Toasting Cheers

Salut! Prost! Skål! Na zdrave! Tagay! No matter what country you clink glasses in, everyone has a word for cheers. In Cheers! Around the World in 80 Toasts, Brandon Cook takes readers on a whirlwind trip through languages from Estonian to Elvish and everywhere in between. Need to know how to toast in Tagalog? Say "bottoms up" in Basque? "Down the hatch" in Hungarian? Cook teaches readers how to toast in 80 languages and includes drinking traditions, historical facts, and strange linguistic phenomena for each. Sweden, for instance, has a drinking song that taunts an uppity garden gnome, while Turkey brandishes words like Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınızcasına. And the most valuable liquor brand in the world isn't Johnny Walker or Hennessey, but Maotai—President Nixon's liquor of choice when he visited China. Whether you're traveling the globe or the beer aisle, Cheers! will show you there's a world of fun waiting for you. So raise a glass and begin exploring! The audio book is narrated by Nicholas Smith. Produced by Speechki in 2021.

This comprehensive reference work first presents an historical overview of the program. Biographies of the show s performers are followed by biographies of the characters. An exhaustive episode guide for all 295 shows includes cast and credits, guest stars, plot synopses, original air dates, featured subplots, and quotations."

A fascinating look at one of the greatest shows of all time. For eleven seasons, Cheers was a critically acclaimed program, ultimately earning more than 100 Emmy nominations and securing 28 wins, including 4 for best comedy series. One of the most popular shows of all time, the series centered on a group of Boston, Massachusetts locals who gathered to drink and socialize. Bar owner Sam Malone was the de facto leader of the group and boss to Carla Tortelli, Coach Ernie Pantuso, Woody Boyd, and Diane Chambers, Sam’s on-again, off again paramour. Regular patrons Norm Peterson and Cliff Claven completed this ersatz family, later joined by Frasier Crane; his wife Lilith; and Rebecca Howe, a new foil for Sam. Cheers not only provided laughs, it revolutionized American sitcoms with its long-running stories and famous will-they-won’t-they relationship of Sam and Diane. In Cheers: A Cultural History, Joseph J. Darowski and Kate Darowski offer an engaging analysis of the show, providing insights into both the onscreen stories and the efforts behind the scenes to shape this beloved classic. The authors examine the series as a whole but also focus on the show’s key characters, narrative arcs, and many themes, ranging from alcoholism to adultery. This volume also provides close looks at how set design, class issues, and gender roles informed the series throughout its run. Also included is an opinionated compendium of every episode, highlighting the peaks and dips in quality across more than a decade of television. Cheers: A Cultural History will appeal to the show’s many fans and bring back beloved memories of the place where everybody knows your name.

After America’s most pompous barhound left the Cheer’s gang in Boston, he returned to Seattle and found himself surrounded by an equally colorful cast of friends and family alike. For eleven seasons, radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane contended with his blue-collar ex-cop father Martin, English caretaker Daphne, coworker Roz, and his younger brother Niles. Looking at the world through Frasier’s aristocratic, witty lens, the show explored themes of love, loss, friendship, and what it might mean to live a full life. Both fans and critics loved Frasier, and the show’s 37 primetime Emmy wins are the most ever for a comedy series. In Frasier: A Cultural History, Joseph J. Darowski and Kate Darowski offer an engaging analysis of the long-running, award-winning show, offering insights into both the onscreen stories as well as the efforts behind the scenes to shape this modern classic. This volume examines the series as a whole, but also focuses on the show’s key characters, including Eddie, the canine. Close looks at set design, class issues, and gender roles are also provided, along with opinionated reviews of all 264 episodes, highlighting the peaks and dips in quality across more than a decade of television. Despite the show’s focus on an elitist intellectual—and his equally snooty brother—Frasier often embraced farce on a level previously unseen in American sitcoms, a mix of comedic elements that endeared it to viewers around the world. Frasier: A Cultural History will appeal to the show’s many fans as well as to scholar of media, television, and popular culture.

Most people are called upon to make a speech or toast at some point in their lives. This book will help the inexperienced speaker to stand up with confidence, and deliver a really effective speech or toast that is appropriate for the occasion. It also contains a variety of toasts and quotes to help those with more experience in public speaking. There are guidelines on how to prepare and deliver a mini speech, including tips on introducing humour and how to avoid embarrassing your audience with inappropriate material. A special section includes interesting quotes and toasts to insert into a wedding speech, whether it's by the best man or woman, bridegroom or father of the bride. A workbook section helps the reader with ideas for appropriate beginnings and endings to speeches. There is even an A-Z of sample toasts for all occasions including anniversaries, achievements, and business occasions; and for a range of subjects such as love, life, and friendship.

This book spotlights the 25 most important sitcoms to ever air on American television—shows that made generations laugh, challenged our ideas regarding gender, family, race, marital roles, and sexual identity, and now serve as time capsules of U.S. history. What was the role of The Jeffersons in changing views regarding race and equality in America in the 1970s? How did The Golden Girls affect how society views older people? Was The Office an accurate (if exaggerated) depiction of the idiosyncrasies of being employees in a modern workplace? How did the writers of The Simpsons make it acceptable to air political satire through the vehicle of an animated cartoon ostensibly for kids? Readers of this book will see how television situation comedies have consistently held up a mirror for American audiences to see themselves—and the reflections have not always been positive or purely comedic. The introduction discusses the history of sitcoms in America, identifying their origins in radio shows and explaining how sitcom programming evolved to influence the social and cultural norms of our society. The shows are addressed chronologically, in sections delineated by decade. Each entry presents background information on the show, including the dates it aired, key cast members, and the network; explains why the show represents a notable turning point in American television; and provides an analysis of each sitcom that considers how the content was received by the American public and the lasting effects on the family unit, gender roles, culture for young adults, and minority and LGBT rights. The book also draws connections between important sitcoms and other shows that were influenced by or strikingly similar to these trendsetting programs. Lastly, a section of selections for further reading points readers to additional resources.

In Italy during the late cinquecento, printed music could be found not only in the homes of the wealthy or the music professional, but also in lay homes, courts, and academies. No longer confined to the salons of the elite, music took on the role of social play and recreation. Paul Schleuse examines these new musical forms through a study of the music books of Italian priest, poet, and composer, Orazio Vecchi. Composed for minor patrons and the wider music-buying public, Vecchi's madrigals took as their subjects game-playing, drinking, hunting, battles, and the life of the street. Schleuse looks at how music and game-playing allowed singers and performers to play the roles of exemplary pastoral characters and also comic, foreign, and "rustic" others in ways that defined and ultimately reinforced social norms of the times. His findings reposition Orazio Vecchi as one of the most innovative composers of the late 16th century.