money goes? For starters, ESPN has anted up - for the privilege of providing viewers a reason to get crawling drunk every Monday night while the Cleveland Browns and Jacksonville Jaguars stink up the field - a smooth 1.1 billion dollars per year through 2021 payable to the NFL. This in turn allows an NFL team like the New York Jets to pay Santonio Holmes $3.9 million so he can blow off receivers' meetings with Mark Sanchez.
 |
| This is not your father's Gatorade.... |
Now let’s ignore the re-take the network makes from commercials, as only Super Bowl ad rates (about $400,00 per 30 second spot) are widely publicized. ESPN does not get the Super Bowl rights, only regular season. Let’s just agree to settle on the basic proposition that ESPN ain’t run by dummies and the network would not sign an agreement to which it would not make money.
Therefore, ESPN (and all other networks) charge advertisers a specified amount per 30 second spot, in order to subsidize that $1.1 billion buy...which has already been paid for by subscriber fees.
Here is the nut of it. Assmuning a cleaver-like division of responsibilities’ that average US household is not only paying their cable provider $4.68 in order to watch ESPN (and ABC and the Disney Channel among other ‘bundled ‘ properties) , but those 100 million households must also generously cough up another $11.10 each in economic activity to subsidize the NFL’s ‘costs’.
In other words, the metaphorical Joe Sixpack has ponied up about $15 per month so that he can watch something he may not want to watch. And how is that great economic engine of democracy to be sustained? Those commercials in Canada, the US or the UK will encourage economic activity based on wants rather than needs.We’re all suckers to a bright-lit ad.
We’ll be picking up in these columns how corporatism is swallowing up your paycheck. But for now... be seeing you.
Rabu, 18 Januari 2012
Membuat Recent Comment Post with Feed Blogspot
Buat para blogger yang ingin bisa melihat dan memantau setiap comment yang terakhir dapat menerapkan ini pada blog nya. Membuat recent comment atau komentar terakhir dan postingan artikel terakhir dengan menggunakan fasilitas gadget blogger yang telah disediakan.
Kita cukup ke halaman edit element blogger, kemudian tambah Gadget dan pilih Feed yang berada paling bawah kemudian akan muncul
Delapan Kado Terindah
Delapan Kado Terindah
Delapan macam kado ini adalah hadiah terindah dan tak ternilai bagi orang-orang yang Anda sayangi.KehadiranKehadiran orang yang dikasihi rasanya adalah kado yang tak ternilai harganya. Memang kita juga bisa hadir di hadapannya lewat surat, telepon, foto atau faks. Namun dengan berada di sampingnya, anda dan dia dapat berbagi perasaan, perhatian dan kasih sayang secara
Selasa, 17 Januari 2012
April Hunter: A Body of Work
April Hunter: A Body of Work
The Women of the Year Series #1
For: Herald de Paris
By: Hubert O'Hearn
In a very real, visceral way it pains me to do this, however I know I need to make the case for this woman’s profession before profiling the woman herself. Why? Because I know from personal experience that if the title of this article read as it properly should, April Hunter: Wrestler, it’s highly likely you would have not read it. You have a clear conception that professional wrestling is low-rent, uncultured entertainment suitable only for trailer park boys and girls who serve in diners; the people for whom The Education System Has Failed. To which I reply: bollocks.
Like a newly-appointed diplomat in a Henry James novel, please allow me to present my credentials. In my past live theatre career I have had precisely 108 Opening Nights as an actor, Director, Writer and/or Producer. I have trained who knows how many dozen actors, some of whom have gone on to juicy and profitable careers. I have studied Stanislvasky and Sandy Meisner, directed works by Anton Chekhov and Noel Coward, and yes indeed I played Hamlet. And played him damn well. I know of what I speak. Here is my bottom line: Professional wrestlers are the greatest live actors of them all. It’s not even close.
I well recall my first year acting class at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. We were all sat cross-legged on the grey all-weather carpeting in the studio and the professor, Bud Burkom, asked everyone what role they would most like to play and what actor’s career they would most like to emulate. The women had a variety of parts, although their ideal actress became a recurring musical theme. Katharine Hepburn. Katharine Hepburn. Katharine Hepburn. Finally Bud said, in delicately, ‘If anyone else mentions that broad’s name I’m gonna scream!’
I can’t remember a professional wrestler ever referring to a woman as a ‘broad’. (Lauren Bacall did, and does, but she of course is not a professional wrestler.) All bracketed humour points aside, here are the points of evidence:
Katharine Hepburn never had bones broken by a fellow actor, never had to take painkillers, and had a union to protect her.
Take the worst case scenario of any or all of the above, and April Hunter has been there, done that, and she’s coming back for more Brother. She is Katharine Hepburn with muscles.
I watched a series of April’s matches on YouTube in preparation for this profile; not watching them as a mark (the wrestling term for a hardcore fan who pretends to be an insider to this carnival-borne world), but as a theatre director. What is the message? What is the technique? How successful is the execution?
April Hunter approaches the ring in a calm, confident, sexual swagger. Hers is an energy of supreme confidence, yet not isolated but rather self-contained. She makes eye contact, she acknowledges fan support, she high-fives, hand slaps, hugs, points and smiles. She is on the side of those in the audience who are on her side. With the slow roll of her toned torso she lets the room in on her secret: ‘Oh, I’m gorgeous. You know it. I like that you know it. But you can’t have it. Unless I say you can have it.’ Nobody’s fool. Nobody’s tool.
I can’t say as I have lost friends over my fascination with professional wrestling; I do however know that I’ve lost admirers. What is perhaps my most treasured email was sent by a former student who became a friend. It began, ‘I’ve lost all respect for you’ and carried on from there. I loved its honesty. You can’t teach understanding until someone admits that he doesn’t understand.
Besides, Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer both loved bullfighting. You tell me how the public, ritual slaughter of cattle is a higher calling than the enjoyment of wrestling and I’m willing to listen. You won’t win the argument; I am simply willing to listen to it.
Back to April. I watch as she calls out, in what is called an ‘in-ring promo’ a rather skinny, frightfully bleached young woman named Talia Madison. Talia would later achieve fame as Velvet Sky in the TNA Impact promotion, known for wriggling her ass over the middle rope of the three-rope ring while the camera zooms in for a shot of tight-covered pudenda.
Why has there never been a band called Tight Covered Pudenda? Lost opportunity.
Thankfully, that was only a brief digression. Coming back to the ring, set in what looks like a high school gymn-atorium with a whiter audience than a Tea Party rally, April continues her promo. I am impressed.
Here’s the Dirty Truth about acting. I’m not the first to have noticed this. Michael Shurtleff in the best single volume on acting I’ve ever read (Audition) devotes a chapter to it; and every casting director knows it, although few are loathe to comment as it is nearly impossible to define the abstract. The Dirty Truth is that some have it, and It can be refined; others don’t. We’re talking about charisma.
Charisma is the Great Unteachable. Speaking for myself as an acting coach, I can teach timing, energy, listening, stage movement, even how to read a script for nuance and meaning … I can’t teach charisma. In all of the arts, that may be the one skill that one is either born with (and enjoys); or isn’t born with (which isn’t to say you can’t have a nice career anyway).
Leave us face it - there are people on stage or on screen that you enjoy watching more than others. That little innocuous ‘more’ speaks shelves of volumes. Shurtleff talks about it in his book: there are people that the eye naturally tracks; you want to know what this person is going to do next.
I continue watching April’s matches on YouTube. The more I watch, the more I realize that she has the quality of charisma. In some forty years of an on-and-off relationship between me and wrestling, I have never seen a better female wrestler.
Now, why I was catching up on these old matches - done for the most part for regional promotions that pop up, have a run of two or three years then morph into something else - is that she has never worked for Vince McMahon’s WWE. No Monday Night Raw, no Smackdown, no national exposure since she broke into the business with WCW during its death throes in 2000. These aspects of her career would be major topics when I interviewed April.
So the question must be in your mind: If I hadn’t actually seen April Hunter work, why was I profiling her? Why not Trish Stratus, likely the best-known woman wrestler in the world who is now a successful TV presenter on a variety on non-wrestling shows? Why not Sunny, or Sable, or George Clooney’s squeeze du jour Stacy Keibler?
The answer is that journalism operates a lot like horse race betting: you go with hot tips. I knew that I wanted to profile a wrestler as part of this Women of the Year series. If part of my purpose is to learn how women are striving and thriving in what still is, in James Brown’s words, A Man’s Man’s Man’s World, there aren’t many more male-dominated professions than the wrestling world. I asked three people whose opinions I trust; a wrestling manager, a writer, and a friend who is a devoted fan: Who would you like to see me interview? They all said April Hunter because she has a story to tell and she deserves the push. Good enough for me.
I do want to comment further on April’s in-ring work. The good part about the smaller promotions as compared to WWE is that the former actually let the women wrestle for a time longer than a beer commercial. That has been a long-standing gripe of mine and I used to write about it when I used to do a weekly column for a major wrestling website (pwtorch.com). My theory on management in general is to hire the best people you can, then get out of the way and let them do their jobs. In WWE (and to a slightly lesser extent in its chirpy, smaller competitor TNA Impact) women’s matches have an average length from bell to bell of about a minute. Strange. We’ll come back to that.
Anyway, April is a masterful worker. She goes from move to move with tremendous pace, uses her strength - she is built like an Olympic pentathlete - and remembers to sell for her opponent. (You likely have no idea what that means. Selling means that when your opponent hits you, remember to show that it hurts. If your opponent has mashed your leg in a chair early in the match, don’t be skipping along like nothing happened two minutes later. You would be amazed at how many professionals forget about this one. Hulk Hogan for one has made a career out of it.)
Work rate is hugely important, yet it isn’t everything. It is that charismatic quality that separates April Hunter from the pack. She communicates her story with imagination and the full shelf of the emotional toolbox. When working as a heel (villain) she mocks her opponent with humorous disdain. When working as a babyface (hero), especially when wrestling men, she creates a pastel of fear, pain and determination while never ever wandering off into the cartoon-land of pulling faces and swooning like Sarah Bernhardt.
To be completely honest with you, if I was still in the theatre business I’d cast her in a heartbeat. Given three weeks’ rehearsal she’d be phenomenal as Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
Beyond wrestling, there were two other aspects of April’s career I needed to catch up on before our conversation. One is her work as a Fitness model and a titleholder in professional Form and Fitness competitions. To say the minimum, at five foot nine in height with long red hair framing brilliant hazel eyes and a strong yet supple figure that would make a valkyrie weep in envy, she has the necessary equipment. She has won the Ms. Fitness Philadelphia competition and medaled at the NPC Junior Nationals. An international spokesperson for various nutritional supplements, she has also featured regularly in fitness and bodybuilding magazines. In other words, the girl’s ripped.
The final part of April Hunter’s career and the one that I suspect will generate the most hits for the on-line version of this profile, is that she is also a nude model, with her own website www.aprilhunter.com . Yes, if you would like to see what this astoundingly beautiful woman, who lappears a good ten years younger than her actual thirty-seven years, looks like without her clothes on, you can do that for a small membership fee. And because you’re going to ask anyway I’ll tell you yes, of course I looked. I am utterly devoted to my fiancee, who sadly is disabled with a loss of short-term memory (that may come in handy here), however research is my life.
We must digress for a paragraph or three. I would ask April about the nude modeling in our interview; it is after all a substantial contributor to her income and she was in Playboy before she was in WCW. Nudity actually led to wrestling; a combination of which I’m quite sure D. H. Lawrence would have approved. If you don’t get the reference, do look up Sons and Lovers. It’s very good.
It would be disingenuous of me to ignore the nudity issue. You and I have known each other for at least five or ten minutes now, so we’ve established an honest relationship. (Well actually, you know a lot more about me while I know not a thing about you; but why let accuracy stand in our way?) The nude modeling was the one thing about April’s career that made me hesitate in choosing her for this profile. What would the neighbours think? (The house next door is currently vacant. Next.) What would the prospective in-laws think? (A larger issue, hopefully ignorable. Next.) What would my editor think?
Yes, that was the potential sticking point. While I’d been given the luxurious go-ahead to write about whatever I wanted it might not be the prudent move to test the rippability of the envelope quite so soon. Here we are though, some two thousand words in and I’m not turning back now.
If journalism is about anything it needs to be about asking questions that others might not ask. For all the sniggering about the internet being a money machine built on porn, who ever asks the models in a serious way how they feel about being part of that industry? Additionally, in watching April Hunter’s video updates I had also discovered that she knows a wealth of information about health, fitness and lifestyle issues that would inform this paper’s readers and improve their lives. It would be the height of hypocrisy and shabby ethics to ignore all that just because April gets her kit off for the cameras.
As the brilliant French General Ferdinand Foch said in the midst of World War One’s Battle of the Marne, ‘Hard pressed on my right; center is yielding; impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent, I shall attack!’ I was ready for the interview.
The Interview
I began our Skype interview by asking April how her Mom was doing. April had actually retired from wrestling after 2007, then returned to it in 2009 after her Mom was diagnosed with Stage Four lung cancer. That sadly reminded me of Christopher Hitchens’ laconic statement when he was diagnosed with Stage Four esophegeal cancer, ‘The bad part is that there is no Stage Five.’
April, who lives now in Clearwater Florida with her husband, the wrestler known as J. D. Maverick, travels regularly back to Pennsylvania where her mother is receiving treatment in a hospice. She said, ‘That’s why I came back to wrestling. I needed the money to help her out and to be able to get back as often as possible, at least once a month.’
Related to that, I’d noticed some comments April had made about the Japanese health cares system in relation to the American. As a Canadian I was curious as to the Japanese variant to the single-payer system. ‘Well, just one comparison, an MRI in Japan costs $160. Here in the US it’s over $1500. They have a combination of public and private health care that I like. You do pay something, like $25 for an exam, which I think is good because that stops people from just coming in for nothing and filling up the system.’
With that as an ice-breaker - I wanted her to know that this wasn’t just another wrestling interview - I of course then asked the standard question of all wrestling interviews. how did she get into the business? She had been in Playboy before WCW, so how did that transition work?
‘It was really easy. They came to me. People had said to me before that I should go into wrestling, because I’m five nine and I’m athletic. Plus I was getting old for modeling at that time.’ Interruption - she was 26. If 26 is old then I am an Egyptian Pharaoh. ‘ WCW approached me after the Playboy shoot and asked me to join so I did.’
April studied wrestling with a true legend, Wladek ‘Killer’ Kowalski. If you think that wrestling is all make-believe and no one ever gets hurt, I invite you to Google ‘Kowalski + Yukon Eric + ear’. If you don’t want to Google that, I think you can fill in the blanks yourself. So how did April come to learn wrestling with the trainer of Triple H and Chyna (Joanie Laurer)? He did not take on many students.
‘I’d been in WCW for nine months and I actually left WCW when they said they didn't really know what was going on for us girls and then had the interview with WWE and their writers...which is how I was referred into Killer Kowalski's school. Kowalski was really hard to track down, so WWE tracked him down for me. He was in Boston so I packed up and moved to Boston the first week of September, just when all the students were arriving. It was crazy. Let me tell you,don't move to any university town during that time!!’
It surprised me more than slightly that April had been with a major wrestling company (at its peak, WCW’s Monday Nitro drew ratings in the 6.0-7.0 category which if replicated would put it in the Top Ten in 2012) for nine months when on her own volition she decided to learn how to actually wrestle. You’d like to think that would be a prerequisite if only for safety’s sake. Did anyone mentor her in WCW, say, ‘Hey kid let me help you with this’?
‘No, not really. Not at all actually. The girls really don’t help one another. They’re all just concerned about themselves.’ And yes, I found that to be sad.
So why had she never been signed by WWE? I think I’ve made it clear in this article that April Hunter is the best female wrestler I have ever seen. My only speculation was that Vince McMahon seems to sign women who do not look like athletes (q.v. Kelly Kelly, Maryse, Maria Kanelis, it’s a long and dubious list). Was that it?
‘No one’s ever really told me, but what I’ve heard is that because I’m tall they didn’t want me standing next to some of the male wrestlers because I’d make them look short.’
What about TNA Impact? April has done a couple of appearances for them and the rumour is that they offered, and she turned down, a contract offer. Is that true?
‘Yeah, it is. Here’s why I turned it down. One, they only offered $300 a show -’
Wait. What!?! A lousy three hundred bucks? Was that the same for TV tapings?
‘That was for TV. But what really stopped me was there was no health care coverage. In order to hire me, I had to sign a waiver that would not have them responsible for any injury I might get on the job. AND the pay was lousy, with no healthcare or benefits. So even though lots of people, friends even said, “Hey are you sure?”, there was just no way.’
Now that was really appalling to me, particularly as TNA is that rarest of wrestling promotions, one owned by a woman - Dixie Carter of Panda Oil. No, not Dixie Carter of Designing Women. Three hundred dollars is a lousy reward for the risk wrestlers take every time they enter the ring, where quite literally their health and life is in the hands of their competitor.
Speaking of which, there was an experience I was curious about. Wrestlers do not have long life spans. WWE needs to rush people into its Hall of Fame before they are age 60, because not too many wrestlers live to see 60. As Bret Hart said in his brilliant autobiography Hitman (one of the 10 best autobiographies I have ever read by anyone in any profession), ‘Is wrestling real? The outcome is pre-determined but the pain is real.’ So how is it being married to a wrestler and watching J. D. in the ring, knowing all the things that can go horribly wrong?
‘You watch it differently. You’re watching it for their forms, are they right? You know the spots so you’re watching for that. Like, “Hey the manager’s supposed to be there! Why’s he late?” Then at home we’re always checking our forms and criticizing one another. “What’s this look like?” “No that’s wrong.” It gets pretty interesting. (laughs)’
My other point of curiosity related to the death of WCW. I have read many, many accounts of how that company fell apart - 1996, top of the ratings; 2001, dead. I have never read a woman’s perspective on the implosion. So how much of a mess was it?
‘We used to use a phrase in the industry. It was indie-rrific. Honestly, you’d arrive at one o’clock for a TV show, to get into your gear and make-up and you’d sit around and at six o’clock there still wouldn’t be a match order taped to the wall. The show would be on at eight o’clock and stuff would still be being torn off the wall and changed. You never knew what you were doing.
‘Then there was the travel. You’d get this FedEx envelope and it would tell you to get to the airport to go to wherever and you’d go. Then there would be no ticket there, but eventually there would be a ticket for like eleven hundred dollars, in coach, which was a lot of money in 2000, while for another fifty bucks you could have traveled first class. Then you'd get in after midnight and have to drive another 2-3 hours to get to the hotel near the venue...because WCW didn't play many big cities. We did outer areas. ’ Clearly, a smooth-running operation.
On to the ‘nudity issue’. Feminists would undoubtedly decry April for objectifying women, so how does she react?
‘" I don't hurt others with what I do, and it allows me freedom with my time. These things matter to me. Sure I end up working all day and night half the time and hurting MYSELF, since people can't tell the difference between being a centerfold and being a porn star, but hey...I don’t apologize to anyone for doing what I have to do to take care of my Mom, put a roof over my head and food on the table. I don’t care. I’m doing what I need to do. My Mom never cared about the nude modeling. She can’t watch me wrestle though. I had to wrestle a lot of men in my career and my Mom came to one show where I was in a battle royal with a bunch of men and one of them was giving me chops in the corner and she just couldn’t watch.’
What about fitness? April Hunter’s career and income depends on keeping herself in fine tune. What are her tips for others?
‘OK, the first one is a no brainer: Avoid soda. Duh. There's zero nutritional value in it and nothing but harmful chemicals to be gained.
2. Get more sleep. You probably need it.
3. Use smaller plates and eat less. As we get older, we need less food.
4. At restaurants, take home 40%.
5. What you eat matters far more than going to a gym. Diet is 80% of what you look like. Eat clean 6 days a week, then have a nice cheat meal.
6. If you're over 30, cut back/cut out your starchy carbs. You probably don't need them & they cause excess weight gain.
7. If you're drinking, stick to vodkas and wine.
8. Realize that on some days you just can't do it all. That you need time for yourself...and don't feel guilty about it. You need to recharge yourself to be at your best for those around you. "Should the airplane cabin pressure drop, put your own mask on first, before helping those around you." ‘
Last but in no way least to me, give my ‘regular’ career as a book reviewer, I knew that wrestlers are massive readers. They are constantly en route here and there and crossword puzzles get boring. So what books would April recommend to readers?
‘ I read so much and love so many books. OK, I've found a few to be really helpful:
1. The Art of Non Conformity by Chris Guillebeau. If you've ever been told to "Get a real job!", you may want to read this book.
2. Bonjour, Happiness! by Jamie Cat Callan. How to age gracefully and the tips and tricks that French women do to achieve this, compared to American women who tend to just give up and fall apart.
3. Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type by Dr Peter D'Adamo. Most of us are eating wrong for our types, which is part of the reason there's so much chronic disease. For example, type A's are very evolved and cant handle meat. They tend to have softer teeth (more dental problems) and don't produce enough stomach acid to break down meat. They are meant to be vegetarians. If you're type A and don't know this, you may be inadvertently causing yourself stomach issues. Type O's are hunter/gatherers. They do well with protein, fats and produce. They are not meant to eat starchy carbs or dairy, both cause weight gain and they're predisposed to diabetes. It sounds a little insane, but after seeing my family battle so many chronic illnesses, I gave it a shot and found that I dropped weight without trying and had more energy.’
In summary? I can’t think of an interview subject I’ve enjoyed more.
Be seeing you.
( If you enjoyed this article and would like to learn more about the remarkable April Hunter, please visit her home page: www.aprilhunter.com )
The Women of the Year Series #1
For: Herald de Paris
By: Hubert O'Hearn
In a very real, visceral way it pains me to do this, however I know I need to make the case for this woman’s profession before profiling the woman herself. Why? Because I know from personal experience that if the title of this article read as it properly should, April Hunter: Wrestler, it’s highly likely you would have not read it. You have a clear conception that professional wrestling is low-rent, uncultured entertainment suitable only for trailer park boys and girls who serve in diners; the people for whom The Education System Has Failed. To which I reply: bollocks.
Like a newly-appointed diplomat in a Henry James novel, please allow me to present my credentials. In my past live theatre career I have had precisely 108 Opening Nights as an actor, Director, Writer and/or Producer. I have trained who knows how many dozen actors, some of whom have gone on to juicy and profitable careers. I have studied Stanislvasky and Sandy Meisner, directed works by Anton Chekhov and Noel Coward, and yes indeed I played Hamlet. And played him damn well. I know of what I speak. Here is my bottom line: Professional wrestlers are the greatest live actors of them all. It’s not even close.
I well recall my first year acting class at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. We were all sat cross-legged on the grey all-weather carpeting in the studio and the professor, Bud Burkom, asked everyone what role they would most like to play and what actor’s career they would most like to emulate. The women had a variety of parts, although their ideal actress became a recurring musical theme. Katharine Hepburn. Katharine Hepburn. Katharine Hepburn. Finally Bud said, in delicately, ‘If anyone else mentions that broad’s name I’m gonna scream!’
I can’t remember a professional wrestler ever referring to a woman as a ‘broad’. (Lauren Bacall did, and does, but she of course is not a professional wrestler.) All bracketed humour points aside, here are the points of evidence:
- Katharine Hepburn never had to perform in high school gyms or Legion halls
- Katharine Hepburn never had to take a chair shot
- Katharine Hepburn never had to perform with a broken nose
- Katharine Hepburn never had to tell an entire story with no scripted words,
just her body to work with to convey meaning
Katharine Hepburn never had bones broken by a fellow actor, never had to take painkillers, and had a union to protect her.
Take the worst case scenario of any or all of the above, and April Hunter has been there, done that, and she’s coming back for more Brother. She is Katharine Hepburn with muscles.
 |
| April in Paris |
I watched a series of April’s matches on YouTube in preparation for this profile; not watching them as a mark (the wrestling term for a hardcore fan who pretends to be an insider to this carnival-borne world), but as a theatre director. What is the message? What is the technique? How successful is the execution?
April Hunter approaches the ring in a calm, confident, sexual swagger. Hers is an energy of supreme confidence, yet not isolated but rather self-contained. She makes eye contact, she acknowledges fan support, she high-fives, hand slaps, hugs, points and smiles. She is on the side of those in the audience who are on her side. With the slow roll of her toned torso she lets the room in on her secret: ‘Oh, I’m gorgeous. You know it. I like that you know it. But you can’t have it. Unless I say you can have it.’ Nobody’s fool. Nobody’s tool.
I can’t say as I have lost friends over my fascination with professional wrestling; I do however know that I’ve lost admirers. What is perhaps my most treasured email was sent by a former student who became a friend. It began, ‘I’ve lost all respect for you’ and carried on from there. I loved its honesty. You can’t teach understanding until someone admits that he doesn’t understand.
Besides, Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer both loved bullfighting. You tell me how the public, ritual slaughter of cattle is a higher calling than the enjoyment of wrestling and I’m willing to listen. You won’t win the argument; I am simply willing to listen to it.
Back to April. I watch as she calls out, in what is called an ‘in-ring promo’ a rather skinny, frightfully bleached young woman named Talia Madison. Talia would later achieve fame as Velvet Sky in the TNA Impact promotion, known for wriggling her ass over the middle rope of the three-rope ring while the camera zooms in for a shot of tight-covered pudenda.
Why has there never been a band called Tight Covered Pudenda? Lost opportunity.
Thankfully, that was only a brief digression. Coming back to the ring, set in what looks like a high school gymn-atorium with a whiter audience than a Tea Party rally, April continues her promo. I am impressed.
Here’s the Dirty Truth about acting. I’m not the first to have noticed this. Michael Shurtleff in the best single volume on acting I’ve ever read (Audition) devotes a chapter to it; and every casting director knows it, although few are loathe to comment as it is nearly impossible to define the abstract. The Dirty Truth is that some have it, and It can be refined; others don’t. We’re talking about charisma.
Charisma is the Great Unteachable. Speaking for myself as an acting coach, I can teach timing, energy, listening, stage movement, even how to read a script for nuance and meaning … I can’t teach charisma. In all of the arts, that may be the one skill that one is either born with (and enjoys); or isn’t born with (which isn’t to say you can’t have a nice career anyway).
Leave us face it - there are people on stage or on screen that you enjoy watching more than others. That little innocuous ‘more’ speaks shelves of volumes. Shurtleff talks about it in his book: there are people that the eye naturally tracks; you want to know what this person is going to do next.
I continue watching April’s matches on YouTube. The more I watch, the more I realize that she has the quality of charisma. In some forty years of an on-and-off relationship between me and wrestling, I have never seen a better female wrestler.
Now, why I was catching up on these old matches - done for the most part for regional promotions that pop up, have a run of two or three years then morph into something else - is that she has never worked for Vince McMahon’s WWE. No Monday Night Raw, no Smackdown, no national exposure since she broke into the business with WCW during its death throes in 2000. These aspects of her career would be major topics when I interviewed April.
So the question must be in your mind: If I hadn’t actually seen April Hunter work, why was I profiling her? Why not Trish Stratus, likely the best-known woman wrestler in the world who is now a successful TV presenter on a variety on non-wrestling shows? Why not Sunny, or Sable, or George Clooney’s squeeze du jour Stacy Keibler?
The answer is that journalism operates a lot like horse race betting: you go with hot tips. I knew that I wanted to profile a wrestler as part of this Women of the Year series. If part of my purpose is to learn how women are striving and thriving in what still is, in James Brown’s words, A Man’s Man’s Man’s World, there aren’t many more male-dominated professions than the wrestling world. I asked three people whose opinions I trust; a wrestling manager, a writer, and a friend who is a devoted fan: Who would you like to see me interview? They all said April Hunter because she has a story to tell and she deserves the push. Good enough for me.
I do want to comment further on April’s in-ring work. The good part about the smaller promotions as compared to WWE is that the former actually let the women wrestle for a time longer than a beer commercial. That has been a long-standing gripe of mine and I used to write about it when I used to do a weekly column for a major wrestling website (pwtorch.com). My theory on management in general is to hire the best people you can, then get out of the way and let them do their jobs. In WWE (and to a slightly lesser extent in its chirpy, smaller competitor TNA Impact) women’s matches have an average length from bell to bell of about a minute. Strange. We’ll come back to that.
Anyway, April is a masterful worker. She goes from move to move with tremendous pace, uses her strength - she is built like an Olympic pentathlete - and remembers to sell for her opponent. (You likely have no idea what that means. Selling means that when your opponent hits you, remember to show that it hurts. If your opponent has mashed your leg in a chair early in the match, don’t be skipping along like nothing happened two minutes later. You would be amazed at how many professionals forget about this one. Hulk Hogan for one has made a career out of it.)
Work rate is hugely important, yet it isn’t everything. It is that charismatic quality that separates April Hunter from the pack. She communicates her story with imagination and the full shelf of the emotional toolbox. When working as a heel (villain) she mocks her opponent with humorous disdain. When working as a babyface (hero), especially when wrestling men, she creates a pastel of fear, pain and determination while never ever wandering off into the cartoon-land of pulling faces and swooning like Sarah Bernhardt.
To be completely honest with you, if I was still in the theatre business I’d cast her in a heartbeat. Given three weeks’ rehearsal she’d be phenomenal as Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
Beyond wrestling, there were two other aspects of April’s career I needed to catch up on before our conversation. One is her work as a Fitness model and a titleholder in professional Form and Fitness competitions. To say the minimum, at five foot nine in height with long red hair framing brilliant hazel eyes and a strong yet supple figure that would make a valkyrie weep in envy, she has the necessary equipment. She has won the Ms. Fitness Philadelphia competition and medaled at the NPC Junior Nationals. An international spokesperson for various nutritional supplements, she has also featured regularly in fitness and bodybuilding magazines. In other words, the girl’s ripped.
The final part of April Hunter’s career and the one that I suspect will generate the most hits for the on-line version of this profile, is that she is also a nude model, with her own website www.aprilhunter.com . Yes, if you would like to see what this astoundingly beautiful woman, who lappears a good ten years younger than her actual thirty-seven years, looks like without her clothes on, you can do that for a small membership fee. And because you’re going to ask anyway I’ll tell you yes, of course I looked. I am utterly devoted to my fiancee, who sadly is disabled with a loss of short-term memory (that may come in handy here), however research is my life.
We must digress for a paragraph or three. I would ask April about the nude modeling in our interview; it is after all a substantial contributor to her income and she was in Playboy before she was in WCW. Nudity actually led to wrestling; a combination of which I’m quite sure D. H. Lawrence would have approved. If you don’t get the reference, do look up Sons and Lovers. It’s very good.
It would be disingenuous of me to ignore the nudity issue. You and I have known each other for at least five or ten minutes now, so we’ve established an honest relationship. (Well actually, you know a lot more about me while I know not a thing about you; but why let accuracy stand in our way?) The nude modeling was the one thing about April’s career that made me hesitate in choosing her for this profile. What would the neighbours think? (The house next door is currently vacant. Next.) What would the prospective in-laws think? (A larger issue, hopefully ignorable. Next.) What would my editor think?
Yes, that was the potential sticking point. While I’d been given the luxurious go-ahead to write about whatever I wanted it might not be the prudent move to test the rippability of the envelope quite so soon. Here we are though, some two thousand words in and I’m not turning back now.
If journalism is about anything it needs to be about asking questions that others might not ask. For all the sniggering about the internet being a money machine built on porn, who ever asks the models in a serious way how they feel about being part of that industry? Additionally, in watching April Hunter’s video updates I had also discovered that she knows a wealth of information about health, fitness and lifestyle issues that would inform this paper’s readers and improve their lives. It would be the height of hypocrisy and shabby ethics to ignore all that just because April gets her kit off for the cameras.
As the brilliant French General Ferdinand Foch said in the midst of World War One’s Battle of the Marne, ‘Hard pressed on my right; center is yielding; impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent, I shall attack!’ I was ready for the interview.
The Interview
I began our Skype interview by asking April how her Mom was doing. April had actually retired from wrestling after 2007, then returned to it in 2009 after her Mom was diagnosed with Stage Four lung cancer. That sadly reminded me of Christopher Hitchens’ laconic statement when he was diagnosed with Stage Four esophegeal cancer, ‘The bad part is that there is no Stage Five.’
April, who lives now in Clearwater Florida with her husband, the wrestler known as J. D. Maverick, travels regularly back to Pennsylvania where her mother is receiving treatment in a hospice. She said, ‘That’s why I came back to wrestling. I needed the money to help her out and to be able to get back as often as possible, at least once a month.’
Related to that, I’d noticed some comments April had made about the Japanese health cares system in relation to the American. As a Canadian I was curious as to the Japanese variant to the single-payer system. ‘Well, just one comparison, an MRI in Japan costs $160. Here in the US it’s over $1500. They have a combination of public and private health care that I like. You do pay something, like $25 for an exam, which I think is good because that stops people from just coming in for nothing and filling up the system.’
With that as an ice-breaker - I wanted her to know that this wasn’t just another wrestling interview - I of course then asked the standard question of all wrestling interviews. how did she get into the business? She had been in Playboy before WCW, so how did that transition work?
‘It was really easy. They came to me. People had said to me before that I should go into wrestling, because I’m five nine and I’m athletic. Plus I was getting old for modeling at that time.’ Interruption - she was 26. If 26 is old then I am an Egyptian Pharaoh. ‘ WCW approached me after the Playboy shoot and asked me to join so I did.’
April studied wrestling with a true legend, Wladek ‘Killer’ Kowalski. If you think that wrestling is all make-believe and no one ever gets hurt, I invite you to Google ‘Kowalski + Yukon Eric + ear’. If you don’t want to Google that, I think you can fill in the blanks yourself. So how did April come to learn wrestling with the trainer of Triple H and Chyna (Joanie Laurer)? He did not take on many students.
‘I’d been in WCW for nine months and I actually left WCW when they said they didn't really know what was going on for us girls and then had the interview with WWE and their writers...which is how I was referred into Killer Kowalski's school. Kowalski was really hard to track down, so WWE tracked him down for me. He was in Boston so I packed up and moved to Boston the first week of September, just when all the students were arriving. It was crazy. Let me tell you,don't move to any university town during that time!!’
It surprised me more than slightly that April had been with a major wrestling company (at its peak, WCW’s Monday Nitro drew ratings in the 6.0-7.0 category which if replicated would put it in the Top Ten in 2012) for nine months when on her own volition she decided to learn how to actually wrestle. You’d like to think that would be a prerequisite if only for safety’s sake. Did anyone mentor her in WCW, say, ‘Hey kid let me help you with this’?
‘No, not really. Not at all actually. The girls really don’t help one another. They’re all just concerned about themselves.’ And yes, I found that to be sad.
So why had she never been signed by WWE? I think I’ve made it clear in this article that April Hunter is the best female wrestler I have ever seen. My only speculation was that Vince McMahon seems to sign women who do not look like athletes (q.v. Kelly Kelly, Maryse, Maria Kanelis, it’s a long and dubious list). Was that it?
‘No one’s ever really told me, but what I’ve heard is that because I’m tall they didn’t want me standing next to some of the male wrestlers because I’d make them look short.’
What about TNA Impact? April has done a couple of appearances for them and the rumour is that they offered, and she turned down, a contract offer. Is that true?
‘Yeah, it is. Here’s why I turned it down. One, they only offered $300 a show -’
Wait. What!?! A lousy three hundred bucks? Was that the same for TV tapings?
‘That was for TV. But what really stopped me was there was no health care coverage. In order to hire me, I had to sign a waiver that would not have them responsible for any injury I might get on the job. AND the pay was lousy, with no healthcare or benefits. So even though lots of people, friends even said, “Hey are you sure?”, there was just no way.’
Now that was really appalling to me, particularly as TNA is that rarest of wrestling promotions, one owned by a woman - Dixie Carter of Panda Oil. No, not Dixie Carter of Designing Women. Three hundred dollars is a lousy reward for the risk wrestlers take every time they enter the ring, where quite literally their health and life is in the hands of their competitor.
Speaking of which, there was an experience I was curious about. Wrestlers do not have long life spans. WWE needs to rush people into its Hall of Fame before they are age 60, because not too many wrestlers live to see 60. As Bret Hart said in his brilliant autobiography Hitman (one of the 10 best autobiographies I have ever read by anyone in any profession), ‘Is wrestling real? The outcome is pre-determined but the pain is real.’ So how is it being married to a wrestler and watching J. D. in the ring, knowing all the things that can go horribly wrong?
‘You watch it differently. You’re watching it for their forms, are they right? You know the spots so you’re watching for that. Like, “Hey the manager’s supposed to be there! Why’s he late?” Then at home we’re always checking our forms and criticizing one another. “What’s this look like?” “No that’s wrong.” It gets pretty interesting. (laughs)’
My other point of curiosity related to the death of WCW. I have read many, many accounts of how that company fell apart - 1996, top of the ratings; 2001, dead. I have never read a woman’s perspective on the implosion. So how much of a mess was it?
‘We used to use a phrase in the industry. It was indie-rrific. Honestly, you’d arrive at one o’clock for a TV show, to get into your gear and make-up and you’d sit around and at six o’clock there still wouldn’t be a match order taped to the wall. The show would be on at eight o’clock and stuff would still be being torn off the wall and changed. You never knew what you were doing.
‘Then there was the travel. You’d get this FedEx envelope and it would tell you to get to the airport to go to wherever and you’d go. Then there would be no ticket there, but eventually there would be a ticket for like eleven hundred dollars, in coach, which was a lot of money in 2000, while for another fifty bucks you could have traveled first class. Then you'd get in after midnight and have to drive another 2-3 hours to get to the hotel near the venue...because WCW didn't play many big cities. We did outer areas. ’ Clearly, a smooth-running operation.
On to the ‘nudity issue’. Feminists would undoubtedly decry April for objectifying women, so how does she react?
‘" I don't hurt others with what I do, and it allows me freedom with my time. These things matter to me. Sure I end up working all day and night half the time and hurting MYSELF, since people can't tell the difference between being a centerfold and being a porn star, but hey...I don’t apologize to anyone for doing what I have to do to take care of my Mom, put a roof over my head and food on the table. I don’t care. I’m doing what I need to do. My Mom never cared about the nude modeling. She can’t watch me wrestle though. I had to wrestle a lot of men in my career and my Mom came to one show where I was in a battle royal with a bunch of men and one of them was giving me chops in the corner and she just couldn’t watch.’
What about fitness? April Hunter’s career and income depends on keeping herself in fine tune. What are her tips for others?
‘OK, the first one is a no brainer: Avoid soda. Duh. There's zero nutritional value in it and nothing but harmful chemicals to be gained.
2. Get more sleep. You probably need it.
3. Use smaller plates and eat less. As we get older, we need less food.
4. At restaurants, take home 40%.
5. What you eat matters far more than going to a gym. Diet is 80% of what you look like. Eat clean 6 days a week, then have a nice cheat meal.
6. If you're over 30, cut back/cut out your starchy carbs. You probably don't need them & they cause excess weight gain.
7. If you're drinking, stick to vodkas and wine.
8. Realize that on some days you just can't do it all. That you need time for yourself...and don't feel guilty about it. You need to recharge yourself to be at your best for those around you. "Should the airplane cabin pressure drop, put your own mask on first, before helping those around you." ‘
Last but in no way least to me, give my ‘regular’ career as a book reviewer, I knew that wrestlers are massive readers. They are constantly en route here and there and crossword puzzles get boring. So what books would April recommend to readers?
‘ I read so much and love so many books. OK, I've found a few to be really helpful:
1. The Art of Non Conformity by Chris Guillebeau. If you've ever been told to "Get a real job!", you may want to read this book.
2. Bonjour, Happiness! by Jamie Cat Callan. How to age gracefully and the tips and tricks that French women do to achieve this, compared to American women who tend to just give up and fall apart.
3. Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type by Dr Peter D'Adamo. Most of us are eating wrong for our types, which is part of the reason there's so much chronic disease. For example, type A's are very evolved and cant handle meat. They tend to have softer teeth (more dental problems) and don't produce enough stomach acid to break down meat. They are meant to be vegetarians. If you're type A and don't know this, you may be inadvertently causing yourself stomach issues. Type O's are hunter/gatherers. They do well with protein, fats and produce. They are not meant to eat starchy carbs or dairy, both cause weight gain and they're predisposed to diabetes. It sounds a little insane, but after seeing my family battle so many chronic illnesses, I gave it a shot and found that I dropped weight without trying and had more energy.’
In summary? I can’t think of an interview subject I’ve enjoyed more.
Be seeing you.
( If you enjoyed this article and would like to learn more about the remarkable April Hunter, please visit her home page: www.aprilhunter.com )
Syair Alami
Alami
Hijau lepas memandang,
Daun dan pohon liar,
Burung biru melintas,
Ku tak tau namanya.
tapi indah … indah sekali
Oh indah… sampai ke hati
Gunung tinggi menjulang,
Dingin menghembus tulang,
Burung kecil bernyanyi,
Ku tak kenal namanya.
tp merdu…..merdu sekali
oh merdu…sampai di hati
Bodohnya aku yang tak mengenal dan mengerti,
Sungguh bodohnya aku yang gak mau belajar bersahabat
dengan
Hijau lepas memandang,
Daun dan pohon liar,
Burung biru melintas,
Ku tak tau namanya.
tapi indah … indah sekali
Oh indah… sampai ke hati
Gunung tinggi menjulang,
Dingin menghembus tulang,
Burung kecil bernyanyi,
Ku tak kenal namanya.
tp merdu…..merdu sekali
oh merdu…sampai di hati
Bodohnya aku yang tak mengenal dan mengerti,
Sungguh bodohnya aku yang gak mau belajar bersahabat
dengan
Senin, 16 Januari 2012
Cara Membuat Label Blogspot Pemula Nofollow
URL pada Archive Blogspot tidak boleh di indeks oleh robot mesin pencari google karena ini adalah salah satu masalah besar, google menganggap kita melakukan duplicate content.
Kali ini blogspot pemula menambahkan sedikit trik Cara Membuat Label Blogspot Pemula Nofollow.
Memahami Karakteristik dan Cara Optimalkan Label Blogger, label Blogger/Blogspot bukan berupa link yang bersifat permanent
Penyaliban atau Sandiwara Penyaliban
Kekurangan Bahasa
Setiap kata adalah gambaran baku dari apa yang diwakilinya. Jika kita mengambil satu kata dan merenungkannya, kita akan bisa melihat atau menggambarkannya dalam pikiran kita. Cobalah - "kapal", Anda akan melihat kapal dalam pikiran Anda, "tas tangan", Anda akan melihat tas tangan dalam pikiran Anda, "rokok", Anda akan melihat sebatang rokok dalam pikiran Anda. Tetapi kita
Setiap kata adalah gambaran baku dari apa yang diwakilinya. Jika kita mengambil satu kata dan merenungkannya, kita akan bisa melihat atau menggambarkannya dalam pikiran kita. Cobalah - "kapal", Anda akan melihat kapal dalam pikiran Anda, "tas tangan", Anda akan melihat tas tangan dalam pikiran Anda, "rokok", Anda akan melihat sebatang rokok dalam pikiran Anda. Tetapi kita
Sabtu, 14 Januari 2012
Manusia dan Kemunafikannya
Manusia dan Kemunafikannya
Mereka adalah bagian dari hidupmu,
Hadir mengalir dalam alunan waktu,
Tiada mungkin dapat kau pisahkan,
Walau mereka sering menenggelamkanmu.
Saat kau menginjak keagungan,
Tiada letih mereka meninggikanmu,
Begitupun saat mereka menadah padamu,
Memohon belas kasih darimu.
Tapi kala kau jatuh terinjak,
Terhempas dalam kerasnya hidup,
Mereka tiada segan mencercahmu,
Mereka adalah bagian dari hidupmu,
Hadir mengalir dalam alunan waktu,
Tiada mungkin dapat kau pisahkan,
Walau mereka sering menenggelamkanmu.
Saat kau menginjak keagungan,
Tiada letih mereka meninggikanmu,
Begitupun saat mereka menadah padamu,
Memohon belas kasih darimu.
Tapi kala kau jatuh terinjak,
Terhempas dalam kerasnya hidup,
Mereka tiada segan mencercahmu,
Jumat, 13 Januari 2012
Sosok Syeikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi
Inilah Sosok Tokoh Muslim Yang Menginspirasi Tahun 2011
Sederat nama mencuat. Mereka di antaranya adalah Syeikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, ulama ternama dan Rashid Ganouchi, pemimpin partai Islam An-Nahda di Tunisia. Dua sosok ini bertengger di dua posisi teratas tokoh 2011 dalam jajak pendapat lama onislam yang dipublikasikan awal Januari 2012 lalu. para pemilih menilai, Qaradhawi dan Ganouchi memiliki
Sederat nama mencuat. Mereka di antaranya adalah Syeikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, ulama ternama dan Rashid Ganouchi, pemimpin partai Islam An-Nahda di Tunisia. Dua sosok ini bertengger di dua posisi teratas tokoh 2011 dalam jajak pendapat lama onislam yang dipublikasikan awal Januari 2012 lalu. para pemilih menilai, Qaradhawi dan Ganouchi memiliki
Fenomena Misteri Segitiga Bermuda
Laut dan udara di wilayah ini tak pernah menunjukkan gejala gangguan apa-apa menjelang pesawat atau kapal tiba-tiba hilang di sini. Kesan inilah yang membuat opini bahwa sampai-sampai pilot atau nakhoda tak pernah sempat lagi mengambil langkah untuk menghindar.
Fenomena yang terjadi di sana memang seolah terlalu dahsyat untuk dihindari. Kesan ini pun seolah membenarkan laporan yang
Puisi Negeri Debu
Negeri Debu
Duka sebegitu tajam tergores di langit ini,sayap kupu-kupu tak bisa membawa beban debu,juga sapu lidi terlalu pendek untuk menyapu.
Sehektar puing yang dititipkan gempa kepadamu,ini wilayah angin, bisik daun pada
sebutir debu. dan debu itu memang
tak pernah melihat onggokan bukit kapur di sana,kecuali rumah-rumah yang rebah
ditidurkan angin.
Sebatas mana rentang tanganmu
Duka sebegitu tajam tergores di langit ini,sayap kupu-kupu tak bisa membawa beban debu,juga sapu lidi terlalu pendek untuk menyapu.
Sehektar puing yang dititipkan gempa kepadamu,ini wilayah angin, bisik daun pada
sebutir debu. dan debu itu memang
tak pernah melihat onggokan bukit kapur di sana,kecuali rumah-rumah yang rebah
ditidurkan angin.
Sebatas mana rentang tanganmu
Kamis, 12 Januari 2012
12 SKS Melayang Percuma
Rasa sesak, galau, resah dan sejenisnya masih menaungi hati dan pikiranku. Betapa tidak, dalam kurun waktu dua hari, 12 SKS (Satuan Kredit Semester) ku melayang percuma, aku gag bisa mengikuti ujian akhir semester (uas). Ingin berteriak seteganya hingga mengecil nadaku, ingin berlari sekencangnya, hingga badan tiada mampu ku papah. Terkadang sejenak terlintas sesal, tapi ku coba untuk menepiskan
Rabu, 11 Januari 2012
The Pro's Pro: Director Guy Magar
Inside Television 586
Publication Date: 1-13-12
By: Hubert O’Hearn
The Pro’s Pro
I have a theory. Television directors are like baseball umpires. When the show or the game is over the average viewer should have no idea of the name of either. Flamboyance takes away from the story the audience wants to see. Movies are different. Ever since Cahiers du Cinema in France and Andrew Sarris in America among others, came up with the auteur theory in the 1950s directors have increasingly and visibly waved their hands, shot off fireworks and held up twinkly signs saying Hey Look at ME!
This week I spoke with a man who knows both sides of the directorial experience. Guy Magar, age 63, has directed thousands of hours of television programming plus several feature films including the cult favourite Retribution and the movie that largely launched the career of Matt LeBlanc, Lookin’ Italian. He authored one of my favourite Hollywood memoirs, Kiss Me Quick Before I Shoot which is in equal parts the story of his rise in Hollywood, becoming a pro’s pro among directors and the story of his beloved wife Jacqui’s battle against leukemia. The latter was ultimately successful thanks to groundbreaking stem cell treatment.
What is perhaps most gratifying about Guy is his willingness to pass on almost 40 years of professional experience to new filmmakers, primarily through his Action/Cut series of weekend seminars, also available on DVD through www.actioncut.com . So what is actually involved in directing a television show like The A Team, La Femme Nikita, or a soap opera like Capitol?
‘There are two parts to directing. One is learning how to tell a story visually, through pictures. Film schools do a great job of that. The other part is working with actors. That’s the part they don’t teach you. I started taking acting classes when I was in New York and I continued to do so in L.A. I needed to know how actors work as individuals and how to communicate with them.’
What else is there that film schools don’t teach the students? It seems that there are no end of people who produce great student films then vanish. ‘I’ve seen that happen to so many. As I mention in the book, there were only 3 of us left in town from my 100 graduating class at the AFI a decade later. You’re right, it’s not just talent…you gotta be a great networker – and super self-motivated – to meet the right folks to SHOW your film to…the right folks mean the very few people who can help you move forward with your career if they like what you show them. As you may recall from my book, it took me sneaking past the guards at the black tower at Universal Studios breaking into an executive’s office who had seen the film, thought I had the talent, but wouldn’t take my calls…I was desperate and needed to confront him and find out if he really did think I had some talent…and if so, to help me get into Universal. And I got lucky.’
Action/Cut is an outstanding seminar program given that it works directly from the dailies which Guy has saved over the years. He teaches how to put a scene together - any kind of scene, from action to comedy to love scenes. And if you learn and then do your job perfectly, maybe you’ll be the next Martin Scorces or maybe you’ll be the next pro’s pro - the guy (pun intended) the industry knows to call when they need the job done right.
Be seeing you.
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