Free Audio: Go the F–k to Sleep Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson

Go_the_fuck_to_sleep

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.]

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Wern­er Her­zog Reads “Go the F**k to Sleep” in NYC (NSFW)

The First Children’s Pic­ture Book, 1658′s Orbis Sen­su­al­i­um Pic­tus

Bob Dylan Clas­sic, “For­ev­er Young,” Ani­mat­ed for Chil­dren

 

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Deleted Scene from Almost Famous: Mom, “Stairway to Heaven” is Based on the Literature of Tolkien

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.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dutch­man Mas­ters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Back­wards

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

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David Brooks’ List of “Really Good Books”

david brooks books

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.

1. A Col­lec­tion of Essays by George Orwell

2. Anna Karen­i­na by Leo Tol­stoy

3. “Ratio­nal­ism in Pol­i­tics” by Michael Oakeshott

4. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn War­ren

5. The Pelo­pon­nesian War by Thucy­dides

6. The Con­fes­sions by St. Augus­tine

7. The Lone­ly Man of Faith by Joseph Soloveitchik

8. Man’s Search for Mean­ing by Vik­tor Fran­kl (see Fran­kl talk about that great search here.)

9. Mid­dle­march by George Eliot

10. End­less Love by Scott Spencer

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

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

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Dimension X: The 1950s SciFi Radio Show That Dramatized Stories by Asimov, Bradbury, Vonnegut & More

dimension x

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’s third 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)

Relat­ed con­tent:

Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio: The War of the Worlds That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

The Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series Fea­tures 24 Free Plays About Great Sci­en­tists and Sci­en­tif­ic Endeav­ors

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

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Botticelli’s 92 Surviving Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1481)


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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Alber­to Martini’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1901–1944)

Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy

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

20-Year-Old Louis CK Performs Stand Up (1987)

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.

As he gen­er­ous­ly advised an 18-year-old aspi­rant on the Google news­group “alt.comedy.standup”:

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

The Only Known Recordings of C.S. Lewis (1944–1948)

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 Chris­tian­i­ty came 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.

Relat­ed con­tent:

C.S. Lewis’ Pre­scient 1937 Review of The Hob­bit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It “May Well Prove a Clas­sic”

Watch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. Lewis

Free Audio: Down­load the Com­plete Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

David Gilmour & David Bowie Sing “Comfortably Numb” Live (2006)

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.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

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

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