Wes Anderson Re-Creates The Truman Show, Armageddon & Out of Sight as Stage Plays Performed by the Cast of Rushmore (1999)

Nom­i­nees of the 1999 MTV Movie Awards includ­ed Adam San­dler, Liv Tyler, Chris Tuck­er, and Jen­nifer Love Hewitt to men­tion just a few of the names in a ver­i­ta­ble who’s-who of turn-of-the-mil­len­ni­um Amer­i­can pop cul­ture. But for the teenage cinephiles watch­ing that night, the high­light of the broad­cast was sure­ly a set of brief skits per­formed by “the Max Fis­ch­er Play­ers.” Direct­ed by Wes Ander­son, who had been named Best New Film­mak­er dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny of three years before, they present low-bud­get but high-spir­it­ed inter­pre­ta­tions of three of the motion pic­tures up for hon­ors: Out of Sight, The Tru­man Show, and Armaged­don.

Hav­ing been a teenage cinephile myself at the time, I can tell you that none of those movies made as much an impact on me as Ander­son­’s own Rush­more, which intro­duced the hyper-ambi­tious young slack­er Max Fis­ch­er to the world. In it, Max and his play­ers adapt Sid­ney Lumet’s Ser­pico, and lat­er put on an elab­o­rate (and explo­sive) pas­tiche of var­i­ous Viet­nam War pic­tures.

Twen­ty-five years ago, few of us had iden­ti­fied in the painstak­ing­ly ram­shackle look and feel of these pro­duc­tions the seed of what would grow into Ander­son­’s sig­na­ture aes­thet­ic. But it was clear that, if the Max Fis­ch­er Play­ers method were applied to the Hol­ly­wood block­busters of the day, amus­ing incon­gruity would result.

These skits promi­nent­ly fea­ture Mason Gam­ble and Sara Tana­ka, both of whom retired from act­ing a few years after giv­ing their mem­o­rable per­for­mances in Rush­more. But Jason Schwartz­man, who will no doubt for­ev­er be iden­ti­fied with Max Fis­ch­er, has remained an active mem­ber of Ander­son­’s own group of play­ers, and even plays a star­ring role once again in Ander­son­’s new film Aster­oid City, which comes out this sum­mer. The Max Fish­er Play­ers’ par­o­dies were includ­ed on the DVD of Rush­more released by the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion — an hon­or still denied, one might add, to the recip­i­ent of the 1999 MTV Movie Award for Best Movie, There’s Some­thing About Mary. (But not to Armaged­don, which just goes to show how unpre­dictable the favor of cinephil­ia can be.)

via Red­dit

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s Break­through Film Rush­more Revis­it­ed in Five Video Essays: It Came Out 20 Years Ago Today

Wes Ander­son Explains How He Writes and Directs Movies, and What Goes Into His Dis­tinc­tive Film­mak­ing Style

Wes Anderson’s Shorts Films & Com­mer­cials: A Playlist of 8 Short Ander­son­ian Works

Wes Ander­son Goes Sci-Fi in 1950s Amer­i­ca: Watch the Trail­er for His New Film Aster­oid City

Why Do Wes Ander­son Movies Look Like That?

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

“Weird Al” Yankovic Breaks Down His Most Iconic Tracks: “Eat It,” “Amish Paradise,” “White and Nerdy,” and His Other Hilarious Songs

Few things could have been more amus­ing to a twelve-year-old in 1996 than an Amish-themed par­o­dy of the late Coo­lio’s por­ten­tous­ly grim life-in-the-hood anthem “Gangsta’s Par­adise.” As luck would have it, “Weird Al” Yankovic released just such a song in 1996, when I hap­pened to be twelve years old myself. Like every­one who’s been a kid at some point in the past 40 years, I grew up hear­ing and appre­ci­at­ing Yankovic’s pro­lif­ic out­put of par­o­dies, pas­tich­es, and even orig­i­nal songs. From “Eat It” to “Smells like Nir­vana” to “White and Nerdy,” there was hard­ly a pop-music phase of my child­hood, ado­les­cence, and ear­ly adult­hood that he did­n’t make fun­ny.

That’s to make fun­ny, as dis­tinct from to make fun of: unlike that of a pre­de­ces­sor in com­e­dy song­writ­ing like Tom Lehrer, Yankovic’s body of work evi­dences not the least ten­den­cy toward harsh­ness or ridicule.

Hence his appeal from his very first record­ing “My Bol­og­o­na,” an accor­dion-based par­o­dy of “My Sharona” record­ed in the bath­room of his col­lege radio sta­tion, to no less an advo­cate of silli­ness than Dr. Demen­to, whose air­play launched the young Weird Al’s career — a career that, as Yankovic acknowl­edges while telling the sto­ries behind his icon­ic songs in the GQ video above, has not gone with­out its strokes of luck.

Yet few liv­ing per­form­ers more clear­ly per­son­i­fy the old apho­rism describ­ing luck as the meet­ing of prepa­ra­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ty. “Weird Al approach­es the com­po­si­tion of his music with some­thing like the holy pas­sion of Michelan­ge­lo paint­ing the ceil­ing of the Sis­tine Chapel,” writes Sam Ander­son in a 2020 New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file. See­ing Yankovic’s notes for “White & Nerdy” “file felt like watch­ing a super­com­put­er crunch through pos­si­ble chess moves. Every sin­gle vari­able had to be con­sid­ered, in every sin­gle line.” To work in musi­cal form, even the sil­li­est humor demands his total ded­i­ca­tion.

Yankovic has long showed a will­ing­ness straight­for­ward­ly to dis­cuss what it’s like to be Weird Al, as well as what it takes to be Weird Al. For a con­sid­er­ably less straight­for­ward ver­sion, we can watch The Roku Chan­nel’s new Weird: The Al Yankovic Sto­ry. Most biopics take artis­tic lib­er­ties with the lives of their sub­jects, but Weird goes all the way, par­o­dy­ing the very form of the biopic itself while per­form­ing colos­sal (and sure­ly fan-delight­ing) exag­ger­a­tions of the facts of Yankovic’s life. In the GQ video, for exam­ple, he men­tions get­ting the idea for “Like a Sur­geon” by hear­ing Madon­na throw it out in an inter­view; in the trail­er above, Madon­na turns at the door at his opu­lent man­sion, a ver­i­ta­ble suc­cubus ready to drag him into the musi­cal under­world. And it seems a safe bet that things only get Weird­er there­after.

Relat­ed con­tent:

“Weird Al” Yankovic Releas­es “Word Crimes,” a Gram­mar Nerd Par­o­dy of “Blurred Lines”

Two Leg­ends: Weird Al Yankovic “Inter­views” James Brown (1986)

Dr. Demento’s New Punk Album Fea­tures William Shat­ner Singing The Cramps, Weird Al Yankovic Singing The Ramones & Much More

Mon­ty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Char­ac­ters

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

Watch You Suck at Cooking, a Hilarious Source for Tasty Recipes and Food Hacks of Questionable Veracity

Is it just us, or did half of Gen Z teach them­selves how to cook on Tik­Tok dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic?

The recipes that go viral have more in com­mon with gonzo sci­ence exper­i­ments than Julia Child’s Coq au Vin.

Hacks are gold­en in this forum — whether or not they actu­al­ly work — and run­ning time is of the essence.

There’s an unmis­tak­able visu­al vocab­u­lary, too — from the god shots of man­i­cured hands dump­ing pre-mea­sured ingre­di­ents into mix­ing bowls to the reveal of the com­plet­ed dish just sec­onds lat­er.

One has to be con­ver­sant in these tropes to sub­vert them as glee­ful­ly as the anony­mous cre­ator of the sev­en year old online series You Suck at Cook­ing.

Unlike such Tik­Tok heavy hit­ters as cloud bread or whipped cof­fee, most of You Suck at Cook­ing’s dish­es are things you might con­sid­er prepar­ing on a reg­u­lar basis, how­ev­er trendy they may be at the moment.

The respon­si­ble par­ty’s cook­ing and edit­ing skills are sol­id, but his writ­ing is the real star here. We also appre­ci­ate the mas­sive amount of plan­ning and care that goes into every five minute episode.

He’s an unabashed coin­er of vocab­u­lary and elab­o­rate ways to refer to straight­for­ward appli­ances and ingre­di­ents. His deliv­ery is mild man­nered, but he doesn’t mince words when it comes to culi­nary bias­es — e.g., condi­ment­ing only one side of the bun is a cer­ti­fi­able burg­er crime and if you don’t like pick­les, one thing you can do is seek help.

Sim­ple dish­es such as overnight oats require so lit­tle instruc­tion, he’s freed up to skew­er the ques­tion­able claims of food-focused well­ness “experts” by lean­ing all the way in.

The spir­it of the project car­ries over into his writ­ten step-by-steps on the rare occa­sions when mere video demon­stra­tion will not suf­fice.

(His cook­book, You Suck at Cook­ing: The Absurd­ly Prac­ti­cal Guide to Suck­ing Slight­ly Less at Mak­ing Food, was pub­lished anony­mous­ly in 2019.)

To get the most from your expe­ri­ence, we rec­om­mend you first watch his deep fried Kore­an-style corn­dog How To, then fol­low the writ­ten recipe:

1. Go to the store 

2. Buy corn dogs 

3. Enjoy 

If you insist on mak­ing corn dogs your­self, first read these fry­ing safe­ty tips

The rea­son home fry­ers are safer than doing it on the stove­top is because they lim­it the heat of your oil so it won’t catch fire. It’s easy to let it get too hot which is very bad news. 

Bat­ter

    • 1 ¼ cups flour 
    • 2 table­spoon sug­ar 
    • ½ tea­spoon salt 
    • 1.3 tea­spoon yeast 
    • 1 egg 
    • 100 ml warm water

Wang­jan­gle until your wrist is furi­ous (I did it for a few min­utes tops)

Let it sit for half an hour 

Dry off any­thing you’re rolling in it 

Peg your dogs 

Roll ‘em 

Roll them in arti­san Ital­ian bread crumbs (okay seri­ous­ly this is a fla­vor game chang­er and I can’t rec­om­mend them enough. Kor­tal­ian food just has such depth. 

Fry for 3 min­utes 

Cool for a few min­utes 

I think any­thing else is pret­ty straight for­ward

When it comes to cook­ing hacks, our hero is a cham­pi­on fab­u­list.

It’s safe to assume that the first tip is legit, after which… well, let’s just say that some of his orange peel­ing meth­ods remind us in the best pos­si­ble way of our old pal Shel Silverstein’s Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book.

Enjoy a playlist of all 150 episodes of You Suck at Cook­ing here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Michael Pol­lan Explains How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life; Rec­om­mends Cook­ing Books, Videos & Recipes

10,000 Vin­tage Recipe Books Are Now Dig­i­tized in The Inter­net Archive’s Cook­book & Home Eco­nom­ics Col­lec­tion

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Making Sense of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal with Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #136

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Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Lawrence Ware, Sarahlyn Bruck, and Al Bak­er con­vene an emer­gency pod­cast record­ing to react to this mind-bend­ing, pos­si­bly immoral HBO com­e­dy docuseries, where­in Field­er helps ordi­nary peo­ple rehearse dif­fi­cult per­son­al con­fronta­tions, but this plan goes off the rails after 1.5 episodes out of the six that made up its first sea­son.

This series builds upon Fielder’s pre­vi­ous show where he comed­ical­ly tried to help busi­ness­es, Nathan for You, whose ground-break­ing finale (“Find­ing Frances”) dis­cov­ered The Rehearsal‘s for­mat. Is Nathan him­self the main butt of the joke, or is he punch­ing down? Are there bet­ter ways to show the fail­ings of real­i­ty TV? How does this kind of embar­rass­ment humor dif­fer from Borat and its ilk? Maybe the show is not as much about these peo­ple going through their rehearsals as an exam­i­na­tion of the process of rehears­ing itself that Field­er has devised.

Feel free to lis­ten to us to find out what it’s all about, but you will be best served by watch­ing this inde­scrib­able show your­self before expe­ri­enc­ing this episode.

A few rel­e­vant arti­cles also con­sid­er­ing the show include:

Fol­low us @law_writes@sarahlynbruck@ixisnox@MarkLinsenmayer.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

When Is a Joke “Too Soon”? — Comedians Discuss on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #132

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To hon­or the death of Gilbert Got­tfried, Pret­ty Much Pop address­es jokes like the 9–11 one he was pil­lo­ried for. Can com­e­dy real­ly be “too soon” in rela­tion to trag­ic sub­ject mat­ter? Is com­e­dy real­ly tragedy plus time, or are jokes most need­ed imme­di­ate­ly when pain and dis­com­fort are most acute?

Your host Mark Lin­se­may­er is joined by three come­di­ans: Adam Sank (of the LGBTQ-themed Adam Sank Show), Twitch-stream­ing song­ster Meri Amber, and return­ing guest Daniel Lobell (graph­ic nov­el­ist and pod­cast­er). We get into tai­lor­ing jokes for an audi­ence, cop­ing with grief, and of course some talk about trig­ger­ing, hyper-sen­si­tive audi­ences, and can­cel­la­tion (Chapelle, any­one?).

Watch Got­tfried’s infa­mous joke your­self:

A few per­spec­tives we may have reviewed before talk­ing:

Fol­low us @AdamSank, @meriamber, @dannylobell, and @MarkLinsenmayer.

So maybe instead of the “Mac­cabees,” my Bible cam­p’s Pol­ish jokes instead made the “Canaan­ites” the butt of their humor. (Unless that actu­al­ly again refers some mod­ern, extant peo­ple…)

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

Julia Child Shows Fred Rogers How to Make a Quick & Delicious Pasta Dish (1974)

Julia Child and Fred Rogers were titans of pub­lic tele­vi­sion, cel­e­brat­ed for their nat­ur­al warmth, the ease with which they deliv­ered impor­tant lessons to home view­ers, and, for a cer­tain sec­tor of the view­ing pub­lic, how read­i­ly their per­son­al­i­ties lent them­self to par­o­dy.

Child’s cook­ing pro­gram, The French Chef, debuted in 1963, and Roger’s much beloved children’s show, Mis­ter Rogers Neigh­bor­hood, fol­lowed five years lat­er.

Rogers occa­sion­al­ly invit­ed accom­plished celebri­ties to join him for seg­ments where­in they demon­strat­ed their par­tic­u­lar tal­ents:

With our guest’s help, I have been able to show a wide diver­si­ty of self-expres­sion, the extra­or­di­nary range of human poten­tial. I want chil­dren and their fam­i­lies to know that there are many con­struc­tive ways to express who they are and how they feel. 

In 1974, Child paid a call to the neigh­bor­hood bak­ery presided over by “Chef” Don Brock­ett  (whose lat­er cred­its includ­ed a cameo as a “Friend­ly Psy­chopath” in Silence of the Lambs…)

The easy-to-pre­pare pas­ta dish she teach­es Rogers — and, by exten­sion, his “tele­vi­sion friend” — to make takes a sur­pris­ing­ly opti­mistic view of the aver­age pre-school palate.

Red sauce gets a hard pass, in favor of a more sophis­ti­cat­ed blend of fla­vors stem­ming from tuna, black olives, and pimen­tos.

Brock­ett pro­vides an assist with both the cook­ing and, more impor­tant­ly, the child safe­ty rules that aren’t always front and cen­ter with this celebri­ty guest.

Child, who had no off­spring, comes off as a high-spir­it­ed, loosey-goosey, fun aunt, encour­ag­ing child view­ers to toss the cooked spaghet­ti “fair­ly high” after adding but­ter and oil “because it’s dra­mat­ic” and talk­ing as if they’ll be hit­ting the super­mar­ket solo, a flat­ter­ing notion to any tot whose refrain is “I do it mySELF!”

She wise­ly reframes tasks assigned to big­ger, more expe­ri­enced hand — boil­ing water, knife work — as less excit­ing than “the fan­cy busi­ness at the end”, and makes it stick by sug­gest­ing that the kids “order the grown ups to do what you want done,” a verb choice the ever-respect­ful Rogers like­ly would have avoid­ed.

As with The French Chef, her off-the-cuff remarks are a major source of delight.

Watch­ing his guest wipe a wood­en cut­ting board with olive oil, Rogers observes that some of his friends “could do this very well,” to which she replies:

It’s also good for your hands ‘coz it keeps ‘em nice and soft, so rub any excess into your hands.

She shares a bit of stage set scut­tle­butt regard­ing a let­ter from “some woman” who com­plained that the off-cam­era waste­bas­ket made it appear that Child was dis­card­ing peels and stems onto the floor.

She said, “Do you think this is a nice way to show young peo­ple how to cook, to throw things on the floor!?” And I said, “Well, I have a self clean­ing floor! …The self clean­ing is me.”

(Rogers appears both amused and relieved when the ulti­mate punch­line steers things back to the realm of good man­ners and per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty.)

Trans­fer­ring the slip­pery pre-cooked noo­dles from pot to serv­ing bowl, Child rem­i­nisces about a won­der­ful old movie in which some­one — “Char­lie Chap­lin or was it, I guess it was, uh, it wasn’t Mick­ey Rooney, maybe it was…” — eats spaghet­ti through a fun­nel.

If only the Inter­net had exist­ed in 1974 so intrigued par­ents could have Googled their way to the Noo­dle Break at the Bull Pup Cafe sequence from 1918’s The Cook, star­ring Roscoe “Fat­ty” Arbuck­le and Buster Keaton!

The fun­nel is but one of many inspired silent spaghet­ti gags in this sure­fire don’t‑try-this-at-home kid-pleas­er.

We learn that Child named her dish Spaghet­ti Mar­co Polo in a nod to a wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed the­o­ry that pas­ta orig­i­nat­ed in Chi­na and was intro­duced to Italy by the explor­er, a bit of lore food writer Tori Avey of The His­to­ry Kitchen finds dif­fi­cult to swal­low:

A com­mon belief about pas­ta is that it was brought to Italy from Chi­na by Mar­co Polo dur­ing the 13th cen­tu­ry. In his book, The Trav­els of Mar­co Polo, there is a pas­sage that briefly men­tions his intro­duc­tion to a plant that pro­duced flour (pos­si­bly a bread­fruit tree). The Chi­nese used this plant to cre­ate a meal sim­i­lar to bar­ley flour. The bar­ley-like meal Polo men­tioned was used to make sev­er­al pas­ta-like dish­es, includ­ing one described as lagana (lasagna). Since Polo’s orig­i­nal text no longer exists, the book relies heav­i­ly on retellings by var­i­ous authors and experts. This, com­bined with the fact that pas­ta was already gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty in oth­er areas of Italy dur­ing the 13th-cen­tu­ry, makes it very unlike­ly that Mar­co Polo was the first to intro­duce pas­ta to Italy.

Ah well.

We’re glad Child went with the Chi­na the­o­ry as it pro­vides an excuse to eat spaghet­ti with chop­sticks.

Noth­ing is more day-mak­ing than see­ing Julia Child pop a small bun­dle of spaghet­ti direct­ly into Fred Rogers’ mouth from the tips of her chopsticks…though after using the same imple­ments to feed some to Chef Brock­ett too, she real­izes that this wasn’t the best les­son in food hygiene.

In 2021, this sort of boo-boo would result in an auto­mat­ic reshoot.

In the wilder, wooli­er 70s, a more press­ing con­cern, at least as far as pub­lic tele­vi­sion was con­cerned, was expand­ing lit­tle Amer­i­cans’ world­view, in part by show­ing them how to get a com­mand­ing grip on their chop­sticks. It’s nev­er too late to learn.

Bon appétit!

JULIA CHILD’S SPAGHETTI MARCO POLO

There are a num­ber of vari­a­tions online, but this recipe, from Food.com, hews close­ly to Child’s orig­i­nal, while pro­vid­ing mea­sure­ments for her eye­balled amounts.

Serves 4–6

INGREDIENTS 

1 lb spaghet­ti 

2 table­spoons but­ter 

2 table­spoons olive oil 

1 tea­spoon salt black pep­per 

1 6‑ounce can tuna packed in oil, flaked, undrained 

2 table­spoons pimien­to, diced or 2 table­spoons roast­ed red pep­pers, sliced into strips 

2 table­spoons green onions with tops, sliced 

2 table­spoons black olives, sliced 

2 table­spoons wal­nuts, chopped

1 cup Swiss cheese, shred­ded 

2 table­spoons fresh pars­ley or 2 table­spoons cilantro, chopped

Cook pas­ta accord­ing to pack­age direc­tions. 

Drain pas­ta and return to pot, stir­ring in but­ter, olive oil, and salt and pep­per. 

Toss with remain­ing ingre­di­ents and serve, gar­nished with pars­ley or cilantro.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Julia Child Shows David Let­ter­man How to Cook Meat with a Blow Torch

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s First Food-and-Trav­el Series A Cook’s Tour Free Online (2002–03)

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

 

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Birth of the Blues Brothers: How Dan Aykroyd & John Belushi Started Introducing a New Generation to the Blues

What were the Blues Broth­ers? A com­e­dy sketch? A par­o­dy act? A real band? A celebri­ty soul artist trib­ute? All of the above, yes. The musi­cal-comedic duo of Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi turned a ludi­crous begin­ning in bum­ble bee cos­tumes — not dark suits, fedo­ras, and Ray-Bans — into a musi­cal act that “exposed a gen­er­a­tion to the bril­liance of blues and soul leg­ends like John Lee Hook­er and Aretha Franklin,” as Dar­ren Weale writes at Loud­er­sound.

That’s quite an accom­plish­ment for a cou­ple of improv come­di­ans on a fledg­ling late-night com­e­dy show that did not seem, in its first year, like it would stick around long. It was dur­ing that anar­chic peri­od when the Killer Bees became recur­ring char­ac­ters on the show, appear­ing 11 times (despite the stu­dio note, “Cut the bees,” which Lorne Michaels point­ed­ly ignored).

The bees were the first incar­na­tion of the Blues Broth­ers, two years before their actu­al debut in Sea­son 4. (See a lat­er appear­ance from that sea­son, intro­duced by Gar­rett Mor­ris, just above).

A Jan­u­ary 17, 1976 appear­ance of the bees fea­tured “Howard Shore and his All Bee Band,” con­sist­ing of “Aykroyd on the har­mon­i­ca and Belushi on vocals belt­ing out a blues clas­sic very much in the style of the future Elwood and ‘Joli­et’ Jake Blues,” notes History.com. They had the begin­nings of an act, but the look and the per­sonas would come lat­er, “dur­ing the hia­tus between SNL sea­sons two and three” in 1977, while Belushi filmed Ani­mal House in Eugene, Ore­gon and fell under the spell of local blues­man Cur­tis Sal­ga­do, future har­mon­i­ca play­er for Robert Cray.

Sal­ga­do “sure turned John on to blues music,” says Aykroyd. “He steeped him in blues cul­ture.” Sal­ga­do him­self describes how Belushi won him over on their first meet­ing: “I’m pack­ing up my harps, try­ing to break free, when he says, ‘I’m going to have Ray Charles on the show.’ ” Sal­ga­do also gave Belushi a les­son in play­ing it straight, even when he played the blues for laughs. When the com­ic per­formed the song “Hey Bar­tender” to a packed house one night, in char­ac­ter as Joe Cock­er, his men­tor gave him a post-show dress­ing down.

“He asks me, ‘What did you think?’”
“I say, ‘John, it’s Joe Cock­er.’”
‘Yes, I do Joe on Sat­ur­day Night Live.’
“I punch his chest and say, ‘You need to do this from here [point­ing at his heart] and be your­self.’ After that he didn’t mim­ic any more. He was him­self.”

Tak­ing the look of Jake and Elwood from Sal­ga­do, but devel­op­ing the char­ac­ter as his swag­ger­ing self, Belushi “came back from Ore­gon with a lust for the blues,” his wid­ow, Judith, recalls. “He had tapes in his pock­ets and went to clubs.” (See the duo play “Hey Bar­tender” at the Uni­ver­sal Amphithe­ater in 1978, below.)

The name was the brain­child of SNL musi­cal direc­tor Howard Shore (who would go on to write the Lord of the Rings film scores), who hap­pened to be present when the two con­ceived the char­ac­ters at a bar. Their 1978 debut — made over the protests of Lorne Michaels (who did­n’t get it) — made them instant stars.

Paul Shaf­fer spun their ori­gin sto­ry in his intro­duc­tion, “claim­ing that they had been dis­cov­ered in 1969 by the fic­tion­al ‘Mar­shall Check­er,” writes Men­tal Floss. He went on:

Today they are no longer an authen­tic blues act, but have man­aged to become a viable com­mer­cial prod­uct. So now, let’s join “Joli­et” Jake and his silent broth­er Elwood — the Blues Broth­ers.

With that, the nev­er-authen­tic blues act did, indeed, become a viable com­mer­cial prod­uct. “Things start­ed to move quick­ly,” Weale writes. “Record exec­u­tive Michael Klenfn­er took John and Dan to see Ahmet Ertegün at Atlantic Records. He signed the Blues Broth­ers up.” They were a real act, and two years lat­er, real movie stars with the release of John Lan­dis’ The Blues Broth­ers, a film that ful­ly deliv­ered on the duo’s com­ic promis­es, while glee­ful­ly giv­ing the spot­light away to its huge cast of soul and blues leg­ends

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aretha Franklin’s Pitch-Per­fect Per­for­mance in The Blues Broth­ers, the Film That Rein­vig­o­rat­ed Her Career (1980)

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

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

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

The Depths of Wikipedia: Enjoy a Compendium of the Online Encyclopedia’s Most Bizarre Pages

@depthsofwikipedia If the author­i­ties kill me for mak­ing this tik­tok just know I loved you guys #learnon­tik­tok #tik­tok­part­ner ♬ orig­i­nal sound — Annie Rauw­er­da

What’s your stance on Wikipedia, the free, open con­tent online ency­clo­pe­dia?

Stu­dents are often dis­cour­aged or dis­al­lowed from cit­ing Wikipedia as a source, a bias that a Wikipedia entry titled “Wikipedia should not be con­sid­ered a defin­i­tive source in and of itself” sup­ports:

As a user-gen­er­at­ed source, it can be edit­ed by any­one at any time, and any infor­ma­tion it con­tains at a par­tic­u­lar time could be van­dal­ism, a work in progress, or sim­ply incor­rect. Biogra­phies of liv­ing per­sons, sub­jects that hap­pen to be in the news, and polit­i­cal­ly or cul­tur­al­ly con­tentious top­ics are espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to these issues…because Wikipedia is a vol­un­teer-run project, it can­not con­stant­ly mon­i­tor every con­tri­bu­tion. There are many errors that remain unno­ticed for hours, days, weeks, months, or even years.


(Anoth­er entry coun­sels those who would per­sist to cite the exact time, date, and arti­cle ver­sion they are ref­er­enc­ing.)

Wikipedia has a clear­ly stat­ed pol­i­cy pro­hibit­ing con­trib­u­tors from close para­phras­ing or out­right copy­ing and past­ing from out­side sources, though in a bit of a cir­cle-in-a-cir­cle sit­u­a­tion, sev­er­al not­ed authors and jour­nal­ists have been caught pla­gia­riz­ing Wikipedia arti­cles.

A list of Wikipedia con­tro­ver­sies, pub­lished on — where else? — Wikipedia is a hair rais­ing litany of polit­i­cal sab­o­tage, char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion, and “revenge edits”. (The list is cur­rent­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed by 338 ref­er­ence links, and has been char­ac­ter­ized as in need of update since Octo­ber 2021, owing to a lack of edits regard­ing the “con­tro­ver­sy about Main­land Chi­nese edi­tors.”)

It can be a pret­ty scary place, but Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan senior Annie Rauw­er­da, cre­ator of the Insta­gram account Depths of Wikipedia is unfazed. As she wrote in an arti­cle for the tech pub­li­ca­tion Input:

Wikipedia is a splen­did­ly exten­sive record of almost every­thing that mat­ters; a mod­ern-day Library of Alexan­dria that’s free, acces­si­ble, and dynam­ic. But Wikipedia is char­ac­ter­ized not only by what it is but also by what it is not. It’s not a soap­box, a bat­tle­ground, nor a blog.


It’s also becom­ing famous as Rauw­er­da’s play­ground, or more accu­rate­ly, a packed swap shop in which mil­lions of bizarre items are tucked away.

If your sched­ule lim­its the amount time you can spend down its myr­i­ad rab­bit holes, Rauw­er­da will do the dig­ging for you.

Turn­ing a selec­tion of Wikipedia excerpts into a col­lage for a friend’s quaran-zine inspired her to keep the par­ty going with screen­shots of odd­ball entries post­ed to a ded­i­cat­ed Insta­gram account.

Her fol­low­ers don’t seem to care whether a post con­tains an image or not, though the neu­ro­science major finds that emo­tion­al, short or ani­mal-relat­ed posts gen­er­ate the most excite­ment. “I used to post more things that were con­cep­tu­al,” she told Lithi­um Mag­a­zine,  “like mind-blow­ing physics con­cepts, but those didn’t lend them­selves to Insta­gram as well since they require a few min­utes of think­ing and read­ing.”

The bulk of what she posts come to her as read­er sub­mis­sions, though in a pinch, she can always turn to the “holy grail” — Wikipedia’s own list of unusu­al arti­cles.

In addi­tion to Insta­gram, her dis­cov­er­ies find their way into an infre­quent­ly pub­lished newslet­ter, and onto Tik­Tok and Twit­ter, where some of our recent faves include the def­i­n­i­tion of hum­ster, a list of games that Bud­dha would not play, and the Paul O’Sullivan Band, “an inter­na­tion­al­ly based, pop-rock band con­sist­ing of four mem­bers, all of whom are named Paul O’Sullivan.”

Along the way, she has found ways to give back, co-host­ing a vir­tu­al edit-a-thon and bring­ing some gen­uine glam­our to a livestreamed Wikipedia triv­ia con­test.

And she recent­ly authored a seri­ous arti­cle for Slate about Rus­sians scram­bling to down­load a 29-giga­byte file con­tain­ing Russ­ian-lan­guage Wikipedia after the Fed­er­al Ser­vice for Super­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Mass Media (Roskom­nad­zor) threat­ened to block it over con­tent relat­ed to the inva­sion of Ukraine.

(You can read more about how that’s going on Wikipedia…)

Sub­mit a link to Wikipedia page for pos­si­ble inclu­sion on the Depths of Wikipedia here.

Fol­low Annie Rauwin­da’s Depths of Wikipedia on Insta­gram and Tik­Tok.

via NYTimes

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Lis­ten to Wikipedia: A Web Site That Turns Every Wikipedia Edit Into Ambi­ent Music in Real Time

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.