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Gordon Tootoosis, Canadian actor (Pocahontas, Legends of the Fall) and activist, died from pneumonia he was , 69.

Gordon Tootoosis, CM  was a Canadian actor of Cree and Stoney descent died from pneumonia he was , 69.. He was a descendant of Yellow Mud Blanket, brother of the famous Cree leader Pitikwahanapiwiyin.[1] He was acclaimed for his commitment to preserving his culture and to telling his people’s stories. He served as a founding member of the board of directors of the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company. Tootoosis offered encouragement, support and training to aspiring Aboriginal actors. He served as a leading Cree activist both as a social worker and as a band chief.

(October 25, 1941 – July 5, 2011)



He was awarded membership in the Order of Canada on October 29, 2004.[2] The investiture ceremony took place on September 9, 2005. His citation recognizes him as an inspirational role model for Aboriginal youth. It notes that as a veteran actor, he portrayed memorable characters in movie and television productions in Canada and the United States.[2]

Biography

Gordon Tootoosis was raised with his 13 siblings in the Plains Cree tradition until he was taken from his home[why?] and placed in a Catholic residential school, where he was treated harshly and forbidden to speak his own language. His father, John Tootoosis, was an activist for aboriginal rights, which got the younger Tootoosis into trouble at school.[1]
After his traumatic school years, Tootoosis went into social work, specializing in work with children and young offenders. His interest in his own cultural traditions led him to become an accomplished native dancer and rodeo roper, and he toured with the Plains InterTribal Dance Troupe in the 1960s and 1970s throughout Canada, Europe and South America, becoming one of North America’s most popular powwow announcers.[1]
His father was one of the founders of the National Indian Brotherhood and former head of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN). Gordon himself served as the chief of his band and as a vice-president of FSIN. Tootoosis was married to Irene Seseequasis since 1965. They have three daughters and two adopted sons. After their daughter Glynnis died of cancer in 1997, they took the responsibility of raising her four children in Saskatoon.[3]
Tootoosis died on July 5, 2011, aged 69, after being hospitalized for pneumonia at St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon.[4][5]
His funeral and interment were held on the Poundmaker Cree Nation Reserve. [6]

Acting career

His first acting role was in the film Alien Thunder (1974), with Chief Dan George and Donald Sutherland. He portrayed Albert Golo in 52 episodes of North of 60 in the 1990s. He is best known to British audiences for playing the Native American Joe Saugus, who negotiates the purchase of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet series 3 (2002). Gordon appeared in the CBC Television mini-series By Way of the Stars with Eric Schweig as Black Thunder and Tantoo Cardinal as Franoise. Tootoosis starred with Russell Means in Disney‘s Pocahontas (1995) and Song of Hiawatha (1997). In 1999, he and Tantoo Cardinal became founding member of the board of directors of the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company. In 2011, he appeared in Gordon Winter at the Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon and Prairie Scene in Ottawa, his first stage role in 15 years.[7]
He won a Gemini Award for his work on the animated show Wapos Bay: The Series and was nominated twice for his work on North of 60.

[edit] Selected filmography

 

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August 24, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cy Twombly, American painter, died from cancer he was , 83

Edwin Parker “Cy” Twombly, Jr.  was an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. He exhibited his paintings worldwide died from cancer he was , 83.

(April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011)

Twombly used the nickname “Cy”, after his father (also nicknamed Cy, who was briefly a pitcher in Major League Baseball) and the star baseball pitcher Cy Young.[1] Twombly’s paintings blur the line between drawing and painting. Many of his best-known paintings of the late 1960s are reminiscent of a school blackboard on which someone has practiced cursive “e”s. Twombly had at this point discarded painting figurative, representational subject-matter, citing the line or smudge – each mark with its own history – as its proper subject.
Later, many of his paintings and works on paper moved into “romantic symbolism”, and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, as well as many classical myths and allegories in his works. Examples of this are his Apollo and The Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word “VIRGIL”. In a 1994 retrospective, curator Kirk Varnedoe described Twombly’s work as “influential among artists, discomfiting to many critics and truculently difficult not just for a broad public, but for sophisticated initiates of postwar art as well.”[2] After acquiring Twombly’s Three Studies from the Temeraire (1998–99), the Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales said “sometimes people need a little bit of help in recognising a great work of art that might be a bit unfamiliar”.[3] He is said to have influenced younger artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, and Julian Schnabel.[4]

Early life and career

Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia, on April 25, 1928. Twombly’s father, also nicknamed “Cy”, pitched for the Chicago White Sox.[5] They were both nicknamed after the baseball great Cy Young who pitched for among others the Cardinals, Red Sox, Indians, and Braves.
At 12 he began to take private art lessons with the Spanish modern master Pierre Daura.[6] He served as a cryptographer in the U.S. army. After graduating from Lexington High School in 1946, Twombly attended Darlington School in Rome, Georgia, and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1948–49), and at Washington and Lee University (1949–50) in Lexington, Virginia. On a tuition scholarship from 1950 to 1951, he studied at the Art Students League of New York, where he met Robert Rauschenberg, who encouraged him to attend Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina. At Black Mountain in 1951 and 1952 he studied with Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and Ben Shahn, and met John Cage.
Arranged by Motherwell, the Samuel Kootz Gallery in New York organized Twombly’s first solo exhibition in 1951. At this time his work was influenced by Kline’s black-and-white gestural expressionism, as well as Paul Klee‘s imagery. In 1952, Twombly received a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which enabled him to travel to North Africa, Spain, Italy, and France. Between 1954 and 1956, he taught at the Southern Seminary and Junior College in Buena Vista, Virginia.
In 1957 Twombly moved to Rome, where he met the Italian artist Tatiana Franchetti – sister of his patron Baron Giorgio Franchetti. They were married at City Hall in New York in 1959[7] and then bought a palazzo on the Via di Monserrato in Rome. Later on, they preferred to dwell in Gaeta near Rome. In 2011, Twombly died in Rome after being hospitalized for several days; he had had cancer for many years.[8] He has a son, Cyrus Alessandro Twombly, who is also a painter and lives in Rome.

Work

After his return in 1953, Twombly served in the U.S. army as a cryptologist, an activity that left a distinct mark on his artistic style. From 1955 to 1959, he worked in New York, where he became a prominent figure among a group of artists including Robert Rauschenberg – with whom he had a relationship[9] and was sharing a studio[10] – and Jasper Johns. Exposure to the emerging New York School purged figurative aspects from his work, encouraging a simplified form of abstraction. He became fascinated with tribal art, using the painterly language of the early 1950s to invoke primitivism, reversing the normal evolution of the New York School. Twombly soon developed a technique of gestural drawing that was characterized by thin white lines on a dark canvas that appear to be scratched onto the surface. His early sculptures, assembled from discarded objects, similarly cast their gaze back to Europe and North Africa. He stopped making sculptures in 1959 and did not take up sculpturing again until 1976.[11]
Just when Johns and Rauschenberg were starting to sell to museums as well as private collectors, Twombly, who was not yet 30, moved to Gaeta in Southern Italy in 1957. This furthered his use of classical sources: from 1962 he produced a cycle of works based on subjects from history such as Leda and the Swan. The subject of Leda and the Swan, like that of The Birth of Venus was one of the most dramatic and frequent themes of Twombly’s work of the early 1960s. Between 1960 and 1963 Twombly painted the subject of Leda’s rape by the god Zeus/Jupiter in the form of a Swan six times, once in 1960, twice in 1962 and three times in 1963.[12]
The critical low point probably came after a widely panned 1964 exhibition of the nine-panel Discourses on Commodus (1963) at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. The artist and writer Donald Judd was especially damning, calling the show a fiasco. “There are a few drips and splatters and an occasional pencil line,” he wrote in a review. “There isn’t anything to these paintings.”[13]
Erotic and corporeal symbols became more prominent, whilst a greater lyricism developed in his ‘Blackboard paintings’. Between 1967 and 1971 he produced a number of works on gray grounds, the ‘grey paintings’. This series features terse, colorless scrawls, reminiscent of chalk on a blackboard, that form no actual words. Twombly made this work using an unusual technique: he sat on the shoulders of a friend, who shuttled back and forth along the length of the canvas, thus allowing the artist to create his fluid, continuous lines.[14] In the summer and early autumn of 1969, Twombly made a series of fourteen paintings while staying at Bolsena, a lake to the north of Rome. In 1971, Nini Pirandello, the wife of Twombly’s Roman gallerist Plinio De Martiis, died suddenly. In tribute, Twombly painted the elegiac “Nini’s Paintings”.
His later sculptures exhibit a similar blend of emotional expansiveness and intellectual sophistication. From 1976 Twombly again produced sculptures, lightly painted in white, suggestive of Classical forms. Like his earlier works, these pieces are assembled from found materials such as pieces of wood or packaging, or cast in bronze and covered in white paint and plaster.[15] In the mid-1970s, in paintings such as Untitled (1976), Twombly began to evoke landscape through colour (favouring brown, green and light blue), written inscriptions and collage elements.[16] In 1978 he worked on the monumental historical ensemble Fifty Days at Iliam, a ten-part cycle inspired by Homer‘s Iliad; since then Twombly continued to draw on literature and myth, deploying cryptic pictorial metaphors that situate individual experience within the grand narratives of Western tradition, as in the Gaeta canvases and the monumental Four Seasons concluded in 1994.
Apart from Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Twombly is regarded as the most important representative of a generation of artists who distanced themselves from Abstract Expressionism.[17]

Exhibitions

After having shown at Stable Gallery from 1953 to 1957, Twombly moved to Leo Castelli Gallery.
Twombly was invited to exhibit his work at the Venice Biennale in 1964, 1989 and 2001. In 1968, the Milwaukee Art Museum mounted the first retrospective of his art. Twombly had his next retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1979, curated by David Whitney. The artist has later been honored by retrospectives at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1987 (curated by Harald Szeemann), the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1988, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1994, with additional venues in Houston, Los Angeles, and Berlin.[18] In 2001, the Menil Collection, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the National Gallery of Art presented the first exhibition devoted entirely to Twombly’s sculpture, assembling sixty-six works created from 1946 to 1998.[19] The European retrospective “Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons” opened at the Tate Modern, London, in June 2008, with subsequent versions at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome in 2009. Opening in conjunction with the Modern Wing, Twombly’s most recent solo exhibition —Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000–2007— was on display at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009.
In 1993, at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York, an exhibition of Twombly’s photographs offered a selection of large blurry color images of tulips, trees and ancient busts, based on the artist’s Polaroids. In 2008, a specially curated selection of Twombly’s photographic work was exhibited in “Huis Marseille”, the Museum for Photography, Amsterdam; the exhibition was opened by Sally Mann. In 2011, the Museum Brandhorst, mounted an retrospective of Twombly’s photographs from 1951 to 2010. It later was passed over to the “Museum für Gegenwartskunst” at Siegen (July-October 2011).[20]

Phaedrus incident

In 2007, an exhibition of Twombly’s paintings, Blooming, a Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things, and other works on paper from gallerist Yvon Lambert’s collection was displayed from June to September in Avignon (France), at the Lambert Foundation (Hôtel de Caumont). On July 19, 2007, police arrested Cambodian-French artist Rindy Sam after she kissed one panel of Twombly’s triptych Phaedrus. The panel, an all-white canvas, was smudged by Sam’s red lipstick. She was tried in a court in Avignon for “voluntary degradation of a work of art”.
Sam defended her gesture to the court: “J’ai fait juste un bisou. C’est un geste d’amour, quand je l’ai embrassé, je n’ai pas réfléchi, je pensais que l’artiste, il aurait compris… Ce geste était un acte artistique provoqué par le pouvoir de l’art” (“It was just a kiss, a loving gesture. I kissed it without thinking; I thought the artist would understand…. It was an artistic act provoked by the power of Art”).
The prosecution, calling it “A sort of cannibalism, or parasitism”, while admitting that Sam is “visibly not conscious of what she has done”, asked that she be fined €4500 and compelled to attend a citizenship class. The art work, which is worth an estimated $2 million, was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon.[21][22][23] In November 2007 Sam was convicted and ordered to pay €1,000 to the painting’s owner, €500 to the Avignon gallery that showed it, and €1 to the painter.[24]

Tate exhibition

Twombly’s work was on exhibition at the Tate Modern, in London, from June 19 to September 14, 2008. Text for the showing read:

Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibition

Twombly’s work went on display as part of Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London from June 29, 2011 less than a week before Twombly’s Death. The show was built on a quote by Twombly stating that “I would’ve liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time” and is the first time that his work was put in an exhibition with Poussin.[25]

Collections

In 1989, the Philadelphia Museum of Art opened permanent rooms dedicated to his monumental 10-painting cycle, Fifty Days at Iliam (1978), based on Alexander Pope’s translation of “The Iliad.”[13] The Cy Twombly Gallery of the Menil Collection in Houston, which was designed by Renzo Piano and opened in 1995, houses more than thirty of Twombly’s paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, dating from 1953 to 1994. A large collection of Twombly’s work is also kept by the Museum Brandhorst and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.
In 1995 The Four Seasons entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art as a gift from the artist. A recent (1998–1999) Twombly work, Three Studies from the Temeraire, a triptych, was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for A$4.5 million in 2004. In 2010, Twombly’s permanent site-specific painting, Ceiling was unveiled in the Salle des Bronzes at the Musée du Louvre; he is only the third artist to have been invited to do so as well as only the first artist given this honor since Georges Braque in the 1950s.[26] In 2011, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, made a large acquisition of nine works worth about $75 million.[11]

Recognition

Twombly was a recipient of numerous awards, most notably the Praemium Imperiale (1996). In 2001 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the 49th Venice Biennale. In 2010 he was made Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government. During fall 2010, Tacita Dean produced a film on Twombly, titled “Edwin Parker”.[27]

At auction

Already in 1990, a Christie’s auction set a record for Twombly, with his 1971 untitled blackboard painting fetching $5.5 million. In 2011 a Twombly work from 1967, “Untitled”, sold for $15.2 million at Christie‘s in New York.[28]

Publications

A first monograph of drawings edited by Heiner Bastian was published in 1972. In 1977 the first monograph on the paintings was published by Propyläen Verlag in Berlin, followed by the publication of his catalogue raisonne of sculpture by Nicola Del Roscio in 1997.

Sources

 

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August 24, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Shinji Wada, Japanese mangaka (Sukeban Deka) died he was , 61

Shinji Wada was a Japanese manga artist in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, and best known for the creation of the Sukeban Deka franchise died he was , 61. He has been the cover artist for and had stories published in the bishōjo lolicon manga anthology series Petit Apple Pie.

( April 19, 1950 – July 5, 2011)

History

When Hakusensha published Sukeban Deka in 1979, Wada’s work became so popular that he was commissioned to create the OAV series and a TV series that spawned three seasons, including two live-action movies.
As of 2007, he had been involved in creating his latest manga Crown. He was previously involved in creating Sukeban Deka: Codename = Asamiya Saki.
Wada died in July 2011 due to ischaemic heart disease.[1]

Works

Manga

Author and artist unless otherwise noted.

  • Ai to Shi no Sunadokei (1971-1973, Bessatsu Margaret, Shueisha)
  • Waga Tomo Frankenstein (1972-1975, Bessatsu Margaret, Shueisha)
  • Gin’iro no Kami no Arisa (1973, Bessatsu Margaret, Shueisha)
  • Daitōbō (1974, Bessatsu Margaret, Shueisha)
  • Hidari no Me no Akuryō (1975, Hana to Yume, Hakusensha)
  • Midori Iro no Sunadokei (1975, Monthly Comics Mimi, Kodansha)
  • Vanilla Essence no Gogo (1975, Hana to Yume, Hakusensha)
  • Chōshōjo Asuka (1975-2000, Margaret (Shueisha), Hana to Yume (Hakusensha), and Comic Flapper (Media Factory))
  • Arabian Kyōsōkyoku (1976, Princess, Akita Shoten)
  • Kuma-san no Shiki (1976, Bessatsu Margaret, Shueisha)
  • Sukeban Deka (1976-1982, Hana to Yume, Hakusensha)
  • Asagi Iro no Densetsu (1976-1990, LaLa and Hana to Yume, Hakusensha)
  • Ramu-chan no Sensō (1978, Princess, Akita Shoten)
  • Pygmalion (1978-1990, Hana to Yume, Hakusensha)
  • Kyōfu no Fukkatsu (1980, Princess, Akita Shoten)
  • Ninja Hishō (1980-2002, Hana to Yume (Hakusensha), Monthly ComiComi (Hakusensha), Duo, Comic Flapper (Media Factory))
  • Cabbage Batake o Tōri Nukete (1982, Petit Apple Pie, Tokuma Shoten)
  • Kaitō Amaryllis (1991-1995, Hana to Yume, Hakusensha)
  • Shōjozame (1996-1999, Hana to Yume, Hakusensha)
  • Lady Midnight (2001-2002, Mystery Bonita, Akita Shoten)
  • Kugutsushi Rin (2006-current, Mystery Bonita, Akita Shoten)

Collaborative manga

Anime

  • Crusher Joe (OAV, special guest designer on Goby)
  • Pygmalio (original creator)

TV

 

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August 24, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Joe Alaskey- the Greatest Vocal Impressionist

Now Thats Funny!!!!

August 24, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

17 people got busted on July 14, 2011

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August 24, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Wes Covington, American baseball player (Milwaukee Braves, Kansas City Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies), died from cancer he was , 79.

John Wesley Covington, was a left fielder in Major League Baseball who played from 1956 through 1966 for the Milwaukee Braves, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers. Listed at 6′ 1″, 205 lb., he batted left handed and threw right handed  died from cancer he was , 79..

(March 27, 1932 – July 4, 2011)


Career

Born in Laurinburg, North Carolina, Covington was a minor league call-up who sparked the 1957 Braves down the stretch and helped them win the World Series.[2]
Covington hit .284 with 21 home runs and drove in 65 runs in just 96 games over the second half of the 1957 season. His inspired play continued in the Series against the New York Yankees, highlighted by two defensive gems that helped preserve wins for Lew Burdette.[1]
In Game 2, Covington pulled off an improbable backhanded stab to take an extra-base hit away from Bobby Shantz, and in Game 5 he crashed into the fence to steal a homer from Gil McDougald. He also drove in Joe Adcock for what would prove to be the winning run in Game 2, while the Braves won the Series in seven games.[2]
In an 11-year career, Covington was a .279 hitter with 131 homers and 499 runs batted in, with a .337 on base percentage and a .466 slugging percentage in 1,075 games. His best season came in 1958, when he posted career numbers in average (.330), home runs (24) and RBI (74).[1]
Covington also was one of a handful of major leaguers to have played for four different teams in one season, after he played for the Braves, White Sox, Athletics and Phillies in the 1961 season.(See July 30, 2004 in baseball)

Retirement

Following his baseball career, Covington moved to Western Canada and operated a sporting goods business. He later became an advertising manager for the Edmonton Sun newspaper, a position he held for nearly 20 years. In addition to his duties with the Sun, he was involved in youth charity work in the Alberta capital.[2]
When the Edmonton Trappers joined the Pacific Coast League in the early 1980s, Covington returned to baseball as a promotions consultant and special ambassador for the club. In 2003, at the invitation of the Braves Historical Association, Covington returned to Milwaukee for the first time in 40 years.[2]
Covington died of cancer in Edmonton, Alberta, at the age of 79.[3]

 

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August 24, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who is Nigella Lucy Lawson?

Who is Nigella Lucy Lawson? The food critic word know Nigella Lawson as an English food writer, journalist and broadcaster. Lawson is the daughter of Nigel Lawson, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Vanessa Salmon, whose family owned the J. Lyons and Co. empire. After graduating from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, Lawson started work as a book reviewer and restaurant critic, later becoming the deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times in 1986. She then embarked upon a career as a freelance journalist, writing for a number of newspapers and magazines. In 1998, Lawson brought out her first cookery book, How to Eat, which sold 300,000 copies and became a bestseller. She went on to write her second book in 2000, How to be a Domestic Goddess, winning her the British Book Award for Author of the Year.

In 2000, she began to host her own cookery series on Channel 4, Nigella Bites, which was accompanied with another bestselling cookery book. The Nigella Bites series won Lawson a Guild of Food Writers Award; however her 2005 ITV daytime chat show was met with a negative critical reaction and was cancelled after attracting low ratings. Lawson hosted the Food Network‘s Nigella Feasts in the United States in 2006 followed by a three-part BBC Two series, Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen, in the United Kingdom. This led to the commissioning of Nigella Express on BBC Two in 2007. Her own cookware range, Living Kitchen, has a value of £7 million, and she has sold more than 3 million cookery books worldwide.
Renowned for her flirtatious manner of presenting, Lawson has been called the “queen of food porn“. She is neither a trained chef nor cook, and has assumed a distinctly relaxed approach to her cooking.

Background

Nigel Lawson

Lawson was born 6 January 1960. Her given name originally being thought up by her grandmother,[3] Nigella Lawson is a daughter of Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby,[4] a Conservative MP, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher‘s cabinet, and Vanessa Salmon (1936–1985),[5] a socialite, “celebrated beauty”[6] and heiress to the J. Lyons & Co. fortune.[7] Her family kept homes in Kensington and Chelsea,[8] and were noted for their luxurious life-style.[9] In the 1960s, Peregrine Worsthorne wrote that Vanessa and her daughters looked “as if they had stepped straight out of a Visconti film set”.[10] Lawson’s parents divorced in 1980. They both remarried; her father in 1980 to a House of Commons researcher, Therese Maclear (to whom he was married until 2008,[11]) and her mother, in the early 1980s, to philosopher, Sir A.J. Ayer (they remained married until her mother’s death).[7] With Lawson’s father being a prominent politician, some of the things she found most frustrating were the many judgements and pre-conceptions made about her.[3] There was a time when Lawson did not get on with her father, mostly during her parents’ divorce, and she became friendly with her mother only when she reached adulthood.[12] Being unhappy as a child has been attributed, by Lawson, partly to the problematic relationship she had with her mother.[8]
Lawson’s school years were difficult; she had to move schools nine times between the ages of 9 and 18, spending some of her childhood in the Welsh town of Higher Kinnerton. “I was just difficult, disruptive, good at school work, but rude, I suspect, and too highly-strung”, Lawson reflected.[13] Her father originally chose not to believe the reports of her disruptive behaviour and thought the school had the wrong person.[12] Lawson reluctantly attended a private school in the Midlands and later returned to London’s Godolphin and Latymer School sixth form where she began to show skill academically.[12] She worked for many department stores in London,[14] and went on to graduate from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford[14] with a degree in mediæval and modern languages.[15] She also lived in Florence for a period.[16]
Lawson’s mother died of liver cancer in Westminster, London, aged 48, when Lawson was 25.[7][16] Her full-blood siblings are her brother, Dominic, former editor of The Sunday Telegraph, a sister, Horatia and sister Thomasina, who died of breast cancer in 1993 during her early thirties;[13][17][18] She has a half-brother Tom, and a half-sister Emily, her father’s children by his second wife. Lawson is a cousin to both George Monbiot and Fiona Shackleton through the Salmons.[19]
Taking part in the third series of the BBC family-history documentary series, Who Do You Think You Are?, Lawson sought to uncover some of her family’s ancestry. She traced her ancestors to Ashkenazi Jews who originate from eastern Europe and Germany, leaving Lawson surprised not to have Iberian–Sephardi ancestry in the family as she had believed.[20] She also uncovered that her maternal great-great-great grandfather, Coenraad Sammes (later Coleman Joseph), had fled to England from Amsterdam in 1830 to escape a prison sentence following a conviction for theft.[20][21] It was his daughter, Hannah, who married Samuel Gluckstein, father-in-law and business partner of Barnett Salmon and father of Isidore and Montague Gluckstein, who together with Barnett founded J. Lyons and Co. in 1887.[20][22]

Career

Early work

Lawson originally worked in publishing, first taking a job under publisher Naim Attallah.[14] At 23, she commenced her journalism career after Charles Moore had invited her to write for The Spectator.[14] Her initial work at the magazine consisted of writing book reviews,[23][24] after which period she became a restaurant critic there in 1985.[13] She became the deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times in 1986 at the age of 26.[13][25] Lawson occasionally drifted into the public’s eye, attracting unwanted publicity in 1989 when she admitted voting for Labour in an election as opposed to her father’s Conservative Party, and then criticised Margaret Thatcher in print.[7] Regarding her political relationship with her father, Lawson has stated, “My father would never expect me to agree with him about anything in particular. And, to be honest, we never talk about politics much.”[26]
After her stint at The Sunday Times, Lawson embarked upon a freelance writing career, realizing that “I was on the wrong ladder. I didn’t want to be an executive, being paid to worry rather than think”.[8] In the United Kingdom, she wrote for The Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard, The Observer and The Times Literary Supplement, and penned a food column for Vogue[27] and a makeup column for The Times Magazine,[8] as well as working with Gourmet and Bon Appétit in the United States.[28] After just two weeks working on Talk Radio in 1995, Lawson was sacked after she had stated her shopping was done for her, which was deemed incompatible with the radio station’s desired “common touch”.[7]

1998–2002: Cookery writing and Nigella Bites

Lawson had an established sense of cooking from her childhood, having had a mother who enjoyed to cook.[8] Lawson conceived the idea of writing a cookery book after she observed a dinner party host in tears because of an unset crème caramel.[29] How to Eat was subsequently written in 1998,[13] featuring culinary tips on preparation and saving time.[29] The book became a success and sold 300,000 copies in the UK;[23] The Sunday Telegraph dubbed it “the most valuable culinary guide published this decade”.[30]
Lawson then wrote How to be a Domestic Goddess in 2000, which focused primarily on baking[16] and also became a bestseller. The Times wrote, regarding the book and Lawson’s approach to its writing, “How To Be a Domestic Goddess … is defined by its intimate, companionable approach. She is not issuing matronly instructions like Delia; she is merely making sisterly suggestions”.[8] Lawson rejected feminist criticism of her book,[31] and stated, “Some people did take the domestic goddess title literally rather than ironically. It was about the pleasures of feeling like one rather than actually being one”.[4] The book sold 180,000 copies in four months,[29] and won Lawson the title of Author of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2001,[23] fending off competition from authors such as J. K. Rowling.[32] One commentator suggested she won the award only because her husband was about to die of cancer.[23] Lawson retorted, “I am not against pity, but I have no desire to be tragic”.[23] How to Eat and How to be a Domestic Goddess were published in America in 2000 and 2001.[33] As a result of the book’s success, The Observer took on Lawson as a social affairs columnist.[13]
Lawson next hosted her own cookery television series, Nigella Bites, which ran from 2000 to 2001 on Channel 4,[34][35] followed by a Christmas special in 2001.[36] Victor Lewis-Smith, a critic notorious for his biting criticism, commended Lawson for being “formidably charismatic”.[4] The first series of Nigella Bites averaged 1.9 million viewers,[37] and won her the Television Broadcast of the Year at the Guild of Food Writers Awards[38] and the Best Television Food Show at the World Food Media Awards in 2001.[39] The show yielded an accompanying bestselling recipe book, also called Nigella Bites,[40] for which Waterstone’s book stores reported UK sales of over 300,000.[41] The book won a W H Smith Award for Lifestyle Book of the Year.[42]
The Nigella Bites series, which was filmed in her home in west London, was later broadcast on American television on channels E![43] and Style Network.[23] Lawson said of the US release, “In the UK, my viewers have responded to the fact I’m trying to reduce, not add to, their burden and I’m looking forward to making that connection with Style viewers across the US”.[43] Overall, Lawson was well received in the United States.[26] Those who did criticise her often suggested she was too flirtatious; a commentator from The New York Times said, “Lawson’s sexy roundness mixed with her speed-demon technique makes cooking dinner with Nigella look like a prelude to an orgy”.[23] The book of Nigella Bites became the second bestselling cookery book of Christmas 2002 in America.[44] The series was followed by Forever Summer with Nigella in 2002 on Channel 4, the concept being, “that you cook to make you still feel as though you’re on holiday”.[26] Also in 2002, she began to write a fortnightly cooking articles for The New York Times,[5] and brought out a profitable line of kitchenware, called the Living Kitchen range, which is sold by numerous retailers.[27] Her range’s value has continued to grow, starting at an estimated £2 million in 2003,[45] and increasing to £7 million in 2007.[46]

2003–2006: Nigella Feasts and BBC contract

In November 2003, Lawson oversaw the menu and preparations for a lunch hosted by Tony Blair at Downing Street for George W. Bush and his wife during their state visit to the UK.[47] Laura Bush is said to be a fan of Lawson’s recipes and once included one of her soups as the starter for the 2002 presidential Christmas dinner.[44] Lawson’s fifth book, Feast Food that Celebrates Life, released in 2004,[48] made sales worth £3 million.[49] In a positive review, London’s Evening Standard wrote that the book “works both as a practical manual and an engrossing read. … Nobody else writes so openly about the emotional significance of food”.[50] Lawson appeared frequently on American television in 2004, conducting cookery slots on talk shows such as The Ellen DeGeneres Show.[51]
In the UK in 2005, Lawson started to host a daytime television chat show on ITV1 called Nigella, on which celebrity guests joined her in a studio kitchen.[21] The first episode debuted with a disappointing 800,000 viewers.[52] The show was met with a largely negative critical reaction,[53] and after losing 40 percent of its viewers in the first week, the show was cancelled.[54] Lawson later commented in an interview with Radio Times that on her first show, she was almost too frightened to come out of her dressing room.[55] Lawson further stated that having to pretend to be interested in the lives of the celebrities on her show became too much of an effort.[21] She also discovered, “I can’t ever be a presenter, and won’t do scripts”.[56]
Her third food-based television series, called Nigella Feasts, debuted on the USA’s Food Network in Autumn 2006 for a 13-week run.[54] Time magazine wrote a favorable review of the show; “the real appeal of Feasts … is her unfussy, wry, practical approach to entertaining and quality comfort food. … between the luscious camera shots and Lawson’s sensual enjoyment of eating, Feasts will leave you wishing for an invite”.[57] Since the American broadcasting, Lawson signed a £2.5 million deal for the series to be shown in ten other countries across the world.[58]
Lawson was next signed to BBC Two to host a three-part cookery show entitled Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen, which began on 6 December 2006 and aired weekly. The first two episodes secured the second highest ratings of the week for BBC Two, with the first episode debuting with a strong 3.5 million.[59][60] The final episode went on to become the top show on BBC Two the week that it was aired.[59] Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen won Lawson a second World Food Media Award in 2007.[61] Her influence as a food commentator was also demonstrated in late 2006, when after she had lauded goose fat as being an essential ingredient for Christmas, sales percentages of the product increased significantly in the UK. Waitrose and Tesco both stated that goose fat sales had more than doubled, as well as Asda‘s goose fat sales increasing by 65 percent from the previous week.[62] Similarly, after she advised using prunes in a recipe on Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen, Waitrose had increased sales of 30 percent year on year.[63][64]

2007–2009: Nigella Express and Nigella’s Christmas

Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen led to the commissioning of a 13-part cookery series entitled Nigella Express.[65] The series began to air on BBC Two on 3 September 2007, suggesting ways of making simple and quick dishes.[66] Lawson admitted the recipes were not “particularly healthy”,[67] although she added, “I wouldn’t describe them as junk”.[68] The show became another ratings success and one of BBC Two’s top-rated shows each week.[69] The first episode debuted with 2.85 million viewers,[69] a high percentage above the channel’s slot average.[70] The second episode’s viewing figures rose to 3.3 million,[71] and the series peaked at 3.4 million on 22 October 2007.[72] Her influence with the public was again demonstrated when sales of Riesling wine increased by 30 percent in the UK after she had incorporated it into her Coq au Riesling recipe on Nigella Express.[73] Later on a separate occasion, a similar trend was seen in the sales figures of the liqueur Advocaat after Lawson had endorsed it on the show.[74]
The television series of Nigella Express was subject to criticism from the Daily Mail when it emerged that a bus Lawson was seen travelling on during the programme had been hired and filled with extras.[46] The producers responded by saying, “This series is a factual entertainment cooking show, not an observational documentary and it is perfectly normal procedure”.[46] There was further controversy when it was revealed that the kitchens in which Lawson was seen cooking were in two separate locations; one in her home and the other in a London television studio.[46] Lawson also came under criticism when viewers complained that she had gained weight since the debut episode of the series.[75] Critics criticised the series for containing what they described as “scenes of gluttony not seen since the golden age of the Cookie Monster“[76] and commenting that her “largesse may have left her just that little bit larger.”[76] The Guardian however, noted, “the food matches her appearance — flawless, polished and sexy”.[77] The rights to Nigella Express have been sold to the Food Network in America,[46] and to Discovery Asia.[78] The series was nominated at the 35th Daytime Emmy Awards in the United States for Outstanding Lifestyle Program, and Lawson herself for the Outstanding Lifestyle Host.[79]
The accompanying book to Nigella Express was released in the UK in September 2007, America in November 2007,[46] and later in Australia in 2008.[80] Sharing the same name as the television series, the book became another bestseller in the UK,[81] and was outselling another television chef, Jamie Oliver, by 100,000 copies according to Waterstone’s.[41] It was reported that over 490,000 copies had been sold by mid-December in the UK.[41] Furthermore, the book was number one for a period on Amazon UK’s bestselling books,[41] and was ninth on their overall list of Christmas bestsellers in any category.[82] Paul Levy from The Guardian wrote that the tone of the recipes was “just right. One of the appealing things about Nigella’s brief introductions to each of them is that she thinks not just as cook, but as eater, and tells you whether they’re messy, sticky or fussy”.[77] Lawson is now estimated to have sold more than 3 million books worldwide.[83] Her Christmas book was released in October 2008 and the television show in December of the same year. An American edition of the book “Nigella Christmas” with a different cover photograph was released in November 2009 with an accompanying book tour of several US cities and a special on the USA’s Food Network.

Presenting style and image

Though Lawson has enjoyed a successful career in cookery, she is not a trained chef,[84] and does not like being referred to as a “celebrity chef”.[3] Furthermore, she does not see herself as a cook or an expert in her field.[16] Throughout Lawson’s television programmes,[85] she emphasises that she cooks for her own pleasure,[8] for enjoyment,[4] and that she finds cooking therapeutic.[16] When deciding upon which recipes to feature in her books, she takes the view of the eater, stating, “If it’s something I don’t want to carry on eating once I’m full, then I don’t want the recipe… I have to feel that I want to cook the thing again”.[16]
Lawson has adopted a casual approach to cooking, stating, “I think cooking should be about fun and family. … I think part of my appeal is that my approach to cooking is really relaxed and not rigid. There are no rules in my kitchen”.[84] One editor, highlighting the technical simplicity of Lawson’s recipes, noted that “her dishes require none of the elaborate preparation called for by most TV chefs”.[86]

Lawson has become renowned for her flirtatious manner of presenting, although she argues, “It’s not meant to be flirtatious. … I don’t have the talent to adopt a different persona. It’s intimate, not flirtatious”.[21] The perceived overt sexuality of her presentation style has led to Lawson’s being called the “queen of food porn“.[12][87][88] Many commentators have alluded to Lawson’s attractiveness, and she was once named as one of the world’s most beautiful women.[16] She has been referred to as “stunningly beautiful, warm, honest, likeable and amazingly normal”,[13] as well as being described as having “flawless skin, perfect white teeth, a voluptuous body, ample height and lots of lush, brown hair”.[84] The media has also noted Lawson’s ability to engage with both male and female viewers;[4][24][89] The Guardian wrote, “Men love her because they want to be with her. Women love her because they want to be her”.[3] The chef, Gary Rhodes, spoke out against Lawson by suggesting that her viewers take preference to her smile rather than the cooking itself.[90] Despite often being labelled as a domestic goddess,[91] she insists that she exhibits very few of the qualities associated with the title.[24][26]
Lawson is also known for her vivid and adjective-filled food descriptions in both her books and television programmes,[92] as one critic summarized, “her descriptions of food can be a tangle of adjectives.”[33] In a study conducted in 2007 on the readability of different recipes, the chatty and florid style of Lawson’s recipes was judged to be confusing to readers with weak reading skills.[93] Lawson has also expressed her surprise at how many reviews in the United States have mentioned her class and posh accent.[7]
Comedians and commentators have taken to mocking Lawson’s style of presentation, particularly in a regularly occurring impersonation of her in the BBC comedy series Dead Ringers, because they perceive that she plays overtly upon her attractiveness and sexuality as a device to engage viewers of her cookery programmes.[94] Impressions by Ronni Ancona that further parodied Lawson’s presenting style have also been featured on the BBC One impersonation sketch show, The Big Impression.[26]

Personal life

Geoffrey Robertson

Lawson was in a relationship with human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC until 1988, when he left her for novelist Kathy Lette.[95] 
Lawson met journalist John Diamond in 1986, when they were both writing for The Sunday Times.[13] They married in Venice in 1992,[12] and had two children together, both born in Hammersmith, London: Cosima Thomasina (born 1994) and Bruno Paul (born 1996).[2][96] Diamond was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997, and died of the disease in March 2001, aged 47.[23] One of his last messages to Lawson was, “How proud I am of you and what you have become. The great thing about us is that we have made us who we are.”[4] His death occurred during the filming of Nigella Bites; “I took a fortnight off. But I’m not a great believer in breaks,” Lawson explained,[4] but she did suffer a bout of depression.[3] After his death, Lawson kept all of the press clippings in what she called her “Morbidobox”.[4]

Charles Saatchi

Lawson married art collector Charles Saatchi in September 2003,[97] having drawn disapproval when she moved in with him nine months after Diamond’s death.[12] Lawson had also come under criticism when it was suggested she started her relationship with Saatchi before Diamond’s death.[98] Saatchi is worth a reputed £100 million,[99] while Lawson is worth £15 million as of 2007, £8 million of which came from book sales.[58] It widely began circulating in the media in early 2008 that Lawson had been quoted as saying her two children should not inherit any of the fortune.[99] She strongly denied these plans in a statement on her personal website, which read, “Of course I have no intention of leaving my children destitute and starving — rather, this is a story that came from a comment I made about my belief that you have to work in order to learn the value of money”.[100]
Although both of Lawson’s parents are Jewish, Judaism has played no significant part religiously in her life, but she believes that she has developed a somewhat “Jewish character”.[3] She was brought up without any religion and she considers herself an atheist.[12][101] In one of her newspaper articles, she has shown a liberal attitude to sexuality (“most [women] simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women”).[102] She has said that she often partakes in watching football and is an avid supporter of Chelsea.[103]
Lawson is a supporter of the Lavender Trust which gives support to young women with breast cancer. She first became involved with the charity in 2002 when she baked some lavender cupcakes to be auctioned at a fundraising event, which sold for a significant amount of money. She subsequently featured the recipe in her book, Forever Summer with Nigella.[104]
It was revealed by leaked Whitehall documents in 2003 that Lawson declined an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II in 2001.[105] As the daughter of a life peer, Nigella is entitled to the courtesy title of “The Honourable” and is thus styled The Hon. Nigella Lawson. However she does not use this courtesy title.
In December 2008, Lawson caused major controversy and was featured in various newspapers for publicly advocating wearing fur. Lawson also remarked that she would love to kill a bear and then wear it.[106][107]
Lawson was featured as one of the three judges on the special battle of Iron Chef America, titled “The Super Chef Battle”, which pitted White House Executive Chef Christeta Comerford and Iron Chef Bobby Flay against super chef Emeril Lagasse and Iron Chef Mario Batali, which was originally broadcast on January 3, 2010.
In January 2011, Lawson and her husband Charles Saatchi moved from Belgravia to Chelsea.[2]

Television credits

Year↓ Programme↓ Episodes↓ Duration↓
2000 Nigella Bites 5 episodes, Series 1 30 minutes
2001 Nigella Bites 10 episodes, Series 2 30 minutes
2001 Nigella Bites Christmas Special 1 episode 60 minutes
2002 Forever Summer 8 episodes 30 minutes
2005 Nigella 20 episodes 60 minutes
2006 Nigella Feasts 13 episodes 30 minutes
2006 Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen 3 episodes, Series 1 30 minutes
2007 Nigella Express 13 episodes 30 minutes
2008 Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen 3 episodes, Series 2 30 minutes
2009 Top Chef (season 6) 1 episode 42 minutes
2010 Iron Chef America: Super Chef Battle 1 episode 120 minutes
2010 Nigella Kitchen 13 episodes 30 minutes
2011 MasterChef Australia Season 3 1 episode 60 minutes

Awards

  • 2000: British Book Award — Author of the Year for How to be a Domestic Goddess
  • 2001: WH Smith Book Award — How To Be A Domestic Goddess shortlisted for Lifestyle Book of the Year
  • 2001: Guild of Food Writers — Television Broadcast of the Year for Nigella Bites
  • 2001: World Food Media Award — Gold Ladle Best Television Food Show for Nigella Bites
  • 2002: WH Smith Book Awards — Lifestyle Book of the Year for Nigella Bites
  • 2007: World Food Media Award — Gold Ladle Best Food And/Or Drink Television Show for Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen

Bibliography

 

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August 24, 2011 | Categories: entertainer, great stuff to know, news, Who is | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Rusty Farley, American politician, member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives (2011) died he was , 57

Rusty Farley was a Republican politician from Oklahoma. Farley was the Representative for District 1 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. House District 1 encompasses all but the far northwestern corner of McCurtain County (the only county in the District), located in the southeastern corner of the state died he was , 57.

(September 25, 1953 – July 4, 2011)

Political History

An 18-year member of the Haworth school board, Farley was unsuccessful in his 2008 bid for the seat, losing to Dennis Bailey.
Farley ran unopposed in the 2010 primary and once again faced Bailey for the District 1 seat. Farley upset the incumbent in a District where 81 percent of the residents are registered Democrats. Even more shocking was his political financing – Farley raised a grand total of only $170,[1] and spent only $70 on a single newspaper ad.[2]

Death

Farley died on July 4, 2011 from a pulmonary aneurysm at a Paris, Texas hospital. He was 57 years-old.[3][4]

 

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August 24, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment