.jpg)
It's A Grilled Cheese Cat!
Bud Ruff Channel
Cat Breeds
Cheezburger
Precious (Cirque du soleil)
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
for the birds
And a bird also interfered with Hillary Clinton's plane while she was flying from Brussels to Paris. NBC’s Pete Williams reports.
KEYT: Air Force Two, a modified Boeing 757, was inspected for damage and departed Santa Barbara for an undisclosed location Saturday morning.
August 11, 2010: Vice President Joe Biden's Air Force 2 in minor accident with small plane on Long Island runway. There were no injuries as the Bidens' 747 jet lifted off from Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Psykopainted.jpg)
Friday, April 13, 2012
Mean Black Cat Blues
It's a mean black cat, Lordy, clawin' on my door.
It's a mean black cat, Lordy, clawin' on my door.
I'm going to Louisiana, where I won't hear it whine no more.
Black Cat Bistro * Black Cat dc *
'Cuddly Catz' Program Saves Strays By Pairing Them With Prison Inmates
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Ambika 1913-2012
Gerda Ursula Zinn: 1913-2012
1930s German Actress, Vedanta Society Devotee
“When I heard the door close behind me, I was terrified,” Gerda Zinn recalled, describing her meeting with Adolf Hitler and his flunky Joseph Goebbels. A drop-dead gorgeous actress of the German stage, Zinn had been summoned to perform for the Fuhrer. Although known for her steely nerves and bottomless self-confidence, Zinn was anxious. By then, many of her theater friends – Jews and gays - had fled Germany or simply vanished.
Zinn had watched Hitler’s own entrance. He seemed shrunken, almost nerd-like to Zinn – “a small, forgettable man” surrounded by acolytes. But once he surveyed the room, clocking his audience, she watched a transformation. Suddenly, Hitler ballooned in stature – and was fearsome and formidable.
Zinn carefully recited a monologue. Afterwards, Goebbels kissed her hand but Hitler, a germ-phobe, took her hand in his and then kissed the air above her wrist.
In the early 1940s, Zinn’s husband, a fellow actor, was drafted into the German Army. Zinn continued to support herself working in theater and film in Berlin and Hamburg. “And then came the complete breakdown of Germany,” she said, “and even the actors and actresses had to go into the re-armament business.” Rather than do so, Zinn returned to her suburban home in Dresden.
In the last days of the war, the Allies firebombed Dresden. For three days, Zinn and her mother were trapped under the rubble in her cellar. “So we had to be dug out.” The ordeal left Zinn with a head tremor. Next, she had to escape the Russians, who had quickly taken over the city. . On her third attempt, Zinn unleashed her considerable charms along with a bottle of vodka that she had hidden in her coat and which she exchanged for her freedom. In West Berlin, Zinn again rustled up jobs in theater, film, and radio – working for all four occupational forces.
One day, in a bombed-out bookstore, the clerk recommended Janna Yoga by Swami Vivekananda. “I read and I read and I read Vivekananda,” she related. ”Every question I had asked the Lord, Vivekananda answered. I started to cry and cry and cry. I cried my heart out.
”And Vivekananda said that the only purpose of life is to find God. It was 1952 and I was 38 years old. And I thought, ‘I have wasted all these years.’ My life changed just as you [would] turn your hand over.”
The same clerk put Zinn in touch with Franz Dispeker. A German Jewish banker who had escaped the Nazis, Dispeker had translated into German The Eternal Companion, by Swami Prabhavananda, the charismatic monk who started the Vedanta Society in the Hollywood Hills and later established the temple and convent in Montecito on Ladera Lane. The following year, Zinn met up with Prabhavananda at Dispeker’s home in Switzerland. He initiated her as a devotee and gave her the Sanskrit name of Ambika – for the Divine Mother..
In 1955, Ambika found her way to the U.S. and settled into the Hollywood Vedanta Society, where she lived for two months. There she worked in the kitchen – preparing “healthy Swiss breakfasts” of raw, grated carrots. “She was the only person that Swami P. ever removed from the kitchen,” said Anandaprana, 89, one of the nuns who knew Ambika there and at the Montecito Vedanta temple, where Ambika re-located in the late1950s.
No one ever said that Ambika was an easy person. She was an unusual amalgam of sheer grit and resolute faith. “She could be very sweet,” said Anandaprana, who is also German, “and difficult, as well. But her devotion to Swamp P. and Vedanta was total.”
Rather than live at the convent in Santa Barbara, Ambika found work to support herself, including waitressing, “because I couldn’t face living with people,” she said. She amassed some savings: She sued the German government for her Dresden trauma and collected social security from at least one country. . In the early 1980s Ambika decided to build a home on Bella Vista Drive, on a corner slice of property owned by the Vedanta Society. The nuns and monks said it was a bad idea because of the fire danger – but Ambika responded that she had no fear and was not to be swayed. Nor would she evacuate when fires did strike –despite the pleas of firefighters.
For the next 30 years, Ambika, often dressed in a floor-length red velvet gown and looking like a Wagnerian goddess, went to vespers at the Vedanta Temple almost daily from 6 to 7 p.m. and meditated.
She became an accomplished stained-glass artist and avid gardener. “Her roses grew to perfection,” said one of the nuns. “They were too scared not to.”
Although she was receiving hospice care for more than a year, Ambika was in no rush to leave. She would exit the stage of life auspiciously – on February 26, during a celebration of the birthday of Ramakrishna, who is revered as an avatar and saint by Vedantists.
Ambika’s last 15 minutes of life were spent gazing directly at the photograph of Ramakrishna on the wall across from her bed. And then she sighed and passed on. She was 98.
A.L. Bardach is writing a biography of Vivekananda which was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal's magazine.
Le Chat Noir
Chat Noir: The First Cabaret
'Le Chat Noir opened in 1881 in a tiny apartment in Montmartre. When it closed in 1897 (in a larger location) it was one of the most famous salons in the world. The Chat Noir created a new style of get-togethers and entertainment.'
Le Chat Noir is a Cabaret Theater and is New Orleans' premier venue for music, cocktails and cabaret
'Le Chat Noir opened in 1881 in a tiny apartment in Montmartre. When it closed in 1897 (in a larger location) it was one of the most famous salons in the world. The Chat Noir created a new style of get-togethers and entertainment.'
Le Chat Noir is a Cabaret Theater and is New Orleans' premier venue for music, cocktails and cabaret
Cabaret
“cabaret” Bob Fosse’s ‘Cabaret,’ restored to its original glory,
opens TCM Classic Film Festival
Set in 1930s Berlin, with German life darkening under the Nazi Party's rise, the film was based on the 1966 Broadway musical adapted from Christopher Isherwood's short novels.
Interestingly, in France at first the word “cabaret” alluded to any establishment that served alcohol. However, cabaret first appeared in 1881 in the Monmartre area of Paris at the Le Chat Noir saloon. Artistic types, such as poets, composers and artists gathered to share their work, and see people’s reactions. This informal setting was to be the launch of the long rich cabaret history.
BOHEMIAN SUNRISE CABARET
opens TCM Classic Film Festival
Bob Fosse's 'Cabaret' Restored To Original Glory
Interestingly, in France at first the word “cabaret” alluded to any establishment that served alcohol. However, cabaret first appeared in 1881 in the Monmartre area of Paris at the Le Chat Noir saloon. Artistic types, such as poets, composers and artists gathered to share their work, and see people’s reactions. This informal setting was to be the launch of the long rich cabaret history.
In the United States cabaretsbegan in the 1910s with the first
European type establishment.
"Eighty is the new sixty."
HOLLYWOOD HUNTS A BLACK CAT
1961
Casting call for black cats to star in Roger Corman movie in Los Angeles, Calif., Published caption:HOLLYWOOD HUNTS A BLACK CAT
-Out of this sidewalk full of black cats one may be chosen for the title role in (natch) "The Black Cat," one of three segments in "Tales of Terror," which American International Pictures is casting at Producers Studio. Director Roger Corman hopes to find six look-alikes--one to star, the others to stand in--for the movie thriller starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Joyce Jameson.
Superstition, prejudice, bringer of good or bad luck
largest selection of photos
Black Cat Auditions in Hollywood (1961)
An Open Audition For The Purr-fect Black Cat
Casting call for black cats to star in Roger Corman movie in Los Angeles, Calif., Published caption:HOLLYWOOD HUNTS A BLACK CAT
-Out of this sidewalk full of black cats one may be chosen for the title role in (natch) "The Black Cat," one of three segments in "Tales of Terror," which American International Pictures is casting at Producers Studio. Director Roger Corman hopes to find six look-alikes--one to star, the others to stand in--for the movie thriller starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Joyce Jameson.
Superstition, prejudice, bringer of good or bad luck
largest selection of photos
Black Cat Auditions in Hollywood (1961)
An Open Audition For The Purr-fect Black Cat
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
.JPG)
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
.JPG)
Monday, April 9, 2012
Animal Attraction
Another beautiful interspecies tale, as a cat and a lizard bask in the sunshine and each other’s love for 34 glorious seconds … Cat Loves Bearded Dragon
BLACK CATS
Black kittens are some of the cutest kittens ever! Unfortunately, they come with a stigma of superstition. Many people believe that black cats are bad luck and therefore will not adopt them. Did you know that black kittens get euthanized at much higher rates than any other color cat? It is simply because less people are willing to adopt them.
Stray Black Cats Roam London Selling Video Games
Black Cats: A Brief History
This dates back at least as far as Ancient Egypt when the goddess Bast reigned in the 22nd dynasty. To court her favor, many Egyptians brought black cats into their households in the belief that Bast's spirit would become intertwined with the soul of the cat and prosperity would follow. Both rich and poor Egyptian families embalmed their deceased pets. Archaeologists have discovered entire pet cemeteries with mummified black cats.
In the 17th century, Charles I of England fiercely loved his precious black cat, going so far as to keep it under 24-hour guard. Eventually, the cat died. Charles I was heard to proclaim, "Alas my luck is gone!" The next day, he was arrested and charged with high treason and ultimately was executed.
In Scotland, a strange black cat on a porch is considered to bring prosperity. In Italy, a sneezing cat is good luck. In parts of Europe, if a black cat crosses your path, you are considered to have good fortune, and if a black cat walks into your home, you are truly blessed.
obi-wan-kitty
Cat Fights Off Dogs With Lightsaber!
30 seconds of adorable-ass-kicking-awesomeness… “Stopped they must be; on this all depends.” –
26 Dogs Dressed as Bunnies
http://kittie42712.blogspot.com/