Not every happy hour has a happy ending ... "
Jackson Pollock
Liliputins. What, the heck, is this ?
http://www.stihi.ru/2012/08/18/5368
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Happy hour
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses of "Happy Hour", see Happy Hour (disambiguation).
"Cocktail hour" redirects here. For other uses, see Cocktail hour (disambiguation).
"Happy Hour" sign on a pub in Jerusalem. (in Hebrew: all draught beers, 1 + 1 free)
Happy hour is a marketing term for a period of time in which a public venue, such as a restaurant, bar, bowling alley, stadium, or state or county fair, offers discounts on alcoholic drinks, such as beer, wine, and cocktails. Free Hors d'oeuvres, appetizers and discounted menu items are often served during Happy hour.
Origin
The words "happy" and "hour" have appeared together for centuries when describing pleasant times. In act I, scene 2 of William Shakespeare's King Henry V (said to have been written in about 1599), for example, King Henry says, "Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour That may give furtherance to our expedition . . . ." The use of the phrase, "Happy Hour," to refer to a scheduled period of entertainment, however, is of much more recent vintage.
One possible origin of the term "Happy Hour," in the sense of a scheduled period of entertainment, is from the United States Navy. In early 1913, a group of "home makers" called the "Happy Hour Social" organized "semi-weekly smokers" on board the U.S.S. Arkansas (BB 33).[1] The name "Happy Hour Club," "Happy Hour Social Club," and similar variants, had been in use as the names of social clubs, primarily by women's social clubs, since at least the early 1880s. By June 1913, the crew of the USS Arkansas had started referring to their regularly scheduled smokers as "Happy Hours."[2] The "Happy Hours" included a variety of entertainment, including boxing and wrestling matches, music, dancing and movies.[3] By the end of World War I, the practice of holding "Happy Hours" had spread throughout the entire Navy.[4]
The idea of drinking before dinner has its roots in the Prohibition era.
When the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act were passed banning alcohol consumption, people would host "cocktail hours", also known as "happy hours", at a speakeasy (an illegal drinking establishment) before eating at restaurants where alcohol could not be served. Cocktail lounges continued the trend of drinking before dinner.
The Random House Dictionary of American Slang dates "Happy hour," as a term for afternoon drinks in a bar, to a Saturday Evening Post article on military life in 1959. That article detailed the lives of government contractors and military personnel who worked at missile-tracking facilities in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. "Except for those who spend too much during “happy hour” at the bar – and there are few of these – the money mounts up fast."[3][5] Barry Popick's online etymology dictionary, The Big Apple, lists several pre-1959 citations to "Happy Hour" in print, mostly from places near Naval bases in California, from as early 1951.[6]
Regulations
United States
Massachusetts was one of the first U.S. states to implement a statewide ban on happy hours in 1984.[7] Other U.S. states also have similar restrictions, including Illinois and North Carolina. The reason for each ban varies, but most are for safety and health reasons.
In 1984, the U.S. military abolished happy hours at military base clubs.
In 2011, the Utah State Legislature passed a ban on happy-hours, effective January 1, 2012.
In July 2011, Pennsylvania extended the period of time for happy hour from two hours to four hours.[8]
In June 2012, happy hour became legal in Kansas after a 26-year ban.[9]
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Happy ending
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which almost everything turns out for the best for the protagonists, their sidekicks, and almost everyone except the villains.
In storylines where the protagonists are in physical danger, a happy ending mainly consists in their surviving and successfully concluding their quest or mission. Where there is no physical danger, a happy ending is often defined as lovers consummating their love despite various factors which may have thwarted it. A considerable number of storylines combine both situations.
A happy ending is epitomized in the standard fairy tale ending phrase, "happily ever after" or "and they lived happily ever after." (One Thousand and One Nights has the more restrained formula "they lived happily until there came to them the One who Destroys all Happiness" (i.e. Death); likewise, the Russian versions of fairy tales typically end with "they lived long and happily, and died together on the same day"). Satisfactory happy endings are happy for the reader as well, in that the characters he or she sympathizes with are rewarded. However, this can also serve as an open path for a possible sequel. For example, in the 1977 film Star Wars, Luke Skywalker defeats the Galactic Empire by destroying the Death Star, however the story's happy ending has consequences that follow in The Empire Strikes Back. The concept of a permanent happy ending is specifically brought up in the Stephen King fantasy/fairy tale novel The Eyes of the Dragon which has a standard good ending for the genre, but simply states that "there were good days and bad days" afterwards.
Features
A happy ending only requires that the main characters be all right. Millions of innocent background characters can die, but as long as the characters that the reader/viewer/audience cares about survive, it can still be a happy ending. Roger Ebert comments ironically in his review of Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow: "Billions of people may have died, but at least the major characters have survived. Los Angeles is leveled by multiple tornadoes, New York is buried under ice and snow, the United Kingdom is flash-frozen, and lots of the Northern Hemisphere is wiped out for good measure. Thank god that Jack, Sam, Laura, Jason and Dr. Lucy Hall survive, along with Dr. Hall's little cancer patient."[1]
Examples
Shakespeare
The presence of a happy ending is one of the key points that distinguishes melodrama from tragedy. In certain periods, the endings of traditional tragedies such as Macbeth or Oedipus Rex, in which most of the major characters end up dead, disfigured, or discountenanced, have been actively disliked. In the eighteenth century, the Irish author Nahum Tate sought to improve Shakespeare's King Lear in his own heavily modified version in which Lear survives and Cordelia marries Edgar. Most subsequent critics have not found Tate's amendments an improvement. Happy endings have also been fastened to Romeo and Juliet and Othello. Not everybody agrees on what a happy ending is.
An interpretation of The Merchant of Venice’s forced conversion of Shylock to Christianity is that it was intended as a happy ending. As a Christian, he could no longer impose interest, undoing his schemes in the play and ending the rivalry between him and Antonio, but more importantly, contemporary audiences would see becoming a Christian as a means to save his soul. (Cf Romans 11:15)
Similarly, based on the assumptions about women's role in society prevalent at the time of writing, The Taming of the Shrew's concluding with the complete breaking of Kate's rebelliousness and her transformation into an obedient wife counted as a happy ending.[citation needed]
Novels
A Times review of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold strongly criticized John le Carré for failing to provide a happy ending, and gave unequivocal reasons why in the reviewer's opinion (shared by many others) such an ending is needed: "The hero must triumph over his enemies, as surely as Jack must kill the giant in the nursery tale. If the giant kills Jack, we have missed the whole point of the story."[2]
George Bernard Shaw had to wage an uphill struggle against audiences, as well as some critics, persistently demanding that his "Pygmalion" have a happy ending, i.e. that Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolitle would ultimately get married.[3][4] To Shaw's great chagrin, Herbert Beerbohm Tree who presented the play in 1914 had sweetened the ending and told Shaw: "My ending makes money; you ought to be grateful. Your ending is damnable; you ought to be shot."[5] The irritated Shaw added a postscript essay, "'What Happened Afterwards,"[6] to the 1916 print edition, for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why in his view it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married. Nevertheless, audiences continued wanting a happy ending also for later adaptations such as the musical and film "My Fair Lady".
See also
Eucatastrophe
Once upon a time
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On August 11, 1956, at 10:15 pm, Pollock died in a single-car crash in his Oldsmobile convertible while driving under the influence of alcohol. One of the passengers, Edith Metzger, was also killed in the accident, which occurred less than a mile from Pollock's home. The other passenger, Ruth Kligman, an artist and Pollock's mistress, survived.[43]