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While there is no question that women on movie screens are frequently eroticised, with countless shots of heaving bosoms or curvaceous rear ends, action stars do occasionally get a reprieve. Pam Grier, the first female action star, was not so lucky. While Grier's Amazonian status should be celebrated, the dark side of her career should also be noted as a cautionary tale of just how much misogyny and racism lurks behind Hollywood doors and intertwined into American cinema history. This chapter examines how Grier's career forces us to rethink both femininity and racism, as well as action films themselves.

With the intention of successfully meeting the challenges of an increasingly complex competitive environment, organizations in many industries are rethinking their performance measurement systems. More effective performance measurement features identified include linking operations to strategic goals, and presenting a balance of indicators. Traditional performance measurement systems, meanwhile, typically stress the short term, focusing on past achievements while largely ignoring the drivers of future performance. Concern has been expressed that UK hotels are still focusing on these traditional performance measures – and so may be overlooking important issues, potentially leading to detrimental outcomes. This concern is supported by new empirical evidence obtained regarding the current range of performance measures used within UK hotels. This evidence suggests that although they appear to monitor performance in great detail, with few notable exceptions, UK hotels do appear to emphasize traditional measures and therefore still seem to have some considerable rethinking to do.

For hospitality organizations to compete successfully in the emerging information age, with its emphasis on innovation, quality and speed, it is suggested that they must adopt more flexible, responsive and empowered management structures. However, if such developments are to prove effective, it is essential that hospitality organizations also overhaul their accounting systems, most of which were designed to support the previous industrial era’s focus on volume and productivity. Indeed, there is a concern that traditional budgeting systems – with their typical bureaucratic encouragement of internally‐focused, department‐centred cost minimization – may present a significant barrier to effective change. It is proposed instead that a fresh approach to the objectives of budgeting is needed, involving “alternative steering mechanisms” that promote empowerment, flexibility and knowledge‐sharing. This suggestion is supported by evidence from an American hotel where such a fresh approach to budgeting has been developing, “matching” its more progressive management structure.

One recently developed performance measurement method which may prove more effective for hotel management is that of the “balanced score‐card” – which aims to give management a “comprehensive but quick” view of their organization′s performance. Investigates whether the “score‐card” may represent a long‐term solution to the “superior performance measurement method” the hotel sector is apparently looking for – or whether it is more likely to be just a short‐term, passing fad?

I don’t remember exactly when I began to be interested in music, but my mother and godmother would laughingly recall when they knew I would be musically inclined. Though I was then in diapers, whenever Tommy Dorsey's recording of Boogie Woogie was played, I would immediately begin to pat my feet. My first conscious memory of reacting to music when I was very young were the times my father would sing little ditties and play his banjo. He could carry a tune, and he played the banjo quite well. His greatest musical feat, however, was as a whistler, and I would try to imitate his whistling style, without success as I grew older. Then too, my siblings and I would sing and recite little nursery rhymes before our parents, and I would compose songs for my sisters to sing. Before he died an early death at 37 my father gave me a mouth harp and a harmonica which I kept for many years; I later misplaced it while in college. I later bought another harmonica which I kept throughout my years in the U.S. Army, my travels throughout Europe, and throughout my years in graduate school. How and why we each possess the talents and skills we have are questions I’ve never fully understood. So I’ve concluded that we just have them, and we’ll never be able to explain it. Throughout this chapter four reference points will be used to explain my exposure to music and my music biculturality: schools, churches, home, and my neighborhood. If I make very few references to whites, it is simply because during my early life my contact with whites was minimal, and white individuals played a minor role in my life, as at home my world centered around my parents and godparents, siblings, and other family members, and neighborhood friends; at school my world was a completely black world. The first white I got to know outside of my early work experiences was the white Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church who visited St. John's Episcopal Church at least six or seven times a year.