Mister Postman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nuEY6fQgzk
Alan S. Burke
Alan S. Burke (September 15, 1922 - August 25, 1992) was an American conservative radio talk show host who was on the air primarily in New York City from 1966 to 1969 on WNEWHe was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1922. Burke was a pioneer of the confrontational style where he would attack or insult his guest and plant ringers in the audience who would attack the guest. Burke had programs on various Miami, Florida radio stations during much of the 1970s and '80's, where he continued to employ his confrontational style. Burke's best known caller was known only as "Raymond", a presumed burn-out who spouted comically clever poetry, often espousing the virtues of his hero, Alan Burke.
Connie Hines
Here's the theme from Mister Ed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_PZPpWTRTU
Connie Hines (March 24, 1931 – December 18, 2009) was a retired American actress, best-remembered for playing Alan Young's wife, Carol Post, on the 1960s syndicated and then CBS sitcom Mister Ed.
Hines was one of four children born in Dedham, Massachusetts to an actress mother and a Boston-based teacher/acting coach father. As a child, she appeared in many of her father's stock-company plays. A member of the class of 1948 at Dedham High School, she was voted the most popular girl in her class. She also dated the captain of the football team and was class secretary. She tried out for a part in the senior class play, but did not get it.
After her father's death, she went on to marry an insurance agent and moved to Jacksonville, Florida. She worked as a model there and as a radio and stage actress, joining a stock company in Miami. By the time she was divorced, Hines traveled to New York City to study with the Helen Hayes Equity Group. When she came to Hollywood, California, she lived in an apartment, rented a car and got her start in acting on an episode of Whirlybirds. Her first film role was in 1960's Thunder in Carolina.
Hines auditioned and won the role of appropriate wife, Carol Post, on Mister Ed, which was, arguably, her best-known character. Hines considered her role to be just getting a steady paycheck as the storylines focused more on the relationship of both Wilbur and Mr. Ed (the talking horse) than her. Her biggest line in the show was “lunch is ready!”
She also said that playing the same role wasn't the greatest part in the world. Around the same time, she took some acting, dancing and music classes. She continued playing that role until 1966. After the series ended she took guest parts on television shows (Bonanza, The Mod Squad) before retiring in 1971. Young and Hines performed together in 1996 in Irvine in the two-person play Love Letters, which deals with the correspondence of a man and woman over 50 years.
Hines died from heart problems at her home in Beverly Hills, California. She was 78 years old.
oil
In the late 1990s, even as the major U.S. oil companies merged to get larger, their influence waned in the face of foreign national oil companies. Of the world's twenty largest oil companies, fifteen are state-owned:"[The need for significantly larger investments in oil exploration and development] created the imperative for what became known as restructuring.
The majors combined to become supermajors. BP merged with Amoco to become BPAmoco, and then merged with ARCO, and emerged as a much bigger BP. Exxon and Mobil - once Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of New York - became ExxonMobil. Chevron and Texaco came together as Chevron. Conoco combined with Phillips to be ConocoPhillips.
In Europe, what had once been the two separate French national champions, Total and Elf Aquitaine, plus the Belgian company Petrofina, combined to emerge as Total. Only Royal Dutch Shell, already of supermajor status on its own, remained as it was. ... With all these mergers, the landscape of the international oil industry changed. ..."It turned out that the restructuring of the world oil industry that had started with the emergence of the supermajors at the end of the 1990s was only the beginning.
One more merger - of Norway's Statoil and Norsk Hydro - created Statoilhydro, a new supermajor, although partly state-owned. But the balance between companies and governments has shifted dramatically. Altogether, all the oil that the supermajors produce for their own account is less than 15 percent of total world supplies.
Over 80 percent of world reserves are controlled by governments and their national oil companies. Of the world's twenty largest oil companies, fifteen are state-owned. Thus, much of what happens to oil is the result of decisions of one kind or another made by governments. And overall, the government-owned national oil companies have assumed a preeminent role in the world oil industry. ..."Saudi Aramco - the successor to Aramco, now state-owned - remains by far the largest upstream oil company in the world, single-handedly producing about 10 percent or more of the world's entire oil with a massive deployment of technology and coordination.
The major Persian Gulf producers control for the most part their production, as do the traditional state companies in Venezuela, Mexico, Algeria, and many other countries. The Chinese companies - partly state-owned, partly owned by shareholders around the world - continue to produce the majority of oil in China but have also become increasingly active and visible in the international arena.
So have Indian companies. The Russian industry is led by state-controlled giants Gazprom and Rosneft and by privately held companies, such as Lukoil and TNK-BP, that are majors in their own right."
Petrobras, the Brazilian national oil company, is 68 percent owned by investors and 32 percent by the Brazilian government, though the government retains the majority of the voting shares. Petrobras had already established itself at the forefront in terms of capabilities in exploring for and developing oil in the challenging deep waters offshore.
Beginning with the Tupi find in 2006, potentially very large discoveries are being made in what had heretofore been inaccessible resources in Brazil's deep waters, below salt deposits. These discoveries could make Petrobras - and Brazil - into a new powerhouse of world oil.
Malaysia's Petronas had turned itself into a significant international company, operating in 32 countries outside Malaysia. State companies in other countries in the former Soviet Union - KazMunayGas in Kazakhstan and SOCAR in Azerbaijan - have also emerged as important players.
While Qatar is an oil exporter, its massive natural gas reserves put it at the forefront of the liquefied natural gas industry (LNG) and, along with Algeria's Sonatrach and other exporters, at the center of growing global trade in natural gas."Daniel Yergin, The Prize, new 2009 epilogue, Free Press, Copyright 1991, 1992, 2009 by Daniel Yergin, pp 765-770.
The majors combined to become supermajors. BP merged with Amoco to become BPAmoco, and then merged with ARCO, and emerged as a much bigger BP. Exxon and Mobil - once Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of New York - became ExxonMobil. Chevron and Texaco came together as Chevron. Conoco combined with Phillips to be ConocoPhillips.
In Europe, what had once been the two separate French national champions, Total and Elf Aquitaine, plus the Belgian company Petrofina, combined to emerge as Total. Only Royal Dutch Shell, already of supermajor status on its own, remained as it was. ... With all these mergers, the landscape of the international oil industry changed. ..."It turned out that the restructuring of the world oil industry that had started with the emergence of the supermajors at the end of the 1990s was only the beginning.
One more merger - of Norway's Statoil and Norsk Hydro - created Statoilhydro, a new supermajor, although partly state-owned. But the balance between companies and governments has shifted dramatically. Altogether, all the oil that the supermajors produce for their own account is less than 15 percent of total world supplies.
Over 80 percent of world reserves are controlled by governments and their national oil companies. Of the world's twenty largest oil companies, fifteen are state-owned. Thus, much of what happens to oil is the result of decisions of one kind or another made by governments. And overall, the government-owned national oil companies have assumed a preeminent role in the world oil industry. ..."Saudi Aramco - the successor to Aramco, now state-owned - remains by far the largest upstream oil company in the world, single-handedly producing about 10 percent or more of the world's entire oil with a massive deployment of technology and coordination.
The major Persian Gulf producers control for the most part their production, as do the traditional state companies in Venezuela, Mexico, Algeria, and many other countries. The Chinese companies - partly state-owned, partly owned by shareholders around the world - continue to produce the majority of oil in China but have also become increasingly active and visible in the international arena.
So have Indian companies. The Russian industry is led by state-controlled giants Gazprom and Rosneft and by privately held companies, such as Lukoil and TNK-BP, that are majors in their own right."
Petrobras, the Brazilian national oil company, is 68 percent owned by investors and 32 percent by the Brazilian government, though the government retains the majority of the voting shares. Petrobras had already established itself at the forefront in terms of capabilities in exploring for and developing oil in the challenging deep waters offshore.
Beginning with the Tupi find in 2006, potentially very large discoveries are being made in what had heretofore been inaccessible resources in Brazil's deep waters, below salt deposits. These discoveries could make Petrobras - and Brazil - into a new powerhouse of world oil.
Malaysia's Petronas had turned itself into a significant international company, operating in 32 countries outside Malaysia. State companies in other countries in the former Soviet Union - KazMunayGas in Kazakhstan and SOCAR in Azerbaijan - have also emerged as important players.
While Qatar is an oil exporter, its massive natural gas reserves put it at the forefront of the liquefied natural gas industry (LNG) and, along with Algeria's Sonatrach and other exporters, at the center of growing global trade in natural gas."Daniel Yergin, The Prize, new 2009 epilogue, Free Press, Copyright 1991, 1992, 2009 by Daniel Yergin, pp 765-770.
Freddie and the Dreamers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62M_odE813AFreddie and the Dreamers were a British musical band who had a number of hit records between May 1963 and November 1965. Their act was based around the comic antics of the 5-foot-3-inch-tall (1.60m) Freddie Garrity, who was famous for bouncing around the stage with arms and legs flying.
The band consisted of Freddie Garrity (born Manchester, Lancashire 14 November 1936 died –19 May 2006), vocals, Roy Crewdson (born Manchester May 29, 1941 ), guitar, Derek Quinn (born Manchester May 24, 1942, ), guitar and harmonica, Peter Birrell (born Manchester May 9, 1941), bass, and Bernie Dwyer (born Manchester September 11, 1940, died – December 4, 2002), drums.
Although the band were grouped as a part of the Merseybeat sound phenomenon that The Beatles exploded around the world in the wake of Beatlemania, they came from Manchester. Prior to becoming a singer, Garrity worked as a milkman in Manchester.
They had four Top Ten UK hits: a cover of James Ray's hit "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody", which reached number 3 in the charts in mid-1963, "I'm Telling You Now", (number 2 in August), "You Were Made For Me", (number 3 in November) and "I Understand", which hit the number 5 spot in November 1964.
Super session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan played on a majority of the records most notably on "Over You", "I Understand", "A Little You", "Thou Shalt Not Steal", "Just For You" and best of all, a cover version of Paul Anka's "I Love You Baby".
The group would appear on stage and perform pre-rehearsed, synchronised wacky dance routines. They appeared in four British films: "What a Crazy World" with singer Joe Brown, "Just for You", "The Cuckoo Patrol". & "Every Day's A Holiday" (U.S.A. title "Seaside Swingers")with Mike Sarne, Ron Moody and John Leyton
Between 1971 and 1973 Garrity and Birrell appeared in the UK ITV children's show Little Big Time, a zany music/talent/adventure show with audience participation
As their popularity declined in the UK, Freddie and the Dreamers enjoyed a brief spell of fame in America, riding the wave of the British Invasion when the American teen public was hungry for any British pop music. As happened with many British EMI groups at that time their recordings were refused by EMI's American arm Capitol Records, and the Dreamers' 1965 releases and re-releases appeared on assorted labels. They recorded on Capitol's new subsidiary Tower, and Philips' Mercury Records label.
"I'm Telling You Now", which had been co-written by Garrity and Mitch Murray, reached Number 1 on the US charts in Spring 1965. They were the first of three consecutive groups from Manchester to have Number 1 hits that spring, the others being Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders and Herman's Hermits. Their next biggest US hit was "Do the Freddie" at number 18, intended to inspire "The Freddie" (sic) as a dance craze. (The band's late 1965 album, Do the Freddie, even included diagrams from legendary dance instructor Arthur Murray on how to perform the routines exactly.)
At their US peak, a TV series featuring the band and British actor Terry-Thomas was mooted but never came to fruition. In the 1980 Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll, writer Lester Bangs paid tribute of a kind to the group: "... Freddie and the Dreamers [had] no masterpiece but a plentitude of talentless idiocy and enough persistence to get four albums and one film soundtrack released ... the Dreamers looked as thuggish as Freddie looked dippy ... Freddie and the Dreamers represented a triumph of rock as cretinous swill, and as such should be not only respected, but given their place in history."
In an interview, Paul McCartney said that the Freddie and the Dreamers version of James Ray's "If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody" was actually copied from an arrangement performed by The Beatles at a show in Manchester. The Dreamers released their copied version of the song as a single which made it into the UK Top 5, leaving the Beatles uncredited for their arrangement. Because of this incident, the Beatles decided to concentrate on their own compositions instead rather than cover versions. The Beatles later forgave the Dreamers and invited them to do a guest appearance in their 1964 Christmas Special.
Freddie and the Dreamers, with a few different line-ups of newer Dreamers, remained a touring band into the 1990s. They appeared with other artists from the same era such as Gerry & The Pacemakers, The Troggs and Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits.
Garrity retired due to pulmonary hypertension, and died on 19 May 2006. Drummer Dwyer died on 4 December 2002 of lung cancer; Birrell became a taxicab driver. Crewdson now runs a bar in Tenerife, while Quinn lives in Cheshire and is in distribution.
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