Taylor Swift is the Top Grossing Artist for 2015 with more than $250 million in ticket sales playing to 2.3 million fans. While that is not a global record, the fact that nearly $200 million of that total came from North America dates means she smashed the previous mark of $162 million set by the Rolling Stones in 2005.
Although The Rolling Stones placed 10th on the chart, the band had the highest average ticket – $174.50. Second is Paul McCartney’s $155.76 followed by Madonna ($127.55), Fleetwood Mac ($125.61), Elton John ($124.49) and U2 ($118.35). Luke Bryan’s $55.48 average ticket price was the lowest on the chart.
he Postal Service is providing a preview of its 2016 stamp program that is sure to attract the interest of fans of Sarah Vaughan, Star Trek, NASA’s New Horizons mission, Trucks, Shirley Temple, flowers, soda fountain fans and the holidays — just to name a small handful.
“Our stamps articulate the American experience through miniature works of art,” said Acting Stamp Services Director Mary-Anne Penner. “Our diverse stamp topics for 2016 are sure to appeal to everyone, and with the New Year just around the corner, now is a perfect time to get started in stamp collecting. It’s an educational hobby the entire family can enjoy.”
Music Icon: Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan was one of America’s greatest singers, successful in both jazz and pop, with a talent for improvisation and skillful phrasing and a voice that ranged over several octaves.
The stamp art is an oil painting of Vaughan in performance based on a 1955 photograph by Hugh Bell. A few lines of selvage text explain her importance as a Music Icon. The cover side of the pane features a larger version of the stamp art, a list of some of Vaughan’s popular songs, and the Music Icons logo. Bart Forbes was the artist and Ethel Kessler was the art director. The 11 a.m. First-Day-of-Issue dedication ceremony will take place March 29 in Newark, NJ, at the Sarah Vaughan Concert Hall.
Legends of Hollywood: Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple becomes the 20th inductee into the Postal Service’s Legends of Hollywood series. As a child she was the most honored film star in the world. As an adult, Shirley Temple Black had a distinguished career in diplomacy, serving as delegate to the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia and U.S. Chief of Protocol. She received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild in 2006.
The stamp art for this Forever stamp features a painting by Tim O’Brien based on a 1935 still image from Curly Top, one of her iconic rolls in movies. The selvage, or area outside of the stamps, features a publicity photo from the 1933 short film “Managed Money.” Ethel Kessler of Bethesda, MD, was the art director for the stamp.
Views of Our Planets
With this pane of 16 Forever stamps, the Postal Service showcases some of the more visually compelling full-disk images of the planets obtained during this era. Eight new colorful Forever stamps, each shown twice, feature Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Some show the planets’ “true color” — what we might see if traveling through space. Others use colors to represent and visualize certain features of a planet based in imaging data. Still others use the near-infrared spectrum to show things that cannot be seen by the human eye invisible light.
The verso text, or text on the back of the stamp pane, explains what these images reveal and identifies the spacecrafts and powerful telescopes that helped obtain them. Antonio Alcalá of Alexandria, VA, was the art director and designer of the stamps. The stamps will be dedicated between May 28 and June 4 at the World Stamp Show – NYC 2016 at the Jacob Javits Center.
Pluto—Explored!
In 2006, NASA placed a 29-cent 1991 Pluto: Not Yet Explored stamp in the New Horizons spacecraft. In 2015 the spacecraft carried the stamp on its history-making mission to Pluto and beyond.
“The New Horizons project is proud to have such an important honor from the U.S. Postal Service,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons lead scientist from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO. “Since the early 1990s the old, ‘Pluto Not Yet Explored’ stamp served as a rallying cry for many who wanted to mount this historic mission of space exploration. Now that NASA’s New Horizons has accomplished that goal, it’s a wonderful feeling to see these new stamps join others commemorating first explorations of the planets.”
The souvenir sheet of four stamps contains two new stamps appearing twice. The first stamp shows an artists’ rendering of the New Horizons spacecraft and the second shows the spacecraft’s image of Pluto taken near its closest approach.
The view — which is color enhanced to highlight surface texture and composition — is a composite of four images from New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), combined with color data from the imaging instrument Ralph that clearly reveals the now-famous heart-shaped feature. Antonio Alcalá was the art director. The stamps will be dedicated between May 28 and June 4 at the World Stamp Show – NYC 2016 at the Jacob Javits Center.
Star Trek
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the television premiere, the new Star Trek Forever stamps showcase four digital illustrations inspired by classic elements of the television program:
the Starship Enterprise inside the outline of a Starfleet insignia against a gold background;
the silhouette of a crewman in a transporter against a red background;
the silhouette of the Enterprise from above against a green background; and,
the Enterprise inside the outline of the Vulcan salute (Spock’s iconic hand gesture) against a blue background
The words “SPACE… THE FINAL FRONTIER,” from Captain Kirk’s famous voice-over appear beneath the stamps against a background of stars. The stamps were designed by Heads of State under the art direction of Antonio Alcalá.
In life, we often forget that the simple, little things in relationships truly matter the most. Life already includes enough stress and complications, so your relationship with your partner should provide you with comfort and peace. Of course, you will inevitably encounter some problems in relationships, but you can make it through anything by keeping the following small details in mind.
Using our advice about relationships, these rules can help you to stay focused on what truly matters in a relationship – unconditional love, compassion, understanding, support, gratitude, and commitment. Thanks to the Power Of Positivity for these tips and rules of life.
“I always wanted to be on a show about nothing,” Obama joked in the Season 7 premiere of Jerry Seinfeld’s web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. “And here I am.” Obama has been known for making appearances on popular entertainment shows, including Running Wild with Bear Grylls and Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. But how exactly did the leader of the free world end up on a Crackle series that exclusively features comedians?
“Jerry jokingly suggested that we should invite the President to be on the show,” a Crackle spokesperson told Mashable in an email Wednesday.
Having spent a lot of time watching a few bunnies in my backyard hang out and eat the grass for me so I don’t have to mow it, I’ve never seen two bunnies have a go like this.
“The worst thing you can say to a creative person, I think, is ‘You can do anything.’ That is the kiss of death. You should say to them, ‘You can’t do this. You definitely can’t do that. And under no circumstances can you do that.’ Then they’ll start thinking in a different, more creative way.” – Peter Gabriel in Uncut Magazine
The White Noise Boutique, a small pop-up shop that opened in Brighton, England in September, is offering custom vinyl LPs consisting entirely of white noise. Think of it as a purer form of the Ghost in the Mp3.
The shop was created by artist Jeff Thompson — who previously made “Computers on Law & Order”. Visitors to the shop can select a seed (dice, yarrow sticks) and a generator (such as hard drive entropy, algorithms, Type 1390-B vacuum tubes) to create a unique recording of white noise (for more info on the process, see the boutique’s site). They can then print a 7″ record of their creation, and/or get a digital file of it for £4 and £1, respectively.
Although it’s a conceptual art piece that mocks expensive specialty boutiques, it still actually functions as a store. “I really like the idea of a store that sells something seemingly so useless that has an incredible amount of detail,” Thompson said. “The records are priced to be cheap enough that anyone can afford them, despite it being a boutique. I want to embrace the high-end and custom-made aspects of boutiques while upending the capitalist and elitist drive behind them.”
