Watch the Oscar-Winning “Gerald McBoing-Boing” (1950): It’s Ranked as the 9th Greatest Cartoon of All Time

in Animation | December 11th, 2020

To under­stand how rev­o­lu­tion­ary this short film from 1950 was to con­tem­po­rary view­ers, just con­sid­er the pre­vi­ous four decades (or so) of ani­mat­ed films. There were talk­ing ani­mals, singing ani­mals, bounc­ing ani­mals, and in Dis­ney films humans based on roto­scop­ing live action. From its hum­ble and humor­ous begin­nings, ani­ma­tion was strid­ing towards real­ism as fast as it could. But in the first minute of this adap­ta­tion of a Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel sto­ry, you can see that’s all been tossed out the win­dow, a win­dow shaped like a trape­zoid.

This ani­ma­tion from the rene­gade stu­dio Unit­ed Pro­duc­tions of Amer­i­ca (UPA) ush­ered in the space age look that suit­ed the dynam­ic post-war Amer­i­can econ­o­my. The pace of life was fran­tic, sleek, mod­ern, and the ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters and back­grounds fol­low suit: laws of per­spec­tive are gone. Back­grounds are sug­gest­ed with one or two objects, and col­or is impres­sion­is­tic, not real­is­tic. The char­ac­ters are cute, but drawn with an econ­o­my of line.

Which would all suit a sto­ry by Dr. Seuss that already exist­ed as a children’s record, told in his famil­iar rhyth­mic rhyming style.

The Ger­ald of the title is a young boy who doesn’t speak in words, but in sound effects. His par­ents freak out, a doc­tor can’t help, and his class­mates and school reject him. But like many a Dr. Seuss sto­ry, Gerald’s prob­lem is actu­al­ly a gift, and the film con­cludes in a pos­i­tive way, cel­e­brat­ing dif­fer­ence. The film went on to win the Oscar for Best Ani­mat­ed Short that year, beat­ing out the estab­lished stu­dios of Warn­er Bros., MGM, and Dis­ney. It paved the way for the more min­i­mal ani­ma­tion of Han­na-Bar­bera (Gerald’s dad has a pro­to-George Jet­son look) and opened the door for more abstract films from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da, and influ­ence the Klasky Csupo stu­dio and oth­ers in the 1990s ani­ma­tion rebirth.

UPA was formed from the exo­dus of sev­er­al top Dis­ney ani­ma­tors after a cre­ators’ strike in 1941. Head among them was John Hub­ley, a lay­out artist who bris­tled against Disney’s real­ism and want­ed to branch out. At first known as Indus­tri­al Film and Poster Ser­vice, the stu­dio made films for the Unit­ed Auto Work­ers and for the Army, mak­ing edu­ca­tion­al films for young pri­vates with the Pri­vate Sna­fu series after Warn­er Bros stepped aside. Chuck Jones helped direct these shorts. Anti-Com­mu­nist sen­ti­ment put an end to gov­ern­ment work, and, so by the late 1940s, UPA decid­ed to take on the big stu­dios with the­atri­cal shorts and after “Ger­ald McBo­ing-Boing” was a hit, they con­tin­ued with the Mr. Magoo series, sev­er­al McBo­ing­Bo­ing sequels, and a TV ver­sion of Dick Tra­cy.

The stu­dio dried up in the 1960s and instead of ani­ma­tion teamed up with Toho Stu­dios in Japan and helped intro­duce a gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can audi­ences to kai­ju (giant mon­ster) films like Godzil­la by re-cut­ting and dis­trib­ut­ing many of their films.

Along with its Oscar, “Ger­ald McBo­ing-Boing” is now part of the Library of Con­gress’ Film Reg­istry as a sig­nif­i­cant Amer­i­can Film and often gets vot­ed as one of the great­est ani­mat­ed films of the 20th Cen­tu­ry. (It was vot­ed the 9th best ani­ma­tion of all time, by 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als.)

Last­ly, Gerald’s last name lives on as the inspi­ra­tion for the “hap­py mutants” zine and web­site, boingboing.net.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Chuck Jones’ 9 Rules For Draw­ing Road Run­ner Car­toons, or How to Cre­ate a Min­i­mal­ist Mas­ter­piece

Leg­endary Ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones Cre­ates an Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About the Virtues of Uni­ver­sal Health Care (1949)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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When Italian Futurists Declared War on Pasta (1930)

in Art, Food & Drink, History | December 11th, 2020

We must fight against pud­dles of sauce, dis­or­dered heaps of food, and above all, against flab­by, anti-vir­ile pas­ta­s­ciut­ta. —poet Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinet­ti

Odds are Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinet­ti, the father of Futur­ism and a ded­i­cat­ed provo­ca­teur, would be crest­fall­en to dis­cov­er how close­ly his most incen­di­ary gas­tro­nom­i­cal pro­nounce­ment aligns with the views of today’s low-carb cru­saders.

In denounc­ing pas­ta, “that absurd Ital­ian gas­tro­nom­ic reli­gion,” his inten­tion was to shock and crit­i­cize the bour­geoisie, not reduce bloat and inflam­ma­tion.

He did, how­ev­er, share the pop­u­lar 21st-cen­tu­ry view that heavy pas­ta meals leave din­ers feel­ing equal­ly heavy and lethar­gic.

As he declared in 1930 in The Futur­ist Cook­book:

Futur­ist cook­ing will be free of the old obses­sions with vol­ume and weight and will have as one of its prin­ci­ples the abo­li­tion of pas­ta­s­ciut­ta. Pas­ta­s­ciut­ta, how­ev­er agree­able to the palate, is a passéist food because it makes peo­ple heavy, brutish, deludes them into think­ing it is nutri­tious, makes them skep­ti­cal, slow, pes­simistic… Any pas­tas­cuit­tist who hon­est­ly exam­ines his con­science at the moment he ingur­gi­tates his biquo­tid­i­an pyra­mid of pas­ta will find with­in the gloomy sat­is­fac­tion of stop­ping up a black hole. This vora­cious hole is an incur­able sad­ness of his. He may delude him­self, but noth­ing can fill it. Only a Futur­ist meal can lift his spir­its. And pas­ta is anti-vir­ile because a heavy, bloat­ed stom­ach does not encour­age phys­i­cal enthu­si­asm for a woman, nor favour the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pos­sess­ing her at any time.

Bom­bast came nat­u­ral­ly to him. While he tru­ly believed in the tenets of Futur­ism—speed, indus­try, tech­nol­o­gy, and the cleans­ing effects of war, at the expense of tra­di­tion and the past—he glo­ried in hyper­bole, absur­di­ty, and showy pranks.

The Futur­ist Cook­book reflects this, although it does con­tain actu­al recipes, with very spe­cif­ic instruc­tions as to how each dish should be served. A sam­ple:

RAW MEAT TORN BY TRUMPET BLASTS: cut a per­fect cube of beef. Pass an elec­tric cur­rent through it, then mar­i­nate it for twen­ty-four hours in a mix­ture of rum, cognac and white ver­mouth. Remove it from the mix­ture and serve on a bed of red pep­per, black pep­per and snow. Each mouth­ful is to be chewed care­ful­ly for one minute, and each mouth­ful is divid­ed from the next by vehe­ment blasts on the trum­pet blown by the eater him­self.

Intre­pid host Trevor Dun­sei­th doc­u­ments his attempt to stage a faith­ful Futur­ist din­ner par­ty in the above video.

Guests eat sal­ad with their hands for max­i­mum “pre-labi­al tac­tile plea­sure” before bal­anc­ing oranges stuffed with antipas­to on their heads to ran­dom­ize the selec­tion of each mouth­ful. While not all of the fla­vors were a hit, the par­ty agreed that the expe­ri­ence was—as intend­ed—total­ly nov­el (and 100% pas­ta free).

Marinetti’s anti-pas­ta cam­paign chimed with Prime Min­is­ter Ben­i­to Mussolini’s goal of elim­i­nat­ing Italy’s eco­nom­ic depen­dence on for­eign mar­kets—the Bat­tle for Grain. North­ern farm­ers could pro­duce ample sup­plies of rice, but nowhere near the amount of wheat need­ed to sup­port the pop­u­lace’s pas­ta con­sump­tion. If Ital­ians couldn’t grow more wheat, Mus­soli­ni want­ed them to shift from pas­ta to rice.

F.T. Marinet­ti by W. Sel­dow, 1934

Marinet­ti agreed that rice would be the “patri­ot­ic” choice, but his desired ends were root­ed in his own avant-garde art move­ment:

… it is not just a ques­tion of replac­ing pas­ta with rice, or of pre­fer­ring one dish to anoth­er, but of invent­ing new foods. So many mechan­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic changes have come into effect in the prac­ti­cal life of mankind that it is also pos­si­ble to achieve culi­nary per­fec­tion and to orga­nize var­i­ous tastes, smells and func­tions, some­thing which until yes­ter­day would have seemed absurd because the gen­er­al con­di­tions of exis­tence were also dif­fer­ent. We must, by con­tin­u­al­ly vary­ing types of food and their com­bi­na­tions, kill off the old, deeply root­ed habits of the palate, and pre­pare men for future chem­i­cal food­stuffs. We may even pre­pare mankind for the not-too-dis­tant pos­si­bil­i­ty of broad­cast­ing nour­ish­ing waves over the radio.

Futurism’s ties to fas­cism are not a thing to brush off light­ly, but it’s also impor­tant to remem­ber that Marinet­ti believed it was the artist’s duty to put for­ward a bold pub­lic per­son­ae. He lived to ruf­fle feath­ers.

Mis­sion accom­plished. His anti-pas­ta pro­nounce­ments result­ed in a tumult of pub­lic indig­na­tion, both local­ly and in the States.

The Duke of Bovi­no, may­or of Naples, react­ed to Marinetti’s state­ment that pas­ta is “com­plete­ly hos­tile to the viva­cious spir­it and pas­sion­ate, gen­er­ous, intu­itive soul of the Neapoli­tans” by say­ing, “The angels in Heav­en eat noth­ing but ver­mi­cel­li al pomodoro.” Proof, Marinet­ti sniped back, of “the unap­pe­tiz­ing monot­o­ny of Par­adise and of the life of the Angels.”

He agi­tat­ed for a futur­is­tic world in which kitchens would be stocked with ”atmos­pher­ic and vac­u­um stills, cen­trifu­gal auto­claves (and) dia­lyz­ers.”

His recipes, as Trevor Dun­sei­th dis­cov­ered, func­tion bet­ter as one-time per­for­mance art than go-to dish­es to add to one’s culi­nary reper­toire.

There is a rea­son why Julia Child’s Coq a Vin and Tarte Tatin endure while Marinet­ti’s  Excit­ed Pig and Black Shirt Snack have fall­en into dis­use.

Uh… progress?

As Daniel A. Gross writes in the Sci­ence His­to­ry Institute’s Dis­til­la­tions:

Marinet­ti sup­port­ed Fas­cism to the extent that it too advo­cat­ed progress, but his alle­giance even­tu­al­ly wavered. To Marinet­ti, Roman ruins and Renais­sance paint­ings were not only bor­ing but also anti­thet­i­cal to progress. To Mus­soli­ni, by con­trast, they were polit­i­cal­ly use­ful. The dic­ta­tor drew on Ital­ian his­to­ry in his quest to build a new, pow­er­ful nation—which also led to a nation­al cam­paign in food self-suf­fi­cien­cy, encour­ag­ing the grow­ing and con­sump­tion of such tra­di­tion­al foods as wheat, rice, and grapes. The gov­ern­ment even fund­ed research into the nutri­tion­al ben­e­fits of wheat, with one sci­en­tist claim­ing whole-wheat bread boost­ed fer­til­i­ty. In short, the pre­war dream of futur­ist food was tabled yet again.

Get your own copy of Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinetti’s The Futur­ist Cook­book here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Keeffe

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. See her as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Art of Traditional Japanese Wood Joinery: A Kyoto Woodworker Shows How Japanese Carpenters Created Wood Structures Without Nails or Glue

in Architecture, Art | December 10th, 2020

Any­one can devel­op basic wood­work­ing skills — and, per the advice of Nick Offer­man, per­haps every­one should. Those who do learn that things of sur­pris­ing func­tion­al­i­ty can be made just by cut­ting pieces of wood and nail­ing or glu­ing them togeth­er. Few­er, how­ev­er, have the patience and ded­i­ca­tion to mas­ter wood­work­ing with­out nails or glue, an art that in Japan has been refined over many gen­er­a­tions. Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese car­pen­ters put up entire build­ings using wood alone, cut­ting the pieces in such a way that they fit togeth­er as tight­ly as if they’d grown that way in the first place. Such unfor­giv­ing join­ery is sure­ly the truest test of wood­work­ing skill: if you don’t do it per­fect­ly, down comes the tem­ple.

“At the end of the 12th cen­tu­ry, fine wood­work­ing skills and knowl­edge were brought into Japan from Chi­na,” writes Yamanashi-based wood­work­er Dylan Iwaku­ni. “Over time, these join­ery skills were refined and passed down, result­ing in the fine wood joiner­ies Japan is known for.”

As it became a tra­di­tion in Japan, this car­pen­try devel­oped a canon of join­ing meth­ods, sev­er­al of which Iwaku­ni demon­strates in the video at the top of the post. Can it be a coin­ci­dence that these most trust­wor­thy joints — and the oth­ers fea­tured on Iwaku­ni’s join­ery playlist, includ­ing the seem­ing­ly “impos­si­ble” shi­hou kama tsu­gi — are also so aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing, not just in their cre­ation but their fin­ished appear­ance?

In addi­tion to his Youtube chan­nel, Iwaku­ni main­tains an Insta­gram account where he posts pho­tos of join­ery not just in the work­shop but as employed in the con­struc­tion and main­te­nance of real build­ings. “Joiner­ies can be used to replace a dam­aged part,” he writes, “allow­ing the struc­ture to stand for anoth­er hun­dreds of years.” To do it prop­er­ly requires not just a painstak­ing­ly honed set of skills, but a per­pet­u­al­ly sharp­ened set of tools — in Iwaku­ni’s case, the vis­i­ble sharp­ness of which draws aston­ished com­ment from wood­work­ing afi­ciona­dos around the world. “Blimey,” as one Metafil­ter user writes, “it’s hard enough get­ting a knife sharp enough to slice onions.” What an audi­ence Iwaku­ni could com­mand if he expand­ed from wood­work­ing Youtube into cook­ing Youtube, one can only imag­ine.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

Nick Offer­man Explains the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Ben­e­fits of Woodworking–and How It Can Help You Achieve Zen in Oth­er Parts of Your Life

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Buddhist Monk Covers Metallica’s ”Enter Sandman,” Then Meditates

in Music | December 10th, 2020

Since the start of the pan­dem­ic, we’ve peri­od­i­cal­ly fea­tured Kos­san, a Japan­ese Bud­dhist monk who has a pen­chant for singing punk, met­al and rock clas­sics, accom­pa­nied by gongs, drums and oth­er instru­ments. In the past, he’s cov­ered the Ramones’ “Teenage Lobot­o­my,” “Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” and the Bea­t­les’ “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine”–not to men­tion Judas Priest’s “Break­ing the Law.” In his lat­est clip, Kos­san offers a unique take on Metal­li­ca’s 1991 clas­sic “Enter Sand­man,” then winds down, of course, with a lit­tle med­i­ta­tion. Enjoy.

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!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Bud­dhist Monk Cov­ers Ramones’ “Teenage Lobot­o­my,” “Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bea­t­les’ “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” & More

Bud­dhist Monk Cov­ers Judas Priest’s “Break­ing the Law,” Then Breaks Into Med­i­ta­tion

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

Med­i­ta­tion for Begin­ners: Bud­dhist Monks & Teach­ers Explain the Basics

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Jimi Hendrix’s Home Audio System & Record Collection Gets Recreated in His London Flat

in Music | December 10th, 2020

A vis­it to William Faulkner’s house once con­vinced me I’d seen his ghost. Mil­lions of peo­ple com­mune with Elvis’s spir­it at Grace­land each year. Some lucky per­son will end up with Toni Morrison’s per­son­al library, and maybe also her Tribeca con­do. No mat­ter how well we think we know a favorite artist, there’s noth­ing like con­nect­ing with the spaces and things they left behind. Since 2016, Jimi Hen­drix devo­tees have been able to make a pil­grim­age to the Lon­don apart­ment he shared with his girl­friend, Kathy Etch­ing­ham, between 1968 and 1969.

The flat on 23 Brook Street has been set up the way it was when Hen­drix lived there, thanks to Han­del & Hen­drix in Lon­don, who also main­tain the house of George Frid­er­ic Han­del just next door. The only oth­er con­nec­tion between the two artists is Hendrix’s own­er­ship of two copies of Handel’s Mes­si­ah, “both of which show signs of wear and tear,” the foun­da­tion notes, and “which would have been uncan­ny lis­ten­ing so near to where it was com­posed.” Jimi taste­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed the apart­ment to his tastes, and told Etch­ing­ham it was “my first real home of my own.”

Hendrix’s home was made com­plete by a 100-plus col­lec­tion of LPs and a high-end audio sys­tem that has recent­ly been recre­at­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the mak­ers of the orig­i­nal com­po­nents: Bang & Olufsen, Lowther, and LEAK sup­ply the same or sim­i­lar mod­els of turntable, speak­er, and ampli­fi­er, respec­tive­ly, on which Jimi lis­tened to Han­del next door to the ghost of Han­del. Hear­ing those records in Jimi’s space, the way he heard them, says Nabi­hah Iqbal in a video that debuted on Hendrix’s birth­day, Novem­ber 27th, is “a time-trav­el­ing expe­ri­ence.”

Iqbal choos­es her favorites from the collection—Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar, Mud­dy Waters, Djan­go Reinhardt—discussing them as they qui­et­ly play in the back­ground. For the full Hen­drix expe­ri­ence, we’d need to crank the vin­tage ampli­fi­er to 11. He liked to lis­ten loud. Etch­ing­ham “recalled that they had to ‘stick a ha’penny with sel­l­otape onto the turntable arm… oth­er­wise it would jump up and down the loud­er it got.” He would occa­sion­al­ly blow the rein­forced speak­ers dur­ing par­ties and have to take them in for repair.

The flat also func­tioned as a com­po­si­tion room, and Hendrix’s friends stopped by to jam. (Richie Havens debuted his “anti-war anthem ‘Hand­some John­ny’ to a small par­ty in the flat on Hendrix’s Epi­phone acoustic gui­tar.”) Han­del & Hen­drix in Lon­don have revived the prac­tice with their Hen­drix Flat Ses­sions, invit­ing musi­cians to play in the space. Above, Mar­cus Macha­do talks about what Hen­drix means to him and jams a ver­sion of “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” while sit­ting on Hendrix’s bed.

See sev­er­al more Hen­drix Flat Ses­sions here. The records in Hen­drix’s col­lec­tion “cov­er blues, jazz, folk, rock, psy­che­delia and even a hand­ful of clas­si­cal LPs.” See Iqbal’s selec­tions, with anno­ta­tions from Han­del & Hen­drix in Lon­don, here. The Hen­drix Flat is cur­rent­ly open to the pub­lic on Sat­ur­days.

via Vinyl Fac­to­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Watch Rare Footage of Jimi Hen­drix Per­form­ing “Voodoo Child” in Maui, Plus a Trail­er for a New Doc­u­men­tary on Jimi Hendrix’s Leg­endary Maui Per­for­mances (1970)

How Sci­ence Fic­tion Formed Jimi Hen­drix

Behold Moe­bius’ Many Psy­che­del­ic Illus­tra­tions of Jimi Hen­drix

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

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Comic Book Writer Fred Van Lente Touts “Comic Supremacy” on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #72

in Comics/Cartoons, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 10th, 2020

Fred Van Lente has writ­ten for more than 15 years for his own Evil Twin Comics, Mar­vel and oth­er out­lets. In this episode of Pret­ty Much Pop, he joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss comics as an idio­syn­crat­ic form of lit­er­a­ture.

In the realm of non-fic­tion, Ryan start­ed with the beloved Action Philoso­phers! series in 2004 with illus­tra­tor Ryan Dunlavey, and this team has gone on to cre­ate the very suc­cess­ful Com­ic Book His­to­ry of Comics, plus more recent­ly Action Pres­i­dents, Action Activists (avail­able free in asso­ci­a­tion with the NYC Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion’s Civics for All pro­gram), and have just begun releas­ing The Com­ic Book His­to­ry of Ani­ma­tion. While the non-fic­tion comics for­mat is com­mon in places like Japan, and has a sto­ried his­to­ry in Amer­i­ca, hav­ing been used to train sol­diers in World War II, this is still some­thing of a nov­el­ty in Amer­i­ca as comics still strug­gle to over­come their rep­u­ta­tion in (as Ryan puts it) “trash for morons.” Giv­en that visu­al con­tent is well known to help peo­ple learn as com­pared to text alone, the use of tools like Action Pres­i­dents in class­rooms should­n’t be sur­pris­ing.

The inter­view also gets into Ryan’s fic­tion work, from Cow­boys & Aliens, which was turned into a 2011 Jon Favreau/Steven Spiel­berg film entire­ly with­out Ryan’s involve­ment, to titles like Mar­vel Zom­bies and X‑Men Noir which use alter­nate dimen­sion ver­sions of pop­u­lar char­ac­ters to tell sto­ries too dark and/or whim­si­cal to have much pos­si­bil­i­ty of ever being trans­ferred to the screen. Despite comics’ rep­u­ta­tion as being basi­cal­ly like elab­o­rate film sto­ry-boards, their low over­head is exact­ly what dis­tin­guish­es them so strong­ly from film: Their cre­ativ­i­ty is unlim­it­ed by bud­get, and cre­ators can take tremen­dous risks. What­ev­er the main­stream palata­bil­i­ty of (alter­nate dimen­sion) Peter Park­er eat­ing Aunt May’s brain, this has been one of the most pop­u­lar things that Ryan’s been involved with among com­ic book read­ers.

Learn more about Fred’s work at fredvanlente.com. You can read there about how Fred con­structs scripts; the one Mark refers to with the mys­te­ri­ous­ly changed coat is right there high­light­ed at the top of this page, and there are also sev­er­al sam­ple scripts includ­ing the one for Action Philoso­phers: Immanuel Kant that demon­strates Fred’s meth­ods for vivid­ly explain­ing a com­plex idea.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Are You Happy, David Lynch?

in Film, Life | December 9th, 2020

Film­mak­er David Lynch answers a basic life ques­tion from Mary Anne Hobbs, BBC Radio 6 DJ, dur­ing a fan Q&A. The accom­pa­ny­ing video appar­ent­ly comes from The Art Life doc­u­men­tary trail­er.

The source of Lynch’s hap­pi­ness? Most like­ly med­i­ta­tion. Find more on that below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

David Lynch Visu­al­izes How Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion Works with Sharpie & Big Pad of Paper

David Lynch Mus­es About the Mag­ic of Cin­e­ma & Med­i­ta­tion in a New Abstract Short Film

David Lynch Cre­ates a Very Sur­re­al Plug for Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion

An Ani­mat­ed David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

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Don’t Think Twice: A Poignant Film Documents How Bob Dylan & The Beatles Bring Joy to a Dementia Patient

in Health, Music, Neuroscience, Psychology | December 9th, 2020

It’s often said the sense of smell is most close­ly con­nect­ed to long-term mem­o­ry. The news offers lit­tle com­fort to us for­get­ful peo­ple with a dimin­ished sense of smell. But increas­ing­ly, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are dis­cov­er­ing how sound can also tap direct­ly into our deep­est mem­o­ries. Patients with Alzheimer’s and demen­tia seem to come alive, becom­ing their old selves when they hear music they rec­og­nize, espe­cial­ly if they were musi­cians or dancers in a for­mer life.

“Sound is evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly ancient,” Nina Kraus, a neu­ro­sci­en­tist at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, tells NPR. “It is deeply, deeply root­ed in our ner­vous sys­tem. So the mem­o­ries that we make, the sound-to-mean­ing con­nec­tions that we have and that we’ve made through­out our lives are always there. And it’s a mat­ter of being able to access them.” The ear­worms we find our­selves hum­ming all day; the songs we nev­er for­get how to sing… these are keys to a store­house of mem­o­ry.

Sto­ries doc­u­ment­ing demen­tia patients in the pres­ence of music usu­al­ly focus, under­stand­ably, on those who have lost brain func­tion due to old age. In “Don’t Think Twice,” the short doc­u­men­tary above, we meet John Fudge, who sus­tained a trau­mat­ic brain injury when he fell from the white cliffs of Dover and split his head open at 24 years old. “The extent of his injuries weren’t revealed,” writes Aeon, “until decades lat­er, when doc­tors decid­ed to per­form a brain scan after John slipped into a deep depres­sion.”

He was found to have exten­sive brain dam­age, “includ­ing a pro­gres­sive form of demen­tia” called Seman­tic Demen­tia that leaves suf­fer­ers aware of their dete­ri­o­ra­tion while being unable to express them­selves. John’s wife Geral­dine “com­pares his brain to an oak tree, its limbs of knowl­edge being slow­ly trimmed away, caus­ing John great men­tal anguish.” In the short film, how­ev­er, we see how “his musi­cal abil­i­ties” are one “as-yet untrimmed branch.”

John him­self explains how he “near­ly died three times” and Geral­dine assists with her obser­va­tions of his expe­ri­ence. “It’s all there,” she says, “it’s just bits of it have sort of been blanked out…. Over the years, John’s seman­tic under­stand­ing of the world will dete­ri­o­rate.” When a young vol­un­teer named Jon from the Hack­ney Befriend­ing Ser­vice stops by, the gloom lifts as John engages his old pas­sion for play­ing songs by the Bea­t­les and Bob Dylan.

Fol­low the mov­ing sto­ry of how John and Jon became fast friends and excel­lent har­mo­niz­ers and see more inspir­ing sto­ries of how music can change Alzheimer’s and demen­tia patients’ lives for the bet­ter at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

Demen­tia Patients Find Some Eter­nal Youth in the Sounds of AC/DC

For­mer Bal­le­ri­na with Demen­tia Grace­ful­ly Comes Alive to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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