Sanırım, C ve C++ adını bilgisayarla az çok haşır neşir olan herkes en az bir kez duymuştur. Sizde bu isimleri duyanlardansanız ve nedir, ne değildir, nasıl kullanılır gibi birçok soruya yanıt arıyorsanız, doğru yerdesiniz. Çünkü bu yazıyla başlayarak C ve C++ ile programlamaya gireceğiz. Önce C ile yolumuza koyulup, belli bir olgunluğa ulaştıktan sonra C++ ile devam edeceğiz.

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originally Nicholas Coppola Born Nicholas Coppola on January 7, 1964, in Long Beach, California, to choreographer Joy Vogelsang and literature professor August Coppola. Cage has two older brothers, Marc and Christopher. He is the nephew of film director Francis Ford Coppola and, as a youth, visited his uncle often at his San Francisco home. At age 15, Cage fell in love with acting during a summer class at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. He dropped out of Beverly Hills High School to pursue an acting career, making his debut on television in 1981. He changed his name to Nicolas Cage as a way to separate his identity from that of his famous uncle. He chose the name ?Cage? as a tribute to comic-book superhero Luke Cage.Cage is known for his edgy, intense personality both on and off the screen, as well as for his passion for method acting. He is said to have had two teeth pulled for his role in Birdy (1984), slashed his arm for Racing With the Moon (1984) and swallowed a live cockroach for Vampire?s Kiss (1992). He is also alleged to have destroyed a street vendor?s remote-controlled car in a fit of rage while preparing for his role as a mobster in The Cotton Club (1984). Cage got his start in teenage comedies, with his debut in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982; also featuring Sean Penn), followed by a leading role as a punk rocker in Valley Girl (1983). Francis Ford Coppola gave him a small role in his critically acclaimed Rumble Fish (1983). His first serious dramatic role was opposite Matthew Modine in Birdy (1984). This was followed by Coppola?s Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), the Coen Brothers? comedy Raising Arizona (1987), Moonstruck (1987, starring Cher), David Lynch?s bizarre Wild at Heart (1990), Vampire?s Kiss (1992) and the comedy Honeymoon in Vegas (1992). By 1994, Cage was valued at about $4 million per picture, but agreed to star in Mike Figgis? Leaving Las Vegas (1995) for only $240,000 because of the strength of the role. It paid off; his portrayal of the alcoholic screenwriter earned him a Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Actor. Since 1995, Cage has made a series of action thrillers, including The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997), John Woo?s Face/Off (1997, opposite John Travolta), and Brian De Palma?s Snake Eyes (1998). In 1998, he starred in the romantic City of Angels with Meg Ryan. After returning to the action genre with the poorly-rated 8MM and headlining Martin Scorsese?s dark Bringing Out the Dead in 1999, Cage reportedly received a $20 million paycheck for the action extravaganza Gone in 60 Seconds, costarring Angelina Jolie. Cage played a more traditional romantic lead in his next two movies, the Christmas 2000 release The Family Man and the World War II-era epic Captain Corelli's Mandolin, starring the much-in-demand actress and Spanish import Penelope Cruz. In December 2002, Cage launched his directorial debut, the $5 million independent film Sonny, about a male gigolo who struggles to free himself from his madam mother. Cage also starred in Adaptation, playing both ill-tempered screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and twin brother Donald. Upcoming projects include costarring with Chow Yun-Fat in director John Woo's action Western Land of Destiny and starring and coproducing Dead to Rights, a movie version of the hugely popular video game. The busy actor also starred in director Jon Turteltaub's 2004 holiday blockbuster National Treasure, playing an archaelogist-historian who believes a treasure map is hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Cage's relationship with Kristina Fulton, a model, lasted several years, producing a son, Weston Coppola Cage, born in 1992. Cage has been married three times: The first to actress Patricia Arquette in 1995; the second was a short-lived marriage to Lisa-Marie Presley, the only daughter of the late King of Rock and Roll, in August 2002; and most recently, he wed his girlfriend, 20-year-old former waitress Alice Kim, at a private ranch in Northern California in August 2004. The couple announced the birth of a son, Kal-el Coppola Cage, on October 3, 2005. ? 2005 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.

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2pac


Representing Tupac online since 1996!
"I just played it to win. Mothafucka took a bet against the odds, rolled those mothafuckin dice. Sometimes a nigga hit 7-11, sometimes a nigga crap out. That's just the chance a mothafucka take when you ridah though." -- Tupac Amaru Shakur (T.I.P)

Check out www.ThugCDs.com for unreleased Makaveli CDs and 2Pac DVDs!
Tupac Shakur grew up around nothing but self-delusion. His mother, Alice Faye Williams, thought she was a "revolutionary." She called herself "Afeni Shakur" and associated with members of the ill-fated Black Panther Party, a movement that wanted to feed school kids breakfast and earn civil rights for African Americans.
During her youth she dropped out of high school, partied with North Carolina gang members, then moved to Brooklyn: After an affair with one of Malcolm X's bodyguards, she became political. When the mostly white United Federation of Teachers went on strike in 1968, she crossed the picket line and taught the children herself. After this she joined a New York chapter of the Black Panther Party and fell in with an organizer named Lumumba. She took to ranting about killing "the pigs" and overthrowing the government, which eventually led to her arrest and that of twenty comrades for conspiring to set off a race war. Pregnant, she made bail and told her husband, Lummuba, it wasn't his child. Behind his back she had been carrying on with Legs (a small-time associate of Harlem drug baron Nicky Barnes) and Billy Garland (a member of the Party). Lumumba immediately divorced fer.




Things went downhill for Afeni: Bail revoked, she was imprisoned in the Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village. In her cell she patted her belly and said, "This is my prince. He is going to save the black nation."

By the time Tupac was born on June 16, 1971, Afeni had already defended herself in court and been acquitted on 156 counts. Living in the Bronx, she found steady work as a paralegal and tried to raise her son to respect the value of an education.

From childhood, everyone called him the "Black Prince." For misbehaving, he had to read an entire edition of The New York Times. But she had no answer when he asked about his daddy. "She just told me, 'I don't know who your daddy is.' It wasn't like she was a slut or nothin'. It was just some rough times."When he was two, his sister, Sekyiwa, was born. This child's father, Mutulu, was a Black Panther who, a few months before her birth, had been sentenced to sixty years for a fatal armored car robbery.

With Mutulu away, the family experienced hard times. No matter where they moved-the Bronx, Harlem, homeless shelters-Tupac was distressed. "I remember crying all the time. My major thing growing up was I couldn't fit in. Because I was from everywhere. I didn't have no buddies that I grew up with."

As time passed, the issue of his father tormented him. He felt "unmanly," he said. Then his cousins started saying he had an effeminate face. "I don't know. I just didn't feel hard. I could do all the things my mother could give me, but she couldn't give me nothing else."

The loneliness began to wear on him. He retreated into writing love songs and poetry. "I remember I had a book like a diary. And in that book I said I was going to be famous." He wanted to be an actor. Acting was an escape from his dismal life. He was good at it, eager to leave his crummy family behind. "The reason why I could get into acting was because it takes nothin' to get out of who I am and go into somebody else."

His mother enrolled him in the 127th Street Ensemble, a theater group in the impoverished Harlem section of Manhattan, where he landed his first role at age twelve, that of Travis in A Raisin in the Sun. "I lay on a couch and played sleep for the first scene. Then I woke up and I was the only person onstage. I can remeber thinking, "This is the best shit in the world!" That got me real high. I was gettin' a secret: This is what my cousins can't do."

In Baltimore, at age fifteen, he fell into rap; he started writing lyrics, walking with a swagger, and milking his background in New York for all it was worth. People in small towns feared the Big Apple's reputation; he called himself MC New York and made people think he was a tough guy.

He enrolled in the illustrious Balitomore School for the Arts, where he studied acting and ballet with white kids and finally felt "in touch" with himself. "Them white kids had things we never seen," he said. "That was the first time I saw there was white people who you could get along with. Before that, I just believed what everyone else said: They was devils. But I loved it. I loved going to school. It taught me a lot. I was starting to feel like I really wanted to be an artist.

By the time he was twenty, Shakur had been arrested eight times, even serving eight months in prison after being convicted of sexual abuse. In addition, he was the subject of two wrongful-death lawsuits, one involving a six-year-old boy who was killed after getting caught in gang-war crossfire between Shakur's gang and a rival group.

In the late eighties, Shakur teamed up with Humpty-Hump (a.k.a. Eddie Humphrey, a.k.a. Gregory "Shock-G" Jacobs) and other Oakland-based rappers to create Digital Underground, a band intent on massive bass beats and frenetic, Parliament-Funkadelic-style rhythms. In 1990, the group released its debut and best album, Sex Packets, a pulsating testament to the boogie power of hip-hop, featuring two classic tracks, "Humpty Dance" and "Doowutchyalike." After an EP of re-mixes in 1991, D.U. released Sons of the P and, the following year, The Body-Hat Syndrome, all on Tommy Boy Records.

In 1992, Shakur entered a most fruitful five-year period. He broke free of D.U. and made his solo debut, 2Pacalypse Now, a gangsta rap document that put him in the notorious, high-speed lane to stardom. That same year he starred in Juice, an acclaimed low-budget film about gangs which saw some Hollywood success. In 1993, he recorded and released Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., an album that found Shakur crossing over to the pop charts. Unfortunately, he also found himself on police blotters, when allegations of a violent attack on an off-duty police officer and sexual misconduct arose. The same year, Shakur played a single father and Janet Jackson's love interest in the John Singleton film Poetic Justice.

In November of 1994, he was shot five times during a robbery in which thieves made off with $40,000 worth of his jewelry. Shakur miraculously recovered from his injuries to produce his most impressive artistic accomplishments, including 1995's Me Against the World, which sold two million copies, and the double-CD All Eyez on Me, which sold nearly three million. As his career arc began a steep rise toward fame and fortune, Shakur was shot (most say suspiciously) and killed after watching a Mike Tyson fight with Death Row Records president Marion "Suge" Knight. Though his death was a jolt to his fans and the music community, Shakur himself often said that he expected he'd die by the sword before he reached thirty.

Following his passing, Shakur's label released an album, The Don Killuminati, under the pseudonym "Makaveli." The cover depicted Shakur nailed to a cross under a crown of thorns, with a map of the country's major gang areas superimposed on it. In January of 1997, Gramercy pictures released Gridlock'd, a film in which Shakur played the role of a drug addict to mostly good reviews. His final film, Gang Related, was released in 1997, and Death Row is said to have several unreleased recordings in the vaults for potential future release.

-Courtesy of Ronin Ro, the author of "HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL: THE SPECTACULAR RISE AND VIOLENT FALL OF DEATH ROW RECORDS" and additional information provided by the Wall of Sound website.

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born Feb. 16, 1886, Plainfield, N.J., U.S.—died May 2, 1963, Bridgewater, Conn.) U.S. critic, biographer, and literary historian. Brooks attended Harvard University. His Finders and Makers series, tracing American literary history in rich biographical detail from 1800 to 1915, includes The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865 (1936, Pulitzer Prize); New England: Indian Summer, 1865–1915 (1940); The World of Washington Irving (1944); The Times of Melville and Whitman (1947); and The Confident Years: 1885–1915 (1952). Copyright © 1994-2008 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc

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Bob Dylan's influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notions that in order to perform, a singer had to have a conventionally good voice, thereby redefining the role of vocalist in popular music. As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock and country-rock. And that just touches on the tip of his achievements. Dylan's force was evident during his height of popularity in the '60s -- the Beatles' shift toward introspective songwriting in the mid-'60s never would have happened without him -- but his influence echoed throughout several subsequent generations. Many of his songs became popular standards, and his best albums were undisputed classics of the rock & roll canon. Dylan's influence throughout folk music was equally powerful, and he marks a pivotal turning point in its 20th century evolution, signifying when the genre moved away from traditional songs and toward personal songwriting. Even when his sales declined in the '80s and '90s, Dylan's presence was calculable.

For a figure of such substantial influence, Dylan came from humble beginnings. Born in Duluth, MN, Bob Dylan (b. Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) was raised in Hibbing, MN, from the age of six. As a child he learned how to play guitar and harmonica, forming a rock & roll band called the Golden Chords when he was in high school. Following his graduation in 1959, he began studying art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. While at college, he began performing folk songs at coffeehouses under the name Bob Dylan, taking his last name from the poet Dylan Thomas. Already inspired by Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, Dylan began listening to blues while at college, and the genre weaved its way into his music. Dylan spent the summer of 1960 in Denver, where he met bluesman Jesse Fuller, the inspiration behind the songwriter's signature harmonica rack and guitar. By the time he returned to Minneapolis in the fall, he had grown substantially as a performer and was determined to become a professional musician.

Dylan made his way to New York City in January of 1961, immediately making a substantial impression on the folk community of Greenwich Village. He began visiting his idol Guthrie in the hospital, where he was slowly dying from Huntington's chorea. Dylan also began performing in coffeehouses, and his rough charisma won him a significant following. In April, he opened for John Lee Hooker at Gerde's Folk City. Five months later, Dylan performed another concert at the venue, which was reviewed positively by Robert Shelton in the New York Times. Columbia A&R man John Hammond sought out Dylan on the strength of the review, and signed the songwriter in the fall of 1961. Hammond produced Dylan's eponymous debut album (released in March 1962), a collection of folk and blues standards that boasted only two original songs. Over the course of 1962, Dylan began to write a large batch of original songs, many of which were political protest songs in the vein of his Greenwich contemporaries. These songs were showcased on his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Before its release, Freewheelin' went through several incarnations. Dylan had recorded a rock & roll single, "Mixed Up Confusion," at the end of 1962, but his manager, Albert Grossman, made sure the record was deleted because he wanted to present Dylan as an acoustic folky. Similarly, several tracks with a full backing band that were recorded for Freewheelin' were scrapped before the album's release. Furthermore, several tracks recorded for the album -- including "Talking John Birch Society Blues" -- were eliminated from the album before its release.

Comprised entirely of original songs, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan made a huge impact in the U.S. folk community, and many performers began covering songs from the album. Of these, the most significant were Peter, Paul & Mary, who made "Blowin' in the Wind" into a huge pop hit in the summer of 1963 and thereby made Bob Dylan into a recognizable household name. On the strength of Peter, Paul & Mary's cover and his opening gigs for popular folky Joan Baez, Freewheelin' became a hit in the fall of 1963, climbing to number 23 on the charts. By that point, Baez and Dylan had become romantically involved, and she was beginning to record his songs frequently. Dylan was writing just as fast.

By the time The Times They Are A-Changin' was released in early 1964, Dylan's songwriting had developed far beyond that of his New York peers. Heavily inspired by poets like Arthur Rimbaud and John Keats, his writing took on a more literate and evocative quality. Around the same time, he began to expand his musical boundaries, adding more blues and R&B influences to his songs. Released in the summer of 1964, Another Side of Bob Dylan made these changes evident. However, Dylan was moving faster than his records could indicate. By the end of 1964, he had ended his romantic relationship with Baez and had begun dating a former model named Sara Lowndes, whom he subsequently married. Simultaneously, he gave the Byrds "Mr. Tambourine Man" to record for their debut album. The Byrds gave the song a ringing, electric arrangement, but by the time the single became a hit, Dylan was already exploring his own brand of folk-rock. Inspired by the British Invasion, particularly the Animals' version of "House of the Rising Sun," Dylan recorded a set of original songs backed by a loud rock & roll band for his next album. While Bringing It All Back Home (March 1965) still had a side of acoustic material, it made clear that Dylan had turned his back on folk music. For the folk audience, the true breaking point arrived a few months after the album's release, when he played the Newport Folk Festival supported by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The audience greeted him with vicious derision, but he had already been accepted by the growing rock & roll community. Dylan's spring tour of Britain was the basis for D.A. Pennebaker's documentary Don't Look Back, a film that captures the songwriter's edgy charisma and charm.

Dylan made his breakthrough to the pop audience in the summer of 1965, when "Like a Rolling Stone" became a number two hit. Driven by a circular organ riff and a steady beat, the six-minute single broke the barrier of the three-minute pop single. Dylan became the subject of innumerable articles, and his lyrics became the subject of literary analyses across the U.S. and U.K. Well over 100 artists covered his songs between 1964 and 1966; the Byrds and the Turtles, in particular, had big hits with his compositions. Highway 61 Revisited, his first full-fledged rock & roll album, became a Top Ten hit shortly after its summer 1965 release. "Positively 4th Street" and "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" became Top Ten hits in the fall of 1965 and spring of 1966, respectively. Following the May 1966 release of the double-album Blonde on Blonde, he had sold over ten million records around the world.

During the fall of 1965, Dylan hired the Hawks, formerly Ronnie Hawkins' backing group, as his touring band. The Hawks, who changed their name to the Band in 1968, would become Dylan's most famous backing band, primarily because of their intuitive chemistry and "wild, thin mercury sound," but also because of their British tour in the spring of 1966. The tour was the first time Britain had heard the electric Dylan, and their reaction was disagreeable and violent. At the Manchester concert (long mistakenly identified as the show from London's Royal Albert Hall), an audience member called Dylan "Judas," inspiring a positively vicious version of "Like a Rolling Stone" from Dylan and the band. The performance was immortalized on countless bootleg albums (an official release finally surfaced in 1998), and it indicates the intensity of Dylan in the middle of 1966. He had assumed control of Pennebaker's second Dylan documentary, Eat the Document, and was under deadline to complete his book Tarantula, as well as record a new record. Following the British tour, he returned to America.

On July 29, 1966, he was injured in a motorcycle accident outside of his home in Woodstock, NY, suffering injuries to his neck vertebrae and a concussion. Details of the accident remain elusive -- he was reportedly in critical condition for a week and had amnesia -- and some biographers have questioned its severity, but the event was a pivotal turning point in his career. After the accident, Dylan became a recluse, disappearing into his home in Woodstock and raising his family with his wife, Sara. After a few months, he retreated with the Band to a rented house, subsequently dubbed Big Pink, in West Saugerties to record a number of demos. For several months, Dylan and the Band recorded an enormous amount of material, ranging from old folk, country, and blues songs to newly written originals. The songs indicated that Dylan's songwriting had undergone a metamorphosis, becoming streamlined and more direct. Similarly, his music had changed, owing less to traditional rock & roll, and demonstrating heavy country, blues, and traditional folk influences. None of the Big Pink recordings were intended to be released, but tapes from the sessions were circulated by Dylan's music publisher with the intent of generating cover versions. Copies of these tapes, as well as other songs, were available on illegal bootleg albums by the end of the '60s; it was the first time that bootleg copies of unreleased recordings became widely circulated. Portions of the tapes were officially released in 1975 as the double-album The Basement Tapes.

While Dylan was in seclusion, rock & roll had become heavier and artier in the wake of the psychedelic revolution. When Dylan returned with John Wesley Harding in December of 1967, its quiet, country ambience was a surprise to the general public, but it was a significant hit, peaking at number two in the U.S. and number one in the U.K. Furthermore, the record arguably became the first significant country-rock record to be released, setting the stage for efforts by the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers later in 1969. Dylan followed his country inclinations on his next album, 1969's Nashville Skyline, which was recorded in Nashville with several of the country industry's top session men. While the album was a hit, spawning the Top Ten single "Lay Lady Lay," it was criticized in some quarters for uneven material. The mixed reception was the beginning of a full-blown backlash that arrived with the double-album Self Portrait. Released early in June of 1970, the album was a hodgepodge of covers, live tracks, re-interpretations, and new songs greeted with negative reviews from all quarters of the press. Dylan followed the album quickly with New Morning, which was hailed as a comeback.

Following the release of New Morning, Dylan began to wander restlessly. He moved back to Greenwich Village, he finally published Tarantula in November of 1970, and he performed at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971. During 1972, he began his acting career by playing Alias in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which was released in 1973. He also wrote the soundtrack for the film, which featured "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," his biggest hit since "Lay Lady Lay." The Pat Garrett soundtrack was the final record released under his Columbia contract before he moved to David Geffen's fledgling Asylum Records. As retaliation, Columbia assembled Dylan, a collection of Self Portrait outtakes, for release at the end of 1973. Dylan only recorded two albums -- including 1974's Planet Waves, coincidentally his first number one album -- before he moved back to Columbia. The Band supported Dylan on Planet Waves and its accompanying tour, which became the most successful tour in rock & roll history; it was captured on 1974's double-live album Before the Flood.

Dylan's 1974 tour was the beginning of a comeback culminated by 1975's Blood on the Tracks. Largely inspired by the disintegration of his marriage, Blood on the Tracks was hailed as a return to form by critics and it became his second number one album. After jamming with folkies in Greenwich Village, Dylan decided to launch a gigantic tour, loosely based on traveling medicine shows. Lining up an extensive list of supporting musicians -- including Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Rambling Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Mick Ronson, Roger McGuinn, and poet Allen Ginsberg -- Dylan dubbed the tour the Rolling Thunder Revue and set out on the road in the fall of 1975. For the next year, the Rolling Thunder Revue toured on and off, with Dylan filming many of the concerts for a future film. During the tour, Desire was released to considerable acclaim and success, spending five weeks on the top of the charts. Throughout the Rolling Thunder Revue, Dylan showcased "Hurricane," a protest song he had written about boxer Rubin Carter, who had been unjustly imprisoned for murder. The live album Hard Rain was released at the end of the tour. Dylan released Renaldo and Clara, a four-hour film based on the Rolling Thunder tour, to poor reviews in early 1978.

Early in 1978, Dylan set out on another extensive tour, this time backed by a band that resembled a Las Vegas lounge band. The group was featured on the 1978 album Street Legal and the 1979 live album At Budokan. At the conclusion of the tour in late 1978, Dylan announced that he was a born-again Christian, and he launched a series of Christian albums that following summer with Slow Train Coming. Though the reviews were mixed, the album was a success, peaking at number three and going platinum. His supporting tour for Slow Train Coming featured only his new religious material, much to the bafflement of his long-term fans. Two other religious albums -- Saved (1980) and Shot of Love (1981) -- followed, both to poor reviews. In 1982, Dylan traveled to Israel, sparking rumors that his conversion to Christianity was short-lived. He returned to secular recording with 1983's Infidels, which was greeted with favorable reviews.

Dylan returned to performing in 1984, releasing the live album Real Live at the end of the year. Empire Burlesque followed in 1985, but its odd mix of dance tracks and rock & roll won few fans. However, the five-album/triple-disc retrospective box set Biograph appeared that same year to great acclaim. In 1986, Dylan hit the road with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers for a successful and acclaimed tour, but his album that year, Knocked Out Loaded, was received poorly. The following year, he toured with the Grateful Dead as his backing band; two years later, the souvenir album Dylan & the Dead appeared.

In 1988, Dylan embarked on what became known as "The Never-Ending Tour" -- a constant stream of shows that ran on and off into the late '90s. That same year, he released Down in the Groove, an album largely comprised of covers. The Never-Ending Tour received far stronger reviews than Down in the Groove, but 1989's Oh Mercy was his most acclaimed album since 1974's Blood on the Tracks. However, his 1990 follow-up, Under the Red Sky, was received poorly, especially when compared to the enthusiastic reception for the 1991 box set The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased), a collection of previously unreleased outtakes and rarities.

For the remainder of the '90s, Dylan divided his time between live concerts and painting. In 1992, he returned to recording with Good As I Been to You, an acoustic collection of traditional folk songs. It was followed in 1993 by another folk album, World Gone Wrong, which won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. After the release of World Gone Wrong, Dylan released a greatest-hits album and a live record.

Dylan released Time Out of Mind, his first album of original material in seven years, in the fall of 1997. Time Out of Mind received his strongest reviews in years and unexpectedly debuted in the Top Ten. Its success sparked a revival of interest in Dylan -- he appeared on the cover of Newsweek and his concerts became sell-outs. Early in 1998, Time Out of Mind received three Grammy Awards -- Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Male Rock Vocal. Another album of original material, Love and Theft, followed in 2001. Soon after its release, Dylan announced that he was making his own film, to star Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, John Goodman, Val Kilmer, and many more. The accompanying soundtrack, Masked and Anonymous, was released in July 2003. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

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in full Hugo La Fayette Black (born Feb. 27, 1886, Harlan, Clay county, Ala., U.S.—died Sept. 25, 1971, Bethesda, Md.) lawyer, politician, and associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1937–71). Black's legacy as a Supreme Court justice derives from his support of the doctrine of selective incorporation, according to which the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States makes the Bill of Rights—originally adopted to limit the power of the national government—equally restrictive on the power of the states to curtail individual freedom. Hugo Black was the youngest of eight children of William La Fayette Black, a poor farmer, and Martha Toland Black. He enrolled in Birmingham (Alabama) Medical School in 1903 but transferred after one year to study law at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. After graduating and passing the bar in 1906, Black practiced law in Birmingham. Appointed a part-time police-court judge in 1911, he fought against the unfair treatment of African Americans and the poor by the local criminal-justice system; as a lawyer, he also represented striking miners and other industrial labourers. His popularity encouraged him to seek political office, and in 1914 he was elected prosecuting attorney for Jefferson county. After serving in the U.S. Army (1917–19) during World War I, Black resumed the practice of law in Birmingham. His successful defense of a Protestant minister accused of killing a Roman Catholic priest drew the favourable attention of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and in 1923 Black joined the organization. Although he openly opposed the Klan's activities, he understood that its support was a prerequisite for political success in the Deep South. Therefore, even after his resignation from the KKK in 1925, he maintained good relations with its leaders. Elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 1926, Black won considerable acclaim for his investigation of utility lobbyists but was criticized for his opposition to the Wagner-Costigan anti-lynching bill, which he believed would offend white Southerners. In 1932 he supported the presidential campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who easily defeated Pres. Herbert Hoover; that year Black also won reelection to the Senate. Black was a strong supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal legislation and court-reorganization (“court-packing�) plan. He also sponsored what would become in 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act, the first federal law to regulate wages and hours. Grateful for Black's support, Roosevelt nominated him to the Supreme Court in August 1937. Because of his controversial career in the Senate and consistent support of Roosevelt's policies, Black's nomination drew strong opposition. During the Senate hearings, his KKK membership was not a highly contentious issue, though the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People demanded answers about Black's membership in the KKK and the African American physicians of the National Medical Association opposed his nomination. The dominant issue during the Senate hearings was whether Black was eligible to serve on the court, because Congress had passed legislation increasing the benefits for Supreme Court retirees, and federal law prohibited a member of Congress from being appointed to a position affected by such legislation during the term in which the legislation was passed. Nevertheless, Black was confirmed by the Senate 63–16. After Black's confirmation but before he sat on the bench, however, solid evidence of his membership in the KKK was made public, causing even Roosevelt to demand an explanation. In an unprecedented move, Black participated in a radio address and admitted to Klan membership, though he claimed that he never participated in any of its activities. Public opinion had turned against Black, however; on his first day on the court in October 1937 he entered through the court's basement, and hundreds of protestors wore black armbands to express their dissatisfaction. In the early part of his tenure, Black acted with a growing court majority in its reversal of previous vetoes of New Deal legislation. Black combined this tolerance for increased federal powers of economic regulation with an activist stance on civil liberties. He advocated a literal interpretation of the Bill of Rights, developing a virtually absolutist position on First Amendment rights. During the 1940s and '50s he frequently dissented from the court's majority in free speech cases, denouncing governmental restrictions on core liberties as unconstitutional. During the 1960s Black held a prominent position among the liberal majority on the court who struck down mandatory school prayer and who guaranteed the availability of legal counsel to suspected criminals. He was, however, torn on issues involving civil disobedience and privacy rights. Although protests were not necessarily viewed as on a par with plain speech, he nevertheless supported the right of The New York Times to publish the so-called Pentagon Papers in 1971 in the face of government attempts to restrict their publication. True to the literal foundation of his liberal jurisprudence, he dissented from the majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which established a constitutional right to privacy. Although he claimed that Connecticut's law, which prohibited using or aiding in the use of any contraceptive device, was “offensive,� he nonetheless argued it was constitutional because he was unable to locate any explicit privacy right within the Constitution. Black resigned from the Supreme Court on Sept. 17, 1971, and died just one week later. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Copyright © 1994-2008 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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Visit our special JOHN BELUSHI Tribute Site for photo gallery, timeline, and more. Actor, comedian, singer. Born on January 24, 1949, in Wheaton, Illinois. Known for his legendary characters and skits on Saturday Night Live, John Belushi imbued his brilliant performances with a manic, boisterous energy that has never seen before or since. One of four children born to Albanian immigrants, he was good at getting laughs in high school. Belushi was also captain of his school's football team and played in a rock band as a drummer. More than anything, however, he wanted to be an actor. After high school, Belushi performed in summer stock productions before starting college. He attended the University of Wisconsin and the College of DuPage where he graduated with an associate degree in 1970. The next year, Belushi made a big splash in the Chicago comedy scene as a member of the legendary Second City improvisational troupe. He wowed audiences with his over-the-top impressions of Marlon Brando, singer Joe Cocker, and others. In 1973, Belushi was selected to appear in an off-Broadway production of Lemmings, a collection of comedy sketches by the staff of National Lampoon, a popular, but offbeat humor magazine. He received great reviews for his work on the show. Two years later, producer Lorne Michaels asked Belushi to join the cast of his new late night comedy show, Saturday Night Live. Premiering on October 11, 1975, Saturday Night Live featured nine talented comedians boldly going where television had not gone before. Along with Belushi, there was Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, George Coe, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, and Gilda Radner. The show soon became a hit and Belushi became one of its emerging stars. Some of his most famous characters were a sword-wielding samurai, a killer bee, and a coneheaded alien named Kuldroth. Belushi also continued making fun of the famous with hilarious takes on the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Henry Kissinger, Truman Capote, and William Shatner. While he was on Saturday Night Live, there were many stories going around about rampant drug use by the members of the cast. To deal with pressures and his own insecurities, Belushi is said to have done cocaine and other drugs. Not long after starting the show, Belushi married his high school sweetheart, Judith Jacklin, in 1976. Two years later, he made the move to the big screen with the hit comedy National Lampoon's Animal House, directed by John Landis. Playing Bluto Blutarsky, Belushi created one of film's most memorable characters—a thoroughly gross, barely verbal frat brother whose immortal lines included “toga, toga, toga� and “food fight.� The havoc created by Bluto and the rest of his Delta House brothers against their school has become one of the most famous college comedies of all time. Belushi's other 1978 film effort was less successful. Only in a small part, he appeared in the western flop Goin' South with Jack Nicholson and Mary Steenburgen. The next year, he took on a serious role in Old Boyfriends with Talia Shire, which failed to find an audience. Belushi fans wanted him to see him return to a Blutolike character, not in a dramatic part. And he did in a way with 1941 (1979) as Captain Will Bill Kelso in this World War II comedy. The film was loosely based on an historical incident when a Japanese submarine was off the West Coast after the attack at Pearl Harbor. Belushi played a manic National Guard pilot, who along with some other concerned citizens, including an overeager tank sergeant played by Dan Aykroyd, tries to protect a California small town under siege from the Japanese. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film was a complete flop and received numerous bad reviews. A review in The New York Times said that it was “less comic than cumbersome, as much fun as a 40-pound wristwatch.� In real life, Belushi and Aykroyd were good friends. While on Saturday Night Live, the two of them developed a blues parody act known as the Blues Brothers. The duo recorded an album, 1978's Briefcase Full of Blues, which had some success, and toured the country with a backup band. While Belushi and Aykroyd left Saturday Night Live in 1979, they continued working together as their musical alter egos. They brought Jake and Elwood Blues to the big screen in 1980. The Blues Brothers begins when “Joliet� Jake Blues (Belushi) is released from prison. His brother Elwood (Aykroyd) picks him up and the two visit the Chicago orphanage where they grew up. There they learn that they are on “a mission from God� to save the orphanage. The Blues brothers work on reuniting the members of their old band in order to raise money to fulfill their mission. The outlandish comedy had crazy car chases, neo-Nazis, and nearly everything else but the kitchen sink in it. The film also featured several musical cameos by such talented recording artists as Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, and James Brown. Focusing on his film career, Belushi was frustrated with the response to his next two films. In Continental Divide (1981), he played a Chicago journalist who falls for a reclusive eagle expert (Blair Brown) he tracks down in the Rocky Mountains. Critic Robert Ebert described his performance as having “a surprising tenderness and charm.� Despite mostly warm reviews, the film was a box office disappointment. Reunited with Aykroyd, Belushi starred in Neighbors (1981). The roles were reversed for the film as Belushi played a mostly straight, subdued man up against Aykroyd's loud and obnoxious character who has moved in next door to him. Again, audiences were disappointed to not see Belushi as a manic ball of comic energy and this affected the film's reception by the public. For his next project, Belushi became active behind the scenes and wrote the screenplay for Noble Rot. But he was also struggling with his drug problem. In the months leading up to his death, he was reportedly spending about $2,500 a week on his habit, according to People magazine. Belushi was traveling back and forth between his home in New York City and California to work on the script in 1982. During the final week of his life, Belushi rented a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, a popular hotel for the Hollywood set. He was also doing a lot of drugs at the time. On the night of March 4, he was reportedly partying with the likes of Robin Williams. The next day Belushi was found dead in his hotel room. Only thirty-three years old, he died from a drug overdose of a combination of cocaine and heroin, also known as a “speedball.� The woman who was with him and had supplied him with drugs, Cathy Smith, was questioned by the police and released. On March 9, 1982, Belushi was buried near his home in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Many were shocked and saddened by the comedian's sudden death. “His death scared a whole group of show-business people. It caused a big exodus from drugs,� Robin Williams told Entertainment Weekly. “Hollywood was toxic to him. People wanted him to be the Belushi they'd seen on screen,� said Lorne Michaels in the same article. Despite the fact that it was an apparent overdose, there was still some mystery surrounding the exact circumstances of Belushi's death.Cathy Smith was later charged with murder and drug-related offenses after admitting that she supplied and administered “speedballs� to Belushi to the National Inquirer, which reportedly paid her $15,000 for her story. She pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and three of the drug charges and spent 15 months in prison. The unanswered questions led Belushi's widow to ask journalist Bob Woodward to investigate her husband's death. The result was the book Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (1984). His family was dismayed by the book, expressing their concern that it was not a fair portrait of the man they had known and loved. Judith Jacklin Belushi wrote her own book on her experiences surrounding his death in Samurai Widow (1990) and later created her own portrait of her late husband entitled Belushi: A Biography (2005). While Belushi has been gone for more than twenty years, the characters he created and the performances he gave are still being enjoyed by his fans. He was named one of television's top 25 stars by People magazine in 1989. His brother Jim also carries on the family name in entertainment, having been a cast member of Saturday Night Live and the star of the television sitcom, According to Jim. © 2008 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.

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Newspaper owner. Born on 1886 in New York, New York. Astor was born into an American financial dynasty and was the fifth member of the family to bear the illustrious name John Jacob. The son of William Waldorf Astor, he spent much of his life in England and educated at Eton College, a private school for boys, and went on to study at Oxford University. At the beginning of World War I, he joined the military and was twice injured in battle. Not only was he a distinguished war hero, but he became baron, inheriting the title from his father at the time of his death in 1919. In 1922, Astor became the chairman and owner of one of the world's most prestigious newspapers, the Times of London. He believed in maintaining high standards for his publication and was supportive of his staff. He remained chairman until 1959 when his eldest son, Gavin Astor, took over the position for him. Astor was also active in politics, serving as a conservative member in the English Parliament from 1922 to 1945. Astor left his beloved England in 1962 and settled in France. It is said that he moved to avoid inheritance taxes. Astor died on July 19, 1971, in Cannes, France. Married to Lady Violet Eliiott in 1916, Astor and his wife had three sons: Gavin, Hugh, and John. © 2006 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved

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