title: Christmas music

text: Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly first released "How to Make Gravy" as part of a four-track EP November 4, 1996, through White Label Records. The title track, written by Kelly, tells the story in a letter to his brother from a newly imprisoned man who laments how he will be missing the family Christmas. It received a Song of the Year nomination at the 1998 Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) Music Awards. Kelly's theme reflects a national experience with Christmas:


title: Christmas music

text: "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas" originated with a poem by Emily Huntington Miller (1833-1913), published as "Lilly's Secret" in "The Little Corporal Magazine" December 1865. Lyrics have also been attributed to Benjamin Hanby, who wrote Up on the Housetop in 1864, but the words commonly heard today resemble Miller's 1865 poem. James R. Murray is attributed as composer in the first publication of the music in "School Chimes, A New School Music Book" by S. Brainard's Sons in 1874. Early notable recordings were made by Ray Smith (1949), Chet Atkins (1961), Eddy Arnold (1962), and Alvin and the Chipmunks (1963).


title: Christmas music

text: "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm", introduced in the musical film "On the Avenue" by Dick Powell and Alice Faye in 1937, was written by Irving Berlin. "The Little Boy that Santa Claus Forgot" – written by Michael Carr, Tommie Connor, and Jimmy Leach in 1937 – was notably performed by Vera Lynn and Nat King Cole. "I'll Be Home for Christmas", by lyricist Kim Gannon and composer Walter Kent, was recorded by Bing Crosby in 1943. "Merry Christmas Baby" is credited to Lou Baxter and Johnny Moore, whose group originally recorded it in 1947, featuring singer and pianist Charles Brown. Kay Thompson introduced her "The Holiday Season" in 1945, which later became part of a medley by Andy Williams. "A Marshmallow World" (sometimes called "It's a Marshmallow World") was written in 1949 by Carl Sigman (lyrics) and Peter DeRose (music).


title: Christmas music

text: More popular songs which reference the Nativity include "I Wonder as I Wander" (1933), "Mary's Boy Child" (1956), "Carol of the Drum" ("Little Drummer Boy") (1941), and "Do You Hear What I Hear?" (1962).


title: Christmas music

text: "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm", written by Irving Berlin, was introduced in the musical film "On the Avenue" by Dick Powell and Alice Faye in 1937. "White Christmas" was introduced in the film "Holiday Inn" (1942), while "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was from "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944), and "Silver Bells" "The Lemon Drop Kid" (1950). The operetta "Babes in Toyland" (1903) featured the song "Toyland". The 1934 film adaptation, a Laurel and Hardy musical film known by alternative titles, opened with the song. Introducing Christmas-themed songs that have yet to achieve popularity, "Scrooge" (1970) included "Father Christmas", "December the 25th", and the Academy Award-nominated "Thank You Very Much".


title: Christmas music

text: "Mistletoe and Wine" was written for a 1976 musical entitled "Scraps", which was an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl". "Hard Candy Christmas" was written by Carol Hall for the 1982 musical, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", and later released by Dolly Parton as a single. "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993) features Christmas-themed songs like "Making Christmas", "What's This?", "Town Meeting Song", and "Jack's Obsession".


title: Christmas music

text: Musical parodies of the season – comical or nonsensical songs performed principally for their comical effect – are often heard around Christmas. Many novelty songs employ unusual lyrics, subjects, sounds, or instrumentation, and may not even be particularly musical. The term arose in the Tin Pan Alley world of popular songwriting, with novelty songs achieving great popularity during the 1920s and 1930s.


title: Christmas music

text: The Christmas novelty song genre, which got its start with "I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas" written by Yogi Yorgesson and sung by him with the Johnny Duffy Trio in 1949, includes such notable titles as:


title: Christmas music

text: In the 1970s comedic singing duo Cheech & Chong's debut single in 1971 was "Santa Claus and His Old Lady". The Kinks did "Father Christmas" in 1977, and Elmo & Patsy came out with "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" in 1979. More recent titles added to the canon include:


title: Christmas music

text: Seattle radio personality Bob Rivers became nationally famous for his line of novelty Christmas songs and released five albums (collectively known as the "Twisted Christmas" quintilogy, after the name of Rivers' radio program, "Twisted Radio") consisting entirely of Christmas parodies from 1987 to 2002. "Don't Shoot Me Santa" was released by The Killers in 2007, benefiting various AIDS charities. Christmas novelty songs can involve gallows humor and even morbid humor like that found in "Christmas at Ground Zero" and "The Night Santa Went Crazy", both by "Weird Al" Yankovic. The Dan Band released several adult-oriented Christmas songs on their 2007 album "Ho: A Dan Band Christmas" which included "Ho, Ho, Ho" (ho being slang for a prostitute), "I Wanna Rock You Hard This Christmas", "Please Don't Bomb Nobody This Holiday" and "Get Drunk & Make Out This Christmas".


title: Christmas music

text: Kristen Bell and a cappella group Straight No Chaser "teamed up to poke fun at the modern seasons greeting" with "Text Me Merry Christmas":


title: Christmas music

text: Straight No Chaser singer Randy Stine said of the song: "We wanted a Christmas song that spoke to how informal communication has become."


title: Christmas music

text: Christmas novelty songs include many sung by young teens, or performed largely for the enjoyment of a young audience. Starting with "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" sung by 13-year-old Jimmy Boyd in 1952, a few other notable novelty songs written to parody the Christmas season and sung by young singers include:


title: Christmas music

text: The number of Christmas novelty songs is so vast that radio host Dr. Demento devotes an entire month of weekly two-hour episodes to the format each year, and the novelty songs receive frequent requests at radio stations across the country.


title: Christmas music

text: Approximately half of the 30 best-selling Christmas songs by ASCAP members in 2015 were written by Jewish composers. Johnny Marks has three top Christmas songs, the most for any writer—"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree", and "A Holly Jolly Christmas". By far the most recorded Christmas song is "White Christmas" by Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Beilin in Russia)—who also wrote "Happy Holiday"—with well over 500 versions in dozens of languages.


title: Christmas music

text: Lyricist Jerome "Jerry" Leiber and composer Mike Stoller wrote "Santa Claus Is Back in Town", which Elvis Presley debuted on his first Christmas album in 1957. "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" was written by Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry (with Phil Spector), originally for Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes. It was made into a hit by Darlene Love in 1963.


title: Christmas music

text: "Peace on Earth" was written by Ian Fraser, Larry Grossman, and Alan Kohan as a counterpoint to "The Little Drummer Boy" (1941) to make David Bowie comfortable recording "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy" with Bing Crosby on September 11, 1977 – for Crosby's then-upcoming television special, "Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas".


title: Christmas music

text: What is known as Christmas music today, coming to be associated with the holiday season in some way, has often been adopted from works initially composed for other purposes. Many tunes adopted into the Christmas canon carry no Christmas connotation at all. Some were written to celebrate other holidays and gradually came to cover the Christmas season.


title: Christmas music

text: "Shchedryk", a Ukrainian tune celebrating the arrival of springtime, was adapted in 1936 with English lyrics to become the Christmas carol "Carol of the Bells" and in 1995 as the heavy-metal instrumental "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24." "When You Wish Upon a Star", an Academy Award-winning song about dreams, hope, and magic featured in Walt Disney's "Pinocchio" (1940). What later became the main theme for Disney studios was sung by Cliff Edwards, who voiced Jiminy Cricket in the film. In Scandinavian countries and Japan, the song is used in reference to the Star of Bethlehem and the "ask, and it will be given to you" discourse in ; in the movie it is in reference to the Blue Fairy.


title: Christmas music

text: Many popular Christmas tunes of the 20th-century mention winter imagery, leading to their being adopted into the Christmas and holiday season. These include:


title: Christmas music

text: "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" (2013), from the movie "Frozen", features lyrics that are more of an illustration of the relationship between the two main characters than a general description of winter or the holidays, but its title rhetoric and the winter imagery used throughout the film have led it to be considered a holiday song.


title: Christmas music

text: Quite the contrary, "Sleigh Ride", composed originally in 1948 as an instrumental by Leroy Anderson, was inspired by a heatwave in Connecticut. The song premiered with the Boston Pops Orchestra in May 1948 with no association with Christmas. The lyrics added in 1950 have "nothing to do with Santa, Jesus, presents or reindeer," but the jingling bells and "sleigh" in the title made it a natural Christmas song. Lyricist Sammy Cahn and composer Jule Styne also found themselves in a heatwave in July 1945 when they wrote "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", inserting no reference to Christmas in the song. "Holiday" (2010) is about the summer holidays, but has been used in some Christmas ad campaigns.


title: Christmas music

text: Perry Como famously sang Franz Schubert's setting of "Ave Maria" in his televised Christmas special each year, including the song on "The Perry Como Christmas Album" (1968). The song, a prayer to the Virgin Mary sung in Latin, would become a "staple of family holiday record collections." American "a capella" group Pentatonix released their version of "Hallelujah", the 1984 song written by Leonard Cohen and covered famously by a number of acts, on their Christmas album shortly before the songwriter's death in 2016. Besides the title, and several biblical references, the song contains no connection to Christmas or the holidays "per se". Various versions have been added to Christmas music playlists on radio stations in the United States and Canada.


title: Christmas music

text: In the United Kingdom, songs not explicitly tied to Christmas are popularly played during the year-end holidays. "Stop the Cavalry", written and performed by English musician Jona Lewie in 1980, was intended as a war protest. The line "Wish I was at home for Christmas" with brass band arrangements styled it as an appropriate song to play in the Christmas season. Children's songs such as "Mr Blobby" (No. 1, 1993) and the theme from "Bob the Builder" (No. 1, 2000), novelty songs such as Benny Hill's "Ernie" (No. 1, 1971) and "South Park"'s "Chocolate Salty Balls" (No. 2, 1998), and "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" from an ensemble of Liverpudlian celebrities in commemoration of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster (No. 1, 2012) are often heard around Christmas.


title: Christmas music

text: In the United States, it is common for local radio stations to gradually begin adding Christmas music to their regular playlists in late-November, typically after Thanksgiving (which is generally considered the official start of the holiday season), and sometimes culminating with all-Christmas music by Christmas itself. More prominently, some stations temporarily drop their regular music format entirely and switch exclusively to Christmas music for the holiday season. The latter practice became more widespread in 2001 after the September 11 attacks, as a means of helping improve the morale of listeners.


title: Christmas music

text: Although there is a chance that a station's normal audience may be alienated by a switch to all-Christmas music (adult contemporary, country music, and oldies audiences are generally the most accepting), these risks are outweighed by the increase in ratings that such a shift can attract. There is also a chance that after they return to regular programming, a station may be able to retain some of this expanded audience as new, regular listeners.


title: Christmas music

text: Arbitron (now Nielsen Audio) reported in 2011 that it was not uncommon for a station's average audience to double after switching to Christmas music, citing several large-market stations in 2010 such as Boston's WODS, Los Angeles's KOST, New York's WLTW, and San Diego's KYXY. In 2017, Chicago's WLIT-FM roughly quadrupled its audience share between November (2.8) and December (12.4) after making the switch. The practice may not always transition well into financial success, since advertisers do not universally recognize Nielsen's holiday ratings book.


title: Christmas music

text: In some markets, there may be one dominant broadcaster of Christmas music, but this is not always the case. Perceiving a competitive advantage in being the first in a market to begin playing Christmas music, it is not uncommon for some stations to adopt the format prior to Thanksgiving, or even as early as late-October. The practice has been considered an example of Christmas creep. In an extreme example of Christmas creep, at least one station in 2020 (WWIZ in the Mahoning Valley) flipped to Christmas music in late September, exactly three full months before Christmas; the same station had also been first in the nation in 2019, but had begun two months before Christmas that year, on October 25. WWIZ was the first of many stations in the United States that had flipped to Christmas especially early in 2020, in part to alleviate stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Christmas music

text: As many Christmas songs contain themes strongly associated with Christmas Day (such as references to figures such as Santa Claus), and popular observance of the Christmas season often ends after December 25 (in contrast to the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas, which by definition runs until Epiphany on January 6), most stations typically end their all-Christmas programming at some point on December 25 or 26. However, it is not uncommon for stations to continue to play at least some Christmas music through the weekend following Christmas, or even through New Year's Day (particularly when stunting in anticipation of a format change). Radio stations will also adjust their playlists throughout the Christmas season; songs that are less readily tolerated for repeated listenings, such as novelty songs, are seldom played in November and only get mixed into the playlist closer to Christmas as a change of pace.


title: Christmas music

text: Christmas music is a popular stunt format for radio stations, either as a "Christmas in July" promotion, or as a buffer period for transitioning from one format to another.


title: Christmas music

text: The end of a calendar year is a common time period for format switches, often following an all-Christmas format (either immediately, or with a second stunt occurring directly afterward). However, the transition itself can still occur before the end of the holiday season, such as the sudden transition of country station KMPS in Seattle to soft adult contemporary KSWD, after briefly playing an all-Christmas format following the merger of CBS Radio and Entercom (due to redundancy with sister station KKWF).


title: Christmas music

text: Playing Christmas music outside of the holiday season, or otherwise implying that the format is permanent, is a more obvious stunt. In April 2008, the new radio station CFWD-FM in Saskatoon soft launched with an all-Christmas format in preparation for the station's official launch as a top 40 station. In an extreme case, adult hits station WJSR in Lakeside/Richmond, Virginia maintained a Christmas music format from October 13, 2020, all the way through March 4, 2021, after which it flipped to classic hits; the station had stunted from the beginning of October as "Short Attention Span Radio" before switching to Christmas music.


title: Christmas music

text: With the growth in digital broadcasting platforms around the world, the opportunity to offer thematic radio formats on a pop-up basis has increased.


title: Christmas music

text: In Ireland, a temporary radio station named Christmas FM broadcasts on a temporary license in Dublin and Cork from November 28 to December 26, solely playing Christmas music.


title: Christmas music

text: In the UK, the Festive Fifty list of songs as voted for by listeners is broadcast starting on Christmas Day, originally by DJ John Peel, and nowadays by Internet radio station Dandelion Radio.


title: Christmas music

text: Since the early 2010s, a number of Christmas music stations have broadcast on national and local digital platforms in the United Kingdom, with some also being carried on the FM band. These have included:


title: Christmas music

text: Outside of traditional AM/FM radio, satellite radio provider SiriusXM typically devotes multiple channels to different genres of Christmas music during the holiday season. Numerous Internet radio services also offer Christmas music channels, some of them available year-round. Citadel Media produced The Christmas Channel, a syndicated 24-hour radio network, during the holiday season in past years (though in 2010, Citadel instead included Christmas music on its regular Classic Hits network). Music Choice offers nonstop holiday music to its digital cable, cable modem, and mobile phone subscribers between November 1 and New Year's Day on its "Sounds of the Seasons" (traditional), "R&B" (soul), "Tropicales" (Latin), and "Soft Rock" (contemporary) channels, as well as a year-round "All Christmas" channel. DMX provides holiday music as part of its SonicTap music service for digital cable and DirecTV subscribers, as does Dish Network via its in-house Dish CD music channels. Services such as Muzak also distribute Christmas music to retail stores for use as in-store background music during the holidays.


title: Christmas music

text: The growing popularity of Internet radio has inspired other media outlets to begin offering Christmas music. In 2009 Phoenix television station KTVK launched four commercial-free online radio stations including Ho Ho Radio, which streams Christmas music throughout the month of December.


title: Christmas music

text: iHeartRadio also has two-year-round stations that are dedicated to Christmas music. One station, iHeart Christmas, focuses on more contemporary holiday music, while the other, iHeart Christmas Classics, offers seasonal music from past decades.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is an American satirical soap opera that aired in daily weeknight syndication from January 1976 to July 1977. The series follows the titular Mary Hartman, an Ohio housewife attempting to cope with various bizarre and violent incidents occurring around her. The series was produced by Norman Lear, directed by Joan Darling, Jim Drake, Nessa Hyams, and Giovanna Nigro, and starred Louise Lasser, Greg Mullavey, Dody Goodman, Norman Alden, Mary Kay Place, Graham Jarvis, Debralee Scott, and Victor Kilian. The series writers were Gail Parent and Ann Marcus.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: Developed by Lear with the intention of examining the effects of consumerism on the American housewife, the series premiered in January 1976, and was filmed at KTLA Studios in Los Angeles. The show's title, featuring the title character's name stated twice, is a reference to Lear's observation that dialogue within soap operas tended to be repeated.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: In 2004 and 2007, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" was ranked #21 and #26 on ""TV Guide"'s Top Cult Shows Ever."


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: "TV Guide" ranked the death of Coach Leroy Fedders, who drowns in a bowl of Mary's chicken soup in the first season, #97 on its list of the 100 Greatest T.V. Moments of All Time.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" follows the titular character through increasingly complex and compounding life events and scenarios often reflective of the changing social fabric of America in the 1970s. Some of the character's key traits, unusual but prescient for the times, include her initially numbed-out response to both external and emotional conflicts, her indecisiveness and her potential to suddenly snap out of one state of mind and swing to its opposite. Moral quandaries frequently seem on the verge of vanishing into apathy, until she is reminded of her love for her family and the need to keep them together. The show's elaborate plots and tongue-in-cheek melodrama lampooned the soap opera format much as "Soap" and "Twin Peaks" would later do.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: In its first episode, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" introduced the Lombardi family of five, all of whom, along with their two goats and eight chickens, had been murdered by young Davey Jessup, an event witnessed by both Mary's daughter, Heather, and the "Fernwood Flasher", who turned out to be Mary's grandfather, Raymond Larkin. Other characters on the show also died in bizarre ways, including by being electrocuted in the bathtub (Jimmy Joe Jeeter), by drowning in chicken soup (Coach Leroy Fedders), and by being impaled on a pink bottle brush artificial Christmas tree (Garth Gimble).


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: Mary Hartman had a nationally televised nervous breakdown on "The David Susskind Show" at the end of the first season. Mary then found herself in a psychiatric ward, where she was delighted to be part of their selected Nielsen ratings "family". One of her sanitarium mates, widowed Wanda Rittenhouse (Marian Mercer), would become more prominent later on when she married Merle Jeeter, the mayor of Fernwood.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: In December 1974, Norman Lear and his entertainment company, Tandem Productions, created a pilot for his new serial, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman", a satire of the impact of American consumerism. The pilot, consisting of two episodes and shot on a $100,000 (equal to $ today) budget, was not picked up by the networks. Lear then pursued a syndication strategy by hiring a sales agent to sell the show at the 1976 National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) market in San Francisco. The mostly independent stations that picked up the show began referring to themselves as the Mary Hartman Network.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: KING-TV of Seattle became the first station to procure syndication rights to "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman".


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: The theme song, "Premiere Occasion", was selected from the stock music library Southern Library of Recorded Music. It was written by British composer Robert Charles Kingston under the pseudonym Barry White and copyrighted in 1965, a full decade before "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" first aired, lending the illusion of a soap opera that already had a long history. Incidental music for the series was mostly written by Earle Hagen.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: As country and western singer-songwriter Loretta Haggers, Mary Kay Place sang a number of songs over the course of the series. Place wrote some of those songs herself, including "Baby Boy" and "Vitamin L", both of which were released as singles by Columbia Records in 1976. "Baby Boy" was a minor hit for Loretta Haggers in the series, which she played to a nationwide audience live on the set of "Dinah!" in one episode, as well as a minor hit for Place, spending 13 weeks on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart and peaking at #60. Place also released a full album of Loretta Haggers's music, titled "Tonite! At the Capri Lounge Loretta Haggers".


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: Several songs have been written about Mary Hartman, many of them incorporating elements of the theme song. All-woman rock group The Deadly Nightshade's disco-flavored "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (Theme)" reached #79 on the Hot 100, and at least four other Mary Hartman-related disco songs were released by Vincent Montana Jr., Sammy Davis Jr., Floyd Cramer, and The Marketts during the show's run.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: In 1976, Lasser was arrested at a Los Angeles charity boutique and police found $6 worth (or 88 milligrams) of cocaine in her purse. Authorities were called after Lasser's American Express card was denied and she refused to leave without possession of a $150 dollhouse. Lasser was initially apprehended for two unpaid traffic tickets (one for jaywalking), but the officers then found the cocaine in her handbag and she claimed the drug had been given to her several months earlier by a fan. Lasser was ordered to six months in counseling, which was easily satisfied as she was already seeing an analyst. A fictionalized version of Lasser's refusal to leave a store without a dollhouse was incorporated into "Mary Hartman"s first season.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: In 1976, Ted Morgan assessed in "The New York Times": "The dreams and nightmares of the American people are reflected darkly through the glass of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman"...No longer merely a television program, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" has become a cultural event, in the same league as those other sociological signposts that culture watchers...are always on the lookout for to help us explain ourselves."


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: Of the series' influence on pop culture, Claire Barliant also writes: "For some, the 1970s...was a descent into chaos, a dissolution of self, but also a kind of awakening...The Seventies' nervous breakdown coincides with women's lib and a strengthening gay rights movement..."MH2" is relevant today because it entertains but still shocks, because the social commentary and satire and bravery of the show are as fresh as ever."


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: In 2000, Lasser appeared on a panel with her former "MH2" cast and crew members at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills, California for a seminar, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman: Reunion, Reunion. The panel was moderated by Steven A. Bell and recorded for the museum archives.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: In 2004 and 2007, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" was ranked #21 and 26 on ""TV Guide"s Top Cult Shows Ever."


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: When Lasser left the show in 1977, it was re-branded "Forever Fernwood" and followed the trials and tribulations of Mary's family and friends after she had run away with a policeman, the aforementioned Sgt. Dennis Foley, with whom she had had a lot of contact during the first season. Aside from Lasser, the rest of the cast remained intact even while additional actors became part of the cast: Shelley Fabares as Eleanor Major, who began dating Tom after Mary had left him; Judith Kahan as Eleanor's stuttering sister, Penny Major; and Randall Carver as Cathy Shumway's gangster husband, Jeffrey DeVito. On the very last episode of the series, Penny married Tom Hartman. "Forever Fernwood" ended in 1978, after 26 weeks on the air (130 half-hour episodes).


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: During the summer of 1977, "Fernwood 2 Night", a local talk show satire and parody starring Martin Mull as Barth Gimble, was broadcast as a spin-off/summer replacement for "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman". It went "nationwide" as "America 2-Night" in the spring of 1978.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: In February 2021, it was reported that a reboot of the series was in development by Sony Pictures Television with Emily Hampshire as writer and starring role, Jacob Tierney as co-writer, and Lear and Brent Miller as executive producers. In July 2021, it was announced that TBS had given a series order. In April 2022, it was announced the series was scrapped alongside all scripted programming on TBS.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: The show got parodied several times during its run from a "Bob Hope's Bicentennial Star Spangled Spectacular" television special on July 4, 1976, with Hope performing a skit "Mary Hartford, Mary Hartford" (in reference to Hartford, Connecticut) set during the American Revolution with Debbie Reynolds as Mary Hartford; on the "Donny & Marie", a series of skits entitled "Marie Heartburn, Marie Heartburn" were performed with Marie Osmond playing the titular role along with Donny Osmond and special guests and on "The Carol Burnett Show" with Harvey Korman, portraying Lear as Norman Blear, introducing the series for children entitled "Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, Mary, Mary Quite Contrary" by using nursery rhyme characters with Burnett in the lead role and Tim Conway as her eccentric grandfather, Wee Willie Winkie, running around "flashing" people in his panda nightgown, in reference to the Fernwood Flasher.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: On March 27, 2007, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman Volume One" on DVD in Region 1. The three-disc boxset features the first 25 episodes of Season 1, dealing with the Fernwood Flasher and Lombardi massacre storylines. Many of the episodes were the heavily edited syndication versions, edited to fit more commercials in the broadcasts, due to expensive costing issues when about to remaster and transferring the original broadcast versions.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: On August 28, 2013, it was announced that Shout! Factory had acquired the rights to the series and released "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman: The Complete Series" on DVD in Region 1 on December 3, 2013. The 38-disc set features all 325 episodes of the series. The Season 1 episodes were restored to their full-length broadcast versions and other bonus features, such as interviews with Norman Lear, Louise Lasser, and Mary Kay Place were included.


title: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

text: "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" was syndicated on local stations briefly in 1982 and later broadcast on Lifetime Television in 1994 and TV Land in 2002.


title: Stoma

text: In botany, a stoma (from Greek "στόμα", "mouth", plural "stomata"), also called a stomate (plural "stomates"), is a pore found in the epidermis of leaves, stems, and other organs, that controls the rate of gas exchange. The pore is bordered by a pair of specialized parenchyma cells known as guard cells that are responsible for regulating the size of the stomatal opening.


title: Stoma

text: The term is usually used collectively to refer to the entire stomatal complex, consisting of the paired guard cells and the pore itself, which is referred to as the stomatal aperture. Air, containing oxygen, which is used in respiration, and carbon dioxide, which is used in photosynthesis, passes through stomata by gaseous diffusion. Water vapour diffuses through the stomata into the atmosphere in a process called transpiration.


title: Stoma

text: Stomata are present in the sporophyte generation of all land plant groups except liverworts. In vascular plants the number, size and distribution of stomata varies widely. Dicotyledons usually have more stomata on the lower surface of the leaves than the upper surface. Monocotyledons such as onion, oat and maize may have about the same number of stomata on both leaf surfaces. In plants with floating leaves, stomata may be found only on the upper epidermis and submerged leaves may lack stomata entirely. Most tree species have stomata only on the lower leaf surface. Leaves with stomata on both the upper and lower leaf surfaces are called "amphistomatous" leaves; leaves with stomata only on the lower surface are "hypostomatous", and leaves with stomata only on the upper surface are epistomatous or "hyperstomatous". Size varies across species, with end-to-end lengths ranging from 10 to 80 µm and width ranging from a few to 50 µm.


title: Stoma

text: Carbon dioxide, a key reactant in photosynthesis, is present in the atmosphere at a concentration of about 400 ppm. Most plants require the stomata to be open during daytime. The air spaces in the leaf are saturated with water vapour, which exits the leaf through the stomata in a process known as transpiration. Therefore, plants cannot gain carbon dioxide without simultaneously losing water vapour.


title: Stoma

text: Ordinarily, carbon dioxide is fixed to ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate (RuBP) by the enzyme RuBisCO in mesophyll cells exposed directly to the air spaces inside the leaf. This exacerbates the transpiration problem for two reasons: first, RuBisCo has a relatively low affinity for carbon dioxide, and second, it fixes oxygen to RuBP, wasting energy and carbon in a process called photorespiration. For both of these reasons, RuBisCo needs high carbon dioxide concentrations, which means wide stomatal apertures and, as a consequence, high water loss.


title: Stoma

text: Narrower stomatal apertures can be used in conjunction with an intermediary molecule with a high carbon dioxide affinity, phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPcase). Retrieving the products of carbon fixation from PEPCase is an energy-intensive process, however. As a result, the PEPCase alternative is preferable only where water is limiting but light is plentiful, or where high temperatures increase the solubility of oxygen relative to that of carbon dioxide, magnifying RuBisCo's oxygenation problem.


title: Stoma

text: A group of mostly desert plants called "CAM" plants (Crassulacean acid metabolism, after the family Crassulaceae, which includes the species in which the CAM process was first discovered) open their stomata at night (when water evaporates more slowly from leaves for a given degree of stomatal opening), use PEPcarboxylase to fix carbon dioxide and store the products in large vacuoles. The following day, they close their stomata and release the carbon dioxide fixed the previous night into the presence of RuBisCO. This saturates RuBisCO with carbon dioxide, allowing minimal photorespiration. This approach, however, is severely limited by the capacity to store fixed carbon in the vacuoles, so it is preferable only when water is severely limited.


title: Stoma

text: However, most plants do not have CAM and must therefore open and close their stomata during the daytime, in response to changing conditions, such as light intensity, humidity, and carbon dioxide concentration. When conditions are conducive to stomatal opening (e.g., high light intensity and high humidity), a proton pump drives protons (H) from the guard cells. This means that the cells' electrical potential becomes increasingly negative. The negative potential opens potassium voltage-gated channels and so an uptake of potassium ions (K) occurs. To maintain this internal negative voltage so that entry of potassium ions does not stop, negative ions balance the influx of potassium. In some cases, chloride ions enter, while in other plants the organic ion malate is produced in guard cells. This increase in solute concentration lowers the water potential inside the cell, which results in the diffusion of water into the cell through osmosis. This increases the cell's volume and turgor pressure. Then, because of rings of cellulose microfibrils that prevent the width of the guard cells from swelling, and thus only allow the extra turgor pressure to elongate the guard cells, whose ends are held firmly in place by surrounding epidermal cells, the two guard cells lengthen by bowing apart from one another, creating an open pore through which gas can diffuse.


title: Stoma

text: When the roots begin to sense a water shortage in the soil, abscisic acid (ABA) is released. ABA binds to receptor proteins in the guard cells' plasma membrane and cytosol, which first raises the pH of the cytosol of the cells and cause the concentration of free Ca to increase in the cytosol due to influx from outside the cell and release of Ca from internal stores such as the endoplasmic reticulum and vacuoles. This causes the chloride (Cl) and organic ions to exit the cells. Second, this stops the uptake of any further K into the cells and, subsequently, the loss of K. The loss of these solutes causes an increase in water potential, which results in the diffusion of water back out of the cell by osmosis. This makes the cell plasmolysed, which results in the closing of the stomatal pores.


title: Stoma

text: Guard cells have more chloroplasts than the other epidermal cells from which guard cells are derived. Their function is controversial.


title: Stoma

text: The degree of stomatal resistance can be determined by measuring leaf gas exchange of a leaf. The transpiration rate is dependent on the diffusion resistance provided by the stomatal pores, and also on the humidity gradient between the leaf's internal air spaces and the outside air. Stomatal resistance (or its inverse, stomatal conductance) can therefore be calculated from the transpiration rate and humidity gradient. This allows scientists to investigate how stomata respond to changes in environmental conditions, such as light intensity and concentrations of gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, and ozone. Evaporation ("E") can be calculated as;


title: Stoma

text: where "e" and "e" are the partial pressures of water in the leaf and in the ambient air, respectively, "P" is atmospheric pressure, and "r" is stomatal resistance.


title: Stoma

text: where "C" and "C" are the atmospheric and sub-stomatal partial pressures of CO, respectively. The rate of evaporation from a leaf can be determined using a photosynthesis system. These scientific instruments measure the amount of water vapour leaving the leaf and the vapor pressure of the ambient air. Photosynthetic systems may calculate water use efficiency ("A/E"), "g", intrinsic water use efficiency ("A/g"), and "C". These scientific instruments are commonly used by plant physiologists to measure CO uptake and thus measure photosynthetic rate.


title: Stoma

text: There is little evidence of the evolution of stomata in the fossil record, but they had appeared in land plants by the middle of the Silurian period. They may have evolved by the modification of conceptacles from plants' alga-like ancestors.


title: Stoma

text: However, the evolution of stomata must have happened at the same time as the waxy cuticle was evolving – these two traits together constituted a major advantage for early terrestrial plants.


title: Stoma

text: There are three major epidermal cell types which all ultimately derive from the outermost (L1) tissue layer of the shoot apical meristem, called protodermal cells: trichomes, pavement cells and guard cells, all of which are arranged in a non-random fashion.


title: Stoma

text: An asymmetrical cell division occurs in protodermal cells resulting in one large cell that is fated to become a pavement cell and a smaller cell called a meristemoid that will eventually differentiate into the guard cells that surround a stoma. This meristemoid then divides asymmetrically one to three times before differentiating into a guard mother cell. The guard mother cell then makes one symmetrical division, which forms a pair of guard cells. Cell division is inhibited in some cells so there is always at least one cell between stomata.


title: Stoma

text: Stomatal patterning is controlled by the interaction of many signal transduction components such as "EPF" (Epidermal Patterning Factor), "ERL" (ERecta Like) and "YODA" (a putative MAP kinase kinase kinase). Mutations in any one of the genes which encode these factors may alter the development of stomata in the epidermis. For example, a mutation in one gene causes more stomata that are clustered together, hence is called Too Many Mouths ("TMM"). Whereas, disruption of the "SPCH" (SPeecCHless) gene prevents stomatal development all together.  Activation of stomatal production can occur by the activation of EPF1, which activates TMM/ERL, which together activate YODA. YODA inhibits SPCH, causing SPCH activity to decrease, allowing for asymmetrical cell division that initiates stomata formation. Stomatal development is also coordinated by the cellular peptide signal called stomagen, which signals the inhibition of the SPCH, resulting in increased number of stomata.


title: Stoma

text: Environmental and hormonal factors can affect stomatal development. Light increases stomatal development in plants; while, plants grown in the dark have a lower amount of stomata. Auxin represses stomatal development by affecting their development at the receptor level like the ERL and TMM receptors. However, a low concentration of auxin allows for equal division of a guard mother cell and increases the chance of producing guard cells.


title: Stoma

text: Most angiosperm trees have stomata only on their lower leaf surface. Poplars and willows have them on both surfaces. When leaves develop stomata on both leaf surfaces, the stomata on the lower surface tend to be larger and more numerous, but there can be a great degree of variation in size and frequency about species and genotypes. White ash and white birch leaves had fewer stomata but larger in size. On the other hand sugar maple and silver maple had small stomata that were more numerous.


title: Stoma

text: Different classifications of stoma types exist. One that is widely used is based on the types that Julien Joseph Vesque introduced in 1889, was further developed by Metcalfe and Chalk, and later complemented by other authors. It is based on the size, shape and arrangement of the subsidiary cells that surround the two guard cells.


title: Stoma

text: Stomatal crypts are sunken areas of the leaf epidermis which form a chamber-like structure that contains one or more stomata and sometimes trichomes or accumulations of wax. Stomatal crypts can be an adaption to drought and dry climate conditions when the stomatal crypts are very pronounced. However, dry climates are not the only places where they can be found. The following plants are examples of species with stomatal crypts or antechambers: "Nerium oleander", conifers, and "Drimys winteri" which is a species of plant found in the cloud forest.


title: Stoma

text: Stomata are obvious holes in the leaf by which, as was presumed for a while, pathogens can enter unchallenged. However, it has been recently shown that stomata do in fact sense the presence of some, if not all, pathogens. However, with the virulent bacteria applied to "Arabidopsis" plant leaves in the experiment, the bacteria released the chemical coronatine, which forced the stomata open again within a few hours.


title: Stoma

text: Drought inhibits stomatal opening, but moderate drought has not had a significant effect on stomatal closure of soya beans. There are different mechanisms of stomatal closure. Low humidity stresses guard cells causing turgor loss, termed hydropassive closure. Hydroactive closure is contrasted as the whole leaf effected by drought stress, believed to be most likely triggered by abscisic acid.


title: Stoma

text: Photosynthesis, plant water transport (xylem) and gas exchange are regulated by stomatal function which is important in the functioning of plants.


title: Stoma

text: Stomata are responsive to light with blue light being almost 10 times as effective as red light in causing stomatal response. Research suggests this is because the light response of stomata to blue light is independent of other leaf components like chlorophyll. Guard cell protoplasts swell under blue light provided there is sufficient availability of potassium. Multiple studies have found support that increasing potassium concentrations may increase stomatal opening in the mornings, before the photosynthesis process starts, but that later in the day sucrose plays a larger role in regulating stomatal opening.


title: Stoma

text: Stomatal density and aperture (length of stomata) varies under a number of environmental factors such as atmospheric CO concentration, light intensity, air temperature and photoperiod (daytime duration).


title: Stoma

text: Decreasing stomatal density is one way plants have responded to the increase in concentration of atmospheric CO ([CO]). Although changes in [CO] response is the least understood mechanistically, this stomatal response has begun to plateau where it is soon expected to impact transpiration and photosynthesis processes in plants.


title: Stoma

text: It is expected for [CO] to reach 500–1000 ppm by 2100. 96% of the past 400 000 years experienced below 280 ppm CO levels. From this figure, it is highly probable that genotypes of today’s plants diverged from their pre-industrial relative.


title: Stoma

text: The gene "HIC" (high carbon dioxide) encodes a negative regulator for the development of stomata in plants. Research into the "HIC" gene using" Arabidopsis thaliana" found no increase of stomatal development in the dominant allele, but in the ‘wild type’ recessive allele showed a large increase, both in response to rising CO levels in the atmosphere. These studies imply the plants response to changing CO levels is largely controlled by genetics.


title: Stoma

text: The COfertiliser effect has been greatly overestimated during Free-Air Carbon dioxide Enrichment (FACE) experiments where results show increased CO levels in the atmosphere enhances photosynthesis, reduce transpiration, and increase water use efficiency (WUE). Increased biomass is one of the effects with simulations from experiments predicting a 5–20% increase in crop yields at 550 ppm of CO. Rates of leaf photosynthesis were shown to increase by 30–50% in C3 plants, and 10–25% in C4 under doubled CO levels. The existence of a feedback mechanism results a phenotypic plasticity in response to [CO] that may have been an adaptive trait in the evolution of plant respiration and function.


title: Stoma

text: Predicting how stomata perform during adaptation is useful for understanding the productivity of plant systems for both natural and agricultural systems. Plant breeders and farmers are beginning to work together using evolutionary and participatory plant breeding to find the best suited species such as heat and drought resistant crop varieties that could naturally evolve to the change in the face of food security challenges.


title: Ammeter

text: An ammeter (abbreviation of "Ampere meter") is an instrument used to measure the current in a circuit. Electric currents are measured in amperes (A), hence the name. For direct measurement, the ammeter is connected in series with the circuit in which the current is to be measured. An ammeter usually has low resistance so that it does not cause a significant voltage drop in the circuit being measured.


title: Ammeter

text: Instruments used to measure smaller currents, in the milliampere or microampere range, are designated as "milliammeters" or "microammeters". Early ammeters were laboratory instruments that relied on the Earth's magnetic field for operation. By the late 19th century, improved instruments were designed which could be mounted in any position and allowed accurate measurements in electric power systems. It is generally represented by letter 'A' in a circuit.


title: Ammeter

text: The relation between electric current, magnetic fields and physical forces was first noted by Hans Christian Ørsted in 1820, who observed a compass needle was deflected from pointing North when a current flowed in an adjacent wire. The tangent galvanometer was used to measure currents using this effect, where the restoring force returning the pointer to the zero position was provided by the Earth's magnetic field. This made these instruments usable only when aligned with the Earth's field. Sensitivity of the instrument was increased by using additional turns of wire to multiply the effect – the instruments were called "multipliers".


title: Ammeter

text: The word "rheoscope" as a detector of electrical currents was coined by Sir Charles Wheatstone about 1840 but is no longer used to describe electrical instruments. The word makeup is similar to that of "rheostat" (also coined by Wheatstone) which was a device used to adjust the current in a circuit. Rheostat is a historical term for a variable resistance, though unlike rheoscope may still be encountered.


title: Ammeter

text: Some instruments are "panel meters", meant to be mounted on some sort of control panel. Of these, the flat, horizontal or vertical type is often called an "edgewise meter".


title: Ammeter

text: The D'Arsonval galvanometer is a moving coil ammeter. It uses magnetic deflection, where current passing through a coil placed in the magnetic field of a permanent magnet causes the coil to move. The modern form of this instrument was developed by Edward Weston, and uses two spiral springs to provide the restoring force. The uniform air gap between the iron core and the permanent magnet poles make the deflection of the meter linearly proportional to current. These meters have linear scales. Basic meter movements can have full-scale deflection for currents from about 25 microamperes to 10 milliamperes.


title: Ammeter

text: Because the magnetic field is polarised, the meter needle acts in opposite directions for each direction of current. A DC ammeter is thus sensitive to which polarity it is connected in; most are marked with a positive terminal, but some have centre-zero mechanisms and can display currents in either direction. A moving coil meter indicates the average (mean) of a varying current through it, which is zero for AC. For this reason, moving-coil meters are only usable directly for DC, not AC.


title: Ammeter

text: This type of meter movement is extremely common for both ammeters and other meters derived from them, such as voltmeters and ohmmeters.


title: Ammeter

text: Moving magnet ammeters operate on essentially the same principle as moving coil, except that the coil is mounted in the meter case, and a permanent magnet moves the needle. Moving magnet Ammeters are able to carry larger currents than moving coil instruments, often several tens of Amperes, because the coil can be made of thicker wire and the current does not have to be carried by the hairsprings. Indeed, some Ammeters of this type do not have hairsprings at all, instead using a fixed permanent magnet to provide the restoring force.


title: Ammeter

text: An electrodynamic ammeter uses an electromagnet instead of the permanent magnet of the d'Arsonval movement. This instrument can respond to both alternating and direct current and also indicates true RMS for AC. See Wattmeter for an alternative use for this instrument.


title: Ammeter

text: Moving iron ammeters use a piece of iron which moves when acted upon by the electromagnetic force of a fixed coil of wire. The moving-iron meter was invented by Austrian engineer Friedrich Drexler in 1884. This type of meter responds to both direct and alternating currents (as opposed to the moving-coil ammeter, which works on direct current only). The iron element consists of a moving vane attached to a pointer, and a fixed vane, surrounded by a coil. As alternating or direct current flows through the coil and induces a magnetic field in both vanes, the vanes repel each other and the moving vane deflects against the restoring force provided by fine helical springs. The deflection of a moving iron meter is proportional to the square of the current. Consequently, such meters would normally have a nonlinear scale, but the iron parts are usually modified in shape to make the scale fairly linear over most of its range. Moving iron instruments indicate the RMS value of any AC waveform applied. Moving iron ammeters are commonly used to measure current in industrial frequency AC circuits.


title: Ammeter

text: In a hot-wire ammeter, a current passes through a wire which expands as it heats. Although these instruments have slow response time and low accuracy, they were sometimes used in measuring radio-frequency current. These also measure true RMS for an applied AC.


title: Ammeter

text: In much the same way as the analogue ammeter formed the basis for a wide variety of derived meters, including voltmeters, the basic mechanism for a digital meter is a digital voltmeter mechanism, and other types of meter are built around this.


title: Ammeter

text: Digital ammeter designs use a shunt resistor to produce a calibrated voltage proportional to the current flowing. This voltage is then measured by a digital voltmeter, through use of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC); the digital display is calibrated to display the current through the shunt. Such instruments are often calibrated to indicate the RMS value for a sine wave only, but many designs will indicate true RMS within limitations of the wave crest factor.


title: Ammeter

text: There is also a range of devices referred to as integrating ammeters. In these ammeters the current is summed over time, giving as a result the product of current and time; which is proportional to the electrical charge transferred with that current. These can be used for metering energy (the charge needs to be multiplied by the voltage to give energy) or for estimating the charge of a battery or capacitor.


title: Ammeter

text: A picoammeter, or pico ammeter, measures very low electric current, usually from the picoampere range at the lower end to the milliampere range at the upper end. Picoammeters are used where the current being measured is below the limits of sensitivity of other devices, such as multimeters.


title: Ammeter

text: Most picoammeters use a "virtual short" technique and have several different measurement ranges that must be switched between to cover multiple decades of measurement. Other modern picoammeters use log compression and a "current sink" method that eliminates range switching and associated voltage spikes. Special design and usage considerations must be observed in order to reduce leakage current which may swamp measurements such as special insulators and driven shields. Triaxial cable is often used for probe connections.


title: Ammeter

text: Ammeters must be connected in series with the circuit to be measured. For relatively small currents (up to a few amperes), an ammeter may pass the whole of the circuit current. For larger direct currents, a shunt resistor carries most of the circuit current and a small, accurately-known fraction of the current passes through the meter movement. For alternating current circuits, a current transformer may be used to provide a convenient small current to drive an instrument, such as 1 or 5 amperes, while the primary current to be measured is much larger (up to thousands of amperes). The use of a shunt or current transformer also allows convenient location of the indicating meter without the need to run heavy circuit conductors up to the point of observation. In the case of alternating current, the use of a current transformer also isolates the meter from the high voltage of the primary circuit. A shunt provides no such isolation for a direct-current ammeter, but where high voltages are used it may be possible to place the ammeter in the "return" side of the circuit which may be at low potential with respect to earth.


title: Ammeter

text: Ammeters must not be connected directly across a voltage source since their internal resistance is very low and excess current would flow. Ammeters are designed for a low voltage drop across their terminals, much less than one volt; the extra circuit losses produced by the ammeter are called its "burden" on the measured circuit(I).


title: Ammeter

text: Ordinary Weston-type meter movements can measure only milliamperes at most, because the springs and practical coils can carry only limited currents. To measure larger currents, a resistor called a "shunt" is placed in parallel with the meter. The resistances of shunts is in the integer to fractional milliohm range. Nearly all of the current flows through the shunt, and only a small fraction flows through the meter. This allows the meter to measure large currents. Traditionally, the meter used with a shunt has a full-scale deflection (FSD) of , so shunts are typically designed to produce a voltage drop of when carrying their full rated current.


title: Ammeter

text: To make a multi-range ammeter, a selector switch can be used to connect one of a number of shunts across the meter. It must be a make-before-break switch to avoid damaging current surges through the meter movement when switching ranges.


title: Ammeter

text: A better arrangement is the Ayrton shunt or universal shunt, invented by William E. Ayrton, which does not require a make-before-break switch. It also avoids any inaccuracy because of contact resistance. In the figure, assuming for example, a movement with a full-scale voltage of 50 mV and desired current ranges of 10 mA, 100 mA, and 1 A, the resistance values would be: R1=4.5 ohms, R2=0.45 ohm, R3=0.05 ohm. And if the movement resistance is 1000 ohms, for example, R1 must be adjusted to 4.525 ohms.


title: Ammeter

text: Zero-center ammeters are used for applications requiring current to be measured with both polarities, common in scientific and industrial equipment. Zero-center ammeters are also commonly placed in series with a battery. In this application, the charging of the battery deflects the needle to one side of the scale (commonly, the right side) and the discharging of the battery deflects the needle to the other side. A special type of zero-center ammeter for testing high currents in cars and trucks has a pivoted bar magnet that moves the pointer, and a fixed bar magnet to keep the pointer centered with no current. The magnetic field around the wire carrying current to be measured deflects the moving magnet.


title: Ammeter

text: Since the ammeter shunt has a very low resistance, mistakenly wiring the ammeter in parallel with a voltage source will cause a short circuit, at best blowing a fuse, possibly damaging the instrument and wiring, and exposing an observer to injury.


title: Ammeter

text: In AC circuits, a current transformer converts the magnetic field around a conductor into a small AC current, typically either or at full rated current, that can be easily read by a meter. In a similar way, accurate AC/DC non-contact ammeters have been constructed using Hall effect magnetic field sensors. A portable hand-held clamp-on ammeter is a common tool for maintenance of industrial and commercial electrical equipment, which is temporarily clipped over a wire to measure current. Some recent types have a parallel pair of magnetically soft probes that are placed on either side of the conductor.


title: Sibyl

text: A sibyl at Delphi has been dated to as early as the eleventh century BC by Pausanias when he described local traditions in his writings from the second century AD.


title: Sibyl

text: At first, there appears to have been only a single sibyl. By the fourth century BC, there appear to have been at least three more, Phrygian, Erythraean, and Hellespontine. By the first century BC, there were at least ten sibyls, located in Greece, Italy, the Levant, and Asia Minor.


title: Sibyl

text: The English word "sibyl" ( or ) is from Middle English, via the Old French and the Latin from the ancient Greek ().


title: Sibyl

text: Varro derived the name from an Aeolic "sioboulla", the equivalent of Attic "theobule" ("divine counsel").


title: Sibyl

text: This etymology is still widely accepted, although there have been alternative proposals in nineteenth-century philology suggesting Old Italic or Semitic derivation.


title: Sibyl

text: The first known Greek writer to mention a sibyl is (based on the testimony of Plutarch) Heraclitus (fl. 500 BC):


title: Sibyl

text: The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god.


title: Sibyl

text: Walter Burkert observes that "frenzied women from whose lips the god speaks" are recorded very much earlier in the Near East, as in Mari in the second millennium and in Assyria in the first millennium".


title: Sibyl

text: Until the literary elaborations of Roman writers, sibyls were not identified by a personal name, but by names that refer to the location of their "temenos", or shrine.


title: Sibyl

text: In Pausanias, "Description of Greece", the first sibyl at Delphi mentioned ("the former" [earlier]) was of great antiquity, and was thought, according to Pausanias, to have been given the name "sibyl" by the Libyans. Sir James Frazer calls the text defective.


title: Sibyl

text: The second sibyl referred to by Pausanias, and named "Herophile", seems to have been based ultimately in Samos, but visited other shrines, at Clarus, Delos, and Delphi and sang there, but that at the same time, Delphi had its own sibyl.


title: Sibyl

text: James Frazer writes, in his translation and commentary on Pausanias, that only two of the Greek sibyls were historical: Herophile of Erythrae, who is thought to have lived in the eighth century BC, and Phyto of Samos who lived somewhat later. He observes that the Greeks at first seemed to have known only one sibyl, and instances Heraclides Ponticus as the first ancient writer to distinguish several sibyls: Heraclides names at least three sibyls, the Phrygian, the Erythraean, and the Hellespontine. The scholar David S. Potter writes, "In the late fifth century BC it does appear that 'Sibylla' was the name given to a single inspired prophetess".


title: Sibyl

text: Like Heraclitus, Plato speaks of only one sibyl, but in course of time the number increased to nine, with a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl, probably Etruscan in origin, added by the Romans. According to Lactantius' "Divine Institutions" (Book 1, Ch. 6), Varro (first century BC) lists these ten: the Persian, the Libyan, the Delphic, the Cimmerian, the Erythræan, the Samian, the Cumæan, the Hellespontine (in Trojan territory), the Phrygian (at Ancyra), and the Tiburtine (named Albunea).


title: Sibyl

text: The sibyl who most concerned the Romans was the Cumaean Sibyl, located near the Greek city of Naples, whom Virgil's Aeneas consults before his descent to the lower world ("Aeneid" book VI: 10). Burkert notes (1985, p. 117) that the conquest of Cumae by the Oscans in the fifth century destroyed the tradition, but provides a "terminus ante quem" for a Cumaean sibyl. She is said to have sold the original Sibylline books to Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome. In Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, the Cumaean sibyl foretells the coming of a savior—possibly a flattering reference to the poet's patron, Augustus. Christians later identified this saviour as Jesus.


title: Sibyl

text: The Delphic Sibyl was a woman who prophesied before the Trojan Wars (c. eleventh century BC). She was noted by Pausanias in his writing during the second century AD about local traditions in Greece. This earliest documented Delphic Sibyl would have predated by hundreds of years priestess of Apollo active at the oracle from around the eighth century BC who was known as Pythia. As Greek religion passed through transitions to the pantheon of the Classical Greeks that is most familiar to modern readers, Apollo had become the deity represented by Pythia and those who then officiated at the already ancient oracle.


title: Sibyl

text: Apollodorus of Erythrae affirms the Erythraean Sibyl to have been his own countrywoman and to have predicted the Trojan War and prophesied to the Greeks who were moving against Ilium both that Troy would be destroyed and that Homer would write falsehoods.


title: Sibyl

text: The word "acrostic" was first applied to the prophecies of the Erythraean Sibyl, which were written on leaves and arranged so that the initial letters of the leaves always formed a word.


title: Sibyl

text: The Hellespontian Sibyl was born in the village of Marpessus near the small town of Gergitha, during the lifetimes of Solon and Cyrus the Great. Marpessus, according to Heraclides of Pontus, was formerly within the boundaries of the Troad. The sibylline collection at Gergis was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae, where it became famous.


title: Sibyl

text: The so-called Libyan Sibyl was identified with prophetic priestesses presiding over the ancient Zeus-Amon (Zeus represented with the horns of Amon) oracle at the Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt. The oracle here was consulted by Alexander after his conquest of Egypt. The mother of the Libyan Sibyl was Lamia, the daughter of Poseidon. Euripides mentions the Libyan Sibyl in the prologue to his tragedy "Lamia".


title: Sibyl

text: The Persian Sibyl was said to be a prophetic priestess presiding over the Apollonian Oracle; although her location remained vague enough so that she might be called the "Babylonian Sibyl", the Persian Sibyl is said to have foretold the exploits of Alexander the Great. Also named "Sambethe", she was reported to be of the family of Noah. The second-century AD traveller Pausanias, pausing at Delphi to enumerate four sibyls, mentions the "Hebrew Sibyl" who was


title: Sibyl

text: brought up in Palestine named Sabbe, whose father was Berosus and her mother Erymanthe. Some say she was a Babylonian, while others call her an Egyptian Sibyl.


title: Sibyl

text: The medieval Byzantine encyclopedia, the "Suda", credits the Hebrew Sibyl as author of the Sibylline oracles.


title: Sibyl

text: The Phrygian Sibyl is most well known for being conflated with Cassandra, Priam's daughter in Homer's "Iliad".


title: Sibyl

text: To the classical sibyls of the Greeks, the Romans added a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl, whose seat was the ancient Sabino–Latin town of Tibur (modern Tivoli). The mythic meeting of Augustus with the Sibyl, of whom he inquired whether he should be worshiped as a god, was a favored motif of Christian artists. Whether the sibyl in question was the Etruscan Sibyl of Tibur or the Greek Sibyl of Cumae is not always clear. The Christian author Lactantius had no hesitation in identifying the sibyl in question as the Tiburtine Sibyl, nevertheless. He gave a circumstantial account of the pagan sibyls that is useful mostly as a guide to their identifications, as seen by fourth-century Christians:


title: Sibyl

text: The Tiburtine Sibyl, by name "Albunea", is worshiped at Tibur as a goddess, near the banks of the Anio, in which stream her image is said to have been found, holding a book in her hand. Her oracular responses the Senate transferred into the capitol. ("Divine Institutes" I.vi)


title: Sibyl

text: An apocalyptic pseudo-prophecy exists, attributed to the Tiburtine Sibyl, written c. AD 380, but with revisions and interpolations added at later dates. It purports to prophesy the advent of a final emperor named Constans, vanquishing the foes of Christianity, bringing about a period of great wealth and peace, ending paganism, and converting the Jews. After vanquishing Gog and Magog, the emperor is said to resign his crown to God. This would give way to the Antichrist. Ippolito d'Este rebuilt the Villa d'Este at Tibur, the modern Tivoli, from 1550 onward, and commissioned elaborate fresco murals in the Villa that celebrate the Tiburtine Sibyl, as prophesying the birth of Christ to the classical world.


title: Sibyl

text: In Medieval Latin, "sibylla" simply became the term for "prophetess". It became used commonly in Late Gothic and Renaissance art to depict female "Sibyllae" alongside male prophets.


title: Sibyl

text: The number of sibyls so depicted could vary, sometimes they were twelve (See, for example, the Apennine Sibyl), sometimes ten, e.g. for François Rabelais, “How know we but that she may be an eleventh sibyl or a second Cassandra?” "Gargantua and Pantagruel", iii. 16, noted in "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable", 1897.


title: Sibyl

text: The best known depiction is that of Michelangelo who shows five sibyls in the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling; the Delphic Sibyl, Libyan Sibyl, Persian Sibyl, Cumaean Sibyl, and the Erythraean Sibyl.


title: Sibyl

text: The library of Pope Julius II in the Vatican has images of sibyls and they are in the pavement of the Siena Cathedral. The Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli crowning the Campidoglio, Rome, is particularly associated with the Sibyl, because a medieval tradition referred the origin of its name to an otherwise unattested altar, "Ara Primogeniti Dei", said to have been raised to the "firstborn of God" by the emperor Augustus, who had been warned of his advent by the sibylline books: in the church the figures of Augustus and of the Tiburtine Sibyl are painted on either side of the arch above the high altar. In the nineteenth-century, Rodolfo Lanciani recalled that at Christmastime the "presepio" included a carved and painted figure of the sibyl pointing out to Augustus the Virgin and Child, who appeared in the sky in a halo of light. "The two figures, carved in wood, have now [1896] disappeared; they were given away or sold thirty years ago, when a new set of images was offered to the Presepio by prince Alexander Torlonia." (Lanciani, 1896 ch 1) Like prophets, Renaissance sibyls forecasting the advent of Christ appear in monuments: modelled by Giacomo della Porta in the Santa Casa at Loreto, painted by Raphael in Santa Maria della Pace, by Pinturicchio in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican, engraved by Baccio Baldini, a contemporary of Botticelli, and graffites by Matteo di Giovanni in the pavement of the Duomo of Siena.


title: Sibyl

text: Shakespeare references the sibyls in his plays, including "Othello", "Titus Andronicus", "The Merchant of Venice", and especially "Troilus and Cressida". In the latter, Shakespeare employed common Renaissance comparison of Cassandra to a sibyl.


title: Sibyl

text: A collection of twelve motets by Orlande de Lassus entitled "Prophetiae Sibyllarum" (pub. 1600) draw inspiration from the sibyl figures of antiquity. The work—for four voices a cappella—consists of a prologue and twelve prophecies, each once corresponding to an individual Sibyl. While the text speaks of the coming of Jesus Christ, the composer reflects the mystical aura of the prophecies by using chromaticism in an extreme manner, a compositional technique that became very fashionable at the time. It is possible that Lassus not only viewed Michelangelo's depictions, but also drew the chromatic manière from a number of Italian composers, who experimented at the time.


title: Sibyl

text: The sayings of sibyls and oracles were notoriously open to interpretation (compare Nostradamus) and were constantly used for both civil and cult propaganda. These sayings and sibyls should not be confused with the extant sixth-century collection of "Sibylline Oracles", which typically predict disasters rather than prescribe solutions.


title: Sibyl

text: Some genuine Sibylline verses are preserved in the second-century "Book of Marvels" of Phlegon of Tralles.


title: Sibyl

text: The oldest collection of written Sibylline Books appears to have been made about the time of Solon and Cyrus at Gergis on Mount Ida in the Troad. The sibyl, who was born near there, at Marpessus, and whose tomb was later marked by the temple of Apollo built upon the archaic site, appears on the coins of Gergis, 400–350 BCE. (cf. Phlegon, quoted in the fifth-century geographical dictionary of Stephanus of Byzantium, under 'Gergis'). Other places claimed to have been her home. The sibylline collection at Gergis was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae, where it became famous. It was this very collection, it would appear, which found its way to Cumae and from Cumae to Rome. Gergis, a city of Dardania in the Troad, a settlement of the ancient Teucri, and, consequently, a town of very great antiquity. Gergis, according to Xenophon, was a place of much strength. It had a temple sacred to Apollo Gergithius, and was said to have given birth to the sibyl, who is sometimes called "Erythraea", ‘from Erythrae,’ a small place on Mount Ida, and at others "Gergithia" ‘of Gergis’.


title: Brian Pillman Jr.

text: Brian Zachary Pillman (born September 9, 1993), better known by the ring name Brian Pillman Jr., is an American professional wrestler currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW). He is also known for his time in Major League Wrestling (MLW). Pillman is a second-generation wrestler, as he is the son of professional wrestler Brian Pillman.


title: Brian Pillman Jr.

text: Pillman is the son of professional wrestler Brian Pillman Sr. and model Melanie Pillman. The younger Pillman had four sisters, Danielle and Brittany Pillman, Alexis Reed and Skylar King, as well as one brother, Jesse Morgan. His sister Alexis became a professional wrestling valet under the ring name Lexi Pillman but died in 2009. Pillman attended Dixie Heights High School in Edgewood, Kentucky, where he played football. He graduated in 2011 and furthered his education by attending college. Pillman earned a degree at Northern Kentucky University in Information Systems.


title: Brian Pillman Jr.

text: In February 2017, Pillman announced he would be following his father's footsteps becoming a professional wrestler. He was trained by Lance Storm at his school, the Storm Wrestling Academy, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.


title: Brian Pillman Jr.

text: Pillman's first match was on December 18, 2017, when he used the ring name "Alex King", a tribute to his sisters Alexis Reed and Skylar King. Pillman made his professional debut for Combat Zone Wrestling on January 28, 2018, at Dojo Wars 162 against Mike Del for the CZW Medal of Valor Championship. Pillman was defeated in the match by submission. Pillman would have one more match in CZW, in a tag team match, teaming with Teddy Hart and faced Anthony Bennet and Jimmy Lloyd at Super Show V on January 26.


title: Brian Pillman Jr.

text: On January 18, 2020, Pillman was a surprise 16th entrant in a 16-man Battle Royale at IWC Reloaded 6.0. He did not win the match, but he appeared in the Main Event, helping IWC Champion Jack Pollock win the match. After the match, Pillman revealed he has signed a contract with IWC, and that part of his contract was a shot at the IWC Championship at the promotion's February event. On February 15, Pillman defeated Sam Adonis, Aramis, Lance Archer, Black Taurus, Michael Elgin, Andrew Everett, and Alex Zayne in a War of Attrition match to win the vacant Warrior Wrestling Championship. The title was left vacant due to injury to former champion Brian Cage. On September 12, 2020, in Washington, Pennsylvania, he won the Super Indy Championship for International Wrestling Cartel (IWC).


title: Brian Pillman Jr.

text: In late 2018, Pillman signed a contract with Major League Wrestling (MLW). When he first came in, he was mentored by his father's World Championship Wrestling rival Kevin Sullivan. He then turned on Sullivan and joined forces with Teddy Hart and Davey Boy Smith Jr., creating the New Era Hart Foundation. This took place in a backstage segment where Pillman attacked Sullivan with a cane, causing Sullivan to bleed. On July 9, 2021, it was reported that Pillman was no longer working with MLW as his contract had expired.


title: Brian Pillman Jr.

text: In May 2019, Pillman was a participant in a battle royal at All Elite Wrestling's inaugural pay-per-view event, Double or Nothing. In July 2020, with MLW shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pillman began to appear in All Elite Wrestling (AEW), wrestling on both their flagship show "Dynamite", and their online show "Dark". Pillman remained contracted to MLW, but was allowed to work for AEW as well. He made his in ring return on the July 7th episode of "Dark" in a losing effort against Shawn Spears. After this, Pillman was used as mostly as an enhancement talent losing to the likes of Brian Cage and Eddie Kingston.


title: Brian Pillman Jr.

text: In late July, Pillman began teaming with fellow AEW newcomer Griff Garrison, still competing mostly on "Dark". Pillman and Garrison made their main show debut in an eight-man tag match, teaming with Joey Janela and Sonny Kiss in a losing effort against The Butcher and The Blade and The Lucha Brothers. The team failed to pick up a win on either shows until the September 25th episode of "Dark", when they defeated Cezar Bononi and David Ali, marking their first victory as a team. During their losing streak, they lost to the likes of Private Party, FTR, The Inner Circle, The Butcher and The Blade, and The Hybrid 2. After picking up their first win, the team went on a second month long losing streak which ended after they defeated Sean Maluta and Alex Chamberlain on the November 3rd episode of "Dark". By early December, Pillman and Garrison had adopted the team name The Varsity Blonds, a tribute to Pillman's father. In their first match with their new name, The Varsity Blonds defeated The Dark Order (Colt Cabana and Alex Reynolds) in a tag team match on the December 8, 2020 episodes of "Dark". On May 11, 2021 Julia Hart started aligning herself with The Varsity Blonds and made appearances with them for several months. On July 12, 2021, Pillman signed a full time deal with All Elite Wrestling making him an official member of the roster.


title: Brian Pillman Jr.

text: Pillman had a strained relationship with his mother Melanie due to her battles with drug addiction following his father's death when Pillman was four years old. Pillman, who was primarily raised by his aunt Linda Pillman (his dad's sister) growing up, shared in a shoot interview that he felt his mother was feigning her grieving during her infamous interview with Vince McMahon on "WWF Raw is War" one day after his dad's death, as their marriage was already going through the divorce process at the time and simply wanted a pay day for drugs. Unlike most wrestling fans and the media, Pillman didn't fault the WWF for the somewhat tactless interview with his mother, as he credited the promotion for trying to help out him and his sisters as much as possible financially.


title: Brian Pillman Jr.

text: Pillman's relationship with his mother started improving after his wrestling career started; this included her making regular appearances during Pillman's live Twitch streams and sharing stories about his father. Melanie was found dead from an apparent drug overdose on June 1, 2022, at the age of 56, as confirmed by Pillman.


title: Falsettos

text: Falsettos is a sung-through musical with a book by William Finn and James Lapine, and music and lyrics by Finn. The musical consists of "March of the Falsettos" (1981) and "Falsettoland" (1990), the last two installments in a trio of one-act musicals that premiered off-Broadway (the first was "In Trousers"). The story centers on Marvin, who has left his wife to be with a male lover, Whizzer, and struggles to keep his family together. Much of the first act explores the impact his relationship with Whizzer has had on his family. The second act explores family dynamics that evolve as he and his wife plan his son's bar mitzvah. Central to the musical are the themes of Jewish identity, gender roles, and gay life in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It also deals with the topic of the AIDS epidemic.


title: Falsettos

text: "Falsettos" premiered on Broadway in 1992 and was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning those for Best Book and Best Original Score. The musical was revived on Broadway in 2016 starring Christian Borle and Andrew Rannells. The 2016 revival was filmed and adapted for the PBS "Live from Lincoln Center" television series, and aired on October 27, 2017. The revival was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical. Both the original cast and 2016 revival cast performed at the Tony Awards. Other revivals include tours in Australia and the United Kingdom. The musical was praised by critics for its melodic compositions, humor, character development, and positive portrayal of non-traditional family structures.


title: Falsettos

text: Composer William Finn began his theater career with a one-act musical "In Trousers" (1979), which centers on the character Marvin questioning his sexuality. It was produced twice at Playwrights Horizons off-Broadway, opening in February 1978 and again in December 1979. It was also produced off-Broadway at Second Stage Theater in March 1981. After "In Trousers" received sharply unfavorable reviews, Finn considered abandoning musical theater and attending medical school. He felt that "if the critic for the "Times" at that time had been more responsible, it would have been a considerable debut. But as it was, he just said it was junk." Finn struggled in his science classes and discarded his medical school plans, turning back to writing about the character of Marvin.


title: Falsettos

text: Finn soon wrote the songs for another one-act musical about Marvin and his family, "March of the Falsettos", collaborating with director James Lapine on the book. This premiered at Playwrights Horizons in April 1981, ran there through September and moved to the Westside Theatre in October 1981. "March of the Falsettos" received more positive critical reception than "In Trousers": Ellen Pall of "The New York Times" wrote that Finn's "brilliant form combined with the absolute topicality of his social themes first bowled critics over". In 1989, Finn premiered another musical, "Romance in Hard Times", which did not feature any of the characters of "Falsettos"; it was not a success.


title: Falsettos

text: Almost a decade after "March of the Falsettos", in the wake of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, Finn followed with "Falsettoland". The musical concluded Finn's "Marvin Trilogy" of one-act pieces about Marvin and his circle, beginning with "In Trousers" and "March of the Falsettos". "Falsettoland" opened at Playwrights Horizons on June 28, 1990, then moved to the Lucille Lortel Theatre, on September 16, 1990, where it closed on January 27, 1991. It won the 1991 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical and the 1991 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics.


title: Falsettos

text: Finn and Lapine then combined "March of the Falsettos" and "Falsettoland" to form a full-length show, titled "Falsettos", slightly altering them to form a "more unified, more thematically consistent" musical. In writing both acts of "Falsettos", Finn prioritized making the audience laugh, believing that provoking laughter is more challenging than garnering tears. Each musical was developed during rehearsals, particularly as Finn is a disorganized writer and composer. Finn often composed songs without a clear idea of where they would fit in the musical; he struggled to decide where to place the bar mitzvah in the action. The idea to set it in the hospital came to him in a dream. According to Stephen Bogardus, who played Whizzer in the original cast of both shows as well as in "Falsettos", Lapine came up with the idea to incorporate racquetball scenes in "Falsettoland", and he and his racquetball partner, Bogardus, added racquetball terminology into the dialogue. The "haftorah" read by Jason at his bar mitzvah was originally the same one read at Finn's own bar mitzvah, but he "got bored in the middle of writing it" and added words that he enjoyed musically but are grammatically incorrect in Hebrew. Some songs, including "Four Jews in a Room Bitching", originated with Finn humming improvised melodies while strolling the streets of New York City.


title: Falsettos

text: In 1979 in New York City, Marvin, his ten-year-old son Jason, his psychiatrist Mendel, and his boyfriend Whizzer are in the midst of an argument ("Four Jews In a Room B*tching"). Marvin steps forward to explain his situation: He has left his wife Trina for his male lover, Whizzer, but no one is happy with his attempts to integrate Whizzer into the family ("A Tight-Knit Family"). At Marvin's suggestion, Trina visits Mendel and explains she is having trouble accepting the end of her marriage and her failure to be a perfect wife. Mendel, instantly attracted to her, tries to reassure her that she is not to blame ("Love Is Blind"). Marvin and Whizzer note that they have very little in common but are intensely attracted to each other and worry that their feelings for one another are fading ("The Thrill of First Love"). Whizzer presents an interlude titled "Marvin at the Psychiatrist, a Three-Part Mini-Opera". In a series of therapy sessions with Mendel, Marvin discusses his relationship with Whizzer, his failed relationship with Trina (which leads to Mendel pressing him for intimate details about his ex-wife), and his inability to connect with his son. Jason is very worried that because of Marvin's sexuality, he will turn out to be gay too ("'My Father's a Homo'"), and his parents suggest he receive therapy from Mendel to calm his mood swings. Jason refuses to listen to his parents, but agrees to go to therapy once Whizzer adds his recommendation ("Everyone Tells Jason to See a Psychiatrist").


title: Falsettos

text: Marvin and Whizzer fight over Whizzer's lack of enthusiasm for monogamy and Marvin's attempt to force him into the role of a housewife ("This Had Better Come to a Stop"), while Trina is concerned that Whizzer is taking her place in the family and has a mental breakdown ("I'm Breaking Down"). Trina requests that Mendel provide in-home therapy for Jason ("Please Come to Our House"), and after getting to know her and Jason through these sessions, Mendel clumsily proposes to her. Trina accepts, sparking jealousy in Marvin ("A Marriage Proposal"). Trina is frustrated with the male-dominated world she lives in and the immaturity of the four men around her, who sing a hymn to masculinity, the three adults singing in falsetto to match Jason's unbroken voice ("Trina's Song/March of the Falsettos").


title: Falsettos

text: Marvin tries to teach Whizzer how to play chess, but bitterness and ill-feeling boil over ("The Chess Game"). They fight and break up. Meanwhile, Trina and Mendel move in together ("Making a Home"). As he packs, Whizzer reflects on his life and relationship with Marvin. He has been used and abused by other men because of his looks his whole life, and Whizzer finally decides that he doesn't want to live like that anymore. ("The Games I Play"). After receiving Mendel and Trina's marriage announcement, Marvin breaks down in rage and slaps her ("Marvin Hits Trina"). Shocked by his actions, everyone confesses that they never intended to feel so deeply about the people in their lives, and they accept the pain that love can bring ("I Never Wanted To Love You"). Jason discovers his attraction to girls, to his immense relief. In the wake of the destruction of his relationships with both Whizzer and Trina, Marvin sits Jason down for a talk and tells him that no matter what kind of man Jason turns out to be, Marvin will always be there for him ("Father to Son") .


title: Falsettos

text: It is 1981, two years later. Nancy Reagan is in the White House, and two new people are introduced: Marvin's lesbian neighbors Dr. Charlotte, an internist, and Cordelia, a non-Jewish caterer specializing in Jewish cuisine. Marvin observes that it's "About Time" to grow up and get over himself. He has managed to maintain his relationship with Jason and now shares split custody with Trina, who has married Mendel. He has not seen Whizzer for two years and has not gotten over him (Falsettoland/About Time). Marvin and Trina begin planning "Jason's Bar Mitzvah", and each character has a different opinion regarding how it should be celebrated ("The Year of the Child"). Later, at Jason's Little League Baseball game, Jason ponders which girls he will invite to the bar mitzvah ("The Miracle of Judaism"). Whizzer arrives at the baseball game after being invited by Jason. Marvin cautiously asks Whizzer on a date just as Jason manages to hit the ball ("The Baseball Game"). An interlude ends with everyone reflecting on how wonderful life is ("A Day in Falsettoland"). Soon afterwards, Marvin and Trina argue at length about the logistics of the bar mitzvah ("The Fight"), which makes Jason want to call it off. Mendel consoles the boy, telling him that "Everyone Hates His Parents" at his age, but everyone eventually matures and hates them less.


title: Falsettos

text: Marvin sits in bed one morning, looking at the sleeping Whizzer, and wonders at how much he loves him ("What More Can I Say?"). Dr. Charlotte, meanwhile, is becoming aware that young gay men in the city arrive at the hospital sick with a mysterious illness that no one understands ("Something Bad is Happening"). Whizzer collapses suddenly during a game of racquetball and is hospitalized, and Trina is disturbed to find how upset she is at his condition ("Holding to the Ground"). In Whizzer's hospital room, everyone gathers to cheer him up, commenting on how well he looks. They agree that it is days like this that make these secular Jews believe in God, but Jason, in childish honesty, tells Whizzer that he looks awful ("Days Like This"). Mendel and Trina sit Jason down to inform him that Whizzer may not recover; they give him the option of "Canceling the Bar Mitzvah". Marvin sits in Whizzer's hospital room, soon joined by Cordelia and Dr. Charlotte, and the four "Unlikely Lovers" reaffirm their commitment to each other despite Whizzer's worsening situation.


title: Falsettos

text: As Whizzer's condition deteriorates, Jason turns to God, offering to get bar mitzvahed if Whizzer gets better ("Another Miracle of Judaism"). Dr. Charlotte explains to Marvin that "Something Bad is Happening" and heavily implies that Marvin may become sick as well. Whizzer's illness becomes terminal, and he resolves to face death with dignity and courage ("You Gotta Die Sometime"). Suddenly, everyone bursts into the hospital room. Jason has had an epiphany: he wants to hold the ceremony in Whizzer's hospital room ("Jason's Bar Mitzvah"). As Jason completes his recitation, Whizzer collapses and is taken from the room, followed by all but Marvin. Marvin, left alone, asks the departed Whizzer what his life would be if they had not loved each other. Whizzer's spirit appears, and asks if Marvin regrets their relationship, and Marvin resolutely states he would do it again ("What Would I Do?"). Marvin's friends and family surround him, and he finally loses his composure and breaks down in their arms. Mendel steps forward, tearfully declaring that "this is where we take a stand" ("Falsettoland (reprise)").


title: Falsettos

text: "Falsettos" opened on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre on April 29, 1992, and closed on June 27, 1993, after 487 performances. Directed by James Lapine, the cast included Michael Rupert as Marvin, Stephen Bogardus as Whizzer, Barbara Walsh as Trina, Chip Zien as Mendel (he played Marvin in "In Trousers"), Jonathan Kaplan as Jason, Heather MacRae as Charlotte, and Carolee Carmello as Cordelia. Rupert, Bogardus, and Zien reprised their roles from the original off-Broadway productions of "March of the Falsettos" and "Falsettoland", MacRae reprised her role from "Falsettoland", and Walsh reprised her role from a Hartford Stage regional production of "Falsettoland". Scenic design was by Douglas Stein, costumes by Ann Hould-Ward, and lighting by Frances Aronson. The cast and producers were unsure if the show would find a strong following on Broadway, but were encouraged when Frank Rich of "The New York Times" gave the musical a positive review.


title: Falsettos

text: "Falsettos", the last show of Broadway's 1991–92 season, had a budget of $957,000, a low budget by Broadway standards. Producers Barry and Fran Weissler tried various marketing strategies to promote the musical. Hoping to create an easily-identifiable logo inspired by the minimalist design of "Cats", the Weisslers used the work of artist Keith Haring in which two adults and a child hold up a bright red heart. Although audiences were enthusiastic at previews, the producers worried that the marketing strategy would not draw a large audience, and Barry Weissler explained that "Since Keith died of AIDS, many people felt the drawing was meant to attract a gay audience." The Weisslers then hired advertising agency LeDonne, Wilner & Weiner, who launched a promotional campaign centered on photographing audience members "not targeting specific Catholic or Jewish or family audiences, but trying to get across the idea that "Falsettos" is for everyone." The advertisers invited the newly-crowned Miss America, who had recently launched an Atlantic City-based AIDS awareness campaign, to attend the show and be photographed. In the following months, the producers began to earn back their initial investment and to profit from the show.


title: Falsettos

text: In 1994, Sydney Theatre Company presented an Australian production directed by Wayne Harrison and featuring John O'May as Marvin, Gina Riley as Trina, Tony Sheldon as Mendel, and Simon Burke as Whizzer. After playing at the Sydney Opera House's Drama Theatre from 12 January to 5 March 1994, the production toured Victoria, Hobart and Canberra. Riley and Sheldon were both awarded Green Room Awards for this production, winning Best Female Artist in a Leading Role and Best for Best Male Artist in a Supporting Role, respectively.


title: Falsettos

text: In 2014 Darlinghurst Theatre Company presented a revival directed by Stephen Colyer. The cast featured Tamlyn Henderson as Marvin, Katrina Retallick as Trina, Stephen Anderson as Mendel, Ben Hall as Whizzer, Elise McCann as Cordelia and Margi de Ferranti as Charlotte. The production played as part of the Sydney Mardi Gras festival throughout February and March 2014. In her review of the production, Cassie Tongue of "Aussie Theatre" viewed the production as a "promising sign of things to come" for the Sydney theater scene, and praised the casting by remarking, "Henderson's Marvin and Retallick's Trina are clear standouts, and de Ferranti and McCann are so essential to the emotional weight of the second act that they are just as impressive as if they had been there from the first".


title: Falsettos

text: Producer Jordan Roth announced in 2015 that he would revive the show under the direction of James Lapine in the spring of 2016. The set design incorporated a cube made of large blocks that the characters rearranged throughout the show. The production began previews on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on September 29, 2016, and opened officially on October 27, directed by Lapine. Christian Borle, Andrew Rannells, Stephanie J. Block and Brandon Uranowitz played Marvin, Whizzer, Trina, and Mendel respectively. Tracie Thoms was Dr. Charlotte, Betsy Wolfe played Cordelia, and Anthony Rosenthal was Jason.


title: Falsettos

text: The production closed on January 8, 2017. Two performances were filmed on January 3 and 4, 2017, which were repackaged into a presentation for the PBS television series "Live from Lincoln Center", and aired on October 27, 2017. A North American tour of the 2016 Broadway revival launched in February 2019, under Lapine's direction, and ended in late June 2019. Max von Essen starred as Marvin, with Eden Espinosa as Trina, Nick Adams as Whizzer, and Nick Blaemire as Mendel.


title: Falsettos

text: Selladoor Worldwide announced that they would produce "Falsettos" at The Other Palace, an off-West End theatre in London, for a strictly limited run. The show began previews on August 30, 2019, before officially opening on September 5. The original cast featured Natasha J Barnes as Cordelia, Daniel Boys as Marvin, Gemma Knight-Jones as Charlotte, Laura Pitt-Pulford as Trina, and Oliver Savile as Whizzer. Joel Montague played Mendel. The show closed on November 23, 2019.


title: Falsettos

text: Before the production opened, a group of more than 20 Jewish actors and playwrights, including Miriam Margolyes and Maureen Lipman, signed an open letter to the producers, concerned about the lack of Jewish presence within the cast and creatives. Despite this, the show opened to mostly positive reviews, with critics praising the cast, story and music, but aiming criticism at the set design. The show was nominated for Best Video Design and won Best Off-West End Production at the 2020 WhatsOnStage Awards.


title: Falsettos

text: Jewish culture and identity plays a significant role in "Falsettos". It takes place in the "often humorous environment of Jewish neuroses and self-deprecation". Finn gave Judaism a central role in the musical, emphasized by beginning it with the song "Four Jews in a Room Bitching". The stage version begins with all four male characters dressed in clothing from Biblical times before they remove these robes to reveal modern clothing. In the song, three characters state that they are Jewish, while Whizzer specifies that he is "half-Jewish". The first act, "March of the Falsettos", was originally intended to be titled "Four Jews in a Room Bitching" until Lapine insisted that Finn change the title. Writers Raymond and Zelda Knapp compared the implications of the AIDS epidemic in "Falsettos" to the foreshadowing of the Holocaust in the 1964 Jewish musical "Fiddler on the Roof", noting that both works suggest the "comparatively innocent" atmosphere before tragedy and the "grim" environment afterward.


title: Falsettos

text: Jason's bar mitzvah is a major plot point and accentuates the theme of the male characters maturing and becoming men. Jesse Oxfeld of "The Forward" wrote that the musical is a "story about love and family – about making your own chosen family, which is of course a classic gay trope, but also, in its message of accommodation and dedication and, well, "l'dor v'dor", very Jewish." He also noted that due to the musical's casual, matter-of-fact depiction of homosexuality, "The lesbians are most interesting for being goyim". The song "The Baseball Game" pokes fun at a stereotypical lack of athletic prowess among American Jews, but Mendel then points out the success of Jewish baseball players Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg. Finn, who played Little League baseball as a child, invited Koufax to a performance of Falsettos in Los Angeles, and the baseball player was "offended – not at all pleased" by the joke.