Free Courses on the Coronavirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerging Pandemic

The coro­n­avirus has spread out of Chi­na, into South Korea, Japan and now Italy. We’re set­tling into the real­i­ty that we’re like­ly fac­ing a pan­dem­ic. It’s time to edu­cate ourselves–to take some free cours­es on COVID-19.

In response to the out­break, Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don has put togeth­er a free course (offered through Cours­era) called “Sci­ence Mat­ters: Let’s Talk About COVID-19.” The course will teach you the “sci­ence under­pin­ning the nov­el Coro­n­avirus out­break,” so that you can under­stand “how the spread of the epi­dem­ic is mod­eled, how trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty of infec­tions is esti­mat­ed, what the chal­lenges are in esti­mat­ing the case fatal­i­ty ratio, and also … the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty involve­ment in respond­ing to the epi­dem­ic.” You can get start­ed with this course right now.

Alter­na­tive­ly you can sign up for COVID-19: Tack­ling the Nov­el Coro­n­avirus. Cre­at­ed by Future­Learn and The Lon­don School of Hygiene and Trop­i­cal Med­i­cine, this course looks at “how COVID-19 emerged, was iden­ti­fied and spreads, the pub­lic health mea­sures for the virus world­wide, and what is need­ed to address COVID-19 and pre­vent it [from] spread­ing.” Although the course is now open for enroll­ment, it won’t offi­cial­ly start until March 22.

Both cours­es will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Hong Kong also offer a course on Epi­demics.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

 

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Conquer Your Vertigo and Watch this Dazzling Footage of Construction Workers Atop the Chrysler Building in 1929

Paris has the gar­goyles of Notre Dame.

New York City has eight art-deco eagles pro­trud­ing from the Chrysler Build­ing’s 61st floor.

These mighty stain­less steel guardians seem impres­sive­ly sol­id until you watch con­struc­tion work­ers muscling them into place on April 3, 1930 in the Fox Movi­etone news­reel footage above.

For­get being stur­dy enough to serve as a time trav­el div­ing board for a very freaked out Will Smith in Men in Black III

It now seems a mir­a­cle that no unsus­pect­ing pedes­tri­ans have been crushed by an art-deco eagle head crash­ing uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly down to Lex­ing­ton Avenue in the mid­dle of rush hour.

Also that no work­ers died on the job, giv­en how quick­ly the build­ing went up and the rel­a­tive lack of safe­ty equip­ment on dis­play… no word on ampu­tat­ed fin­gers, but it’s not hard to imag­ine giv­en that only one of the guys help­ing out with the eagle appears to be wear­ing gloves.

In fact, as author Vin­cent Cur­cio describes in Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Auto­mo­tive Genius, the job site boast­ed a num­ber of inno­v­a­tive safe­ty mea­sures, such as scaf­folds with guardrails, tar­pau­lin-cov­ered plank roofs, wire net­ting between the toe boards, a hos­pi­tal on-loca­tion, and a bul­letin board for safe­ty-relat­ed updates. Founder Wal­ter Chrysler was as proud of this work­place con­sci­en­tious­ness as he was of the 4‑floors per week speed with which his build­ing was erect­ed:

In an arti­cle called “Is Safe­ty on Your Pay­roll?” He spoke of star­ing up at work­ers on the scaf­fold­ing with a friend on the street below. “‘My, that’s a risky job,’ my com­pan­ion remarked. ‘A man just about takes his life in his hands work­ing on a build­ing like this.’”

“‘I sup­pose it does seem that way,’ I replied, ‘But it’s no so dan­ger­ous as you think. If you knew the pre­cau­tions we have tak­en to pro­tect those work­ers, you might change your mind… not a sin­gle life has been lost in con­struct­ing the steel frame­work of that build­ing.’” To give an idea of how much of an achieve­ment this was, it should be not­ed that the rule of thumb at that time was one death for every floor above fif­teen in the con­struc­tion of a build­ing; by this mea­sure the Chrysler Build­ing should have been respon­si­ble for six­ty-two deaths.

By con­trast, the guys Fox Movi­etone filmed seem hap­py to play up the ver­tig­i­nous nature of their work for the cam­era, edg­ing out onto gird­ers and con­vers­ing casu­al­ly atop pipes, as if seat­ed astride a 1000-foot tall jun­gle gym:

“Gosh, that’s a long way to the street, boys.”

“How’d ya like to fall down there?”

“Whad­daya think, I’m an angel?

“Well, you’re liable to be an angel any minute.”

“You’ll break the alti­tude record going down-“

“Ha ha, yeah, maybe!”

While our appetite for this vin­tage blus­ter is bot­tom­less, it’s worth not­ing that Movi­etone usu­al­ly issued those appear­ing in pri­ma­ry posi­tions a cou­ple of lines of script­ed dia­logue.

What would those work­ers think of OSHA’s cur­rent safe­ty stan­dards for the con­struc­tion indus­try?

Fall pro­tec­tion is still the most com­mon­ly cit­ed stan­dard dur­ing con­struc­tion site inspec­tions.

Falls claimed the lives of 338 Amer­i­can con­struc­tion work­ers in 2018, the same year a con­struc­tion work­er in Kuala Lumpur used his cell phone to film a cowork­er in shorts and sneak­ers erect­ing scaf­fold­ing sans safe­ty equip­ment, whilst bal­anc­ing on unse­cured pipes some 700 feet in the air.

Watch it below, if you dare.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Brook­lyn Bridge Was Built: The Sto­ry of One of the Great­est Engi­neer­ing Feats in His­to­ry

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

A Vir­tu­al Time-Lapse Recre­ation of the Build­ing of Notre Dame (1160)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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

You may have noticed cer­tain brands, over the past decade or so, going for a “Wes Ander­son aes­thet­ic” in their adver­tise­ments. But as all the younger film­mak­ers Ander­son inspires inevitably find out, repli­cat­ing the direc­tor’s sig­na­ture mise-en-scène — the dis­tinc­tive col­or palettes, the rig­or­ous geom­e­try, the care­ful­ly curat­ed objects — is no easy task. To achieve the cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Ander­son­ian, it seems you real­ly need Ander­son him­self. For­tu­nate­ly for cer­tain mar­ket­ing depart­ments, the auteur of Rush­moreThe Roy­al Tenen­baums, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and oth­er pic­tures (includ­ing the upcom­ing The French Dis­patch) has occa­sion­al­ly made him­self avail­able for com­mer­cial work.

But as any­one who has seen one or two of Ander­son­’s movies might expect, the man appears to have lit­tle inter­est in mak­ing straight­for­ward com­mer­cials. Even when direct­ing short spots for the likes of Amer­i­can Express or Stel­la Artois, Ander­son brings us into his very own aes­thet­ic and cul­tur­al realm: in the for­mer he sat­i­rizes a cer­tain idea of his own process on set, and in the lat­ter he cre­ates com­e­dy from his pen­chant for (and mas­tery of) ear­ly-1960s Euro­pean design. In oth­er instances he’s tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to indulge his cinephil­ia more direct­ly than usu­al, as in his Jacques Tati-inspired com­mer­cial for Japan­ese cell­phone ser­vice provider Soft­Bank. You can see all these and more on our Youtube playlist of eight of Ander­son­’s short films.

Com­mer­cial direc­tors often dis­cuss their projects in the same terms they would use to dis­cuss short films. But it seems that every time Ander­son makes a com­mer­cial, he real­ly does make a short film. Some­times he makes both: after he direct­ed a 44-sec­ond ad for Pra­da, he went on with the fash­ion house­’s spon­sor­ship to direct the sev­en-minute Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti. But ever since mak­ing the thir­teen-minute black-and-white short that would become his debut fea­ture Bot­tle Rock­et, Ander­son has also used short films in ser­vice of his long ones. Cousin Ben’s Troop Screen­ing makes for a fun intro­duc­tion to Moon­rise King­domHotel Cheva­lier is prac­ti­cal­ly required view­ing before The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed. Both remind us that, how­ev­er sol­id the work a brand can get out of him, Wes Ander­son pro­motes noth­ing quite as delight­ful­ly as he pro­motes Wes Ander­son. Watch the playlist of 8 com­mer­cials and short films here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

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

Watch the Coen Broth­ers’ TV Com­mer­cials: Swiss Cig­a­rettes, Gap Jeans, Tax­es & Clean Coal

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Fellini’s Three Bank of Rome Com­mer­cials, the Last Thing He Did Behind a Cam­era (1992)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

Military Vet Floored (Literally) by Discovery That Rolex Purchased for $341 Is Now Worth $500,000-$700,000

Now you know what knock me down with a feath­er means…

Why We Should Read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies: An Animated Video Makes the Case

Like many of you, I was assigned to read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in junior high. (Raise your hand if you had the one with this cov­er). Look­ing back, was there a sub­con­scious rea­son our teacher gave us this famous tale of a group of ship­wrecked chil­dren and young teens turn­ing into mur­der­ous sav­ages? Were we real­ly that bad?

Per­haps you’ve nev­er read the book and got assigned To Kill a Mock­ing­bird or Kes instead. Is Golding’s book still worth pick­ing up as an adult?

For sure, yes, and this ani­mat­ed explain­er from Jill Dash of TED-Ed hope­ful­ly will entice you do so. What it pro­vides is what we didn’t get in school: con­text.

Gold­ing had been a lieu­tenant in the Roy­al Navy dur­ing the war, and had returned to find a post-war world where nuclear anni­hi­la­tion felt pal­pa­ble. He was also teach­ing at a pri­vate school for boys. He got to won­der­ing: are we doomed as a species to sav­agery? Is war inevitable?

Gold­ing was also think­ing about the pop­u­lar Young Adult nov­els (as we now call them) of his day, because he read them to his own chil­dren. A pop­u­lar trope fea­tured young boys as cast­aways on a desert island who get up to all sorts of fun adven­tures, with a dash of British colo­nial­ism thrown in for good mea­sure. All were riffs on Daniel Defoe’s Robin­son Cru­soe.

Lord of the Flies, then, is a bru­tal satire, reduc­ing angel­ic British school­boys to a blood­thirsty mob in very lit­tle time, while in the greater world of the nov­el nuclear war rages. (Hav­ing read this dur­ing the ‘80s, the nuclear back­ground was nev­er impressed on us stu­dents. I think I would have found the nov­el even more ter­ri­fy­ing.)

It took Gold­ing ten years to find an inter­est­ed pub­lish­er, and even then it was a flop on ini­tial release. But its rep­u­ta­tion soon grew, helped by Peter Brook’s black-and-white film adap­ta­tion, and its ped­a­gog­i­cal use as an alle­gor­i­cal tale dur­ing the Cold War. It also influ­enced a gen­er­a­tion of writ­ers. Stephen King named his fic­tion­al town Cas­tle Rock after the kids’ fort in the nov­el. It also opened the door for any num­ber of Young Adult authors to deal with dark and trou­bling themes.

There were also real-world exam­ples to draw from. In the same year, 1954, as Golding’s nov­el appeared, Muzafer Sher­if’s The Rob­bers Cave Exper­i­ment was pub­lished. This was non-fic­tion, how­ev­er, detail­ing an exper­i­ment in which 22 mid­dle-class white boys were set up in two groups at a desert­ed Okla­homa sum­mer camp. With sci­en­tists pos­ing as coun­selors, they let the groups–the Rat­tlers and the Eagles–sort out their own hier­ar­chies, then set up com­pe­ti­tions.

The psy­chol­o­gists watched the arms race esca­late over the fol­low­ing days. Final­ly, one vio­lent mob brawl became so sus­tained that the researchers were forced to step in, drag the boys apart and remove them to sep­a­rate loca­tions.

How long did it take for mere fric­tion to esca­late into a juve­nile war, in an idyl­lic set­ting where every­one had plen­ty of food? Phase two last­ed just six days from the first insult (“Fat­ty!”) to the final all-out brawl. Gold­ing would have loved it.

We can see Golding’s warn­ing every­where in pop­u­lar cul­ture, from the back-bit­ing and betray­als in real­i­ty shows like Sur­vivor to hor­ror movies like The Purge. We’ve also seen the ter­rors that chil­dren can inflict on each oth­er, Columbine school shoot­ing onward. In Golding’s nov­el, the chil­dren are res­cued and revert back to a sob­bing, depen­dent state. In the real world, alas, nobody’s com­ing to save us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why You Should Read One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude: An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

How to Mem­o­rize an Entire Chap­ter from “Moby Dick”: The Art and Sci­ence of Remem­ber­ing Every­thing

Why Should We Read William Shake­speare? Four Ani­mat­ed Videos Make the Case

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Interactive Web Site Tracks the Global Spread of the Coronavirus: Created and Supported by Johns Hopkins

Johns Hop­kins has cre­at­ed an inter­ac­tive web­site that tracks the spread of the coro­n­avirus around the globe. The site is updat­ed dai­ly, if not sev­er­al times per day. And it shows the num­ber of con­firmed coro­n­avirus cas­es around the globe (along with the pre­cise loca­tion on a map), the num­ber of peo­ple who have recov­ered from the virus, and the total num­ber who have per­ished. With the report today that Italy has seen coro­n­avirus spike from 3 cas­es, to 132 230, in a mat­ter of days, it does look like coro­n­avirus is tak­ing on a more glob­al dimen­sion. That’s all reflect­ed on the Johns Hop­kins site, whose data is drawn from the WHOCDCECDCNHC and DXY. You can read more about the inter­ac­tive web­site at The Lancet.

Find infor­ma­tion about the Coro­n­avirus at this ded­i­cat­ed CDC web­site.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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How Nina Simone Became Hip Hop’s “Secret Weapon”: From Lauryn Hill to Jay Z and Kanye West

In 1996, the Fugees burst on the scene with “Ready or Not,” and most lis­ten­ers were not ready: for the omi­nous, eclec­tic, Caribbean-inflect­ed pro­duc­tion, the smooth, sexy men­ace of Lau­ryn Hill’s hook (“you can’t hide / Gonna find you and take it slow­ly”), or the inter­play of ref­er­ences in the break­out star’s rhymes. “Rap orgies with Por­gy and Bess / Cap­ture your boun­ty like Eliot Ness,” Hill raps, and then a few lines lat­er, “So while you’re imi­tat­ing Al Capone, I’ll be Nina Simone / And defe­cat­ing on your micro­phone.”

The tongue-in-cheek line intro­duced a gen­er­a­tion of fans to the icon­ic singer and vir­tu­oso pianist, who could and did play every­thing from blues, jazz, soul, cabaret, clas­si­cal, and Broad­way tunes like those from the Gersh­win clas­sic (hear Simone’s “I Loves You Por­gy,” here).

Hill has paid homage to Simone ever since. In 2015, she pro­mot­ed the trib­ute album, Nina Revist­ed—the sound­track to doc­u­men­tary What Hap­pened to Nina Simone?—at the Apol­lo. Report­ing on the event in The Verge, Kwame Opam like­ly spoke for thou­sands in admit­ting he’d “first heard Nina’s name in that clas­sic line on ‘Ready or Not.’”

Last year saw the release of The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Eunice Way­mon, a title com­bin­ing Hill’s acclaimed solo album with Simone’s birth name. The record, pro­duced by Ameri­go Gaz­a­way, is a “mashup of songs by Fugees emcee and hip hop leg­end Lau­ryn Hill, and the jazz and soul icon Nina Simone.” What might have come off like a mar­ket­ing stunt trad­ing on both names instead “ele­vates them to new heights,” writes Zack Gin­grich-Gay­lord at KMUW, “putting them in con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er and mak­ing it sound like the col­lab­o­ra­tion was always meant to be.”

Maybe one rea­son these imag­i­nary stu­dio ses­sions work so well has to do not only with Hill’s ven­er­a­tion of Simone, and the har­mo­nious meet­ing of their two voic­es and sen­si­bil­i­ties, but also with Simone’s promi­nence in so much recent hip hop. Among the dozens of soul artists whose grooves have giv­en loops and hooks to many a rap clas­sic, she now holds a spe­cial place, as the Poly­phon­ic video at the top shows in an explo­ration of four Simone songs that have left an indeli­ble mark on hip hop’s cur­rent sound.

The first of those songs, “Feel­ing Good,” appears on both the Hill/Simone mashup album and in a pow­er­ful cov­er by Hill on Nina Revis­it­ed. Simone’s soar­ing ver­sion of the song—originally from the British musi­cal The Roar of the Greasepaint—The Smell of the Crowd—“turned it into a musi­cal stan­dard” for the next sev­er­al decades. In the 2000s, it popped up in tracks from Wax Tai­lor, Lil Wayne, and Jay Z and Kanye West, “two artists who have made careers out of sam­pling the high priest­ess” of soul and whose names come up fre­quent­ly in this dis­cus­sion.

The sec­ond song iden­ti­fied as one of “hip hop’s secret weapons,” Simone’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the gospel “Sin­ner­man,” may be her “great­est accom­plish­ment” and appears in tracks by Tim­ba­land and Fly­ing Lotus and in the Tal­ib Kweli track “Get By,” pro­duced by a young Kanye West.

Simone’s appeal to hip hop artists goes beyond her incred­i­bly pow­er­ful voice and piano. She was a fierce civ­il rights activist who used her music as a form of protest. Her ver­sion of “Strange Fruit,” a song first turned into a civ­il rights anthem by Bil­lie Hol­i­day from a poem by Abel Meeropol, has inspired tracks by Cas­sidy, Com­mon, and, most famous­ly, West again on his 2013 “Blood on the Leaves.” West uses the song as a back­drop for a nar­ra­tive of his per­son­al prob­lems and rela­tion­ship woes, which doesn’t real­ly hon­or its his­to­ry, the Poly­phon­ic argu­ment in favor of his use notwith­stand­ing.

That’s not the case with reimag­in­ings of the last Simone song in this explain­er, her orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion “Four Women,” which imag­ines four dif­fer­ent women express­ing the pain racism has caused them. In 2000, Tal­ib Kweli and pro­duc­er Hi-Tek came togeth­er as Reflec­tion Eter­nal and record­ed their own ver­sion, men­tion­ing Simone’s South­ern inspi­ra­tions in the intro before telling con­tem­po­rary tales of four women in New York. “More than just a sam­ple,” the track “rein­ter­prets the mes­sage” of “Four Women” and applies Simone’s 1966 insights to the present, some­thing Jay Z also does on 2017’s “The Sto­ry of O.J.”

It is worth not­ing that all of the tracks the Poly­phon­ic video men­tions as exam­ples of Simone’s influ­ence on hip hop were released after Lau­ryn Hill and the Fugees brought Simone to the atten­tion of young rap­pers, DJs, pro­duc­ers, and fans just com­ing of age in the mid-nineties. Since then, Simone’s music has since left its mark all over the genre, and it’s easy to see why so many would be drawn to her intense, author­i­ta­tive musi­cian­ship and polit­i­cal urgency.

Simone may not have had the chance her­self to enter into con­ver­sa­tions with Lau­ryn Hill, Tal­ib Kweli, Com­mon, Kanye, or Jay Z, but through hip hop’s end­less­ly cre­ative abil­i­ty to make the musi­cal heroes of its past live again in song, it is as if she is still speak­ing, singing, and play­ing to the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of black artists—and through them, to the future of hip hop.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Watch a New Nina Simone Ani­ma­tion Based on an Inter­view Nev­er Aired in the U.S. Before

The His­to­ry of Hip Hop Music Visu­al­ized on a Turntable Cir­cuit Dia­gram: Fea­tures 700 Artists, from DJ Kool Herc to Kanye West

Watch Nina Simone Sing the Black Pride Anthem, “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” on Sesame Street (1972)

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

Peanuts Rock: Watch the Peanuts Gang Play Classic Rock Songs by Queen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Journey & More

In a very crowd­ed field, Gar­ren Lazar’s com­i­cal take on Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” is a stand-out.

Com­i­cal in the lit­er­al sense. Lazar, aka Super G, struck a rich vein when he thought to mash the Rolling Stones’ “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” with footage culled from Charles Schulz’s ani­mat­ed Peanuts spe­cials.

And over the last six years, he’s mined a lot of gold, using Final Cut Pro to pair famil­iar clips of a drum­ming Pig­pen, Snoopy slap­ping a dou­ble bass, and the icon­ic “Linus And Lucy” scene from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas with rock and pop clas­sics.

Schulz, an ardent music lover, fre­quent­ly pic­tured his char­ac­ters singing, danc­ing, and play­ing instru­ments, so Lazar, who has an uncan­ny knack for match­ing ani­mat­ed mouths to record­ed lyrics, has plen­ty to choose from.

Char­lie Brown’s anx­i­eties fuel the intro­duc­tion to a 15 minute remix of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird,” until he gets hold of the Christ­mas special’s mega­phone…

The mega­phone serves Char­lie equal­ly well on “Stayin’ Alive,” the Bee Gees’ dis­co chart top­per, though depend­ing on your vin­tage, the vision of Snoopy in leg warm­ers and sweat­band may come as a shock. Those clips come cour­tesy of It’s Flash­bea­gle, Char­lie Brown, Schulz’s 1984 goofy spin on Flash­danceFoot­looseSat­ur­day Night Fever and oth­er dance-based pop cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­nons of the era. Although that special—Schulz’s 27th—features a roto­scoped Snoopy bust­ing moves orig­i­nat­ed by Flash­dance’s stunt dancer Marine Jahan, that old hol­i­day chest­nut still man­ages to steal the show.

And when­ev­er you need a lift, you can’t do bet­ter than to spend a few min­utes with Lazar’s heady reboot of Chicago’s quin­tes­sen­tial 1970s sin­gle, “Sat­ur­day In the Park,” where­in the nor­mal­ly reserved Schroed­er reveals a more exu­ber­ant side.

Begin your explo­rations of Gar­ren Lazar’s musi­cal Peanuts remix­es on his YouTube chan­nel, warm in the knowl­edge that he enter­tains requests in the com­ments.

via Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Vel­vet Under­ground as Peanuts Char­ac­ters: Snoopy Morphs Into Lou Reed, Char­lie Brown Into Andy Warhol

Umber­to Eco Explains the Poet­ic Pow­er of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts

The Joy of Expe­ri­enc­ing Queen’s Bohemi­an Rhap­sody for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reac­tion Videos

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City this March for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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