Music: Rap video: Raise the Debt Ceiling by Remy

YouTubeServices, channel yUT2ube (found July27,2k11)

Remy the Rapper dishes out irony on Raise the Debt Ceiling.  A case of ironic agitprop (agitator propaganda).  Or, as I prefer, aesthetipol in the rap genre.

— Videomonger

Movies: Comix characters: Captain America arrives at your local theatre.

NewYorkTimes (July21,2k11)

Captain America: The First Avenger, a new movie based on Stan Lee's comicbook character was fulsomely praised by most film critics, with at least one notable exception, A. O. Scott, of NYT — and even he came around in the course of his critique to tell us it's "great fun," all caveats aside.   Posts of intro materials are mine.  I recommend you read the whole review.

— Movie Man

MOVIE REVIEW

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Hey, Brooklyn, 

Where’d You Get Those Muscles?

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: July 21, 2011

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“Captain America: The First Avenger” turns out in the end — and this is really the opposite of a spoiler — to have been a two-hour teaser for another movie. That picture, foreshadowed in the second “Hulk,” the first “Thor” and both “Iron Man” episodes and scheduled to open next May, will be called “The Avengers.” Whether you regard its imminence with resignation, dread or uncontainable glee depends on your standing in the Marvel Universe. Shareholders and die-hard fans no doubt already have the opening date circled on their calendars, and many of the rest of us will probably show up as well, either out of curiosity or solemn duty.

More About This Movie

• Overview
• Tickets & Showtimes
• New York Times Review
• Cast, Credits & Awards
• Readers' Reviews
• Trailers & Clips
  View Clip...

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Jay Maidment/Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment

Chris Evans in "Captain America: The First Avenger." More Photos »

Multimedia

Slide Show

The Films of Chris Evans

Related

• Star-Spangled and Searching His Own Psyche (July 10, 2011)

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Jay Maidment/Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment

Chris Evans with Hayley Atwell in the film directed by Joe Johnston. More Photos »

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Jay Maidment/Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment

Chris Evans as the superhero Captain America. More Photos »

But in the meantime this origin story, directed by Joe Johnston and starring Chris Evans as the square-jawed, shield-throwing, red-white-and-blue Captain, is pretty good fun. The succinct judgment of my 15-year-old screening buddy was “Better than ‘Thor’ or ‘Green Lantern,’ ” and while that isn’t saying a lot, it may be saying enough. “Captain America,” based on a character that first appeared in Timely Comics, a precursor to Marvel, in the early 1940s — the era of Batman, Superman and other old-growth, popular-front superheroes — has a winningly pulpy, jaunty, earnest spirit.

With a dusty color scheme that evokes newsprint and cheap ink, and a production design that captures the Deco-inflected futurism of an earlier time, the movie is nostalgic without making a big fuss about it. And though there are plenty of the usual digital enhancements and overscaled effects, the pseudo-operatic grandiosity that has become a staple of the genre is mostly missing. Instead “Captain America,” like its unapologetically corny hero, is propelled by unpretentious and plucky ingenuity.

Music: Jazz: Oscar Peterson

YouTubeServices channel yUT2ube (July27,2k11)




Hat Tip to Lucas Freire.

— Music Man post

Music: CountryUSA: Top 20 Country Songs

Great American Country
(posted here by Country Gal July27,2k11)

This Week’s Chart:

1. Margaret Durante; – “Maybe Tonight”
2. Katie Armiger – “I Do But Do I”
3. Blake Shelton — “Honey Bee”
4. Jaron and The Long Road To Love – “Beautiful Lies”
5. Chris Young – “Tomorrow”
6. Trace Adkins – “Just Fishin”
7. Jason Aldean – “Dirt Road Anthem”
8. Lady Antebellum – “Just A Kiss”
9. Taylor Swift – “Mean”
10. Luke Bryan – “Country Girl Shake It For Me”
11. Brad Paisley – “Old Alabama”
12. Shania Twain – “Today Is Your Day”
13. Kenny Chesney w/ Grace Potter – “You and Tequila”
14. Eric Church – “Homeboy”
15. Reba McEntire – “When Love Gets A Hold Of You”
16. Justin Moore – “If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away”
17. Martina McBride – “Teenage Daughters”
18. Ronnie Dunn – “Bleed Red”
19. Dierks Bentley – “Am I The Only One”
20. Brantley Gilbert – “Country Must Be Country Wide”

GAC’s Top 20 Country Countdown premieres every Friday night at 8/7c with re-airs throughout the weekend. Click here for a complete schedule.

Ottawa: Canada's capital city: Stage collapses in storm in Bluesfest

jambands.commbands.com (July18,2k11)

See also: Montreal Gazette (July 18,2,11)

Published: 2011/07/18

Stage Collapses at Ottawa Bluesfest

The damage from yesterday’s stage collapse

Last night, an outdoor performance in Canada’s capital city came to an abrupt end when a vicious storm swept through the grounds, collapsing the stage and sending festival goers to scramble for shelter. The storm appeared suddenly during a performance by Cheap Trick at the Ottawa Bluesfest, shortly after the band finished playing their hit “I Want You to Want Me.” Festival goers were forced to scramble for shelter, with many seeking safety inside the nearby Canadian War Museum. One man was seriously injured, while several others were treated onsite for minor injuries. As a result of the stage collapse, performances by Death Cab for Cutie and Galactic were canceled.

A message posted to Cheap Trick’s webpage following the incident reads: “Everyone is shaken up but band and crew are all fine. Cheap Trick hopes that everyone who attended the show is also ok.” Without much explanation, the message also states, “And all the best to our truck driver Sandy.” However, Band manager Dave Frey later confirmed to CNN that one of the band’s drivers would be spending the night in a local hospital.

Head over to our sister site Relix.com where you can watch video of the stage collapse.

— Zoundz! — Music Man

Toronto the Good: Province: Ontario's new photo ID for non-drivers

Toronto Star (Jun9,2k11)
by Rob Ferguson

— posted here by Owlb




Ontario to launch 

new photo identification card

Ontarians without a driver’s licence to use as a quick and easy piece of identification can soon apply for a government-issue photo ID card.

The new cards, to become available in late July, cost $35 and are valid for five years but are not suitable as a passport substitute on international trips, Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne said Thursday.

The wallet-sized cards are aimed at the estimated 1.5 million Ontarians over the age of 16 — including the blind and those with partial sight — who don’t have driver’s licences.

“The driver’s licence has been the stand-in for photo ID but some people don’t have one,” Wynne said as she announced the cards at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind in Toronto.

“It’s an acknowledgement we live in a world where people need to be able to identify themselves,” Wynne added, noting her 55-year-old sister doesn’t drive and could use such a card.

“We want to make life a little bit easier for those people.”

The move was applauded by the CNIB as long overdue, with Wynne noting Quebec will now be the only Canadian province that does not have a simple photo ID card.

“If you don’t drive, like CNIB clients, you struggle with a lot of business transactions that require photo ID, like taking out a loan or opening an account or booking hotel accommodation or voting,” said Paul Ting, executive director of the CNIB.

Wynne said the card has been in development for three years and was first intended as a hi-tech passport substitute, but that track was abandoned as too costly and cumbersome when there was more urgent need for a basic photo ID.

“We can get to that later,” she said of a passport substitute, adding the government is waiting to see how much demand there would be for such a card. “We need to see that materialize.”

The photo ID card does not have Braille but features include raised lettering for the card number and date of birth.

Applications for the card will be taken starting next month at 20 Service Ontario centres throughout the province before the offer is expanded to every centre throughout the province next year.

Sports: Women's SoccerFootball: Korea's women's team wins over USA, after 21 years of competition

More later ... I cawt a moment on a brief news report about the event, with Korean fans electric with pleasure, enthusiasm, and national pride.

At these upmost levels of World Sports, I root for the USA and Canada teams — always a little further tense if I shoud have to choose between the two in a match above the Olympic level — that is, the professional football world, what in American usage of the language, we call "soccer".

More later ...

— Sportikos

———

UPDATE:

FIFA Women's World Cup

fantastic pictures of the winning team in their sheer joy over the win

FIFA.com - Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)

www.fifa.com/ - Cached

17 Jul 2011 – Japan are FIFA Women's World Cup™ champions for the first ...

— Sportikos


Frankfurt am Main, Germany

FIFA Women's World Cup

Sawa: I could never imagine this

Monday 18 July 2011

FIFA.com spoke to 

Japan's FIFA Women's World Cup hero Homare Sawa 

about winning the tournament, ...

FIFA.com - Sawa: I could never imagine this

— latest update posted July18,2k11 — 7:10 am, Toronto


In sports, its okay to let some national pride expressive itself.

Entertainment: TourismRomania: Dracula in Transylvania, and the Hungarian Reformed culture in Cluj Napoca, Transylvania, Romania

Exclusive Romania Tours (commercial website)

from them (just above) I borrowed their excellent and indigenous representation of Dracula as the Devil incarnate,  perhaps influenced by seeing movies or reading books, especially given that the Count Dracula's alleged species — namely, Vampire —  was a symbolic system that found itself renewed in the movies by a new film made in tribute to Bram Stoker's classic novel (1897, Irish author), the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula (1994).  The graphic below is used to advertize this cultural zone in which the Hungarian Reformed Church in Transylvania, a territory now assigned to the country of Romania, is a leading element of the religious minority of the Protestant Reformed Calvinian churches that were and remain treated so sneeringly by the Romanian Orthodox leaders who oppose the very existence of the Reformed people and their parishes, their language, and their internally-organized institutions to preserve their culture, the minority can justfiably say.  In the discussion below, I woud prefer to call the Dracula story "legendary" (rather than "mythic"), and Mary Wollstonescraft Shelley's imaginative creation burst on the world as a mass-circulated papercover novel.  She had dutifully read her Milton and her Bible, upon both of which she drew for her depiction of the Dracula, as originating in a pre-human or parallel species or ... a parasitic blood-thirsty other species of dubious origins.

Dracula, Myth vs History

Count Dracula, a fictional character in the original Dracula novel by author Bram Stoker (Irish Republic origins), was inspired by one of the best-known figures of Romanian history, Vlad Dracula, nicknamed Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler), who was the ruler of Wallachia (south of Transylvania) at various times from 1456-1462. Born in 1431 in Sighisoara, he resided all his adult life in Wallachia, except for periods of imprisonment at Pest and Visegrad (in Hungary). The original Dracula interface character, interface between historicity and literary acumen, the historical being dead before the birth of John Calvin (1509-1564).  So the Count Dracula is cast as born before the Hungarian Reformation and the establishment of the Reformed Church in Transylvania under the sponsorship of various educated counts and dukes among the mainly noble familyheads of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  That was part of a pattern in many parts of Europe, where nobility seeking freedom of conscience from the kings and convinced by Calvinist precepts, actually turned around to sponsor the Reformation of their domains and landed estates.   For more information about Bram Stocker's Dracula Novel please visit www.literature.org/authors/stoker-bram/dracula/

For more information about the Reformed Church in Romania (a minority in an overwhelming majority population of Romanian Orthodox citizens, many of them only nominally so, please visit Transylvania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Current population

The 2002 Romanian census classified Transylvania as the entire region of Romania west of the Carpathians. This region has a population of 7,221,733, with a large Romanian majority (75.9%). There are also sizeable Hungarian (19.6%), Roma (3.3%), German (0.7%) and Serb (0.1%) communities.^[66][67] The ethnic Hungarian population of Transylvania, largely composed of Székely, form a majority in the counties of Covasna and Harghita.

Economy

Transylvania is rich in mineral resources, notably lignite, iron, lead, manganese, gold, copper, natural gas, salt and sulfur.  There are large iron and steel, chemical, and textile industries. Stock raising, agriculture, wine production and fruit growing are important occupations.Timber is another valuable resource.  Transylvania accounts for around 35% of Romania's GDP, and has a GDP per capita (PPP) of around $11,500, around 10% higher than the Romanian average.

Hence, the tendency of Hungarian Roman Catholics and Hungarian Reformeds to occur in demographically dense thru to tiny presences.  Here's an example, somewhat dated but suggestive, a starting point for further comparative sociological-philosophical Christian reflection:

Take the small city of Campia Turzil (Câmpia Turzii - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

"Currently the city's ethnic composition is as follows:

• Romanians : 87.14% (49% in 1850)
• Hungarians : 7.97% (40% in 1850)
• Roma : 4.57% (10% in 1850)
• Others : 0.32%.

Hungarians (RomanCatholics, Reformeds, Lutherans, Unitarians) 

Some Germanics (Lutherans, German Reformed, German Roman Catholic)

Items collected from online sources and posted by Politicarp.

Folkloric and Religion-sponsored dance by young church members Hungarian Reformed

YouTubeServices via yUT2ube, refWrite's partner in vidio collection/s




YouTube - ‪International Fest: Hungarian Reformed Church dancers

I'm at least a sociology hobbyist, and in these dances I see a good-natured church consistory (parishes' elders) decided what mixing of boys and girls, young women and young men, the intergenerationality, the more and less success in giving a trim performance ... but the good spirit and actually the demonstration  of a religious communal identity in socializing and in physical performance.  Dancing that good suggests participation in the Reformed Church dance group, a class perhaps once a week and then perhaps a week away from other studies and duties, to work more intensively in shaping up their readiness for a performance.  Or tour.  As these particular non-performers did wonderful amateur — but not fantastic.   There were moments when images of circles of girls and young women — sororities!  The destiny of the line of young men (short to tall) facing the line of young women (again, sort to tall) — for the sorority there comes a breakdown, a breakdown of sorority, as the edge of the mating dance brings the women fact to face with the men,  upclose and ritual, a silent undertone comes to the surface suggesting the narrative source is the courting dance of the ancient clans of free-choice marriage.  Perhaps  Magyars and Germanics of the Hungarian Reformed Church, but I am noting from the standpoint of my hobby that at least one of these dances was brawt into the dancing canon by the elders and pastors of Hungarian Reformed Church at a certain point, or period of time.  Whether from far earlier provenance or choreographed just so for the show, a few moments of joyous and artistically-disciplined popular culture indigenous to at least one parish of the Reformed Church in Hungary. ‏