Just 45 Straight Minutes of Nick Offerman Quietly Drinking Single Malt Scotch by the Fire

Dia­geo, the dis­tiller of sin­gle malt whiskies includ­ing Lagavulin and Oban, has teamed up with Nick Offer­man (actor, author, wood­work­er and scotch enthu­si­ast) to cre­ate a new video series called “My Tales of Whisky.” Appar­ent­ly the video series will be made in dif­fer­ent styles, with dif­fer­ent kinds of sto­ry lines. This one is pret­ty straightforward–just Nick sit­ting in front of a fire drink­ing sin­gle malt scotch (Lagavulin) for 45 min­utes straight, sim­ply star­ing and say­ing nary a word. Tonight, maybe you can grab your own favorite liba­tion, stare right back, and try not to blink.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens, Who Mixed Drink­ing & Writ­ing, Names the “Best Scotch in the His­to­ry of the World”

Dewars Chan­nels the Ghost of Charles Bukows­ki to Sell Scotch

The Scotch Pro­nun­ci­a­tion Guide: Bri­an Cox Teach­es You How To Ask Authen­ti­cal­ly for 40 Scotch­es

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Werner Herzog Creates Required Reading & Movie Viewing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

“Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read… read, read… read,” Wern­er Her­zog once said. “If you don’t read, you will nev­er be a film­mak­er.” The direc­tor of Aguirre, the Wrath of GodFitz­car­ral­do, and Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call New Orleans has­n’t dis­tanced him­self from that pro­nounce­ment in assem­bling the cur­ricu­lum for his Rogue Film School, which we first fea­tured last year. Her­zog’s uncon­ven­tion­al crash-course in auteur­ship may promise to cov­er “the art of lock-pick­ing, trav­el­ing on foot, the exhil­a­ra­tion of being shot at unsuc­cess­ful­ly, the ath­let­ic side of film­mak­ing, the cre­ation of one’s own shoot­ing per­mits, the neu­tral­iza­tion of bureau­cra­cy, and gueril­la film­mak­ing,” but it also demands that its stu­dents hit the books.

Here, from the Rogue Film School’s about page, we have its required read­ing:

And its sug­gest­ed read­ing:

Like a more stan­dard film school, Her­zog’s pro­gram also has a required film-view­ing list, which includes a few of my own favorite direc­tors (though with noth­ing by Her­zog him­self, not that any stu­dent igno­rant of the man’s work would want to enroll in the first place):

Once these mate­ri­als have filled your head with visions of big-game hunt­ing, rebel­lion and counter-rebel­lion, Roman agri­cul­ture, ven­tures into ter­ra incog­ni­ta, com­ing of age in the third world, and the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry, will you then find your­self able to make a film? Only if you take these lists as but a start­ing point, and keep on read­ing, read­ing, read­ing, read­ing, and read­ing, as well as watch­ing, watch­ing, watch­ing, watch­ing, and watch­ing. And what about oth­er triv­ial mat­ters, like financ­ing? In more of Her­zog’s own, direct words (though sure­ly said in jest): “Rob a bank, for god’s sake!”

Note: The image used to high­light this post on Twit­ter and Face­book was tak­en by Erinc Salor, and it’s avail­able by Wiki­me­dia Com­mons.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Favorite Films

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Wern­er Her­zog Gets Shot Dur­ing Inter­view, Doesn’t Miss a Beat

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Downton Abbey Actors Perform Scene from the Show with American Accents

How­ev­er stiff they may seem on the show, the cast of Down­ton Abbey can let down its hair and have some fun. Last Christ­mas, they put togeth­er a fun par­o­dy episode, where, bor­row­ing from It’s a Won­der­ful Life, they asked us to imag­ine what dai­ly life at the Abbey would look like if Lady Grantham spent her days cavort­ing with George Clooney rather than Lord Grantham.

Now, right before the show’s final sea­son starts air­ing in the US on Jan­u­ary 3, sev­er­al cast mem­bers are giv­ing us anoth­er sce­nario to con­sid­er: What would it look if Down­ton Abbey was per­formed only with Amer­i­can accents? Appear­ing on The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert, Michelle Dock­ery (Lady Mary Craw­ley), Hugh Bon­neville (Lord Grantham) and Allen Leech (Tom Bran­som) per­formed an actu­al scene in their best Amer­i­can accents, and it’s a sight to behold. Par­tic­u­lar­ly Allen, he’s a trip.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Fun Par­o­dy of Down­ton Abbey Fea­tures George Clooney & the Cast of the Show

Three Actress­es from Down­ton Abbey Play a Raunchy Card Game (NSFW)

One Woman, 17 British Accents

Watch Meryl Streep Have Fun with Accents: Bronx, Pol­ish, Irish, Aus­tralian, Yid­dish & More

Hear Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Read by His Great-Granddaughter, Monica

In Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries where Christ­mas is cel­e­brat­ed, A Christ­mas Car­ol, Charles Dick­ens’ sec­u­lar Vic­to­ri­an tale of a Grinch restored to hol­i­day cheer, usu­al­ly plays some part.

How many chil­dren have been trau­ma­tized by Marley’s Ghost in the annu­al rebroad­cast of the half hour, 1971 ani­mat­ed ver­sion, fea­tur­ing the voic­es of Alis­tair Sim and Michael Red­grave as Scrooge and Bob Cratchit?

Per­son­al­ly, I lived in mor­tal fear of the cowled Ghost of Christ­mas Yet to Come from Scrooge, a movie musi­cal ver­sion star­ring Albert Finney.

Adap­ta­tions have been built around every­one from the Mup­pets to Bill Mur­ray.

And in some lucky fam­i­lies, an old­er rel­a­tive with a flair for the the­atri­cal reads the sto­ry aloud, prefer­ably on the actu­al day.

It’s a tra­di­tion that Charles Dick­ens him­self observed. It must’ve been a very pic­turesque scene, with his wife and all ten of their chil­dren gath­ered around. (Pre­sum­ably his mis­tress was not includ­ed in the fes­tiv­i­ties).

Even­tu­al­ly, the torch was passed to the next gen­er­a­tion, who mim­ic­ked and pre­served the cadences favored by the mas­ter.

Dick­ens great-grand­daugh­ter, nov­el­ist Mon­i­ca Dick­ens, who nar­rat­ed a con­densed ver­sion of the clas­sic tale in 1984, above, was schooled in the fam­i­ly inter­pre­ta­tion by her grand­fa­ther, Hen­ry Field­ing Dick­ens, who said of his famous father:

I remem­ber him as being at his best either at Christ­mas time or at oth­er times when Gad’s Hill was full of guests, for he loved social inter­course and was a per­fect host. At such times he rose to the very height of the occa­sion, and it is quite impos­si­ble to express in words his genial­i­ty and bril­lian­cy amid a bril­liant cir­cle.

Before the read­ing, Ms. Dick­ens shares some charm­ing anec­dotes about the orig­i­nal pub­li­ca­tion, but those with lim­it­ed time and/or a Scrooge-like aver­sion to jol­ly intros can skip ahead to 7:59, when Big Ben chimes to sig­nal the start of the sto­ry prop­er.

Her read­ing orig­i­nal­ly aired on Cape Cod’s radio sta­tion, 99.9 the Q. The read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

A Christ­mas Car­ol, A Vin­tage Radio Broad­cast by Orson Welles and Lionel Bar­ry­more (1939)

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

George Saunders Demystifies the Art of Storytelling in a Short Animated Documentary

An inter­est­ing thing hap­pens when you read cer­tain of George Saun­ders’ sto­ries. At first, you see the satirist at work, skew­er­ing Amer­i­can mean­ness and banal­i­ty with the same unspar­ing knife’s edge as ear­li­er post­mod­ernists like John Barth or Don­ald Barthelme. Then you begin to notice some­thing else tak­ing shape… some­thing per­haps unex­pect­ed: com­pas­sion. Rather than serv­ing as paper tar­gets of Saun­ders’ dark humor, his mis­guid­ed char­ac­ters come to seem like real peo­ple, peo­ple he cares about; and the real tar­get of his satire becomes a cul­ture that alien­ates and deval­ues those peo­ple.

Take the oft-anthol­o­gized “Sea Oak,” a far­ci­cal melo­dra­ma about a dead aunt who returns rean­i­mat­ed to annoy and depress her down­ward­ly mobile fam­i­ly mem­bers. The stage is set for a series of buf­foon­ish episodes that, in the hands of a less mature writer, might play out to empha­size just how ridicu­lous these char­ac­ters’ lives are, and how jus­ti­fi­ably we—author and reader—might mock them from our perch­es. Saun­ders does not do this at all. Rather than dis­tanc­ing, he draws us clos­er, so that the char­ac­ters in the sto­ry become more sym­pa­thet­ic and three-dimen­sion­al even as events become increas­ing­ly out­landish.

All of this human­iz­ing is by design, or rather, we might say that empa­thy is baked into Saun­ders’ ethos—one he has artic­u­lat­ed many times in essays, inter­views, and a mov­ing 2013 Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty com­mence­ment speech. Now we can see him in a can­did filmed appear­ance above, in a doc­u­men­tary titled “George Saun­ders: On Sto­ry” by Red­g­lass Pic­tures (exec­u­tive pro­duced by Ken Burns). Cre­at­ed from a two-hour inter­view with Saun­ders, the short video at the top offers “a direct look at the process by which he is able to take a sin­gle mun­dane sen­tence and infuse it with the dis­tinct blend of depth, com­pas­sion, and out­right mag­ic that are the trade­marks of his most pow­er­ful work.”

In Saun­ders’ own words, “a good sto­ry is one that says, at many dif­fer­ent lev­els, ‘we’re both human beings, we’re in this crazy sit­u­a­tion called life, that we don’t real­ly under­stand. Can we put our heads togeth­er and con­fer about it a lit­tle bit at a very high, non-bull­shit­ty lev­el?’ Then, all kinds of mag­ic can hap­pen.” The rest of Saun­ders’ fas­ci­nat­ing mono­logue on sto­ry gets an ani­mat­ed treat­ment that illus­trates the mag­ic he describes. If you haven’t read Saun­ders, this is almost as good an intro­duc­tion to him as, say, “Sea Oak.” His thoughts on the role fic­tion plays in our lives and the ways good sto­ries work are always lucid, his exam­ples vivid­ly inven­tive. The effect of lis­ten­ing to him mir­rors that of sit­ting in a sem­i­nar with one of the best teach­ers of cre­ative writ­ing, which Saun­ders hap­pens to be as well.

I would love to take a class with him, but bar­ring that, I’m very hap­py for the chance to hear him dis­cuss writ­ing tech­niques and phi­los­o­phy in the short film at the top and in the inter­view extras below it: “On the rela­tion­ship between read­er and writer,” “On the tricks of the writ­ing process,” and “In defense of dark­ness.” Praised by no less a post­mod­ernist lumi­nary than Thomas Pyn­chon, Saun­ders’ sto­ry col­lec­tions like Civil­WAr­Land in Bad Decline, Pas­toralia, and In Per­sua­sion Nation get at much of what ails us in these Unit­ed States, but they do so always with an under­ly­ing hope­ful­ness and a “non-bull­shit­ty” con­vic­tion of shared human­i­ty.

You can read 10 of Saun­ders’ sto­ries free—including “Sea Oak” and the excel­lent “The Red Bow”—here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Impor­tance of Kind­ness: An Ani­ma­tion of George Saun­ders’ Touch­ing Grad­u­a­tion Speech

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

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

Hear Sun Ra, the Avant-Garde Jazz Legend, Play on a 1966 Batman and Robin Album for Kids

In the mid 1960s, when the Bat­man TV show was in full swing, a New Jer­sey toy com­pa­ny released a chil­dren’s record of Bat­man & Robin songs. Called The Sen­sa­tion­al Gui­tars Of Dan & Dale, Bat­man & Robin, the album fea­tured, as WFMU’s Beware of the Blog notes, “one of the great­est uncred­it­ed ses­sion com­bos of all time, includ­ing the core of Sun Ra’s Arkestra and Al Koop­er’s Blues Project.” Anony­mous­ly, Sun Ra played on organ, Jim­my Owens on trum­pet, Tom McIn­tosh on trom­bone & Dan­ny Kalb on gui­tar.

Oth­er than the well-known Bat­man and Robin themes (above), the kid’s album was cre­at­ed around music that had fall­en into the pub­lic domain–e.g. Chopin’s Polon­aise Op. 53, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Sym­pho­ny and the love theme from Romeo and Juli­et. Over at WFMU, you can hear var­i­ous tracks, includ­ing Bat­man’s Bat­marangBat­man and Robin Over The RoofsFlight of the Bat­manThe Rid­dler’s RetreatJok­er is WildPen­guin’s Umbrel­la, and more. Enjoy.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

Hear Sun Ra’s 1971 UC Berke­ley Lec­ture “The Pow­er of Words”

A Sun Ra Christ­mas: Hear His 1976 Radio Broad­cast of Poet­ry and Music

The Evo­lu­tion of Bat­man in Cin­e­ma: From 1939 to Present

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How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Master Sushi Chef

I think we’ve all had moments when, bel­ly­ing up to our favorite sushi bar, we’ve watched the chef in action behind the counter and thought, “I won­der if I could do that?” Then we see a doc­u­men­tary like Jiro Dreams of Sushi and think, “Well, no, I prob­a­bly could­n’t do that.” Still, you don’t have to live, breathe, and dream sushi your­self to get some­thing out of prac­tic­ing the craft, and if you want to get a han­dle on its basics right now, you could do much worse than watch­ing the video series Diaries of a Mas­ter Sushi Chef.

Hiroyu­ki Ter­a­da, the mas­ter sushi chef in ques­tion, first learned the basics him­self at home from his father, then con­tin­ued his stud­ies in Kōchi, on the Japan­ese island of Shikoku, then made a name for him­self in Amer­i­ca, at NoVe Kitchen and Bar in Mia­mi.

More recent­ly, his fame has come from his Youtube chan­nel, which, in line with his rep­u­ta­tion for com­ing up with uncon­ven­tion­al dish­es, fea­tures videos like this con­ver­sion of a Big Mac into a sushi roll — kids, don’t try this at home. But do watch some of his instruc­tion­al videos, which cov­er such tra­di­tion­al top­ics as how to pre­pare sushi riceknife skills, and how to fil­let a whole salmon.

If you real­ly want to start from square one, Ter­a­da has also put togeth­er a four-part minis­eries on mak­ing sushi at home from gro­cery store ingre­di­ents. When you get those teach­ings down, you have only to prac­tice — and prac­tice, and prac­tice, and prac­tice some more. From there, you can also move on to Ter­ada’s roll-spe­cif­ic videos, which teach how to make some of his more elab­o­rate cre­ations: the crazy salmon roll, the uni tem­pu­ra mon­ster roll, even some­thing called the meat lover’s roll. Would Jiro approve? Maybe not, but the Mia­mi nightlife crowd cer­tain­ly seems to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Right and Wrong Way to Eat Sushi: A Primer

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­maand the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Casablanca’s Hilarious Alternative Final Scene Featuring Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon: Pragmatism Carries the Day!

The clas­sic film Casablan­ca is peren­ni­al­ly ripe for par­o­dy, but for some rea­son, its spoofs usu­al­ly con­fine them­selves to Rick­’s Café Améri­cain. It’s rare that any­one gets fun­ny with the famous final scene, where (spoil­er!) Humphrey Bog­a­rt’s Rick sac­ri­fices his per­son­al hap­pi­ness, insist­ing that his beloved board a plane that will safe­ly car­ry her and her hus­band, a leader of the Czech Resis­tance, away from Vichy-con­tolled Casablan­ca.

There are excep­tions of course.

Bugs Bun­ny

The Simp­sons

Woody Allen

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Kate McK­in­non bests them all with a dewy-eyed Ingrid Bergman impres­sion nail­ing the Swedish-born actress’ glo­ri­ous­ly cin­e­mat­ic mid­dle Atlantic accent, described by writer Trey Tay­lor in The Atlantic as a learned “hybrid of Britain’s Received Pro­nun­ci­a­tion and stan­dard Amer­i­can Eng­lish as it exists today.”

It’s a refresh­ing change to see the Ilsa char­ac­ter dri­ving the laughs.

McKinnon’s scene part­ner, J.K. Sim­mons, gives an equal­ly cred­i­ble per­for­mance as Bogart’s Rick. The award-win­ning actor has demon­stra­ble com­ic chops, but for this sketch, the writ­ers wise­ly had him play it dead seri­ous.

The play­ers are fur­ther abet­ted by the design team’s faith­ful exe­cu­tion of the orig­i­nal, includ­ing cos­tumes by Tom Broeck­er and Eric Jus­t­ian. Who wouldn’t want to wear that hat?

Much of Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch’s orig­i­nal dia­logue was left intact. It’s repro­duced below for your scruti­ny, along with Bog­a­rt and Bergman’s per­for­mance.

You’ll notice one sig­nif­i­cant line reas­sign­ment, neces­si­tat­ed by this Ilsa’s prag­mat­ic response to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of wind­ing up in a con­cen­tra­tion camp.

As in the orig­i­nal, love does not tri­umph, but they’ll always have Paris.

INT./EXT. AIRPORT HANGAR — NIGHT

Rick takes the let­ters of tran­sit out of his pock­et and

hands them to Renault, who turns and walks toward the hangar.

RICK

If you don’t mind, you fill in the names. That will make it even more offi­cial.

RENAULT

You think of every­thing, don’t you?

RICK

(qui­et­ly And the names are Mr. and Mrs. Vic­tor Las­z­lo.

Renault stops dead in his tracks, and turns around.  Both Ilsa and Renault look at Rick with aston­ish­ment.

ILSA

But why my name, Richard?

RICK

Because you’re get­ting on that plane.

ILSA

(con­fused)  I don’t under­stand. What about you?

RICK

I’m stay­ing here with him ’til the plane gets safe­ly away.

Rick­’s inten­tion sud­den­ly dawns on Ilsa.

ILSA

No, Richard, no. What has hap­pened to you? Last night we said —

RICK

Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the  think­ing for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then and it all adds up to one thing. You’re get­ting on that plane with Vic­tor where you belong.

ILSA

 (protest­ing) But Richard, no, I, I —

RICK

You’ve got to lis­ten to me. Do you have any idea what you’d have to look for­ward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten we’d both wind up in a con­cen­tra­tion camp. Isn’t that true, Louis?

 Renault coun­ter­signs the papers.

RENAULT

I’m afraid Major Strass­er would insist.

ILSA

You’re say­ing this only to make me go.

RICK

I’m say­ing it because it’s true. Inside of us we both know you belong with Vic­tor. You’re part

of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with

him, you’ll regret it.

ILSA

No.

RICK

Maybe not today, maybe not tomor­row, but soon, and for the rest of your life.

ILSA

But what about us?

RICK

We’ll always have Paris. We did­n’t have, we’d lost it, until you came to Casablan­ca. We got it back last night.

ILSA

And I said I would nev­er leave you.

RICK

And you nev­er will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going you can’t fol­low. What I’ve got to do you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it does­n’t take much to see that the prob­lems of three lit­tle peo­ple don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Some­day you’ll under­stand that.  Now, now…

Ilsa’s eyes well up with tears.  Rick puts his hand to her chin and rais­es her face to meet his own.

RICK

Here’s look­ing at you, kid.

If McKinnon’s take on Ingrid Bergman leaves you scream­ing for more, here are Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton, Justin Bieber and Ellen DeGeneres.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Par­o­dy of David Lynch’s Icon­ic TV Show (1990)

A Fun Par­o­dy of Down­ton Abbey Fea­tures George Clooney & the Cast of the Show

The Bea­t­les Per­form in a Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, 1964

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

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