19 posts from May 2008

Fold a New Pink $20 bill in half.  Just take a look for your self. Plus read the other coincidence and you decide.
Thanks to me neighbor William  over at Ivysgrandkid

Urban Outfitters is a triumph of marketing - a hugely successful business that has disguised the gap between what it is and what its customers suppose it to be.

Walk into the store on Kensington High Street and be convinced you have entered a world run by a new breed of hippies - cooler and more sarcastic than the originals, and with better dress sense.

The staff look like students because many of them are, and everything in the shop blares detachment - a major attraction to twentysomethings who just can't resist an ironic T-shirt and thirtysomethings still trying to pull off the old look. The stores have already conquered New York and London. Ireland is next.

Richard Hayne
Quiet man: To expand, Richard Hayne needs to stay in the background

It seems unlikely that many of the staff or the customers know much about the owner and boss of Urban - a brilliant retailer called Richard Hayne whose views would be a serious risk to sales were his profile to rise.

Hayne started the business in the 1970s, taking it public in 1993 and bringing it to Britain in 1998. He is still the biggest shareholder and a seriously rich man - a billionaire by some estimates. You only have to look to see that there is nothing remotely hip about him. There is surely a bigger gulf between Hayne and his customer base than any other High Street retailer.

Shopping in Urban makes you feel like you are somewhere radically Left-wing, an antidote to the corporate blandness of The Gap. But Hayne is a stanch conservative who donates money to Republican politicians, not least Rick Santorum, a now failed Senator whose views on homosexuality are both bizarre and old-fashioned.

Hayne doesn't give many interviews precisely because he's afraid that college slackers who get to know him will suddenly realise that buying his clothes is like giving cash to George Bush.

Once described as projecting a "Dick Cheney-esque aura of no-nonsense grayflannel gravitas", Hayne must be the only retailer whose expansion plans depend on no one finding out who he really is.

Despite the strife in the sector, Urban just beat Wall Street profit expectations yet again. So far, the illusion is holding up perfectly. 

I go through this every day with CoCo. Loves to get in the shower with me and he doesn't mined if he gets all wet.

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Boys night out started with a play at a local theater and later moved to a nice lounge across the street for drinks and light nibbles.
This is a recap of the play

It's easy to see why protesters raged over “ Corpus Christi ” when the play premiered 10 years ago. Who dares make James Dean the devil?

Actually, the furor had more to do with a different young martyr entirely – a character whom Lucifer, doing his best Dean impression in Terrence McNally's play, tries to corrupt in the Texas desert.

His name is Joshua, and he's young and fervent and pure and, as it happens, the son of God. Also, gay.

McNally knew what he was doing when he recast Jesus as a conflicted soul growing up homosexual in 1950s Texas . In 1988, Martin Scorsese's film “The Last Temptation of Christ” drew picketers for suggesting that Jesus had desires of any kind. Protests over “ Corpus Christi ” were a given, and the cranks accommodated before its 1998 premiere with death threats that temporarily scuttled the New York production.

As usual in these cases, the offended parties might've waited to see the work first. “ Corpus Christi ,” which just opened in a spirited, funny but sometimes puzzling production at Diversionary Theatre, turns out to be about as reverent as irreverence gets.

Though it has its moments of raw language and what some might consider blasts of blasphemy, the play ultimately pushes a gentle message of tolerance and respect, often invoking Scripture in support.

Honestly, how bomb-throwing can a play be whose 13-member cast is clad in matching khakis and occasionally breaks into joyous song like some Up With Apostles youth troupe?

McNally doesn't turn Jesus into Joshua so much as overlay the two stories, crafting a sometimes wacky passion play of anachronisms. So as Josh and pals party at the Pontius Pilate High prom, Roman centurions loom somewhere outside the school's gates. (Just to further confuse eras, Joshua also appears to keep a Hello Kitty diary.)

As Joshua, Trevor Bowles may be the first actor whose actual prom will take place during the run of the show. A senior at Madison High, Bowles has a presence beyond his years – a little understated in his delivery on occasion, but otherwise gracefully conveying his character's mix of pain and strength.

Rich Carrillo stands out as a strutting, chest-thumping Judas whose bitterness smolders like a lit fuse.

“Y'ever listen to the other side of 'Heartbreak Hotel?' ” he asks Joshua when they first meet, his clipped, staccato syllables making it sound as much a threat as an invitation. The two quickly become more than friends, adding a new dimension to the sentiments behind Judas' ultimate betrayal.

Their posse steps up with some tough and funny performances. Jessica Parsell is almost a show all her own as a “South Pacific”-loving nun, a ditzy prom date and a very ticked-off centurion.

Director Nic Arnzen's staging has a loose-limbed, almost improv-y feel that nicely serves the play's wry humor and sense of surprise, but also sets up some jarring clashes in tone. The actors, who mill around chatting and laughing onstage as the audience filters in, are introduced in a casual baptism presided over by the versatile Rachael VanWormer, who plays John (McNally gave Diversionary the go-ahead to use both male and female actors).

Soon they're tossing a fake baby Jesus like a football, while the sound of a cross being hammered together – the one Christ eventually will hang from – can be heard offstage. Not that the gags aren't amusing in their goofy way, but when you're dealing seriously with crucifixion, farce is a tough thing to muster.

And yes, Joshua is persecuted for his sexuality, but he's ultimately crucified for the same reasons the Scriptures tell us Jesus was – telling people he was the son of God, and having the gall to convince them of their divinity, too. McNally leaves us with the sense that if you're facing hatred for the very act of trying to salvage souls, being gay – while a complication when you're surrounded by bullies and bigots – can't raise the stakes that much.

Maybe that's his intention. “ Corpus Christi ” retells “an old and familiar story,” as the first line of the play goes. And there'll always be a new excuse for people to inflict the old, familiar miseries.

By James Hebert

UNION-TRIBUNE THEATER CRITIC

So what about when your friends are not your friends any more. We have this friend that we met when we came to San Diego 3 years ago. He  introduced us to his friends and  there friends and so on.. Out of no where this friend has decided he has been left out and or we do not include him enough, specially when we or I do things with  one friend in particular. WHAT...... That and I have been told that he thinks we drink to much.  My friend and I meet every Tuesday for 2 martinis over a 2 plus hours time span and catch up.  I know that there are alcohol issues in his family but he thinks it is wrong that we have our own private Cheers. 

This is not High School, why are we not past this kind of thing. " I know.. a little bitchy but I am upset about this"

We love our friend and we can not even believe this is happening.  Cant we talk about this? Is there more to the story?  Not only have we been shut out, we have been blocked AND de-linked. W.T.F. Come on now.  It hurts to loose a friend and hurts even more when your are not really sure why. What about all the dinners we shared at my house, the BBQ's the movies, American Idol parties. Gone, done, no more.  This just does not seem right.

When your ready to talk, We will be here. I miss you my friend.
 Just in case he reads this.