<3 Ashley
Fecund
An eclectic journal of people, places and things.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
The Hair Bow (Hair Tutorial)
<3 Ashley
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Paul Newman: An Actor's Actor
I am a movie man, just like I’m a book man, and I love books, so you can fairly say that I love movies. But not just any movies. Like many people, I enjoy laughing and finding humor in life’s situations and events– but I don’t necessarily like watching it on film. As much as I appreciate humor, the number of comedic movies that I like you can count on the fingers of two hands. Really. And I’m not one for blockbusters so much either. Oh, I paid homage to the double trilogy of Star Wars, and the one trilogy of Lord of the Rings, and I still am willing to pay to see the occasional “big release” in theaters– mostly out of curiosity– but I am more interested in seeing dramatic movies, where the cast has to convince us that they are indeed the characters that they are portraying.
I am here today to sing the praises of the late Paul Newman, in my opinion, the finest actor of my generation, and the finest of his. There are few actors today who are as convincing in their movie roles as Paul Newman was in his roles. Each year, when I watch the movie award shows, (Golden Globes, Screen Actors’ Guild, and the Oscars) and see the actors of this era being paraded on camera, I cringe on the inside when I hear any of them referred to as being “legendary.” I stopped paying attention to an artist being referred to as a “legend” when I heard Britney Spears being introduced as a “legend” on a music awards show one year. I’m not kidding, it happened. Paul Newman defined the words “legend” and “actor” and “artist.”
It’s hard to describe the art of acting in motion pictures to the generation of today, weaned on computer-generated images and animation, and characters portrayed by actors judged only by their degree of “hotness.” With the exception of a voiceover for “Cars,” Paul Newman was not a part of any movies resembling “Transformers” or “Twilight”– he did much better than that. He and his acting brethren of the age concerned themselves with portraying a character. He concerned himself with helping to tell a story.
Paul Newman was nominated for an Oscar nine times. Nine times. He won only once, for his return performance as “Fast Eddie” Felson in “The Color of Money,” sequel to “The Hustler.” This piece of trivia leaves me speechless.
His other Oscar-nominated roles were in movies that are consensus picks on all-time greatest movie lists: Brick Pollitt, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Eddie Felson, “The Hustler,” Hud Bannon, “Hud,” Luke Jackson, “Cool Hand Luke,” Michael Colin Gallagher, “Absence of Malice,” Frank Galvin, “The Verdict,” Donald J. “Sully” Sullivan, “Nobody’s Fool,” and in a supporting role, as John Rooney in “Road to Perdition.” In my opinion, exceptional performances, each and every one. The two things that stood out to me in the Newman roles I’ve seen are his sincerity, and his vulnerability. If you watch “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,” maybe you’ll see Newman’s character of Brick, the often-drunk and frustrated ex-high school jock who only wants his father’s approval. Or, if you watch “Absence of Malice,” maybe you’ll see Newman’s character of Michael witnessing his world crumbling because of lies and rumors printed in the newspaper.
My favorite Newman performance was as Frank Galvin in “The Verdict,” where Galvin’s life seems to hit absolute rock-bottom. Galvin has had everything that could go wrong in his life go wrong. If it weren’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have luck at all, as a song says. Galvin becomes a lawyer, and he marries into a prestigious law firm, only to have his wife die. His law career then dies a slow death-- losing his position with the firm, he develops a booze problem. In desperation, he becomes an “ambulance-chaser.” He is thrown a bone– his law mentor finds him a medical malpractice case tried in civil court. The movie becomes a serious and interesting drama when Galvin must make and win a case against two prominent Boston doctors, (the charge is wrongful death) defended by Boston’s most prestigious law firm. Along the way, Galvin finds out that he actually is a fine lawyer, but not before hitting some more bumps in the road. This is my favorite Paul Newman movie, simply because I think that it’s his finest performance.
There are other actors of Newman’s generation whom I regard as exceptional– Jack Lemmon, Jack Nicholson, William Holden, Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger come to mind– but I still vote for Newman as the best of the lot. He avoided being typecast, and he avoided being in and overshadowed by an Epic Movie.
When you want to see an actor act, treat yourself sometime to a Newman movie, and watch Paul Newman at work.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Why April 12th Is Important To Remember
Another April 12th has come and gone, and for most Americans the date holds no special significance-- if nothing else, it might remind some that the dreaded April 15th tax deadline is not far away; for others, they might be reminded that Spring is well underway, and if we haven't observed Easter yet, it won't be long before we do.
But for those who remember the history of this nation, especially of the last one hundred and fifty years, April 12th is significant, and arguably, quite important. Three prominent events happened on April 12th that affected American history, and perhaps heralded-in new eras.
On April 12, 1945, the United States and the Free World lost Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a cerebral hemorrhage in the closing months of the Second World War. The responsibilities of presidential leadership fell on the shoulders of Harry Truman.
The world entered the age of manned space flight on April 12, 1961, as the now-former Soviet Union launched Vostok I with Yuri Gagarin aboard. Gagarin would complete one orbit on his mission, making exploration history. Alan Shepard would become America's first man into space three weeks later.
Perhaps the most famous (or infamous) April 12th occurred in 1861,( marking the beginning of the American Civil War) with rebel Confederate artillery forces shelling Fort Sumter, a federal island fortress in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The artillery barrage began at 4:30 a.m., and continued for thirty-four hours, until the Union forces under the command of Robert Anderson surrendered.
Neither the Union nor the Confederacy suffered casualties that day, but the Civil War had indeed begun, and before it concluded, over half a million men would die. What began as a war for states' rights would become a war to define what "freedom" actually meant.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The Budget Friendly Manicure
Step by Step - Manicure
By Ashley Pinkham
"Create professional quality results and keep cash in your pocket" |
Your Computer Is Watching You!
Are you watching back? Have you noticed anything odd lately?
By: Nate Hemmert
Does it ever feel like the computer you’re staring at may just be watching you back? Well that’s because it is! No, it doesn’t have eyes; it’s not a Transformer, but it can still see you. It knows where you’ve been, how long you’ve been there, and in all honesty, it might even know your interests better than you do yourself. Do you ever wonder how the ads being shown to you are so spot-on? Why does a t-shirt for your favorite band always seem to popping up? It’s called behavioral advertising and it’s the newest form of deadly-accurate advertising. Behavioral advertising, to some extent, is everywhere on the internet. Every page you visit, every click you make, it’s there – although you may not notice it or maybe you’re so used to it that you just don’t see it anymore.
Almost all of us have at least one email account from a large provider, if not quite a few. If you sign on to your hotmail account (or equivalent) the ads are tailored to recent searches you've made. Maybe you've been considering a Vegas trip? Looked up a flight or two? Well now there is going to be a multitude of travel ads all over the place. The scary part is, these ads just so happen to be advertising flight deals from where you live to whatever city you’ve just searched for! You're being tracked every single time you use your internet connection!
A better example than basic email accounts might be the social networking sites. Almost all of us have a Facebook account these days – one out of every dozen people on the planet actually. Facebook, more than any other, is the so-called king of behavioral advertising – “It knows exactly who you are and what you're interested in, because you told it. So if Nike wants its ads shown only to people ages 19 to 26 who live in Arizona and like Nickelback, Facebook can make that happen. In the world of targeted advertising, Facebook has a high-powered sniper rifle.” And in no way is that an exaggeration; Facebook has still not become a public company – there are still no big shot shareholders. Mark Zukerburg, Facebook’s creator and CEO, says it’s not about the money, but more so that he’d rather run things himself than let a bunch of shareholders make the decisions, and he definitely seems to mean it. Although Facebook is a privately held company and doesn’t release financial statements, analysts and journalists estimate Facebook's 2010 revenue stream to be anywhere from $1.1 billion to $2 billion! Yet somehow Zuckerberg is still seen driving a humble and modest black Acura TSX.
If a company or business wants to advertise on Facebook, basically what’s going to happen is: that specific company or business is going to get a monthly demographic report from Facebook. The company is then are able to find out how many people visited their page, what their ages were, their genders, the locations of these visitors, and many other things. With this information, a company can then modify the demographic focus of their advertising. Facebook will then give different payment options based on the selections made. There are options like "Pay Per Click" (CPC) – which means that you only pay Facebook a fee each time a user clicks on the ad that takes them to your page. Then there is also the option to pay whenever someone sees your ad (CPM), whether they actually looked at it or not. It would seem that the “Pay Per Click” or CPC option is better than paying for each ad, regardless of whether 100 people click on it or only 2. Facebook doesn't sell your personal data to advertisers; it uses the aggregated statistics of its millions of users to more effectively target the ads it serves, but still this is a long way from selling personal information – which you’ve given to them willingly by the way.
In the end, each individual user is helping Facebook every step of the way as far as its targeted advertising goes. Every time you change or update something, the advertising on your Facebook homepages and all the other pages you visit will change to suit. These ads change depending on all of your different interests. If you join a certain group or happen to “Like” something such as a new product, a band, a TV show or maybe even a new movie, the ads will again, be tailored to more closely fit your personal interests. Facebook shows each user individually, the ads that best suit them –ultimately increasing the possibility that they will end up clicking on the ad and the company paying for it can, in turn, make a sale. This is an ongoing, ever-changing process too, so rarely will the ads ever be the same.
Since behavioral advertising has a way of being so accurate, a growing concern in the minds of many is just how far this new form of advertising will end up reaching. A teacher once showed me a truly amazing online radio show called “OnTheMedia” from NPR. This broadcast regularly addresses many current issues regarding media in today’s world – although, with the recent funding cuts passed by congress, this show may not be around for too much longer. In a recent episode that was aired, titled Off Target, the topic of discussion was behavioral advertising and some of the ethical boundaries within. The host Bob Garfield discusses the topic with Joseph Turow, professor at UPenn and lead author of a new study on behavioral advertising. Although, I won’t spoil the entire show (it is still available online), Turow puts forth the idea of an episode of "60 Minutes" that is so tailored to the individual that it is has become a different show for each person that views it to exemplify just how far this may go. Although behavioral advertising is still a long way from this, the point hits home and is made more than clear. So what exactly are we supposed to do, right?
You can, realistically, control how much of this tracking is going on to a point. You could turn off "cookies" and restrict privacy settings through your computer. But once you do this your internet experience isn't all that enjoyable anymore. Things like saving your history, temporary internet files, cookies, and all the things like that, all make your internet experience much smoother and that much more enjoyable.
The question here is: where is the line of personal privacy being drawn? In the end, each and every one of us are giving up our privacy and personal information willingly, albeit not always intentionally, so it is an unclear issue at best. Some people enjoy the custom-tailored ads; it helps them see ideas and products they might otherwise have missed. Others don’t even notice the near-creepy accuracy of these ads. With a fully connected global society will this so-called “privacy” even exist anymore?
Monday, May 2, 2011
The G7 Army
By Ashley Pinkham
"The first time I heard myself recorded I cried." |
"I spend most of my free time playing guitar." |