显示标签为“cheap air jordan sale”的博文。显示所有博文
显示标签为“cheap air jordan sale”的博文。显示所有博文

2013年3月14日星期四

who is projected to be the first quarterback

Thursday's pro day will precede West Virginia's third spring football practice.

The key components of one of the nation's most explosive offenses will gather in front of NFL scouts to prove they belong on the professional level.

A few hours later, just across from where those former Mountaineers will work out, the current Mountaineers will take the field, trying to get a grasp of Dana Holgorsen's offensive scheme.

These players will be the ones following in the footsteps of those that are preparing for a career in the NFL. Take a second to think about what all WVU loses on offense.

Possibly the best duo of receivers West Virginia has ever seen, Stedman Bailey and Tavon Austin, will be gone. Both players were listed on All-America teams, and each will be taken in the NFL draft. Austin had a good enough scouting combine that he very well may go in the first round, and some are projecting Bailey as high as the second round. J.D. Woods will join these two on pro day.

Then, of course, there's Geno Smith, who is projected to be the first quarterback taken in the draft. That could very well mean a top ten pick, and a shot at a starting position in the league next season.

Just for good measure, Pat White will be attempting an NFL comeback this year. He'll be participating in the pro day, as well.

On Mountaineer Field, a group of quarterbacks that have a combined zero starts in NCAA ball will be warming up. The leading returning wide receiver, Jordan Thompson,Score favorite new and used bobbleheads at great values. had just 85 yards last season. Running back Andrew Buie actually has the most receiving yards of any returning player.

This is an offense with a lot of talent to replace, and even more experience to replace. But this is nothing new.

"Everybody gets all up in arms about, 'Oh my gosh, how are these guys going to play football? Because they don't have a couple of guys that are going to get drafted and move onto the NFL,'" said Holgorsen. "Well, it happens every year- every different program across the country. You lose people, and you try to move forward. For me personally, I'm excited to do it."

OK, so maybe West Virginia is losing a lot more than usual. This is arguably the best draft class WVU has ever sent to the NFL. That doesn't mean that the younger players can't step up, though.

There will be a healthy competition at quarterback, the receiving corps gets the addition of a few junior college transfers that could have an immediate impact,Shop the latest hair flower accessories on the world. and the offensive line does return players like Pat Eger and Quinton Spain.

There are still a lot of losses, though,American tungsten jewelry for you and someone special, and some newer players are going to have to step up.

"It gives young guys opportunities to where they say, 'Now I'm the guy. I better step up and I better start playing a lot better than I did the previous year,'" Holgorsen said. "And that just naturally happens. Guys get older, they get more reps, but then also,Specialized in manufacturing Laser engraver system for laser marking, the burden is on their shoulders, and they become players. I'm looking forward to seeing who these guys are going to be."

This spring has a completely different feeling from last spring. Last year, it was all about how good West Virginia was going to be. With that talent in Holgorsen's offense, this team was going to be able to score at will.

This year,Find all the manufacturers of laser engraving machine and contact them. young players are learning the offense. Holgorsen said that it feels a little like two years ago when he was first implementing his offense. That took place with the players that are now focusing on a football career.

2013年3月11日星期一

The police will not spend any fund for this project

The district police have directed all shop owners who sell costly goods to set up Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras and sensor alarms at their outlets and stores to prevent theft.

District police chief Thomson Jose said directions have been given to all circle inspectors to hold a meeting of the shop owners in their limits and instruct them on the advantages of installing security systems.

"We have resolved to launch this drive in order to prevent shoplifting and other major theft from shops and enable the police to catch the culprits as soon as possible if a shop is burgled. Our plan is to set up CCTV cameras at several shops including jewellery outlets, textiles and grocers. Sensor alarms will also be set up on the lockers and cupboards of these shops. The police will not spend any fund for this project and the owners will be required bear the cost necessary to secure their shops. The initiative will be quite helpful not only for the police but for the shop owners themselves," said Thomson Jose.

Kuthiyathodu circle inspector P Sivankutty said they had already started holding meetings with shop owners in all shops that come under the limits of his station.

"A jewellery in Thuravoor has already set up cameras and sensor alarms as per the direction of the police. There is also an option to trigger an alert on mobile phones when the alarm goes off at the shop.election of stainless steel earring findings are ready.

The contact numbers of police officials and shop owners can be stored in the alarm. When somebody touches a cupboard or a locker that has an alarm, we will get alert calls in our mobile phones. Recently, we received such an alert call when a thief entered the jewellery in Thuravoor. Since the system also triggered a noise alarm inside the shop, the thief fled the spot without taking anything from the jewellery,Elastic Hair bands from Manufacturers and Suppliers around the World." he said.

"We have been getting good response from all shop owners and all of them have agreed to buy CCTV cameras and sensor alarms. A committee consisting of police officials and shop owners will be formed for the smooth execution of this programme. A shop owner has to spend at least Rs 50,Customized bobblehead made from your own photos,000 to set up electronic security equipment at his shop," he said.

"As many as four CCTV cameras at places where several major shops are located. The rest of the cameras will be set up inside the shops,We are always offering best quality stainless steel bracelet the affordable price." the police chief said.

District general secretary of the Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopana Samithi, Varghese Joseph said this is a good initiative and is a must in shops functioning in town areas.Hers Couples Gift Heart stainless steel pendant Love Necklace for Lover Valentine, "I run a jewellery in Chambakkulam and since our shop has very few business transactions, we do not really require CCTVs or sensor alarms here," he said.

who works with a stock broking firm

Police on Sunday arrested a 50-yearold woman who was caught by a Mulund jewellery store owner while she was trying to conceal small silver articles in her bag.

During interrogation the police found that the woman,A durable luggage tag is an essential for peace of mind while traveling. identified as Rekha Vinayak Wamurkar, has stolen silver ornaments from over 150 city jewellery shops in the last six years. Wamunkar, who is a clerk with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, lives in Matunga with her two sons aged 25 and 15.

“Wamurkar was apparently told by a friend that silver would by the next decade become more expensive than gold and that it was a very good investment to make,A laser marking machine can be thought of as three main parts.” said Jivajeerao Jadhav, senior inspector, Mulund.

“Wamurkar is awidow and was very concerned about her life after retirement. She thought she would invest in silver rather than savings deposits and other funds.Purchase quality wholesale USB flash drives wholesale USB drives, She used to buy a lot of silver jewellery but as expenses at home started to mount, she turned to stealing.”

On Sunday, however, she ran out of luck when she was trying to steal silver coins from Mansi Jewellers on MG Road in Mulund. The owner, Manish Kumar Jain, who saw her trying to put silver coins in her bag detained her and called the police.We create personalized bobbleheads dolls right from your photo. When the police found the coins and a small silver idol in her bag, they arrested her.

“She came in at around 11 am,” Jain told Mirror. “My brother was showing her some articles and I saw her putting a silver coin and a small Ganesh idol in her bag. We stopped her just as she was trying to flee. It was god’s grace that I saw her because the CCTV in our shop wasn’t working for a week now. It would have been difficult to nail her had she managed to leave the shop.” At the police station, Wamurkar confessed to stealing 300 gm of silver jewellery.

“She confessed to stealing silver ornaments from many shops, but was reluctant to tell us were he has hidden these ornaments,” said Jadhav. “On Sunday evening, we searched at her house and found silver articles hidden under her sofa,Our premium collection of quality custom keychain generously offers affordability. in utensils, etc. In all we found 18 kg of silver worth Rs 10 lakh.

” Assistant inspector Pandrinath Patil said Wamurkar earned Rs 35,000 a month and that her elder son, who works with a stock broking firm, earned a similar amount. “She doesn’t seem to be desperately in need of money,” said Patil. “But she said she wanted to sell the ornaments 10 years later when she retired.”

2012年11月4日星期日

Saddle makers hang on as their craft shifts

As an officer, board member, attorney,Distributors and Wholesalers of Mens and Womens wholesale fashion shoes; lobbyist, philanthropist and volunteer, he had his heart and hands in dozens of agencies and nonprofits including:

The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, Cleveland Ballet, Cleveland Playhouse, Shoes and Clothes for Kids, The Temple, Jewish Family Service Association, Recovery Resources, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Maltz Museum, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Community Federation, Sisters of Charity Foundation, Western Reserve AIDS Foundation, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and Hough Area Development.

Bill loved Cleveland unconditionally.

He loved it with his wallet and his talents and his energy and his presence.

His life belonged to the whole community. As one rabbi said at his funeral, Bill did everything he could for as long as he could to improve this place we all call home.

I knew Bill as a friend who tossed homemade chocolate banana bread onto our doorstep in the middle of the night. We had to hurry to grab the bread before the skunks beat us to it.

No matter what was going on in his life, he met it with a smile or a shrug, even the cancer that roared through him in 10 short months. He was 66.

We couldn't really call ourselves mourners at his funeral last week. His life was a party, and we were all invited to celebrate how much he loved it and all of us.

We laughed as people shared how Bill was part of the Tuesday Club that met for dinner on any night except Tuesday. He loved clothes and owned hundreds of ties. Bill once gave a 30th birthday party for his yellow Mustang with the car parked on the lawn in front of his house. He once threw a 40th birthday party for himself that started at midnight.

He used to wake his son, Billy, in the dark to drive out to a wide patch of sky to watch Venus rising. His daughter, Robyn, loved waking up to classical music, fresh coffee and the sight of her dad sitting on the living room floor putting together scrapbooks.

In the weeks before he died, Bill shared his favorite quote with me, the model he based his entire life on. He carried these words from George Bernard Shaw:

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die,Distributors and Wholesalers of Mens and Womens wholesale fashion shoes; for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no 'brief candle' for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

Bill told me he wasn't afraid of dying, but he had embraced life so tightly, it was hard to let go.

When we stopped at his family's home to make a condolence call, Bill's ties were hanging all over the place like party streamers. The family asked everyone to take one.

They didn't want us to tuck them away in our closets as a memento, but to wear them to the symphony, to Columbus, to fundraisers in hopes that we might run into each other, smile and say, "Is that Bill's tie you have on?"

Yes, a light has gone out, but the torch hasn't. It was handed to everyone who loved Bill Joseph and everything he loved.

Montana saddle makers may work in one of the most tradition-bound industries around, but local craftsmen are as adaptable as anyone to changing markets and tastes.

Local saddle makers say there are fewer traditional tack stores today, but the number of pros or hobbyists building saddles at home has jumped to several hundred in the Billings area.Offer cheap supras shoes the latest new supra shoes for sale,

Next door to Swanke’s shop is Buckaroo Business where Scott and Staci Grosskopf sell traditional horse gear and custom saddles built for their customers by area craftsmen.

The heyday of saddle and harness making was the early 1900s when homesteaders flooded into Montana, all needing gear for a horse-powered economy. In those days, Butte had some 50 shoe repair shops, and Billings and Miles City each supported a handful of saddle shops.

“The Miles City Saddlery did over $1 million in 1918 dollars that year and had 14 to 15 people making saddles and harnesses,” local saddle maker Mike Witt said.

But horses gave way to cars,The classic purple supra shoes in purple and white. and riding and driving horses became more of a hobby than the way most Americans made a living, Witt said.

So in January, Witt closed the saddle and tack shop he ran for three decades on First Avenue North in Billings, and downsized to a smaller store at 407 E. Main in Laurel. Today he rides the Internet, filling orders for custom-tooled leather purses, briefcases and cellphone cases and occasionally building saddles.

Three generations of Witts have been gunsmiths, so Mike Witt makes some of his own metal tools, a skill he said he just picked up from his kin.

When he moved to Billings from the home ranch near Big Sandy in 1978, Witt said there were half a dozen saddle makers in town. Now there are probably 50 or so in the Billings area and 300 within a 200-mile radius of Billings, including northern Wyoming, Witt said.

which had been cordoned off for the show between P and S Streets

As a Philadelphia native relatively new to the Washington metropolitan area, I am constantly learning of new traditions and customs in the city. Most recently, I was introduced to the High Heel Drag Race, an annual October event where men don women’s clothing and their best heels and speed down 17th Street in Dupont Circle, a neighborhood “synonymous with gay life” in the city.

This year’s 26th annual High Heel Drag Race,Dear Customer welcome to Lover women shoes manufacturer! which typically takes place the night before Halloween, was postponed to the following Thursday because of Hurricane Sandy. From the looks of it, turnout wasn’t affected at all by the changed date.

The actual event was set to start at 9 p.m., but a friend told me I should aim to be there three hours early. Feeling a little silly, I arrived at one end of what was to be the raceway at the corner of P Street and 17th Street at half past 6 p.m., dragging along my boyfriend, who learned somewhat belatedly that this wasn’t the kind of drag race that involved cars. He was a bit disappointed.

To my surprise, there was already a thin crowd gathered along the sides of the road, which had been cordoned off for the show between P and S Streets. The fenced-in outdoor areas in front of the bars were overflowing with people settling in for the race. By 7:40 p.m., the streets were starting to fill up. Around this time, I ducked into a busy McDonald’s for a quick snack, and when I reemerged 10 minutes later, the crowd was so dense that I was stuck three rows back from the street.

The most unexpected part of the whole event was the ever-present sense of calmness and normalcy. I honestly had no idea what to expect before the race — what the crowds would look like, what kind of people would be there or what kind of mood there would be. The entire event was tame and controlled,Combine comfort with style by wearing flat shoes for women. especially for something taking place outside at night on a city street lined with bars. Everyone seemed to know what to do, and I got the feeling I was the only one experiencing it for the first time. The demographic was surprising as well — I thought I’d only see young adults, but there were parents with toddlers and tons of grandparents, too.

The drag queens themselves were quite spectacular. The race itself lasted only four-and-a-half minutes, so the exciting part was beforehand — seeing all of the race participants strutting the street-turned-runway and striking poses for every willing camera, confident and seemingly oblivious to the sharp cold. Since the race was Halloween-themed, there were many in costume. The group outfits stole the show by far – four queens dressed up as the ladies from popular talk show The View and pushed around a table on wheels; a group of seven or eight donned long, thin rainbow-colored balloons and plastic fish decorations and went as “The Gay Barrier Reef.”

The race began promptly at 9 p.m. and with little warning. I was positioned in the middle, near the corner of 17th and Q Streets,Beautiful range of stylish footwear for women available with shoes for ladies. so I wasn’t close enough to the starting line at S Street to hear the starting signal.Offer cheap supras shoes the latest new supra shoes for sale, One minute, the streets were empty; the next, there was a quickly building roar of cheers that rippled down the street, and the first racer bolted past me, a blur of wig, dress and heels. It was impressive to say the least — as someone who is supposed to be comfortable in the tall, pointy death traps that are women’s dress shoes, I appreciate anyone who can walk gracefully, no less run, in heels.

CBS reported that this year’s winner was Inertia, a 26-year-old who once ran track for the University of North Carolina Wilmington, propelled to victory in her 4-inch stiletto boots.

In all, the experience was incredible — everything I had hoped for and then some. Even my boyfriend, who had come along reluctantly, said it was pretty exciting. I definitely plan to return for next year’s race, and I’m looking forward to making this quirky event a new Halloween tradition.

Giving the department employees a lesson in discipline

This post comes at the request of many of you for a focus on sweet flats for going out and the like. Granted. I will grant most wishes, by the way.

I didn't know it was possible, but after a rootle around my favourite sites I found more than a few astoundingly chic pairs. Because they can be freakin' cute. As much as I don't like to reiterate what's bandied about the gossip rags, the obvious case in point on the subject of chic  flats is Alexa Chung. And not because she's a skinny bitch - it's because she pulls off her flats with a nonchalant cool that even the best heel wearers cannot hope to claim. Her shoe choices become a part of her so much that one is hardly aware she ain't wearing heels.

And in that light of "let's get inspired by stylish flat shoe wearers" (we could also throw in images of Audrey,Offer cheap supras shoes the latest new supra shoes for sale, Carla Bruni and other widely used shoespirations but you've seen them before), here are some freakin' cool flats that are making me want to ditch the heels forever and go out and buy this whole set.

Also morphs into a loafer, which somehow morphs into a what-could-be-an-orthopaedic-nurse's-shoe-if-it-wasn't-for-the-red-snakeskin Stella McCartney-type shoe. These are the elegant flats. The wear-with-freakin'-cool-trousers and an awesome blouse and look a million bucks. Or make it known that you're cooler than everyone on the street and you don't even know it. Or something to that equation.

Elvis Presley’s ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ have just been turned blood red, as remix master Andy Rehfeldt has given the classic rock ‘n’ roll track a technical death metal makeover.

Originally written by Carl Perkins, ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ was taken to new heights by ‘The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ –Elvis Presley. Country legend Johnny Cash also had a hand in creating the concept for the ’50s track after telling Perkins a story about how a military airman, who Cash met while serving in Germany, had dubbed his military regulation air shoes as “blue suede shoes.” Shortly after, Perkins was playing a dance party when he saw a man lambast the girl he was dancing with for stepping on his blue suede shoes. Perkins began to write the classic track that very night.

‘Blue Suede Shoes’ certainly has a rich history, having been covered by acts such as Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, Helloween and the Beatles, but Rehfeldt is likely the first to turn the song into technical death metal madness. Rehfeldt, who has made viral ‘Radio Disney’ makeovers of Slipknot‘s ‘Wait and Bleed’ and Slayer‘s ‘Angel of Death,’ along with death metal versions of the Jonas Brothers’ ‘Paranoid’ and Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby,Combine comfort with style by wearing flat shoes for women.’ has created another hilarious remix spliced with video of Elvis Presley performing ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’

If you want to see Elvis Presley shred on his acoustic guitar and unleash demonic gutturals while shakin’ those morally corrupting hips like only he can, then check out this death metal version of the classic, ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’

In a state where a new multi-crore scam unfolds every few days, here's a unique story of model conduct that is leading to several raised eyebrows instead of loud applause. Creating a buzz in the state's commercial tax department a new diktat by the department's chief --to not come to the office wearing flashy clothes and sports shoes--has forced employees to do a quick rethink.

Giving the department employees a lesson in discipline and professionalism, Himanshu Kumar, commissioner of the commercial and trade tax department, which generates the highest revenue for the state government, has sent out letters to the additional and zonal commissioners of his departments asking them to ensure all employees turn to a new, exemplary leaf. Instructing them to exhibit disciplined behavior, a model conduct and turn up in officers in simple, formal clothes, The senior IAS officer has sent out word he is unwilling to put up with laxity in any form.

Taking exception to departmental employees turning up for work in what is believed to be "unkempt" conditions, Kumar, it appears, has said a laid back approach to personal appearance is reflective of employees' attitude to their work.Beautiful range of stylish footwear for women available with shoes for ladies.

In fact, though a public ban on the use of cigarettes, pan masala and paan is already effective in government offices, Kumar has reiterated that the use of these products is not permitted, at least in the state's commercial and trade tax department. In his advisory to the department officials, Kumar has said the habit is not only harmful to health, it also affects people's performances at work.Dear Customer welcome to Lover women shoes manufacturer! Advising people against the habit, Kumar has also said department employees should also act as good samaritans and advise others as well, against the use of any nicotine or carcinogenic substances.

2012年10月10日星期三

What was sold in the souks of Cairo in a month

In March 2011, as she had done every Friday afternoon for years, Jenny Poche Marrache held court at her 16th-century compound in the heart of Aleppo’s sprawling ancient market. Wearing a fur-lined leather coat to ward off the spring chill, the tiny 72-year-old regaled visitors with stories of this city’s cosmopolitan past. When her great-grandfather — a Bohemian crystal merchant — arrived here two centuries ago, Aleppo had already been a hub of East-West trade for half a millennium. Carpets from Persia, silks from China and high-quality local textiles filled the warehouses and stalls. Even at the height of the Crusades, Venetian agents exchanged timber and iron for Indian spices in the city’s souks.

In the midst of Syria’s civil war, more is being lost than lives. Aleppo may be the world’s oldest continuously occupied city, dating to the era of the pyramids, and at the height of the Ottoman Empire, it was the world’s largest metropolis after Istanbul and Cairo. That antiquity, wealth and diversity left behind magnificent mosques with Mameluke minarets, Ottoman-style bathhouses, and neoclassical columns and balustrades overlooking traditional courtyards tiled with marble and splashed by fountains. But Aleppo’s legacy extends beyond historic buildings. The city welcomed people of many faiths and traditions, while its old rival Damascus, a holy city and a gateway to Mecca, was long out of bounds for Westerners. Muslims, Christians and Jews created Syria’s commercial hub and one of the most tolerant, long-lasting and prosperous communities in the Middle East. “What was sold in the souks of Cairo in a month was sold in Aleppo in a day,” Madame Poche said, quoting a Syrian adage.

As we sipped coffee the week that the civil war began, this refined, prosperous world was already long in decline. “The situation is deplorable,” Madame Poche said in French-accented English, looking with disdain at the crates of cheap Chinese shoes filling the courtyard. Neighborhood merchants complained that the local textile mills had shut down, forcing them to replenish their stock with inferior cloth from Dubai. Despite Aleppo’s status as a World Heritage Site, many old buildings were in serious disrepair. And the once-vibrant Jewish community had vanished.

Since my first visit to Aleppo two decades ago, a coalition of entrepreneurs, city planners and foreign experts began the formidable task of rescuing and restoring one of the cultural and architectural jewels of the Middle East. Last year I walked along the new promenade surrounding the moated and massive ancient citadel. I stayed at one of the bed-and-breakfasts that had sprung up amid the warrens of covered markets to cater to foreign tourists, and I visited a recently uncovered 4,500-year-old temple. At an art gallery, I chatted with a photographer who helped organize an edgy international arts festival — an event unthinkable in dour Damascus.

The growing recognition of Aleppo’s importance in Middle Eastern history and culture makes the burning of the old city all the more tragic. In recent online videos, flames crackle in the closely packed alleys of the covered bazaar, smoke billows from a medieval caravansary, and an armed fighter gestures at the collapsed dome of a 19th-century mosque. Reportedly, more than 500 shops in the 71 / 2 miles of streets within the region’s largest marketplace have been damaged. The minaret of a 14th-century school is now only a stump. The entrance of the medieval citadel is cratered, and the fortress’s huge wooden gates are gone. A car bomb last week blew out the windows of the Aleppo Museum, one of the world’s best collections of Near Eastern artifacts.

2012年10月8日星期一

Sighted take walk in shoes of blind

Veterans Park was filled with people walking the trails wearing a sleep shade and using a walking stick Saturday, occasionally wondering into a planter or flower bed.

Members of the National Federation for the Blind, Tupelo chapter, were showing friends, interested community members and nursing students at ICC what being blind is like.

The blind members of the National Federation for the Blind also were helping the nursing students train for helping a blind patient.

“We’re out here showing people what it’s like to be blind and also that it’s OK, if you see a blind person, to approach them and say something,” said Richard Joyner, president of the Tupelo chapter of the National Federation for the Blind.

Joyner was in the eighth grade when he began losing his eyesight and had to learn to walk and navigate the Tupelo streets without his eyes.

“I thought I knew the streets when I started training at the Reach Center,” Joyner said. “They put me on Greet Street and I said, ‘I know this street.’ They told me to go to Church and then take Jefferson and I got totally lost. But I mapped it in my head, ‘Now I know exactly where I am.’”

Nurses walked the trails with blindfolds on to understand what a blind person has to feel for when they walk in an unknown area and then they would walk with blind individuals around the track.

“We’re instructing the nurses that are going to ICC on how to sight guide a blind person or lead a blind person, as far as giving them directions,” said Necy McGaha. “We’re teaching them to work with a blind person in case they have to work with a blind patient.”

McGaha is the vice president of the National Federation for the Blind Tupelo Chapter.

Cindi Eskey, of Tupelo, teaches blind students in Booneville. She attended the event as a way to better understand what needs her students have and walk a short ways in their shoes.

2012年9月26日星期三

what looks like dirty orange mattress ticking and knocked

The only thing anyone wonders, wants to read, or even needs to know about a pretentious, elliptical and utterly worthless load of tongue-tied gibberish imported from England by the Roundabout Theatre Co. called If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet is the answer to a single question: How is Jake Gyllenhaal? In his New York stage debut, I am pleased to inform you, he acts the impossible role of a human zero in a profoundly professional manner. He has energy, presence and a theatrical dynamic—qualities as affecting onstage as they appear onscreen. He would be a whole lot better if we could actually hear what he’s saying, however. Since his most recent screen appearance as a bald L.A. ghetto cop in End of Watch, he’s grown a head full of what looks like dirty orange mattress ticking and knocked himself out perfecting a cockney accent, which he spits and mumbles incoherently through a scruffy beard like a face on a box of Smith Brothers cough drops. Of course, this might be a blessing in disguise. The play is so stupendously abysmal it doesn’t make any sense anyway.

The first thing you see upon entering the Laura Pels Theatre is the water. In the last performance I saw on that stage—a grim revival of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger—they covered the proscenium with rotting food and garbage. This time they drown it in water. The rain comes down in buckets from the ceiling and splashes into a water tank the width of the stage, into which the four-member cast tosses props, furniture, used appliances and old shoes. If you are foolish enough to pay real money to suffer through 95 minutes of this stuff without intermission, do not sit in the first row without an umbrella. The water tank acts as a moat-like protection that separates the audience from the squalid flat of an ecology professor named George (played by the always-excellent Brían F. O’Byrne, of Doubt), his wife Fiona (Michelle Gomez) and their obese daughter Anna (Annie Funke). While George spouts academic babble from the new book he’s writing about the survival of mankind in an age of global disaster called How Green Are Your Tomatoes? and Annie sulks about reliving the abuse she gets at school from bullying classmates, the gloom is relieved temporarily by George’s brother Terry (Mr. Gyllenhaal), whose welcome presence offers hope that the play might be heading somewhere—that is, until he speaks. Then what comes out is a torrent of four-letter words that makes David Mamet seem like a model of grace, finesse and literary sophistication.

It is never clear what Terry does or where he’s been. He’s been abroad. Postcards have been received. Now he’s popped in for a visit, covered with tattoos and driving everyone nuts in a Faulknerian stream of jabberwocky punctuated with more F-words than any attempt to quote dialogue will allow. Clutching his overstretched, misshapen T-shirt, shifting on his feet and dancing around like a whirling dervish, he smokes a joint, climbs on top of the fridge for no reason and scratches himself in every body crevice. It’s a wild, exhausting performance that for all of its judo is not always convincing. Encouraged by the kind of loopy direction (by Michael Longhurst) that can only be described as spastic, Mr. Gyllenhaal’s fearless vitality is admirable, but he so completely throws himself into a repulsive character that it overwhelms him. The father rants on ad infinitum about polar ice caps, evolution and global warming. Fat Anna strips off her clothes (not a pretty sight), climbs into an overflowing bathtub, slashes her wrists and floods what’s left of the set in a tidal wave. Mr. Gyllenhall takes over the kitchen and tries his hand at making pastry. The direction is simplicity itself. Every scene ends by knocking another piece of the set into the water. Eventually the cast sloshes through the debris with water above their ankles and takes their curtain calls sopping wet.

The writer of this ludicrous trash is Nick Payne, a critical Flavor of the Avant-Garde Moment in London, praised by the London press for thumbing his nose at tradition as a rule-breaking revolutionary Turk, who encourages healthy wrath from theatergoers who still care about the kind of coherent, well-written plays Britain is famous for. If he has any talent beyond inciting protest, it is not the ability to hold an audience’s attention beyond a central conceit. One can only wonder why Roundabout chose to plague the undeserving New York audience with so much obtuse and juvenile irrelevance, or why, indeed, a movie star of Jake Gyllenhaal’s stature and popularity would choose to appear in it. He’s powerful enough to raise the backing for any play he chooses, and financially independent enough to wait until the right one comes along. What on earth, I kept asking myself, could have attracted him to this rubbish? Then I knew. During the final third of If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, he disappears from the watery stage and doesn’t appear again until the water washes it away. Some actors have all the luck.

2012年9月24日星期一

My first trip into the rural areas south of Palomas

It's mid-morning on Thursday,as I head south from Palomas, Mexico, with Esperanza Lozoya, the founder of the humanitarian program, La Luz de la Esperanza, her granddaughter and her assistant, Maria Dolores Campos.

Our goal is to take beans, medicine and shoes to two rural towns, Colonia Modelo and Guadalupe Victoria. The beans were purchased by Esperanza from Diaz Farms in Deming, N.M. The shoes were donated by Nina Houle, the very supportive owner of a shoe store named On Your Feet in Santa Fe.

This is my first trip into the rural areas south of Palomas and my first meeting with Esperanza. On June 21, however, I observed her summer lunch program in Palomas.

In the space of about an hour, her daughter Sofia and an assistant distributed 600 lunch boxes to needy children there, an extraordinary feat that they continued every weekday all summer.

They also run a midday meal program for the elderly in a building that used to be a rehab center.

Esperanza is originally from Chicago, but she and her family have a long history of community leadership in both Palomas and Columbus, N.M., a few miles to the north. The recreation center in Columbus is named after her father, Andrew Sanchez, for all his contributions.

Her sister, Lupita Otero, manages several food banks in Columbus and was given a “Community Health Leader” award by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2003.

They typify the many heroic people who hold these impoverished communities together in the absence of government services.

We drive about a half hour straight south, then turn off at Modelo, which is just a collection of houses by the road. For safety reasons and as a woman who travels extensively in rural Chihuahua, Esperanza doesn’t announce where she is going in advance so there is no one waiting for us.

We then continue on a few miles to El Entronque, a community built where the Palomas road intersects the highway from Juárez to Chihuahua. There at the Tortería 3 Caminos, we find El Commandante, the officer in charge of that area.

A cheerful man in dark glasses, a white shirt and suspenders, he poses for photos with Esperanza, his unsmiling assistant and his wife. Then he calls on his cell phone and tells another officer to meet us by the town plaza in Modelo.

He also mentions two recent murders. I had assumed that this area was much safer. Esperanza smiles and says that I’m seeing, “The calm before the storm.”

She knows about violence; one of her strongest supporters, the former mayor of Palomas, Tanys Garcia, was murdered in 2009.

A crowd, mostly women, gathers. We open white sacks of beans and Esperanza ladles out five big cups into each woman’s plastic bag. The men are working in the fields, although with the extremely dry weather, there is much less work than usual.

Esperanza has been doing this for nine years. Over the past two and a half, she has distributed some 160,000 pounds of food in the Palomas area. This is in addition to shoes, medicine, basic first aid kits and school supplies. Her job is, if anything, more difficult now, because the Mexican government is limiting the quantity of beans that can be brought across the border. Why, no one knows.

Our second stop is in a farm town named Guadalupe Victoria located some 12 kilometers to the west of the Palomas-El Entronque road. Esperanza and Maria Dolores are both trained as promotoras and can handle basic medical problems.

Their goal here is to provide medicine for the children of migrant farm worker families who have parasites. A longer-term goal is to train local women as promotoras, so that they can deal with basic medical issues like checking blood pressure. The two biggest health problems are high blood pressure and diabetes.

We find the migrant camp, which consists of a long, low, three-sided cinder block building partitioned into a series of living quarters. Outside each doorway is a large metal pan for cooking, a row of chilis, some farm tools, old shoes or clothing and maybe a broom.

Clothing is hung up to dry in a crisscross of wire clotheslines. In the center is a pile of firewood, and the ground is muddy with foul-looking pools of water. It’s a scene from hell, especially when compared to the semi-mansions of the farm owners only a few blocks away.

The women and children we meet are Mixteca Indians from the state of Guerrero way to the south. Many don’t appear to speak Spanish. They line up for the medicine and for what beans remain and are fitted for the shoes I brought from Santa Fe.

I ask several to pose with photos with their new shoes and they agree, but it’s a cheerless place. It’s hard to imagine why government officials haven’t made the farm owners provide cleaner water or better housing, or why these ragged kids aren’t in school. The families have been coming here to work for years; this isn’t a new problem.

We then stop at the local health clinic, are given more medicine by a curt young woman who is the local “doctor,” administers it and return to Palomas.

“I love what I do,” she says as we say goodbye. When I ask about her safety, she adds, “ I have my angel with me.”