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Why it Happens: |
In accordance with the MPAA's archaic and nonsensical rating system, only a small percentage of any given R-rated movie is allowed to be titties, (and that percentage shrinks as the rating lowers). An extra eight frames of boob turns your movie from a PG-13 to an R, and an R to an NC-17, (thus limiting your chances of reaching a wider audience). Now, it's important to note that the MPAA isn't against the idea of sex, they just specifically don't want to see anyone's breasts or genitals. So to cover their asses, boobically speaking, filmmakers try to convince their actors and audience that this... |
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... is a totally reasonable and comfortable way to behave after sex. This odd, L-shaped sheet arrangement, has become accepted among movie makers as a thing that humans actually do, even though no one I know has ever admitted to doing this or even considered doing it. Additionally, it's pretty uncomfortable and freaking difficult to arrange bed sheets so that they only go up to the guy's waist but all the way up to the chick's armpits. Movies want you to ignore all that and pretend, for just a second, that this is a thing that people like you do all the time. |
Well I don't accept the idea that couples awkwardly manipulate their bed sheets to preserve an at-that-point un-preservable level of modesty, so I've decided to create my own, naturally-L-shaped sheets for the couple that loves, at any given time, only two out of four of their collective nipples. |
The Pitch: |
You're in bed with an amazing woman with whom you've just had tremendous, beautiful-people-sex. All is going well until you realize that, post-coitus, you'll still have to share a bed in your combined nudity. It's too warm to go completely under the covers, but that doesn't mean you should have to stare at her disgusting, perfectly sculpted breasts while you're trying to sleep, right? His n' Hers has the answer.<|endoftext|>OTTAWA (The News Desk) — Claiming that Canada’s veterans have been neglected for too long, decommissioned Sea King helicopter, tail number 11356, gave a moving speech in Parliament today while inadvertently destroying everything in the House of Commons. |
“Veterans can no longer be a political playing card,” said 11356, its rotors tearing through flesh, wood and upholstery. |
“This government has been missing in action when it comes to securing the basic rights and benefits that veterans deserve.” |
11356, who served numerous tours in Kosovo and Afghanistan, claimed that it is time for a “new era” in government–veteran relations, while the downdraft from its rotors sent documents and debris flying into the air and MPs fleeing from the room in terror. |
11356 also said that it experienced the government’s neglect for veterans first-hand when its application for a rotor mast and control rod replacement procedure was rejected last year. |
“What I saw during my 25 years of service will haunt me for the rest of my life. The least our government can do is honour that service with the basic benefits and medical care that we deserve,” it said, before inadvertently destroying the limestone support pillars at the north end of the chamber. |
“We deserve better than this.” ♦ |
If you liked this, like our Facebook page!<|endoftext|>Bobby Jindal, Rob Portman and Tim Pawlenty are all considered low-drama options. | AP Photos Veepstakes: The fine line between safe and boring |
Bet you didn’t know that Rob Portman does an impressive imitation of a chicken and kayaked the entire 1900-mile length of the Rio Grande River. |
Now does that sound like a boring guy? |
Story Continued Below |
The senator from Ohio is believed to a top contender to be Mitt Romney’s running mate yet the poor fellow has been battling the persistent rap that he’s… well… way too dull for the ticket. Stephen Colbert helped channel this sentiment by calling a potential Romney-Portman union “the bland leading the bland.” |
( See also: POLITICO's Veep Watch) |
But as the shrouded vice-presidential selection comes down to the wire — and amid some signs that the choice could come sooner rather than later — the court of Republican opinion seems to be swinging back toward the notion that a little bit boring may be the right play in a close election in which the challenger can’t afford any mistakes or unscripted drama. |
The politics of boring can be quite delicate, however. The problem for Portman and other charisma-challenged pols on Romney’s presumed short list, such as former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, is that a 2012 veep hopeful should present as solid, smart and noncontroversial — but not so unexciting that comedians smell blood or that activists howl that Romney is again being too cautious. |
This is why friends of Portman, for example, make sure you know there’s a real character lurking somewhere beneath the wonk. “It drives me crazy when people say he’s boring. Where in the world do they get that from?” said former New York congressman Rick Lazio, who shared a house with Portman in Washington. “If you define exciting as a celebrity who invites controversy — he’s not that guy. But he’s an interesting and fun-loving guy.” |
Still — despite the Matt Drudge-inspired boomlet about putting the decidedly-not-dull concert pianist, figure skating, fashion icon Condoleezza Rice on the ticket — party wise, men and women feel this is a year when the party should pick a tortoise and not a hare. |
( PHOTOS: Veepstakes speculation: A guide) |
“Boring is the most logical choice for Romney,” said Republican strategist John Weaver. “Given the way the base so hates this president, they are going to be motivated regardless of who the vice president nominee is. So it makes more sense for him to go with [the] safer choice.” |
“Just because someone seems interesting or flashy, that doesn’t qualify them to be vice president,” said Terry Holt, a Republican presidential campaign veteran and strategist. “It’s common for activists to try to and reach for the brass ring, to hope for someone who will somehow end up being the silver bullet to victory. Ultimately, for Romney it’s his leadership attributes that will determine whether or not people vote for him — not who he picks for a running mate.”<|endoftext|>The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the "horn" in some professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B♭ (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most often used by players in professional orchestras and bands. A musician who plays a French horn is known as a horn player or hornist. |
Pitch is controlled through the combination of the following factors: speed of air through the instrument (controlled by the player's lungs and thoracic diaphragm); diameter and tension of lip aperture (by the player's lip muscles—the embouchure) in the mouthpiece; plus, in a modern French horn, the operation of valves by the left hand, which route the air into extra sections of tubing. Most horns have lever-operated rotary valves, but some, especially older horns, use piston valves (similar to a trumpet's) and the Vienna horn uses double-piston valves, or pumpenvalves. The backward-facing orientation of the bell relates to the perceived desirability to create a subdued sound in concert situations, in contrast to the more piercing quality of the trumpet. A horn without valves is known as a natural horn, changing pitch along the natural harmonics of the instrument (similar to a bugle). Pitch may also be controlled by the position of the hand in the bell, in effect reducing the bell's diameter. The pitch of any note can easily be raised or lowered by adjusting the hand position in the bell.[2] The key of a natural horn can be changed by adding different crooks of different lengths. |
Three valves control the flow of air in the single horn, which is tuned to F or less commonly B♭. The more common double horn has a fourth, trigger valve, usually operated by the thumb, which routes the air to one set of tubing tuned to F or another tuned to B♭ which expands the horn range to over four octaves and blends with flutes or clarinets in a woodwind ensemble. Triple horns with five valves are also made, usually tuned in F, B♭, and a descant E♭ or F. There are also double horns with five valves tuned in B♭, descant E♭ or F, and a stopping valve, which greatly simplifies the complicated and difficult hand-stopping technique[3], though these are rarer. Also common are descant doubles, which typically provide B♭ and alto F branches. |
A crucial element in playing the horn deals with the mouthpiece. Most of the time, the mouthpiece is placed in the exact center of the lips, but, because of differences in the formation of the lips and teeth of different players, some tend to play with the mouthpiece slightly off center.[4] Although the exact side-to-side placement of the mouthpiece varies for most horn players, the up-and-down placement of the mouthpiece is generally two-thirds on the upper lip and one-third on the lower lip.[4] When playing higher notes, the majority of players exert a small degree of additional pressure on the lips using the mouthpiece. However, this is undesirable from the perspective of both endurance and tone: excessive mouthpiece pressure makes the horn sound forced and harsh, and decreases player's stamina due to the resulting constricted flow of blood to the lips and lip muscles.[4] |
Name [ edit ] |
The name "French horn" is found only in English, first coming into use in the late 17th century. At that time, French makers were preeminent in the manufacture of hunting horns, and were credited with creating the now-familiar, circular "hoop" shape of the instrument. As a result, these instruments were often called, even in English, by their French names: trompe de chasse or cor de chasse (the clear modern distinction between trompes, trumpets, and cors, horns, did not exist at that time).[5] |
German makers first devised crooks to make such horns playable in different keys—so musicians came to use "French" and "German" to distinguish the simple hunting horn from the newer horn with crooks, which in England was also called by the Italian name corno cromatico (chromatic horn).[5] |
More recently, "French horn" is often used colloquially, though the adjective has normally been avoided when referring to the European orchestral horn, ever since the German horn began replacing the French-style instrument in British orchestras around 1930.[6] The International Horn Society has recommended since 1971 that the instrument be simply called the horn.[7][8] |
There is also a more specific use of "French horn" to describe a particular horn type, differentiated from the German horn and Vienna horn. In this sense, "French horn" refers to a narrow-bore instrument (10.8–11.0 mm [0.43–0.43 in]) with three Périnet (piston) valves. It retains the narrow bell-throat and mouthpipe crooks of the orchestral hand horn of the late 18th century, and most often has an "ascending" third valve. This is a whole-tone valve arranged so that with the valve in the "up" position the valve loop is engaged, but when the valve is pressed the loop is cut out, raising the pitch by a whole tone.[9] |
History [ edit ] |
"How to shout and blow horns."—Facsimile of a miniature in a manuscript of the hunting manual of Gaston Phoebus (15th century) |
As the name indicates, humans originally used to blow on the actual horns of animals before starting to emulate them in metal. This original usage survives in the shofar, a ram's horn, which plays an important role in Jewish religious rituals. |
Early metal horns were less complex than modern horns, consisting of brass tubes with a slightly flared opening (the bell) wound around a few times. These early "hunting" horns were originally played on a hunt, often while mounted, and the sound they produced was called a recheat. Change of pitch was controlled entirely by the lips (the horn not being equipped with valves until the 19th century). Without valves, only the notes within the harmonic series are available. By combining a long length with a narrow bore, the French horn's design allows the player to easily reach the higher overtones which differ by whole tones, thus making it capable of playing melodies before valves were invented.[4] |
Early horns were commonly pitched in B♭ alto, A, A♭, G, F, E, E♭, D, C, and B♭ basso. Since the only notes available were those on the harmonic series of one of those pitches, they had no ability to play in different keys. The remedy for this limitation was the use of crooks, i.e., sections of tubing of differing length that, when inserted, altered the length of the instrument, and thus its pitch.[10] |
In the mid-18th century, horn players began to insert the right hand into the bell to change the length of the instrument, adjusting the tuning up to the distance between two adjacent harmonics depending on how much of the opening was covered. |
In 1818 the German makers Heinrich Stölzel and Friedrich Blümel patented the first valved horn, using rotary valves. Piston valves were introduced in France about 1839 by François Périnet.[11] Valves were initially intended to overcome problems associated with changing crooks during a performance. Valves' unreliability, musical taste, and players' distrust, among other reasons, slowed their adoption into mainstream. Many traditional conservatories and players refused to use them at first, claiming that the valveless horn, or natural horn, was a better instrument. Some musicians who specialize in period instruments use a natural horn to play in original performance styles, to try to recapture the sound of an older piece's original performances.[12] |
The use of valves, however, opened up a great deal more flexibility in playing in different keys; in effect, the horn became an entirely different instrument, fully chromatic for the first time. Valves were originally used primarily as a means to play in different keys without crooks, not for harmonic playing. That is reflected in compositions for horns, which only began to include chromatic passages in the late 19th century.[citation needed] When valves were invented, generally, the French made smaller horns with piston valves and the Germans made larger horns with rotary valves.[clarification needed] |
In English, the term "French horn" is often used.[13] Nevertheless, the International Horn Society has recommended since 1971 that the instrument be simply called the horn, despite the ambiguity of the term.[7][8] |
Types [ edit ] |
Horns may be classified in single horn, double horn, compensating double horn, and triple horn as well as the versatility of detachable bells. |
Single horn in F, student model. |
Single horn [ edit ] |
Single horns use a single set of tubes connected to the valves. This allows for simplicity of use and a much lighter weight. They are usually in the keys of F or B♭, although many F horns have longer slides to tune them to E♭, and almost all B♭ horns have a valve to put them in the key of A. The problem with single horns is the inevitable choice between accuracy or tone – while the F horn has the "typical" horn sound, above third-space C accuracy is a concern for the majority of players because, by its nature, one plays high in the horn's harmonic series where the overtones are closer together. This led to the development of the B♭ horn, which, although easier to play accurately, has a less desirable sound in the mid and especially the low register where it is not able to play all of the notes. The solution has been the development of the double horn, which combines the two into one horn with a single lead pipe and bell. Both main types of single horns are still used today as student models because they are cheaper and lighter than double horns. In addition, the single B♭ horns are sometimes used in solo and chamber performances and the single F survives orchestrally as the Vienna horn. Additionally, single F alto and B♭ alto descants are used in the performance of some baroque horn concertos and F, B♭ and F alto singles are occasionally used by jazz performers. |
Dennis Brain's benchmark recordings of the Mozart Horn Concerti were made on a single B♭ instrument by Gebr. Alexander, now on display at the Royal Academy of Music in London. |
Double horn [ edit ] |