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May was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He started out playing the tuba in the high school band. "I sat in the rear of the stand. [...] I didn't realize it at the time, but I was intrigued with becoming an arranger and an orchestrator." At the age of seventeen May began playing with Gene Olsen's Polish-American Orchestra.
At Capitol, May wrote arrangements for many top artists. These included Frank Sinatra on the albums Come Fly with Me (1958), Come Dance with Me! (1959) and Come Swing with Me! (1961); Nat King Cole on the albums Just One of Those Things and Let's Face the Music!, as well as numerous singles (all his work with Cole being packaged later on the 2-CD set The Billy May Sessions); Stan Freberg, with whom he was a longtime collaborator, featuring on many of the artist's comedy recordings; Peggy Lee on the album Pretty Eyes; Sue Raney on her second album Songs for a Raney Day; Vic Damone on the albums The Lively Ones and Strange Enchantment; Jeri Southern on the album Jeri Southern Meets Cole Porter; Keely Smith on the album Politely and on a duet single, "Nothing In Common"/"How Are Ya Fixed For Love?", with Sinatra; Bobby Darin on the album Oh! Look at Me Now; Nancy Wilson on the albums Like In Love, Something Wonderful, Tender Loving Care, Nancy - Naturally! and various tracks from the albums Just For Now and Lush Life; Matt Monro on several tracks from the albums Invitation to the Movies, Invitation to Broadway, and These Years; Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney on the albums That Travelin' Two-Beat and Fancy Meeting You Here; and Sir George Shearing on the albums Satin Affair and Burnished Brass, co-arranged with Shearing (May also conducted Shearing's album Concerto for My Love, on which Shearing had sole credit for the arrangements). May's orchestra was featured on many Capitol Records children's projects, including cowboy star, Hopalong Cassidy. He worked closely with early 1950s satirist Stan Freberg, using his arranging skills to help Freberg create his spoofs of current hits by creating musical backing often stunningly close to the original hit single.  On Freberg's Wun'erful, Wun'erful! a lacerating spoof of bandleader Lawrence Welk, May hired some of the best jazz musicians in Hollywood for his recording sessions, and they relished the idea of mocking the financially successful Welk sound, which they considered musically awful. The result was a note-perfect recreation of Welk's sound as Freberg and a group of vocalists created parodies of Welk's "musical family". Freberg has recounted that Welk was less than amused by the results.  May also composed and conducted the music for Freberg's short-lived comedy radio series on CBS, which ran for fifteen episodes in 1957. His send-up of trashy horror-film music ("Gray Flannel Hat Full of Teenage Werewolves") is notable.  May won two Grammy Awards including Best Performance by an Orchestra in 1958 and for Best Arrangement in 1959. Much of May's work for Capitol has been reissued on the Ultra-Lounge series of CDs.
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Shandi Ren Finnessey (born June 9, 1978) is an American actress, model, TV host and beauty queen. She is best known for winning the Miss USA title, as Miss Missouri USA. She previously held the title of Miss Missouri 2002 and competed in Miss America, where she won a preliminary award. She placed as first runner-up at the Miss Universe 2004 competition.
After completing her reign as Miss USA, Finnessey became a co-host of Lingo and PlayMania on GSN. She hosted Lingo from August 2005 at the start of the show's fourth season until the show went on hiatus in 2008. In April 2006, she began her turn with the interactive series PlayMania, which broke into two shows on February 23, 2007. Finnessey became the co-host of the quiznation spinoff, a revised but similar version of the original PlayMania. She remained a co-host until October 21, 2007, several days before the show's finale. She also was a sideline reporter for the CBS tournament blackjack series Ultimate Blackjack Tour.  She also has appeared in several documentaries produced by GSN. She has also appeared on the NBC reality show The Apprentice (February 15, 2005, episode 3.5), in the November 13, 2004, 20 Sexiest Men and 20 Sexiest Women specials on CMT, and as Grand Marshal in the November 25, 2004, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. She was named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Americans of 2006 by the Jaycees. She also appeared alongside Chris Myers as part of the coverage of the New Year's Eve 2007 Festivities for Fox. On March 19, 2007, Finnessey debuted on the fourth season of Dancing with the Stars. Her professional dance partner was Brian Fortuna, and she was the second celebrity voted off the show. On October 31 and November 21, 2007, she appeared as a guest celebrity on NBC's Phenomenon. She also hosted Hollywood Fast Track, a web based show about movies, music, and trends in Hollywood. She is also the host/co-host of several TV Guide Network specials. On September 2, 2008, Finnessey was on the season finale of Wanna Bet? on ABC, where she made a record for the biggest successful bet on the show betting $20,000 in the 1st best. Finnessey lost in the end betting $40,000 and guessing incorrectly. In August, 2010, she appeared on a special "Girls of Summer" week airing of NBC's Minute to Win It on an episode called "Last Beauty Standing." The episode featured 10 beauty pageant winners competing for $100,000 towards their chosen charities along with a chance to win a $1,000,000 challenge. At the Miss USA 2011 competition, she was among the 31 former winners who were part of a photoshoot layout for Time Magazine. She played the role of Stephie in the Roger Corman-produced Sharktopus (2010) which aired on the Syfy Channel three years before the same network made waves with its Sharknado movie franchise.  In January 2012, she became one of the original reporters for ENTV News (a branch of TVLine) on a premium YouTube Channel. In March 2013, she was selected as one of 36 bachelorettes to compete on the reality television show Ready For Love. Finnessey was the winner for bachelor Ernesto Arguello, but the relationship ended briefly after the show.  On August 8, 2013, she was named as one of five correspondents for the entertainment magazine, OK!TV, that was scheduled to debut on September 9.
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she became one of the original reporters for ENTV News