Les Cinquantes Sonnets is the first book by poet Kelechukwu Brnfre (www.kelechukwubrnfre.com) This is my first book of poetry that includes my signature poem "Zero."I wrote this book as a gift to my fiancee at the time for her birthday. I wrote 34 poems for her 34th birthday in the form of Sonnets. I was reading Shakespeare at the time and I was inspired by his sonnets but I formed all of these poems in 16 lines because her favorite number was 16. The first 34 poems were influenced by her and the last 17 poems were influenced by a mixture of people, emotions and situations.I am very thankful for Erica Walker reading it over and encouraging me to make all of last 17 stay consistent with a theme of love, a subject I struggle to write about because it is so subjective. Loving a family member or your children is different from a person you are involved with intimately in a relationship.The format of this book starts with zero and goes to fifty. I used French because I am bilingual French and it seemed to fit the scheme and format of the subject matter in the book.

Mickey Rooney Was Right is D.W. Paone's autobiography with the emphasis on his quest to achieve success as both a writer and assistant cameraman in the entertainment industry. However, no matter how hard he tried, and he tried very hard, long-term success in both these aspects of the industry continued to elude him. While he had the opportunity to work on Law & Order and a handful of other high-profile jobs, and even sold a joke to Jay Leno, his career was a roller coaster ride of highs and lows in a fickle industry with no rhyme or reason. This book is for anyone who has attempted, or even considered a career in the entertainment industry, or followed a dream even when logic and those around him said to stop.

In popular music, live performance is one of the most important points of contact between artist and audience. However, this crucial part of the creation and reception of popular music has not received the attention it deserves. "Rock Music in Performance" aims to fill this gap. Focussing on one type of popular music - rock - it will trace the evolution of rock performance styles from the late 1960s to the present, and discuss the paradoxical nature of performance in popular music.

The contributors to this volume share the assumption that popular narrative, when viewed with an evolutionary lens, offers an incisive index into human nature. In theory, narrative art could take a near infinity of possible forms. In actual practice, however, particular motifs, plot patterns, stereotypical figures, and artistic devices persistently resurface, indicating specific predilections frequently at odds with our actual living conditions. Our studies explore various media and genres to gauge the impact of our evolutionary inheritance, in interdependence with the respective cultural environments, on our aesthetic appreciation. As they suggest, research into mass culture is not only indispensable for evolutionary criticism but may also contribute to our understanding of prehistoric selection pressures that still influence modern preferences in popular narrative. Contributions by David Andrews, James Carney, Mathias Clasen, Brett Cooke, Tamas David-Barrett, Tom Dolack, Kathryn Duncan, Isabel Behncke Izquierdo, Joe Keener, Alex C. Parrish, Todd K. Platts, Anna Rotkirch, Judith P. Saunders, Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, Dirk Vanderbeke, and Sophia Wege.

Leading circus skills author Charlie Dancey has spent over 20 years compiling this book of the world's coolest tricks, from unicycles to levitation, and vanishing coins to lion-taming.

A unique theory of trust building in engagement journalism that proposes journalists move to an ethic of care as they prioritize listening and learning within communities instead of propping up problematic institutions. In How Journalists Engage, Sue Robinson explores how journalists of different identities, especially racial, enact trusting relationships with their audiences. Drawing from case studies, community-work, interviews, and focus groups, she documents a growing built environment around trust building and engagement journalism that represents the first major paradigm shift of the press's core values in more than a century. As Robinson shows, journalists are being trained to take on new roles and skillsets around listening and learning, in addition to normative routines related to being a watchdog and storyteller. She demonstrates how this movement mobilizes the nurturing of personal, organizational, and institutional relationships that people have with information, sources, news brands, journalists, and each other. Developing a new theory of trust building, Robinson calls for journalists to grapple actively with their own identities-especially the privileges, biases, and marginalization attached to them-and those of their communities, resulting in a more intentional and effective moral voice focused on justice and equity through the news practice of an ethic of care.

Creative Health for Pianists: Concepts, Exercises & Compositions is a practical method book for musicians of all abilities. It provides a new way of thinking about the piano, emphasizing the pianist-reader's innate capacity to respond creatively to a musical and technical stimulus. Author and veteran educator Pedro de Alcantara suggests that every pianist, from a complete beginner to a concert artist, may approach the instrument with the frame of mind of an improviser and composer, in which curiosity, inventiveness, and technical skills are inseparable. Throughout the book, original music snippets that encapsulate one or more aspects of piano playing are presented and explained, then developed through tweaks, variations, and compositions of increasing complexity. Every chapter contains variations suited to a complete beginner, as well as musical challenges that will capture the imagination of advanced players. Most chapters contain improvisational prompts and games with step-by-step rules, leading to the development of new creative skills combining musical depth and technical intelligence. Creative Health for Pianists is supported by a dedicated companion website with 48 pedagogical video clips.

Hidden in a theater's orchestra-level wall is the pass door. Step through it, and you will enter the backstage area, but beware, once you enter, you will encounter the realities dwelling in the kingdom of make-believe.

In this seriocomical look at life, with a who's who in the theater during the 1960s and 70s, attend the final days of the Golden Age of Theater and the beginnings of its new sounds - Hair and Company.

You will read about Carol Channing prior to her acclaim in Hello, Dolly Liza Minnelli's stage debut and Judy Garland's final stage appearance. Be a spectator during Hair's first year. Reach for something other than a glass of Remy Martin as you watch cognac shatter a relationship with Maggie Smith. Observe a coterie of distinguished Broadwayites destroy a gift from the United States Government. Be a witness to Deborah Kerr's strength knowing that she's in a failed play, and Billy Dee Williams, the then hot-hunk with the chiseled body, take on the role of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Also appearing (in order of appearance) are Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, Barbra Streisand, Barbara Cook, Stan Getz, Ethel Merman, Fred Astaire, Elaine Stritch, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, James Baldwin, Kim Stanley, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Fidel Castro, Doris Day, and Mae West.

Fly to 1960s Havana; drive through France; experience the London of 1974, and visit Venice Beach, CA before it became an in-place.

You'll see reality warp into illusion, then comprehend how a young boy, whose own family turned to illusion during World War II, spiraled to drugs and alcohol at adulthood. You'll also view that young gay man, who ignored reality in favor of illusion, immerse himself into a dark hole whose force of gravity was so intense that escape seemed improbable.

Do not ask what is it. Let us go and make our visit. This is an invitation to Kindred Stories. From moonlight surfing to images in a window, from the lamppost that beckons to ivy that insists it has great understanding, from the piano player singing in the middle of the world to the lighthouse that helps us to get home, or does it? No one can live without a heart, although some try to. Welcome. Let me introduce you to someone you may know. Someone you may know well, possibly you.

And ANOTHER Thing, as the subtitle states, is an eclectic collection of musings, afterthoughts and paternal rantings. It is simply a collection of the authors private thoughts, thoughts that you may have had yourself but never verbalized. And ANOTHER Thing could have been a collection of anyone's thoughts. It could have been a collection of YOUR thoughts!

Vampire films have not only enthralled and terrified audiences for decades, they also represent one of the oldest subgenres within the world of horror. A subgenre that exhibits a rich tapestry of depth and history like no other, and a creature that has managed to evolve and survive for over one hundred years on film. The vampire represents a primal fear within all of us, a fear that both captivates and terrifies. Sometimes flawed, these cursed immortals were once just like us, and this is perhaps the true appeal after so much time. The shapeshifter can enter the perceived safety of our existence through skilled manipulation and deceit, while offering the victim something they will find hard to resist and eventually succumb to. They are arguably the most skilled and intelligent of all horror villains, and it is of no surprise that they have managed to hold our attention for decades.

Stories abound in this book, and a river runs through it. The stories are random and recurring, like memory itself. Family history. A conversation struck up with an old man in a bar. A long ago Pony League team undefeated. A young marine walking in an empty baseball field in Oahu, reading his college acceptance letter. The stories, like the cue balls Pearn describes in another poem, touch each other and change trajectories. The river is the Poudre - born in the Rocky Mountains, eastern slope, flowing through Fort Collins. Pearn gives his readers its colors and its creatures in many lights and seasons. Like memory, it is a place to return to, a source of renewal. There is another force moving these poems, one not found so much in contemporary writing. Call it boundless hope. In his poem "Three Square Meals," Pearn says he "did not have the American dream" because he never wanted to be rich; he just wanted to be a writer. But the American dream is writ large in these poems - true grit and work and the possibility of glory in baseball fields and boot camp - and in poetry. Many of the poems in this book are conversations with poetry and poets that begin in a seventh-grade classroom and are now part of his outlook and his art. The American dream shines in Pearn's memories of Jacksonville, Illinois, in the good days of the 1950s and 60s when there was work in huge and colorful variety for anyone who was willing to do it. But he also tells some 21st centuries stories of hope and struggle. His wife, a recent immigrant from China, confronts the gulf between her education and the jobs available to her. They walk the bureaucratic maze in their efforts to bring her son to the United States. This is a book to read and return to. -Peggy Sower Knoepfle

In this collection of interviews, artists from various disciplines and in various stages of their careers discuss how they balance their art with the practical aspects of earning a living. They explore how this dichotomy, which affects them creatively, financially, spiritually, and professionally, can be both frustrating and nourishing. Some artists have managed to find art-related work to make ends meet. Others contemplate their dual role in both the artistic community and in the corporate or academic world. They discuss the role art plays in influencing social change and the role technology has played in revolutionizing the creation of art and its marketing and distribution.

These insights into how artists merge their creative life with their financial obligations will be useful to both instructors and students in the arts. Topics such as how artists have managed to acquire flexible work schedules and educational leave will also appeal to professional artists looking for employment suggestions or alternatives. Representative artists include painters, writers, musicians, dancers, actors, and performance artists.

More than a century ago, filmmakers made their primary focus innovative and widely promulgated visions of antiquity, creating a profound effect on the critical, popular, and scholarly reception of antiquity. In this volume, scholars from a variety of countries and varying academic disciplines have addressed film s way of using the field of Classical Reception to investigate, contemplate, and develop hypotheses about present-day culture, society, and politics, with a particular emphasis on gender and gender roles, their relationship to one another, and how filmic constructions of masculinity and femininity shape and are shaped by interacting economic, political, and ideological practices.

Pillars of Destiny, Foundations in the Chinese Zodiac for Psychic Entertainers is a book for Mentalists and Mystery Performers on exploring Mysticism in Chinese culture. Matt Pulsar is a western entertainer who has been living in Asia for 7 years and performing for mostly Asian audiences. This is his story of exploration and learning about Chinese culture and how the zodiac functions in Chinese society. Pillars of Destiny teaches how to learn someone's Chinese Zodiac sign, how to tell the day of their birthday, the basics of Feng Shui, what the Ba Zi is and how an entertainer can use it, giving readings based on the Chinese Zodiac, incorporating western star signs with a reading, full routines with a Chinese Zodiac theme and much much more.