Peter Brett Cullen

Who is Peter Brett Cullen? The entertainment world knows him as Brett Cullen,   is an American actor who has appeared in numerous motion pictures and television programs. Early in 2007, he was cast as the role of an estranged father to one of the American football players, Tim Riggins (played by actor Taylor Kitsch), in the NBC drama series Friday Night Lights.

Life and career

Cullen was born August 26, 1956 as Peter Brett Cullen^[1] in Houston, Texas, the son of Lucien Hugh Cullen, an oil industry executive, and Catherine Cullen.^[2] He graduated from Madison High School in Houston in 1974.^[3] Cullen graduated from the University of Houston, giving great credit to his highly acclaimed acting mentor and University of Houston professor, Cecil Pickett, who also mentored such Houston born actors as Dennis Quaid, Randy Quaid, & Brent Spiner among others. Cullen and Dennis Quaid's close friendship to this day dates back to the 1970's and it is Cullen who introduced Dennis Quaid to his current wife, Kimberly Buffington at a dinner in Austin, Texas.
Cullen played Dan Fixx in the 1980s CBS drama Falcon Crest for two seasons (1986-1988) and Marshal Sam Cain in the ABC western series The Young Riders for one season (1989-1990). In 1980, he appeared as the second Gideon Chisholm in the last nine episodes of the CBS western miniseries The Chisholms. In the four earlier episodes, the Gideon Chisholm role was played by Brian Kerwin. Cullen was the lead actor as Ned Logan in the short-lived Legacy, which lasted for just one season (1998-1999). On the series The West Wing Cullen played Ray Sullivan, a fictional governor of West Virginia and the Republican nominee for Vice President.
His guest appearances on TV include: The Incredible Hulk, M*A*S*H, V, Matlock, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Ally McBeal, Walker, Texas Ranger, Once and Again, Without a Trace, Cold Case, The Mountain, Monk, CSI: Miami, NCIS, Desperate Housewives, Pepper Dennis, Lost, Ghost Whisperer, Private Practice, Ugly Betty, and Friday Night Lights. In 2009, he had a recurring role in the ABC Family television series Make It or Break It.^[4]
He has played two real-life astronauts, Jack Lousma in Apollo 13 (Brett is the CapCom at the time of the explosion; at that shift Lousma was the CapCom in real life) and David Scott in the HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon.
His most recent appearance was in the role of Barton Blaze in the movie Ghost Rider. Other movie credits include Wyatt Earp (with Kevin Costner), Gambler V: Playing for Keeps (with Kenny Rogers and Bruce Boxleitner), Something to Talk About (with Julia Roberts and Dennis Quaid), The Replacements (with Gene Hackman), On Golden Pond (with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer), Nancy Drew, and Gridiron Gang. He also played Bob Cleary in the 1983 mini-series The Thorn Birds.
Cullen was recently cast in the up-coming femme comedy Monte Carlo alongside Selena Gomez, Andie MacDowell and Leighton Meester.
Cullen married Michelle Little (an actress); they have one daughter.








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Who is Christina Duckworth?

Who is Christina Duckworth? The political world knows her as Christina Romer, she is the Class of 1957 Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and current Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration. She resign from her role on the Council of Economic Advisers on September 3, 2010, and will become a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
After her nomination and before the Obama administration took office, Romer was tasked with co-authoring the administration's plan to recover from the 2008 recession. With economist Jared Bernstein, Romer co-authored Obama's plan for economic recovery. In a January 2009 video presentation, she discussed details of the job creation package that the Obama administration submitted to Congress.

Early life

Romer was born December 25, 1958  in Alton, Illinois. She graduated from Glen Oak High School in Canton, Ohio, in June 1977. She obtained her bachelor's degree in economics from The College of William & Mary in 1981, and her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985. Upon completion of her doctorate, she started working as an assistant professor at Princeton University. In 1988 she moved to the University of California, Berkeley and was promoted to full professor in 1993.

Research

Romer's early work focused on a comparison of macroeconomic volatility before and after World War II. Romer showed that much of what had appeared to be a decrease in volatility was due to better economic data collection, although recessions have become less frequent over time.

She has also researched the causes of the Great Depression in the United States and how the US recovered from the depression. Her work showed that the Great Depression occurred more severely in the US than in Europe, and had somewhat different causes than the Great Depression in Europe. Romer showed that fiscal policy played a relatively small role in the recovery from the depression in the US, because taxes were raised in the US almost as quickly as government spending increased during the New Deal. However, accidental monetary policy played a large role in the US recovery from depression. This monetary policy came first from the devaluation of the dollar in terms of gold in 1933-1934, and later from the flight of European capital to the relatively stable US as war in Europe became more likely.
She has done extensive work on fiscal and monetary policy from the Great Depression to the present, using notes from the meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the materials prepared by Fed staff to study how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions. Her work suggests that some of the credit for the relatively stable economic growth in the 1950s should lie with good policy made by the Federal Reserve, and that the members of the FOMC could at times have made better decisions by relying more closely on forecasts made by the Fed professional staff.
Her recent work (with David Romer) has focused on the impact of tax policy on government and general economic growth. This work looks at the historical record of US tax changes from 1945-2007, excluding "endogenous" tax changes made to fight recessions or offset the cost of new government spending. It finds that such "exogenous" tax increases, made for example to reduce inherited budget deficits, reduce economic growth (though by smaller amounts after 1980 than before). Romer and Romer also find "no support for the hypothesis that tax cuts restrain government spending; indeed ... tax cuts may increase spending. The results also indicate that the main effect of tax cuts on the government budget is to induce subsequent legislated tax increases." However, she notes that "Our baseline specification suggests that an exogenous tax increase of one percent of GDP lowers real GDP by roughly three percent."

Career

She is a former vice president of the American Economic Association, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship recipient, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a winner of the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award. Professor Romer is co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and was a member of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee until she resigned from this position on November 25, 2008.
In 2008 Romer was set to join the Harvard faculty of economics, while her husband was offered a position at the university's Kennedy School of Government. However, the Romers remained at Berkeley after Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's president, vetoed her appointment. Her decision resulted in substantial discussion within the discipline and in the mass media. The motivations for Faust's decision to block Romer's appointment remain unclear, though speculation has focused on an opposition among "New Classical" economists to her "New Keynesian" tendencies, or a reluctance to appoint MIT-trained faculty at Harvard.

Family

She is married to David Romer, her classmate at MIT and her colleague in the Economics Department at University of California, Berkeley. They have adjoining offices in the department, and collaborate on much of their research. The couple have three children together. She is not related to Paul Romer, the economist famous for his work on economic growth, although she has a son with the same name.

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Jeffrey Scot Tweedy

Who is Jeffrey Scot Tweedy? The entertainment and music world knows as  Jeff Tweedy , he is an American songwriter, musician and leader of the band Wilco. Tweedy joined rockabilly band The Plebes with high school friend Jay Farrar in the early 1980s, but Tweedy's musical interests caused one of Farrar's brothers to quit. The Plebes changed their name to The Primitives in 1984, and subsequently to Uncle Tupelo. Uncle Tupelo garnered enough support to earn a record deal and to tour nationally. After releasing four albums, the band broke up in 1994 because of conflicts between Tweedy and Farrar.
In 1994, Tweedy formed Wilco with John Stirratt, Max Johnston, and Ken Coomer. Wilco has released eight albums and found commercial success with their albums Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost Is Born, Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album). The band also released two collaboration albums with Billy Bragg and one with The Minus 5. Jeff Tweedy has been the recipient of two Grammy Awards, including Best Alternative Album for A Ghost Is Born. Tweedy has also participated in a number of side groups including Golden Smog and Loose Fur, has released a book of poems, and has released a DVD of solo performances. He was originally influenced by punk and country music, but has recently reflected more experimental themes in his music.
Tweedy has been afflicted with migraine headaches since childhood. Treatment for the migraines led to a dependency on painkillers, for which he underwent successful rehab in 2004. Tweedy also has been open about the fact that he suffers from clinical depression and panic attacks.

Early life

Jeff Tweedy was born in Belleville, Illinois on August 25, 1967 as the fourth child of Bob and Jo Ann Tweedy. Bob Tweedy worked at Alton & Southern Railroad in East St. Louis while Jo Ann was a kitchen designer. Jo Ann bought Tweedy his first guitar at age six, although he did not begin to play it seriously until he was eight. In 1981, when Tweedy was fourteen years old, he befriended Jay Farrar in an English class at Belleville Township High School West. All of the members of Farrar's family enjoyed playing music, causing Farrar to already have knowledge of the musical elements of rock and roll. By this time, Tweedy was a fan of The Ramones and country music while Farrar enjoyed The Sex Pistols.
Farrar was in a band called The Plebes with his brothers Wade and Dade, which Tweedy joined in order to qualify for a battle of the bands competition. Tweedy pushed The Plebes away from the rockabilly music that they had been playing, which caused Dade Farrar to leave the band. The band renamed themselves The Primitives in 1984, taking their name from a song by garage rock band The Groupies. Wade Farrar sang lead vocals and played harmonica, Jay Farrar played guitar, Tweedy played bass guitar, and Mike Heidorn played drums. In late 1986, the band decided to change their name to Uncle Tupelo, because a more popular British band was also using the name "The Primitives". The Primitives went on hiatus in 1986 after Wade Farrar left the band to finish his engineering degree at Southern Illinois University. While waiting for Wade to return from campus, Jay, Tweedy, and Heidorn formed Uncle Tupelo.

 Uncle Tupelo (1987-1994)

At his parents' request, Jeff Tweedy enrolled at several universities, but dropped out of them so that he could concentrate on Uncle Tupelo. While moonlighting as a record store clerk at Euclid Records in St. Louis, Tweedy met Tony Margherita. After Margherita saw the band perform at an acoustic concert in 1988, he decided to become the band's manager. The band began playing regular shows at Cicero's basement bar in the Delmar Loop near Washington University with other bands playing in a similar style. Uncle Tupelo recorded a ten-track demo tape entitled Not Forever, Just For Now in 1989, attracting the attention of Giant/Rockville Records. The independent label signed the band, and Uncle Tupelo's first album, No Depression, was released the next year. The title song, originally performed by the Carter Family, became strongly associated with the alternative country scene, and became the name of an influential alternative country periodical.
During times when Uncle Tupelo was not touring, Tweedy and Farrar played as Coffee Creek, a short-lived cover band with The Bottle Rockets' Brian Henneman and Mark Ortmann. Around this time, Tweedy began developing problems with alcohol abuse, leading to tensions between Tweedy and Farrar. While he never refused to play a gig, Tweedy was forced to sit out in place of Henneman at some performances. Tweedy quit drinking entirely after meeting future wife Sue Miller, although he replaced this habit with smoking marijuana. After releasing Still Feel Gone, the band formed a friendship with Peter Buck of R.E.M., who produced their third album March 16–20, 1992 for free. Uncle Tupelo left the Rockville label in favor of Sire Records (Warner) later in 1992 because Rockville refused to pay the band any royalties for their albums. After the signing, Max Johnston and John Stirratt joined the band as Mike Heidorn was replaced by Bill Belzer who was later replaced by Ken Coomer.The five-piece band recorded Anodyne, which sold over 150,000 copies and debuted at number 18 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, but was the last album Uncle Tupelo released.

 Breakup

In January 1994, Farrar called Tony Margherita to tell him that the band was breaking up, saying that he was not having any fun in the band anymore and was not getting along with Tweedy. Tweedy was enraged that Farrar decided to break up the band without notifying him, and this led to a series of harsh verbal exchanges. Farrar and Tweedy agreed to a final Uncle Tupelo tour, but the concerts were marred by the two not participating in each other's songs. The band decided to play Tweedy's "The Long Cut" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, which further distanced Farrar and Tweedy. Farrar began to assemble a new band named Son Volt with Mike Heidorn, bassist Jim Boquist, and his brother Dave Boquist. At the same time, Jeff Tweedy formed Wilco with Stirratt, Johnston, and Coomer.

 Wilco (1995-present)

Wilco was signed to Reprise Records (Warner) and began recording A.M. almost as soon as the band was formed. After recording, Tweedy was introduced to Jay Bennett, who then joined the band. Also during this time, Tweedy quit smoking marijuana after a particularly bad experience with some cannabis brownies. A.M. did not fare as well commercially in comparison to Son Volt's first album, only reaching number 27 on the Heatseekers chart while Son Volt's debut Trace hit the Billboard 200. Dan Murphy of Soul Asylum invited Tweedy to join him in a supergroup named Golden Smog with Gary Louris and Marc Perlman of the Jayhawks, Kraig Johnson of Run Westy Run, and Noah Levy of The Honeydogs. Under the pseudonym Scott Summit, Tweedy released Down by the Old Mainstream with Golden Smog in 1996.
Tweedy and Wilco began to explore new styles and broke from the style of previous recordings on the seminal sprawling double album Being There in 1996. Tweedy did not write music for many of the songs ahead of time, and welcomed unexpected sounds into the recording. Wilco recorded nineteen songs for the double-CD album, and wanted the label to release it with a retail price comparable to a single-CD release. Being There was a commercial success, selling 300,000 copies and peaking in the top half of the Billboard 200. Reprise records invested $100,000 in the single "Outta Mind (Outtasite)", but received little radio exposure. While on tour, Tweedy began to spend time reading books by William H. Gass, Henry Miller, and John Fante. As he read their books, Tweedy decided to place more of an emphasis on writing. Representatives in the A&R department of Reprise wanted a radio single from Summerteeth, and Wilco reluctantly agreed to a re-working of "Can't Stand It". The single was a top five hit on adult album alternative radio stations, but failed to cross over to a larger audience.

Before the release of Summerteeth, the daughter of the late folk legend Woody Guthrie contacted folk rock singer Billy Bragg, who in turn contacted Tweedy about recording an album of unreleased Woody Guthrie songs. Tweedy was indifferent to the idea of working with Bragg, but Jay Bennett's enthusiasm about the idea convinced Tweedy to get the band involved in the project. As a result of Tweedy's feelings on the political nature of some of the lyrics, Bragg recorded mostly political songs while Wilco recorded more neutral songs. Almost all of the songs that appeared on Mermaid Avenue and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II were recorded over a six day period in December 1997. The first Mermaid Avenue album and a second Golden Smog album (Weird Tales) were released in 1998, Summerteeth was released in early 1999, and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II was released in 2000. Tweedy received his first Grammy nomination when Mermaid Avenue was nominated for Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1999.

 Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Jeff Tweedy was invited to play at Chicago's Noise Pop festival, and was told that he could collaborate with a musician of his choosing. Tweedy chose Jim O'Rourke based on his fascination with O'Rourke's Bad Timing album. O'Rourke offered to bring drummer Glenn Kotche to the festival, and the trio formed a side project named Loose Fur. The other band members of Wilco had written a number of songs for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but Tweedy was unsatisfied with them because he believed that the songs did not sound like the ones he played with Loose Fur. Tweedy became such a fan of Kotche's playing style that he decided to dismiss Ken Coomer from the band in favor of Kotche. Tweedy had strong feelings about how songs should be sequenced, which clashed with Jay Bennett's focus on the songs themselves. Because Bennett was ixing the album, this led to a series of arguments about how the album should sound between songs. Tweedy asked O'Rourke to remix several songs on the album that had been mixed by Bennett, which caused tensions within the band to escalate. The album was completed in June 2001, and Tweedy was insistent that it was in its final form. Tweedy also fired Jay Bennett around this time, believing (according to Jay Bennett) that Wilco should only have one core member. The band maintains that the firing of Jay Bennett was a collective decision.

Reprise Record's parent company Time Warner merged with America Online in 2001, and the recording company was asked to cut costs. Howie Klein, the CEO of Reprise Records, considered Wilco to be one of the label's core bands, but was offered a lucrative buy-out by AOL Time Warner. A&R representative Mio Vukovic was placed in charge of Wilco, and he believed that the album was not commercially viable. Vukovic called manager Tony Margherita and told him that Reprise was not interested in releasing the album, a point of view shared by the head of the A&R department, David Kahne. Kahne agreed to release Wilco from Reprise records under the condition that Wilco got to keep all legal entitlements to the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album. After an article in the Chicago Tribune publicly described these managerial practices, CEO Gary Briggs quit. Shortly after leaving the label, Briggs remarked:

“

It [dropping Wilco from the label] should never have happened. One of the most embarrassing moments in my career at Warner Brothers was the day they let Wilco go. It broke my heart, and it told me that I no longer have a home there.

”

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was originally scheduled to be released on Reprise on September 11, 2001, prior to the band's departure from Reprise. Seven days later, Tweedy decided that he would stream the entirety of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on Wilco's official website. Over thirty record labels offered to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot after the departure from Reprise was official. One of the thirty was Warner Brothers affiliate Nonesuch Records, who signed Wilco in November 2001. AOL Time Warner paid Wilco to make the album on Reprise, gave them the record for free, and then bought it back on the Nonesuch label. The album was released on April 23, 2002 to significant critical acclaim, including being named the best album of the year by The Village Voice.The album became the biggest hit of Jeff Tweedy's career and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling over 500,000 copies.

 A Ghost Is Born and side projects

Scott McCaughey contacted Tweedy about recording an album together for a The Minus 5 release. They scheduled a meeting for September 11, 2001, but were reluctant to enter the recording studio after the terrorist attacks. At night, McCaughey and Tweedy decided to begin recording songs as a way to calm down. A few more tracks were later added to the album with the rest of Wilco, and it was released with the name Down with Wilco in 2003.

In November 2003, Wilco began recording a fifth studio album. Unlike their previous albums, all of the songs were originally performed in the studio and then later adapted for playing at concerts. Wilco released A Ghost Is Born on June 22, 2004, and it attained a top ten peak on the Billboard 200. The album was awarded with Grammy Awards for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Recording Package in 2005. A few weeks before the album's release, Tweedy released a book of forty-three poems entitled Adult Head on Zoo Press. The following year, the band released their first live album, a two-disc set entitled Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, recorded at The Vic Theater. Wilco recorded twelve tracks for a sixth studio album entitled Sky Blue Sky, which was released on May 15, 2007. Sky Blue Sky debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, the band's highest debut yet. It sold over 87,000 copies in its first week of release.
Jeff Tweedy has performed several solo tours, on which he typically plays acoustic music. He also does The Song Simple Twist of Fate on the Soundtrack to I'm Not There. On October 24, 2006 Nonesuch Records released Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest, a live DVD by Tweedy. The disc includes performances and conversations gathered over five nights on Tweedy’s February 2006 solo acoustic tour, with footage from concerts at Seattle’s Moore Theater, Portland’s Crystal Ballroom, Eugene’s McDonald Theatre, Arcata’s Humboldt State University, and The Fillmore in San Francisco. The DVD was directed by Christoph Green and Fugazi’s Brendan Canty, the creators of the documentary series Burn to Shine.

 Musical style

Jeff Tweedy's musical style has varied over his music career. Tweedy's vocal style is considered nasal, emotional, and scratchy, and has been compared to that of Neil Young. His first exposure to music was through gramophone records that his siblings left behind when they attended college, and he particularly liked The Beatles' White Album. Tweedy would frequently read issues of magazines such as Rolling Stone, and began to purchase punk rock albums such as The Clash's London Calling and X's Wild Gift. Belleville crowds did not respond well to punk music, so while Tweedy was a member of The Primitives they played covers of country songs at much faster tempos. When Uncle Tupelo formed, the band began composing its own songs influenced by Jason & the Scorchers and The Minutemen. Wilco's first album shared many musical similarities with the four previous Uncle Tupelo albums, but on Being There, Tweedy began introducing more experimental themes into his music. He claims that he wanted to rebel against the belief spread by the No Depression magazine that Wilco was primarily a country band. One of the most influential albums for Tweedy was Bad Timing by Jim O'Rourke, which helped to inspire Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born. Tweedy uses a 1957 Gibson J-45, as well as Fender Jazzmasters, Telecasters and Gibson SGs. He also has been known to use a Breedlove 000.

 Personal life

Tweedy has been prone to chronic migraines throughout his entire life, forcing him to miss forty days of elementary school in one year. These chronic migraines caused Tweedy to become dependent on painkillers. While he attempted to regulate his use of painkillers, he was never able to stop their use for more than five weeks. Tweedy attributes this to comorbidity with major depressive disorder and severe panic attacks. In 2004, he entered a dual diagnosis rehabilitation clinic in order to receive treatment for an addiction to prescription painkillers. Tweedy quit smoking the next year; John Stirratt claimed afterward that this significantly improved the focus of the band.

Tweedy is married to former talent booking agent Sue Miller. Tweedy first met Miller when he was trying to get Uncle Tupelo booked at Cubby Bear, where Miller worked. Miller opened a club in Chicago named Lounge Ax in 1989, and booked Uncle Tupelo for sixteen shows over four years. Miller and Tweedy began dating in 1991 and they were married on August 9, 1995. The Tweedys have two children: Spencer Tweedy (born December 16, 1995) and Sam Tweedy (born December 22, 1999). Spencer has been the drummer for pre-teen rock band The Blisters, not to be confused with Chicago powerpop band The Blissters, since December 2003.  has also recently formed a new band called Tully Monster with friends Hayden Holbert and Henry Mosher. They go to a Montessori School in Chicago,IL. The band has played major events such as Lollapalooza, which Jeff and Wilco headlined, and also at the opening of Millennium Park in Chicago. On December 16, 2008 Spencer Tweedy joined Wilco on stage at Madison Square Garden to play drums on their song "The Late Greats," while opening for Neil Young. Before the song, the entire crowd sang Happy Birthday to Spencer Tweedy, as it was his 13th birthday.

In early May 2009, former Wilco member Jay Bennett sued Tweedy for breach of contract. Bennett died later that month of an apparent accidental overdose of the painkiller fentanyl.

Selected discography

 Uncle Tupelo

Year	Title	Label
1990	No Depression	Rockville Records
1991	Still Feel Gone	Rockville Records
1992	March 16–20, 1992	Rockville Records
1993	Anodyne	Sire Records

 Wilco

Year	Title	Label
1995	A.M.	Reprise Records
1996	Being There	Reprise Records
1999	Summerteeth	Reprise Records
2002	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot	Nonesuch Records
2004	A Ghost Is Born	Nonesuch Records
2005	Kicking Television: Live in Chicago	Nonesuch Records
2007	Sky Blue Sky	Nonesuch Records
2009	Wilco (The Album)	Nonesuch Records

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