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Amanda Lear

Amanda Lear (born 18 June or 18 November 1939 or 1941 or 1946 or 1950 in Saigon or Hong Kong or Hanoi ) is a French singer, songwriter, painter, television presenter, actress, and former model.

She began her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s, and went on to model for Paco Rabanne, Ossie Clark, and others. She met Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, and remained his closest friend and muse for the next 18.5 years. Lear first came into the public eye as the cover model for Roxy Music's album For Your Pleasure in 1973. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, she was a million-album-selling disco star signed to Ariola Records, primarily impacting continental Europe and Scandinavia. Lear's first four albums earned her mainstream popularity, charting in the top 10 of European charts, including the best-selling Sweet Revenge (1978). Her bigger hits included "Blood and Honey", "Tomorrow", "Queen of Chinatown", "Follow Me", "Enigma (Give a Bit of Mmh to Me)", "The Sphinx", and "Fashion Pack".

By the mid-1980s, Lear had become a leading media personality in Italy, hosting many popular TV shows. Although television took priority over musical activity, she continued to record, experimenting with different genres and trying to revive her career by re-recording and remixing earlier hits to various levels of success. Lear has also developed a successful career in painting, which she has long described as her biggest passion, and regularly exhibited her works in galleries across Europe and beyond since the early 1980s. She has also written a number of autobiographies, including My Life with Dalí.

Since the 1990s, her time has been divided among music, television, movies, and painting. Despite regular album releases, she failed to achieve major success in the charts with her music, but her television career has remained stellar, and she has hosted numerous primetime TV shows, mostly in Italy and France, occasionally making guest appearances in TV series. She has performed acting and dubbing roles in independent, as well as major, film productions. In the late 2000s, Lear reinvented herself as a theatrical actress, performing in long-running stage plays in France. To date, she allegedly has sold over 27 million records worldwide. Lear is also a widely recognized gay icon.

Early life
Lear's origins are unclear, with the singer providing different information about her background and keeping her birth year a secret from her long-term husband. Contested facts include her birth date and place, the gender she was born as, names and nationalities of her parents, and the location of her upbringing. Most sources claim 18 June 1939, including Bibliothèque nationale de France or 18 November 1939 to be her birth date, including GEMA. Her birth year, though, has variously been given as 1941, 1946, and 1950. During a 2010 interview with French newspaper Libération, Lear presented her identity card to the journalist, which read: "born 18 November 1950 in Saigon". Georges Claude Guilbert claims, "Most biographers believe she was born in 1939, whatever she might declare to the contrary."

As for her birthplace, Saigon and British Hong Kong appear to be the most credible versions, but places like Singapore, Switzerland, and even Transylvania have been rumoured as the singer's birthplace. She was reportedly the only child of her parents, who later divorced. Most sources, including Lear's 1965 wedding certificate from the Chelsea registry office, confirm that her father was a French army officer. Her mother was a Russian. According to the General Register Office for England and Wales, her birth surname was Tap. According to the French Republic, her birth surname was Tapp. In a 1976 interview with Carmen Thomas for a German television show, Lear confirmed that her father was British and mother was Russian and that they both had died. However, she later claimed that her mother had a French background. In 2021, she confirmed she was born in Saigon.

Lear allegedly grew up in the South of France and in Switzerland, or between London and Paris, or in Nice. She learned English, German, Spanish, and Italian in her teens, and would use multilingualism in her professional life. The academic Georges Claude Guilbert claims, "Linguists observe that she has a French accent when she speaks (and sings) in English".

The Guardian, on 24 December 2000, summarized the information relating to these aspects of Lear's life as follows: "Lear's background remains a mystery. She has variously let it be known that her mother was English or French or Vietnamese or Chinese, and that her father was English, Russian, French or Indonesian. She may have been born in Hanoi in 1939, or Hong Kong in either 1941 or 1946. Once she said she was from Transylvania. And to this day, it is a matter of conjecture as to whether she was born a boy or a girl."

Gender identity
Allegations claiming that Lear was a drag queen or intersex circulated from the beginning of Lear's modelling and singing careers. Her alleged transgender background was commented on by Salvador Dalí himself, and remarked upon in the media and in the biographies of those who knew Lear earlier in her life, including Dalí; author Ian Gibson devoted an entire chapter to Lear in his biography of Dalí.

April Ashley, a transgender entertainer and model, claimed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, Lear, whose birth name she said was "Alain Tap", had worked with her in the Parisian transgender revues Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel de Paris. In her book April Ashley's Odyssey, Ashley recalls Lear performing drag acts under the stage name "Peki d'Oslo", and it is confirmed that Lear was using this stage name in London in 1965. Similar facts have been reported by Romy Haag, a transgender artist living in Germany, who ran the popular nightclub Chez Romy in Berlin and knew Lear.

Some sources claim that Dalí sponsored Lear's sex reassignment surgery in Casablanca in 1963, carried out by Georges Burou, and also that Dalí invented the stage name for her, a pun of the Catalan language "L'Amant de Dalí" ('Dalí's lover').

In 1978, Lear posed nude for Playboy.

Despite Lear contradicting transgender allegations on numerous occasions and explaining they were part of a strategy to draw public attention, the allegations continued to persist. In 1976, Lear stated that it was "a crazy idea from some journalist", and later claimed that the rumour had been started by Dalí or even herself.

However, French, British, and Italian newspapers and magazines in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently in 2008 and 2011 and a 2016 article in La Stampa included passport details and an alleged reproduction of a copy of Lear's birth certificate, which states that she was given the name Alain Maurice Louis René Tap on 18 June 1939 in Saigon. The article included a supposed picture of Lear before her alleged transition.

1965–1974: Modelling and the Swinging London period
Amanda Lear was introduced to the eccentric Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí in Paris. The self-proclaimed enfant terrible in the world of art, 35 years her senior, was struck by her looks and found a soul mate in her. She has since described their close and unconventional relationship as a "spiritual marriage" and remained Dalí's confidante, protégée and closest friend through the next 16 years. She spent every summer with Dalí at his home at Port Lligat in Catalonia, Spain, and accompanied him and his wife on trips to Barcelona, Madrid, Paris and New York. She also took part in his art projects, posing for a number of Dalí's drawings and paintings, including The Dream of Hypnos (1965), Venus in Furs (1968), Angélus de Millet - Amanda, Angélique Rescued from the Dragon (1970), Bateau Anthotropic (1971), and Exploding Head (1982). Dalí and Lear would later collaborate on a giant seven-foot-wide by four-foot high collage fan. Lear can be found as Temperance in Salvador Dali's Tarot, in which she claimed to have assisted Dalí in the completion of the collages.

In 1965, Lear moved to London and began working as a cabaret artist. A July 1965 newspaper report about a robbery at her home described her as the strip-tease artist "Amanda Tapp, professionally known as Peki d'Oslo". An American newspaper described her in October 1965 as "one of the leading stripping stars on the European cabaret circuit".

On 11 December 1965 in the UK, she married Morgan Paul Lear, a Scottish architecture student, and adopted his name. After showing up at Lucie Daouphars' Parisian model school (known as Lucky), she was sent by Gérald Nanty to Karl Lagerfeld, then model maker at Patou. Amanda Lear was a runway model for Lagerfeld and met Catherine Harlé, the head of a modelling agency, who offered her a contract. With her modelling assignment, she walked for rising star Paco Rabanne in 1967. Just as Harlé had predicted, her looks were very much in demand. Soon after her debut Lear was photographed by Helmut Newton, Charles Paul Wilp and Antoine Giacomoni for magazines such as Beau (1966), mr. (1966), Le Nouveau Candide, Cinémonde (1967), Scandal, Marie France, Nova, The Daily Telegraph, Stern, Bravo and Vogue. She modelled for fashion designers including Yves Saint Laurent and Coco Chanel in Paris and Mary Quant, Ossie Clark and Antony Price in London. After some time, Lear dropped out of art school to model full-time and went on to lead a bohemian and flamboyant life in the Swinging London of the 1960s. Lear's acquaintances included the Beatles and fellow top models Twiggy, Pattie Boyd and Anita Pallenberg. In late 1966, she began dating the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones, whom she first met prior through Tara Browne. Pallenberg, cited as "Jones' mistress", also connected Lear with him. Their relationship inspired Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for the track "Miss Amanda Jones" from Between the Buttons, alluding the romance between Jones and Lear as she's described as "Ms. Jones". She became a "stalwart of London's demimonde", an exotic name on the nightclub circuit and a regular fixture in the gossip columns. Lear was arrested in 1967 by the police with drugs belonging to the Rolling Stones. Lear was sent naked to a prison cell "because you don't denounce a Rolling Stones", she said and was later fined for it. Lear appeared in several advertisements for major brands, modelling among others for a Chantelle underwear range and the Detchema fragrance by a French company Révillon Frères in 1967, and in 1968 played a minor role in the French comedy film Ne jouez pas avec les Martiens and also in the 1968 British psychedelic film Wonderwall. After Jones' death, Lear moved with hippie friends to Elvaston Place, South Kensington, in London. Lear recalled: "We smoked joints, took LSD, Jimi Hendrix came by when he had no place to sleep." In New York, Lear became a fixture at Max's Kansas City, partying every night with Andy Warhol and friends, to the point of neglecting some of her modelling duties, saying : "Do you even think I could have been ready and spotless by 8 A.M. as they wanted me to be ?".

In 1971, Lear modelled for a special Christmas issue of the French edition of Vogue, edited entirely by Salvador Dalí, and was photographed by David Bailey. She performed in a short-lived play along with the singer P.J. Proby in an Islington pub in London and 1972 saw her first on-stage appearance when she introduced Roxy Music and Lloyd Watson at the Rainbow Theatre in London in August. Lear also made a cameo appearance modelling in A Bigger Splash. Lear has been briefly engaged to Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music and was famously depicted posing in a skintight leather dress leading a black panther on a leash on the cover of the band's art rock album For Your Pleasure, released in March 1973, an image that has been described as "as famous as the album itself". After the release of For Your Pleasure, Lear appeared on stage at Camden Palace during Roxy Music concerts; "Freddie Mercury and Elton John thought I was great", she said. Later, Marianne Faithfull handed the phone to Lear: "It's David Bowie, he wants to talk to you." Lear first met Bowie at a dinner with Jagger and his wife Bianca, and then went to a Muhammad Ali boxing match shown at a cinema in Leicester Square. Lear thought Bowie was "weird with his red hair". Bianca "hated" Lear. Lear went on to have an affair with the married Bowie. However, Bowie's wife Angie supported Lear. Following the exposure to the music world she gained from the album cover, Lear appeared in the live performance of Bowie's hit song "Sorrow" in The 1980 Floor Show held in October 1973, broadcast in November 1973 as part of The Midnight Special TV series. Lear then contributed to the Dalí Museum, opened in the painter's home town Figueres in September 1974, by producing a series of collages decorating the doors of the museum, and was offered writing a monthly gossip column by the British magazine Tatler.

1974–1983: The disco period with Ariola Records
In 1974, disillusioned by a shallow and conservative fashion industry and encouraged by her boyfriend Bowie, who paid for singing and dancing lessons, Lear decided to launch a career in music. Bowie recommended a Hungarian voice coach Florence Wiese-Norberg, with whom he also worked, and the pair subsequently recorded a demo track called "Star", which remains unreleased to date. Lear's debut single, "Trouble", a pop-rock cover of Elvis Presley's 1958 classic, was released unsuccessfully by minor label Creole Records in the United Kingdom. A French-language version of the track, "La Bagarre", was released on Polydor in France and while equally unsuccessful there, it became a minor disco hit in West Germany in early 1976. The track caught the attention of the singer, composer and producer Anthony Monn and label Ariola, which offered her a seven-year, six-album recording contract for a sum of money that Lear since has described as "astronomic". Lear was also one of the four gossip columnists for Ritz Magazine. Her debut album, I Am a Photograph, released in 1977, was recorded in Munich with most songs composed by Monn who later produced majority of her material in the disco era. The album included Lear's first European hit "Blood and Honey", as well as the follow-up Italian no. 1 single "Tomorrow", and covers of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" and Leroy Anderson's "Blue Tango". I Am a Photograph's mixture of lush disco, schlager, kitsch and camp, topped with Lear's deep half-spoken, half-sung vocals and her characteristic Franglais accent was a successful combination. The second edition of I Am a Photograph, which also contained German no. 2 hit "Queen of Chinatown", included a free pin-up poster with Lear posing topless, a photo originally featured in a Playboy spread. Lear allegedly had affairs with Keith Moon and Jimmy Page.

In 1978, Lear continued her line of disco hits with Sweet Revenge, an album that opens with a concept medley about a Faustian fairy tale of a girl who sells her soul to the devil for fame and fortune, and in her eventual revenge over the devil's offer finds true love. The first single from Sweet Revenge, "Follow Me", powered by Lear's characteristic deep and recitative voice and the theme of the devil, was an instant smash hit. It reached the top 3 in the West German singles chart as well as the top 10 in many European countries, and has been Lear's signature tune ever since. The Sweet Revenge album was certified gold in West Germany and France, and went on to sell in excess of four million copies, spawning further European hit singles "Gold" and "Enigma (Give a Bit of Mmh to Me)". Lear took part in three Italian productions in 1978: a war-time parody Zio Adolfo in arte Führer, a softporn documentary Follie di notte directed by Joe D'Amato, and a six-episode controversial TV show Stryx. Later in 1978, Lear and Monn teamed for Never Trust a Pretty Face. The album featured a variety of genre exercises like the dance version of a war-time classic "Lili Marleen", the interpersonal ballad "The Sphinx", the cabaret-esque "Miroir", futuristic tracks "Black Holes" and "Intellectually", as well as the hit disco single "Fashion Pack (Studio 54)".

In late 1978, at a fashionable Parisian discothèque Le Palace, a French equivalent of Studio 54, Amanda Lear met bisexual French aristocrat Alain-Philippe Malagnac d'Argens de Villèle, the former lover and then adopted son of diplomat and controversial gay novelist Roger Peyrefitte.

She married him on 13 March 1979, while on a trip to the United States. The marriage lasted 21 years, until Malagnac's death on 16 December 2000, when he was killed by smoke in a fire at their farmhouse in Saint-Étienne-du-Grès. He died just six weeks after Roger Peyrefitte.

This marriage is not official for the French state. Dalí and his wife Gala both strongly disapproved of the relationship and attempted to persuade Lear to have the marriage annulled. As a consequence of this, and also the time taken up by Lear's successful career in music and television, she and her mentor began drifting apart. They sporadically kept in touch via letters and telephone through the early and mid-1980s, especially after Gala's death in 1982. Lear visited Dalí one last time at Púbol, Spain, a few years before the painter died.

In the early '80s, she had her first art exhibition in Paris. According to Lear, it happened in 1979.

In late 1979, Lear recorded Diamonds for Breakfast, which was her commercial breakthrough in the Scandinavian market (top 10 in both Sweden and Norway ), producing hits "Fabulous (Lover, Love Me)" and "Diamonds", plus regional single releases "Japan", "When" and the autoerotic "Ho fatto l'amore con me". The album abandoned the Munich disco sound with its lush strings and brass arrangements in favour of an electronic new wave rock style. Lear spent most of 1980 on European promotional tours for the album and its many accompanying single releases, from Greece to Finland. She also made her first visit to Japan, where both the single "Queen of Chinatown" and the Sweet Revenge album had charted. Two non-album singles followed the Diamonds for Breakfast album in late 1980: a pop cover of Eric "Monty" Morris's early ska hit "Solomon Gundie" and the chanson-esque "Le Chat de gouttière", the latter with both music and lyrics written by Lear and recorded for francophone markets.

The Lear/Monn album success saga neared its end in 1981 when Lear had become increasingly uncomfortable with the expectations and pressures of the music business in general and her own record label in particular. At the artistic and commercial peak of her international career, but with the so-called "anti-disco backlash" beginning to take its toll, she had tentatively started recording tracks for a forthcoming album with producer Trevor Horn in London. However, Ariola did not approve of the material and informed Lear that she was to return to Munich and provide the company and the market with another Monn product. The result of these sessions was Incognito, only partly co-written by Lear, with new wave material fueled with rock and electronic elements. Incognito generated only one minor hit, the French language ballad "Égal", and still met with relative success in Scandinavia. It was also her breakthrough album in South America, with three tracks recorded in Spanish: "Igual", "Dama de Berlin", and "Ninfomanía". Another non-album single followed in early 1982, a synthpop take on the pop classic "Fever". This was Lear's final collaboration with producer Anthony Monn. Shortly thereafter, she took legal action against the Ariola label on the grounds of artistic differences to be released from her recording contract. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, and she remained with Ariola until the end of 1983, as stipulated in the original contract. In 1982, another Italian language single, the ballad "Incredibilmente donna", was released on the greatest hits compilation Ieri, oggi.

The double A-side single "Love Your Body"/"Darkness and Light", released in the spring of 1983, was produced by Monn's sound engineer Peter Lüdemann rather than Monn. These were Lear's final Munich recordings for Ariola and her final promotional appearance on West Germany's most important music TV show at the time, Musikladen, in June 1983. Lear's international career momentum was slowing and effectively ended in December 1983 with her sixth and final Ariola album under contractual obligation. Tam-Tam, a collaboration with Italian composers and producers, was a modern and minimalist early 1980s synthpop album with a soundscape dominated by Roland TR-808 drum machines and sequencer-programmed synthesizers. Lear again wrote all the English lyrics for the album. Although she performed some of the songs from the album on the popular Italian TV show , she did not promote Tam-Tam in West Germany or any other parts of Europe and neither did the record company. As a consequence, Tam-Tam passed by unnoticed by the international record-buying public.

1983–1999: Television career and comeback attempts
Lear launched a very successful and lucrative career as a TV presenter in Italy, thanks to the future prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, soon becoming a household name in that country. She hosted many successful TV shows there, including Premiatissima and W le donne (the latter adapted in France as Cherchez la femme), where she frequently promoted her music. The singer recorded a string of dance singles for various European labels: "Assassino" and "Ritmo Salsa" in 1984, followed by "No Credit Card" and "Women" in 1985. A mini album titled A L, with four covers of classic songs, including Marilyn Monroe's "Bye Bye Baby" and "As Time Goes By" from the film Casablanca, was recorded for Five Records and released in 1985. Her music career, however, had waned by that point, and she had failed to find chart success with her recordings at that time. In late 1985, Lear appeared in a series of TV spots for Fiat. She had written her first book, the autobiography My Life with Dalí, about her long relationship with the famous painter. Originally published in French, the book was translated into other languages in the second half of the 1980s.

After several years as a TV entertainer in Italy on Canale 5 and France on La Cinq, Lear returned to music. Her next album, Secret Passion, a post-disco Hi-NRG affair produced by Christian De Walden, was recorded in Los Angeles and Rome for major French label Carrere Records. The album was to be her comeback in Continental Europe, Scandinavia, the Eastern Bloc, South America and Japan, as well as a breakthrough attempt in English-speaking countries. These were the only major markets that Lear had not conquered during the Ariola years. The launch was planned for January 1987, however, just before promotion began, Lear was seriously injured in a near-fatal car accident and took months to recover, unable to promote the record properly. Secret Passion's commercial success was less than hoped for, and the lead single "Wild Thing" was ultimately released in a few countries such as France, Italy and Greece. While in hospital, Lear began writing a novel, L'Immortelle, a surrealistic tale of the torments of a woman doomed to eternal youth and beauty. Watching everyone else grow older and eventually losing all her loved ones, the woman is still as beautiful but unable to stop the merciless passage of time.

A series of re-recordings of her old hits appeared on the market in the late 1980s, starting with a synthpop take of the biggest hit, "Follow Me", in 1987. The following year, Italian band CCCP Fedeli alla linea recorded a cover of her song "Tomorrow", retitled "Tomorrow (Voulez-vous un rendez-vous)", for which Lear contributed guest vocals. The single was a minor hit in Italy and Amanda's first chart success in that country in six years. In 1989, DJ Ian Levine remixed "Follow Me" and "Gold" in a Hi-NRG fashion, while Lear hosted Ars Amanda on Rai 3, an Italian chat show where she interviewed both Italian and international celebrities and politicians in bed. From the late 1980s, Lear has been a regular participant in the popular French radio show Les Grosses Têtes on RTL, televised on Paris Première. To maintain her popularity in Italy, she recorded Uomini più uomini, an all-Italian language album, which included mainstream pop material written among others by, Paolo Conte's brother No single was released to promote the album and it turned out a commercial failure. The same year, Amanda re-recorded some of the songs in French and cut the dance single "Métamorphose" for the French-Italian re-release of the album Tant qu'il y aura des hommes. In 1990, she released an up-tempo, promotional-only single, "Do You Remember Me?" and took part in Thierry Mugler's fashion show.

Lear continued to record more dancefloor-friendly repertoire in the 1990s, starting with the 1992 song "Fantasy", which became a hit in European clubs. Cadavrexquis, her next album, was released in 1993 and featured heavily club-oriented material, including "Fantasy" and re-recordings of three songs from the disco era. Both the single and the album failed to enter any mainstream charts. Meanwhile, Lear hosted the TV show Méfiez-vous des blondes on TF1 and appeared in 's TV drama Une Femme pour moi in France. In 1994, she modelled for the fashion house Grès in Paris and again for Thierry Mugler in Berlin the following year. In May 1995, Lear debuted her new, erotic late night TV show Peep! in Germany, also known as Beware of the Blondes, which she hosted for one year. The show, which used her song "Peep!" as the opening music theme, became remarkably popular in Germany, achieving over 50% of the market share. In June 1995, she performed at a 1970s disco music tribute concert La fièvre du disco in Paris alongside Boney M. and Gloria Gaynor In autumn, the singer released Alter Ego, an upbeat eurodance offering. Again, the album was unsuccessful and did not produce any hits. As an active supporter of people suffering from HIV/AIDS, Lear made an appearance in 1996 as a model for Paco Rabanne during an annual charity event Life Ball. During her November 1996 concert at Le Palace in Paris, the singer announced her definitive departure from touring and performing live, and although she sporadically gave concerts in the following years, her live acts have been limited mostly to short TV appearances.

Lear released Back in Your Arms in Spring 1998, an album consisting of re-recordings of her own 1970s disco hits and remixed versions of tracks from the 1995 album Alter Ego. The album failed to make much impact on the market, but the re-recordings have been featured on many mid-price compilations in Europe. Back in Your Arms was re-released with a slightly different track list and title, and a remix of "Blood and Honey" was released as the single. Her next acting and television ventures were the French movie Bimboland, in which she starred alongside Gérard Depardieu, and an Italian makeover TV show Il brutto anatroccolo. The theme tune to the latter was "Nuda", a cover version of Melina Mercouri's 1960 recording "Never on Sunday", which Lear recorded but never released commercially. On the set of Il brutto anatroccolo Lear met model and actor, some 30 years her junior. Lear and Casella began a long-term relationship and were featured prominently in the tabloid press in France and Italy, before splitting in 2008.

2000–present: Recent career
Lear contributed vocals for a cover of Giorgio Moroder's 1970s hit "From Here to Eternity", recorded in 2000 with Eric D. Clark. In the morning of 16 December 2000, a fire broke out in Lear's house in Saint-Étienne-du-Grès, killing her husband Alain-Philippe, and his friend Didier Dieufis. At the time of the accident, Lear was in Milan, where she was hosting a TV show. The fire left the house in ruins, destroying personal memorabilia and a number of Dalí's paintings. As a result of the accident, she fell into depression, but soon returned to work and put on an art exhibition titled Not a. Lear. At the end of 2001, she returned with the album Heart, dedicated to the late husband. The album offered a cover of "Love Boat", the title song from the 1970s TV series of the same name, and the club-friendly track "I Just Wanna Dance Again", both issued as singles featuring remixes by some prominent names in the world of French dance music, such as Laurent Wolf and Junior Vasquez.

In 2002, Lear starred in Le Défi, a musical movie written and directed by choreographer Blanca Li about an 18-year-old dropout who dreams of becoming a star in breakdancing and the ensuing conflicts with his conservative mother. Lear played the mother's understanding and encouraging best friend. She cut the title song for her Italian TV show Cocktail d'amore in which she interviewed some of Italy's most famous 1980s music stars, and released the single "Beats of Love" with the Belgian boy band Get Ready! Both tracks were included in the 2003 re-release of Heart, retitled Tendance. Next year, Lear dubbed the voice of Edna Mode in the French and Italian versions of the Disney/Pixar's blockbuster The Incredibles, and her 1978 song "Enigma" enjoyed success in Central and Eastern Europe after exposure in the Kinder Bueno TV advert. In 2005, the singer became a judge on Ballando con le stelle, the Italian version of Dancing with the Stars, and released two dance singles, "Paris by Night" and the remake of Barry Manilow's "Copacabana", as well as two compilations, Forever Glam! and Sings Evergreens. In 2006, Lear opened an art exhibition in New York, titled Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's Amanda Lear, and was decorated with the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres in recognition of her contributions to French arts and sciences. A compilation was released, the 3 CD The Sphinx – Das Beste aus den Jahren 1976–1983, fully covering the singer's Ariola output. In October, the album With Love was released in France. It won critical acclaim in France and was released in the rest of Europe in early 2007. Lear made several appearances in movies, including acting in Oliviero Rising and dubbing for the French version of Dragon Hunters. In 2008, she hosted several TV shows in Italy and France.

In 2009, Lear accepted the part of Cécile in the comedy Panique au ministère, which debuted at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris. The show turned out to be a huge success and was taken on tour. The same year, she dubbed the voice of Fish in the German movie Lacoma directed by Christopher Roth. Her next album Brief Encounters, was released in autumn 2009, preceded by the single "Someone Else's Eyes", a duet with Italian singer-producer Deadstar. The following month, Lear released the autobiography Je ne suis pas celle que vous croyez... (I am not who you think...) and the EP Brand New Love Affair. The title song was released as the lead single, accompanied by an animated music video. Brief Encounters was partly re-recorded and remixed and then released in Acoustique and Reloaded versions. Boy George remixed "Someone Else's Eyes" in 2010. In April 2011, Lear released the single "Chinese Walk", and joined the judging panel of the Italian TV show Ciak... si canta! on Rai 1. She dubbed the voice of Janet the Lioness in the French version of Zookeeper. In September, Lear returned to theatre for the lead role in Lady Oscar, an adaptation of Claude Magnier's 1958 play Oscar, at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris. The play was another success and was taken on tour.

Her album I Don't Like Disco was released in January 2012, and the single "La Bête et la Belle" sparked controversy due to its erotic imagery. In September 2012, Lear appeared as a catwalk model on Jean Paul Gaultier's fashion show in Paris and in 2013 started playing the leading part in the play Divina at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris. In Spring 2014, she released My Happiness, a tribute album with covers of Elvis Presley's songs, promoted by the single and video "Suspicious Minds". In 2015, she recorded the duet "Mai più" with Italian singer for his album L'universo elegante. The pair then teamed for the ballad "Prima del tuo cuore" for Lear's next album Let Me Entertain You, released in May 2016. Her play La Candidate, a sequel to Panique au ministère, opened in 2016 at the Théâtre de la Michodière and was subsequently taken on tour across France. At the time of an interview in the Italian program Domenica in on 16 October 2016, Lear had planned a retirement immediately after completing the La Candidate tour in Spring 2017, however, she had to cancel a number of final dates due to health issues. In 2018, she worked on the dubbing for French and Italian versions of Incredibles 2, hosted the TV show Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ? on Cielo, and released another book, Délires. In 2019, Lear joined the judging panel of the Italian TV show Sanremo Young on Rai 1. In 2020, Lear starred in Si Muore Solo Da Vivi directed by Alberto Rizzi and in Miss directed by Ruben Alves. In 2021, she appears in TV drama  in France. In September, Lear returned to theatre to play Joan Crawford in , a play about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in the war they fought on the set of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? The play was directed by Michel Fau at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris.

She released a new album called Tuberose in 2021.

She is portrayed by Andreja Pejić in the film Dalíland, released in 2023.

Discography

 * Studio albums and main compilations:

 * 1977: I Am a Photograph
 * 1978: Sweet Revenge
 * 1979: Never Trust a Pretty Face
 * 1980: Diamonds for Breakfast
 * 1981: Incognito
 * 1982: Ieri, oggi
 * 1983: Tam-Tam
 * 1985: A L
 * 1986: Secret Passion
 * 1989: Uomini più uomini
 * 1989: Tant qu'il y aura des hommes
 * 1989: Super 20
 * 1991: The Collection
 * 1993: Cadavrexquis

 * 1995: Alter Ego
 * 1998: Back in Your Arms
 * 2001: Heart
 * 2003: Tendance
 * 2005: Forever Glam!
 * 2005: Sings Evergreens
 * 2006: The Sphinx – Das Beste aus den Jahren 1976–1983
 * 2006: With Love
 * 2009: Brief Encounters
 * 2009: Brand New Love Affair
 * 2012: I Don't Like Disco
 * 2014: My Happiness
 * 2016: Let Me Entertain You
 * 2021: Tuberose

Filmography

 * Ne jouez pas avec les Martiens (1967)
 * Wonderwall (1968)
 * Follie di notte (1978)
 * Loggerheads (1978)
 * Grottenolm (1985)
 * L'amour est à réinventer (1997)
 * Bimboland (1998)
 * La Défi (2002)
 * Oliviero Rising (2007)
 * Bloody Flowers (2008)
 * 8th Wonderland (2010)
 * Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)
 * Metti una notte (2017)
 * Miss (2020)
 * Si muore solo da vivi (2020)
 * Maison de retraite 2 (2024)
 * To Live, To Die, To Live Again (Vivre, mourir, renaître) (2024)

Theater

 * 2009-2011 : Panique au ministère written by Jean Franco & Guillaume Mélanie, directed by Raymond Acquaviva
 * 2011-2013 : Lady Oscar written by Guillaume Mélanie, directed by Éric Civanyan
 * 2013-2014 : Divina written by Jean Robert-Charrier, directed by Nicolas Briançon
 * 2016-2017 : La Candidate written by Jean Franco & Guillaume Mélanie, directed by Raymond Acquaviva
 * 2021-2022 : Qu’est-il arrivé à Bette Davis et Joan Crawford ? written by Jean Marboeuf, directed by Michel Fau
 * 2024 : The Scientific Cardplayer written by Jean Franco & Guillaume Mélanie, directed by Raymond Acquaviva

Books

 * 1984 : (autobiography)
 * 1987 : (novel)
 * 1994 : (reprint of Le Dalí d'Amanda, with a foreword by Paco Rabanne)
 * 2004 : (reprint of Le Dalí d'Amanda)
 * 2006 : (collected arts)
 * 2009 : (autobiography)
 * 2018 : (collection of meditations and anecdotes)

In popular culture

 * Lear was romantically linked to Brian Jones, which resulted in the ironic Rolling Stones track "Miss Amanda Jones" on the 1967 album Between the Buttons.
 * Character Patsy Stone from the UK TV series Absolutely Fabulous was partly modeled on Amanda Lear.
 * Italian band Baustelle dedicated their 2016 song "Amanda Lear" to her.
 * In the biographical film Dalíland, Amanda Lear is played by the model and actress Andreja Pejić.

title: Amanda Lear


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WJBK

WJBK (channel 2) is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, serving as the market's Fox network outlet. Owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division, the station maintains studios and transmitter facilities on West 9 Mile Road in the Detroit suburb of Southfield.

WJBK's over-the-air signal covers all of Metro Detroit, along with Southwestern Ontario, Canada, surrounding the city of Windsor. The station is also carried on most cable systems in southeast Michigan, southwestern Ontario and northwest Ohio.

CBS affiliate (1948–1994)
WJBK-TV first signed on the air on October 24, 1948. It was the third television station to sign-on in Detroit and Michigan, after WWJ-TV (channel 4, now WDIV-TV) and WXYZ-TV (channel 7)—all of which have signed on in a 14-month timeframe. Despite Detroit being a major television market, it only accommodated three VHF allocations due to being shortspaced between Flint (channel 12) and Saginaw (channel 5) to the north; Lansing (channels 6 and 10) to the west; Toledo (channels 11 and 13) to the south; and Cleveland (channels 3, 5 and 8); Windsor, Ontario (channel 9); and London, Ontario (channel 10) to the east. For this reason, WJBK was assigned the final VHF channel in Detroit.

At sign on, the first program broadcast by WJBK was a presentation of Lucky Pup at 6:15 p.m. that evening. The station was originally an affiliate of both CBS and the DuMont Television Network. It was originally owned by Fort Industry Broadcasting, owned by George B. Storer and then based in nearby Toledo, Ohio. Fort Industry, which would later be renamed Storer Broadcasting, also owned WJBK radio (1500 AM, now WLQV, and 93.1 FM, now WUFL). The station originally operated from Detroit's Masonic Temple until 1956, when its operations were moved to a purpose-built studio facility on Second Avenue in Detroit's New Center section, which would be occupied by PBS member station WTVS for nearly 40 years and is now being reconstructed for use as headquarters for the nonprofit Midnight Golf Program. WJBK-TV would eventually become an exclusive CBS affiliate by 1955, when Windsor, Ontario-based CKLW-TV (channel 9, now CBC O&O CBET-DT) became a DuMont affiliate. WJBK first broadcast in color around 1956. In 1970, the station moved to its current broadcast facilities on West Nine Mile Road in Southfield. Like most studio facilities built by Storer during that time, it resembles a Southern antebellum mansion.

The station went through a number of ownership and management changes with its parent companies in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1985, the equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) acquired Storer Communications, Incorporated in a leveraged buyout. Storer spurned offers from Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Tele-Communications, Inc. and Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., though Scripps-Howard would successfully acquire cross-town rival ABC owned and operated station WXYZ-TV in 1986 after the ABC-Capital Cities Communications merger was approved by federal regulators. KKR then sold all of the Storer broadcast assets, including WJBK, to Gillett Communications in 1987, after an attempt to sell the stations to Lorimar-Telepictures in 1986 failed. When Gillett went bankrupt in 1992, it reorganized the ownership of its television stations into SCI Television. The following year, in 1993, SCI was acquired by the film and television production company New World Communications.

Switch to Fox station (1994–present)
In May 1994, News Corporation, then-parent of the Fox network, purchased a 20% ownership stake (amounting to a $500 million investment) in WJBK's owner New World Communications. Fox made the investment to comply with their winning bid for the broadcast rights to the NFL's National Football Conference. Fox outbid CBS for the NFL broadcast rights on the condition that it would improve the network's affiliate coverage in the larger television markets. As a result of Fox's investment, New World agreed to switch the network affiliations of most of the company's stations, including WJBK, to Fox. While WKBD-TV (channel 50) had been the Fox affiliate in Detroit since the network debuted on October 9, 1986, and had grown to be one of the network's strongest affiliates, Fox still considered WJBK a far-more desirable affiliation prospect on the strength of its VHF signal and the station's longtime news department.

WJBK became Detroit's new Fox affiliate on December 11, 1994, after the station's affiliation contract with CBS ended, ending its 45-year affiliation with that network. With the switch, regular season games of the Detroit Lions' continued to air on WJBK, although there was a brief three-month interruption in coverage due to CBS losing the NFC rights for the first three months of Fox's NFC telecasts due to WKBD airing them. After losing Fox, WKBD was briefly an independent before joining the newly launched UPN a month later.

CBS found it difficult to find a new home in Detroit. WXYZ and Cleveland sister station WEWS-TV were both heavily wooed to become CBS affiliates, but the E. W. Scripps Company signed an affiliation deal with ABC in June 1994 that renewed the network's affiliations with both stations. WDIV was not an option as that station was in the middle of a long-term affiliation contract with NBC at the time. As a result, CBS was forced to deal with the market's lower-rated UHF outlets, none of which had the kind of signal penetration that WJBK had. As a contingency plan, CBS signed a long-term affiliation deal with WTOL in Toledo, Ohio; which provides city-grade coverage to most of Detroit's southern suburbs and grade B coverage of Detroit itself. It also persuaded Mid-Michigan's longtime NBC affiliate, WNEM-TV, to switch to CBS; WNEM provided stronger coverage of Detroit's outer northern suburbs than did the market's longtime CBS affiliate, WEYI-TV.

With just days to go before WJBK was due to switch to Fox, CBS faced the prospect of having to import WTOL, WNEM, and WLNS on area cable providers until it could find a replacement affiliate. CBS would end up purchasing low-rated UHF independent station WGPR-TV (channel 62, now WWJ-TV) in September 1994. The last CBS network program to air on WJBK was a first-run episode of Walker, Texas Ranger at 10 p.m. Eastern Time on December 10, 1994; channel 2 officially became a Fox affiliate the next day, when the network's programming lineup moved to the station from WKBD; the first Fox network program to air on the station as a full-time affiliate was Fox NFL Sunday at noon that day, which led into that afternoon's NFL doubleheader: an early game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Los Angeles Rams and a mid-afternoon game between the San Francisco 49ers and the San Diego Chargers. Former Fox affiliate WKBD briefly became an independent station before becoming a charter affiliate of UPN in January 1995.

Until channel 62 built a new transmitter in 1999, WTOL served as the default CBS affiliate for most of the southern portion of the market, while WNEM served the northern portion and WLNS served the western portion.

As a result of the network switch, WJBK changed its branding from "TV 2" to "Fox 2" by the fall of 1995 (becoming one of the few New World stations that switched to the network to adhere to the network's branding conventions before Fox's buyout of New World). Fox Television Stations bought New World's ten Fox-affiliated stations, including WJBK, in July 1996; the purchase was finalized on January 22, 1997, with channel 2 becoming a Fox owned-and-operated station as a result.

On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company, owner of WXYZ-TV's affiliated network ABC, announced its intent to buy WJBK's parent company, 21st Century Fox, for $66.1 billion; the sale, which closed on March 20, 2019, excluded WJBK as well as the Fox network, the MyNetworkTV programming service, Fox News, Fox Sports 1, the Big Ten Network and the Fox Television Stations unit, which were all transferred to the newly-formed Fox Corporation.

Local productions
Some of WJBK's early productions included popular children's shows. Milky's Movie Party starring Milky the Clown, played by magician Clarence R. Cummings Jr., was one of the station's first locally produced children's programs from 1950 to 1955. The program featured a mix of cartoons and westerns with Cummings performing magic tricks with other acts in front of a live audience. Cummings would eventually take the Milky character to WXYZ-TV and the former WWJ-TV (now WDIV).

Other original WJBK children's programs included a cowboy-themed show with Sagebrush Shorty, played by ventriloquist Ted Lloyd, with his sidekick dummy Skinny Dugan that aired from 1956 to 1960, featuring a mix of children's activities and various other characters that interacted with Lloyd. That program was followed by another WJBK children's favorite, Jungle-La with wildlife expert "B'wana" Don Hunt, that aired from 1960 to 1963. Hunt with his sidekick chimpanzee Bongo Bailey hosted cartoons and taught viewers about various wildlife. Hunt moved to Africa in 1964 and managed a wildlife preserve in Kenya responsible for saving some species from extinction. After airing first on the former WWJ-TV and CKLW-TV, performer Art Cervi would obtain the Bozo the Clown franchise for Detroit and perform the character at WJBK beginning in 1975. During its run at the station, the program would be syndicated from WJBK to cities including New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Wichita, Kansas.

WJBK also produced one of Detroit's first morning talk shows, Ladies' Day with Chuck Bergeson, which aired from 1952 to 1959. The hour-long show included games, contests, and interviews with the biggest stars of the time including Lucille Ball and Red Skelton. Bergeson also hosted other WJBK shows in the 1950s including Your TV Golf Pro and The Name Game. From 1967 to 1983, Sir Graves Ghastly, played by actor Lawson J. Deming, hosted WJBK's assorted sci-fi and horror movies on Saturday afternoons; the humorous character became a popular figure in Detroit television. Deming had originally come to the station as a puppeteer and voice actor for the children's program Woodrow the Woodsman when that show moved from Cleveland's WKYC-TV to WJBK in 1966. In addition to playing the character in Cleveland, he also played Sir Graves on WTOP-TV in Washington, D.C. at the same time.

With This Ring was a nationally syndicated religious program produced at the studios of WJBK from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s. The weekly 15-minute show hosted by Roman Catholic priest Raymond Schlinkert featured lectures and advice about marriage and family life. The program was syndicated to several other U.S. commercial stations, usually shown immediately following the station's sign-on or before sign-off on Sundays.

WJBK would also produce Sunday public affairs/interview shows over the years including Focus Detroit, hosted by reporters Woody Willis and Beverly Payne in 1973; Sunday in Detroit, hosted by news anchor Kathy O'Brien, would air around 1980 and WJBK business reporter and news anchor Murray Feldman also hosted a Sunday business and financial program in the mid-1990s called Moneywise. WJBK produced a local version of the syndicated program PM Magazine from 1978 to the mid-1980s. The show changed titles over the years eventually becoming known as PM Detroit – it also had various hosts included Ronnie Klemmer, Lorrie Kapp, Gary Cubberly and Mattie Majors. The station was also the Detroit home and active participant for comedian Jerry Lewis' annual MDA Labor Day Telethon for several years.

From 1983 to 1986, popular WJR (760 AM) morning radio host J. P. McCarthy hosted an evening interview show with newsmakers and people of interest called JP, as well as a similar program in the early 1990s entitled In Person with J.P. McCarthy. He also previously hosted sports interview show specials through the 1970s. In 1995, former WXYZ-TV news anchor Bill Bonds hosted the 11 p.m. talk/interview show, Bonds Tonight. Bonds eventually would end up anchoring and reporting on WJBK's newscasts.

Past program preemptions and deferrals
Even though WJBK was one of CBS' stronger affiliates, it would preempt or reschedule some network programs. As the flagship station of Detroit Tigers baseball from the 1950s to the 1970s, it would preempt network programming to televise games. From 1970 until the early 1980s, the station would air its own local morning newscast from 7 to 8 a.m. and then Good Morning, Detroit instead of the CBS Morning News. In 1992, it chose again not to air CBS This Morning in favor of its own local newscast. The station would regularly reschedule CBS' daytime game shows and it would also move the soap opera Guiding Light from its usual network airtime of 3 pm. ET to 10 am, with episodes airing on a one-day delay. WJBK would also preempt the CBS late night schedule with syndicated reruns including Cheers and late night movies until the debut of the Late Show with David Letterman in 1993, when the station cleared the show at 11:35 p.m.

After the affiliation switch, WJBK maintained its existing schedule, with the exception of the expansion of its news programming including the move and conversion of its 11 p.m. newscast to an hour-long broadcast at 10 pm. As Fox offered less network programming, especially during the daytime hours, WJBK would fill its schedule with more syndicated programs and off-network reruns. However, the station, like its fellow former New World stations, never ran the Fox Kids children's programming block. That block would remain on former Fox affiliate WKBD before eventually moving to WADL (channel 38) and then WDWB-TV (channel 20, now WMYD). In 2014, WJBK cleared Steve Rotfeld Productions' Xploration Station block, making it the first time the station has ever cleared Fox children's programming.

Detroit Tigers
From the 1950s to the 1970s, WJBK was a pioneer in Detroit sports broadcasting. In 1949, it was the first television station in Michigan to broadcast live Detroit Tigers baseball and Detroit Lions football games. From 1953 to 1974, WJBK served as the first flagship station of the Tigers Television Network with games broadcast on stations throughout Michigan, northern Indiana, and northwest Ohio. In the 1960s, longtime Tigers broadcaster and former player George Kell hosted the pregame show Tigers Warm Up on the field during batting practice. During the 2007 season, the station aired some regular season Tigers games produced by Fox Sports Detroit (now Bally Sports Detroit). Currently, the only Tigers games aired on WJBK are the Tigers' season home opener and national coverage presented by Fox (including the team's 2006 and 2012 World Series appearances); WJBK also aired select Tigers games featured on CBS' MLB coverage from 1990 to 1993.

Detroit Pistons
WJBK also televised Detroit Pistons games from the time that the team's relocated to Detroit from Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1957, until 1972; the team's games began airing on WKBD-TV the following season. The Pistons would also air on WJBK during nationally televised games on CBS from 1973 to 1990; WJBK televised both of the first two Pistons NBA Finals championships of 1989 and 1990 (game 5 of the latter series was the last NBA game aired on CBS).

Detroit Red Wings
Detroit Red Wings NHL games, produced again by Fox Sports Detroit, would also be aired on the station from 2003 to 2007. In March 2007, WJBK began broadcasting Red Wings games in high definition. Previously the Red Wings aired on the station various times between 1956 and 1980 through broadcast rights held by CBS and again from 1995 to 1999 through Fox's contract with the NHL; this included the team's Stanley Cup Finals victories in 1997 and 1998.

Detroit Lions
WJBK has had a long-standing relationship with the NFL's Detroit Lions (first with CBS, now Fox), having carried most of its games since 1956, when CBS started airing NFL games. Except for the first three months of the 1994 season (before the affiliation switch took effect), it has been the unofficial regular-season "home" station of the Lions ever since, including coverage of the team's Thanksgiving Day home games in odd-numbered years. For the first 15 weeks of the 1994 season, the games aired on lame-duck Fox outlet WKBD. However, regular season home games were subject to the NFL's local television blackout policy. This occurred five times during the Lions' winless season of 2008 when five home games were blacked out due to low ticket sales. However, in 2015, the NFL decided to lift the blackout rules on an experimental basis, meaning that Lions games were shown on Channel 2 regardless of ticket sales; this policy was continued the next season in 2016 as well, and has continued indefinitely as of 2019.

In previous years, WJBK had also televised Lions preseason games as the flagship station of the Detroit Lions Television Network and produced pregame and postgame shows. Those preseason broadcast rights were then held by WWJ-TV and then WXYZ-TV until 2015, when WJBK once again became the official preseason station of the Lions as well.

As a CBS affiliate, WJBK aired the network's coverage of Super Bowl XVI, which was hosted locally at the Pontiac Silverdome.

WJBK's sportscasters have also been team play-by-play announcers through the years with Van Patrick doing Tigers, Lions and Notre Dame Football games. Ray Lane would be paired with Hall of Fame announcer Ernie Harwell on Tigers' radio broadcasts from 1967 to 1972; and current sports director Dan Miller performs radio play by play for the Lions.

News operation
WJBK currently broadcasts 68½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 11½ hours each weekday and 5½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output among all broadcast television stations in the state of Michigan. In addition, WJBK produces a sports highlight program on Sunday nights following the 10 p.m. newscast called Sports Works (which is also the branding of the sports segments seen within its newscasts); the show is hosted by either WJBK sports director Dan Miller or sports anchor/reporter Woody Woodriffe, and typically features a roundtable discussion with members of the Detroit sports media including Sean Baligian, formerly of WDFN (1130 AM); Bob Wojnowski from the Detroit News; Pat Caputo from the Oakland Press and WXYT-FM (97.1) and Tony Ortiz from WXYT-FM.

WJBK operates a fleet of Ford E350 ENG vehicles with microwave transmission and video editing capabilities. The station also has (SNG) mobile satellite uplink capability. For aerial news coverage, WJBK shares a Eurocopter AS350BA A-star news helicopter with WXYZ-TV and WDIV-TV as part of a Local News Service agreement. The aircraft has HD video capability and goes by the call sign "Red Bird" (although WJBK brands the helicopter as "SkyFox"). In 2009, WJBK and WXYZ-TV expanded the LNS agreement to allow the sharing of local news video.

In an effort to cut expenses, WJBK and WXYZ's respective owners, Fox and the E. W. Scripps Company, established an LNS in all markets where both companies own stations. The stations pool newsgathering resources and share video during coverage of general news events. While the news department primarily focuses its local news coverage on southeastern Michigan, it also provides coverage of larger stories in southwestern Ontario, northern Ohio and the rest of Michigan.

TV-2 Eyewitness News
Through much of the 1960s and 1970s WJBK's TV-2 Eyewitness News dominated the newscast ratings in the Detroit market. This began with news anchor Jac LeGoff and grew when LeGoff was paired with newscaster John Kelly. Other popular longtime Detroit television personalities including Joe Weaver, Jerry Hodak, Van Patrick and Marilyn Turner would also be a part of WJBK's ratings success. The station's ratings would begin to wane in the mid-1970s after then-ABC O&O WXYZ-TV hired away WJBK's and WWJ-TV's top talent, including Kelly and Turner and eventually LeGoff and Hodak. WJBK's newscasts remained competitive in the 1970s with a new stable of talent including anchors Joe Glover, Robbie Timmons, Harry Gallagher, Murray Feldman and Terry Murphy. The station also had correspondents in bureaus at the Detroit City-County Building (Louis Miller), the Michigan state capital in Lansing and Washington, D.C. Nationally syndicated radio host George Noory was even a news producer at WJBK from 1974 to 1978, before becoming a news director at stations in Minneapolis and St. Louis. However, by 1980, the station's news ratings steeply declined with the growing dominance of WXYZ. Also by this time WDIV's new owners, Post-Newsweek Stations, were making aggressive changes to bolster its station's image and ratings from third place. By 1982, management at WJBK replaced most of the staff, which sank the station's news ratings further into third place, from where it would almost never recover.

With new management, WJBK's news department saw a resurgence by 1990 with new staff that included Sherry Margolis, Huel Perkins and the rehiring of former anchor Joe Glover. The station would also hire away news staff and talent away from top rated WXYZ including Rich Fisher, Dayna Eubanks, Catherine Lehan, Jerry Hodak and investigative reporter Vince Wade. The station revised its image with a new logo, graphics, music and news set and began airing Detroit's first 4 p.m. newscast as part of a three-hour evening news block with half-hour newscasts at 4, 5 and 6 pm. At the same time, the station also became Detroit's first television station to launch a weekend morning newscast. Overall, WJBK's news ratings would not improve enough to surpass WXYZ and WDIV, which would continue to go head-to-head for first place. The station would also begin to simulcast its late newscast on WADL, which lasted until 1998. It would also be among the first television stations in the country to air obituaries in 1995 during the Detroit newspaper strike.

Fox 2 News
When WJBK switched affiliations from CBS to Fox in December 1994, the station adopted a news-intensive format. It has retained a news schedule similar to the one it had in its latter days as a CBS affiliate. The 35-minute 11 p.m. newscast was moved to 10 p.m. and expanded to an hour, and the weekday morning newscast was also expanded. The weekend 6 p.m. newscasts would also be expanded to one hour. WJBK now had a late local newscast in first place as it immediately overtook the hour-long 10 p.m. newscast that WKBD had at the time in the ratings. Eventually, WJBK would drop the 4 p.m. newscast, but the station's profile and ratings for its morning and 10 p.m. newscasts would surge with it out of direct competition from its main competitors WDIV and WXYZ. In 1995, the station would hire news anchor Bill Bonds after his departure from WXYZ-TV. Bonds would fill the 11 p.m. timeslot with a news/interview show, Bonds Tonight.

The newscasts were branded as Fox 2 Eyewitness News until 1997, when Fox took full ownership of the station and rebranded its newscasts as Fox 2 News. By that time, the station would also release its previous WXYZ hires. At the same time, Fox's news management brought on new talent including Dan Miller, Alan Lee and Monica Gayle from Seattle, as well as Rob Wolchek from Fresno, California. By 1998, the station would bolster its image by improving its investigative and consumer advocate unit and branding it as The Problem Solvers. It also adopted a slogan complementary to Detroit's working class heritage, "News That Works for You". On September 24, 2007, WJBK relaunched an 11 p.m. newscast, using the NewsEdge format originally used by Fox Tampa station WTVT. It also changed its logo, graphics and news theme to an image that became standard on the Fox O&O stations. In April 2008, the station became the first Fox-owned station (and the third television station in Detroit) to broadcast its news programming in high definition.

On September 12, 2016, WJBK added an extra half-hour to its 6 p.m. newscast.

Mornings
WJBK had a tradition of producing its own morning news shows instead of airing CBS' morning news programs, beginning with a 7:30 a.m. newscast in 1969. The newscast would soon expand to an hour starting at 7 am. It became a mix of news, interviews and features and would be renamed Good Morning, Detroit and eventually moved to 8 am. During its run, Vic Caputo would co-anchor separately with Beverly Payne, Ken Ford and Kathy O'Brien. Payne would be the first African-American female news anchor in Detroit. Good Morning, Detroit eventually became Morning Magazine, hosted by Kathy O'Brien and Gary Cubberly. In 1982, Morning Magazine was discontinued and briefly became Two's Company, also hosted by O'Brien and Cubberly. In 1992, the station preempted CBS' morning news program again when WJBK rehired Jerry Hodak from WXYZ to co-anchor Eyewitness News Morning. Just prior to that, WJBK also debuted Detroit's first weekend morning newscast, which was first anchored by former PM Magazine host Gary Cubberly. Competitor WDIV would follow with its own weekend morning newscast, as did eventually WXYZ. Since then, the station has broadcast more morning news hours than any other Detroit television station. In September 2009, the morning newscast was expanded to 5½ hours, airing from 4:30 to 10 am. In September 2011, Fox 2 News Morning expanded to 6½ hours from 4:30 to 11 am, where it joins the station's hour-long midday newscast at 11 am. WJBK has also had the longest-running midday newscast in the Detroit market, which originated in 1966 in the noon timeslot, before moving to 11 a.m. shortly after the switch to Fox.

On Wednesday, May 6, 2015, WJBK's morning show became the subject of notoriety for a blooper, wherein an anchor hoped the middle day of the week, which is often referred to as "hump day", would have clear skies, and turn out to be a "dry hump day". In the fall of 2018, WJBK begin expanding its current morning newscasts to 8 hours with addition of half-hour starting at 4 am. On September 19, 2022, Fox 2 News Morning expanded to noon, with the midday newscast pushed back into the noon hour.

Ratings
As of February 2012, WJBK's Fox 2 News Morning has consistently remained the Detroit market's highest-rated local morning newscast (6–7 a.m., 4.5 rating/17 share). After years of faltering at a distant third against WDIV and WXYZ, WJBK began to make gains in its audience growth in other newscasts. While WDIV continued to have the most-watched evening and late newscasts, WJBK's 10 p.m. news (7.5 rating/12 share) remains the highest-rated prime time newscast in Metro Detroit. Its early evening 5 and 5:30 p.m. newscasts (6.0/13) have surpassed WXYZ-TV's longtime dominant 5 p.m. newscast (5.8/13) for second place, while WJBK's 6 p.m. newscast (5.1/10) has become a very close third moving within one rating point to WXYZ's newscast in that timeslot (6.1/12). Since debuting in 2007, WJBK's 11 p.m. newscast Newsedge has been in third place overall (5.0 rating/9 share).

Notable current on-air staff

 * Dan Miller – sports director; also SportsWorks host
 * Lee Thomas – entertainment reporter
 * Rob Wolchek – "Problem Solvers" investigative and "Hall of Shame" feature reporter

Notable former on-air staff

 * Bill Bonds – news anchor and interviewer (1995–1998; was top anchor at WXYZ-TV from 1964 to 1995; also anchored at KABC-TV and WABC-TV, died 2014)
 * Lawson J. Deming – played horror movie host Sir Graves Ghastly (1967–1983; died in 2007)
 * Sonny Eliot – weathercaster (1980–1983, previously with WDIV-TV and later with WWJ-AM; died 2012)
 * M. L. Elrick – investigative reporter
 * Jerry Hodak – meteorologist (1965–1977) and news anchor (1992–1996; went to WXYZ-TV after each time as meteorologist and science editor, retired in 2010 after having forecasted weather longer than anyone in Detroit television)
 * Ray Lane – sports anchor (1961–1982; became sportscaster at WKBD-TV and for Detroit Red Wings, Pistons and Tigers games)
 * Charlie LeDuff – investigative reporter (2012–December 2016); contract not renewed
 * Joseph "J.P." McCarthy – interview show host (occasionally from 1972 to 1986; morning show host on WJR; died 1995)
 * Fred McLeod – sports anchor/reporter (1981–1989; moved to WDIV, later at Fox Sports Ohio; died 2019)
 * Terry Murphy – news anchor (1974–1975; became news anchor at WLS-TV/Chicago and host of Hard Copy)
 * George Noory – assignment editor/producer (mid-1970s; now host of the overnight radio show Coast to Coast AM)
 * Van Patrick – sports director (1960–1974; died 1974)
 * Charles Pugh – anchor/reporter (1999–2009; became Detroit City Council president)
 * Jeff Rossen – reporter (1998–2001; moved to WABC-TV/New York, now an NBC News correspondent)

Subchannels
The station's signal is multiplexed: {{legend|#DFEBF6|Broadcast on behalf of another station}}

Analog-to-digital conversion
WJBK began airing its digital high-definition feed, WJBK-DT, on its pre-transition UHF channel 58 starting on October 1, 1998. The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 2, on June 12, 2009, per the U.S. Digital Television transition federal mandate. In concurrence, the station's digital signal switched to its assigned post-transition VHF channel 7 which was until that day occupied by WXYZ-TV's analog signal. WJBK was assigned its post-transition digital signal on May 7, 2007.

As part of the SAFER Act, WJBK kept an analog signal on the air for two additional weeks until June 26 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.

Digital television receivers continue to display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 2. WJBK is the only American television station in the Detroit–Windsor television market that broadcasts its digital signal on the VHF band. Canadian station CBET-DT, broadcasting from McGregor, Ontario, is on VHF channel 9. All other Detroit–Windsor DTV stations are on the UHF band, which includes channels 14 to 36 after the FCC repack.

Canada
WJBK also serves as a Fox station for other Canadian cable providers, including on Rogers Cable in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, Ontario. It was also one of five Detroit television stations seen in Canada on satellite provider Shaw Direct. As of April 2009, Shaw Broadcast Services (formerly CANCOM) replaced WJBK's signal with Rochester, New York Fox affiliate WUHF. As a CBS affiliate, WJBK was carried on Cable Atlantic (now Rogers Cable) in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia from 1985 until it affiliated with Fox in 1994. Both provinces are now served by Boston CBS O&O WBZ-TV.

Coverage on cable providers outside the Detroit–Windsor market may be subject to syndex and network blackouts in the United States and simsubbing in Canada.

Newscasts
When WJBK became a Fox station, WGKI/WGKU (now WFQX-TV/WFUP), the Fox affiliate in Cadillac, Michigan, stopped simulcasting WKBD's 10 p.m. newscast in favor of WJBK's; this arrangement ended when WGKI began producing its own 10 p.m. newscast in 2000. In January 2007, WFQX began simulcasting WJBK's morning newscast from 6 to 8 a.m. under the title Michigan's Fox News Morning. The simulcasts were made possible with an agreement that offered northern Michigan businesses advertising opportunities during the newscast. WFQX would also air the second half of WJBK's 10 p.m. newscast following its own half-hour 10 p.m. newscast. WFQX would drop WJBK's newscasts altogether in October 2007, after the station was sold and CBS affiliate WWTV began producing WFQX's 10 p.m. and morning newscasts.

title: WJBK


text:
Talk:Guerilla

We don't have redirects for misspellings. This should be speedy deleted. john k 17:41, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Sure we do. This isn't even a misspelling, but a valid variation which gets 900 000 Google hits. —Charles P. (Mirv) 20:07, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, we oughtn't to have redirects from misspellings. But I'll accept that this is a variant, and withdraw the complaint. john k 21:43, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Looking at the page you linked - the vast majority are not misspellings at all. They are names spelled without accents, or things where hyphens and punctuation are not where they should be. john k 21:45, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Guerilla


text:
Talk:Barricade

from Vfd
On 19 Feb 2005, this article was nominated for deletion. The result was keep. See Votes for deletion/Barricade for a record of the discussion.

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title: Talk:Barricade


text:
Athenaeum

Athenaeum may refer to:

Books and periodicals

 * Athenaeum (German magazine), a journal of German Romanticism, established 1798
 * Athenaeum (British magazine), a weekly London literary magazine 1828–1921
 * The Athenaeum (Acadia University), a student newspaper of Acadia University, Nova Scotia
 * The Daily Athenaeum, the newspaper of West Virginia University
 * The Athenaeum (novel), a novel by Raul Pompéia 1888
 * Atheneum Books, a children's fiction imprint of Simon & Schuster
 * Athenaeum Press, an imprint of Ginn and Company

Clubs and societies
(alphabetical by city)

 * Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California, US
 * Liverpool Athenaeum, Liverpool, UK
 * Athenaeum Club, London, UK
 * German Athenaeum, London, UK
 * Ateneo de Madrid, Spain
 * Manchester Athenaeum, Manchester, UK
 * Athenaeum Club, Melbourne, Australia
 * Athenaeum at Caltech, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, US
 * The Plymouth Athenaeum, Plymouth, UK
 * Ateneo de Sevilla, Spain

Cultural centers

 * Athenæum (Das Deutsche Haus), Indianapolis, Indiana, US
 * The Athenaeum (South Africa), Port Elizabeth, South Africa
 * Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts, US
 * Caracas Athenaeum, Caracas, Venezuela
 * Mexican Youth Athenaeum, Mexico City, Mexico
 * New Harmony's Atheneum, New Harmony, Indiana, US
 * Puerto Rican Athenaeum, the English name for Ateneo Puertorriqueño, Puerta de Tierra, Puerto Rico
 * Iași Athenaeum, Iași, Romania

Hotels

 * The Athenaeum Hotel, Piccadilly, London, UK
 * Athenaeum Hotel at the Chautauqua Institution, New York, US

Libraries

 * Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla, California, US
 * Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
 * Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, US
 * Boston Athenæum, Boston, Massachusetts, US
 * Dunedin Athenaeum and Mechanics' Institute, Dunedin, Otago, NZ
 * Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum, Seattle, Washington, US
 * Melbourne Athenaeum, Melbourne, Australia
 * Minneapolis Athenæum, the name of the first library in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US
 * Portsmouth Athenæum, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, US
 * Providence Athenaeum, Providence, Rhode Island, US
 * Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport, Rhode Island, US
 * Salem Athenaeum, Salem, Massachusetts, US
 * St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, US
 * Westfield Athenaeum, Westfield, Massachusetts

Museums

 * Athenaeum (Alexandria, Virginia), Alexandria, Virginia, US
 * Chicago Athenaeum, Chicago, Illinois
 * Portsmouth Athenæum, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, US
 * Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, US
 * Wilcannia Athenaeum, Wilcannia, New South Wales, Australia

Europe

 * Athenaeum (ancient Rome), a school founded by Emperor Hadrian
 * Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
 * Athenaeum illustre, a late name for the University of Franeker (1585-1811)
 * Atheneum (school), formal name of main educational track of Dutch Voorbereidend wetenschappelijk onderwijs
 * Atheneum, the main variant of the voorbereidend wetenschappelijk onderwijs (vwo) in the Dutch school system
 * Limerick Athenaeum, Limerick, Ireland
 * Glasgow Athenaeum School of Music, predecessor institute to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
 * Pontifical Athenaeum of Saint Anselm or Anselmianum, the Benedictine Pontifical University in Rome

North America

 * Athenaeum (Tennessee), Columbia, Tennessee, US
 * Athenaeum of Ohio, a seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, US

Theaters

 * Athenaeum Theatre, Sydney, aka Atheneum Hall, early cinema
 * Howard Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts, US
 * Melbourne Athenaeum, aka Athenaeum Hall, Melbourne, Australia
 * Romanian Athenaeum, Bucharest, Romania
 * The Plymouth Athenaeum, Plymouth, Devon, UK
 * New Theatre Comique, known as Atheneum in New York City (1865)
 * Warminster Athenaeum, Warminster, Wiltshire, UK

Other uses

 * Athenaeum (Arcadia), a town of ancient Arcadia, Greece
 * Athenaeum (band), a rock band from Greensboro, North Carolina
 * Athenaeum (fort), a fort of ancient Arcadia, Greece
 * Athenaeum Portrait, also known as The Athenaeum, an unfinished portrait of George Washington

title: Athenaeum


text: Category:Dance stubs

title: Category:Dance stubs


text:
Crissa

Crissa or Krissa (Κρίσσα) or Crisa or Krisa (Κρῖσα) was a town in ancient Phocis. Crissa was regarded as one of the most ancient cities in Greece. It was situated inland a little southwest of Delphi, at the southern end of a projecting spur of Mount Parnassus. It is mentioned in the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad as the "divine Crissa" (Κρῖσα ζαθέη). According to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, it was founded by a colony of Cretans, who were led to the spot by Apollo himself, and whom the god had chosen to be his priests in the sanctuary which he had intended to establish at Pytho. In this hymn, Crissa is described as situated under Parnassus, where no chariots rolled, and no trampling of horses was heard, a description suitable to the site of Crissa upon the rocks. In like manner, Nonnus, following the description of the ancient epic poets, speaks of Crissa as surrounded by rocks. Moreover, the statement of Pindar, that the road to Delphi from the Hippodrome on the coast led over the Crissaean hill, leaves no doubt of the true position of Crissa, since the road from the plain to Delphi must pass by the projecting spur of Parnassus on which the modern village of Chrisso stands. In the Homeric hymn to Apollo, Crissa appears as a powerful place, possessing as its territory the rich plain stretching down to the sea, and also the adjoining sanctuary of Pytho itself, which had not yet become a separate town. In fact, Crissa is in this hymn identified with Delphi. Even in Pindar, the name of Crissa is used as synonymous with Delphi, just as Pisa occurs in the poets as equivalent to Olympia. Metapontium in Magna Graecia (modern Italy) is said to have been a colony of Crissa.

Near Crissa, but established later, was a seaport named Cirrha. In course of time the seaport town of Cirrha increased at the expense of Crissa; and the sanctuary of Pytho grew into the town of Delphi, which claimed to be independent of Crissa. Thus Crissa declined, as Cirrha and Delphi rose in importance. Cirrha was destroyed in the First Sacred War; but the fate of Crissa is uncertain. It is not improbable that Crissa had sunk into insignificance before this war, and that some of its inhabitants had settled at Delphi, and others at Cirrha.

Between Crissa and Cirrha was a fertile plain, bounded on the north by Parnassus, on the east by Mount Cirphis, and on the west by the mountains of the Ozolian Locrians. On the western side it extended as far north as Amphissa, which was situated at the head of that part of the plain. This plain, as lying between Crissa and Cirrha, might be called either the Crissaean or Cirrhaean, and is sometimes so designated by the ancient writers; but, properly speaking, there appears to have been a distinction between the two plains. The Cirrhaean plain was the small plain near the town of Cirrha, extending from the sea as far as the modern village of Xeropegado, where it is divided by two projecting rocks from the larger and more fertile Crissaean plain, which stretches as far as Crissa and Amphissa. The small Cirrhaean plain on the coast was the one dedicated to Apollo after the destruction of Cirrha. The name of the Crissaean plain in its more extended sense might include the Cirrhaean, so that the latter may be regarded as a part of the former. The boundaries of the land dedicated to the god were inscribed on one of the walls of the Delphian temple.

The ancient town of Crissa gave its name to the bay above which it stood; and the name was extended from this bay to the whole of the Corinthian Gulf, which was called Crissaean in the most ancient times. Cirrha was built subsequently at the head of the bay, and rose into a town from being the port of Crissa. This is in accordance with what we find in the history of other Grecian states. The original town is built upon a height at some distance from the sea, to secure it against hostile attacks, especially by sea; but in course of time, when property has become more secure, and the town itself has grown in power, a second place springs up on that part of the coast which had served previously as the port of the inland town. This was undoubtedly the origin of Cirrha, which was situated at the mouth of the river Pleistus, and at the foot of Mount Cirphis.

As of the mid-19th century, ancient Crissa's ruins could still be seen at a short distance from the modern village of Chrisso, surrounding the church of the Forty Saints. They consist of very ancient polygonal walls, still as high as 10 feet in some parts, and as broad as 18 feet on the northern side, and 12 feet on the western.

title: Crissa


text:
Ronald Smith (musician)

Ronald Bertram Smith (3 January 1922 – 27 May 2004) was a British classical pianist and teacher.

Birth and education
Smith was born in London, and grew up in Sussex. He was educated at Lewes County Grammar School and the Brighton College of Music. He entered the Royal Academy of Music at the age of 16 with the Sir Michael Costa Scholarship for composition. After leaving the academy he studied privately in Paris with Marguerite Long, while also taking an external BMus degree from Durham University.

He was influenced by the pianist Edwin Fischer, whom he impressed as a contestant in the 1949 Geneva international piano competition. When Fischer visited London he selected Smith and Denis Matthews to play the second and third piano parts in his recording of Bach's triple keyboard concerto. Smith said he learnt more in four days working with Fischer than he had in his years of previous study.

Professional career
As a performer, Smith championed piano works from the romantic period. In the 1940s he was first asked to record music by the then neglected Charles-Valentin Alkan, his Concerto for Solo Piano. He was sent the score by Humphrey Searle: when he first saw it he thought it "seemed unplayable". He later recorded many of Alkan's works, and also wrote a biography. His efforts played a major role in rekindling interest in Alkan, including remaining president of the Alkan Society from 1977 when it was formed until his death.

His recorded legacy encompasses pioneering performances of Alkan, including the complete studies in all the minor keys Op. 39, as well as music by Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven, Balakirev and Liszt.

He taught the piano for many years, first at Harrow School from 1943, and then at The King's School, Canterbury from the 1950s to 1990. Freddy Kempf was one such pupil. He then took auditions at the Kent School of Music (Canterbury) to select private students to whom he could donate his spare time.

Private life
Smith married the cellist Anne Norman in 1969, and they had one daughter, the artist Beka Smith. They established a family home at Saltwood in Kent, in a large house which afforded space for a music studio. Smith died in Hythe, Kent, aged 82, on 27 May 2004.

title: Ronald Smith (musician)


text:
User:Jpagens

Soon to be user page for Jpagens.

title: User:Jpagens


text:
Warwickshire County Record Office

Warwickshire County Record Office is the county record office for Warwickshire, England. Its purpose is to collect, preserve and make available archives relating to the history of the county and its people dating from the early 12th to the 21st century. It is located in the town of Warwick, and is owned and run by Warwickshire County Council.

History
The Record Office was first founded in 1933 when it was sited in the Shire Hall. Forty years after its founding it moved to its present site, which is a purpose-built building next to Priory Park. The building was later refurbished and extended in 2002 to 2003, with two new strongrooms and improved facilities for researchers. A new conservation workshop was also provided, in an adjacent building, which is a remaining part of the original 16th/17th house on the site that was demolished (except for this small part) in 1925.

Records held
Records in the County Record Office include parish registers for Warwickshire, local government records for the county, school records for the county, court records including quarter sessions and coroner's records and the records of the Warwickshire Constabulary. Several hospital archives are at the Record Office, including those of Warwickshire County Lunatic Asylum at Hatton and the former Warneford Hospital in Leamington Spa. The records of a few local firms can also be found, with many solicitors records and those of concerns like Eagle Engineering, Needle Industries Ltd and Stanley Brothers of Nuneaton.

A number of prominent local families also have records in the office including the Greville family (Earls of Warwick), the Feilding family (Earls of Denbigh), the Seymour family (Marquises of Hertford) and the Newdigate family of Arbury Hall.

Other resources
In addition to the archive material kept by the record office, there are various other resources for researchers. These include a library of secondary sources relating to Warwickshire, newspapers, maps, photographs, microfilm copies of census returns for Warwickshire and microfilm copies of the GRO index (an index of the General Register Office's birth, marriage and death certificates).

Other record offices with Warwickshire material
The Warwickshire County Record Office is not the only repository holding archives relating to Warwickshire. Many of the records for certain areas of the historic county of Warwickshire are held by other record offices.

Other archives that hold records relating to the historic county of Warwickshire include:
 * Birmingham Archives and Heritage – holds records for the Birmingham area
 * Coventry History Centre – holds records for the City of Coventry
 * Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive – holds many of the records relating to the Stratford-upon-Avon area

title: Warwickshire County Record Office


text:
Experix

Experix is an open-source command interpreter designed for operating laboratory equipment, especially data acquisition devices, and processing, displaying and storing the data from them. It is usable now, only under Linux on the x86 architecture, but still under development, and users are welcome to participate in extending and improving it.

Experix is radically different from most commercial data acquisition programs, for example LabVIEW, which model a measurement and control application as a network of operational units represented graphically as boxes with connections that stand for data flow. In these systems an application is created by manipulating these symbols on the screen, and then it is used by clicking buttons and filling dialog boxes in a GUI environment.

Experix, in contrast, represents the application as a series of operations generally taking place one after another. It processes a command line in a sequential way, and numbers, operators, functions and commands in the command line consume and create objects on a stack. These objects include integers and floating-point numbers in several sizes, complex and polar numbers, multi-dimensional arrays made from any of the numerical types, several kinds of strings, and pointers to functions, commands and variables (which can be numbers, arrays and strings). A function, command or operator requires certain types of objects on the stack and puts objects on the stack, and may also change values in stack objects and variables, draw graphs, order operations in device drivers, and read and write files.

Experix is released under the GNU GPL.

Syntax
A command line can have practically arbitrary length, and is a series of tokens. For example, would create an array of 1000 double-precision values representing the function ; draw a graph of that using black points on a yellow background; and copy that array into a variable called function1. This sample of command tokens will give an idea of the range of capabilities that experix has.
 * puts the double-precision number 1.23*10^6 on the stack
 * puts the integer 0x5a1 on the stack
 * adds the object in stack level 1 to the object in level 2; what that means exactly depends on what those objects are: add two numbers, or add a number to each member of an array, or add corresponding members of two arrays
 * replaces the number in stack level 1, or each member of the array in stack level 1, with cosine (that number)
 * puts the speed of light on the stack
 * sets the bit designated by stack level 1 (integer) in the integer in stack level 2; does arrays too
 * makes an array from numbers on the stack
 * makes a ramp array using the increment value in level 2 and number of elements in level 1
 * sets the value of an array element
 * extracts a subspace of an array as specified by stack arguments
 * gets the smaller value of two stack objects
 * (that's backslash,slash,D) decodes the option characters which follow the name of a command in a command string
 * displays the help file about the command-option operators
 * starts a virtual terminal session with a text editor loaded with the help file about the Fourier transform function
 * runs the commands from the file specified by "path"
 * command string label number 9
 * if the value in stack level 1 is greater than that in level 2, command execution branches to label $9:
 * makes a deferred command
 * runs a deferred command
 * sets command string local variable number 3
 * concatenates two strings or arrays
 * makes a complex number from two numbers or a complex array from two arrays
 * makes an unsigned 1-byte number or array with values from stack level 3, which may be in any numerical type
 * drops stack level 1
 * gets the number of data units in the object in stack level 3
 * makes a truth value: 1 (true) if all members of the array in stack level 1 are greater than 0; 0 (false) otherwise
 * creates variables and commands
 * draws graphs
 * runs programs and collects the standard output and standard error in files that can be displayed or edited by special help operators
 * transfers data between files and stack objects
 * performs operations on experix device files

Experix provides hardware operations by way of a command-line interface to device drivers. An experix driver has a 'read' entry point which functions more like an ioctl. It copies the integer array that experix has prepared, finds in it an operation code and supporting information, performs the operation and returns results to the array. The driver maintains a control page which experix maps with read-only permission, and a number of data pages which are mapped with read-write permission. The xcd function performs this memory mapping and creates command variables that represent the data pages. These variables can then be used in command strings to perform data display and analysis.

A data acquisition device driver has an interrupt handler which uses data from the output pages and stores data in the input pages. At designated index values it sends the new data signal to experix. The xcd function is used to bind the signal to an experix command string. Then that command is executed whenever the new data signal comes. A device handler command might update variables, perform analysis functions, draw graphs and issue warnings. It runs atomically, which means it uses a separate stack and runs uninterrupted between two tokens in whatever user command happens to be in progress.

Documentation
Documentation is extensive. The keywords.doc file describes functions and data structures in the program. Commands, functions and operators are described in help files, which are accessed in experix by the help operators. Help files are ordinary text files with terminal escape sequences to provide color highlights. System commands such as cat and grep will show these files with their colorization, and the editor that experix uses for the two-question-mark help operator is nano (from the GNU project) with the escape sequence extension. The source files for nano that were changed to provide this extension are available on the experix website. Experix users are encouraged to correct and improve help files as they work.

Limitations
Currently, experix is only available for Linux and, due to assembly language code, only on the x86 architecture.

At present the only graphics support for experix is with the open-source SVGALib. It is possible to have an experix graphics session in one virtual terminal and text or X sessions in others, and switch between them with the $⟨alt-F#⟩$ keys. Graphics operations are done by a server process, and experix sends commands and data to this process through a fifo. It has an execution thread that uses readline (an open-source library from the GNU project) to obtain command lines and place them in the execution queue. Another thread translates the standard output (i.e. the echo from readline) into graphics server commands. Experix can also run in a text screen or X-term without using svgalib at all.

There is some assembly code and other matters to attend to before it can run on architectures other than x86.

The range of device drivers and applications available now is extremely limited.

It runs as root, which is a considerable security hazard on a networked computer. It should be possible to run experix without root privileges, but this has not yet been done.

title: Experix


text:
National Christian Forensics and Communications Association

The Christian Speech & Debate League, also known as the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association, is a speech and debate league for Christian students in the United States. The NCFCA was established in 2001 after outgrowing its parent organization, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which had been running the league since it was originally established in 1995. NCFCA is now organized under its own board of directors with regional and state leadership coordinating various tournaments throughout the season.

Structure of the organization
The NCFCA is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization. Tournaments are run by volunteers, who are usually parents, club directors, and league officials in the area. The judging pool includes parents of competitors, NCFCA alumni, and members of the community. For moot court, the judging pool includes parents of competitors and members of the community with experience in law (e.g. attorneys, judges). Coaches also serve as judges on a volunteer basis. The NCFCA is governed by a board and divided into fourteen regions. Each region has a regional coordinator and each state has a representative.

Regional Qualifiers and Regional Championship
Each region hosts three "regional qualifiers," open to all competitors competing in Lincoln-Douglas, Team Policy, and speeches, between January and April. Competitors who advance from preliminary rounds to elimination rounds at any regional qualifier earn a slot at the regional championship, usually between April and May. Each region is allocated a certain number of national slots for a debate or speech event, according to the number of competitors nationally and regionally in a given event. As of the 2023 - 2024 season, there were 800 slots given out nationally for speech, and 120 slots for debate.

Size
During the 2022-2023 season, there were roughly 38,000 students participating, making the NCFCA the third largest national high school speech and debate league after the National Speech and Debate Association and the National Catholic Forensic League.

Speech
The NCFCA offers ten individual events for speech from three categories: Platform (memorized, 10-minute speeches), Interpretation (short interpretations of written works), and Limited Preparation (impromptu or limited preparation speeches). The rules for each of these events are published in the Speech Guide each season.

Debate
The NCFCA offers three types of debate: Team Policy Debate, Lincoln-Douglas Value Debate, and Moot court. The NCFCA discourages the use of overly complicated theory and extremely fast talking (also known as "spreading"), instead encouraging effective communication of complex topics to lay judges.

At tournaments, competitors speak in six rounds and are judged by one judge in preliminary rounds. In elimination rounds, competitors are judged by three judges and are judged by five judges in the qualifier tournament final.

 * Team Policy (TP): A policy-centered debate, with rounds typically lasting 90 minutes. Two teams of two competitors form the 'Affirmative' and 'Negative' sides to the debate, with the Affirmative arguing for a reform to the system and the Negative arguing against it. The debate is set by a resolution that is published before a season starts. The resolution for the 2023 - 2024 season states that "the United States Federal Government shall significantly reform its domestic transportation policy implemented by the Department of Transportation". The resolution includes input fro competitors and typically alternates between domestic and international policy.
 * Lincoln-Douglas (LD): A value-centered debate, with rounds lasting around 45 minutes. Two competitors form the 'Affirmative' and 'Negative' sides to the debate, with the Affirmative affirming the validity of the resolution and the Negative negating it. As in Team Policy, the debate is governed by a resolution affirming one value above another. The resolution for the 2023 - 2024 season states that "rationalism should be valued above empiricism".


text:
Pretty Polly (horse)

Pretty Polly (March 1901 – 17 August 1931) was an Irish-bred, British-trained Thoroughbred racehorse and broodmare. One of the greatest fillies ever to race in Britain, she won fifteen consecutive races and was only the fifth horse to win the British Fillies Triple Crown since its inception in 1814. Pretty Polly also became one of the greatest broodmares of the century.

Breeding
Her sire was the good stallion, Gallinule who was also a roarer and bleeder. Pretty Polly’s dam was the cluster mare, Admiration by Saraband, who won two small races in Ireland, before being tried as a steeplechaser. Admiration foaled nine winners, which won 42 races worth £52,484, and founded a successful female family, which included top class gallopers Craganour, Cresta Run, King John and Tehran.

Racing record
Pretty Polly was bred and owned by Major Eustace Loder and trained by Peter Gilpin, she won nine races from nine starts as a two-year-old in 1903.

The following year, Pretty Polly won the 1,000 Guineas as 1-4 favourite, winning easily by three lengths in record time. Other wins as a three-year-old were The Oaks, the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot, the Nassau Stakes at Goodwood, the St. Leger Stakes (completing the Fillies' Triple Crown) and the Park Hill Stakes with jockey William Lane.

Pretty Polly stayed in training as a four and five-year-old, winning six more races, including the Coronation Cup in 1905 and 1906.

In total, Pretty Polly won 22 of her 24 races, placing second twice, in Paris in 1904 and in the 1906 Ascot Gold Cup.

Stud record
Pretty Polly was returned to the place of her birth, Eyrefield Lodge Stud, to begin her new career as a broodmare. Here Pretty Polly produced ten foals and four of these were flat race winners who between them won eleven races for £6,107. Another son, Tudor King (1920) won a small hurdle race. Her four daughters (each by a different sire) were successful as broodmares, founding the classic winning Pretty Polly family which remains important in the stud book. Pretty Polly was the fourth dam of the good sire, Donatello II, the fifth dam of Brigadier Gerard and the sixth dam of The Derby winner St. Paddy.

Honours
Pretty Polly was recorded as Cluster mare, number CM/73 by Denis Craig in his book, Breeding Racehorses from Cluster Mares. In A Century of Champions by John Randall and Tony Morris she was named Broodmare of the Century as the Matriarch of Family 14-C, the most successful female family in Thoroughbred racing history.

The London and North Eastern Railway named one of its class A3 Pacific express steam locomotives (no. 2560, later 60061; in service from 1925 to 1963) Pretty Polly after the racehorse.

title: Pretty Polly (horse)