Doonesbury Confronts Creationism in the Classroom

Gar­ry Trudeau has tak­en on cre­ation­ism before. He’s doing it again, this time com­ment­ing on the oxy­moron­ic “Louisiana Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Act,” which allows the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism in the pub­lic class­room. You can view Trudeau’s car­toon in full, and in high res here.

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Stephen Fry on Philosophy and Unbelief

Come­di­an Stephen Fry has the clas­sic British intel­lec­tu­al voice, much like philoso­pher Bryan McGee. It turns out that he knows some­thing about phi­los­o­phy, and this clip is a short­ened ver­sion of a longer video called “The Impor­tance of Unbe­lief.”

A more gen­tle ver­sion of George Car­lin, Fry’s views appear heart­felt while par­tak­ing of seri­ous irony. He claims that in order to prop­er­ly appre­ci­ate our present lives, “even if it isn’t true, you must absolute­ly assume that there is no after­life.” Choos­ing his posi­tions to argue as much for their rhetor­i­cal audac­i­ty as any­thing else, he argues for poly­the­ism in favor of monothe­ism, and he treats the issue of the divine pres­ence in nature by ref­er­enc­ing the life cycle of a par­a­sitic worm. He seems an apt voice to add to the new athe­ist debates, at least as amus­ing as Dawkins and much more­so than Sam Har­ris. This clip is added to our col­lec­tion of 250 Cul­tur­al Icons.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. He also per­forms with the Madi­son, WI band New Peo­ple.

Steve Martin Releases Bluegrass Album/Animated Video

Once again, we’re remind­ed of Steve Mar­t­in’s many tal­ents — come­di­an, movie starNew York­er writerplay­wrightmagi­cian, and, yes, ban­jo play­er too. In June 2009, Mar­tin hooked up with the Steep Canyon Rangers, an Amer­i­can blue­grass band, on Gar­ri­son Keil­lor’s A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion. (Lis­ten to mp3 here.) Lat­er in 2009 and ear­ly 2010, Mar­tin made more appear­ances with the band, per­form­ing (among oth­er things) the first song ever writ­ten for hymn-deprived athe­ists. Now comes a new CD, Rare Bird Alert, which fea­tures 13 tracks, includ­ing “Jubi­la­tion Day” (watch ani­mat­ed video above) and King Tut, a blue­grass ver­sion of his 1978 clas­sic. Enjoy…

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Jimmy Fallon Nails the Bob Dylan Impersonation

He looks like Bob Dylan. He sings like our birth­day boy Bob Dylan. And yet he’s cov­er­ing per­haps the cheesi­est 80s sit­com theme song ever made — which makes it all the more hilar­i­ous…

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Peter Sellers Performs The Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shakespearean Voice

Back in 1964, Peter Sell­ers (aka Chief Inspec­tor Clouse­au in The Pink Pan­ther films) made a cameo appear­ance on “The Music of Lennon and McCart­ney,” a tele­vi­sion pro­gram pro­duced at the height of Beat­le­ma­nia. The schtick? To read the lyrics of A Hard Day’s Night in a way that com­i­cal­ly recalls Lau­rence Olivier’s 1955 per­for­mance of the open­ing solil­o­quy from Richard III. It starts famous­ly “Now is the win­ter of our dis­con­tent â€¦â€ť (See full text here.)

On a very relat­ed note, don’t miss:

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Voic­es

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George Carlin’s “Modern Man” Rap

Forty years after George Car­lin first stopped by The Tonight Show (1966), he made one of his last appear­ances, deliv­er­ing a rap/poem that’s clas­sic Car­lin, a hyp­not­ic riff on mod­ern life and soci­ety. The lyrics appear right below.

I’m a mod­ern man,
A man for the mil­len­ni­um,
Dig­i­tal and smoke free.
A diver­si­fied mul­ti­cul­tur­al post­mod­ern decon­struc­tion­ist,
Polit­i­cal­ly anatom­i­cal­ly and eco­log­i­cal­ly incor­rect.
I’ve been uplinked and down­loaded.
I’ve been inputted and out­sourced.
I know the upside of down­siz­ing.
I know the down­side of upgrad­ing.
I’m a high tech lowlife.
A cut­ting edge state-of-the-art bicoastal mul­ti­tasker,
And I can give you a giga­byte in a nanosec­ond. (The rest after the jump…)
(more…)

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The Book Trailer as Self-Parody: Stars Gary Shteyngart with James Franco Cameo

What can we say about Gary Shteyn­gart? The nov­el­ist appeared last year in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 Fic­tion Issue (which list­ed authors “who cap­ture the inven­tive­ness and the vital­i­ty of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can fic­tion.”) He teach­es writ­ing at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and counts James Fran­co as one of his stu­dents. And he’s will­ing to hus­tle a lit­tle to sell a book. When his nov­el Super Sad True Love Sto­ry came out last sum­mer (find NYTimes review here), the quirky Leningrad-born author (key to under­stand­ing what comes next) released a satir­i­cal, self-dep­re­cat­ing trail­er to pro­mote his book. Jef­frey Eugenides, Jay McIn­er­ney, Edmund White, Mary Gait­skill and Fran­co him­self all get in on the joke … which gets bet­ter as it goes along.

Shteyn­gart’s book just came out in paper­back last week. To mark the occa­sion, Fresh Air re-aired an inter­view with him (sans accent) last week. His book is also avail­able as an audio down­load via Audible.com, and here’s how you can snag a free copy…

Relat­ed:

Review­ing Jonathan Franzen’s “Free­dom” with Wit

1956 Home Movie: Laurel & Hardy Together for the Last Time

There is no exact date for this silent home movie shot at the Rese­da, CA home of Stan Lau­rel’s daugh­ter, Lois. But the year must have been 1956, because, dur­ing that year, Oliv­er Hardy, the oth­er mem­ber of the great com­ic duo, lost more than 150 pounds, result­ing in a com­plete change of his out­ward appear­ance. Hardy had a mild heart attack in 1954 and start­ed look­ing after his health. But let­ters by Stan Lau­rel indi­cate that Oliv­er was also suf­fer­ing from can­cer. In Sep­tem­ber 1956 — prob­a­bly not long after this movie was made — Oliv­er suf­fered a major stroke, which left him unable to speak and con­fined to bed for sev­er­al months. Then, at the begin­ning of August 1957, he had two more strokes and slipped into a coma from which he nev­er recov­ered. He died on August 7 that year.

Exact­ly one week after Oliv­er’s death, Stan gave a rare radio inter­view and recount­ed the moment when he and Oliv­er met for the first time. The full, one-hour inter­view can be enjoyed here. Stan died on 23 Feb­ru­ary 1965 after suf­fer­ing a heart attack of his own. He was buried at For­est Park Memo­r­i­al Park in Bur­bank. Footage from the funer­al shows celebri­ties such as Dick Van Dyke, Buster Keaton and George Chan­dler in atten­dance. Stan’s friend Dick Van Dyke deliv­ered this mov­ing eulo­gy.

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