closer2fine

Joined

• started 157 topics
• posted 974 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by closer2fine

• 
  18

  Is it just me or does anyone else....Mr.Moe

  by SheilaM in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  .

  on american idol doesn't kimberly caldwell remind you of moe?????

  just wondering if i was the only one that thinks this.. sheila

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  closer2fine

  Mr. Moe reminds me of my friend Ashley - they could easily be sisters. Can't post her pic 'cause she'd kill me.

  Francois, hmmmmmm wonder if they are the same person.........was she a JW? living on the east coast?

  closer
• 
  16

  Oh my God!! 8 people killed in Santa Monica farmers market

  by Dogpatch in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  occasionally i go with friends to visit the santa monica farmer's market, and it is a good area to hang out in the summer in the evening.

  some 80 year old man just plowed through the crowd in a car for 2.5 blocks and ran over 8 people, injuring about 30+ others.

  a two-year old baby was killed.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  closer2fine

  this is so awful.

  I'm very interested in hearing the cause. Elderly driving is a sore topic for me. My Grandfather at 76 is still driving & if his Dr. notified the state, his license would be revoked (he has fallen asleep hundreds of times while at the wheel and run off the road) Thankfully no one has been injured by his driving - but he has no business driving.

  closer
• 
  20

  Bye

  by IronGland in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  bye everyone.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  closer2fine

  bye Ironclad

  I'll have to look at your previous posts to see the impression you've made!

  closer
• 
  11

  This One's For The Girls

  by sandy in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  this one's for the girls.

  this is for all you girls about twenty-five.

  this ones for the girls.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  closer2fine

  I liked it too.

  closer
• 
  20

  Can't stand the weight I've gained on my anti-depressant....

  by berylblue in

  1. social
  2. physical

  ...i have my first comedy performance saturday, and i'm 15 pounds overweight.

  i don't care that i'm still (albeit barely) in the acceptable weight range for my age/height (47/5'1"); i want to be thin again.

  short of not eating for a week, does anyone have any suggestions?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  closer2fine

  Berylblue - You can get prescription drugs out of Canada for up to 70% off the US price.

  Try this site: http://www.canadamedicinecompany.com/

  Also - Wellbutrin can cause weight loss (besides the loss you might have due to not being depressed), and can restore/even increase sexual drive.

  How was the comedy show?

  hth

  closer
• 
  20

  What would YOU 'do' for a Klondike bar?

  by sf in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  would you call watchtower and tell them we are ashamed of them?.

  would you call this judge and tell him that he made a lethal ruling?.

  would you offer your insights to the right people, who can demand answers and change and get that insane judge off the bench?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  closer2fine

  Amy's Ice Cream in Austin, TX

  closer
• 
  3

  Jazz Great Nina Simone Dies at 70

  by closer2fine in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030421/d7qi89m80.html

  just a sad day

  jazz great nina simone dies at 70

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  closer2fine

  http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030421/D7QI89M80.html

  Just a sad day

  Jazz Great Nina Simone Dies at 70

  Email this Story Apr 21, 7:54 PM (ET) By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY

  (AP) An Oct. 7, 1999 photo from files of Jazz legend Nina Simone arriving at the Heineken/Hot Press... Full Image

  NEW YORK (AP) - Nina Simone, whose deep, raspy, forceful voice made her a unique figure in jazz and later helped chronicle the civil rights movement, died Monday at her home in France, according to her personal manager. She was 70.

  Clifton Henderson, who was at Simone's bedside at her death, said she died of "natural causes" in her sleep after a long illness. He refused to provide the name of the town where she lived.

  "She inspired other singers to do what they believed in," Henderson said, saying the musician would also be remembered for her activism. "She'll definitely be looked at as a civil rights movement leader."

  Norah Jones, India.Arie, Peter Gabriel, Sade and Aretha Franklin, who rerecorded one of Simone's most famous songs, the anthem "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," were among the artists who cited her as an influence.

  Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in 1933 in North Carolina, Simone was the sixth of seven children in a poor family. She began playing the piano at age 4 and was classically trained, attending the Juilliard School in New York for one year. She had hoped to attend the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, but was rejected - one of many disappointments she would attribute to racism.

  She turned to singing jazz and popular music as a way to make money, performing in nightclubs in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, N.J. In the late 1950s Simone recorded her first tracks, including "Plain Gold Ring" and "Don't Smoke in Bed." But she gained fame in 1959 with her recording of "I Loves You Porgy," from the opera "Porgy & Bess."

  Simone later wove the turbulent times of the 1960s into her music. In 1963, after the church bombing that killed four young black girls in Birmingham, Ala., and the slaying of Medgar Evers, she wrote "Mississippi Goddam," whose searing lyrics included the lines: "Oh but this whole country is full of lies, You're all gonna die and die like flies."

  After the killing of The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., she recorded "Why? The King of Love Is Dead."

  "That's what separated Nina from the other singers," friend and jazz concert promoter George Wein told The Associated Press on Monday. "Nina took civil rights and the movement, the fight to another level, and made it part of her persona."

  In a 1998 interview, Simone blamed racism in the United States for her decision to live abroad, saying that as a black person, she had "paid a heavy price for fighting the establishment."

  She left the United States in 1973 and lived in the Caribbean and Africa before settling in Europe. She didn't return to the United States until 1985 for a series of concerts.

  Wein said she was extremely bitter.

  "She was a black woman who never could relate to the position of what it was to be black in America. She couldn't understand it," he said. "She was an unhappy person."

  Simone enjoyed perhaps her greatest success in the 1960s and '70s, with songs such as "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl" and "Four Women," a song about four black woman with varying skin colors and lifestyles. One of the verses reads, "My skin is brown-And my manner is tough-I'll kill the first mother I see ... What do they call me? My name is PEACHES."

  Though she was a gifted songwriter, Simone also recorded songs from artists as diverse as Leonard Cohen and the Bee Gees and made them her own. Perhaps one of her more popular covers was her version of "House of the Rising Sun."

  While she had a regal presence onstage, she could often be temperamental; she had a reputation for chewing out audience members who interrupted her performances with conversation or loud drinking or talking.

  "As an entertainer, she had the world in her hands, but she never knew how to grab it," said Wein.

  Sometimes called "High Priestess of Soul," she remained a top concert draw in her later years.

  However, she was quite frail. At a 2001 concert at Carnegie Hall, she had to be helped to the stage, and was later seen sitting backstage in a wheelchair.

  Yet Wein called the performance, which ran a little over an hour, one of her greatest. Fans wildly applauded every song, and demanded an encore after she left the stage - to which Simone responded by returning and shouting, "Go home!"

  "This was one of the most amazing evenings I had ever seen in my years," he said.

  Simone, who was divorced twice, is survived by a daughter, Lisa - a singer who goes by Simone. She's starring in Broadway's "Aida" and has recorded with the group Liquid Soul.
• 
  12

  Ja Rule raised a Witness?

  by joenobody in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  read an excerpt in my morning paper quoting rapper 50 cent saying this:.

  "that kid is a fraud.

  ja rule grew up a jehovah's witness.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  closer2fine

  Ja Rule continues his conquest

  By Steve Jones, USA TODAY

  Hosting a show on MTV recently, Ja Rule looked at the teleprompter and was surprised to see his name was actually spelled right. It was just another sign that after two hit albums, the star of the 23-year-old Queens-born rapper is rising.

  "I'm still kind of shocked when they get it right in articles and like that," says Ja Rule (Jeffrey Atkins). "They used to put an 'h' on the end of Ja because they didn't know me like that. I am a double-platinum artist, and they should get it right, but it still bugs me out."

  Just two years after being introduced to the mainstream via a song-stealing appearance on Jay-Z's smash Can I Get a ..., Ja Rule has lived up to the ambitious title of his 1999 debut album, Venni Vetti Vecci (his version of the Latin "I came, I saw, I conquered"). He has sold millions of records, become a pitchman for such companies as Calvin Klein and Coca-Cola, and is enjoying a budding movie career.
  With his second album, Rule 3:36, he managed to shrug off comparisons to other rappers, banish the one-hit-wonder label and avoid the sophomore jinx that plagues the vast majority of hip-hop artists. And in the process, he has taken a place with longtime friends Jay-Z and DMX at the top of rap's current pantheon of stars. The second album has succeeded largely because raspy-voiced Ja Rule offered more, rather than more of the same.
  After being propelled to stardom by the gritty street anthem Holla Holla, with its ominous "It's murder" chant, expectations were that he'd follow up with other songs in a similar vein. Ja Rule says he was having none of that.

  While Rule 3:36 has its share of hard-core jams, its first single, the lilting Between Me and You (an ode to illicit love), and the sexy follow-up Put It on Me go in a different direction.

  "People were saying I got lucky with Holla Holla, and I just had to prove myself again," says Ja Rule, who spent four months in California working on the album. The change in venue was "a different vibe. It was hot, and there were palm trees. It was a great environment for me to be around and reflect. It made the album brighter."

  He also had tired of critics saying he was trying to sound like DMX or look like the late Tupac Shakur. So he took steps to establish his own identity.

  "I really try to be very different from everybody else," he says. "It's not my fault that X and I have similar voices, and it's not my fault that me and 'pac have similar builds. So to get away from these things, I had to do the opposite. DMX and Tupac never had hair, so I grew my hair and now I have braids. I don't feel that DMX would ever make a record like Between You and Me or Put It on Me, and I wouldn't make his type of record. I never saw the similarities anyway, but since I was hearing that, I had to really go out in left field."

  Ja Rule's seemingly overnight rise is actually the result of seven years of struggle. He says he can laugh now about the popular perception that he's a protégé of Jay-Z or DMX. Back in 1994, when none of them had yet made a dent in the public consciousness, Ja was part of the New York collective Cash Money Click (no relation to New Orleans' Cash Money Records), which also included DJ Irv Gotti. The unknown Jay-Z and DMX made guest appearances on a Click album that was never released.

  But what did come out was a black-and-white video, which caught the eye of Def Jam president Lyor Cohen, who eventually hired the energetic Gotti as a Def Jam executive (he now heads the label's Murder Inc. Records, Ja's recording home). It took some time for Gotti to get Ja Rule signed, because he was still under contract with the Click's label, Blunt Records. In the meantime, Gotti brought DMX and his Ruff Ryders management team to Def Jam and helped smooth the way for Jay-Z and Roc-a-fella Records to join the company.

  "It's a funny story," says Ja Rule, "and Lyor likes to say that if he hadn't discovered me, he may not have (had) some of these other beautiful things that he has got going on here."

  Ja Rule's music is rife with religious imagery and symbolism. On the cover on his first album, he takes a prayerful stance, while the title of his newest album is the first of 13 rules ("He who believes in Ja shall have everlasting love/He who does not shall not see life but the wrath of my vengeance") that embody his life philosophy. On the song One of Us, he postulates a God who has to face daily struggles (in similar fashion as the unrelated Joan Osborne hit of the same name).

  "I'm real spiritual, but I can't say that I'm religious," says Ja Rule, who was raised a Jehovah's Witness but also worshiped for a time under the banners of Catholicism and later Islam. "I think that people really don't need religion, but should just cut out the middleman and serve God themselves."

  He says he "jacked" Rule 3:36 from the Bible's John 3:16 and made up the rest of his rules. He intended to keep the rules private, but he posted them on his Web site at the suggestion of his record company. The site allows fans to respond to the rules, something that has proved eye-opening to the rapper.
  "That's why the computer is kind of dangerous," says Ja Rule, the married father of two young children. "I was reading some of the messages, and they were like, 'Ja, you're the greatest,' and it's different from being into your music. They are into me.

  "That's the scary thing about the Internet, because you can have somebody so into you that they will follow you, and that can be a problem. That's why I get so much flak about the 'murder' thing, because kids are looking and listening, and you become this role model even if you don't want to be. There's nothing you can do about it; you just have to learn to be more careful with what you say. But I do try to let everybody know that I do make adult music."

  The same can be said for the gritty urban films he has made so far — Turn It Up, with rapper Pras; Crime Partners, which is based on a Donald Goines novel and also stars Snoop Dogg and Ice-T; and The Fast and the Furious, which is due March 28. His next project, the cop drama Training Day, stars Denzel Washington and will come out in the fall.

  By that time, he hopes to release his third album, Pain Is Love, a double CD. He believes his increasing stature will allow him to take even more risks and get even more personal. He says it will be a summary of everything he has gone through, and it will allow him to "pour out my heart and soul, joy and pain. All of me."
• 
  15

  Which is the right beer for you? (QUIZ)

  by Gizmo in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  .

  rank.

  #1 equals your best match item.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  closer2fine

  hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..............

  #1 Zima
• 
  17

  Great Depeche Mode Quotes from songs

  by Beans in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  i love music from every different era and all types, but one band that i enjoy alot is depeche mode!

  usually i don't listen to words or take them in alot, but alot of there lyrics are pretty deep and say some interesting things!

  you cant change the world.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  closer2fine

  I felt like this a lot when I was in the borg.....

  Sometimes
  Only sometimes
  A question everything
  And I'm the first to admit
  If you catch me in a mood like this
  I can be tiring
  
  Even embarassing
  But you must
  Feel the same
  When you look around
  You can't tell me honestly
  You're happy with what you see
  
  Oh sometimes
  You must be...
  You must be...
  As embarassing as me
  Sometimes