Published back in 2011, Go the F–k to Sleep, the playful children’s storybook meant for adults, became a big besteller. It topped Amazon’s bestseller list for a while. And, before you knew it, celebrities were giving public readings of the book. Perhaps you’ll recall Werner Herzog’s fun reading at The New York Public Library.
Samuel L. Jackson did the honors when the book was released in its official audio format. Now that reading is free to download thanks to Audible.com. Unabridged, it runs a mere 6 minutes. To download the audio, you will need to register with Audible. We hope you’ll get a good laugh out of it.
[PS: If you’re interested in other ways to download a free audio book from Audible, be sure to see their a 30-day free trial program. We have more info on that here.]
If you came of age during the 1980s, you might associate Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” with junior high school dances — an awkward phase of life you’d just as soon forget. For me, it’s hard to think of “Stairway to Heaven” and not cringe. But if you first heard the song in 1971 (when it was released) or soon thereafter, perhaps you have better associations. That’s what filmmaker Cameron Crowe was partly trying to get across in this deleted scene from his 2000 film Almost Famous. In the clip, a high-school boy tries to coax his mother (played by the great Frances McDormand) into letting him write for Rolling Stone. Central to his pitch is the idea that rock music is intellectual, that “Stairway to Heaven” is based on the literature of Tolkien — something that has been debated by critics and scholars. As for why the scene didn’t make it into the movie, you’d think that it’s because of the song’s length. 8 minutes is a long time for a film to go without any dialogue. But apparently it came down to permissions. Crowe told Coming Soon.Net: “Led Zeppelin had already given us four songs at a nice price but they said, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ we’re not going to give to anybody, and we had already shot a scene that was to ‘Stairway to Heaven’ so what was great was we ended up putting the scene on the DVD and saying ‘Put your record on NOW and score it yourself.’ ” You can try that at home and see if it changes your thoughts on “Stairway to Heaven,” for better or for worse.
In the pages of The New York Times, David Brooks reeled off a list of Really Good Books. He prefaces the list with this: “People are always asking me what my favorite books are. I’ve held off listing them because it seems self-indulgent. But, with summer almost here, I thought I might spend a couple columns recommending eight books that have been pivotal in my life.” [He actually recommends more than 8 in the end.] Some of the books will help you think about living a life of “civilized ambition.” Others will nurture your inner spirit. And still others will help you think more intelligently about writing and politics. Along the way, he adds a quick caveat about what these books “can’t do.” “They can’t carve your convictions about the world. Only life can do that — only relationships, struggle, love, play and work. Books can give you vocabularies and frameworks to help you understand and decide, but life provides exactly the education you need.”
The list was published in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2. In each installment, Brooks explains why he selected each work. Where possible, we have provided links to texts available online. You can also find them listed in our collection, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices.
Enthusiasts of American radio drama usually place the form’s “Golden Age” as beginning in the 1920s and ending, almost at the stroke of television’s mass adoption, in the 1950s. NBC’s Dimension X, which ran in 1950 and 1951, came somewhat late to the game, but it did more than its part to give “old time radio” a strong last decade — indeed, perhaps its strongest. Other famous “serious” science-fiction programs had aired in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, but Dimension X made its mark by adapting short stories by acknowledged masters of the craft: Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and even a non-genre-bound literary mind like Kurt Vonnegut. All of these world-creators knew well the value of imagination, and radio, in its way, stood then and remains today the most evocative, imagination-driven medium of them all. At the Internet Archive (certainly a more convenient old time radio source than the bootleg cassette tapes I used to have to buy) you can download all of Dimenson X’s “adventures in time and space, transcribed in future tense.”
If you don’t know where in this speculative field of time and space to begin, we’ve highlighted a few Dimension X episodes drawn from works of the most notable authors. June 10, 1950’s “The Green Hills of Earth”, based upon the Robert Heinlein story of the same name, relates the life of “Noisy” Rhysling, a blind space-age troubadour who realizes he must pay tribute to the planet he long ago left behind. The very next week’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”, one of Ray Bradbury’s many works adapted for the show, describes the apocalypse through the processes of the self-maintaining high-tech miracle house. June 17, 1951’s “Pebble in the Sky” takes its theme from the eponymous Isaac Asimov novel that thrusts a 20th-century everyman into a complex future of a galactic empire, a radioactive Earth, and mandatory euthanasia at age sixty. And in February 11, 1950’s “Report on the Barnhouse Effect”, only the show’sthird broadcast, we hear the testimony of a telekinetic — one who, given that Kurt Vonnegut wrote the original story, it won’t surprise you to hear the government immediately (and haplessly) tries to weaponize.
“The Green Hills of Earth” (Robert Heinlein)
“There Will Come Soft Rains” (Ray Bradbury)
“Pebble in the Sky” (Isaac Asimov)
“Report on the Barnhouse Effect” (Kurt Vonnegut)
Every true Renaissance man needed a wealthy patron, and many Italian artist-inventor-scholar-poets found theirs in Lorenzo de’Medici, scion of a Florentine dynasty and himself a scholar and poet. Lorenzo either sponsored directly or helped secure commissions for such 15th century art stars as Michelangelo Buonaroti and Leonardo da Vinci.
Among Lorenzo’s many artist friends was a painter who mostly disappeared from history until the late nineteenth century, when the rediscovery of his Primavera and Birth of Venus made him one of the most popular of Renaissance artists. I’m referring of course, to Sandro Botticelli, portraitist of Lorenzo de’Medici, his father, and grandfather and also, it turns out, illustrator of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.
In 1550, the so-called “father of art history” Giorgio Vasari recorded that “since Botticelli was a learned man, he wrote a commentary on part of Dante’s poem, and after illustrating the Inferno, he printed the work.” The painter also made a portrait of Dante, Vasari tells us, and drew sketches for engravings in the first Florentine edition of The Divine Comedy in 1481.
It seems, however, that Botticelli’s interest in Dante went much further than even Vasari knew. Sometime late in his career—after he had already achieved local renown in Florence—Botticelli promised his patron Lorenzo an illustrated Divine Comedy on sheepskin with a separate image for each Canto, something no artist had yet attempted. 92 of those illustrations survive, in various stages of completion, such as the two above, “Panderers, Flatterers” (top–the only drawing in color) and “Giants” (above), both from the Inferno.
These are two of the most fully realized of the collection. According to art historian Jonathan K. Nelson, “Botticelli completed the outline drawings for nearly all the cantos, but only added colors for a few. The artist shows his ‘learning’ and artistic skill by representing each of the three realms each in a distinctive way.” Many of Botticelli’s drawings for the Purgatorio and Paradiso survive as well, but—like the books themselves—these are increasingly less detailed (and arguably less interesting). See “Dante’s Confession” from the Purgatorio above, his “Map of Hell” at the top, “Jacob’s Ladder” from the Paradiso below, and the remaining 88 illustrations at World of Dante.
Ever been taken aback by a vintage photo of a Facebook friend? “Look how young he was! An infant!” If you’re a member of comedian Louis CK’s generation, it’s likely that at some point, the person in the photo was you.
Louis model 1987, above, is close to unrecognizable, with a full head of red hair and a trim belly. His joke-based routine isn’t howlingly funny, but neither is it shameful. He’s confident, at his ease with the audience, but the life experience that would inform his later work was not yet a thing.
A few years further along, above, one can see that comic persona coming into focus. The sad sack physicality that gives it weight came later. Suffice to say, that hairbrush joke is no longer a present tense proposition.
What struck me were the familiar back walls of those little comedy club stages. Louis has been working those crummy little stages for such a long time. No wonder he’s on familiar terms with the door guys at the Comedy Cellar, the club he’s most often shown frequenting in his character-driven, self-produced, largely autobiographical TV show.
Go on stage as often as possible. Any stage anywhere. Don’t listen to anyone about anything. Just keep getting up there and try to be funny, honest and original.
Know that it’s not going to be easy. Know that it’s going to take a long time to be good or great. Don’t focus on the career climbing. Focus on the getting funnier. The second you are bitching about what another comic is getting you are going in the completely wrong direction. No one is getting your gig or your money.
Keep in mind that you are in for a looooong haul of ups and downs and nothing and something. It takes at least 15 years, usually more, to make a great comic. Most flame out before they get there.
And yes, be polite and courteous to every single person you deal with. Not because that will make you a better comedian, but because you’re supposed to do that.
- Ayun Halliday is the author of seven books, including No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late. Follow her @AyunHalliday
When we come to know the work of novelist and scholar C.S. Lewis, we usually do it through a textual medium — specifically in childhood, through that thrilling written artifact known as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Often this leads us into the rest of his seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia series (find a free audio version here), and those most deeply intrigued by the worldview that shaped that high-fantasy world may find themselves eventually reading even Lewis’ Christian apologetics, of which 1952’s well-known Mere Christianitycame as only the first. That book drew its content from a series of theological lectures Lewis gave on BBC radio between 1942 and 1944, during the Second World War. Little material from these talks survives — in fact, we have precious few minutes of his voice on tape in any context, and nothings at all of him on film — but you can hear about fifteen minutes of it in the clips above and below.
These excerpts come from “The New Men”, the last episode of Lewis’series Beyond Personality originally broadcast on March 21, 1944, and an introduction to The Great Divorce, his theological novel written in response to William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. “If I’ve written of their divorce,” Lewis says, “this is not because I think myself a fit antagonist for so great a genius, nor even because I feel at all sure that I knew what he meant.” The statement exemplifies the clarity and humility with which he always wrote, even when essentially trumpeting the benefits of his own faith. Given the off-puttingly combative tenor of most high-profile religious arguments made today, both for and against, the remains of Lewis’ broadcasts remind us how much we could use more thinkers like him today — in any form of media.
David Bowie and David Gilmour singing “Comfortably Numb” together? Yes, thank you. Filmed at the Royal Albert Hall, the clip above shows the two performing at the end of Gilmour’s 2006 European solo tour in support of his solo album On an Island. During two other nights in the same venue, Gilmour was joined by David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Robert Wyatt, and the footage saw release as a DVD titled Remember That Night: “It goes without saying,” writes Allmusic of the disc, “that it is stunning, both visually and aurally; how could any Pink Floyd-related project fail to be? […] but it is Gilmour’s show, and no star can outshine him.” Maybe, but Bowie’s pretty riveting singing what may be the most spellbinding of Gilmour and Roger Waters’ collaborations on Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
Gilmour played several Floyd classics during the Royal Albert Hall stint. Gilmour and band play Pink Floyd’s “Breathe,” “Time,” and “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” in addition to songs from On an Island, “a mostly laid-back, utterly elegant English record,” writes Thom Jurek. Laid-back and elegant might also describe the stage show—its star and his guests somewhat less animated than in their heyday—but Gilmour’s solos soar, and the light show, true to form, is a dramatic complement to an equally dramatic set in which classic Floyd seems to mix seamlessly with the first collection of original songs Gilmour had released in 22 years.
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