If Dick Clark is the world’s oldest teenager, then Normal Fell has got to go down in the history books as the world’s perennial middle aged man. His looks could never really be characterized as good, or even ruggedly handsome, but he had a good look. A very good look. And he had the talent to know how to work it, giving some fuel to the notion that there’s no such thing as a bad destiny.

He made a career out of looking like the kind of guy who would know how to swindle people on the streets, go a little mad somewhere on the road, or poke a broom on the ceiling when the kids upstairs got loud. The movies and television are filled with these kinds of characters, and he was able to fill the roles with what will one day be recognized as a consummate actor’s ability.

He’s the kind of guy that one would expect to see on the street outside the hotel. Philadelphia has lots of characters like this, and so it’s no wonder that this is also his birthplace. As time is showing, it’s also a great place to grow up, where it’s tough enough to build calluses for the world, and also cultured enough to hone talent to the point where the world might become an oyster. It might one day even build a church on you.

One of his great talents, of course, was his amazing ability to make us believe. That’s because he believed, too, in what he was doing, in the characters he was making. He had a technique that was solid enough that it would earn him the respect of the Rat Pack, and even membership in that problematic organization. It was also enough to make everyone a little bit annoyed whenever Mr. Roper walked in the room. Growing up on the idea of the Ropers upstairs, no one would have ever guessed that years later, we would ever miss Mr. Roper. But we sure miss Norman Fell.

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A short distance from the Mall in Washington D.C., travelers will come across the Ford Theatre , the nation’s most famous theater, famous largely for infamous reasons dating back to 1865, which operates to this day as a theater and museum to the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. While this is the site where John Wilkes Booth shot a president, it remains an active theater, and is a fascinating place to visit not only for those who love history, but also theater. Designated a national historic site, the theater continues to produce plays each year and tickets for its 2010-2011 season will be available for purchase in August, 2010. The upcoming season consists of four plays:

Sabrina Fair, written by Samuel A. Taylor, will be performed from October 1st to the 24th. This play features a twist on the Cinderella story, focusing on the daughter of the Larrabees’ chauffeur. She returns from Paris and enchants the Larrabee brothers; originally ignored as a child, Sabrina now discovers suitors all around her, including a handsome playboy named David, a person she has always liked. The play explores the question, in essence, about whether or not this Prince Charming is actually right for her.

Another treatment of a classic is presented from November 20th to January 2nd, when the Ford Theatre presents Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with an adaptation by Michael Wilson. This familiar tale of Scrooge and ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future stars Edward Gero, who has received past acclaim for Scrooge in a production that the Washington Post called “musically high-spirited” and “infectiously jolly.”

Horton Foote’s The Carpetbagger’s Children makes an appearance from January 21st to February 13th in 2011. The play is a series of vignettes that explores family secrets and small town life set during the South during the time of Post-Reconstruction following the Civil War. Foote is a playwright who has also won the Academy Award, as well as the 2002 Steinberg/American Theatre Critics New Play Award for this particular play.

Rounding out the season is Liberty Smith, with music by Michael Weiner and lyrics by Adam Abraham. This is a musical about the American Revolution where Liberty Smith, a childhood friend of George Washington and an apprentice to Benjamin Franklin, weaves his way through American history, not too unlike the title character in the film, Forrest Gump.

If you’re visiting over the course of next year, whether it’s with friends or one of the city’s four star hotels, Washington DC provides excellent entertainment, including the Ford Theatre, which may be visited both as a functioning theater and/or as a museum to one of the most transformative moments in the nation’s history.

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Rockville, Maryland is a rather lovely place by any standards, and has one of the highest quality of life index ratings in the area. It’s the kind of incorporated city that should have places in it with names like Daley’s Tavern, Hungerford’s Tavern, and Owen’s Ordinary. But those were actually names of the city at one time or another, while it was on its way to finding its identity as Rockville. Today, there is a lively population here, and a wide selection of things to do for the whole family. There is also a great selection of Rockville hotels and local restaurants that have something to suit your tastes any day of the week.

If anyone’s artistically inclined, or is inclined toward appreciating art, then a visit to VisArts is definitely in order. It’s a 30,000 square-foot space that has amazing views of the Town Square, and can be rented out for special events. The views are spectacular, and the space is delightful on the eyes, but the real appeal of VisArt is the visual art. It houses 8 artist studios with 11 artists working here full-time, and there are lots of exhibitions here related to the local work of artists in Bethesda .

It also happens to be one of the more community-embedded arts organizations around. They have an event room that holds 200 people, and they also have classes all year round. The classes can be in glass, ceramics, painting, drawing, photography , and a number of other fabulous selections. They also have a specialty for attracting kids to their facilities to take courses and start nudging the muses early on. Also included are courses for at-risk youth and other community outreach programs. This is basic art with some amazing artistic flourishes and a very local touch, and it’s enormously charming, not to mention inspiring.

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Okay, so you’re getting dragged to New York against your will, by say your boyfriend, or girlfriend alternately, though in this fantasy description boyfriend might be more fitting so it’s best to relate to your feminine side at this point, and he desperately wants to take you to one of the city’s finest restaurants followed by attendance at one of the latest Broadway musicals. Okay, so now you might get the boyfriend aspect, though no stereotyping is intended here. But the bottom line is that the whole thing is extremely unlikely. Not because your partner may be uninterested in great food or great theater but because it’s almost impossible that he, or she, would have to drag you there against your will.

So, after we’ve established that you and everyone else would love to go to the Big Apple and stay in a one of the Park Avenue hotels in New York , we basically just need to choose a play. And as always, there are a great number to choose from and they all sound fabulous. So, how do you possibly decide? Well, one of the best things to do at this time of the year is to choose something that’s been nominated for a Tony Award.

Well, even then it’s a difficult choice, though A Little Night Music has always been a favorite of audiences and the current revival is up for four Tony Awards. It stars Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury , both of whom are up for awards. This is one of Stephen Sondheim’s most loved musicals and features the popular song Send in the Clowns. But then Promises Promises is another musical revival whose stars are up for Tony Awards. Sean Hayes, of Will and Grace fame, and Kristin Chenoweth are the engaging stars of this hit. So, there are still others to chose from, so what’s a person to do? I guess you might as well see them all, after all this is a fantasy, right? Well, that’s up to you. New York is there and a hotel room is waiting.

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Posting by Charlie Cooper

I really am a college sports junkie who needs some type of daily competition fix. Back in the day the only way to keep up was with late night programming. My co-workers could never understand why I was always tired. When a direct tv sports package came out with a subscription for CBS College Sports Television, fulfilling every sports fantasy that had traveled across my brain, I immediately signed up.

CBS College Sports is about more than the scheduled sporting event itself. There are interviews with students on campus about their school and sport teams. Of course it’s all done in fun but it helps lend an air of familiarity to the sports hoopla. Sometimes, it can seem that the athletes themselves are not a part of the sports process because they are usually only shown on game day. In-depth interviews before the game with the players help bring them into a closer perspective and showing a human side to what can look like a robotic process.

College sports truly are the last bastion of competition. The collegiate athletes refuse to give up on their games. Countless basketball games have been decided in the last shot of the game and it usually comes after a team has been down by more than ten points for the majority of the game. They scratch and claw while making adjustments to their game plan and keep charging forward to win.

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There are always extraordinary things to see and do in New York City, and moments of unimaginable beauty. Some of the most exceptional moments in the city are when a still exterior starts to give way, revealing its exceptional secrets. Everyone has a thousand stories here, amending the idea that we all have one novel in us. Here, there are volumes, and although it is impossible to hear all of them, it’s important to try. In this regard, Polish tradition starts to dovetail with Jewish tradition in terms of the place that memory holds in the hierarchy of being.

The Kosciuszko Foundation in the city is a remarkable place. There is a feeling of overwhelming austerity here, that serves to underplay the importance of the work they do. It began in the 1920s, with a mission of helping to improve understanding between Polish culture and the cultures in the U.S. There are many different arms to the organization, with a number of events throughout the year. These include some remarkable works of art, which the foundation helps to support, such as Marc P. Smith’s excellent play, ” Karski .” This is a work about a Polish national hero who, while living in exile in London, managed to sneak back into the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust, in order to report what was happening to the rest of the world.

It’s a remarkable story about a time that cannot be forgotten, and this is the kind of work that gets the foundation’s attention. Its namesake, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, stood up for the rights of Native Americans, warned the world again Bonaparte, and even tried to buy Jefferson’s slaves their freedom. He’s a remarkable figure, having anticipated how a social conscience would perceive the world over a hundred years before his time, and stands for a remarkable organization. It’s worth a visit, while enjoying New York City and its hotels , and touching Polish culture, of the past and of the absolute present.

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Melbourne, Australia is one of the country’s great cities. That’s simple enough to say, and it’s actually even easier to support, or demonstrate with examples. There is an abundance of great cultural attractions, entertainment options and recreational activities that captivates tourists from across the world and satisfies city residents throughout the year. Some of the best hotels in Melbourne will have great information and various resources to assist with deciding what to do and then accessing it either through transportation or tickets while you are there. This is a tremendous benefit for any tourist, though the following paragraphs will also help you make some initial decisions by providing insightful ideas on what are some of the best things to do while you’re there.

Most people who visit Melbourne will be interested in exploring some of the city’s nightlife offerings. And not only is this an expected aspect of your trip, it is also recommended. The various clubs and bars offer everything from dance to live music and also quite little whole in the wall places that are perfect for quiet conversations and romantic evenings.

Meanwhile there are other great options and many of these are available during the day. One thing you don’t want to do is enjoy the nightclub scene so much that you are unable to do anything during the daylight hours. The Carlton Gardens are one of the city’s points of pride and they attract hundreds upon hundreds of visitors every year. The Eureka Sky Deck 88 is definitely a stop you will not want to pass up or miss as it offers some of the most outstanding panoramic 360 degree views of the city and countryside that are available. The Melbourne Zoo is another great place to visit during the day this is also extremely popular with families. Some of the highlights from the zoo include the African elephant exhibit and the rainforest. These are just a few of the places you will definitely want to visit while you’re in Melbourne, though there are numerous others as well.

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With the Grand Slam tournaments coming up, right around the corner, in fact, the iconographies of tennis have started entering the public imagination again. Aside from wondering about the Wimbledon schedule , what the players might be doing to get ready this year, and what they’re significant others might be wearing, there are more than a few tennis thoughts looming. Some of these are the same questions that we all wonder about every year. The history of the game, the origins, and the way some players seem to float into it and others have to fight, are all part of the pool of memories we get to drink from.

Then comes the old thought, inspired by the stunning showings of Rafael Nadal every year at the French Open . He’s won four times, and it seems to be pretty well-argued that his skill as a player is what’s been driving his wins, but it also might be important to mention that he’s left-handed. It seems as though being left-handed has often been something of an advantage, in tennis as well as a number of other sports. The thoughts about why this might be come around again every year, and it’s been going around long enough that there have even been studies to look at this very phenomenon.

The research seems to suggest that left-handed tennis players have an advantage because they are used to playing right-handed people as well as left-handed people. Naturally, they can face off against a left-handed opponent more instinctually. But they are used to playing the dominant right-handers, and can adjust their moves out of reflex. Right-handed people always have to prepare and make adjustments more consciously. There is also a notion that left-handed people generally tend to look at the big picture first, and notice details later, whereas right-handed people tend to look at details, and form a big picture from the information. Whether or not this will come into play this year is up to destiny to decide, but it’s interesting to watch the games with this in mind, and see how the lovely game gets played out in another manifestation.

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San Francisco is well known for many of its cultural attractions. Even some of the streets and neighborhoods in this city are famous in their own right. It is only fitting that it is also one of the major theatre towns in the country and it draws some of the top theatre professionals from across the world. In addition to the number of major theatres that host Broadway touring productions there are a great deal of others that produce original works as well as some of the greats from the popular canon. Whatever you happen to be looking for, you will be able to find some great theatre during your stay in a hotel San Francisco . In addition to that which is available in the city, the East Bay has numerous other companies that produce quality shows every year.

Some of the current and upcoming Broadway productions that are enjoying runs in San Francisco include Wicked, which is being performed at the Orpheum, West Side Story which will also be hosted by the Orpheum and The Color Purple which will run for four days in November at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. These are just a few of the popular tours that will be coming through or are in town or across the Bay.

In addition, the Berkeley Repertory Theatre is currently presenting the world premiere of Girlfriend with music and lyrics by Mathew Sweet and book by Todd Almond. This show was directed by Les Waters. Upcoming on the theatre’s schedule is in the wake, by Lisa Kron and is directed by Leigh Silverman. Other Bay Area productions include Round and Round the Garden at the American Conservatory Theatre on Geary Street in San Francisco. The play was written by Alan Ayckbourn and this production was directed by John Rando.

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