Celebrate Valentine’s Day with a Funny Medley of Male Pain, Selected By Musical Collective “Cadenza”

in Comedy, Music | February 14th, 2014

“If my Valen­tine you won’t be,

I’ll hang myself on your Christ­mas tree.”

― Ernest Hem­ing­way, 88 Poems

Strange­ly, that’s one activ­i­ty that did­n’t make Men’s Health reporter Markham Hei­d’s  list of 10 Valen­tine’s Day dis­trac­tions for the new­ly dumped. Yoga class­es and Sin­gles Fun Runs do sound health­ful, but many will find sug­ges­tion num­ber 10—wallowing in it—the most viable option.

Musi­cal exper­i­men­tal­ists Col­lec­tive Caden­za­’s Valen­tine’s Day Spe­cial “A His­to­ry of Men Mov­ing On” is to wal­low­ing as speed dat­ing is to courtship.

It’s a five minute med­ley of male roman­tic pain that takes us all the way from Roy Orbison’s 1960 “Only the Lone­ly” to Cee­Lo Green’s point­ed “Fuck You.”

Vocal­ist For­est Van Dyke exhibits con­sid­er­able dex­ter­i­ty, nav­i­gat­ing these styl­is­tic switch­backs. A shame he was direct­ed to deliv­er so much of this choice mate­r­i­al to a framed pho­to, awk­ward­ly posi­tioned on an upstage music stand. I know that the room was crowd­ed, but I would’ve liked to see his feet, too. A man who can dance is some­thing to see.

Kudos to musi­cal direc­tor Michael Thurber for mak­ing explic­it the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Gotye’s “Some­body That I Used To Know” and Ush­er’s “Papers” (as cov­ered by a goat). As with Hem­ing­way’s cou­plet, the lat­ter failed to make the round up. Does the heart­break ever cease?

Hap­py Valen­tine’s Day!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Lover’s Spat Set to the Lyrics of 17 Bea­t­les Songs

Tom Waits Shows Us How Not to Get a Date on Valentine’s Day

Bar­ry White’s Phi­los­o­phy of Music and Mak­ing Love, Ani­mat­ed

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is sta­pling up a new issue of her zine, The East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life: The Oscar-Winning Film About Kafka Writing The Metamorphosis

in Film, Literature, Radio | February 13th, 2014

Peter Capal­di is best known in the States for being the most recent actor to play Doc­tor Who. But did you know that he is also an Oscar-win­ning film­mak­er? His bril­liant short film Franz Kafka’s It’s a Won­der­ful Life took the prize for Best Short Film in 1995.

The movie shows Kaf­ka, on Christ­mas Eve, strug­gling to come up with the open­ing line for his most famous work, The Meta­mor­pho­sis.

As Gre­gor Sam­sa awoke one morn­ing from uneasy dreams he found him­self trans­formed in his bed into a gigan­tic insect.

Capal­di wrings a lot of laughs out of Kafka’s inabil­i­ty to fig­ure out what Sam­sa should turn into. A giant banana? A kan­ga­roo? Even when the answer is lit­er­al­ly star­ing at him in the face, Kaf­ka is hilar­i­ous­ly obtuse.

Richard E. Grant stars as the tor­tured, tight­ly-wound writer who is dri­ven into fits as his cre­ative process is inter­rupt­ed for increas­ing­ly absurd rea­sons. The noisy par­ty down­stairs, it turns out, is pop­u­lat­ed by a dozen beau­ti­ful maid­ens in white. A lost deliv­ery woman offers Kaf­ka a bal­loon ani­mal. A local lunatic search­es for his com­pan­ion named Jiminy Cock­roach.

You can see the film above, help­ful­ly sub­ti­tled in Ger­man. Also find it in our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More, plus our list of 33 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find Works by Kaf­ka in our lists of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

Watch Franz Kaf­ka, the Won­der­ful Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Kafka’s Famous Character Gregor Samsa Meets Dr. Seuss in a Great Radio Play

in Literature, Radio | February 13th, 2014

If you don’t have enough exis­ten­tial angst in your life — and if you’re oper­at­ing on the the­o­ry that there’s no such thing as too much Kaf­ka (see our post from ear­li­er today) — then check out this radio play called Sam­sa & Seuss, which aired orig­i­nal­ly on the CBC show Wire­tap before appear­ing on This Amer­i­can Life. The piece is based on an epis­to­lary short sto­ry by the late, great David Rakoff and is per­formed by Rakoff along with Jonathan Gold­stein.

The sto­ry begins with a des­per­ate Gre­gor Sam­sa reach­ing out to Dr. Seuss look­ing for some way to cure him of his mal­a­dy — i.e. being a bug. Seuss’s reply is writ­ten entire­ly in verse — “Rest assured, I’ll endeav­or to glean and deduce. You’ll be bet­ter than ever or my name isn’t Seuss” – which con­fus­es Sam­sa to no end. At one point, Sam­sa asks, “Is met­ri­cal rhyme an Amer­i­can mode of cor­re­spon­dence?”

Yet what could be a one-joke nov­el­ty grows sur­pris­ing­ly poignant in Rakoff’s deft hands. When it becomes clear that the doctor’s eccen­tric health regime – “mag­no­lia cus­tard and rose­hip souf­flé and some dew drops with mus­tard” – has failed to fix the ail­ment of the increas­ing­ly depressed Sam­sa, Seuss’s cheery can-do atti­tude turns reflec­tive:

I’m aston­ished at times when I think of the past, of my thou­sands of rhymes, of how life is so vast. I’m left, then, to won­der how any­one gleans a pur­pose or sense of what any­thing means. It’s not ours for the know­ing. It’s mean­ing abstruse. We both best be going. Your lov­ing friend, Seuss.

And you thought The Lorax felt a lit­tle bleak.

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

BBC Radio Play Based on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon Stream­ing Free Online

Down­load Brave New World for Free: Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion Read by Aldous Hux­ley

Isaac Asimov’s Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sic, The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (1973)

 

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What Happens When Your Brain is on Alfred Hitchcock: The Neuroscience of Film

in Film, Psychology, Science | February 13th, 2014

If you have 22 min­utes, why not sit back and watch the clas­sic piece of tele­vi­sion above, Alfred Hitch­cock Presents’ 1961 episode “Bang, You’re Dead”? You may well have seen it before, quite pos­si­bly long ago, but you’ll find it holds up, keep­ing you in sus­pense today as art­ful­ly as it or any oth­er Hitch­cock pro­duc­tion always has. But why do we get so emo­tion­al­ly engaged in this sim­ple tale of a five-year-old boy who comes into pos­ses­sion of a real hand­gun that he mis­tak­en­ly thinks a harm­less toy? Here with detailed answers root­ed in the mechan­ics of the human brain, we have “Neu­rocin­e­mat­ics: the Neu­ro­science of Film,” a pre­sen­ta­tion by Uri Has­son of Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty’s Neu­ro­science Insti­tute.

Hitch­cock con­ceived of his style of cin­e­ma, says Has­son in the clip below, as “doing exper­i­ments on the audi­ence,” and of a movie itself as “a sequence of stages designed to have an effect on your brain.”

The brains of every­one sit­ting in the the­ater thus, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, all become “res­o­nant and aligned with the movie in a very pow­er­ful and com­pli­cat­ed way.” Var­i­ous types of research bear this out, from mea­sur­ing the skin tem­per­a­ture, per­spi­ra­tion, and blood flow in the brains of sub­jects as they watch Hitch­cock­’s young pro­tag­o­nist add more “toy” bul­lets to the “toy” gun he bran­dish­es around the neigh­bor­hood. In the clip below, you can see exact­ly how the sci­en­tists’ func­tion­al MRI machines scan the view­ers as they watch the episode, whose plot, as one of the research team puts it, “keeps the par­tic­i­pants a bit on their feet,” flat on their back though they need to remain for the dura­tion. You’ll find the watch­ing expe­ri­ence much more com­fort­able in your chair. It won’t pro­duce much data for the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, but at least now you’ll know what goes on in your brain as it hap­pens, some­thing about which even Hitch­cock him­self could only guess. To con­duct your own exper­i­ments, see our col­lec­tion of 21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock Explains the Plot Device He Called the ‘MacGuf­fin’

Alfred Hitch­cock on the Filmmaker’s Essen­tial Tool: ‘The Kuleshov Effect’

Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

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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An Online Gallery of 30,000 Items from The British Library, Including Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebooks And Mozart’s Diary

in Art, History | February 13th, 2014

DAVINCI

(Click image to enlarge)

This past Decem­ber, we wrote about the British Library’s releas­ing “over a mil­lion images onto Flickr Com­mons for any­one to use, remix and repur­pose.” For those who enjoyed this trea­sure trove of his­tor­i­cal con­tent, we bring more good tid­ings: the British Library also has a freely acces­si­ble online gallery, num­ber­ing some 30,000 items.

MOZART

The vast dig­i­tal col­lec­tion includes books, ancient maps, and price­less prints. Amid the count­less vir­tu­al tomes, some of the more impres­sive hold­ings include Mozart’s musi­cal diary from the last sev­en years of his life, and Leonar­do da Vinci’s note­book (find both above) where the artist and inven­tor the­o­rized about mechan­ics. Da Vin­ci also record­ed rid­dles in his notes, includ­ing: “The dead will come from under­ground and by their fierce move­ments will send num­ber­less human beings out of the world” (Answer: “Iron, which comes from under the ground, is dead, but the weapons are made of it which kill so many men”).

LONDON

The online col­lec­tion also con­tains a num­ber of expert­ly curat­ed exhibits by British Library staff, many of which are accom­pa­nied by a thor­ough intro­duc­tion to guide read­ers through the mate­r­i­al. I’ve always liked get­ting lost in old, detailed maps and par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed the Crace Col­lec­tion of Maps of Lon­don, which range from a 16th cen­tu­ry “guide for cun­trey men in the famous cittey of Lon­don by the helpe of wich plot they shall be able to know how far it is to any street,” to a 19th cen­tu­ry puz­zle-type map, whose read­ers must find a par­tic­u­lar route from the Strand to St. Paul’s. The col­lec­tion also con­tains a ter­rif­ic selec­tion of pre-print­ing-press-era illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, deemed “illu­mi­nat­ed” because they were metic­u­lous­ly dec­o­rat­ed, often using gold leaf. Among these are the open­ing of St. Luke’s Gospel from the Lind­is­farne Bible (below), one of the ear­li­est sur­viv­ing Eng­lish lan­guage Gospels (cir­ca 715 CE), and scenes from the life of St. Guth­lac, which dates to the ear­ly 13th cen­tu­ry.

STLUKE

For more of the British Library’s Online Col­lec­tion, head here.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

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Watch Langston Hughes Read Poetry from His First Collection, The Weary Blues (1958)

in Literature | February 13th, 2014

Today we fea­ture record­ings of Langston Hugh­es read­ing two of his ear­li­est and best-known poems from his debut 1926 col­lec­tion The Weary Blues. The first, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hugh­es wrote in 1920 when he was only 17. In her very close read­ing of this poem, Alexan­dra Socarides tells us that Hugh­es was just “emerg­ing from a dis­tinct­ly Mid­west­ern child­hood” and tak­ing a train to Mex­i­co City to spend a year with his estranged father when he wrote the lines: “I’ve known rivers: / I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and old­er than the / flow of human blood in human veins.” (You can hear Hugh­es tell the sto­ry of writ­ing the poem here). The short poem spans four rivers in three dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents, though “at the moment of its com­po­si­tion, it was the land­scape of the Mid­west [Hugh­es] knew best.”

Even before he had trav­eled the globe, Hugh­es’ con­cerns were glob­al in scope. But he is most often asso­ci­at­ed with the jazz-age Harlem Renais­sance scene, and right­ly so. After his year in Mex­i­co City, Hugh­es moved to New York to study at Colum­bia and helped pio­neer a jazz poet­ry that antic­i­pat­ed Beats and Black Arts poets alike. The title poem of The Weary Blues is firm­ly sit­u­at­ed in Harlem—“Down on Lenox Avenue” where a blues­man “made that poor piano moan with melody.” It’s a poem meant to be read aloud, and in the video above, you can see Hugh­es do so with accom­pa­ny­ing jazz ensem­ble The Doug Park­er Band for a 1958 Cana­di­an pro­gram. That next year, Hugh­es col­lab­o­rat­ed with Charles Min­gus and Leonard Feath­er on an album of jazz read­ings called The Weary Blues.

Crit­ic Don­ald B. Gib­son once not­ed that Hugh­es may have “read his poet­ry to more peo­ple (pos­si­bly) than any oth­er Amer­i­can poet.” His gen­er­ous pop­ulism didn’t always mean crit­i­cal success—the two are often at odds—such that in 1969, Lind­say Pat­ter­son called him “the most abused poet in Amer­i­ca” for the neglect or out­right scorn his acces­si­ble poet­ry received from both black and white crit­ics at the time. In a review of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee’s hard-to-find record­ed read­ings of 50 of Hugh­es’ poem, Pat­ter­son wrote that Hugh­es’ work “must be heard, rather than read silent­ly, for one to real­ize its emo­tion­al scope.” I dis­agree. From ear­ly short poems like “A Woo­ing” to lat­er, longer works like “Pre­lude to Our Age,” Hugh­es’ work on the page is deeply evoca­tive, com­plex, and reward­ing. But while Hugh­es was steeped in his­to­ry, he was also steeped in poet­ic tra­di­tion of a very Amer­i­can variety—Walt Whit­man, Claude McK­ay, Coun­tee Cullen—that priv­i­leged musi­cal lan­guage, ver­nac­u­lar expres­sions, and an exu­ber­ant per­son­al voice, and that makes his work a par­tic­u­lar joy to hear read, espe­cial­ly by the poet him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

Hear the Very First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing His Epic Poem “Howl” (1956)

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

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

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Painters Painting: The Definitive Documentary Portrait of the New York Art World (1940–1970)

in Art, Film | February 12th, 2014

Emile de Anto­nio is one of those peo­ple who sim­ply had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. He was a Har­vard class­mate of John F. Kennedy. He knew all of the core mem­bers of the Beat move­ment, even help­ing to dis­trib­ute the sem­i­nal Beat movie Pull My Daisies. And De Anto­nio was a friend with vir­tu­al­ly every­one in the New York art scene from Jasper Johns to Willem de Koon­ing. He once drank him­self into a stu­por for Andy Warhol’s exper­i­men­tal movie Drink. Warhol even famous­ly praised De Anto­nio say­ing, “Every­thing I learned about paint­ing, I learned from De.”

De Anto­nio was also a major voice of dis­sent dur­ing the Cold War. He direct­ed a series of scathing doc­u­men­taries includ­ing Point of Order (1964), about the McCarthy hear­ings; Rush to Judg­ment (1966), a sta­ple among JFK assas­si­na­tion the­o­rists; and the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed anti-Viet­nam war movie In the Year of the Pig. (1968)

For his 1972 movie Painters Paint­ing: The New York Art Scene 1940–1970, De Anto­nio man­aged to get artists like Warhol, Johns, and De Koon­ing along with Robert Rauschen­berg, Frank Stel­la, Bar­nett New­man and Helen Franken­thaler to talk about their craft. It is the defin­i­tive doc­u­men­tary por­trait of the New York art world.

De Anto­nio talked about Painters Paint­ing in a 1988 inter­view:

I was prob­a­bly the only film­mak­er in the world who could [have made Painters Paint­ing] because I knew all those peo­ple, from the time that they were poor, and unsuc­cess­ful and had no mon­ey. I knew Warhol and Rauschen­berg and Jasper Johns and Stel­la before they ever sold a paint­ing, and so it was inter­est­ing to [do the film about them]. They appeared in the film along with De Koon­ing, whom I knew very well, and Bar­nett New­man, who is now dead. They talked to me in a way that they would nev­er have talked to any­body else because they knew I knew the sub­ject.

The film, a tad grainy, appears above. A high­er res ver­sion of the film can “rent­ed” on Ama­zon. Ama­zon Prime mem­ber can watch it for free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:
Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

635 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Rauschen­berg Eras­es De Koon­ing

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Mark Twain Creates a List of His Favorite Books For Adults & Kids (1887)

in Books, Letters, Literature | February 12th, 2014

Twainbooklist

In Jan­u­ary of 1887, Mark Twain wrote the above let­ter to a Rev­erend Charles D. Crane, pas­tor of a Methodist Epis­co­pal Church in Maine, to advise him of the most suit­able read­ing for both chil­dren and adults. Twain’s letter—which, as he did near­ly all his let­ters, he signed with his giv­en name of Samuel Clemens (or “S.L. Clemens”)—came in response to a query in three parts from the Rev. Crane. But we do not seem to have Crane’s let­ter (at least a thor­ough search of the exhaus­tive cat­a­log at the online Mark Twain Project yields no results.) Nonethe­less, we can rea­son­ably infer that he asked the famous author—who was between Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and A Con­necti­cut Yan­kee in King Arthur’s Court—some­thing like the fol­low­ing:

1) What books should young boys read? 2) And young girls? … 3) [and both/either] What should grown-ups read? [and/or] What are Mr. Samuel Clemens’ favorite books?

Twain, in a hur­ry, “took a shot on the wing” and replied with the let­ter below, which, despite his protes­ta­tions of haste, seems fair­ly well-con­sid­ered. I’ll admit that the ambi­gu­i­ty of the last sen­tence, how­ev­er, gives me the researcher’s buzz to go back and dig through more archives for Crane’s orig­i­nal let­ter.

Dear Sir:



I am just start­ing away from home, & have no time to think the ques­tions over & prop­er­ly con­sid­er my answers; but I take a shot on the wing at the mat­ter, as fol­lows:



1.Macaulay;
Plutarch;
Grant’s Mem­oirs;
Cru­soe;
Ara­bi­an Nights;
Gul­liv­er.



= 2. The same for the girl, after strik­ing out out Cru­soe & sub­sti­tut­ing Ten­nyson.
 


I can’t answer No. 3 in this sud­den way.  When one is going to choose twelve authors, for bet­ter for worse, for­sak­ing fathers & moth­ers to cling unto them & unto them alone, until death shall them part, there is an awful­ness about the respon­si­bil­i­ty that makes mar­riage with one mere indi­vid­ual & divorcible woman a sacra­ment sod­den with lev­i­ty by com­par­i­son. 



In my list I know I should put Shak­s­peare [sic]; & Brown­ing; & Car­lyle (French Rev­o­lu­tion only); Sir Thomas Mal­o­ry (King Arthur); Park­man’s His­to­ries (a hun­dred of them if there were so many); Ara­bi­an Nights; John­son (Boswell’s), because I like to see that com­pla­cent old gas­om­e­ter lis­ten to him­self talk; Jowet­t’s Pla­to; & “B.B.” (a book which I wrote some years ago, not for pub­li­ca­tion but just for my own pri­vate read­ing.)



I should be sure of these; & I could add the oth­er three — but I should want to hold the oppor­tu­ni­ty open a few years, so as to make no mis­take.



Tru­ly Yours



S.L. CLEMENS



See all six man­u­script pages of Twain’s let­ter (and zoom in to exam­ine them close­ly) at the Shapell Man­u­script Foun­da­tion. We’ve added links to Twain’s rec­om­mend­ed texts above. You can find many in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read.

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Tells His 11-Year-Old Daugh­ter What to Wor­ry About (and Not Wor­ry About) in Life, 1933

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

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