title: Sea shanty

text: The 1914 collection by Frank Thomas Bullen, "Songs of Sea Labour", differed from the work of writers such as Masefield in having a more practical, rather than romantic, tone. Bullen, an Englishman, was an experienced shantyman, who sailed during the heyday of shanties to ports in the Southern U.S. and the Caribbean. He took a firm stance that only true work songs should be included in his collection, thus resisting the temptation to let shanties slide into the genres of ballads or other off-duty songs. (Pressure of his publisher forced him to include two sea songs, clearly demarcated, at the end of the book.) And rather than shape the shanties to appear as narrative pieces, he noted that, since most shanties would usually be improvised, it would be disingenuous to present more than one or two sample verses. As for his framing of the genre's origins, Bullen stated his belief that, "[T]he great majority of these tunes undoubtably emanated from the negroes of the Antilles and the Southern states, a most tuneful race if ever there was one, men moreover who seemed unable to pick up a ropeyarn without a song ..." And Bullen's musicologist editor, Arnold, claimed, "[T]he majority of the Chanties are Negroid in origin ..." Bullen's insistence on including only true work songs in the collection meant that he likely omitted songs—generally those for heaving tasks, like capstan work—which had been easily borrowed from the land-based traditions of various nations. The effect of including only the most exclusively work-oriented songs meant that a higher percentage of African-American songs were represented.


title: Sea shanty

text: Somewhere between these perspectives was Cecil Sharp's, whose "English Folk-Chanteys" (1914) was published in the same year, and was based on shanties he collected from aged English sailors in Britain. Sharp responds to Bullen's claims of African-American origins by ceding that many shanties were influenced through the singing of Black shantymen—a position that assumes English folk song was the core of the tradition by default. The title of Sharp's work reflects his project of collecting and grouping shanties as part of what he conceived to be a rather continuous English folk song tradition. Sharp states in the introduction that he deliberately excluded shanties which were obviously (i.e. to him) born of popular songs. This idea is problematic when one considers that the popular songs that were feeding shanties were largely American and based in real or imagined African-American musical traits. However, Sharp believed that by eliminating such shanties based on popular songs, he could concentrate those that were "folk" songs. Of his own admission, Sharp lacked any shantying or sea experience to intuitively judge shanties like someone such as Bullen, however he offers his objectivity, recording precisely what was sung to him, as consolation. While Sharp's manner of documenting shanties was more or less objective, the field of his research and his biases in what to collect certainly influenced the outcome of this study. And whereas Bullen's work was fairly inaccessible, Sharp was influential as the leader of a cohort of scholars who were actively creating the young field of folk song research.


title: Sea shanty

text: By the 1920s, the proliferation of shanty collections had begun to facilitate a revival in shanty singing as entertainment for laypersons (see below), which in turn created a market for more shanty collections that were geared towards a general audience. Writers of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, through their derivative, popular works, established in effect a new body of "common knowledge" about shanties that overwrote some of the knowledge of 19th century observers.


title: Sea shanty

text: Shanty collection was seen as a facet of the early twentieth century folk revival. The Australian-born composer and folklorist Percy Grainger collected various shanties and recorded them on wax cylinders in the early 1900s, and the recordings are available online courtesy of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.


title: Sea shanty

text: In the 1920s, while the proliferation of soft-scholarly books was reifying the shanty repertoire, a few American scholars were audio-recording some of the last surviving sailors that had sung shanties as part of their daily work: in short, field recording. James Madison Carpenter, made hundreds of recordings of shanties from singers in Britain, Ireland, and the north-eastern U.S. in the late 1920s, allowing him to make observation from an extensive set of field data. Robert Winslow Gordon, founding head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, recorded sailors singing shanties in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1920s, and later made recordings of African-American work songs in Georgia and elsewhere, seeking to demonstrate correspondences between these and the shanty genre. Neither of these scholars had the opportunity, however, to publish major works on shanties. Similarly, Alan Lomax's work starting in the 1930s, especially his field recordings of work songs in the Caribbean and Southern U.S., makes a significant contribution to the information on extant shanty-related traditions.


title: Sea shanty

text: From the 1940s to the 1960s, Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton collected shanties from Nova Scotia seamen, such as 'Blow the Man Down', 'Whiskey Johnny', 'The Sailor's Alphabet', 'Shenandoah' and "Rio Grande". Lastly, William Main Doerflinger carefully recorded and collected shanties from singers in New York and Nova Scotia in the 1930s and 1940s, the result of which was his "Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman".


title: Sea shanty

text: English folklorist Peter Kennedy recorded Stanley Slade of Bristol, England, thought to be 'The Last Shantyman', singing several shanties including 'Haul Away, Joe', 'Leave Her, Johnny' and 'Shenandoah', and the recordings are available online via the British Library Sound Archive.


title: Sea shanty

text: One of the most celebrated volumes on shanties produced in the 20th century is Stan Hugill's "Shanties from the Seven Seas" (1961). It is the largest of its kind, owing to Hugill's methodology and chronological position. With respect to methodology, Hugill aimed to be as inclusive as possible—to account for and to present, if sometimes only in fragments, any and all items of shanty repertoire that he was currently able to find. Any song that he had heard or read being attested as having been ever "used as shanty" was included—regardless of whether that song was not generally known as a shanty or if its use as a shanty was rare and incidental. The result is a varied portrait of the genre, highlighting its maximum diversity without, however, giving a focused sense of what songs were most common during the heyday of shanties or in latter eras. Hugill readily included more recently popular songs—those that evidently were not sung until after the shanty genre was experiencing decline, but which were extant when Hugill sailed (1920s–40s). He also culled from the major collections of non-English-language sailor work songs. Hugill's practice of liberally culling from all major prior works, "in combination with" original material from his own field experiences, makes it a handy sourcebook for performers, but a difficult work to assess in terms of historical accuracy.


title: Sea shanty

text: With respect to chronological position, while Hugill is affectionately known as "The Last Shantyman," he was also one of the last original shanty "collectors". A few original collections followed, notably Roger Abrahams' and Horace Beck's works on contemporary shantying in the Caribbean, yet most publications in the "song collection" genre are general anthologies based in Hugill and his predecessors' works. To a great extent, "Shanties from the Seven Seas" is considered the "last word" on shanties and the first stop as a reference. The book's "authoritative" position is bolstered by the personal image of its author. In contrast to many of the academic folklorists who had collected shanties before him, Hugill possessed the look and pedigree of an old-time sailor, and he was actually able to perform the songs from his collection at sea music festivals. "Shanties from the Seven Seas" and Stan Hugill's performances have had a tremendous bearing on how shanties have been understood and performed by enthusiasts since the second half of the 20th century up to today.


title: Sea shanty

text: Even as shanty singing to accompany work aboard ships was "dying," interest was being taken in "reviving" it—as a type of leisure pastime. Most shanty singing since the mid-20th century or earlier is considered to be in such a "revival" vein.


title: Sea shanty

text: A few of the editors of early shanty collections provided arrangements for pianoforte accompaniment with their shanties. While this may have simply been a customary way of presenting songs or attempting to frame their tonality, it may also suggest they hoped their examples could be performed, as well. One of the earliest shanty collections, Davis and Tozer's "Sailor Songs or 'Chanties"' (which circulated in the early 1890s), included such accompaniment, along with safe, "drawing room" style lyrics. It is unknown whether any actual performances were based on this otherwise influential work, however, the proceedings from a meeting of the Manchester Literary Club, 4 February 1895, record an instance of laypersons attempting to recreate shanty performance at that early date. In general, shanty performance by laypersons, up through the first two decades of the 20th century, would have been hindered by the lack of suitable resources, if not lack of interest.


title: Sea shanty

text: Independent of this literature, a revival of sorts was staged by the U.S. Shipping Board in 1918 when Stanton H. King of Boston, a merchant sailor of the 1880s, was appointed as "Official Chantey Man for the American Merchant Marine." King taught shanties to the young Merchant Marine recruits, but it appears that they were used more for entertainment than work functions. A description of the daily training schedule included the following note:


title: Sea shanty

text: Recreation includes singing, for each ship is supplied with a piano. The musical program includes old-time chanties, in which the young men are instructed by a veteran deep-water chantie man.


title: Sea shanty

text: An on-shore revival in shanty singing for leisure was facilitated by song collections of the 1920s, especially Terry's "The Shanty Book" (in two volumes, 1921 and 1926). What set apart this and following collections was full musical score along with an adequate stock of lyrics. Collections prior to Terry's (except for Davis and Tozer's much earlier and contrived-sounding settings) had not provided enough verses to create "full" songs, and it is unlikely that performers would venture to improvise new verses in the manner of traditional shantymen. By 1926, it had become a custom at the Seven Seas Club in London to hold a shanty sing-along after the club's monthly dinners. By 1928, commercial recordings of shanties, performed in the manner of classical concert singing, had been released on HMV, Vocalion, Parlophone, Edison, Aco, and Columbia labels; many were realizations of scores from Terry's collection. Shanties like "Johnny Come Down to Hilo" were more or less standardized through popular dissemination.


title: Sea shanty

text: The next revival in shanties occurred as part of the Anglophone folk music revival of the mid-20th century. The American folk revival group The Almanac Singers were recruited by Alan Lomax to record several shanties for the 1941 album Deep Sea Chanteys and Whaling Ballads. In Britain, the incorporation of shanties into the folk revival repertoire was largely led by A.L. Lloyd starting in the 1950s. An amateur folklorist, Lloyd discarded the earlier classical style of presentations in favor of a more "authentic" performance style. He was generally mysterious about the sources of his shanty arrangements; he obviously referred to collections by editors like Sharp, Colcord, and Doerflinger, however it is often unclear when and whether his versions were based in field experience or his private invention. Lloyd's album "The Singing Sailor" (1955) with Ewan MacColl was an early milestone, which made an impression on Stan Hugill when he was preparing his 1961 collection, particularly as the performance style it embodied was considered more appropriate than that of earlier commercial recordings. Many other performers followed, creating influential versions and interpretations of shanties that persist today. For example, Lloyd's personal interpretation of "South Australia" was taken up by the Irish folk revival group The Clancy Brothers, from which this version spread to countless folk performers to become established as the "standard" form of what is usually presented as a "traditional" shanty. The Canadian, Alan Mills (1913-1977), recorded numerous songs for Folkways Records including "Songs of the Sea" (1959). Through the mass distribution of particular shanty forms through recordings and clubs, the folk revival has had the effect of creating an impression of rather consistent forms of texts and tunes—a sharp contrast to the highly variable and often improvised nature of work-based shanty singing. Another effect, due to the fact that most folk performers sang shanties along with other genres, is that shanty repertoire was ever more incorporated within the generic fold of "folk song," and their distinctive use, manner of performance, and identity were co-opted.


title: Sea shanty

text: With one foot firmly planted in the world of traditional shanties, the veteran sailor and author Stan Hugill also became a leader (and follower) of trends in the folk music revival. His presence as an exclusive performer of sailor songs did much to establish sea music as a revival genre apart from or within folk music. By the late 1970s, the activities of enthusiasts and scholar-performers at places like the Mystic Seaport Museum (who initiated an annual Sea Music Festival in 1979) and the San Francisco Maritime Museum established sea music—inclusive of shanties, sea songs, and other maritime music—as a genre with its own circuit of festivals, record labels, performance protocol, and so on.


title: Sea shanty

text: In the days when human muscles were the only power source available aboard ship, shanties served practical functions. The rhythm of the song served to synchronize the movements of the sailors or to pace the labor as they toiled at repetitive tasks. Singing helped to alleviate boredom and to lighten, perhaps, the psychological burden of hard work. Shanties may also be said to have served a social purpose, as to build camaraderie.


title: Sea shanty

text: All shanties had a chorus of some sort, in order to allow the crew to sing all together. Many shanties had a "call and response" format, with one voice (the shantyman) singing the solo lines and the rest of the sailors bellowing short refrains in response (compare military cadence calls).


title: Sea shanty

text: The "shantyman" was a regular sailor who led the others in singing. He was usually self-appointed. A sailor would not generally sign on as a shantyman "per se", but took on the role in addition to their other tasks on the ship. Nevertheless, sailors reputed to be good shantymen were valued and respected.


title: Sea shanty

text: The following example, a verse of the shanty "Boney" (in reference to Napoleon), shows the call and response form and the interplay between the voices of the shantyman and the crew.


title: Sea shanty

text: When working this as a "short-drag" shanty (see below), hands on the line would synchronize their pulls with the last syllable of each response (in italics).


title: Sea shanty

text: The practical function of shanties as work songs was given priority over their lyrics or the musicality of a performance. Due to this, shanty texts might have been poor from an aesthetic standpoint—even at times random nonsense—so long as the singing fit the form of the work song. One writer about shanties warned his readers that their lyrics, to landsmen, would "probably appear as the veriest doggerel." He went on to explain,


title: Sea shanty

text: As a rule, the chantey in its entirety possesses neither rhyme nor reason; nevertheless, it is admirably fitted for sailors' work. Each of these sea-songs has a few stock verses or phrases to begin with, but after these are sung, the soloist must improvise, and it is principally his skill in this direction that marks the successful chantey-man.


title: Sea shanty

text: Improvisation and stock verses were the tools of the trade of shantymen. Similar to the blues, shanties often exhibited a string of such verses without much explicit or continuous theme. While on one hand this may simply reflect the aesthetic of the music-culture from which the form originated, this, too, was a feature suited to practical restrictions. Work tasks might be of any length and often unpredictable. Songs with a fixed set of verses, or ballads, which tell a story, were not so well suited to tasks that could end abruptly at any time or that might require extending.


title: Sea shanty

text: Improvising of lyrics in such a context could be seen as an African-American musical characteristic, as Euro-American observers of Black work-singing consistently remarked on its extempore nature. Stock verses helped the shantyman fill space when his creative faculties came up short. These might take the form of multipurpose clichés, like,


title: Sea shanty

text: Many stock verses used phrases that "floated" between both minstrel and authentic African-American traditional songs. For example, the phrase "girl with the blue dress on" is documented in a Black muledriver's song and in a popular minstrel song, as well as in a few shanties, for example,


title: Sea shanty

text: As evident from the last lyric, above, shanty lyrics were not limited to seafaring or work topics. Drawing lyrics (and sometimes entire songs) from the popular and traditional repertoires of the time meant that a wide range of themes were represented.


title: Sea shanty

text: Shanties reflect a variety of source material. As discussed above, there is a notable correspondence between shanties and African-American songs of both work and leisure. Popular music of the time was readily adapted, especially the minstrel music genre, songs of whose couplets were often of a suitable metrical length. It is common to find phrases from minstrel songs of the late 1830s and 1840s in many shanties, like "A Long Time Ago," "Jamboree," "Johnny Come Down to Hilo," or "Johnny Bowker." Music hall songs also had an influence, for example "Paddy on the Railway." Popular marches were borrowed especially for capstan work, including "John Brown's Body" and "Marching Through Georgia." A few shanties have ballad forms, such as "The Dreadnaught," "The Banks of Newfoundland," and "The Golden Vanitee", but these were relatively uncommon and required the addition of a chorus section. However, shantymen more often adapted lyrics and themes from ballads and "spliced" them to existing shanty melodies and choruses. Other shanties were adapted from land-based traditional songs, for example "Billy Boy" and "The Derby Ram."


title: Sea shanty

text: Broadly speaking, the categories for shanties can be understood in terms of whether the task(s) for which they were used was/were related to "hauling" or "heaving". "Hauling" (pulling) actions were intermittent in nature. They required a coordinated show of focused exertion, not sustained, but rather at specific moments. Shanties for hauling tasks thus coordinated the timing of those exertions, the "pulls." "Heaving" (pushing) actions were of a continuous nature. In these, coordination was of minor importance as compared to "pacing". Rather than rhythmically "timing" the labor, shanties for heaving were more intended to set an appropriate, manageable pace and to occupy or inspire workers throughout the duration of what could often be long tasks.


title: Sea shanty

text: The above categories, with respect to the repertoire they contain, are not absolute. Sailors often took a song from one category and, with necessary alterations to the rhythm, tempo, or form, used it for a different task. This can be seen in the frequent lack of consensus, among different writers and informants, as to what job a given shanty was used for.


title: Sea shanty

text: Shanties are work songs and were originally sung only for work. However, sailors also sang for pleasure in the fo'c's'le (forecastle) where they slept or, in fine weather, gathered near the fore bitts (large posts on the foredeck). While songs with maritime themes were sung, all manner of popular songs and ballads on any subject might be sung off watch. The leisure songs associated with sailors are labeled simply as "sea songs," but they have no consistent formal characteristics. They are also popularly known among enthusiasts, especially when distinguishing them from shanties, as "fo'c's'le songs" or "forebitters". Although those terms were not in great evidence in the 19th century, some literary references to "fore-bitter" and, less so, "fo'c'sle song," attest to their use even prior to the appearance of "shanty." Unlike shanties, during the singing of which one's hands were occupied, sea songs might be sung to the accompaniment of handy instruments like fiddle or concertina.


title: Sea shanty

text: Examples of sea songs include "Spanish Ladies", first popular in the Royal Navy, and "The Stately Southerner", a ballad about a U.S. war ship, and "Wellerman". Examples of sea songs that were poorly documented in the sailing era, but which gained great popularity among singers in the revival era, are "The Leaving of Liverpool" and "Rolling Down to Old Maui."


title: Sea shanty

text: While the crews of merchant ships in which shanties were sung might have come from a wide variety of national and ethnic backgrounds and might have spoken various mother-tongues, the shanty genre was by and large an English-language phenomenon. However, non-English-language sailor work songs were also developed. They are generally of these types:


title: Sea shanty

text: There are notable bodies of shanty repertoire in Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, French, Breton, and Welsh, and shanties have been translated into Polish and German. The terms for shanties in these languages do not always precisely correlate with English usage. In French, or "sailor's song" is a broad category that includes both work and leisure songs. Swedish uses "sjömansvisa", "sailor song," as a broad category, but tends to use the borrowed "shanty" to denote a work song. Similarly, Norwegian uses "sjømannsvise" as the broad category and the borrowed term (also spelled "shanty") or the native "oppsang" for work songs. The equivalents in German are "Seemannslied" and, again, shanty. A shanty in Polish is .


title: Sea shanty

text: Substantial collections of non-English shanties include the following, which have been instrumental in forming the modern day sailor song repertoires of revival performers in their respective languages:<br>


title: Sea shanty

text: Historically, shanties were usually not sung outside of work contexts, and singing sea songs was generally the purview of sailors. However, since their revival as leisure songs among laypersons they have been performed in a variety of contexts. Similarly to Euro-American folk music, shanties and sea songs are performed both informally by amateurs and as commercial entertainment by professionals, with many performers straddling both contexts. Some performers focus on shanties, sea songs, and related material, as part of the genre of maritime music, whereas in other cases performers of popular music (including the Folk genre) and classical music bring songs from the shanty repertoire into their own.


title: Sea shanty

text: Devoted performances of shanties display certain customs and general trends in different areas. However, the genre is an international one; practices vary freely and are not limited to the following generalizations.


title: Sea shanty

text: In North America, enthusiasts could gather at regularly scheduled, open singing sessions, for example the "chantey sings" held monthly aboard the ship "Balclutha" in San Francisco, weekly in Gloucester, Massachusetts, At these sessions, any participant is free to start up and lead a shanty, which the rest of those present—sometimes over one hundred or more participants—join on the choruses. The gatherings aim for an inclusive atmosphere that welcomes people of all ages, genders, ethnicities, and singing abilities. North American professionals often perform solo or in very small groups, frequently using instruments. One of America's oldest inns, The Griswold Inn in Essex, Connecticut, has hosted Monday evening sea chantey sessions since 1972, originally led by Cliff Haslam and later joined by other musicians as The Jovial Crew.


title: Sea shanty

text: Annual maritime festivals in coastal towns provide a gathering point for both amateurs and professionals, and the site for the introduction of new interpretations.


title: Sea shanty

text: In the UK, shanties find a venue in pubs that host "folk clubs." Professional performers tend to be in larger groups with a more substantial chorus, allowing for "a capella" performances. They are frequently identified with a specific port town to which they belong. Many annual maritime festivals in Britain and across the Channel provide contexts for performance.


title: Sea shanty

text: s (German , Dutch ) are choral groups – often with many members – that perform only sailor songs. They are especially popular in the Netherlands, Germany, and Norway. Polish performers of shanties favor medium-sized groups, often singing in harmony, accompanying themselves on instruments, and presenting themselves similarly to the way a rock band would.


title: Sea shanty

text: Sea Shanty Groups are active across Australia including Perth, Fremantle, and Albany. A group called The Anchormen formed by Matthew Wearne and Colin Anker in 2018, perform regular gigs in Bunbury, Western Australia. They performed at the City of Albany Maritime Festival in 2021. Anker said regarding Mental Health "We've had guys in the group say this is the only place where they feel comfortable in that no one judges them. We often face and perform to each other instead of the audience. It's a brotherhood. When you start singing sea shanties, it just grabs you and draws you in. You can't stop listening to and singing them." A favourite song is Spanish Ladies.


title: Sea shanty

text: Items from the shanty and sea song repertoire have been brought into the repertoires of performers of folk music, rock, and Western classical music. Sources for these renditions include books by folklorists and commercial recordings by shanty revival performers. The forms these performers produce tend to be quite standardized and relate to their source material similar to the way a cover song does. This can be contrasted with the method of performers focusing on maritime music, who tend to think of themselves as operating within that genre or a tradition, and who develop their repertoire from multiple sources and through various experiences.


title: Sea shanty

text: The folk revival movement is one in which shanties themselves were often revived, especially as they have been viewed as a branch of heritage traditional songs of Anglophone culture. Several of the early performers in the Folk genre performed and recorded a significant number of sailor songs. For example, Paul Clayton recorded the album "Whaling and Sailing Songs from the Days of Moby Dick" (Tradition Records) in 1956, and Burl Ives' "Down to the Sea in Ships" came out in the same year. Since at least the 1950s, certain shanties have become staples of the Folk genre. This is evidenced in the popular Folk music fake book "Rise Up Singing", which includes such shanties as "Blow the Man Down," "What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor," and "Bound for South Australia".


title: Sea shanty

text: Borrowings into Rock music have often resulted from the fluid borders between Folk and Rock performers and audiences. For example, Bruce Springsteen's "Pay Me My Money Down" derives from the interpretation by the Folk group The Weavers, who in turn found it among the collected shanties once traditionally performed by residents of the Georgia Sea Islands. Some Rock performers, too, have been inspired to adopt shanties as part of what they perceive to be a connection to their regional or national heritage. For example, The Pogues recorded "Poor Paddy [Works on the Railway]" in the arrangement of Folk group The Dubliners, ostensibly because of the Irish connection. Others have been fascinated by "sea" themes, including "pirates" and the perceived freedom, wildness, or debauchery of sailor culture.


title: Sea shanty

text: Classical composers have used shanties and sea songs (or their melodies) in their works. The Australian composer Percy Grainger is a notable case. Malcolm Arnold's "Three Shanties" for woodwind quintet (1943) develops motifs from "Drunken Sailor," "Boney Was a Warrior," and "Johnny Come Down to Hilo."


title: Sea shanty

text: Shanty performances today reflect a range of musical approaches and tastes. The purpose and parameters of shanty singing in the present era have had an influence on which shanties are sung and how.


title: Sea shanty

text: Performers who favor a "traditional" style do not necessarily believe they are replicating the exact style of shanty singing of the 19th century. However, within the constraints of modern contexts, they tend to adhere to certain stylistic traits that are believed to have characterized the genre historically. These may include a loud or full voice, an emphatic, strident—even harsh—tone (as if to carry over the noise of wind and waves), and tempos and rhythms that are reasonably conducive to working. They often perform "a capella" or only with light instrumentation typical of sailors (e.g. concertina). In general, performances may be more "rough around the edges" and be of variable length to accommodate impromptu changes in verses.


title: Sea shanty

text: A great many of the performers of shanties do so in what might be distinguished as a "folk music" style. They tend to be more interested in the songs themselves and less in the "shanty style" of performance, in favor of music that may be considered more pleasant, less rough, and with more variation and interest than traditional shanties offer. Stylistic characteristics include lighter vocals with a "folk" timbre, livelier tempos, and instrumental interludes between verses. Invariably these performers choose to accompany themselves on instruments such as guitar and banjo. Their rhythms may be syncopated and quite different from work song rhythms, relying on the instruments to keep time rather than the voice.


title: Sea shanty

text: Still other performers come to shanties from backgrounds in pop, rock, or theatrical music, and perform in what may be called a "contemporary" style. Some of the preferred characteristics are smooth, pop-style vocal timbre, carefully worked out harmony, and engaging rhythms.


title: Sea shanty

text: Less commonly—though it was the case with their earliest commercial recordings—shanties are performed in a "classical" choir style. Choirs like the Robert Shaw Chorale, the Norman Luboff Choir, and The Seafarers Chorus have released entire albums of shanties and sea songs.


title: Sea shanty

text: Appearances of shanties, or songs and melodies labeled as "shanties," in popular media can be anachronistic and fanciful. In accord with popular perception of shanties as a genre many hundreds of years old, songs with documented existence to only the mid-19th century, at the earliest, have been freely used to portray scenes from the 18th century and earlier. By imagining modern shanties to have been in use during such eras as the Golden Age of Piracy and the Napoleonic Wars, anachronistic associations have been formed between shanties and "pirates." Evidence for all these uses and associations can be found in the examples that follow in this section. Shanties, and short videos of them being sung, saw a spike in popularity in late 2020 into early 2021 mainly due to a trend on TikTok.


title: Sea shanty

text: Much of the available historical information on shanties comes from travelogue literature, most of it of scarcely notable popularity, but some of it reaching a wide audience, such as Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast" (1840). However, some fiction writers up through the mid-19th century, who had sailing experience, also included scenes involving sailors' work songs. Among these authors were Horace Elisha Scudder, Elijah Kellogg, and Herman Melville. In "Redburn: His First Voyage", for example, Melville wrote:


title: Sea shanty

text: I soon got used to this singing; for the sailors never touched a rope without it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike up, and the pulling, whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting forward very well, the mate would always say, "Come, men, can't any of you sing? Sing now, and raise the dead." And then some one of them would begin, and if every man's arms were as much relieved as mine by the song, and he could pull as much better as I did, with such a cheering accompaniment, I am sure the song was well worth the breath expended on it. It is a great thing in a sailor to know how to sing well, for he gets a great name by it from the officers, and a good deal of popularity among his shipmates. Some sea-captains, before shipping a man, always ask him whether he can sing out at a rope.


title: Sea shanty

text: The shanty genre was unfamiliar to much of the lay public until it was publicized in the 1880s, however, so most of the popular references in fiction do not begin until that decade. A well-known early example, though not strictly speaking a reference to a shanty, is the song "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest", which was invented by Robert Louis Stevenson for his novel "Treasure Island" (1883). Quotes of "Blow the Man Down" were particularly plentiful. Rudyard Kipling romanticized the idea of the sailor's sea song within the poetic genre with his works "The First Chantey" and "The Last Chantey" (1893).


title: Sea shanty

text: While shanties were historically understood as work songs, the word "shanty" has often been used in popular culture since the mid-20th century as a catch-all term that also includes songs supposed to have been sung during leisure time at sea, and even other songs about the sea or which vaguely inspire thoughts of the sea. Much of the historical shanty repertoire, being by definition designed to suit work, is less attractive as entertainment listening. The musical forms were highly repetitive, and the lyrics were quite often doggerel without any cohesive or preconceived composition. For these reasons, sea songs that were never or only exceptionally adapted as shanties—but which have engaging melodies and texts—have proved popular to 20th century audiences under the rubric of "shanties." Both these non-shanty sailor songs and the historical repertoire of shanties are typically performed with instrumental accompaniment—something that was rare or unheard of at sea in the case of authentic shanties.


title: Sea shanty

text: Music performers with no strong links to maritime music have interpreted traditional shanty and sea song compositions, of which widely scattered instances abound. For example, the bawdy sea song "Frigging in the Rigging" was recorded by the punk band Sex Pistols. Perhaps under the influence of Irish folk revival groups like The Clancy Brothers and The Dubliners, who included some shanties in their repertoires, some association has also been formed between shanties and Irish music. And so, looking back to these performers, later Irish-oriented rock groups like The Pogues interpreted traditional shanties and sea songs like "South Australia" and "The Greenland Whale Fisheries." A notable instance where many non-maritime music performers tackled the traditional maritime repertoire stems from the actor Johnny Depp's reported interest in shanties that developed while filming "Pirates of the Caribbean". As a result, in 2006 Depp helped facilitate "." A medley of sea songs performed by concert orchestra, Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs, is a popular component of the Last Night of the Proms in Britain. In 2021, sea shanties such as "Wellerman" became viral on TikTok following a rendition of the song made by Scotland-based postman Nathan Evans, prompting further arrangements building off the original.


title: Sea shanty

text: The musical "style" of shanties has also inspired new musical compositions, ranging from those designed to imitate 19th century song-style to those merely intended to evoke seafaring culture through evocative phrases and token musical features. For example, the Stan Rogers song, "Barrett's Privateers", being sung in a traditional style and having lyrics that relate an anecdote of maritime history, makes a convincing sea ballad and has been adopted into the repertoire of maritime music performers. Another newly composed song by folk singer Steve Goodman, "Lincoln Park Pirates," uses the phrase, "Way, hey, tow 'em away," imitating shanty choruses while at the same time anachronistically evoking the "piracy" in its subject. The theme song for the television show SpongeBob SquarePants has a shanty-like call and response structure and begins with a melodic phrase that matches the traditional "Blow the Man Down," presumably because the character "lives in a pineapple under the sea." The theme to Gilligan's Island was also inspired by shanty structure and style. An example of a more tenuous link between a new composition labeled as "shanty" and the salient characteristics of the genre, The Pogues recorded a song called "Sea Shanty." The only characteristic it appears to share with the shanty genre is a 6/8 meter (displayed by some well known shanties like "Blow the Man Down").


title: Sea shanty

text: English composer Michael Maybrick (alias Stephen Adams) sold a hundred thousand copies of an 1876 song "Nancy Lee" in Seafaring style, with lyrics by Frederick Weatherly concerning an archetypal sailors wife. The song evoked an 1882 response Susie Bell from Australian composer Frederick Augustus Packer in the far flung British colony at Port Arthur (Australia)


title: Sea shanty

text: Songs from the shanty repertoire have appeared in motion pictures. These most often are not portrayed in an appropriate work context and sometimes not even a shipboard context, and many times they can be classed as anachronisms that serve to bring color and interest to the drama. The following is a sample list of notable films to have included traditional shanty repertoire.


title: Kirron Kher

text: Kirron Anupam Kher (also Kiran or, Kiron born 14 June 1952) is an Indian politician; theatre, film and television actress; television personality; singer; entertainment producer; and a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. In May 2014, she was elected to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian Parliament, from Chandigarh.


title: Kirron Kher

text: Kiran Thakar Singh Sandhu was born on 14 June 1952 in Bangalore, Mysore State, India into a Punjabi Jatt Sikh family of the Sandhu clan and grew up in Chandigarh. During the period of her first marriage to Gautam Berry, she was known as 'Kiran Berry.' When she married Anupam Kher, she resumed her maiden name and also added her latest husband's surname, being known as 'Kiran Thakar Singh Kher.' In later life, she developed a firm belief in Numerology, and in 2003 (aged 51), she changed her name from "Kiran" to "Kirron" based on numerological calculations, dropped her maiden names, and came to be known as 'Kirron Kher.'


title: Kirron Kher

text: Kirron has one brother and two sisters. Her brother, the artist Amardeep Singh Sandhu, died in 2003. One of her sisters is the Arjuna award–winning badminton player, Kanwal Thakar Kaur. Her other sister, Sharanjit Kaur Sandhu, is the wife of a retired senior officer of the Indian Navy.


title: Kirron Kher

text: Kirron went to school in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, and completed her school education in Chandigarh, and then graduated from the Department of Indian Theatre of Panjab University, Chandigarh.


title: Kirron Kher

text: Kirron married Gautam Berry, a Mumbai–based businessman, in first week of March 1979, and had a son, Sikandar Kher.


title: Kirron Kher

text: In Mumbai, Kiran tried throughout the 1980s to get a foothold in the film industry, but without success. While visiting producer after producer seeking a role in films, Kirron renewed her acquaintance with Anupam Kher, who was also a similarly struggling actor, and whom she had known slightly at university in Chandigarh. Moving in the same theatre circles, they worked together in a play called "Chandpuri Ki Champabai". In 1985, after Anupam had secured a break in films with "Saaransh", Kirron divorced her first husband.


title: Kirron Kher

text: Kirron Kher made her film debut in 1983 in the Punjabi feature film "Aasra Pyar Da," After this, she took a hiatus from films until 1996. Between 1983 and 1996, she appeared in one film, "Pestonjee" (1987), in which she acted in a small role alongside her second husband Anupam Kher.


title: Kirron Kher

text: Her return to acting came in the mid–1990s, through theatre, with the play "Saalgirah" written by playwright Javed Siddiqui and directed by Feroz Abbas Khan. She then hosted three television shows, starting with the short–lived "Purushkshetra" on Zee TV which got attention for bringing out the discussion of alternative sexuality for the first time, while also highlighting women's issues. "Kiron Kher Today" and "Jagte Raho with Kiron Kher", before doing Hindi films.


title: Kirron Kher

text: Her comeback film was by Shyam Benegal, "Sardari Begum" (1996), which won her the Special Jury Award at the 1997 National Film Awards.


title: Kirron Kher

text: She then appeared in film director Rituparno Ghosh's Bengali film "Bariwali" (1999), to critical acclaim. When she won the National Film Award for Best Actress for the film, a controversy arose as a Bangla film actress, Rita Koiral, claimed that she had dubbed for the character of Kirron, making her an equal claimant to the award. Kirron refuted the charges claiming she spent hours rehearsing for her dialogue delivery, and the award was eventually not shared.


title: Kirron Kher

text: In 2002, Kirron appeared in "Devdas" (2002), alongside Shahrukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai, and was nominated for the Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award.


title: Kirron Kher

text: In "Khamosh Pani" ("Silent Waters") (2003), a film that portrays the plight of a woman abducted during partition of India, her character not only refused to kill herself as suggested by her family, but marries her abductor and, after his death, makes an earning teaching Quran to local children. It shows how her life changes dramatically when her son takes up Islamic extremism in 1979 during the rule of Zia–ul–Haq and his process of Islamization of Pakistan. She won the Best Actress Award, at Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland, the Karachi International Film Festival, Karachi, and International Festivals at Ciepie in Argentina, and Cape Town in South Africa while the film won the Best Film – Golden Leopard, Festival Grand Prize at Locarno.


title: Kirron Kher

text: The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) 2004 paid tribute to Kirron during its annual festival.


title: Kirron Kher

text: In October 2004 Kirron made a guest appearance, along with her husband, in the American TV series "ER" playing Parminder Nagra's mother, Mrs. Rasgotra, in episode "Damaged."


title: Kirron Kher

text: In 2005, she played the role of Sunanda in the tele–serial "Prratima" on Sahara One channel, before which she had appeared in TV series like "Dil Na Jaane Kyon" (Zee TV), "Isi Bahane", and "Chausath Panne".


title: Kirron Kher

text: Despite playing mostly supporting roles, her successful movies include "Main Hoon Na" (2004), "Hum Tum" (2004), "Veer–Zaara" (2004), and "" (2005), where her performance drew rave reviews. Her work in "Rang De Basanti" (2006) was a huge hit and her performance got her second nomination for the Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award. Her role in "Fanaa" (2006) and "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" (2006) also received appreciation. Adding to her list of comical roles in 2008 she appeared in "Singh Is Kinng", "Saas bahu aur Sensex" and "Dostana". In 2009, she appeared as judge on India's Got Talent, the Indian franchise of the Got Talent series.


title: Kirron Kher

text: Kirron Kher has been involved with non–profit movements such as Laadli (a campaign against female infanticide) and Roko Cancer (a campaign for awareness of cancer). She joined the Bhartiya Janata Party in 2009. She campaigned for the party in across the country during the elections, including in Chandigarh for the 2011 municipal corporation elections.


title: Kirron Kher

text: She has been a vocal admirer of BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi since long before his candidature was announced. Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) declared her as the Lok Sabha candidate from Chandigarh for General Elections, 2014. Subsequently, in May 2014, she won the seat with 1,91,362 votes, defeating sitting MP, Congress leader Pawan Bansal who received 1,21,720 votes, while AAP's Gul Panag came in third position with 1,08,679 votes.


title: Kirron Kher

text: As a Member of parliament from Chandigarh and having connection with the film industry, Kirron promised a film city for Chandigarh. After winning the seat, she said that she had difficulty in acquiring land in Chandigarh. However, her proposal was accepted by the Chandigarh Administration and the film city is proposed to be set up in Sarangpur, Chandigarh.


title: Kirron Kher

text: Kirron Kher, BJP candidate, won in 2019 Indian general election Chandigarh constituency by a margin of 46,970 votes.


title: Kirron Kher

text: After a woman was gang raped by an auto rickshaw driver and his accomplices in Chandigarh in 2017, she suggested that women should avoid traveling with strangers, earning widespread criticism from the opposition and social media.


title: Dominoes

text: Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces, commonly known as dominoes. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square "ends". Each end is marked with a number of spots (also called "pips" or "dots") or is blank. The backs of the tiles in a set are indistinguishable, either blank or having some common design. The gaming pieces make up a domino set, sometimes called a "deck" or "pack". The traditional European domino set consists of 28 tiles, also known as pieces, bones, rocks, stones, men, cards or just dominoes, featuring all combinations of spot counts between zero and six. A domino set is a generic gaming device, similar to playing cards or dice, in that a variety of games can be played with a set. Another form of entertainment using domino pieces is the practice of domino toppling.


title: Dominoes

text: The earliest mention of dominoes is from Song dynasty China found in the text "Former Events in Wulin" by Zhou Mi (1232–1298). Modern dominoes first appeared in Italy during the 18th century, but they differ from Chinese dominoes in a number of respects, and there is no confirmed link between the two. European dominoes may have developed independently, or Italian missionaries in China may have brought the game to Europe.


title: Dominoes

text: The name "domino" is probably derived from the resemblance to a kind of carnival costume worn during the Venetian Carnival, often consisting of a black-hooded robe and a white mask. Despite the coinage of the word "polyomino" as a generalization, there is no connection between the word "domino" and the number 2 in any language.


title: Dominoes

text: The most commonly played domino games are Domino Whist, Matador, and Muggins (All Fives). Other popular forms include Texas 42, Chicken Foot, Concentration, Double Fives, and Mexican Train. In Britain, the most popular league and pub game is Fives and Threes.


title: Dominoes

text: Dominoes have sometimes been used for divination, such as bone throwing in Chinese culture and in the African diaspora.


title: Dominoes

text: European-style dominoes are traditionally made of bone, silver lip ocean pearl oyster shell (mother of pearl), ivory, or a dark hardwood such as ebony, with contrasting black or white pips (inlaid or painted). Some sets feature the top half thickness in MOP, ivory, or bone, with the lower half in ebony. Alternatively, domino sets have been made from many different natural materials: stone (e.g., marble, granite or soapstone); other woods (e.g., ash, oak, redwood, and cedar); metals (e.g., brass or pewter); ceramic clay, or even frosted glass or crystal. These sets have a more novel look, and the often heavier weight makes them feel more substantial; also, such materials and the resulting products are usually much more expensive than polymer materials.


title: Dominoes

text: Modern commercial domino sets are usually made of synthetic materials, such as ABS or polystyrene plastics, or Bakelite and other phenolic resins; many sets approximate the look and feel of ivory while others use colored or even translucent plastics to achieve a more contemporary look. Modern sets also commonly use a different color for the dots of each different end value (one-spots might have black pips while two-spots might be green, three red, etc.) to facilitate finding matching ends. Occasionally, one may find a domino set made of card stock like that for playing cards. Such sets are lightweight, compact, and inexpensive, and like cards are more susceptible to minor disturbances such as a sudden breeze. Sometimes, the tiles have a metal pin (called a spinner or pivot) in the middle.


title: Dominoes

text: The traditional domino set contains one unique piece for each possible combination of two ends with zero to six spots, and is known as a double-six set because the highest-value piece has six pips on each end (the "double six"). The spots from one to six are generally arranged as they are on six-sided dice, but because blank ends having no spots are used, seven faces are possible, allowing 28 unique pieces in a double-six set.


title: Dominoes

text: However, this is a relatively small number especially when playing with more than four people, so many domino sets are "extended" by introducing ends with greater numbers of spots, which increases the number of unique combinations of ends and thus of pieces. Each progressively larger set increases the maximum number of pips on an end by three; so the common extended sets are double-nine (55 tiles), double-12 (91 tiles), double-15 (136 tiles), and double-18 (190 tiles), which is the maximum in practice. Larger sets such as double-21 (253 tiles) could theoretically exist, but they seem to be extremely rare if not nonexistent, as that would be far more than is normally necessary for most domino games, even with eight players. As the set becomes larger, identifying the number of pips on each domino becomes more difficult, so some large domino sets use more readable Arabic numerals instead of pips.


title: Dominoes

text: In China, early "domino" tiles were functionally identical to playing cards. An identifiable version of Chinese dominoes developed in the 12th or 13th century. The oldest written mention of domino tiles in China comes from the "Former Events in Wulin" (i.e., the capital Hangzhou) written by the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) author Zhou Mi (1232–1298), who listed "pupai" (gambling plaques or tiles), as well as dice as items sold by peddlers during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of Song (r. 1162–1189). It isn't entirely clear that "pupai" here means domino tiles, but Andrew Lo (2000) argues that it plausibly does, as the same term is used two centuries later by the Ming author Lu Rong (1436–1494) in a context that clearly describes domino tiles (in regard to a story of a suitor who won a maiden's hand by drawing out four winning "pupai" from a set).


title: Dominoes

text: The earliest known manual written about dominoes is the "Manual of the Xuanhe Period" () written by Qu You (1341–1427), but some Chinese scholars believe this manual is a forgery from a later time.


title: Dominoes

text: In the "Encyclopedia of a Myriad of Treasures", Zhang Pu (1602–1641) described the game of laying out dominoes as "pupai", although the character for "pu" had changed, yet retained a similar pronunciation. Traditional Chinese domino games include "Tien Gow, Pai Gow, Che Deng", and others. The 32-piece Chinese domino set, made to represent each possible face of two thrown dice and thus have no blank faces, differs from the 28-piece domino set found in the West during the mid 18th century. Chinese dominoes with blank faces were known during the 17th century.


title: Dominoes

text: Each domino originally represented one of the 21 results of throwing two six-sided dice (2d6). One half of each domino is set with the pips from one die and the other half contains the pips from the second die. Chinese sets also introduce duplicates of some throws and divide the tiles into two suits: military and civil. Chinese dominoes are also longer than typical European ones.


title: Dominoes

text: The early 18th century saw the game of domino surfacing in Italy, before rapidly spreading to Austria, southern Germany and France.


title: Dominoes

text: The game became a fad in France in the mid-18th century. The name "domino" does not appear before that time, being first recorded in 1771, in the "Dictionnaire de Trévoux".


title: Dominoes

text: There are two earlier recorded meanings for the French word "domino", one referring to the masquerades of the period, derived from the term for the hooded garment of a priest, the other referred to crude and brightly colored woodcuts on paper formerly popular among French peasants. The way by which this word became the name of the game of domino remains unclear.


title: Dominoes

text: From France, the game was introduced to England by the late 1700s, purportedly brought in by French prisoners-of-war. It appears in American literature by the 1860s and variants soon spring up. In 1889, it was described as having spread worldwide, "but nowhere is it more popular than in the cafés of France and Belgium. From the outset, the European game was different from the Chinese one. European domino sets contain neither the military-civilian suit distinctions of Chinese dominoes nor the duplicates that went with them. Moreover, according to Michael Dummett, in the Chinese games it is only the identity of the tile that matters; there is no concept of matching. Instead, the basic set of 28 unique tiles contains seven additional pieces, six of them representing the values that result from throwing a single die with the other half of the tile left blank, and the seventh domino representing the blank-blank (0–0) combination. Subsequently 45-piece (double eight) sets appeared in Austria and, in recent times, 55-piece (double nine) and 91-piece (double twelve) sets have been produced.


title: Dominoes

text: The earliest game rules in Europe describe a simple block game for two or four players. Later French rules add the variant of "Domino à la Pêche" ("Fishing Domino"), an early draw game as well as a three-hand game with a pool. The first scoring game to be recorded was Fives, All Fives, or Cribbage Dominoes which appeared in 1863 and borrowed the features of scoring for combinations as well as the cribbage board from the card game of Cribbage. In 1864, "The American Hoyle" describes three new variants: Muggins, simply Fives with the addition of another Cribbage feature, the 'muggins rule'; Bergen; and Rounce; alongside the Block Game and Draw Game. All are still played today alongside games that have sprung up in the last 60 years such as Five Up, Mexican Train, and Chicken Foot, the last two taking advantage of the larger domino sets available.


title: Dominoes

text: The game is still played internationally, recognized as an "ingrained cultural activity within the Caribbean" but also popular with the Windrush generation (who have Caribbean heritage) in the UK.


title: Dominoes

text: Dominoes (also known as bones, cards, men, pieces or tiles), are normally twice as long as they are wide, which makes it easier to re-stack pieces after use. A domino usually features a line in the middle to divide it visually into two squares, called ends. The value of either side is the number of spots or pips. In the most common variant (double-six), the values range from six pips down to none or blank. The sum of the two values, i.e. the total number of pips, may be referred to as the rank or weight of a tile; a tile may be described as "heavier" than a "lighter" one that has fewer (or no) pips.


title: Dominoes

text: Tiles are generally named after their two values. For instance, the following are descriptions of the tile bearing the values two and five:


title: Dominoes

text: A tile that has the same pips-value on each end is called a double or doublet, and is typically referred to as double-zero , double-one , and so on. Conversely, a tile bearing different values is called a single.


title: Dominoes

text: Every tile which features a given number is a member of the suit of that number. A single tile is a member of two suits: for example, belongs both to the suit of threes and the suit of blanks, or 0 suit.


title: Dominoes

text: In some versions the doubles can be treated as an additional suit of doubles. In these versions, the belongs both to the suit of sixes and the suit of doubles. However, the dominant approach is that each double belongs to only one suit.


title: Dominoes

text: The most common domino sets commercially available are double six (with 28 tiles) and double nine (with 55 tiles). Larger sets exist and are popular for games involving several players or for players looking for long domino games.


title: Dominoes

text: This formula can be simplified a little bit when formula_2 is made equal to the "total number of doubles in the domino set":


title: Dominoes

text: e.g. a 6-6 set has (7 x 8) / 2 = 56/2 = 28 tiles, the average number of pips per tile is 6 (range is from 0 to 12), giving a total pip count of 6 x 28 = 168


title: Dominoes

text: The most popular type of play are layout games, which fall into two main categories, blocking games and scoring games.


title: Dominoes

text: The most basic domino variant is for two players and requires a double-six set. The 28 tiles are shuffled face down and form the "stock" or "boneyard". Each player draws seven tiles from the stock. Once the players begin drawing tiles, they are typically placed on-edge in front of the players, so players can see their own tiles, but not the value of their opponents' tiles. Players can thus see how many tiles remain in their opponents' hands at all times.


title: Dominoes

text: One player begins by downing (playing the first tile) one of their tiles. This tile starts the line of play, in which values of adjacent pairs of tile ends must match. The players alternately extend the line of play with one tile at one of its two ends; if a player is unable to place a valid tile, they must continue drawing tiles from the stock until they are able to place a tile. The game ends when one player wins by playing their last tile, or when the game is blocked because neither player can play. If that occurs, whoever caused the block receives all of the remaining player points not counting their own.


title: Dominoes

text: Players accrue points during game play for certain configurations, moves, or emptying one's hand. Most scoring games use variations of the draw game. If a player does not call "domino" before the tile is laid on the table, and another player says domino after the tile is laid, the first player must pick up an extra domino.


title: Dominoes

text: In a draw game (blocking or scoring), players are additionally allowed to draw as many tiles as desired from the stock before playing a tile, and they are not allowed to pass before the stock is (nearly) empty. The score of a game is the number of pips in the losing player's hand plus the number of pips in the stock. Most rules prescribe that two tiles need to remain in the stock. The draw game is often referred to as simply "dominoes".


title: Dominoes

text: Adaptations of both games can accommodate more than two players, who may play individually or in teams.


title: Dominoes

text: The line of play is the configuration of played tiles on the table. It starts with a single tile and typically grows in two opposite directions when players add matching tiles. In practice, players often play tiles at right angles when the line of play gets too close to the edge of the table.


title: Dominoes

text: The rules for the line of play often differ from one variant to another. In many rules, the doubles serve as spinners, i.e., they can be played on all four sides, causing the line of play to branch. Sometimes, the first tile is required to be a double, which serves as the only spinner. In some games such as Chicken Foot, all sides of a spinner must be occupied before anybody is allowed to play elsewhere. Matador has unusual rules for matching. Bendomino uses curved tiles, so one side of the line of play (or both) may be blocked for geometrical reasons.


title: Dominoes

text: In Mexican Train and other train games, the game starts with a spinner from which various trains branch off. Most trains are owned by a player and in most situations players are allowed to extend only their own train.


title: Dominoes

text: In blocking games, scoring happens at the end of the game. After a player has emptied their hand, thereby winning the game for the team, the score consists of the total pip count of the losing team's hands. In some rules, the pip count of the remaining stock is added. If a game is blocked because no player can move, the winner is often determined by adding the pips in players' hands.


title: Dominoes

text: In scoring games, each individual can potentially add to the score. For example, in Bergen, players score two points whenever they cause a configuration in which both open ends have the same value and three points if additionally one open end is formed by a double. In Muggins, players score by ensuring the total pip count of the open ends is a multiple of a certain number. In variants of Muggins, the line of play may branch due to spinners. In the common U.S. variant known as Fives players score by making the open ends a multiple of five.


title: Dominoes

text: In British public houses and social clubs, a scoring version of "5s-and-3s" is used. The game is normally played in pairs (two against two) and is played as a series of "ends". In each "end", the objective is for players to attach a domino from their hand to one end of those already played so that the sum of the end tiles is divisible by five or three. One point is scored for each time five or three can be divided into the sum of the two tiles, i.e. four at one end and five at the other makes nine, which is divisible by three three times, resulting in three points. Double five at one end and five at the other makes 15, which is divisible by three five times (five points) and divisible by five three times (three points) for a total of eight points.


title: Dominoes

text: An "end" stops when one of the players is out, i.e., has played all of their tiles. In the event no player is able to empty their hand, then the player with the lowest domino left in hand is deemed to be out and scores one point. A game consists of any number of ends with points scored in the ends accumulating towards a total. The game ends when one of the pair's total score exceeds a set number of points. A running total score is often kept on a cribbage board. 5s-and-3s is played in a number of competitive leagues in the British Isles.


title: Dominoes

text: Apart from the usual blocking and scoring games, also domino games of a very different character are played, such as solitaire or trick-taking games. Most of these are adaptations of card games and were once popular in certain areas to circumvent religious proscriptions against playing cards.


title: Dominoes

text: A very simple example is a Concentration variant played with a double-six set; two tiles are considered to match if their total pip count is 12.


title: Dominoes

text: A popular domino game in Texas is 42. The game is similar to the card game spades. It is played with four players paired into teams. Each player draws seven tiles, and the tiles are played into tricks. Each trick counts as one point, and any domino with a multiple of five dots counts toward the total of the hand. These 35 points of "five count" and seven tricks equals 42 points, hence the name.


title: Dominoes

text: Dominoes is played at a professional level, similar to poker. Numerous organisations and clubs of amateur domino players exist around the world. Some organizations organize international competitions. Examples include the Anglo Caribbean Dominoes League (ACDL) in the UK which includes over 40 clubs including the Brixton Immortals.


title: Dominoes

text: Since April 2008, the character encoding standard Unicode includes characters that represent the double-six domino tiles. While a complete domino set has only 28 tiles, the Unicode set has "reversed" versions of the 21 tiles with different numbers on each end, a "back" image, and everything duplicated as horizontal and vertical orientations, for a total of 100 glyphs. Few fonts are known to support these glyphs.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: A Rainy Day in New York is a 2019 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen, and starring Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Diego Luna, and Liev Schreiber. The film follows the romantic exploits of two young college students, Gatsby and Ashleigh (Timothée Chalamet and Elle Fanning), while on a weekend visit to New York City, Gatsby's hometown. He hopes to deepen their relationship while she is in the city to interview film director (Liev Schreiber) for their college newspaper.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: The film was completed in 2018, but its distributor, Amazon Studios, halted its release following the Me Too movement and the resurgence of the sexual abuse allegation against Allen. It was released in Poland on July 26, 2019, followed by releases in multiple European, South American, and Asian countries. It was released in the United States on October 9, 2020, by MPI Media Group and Signature Entertainment. The film received mixed reviews from critics.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: Gatsby Welles, the brainy but eccentric son of wealthy New York City-based parents, is a student at Yardley College, a liberal arts school in upstate New York. He is also a successful gambler. When his girlfriend, Ashleigh Enright, a journalism major from Tucson, has to travel to Manhattan to interview esteemed independent film director Roland Pollard for the student newspaper, Gatsby tags along, planning a romantic weekend in the city, while trying to avoid his parents who are holding a gala in the evening, and with whom he has a conflicted relationship.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: Ashleigh's interview with Pollard is supposed to last one hour, but the director invites her to a private screening of his new film, which ruins her plans with Gatsby, much to his dismay. Strolling alone through New York, Gatsby bumps into a film student friend who is shooting a short film and who asks him to stand in for a missing actor for a shot that involves kissing his co-star. To Gatsby's surprise, the actress turns out to be Chan Tyrell, the younger sister of a former girlfriend. The two of them run into each other again when they both hail the same cab. Gatsby's romantic plans with Ashleigh are further delayed by Ashleigh getting increasingly involved with Pollard, who is having a creative crisis, and his long-suffering screenwriter, Ted Davidoff.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: Feeling abandoned and without an itinerary, Gatsby accompanies Chan to her parents' apartment where he sings "Everything Happens to Me" on their piano. They discuss their love for New York and agree that on rainy days it is one of the most romantic places. They visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Chan confesses that she used to have a crush on Gatsby. A chance encounter with his aunt and uncle at the museum forces Gatsby to attend his parents' gala later that evening.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: Meanwhile, while searching for a vanished Pollard, Ashleigh and Ted stumble upon Ted's wife, who is having an extramarital affair. While Ted confronts his wife, Ashleigh goes to the studio where she meets film star Francisco Vega, who invites her out for dinner. Gatsby, meanwhile, uses his gambling skills to win big at a poker game his brother had arranged earlier in the evening. Back at his hotel room, he sees Ashleigh on the television news hailed as Francisco's latest fling. Distraught, he goes for a drink at the Carlyle Hotel's cocktail lounge, where he meets an escort named Terry, whom he hires to impersonate the absent Ashleigh at his family's gala.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: Francisco takes Ashleigh to a film business party, where she reconnects with Pollard and Ted, who both declare themselves smitten with her. Afterwards, Francisco and Ashleigh retire to his apartment, and as they begin to have sex, Francisco's girlfriend arrives unexpectedly, driving Ashleigh to leave through the backdoor into the rain, wearing only a raincoat over her bra and panties.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: Gatsby arrives at his family's gala with Terry, but his mother sees through the charade. In an intimate talk, she reveals to Gatsby that she was an escort when she met his father, and that her earnings were the seed capital that resulted in their wealth. Her personal history is the reason she has pressured Gatsby into intellectual and artistic endeavors, education, and refinement that she acquired as an adult. This revelation changes Gatsby's perceptions of his mother. At the end of the night, Ashleigh finds a despondent Gatsby back at the Carlyle, assuring him that nothing happened with Francisco, despite her lack of clothing.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: The next morning, before their planned return to Yardley, the pair take a horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park. Ashleigh, however, is disappointed by the misty weather, and when Gatsby mentions a Cole Porter lyric, she misattributes it to Shakespeare. Realizing their incompatibility, Gatsby abruptly ends their relationship and announces that he will withdraw from Yardley to stay in New York. He later goes to the Delacorte Clock, outside the Central Park Zoo, reenacting a fantasy he and Chan previously shared. As the clock strikes six, Chan arrives, and the pair kiss in the pouring rain.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: In August 2017, Timothée Chalamet, Selena Gomez, and Elle Fanning joined the cast of Woody Allen's newest film, with Allen directing from a screenplay he wrote. Letty Aronson produced, while Amazon Studios was to distribute it. In September 2017, Jude Law, Diego Luna, Liev Schreiber, Annaleigh Ashford, Rebecca Hall, Cherry Jones, Will Rogers, and Kelly Rohrbach joined the cast. In October 2017, Suki Waterhouse joined the cast, and Allen confirmed the film was to be titled "A Rainy Day in New York".


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: "A Rainy Day in New York" was first released in Poland on July 26, 2019, by Kino Świat. It was subsequently released in Lithuania, Greece, Netherlands, Turkey, Belgium, France, Slovakia, Israel, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Brazil, South Korea, Russia, and Central and South America throughout the second half of 2019. It was released in the United Kingdom on June 5, 2020. It was released in the United States on October 9, 2020, by MPI Media Group and Signature Entertainment.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: The film was the opening night premiere at the Deauville American Film Festival on September 6, 2019, before opening theatrically in France on September 18.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: During the weekend of May 8–10, 2020, the film grossed over $330,000 in South Korea, becoming the highest-grossing film globally during that week. It had a disappointing opening weekend in the United States in October 2020, grossing $2,744 from six theaters, with an average of $457 per theater. The film is set for a release in China in February 2022, becoming the first film by Allen to obtain a total theatrical release in the country. It has earned approximately $23.8 million worldwide.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: The film completed post-production in the third quarter of 2018. Amazon shelved the project as being effectively unmarketable, and later dropped the film; thus, 2018 marked the first time since 1981 that an entire calendar year had gone by without a new Woody Allen film. In February 2019, Allen filed a $68 million lawsuit contesting that Amazon had failed to meet contractual obligations to release the film as contracted, alleging the studio had dropped the film for only "vague reasons" and terminated the four-picture contract over "a 25-year-old, baseless allegation". The legal action was seeking minimum guarantee payments for the four films, plus damages and legal fees. In May 2019, it was reported that Amazon had given the U.S. distribution rights back to Allen. In November 2019, Allen settled his breach of contract lawsuit against Amazon, and both parties voluntarily filed a joint notice dismissing the case. The film was eventually released on Amazon Prime in 2021.


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: The film's production coincided with the start of the Me Too movement, causing a resurgence in public interest in the 1992 sexual abuse allegation against Allen. In October 2017, actor Griffin Newman announced via Twitter that he regretted acting in the film and would not work with Allen again in the future. Newman donated his salary to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). In January 2018, Chalamet donated his salary to the RAINN, Time's Up and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center of New York City. Gomez made a donation of over $1 million, exceeding her salary, to Time's Up. Like Gomez, Hall donated her salary to Time's Up. She later explained, "I've been deliberate in saying that the choice wasn't making a judgment one way or another. I don't believe anyone in the public should be judge and jury on a case that is so complex."


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: Without commenting on the allegations against Allen, Law said in November 2018 that it's "a terrible shame" the film got shelved. Cherry Jones, conversely, defended Allen in April 2019, saying: "[...] I went back and studied every scrap of information I could get about that period. And in my heart of hearts, I do not believe he was guilty as charged [...] [t]here are those who are comfortable with their certainty. I am not. I don't know the truth, but I know that if we condemn by instinct, democracy is on a slippery slope."


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: "A Rainy Day in New York" garnered mixed to negative reviews, with "The Hollywood Reporter" and Screen Rant respectively noting critics' general praise for Chalamet's performance and their belief that the film contains derivative ideas from Allen's previous films. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads: "Its outstanding cast helps elevate a middling screenplay, but "A Rainy Day in New York" falls well short of Woody Allen's best efforts." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 38 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".


title: A Rainy Day in New York

text: "Variety"'s Jessica Kiang wrote: "Despite featuring some of the best actors of their respective generations, "A Rainy Day in New York" feels like a film born of profound creative exhaustion." Matt Thrift of "Little White Lies" was more positive, calling the film "hardly top-tier Allen" but had "such wonderful performances" from the cast. Lisa Nesselson for "Screen Daily" praised the "splendid performances" and Vittorio Storaro's brilliant cinematography, and noted that the film is "far more hit than miss". Jordan Mintzer of "The Hollywood Reporter" suggested that ""A Rainy Day" has its moments, most of them thanks to star Timothée Chalamet [...] who does a terrific job channeling your typical Allenian antihero," and "Fanning does her best with such a problematic character", but concluded that the film is merely Allen's watchable rehashed themes. Jade Budowski of "Decider" panned the film for its unlikable characters and its "painfully pretentious and on-the-nose" dialogue, before concluding by advising readers to skip the film: "The allegations against Allen alone should be enough reason to avoid "A Rainy Day in New York", but even without them, it is a barely watchable affair."


title: VeggieTales

text: VeggieTales is an American Christian media, computer generated musical children's animation, and book franchise created by Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki under Big Idea Entertainment. The series sees fruit and vegetable characters retelling Christian stories from the Bible, with episodes presenting life lessons according to a biblical world view.


title: VeggieTales

text: The franchise originated as a video series, with episodes distributed primarily direct to home media, first in 1993 on VHS, and later on DVD and Blu-ray through to 2015. The television series "VeggieTales on TV!" ran on NBC from 2006 to 2009, and two Netflix series debuted in 2014 and 2017. Two films were released: "" (2002) and "" (2008). The success of the animations helped establish a franchise of related media, including music, stage productions, and video games.


title: VeggieTales

text: The series is distinguished as the most successful Christian children's franchise of all time. It has sold over 16 million books, 7 million music CDs, and 235 million music streams.


title: VeggieTales

text: "VeggieTales" was created by Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki through the production company Big Idea Entertainment with an overall aim to convey Christian moral themes and teach Biblical values and lessons for a child-based audience. Vischer developed the idea for "VeggieTales" in the early 1990s while testing animation software as a medium for children's videos. Due to limitations in the Softimage 3D at the time, Vischer opted to avoid the technical production hurdle of designing characters with arms, legs, hair, and clothes. The first animation model for "VeggieTales" was an anthropomorphic candy bar. Further inspiration derived from Vischer's wife who suggested parents of the target audience might prefer a character who promoted healthier eating habits. Vischer then began to design the characters based on fruits and vegetables.


title: VeggieTales

text: Vischer then recruited his friends to voice the cast of "VeggieTales" in the early episodes. Dan Anderson (Dad Asparagus) and Jim Poole (Scooter) who collaborated with Vischer on dramas at their local church, were recruited for the cast. First offered in the direct-to-video market, the first release was the 30-minute video, "Where's God When I'm S-Scared?", in December 1993. Softimage 3D was used to animate the characters for episodes until 1999 when it was replaced with the animation software, Maya.


title: VeggieTales

text: In January 2002, HIT Entertainment sued Big Idea, claiming Big Idea "abruptly walked away" from a 1997 deal with Lyrick Studios, which HIT acquired in 2001. The deal intended for HIT to manufacture and distribute VeggieTales merchandise. Having had no written contract with either Lyrick or HIT, Big Idea arranged a distribution deal with Warner Home Video, triggering the suit. In the trial, Lyrick claimed: 1) a binding agreement had been arranged between them and Big Idea; 2) Big Idea disapproved of HIT's purchase of Lyrick only to get more money for themselves; and 3) Big Idea had granted Lyrick the distribution rights to Big Idea DVDs and videocassettes. In April 2003, a jury in Texas ruled Big Idea must pay $11 million to HIT—a decision which was overturned on appeal in 2005. Due to bankruptcy concerns from the jury decision, Vischer lost control over VeggieTales in 2004.


title: VeggieTales

text: On June 29, 2021, Vischer stated in a series of posts on his Twitter account that his wife, Nawrocki and Heinecke had left Big Idea, who intended to recast the voices for their respective characters. He also stated that Nawrocki and Heinecke had been let go from the series several years beforehand for budgetary reasons, being demoted solely to freelance work. They had asked to have a bigger role in the franchise following their involvement in "The VeggieTales Show" and the company refused, resulting in their complete departure.


title: VeggieTales

text: A podcast titled "Very Veggie Silly Stories" debuted on May 17, 2022 with a new voice cast that replaced Vischer and Nawrocki.


title: VeggieTales

text: The "VeggieTales" cartoons are teleplays, performed by various vegetables and fruit that live together on the same kitchen countertop. Some of these characters have "real names", and take on various roles in the teleplays. Most of these "regulars characters", such as Larry, Bob, Junior Asparagus, Archibald Asparagus, Pa Grape, Jimmy and Jerry were established in the earliest videos.


title: VeggieTales

text: The videos generally present a moral issue in the opening countertop sequence, either through a viewer question or an issue brought up by Bob or Larry. Usually this is followed by one or more "films" that address the said issue, with "Silly Songs with Larry" in the middle.


title: VeggieTales

text: "Silly Songs" are generally introduced with a title card and a voice-over saying, "And now it's time for Silly Songs with Larry, the part of the show where Larry comes out and sings a silly song." Some "Silly Songs" have alternate titles, such as "Love Songs with Mr. Lunt", or "Ukulele Karaoke with Bob", where another character sings the song instead. The "Silly Song", if one appears, is usually in the middle of the program, often at a cliffhanger moment or in between two stories (although the LarryBoy videos, in particular, often lack this segment, with the exception of "League of Incredible Vegetables"). Each video ends with this program's signature sign-off: "Remember kids, God made you special and He loves you very much."


title: VeggieTales

text: Big Idea has released a few "special edition" DVDs which consist of remastered videos and additional features not on the original DVD.


title: VeggieTales

text: Various "VeggieTales" videos were bundled into collections. The collections ranged in size from double features to a boxed collection of the first 30 "VeggieTales" videos. Compilation videos of only the "Silly Songs" were also released. Several video collections have the songs in "sing along" format and "The Ultimate Silly Song Countdown" video included the most popular Silly Songs as voted by fans of the show.


title: VeggieTales

text: For three seasons, "VeggieTales on TV!" ran on NBC, Telemundo, and Ion Television as part of the Qubo children's programming block from 2006 to 2009. The television show altered the general format by opening at the front gate of Bob the Tomato's house. Bob, Larry the Cucumber, and other Veggie characters then sing the show's theme song as they hop to Bob's front door. The theme song ends with a character making a random comment, such as Pa Grape commenting on Archibald's new sweater. Bob and Larry then wait for the mailman, Jimmy Gourd, to deliver a letter. When Jimmy comes, he happily sings his Mail Song, which Bob and Larry both find tedious. Similar to the opening counter top sequence of the "VeggieTales" videos, Bob and Larry read the letter and the cast tries to decide how to solve the viewer's problem through one of three regular segments: Archibald reads a story from his Big Book of Oddities, Pa Grape shows an old film, or Mr. Lunt appears with his stick puppet (Paco the Storytelling Mule) and tells a story. The result always proves disastrous, as the story or film makes no sense. Bob and Larry then intervene with a story from a VeggieTales video. The show ends with Bob and Larry wrapping things up by reiterating the story's lesson and Bob thanking the kids for coming over to his house. NBC episodes end with characters bidding the audience a simple "Good-bye".


title: VeggieTales

text: According to the Los Angeles Times, "VeggieTales has been very successful for NBC in a Saturday morning time slot that has traditionally been difficult for the networks". NBC saw its biggest ratings jump in Saturday morning children's programming since 2003." As a result, ratings on NBC's Saturday morning program had grown from an average Nielsen Rating of 0.5 between 2003 and 2005 to an average Nielsen Rating of 0.95 between 2006 and 2008, with an average of 430,000 children watching each weekend.


title: VeggieTales

text: After NBC aired the first few episodes of the first season in September 2006, the company chose to edit the episodes to remove religious messages, including references to God. The original sign-off message—"And remember kids, God made you special and He loves you very much! Good-bye!"—was replaced by "Thanks for coming to my house today, kids. See you next week! Good-bye!". The changes were made at the request of the network's standards and practices department to enforce compliance with network policies regarding religious neutrality. The original dialogue remained viewable by users of the network's closed-caption feature.


title: VeggieTales

text: The conservative watch group Parents Television Council complained to NBC about the changes. L. Brent Bozell, president of the group, complained of the network "ripping the heart and soul out of a successful product". His argument was that if NBC was concerned about references to God, they should not have taken the series. Bozell stated "This just documents the disconnect between Hollywood and the real world."


title: VeggieTales

text: The response from NBC stated the editing now conformed to the network's broadcast standards, which direct producers "not to advocate any one religious point of view." NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks said "Our goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible with these positive messages while being careful not to advocate any one religious point of view."


title: VeggieTales

text: Vischer expressed disappointment with these edits, stating that he wasn’t informed that religious content would be removed from the series, and that he could’ve refused to sign a contract with Qubo if he’d known of the decision beforehand. He said, "I would have declined partly because I knew a lot of fans would feel like it was a sellout or it was done for money." Still, Vischer said he understood NBC's wish to remain religiously neutral, and he said, "VeggieTales is religious, NBC is not. I want to focus people more on 'Isn't it cool that Bob and Larry are on television."


title: VeggieTales

text: A new series, "VeggieTales in the House", premiered on Netflix as an original series in Thanksgiving 2014. The series lead is Doug TenNapel and features a theme song by independent studio musician and frequent TenNapel collaborator Terry Scott Taylor. The deal between current "VeggieTales" owner DreamWorks Animation and Netflix calls for the release of 75 episodes over a three-year period with each episode featuring two 11-minute stories.


title: VeggieTales

text: Mike Nawrocki and Phil Vischer continue to voice their characters, but the rest of the original video cast has been replaced by veteran voice actors Tress MacNeille and Rob Paulsen. The series is an expansion of the kitchen counter top segments of the original videos to include a full city which the characters live in. Bob and Larry live as roommates in an apartment west of the kitchen counter. Several stories revolve around a general store built into the bottom-right corner of a kitchen counter which is run by Pa Grape. The cast from the original videos remains the same aside from the absence of Mr. Nezzer, who has been replaced by a similar looking character named Ichabeezer (voiced by Paulsen). Themes in each episode relate to Biblical principles such as forgiveness, compassion and generosity.


title: VeggieTales

text: In 2017, "VeggieTales in the House" ended, and a new series was developed, to continue VeggieTales on Netflix. The series was called "VeggieTales in the City".


title: VeggieTales

text: In March 2019, it was announced that the Trinity Broadcasting Network was to inherit the broadcasting rights to air a new "VeggieTales" series on their networks. Vischer confirmed via Twitter, he and Nawrocki were to return to Big Idea Entertainment as full-time staff to work on the series, tentatively titled "The VeggieTales Show".


title: VeggieTales

text: On April 24, 2019, the VeggieTales Official YouTube channel published a video called "VeggieTales is Back: Brand New VeggieTales Show Trailer" which provided information about The VeggieTales Show. The show started airing on TBN in 2019. This version of the show focuses on the VeggieTales characters acting in on shows of Bible stories in a theater. The series brought back Mr. Nezzer (albeit with voice actor David Mann), as the owner of the theater in which the show takes place. The first episode was a Christmas special called The Best Christmas Gift. This premiered on TBN Christmas Day 2019 and was distributed on DVD and Digital by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.


title: VeggieTales

text: In 2019, Yippee TV became the exclusive streaming service of "The VeggieTales Show" and released episodes monthly in 2019–2022.


title: VeggieTales

text: "VeggieTales Live" is a series of stage shows based on the "VeggieTales" videos. The first stage series was part of a two-year agreement with Clear Channel in 2002. Six versions of the shows have been staged. The shows have toured across the U.S. and at theme parks including Dollywood and Silver Dollar City.


title: VeggieTales

text: Big Idea, and its successors, have released "VeggieTales" themed games on various platforms including PC, Macintosh, iOS, and Android. Applications include games revolving around specific "VeggieTales" episodes (such as the PlayStation 2 release of "LarryBoy and the Bad Apple") to new content revolving around various "VeggieTales" characters.


title: VeggieTales

text: There have been over 45 musical albums released that tie into either "VeggieTales" characters or videos. Some albums are compilations of songs from the various videos, such as "Larry-Boy Soundtrack", "A Very Veggie Easter", and "25 Favorite Very VeggieTunes". Others contain completely original material, such as stories or songs performed by Phil Vischer, Mike Nawrocki, and the other "VeggieTales" voice talent, such as "Bob and Larry's Campfire Songs", "Christian Hit Music", and "Bob and Larry Sing the 80's".


title: VeggieTales

text: In August 1998, Fisher Price introduced several VeggieTales products including the "Bounce N Talk Veggies", "Sing N Dance Bob and Larry", "Junior Asparagus Bedtime Friend", "Veggie Bunch", "Talking Clip Ons", "Dress Up Mix Up Larry", "Larryboy", "Larrymobile", and the "Figure Pack".


title: VeggieTales

text: The Fisher Price products from their merchandise were sold at Walmart, Kmart, Toys R Us and Target stores until the end of 2004. On January 1, 2005, Fisher Price sold the VeggieTales toys to Blue Box Toys until they stopped making the products in 2009. However, Blue Box Toys has VeggieTales products since 2002.


title: VeggieTales

text: On February 10, 2011, Big Idea Entertainment announced several new product promotions, including partnerships with Chick-fil-A (kids meal promotions), American Puzzle Company (wooden puzzles and trains), CTI Industries (mylar and latex balloons), Tabbies (index tabs, stickers, temporary tattoos and wall clings), Victory Designs (children's guitars), and Zoobies (plush pillows and blankets).


title: VeggieTales

text: In June 2014, B&H Kids announced plans to produce a "VeggieTales" comic with Big Idea Productions and DreamWorks Animation.


title: VeggieTales

text: VeggieTales has been nominated for three Emmy Awards, four Annie Awards, thirteen GMA Dove Awards, six Parents' Choice Awards, two Chicago Film Festival Awards, one Movieguide Award, one Golden Reel Award, and one International World Animation Celebration Festival Award. It was one of the earliest computer animated franchises, predating both "ReBoot" and "Toy Story".


title: VeggieTales

text: As of 2019, "VeggieTales" has sold 75 million videos (VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray), 16 million books, 7 million music albums, and 235 million music streams. The revenue for Big Idea grew between 1996 and 1999 by 3300% from $1.3 million to over $44 million as the moral tales and off-beat humor proved popular with parents. According to Phil Vischer's book, "Me, Myself, and Bob", "one third of American homes owned a Veggietales video by the year 2000". "The Wall Street Journal" commented on the franchise's success that "VeggieTales is the Barney of the group. It's simple characters, bright colors and catchy tunes sweeten the Christian message...The real appeal of the veggies is their wackiness. Like Bugs Bunny, the cartoons contain a multitude of adult jokes, and like a sanitized version of "South Park", Comedy Central's raunchy cartoon, they rely on gross-out humor. Among evangelical Christian young adults, the veggies have a cult following, analogous to the adult audience of "South Park".


title: VeggieTales

text: "Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie" currently holds a 65% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 55 reviews from critics, with an average score of 5.8 out of 10. "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" received a 39% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 33 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. Their summary of critical consensus was, "This Veggietale should please the youngest crowds, but the silly script will tire the more discerning viewer."


title: Project Runway

text: Project Runway is an American reality television series that premiered on Bravo on December 1, 2004. The series focuses on fashion design.


title: Project Runway

text: The contestants compete with each other to create the best clothes and are restricted by time, materials and theme. Their designs are judged by a panel, and one or more designers are typically eliminated from the show each week. During each season, contestants are progressively eliminated until only a few contestants remain. These finalists prepare complete fashion collections for New York Fashion Week. After the runway shows, the judges choose the winner.


title: Project Runway

text: "Project Runway" was created by Eli Holzman and was hosted by Heidi Klum from 2004 to 2017. It has a varied airing history, with Bravo originating the first five seasons, followed by Lifetime for eleven more.


title: Project Runway

text: In 2018, during the wake of The Weinstein Company's bankruptcy, the show then returned to Bravo. Klum and the designers' mentor Tim Gunn both left the show in 2018 to helm another fashion competition show, "Making the Cut" on Amazon Video. American model Karlie Kloss followed Klum as the new host, with season four winner Christian Siriano replacing Gunn as mentor.


title: Project Runway

text: In 2008, the show won a Peabody Award "for using the 'television reality contest' genre to engage, inform, enlighten and entertain."


title: Project Runway

text: "Project Runway" uses progressive elimination to reduce the initial field of 12 or more fashion designers down to three or four before the final challenge. Each non-finale challenge (the scope of one episode) requires the designers to develop one or more pieces of new clothing to be presented at a runway show. The challenges range in creative diversity to test the designers' ingenuity while maintaining their personal fashion design aesthetic. These challenges may include creating a garment from non-traditional materials, such as: apartment furnishings (Season 3), recyclable materials (Season 3), items from a grocery store (Seasons 1 & 5), edible food items (Seasons 1, 4 & 10), plants and flowers (Season 2), using their own clothes that they happened to be wearing (Seasons 2 & 9), designing clothing with materials from a party store (season 8), or designing for a certain high-profile person (such as actress Brooke Shields, figure skater Sasha Cohen or Miss USA Tara Conner); or designing for a corporate fashion line (e.g., Banana Republic; Diane von Fürstenberg; Macy's; or Sarah Jessica Parker's Bitten); or centered on a specialized theme (such as "cocktail party", "wedding gown", "female wrestling outfit", or "prom dress").


title: Project Runway

text: The first several seasons were filmed in New York City, at The New School's Parsons School of Design. They shop for materials at a fabric store in New York's Garment District (usually at "MOOD Designer Fabrics") – unless the challenge requires otherwise (e.g., denim jackets and jeans from Levi's, confectionery and souvenirs at the Hershey's Store in Times Square, or fabric at "Spandex House" in Season 4). The designers live together, grouped by gender, at Atlas New York (an apartment building near Parsons) during Seasons 1–3 (back again at Season 5) and at New Gotham during Season 4. Along with the network change to Lifetime, the location changed from New York to Los Angeles for Season 6 only (permanently returning to New York for Season 7.) While on the show, the designers are prohibited from leaving the apartments without authorization, making unauthorized communication with family or friends, or using the Internet to research designs. Designers are also forbidden to bring pattern books or similar how-to materials with them during the show, or risk being disqualified from the competition (as was the case of Keith Michael in Season 3 and of Claire Buitendorp in Season 16).