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RuPaul speaks about society and the state of drag as performance art
February 2nd, 2022 | Uncategorized |
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Few artists ever penetrate the subconscious level of American culture the way RuPaul Andre Charles did with the 1993 album Supermodel of the World. It was groundbreaking not only because in the midst of the Grunge phenomenon did Charles have a dance hit on MTV, but because he did it as RuPaul, formerly known as Starbooty, a supermodel drag queen with a message: love everyone. A duet with Elton John, an endorsement deal with MAC cosmetics, an eponymous talk show on VH-1 and roles in film propelled RuPaul into the new millennium.
In July, RuPaul’s movie Starrbooty began playing at film festivals and it is set to be released on DVD October 31st. Wikinews reporter David Shankbone recently spoke with RuPaul by telephone in Los Angeles, where she is to appear on stage for DIVAS Simply Singing!, a benefit for HIV-AIDS.
DS: How are you doing?
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RP: Everything is great. I just settled into my new hotel room in downtown Los Angeles. I have never stayed downtown, so I wanted to try it out. L.A. is one of those traditional big cities where nobody goes downtown, but they are trying to change that.
DS: How do you like Los Angeles?
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RP: I love L.A. I’m from San Diego, and I lived here for six years. It took me four years to fall in love with it and then those last two years I had fallen head over heels in love with it. Where are you from?
DS: Me? I’m from all over. I have lived in 17 cities, six states and three countries.
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RP: Where were you when you were 15?
DS: Georgia, in a small town at the bottom of Fulton County called Palmetto.
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RP: When I was in Georgia I went to South Fulton Technical School. The last high school I ever went to was…actually, I don’t remember the name of it.
DS: Do you miss Atlanta?
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RP: I miss the Atlanta that I lived in. That Atlanta is long gone. It’s like a childhood friend who underwent head to toe plastic surgery and who I don’t recognize anymore. It’s not that I don’t like it; I do like it. It’s just not the Atlanta that I grew up with. It looks different because it went through that boomtown phase and so it has been transient. What made Georgia Georgia to me is gone. The last time I stayed in a hotel there my room was overlooking a construction site, and I realized the building that was torn down was a building that I had seen get built. And it had been torn down to build a new building. It was something you don’t expect to see in your lifetime.
DS: What did that signify to you?
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RP: What it showed me is that the mentality in Atlanta is that much of their history means nothing. For so many years they did a good job preserving. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a preservationist. It’s just an interesting observation.
DS: In 2004 when you released your third album, Red Hot, it received a good deal of play in the clubs and on dance radio, but very little press coverage. On your blog you discussed how you felt betrayed by the entertainment industry and, in particular, the gay press. What happened?
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RP: Well, betrayed might be the wrong word. ‘Betrayed’ alludes to an idea that there was some kind of a promise made to me, and there never was. More so, I was disappointed. I don’t feel like it was a betrayal. Nobody promises anything in show business and you understand that from day one.
- But, I don’t know what happened. It seemed I couldn’t get press on my album unless I was willing to play into the role that the mainstream press has assigned to gay people, which is as servants of straight ideals.
DS: Do you mean as court jesters?
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RP: Not court jesters, because that also plays into that mentality. We as humans find it easy to categorize people so that we know how to feel comfortable with them; so that we don’t feel threatened. If someone falls outside of that categorization, we feel threatened and we search our psyche to put them into a category that we feel comfortable with. The mainstream media and the gay press find it hard to accept me as…just…
DS: Everything you are?
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RP: Everything that I am.
DS: It seems like years ago, and my recollection might be fuzzy, but it seems like I read a mainstream media piece that talked about how you wanted to break out of the RuPaul ‘character’ and be seen as more than just RuPaul.
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RP: Well, RuPaul is my real name and that’s who I am and who I have always been. There’s the product RuPaul that I have sold in business. Does the product feel like it’s been put into a box? Could you be more clear? It’s a hard question to answer.
DS: That you wanted to be seen as more than just RuPaul the drag queen, but also for the man and versatile artist that you are.
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RP: That’s not on target. What other people think of me is not my business. What I do is what I do. How people see me doesn’t change what I decide to do. I don’t choose projects so people don’t see me as one thing or another. I choose projects that excite me. I think the problem is that people refuse to understand what drag is outside of their own belief system. A friend of mine recently did the Oprah show about transgendered youth. It was obvious that we, as a culture, have a hard time trying to understand the difference between a drag queen, transsexual, and a transgender, yet we find it very easy to know the difference between the American baseball league and the National baseball league, when they are both so similar. We’ll learn the difference to that. One of my hobbies is to research and go underneath ideas to discover why certain ones stay in place while others do not. Like Adam and Eve, which is a flimsy fairytale story, yet it is something that people believe; what, exactly, keeps it in place?
DS: What keeps people from knowing the difference between what is real and important, and what is not?
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RP: Our belief systems. If you are a Christian then your belief system doesn’t allow for transgender or any of those things, and you then are going to have a vested interest in not understanding that. Why? Because if one peg in your belief system doesn’t work or doesn’t fit, the whole thing will crumble. So some people won’t understand the difference between a transvestite and transsexual. They will not understand that no matter how hard you force them to because it will mean deconstructing their whole belief system. If they understand Adam and Eve is a parable or fairytale, they then have to rethink their entire belief system.
- As to me being seen as whatever, I was more likely commenting on the phenomenon of our culture. I am creative, and I am all of those things you mention, and doing one thing out there and people seeing it, it doesn’t matter if people know all that about me or not.
DS: Recently I interviewed Natasha Khan of the band Bat for Lashes, and she is considered by many to be one of the real up-and-coming artists in music today. Her band was up for the Mercury Prize in England. When I asked her where she drew inspiration from, she mentioned what really got her recently was the 1960’s and 70’s psychedelic drag queen performance art, such as seen in Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, The Cockettes and Paris Is Burning. What do you think when you hear an artist in her twenties looking to that era of drag performance art for inspiration?
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RP: The first thing I think of when I hear that is that young kids are always looking for the ‘rock and roll’ answer to give. It’s very clever to give that answer. She’s asked that a lot: “Where do you get your inspiration?” And what she gave you is the best sound bite she could; it’s a really a good sound bite. I don’t know about Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, but I know about The Cockettes and Paris Is Burning. What I think about when I hear that is there are all these art school kids and when they get an understanding of how the press works, and how your sound bite will affect the interview, they go for the best.
DS: You think her answer was contrived?
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RP: I think all answers are really contrived. Everything is contrived; the whole world is an illusion. Coming up and seeing kids dressed in Goth or hip hop clothes, when you go beneath all that, you have to ask: what is that really? You understand they are affected, pretentious. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s how we see things. I love Paris Is Burning.
DS: Has the Iraq War affected you at all?
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RP: Absolutely. It’s not good, I don’t like it, and it makes me want to enjoy this moment a lot more and be very appreciative. Like when I’m on a hike in a canyon and it smells good and there aren’t bombs dropping.
DS: Do you think there is a lot of apathy in the culture?
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RP: There’s apathy, and there’s a lot of anti-depressants and that probably lends a big contribution to the apathy. We have iPods and GPS systems and all these things to distract us.
DS: Do you ever work the current political culture into your art?
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RP: No, I don’t. Every time I bat my eyelashes it’s a political statement. The drag I come from has always been a critique of our society, so the act is defiant in and of itself in a patriarchal society such as ours. It’s an act of treason.
DS: What do you think of young performance artists working in drag today?
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RP: I don’t know of any. I don’t know of any. Because the gay culture is obsessed with everything straight and femininity has been under attack for so many years, there aren’t any up and coming drag artists. Gay culture isn’t paying attention to it, and straight people don’t either. There aren’t any drag clubs to go to in New York. I see more drag clubs in Los Angeles than in New York, which is so odd because L.A. has never been about club culture.
DS: Michael Musto told me something that was opposite of what you said. He said he felt that the younger gays, the ones who are up-and-coming, are over the body fascism and more willing to embrace their feminine sides.
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RP: I think they are redefining what femininity is, but I still think there is a lot of negativity associated with true femininity. Do boys wear eyeliner and dress in skinny jeans now? Yes, they do. But it’s still a heavily patriarchal culture and you never see two men in Star magazine, or the Queer Eye guys at a premiere, the way you see Ellen and her girlfriend—where they are all, ‘Oh, look how cute’—without a negative connotation to it. There is a definite prejudice towards men who use femininity as part of their palette; their emotional palette, their physical palette. Is that changing? It’s changing in ways that don’t advance the cause of femininity. I’m not talking frilly-laced pink things or Hello Kitty stuff. I’m talking about goddess energy, intuition and feelings. That is still under attack, and it has gotten worse. That’s why you wouldn’t get someone covering the RuPaul album, or why they say people aren’t tuning into the Katie Couric show. Sure, they can say ‘Oh, RuPaul’s album sucks’ and ‘Katie Couric is awful’; but that’s not really true. It’s about what our culture finds important, and what’s important are things that support patriarchal power. The only feminine thing supported in this struggle is Pamela Anderson and Jessica Simpson, things that support our patriarchal culture.
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Top Website Design Company, Website Development Company and SEO Services Provider in Bangalore India
by
seeknext
Why seeknext
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLOPDQbVbys[/youtube]
We at seeknext.com Website Design Company / Website Development Company, do something that everybody promises you but few deliverresult. Easier said than done for it involves a rocklike commitment demanding sweating, racking brains, hiring the best available hands in technology and letters. We have all this and we court in style the most important suitor on the web: search engines. Here are five reasons why you must trust us the next time you seek the best in web business. In all departments of making a user-friendly website, which includes powerful contents, we excel and that finally makes a difference in the vast galaxy of ever expanding Netscape. 1. We have the expert hands in SEO services, search engine marketing, and SEO package. In fact we excel in all the five or so departments of web marketing. The web pundits will tell you every department is important much like thousands of auto parts making a vehicle or various bars and notes of instruments making a melody or symphony. One misplaced part or note will mar the car or music as the case may be. In other words, the aesthetic look of the website is as important as its navigability. Its content is as important as its navigability and so on. 2. Seeknext is a total solution company that has earned the smile of scores of businesses, service service providers, and over 1000 sub-sellers. We do one or we do all but all your needs from domain registration to SEO are met by our acclaimed hands with a service motto not many can match, 3. Specialized are we in search engine optimization (SEO) and internet marketing. This calls for an in depth technical knowledge and insight into the web and web search engines. We do research on the leading crawlers on the Net and ensure our clients goods and services get a top position in the north. 4. Our servers are located at the SoftLayer Datacenter. SoftLayer engineers act as virtual onsite technicians to facilitate enterprise quality hosting services. Through the use of IPMI 2.0 server technologies, remote management software, out-of-band management, automated OS reloads, and other proprietary SoftLayer methodologies; SoftLayer brings the datacenter and hosting environments to the virtual realm, giving customers complete control over the outsourced environment. We also have a database on servers that are separate from our front end hosting servers. 5. Tailor a web scape that suits not just your need but your pocket. In the past five years of our glorious existence never did we hold the cost against any of our client that sought us because our team holds both small and big with equal esteem.
Seeknext.com, a division of Seeknext IT Solutions Pvt .Ltd. a professional Internet strategy,
Website Design Company
, Web Development Company and Web Design Company, is based in Bangalore, India. We have the expert hands in
SEO Services
, search engine marketing, and SEO package. In fact we excel in all the five or so departments of web marketing.
Article Source:
ArticleRich.com
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New method of displaying time patented
February 1st, 2022 | Uncategorized |
Saturday, October 14, 2006
An American inventor has patented a pair of new time formats with a footprint less than 50% of that of conventional four-digit time. The more unusual of the two new formats, called “TWELV”, dispenses with numerals altogether. In place of clock hands or digits, the new clock uses color to convey the hour and a moon image to convey the minute, which moon slowly grows throughout the course of an hour from a narrow crescent to a full-fledged circle.
The second and more approachable of the new formats retains numerical digits to indicate the minute but uses colors to convey the hour.
Early critics question whether the aesthetic benefits of the moon-clock will be sufficient to encourage users to learn the color-based time-telling system. However, the size advantages of the new system may make it particularly suitable for mobile applications, particularly cell phones, wearable computers, and head-mounted displays.
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Saturday, October 14, 2006
An American inventor has patented a pair of new time formats with a footprint less than 50% of that of conventional four-digit time. The more unusual of the two new formats, called “TWELV”, dispenses with numerals altogether. In place of clock hands or digits, the new clock uses color to convey the hour and a moon image to convey the minute, which moon slowly grows throughout the course of an hour from a narrow crescent to a full-fledged circle.
The second and more approachable of the new formats retains numerical digits to indicate the minute but uses colors to convey the hour.
Early critics question whether the aesthetic benefits of the moon-clock will be sufficient to encourage users to learn the color-based time-telling system. However, the size advantages of the new system may make it particularly suitable for mobile applications, particularly cell phones, wearable computers, and head-mounted displays.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. Two weeks ago Dr. Siemionow, in a 23-hour marathon surgery, replaced 80 percent of her face, by transplanting or grafting bone, nerve, blood vessels, muscles and skin harvested from a female donor’s cadaver.
The Clinic surgeons, in Wednesday’s news conference, described the details of the transplant but upon request, the team did not publish her name, age and cause of injury nor the donor’s identity. The patient’s family desired the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The Los Angeles Times reported that the patient “had no upper jaw, nose, cheeks or lower eyelids and was unable to eat, talk, smile, smell or breathe on her own.” The clinic’s dermatology and plastic surgery chair, Francis Papay, described the nine hours phase of the procedure: “We transferred the skin, all the facial muscles in the upper face and mid-face, the upper lip, all of the nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw including the teeth, the facial nerve.” Thereafter, another team spent three hours sewing the woman’s blood vessels to that of the donor’s face to restore blood circulation, making the graft a success.
The New York Times reported that “three partial face transplants have been performed since 2005, two in France and one in China, all using facial tissue from a dead donor with permission from their families.” “Only the forehead, upper eyelids, lower lip, lower teeth and jaw are hers, the rest of her face comes from a cadaver; she could not eat on her own or breathe without a hole in her windpipe. About 77 square inches of tissue were transplanted from the donor,” it further described the details of the medical marvel. The patient, however, must take lifetime immunosuppressive drugs, also called antirejection drugs, which do not guarantee success. The transplant team said that in case of failure, it would replace the part with a skin graft taken from her own body.
Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon praised the recent medical development. “There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.
Leading bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania withheld judgment on the Cleveland transplant amid grave concerns on the post-operation results. “The biggest ethical problem is dealing with failure — if your face rejects. It would be a living hell. If your face is falling off and you can’t eat and you can’t breathe and you’re suffering in a terrible manner that can’t be reversed, you need to put on the table assistance in dying. There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.
Dr Alex Clarke, of the Royal Free Hospital had praised the Clinic for its contribution to medicine. “It is a real step forward for people who have severe disfigurement and this operation has been done by a team who have really prepared and worked towards this for a number of years. These transplants have proven that the technical difficulties can be overcome and psychologically the patients are doing well. They have all have reacted positively and have begun to do things they were not able to before. All the things people thought were barriers to this kind of operations have been overcome,” she said.
The first partial face transplant surgery on a living human was performed on Isabelle Dinoire on November 27 2005, when she was 38, by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, assisted by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard in Amiens, France. Her Labrador dog mauled her in May 2005. A triangle of face tissue including the nose and mouth was taken from a brain-dead female donor and grafted onto the patient. Scientists elsewhere have performed scalp and ear transplants. However, the claim is the first for a mouth and nose transplant. Experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant.
In 2004, the same Cleveland Clinic, became the first institution to approve this surgery and test it on cadavers. In October 2006, surgeon Peter Butler at London‘s Royal Free Hospital in the UK was given permission by the NHS ethics board to carry out a full face transplant. His team will select four adult patients (children cannot be selected due to concerns over consent), with operations being carried out at six month intervals. In March 2008, the treatment of 30-year-old neurofibromatosis victim Pascal Coler of France ended after having received what his doctors call the worlds first successful full face transplant.
Ethical concerns, psychological impact, problems relating to immunosuppression and consequences of technical failure have prevented teams from performing face transplant operations in the past, even though it has been technically possible to carry out such procedures for years.
Mr Iain Hutchison, of Barts and the London Hospital, warned of several problems with face transplants, such as blood vessels in the donated tissue clotting and immunosuppressants failing or increasing the patient’s risk of cancer. He also pointed out ethical issues with the fact that the procedure requires a “beating heart donor”. The transplant is carried out while the donor is brain dead, but still alive by use of a ventilator.
According to Stephen Wigmore, chair of British Transplantation Society’s ethics committee, it is unknown to what extent facial expressions will function in the long term. He said that it is not certain whether a patient could be left worse off in the case of a face transplant failing.
Mr Michael Earley, a member of the Royal College of Surgeon‘s facial transplantation working party, commented that if successful, the transplant would be “a major breakthrough in facial reconstruction” and “a major step forward for the facially disfigured.”
In Wednesday’s conference, Siemionow said “we know that there are so many patients there in their homes where they are hiding from society because they are afraid to walk to the grocery stores, they are afraid to go the the street.” “Our patient was called names and was humiliated. We very much hope that for this very special group of patients there is a hope that someday they will be able to go comfortably from their houses and enjoy the things we take for granted,” she added.
In response to the medical breakthrough, a British medical group led by Royal Free Hospital’s lead surgeon Dr Peter Butler, said they will finish the world’s first full face transplant within a year. “We hope to make an announcement about a full-face operation in the next 12 months. This latest operation shows how facial transplantation can help a particular group of the most severely facially injured people. These are people who would otherwise live a terrible twilight life, shut away from public gaze,” he said.
Torcana Newsletter Issue 24 – Important USA Property News & Mosaic Orlando Update
by
Colin Murphy (Torcana)
To your right you ll find our main deal of the week – Mosaic at Mall of Millenia in Orlando (pictured above). Yields are very high (10%) and occupancy is almost 100%. Best of all, it s extremely beautiful and prices start at 45,500 ($60,900).
Volcano Chaos
It s been a rather topsy turvey week, with all manner of travel chaos caused by this Icelandic Volcano. We ve had people getting buses from Berlin to London and many more trying to get into and out of Florida. The best jokes for those seeking relief from the travel boredom included:
a. It was the last wish of the Icelandic economy that its ashes be spread over Europe
b. It s too soon to make jokes about the Icelandic volcano – we should at least wait until the dust settles.
Thankfully, things are rather more settled stateside and there is an abundance of positive economic and property news in the USA for those who care to look. The most striking trends and chances I have noticed included:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oMCUTJKcxE[/youtube]
Pending Homes Sales: This is often considered a leading indicator of the direction an economy is moving. In February, the number of homes in the US that are under contract rose by 8.2%. This index is also a significant 17.3% higher than it was a year ago.
Housing Affordability: This is a hugely important statistic as improved affordability helps the economic recovery by enabling more families (especially first time buyers) to purchase homes.
Back in 2007, the average house cost $217,900, the average mortgage interest rate was 6.52% and the average family income was $61,173. In February 2010, the average house cost $164,300, the average mortgage interest rate was 4.99% and the average family income was $60,498.
Some difference eh? That means a housing payment is just 14% of a regular families income, way below the 25% most experts recommend for a stable family budget.
This affordability is one of the key reasons Torcana focus on communities where locals, as opposed to tourists buy and rent. Mosaic (below) is a prime example.
Financing: A low affordability index is only useful if there is financing available to match it. The government funded home buyer tax creditshas been a major help with 128,500 people in Florida alone claiming almost a billion dollars in tax credits.
Vacancy Rates: Over the past two years vacancy rates have been rising and rental rates have been falling across the USA – no surprise with an unprecedented housing and economic bust. However, latest figures from Reuters suggest that vacancy rates have stopped risingand rental rates have started increasingin the first quarter of 2010. The number of apartments rented after a discounted house was vacated surged by over 20,000 units in the first quarter – the highest net positive jump in 10 years.
National vacancy rates now stand at 8%, but there are plenty of developments that are far lower. Our Mosaic community has 450 units – 99% of which are occupied. As you can probably imagine; it s extremely hard to find
investment properties
like that.
Mosaic At Millenia Update
Hundreds of you have now enquired about this and all should have received the full brochure, information pack, financial details and site plan. Hopefully you have had the time to review and study the very detailed information provided.
Our sales team (including Florida expert David Shaw) have been onsite over the past few weeks and are amazed at the level of sales activity from not only our own clients but from other international and local realtors. Over 100 condos have been sold to owner occupiers and investors since the launch 5 weeks ago.
The reason? Desirable location; competitive pricing, great build quality, spacious floor plans, impeccable presentation on the community and an occupancy rate of 99%. All the essential boxes are ticked and then some.
If you ve got some spare time on your hands, we d encourage you to come over and have a look. The strategy of “waiting for the market to bottom out” doesn t really apply anymore in locations like this. The demand for quality distressed assets in Florida, as illustrated by the stats above, is huge.
A community like Mosaic is rare. The available units, and especially the south and west facing ones with high yields, are being snapped up fast.
Below you ll find a short investment summary with a link to more information on the website. As always, a full aftersales service and hassle free purchase process is available for all Torcana clients.
Torcana Ltd is a property investment consultancy dealing with investments in foreclosed property, distressed property, and discounted property in USA, Spain, UK, and Panama. For more information please visit: –
torcana.com
Article Source:
ArticleRich.com
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
English actress Rachel Weisz thinks that Botox injections should be banned for all actors.
The 39-year-old actress, best known for her roles in the Mummy movie franchise and for her Academy Award-winning portrayal in The Constant Gardener, feels facial Botox injections leave actors less able to convey emotion and that it harms the acting industry as much as steroids harm athletes.
In an interview with UK’s Harper’s Bazaar, coming out next month, Weisz says, “It should be banned for actors, as steroids are for sportsmen,” she claims. “Acting is all about expression; why would you want to iron out a frown?”
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Currently living in New York, she also mentions that English women are much less worried about their physical appearance than in the United States. “I love the way girls in London dress,” she claimed. “It’s so different to the American ‘blow-dry and immaculate grooming’ thing.”
Friday, September 1, 2006
Mario López is favored to win the third season of American television series Dancing with the Stars, with 3:1 odds of winning, but close on his heels is actress Vivica Fox, with four-to-one odds. López is perhaps best known for his role on Saved by the Bell, and currently stars on soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. Gambling site BetBet released odds on its website recently.
Monique Coleman (High School Musical), Joey Lawrence (Blossom), and Harry Hamlin (Clash of the Titans), each with six-to-one odds. Hamlin’s wife, Lisa Rinna, was a contestant in the second season of the series. Singers Willa Ford and Sara Evans each rank 8:1.
It is unknown how the firm decided the competitor’s odds; none of this year’s dancing has been previewed publicly, let alone for the press.
Dancing with the Stars enters its third season on September 12, at 8pm, with a two-hour season premiere. The series was a surprise hit for ABC, who added the program as a summer filler, with no large hopes for its success. Based on the British series Strictly Come Dancing, the series has been produced in 20 countries.
ODDS
Submitted by: Monique Marcus
Want more new clients? Then this is a must read for you!!
Now, you can spend less time advertising and marketing, and get all the new customers you ever wanted with little to no effort on your part. Just do what you do the best, and the rest will follow. They will most likely love your service and gladly tell others about it.
Referrals can have a huge impact on your business. In fact, here is an excellent example on how to quantify the big impact that it will have. For instance, you have a hair salon business where an average haircut is $45. This might not seem like a big transaction to most people, but the amount of impact it will have when it comes to referrals and the bottom line is really, really big.
If you are a salon owner and you have a client who comes in six times a year for a haircut, pays $45 for it, spends an additional $300 per year for other services and products, that is $2,850 in five years, which is the average length that a customer stays with the same salon.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7vUa1efOP4[/youtube]
If the client is extremely happy with this hair salon and tells just four of their friends and neighbors about it, and let s be conservative and say that only 25% of those told decide to try it out, that is just one referral. Then the hair salon earned $2,850 more. Combine the original client and the referral client, and you have already made the salon $5,700. This is just because of one extremely satisfied and happy client. Of course we still have to subtract the cost of goods and the marketing expenses, but the lifetime value will be extremely substantial and beneficial.
Let me also share this tidbit: it might not, after all, be as little as you think. Did you know that a client that has been referred as a new client is up to FOUR times as likely to refer new clients AGAIN, since it is the exact same way they were introduced into this business? Now, think about what that impact would have on the bottom line HUGE! And it continues as long as they are satisfied.
Just imagine if those 25% becomes 50% or 75%. A happy client might not just tell it to four friends, it could be 10 or 12, or even more. The number of returning and referred clients can be greater. This is highly possible and easily attainable when you have a structured and organized referral program established for your business.
I hope that given these numbers, this stresses to you the significance of referrals to any business, and start a formal referral program for your business. Consider using these figures to convey to any staff you might employ the importance of satisfying your clients in every aspect so that you can differentiate your business from theirs . Remember, a dissatisfied client can influence far more potential clients to decide not to do business with you as well. One happy client and a single referral can earn you $5,700.
That is why the hair salon should train each and every one of their employees to treat that particular $45 client as if they were wearing a $5,700 price tag around their neck, conservatively.
It is critical that you start a referral program right away if you are not currently following a system that you and your staff are using every day with every customer.
PS. Think about it this way: each day, as clients visit your business, you must have a system in place to empower them to refer new clients to you. This is KEY for your business’ success.
For more information on how to easily implement a referral system:
contact RipCard at 415-251-1980 or email us at Support@RipCard.com
About the Author: I’m an Advertising Executive who believes and witnessed the power of referrals. I want to share my knowledge and experiences, especially to those start up companies, who wants a marketing strategy that is very easy to implement but very effective. Check out our site at
ripcard.com
.
Source:
isnare.com
Permanent Link:
isnare.com/?aid=835644&ca=Marketing
Monday, September 7, 2015
The US economy added 173,000 jobs in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. The unemployment rate fell from 5.3 to 5.1 percent, the lowest since April 2008.
Although August job gains were lower than most economists forecast, job growth numbers for June and July were revised upwards by a combined 44,000. Average job gains over the past three months stand at 221,000, compared to March-May’s 189,000 monthly average. Over the past twelve months, job growth has averaged 247,000 per month.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent, or 8 cents, marking the largest increase in earnings in seven months. Hourly earnings had risen by 6 cents in July. Wages have risen by 2.2 percent over the past year.
Job growth in August was primarily concentrated in the health care and social assistance, financial activities, and professional and business services sectors. Those three areas of the economy added a combined 108,000 jobs. Food service and drinking places employment increased by 26,000 over the month, and other economic sectors saw employment hold steady. Manufacturing, on the other hand, saw employment decline by 17,000 in August. A stronger dollar and worldwide economic weakness make US exports less desirable, leading to a flattening in manufacturing employment so far this year after steadily rising in the early years of the US economic recovery.
The solid overall job gains led analysts to slightly raise expectations for a decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this month. Investors raised the likelihood of a September rate increase from 26 percent before the jobs report to 30 percent, and stocks dropped by over one percent on Friday. “The payrolls data is certainly good enough to allow for a Fed rate hike in September,” said Deutsche Bank’s head of currency strategy, Alan Ruskin. “The big question is still whether financial market volatility will scupper the plans.”
“This is the first time the market has looked at a Fed meeting and really has no idea what the Fed is going to do,” said Mark Kepner, a New Jersey equity trader with Themis Trading. “Right now you’re looking at the overall uncertainty and that’s what’s hanging on the market. I don’t think this number in and of itself changes how somebody’s going to vote.”