Schoolhouse Rock: Revisit a Collection of Nostalgia-Inducing Educational Videos

in Animation, Education, K-12, Television | December 6th, 2012

Some­times a tune lives in your head and you hum it now and again with­out any rec­ol­lec­tion of where it orig­i­nal­ly came from. Chances are, if you grew up in the Unit­ed States watch­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toons, that tune came from School­house Rock.

Like so many of its biggest fans, School­house Rock is now offi­cial­ly in its 40s. This year marks the 40th anniver­sary of the pilot seg­ment, Three is a Mag­ic Num­ber, whose melody and lyrics ooze the type of hip­pie Sun­shine Fam­i­ly whole­some­ness so abun­dant in ‘70s children’s pro­gram­ming.

Man and a woman had a lit­tle baby,

Yes they did.

They had three in the fam­i­ly.

And that’s a mag­ic num­ber

Fol­low that up with School­house Rock’s win­ning for­mu­la: sim­ple, hum­ma­ble tunes mixed with math fact lyrics.

3–6‑9, 12–15-18, 21–24-27, 30.
3–6‑9, 12–15-18, 21–24-27, 30.

School­house Rock start­ed out as an adver­tis­ing ven­ture on ABC, dreamed up by an exec­u­tive whose son was strug­gling to mem­o­rize his mul­ti­pli­ca­tion tables. But it grew into the most pop­u­lar inter­sti­tial pro­gram­ming (short vignettes shown between TV seg­ments) in mod­ern tele­vi­sion.

One of the most mem­o­rable melodies is Blos­som Dearie’s sweet and melan­choly Fig­ure Eight, broad­cast in Feb­ru­ary, 1973. This one was cov­ered by Eliot Smith in a decid­ed­ly less upbeat ver­sion.

With­out a doubt these three-minute ani­ma­tions (by Loonie Tunes ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones) are some of the best mod­ern edu­ca­tion­al videos around. Whose social stud­ies teacher didn’t show this tune­ful expla­na­tion of the leg­isla­tive process dur­ing class?

And this one about the Con­sti­tu­tion, well I have to admit that it still chokes me up.

The man behind the vast major­i­ty of the music is Bob Dor­ough, a pianist who worked with Miles Davis and Allen Gins­berg before becom­ing the voice and main com­pos­er for School­house Rock.


The series took on near­ly every sub­ject, from mul­ti­pli­ca­tion and gram­mar to sci­ence and Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment. Today’s edu­ca­tion­al soft­ware devel­op­ers would kill to make gram­mar as fun as Con­junc­tion Junc­tion and Lol­ly, Lol­ly, Lol­ly Get Your Adverbs Here.  The pro­duc­ers didn’t shy away from more weighty issues either. Take a lis­ten to this lit­tle dit­ty on the theme of Amer­i­can ter­ri­to­r­i­al expan­sion.

The series took a break dur­ing the 1980s but picked up again in the mid-’90s with Mon­ey Rock. In 2009 came Earth Rock. Both fea­tured a more gloom-and-doom feel than the inspir­ing tone of the ear­li­er School­house Rock iter­a­tions.

Some­times the orig­i­nal real­ly is the best.

You can pur­chase the com­plete set of School­house Rock videos on Ama­zon. We’ve also added a link to this post in our new col­lec­tion: 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com. 

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Pier Paolo Pasolini Talks and Reads Poetry with Ezra Pound (1967)

in Poetry | December 6th, 2012

Here’s a col­li­sion of cul­tur­al fig­ures you don’t see every day: Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom direc­tor Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni sit­ting down with mod­ernist poet Ezra Pound. Though only eight min­utes in length and per­haps not sub­ti­tled with ide­al flu­en­cy, this clip nonethe­less hints at the kind of con­ver­sa­tion, or con­ver­sa­tions, you’d like to have been in the room for. Here Pound and Pasoli­ni dis­cuss the lin­guis­ti­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal Ital­ian lit­er­ary move­ment “neoa­van­guardia,” which count­ed among its adher­ents Umber­to Eco, Edoar­do San­guineti, and Amelia Rossel­li. Pasoli­ni, not just a film­mak­er but a poet and all-around man of let­ters him­self, would nat­u­ral­ly know to bring this sub­ject up, since the group famous­ly looked to Anglo­phone mod­ernists like Pound him­self (as well as T.S. Eliot) for their inspi­ra­tion.

Pound came to Italy in 1924, by which point he already held expa­tri­ate sta­tus. Born in 1885 in what we now know as Ida­ho, he moved to Lon­don ear­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry. Hor­ri­fied and dev­as­tat­ed by the First World War, he moved to Paris in 1921 before land­ing in the small Ital­ian town of Rapal­lo three years lat­er. He there pro­ceed­ed to tar­nish his rep­u­ta­tion by endors­ing the fas­cism of Mus­soli­ni and even Hitler. Pasoli­ni shows inter­est not in polit­i­cal ques­tions, but artis­tic ones: about the avant-garde, about Pound’s beloved 14th- and 15th-cen­tu­ry painters, and about his Pisan Can­tos. Pasoli­ni actu­al­ly dons his glass­es and per­forms a read­ing from that work as Pound gazes on. We then see the 82-year-old poet tak­ing his leave, lean­ing on his cane, mov­ing halt­ing­ly through the rus­tic Ital­ian coun­try­side that spreads out behind him.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ezra Pound’s Fiery 1939 Read­ing of His Ear­ly Poem, ‘Ses­ti­na: Altaforte’ 

Rare Ezra Pound Record­ings Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Kafka’s Nightmare Tale, ‘A Country Doctor,’ Told in Award-Winning Japanese Animation

in Animation, Books, Literature | December 5th, 2012

Here’s a good sto­ry for a cold Decem­ber night: Franz Kafka’s cryp­tic, hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry tale of “A Coun­try Doc­tor.”

Writ­ten in Prague dur­ing the icy win­ter of 1916–1917, Kafka’s sto­ry unfolds in one long para­graph like a fevered night­mare. “I was in great per­plex­i­ty,” says the nar­ra­tor, an old doc­tor, as he sets out in a bliz­zard at night on an urgent but vague mis­sion. But he can’t go any­where. His horse, worn out by the win­ter, has just died and his ser­vant girl is going door to door plead­ing for help. A sur­re­al sequence of events fol­low.

“A Coun­try Doc­tor” is per­me­at­ed with the qual­i­ties John Updike found so com­pelling in Kaf­ka: “a sen­sa­tion of anx­i­ety and shame whose cen­ter can­not be locat­ed and there­fore can­not be pla­cat­ed; a sense of an infi­nite dif­fi­cul­ty with­in things, imped­ing every step; a sen­si­tiv­i­ty acute beyond use­ful­ness, as if the ner­vous sys­tem, flayed of its old hide of social usage and reli­gious belief, must record every touch as pain.”

In 2007 the award-win­ning Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Koji Yama­mu­ra made a 21-minute film (see above) which cap­tures some of the strange­ness and beau­ty of Kafka’s sto­ry. It seems some­how appro­pri­ate that the dream­like nar­ra­tive has been trans­mut­ed into a form and lan­guage unknown to Kaf­ka. And if you aren’t famil­iar with the orig­i­nal, you can read a trans­la­tion of “A Coun­try Doc­tor” by Willa and Edwin Muir. You can also find Kafka’s sto­ries in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Franz Kaf­ka: The Ani­mat­ed Short Film

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Kafka’s Para­ble, “Before the Law”

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

 

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Remembering Jazz Legend Dave Brubeck (RIP) with a Very Touching Musical Moment

in Music | December 5th, 2012

Sor­ry to bring you the sad news.  This morn­ing, the great jazz musi­cian Dave Brubeck died in Con­necti­cut, just a day short of his 92nd birth­day. He’s, of course, best remem­bered for his jazz stan­dard “Take Five,” record­ed and per­formed first in 1959. Below, you can watch a vin­tage per­for­mance from the Jazz Casu­al TV show in 1961.

Above, we’re bring­ing you a reprise of our favorite moment with Brubeck. The footage you’re watch­ing was record­ed in Decem­ber 1997, when the pianist paid a vis­it to the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry. Dur­ing his con­cert, an audi­ence mem­ber asked him to impro­vise on the old Russ­ian sea shan­ty “Ej, Uhnem.” About two min­utes into the impro­vi­sa­tion, a young vio­lin­ist rose from his seat and start­ed to play along. You just have to love Dav­e’s sur­prised look at 2:09. The young man turned out to be a stu­dent at the con­ser­va­to­ry. His name is Denis Kolobov and he is now a vio­lin­ist of inter­na­tion­al renown. We will sore­ly miss you Dave.…

Mate­r­i­al for this post was con­tributed by @MatthiasRascher

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A Colorfully Animated Biography of Bluesman Skip Pitts

in Animation, Music | December 5th, 2012

Ear­li­er this year, the blues gui­tarist Charles ‘Skip’ Pitts passed away after a bout of lung can­cer. He had a musi­cal career that spanned many decades. But, he’s best remem­bered for his riffs on one song — Isaac Hayes’ theme song for the 1971 film Shaft. (Catch it below.) Pitts’ licks have been sam­pled by count­less younger musi­cians, every­one from Snoop Dogg and the Beast­ie Boys to Dr. Dre and Mas­sive Attack. Start­ing in the late 90s, the blues­man began play­ing with a band called The Bo-Keys, which became the sub­ject of a mini doc­u­men­tary in 2011. The short film yield­ed some insight­ful inter­views with Pitts. And, once he depart­ed from our world, the con­ver­sa­tions became the basis for the “ani­mat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion” you’re hope­ful­ly now watch­ing above. It’s the work of Loaded Pic­tures, a stu­dio based in Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Leg­end of Blues­man Robert John­son Ani­mat­ed

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Rainn Wilson Talks About Life’s Big Questions in His Web Series Metaphysical Milkshake

in Comedy, Philosophy | December 5th, 2012

Off­screen, Rainn Wilson—Dwight from The Office—has become a kind of pop-guru for the Web 2.0 set. In 2009, Wil­son and friends Joshua Hom­nick and Devon Gundry cre­at­ed Soul­Pan­cake, a media com­pa­ny designed to pro­vide an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence for peo­ple to “Chew on Life’s Big Ques­tions” (says the tagline): reli­gion, phi­los­o­phy, art, cul­ture, sci­ence, humor, life, death, you name it. And the refresh­ing thing about it is, while Wil­son is of the Bahai faith him­self, his orga­ni­za­tion is unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any par­tic­u­lar reli­gion. So it’s a safe­ly ecu­meni­cal space for athe­ists, agnos­tics, and the grow­ing num­ber of “Nones” to inter­act with­out any dan­ger of pros­e­ly­tiz­ing or reli­gious inside base­ball.

Soul­Pan­cake has pro­duced a best-sell­ing book and scored a con­tent deal with Oprah’s OWN net­work, but it all grew out of a rather sim­ple idea—a video series called Meta­phys­i­cal Milk­shake. Billed as a “trav­el­ling talk show,” Meta­phys­i­cal Milk­shake is as low-con­cept, high-appeal as Jer­ry Seinfeld’s web series “Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee”: Basi­cal­ly, Wil­son dri­ves around in a beat-up sev­en­ties ston­er van and picks up celebri­ties like Joseph Gor­don-Levitt or less­er-known inter­net stars like blog­ger and “twit­ter fun­ny girl” Kel­ly Oxford, (who calls his ride “a sweaty rape van”). Then he dish­es with them about some deep and some not-so-deep stuff. And thanks to some cheap spe­cial effects, the van mag­i­cal­ly trans­ports them wher­ev­er the guest wants to go.

A cou­ple days ago, Wil­son picked up con­cep­tu­al prop-com­ic Demetri Mar­tin (or the oth­er way around). They gabbed about com­e­dy archae­ol­o­gy, get­ting mugged for beliefs, and draw­ing the state of their souls. Watch the short episode above and sub­scribe to the Soul­Pan­cake YouTube chan­nel to see them all and more.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Vladimir Nabokov Talks About Life, Literature & Love in a Meticulously Prepared Interview, 1969

in Literature | December 4th, 2012

“I think like a genius, I write like a dis­tin­guished author, and I speak like a child.” So begins Vladimir Nabokov in the fore­word to his 1973 book of inter­views and arti­cles, Strong Opin­ions.

To avoid speak­ing like a child in pub­lic, Nabokov took great pains to pre­pare his every word. “Through­out my aca­d­e­m­ic ascent in Amer­i­ca from lean lec­tur­er to Full Pro­fes­sor, I have nev­er deliv­ered to my audi­ence one scrap of infor­ma­tion not pre­pared in type­script before­hand and not held under my eyes on the bright-lit lectern.”

When it came to giv­ing inter­views, Nabokov was hor­ri­fied by the notion of sit­ting back and hav­ing a casu­al chat with a reporter. “It has been tried at least twice in the old days,” he writes, “and once a record­ing machine was present, and when the tape was rerun and I had fin­ished laugh­ing, I knew that nev­er in my life would I repeat that sort of per­for­mance. Nowa­days I take every pre­cau­tion to ensure a dig­ni­fied beat of the man­dar­in’s fan. The inter­view­er’s ques­tions have to be sent to me in writ­ing, answered by me in writ­ing, and repro­duced ver­ba­tim. Such are the three absolute con­di­tions.”

So the excerpt above from a 1969 inter­view with the British jour­nal­ist James Moss­man should be under­stood as a care­ful­ly pre­pared per­for­mance. As Nabokov says in his own intro­duc­tion to the full text ver­sion of the inter­view in Strong Opin­ions, Moss­man sub­mit­ted 58 ques­tions on Sep­tem­ber 8, 1969, and “some 40 were answered and record­ed by me from writ­ten cards in Mon­treaux.” In a con­ver­sa­tion rang­ing from the plea­sure and agony of com­pos­ing fic­tion to Dos­toyevsky’s “ghast­ly Crime and Pun­ish­ment rig­ma­role,” the man­dar­in’s fan keeps a dig­ni­fied beat.

Releat­ed con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Vladimir Nabokov Recites His Ear­ly Poem, ‘To My Youth’

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

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Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Horrors of WWII

in Film | December 4th, 2012

Did Orson Welles ever make an non-notable movie? Sure, the sheer cin­e­mat­ic impor­tance of Cit­i­zen Kane, Touch of Evil, The Lady from Shang­hai, and even the famous­ly incom­plete The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons, tend to draw all the atten­tion most peo­ple have for his fil­mog­ra­phy. Make sure you watch those — no self-respect­ing lover of Amer­i­can film could do with­out them — but then look beyond them.

Per­son­al­ly, I yield to no one in my endorse­ment of Welles’ for­mal­ly unique mul­ti-genre qua­si-doc­u­men­tary F for Fake. But first, I sug­gest you look to the top of this post and watch 1946’s The Stranger, a far more main­stream pic­ture (for one can hard­ly trav­el far­ther from the main­stream than F for Fake), and in fact the only Welles film to meet with imme­di­ate box office suc­cess. Con­sid­er­ing what it shows, that may come as a sur­prise.

The pic­ture pits a Unit­ed Nations Nazi hunter, played by Hol­ly­wood Gold­en Age leg­end Edward G. Robin­son, against a Third Reich war crim­i­nal played by Welles him­self. The hunter tracks down the hunt­ed, who has tak­en on a new, near­ly anony­mous iden­ti­ty in small-town Con­necti­cut. The U.N. man becomes des­per­ate to bring the Nazi to jus­tice, the Naz­i’s becomes des­per­ate to live his new life in peace, and his unsus­pect­ing wife becomes des­per­ate to deny the truth about her hus­band’s past. In order to con­vince the lady, Robin­son’s char­ac­ter screens her actu­al footage of Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camps. The shock on actress Loret­ta Young’s face was the shock on the faces of Amer­i­can audi­ences; nei­ther pre­vi­ous­ly had much of a chance to see what had real­ly hap­pened in wartime Europe. Leave it to Welles, whose fas­ci­na­tion with and hatred of fas­cism led him to write a series of columns on the sub­ject for the New York Post, to smug­gle this depth of real human hor­ror into what looks at first glance like a plain old 1940s noir thriller.

You will find The Stranger, a film now in the pub­lic domain, list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Orson Welles on the Art of Act­ing: ‘There is a Vil­lain in Each of Us’

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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