- published: 31 Jul 2016
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God bless you (variants include God bless or bless you) is a common English expression, used to wish a person blessings in various situations, especially as a response to a sneeze, and also, when parting or writing a valediction.
The phrase has been used in the Hebrew Bible by Jews (cf. Numbers 6:24), and by Christians, since the time of the early Church as a benediction, as well as a means of bidding a person Godspeed. Many clergy, when blessing their congregants individually or corporately, use the phrase "God bless you".
National Geographic reports that during the plague of AD 590, "Pope Gregory I ordered unceasing prayer for divine intercession. Part of his command was that anyone sneezing be blessed immediately ("God bless you"), since sneezing was often the first sign that someone was falling ill with the plague." By AD 750, it became customary to say "God bless you" as a response to one sneezing.
The practice of blessing someone who sneezes, dating as far back as at least AD 77, however is far older than most specific explanations can account for. Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed, that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits, or that sneezing was the body's effort to force out an invading evil presence. In these cases, "God bless you" or "bless you" is used as a sort of shield against evil. The Irish Folk story "Master and Man" by Thomas Crofton Croker, collected by William Butler Yeats, describes this variation. Moreover, in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze, and that the phrase "God bless you" encourages the heart to continue beating.
HIDDEN ERROR: Usage of "awards" is not recognized
Alan Irwin Menken (born July 22, 1949) is an American musical theatre and film composer and pianist. Menken is best known for his scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores for Little Shop of Horrors, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Newsies, Home on the Range, Enchanted, Tangled, The Shaggy Dog, and Mirror Mirror.
Menken has collaborated on several occasions with lyricists including Howard Ashman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, Stephen Schwartz, and David Zippel. With eight Academy Award wins (four each for Best Original Score and Best Original Song), Menken is the second most prolific Oscar winner in a music category after Alfred Newman, who has nine Oscars.
Alan Irwin Menken was born on July 22, 1949 at French Hospital in New York City to Normann Menken and his wife Judith. His father was a boogie-woogie piano-playing dentist, while his mother was an actress, dancer and playwright.
Howard Elliott Ashman (May 17, 1950 – March 14, 1991) was an American playwright and lyricist. He collaborated with Alan Menken on several films, notably animated features for Disney, Ashman writing the lyrics and Menken composing the music.
Ashman was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Shirley Thelma (née Glass) and Raymond Albert Ashman, an ice cream cone manufacturer. Ashman first studied at Boston University and Goddard College (with a stop at Tufts University's Summer Theater) and then went on to achieve his master's degree from Indiana University in 1974.
After graduating from Indiana in 1974, he spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Burkina Faso, an experience that shaped much of his later work. Upon his return, he became the artistic director of the WPA Theater in New York. His first two plays, Cause Maggie's Afraid of the Dark and Dreamstuff, were met with mixed reviews. His play The Confirmation was produced in 1977 at Princeton's McCarter Theater and starred Herschel Bernardi. He first worked with Alan Menken on a 1979 musical adapted from Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. They also collaborated on Little Shop of Horrors with Ashman as director, lyricist, and librettist, winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics.
Coordinates: 40°43′45″N 73°59′26″W / 40.72927°N 73.99058°W / 40.72927; -73.99058
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union or The Cooper Union and informally referred to, especially during the 19th century, as "the Cooper Institute", is a privately funded college located in Cooper Square in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Inspired in 1830 when Peter Cooper learned about the government-supported École Polytechnique in France, Cooper Union was established in 1859. The school was built on a radical new model of American higher education based on founder Peter Cooper's fundamental belief that an education "equal to the best technology schools [then] established" should be accessible to those who qualify, independent of their race, religion, sex, wealth or social status, and should be "open and free to all". The Cooper Union originally granted each admitted student a full-tuition scholarship; that policy has been eliminated beginning with the class entering in the Fall of 2014, although every incoming student receives at the very least a half-tuition merit scholarship.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (/ˈvɒnᵻɡət/; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).
Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Vonnegut attended Cornell University, but dropped out in January 1943 and enlisted in the United States Army. He was deployed to Europe to fight in World War II, and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden and survived the Allied bombing of the city by taking refuge in a meat locker. After the war, Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children. He later adopted his sister's three sons, after she died of cancer and her husband died in a train accident.
Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. The novel was reviewed positively, but was not commercially successful. In the nearly twenty years that followed, Vonnegut published several novels that were only marginally successful, such as Cat's Cradle (1963) and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1964). Vonnegut's magnum opus, however, was his immediately successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The book's antiwar sentiment resonated with its readers amidst the ongoing Vietnam War, and its reviews were generally positive. After its release, Slaughterhouse-Five went to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list, thrusting Vonnegut into fame. He was invited to give speeches, lectures, and commencement addresses around the country and received many awards and honors.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - 2016 - Encores! Off-Center Highlights
Eliot...Sylvia - Demo - Howard Ashman and Alan Menken - God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
I, Eliot Rosewater - Jim Walton - God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - 3/7/2003 - Cooper Union Concert
Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: Behind the Scenes
Eliot...Sylvia - Jim Walton & Carolee Carmello - God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - 2003 Concert
Since You Came to This Town - God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - 3/7/2003 - Cooper Union Concert
Overture - God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - 3/7/2003 - Cooper Union Concert
Howard Ashman - God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Mushari’s Waltz - David Pittu - God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - 3/7/2003 - Cooper Union Concert
Plain, Clean, Average Americans - God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - 3/7/2003 - Cooper Union Concert
Here is a highlight reel, featuring footage from the recent Encores! Off-Center revival of "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," the first collaboration between composer Alan Menken and writer, director, and lyricist Howard Ashman. The musical also features additional lyrics by lyricist Dennis Green. This revival features Santino Fontana (as Eliot Rosewater), Skylar Astin (as Norman Mushari), Derrick Baskin, Jeff Blumenkrantz, Nick Choksi, Eddie Cooper, Kevin Del Aguila, Clark Johnson, James Earl Jones, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Kevin Ligon, Marla Louissaint, Liz McCartney, Bonnie Milligan, Brynn O’Malley, and Kate Wetherhead, with direction by Michael Mayer, choreography by Lorin Latarro, and music direction by Chris Fenwick. This video is a composite of the following: NYCityCenter's highlights vi...
Here is the demo to "Eliot...Sylvia" from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, as sung by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman. This was the duo's first collaboration. Having heard of Howard's show "Dreamstuff" (which Howard only supplied the book for), Alan, a composer and lyricist at the time, was introduced to Howard through Maury Yeston. (Howard had recently directed a workshop of Maury's musical "Nine," while Alan and Maury knew each other through the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.) Though reluctant to work solely as a composer with a relatively new lyricist, Alan (a fan of Kurt Vonnegut) agreed to meet Howard, who was looking for a composer, after learning that the project he was working on was a musical based off of "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater." Coming to Alan's a...
Here is "I, Eliot Rosewater," as sung by Jim Walton, from Cooper Union's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater concert, which took place in The Great Hall on March 7, 2003. The first Ashman & Menken collaboration, the music is by Alan Menken, while the book and lyrics are by Howard Ashman. The musical is based on the novel "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine" by Kurt Vonnegut. The rest of the cast in this recording includes Kevin R. Free (Yes, THAT Kevin R. Free), Bambi Jones, Robin Skye, and Kirk McDonald. The concert also features Jimmy Roberts, serving as the event's musical director and arranger, on the piano and Mairi Dorman on cello, while Peter Flynn served as director. In the forward to a never published e-book release of the libretto, which was to be published with th...
See God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater July 27-30. The songs of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, from "Suddenly, Seymour" to "Under the Sea," have become part of the American subconscious—but few have heard their first musical, Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. The 1979 show tells the story of Eliot Rosewater (Santino Fontana), a millionaire who drunkenly decides to blow his fortune on an impoverished town after being inspired by the utopian vision of novelist Kilgore Trout (James Earl Jones). But there are forces who want to put the kibosh on Eliot’s philanthropy—like Norman Mushari (Skylar Astin), a lawyer plotting to have Eliot declared insane. With an irresistible crazy-quilt score that volleys between pop, ragtime, Gilbert & Sullivan, and proto-Disney ballads, God Bless You, Mr....
Here is "Eliot...Sylvia" from Cooper Union's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater concert, which took place in The Great Hall on March 7, 2003. The first Ashman & Menken collaboration, the music is by Alan Menken, while the book and lyrics are by Howard Ashman. The musical is based on the novel "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine" by Kurt Vonnegut. The cast in this recording includes Jim Walton as Eliot Rosewater and Carolee Carmello as Sylvia Rosewater. The concert also features Jimmy Roberts, serving as the event's musical director and arranger, on the piano and Mairi Dorman on cello, while Peter Flynn served as director. In the forward to a never published e-book release of the libretto, which was to be published with the original novel, Menken sums up his thoughts on the ...
Here is "Since You Came to This Town" from Cooper Union's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater concert, which took place in The Great Hall on March 7, 2003. The first Ashman & Menken collaboration, the music is by Alan Menken, while the book and lyrics are by Howard Ashman. This song also features additional lyrics by Dennis Green. The musical is based on the novel "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine" by Kurt Vonnegut. The cast in this recording includes Kevin R. Free (Yes, THAT Kevin R. Free), Bambi Jones, Robin Skye, and Kirk McDonald as the citizens of Rosewater. The concert also features Jimmy Roberts, serving as the event's musical director and arranger, on the piano and Mairi Dorman on cello, while Peter Flynn served as director. In the forward to a never published e-bo...
Here is the overture from Cooper Union's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater concert, which took place in The Great Hall on March 7, 2003. The first Ashman & Menken collaboration, the overture was written by Alan Menken. The musical is based on the novel "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine" by Kurt Vonnegut. The cast in this recording includes Kevin R. Free (Yes, THAT Kevin R. Free), Bambi Jones, Robin Skye, and Kirk McDonald. The concert also features Jimmy Roberts, serving as the event's musical director and arranger, on the piano and Mairi Dorman on cello, while Peter Flynn served as director. In the forward to a never published e-book release of the libretto, which was to be published with the original novel, Menken sums up his thoughts on the musical, writing "ROSEWATWE...
A clip from the Howard Ashman memorial service held at the Orpheum Theater on May 6, 1991 featuring two songs from the musical God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which Howard based on the Kurt Vonnegut novel of the same name. The songs ("30 Miles from the Ohio" and "Look Who's Here") are beautifully rendered by Fred Coffin, the original Eliot Rosewater, who sadly passed away in 2003. Mr. Coffin is accompanied at the piano by the show's composer, Alan Menken. Uploaded by http://www.howardashman.com the official site dedicated to the life and work of lyricist, librettist, playwright and director Howard Ashman. We welcome any videos and stills you may have from your productions of Howard Ashman shows. http://www.howardashman.com/FeedMe/ Watch more videos Howard Ashman's Memorial Service! ...
Here is "Mushari’s Waltz," as sung by David Pittu, from Cooper Union's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater concert, which took place in The Great Hall on March 7, 2003. The first Ashman & Menken collaboration, the music is by Alan Menken, while the book and lyrics are by Howard Ashman. The musical is based on the novel "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine" by Kurt Vonnegut. The concert also features Jimmy Roberts, serving as the event's musical director and arranger, on the piano and Mairi Dorman on cello, while Peter Flynn served as director. In the forward to a never published e-book release of the libretto, which was to be published with the original novel, Menken sums up his thoughts on the musical, writing "ROSEWATWER never had a long run. There never was an original cast...
Here is "Plain, Clean, Average Americans" from Cooper Union's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater concert, which took place in The Great Hall on March 7, 2003. The first Ashman & Menken collaboration, the music is by Alan Menken, while the book and lyrics are by Howard Ashman. The musical is based on the novel "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine" by Kurt Vonnegut. The cast in this recording includes David Pittu as Norman Mushari, Kevin R. Free (Yes, THAT Kevin R. Free), Bambi Jones, Robin Skye, and Kirk McDonald. The concert also features Jimmy Roberts, serving as the event's musical director and arranger, on the piano and Mairi Dorman on cello, while Peter Flynn served as director. In the forward to a never published e-book release of the libretto, which was to be published...
They may offer you fortune and fame,
Love and money and instant acclaim.
But whatever they offer you,
Don't feed the plants!
They may offer you lots of cheap thrills,
Fancy discos in Beverly Hills.
But whatever they offer you,
Don't feed the plants!
Look out!
Here comes Audrey II.
Look out!
Here I come for you...
Here I come for you...
Here I come for you...
Here I come for you...
Hold you hat and hang on to your soul.
Something's comming to eat the world whole.
If we fight it we've still got a chance.
But whatever they offer you,
Though they're slopping the trough for you,
Please, whatever they offer you,
Don't feed the plants!