Senator Al Franken Does a Pitch Perfect Imitation of Mick Jagger (1982)

If Sen­a­tor Al Franken won’t run for Pres­i­dent in 2020, per­haps he’d tem­per fans’ dis­ap­point­ment with a repeat of his ear­ly 80’s turn as Mick Jag­ger, above.

The per­for­mance took place at Stock­ton State, a pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed in New Jersey–what the late Tom Davis, Franken’s long time Sat­ur­day Night Live writ­ing part­ner and Kei­th Richards to his Jag­ger called “the Blair Witch scrub forests twen­ty-five miles north of Atlantic City.”

Franken’s per­for­mance is an immer­sive tri­umph, espe­cial­ly for those who remem­ber his best known SNL char­ac­ter, the lisp­ing­ly upbeat Stu­art Smal­l­ey.

His Jag­ger is the oppo­site of Stuart–butch, preen­ing, ath­let­ic … a less than sober stu­dent fan in the Stock­ton State crowd might have drunk­en­ly won­dered if he or she had acci­den­tal­ly bought tick­ets to the Tat­too You tour. Those lips are pret­ty con­vinc­ing.

The cos­tum­ing is dead on too, and Franken did not take the route Chris Far­ley would lat­er take, lam­poon­ing the male strip­pers of Chip­pen­dales. He may not be Jag­ger-rangy, but he’s cer­tain­ly fit in an out­fit that leaves no room to hide.

As Davis recalled in his 2010 mem­oir, Thir­ty-Nine Years of Short-Term Mem­o­ry Loss: The Ear­ly Days of SNL from Some­one Who Was There:

As we start­ed “Under My Thumb,” Franken came run­ning out as Mick Jag­ger, wear­ing yel­low foot­ball pants and Capezios and was so good, it was scary. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Franken and Davis at Stock­ton State nev­er sold very well… maybe it would be re-released if one of us became pres­i­dent, or shot a pres­i­dent.

Know­ing that Davis, who died five years ago, would like­ly nev­er have pre­dict­ed the out­come of the recent elec­tion, and that Sen­a­tor Franken, out­spo­ken as he is, is in no posi­tion to joke about the sec­ond option, we sug­gest truf­fling up a used copy, if you’d like to see more.

And for comparison’s sake, here are the orig­i­nals per­form­ing to an are­na-sized crowd in Ari­zona in 1981:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick Jag­ger Defends the Rights of the Indi­vid­ual After His Leg­endary 1967 Drug Bust

When Bowie & Jagger’s “Danc­ing in the Street” Music Video Becomes a Silent Film: Can the Worst Music Video Ever Get Even Worse?

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

11,700 Free Photos from John Margolies’ Archive of Americana Architecture: Download, Use & Re-Mix

Many con­nois­seurs of archi­tec­ture are enthralled by the mod­ernist phi­los­o­phy of Le Cor­busier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and I M Pei, who shared a belief that form fol­lows func­tion, or, as Wright had it, that form and func­tion are one.

Oth­ers of us delight in gas sta­tions shaped like teapots and restau­rants shaped like fish or dough­nuts. If there’s a phi­los­o­phy behind these insis­tent­ly play­ful visions, it like­ly has some­thing to do with joy…and pulling in tourists.

Art his­to­ri­an John Mar­golies (1940–2016), respond­ing to the beau­ty of such quirky visions, scram­bled to pre­serve the evi­dence, trans­form­ing into a respect­ed, self-taught pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the process. A Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion grant and the finan­cial sup­port of archi­tect Philip John­son allowed him to log over four decades worth of trips on America’s blue high­ways, hop­ing to cap­ture his quar­ry before it dis­ap­peared for good.

Despite Johnson’s patron­age, and his own stints as an Archi­tec­tur­al Record edi­tor and Archi­tec­tur­al League of New York pro­gram direc­tor, he seemed to wel­come the ruf­fled min­i­mal­ist feath­ers his enthu­si­asm for mini golf cours­es, theme motels, and eye-catch­ing road­side attrac­tions occa­sioned.

On the oth­er hand, he resent­ed when his pas­sions were labelled as “kitsch,” a point that came across in a 1987 inter­view with the Cana­di­an Globe and Mail:

Peo­ple gen­er­al­ly have thought that what’s impor­tant are the large, unique archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ments. They think Toronto’s City Hall is impor­tant, but not those won­der­ful gnome’s‑castle gas sta­tions in Toron­to, a Detroit influ­ence that crept across the bor­der and pol­lut­ed your won­der­ful­ly con­ser­v­a­tive envi­ron­ment.

As Mar­golies fore­saw, the type of com­mer­cial ver­nac­u­lar archi­tec­ture he’d loved since boyhood–the type that screams, “Look at me! Look at me”–has become very near­ly extinct.

And that is a max­i­mal shame.

Your chil­dren may not be able to vis­it an orange juice stand shaped like an orange or the Lean­ing Tow­er of Piz­za, but thanks to the Library of Con­gress, these locales can be pit­stops on any vir­tu­al fam­i­ly vaca­tion you might under­take this July.

The library has select­ed the John Mar­golies Road­side Amer­i­ca Pho­to­graph Archive as its July “free to use and reuse” col­lec­tion. So linger as long as you’d like and do with these 11,700+ images as you will–make post­cards, t‑shirts, sou­venir place­mats.

(Or eschew your com­put­er entirely–go on a real road trip, and con­tin­ue Mar­golies’ work!)

What­ev­er you decide to do with them, the archive’s home­page has tips for how to best search the 11,710 col­or slides con­tained there­in. Library staffers have sup­ple­ment­ed Mar­golies’ notes on each image with sub­ject and geo­graph­i­cal head­ings.

Begin your jour­ney through the Library of Con­gress’ John Mar­golies Road­side Amer­i­ca Pho­to­graph Archive here.

We’d love to see your vaca­tion snaps upon your return.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Stew­art Brand’s 6‑Part Series How Build­ings Learn, With Music by Bri­an Eno

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times 

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Meet Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor of the Telephone and Popular TV Pitchman

Mr. Wat­son, come here! I want you to tell me why I keep show­ing up in tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials. Is it because they think I invent­ed the tele­vi­sion?

- The ghost of Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell

Not at all, my dear Mr. Bell. A sec­ond’s worth of research reveals that a 21-year-old upstart named Phi­lo Tay­lor Farnsworth invent­ed tele­vi­sion. By 1927, when he unveiled it to the pub­lic, you’d already been dead for five years.

You invent­ed the telephone, a fact of which we’re all very aware.

Though you might want to look into intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty law.… His­toric fig­ures make pop­u­lar pitch­men, espe­cial­ly if — like Lin­coln, Coper­ni­cus, and a red hot Alexan­der Hamil­ton, they’ve been in the grave for over 100 years. (Hint — you’ve got five years to go.)

Or you could take it as a com­pli­ment! You’ve made an impres­sion so last­ing, the briefest of estab­lish­ing shots is all we tele­vi­sion audi­ences need to under­stand the adver­tis­er’s premise.

Thus­ly can you be co-opt­ed into sell­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic on the appar­ent­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­cept of chick­en for break­fast, above.

And that’s just the tip of the ice­berg!

Mr. Wat­son gets a cameo in your 1975 ad for Care­free Gum. You def­i­nite­ly come off the bet­ter of the two.

You’re an obvi­ous choice for a recent AT&T spot trac­ing a line from your rev­e­la­to­ry moment to 20-some­thing  hip­sters wield­ing smart­phones and sparklers on a Brook­lyn rooftop. Their devices aren’t the only thing con­nect­ing you. It’s also the beards…

Apolo­gies for the beard­less­ness of this 10 year old, low-bud­get spot for Able Com­put­ing in Papua New Guinea. Pos­si­bly the cos­tumer thought Ein­stein invent­ed the phone? Or maybe the cre­ative direc­tor was count­ing on the local view­ing audi­ence not to sweat the small stuff. Your inven­tion mat­ters more than your facial hair.

Lego took a cue from the 80s Mup­pet Babies craze by send­ing you back to child­hood. They also sad­dled you and your mom  with Amer­i­can accents, a regret­tably com­mon prac­tice. I bet you would’ve liked Legos, though. They’re like blocks.

As for this one, your guess is as good as mine.

Read­ers, please share your favorite ads fea­tur­ing his­toric fig­ures in the com­ments below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Voice of Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell for the First Time in a Cen­tu­ry

Hear Kurt Von­negut Vis­it the After­life & Inter­view Dead His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures: Isaac New­ton, Adolf Hitler, Eugene Debs & More (Audio, 1998)

Thomas Edison’s Silent Film of the “Fartiste” Who Delight­ed Crowds at Le Moulin Rouge (1900)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City in Paul David Young’s Faust 3, an indict­ment of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion that adapts and man­gles Goethe’s Faust (Parts 1 and 2) and the Gospels in the King James trans­la­tion, as well as bits of Yeats, Shake­speare, Christ­mas car­ols, Stephen Fos­ter, John Donne, Hein­er Müller, Julia Ward Howe, and Abel Meeropol. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life” Is the Perfect Song to End Any Movie: The Graduate, Psycho, Easy Rider & 50+ Other Films

It’s hard to con­ceive of direc­tor Stan­ley Kubrick choos­ing a more per­fect song for Dr. Strangelove’s final mush­room cloud mon­tage than Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again.”

Dit­to Mike Nichols’ The Grad­u­ate. Can you imag­ine Ben and Elaine mak­ing their exis­ten­tial get­away to the tune of any­thing oth­er than “The Sound of Silence”?

Free­lance video edi­tor Peter Salomone can (see above). If he had his druthers, all films would end with Dire Straits’ 1985 hit, ”Walk of Life” a tune Rolling Stone described upon its release as a “boun­cy Fifties rock & roll song about cool Fifties rock & roll songs,” not­ing its “cheesy organ sound.”

More recent­ly, the New Zealand-based music blog Off the Tracks pro­claimed it “god-awful,” sug­gest­ing that the CIA could sur­gi­cal­ly implant its “obnox­ious” key­board riff to trig­ger assas­sins, and assert­ing that it (“and those fuck­ing sweat­bands”) were the demise of Dire Straits.

Such crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tions are imma­te­r­i­al where Salomone’s The Walk of Life Project is con­cerned. Over the course of a cou­ple months, he has glee­ful­ly applied it to the final min­utes of over five dozen films, leav­ing the visu­als unmo­lest­ed.

There are no sacred cows in this realm. Casablan­ca and The God­fa­ther are sub­ject­ed to this aur­al exper­i­ment, as, some­what mys­ti­fy­ing­ly, are Nanook of the North and Chaplin’s City Lights. Hor­ror, Dis­ney, musicals…Salomone dab­bles in a wide vari­ety of gen­res.

For my mon­ey, the most suc­cess­ful out­comes are the ones that impose a com­mer­cial send-em-up-the-aisles-smil­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty on delib­er­ate­ly bleak end­ings.

Direc­tor Dan­ny Boyle may have allowed audi­ences to decom­press a bit with heart­warm­ing footage of the real life Aron Ral­ston, whose auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal account of a life-chang­ing acci­dent inspired the film 127 Hours, but Salomone’s choice to move the play­head to the moment shocked hik­ers encounter a dazed and dehy­drat­ed James Fran­co clutch­ing his muti­lat­ed arm is sub­lime. That heli­copter could not be more per­fect­ly timed:

Some oth­er dark gems:

Easy Rid­er:

Plan­et of the Apes

Psy­cho

Salomone told Giz­mo­do that he’s tak­ing a break from the project, so if there’s a film you think would ben­e­fit from the Walk of Life treat­ment, you’ll have to do it your­self, with his bless­ing. Fan stabs at Scar­face, The Silence of the Lambs and Gone with the Wind sug­gest that the trick is not quite as easy to pull off as one might think.

You can view the com­plete col­lec­tion on The Walk of Life Project’s web­site or YouTube chan­nel.

via Giz­mo­do

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Film and TV Title Design

Watch Steven Soderbergh’s Cre­ative Mashup of Hitch­cock and Gus Van Sant’s Psy­cho Films

Hear 4+ Hours of Jazz Noir: A Sound­track for Strolling Under Street Lights on Fog­gy Nights

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’ll is cur­rent­ly appear­ing as one of the clowns in Paul David Young’s Faust 3, open­ing this week­end in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

When Bowie & Jagger’s “Dancing in the Street” Music Video Becomes a Silent Film

You might remem­ber it. Back in 1985, Mick Jag­ger and David Bowie record­ed “Danc­ing in the Street” to raise mon­ey for Live Aid, the famine relief mega-con­certs orga­nized by Bob Geld­of. Orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Mar­vin Gaye, and first made famous by Martha and the Van­del­las in 1964, “Danc­ing in the Street” topped the British charts when Bowie and Jag­ger record­ed their ver­sion in 13 short hours. The col­lab­o­ra­tion also yield­ed what’s pos­si­bly the worst music video ever made. Or so this sur­vey by The Guardian would con­clude. NME ranks it as the 11th worst of all-time.

Shot by David Mal­let at the Lon­don Dock­lands, the orig­i­nal video (see below) fea­tures “Bowie in an over­sized yel­low rain­coat and leop­ar­dish jump­suit and Jag­ger in yel­low sneak­ers and a floun­cy elec­tric-green blouse,” writes Mark Kurlan­sky in his book, Ready For a Brand New Beat: How “Danc­ing in the Street” Became the Anthem.

He adds, “It is hard to under­stand what is going on in this video of two men danc­ing and hop­ping around each oth­er.” And if you turn the sound off, it only gets worse … if that’s pos­si­ble.

Above, see what hap­pened when writer & direc­tor Strack Azar cre­at­ed a “silent” ver­sion of the Jagger/Bowie video last year. It’s laugh-out-loud fun­ny at times. It’s also a good reminder that when you watch some­thing visu­al, you can’t dis­count the impact that the sound­track makes on the total expe­ri­ence.

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:

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

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“If Life Were Only Like This”: Woody Allen Gets Marshall McLuhan to Put a Pontificating Professor in His Place

The dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion cre­at­ed a mighty forum for those who once held forth from around the pick­le bar­rel or atop a stur­dy soap box.

The Inter­net has spawned many com­men­ta­tors whose thoughts are cogent, well researched and well argued, but they’re sad­ly out­num­bered by a mul­ti­tude of blowhards, wind­bags, and oth­er self-appoint­ed experts, force­ful­ly express­ing opin­ions as fact.

And, as you’ve like­ly heard, many con­sumers fail to check cre­den­tials before believ­ing unsub­stan­ti­at­ed state­ments are the rock sol­id truth, to be repeat­ed and act­ed upon, some­times to last­ing con­se­quence.

Com­pare the unman­age­abil­i­ty of our sit­u­a­tion to that of 40 years ago, when an obnox­ious blovi­a­tor could appar­ent­ly be silenced by the intro­duc­tion of irrefutable author­i­ty…

Ah, wait, this is fic­tion…

A notable thing about the above scene from 1977’s Annie Hallbesides how beau­ti­ful­ly the com­e­dy holds up—is that the bad guy’s not stu­pid. His qual­i­fi­ca­tions are actu­al­ly quite impres­sive.

(We speak here of the Guy in Line, not writer-direc­tor-star Woody Allen, whose rep­u­ta­tion has been per­ma­nent­ly tar­nished by per­son­al mis­con­duct, some of it easy to sub­stan­ti­ate.)

The scene’s best punch­line comes from pit­ting intel­lec­tu­al against intel­lec­tu­al, not intel­lec­tu­al against some myth­i­cal “reg­u­lar” Amer­i­can, as we’ve come to expect.

The audi­ence is well posi­tioned to side with Allen and his ace-in-the-hole, media philoso­pher Mar­shall McLuhan. It’s a revenge fan­ta­sy designed to appeal to any­one whose free­dom has been impinged by some loud­mouthed stranger sound­ing off in a pub­lic area.

That’s all of us, right? (Though how many of us are will­ing to cop to the occa­sions when we may have been the nar­cis­sis­tic jerk monop­o­liz­ing the con­ver­sa­tion at top vol­ume …)

The court­ly McLuhan, a last minute replace­ment for direc­tor Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, pos­sessed the per­fect tem­pera­ment to skew­er the over­in­flat­ed self-worth of a pon­tif­i­cat­ing ego­ma­ni­ac.

He was, how­ev­er, not much of a per­former, accord­ing to Rus­sell Hor­ton, who played the Guy in Line:

Woody would pull him out and he’d say some­thing like, ‘Well you’re wrong, young man.’ Or, ‘Oh, gee, I don’t know what to say.’… We did like 17 or 18 takes, and if you look at it care­ful­ly in the movie, McLuhan says, ‘You mean my whole fal­la­cy is wrong’ which makes no sense. How can you have your fal­la­cy wrong?

Read the recent, and extreme­ly amus­ing Enter­tain­ment Week­ly inter­view with Guy in Line (and voice of the Trix cere­al rab­bit) Hor­ton in its entire­ty here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­shall McLuhan in Two Min­utes: A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the 1960s Media The­o­rist Who Pre­dict­ed Our Present

Woody Allen Tells a Clas­sic Joke About Hem­ing­way, Fitzger­ald & Gertrude Stein in 1965: A Pre­cur­sor to Mid­night in Paris

Woody Allen Amus­es Him­self by Giv­ing Untruth­ful Answers in Unaired 1971 TV Inter­view

Watch a 44-Minute Super­cut of Every Woody Allen Stam­mer, From Every Woody Allen Film

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Philosophical, Sci-Fi Claymation Film Answers the Timeless Question: Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

It’s a ques­tion that’s occu­pied our great­est thinkers, from Aris­to­tle and Pla­to to Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye:

Which came first—the chick­en or the egg?

The debate will like­ly rage as long as there’s a faith-based camp to square off against the evi­dence-based camp.

With that in mind, and the week­end loom­ing, we’re inclined to go with the Clay­ma­tion camp, in the form of Time Chick­en, Nick Black’s 6‑minute stop-motion med­i­ta­tion, above.

Described by its cre­ator as a “philo­soph­i­cal-action-fan­ta­sy into the world of sci­ence, reli­gion, knowl­edge and cre­ation,” Time Chick­en ben­e­fits from an appro­pri­ate­ly bom­bas­tic orig­i­nal score per­formed by the Prague Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra and the seem­ing-eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny of its admit­ted­ly clay-based, all-poul­try cast.

Black’s copi­ous cin­e­mat­ic ref­er­ences and sci­ence fic­tion tropes are every bit as delec­table as a Mughal style egg-stuffed whole chick­en slow cooked in a rich almond-pop­py seeds-yogurt-&-saffron gravy.

Kudos to the film­mak­er, too, for eschew­ing the uncred­it­ed dub­bing that made fel­low clay­ma­tor Nick (Park)’s Chick­en Run a crossover hit, trust­ing instead in the (unsub­ti­tled) orig­i­nal lan­guage of his sub­jects.

Read­ers, watch this hilar­i­ous lit­tle film and weigh in. Which came first? The chick­en? Or the egg?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son

Watch The Touch­ing Moment When Physi­cist Andrei Linde Learns That His The­o­ries on the Big Bang Were Final­ly Val­i­dat­ed

Hear Carl Sagan Art­ful­ly Refute a Cre­ation­ist on a Talk Radio Show: “The Dar­win­ian Con­cept of Evo­lu­tion is Pro­found­ly Ver­i­fied”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Day When Chivalry Officially Came to an End in 1363 AD: A Short Comedy Film

When did chival­ry come to an end? Some would say it’s a mat­ter of his­tor­i­cal debate. But not for Jake Mahaffy. His short, fun­ny film lets you see the embar­rass­ing cir­cum­stances under which chival­ry died, some­where in a marsh in 1363. 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 Vimeo Staff Picks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s It Like to Fight in 15th Cen­tu­ry Armor?: A Sur­pris­ing Demon­stra­tion

Yoda’s Long Lost Twin Found in a 14th Cen­tu­ry Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

See The Guidon­ian Hand, the Medieval Sys­tem for Read­ing Music, Get Brought Back to Life

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