Pras Michel

Pras Michel

Au Revoir ..... daughter from hell

Au Revoir Mark Forster Feat. Sido

The Wheels on the Bus

Go Round and Round

Have a Neighbor From Hell? Tell '20/20'

Do you have a neighbor from hell? ABC News "20/20" may have a solution. Fill out the form below and include a description of what your neighbor has done to drive you crazy. Include your city and state and please upload any photos or video of what has upset you at the bottom of the form. After you have sent in your submission, a "20/20" producer may be in touch with you. ABC News

Sailor set for Irish pint after navigating Northwest Passage

A sailor who has navigated the Northwest Passage, fended off polar bears and survived Hurricane Gonzalo has said he is looking forward to a pint and a rest after entering Irish waters. Canadian Erkan Gursoy, 67, appears to be making little headway about 483km off the west coast after pushing through the Atlantic storms, prompting concerns. The boat builder and former teacher was making progress at only three knots in heavy seas in his 11m ocean-going yacht Altan Girl, despite being in 50-knot winds. Coast Guard officers monitoring his progress from the Malin Head station in Co Donegal called in an Air Corps crew to try to make contact. "He contacted us when the weather was very poor. We were tracking the storms and passed on the forecasts so he could alter his course," a Coast Guard spokesman said. "He's not in any difficulty but he went through a rough couple of days." Gursoy, from Nanaimo, Vancouver, had sailed single-handed over the top of Canada, past Greenland and into the Atlantic before reaching Irish waters. Authorities said they will continue to track his progress until he reaches shore in Dingle, Co Kerry, where he told the Air Corps crew he is planning to have a rest, enjoy a pint and learn about WB Yeats and James Joyce. RTÉ News

Hozier

Cherry Wine Live

Singapore named Lonely Planet's No 1 destination for 2015

Chinese New Year laterns add a splash of colour at Marina Bay. -- PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/LONELY PLANET Singapore has been named Lonely Planet's top travel destination for 2015. Lonely Planet said "a slew of new developments has elevated the 'Singapore experience' to a new level", from Marina Bay to "a new crop of swanky hotels". The Straits Times

The Italian American Journal

The Resemblance Is Uncanny.... A Harvard student was bewildered on a visit to Vatican City, not because of the beauty or the history, but because a 500-year-old painting by Raphael which shows a man who is an exact doppelganger of Sylvester Stallone.

That's What Friends Are For

Live with Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross, Dionne Warwick and Stevie Wonder

Angel Food Cake

Angel food cake Charlotte J. Crocker angel no-fool cake Prep: 40 minutes Cook: 30 minutes Makes: 10 servings The Tribune's Renee Enna shared her tortuous odyssey to master angel food cake, a classic dessert she describes as a "devil in disguise." Her hilarious tale of failure upon failure finally leads to this fool-proof recipe. Her result combines the best of versions from Betty Crocker and a woman named Charlotte J., who posted her recipe and tips online, with more guidelines from Enna. 1 cup cake flour 7/8 cup sugar plus 3/4 cup sugar 12 egg whites 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla 1/2 teaspoon almond extract 1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Measure the cake flour and 7/8 cup sugar into a bowl (for 7/8 cup, measure a cup, then remove 2 tablespoons); sift together. Set aside. 2. Combine the egg whites, cream of tartar, salt, vanilla and almond extract into the bowl of an electric mixer; beat on medium speed with electric mixer until soft peaks form. (Do not beat until stiff, no matter what any recipe says!) Slowly add the 3/4 cup sugar, beating on medium-high speed until combined. (Do not overbeat!) 3. Reduce speed to low; slowly mix in the flour-sugar mixture just until incorporated. 4. Gently spoon batter into a 10-inch aluminum tube pan. Gently cut through batter with a butter knife. This breaks up any air bubbles in the batter. (One time around is sufficient. And don't bang the pan on the counter! It's a cake, not a slab of meat.) 5. Bake until top of cake is golden brown and crusty, and top springs back when lightly touched, 30 to 40 minutes. (Do not ever "turn cake around halfway through baking," no matter how trusted the source. Leave it alone, opening the door only when checking for doneness near end of baking.) Remove cake from oven; turn pan upside down. Let stand until completely cool, about 1 1/2 hours. 6. To remove cake from pan, carefully loosen all pan edges including the tube's with a butter knife. Invert onto your serving platter. To frost and fill, halve cake horizontally with a serrated knife, using a gentle sawing motion. Fill center and frost cake with whipped cream frosting.

Another polar freeze this winter in Milwaukee? Not quite By Meg Jones

For every Wisconsinite who ventured outdoors last winter, who shoveled and shivered for months, there's slightly good news. Forecasters are predicting the nastiness quotient to drop a notch this winter. The prediction calls for a colder and snowier winter than normal in Wisconsin — but not as cold and not as snowy as the winter of 2013-'14, when the phrase "polar vortex" suddenly became part of everyone's vocabulary. "It will not be as bad as last winter, but last winter was very extreme," said Jack Boston, senior meteorologist for AccuWeather Global Weather Center. El Niño is caused by prolonged warming in Pacific Ocean surface temperatures. "Generally during a stronger El Niño we have a warmer winter, and with a weaker El Niño it gives us an equal chance for above or below average temperatures and precipitation," said Miller. "There's no strong signal telling us one thing or the other. It's a tough one to predict. I don't envy (the Climate Prediction Center) in that regard." Milwaukee suffered through the 10th coldest winter on record, with an average temperature of 17.2 degrees, which was 7.7 degrees below average. And Milwaukee's snowfall of 54.8 inches between December and February was a whopping 19.7 inches above average, said Sarah Marquardt, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Sullivan. "Last winter we were dominated by pushes of colder air from Canada," said Marquardt, adding that polar vortex "is just a fancy name for this cold air that originated to our north. It was a cold air mass in Canada that dropped down over us, and the phrase took off." Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel

The Script

Six Degrees of Separation

Macy's to open at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz

Black Friday is continuing its creep earlier into Thanksgiving Day, with Macy's opening its doors at prime turkey-coma time. Macy's plans to open at 6 p.m. Thanksgiving, two hours earlier than last year, “in response to the significant, sustained customer interest in last year's opening on Thanksgiving, both at Macy's and other retailers,” the department store chain said in a statement Tuesday. For the first time, The Walnut Room inside Macy’s State Street also will open to the Thanksgiving Day crowds, inviting families to have Thanksgiving dinner there starting at 6 p.m., a spokesperson said. The Walnut Room, a rather grand restaurant that dates back to 1907, is a chief draw during the holidays as the home of the store’s 45-foot Great Tree. Macy's, which has 840 stores, had resisted following the trend of opening on Thanksgiving Day until last year, when it opened at 8 p.m. In 2012, it opened at midnight. Store traffic on Thanksgiving Day grew 27 percent last year to 45 million people, or 31.8 percent of holiday shoppers, up from 35 million in 2012, according to a survey commissioned by the National Retail Federation over Black Friday weekend. Black Friday is still the most popular shopping day, with 92 million people, or 65.2 percent of holiday shoppers, according to the National Retail Federation. Chicago Tribune

In my own write: The beauty of fragility By Judy Montagu

The succa is an object lesson in the importance of contrast in human life.

The transience of the material world and one’s place in it is, of course, one of the lessons that a week spent in a flimsy hut open to the sky is meant to drive home. And whether that sojourn sharpens the observant Jew’s belief that the only real permanence is God Himself; or serves to remind the secular Jew that the search for meaning in life necessarily transcends the acquisition of a luxurious home and a pile of possessions, the succa in its simplicity and fragility speaks to all. When you sit in it of an autumn evening and not only hear the wind blow but feel it blowing; when a sudden shower of rain is not something that you casually observe happening on the other side of your living room window but is actual wetness dropping on your head and diluting your soup, then, if you are open to it, you gain an immediate, personal understanding of physical vulnerability that goes beyond the theoretical. But how many of us, beyond a fleeting sense of pity, can say during 51 weeks of the year that we identify in any real way with the fragility that is ever-present in the uncertain lives of these hundreds of thousands of dispossessed individuals and others like them with whom we have no personal contact? For one week in the year, huddled inside our leaky little huts as the evenings suddenly turn cold, there is more chance of our internalizing what being homeless actually means and moving beyond pity for the other to compassion and fellow-feeling. At the same time, that simple little dwelling, giving us a small experience of fragility and uncertainty, can lead us to a new appreciation of the things we take for granted, such as a permanent roof over our heads. In a 2005 piece called “Succot: The beauty of fragility,” Rabbi Daniel Greyber agreed that beauty is linked to vulnerability. “We try so hard to protect ourselves, to protect our children. We build walls. We build strong, comfortable houses with roofs and heat for shelter and quiet. But we cannot be made invulnerable; we cannot keep ourselves safe and truly celebrate the beauty of this world.” Perhaps the succa is telling us that our potential to act and to appreciate is, paradoxically, increased when we recognize our fragility. The Jerusalem Post

Appeal of Writing Memoirs Grows, as Do Publishing Options By Elizabeth Olson

Writing the Memoir. No one keeps an official tally of enrollees, but teachers like Wendy Salinger, who conducts a summer memoir writing course at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, said retirees made up a substantial portion of these classes. “We help them understand that a memoir covers an aspect of their life,” said Ms. Salinger, who has written her own. “A memoir is not an autobiography that tells a life from beginning to end. A memoir has to tap into a universal truth.” There have long been memoirs, often written by celebrities and politicians. But recent bare-all personal tales like “Wild,” in which Cheryl Strayed unsparingly examines her life during a grueling hike on a Pacific Northwest trail, are inspiring more people to be increasingly candid about experiences that were once carefully hidden. “There are a lot of scenes my students write that knock my socks off,” Ms. Salinger said, “because people have to look inward to be honest, and that can be very difficult.” The confessional writing that results from such self-examination grates on some who find it self-indulgent or even cynical, and the genre got publicly sullied in 2006 when writer James Frey was caught mixing fiction with truth in his popular memoir “A Million Little Pieces.” But the genre has endured and even thrived. “It’s the age of memoirs,” Ms. Salinger said, as self-publishing has made it easier and more accessible to plumb an individual’s past and share it widely. And many do so because they believe memoir writing is therapeutic and revelatory. “A memoir can be a beautiful literary effort, or a sensational pop culture piece,” Ms. Todd, “and people want to read them.” The New York Times

Malala Yousafzai - Nobel Peace Prize 2014

Chime for Change Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi share Nobel Peace Prize By Laura Smith-Spark (CNN) -- The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to India's Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai for their struggles against the suppression of children and for young people's rights, including the right to education. CNN

Journey Faithfully

Journey Faithfully 1994