Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is an American animated television series created by Craig McCracken for Cartoon Network Studios. The series, set in a world in which imaginary friends coexist with humans, centers on an eight-year-old boy, Mac, who is pressured by his mother to abandon his imaginary friend, Bloo. After Mac discovers an orphanage dedicated to housing abandoned imaginary friends, Bloo moves into the home and is kept from adoption so long as Mac visits him daily. The episodes revolve around Mac and Bloo as they interact with other imaginary friends and house staff and live out their day-to-day adventures, often getting caught up in various predicaments.

McCracken conceived the series after adopting two dogs from an animal shelter and applying the concept to imaginary friends. The show first premiered on Cartoon Network on August 13, 2004, as a 90-minute television film. On August 20, it began its normal run of twenty-to-thirty-minute episodes on Fridays, at 7 pm. The series finished its run on May 3, 2009, with a total of six seasons and seventy-nine episodes. McCracken left Cartoon Network shortly after the series ended.

Carolina Foods

Carolina Foods Incorporated is a private confectionery corporation and bakery headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. Founded in 1934, it is known for its Duchess brand honey buns and doughnuts and has been featured on the Food Network.

History

Vernon Scarborough founded Carolina Foods in Charlotte in 1934 as a sandwich company that expanded after World War II. Operating out of his basement, Scarborough made lunches for workers at local textile and furniture factories. Gradually, he introduced honey buns as complementary product. Following the war, the company expanded to its first location on South Boulevard in South Charlotte, where it expanded its confectionery offerings to doughnuts and pies, in addition to the growing popularity of its honey buns.

Carolina Foods has expanded into a 100,000 square foot plant. It employs 425 people and produces 1 million honey buns per day, in addition to its other products, which include the Duchess brand doughnuts and Dunkin Sticks. It was the top "snack food" brand in Puerto Rico in 2014 according to the company's president. In an interview, the current president claimed that revenues doubled between 2009 to 2014. At the same time, increasing sugar prices hurt the company's profitability.

Music

Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound and silence. The common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics (loudness and softness), and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture (which are sometimes termed the "color" of a musical sound). Different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. Music is performed with a vast range of instruments and with vocal techniques ranging from singing to rapping, and there are solely instrumental pieces, solely vocal pieces and pieces that combine singing and instruments. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses"). In its most general form, the activities describing music as an art form include the production of works of music (songs, tunes, symphonies, and so on), the criticism of music, the study of the history of music, and the aesthetic examination of music. Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as "the harmony of the spheres" and "it is music to my ears" point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound."

Music (short story)

"Music" is a short story by Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov originally published in Russian in 1932.

Summary

The story uses third-person narration and tells the story of Victor, a self-conscious man for whom "music he did not know... could be likened to the patter of a conversation in a strange tongue." When Victor arrives at a party, he finds the other guests listening with varying degrees of engagement to a man named Wolfe play the piano. As Victor does not know the song being played, he loses interest. He catches a glimpse of his ex-wife at the party, but cannot look at her. He laments the fact that now he must "start all over" the long task of forgetting her (in a flashback, it's revealed that she left him for another, who may or may not be at the party). Throughout the entire story, Victor views the music as a structure that has him encaged in an awkward situation with his ex-wife; it had seemed to him "a narrow dungeon" until it ends, thus giving his ex-wife the opportunity to leave, which she does. Victor then realizes that the music was not a dungeon, but actually "incredible bliss, a magic glass dome that had embraced and imprisoned him and her," and which allowed him to "breathe the same air as she." After she leaves, another party-goer comments to Victor that he looked immune to the music and that he didn't think such a thing possible. His own inanity is revealed when Victor asks him what was played and he cannot tell whether it was Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata or Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska's rather easy piece, Maiden's Prayer.

Music (Erick Sermon and Marvin Gaye song)

"Music" is a 2001 hit single by Erick Sermon featuring archived vocals from Marvin Gaye.

The song was thought of by Sermon after buying a copy of Gaye's Midnight Love and the Sexual Healing Sessions album, which overlook some of the original album's earlier mixes. After listening to an outtake of Gaye's 1982 album track, "Turn On Some Music" (titled "I've Got My Music" in its initial version), Sermon decided to mix the vocals (done in a cappella) and add it into his own song. The result was similar to Natalie Cole's interpolation of her father, jazz great Nat "King" Cole's hit, "Unforgettable" revisioned as a duet. The hip hop and soul duet featuring the two veteran performers was released as the leading song of the soundtrack to the Martin Lawrence & Danny DeVito comedy, "What's the Worst That Could Happen?" The song became a runaway success rising to #2 on Billboard's R&B chart and was #1 on the rap charts. It also registered at #21 pop giving Sermon his highest-charted single on the pop charts as a solo artist and giving Gaye his first posthumous hit in 10 years following 1991's R&B-charted single, "My Last Chance" also bringing Gaye his 41st top 40 pop hit. There is also a version that's played on Adult R&B stations that removes Erick Sermon's rap verses. The song was featured in the 2011 Matthew McConaughey film The Lincoln Lawyer.