Archive for April, 2008

Monday, April 28th, 2008

Clifton Chenier - Clifton Chenier And His Red Hot Louisiana Band In New Orleans [1979]

Saturday, April 26th, 2008


Price: $1.04
Size: cheap mp3 Mb
Tracks:
1: Boogie Louisiane
2: Cotton-Picker Blues
3: J'aime Pain De Mais (I Love Corn Bread)
4: Pousse Cafe Waltz
5: Hello Rosa-Lee
6: Jusque Parce Que Je T'aime (Only Because I Love You)
7: Boogiein' In New Orleans
8: Rumblin' On The Bayou
9: I'm Gonna Take You Home Tonite
10: Mon Vieux “Buggy” (My Old Buggy)
11: Crying My Heart Out To You
12: Tous Les Jours (Everyday)
13: Mardi Gras Boogie

Alan Jackson - Good Time [2008]

Friday, April 25th, 2008


Price: $1.36
Size: 90,03 Mb
Tracks:
1: Good Time
2: Small Town Southern Man
3: I Wish I Could Back Up
4: Country Boy
5: Right Where I Want You
6: 1976
7: When The Love Factor's High
8: Long Long Way
9: Sissy's Song
10: I Still Like Bologna
11: Never Loved Before (With Martina McBride)
12: Nothing Left To Do
13: Listen To Your Senses
14: This Time
15: Laid Back 'N Low Key (Cay)
16: If You Want To Make Me Happy
17: If Jesus Walked The World Today

Voice in Narrative and Dialogue

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

One of the nice things about being an author is that we can break any rule we want. (I just did.) It’s part of our job description. Language changes through usage — definitions, spelling, grammar — and authors can help it do this. But on the other hand, we have to have some sort of agreement on the language or we won’t be able to talk to each other.

When we as authors break a rule or two, it’s not because we’re ignorant. It’s because we have reasons to break them. That’s one of the joys of writing.

Having said that, now I’m going to explain some rules. There are two types of writing in your novel. There is your narrative and there is your dialogue. The rules for the two are not the same.

For example, comma use. In dialogue, it’s not so difficult. Put in a comma wherever your speaker pauses in his/her speaking. In narrative, you have to consult the style guides and hope that you and your editor, working as a team, can sort it all out.

NARRATIVE

A cop thriller like my VIGILANTE JUSTICE has a simple set of rules for the narrative portion. Third-person, straightforward writing, light on adjectives and adverbs, easy to read and grammatically correct. Sentence fragments are acceptable if communication is achieved, and you’ll note that I use them often in this article. Why? Simply because it’s more effective that way.

To a degree the genre will help you identify what’s appropriate. For a cop drama, write in the dry style of a journalist. For horror, a bit of hyperbole may be acceptable in the most dramatic sections. For romance (not my genre), you can probably use lots more adjectives (swollen, heaving, throbbing, etc.) than you’d normally dare.

When I wrote RISING FROM THE ASHES, the true story of Mom raising my brother and me alone, I tried to adopt a “childlike voice” early in the narrative. As the character of Michael the storyteller grew older, I abandoned that childlike quality. (An entire book of that would get old fast anyway.)

When I wrote AN AMERICAN REDNECK IN HONG KONG, the humorous sequel, I once again used first person narrative. But the narrative of RISING is first person only in that it uses “I” instead of “Michael.” Michael is only a camera. It still follows all the rules of “conventional” narrative. In REDNECK, I threw most of the rules out the window.

I used what one author referred to my as “conversational” tone to maximum effect in REDNECK. This fellow author felt like he wasn’t so much reading my book as just listening to me tell some stories over a few beers. That’s exactly what I wanted.

When I wrote the sequel to REDNECK, another bit of humor called WHO MOVED MY RICE?, I chose to keep that same narrative style, which I’d spent three years perfecting in my newsletter.

In RISING, while I was the “first person” character, I wasn’t really the book’s focus. In REDNECK and RICE, I am. Center stage, in the spotlight. Using more of a “dialogue” style in what should have been “narrative” allowed me to focus the reader’s attention on the first person to a greater degree than simply describing him ever could. You may love me or you may hate me, but you’ll know me and you’ll laugh at me. Or, in the case of RICE, you’ll feel my frequent confusion. I had to write that from “my perspective” because it was often the only one I understood.

If you want to see such a technique used to maximum effect, I recommend A MONK SWIMMING by Malachy McCourt. (I read it after writing REDNECK, by the way.) It’s about an actor who gets drunk and does very bad things to himself and his family, and it’s amazing just how much I laughed out loud reading it. Doesn’t sound like a funny subject, does it? It’s not, and yet it is, thanks to his unconventional narrative style.

To tell you the truth, I don’t even think McCourt “wrote” that book. I think he just said it all into a tape recorder and transcribed it later. It reads that much like “a guy at the pub telling a tale.” If he used the grammar checking function in MSWord, I bet it underlined every sentence. And, bright fellow that he is, he ignored them all and didn’t change a word.

If you’re going to use a more conversational tone in your narrative, don’t think that means you just write something down and don’t have to edit it. You still have to organize your thoughts, and that means rewriting. While your style may be unconventional, you have to make the ideas easy for the reader to follow.

(I’m not entirely serious when I say McCourt just spoke into a tape recorder, and even if he did that doesn’t mean the rest of us can get away with it.)

In the case of narrative, you have the choice. If you want to spotlight the storyteller to maximum effect, you can go with first person and let the storyteller’s narrative and his dialogue read the same. If you’d prefer to “move the camera” back a bit, make the narrative conventional in contrast to the dialogue. As a rule, this reader likes contrast, because he gets bored reading the same thing over and over again unless the style is really special. Or perhaps you can find a point somewhere in between.

Every story has a way that it should be told for maximum effect. Maximum effect in the author’s eyes, of course, since it’s a subjective thing. Keep it in mind as you write. Make the call, stick to it, change it if it’s not working. It might even be okay to be inconsistent, but only if you do so deliberately. Just keep stuff like “ease of reading” and “maximum effect” in mind and be creative.

DIALOGUE

Have you ever read a book where the dialogue reads like narrative? I hope you haven’t. But as an editor I’ve seen such things, and they’re very ugly.

Do you know why they’re so ugly? Because they remind the reader of the one thing an author does not want to remind the reader of. Namely, that every character on the page is a puppet under the author’s control.

As readers, we put that thought aside so we can enjoy reading. “Willing suspension of disbelief.” If the author ensures that the reader can’t suspend disbelief, the book will not be read. Stilted dialogue is one of the quickest ways to make that happen.

I’ve decided that writing dialogue is the hardest thing we do. It’s certainly not something we can go look up in a style manual like Strunk or Turabian.

What are the rules? “Make it sound real.” But with the corollary, “not too real because people always say um and er and crap like that.” Oh yeah. That explains everything! End of my article, right?

Nope. I’m still writing it.

Ideally, the greatest of the great creators of dialogue will have every character “speaking” in a voice so distinctive that he/she need never identify the speaker. Okay, that’s enough fiction. Back to reality. None of us are writing dialogue that well, are we?

People use a lot more contractions in speech than in writing. They’re faster. More sentence fragments, too. People very often use the wrong version of lie/lay or who/whom in speaking. (I never use “whom” in speaking or writing because I want to see the distinction scrapped, but that’s another story.)

The dialogue portion of VIGILANTE JUSTICE isn’t difficult to describe. The hero is a self-destructive cop named Gary Drake. He is based on a real-life cop, my little brother. So his dialogue was easy because, in my mind, I always heard Gary speaking in Barry’s voice.

For my other characters, I had to find some other voices. For example, the voice of Doctor Garrett Allison is, to me, that of Michael Jordan.

That’s right, people. When I write, I literally hear voices in my head.

As a beginning writer, and not a very good one, I read some advice somewhere saying you might want to cut photos out of magazines and use them when writing your physical description, in case you can’t form a mental picture of your characters. I’ve used this technique, and with some modification I’ve extended it to voices.

As an author, you should always play to your greatest strengths while working to improve your weaknesses. I know many authors who think visually, and I envy them. One author told me that when he writes, he literally sees movies in his head, then just has to type them really fast because that’s how they’re playing. Lucky him! My novels first come to me in snippets of dialogue. Every character has the same voice at that stage. (My voice, of course.)

Tight dialogue is one thing I enjoy when I read. Here are the characters at some sort of verbal showdown. I know them, I know their motives, I can read between the lines and know what’s being left unsaid. I can just feel the tension in the air. I’m not so much mentally picturing bulging veins and angry glares as I am just feeling the spoken words.

I also have an excellent memory of voices. Like a dog remembers scents or an artist colors, it seems, I can remember voices. If I hear an unfamiliar song on the radio but I’ve ever heard that singer before, I can tell you who it is. I can tell you that the guy who did the voice of Gomez Addams in the original Addams Family cartoon is now doing one of the voices in the Tasmanian Devil’s cartoon series. I can spot an actor like Andreas Katsulas no matter what species of rubberized alien he’s playing, because I recognize his voice, although really that’s no great challenge in his case.

(For the record, if you’ve read THE CHRONICLES OF A MADMAN, Ahriman looks and sounds like Andreas Katsulas. Clyde Windham is Dennis Franz. Wendy Himes is some girl who sold me some horse feed about 15 years ago.)

But just “hearing” the voices (if you’re able) isn’t enough. The words themselves will be different depending on who’s speaking them, even if they’re relaying the same information.

In VIGILANTE JUSTICE, Gary Drake doesn’t use a lot of words. He almost never describes his own feelings, and if he does he always feels guilty about it. He speaks with a Southern drawl. He tends to use a single swear word, and that word is “fuck.” Marjorie Brooks, on the other hand, mentions feelings and uses whichever swear word is the most accurate, except that she never says “fuck.” Doctor Allison doesn’t use as many contractions as the rest of us do. These are things I kept in mind as I wrote their dialogue.

Who remembers Mr. Spock? His speech sounds like written language, very grammatical and correct, and that’s deliberate. He’s a scientist, he’s logical, and for him language is a tool to be used with as much precision as possible. That isn’t just a different style of dialogue; it helps define his character.

In THE CHRONICLES OF A MADMAN, Ahriman used fewer contractions than the rest of us and he avoided sentence fragments. He probably even knew the difference between who and whom or lie and lay. That’s because he’s intelligent, you see. It kinds of goes with the territory when one is evil incarnate.

During an edit I did of a sci-fi book, I saw that the author wasn’t using contractions in dialogue. I made many suggestions that he change the dialogue of the humans to use those contractions, except when military officers were giving orders, because order-giving officers tend to be more “serious” and “thoughtful” than folks just being regular folks.

I also suggested to this author that he change nothing about the “stilted” speech patterns of his aliens. English isn’t their native language, you see, and one thing I’ve noticed from living in China is that the locals don’t use nearly as many contractions as I do. So I thought that added realism. Plus, the contrast should help the readers keep everybody straight even if they aren’t consciously aware of why.

I remember in one edit where I read some character saying, “I am an historian.” Oh, I hate that phrase. I hate anyone ever putting “an” in front of a word that begins with the consonant “h.” It’s terribly pretentious and arrhythmic. As I kept reading the book, I quickly learned that the character in question was terribly pretentious. Nobody else in the book was throwing “an” in front of “h” words. It was a deliberate contrast on the author’s part, and it worked quite nicely.

CONCLUSION

I suppose the point of all this is, remember the difference between narrative and dialogue.

In the case of narrative, you’re simply trying to describe what happens. There is a famous quote of some sort that says, “Great writing is like a window pane.” Stick to that maxim unless you feel you have a good reason not to. If you’ve got what it takes to make your writing style superior to the conventional, and if your story allows it, let that style be an asset of your writing. Otherwise, just stick to the rules until you master them.

In the case of dialogue, you’re trying to write something that sounds like what the characters would actually say, but a bit more organized because “real” speech can be boring. Give every character his/her/its own voice.

Am I joking when I say “its?” Not entirely. THE CHRONICLES OF A MADMAN contains a short story, written in first person from my dog’s viewpoint. But then again, I would never call Daisy an “it.”

There’s a stylistic decision you can make in narrative, by the way. I always refer to animals as “he” or “she.” Some authors always use “it.”

In dialogue, you can let some characters always say he or she, and let others always say it, to contrast the feeling with the unfeeling. (My heroes never call an animal “it.”)

In the end, the goal is always the same. Make your writing as easy to read as you can. Keep that in mind, and always keep learning, and you won’t go wrong.

Michael LaRocca


Price: $0.80
Size: 49,64 Mb
Tracks:
1: Love In The Afternoon
2: Guava Jelly
3: Grandma's Hands
4: I Won't Last A Day Without You
5: Jubilation
6: Simple Man
7: Life On Mars
8: Since I Don't Have You
9: Crying Time
10: Let The Good Times Roll

Show Me The CD…If You Think Your Music’s Great, Record It!

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

Throughout the history of modern music, there hasn’t been a musical artist/band who doesn’t think that their songs are all #1 hits just waiting to be discovered. Many of these artists have been correct and have stood by grinning as their tunes screeched up the charts. This inspires a new crop of musicians every year to feverishly pen their potential hits in hopes of making it big.

Musicians write. They rehearse. They play clubs and hope that one day they’ll encounter that special A&R guy (or gal) that will, see them, dig them, sign them, and make them stars. But surprisingly enough, many of these bands never complete what is probably the most important tool for any musician signed or unsigned…they never record a CD.

It cannot be stressed enough that the CD is at the heart of any musical project. It is the physical embodiment of the song, the combination of writing and performing. It’s any musician’s skeleton key for: club gigs, reviews, and radio play. CDs enable you to draw the attention of fans and industry at the same time. Whether containing one song or twenty, the possibilities of the unsigned artist’s CD are endless. Post them on the web. Get them to the press. Give them to your friends. Sell them at your shows. Send them to the record labels. Your CD lets the world know who you are and what you sound like and gives anyone who digs your music the opportunity to listen to it again and again.

So, how can you make sure that you’re CD does your music justice while appealing to fans and industry alike? While there is not one set way to record a CD, there are certain key elements that every professional CD should possess.

The following are a few tips that may help you to make sure that your CD will help your band instead of hindering it:

1.) It’s Not The Size, It’s What You Do With It—It doesn’t matter how long your CD is, only that it accurately portrays your sound and vibe. If you don’t have a lot of time or money to spend in the studio then record for quality instead of quantity. It’s better to have one really kick ass tune recorded then a full length CD that sounds like it was recorded on a boom box in your basement. But that doesn’t mean that your CD needs to be expensive or time consuming. The advanced technology of digital recordings has afforded musicians/bands the opportunity to record in smaller home studios and still come away with professional sounding recordings. It’s now all about finding an engineer with a fantastic ear and the mastery of his/her own gear regardless of how inexpensive it may be.

2.) Record And Mix For The Song—Remember a song is a collaboration. Even if you’re the sole musician and engineer of your CD, recording a song is still an ensemble project. Instruments, voices and effects must all work together as a team to produce the best possible finished project. If a guitar line is too busy, a kick drive is too loud, or a voice is perpetually off key, the overall quality of the finished product is compromised. There is a delicate balance of creativity and technology, of art and electronics that comes together to produce the wonder that is your CD. Treat that balance with respect. Put your ego aside and record with the songs as your absolute priority.

3.) Less Talk And More Action—Certainly there is a great deal of preparation that is required before recording. Mapping out the arrangements of your tunes can be an arduous process usually much more complicated than the live performance of the song. One guitar part becomes three, or five or ten, a basic drum part now includes percussion and electronic beats, two backing tracks can become twenty. Sometimes you feel as if your brain will certainly explode from the mapping out of all of the musical and vocal parts required to give your song a professionally recorded sound. But don’t get so lost in the charting and practicing of various parts and forget that time is of the essence here. It’s all well and good to tell those who inquire that you’re “in the studio” or “currently recording” but if a CD does not materialize in a reasonable amount of time both fans and industry will grow disinterested and move on to someone who has a finished product.

4.) If It Sounds Good, Make It Look Good—After the time and energy you’ve spent to make your CD sound amazing, don’t scribble on it with a blunt sharpie, throw it in a used envelope and expect a record label to be impressed with it. If your CD looks unprofessional, it will be dismissed as such and will probably spend its days unlistened to, lining the bottom of some A&R intern’s birdcage. Simple packaging is certainly acceptable but make sure your CD’s first impression a good one…your graphics are high quality, your text is neat, your paper stock is professional and all materials are unused. Even the most poorly recorded CD will get a listen, if it comes in a pretty package.

Now that you have a professional CD recorded, your possibilities are endless. Send it to anyone and everyone! Get your name out there! Make new fans! Grab some press! Get a record deal! Stand back and grin as your single goes screaming up the charts. Anything is possible if you have a good CD and can share your music with the world.

Sheena Metal is a radio host, producer, promoter, music supervisor, consultant, columnist, journalist and musician. Her syndicated radio program, Music Highway Radio, airs on over 700 affiliates to more than 126 million listeners. Her musicians’ assistance program, Music Highway, boasts over 10,000 members. She currently promotes numerous live shows weekly in the Los Angeles Area, where she resides. For more info: http://www.sheena-metal.com.

La Vie en Rose: The Transformation of Edith Piaf

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

I have been a fan of Edith Piaf’s for many years. Among her esoteric US following was the basketball team at my college, which used to warm up to her song, “Milord.” I was also a student of French, and learned to sing along with many of her songs. Even though I knew nothing of her life, and no one off my college campus had ever heard of her, her singing was inspirational to me at the gut level. It is something in the voice itself.

The story of Edith Piaf’s life, told in the movie “La Vie en Rose,” is so turbulent and full of tragedy and success that it lends itself to mythologizing, though that isn’t necessary. The verifiable facts are enough. With parents who were a street singer (mother) and a circus performer and/or street-performing contortionist (father), both likely alcoholics, Edith was born in the streets of Paris (or thereabouts). She was then tossed from parent to grandparent and back again throughout her childhood. She was blind for several years as a child and possibly deaf for a period of time later on, she spent several years living in the brothel her grandmother ran, and her only child, born to her when was but a teenager, died before the age of 2.

How did Edith Piaf survive this life which always seemed to be now-you-can-see, now-you can’t, much less become an international superstar, icon for France, and personification to many of the sheer will to survive?

Among the many scenes that captured me in the movie, were the scenes with her coach, perhaps because I’m a personal life coach. Raymond Asso basically turned her from a street singer into an international super star in the way that coaches work - recognizing the raw talent, seeing what needed to be done, giving feedback and motivation, and most of all sticking with the client as they do the work which quite often includes the phrase “I can’t.”

First he realized she needed a name change. Edith Gassion was not going to work. He suggested “Piaf” which meant little sparrow, fitting because Edith Piaf was only 4′8″ tall.

Next he told her she needed to articulate and taught her how to spit the words out in a way that one critic describes as “an any note could be the last sort of conviction”. When she turns to the orchestra (in the movie) and tells them to play “Padam” you hear this. Padam … Padam … Padam… ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R85LXfkdcWA ) When he told her to articulate, she said she could not sing that way, at which he gave her motivation. “Do what I say,” he told her, “or go back to the gutter.”

Motivation, however, we coaches know, is only temporary. What it boils down to is determination, and having someone join you in the difficult journey is often the key to success. In the movie, we watch them working together for hours and hours and he encourages her when she becomes negative, tired, or both. What a coach!

Raymond Asso also noticed the natural beauty of her hands, and taught her how to use them when she sang. If you watch the video of “Hymne a L’Amour” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjR5xFZxZK8 ) you will see the incredible quality this brings to her performances. Her coach also wrote “Mon Legionnaire,” the song said to have made her a star.

Essentially what her coach did was develop the raw talent, so the lump of coal could become a diamond, true to its nature, but refined and polished. Edith Piaf said she learned everything from her coach about how to sing and perform.

Other life events intruded, one more painful than the next. The movie makes it clear that what kept Edith Piaf going was being able to sing on stage, before an audience. “Life without singing did not interest me,” she said. The voice and natural talent were given to her, but it is entirely likely that without the expert guidance and support of her coach, she would have remained singing “in the gutter,” without the audience she desired, and none of us would have had the opportunity to hear this truly unique singer.

Hymne a L’Amour, by the way, was voted the #4 most beautiful French song ever written. It is about Marcel Cerdon, the boxer, who was the great love of Edith Piaf’s life. She recorded it early in 1949, and Marcel Cerdon died in a plane crash in October of that year. While the song defies literal translation, the cover in the US is called “If You Love Me (Really Love Me), and the last line is “God reunites those who love each other.”

©Susan Dunn, Personal Life Coach, http://www.susandunn.cc, mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc . Susan offers individual coaching, Internet courses and ebooks for your personal and professional development. Career, retirement, relationships, emotional intelligence, wellness, stress management. Email for fr*e ezine. Susan is also the founder of Club Vivo Per Lei, http://www.susandunn.cc/vivoperlei.htm.

Chick Corea - Eye Of the Beholder [1988]

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008


Price: $0.88
Size: 61,15 Mb
Tracks:
1: Home Universe
2: Eternal Child
3: Forgotten Past
4: Passage
5: Beauty
6: Cascade Part I
7: Cascade Part II
8: Trance Dance
9: Eye of the Beholder
10: Ezinda
11: Amnesia

Chick Corea - Tap Step [1978]

Monday, April 21st, 2008


Price: $0.56
Size: 47,37 Mb
Tracks:
1: Samba L.A.
2: The Embrace
3: Tap Step
4: Magic Carpet
5: The Slide
6: Granpa Blues
7: Flamenco

The Future Of Libraries

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Imagine a time when you could get any audio book you want to read from the library without having to physically visit the library to lend the audio books.

Well, imagine no more because it is now possible.

Public libraries from New York City to Alameda, California are now leading the packs of libraries that have begun allowing members to download audio books which they can listen to on their Personal Computers or portal audio book players such as PDAs — all from the comfort of their homes or offices.

From Tom Clancy’s techno-thrillers, Arabic, Spanish, French tutorials to as many titles as possible, librarians can now enjoy the best of audio books without having to leave their homes or offices.

What better way for libraries to stay needed and relevant in the new digital age than this?

With the Internet, many people are beginning to lose interest in the libraries, but this move will help the libraries to retain their memberships.

When asked what prompted this development, Barbara Nichols Randal, the director of the Guilderland Public Library in suburban Albany, explained that they took the needs of their younger readers and other people that were too busy to visit the library into consideration before coming up with this move.

Specifically, she said, “This is a way for us to have library access 24/7″.

For example, the Madison Public Library has access to a subscription database of audio book content. It provides this service for people who want to access this information from the comfort of their homes or offices, without having to physically visit the library.

The name of this subscription database of audio book content is OverDrive.

Anyone that has a LINK library card and access to the Internet can benefit from using OverDrive.

Note that while some of the libraries allow you to download and even copy their audio books into your PC and/or other portable CD or MP3 players, others don’t.

With those that do not allow downloading or burning of their audio books, you will only be able to read them on your computer… while being connected to the Internet.

Whichever service or library you prefer, the point is that you can benefit from the audio book without leaving the comfort of your home or office.

Take the time to search for the particular library that you prefer and register with them. Some of them offer free registration for particular periods of time, while others charge a token fee to access their database of audio books.

Janet Rusky is an upcoming author who runs one of the best audio book stores on the internet where 7000 titles divided in hundreds of categories are available for immediate download.

Chick Corea - Corea. Concerto [1997]

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008


Price: $0.48
Size: 62,10 Mb
Tracks:
1: Spain (1)
2: Spain (2)
3: Spain (3)
4: Concerto #1 (1)
5: Concerto #1 (2)
6: Concerto #1 (3)

Based on the bestselling novel by Candace Bushnell, the HBO original series Sex And The City took the television world by storm following its release in the summer of 1998. Following the exploits of four young and educated female friends living and working in New York City, the show revolves around the various relationships and life problems experienced by each member of the group. Sporting an experienced and talented cast, the show has developed a strong, borderline fanatic following…

Sarah Jessica Parker (the de facto lead character of the show) stars as Carrie Bradshaw, a popular sex columnist for a local newspaper who travels in numerous Manhattan social circles. Carrie is engaged in a tempestuous on-again, off-again relationship with a mystery man always referred to as “Mr. Big”. The young urban professional shares her life with three best friends who have similarly interesting jobs - Miranda Hobbs (Cynthia Nixon), a lawyer tired of being single given the societal ramifications; Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), a promiscuous publicist who enjoys non-exclusive relationships; and Charlotte McDougal (Kristin Davis), an art museum curator who is relatively less open about her sexuality… Together, the women seek each other’s advice on the ever-present and varying predicaments in which they find their romantic relationships…

The Sex And The City (Season 4) DVD features a number of hilarious episodes including the season premiere “The Agony and the ‘Ex’stasy” in which Carrie celebrates her 35th birthday. The milestone gives cause for the various women to reflect - Samantha is happy with her various sexual liaisons, Miranda realizes that marriage does not equate with happiness, Charlotte loses her appetite for Trey following a late night incident, and Carrie is disappointed when her dinner party bombs, but she perks up when Mr. Big arrives unannounced with a bottle of Champagne… Other notable episodes from Season 4 include “Defining Moments” in which each of the women defines a new set of boundaries in each of their various relationships, and “Baby, Talk is Cheap” in which Samantha meets a man who enjoys baby talk in bed and Charlotte and Trey decide against trying to conceive after attending a dinner party with their married friends and children…

Below is a list of episodes included on the Sex And The City (Season 4) DVD:

Episode 49 (The Agony and the ‘Ex’stasy) Air Date: 06-03-2001
Episode 50 (The Real Me) Air Date: 06-03-2001
Episode 51 (Defining Moments) Air Date: 06-10-2001
Episode 52 (What’s Sex Got to Do With It?) Air Date: 06-17-2001
Episode 53 (Ghost Town) Air Date: 06-24-2001
Episode 54 (Baby, Talk is Cheap) Air Date: 07-01-2001
Episode 55 (Time and Punishment) Air Date: 07-08-2001
Episode 56 (My Motherboard, My Self) Air Date: 07-15-2001
Episode 57 (Sex and the Country) Air Date: 07-22-2001
Episode 58 (Belles of the Balls) Air Date: 07-29-2001
Episode 59 (Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda) Air Date: 08-05-2001
Episode 60 (Just Say Yes) Air Date: 08-12-2001
Episode 61 (The Good Fight) Air Date: 01-06-2002
Episode 62 (All That Glitters) Air Date: 01-13-2002
Episode 63 (Change of a Dress) Air Date: 01-20-2002
Episode 64 (Ring a Ding Ding) Air Date: 01-27-2002
Episode 65 (A Vogue Idea) Air Date: 02-03-2002
Episode 66 (I Heart NY) Air Date: 02-10-2002

Britt Gillette is author of The DVD Report, a blog where you can find where you can find more reviews of movies and TV series. Source: http://thedvdreport.blogspot.com/2006/02/sex-and-city-season-4-dvd.html.