The weather is crazy all over the U.S. and here it has been very unpredictable. 72 degrees Tuesday morning, violent weather moved in, and by bedtime it was plunging into the 30’s. Of course the lights went out after several episodes of flickering on and off like a scene from “The Exorcist.” Late in the evening I had been talking to Christy and she was telling me how black the sky had gotten. I smugly said, oh it’s not like that here. Ha! I went outside and was shocked to see the entire western sky filled with massive rolls of dark blue black storm clouds moving rapidly toward us. Then all hell broke loose.

This violent weather brought tornadoes and hail in different parts of the state. Gusts of high winds blew something on the roof–or off the roof–I haven’t been outside yet to check it out. I had rushed around unplugging everything as the storm exploded. I could hear dead trees cracking like gunshots as they were broken and blown down. (It seems there will never be an end to the dead and dying trees.) The power company worked late into the night getting the power back on.

This morning at daylight the cold damp sky was dropping random snowflakes–the aide rushed in to tell me she had driven through this snow shower, but the flakes melted as soon as they fell, and by 9am the sky was clearing and the sun came out. But not being able to sleep through the “dark and stormy night,” I made up for it by sleeping a good part of the afternoon.

Bye y’all. PS The computer screen keeps warning me I have cookies etc so I don’t know how long the computer will hold out before it crashes. So if and when it does, I will miss everyone so much and be thinking about y’all. Sue

The word “ringtone” comes from the English words “ring” and “tone”. It means an incoming call sound of a telephone. Nowadays it is almost a synonym of a melody set as a mobile phone ring.

The first ringtone.
It’s curious that ringtone appeared a little later than a telephone itself. The telephone invented by A. Bell in 1876 didn’t have any ringtone and a call was realized with a whistle. A ring was offered 2 years later in 1878 by T. Watson. But for a long time ringtone was an ordinary bell ring though electric.

The first mentions of the first real ringtones appeared in the middle of the 20th century when the Popular Eletronix journal in 1956 published the article “Telephones will call with melodies”. That article said: “Telephone users will be glad to know that The Bell Telephone Laboratories is working on a new device which will do away with the boring present-day rings. This device that uses transistors will produce nice sounds like ones of a clarinet”.

Probably, one of the most famous and recognizable ringtones is a “Nokia Tune” built into the Nokia telephones as the default ringtone. It appeared in 1994 (and still holds its positions).

What ringtones can be?
Ringtones have been developing gradually; therefore the existent types of ringtones represent the steps of their development.
Monophonic ringtones contain a notes set and any moment only one note can play. The first mobile phones had such ringtones. They were peeping really nasty.

Polyphonic ringtones can play several notes simultaneously. One of such ringtone formats is MIDI. This is the next step of the ringtones development. The phones that have high-quality MIDI sequencer utter melodies with a good quality of sound. These ringtones can play the sounds of different instruments, but they are almost unable to reproduce a voice.

Realtone is modern and the most commonly used format nowadays. The modern digital formats of music (AAC, WMA, MP3, Ogg, etc.) are used to store records. Thanks to them top-charts and other popular melodies are used as the ringtones.

How can you get a rington?
It’s a strange question, isn’t it? You can download it from friends, buy it (there are lots of different content-providers) or create it youself. You can make a ringtone online or by using the appropriate program – for example, SoundForge or CoolEdit.

It is important to remember that the usage of ringtones is restricted by the copyright law. So you can create, sale or exchange ringtones only in agreement with its rightholder, otherwise you may become even criminally responsible.

The most popular ringtones.
Nobody performed such a research, but the hit parade of the ringtones would look like this:

1. Perhaps the most popular ringtones are those ones installed on mobile phones by default. For example, the above-mentioned Nokia Tune. The most people are too lazy to change something.
2. Classical melodies, for example the immortal compositions by Beethoven “The 5th symphony” and “To Elisa”. They are very pleasant to hear and almost never annoy. Well, they may annoy some people only because there are too much of them.
3. Rock and pop hits.
4. Different merry, annoying, loud, unusual melodies like Crazy Frog or the voice-talker “Hello, this is your mobile phone speaking. You’ve got a call”

P.S. make ringtone online with ringtonizer.com!.?

You can make an avatar online using pikun.ru service. And, at that making an avatar is free, it doesn’t take much time, and the most important is that you don’t need to install any software on your computer.

1. Load a picture for the avatar

Enter http://pikyn.ru/. You can either load an avatar image from a file on your computer or provide a link to the image in Internet. Almost any graphic files can be loaded, such as.jpg,.png,.gif.

You can load a picture from the file (on your computer) by clicking on button “Browse” and select the file you need in the opened window. Then click button “OK”, the dialog will close and you will see the name of the selected file in the text-field on the left side of button “Browse”. Then click “Load” and the file will start loading to the server. The bigger is the size of the file, the longer it takes to load it – please be patient.

You can load an image also by a link in Internet. To do this, please open a page with the image or the image itself in your browser (to find images and photos you can use services like http://images.google.ru or http://images.yandex.ru). Move the mouse pointer to the image and click on it with the right button. A small menu will open where you should find an item with the name like “Copy image location” and click it. Then you should get back to pikyn.ru and in the field “or copy the link here” press the right mouse button and select the item “Paste”. If you’ve done all correctly, a link to your image will appear in the field. Then press “Load” and a file will start loading, please wait a little.

ATTENCION: you should copy a link to a picture, not a link to a page with a picture. Usually a link to a page looks like http://yandex.ru/about.html, and a link to a graphical image like http://img.yandex.net/i/logo95×37x8.png, i.e. Ends with a full stop and several letters, which indicate a type of a graphical file, usually these are.jpg,.jpeg,.png,.gif or.bmp.

LINK COPYING FAILED: If you failed to copy a link (usually in the browser Internet Explorer), don’t lose your hope, you can save the image to your computer and load it as a file. To do this please click with the right button on the image and select an item like “Save picture” or “Save image as” or “Save image”. In the opened window you should show where to save the file with the image, keep in mind the place, click “OK”, the image will save, and then load the saved file as a picture from the file.

After you’ve provided a file or a link press “Load” and the file will start loading to the server. The bigger is the size of the file, the longer it takes to load it – please be patient.

Making an avatar.

Wait till the image is loaded and an avatar making window will open (wait till the message “Please wait until loaded…” is disappeared from the opened page.

In a panel on the left you can select a desired size of the avatar (myspace.com, facebook.com, livejournal, qip, icq, etc.) by clicking on the appropriate menu item. And also select the desired background color by clicking on the necessary color.

On the right side there is a window to make an avatar. The area of the future avatar is marked with a red rectangle. Drag your image with a mouse to select the necessary area for the avatar. Also you can turn the image (by moving a slider near the caption “Turn”) or change its size (by moving a slider near the caption “Scale”).

If you’ve performed all preparatory actions to make the avatar, now press button “make” on the left side of the page and we’ll make your avatar in several seconds.

The avatar is ready.

After you’ve pressed “make the avatar“, please wait several seconds while the avatar is being made. Shortly you’ll be automatically forwarded to another page where you will see your new avatar. A ready avatar can be downloaded, send by email to yourself or your friend or published in a gallery, where other users could appreciate and comment it.

As you see, makeing an avatar is easy and nothing to be afraid of.

p.s. We wish you to make a nice avatar that you and your friends will like.

This is yet another book that I came across and grabbed off the shelf while I was weeding. I have known the basics of the Stonewall riots because of the importance they play to the gay rights movement. There is a certain aura that surround them, and many people look back at them as being the start of things for the movement much the way the murder of Emmitt Till encouraged the Civil Rights Movement. I had seen a few documentaries about the riots, but I have always wanted to do more than stick my toe in the pool to test the waters. This was my chance.

Carter does a nice job of balancing the personal perspectives of what happened with the historical importance. It was not an easy job because so many people disagree about so many of the specific details surrounding the riots. He makes that clear from the very beginning. As a result, he tried to use as many sources as possible to corroborate various stories. This meant using interviews and oral histories from people that were there. He also looked to official police reports and periodical articles that presented the events at the time. As a result, the reader is presented with various perspectives that provide for a well-rounded view of the events that changed the way gays and lesbians viewed their rights.

Carter started by introducing us to many of the major players that ended up being involved in the events. Then, he describes the Stonewall Inn itself. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it was a hole in the wall bar that was run by the Mafia. Now you might think that meant the mob supported gays, but it was really just a chance to exploit something for money much the way they controlled speakeasies during Prohibition. It was against the law for places to be available for same-sex couples to dance as well as to sell them liquor. Leave it to the mob to find a way to do it and make a profit. To give you an idea, the three partners invested just $3500 to spruce up what was a burnt out structure and turned it into something that was bringing in $6000 a night!

One thing that I found most interesting is that the riots were just something that happened. They weren’t planned. It came about through a series of events that just made gays and lesbians frustrated. They were sick of being abused by the city, the police (who took money to avoid the bars, but then periodically raided them anyway), the mob, and society in general. So, when the police raided the Stonewall in at peak hours early on a Saturday morning, things got out of control pretty quickly.

There was shouting, pushing, shoving, marching, singing and throwing Molotov cocktails. The police ended up baracading themselves into the Stonewall in for their own protection before support came.

The story doesn’t end with a series of riots that continued on the following Sunday and Wednesday. It talks about how the riots brought about a realization that gays and lesbians had a voice,a nd that they could use it in the fight for equality. This led to the creation of two influention organizatons: the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Actavist Alliance. It was this second organization that organized the first gay pride march in June of 1970 to commemorate the riots. That is why we celebrate pride in June.

I also learned by lambda is a symbol for gays and lesbians. That has always been a bit of a mystery for me. Obviously, it is a one of the letters of the Greek alphabet, but I assumed that there was more to it than that. Well, it was chosen because it looks like an inverted y, and in science it is the symbol for the complete exchange of energy. That is amazing and incredibly deep. Originally, it was designed to be yellow on a navy field like the equal sign that is used for the Human Rights Campaign.

I am probably doing a crappy job summarizing the events of the riot as well as the aftermath because there is so much more to it, but this review can only be so long. It was just so inspirational to see the early movement progressed, particularly knowing how far we have come in the fight for equality. I thought the book was totally amazing.

The June issue of Glamour Magazine features an article on “The 50 Most Glamorous Women of 2009. It may or may not shock you to know that I was not among those pictured. Didn’t even get honorable mention. Which really hurts because even Paris Hilton’s dog was mentioned as being a “glam pet”.

The panel who chose this group of 50 glamorous people had 10 people on it. The only panelist I heard of was Isaac Mizrahi. I’m sure he’s never heard of me even though I’ve heard of him, so it’s no wonder I wasn’t on his list of 50 finalists.

I’m going to reveal the names of a few people who made the top 50, so if this would be a spoiler for you, stop reading now.

The Number 3 position on The 50 Most Glamorous Women of 2009 is… drum roll please… Michelle Obamarx. I know this should not have surprised me because ever since the coronation there is simply no getting away from photos of either the Mr or the Mrs Obamarx, but Number 3???? REALLY???? The blurb that goes with her photo says:

“She’s intelligent, self-assured, and chic. The arms, the sheaths, the cardigans, the belts… the confidence.” (This is according to photographer Norman Jean Roy)

Okay, except for maybe the “chic” part, this could be a description of Ayn Rand who was glamorous by no one’s stretch of the imagination. In the photo the mag used for her blurb, Michelle has got either a nasty case of bed-head or else her head is very very lumpy and misshapen. As I remember it, Michelle wore a rug on election night, she wore a bedspread to the inauguration, and she wore a sheet covered with lint to the inaugural balls. I don’t know who her favorite designer is, but whomever really needs to stop shopping in the bedroom and bathroom accessories departments at K-Mart. Apparently she’s very proud of the muscle definition in her arms, but her back reminds me of Mickey Rourke’s after he got stapled in The Wrestler. If I were dressing Mrs Obamarx, and given the size of her caboose, I’d recommend no more sheaths.

Number 19 on the list is Nicole Kidman. She has done some serious damage to her face — one of those Botox freaks I can’t stand to look at, so I really don’t get where glamorous comes in anymore. She USED to be glamorous, but not now. Likewise for Number 20, Sarah Jessica Parker. The picture they printed of her looked as though someone had cut her hair with a weed whacker while she was sleeping. Or maybe she was awake, but I can’t imagine allowing anyone to do that to my hair while I was conscious.

Number 36 is America Ferrera. All I can say to that is there must have been a real dearth (love that word, and I don’t get to use it much) of talent for that slot. Giving it to America Ferrera is like giving a glamour award to Bette Davis when she was in her declining years and she had all those wrinkles and her eyes REALLY bugged out.

Gisele Bundchen came in at Number 9. Her photo was terrible too. Her mouth looked big enough to drive an 18 wheeler through sideways, and the dress she’s wearing is terribly unflattering. She’s got seriously saggy floobies.

Last, but not least, the Number 1 spot went to Kate Winslet. When Kate keeps her clothes on, and when she’s all decked out like she was for the Oscars, I’d say she is pretty darn glamorous, so at least the panel bozos got one right.

Still, the bottom line… does anyone really care who Glamour Magazine thinks is among the top 50 most glamorous women in America? To my way of thinking an unnecessarily large number of trees got killed for absolutely no good reason no matter what Isaac Mizrahi thinks of glamour.

The word ‘animation‘ comes from the French word ‘animation’ that means enlivening, animation. The synonyms of the ‘animation’ is animated cartoons as a technology and animated cartoons as an art. The main point of the animation is providing ability to move or to bring life into objects, works of art, dead bodies in the invented worlds, etc.

Usually animation is used as a synonym for animated cartoons. But the origins of the terms “animated cartoons” and “animation” are different. For the first time something like animated cartoons appeared in 1977 in France and was called “pracsinoscope”.

The first animations were implemented differently from the cinema that appeared later. But there already was some musical soundtrack synchronized with the appropriate animation. The first popular animated hero was Felix the cat that ten years later was replaced by Micky Mouse. But the main hero of the very best animation ever created was the hedgehog in the animated cartoon “The hedgehog in the Mist”.

Animation creation is a process similar to cinematography. But they use lifeless figures as actors, for example drawn characters, plasticine figures, rag dolls, etc. Although the animation history has examples of combined characters, for example in a feature film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” living actors and absolutely artificial animated drawn characters exist together. However, the barriers between cinema and animation have been disappearing since the computer technologies development started, because the figures created with a computer can be similar to real people and the number of the abilities to create cinema with animation keeps growing on.

Since the bandwidth of communication channels increased, animation appeared on the Internet and became its integral part adding dynamics to the Internet pages. At first there were animated advertising banners and animated avatars on forums, and later full-length online animation appeared. The first abilities for animation embedding into web pages appeared in 1989 when GIF format was extended to GIF89a. This type of animation is supported by the majority of browsers, thus the animated banners and avatars of this format became wide-spread. It is easy enough to create, represent and store such animation, so GIF animation remains one of the most popular animation formats on the Internet. You can create an animation of this format with special programs or load your photos to create an animated avatar online.

Since Flash technology appeared, animation possibilities on the Internet stepped on a new level. The technology uses vector graphics for conversion (unlike GIF89a which holds animation as raster data), that beyond all bounds extends the possibilities of the created animation but considerably raises requirements to the hardware possibilities of the computer. Using flash animation you can create not only banners, but full-grown sites, since the flash technology provides rich interactive possibilities. As creating flash animation is too difficult for the ordinary user, flash animation isn’t used to create avatars.

Also by means of the flash technology video and games (files with extensions.flv and.swf) are being distributed on the Internet. Such video services as www.youtube.com do not require any recommendations.

The alternative way of gif and flash animation can be programming on JavaScript, SVG. JavaScript allows operating the content of a web page directly in the user browser, and SVG adds support of vector graphics, these together provide rich interactive and animating possibilities for web developers. For example, before the New Year holidays there are falling snowflakes appear on many sites. These snowflakes are the animation created by means of JavaScript.

P.S. If you need an animated avatar you can create it online in gif maker online.

Whenever I’m alone I think of you, whenever I call you its because I miss your voice. You are my everything that I ever wished for. You are the only one who loves me for me. But when you never answer I miss you deeply, so please just know, whenever I want to hear your voice or see your face, just remember that you have my heart and I have yours. Dont be sad that you miss me too, ’cause deep down I’m only alive for you. It hurts to know you live far away, but baby I will drive one thousand miles to be in your arms. Its been since April and almost a year together. Baby I love you always and forever, I’m waiting for our last day alive, so I know that love is not a fairy tale.

Toutes les fois qu’I’ ; seul m que je pense à vous, toutes les fois que je vous appelle son parce que je manque votre voix. Vous êtes mon tout lequel j’ai jamais souhaité. Vous êtes la seule personne qui m’aime pour moi. Mais quand vous ne répondez jamais que je vous manque profondément, satisfais ainsi connais juste, toutes les fois que je veux entendre votre voix ou voir votre visage, me rappelle juste que vous avez mon coeur et j’ai le vôtre. Ne soyez pas triste que vous manquiez le m3 aussi, ‘ ; causez le bas profond I’ ; m seulement vivant pour vous. Il blesse pour vous connaître lointain de phase, mais bébé que je conduirai mille milles pour être dans des vos bras. Son eu lieu depuis avril et presque une année ensemble. Bébé je t’aime toujours et pour toujours, I’ ; m attendant notre dernier jour vivant, ainsi moi savent que l’amour n’est pas un conte de fées.

Wann immer I’ m, alleine, das ich an Sie denke, wann immer ich Sie seine anrufe, weil ich Ihre Stimme verfehle. Sie sind mein alles, das ich überhaupt für wünschte. Sie sind die einzige Person, die mich für mich liebt. Aber, wenn Sie nie antworten, dass ich Sie tief verfehle, so weiß gerade, wann immer ich Ihre Stimme hören oder Ihr Gesicht sehen möchte, mich daran erinnere gerade gefalle, dass Sie mein Herz haben und ich habe Ihr. Seien Sie nicht, dass Sie m3 auch verfehlen, ‘ traurig; verursachen Sie tiefen Abstieg I’ m nur lebendig für Sie. Es verletzt, um Sie zu kennen lebhaftweit entferntes, aber Baby, die ich tausend Meilen fahre, um in Ihren Armen zu sein. Sein gewesen seit April und fast einem Jahr zusammen. Baby ich liebe dich immer und für immer, I’ m, das unseren letzten Tag lebendig, also warten, ich wissen, dass Liebe nicht Märchen ist.

The word “ringtone” comes from the English words “ring” and “tone”. It means an incoming call sound of a telephone. Nowadays it is almost a synonym of a melody set as a mobile phone ring.

The first ringtone.
It’s curious that ringtone appeared a little later than a telephone itself. The telephone invented by A. Bell in 1876 didn’t have any ringtone and a call was realized with a whistle. A ring was offered 2 years later in 1878 by T. Watson. But for a long time ringtone was an ordinary bell ring though electric.

The first mentions of the first real ringtones appeared in the middle of the 20th century when the Popular Eletronix journal in 1956 published the article “Telephones will call with melodies”. That article said: “Telephone users will be glad to know that The Bell Telephone Laboratories is working on a new device which will do away with the boring present-day rings. This device that uses transistors will produce nice sounds like ones of a clarinet”.

Probably, one of the most famous and recognizable ringtones is a “Nokia Tune” built into the Nokia telephones as the default ringtone. It appeared in 1994 (and still holds its positions).

What ringtones can be?
Ringtones have been developing gradually; therefore the existent types of ringtones represent the steps of their development.
Monophonic ringtones contain a notes set and any moment only one note can play. The first mobile phones had such ringtones. They were peeping really nasty.

Polyphonic ringtones can play several notes simultaneously. One of such ringtone formats is MIDI. This is the next step of the ringtones development. The phones that have high-quality MIDI sequencer utter melodies with a good quality of sound. These ringtones can play the sounds of different instruments, but they are almost unable to reproduce a voice.

Realtone is modern and the most commonly used format nowadays. The modern digital formats of music (AAC, WMA, MP3, Ogg, etc.) are used to store records. Thanks to them top-charts and other popular melodies are used as the ringtones.

How can you get a rington?
It’s a strange question, isn’t it? You can download it from friends, buy it (there are lots of different content-providers) or create it youself. You can create a ringtone online or by using the appropriate program – for example, SoundForge or CoolEdit.

It is important to remember that the usage of ringtones is restricted by the copyright law. So you can create, sale or exchange ringtones only in agreement with its rightholder, otherwise you may become even criminally responsible.

The most popular ringtones.
Nobody performed such a research, but the hit parade of the ringtones would look like this:

1. Perhaps the most popular ringtones are those ones installed on mobile phones by default. For example, the above-mentioned Nokia Tune. The most people are too lazy to change something.
2. Classical melodies, for example the immortal compositions by Beethoven “The 5th symphony” and “To Elisa”. They are very pleasant to hear and almost never annoy. Well, they may annoy some people only because there are too much of them.
3. Rock and pop hits.
4. Different merry, annoying, loud, unusual melodies like Crazy Frog or the voice-talker “Hello, this is your mobile phone speaking. You’ve got a call”

P.S. create ringtone online with ringtonizer.com!.?

It was troubling to me when I had to forgo a chance to be part of the Broadway Onstage Theater production of Harvey, put on about this time last year. Both because I wanted to honor my commitment and also I knew the part was perfect for me. Only thing was, I had recently chosen to kick a few habits. The first being marijuana. I would wake and bake every morning and it would settle me down and allow me to think clearly. This might seem as a phenomena due to the “puff puff pass” laid back, general inclination attributed to the still illegal substance, however for me it would relieve my hyper tension.

After booking the role, I had also cut back drastically on my alcohol consumption. This only exacerbated my hyper-tension. I realize now, after over a year of clean (?) living, that it was the Coming Down part of my substance abuse which enveloped my mind with the claws of a Raven. Many things over lap this period including my bailing out of two independent films, both of which are suspect as to their validity. One was posted on a bogus yahoo site and the other was from craigslist. Some of the things I heard on one set and the other during a reading, lead me to believe some of these guys were full of shit. One episode ended up with me getting into a fist fight with some loser. He picked up the production’s sticks and I pulled my knife. Fight over. Some other Bachagalupe pretends to tell me a story about Georgianne Walken. I thought we were having a conversation, but I know bad acting when I see it [place self deprecating joke here].

My first gig, as a wee lad, was a talent show put on by my old parochial school, Mt. Calvary. In it, me and some of the other guys put together a band called: the Atomic Punks, named after the Van Halen song. I formed the structure of the song, while the other guitarist played lead at which point our singer came out in a fright wig and screamed into the mike. Four years later I played at my High School in Detroit with my “band” Urban Upset. This consisted of me and Bob, my drummer. We played one punk song I wrote, (I can’t recall the name of) in which I stopped playing in the middle of it and stole a line directly from Johnny Thunders: “Don’t you people know how to dance? What did ya come here to stand around and look funny, or something?” Some Homey in the audience yelled out, “Fuck You!” to which I replied, “And Yo-Mamma”. At this point I couldn’t hear a thing because the whole of the just-built auditorium screamed out laughing. The nextsong we did was a Rap tune, with just Bob pounding away on his tom-toms and me, being influenced by the “new sound” currently embraced by: Johnny Rotten with Afrika Bambaataa, the Clash, Aerosmith (whose Rocks 8-track me and Bob would listen to in his basement for hours, “smokin’ down!”) as well as my favorite Ramone: Dee Dee King! The kids were non plussed, only I felt different.

Soon after Bob joined Son of Sam (now Detroit 442 catch’em if you can) I started the Grievance Committee. I plan on putting all of the Grievance Committee’s early songs on myspace as soon as I up grade my old clunker of a computer. It was around this time that I started to audition for plays. I had been a life long film buff and now that I had gotten over my childhood shyness, I was ready to venture into something completely different. I felt nervous, of course, but any phobias I had were squelched from the countless Grievance Committee shows where no one would slam, stage dive or even nod along. Most Detroit punk audiences will stand there with their arms crossed, or sipping on their drink while you sweat and snarl like a beast. And this still stands true today. I went to go see FireWater at the Majestic and the singer couldn’t figure out why an audience who paid to come to the show, wasn’t jumping around in accordance. I gave him my t-shirt that read:Detroit, Motherfucker!

Inorder to get “work” as an actor, and I had been “working” since the age of five*, one has to have a head shot. A girlfriend of mine hooked me up with a couple-few photographers and I spent a small fortune in cash but, due to me being a neophyte, I had no idea of what looked decent and which picture, or series of pictures, I should use. In hind sight, they were all completely wrong for what I wanted to accomplish. Live & Learn-Money Burn!

I did a couple few gigs here in Michigan, but it wasn’t long before I hopped the Soul Train (Greyhound) to NYC. Once there I got situated in an apartment on Third St. between First and Second Avenue. Also by then, I had become a fan of the style of writer, director and auteur David Mamet. I was lucky enough to do some scene study with the Atlantic Theater Co. but it was really at the American Indian Community House, NYC where I began to come into my own.

A.I.C.H. was in an unassuming building sandwiched between Broadway and Lafayette. Jim Cyrus was in charge of the Theatrical Dept. (as well as many other tasks and duties of which he performed impeccably) where me and a whole host of truly talented and modest actors would perform in the Circle. Industry people where always present and we would all get sent out on go-sees a.k.a. auditions. Luckily I had gotten my head-shot problem under control early on. Somehow I managed to find this really cool fellow who was not only nice enough to take the time in order to produce something I could use, he also knew people like Richard Hell and Debbie Harry. We talked about the No-Wave scene and he told me about the Mud Club which was long gone by the time I got to the rotten apple.

I hit the ground running only to find I worked alot more when I sent out my head-shot through Back Stage, than I did going to agency auditions. Ricki Olshan was lovely enough to send me out on many auditions, but the problem was this: Being an actor in New York is alot like going to prison. One has to stay with ones own kind. I’m being extreme to make a point. I don’t look like a traditional Native American. Once I inform people that that’s what I happen to be (along with the non apparent Scots-Irish from Kentucky) and after I listening to them tell me about how their grandmother was a Cherokee Princess and how they go to the hoop-dance-pow-wow every year, they always ask me about my “tribe”.

My grandfather told my mother that we were Eastern Sioux and refused to sign up to be apart of the Lumbee people back in 1953, a people who I have come to know and respect, due in part to Lloyd Oxendine who was the curator of the American Indian Community House Art Gallery. He is the one who turned me onto books and stories relating to the Lumbee and other Native People of North Carolina. As well as giving me one of my first jobs. I’ll always be grateful to him and everyone else at A.I.C.H.

It’s my theory that in Hollywood’s infancy, when they used Italians and Jews to play native people, this fore shadowed a persona, one which has stuck to the movie going psyche. Martin Landau, Chuck Conners, Fredric Forrest have all played Natives but, the one that gets me the most is: Iron Eyes Cody. The son of two Sicilians! Hell my step-father has a better chance at getting cast as a red-skin than I do. However, I’ve come to be comfortable with who and what I am, where I’m from and where I will eventually end up. So mote it be.

When I picked scenes or monologues to do, I tried to pick ones that were not well known. I did something from John Moran’s “Manson Family Opera” as well as “Short Eyes” by Minguel Pineroor anything by Sam Shepard. I even did a John Lurie sound byte from a John Zorn song. Top that thesboze! I also began working with students from New York University film school.

Before leaving Detroit I was into film makers like Nick Zedd, Richard Kern, Jim Jarmusch, Alessandro Jodorowsky along with John Cassavetes. I wasn’t able to work with anybody who was on the same level as these men, but I did work with alot of people who were just as invested in their projects and I did my best to help them along. Speaking of my best, the worst piece of work I did was a commercial for a furniture company. Getting cast was great, along with the five hundred dollar check, only thing was; I had no idea what a “buy out” was. This means they can show the commercial over and over and over, as many times as they like, without giving the actors any residuals, as they do in national commercials.

At the shoot, all I did was show up, put on their goofy clothes, say the lines once as a rehearsal (I was the first one up), say them again once the director gave me the direction to “sit down when you say this line”. We shot another one for safety and that was it. Just that fast. One, Two, Three and I was done. A fifteen passenger van picked me up, so instead of leaving early with no ride, I stayed and filled my pockets with food from the craft service table. I listened as some people were on their twelfth take. To me this didn’t seem like “selling out”. Hell, now you see and hear Iggy Pop in commercials, but for me, it was really a kick in the head. This one spot didn’t represent me or anything about me. The money went to pay my rent, my booze and my drug habit.

I’ve done alot of other gigs in the city that never sleeps (you’ll hear about all in due time), though once I moved to the desert, I had to improvise by doing Stand-Up (in my case it was; sit the fuck down) as well as open mike “poetry”. I’ve always believed in the idea of rebirth and to be a true Renascence man I have to regress back to infancy, come out weak and keep growing strong. This is what I’m doing now and despite my checkered passed, I will always find an outlet for my neurosis.

I recently looked up my old favorite free weekly, the New York Press on line. In it, some kid wrote an article about the good ole daze of NYC circa 93′. I thought to myself, shit, what do you know? I Was There Man!!!!!! Stay Tuned for the next exciting episode of: “Slack Jaw Where are You?” or “Incog-Guido”

*I approach my work as an actor the same way I do any other job. Blue Collar!

You can create an avatar online by taking advantage of a magnificent online service picator.com.

Avatar on the Internet is a way of self-expression, a way to personalize yourself on boundless resources. Avatar is a way to make you recognizable. A memorable avatar marks out the owner from the crowd, attracts attention to the comments of the avatar’s owner.

Certainly, you can download an avatar, but a downloaded avatar can be downloaded by other people, so there may be many users with the same avatar. The best way is to create your own, personal, attractive and nice avatar.

What kind of avatar should be created?
The avatar should attract attention, but shouldn’t annoy the site visitors. For example, eyes annoying high-contrast bright red square won’t be good to attract attention. The avatar should stick in memory – you can make several photos of your face with unusual mimicry and create an animated avatar on which you will wink once in several seconds. It may turn out more attractive than endless catlings and doggies. The avatar should be nice and good-looking. A negligent avatar just will alienate other users. A close-up face is good for avatar, and a many times scaled-down photo of you against the background of a large building is bad for avatar.

What you need to create an avatar
Actually, to create an avatar you need only a little time and desire. You can create an avatar online and without spending money on the Photoshop (or stealing it), without troubling over the poor Paint, offered by Windows for image editing. Also you need one or several photos.If you have no photos or you want to use images, you should look for images on the Internet. Popular search systems such as google.com or other offer searching for images service. You can search there and then create an avatar out of the images you’ve found (but remember that you can’t use every found image for avatar because usage of some of them is restricted by the copyright law).

You can save the found images on your computer or immediately upload them to the site and create an avatar out of them just by pointing at the image link (usually, you can get the image link by pressing the right button over the image in a browser and select an item with the text like “save link” from the pop-up menu).

What can I do with the selected images
Having uploaded images to picator.com you can edit them in various ways. You can move them to create a composition. You can rotate them by selecting the correct position (for example, to create a collage by placing friends’ faces in a circle). You can resize and scale them. You can cut out a part of the image to replace the cut part with another image. You can cut off unnecessary parts of the picture (for example, to cut out someone’s face and to stick it to another person).

To create an avatar
In general, you can create an avatar quickly, easily and above all free of charge. Use your imagination and creative thinking – and a nice and attractive avatar or collage will be your award. And if other people like your avatar, it means they like you too, so you attract their attention.

p.s. We wish you to create a cool and interesting avatar!.