The Proper Way to Eat Ramen: A Meditation from the Classic Japanese Comedy Tampopo (1985)

There is a right way to eat every dish, as an ever-increas­ing abun­dance of inter­net videos dai­ly informs us. But how did we nav­i­gate our first encoun­ters with unfa­mil­iar foods thir­ty, forty, fifty years ago? With no way to learn online, we had no choice but to learn in real life, assum­ing we could find a trust­ed fig­ure well-versed in the ways of eat­ing from whom to learn — a sen­sei, as they say in Japan­ese, the kind of wise elder depict­ed in the film clip above, a scene that takes place in a ramen shop. “Mas­ter,” asks the young stu­dent, “soup first or noo­dles first?” The ramen mas­ter’s reply: “First, observe the whole bowl. Appre­ci­ate its gestalt. Savor the aro­mas.”

Behold the “jew­els of fat glit­ter­ing on its sur­face,” the “shi­nachiku roots shin­ing,” the “sea­weed low­ly sink­ing, the “spring onions float­ing.” The eater’s first action must be to “caress the sur­face with the chop­stick tips” in order to “express affec­tion.” The sec­ond is to “poke the pork” — don’t eat it, just touch it — then “pick it up and dip it into the soup on the right of the bowl.” The most impor­tant part? To “apol­o­gize to the pork by say­ing, ‘See you soon.’ ” Then the eat­ing can com­mence, “noo­dles first,” but “while slurp­ing the noo­dles, look at the pork. Eye it affec­tion­ate­ly.” After then sip­ping the soup three times, the mas­ter picks up a slice of pork “as if mak­ing a major deci­sion in life,” and taps it on the side of the bowl. Why? “To drain it.” To those who know Japan­ese food cul­ture for the val­ue it places on aes­thet­ic sen­si­tiv­i­ty and adher­ence to form, this scene may look per­fect­ly real­is­tic.

But those who know Japan­ese cin­e­ma will have rec­og­nized imme­di­ate­ly the open­ing of Tam­popo, the beloved 1985 com­e­dy that sat­i­rizes through food both Japan­ese cul­ture and human­i­ty itself. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert describes the ramen-mas­ter vignette as depict­ing “a kind of gas­tro­nom­ic reli­gion, and direc­tor Juzo Ita­mi cre­ates a scene that makes noo­dles in this movie more inter­est­ing than sex and vio­lence in many anoth­er.” Not that Tam­popo, for all its cheer­ful­ness (Ebert calls it “a bemused med­i­ta­tion on human nature in which one humor­ous sit­u­a­tion flows into anoth­er offhand­ed­ly, as if life were a series of smiles”) does­n’t also con­tain plen­ty of sex and vio­lence. Wal­ter Ben­jamin once said that every great work of art destroys or cre­ates a genre. Tam­popo cre­ates the “ramen West­ern,” rolling a cou­ple of cow­boy­ish truck­ers (seen briefly in the clip above) into boom­ing 1980 Tokyo to get a wid­ow’s fail­ing ramen shop into shape.

Through par­o­dy and sly­er forms of allu­sion, Tam­popo ref­er­ences cin­e­ma both West­ern and East­ern, and its cast includes actors who were or would become icon­ic: the stu­dent of ramen is played by Ken Watan­abe, now known to audi­ences world­wide for his roles in Hol­ly­wood pic­tures like The Last Samu­rai and Incep­tion. The mas­ter is played by Ryû­tarô Ôto­mo, a main­stay of samu­rai films from the late 1930s through the 1960s, who chose this as his very last role: the very day after shoot­ing his scene, he com­mit­ted sui­cide by jump­ing from the top of a build­ing. (Ita­mi would die under sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances in 1997, some say with the involve­ment of the Yakuza.) Now that inter­net videos and oth­er forms of 21st-cen­tu­ry media are dis­sem­i­nat­ing the rel­e­vant knowl­edge, we can all study to become mas­ters of ramen, or for that mat­ter of any dish we please — but can any of us hope to rise to the exam­ple of ele­gance, and hilar­i­ous­ness, laid down by Ôto­mo’s final act on film?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Right and Wrong Way to Eat Sushi: A Primer

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Mas­ter Sushi Chef

Watch Tee­ny Tiny Japan­ese Meals Get Made in a Minia­ture Kitchen: The Joy of Cook­ing Mini Tem­pu­ra, Sashi­mi, Cur­ry, Okonomiya­ki & More

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

In Japan­ese Schools, Lunch Is As Much About Learn­ing As It’s About Eat­ing

The Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders: A Tokyo Restau­rant Where All the Servers Are Peo­ple Liv­ing with Demen­tia

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders: A Tokyo Restaurant Where All the Servers Are People Living with Dementia

If you’ve ever been to Japan, you’ll know that in Japan­ese restau­rants, mis­takes are not made. And on the off chance that a mis­take is made, even a triv­ial one, the lengths that pro­pri­etors will go to make things right with their cus­tomers must, in the eyes of a West­ern­er, be seen to be believed. But as its name sug­gests, the Tokyo pop-up Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders does things a bit dif­fer­ent­ly. “You might think it’s crazy. A restau­rant that can’t even get your order right,” says its Eng­lish intro­duc­tion page. “All of our servers are peo­ple liv­ing with demen­tia. They may, or may not, get your order right.”

Un-Japan­ese though that con­cept may seem at first, it actu­al­ly reflects real­i­ties of Japan­ese soci­ety in the 21st cen­tu­ry: Japan has an aging pop­u­la­tion with an already high pro­por­tion of elder­ly peo­ple, and that puts it on track to have the fastest grow­ing num­ber of preva­lent cas­es of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease.

Whole towns have already begun to struc­ture their ser­vices around a grow­ing num­ber of cit­i­zens with demen­tia. But demen­tia itself remains “wide­ly mis­un­der­stood,” says Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders pro­duc­er Shi­ro Ogu­ni in the “con­cept movie” at the top of the post. “Peo­ple believe you can’t do any­thing for your­self, and the con­di­tion will often mean iso­la­tion from soci­ety. We want to change soci­ety to become more easy-going so, demen­tia or no demen­tia, we can live togeth­er in har­mo­ny.”

You can see more of the Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders in last year’s “report movie” just above, which shows its team of servers with demen­tia in action. Some shown are in mid­dle age, some are in their tenth decade of life, but all seem to have a knack for build­ing rap­port with their cus­tomers — a skill that any­one who has ever worked front-of-the-house in a restau­rant will agree is essen­tial, espe­cial­ly when mis­takes hap­pen. We see them deliv­er orders both cor­rect and incor­rect, but the din­ers seem to enjoy the expe­ri­ence either way: “37% of our orders were mis­tak­en,” the restau­rant reports, “but 99% of our cus­tomers said they were hap­py.” This con­tains anoth­er truth about Japan­ese food cul­ture that any­one who has eat­en in Japan will acknowl­edge: what­ev­er you order, the chance of its being deli­cious is approx­i­mate­ly 100%.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent;

The French Vil­lage Designed to Pro­mote the Well-Being of Alzheimer’s Patients: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to the Pio­neer­ing Exper­i­ment

In Touch­ing Video, Peo­ple with Alzheimer’s Tell Us Which Mem­o­ries They Nev­er Want to For­get

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

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

In Japan­ese Schools, Lunch Is As Much About Learn­ing As It’s About Eat­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Leonard Cohen’s Cocktail Recipe: Learn How to Make “The Red Needle”

Image by Jarkko Arjat­sa­lo, The Leonard Cohen Files

Back in 1975, poet and singer-song­writer Leonard Cohen cre­at­ed a cock­tail that he called The Red Nee­dle. Accord­ing to the web­site, “The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy,” here’s how to make it:

If you’d like to enter­tain your friends with a few Red Nee­dles, and you feel you must have a recipe, here’s some­thing too smooth to go by:

Into one very tall glass about half full of crushed ice pour and drop:

2 oz tequi­la (that’s 2½ Eng­lish mea­sures or about 60ml)
1 slice lemon
enough cran­ber­ry juice to top up the glass

Repeat for each friend.

Serve with Mon­tre­al smoked meat sand­wich­es accom­pa­nied by Leonard Cohen’s Var­i­ous Posi­tions.

If you don’t want to make it at home, you can always vis­it NYC and head to the Jew­ish Muse­um, where, notes the NYTimes, “the drink is being served on Thurs­days in August in the muse­um lob­by.”

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:

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Con­ju­gates “to Cock­tail,” the Ulti­mate Jazz-Age Verb (1928)

Win­ston Churchill Gets a Doctor’s Note to Drink “Unlim­it­ed” Alco­hol in Pro­hi­bi­tion Amer­i­ca (1932)

Drink­ing with William Faulkn­er: The Writer Had a Taste for The Mint Julep & Hot Tod­dy

The Giger Bar: Discover the 1980s Tokyo Bar Designed by H. R. Giger, the Same Artist Who Created the Nightmarish Monster in Ridley Scott’s Alien

In 1980s Tokyo, every­thing was pos­si­ble — or at least every­thing was tried out. Hav­ing devel­oped fever­ish­ly since the end of the Sec­ond World War, Japan had by that point inflat­ed an asset bub­ble so enor­mous that, so the sto­ry goes, the land on which the Impe­r­i­al Palace stands was worth more than all of Cal­i­for­nia. Many Japan­ese felt rich, and upward­ly mobile young Toky­oites felt much more so; in the cap­i­tal sprung up count­less estab­lish­ments aim­ing to cash in on their will­ing­ness and abil­i­ty to spend their new mon­ey on expe­ri­ences, espe­cial­ly expe­ri­ences slick, expen­sive, and exot­ic.

And for the high­est-rolling young Toky­oites of the 1980s, con­sumers for whom pieces of Amer­i­ca and Europe would­n’t be exot­ic enough, there was the Giger Bar. Writer on Japan­ese cul­ture W. David Marx recent­ly tweet­ed out a few mag­a­zine clip­pings to do with one of what he calls the “hot yup­pie date spots in Tokyo, 1989: GIGER BAR Bring your date to the Tokyo bar designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger of Alien fame, where ‘the atmos­phere dif­fers from the usu­al.’ ‘alien eggs’ on the menu at ¥1200, and some­thing called ‘sex­u­al com­mu­nion’ for ¥1500.”

“The Giger Bar in Tokyo was actu­al­ly cre­at­ed against my will,” Giger him­self wrote in 1997. “While I was in Tokyo, I was asked to make a wish, on stage, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence. Spon­ta­neous­ly, I wished for a bar, which was then brought into being even more spon­ta­neous­ly!”

For that bar, Giger designed “tables-for-two in open ele­va­tor cars in the man­ner of glid­ing ele­va­tors that would trav­el up and down the four-sto­ry estab­lish­ment, per­pet­u­al­ly in motion.” But he had­n’t tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion the rigid­i­ty of Japan­ese fire mar­shals, and already “dri­ven to the brink of mad­ness” by the coun­try’s com­plex earth­quake-relat­ed build­ing codes, Giger ulti­mate­ly stepped back from his design role.

Giger also had­n’t fore­seen the fact that his name­sake Japan­ese bar “was tai­lor-made for the under­world.” Five years after the bar opened, a friend vis­it­ed and told Giger that “it had fall­en into the hands of the Yakuza. He went on to report that he was alone in the bar until 11 o’clock, when it began to fill with the type of unsa­vory char­ac­ters who might have installed a roulette table in the atri­um.” By the time Giger wrote this reflec­tion, the Tokyo Giger Bar had closed its doors entire­ly: “Insid­ers know that a bar in Tokyo rarely sur­vives more than five years!”

But two oth­er Giger Bars live on, not in Japan but in Giger’s native Switzer­land, one in his home­town of Chur (orig­i­nal­ly planned for New York City, a loca­tion that proved too expen­sive for the elab­o­rate design) and the oth­er in Gruyères (adja­cent to the H.R. Giger Muse­um). Those Swiss branch­es, a cou­ple pic­tures of which appear above, car­ry on the Giger Bar’s aes­thet­ic in a man­ner seem­ing­ly more faith­ful to the artist’s grotesque bio­me­chan­i­cal visions than did the Tokyo branch. Whether this could ever prove a sus­tain­able nightlife con­cept else­where in the world remains to be seen, but as Giger’s hard­core fans — the kind who would­n’t hes­i­tate to make the Giger Bar pil­grim­age to Switzer­land — might well ask, who would­n’t want to have a drink in the womb of the alien queen?

via W. David Marx

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.R. Giger’s Tarot Cards: The Swiss Artist, Famous for His Design Work on Alien, Takes a Jour­ney into the Occult

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

High School Kids Stage Alien: The Play and You Can Now Watch It Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Art & Cooking of Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, Georgia O’Keeffe, Vincent Van Gogh & More

Mex­i­can cui­sine is as time-con­sum­ing as it is deli­cious.

Fri­da Kahlo fans attract­ed to the idea of dupli­cat­ing some dish­es from the ban­quet served at her wed­ding to fel­low artist Diego Rivera should set aside ample time, so as to tru­ly enjoy the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing chiles rel­lenos and nopales sal­ad from scratch.

Sarah Urist Green’s Kahlo-themed cook­ing les­son, above, adapt­ed from Marie-Pierre Colle and Frida’s step­daugh­ter Guadalupe Rivera’s 1994 cook­book Frida’s Fies­tas: Recipes and Rem­i­nis­cences of Life with Fri­da Kahlo, is refresh­ing­ly frank about the chal­lenges of tack­ling these types of dish­es, espe­cial­ly for those of us whose grand­mas ran more toward Jell‑O sal­ad.

Her self-dep­re­ca­tion should go a long way toward reas­sur­ing less-skilled cooks that per­fec­tion is not the goal.

As she told Nuvo’s Dan Gross­man:

The art cook­ing videos are immense­ly fun to make… And what I’m try­ing to do is reach peo­ple who aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly out­ward­ly into art or don’t know whether they’re into art so they’re not going to click on a video that’s strict­ly about art. But if you can present art ideas through a cook­ing tuto­r­i­al per­haps they’ll be more open to it. I love to cook. And I love to think about that side of art his­to­ry.

To that end, she takes a cou­ple of bite-sized art breaks, to intro­duce view­ers to Frida’s life and work, while the toma­toes are roast­ing.

As tempt­ing as it is for old Fri­da hands to skip this well-chart­ed ter­rain, doing so will not make din­ner ready any faster. Why not enjoy the non-cook­ing relat­ed sec­tions with the eas­i­est item on the menu—a tequi­la shot?

Don’t trick your­self into think­ing there’s noth­ing more to learn.

For instance, I did not know the Span­ish for “I can’t get over this hang­over,” but Frida’s pet par­rot did. (Didn’t know that either.)

Green also offers some quick how-tos that could come in handy for oth­er, less time-con­sum­ing dish­es, like a sand­wich or a plate of home­made pasta—everything from how to make home­made toma­to sauce  to denud­ing prick­ly pear cac­tus pads of their non-edi­ble spines.

If you’re undaunt­ed by the Fri­da recipes, per­haps you should pro­ceed to Sal­vador Dali’s tow­er­ing Bush of Cray­fish in Viking herbs, or the Futur­ists’ high­ly sug­ges­tive Meat Sculp­ture. Oth­er recipes come from Vin­cent Van Gogh and Geor­gia O’Ke­effe. See above.

Books ref­er­enced in the videos include: Din­ner with Geor­gia O’Ke­effe; A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Ke­effe; Dal­i’s Les Din­ers de GalaVan Gogh’s Table at the Auberge Ravoux: Recipes From the Artist’s Last Home and Paint­ings of Cafe Life; and again Frida’s Fies­tas: Recipes and Rem­i­nis­cences of Life with Fri­da Kahlo.

View the full playlist of The Art Assignment’s Art Cook­ing episodes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Futur­ist Cook­book (1930) Tried to Turn Ital­ian Cui­sine into Mod­ern Art

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

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

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

McDonald’s Opens a Tiny Restaurant — and It’s Only for Bees

How are the world’s hon­ey bees doing? Just a few years ago, word spread that they were on the verge of a mys­te­ri­ous extinc­tion. Look for updates on their sit­u­a­tion now and you get con­tra­dic­to­ry results, all of them fair­ly recent, from “Bees Are Still Dying” to “Bees Are Bounc­ing Back From Colony Col­lapse Dis­or­der” to “Yes, the Bees Are Still in Trou­ble” to “The Bee Apoc­a­lypse Was Nev­er Real.” But whether they’re in exis­ten­tial dan­ger or not, bees at least now have their very own McDon­ald’s — bees in cer­tain parts of Swe­den, any­way.

“McDonald’s has cre­at­ed a tiny repli­ca of one of its restau­rants, too small for any human to eat there,” writes Emi­ly Chudy in the Inde­pen­dent. “The repli­ca, dubbed the ‘McHive,’ is a ful­ly-func­tion­ing bee­hive designed to look like a McDonald’s restau­rant and fea­tures seat­ing, a dri­ve-through and an entrance. The brain­child of set design­er Nick­las Nils­son, the hive is part of an ini­tia­tive which has seen bee­hives placed on cer­tain Swedish branch­es of the fran­chise.” This project seems to be the first insect-scale restau­rant for Nils­son, whose past work includes cos­tume design on the video for David Bowie’s “Black­star.”

You can see footage of the McHive’s design and assem­bly process, as well as an assem­bled McHive full of its “thou­sands of impor­tant guests,” in the video at the top of the post. There are more pho­tos at design­boom, which quotes the pro­jec­t’s adver­tis­ing agency NORD DDB as say­ing that “the ini­tia­tive start­ed out local­ly but is now grow­ing.” In addi­tion to installing bee­hives on their rooftops, more Swedish McDon­ald’s fran­chisees “have also start­ed replac­ing the grass around their restau­rants with flow­ers and plants that are impor­tant for the well­be­ing of wild bees.”

Why so much con­cern about hon­ey bees in the first place? Chudy quotes a Green­peace esti­mate that they “per­form about 80% of all pol­li­na­tion and a sin­gle bee colony can pol­li­nate 300 mil­lion flow­ers each day.” Bees do the hard work of keep­ing a sur­pris­ing­ly large part of the nat­ur­al world work­ing as we’ve always known it to, and to the extent that bees die out, much else may die out as well, with poten­tial knock-on effects many would pre­fer not to think about. But then, the taste for pre­dic­tions of eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter on the inter­net seems only to have grown since we first noticed the prob­lem with bees: if you real­ly want to feel moti­vat­ed to peti­tion your local McDon­ald’s to put up a McHive, try Googling the phrase “cat­a­stroph­ic col­lapse of nature.”

via design­boom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mes­mer­iz­ing Time­lapse Film Cap­tures the Won­der of Bees Being Born

The Bil­lion-Bug High­way You Can’t See

A Shaz­am for Nature: A New Free App Helps You Iden­ti­fy Plants, Ani­mals & Oth­er Denizens of the Nat­ur­al World

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A New Swedish Muse­um Show­cas­es Harley-David­son Per­fume, Col­gate Beef Lasagne, Google Glass & Oth­er Failed Prod­ucts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Does Playing Music for Cheese During the Aging Process Change Its Flavor? Researchers Find That Hip Hop Makes It Smellier, and Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” Makes It Milder

Humans began mak­ing cheese sev­en mil­len­nia ago: plen­ty of time to devel­op an enor­mous vari­ety of tex­tures, fla­vors, and smells, and cer­tain­ly more than enough to get cre­ative about the meth­ods of gen­er­at­ing even greater vari­ety. But it seems to have tak­en all that time for us to come around to the poten­tial of music as a fla­vor­ing agent. “Expos­ing cheese to round-the-clock music could give it more fla­vor and hip hop might be bet­ter than Mozart,” report Reuters’ Denis Bal­i­bouse and Cecile Man­to­vani, cit­ing the find­ings of Cheese in Sound, a recent study by Swiss cheese­mak­er Bert Wampfler and researchers at Bern Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts.

“Nine wheels of Emmen­tal cheese weigh­ing 10 kilos (22 pounds) each were placed in wood­en crates last Sep­tem­ber to test the impact of music on fla­vor and aro­ma,” write Bal­i­bouse and Man­to­vani. The hip hop cheese heard A Tribe Called Quest’s “Jazz (We’ve Got),” the clas­si­cal cheese Mozart’s “Mag­ic Flute,” the rock cheese Led Zep­pelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en,” and so on.

Three oth­er wheels heard sim­ple low, medi­um, and high son­ic fre­quen­cies, and one con­trol cheese heard noth­ing at all. But per­haps “heard” is the wrong word: each matur­ing cheese received its music not through speak­ers but “mini trans­mit­ters to con­duct the ener­gy of the music into the cheese.”

That may make more plau­si­ble the results that came out when a culi­nary jury per­formed a blind taste test of all the cheeses and found that they real­ly did come out with dif­fer­ent fla­vors. Accord­ing to the pro­jec­t’s press release, a “sen­so­ry con­sen­sus analy­sis car­ried out by food tech­nol­o­gists from the ZHAW Zurich Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences” con­clud­ed that “the cheeses exposed to music had a gen­er­al­ly mild fla­vor com­pared to the con­trol test sam­ple” and that “the cheese exposed to hip hop music dis­played a dis­cernibly stronger smell and stronger, fruiti­er taste than the oth­er sam­ples.”

Or, as Smithsonian.com’s Jason Daley sum­ma­rizes the find­ings, A Tribe Called Quest “gave the cheese an espe­cial­ly funky fla­vor, while cheese that rocked out to Led Zep­pelin or relaxed with Mozart had milder tests.” Cheese-lovers intrigued by the pos­si­bil­i­ties implied here would be for­giv­en for think­ing it all still sounds a bit too much like those CD sets that claimed a baby’s intel­li­gence could be increased by play­ing them Mozart in the womb. But if Cheese in Sound’s results hold up to fur­ther scruti­ny, maybe those par­ents — at least those par­ents hop­ing for a funki­er child — should have been play­ing them hip hop all along.

via Smith­son­ian Mag

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cheese: 10,000 Years in Under Six Min­utes

How to Break Open a Big Wheel of Parme­san Cheese: A Delight­ful, 15-Minute Primer

Music in the Brain: Sci­en­tists Final­ly Reveal the Parts of Our Brain That Are Ded­i­cat­ed to Music

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac ‘N’ Cheese

Enter the The Cor­nell Hip Hop Archive: A Vast Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion of Hip Hop Pho­tos, Posters & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Jim Morrison Declares That “Fat is Beautiful” .… And Means It

There’s a bit of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance in a young rock god giv­ing voice to the fat pride move­ment some four decades after his death.

Years before social media ampli­fied celebri­ty weight gain cov­er­age to the realm of nation­al news, The Doors’ lead singer, Lizard King Jim Mor­ri­son, was the sub­ject of intense bod­i­ly scruti­ny.

The musician’s drug of choice—alcohol—swiftly added some extra cush­ion­ing to the sexy, shirt­less young lion image pho­tog­ra­ph­er Joel Brod­sky man­aged to cap­ture in 1967.

That lean, leather-pant­ed ver­sion is the one the Mor­ri­son direc­tor Patrick Smith went with for the Blank on Blank ani­ma­tion above, using audio from a 1969 inter­view with the Vil­lage Voice’s Howard Smith (no rela­tion).

Occa­sion­al­ly ani­ma­tor Smith bal­loons the 2‑D Morrison’s bel­ly for humor­ous effect, but let’s be frank. By today’s stan­dards, the 5’11 Mor­ri­son, who by his own esti­mate tipped the scales at 185lb, was hard­ly “fat.”

Pleas­ing­ly plump per­haps…

Fill­ing out…

Eat­ing (and drink­ing) like some­one whose bank account did­n’t require belt tight­en­ing.

His com­pas­sion toward gen­er­ous­ly pro­por­tioned bod­ies like­ly sprang from ear­ly expe­ri­ence.

As pho­tog­ra­ph­er Lin­da McCart­ney recalled in Lin­da McCartney’s The Sixties—Portrait Of An Era:

He … told me that he’d grown up as a fat kid that no one want­ed to know and that this had caused him a lot of emo­tion­al pain.

Then he explained what had brought it all to the sur­face. Appar­ent­ly he had been walk­ing around Green­wich Vil­lage that morn­ing and a girl who he knew as a child had spot­ted him and start­ed going crazy over him. That both­ered him because he sensed the hypocrisy of it all. When he was a fat mil­i­tary brat these peo­ple had reject­ed and ignored him but now, because of his new pub­lic image, they were fawn­ing over him.

That “new pub­lic image” is the one most of us think of first when think­ing of Jim Mor­ri­son, but as a flesh and blood exem­plar, it was unsus­tain­able. Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Brod­sky reflects:

The shot on the inner sleeve of the Great­est Hits album was pret­ty near the end, I think. By that time, he was so drunk he was stum­bling into the lights and we had to stop the ses­sion. Mor­ri­son nev­er real­ly looked that way again, and those pic­tures have become a big part of The Doors’ leg­end. I think I got him at his peak.

Mor­ri­son didn’t dwell on child­hood mis­eries in his Vil­lage Voice inter­view, nor did he show any self-loathing or regret for physiques past.

Rather, he gave voice to the pos­i­tive effects of his increased size. He felt like a tank, a beast—a body of con­se­quence.

(To con­sid­er the impli­ca­tions of bod­i­ly size for a female in Morrison’s world, have a look at car­toon­ist Péné­lope Bagieu’s Cal­i­for­nia Dreamin’: Cass Elliot before the Mamas and The Papas.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Lost Paris Tapes” Pre­serves Jim Morrison’s Final Poet­ry Record­ings from 1971

The Last Known Pho­tos of Jim Mor­ri­son, Tak­en Days Before His Death in Paris (June 1971)

The Doors Play Live in Den­mark & LA in 1968: See Jim Mor­ri­son Near His Charis­mat­ic Peak

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City March 11 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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