Glay is a Japanese rock band, formed in Hakodate in 1988. Glay primarily composes songs in the rock and pop genres, but they have also arranged songs using elements from a wide variety of genres, including punk, electronic, R&B, folk, reggae, gospel, and ska. Originally a visual kei band, the group slowly shifted to less dramatic attire through the years. As of 2008, Glay had sold an estimated 51 million records; 28 million singles and 23 million albums, making them one of the top ten best-selling artists of all time in Japan.
Glay formed in 1988 as a high school band when Takuro asked Teru, a schoolmate, to play the drums. They found a bassist but had difficulty finding a vocalist. When Teru made a tape of his singing and gave it to Takuro he was immediately recruited for the part, leaving the drums part to be filled by another person. On the search for a second guitarist, Hisashi was asked to join but declined the offer, as he was already part of a locally well-known heavy punk/rock band called Ari, which better suited his taste in music. Hisashi eventually accepted Takuro's offer and became Glay's lead guitarist after Ari disbanded.
Glay is the eleventh studio album by Japanese band Glay. The album was released on October 13, 2010. It reached #1 at Oricon charts and Billboard Japan Top Albums chart and sold a total of 125,081 as of January 3, 2011. It is the first album released under the band's own label "Loversoul Music & Associates". The limited edition came with a DVD featuring a live at Niigata Lots on July 30, 2010 and the anime movie Je t'aime, which was directed by Oshii Mamoru, produced by Production I.G and featured "Satellite of Love" as the theme song.
The album is certified Gold by the RIAJ for shipment of over 100,000 copies.
A mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Africa and Asia. The first stories appeared in ancient Assyria, in which the goddess Atargatis transformed herself into a mermaid out of shame for accidentally killing her human lover. Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks and drownings. In other folk traditions (or sometimes within the same tradition), they can be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with humans.
Some of the attributes of mermaids may have been influenced by the Sirens of Greek mythology. Historical accounts of mermaids, such as those reported by Christopher Columbus during his exploration of the Caribbean, may have been inspired by manatees and similar aquatic mammals. While there is no evidence that mermaids exist outside of folklore, reports of mermaid sightings continue to the present day, with recent examples from Canada, Israel, and Zimbabwe.
The Do-it-yourself Mermaid is an 11 foot (3.4m) plywood sailing dinghy designed by Roger Hancock in 1962. Usually built at home, it is suitable for a crew of two or three. It can be sailed, rowed or motored and can be trailed or car-topped. The boat is gunter rigged, with one size of jib. A spinnaker is used for racing.
The DIY Mermaid broke away from the post-war tradition of building the hulls of plywood dinghies upside-down on frames fixed to the floor of a shed or garage, for the duration of the hull-construction process. The innovation consisted of building the stem to stern seating surfaces of the boat flat on the floor in such rooms as the kitchen, the spare bedroom or the garage during the minimum amount of time needed for the glue to set, for example, overnight. This allowed people living in quite small houses to build a boat at home for the first time.
The spine of the boat is an extended centreboard case running from stem to stern, which gives enormous strength to the hull structure. The gunter rig design allows the spars to be easily stored inside the boat and kept under a flat cover when not in use.
Mermaid (sometimes The Mermaid) is a 1979 outdoor sculpture by Roy Lichtenstein, composed of concrete, steel, polyurethane, enamel, palm tree, and water. It is located in Miami Beach at the Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater. Measuring 640 cm × 730 cm × 330 cm (252 in × 288 in × 132 in), it is his first public art commission according to some sources, although others point to a temporary pavilion that predates this work. It is also the second piece of public art in the city of Miami Beach. Since the sculpture was installed, it has been restored several times, and the theater that it accompanies has been restored and renamed twice.
The statue rests outside what was originally called the Miami Beach Auditorium and later named the Miami Beach Theater of the Performing Arts or Theater of the Performing Arts, Miami. In 1987, the building was renamed the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts. The institution was renamed in 2007 to the The Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater.