John Cleese Plays the Devil, Makes a Special Appeal for Hell, 1966

in Comedy, Television | May 13th, 2012

Hell. We tend to take it for grant­ed. Have you ever stopped to think about the heat­ing bills, or the stu­pen­dous over­head?

John Cleese plays a cash-strapped Prince of Dark­ness in this clas­sic sketch from The Frost Report, the show that launched Cleese as a tele­vi­sion star in Britain. He was 26 years old at the time. The pro­gram was host­ed by David Frost, who is per­haps best known for his 1977 inter­views of Richard Nixon. There were four oth­er future Mon­ty Python come­di­ans on the writ­ing staff of The Frost Report–Gra­ham Chap­man, Ter­ry Jones, Michael Palin and Eric Idle–but only Cleese was a cast mem­ber. The show was broad­cast in 1966 and 1967, with each week­ly episode cen­tered around a par­tic­u­lar theme, like love, leisure, class and author­i­ty. The “Souls in Tor­ment Appeal” is from a March 24, 1966 pro­gram about sin. It’s a fun­ny sketch.

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Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python’s Away From it All: A Twist­ed Trav­el­ogue with John Cleese

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What Happens When a Terry Gross/Fresh Air Interview Ends: A Comic Look

in Comedy, Radio | May 12th, 2012

If you’re a reg­u­lar read­er of Open Cul­ture, and if you live in the Unit­ed States, then chances are you lis­ten to Ter­ry Gross’ Fresh Air inter­views on NPR, at least occa­sion­al­ly. There’s also a good chance that you’ve won­dered, at some point dur­ing the past 30 years, what the host looks like and what goes on behind the scenes. Now you can find out … sort of.

Above, we’re fea­tur­ing a new video by come­di­an Mike Bir­biglia, which gives you a fun­ny and entire­ly fic­tion­al look at what hap­pens when a Fresh Air inter­view draws to a close. The video was orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced for the “This Amer­i­can Life” live show, which was broad­cast to 500 movie the­aters on Thurs­day night. If you’re a casu­al or ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­er to Fresh Air, it’s good for a laugh. And if you’ve nev­er lis­tened to the show before, you can get acquaint­ed by lis­ten­ing to Ter­ry’s actu­al inter­view of Bir­biglia in Octo­ber 2010. Catch it right here, or lis­ten below.

via AllTh­ingsD

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on the Art of Sto­ry­telling

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The Original Episode of Dark Shadows, the 1960s TV Series That Inspired Tim Burton’s New Film

in Film, Television | May 11th, 2012

For mil­lions of Amer­i­can kids grow­ing up in the late 1960s, it was a thrill to run home from school and flip on the TV in time to hear the creepy theremin music at the begin­ning of Dark Shad­ows. A soap opera with a vam­pire! There was some­thing strange­ly sub­ver­sive about it. As a head­line writer for The New York Times recent­ly put it, Barn­abas Collins (the undead star of the show) was “The Vam­pire Who Came Out in the After­noon.”

Tim Bur­ton was one of those kids who ran home to watch the show. “I should prob­a­bly have been doing home­work or play­ing sports after school instead of watch­ing ‘Dark Shad­ows,’ ” Bur­ton told Ter­rence Raf­fer­ty for the Times arti­cle. “But see­ing that show every after­noon, at home, in Bur­bank, it just does­n’t get much weird­er than that.”

It might get just a lit­tle weird­er tonight, with the Amer­i­can open­ing of Bur­ton’s campy new film adap­ta­tion of Dark Shad­ows, star­ring John­ny Depp as Barn­abas Collins. The movie has been get­ting pos­i­tive reviews. Manohla Dar­gis in The New York Times calls it “Mr. Bur­ton’s most plea­sur­able film in years.” To help get you in the spir­it, so to speak–and to add perspective–we’re tak­ing you back to the very first episode of the orig­i­nal series (above) from June, 1966. Alas, Barn­abas Collins did­n’t make his appear­ance until episode num­ber 211, a year lat­er. The actor who played Collins, Jonathan Frid, died last month at the age of 87. He makes a cameo appear­ance in Bur­ton’s movie. For a pre­view of the film, see below. You can pur­chase the com­plete Dark Shad­ows TV series on DVD here, which comes in a nice pack­age of 131 discs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Franken­wee­nie: Tim Bur­ton Turns Franken­stein Tale into Dis­ney Kids Film (1984)

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

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James Joyce Manuscripts Online, Free Courtesy of The National Library of Ireland

in Books, History | May 11th, 2012

Soon, the Nation­al Library of Ire­land will re-scan, re-orga­nize, and ful­ly con­tex­tu­al­ize its online col­lec­tion of James Joyce man­u­scripts. But the die-hard Joyce enthu­si­asts among us prob­a­bly found this out in April, when what the NLI calls “The Joyce Papers, c. 1903–1928″ first became avail­able. They would have had to do some click­ing to get there, though, since the col­lec­tion debuted and remains buried sev­er­al lay­ers deep in the site, enjoy­ing what the restau­rant indus­try calls a “soft open­ing,” before its more user-friend­ly “grand open­ing” in the near future. But when you’ve got the chance to read mil­lions of euros’ worth of writ­ing in Joyce’s own hand — drafts of Ulysses, proofs of Finnegans Wake, notes dat­ing back to his uni­ver­si­ty days — why daw­dle?

The col­lec­tion awaits a detailed guide, offer­ing at the moment only a list of man­u­scripts labeled 36,639/1 through 36,639/19. But you can get a sense of what’s in there from assis­tant keep­er Peter Ken­ny’s sum­ma­ry at the top of the page. Ter­ence Killeen in the Irish Times draws spe­cial atten­tion to doc­u­ment 36,639/2/A, a jour­nal or “com­mon­place book, which Joyce used for an unusu­al vari­ety of pur­pos­es: as an account book, as a repos­i­to­ry of var­i­ous pas­sages and poems from his read­ing that struck him (Ben Jon­son is a par­tic­u­lar favourite); read­ing lists; thoughts and reflec­tions on aes­thet­ics; remarks on friends (JF Byrne, for instance); and, even­tu­al­ly, notes for Dublin­ers and for the fig­ure of Stephen Dedalus as he emerged in the lat­er fic­tion (some of the notes even look for­ward to Ulysses).” As if that weren’t enough, he also rec­om­mends the next doc­u­ment down, a “sub­ject note­book” for Ulysses includ­ing “notes on the Irish,” “the Clerken­well bomb­ing of 1867, “the Celtic view of hell by a Ger­man pro­fes­sor,” and “the Jews and theos­o­phy.” And if actu­al­ly deci­pher­ing Joyce’s own hand proves too daunt­ing a task, well, you can always wait for the tran­scrip­tions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

Pas­sages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: The Film

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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1377 TED Talks Listed in a Neat Spreadsheet — And More Stellar Culture Links on the Web

in TED Talks | May 11th, 2012

A quick fyi for TED heads. In ear­ly 2011 we men­tioned that some­one put togeth­er a handy online spread­sheet that lists 1377 TED Talks, with handy links to each indi­vid­ual video. It’s worth men­tion­ing the spread­sheet again because this evolv­ing Google doc has now grown beyond 1200 talks. That works out to more than 340 hours of “riv­et­ing talks by remark­able peo­ple.” Because the page gets updat­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, you’ll def­i­nite­ly want to book­mark it and keep tabs on the new addi­tions.

Now time for more good cul­ture links, all pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on our hap­penin’ Twit­ter stream.

Archae­ol­o­gists Unearth Ancient Maya Cal­en­dar Writ­ing

Vir­ginia Woolf. Play­ing Crick­et

Delta Dawn: How Sears, Roe­buck & Co. Mid­wifed the Birth of the Blues

Mau­rice Sendak’s Last Video Appear­ance with Stephen Col­bert

‘Madame Bovary’ in Pie Chart Form. (Did Some­one Say Pie?)

From Whistler to Warhol, Famous Artists Paint Their Moth­ers

Jose Sara­m­ago’s First Reac­tion after Watch­ing the Movie Blind­ness

All 268 Pages from Leonar­do’s Note­books Pre­sent­ed in High Res iPad App

Mar­garet Atwood Rec­om­mends That Mar­tians Read Moby Dick to Under­stand Amer­i­ca

Biog­ra­ph­er Robert Caro Dis­cuss­es Polit­i­cal Power—How to Get It and Use It

A Record­ing of 24-Year-Old John Ash­bery Read­ing His Poems

John Peel’s Mas­sive Record Col­lec­tion Now Avail­able Online

The Strange Pol­i­tics of Gertrude Stein

David Sedaris Reads “Six to Eight Black Men” from the Album ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus or Email, and we’ll bring intel­li­gent media right to you. We’re at your ser­vice, you know?

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Five Historical Misconceptions Debunked

in History | May 11th, 2012

Viking hel­mets had horns, Napoleon was quite short and Lady Godi­va rode through Coven­try naked. Most of us accept these tales as facts because they’ve been told for many gen­er­a­tions. But C.G.P. Grey took a clos­er look and com­piled this short video in which he debunks not only these his­tor­i­cal mis­con­cep­tions but also two myths sur­round­ing the Roman “Vom­i­to­ri­um” and Colum­bus.

Bonus mate­r­i­al:

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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The History of Rome in 179 Podcasts

in History, Podcasts | May 10th, 2012

What with so many open-end­ed inter­net media projects out there, I admire any that come to a close. Peo­ple start plen­ty of things on the net that wind up peter­ing out, but few dis­play the con­vic­tion to work toward a deci­sive end. Then again, this goes for all forms of human endeav­or; even the builders of the Roman Empire must have oper­at­ed on the assump­tion that it might go on for­ev­er. We now know, of course, that it would­n’t, and this knowl­edge pro­vides for­mal and intel­lec­tu­al premis­es for Mike Dun­can’s pod­cast, The His­to­ry of Rome (iTunes — RSS). The Roman Empire end­ed by the year 476. The his­to­ry of the Roman Empire in pod­cast form end­ed last Sun­day, after almost five years, 179 episodes, and 1654 near-uni­ver­sal­ly lauda­to­ry iTunes reviews.

I reviewed The His­to­ry of Rome myself back in 2009, for the Podthoughts col­umn I write for MaximumFun.org. Pod­think­ing has taught me that his­to­ry as a sub­ject suits this ver­bal, episod­ic, straight-into-your-mind type of medi­um almost ide­al­ly. Though Dun­can choos­es to get straight to the point and tell the Roman Empire’s sto­ry in a clear, asceti­cal­ly unadorned man­ner, dif­fer­ent pod­casts deliv­er their slices of his­to­ry with styles and sen­si­bil­i­ties all their own. If you his­tor­i­cal­ly inclined pod­cast-lis­ten­ers have already been keep­ing up with this show, oth­ers await you: Dan Car­lin’s Hard­core His­to­ry, Twelve Byzan­tine Rulers, A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects, and (my own cur­rent lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence of choice) Top­ics in Kore­an His­to­ry, to name but a few. But if you haven’t been, sit down and let Mike Dun­can tell you about a cer­tain Romu­lus and Remus, with whom the his­to­ry of Rome myth­i­cal­ly began.

More cours­es on the Ancient world, includ­ing the his­to­ry of Rome, can be found in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1150 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and Amer­i­can?) Empire: A Free Audio­book

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Electronic Nose and The Strange Future of Public Health & Safety

in Science | May 10th, 2012

Over in Nate Lewis’ Cal­tech lab, they’re work­ing on devel­op­ing an “elec­tron­ic nose” that can sniff out dis­eases, bombs, dan­ger­ous tox­ins and beyond. And then they want to put that e‑nose right in your smart­phone.

Need to find out if you have a lit­tle tuber­cu­lo­sis? No prob­lem, there’s an app for that. Won­der­ing if that pow­der may be anthrax? Oh iPhone, what say you?

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