Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Is Finally for Sale

in Games, Literature | October 9th, 2024

Kurt Von­negut’s life was not with­out its ironies. Fight­ing in World War II, that descen­dant of a long line of Ger­man immi­grants in the Unit­ed States found him­self impris­oned in Dres­den just when it was dev­as­tat­ed by Allied fire­bomb­ing. To under­stand the rel­e­vance of this expe­ri­ence to his lit­er­ary work, one need only know that his cap­tors made him live in a slaugh­ter­house. It’s not sur­pris­ing that anti-war sen­ti­ments would sur­face again and again in the books he wrote after com­ing home. But one would hard­ly expect him to have spent his time away from the writ­ing desk on a mil­i­tary-themed board game.

“After releas­ing his first nov­el, Play­er Piano, in 1952, to pos­i­tive reviews and poor sales, he need­ed oth­er streams of income to sup­port his grow­ing fam­i­ly,” writes the New York Times’ Julia Carmel of the young Von­negut. Of all his endeav­ors — which includ­ed pub­lic rela­tions, a car deal­er­ship and a very brief stint at Sports Illus­trat­ed — he was most pas­sion­ate about design­ing a board game called Gen­er­al Head­quar­ters.” Read­ers of Von­negut’s nov­els might expect a sar­don­ical­ly didac­tic object les­son on the futil­i­ty of war, but in fact, “GHQ is a fast-paced two-play­er bat­tle game in which each play­er maneu­vers mil­i­tary units — infantry, armored vehi­cles, artillery and an air­borne reg­i­ment — to cap­ture the oth­er player’s head­quar­ters.”

Von­negut nev­er did man­age to sell the game, which has only just come avail­able for pur­chase at Barnes & Noble stores. Its long-delayed pro­duc­tion was the project of a table­top game design­er called Geoff Engel­stein, who ran across a brief men­tion of GHQ that even­tu­al­ly inspired him to inquire about the game’s sta­tus with the writer’s estate. The 40 pages of notes amid Von­negut’s papers include sev­er­al revi­sions of its rules, but also pitch let­ters to board-game com­pa­nies sug­gest­ing that GHQ could “become the third pop­u­lar checker­board game” — and even “be used to train cadets at the U.S. Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my at West Point.”

Despite prob­a­bly hav­ing missed its chance to enter the stan­dard mil­i­tary-acad­e­my cur­ricu­lum, the game could nev­er­the­less become a must-have among col­lec­tors of Von­negutiana. Accord­ing to the Kurt Von­negut Muse­um & Library’s online store, “this first edi­tion of GHQ fea­tures deluxe wood­en pieces and a 24-page com­men­tary book­let, show­ing Kurt Vonnegut’s actu­al design notes to give insight into his cre­ative process.” It may “lack the sig­na­ture dark sense of humor that runs through Mr. Von­negut’s writ­ing,” as Carmel puts it, but it sure­ly could­n’t be with­out his less wide­ly acknowl­edged — but no less char­ac­ter­is­tic — instinct for enter­tain­ment val­ue.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

A New Kurt Von­negut Muse­um Opens in Indi­anapo­lis … Right in Time for Banned Books Week

The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Board Game, Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s Rol­lick­ing Nov­el

Jack Ker­ouac Was a Secret, Obses­sive Fan of Fan­ta­sy Base­ball

The Fiendish­ly Com­pli­cat­ed Board Game That Takes 1,500 Hours to Play: Dis­cov­er The Cam­paign for North Africa

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Thomas Edison’s Recordings of Leo Tolstoy: Hear the Voice of the Great Russian Novelist

in History, Literature, Technology | October 8th, 2024

Born 196 years ago, Russ­ian nov­el­ist Leo Tolstoy’s life (1828–1910) spanned a peri­od of immense social, polit­i­cal, and tech­no­log­i­cal change, par­al­leled in his own life by his rad­i­cal shift from hedo­nis­tic noble­man to the­olo­gian, anar­chist, and veg­e­tar­i­an paci­fist. Though he did not live to see the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, the nov­el­ist did see Tsar Alexan­der II’s sweep­ing reforms, includ­ing the 1861 Eman­ci­pa­tion order that changed the social char­ac­ter of the coun­try. Near the end of his life, Tol­stoy saw the com­ing of new record­ing tech­nol­o­gy that would rev­o­lu­tion­ize the direc­tion of his own life’s work—telling sto­ries.

In his lat­er years Tol­stoy appeared in the new medi­um of film, which cap­tured his 80th birth­day in 1908, and his funer­al pro­ces­sion two years lat­er. He was the sub­ject of the first col­or pho­to­graph tak­en in Rus­sia (top) also in 1908. And that same year, Tol­stoy made sev­er­al audio record­ings of his voice, on a phono­graph sent to him per­son­al­ly by Thomas Edi­son. You can hear one of those record­ings, “The Pow­er of Child­hood,” made on April 19th, 1908, just above.

You’ll note, of course, that the great author reads in his native lan­guage. Most of the record­ings he made, which he intend­ed for the edi­fi­ca­tion of his coun­try­men, are in Russ­ian. Below, how­ev­er, you can hear him read from his last book, Wise Thoughts For Every Day in Eng­lish, Ger­man, French and Russ­ian. The book col­lects Tolstoy’s favorite pas­sages from thinkers as diverse as Lao-Tzu and Ralph Wal­do Emer­son. As Mike Springer wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on this record­ing, “Tol­stoy reject­ed his great works of fic­tion” as an old man, “believ­ing that it was more impor­tant to give moral and spir­i­tu­al guid­ance to the com­mon peo­ple.” To that end, he made a series of short record­ings, which you can hear at this site, on such sub­jects as art, law, moral­i­ty, pover­ty, non­vi­o­lence, and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

The sto­ry of how Tol­stoy came to make these record­ings is a fas­ci­nat­ing one. Inter­est­ed in the new tech­nol­o­gy, Tol­stoy made his first record­ing in 1895, when, writes The Moscow Times, “an Edi­son rep­re­sen­ta­tive came to Yas­naya Polyana, Tol­stoy’s estate, to record the author’s voice. Those record­ings were tak­en over the bor­der to Berlin, where they lay in an archive until they were brought back to the Sovi­et Union after World War II.” When Stephen Bon­sal, edi­tor of the New York Times learned of Tolstoy’s inter­est in record­ing tech­nol­o­gy in 1907, he promised to send the nov­el­ist an Edi­son phono­graph of his own. Edi­son him­self, hear­ing of this, refused to accept any pay­ment, and per­son­al­ly sent his own machine to Tolstoy’s estate with the engraved mes­sage “A Gift to Count Leo Tol­stoy from Thomas Alva Edi­son.”

Edi­son asked Tol­stoy for many mul­ti-lin­gual record­ings, request­ing “short mes­sages” in Eng­lish and French, “con­vey­ing to the peo­ple of the world some thoughts that would tend to their moral and social advance­ment.” Tol­stoy dili­gent­ly made sev­er­al record­ings, some of which were then shipped to Edi­son in 1908. On Feb­ru­ary 21 of that year, the New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle on the exchange titled “Tolstoy’s Gift to Edi­son. Will Send Record of His Voice—Edison Gave Him a Phono­graph.” The world eager­ly await­ed the world-famous author’s mes­sage to its “civ­i­lized peo­ples.” It seems how­ev­er, that the mes­sage nev­er arrived. Accord­ing to Sput­nik News, the fate of that leg­endary record­ing “has yet to be found out.” Nev­er­the­less, thanks to Edi­son, we have sev­er­al oth­er record­ings of Tolstoy’s very well-pre­served voice, the record of a life lived to the end with fierce con­vic­tion and curios­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Leo Tol­stoy Became a Veg­e­tar­i­an and Jump­start­ed the Veg­e­tar­i­an & Human­i­tar­i­an Move­ments in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

The Only Col­or Pic­ture of Tol­stoy, Tak­en by Pho­tog­ra­phy Pio­neer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1908)

Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in 4 Lan­guages, 1909

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

T. S. Eliot’s Classic Modernist Poem The Waste Land Gets Adapted into Comic-Book Form

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Poetry | October 8th, 2024

The phrase “April is the cru­elest month” was first print­ed more than 100 years ago, and it’s been in com­mon cir­cu­la­tion almost as long. One can eas­i­ly know it with­out hav­ing the faintest idea of its source, let alone its mean­ing. This is not, of course, to call T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land an obscure work. Despite hav­ing met with a deri­sive, even hos­tile ini­tial recep­tion, it went on to draw acclaim as one of the cen­tral Eng­lish-lan­guage poems of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, to say noth­ing of its sta­tus as an achieve­ment with­in the mod­ernist move­ment. But how, here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, to read it afresh?

One new avenue to approach The Waste Land is this com­ic-book adap­ta­tion by Julian Peters, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his graph­ic ren­di­tions of oth­er such poems as Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee, W. B. Yeats’ “When You Are Old,” and Eliot’s own “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

It’s an adap­ta­tion, to be pre­cise, of the first of The Waste Land’s five sec­tions, “The Bur­ial of the Dead,” which opens on a First World War bat­tle­field — at least in Peters’ adap­ta­tion, which puts the first line “April is the cru­elest month” into the con­text of night­mar­ish imagery of blood­shed and death — and ends in a worka­day Lon­don likened to Dan­te’s hell.

The Waste Land presents a tempt­ing but daunt­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to an illus­tra­tor, filled as it is with vivid evo­ca­tions of place and appear­ances by intrigu­ing char­ac­ters (includ­ing, in this sec­tion, “Madame Sosostris, famous clair­voy­ante”), and char­ac­ter­ized as it is by exten­sive lit­er­ary quo­ta­tion and sud­den shifts of con­text. But Peters has made a bold start of it, and any­one who reads his adap­ta­tion of “The Bur­ial of the Dead” will be wait­ing for his adap­ta­tions of “A Game of Chess” through “What the Thun­der Said.” Though much-scru­ti­nized over the past cen­tu­ry, Eliot’s mod­ernist mas­ter­piece (hear Eliot read it here) still tends to con­found first-time read­ers. To them, I always advise con­sid­er­ing poet­ry a visu­al medi­um, an idea whose pos­si­bil­i­ties Peters con­tin­ues to explore on a much more lit­er­al lev­el. Explore it here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Read the Entire Com­ic Book Adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

A Com­ic Book Adap­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s Poignant Poem Annabel Lee

W. B. Yeats’ Poem “When You Are Old” Adapt­ed into a Japan­ese Man­ga Com­ic

T. S. Eliot Illus­trates His Let­ters and Draws a Cov­er for Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats

T. S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “TheLovee Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Twin Peaks Actually Explained: A 4‑Hour Video Essay Demystifies It All

in Film | October 8th, 2024

I don’t know about you, but my YouTube algo­rithms can act like a nag­ging friend, sug­gest­ing a video for days until I final­ly give in. Such was the case with this video essay with the tan­ta­liz­ing title: “Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED (No, Real­ly)”.

First of all, before, dur­ing, and after 2017’s Twin Peaks The Return, the­o­ries were as inescapable as the cat memes on the Twin Peaks Face­book groups. After the mind-blow­ing Episode 8, they went into over­drive, includ­ing the bonkers idea that the final two episodes were meant to be watched *over­laid* on each oth­er. And I high­light­ed one in-depth jour­ney through the entire three decades of the Lynch/Frost cul­tur­al event for this very site.

So when I final­ly clicked on the link I balked imme­di­ate­ly: Four and a half hours? Are you kid­ding me? (You might be say­ing the very thing to your­self now.) But just like the nar­ra­tor says, bear with me. Over the week, I watched the entire thing in 30-minute seg­ments, not because it was gru­el­ing, but because time is pre­cious and there is a lot to chew over. By the end, I was rec­om­mend­ing the video to friends only to find some of them were already deep inside Twin Perfect’s analy­sis.

So here we are, with me high­ly encour­ag­ing you to invest the time (pro­vid­ing you have watched all three sea­sons of Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me), but also not want­i­ng to ruin some of Twin Perfect’s the­o­ries, which he lays out like a pros­e­cu­tor, walk­ing us through a gen­er­al the­o­ry of Lynch.

How­ev­er, I will make a few points:

  • In 2019, we post­ed a video in which Lynch explains both the Uni­fied Field The­o­ry and Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion. There are at least two major sequences that Twin Per­fect sug­gests reflect the Uni­fied Field.
  • Lynch’s obses­sion with elec­tric­i­ty and fire is essen­tial to the the­o­ry.
  • The One-Armed Man’s quote “I mean it as it is, as it sounds,” dou­bles as Lynch’s approach: Twin Per­fect does a mas­ter­ful job show­ing many, many exam­ples where Lynch is direct­ly explain­ing his use of metaphor and sym­bol to us. Some­times that is straight into the cam­era.
  • We now know why Sea­son Three fea­tured a three-minute shot of a man sweep­ing up peanuts from a bar floor.
  • I’ve always felt that The Return was an explo­ration of the dan­gers of nos­tal­gia, and this essay con­firmed it for me. There was some­thing miss­ing at the cen­ter of the Third Sea­son, indeed.
  • Twin Per­fect reads all quotes from the direc­tor in a mock-Lynch voice. For some this will grate; for me it was A BEAUTIFUL THING (wig­gly fin­ger ges­ture).

Twin Per­fect puts much more effort into this than most grad­u­ate stu­dents:

I have been work­ing on this video for two years, writ­ing and research­ing and edit­ing. I’ve been read­ing and watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to every cre­ator inter­view and AMA, every DVD extra and fea­turette, every TV spe­cial, every fan the­o­ry, blog, and pod­cast — any and all Twin Peaks-relat­ed posts I could find — try­ing to hone and pol­ish my script to be the best I thought it could pos­si­bly be. I focus-grouped my video with peo­ple, chal­leng­ing them to poke as many holes in my argu­ments as they could so that I could bet­ter illus­trate my ideas. I tried my best to cre­ate some­thing oth­ers would find of val­ue, some­thing that would add to the ongo­ing mys­tery and spark new dis­cus­sions about my favorite series.

Are there some prob­lems with the the­o­ry? Sure. But for every “I don’t know, man,” I said to myself, he imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed it up with some­thing spot on. I think he deserves that MFA in Twin Peaks Stud­ies.

So brew up some strong cof­fee and cut your­self a slice of cher­ry pie, and get stuck in.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Three Days in Twin Peaks: An In-Depth Jour­ney Through the Evoca­tive Loca­tions of David Lynch’s TV Series

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts., You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

David Lynch Releases on YouTube Interview Project: 121 Stories of Real America Recorded on a 20,000-Mile Road Trip

in Film, Travel | October 7th, 2024

Take a suf­fi­cient­ly long road trip across Amer­i­ca, and you’re bound to encounter some­thing or some­one Lynchi­an. Whether or not that idea lay behind Inter­view Project, the under­tak­ing had the endorse­ment of David Lynch him­self. Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, it was con­ceived by his son Austin, who along with film­mak­er Jason S. (known for the doc­u­men­tary David Lynch: The Art Life), drove 20,000 miles through the U.S. in search of what it’s tempt­ing to call the real Amer­i­ca, a nation pop­u­lat­ed by col­or­ful, some­times des­per­ate, often uncon­ven­tion­al­ly elo­quent char­ac­ters, 121 of whom Inter­view Project finds pass­ing the day in bars, work­ing at stores, or just sit­ting on the road­side.

Pro­fil­ing David Lynch in the nineties, David Fos­ter Wal­lace observed that “a good 65 per­cent of the peo­ple in met­ro­pol­i­tan bus ter­mi­nals between the hours of mid­night and 6 A.M. tend to qual­i­fy as Lynchi­an fig­ures — grotesque, enfee­bled, flam­boy­ant­ly unap­peal­ing, freight­ed with a woe out of all pro­por­tion to evi­dent cir­cum­stances.”

Inter­view Project sticks to small-town or rur­al set­tings — Camp Hill, Penn­syl­va­nia; Pigeon Forge, Ten­nessee; Tuba City, Ari­zona — but still encoun­ters peo­ple who may at first glance strike view­ers as dis­turb­ing, men­ac­ing, sad­den­ing, for­bid­ding, or some com­bi­na­tion there­of. But they all have com­pelling sto­ries to tell, and can do so with­in five min­utes.

Being the sub­ject of an Inter­view Project video requires a degree of forth­right open­ness that those who’ve spent their lives in the U.S. may not rec­og­nize as char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Amer­i­can. Though often beset by a host of crises, ail­ments, and griev­ances (imposed from with­out or with­in), they don’t hes­i­tate to assert them­selves and their world­views. Though there’s obvi­ous curios­i­ty val­ue in all these eccen­tric con­vic­tions, region­al twangs, and some­times har­row­ing mis­for­tunes, what emerges above all from these inter­views is an impres­sive resilience. Young or old, coher­ent or oth­er­wise, with or with­out a place to live, these peo­ple all come off as sur­vivors.

When Inter­view Project first went online in 2009, it was­n’t view­able on Youtube. Now, for its fif­teenth anniver­sary, all of its videos have been uploaded to that plat­form, and in high def­i­n­i­tion at that. Seen in this new con­text, Inter­view Project looks like an antecedent to cer­tain Youtube chan­nels that have risen to pop­u­lar­i­ty in the decade and a half since: Soft White Under­bel­ly, for instance, which devotes itself to inter­vie­wees at the extreme mar­gins of soci­ety. Extrem­i­ty isn’t the sig­nal char­ac­ter­is­tic of Inter­view Project’s sub­jects, depart dra­mat­i­cal­ly though their expe­ri­ences may from the mod­ern mid­dle-class tem­plate. One could pity how short their lives fall of the “Amer­i­can Dream” — or one could con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they’re all liv­ing that dream in their own way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

Real Inter­views with Peo­ple Who Lived in the 1800s

The New Studs Terkel Radio Archive Will Let You Hear 5,000+ Record­ings Fea­tur­ing the Great Amer­i­can Broad­cast­er & Inter­view­er

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Strange, Sur­re­al­ist Video

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

in Film, History | October 6th, 2024

Pri­vate Sna­fu was the U.S. Army’s worst sol­dier. He was slop­py, lazy and prone to shoot­ing off his mouth to Nazi agents. And he was huge­ly pop­u­lar with his fel­low GIs.

Pri­vate Sna­fu was, of course, an ani­mat­ed car­toon char­ac­ter designed for the mil­i­tary recruits. He was an adorable dolt who sound­ed like Bugs Bun­ny and looked a bit like Elmer Fudd. And in every episode, he taught sol­diers what not to do, from blab­bing about troop move­ments to not tak­ing malar­ia med­ica­tion.

The idea for the series report­ed­ly came from Frank Capra — the Oscar-win­ning direc­tor of It’s a Won­der­ful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton and, dur­ing WWII, the chair­man of the U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Pic­ture Unit. He want­ed to cre­ate a car­toon series for new recruits, many of whom were young, unworld­ly and in some cas­es illit­er­ate. Capra gave Dis­ney first shot at devel­op­ing the idea but Warn­er Bros’ Leon Schlesinger, a man who was as famous for his hard-dri­ving busi­ness acu­men as he was for wear­ing exces­sive cologne, offered a bid that was 2/3rds below that of Dis­ney.

The tal­ent behind this series was impres­sive, fea­tur­ing a ver­i­ta­ble who’s who of non-Dis­ney ani­mat­ing tal­ent, includ­ing Chuck Jones, Bob Clam­pett, and Friz Fre­leng. Sna­fu was voiced by Mel Blanc, who famous­ly did Bun­ny Bugs, Daffy Duck and lat­er Mar­vin the Mar­t­ian. And one of the main writ­ers was none oth­er than Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel.

As you can see in the first Sna­fu short Com­ing!! (1943), direct­ed by Chuck Jones (see above), the movie dis­plays a salty sen­si­bil­i­ty intend­ed for an army camp rather than a Sun­day mati­nee. The movie opens with a dead­pan voiceover explain­ing that, in infor­mal mil­i­tary par­lance, SNAFU means “Sit­u­a­tion Nor­mal All…All Fouled Up,” hint­ing that the usu­al trans­la­tion of the acronym includes a pop­u­lar Anglo-Sax­on word. Lat­er, it shows Pri­vate Sna­fu day­dream­ing about a bur­lesque show – com­plete with a shape­ly exot­ic dancer doff­ing her duds – as he obliv­i­ous­ly wrecks a plane.

Though there were no writ­ing cred­its for each indi­vid­ual episode, just lis­ten to the voiceover for Gripes (1943), direct­ed by Friz Fre­leng. Dr. Seuss’s trade­mark singsong cadence is unmis­tak­able includ­ing lines like:

“The moral, Sna­fu, is that the hard­er you work, the soon­er we’re gonna beat Hitler, that jerk.”

Gas! (1944), direct­ed by Chuck Jones, fea­tures a cameo from Bugs Bun­ny.

And final­ly, Going Home, direct­ed by Chuck Jones, was slat­ed to come out in 1944 but the War Depart­ment kiboshed it. The ratio­nale was nev­er explained but some think that the film’s ref­er­ence to a mas­sive, top-secret weapon that was to be deployed over Japan was just a lit­tle too close to the Man­hat­tan Project.

You can watch a long list of Pri­vate Sna­fu episodes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Films: Your Job in Ger­many (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)

Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fas­cists Are Made

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Greatest Shot in Television: Science Historian James Burke Had One Chance to Nail This Scene … and Nailed It

in Science, Technology, Television | October 4th, 2024

The 80-sec­ond clip above cap­tures a rock­et launch, some­thing of which we’ve all seen footage at one time or anoth­er. What makes its view­ers call it “the great­est shot in tele­vi­sion” still today, 45 years after it first aired, may take more than one view­ing to notice. In it, sci­ence his­to­ri­an James Burke speaks about how “cer­tain gas­es ignite, and that the ther­mos flask per­mits you to store vast quan­ti­ties of those gas­es safe­ly, in their frozen liq­uid form, until you want to ignite them.” Use a suf­fi­cient­ly large flask filled with hydro­gen and oxy­gen, design it to mix the gas­es and set light to them, and “you get that” — that is, you get the rock­et that launch­es behind Burke just as soon as he points to it.

One can only admire Burke’s com­po­sure in dis­cussing such tech­ni­cal mat­ters in a shot that had to be per­fect­ly timed on the first and only take. What you would­n’t know unless you saw it in con­text is that it also comes as the final, cul­mi­nat­ing moment of a 50-minute explana­to­ry jour­ney that begins with cred­it cards, then makes its way through the inven­tion of every­thing from a knight’s armor to canned food to air con­di­tion­ing to the Sat­urn V rock­et, which put man on the moon.

For­mal­ly speak­ing, this was a typ­i­cal episode of Con­nec­tions, Burke’s 1978 tele­vi­sion series that traces the most impor­tant and sur­pris­ing moves in the evo­lu­tion of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy through­out human his­to­ry.

Though not as wide­ly remem­bered as Carl Sagan’s slight­ly lat­er Cos­mos, Con­nec­tions bears repeat view­ing here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, not least for the intel­lec­tu­al and visu­al brava­do typ­i­fied by this “great­est shot in tele­vi­sion,” now viewed near­ly 18 mil­lion times on Youtube. Watch it enough times your­self, and you’ll notice that it also pulls off some minor sleight of hand by hav­ing Burke walk from a non-time-sen­si­tive shot into anoth­er with the already-framed rock­et ready for liftoff. But that hard­ly lessens the feel­ing of achieve­ment when the launch comes off. “Des­ti­na­tion: the moon, or Moscow,” says Burke, “the plan­ets, or Peking” — a clos­ing line that sound­ed con­sid­er­ably more dat­ed a few years ago than it does today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Endeavour’s Launch Viewed from Boost­er Cam­eras

The 100 Most Mem­o­rable Shots in Cin­e­ma Over the Past 100 Years

The Most Beau­ti­ful Shots in Cin­e­ma His­to­ry: Scenes from 100+ Films

125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Bruce Springsteen Endorses Kamala Harris & Makes the Case Against Donald Trump

in Current Affairs | October 3rd, 2024

The Boss speaks the truth in a din­er. Find it on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 24 ) |

When Kris Kristofferson (RIP) Stood by Sinéad O’Connor at the Height of Her Controversy

in History, Music | October 3rd, 2024

One would have imag­ined Sinéad O’Con­nor imper­vi­ous to any reac­tion from a hos­tile audi­ence, no mat­ter how vit­ri­olic. But even for a pub­lic fig­ure as out­spo­ken and unapolo­getic as her, it could all get to be a bit much at times. Take the 1992 con­cert Colum­bia Records put on for the 30th anniver­sary of Bob Dylan’s first album. “Avail­able on pay-per-view,” writes the New York Times’ Marc Tra­cy, it “fea­tured per­for­mances by Dylan along with some of the biggest stars of his era, among them Ste­vie Won­der, George Har­ri­son, John­ny Cash and Eric Clap­ton,” as well as the late out­law-coun­try icon Kris Kristof­fer­son.

The young O’Con­nor also per­formed, despite being “at the cen­ter of a firestorm. Just two weeks ear­li­er, the Irish singer was the musi­cal guest on Sat­ur­day Night Live when, at the con­clu­sion of her sec­ond and final per­for­mance of the evening, she ripped up a pic­ture of Pope John Paul II and exhort­ed, ‘Fight the real ene­my,’ a defi­ant act of protest against sex­u­al abuse in the Catholic Church.” It fell to Kristof­fer­son to intro­duce her, where­upon she “took the stage to a cas­cade of applause and boos, which did not let up as O’Connor stood silent­ly at the micro­phone with her hands behind her back.”

As you can see in the video at the top of the post, Kristof­fer­son did­n’t stay off­stage. After a minute he “re-emerged from stage left, put his arm around O’Connor and whis­pered some­thing in her ear.” The show then went on, albeit not as planned: instead of doing Dylan’s “I Believe in You,” she did Bob Mar­ley’s “War,” the very same song she’d sung on SNL before the noto­ri­ous Pope-rip­ping. Rather than leav­ing his mes­sage as a Lost in Trans­la­tion moment, Kristof­fer­son lat­er revealed the words he’d sum­moned to encour­age her: “ ‘Don’t let the bas­tards get you down.’ To which, he said, she respond­ed: ‘I’m not down.’ ”

That response was char­ac­ter­is­tic of O’Con­nor, as was her 2021 auto­bi­og­ra­phy’s note that she was think­ing, “I don’t need a man to res­cue me, thanks.” What­ev­er her feel­ings in the moment, her friend­ship with Kristof­fer­son seems to have last­ed until her death last year. “Kristof­fer­son appeared with her in the 1997 music video for the song ‘This Is to Moth­er You,’ ” writes Tra­cy. “In 2010, the two per­formed a duet of Kristofferson’s ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’ on an Irish talk show. It was a year after Kristof­fer­son had released a song about the 1992 inci­dent, ‘Sis­ter Sinead.’ ” Out­ward­ly, the two could hard­ly have had less in com­mon, but inward­ly, they must have rec­og­nized each oth­er as kin­dred spir­its — the likes of which we’ll sure­ly not see again.

via New York Times

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear a Rare First Record­ing of Janis Joplin’s Hit “Me and Bob­by McGee,” Writ­ten by Kris Kristof­fer­son

Shane Mac­Gowan & Sinéad O’Connor Duet Togeth­er, Per­form­ing a Mov­ing Ren­di­tion of “Haunt­ed” (RIP)

Sinéad O’Connor’s Raw Iso­lat­ed Vocals for “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U”

A Choir with 1,000 Singers Pays Trib­ute to Sinéad O’Connor & Per­forms “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U”

5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Elvis Costel­lo to Frank Zap­pa

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Is Now a Retro Video Game

in Video Games | October 2nd, 2024

The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show–it start­ed first as a musi­cal stage pro­duc­tion in 1973, then became a cult clas­sic film in 1975. Now, a half-cen­tu­ry lat­er, it gets reborn as a retro video game. Sched­uled to be released by Hal­loween, the game fea­tures “8‑bit chip­tune ren­di­tions of Rocky Hor­ror’s leg­endary songs,” includ­ing the “Time Warp” of course. Accord­ing to The Wrap, it also boasts “8‑bit-styled graph­ics bring­ing the show’s sets and char­ac­ters to life, com­bin­ing ’80s nos­tal­gia with the show’s ’70s retro vibes.” The game will be avail­able for Sony Playsta­tion, Xbox, Nin­ten­do Switch and Steam. Enjoy.

via The Wrap

Relat­ed Con­tent

How Rocky Hor­ror Became a Cult Phe­nom­e­non

1978 News Report on the Rocky Hor­ror Craze Cap­tures a Teenage Michael Stipe in Drag

Rare Inter­view: Tim Cur­ry Dis­cuss­es The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show, Dur­ing the Week of Its Release (1975)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Artificial Intelligence & Drones Uncover 303 New Nazca Lines in Peru

in Art, History, Technology | October 2nd, 2024

If you vis­it one tourist site in Peru, it will almost cer­tain­ly be the ruined Incan city of Machu Pic­chu. If you vis­it anoth­er, it’ll prob­a­bly be the Naz­ca Desert, home to many large-scale geo­glyphs made by pre-Inca peo­ples between 500 BC and 500 AD. Many of these “Naz­ca lines” are lit­er­al­ly that, run­ning across the desert floor in an abstract fash­ion, but oth­ers are fig­u­ra­tive, depict­ing human beings, flo­ra, fau­na, and var­i­ous less eas­i­ly cat­e­go­riz­able chimeras. The preser­v­a­tive effects of the cli­mate kept many of these designs iden­ti­fi­able by the time mod­erns dis­cov­ered them in 1927, and thanks to arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence tech­nol­o­gy, researchers are find­ing new ones still today.

“A team from the Japan­ese Uni­ver­si­ty of Yamagata’s Naz­ca Insti­tute, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with IBM Research, dis­cov­ered 303 pre­vi­ous­ly unknown geo­glyphs of humans and ani­mals, all small­er in size than the vast geo­met­ric pat­terns that date from AD 200–700 and stretch across more than 400 sq km of the Naz­ca plateau,” writes the Guardian’s Dan Col­lyns.

“The use of AI com­bined with low-fly­ing drones rev­o­lu­tion­ized the speed and rate at which the geo­glyphs were dis­cov­ered, accord­ing to a research paper pub­lished this week in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences,” and many more Naz­ca lines could remain to be iden­ti­fied with these meth­ods.

The new­ly iden­ti­fied geo­glyphs “include birds, plants, spi­ders, human­like fig­ures with head­dress­es, decap­i­tat­ed heads and an orca wield­ing a knife,” writes CNN’s Katie Hunt. She also cites hypothe­ses about why the orig­i­nal cre­ators of these fig­ures did the painstak­ing work of dis­plac­ing stone after stone to cre­ate images most­ly invis­i­ble to the human eye: it’s pos­si­ble that “they formed a sacred space that was per­haps a place of pil­grim­age. Oth­er the­o­ries pro­pose they played a part in cal­en­dars, astron­o­my, irri­ga­tion or for move­ment, such as run­ning or danc­ing, or com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” Some of them, sure­ly, were meant only for the eyes of the gods, and so it may stand to rea­son that only our mod­ern gods of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence have been able to reveal them.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Machu Pic­chu, One of the New 7 Won­ders of the World

The Solar Sys­tem Drawn Amaz­ing­ly to Scale Across 7 Miles of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert

Peru­vian Singer & Rap­per, Rena­ta Flo­res, Helps Pre­serve Quechua with Viral Hits on YouTube

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

A Mys­te­ri­ous Mono­lith Appears in the Utah Desert, Chan­nel­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |


| Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast
    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.