Watch Marc Martel, Who Supplied Vocals for the Award-Winning Queen Film, Sing Just Like Freddie Mercury: “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “We Are The Champions” & More

Under­stand­ably, giv­en a moviego­ing pub­lic seem­ing­ly starved for real­i­ty, all of the biggest win­ners at this year’s Acad­e­my Awards were based on true events. And near­ly all of them have gen­er­at­ed huge con­tro­ver­sies for the lib­er­ties they took with those true sto­ries. While some of the crit­i­cism can sound cen­so­ri­ous, none of it is about cen­sor­ship, but about the larg­er social ques­tion of how much truth we should sac­ri­fice for the sake of com­merce and enter­tain­ment, two human endeav­ors with which edu­ca­tion can­not com­pete.

One of those big Oscar con­tenders, the Fred­die Mer­cury biopic Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, strays from the facts in ways some have even deemed “harm­ful.” But in one respect, at least—and per­haps the most impor­tant giv­en its subject—it is faith­ful.

The film gets the music right, in part by sync­ing best actor-win­ner Rami Malek’s onstage per­for­mances as Mer­cury with Mercury’s actu­al voice, and some­times with the voice of Marc Mar­tel, “a vocal dop­pel­gänger for the Queen front­man,” as Gavin Edwards writes at The New York Times, with a “promi­nent but invis­i­ble role in Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.”

Audi­ences will not know when it’s Mer­cury or Mar­tel, though the singer has received “fleet­ing ‘addi­tion­al vocals’ billing” in the film. A nondis­clo­sure agree­ment keeps Mar­tel from telling—and he did­n’t know until the film pre­miered which scenes would fea­ture his voice. But the fact that audi­ences will like­ly nev­er tell the dif­fer­ence is remark­able. Even Queen drum­mer Roger Tay­lor told Mar­tel, “When I lis­ten to you sing it’s like Fred­die walked into the room.” This was the moment, the singer says, when he embraced the like­ness, which he hadn’t thought very much of in the past. “It’s dif­fer­ent from what I envi­sioned doing as a young musi­cian.”

Martel’s oth­er gig was as the lead singer of a Chris­t­ian rock band called Down­here (he says noth­ing about how his par­tic­u­lar sect views Mer­cury’s sex­u­al­i­ty). He began per­form­ing Queen cov­ers dur­ing a hia­tus and has since appeared on Amer­i­can Idol, released an album of Queen cov­ers, and is now tour­ing in a trib­ute show, “The Ulti­mate Queen Cel­e­bra­tion.” Mar­tel is not a Mer­cury clone, nor has he ever attempt­ed to be. He can “item­ize the sub­tle dif­fer­ences” between his voice and Freddie’s, Edwards writes:

I’m not British, so I don’t usu­al­ly sing with an accent. I don’t have extra teeth like he did, so my Ss come out nor­mal­ly — his were very pierc­ing. But even if I don’t try to sing like Fred­die Mer­cury, peo­ple still hear him in my voice, no mat­ter what I do. I have this weird unique thing where I can sound like him, so why wouldn’t I?

It has become a high­ly mar­ketable skill that’s “pay­ing the bills right now,” as his man­ag­er put it, though Mar­tel is eager to get back to his own song­writ­ing. But even if he wasn’t cel­e­brat­ed at the Oscars, he’s proud of his con­tri­bu­tion to the film, and to the lives of Queen fans. “It brings peo­ple so much joy and nos­tal­gia,” Mar­tel says, “and fre­quent­ly I see peo­ple tear­ing up in the front row.” Whether or not you are a fan of Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the movie, you’ll be bowled over by the uncan­ny fideli­ty of Martel’s Mer­cury ren­di­tions (his fea­tures even resem­ble Mer­cury’s when he starts singing). Here, see Mar­tel sing “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” at the top, “We Are the Cham­pi­ons,” fur­ther up, and, above, a stun­ning ren­di­tion of “Love of My Life.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody”: Take a Deep Dive Into the Icon­ic Song with Queen’s 2002 Mini Doc­u­men­tary

What Made Fred­die Mer­cury the Great­est Vocal­ist in Rock His­to­ry? The Secrets Revealed in a Short Video Essay

Hear Fred­die Mercury’s Vocals Soar in the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for “Some­body to Love”

Hear Fred­die Mer­cury & Queen’s Iso­lat­ed Vocals on Their Endur­ing Clas­sic Song, “We Are The Cham­pi­ons”

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

The New Normal: Spike Jonze Creates a Very Short Film About America’s Complex History with Cannabis

In two short min­utes, direc­tor Spike Jonze takes you from the hemp farms of George Wash­ing­ton to Reefer Mad­ness and Amer­i­ca’s long, cost­ly pro­hi­bi­tion against cannabis–a pro­hi­bi­tion that’s now get­ting dis­man­tled state by state. Nar­rat­ed by actor Jesse Williams, the short was made for Med­Men, an Amer­i­can pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny that pro­vides “a wide range of … high qual­i­ty cannabis prod­ucts.” Wel­come to the new nor­mal.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Film Haunt­ing­ly Ani­mates Paris’ Famed Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Book­store

Reefer Mad­ness, 1936’s Most Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Hilar­i­ous “Anti-Drug” Exploita­tion Film, Free Online

Carl Sagan on the Virtues of Mar­i­jua­na (1969)

The Life & Work of Edvard Munch, Explored by Patti Smith and Charlotte Gainsbourg

Look beyond the high­ly dis­tressed gen­der­less fig­ure in the fore­ground of The Scream, one of the most famous paint­ing in exis­tence, and you’ll find plen­ty of women. While its painter Edvard Munch was a man, as his name might sug­gest, the rest of his body of work fea­tured not a few female bod­ies: 1895’s Woman in Three Stages, 1896’s Young Woman on the Beach, and in 1907’s The Sick Child, a high­ly per­son­al work by an artist whose moth­er and sis­ter both died of tuber­cu­lo­sis. Or take 1895’s Madon­na: “How­ev­er dra­mat­i­cal­ly effec­tive Munch’s use of col­or was,” writes Michael Spens of its black-print­ed ver­sion, “this option for black to express a mood of despair per­sist­ed, and worked with many suc­cess­ful results.”

It was sig­nif­i­cant, Spens adds, that Munch’s “depres­sive ten­den­cy was fre­quent­ly induced by women, or by Munch’s per­son­al lack of suc­cess in love there­by, as reflect­ed in his own affairs.” The painter may have had plen­ty of “trou­ble with women” in life, as the title of Spens’ essay puts it, and even now, 75 years after his death, he may find him­self occa­sion­al­ly charged with pos­sess­ing an objec­ti­fy­ing male gaze.

But that hard­ly stops artis­ti­cal­ly pow­er­ful women from admir­ing and even cham­pi­oning his work: singer-song­writer, poet, and visu­al artist Pat­ti Smith and actress and singer Char­lotte Gains­bourg, for instance, both appear in the short Now­ness doc­u­men­tary above to “delve into the pro­to-exis­ten­tial­ist ideas and psy­cho­log­i­cal themes” of that work at “Between the Clock and the Bed,” a Munch exhi­bi­tion that toured a few years ago.

Walk­ing through the gallery, Smith says she’s been “look­ing at Munch paint­ings for maybe 60 years, since I was very young.” Look­ing at 1913–14’s Weep­ing Nude, anoth­er of Munch’s women, Gains­bourg com­ments that “the choice of col­ors is incred­i­ble, because they’re quite ugly, but the whole thing is incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful.” To describe the beau­ty of 1895’s Death in the Sick­room, Smith explains that the paint­ing “express­es not the death as much as the effect the death has on oth­ers.” But for all he under­stood about oth­ers, Munch remained a man iso­lat­ed, “con­vinced that in order to be able to ful­ly express your­self artis­ti­cal­ly you have to be alone,” in the words of Munch Muse­um art his­to­ri­an Niki­ta Math­ias. “You have to be an out­sider, you need a cer­tain dis­tance to soci­ety in order to be able to describe what’s going on there” — a sen­ti­ment that can’t but res­onate with Smith, Gains­bourg, and oth­er cre­ators so ful­ly them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore 7,600 Works of Art by Edvard Munch: They’re Now Dig­i­tized and Free Online

30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Oth­er Artists Put Online by Norway’s Nation­al Muse­um of Art

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ing “The Scream” Ani­mat­ed to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

The Edvard Munch Scream Action Fig­ure

Pat­ti Smith, The God­moth­er of Punk, Is Now Putting Her Pic­tures on Insta­gram

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

The Lifespan of Ancient Civilizations Detailed in a Handy Infographic: Are We Headed Towards Our Own Collapse?

Any­one liv­ing in the West today sure­ly feels they’ve heard quite enough about its decline. (Unless, of course, they’re fans of 1980s punk rock.) Giv­en how long civ­i­liza­tions usu­al­ly out­live indi­vid­u­als, how can an indi­vid­ual grasp the prospects for longevi­ty of the civ­i­liza­tion in which they find them­selves? His­to­ry, a dis­ci­pline which has long had every­thing to do with chart­ing the rise and fall of set­tle­ments, cul­tures, and empires, can pro­vide the con­text nec­es­sary for under­stand­ing, but more of it has been writ­ten than even a human with the lifes­pan of a civ­i­liza­tion can digest. Come to pro­vide some clar­i­ty is Luke Kemp of Cam­bridge’s Cen­tre for the Study of Exis­ten­tial Risk, cre­ator of the info­graph­ic above. View it here in a larg­er for­mat, cour­tesy of the BBC.

“There is no strict def­i­n­i­tion of civil­i­sa­tion,” Kemp admits, “nor an over­ar­ch­ing data­base of their births and deaths.” This forced him to come up with his own def­i­n­i­tion for this info­graph­ic: “as a soci­ety with agri­cul­ture, mul­ti­ple cities, mil­i­tary dom­i­nance in its geo­graph­i­cal region and a con­tin­u­ous polit­i­cal struc­ture. Giv­en this def­i­n­i­tion, all empires are civil­i­sa­tions, but not all civil­i­sa­tions are empires.”

What comes at the end of vir­tu­al­ly all of them, he calls a col­lapse: “a rapid and endur­ing loss of pop­u­la­tion, iden­ti­ty and socio-eco­nom­ic com­plex­i­ty. Pub­lic ser­vices crum­ble and dis­or­der ensues as gov­ern­ment los­es con­trol of its monop­oly on vio­lence.”

When civ­i­liza­tions have col­lapsed, as they’ve done with fair fre­quen­cy over the past five mil­len­nia, “some recov­ered or trans­formed, such as the Chi­nese and Egypt­ian. Oth­er col­laps­es were per­ma­nent, as was the case of East­er Island. Some­times the cities at the epi­cen­tre of col­lapse are revived, as was the case with Rome. In oth­er cas­es, such as the Mayan ruins, they are left aban­doned as a mau­soleum for future tourists.” The Roman Empire, “the vic­tim of many ills includ­ing over­ex­pan­sion, cli­mat­ic change, envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion and poor lead­er­ship” before its sack­ing by the Visig­oths in the year 410 and the Van­dals in 455, has come up espe­cial­ly often in cur­rent dis­cus­sions about the fate of the Amer­i­ca-led West­ern — or even glob­al — order.

The Roman Empire, as we can see on Kem­p’s info­graph­ic, last­ed 525 years: much longer than the Akka­di­an Empire, which last­ed 187 years, but less than half as long as the African Aksum­ite Empire, which last­ed 1100. “We may be more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced now,” Kemp writes,” but this gives lit­tle ground to believe that we are immune to the threats that undid our ances­tors. Our new­found tech­no­log­i­cal abil­i­ties even bring new, unprece­dent­ed chal­lenges to the mix. ” Kemp names among the pos­si­ble fac­tors in the next big col­lapse cli­mate change, envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, inequal­i­ty and oli­garchy, as well as plain ran­dom­ness and bad luck. Giv­en the inevitabil­i­ty of col­lapse, per­haps we can only hope that our civ­i­liza­tion is ulti­mate­ly suc­ceed­ed by a supe­ri­or one. But then, Kemp adds, ” “We will only march into col­lapse if we advance blind­ly. We are only doomed if we are unwill­ing to lis­ten to the past.”

via the BBC

Relat­ed Con­tent:

M.I.T. Com­put­er Pro­gram Alarm­ing­ly Pre­dicts in 1973 That Civ­i­liza­tion Will End by 2040

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

The Rise & Fall of the Romans: Every Year Shown in a Time­lapse Map Ani­ma­tion (753 BC ‑1479 AD)

The West­ern Tra­di­tion by Eugen Weber: 52 Video Lec­tures

Stew­art Brand’s List of 76 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion

The His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion Mapped in 13 Min­utes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

To Save Civilization, the Rich Need to Pay Their Taxes: Historian Rutger Bregman Speaks Truth to Power at Davos and to Fox’s Tucker Carlson

Cer­tain econ­o­mists may have down­grad­ed the labor the­o­ry of val­ue, but most of us can agree on the basic moral intu­ition that no one per­son is worth mil­lions, even bil­lions, more than almost every­one else on the plan­et. Yet we live in a soci­ety that allows indi­vid­u­als to hoard mil­lions and bil­lions of dol­lars in cash, assets, and cap­i­tal gains, with­out even the pre­sump­tion that they demon­strate why they should have it–especially to the degree that the top 1% now holds more wealth than 90% in the U.S.

What social con­tract allows for this sit­u­a­tion? I’m not per­son­al­ly inter­est­ed in the answer from econ­o­mists, though I imag­ine there are many excel­lent­ly accred­it­ed pro­po­nents. The dom­i­nant assump­tions in eco­nom­ics come from fan­tasies like ceteris paribus, “all else being equal,” and the con­cept of “exter­nal­i­ties.” World his­tor­i­cal inequal­i­ty, polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, and eco­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion do not seem to pose seri­ous prob­lems for most main­stream eco­nom­ic think­ing. But what do his­to­ri­ans say? This is, after all, a his­tor­i­cal ques­tion.

Many sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions have obtained in the past. Some­times they have result­ed in bloody rev­o­lu­tions, some­times sack­ing and pil­lag­ing, some­times redis­tri­b­u­tion schemes. Noblesse oblige: land grants, endow­ments, hos­pi­tals, muse­ums, uni­ver­si­ties… these have not only eased the con­sciences of the rich but have stood out as appeas­ing acts of pub­lic gen­eros­i­ty. But the only thing that has real­ly mit­i­gat­ed the con­di­tions for soci­etal col­lapse under cap­i­tal­ism?

Accord­ing to Dutch his­to­ri­an and writer Rut­ger Breg­man, it’s high tax­es on high incomes and estates. It just so hap­pened, how­ev­er, at this year’s Davos World Eco­nom­ic Forum, as Breg­man lament­ed in a Davos pan­el dis­cus­sion, tax­es were the one thing bil­lion­aires would not dis­cuss. This was so, he observes, at a con­fer­ence that fea­tures Sir David Atten­bor­ough “talk­ing about how we’re wreck­ing the plan­et.”

I mean, I hear peo­ple talk­ing the lan­guage of par­tic­i­pa­tion and jus­tice and equal­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, but then, I mean, almost no one rais­es the real issue of tax avoid­ance, right? And of the rich are just not pay­ing their fair share. I mean, it feels like I’m at a firefighter’s con­fer­ence and no one’s allowed to speak about water.

Pic­tur­ing fire­fight­ers hoard­ing water and refus­ing to share it while the plan­et is going up in flames is a sin­is­ter image, but maybe the inten­tions are beside the point. Even where tax rates are high(ish), gov­ern­ments go out of their way to allow com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als to avoid pay­ing them. Sure­ly, many peo­ple believe this is nec­es­sary to cre­ate jobs? So what if those jobs lack secu­ri­ty, ben­e­fits, or a liv­ing wage?

Breg­man pulls back from the inflam­ma­to­ry metaphor to con­cede that one pan­el did address the issue. He was one of fif­teen par­tic­i­pants. We have to “stop talk­ing about phil­an­thropy,” he says, “and start talk­ing about tax­es,” just like Amer­i­cans did in the sup­pos­ed­ly hal­cy­on days of the 1950s, when under Repub­li­can pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisen­how­er the top mar­gin­al tax rate was 91%. He says this to peo­ple like Michael Dell, who once asked Breg­man for an exam­ple of a 70% tax rate ever work­ing.

Oxfam’s exec­u­tive direc­tor Win­nie Byany­i­ma sub­stan­ti­ates his polemic, not­ing glob­al­ly “we have a tax sys­tem that leaks so much, that $170 bil­lion” annu­al­ly ends up in tax havens. This is wealth that is extract­ed from the planet’s resources, from gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies and the labor hours and health of gross­ly under­paid work­ers. Then it is dis­ap­peared. If you’ve seen this video, you’ve seen the charges of “one-sid­ed­ness” lobbed by for­mer Yahoo CFO Ken Gold­man from the audi­ence. Byany­i­ma’s response rebuts all of his talk­ing points. She deserves her own cheer­lead­ing video edit.

Breg­man took the same con­fronta­tion­al stance in an unaired inter­view with Fox’s Tuck­er Carl­son. After Carl­son seemed to agree with him, the his­to­ri­an bris­tled and point­ed out that as “a mil­lion­aire fund­ed by bil­lion­aires,” Carl­son has faith­ful­ly rep­re­sent­ed and com­mu­ni­cat­ed the inter­ests of his employ­ers for decades, whether that’s the bru­tal scape­goat­ing of immi­grants or the defense of unlim­it­ed prof­i­teer­ing and huge tax cuts for the wealthy (and tax rais­es for every­one else). The host ends the inter­view sput­ter­ing insults and obscen­i­ties and sneers “I was will­ing to give you a hear­ing.” The prob­lem requires more than a con­de­scend­ing pat on the head, Breg­man argues.

His solu­tion to mas­sive inequal­i­ty and unrest, uni­ver­sal basic income, is one that, like high mar­gin­al tax rates, once appealed to Repub­li­cans. The pro­pos­al has a long his­to­ry, many seri­ous detrac­tors, and it’s also polit­i­cal­ly ignored. You can hear Bregman’s argu­ment for it above, and against Mar­garet Thatcher’s ruth­less­ly ahis­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of pover­ty as a “per­son­al­i­ty defect.” If you think UBI goes too far, or not near­ly far enough, maybe you’d be inter­est­ed in oth­er ideas, like a 15-hour work­week and open bor­ders, part of the “ide­al world” Breg­man says is pos­si­ble in his book Utopia for Real­ists. You can down­load it as a free audio­book if you sign up for Audi­ble’s free tri­al pro­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

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

Discover the KattenKabinet: Amsterdam’s Museum Devoted to Works of Art Featuring Cats

Image by T_Marjorie, via Flickr Com­mons

There’s been quite a bit of bark­ing in the media late­ly to her­ald the reopen­ing of the Amer­i­can Ken­nel Club Muse­um of the Dog, relo­cat­ing from St. Louis to New York City’s Park Avenue.

What’s a cat per­son to do?

Per­haps decom­press with­in Amsterdam’s Kat­tenK­abi­net

In con­trast to the Muse­um of the Dog’s glitzy, glass-front­ed HQ, the Cat Cab­i­net main­tains a fair­ly low pro­file inside a 17th-cen­tu­ry canal house. (Sev­er­al vis­i­tors have not­ed in their Trip Advi­sor reviews that the 3‑room museum’s grand envi­rons help jus­ti­fy the €7  admis­sion.)

The Muse­um of the Dog’s high­ly tot­ed “dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences”  and redesigned atri­um sug­gest a cer­tain eager­ness to estab­lish itself as a major 21st-cen­tu­ry insti­tu­tion.

The Kat­tenK­abi­net is more of a stealth oper­a­tion, cre­at­ed as an homage to one J.P. Mor­gan, a dear­ly depart­ed gin­ger tom, who lived upstairs with his own­er.

The inau­gur­al col­lec­tion took shape around presents the for­mi­da­ble Mor­gan received dur­ing his 17 years on earth—paintings, a bronze cat stat­ue, and a fac­sim­i­le of a dol­lar bill fea­tur­ing his like­ness and the mot­to, “We Trust No Dog.”

In spir­it, the Kabi­net hews close­ly to America’s eclec­tic (and fast dis­ap­pear­ing) road­side muse­ums.

No apps, no inter­ac­tive kiosks, a stolid­ly old fash­ioned approach when it comes to dis­play…

It does have a gift shop, where one can pur­chase logo t‑shirts fea­tur­ing an extreme­ly cat-like spec­i­men, viewed from the rear, tail aloft.

While the KattenKabinet’s hold­ings include some mar­quee names—Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Rembrandt—there’s some­thing com­pelling about the collection’s less well known artists, many of whom embraced the museum’s pet sub­ject again and again.

Muse­um founder Bob Mei­jer rewards vir­tu­al vis­i­tors with some juicy bio­graph­i­cal tid­bits about his artists, cat-relat­ed and oth­er­wise. Take, for exam­ple, Leonor Fini, whose Ubu glow­ers below:

Fini had a three-way rela­tion­ship with the Ital­ian diplo­mat-cum-artist Stanis­lao LeP­ri, who, like Fini, was dif­fi­cult to pin into a cer­tain style, and the Pol­ish lit­er­ary writer Con­stan­tin Jelen­s­ki. The two men were not, how­ev­er, her only house­mates: Fini had dozens of Per­sian cats around her. Indoors you rarely see a pho­to of her with­out a cat in her arms. In the Cat Cab­i­net you can find many of her works, from cheer­ful­ly col­ored cats to high­ly detailed por­traits of cats. The women depict­ed in the paint­ings have that icon­ic mys­tique char­ac­ter­is­tic of Fini’s work.

Tsug­uharu Fou­ji­ta, whose work is a sta­ple of the muse­um, is anoth­er cat-lov­ing-artist-turned-art-him­self, by virtue of Dora Kalmus’ 1927 por­trait, above.

Hil­do Krop is well rep­re­sent­ed through­out Ams­ter­dam, his sculp­tures adorn­ing bridges and build­ings. Two Cats Mak­ing Love, on view at the Kabi­net, is, Mei­jer com­ments,” clear­ly one of his small­er projects and prob­a­bly falls into the cat­e­go­ry of “free work.” One of his most famous works, and of a dif­fer­ent order of mag­ni­tude, is the Berlage mon­u­ment on Vic­to­rieplein in Ams­ter­dam.”

In addi­tion to fine art, the Kabi­net show­cas­es oth­er feline appearances—in vin­tage adver­tis­ing, Tadaa­ki Nar­i­ta’s Lucky cat pin­ball machine, and in the per­son, er, form of 5 live spec­i­mens who have the run of the place.

Those vis­it­ing in the flesh can cat around to some of Amsterdam’s oth­er feline-themed attrac­tions, includ­ing two cat cafes, a cat-cen­tric bou­tique, and the float­ing shel­ter, De Poezen­boot.

And let’s not for­get the oth­er cat muse­ums ‘round the globe, from Min­sk and Malaysia to Syl­va, North Carolina’s Amer­i­can Muse­um of the House Cat.

Begin your explo­ration of the col­lec­tion here.

via the BBC

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

Edward Gorey Talks About His Love Cats & More in the Ani­mat­ed Series, “Goreytelling”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this March. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.E

Hear a Six-Hour Mix Tape of Hunter S. Thompson’s Favorite Music & the Songs Name-Checked in His Gonzo Journalism

Of all the musi­cal moments in Hunter S. Thomp­son’s for­mi­da­ble cor­pus of “gonzo jour­nal­ism,” which one comes most read­i­ly to mind? I would elect the scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when Thomp­son’s alter-ego Raoul Duke finds his attor­ney “Dr. Gonzo” in the bath­tub, “sub­merged in green water — the oily prod­uct of some Japan­ese bath salts he’d picked up in the hotel gift shop, along with a new AM/FM radio plugged into the elec­tric razor sock­et. Top vol­ume. Some gib­ber­ish by a thing called ‘Three Dog Night,’ about a frog named Jere­mi­ah who want­ed ‘Joy to the World.’ First Lennon, now this, I thought. Next we’ll have Glenn Camp­bell scream­ing ‘Where Have All the Flow­ers Gone?’ ”

But Dr. Gonzo, his state even more altered than usu­al, real­ly wants to hear only one song: Jef­fer­son Air­plane’s “White Rab­bit.” He wants “a ris­ing sound,” and what’s more, he demands that “when it comes to that fan­tas­tic note where the rab­bit bites its own head off,” Duke throw the radio in the tub with him.

Duke refus­es, explain­ing that “it would blast you right through the wall — stone-dead in ten sec­onds.” Yet Dr. Gonzo, who insists he just wants to get “high­er,” will have none of it, forc­ing Duke to engage in trick­ery that takes to a new depth the book’s already-deep lev­el of crazi­ness. Such, at the time, was the pow­er of not just drugs but of the even more mind-alter­ing prod­uct known as music.

Noth­ing evokes a peri­od of recent his­to­ry more vivid­ly than its songs, espe­cial­ly in the case of the 1960s and ear­ly 1970s that Thomp­son’s prose cap­tured with such improb­a­ble elo­quence. Now, thanks to Lon­don’s NTS Radio (they of the spir­i­tu­al jazz and Haru­ki Muraka­mi mix­es), you can spend a good six hours in that Thomp­son­ian peri­od when­ev­er you like by stream­ing their Hunter S. Thomp­son Day, con­sist­ing of two three-hour mix­es com­posed by Edu Vil­lar­roel, cre­ator of the Spo­ti­fy playlist “Gonzo Tapes: Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die!” Both that playlist and these mix­es fea­ture many of the 60s names you might expect: not just Jef­fer­son Air­plane but Buf­fa­lo Spring­field, Jimi Hen­drix, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Cream, Cap­tain Beef­heart, and many more besides.

Those artists appear on one par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant source for these mix­es, Thomp­son’s list of the ten best albums of the 60s. But Hunter S. Thomp­son Day also offers deep­er cuts of Thomp­so­ni­ana as well, includ­ing pieces of Ter­ry Gilliam’s 1998 film adap­ta­tion of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as well as clips from oth­er media in which the real Thomp­son appeared, in ful­ly gonzo char­ac­ter as always. Vil­lar­roel describes these mix­es as “best served with a cou­ple tabs of sun­shine acid, tall glass of Wild Turkey with ice and Mez­cal on the side,” but you may well derive a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence from lis­ten­ing while par­tak­ing of anoth­er pow­er­ful sub­stance: Thomp­son’s writ­ing, still so often imi­tat­ed with­out ever repli­cat­ing its effect, which you can get start­ed read­ing here on Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 10 Best Albums of the 1960s as Select­ed by Hunter S. Thomp­son

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Pulled Him­self Out of a Deep, Last­ing Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Lis­tened to the Music of John Prine

Hunter S. Thomp­son Remem­bers Jim­my Carter’s Cap­ti­vat­ing Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards, and Very Lit­tle Makes Sense

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Day: Stream Sev­en Hours of Mix­es Col­lect­ing All the Jazz, Clas­si­cal & Clas­sic Amer­i­can Pop Music from His Nov­els

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

18 Classic Myths Explained with Animation: Pandora’s Box, Sisyphus & More

Greek myths have an incred­i­ble shelf life.

We may not retain all the play­ers’ names or the intri­ca­cies of the var­i­ous plot lines, but the cre­ative pun­ish­ments the gods—Zeus, in particular—visited upon those who dis­pleased them have pro­vid­ed mod­ern mor­tals with an endur­ing short­hand for describ­ing our own woes.

Tempt­ed to sneak a peek inside a lover’s diary? Take a tee­ny swig from the liquor cab­i­net whilst hous­esit­ting? Go snoop­ing in your teenager’s Inter­net his­to­ry?

DON’T DO IT, PANDORA!!!

But if curios­i­ty com­pels you to explore beyond the famous punch­lines of mythology’s great­est hits, TED-Ed’s ani­mat­ed Myths from Around the World series is a rec­om­mend­ed rum­mage.

Aver­ag­ing around five min­utes per tale, each episode is packed tight as a snake in a can of mixed nuts. Pre­pare to be sur­prised by some of the tid­bits that come spring­ing out.

Take Pandora’s box, above.

(Actu­al­ly it was a jar, but why quib­ble?)

Not to unleash too many major spoil­ers, but how many of us remem­bered that the thing con­tained a bit of good along with all that evil?

Or that the ves­sel she wasn’t allowed to open was but one of many gifts the gods bestowed upon her at birth? In fact, Zeus gave her two presents, that pret­ty box, jar, what­ev­er, and—wait for it—an irre­press­ibly inquis­i­tive nature.

Or the close con­nec­tion between Pan­do­ra and Prometheus? Zeus con­ceived of Pan­do­ra as a ret­ri­bu­tion for Prometheus steal­ing fire and return­ing it to earth.

Remem­ber Prometheus?

No, not the guy who’s doomed to spend his life rolling a mas­sive rock uphill, only to have it roll back down before he reach­es the top. That’s Sisy­phus, as in Sisyphean task, like laun­dry or clean­ing the cat lit­ter.

Prometheus is the Titan who winds up chained to a rock so Zeus can send a hun­gry vulture—some say eagle—to devour his liv­er once a day.

(Which kind of puts the cat lit­ter in per­spec­tive.)

In addi­tion to ancient Greek crowd pleasers, the 18-episode Myths from Around the World playlist delves into the famil­iar stuff of Norse, Chi­nese, and ancient Egypt­ian leg­ends, as well as less wide­ly known Cam­bo­di­an and Irish tales.

Each video’s descrip­tion has a link to a full Ted-Ed les­son, with the usu­al com­ple­ment of quizzes, resources and oppor­tu­ni­ties for teacher cus­tomiza­tion.

Watch the full playlist here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Myth of Sisy­phus Won­der­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed in an Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Short Film (1974)

Greek Myth Comix Presents Homer’s Ili­ad & Odyssey Using Stick-Man Draw­ings

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course) 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this March. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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