An Animated Louis CK on How the Colonists Came to America and Screwed It All Up (NSFW)

in Animation, Comedy, Video - Politics/Society | May 4th, 2015

I sus­pect par­ents of school-aged chil­dren will find much to relate to in the Lord’s frus­tra­tion with mankind, above, whether or not they’re prone to vent­ing in come­di­an Louis CK’s patent­ed NSFW lan­guage.

Who among us has not turned our back for a few moments, only to dis­cov­er upon our return the house in sham­bles, the nutri­tious snack we set out passed over in favor of junk.

(“Just eat the shit on the floor! I left shit all over the floor! Fuckin’ corn and wheat and shit, grind it up and make some bread—what are you doing!?”)

It’s no won­der ani­ma­tors are drawn to CK. His dis­tinc­tive voice and impec­ca­ble tim­ing have earned him a star­ring role as a talk­ing dog in a CGI fea­ture to be released in 2016. Pri­or to strik­ing it big with the series Louie, he was a fre­quent vis­i­tor on “Dr” Jonathan Katz’s couch. His over-the-top standup spiels pro­vide the unau­tho­rized flash ani­ma­tor with an embar­rass­ment of rich­es.

Cana­di­an film stu­dent John Roney, whose YouTube chan­nel boasts spoofs of Game of Thrones and the Mag­ic School­bus, keeps his visu­als under­stat­ed, min­ing CK’s 2011 per­for­mance at New York City’s Bea­con The­ater for the 2‑dimensional realm.

It could have been so much gross­er.

Turn down the sound and Roney’s adap­ta­tion could be high qual­i­ty children’s pro­gram­ming, the kind most of us god­like par­ents even­tu­al­ly accept as a nec­es­sary evil. Well, maybe not the part where those Aztec kids bowl Louis’ head down the pyra­mids (right above)…though they, like Roney’s oth­er mild­ly observed human and ani­mal char­ac­ters, add to the fun­ny. Here’s the orig­i­nal clip from the Bea­con The­ater show:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Louis CK Crash­es Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis & Brad Pitt’s Very Awk­ward Inter­view

Jer­ry Sein­feld and Louis CK in Small Cars and Big Yachts, Get­ting Cof­fee

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

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How Languages Evolve: Explained in a Winning TED-Ed Animation

in Animation, Science, TED Talks, Video - Politics/Society | September 8th, 2014

Lan­guage. It’s as adapt­able as Darwin’s finch­es.

It’d be inter­est­ing to know how the Inter­net changes the game. Seems like it would go a long way toward democ­ra­tiz­ing the process by which lin­go gets min­gled.

Alex Gendler’s TED-Ed les­son, win­ning­ly ani­mat­ed by Igor Coric, rolls back the clock to a time when com­mu­nal groups would sub­di­vide and strike out on their own, usu­al­ly in order to beef up the food sup­ply.

This sort of geo­graph­ic and tem­po­ral sep­a­ra­tion was bound to take a toll, lin­guis­ti­cal­ly. Evo­lu­tion is need-based. Vocab­u­lary and pro­nun­ci­a­tion even­tu­al­ly betray the specifics of the speak­er’s sur­round­ings, their cir­cum­stances and needs.

It takes some foren­sics to fig­ure out how, or, even if, var­i­ous lan­guages relate to each oth­er. A cun­ning lin­guist (for­give me) will also have the pow­er to fill in his­tor­i­cal gaps, by iden­ti­fy­ing words that have been bor­rowed from neigh­bor­ing cul­tures, as well as more tran­sient acquain­tances.

As a lit­tle exper­i­ment, look at the way you talk! Those of us with­out roy­al blood or a stick up our heinies tend to speak a mon­grel patois cus­tom tai­lored by our own expe­ri­ence. A lit­tle bit of region­al­ism, some pro­fes­sion­al jar­gon, a few col­or­ful words gleaned from life’s char­ac­ters, lines from long ago enter­tain­ments deployed as if the ref­er­ences were fresh.

I’ll bet a lin­guist would have a field day with you, Bub.

Even if you’re the most straight­for­ward con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist on the plan­et, the peo­ple who can’t under­stand a word you say would great­ly out­num­ber those who can.

Maybe we  should all “speak Man­darin,” as per the bill­boards I saw in Sin­ga­pore on a post-col­le­giate trip. (As a West­ern back­pack­er in Birken­stocks and a wrap-around hip­pie skirt, I was exempt, leav­ing me plen­ty of time to wor­ry about being caned for spit­ting gum on the side­walk, a thing I’d nev­er do, by the way.)

Back to the ani­mat­ed les­son, above. While I agree that polit­i­cal and nation­al inter­ests can be huge­ly influ­en­tial with regard to lan­guage devel­op­ment, I’m not sure a pig is the wis­est choice when depict­ing this lin­guis­tic phe­nom­e­non as an ani­mal’s worth of re-zoned pri­mal cuts, labelled a la the for­mer Yugoslavia.

Pork is haraam, and treif, and  ‘pig,’ in and of itself, is hard­ly a flat­ter­ing epi­thet, a sit­u­a­tion that’s sort of insult­ing to a nat­u­ral­ly intel­li­gent and fas­tid­i­ous beast.

I digress.

As does lan­guage, which explains why there could be as many as 8000 of them in use. A more con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate puts the num­ber at 3000. Not to alarm you, but if the num­ber of peo­ple who speak your lan­guage is what the food­ie hip­sters of Brook­lyn would refer to as “small batch,” there are lin­guists who would down­grade your tongue to mere dialect.

In which case, this list of obscene ges­tures from around the world might well come in handy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Ali G and Noam Chom­sky Talk Lin­guis­tics

The Ideas of Noam Chom­sky: An Intro­duc­tion to His The­o­ries on Lan­guage & Knowl­edge (1977)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic approach to lan­guage can be stud­ied in sev­en books, a num­ber of antholo­gies, and her long suf­fer­ing zine, the East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Want to Know What Makes the Troops Laugh? Comedian Louis CK in Afghanistan (Quite NSFW)

in Comedy, Video - Politics/Society | June 17th, 2013

The oth­er day, a teenaged friend asked me if the war in Afghanistan is still going on. The answer is yes. Pre­sum­ably, it won’t be when he reach­es draft age.

In the mean­time, here’s some extreme­ly NSFW footage of Louis CK enter­tain­ing the troops at Bagram Air­field in Afghanistan a few years back. Look­ing for a quick overview of what makes the troops laugh? Cinnabon, schlub­by mid­dle aged dudes com­par­ing them­selves unfa­vor­ably to the audi­ence’s rock hard lean­ness, and the F word. The one whose non-slang def­i­n­i­tion is “a bun­dle of sticks.”

Giv­en the make up of the crowd, it made me uneasy. This was most assured­ly not a preach­ing-to-the-choir sit­u­a­tion, though the young audi­ence mem­ber who filmed the rou­tine with­out the ben­e­fit of a tri­pod notes: ” I did­n’t even know who he was before this set. He’s one of my top 3 favorites now. I just want­ed oth­er peo­ple to see him like I did. I wish I could have a con­ver­sa­tion with him!”

Hope­ful­ly, by now, hero wor­ship will have steered him to the sec­ond episode of CK’ s semi­au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal show, in which extreme­ly forth­com­ing gay come­di­an, Rick Crom, schools a table­ful of straight pok­er bud­dies on var­i­ous sex­u­al prac­tices. His mat­ter-of-fact demeanor leads CK to ask how a queer crowd might react to his “fag­got” rou­tine. The fact that CK also pro­duced and script­ed this show is enough to con­vince me that his aim is true.

It’s worth not­ing that the pre­sum­ably straight (watch his oth­er videos) Youtu­ber who filmed and hosts this video liked ‘Louis CK — Laugh­ing at Gay Peo­ple” but also the Fred­die Mer­cury Google Doo­dle.

Giv­en CK’s mad respect for any­one serv­ing in the mil­i­tary, per­haps this young man can con­vince him that it’s time to retire “retard” as a pejo­ra­tive … even if he’s talk­ing about his own kids.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Louis CK Ridicules Avant-Garde Art on 1990s MTV Show

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is also sick of epilep­sy as punch­line or short­cut. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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All You Need is Love: The Beatles Vanquish Pastor Terry Jones in the Big Apple

in Life, Music, Religion, Video - Politics/Society | December 25th, 2012

New York­ers go out of their way to avoid Times Square, espe­cial­ly at this time of year. What­ev­er the sea­son, it’s sure to be a mob scene of slow mov­ing tourists, mis­er­able Elmos, and loose screw loud­mouths preach­ing mes­sages of intol­er­ance. In this milieu, Flori­da pas­tor Ter­ry Jones is noth­ing spe­cial, and cer­tain­ly less pho­to­genic than the Naked Cow­boy.

Film­mak­ers Hei­di Ewing and Rachel Grady trailed the Quran-burn­ing, effi­gy-hang­ing, failed Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date there any­way, to cap­ture his “mes­sage to the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty” on the 10th anniver­sary of Sep­tem­ber 11.

Bystanders roll their eyes and hus­tle past, but only one young woman attempts to engage him direct­ly, smil­ing as if she knows that Jones’ is the sort of shell game you can’t win.

That is until one man breaks into a spon­ta­neous ren­di­tion of All You Need Is Love, the lyrics pulled up on his smart­phone. Was this brave per­for­mance moti­vat­ed in part by the pres­ence of a film crew? Who cares, as ran­dom pedes­tri­ans and staffers from the near­by TKTS booth join in, pro­vid­ing a fine alter­na­tive sound­track to the hate spew­ing from the bull pul­pit. In Ewing and Grady’s edit, the Bea­t­les are a force strong enough to drown him out.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day would like to teach the world to sing in per­fect har­mo­ny.

 

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Crowded House: How the World’s Population Grew to 7 Billion People

in Current Affairs, History, Video - Politics/Society | December 6th, 2011

This fall, the world’s pop­u­la­tion reached sev­en bil­lion. A sober­ing thought. How did we get to this point? Pro­duc­er Adam Cole and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mag­gie Star­bard of Nation­al Pub­lic Radio have put the world’s accel­er­at­ing pop­u­la­tion growth in per­spec­tive in a two-and-a-half minute video, above.

In those two and a half min­utes, 638 babies will be born world­wide, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the Unit­ed States Cen­sus Bureau, and 265 peo­ple will die. That’s a net gain of 373 peo­ple, just while you watch the film. The biggest growth, accord­ing to NPR,  is hap­pen­ing in sub-Saha­ran Africa, where access to fam­i­ly plan­ning is low and infant mor­tal­i­ty rates are high.

It may seem counter-intu­itive that pop­u­la­tion growth rates are high where infant sur­vival rates are low, but as Swedish glob­al health expert Hans Rosling put it dur­ing a recent TED talk, “Only by child sur­vival can we con­trol pop­u­la­tion growth.” Because pop­u­la­tion growth and infant mor­tal­i­ty rates are both cor­re­lat­ed to pover­ty rates, he argues, elim­i­nat­ing pover­ty is the key to achiev­ing a sus­tain­able world pop­u­la­tion. You can learn more in our Novem­ber 1 fea­ture,  “Hans Rosling Uses IKEA Props to Explain World of 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple.”

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The Mechanical Monsters: Seminal Superman Animated Film from 1941

in Film, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, YouTube | October 4th, 2011

In 1941, direc­tor Dave Fleis­ch­er and Para­mount Pic­tures ani­ma­tors Steve Muf­fati and George Ger­manet­ti pro­duced Super­man: The Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters — a big-bud­get ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of the pop­u­lar Super­man comics of that peri­od, in which a mad sci­en­tist unleash­es robots to rob banks and loot muse­ums, and Super­man, nat­u­ral­ly, saves the day. It was one of sev­en­teen films that raised the bar for the­atri­cal shorts and are even con­sid­ered by some to have giv­en rise to the entire Ani­me genre.

More than a mere treat of vin­tage ani­ma­tion, the film cap­tures the era’s char­ac­ter­is­tic ambiva­lence in rec­on­cil­ing the need for progress with the fear of tech­nol­o­gy in a cul­ture on the brink of incred­i­ble tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. It was the dawn of the tech­no-para­noia that per­sist­ed through the 1970s, famous­ly cap­tured in the TV series Future Shock nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, and even through today. Take for exam­ple books like Nicholas Car­r’s The Shal­lows and Sher­ry Turkle’s Alone Togeth­er: Why We Expect More from Tech­nol­o­gy and Less from Each Oth­er.

Super­man: The Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters is avail­able for down­load on The Inter­net Archive, and Toon­a­mi Dig­i­tal Arse­nal has the com­plete series of all sev­en­teen films. Find more vin­tage ani­ma­tion in Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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Jon Stewart & Bill O’Reilly Debate Rapper’s Visit to the White House

in Current Affairs, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | May 17th, 2011

The cul­ture wars wage on. Almost twen­ty years after the great Mur­phy Brown debate, we’re still going at it. But now, instead of debat­ing the pros and cons of sin­gle moth­er­hood, the focus has turned to whether Michelle Oba­ma erred in invit­ing the rap­per Com­mon to the White House Poet­ry Night last week. (See his actu­al per­for­mance here.) Crit­ics point to this 2007 YouTube video, A Let­ter to the Law, though they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly lis­ten until the very end. And they also flag his sym­pa­thet­ic words direct­ed toward Joanne Ches­i­mard (aka Assa­ta Shakur), an ex-Black Pan­ther, con­vict­ed of killing a New Jer­sey police offi­cer in 1973. This all built up to the lat­est Jon Stew­art — Bill O’Reil­ly face­off, which drilled down to the ques­tion: Did the First Lady make a major gaffe? Or is this anoth­er case of selec­tive out­rage? Part 1 is above; Part II is here…

via @Frauenfelder

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William F. Buckley Explains How He Flogged Himself to Get Through Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged

in Books, Video - Politics/Society | May 10th, 2011

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged sold an esti­mat­ed 25 mil­lion copies between its pub­li­ca­tion in 1957 and 2007. Ear­ly on, the book inspired a young gen­er­a­tion of busi­ness lead­ers, and now, decades lat­er, it holds appeal for a new class of con­ser­v­a­tives. But it was­n’t always that way. Back in the 1950s, William F. Buck­ley, the enfant ter­ri­ble of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, launched the Nation­al Review and pub­lished a review by Whit­tak­er Cham­bers — the Sovi­et spy who famous­ly turned against Com­mu­nism (and Alger Hiss), all while build­ing a remark­able career at TIME Mag­a­zine. About Atlas Shrugged, Cham­bers wrote: ”I find it a remark­ably sil­ly book. It is cer­tain­ly a bump­tious one. Its sto­ry is pre­pos­ter­ous.” And, what’s more, he adds: “Out of a life­time of read­ing, I can recall no oth­er book in which a tone of over­rid­ing arro­gance was so implaca­bly sus­tained. Its shrill­ness is with­out reprieve. Its dog­ma­tism is with­out appeal.”

Rand nev­er for­gave Buck­ley for the review. Per­sona non gra­ta, he was. Years lat­er, in 2003, Buck­ley revis­it­ed the whole affair with Char­lie Rose and made known his per­son­al feel­ings for Rand’s book. “I had to flog myself to read it…”

Note: You can down­load Atlas Shrugged as a free audio­book if you sign up for a free 30-Day Tri­al with Audible.com. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

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:

Mike Wal­lace Inter­views Ayn Rand (1959)

William F. Buck­ley v. Gore Vidal (1968)

Ayn Rand Talks Athe­ism with Phil Don­ahue

Wealthy Donors Pay­ing Uni­ver­si­ties to Teach Rand

via Roger Ebert

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