Park at Mount Rogers Outfitters Hostel in Damascus VA for a nominal fee.
This has to be one of the best backpacks in Virginia. We did it as an aggressive 2.5 day backpack covering 39.6 miles. This backpack has everything, creeks, tough climbs, great vistas, wild ponies, tallest mountain in Virginia, tons of camp sites, open balds, and the list goes on. Double check the weather prior to your hike as it can change dramatically in this area and at these 5000+ elevations.
We spent our 1st night at the Mount Rogers Outfitters Hostel in Damascus VA, and also left our car here for a nominal fee. Prior to our trip we called them and setup a shuttle ride from Route 603, the hike end point, back to our car at the Hostel. See thier site for a list of rates.
We hiked the Virginia Creeper Trail for the first 12.3 miles to ease in for our first day. The Appalachian Trail north on this section does not have many views. The mileage is not much different so decide if you want to do the A.T. or the Virginia Creeper Trail. The Virginia Creeper Trail is very picturesque and has multiple bridge crossings over Laurel Creek.
NOTE: The printable hike directions we have here does not contain a TOPO map. There are just way to may interconnectiong trails and and details to fit on one page. We highly reccomend that you purchase the National Geographic Mount Rogers 786 Map.
Also see the alternate 2 day version at the end of this write-up.
Mile 0.0 – Start at the Mount Rogers Outfitters Hostel and followed the white blazed Appalacian Trail (A.T.) through Damascus. The A.T. will bear off to the left just outside of town after you have been on the Virginia Creeper Trail for a little while. Stay on the Virginia Creeper Trail for the next 7.4 miles enjoying the many beautiful views of the creek and fields.
Mile 7.4 – Taylor's Valley (Route 725). You will see the Creeper Trail Cafe on the right on the other side of the bridge. Continue 4.9 miles to the Creek Junction Trestle.
Mile 12.3 – Cross the Creek Junction Trestle, the tallest trestle on the Virginia Creeper Trail. Bear to the left onto the A.T. after crossing the trestle, continue for 1.9 miles to the Lost Mountain Shelter. Take a look at the trestle construction, really cool.
Mile 14.2 – Lost Mountain Shelter. Continue north to Route 58 crossing, Summit Cut, in 1.1 miles, this will be mostly down.
Mile 15.5 – Day 1 Campsite on left at pine grove, no water here. Walk in just a little ways for enough flat spots for 4-5 tents.
Continue north from the campsite, going through fields, and reach the Route 601 Parking in 1.2 miles.
Mile 16.7 – Route 601 Parking, room for 4-5 cars, gravel road. Coordinates: 36.6373 -81.6404. Be prepared for some exertion on the next 2.6 miles, gaining almost 1700' and not many switchbacks.
Mile 19.3 – Reach Buzzard Rock (5096') after a nice steady climb up the side of Beech Mountain. There are some awesome views here. Go through a section of woods and quickly come out into the open again reaching a spring in 0.8 miles below Whitetop Mtn.
Mile 22.6 – Route 600 Parking, coordinates: 36.6465, -81.5832. Cross Route 600 and go through the gate into the open field, be sure to look back over your shoulder on occasion to view Whitetop Mtn. Continue the climb towards Mt Rogers Spur Trail, reaching it in 4 miles. This section is mostly in the woods until just before the spur trail. Some of these woods will make you think you are in Canada.
Mile 26.6 – Mt Rogers Spur Trail, tallest Mountain in VA, 5729'. You are there, go to the summit but don't expect any views, the summit is covered with trees. Continue 0.2 miles to the Thomas Knob Shelter.
Mile 26.8 – Thomas Knob Shelter. Great place for lunch and to fill up with water about 150 yards behind the shelter where there are also great views. The next 5.1 miles through Grayson Highlands have some of the best views you will find in Virginia. You may also be fortunate enough to see some of the wild ponies.
Mile 31.0 – Quebec Branch creek crossing, could fill up here or at Big Wilson Creek near the shelter.
Mile 31.9 – Wise Shelter. Plentiful campsites near the shelter. Water source is Big Wilson Creek, about 0.1 miles north on the AT from the shelter.
Continue north on the AT from the campsite, through the Little Wilson Creek Wilderness, reaching the Scales Campgound in 3 miles. We hiked this early in the morning, great views even with clouds blowing through .
Mile 34.9 – Scales Campgound. Clean pit toilets located here. You will be pretty much in the woods for the hike down to Route 603 parking area.
Mile 37.9 – Old Orchard Shelter.
Mile 39.6 – Route 603 parking area. Shuttle ride back to Damascus.
Day 1 – (11.5 miles) Skip the VA Creeper Trail and have the shuttle take you to Route 58 (Summit Cut). Hike to Thomas Knob Shelter and spend the night near there, tons of campsites just after the shelter.
Did this hike over four days with two kids including my 8 year old daughter. She had a very light pack, but 10 miles/day was about all she could do. We had the shuttle take us to fox creek/603 so that we could hike back to the car. We got a lot of rain over the four days, but the springs and streams were all flowing well. I was worried there would be stretches without water but it seemed there was a source often enough that you don't really have to worry about carrying a lot/extra. The shelters all have lots of campsites around them, and while there were definitely decent stretches without any sites, there were enough that you don't really have to worry about where you'll sleep each night if you are tenting and don't want to stay IN the shelters. Lastly, bears. They are having a serious bear problem up there with bears that are getting food and are not scared of people. Bear boxes were installed near Wise and Thomas Knob and they need them at Old Orchard. Even saw an electrified fence that had been setup near Thomas Knob. There were signs everywhere about the problem, but be very careful and take the utmost precautions when eating and storing your food. Even in the first week of August, during the week, and with lots of rain in the forecast, there were still a bunch of hikers out there. I can't even imagine what it's like on weekends or during leaf season. But for good reason: this hike is amazing.
I did a modified version of this hike on the A.T. the whole way instead of the Creeper Trail in early Spring 2018. This is truly an epic section of trail, I can't overstate how beautiful it is. The first day out of Damascus is not too exciting but has some killer switchbacks before Saunders Shelter. I camped the first night at the junction of Creeper Trail and A.T. next to a roaring Laurel Creek. In mid-April every spring and stream was full so I never carried much more than 1L of water. (Even at 5000' on Whitetop and Pine mtns there were springs flowing.) Day 2 is when the trail comes out of the woods and you have more open sections in high meadows. The climb to Buzzard Rock was really tough, and then the trail around Whitetop toward Mount Rogers was more rocky and difficult than I expected. Views were insane. I camped near Thomas Knob on Night 2- there was a small herd of ponies walking around. Day 3 is just view after view, it will make your eyes pop out of your face. Plan extra time for taking pics and video. It was a beautiful Saturday when I came through Grayson Highlands so there were hundreds of people there. Night 3 I camped at Old Orchard shelter which was less crowded than Wise Shelter. I had MRO shuttle pick me up at Fox Creek at 10AM on Day 4 and drive me back to Damascus. Then I hiked south to the state line to check off that A.T. section. My mileage was roughly 15/15/11/9, all on the A.T. This one is a superlative, bucket-list level of backpack trip. If you can't make it to the Grand Canyon this might be a good substitute.
This is a hike unlike any other. This was one of my favorites and I look forward to getting back out there again. If you get the chance, you definitely need to check this one out. I recommend doing it in the late fall or winter because the majority of the hike lacks shade - the trail is mostly out in the open with breathtaking views the entire way up. If you are into photography, this is an excellent place to capture some incredible shots with a wide variety of scenery. With the wide open rolling hills, this hike feels less like something in Virginia and more like something out in Colorado. Prepare to be in for a surprise when you make it to the top - I was not expecting what we encountered! There were some cool rock formations along the way, as well as an amusing number of friendly wild ponies roaming around the hillsides. If you're not local, it can be a long drive to the state park, but it is worth every minute of the drive.
We (me plus one 1st time hiker and one experienced hiker) stayed at the Hikers Inn in Damascus ($25 for a bunk bed and a shared bathroom) on Friday night. We parked our vehicle at Mt. Rodgers outfitters and coordinated for a pick up on Monday at noon at Route 603 parking area. We followed the Creeper Trail out of town and picked up the AT as the directions state the walk was very nice following the river. We made it to Lost Mountain Shelter early afternoon with no problem. We started out on day 2 with the intention of making it to Wise Shelter however a very cold, wet and windy day slowed us down so we stopped at Thomas Knob Shelter which was very crowded. This left us a long day 3 in order to make it to the pick up location by noon. I recommend planning this as a 4 day or at least coordinating for a later pick up. Highly recommend breakfast at Hey Joe's (great food and great people) and dinner at the Old Mill (again great food and great people).


Step inside the KB Dwelling Design Studio and Uncover the right design and expertise products to personalize your new house. Transitional: Placing a steadiness between fashionable and conventional is the transitional inside design type. Choosing from both types, you possibly can have clear cut lines of the modern whereas selecting wealthy traditional fabrics or equipment.
You may also use deck and fence designer tools, which work very similar to house design packages' room-building features – you may join a deck to your private home and set an exterior door as an easy accessibility point. The identical texture and materials customized design instruments used to replace your home can create a deck that's aesthetically pleasing and enhances the house's exterior.
We offer a wide range of providers to our East Coast Members, which includes Eating regimen Counseling, Therapeutic therapeutic massage Therapy. The combination and application of scientifically based vitamin plans, massage and exercise physiology rules that help and enhance training, effectivity, and recovery. As well as, Youngster Care and Tanning suppliers are also out there.
Designing for sustainable outcomes remains an underdeveloped ability in lots of design practices. Some designers declare that they do not apply the ideas in Your Residence because there isn't any consumer demand, however that is altering quickly. Many architects and building designers now specialize in sustainable observe. Seek out a designer with specialist skills on this area to attain prime quality, price-efficient outcomes.
You may construct considered one of our pre-designed energy environment friendly house plans, you can customise one of our present designs or we are able to customized design your very own distinctive Inexperienced home because you may want one thing that is tailored to your lifestyle, block of land and price range.… Read More..
With over 20 original designs ranging from 14 to 22 squares, the Smart Dwelling Series affords a selection of fashionable, highly practical ground plans. We get to know you, your area, the belongings you like to do – or hope to do – in your house. Then we match you with the right designer to get you there. Start with an instance from our in depth house plan library! You select the house model, variety of flooring, bedrooms, loos and more.
Choosing GHA to build your new Green house is a great transfer on many ranges. A better quality build, a extra fashionable design, finely-tuned price efficiency, superior sustainability… larger benefits for your loved ones all spherical, at no extra price than a regular residence design. What's extra you are guaranteed a simple, dependable, clearly outlined timeframe to your build.
Certainly, you may build 3 tales which is sufficient for many homes. We set this restrict because extra floorplans would make the app run sluggish and never usable for most users. TRY GHA DESIGN PLANS OUT THERE IN YOUR SPACE. Clarendon Properties has created quite a lot of home designs, for you to find the home that can suit your way of life, your wants and your price range. Choosing the right dwelling requires time and dedication.
Dwelling Designer Professional makes it easy to design and visualize your ideas with good constructing and advanced design instruments. The tools have commonly accepted defaults for many constructing practices to help you in your house design initiatives Create accurately scaled floor plans that automatically generate 3D fashions.
Flat charge: This methodology can work properly if your client provides all the merchandise and furniture. You simply multiply your hourly rate by the variety of hours you think you may want to finish the job, … Read More..
Step inside the KB Home Design Studio and Discover the perfect design and technology merchandise to personalize your new home. I couldn't agree with you more. I have been ministering on-line" because the mid 90s as a consequence of extreme illness which saved me " housebound" for years on finish. It wasn't how I wanted to do issues however I labored with what I had. Telephone calls, letters, and e-mail had been how folks communicated most again then. I miss these days. Not the weeks and months spent in hospitals but the times when there weren't all these loopy tools'" that not solely prompt but promote comparability. competition, and a false sense of obedience to God.
Take a contemporary method to the way in which you reside with Digital Architect Ultimate Residence Design with Landscaping and Decks eight.zero. This innovation in house design software delivers the powerful tools and inspiration you could rework your living space, plus professional assist to get the job accomplished proper.
Candy Home 3D has a neat function that lets you view the 2ND and 3D plans concurrently. As you place features and objects into your 2D design, you can see them automatically render in the 3D view. This cuts down on floating objects, a result of constructing in 2ND that locations objects high in your design moderately than flush to the bottom, which you'll solely see in a 3D view. This function additionally allows you to shortly check that all the things is balanced.
Prior to now, interiors had been put collectively instinctively as a part of the method of constructing. 1 The occupation of interior design has been a consequence of the development of society and the complex structure that has resulted from the development of business processes. The pursuit of efficient use of … Read More..


My friend Mike confided to me yesterday that he and his wife of over 20 years are getting a divorce. Although the split was her idea, he was quick to choose to forgive her and focus on building a stable future for himself, his wife, and their children.
This is a very mature, evolved perspective. And, I wanted to check if it was real. So, I asked "what about you and your feelings"? You're giving up a life that made you happy…a life that once made her happy…so that she can build a different kind of happiness without you. Aren't you hurt? Angry? Sad?
Even after all this time to get used to the idea, I am quite sad over the family life I am losing and I want to make sure my kids hurt as little as possible. And, I'll admit I felt angry at first. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted her to beg me to forgive her. But, I quickly realized I was more in shock, than angry.
So, I stopped reacting and started to truly listen to her explanation, which she patiently provided a few times. Then I made myself think about our marriage from her perspective. About my own role in the deterioration of our romantic side. I thought about the opportunities for happiness she could have in a different life. And, I got it. I truly did. After that, it was easy for me to tell her that I forgive her and to focus on solutions that worked for both of us, and our kids.
Why did forgiveness come so easy for Mike?
I know Mike pretty well. He has strong spiritual beliefs that require him to turn the other cheek. He also ranks high in his ability to take another person's perspective. He can feel and express empathy. And, he still cares about his soon-to-be X-wife, so he doesn't want to try to make her feel worse than she already does. In fact, he wants to help her save-face, so she feels less guilty and can regain happiness more quickly.
Mike also knows the value forgiveness plays in preserving a relationship. He knows he and his wife will not be able to be good co-parents, if they do not forgive one another.
In the end, forgiveness is a choice.
A choice not to fight.
A choice not to hold a grudge.
A choice to surrender your pride to obtain peace. In the end, waving the white flag of surrender, is a sign of maturity and strength, not submission and weakness.
What makes forgiveness difficult for some people?
People who generally find it hard to forgive others include (1) people with a fairly low self-esteem who build themselves up by viewing the other's mistakes as much worse than their own and (2) people who are cognitively immature and have an underdeveloped sense of empathy.
But, even the most empathic and developmentally mature among us have to remind ourselves about the importance of forgiveness when the transgression is quite severe, has occurred too often, or is likely on-going – especially when the transgressor has not sincerely apologized.
There also is a common tendency, called the Fundamental Attribution Error, that makes people view other's mistakes as due to internal causes like their personality or character traits. In Mike's case, he could have said his wife's falling out of love with him was caused by her "her lack of ability to keep her promises", "her selfishness", or "her overly romantic idea of what long-term married life is like".
These are harsh judgments that would have made it difficult, if not impossible, for Mike to forgive his wife and preserve a friendly relationship with her.
The flip side of the Fundamental Attribution Error makes it even more difficult.
Instead of assuming that our own mistakes are caused by our character or personality traits, we explain away our mistakes by attributing them to external causes like situational factors or life circumstances. In Mike's case, he would say "I was only inattentive because I had to work such long hours", "It just the aging process" or "The guys count on me".
These explanations allow Mike to let himself off the hook, rather than take responsibility for his part in the deterioration of his marriage. Both sides of the Fundamental Attribution Error combined allow Mike to blame his wife and absolve himself. To judge her harshly, rather view her through empathetic eyes. To self-righteously hold a grudge, rather than forgive.
Fortunately, Mike quickly reframed his attributions and listened carefully to his wife's concerns. He surrendered his pride and obtained an empathic perspective. As a result, he and his wife have maintained a peaceful relationship as they try to reach agreement on important issues and build a stable future for themselves and their children, rather than keep rehashing the past.
Please give the Fundamental Attribution Error some thought. Is this common tendency prohibiting you and your partner from forgiving each other, preserving a friendly relationship, and having a happy future?
If so, share this post with your partner (or anyone else you're struggling with) and suggest that you both give forgiveness a try.
Surrender your pride. Choose not to fight. Not to hold a grudge.
Then, start to Work it Out. Even if you are headed for divorce, you can make it a friendly one.
If you liked this blog post, SIGN UP NOW for my "Work it Out – Insider" emails packed with Hot Topics and Relatable Insights, plus helpful (and fun) relationship tips.
Previous Article Previous Article: A New School Year – A New Family Type for You?


text:
Court upholds new charge against Zimbabwean journalist
Hopewell Chin'ono was arrested along with two others for speaking out against police brutality on social media
13 January 2021 By Masego Mafata Law | Zimbabwe
Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin'ono and member of parliament Job Sikhala arriving at the Harare Magistrates Court on Tuesday. Chin'ono returned to court on Wednesday where his lawyer is currently arguing for bail. Photo: Twitter/ZLHRLawyers
The Harare Magistrates Court has upheld charges of "spreading falsehoods" against an award-winning Zimbabwean journalist.
Hopewell Chin'ono was arrested on Friday and remains in custody.
This week Chin'ono tried to challenge the validity of the charge against him as well as his arrest.
The charge is related to the journalist posting about a case of police brutality where a baby was possibly beaten to death.
The Harare Magistrates Court has dismissed a bid by journalist Hopewell Chin'ono to have a charge against him of "spreading falsehoods" declared invalid.
The award-winning journalist was arrested on Friday and remains in custody.
Chin'ono was arrested for the third time in six months, along with Job Sikhala, a member of parliament for the opposition party in Zimbabwe, Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDC). The spokesperson of the MDC, advocate Fadzayi Mahere, was also arrested on the same charge. Sikhala's attempt to challenge the constitutionality of his arrest was denied on Tuesday afternoon.
Mahere is due in court on Friday to challenge her arrest. All three are being held at the Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare.
On Wednesday, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, representing Chin'ono, said that they were currently applying for bail.
"On Tuesday when hard lockdown started in Zimbabwe, there was an incident of a woman whose baby was assaulted by the police. There was a video of this incident that went viral on social media. In the video, the woman claimed that the baby had been beaten to death," said Paidamoyo Saurombe, of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.
Saurombe said that Chin'ono, Sikhala and Mahere had highlighted the incident on their social media pages as police brutality.
The police claimed that the baby was still alive and arrested Chin'ono, Sikhala and Mahere on grounds that "they had published falsehoods regarding the death of the baby at the hands of a policeman," said Saurombe.
Chin'ono, Sikhala and Mahere were charged under Section 31 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act. Saurombe said this law was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in 2014.
"The judges said that if a section of the law has been declared unconstitutional under the old law, it remains unconstitutional even under the current Constitution," said Saurombe. The current Constitution has been in place since 2013.
Chin'ono had returned to Zimbabwe the day before his arrest from South Africa where he had been receiving medical treatment in South Africa. He was instructed by his doctor to isolate because he had come into contact with two people who tested positive for Covid-19, said Saurombe.
"The prison conditions are not favourable. There is no running water in [Chin'ono's] cell. He was being denied warm blankets and hot water. He only received them on Monday, after we made a request," Saurombe said.
He said it was unclear how long the application for bail would take because in previous cases, Sikhala and Chin'ono had to remain in prison for nearly two months.
GroundUp is being sued after we exposed dodgy Lottery deals involving millions of rands. Please help fund our defence. You can support us via Givengain, Snapscan, EFT, PayPal or PayFast.
© 2021 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
TOPICS: Court Human Rights Zimbabwe
Next: Blind pensioner left in the rain without answers outside SASSA office
Previous: Adopt a Pet shelter in Philippi to close after 17 years
Write a letter in response to this article
Ivermectin and Covid-19: Why it's promising but why we need to be cautious
Judges told to apologise for taking too long over judgments
Extend disability grants, Black Sash tells SASSA as queues shock country
Latest questions and answers
How can I apply for a business permit or permanent residence, and how can I register my business?
What housing options are available to me if I earn over R3,500 a month and am blacklisted?
My late ex-husband remarried and had children. Who will inherit our RDP house?
What can I do about the unfair treatment by my landlord?
How can I get SASSA to give me my late mother's last payout without her burial papers?
Lottery boss misled Parliament
Covid-19: Cell phone study shows where infections take place

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Travellers allocates US$205 mln for expansion in 2014
Jun 13, 2014 Newsdesk Latest News, Philippines, Top of the deck
Travellers International Hotel Group Inc said it is allocating up to 9 billion pesos (US$205 million) in 2014 for the expansion of its Resorts World Manila, planning to add more gaming areas and hotel rooms.
The casino operator ended 2013 in a net cash position of 8.1 billion pesos, which will enable it to fast track the Phase 2 and Phase 3 projects, the company said on Friday after its annual shareholders' meeting. The two phases are forecast to cost a total US$650 million.
Travellers International Hotel Group Inc is a joint venture between Philippine-based Alliance Global Group Inc and Genting Hong Kong Ltd, a subsidiary of Malaysia's Genting Bhd.
The company's total gross revenues reached 33.4 billion pesos in 2013. Gross gaming revenues (GGR) contributed 30 billion pesos of 2013 revenues.
In the first quarter of 2014, the company posted a profit of 1.72 billion pesos, up from 995.4 million pesos a year earlier, though its GGR fell by 23.4 percent to 7.21 billion pesos.
Resorts World Manila opened in 2009 and it is currently being expanded. The second phase, which includes the expansion of the Marriott Hotel Manila and the addition of 227 rooms, should be ready by the end of 2015.
Phase 3 will comprise a new gaming area and two new hotels – the Hilton Manila and the Sheraton Hotel Manila, Travellers said in the statement. The third phase is scheduled to be completed by 2017.
Genting HK terminates sale-leaseback...
Macau govt leaves door open to casino...


After the EBA term is completed, libraries use real usage data to develop their own evidence based approach to the selection of titles for purchase.
Library uses data to select titles for purchase in perpetuity up to the deposit amount. If the library would like to purchase additional titles after the deposit value has been reached they can make additional payments or opt to run their EBA for additional terms.
For pricing information, if you have any specific questions about using the Cambridge EBA, or would like to place an order, please contact your Cambridge sales representative Agathe Hahn. We also have a helpful EBA FAQ available on the Cambridge blog with more information about how the Cambridge EBA works.


text:
DefPost
A Comprehensive Aerospace & Defense Portal
AEW&CS
ATGMs
Air-to-Air Missiles
Air/ Missile Defense
Ballistic Missiles
Cruise Missiles
Directed-energy weapons
Torpedos
Small Arms and Light Weapons
Gallium nitride (GaN) Radar
C4ISR Americas
Lockheed Martin Delivers First Q-53 Radar Equipped With GaN to U.S. Army
April 30, 2020 Arun Mathew	0 Comments	AN/TPQ-53 Quick Reaction Capability Radar, Counter-battery radar, Gallium nitride (GaN) Radar, Lockheed Martin, Radar, U.S. Army, USA
Lockheed Martin recently delivered the first Q-53 radar system equipped with Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology to the U.S. Army, the
Saab Completes First Air Trials of Its New Fighter X-Band AESA Radar
April 28, 2020 April 28, 2020 DP Staff Writer	0 Comments	Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA), Gallium nitride (GaN) Radar, Radar, Saab, Saab JAS 39 Gripen
Saab has successfully completed the first air trials with its new fighter X-band Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar. The
Americas C4ISR
Raytheon Submits Proposal for U.S. Army's Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) Program
July 16, 2019 DP Staff Writer	0 Comments	3D Air Defense Radar, Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA), Gallium nitride (GaN) Radar, Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS), Raytheon, U.S. Army, USA
Raytheon announced the submission of its proposal for U.S. Army's Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) program that
Northrop Grumman Demonstrates Its Solution for U.S. Army's LTAMDS Program
June 6, 2019 DP Press Releases	0 Comments	Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA), Gallium nitride (GaN) Radar, Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS), Northrop Grumman, U.S. Army, USA, White Sands Missile Range (WSMR)
Northrop Grumman has announced that the company demonstrated its in-production solution for the U.S. Army's Lower Tier Air and Missile
Northrop Grumman Completes IOT&E for U.S. Marine Corps' AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR AESA Radar
May 14, 2019 DP Press Releases	0 Comments	Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA), Air Surveillance Radar, AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR), Gallium nitride (GaN) Radar, Northrop Grumman, U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), USA
Northrop Grumman Corporation, in partnership with the U.S. Marine Corps, recently completed a successful Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E)
Saab Receives Order from U.S. Government for X-Band AESA Radar Technology
October 26, 2018 DP Press Releases	0 Comments	Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA), Gallium nitride (GaN) Radar, Radar, Saab, USA
Saab has received an order from the U.S. Government for X-band Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) technology, which has its
Lockheed Martin's Long Range Discrimination Radar Completes Closed Loop Satellite Track with Tactical Hardware, Software
October 16, 2018 DP Press Releases	0 Comments	Clear AFS, Early warning radar, Gallium nitride (GaN) Radar, LM Solid State Radar (SSR), Lockheed Martin, Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR), Missile Defense Agency (MDA)
Lockheed Martin's Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) has completed a closed loop satellite track with tactical hardware and software marking
U.S. Army Awards Lockheed Martin Contract Extending AN/TPQ-53 Radar Range
October 9, 2018 DP Press Releases	0 Comments	AN/TPQ-53 Quick Reaction Capability Radar, Gallium nitride (GaN) Radar, Lockheed Martin, U.S. Army, USA
The U.S. Army awarded Lockheed Martin a contract modification to insert Gallium Nitride (GaN) into the AN/TPQ-53 (Q-53) radar as
Northrop Grumman Delivers First Gallium Nitride (GaN) G/ATOR System to U.S. Marine Corps
July 27, 2018 DP Press Releases	0 Comments	Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA), Air Surveillance Radar, AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR), Gallium nitride (GaN) Radar, Northrop Grumman, U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), USA
Northrop Grumman has delivered the first AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) that incorporates advanced high power and high efficiency gallium
Russia's Nevskoe Design Bureau Unveils UMK Varan Aircraft Carrier Concept
U.S. Navy Announces Names of Five Future Vessels
Iveco Defence Vehicles to Supply 1048 Trakker Military Trucks to German Armed Forces
SSN Perle Arrives at Naval Group Facility for Repairs After Fire Damage
Naval Group Equips French Navy Ship with 3D-Printed Propeller
Rheinmetall to Supply Digital Classroom for German Navy NH90 NTH Sea Lion Helicopter
ideaForge Receives $20 Million Contract to Supply SWITCH UAVs to Indian Army
Russia's Nevskoe Design Bureau Unveils UMK Varan Aircraft Carrier Concept
Rostec Developing Third-Generation Sotnik Combat Equipment
DOE Awards $20 Million for Advanced Reactor Concepts-20 Program
Copyright © 2021 DefPost. All rights reserved.


text:
The Global Domain News
Home Breaking A Clown can Only be the ex to die and died in...
A Clown can Only be the ex to die and died in the city of Bruges prison, he was refused his medication, to take
Oudenburg, The 32-year-old Kevin L. from Oudenburg, better known as a Clown, yet there was, until he died in his cell in the prison of Brugge, belgium. The Bruges public prosecutor confirmed his death and describes it as a desperate act. The man refused to take his medication for his diabetes, too, and it died zijn.De well-known clown, released in may of last year, his ex-girlfriend, Caroline, Dombrecht (46) in order to live, and entrenched himself armed, on top of a building located in Bredene.
It was to look at the assisenproces Kevin L., who for more than a year, was a grisly murder. He was able to marital breakdown with Caroline, Dombrecht from Ettelgem, not verkroppen, and it was on the 14th of may, the house foreign debt. Kevin L. bond, the victim, and brought her to life, but with knife wounds. Her children were in the house as well.
and Then he left, Kevin L., to the place, and the military and he is spending hours on the roof of the apartment building where he used to live in Bredene. He gesticuleerde constantly, it was sometimes around, and even a Facebook-live-boot. My friend in the special forces unit of the police force him to flee.
the investigation into the murder had almost been completed, and the matter would go to council to be referred to a specialist. But on Saturday it died, Kevin L. is in the cell. The public prosecutor's office in Bruges to describe the facts as if an act of desperation, or suicide. "There were no third parties involved at the time of death. There are also no facts have occurred that, in order to further research questions," said Celine D'have, of the public prosecutor's office of the city. Kevin L. it was a long time ill, and was suffering from diabetes. Already for a long time, he refused to take his medication, to take it, you hear it from a variety of sources. Eventually, Kevin L., to be there on Saturday to have died, not long after, an out-patient hospital visit.
Previous articleRussia, for the second year in a row, excluded from the world CHAMPIONSHIPS in athletics
Next articleTRAILER. These are the first pictures from the 'Breaking Bad'-film 'El Camino.'
With over twenty years of experience in the field of journalism, He is the ideal man to write for our site.
The Smart Guide to Opening a Restaurant
Russians will pay dearly for migrants
The great war the Chinese and the Russians
What is wrong in Lugansk tragedy?
Chukchi-Russian war: what they ended actually
"Islanders" beat "San Jose", Varlamov has reflected 29 throws
As Soviet troops took the Konigsberg
Jelena Ostapenko reached the second round of the tournament in Doha
"For aesthetic reasons", had said Galina Brezhnev about the Raisa Gorbachev in a forbidden TV show
Transmission Radulov helped the "Dallas" win "Chicago," Khudobin was the first star of the match
The mystery of the death of Maxim Gorky: what were the questions
PSG beat Bordeaux, Neymar got red card in the 92nd minute
Fridays for the Future: The German self-deception
zeit - 30 March 2019
Delivery river level: low, water shortages and price increases
zeit - 9 November 2018
Is It Legit to Pay Someone for Writing Academic Papers?
Daniel Johnson - 19 September 2019
Business Gerard Depardieu admitted to the victims of the coronavirus, but it is not necessary
Daniel Johnson - 25 May 2020
Karatbars Is In the Forbes Prominent Blockchain List: "10 Blockchain Companies To Watch In 2019"
Daniel Johnson - 19 June 2019
Austria extends lockdown into Feb. 7, toughens some Steps
TheEditor - 17 January 2021
The government says it is extending the country's lockdown before Feb. 7 in a drive to push still-high disease figures as officials worry about...
UK Attempts to Offer 1st COVID shot to all adults from...
Biden says That His Advisors will Direct with'science and Reality'
Biden Chooses geneticist as science Advisor, puts in Cabinet
Extremists exploit a loophole in Societal moderation: Podcasts
The Global Domain News is an online news portal providing daily news, events and latest headlines from Fairview Kersey, Pennsylvania. We provide independent and objective news to our local readers.
Contact us: info@globaldomainsnews.com
© THE GLOBALDOMAINSNEWS - THE GLOBAL DOMAINS NEWS


text:
Tag Archives: Charles Beaumont
Interview: Jason V Brock on The Twilight Zone and The Group
George Clayton Johnson and Charles Beaumont, circa 1960. Illustration by Henry Chamberlain
Editor's Note: If you are heading out to Comic-Con, and you wish to learn more about what we covered in this interview, go to a special panel, "Star Trek 50th Anniversary and George Clayton Johnson Tribute," on Thursday, July 21st, 9:00 – 10:30 PM. Room: 9 upstairs inside San Diego Convention Center. Having written the first aired Star Trek episode, "The Man Trap," George has secured his place within Star Trek as much as Twilight Zone.
Jason V Brock is a filmmaker, writer, editor, and artist. For this interview, I draw from Jason's extensive knowledge of golden age television and pop culture. Among his work in film, he is known for his documentary on the writer Charles Beaumont (1929-1967), which is a rich source for our talk. At the same time, Brock's academic work is just as compelling. I consider Jason a friend in the entertainment industry: we both share a certain sensibility. I hope you enjoy this concise version our geeking out on George Clayton Johnson and related things. We were both en route to a special tribute for screenwriter George Clayton Johnson that took place this February. So, it all makes sense.
In this interview, we're chatting about that golden time in television that was "The Twilight Zone." This is digging deeper into the background of the show and its key talent. For this talk, we're focusing on George Clayton Johnson along with other members of what became known as "The Group," which met from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s. Within that gathering of writers, the leader was Charles Beaumont. Some writers from The Group went on to write for The Twilight Zone.
HENRY CHAMBERLAIN: Jason, talk about Charles Beaumont, who remains something of a mystery: a great writer on the rise, dead at age 38. And then let's shift to George, who also remains a mystery.
JASON V BROCK: There's an interview with Charles Beaumont that was conducted by George Clayton Johnson. It was for a show called, "The Author and the Story." And Beaumont recites from "My Fair Lady." We include some of that in the documentary. If you can find that interview, it is well worth seeking out. Beaumont's illness is a mystery. It does seem to come down to two possibilities: Alzheimer's disease or Pick's disease. I tend to think it was Pick's disease as it fits in with what we know about Beaumont's activity as he declined: slow and halting speech; a greater amount of impulsivity. What Beaumont's friends believed was the main cause of Beaumont's premature death was his routine use of Bromo-Seltzer, which had aluminum, a cause of dementia.
During this time that Beaumont was declining in health, he and George had a falling out. George was trying to figure out a new project. And they had a sort of disagreement. But, after a while, they mended fences. It was during that time that George discovered what was happening to Beaumont. Keep in mind that these were still young guys. The dementia started for Beaumont at around age 33.
Now, George will always remain a mystery. He was an enigmatic individual to be sure. A lot of people don't know this but he was an underwear model for a time. He did whatever to make ends meet. He was, as he liked to say, "a dog without a collar." He wanted to do things his way and succeed on his own terms. He was punk rock before that became a thing, and I admire that about him. He was a very intelligent person. He only had an eighth grade education. He was born in a barn in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He went through many phases. He was a beatnik and then became enthralled with hippiedom, and that aspect never left. He was a vegetarian. And he was involved with supporting the legalization of marijuana. Politically, he had more of a Libertarian ideal. He was also mercurial, open to new ideas, never crystallized in his mindset.
Ray Bradbury asked, "Who can explain the mystery of personality?" And I think George fits that perfectly. You could ask him one thing and he would answer back with the most unexpected things.
There was that aspect of overcoming the odds for George and his feeling a need to prove himself.
I look at The Group and think of it as the atom with Charles Beaumont as the nucleus. They're all in different shells around Beaumont. The atom blew apart once the nucleus was gone. Everyone went in different directions. In the hierarchy, Beaumont was at the top. But, beyond that, in relation to success, was Richard Matheson in a role as mentor. Then there was Ackerman and Bradbury who were relatively older. What's interesting is that Nolan and Johnson told me that they felt they were lowest on the totem pole in relation to the group. However, Nolan and Tomerlin were, in fact, closest to Beaumont. And then George was next to them.
George was more responsible. The three others did as they pleased. They would go to Monaco and crash a dinner for Princess Grace. They loved Grand Prix racing. They would run off and do all these things at the drop of a hat. Go hang out with Ian Fleming. George stayed home with his family. Richard Matheson stayed home with his family. George was one of the few who bought his house. He bought it early on and lived the rest of his life there. He hungered for that stability and security.
Considering those four core members, tell us more about John Tomerlin.
What's interesting about him is that he was a catalyst for a number of things. He started in radio and that was his big love. He wasn't really interested in television or film. The rest of the group dragged him into that. He was interested in competing and conquering. He was feisty. He became a bridge champion, and pilot. He was mostly in love with the Norman Corwin school of writing for radio. That's like saying today that you'd like to write like the original Twilight Zone when we're in the midst of Kardashian cult TV. It ain't gonna happen!
Share with us more about other members of The Group. They seem to fade into the background and yet they're all interesting in their own ways. There's Chad Oliver, for instance, he seems pretty obscure but I come to find that he had his cult following.
Well, Chad Oliver really did enjoy science fiction. I don't think that was where Beaumont's heart was. It's weird that Johnson and Nolan would think they were lowest on the totem pole since that was not true. After you move past the core, there are the top ten. Altogether, you could say there were thirty writers associated with The Group. If you're thinking conceptually, outside of Bradbury, Beaumont was most influential closely followed by Richard Matheson. And then, after that, Nolan.
After that, it depends, as you give merit on a story by story basis. Stylistically, Beaumont was at the top. Followed by Nolan, and then Johnson. I would place Matheson at the bottom, as a stylist. His writing was very direct; he was not an atmospheric writer. His ideas and his characterizations are his strengths, and his novel way of looking at the universe. While Beaumont's writing was more rich, a lot more substance to his delivery. Bill Nolan was a lot like that too, especially early in his career. Later in his career, his writing is more like Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler or Hemingway. He started in the style of Bradbury, as did Beaumont. George also emulated Bradbury. And then they moved on. Bill did a lot of television with Dan Curtis. Mathewson wrote a tremendous amount for television and film, beginning with Roger Corman. His writing lent himself to screenplays. He wrote about a hundred short stories and then switched to novels.
Talk more about the dynamics of what was going on behind the scenes of The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling and Ray Bradbury.
The Group would not have happened if not for Rod Serling. It was Serling who was the big shot in television. Ray Bradbury wanted to do that too. Serling came from the East Coast and steeped in great television, like Paddy Chayefsky. Bradbury has his side of the story of what caused the great rift between them–and we cover that in our documentary. I can see that it was jealously at play: Bradbury wanted what Serling had. But, The Twilight Zone, in fact, was always on precarious ground. Then there's Night Gallery which left Serling without creative control which he regretted very much. Writers from The Twilight Zone went on to write for Star Trek and for Night Gallery. Nolan and Johnson both wrote a number of scripts for consideration on Star Trek. And, it was Johnson who wrote the first Star Trek episode aired, "The Man Trap."
I can understand how Ray Bradbury would have felt that he could have done a better job than Rod Serling, even if that was not the case.
Bradbury would have directly said that. Serling got to the point too describing Bradbury's style as best for the page and not the screen. Bradbury is more in line with Edgar Alan Poe. And that is more of an internal mode of writing. It is very difficult to transfer that onto a script. On the other hand, you can say Serling's writing can be very talky. The modern equivalent to Serling would be Aaron Sorkin. Your mind is just snapping and crackling to that kind of writing. Serling was very much like that on his work for Playhouse 90.
Clusters of writers do crop up. You think of The Lost Generation Expats in Paris, The Lovecraft Circle, The Beats, The Group. It's very hard, if not impossible, to form this bond online. You need that human connection.
Rod Serling is quite fascinating. And he did know what he was doing even if he had not been known for science fiction and fantasy prior to The Twilight Zone.
Yes, he had always been reading in the field. He had always been interested in science fiction and fantasy, reading it since he was a boy. He just didn't have an outlet for it yet. He wasn't a prose writer, that wasn't his form of writing. He started in radio, just like John Tomerlin. Serling started writing from his direct experience in the war. He was in the Pacific during World War II. I recommend a memoir by Anne Serling, "As I Knew Him," about her father. It is very well written. She describes how her dad wrote initially in a diary form to help him overcome PTSD. This would lead him to radio and, with his clipped style of talking, he was a natural for it. Later, he wins a writing contest for television. The writer who came in second was Earl Hamner Jr., who would go on to write a number of Twilight Zone episodes.
Indulge me and go even further into the background of the writing for The Twilight Zone. For one thing, everyone involved was hip to Weird Fiction.
If you break it down, story by story, what these writers were most interested in was Magical Realism. They didn't really call it that back then in the United States. Bradbury had that aspect. Serling definitely had it. When you start looking at other writers from The Group, John Tomerlin and Jerry Sohl were much more interested in serious and realistic stories. So, it comes down to Nolan, Matheson, Beaumont, and Johnson.
They all loved F. Scott Fitzgerald. They all loved Hemingway. They could not help but admire Hemingway as he was the big force in writing at the time. Hemingway had that succinct style that fit right in with their interest in noir. They tapped into the Magical Realism in Faulkner. They all loved Poe. And they all loved Bradbury and wanted to follow in his footsteps and write for the pulps. Beaumont loved Lovecraft. He loved Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun." Had Beaumont lived, he would have pursued more work with social commentary similar to Rod Serling. It's very interesting as to how it all came together as it did. It is something I'd like to write about in the future.
Thank you, Jason. As always, a pleasure. I look forward to our next conversation.
Same here, Henry.
Keep up with Jason V Brock by visiting his website for his work and that of his wife, Sunni K Brock, right here.
Filed under Charles Beaumont, Comic-Con, George Clayton Johnson, Hollywood, Interviews, Jason V. Brock, movies, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, William F. Nolan, writers, writing
Tagged as Charles Beaumont, Comic-Con, Entertainment, George Clayton Johnson, Hollywood, Jason V Brock, Media, Movies, Pop Culture, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, Screenplays, Star Trek, Television, The Twilight Zone, William F. Nolan, Writers, Writing
Interview: William F. Nolan and the True Meaning of Fiction
William F. Nolan and Ray Bradbury
Great fiction comes from all over: horror, dark fantasy, mystery, and so on. William F. Nolan writes in various genres. You may know him from his work with Dan Curtis, such as the classic horror film, "Burnt Offerings." Or perhaps you know him from co-writing, with George Clayton Johnson, the classic dystopian novel, "Logan's Run." Mr. Nolan has gained great recognition and won numerous awards and honors. Just last year he was named the Grand Master at the World Horror Convention in Atlanta. In this interview, we spend a good time chatting about horror as well as fiction in general. And we definitely visit the subject of the Southern California Sorcerers, otherwise known simply as The Group.
"Burnt Offerings" from 1976
During our conversation, Bill shared a very special moment regarding his friend and fellow writer, George Clayton Johnson, who passed away this last Christmas. He offers up for us a picture of a fresh-faced, and beaming, young George bursting upon the scene, circa 1957. He has shown up at a meeting of The Group and asks if he may join in with the illustrious and ambitious writers. Someone asks George what he has to show for himself. And, George, just having received his box of author copies, proudly shows the men what he's been up to. "Hey guys," George says, "I co-wrote this really cool thing called, 'Ocean's Eleven!'" And the rest is history!
This interview was conducted Monday, February 22nd. William F. Nolan is going strong, just shy of his 88th birthday on March 6th. If you love a good story, or if you are an aspiring writer yourself, or if you'd like to know something about the Sixties zeitgeist, then this interview is for you. In the span of about twenty minutes we cover a lifetime of observations and insight.
Henry Chamberlain: Thank you for getting together with me, Bill. I wanted to cover the writer's life with you in this interview. First off, a good horror story has been compared to placing a frog in gradually boiling water. What can you tell us about the boiled frog method of storytelling?
William F. Nolan: Allow me to veer off a bit from the boiled frog to tell you how I approach telling a story. Really, how I tell a story is like the other night when I was in bed, half asleep and half awake, a state where I get all of my ideas. I was thinking of these deadly flowers. They had the power to stop the human heart. They were alive and, if you didn't treat them right, they could turn against and stop your heart. There's this couple who decide to rent this place on the beach. It looks like a great place. The owner lets them know that they have to take care of these special flowers but the couple ignore him, they don't do it. And they end up being killed by the flowers. Their dead bodies are found on the beach. That's how I form an idea for a story. I get an opening in my head for the concept and then I get the ending. Finally, I fill in the middle. That's how I write a horror story, or any other kind of story.
Discoveries Best of Horror and Dark Fantasy edited by James R. Beach and Jason V Brock
HC: There's a story of yours, "Stabbed by Rob," in the recently published collection of dark fantasy from Dark Discoveries, edited by James R Beach and Jason V Brock. That story is a perfect example of that boiled frog method. There are a number of touches of humor, including your mentioning a glow-in-the-dark statue of Jesus. And the story keeps turning up the heat to the very last sentence.
WFN: Well, I believe you really can't get away without some humor in a horror story. Horror is too stark, raw, and unflinching. You need to be able to live in it. You've got to lighten it with some humor. All my horror stories have elements of humor. You need to let the reader breathe. You can't go from the first page to the last and do straight horror. That's the problem with H. P. Lovecraft for me. Lovecraft has no sense of humor. He was a brilliant writer. He was a brilliant innovator. But no sense of humor. By the time you finish "The Shadow over Innsmouth," you're exhausted. I want my readers to relax a little, to breathe, and have a good chuckle while they're being frightened. That's my method of writing horror.
HC: I'm glad that you mention Lovecraft because I've had difficulty with him too. Your adaptation with Dan Curtis of Robert Marasco's 1973 novel, "Burnt Offerings," has just the right touches of humor at the start, and they give way to a more sinister mood. There's a balance.
WFN: Yes, that was adapted from the Marasco novel which had no humor whatsoever. I told Dan Curtis, who directed, and produced the film with me, that we were going to need to lighten up the material because it was too stark. I'm glad that you appreciate the humorous elements in the film. As I say, I just don't think you can do horror without lightening it up a little bit.
HC: Then there's Ray Russell's work. Perhaps more of a touch of elegance than humor. I love the way Ray Russell masterfully brings up a lot of pretty grim stuff in his work. He knows what to leave in and what to mostly imply. I'm thinking of "Sardonicus," "Sagittarius," and "Sanguinarius."
WFN: Ray Russell was one of my closest friends for years. We would talk about how to write in terms of horror. And we both agreed on the same thing that you've got to put some humor into it in order to lighten the whole thing. I love Ray's work. He passed on some years back. He would be happy to hear that you enjoy his work.
Just Part of The Group: Charles Fritch, Chad Oliver, Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, and William F. Nolan, circa 1954.
HC: There were all of these amazing writers that you got to be close with in social settings and in work sessions. All of you together were the Southern California Writer's Group.
WFN: There were eleven of us. We didn't think of ourselves as anything special. We were all trying to make a living, pay the rent, pay the mortgage, stay afloat. We wrote science fiction and fantasy in a modern vein. We took it away from the Lovecraftian type of fiction and wrote a modern type. It was sort of pioneered by Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury who were part of our group. We all worked from the same principle: you can do modern horror but it has got to be something that people can believe in. It has to be realistic. It should happen today, in somebody's kitchen. It could happen in a kitchen. You don't have to go to a haunted castle, back in Transylvania, to have horror. Horror can happen on your doorstep. Horror can be a terrorist with a submachine gun that sprays lead over you while you're eating in a restaurant. That's horror. Horror takes many forms. We all tried to work within that scope.
Yeah, eleven of us. Matheson, Bradbury, myself…Charles Beaumont was sort of the hub of the thing. We had Jerry Sohl. We had Robert Bloch, known for "Psycho." We'd all gather together at each other's houses, at all-night coffeeshops and talk shop, editors, and markets. We were quite a group. All these years later, people look back on us as pioneers in the field. And that's nice but, at the time, we were just trying to make a buck, just trying to make a living.
HC: Well, sure, you guys were so close to it all. You would need to stand back to see it clearly. What you guys did was take gothic literature and give it a modern cool. That's essentially it.
I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson
WFN: Yeah. I still think that you can credit Richard Matheson for a lot of that. Stephen King said that he was influenced more by Richard Matheson, than any other author, because he took horror out of the castle and brought it into the kitchen. And I agree with him. We all tried to do that. We all felt that was the way to go. We weren't interested in something ancient. We wanted something real, something of today.
HC: You list eleven members of The Group. Was there any time that all eleven of you met under one roof?
WFN: Three or four of us were into auto racing. Richard Matheson, Jerry Sohl, and Robert Bloch didn't care at all about that. But Charles Beaumont, John Tomerlin, and myself were heavily into Grand Prix sports car racing both here and in Europe. We actually flew to Monte Carlo one year for the Grand Prix. And we went to Sebring Raceway in Florida for the races there. The Beaumont kitchen in North Hollywood, his upstairs kitchen, is where most of us would meet. George Clayton Johnson was part of that group too. We would meet there. But there was never a meeting of all eleven of us at one time. It was three or four of us at at time at different places. We'd go to movies together. We'd meet in coffeeshops.
Musso and Frank Grill
HC: I imagine that you guys enjoyed Musso and Frank Grill.
WFN: We loved Musso and Frank Grill. It has all that history: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner. The murals never changed. The seats are the same. When you're sitting there, it's like you've gone back in a time machine. We loved it. I still love it. I love to go whenever I'm in L.A.
HC: You touched upon George. I have to say that I can imagine that he loved the fact that he got to pass away on Christmas Day. Such a magical thing. Such an act of will.
WFN: That was no accident. He was ill. He was in hospice care for about a week before that happened.
HC: Oh, yeah.
WFN: The doctors were saying that he could go at any minute but George, subconsciously, since he couldn't verbalize it at that stage, was saying that the doctors couldn't tell him when he was going to die. He was always an independent guy. He was saying: "I want to die on Christmas Day since that was the birthday of Rod Serling, who made me famous for my writing for The Twilight Zone." He was able to die three days past when he was expected to die. He was able to fool all the doctors. That was no accident.
George Clayton Johnson and William F. Nolan, circa 1957, illustration by Henry Chamberlain
HC: Yes, that's what I meant. I was honored to interview George a number of times and got to meet him in person. Would you share with us a little more of the flavor of the era and a picture of George at one of these bull sessions at The Group that may come to mind?
WFN: Four or five of us were sitting in the living room of the upstairs apartment of Charles Beaumont one night. There was a knock at the door. This is around 1957. The Group was around from the '50s to '60s. So, there's a knock at the door. We open the door and there's George Clayton Johnson with a package under his arm. He said, "I'm George Clayton Johnson. I want to join you guys. I want to be with you. I've heard about you and I want to join you." Someone asked, "Are you a writer?" He said, "Yes, I am," and he held up the package, "It's called, 'Ocean's Eleven' and I just sold it to Frank Sinatra!" That's what got him started with The Group.
HC: That's beautiful. I wanted to ask you about the literary tradition that The Group worked from. I'm sure that Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelly, all the gothic writers, were subjects of conversations for all of you.
WFN: You can't write out of a vacuum. We're all influenced by other people. Ray Bradbury was influenced by Herman Melville, William Shakespeare, and George Bernard Shaw. We were influenced more by such horror writers as Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. I started out reading H.G. Wells's "The Time Machine" and "War of the Worlds" when I was a boy growing up in Kansas City, Missouri. And then I discovered Bradbury and Weird Tales. Ray Bradbury and I became close friends and that lasted 50 years. We're all standing on the shoulders of other people. We all read Hawthorne and Robert Louis Stevenson. We were influenced by them but we wanted to take our fiction into a modern setting and move it forward and I believe we succeeded.
Photo by Ralph Morris, Hollywood Blvd. 1960
HC: I wanted to close out by asking if you could give us a little more of a flavor of Los Angeles in the '50s and '60s. I can just imagine: you had the ghost of Raymond Chandler; old Hollywood giving way to new Hollywood; Forey Ackerman and the rise of geek culture. L.A. in the Sixties, it doesn't get much better than that.
WFN: I read Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, the hard-boiled school, James M. Cain. I've read books on Chandler and Hammett. I'm a big hard-boiled fan. Los Angeles was a hard-boiled city in those days. Dashiell Hammett glorified San Francisco. But Los Angeles was also part of that era where corruption ruled in high places. It was a violent and colorful era captured beautifully by Raymond Chandler. If you read the work of Raymond Chandler, you're learning a lot about Los Angeles as he experienced it.
I can tell you that there was a lot of smog. I used to live in Burbank, right against the mountains. The smog was terrible. I did move around different parts of Los Angeles. It changed quite a lot during the many years I was there. It's not the same city that it used to be.
HC: I love Los Angeles and love looking for signs of yesteryear. They're around if you know where to look for them.
WFN: If you go to Pasadena, there's the old bridge that Raymond Chandler wrote about in one of his novels. The bridge that Philip Marlowe drove over at night. It's still standing there. I wrote a piece entitled, "Marlowe in Los Angeles." I toured all the places he used to go to, including Musso and Frank Grill. Chandler was an insatiable researcher, always moving around, and usually within the greater Los Angeles area. He grew to know it beautifully. Hammett made San Francisco famous with "The Maltese Falcon." Chandler did the same for Los Angeles with "The Big Sleep."
HC: I wish you a great year ahead, Bill. Any projects we can look forward to soon?
WFN: I had a collection of my poetry come out last year. This year we'll have a new collection of my essays. I'm working on a new collection of short stories. I just wrote three new stories this month. So, even though I'll be turning 88, I feel like I'm still 28.
HC: I can feel the energy. Thanks again, Bill.
WFN: I really enjoyed this. Thank you.
You can listen to the podcast interview by just clicking the link below:
https://comicsgrinder.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/bill-nolan-22-feb-2016.mp3
Keep up with William F. Nolan at his website right here.
Filed under Charles Beaumont, George Clayton Johnson, Interviews, Jason V. Brock, Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, Sci-Fi, science fiction, The Twilight Zone, William F. Nolan, writers, writing
Tagged as Charles Beaumont, George Clayton Johnson, H.P. Lovecraft, Hollywood, Horror, Interviews, Jason V Brock, Los Angeles, Media, Pop Culture, Publishing, Raymond Chandler, Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, The Twilight Zone, William F. Nolan, Writers
January 1, 2016 · 6:30 pm
Book Review: 'Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont'
Charles Beaumont on the set of "The Howling Man." Illustration by Henry Chamberlain.
How do you describe the distinctive character of the landmark television series, The Twilight Zone (1959-1964)? Well, it has everything to do with its unique literary quality. And how to best speak to that? Charles Beaumont (1929-1967), one of its celebrated writers, is a perfect example. Let's look at a new collection of his work, published by Penguin Classics, "Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont."
"Perchance to Dream" by Charles Beaumont
What a treat this book is for any Twilight Zone fan since here you have some of the original stories by Beaumont that went on to become classic episodes. And you also get them in the context of his work for various magazines of the era, a total of 23 stories in this collection. Consider the title piece, "Perchance to Dream," first published in Playboy, October 1958, and then turned into a TZ script and broadcast November 27, 1959. A distraught man enters a psychiatrist's office in fear that he will die if he falls asleep. He is certain this will happen since he sees things that tell him so. For instance, if he stares long enough at a painting, the figures will move around and talk to him. Here, perhaps Beaumont borrows a little from "The Golgotha Dancers," by Manly Wade Wellman, first published in Weird Tales, October 1937. It's just enough to fuel another strain in the tradition of weird fiction dating back to Gothic literature. In this case, we have a man in a contemporary setting who has been reduced to a quivering heap as his only solace, to dream, has been denied him.
Rod Serling was a writer on the rise, already with a reputation for first-rate work like "Requiem for a Heavyweight," when he decided to try something new. It was to be an anthology series of science fiction and fantasy, the best possible route for him to continue to pursue his social commentary. When Serling approached Ray Bradbury for advice, Bradbury presented him with four books by authors he should know: Ray Bradbury, John Collier, Richard Matheson, and Charles Beaumont. Dark fantasy is what Serling was seeking. Beaumont seemed to be dark fantasy incarnate. He was a brash young aspiring writer when Bradbury took him under his wing. In a year's time, Beaumont was well on his way. In 1950, at 21, he sold his first story to Amazing Stories. And, in 1954, Playboy magazine selected his story "Black Country" to be the first work of short fiction to appear in its pages. His astonishing trajectory would end by a mysterious condition that would cut his life short, at 38, in 1967. A fascinating documentary by Jason V Brock provides great insight into this unique life and career.
Browsing through the titles, you'll find a wealth of creativity spanning many genres, all of them embracing a sense of the macabre. The opening lines to "The New People" (1958) lure you in with the misgivings of Hank Prentice over buying his first home, that embodiment of the American Dream. Instinctively, he fears for his wife and son: "Too late for what? It's a good house, well built, well kept up, roomy. Except for that blood stain, cheerful." And so commences a fine piece of horror with a fine bite of social commentary. Conformity has brought each member of the neighborhood together. However, in order to cope with and stave off boredom, we discover this group gives new, and bloody, meaning to the quaint notion of "community." In the same spirt as Richard Matheson, Beaumont conjures up a fable that questions our so-called dreams and aspirations.
Charles Beaumont's work has a distinctive style and it is far from formulaic. What he did was follow a certain way of revealing a greater truth. Beaumont confronted that clean wall of 1950s conformity. He looked closer to see the stress cracks forming. He responded with fiction that helped to tear that wall down.
"Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont" is published by Penguin Classics. For more details, visit our friends at Penguin Random House right here.
Filed under Book Reviews, Books, Charles Beaumont, George Clayton Johnson, Penguin Random House, Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone
Tagged as Charles Beaumont, Dark Fantasy, Entertainment, Fantasy, George Clayton Johnson, Media, Penguin Random House, Pop Culture, Rod Serling, Science Fiction, Television, The Twilight Zone, Writers, Writing
Interview: Jason V Brock and the World of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Jason V Brock
Jason V Brock is an author, artist, and filmmaker who finds himself in a very interesting place in pop culture. For starters, he has created two well-regarded documentaries that focus on two very different men, both great contributors to science fiction, horror, movies, television, and the arts in general. One is Charles Beaumont. The other is Forrest J Ackerman. We chat about them and the creative process. How do you create art? One rule of thumb: Do it yourself! We begin with a look back at Brock's childhood and how he, a child of the '80s, grew up with the DIY ethos. In Charlotte, North Carolina. That's where Brock cut his teeth on comics, retro cinema, vintage LPs, pulp fiction, and Playboy. Brock began working at his local comic book shop at the age of 13. His dad was a writer and graphic designer. It sounds like an idyllic way to grow up, right out of a Ray Bradbury story.
Charles Beaumont and Robin Hughes on the set of "The Howling Man"
Speaking of stories,there are so many stories to cover just in Brock's documentary on Beaumont. Take the case of the short story, "The Crooked Man," by Charles Beaumont. It is a classic today that was highly controversial for the time, circa 1955. It imagined a society where homosexuality was predominant while hetrosexuality was outlawed. The story was bought by Esquire but subsequently was not published. It turned out to also be too hot for the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. But when Playboy published it in 1955, then that same story became okay, more than okay. Charles Beaumont sold his first science fiction story, "The Devil You Say," to Amazing Stories in 1950. By 1954, he had written the first work of fiction, the landmark work, "Dark Country," to appear in Playboy in 1954. This kicked off over a decade of Beaumont stories in Playboy. Writing for movies and televison soon followed including some of the best episodes of "The Twilight Zone." All this, and so much more, before his life was cut short at 38 by a mysterious illness.
And, that gives you some sense of what to expect in Brock's "Charles Beaumont: Short Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man." You can find that documentary as well as Brock's documentary on Famous Monsters of Filmland's former editor, Forrest J Ackerman (Uncle Forry), "The AckerMonster Chronicles!" right here.
We also chat about Brock's work in editing and writing his own stories. This led us to discussing a unique pairing of talents. In the course of working on the Beaumont documentary, Brock got to know one of the members of the Southern California Writer's Group, William F. Nolan. They struck up a solid friendship. When Nolan was at a turning point on where he wanted to live next, it was a reasonable choice for him to move a bit further north from Bend, Oregon to Brock's neighborhood in Vancouver, Washington. It turned out to be a natural fit and Brock and his wife, Sunni, could not be happier to share meals but not only that. Bill Nolan became family and you look out for family.
Among Brock's impressive editorial work, there's the recent anthology, from 2014, "A Darke Phantastique." This is a 730-page lushly illustrated collection of some of the best dark horror fiction around with more than fifty stories, poems, and one teleplay. This includes Joe R. Lansdale's "The Case of the Four-Acre Haunt"; Paul Kane's "Michael the Monster"; William F. Nolan's "The Last Witch"; Nathaniel Lee's "The Wisest Stone and the Zoo"; Derek Künsken's "The Buddha Circus"; E.E. King's "Three Fables"; Jason Maurer's "In Your Dark: Differing Strategies in Subhuman Integration Through Monster Academies" and S.T. Joshi's "You'll Reach There in Time." "A Darke Phantastique" is published by Cicatrix Press and you can find it here.
And another recent anthology, out this year, is "Disorders of Magnitude." This is a 336-page overview of the genres of horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. It will prove useful to anyone who wants a better understanding of the roots of one of today's dominant forms of entertainment and art. Included in this collection are essays, reviews, and interviews. Brock studies such dynamic figures as H. P. Lovecraft, Forrest J Ackerman, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, and William F. Nolan. This collection also includes filmmakers Roger Corman, George Romero, and Dan O'Bannon, and such fantasy artists as H. R. Giger. "Disorders of Magnitude" is published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. You can find it as Amazon right here.
You can listen to our conversation by clicking the link below. For anyone interested in writing, filmmaking, and creativity in general, there's something here for you. Enjoy.
https://comicsgrinder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/jason-v-brock.m4a
And be sure to visit Jason and Sunni Brock at JaSunni Productions to find out more about their products and services right here.
Filed under Charles Beaumont, Documentaries, Forrest J Ackerman, George Clayton Johnson, Interviews, Jason V. Brock, Rod Serling, Sci-Fi, science fiction, The Twilight Zone, William F. Nolan
Tagged as Art, arts, Charles Beaumont, Creativity, Documentaries, Entertainment, Film, Filmmaking, forrest j ackerman, George Clayton Johnson, Horror, Interviews, Jason V Brock, Movies, Pop Culture, Rod Serling, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Television, The Twilight Zone, William F. Nolan, Writers, Writing


text:
ECO TOURS IN COZUMEL MEXICO
Come and enjoy some of Cozumel and the Riviera Maya's most unique and amazing eco-tours in all of Mexico. The Mayan Riviera and all of the Yucatan peninsula offer great nature preserves and natural parks such as Sian Ka'an and Rio Lagartos, each of these eco-parks and natural preserves are home to over 350 species of birds, along with countless other types of wildlife.
COZUMEL ECOTOURS AND ECO-ADVENTURES!
All Tours Depart From Cozumel. See Also from Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Riviera Maya
SAVE UP TO 25% !
Sea Lion Discovery
YOU SAVE 10% !
Snorkel with Stingrays
2x1 DEAL!
Manatee Encounter
Sian Ka'an Biosphere
Whale Sharks Adventure
Coba & Monkey Reserve
YOU SAVE 5% !
Rio Lagartos Ecotour
Rio Lagartos is known for it's beauty, it's tranquility, it is a unique site and offers a flamingo sanctuary, located on the North slope of the Yucatan peninsula. It offers a natural pink salt baths where the Mayans have been performing cleansing rituals for hundreds of years.
Sian Ka'an is a huge expanse of natural wetland, named World Heritage Site by UNESCO, this is the largest nature reserve in Mexico. See hundreds of species of endemic birds and other wildlife, as you take a boat ride through the mangroves. Snorkel on untouched coral reefs, and spot for dolphins and manatees.
Punta Laguna monkey preserve is a great place to see local howler and spider monkeys. You can see these cute critters in their natural environment, and also visit the ruins at Coba and climb a pyramid.
All of these tours are great eco tours, they feature hundreds of species of birds, plants and lots of animals, they make great birding and birdwatching excursions. Get off the beaten track and see the "real Yucatan" this vacation!
Use the navigation bar at left to browse our massive selection of other Cozumel Tours & Excursions.


text:
Expanded Link URLs
« Return to Article
How to Make Chicago-Style Italian Beef at Home
Tender, juicy, beefy, and balanced, this homemade version is as good as an Italian beef gets. [Photographs: Nick Kindelsperger]
Homemade Italian Beef
When I moved to Chicago, I wasted little time before devouring all of its iconic dishes. I mean, isn't that what civic pride is all about? My wife and I manhandled a deep dish pizza at Uno's, waited in line for a Chicago-style hot dog at Hot Doug's, and bellied up to the counter for our very first Italian beef at Al's #1 Italian Beef. It didn't take long to figure out that these dishes had one obvious similar trait. Besides embodying a, how shall I say, generous Chicago spirit, they all were spectacularly messy. Condiments crumbled into our laps, cheese stretched for feet, and shirts inevitably picked up stains.
Italian Beef at Johnnie's.
While none of these iconic dishes are even remotely polite, there's no doubt which one required the tallest stack of napkins. That honor went to the Italian beef, one of the most unwieldy sandwiches ever created by man. At first glance it looks like the less dignified cousin of the French dip, but instead of coming with a nice little side of jus for you to wet the sandwich's ends with, this bad boy is saturated from the start. Ask for it "dipped" and the whole sandwich is dunked in meaty juices, soaking the bread to the core. I know this sounds insane, and if you're talking about the mess, you're absolutely right. There's no respectable way to eat one of these. All you can hope to do is contain the chaos.
The shock of eating one of these for the first time is genuine, but great sandwiches are not built on blunt tricks alone. The true power of the Italian beef is how it takes one of the leanest, toughest, and least flavorful parts of the cow, the lean and boring round, and transforms it into something so unhinged and supremely beefy. If you're looking to try one of these for yourself, it's hard to go wrong with offerings at Al's #1 Italian, Johnnie's Beef, or, my most recent find, Bari. But what if you don't live in the Chicagoland area or just want to make one at home?
What Is an Italian Beef?
First we need to nail down what this beast of a sandwich is, because it's slightly more confusing than it first appears. I've always thought of the sandwich as a spruced up roast beef sandwich, but that's not quite the case. Watch this behind the scenes video at Al's #1 Italian Beef and you'll see they start with an enormous hunk of beef roasted with a fair amount of liquid. You'd think that would make this a braised dish, much like a roast beef po' boy, but that's not quite true, either. The beef isn't cooked to the point where it falls apart like a pot roast. Instead, the roast is cut very thin, and these slices maintain some of their integrity.
Though the sandwich is a bit tricky to define, making one looks simple enough: roast a big hunk of meat with water and seasonings, thinly slice the meat, combine the slices with the the flavorful leftover liquid from cooking, and then serve it all on rolls. This is basically what I did a few years ago when I followed the very good recipe from Saveur. Yet I couldn't help but feel like something was missing from the finished sandwich. While solid, it never quite crossed the line into pure mayhem like the best Italian beefs.
Beefing Up the Jus
While it's almost always referred to as being served au jus, the liquid used with an Italian beef is actually more of a broth. In the strictest sense, the jus only refers to the juices released from the meat. While a vat of this elixir would be pure heaven, a single roast would never release enough natural juices necessary for the sandwich (remember: this thing needs to be dunked). To come anywhere close, you'd have to cook an epic amount of meat solely for the juices, turning what should be a humble dish into an insanely expensive project. Simply pouring water into the roasting pan helps with volume but is nowhere near as potent.
The breakthrough came from James Peterson's What's a Cook To Do?, which honestly has a section titled, "How to get more jus from roast meats." Lucky me!
Peterson's solution is to add inexpensive, flavor-packed stew meat and bones to the pan underneath the roast. It's a method that Kenji uses with his prime rib recipe to produce extra red wine jus. Since these scraps are used solely to deepen the flavor of the liquid, they can be cooked longer to release more of their juices. The stew meat is also cut into strips and cooked until well browned.
What kind of beef should you use for this? There are a number options, so try to find what is cheapest for you. For me, that was beef neck, which, at my market at least, had an even ratio of meat to bones. Of course, this means you'll need to cut the meat off the bones, but that's pretty easy. The rest of my mix was made of oxtails, which are slightly more expensive but add loads of body. Beef shin is also a great option if you can find it.
The only further additions were some aromatics and a few spices, like clove and black pepper, to give it some personality. Simmer everything for about four hours and that's it.
The additional beef scraps accomplished everything I wanted in the liquid, making it richer and more savory. The only problem, oddly enough, was with the roast.
I thought the roast would be the easy part. Almost every source I found online called for using a hunk of round, which comes from the very back of the cow. Sure, it's tough and lean, but it's cheap, and using anything else would kind of go against everything this sandwich is about. All I thought I needed to do was mimic what they do at Al's: roast it with some liquid, let it cool, and then cut it into thin slices. While this sort of worked, the beef was never quite as tender as I wanted it to be.
The problem? Equipment. Walk to the end of the counter at the original Al's #1 Italian Beef on Taylor and peek into the kitchen. There you'll see a meat slicer that's about the size of a fridge. This hulking machine is what allows Al's #1 to get its beef so thin, almost to the point where the slightest touch breaks each sheet apart. At home, I have to rely on my knives for slicing, and even the best cook in the world will never match an electric slicer for even, thin slices.
Check out how thin those slices are.
On one hand finding out about the slicer was great news—this is how to make the meat so tender!—but it left one enormous problem: I don't have an enormous meat slicer at home. So where to go from here?
A number of recipes online recommend a solution to this problem: cooking the beef until it falls apart like a pot roast. This can be utterly delicious, but it's not, strictly speaking, an Italian beef, and I'm going for authenticity here.
No, I just needed to figure out a way to slice the meat more thinly. One method for achieving this is to let the roast cool, and then transfer it to the freezer for an hour or two to firm it up. This does make it slightly easier to cut those paper-thin slices, but no matter how carefully I carved, I could never get the slices as uniformly thin as they needed to be. I worried that this was the end of the line—that I'd have to give up trying to come up with an accurate Italian beef recipe and settle for one that was close. But what's the fun in that?
Giving Up the Roast
I'd always assumed an Italian beef was just a glorified roast beef sandwich, and that the best version would follow the same logic: cook until medium-rare and slice thin. But there is one peculiar aspect of the Italian beef that sets it apart. After it's cooked and sliced, the meat is mixed with the warm jus. This essentially continues to the cooking process, so even if I did cook the beef to a spot-on 125°F, those slices would eventually have to take a bath in liquid held at a higher temperature, around 140°F.
So if the meat is being cooked by the jus anyway, why did I need to roast the meat in the first place? I could make of batch of the jus using scraps and bones, find a butcher to thinly slice uncooked beef for me—thereby solving the thinness problem—and simply add the beef to the jus, cook for a few minutes, and I'd be done. What a genius idea!
Not exactly. When I tested the idea with some meat that I sliced as thinly as possible, the slices were even tougher than before. Plus, the raw meat clouded the liquid, casting it an unappetizing grey. A quick chat with Kenji confirmed that this idea had some serious logistical issues, namely that with thin raw slices of beef, proteins and other contaminants leak out too quickly into the jus, turning it cloudy and robbing the beef of flavor. Not only that, but I'd have to cook the slices in the liquid for a long time for them to become tender. Besides, it was doubtful I'd ever be able to convince some knife wielding butcher to dirty his or her deli slicer with raw meat.
"But what about using good quality roast beef?" Kenji wrote.
Beef that has been par-cooked through roasting already has its proteins set, meaning they won't leak out into the jus. The idea of using homogenous grey lunch meat didn't sound appealing, but what about delis that roast their own beef? I knew Whole Foods had nice looking roast beef reading for slicing in its deli section. I just made sure to ask for it to be sliced as thinly as possible.
Now all I had to do was combine the sliced beef and the jus. You could just warm the jus on the stove, swirl in the meat, and you'd probably be okay. But I wanted to get an exact temperature. I started the test at 130°F and tried 10 degree increments up to 170°F. The meat was added and left at each temperature for about 30 seconds.
Starting on the left: 130°F, 140°F, 150°F, 160°F, 170°F
130°F was too low. The texture wasn't quite right, the slices were a bit bouncy, and each still had a light red hue, which I'd never encountered with an Italian beef. There was a big change at 140°F—the meat was far more tender and lost the red tint. At 150°F, the meat was still tender but was starting to look grainier. By 160°F, the slices started to curl and dry out, which meant that at 170°F they started to look truly disheveled. 140°F it is.
The Rolls
Most Italian beefs in Chicago are served on Turano or Gonnella French rolls, which I've always found a bit underwhelming, especially compared to the fresh and flaky rolls often used for New Orleans po' boys or Philadelphia cheesesteaks. But after a few tests, I realized why these rolls are used. The French rolls remain sound and strong after being dipped, unlike extra flaky rolls, which may turn mushy and soft.
While you can use any hearty French roll straight out of the packaging, I found them a little more pleasing if warmed in the oven for a bit. I just simply wrapped them in aluminum foil so the exterior wouldn't crisp up too much.
Italian beefs are topped with "hot" and/or "sweet peppers," which is code for giardiniera and roasted green peppers. You can make giardiniera at home, but that was one step too many for me, especially since I still had a fridge full of options while taste testing the best versions in Chicago. As for the green peppers, they just need to be roasted in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes, then peeled, stemmed, seeded, and sliced.
To Dip or Not to Dip
After loading up your sandwich with beef and topping it with sweet and hot peppers, your last decision is whether you want the whole sandwich dunked. It'll taste great regardless, but I'd like to give you the hard sell to make the plunge. It's the final flourish to the already ridiculous sandwich, and while it leaves your hands messy, it's well worth the mess.
While I admit it sort of felt like cheating to give up the initial step of cooking the beef myself, it's hard to argue with the end results. Finally, a homemade Italian beef that you can make anywhere that actually tastes like the best versions in Chicago.
View Recipe »


text:
package org.apache.spark.sql.execution.datasources.json

import java.nio.charset.{Charset, StandardCharsets}

import org.apache.hadoop.conf.Configuration
import org.apache.hadoop.fs.{FileStatus, Path}
import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.{Job, TaskAttemptContext}

import org.apache.spark.internal.Logging
import org.apache.spark.sql.{AnalysisException, SparkSession}
import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.InternalRow
import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.expressions.ExprUtils
import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.json._
import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.util.CompressionCodecs
import org.apache.spark.sql.execution.datasources._
import org.apache.spark.sql.sources._
import org.apache.spark.sql.types._
import org.apache.spark.util.SerializableConfiguration

class JsonFileFormat extends TextBasedFileFormat with DataSourceRegister {
  override val shortName: String = "json"

  override def isSplitable(
      sparkSession: SparkSession,
      options: Map[String, String],
      path: Path): Boolean = {
    val parsedOptions = new JSONOptionsInRead(
      options,
      sparkSession.sessionState.conf.sessionLocalTimeZone,
      sparkSession.sessionState.conf.columnNameOfCorruptRecord)
    val jsonDataSource = JsonDataSource(parsedOptions)
    jsonDataSource.isSplitable && super.isSplitable(sparkSession, options, path)
  }

  override def inferSchema(
      sparkSession: SparkSession,
      options: Map[String, String],
      files: Seq[FileStatus]): Option[StructType] = {
    val parsedOptions = new JSONOptionsInRead(
      options,
      sparkSession.sessionState.conf.sessionLocalTimeZone,
      sparkSession.sessionState.conf.columnNameOfCorruptRecord)
    JsonDataSource(parsedOptions).inferSchema(
      sparkSession, files, parsedOptions)
  }

  override def prepareWrite(
      sparkSession: SparkSession,
      job: Job,
      options: Map[String, String],
      dataSchema: StructType): OutputWriterFactory = {
    val conf = job.getConfiguration
    val parsedOptions = new JSONOptions(
      options,
      sparkSession.sessionState.conf.sessionLocalTimeZone,
      sparkSession.sessionState.conf.columnNameOfCorruptRecord)
    parsedOptions.compressionCodec.foreach { codec =>
      CompressionCodecs.setCodecConfiguration(conf, codec)
    }

    new OutputWriterFactory {
      override def newInstance(
          path: String,
          dataSchema: StructType,
          context: TaskAttemptContext): OutputWriter = {
        new JsonOutputWriter(path, parsedOptions, dataSchema, context)
      }

      override def getFileExtension(context: TaskAttemptContext): String = {
        ".json" + CodecStreams.getCompressionExtension(context)
      }
    }
  }

  override def buildReader(
      sparkSession: SparkSession,
      dataSchema: StructType,
      partitionSchema: StructType,
      requiredSchema: StructType,
      filters: Seq[Filter],
      options: Map[String, String],
      hadoopConf: Configuration): PartitionedFile => Iterator[InternalRow] = {
    val broadcastedHadoopConf =
      sparkSession.sparkContext.broadcast(new SerializableConfiguration(hadoopConf))

    val parsedOptions = new JSONOptionsInRead(
      options,
      sparkSession.sessionState.conf.sessionLocalTimeZone,
      sparkSession.sessionState.conf.columnNameOfCorruptRecord)

    val actualSchema =
      StructType(requiredSchema.filterNot(_.name == parsedOptions.columnNameOfCorruptRecord))
    // Check a field requirement for corrupt records here to throw an exception in a driver side
    ExprUtils.verifyColumnNameOfCorruptRecord(dataSchema, parsedOptions.columnNameOfCorruptRecord)

    if (requiredSchema.length == 1 &&
      requiredSchema.head.name == parsedOptions.columnNameOfCorruptRecord) {
      throw new AnalysisException(
        "Since Spark 2.3, the queries from raw JSON/CSV files are disallowed when the\n" +
        "referenced columns only include the internal corrupt record column\n" +
        s"(named _corrupt_record by default). For example:\n" +
        "spark.read.schema(schema).json(file).filter($\"_corrupt_record\".isNotNull).count()\n" +
        "and spark.read.schema(schema).json(file).select(\"_corrupt_record\").show().\n" +
        "Instead, you can cache or save the parsed results and then send the same query.\n" +
        "For example, val df = spark.read.schema(schema).json(file).cache() and then\n" +
        "df.filter($\"_corrupt_record\".isNotNull).count()."
      )
    }

    (file: PartitionedFile) => {
      val parser = new JacksonParser(actualSchema, parsedOptions, allowArrayAsStructs = true)
      JsonDataSource(parsedOptions).readFile(
        broadcastedHadoopConf.value.value,
        file,
        parser,
        requiredSchema)
    }
  }

  override def toString: String = "JSON"

  override def hashCode(): Int = getClass.hashCode()

  override def equals(other: Any): Boolean = other.isInstanceOf[JsonFileFormat]

  override def supportDataType(dataType: DataType): Boolean = dataType match {
    case _: AtomicType => true

    case st: StructType => st.forall { f => supportDataType(f.dataType) }

    case ArrayType(elementType, _) => supportDataType(elementType)

    case MapType(keyType, valueType, _) =>
      supportDataType(keyType) && supportDataType(valueType)

    case udt: UserDefinedType[_] => supportDataType(udt.sqlType)

    case _: NullType => true

    case _ => false
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


You are at:Home»Posts Tagged ""Jason Statham""
It's not terrible as these things go, and I'd feel fine endorsing it if you could see it for free.
Spy is not just the franchise we need right now, but the one some of us have deserved for a long, long time.
Who knows if any of these will last past a season, but at least some of the upcoming shows appear to be worth a look.
The Schwarz, the Stath, Captain America, violent death and…Miyazaki. One of these things is not like the other.
Hackford has been directing movies since 1973, but this is his first action film. I sat down with him to discuss such things as choreographing Jason Statham, casting Jennifer Lopez against type, and where he finds the time to make movies while being president of the DGA and husband to an imposing talent.


We can't be sure that this air freshener, inspired by the Stoniest Vehicle In Motion Picture History, actually smells like reefer. But we can guarantee the smell won't matter as soon as a member of the law enforcement community takes a look at this thing dangling from the mirror of your vehicle; regardless of actual circumstances, you might as well have an eight-tube hookah stuffed with a pound of hash-oil-drenched Northern Lights smoldering away on the dash and a pair of tiny rectangular-framed Tea Shades shielding your crimson orbs. But hey, it's still a cool air freshener!