George Michael
Born: 25 June 1963
Birthplace: Bushey (near London), England
Best Known As: Singer of "Careless Whisper" and "Faith"
Name at birth: Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou
Scruffy-sexy and sultry, Michael was the bridge between 1970s glam rock and the sex-pop of the 1990s. With school chum Andrew Ridgeley he formed the pop group Wham!, and they leapt to stardom in Britain with the 1982 single "Young Guns (Go For It!). A string of hits followed while Michael, first among equals, also began a successful solo career with the 1984 single "Careless Whisper." Wham! disbanded after a farewell concert at Wembley Stadium in 1986. Michael quickly remade his image, shifting from clean-cut pop star to leather-clad, stubble-chinned hunk. His best-selling solo album Faith (1987) won a Grammy for Best Album and a BBC ban for the saucy video for the single "I Want Your Sex." Michael's 1990 followup album, Listen Without Prejudice, included the MTV-ready single Freedom 90. Wrangles with record companies slowed Michael in the early 1990s, and his embarrassing 1998 arrest for "public lewdness" in a Los Angeles park lavatory eventually led him to publicly acknowledge his homosexuality. He released the album Older in 1996 and returned to action in 2004 with the successful album Patience, after which he announced his semi-retirement from the music business, saying he would release future tunes for free over the Internet.
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Category: Water Rabbit - Kuei Mao
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Georges Simenon
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (February 13, 1903 - September 4, 1989) was a Belgian writer, who wrote in French.
Simenon, who was born in Liège, established himself in Paris in 1922. He travelled widely and stayed in the United States for ten years, from 1945 until 1955. In 1957, he moved to Switzerland.
Simenon was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century. He was able to write 60 to 80 pages a day. During his lifetime, he published about 450 novels and short stories. He is best known, however, for his 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. The first novel in the series, Pietr-Le-Letton, appeared in 1931; the last one, Maigret et M. Charles, was published in 1972. The Maigret novels were translated in all major languages and several of them were turned into a film (starting with La nuit du carrefour, adapted for the screen by Jean Renoir as early as 1932).
During his "American" period, Simenon reached the height of his creative powers, and several novels of those years were inspired by the context in which they were written (Trois chambres à Manhattan (1946), Maigret à New York (1947), Maigret se fâche (1947)).
Simenon also wrote a large number of "psychological novels", such as La neige était sale (1948) or Le fils (1957), as well as several autobiographical works, in particular Je me souviens (1945), Pedigree (1948), Mémoires intimes (1981).
Simenon was known as "the man of 10,000 women", a self-confessed sex addict who "needed" to have sex three times a day. Quite a few women were prepared to humour him for nothing, but that total was said to include 8,000 prostitutes.
In this he was quite different from his fictional creation, Maigret, a homely sort of chap (when he wasn't in the bar).
Georges Simenon died of a brain tumour in Lausanne, aged 86.
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