The world be an infinitely more cheerful place if every 20th Century Fox Film started like this, wouldn’t it?
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“Learn English With Ricky Gervais,” A New Podcast Debuts (NSFW)
Bombastically billed as “a new landmark in human comprehension,” Ricky Gervais’ video podcast, “Learn English with Ricky Gervais” does, in a way, break new pedagogical ground. The trailer above provides a brief glimpse of the series’ first episode, currently available for free on iTunes. The premise of the show is that Gervais and his partner Karl Pilkington, in a posh-looking study with globe and fireplace, parody video language courses for non-English speakers. Gervais’ obnoxious grandiosity and the almost methodical obtuseness of Pilkington have become legendary to fans of HBO’s The Ricky Gervais Show. Missing here is the third member of that program, co-creator of the original British The Office, Stephen Merchant, but whatever the reason for his absence, this concept probably works better as a duo, with Gervais playing the overbearing and somewhat abusive teacher and Pilkington standing in for the hypothetical “students,” who would no doubt find this method as bewildering as he does.
The full episode includes subtitles in a language that resembles Welsh but mostly seems like gibberish (correct me, Welsh speakers, if I’m wrong), and Gervais and Pilkington’s exchanges are chock-full of non-sequiturs and insults, some benign, some skirting the boundaries of the uncomfortably xenophobic, but that’s kind of the point, and the source of much of the humor. The characters here are too culturally insensitive and dense to teach anyone anything. Gervais—with Merchant and Pilkington—uses a similar shtick in his An Idiot Abroad series, and it works, I think, but you’ll need to decide for yourself in the case of “Learn English,” and you’ll need to download iTunes (on the off chance you don’t have it) and subscribe to the podcast to view the full first episode, which debuted on August 14th. Gervais has said that future episodes may involve either a small fee or advertising to cover costs.
In the meantime, stop by our collection of Free Language Lessons, where you can download serious lessons in 40 different languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, Arabic, and, yes, English and Welsh.
Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.
Mnozil Brass: Europe’s Most Imaginative Brass Band
Here’s something fun. And a bit weird. Mnozil Brass is an Austrian septet that combines musical virtuosity with absurdist theatre. The group’s name means “nozzle,” and refers to the Mnozil Pub, a little place near the Vienna College of Music where the founding members used to get together to drink and play music. Since forming in 1992, and the group’s entertaining mixture of music and clowning has grown steadily in popularity. Above is a skit called “Slow Motion” from Mnozil Brass’s new DVD, Magic Moments. Think of it as a sort of “spaghetti western music recital.” There are several more samples below, to give you a sense of the lunacy:
The William Tell Overture:
Lonely Boy:
Bohemian Rhapsody:
Julia Child Shows David Letterman How to Cook Meat with a Blow Torch
Julia Child would have turned 100 years old today. As an author and television personality, Child introduced French cuisine to the mainstream American public and turned cooking into a daily adventure.
Child became fascinated with French food after moving to Paris in 1948. She studied cooking at the renowned Cordon Bleu school, and in 1961 co-authored the two-volume Mastering the Art of French Cooking. More than 2 million copies of the book have been sold, but Child is best known for her television appearances on a succession of programs, starting with The French Chef in 1962 and ending with Julia’s Casual Dinners in 1999, just three years before her death in 2002 at the age of 92.
In 2009 she was the subject of the film Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep. The movie is based on the real-life adventures of Julie Powell, who was greatly inspired by Child. “Something came out of Julia on television that was unexpected,” says Powell in a video at Biography.com. “She’s not a beautiful woman, but her voice and her attitude and her playfulness–it’s just magical. You can’t fake that. You can’t take classes to learn how to be wonderful. She just wanted to entertain and educate people at the same time. Our food culture is better for it.”
For a quick reminder of Child’s voice, attitude and playfulness–not to mention her considerable skill with a blowtorch–we bring you her memorable late-1980s appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, in which the resourceful Child adjusts to time constraints by changing a simple American hamburger into beef tartare gratiné.
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George Carlin Performs His “Seven Dirty Words” Routine: Historic and Completely NSFW
Okay, this is George Carlin’s infamous bit “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” so please don’t watch it at work. That said, a bit of context: Carlin, arch comic satirist and incisive social critic, originally performed this routine in Milwaukee in 1972. Carlin is deliberately pushing the envelope here, and he’s paying homage to the great Lenny Bruce, who was persecuted by censors and police, and hounded out of work, more or less, for doing what Carlin does above—poking fun at our American squeamishness about the body, sexuality, and religion. With Elizabethan glee, Carlin takes seven words from Bruce’s original nine and reduces them to absurdities. As we all know–South Park and pay cable excepted–most of these words are still taboo and can send certain viewers, media watchdogs, and congress people into fits.
Carlin’s point is exactly that—people squirm when they hear obscene words, as though the language itself had some magically destructive power, but as he says, “there are no bad words. Bad thoughts, Bad intentions,” suggesting that the problem lies in the minds and hearts of those who assume that quarantining certain uses of language will keep us from certain ideas and acts they fear—or in his own irreverent voice, that some words “will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.…” Carlin was arrested after his Milwaukee appearance when an audience member complained, but a Wisconsin judge determined that his speech was protected. Later, when the bit was broadcast by a New York radio station, legal trouble ensued once again, and the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1978 that the government had the right to restrict television and radio broadcasts in case children were listening. Carlin, who died in 2008 at the age of 71, said of the case, “My name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of.”
Related Content:
How the Great George Carlin Showed Louis CK the Way to Success (NSFW)
George Carlin: The Modern Man in Three Minutes
Conformity Isn’t a Recipe for Excellence: Wisdom from George Carlin & Steve Jobs (NSFW)
Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.
David Rakoff Reads Personal Story During Live Stage Performance of This American Life (May, 2012)
By now, you know that David Rakoff, a prizewinning humorist championed by David Sedaris, died Thursday night after two public battles with cancer. Rakoff cultivated a following among listeners of This American Life, the beloved radio show hosted by Ira Glass. In May, he made one of his last appearances on the show when TAL presented “The Invisible Made Visible,” a live stage performance beamed to movie theaters nationwide. Here, Rakoff reads the story, “Stiff as a Board, Light as a Feather,” about “the invisible processes that can happen inside our bodies…and the visible effects they eventually have.” You won’t want to his miss his poignant last dance. It’s yet another reminder of why he’ll be sorely missed. We’d also recommend spending time with his appearances on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Related Content:
Ira Glass on the Art of Storytelling
David Sedaris and Ian Falconer Introduce “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk”
Celebrate Harry Potter’s Birthday with Song. Daniel Radcliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Elements.
Some child actors are unendearing, snarky types (think Selena Gomez or a young Dakota Fanning). Others, you root for because even if they’re cloying they seem real (Haley Joel Osment comes to mind).
Daniel Radcliffe, who was most certainly a child when he was cast as Harry Potter at 11, may fall more into the second camp. He’s as hapless and earnest as Harry, and it turns out that he’s endearingly nerdier in real life than Harry himself could ever be.
Radcliffe, who celebrated his 23rd birthday this week, sealed his fate as a bit of an anorak when he appeared on the BBC’s Graham Norton Show and nervously sang Tom Lehrer’s song The Elements.
Maybe Radcliffe’s best subject at Hogwarts would have been potions. On television he admits to being a little nervous before launching into the homage to Lehrer, explaining that he’d stayed up all night trying to memorize the song. One of Lehrer’s classics, it actually sets the periodic table of elements to music. In the best versions, Lehrer accompanies himself on piano while reciting all of the chemical elements known at the time of writing (1959) to the tune of a Gilbert and Sullivan melody.
Harry Potter’s birthday is next week (July 31), the same day author J.K. Rowling celebrates hers. Perhaps Potter fans could cook up a birthday celebration for Potter involving a song about lawrencium, which was added to the periodic table two years after Lehrer wrote his song. As he cleverly noted himself at the end of the tune,
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha’vard,
And there may be many others, but they haven’t been discavard
Good stuff. Worthy of the boy who survived.
Kate Rix is an Oakland-based freelance writer. See more of her work at .
Conan O’Brien Writes Chicago Blues Songs With School Kids
Here’s a little something to end your week with a smile: Conan O’Brien improvising the blues with a group of first graders. The segment was taped in Chicago–home of the electric blues–during the Conan show’s one-week stand there last month. O’Brien and his bandleader, Jimmy Vivino, brought their guitars to the Frances Xavier Warde elementary school on the city’s Near West Side to investigate what a group of six- and seven-year-olds might be blue about. The result is the sad, sad, “No Chocolate Blues.”
Related Content:
Conan O’Brien Does Standup @ Google
Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dartmouth Graduation
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