title: Roman Senate

text: Through these decrees, the senate directed the magistrates, especially the Roman Consuls (the chief magistrates), in their prosecution of military conflicts. The senate also had an enormous degree of power over the civil government in Rome. This was especially the case with regard to its management of state finances, as only it could authorize the disbursal of public funds from the treasury. As the Roman Republic grew, the senate also supervised the administration of the provinces, which were governed by former consuls and praetors, in that it decided which magistrate should govern which province.


title: Roman Senate

text: Since the 3rd century BC the senate also played a pivotal role in cases of emergency. It could call for the appointment of a dictator (a right resting with each consul with or without the senate's involvement). However, after 202 BC, the office of dictator fell out of use (and was revived only two more times) and was replaced with the "senatus consultum ultimum" ("ultimate decree of the senate"), a senatorial decree which authorised the consuls to employ any means necessary to solve the crisis.


title: Roman Senate

text: While senate meetings could take place either inside or outside the formal boundary of the city (the "pomerium"), no meeting could take place more than a mile (1 km) outside it. The senate operated while under various religious restrictions. For example, before any meeting could begin, a sacrifice to the gods was made, and a search for divine omens (the "auspices") was taken. The senate was only allowed to assemble in places dedicated to the gods.


title: Roman Senate

text: Meetings usually began at dawn, and a magistrate who wished to summon the senate had to issue a compulsory order. The senate meetings were public and directed by a presiding magistrate (usually a consul). While in session, the senate had the power to act on its own, and even against the will of the presiding magistrate if it wished. The presiding magistrate began each meeting with a speech, then referred an issue to the senators, who would discuss it in order of seniority.


title: Roman Senate

text: Senators had several other ways in which they could influence (or frustrate) a presiding magistrate. For example, every senator was permitted to speak before a vote could be held, and since all meetings had to end by nightfall, a dedicated group or even a single senator could talk a proposal to death (a filibuster or "diem consumere"). When it was time to call a vote, the presiding magistrate could bring up whatever proposals he wished, and every vote was between a proposal and its negative.


title: Roman Senate

text: With a dictator as well as a senate, the senate could veto any of the dictator's decisions. At any point before a motion passed, the proposed motion could be vetoed, usually by a tribune. If there was no veto, and the matter was of minor importance, it could be put to either a voice vote or a show of hands. If there was no veto and no obvious majority, and the matter was of a significant nature, there was usually a physical division of the house, with senators voting by taking a place on either side of the chamber.


title: Roman Senate

text: Senate membership was controlled by the censors. By the time of Augustus, ownership of property worth at least one million sesterces was required for membership. The ethical requirements of senators were significant. In contrast to members of the Equestrian order, senators could not engage in banking or any form of public contract. They could not own a ship that was large enough to participate in foreign commerce, they could not leave Italy without permission from the rest of the senate and they were not paid a salary. Election to magisterial office resulted in automatic senate membership.


title: Roman Senate

text: After the fall of the Roman Republic, the constitutional balance of power shifted from the Roman senate to the Roman Emperor. Though retaining its legal position as under the republic, in practice, however, the actual authority of the imperial senate was negligible, as the emperor held the true power in the state. As such, membership in the senate became sought after by individuals seeking prestige and social standing, rather than actual authority.


title: Roman Senate

text: During the reigns of the first emperors, legislative, judicial, and electoral powers were all transferred from the Roman assemblies to the senate. However, since the emperor held control over the senate, the senate acted as a vehicle through which he exercised his autocratic powers.


title: Roman Senate

text: The first emperor, Augustus, reduced the size of the senate from 900 members to 600, even though there were only about 100 to 200 active senators at one time. After this point, the size of the senate was never again drastically altered. Under the empire, as was the case during the late republic, one could become a senator by being elected "quaestor" (a magistrate with financial duties), but only if one were already of senatorial rank. In addition to quaestors, elected officials holding a range of senior positions were routinely granted senatorial rank by virtue of the offices that they held.


title: Roman Senate

text: If an individual was not of senatorial rank, there were two ways for him to become a senator. Under the first method, the emperor manually granted that individual the authority to stand for election to the quaestorship, while under the second method, the emperor appointed that individual to the senate by issuing a decree. Under the empire, the power that the emperor held over the senate was absolute.


title: Roman Senate

text: The two consuls were a part of the senate, but had more power than the senators. During senate meetings, the emperor sat between the two consuls, and usually acted as the presiding officer. Senators of the early empire could ask extraneous questions or request that a certain action be taken by the senate. Higher ranking senators spoke before those of lower rank, although the emperor could speak at any time.


title: Roman Senate

text: Besides the emperor, consuls and praetors could also preside over the senate. Since no senator could stand for election to a magisterial office without the emperor's approval, senators usually did not vote against bills that had been presented by the emperor. If a senator disapproved of a bill, he usually showed his disapproval by not attending the senate meeting on the day that the bill was to be voted on.


title: Roman Senate

text: While the Roman assemblies continued to meet after the founding of the empire, their powers were all transferred to the senate, and so senatorial decrees ("senatus consulta") acquired the full force of law. The legislative powers of the imperial senate were principally of a financial and an administrative nature, although the senate did retain a range of powers over the provinces.


title: Roman Senate

text: During the early Roman Empire, all judicial powers that had been held by the Roman assemblies were also transferred to the senate. For example, the senate now held jurisdiction over criminal trials. In these cases, a consul presided, the senators constituted the jury, and the verdict was handed down in the form of a decree ("senatus consultum"), and, while a verdict could not be appealed, the emperor could pardon a convicted individual through a veto. The emperor Tiberius transferred all electoral powers from the assemblies to the senate, and, while theoretically the senate elected new magistrates, the approval of the emperor was always needed before an election could be finalized.


title: Roman Senate

text: Around 300 AD, the emperor Diocletian enacted a series of constitutional reforms. In one such reform, he asserted the right of the emperor to take power without the theoretical consent of the senate, thus depriving the senate of its status as the ultimate repository of supreme power. Diocletian's reforms also ended whatever illusion had remained that the senate had independent legislative, judicial, or electoral powers. The senate did, however, retain its legislative powers over public games in Rome, and over the senatorial order.


title: Roman Senate

text: The senate also retained the power to try treason cases, and to elect some magistrates, but only with the permission of the emperor. In the final years of the western empire, the senate would sometimes try to appoint their own emperor, such as in the case of Eugenius, who was later defeated by forces loyal to Theodosius I. The senate remained the last stronghold of the traditional Roman religion in the face of the spreading Christianity, and several times attempted to facilitate the return of the Altar of Victory (first removed by Constantius II) to the senatorial curia.


title: Roman Senate

text: According to the "Historia Augusta" ("Elagabalus" 4.2 and 12.3) emperor Elagabalus had his mother or grandmother take part in Senate proceedings. "And Elagabalus was the only one of all the emperors under whom a woman attended the senate like a man, just as though she belonged to the senatorial order" (David Magie's translation). According to the same work, Elagabalus also established a women's senate called the "senaculum", which enacted rules to be applied to matrons regarding clothing, chariot riding, the wearing of jewelry, etc. ("Elagabalus" 4.3 and "Aurelian" 49.6). Before this, Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero, had been "listening" to Senate proceedings, concealed behind a curtain, according to Tacitus ("Annales", 13.5).


title: Roman Senate

text: After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the senate continued to function under the Germanic chieftain Odoacer, and then under Ostrogothic rule. The authority of the senate rose considerably under barbarian leaders, who sought to protect the institution. This period was characterized by the rise of prominent Roman senatorial families, such as the Anicii, while the senate's leader, the princeps senatus, often served as the right hand of the barbarian leader. It is known that the senate successfully installed Laurentius as pope in 498, despite the fact that both King Theodoric and Emperor Anastasius supported the other candidate, Symmachus.


title: Roman Senate

text: The peaceful coexistence of senatorial and barbarian rule continued until the Ostrogothic leader Theodahad found himself at war with Emperor Justinian I and took the senators as hostages. Several senators were executed in 552 as revenge for the death of the Ostrogothic king, Totila. After Rome was recaptured by the imperial (Byzantine) army, the senate was restored, but the institution (like classical Rome itself) had been mortally weakened by the long war. Many senators had been killed and many of those who had fled to the east chose to remain there, thanks to favorable legislation passed by Emperor Justinian, who, however, abolished virtually all senatorial offices in Italy. The importance of the Roman senate thus declined rapidly.


title: Roman Senate

text: In 578 and again in 580, the senate sent envoys to Constantinople. They delivered of gold as a gift to the new emperor, Tiberius II Constantinus, along with a plea for help against the Lombards, who had invaded Italy ten years earlier. Pope Gregory I, in a sermon from 593, lamented the almost complete disappearance of the senatorial order and the decline of the prestigious institution.


title: Roman Senate

text: It is not known exactly when the Roman senate disappeared in the West, but it appears to have been in the early 7th century. It is last attested in 603, when the Gregorian register records that it acclaimed new statues of Emperor Phocas and Empress Leontia, and in 630 the Curia Julia was converted into a church (Sant'Adriano al Foro) by Pope Honorius I, which suggests that the Senate had ceased to meet there some time previously.


title: Roman Senate

text: The title "senator" did continue to be used in the Early Middle Ages (it was held by Crescentius the Younger (d.998) and in its feminine form "senatrix" by Marozia (d.937), to give two prominent examples) but in this period it appears to have been regarded as a title of nobility and no longer indicated membership of an organized governing body.


title: Roman Senate

text: In 1144, the Commune of Rome attempted to establish a government modelled on the old Roman Republic in opposition to the temporal power of the higher nobles (in particular the Frangipani family) and the pope. It constructed a new Senate House (the ) for itself on the Capitoline Hill, apparently in the mistaken belief that this was the site of the ancient Senate House.


title: Roman Senate

text: Most sources state that there were 56 senators in the revived senate, and modern historians have therefore interpreted this to indicate that there were four senators for each of the fourteen "regiones" of Rome. These senators, the first real senators since the 7th century, elected as their leader Giordano Pierleoni, son of the Roman consul Pier Leoni, with the title patrician, since the term "consul" had been deprecated as a noble styling.


title: Roman Senate

text: The Commune came under constant pressure from the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor during the second half of the twelfth century. From 1192 onwards the popes succeeded in reducing the 56-strong senate down to a single individual, styled "Summus Senator", who subsequently became the head of the civil government of Rome under the pope's aegis. Between 1191 and 1193, this was a certain Benedetto called "Carus homo" or "carissimo".


title: Roman Senate

text: The senate continued to exist in Constantinople, although it evolved into an institution that differed in some fundamental forms from its predecessor. Designated in Greek as "synkletos", or assembly, the Senate of Constantinople was made up of all current or former holders of senior ranks and official positions, plus their descendants. At its height during the 6th and 7th centuries, the Senate represented the collective wealth and power of the Empire, on occasion nominating and dominating individual emperors.


title: Roman Senate

text: In the second half of the 10th century a new office, "proëdrus" (), was created as head of the senate by Emperor Nicephorus Phocas. Up to the mid-11th century, only eunuchs could become proëdrus, but later this restriction was lifted and several proëdri could be appointed, of which the senior proëdrus, or "protoproëdrus" (), served as the head of the senate. There were two types of meetings practised: "silentium", in which only magistrates currently in office participated and "conventus", in which all syncletics (, senators) could participate. The Senate in Constantinople existed until at least the beginning of the 13th century, its last known act being the election of Nicolas Canabus as emperor in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade.


title: Shesha

text: Shesha (Sanskrit: शेष; ) , also known as Sheshanaga (Sanskrit: शेषनाग; ) or Adishesha (), is a serpentine demigod (Naga) and Nagaraja (King of all serpents), as well as a primordial being of creation in Hinduism. In the Puranas, Shesha is said to hold all the planets of the universe on his hoods and to constantly sing the glories of Vishnu from all his mouths. He is sometimes referred to as Ananta Shesha, "Endless-Shesha", or Adishesha, the "First Shesha". It is said that when Adishesa uncoils, time moves forward and creation takes place; when he coils back, the universe ceases to exist.


title: Shesha

text: The Narayana form of Vishnu is often depicted as resting on Shesha, accompanied by his consort Lakshmi. Adishesha is considered as one of the two mounts of Vishnu alongside Garuda. He is said to have descended upon Earth in the following human forms or incarnations: Lakshmana, brother of Vishnu's incarnation Rama during the Treta Yuga, and according to some traditions, as Balarama, brother of Vishnu's incarnation Krishna during the Dvapara Yuga. According to the Mahabharata (Adi Parva), his father was Kashyapa and his mother Kadru, though in other accounts, he is usually a primordial being created by Vishnu.


title: Shesha

text: His name means "he who remains", from the Sanskrit root "śiṣ", because even as the world is destroyed at the end of each kalpa, Shesha remains as he is.


title: Shesha

text: Adishesha is generally depicted with a massive form that floats coiled through space, or upon the Ocean of Milk, to form the bed upon which Vishnu lays. Sometimes, he is depicted as a five-headed or seven-headed or a ten-headed serpent; but more commonly as one thousand-headed, or five thousand-headed, or even as many as a one million-headed serpent; sometimes with each head wearing an ornate crown.


title: Shesha

text: According to the Mahabharata, Adishesha was born to the sage Kashyapa and his wife Kadru. Kadru gave birth to a thousand snakes, of which Shesha was the eldest. After Shesha, Vasuki, Iravati and Takshaka were born, in that order. A lot of Shesha's brothers were cruel and were bent upon inflicting harm on others. They were even unkind to Garuda, who was Kashyapa's son through Vinata, sister of Kadru. (Kadru and Vinata were daughters of Daksha).


title: Shesha

text: Shesha, disgusted by the cruel acts of his brothers, left his mother and kin, and took to austere penances. He lived on air and meditated in places including Gandhamadhana, Badrikashrama, Gokarna, Pushkara, and the Himalayas. His penances were so severe that his flesh, skin, and muscles dried up and merged with his frame. Brahma, convinced of Shesha's will, asked Shesha to request a boon. Shesha asked that he be able to keep his mind under control so that he could continue to perform ascetic penances. Brahma gladly accepted the request. Brahma then asked a favour of Shesha: to go beneath the precarious earth and stabilise it. Shesha agreed and went to the netherworld and stabilised Bhumi with his hood. He is believed to support her even today, thus making Patala his perennial residence.


title: Shesha

text: Shesha is usually depicted as floating in the ocean of the changing world, forming the bed of Mahavishnu.


title: Shesha

text: In the Bhagavata Purana, Shesha is named Sankarshana, the tamasic energy of Narayana himself, and is said to live deep within the inner layers of Patala, where there are many serpents with gems on their heads and where he reigns as its ruler. He is said to have existed before the creation of the universe. When the universe is towards its end, he creates the 11 Rudras from the serpents to destroy the universe for a new one to be created.


title: Shesha

text: Sankarshana is also one of the four vyuha forms of Vishnu, the other three being Vāsudeva, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha.


title: Shesha

text: In Gaudiya accounts, Sankarshana expands himself as Garbhodakshayi-Vishnu in the beginning of the universe to create Brahma. In other words, Sankarshana is believed to be Narayana himself.


title: Shesha

text: In the first few chapters of the Puranas, it is also said that Sankarshana preached the Bhagavata to the Four Kumaras, who in turn passed on this message. At some point, the message was passed to sage Maitreya, who in turn preached it to Vidura.


title: Shesha

text: Adisesha is believed to have taken 5 incarnations on earth. During the Satya Yuga, he came down in his original form to form a seat for Vishnu's avatar of Narasimha, who had incarnated to slay the impious Hiranyakashipu.


title: Shesha

text: During the Treta Yuga, Sesha took birth as Lakshmana, as Lord Vishnu's (as Rama) brother. Lakshmana is a very prominent character in the Ramayana, along with Hanuman and Sita.


title: Shesha

text: During Dvapara Yuga, he is a stated to have incarnated as Balarama again as a brother to Vishnu (as Krishna). This is often disputed by the original line-ups of the Dasavatara, where Balarama is also considered to be an incarnation of Vishnu.


title: Shesha

text: During the Kali Yuga, according to Sri Vaishnava tradition, he was born as Patanjali Maharishi, Ramanujacharya, and Manavala Mamunigal. He was not accompanied by God during the Kali Yuga. Instead, he incarnated alone to spread devotion among the people, being a peaceful incarnation.


title: Shesha

text: Sri Vaishnavism also states that Balarama is an incarnation of both Vishnu and Adishesha. In the Bhagavad Gita, in the middle of the battlefield Kurukshetra, Krishna, explaining his omnipresence, says: "Of Nāgas, I am Ananta" indicating the importance of Ananta Shesha.


title: Shesha

text: In the Bhagavad Gita chapter 10, verse 29, Krishna describes 75 of his common manifestations, and declares, : "Among Nāgas (a special class of serpents), I am the serpent-god Ananta".


title: Shesha

text: The Palliyodam, a type of large snake boat built and used by Aranmula Parthasarathy Temple in Kerala for the annual water processions of Uthrattathi Jalamela and Valla Sadhya has the legend that it was designed by Krishna and were made to look like Shesha.


title: Shesha

text: The capital of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, is named after the King of the Serpents and is translated as "The Sacred City of Ananta".


title: Shesha

text: On the SCP Foundation wiki, the winning article for the SCP-3000 contest is titled "Anantashesha". The article features SCP-3000, a gargantuan serpentine entity swimming in the Bay of Bengal with anomalous abilities, based on the fact that Shesha "would linger past the end".


title: Craig Bierko

text: Bierko was born in Rye Brook, New York where his mother Pat ran The Harrison Players, a local community theatre.


title: Craig Bierko

text: After graduating Blind Brook High School, Bierko spent his freshman year studying journalism at Boston University’s School of Public Communications. But he spent most of his time across the Charles River doing plays at Harvard. The following year Bierko transferred to Northwestern University to study acting alongside David Schwimmer, Stephen Colbert, George Newbern and Harry Lennox. He graduated in 1986 with a BS in theater arts from the School of Speech.


title: Craig Bierko

text: Bierko’s film roles include Timothy in the 1996 action film "The Long Kiss Goodnight" which he credits for being cast in far more interesting, darkly humorous roles such as Max Baer in Ron Howard’s "Cinderella Man" opposite Russell Crowe, Tom Ryan in "Scary Movie 4" (spoofing Tom Cruise throughout the film) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Thirteenth Floor. In 2000 Bierko made his Broadway debut as Professor Harold Hill in Susan Stroman’s critically acclaimed revival of Meredith Willson’s "The Music Man." Bierko was the original choice for the character of Chandler Bing on the sitcom "Friends" but turned it down. He played “the jazz guy” Ray King a love interest for Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) in the fourth season of "Sex and the City" attorney, Jeffrey Coho on season three of the ABC television series "Boston Legal," and one of four newly divorced friends on Fox’s short-lived "Unhitched". Bierko was cast as Dave Lister in the pilot for the American TV version of the British show "Red Dwarf". He’s appeared twice on TV's "" - first as Andy Eckerson, a United States Deputy Marshal who is working with the SVU (and ex-flame Det. Olivia Benson) to recapture an escaped convict. and several years later, a serial rapist.


title: Craig Bierko

text: Bierko appeared for four seasons in the Peabody Award winning series "UnREAL" as Chet Wilton, the eccentric, drug addicted, womanizing creator of a reality dating show. Recently he appeared on The Blacklist as The Chairman, the coldly sociopathic head of an underground stock market for criminals and will be seen on season two of the hit Netflix show Sex/Life as a superstar literary agent.


title: Craig Bierko

text: Bierko was slated to appear on Broadway in the Manhattan Theatre Club production of "To Be or Not to Be" but withdrew from the production August 29, 2008 for creative differences. He starred as Sky Masterson in the Broadway revival of "Guys and Dolls" which began performances at the Nederlander Theatre on February 5, 2009, and officially opened on March 1, 2009. It closed on June 14, 2009 after 113 performances. He performed the role of Peter in the acclaimed 2011 New York Philharmonic production of Stephen Sondheim's "Company" with Neil Patrick Harris, Patti Lupone and Stephen Colbert.


title: Craig Bierko

text: Bierko replaced Bertie Carvel as Miss Trunchbull in "Matilda the Musical" at the Shubert Theatre along with Jill Paice as Miss Honey on September 3, 2013 but could not start performances until September 17 following a neck and shoulder injury he suffered rehearsing a gymnastic flip. Despite the injury Bierko continued rehearsing, eventually performing the role for about a month before the shoulder injury - along with a foot injury sustained during performance - made it impractical to continue.


title: Craig Bierko

text: In 2022, Conor McPherson cast Bierko as Mr. Burke in his "Girl from the North Country (featuring music by Bob Dylan)" opposite Luba Mason and Mare Winningham The Tony Award winning limited engagement played its final performance June 19, 2022.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (; 29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work, "The Decline of the West" ("Der Untergang des Abendlandes"), published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history. Spengler's model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Spengler predicted that about the year 2000, Western civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency whose countering would lead to 200 years of Caesarism (extra-constitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of government) before Western civilization's final collapse.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Spengler is regarded as a nationalist and an anti-democrat, and he was a prominent member of the Weimar-era Conservative Revolution. Although he had voted for Hitler over Hindenburg in the 1932 German presidential election, he later criticized Nazism due to its excessive racialist elements, which led to him and his work being sidelined in his final years. He saw Benito Mussolini, and entrepreneurial types, like the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, as examples of the impending Caesars of Western cultureshowcasing his stark criticism of Mussolini's imperial adventures.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: He strongly influenced other historians, including Franz Borkenau and especially Arnold J. Toynbee and other successors including Francis Parker Yockey, Carroll Quigley, and Samuel P. Huntington. John Calvert notes that Spengler's critique of the West is popular with Islamists.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was born on 29 May 1880 in Blankenburg, Duchy of Brunswick, German Empire, the oldest surviving child of Bernhard Spengler (1844–1901) and Pauline Spengler (1840–1910), née Grantzow, the descendant of an artistic family. Oswald's elder brother was born prematurely in 1879, when his mother tried to move a heavy laundry basket, and died at the age of three weeks. Oswald was born ten months after his brother's death. His younger sisters were Adele (1881–1917), Gertrud (1882–1957), and Hildegard (1885–1942). Oswald's paternal grandfather, Theodor Spengler (1806–76), was a metallurgical inspector ("Hütteninspektor") in Altenbrak.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Oswald's father, Bernhard Spengler, held the position of a postal secretary ("Postsekretär") and was a hard-working man with a marked dislike of intellectualism, who tried to instil the same values and attitudes in his son.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Spengler's maternal great-grandfather, Friedrich Wilhelm Grantzow, a tailor's apprentice in Berlin, had three children out of wedlock with a Jewish woman named Bräunchen Moses ( 1769–1849) whom he later married, on 26 May 1799. Shortly before the wedding, Moses was baptized as Johanna Elisabeth Anspachin; the surname was chosen after her birthplace—Anspach. Her parents, Abraham and Reile Moses, were both deceased by then. The couple had another five children, one of whom was Spengler's maternal grandfather, Gustav Adolf Grantzow (1811–83)—a solo dancer and ballet master in Berlin, who in 1837 married Katharina Kirchner (1813–73), a solo dancer from a Munich Catholic family; the second of their four daughters was Oswald Spengler's mother Pauline Grantzow. Like the Grantzows in general, Pauline was of a Bohemian disposition, and, before marrying Bernhard Spengler, accompanied her dancer sisters on tours. In appearance, she was plump. Her temperament, which Oswald inherited, complemented her appearance and frail physique: she was moody, irritable, and morose.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: When Oswald was ten years of age, his family moved to the university city of Halle. Here he received a classical education at the local Gymnasium (academically oriented secondary school), studying Greek, Latin, mathematics and sciences. Here, too, he developed his propensity for the arts—especially poetry, drama, and music—and came under the influence of the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Nietzsche. At 17, he wrote a drama titled "Montezuma".


title: Oswald Spengler

text: After his father's death in 1901, Spengler attended several universities (Munich, Berlin, and Halle) as a private scholar, taking courses in a wide range of subjects. His studies were undirected. In 1903, he failed his doctoral thesis on Heraclitus—titled "Der metaphysische Grundgedanke der heraklitischen Philosophie" ("The Fundamental Metaphysical Thought of the Heraclitean Philosophy") and conducted under the direction of Alois Riehl—because of insufficient references. He took the doctoral oral exam again and received his PhD from Halle on 6 April 1904. In December 1904, he began to write the secondary dissertation ("Staatsexamensarbeit") necessary to qualify as a high school teacher. This became "The Development of the Organ of Sight in the Higher Realms of the Animal Kingdom" ("Die Entwicklung des Sehorgans bei den Hauptstufen des Tierreiches"), a text now lost. It was approved and he received his teaching certificate. In 1905, Spengler suffered a nervous breakdown.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Spengler briefly served as a teacher in Saarbrücken then in Düsseldorf. From 1908 to 1911 he worked at a grammar school ("Realgymnasium") in Hamburg, where he taught science, German history, and mathematics. Biographers report that his life as a teacher was uneventful.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: In 1911, following his mother's death, he moved to Munich, where he would live for the rest of his life. He lived as a cloistered scholar, supported by his modest inheritance. Spengler survived on very limited means and was marked by loneliness. He owned no books, and took work as a tutor or wrote for magazines to earn additional income. Due to a severe heart problem, Spengler was exempted from military service. During the war, his inheritance was useless because it was invested overseas; thus, he lived in genuine poverty for this period.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: He began work on the first volume of "The Decline of the West" intending to focus on Germany within Europe. The Agadir Crisis of 1911 affected him deeply, though, so he widened the scope of his study. According to Spengler the book was completed in 1914, but the first edition was published in the summer of 1918, shortly before the end of World War I. Spengler wrote about the years immediately prior to World War I in "Decline":


title: Oswald Spengler

text: When the first volume of "The Decline of the West" was published, it was a wild success. Spengler became an instant celebrity. The national humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), followed by economic depression in 1923 and hyperinflation, seemed to prove Spengler right. "Decline" comforted Germans because it could be used as a rationale for their diminished pre-eminence, i.e. due to larger world-historical processes. The book met with wide success outside of Germany as well, and by 1919 had been translated into several other languages.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: The second volume of "Decline" was published in 1922. In the second volume, Spengler argued that German socialism differed from Marxism; instead, he said it was more compatible with traditional German conservatism. Spengler declined an appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Göttingen, saying he needed time to focus on writing.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: The book was widely discussed, even by those who had not read it. Historians took umbrage at his unapologetically non-scientific approach. Novelist Thomas Mann compared reading Spengler's book to reading Schopenhauer for the first time. Academics gave it a mixed reception. Sociologist Max Weber described Spengler as a "very ingenious and learned dilettante", while philosopher Karl Popper called the thesis "pointless". Both volumes of "Decline" were published in English by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: In 1924, following the social-economic upheaval and hyperinflation, Spengler entered politics in an effort to bring Reichswehr General Hans von Seeckt to power as the country's leader. The attempt failed and Spengler proved ineffective in practical politics.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: A 1928 "Time" review of the second volume of "Decline" described the immense influence and controversy Spengler's ideas enjoyed during the 1920s: "When the first volume of "The Decline of the West" appeared in Germany a few years ago, thousands of copies were sold. Cultivated European discourse quickly became Spengler-saturated. Spenglerism spurted from the pens of countless disciples. It was imperative to read Spengler, to sympathize or revolt. It still remains so".


title: Oswald Spengler

text: In 1931, he published "Man and Technics", which warned against the dangers of technology and industrialism to culture. He especially pointed to the tendency of Western technology to spread to hostile "Colored races" which would then use the weapons against the West. It was poorly received because of its anti-industrialism. This book contains the well-known Spengler quote "Optimism is cowardice".


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Despite voting for Hitler over Hindenburg in 1932, Spengler found the Führer vulgar. He met Hitler in 1933 and after a lengthy discussion remained unimpressed, saying that Germany did not need a "heroic tenor <nowiki>[</nowiki>"Heldentenor": one of several conventional tenor classifications] but a real hero ["Held"]". He quarreled publicly with Alfred Rosenberg, and his pessimism and remarks about the Führer resulted in isolation and public silence. He further rejected offers from Joseph Goebbels to give public speeches. However, Spengler did become a member of the German Academy that year.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: "The Hour of Decision", published in 1934, was a bestseller, but was later banned for its critique of National Socialism. Spengler's criticisms of liberalism were welcomed by the Nazis, but Spengler disagreed with their biological ideology and anti-Semitism. While racial mysticism played a key role in his own worldview, Spengler had always been an outspoken critic of the racial theories professed by the Nazis and many others in his time, and was not inclined to change his views during and after Hitler's rise to power. Although a German nationalist, Spengler viewed the Nazis as too narrowly German, and not occidental enough to lead the fight against other peoples. The book also warned of a coming world war in which Western Civilization risked being destroyed, and was widely distributed abroad before eventually being banned by the National Socialist German Workers Party in Germany. A "Time" review of "The Hour of Decision" noted Spengler's international popularity as a polemicist, observing that "When Oswald Spengler speaks, many a Western Worldling stops to listen". The review recommended the book for "readers who enjoy vigorous writing", who "will be glad to be rubbed the wrong way by Spengler's harsh aphorisms" and his pessimistic predictions.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Spengler spent his final years in Munich, listening to Beethoven, reading Molière and Shakespeare, buying several thousand books, and collecting ancient Turkish, Persian and Indian weapons. He made occasional trips to the Harz mountains and to Italy. In the spring of 1936 (shortly before his death), he prophetically remarked in a letter to Reichsleiter Hans Frank that "in ten years, a German Reich will probably no longer exist" (""da ja wohl in zehn Jahren ein Deutsches Reich nicht mehr existieren wird!"").


title: Oswald Spengler

text: In the introduction to "The Decline of the West", Spengler cites Johann W. von Goethe and Friedrich Nietzsche as his major influences. Goethe's vitalism and Nietzsche's cultural criticism, in particular, are highlighted in his works.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Spengler enumerates nine Cultures: Ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, Greco-Roman or 'Apollonian', 'Magian' or 'Arabic' (including early and Byzantine Christianity and Islam), Mexican, Western or 'Faustian', and Russian. They interacted with each other in time and space but were distinctive due to 'internal' attributes. According to Spengler, "Cultures are organisms, and world-history is their collective biography."


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Spengler also compares the evolution of Cultures to the different ages of human life, "Every Culture passes through the age-phases of the individual man. Each has its childhood, youth, manhood and old age." When a Culture enters its late stage, Spengler argues, it becomes a 'Civilization' ("Zivilisation"), a petrified body characterized in the modern age by technology, imperialism, and mass society, which he expected to fossilize and decline from the 2000s onward. The first-millennium Near East was, in his view, not a transition between Classical Antiquity, Western Christianity, and Islam, but rather an emerging new Culture he named 'Arabian' or 'Magian', explaining messianic Judaism, early Christianity, Gnosticism, Mandaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Islam as different expressions of a single Culture sharing a unique worldview.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: The great historian of antiquity Eduard Meyer thought highly of Spengler, although he also had some criticisms of him. Spengler's obscurity, intuitiveness, and mysticism were easy targets, especially for the positivists and neo-Kantians who rejected the possibility that there was meaning in world history. The critic and aesthete Count Harry Kessler thought him unoriginal and rather inane, especially in regard to his opinion on Nietzsche. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, however, shared Spengler's cultural pessimism. Spengler's work became an important foundation for social cycle theory.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: In late 1919, Spengler published "Prussianism and Socialism" ("Preußentum und Sozialismus"), an essay based on notes intended for the second volume of "The Decline of the West" in which he argues that German socialism is the correct socialism in contrast to English socialism. In his view, correct socialism has a much more "national" spirit.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: According to Spengler, the West will spend the next and last several hundred years of its existence in a state of Caesarian socialism, when all humans will be into a harmonious and happy totality by a dictator, like an orchestra is synergized into a harmonious totality by its conductor.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: According to some recent critics such as Ishay Landa, "Prussian socialism" has some decidedly capitalistic traits. Spengler declares himself resolutely opposed to labor strikes (Spengler describes them as "the unsocialistic earmark of Marxism"), trade unions ("wage-Bolshevism" in Spengler's terms), progressive taxation or any imposition of taxes on the rich ("dry Bolshevism"), any shortening of the working day (he argues that workers should work even on Sundays), as well as any form of government insurance for sickness, old age, accidents, or unemployment.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: In his private papers, Spengler denounced Nazi anti-Semitism in even stronger terms, wondering "how much envy of the capability of other people in view of one's lack of it lies hidden in anti-Semitism!", and arguing that "when one would rather destroy business and scholarship than see Jews in them, one is an ideologue, i.e., a danger for the nation. Idiotic." Spengler was an admirer of the old Prussian aristocracy and showed contempt for the proletarian and demagogic character of the Nazi party, and considered the Aryan racial doctrine to be nonsense. In 1934, Spengler pronounced the funeral oration for one of the victims of the Night of the Long Knives and retired in 1935 from the board of the highly influential Nietzsche Archive in opposition to the regime.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: Spengler, however, regarded the transformation of ultra-capitalist mass democracies into dictatorial regimes as inevitable, and he had expressed some sympathy for Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascist movement as a first symptom of this development.


title: Oswald Spengler

text: He also considered Judaism to be a "disintegrating element" (zersetzendes Element) that acts destructively "wherever it intervenes" (wo es auch eingreift). In his view, Jews are characterized by a "cynical intelligence" (zynische Intelligenz) and their "money thinking" (Gelddenken). Therefore, they were incapable of adapting to Western culture and represented a foreign body in Europe. He also clarifies in "The Decline of the West" that this is a pattern shared in all civilizations: He mentions how the ancient Jew would have seen the cynical, atheistic Romans of the late Roman empire the same way Westerners today see Jews. Alexander Bein argues that with these characterizations Spengler contributed significantly to the enforcement of Jewish stereotypes in pre-WW2 German circles.


title: Tonsure

text: Tonsure () is the practice of cutting or shaving some or all of the hair on the scalp as a sign of religious devotion or humility. The term originates from the Latin word "" (meaning "clipping" or "shearing") and referred to a specific practice in medieval Catholicism, abandoned by papal order in 1972. Tonsure can also refer to the secular practice of shaving all or part of the scalp to show support or sympathy, or to designate mourning. Current usage more generally refers to cutting or shaving for monks, devotees, or mystics of any religion as a symbol of their renunciation of worldly fashion and esteem.


title: Tonsure

text: Tonsure is still a traditional practice in Catholicism by specific religious orders (with papal permission). It is also commonly used in the Eastern Orthodox Church for newly baptised members and is frequently used for Buddhist novices, monks, and nuns. The complete shaving of one's head bald, or just shortening the hair, exists as a traditional practice in Islam after completion of the "Hajj" and is also practised by a number of Hindu religious orders.


title: Tonsure

text: A pattern in the behavioral disorder trichotillomania (compulsive pulling out of scalp hair) has been named after the pattern of this style.


title: Tonsure

text: Tonsure was not widely known in antiquity. Tradition states that it originated with the disciples of Jesus, who observed the Torah command not to shave the hair around the sides of one's head (Leviticus 19:27). There were three forms of tonsure known in the 7th and 8th centuries:


title: Tonsure

text: St. Germanus I, Patriarch of Constantinople from 715 to 730, writes "The double crown inscribed on the head of the priest through tonsure represents the precious head of the chief-apostle Peter. When he was sent out in the teaching and preaching of the Lord, his head was shaved by those who did not believe his word, as if in mockery. The Teacher Christ blessed this head, changed dishonour into honour, ridicule into praise. He placed on it a crown made not out of precious stones, but one which shines more than gold, topaz, or precious stone – with the stone and rock of faith.” In the Eastern Orthodox Church today, priests, deacons, readers, and other tonsured offices do not have their heads shaved. Rather, four locks of hair are clipped from the top of the head in the shape of a cross to mark their obedience to the Church.


title: Tonsure

text: St. Germanus I writes "The total tonsuring of the head is in imitation of the holy Apostle James, brother of the Lord, and the Apostle Paul, and of the rest."


title: Tonsure

text: In the Latin or Western Rite of the Catholic Church, "first tonsure" was, in medieval times, and generally through 1972, the rite of inducting someone into the clergy and qualifying him for the civil benefits once enjoyed by clerics. Tonsure was a prerequisite for receiving the minor and major orders. Failing to maintain tonsure was the equivalent of attempting to abandon one's clerical state, and in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, any cleric in minor orders (or simply tonsured) who did not resume the tonsure within a month after being warned by his Ordinary lost the clerical state. Over time, the appearance of tonsure varied, ending up for non-monastic clergy as generally consisting of a symbolic cutting of a few tufts of hair at first tonsure in the Sign of the Cross and in wearing a bare spot on the back of the head which varied according to the degree of orders. It was not supposed to be less than the size of a communicant's host, even for a tonsuratus, someone simply tonsured, and the approximate size for a priest's tonsure was the size of a priest's host. Countries that were not Catholic had exceptions to this rule, especially in the English-speaking world. In England and America, for example, the bare spot was dispensed with, likely because of the persecutions that could arise from being a part of the Catholic clergy, but the ceremonious cutting of the hair in the first clerical tonsure was always required. In accordance with Pope Paul VI's "motu proprio" "Ministeria quaedam" of 15 August 1972, "first tonsure is no longer conferred".


title: Tonsure

text: Apart from this general clerical tonsure, some Western Rite monastic orders, for example Carthusians and Trappists, employed a very full version of tonsure, shaving the head entirely bald and keeping only a narrow ring of short hair, sometimes called "the monastic crown" (see "Roman tonsure", above), from the time of entrance into the monastic novitiate for all monks, whether destined for service as priests or brothers.


title: Tonsure

text: Today in Eastern Orthodoxy and in the Eastern Catholic Churches of Byzantine Rite, there are three types of tonsure: baptismal, monastic, and clerical. It always consists of the cutting of four locks of hair in a cruciform pattern: at the front of head as the celebrant says "In the Name of the Father", at the back of head at the words "and the Son", and on either side of the head at the words "and the Holy Spirit". In all cases, the hair is allowed to grow back; the tonsure as such is not adopted as a hairstyle.


title: Tonsure

text: Baptismal tonsure is performed during the rite of Holy Baptism as a first sacrificial offering by the newly baptized. This tonsure is always performed, whether the one being baptized is an infant or an adult.


title: Tonsure

text: Monastic tonsure (of which there are three grades: Rassophore, Stavrophore and the Great Schema), is the rite of initiation into the monastic state, symbolic of cutting off of self-will. Orthodox monks traditionally never cut their hair or beards after receiving the monastic tonsure as a sign of the consecration of their lives to God (reminiscent of the Vow of the Nazirite).


title: Tonsure

text: Clerical tonsure is the equivalent of the "first tonsure" in the Latin church. It is done immediately prior to ordination to the minor order of reader but is not repeated at subsequent ordinations. This led to a once common usage that one was, for instance, "tonsured a reader", although technically the tonsure occurs prior to the prayer of ordination within the ordination rite.


title: Tonsure

text: Since the issuing of "Ministeria quaedam" in 1972, certain institutes have been authorized to use the first clerical tonsure, such as the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (1988), the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (1990), and the Personal Apostolic Administration of Saint John Mary Vianney (2001).


title: Tonsure

text: Although the tonsure itself is obsolete, the wearing of a skull cap, called a zuchetto, in church to keep the head warm, which the fuller form of clerical tonsure led to, still survives. The zuchetto is worn by the pope (in white), cardinals (in red) and bishops (in purple) both during and outside of formal religious ceremonies. Priests may wear a simple black zuchetto, only outside of religious services, though this is almost never seen except on abbots, who continue to wear the black zuchetto, or abbots of the Order of Canons Regular of Premontre, who wear white. Another congregation of Canons Regular, the Canons Regular of the Lateran, wear a white zuchetto as part of their proper habit. Some priests who held special titles (certain ranks of monsignori and some canons, for instance) formerly wore black zuchettos with red or purple piping, but this too has fallen out of use except in a few, extremely rare cases.


title: Tonsure

text: Some monastic orders and individual monasteries still maintain the tradition of a monastic tonsure. While not required, it is still a common practice of Latin Rite friars, such as the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word. Some references compare the tonsure to the crown of thorns worn by Christ at the crucifixion.


title: Tonsure

text: Tonsure is usually the part of three rites of passages in the life of the individual in Hinduism. The first is called Chudakarana (IAST: Cūḍākaraṇa, Sanskrit: चूडाकरण; literally, "rite of tonsure"), also known as "choulam", "caula", "chudakarma", or "mundana", marks the child's first haircut, typically the shaving of the head. The mother dresses up, sometimes in her wedding sari, and with the father present, the baby's head is shaved and nails trimmed, washed and dressed in new clothes. Sometimes, a tuft of hair is left to cover the soft spot near the top of the baby's head. Both boys and girls typically go through this ceremony, sometimes near a temple or a river, but it is not mandatory in Hinduism.


title: Tonsure

text: The significance of Chudakarana rite of passage is the baby's cyclical step to hygiene and cleanliness. The ritual is typically done about the first birthday, but some texts recommend that it be completed before the third or the seventh year. Sometimes, this ritual is combined with the rite of passage of Upanayana, initiation to formal schooling.


title: Tonsure

text: The second rite of passage in Hinduism that sometimes involves tonsure is at the Upanayana, the "sanskara" marking a child's entry into school.


title: Tonsure

text: Another rite of passage where tonsure is practiced by Hindus is after the death and completing the last rites of an immediate family member, that is father, mother, brother, sister, spouse or child. This ritual is regionally found in India among male mourners, who shave their heads as a sign of bereavement. Until a few decades ago, many Hindu communities, especially the upper castes, forced widows to undergo the ritual of tonsure and shun good clothes and ornaments, in order to make them unattractive to men.


title: Tonsure

text: According to Jamanadas, tonsure was originally a Buddhist custom and was adopted by Hinduism. However, Pandey and others trace the practice to Sanskrit texts dated to have been composed before the birth of Buddha, which mention tonsure as a rite of passage.


title: Tonsure

text: In Buddhism, tonsure is a part of the rite of "pabbajja" and also a part of becoming a Bhikkhu (monk) or Bhikkhuni (nun). This involves shaving the head and face. This tonsure is renewed as often as required to keep the head cleanly shaven.


title: Tonsure

text: The purification process of the "metzora" (one afflicted with "tzaraath") involved the ritual shaving of the "metzorah's" entire body except for the afflicted locations.


title: Tonsure

text: In a effort to distinguish themselves from ancient practices of tonsure associated with idolatry, by doing the inverse, some hasidic Orthodox Jewish males do not shave the corners of their beards or scalps with straight blades, as described in Leviticus 19:27.


title: Tonsure

text: Partial tonsure is forbidden in Islam. Muhammad forbade shaving one's hair on some parts of the head while letting it grow on other parts, as in tonsure. However, shaving the head entirely is allowed. The proscription is detailed in the hadith.


title: Tonsure

text: From Ibnu 'Umar (he says), the Prophet – peace be upon him – forbids the Qoza‘ (i.e. shaving hair on some parts of the head while let it grow on other parts).


title: Tonsure

text: Hadith Bukhori V/2214 no.5577 about "Al-Qoza‘", and Hadith Muslim III/1675 no.2120, about "the Proscription of Al-Qoza‘")


title: Tonsure

text: From Ibnu 'Umar (he says), the Prophet – peace be upon him – saw a boy whose head shaven on some parts and let the hair grow on other parts. Then, the Prophet commands, "Shave the head entirely or let the hair grow entirely"


title: Tonsure

text: Among the Merovingians, whose rulers were the "long-haired kings", the ancient custom remained that an unsuccessful pretender or a dethroned king would be tonsured. Then he had to retire to a monastery, but sometimes this lasted only until his hair grew back. Thus Grimoald the Elder, the son of Pippin of Landen, and Dagobert II's guardian, seized the throne for his own son and had Dagobert tonsured, thus marking him unfit for kingship, and exiled.


title: Tonsure

text: The practice of tonsure, coupled with castration, was common for deposed emperors and their sons in Byzantium from around the 8th century, prior to which disfigurement, usually by blinding, was the normal practice.


title: Rage (King novel)

text: Rage (written as Getting It On; the title was changed before publication) is a psychological thriller novel by American writer Stephen King, the first he published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was first published in 1977 and then, it was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus "The Bachman Books". The novel describes a school shooting, and has been associated with actual high school shooting incidents in the 1980s and 1990s. In response, King allowed the novel to fall out of print, and in 2013, he published a non-fiction, anti-firearms violence essay titled "Guns".


title: Rage (King novel)

text: Charlie Decker, a Maine high school senior, is called to a meeting with his principal about a previous incident in which he struck his chemistry teacher with a pipe wrench, leading to the teacher's hospitalization and Charlie's suspension. Charlie then subjects the principal to a series of insulting remarks, resulting in his expulsion. Charlie storms out of the office and retrieves a pistol from his locker, then sets the contents of his locker on fire. He then returns to his classroom and fatally shoots his algebra teacher, Miss Jean Underwood. The fire triggers an alarm, but Charlie forces his classmates to stay in the room, killing a history teacher, Mr. Peter Vance, when he attempts to enter. As the other students and teachers evacuate the school, the police and media arrive at the scene.


title: Rage (King novel)

text: Over the following four hours, Charlie toys with various authority figures who attempt to negotiate with him, including the principal, the school psychologist, and the local police chief. Charlie gives them certain commands, threatening to kill students if they do not comply. Charlie also admits to his hostages that he does not know what has compelled him to commit his deeds, believing he will regret them when the situation is over. As his fellow students start identifying with Charlie, he unwittingly turns his class into a sort of psychotherapy group, causing his schoolmates to semi-voluntarily tell embarrassing secrets regarding themselves and each other.


title: Rage (King novel)

text: Interspersed throughout are narrative flashbacks to Charlie's troubled childhood, particularly his tumultuous relationship with his abusive father Carl. Several notable incidents include a violent disagreement between two female students and a police sniper's attempt to shoot Charlie through the heart. However, Charlie survives due to having earlier put the combination lock from his locker into the breast pocket of his shirt, where it stops the bullet.


title: Rage (King novel)

text: Charlie finally comes to the realization that only one student is really being held against his will: a seeming "Big Man On Campus" named Ted Jones, who is harboring his own secrets. Ted realizes this and attempts to escape the classroom, but the other students brutally assault him, driving him into a battered catatonic state. At 1:00 p.m., Charlie releases the students, but Ted is unable to move under his own power and remains. When the police chief enters the classroom, the now-unarmed Charlie moves as if to shoot him, attempting suicide by cop. The chief shoots Charlie, but he survives and is found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a psychiatric hospital in Augusta, Maine until he can answer for his actions.


title: Rage (King novel)

text: The final chapters contain an inter-office memo concerning Ted's treatment and prognosis at the hospital where he is now a patient, and a letter from one of Charlie's friends describing assorted developments in the students' lives during the months following this incident. The story ends with Charlie addressing the reader: "That's the end. I have to turn off the light now. Good night."


title: Rage (King novel)

text: The plot of "Rage" vaguely resembles actual high school shootings and incidents of hostage-taking that have transpired since its publication. As a result, King became uncomfortable with the idea of having it remain in print, for fear that it might inspire further such occurrences ("["Rage" is] now out of print, and a good thing"). The novel has been allegedly associated with the following events:


title: Rage (King novel)

text: When King decided to let "Rage" fall out of print in the United States, it remained available only as part of "The Bachman Books". In contrast, the other novels that appeared in that compilation – "The Long Walk", "Roadwork", and "The Running Man" – are available separately in the US. "Rage" remained available in the United Kingdom and other countries in "The Bachman Books" for a time, but later appeared to become unavailable. New editions of "The Bachman Books" do not include "Rage".


title: Rage (King novel)

text: In a footnote to the preface of the novel "Blaze", dated January 30, 2007, King wrote of "Rage": "Now out of print, and a good thing."


title: Rage (King novel)

text: King said, in his keynote address at the VEMA Annual Meeting on May 26, 1999: "The Carneal incident was enough for me. I asked my publisher to take the damned thing out of print. They concurred." King went on to describe his view on this subject, which acknowledged the role that cultural or artistic products such as "Rage" play in influencing individuals, particularly troubled youths, while also declaring that artists and writers should not be denied the aesthetic opportunity to draw upon their own culture—which is suffused with violence, according to King—in their work. King went on to describe his inspiration for stories such as "Rage", which drew heavily upon his own frustrations and pains as a high school student.


title: Rage (King novel)

text: In an article on the ominous writings of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho for "Entertainment Weekly", King said: "Certainly in this sensitized day and age, my own college writing—including a short story called 'Cain Rose Up' and the novel "Rage"—would have raised red flags, and I'm certain someone would have tabbed me as mentally ill because of them..." After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, he elaborated in a non-fiction essay, titled "Guns" (2013), on why he let "Rage" go out of print. King's website states: "All profits from 'Guns' will benefit the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence."


title: Jay Sean

text: Kamaljit Singh Jhooti (born 26 March 1981), better known by the stage name Jay Sean, is an English singer, songwriter, record producer and arranger. He debuted in the UK's Asian Underground scene as a member of the Rishi Rich Project with "Dance with You", which reached No. 12 on the UK Singles Chart in 2003. This led to him being signed to Virgin Records and having two UK top 10 hits as a solo artist in 2004: "Eyes on You" at No. 6 and "Stolen" at #4. They were included in his critically acclaimed debut album "Me Against Myself" which, though only moderately successful in the UK, sold more than two million copies across Asia and remains his most successful album to date. Alongside the Rishi Rich Project, Sean was a pioneer of Bhangra-R&B fusion, which his debut album helped popularize among the worldwide South Asian diaspora.


title: Jay Sean

text: He eventually left Virgin in 2006 and founded his own independent label, Jayded Records. After a gap of nearly four years, he returned in 2008 with "Ride It", which reached No. 11 in the UK and topped the charts in several Eastern European countries, including Romania where it was one of the best-selling singles of the year. It was followed by hits such as "Maybe", which reached No. 7 on the Japan Hot 100, and "Tonight". They were included in his second album, "My Own Way", which became his most successful album on the UK Albums Chart, reaching , and topped the UK R&B Chart. At around this time, he began increasingly incorporating electropop sounds into his R&B music.


title: Jay Sean

text: From 2009 up to 2014, he was signed to Cash Money Records. In 2009, his American debut single "Down" topped the "Billboard" Hot 100, making him the first solo artist of South Asian origin and first UK urban act to top the Hot 100. It was the seventh-best selling song of 2009, having sold more than three million copies in the United States that year, eventually reaching six million sales in the United States, making him the most successful British/European male urban artist in US chart history at the time. As of 2011, it is the fifth best selling song by a British artist in the digital era. It was soon followed by another hit, "Do You Remember", which has sold more than a million copies in the US, and entered the top ten on the Hot 100, making him the first male act since Chingy in 2003 to "simultaneously appear in the Hot 100 top 10 with his first two charting singles." They were included in his American-debut album "All or Nothing", which debuted at No. 37 on the US "Billboard" 200 and reached No. 11 on the Japan Oricon Albums Chart. Sean has also been a featured artist on several hits including "What Happened to Us" by Australian singer Jessica Mauboy, which charted within the top 20 on the ARIA singles chart and certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. Sean was ranked No. 35 in "Billboard"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Hot 100 Artists of 2009.


title: Jay Sean

text: Jay Sean was born as Kamaljit Singh Jhooti (; ) on 26 March 1981 in Hounslow, West London into an Indian Punjabi Sikh family to parents Sharan Singh Jhooti and Bindi Kaur Jhooti. He was raised in Southall, West London and displayed musical talent at an early age. At age 11, he and his cousin Pritpal Rupra formed a hip hop duo named "Compulsive Disorder". His stage name at the time was MC "Nicky J", with the "J" being derived from the first letter of his last name "Jhooti". He eventually came to be known by the nickname "Jay" among his friends.


title: Jay Sean

text: He was a student at Latymer Upper School, the same private school that Hugh Grant, Heston Blumenthal and Lily Cole had attended. He left the school in 1997. He finished his GCSEs as a "straight-A student" and then completed his A Levels with an A grade in Biology and B grades in Mathematics and Chemistry. He later enrolled in Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry at Queen Mary University of London, to study Medicine before he dropped out in 2003 to pursue a singing career. For his music career, he chose the stage name Jay Sean; "Jay" being his nickname, while "Sean" is derived from "Shaan"—a nickname he was called at home by his grandmother—which means "shining star" or "pride" in the Punjabi language.


title: Jay Sean

text: After Sean's track "One Minute" fell into the hands of producer Rishi Rich, the Rishi Rich Project was formed (consisting of Rich, Sean and Juggy D) in 2003. Their first taste of UK chart success was the Asian underground song, "Dance with You (Nachna Tere Naal)", which became a Top 20 hit, peaking at #12. This led to Sean signing a £1m deal with Virgin Records, under their label Relentless Records. His second single, "Eyes on You", was his first solo effort and became a Top 10 hit, peaking at #6. His third single, "Stolen", peaked at #4, with Bollywood actress Bipasha Basu making an appearance in the video. His debut album, "Me Against Myself," was released in 2004 and received much critical praise and acclaim. Sean was referred to as an "Asian sensation" and was praised for his experimental, creative fusion of contemporary R&B, British hip hop and Indian music. The title track in particular was considered innovative, featuring two alter egos of himself, one an R&B singer and the other a rapper, clashing in a rap battle.


title: Jay Sean

text: Despite initially failing to reach the top 20 on the UK Albums Chart (where it peaked at #29), the album gradually managed to sell 100,000 copies in the UK and went on to become a substantial hit in India, selling over two million copies there. He made a brief appearance in the 2005 Bollywood film "Kyaa Kool Hai Hum", providing the song "Dil Mera (My Heart)" to the soundtrack, based on "One Night" from his own debut album. Beyond India, the album sold over 300,000 copies across other parts of the world, including Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong. His performance of tracks from "Me Against Myself" on MTV Asia (alongside the Rishi Rich Project) had a television audience as large as 165 million viewers. It helped establish Sean as a major recognised artist across Asia and among the worldwide Desi diaspora, and remains his most successful album to date. With his debut album, Sean was influential in popularising Indian-R&B fusion sounds in Asian underground and Indian pop music. He recorded a 16 track album which was scrapped because Virgin felt the market had changed to where it was all about Pop music. In February 2006, after several delays of his second album, he left Virgin Records.


title: Jay Sean

text: After parting ways with Virgin Records, Sean continued to work on his second album, which was initially named after the title track "Deal With It", but the song ended up being given to Corbin Bleu. Sean's background vocals remain on Bleu's version of the track. The song "Deal With It" earned Sean a BMI Songwriter Award and later inspired the 2009 single "Juliette" by South Korean band Shinee.


title: Jay Sean

text: Sean returned in late 2007 with the new single "Ride It", which was the first single from his second album "My Own Way". It was to be the first album released as a joint-venture between his own label Jayded and 2Point9 Records. The video for "Ride It", released in early 2008, featured Sean with a new style after being out of the limelight for nearly three and a half years. "My Own Way" debuted at No. 6 in the official UK Albums Chart and generated two more UK top 20 singles, "Ride It" and "Maybe". On the back of this Sean received two MOBO Award nominations, for Best UK Male (alongside Dizzee Rascal, Taio Cruz, Wiley and Sway) and Best R'n'B/Soul (alongside Usher, Estelle, Ne-Yo and Chris Brown). "Ride It" was successful in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia, Turkey and Romania, where it became one of the three best-selling singles of the year. The song was remixed by Kosovan DJ Regard in 2019 and became a viral hit on the TikTok app. "Maybe" was his most successful single in Japan, where it reached No. 7 on the Japan Hot 100 Singles. A Mandarin Chinese cover version of "Maybe" by Coco Lee has been released in China. Sean sang a Hindi version of the album "My Own Way" for release in India. The album sold more than 350,000 copies across the world.


title: Jay Sean

text: "Touch" Magazine in the UK described him as "the UK's answer to Ne-Yo," while The Independent called him "...an urban legend in the making." In August 2008, Sean co-hosted London radio station Choice FM's Breakfast show a week in which he only performed previously unheard tracks, including a song whose title was left to the listeners to decide. The unknown track was later confirmed to be called "Tonight" and is included in "My Own Way: Deluxe Edition". Sean was confirmed for the third series of Celebrity Scissorhands in October 2008 but he withdrew before the show was aired for unclear reasons.


title: Jay Sean

text: American hip-hop oriented record label Cash Money Records distributed via Universal Republic Records making him the first male British Asian singer to sign with an American label. His American-debut single was "Down" featuring American rapper and label mate Lil Wayne. It topped the "Billboard" Hot 100, replacing The Black Eyed Peas. This made him the first British artist to top the Hot 100 since Freddie Mercury of Queen in 1980, and the first solo artist of Asian descent to do so. "Down" has sold more than six million copies in the United States, and three million digital copies in the US, making the song the best-selling single by a British/European male artist in North America since Elton John's "Candle in the Wind" in 1997. In addition, "Down" has received a large airplay of two billion listener impressions on radio worldwide. As of November 2011, "Down" has sold 4.1 million copies in the US, which is currently the fifth best-selling song by a British artist in the digital era. In November 2009, Sean's next single from his album, "Do You Remember", was released and featured Jamaican dancehall superstar Sean Paul plus US Southern crunk rapper Lil Jon. It entered the Hot 100 top ten on the week of 9 January 2009, breaking "a three-week streak of no titles moving into the top 10" since December 2009. Like its predecessor, it has sold more than a million copies in the United States.


title: Jay Sean

text: At the 2009 UK Asian Music Awards (AMA), Sean won three awards, including "Best Male", "Best Urban Act" and "Best Album", the latter for his second album, "My Own Way". He met with Rishi Rich, Juggy D and H-Dhami during the ceremony. After the award, he was in America for the first time since signing with Cash Money, he announced through an interview with MTV IGGY that he was recording five new songs for his album, then titled "My Own Way (U.S. edition)", one of which was his American-debut single with Lil Wayne, later titled "Down". Sean discussed a collaboration with Akon at the 2009 Grammy Awards, in addition to recording a song with Nadine Coyle and told viewers that the album will be released in third quarter of 2009. The album title was later changed to "All or Nothing", and featured brand new songs and some of the songs from "My Own Way". Despite success with two singles from the album, the album itself only debuted at No. 37 on the US "Billboard" 200. It was his lowest-charting entry on the UK Albums Chart, debuting there at #62. Despite this, it has become his highest-charting album in Japan, reaching No. 11 on the Oricon Albums Chart.


title: Jay Sean

text: Sean was featured on a song called "Written on Her" alongside Birdman for the CEO's project, released on 23 June 2009 on iTunes. Sean has featured on Skepta's single "Lush" released on 10 June 2009 on iTunes. On 2 February 2010, Kevin Rudolf's single "I Made It (Cash Money Heroes)", featured Sean alongside Birdman and Lil Wayne, was released. In early December 2009, it was confirmed that he has collaborated with Justin Timberlake and Esmée Denters on a song, "Love Dealer". There have been talks of collaborations with other American artists such as Ashley Tisdale, Taylor Swift, Nicole Scherzinger, Rihanna, Usher, and Jay-Z & Beyoncé.


title: Jay Sean

text: Sean was in early September 2009 nominated for the "30 Under 30" award. At the 2009 UK Urban Music Awards, he won the Best Collaboration award for "Down" alongside Lil Wayne. In early December 2009, he was ranked No. 35 in "Billboard"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Hot 100 Artists of the year. On 11 December 2009, he became the first South Asian origin artist since Freddie Mercury to perform at Madison Square Garden, as part of the Jingle Ball concert, alongside beatboxer MC Zani. Sean's performance "had the entire crowd – parents and children, teens and twenty-somethings – dancing."


title: Jay Sean

text: Sean began working on his fourth album and second with Cash Money Records, "Freeze Time" in July 2010. At the time, he stated that he had completed roughly 75 percent of the album and that guests included Lil Wayne, Pitbull, Nicki Minaj and Mary J. Blige. Three singles, "2012 (It Ain't the End)", "Hit The Lights" and "Like This, Like That" were released in support of the album. Sean also co-headlined with Joe Jonas on the Joe Jonas & Jay Sean Tour with JoJo as the opening act. Sean released a mixtape titled "The Mistress" in September 2011, spawning a single and a music video for "Where Do We Go".


title: Jay Sean

text: "Freeze Time" was scrapped due to legal issues in 2011 and Sean began working on a new, be more R&B influenced album altogether. The first official single from the album was announced to be "I'm All Yours", which features American and Latin artist Pitbull. Officially released in May 2012, the song peaked at a disappointing #85 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song's best performance was in Australia where it peaked at 13 and was certified as Gold. The second single of the album "So High", produced by DJ Afrojack, was released in October 2012. Later in the same month, both singles were included in an EP, titled "So High", with "Sex 101" featuring Cash Money rapper Tyga (originally included in "The Mistress") and an exclusive bonus track "Patience".


title: Jay Sean

text: In February 2013, Sean announced he would be changing the title of the album from "Worth It all" to "Neon", and his long delayed fourth studio album was released in July 2013. Both of the album singles, "Where You Are" and "Mars" featuring American rapper Rick Ross, failed to break into the Billboard Hot 100.


title: Jay Sean

text: In January 2014, Sean released the lead song "Take That Off" from his second mixtape "The Mistress II". Alongside releasing the first single in October 2014, "Tears in the Ocean" which received acclaimed reviews from audiences, Sean left Cash Money Records, citing that he wanted to go in a different direction artistically. On 14 November 2014, music website Djbooth premiered the second single "All I Want". "The Mistress II" was released on 18 November with a video for "All I Want" premiered hours later. A video for the third single "Jameson" was released on 23 December, and it was announced that an EP of "The Mistress II" featuring the original and acoustic remixed versions of each of the third singles from the mixtape would be released on 26 December.


title: Jay Sean

text: In 2015, Sean reunited with fellow UK artists Rishi Rich and Juggy D, restart the Rishi Rich project, together, they released the single: "Freak".


title: Jay Sean

text: On 5 February 2016, Sean released his first 'official' single since his departure from Cash Money Records, title "Make My Love Go", the single featuring Sean Paul who also featured in Sean's 2010 single "Do You Remember", the single marked Sean's first appearance on charts since the 2012 single "I'm All Yours". Sean also collaborated with various well-known DJs: DJ Antoine, Hardwell, DJ Prostyle, Alex Gaudino, as well as artists Christian Rich, Stafford Brothers and Seeb. The single "Thinking About You" with Hardwell received favourable and positive reviews from critics and audiences.


title: Jay Sean

text: In 2017, Sean released the singles "Do You Love Me" and "What You Want" featuring Davido. He followed these in 2018 with the singles "Emergency" and "Say Something".


title: Jay Sean

text: Towards the end of 2018, Sean released four songs: "Need To Know", "Now Or Later", "Say Something" and "Why Why How Why".


title: Jay Sean

text: In 2020, Sean collaborated with Indian pop singer Guru Randhawa and released the single "Surma Surma". Also, along with Rishi Rich, Sean released a single "Nakhre", also titled as "Eyes on You 2" which reached No.1 on BBC Asian Chart.


title: Jay Sean

text: Sean has worked with BBC Blast doing Q&A's on tour events in an effort to "give something back". He has supported the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) in the charity event Partnership Walk and Run by performing in Regent's Park in 2004 and 2009. During this time, he also visited different UK schools to inspire and encourage schoolchildren to get involved in music; at one school, he met a young Zayn Malik and encouraged him to sing on stage for the first time.


title: Jay Sean

text: In 2009, Sean performed in Justin Timberlake's charity concert to raise funds for the Shriners Hospital for Children, alongside artists such as MC Zani, Taylor Swift and Alicia Keys. It became one of the highest-earning charity events of the year, raising more than $9 million.


title: Jay Sean

text: In 2012, Sean became a part of Child Hunger Ends Here campaign along with artists Owl City and Jewel. For this purpose he recorded a song named "Here's Hope" which was available from the Child Hunger Ends Here website. He also appeared in a PETA ad campaign, encouraging potential pet owners to adopt from shelters rather than buy from stores.


title: Jay Sean

text: Sean married singer Thara in August 2009. Their daughter, Ayva Loveen Kaur Jhooti, was born on 13 December 2013. They had a son named Aaryan on 15 August 2018.


title: Ali G

text: Alistair Leslie Graham, better known as Ali G, is a satirical fictional character created and performed by English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. A faux-streetwise poseur from Staines, Ali G speaks in rude boy-style Multicultural London English and brags about coming up "in da heart of da Staines ghetto" and leading a local street gang, "Da West Staines Massiv." He conducts interviews with unsuspecting subjects who do not realise they have been set up.


title: Ali G

text: Ali G first appeared as the "voice of da yoof" on Channel 4's "The 11 O'Clock Show" in 1998, and he subsequently became the title character of "Da Ali G Show" in the early 2000s, and was also the title character of the film "Ali G Indahouse". In a 2001 poll by Channel 4, Ali G was ranked eighth on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters.


title: Ali G

text: In a 2007 interview with "The Daily Telegraph", Baron Cohen announced that Ali G, along with Borat, had been retired. However, Ali G returned at the 2012 British Comedy Awards to accept Baron Cohen's Outstanding Achievement Award, causing controversy by making jokes about Kate Middleton and Jimmy Savile. Ali G returned to television with "Ali G Rezurection" in 2014. "Rezurection" features new footage of Ali G introducing old highlights of "Da Ali G Show", while Borat reappeared for "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" in 2020.


title: Ali G

text: Ali G is a fictional stereotype of a British suburban male "chav" also known as Alex; who imitates inner-city urban British hip hop culture and British Jamaican culture, particularly through hip hop, reggae, drum and bass and jungle music, as well as speaking in rude boy-style Multicultural London English from Jamaican Patois. Ali G was part of a group called the "West Staines Massiv", and grew up near Staines in Langley. He also lived part of his life in Staines.


title: Ali G

text: Baron Cohen has stated that BBC Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood was an influence on the development of his character; Westwood used to host Radio 1's "Rap Show" and became known for speaking in a Multicultural London English dialect. Ali G's middle-class credentials mirror Westwood's, as the latter was brought up in Lowestoft as a bishop's son. Prior to his character's first appearance on "The 11 O'Clock Show", Baron Cohen had portrayed an early incarnation of him named MC Jocelyn Cheadle-Hume on a show he presented called "F2F", which ran on the satellite channel Granada Talk TV. While in character, Baron Cohen chatted to a group of skateboarders and realised that people could be led to believe his character was real; he then filmed a number of segments which were ordered off-air by London Weekend Television.


title: Ali G

text: Ali G, a faux-streetwise poseur with a deeply stereotypical view of the world, first came to prominence on Channel 4's "The 11 O'Clock Show" as the "voice of da yoof" in 1998. He interviewed various public figures in the United Kingdom, always either embarrassing his interviewee by displaying a mixture of uninformed political incorrectness, or getting the interviewee to agree to some shocking inaccuracy or insult.


title: Ali G

text: Other examples of his bold interviewing style include getting Lindsay Urwin, the Bishop of Horsham, to admit that God created the universe and then asking him, "And since then, [God]'s just chilled?" Ali G asked the Bishop about God's appearance, to which the Bishop replied, "Well, he's sort of Jesus-shaped." During an interview with James Ferman, former director of the British Board of Film Classification, Ali G asks whether his made-up vulgarities would restrict a film to an over-18 audience, and suggests that film censorship be performed by younger persons who understand contemporary slang. In an interview with the chairman of the Arts Council of England, Gerry Robinson, Ali G's first question was, "Why is the arts so – excuse me French, but – crap?"


title: Ali G

text: Ali G appeared in the 2003 short film "Spyz", directed by James Bobin. It showcases Ali G as James Bond in a series of inexplicably occurring action and sex scenes. In 2004, Ali G gave the commencement speech at Harvard.


title: Ali G

text: Ali G was in a series of ads for the 2005–06 NBA season, in which he used his brand of off-kilter journalism to interview various NBA stars. The spots were directed by Spike Lee.


title: Ali G

text: Ali G was also featured in the music video "Music" by Madonna as her limo driver. He complains that her "babylons" are not as big as they appear to be on TV and calls her "Maradona" when asking to be in her next video.


title: Ali G

text: Baron Cohen received the Outstanding Achievement Award at the 2012 British Comedy Awards and appeared in character as Ali G to accept the trophy.


title: Ali G

text: Ali G appeared at the 88th Academy Awards. Baron Cohen did not tell the ceremony's producers beforehand that he would appear on stage as his Ali G character instead of himself. He and his wife, actress Isla Fisher, locked themselves in the bathroom for 40 minutes to secretly put on his costume, after telling people he had food poisoning.


title: Ali G

text: Ali G is the leader of a fictional gang called "Da West Staines Massif", who currently lives in his grandmother's garage in a semi-detached house at 36 Cherry Blossom Close, in the heart of the "Staines Ghetto". He was educated at what he calls "da Matthew Arnold Skool", which is a real school in Staines.


title: Ali G

text: Staines, a commuter town to the west of London, is different from the inner city ghetto that Ali G claims. In the same comic vein, he also makes reference to stockbroker belt towns in the area, such as Egham, Langley and Englefield Green with which he contrasts Staines. Despite the incongruous nature of his hometown, he purports to exemplify inner city culture. Ali's full name is later revealed to be Alistair Leslie Graham (revealed in the eponymous film, much to his embarrassment).


title: Ali G

text: Ali G speaks a comical patois in keeping with his delusions of being black with Jamaican ancestry and peppered with such catchphrases as "Aight" or "Aiii" (alright), "Booyakasha", "Big up Yaself", "Wagwaan", "West Side", "Batty Boy" "Respek", "For Real", "Punani", "Check It", "Wicked" and "Keep It Real". His trademark hand gesture closely resembles the "dip snap".


title: Ali G

text: Although Baron Cohen has repeatedly stated that Ali G is a parody of suburban, privileged youth acting in a way that they think is typical of black people, some commentators have opined that the force of the humour is derived from stereotypes of blacks, not poseur whites. According to this view of the character, the suburban background written into Ali G's character serves as a false alibi. The sociologist Tara Alturi observed that, by presenting as racially ambiguous, Ali G both exploits minstrel show racial stereotypes for humour and ridicules white minstrel expropriation.


title: Ali G

text: The comedian Felix Dexter has said that he appreciated the humour of an innocent ignoramus confronting an expert with neither understanding the other, but felt that "a lot of the humour is laughing at black street culture and it is being celebrated because it allows the liberal middle classes to laugh at that culture in a safe context where they can retain their sense of political correctness". Fellow comedian Victoria Wood criticised Baron Cohen's style of comedy, saying that his "endless setting up of victims" was "tiresome" and akin to "laughing at lunatics".


title: Good Boys (film)

text: Good Boys is a 2019 American coming-of-age comedy film directed by Gene Stupnitsky, in his directorial debut, and written by Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg. It stars Jacob Tremblay, Brady Noon and Keith L. Williams as three sixth-graders who find themselves in a series of misadventures as they try to attend a party hosted by their popular classmates. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg produced the film through their Point Grey Pictures company.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: The film premiered at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. on March 11, 2019 and was theatrically released in the United States on August 16, 2019 by Universal Pictures. It received generally positive reviews and was a box office success, grossing $111 million worldwide on a $20 million budget.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: A trio of best friends, Max, Thor and Lucas enter sixth grade facing their own personal dilemmas: Max has a crush on his classmate Brixlee, Lucas learns his parents are getting divorced, and bullying from his peers discourages Thor from pursuing his love of singing. When presented with the opportunity to kiss Brixlee at a party hosted by popular student Soren, Max and his friends use his father's valued drone to spy on his teenage neighbor Hannah in an attempt to learn proper kissing. The plan goes wrong and results in the drone being destroyed and the boys in possession of Hannah's ecstasy. To avoid getting grounded, they cut school to buy a new drone at the local mall, with Hannah and her friend Lily in pursuit.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: Amid a series of escapades, Max, Thor and Lucas reach the mall, but learn that Hannah and Lily bought the drone and will only give it to the boys in exchange for their ecstasy. Having surrendered the drugs to a police officer, the boys manage to obtain new ecstasy from Hannah's ex-boyfriend Benji and trade it for the drone. Nevertheless, Max is unable to prevent his father from finding out that he used the drone and is grounded. An argument ensues between the friends and the three go their separate ways, although Max takes the blame for what transpired to prevent Thor and Lucas from getting in trouble. When Lucas speaks to his parents about the potential end of his friendships, they advise him that he, Max, and Thor are growing apart.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: That night, Lucas convinces Max to sneak out to attend the party, tricking Max and Thor into meeting up again in the process. Max successfully kisses Brixlee while Thor and Lucas re-encounter Hannah and Lily, the latter revealed as Soren's sister, who encourage Thor to continue his passion for singing. In the ensuing weeks, Thor lands the role of Stacee Jaxx in the school's amateur production of "Rock of Ages", Lucas joins the anti-bullying group at the school, and Max begins dating his classmate Scout after his relationships with Brixlee and then her friend Taylor end in heartbreak and his grounding ends. Following a performance of the school musical, Max, Thor and Lucas reconcile and promise to remain in each other's lives.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: Co-writer and co-producer Lee Eisenberg also appears as a character named Leigh Eisenberg. Mariessa Portelance plays Amy Newman, Max's mother, Enid-Raye Adams plays Thor's mother, Benita Ha plays Lily's and Soren's mother, and Lina Renna plays Thor's sister Annabelle. The boys' classmates Marcus and Atticus are played by Christian Darrel Scott and Chance Hurtsfield, respectively, while Alexander Calvert plays fraternity brother Daniel. Stephen Merchant makes an uncredited cameo appearance as Claude, the man who purchases a sex doll from the boys.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: On August 16, 2017, it was announced that Seth Rogen's Point Grey Pictures and Good Universe would produce a comedy film by writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky in their directorial debuts. The film was produced by Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Nathan Kahane and Joe Drake. In March 2018, Jacob Tremblay was cast in the film, titled "Good Boys", to which Universal Pictures bought the distribution rights.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: The film was shot in Vancouver, Maple Ridge, Surrey, Langley, and Abbotsford in British Columbia, Canada. Stupnitsky received sole director credit.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: Jonathan Furmanski, who had worked on "Search Party", "Inside Amy Schumer", and "The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling", was enlisted as the film's cinematographer. He took inspiration from "Stand By Me", "The Goonies", and "E.T.", aiming to have "one foot in 2019 and the other in 1986 ("Stand By Me"'s release date)." He arrived at Vancouver a month before principal photography, allowing him to discuss more about the style of the film. The "universal agreement" is that "Good Boys" shouldn't look like a "typical" pre-teen comedy, that it should feel "bigger and more open" despite its tight premise.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: Furmanski filmed "Good Boys" with Arri Alexa SXT and Alexa Mini cameras equipped with Arri Master Anamorphic lenses. The anamorphic aspect ratio was utilized to achieve the wide scope of the film; Furmanski explained the Master Anamorphics were "the perfect choice: a big look, great contrast and color rendition, lovely depth and separation, and clean and sharp across the frame." To avoid making the set overheated and claustrophobic, lights were kept out of the room or rigged overhead. Furmanski also noted that most shots used visual effects. He said that the scene where the boys paintball-fight with grown-ups was shot in one take.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: The "biggest" and most challenging scene Furmanski shot was the scene of the boys running across the highway, utilizing multiple units and taking over five days to achieve: three days of filming and two days of stunt and visual effects. It was shot at a makeshift 300-foot highway on an unused airport runway; the crew were not able to film at a real highway due to active traffic. He credited first assistant director (AD) Dan Miller and key grip Marc Nolet for achieving the scene. According to Furmanski, Nolet "drilled small washers into the tarmac for every camera position and we took copious notes so we could go back if necessary, or second unit could come in and replicate something."


title: Good Boys (film)

text: The film had its world premiere at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. on March 11, 2019. "Good Boys" was theatrically released on August 16, 2019 by Universal Pictures, and became generally available on December 13, 2019.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: "Good Boys" was released on Digital HD on October 29, 2019 and on DVD and Blu-ray on November 12, 2019.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: "Good Boys" grossed $83.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $28 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $111.2 million. "Deadline Hollywood" calculated the net profit of the film to be $39million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: In the United States and Canada, "Good Boys" was projected to gross $12–15 million from 3,204 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $8.3 million on its first day, including $2.1 million from Thursday night previews. It overperformed and went on to debut to $21 million, becoming the first R-rated comedy since "The Boss" for three years to finish first at the box office. The film made $11.6 million in its second weekend and $9.5 million in its third, finishing second behind "Angel Has Fallen" both times.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, ""Good Boys" is undermined by an eagerness to repeatedly indulge in profane humor, but its appealing cast and ultimately thoughtful message often shine through." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an 83% overall positive score, with 61% saying they would definitely recommend it.


title: Good Boys (film)

text: Critic Richard Roeper of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film a rating of three stars out of four, who commented that "for all its wacky, gross-out, shock-ya humor, "Good Boys" has a lot of heart." Two "National Review" writers share slightly opposing views. Kyle Smith opined it as "engaging" on its mish-mash of innocence and naughtiness, calling the film a good depiction of juvenile delinquency, however noted its predictability and nonsensical humor, calling it "so thin on plot that, even at 90 minutes, things feel a bit stretched." Meanwhile, Armond White said that the film has a "rush-to-perdition premise", marking it a "step down from "Freaks and Geeks" and "Superbad"". He looked on the main characters as "the worst example of media brats", and that the crew's ambition to make it as profane as possible makes it for a hypocritical and "smut-peddling" work. It called the scene of Thor performing "Rock of Ages" "the single most mawkish and dishonest movie ending so far this year."


title: Good Boys (film)

text: The film was nominated at the People's Choice Awards in the "Favorite Comedy Movie of 2019" category, but lost to "Murder Mystery".


title: Vanessa Bryant

text: Vanessa Marie Bryant (previously Laine; born Vanessa Urbieta Cornejo; May 5, 1982) is a businesswoman, philanthropist and model. She was married to basketball player Kobe Bryant. They founded the Kobe and Vanessa Bryant Foundation in 2007 to provide scholarships to minority college students worldwide. Bryant leads the Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation to support child athletes who are in need. She is the president and chief executive officer of Granity Studios and a member of the board of directors of Bodyarmor SuperDrink.


title: Vanessa Bryant

text: Bryant was born on May 5, 1982, in Los Angeles, California. She is of Mexican descent. Her parents divorced when she was a baby. After her parents' divorce, her biological father moved to Baja California. She has an older sister, Sophie. Her mother was a shipping clerk at an electronics company. In 1990, her mother married Stephen Laine, who was a middle manager at the same electronics company that she worked in. She began going by Laine after the marriage and officially changed her name to Vanessa Marie Laine in 2000, despite never officially being adopted by her step-father.


title: Vanessa Bryant

text: Her family's home was in Garden Grove, California, and she resided with her step-grandfather Robert Laine in Huntington Beach, California. She attended Marina High School.


title: Vanessa Bryant

text: In August 1999, Bryant and her friend Rowena Ireifej attended a hip-hop concert at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. They were approached by a company and offered work as music video extras and backup dancers. Bryant later appeared in music videos for artists including Krayzie Bone and Snoop Dogg. Her mother chaperoned her on the shoots. In November 1999, Bryant met her future husband Kobe Bryant on the set of the music video for the song "G'd Up." The high-profile relationship caused disruptions at her high school, leading Bryant to complete her senior year at home as an independent study. She graduated from high school in 2000 with honors.


title: Vanessa Bryant

text: In 2007, Bryant and her husband founded the VIVO Foundation which was later renamed the Kobe and Vanessa Bryant Foundation. It is a charity that supports increasing a global perspective among young people. It provides scholarships for minority college students and other youth worldwide. The charity has collaborated with the Make-A-Wish Foundation.


title: Vanessa Bryant

text: Bryant and her husband were founding donors of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.


title: Vanessa Bryant

text: In 2020, following her husband and second-oldest daughter's deaths, Bryant changed the name of her husband's Mamba Sports Foundation to the Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation in honor of her daughter. It supports poor child athletes. In May 2021, Bryant launched a Mambacita line of clothing in honor of her daughter Gianna. The line is in partnership with a female-owned brand, Dannijo and all proceeds go towards the Mambacita Sports Foundation.


title: Vanessa Bryant

text: Bryant worked with Baby2Baby to provide support for women and children in poverty. At the Baby2Baby 10-year gala in November 2021, she received a philanthropy award.


title: Vanessa Bryant

text: On February 8, 2022, during the "Sports Power Brunch: Celebrating the Most powerful Women in Sports", Bryant received the Be Your Own Champion Award for her leadership of the Mambacita Sports Foundation.