John Waters Makes Handmade Christmas Cards, Says the “Whole Purpose of Life is Christmas”

in Creativity, Film, Life | December 13th, 2013

WatersMugshot

Awk­ward as it feels to receive Christ­mas cards from peo­ple we don’t real­ly know, who among us would turn one down from the one and only John Waters? Then again, the direc­tor of such land­marks in delib­er­ate­ly taste-free cin­e­ma as Pink Flamin­gos and Female Trou­ble would pre­sum­ably delight in inject­ing a lit­tle aes­thet­ic dis­com­fort into our hol­i­day rou­tines. Waters, accord­ing to a New York Times Q&A about his tak­ing on the road “A John Waters Christ­mas,” his “staged mono­logue about all things mer­ry and dark,” has made and sent out his own inim­itable Christ­mas cards for almost fifty years. “I start­ed doing it in high school in 1964,” he explains. “I send out over 2,000 cards by now. Basi­cal­ly, I’m chan­nel­ing Pia Zado­ra, who used to send out the best pricey hol­i­day-relat­ed object to help spread her name and make it last all year.” His 2006 card above bears a gen­uine mugshot from the police depart­ment of Waters’ beloved Bal­ti­more; oth­er images have includ­ed a dra­mat­ic 1940s scene of Christ­mas ruined by a crim­i­nal San­ta, indie-film act­ing icon Steve Busce­mi made up con­vinc­ing­ly as Waters, and Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor shaven-head­ed after brain surgery. One year, he even attached a tree orna­ment con­tain­ing a dead cock­roach.

BuscemiasWaters

“Being a tra­di­tion­al­ist, I’m a rabid suck­er for Christ­mas,” Waters explains in his essay “Why I Love Christ­mas.” “Novem­ber 1 kicks off the jubilee of con­sumerism, and I’m so rid­dled with the hol­i­days sea­son that the mere men­tion of a stock­ing stuffer sex­u­al­ly arous­es me.” Pre­hol­i­day activ­i­ties he con­sid­ers “the fore­play of Christ­mas,” and nat­u­ral­ly, “Christ­mas cards are your first duty and you must send one (with a per­son­al, hand­writ­ten mes­sage) to every sin­gle per­son you ever met, no mat­ter how briefly.” And of course, “you must make your own cards by hand. ‘I don’t have time’ you may whine, but since the whole pur­pose of life is Christ­mas, you’d bet­ter make time, buster.” Waters has also assem­bled his very own Christ­mas album, fea­tur­ing a vari­ety of hol­i­day songs per­formed by Tiny Tim, Stormy Weath­er, and even Alvin and the Chip­munks. The selec­tion below, “First Snow­fall” by the Coc­tails, uses the clas­si­cal­ly kitschy singing saw as a lead:

You may well hear it again if you hap­pen to attend Waters’ own annu­al Christ­mas par­ty in Bal­ti­more, a tra­di­tion he’s kept up for near­ly as long as he’s sent out the cards. “Every­one comes, from the may­or to Pat Sajak to a judge and a well-known crim­i­nal I helped get out of jail,” as he describes it to the Times.” There’s a bar on every floor of the house and a buf­fet table where you’ll see the guy that played the singing anus in Pink Flamin­gos stand­ing next to the gov­er­nor.” For­get the cards; I need an invi­ta­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up John Waters: The Odd­ball Film­mak­er Cat­a­logues His Many For­ma­tive Rebel­lions (1993)

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

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

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Great New Archive Lets You Hear the Sounds of New York City During the Roaring 20s

in Archives, History, Life | December 11th, 2013

NewYorkNoiseComplaints

The French refer to the decade between 1920 and 1929 as les Années folles, “the crazy years,” which is apt when you con­sid­er how the French mid­dle and upper class­es gen­er­al­ly loos­ened their brassieres and defined mod­ern bohemia, à la Coco Chanel.

But the Amer­i­can moniker — the Roar­ing 20s — fits too. Near­ly every­thing about that decade roared: cars, jazz, man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­struc­tion.

Din, in fact, came to define the age, par­tic­u­lar­ly in big cities and espe­cial­ly in New York. An unnamed Japan­ese vis­i­tor was quot­ed upon his vis­it to that city in 1920: “My first impres­sion of New York was its noise. When I know what they mean, I will under­stand civ­i­liza­tion.”

A Prince­ton his­to­ry pro­fes­sor took that chal­lenge at face val­ue, while cap­tur­ing a broad­er indus­tri­al era. The Roar­ing Twen­ties is an audio (and to some extent video) archive of what New York City sound­ed like from 1900 to 1933. Pro­fes­sor Emi­ly Thomp­son and design­er Scott Mahoy have cre­at­ed a love­ly site that’s fun to explore. The archive includes a beau­ti­ful 1933 map of New York City loaded with links to noise com­plaints (screen­shot at top), com­plete with doc­u­men­ta­tion. New York had long been a place where peo­ple from all over the world lived on top of one anoth­er, but noise lev­els were shifting—getting loud­er and more var­ied, that is—and the city was inun­dat­ed with com­plaints about fer­ry whis­tles, radio shops, street traf­fic, the clat­ter of restau­rant dish­wash­ing, and all man­ner of con­struc­tion.

CityNoiseSourcesShot

Sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the city’s vol­ume was high. The city’s Noise Abate­ment Com­mis­sion mea­sured the “deaf­en­ing effect” of sound in Times Square. The women’s cafe­te­ria in the New York Life Insur­ance build­ing was designed with state-of-the-art acoustics to keep the noise of the city out and the sound of office work­ers in.

Cort­landt Street in low­er Man­hat­tan was lined with radio shops, each broad­cast­ing dif­fer­ent music. Don’t miss that video, which you’ll find by scan­ning the Space tab map.

You can also move through time on the site, lis­ten­ing to the city’s cacoph­o­ny from the ear­ly 1900s up to the 1930s, or browse a menu of noise sources from home sounds to the noise of the har­bors and rivers. Again, you can vis­it the The Roar­ing Twen­ties site here.

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Lomax’s Music Archive Hous­es Over 17,400 Folk Record­ings From 1946 to the 1990s

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

The Chal­lenge of Archiv­ing Sound + Vision in the 21st Cen­tu­ry

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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Cancer Patients’ Extreme Makeovers Let Them To Forget Their Illness ‘If Only For A Second’

in Art, Comedy, Life | December 10th, 2013

The sea­son of giv­ing can be an unseem­ly time for non­prof­its. As New Year’s approach­es, every char­i­ta­ble insti­tu­tion down in Char­i­ta­ble Insti­tu­tionville must bang its tar-tin­ker and blow its hoo-hoover, in hope of dona­tions.

No doubt they’re all deserv­ing, but the onslaught of requests can leave sup­port­ers feel­ing a bit Grinchy. When that hap­pens, I rec­om­mend the video above, which doc­u­ments a hoax of Borat-like pro­por­tions. The per­pe­tra­tor is the Mimi Foun­da­tion, a Bel­gium-based group that offers psy­cho­log­i­cal coun­sel­ing, beau­ty treat­ments, and hair­style tips to peo­ple with can­cer.

The unsus­pect­ing vic­tims? Twen­ty can­cer patients who took it on good faith that they were being treat­ed to stan­dard makeovers, the sort of pro­fes­sion­al artistry that cre­ates an illu­sion of health, what many think pass­es for nor­mal­cy. All the Mimi Foun­da­tion asked for in return was that the recip­i­ents keep their eyes closed as the mag­ic was being worked.

Mean­while, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Vin­cent Dixon crouched behind a one-way mir­ror, poised to cap­ture each sit­ters’ reac­tion to his or her trans­for­ma­tion.

One does­n’t want to say too much. The end results are not what you think, unless you were think­ing of one of those over-the-top bizarre Amer­i­ca’s Next Top Mod­el pho­to chal­lenges.

Dixon’s images record the shock and invol­un­tary spon­tane­ity. The video, called “If Only for a Sec­ond, shows those ini­tial respons­es blos­som­ing into …well, let’s just say the Mimi Foun­da­tion, assist­ed by a pha­lanx of styl­ists, achieved their goal.

H/T Alan Gold­wass­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Come­di­an Tig Notaro’s “Tru­ly Great” Can­cer Stand-up Set Now Avail­able on Louis C.K.’s Web­site

Life in 4,748 Self-Por­traits

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s heart grew three sizes today. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday

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David Rees Presents a Primer on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening

in Comedy, Creativity, Life | December 6th, 2013

How have you been sharp­en­ing your pen­cils? Regard­less of your answer, rest assured that you’re doing it wrong.

Lest there be any doubt that I’m geo­graph­i­cal­ly sit­u­at­ed smack dab in the mid­dle of for­mer car­toon­ist’s David Rees’ tar­get demo­graph­ic, I almost did­n’t click on the link to the pitch per­fect send up above because I believed it was real.

Here in non-Caribbean, non-South­east-Asian, non-Russ­ian, non-Mex­i­can Brooklyn—think Girls, the Jonathans Ames and Letham, brown­stone-dwelling movie stars and the very lat­est in n’est plus ultra strollers—it’s entire­ly plau­si­ble that a humor­less young arti­san might take to the Inter­net to teach us reg­u­lar schlubs How to Sharp­en Pen­cils.

Just wait ’til he brings out his leather strop. (Mis­placed yours? Look in your base­ment, or your grand­fa­ther’s tomb.)

Please note that though the video may be satir­i­cal, Rees makes actu­al mon­ey sharpening—and authen­ti­cat­ing—cus­tomers’ Num­ber Two pen­cils, using the same tech­niques demon­strat­ed in the video. (Sor­ry, hol­i­day shop­pers, as per his web­site, he won’t be tak­ing orders for his live pen­cil sharp­en­ing ser­vices until the New Year, but he does have a book out.)

Like you need any more excuse to whip out your knife, place it in your dom­i­nant hand, and start carv­ing.

To quote a cer­tain clas­sic Broad­way musi­cal, you got­ta have a gim­mick.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Peri­od­ic Table Table” — All The Ele­ments in Hand-Carved Wood

Watch The New Amer­i­ca, a Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion Star­ring 800+ Laser Engraved Wood Blocks

Learn to Draw Butts with Just Five Sim­ple Lines

Ayun Hal­l­i­day can get behind New Ork City pub­lic school teach­ers’ insis­tence on the Ticon­dero­ga brand. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday

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Nelson Mandela’s First-Ever TV Interview (1961)

in History, Life | December 5th, 2013

Note: This post was orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured on our site in 2010. In light of the news that Nel­son Man­dela has passed away at age 95, we’re bring­ing this vin­tage clip back to the fore. Here you can see a young Man­dela mak­ing his­to­ry, and with­out per­haps real­iz­ing it, build­ing the remark­able lega­cy that remains with us today.

In 1962, Nel­son Man­dela was arrest­ed on alle­ga­tions of sab­o­tage and oth­er charges and sen­tenced to life in prison, where he spent 27 years before becom­ing South Africa’s first pres­i­dent elect­ed in a ful­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion. His sto­ry, among mod­ern his­to­ry’s most pro­found­ly inspi­ra­tional, is beau­ti­ful­ly and poet­i­cal­ly cap­tured in Clint East­wood’s 2009 gem, Invic­tus. But what East­wood’s account leaves out are the events that pre­ced­ed and led to Man­de­la’s arrest.

In May of 1961, a 42-year-old Man­dela gave his first-ever inter­view to ITN reporter Bri­an Wid­lake as part of a longer ITN Rov­ing Report pro­gram about Apartheid. At that point, the police are already hunt­ing for Man­dela, but Wid­lake pulls some strings and arranges to meet him in his hide­out. When the reporter asks Man­dela what Africans want, he prompt­ly responds:

“The Africans require, want the fran­chise, the basis of One Man One Vote – they want polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence.”

But per­haps more inter­est­ing is the dia­logue towards the end of the inter­view, where Man­dela explores the com­plex rela­tion­ship between peace and vio­lence as protest and nego­ti­a­tion tac­tics. We’re left won­der­ing whether his seem­ing­ly sud­den shift from a com­plete­ly peace­ful cam­paign strat­e­gy up to that point towards con­sid­er­ing vio­lence as a pos­si­bil­i­ty may be the prod­uct of South African police going after him with full force that week. Vio­lence, it seems, does breed vio­lence even in the best and noblest of us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nel­son Man­dela Archive Goes Online (With Help From Google)

The Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive Goes Online

U2 Releas­es a Nel­son Man­dela-Inspired Song, “Ordi­nary Love”

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

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In Touching Video, Artist Marina Abramović & Former Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

in Art, Life | December 2nd, 2013

In 2010, Ser­bian artist Mari­na Abramović had the hon­or of being the sub­ject of a pop­u­lar ret­ro­spec­tive at New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. Through­out the show, Abramović per­formed a gru­el­ing piece enti­tled “The Artist Is Present,” sit­ting in the museum’s atri­um and invit­ing the swelling crowds of view­ers to sit direct­ly oppo­site her, in silent dia­logue. Abramović was no stranger to chal­leng­ing per­for­mances. By the time that MoMA staged the ret­ro­spec­tive, the then 63-year-old artist had engaged in count­less tax­ing exhi­bi­tions, earn­ing her self-giv­en title, “the grand­moth­er of per­for­mance art.”

In her first per­for­mance at 27, Abramović explored the idea of rit­u­al by play­ing a knife game on cam­era, stab­bing the sur­face between her splayed fin­gers with a knife and occa­sion­al­ly hurt­ing her­self; she would then watch a video record­ing of the vio­lence, and attempt to repli­cate it. Sub­se­quent per­for­mances includ­ed her explo­rations of con­scious­ness through the inges­tion of pills for cata­to­nia and depres­sion; anoth­er com­prised a 1974 incar­na­tion of her MoMA per­for­mance, where Abramović  sat pas­sive­ly before a table lit­tered with objects for six hours, invit­ing the audi­ence to put them to use on her per­son (of this piece, Abramović says, “What I learned was that… if you leave it up to the audi­ence, they can kill you… I felt real­ly vio­lat­ed: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stom­ach…”)

In 1976, Abramović  met Ulay, a West Ger­man artist who would become her lover and col­lab­o­ra­tor for the next twelve years. The duo fell into an imper­son­al abyss, los­ing their self­hoods and attempt­ing to become a sin­gle enti­ty through arrest­ing per­for­mances such as Breath­ing In/Breathing Out, where they locked mouths and breathed each other’s exhaled breath, even­tu­al­ly fill­ing their lungs with car­bon monox­ide and falling uncon­scious. By 1988, their romance had run its course; in typ­i­cal­ly atyp­i­cal fash­ion, the pair decid­ed to part by walk­ing from oppos­ing ends of the Great Wall of Chi­na until they met in the mid­dle, and then said good­bye.

On the open­ing night of Abramović’s ret­ro­spec­tive in 2010, the erst­while lovers were reunit­ed. The video above shows Abramović, sit­ting and steel­ing her­self for her next silent inter­locu­tor. Ulay approach­es, and Abramović, a vet­er­an of such dif­fi­cult per­for­mances, looks up to what may have been the sin­gle most unex­pect­ed sight of the night, jolt­ing her dig­ni­fied com­po­sure. Their reunion is a deeply ten­der scene.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Rocks Stars Who Died Before They Got Old: What They Would Look Like Today

in Life, Music, Photography | November 24th, 2013

aged rock stars

Live fast.

Die young.

Spare your­self the grim real­i­ties of the state fair reunion tour cir­cuit.

On the oth­er hand, it’s death­ly hard to con­trol one’s image from beyond the grave. Espe­cial­ly when you’ve got an award-win­ning PR Agency and a pho­to manip­u­la­tion com­pa­ny team­ing up to imag­ine how you might look had you sur­vived!

The twelve unlucky recip­i­ents of these posthu­mous makeovers remain house­hold names (see the gallery here), even though it’s near­ly twen­ty years since the last of their num­ber drew breath. Like Jim Mor­ri­son, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hen­drix, Kurt Cobain was but 27 when he passed, though at the time of his birth, the oth­er three were all old enough to be his mom­my or dad­dy. Fit­ting, then, that he appears to be the baby of the gold­en group.

Music writer Eli­jah Wald and pop­u­lar music schol­ar Reebee Garo­fa­lo offer insights below each por­trait in the gallery about where the sub­jects might now find them­selves in their careers. It’s all con­jec­ture, but their expe­ri­ence ensures that their opin­ions can be tak­en as edu­cat­ed guess­es, at least.

Less con­vinc­ing are the sar­to­r­i­al choic­es on dis­play. Den­nis Wil­son in a Hawai­ian shirt, okay, but were he alive, might not Kei­th Moon fol­low suit with for­mer-band­mates Pete Town­shend and Roger Dal­trey, both of whom have adopt­ed the sleek, mono­chro­mat­ic wardrobe favored by aging rock gods?

And who here thinks the 78-year-old Elvis would traipse around in the sort of short-sleeved poly-blend shirt my late grand­fa­ther wore to his week­ly men’s prayer break­fast?

For pity’s sake, age does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly imply drab­ness!

(Who’s that I see over there? Could it be Yoko Ono, look­ing great at 80, in a top hat and tap pants? Even if she were look­ing less-than-fit, it would still be a bold choice! I doubt she wears that get-up to the gro­cery store, but the pro­gres­sion of time has not robbed her of the abil­i­ty to make a delib­er­ate visu­al impres­sion.)

What is refreshing—though not nec­es­sar­i­ly believable—is how none of the res­ur­rect­ed icons in these por­traits seem to have gone in for plas­tic surgery.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

Ani­mat­ed Video: Kurt Cobain on Teenage Angst, Sex­u­al­i­ty & Find­ing Sal­va­tion in Punk Music

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, most recent­ly Peanut. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Houdini Escape From a Strait Jacket, Then See How He Did It (Circa 1917)

in History, Life | November 18th, 2013

Claus­tro­phobes, take cau­tion, and for pity’s sake, don’t try this at home!

Should such warn­ings leave you unde­terred, PBS has step-by-step instruc­tions for per­form­ing Hou­dini’s strait jack­et escape. Well, almost step-by-step. Derived from the mas­ter’s own 1909 Hand­cuff Secrets (read the text online here), the direc­tions are both vague and hor­ri­fy­ing in their speci­fici­ty, falling some­where between assem­bling an Ikea book­shelf and 127 Hours.

In need of more guid­ance? Have a look below at the how-to Hou­di­ni shared with Ladies Home Jour­nal in 1918. (He also gave advice to gen­teel, post-WWI female read­ers on how to escape rope bondage.)

houdini escape

For a more man­age­able trick, imag­ine your­self a face in the crowd, gaz­ing upward at the strug­gling magi­cian, with­out tex­ting, tweet­ing, or Insta­gram­ming. Sheer open-mouthed amaze­ment is a trick we see pre­cious lit­tle of these days.

Our best guess is that the video above was shot around 1917.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­ry Houdini’s Great Rope Escape

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s lat­est feat is direct­ing 16 home­schooled teens in Yeast Nation, the world’s first bio-his­tor­i­cal musi­cal. See it in New York City this week. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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