Watch High Maintenance: A Critically-Acclaimed Web Series About Life & Cannabis

in Film, Life, Television | April 4th, 2014

Web series might have a rep­u­ta­tion for being ama­teur­ish, but that’s not entire­ly fair. High Main­te­nance, cre­at­ed by hus­band and wife team Ben Sin­clair and Kat­ja Blich­feld, for instance, is a high­ly pol­ished web series, fea­tur­ing sub­tle char­ac­ter­i­za­tions, wry humor and some of the tight­est writ­ing this side of Louis C.K.’s series Louie.

Each episode, which gen­er­al­ly runs between five and fif­teen min­utes, is about a new char­ac­ter — gen­er­al­ly a young pro­fes­sion­al Brook­lynite — who is wrestling with life’s small prob­lems. The one com­mon denom­i­na­tor is their name­less put-upon pot deal­er, played by Sin­clair. The show oper­ates on the same world of neu­ro­sis, self-absorp­tion and lone­li­ness as does Louie and Lena Dunham’s Girls. Mar­i­jua­na is the thing that makes their urban woes a lit­tle more palat­able.

Sin­clair recent­ly described his series to the New York­er:

The thing about weed is, we didn’t want to use it as a punch line. Instead, it’s this sub­stance that, like choco­late, caus­es peo­ple to expose their own foibles. Peo­ple become so human in pur­suit of this thing. And the inter­ac­tion they have with the per­son bring­ing it is often trag­ic, because there are a lot of lone­ly peo­ple out there who order it and then that is their human inter­ac­tion for the day.

The sto­ry of each episode hinges on the character’s inter­ac­tion with the deal­er. In the episode titled “Hei­di” (above) – one of my favorites – the deal­er tells a guy that the viva­cious lass he has fall­en for after meet­ing her on OK Cupid has a dark secret.

The episode “Brad Pitts” oper­ates in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent tone. A woman suf­fer­ing from can­cer is feel­ing too nau­se­at­ed to eat until her mid­dle-aged friend calls up Sin­clair. The results are not quite what any­one expect­ed.

In “Rachel,” an author, played by Down­ton Abbey’s Dan Stevens, strug­gles with both cre­ative and iden­ti­ty issues.

And final­ly, “Olivia” is about two of the most awful, tox­ic twits you would ever care to (not) meet:

You can watch all of the episodes here. And at some point this month (prob­a­bly 4/20) three new episodes are slat­ed to pre­miere.

H/T @sheerly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Extols the Virtues of Cannabis (1969)

Alice B. Tok­las Talks About Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge

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.

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Eleanor Roosevelt’s Durable Wisdom on Curiosity, Empathy, Education & Responding to Criticism

in Education, History, Life, Politics | April 1st, 2014

eleanor 2

First Lady Eleanor Roo­sevelt was a pro­lif­ic colum­nist and writer, with an impres­sive list of clips pro­duced both dur­ing FDR’s tenure in the White House and after­wards. George Wash­ing­ton University’s Eleanor Roo­sevelt Papers Project tal­lies up her out­put: 8,000 columns, 580 arti­cles, 27 books, and 100,000 let­ters (not to men­tion speech­es and appear­ances). Many of those columns and arti­cles can be found on their web­site.

Their archive offers every one of Roosevelt’s “My Day” columns, which ran through Unit­ed Fea­tures Syn­di­cate from 1936–1962. These short pieces act­ed like a dai­ly diary, chron­i­cling Roosevelt’s trav­els, the books she read, the peo­ple she vis­it­ed, her evolv­ing polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, and, occa­sion­al­ly, her reflec­tions on such top­ics as edu­ca­tion, empa­thy, apa­thy, friend­ship, stress, and the scourge of exces­sive mail (“I love my per­son­al let­ters and I am real­ly deeply inter­est­ed in much of my mail, but when I see it in a mass I would some­times like to run away! I just closed my eyes in this case and went to bed!”)

The “My Day” archive is a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to navigate—you have to browse by year, or search by keyword—but the archive’s short list of select­ed longer arti­cles is a bit sim­pler to sur­vey. Some of my favorites:

“In Defense of Curios­i­ty” (Sat­ur­day Evening Post, 1935): Roo­sevelt often drew fire for her insa­tiable inter­est in all areas of nation­al life—a char­ac­ter­is­tic that peo­ple thought of as unla­dy­like. This arti­cle argues that women, too, should be curi­ous, and that curios­i­ty is the basis for hap­pi­ness, imag­i­na­tion, and empa­thy.

“How to Take Crit­i­cism” (Ladies Home Jour­nal, 1944): Roo­sevelt had a lot of haters. This longer piece mulls over the dif­fer­ent types of crit­i­cism that she received dur­ing her pub­lic career, and asks how one should dis­tin­guish between wor­thy and unwor­thy cri­tiques.

“Build­ing Char­ac­ter” (The Parent’s Mag­a­zine, 1931): An edi­to­r­i­al on the impor­tance of pro­vid­ing chil­dren with chal­lenges, clear­ly meant to reas­sure par­ents wor­ried about the effects of the Depres­sion on their kids.

“Good Cit­i­zen­ship: The Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion” (Pic­to­r­i­al Review, 1930): Much of this piece is about the impor­tance of fair com­pen­sa­tion for good teach­ers. “There are many inad­e­quate teach­ers today,” Roo­sevelt wrote. “Per­haps our stan­dards should be high­er, but they can­not be until we learn to val­ue and under­stand the func­tion of the teacher in our midst. While we have put much mon­ey in build­ings and lab­o­ra­to­ries and gym­na­si­ums, we have for­got­ten that they are but the shell, and will nev­er live and cre­ate a vital spark in the minds and hearts of our youth unless some teacher fur­nish­es the inspi­ra­tion. A child responds nat­u­ral­ly to high ideals, and we are all of us crea­tures of habit.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“F. Scott Fitzger­ald Tells His 11-Year-Old Daugh­ter What to Wor­ry About (and Not Wor­ry About) in Life, 1933”

“’Noth­ing Good Gets Away’: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)”

“George Washington’s 110 Rules for Civil­i­ty and Decent Behav­ior”

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion. 

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Animated Video Features Werner Herzog Discussing His Childhood Adventures & 20th-Century Rage

in Animation, Environment, Film, Life | March 14th, 2014

I’m not sur­prised that film­mak­er Wern­er Her­zog hates the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the word “adven­ture,” when he’s spent over four decades court­ing it in the most clas­sic sense. In the New York Pub­lic Library Con­ver­sa­tion Por­trait above (one of a series that includes the John Waters pro­file we brought you ear­li­er this week), the ven­er­a­ble direc­tor describes the sort of child­hood that could cause one to take a dim view of pack­aged tours mas­querad­ing as adven­ture.

After the infant Her­zog sur­vived a bomb­ing that cov­ered him in rub­ble, his moth­er, under­stand­ably fear­ing for her chil­dren’s safe­ty, fled to the moun­tains. The remote­ness of his upbring­ing shel­tered him in some ways (“I did not even know that cin­e­ma exist­ed until I was 11”) and not, in oth­ers. (“At age four, I was in pos­ses­sion of a func­tion­ing sub­ma­chine gun and my broth­er had a hand grenade.”)

When he says that hunger was a pre­vail­ing theme, I dare you to dis­agree.

I’m like­wise inclined to pay atten­tion when he asserts that the mod­ern obses­sion with tech­nol­o­gy is gob­bling resources at a dis­as­trous pace, and that thou­sands of world lan­guages will have dis­ap­peared for good by 2050.

Dire pre­dic­tions, and yet he fills me with cheer every time he opens his mouth. I swear it’s not just that mar­velous, much imi­tat­ed voice. It’s also a com­fort to know we’ve got a pro­lif­ic artist remain­ing at his out­post from a sense of duty, gloomy yet stout as a child in his belief that an ecsta­sy of truth lies with­in human grasp.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

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

Mas­ter Cura­tor Paul Hold­en­gräber Inter­views Hitchens, Her­zog, Goure­vitch & Oth­er Lead­ing Thinkers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day looks in the eyes of the bear … Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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John Waters Talks About His Books and Role Models in a Whimsical Animated Video

in Animation, Books, Film, Life | March 10th, 2014

Kudos to car­toon­ist Flash Rosen­berg for hav­ing the huevos to illus­trate cult film icon John Waters’ remarks at the New York Pub­lic Library in real time before a live audi­ence. The first half minute of this ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion Por­trait had me wor­ried on her behalf. What a relief when the the coiled lump she was swab­bing with brown water­col­or turned out to be a cin­na­mon roll, and not the sub­stance Divine (the direc­tor’s muse) famous­ly ate—for real—in 1972’s Pink Flamin­gos.

It’s a very free asso­cia­tive process. The top­ic under dis­cus­sion turns out to be not baked goods, but rather role mod­els. (Roll mod­els, get it?)

As to who the Sire of Sleaze choos­es to ele­vate in this capac­i­ty:

Croon­er John­ny Math­is, whose heav­en­ly pipes Waters pre­scribes as a poten­tial rem­e­dy for bipar­ti­san ugli­ness.

Play­wright Ten­nessee Williams (whose work Car­di­nal Spell­man denounced as “revolt­ing, deplorable, moral­ly repel­lent…”)

And, touch­ing­ly, his par­ents, whom Rosen­berg draws with arms encir­cling their pen­cil-mus­tached tot, a sweet Three Is a Mag­ic Num­ber tableau. (In non-ani­mat­ed life, Waters is one of four chil­dren.)

The Prince of Puke mod­est­ly deflects inter­view­er Paul Hold­en­gräber’s asser­tion that he him­self is a role mod­el, advis­ing his fans to pick ten flawed indi­vid­u­als from whom they’ve learned some­thing  and “let them know how much you mean to them.”  (He may have meant “let them know how much they mean to you,” but it might be a fun sort of exer­cise to fol­low his instruc­tions as uttered.)

And if on some far off evening, you’re moved to have sex on his grave, know that this role mod­el’s ghost will rest con­tent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters Makes Hand­made Christ­mas Cards, Says the “Whole Pur­pose of Life is Christ­mas”

Grow­ing Up John Waters: The Odd­ball Film­mak­er Cat­a­logues His Many For­ma­tive Rebel­lions (1993)

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

Ayun Hal­l­i­day told you cha cha heels, black ones! Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Alice Herz-Sommer, the Oldest Holocaust Survivor (Thanks to the Power of Music), Dies at 110

in History, Life | February 24th, 2014

On Sun­day, 23 Feb­ru­ary 2014, Alice Herz-Som­mer, thought to be the old­est Holo­caust sur­vivor, died in Lon­don. She has been an inspi­ra­tion to many peo­ple as the sto­ry of her life is shown in the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary called “The Lady in Num­ber 6″ (the video above is the offi­cial trail­er).

Alice was born in Prague – then part of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire – in 1903. She start­ed play­ing the piano as a child and took lessons with Con­rad Ansorge, a stu­dent of Liszt. At 16, she attend­ed the mas­ter class at Prague’s pres­ti­gious Ger­man musi­cal acad­e­my. Lat­er, Alice became a respect­ed con­cert pianist in Prague. Through her fam­i­ly, she also knew Franz Kaf­ka. All of this changed when the Nazis occu­pied Czecho­slo­va­kia in March 1939. Along with oth­er Jews liv­ing in Prague, Alice was ini­tial­ly forced to live in Prague’s ghet­to before being deport­ed to the There­sien­stadt con­cen­tra­tion camp in 1943, along with her five-year-old son Raphael. Even­tu­al­ly her whole fam­i­ly, includ­ing her hus­band, cel­list Leopold Som­mer, and her moth­er, was sent to Auschwitz, Tre­blin­ka and Dachau, where they were killed.

Alice and her son sur­vived There­sien­stadt because the Nazis used this par­tic­u­lar con­cen­tra­tion camp to show the world how “well” the inmates were treat­ed. A pro­pa­gan­da film by the Nazis was shot and a del­e­ga­tion from the Dan­ish and Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross was shown around in 1943. To boost morale, Alice and many oth­er impris­oned musi­cians reg­u­lar­ly per­formed for the inmates. Despite the unimag­in­able liv­ing con­di­tions, Alice and her son sur­vived. They moved to Israel after the war, where she taught music. In 1986, she moved to Lon­don. Her son died in 2001 (obit­u­ary here).

The way Alice dealt with those hor­ri­ble times is par­tic­u­lar­ly inspir­ing. She says about the role of music: “I felt that this is the only thing which helps me to have hope … it’s a sort of reli­gion actu­al­ly. Music is … is God. In dif­fi­cult times you feel it, espe­cial­ly when you are suf­fer­ing.” When asked by Ger­man jour­nal­ists if she hat­ed Ger­mans, she replied: “I nev­er hate, and I will nev­er hate. Hatred brings only hatred.”

Extra mate­r­i­al:

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

 

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Ira Glass’ Advice on Achieving Creative Excellence Presented in Two Artful, Typographic Videos

in Creativity, Life, Radio | February 4th, 2014

”All of us who do cre­ative work,” says Ira Glass, cre­ator This Amer­i­can Life, quite pos­si­bly the most respect­ed pro­gram on pub­lic radio, “we get into it because we have good taste.” Yet despite this dis­cern­ment, or indeed because of it, “there’s a gap: for the first cou­ple years that you’re mak­ing stuff, what you’re mak­ing isn’t so good. [ … ] Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re mak­ing is kind of a dis­ap­point­ment to you.” For this rea­son, Glass argues, the taste­ful often fail at their cre­ative endeav­ors entire­ly. “Most every­body I know who does inter­est­ing cre­ative work,” he con­tin­ues, “they went through a phase of years where they had real­ly good taste, and they could tell what they were mak­ing was­n’t as good as they want­ed it to be.” This astute diag­no­sis of a “total­ly nor­mal” syn­drome comes extract­ed from Glass’ talk on the craft of sto­ry­telling, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

For­tu­nate­ly for those of us strug­gling with the very taste-abil­i­ty mis­match Glass describes, a solu­tion exists. If you want a quick fix, though, pre­pare for dis­ap­point­ment. “Do a lot of work,” he flat­ly advis­es. “Do a huge vol­ume of work. Put your­self on a dead­line so that every week or every month you know you’re going to fin­ish one sto­ry. Because it’s only by actu­al­ly going through a vol­ume of work that you’re actu­al­ly going to catch up and close that gap.” These words have proven inspir­ing enough that they’ve sure­ly spurred lis­ten­ers on to plow paths of sheer pro­duc­tion through their cho­sen rocky yet fer­tile cre­ative fields. Two lis­ten­ers in par­tic­u­lar, David Shiyang Liu and Frohlocke, appar­ent­ly found them­selves imme­di­ate­ly gal­va­nized to work with the words them­selves, result­ing in the typo­graph­i­cal­ly focused video inter­pre­ta­tions above. Only one ques­tion remains: how large a vol­ume of typo­graph­i­cal­ly focused video inter­pre­ta­tions of Ira Glass’ words did they have to cre­ate before they could make ones this impres­sive?

via Vimeo Staff Picks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass, the Host of This Amer­i­can Life, Breaks Down the Fine Art of Sto­ry­telling

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Student Asks Noam Chomsky for Dating Advice

in Life, Philosophy | January 30th, 2014

Noam Chom­sky is a pret­ty unlike­ly celebri­ty. As a pre­em­i­nent anar­chist the­o­rist, his polit­i­cal writ­ing is full of pas­sion­ate inten­si­ty, but in his numer­ous pub­lic appear­ances, he con­forms much more to images asso­ci­at­ed with his day job as a pre­em­i­nent aca­d­e­m­ic and lin­guist. He’s very soft-spoken—I’ve nev­er heard him raise his voice above the reg­is­ter of polite cof­fee-shop conversation—and frumpy in that elder schol­ar kind of way: uncombed gray hair, an end­less sup­ply of sweaters and cor­duroy jack­ets…

So, yes, it’s amus­ing when, in the short clip above, a young Chom­sky fan asks the 85-year-old “father of mod­ern lin­guis­tics” for advice on how to talk to women. Chomsky’s non­plussed response is hon­est and heart­felt. He has noth­ing to offer in this regard, he says: “I got out of that busi­ness 70 years ago.” If it seems like Chomsky’s math is a lit­tle off—he was mar­ried in 1949—consider that he and his wife Car­ol met when they were both just five years old.

Theirs was a qui­et­ly charm­ing romance. Chom­sky, who has always pos­sessed an extra­or­di­nary abil­i­ty to keep his per­son­al, polit­i­cal, and pro­fes­sion­al lives sep­a­rate, did not speak much of their mar­riage until after Carol’s death in 2008. In the excerpt above from a Big Think inter­view short­ly after, Chom­sky tells a sto­ry of group of peas­ants in South­ern Colum­bia who plant­ed a for­est in his wife’s mem­o­ry. He’s also asked to define love. This time, he has a much more inter­est­ing response than his reply to the would-be pick up artist above: “I just know it’s—has an unbreak­able grip, but I can’t tell you what it is.  It’s just life’s emp­ty with­out it.”

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Schools 9/11 Truther; Explains the Sci­ence of Mak­ing Cred­i­ble Claims

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

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

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Pete Seeger Dies at 94: Remember the American Folk Legend with a Priceless Film from 1947

in Life, Music | January 28th, 2014

We’ve got some sad news to report. Last night Pete Seeger, one of Amer­i­ca’s nation­al trea­sures, died at the age of 94. For near­ly 70 years, Seeger embod­ied folk music and its ideals (“com­mu­ni­ca­tion, enter­tain­ment, social com­ment, his­tor­i­cal con­ti­nu­ity, inclu­sive­ness”) and became a tire­less advo­cate for social jus­tice and pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment. In recent years, Seeger made his voice heard at Occu­py Wall Street and even paid a vis­it to the 2013 edi­tion of Farm Aid, where he sang “This Land is Your Land”. Above you can watch a film that brings you back to Seeger’s ear­ly days. Released in 1946, To Hear Your Ban­jo Play is an engag­ing 16-minute intro­duc­tion to Amer­i­can folk music, writ­ten and nar­rat­ed by Alan Lomax and fea­tur­ing rare per­for­mances by Woody Guthrie, Bald­win Hawes, Son­ny Ter­ry, Brownee McGhee, Texas Glad­den and Mar­got May­o’s Amer­i­can Square Dance Group. In the film, Seeger is only 27 years old. We’ll miss you dear­ly Pete.

To Hear Your Ban­jo Play resides in our col­lec­tion of 625 Free Online Movies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leg­endary Folk­lorist Alan Lomax’s ‘The Land Where the Blues Began’

94-Year-Old Pete Seeger Sings “This Land is Your Land” at Farm Aid

Willie Nel­son, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie at Occu­py Wall Street

Pete Seeger on “Turn! Turn! Turn!”

Pete Seeger, 91, Per­forms BP Protest Song

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