text: The Gambia, as per its constitution, will provide free legal assistance for accused persons charged with capital offences only.


title: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

text: Pakistan, has made several reservations to the articles in the convention; "the provisions of Articles 3, 6, 7, 18 and 19 shall be so applied to the extent that they are not repugnant to the Provisions of the Constitution of Pakistan and the Sharia laws", "the provisions of Article 12 shall be so applied as to be in conformity with the Provisions of the Constitution of Pakistan", "With respect to Article 13, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan reserves its right to apply its law relating to foreigners", "the provisions of Article 25 shall be so applied to the extent that they are not repugnant to the Provisions of the Constitution of Pakistan" and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan "does not recognize the competence of the Committee provided for in Article 40 of the Covenant".


text: The United States has made reservations that none of the articles should restrict the right of free speech and association; that the US government may impose capital punishment on any person other than a pregnant woman, including persons below the age of 18; that "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment" refers to those treatments or punishments prohibited by one or more of the fifth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments to the US Constitution; that the third clause of Paragraph 1, Article 15 will not apply; and that, notwithstanding paragraphs 2(b) and 3 of Article 10 and paragraph 4 of Article 14, the US government may treat juveniles as adults, and accept volunteers to the military prior to the age of 18. The United States also submitted five "understandings", and four "declarations".


text: The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights has 167 states parties, 67 by signature and ratification, and the remainder by accession or succession. Another five states have signed but have yet to ratify the treaty.


text: According to a 2013 study, the ICCPR has significantly improved human rights practices on matters where evidence-production costs and standards of proof are low, but has had a limited impact for issue areas where legally admissible evidence is costly to produce and standards of proof are high. This means that the ICCPR has "significantly improved governments' respect for the freedoms of speech, association, assembly, and religion" but has had insignificant effects on respect to personal integrity rights.


text: The Covenant is not directly enforceable in Australia, but its provisions support a number of domestic laws, which confer enforceable rights on individuals. For example, Article 17 of the convention has been implemented by the Australian Privacy Act 1988. Likewise, the Covenant's equality and anti-discrimination provisions support the federal Disability Discrimination Act 1992. Finally, the Covenant is one of the major sources of 'human rights' listed in the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011. This law requires most new legislation and administrative instruments (such as delegated/subordinate legislation) to be tabled in parliament with a statement outlining the proposed law's compatibility with the listed human rights A Joint Committee on Human Rights scrutinises all new legislation and statements of compatibility. The findings of the Joint Committee are not legally binding.


text: Legislation also establishes the Australian Human Rights Commission which allows the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) to examine enacted legislation (to suggest remedial enactments), its administration (to suggest avoidance of practices) and general compliance with the covenant which is scheduled to the AHRC legislation.


text: In Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, the convention can be used by a plaintiff or defendant who invokes those jurisdiction's human rights charters. While the Convention cannot be used to overturn a Victorian or ACT law, a Court can issue a 'declaration of incompatibility' that requires the relevant Attorney-General to respond in Parliament within a set time period. Courts in Victoria and the ACT are also directed by the legislation to interpret the law in a way to give effect to a human right, and new legislation and subordinate legislation must be accompanied by a statement of compatibility. Efforts to implement a similar Charter at the national level have been frustrated and Australia's Constitution may prevent conferring the 'declaration' power on federal judges.


text: Ireland's use of Special Criminal Courts where juries are replaced by judges and other special procedures apply has been found to not violate the treaty: "In the Committee's view, trial before courts other than the ordinary courts is not necessarily, per se, a violation of the entitlement to a fair hearing and the facts of the present case do not show that there has been such a violation."


text: New Zealand took measures to give effect to many of the rights contained within it by passing the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in 1990, and formally incorporated the status of protected person into law through the passing of the Immigration Act 2009.


text: Sri Lankan author Shakthika Sathkumara was arrested on 1 April 2019 for inciting religious violence, following a publication of a short story about homosexuality and child abuse at a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka. The author had been adjudged the best Sinhala language short story writer in Sri Lanka's National Youth Literary Festivals of 2010 and 2014, and was twice the recipient of the north western provincial state literary award. A group of Buddhist monks had stormed the author's workplace demanding punitive action against him after the story first appeared on Facebook; the ICCPR prohibits "advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence". Human rights organizations Civicus and the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) have asserted that the charges are spurious and a clear violation of the author's right to freedom of expression.


text: The United States Senate ratified the ICCPR in 1992, with five reservations, five understandings, and four declarations. Some have noted that with so many reservations, its implementation has little domestic effect. Included in the Senate's ratification was the declaration that "the provisions of Article 1 through 27 of the Covenant are not self-executing", and in a Senate Executive Report stated that the declaration was meant to "clarify that the Covenant will not create a private cause of action in U.S. Courts".


text: Where a treaty or covenant is not self-executing, and where Congress has not acted to implement the agreement with legislation, no private right of action within the US judicial system is created by ratification.


text: As a reservation that is "incompatible with the object and purpose" of a treaty is void as a matter of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and international law, there is some issue as to whether the non-self-execution declaration is even legal under domestic law.


text: Prominent critics in the human rights community, such as Prof. Louis Henkin (non-self-execution declaration incompatible with the Supremacy Clause) and Prof. Jordan Paust ("Rarely has a treaty been so abused") have denounced the United States' ratification subject to the non-self-execution declaration as being a blatant fraud upon the international community, especially in light of what they allege is its subsequent failure to conform domestic law to the minimum human rights standards as established in the Covenant and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights over the last thirty years.


text: It has been argued that Article 20(2) of the ICCPR may be unconstitutional according to Supreme Court precedent, which is the reason behind the Senate reservations.


text: Of particular concern are widely formulated reservations which essentially render ineffective all Covenant rights which would require any change in national law to ensure compliance with Covenant obligations. No real international rights or obligations have thus been accepted. And when there is an absence of provisions to ensure that Covenant rights may be sued on in domestic courts, and, further, a failure to allow individual complaints to be brought to the Committee under the first Optional Protocol, all the essential elements of the Covenant guarantees have been removed.


text: Indeed, the United States has not accepted a single international obligation required under the Covenant. It has not changed its domestic law to conform with the strictures of the Covenant. Its citizens are not permitted to sue to enforce their basic human rights under the Covenant. It has not ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT). As such, the Covenant has been rendered ineffective, with the bone of contention being United States officials' insistence upon preserving a vast web of sovereign, judicial, prosecutorial, and executive branch immunities that often deprives its citizens of the "effective remedy" under law the Covenant is intended to guarantee.


text: In 2006, the Human Rights Committee expressed concern over what it interprets as material non-compliance, exhorting the United States to take immediate corrective action:


text: Most states in the world are parties to the ICCPR. The following 25 states have not become party to it, but six states have signed the Covenant but not ratified it.


title: Teen Choice Awards

text: The Teen Choice Awards is an annual awards show that airs on the Fox television network. The awards honor the year's biggest achievements in music, film, sports, television, fashion, social media, and more, voted by viewers living in the United States, aged 13 and over, through various social media sites; primarily Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube.


title: Teen Choice Awards

text: Executive producers, Bob Bain and Michael Burg, came together to create an award show geared toward a teen demographic, somewhat older than that of the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, but similar to that of MTV.


title: Teen Choice Awards

text: The format of the show has remained the same, awarding the achievements of those in the entertainment and athletic industries with non-traditional categories fixed into the ceremony. The show was held at the Barker Hangar at Santa Monica Airport for its first two shows in 1999 and 2000. From 2001 to 2013, it was held at the Universal Amphitheatre (later known as Gibson Amphitheatre) in Universal City, California. It airs live to the east coast, taped delayed on the west. With the demolition of the amphitheater in 2013, the show moved to a new location. Then after the remodeled Pauley Pavilion at UCLA in Westwood, Los Angeles was flooded by a broken 30" water pipe on July 29, 2014, the show was moved to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The 2015 and 2017 Awards were held at The Galen Center (USC), and the 2016 and 2018 Awards were held at the refurbished Forum in Inglewood. The 2019 Awards were held at the outdoor set in Hermosa Beach, California. There were no awards ceremonies in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.


title: Teen Choice Awards

text: Ballots were once used in teen-oriented magazines, where readers were to purchase and tear out their ballot. Votes could also be cast online through Fox.com. In 2008, Fox and the show's producers created Teenchoiceawards.com as the official website for the Teen Choice Awards. In 2009, the number of votes cast was in excess of 83 million. Votes are now cast online through Twitter, FOX.com, and the FOX NOW app. In 2016, more than 37 million votes were cast.


title: Teen Choice Awards

text: Since the ceremony's inception, the show has given out genuine custom-made surfboards to individual winners. The surfboard was chosen as the award because it represents the freedom of the summer vacation for teens. Some celebrities, such as Jennifer Love Hewitt, have actually used them to surf; Marlon Wayans famously said, "Brothers don't surf"; and in 2009, Hugh Jackman, upon winning his first one, said that he was no longer the only Australian without a surfboard. Each of the custom-made surfboard awards costs $800 to make.


title: Teen Choice Awards

text: In 2008, Dosomething.org sponsored The Do Something Award—which recognized young people. Nine nominees—who saw a problem in the world and then tackled it—each won $10,000 for their cause. The winner received $100,000. The Do Something Award (formerly the BR!CK Awards) is a program of Do Something, a New York-based non-profit that reaches about 11.5 million young people annually. The award was not presented in 2009. It was replaced with "Choice Celebrity Activist", which was won by Hayden Panettiere.


title: Teen Choice Awards

text: On August 11, 2014, after losing his category, Vine star Cameron Dallas tweeted that the awards ceremony was "rigged", saying that he had been informed six days prior to the actual event that he had won the award, and the runners-up were told to still try to solicit votes from their followers, even though the results had already been decided. He also tweeted "So I found out that the Teen Choice Awards were rigged and used powerful internet people for marketing. I'm sad now. Television is stupid" before deleting the tweets, saying he "should have taken the high road", but he "didn't like the fact that [his fans] were being lied to". Soon after Dallas' initial tweets, fellow Viner Carter Reynolds stated that the Teen Choice Awards had "used everyone for promotion", using the hashtag "#TeensDontHaveAChoiceAwards", which soon began trending by fans who noticed the disclaimer at the end of the show saying that the producers reserved the right to choose the winners.


title: Teen Choice Awards

text: In earlier years of the show, the voting rules page stated ""Teenasaurus Rox reserves the right to choose the winner from the top four vote generators"".


title: Teen Choice Awards

text: In 2016, controversy started on Twitter when fans became upset when they found out that late pop singer Christina Grimmie won the award for Choice Web Star: Music but was not mentioned during the show. Many fans felt that the award show should have been dedicated to her memory or at least for a moment of recognition.


title: Teen Choice Awards

text: In 2017, controversy started again on Twitter when fans became upset that The Dolan Twins lost their category of Choice YouTuber to Jake Paul after being told that they had won and had gone backstage to get ready to accept their award. Fans on Twitter were also upset that Actress and Dancer Chloe Lukasiak lost her category, Choice Dancer, to Maddie Ziegler after having the most retweets and being the top trending account under 'Choice Dancer' on Twitter.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: Wargaming Group Limited (also known as Wargaming.net) is a video game company formed in Minsk, Belarus in 1998 and is currently based in Nicosia, Cyprus. The group operates across more than 16 offices globally and development studios. Initially focused on turn-based strategy and real-time strategy games, Wargaming switched to developing free-to-play online action games in 2009, including the military-themed team-based game "World of Tanks", and later "World of Warships" and "World of Warplanes".


title: Wargaming (company)

text: Wargaming was founded by Victor Kislyi () in Minsk on 2 August 1998, intending the company as a developer of strategy video games. The company's first project was "DBA Online"—the digital version of a miniature tabletop rule set "De Bellis Antiquitatis"—launched in 2000. Wargaming started working on its first full-scale commercial project—the sci-fi turn-based strategy game "Massive Assault", in March 2002. Over the course of five years, the company shipped five projects within the "Massive Assault" franchise.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: On 16 November 2007, Wargaming acquired the Minsk-based developer Arise. In December 2008, the company released its first real-time strategy "Operation Bagration". On 16 April 2009, Wargaming started working on real-time strategy game "Order of War". It was published by Square Enix on 18 September 2009. On 12 August 2010, the company released its first online title, "World of Tanks". On 12 April 2011, "World of Tanks" was released in North America and Europe.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: In 2011, Wargaming relocated its headquarters from Minsk to Nicosia, Cyprus. Since 17 August 2015, these headquarters are located in the Wargaming HQ building, formerly known as the President building, located near the Presidential Palace in Nicosia. European operations headquarters, known as Wargaming Europe, were established in Paris, France, in July 2011. On 3 August 2011, the company created a direct presence in North America by opening an office in San Francisco. At E3 2011, Wargaming announced the follow-up to "World of Tanks", the flight combat online action game "World of Warplanes". At Gamescom 2011, the company unveiled the third part of its military saga—the naval action online game "World of Warships". In October 2011, Wargaming announced the online collectible card MMO game "World of Tanks: Generals". Throughout 2011, Wargaming joined strategic partnerships with Persha Studia, Lesta Studio and DAVA Consulting, with each operating separate projects under Wargaming.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: On 21 February 2012, the Android version of "World of Tanks Assistant", the mobile application for "World of Tanks", went live in Europe and North America. In May 2012, Wargaming entered the Korean games market by opening a subsidiary office in Seoul. Wargaming embarked on a rebranding initiative and announced the Wargaming.net service, which will unite its games and services into a single battle universe in June 2012. On 7 August 2012, Wargaming acquired Australian company BigWorld Technology which brought development of the middleware for its MMO projects in-house. In an annual report for the Cyprus Stock Exchange (CSE) in 2012, Wargaming's revenue was declared to be 217.9 million Euro, with a net profit of 6.1 million Euro. Wargaming's shares were delisted from the CSE in 2015, and it remains a privately held company to date.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: Wargaming moved into the console market by acquiring Day 1 Studios on 29 January 2013. Renamed Wargaming Chicago-Baltimore, the studios are currently developing "" (February 2014), Xbox One (July 2015) and PlayStation 4 (January 2016). On 12 February 2013, Wargaming announced its own esports league, the Wargaming.net League. The company acquired Gas Powered Games on 14 February 2013. On 26 March 2013, Wargaming announced "World of Tanks Blitz", a mobile MMO game centered around tank combat available for smartphones and tablets. The game was released on iOS in June 2014. As of 2016, "World of Tanks Blitz" is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10 and Mac OS X. Wargaming branched into the Japanese games market by opening an office in Tokyo on 29 May 2013. On 22 July 2013, the company bought "Total Annihilation" and "Master of Orion" intellectual properties from the Atari bankruptcy proceedings.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: In July 2015, Wargaming launched WG Labs as a division that would act as a third-party publisher to outside developers. The creation of the division was primarily driven by Wargaming's partnership with independent studio NGD Studios and their game, "Master of Orion". In October, the company also rebranded DropForge, a Bellevue, Washington-based mobile game studio founded in 2013 by David Bluhm, as WG Cells. WG Cells was shut down in August 2016.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: Wargaming's WG Labs division released a reimagining of "Master of Orion" in August 2016. The game was developed by the Argentine NGD Studios. In November 2016 Wargaming, SEGA and Creative Assembly announced a new strategic partnership that will see Total War: ARENA published worldwide. As of 2016, Wargaming owns a significant share of the Hellenic Bank (Daniel S. Loeb's Third Point Group is the other major shareholder of the Cyprus-based Bank) and has shown an interest in purchasing land property assets in Cyprus for its use and investment purposes. Wargaming has become the largest taxpayer within Cyprus.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: In May 2017, Wargaming found itself amidst controversy when it was claimed that one of its employees had threatened to file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claim against YouTube gaming content creator SirFoch over his scathing review of a "World of Tanks" premium tank, they apologised later though.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: In May 2018, Wargaming's CEO showed up personally to close their Seattle studio and lay off over 150 developers.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: In November 2020, the Cypriot government announced an investigation into possible passport fraud, where Wargaming employees were granted "Golden Passports" (faster Cypriot citizenship in exchange for monetary investments in the country) on fraudulent grounds, 27 of which were found to be non-compliant with the program's criteria, including having filed using fake addresses (assigned to parking lots, empty land, etc.).


title: Wargaming (company)

text: In August 2021, Wargaming found itself amidst controversy once again when a large part of the "Community Contributors" (a form of associate program) walked out in protest over the over-proliferation of lootboxes and gambling mechanics in "World of Warships", paired with the chronic abhorrent treatment of them and the players by the developers at Lesta Studio in the last few years. In the wake of the walking out of the CC, an employee nicknamed "Gneisenau013" of the Texas office was terminated. However, said employee was not involved in the entire situation, but merely a scapegoat. In protest of this behavior, a senior manager for World of Tanks resigned, stating that the displayed behavior of the senior World of Warships management is "cowardly, contemptible and shitbird-like"


title: Wargaming (company)

text: On February 26, 2022, amidst the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Creative Director of Wargaming Sergey Burkatovskiy was fired, following comments in support of the Russian invasion that he posted to his Facebook page. Following his termination, Wargaming made the statement that "Sergey is an employee of the company and expressed his personal opinion, which categorically does not coincide with the position of the company. All our staff are now focused on helping out our over 550 colleagues from Kyiv and their families... Sergei's opinion is in complete contradiction with the company's position. He is no longer an employee of Wargaming."


title: Wargaming (company)

text: On April 4, 2022, Wargaming announced the closure of all operations in Russia and Belarus, stating on their official website that following "strategic review of business operations" they would be separating themselves from Lesta Studio, a former Wargaming Studio based in St. Petersburg, effective March 31, and are in the process of closing their studio in Minsk. The company also noted they expect "substantial losses" because of the decision.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: On 1 November 2017, the World of Warships team organized a fundraiser to support the USS Texas museum that was in severe financial need after the floods caused by Hurricane Harvey. Special bundles with USS Texas battleship were offered to players on NA, EU and SEA servers, and all of the proceeds from this sale were donated to Battleship Texas Foundation. On top of this, USS Texas battleship was offered as a free referral prize for the newcomers invited by veteran players. World of Warships donated $25 to Battleship Texas Foundation for each qualifying referral during this charitable campaign on top of the proceeds from bundle sales. As of 1 December 2019, over $280,000 was raised by World of Warships community for the battleship preservation efforts.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: On 16 November 2019, Wargaming partnered with Muskogee War Memorial Park in Oklahoma to raise money to save the USS Batfish (SS-310) submarine, with the goal of helping the museum reach $150,000 to cover the necessary repairs. To raise money, a charity stream went live on Twitch. Unique patches were made available for purchase in the game with all proceeds from sales going directly to the USS Batfish preservation efforts. This initiative helped raise $45,000.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: On 14 December 2019, Wargaming announced a Save the Children 24-hour charity stream, aiming to raise $25,000 before the clock ran out.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: As part of its simulation initiatives, Wargaming is exploring virtual and augmented reality technologies. In early 2015, the company worked with Google to record and portray a 1941 battle in 360° for the Google Cardboard mobile HMD. This was followed by a series of panoramic tours of WWII tanks, "Virtually Inside the Tanks Retrieved", filmed in co-operation with Google and The Tank Museum in Bovington. Available via the Littlstar VR cinema network, the series currently includes the T-34-76, the M4 Sherman "Fury" from the Brad Pitt movie of the same name, the Type 59, Leopard 1, and the Chieftain. Each video also offers a tour with Wargaming military specialists Richard Cutland and Nicolas Moran.


title: Wargaming (company)

text: To honour Victory Day, Wargaming released the "War Knows No Nation" video. The video rekindles the memories of three veteran World War II tankers, blending live action panorama footage with CG scenes for the very first time. In spring 2016, Wargaming worked with the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and honoured the anniversary of the Battle of Jutland with an augmented reality app: "HMS Caroline" AR Experience. To congratulate Russians on Navy Day, Wargaming created a PortHub augmented reality mobile app that allowed users take snapshots with warships. As part of the 100 Years of Tanks celebration, Wargaming presented the "Virtually inside the First Tanks 360°" video that featured a walkthrough of Bovington's collection of early tanks, enhanced by "World of Tanks" in-game scenes and the free Tank 100 mobile app. Another in its range of 360° videos, "Virtual Inside the Warships", features amongst others.


title: Montell Jordan

text: Montell Du'Sean Barnett Jordan (born December 3, 1968) is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. Best known for his 1995 single "This Is How We Do It", Jordan was the primary male solo artist on Def Jam's Def Soul imprint until leaving the label in 2003.


title: Montell Jordan

text: In 2010, Jordan left the music business to become the worship leader at Victory World Church in Norcross, Georgia.


title: Montell Jordan

text: Montell Jordan was born in South Central Los Angeles to Elijah and Deloris Jordan. Born into a Baptist family, Jordan attended his local church frequently as a child, where his mother and father worked as deacons. Growing up, Jordan played piano for his church as a musician. In the mid-1980s, Montell attended Junipero Serra High School in Gardena, California as well as Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, where he earned a bachelor's degree in communications. He became a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity in the spring of 1989. Jordan graduated in 1991.


title: Montell Jordan

text: After graduating, Jordan started working for Williams Television Time, where he helped make TV infomercials. In an attempt to jump-start his career as a musician, Jordan invited his coworkers to see him perform at a showcase. According to interviews with Jordan, musicians Janet Jackson and Shanice Wilson attended the show. From there he made his first mix-tape and flew out to New York with producer Russell Simmons of Def Jam Records. He signed to Def Jam in 1995, becoming the second R&B artist to sign with the label.


title: Montell Jordan

text: Jordan's first single was the 1995 No. 1 hit "This Is How We Do It," which sampled Slick Rick's earlier Def Jam hit "Children's Story". According to interviews with Jordan, the song is a "reflection of what street life was for a kid who grew up in the neighborhood." The single reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remained there for seven consecutive weeks. Thanks to the enormous success of the single, Jordan's first album went platinum, selling over a million copies.


title: Montell Jordan

text: In 1996, Jordan opened for Boyz II Men in Vancouver. During the performance a stage flare disoriented him, causing him to fall off the seven-foot stage and hit his head. Despite being taken to the hospital, Jordan sustained no injuries. Jordan would later describe the event as a "modern-day miracle" and that he owed his life to Boyz II Men.


title: Montell Jordan

text: Jordan followed up his success with "Somethin' 4 da Honeyz", which peaked at No. 21. Later hits included "Let's Ride" with Master P and Silkk the Shocker and "I Like". He co-wrote, produced and sang back-up on Shae Jones's 1999 album Talk Show. The Jordan single "Get It On Tonite" peaked at No. 4 in the same year.


title: Montell Jordan

text: In addition to crafting his own material, Jordan has written and produced for other artists, including Christina Milian, 98 Degrees, Shae Jones, Deborah Cox ("Nobody's Supposed to Be Here", 1998), Lil' Mo ("Ta Da", 2000), and Sisqó (the number-one hit "Incomplete", 2000). The singer had a comedic supporting role in the film "The Fighting Temptations" as Mr. Johnson, an aggressive convict who is self-conscious about his high-pitched voice. He made a cameo appearance in "The Nutty Professor", and he performed in the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown". In 2000, his song "Unstoppable" was featured exclusively in the video game "NBA Live 2001". He performed the song "Careless Whisper" together with musician Dave Koz during the evening gown competition in Miss Universe 2000, in Nicosia, Cyprus.


title: Montell Jordan

text: In 2003 Jordan left Def Soul, citing artistic differences as the reason for the departure. In recent interviews, Jordan recalls issues he had with his image under Def Soul. In particular, Jordan wished to leave his image as a sex symbol behind and mature artistically. Jordan was marketed as a sex icon since his start at Def Soul, despite having been married to Kristin Hudson before even signing. Whenever he was asked about his relationship status, Jordan would simply respond that he was "married to [his] music." Realizing Def Soul was committed to maintaining Jordan's current image as their prominent R&B artist, Jordan left the label to sign with Koch Records. That same year Jordan released the album "Life After Def" under Koch. He contributed to the album of Croatian singer Nina Badrić in the duet "Ne dam te nikom" ("I'm Not Giving You to Anyone"). Jordan's last release was 2008's "Let It Rain" on the Fontana Records label.


title: Montell Jordan

text: Through 2015 and 2016, Jordan appeared at the halftime shows of various sporting games, as well as on "The Late Late Show with James Corden", performing "This Is How We Do It".


title: Montell Jordan

text: In 2019, during an appearance on the SoulBack R&B Podcast, Jordan confirmed that he has recorded his first R&B album in over a decade and plans to release it this year.


title: Montell Jordan

text: On May 19, 2019, Jordan sang "This Is How We Do It" on the finale of "American Idol", with a minor portion rapped by eliminated contestant Margie Mays, due to a performance of the song by Jake Puliti from earlier in the season in the audition round, which led to one of the memorable moments of the season with Katy Perry doing the worm.


title: Montell Jordan

text: On November 19, 2019, Jordan was a guest on Tamron Hall's talk show for her Throwback week series in which he performed "This Is How We Do It". During the show, he talked about his upcoming album, "The Masterpiece", which would be released on November 29.


title: Montell Jordan

text: In 2022, Jordan competed in season eight of "The Masked Singer" as "Panther". When Jordan was eliminated on "Vegas Night" alongside Jeff Dunham as "Pi-Rat", Nick Cannon stated to the panel that this is the one time that they didn't guess Montell Jordan like they did for the other contestants. In addition, Jordan also sang this show's rendition of "This Is How We Do It".


title: Montell Jordan

text: Jordan is now a born-again Christian and can be seen at Victory World Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives and worships with the church team called Victory World Music. In 2010 Jordan planned to make a comeback album as his foray back into the music industry. However, during a fast at the Victory World Church, Jordan said he was told by God to quit the music industry. He decided to cancel his plans and dedicate his life to his faith.


title: Montell Jordan

text: Jordan created a music collective at the Victory World Church called "Victory World Music." In early 2011, they released a Christian album featuring the song "Shake Heaven", with Beckah Shae.


title: Montell Jordan

text: Jordan married his wife, Kristin, in 1994. They have four children. Montell and Kristin co-authored their first book in 2017: This Is How We Do It! Making Your Marriage A Masterpeace.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise (12 December 1791 – 17 December 1847) was an Austrian archduchess who reigned as Duchess of Parma from 11 April 1814 until her death. She was Napoleon's second wife and as such Empress of the French and Queen of Italy from their marriage on 1 April 1810 until his abdication on 6 April 1814.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: As the eldest child of Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor and Emperor of Austria, and his second wife, Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily, Marie Louise grew up during a period of continuous conflict between Austria and revolutionary France. A series of military defeats at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte had inflicted a heavy human toll on Austria and led Francis to dissolve the Holy Roman Empire. The end of the War of the Fifth Coalition resulted in the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise in 1810, which ushered in a brief period of peace and friendship between Austria and the French Empire. Marie Louise agreed to the marriage despite being raised to despise France. She was adored by Napoleon, who had been eager to marry a member of one of Europe's leading royal houses to cement his relatively young Empire. With Napoleon, she bore a son, styled the King of Rome at birth, later Duke of Reichstadt, who briefly succeeded him as Napoleon II.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Napoleon's fortunes changed dramatically in 1812 after his failed invasion of Russia. The European powers, including Austria, resumed hostilities towards France in the War of the Sixth Coalition, which ended with the abdication of Napoleon and his exile to Elba. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau gave the Duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla to Marie Louise, who ruled the duchies until her death.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise married morganatically twice after Napoleon's death in 1821. Her second husband was Count Adam Albert von Neipperg (married 1821), an equerry she met in 1814. She and Neipperg had three children. After Neipperg's death in 1829, she married Count Charles-René de Bombelles, her chamberlain, in 1834. Marie Louise died in Parma in 1847.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria (who was given the Latin baptismal name of "Maria Ludovica Leopoldina Francisca Theresa Josepha Lucia") was born at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna on 12 December 1791 to Archduke Francis of Austria and his second wife, Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily. She was named after her grandmother, Marie Louise, Holy Roman Empress. Her father became Holy Roman Emperor a year later as Francis II. Marie Louise was a great-granddaughter of Empress Maria Theresa through both her parents, as they were first cousins. She was also a maternal granddaughter of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples, Marie Antoinette's favorite sister.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise's formative years were during a period of conflict between France and her family. She was brought up to detest France and French ideas. Her upbringing was supervised by her French imperial governess Victoire de Folliot de Crenneville. Marie Louise was influenced by her grandmother Maria Carolina, who despised the French Revolution which ultimately caused the death of her sister, Marie Antoinette. Maria Carolina's Kingdom of Naples had also come into direct conflict with French forces led by Napoleon Bonaparte. The War of the Third Coalition brought Austria to the brink of ruin, which increased Marie Louise's resentment towards Napoleon. The Imperial family was forced to flee Vienna in 1805. Marie Louise took refuge in Hungary and later Galicia before returning to Vienna in 1806. Her father relinquished the title of Holy Roman Emperor but remained Emperor of Austria.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: To make her more marriageable, her parents had her tutored in many languages. In addition to her native German, she became fluent in English, French, Italian, Latin, and Spanish.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: In 1807, when Marie Louise was 15, her mother died after suffering a miscarriage. Less than a year later, Emperor Francis married his first cousin Maria Ludovika Beatrix of Austria-Este, who was four years older than Marie Louise. Nonetheless, Maria Ludovika Beatrix took on a maternal role towards her stepdaughter. She was also bitter towards the French, who had deprived her father of the Duchy of Modena.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Another war broke out between France and Austria in 1809, which resulted in defeat for the Austrians again. The Imperial family had to flee Vienna again before the city surrendered on 12 May. Their journey was hampered by bad weather, and they arrived in Buda "wet through, and nearly worn out with fatigue".


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: After escaping an assassination attempt in Vienna while negotiating the Treaty of Schönbrunn on 12 October 1809, Emperor Napoleon decided that he needed an heir to cement his relatively young Empire. He also sought the validation and legitimization of his Empire by marrying a member of one of the leading royal families of Europe. He began proceedings to divorce Joséphine de Beauharnais, who did not bear him a son, and began searching for a new empress. His wish to marry Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, the youngest sister of Tsar Alexander I of Russia, caused alarm in Austria, who were afraid of being sandwiched between two great powers allied with each other. At the persuasion of Prince Metternich, a marriage between Napoleon and Marie Louise was suggested by Emperor Francis to the Count of Narbonne but no official overture was made by the Austrians. Though officials in Paris and Austria were beginning to accept the possibility of the union, Marie Louise was kept uninformed of developments.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Frustrated by the Russians delaying the marriage negotiations, Napoleon rescinded his proposal in late January 1810 and began negotiations to marry Marie Louise with the Austrian ambassador, the Prince of Schwarzenberg. Schwarzenberg signed the marriage contract on 7 February. Marie Louise was informed of the marriage by Metternich. When asked for consent, she replied: "I wish only what my duty commands me to wish."


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise was married by proxy to Napoleon on 11 March 1810 at the Augustinian Church, Vienna. Napoleon was represented by Archduke Charles, the bride's uncle. According to the French ambassador, the marriage "was celebrated with a magnificence that it would be hard to surpass, by the side of which even the brilliant festivities that have preceded it are not to be mentioned". She became Empress of the French and Queen of Italy.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise departed Vienna on 13 March, probably expecting never to return. Upon arriving in France she was placed in the custody of Napoleon's sister, who had her put through a symbolic old ritual. Tradition dictated that a royal bride coming to France must keep nothing of her homeland, especially her clothes. Accordingly, Marie Louise was stripped of her dress, corset, stockings, and chemise, leaving her completely naked. Napoleon's sister then made the nude teenager take a bath. She was then redressed in French bridal clothes. Marie Antoinette had been put through a similar ritual when she arrived in France in 1770. She met Napoleon for the first time on 27 March in Compiègne, remarking to him: "You are much better-looking than your portrait."


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: The civil wedding was held at the on 1 April 1810. The next day, Napoleon and Marie Louise made the journey to Paris in the coronation coach. The Imperial Guard cavalry led the procession, followed by the herald-at-arms and then the carriages. The Marshals of France rode on each side, near the doors of the carriages. The procession arrived at the Tuileries Palace, and the Imperial couple made their way to the Salon Carré chapel (in the Louvre) for the religious wedding ceremony. The ceremony was conducted by Cardinal Joseph Fesch, Grand Almoner of France and Napoleon's uncle. A Bridal March was composed for the occasion by Ferdinando Paer.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Elaborate celebrations continued to be held in May and June 1810. These included a ball, a masque, a sea-battle on the Seine, and a display of fireworks created by Claude-Fortuné Ruggieri, for 4,000 people.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise was an obedient wife and settled in quickly in the French court. She developed a close friendship with her "Première dame d'honneur", the Duchess of Montebello, while most of the daily affairs were handled by her "Dame d'atour" Jeanne Charlotte du Luçay. Napoleon initially remarked that he had "married a womb" to an aide, but their relationship soon grew. He "spared no pains" to please her and claimed at one point to prefer Marie Louise to his first wife Joséphine; while he had loved Joséphine, and though he claimed Joséphine remained his greatest friend even after their amicable divorce, he had not respected her, whereas with Marie Louise, there was "Never a lie, never a debt" — presumably a reference to Joséphine's rumoured extramarital affairs and reputation as a spendthrift. Marie Louise wrote to her father: "I assure you, dear papa, that people have done great injustice to the Emperor. The better one knows him, the better one appreciates and loves him." However, the marriage was not without tension; Napoleon sometimes remarked to aides that Marie Louise was too shy and timid, compared to the outgoing and passionate Josephine, with whom he remained in close contact, upsetting Marie Louise.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: The excitement surrounding the wedding ushered in a period of peace and friendship between France and Austria, who had been largely at war for the last two decades. The people of Vienna, who hated Napoleon only months before, were suddenly in full praise of the French Emperor. Flattering letters were sent between Napoleon and Emperor Francis, Empress Maria Ludovika Beatrix and Archduke Charles during the wedding festivities.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: During public occasions, Marie Louise spoke little due to reserve and timidity, which some observers mistook for haughtiness. She was regarded as a virtuous woman and never interfered in politics. Privately, she was polite and gentle.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Napoleon arranged for Marie Louise to participate in some carefully selected charity assignments, most notably the Société de Charité Maternelle, for which he made her Honorary President.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise became pregnant by July 1810 and gave birth to a son on 20 March 1811. The boy, Napoléon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte, was given the title "King of Rome", in accordance with the practice where the heir apparent to the Holy Roman Empire was called the King of the Romans. Napoleon was delighted that his wife survived the ordeal and said: "I had rather never have any more children than see her suffer so much again."


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise was devoted to her son; she had him brought to her every morning and visited him in his apartment in the course of the day.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: In May 1812, a month before the French invasion of Russia, Marie Louise accompanied Napoleon to Dresden, where she met her father and stepmother. Emperor Francis told Napoleon he could count on Austria for the "triumph of the common cause", a reference to the impending war. A minor rivalry began to develop between Marie Louise and the Empress of Austria, who was jealous at being upstaged in appearance by her stepdaughter. It was also in Dresden where she met Count Adam Albert von Neipperg for the first time. Napoleon left Dresden on 29 May to take charge of his army.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise then travelled to Prague, where she spent a few weeks with the Austrian Imperial family, before returning to Saint Cloud on 18 July. She kept in touch with Napoleon throughout the war. The invasion of Russia ended disastrously for France. More than half of the "Grande Armée" was destroyed by the Russian Winter and guerrilla attacks. After the failed Malet coup of October 1812, Napoleon hastened his return to France and reunited with his wife on the night of 18 December.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: The weakened French position triggered the Sixth Coalition. Prussia and the United Kingdom joined Russia in declaring war on France, but Austria stayed out due to relations between the Imperial families. On 30 March, Marie Louise was appointed Regent as Napoleon set off for battle in Germany. The regency was only "de jure", as all decisions were still taken by Napoleon and implemented by his most senior officials, including Lebrun, Joseph Bonaparte, Talleyrand and Savary. Marie Louise tried unsuccessfully to get her father to ally with France. Austria too joined the opposition to France. She maintained a correspondence with Napoleon, informing him of increasing demands for peace in Paris and the provinces. Napoleon was decisively defeated in Leipzig on 19 October and returned to Saint Cloud on 9 November.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: On 23 January 1814, Marie Louise was appointed Regent for the second time. On 25 January, at 03:00 in the morning, Napoleon embraced Marie Louise and his son for the last time. He left to lead a hastily formed army to stave off the Allied invasion from the north.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: As the Allies neared Paris, Marie Louise was reluctant to leave. She felt that as the daughter of the sovereign of Austria, one of the allied members, she would be treated with respect by Allied forces, with the possibility of her son succeeding the throne should Napoleon be deposed. She was also afraid that her departure would strengthen the royalist supporters of the Bourbons. Marie Louise was finally persuaded to leave by Henri Clarke, who received the order from Napoleon: "I would prefer to know that they [the Empress and the King of Rome] are both at the bottom of the Seine rather than in the hands of the foreigners." On 29 March, the court left Paris. The Allies entered the city the following day.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise and the court moved to Blois, which was safe from the Allies. She did not expect her father to dethrone Napoleon and deprive her son of the crown of France. On 3 April, the Senate, at the instigation of Talleyrand, announced the deposition of the Emperor. Marie Louise was unaware of this until 7 April, and was astonished to discover the turn of events. She wanted to return to Paris, but was dissuaded from doing so by physician Jean-Nicolas Corvisart and the Duchess of Montebello.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Napoleon abdicated the throne on 11 April 1814 in Fontainebleau. The Treaty of Fontainebleau exiled him to Elba, allowed Marie Louise to retain her imperial rank and style and made her ruler of the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, with her son as heir. This arrangement was later revised at the Congress of Vienna.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise was strongly dissuaded from rejoining her husband by her advisors, who fed her accounts that Napoleon was distraught with grief over the death of Joséphine. On 16 April, her father arrived at Blois to meet her. At the advice of Emperor Francis, Marie Louise departed Rambouillet with her son for Vienna on 23 April. At Vienna, she stayed at Schönbrunn, where she received frequent visits from her sisters, but rarely from her father and stepmother. She met her grandmother, Maria Carolina, who disapproved of her deserting her husband. Distressed at being seen as a heartless wife and indifferent mother, she wrote on 9 August 1814: "I am in a very unhappy and critical position; I must be very prudent in my conduct. There are moments when that thought so distracts me that I think that the best thing I could do would be to die."


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: In the summer of 1814, Emperor Francis sent Count Adam Albert von Neipperg to accompany Marie Louise to the spa town of Aix-les-Bains to prevent her from joining Napoleon on Elba. Neipperg was a confidant of Metternich and an enemy of Napoleon. Marie Louise fell in love with Neipperg. They became lovers. He became her chamberlain, and her advocate at the Congress of Vienna. News of the relationship was not received well by the French and the Austrian public.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: When Napoleon escaped in March 1815 and reinstated his rule, the Allies once again declared war. Marie Louise was asked by her stepmother to join in the processions to pray for the success of the Austrian armies but rejected the insulting invitation. She passed a message to Napoleon's private secretary, Claude François de Méneval, who was about to return to France: "I hope he will understand the misery of my position ... I shall never assent to a divorce, but I flatter myself that he will not oppose an amicable separation, and that he will not bear any ill feeling towards me ... This separation has become imperative; it will in no way affect the feelings of esteem and gratitude that I preserve." Napoleon was defeated for the last time at the Battle of Waterloo and was exiled to Saint Helena from October 1815. Napoleon made no further attempt to contact her personally.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: The Congress of Vienna recognised Marie Louise as ruler of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, but prevented her from bringing her son to Italy. It also made her Duchess of Parma for her life only, as the Allies did not want a descendant of Napoleon to have a hereditary claim over Parma. After her death, the duchy was to revert to the Bourbons.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise departed for Parma on 7 March 1816, accompanied by Neipperg. She entered the duchy on 18 April. She wrote to her father: "People welcomed me with such enthusiasm that I had tears in my eyes." She largely left the running of day-to-day affairs to Neipperg, who received instructions from Metternich. In December 1816, Marie Louise removed the incumbent Grand Chamberlain (prime minister) and installed Neipperg.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Napoleon died on 5 May 1821. On 8 August, Marie Louise married Neipperg morganatically. Neipperg died of heart problems on 22 February 1829, devastating Marie Louise. She was banned by Austria from mourning in public. To replace Neipperg, Austria appointed Josef von Werklein as Grand Chamberlain.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise's son by Napoleon, then known as "Franz", was given the title "Duke of Reichstadt" in 1818. Franz lived at the Austrian court, where he was shown great affection by his grandfather, but was constantly undermined by Austrian ministers and nationalists, who did their best to sideline him to become an irrelevance. There were fears that he might be smuggled over to France to regain the throne, as he could be easily disguised as a girl.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Franz grew resentful at his Austrian relatives and his mother for their lack of support, and began identifying as Napoleon II and surrounding himself with French courtiers. The relationship with his mother broke down to such an extent that he once remarked "If Josephine had been my mother, my father would not have been buried at Saint Helena, and I should not be at Vienna. My mother is kind but weak; she was not the wife my father deserved; Josephine was." However, before anything could become of Napoleon II, he died at the age of 21 in Vienna in 1832, after suffering from tuberculosis.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: 1831 saw the outbreak of the Carbonari-led uprisings in Italy. In Parma, protesters gathered in the streets to denounce Grand Chamberlain Werklein. Marie Louise did not know what to do and wanted to leave the city, but was prevented from doing so by the protesters, who saw her as someone who would listen to their demands. She managed to leave Parma between 14 and 15 February, and the rebels formed a provisional government, led by Count Filippo Luigi Linati. At Piacenza, she wrote to her father, asking him to replace Werklein. Francis sent in Austrian troops, which crushed the rebellion. To avoid further turmoil, Marie Louise granted amnesty to the dissidents on 29 September.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: To replace Werklein, in 1833 Metternich sent Charles-René de Bombelles, a French émigré nobleman who had served in the Austrian army against Napoleon. Bombelles was an excellent Grand Chamberlain, who thoroughly reformed the finances of the duchy. A middle-aged widower, he also developed a close personal relationship with Marie Louise. Six months after his arrival, on 17 February 1834, she married him, again morganatically.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Marie Louise fell ill on 9 December 1847. Her condition worsened for the next few days. On 17 December, she passed out after vomiting and never woke up again. She died in the evening. The cause of death was determined to be pleurisy.


title: Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

text: Her arms as Duchess of Parma are used as the logo of the perfume company Acqua di Parma. This is in homage to the role she played in helping to develop the perfume and glass industry of Parma.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: Chowder is an American animated television series created by C. H. Greenblatt that premiered on Cartoon Network on November 2, 2007. The series follows an aspiring young boy named Chowder and his day-to-day adventures as an apprentice in Chef Mung Daal's catering company. Although he means well, Chowder often finds himself in predicaments due to his perpetual appetite and his nature as a scatterbrain. Chowder's guidance in his goal to become a master chef is influenced by Mung's wife, Truffles; Mung's assistant, Shnitzel; Mung's rival, Endive; Endive's apprentice, who has a perpetual crush on Chowder, Panini; as well as other side characters.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: "Chowder" ran for three seasons with a total of 49 episodes. It received mostly positive reviews, as well as one Primetime Emmy Award win, six Annie Award nominations, and two additional Emmy Award nominations during its run. The series finale, "Chowder Grows Up", aired on August 7, 2010.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: The series plot revolves around the titular character Chowder, an aspiring young cook in Chef Mung Daal's catering company. Though he is lighthearted and carefree, Chowder's actions habitually land him in circumstances out of his control, partly due to his hunger and absent-mindedness. His caregivers, Mung and Truffles Daal, as well as Shnitzel, a rock monster who works for Mung, and Kimchi, Chowder's gaseous pet, try to aid Chowder in his ambitions to become a great chef, but they frequently find themselves undermined by the calamitous antics that ensue. Chowder is also undermined by Panini, a girl who has an unrequited love for Chowder, going so far as to say that he is her boyfriend despite the pair not dating.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: A total of 49 episodes were aired in the series. Season 1, which consists of 20 episodes, started with the series premiere, entitled "Burple Nurples/Shnitzel Makes a Deposit", and ended with the special "The Apprentice Games". Season 2 also contains 20 episodes, debuting with "The Arborians/The Garage Sale", and ending with "A Faire to Remember/Tofu-Town Showdown". Season 3 consists of only nine episodes, premiering with "Hands on a Big Mixer/The Blast Raz", and ending with the series finale, entitled "Chowder Grows Up".


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: During his time working on Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants", Greenblatt had been sketching various characters for his own animation series concept. Greenblatt originally based the premise on the idea of the sorcerer's apprentice style of story, such as "The Sword in the Stone". The plot devices were modified so that the story revolves around a master chef who teaches his young apprentice how to cook. Chowder himself was developed with no specific species in mind, but rather with the intentions of invoking the image of a child's soft squeeze toy. Some of the inspiration comes from Dr. Seuss, with other inspiration from Saturday morning cartoons.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: Greenblatt pitched the concept to Cartoon Network in the mid-2000s when he began working as a writer and storyboard artist for "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy", and two years later the series was approved with another year for production before the pilot episode aired. Greenblatt estimates he spent about seven years working on "Chowder" before the show made it to air in 2007.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: Episodes are produced in seasons which consist of twenty 24-minute episodes. Each episode is produced with a 30-second puppet sequence that is meant to run over the ending credits. Episodes can be purchased from the iTunes Store in the United States which are delivered with the sequences as are episodes which are available on Cartoon Network's VOD website also within the United States.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: One of the unusual design features of the show is the patterns used on the clothing or players. The patterns are developed as a full-screen image and then sent to the production house, where the characters are modified to fill the patterns in over the character clothing. Using this technique, when a character moves, their patterns do not follow, but display as a "static" background. A similar technique was used in the "Monkey Island" video game series (particularly for the character Stan), the Nickelodeon series "The Off-Beats", and the "Mr. Bean" animated series.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: The show is also known for the very wide variety of media used in various episodes. These include animation using watercolors and ink-and-paint in addition to the cartoon's classic pattern style. It also uses stop motion animation with real food, action figures, and clay; live-action scenes with the voice actors of the show and puppets; both marionette and hand-controlled. This was also sometimes used in "Courage the Cowardly Dog". It boasts one of the most diverse varieties of mediums used in any single series.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: "Chowder" was canceled by Cartoon Network in August 2009, as the network felt the show did not fit its new demographic of older boys, favoring shows such as the live-action "Destroy, Build, Destroy" instead. On his blog, C. H. Greenblatt expressed relief about having his schedule freed up by the cancellation, saying: "I didn't really think there'd be this many upsides to having a show officially canceled by a network, but I'm feeling happier than I've been in a long time. Since we've only got post-production, my schedule finally eases up. I haven't had a break like this in a long, long time... "Chowder" has opened up a lot of awesome possibilities for me, and creatively I'm feeling more inspired than ever."


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: The entire series has been released in ten Region 3 fullscreen DVD volumes in Thailand from MVD Company Limited. Every episode of Chowder is also available on the iTunes Store.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: "Chowder" received mostly positive reviews. Barry Garron of "The Hollywood Reporter" thought that the show would appeal to children and adults alike, using exotic artwork, unusual settings, and a zany cast of characters. On Toon Zone, Ed Liu expands on the animation and crazy antics of the characters, pointing that "the humor is kid-friendly without being juvenile" and praising it for getting laughs, "without resorting to an excess of toilet humor, even if Chowder's pet happens to be a sentient fart cloud." Aaron H. Bynum on "Animation Insider" wrote, "Featuring brightly colored environments, stylishly matted/fixed background artwork and humorously designed characters with unique personalities to boot, "Chowder" is one of the network's largest creative accomplishments in recent years."


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: In 2019, American rapper Lil Nas X released a song entitled "Panini", which was named after the "Chowder" character of the same name, and later made a music video for the remix of his song featuring characters from "Chowder". Although Greenblatt was not involved in the production of the music video, he did praise the video on his Tumblr blog.


title: Chowder (TV series)

text: In 2019, over 200 animators collaborated and reanimated the 22 minute Season 2 special "Hey Hey, it's Knishmas" in their own styles. It was dedicated to CH Greenblatt and everyone who worked on the original show. The video has over 1 million views as of 2022.


title: Michael Chabon

text: born May 24, 1963) is an American novelist, screenwriter, columnist, and short story writer. Born in Washington, DC, he spent a year studying at Carnegie Mellon University before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, graduating in 1984. He subsequently received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon's first novel, "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" (1988), was published when he was 25. He followed it with "Wonder Boys" (1995) and two short-story collections. In 2000, he published "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay", a novel that John Leonard would later call Chabon's magnum opus. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001.


title: Michael Chabon

text: His novel "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", an alternate history mystery novel, was published in 2007 and won the Hugo, Sidewise, Nebula and Ignotus awards; his serialized novel "Gentlemen of the Road" appeared in book form in the fall of the same year. In 2012, Chabon published "Telegraph Avenue", billed as "a twenty-first century "Middlemarch"," concerning the tangled lives of two families in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004. He followed "Telegraph Avenue" in November 2016 with his latest novel, "", a fictionalized memoir of his maternal grandfather, based on his deathbed confessions under the influence of powerful painkillers in Chabon's mother's California home in 1989.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon's work is characterized by complex language, and the frequent use of metaphor along with recurring themes such as nostalgia, divorce, abandonment, fatherhood, and most notably issues of Jewish identity. He often includes gay, bisexual, and Jewish characters in his work. Since the late 1990s, he has written in increasingly diverse styles for varied outlets; he is a notable defender of the merits of genre fiction and plot-driven fiction, and, along with novels, has published screenplays, children's books, comics, and newspaper serials.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon (pronounced, in his words, "Shea as in Shea Stadium, Bon as in Bon Jovi", i.e., ) was born in Washington, DC to a Jewish family. His parents are Robert Chabon, a physician and lawyer, and Sharon Chabon, a lawyer. Chabon said he knew he wanted to be a writer when, at the age of ten, he wrote his first short story for a class assignment. When the story received an A, he recalls, "I thought to myself, 'That's it. That's what I want to do. I can do this.' And I never had any second thoughts or doubts." Referring to popular culture, he wrote of being raised "on a hearty diet of crap". His parents divorced when he was 11, and he grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Columbia, Maryland. Columbia, where he lived nine months of the year with his mother, was "a progressive planned living community in which racial, economic, and religious diversity were actively fostered." He has written of his mother's marijuana use, recalling her "sometime around 1977 or so, sitting in the front seat of her friend Kathy's car, passing a little metal pipe back and forth before we went in to see a movie." He grew up hearing Yiddish spoken by his mother's parents and siblings.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon attended Carnegie Mellon University for a year before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied under Chuck Kinder and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1984. He then went to graduate school at the University of California, Irvine, where he received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon's first novel, "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh", was written as his UC Irvine master's thesis. Without telling Chabon, his professor, Donald Heiney (better known by his pen name, MacDonald Harris), sent it to a literary agent, who got the author an impressive $155,000 advance on the novel, though most first-time novelists receive advances under $7,500. "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" appeared in 1988 and was a bestseller, instantly catapulting Chabon to literary celebrity. Among his major literary influences in this period were Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Raymond Chandler, John Updike, Philip Roth and F. Scott Fitzgerald. As he remarked in 2010, "I just copied the writers whose voices I was responding to, and I think that's probably the best way to learn."


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon was ambivalent about his newfound fame. He turned down offers to appear in a Gap ad and to be featured as one of "People"s "50 Most Beautiful People." He later said of the "People" offer, "I don't give a shit [about it] ... I only take pride in things I've actually done myself. To be praised for something like that is just weird. It just felt like somebody calling and saying, 'We want to put you in a magazine because the weather's so nice where you live.' "


title: Michael Chabon

text: In 2001, Chabon reflected on the success of his first novel by saying that while "the upside was that I was published and I got a readership, ... [the] downside ... was that, emotionally, this stuff started happening and I was still like, 'Wait a minute, is my thesis done yet?' It took me a few years to catch up." In 1991, he published "A Model World", a collection of short stories, many of which were previously published in "The New Yorker".


title: Michael Chabon

text: After the success of "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh", Chabon spent five years working on a second novel, "Fountain City", a "highly ambitious opus ... about an architect building a perfect baseball park in Florida." It ballooned to 1,500 pages, with no end in sight. The process was frustrating for Chabon, who, in his words, "never felt like I was conceptually on steady ground."


title: Michael Chabon

text: At one point, he submitted a 672-page draft to his agent and editor, who disliked the work. Chabon had problems dropping the novel, though. "It was really scary," he said later. "I'd already signed a contract and been paid all this money. And then I'd gotten a divorce and half the money was already with my ex-wife. My instincts were telling me, 'This book is fucked. Just drop it.' But I didn't, because I thought, 'What if I have to give the money back?' " "I used to go down to my office and fantasize about all the books I could write instead." Chabon has confessed to being "careless and sloppy" when it came to his novels' plots, saying how he "again and again falls back on the same basic story."


title: Michael Chabon

text: When he finally decided to abandon "Fountain City", Chabon recalls staring at his blank computer for hours before suddenly picturing "a straitlaced, troubled young man with a tendency toward melodrama, trying to end it all." He began writing, and within a couple of days had written 50 pages of what became his second novel, "Wonder Boys". Chabon drew on his experiences with "Fountain City" for the character of Grady Tripp, a frustrated novelist who has spent years working on an immense fourth novel. He wrote "Wonder Boys" in a dizzy seven-month streak, without telling his agent or publisher he'd abandoned "Fountain City". The book, published in 1995, was a commercial and critical success.


title: Michael Chabon

text: In late 2010, "An annotated, four-chapter fragment" from the unfinished 1,500 page "Fountain City" manuscript, "complete with cautionary introduction and postscript" written by Chabon, was included in "McSweeney's 36".


title: Michael Chabon

text: Among the supporters of "Wonder Boys" was "The Washington Post" critic Jonathan Yardley; however, despite declaring Chabon "the young star of American letters," Yardley argued that, in his works to that point, Chabon had been preoccupied "with fictional explorations of his own ... It is time for him to move on, to break away from the first person and explore larger worlds." Chabon later said that he took Yardley's criticism to heart, explaining, "It chimed with my own thoughts. I had bigger ambitions." In 1999 he published his second collection of short stories, "Werewolves in Their Youth", which included his first published foray into genre fiction, the grim horror story "In the Black Mill."


title: Michael Chabon

text: Shortly after completing "Wonder Boys", Chabon discovered a box of comic books from his childhood; a reawakened interest in comics, coupled with memories of the "lore" his Brooklyn-born father had told him about "the middle years of the twentieth century in America. ...the radio shows, politicians, movies, music, and athletes, and so forth, of that era," inspired him to begin work on a new novel. In 2000, he published "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay", an epic historical novel that charts 16 years in the lives of Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier, two Jewish cousins who create a wildly popular series of comic books in the early 1940s, the years leading up to the entry of the U.S. into World War II. The novel received "nearly unanimous praise" and became a "New York Times" Best Seller, eventually winning the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Chabon reflected that, in writing "Kavalier & Clay", "I discovered strengths I had hoped that I possessed—the ability to pull off multiple points of view, historical settings, the passage of years—but which had never been tested before."


title: Michael Chabon

text: In 2002, Chabon published "Summerland", a fantasy novel written for younger readers that received mixed reviews but sold extremely well, and won the 2003 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Two years later, he published "The Final Solution", a novella about an investigation led by an unknown old man, whom the reader can guess to be Sherlock Holmes, during the final years of World War II. His Dark Horse Comics project "The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist", a quarterly anthology series that was published from 2004 to 2006, purported to cull stories from an involved, fictitious 60-year history of the Escapist character created by the protagonists of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay". It was awarded the 2005 Eisner Award for Best Anthology and a pair of Harvey Awards for Best Anthology and Best New Series.


title: Michael Chabon

text: In late 2006, Chabon completed work on "Gentlemen of the Road", a 15-part serialized novel that ran in "The New York Times Magazine" from January 28 to May 6, 2007. The serial (which at one point had the working title "Jews with Swords") was described by Chabon as "a swashbuckling adventure story set around the year 1000." Just before "Gentlemen of the Road" completed its run, the author published his next novel, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", which he had worked on since February 2002. A hard-boiled detective story that imagines an alternate history in which Israel collapsed in 1948 and European Jews settled in Alaska, the novel was released on May 1, 2007 to enthusiastic reviews, and spent six weeks on the "New York Times" Best Seller list. The novel also won the 2008 Hugo Award.


title: Michael Chabon

text: In May 2007, Chabon said that he was working on a young-adult novel with "some fantastic content." A month later, the author said he had put plans for the young-adult book on hold, and instead had signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins.


title: Michael Chabon

text: The first, a book-length work of non-fiction called "Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son", was published in spring 2009 (2010 in Europe); the work discusses "being a man in all its complexity—a son, a father, a husband." The collection was nominated for a 2010 Northern California Book Award in the Creative Nonfiction category. This was Chabon's second published collection of essays and non-fiction. McSweeney's published "Maps and Legends", a collection of Chabon's literary essays, on May 1, 2008. Proceeds from the book benefited 826 National. Also in 2008, Chabon received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, presented annually by the Tulsa (Oklahoma) Library Trust.


title: Michael Chabon

text: During a 2007 interview with the "Washington Post", Chabon discussed his second book under the contract, saying, "I would like it to be set in the present day and feel right now the urge to do something more mainstream than my recent work has been." During a Q&A session in January 2009, Chabon added that he was writing a "naturalistic" novel about two families in Berkeley. In a March 2010 interview with the "Guardian" newspaper, Chabon added that "So far there's no overtly genre content: it's set in the present day and has no alternate reality or anything like that."


title: Michael Chabon

text: "Telegraph Avenue", adapted from an idea for a TV series pilot that Chabon was asked to write in 1999, is a social novel set on the borders between Oakland and Berkeley in the summer of 2004 that sees a "large cast of characters grapple with infidelity, fatherhood, crooked politicians, racism, nostalgia and buried secrets." Chabon said upon publication in an interview with the "San Francisco Chronicle" that the novel concerns "the possibility and impossibility of creating shared community spaces that attempt to transcend the limits imposed on us by our backgrounds, heritage and history." Five years in gestation, "Telegraph Avenue" had a difficult birth, Chabon telling the "Guardian" newspaper, "I got two years into the novel and got completely stymied and felt like it was an utter flop... I had to start all over again, keeping the characters but reinventing the story completely and leaving behind almost every element." After starting out with literary realism with his first two novels and moving into genre-fiction experiments from "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" onward, Chabon feels that "Telegraph Avenue" is a significant "unification" of his earlier and later styles, declaring in an interview, "I could do whatever I wanted to do in this book and it would be OK even if it verged on crime fiction, even if it verged on magic realism, even if it verged on martial arts fiction... I was open to all of that and yet I didn't have to repudiate or steer away from the naturalistic story about two families living their everyday lives and coping with pregnancy and birth and adultery and business failure and all the issues that might go into making a novel written in the genre of mainstream quote-unquote realistic fiction, that that was another genre for me now and I felt free to mix them all in a sense." The novel has been optioned by film producer Scott Rudin (who previously optioned and produced "Wonder Boys"), and Cameron Crowe is adapting the novel into a screenplay, according to Chabon.


title: Michael Chabon

text: In a public lecture and reading of the novel in Oakland, California, Chabon listed creative influences as broad as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Altman, and William Faulkner.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon's latest novel, "Moonglow", was published November 22, 2016. The novel is a quasi-metafictional memoir, based upon the deathbed confessions of Chabon's grandfather in the late 1980s.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon followed-up "Moonglow" in summer 2017 with the edited collection "Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation", a non-fiction collection of essays by writers concerning the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, featuring contributions from writers including Dave Eggers, Colum McCann, and Geraldine Brooks. Chabon co-edited the volume with Ayelet Waldman, and they both contributed essays to the collection. Chabon had previously weighed in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2010, having written an op-ed piece for the "New York Times" in June 2010 in which he noted the role of exceptionalism in Jewish identity, in relation to the "blockheadedness" of Israel's botching of the Gaza flotilla raid and the explanations that followed.


title: Michael Chabon

text: "Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces" was published in May 2018. "Pops" is a short non-fiction memoir/essay collection, the essays thematically linked by the rewards and challenges of various aspects of fatherhood and family.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon's next non-fiction book, "Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros", was published in January 2019. This volume is a collections of introductions, afterwords, and liner notes that Chabon has contributed over the years to various books and other projects, also exploring Chabon's own literary influences and ideas about writing and reading. The book serves as a fundraiser for MacDowell, to which Chabon is contributing all royalties.


title: Michael Chabon

text: In an interview with the American Booksellers Association promoting "Moonglow" in November 2016, Chabon stated that his next fiction project would be "...a long overdue follow-up — but not a sequel — to "Summerland", my book for a somewhat younger readership. It’s something I’ve been trying to get around to for a long time."


title: Michael Chabon

text: Despite his success, Chabon continues to perceive himself as a "failure," noting that "anyone who has ever received a bad review knows how it outlasts, by decades, the memory of a favorable word."


title: Michael Chabon

text: In 2014, Amazon.com, a leading book distributor, was in a dispute with Hachette, a publisher. Hundreds of authors, Chabon included, condemned Amazon in an open letter because Amazon stopped taking pre-orders for books published by Hachette.


title: Michael Chabon

text: After the publication of "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh", Chabon was mistakenly featured in a "Newsweek" article on up-and-coming gay writers ("Pittsburgh"s protagonist has liaisons with people of both sexes). "The New York Times" later reported that "in some ways, [Chabon] was happy" for the magazine's error, and quoted him as saying, "I feel very lucky about all of that. It really opened up a new readership to me, and a very loyal one." In a 2002 interview, Chabon added, "If "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" is about anything in terms of human sexuality and identity, it's that people can't be put into categories all that easily." In "On "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh"," an essay he wrote for the "New York Review of Books" in 2005, Chabon remarked on the autobiographical events that helped inspire his first novel: "I had slept with one man whom I loved, and learned to love another man so much that it would never have occurred to me to want to sleep with him."


title: Michael Chabon

text: In 1987, Chabon married the poet Lollie Groth. According to Chabon, the popularity of "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" had adverse effects; he later explained, "I was married at the time to someone else who was also a struggling writer, and the success created a gross imbalance in our careers, which was problematic." He and Groth divorced in 1991.


title: Michael Chabon

text: He married the Israeli-born writer Ayelet Waldman in 1993. They live together in Berkeley, California, with their four children. Chabon has said that the "creative free-flow" he has with Waldman inspired the relationship between Sammy Clay and Rosa Saks toward the end of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay", and in 2007, "Entertainment Weekly" declared the couple "a famous—and famously in love—writing pair, like Nick and Nora Charles with word processors and not so much booze."


title: Michael Chabon

text: In a 2012 interview with Guy Raz of "Weekend All Things Considered", Chabon said that he writes from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. each day, Sunday through Thursday. He tries to write 1,000 words a day. Commenting on the rigidity of his routine, Chabon said, "There have been plenty of self-destructive rebel-angel novelists over the years, but writing is about getting your work done and getting your work done every day. If you want to write novels, they take a long time, and they're big, and they have a lot of words in them... The best environment, at least for me, is a very stable, structured kind of life."


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon was a vocal endorser of Barack Obama during his 2008 election campaign, and wrote an enthusiastic opinion piece on Obama for the "New York Review of Books", titled "Obama & the Conquest of Denver", in October 2008. Subsequently, Chabon included a brief, fictionalized 'cameo' by Obama in his 2012 novel "Telegraph Avenue".


title: Michael Chabon

text: Since 2016, Chabon has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, both during his campaign for the presidency (signing a petition with over 400 other writers against his candidacy in May 2016), and during his administration. During an interview with "The Guardian" before Trump's inauguration in January 2017, Chabon remarked of the incoming president, "I really have no idea what to expect. He’s so unpredictable. He’s so mercurial. You know, I would be no more surprised if he stood up there and declared amnesty for all illegal immigrants to the United States than if he said he was going to take them all out to be shot. He’s like a random impulse generator." In a 2017 radio interview, Chabon spoke of Trump: "Every morning I wake up and in the seconds before I turn my phone on to see what the latest news is, I have this boundless sense of optimism and hope that this is the day that he’s going to have a massive stroke, and, you know, be carted out of the White House on a gurney."


title: Michael Chabon

text: In a 2002 essay, Chabon decried the state of modern short fiction (including his own), saying that, with rare exceptions, it consisted solely of "the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story." In an apparent reaction against these "plotless [stories] sparkling with epiphanic dew," Chabon's post-2000 work has been marked by an increased interest in genre fiction and plot. While "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" was, like "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" and "Wonder Boys", an essentially realistic, contemporary novel (whose plot happened to revolve around comic-book superheroes), Chabon's subsequent works—such as "The Final Solution", his dabbling with comic-book writing, and the "swashbuckling adventure" of "Gentlemen of the Road"—have been almost exclusively devoted to mixing aspects of genre and literary fiction. Perhaps the most notable example of this is "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", which won five genre awards, including the Hugo Award and Nebula Award. Chabon seeks to "annihilate" not the genres themselves, but the bias against certain genres of fiction such as fantasy, science fiction and romance.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon's forays into genre fiction have met with mixed critical reaction. One science fiction short story by Chabon, "The Martian Agent", was described by a reviewer as "enough to send readers back into the cold but reliable arms of "The New Yorker"." Another critic wrote of the same story that it was "richly plotted, action-packed," and that "Chabon skilfully elaborates his world and draws not just on the steampunk worlds of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Michael Moorcock, but on alternate histories by brilliant science fiction mavericks such as Avram Davidson and Howard Waldrop. The imperial politics are craftily resonant and the story keeps us hanging on." While "The Village Voice" called "The Final Solution" "an ingenious, fully imagined work, an expert piece of literary ventriloquism, and a mash note to the beloved boys' tales of Chabon's youth," "The Boston Globe" wrote, "[T]he genre of the comic book is an anemic vein for novelists to mine, lest they squander their brilliance." "The New York Times" states that the detective story, "a genre that is by its nature so constrained, so untransgressive, seems unlikely to appeal to the real writer," but adds that "... Chabon makes good on his claim: a successful detective story need not be lacking in literary merit."


title: Michael Chabon

text: In 2005, Chabon argued against the idea that genre fiction and entertaining fiction should not appeal to "the real writer," saying that the common perception is that "Entertainment ... means junk... [But] maybe the reason for the junkiness of so much of what pretends to entertain us is that we have accepted—indeed, we have helped to articulate—such a narrow, debased concept of entertainment... I'd like to believe that, because I read for entertainment, and I write to entertain. Period."


title: Michael Chabon

text: One of the more positive responses to Chabon's brand of "trickster literature" appeared in "Time" magazine, whose Lev Grossman wrote that "This is literature in mid-transformation... [T]he highbrow and the lowbrow, once kept chastely separate, are now hooking up, [and] you can almost see the future of literature coming." Grossman classed Chabon with a movement of authors similarly eager to blend literary and popular writing, including Jonathan Lethem (with whom Chabon is friends), Margaret Atwood, and Susanna Clarke.


title: Michael Chabon

text: On the other hand, in "Slate" in 2007, Ruth Franklin said, "Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it."


title: Michael Chabon

text: For some of his own genre work, Chabon has forged an unusual horror/fantasy fiction persona under the name of August Van Zorn. More elaborately developed than a pseudonym, August Van Zorn is purported to be a pen name for one Albert Vetch (1899–1963). In Chabon's 1995 novel "Wonder Boys", narrator Grady Tripp writes that he grew up in the same hotel as Vetch, who worked as an English professor at the (nonexistent) Coxley College and wrote hundreds of pulp stories that were "in the gothic mode, after the manner of Lovecraft ... but written in a dry, ironic, at times almost whimsical idiom." A horror-themed short story titled "In the Black Mill" was published in "Playboy" in June 1997 and reprinted in Chabon's 1999 story collection "Werewolves in Their Youth", and was attributed to Van Zorn.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon has created a comprehensive bibliography for Van Zorn, along with an equally fictional literary scholar devoted to his oeuvre named Leon Chaim Bach. Bach's now-defunct website (which existed under the auspices of Chabon's) declared Van Zorn to be, "without question, the greatest unknown horror writer of the twentieth century," and mentioned that Bach had once edited a collection of short stories by Van Zorn titled "The Abominations of Plunkettsburg". (The name "Leon Chaim Bach" is an anagram of "Michael Chabon," as is "Malachi B. Cohen," the name of a fictional comics expert who wrote occasional essays about the Escapist for the character's Dark Horse Comic series.) In 2004, Chabon established the August Van Zorn Prize, "awarded to the short story that most faithfully and disturbingly embodies the tradition of the weird short story as practiced by Edgar Allan Poe and his literary descendants, among them August Van Zorn." The first recipient of the prize was Jason Roberts, whose winning story, "7C," was then included in "McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories", edited by Chabon.


title: Michael Chabon

text: A scene in the film adaptation of Chabon's novel "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" shows two characters in a bookstore stocking August Van Zorn books.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon has provided several subtle hints throughout his work that the stories he tells take place in a shared fictional universe. One recurring character, who is mentioned in three of Chabon's books but never actually appears, is Eli Drinkwater, a fictional catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates who died abruptly after crashing his car on Mt. Nebo Road. The most detailed exposition of Drinkwater's life appears in Chabon's 1990 short story "Smoke," which is set at Drinkwater's funeral, and refers to him as "a scholarly catcher, a redoubtable batsman, and a kind, affectionate person." Drinkwater was again referred to (though not by name) in Chabon's 1995 novel "Wonder Boys", in which narrator Grady Tripp explains that his sportswriter friend Happy Blackmore was hired "to ghost the autobiography of a catcher, a rising star who played for Pittsburgh and hit the sort of home runs that linger in the memory for years."


title: Michael Chabon

text: Tripp explains that Blackmore turned in an inadequate draft, his book contract was cancelled, and the catcher died shortly afterwards, "leaving nothing in Happy's notorious 'files' but the fragments and scribblings of a ghost." In Chabon's children's book "Summerland" (2002), it is suggested that Blackmore was eventually able to find a publisher for the biography; the character Jennifer T. mentions that she has read a book called "Eli Drinkwater: A Life in Baseball", written by Happy Blackmore. Drinkwater's name may have been selected in homage to contemporary author John Crowley, whom Chabon is on the record as admiring. Crowley's novel "Little, Big" featured a main character named Alice Drinkwater.


title: Michael Chabon

text: There are also instances in which character surnames reappear from story to story. Cleveland Arning, a character in Chabon's 1988 debut novel, "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh", is described as having come from a wealthy family, one that might be expected to be able to endow a building. Near the end of "Wonder Boys" (1995), it is mentioned that, on the unnamed college campus at which Grady Tripp teaches, there is a building called Arning Hall "where the English faculty kept office hours." Similarly, in Chabon's 1989 short story "A Model World," a character named Levine discovers, or rather plagiarizes, a formula for "nephokinesis" (or cloud control) that wins him respect and prominence in the meteorological field. In "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" (2000), a passing reference is made to the "massive Levine School of Applied Meteorology," ostensibly a building owned by New York University.


title: Michael Chabon

text: In 2014, Chabon was involved in writing lyrics for Mark Ronson's album "Uptown Special". In an interview with WCBN-FM, Chabon described meeting Ronson at a party, and later being contacted to write a song. Chabon penned "Crack in the Pearl", and after growing chemistry with Ronson and Jeff Bhasker, worked on more songs for the album. One of these included the single "Daffodils", which he wrote with Kevin Parker of Tame Impala. In total, Chabon helped write 9 of the 11 songs on the album, not including mega-smash hit, "Uptown Funk". He has also collaborated with Adam Schlesinger on the song "House of Broken Gingerbread" written for the Monkees' October 2018 album Christmas Party. He also co-wrote Boxes for Moses Sumney, and wrote for an unreleased Charlie Puth song.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Although Chabon once described his attitude toward Hollywood as "pre-emptive cynicism," for years the author has worked to bring both adapted and original projects to the screen. In 1994, Chabon pitched a screenplay entitled "The Gentleman Host" to producer Scott Rudin, a romantic comedy "about old Jewish folks on a third-rate cruise ship out of Miami." Rudin bought the project and developed it with Chabon, but it was never filmed, partly due to the release of the similarly themed film "Out to Sea" in 1997. In the nineties, Chabon also pitched story ideas for both the X-Men and Fantastic Four films, but was rejected.


title: Michael Chabon

text: When Rudin was adapting "Wonder Boys" for the screen, the author declined an offer to write the screenplay, saying he was too busy writing "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay". Directed by Curtis Hanson and starring Michael Douglas, "Wonder Boys" was released in 2000 to critical acclaim and financial failure. Having bought the film rights to "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", Rudin then asked Chabon to work on that film's screenplay. Although Chabon spent 16 months in 2001 and 2002 working on the novel's film adaptation, the project has been mired in pre-production for years.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon's work, however, remains popular in Hollywood, with Rudin purchasing the film rights to "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", then titled "Hatzeplatz", in 2002, five years before the book would be published. The same year, Miramax bought the rights to "Summerland" and "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" (a planned collection of eight genre short stories that Chabon has not yet written), each of which was optioned for a sum in the mid-six figures. Chabon also wrote a draft for 2004's "Spider-Man 2", about a third of which was used in the final film. Soon after "Spider-Man 2" was released, director Sam Raimi mentioned that he hoped to hire Chabon to work on the film's sequel, "if I can get him," but Chabon never worked on "Spider-Man 3".


title: Michael Chabon

text: In October 2004, it was announced that Chabon was at work writing Disney's "Snow and the Seven", a live-action martial arts retelling of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" to be directed by master Hong Kong fight choreographer and director Yuen Wo Ping. In August 2006, Chabon said that he had been replaced on "Snow", sarcastically explaining that the producers wanted to go in "more of a fun direction."


title: Michael Chabon

text: Although Chabon was uninvolved with the project, director Rawson Marshall Thurber shot a film adaptation of "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" in fall 2006. The film, which stars Sienna Miller and Peter Sarsgaard, was released in April 2008. In February 2008, Rudin reported that a film adaptation of "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" was in pre-production, to be written and directed by the Coen brothers. However, as of 2018, Chabon expressed skepticism that the Coens would make the film, saying that they had effectively chosen to make "A Serious Man" instead, and did not wish to do another film with such similar themes.


title: Michael Chabon

text: In April 2009, Chabon confirmed he had been hired to do revisions to the script for Disney's "John Carter". In July 2015, Chabon was hired to do revisions to the script for Disney's "Bob the Musical".


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon joined the writing team of "", a new "Star Trek" series starring Patrick Stewart, and was named showrunner in July 2019. In November 2018, a "" episode co-written by Chabon, titled "Calypso", was released. Another short, written only by Chabon and titled "Q&A", was released on October 5, 2019. Chabon's "Star Trek" series premiered on January 23, 2020, with Chabon referring to himself as a lifelong "Star Trek" fan. After the release of Season 1 of "Star Trek: Picard", Chabon said in an interview with "Variety" in March 2020 that he would be involved with Season 2 of "Picard", but as an executive producer rather than as showrunner.


title: Michael Chabon

text: Chabon was also listed as co-creator of the Netflix miniseries "Unbelievable", and has been working on a television adaptation of "Kavalier and Clay" with his wife Ayelet Waldman since at least December 2019.


title: Michael Chabon

text: In April 2021, following an article in "The Hollywood Reporter" which alleged numerous instances of physical and emotional abuse from Rudin towards his employees, Chabon wrote a public apology, stating that he had "regularly, even routinely" heard Rudin shout at and insult staff during their twenty years of collaboration, and had once witnessed Rudin throw a pencil at an employee's head. Chabon said, "I’m ashamed. I regret, and I want to apologize for, my part in enabling Scott Rudin’s abuse, simply by standing by, saying nothing, looking the other way."


title: Miss International 2022

text: Miss International 2022 was the 60th Miss International pageant, held at the Tokyo Dome City Hall in Tokyo, Japan on December 13, 2022. Sireethorn Leearamwat of Thailand crowned Jasmin Selberg of Germany as her successor at the end of the event.


title: Miss International 2022

text: The coronation was initially scheduled in 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it moved at least twice; first in 2021, and later to December 13, 2022. The cancellations of 2020–21 marked the second time Miss International pageant has been cancelled since 1966, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.