Hundreds of Classical Sculptures from the Uffizi Gallery Now Digitized & Put Online: Explore a Collection of 3D Interactive Scans

in Art, Technology | August 17th, 2018

As the mighty House of Medici amassed works of art between the 15th and 18th cen­turies, could its mem­bers have imag­ined that we would still be enjoy­ing their col­lec­tion in the 21st? Per­haps they did, giv­en the ten­den­cy — some­times fatal — of busi­ness and polit­i­cal dynas­ties to imag­ine them­selves as eter­nal. But the Medicis could scarce­ly have imag­ined how peo­ple all around the world have just gained access to the sculp­ture they col­lect­ed, now dis­played at Flo­rence’s Uffizi Gallery and else­where, through the Uffizi Dig­i­ti­za­tion Project.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion between Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty’s Vir­tu­al World Her­itage Lab­o­ra­to­ry, the Politec­ni­co di Milano, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flo­rence, the five-year project, which began in 2016, has as its goal the com­plete dig­i­ti­za­tion of Greek and Roman sculp­ture in the Uffizi Gallery, Pit­ti Palace, and Boboli Gar­dens. Though not yet fin­ished, it has already man­aged to dig­i­tize more works of clas­si­cal sculp­ture than any oth­er effort by a sin­gle muse­um, and at its site you can take a look at every com­plete piece and frag­ment already dig­i­tized — and not just a look, as you’d get while pass­ing by on a walk through a muse­um, but a clos­er and more detailed look than you may ever have thought pos­si­ble.

“The gen­uine­ly easy-to-nav­i­gate web­site proves more inter­ac­tive than many com­put­er­ized muse­um archives,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Jas­mine Weber. “Users are giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trav­el inside tombs and inside every nook of the fig­ures’ con­struc­tion. The inter­face allows users to trav­el around and with­in the sculp­tures, get­ting clos­er than vis­i­tors often can in the muse­um space itself thanks to three-dimen­sion­al ren­der­ing from every imag­in­able angle.” The col­lec­tion, notes the Uffizzi Dig­i­ti­za­tion Pro­jec­t’s about page, con­tains “works of excep­tion­al inter­est to stu­dents of Greek and Roman art, notably the Medici Venus, the Medici Faun, the Nio­bids, and the Ari­adne.”

The Uffizi Dig­i­ti­za­tion Project has so far made more than 300 works avail­able to view as 3D mod­els, and you can find them by either search­ing the col­lec­tion or scrolling down to browse by cat­e­go­ry, a list that includes every­thing from altars and busts to stat­uettes and vas­es. And though no more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly impres­sive col­lec­tion of vir­tu­al clas­si­cal sculp­ture may exist on the inter­net, after expe­ri­enc­ing it you might nev­er­the­less feel the need to see these pieces in an envi­ron­ment oth­er than the black dig­i­tal void. If so, have a look at the vir­tu­al tour of the Uffizi Gallery we fea­tured ear­li­er this year here on Open Cul­ture. But be pre­pared: from there you may want to book a tick­et to Flo­rence and see the sculp­ture col­lect­ed by the House of Medici in the very city where it rose to such vast eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al pow­er.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the World-Famous Col­lec­tion of Renais­sance Art

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

Artists Put Online 3D, High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of 3,000-Year-Old Nefer­ti­ti Bust (and Con­tro­ver­sy Ensues)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Aretha Franklin’s Pitch-Perfect Performance in The Blues Brothers, the Film That Reinvigorated Her Career (1980)

in Film, Music | August 17th, 2018

There are many films of the 70s and 80s that could nev­er get made today. This is not your grumpy uncle’s rant about polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness gone wild. In many cas­es, it’s very much for the best. (And did we ever need “movies” like Porky’s or Hard­bod­ies in the first place? I’m going to say no.) Styles and social mores change. Actors and direc­tors who alone could have pulled off what they did, when they did, pass away. And so too do musi­cians whose equal we will nev­er see again. When these inim­itable forces come togeth­er, it’s once-in-a-life­time cel­lu­loid mag­ic. Remakes and ill-advised sequels seem like sac­ri­lege.

I am speak­ing on this occa­sion of The Blues Broth­ers, the 1980 musi­cal com­e­dy that brought togeth­er a pan­theon of leg­ends now most­ly depart­ed for that hall of fame in the sky. John Belushi, of course, but also John Can­dy and Car­rie Fish­er. James Brown, Cab Cal­loway, Ray Charles, John Lee Hook­er… and Aretha Franklin, whom the whole world now mourns. Charges of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion might get lobbed at The Blues Broth­ers, but they would be mis­placed. For all its absur­dist slap­stick, the film was noth­ing if not a cel­e­bra­tion of black Amer­i­can music, a rev­er­ent, lov­ing trib­ute to the blues, R&B, and clas­sic soul that went direct­ly to the source, and in so doing, rein­vig­o­rat­ed Aretha’s flag­ging career.

The music scene of the late sev­en­ties had “turned away from soul and toward dis­co,” writes Lau­ra Bradley at Van­i­ty Fair. “Franklin was strug­gling to make the tran­si­tion, espe­cial­ly after Atlantic allowed her con­tract to expire.” Her attempt to keep up in the 1979 dis­co album La Diva had flopped. She was the Queen of Soul, not sweaty dance­floors, and so she would remain, thanks in part to the antics of Jake and Elwood and writer/director John Lan­dis, who cast her as Mrs. Mur­phy, a din­er wait­ress who gets to call the broth­ers “two honkys dressed like Hasidic dia­mond mer­chants” who “look like they’re from the CIA.”

The sto­ry of her cast­ing is bit­ter­sweet. “You have to remem­ber that in 1979,” says Lan­dis, “rhythm and blues was basi­cal­ly over, and the num­ber one music in the world was Abba, the Bee Gees… when peo­ple ask, how did you get the likes of Aretha Franklin and James Brown, it was easy. We just called them and said, ‘Wan­na job?’” Stu­dio exec­u­tives balked, want­i­ng hip­per acts like Rose Royce, who had sung the theme from Car Wash. It would have been a tragedy.

Thank­ful­ly, Lan­dis persisted—he had writ­ten the part for her. “Every­one in the movie,” he says in a recent inter­view, “the parts were writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for them.” (Except James Brown, who took over as the preach­er when Lit­tle Richard “found Jesus, again,” and went to back to his church in Ten­nessee.) Lan­dis also insist­ed on Aretha singing “Think,” a song from her 1968 album Aretha Now, instead of her biggest hit. (“Real­ly?” he recalls her say­ing, “Don’t you want me to sing ‘Respect’?”) The song came direct­ly out of the dia­logue between her and blues gui­tarist Matt Mur­phy, play­ing her hus­band.

Lan­dis remem­bers Aretha’s re-record­ing of the extend­ed film ver­sion of the song:

So, we laid down the tracks for “Think.” She came in, a cou­ple days before she was to be shot. She lis­tened to the track once and said, “OK, but I would like to replace the piano.” We said, great, what do you want to do? She said, “I’ll play.”

So we got a piano, she sat in a record­ing stu­dio, and it was Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios’ record­ing stu­dios in Chica­go, a very old, funky stu­dio we were delight­ed to be in because it was where Chess Records did all their record­ings. We had a piano for her. She sat with her back to us, at the keys, and the piano and her voice was mic’d. She did it once, lis­tened to the play­back. She said, “I’d like to do it again.” She played piano as she sang, and the sec­ond take is the one in the movie. She was just won­der­ful. She didn’t like doing so many takes and she had issues with lip-sync­ing.

Franklin also thought of the expe­ri­ence fond­ly, writ­ing in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy that it was “some­thing I enjoyed mak­ing tremen­dous­ly.” She did final­ly get the chance to sing “Respect” in a Blues Broth­ers film, almost twen­ty years lat­er, when she reprised her role in Blues Broth­ers 2000. It’s arguable whether that movie ever should have been made. But there’s nev­er any argu­ing with Aretha Franklin’s com­mand­ing voice. See her tell off Mur­phy and Elwood Blues, again, in a clip from the belat­ed sequel below. Queen Aretha may have left us, but her lega­cy will live for­ev­er.

via Van­i­ty Fair

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aretha Franklin’s Most Pow­er­ful Ear­ly Per­for­mances: “Respect,” “Chain of Fools,” “Say a Lit­tle Prayer” & More

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd Get Bri­an Wil­son Out of Bed and Force Him to Go Surf­ing, 1976

The Night John Belushi Cart­wheeled Onstage Dur­ing a Grate­ful Dead Show & Sang “U.S. Blues” with the Band (1980)

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

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David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delightfully Performed by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

in Music | August 17th, 2018

Cov­er tunes are not trib­ute bands. The best cov­ers don’t aim to be car­bon copies. They expand our con­cept of the orig­i­nal with an unex­pect­ed ele­ment or fresh lens.

Would you believe me if I told you that the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s take on David Bowie’s “Heroes”—the sec­ond most cov­ered tune in the late rocker’s canon—is even sex­i­er than the orig­i­nal?

No?

Good.

Noth­ing ever will be.

It is, how­ev­er, a com­pelling case for the pow­er of mul­ti­ple ukule­les.

A sin­gle uke could only be dwarfed by the mem­o­ry of “Heroes”’ dri­ving, famous­ly lay­ered sound, a group effort that includ­ed pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti and gui­tarist Robert Fripp.

Bowie may have referred to the tem­po and rhythm as “plod­ding,” but co-writer Bri­an Eno’s descrip­tion of the sound as some­thing “grand and hero­ic” comes much clos­er to the mark.

Are eight ukes grand and hero­ic? Well, no. Not real­ly.

And there is some­thing unde­ni­ably humor­ous about a row of for­mal­ly attired, seat­ed, mid­dle-aged men and women, wail­ing away in uni­son with their right hands, but it’s telling that the audi­ence at New York’s mul­ti­me­dia art cabaret (le) Pois­son Rouge isn’t laugh­ing.

Admit­ted­ly, there were a few iso­lat­ed chuck­les in the begin­ning, a few notes in.

Philistines.

Prob­a­bly been dragged there on blind dates with ukulele-enthu­si­asts.

To be char­i­ta­ble, there will always be those in need of con­vinc­ing that the ukulele is a legit­i­mate instru­ment.

Who bet­ter to con­vince them than the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain, whose very name sug­gests that its mem­bers are in on the joke, and capa­ble of turn­ing it on its head?

The lyrics, as most Bowie fans can tell you, were inspired by real life, but not exact­ly Bowie’s. The tune was on sol­id foot­ing, but the words were still slow to come, when Bowie glanced out the win­dow of his Berlin record­ing stu­dio to catch a back up singer and Vis­con­ti, mar­ried at the time, enjoy­ing what they believed was a stolen kiss.

The rest, as they say is his­to­ry, kept some­what shroud­ed in mys­tery until rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly.

The Ukulele Orches­tra singers wise­ly steer clear of Bowie’s howl­ing, emo­tion­al deliv­ery, which Vis­con­ti got on tape almost before the ink on those lyrics had time to dry.

Instead, they hon­or him, and the place this song has in so many people’s hearts, with their sin­cer­i­ty.

Lis­ten to the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s take on Bowie’s Life on Mars here.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain Per­forms Stun­ning Cov­ers of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer” & More

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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See the First Ever Video of Elvis Costello Performing, Summer 1974

in Music | August 16th, 2018

The set­ting: Lon­don. In par­tic­u­lar, Step­ney, Lon­don E1. The year, a warm sum­mer in 1974, July 21 to be exact. And a very ear­ly video cam­era, only able to shoot in black and white, records the events of the E1 Fes­ti­val, a free day out for fam­i­lies, rest­less teens, and bell bot­tomed, long-haired youth enjoy­ing the sun. There’s Indi­an musi­cians, face paint­ing, car­ni­val games, jazz bands, folk danc­ing, and a “Wellie Boot Chuck­ing Com­pe­ti­tion”. You know, “the lot,” as the Eng­lish would say. But then, around 40 min­utes in, the video­g­ra­ph­er decides to shoot the pub rock band play­ing on the main stage.

If the bespec­ta­cled 19 year old looks and sounds a bit famil­iar, well luvvies, you’re not see­ing things. This is the first filmed appear­ance of a young Elvis Costel­lo, beclad in very fetch­ing dun­ga­rees and fronting his first band Flip City. This was their third ever gig, accord­ing to the Elvis Costel­lo fan site.

A full three years before Declan Mac­Manus would change his name and burst upon the scene with My Aim Is True, here he is pay­ing his dues.

Flip City was Costello’s sec­ond group, the first being a folk rock duo called Rusty that played John Prine, Jesse Win­ches­ter, and Van Mor­ri­son cov­ers in between their own songs. After Costel­lo split from Liv­er­pool and left for Lon­don, he jumped on the pub rock band­wag­on that was already formed around Nick Lowe, Dr. Feel­go­od, and Brins­ley Schwarz, mix­ing up Amer­i­cana and R’n’B cov­ers with very British orig­i­nals. They even record­ed demos a few years after this gig, which were wide­ly boot­legged until most of them appeared on bonus tracks on var­i­ous CD reis­sues. (You can lis­ten to them here.)

But back to 1974. We have no record of their full set, but the two songs on the video are from the Coast­ers’ “I’m a Hog for You” (the B‑side of “Char­lie Brown” but cov­ered by Scream­ing Lord Sutch in 1963) and from the Isley Broth­ers, “This Old Heart of Mine,” a Motown sta­ple. Despite Costello’s ency­clo­pe­di­ac knowl­edge of music, he nev­er again played these two songs live again.

It might be 20/20 hind­sight, but one can already hear the tal­ent and the con­fi­dence (or at least mock con­fi­dence) that would soon pro­pel the young man into the charts. The rest, as they say, is much bet­ter than win­ning the wellie chuck­ing con­test.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Wave Music–DEVO, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello–Gets Intro­duced to Amer­i­ca by ABC’s TV Show, 20/20 (1979)

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

Elvis Costel­lo Sings “Pen­ny Lane” for Sir Paul McCart­ney at The White House

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Bauhaus Ballet: A Dance of Geometry

in Dance | August 16th, 2018

Dur­ing the past month, the Great Big Sto­ry has released a series of videos that revis­it the design aes­thet­ic of the Bauhaus move­ment. Their first video explored the rad­i­cal build­ings designed by Bauhaus archi­tects. A sec­ond focused on the lega­cy of min­i­mal­ist Bauhaus fur­ni­ture. And now a third takes as its sub­ject Oskar Schlem­mer’s 1922 “Tri­adic Ballet”–a bal­let famous for putting geom­e­try and struc­ture into dance. The video above shows the “Bay­erisches Junior Bal­let München as they pre­pare to bring Bauhaus cen­ter stage again.” You can watch a full recre­ation of the bal­let and learn much more about Schlem­mer’s exper­i­men­tal pro­duc­tion by read­ing this post from our archive.

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:

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Bal­let in Bril­liant Col­or, the Tri­adic Bal­let, First Staged by Oskar Schlem­mer in 1922.

An Oral His­to­ry of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Inter­views (in Eng­lish) with Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe & More

Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books & Jour­nals for Free: Gropius, Klee, Kandin­sky, Moholy-Nagy & More

32,000+ Bauhaus Art Objects Made Avail­able Online by Har­vard Muse­um Web­site

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

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How Aleister Crowley, the Infamous Occultist, Led the First Attempt to Reach the Summit of K2 (1902)

in History, Nature | August 16th, 2018

It sounds like the plot of a Wern­er Her­zog film: Aleis­ter Crow­ley, heir to a brew­ing for­tune and “flam­boy­ant, bisex­u­al drug fiend with a fas­ci­na­tion for the occult,” meets “son of a well-known Jew­ish Social­ist” Oscar Eck­en­stein, “a chemist turned rail­way engi­neer.” The two strike up a friend­ship over their mutu­al pas­sion for moun­taineer­ing, and, in four years time, co-lead an expe­di­tion to reach the sum­mit of K2, the sec­ond high­est moun­tain in the world.

The descrip­tions of these char­ac­ters come from Mick Conefrey’s The Ghosts of K2: The Race for the Sum­mit of the World’s Most Dead­ly Moun­tain, a book detail­ing the many gru­el­ing attempts, many deaths, and few suc­cess­es, in over a cen­tu­ry of climbs to the mountain’s peak. Crow­ley and Eckenstein’s expe­di­tion, under­tak­en in 1902, was the first. Though unsuc­cess­ful, their effort remains a leg­endary feat of his­tor­i­cal brav­ery, or hubris, or insanity—an ascent up the face of what climber George Bell called “a sav­age moun­tain that tries to kill you.”

In an inter­view with Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, Cone­frey sums up the doomed expe­di­tion:

 In those days, nobody had a clue about what it was going to be like. They thought they would go to the Himalayas and knock off K2 in a cou­ple of days. But as the expe­di­tion pro­ceed­ed, it start­ed falling apart. Eck­en­stein, the leader, had a bad res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion. Crow­ley had malar­ia and spent most of the time in his tent with a high fever. At one point he got so deliri­ous, he start­ed wav­ing his revolver at oth­er mem­bers of the team. 

There are many oth­er Her­zo­gian touch­es. In his book Fall­en Giants, Mau­rice Isser­man describes the team—also con­sist­ing of a novice Eng­lish­man, a Swiss doc­tor, and two expe­ri­enced Aus­tri­an climbers—as “unrea­son­ably bur­dened by three tons of lug­gage.” Some of that unnec­es­sary bur­den came from a “sev­er­al-vol­ume library” Crow­ley “intend­ed to haul onto the glac­i­er.” The oth­ers “object­ed to the super­flu­ous weight, but Crow­ley had read enough Joseph Con­rad to know what hap­pened to those who let go of their hold on civ­i­liza­tion in the wild.” The library stayed, and a train of 200 porters hauled the team’s lug­gage to Bal­toro Glac­i­er. (See Crow­ley in a pho­to from the expe­di­tion above, pre­sum­ably strick­en with malar­ia.)

Pri­or to set­ting off for K2 Eck­en­stein and Crow­ley had climbed vol­ca­noes in Mex­i­co, then the lat­ter had trav­eled to San Fran­cis­co, Hawaii, Japan, Sri Lan­ka, and India—along the way hav­ing affairs, learn­ing med­i­ta­tion, and devel­op­ing a “life­long devo­tion to Shi­va, the Hin­du god of destruc­tion.” While it takes a cer­tain rare per­son­al­i­ty to sub­ject them­selves to the rig­ors of scal­ing a moun­tain almost five miles high, Crowley—notorious for his “mag­ick,” sex­u­al adven­tures, drug use, lewd poet­ry, and found­ing of a reli­gious order—is arguably the most out-there per­son­al­i­ty in the his­to­ry of a very extreme sport.

But moun­taineer­ing “is not a nor­mal pur­suit,” writes Scot­tish climber Robin Camp­bell, “and we should not be too sur­prised to find its adepts show­ing odd behav­ior in oth­er spheres of life.” Like all devo­tees of stren­u­ous, death-defy­ing pur­suits, Crow­ley “want­ed extreme expe­ri­ences,” says Cone­frey, “where he pushed him­self to the lim­it.” It just so hap­pened that he want­ed to push far beyond the nat­ur­al and human worlds. After the failed K2 attempt, he would only make one more dar­ing expe­di­tion with Eck­en­stein, in 1905, a climb up the Himalayan moun­tain of Kangchen­jun­ga, the third high­est moun­tain in the world.

On the trip, Crow­ley, the leader, report­ed­ly treat­ed the local porters with bru­tal arro­gance, and when three of them were killed along with one of the expe­di­tion mem­bers, he refused to help, writ­ing to a Dar­jeel­ing news­pa­per, “a moun­tain ‘acci­dent’ of this sort is one of the things for which I have no sym­pa­thy what­ev­er.” He left the fol­low­ing day and gave up moun­taineer­ing, devot­ing the rest of his life to his occult inter­ests and the exploits that earned him the tabloid rep­u­ta­tion as “the wickedest man in the world.”

K2 was final­ly con­quered by two Ital­ian climbers in 1954, who reached the sum­mit, frost­bit­ten and half-mad, as Joan­na Kaven­na puts it in a review of Cone­frey’s spell­bind­ing book, “in a moment of sub­lime anti­cli­max.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Paint­ings of the Occult Magi­cian, Writer & Moun­taineer, Aleis­ter Crow­ley

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

Aleis­ter Crow­ley & William But­ler Yeats Get into an Occult Bat­tle, Pit­ting White Mag­ic Against Black Mag­ic (1900)

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

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How David Lynch Got Creative Inspiration? By Drinking a Milkshake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Single Day, for Seven Straight Years

in Film | August 16th, 2018

“It is no secret that David Lynch, the writer-direc­tor-com­pos­er-painter, has an unusu­al rela­tion­ship with Bob’s Big Boy,” begins a 1999 Los Ange­les Times arti­cle on the auteur of films like Eraser­head and Blue Vel­vet. “For sev­en years in the 1980s he ate lunch there every day, order­ing cup after cup of over-sweet­ened cof­fee and a sin­gle choco­late milk­shake while scrib­bling notes on Bob’s lit­tle square nap­kins.” He took pains, notes reporter Amy Wal­lace, “to arrive at Bob’s at pre­cise­ly 2:30 p.m. each day. The rea­son: It increased the odds that he would encounter per­fec­tion.”

“If you go ear­li­er, at lunchtime, they’re mak­ing a lot of choco­late milk­shakes. The mix­ture has to cool in a machine, but if it does­n’t sit in there long enough — when they’re serv­ing a lot of them — it’s run­ny,” Wal­lace quotes Lynch as say­ing. “At 2:30, the milk­shake mix­ture has­n’t been sit­ting there too long, but you’ve got a chance for it to be just great.”

For his pains, he received “only three per­fect milk­shakes out of more than 2,500. But that was­n’t the point. For Lynch, it was enough to know he had set the stage for excel­lence to occur,” believ­ing that “whether with milk­shakes or movies,” one “must make room for inspi­ra­tion to strike — to lay the prop­er ground­work for great­ness to take hold.”

When the 1980s British tele­vi­sion series The Incred­i­bly Strange Film Show devot­ed an episode to Lynch, it nat­u­ral­ly went to Los Ange­les not just to inter­view him but to shoot some footage at Bob’s, the sacred space itself. In the clip at the top of the post, you can see host Jonathan Ross, seat­ed in one of the retro din­er’s booths and Lynchi­an­ly dressed in a white shirt but­toned all the way up, describe how, after an “all-Amer­i­can lunch,” the direc­tor would embark on “marathon cof­fee-drink­ing ses­sions. Fueled by the caf­feine and his exces­sive sug­ar intake, he’d then spend the after­noon writ­ing down ideas for movies on the nap­kins help­ful­ly pro­vid­ed by Bob.”

In the inter­view that fol­lows, Lynch him­self con­firms all this. “I was into Bob’s halfway through Eraser­head,” he says, estab­lish­ing the chronol­o­gy. “The end of Dune” — his trau­mat­ic, failed expe­ri­ence with big-bud­get stu­dio pro­duc­tion — “was pret­ty much the end of Bob’s.” Even Lynch’s daugh­ter Jen­nifer, for a time her father’s Bob’s-going com­pan­ion, rem­i­nisces about “the draw­ing on nap­kins” and the “tons of cof­fee with lots of sug­ar.” In this late-80s inter­view, Lynch describes him­self as “heav­i­ly into sug­ar. I call it ‘gran­u­lat­ed hap­pi­ness.’ It’s just a great help, a friend.”

Lynch’s rep­u­ta­tion for drink­ing Bob’s milk­shakes long out­last­ed his actu­al habit. Char­lie Rose makes a point of ask­ing about it in the clip in the mid­dle of the post, prompt­ing Lynch to explain the rea­son­ing behind his dai­ly trips — both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly, since when Rose asks if all the sug­ar got him high, Lynch admits that “it is like a drug, I sup­pose, because it revs you up.” Though by all accounts still a prodi­gious drinker of cof­fee and smok­er of cig­a­rettes, Lynch has grown more health-con­scious in recent years, a shift that may well have begun when, for rea­sons of his own, he went behind his beloved Bob’s and climbed into its dump­ster. “I found one of these car­tons that milk­shakes came from,” says Lynch in the more recent inter­view clip above. “Every ingre­di­ent end­ed in ‑zene or ‑ate. There was noth­ing nat­ur­al any­where near that car­ton.”

Even though that dis­cov­ery put an end to Lynch’s 2:30 appear­ances, all his cof­fee-soaked, sug­ar-sat­u­rat­ed after­noons spent at Bob’s had already filled him with ideas. One day, for exam­ple, “I saw a man come in. He came to the counter, and that’s all I remem­ber of this man, but from see­ing him came a feel­ing, and that’s where Frank Booth came from.” Blue Vel­vet’s psy­chot­ic, gas-huff­ing, Den­nis Hop­per-por­trayed vil­lain aside, Lynch fans who make their own pil­grim­age to Bob’s Big Boy even today will under­stand how well its sen­si­bil­i­ty may have res­onat­ed with the film­mak­er’s obvi­ous attrac­tion to mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­cana. But as we’ve learned from his life as well as his work, it’s best not to go around back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

The Incred­i­bly Strange Film Show: Revis­it 1980s Doc­u­men­taries on David Lynch, John Waters, Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky & Oth­er Film­mak­ers

An Ani­mat­ed David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Boosts Our Cre­ativ­i­ty (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Med­i­tat­ing)

Hear David Lynch Read from His New Mem­oir Room to Dream, and Browse His New Online T‑Shirt Store

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What English Would Sound Like If It Was Pronounced Phonetically

in English Language | August 15th, 2018

The Eng­lish lan­guage presents itself to stu­dents and non-native speak­ers as an almost cru­el­ly capri­cious enti­ty, its irreg­u­lar­i­ties of spelling and con­ju­ga­tion impos­si­ble to explain with­out an advanced degree. It wasn’t until grad­u­ate school that I came to under­stand how spellings like “rough” and “knight” sur­vived sev­er­al hun­dreds of years of lin­guis­tic change, and pre­served ves­tiges of pho­net­ic pro­nun­ci­a­tions that had long since dis­ap­peared in his­toric upheavals like the Great Vow­el Shift and sub­se­quent spelling wars.

The impor­ta­tion of huge num­bers of loan words from oth­er lan­guages, and expor­ta­tion of Eng­lish to the world, has made it a poly­glot tongue that con­tains a mul­ti­tude of spellings and pro­nun­ci­a­tions, to the con­ster­na­tion of every­one. Unlike French, which has a cen­tral­ized body that adju­di­cates lan­guage change, Eng­lish grows and evolves wild­ly. Dic­tio­nar­ies and lin­guis­tics depart­ments strug­gle to keep up.

One almost wants to apol­o­gize to non-native speak­ers for the fol­low­ing sen­tence: “Though I coughed rough­ly and hic­coughed through­out the lec­ture, I still thought I could plough through the rest of it.” As Aaron Alon, nar­ra­tor of the video above, points out, the “incred­i­ble incon­sis­ten­cy” of words with “ough” in them “can make Eng­lish incred­i­bly hard to mas­ter.” What if a gov­ern­ing body of Eng­lish lan­guage schol­ars, like the Académie française, came togeth­er to pre­scribe a pho­net­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent pro­nun­ci­a­tion?

For one thing, they would have to deal with the diver­si­ty of vow­el sounds—like the “a” in “father,” “ape,” and “apple.” As the video pro­ceeds, we hear these reg­u­lar­ized in the narrator’s speech. Stu­dents of the lan­guage’s his­to­ry might imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize some­thing like the sound of Shake­speare’s Ear­ly Mod­ern Eng­lish, which did have a more pho­net­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Soon the sounds of Romance languages—French, Span­ish, Ital­ian, Romanian—and the accents speak­ers of those lan­guages bring to Eng­lish, start to emerge.

By the time Alon has reg­u­lar­ized the vow­el sounds, and launched into a recita­tion of Hamlet’s famous solil­o­quy, his pro­nun­ci­a­tion begins to sound like Chaucer’s Mid­dle Eng­lish, which you can hear pro­nounced above in a read­ing of The Can­ter­bury Tales. If we hear the accent this way, the exer­cise shows that Eng­lish once made far more pho­net­ic sense (and had a more pleas­ing musi­cal lilt) than it does today. Alter­nate­ly, we may hear, as Jason Kot­tke does, an accent that “sounds a lit­tle like Wern­er Her­zog doing an impres­sion of some­one from Wales doing an impres­sion of an Ital­ian who doesn’t speak Eng­lish that well.” Which, he writes, “makes sense because that’s pret­ty much how the lan­guage came togeth­er in the first place!” More or less….

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Where Did the Eng­lish Lan­guage Come From?: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

What Shakespeare’s Eng­lish Sound­ed Like, and How We Know It

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

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