The Centrifuge Brain Project: Scientists Solve Mankind’s Great Problems by Spinning People

in Comedy, Sci Fi | February 7th, 2013

What if the very thing that made you feel crazy hap­py also made you smarter? That’s the ques­tion under­ly­ing the work of the Insti­tute for Cen­trifu­gal Research, where sci­en­tists believe that spin­ning peo­ple around at a suf­fi­cient­ly high G‑force will solve “even the trick­i­est chal­lenges con­fronting mankind.”

We fol­low Dr. Nick Laslow­icz, chief engi­neer, as he strolls through amuse­ment parks, wear­ing a hard hat and tak­ing notes, and describes the lib­er­at­ing pow­er of spin­ning and the “mis­take” of grav­i­ty.

The actor is ter­rif­ic. Yes, The Cen­trifuge Brain Project is a joke. Laslow­icz is just zany enough to be believ­able as a sci­en­tist whose research began in the 1970s. The sketch­es on the project’s web­site are fun too and direc­tor Till Nowak’s CGR ren­der­ing of the ride con­cepts are hilar­i­ous.

centrifuge_plan_steam_pressure_catapult

The cul­mi­nat­ing exper­i­ment fea­tures a ride that resem­bles a giant trop­i­cal plant. Rid­ers enter a round car that ris­es slow­ly up, up, up and then takes off sud­den­ly at incred­i­bly high speed along one of the “branch­es.”

“Unpre­dictabil­i­ty is a key part of our work,” says Laslow­icz. After the ride, he says, peo­ple described expe­ri­enc­ing a “read­just­ment of key goals and life aspi­ra­tions.” Though he lat­er adds that he wouldn’t put his own chil­dren on one of his rides.

“These machines pro­vide total free­dom,” Laslow­icz says, “cut­ting all con­nec­tion to the world we live in: com­mu­ni­ca­tion respon­si­bil­i­ty, weight. Every­thing is on hold when you’re being cen­trifuged.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mir­a­cle Mush­rooms Pow­er the Slums of Mum­bai

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her work at .

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The Troggs Tapes: ‘Put a Little Bit of F***ing Fairy Dust Over the Bastard!’

in Comedy, Music | February 7th, 2013

Reg Pres­ley, lead singer of the Six­ties rock group The Trog­gs, died Mon­day at the age of 71. The Trog­gs (short for Troglodytes) are often men­tioned as a major influ­ence on the punk rock move­ment of the 1970s. They record­ed a string of hits between 1966 and 1968, most notably “Wild Thing.” The Trog­gs are also remembered—much to the band’s chagrin—for one of the most noto­ri­ous bootlegs ever: “The Trog­gs Tapes,” described by Uncut mag­a­zine as a “hilar­i­ous, 12-minute swearathon.”

The Trog­gs Tapes were record­ed in Lon­don in 1970. The band was work­ing on a song called “Tran­quil­i­ty,” but things weren’t going well, and the ses­sion degen­er­at­ed into a foul-mouthed orgy of acri­mo­ny and recrim­i­na­tion. A copy of the record­ing some­how made it onto the boot­leg mar­ket and became leg­endary. Sat­ur­day Night Live par­o­died the Trog­gs Tapes in a sketch with Bill Mur­ray, John Belushi and oth­ers play­ing a group of frus­trat­ed medieval musi­cians who say the word “flog­ging” over and over. The tapes are also par­o­died in This is Spinal Tap, dur­ing the record­ing scene at the “Rain­bow Trout Stu­dios.” In a piece this week pay­ing trib­ute to Reg Pres­ley, the Tele­graph music crit­ic Neil McCormick writes:

Before the inter­net, The Trog­gs Tapes were hard to find, yet every­one seemed to know about them, an elu­sive­ness that only added to their allure. I remem­ber get­ting my hands on a copy in a Dublin flea mar­ket, then sit­ting aroud late at night with friends laugh­ing our­selves sil­ly at the inani­ty and pal­pa­ble sense of frus­tra­tion as the musi­cians fail to find a way to artic­u­late and cap­ture some sound idea, beyond the reach of either their lan­guage or their tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties.… In truth, it is the kind of con­ver­sa­tion you can hear every day in record­ing stu­dios all around the world, but there was some­thing lib­er­at­ing and myth-bust­ing about the expe­ri­ence of eaves­drop­ping on these unguard­ed musi­cians at work.

You can lis­ten to an abridged ver­sion of The Trog­gs Tapes above. To learn more about Reg Pres­ley, you can read his fit­ting­ly uncon­ven­tion­al obit­u­ary in The Tele­graph. And to end things off on a pos­i­tive note, we offer a glimpse of The Trog­gs when things were going con­sid­er­ably more smooth­ly, with the band per­form­ing “Wild Thing” in 1966:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 1962 Bea­t­les Demo that Dec­ca Reject­ed: “Gui­tar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

8,976 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive, Explored by the New York­er

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Monty Python’s Life of Brian: Religious Satire, Political Satire, or Blasphemy?

in Comedy, Film, Religion, Television | February 6th, 2013

Before I saw Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an, I only knew that reli­gious peo­ple did­n’t like it, which intrigued me. Then I found out that some reli­gious peo­ple like it very much indeed, which real­ly intrigued me. Build­ing its sto­ry on a satir­i­cal par­al­lel of the life of Jesus Christ, Life of Bri­an could nev­er have helped draw­ing fire. But the Pythons knew how to use it: “So fun­ny it was banned in Nor­way!” read one of the film’s posters, and indeed, the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment put the kibosh on its screen­ings, as did Ire­land’s, as did a num­ber of town coun­cils in Eng­land. “As a satire on reli­gion, this film might well be con­sid­ered a rather slight pro­duc­tion,” writes Richard Web­ster in A Brief His­to­ry of Blas­phemy. “As blas­phe­my it was, even in its orig­i­nal ver­sion, extreme­ly mild. Yet the film was sur­round­ed from its incep­tion by intense anx­i­ety, in some quar­ters of the Estab­lish­ment, about the offence it might cause. As a result it gained a cer­tifi­cate for gen­er­al release only after some cuts had been made. Per­haps more impor­tant­ly still, the film was shunned by the BBC and ITV, who declined to show it for fear of offend­ing Chris­tians in this coun­try.”

All this con­tro­ver­sy came to a now-infa­mous 1979 tele­vi­sion debate: In one cor­ner, we have Python’s John Cleese and Michael Palin. In the oth­er, we have con­trar­i­an satirist Mal­colm Mug­geridge and Bish­op of South­wark Mervyn Stock­wood. You can watch the whole broad­cast on Youtube (part one, part two, part three, part four). In the extract above, you can hear Cleese argue that the film does not, in fact, ridicule Jesus Christ, but instead indicts “closed sys­tems of thought” of the type drilled into his con­scious­ness dur­ing his board­ing school years. Palin takes pains to under­score its nature as not whol­ly a reli­gious satire, but more of a jab at mod­ern Eng­lish soci­ety and pol­i­tics trans­posed into the Bib­li­cal past. Mug­geridge and Stock­wood, while den­i­grat­ing Life of Bri­an’s cin­e­mat­ic mer­it all the while, nonethe­less see in it a dan­ger­ous poten­tial to cor­rupt the youth. But it turns out that they’d shown up at their screen­ing fif­teen min­utes late, miss­ing the scenes which would have told them that Jesus Christ and the hap­less Bri­an of the title are two dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Indeed, Bri­an is not the mes­si­ah. The les­son here: watch Life of Bri­an in full, as many times as it takes to get you draw­ing your own non-received con­clu­sions about reli­gion, soci­ety, and com­e­dy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python’s Away From it All: A Twist­ed Trav­el­ogue with John Cleese

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Kingsley Browne, Wayne State Law Prof, Embarrasses Himself Spectacularly on The Daily Show

in Comedy, Law | January 30th, 2013

Jon Stew­art and com­pa­ny can make pret­ty much any­one look like an imbe­cile. Some nights they have to put a lot of elbow grease into it. Some nights less. And, some nights, they can just leave the elbow grease on the work­room shelf. Like Mon­day night, when Kings­ley Browne, law pro­fes­sor at Wayne State, gave an inter­view to The Dai­ly Show and opined on whether women should take part in front­line com­bat. While some con­ser­v­a­tives have opposed widen­ing wom­en’s role in com­bat by point­ing to “anatom­i­cal facts,” Kings­ley pulled some pop psy­cho-biol­o­gy out of his dusty store­house of patri­cian knowl­edge. “Girls become women by get­ting old­er; boys become men by accom­plish­ing some­thing, by prov­ing some­thing.” Saman­tha Bee could have just stayed home and col­lect­ed a pay­check that night. 1950s prat­tle just sounds increas­ing­ly fool­ish and fun­ny in 2013 (even if its effects are still per­ni­cious). But, even so, Bee did add the Andy Grif­fith fade-to-black & white, and that was a pret­ty nice touch.

Note: If Mr. Browne feels like his views weren’t ade­quate­ly expressed on The Dai­ly Show, we would wel­come him to elab­o­rate on his views in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Also note, if you’re look­ing for more musty mus­ings from the liv­ing muse­um, you can catch Mr. Browne on CNN.

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A Look Back at Andy Kaufman: Absurd Comic Performance Artist and Endearing Weirdo

in Comedy | January 29th, 2013

Andy Kauf­man had too much per­son­al­i­ty for one per­son, so he split him­self into sev­er­al, and nobody seemed to know which one of them was Andy Kauf­man. Andy Kauf­man prob­a­bly could have faked his death, then returned for the big ta-da twen­ty years lat­er, but he didn’t (prob­a­bly). Andy Kauf­man, ladies and gen­tle­men, was a genius. I don’t mean that in the idiomat­ic sense of “he was real­ly great,” no. I mean that he had a com­ic IQ of sev­er­al hun­dred points. Which is why so many of his bits are so baf­fling and rib-crack­ing­ly fun­ny at once: he played dolts, sim­ple­tons, and drool­ing, almost cata­ton­ic idiots so per­fect­ly that you might swear that there was real­ly some­thing wrong with him. Except that dur­ing a per­for­mance, you might also swear you’d caught a wicked glint in his eye—for frac­tion of a second—as if you’d almost, maybe, but not quite seen a sub­lim­i­nal ad flash over the screen dur­ing a movie.

Then there were the Kauf­man char­ac­ters so unlike­able, so ruth­less­ly obnox­ious and dan­ger­ous­ly unhinged, you’d swear that there was some­thing wrong with him, again. And maybe there was, but I’m con­vinced he was in full con­trol of it. In the clip above, from The David Let­ter­man Show in 1980, Kauf­man sends Let­ter­man into a fit of stam­mer­ing “uh, oh… ums” and the audi­ence into fits of laugh­ter by look­ing like he’s just stum­bled in from a psych ward and isn’t sure exact­ly where he is or why. When he final­ly opens his mouth to speak, at near­ly two min­utes into the inter­view, he seems lost, dazed, almost child­like. Which every­one thinks is hilar­i­ous, because, well, it’s Andy Kauf­man. It must be per­for­mance art, right? No mat­ter which Andy Kauf­man appeared before an audi­ence, they always had the sense there was anoth­er one, or sev­er­al, under­neath, whether they knew his act or not. But you could nev­er know if you’d hit bedrock. Joaquin Phoenix—whose attempts to stunt the pub­lic a few years ago most­ly pro­voked befud­dle­ment and pity—never came close to this lev­el of weird. If Char­lie Sheen had been hoax­ing, instead of just los­ing his mind… maybe.

One might say Andy Kauf­man invent­ed trolling, the art of ril­ing peo­ple up by imper­son­at­ing idiots, cra­zies, and abra­sive jerks. And he got away with it for one sim­ple rea­son; he was authentic—all of his char­ac­ters had some kind of endear­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, even at their most deranged. This was cer­tain­ly the case with the TV char­ac­ter that made him famous, Taxi’s Lat­ka, an immi­grant dri­ver of inde­ter­mi­nate ori­gin, whose naïve demeanor and unin­tel­li­gi­ble lan­guage nev­er smacked of mere, broad par­o­dy of “the for­eign­er,” although in any­one else’s hands, that would have hap­pened. But Kauf­man brought to the char­ac­ter a sub­tle­ty that made Lat­ka an instant indi­vid­ual. Watch the scene below, for exam­ple, in which Kauf­man, as Lat­ka, trans­forms into a swing­ing Play­boy mag­a­zine afi­ciona­do, then back to Lat­ka, all in under two min­utes of Char­lie Chap­lin-wor­thy phys­i­cal com­e­dy.

Lat­ka grew out of an ear­li­er per­sona of Kaufman’s who claimed to be from a fic­tion­al island in the Caspi­an Sea called “Caspi­ar.” This character’s ner­vous inep­ti­tude was charm­ing enough, but the pay­off, as you’ll see below, was when Kauf­man broke out of char­ac­ter into his swag­ger­ing Elvis imper­son­ation. It’s said that the real Elvis loved it, and it’s the bit that inspired the immor­tal lines in R.E.M.’s Kauf­man trib­ute song, “Man on the Moon”: “Andy are you goof­ing on Elvis (hey baby) / Are you hav­ing fun?” Below, see Kaufman’s trans­for­ma­tion into Elvis from an appear­ance on The Tonight Show with John­ny Car­son in 1977. Tell me if you think he’s enjoy­ing him­self.

The dark­er side of Andy Kauf­man comes out in such abu­sive char­ac­ters as vit­ri­olic lounge singer, Tony Clifton, some­times played by Kaufman’s friend and part­ner, Bob Zmu­da (watch Kauf­man and Zmu­da togeth­er on a kids show called Bananaz in 1979). Tony Clifton became Kauf­man’s evil alter-ego, an ali­bi for his more destruc­tive urges, and a char­ac­ter that out­lived him, res­ur­rect­ed after his death by Zmu­da, and lat­er by come­di­an Ben Isaac. Below, see Kaufman’s first per­for­mance as Clifton in 1977.

Clifton, and Kauf­man, got mean­er and weird­er over the years (or so it seemed). Any­one who’s seen Milos Forman’s biopic Man on the Moon is famil­iar with Kaufman’s obses­sive prank­ing of pro­fes­sion­al wrestling: his feud with wrestler Jer­ry Lawler (who was in on the joke), his relent­less taunt­ing of the South­ern Lawler and the most­ly South­ern audi­ence as red­necks and rubes, and his turns in the ring with female wrestlers. This part of his career is tru­ly bizarre, though sure­ly no less a con­trolled demo­li­tion than any­thing he’d done before. And the weird­er Kauf­man got, the more he seemed to con­firm some­thing many peo­ple had always sus­pect­ed. What­ev­er the stunt, the char­ac­ter, or impres­sion, the joke was on every­one, and nobody knew what was hap­pen­ing but Andy. In 1989, five years after Kaufman’s death from can­cer, his girl­friend Lynne Mar­gulies and friend Joe Orr fin­ished a doc­u­men­tary about his adven­tures in pro­fes­sion­al wrestling called I’m from Hol­ly­wood, after one of his sneer­ing, faux-elit­ist insults of Lawler. It’s the last piece of Kaufman’s lega­cy, and it’s avail­able in sev­er­al parts on YouTube. Watch and try to imag­ine, if you can, what the wrestling fans ring­side made of Andy Kauf­man.

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

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Father Guido Sarducci Pitches “The Five Minute University”

in Comedy, Education | January 28th, 2013

If you expe­ri­enced the hey­day of Sat­ur­day Night Live, you’ll almost cer­tain­ly remem­ber Father Gui­do Sar­duc­ci, the chain-smok­ing, sun­glass-wear­ing priest who worked (rather implau­si­bly) as a rock crit­ic for the Vat­i­can news­pa­per L’Osser­va­tore Romano. The Sar­duc­ci char­ac­ter was the brain­child of Don Nov­el­lo, a come­di­an who first began play­ing with the char­ac­ter in the ear­ly 1970s, when he bought a mon­signor’s out­fit for $7.50 at a thrift shop. Nov­el­lo took “Sar­duc­ci” from the San Fran­cis­co night­clubs, to The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Show, to Sat­ur­day Night Live in 1977. The irrev­er­ent priest often appeared on the “Week­end Update” seg­ment and even once opened the show. And then, lat­er, Nov­el­lo brought Sar­duc­ci onto the Amer­i­can com­e­dy cir­cuit where he pitched audi­ences on the “Five Minute Uni­ver­si­ty,” a con­cept you’ll want to con­sid­er in case that MOOC thing does­n’t quite work out. Appar­ent­ly it now has VC fund­ing too.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Pope John Paul II Takes Bat­ting Prac­tice in Cal­i­for­nia, 1987

John Belushi’s Impro­vised Screen Test for Sat­ur­day Night Live (1975)

The Mak­ing of The Blues Broth­ers: When Belushi and Aykroyd Went on a Mis­sion for Com­e­dy & Music

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Meet “Dashan,” the Canadian Comedian Who Achieved Accidental Stardom in China

in Comedy, Life | January 25th, 2013

West­ern stu­dents of the Chi­nese lan­guage tend to know Dashan. Some­times they don’t like him very much. The vari­ety of pos­si­ble expla­na­tions obvi­ous­ly includes sim­ple jeal­ousy, since Dashan (giv­en name Mark Rowswell) enjoys fame across Chi­na for his mas­tery of Man­darin. But just as this anti-Dashan resent­ment actu­al­ly springs from more com­pli­cat­ed caus­es, so the fer­vent­ly pro-Dashan feel­ings of mil­lions of Chi­nese fans spring from more than his unusu­al flu­en­cy. Ambas­sador to Chi­na’s Fun­ny Bone, the fifty-minute doc­u­men­tary above, traces Dashan’s seem­ing­ly uncal­cu­lat­ed rise from his under­grad­u­ate days in Chi­nese stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, to his break­through appear­ance on Chi­na Cen­tral Tele­vi­sion’s 1988 New Year’s Gala, to his inescapable pres­ence on the Chi­nese stage and screen — includ­ing but by no means lim­it­ed to endors­ing a “Cana­di­an fast food restau­rant.” This sort of celebri­ty makes one instinc­tive­ly want to para­phrase Samuel John­son’s line about the dog walk­ing on its hind legs: even if a west­ern­er speak­ing Chi­nese on tele­vi­sion is not done well, audi­ences are sur­prised to find it done at all.

But Dashan does do it well, and he does it in a con­text even more chal­leng­ing than a four-legged ani­mal walk­ing upright: the tra­di­tion­al form of lan­guage com­e­dy known as xiang­sheng. The doc­u­men­tary shows Dashan per­form­ing as part of a duo, and just above you can see him going solo. Out­side of this spe­cial­ized set­ting, observers have com­pared his mild, easy­go­ing, friend­ly — dare I say Cana­di­an? — per­sona to Dick Clark’s; one inter­vie­wee in Ambas­sador even describes him as harm­less­ly sym­bol­iz­ing Cana­da just as a pan­da sym­bol­izes Chi­na. Yet his detrac­tors have grown vocal enough to prompt some­one to pub­licly ask, on ques­tion-and-answer site Quo­ra, “Why do so many Chi­nese learn­ers seem to hate Dashan?” The top answer comes from Dashan him­self, who pro­vides a thor­ough, clear­head­ed, and self-aware analy­sis of the per­cep­tion of his char­ac­ter. He even cites, approv­ing­ly, the answer from Chi­na watch­er and rock­er Kaiser Kuo: “Dashan seems like a nice enough guy, but for some rea­son every once in a while I have the urge to punch him in the face.”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch Bill Murray Perform a Satirical Anti-Technology Rant (1982)

in Comedy, Technology, Television | January 23rd, 2013

Above you’ll find find a clip from Wired In, a tele­vi­sion show pro­duced in the ear­ly eight­ies meant to ori­ent view­ers in the midst of that heady era of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. Alas, the pro­gram nev­er aired; only a demo reel and some raw footage sur­vive. But those remains fea­ture no less a comedic lumi­nary than Bill Mur­ray, who even 32 years ago must have been quite a catch for a pilot like this. Though not known for his tech savvy, he has built a rep­u­ta­tion for mak­ing any­thing sound hilar­i­ous by virtue of his per­sona alone. This skill he applies to a par­o­dy of the every­man’s anti-tech­nol­o­gy dia­tribe, as com­mon­ly heard then as it is today — or as it no doubt was 32 years before the shoot, or will be 32 years from now. “Who thinks up all this high-tech stuff any­way?” Mur­ray demands. “They start with the dig­i­tal watch­es. Tells you the time in num­bers, the exact time to the sec­ond. 3:12 and 42 sec­onds. Who needs to know that stuff? I don’t!”

Keep watch­ing, and that Wired In clip heads to Las Vegas to demon­strate for us the won­der of sol­id-state car­tridge soft­ware for the Texas Instru­ments Home Com­put­er. But if you’d rather mar­vel at more of Mur­ray’s par­tic­u­lar kind of craft, watch the full sev­en min­utes of rant takes above. His riffs, seem­ing­ly script­ed as well as impro­vised, of vary­ing moods and pitched at vary­ing ener­gy lev­els, take him from those dig­i­tal watch­es to auto­mat­ed car fac­to­ries to R2-D2 to talk­ing dash­boards to the one idea he does like, robots that ride along­side you in your car’s pas­sen­ger’s seat. “You know what?” he con­cludes, “They’ll nev­er do it — because it makes too much sense.” The mak­ers of Wired In clear­ly had a pre­scient­ly sar­don­ic atti­tude about the com­ing waves of tech-relat­ed anx­i­ety; the pilot also includes a jab at the notion of video game addic­tion from “Pac-Man freak” Lily Tom­lin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Reads Wal­lace Stevens Poems — “The Plan­et on The Table” and “A Rab­bit as King of the Ghosts”

Fact Check­ing Bill Mur­ray: A Short, Com­ic Film from Sun­dance 2008

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry at a Con­struc­tion Site

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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