John Cleese Explores the Health Benefits of Laughter

in Comedy, Health, Psychology | April 29th, 2015

If you live in a big city like Los Ange­les or San Fran­cis­co, you’ll dis­cov­er that there are just a bewil­der­ing vari­ety of yoga styles out there — there’s Ash­tan­ga Yoga if you want a real work out, there’s Yin Yoga if you want to chill out and there’s Bikram Hot Yoga if you want heat stroke. Add to this list Laugh­ter Yoga. Yes, Laugh­ter Yoga.

For a seg­ment of the 2001 BBC series The Human Face, John Cleese, a man who knows some­thing about laugh­ter, ven­tured to Mum­bai, India to see what Laugh­ter Yoga is all about. He inter­views the man behind it all, Dr. Madan Kataria, who argues that laugh­ter is bril­liant at low­er­ing stress and improv­ing the immune sys­tem. And best of all, you don’t even need mats or unflat­ter­ing pants to do it. You just need a group of like-mind­ed peo­ple and a will­ing­ness to look sil­ly. In the video, which you can see above, Cleese yuks it up with a group of Mum­bai locals.

“We all know what a good laugh feels like,” he tells the cam­era. “But what struck me was how easy it was to get start­ed. When you have a lot of warm, friend­ly, fun­ny faces com­ing at you, you respond very naturally…I’m struck by how laugh­ter con­nects you to peo­ple. It’s almost impos­si­ble to main­tain any kind of dis­tance or any sense of social hier­ar­chy when you’re just howl­ing with laugh­ter. Laugh­ter is a force for democ­ra­cy”

Appar­ent­ly, you don’t even have to be in an espe­cial­ly jol­ly mood to reap the health ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter Yoga. Forced laugh­ter tricks the body into releas­ing endor­phins too. In Laugh­ter Yoga, as with life, the mot­to is “fake it til you make it.”

So if you are inter­est­ed in laugh­ing like a mad­man in the pri­va­cy of your own home, Dr. Kataria has an instruc­tion­al video for you, which you can see right above. There are a sur­pris­ing num­ber of laugh­ing exer­cis­es avail­able — from the milk­shake move, where you pan­tomime guz­zling a drink, to the argu­ment laugh­ter, where you wag a fin­ger, to the Visa laugh­ter where you pre­tend to laugh through the tears as you open your cred­it card state­ment. So go ahead and try it. You’ll feel bet­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yoga in an X‑Ray Machine

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Enter the Church of the SubGenius, the Parody Religion Backed by R. Crumb, David Byrne & Other Alt-Icons

in Comedy, Religion | April 16th, 2015

You may not know much about the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius, but you’ve def­i­nite­ly seen its prophet. The inten­sive­ly groomed, Ward Cleaveresque J. R. “Bob” Dobbs (below) began as a hum­ble piece of 1950s clip art and went on to become “a way of life to mil­lions… yet half of them don’t even know it.” Or so claims the sweep­ing, absur­di­ty-laced, son­i­cal­ly (and per­haps intel­lec­tu­al­ly) twist­ed nar­ra­tion of Arise! The Sub­Ge­nius, an “instruc­tion­al bar­rage video” put out by the Church in 1992 as the most potent dis­til­la­tion of its reli­gion-sat­i­riz­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty.

Arise-Church-SubGenius

The obses­sion with world­wide con­spir­a­cies, the impor­tance grant­ed to vora­cious con­sump­tion and “remix­ing” of pop cul­ture (vis­i­ble every­where in Arise!), the hard­line oppo­si­tion to work, the all-impor­tant and nev­er-defined qual­i­ty of “Slack,” the askew escha­tol­ogy: how much of the Church of the Sub­ge­nius’ doc­trine has remained mere par­o­dy reli­gion, and how much, since its found­ing in the late 1970s, have its “followers”—a group that includes such alt-icons as David Byrne, Robert Crumb, and Mark Mothersbaugh—come to con­sid­er as good as the real thing?

But what­ev­er legit­i­ma­cy this sur­pris­ing­ly long-run­ning post­mod­ern joke has attained, we can also view it, like all reli­gions, as a cul­tur­al move­ment. This approach rais­es its own ques­tions: how, exact­ly, did Dobbs’ pipe-clench­ing, father­ly yet sin­is­ter vis­age become one of the most rec­og­niz­able sub­cul­tur­al emblems of the 1980s and 1990s? You may nev­er learn the answer, just as you may nev­er get a han­dle on the entire­ty of the Church’s ever more labyrinthine and aggres­sive­ly pre­pos­ter­ous mythol­o­gy, but you’ll cer­tain­ly find it all strange­ly com­pelling in the attempt.

And even if Arise! The Sub­Ge­nius does­n’t recruit you into the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius’ ranks, you’ve got to respect what they’ve pre­dict­ed: not the end of the world, as much as they talk about it, but our cur­rent­ly thriv­ing 21st-cen­tu­ry cul­ture of media appro­pri­a­tion, recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, and absur­di­fi­ca­tion. If ever there were a reli­gion for the Youtube era, here it is. And if you find noth­ing nov­el in its char­ac­ter­is­tic ambiva­lence about what counts as seri­ous and what does­n’t, maybe the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius’ teach­ings have pen­e­trat­ed even deep­er into the zeit­geist than all those “Bob” stick­ers made us sus­pect.

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 8 Clas­sic Cult Films for Free: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Plan 9 from Out­er Space & More

When William S. Bur­roughs Joined Sci­en­tol­ogy (and His 1971 Book Denounc­ing It)

Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an: Reli­gious Satire, Polit­i­cal Satire, or Blas­phe­my?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Stephen Hawking Sings Monty Python’s “Galaxy Song”: Hear the Newly-Released Single

in Astronomy, Comedy, Music, Physics | April 13th, 2015

The “Galaxy Song” first appeared in the 1983 film Mon­ty Python’s The Mean­ing of Life, and it has been revived in lat­er years — on Mon­ty Python albums, and in Mon­ty Python stage plays. Now the song orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Eric Idle has been re-record­ed, this time with the lyrics sung by the world-famous physi­cist Stephen Hawk­ing. The lyrics include a lot of astro­nom­i­cal facts, some now con­sid­ered out­dat­ed by schol­ars. But that does­n’t take the fun out of the record­ing.

The song will be avail­able for down­load on iTunes. (If you live in the UK, find it here.) And it will also be released as a 7″ sin­gle. But you can stream it online for free above. Enjoy.

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:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Stephen Hawking’s Big Ideas Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

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What Happens When a Cheap Ikea Print Gets Presented as Fine Art in a Museum

in Art, Comedy, Design, Life | March 23rd, 2015

The enti­ty to whom Dutch group, Life­hunters, attrib­ut­es the muse­um qual­i­ty art­work in the video prank above doesn’t exist. The “famous” Swedish artist’s han­dle –IKE Andrews –is but a puck­ish ref­er­ence to IKEA, the pur­vey­or of the 10€ print (oh snap, it’s not even an orig­i­nal!) var­i­ous unnamed “art experts” are asked to eval­u­ate, hav­ing been led to believe it’s some­thing rare and won­der­ful. IKE Andrews’ fel­low fic­tion­al enti­ty, Borat, would be grat­i­fied by how read­i­ly these experts accept pre­sen­ter Boris Lange’s sug­ges­tions as to the val­ue of this work.

So how bad is this “paint­ing”? Wal­ter Keane bad? Mar­garet Keane bad? Is it a Velvis? A sad clown? The sort of crum­my land­scape artist Wayne White might snap up in a thrift store?

Only if you think IKEA achieved glob­al dom­i­nance by choos­ing designs, pat­terns, and images in order for snot­ty hip­sters to buy them iron­i­cal­ly…

As sev­er­al YouTube, Twit­ter, and blog com­menters have men­tioned, the print itself is pret­ty cool.

It’s a media fren­zy, but inter­est­ing­ly, the artist is not com­ing for­ward to her­ald his or her role in the hoax.

Make that artists. Turns out IKE Andrews is a pair of Swiss street artists, Chris­t­ian Rebec­chi and Pablo Tog­ni, who col­lab­o­rate as NEVERCREW.

They have a fas­ci­na­tion with cross sec­tions. As their web­site some­what murk­i­ly explains [all sic]:

These mod­els, as such, from time to time actu­al­ly con­tain more or less exten­sive real­i­ties, rep­re­sent­ed as autonomous sys­tems of which the real­i­ty of the view­er becomes a part. This then the rap­port becomes the very sub­ject, main­ly high­light­ed as the rela­tion­ship between man and nature (between human being and its nature), but auto­mat­i­cal­ly extend­ed to a vision of total and inevitable rela­tion­ship between every­thing, between every part, where it is only the point of view, the posi­tion with­in a sys­tem, to define a selec­tion.

IKEA stream­lines the artists’ phi­los­o­phy for the mass­es thus­ly:

We call the theme “liv­ing struc­tures” and we like to see them as mod­els of liv­ing sys­tems. We would like our art to gen­er­ate inter­est and curios­i­ty, and the view­er to become a part of the mech­a­nism with his or her thoughts, per­spec­tive and emo­tions.

never-crew-message-in-a-bottle

 

Philosophy’s all well and good, but what’s it actu­al­ly look like, this “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle”?

Well, it seems to me to be a bot­tle, implau­si­bly halved length­wise to reveal a bunch of steam­punk stuff bal­anced atop robot spi­der legs, form­ing a cage around an ancient-look­ing whale. Also, a cloud rain­ing yel­low liq­uid, or pos­si­bly light. (Hope­ful­ly the lat­ter). Oh! And it appears to have been paint­ed on a brown paper bag.

I can think of plen­ty of peo­ple who’d not only like it, but find mean­ing in it, as the experts do. The only dif­fer­ence is the experts do so on cam­era, a fact not all of them are will­ing to laugh at, when host Lange informs them they’ve been punked.

The artists aren’t the only ones play­ing it cool. The inter­net may be explod­ing, but so far, nei­ther IKEA, nor the Nether­lands’ Arn­hem Muse­um, where the prank was staged, have made men­tion of this busi­ness.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F for Fake: Orson Welles’ Short Film & Trail­er That Was Nev­er Released in Amer­i­ca

The Great Dr. Fox Lec­ture: A Vin­tage Aca­d­e­m­ic Hoax (1970)

How the “Paul McCart­ney is Dead” Hoax Start­ed at an Amer­i­can Col­lege News­pa­per and Went Viral (1969)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and moth­er of a teen film­mak­er whose best known work was shot guer­ril­la style in a Red Hook, Brook­lyn Ikea. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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

in Comedy, Film, Television, Theatre | March 18th, 2015

Meryl Streep, fre­quent­ly hailed as one of our Great­est Liv­ing Actress­es — she claims there’s no such thing — com­mands a near-ency­clo­pe­dic mas­tery of accents.

Oth­ers may pre­pare for their roles by work­ing with a dialect coach or lis­ten­ing to tapes of native speak­ers, but Streep push­es to the lim­it, as indi­cat­ed in the con­ver­sa­tion with author Andre Dubus III, below.

She not only learned Pol­ish in order to play a trou­bled Holo­caust sur­vivor in Sophie’s Choice, she thought deeply about the way gen­der roles and peri­od inform vocal pre­sen­ta­tion.

Clear­ly a lot of effort goes into the per­for­mances that leave British crit­ics cheer­ing Streep as she sails above play­ing fields lit­tered with Amer­i­can actors who dared attempt Eng­lish accents.

Her com­mit­ment to her craft is inad­ver­tent­ly to blame for pop­u­lar­iz­ing the phrase “dingo’s got my baby.”

How refresh­ing that this ver­sa­tile and accom­plished actor is not pre­cious about her skills. She game­ly trot­ted them out for the come­di­an Ellen DeGeneres’ par­lor game, above. Looks like fun, pro­vid­ed one’s not an intro­vert. Each play­er draws a card labelled with an accent, sticks it to the brim of a sil­ly hat, then tried to guess the accent, based on her partner’s impromp­tu per­for­mance.

“Brook­lyn?” Streep gig­gles when the Louisiana-born DeGeneres has a go at Boston.

Her stab at the Bronx shows off her improv chops far bet­ter than the most recent stunt DeGeneres roped her into.

(For what it’s worth, Ben Affleck also excelled at this game. The late Robin Williams was less con­vinc­ing, but char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly irre­press­ible, even when called upon to imper­son­ate speak­ers of oth­er races.)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and low bud­get the­ater impre­sario. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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77 Exercises: A Workout Video For Fans of the Talking Heads

in Comedy, Music | February 21st, 2015

Turns out you can burn some good calo­ries when you’re Burn­ing Down the House. Enjoy a fun clip from Fun­ny or Die, and some oth­er great Talk­ing Heads mate­r­i­al from our archive below.

via @stevesilberman

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

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A Gallery of Mad Magazine’s Rollicking Fake Advertisements from the 1960s

in Comedy, Magazines | February 20th, 2015

Mad-Edsel

I can well remem­ber the first time I read Mad Mag­a­zine. I was prob­a­bly around Bart Simpson’s age, but nowhere near his degree of wiseass-ness. I found the humor of the adult world most­ly mys­ti­fy­ing and also pret­ty tame, giv­en my rather shel­tered exis­tence. It was my dis­cov­ery of Mad—stacks and stacks of old Mads, to be pre­cise, in the rec room of a fam­i­ly acquaintance—that cracked the shell, one of those for­ma­tive loss-of-inno­cence moments that are ulti­mate­ly edi­fy­ing. At the time, I couldn’t tell sophis­ti­cat­ed satire from puerile par­o­dy, and the aver­age issue of Mad was no Gulliver’s Trav­els. Nonethe­less, its glee­ful skew­er­ing of the Amer­i­can civ­il reli­gion of pol­i­tics, celebri­ty, pro­fes­sion­al sports, com­merce, and mid­dle class com­fort hooked me instant­ly, and taught me about the val­ue of freethought before I’d ever heard the name Jonathan Swift.

Found­ed as a com­ic book by edi­tor Har­vey Kurtz­man and pub­lish­er William Gaines in 1952, Mad and its gap-toothed mas­cot Alfred E. New­man (still active today!) pio­neered pop­ulist satire and inspired many less­er imi­ta­tors. One dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of the mag­a­zine for almost its entire exis­tence was its abil­i­ty to run with­out adver­tis­ing, allow­ing it to tear apart mate­ri­al­ist cul­ture with­out fear of bit­ing the hands that fed it. Instead, for decades, the mag­a­zine ran fake spoof ads like those you see here. At the top, for exam­ple, see a 1963 ad for the “1963 ¾ Edsel,” an update of the “1963 ½ models—which made all ’63 mod­els obso­lete.” The text goes on to state frankly, “we’re tak­ing the first steps toward “Planned Month­ly Obsolescence—when every car own­er will be shamed into trad­ing in his old June ’64 car for a brand new shiny July ’64 mod­el.” Apple, take note.

Mad-Bootlicking

In the 1960 spoof ad above, mil­i­tary cul­ture gets a send-up with “Aspire Boot-Lick Pol­ish,” made for “The Man in Com­mand: Pompous… Pig-head­ed… Patho­log­i­cal.” The fla­vored boot polish—“licorice, caviar, choco­late, caramel, molasses, borscht, halavah, and Mox­ie in a base of chick­en fat”—is said to make “boot-lick­ing a lit­tle more tasty when you got­ta do it.” A clever inset links the U.S. chain of com­mand with pre­vi­ous empires, show­ing a car­toon Euro­pean naval offi­cer of cen­turies past get­ting his boots licked by a sub­or­di­nate sailor.

Mad-Hitler Cigarettes

Just above, the dis­turb­ing 1969 fake ad for “Ceme­tery Filler Cig­a­rettes” pre­dates the tobac­co tri­als of the 1990s by decades. Long pro­mot­ed for their health ben­e­fits, calm­ing effects, sophis­ti­ca­tion, and taste—as in that mem­o­rable first episode of Mad Men—cig­a­rettes are exposed for the mass killers they are by none oth­er than “Adolph Hitler”. (Anoth­er 1970 fake ad for “Win­som Cig­a­rettes” uses an actu­al ceme­tery to sim­i­lar effect.)

Mad-Kill Off

While cig­a­rette com­pa­nies were a fre­quent tar­get of Mad’s fake ads, just as often they took on the inani­ty of the entire ad indus­try itself, as in the above 1965 meta-ad for “Let’s Kill Off Ridicu­lous Ad Cam­paigns.” The text reads, “If you adver­tis­ers have to blow your own horns, why tie your prod­ucts to unre­lat­ed activ­i­ties? Main­ly, what’s eat­ing a Break­fast Cere­al got to do with play­ing a musi­cal instru­ment? Boy… we just can’t swal­low that!” Anoth­er reg­u­lar fea­ture was “Mad’s Great Moments in Adver­tis­ing,” a kind of high­light bloop­er reel of ads gone wrong. The exam­ple below, also from 1965, spoofs the promis­es of clean­ing prod­uct ads to make the lives of house­wives eas­i­er with a prod­uct that works just a lit­tle too well.

Mad-Great Moments

All of these fake Mad ads come from a Flickr account com­piled by user “Jas­par­do.” See many more of them there, and for even more of the magazine’s illus­tri­ous past, check out this Fla­vor­wire gallery of “The 10 Great­est Mad Mag­a­zine Cov­ers.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

Before Mad Men: Famil­iar and For­got­ten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca: The First Polit­i­cal Adver­tise­ments on Amer­i­can TV (1952)

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

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Joni Mitchell’s Application for a Tenure Track Philosophy Position

in Comedy, Philosophy | February 9th, 2015

joni philosophy

Image by Asy­lum Records (Bill­board page 2) [Pub­lic domain], via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Michael Stipe has a teach­ing gig at NYU. Lyn­da Bar­ry has one at UW-Madi­son. Sun Ra gave a clas­sic lec­ture at UC-Berke­ley. So why can’t we imag­ine Joni Mitchell land­ing a job at a uni­ver­si­ty too? That’s what Jedidi­ah Ander­son did, when he wrote a satir­i­cal piece over at McSweeney’s called “Joni Mitchell Applies for a Tenure Track Phi­los­o­phy Posi­tion.” It begins:

Dear Search Com­mit­tee:

I am apply­ing for the posi­tion of Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in Phi­los­o­phy. I am an advanced doc­tor­al can­di­date in Phi­los­o­phy (with minors in Urban Stud­ies and Eng­lish), and expect to defend my dis­ser­ta­tion in May, 2015.

My dis­ser­ta­tion, Both Sides Now applies a bilat­er­al, hylo­mor­phic analy­sis to the phe­nom­e­non that is described by the sig­ni­fi­er “clouds.” Hav­ing been con­sti­tut­ed in West­ern dis­course both pos­i­tive­ly as “rows and flows of angel hair,” “ice cream cas­tles in the air,” “feath­er canyons every­where,” and neg­a­tive­ly as objects that exist sole­ly to obscure the sun, express rain and snow, and hin­der the achieve­ment of var­i­ous goals, we can con­clude that after the appli­ca­tion of this bilat­er­al, hylo­mor­phic analy­sis that due to these con­tra­dic­to­ry “up” and “down” epis­te­molo­gies of cloud tropes, the real­i­ty of clouds is some­how still under­stud­ied, hav­ing been ignored in favor of their Pla­ton­ic form/sign, and that we real­ly don’t “know” clouds at all.

You can read the rest of her “appli­ca­tion” here and then spend the evening dream­ing about tak­ing Joni’s class­es on Pla­to, Exis­ten­tial­ism, and Urban Devel­op­ment. I know I will.

You can find more great Joni Mitchell mate­r­i­al below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Video of Joni Mitchell Per­form­ing in 1965 — Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

The Music, Art, and Life of Joni Mitchell Pre­sent­ed in a Superb 2003 Doc­u­men­tary

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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