R Crumb, the Father of Underground Comix, Takes Down Donald Trump in a NSFW 1989 Cartoon

in Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, Politics | June 20th, 2016

trump-crumbTrump Crumb

Nature’s way is to take away from those that have too much and give to those that have too lit­tle. Man’s way, on the con­trary, is to take away from those who have too lit­tle to give more to those who already have too much. 

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, cir­ca 500 BC

Two and a half thou­sand years lat­er, the ancient sage’s quote con­tin­ues to res­onate, espe­cial­ly in this elec­tion year.

Lest we get too gloomy, there is anoth­er quote I would like to sub­mit:

And isn’t this a nut­ty kin­da coun­try where you can draw any irrev­er­ent, degrad­ing thing about the most pow­er­ful peo­ple and nobody cares! You don’t get jailed. You don’t get per­se­cut­ed. They just ice you out of the mar­ket­place. 

- R Crumb, Hup, 1989

Crumb is to under­ground comix as Lao Tzu was to Tao­ism, but the fame Crumb achieved in the late 60s and ear­ly 70s did not pro­tect him from the 80s, “an awful decade” as he told the Observ­er. His aston­ish­ing cre­ative out­put nev­er flagged, but he hat­ed the cul­ture and strug­gled to make ends meet:

…it all grad­u­al­ly fell apart through the 70s, and by the 80s with the rise of the yup­pies, Reagan’s elec­tion and the real estate boom. In Cal­i­for­nia it was always about real estate ever since the Gold Rush, but the 80’s saw a new explo­sion of it. They went crazy. Every­body was get­ting their real estate license. They kept on build­ing these hideous hous­ing devel­op­ments where we lived. It used to be farm­land there when we first arrived, then every­thing became a fight. Dow Chem­i­cal tried to come there, we fought that. Then the Super Col­lid­er, we fought that. It was this con­stant bat­tle against these forces of devel­op­ment and busi­ness. 

In 1991, he fled Amer­i­ca for a small vil­lage in South­ern France, a pre­scient move, giv­en “Point the Fin­ger,” a com­ic pub­lished two years ear­li­er in his short-lived Hup series. The semi-fic­tion­al five-pager pits Crumb him­self against real estate devel­op­er Don­ald Trump, billed as “one of the more vis­i­ble big time preda­tors who feed on soci­ety,” as well as “one of the most evil men alive.”

The then-42-year-old Trump is quick to take Crum­b’s bait, pil­ing on some insults of his own. He may not be famil­iar with the car­toon­ist’s work, but he knows how to mount an attack, with labels like “crass,” “venal,” “some kind of self-styled ter­ror­ist,” “the pic­ture of neg­a­tiv­i­ty,” and “filled with hate.” Had Crumb set this smack down on a beach, Trump would be the bul­ly kick­ing sand in the scrawny nerd’s face, as a cou­ple of hot babes look on, admir­ing­ly.

In fact, the com­ic comes very close to end­ing on such a note. Two of Crumb’s char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly pow­er­ful­ly-thigh­ed females are on hand, osten­si­bly as mem­bers of his camp. Their heads are quick­ly turned, how­ev­er, by an invi­ta­tion to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s lav­ish Palm Beach estate. The Don­ald starts look­ing pret­ty good to Tra­cy and Marny, bedaz­zled by the promise of ban­quets, man­i­cures, world-class enter­tain­ment, and a hedo­nis­tic after-hours romp with Trump and his then-wife Ivana.

The car­toon­ist, defeat­ed, com­pares the tycoon to Tri­mal­chio, the vul­gar but loaded host of Petro­n­ius’ Satyri­con, before prepar­ing to take things out with the Lao Tzu quote at the top of this post.

It’s here that things take a turn for the meta, as Stan “the Man” Shnoot­er, the self-assured fic­tion­al pro­duc­er of Hup, ral­lies Crumb to assert autho­r­i­al con­trol.

Crumb rewinds to a piv­otal moment. In this redo, Tra­cy and Marny remain stead­fast. The bul­ly is frog­marched to the toi­let to be giv­en a taste of his own med­i­cine. The saga draws to a close with the sort of acro­bat­ic, ques­tion­ably con­sen­su­al, NSFW sex that has rained fem­i­nist ire on Crumb for years, as the unlike­ly con­quer­er savors vic­to­ry in his pre­ferred style.

Is it fan­ta­sy? Real­i­ty? All just a dream?

(Any way you slice it, I’m pret­ty sure Tra­cy and Marny aren’t the win­ners…)

You can check out Crumb’s 1989 Trump com­ic in its extreme­ly NSFW entire­ty here or buy Hup, Issue 3 to read it the old fash­ioned way. Some of the tamer pan­els can be sam­pled here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R. Crumb Shows Us How He Illus­trat­ed Gen­e­sis: A Faith­ful, Idio­syn­crat­ic Illus­tra­tion of All 50 Chap­ters

R. Crumb Describes How He Dropped LSD in the 60s & Instant­ly Dis­cov­ered His Artis­tic Style

Noam Chom­sky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resem­bles the Rise of Fas­cism in 1930s Ger­many

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

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Download a Complete, Cover-to-Cover Parody of The New Yorker: 80 Pages of Fine Satire

in Comedy, Magazines | June 16th, 2016

jorker combo

From Andrew Lip­stein & James Fol­ta comes The Neu Jork­er, a great par­o­dy of the high-brow mag­a­zine, The New York­er. The table of con­tents, the con­trib­u­tor bios, the car­toons, the ads, the articles–they’re all imi­tat­ed in a near­ly pitch per­fect way, just tak­en one degree fur­ther into the realm of slight absur­di­ty. Down­load The Neu Jork­er in high-res for­mats via Drop­box and Scribd, and you’ll see what I mean.

On page 4 of the mag­a­zine, Lip­stein and Vol­ta write, “The Neu Jork­er was a labor of love… Not a sin­gle cent was spent or made on this project. We’ve done our share of research on fair use and par­o­dy law (a sol­id Wikipedia skim), and are pret­ty sure we’re good, but we do hope that the mag­a­zine-not-to-be-named under­stands that this is some­where between satire, par­o­dy, and homage.” We’re hop­ing, too, that David Rem­nick and the lawyers at Conde Nast will appre­ci­ate the effort that went into this 80 page, cov­er-to-cov­er par­o­dy.

Con­trib­u­tors to The Neu Jork­er come from The Onion, Click­Hole, The New York­er, the Late Show with David Let­ter­man, the Late Show with Stephen Col­bert, McSweeney’s, the Upright Cit­i­zens Brigade and var­i­ous oth­er fun­ny places.

Down­load the par­o­dy here. And speak­ing of The New York­er, just a quick reminder that Mal­colm Glad­well has launched a pod­cast called “Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry” today. You can hear the first episode here.

via Metafil­ter/AV Club

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:

Mal­colm Glad­well Has Launched a New Pod­cast, Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry: Hear the First Episode

Al Jaf­fee, the Longest Work­ing Car­toon­ist in His­to­ry, Shows How He Invent­ed the Icon­ic “Folds-Ins” for Mad Mag­a­zine

The New York­er’s “Com­ma Queen” Mer­ci­ful­ly Explains the Dif­fer­ence Between Who/Whom, Lay/Lie, Less/Fewer & Beyond

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

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Stephen Fry Hates Dancing: Watch Fry’s Rant Against Dancing Get Turned into a Wonderful Interpretative Dance

in Comedy, Dance, Film | June 15th, 2016

Danc­ing, says Stephen Fry in a vehe­ment dia­tribe, is “not so much an accom­plish­ment as an afflic­tion.” He deliv­ers this pro­nounce­ment against danc­ing in one of his “pod­grams,” as he calls them, pod­casts in which the actor/writer/comedian/media per­son­al­i­ty rants, rhap­sodizes, and ram­bles on about his favorite—and least favorite—subjects. Danc­ing falls so far afoul of Stephen Fry that he devotes near­ly an entire episode to his hatred of this uni­ver­sal form of human phys­i­cal expres­sion.

“I hate doing it myself,” he begins, “which I can’t do any­way, but I loathe and detest the neces­si­ty to try.” He would deny oth­ers the plea­sure as well, at least in his com­pa­ny, of “that sloven­ly mix­ture of sex­u­al exhi­bi­tion­ism, strut­ting con­tempt, and repel­lant nar­cis­sism.” Is Fry a dance snob? Does he hate pop­u­lar dance but love ball­room and bal­let? No. “I hate it when it’s form­less, mean­ing­less bop­ping,” he seethes, “and I hate it even more when it’s for­mal and chore­o­graphed into gen­res like ball­room and schooled dis­co. Those cavort­ings are so embar­rass­ing and dread­ful as to force my hand to my mouth.”

We get it, Stephen, give it a rest! But no, he isn’t done. He goes on, for eleven whole min­utes, in the anti-danc­ing harangue above, excerpt­ed from his “Bored of the Dance.” How could one pos­si­bly respond to such a tor­rent of dis­gust and dis­dain? By danc­ing to it, of course. In the video at the top of the post, that’s exact­ly what L.A.-based dancer and film­mak­er Jo Roy does, for near­ly two and half minutes—enough time, I’m sure, to make Stephen Fry die of embar­rass­ment.

Maybe Fry has the good humor to appre­ci­ate this offen­sive rejoin­der, but I doubt he could stand to watch Roy twist, twirl, hop, pop, lock, and ges­ture expres­sive­ly to his vicious attack on the dance.

But there’s much more to Fry’s hatred of dance than cur­mud­geon­ly prud­ery. His anti-danc­ing man­i­festo is almost a digres­sion, real­ly, in the scope of his longer “pod­gram,” which you can read in full at his web­site. What he’s get­ting at is why he prefers clas­si­cal music to modern—and it is not, he insists, because of snob­bery, but because pop­u­lar music—“country, blues, rock and roll, gospel, zyde­co, jazz, swing, Tin Pan Alley, roots, blue­grass, hill­bil­ly… funk, soul, mo’town, rap, hip-hop, house, R and B”—is dance music. And Stephen Fry hates danc­ing. He is “aller­gic” to danc­ing.

“Clas­si­cal music,” on the oth­er hand, he says, “is there to be lis­tened to. It doesn’t make it bet­ter. I real­ly, real­ly mean that I do not believe that it makes it bet­ter, and I despise the snob­bery and igno­rance that is con­vinced oth­er­wise. But it does make it bet­ter suit­ed to Stephens.” As he says, quot­ing Riv­er Phoenix’s char­ac­ter in Sid­ney Lumet’s Run­ning on Emp­ty, “You can’t dance to Beethoven.” And that’s just fine with Stephen. By the end of his pro­lix apol­o­gy for his clas­si­cal pref­er­ence (not snobbery!)—which ranges in ref­er­ence from Lumet to Led Zep­pelin and Abba to Jane Austen—we believe him.

Stephen Fry hates danc­ing, per­haps more than any­one has ever hat­ed danc­ing. See him go on record again in the clip above from the BBC’s The One Show, and imag­ine how appalled he would be, if he could bring him­self to watch it, by the dance-off response at the top.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry, Lan­guage Enthu­si­ast, Defends The “Unnec­es­sary” Art Of Swear­ing

Stephen Fry Launch­es Pin­dex, a “Pin­ter­est for Edu­ca­tion”

Stephen Fry Explains Human­ism in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos: Hap­pi­ness, Truth and the Mean­ing of Life & Death

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

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Lena Dunham Shows Why It’s So Damn Hard to Meditate: A Four-Minute Comedy

in Comedy | June 14th, 2016

Sit, focus on your breath, let errant thoughts drift past — we know how med­i­ta­tion sup­pos­ed­ly works in the­o­ry, but how does it work in prac­tice? Here we have one exam­ple, which comed­ical­ly plays out at Sun­set Boule­vard’s show-biz-sto­ry-sat­u­rat­ed Chateau Mar­mont. It stars Lena Dun­ham, film­mak­er, writer, cre­ator of the HBO series Girls, and, depend­ing on who’s writ­ing about her, the embod­i­ment of the aspi­ra­tions, delu­sions, or anx­i­eties of a gen­er­a­tion. Any way the pro­files frame it, Dun­ham has a com­pli­cat­ed life, which makes her as suit­able a can­di­date as any for a dai­ly med­i­ta­tion reg­i­men.

Or as one of her assis­tants puts it after run­ning down the day’s sched­ule — a pho­to shoot, an inter­view with Rihan­na, a bap­tism, a Celi­acs for Hillary Clin­ton din­ner — “You do have to med­i­tate twice or your brain will explode.” But just as soon as Dun­ham finds the right “om” to chant to her­self, ques­tions beset her con­scious­ness: “Does my hand feel weird?” “Are Jack and I ready for adult­hood? What if we have kids and it all goes wrong?” “Am I neglect­ing my friend­ships?” “What am I going to do after Girls ends?” “Do I spend enough time with my fam­i­ly? Is the inter­net right about me? Do all dogs secret­ly hate me?” Sure­ly we all get caught in such tan­gled webs when first we prac­tice med­i­tat­ing, but Dun­ham’s expe­ri­ence with short films empow­ers her to take the depic­tion one step fur­ther.

“Should we do, like, Thai tonight?” asks Dun­ham’s boyfriend, the musi­cian Jack Antonoff, not just inside Dun­ham’s head but from a chair on the oth­er side of the room. Oth­er med­i­ta­tion-inter­rupt­ing appari­tions fol­low, tak­ing the form of Dun­ham’s best friend (who’s found a new, also-famous best friend for her­self), an infu­ri­at­ed fel­low play­er on Girls, her mis­be­hav­ing future daugh­ter, and a cou­ple of assis­tants about to defect for jobs with Mindy Kaling. And if you think using med­i­ta­tion as a way of deal­ing with the exi­gen­cies of a show­biz career, let alone doing it at the Chateau Mar­mont, seems like a pre­pos­ter­ous­ly south­ern Cal­i­forn­ian con­cept, wait until you see the solu­tion at which Dun­ham ulti­mate­ly arrives.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Med­i­ta­tion 101: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Beginner’s Guide

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Brian Eno Answers Deep Questions from Music Journalist Dick Flash: The Best Eno Interview You’ll See

in Comedy, Music | June 1st, 2016

Sure­ly you’re famil­iar with the work of Dick Flash, the tire­less writer for Pork mag­a­zine who asks the most bril­liant minds in music today the deep­est, most seri­ous, most prob­ing ques­tions. Take, for instance, his inter­view of artist/pro­duc­er/am­bi­ent-music-inven­tor Bri­an Eno. “I was going to ask you whether you thought tech­nol­o­gy had affect­ed music very deeply,” Flash begins, “but then I thought, ‘Well, that’s a bloody stu­pid ques­tion to ask Bri­an Eno. I know you’ll agree that you just can’t imag­ine rock music with­out all the tech­nol­o­gy which goes into mak­ing it and get­ting it heard. How do you think that process has affect­ed what you’re doing?”

“Well —”

“I mean, when you’re mak­ing music, what even­tu­al­ly comes out has almost noth­ing to do with per­for­mance at all. I mean, I won­der if you some­times feel more like a painter than a com­pos­er.”

“The thing about this new record —”

“Because after all, your music is basi­cal­ly scenic. It’s not only that you make it more like a painter than a com­pos­er, but also, it does­n’t have a nar­ra­tive. There’s no sort of tele­o­log­i­cal struc­ture to it. It’s not goal-direct­ed. Instead it’s a bit like a sort of emo­tion­al micro­cli­mate, a place more than an event. Does that make any sense to you?”

“Yeah, well, I —”

“I mean, I’m not try­ing to put words into your mouth, but the real ques­tion is, should this stuff be called music at all, or is it a new art form? Do you think that this and oth­er media suf­fer from the car­ry­over of their orig­i­nal names, when in fact they’ve changed into some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent.”

“Well, I like paint­ing, yeah. I real­ly like it. Um…”

The inter­view, con­duct­ed at the time of the release of Eno’s album Small Craft on a Milk Sea (which Flash calls Milk Crate on a Small Sea) con­sti­tutes a true meet­ing of the minds. The con­ver­sa­tion cov­ers all the sub­jects that mat­ter: ecol­o­gy, film scores, the 1956 Copy­right Act, the human need for sur­ren­der, “the inter­net and all that,” the Edge’s hat, and why Eno does so much col­lab­o­ra­tion in the stu­dio. As to that last, the inter­view­er has a the­o­ry: “You love play­ing with what some­body else is play­ing as much as you enjoy play­ing with your­self.”

But wait — you say you’ve nev­er heard of Dick Flash? Watch the inter­view again: does­n’t he sound and look, behind that hip hair and spec­ta­cles, at least a lit­tle bit famil­iar? And does­n’t Eno him­self, con­fus­ing Mal­colm McLaren with Mar­shall McLuhan and going on about Annie Lennox’s neck, seem unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly inar­tic­u­late, almost as if he’s pok­ing fun at him­self? (And who’s that in the pic­ture on his com­put­er desk­top, any­way?) Like all the finest inter­views through­out the his­to­ry of jour­nal­ism, this one leaves us with more ques­tions than answers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

The Genius of Bri­an Eno On Dis­play in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies”

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

David Bowie & Bri­an Eno’s Col­lab­o­ra­tion on “Warsza­wa” Reimag­ined in Com­ic Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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

in Comedy, Music | May 18th, 2016

Sure, I know ice truck­ers and snow crab fish­er­men have it rough, but I’ve always thought the hard­est job in the world is to be a come­di­an. You walk out on stage, night after night, throw­ing your­self on the mer­cy of the fick­le crowd, with noth­ing but your wits to keep you afloat. It’s nev­er been any won­der to me that so many come­di­ans turn to var­i­ous sub­stances to cope with the heck­ling, chilly silences, and dis­in­ter­est­ed, half-emp­ty rooms. Even suc­cess­ful, beloved comics face tremen­dous per­for­mance pres­sures. Some of them crack. And some, like John Belushi, hop onstage dur­ing a Grate­ful Dead show at the Capi­tol The­atre, cart­wheel over to a micro­phone before the cho­rus of “U.S. Blues,” and join in on back­ing vocals.

Belushi’s impromp­tu 1980 prank per­for­mance with the Dead was not, ini­tial­ly, wel­comed. He had, reports Live for Live Music, “met with some resis­tance from the band” when he asked to join in dur­ing the encore, and drum­mer Bill Kreutz­mann “had to nix Belushi’s wish­es.”

So Belushi, true to form, took mat­ters into his own anar­chic hands, stag­ing what Kreutz­mann called in his 2015 auto­bi­og­ra­phy a “comedic ambush.”

He had on a sport coat with small Amer­i­can flags stuffed into both of his breast pock­ets and he land­ed his last cart­wheel just in time to grab a micro­phone and join in on the cho­rus. The audi­ence and every­one in the band—except for Phil—ate it up. It could­n’t have been rehearsed bet­ter. Belushi had impec­ca­ble comedic tim­ing, musi­cal­i­ty, balls, the works. And appar­ent­ly, he did­n’t take no for an answer.

Belushi’s musi­cal antics, and sur­pris­ing acro­bat­ic agili­ty, are already well-known to fans of The Blues Broth­ers. His pen­chant for real-life musi­cal chaos—such as his stag­ing of an authen­ti­cal­ly riotous punk show on Sat­ur­day Night Live—have also become part of his estimable com­ic leg­end.

Sad­ly, no video of the stunt seems to exist, but you can see Kreutz­mann tell the Belushi sto­ry in the inter­view at the top of the post and, just above, hear that night’s encore per­for­mance of “U.S. Blues.” Lis­ten close­ly at around the 1:50 mark and you’ll hear Belushi join in on the cho­rus. We’ll have to imag­ine the cart­wheels, but it prob­a­bly looked some­thing like this.


Hear the full Dead show from that night here. And if you’re crav­ing more musi­cal Belushi, check out his spas­mod­ic impres­sion of the late, great Joe Cock­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young John Belushi Imi­tates Tru­man Capote & Per­forms Live on Sec­ond City Stage (1972)

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Stream 36 Record­ings of Leg­endary Grate­ful Dead Con­certs Free Online (aka Dick’s Picks)

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

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

in Comedy, Film, History, Theatre | May 16th, 2016

In 1900, Thomas Edi­son trav­eled to Paris to doc­u­ment the many won­ders of the Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle, and the city itself. Among the sights cap­tured with his kine­to­scope cam­eras were the Expo’s mov­ing side­walks, the Champs-Élysées, and the pre­vi­ous Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle’s crown jew­el, the Eif­fel Tow­er, now eleven years old.

It wasn’t all so high-mind­ed. Edi­son and his kine­to­scope also caught a per­for­mance by for­mer Moulin Rouge star, Joseph Pujol, aka Le Pétomane, above. This ele­gant­ly attired gen­tle­men achieved fame and for­tune with a series of impres­sions, car­ried out by a rather eccen­tric ori­fice. He was not so much artiste as fartiste, a title he wore with pride.

Pujol claimed to have dis­cov­ered his unusu­al tal­ent as a child, and soon set about achiev­ing dif­fer­ent effects by using his abdom­i­nal mus­cles to expel not gas, but odor­less air. By vary­ing the pres­sure, he was able to play sim­ple tunes. By the time he turned 30, his act had expand­ed to include imper­son­ations of celebri­ties, musi­cal instru­ments, birds, a thun­der­storm and such stock char­ac­ters as a ner­vous bride. His grand finale includ­ed such feats as blow­ing out can­dles, smok­ing cig­a­rettes and play­ing an oca­ri­na (below), all with the aid of a rub­ber hose insert­ed into his anus via a mod­est trouser slit.

oc-fluted-top

What a tragedy that Edison’s short film is silent! No live piano accom­pa­ni­ment could do jus­tice to this mag­i­cal artis­tic fruit, and if there were oth­er record­ings of Pujol, they’ve been lost to his­to­ry.

He lives on in the imag­i­na­tions of artists who fol­lowed him.

Actor Ugo Tog­nazzi, below, assumed the title role in a 1983 Ital­ian lan­guage fea­ture.

Direc­tor Mel Brooks inject­ed a bit of sub­tle­ty into Blaz­ing Sad­dles’  beans-around-the-camp­fire humor when he appeared as a char­ac­ter named Gov­er­nor William J. LeP­etomane.

Sad­ly, Pujol was left on the cut­ting room floor of direc­tor Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, but all is not lost. Report­ed­ly, John­ny Depp has indi­cat­ed inter­est in bring­ing this his­toric fig­ure back to life. (Gen­tle­men, start your screen­plays…)

Fartiste

Then there is the half hour biopic, below, direct­ed by Mon­ty Python alum Ian McNaughton and star­ring Leonard Rossiter as Pujol. Pre­pare to hear the open­ing ses­sion of the Con­gress of Vien­na, a toad, and a four-part har­mo­ny.

via Messy Nessy Chic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talk­ing Dolls: An Inven­tion That Scared Kids & Flopped on the Mar­ket

Thomas Edison’s Box­ing Cats (1894), or Where the LOL­Cats All Began

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

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

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Monty Python’s Philosopher’s Football Match: The Epic Showdown Between the Greeks & Germans (1972)

in Comedy, Philosophy | May 10th, 2016

Last year, we wit­nessed a very tense, unpleas­ant show­down between Ger­many and Greece as the top­most nation in the Euro­pean Union drove its most indebt­ed coun­try to make painful, per­haps pun­ish­ing com­pro­mis­es. In one analy­sis of this hard-to-watch eco­nom­ic humiliation—for Greece, that is—The Wash­ing­ton Post made use of a much more light­heart­ed con­test between the two coun­tries, one in which Greece emerged the vic­tor after scor­ing the only goal of the match.

The soc­cer match, that is, or, if you must, football—played between Ger­man and Greek philoso­phers in 1972 and staged by Mon­ty Python. On one side, Hegel, Leib­niz, Kant, Marx, Niet­zsche, Wittgen­stein, and more (includ­ing actu­al foot­baller Franz Beck­en­bauer, a “sur­prise inclu­sion”)… on the oth­er, Socrates, Archimedes, Her­a­cli­tus, Pla­to, Dem­ocri­tus, Epicte­tus, etc…. On the side­lines of this show­down between West­ern schools of thought, Con­fu­cius served as the ref­er­ee. Even after that sin­gle goal, scored after two full halves of mean­der­ing, the two teams came into conflict—in heat­ed argu­ments about the nature of exis­tence….

I won’t con­tin­ue to bore you by explain­ing the gags—watch the sketch above. It’s great fun, if by some chance you haven’t seen it, and great fun to watch again if you have.

Filmed at the Grün­walder Sta­dion in Munich (pre­sum­ably giv­ing the Ger­mans home field advan­tage), the sketch, Ter­ry Jones recalled many years lat­er, is about the “clash of oppo­sites.” No, not the two Euro­pean coun­tries, but the oppo­sites of sports and intel­lec­tu­al exer­cise. “You can’t think about foot­ball too much,” said Jones, “you just have to do it.” This proves chal­leng­ing for our deep thinkers.

Why foot­ball? Because it’s “a team activ­i­ty,” Jones answered, “which phi­los­o­phy, as a gen­er­al rule, isn’t.” Well, most­ly. The Pythons weren’t the first to make the “incon­gru­ous” con­nec­tion. Albert Camus played the game, as a goal­keep­er, and played it quite well by all accounts. He once wrote, “all I know most sure­ly about moral­i­ty and oblig­a­tions, I owe to foot­ball.”

The injunc­tion to “just do it” wouldn’t present too much of a chal­lenge for an exis­ten­tial­ist, one would think. Philoso­pher Julian Bag­gi­ni puts the Pythons firm­ly in that school of thought, their take on it a “coher­ent, Anglo-Sax­on” one. Indeed, like Camus, the British come­di­ans rec­og­nized the absur­di­ty of life, and showed us that “the right response is to laugh at it.” They also showed us that phi­los­o­phy could be hilar­i­ous, and made a clas­sic sketch aca­d­e­mics could use to refute charges they’re a dour, humor­less lot.

It should come as no sur­prise that the Python “most inter­est­ed in the sub­ject” of phi­los­o­phy and com­e­dy was John Cleese—whom we’ve fea­tured here many times for his tal­ents in com­bin­ing the two. Cleese, writes Bag­gi­ni, is “on record as say­ing that com­e­dy and deep thought can go hand in hand. ‘You and I could talk about the mean­ing of life, or edu­ca­tion, or mar­riage,’ Cleese once told a jour­nal­ist, ‘and we could be laugh­ing a lot, and it doesn’t mean that what we’re talk­ing about isn’t seri­ous.’”

Inspired by the Pythons’ serio-com­ic love of learn­ing, Bag­gi­ni, and oth­er philoso­phers like A.C. Grayling and Nigel War­bur­ton, along with come­di­ans, his­to­ri­ans, and jour­nal­ists, decid­ed to restage the Ger­many-Greek match in 2010. Where the Pythons indi­rect­ly boost­ed intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits in the course of mock­ing them, the par­tic­i­pants in this “game”—such as it was—explicitly sought to pro­mote “Rea­son­ing,” the “fourth R” in “Read­ing, W®iting, and A®ithmetic.”

See them bum­ble around on the pitch here and gen­er­al­ly have a good time mak­ing philo­soph­i­cal fools of them­selves to the strains of Mon­ty Python’s row­dy anthem “The Philoso­pher’s Song.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python Sings “The Philosopher’s Song,” Reveal­ing the Drink­ing Habits of Great Euro­pean Thinkers

John Cleese Touts the Val­ue of Phi­los­o­phy in 22 Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments for the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Re-Imag­ined as an Epic, Main­stream Hol­ly­wood Film

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

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