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Billy Blanks
William Wayne Blanks (born September 1, 1955) is an American fitness personality, martial artist, actor, and the creator of the Tae Bo exercise program. Early life and education Blanks was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. He began his study of the martial arts at the age of eleven, attending Karate and Taekwondo classes. He was born with an anomaly in his hip joints that impaired his movement. The resulting clumsiness aroused taunts from Blanks' siblings and led his instructors to believe that he would never accomplish much. Blanks found the answer to these challenges in karate. When he saw Bruce Lee on TV, he decided he wanted to be a world martial-arts champion. Career Blanks was hired as a bodyguard for lead actress Catherine Bach during the filming of 1988's '' Driving Force'', which was filmed in Manila during a time of political unrest. Blanks impressed the producers and was written into the script in a supporting role. This led to Blanks' work in several martial arts films, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erie, Pennsylvania
Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 at the 2020 census. The estimated population in 2021 had decreased to 93,928. The Erie metropolitan area, equivalent to all of Erie County, consists of 266,096 residents. The Erie-Meadville combined statistical area had a population of 369,331 at the 2010 census. Erie is roughly equidistant from Buffalo and Cleveland, each being about 100 miles (160 kilometers) away. Erie's manufacturing sector remains prominent in the local economy, though insurance, healthcare, higher education, technology, service industries, and tourism are emerging as significant economic drivers. As with the other Great Lakes port cities, Erie is accessible to the oceans via the Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River network in Canada. The local climate is humid, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bloodfist
''Bloodfist'' is a 1989 American martial arts action film directed by Terence H. Winkless, written by Robert King, and starring Don "The Dragon" Wilson. Wilson plays a dojo sensei in California who travels to Manila to avenge his professional kickboxer brother, who was murdered after a fight. It has become a cult film. Plot A man gets beaten by his opponent, but after he finds out the fight was rigged, he decides to fight back. He kills his opponent and is announced as the winner. On his way back to his home, another man kills him. Back in the United States, retired boxer Jake Raye and co-owner of Hal and Jake's self-defense class receives a call from the Philippines police department. He is told his half-brother Michael is dead, and he must pick up the body in Manila. Raye travels to Manila and collects the body, but he decides to stay there and find his brother's killer. Raye gets training help from a man named Kwong and stays with local kickboxer Baby Davies, upon whom local ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trinity Broadcasting Network
The Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) is an international Christian-based broadcast television network and the world's largest religious television network. TBN was headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, until March 3, 2017, when it sold its highly visible office park, Trinity Christian City. The broadcaster retained its studios in nearby Tustin. Auxiliary studio facilities are located in Irving, Hendersonville, Gadsden, Decatur, Miami and Orlando, Tulsa and New York City. TBN has characterized itself as broadcasting programs hosted by a diverse group of ministries from Evangelical, traditional Protestant and Catholic denominations, non-profit charities, Messianic Jewish and Christian media personalities. TBN also offers a wide range of original programming and faith-based films from various distributors. TBN owns and operates six broadcast networks, each reaching separate demographics. In addition to the main TBN network, TBN owns TBN Inspire, Smile, Enlace, TBN Salsa an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prayer
Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication. In the narrow sense, the term refers to an act of supplication or intercession directed towards a deity or a deified ancestor. More generally, prayer can also have the purpose of thanksgiving or praise, and in comparative religion is closely associated with more abstract forms of meditation and with charms or spells. Prayer can take a variety of forms: it can be part of a set liturgy or ritual, and it can be performed alone or in groups. Prayer may take the form of a hymn, incantation, formal creedal statement, or a spontaneous utterance in the praying person. The act of prayer is attested in written sources as early as 5000 years ago. Today, most major religions involve prayer in one way or another; some ritualize the act, requiring a strict sequence of actions or placing a restriction on who is permitted to pray, while others teach that prayer may b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christianity In The United States
Christianity is the most prevalent religion in the United States. Estimates from 2021 suggest that of the entire US population (332 million) about 63% is Christian (210 million). The majority of Christian Americans are Protestant Christians (140 million; 42%), though there are also significant numbers of American Roman Catholics (70 million; 21%) and other minority Christian denominations such as Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses (about 13 million in total; 4%). The United States has the largest Christian population in the world and, more specifically, the largest Protestant population in the world, with nearly 210 million Christians and, as of 2021, over 140 million people affiliated with Protestant churches, although other countries have higher percentages of Christians among their populations. The Public Religion Research Institute's "2020 Census of American Religion", carried out between 2014 and 2020, showed that 70% of Americans identified as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Popular Culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in time. Popular culture also encompasses the activities and feelings produced as a result of interaction with these dominant objects. The primary driving force behind popular culture is the mass appeal, and it is produced by what cultural analyst Theodor Adorno refers to as the "culture industry". Heavily influenced in modern times by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of people in a given society. Therefore, popular culture has a way of influencing an individual's attitudes towards certain topics. However, there are various ways to define pop culture. Because of this, popular culture is something that can be defined in a variety of conflicting ways by different people across diff ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paula Abdul
Paula Julie Abdul (born June 19, 1962) is an American singer, dancer, choreographer, actress, and television personality. She began her career as a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Lakers at the age of 18 and later became the head choreographer for the Laker Girls, where she was discovered by The Jacksons. After choreographing music videos for Janet Jackson, Abdul became a choreographer at the height of the music video era and soon thereafter she was signed to Virgin Records. Her debut studio album ''Forever Your Girl'' (1988) became one of the most successful debut albums at that time, selling seven million copies in the United States and setting a record for the most number-one singles from a debut album on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart: " Straight Up", "Forever Your Girl", "Cold Hearted", and "Opposites Attract". Her second album ''Spellbound'' (1991) scored her two more ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart toppers: " Rush Rush" and "The Promise of a New Day". Her six number-one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. The publication has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by the Times Mirror Company. The newspaper’s coverage emphasizes California and especially Southern California stories. In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to labor unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. In recent decades the paper's readership has declined, and it has been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, and other controversies. In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize and final ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boxing
Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermined amount of time in a boxing ring. Although the term "boxing" is commonly attributed to "western boxing", in which only the fists are involved, boxing has developed in various ways in different geographical areas and cultures. In global terms, boxing is a set of combat sports focused on striking, in which two opponents face each other in a fight using at least their fists, and possibly involving other actions such as kicks, elbow strikes, Knee (strike), knee strikes, and headbutts, depending on the rules. Some of the forms of the modern sport are western boxing, Bare-knuckle boxing, bare knuckle boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, muay-thai, lethwei, savate, and Sanda (sport), sanda. Boxing techniques have been incorporated into many martial ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy ( ) is a coastal U.S. city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the largest city in the county and a part of Greater Boston, Metropolitan Boston as one of Boston's immediate southern suburbs. Its population in 2020 was 101,636, making it the seventh-largest city in the U.S. state, state. Known as the "City of Presidents", Quincy is the birthplace of two President of the United States, U.S. presidents—John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams—as well as John Hancock (a President of the Continental Congress and the first signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, Declaration of Independence) and the first and third Governor of Massachusetts. First settled in 1625, Quincy was briefly part of Dorchester, Boston, Dorchester before becoming the north precinct of Braintree, Massachusetts, Braintree in 1640. In 1792, Quincy was split off from Braintree; the new town was named after Colonel John Quincy, maternal grandfather of Abigail Adams and af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kiss The Girls (1997 Film)
''Kiss the Girls'' is a 1997 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Gary Fleder and starring Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, and Cary Elwes. The screenplay by David Klass is based on James Patterson's best-selling 1995 novel of the same name. A sequel titled '' Along Came a Spider'' was released in 2001. Plot Washington, D.C. detective and forensic psychologist Alex Cross heads to Durham, North Carolina when his niece Naomi, a college student, is reported missing. He learns from police detective Nick Ruskin that Naomi is the latest in a series of young women who have vanished. Soon after his arrival, one of the missing women is found dead, bound to a tree, and a short time later, Kate McTiernan is kidnapped from her home. When she awakens from a drugged state, Kate discovers that she is being held by a masked man calling himself Casanova, and she is one of several prisoners trapped in his lair. She manages to escape and is severely injured when she jumps from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
