Making sequels to my own old designs became somewhat a good tradition. This one wasn't initially planned as one of those, but it became very reminiscent of my "Cicada" The First and so I thought it's only natural to turn this one into a sequel. And yes, it looks very alien with all these insect parts, but I still see it as a weird example of human technologies. Chinese technologies ;)

 

360° rotation

Aaliyah Dana Haughton - January 16, 1979 – August 25,

2001)

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6MEBi4ejTs

  

Aaliyah Dana Haughton was a multi-platinum recording artist, fashion icon, philanthropist,

 

and burgeoning actress. She left behind a body of work that made an undeniable impact on R&B

 

music and remains a testament to her many talents. Her debut album in 1994, “Age Ain’t

 

Nothing But a Number,” was a hit due to her debut single “Back and Forth.” However, it was

 

her collaboration with a then unknown Missy Elliott and Timbaland for the album “One in a A

 

Million” that blew her career up.

 

Before her death, she also had an up-and-coming acting career in films like “Romeo Must Die”

 

and a role in the “Matrix” sequel. Aaliyah once told VIBE, “Of course, I would love to get

 

into acting and I am talking to a few producers now. That would be really exciting to be a

 

jack of all trades and do music, movies and TV. I love drama and I think I could be a good

 

dramatic actress. I have to ‘act out’ emotions in my videos a lot and I try to seem as

 

realistic as possible.”

 

She continued, “I also would like to make bigger impact on the world by giving back, and

 

using my celebrity to raise money for people who need it the most. What good is having money

 

and being famous if you can’t share it with others less fortunate than yourself? I always

 

felt that you should treat others how you yourself want to be treated.”

 

Sadly, we lost the singer in a plane crash on August 25, 2001 in the Bahamas. She was only

 

22 years old.

  

Biography

  

Aaliyah Dana Haughton - January 16, 1979 – August 25, 2001) was an American singer, actress,

 

and model. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Detroit, Michigan, she first gained

 

recognition at the age of 10, when she appeared on the television show Star Search and

 

performed in concert alongside Gladys Knight. At the age of 12, Aaliyah signed with Jive

 

Records and her uncle Barry Hankerson's Blackground Records. Hankerson introduced her to R.

 

Kelly, who became her mentor, as well as lead songwriter and producer of her debut album,

 

Age Ain't Nothing but a Number. The album sold 3 million copies in the United States and was

 

certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). After

 

facing allegations of an illegal marriage with Kelly, Aaliyah ended her contract with Jive

 

and signed with Atlantic Records.

 

Aaliyah worked with record producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott for her second album, One

 

in a Million, which sold 3 million copies in the United States and more than 8 million

 

copies worldwide. In 2000, Aaliyah appeared in her first film, Romeo Must Die. She

 

contributed to the film's soundtrack, which spawned the single "Try Again". The song topped

 

the Billboard Hot 100 solely on airplay, making Aaliyah the first artist in Billboard

 

history to achieve this goal. "Try Again" also earned Aaliyah a Grammy Award nomination for

 

Best Female R&B Vocalist. After completing Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah filmed her role in Queen

 

of the Damned, and released her self-titled third and final studio album in 2001.

 

On August 25, 2001, Aaliyah and eight others were killed in a plane crash in the Bahamas

 

after filming the music video for the single "Rock the Boat". The pilot, Luis Morales III,

 

was unlicensed at the time of the accident and toxicology tests revealed that he had traces

 

of cocaine and alcohol in his system. Aaliyah's family later filed a wrongful death lawsuit

 

against Blackhawk International Airways, which was settled out of court. Aaliyah's music

 

continued to achieve commercial success with several posthumous releases, and has sold an

 

estimated 24 to 32 million albums worldwide. She has been credited for helping redefine

 

contemporary R&B, pop and hip hop,[1] earning her the nicknames the "Princess of R&B" and

 

"Queen of Urban Pop". Billboard lists her as the tenth most successful female R&B artist of

 

the past 25 years, and the 27th most successful in history.

  

Early life

 

Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born on January 16, 1979, in Brooklyn, New York,[2] and was the

 

younger child of Diane and Michael "Miguel" Haughton (1951–2012).[3] She was of African-

 

American descent, and had Native American (Oneida) heritage from a grandmother.[3][4][5] Her

 

name has been described as a female version of the Arabic "Ali", but the original Jewish

 

name "Aliya (Hebrew: אליה)" is derived from the Hebrew word "aliyah (Hebrew: עלייה)", meaning

 

"highest, most exalted one, the best."[6][7] The singer was highly fond of her Semitic name,

 

calling it "beautiful" and asserting she was "very proud of it" and strove to live up to her

 

name every day.[6] Aaliyah's mother enrolled Aaliyah in voice lessons at an early age.[2]

 

She started performing at weddings, church choir and charity events.[8] When Aaliyah was

 

five years old, her family moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she was reared along with her

 

older brother, Rashad.[9][10] She attended a Catholic school, Gesu Elementary, where in

 

first grade she was cast in the stage play Annie, which inspired her to become an

 

entertainer.[11] In Detroit, her father began working in the warehouse business, one of his

 

brother-in-law Barry Hankerson's widening interests. Her mother stayed home and raised

 

Aaliyah and her brother.[12]

 

Throughout Aaliyah's life, she had a good relationship with Rashad, who recalled Aaliyah

 

having a beautiful voice as a child.[11] Aaliyah's family was very close due to the

 

struggles of her grandparents and when they moved to Detroit, the Hankersons were ready to

 

take them in if necessary. These same bonds led to ties in the music industry, under the

 

Blackground Records label.[6]

 

Aaliyah's mother was a vocalist, and her uncle, Barry Hankerson, was an entertainment lawyer

 

who had been married to Gladys Knight.[10] As a child, Aaliyah traveled with Knight and

 

worked with an agent in New York to audition for commercials and television programs,

 

including Family Matters; she went on to appear on Star Search at the age of ten.[2] Aaliyah

 

chose to begin auditioning. Her mother made the decision to drop her surname.[12][13] She

 

auditioned for several record labels and at age 11 appeared in concerts alongside Knight.

 

[10][14] She had several pet animals during her childhood, including ducks, snakes and

 

iguanas. Her cousin Jomo had a pet alligator, which Aaliyah felt was too much, remarking,

 

"that was something I wasn't going to stroke."[6]

 

Her grandmother died in 1991. Years after her death, Aaliyah said her grandmother supported

 

everyone in the family and always wanted to hear her sing, as well as admitting that she

 

"spoiled" her and her brother Rashad. She also enjoyed Aaliyah's singing and would have

 

Aaliyah to sing for her. Aaliyah said she thought of her grandmother whenever she fell into

 

depression.[15] Aaliyah's hands reminded her of her aunt, who died when she was very young

 

and whom Aaliyah remembered as an "amazingly beautiful woman".[16]

 

Education

 

When she was growing up, Aaliyah attended Detroit schools and believed she was well-liked,

 

but got teased for her short stature. She recalled coming into her own prior to age 15 and

 

grew to love her height. Her mother would tell her to be happy that she was small and

 

compliment her. Other children disliked Aaliyah, but she did not stay focused on them. "You

 

always have to deal with people who are jealous, but there were so few it didn't even

 

matter. The majority of kids supported me, which was wonderful. When it comes to dealing

 

with negative people, I just let it in one ear and out the other. Those people were

 

invisible to me." Even in her adult life, she considered herself small. She had "learned to

 

accept and love" herself and added: "... the most important thing is to think highly of

 

yourself because if you don't, no one else will".[6]

 

During her audition for acceptance to the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing

 

Arts, Aaliyah sung the song "Ave Maria" in its entirety in the Italian language.[17]

 

Aaliyah, who maintained a perfect 4.0 grade point average when graduating from high school,

 

felt education was important. She saw fit to keep her grades up despite the pressures and

 

time constraints brought on her during the early parts of her career. She labeled herself as

 

a perfectionist and recalled always being a good student. Aaliyah reflected: "I always

 

wanted to maintain that, even in high school when I first started to travel. I wanted to

 

keep that 4.0. Being in the industry, you know, I don't want kids to think, 'I can just sing

 

and forget about school.' I think it's very important to have an education, and even more

 

important to have something to fall back on." She did this in her own life, as she planned

 

to "fall back on" another part of the entertainment industry. She believed that she could

 

teach music history or open her own school to teach that or drama if she did not make a

 

living as a recording artist because, as she reasoned, "when you pick a career it has to be

 

something you love".[6]

 

Career

 

1991–1995: Age Ain't Nothing but a Number

     

R. Kelly was introduced to Aaliyah and became her mentor, as well as lead songwriter and

 

producer on her debut album.

After Hankerson signed a distribution deal with Jive Records, he signed Aaliyah to his

 

Blackground Records label at the age of 12.[18][19] Hankerson later introduced her to

 

recording artist and producer R. Kelly,[14] who became Aaliyah's mentor, as well as lead

 

songwriter and producer of her first album, which was recorded when she was 14.[2][19][20]

 

Aaliyah's debut album, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number, was released under her mononym

 

"Aaliyah", by Jive and Blackground Records on May 24, 1994; the album debut at number 24 on

 

the Billboard 200 chart, selling 74,000 copies in its first week.[21][22] It ultimately

 

peaked at number 18 on the Billboard 200 and sold over three million copies in the United

 

States, where it was certified two times Platinum by the RIAA.[22][23][24] In Canada, the

 

album sold over 50,000 copies and was certified gold by the CRIA.[25] Aaliyah's debut

 

single, "Back & Forth", topped the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for three weeks and

 

was certified Gold by the RIAA.[24][26] The second single, a cover of The Isley Brothers'

 

"At Your Best (You Are Love)", peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and was also

 

certified Gold by the RIAA.[24][26] The title track, "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number",

 

peaked at number 75 on the Hot 100.[26] Additionally, she released "The Thing I Like" as

 

part of the soundtrack to the 1994 film A Low Down Dirty Shame.[27]

 

Age Ain't Nothing But a Number received generally favorable reviews from music critics. Some

 

writers noted that Aaliyah's "silky vocals" and "sultry voice" blended with Kelly's new jack

 

swing helped define R&B in the 1990s.[28][29] Her sound was also compared to that of female

 

quartet En Vogue.[28][30] Christopher John Farley of Time magazine described the album as a

 

"beautifully restrained work", noting that Aaliyah's "girlish, breathy vocals rode calmly on

 

R. Kelly's rough beats".[31] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic felt that the album had its

 

"share of filler", but described the singles as "slyly seductive".[2] He also claimed that

 

the songs on the album were "frequently better" than that of Kelly's second studio album, 12

 

Play.[2] The single "At Your Best (You Are Love)" was criticized by Billboard for being out

 

of place on the album and for its length.[32]

 

1996–1999: One in a Million

     

"If Your Girl Only Knew" (1996)

  

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The first single released from her second studio album, "If Your Girl Only Knew" was

 

described as a sassy, organ-infused song.[33] Aaliyah was noted for having "smoother, more

 

seductive, and stronger" singing.[34]

  

Problems playing this file? See media help.

 

In 1996, Aaliyah left Jive Records and signed with Atlantic Records.[14] She worked with

 

record producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott, who contributed to her second studio album,

 

One in a Million.[10] Missy Elliott recalled Timbaland and herself being nervous to work

 

with Aaliyah, since Aaliyah had already released her successful début album while Missy

 

Elliott and Timbaland were just starting out. Missy Elliott also feared she would be a diva,

 

but reflected that Aaliyah "came in and was so warming; she made us immediately feel like

 

family."[35] The album yielded the single "If Your Girl Only Knew", which topped the

 

Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs for two weeks.[26] It also generated the singles "Hot Like

 

Fire" and "4 Page Letter". The following year, Aaliyah was featured on Timbaland & Magoo's

 

debut single, "Up Jumps da Boogie".[36] One in a Million peaked at number 18 on the

 

Billboard 200,[23] selling 3 million copies in the United States and over eight million

 

copies worldwide.[37][38] The album was certified double platinum by the RIAA on June 16,

 

1997, denoting shipments of two million copies.[24] The month prior to One in a Millions

 

release, on May 5, 1997, music publisher Windswept Pacific filed a lawsuit in U.S. District

 

Court against Aaliyah claiming she had illegally copied Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do

 

for Love" for the single "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number".[39]

 

Aaliyah attended the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts, where she majored

 

in drama and graduated in 1997 with a 4.0 GPA.[14][40][41] Aaliyah began her acting career

 

that same year; she played herself in the police drama television series New York

 

Undercover.[42] During this time, Aaliyah participated in the Children's Benefit Concert, a

 

charity concert that took place at the Beacon Theatre in New York.[43] Aaliyah also became

 

the spokesperson for Tommy Hilfiger Corporation.[44] During Aaliyah's campaign for Tommy

 

Hilfiger the company had sold all 2,400 of the red, white and blue baggy jeans emblazoned

 

with the Hilfiger name that Aaliyah wore in their 1997 advertisements and they were

 

constantly restocking those jeans.[45] In 1997 Aaliyah performed the Christmas carol What

 

Child Is This at the annual holiday special Christmas in Washington.[46] She contributed on

 

the soundtrack album for the Fox Animation Studios animated feature Anastasia, performing a

 

cover version of "Journey to the Past" which earned songwriters Lynn Ahrens and Stephen

 

Flaherty a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.[27][38][47] Aaliyah

 

performed the song at the 1998 Academy Awards ceremony and became the youngest singer to

 

perform at the event.[48][49] The song "Are You That Somebody?" was featured on the Dr.

 

Dolittle soundtrack, which earned Aaliyah her first Grammy Award nomination.[50] The song

 

peaked at number 21 on the Hot 100.[51]

 

2000: Romeo Must Die

 

In 1999, Aaliyah landed her first film role in Romeo Must Die, released March 22, 2000.

 

Aaliyah starred opposite martial artist Jet Li, playing a couple who fall in love amid their

 

warring families. It grossed US$18.6 million in its first weekend, ranking number two at the

 

box office.[52] Aaliyah purposely stayed away from reviews of the film to "make it easier

 

on" herself, but she heard "that people were able to get into me, which is what I

 

wanted."[53] In contrast, some critics felt there was no chemistry between her and Jet Li,

 

as well as viewing the film was too simplistic.[54] This was echoed by Elvis Mitchell of The

 

New York Times, who wrote that while Aaliyah was "a natural" and the film was conceived as a

 

spotlight for both her and Li, "they have so little chemistry together you'd think they're

 

putting out a fire instead of shooting off sparks.[55] Her role was well received by Glen

 

Oliver by IGN who liked that she did not portray her character "as a victimized female" but

 

instead "as a strong female who does not come across as an over-the-top Women's Right

 

Advocate."[56]

     

Aaliyah in 2000

In addition to acting, Aaliyah served as an executive producer of the film's soundtrack,

 

where she contributed four songs.[57] "Try Again" was released as a single from the

 

soundtrack; the song topped the Billboard Hot 100, making Aaliyah the first artist to top

 

the chart based solely on airplay; this led the song to be released in a 12" vinyl and 7"

 

single.[26][58] The music video won the Best Female Video and Best Video from a Film awards

 

at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.[59] It also earned her a Grammy Award nomination for

 

Best Female R&B Vocalist.[60] The soundtrack went on to sell 1.5 million copies in the

 

United States.[61]

 

2001: Aaliyah

 

After completing Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah began to work on her second film, Queen of the

 

Damned. She played the role of an ancient vampire, Queen Akasha, which she described as a

 

"manipulative, crazy, sexual being".[19] Filming both Romeo Must Die and Queen of the Damned

 

delayed the release of the album. Aaliyah had not intended for her albums to have such a gap

 

between them. "I wanted to take a break after One in a Million to just relax, think about

 

how I wanted to approach the next album. Then, when I was ready to start back up, "Romeo"

 

happened, and so I had to take another break and do that film and then do the soundtrack,

 

then promote it. The break turned into a longer break than I anticipated."[62] Aaliyah

 

enjoyed balancing her singing and acting careers. Though she called music a "first" for her,

 

she also had been acting since she was young and had wanted to begin acting "at some point

 

in my career," but "wanted it to be the right time and the right vehicle" and felt Romeo

 

Must Die "was it".[61] Connie Johnson of the Los Angeles Times argued that Aaliyah having to

 

focus on her film career may have caused her to not give the album "the attention it

 

merited."[63] Collaborator Timbaland concurred, stating that he was briefly in Australia to

 

work on the album while Aaliyah was filming and did not feel the same production had gone

 

into Aaliyah as One in a Million had. He also said Virgin Records had rushed the album and

 

Aaliyah had specifically requested Missy Elliott and Timbaland work on Aaliyah with her.[64]

 

During the recording stages for the album, Aaliyah's publicist disclosed that the album's

 

release date was most likely in October 2000.[65] Ultimately she finished recording the

 

album in March 2001; after a year of recording tracks that began in March of the previous

 

year.[66] Aaliyah was released five years after One in a Million on July 17, 2001,[2] and it

 

debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 187,000 copies in its first week.[67]

 

The first single from the album, "We Need a Resolution", peaked at number 59 on the

 

Billboard Hot 100.[26] The week after Aaliyah's death, her third and self-titled studio

 

album, rose from number 19 to number one on the Billboard 200.[68] "Rock the Boat" was

 

released as a posthumous single. The music video premiered on BET's Access Granted; it

 

became the most viewed and highest rated episode in the history of the show.[69] The song

 

peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop

 

Songs chart.[70] It was also included on the Now That's What I Call Music! 8 compilation

 

series; a portion of the album's profits was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund.[71]

 

Promotional posters for Aaliyah that had been put up in major cities such as New York and

 

Los Angeles became makeshift memorials for grieving fans.[72]

 

"More than a Woman" and "I Care 4 U" were released as posthumous singles and peaked within

 

the top 25 of the Billboard Hot 100.[70] The album was certified double Platinum by the RIAA

 

and sold 2.6 million copies in the United States.[24][73] "More than a Woman" reached number

 

one on the UK singles chart making Aaliyah the first female deceased artist to reach number

 

one on the UK singles chart.[74][75] "More than a Woman" was replaced by George Harrison's

 

"My Sweet Lord" which is the only time in the UK singles chart's history where a dead artist

 

has replaced another dead artist at number one.[76] In July 2001, she allowed MTV's show

 

Diary behind-the-scenes access to her life and stated "I am truly blessed to wake up every

 

morning to do something that I love; there is nothing better than that." She continued,

 

"Everything is worth it – the hard work, the times when you're tired, the times when you are

 

a bit sad. In the end, it's all worth it because it really makes me happy. I wouldn't trade

 

it for anything else in the world. I've got good friends, a beautiful family and I've got a

 

career. I thank God for his blessings every single chance I get."[77]

 

Aaliyah was signed to appear in several future films, including Honey,[78] a romantic film

 

titled Some Kind of Blue,[79] and a Whitney Houston-produced remake of the 1976 film

 

Sparkle.[4] Whitney Houston recalled Aaliyah being "so enthusiastic" about the film and

 

wanting to appear in the film "so badly". Houston also voiced her belief that Aaliyah was

 

more than qualified for the role and the film was shelved after she died, since Aaliyah had

 

"gone to a better place".[80] Studio officials of Warner Brothers stated that Aaliyah and

 

her mother had both read the script for Sparkle. According to them, Aaliyah was passionate

 

about playing the lead role of a young singer in a girl group.[81] The film was released in

 

2012, eleven years after Aaliyah's death. Before her death Aaliyah was cast in the sequels

 

of The Matrix as the character Zee.[14][82] She had filmed part of her role in The Matrix

 

Reloaded and was scheduled to film and reprise her role in The Matrix Revolutions as Zee.

 

[36] Aaliyah told Access Hollywood that she was "beyond happy" to have landed the role.[83]

 

The role was subsequently recast to Nona Gaye.[82] Aaliyah's scenes were included in the

 

tribute section of the Matrix Ultimate Collection series.[84]

 

In November 2001, Ronald Isley stated that Aaliyah and the Isley Brothers had discussed a

 

collaboration prior to her death. She had previously covered the Isley Brothers' single "At

 

Your Best (You Are Love)".[85] Prior to her death, she expressed the possibility of

 

recording songs for the Queen of The Damned soundtrack and welcomed the possibility of

 

collaborating with Jonathan Davis.[66] By 2001, Aaliyah had enjoyed her now seven-year

 

career and felt a sense of accomplishment. "This is what I always wanted," she said of her

 

career in Vibe magazine. "I breathe to perform, to entertain, I can't imagine myself doing

 

anything else. I'm just a really happy girl right now. I honestly love every aspect of this

 

business. I really do. I feel very fulfilled and complete."[54]

 

Artistry

 

Voice and style

     

"Are You That Somebody?" (1998)

  

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Timbaland's stuttering, idiosyncratic productions challenged Aaliyah to reveal her artistic

 

personality more than she had on R. Kelly's smoother musical settings.[30]

  

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Aaliyah had the vocal range of a soprano.[14] With the release of her debut album "Age Ain't

 

Nothing But a Number", writer Dimitri Ehrlich of Entertainment Weekly compared her style and

 

sound to R&B group En Vogue.[86] Ehrlich also expressed that Aaliyah's "silky vocals are

 

more agile than those of self-proclaimed queen of hip-hop soul Mary J. Blige."[86] In her

 

review for Aaliyah's second studio album One in a Million Vibe magazine, music critic Dream

 

Hampton said that Aaliyah's "deliciously feline" voice has the same "pop appeal" as Janet

 

Jackson's.[87] Aaliyah described her sound as "street but sweet", which featured her

 

"gentle" vocals over a "hard" beat.[88] Though Aaliyah did not write any of her own

 

material,[14] her lyrics were described as in-depth.[89][90] She incorporated R&B, pop and

 

hip hop into her music.[10][91][92][93][94][95][96] Her songs were often uptempo and at the

 

same time often dark, revolving around "matters of the heart".[97] After her R. Kelly-

 

produced debut album, Aaliyah worked with Timbaland and Missy Elliott, whose productions

 

were more electronic.[98] Sasha Frere-Jones of The Wire finds Aaliyah's "Are You That

 

Somebody?" to be Timbaland's "masterpiece" and exemplary of his production's start-stop

 

rhythms, with "big half-second pauses between beats and voices".[99] Keith Harris of Rolling

 

Stone cites "Are You That Somebody?" as "one of '90s R&B's most astounding moments".[30]

 

Aaliyah's songs have been said to have "crisp production" and "staccato arrangements" that

 

"extend genre boundaries" while containing "old-school" soul music.[100] Kelefah Sanneh of

 

The New York Times called Aaliyah "a digital diva who wove a spell with ones and zeroes",

 

and writes that her songs comprised "simple vocal riffs, repeated and refracted to echo the

 

manipulated loops that create digital rhythm", as Timbaland's "computer-programmed beats

 

fitted perfectly with her cool, breathy voice to create a new kind of electronic

 

music."[101] When she experimented with other genres on Aaliyah, such as Latin pop and heavy

 

metal, Entertainment Weekly's Craig Seymour panned the attempt.[97] While Analyzing her

 

eponymous album British publication NME (New Musical Express) felt that Aaliyah's radical

 

third album was intended to consolidate her position as U.S.R&B's most experimental artist.

 

[102] As her albums progressed, writers felt that Aaliyah matured, calling her progress a

 

"declaration of strength and independence".[90][103] ABC News noted that Aaliyah's music was

 

evolving from the punchy pop influenced Hip hop and R&B to a more mature, introspective

 

sound on her third album.[104] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described her eponymous

 

album, Aaliyah, as "a statement of maturity and a stunning artistic leap forward" and called

 

it one of the strongest urban soul records of its time.[90] She portrayed "unfamiliar

 

sounds, styles and emotions", but managed to please critics with the contemporary sound it

 

contained.[90] Ernest Hardy of Rolling Stone felt that Aaliyah reflected a stronger

 

technique, where she gave her best vocal performance.[100] Prior to her death, Aaliyah

 

expressed a desire to learn about the burgeoning UK garage scene she had heard about at the

 

time.[98]

 

Influences

 

As an artist, Aaliyah often voiced that she was inspired by a number of performers. These

 

include Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Sade, En Vogue, Nine Inch Nails, Korn, Prince,

 

Naughty by Nature, Johnny Mathis, Janet Jackson[105] and Barbra Streisand.[106] Aaliyah

 

expressed that Michael Jackson's Thriller was her "favorite album" and that "nothing will

 

ever top Thriller."[105] She stated that she admired Sade because "she stays true to her

 

style no matter what ... she's an amazing artist, an amazing performer ... and I absolutely

 

love her."[105] Aaliyah expressed she had always desired to work with Janet Jackson, whom

 

she had drawn frequent comparison to over the course of her career, stating "I admire her a

 

great deal. She's a total performer ... I'd love to do a duet with Janet Jackson."[105]

 

[107][108][109] Jackson reciprocated Aaliyah's affections, commenting "I've loved her from

 

the beginning because she always comes out and does something different, musically." Jackson

 

also stated she would have enjoyed collaborating with Aaliyah.[105]

 

Image

 

Aaliyah focused on her public image throughout her career. She often wore baggy clothes and

 

sunglasses, stating that she wanted to be herself.[110] She described her image as being

 

"important ... to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack".[111] She often wore

 

black clothing, starting a trend for similar fashion among women in United States and

 

Japan.[14][112] Aaliyah's fashionable style has been credited for being an influence on new

 

fashion trends called "Health Goth"[113][114] and "Ghetto Goth" also known as GHE20 GOTH1K

 

[115][116] Aaliyah participated in fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger's All America Tour and

 

was featured in Tommy Jean ads, which depicted her in boxer shorts, baggy jeans and a tube

 

top. Hilfiger's brother, Andy, called it "a whole new look" that was "classy but sexy".[112]

 

Carson Daly A former VJ on MTV's Total Request Live commented on Aaliyah's style by saying

 

that she was "cutting edge" ,"always one step ahead of the curve" and that "the TRL audience

 

looks to her to figure out what's hot and what's new".[117]

 

When she changed her hairstyle, Aaliyah took her mother's advice and covered her left eye,

 

much like Veronica Lake.[118] The look has become known as her signature and been referred

 

to as fusion of "unnerving emotional honesty" and "a sense of mystique".[119] In 1998, she

 

hired a personal trainer to keep in shape, and exercised five days a week and ate diet

 

foods.[120] Aaliyah was praised for her "clean-cut image" and "moral values".[121] Robert

 

Christgau of The Village Voice wrote of Aaliyah's artistry and image, "she was lithe and

 

dulcet in a way that signified neither jailbait nor hottie—an ingenue whose selling point

 

was sincerity, not innocence and the obverse it implies."[122]

 

Aaliyah was viewed by others as a role model. Emil Wilbekin, described by CNN as "a friend

 

of Aaliyah's" and follower of her career, explained: "Aaliyah is an excellent role model,

 

because she started her career in the public eye at age 15 with a gold album entitled Age

 

Ain't Nothing but a Number. And then her second album, One in a Million went double

 

platinum. She had the leading role in Romeo Must Die, which was a box office success. She's

 

won numerous awards, several MTV music video awards, and aside from her professional

 

successes, many of her lyrics are very inspirational and uplifting. She also carried herself

 

in a very professional manner. She was well spoken. She was beautiful, but she didn't use

 

her beauty to sell her music. She used her talent. Many young hip-hop fans greatly admire

 

her."[123]

 

She also was seen by others as a sex symbol. Aaliyah did not have a problem with being

 

considered one. "I know that people think I'm sexy and I am looked at as that, and it is

 

cool with me," she stated. "It's wonderful to have sex appeal. If you embrace it, it can be

 

a very beautiful thing. I am totally cool with that. Definitely. I see myself as sexy. If

 

you are comfortable with it, it can be very classy and it can be very appealing."[124] The

 

single "We Need a Resolution" was argued to have transformed "the once tomboy into a sexy

 

grown woman".[125] Aaliyah mentioned that her mother, during her childhood, would take

 

pictures of her and notice a sex appeal. She reinforced her mother's belief by saying that

 

she did feel "sexy for sure" and that she embraced it and was comfortable with this view of

 

her.[54]

 

Personal life

 

In her spare time, she was mostly a homebody, which dated back to her younger years, but on

 

occasion went out and played laser tag. She reasoned this was due to her liking "the simple

 

things in life".[54] Despite having a prosperous career that allowed her to purchase the

 

vehicle she wanted, Aaliyah revealed during her final interview on August 21, 2001 on 106 &

 

Park that she had never owned a car because she lived in New York City and could hire a car

 

or driver on a regular basis.[126]

 

Family

 

Aaliyah's family played a major role in the course of her career.[54] Aaliyah's father

 

Michael Haughton served as her personal manager. Her mother assisted her in her career while

 

brother Rashad Haughton and cousin Jomo Hankerson worked with her consistently.[127] Her

 

father's illness ended his co-management of Aaliyah with her mother Diane Haughton. She ran

 

all of her decisions by Rashad.[54]

 

Aaliyah was known to have usually been accompanied by members of her family and the "Rock

 

the Boat" filming was credited by Rashad Haughton as being the first and only time her

 

family was not present. In October 2001, Rashad stated: "It really boggles everyone [that]

 

from Day One, every single video she ever shot there's always been myself or my mother or my

 

father there. The circumstances surrounding this last video were really strange because my

 

mother had eye surgery and couldn't fly. That really bothered her because she always

 

traveled. My dad had to take care of my mom at that time. And I went to Australia to visit

 

some friends. We really couldn't understand why we weren't there. You ask yourself maybe we

 

could have stopped it. But you can't really answer the question. There's always gonna be

 

that question of why."[128] Her friend Kidada Jones said in the last year of her life her

 

parents had given her more freedom and she had talked about wanting a family. "She wanted to

 

have a family, and we talked about how we couldn't wait to kick back with our babies."[129]

 

Gladys Knight, who had been married to Aaliyah's uncle Barry Hankerson, was essential to the

 

start of Aaliyah's career as she gave her many of her earlier performances. One of their

 

last conversations concerned Aaliyah having difficulty with "another young artist" that she

 

was trying to work with. Knight felt the argument was "petty" and insisted that she remain

 

being who she was in spite of the conflict.[130]

 

Illegal marriage

 

With the release of Age Ain't Nothing but a Number, rumors circulated of a relationship

 

between Aaliyah and R. Kelly,[14][131] including the allegation that they had secretly

 

married without her parents' knowledge,[132][133][134][135] Vibe later revealed a marriage

 

certificate that listed the couple married on August 31, 1994, in Sheraton Gateway Suites in

 

Rosemont, Illinois.[14][133] Aaliyah, who was 15 at the time, was listed as 18 on the

 

certificate; the illegal marriage was annulled in February 1995 by her parents.[20][133]

 

[136] The pair continued to deny marriage allegations, stating that neither was married.

 

[131]

 

Aaliyah reportedly developed a friendship with Kelly during the recording of her debut

 

album. As she recalled to Vibe magazine in 1994, she and Kelly would "go watch a movie" and

 

"go eat" when she got tired and would then "come back and work". She described the

 

relationship between her and Kelly as being "rather close."[137] In 2016, Kelly said that he

 

was as in love with Aaliyah as he was with "anybody else."[138] In December 1994, Aaliyah

 

told the Sun-Times that whenever she was asked about being married to Kelly, she urged them

 

not to believe "all that mess" and that she and Kelly were "close" and "people took it the

 

wrong way."[139] In his 2011 book The Man Behind the Man: Looking From the Inside Out,

 

Demetrius Smith Sr., a former member of Kelly's entourage, wrote that Kelly told him "in a

 

voice that sounded as if he wanted to burst into tears" that he thought Aaliyah was

 

pregnant.[140]

 

Jamie Foster Brown in the 1994 issue of Sister 2 Sister wrote that "R. Kelly told me that he

 

and Aaliyah got together and it was just magic." Brown also reported hearing about a

 

relationship between them. "I've been hearing about Robert and Aaliyah for a while—that she

 

was pregnant. Or that she was coming and going in and out of his house. People would see her

 

walking his dog, 12 Play, with her basketball cap and sunglasses on. Every time I asked the

 

label, they said it was platonic. But I kept hearing complaints from people about her being

 

in the studio with all those men." Brown later added "at 15, you have all those hormones and

 

no brains attached to them."[141]

 

The 2019 documentary Surviving R. Kelly revealed new details about their relationship and

 

marriage. Jovante Cunningham, a former backup dancer, claimed to have witnessed Kelly having

 

sex with Aaliyah on his tour bus[142][143] while Demetrius Smith again recounted the time

 

Kelly feared that he had impregnated her.[142] Smith also described how he helped Aaliyah

 

forge the necessary documents to show she was 18 and that the wedding was short and

 

unceremonious, as neither was dressed up and Aaliyah looked "worried and scared" the whole

 

time.[142] Smith states that he is "not proud" of his role in facilitating their illegal

 

marriage.[142]

 

Aaliyah admitted in court documents that she had lied about her age. In May 1997, she filed

 

suit in Cook County seeking to have all records of the marriage expunged because she was not

 

old enough under state law to get married without her parents' consent. It was reported that

 

she cut off all professional and personal ties with Kelly after the marriage was annulled

 

and ceased having contact with him.[144] In 2014, Jomo Hankerson stated that Aaliyah "got

 

villainized" over her relationship with Kelly and the scandal over the marriage made it

 

difficult to find producers for her second album. "We were coming off of a multi-platinum

 

debut album and except for a couple of relationships with Jermaine Dupri and Puffy, it was

 

hard for us to get producers on the album." Hankerson also expressed confusion over why

 

"they were upset" with Aaliyah given her age at the time.[145]

 

Aaliyah was known to avoid answering questions regarding Kelly following the professional

 

split. During an interview with Christopher John Farley, she was asked if she was still in

 

contact with him and if she would ever work with him again. Farley said Aaliyah responded

 

with a "firm, frosty 'no'" to both of the questions.[146] Vibe magazine said Aaliyah changed

 

the subject anytime "you bring up the marriage with her".[147] A spokeswoman for Aaliyah

 

said in 2000 that when "R. Kelly comes up, she doesn't even speak his name, and nobody's

 

allowed to ask about it at all".[148] Kelly later commented that Aaliyah had opportunities

 

to address the pair's relationship after they separated professionally but chose not to.

 

[149] In 2019, Damon Dash revealed to Hip Hop Motivation that Aaliyah didn't even speak of

 

her relationship with Kelly in private; she tried multiple times to discuss it with him, but

 

was only able to find the courage to say that Kelly was a "bad man".[143] She told him that

 

she could only possibly discuss the relationship with a professional counselor.[143] Dash

 

said he was unable to watch Surviving R. Kelly because its interviews with visibly

 

traumatized girls struggling to discuss their encounters with Kelly reminded him of how

 

Aaliyah behaved when trying to recount her relationship with Kelly.[143]

 

R. Kelly would have other allegations made about him regarding underage girls in the years

 

following her death and his marriage to Aaliyah was used to evidence his involvement with

 

them. He has refused to discuss his relationship with her, citing her death. "Out of respect

 

for her, and her mom and her dad, I will not discuss Aaliyah. That was a whole other

 

situation, a whole other time, it was a whole other thing, and I'm sure that people also

 

know that."[150] Aaliyah's mother, Diane Haughton, reflected that everything "that went

 

wrong in her life" began with her relationship with Kelly.[139] Damon Dash also noted that

 

lasting trauma from her relationship with Kelly negatively affected their relationship.[143]

 

However, the allegations have been said to have done "little to taint Aaliyah's image or

 

prevent her from becoming a reliable '90s hitmaker with viable sidelines in movies and

 

modeling."[32]

 

Engagement

 

Aaliyah was dating co-founder of Roc-A-Fella Records Damon Dash at the time of her death

 

and, though they were not formally engaged, in interviews given after Aaliyah's death, Dash

 

claimed the couple had planned to marry.[151] Aaliyah and Dash met in 2000[152] through his

 

accountant and formed a friendship.[153] Dash has said he is unsure of how he and Aaliyah

 

started dating and that the two just understood each other. "I don't know [how we got

 

involved], just spending time, you know, we just saw things the same and it was new, you

 

know what I mean? Meeting someone that is trying to do the same thing you are doing in the

 

urban market, in the same urban market place but not really being so urban. It was just; her

 

mind was where my mind was. She understood me and she got my jokes. She thought my jokes

 

were funny."[154]

 

Dash expressed his belief that Aaliyah was the "one" and claimed the pair were not

 

officially engaged, but had spoken about getting married prior to her death.[155] Aaliyah

 

publicly never addressed the relationship between her and Dash as being anything but

 

platonic. In May 2001, she hosted a party for Dash's 30th birthday at a New York City club,

 

where they were spotted together and Dash was seen escorting her to a bathroom. Addressing

 

this, Aaliyah stated that she and Dash were just "very good friends" and chose to "keep it

 

at that" for the time being.[147] Just two weeks before her death, Aaliyah traveled from New

 

Jersey to East Hampton, New York to visit Dash at the summer house he shared with Jay Z.

 

[129]

 

The couple were separated for long periods at a time, as Dash recalled that Aaliyah

 

continuously shot films and would be gone for months often to come back shortly and continue

 

her schedule. Dash was also committed to "his own thing", which did not make matters any

 

better. Despite this, they were understanding that the time they had together was special.

 

Dash remembered they would "be in a room full of people talking to each other and it felt

 

like everyone was listening but it would be just us. It would be like we were the only ones

 

in the room". Dash always felt their time together was essential and Aaliyah was the person

 

he was interested in being with, which is why, as he claimed, they had begun speaking about

 

engagement.[153] The relationship was mentioned in the lyrics of Jay-Z's remix to her song

 

"Miss You", released after her death.

 

Death

 

Main article: Death of Aaliyah

 

On August 25, 2001, at 6:50 p.m. (EDT), Aaliyah and the members of the record company

 

boarded a twin-engine Cessna 402B (registration N8097W) at the Marsh Harbour Airport in

 

Abaco Islands, the Bahamas, to travel to the Opa-locka Airport in Florida, after they

 

completed filming the music video for "Rock the Boat".[156] They had a flight scheduled the

 

following day, but with filming finishing early, Aaliyah and her entourage were eager to

 

return to the U.S. and made the decision to leave immediately. The designated airplane was

 

smaller than the Cessna 404 on which they had originally arrived, but the whole party and

 

all of the equipment were accommodated on board.[157] The plane crashed shortly after

 

takeoff, about 200 feet (60 m) from the end of the runway and exploded.[156]

 

Aaliyah and the eight others on board—pilot Luis Morales III, hair stylist Eric Forman,

 

Anthony Dodd, security guard Scott Gallin, family friend Keith Wallace, make-up stylist

 

Christopher Maldonado, and Blackground Records employees Douglas Kratz and Gina Smith—were

 

all killed.[158] Gallin survived the initial impact and spent his last moments worrying

 

about Aaliyah's condition, according to ambulance drivers.[159] The plane was identified as

 

being owned by Florida-based company Skystream by the US Federal Aviation Administration

 

(FAA) in Atlanta. Initial reports of the crash identified Luis Morales as "L Marael".[160]

 

According to findings from an inquest conducted by the coroner's office in the Bahamas,

 

Aaliyah suffered from "severe burns and a blow to the head", in addition to severe shock and

 

a weak heart.[161] The coroner theorized that she went into such a state of shock that even

 

if she had survived the crash, her recovery would have been nearly impossible given the

 

severity of her injuries.[162] The bodies were taken to the morgue at Princess Margaret

 

Hospital in Nassau, where they were kept for relatives to help identify them. Some of the

 

bodies were badly burned in the crash.[163]

 

As the subsequent investigation determined, when the aircraft attempted to depart, it was

 

over its maximum take-off weight by 700 pounds (320 kg) and was carrying one excess

 

passenger, according to its certification.[164] An informational report issued by the

 

National Transportation Safety Board stated, "The airplane was seen lifting off the runway,

 

and then nose down, impacting in a marsh on the south side of the departure end of runway

 

27."[165] It indicated that the pilot was not approved to fly the plane. Morales falsely

 

obtained his FAA license by showing hundreds of hours never flown, and he may also have

 

falsified how many hours he had flown in order to get a job with his employer, Blackhawk

 

International Airways.[166] Additionally, toxicology tests performed on Morales revealed

 

traces of cocaine and alcohol in his system.[167]

 

Aaliyah's funeral services were held on August 31, 2001, at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral

 

Chapel and St. Ignatius Loyola Church in Manhattan. Her body was set in a silver-plated

 

copper-deposit casket, which was carried in a glass horse-drawn hearse.[168] An estimated

 

800 mourners were in attendance at the procession.[20][169] Among those in attendance at the

 

private ceremony were Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Gladys Knight, Lil' Kim and Sean Combs.

 

[168][170][171] After the service, 22 white doves were released to symbolize each year of

 

Aaliyah's life.[172] Aaliyah was initially entombed in a crypt at the Ferncliff Mausoleum in

 

Hartsdale, New York; she was later moved to a private room at the left end of a corridor in

 

the Rosewood Mausoleum.[173] The inscription at the bottom of Aaliyah's portrait at the

 

funeral read: "We Were Given a Queen, We Were Given an Angel."[174]

 

After Aaliyah's death, the German newspaper Die Zeit published excerpts from an interview

 

done shortly before her death, in which she described a recurring dream: "It is dark in my

 

favorite dream. Someone is following me. I don't know why. I'm scared. Then suddenly I lift

 

off. Far away. How do I feel? As if I am swimming in the air. Free. Weightless. Nobody can

 

reach me. Nobody can touch me. It's a wonderful feeling."[175]

 

Posthumous career

 

Immediately after Aaliyah's death, there was uncertainty over whether the music video for

 

"Rock the Boat" would ever air.[176] It made its world premiere on BET's Access Granted on

 

October 9, 2001. She won two posthumous awards at the American Music Awards of 2002;

 

Favorite Female R&B Artist and Favorite R&B/Soul Album for Aaliyah.[177] Her second and

 

final film, Queen of the Damned, was released in February 2002. Before its release,

 

Aaliyah's brother, Rashad, re-dubbed some of her lines during post-production.[178][179] It

 

grossed US$15.2 million in its first weekend, ranking number one at the box office.[180] On

 

the first anniversary of Aaliyah's death, a candlelight vigil was held in Times Square;

 

millions of fans observed a moment of silence; and throughout the United States, radio

 

stations played her music in remembrance.[181] In December 2002, a collection of previously

 

unreleased material was released as Aaliyah's first posthumous album, I Care 4 U. A portion

 

of the proceeds was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund, a program that benefits the Revlon

 

UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program and Harlem's Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.[182] It

 

debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 280,000 copies in its first week.[183]

 

The album's lead single, "Miss You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and

 

topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.[70] In August of the following year, clothing

 

retailer Christian Dior donated profits from sales in honor of Aaliyah.[184]

 

In 2005, Aaliyah's second compilation album, Ultimate Aaliyah was released in the UK by

 

Blackground Records.[185] Ultimate Aaliyah is a three disc set, which included a greatest

 

hits audio CD and a DVD.[185] Andy Kellman of AllMusic remarked "Ultimate Aaliyah adequately

 

represents the shortened career of a tremendous talent who benefited from some of the best

 

songwriting and production work by Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and R. Kelly."[185] A

 

documentary movie Aaliyah Live in Amsterdam was released in 2011, shortly before the tenth

 

anniversary of Aaliyah's death. The documentary, by Pogus Caesar, contained previously

 

unseen footage shot of her career beginnings in 1995 when she was appearing in the

 

Netherlands.[186]

 

In March 2012, music producer Jeffrey "J-Dub" Walker announced on his Twitter account that a

 

song "Steady Ground", which he produced for Aaliyah's third album, would be included in the

 

forthcoming posthumous Aaliyah album. This second proposed posthumous album would feature

 

this song using demo vocals, as Walker claims the originals were somehow lost by his sound

 

engineer. Aaliyah's brother Rashad later refuted Walker's claim, claiming that "no official

 

album [is] being released and supported by the Haughton family."[187] On August 5, 2012, a

 

song entitled "Enough Said" was released online. The song was produced by Noah "40" Shebib

 

and features Canadian rapper Drake.[188] Four days later, Jomo Hankerson confirmed a

 

posthumous album is being produced and that it was scheduled to be released by the end of

 

2012 by Blackground Records.[189] The album was reported to include 16 unreleased songs and

 

have contributions from Aaliyah's longtime collaborators Timbaland and Missy Elliott, among

 

others.[189] On August 13, Timbaland and Missy Elliott dismissed rumors about being

 

contacted or participating for the project.[190] Elliott's manager Mona Scott-Young said in

 

a statement to XXL, "Although Missy and Timbaland always strive to keep the memory of their

 

close friend alive, we have not been contacted about the project nor are there any plans at

 

this time to participate. We've seen the reports surfacing that they have been confirmed to

 

participate but that is not the case. Both Missy and Timbaland are very sensitive to the

 

loss still being felt by the family so we wanted to clear up any misinformation being

 

circulated."[190] Elliott herself said, "Tim and I carry Aaliyah with us everyday, like so

 

many of the people who love her. She will always live in our hearts. We have nothing but

 

love and respect for her memory and for her loved ones left behind still grieving her loss.

 

They are always in our prayers."[190]

 

In June 2013, Aaliyah was featured on a new track by Chris Brown, titled "Don't Think They

 

Know"; with Aaliyah singing the song's hook. The video features dancing holographic versions

 

of Aaliyah. The song appears on Brown's sixth studio album, X.[191] Timbaland voiced his

 

disapproval for "Enough Said" and "Don't Think They Know" in July 2013. He exclaimed,

 

"Aaliyah music only work with its soulmate, which is me".[192] Soon after, Timbaland

 

apologized to Chris Brown over his remarks, which he explained were made due to Aaliyah and

 

her death being a "very sensitive subject".[193] In January 2014, producer Noah "40" Shebib

 

confirmed that the posthumous album was shelved due to the negative reception surrounding

 

Drake's involvement. Shebib added, "Aaliyah's mother saying, 'I don't want this out' was

 

enough for me ... I walked away very quickly."[194][195]

 

Aaliyah's vocals were reported to be featured on the T-Pain mixtape, The Iron Way, on the

 

track "Girlfriend", but were pulled after being met with criticism by fans and many in

 

attendance at a New York listening session that he hosted for the project. In response to

 

the criticism, T-Pain questioned if Aaliyah's legacy was driven by her death and claimed

 

that were she still alive, she would be seen as trying to emulate Beyoncé.[196] According to

 

T-Pain, he was given her vocals from a session she had done prior to her death after being

 

approached to work on a track for a posthumous Aaliyah album and completing the song,

 

calling the exchange "just like a swap."[197]

 

She was featured on the Tink track "Million", which was released in May 2015 and contained

 

samples from her song "One in a Million".[198] Collaborator Timbaland was involved in the

 

song's creation, having previously claimed that Aaliyah appeared to him in a dream and

 

stressed that Tink was "the one".[199]

 

In August 2015, Timbaland confirmed that he had unreleased vocals from Aaliyah and stated a

 

"sneak peek" would be coming soon.[200][201]

 

In September 2015, Aaliyah by Xyrena, an official tribute fragrance was announced.[202]

 

On December 19, 2015, Timbaland uploaded a snippet of a new Aaliyah song title "He Keeps Me

 

Shakin" on his Instagram account and said it would be released December 25, 2015, on the

 

Timbaland mixtape King Stays King.[203] On August 24, 2017 MAC Cosmetics announced that an

 

Aaliyah collection will be made available in the summer of 2018.[204] The Aaliyah for Mac

 

collection was released on June 20 online and June 21 in stores, along with the MAC

 

collection, MAC and i-D Magazine partnered up to release a short film titled "A-Z of

 

Aaliyah" which coincided with the launch.[205] The short film highlighted and celebrated the

 

legacy of Aaliyah with the help of select fans who were selected to be a part of the film

 

through a casting call competition held by Mac and i-d magazine.[206] The Aaliyah for Mac

 

collectors box was sold at $250 and it sold out within minutes during the first day of its

 

initial release.[207]

 

Legacy and influence

 

Aaliyah has been credited for helping redefine R&B, pop and hip hop in the 1990s, "leaving

 

an indelible imprint on the music industry as a whole."[1][89][208] According to Billboard,

 

Aaliyah revolutionized R&B with her sultry mix of pop, soul and hip hop.[209] In a 2001

 

review of her eponymous album, Rolling Stone professed that Aaliyah's impact on R&B and pop

 

has been enormous.[210] Steve Huey of AllMusic wrote Aaliyah ranks among the "elite" artists

 

of the R&B genre, as she "played a major role in popularizing the stuttering, futuristic

 

production style that consumed hip-hop and urban soul in the late 1990s."[211] Bruce Britt

 

of "music world" on Broadcast Music, Inc's. website stated that by combining "schoolgirl

 

charm with urban grit", Aaliyah helped define the teen-oriented sound that has resulted in

 

contemporary pop phenom's like Brandy, Christina Aguilera and Destiny's Child.[212]

 

Described as one of "R&B's most important artists" during the 1990s,[213] her second studio

 

album, One in a Million, became one of the most influential R&B albums of the decade.[33]

 

Music critic Simon Reynolds cited "Are You That Somebody?" as "the most radical pop single"

 

of 1998. Kelefah Sanneh of The New York Times wrote that rather than being the song's focal

 

point, Aaliyah "knew how to disappear into the music, how to match her voice to the bass

 

line", and consequently "helped change the way popular music sounds; the twitchy, beat-

 

driven songs of Destiny's Child owe a clear debt to 'Are You That Somebody'." Sanneh

 

asserted that by the time of her death in 2001, Aaliyah "had recorded some of the most

 

innovative and influential pop songs of the last five years."[101] Music publication Popdust

 

called Aaliyah an unlikely queen of the underground due mainly to her influence on the

 

underground alternative music scene, which consists of heavy sampling and references to her

 

music by underground artists. Popdust also mentioned that the forward-thinking music Aaliyah

 

did with Timbaland and the experimental music being made by many underground alternative

 

artists are somewhat cut from the same cloth.[214] While compiling a list of artists that

 

take cues from Aaliyah, MTV Hive mentioned that it's easy to spot her influence on

 

underground movements like dubstep, strains of indie pop, and lo-fi R&B movements.[215] With

 

sales of 8.1 million albums in the United States and an estimated 24 to 32 million albums

 

worldwide,[216][217][218][219][220] Aaliyah earned the nicknames "Princess of R&B" and

 

"Queen of Urban Pop",[221][222] as she "proved she was a muse in her own right".[223] Ernest

 

Hardy of Rolling Stone dubbed her as the "undisputed queen of the midtempo come-on".[19]

 

Aaliyah has been referred to as a pop icon and a R&B icon for her impact and contributions

 

to those respective genres.[224][225] Japanese pop singer Hikaru Utada has said several

 

times that "It was when I heard Aaliyah's Age Ain't Nothing but a Number that I got hooked

 

on R&B.", after which Utada released her debut album First Love with heavy R&B influences.

 

[226][227] Another Japanese pop singer Crystal Kay has expressed how she admired Aaliyah

 

when she was growing up and how she would practice dancing while watching her music videos.

 

[228]

 

Aaliyah was honored at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards by Janet Jackson, Missy Elliott,

 

Timbaland, Ginuwine and her brother, Rashad, who all paid tribute to her.[229] In the same

 

year, the United States Social Security Administration ranked the name Aaliyah one of the

 

100 most popular names for newborn girls.[230] Aaliyah was ranked as one of "The Top 40

 

Women of the Video Era" in VH1's 2003 The Greatest series.[231][232] She was also ranked at

 

number 18 on BET's "Top 25 Dancers of All Time".[233] Aaliyah appeared on both 2000 and 2001

 

list of Maxim Hot 100 in position 41 and the latter at 14.[234][235] In 2002 VH1 created the

 

100 sexiest artist list and Aaliyah was ranked at number 36.[236] In memory of Aaliyah, the

 

Entertainment Industry Foundation created the Aaliyah Memorial Fund to donate money raised

 

to charities she supported.[237][238] In December 2009, Billboard magazine ranked Aaliyah at

 

number 70 on its Top Artists of the Decade,[239] while her eponymous album was ranked at

 

number 181 on the magazine's Top 200 Albums of the Decade.[240] She is listed by Billboard

 

as the tenth most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years, and 27th most

 

successful R&B artist overall.[241] In 2012, VH1 ranked her number 48 in "VH1's Greatest

 

Women in Music".[242] Also in 2012, Aaliyah was ranked at number 10 on Complex magazine's

 

100 hottest female singers of all-time list[243] and number 22 on their 90 hottest women of

 

the 90's list.[244] In 2014, NME ranked Aaliyah at number 18 on NME's 100 most influential

 

artist list.[245] Aaliyah's dress that she wore at the 2000 MTV Video Music Award's was

 

featured in the most memorable fashion moments at the VMA's list by the fashion publication

 

Harper's Bazaar.[246] In October 2015 Aaliyah was featured in the 10 women who became Denim

 

Style icons list created by the fashion publication Vogue.[247] In August 2018 Billboard

 

ranked Aaliyah at number 47 on their Top 60 Female Artists of All-Time list.[248]

 

Aaliyah's music has influenced numerous artists including Adele,[249] The Weeknd,[250]

 

Ciara,[251] Beyoncé,[252] Monica,[253] Chris Brown,[191] Rihanna,[254] Azealia Banks,[255]

 

Sevyn Streeter,[256] Keyshia Cole,[257] J. Cole,[258] Ryan Destiny[259] Kelly Rowland,[260]

 

Zendaya,[261] Rita Ora,[262] The xx,[263][264][265] Arctic Monkeys,[266] Speedy Ortiz,[267]

 

Chelsea Wolfe,[268] Haim,[269] Angel Haze,[270] Kiesza,[271] Naya Rivera,[272] Normani[273]

 

Cassie,[274][275] Hayley Williams,[276] Jessie Ware,[277] Yeasayer,[278] Bebe Rexha,[279]

 

Omarion,[280] and Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander.[281] Canadian R&B singer Keshia

 

Chanté who was said to play as her in her pending biopic back in 2008, complimented the

 

singer's futuristic style in music and fashion.[282] Chanté backed out of the biopic after

 

speaking to Diane Haughton, but has expressed a willingness to do the project if "the right

 

production comes along and the family's behind it". Chanté also mentioned that Aaliyah had

 

been part of her life "since I was 6."[283] R&B singer and friend Brandy said about the late

 

singer "She came out before Monica and I did, she was our inspiration. At the time, record

 

companies did not believe in kid acts and it was just inspiring to see someone that was

 

winning and winning being themselves. When I met her I embraced her, I was so happy to meet

 

her."[284] Rapper Drake said that the singer has had the biggest influence on his career. He

 

also has a tattoo of the singer on his back.[285] Solange Knowles remarked on the tenth

 

anniversary of her death that she idolized Aaliyah and proclaimed that she would never be

 

forgotten.[286] Adam Levine, the lead vocalist of the pop rock group Maroon 5, remembers

 

that listening to "Are You That Somebody?" convinced him to pursue a more soulful sound than

 

that of his then-band Kara's Flowers.[287] Erika Ramirez, an associate editor of Billboard,

 

said at the time of Aaliyah's career "there weren't many artists using the kind of soft

 

vocals the ways she was using it, and now you see a lot of artists doing that and finding

 

success," her reasoning for Aaliyah's continued influence on current artists. She argued

 

that Aaliyah's second album One in a Million was "very much ahead of its time, with the bass

 

and electro kind of R&B sounds that they produced", referring to collaborators Timbaland and

 

Missy Elliott and that the sound, which "really stood out" at its time, was being

 

replicated.[288]

 

In 2012, British singer-songwriter Katy B released the song Aaliyah as a tribute to

 

Aaliyah's legacy and lasting impression on R&B music.[289] The song first appeared on Katy

 

B's Danger EP and featured Jessie Ware on guest vocals. In 2016, Swedish singer-songwriter

 

Erik Hassle released a song titled "If Your Man Only Knew" which serves as a tribute to

 

Aaliyah's 1996 single "If Your Girl Only Knew".[290]

 

There has been continuing belief that Aaliyah would have achieved greater career success had

 

it not been for her death. Emil Wilbekin mentioned the deaths of The Notorious B.I.G. and

 

Tupac Shakur in conjunction with hers and added: "Her just-released third album and

 

scheduled role in a sequel to The Matrix could have made her another Janet Jackson or

 

Whitney Houston".[291] Director of Queen of the Damned Michael Rymer said of Aaliyah, "God,

 

that girl could have gone so far" and spoke of her having "such a clarity about what she

 

wanted. Nothing was gonna step in her way. No ego, no nervousness, no manipulation. There

 

was nothing to stop her."[292]

 

On July 18, 2014, it was announced that Alexandra Shipp replaced Zendaya for the role of

 

Aaliyah for the Lifetime TV biopic movie Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B,

ポタリング

9/6 w/c sketche

Hey guys, school is inevitable, so I’m going to be posting a lot today. This is also a sequel to Extermination 1… Yeah, I’m actually saying that. Disclaimer, you should read part 1 first because it is kinda important and I put tons of work into this.

 

Link to part 1: www.flickr.com/photos/purist_lego_minifigs/51177735500/in...

——————————————————————————————-

 

“JOHN,” Battlestar yelled, “YOU’RE GOING TO DIE, GET BACK HERE!”

 

John Walker, also known as U.S. Agent was holding a horde of zombies back. He was buying the group time to escape. His shield was slowly breaking —as his shield wasn’t vibranium— John was no longer holding them off. It was a sacrifice.

 

“AGH! Open the door already,” said Walker.

 

John’s shield broke and he was dead in an instant. Battlestar by his side started shooting at the zombies. Unfortunately it lured more zombies and they started piling up cornering the group of survivors.

 

RATATATATATTATA!

 

“The Punisher?! What the? What are you doing here,” asked Speed Demon.

 

“Punishing demons, get through the d##n door before the Hulk barges through,” the Punisher replied.

 

“But, don’t you kill peo—“ Speed Demon asked.

 

“Shut up before I change my mind.”

 

Electro, Blizzard, Speed Demon, Punisher, Boomerang, and Battlestar went into the police station and blockaded the door. In the holding cell they found some surprises. Cletus Cassidy, arrested for killing his whole family and accidentally bonding with the symbiote and becoming Carnage and Goldbug, arrested for stealing jewelry from a cash for gold store. Goldbug pleaded for help, saying he can be good. Cassidy on the other hand shrugged and flipped the bird.

 

BANG! BANG!

 

“OH MY GOD,” Boomerang yelled, “did you just kill them?”

 

“I put them out of their misery, f##k off,” the Punisher replied.

 

The group moved upstairs and went into the armory where they stocked up on guns. Sadly, most of it was gone, but Boomerang managed to find a bullet proof vest and a few pistols. The rest found nothing but a few bullets and half eaten donuts. Boomerang shared the guns, knowing that he would barely use them because he was more skilled with his boomerangs (obviously).

 

Crack!

 

The group heard a noise coming from a supply closet. Punisher went up to the door and pulled his rifle out to kill whoever was in there. Blizzard ended up telling Punisher to stand down to find out who it was. They slammed the door opened and found no one, but a rat. Blizzard soon went to the roof to see the city's destruction. There were no more screams. Just flames, flipped over cars, and dead corpses everywhere. Speed Demon would later follow Blizzard to the roof.

 

"Hey dude," Blizzard said.

 

"Hey," Speed Demon replied, "What are you doin' up here?"

 

"Contemplating life. I feel like robbing and doing crime was just a waste of time. My life is just... nothing, ya know?" Blizzard explained. "It's like I am a failure in life."

 

"Oh, well I guess," Speed Demon replied. “To be honest, I feel fine, I have F-ING superpowers!”

 

“You ain’t getting my point. Never mind,” Blizzard said.”

 

“Nah, I getcha, you feel bad because… wait, what is that?” Speed Demon responded.

 

“HULK’S HUNGRY!”

 

Hulk and the other super zombies barged into the police station. It was definitely not a good sign at all. Hulk, Wolverine, Silver Surfer, they were all there. The whole Sinister Six, Spider-Man. There was no way for the team to survive. A zombified Quicksilver and Whizzer appeared soon after the rest. The whole zombie army was there. Speed Demon was the only one to lure them away. He only could run for half an hour due to the food shortage. Blizzard started freezing some, no effect, but it gave them time to run. Life was unforgiving. Godspeed.

Another streetview find in a tiny Angus village. Off the road for over 20 years.

 

M567 XSP

 

*a Preview rather than a Sequel

Wonder Woman at the bay of an Island far-away from her Amazonian homeland.

IMG_6895-1-2

Vehicle make: NISSAN

Date of first registration: February 1995

Year of manufacture: 1995

Cylinder capacity (cc): 1392 cc

So in the last year, I have had 5 seriously dramatic sunsets. You know the type. You start shooting and chasing the light, and when it is all done, you actually end up with 3-4 really awesome shots.

This was one of those nights. Ironically, another was the following night on Ruby Beach (but more on that later). This show was taken about 5 minutes after the "Beautiufl Drama" shot shown below, while the sun was behind a cloud. Its also not a long exposure like the one below. I did blow the best shot of the night. I was doing a 4-minute expsoure was the sun was dropping below the horizon. The problem? I left the f'cking lense cap on!! Oh hell yeah, I was pissed.

Tonight's sunset looks like it will be kinda bland. I am trying to figure out were to go. I'm thinking Alki, not sure.

Athena, Nisha, Handsome Jack, and Wilhelm.

桜を見に。

As all photography-people know, we take tons of photos during a photoshoot, some of which never emerge to see light of many computer screens. I upload extra photos on Instagram, so there will be Insta-exclusive photos there. :D

 

Please follow me on @rainwaltz if you have an Android/iPhone! Instagram is really fun and has tons of cool filters and many doll-folks there too. If you don't have an Insta account, you can still view my photos on via web here. Sorry for the pimping, heehee. Please tell me your Insta username if you have one as well so I can follow you~

 

Also I'm going away tomorrow so I will be absent from Flickr for a while. I should have internet access though so I will be updating preview photos on Instagram if I have the time. <--- more incentive to get an Instagram account! :D

...the sequel (Explore #80)

Destination Unknown Sequel: My Next Passport Photo: Han(d)s(Free) Solo Saving PrincesS In Turmoil, Without Looking Like Darth Vader! - IMRAN™

The economic meltdown in 2009 & subsequent time rebuilding meant little travel abroad. That was followed by years of opportunity lost to the pandemic years.

I needed fo get my passport renewed before I got a chance to travel on this again this year, much less going into space.

I think this would be perfect for my future passport photos. With biometrics and cameras watching us getting from homes to airports, who needs photos of us anymore? It depicts how masks, hoodies, and noise-cancellation headphones, can insulate and isolate us in travel, while we still yearn to boldly go and explore whole new (and very old) worlds.

Almost like Han(d)s(Free) Solo Terrestronauts, seeking to save a beloved princess from turmoil in a galaxy far away or a town nearby. But, ideally, doing it without looking like Darth Vader becoming a white hood-wearing kl@n$man. 😀😀

Have you been traveling? Where did you go in recent days or past years? Share your traveling or airport or passport photo below!

 

© 2022 IMRAN™

 

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#IMRAN #travel #travelogue #humor #IMHO #society #security #pandemic #airport #international #WhereTo #adventure #future #identity #explorer #lifestyle #StarTrek #StarWars #romance

The extra-long sequel to: www.flickr.com/photos/133558185@N07/23290211525/in/dateta...

 

Chris Peterson’s eyes snapped open. He was in some kind of interrogation chamber, immobilized in the grasp of a wicked apparatus. Assumably he was still on board the Blabber superweapon. A dark, cloaked figure stood before him, its emotionless visor reflecting his own face back at him.

“So, you’re finally awake,” it said, in a rather disinterested voice, “I would’ve thought my neural stimulators would’ve woken you up faster, but I guess you don’t have enough brain mass for them to be effective.”

“Nice torture chamber,” said Chris, looking around with a smirk, “I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect such high-grade facilities from an Overlord of your, erm, caliber.” He smiled to himself as he surveyed the forbidding room. Doubtless this darkly arrayed being felt rather put out by his coolness, he thought, after all it’d gone through to look intimidating. Maybe it even felt a little insecure, after all…

“AH!” Chris cried, his train of thought cut short as he turned his head and found himself staring down the four barrels of an oversized laser turret.

“That… That’s big,” he added, trying not to look like he’d almost wet himself.

“I have some questions for you,” said the figure. Chris’ face hardened.

“I’ll never tell you anything, murderer. I’d sooner be smashed to subatomic particles than breathe a word to you,” he said.

“Well, then I suppose there’s no point in keeping you alive,” said the figure, turning away. Light suddenly blazed in the turret’s barrels, promising to literally blow Chris to atoms in a few seconds.

“Wait, wait, wait!” he screamed, “I’ll talk, I’ll be reasonable! I’ll say anything you want! Just turn that thing off!” The upcoming blast faded away back into the depths of turret and the figure turned to face him once more, chuckling.

“Your endurance is truly heroic.” it said, a sarcastic smile in its voice, “Now, onto the questions. First, what is this? A laser plunger?” The figure pulled out Chris’ weapon of choice, igniting its glowing conical end.

“No, no, that’s an Electromagnetic Extractor,” Chris explained, “Though, now that you mention it, it does kinda look like a toilet plunger… Aw, cummon, why’d you have to point that out? I never noticed it before!”

“Moving onto the second question—what is this?” the figure pulled out Chris’ Superdimensional Karate Assistant & Travel Evolver (SKATE) board, throwing it down on the floor. In its folded state, it rather resembled a mangled duck made of titanium, but Chris knew it was much more powerful than it looked. He thought fast. If this overlord found out that his SKATE board was an interdimensional conveyance that could go nearly anywhere in the universe in a matter of minutes, it would doubtlessly use it for its own purposes. And that would be… Bad. Really, really bad.

“Oh, uh, that’s um, uh… That’s kinda personal,” he said, wracking his brains for a conceivable lie.

“If you’d rather not tell me, I can just melt your face off and figure it out myself.” suggested the figure, glancing at the turret.

“No, no, if you really wanna know, I’ll tell you,” protested Chris, “It’s a… Mobile waste disposal system.”

“It’s a what?” asked the figure.

“It’s a portable toilet,” Chris elaborated.

“Ahuh,” said the figure, glancing at SKATE with a mixture of newfound disgust and curiosity. “Moving on—why, and more importantly how, did you just walk into my Blabber and sabotage my Phlebotium Core? Do you have any idea how freakishly hard it was to get the Phlebotium to make that? Do you? Because I feel like, if you did, you would’ve thought twice before blowing the entire thing to smithereens without a thought about the trials of an Overlord.” The figure’s voice, previously apathetic and emotionless, started to betray some annoyance.

“Oh, I know how hard it was for you to get that. In fact, I was the reason it was so hard for you to get your Phlebotium whatchimidoohickey. And, if everything had gone well, you would’ve never even gotten it in the first place,” said Chris, with some pride he couldn’t conceal.

“Is that so?” asked the figure, “What great operative do I have the honour of addressing?” His voice was laden with sarcasm.

“I’m Chris Peterson,” said Chris, “And I’m not an operative. I’m a freelancer.”

“I can tell,” said the figure, eyeing the Electromagnetic Extractor with contempt. “May I ask why a freelancer would sneak into a top-security superweapon-equipped space station that belongs to an obscure overlord without a planet to his name?”

“Uh…” said Chris, trying not to cross the line between bragging and blabbing, “No reason. Or at least, not one I’m going to tell you.”

“Well, alright,” said the figure, “Send me a postcard from the afterlife.” The turret powered on once more, this time so quickly Chris could feel the heat of the forthcoming beam on his face as he shouted in panic.

“Fine, fine! I’ll tell you! Just don’t blow me up!” he cried frantically. The dangerous light in the turret’s barrels slowly backed away, but did not leave entirely this time, lingering like the gleam of insectoid eyes.

“To clarify, it wouldn’t blow you up—it’d melt you. Slowly,” explained the figure, “Now tell me why you blew up my Core.”

“Well…” said Chris, hesitantly, “You kinda used your superweapon to wipe out six billion people or so… And that’s not cool. Thankfully your Blabber thing kinda blew up when you used it, so you backed off for about twenty years. But then you came back, and with your new fancy Core you were gonna be able to hit multiple planets in a row without a hitch and scare everybody into submission. And that really wasn’t cool. So I blew up your Core.”

“Certainly you had to have a better reason than that you thought my conduct ‘wasn’t cool’. Plenty of people think what the Overlords do isn’t ‘cool’, but few have the pluck to strike back against them. Or the tech, for that matter. So why’d you do it?” asked the figure.

“Because it was the right thing to do,” said Chris, proudly.

“Oh please,” snorted the figure, rolling its eyes behind its visor, “Everyone says that. What’s the real reason? Do you have friends down on my target of choice, perhaps?” The darkly-clad being wandered towards the big screen that displayed the planet the Blabber was orbiting. Chris new it well. Very well.

“Ehm…” stuttered Chris. The fact was, it was actually his planet, and he did have a dear friend or two down on it. He didn’t feel like admitting that was a good idea, though. Revenge ran deep in the blood of the Overlords. Or at least in blood of the ones who had blood.

“That would be an interesting revelation,” the figure continued, “I wiped out everybody on this planet with my first strike, except for a couple thousand or so. It’d be rather ironic if, out of that ridiculously small tithe of people, someone managed to grow up and then acquire the tech to sabotage my second design. Ironic and annoying.”

“Heheh, it is kind of ironic,” said Chris, before he could help himself. “I mean, uh, that you were thwarted at the same planet twice; the first time because you didn’t have a powerful enough Core, and the second time by a guy like me. You just can’t catch a break, can you?”

“Seemingly not.” said the figure coldly, “I have one last question: Where’s your girlfriend?”

“My what?” asked Chris.

“That lady you were with in the Core Room. She’s not showing up on any of my scanners. Not even giving a life reading. Normally I’d just assume she’d been smashed, but my security cameras and motion sensors seem to be telling otherwise. I’ve been catching glimpses of her for about an hour now. Where’s she hiding, and how is she doing it?”

“First off, she is NOT my girlfriend,” said Chris, “She’s just… No, not that… And secondly, I have no idea where she is. Even I can’t find her most of the time.”

“What stealth tech is using?” asked the figure.

“I dunno,” said Chris, which was true. He was bad at remembering names, especially technical ones. The lights in the turret’s barrels began to get brighter, and the figure turned round again.

“Don’t try and play games with me, freelancer,” it said, “You and your not-girlfriend are much more likely to live if you surrender. Just tell me how I can detect her and I’ll spare your lives.” Chris could feel the heat of the turret’s blast on his face, getting hotter and hotter.

“I seriously don’t know!” he cried, “Honestly! If I did I’d totally betray her like a weakling, but I really don’t!”

“Then why should I keep you alive?” asked the figure. Chris’ face was beginning to burn, and the light was so bright now he could hardly see. And then, quite suddenly, the turret switched off, the light exploding in its barrels as its containment field failed. A chunk of shrapnel hit the figure over the head, knocking him across the room. One of the floor grates was pushed aside from below, and out of the hole it left leapt the very woman they’d been talking about.

“Charlotte!” cried Chris, in surprise. Without replying, she snatched his Extractor and SKATE off the ground, grabbed him by the shoulder, and switched on the latter. A giant invisible sphere deformed the world around them, the interrogation room fading away as a wormhole sucked them into another dimension.

“This isn’t the end!” cried the figure’s voice, and then the physical world vanished.

el.godfootsteps.org/videos/the-mystery-of-godliness-seque...

 

Εισαγωγή

Χριστιανική ταινία «Το μυστήριο της ευσέβειας: η συνέχεια» Το ευαγγέλιο της επιστροφής του Κυρίου

 

Ο Λιν Μπόεν είναι ένας ηλικιωμένος ιεροκήρυκας που πιστεύει στον Κύριο εδώ και πολλές δεκαετίες. Αφότου αποδέχθηκε τον Παντοδύναμο Θεό , τον Χριστό των εσχάτων ημερών, οι πάστορες και οι πρεσβύτεροι, οι αντίχριστες δυνάμεις, τον καταδίκασαν, τον απέκλεισαν και τον εκδίωξαν από τη θρησκευτική κοινότητα. Αλλά παρόλο που επιτέθηκαν, καταδίκασαν και παγίδευσαν τον Λιν Μπόεν, εκείνος δεν οπισθοχώρησε από φόβο. Αντιθέτως, η πίστη του έγινε πιο ακλόνητη από ποτέ, και αυτό τον οδήγησε να καταλάβει επιτέλους ότι οι πάστορες και οι πρεσβύτεροι του θρησκευτικού κόσμου παρουσίαζαν ένα ψεύτικο ενάρετο παρουσιαστικό. Ταυτόχρονα, έμαθε ότι μόνο ο Χριστός είναι η αλήθεια, η οδός και η ζωή, και ότι μόνο ο Χριστός μπορεί να σώσει, να εξαγνίσει και να οδηγήσει στην τελείωση τον άνθρωπο. Λόγω αυτού, ήταν αποφασισμένος να ακολουθήσει τον Χριστό, να γίνει μάρτυρας για τον Χριστό και να καταβάλει κάθε δυνατή προσπάθεια για να επιδιώξει την αλήθεια, να επιζητήσει τη μετατροπή της διάθεσής του, ώστε να γίνει αληθινός μάρτυρας για τον Θεό. Μόλις το Κινεζικό Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα ανακάλυψε ότι ο Λιν Μπόεν είχε αποφυλακιστεί και δεν είχε αλλάξει, ότι δεν είχε απαρνηθεί στο ελάχιστο την πίστη του και ότι πίστευε, μάλιστα, στην Αστραπή της Ανατολής, ότι πήγαινε παντού για να μαρτυρήσει ότι ο Κύριος Ιησούς έχει έλθει ξανά και ότι Αυτός είναι ο Παντοδύναμος Θεός, το ΚΚΚ τον καταχώρησε ως καταζητούμενο και πήγε παντού για να τον συλλάβει. Ο Λιν Μπόεν αναγκάστηκε να αφήσει την οικογένειά του και, σε κάθε μέρος στο οποίο μαρτυρούσε το έργο του Παντοδύναμου Θεού των εσχάτων ημερών, κατόρθωνε να οδηγήσει πολλούς ειλικρινείς, καλοκάγαθους πιστούς στο πλευρό του Θεού. Αυτό το βίντεο παρουσιάζει την αληθινή ιστορία τού πώς ο Λιν Μπόεν διέδωσε το ευαγγέλιο και μαρτύρησε για τον Θεό.

 

Πηγή εικόνας: Εκκλησία του Παντοδύναμου Θεού

Όροι Χρήσης： el.godfootsteps.org/disclaimer.html

to "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"

 

Ocean Shores Cinema marque

Destination Unknown Sequel: Legalized Torture: Skinny Seats For Fat Passengers - IMRAN™

I had my first flight as an unaccompanied child in Pakistan more than 50 years ago in the glory days of PIA. I was a cute chubby kid but even the economy seat on Boeing aircraft of that era could have seated nearly two of me.

Now, half a century later, even half of an average American adult has to squeeze into what airlines still insist on calling “seats”. My aviation fascination and passion for flying have not waned. But even as a not too fat or wide-ass adult the width of most airlines’ seats is nothing but legalized torture.

Having decently long legs I do appreciate the somewhat back-to-normal seat-to-seat distance you can see in this photo. But don’t be fooled. The extra space is because it is an exit-row seat. Next, look at the sexy svelte shape of the seat in front of me. Now imagine the typical person ahead of you at a grocery checkout or airline check-in line fitting in that. Exactly. Impossible.

Even more illustrative of the problem is the width of armrests which are also the separation between adjacent passengers. Today’s armrests are now literally *narrower* than two fingers width. It’s true. I’ve measured them and taken pictures too. I know what I’d like to do with those two fingers and where I’d like to shove my full arm. 😏😀

I would love to see the CEOs of Boeing, Delta, and the seat manufacturer try to sit in three adjacent seats for 3, much less 6 or 12, hours. Ideally they should sit for a three days long congressional inquiry — while being kept belted in those seats, together! 💺💺💺

What do you think? In the meantime, that vision of them unable to even squirm in their seats will make me smile as I enjoy my love of flying with gratitude. ✈️❤️🙏

 

© 2022 IMRAN™

 

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#travel, #flying, #airline, #travelogue, #nonstop, #adventure, #gratitude, #blessed, #IMRAN , #airlines, #CEO, #Congress, #consumerrights, #customerexperience, #humanrights, #humanbody, #torture, #FAA , #humor, #IMHO , #Boeing, #Delta,

Italian postcard. G.B. Falci, Milano, No. 1920s. Biancamaria Hubner as Saita and Emilio Vardannes as the Inquisitor Stefano Donato in La congiura di San Marco (Domenico Gaido, 1924), the sequel to Il ponte dei sospiri (Domenico Gaido, 1921). The main role of Rolando Candiani, acted by Luciano Albertini in the original, was played in the sequel by Amleto Novelli.

 

In this film Rolando Candiani (Novelli) has become Doge of Venice and his great aspiration is to satisfy all the needs of the Venetian people and to defend the integrity of the Venetian Republic. However, the followers of the ex-Doge Foscari conspire against him. But Candiano is helped by Scalabrino (Celio Bucchi), a gentleman who has become the head of a band of acrobats, and by Zanze (Bianca Stagno-Bellincioni) , a woman of the people. Together with a monkey these two manage to prevent all the traps of the enemies and to save Rolando. For several reasons almost all major parts were played out by new actors.

 

Émile/ Emilio Vardannes, pseudonym of Antonin Bénévent (Paris, 13 January 1873 - Paris, 13 December 1951) was a French actor, director and screenwriter, who had a prolific career in Italian silent cinema.

 

Vardannes was descended from the Bénévents, a well-known French family of circus and theatre artists. The same family also included the character actor Noël Roquevert (born Noël Bénévent), whose paternal uncle Vardannes was. Himself the son of a former health officer who became a dentist in Grenoble, Antonin Bénévent joined the army at the age of 19 and fought in the Algerian campaign between June 1892 and June 1896 in the 3rd Zouaves regiment where he was posted as a drummer. On his return to civilian life, he became a travelling actor with his brother Auguste (1862-1937), father of Noël Roquevert, in the Bénévent Theatre, a family theatre company that toured mainly in the west of France. He then went to Paris where he was hired at the Eden-Comédie, where he worked in 1907-1908 as dramatic and comic actor and took the pseudonym of Émile Vardannes.

 

Thus Vardannes was already an established and experienced theatre actor, when in 1909 he was hired as an actor and film director by Pasquali & C. in Turin and then by Croce & C. in Milan. In 1911 he was hired by Itala Film, where he was employed as a comic actor, starring in the films of the Totò comic series (which he had already started at Pasquali and Croce), of which he himself was subject and director. At Itala, Vardannes also acted in historical dramas such as Giulio Cesare (1909, playing Brutus, and Principessa e schiava (1909), in both cases with Adriana Costamagna in the female lead. In 1912, Vardannes moved on to Milano Films where he starred in a comic series as a new character named Bonifacio. He returned to Itala Film in 1913, where he was employed not only as a comedian, but also as a dramatic actor. He played the role of Hannibal in Itala's 1914 super-production, the epic Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone. Recalled to the French army in August 1914, Vardannes returned to France and was first posted to the territorial infantry before moving in May 1916 to the 20th Train Squadron where he was promoted to the rank of brigadier a year later.

 

Demobilized in January 1919, he returned to Italy where he resumed his activities, acting in many of the Maciste films of 1920-1921, but also the Tolstoy adaptation Il cadavere vivente (1921) and the sequel to Il ponte dei sospiri: La congiura di San Marco (1924), starring Amleo Novelli. With Biancamaria Hubner, Vardannes acted in La congiura di San Marco, Saetta, principe per un giorno (Mario Camerini, 1924) starring Domenico Gambino, and Mario Guaita-Ausonia's last film La donna carnefice nel paese dell'oro (Guaita, 1926). As a director, in addition to the comedies, Vardannes' most important film was L'oro degli Aztechi (Aztec Gold), made in 1920 in co-direction with Umberto Mozzato. At the end of the silent era he returned to France, where under the pseudonym of Vardannes he had supporting parts in four late silent films and three early sound films, the last of which, Adieu Léonard by Pierre Prévert, was made in 1943.

 

(Sources: Italian and French Wikipedia, IMDb)

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over lowe jape

A redone version of the original HDR 360 version I did - this one is a bit more dramatic and I actually like this one better.

So guess I best follow up

I took my Volvo for a little run to the supermarket this morning, and obviously looked for the most appropriate car in the car park to park it next to.

I've seen this Sunny around locally for several years now, but it's another of the many that I've never managed to get a photo of.

It's done 99k miles, and only seems to be doing around 1000 per year. It's MOT is up at the end of August and has had rust/corrosion issues for every MOT since 2010, so you have to wonder how long it's got left.

Both original looking number plates from 'Widnes Car Centre' which still seems to be in business as a Nissan main dealer, albeit now under the 'Bristol Street Motors' name.

amending history on the set of GHOSTBUSTERS, 1983

A sequel to my prevous caption. Again, not sure the lettering works but let me know.

 

The text in the caption reads:

Michelle looked down at her large breasts and smiled. Most girls would be jealous of my girls she thought. Her breasts had stopped growing after taking that magic pill

and she'd had a chance to

examine her new body.

 

She checked off the list

in her head.

Vagina, check.

Hips, check.

Nice curvy bottom, check.

Luscious lips, check.

Long legs, check.

 

Then the doorbell rang.

Michelle answered it.

A man stood there. "Hello Michelle," the man said, "I'm Phil and I'm here to take you to the movies."

 

"Er I don't..." Michelle started and then saw the man was holding a gun.

 

"This isn't optional. The wizard only turns men into girls so he can use them in his porn films. I'm here to escort you to the movie studio where you will stay. The pill did more than turn you into a girl. It will keep you looking like this forever but you now have new obligations."

This was built for a Lego IDEAS contest, and if you want to give it a like, you can do that here: ideas.lego.com/challenges/2d3f47a4-66c9-4f41-92ee-87ccc9f...

 

20 years after the release of the original, LEGO Studios finally greenlit the sequel, and it looks like the whole crew is back together.

 

In this build I wanted to show off one of my favourite themes, LEGO Studios, specifically the subtheme "Monsters". With references to the old version, but also other themes and sub-themes, I wanted to honor the theme that is often overlooked.

 

The build shows the set of Vampire's crypt, behind wich you can find some workers setting up lights and a green screen. With the director and actors, the set is surrounded by camera rig, sound personnel, makeup artists and special effects supervisor that has a slight problem with the smoke machine. As you move along, on the other side you can find makeup and dressing part, since this is a smaller set. With costumes and set pieces of some other "movies", you can also find two actresses sharing a cup of coffe while the angry producer is staring at them.

I hope you like it :)

So I've been tagged every now and then over the past year and a half, but then Kodi posted his tag and tagged me and I thought, "Why not?" I will try to keep my facts a bit more brief this time around.

 

1. Welcome to my room! This is as relatively clean as it gets. Everything gets shoved to a corner and magically, there is indeed a floor under my feet!

 

2. As you can tell, I am very dark and brooding, hence why I have my wrist being attacked by Spider-Frog. I've had that frog since 2007, and he can still fit on my wrist!

 

3. I'm so dark and brooding in fact, that I cut my hair. Actually, the real reason was because I had not cut it in a year and 3 months or so, and I am about to begin another semester where I will be working with clay on the wheel. I don't have anything to tie my hair up with except for catching the back with my work apron which hangs on the out-most bedpost.

 

4. By my feet, you can see many of my work done on the wheel in spring. I've done it before, but I still prefer hand building. The glaze colors also suck from my current university. My community college had a better selection, and I still get some stuff glazed over there for free because it helps fill the kiln there so that no energy is wasted. They don't need my help at the university. But yeah, that's what I have to show by my feet.

 

5. Also, check out my feet! Well they one is hiding behind a leg and the other is being cropped off. I have 5 pairs of footwear: Dress Shoes, Nice Regular Shoes, another pair of the Regular Shoes used only for working in the art studios, so really, my normal shoes, a pair of Moccasins, and then Sandels that I hardly ever wear for anything.

 

6. Speaking of a bed. I have finally moved back to the lower bunk of my bed after probably 8 or so years. I used to sleep on a couch in the den for a few years, and then I moved to the top bunk of my bed and slept on a blanket laid on top of the plywood, and now I'm back to a real mattress.

 

7. One of my pillows has dinosaurs on the case because dinosaurs are awesome!

 

8. Is that something I should be proud of? I mean, I am 21, so...

 

9. Screw it, dinosaurs are awesome, I'll never grow up, you can't make me!

 

10. I guess that's why I still mess around with all of this LEGO stuff. I have three bookshelves in my room for display and storage, and all the books are from when I was a kid, and berried in the bottom shelves and shoved in the corner.

 

11. You can't see the corner though, and that's because I have 14 of my 43 bins blocking the way. It took a long time to sort all the pieces into their respective colors, but now I am sorting certain colors with more than 2 bins into type. Progress is slow.

 

12. That bin full of packing peanuts used to be full of random pieces though, so at least I have those pieces sorted and they have the potential to be used. I never went digging in the bin because I would always forget about it, and there was all that stuff on top of it. I had those pieces go unsorted for 13 years.

 

13. 13 years ago, I was given one family's collection of pieces from their 3 high school and college aged sons, and then I've also had a friend donate pieces, and then most recently, a bunch of stuff from my pastor's son's old collection consisting of late 90's and early 2000's sets still mostly in tact. And all of the donations were for the low, low price of FREE! It pays to let people know you like LEGO, and it also pays to just be nice because then they give you free stuff. Now if only I could get my other friends to give me there stuff.

 

14. This is primarily why I don't use Bricklink and think a lot of people that go crazy with it, I'm looking at you Aaron, are well, crazy. He had $30 to spend and he managed to cut a $300+ order down to the $30; insane. I tend to just build with what I already have because most of it, I still haven't even gotten around to using in MOCs. I do actualy have a Bricklink order in the works though, and it is mainly for pieces to replace the broken ones in my Star Wars collection, and the ones I keep stealing because they are going to be a lot easier to use when loose.

 

15. I will end my rambling, I think I failed in trying to keep things brief, but I tried to tie them all in to one another. The final fact is that I am actually running out of room for the Star Wars collection and it spilled over into my room now, and to be honest, with all the rehashes, the jacked up prices, and the randomness of some sets, mainly those battlepacks, as well as all the Episode VII sets looking very bland, I am actually losing interest in adding to my collection. I'd rather try to get some of the older ones I missed out on that have yet to be rehashed. My goal was never to collect every set, but a lot of the time now, I buy the set, and display, but never play. There are some I can't pass up on, but it is getting a bit ridiculous.

 

Sorry, I suck at these tagged things. Actually, I am writing more like I do on MOCpages. I probably wrote more than my first Tagged. That's why my descriptions of MOCs that are also on MOCpages have links for more details. I don't like flooding Flickr with too many images and then a bunch of detail on each image.

 

I have tagged people. Do with that what you will.

An update (sequel?) to a vignette I originally photographed in late 2015.

 

The setup for this shot was surprisingly needlessly complicated, as I ran into multiple issues with proper lighting. The scene was shot in a dimly-lit room, with red and yellow spotlights shining up against a dark red cloth behind the cemetery. I rigged up some wires and LEDs to create some hard blue highlights against the tombstones. The big problem was glare which kept ruining the zombie's face, so I had to constantly reposition my reflector disc for each shot just to achieve the best lighting, while keeping the background dark. Later in Lightroom I remixed the colors by emphasizing the orange background, and desaturating the blue highlights.

I started of shooting for a Transformers series. This is the first of the series, doing it the X-MEN sequel way - this is the last frame of the series. Post Transformers-II and Transformers-I will follow.

A sequel to something I did already for Prozac05 here (for friends only due to partial nudity). As with all sequels the producers try to reach a broader audience, (PG 13 instead of R by simply wearing a bra), increase the special effects (36 pictures instead of 9) and have a higher budget at hand (Canon EOS 30D instead of Konica Minolta Z2). However the production time was 9 month in both cases.

Explore it in large!

 

And if you are a friend go here or here and compare.

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American Arcade card.

 

American film and television actor Lee Marvin (1924-1987) began as a supporting player of a generally vicious demeanor, then metamorphosed into a star playing tough, hard-bitten anti-heroes. Known for his gravelly smoke burnished voice and premature white hair, Marvin initially played villains, soldiers, and other hardboiled characters. A prominent television role was that of Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger in the NBC crime series M Squad (1957–1960). He became a major star with Cat Ballou (1965), a comedy Western in which he played dual roles, but his career waned considerably after Paint Your Wagon (1969). For portraying both gunfighter Kid Shelleen and criminal Tim Strawn, he won the Oscar for Best Actor, along with a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, an NBR Award, and the Silver Bear for Best Actor. Marvin is also remembered for his 'tough guy' characters in The Killers (1964), The Professionals (1966), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Point Blank (1967), and The Big Red One (1980).

 

Lamont Waltman Marvin Jr. was born in 1924 in New York City. He was the son of Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive and later the head of the New York and New England Apple Institute, and Courtenay Washington (née Davidge), a fashion and beauty writer/editor. As with his elder brother, Robert, he was named in honor of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was his first cousin, four times removed. His father was a direct descendant of Matthew Marvin Sr., who emigrated from Great Bentley, Essex, England, in 1635, and helped found Hartford, Connecticut. Marvin studied the violin when he was young. As a teenager, Marvin "spent weekends and spare time hunting deer, puma, wild turkey, and bobwhite in the wilds of the then-uncharted Everglades". He attended Manumit School, a Christian socialist boarding school in Pawling, New York, during the late 1930s, and later attended St. Leo College Preparatory School, a Catholic school in St. Leo, Florida, after being expelled from several other schools for bad behaviour. Marvin left school at 18 to enlist in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1942. He served with the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific Theater during World War II. While serving as a member of "I" Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division, he was wounded in action on in 1944, during the assault on Mount Tapochau in the Battle of Saipan, during which most of his company were casualties. He was hit by machine-gun fire, which severed his sciatic nerve, and then was hit again in the foot by a sniper. After over a year of medical treatment in naval hospitals, Marvin was given a medical discharge with the rank of private first class (he had been a corporal years earlier but had been demoted after causing trouble) in 1945 Philadelphia. Marvin's military awards include the Purple Heart Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Combat Action Ribbon.

 

After the war, while working as a plumber's assistant at a local community theatre in upstate New York, Lee Marvin was asked to replace an actor who had fallen ill during rehearsals. He caught the acting bug and got a job with the company at $7 a week. He moved to Greenwich Village and used the GI Bill to study at the American Theatre Wing. He appeared on stage in a production of 'Uniform of Flesh', an adaptation of the novel 'Billy Budd' (1949). It was done at the Experimental Theatre, where a few months later Marvin also appeared in 'The Nineteenth Hole of Europe' (1949). Marvin began appearing on television shows like Escape, The Big Story, and Treasury Men in Action. He made it to Broadway with a small role in a production of Uniform of Flesh, now called Billy Budd in February 1951. Marvin's film debut was in You're in the Navy Now (Henry Hathaway, 1951), which also marked the debuts of Charles Bronson and Jack Warden. This required some filming in Hollywood. Marvin decided to stay there. He had a similar small part in Teresa (Fred Zinnemann, 1951). As a decorated combat veteran, Marvin was a natural in war dramas, where he frequently assisted the director and other actors in realistically portraying infantry movement, arranging costumes, and the use of firearms. He guest-starred on episodes of Fireside Theatre (1950), Suspense (1950), and Rebound (1952). Hathaway used him again on Diplomatic Courier (Henry Hathaway, 1952) and he could be seen in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (Edmund Goulding, 1952), We're Not Married! (Edmund Goulding, 1952), The Duel at Silver Creek (Don Siegel, 1952), and Hangman's Knot (Roy Huggins, 1952). He guest-starred on Biff Baker, U.S.A. (1952) and Dragnet (1952-1953), and had a decent role in a feature with Eight Iron Men (Edward Dmytryk, 1952), a war film starring Bonar Colleano and produced by Stanley Kramer. Marvin's role had been played on Broadway by Burt Lancaster. He was a sergeant in the Western Seminole (Budd Boetticher, 1953), and was a corporal in The Glory Brigade (Robert D. Webb, 1953), a Korean War film starring Victor Mature. He was now in much demand for Westerns: The Stranger Wore a Gun (Andre DeToth, 1953) with Randolph Scott, and Gun Fury (Raoul Walsh, 1953) with Rock Hudson and Donna Reed.

 

Lee Marvin received much acclaim for his portrayal as villains in two Film Noirs: The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) where he played Gloria Grahame's vicious boyfriend, and The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953) opposite Marlon Brando. Marvin's gang in the film was called "The Beetles". He continued in TV shows such as The Plymouth Playhouse (1953) and The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse (1954). He had support roles in the 3D horror mystery B-movie Gorilla at Large (Harmon Jones, 1954) and had a notable small role as smart-aleck sailor Meatball in The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, 1954), produced by Stanley Kramer. Marvin was in the war film The Raid (Hugo Fregonese, 1954) with Van Heflin and Anne Bancroft, and in episodes of the TV series Center Stage (1954), Medic (1954) and TV Reader's Digest (1955). He had an excellent part as Hector, the small-town hood in Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955) with Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan. Also in 1955, he played a conflicted, brutal bank-robber in the thriller Violent Saturday (Richard Fleischer, 1955) with Victor Mature. A latter-day critic wrote of the character, "Marvin brings a multi-faceted complexity to the role and gives a great example of the early promise that launched his long and successful career." Marvin played Robert Mitchum's friend in Not as a Stranger (Stanley Kramer, 1955), a medical drama also produced by Kramer. He had bigger supporting roles in A Life in the Balance (Harry Horner, Rafael Portillo, 1955), Pete Kelly's Blues (Jack Webb, 1955) and I Died a Thousand Times (Stuart Heisler, 1955) with Jack Palance. Marvin was the villain in 7 Men from Now (Budd Boetticher, 1956) with Randolph Scott, and was second-billed to Jack Palance in Attack (Robert Aldrich, 1956). Marvin had good roles in The Rack (Arnold Laven, 1956) with Paul Newman, Raintree County (Edward Dmytryk, 1956) starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, and The Missouri Traveler (Herry Hopper, 1958). Marvin finally got to be a leading man in 100 episodes in the successful television series M Squad (1957-1960). Set in Chicago, Illinois, it starred Marvin as Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger, a member of "M Squad", a special unit of the Chicago Police, assisting other units in battling organized crime, corruption, and violent crimes citywide. One critic described the show as "a hyped-up, violent Dragnet ... with a hard-as-nails Marvin" playing a tough police lieutenant. Marvin received the role after guest-starring in a memorable Dragnet episode as a serial killer. When the series ended Marvin appeared on such TV shows as Wagon Train (1960-1961), Route 66 (1961; he was injured during a fight scene), Bonanza (1962), The Untouchables (1961-1962; several times), The Virginian (1962), The Twilight Zone (1961-1963), and The Dick Powell Theatre (1963).

 

Lee Marvin returned to features with a prominent role in The Comancheros (Michael Curtiz, 1961) starring John Wayne. He played in two more films with Wayne, both directed by John Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Donovan's Reef (1963). As the vicious Liberty Valance, Marvin played his first title role and held his own with two of the screen's biggest stars (John Wayne and James Stewart). In 1962 Marvin appeared as Martin Kalig on the TV western The Virginian in the episode titled 'It Tolls for Thee'. He continued to guest star on shows like Combat! (1963), Dr. Kildare (1962-1964), and The Great Adventure (1963). For director Don Siegel, Marvin appeared in The Killers (1964) playing an efficient professional assassin alongside Clu Gulager. The Killers was also the first film in which Marvin received top billing. Marvin finally became a star for his comic role in the Western comedy Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) starring Jane Fonda. This was a surprise hit and Marvin won the 1965 Oscar for Best Actor and several other awards. Playing alongside Vivien Leigh and Simone Signoret, Marvin won the 1966 National Board of Review Award for male actors for his role in Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer, 1965). Marvin next performed in the hit Western The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966), in which he played the leader of a small band of skilled mercenaries (Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode) rescuing a kidnap victim (Claudia Cardinale) shortly after the Mexican Revolution. He followed that film with the hugely successful World War II epic The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967) in which top-billed Marvin again portrayed an intrepid commander of a colorful group (future stars John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown, and Donald Sutherland) performing an almost impossible mission. In the wake of these two films and after having received an Oscar, Marvin was a huge star, given enormous control over his next film Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967), co-starring Angie Dickinson. He portrayed a hard-nosed criminal bent on revenge. Marvin, who had selected Boorman himself for the director's slot, had a central role in the film's development, plotline, and staging. Marvin also appeared in another Boorman film, the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful World War II character study Hell in the Pacific (John Boorman, 1968), also starring famed Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. Marvin was originally cast as Pike Bishop (later played by William Holden) in The Wild Bunch (1969), but fell out with director Sam Peckinpah and pulled out to star in the Western musical Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan, 1969), in which he was top-billed over a singing Clint Eastwood. Despite his limited singing ability, he had a surprise hit song with "Wand'rin' Star". By this time, he was getting paid a million dollars per film, $200,000 less than top star Paul Newman was making at the time.

 

Lee Marvin had a much greater variety of roles in the 1970s, with fewer bad-guy roles than in earlier years. His 1970s films included Monte Walsh (William A. Fraker, 1970), a Western with Jack Palance and Jeanne Moreau; the violent Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie, 1972) with Gene Hackman; Pocket Money (Stuart Rosenberg, 1972) with Paul Newman; Emperor of the North (Robert Aldrich, 1973) opposite Ernest Borgnine; as Hickey in The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer, 1973) with Fredric March and Robert Ryan; The Spikes Gang (Richard Fleischer, 1974) with Noah Beery Jr.; The Klansman (Terence Young, 1974) with Richard Burton; Shout at the Devil (Peter Hunt, 1976), a World War One adventure with Roger Moore; The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday (Don Taylor, 1976), a comic Western with Oliver Reed; and Avalanche Express (Mark Robson, 1978), a Cold War thriller with Robert Shaw who died during production. None of these films were big box office hits. Marvin was offered the role of Quint in Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) but declined, stating "What would I tell my fishing friends who'd see me come off a hero against a dummy shark?". Marvin's last big role was in Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One (1980), a war film based on Fuller's own war experiences. His remaining films were Death Hunt (Peter R. Hunt, 1981), a Canadian action film with Charles Bronson; Gorky Park (Michael Apted, 1983) with William Hurt; and in France Canicule/Dog Day (Yves Boisset, 1984), with Miou-Miou. For TV he did The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1985), a sequel with Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Jaeckel picking up where they had left off despite being 18 years older. His final appearance was in The Delta Force (Menahem Golan, 1986) with Chuck Norris, playing a role turned down by Charles Bronson. Marvin had married Betty Ebeling in February 1951 and together they had four children, son Christopher Lamont (1952–2013), and three daughters: Courtenay Lee (1954), Cynthia Louise (1956), and Claudia Leslie (1958–2012). Married 16 years, they divorced in 1967. A long-term romantic relationship with Michelle Triola led, after their breakup, to a highly publicized lawsuit in which Triola asked for a substantial portion of Marvin's assets. Her case failed in its main pursuit but did establish a legal precedent for the rights of unmarried cohabitors, the so-called "palimony" law. Marvin reunited with his high school sweetheart, Pamela Feeley and they married in October 1970. She had four children with three previous marriages, they had no children together and remained married until his death in 1987. In December 1986, Marvin was hospitalized for more than two weeks because of a condition related to coccidioidomycosis. He went into respiratory distress and was administered steroids to help his breathing. He had major intestinal ruptures as a result and underwent a colectomy. Marvin died of a heart attack on 29 August 1987 in Tucson, Arizona, aged 63. He was buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery.

 

Sources: Jim Beaver (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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British postcard by A Bigger Splash, Manchester, no. X667. Photo: Dark Horse Comics / Polygram. Publicity still for Barb Wire (David Hogan, 1996).

 

Sexy Canadian-American actress and model Pamela Anderson (1967) is best known for the TV series Home Improvement, Baywatch and V.I.P., but the platinum blonde but naturally born brunette also appeared in a dozen of feature films and on a record 14 Playboy covers. Furthermore she is an international celebrity thanks to her rocky marriages, her animal rights activism and her changing bust sizes.

 

Pamela Denise Anderson was born in Ladysmith, (Vancouver Island), BC, Canada, the daughter of Barry Anderson, a furnace repairman, and Carol (née Grosco) Anderson, a waitress. She was the first Canadian baby born in Ladysmith Canada's Centennial Day in 1967, A Centennial Baby. As a child, Anderson suffered frequent sexual abuse, a fact she revealed publicly in 2014: she was molested by a female babysitter from ages 6 to 10, raped by a 25-year-old man when she was 12, and gang-raped by her boyfriend and six of his friends when she was 14. She also revealed that her father, though "loving", had been an alcoholic. Anderson attended Highland Secondary School in Comox, British Columbia. During high school, she played on the volleyball team. She graduated in 1985. In 1988, the 19-years-old Anderson moved to Vancouver and worked as a fitness instructor. In 1989, Anderson attended a BC Lions Canadian Football League game at the BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, where the stadium camera featured her on the electronic scoreboard while wearing a Labatt's Beer T-shirt. The fans cheered her and she was brought down to the football field. Because of her fame in Vancouver, she signed a commercial contract with The brewing company to be the Blue Zone girl. More advertising assignments followed. Anderson appeared as the cover girl on Playboy magazine's October 1989 issue. She moved to Los Angeles to further pursue a modelling career. Playboy subsequently chose her as Playmate of the Month in their February 1990 issue, in which she appeared in the centrefold photo. Anderson then elected to have breast implant surgery, increasing her bust size to 34D. She famously increased her bust size again, to 34DD, several years later. Anderson has since appeared in Playboy several times in the 1990s and the 2000s. Anderson's Playboy career spans 22 years, and she has appeared on 14 Playboy covers, more than any other model. Anderson was the last to pose nude in Playboy, on the magazine's January/February 2016 cover. She also became known as a lifelong animal rights and human advocate and is also an activist for environmental issues. In 2006, she posed naked in the window of Stella McCartney's store in London to protest against the use of fur for making clothes.

 

After Pamela Anderson moved to Los Angeles, she won a minor role as Lisa, the original ‘Tool Time girl’, on the television sitcom, Home Improvement (1991-1993), starring Tim Allen. She left the show after two seasons and won the role of lifeguard C. J. Parker on Baywatch (1992-1997), the action drama series about the Los Angeles County Lifeguards who patrol the beaches of Los Angeles County, California, starring David Hasselhoff. She played C.J. for five seasons making her one of the longest serving and most popular cast members. This has been her best known role to date and she later reprised her role to return in a reunion movie, Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding (Douglas Schwartz, 2003). In 1994, she was cast in her first starring film role, in the action thriller Raw Justice (David A. Prior, 1994), co-starring with Stacy Keach. She also appeared in Naked Souls (Lyndon Chubbuck, 1996), starring Brian Krause. Next she starred in the action-Science Fiction film Barb Wire (David Hogan, 1996), based on the Dark Horse comic book series of the same name. The thinly veiled futuristic remake of Casablanca was poorly received by critics, bombed at the box office and resulted for Anderson in a Golden Raspberry Award for her interpretation. In 1998, she came back as Vallery Irons in the TV series V.I.P. (1998-2002) about a bodyguard agency (V.I.P. aka Vallery Irons Protection). Blending action and humour in a fast-paced adventure series, with Anderson often poking fun at her tabloid image, the show explored the exciting and sometimes treacherous lives of the rich and famous. The series lasted through a successful four-year run. In 1999, Anderson had her breast implants surgically removed. The breaking news seemed like the end of an era.

 

Pamela Anderson married Tommy Lee, drummer of Mötley Crüe in 1995, after knowing him for about 4 days. They wed on a beach, with Anderson in a bikini. Anderson's mother did not know, and learned of the marriage from People magazine. A sex tape of Anderson and Tommy Lee on their honeymoon was stolen from their home in 1995 and made a huge stir on the Internet. Anderson sued the video distribution company, Internet Entertainment Group. Ultimately, the Lees entered into a confidential settlement agreement with IEG. During this time, she was known professionally as Pamela Anderson Lee. Together they have two sons, Brandon Thomas Lee and Dylan Jagger Lee. The couple divorced in 1998. In 2000, Anderson became engaged to Swedish model Marcus Schenkenberg, but they broke up in 2001. In 2004, Anderson became a naturalized citizen of the United States, while retaining her Canadian citizenship. She became engaged to the singer Kid Rock (Robert J. Ritchie); and they married in 2006. Later that year Anderson miscarried while shooting a new film, Blonde and Blonder (Dean Hamilton, 2006) with Denise Richards. Seventeen days later, Anderson filed for divorce. In 2007, Anderson married Rick Salomon in a small wedding ceremony at The Mirage, between her two nightly appearances at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Hans Klok's magic show. The couple separated later that year and Anderson requested through the courts that the marriage be annulled, citing fraud. In 2014 they remarried and also divorced again in 2015. Her film work in the new millennium consisted mainly of cameos in such comedies as Scooby-Doo (Raja Gosnell, 2002) with Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Scary Movie 3 (David Zucker, 2003), part of the franchise that parodied the horror, sci-fi, and mystery genres. In 2004, she released the book Star, co-written by Eric Shaw Quinn, about a teenager trying to become famous. Her second book, the sequel Star Struck (2005), is a thinly veiled look at her life with Tommy Lee and the trials of celebrity life. Anderson appeared in the mockumentary, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Larry Charles, 2006), as the title character (Sacha Baron Cohen) becomes obsessed with her, and plans to abduct and marry her. She appears as herself at a book signing at the end of the film, confronted by Borat in a staged botched abduction. The film opened at No. 1 in the US box office, maintaining first place for two weeks straight. More recently she co-starred in the independent film The People Garden (Nadia Litz, 2016), a Canadian-Japanese drama starring Dree Hemingway, and for this year she’s scheduled to return in a cameo as the older C.J. in a new film version of Baywatch (Seth Gordon, 2017). The new film version stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Priyanka Chopra and Zac Efron and the tagline is promising: Don't worry, summer is coming. Recently, Pamela Anderson, now 49, appeared in the erotic magazine The Amorist in new pictures by photographer Rankin for a new ad campaign for an erotic lingerie brand. The DailyMail Online commented: “Time may well be a cruel mistress, but Pamela Anderson goes some way towards proving the years have been kind in a stunning new photoshoot.”

 

Sources: Pamelandersonfoundation.org, Daily Mail Online, Wikipedia and IMDb.

The sequel to this. For the Rogue-Fearr RFT.2, I was aiming for the body style of a Class 1(?) Buggy/Truggy and the relative "comforts" and overall design (NOT body style) of this.

 

No interesting backstory here, you'll have to come up with it yourselves or wait 'til I have the motivation :D

A sequel to the earlier upload!

 

Please Forgive me

Sequel to the Undead Situation , The Undead Haze is Eloise J. Knapp' second novel.

This second opus takes us and Cyrus V. Sinclar, our favorite anti-hero, on a quest across zombie land... Check out my review of the book on Bricks of the Dead!

 

Many thanks to my buddy Pixel Fox for the Photoshop edits on this picture!

   

DRD * The Arcade * Serenity Style​ * GEN-Neutral Event​ * Sequel

 

thecollectivemusingsofcat2.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/a-tou...

AN IN DEPTH LOOK AT CORVUS CORONE

  

LEGEND AND MYTHOLOGY

By Paul Williams

  

Crows appear in the Bible where Noah uses one to search for dry land and to check on the recession of the flood. Crows supposedly saved the prophet, Elijah, from famine and are an Inuit deity. Legend has it that England and its monarchy will end when there are no more crows in the Tower of London. And some believe that the crows went to the Tower attracted by the regular corpses following executions with written accounts of their presence at the executions of Anne Boleyn and Jane Gray.

  

In Welsh mythology, unfortunately Crows are seen as symbolic of evilness and black magic thanks to many references to witches transforming into crows or ravens and escaping. Indian legend tells of Kakabhusandi, a crow who sits on the branches of a wish-fulfilling tree called Kalpataru and a crow in Ramayana where Lord Rama blessed the crow with the power to foresee future events and communicate with the souls.

  

In Native American first nation legend the crow is sometimes considered to be something of a trickster, though they are also viewed positively by some tribes as messengers between this world and the next where they carry messages from the living to those deceased, and even carry healing medicines between both worlds.

  

There is a belief that crows can foresee the future. The Klamath tribe in Oregon believe that when we die, we fly up to heaven as a crow. The Crow can also signify wisdom to some tribes who believe crows had the power to talk and were therefore considered to be one of the wisest of birds. Tribes with Crow Clans include the Chippewa (whose Crow Clan and its totem are called Aandeg), the Hopi (whose Crow Clan is called Angwusngyam or Ungwish-wungwa), the Menominee, the Caddo, the Tlingit, and the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico.

  

The crow features in the Nanissáanah (Ghost dance), popularized by Jerome Crow Dog, a Brulé Lakota sub-chief and warrior born at Horse Stealing Creek in Montana Territory in 1833, the crow symbolizing wisdom and the past, when the crow had become a guide and acted as a pathfinder during hunting. The Ghost dance movement was originally created in 1870 by Wodziwob, or Gray Hair, a prophet and medicine man of the Paiute tribe in an area that became known as Nevada.

  

Ghost dancers wore crow and eagle feathers in their clothes and hair, and the fact that the Crow could talk placed it as one of the sages of the animal kingdom. The five-day dances seeking trance, prophecy and exhortations would eventually play a major part in the pathway towards the white man's broken treaties, the infamous battle at Wounded knee and the surrender of Matȟó Wanáȟtaka (Kicking Bear), after officials began to fear the ghost dancers and rituals which seemed to occur prior to battle.

  

Historically the Vikings are the group who made so many references to the crow, and Ragnarr Loðbrók and his sons used this species in his banner as well as appearances in many flags and coats of arms. Also, it had some kind of association with Odin, one of their main deities. Norse legend tells us that Odin is accompanied by two crows.

  

Hugin, who symbolizes thought, and Munin, who represents a memory. These two crows were sent out each dawn to fly the entire world, returning at breakfast where they informed the Lord of the Nordic gods of everything that went on in their kingdoms. Odin was also referred to as Rafnagud (raven-god).

  

The raven appears in almost every skaldic poem describing warfare. Coins dating back to 940's minted by Olaf Cuaran depict the Viking war standard, the Raven and Viking war banners (Gonfalon) depicted the bird also.

  

In Scandinavian legends, crows are a representative of the Goddess of Death, known as Valkyrie (from old Norse 'Valkyrja'), one of the group of maidens who served the Norse deity Odin, visiting battlefields and sending him the souls of the slain worthy of a place in Valhalla. Odin ( also called Wodan, Woden, or Wotan), preferred that heroes be killed in battle and that the most valiant of souls be taken to Valhöll, the hall of slain warriors.

  

It is the crow that provides the Valkyries with important information on who should go. In Hindu ceremonies that are associated to ancestors, the crow has an important place in Vedic rituals. They are seen as messengers of death in Indian culture too.

  

In Germanic legend, Crows are seen as psychonomes, meaning the act of guiding spirits to their final destination, and that the feathers of a crow could cure a victim who had been cursed. And yet, a lone black crow could symbolize impending death, whilst a group symbolizes a lucky omen! Vikings also saw good omens in the crow and would leave offerings of meat as a token.

  

The crow also has sacred and prophetic meaning within the Celtic civilization, where it stood for flesh ripped off due to combat and Morrighan, the warrior goddess, often appears in Celtic mythology as a raven or crow, or else is found to be in the company of the birds. Crow is sacred to Lugdnum, the Celtic god of creation who gave his name to the city of Lug

  

In Greek mythology according to Appolodorus, Apollo is supposedly responsible for the black feathers of the crow, turning them forever black from their pristine white original plumage as a punishment after they brought news that Κορωνις (Coronis) a princess of the Thessalian kingdom of Phlegyantis, Apollo's pregnant lover had left him to marry a mortal, Ischys.

  

In one legend, Apollo burned the crows feathers and then burned Coronis to death, in another Coronis herself was turned into a black crow, and another that she was slain by the arrows of Αρτεμις (Artemis - twin to Apollo). Koronis was later set amongst the stars as the constellation Corvus ("the Crow").

  

Her name means "Curved One" from the Greek word korônis or "Crow" from the word korônê.A similar Muslim legend allegedly tells of Muhammad, founder of Islam and the last prophet sent by God to Earth, who's secret location was given away by a white crow to his seekers, as he hid in caves. The crow shouted 'Ghar Ghar' (Cave, cave) and thus as punishment, Muhammad turned the crow black and cursed it for eternity to utter only one phrase, 'Ghar, ghar). Native Indian legend where the once rainbow-coloured crows became forever black after shedding their colourful plumage over the other animals of the world.

  

In China the Crow is represented in art as a three legged bird on a solar disk, being a creature that helps the sun in its journey. In Japan there are myths of Crow Tengu who were priests who became vain, and turned into this spirit to serve as messengers until they learn the lesson of humility as well as a great Crow who takes part in Shinto creation stories.

  

In animal spirit guides there are general perceptions of what sightings of numbers of crows actually mean:

  

1 Crow Meaning: To carry a message from your near one who died recently.

 

2 Crows Meaning: Two crows sitting near your home signifies some good news is on your way.

 

3 Crows Meaning: An upcoming wedding in your family.

 

4 Crows Meaning: Symbolizes wealth and prosperity.

 

5 Crows Meaning: Diseases or pain.

 

6 Crows Meaning: A theft in your house!

 

7 Crows Meaning: Denotes travel or moving from your house.

 

8 Crows Meaning: Sorrowful events

  

Crows are generally seen as the symbolism when alive for doom bringing, misfortune and bad omens, and yet a dead crow symbolizes potentially bringing good news and positive change to those who see it.

 

This wonderful bird certainly gets a mixed bag of contradictory mythology and legend over the centuries and in modern days is often seen as a bit of a nuisance, attacking and killing the babies of other birds such as Starlings, Pigeons and House Sparrows as well as plucking the eyes out of lambs in the field, being loud and noisy and violently attacking poor victims in a 'crow court'....

  

There is even a classic horror film called 'THE CROW' released in 1994 by Miramax Films, directed by Alex Proyas and starring Brandon Lee in his final film appearance as Eric Draven, who is revived by a Crow tapping on his gravestone a year after he and his fiancée are murdered in Detroit by a street gang. The crow becomes his guide as he sets out to avenge the murders.

  

The only son of martial arts expert Bruce Lee, Brandon lee suffered fatal injuries on the set of the film when the crew failed to remove the primer from a cartridge that hit Lee in the abdomen with the same force as a normal bullet. Lee died that day, March 31st 1993 aged 28.

  

The symbolism of the Crow resurrecting the dead star and accompanying him on his quest for revenge was powerful, and in some part based on the history of the carrion crow itself and the original film grossed more than $94 Million dollars with three subsequent sequels following.

  

TAKING A CLOSER LOOK

  

So, let's move away from legend, mythology and stories passed down from our parents and grandparents and look at these amazing birds in isolation.

  

Carrion crow are passerines in the family Corvidae a group of Oscine passerine birds including Crows, Ravens, Rooks, Jackdaws, Jays, Magpies, Treepies, Choughs and Nutcrackers. Technically they are classed as Corvids, and the largest of passerine birds. Carrion crows are medium to large in size with rictal bristles and a single moult per year (most passerines moult twice).

  

Carrion crow was one of the many species originally described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (Carl Von Linne after his ennoblement) in his 1758 and 1759 editions of 'SYSTEMA NATURAE', and it still bears its original name of Corvus corone, derived from the Latin of Corvus, meaning Raven and the Greek κορώνη (korōnē), meaning crow.

  

Carrion crow are of the Animalia kingdom Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Passeriformes Family: Corvidae Genus: Corvus and Species: Corvus corone

  

Corvus corone can reach 45-47cm in length with a 93-104cm wingspan and weigh between 370-650g. They are protected under The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 in the United Kingdom with a Green UK conservation status which means they are of least concern with more than 1,000,000 territories.

 

Breeding occurs in April with fledging of the chicks taking around twenty nine days following an incubation period of around twenty days with 3 to 4 eggs being the average norm. They are abundant in the UK apart from Northwest Scotland and Ireland where the Hooded crow (Corvus cornix) was considered the same species until 2002. They have a lifespan of around four years, whilst Crow species can live to the age of Twenty years old, and the oldest known American crow in the wild was almost Thirty years old.

  

The oldest documented captive crow died at age Fifty nine. They are smaller and have a shorter lifespan than the Raven, which again is used as a symbol in history to live life to the full and not waste a moment!

  

They are often mistaken for the Rook (Corvus frugilegus), a similar bird, though in the UK, the Rook is actually technically smaller than the Carrion crow averaging 44-46cm in length, 81-99cm wingspan and weighing up to 340g. Rooks have white beaks compared to the black beaks of Carrion crow, a more steeply raked ratio from head to beak, and longer straighter beaks as well as a different plumage pattern.

  

There are documented cases in the UK of singular and grouped Rooks attacking and killing Carrion crows in their territory. Rooks nest in colonies unlike Carrion crows. Carrion crows have only a few natural enemies including powerful raptors such as the northern goshawk, the peregrine falcon, the Eurasian eagle-owl and the golden eagle which will all readily hunt them.

  

Regarded as one of the most intelligent birds, indeed creatures on the planet, studies suggest that Corvids cognitive abilities can rival that of primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas and even provide clues to understanding human intelligence.

  

Crows have relatively large brains for their body size, compared to other animals. Their encephalization quotient (EQ) a ratio of brain to body size, adjusted for size because there isn’t a linear relationship is 4.1.

  

That is remarkably close to chimps at 4.2 whilst humans are 8.1. Corvids also have a very high neuronal density, the number of neurons per gram of brain, factoring in the number of cortical neurons, neuron packing density, intraneuronal distance and axonal conduction velocity shows that Corvids score high on this measure as well, with humans scoring the highest.

  

A corvid's pallium is packed with more neurons than a great ape's. Corvids have demonstrated the ability to use a combination of mental tools such as imagination, and anticipation of future events.

  

They can craft tools from twigs and branches to hook grubs from deep recesses, they can solve puzzles and intricate methods of gaining access to food set by humans,and have even bent pieces of wire into hooks to obtain food. They have been proven to have a higher cognitive ability level than seven year old humans.

  

Communications wise, their repertoire of wraw-wraw's is not fully understood, but the intensity, rhythm, and duration of caws seems to form the basis of a possible language. They also remember the faces of humans who have hindered or hurt them and pass that information on to their offspring.

  

Aesop's fable of 'The Crow and the Pitcher, tells of a thirsty crow which drops stones into a water pitcher to raise the water level and enable it to take a drink. Scientists have conducted tests to see whether crows really are this intelligent. They placed floating treats in a deep tube and observed the crows indeed dropping dense objects carefully selected into the water until the treat floated within reach. They had the intelligence to pick up, weigh and discount objects that would float in the water, they also did not select ones that were too large for the container.

  

Pet crows develop a unique call for their owners, in effect actually naming them. They also know to sunbathe for a dose of vitamin D, regularly settling on wooden garden fences, opening their mouths and wings and raising their heads to the sun. In groups they warn of danger and communicate vocally.

  

They store a cache of food for later if in abundance and are clever enough to move it if they feel it has been discovered. They leave markers for their cache. They have even learned to place walnuts and similar hard food items under car tyres at traffic lights as a means of cracking them!

  

Crows regularly gather around a dead fellow corvid, almost like a funeral, and it is thought they somehow learn from each death. They can even remember human faces for decades. Crows group together to attack larger predators and even steal their food, and they have different dialects in different areas, with the ability to mimic the dialect of the alpha males when they enter their territory!

  

They have a twenty year life span, the oldest on record reaching the age of Fifty nine. Crows can leave gifts for those who feed them such as buttons or bright shiny objects as a thank you, and they even kiss and make up after an argument, having mated for life.

  

In mythology they are associated with good and bad luck, being the bringers of omens and even witchcraft and are generally reviled for their attacks on baby birds and small mammals. They have an attack method of stunning smaller birds before consuming them, tearing violently at smaller, less aggressive birds, which is simply down to the fact that they are so highly intelligent, and also the top of the food chain.

  

Their diet includes over a thousand different items: Dead animals (as their name suggests), invertebrates, grain, as well as stealing eggs and chicks from other birds' nests, worms, insects, fruit, seeds, kitchen scraps. They are highly adaptable when food sources grow scarce. I absolutely love them, they are magnificent, bold, beautiful and incredibly interesting to watch and though at times it is hard to witness attacks made by them, I cannot help but adore them for so many other and more important reasons.

  

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PAIR IN MY GARDEN

 

Known mostly for my landscape work, Covid-19 changed everything for me photographically speaking thanks to a series of lock downs which naturally impeded my ability to travel. I began to spend more time on my own land, photographing the wildlife, and suddenly those wildlife photographs began to sell worldwide in magazines and books.

 

Crows have been in the area for a while, but rarely had strayed into my garden, leaving the Magpies to own the territory. Things changed around mid May 2021 when a beautiful female Carrion crow appeared and began to take some of the food that I put down for the other birds. Within a few days she began to appear regularly, on occasions stocking up on food, whilst other times placing pieces in the birdbath to soften them. She would stand on the birdbath and eat and drink and come back over the course of the day to eat the softened food. Naturally I named her Sheryl (Crow).

  

Shortly afterwards she brought along her mate, a tall and handsome fella, much larger than her who was also very vocal if he felt she was getting a little too close to me. I named him Russell (Crow). By now I had moved from a seated position from the patio as an observer, to laying on a mat just five feet from the birdbath with my Nikon so that I could photograph the pair as they landed, scavenged and fed.

  

Sheryl was now confident enough to let me be very close, and she even tolerated and recognized the clicking of the camera. At first, I used silent mode to reduce the noise, but this only allowed two shooting frame rates of single frame or continuous low frame which meant I was missing shots. I reverted back to normal continuous high frames, and she soon got used to the whirring of the mechanisms as the mirror slapped back and forth.

  

Russell would bark orders at her from the safety of the fence or the rear of the garden, whilst she rarely made a sound. That was until one day when in the sweltering heat she kept opening her beak and sunning on the grass, panting slightly in the heat.

  

I placed the circular water sprayer nearby and had it rotating so that the birdbath and grass was bathed in gentle water droplets and she soon came back, landed and seemed to really like the cooling effect on offer. She then climbed onto the birdbath and opened her wings slightly and made some gentle purring, cooing noises....

  

I swear she was expressing happiness, joy even....

  

On another blisteringly hot day when the sprayer was on, she came down, walked towards it and opened her wings up running into the water spray. Not once, but many times.

  

A further revelation into the unseen sides to these beautiful birds came with the male and female on the rear garden fence. They sat together, locked beaks like a kiss and then the male took his time gently preening her head feathers and the back of her neck as she made tiny happy sounds.

  

They stayed together like that for several minutes, showing a gentle, softer side to their nature and demonstrating the deep bond between them. Into July and the pair started to bring their three youngsters to my garden, the nippers learning to use the birdbath for bathing and dipping food, the parents attentive as ever. Two of the youngsters headed off once large enough and strong enough.

  

I was privileged to be in close attendance as the last juvenile was brought down by the pair, taught to take food and then on a night in July, to soar and fly with its mother in the evening sky as the light faded. She would swoop and twirl, and at regular intervals just touch the juvenile in flight with her wing tip feathers, as if to reassure it that she was close in attendance.

  

What an amazing experience to view. A few days later, the juvenile, though now gaining independence and more than capable of tackling food scraps in the garden, was still on occasions demand feeding from its mother who was now teaching him to take chicken breast, hotdogs or digestive biscuits and bury them in the garden beds for later delectation.

  

The juvenile also liked to gather up peanuts (monkey nuts) and bury them in the grass. On one occasion I witnessed a pair of rumbunctious Pica Pica (Magpies), chasing the young crow on rooftops, leaping at him no matter how hard he tried to get away. He defended himself well and survived the attacks, much to my relief.

  

Into August and the last youngster remained with the adults, though now was very independent even though he still spent time with his parents on rooftops, and shared food gathering duties with his mum. Hotdog sausages were their favourite choice, followed by fish fingers and digestive biscuits which the adult male would gather up three at a time.

  

In October 2021, the three Crows were still kings of the area, but my time observing them was pretty much over as I will only put food out now for the birds in the winter months. The two adults are still here in December and now taking the food that I put out to help all birds survive in the winter months. They also have a pair of Magpies to compete with now.

  

Late February 2022 and Cheryl and Russell and their youngster are still with me, still dominant in the area and still taking raw chicken, hotdogs, biscuits and fat balls that I put out for them. Today I saw them mating for the first time this year in the tree and the cycle continues.

  

By October 2022 the pair had successfully reared a new baby who we nicknamed Baboo, and the other youngster flew the coup. The three now recognised our car returning from weekends away, and were enjoying sausages, hotdogs, raw chicken, fish and especially cheese, but life was hard as they aged with daily morning and evening tussles in the air with invaders and intruders hoping to take their land.

  

Russell picked up an injury during one fight and hobbled about for a few weeks before fully recovering, though a slight limp remained long-term, but Sheryl was visibly ageing and struggled at times to gain height from a vertical ground take off. I placed a garden chair near the house and she would often jump onto the top and then onto the fence and then the roof in stages.

 

Baboo became the dominant garden watcher, swooping in to take advantage of the food I put out, though he now faced competition from a gaggle of five or so resident Magpies, Black headed gulls and Herring Gulls which seemed to have adopted the area, and brave enough to snatch food from under his nose and eat on the grass in his presence. The three crows still held on to our garden and the territory and were dominant still into December 2022. They loved cheese, hot dogs, raw chicken, fish fingers and digestive biscuits and also mixed nuts, crusty bread and cakes and fat from steak or gammon plus fish skin from salmon or haddock. But by December 13th 2022, feeding became almost impossible as Black headed gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus), Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus) and Common Gulls (Larus canus), seemed to take up residence, swooping from nowhere in dozens as soon as I tried to feed the crows and Magpies. I had to wait until any of my three crows were nestled in the Chestnut tree which seeps into my garden, before throwing food out to them, watching as they grabbed what they could, followed by the resident Magpies, before the gulls began to swoop once more!

 

By December 25th normal service was resumed and the crows could recognise my car and know if we were returning home, and call each other, then me to feed them.

  

Corvus Corone.... magnificently misunderstood by some!

  

Paul Williams June 4th 2021 (Updated on December 26th 2022)

  

©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

 

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***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on Wednesday 23rd November 2022

  

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©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Fifty five metres at 10:55pm on a Springtime afternoon on Thursday 16th June 2022, off Hythe Avenue and Chessington Avenue in Bexleyheath, Kent.

  

Here we see an adult female Carrion crow (Corvus corone) standing in a garden off Hythe Avenue and Chessington Avenue in Bexleyheath, Kent.

  

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Nikon D850 Focal length 380mm Shutter speed: 1/400s Aperture f/6.3 iso200 Hand held with Tamron VC Vibration control set to ON in position 1 14 Bit uncompressed RAW NEF file size L (8256 x 5504 pixels) FX (36 x 24) Focus mode: AF-C AF-Area mode: 3D-tracking AF-C Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points Exposure mode: Manual exposure mode Metering mode: Matrix metering White balance on: Auto1, 0, 0 (4490k) Colour space: RGB Picture control: (SD) Standard (Sharpening +3 & Clarity +1.00) Active D-Lighting: Auto Vignette Control: Normal High ISO NR: ON (Low)

  

Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Lee SW150 MKII filter holder. Lee SW150 95mm screw in adapter ring. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Mcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Black Rapid Curve Breathe strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.

     

LATITUDE: N 51d 28m 28.40s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 8m 10.70s

ALTITUDE: 55.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF FILE: 90.70MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 28.70MB

     

PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00

  

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit Version 1.4.1 (18/02/2020). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.13.5. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

  

A sequel to 'Ten Frames.'

 

07/11/22 edit: Oops, I now count twelve frames (not counting unframed works). Oh, well...

 

Tualatin Beard's Framing

19200 SW Martinazzi Ave

Tualatin, OR 97062

This story is a direct sequel to this one: www.flickr.com/photos/strintfire/6207596882/in/photostream

Previously, it was... pretty unreadable, so I corrected it, now it should be better. My english is shit thom so you will help me, if you will point to some mistakes.

 

The Spectre slowly floated from behind of the cliff, winking with bright yellow eyes.

Commander raised his fist. "Stop."

The Spectre was graceful, majestic.

 

Spectres are occasionally seen in the different corners of the planet. Usually they were immovable distant figures disappearing into nowhere, if someone will try to get closer.

However, some people saw them close enough to distinguish several basic external features - a long cloak (presumably tissued), metal collar or breastplate and large, not always anthropomorphic helmet.

These observations have allowed to identify a few monuments, found in different parts of the world with the Spectres. Monuments represent an "armor" of Spectre, opened like a flower and interwoven in an intricate design. Cloak always tosses over the monument, like a flag. Has been suggested that it is dead Spectres, although it isn’t clear how they could be killed – because those monuments are indestructible, scientists failed either to budge nor to damage them.

In a further researches this material demonstrated the ability to absorb the entire spectrum of light at certain angles of observation, so for this Spectres was named.

Later the material itself was called “deusite” for the unfathomable propeties.

However, later scientists found out that the esper’s nerves are covered with a thin layer of deusite, which gives them their powers, however, if deusite somehow separated from the body of the esper, it instantly evaporates and desintegrates, so it did not allow further researches.

 

Spectre was three meters tall, in the dark-purple cloak, covered with golden ornaments, his breastplate and helmet lookes like a polished silver, and four of his round eyes softly glowed with golden shine.

He slowly and carefully, under the wary eye on the squad, work free a long shiny tentacle from under the cloak and... waved with a six-fingered palm in a welcoming gesture.

- Kira, what’s happening? – commander asked.

Spectre, gaze swept (no one could figure out how he did it, not even moving his eyes) the team and stopped at Kira.

Looked right into her eyes. It was inexplicable, how the four lamps can look in the eyes, but so it was.

- I don’t know. – Kira clearly said.

And then the time seems stopped for her.

A voice started to sound in her head. Soft and deep, it wasn’t heard with ears, but with the mind, it wasn’t poured into her head, but arisen from within it.

"The time has come."

These were not the words, but the antecessors of words, pure meaning, unencumbered with the standards of language. Kira’s mind itself built it in the voice and words.

"I am The One Who Watching, overseer of the White Monolith."

The image of a huge white stone ran along the border of Kira’s mind.

"We were watching your people. We watched you. "

Stream of thoughts and memories. Recognizable, like her own. Yet they were strangers. In these memories, she saw herself from a side.

"We saw your awakening."

Image of a scorched wasteland. Smoldering crater in the center of a huge crevice. Fragile white body curled up in the middle of it. Defenseless. Unique…

"We saw awakening of your people."

Thin radiant wave, covering the entire planet in a few seconds and closing at the other pole. Wave of pure energy, not clouded by laws of physics and common sense.

"It's time to learn the truth. And your purpose. "

Time dramatically returned to normal.

Spectre slowly turned his hand into a fist, leaving only one finger sticking.

He stretched out his hand and slowly ran his finger along the string, quietly hanging two meters away from him. String opened up with the movement of the finger, like a giant flower, and soon became a large rose-like vortex, glowing with soft yellow light.

Spectre gaze swept the squad and crooked his finger.

"Follow me."

Then he quickly bounced back and passed through the vortex, and instantly disappeared in it. String carried away a little bright spark.

Kira stepped to the vortex.

- Kira, respond! What is this light, what happened to the spectre? - Commander's voice sounded surprised.

Clips on the Kira’s helmet opened up, enabling the helmet to fall into the Kira’s hands. She turned to the squad, the wind blowed her hair like a red hurricane.

- Excuse me. I'll be back soon. - she said with a smile, and then, in three steps, she covered the distance to the vortex and jumped into it.

Portal quickly began to shrink.

- What the ... - said the Monk, took his sword and tried to block the portal, but vortex just huddled for a second around the sword, then uttered a melodious rang and finally shrunk, leaving the Monk with half of the blade in his hand.

 

The sun slowly rised over the valley.

  

Engraving is part of the Hippocrates aphorism, " What medicines will not cure, iron will cure"

Credits to the Arch and SPW.

Enjoy and don't forget to comment.

JP DEE DD EXPRESS!!! WITH TKD WDP4B#40073 in lead.