French Café Adds Extra Charge for Rude Customers

in Food & Drink, Life | December 19th, 2013

french-rude-cafe

A cou­ple of days ago, we high­light­ed a delight­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Eti­quette Guide Explain­ing How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civ­i­lized Way. It comes to you cour­tesy of the RATP, the gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion that makes the sub­ways and trains run in Paris (some­times on time).

Let’s now head 600 miles south, to the Riv­iera city of Nice, where some café own­ers opt­ed for anoth­er way to keep bad behav­ior in check. At the Petite Syrah, they’ve imple­ment­ed a sim­ple pric­ing scheme that works like this:

If you ask for “a cof­fee” (it’s most like­ly an espres­so), it will run you 7 euros, or $9.50.

If you ask for a “cof­fee please,” the charge drops to €4.25/$5.80.

But if you start your order by say­ing “Hel­lo, may I have a cof­fee, please,” the bill becomes a man­age­able €1.40.

Now, truth be told, the pric­ing scheme is more car­rot than stick. The café’s man­ag­er read­i­ly admits that he has nev­er actu­al­ly charged any of the puni­tive high­er prices. But that’s not to say that the scheme does­n’t work. Accord­ing to manager/owner Fab­rice Pepino, reg­u­lar cus­tomers quick­ly took note of the sign and began to “say, ‘Hel­lo, your high­ness, will you serve me one of your beau­ti­ful cof­fees.” Eh voilà, no more cof­fee jerks.

via Kot­tke/The Local

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Illus­trat­ed Eti­quette Guide Explains How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civ­i­lized Way

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

The (Beau­ti­ful) Physics of Adding Cream to Your Cof­fee

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

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New Art Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses Features All 265,000 Words Written by Hand on Big Wooden Poles

in Art, Books, Literature | December 18th, 2013

ulysses art book

This week, Stephen Gertz, the edi­tor of Book Tryst, has on dis­play an Incred­i­ble Art Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Here’s how he describes the ambi­tious project:

James Joyce com­plet­ed his nov­el, Ulysses, on Octo­ber 30, 1921. Nine­ty years lat­er, on Octo­ber 30, 2011, Char­lene Matthews, the Los Ange­les-based book artist and book­binder recent­ly the sub­ject of a pro­file in Stu­dios mag­a­zine, began work on an extra­or­di­nary edi­tion of the book, based upon Sylvia Beach’s true first edi­tion with all its typos includ­ed.

Two years lat­er, on Octo­ber 30, 2013, she com­plet­ed it: the entire text of Ulysses — all of its approx­i­mate­ly 265,000 words in eigh­teen episodes — tran­scribed by hand onto thir­ty-eight sev­en-foot tall, two-inch diam­e­ter poles: Ulysses as a land­scape to phys­i­cal­ly move through; the nov­el as lit­er­ary grove, Ulysses as trees of of life with lan­guage as fra­grant, hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry bark, and trunks reach­ing toward the sky.

Head over to Book­tryst to look over a gallery of images and learn more about Matthews’ grand under­tak­ing. And if you’d like a nice intro­duc­tion to Ulysses, please see some of the instruc­tive mate­r­i­al we’ve list­ed below.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email orRSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Pod­cast

Hear James Joyce Read a Pas­sage From Ulysses, 1924

The Very First Reviews of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “A Work of High Genius” (1922)

Vir­ginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

Vladimir Nabokov Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

 

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See Peter O’Toole Talk Hamlet with Orson Welles (1963) and Play Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew (1986)

in Theatre | December 18th, 2013

To write an obit­u­ary for Peter O’Toole, who died this past Sun­day, I would pick no oth­er writer than New York­er film crit­ic Antho­ny Lane. Luck­i­ly, the New York­er had the same incli­na­tion. In his “post­script” piece on O’Toole, Lane ref­er­ences one of my favorite pieces of tele­vi­sion talk, view­able above. “To watch O’Toole and Orson Welles on the BBC’s Mon­i­tor pro­gram, in 1963, as they rumi­nate at length on Ham­let and his father’s ghost,” he writes, “is to real­ize what a real talk show is, or what it could be, when the air­waves were still haunt­ed by the grand talk­ers. What takes you slight­ly aback, how­ev­er, is not that O’Toole seems will­ing and able to dis­cuss sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Catholic doc­trines of the after­life but that, with his dicky bow, dark shirt, and thick-rimmed black spec­ta­cles, he looks like a man in dis­guise.” Lane points out what even some of us O’Toole fans nev­er quite real­ized: “scan his fil­mog­ra­phy and you see how sel­dom he made an impact in mod­ern garb, and what ele­gant shel­ter he sought in peri­od dress.”

Even film­go­ers who’ve seen only O’Toole’s most famous per­for­mances in lav­ish, wider-than-widescreen his­tor­i­cal films — Lane high­lights his title role, a mas­ter work of tense­ly focused flam­boy­ance, in David Lean’s Lawrence of Ara­bia and his turn as gen­tle Regi­nald John­son, tutor of the title char­ac­ter in Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci’s The Last Emper­or — rec­og­nize the strength he drew from step­ping into the past and its haze of myth. O’Toole enjoyed some of his finest per­for­ma­tive hours, his most ded­i­cat­ed fol­low­ers say, when he stepped all the way back into the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, to the time of Shake­speare. Remark­ing on his ten­den­cy to play oth­er nation­al­i­ties — the Eng­lish Lawrence, the Scot­tish John­son — Lane observes that “he was Irish, as tall and slim and unsnap­pable as a Malac­ca cane, and one regret, for his moviego­ing fans, was that they saw and heard far less of O’Toole the Celt than their the­atre-lov­ing coun­ter­parts were priv­i­leged to enjoy.” Just above, you can at least hear one more instance of the the­atri­cal, and Shake­speare­an, O’Toole in action — not, alas, as an Irish­man, but as an Ital­ian: Petru­chio, the strong-willed (and fem­i­nist-loathed) suit­or at the heart of The Tam­ing of the Shrew. Note that this per­for­mance, a pro­duc­tion of Liv­ing Shake­speare in 1986, uses an abridged ver­sion of the play, but O’Toole him­self cer­tain­ly sounds in full form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lawrence of Ara­bia Remem­bered with Rare Footage

Acclaimed BBC Pro­duc­tion of Ham­let, Star­ring David Ten­nant (Doc­tor Who) and Patrick Stew­art (Star Trek)

A Sur­vey of Shakespeare’s Plays (Free Course)

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Hand-Colored Photographs of 19th Century Japan

in History, Photography | December 18th, 2013

hand colored japanese photos

This week, The Pub­lic Domain Review (PDR) post­ed a series hand-col­ored albu­mine prints (“a process which used the albu­men found in egg whites to bind the pho­to­graph­ic chem­i­cals to the paper) from 19th cen­tu­ry Japan. They date back to 1880.

Some of the prints, like the one below, cer­tain­ly have a for­eign qual­i­ty to them. They feel far away in terms of time and place. But oth­ers (like the shot above) feel remark­ably close, some­thing we can all relate to today.

Hand coloured photographs of 19th century Japan

Accord­ing to the PDR, the pic­tures came to reside in the Dutch Nation­al Archive as a result of the cen­turies-long com­mer­cial rela­tion­ship between the Dutch and the Japan­ese. More vin­tage pix can be viewed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Old­est Col­or Movies Bring Sun­flow­ers, Exot­ic Birds and Gold­fish Back to Life (1902)

One of the Ear­li­est Known Pho­tos of Guys Sit­ting Around and Drink­ing Beer (Cir­ca 1845)

1922 Pho­to: Claude Mon­et Stands on the Japan­ese Foot­bridge He Paint­ed Through the Years

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Morgan Freeman Masterfully Recites Nelson Mandela’s Favorite Poem, “Invictus”

in History, Literature | December 18th, 2013

Nel­son Man­dela, who died on Decem­ber 5, 2013, had spent more than a quar­ter of his life serv­ing time in var­i­ous jails. While behind bars for the 18-year peri­od between 1962 and 1980, the anti-apartheid rev­o­lu­tion­ary edu­cat­ed both him­self and oth­ers to pre­pare for the advent of mul­tira­cial equal­i­ty in South Africa. Dur­ing his con­fine­ment at the Robben Island prison, Man­dela stud­ied law by cor­re­spon­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, learned Afrikaans to fos­ter a rap­port with jail­house war­dens, and was instru­men­tal in launch­ing the “Uni­ver­si­ty of Robben Island”, where pris­on­ers pos­sess­ing exper­tise in par­tic­u­lar fields pre­sent­ed lec­tures to their fel­low inmates.

Mandela’s stay, how­ev­er, was fre­quent­ly marred by demean­ing and deplorable treat­ment. Ini­tial­ly, black pris­on­ers were humil­i­at­ed by being giv­en shorts, com­mon­ly worn by chil­dren, rather than full-length pants as uni­forms. Man­dela was also for­bid­den from wear­ing sun­glass­es when forced to labor at a lime­stone quar­ry, and the harsh reflec­tions from the rocks dam­aged his vision. The quar­ry dust also dam­aged his tear ducts, which made it impos­si­ble for him to cry until receiv­ing cor­rec­tive surgery in 1994. Per­haps the most painful moments arrived in the late 1960s, when Man­dela lost his moth­er and first­born son, and was denied per­mis­sion to attend their funer­als.

In spite of these ordeals, Man­dela per­se­vered. In an inter­view with Char­lie Rose, above, Mor­gan Free­man dis­cuss­es Mandela’s reliance on William Ernest Henley’s 1875 poem, “Invic­tus,” to keep his hope alive:

“That poem was his favorite… When he lost courage, when he felt like just giv­ing up — just lie down and not get up again — he would recite it. And it would give him what he need­ed to keep going.”

Free­man, who played Man­dela in the 2009 film Invic­tus, also pro­vides a solemn and dig­ni­fied recita­tion of the poem begin­ning at 3:51. Although the poem is best known for pro­vid­ing suc­cour to Man­dela in times of despair, its words of courage have served as inspi­ra­tion to count­less oth­ers. Famous fig­ures who have drawn hope from “Invic­tus” include the father of Burmese oppo­si­tion leader Aung San Suu Kyi dur­ing his strug­gle for Burmese inde­pen­dence and ten­nis cham­pi­on Andre Agas­si. Rumor has it that U.S. Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt was also quite fond of it. We’ve includ­ed the full text for “Invic­tus” below:

Out of the night that cov­ers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank what­ev­er gods may be

For my uncon­quer­able soul.

In the fell clutch of cir­cum­stance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the blud­geon­ings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Hor­ror of the shade,

And yet the men­ace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It mat­ters not how strait the gate,

How charged with pun­ish­ments the scroll.

I am the mas­ter of my fate:

I am the cap­tain of my soul.

H/T to Bruno, one of our read­ers, for send­ing this video our way.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nel­son Mandela’s First-Ever TV Inter­view (1961)

U2 Releas­es a Nel­son Man­dela-Inspired Song, “Ordi­nary Love”

Nel­son Man­dela Archive Goes Online

Find “Invic­tus” in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

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Orson Welles Narrates Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner in an Experimental Film Featuring the Art of Gustave Doré

in Poetry | December 18th, 2013

Water, water, every­where / Nor any drop to drink. Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge—poet, crit­ic, opi­um addict—wrote his Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1798, a time when long poems still began with a short syn­op­sis called the “Argu­ment.” I have always loved Coleridge’s weird poem, with its archa­ic lan­guage recall­ing medieval trav­el sto­ries, and its glo­be­trot­ting nar­ra­tive reach­ing back to Odysseus and the recent tales of Cap­tain Cook, and for­ward to the impe­r­i­al age to come. In sub­se­quent edi­tions, Coleridge would edit out some of the antique lan­guage, bow­ing to pres­sure from adher­ents of his friend and col­league William Wordsworth, who promised the world a people’s poet­ry in the pref­ace to Coleridge and Wordsworth’s sem­i­nal Roman­tic col­lec­tion Lyri­cal Bal­lads.

Even lat­er edi­tions of the poem appeared with mar­gin­al gloss­es that over-explained the text. This is unfor­tu­nate. Much of the poem’s charm comes from its strange­ness. It is, after all, about an ancient mariner, a key point mod­ern­iz­ing crit­ics seemed to miss.

The poem, which immor­tal­ized the alba­tross as a fig­ure of speech, has recent­ly been mod­ern­ized in much more inter­est­ing ways, through the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music’s “Record Your Rime,” an open read­ing by over two-dozen indi­vid­u­als in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion’s Record-a-Poem project. The video excerpt below sets snip­pets of the read­ings to ani­ma­tion by Nathan Gel­gud and Katie Positer­ry. Lis­ten to all of the “Record Your Rime” read­ings here.

“Record Your Rime” coin­cid­ed with Irish actress Fiona Shaw’s cur­rent dra­mat­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of the poem at BAM, which the Finan­cial Times calls “a riv­et­ing, vir­tu­oso per­for­mance.” Coleridge’s poem has inspired its share of mod­ern artists, from Fleet­wood Mac to Iron Maid­en, but, despite its inher­ent­ly dra­mat­ic nature, few actors have tak­en it on as a the­atri­cal piece. Next to Shaw, and Richard Bur­ton, we have a ren­di­tion from the great Orson Welles. The video of Welles’ read­ing (top) ani­mates a set of 1896 engrav­ings from 19th cen­tu­ry illus­tra­tor Gus­tave Dore.  The 1977 film, made by avant-garde ani­ma­tor Lar­ry Jor­dan, fus­es these two great inter­preters for per­haps the first and only time, and gets the tone of Coleridge’s poem just right.

Ver­sions of Coleridge’s poem can be found in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

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:

Richard Bur­ton Reads Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (1965) 

Watch an Ani­ma­tion of Orson Welles’ Famous Frozen Peas Rant

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Clas­sic, Don Quixote

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Kids’ Priceless Reactions to Hearing the Timeless Music of The Beatles

in K-12, Life, Music | December 17th, 2013

Yes­ter­day, John McMil­lian, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty, appeared on KQED’s Forum in San Fran­cis­co (lis­ten here) to talk about his new book Bea­t­les vs. Stones. It offers a new look at how the two British bands co-exist­ed, often helped one anoth­er, and strate­gi­cal­ly defined them­selves against each oth­er. The Bea­t­les were every­man’s band. Whole­some, clean-cut, wit­ty, the Fab Four appealed to the young and the old, the rich and the poor. The Stones, try­ing to make a name for them­selves in the wake of Beat­le­ma­nia, posi­tioned them­selves as the anti-Bea­t­les. As the jour­nal­ist Tom Wolfe once wrote, “The Bea­t­les want to hold your hand, but the Stones want to burn down your town.”

50 years lat­er, The Bea­t­les still have a near­ly uni­ver­sal appeal. The Boomers and their now mid­dle-aged chil­dren haven’t let dust gath­er on The Bea­t­les’ discog­ra­phy. And, if you plunk the grand­chil­dren in front of old Bea­t­les’ videos, they’ll love what they see. Just watch above.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Flash­mob Per­forms The Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unem­ploy­ment Office

The Bea­t­les Per­form in a Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, 1964

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

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1976 Film Blank Generation Documents CBGB Scene with Patti Smith, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie & More

in Film, Music | December 17th, 2013

Fans of brat­ty New York punk-turned-seri­ous writer Richard Hell or schlocky Ger­man hor­ror direc­tor Ulli Lom­mel or—why not—both, will like­ly know of Lommel’s 1980 Blank Gen­er­a­tion, a film unre­mark­able except for its cast­ing of Hell and his excel­lent Voidoids as fea­ture play­ers. (Their debut 1977 album and sin­gle are also called Blank Gen­er­a­tion.) The movie, as a review­er puts it, “seems as if each mem­ber of the pro­duc­tion was under the impres­sion they were work­ing on a dif­fer­ent film than the rest of their col­lab­o­ra­tors…. You can’t help but think that some­thing more watch­able could be pro­duced out of the raw footage with a good edi­tor.”

One might approach an ear­li­er film, also called Blank Gen­er­a­tion—the raw 1976 doc­u­men­tary about the bud­ding New York punk scene above—with sim­i­lar expec­ta­tions of coher­ent pro­duc­tion and nar­ra­tive clar­i­ty. But this would be mis­tak­en. The first Blank Gen­er­a­tion is a film that rewards no expec­ta­tions, except per­haps expect­ing to be con­stant­ly dis­ori­ent­ed. But that would seem to me a giv­en for a gen­uine doc­u­ment of what Lydia Lunch chris­tened “No Wave,” the delib­er­ate­ly taste­less 70s hybrid of punk, rock, new wave, noise, free jazz, and jar­ring com­bi­na­tion of ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al exper­i­men­ta­tion that came to define the sound of down­town for decades to come.

Shot and direct­ed by fre­quent Lunch and Pat­ti Smith col­lab­o­ra­tor Ivan Kral and pio­neer­ing indie film­mak­er Amos Poe, the doc­u­men­tary fea­tures Smith, The Ramones, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie, Tele­vi­sion, The Heart­break­ers, Wayne/Jayne Coun­ty, and pret­ty much every­one else on the CBGB’s scene at the time. The Austin Film Soci­ety sums it up well. Kral and Poe’s Blank Gen­er­a­tion

exem­pli­fied a punk­ish atti­tude toward film struc­ture with hand­held zooms, angled com­po­si­tions, flood­light light­ing, extreme close-ups, ellip­ti­cal edit­ing, flash pans, and a gen­er­al in-your-face and “up-yours” stance. Sound and image pur­pose­ly do not synch. In many cas­es music and image were record­ed on sep­a­rate nights—more eco­nom­i­cal because of the high cost of raw film stock with sound, but also an aes­thet­ic nod to Jean-Luc Godard who had slashed the umbil­i­cal cord unit­ing sound and image. Out of the French New Wave came the New York No Wave.

The influ­ence is evi­dent, though it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful con­text. Real­ly, all you need to know is con­tained with­in the frame: in the lilt­ing rasp of Pat­ti Smith’s “Glo­ria,” in close-up shots of Joey Ramone’s crotch and filthy sneak­ers, in the youth­ful David Byrne’s jan­g­ly acoustic gui­tar and the sleazy lounge-punk of Television’s trib­ute to Iggy Pop, “Lit­tle John­ny Jew­el.” Of course lat­er No Wave stal­warts like Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Swans, Son­ic Youth, John Zorn, DNA, and Mars don’t appear—but some get their due else­where. And while the Hell/Lommel film might be worth a watch for curios­i­ty’s sake, the first Blank Gen­er­a­tion is a tru­ly incred­i­ble his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment that deserves repeat­ed view­ing.

It’ll get added to our col­lec­tion of 600 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

CBGB’s: The Roots of Punk Lets You Watch Vin­tage Footage from the Hey­day of NYC’s Great Music Scene

Deb­bie Har­ry Turns 68 Today. Watch Blondie Play CBGB in the Mid-70s in Two Vin­tage Clips

The Ramones in Their Hey­day, Filmed “Live at CBGB,” 1977

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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