Cited: AP

There is one dress everyone will remember, black and strapless, with a sassy sequined flounce at the bodice and a gloriously full, swishy skirt. It is the dress that Lady Diana Spencer thought was so grown-up and just right for her first official engagement after it was announced that she would marry Prince Charles.

But when photographs emerged of the then 19-year-old Diana emerging from a limousine at a March, 1981 charity event — all creamy shoulders and ample decolletage — there was a minor scandal over the revealing cut. According to Elizabeth Emanuel, who designed the ball gown with her husband David, they didn’t realize the furor the dress would cause.

“She just looked fantastic. At that time, she was curvy. Not fat in any way, but she had cleavage — we love cleavage. And she looked great in this dress,” Emanuel said in an interview Friday. “We in no way expected there to be such a reaction. And I think from that moment on, Diana became a fashion icon.”

The dress had been missing for years until David Emanuel recently discovered it in a plastic bag at his home. Along with other garments worn by Diana and designed by the Emanuels, it is to be auctioned off June 8 in a sale that includes the silk chiffon blouse chosen for the Princess of Wales’ official engagement portrait by Lord Snowdon, and the calico prototype used to fit her famous ivory wedding gown.

Prince Charles reportedly didn’t like the ball gown she wore to the charity event, because he thought black was for people in mourning. Diana thought it was tres chic, and anyway, she had nothing else to wear.

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“She was unsophisticated at that point, and when I look at the wedding dress and the black ballgown I can see a young girl’s dream of the ultimate party dress or romantic dress,” said auctioneer Kerry Taylor, whose eponymous firm is handling the sale. “So there’s an innocence about these early pieces.

“Later on she became very svelte, very sophisticated, very elegant,” Taylor said. “But here we see just a very beautiful, innocent young girl, and the clothes reflect that.”

For the editors of Britain’s voracious press, the dress — and the snaps of Diana in it — would kick off a long love affair with the princess.

“Up until that point, they’d seen her as a floppy-haired puppy,” said Christopher Wilson, a seasoned observer who has written extensively on the royals. “And that’s the moment Fleet Street fell in love with her.

“It all stretches back to that one picture.”

Taylor and Elizabeth Emanuel are hopeful the collection will go to a museum — the black dress is expected to fetch between 30,000 and 50,000 pounds ($44,000 to $73,000) and the prototype of the wedding dress between 8,000 and 12,000 pounds ($12,000 to $17,000) — but understand that Diana’s legacy means there’s a strong chance a private collector may snap up the garments.

Despite the reaction to her ball gown, Diana liked it enough to ask the Emanuels to take it in when it became too large for her, as she was constantly losing weight. In the months leading up to her wedding, Diana’s waist dropped from 26 to 24 inches, and the Emanuels decided it would be easier to just make her a new, smaller version of the dress. Elizabeth Emanuel said she doesn’t know what happened to the second version.

The collection up for sale includes sketches, notes, invoices — one shows Diana’s mother paid 1,000 guineas for the wedding party’s dresses, which was the equivalent of 1,050 pounds — and even the handbag that Elizabeth Emanuel carried to the wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981. It still has the smelling salts the designer brought along in case her famous client felt faint. (She didn’t, Emanuel said, describing Diana as the epitome of calm.)

“Diana was just fantastic. From the moment we first met her, she was just like a regular client. She was lovely, down-to-earth, very sweet, very calm, and very friendly. She made a point of meeting everybody in the work room and she was just so easy to get on with,” Emanuel said. “We had so much fun.”

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My Take: Everybody has one piece of clothing that is special to them. But I do not believe that this dress was Princess Diana’s favorite. It is a favorite of her fans. Why is it that when someone is loved so much by millions of people, they are put up on a pedestal as if they were perfect? Diana hired a Nashville divorce lawyer, well maybe not in Nashville lawyer, but she definitely hired a divorce lawyer.

Perfect people have perfect marriages and do not need a Nashville divorce attorney. There are no perfect people on this earth. There may be perfect looking people because they do Pilates exercise every day. But there are no perfect people on. With Pilates instruction, they can get as close to perfection as possible, but will never make.

The way Princess Diana died should prove that she is not perfect. It was tragic and her family probably had to hire a Riverside CA personal injury law firm to help with the aftermath. Of course, not many California injury attorneys are allowed to work in England, but they still needed a lawyer.

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Cited: ABC News

There is something new to see in Rome this summer, something old. Tourists will be able to see what the gladiator saw of the Roman Colosseum that have never before been open to the public. Visitors will be able to descend to the bank gets of the world’s biggest ancient amphitheater and climbed the steep steps to the highest level where they will be able to admire the majestic views over the arena. The Roman Forum and Arch of Constantine can be viewed from these heights just next door.

Thanks to special government funds, conservation projects are underway at what is arguably the world’s most famous monument to shore up areas that have been closed for decades, and allow access to visitors. Particularly fascinating is the warren of underground chambers and passageways that housed the animals, gladiators, machines and scenery that made up the greatest show on earth two-thousand years ago.

Soon, small groups of visitors with a guide will enter the Colosseum through the back entrance known as the Porta Libidinaria — where in Roman times the gladiators made their grand entrance into the arena — and take a glass elevator down into the bowels of the arena. There, with some imagination, you can picture the noisy, smelly chaos of animals and men preparing for showy battle.

The area opening to the public is under a modern reconstruction of the floor of the Colosseum that was built with steel beams in the year 2000. The original was built of wood, and covered with sand. Under this roof visitors get a feel for what it was like to be in the underground area where wild animals and gladiators waited their turn in what was the backstage of the biggest spectacle in the world at the time.

“The public will be able to visit this area for the first time in August or September,” says Barbara Nazzaro, the architect in charge of the still-to-be completed restoration under the Colosseum, “and they will see the area under the arena where people worked all day to put on the show.”

Lions, tigers, buffalo, gazelles, ostriches and more were brought into the Colosseum through an underground tunnel and locked in cells before being hoisted up in one of the 80 elevators to the stage above, appearing as if by magic in different corners of the arena (elephants used the ground-level entrance) .

“They were very appreciated by the public,” says Nazzaro, “but many wild animals disappeared in this period” to satisfy the Roman audience. She shows you the holes in the cells through which the animals were poked so they would enter the elevator cages. Gladiators and scenery were also lifted to the surface with pulleys.

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In its early days the Colosseum was even flooded with water and naval battles were re-enacted for an excited public, according to Rosella Rea, the archeologist in charge of the monument. She says the long vaulted galleries you see underground housed the ships. The water that was used for the naval battles — and, more gruesomely, to wash away the blood and dirt of battle — came from an underground stream that was channeled by the Romans and still flows through the site.

Colosseum shows, with as many as 80,000 spectators, were all-day events featuring hunts and battles, and were offered free to the people by the Roman emperor. At the end of the day, the emperor would distribute the meat from the dead animals to the public according to precise rules, says Rea.

The emperor himself would always get the elephant tusks, the senators and officials the choice meats, and the leftovers were left for the plebes.

Much as in a modern baseball stadium, there were merchants selling food and drink, and archeologists have even found small cooking stoves that must have been used to prepare meals, says Rea.

Also being opened to visitors this summer is a section of the third tier of the amphitheater, the highest section still standing. It offers a different perspective on the cavea, or pit of the arena, as well as spectacular views over the Palatine and the Forum all the way down to Piazza Venezia, where, with construction materials quarried for the Colosseum, the Palazzo Venezia was built in the 15th century.

This is where the middle class sat, says Rea, with the emperors and senators in the best ground-level seats and the plebeians in the peanut gallery on top. On the way to the third level visitors will be able to admire the only original vaulted passageway leading to the seats that is still standing.

Rome’s Ancient Monuments

In June 2009 the Italian government named a special commissioner and provided him with emergency funds for urgent repair to the ancient monuments in Rome , many of which are in a sorry state of conservation. A part of Nero’s famed Golden House caved in at Easter, and most recently a chunk of ceiling plaster fell from one of the galleries in Colosseum, dragging protective netting with it.

The equivalent of just under $2 million were allotted to the Colosseum, which is a small windfall for a monument with an annual budget of only $900,000 and a technical staff of just three people. They are spending the funds to “accelerate” a series of essential restorations they had already planned, says Rea. “If we could always work at this pace, it would be ideal,” she says.

Restorers have been hard at work since January cleaning and restoring travertine columns and ancient bricks. “All old things can use a face-lift,” says Nazzaro with a smile, “and this monument is particularly old, with a lot of problems.” They will be finished by the end of July.

It is going to cost $25 million to fully restore and clean the whole monument and the government is looking for outside sponsors who are willing to contribute to the endeavor.

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My Take: Wow, it’s about time. If I ever did get a chance to visit Rome that would be one of the things I would want to see, the Colosseum and all of its hidden secrets. I would also get one of their famous Italian linens tablecloths. I understand they are masterfully crafted.

I also want to taste their authentic Italian sauce just to see if it is better than what I have tasted in the US. I would think it would be, but you never know. My best friend is Italian and she can make the best sauce! She got the recipe from her father who was worst generation US Italian. Her grandmother had an Italian linen tablecloth and it was beautiful.

I might just join one of those US volunteer programs to get to Italy. They have several overseas volunteer programs as well. I could volunteer in Bolivia if I really wanted to, but I really don’t want to go to Bolivia. It doesn’t really matter which country I would choose, I definitely would take my electronic cigarette with me because the flights are non-smoking and so are the airports. I would have to make sure that I took my electronic cigarette cartridges with me as well so I would have plenty on my trip.

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A Different Gift

One company sells vintage wood propellers and aviation gifts, all types of brass bells, personalized lake house signs and nostalgic hockey gifts. These best sellers only scratch the surface of what you’ll find at their online store. But they are pretty sure you won’t find such an eclectic group of nostalgic products anywhere else.

Cited: Reuters

Do you know who Megan Fox is? You should! Very few people knew she was two years ago. However, now that she has starred in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” she is among the hottest actresses in Hollywood. Her sex appeal has one millions of fans to her. Many of her peers want to avoid the label of “sex symbol” because it might overshadow her talent. However, Fox deals differently since the “Transformers” sequel debuted last month.

She thinks being sexy has its advantages. It helped get Fox her start in 2007’s original, big-budget action flick “Transformers” from director Michael Bay, and that has led her to her other parts where she is now achieving what she set out to do in Hollywood — become a real actress.

“Women in movies, in general, are sexy — especially in Michael’s movies. And if you want to make movies that people want to see, that’s part of it. That’s part of the formula,” Fox told reporters at a recent news conference. Bay, who was sitting with her, chimed in: “It’s called summer fun. It’s a robot movie.”

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is based on the popular toys and cartoons about shape-shifting cars which morph into “autobots” that fight alien “decepticons” who want to control Earth. In the 2007 movie, the decepticons got thrashed in the final battle. Now, they’re back to avenge their losses.

The effects-filled movies are aimed mostly at young men, and with that in mind Bay hired the attractive brunette from Tennessee to co-star as the movie’s main love interest, Mikaela Banes, who favors tight jeans and even tighter t-shirts.

OPENING SHOT, OPENING DOORS

Bay, ever willing to indulge fan tastes, has made sure Fox’s first appearance in “Revenge of the Fallen” has an impact. As Mikaela, the lanky actress is filmed from behind, sprawled on a motorcycle in hotpants and motorcycle boots.

“We got that first shot out of the way, just to get it out for the young boys…and moved on,” Bay said. Before 2007, most of Fox’s work had been small parts on TV and in movies, but fan buzz from the smash hit “Transformers” ($700 million global box office) catapulted her to stardom.

“The movie, its success and how well it was received has opened a lot of doors for me, career-wise,” Fox said. Fox wants to be more than just a pretty face in Hollywood’s next big action flick, and when “Transformers” “opened a lot of doors” for her, she took advantage.

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Now, to look that good Megan Fox must use the Alexander Technique classesin Manhattan. Either that or she does exercises with Pilates. Both of which can provide excellent exercise and relaxation. The Alexander Technique teaches you how to relax and use your body the way it should be and a Pilates fitness program with DVD can teach you how to do exercises, that are very similar, on a mat.

She will soon star opposite Oscar-nominees Josh Brolin and John Malkovich in sci-fi Western “Jonah Hex”, due to hit theaters later this year. In September, she headlines supernatural comedy “Jennifer’s Body”, penned by Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (”Juno”).

“I’ve been able to be a part of films I don’t really feel like I deserve to have been a part of,” she said, in a nod to her lack of experience. But what Fox can’t quite get her head around, is the price of fame — constantly being hounded by paparazzi and press.

“Being photographed at Whole Foods, or like coming out of Rite-Aid with your shampoo bottles and stuff, that’s new to me,” Fox said.

Cast members, Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Isabel Lucas, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Julie White, Kevin Dunn, Anthony Anderson and Matthew Marsden, were all seen at the event. They were joined by director Michael Bay, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, and screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, as well as Paramount Pictures toppers Brad Grey and Sumner Redstone.

The cast members were not the only Hollywood stars to be at the premiere actors Emile Hirsch and Brenda Song, TV personalities Kim Kardashian, Kristin Cavallari and Kendra Wilkinson and Travis Barker among others who went to to the premiere.

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My Take: It is always nice to see a rising new star take on the paparazzi. The paparazzi can drive you absolutely insane. If she can ride that roller coaster and still be herself, then she is a star in deed. I saw the first “Transformers” and enjoyed it very much. However, I have not had a chance to see the sequel.

I have found that many times sequels do not measure up to the original movie. The sequel, however, seems to be one of the rare ones. Everybody is talking about it and saying it is better than the first movie. With my finances being tagged I may not be able to go to the theater to see it. I will just wait and do a movie download.

I belong to one of those Internet companies where you can get downloads of movies from low fee. So when I am ready I will go to my free movie downloads and get the sequel. In fact, if I don’t have the patience to wait for the download, I may just watch online.

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Transformer Halloween

Halloween is only three months away, it might be a good idea to start shopping around for that Halloween Party costume now. You can get costumes for every family member including buntings and onezees for newborns, infants, toddlers, boys & girls, teens & adults up to 2XL. You can even find costumes for the family pet. Where can you find brands that include Disguise, Rasta Imposta & Rubies, online! You can even find  adult Halloween costumes.

Premier Date

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Movies a Gamble?

Every time a movie is made, it is a gamble. The producers, directors and actors really do not know if everybody will like that movie. However, movies make money, even the bad ones. The average people would never have enough money to make a movie themselves. However, they can have fun and make money online by going to an online casino. They canget free online gambling right from the comfort of your own living room.

DVD Movies

If you are like most people you want to share your DVD collection with everybody. Unfortunately, most people you lend that you DVDs or CDs to never bring them back. That is when California DVD replication comes in handy. Did you know that you can make a DVD copy or even a CD copy as long as it is for personal use only? You can easily find duplication services online.

There is something different about experiencing a live performance. Everything seems so alive. Getting to that point takes time. To get such an immaculate presentation, the staging crew needs to have the proper equipment installed. With the proper equipment, they get the best results from the performers rather than the audience.

Stage and aisle lighting are extremely important to the performance. The lights are extremely bright in most cases and are required to radiate performers’ facial expressions. If the audience cannot see these, it can detract from the performance. Aisle lighting is also provided near seating risers to guide patrons up and down the aisles, and to ensure safety during dimly lit performances.

Stage lights are available in varying wattage based upon the stage requirements. Apart from being set on center stage, they are often placed at the side wings, and even at special points where the audience is seated. Stage lights are also available in various colors. Apart from regular lights, these colored varieties are used to create special effects. Different stage lights are used during different scenes. Different colored lights on stage bring out different emotions, colors like red are used to bring out love and despair, whereas yellow lights are used to go back into memory lane.

Most stage lighting is extremely heavy and difficult to move. This makes lighting difficult when a performance is on the road. This stage is on the other hand, is very portable. A portable stage can have several bridge supports and a folding frame that makes for easy transportation. A folding bridge frame, also referred to as a C-Frame, is a functional frame that provides bridging between platforms. The frame folds flat, is self-contained and is available in fixed and adjustable heights.

A director may also place lighting on side screens when they need to light up a particular part of the stage or object on the stage. Even the audience has their own special lighting system in an auditorium. This is usually used so that the audience can feel what is going on in the performance.

Everyone loves to win money! Is one of the greatest feelings you will ever experience. Imagine having that experience from the safety and comfort of your own home. Have you ever thought about Casinos online? Each online casino is built just a little bit different in one way or another. Most people when they play online want an advantage. Nevertheless, how do you get that advantage? Can you ever expect to beat the online system?

Yes, even the unluckiest players can expect to win if they follow 4 simple tips. Here are those tips that may help you win:

1. Do not get greedy! When you get greedy, you tend to get loose more than you should. Stop and think clearly before you lose all of your cash and some of you pride.
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4. Study, study, study! You need to study and learn everything you can about the games you are playing if you want to win money. Find and study a free how to win guide that is geared towards the game you wish to play. Never turn down free advice!

The advantages online casinos have over land-based casinos is the real cash bonuses that they offer for sign-ups. This means online casino gambling can be lucrative if you are willing to take the chance. If you decide to play online casino games, make sure you follow these tips.