IN: The Residents are an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. Since their first official release, Meet the Residents (1974), the group has released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects, and ten DVDs. They have undertaken seven major world tours and scored multiple films. Pioneers in exploring the potential of CD-ROM and similar technologies, the Residents have won several awards for their multimedia projects.

Summer of 2006 brought the internet download project, River of Crime (Episodes 1-5). River of Crime was their first project with Warner Music Group's Cordless Label. Following the success of that album, the Residents launched their weekly Timmy video project on YouTube. In 2007 they did the soundtrack for the documentary Strange Culture and also released a double instrumental album, Night of the Hunters. On the Fourth of July 2007, the planned October release of its latest project with Mute Records, The Voice of Midnight (a music theater adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann's short story "Der Sandmann"), was announced on its Web site.  On the May 21 the band announced on its website that its first North America tour since Demons Dance Alone for a project titled The Bunny Boy was set to begin on October 9 in New York--later an earlier date was added for Santa Cruz. Soon, it was announced that the tour would also include Europe, starting November 13. On June 3, the Residents.com Web site boasted the planned release of The Bunny Boy, which was released on September 1. The Web site had posted information in which "Foxboro" claimed this would be a farewell tour; it was later revealed that this was nothing more than a mistake by Foxboro.  November 3, 2009, saw three new releases. The Ughs! is a mostly instrumental album made up of music composed earlier in the band's career, which had been completely reworked for the Voice of Midnight album. Ten Little Piggies is a "futurist compilation", ten songs from projects that may or may not be released in the future. Finally, Is Anybody out There is a DVD collecting all the Bunny Boy videos from the series posted on YouTube. The episodes are streamlined and not exactly the same as the originals.

What type of stories did they like to write?

OUT: 


IN: Once is a 2007 Irish romantic musical drama film written and directed by John Carney. The film stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova as two struggling musicians in Dublin, Ireland. Hansard and Irglova had previously performed music as the Swell Season, and composed and performed the film's original songs. Once spent years in development with the Irish Film Board and was made for a budget of EUR112,000.

A rough cut of the film was previewed on 15 July 2006 at the Galway Film Fleadh, but the film was subsequently turned down by several prestigious European film festivals. However, once finished, it secured spots at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival on 20 January 2007 and the Dublin Film Festival in February 2007, and received the audience awards at both events.  The film was first released on cinema in Ireland on 23 March 2007, followed by a limited release in the United States on 16 May 2007. After its second weekend in release in the United States and Canada, the film topped the 23 May 2007 indieWIRE box office chart with nearly $31,000 average per location. As of 28 March 2009, Once has grossed nearly $9.5 million in North America and over $20 million worldwide. After 2007's box office success and critical acclaim, it won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film. Steven Spielberg was quoted as saying "A little movie called Once gave me enough inspiration to last the rest of the year". When informed of Spielberg's comments, director John Carney told Sky News, "in the end of the day, he's just a guy with a beard". At the time of this interview, Carney himself was also wearing a beard.  The song "Falling Slowly" won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Original Song. The nomination's eligibility for the Oscar was initially questioned, as versions of the song had been released on The Cost and The Swell Season albums, but this was resolved before the voting for the award took place. The AMPAS music committee satisfied themselves that the song had indeed been written for the film and determined that, in the course of the film's protracted production, the composers had "played the song in some venues that were deemed inconsequential enough to not change the song's eligibility".

How did Once do at the box office?

OUT: the film topped the 23 May 2007 indieWIRE box office chart with nearly $31,000 average per location.


IN: Jennifer Mulhern Granholm (born February 5, 1959) is a Canadian-born American politician, lawyer, educator, author, political commentator and member of the Democratic Party who served as the Attorney General of Michigan from 1999 to 2003 and as the Governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011. In January 2017, she became a CNN political contributor. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Granholm moved from Canada to California at age four. She graduated from San Carlos High School and briefly attempted an acting career, then held a variety of jobs before attending the University of California, Berkeley.

Granholm was sworn into office on January 3, 1999, becoming the first female Attorney General of Michigan. She served a single term, from 1999 to 2003. In office, she continued Kelley's work on protecting citizens and consumers' rights and established Michigan's first High Tech Crime Unit, appointing Terrence G. Berg as its first Chief.  In April 1999, Granholm announced a lawsuit against RVP Development, builders of the Arcadia Bluffs Golf Course, alleging that poor construction of the course had led to illegal discharges of sediment into Lake Michigan from erosion following heavy storms in 1998, which had "turned a ravine into a ravaged gorge". Development company President Richard Postma refused to pay the $425,000 of state fines, saying that he had made moves to stop the erosion and accused Granholm of trying to make him "a poster child for her campaign of the future." Granholm responded that his "perception of the political landscape in Michigan is as poor as his ability to construct a golf landscape." After years of negotiations and legal wrangling, the lawsuit was settled in August 2003, with RVP Development agreeing to pay a $125,000 fine.  In July 2000, Granholm's office settled with J.C. Penney after the retailer made numerous pricing and scanning errors in stores in Michigan. The issue came to the attention of the Attorney General's office after a "repeat and progressively worse error rate" that saw 33% of items sold in December 1999 being sold for more at the register than they were listed for on the shelves. J.C. Penney paid a fine and agreed to designate "pricing associates" to monitor for errors in pricing.  After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Granholm directed state agencies to work with lawmakers in keeping the fight against terrorism within the powers of the state. She also imposed a regulation on gasoline dealers to keep them from raising prices dramatically, something which occurred sporadically across Michigan immediately following the attacks. In February 2002, Granholm announced that her office was joining with the AARP Michigan State Office to help consumers fight calls from telemarketers.

What major bills did she pass while in office?

OUT:
She also imposed a regulation on gasoline dealers to keep them from raising prices dramatically,