The Late Alan Thicke Hosts a Twin Peaks Behind-the-Scenes Special (1990)

in Television | December 15th, 2016

When Alan Thicke died this week, he died a true man of tele­vi­sion. His more than forty-year career saw him not just star in the hit ABC sit­com Grow­ing Pains but host game, talk, and dance shows as well as com­pose the theme songs for Dif­f’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life. His final tweet praised the new sea­son of the Net­flix reboot of Full House (Grow­ing Pains’ near-con­tem­po­rary) on which he made a guest appear­ance. But he did­n’t live exclu­sive­ly in the main­stream: in Sep­tem­ber of 1990, he con­fessed — on nation­al tele­vi­sion, of course — his love of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s bound­ary-push­ing, real­i­ty bend­ing mys­tery series Twin Peaks.

“Every decade has its TV cult,” says Thicke, open­ing this ABC sea­son-pre­view spe­cial from the Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios lot. “Now, I was nev­er a Trekkie myself, but I do con­fess, I am a Peak­er.” A fair few view­ers across Amer­i­ca could, at that moment, say the same, since enthu­si­asm for the show peaked, as it were, around the end of its first sea­son and the begin­ning of its sec­ond, the pre­miere of which the net­work put togeth­er this seg­ment to hype (along­side the debut of Cop Rock, the non-iron­ic police-pro­ce­du­ral/­mu­si­cal). “There’s so much more to Twin Peaks than a riv­et­ing mur­der mys­tery,” Thicke con­tin­ues. “There’s a whole look and a feel and a tex­ture,” an expe­ri­ence “180 degrees away from any­thing else on tele­vi­sion.”

These fif­teen min­utes include brief con­ver­sa­tions with Twin Peaks’ cre­ators and col­lab­o­ra­tors. “It need­ed to be away from the reg­u­lar world and be a kind of a hair of a dream spot,” says Lynch, some­what cryp­ti­cal­ly, “and it need­ed a woods that had a wind of a mys­tery, you know, blow­ing through it.” Kyle MacLach­lan, who starred as FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er, offers fur­ther insight into the show’s appeal: “The peo­ple don’t… they don’t behave nor­mal­ly.” It also includes Sheryl Lee, who played the mur­dered home­com­ing queen Lau­ra Palmer, read­ing from the char­ac­ter’s “secret diary… her real diary.”

Using a map of the epony­mous small Wash­ing­ton town, Thicke attempts to catch those who missed all or part of Twin Peaks’ first sea­son up on its many plot threads, all direct­ly or indi­rect­ly relat­ed to the ques­tion of who killed Lau­ra Palmer. That cen­tral mys­tery would dri­ve the plot all the way up to the mid­dle of the sec­ond sea­son, and its res­o­lu­tion result­ed in declin­ing rat­ings and even­tu­al can­cel­la­tion. But as we learned with from the col­lec­tion of video essays we fea­tured yes­ter­day, the work of David Lynch is built on a foun­da­tion not of plot, but of pure images and sounds.

That so many more of us now under­stand that has placed us well to enjoy Twin Peaks’ long-await­ed third sea­son. Set to pre­miere next year on Show­time, it has, like Full House — two shows sel­dom com­pared to one anoth­er — trans­posed its core con­cepts from the realm of 20th-cen­tu­ry net­work tele­vi­sion into that of 21st-cen­tu­ry spe­cial­ty tele­vi­sion. “Revis­it­ing all this ter­ri­to­ry, there’s a fresh­ness to it, there’s a light­ness to it,” says MacLach­lan in the new behind-the-scenes teas­er above. Encour­ag­ing words, but one hopes above all that the project retains the ani­mat­ing cre­ative ten­sion expressed a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, when Thicke asked how thought-out the show real­ly was: “Not too thought-out,” insist­ed Lynch. “Very thought-out,” insist­ed Frost.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 20 Min­utes of Mark Frost’s New Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks, the Book Fans Have Wait­ed 25 Years to Read

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Twin Peaks Tarot Cards Now Avail­able as 78-Card Deck

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Truman Capote Narrates “A Christmas Memory,” a 1966 TV Adaptation of His Autobiographical Story

in Books, Life, Literature, Television | December 9th, 2016

It’s fruit­cake weath­er, so bust out your han­kies.

You’ll need them by the end of this 1966 tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion of Tru­man Capote’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal 1956 sto­ry, “A Christ­mas Mem­o­ry,” above.

As hol­i­day spe­cials go, it’s bless­ed­ly free of raz­zle daz­zle. Capote’s Depres­sion-era Christ­mases in rur­al Alaba­ma were short on tin­sel and long on wind­fall pecans.

Com­bined with flour, sug­ar, dried fruit, and some hard-pur­chased whiskey, these gifts of nature yield­ed deli­cious cakes the main char­ac­ters send to a long list of recip­i­ents rang­ing from FDR to a young man whose car broke down in front of their house, who snapped the only pho­to­graph of the two of them togeth­er.

The nos­tal­gia may feel a bit thick at times. Both the sto­ry and the hour-long adap­ta­tion are a love let­ter to an eccen­tric, much old­er cousin, Nan­ny Rum­b­ley Faulk, known as Sook. She was part of the house­hold of dis­tant rela­tions where Capote’s moth­er, Lil­lie Mae, spent a por­tion of her child­hood, and on whom she lat­er dumped the 3‑year-old Tru­man.

Sook was “the only sta­ble per­son” in his life, Capote told Peo­ple mag­a­zine thir­ty years after her death.

And accord­ing to Capote’s aunt, Marie Rud­is­ill, “the only per­son that Sook ever cared any­thing about was Tru­man.”

Her inter­ests, while not in keep­ing with those of a lady of her time, place, race, and class, held enor­mous appeal for a lone­ly lit­tle boy with few play­mates his own age. Believ­ing in ghosts, tam­ing hum­ming­birds and cur­ing warts with an “old-time Indi­an cure” are just a few of Sook’s hob­bies he men­tions in the sto­ry, where­in her only name is “my friend.” She is:

small and spright­ly, like a ban­tam hen; but due to a long youth­ful ill­ness, her shoul­ders are piti­ful­ly hunched. Her face is remarkable–not unlike Lin­col­n’s, crag­gy like that, and tint­ed by sun and wind; but it is del­i­cate too, fine­ly boned, and her eyes are sher­ry-col­ored and timid.

Actress Geral­dine Page, then 43 and a favorite of Capote’s con­tem­po­rary, play­wright Ten­nessee Williams, imbued the “six­ty-some­thing” Sook with wide eyes and wild hair.

But the real star of the show is Capote him­self as nar­ra­tor. That famous nasal whine sets his “Christ­mas Mem­o­ry” apart from more gold­en-throat­ed hol­i­day voiceover work by Burl Ives, Greer Gar­son, and Fred Astaire. It also cuts through the trea­cle, as Bart Simp­son would say.

You can find “A Christ­mas Mem­o­ry” in this col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas” On His Hol­i­day Radio Show (2006)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Whiskey-Fueled Lin-Manuel Miranda Reimagines Hamilton as a Girl on Drunk History

in Comedy, History, Television, Theatre | December 2nd, 2016

Back in July of 1804, when Vice Pres­i­dent Aaron Burr fired a fatal round into the abdomen of for­mer Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury Alexan­der Hamil­ton, I won­der which sce­nario would have seemed more implau­si­ble: that these polit­i­cal rivals would one day be res­ur­rect­ed in the form of a black guy and a Nuy­or­i­can, or as two young women in reveal­ing­ly snug breech­es, above.

Time moves on. These days, your aver­age Hamil­ton-obsessed pre-teen may have trou­ble accept­ing that there was a time—Jan­u­ary 2015, to be exact—when most Amer­i­cans could­n’t say what the guy on the ten dol­lar bill was famous for.

I con­fess, until quite recent­ly, I was far more con­fi­dent in Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment’s fic­tion­al Bluth fam­i­ly’s exploits than any involv­ing Hamil­ton and Burr. This explains, in part, why I’m so drawn to the cast­ing instincts of Derek Waters’, cre­ator of Drunk His­to­ry. 

The most recent episode fea­tures Alia Shawkat, one of my favorite Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment play­ers as a sar­don­ic, pot­ty mouthed Hamil­ton.

No wor­ries that Drunk His­to­ry, which bills itself as a “liquored-up nar­ra­tion of our nation’s his­to­ry,” is the lat­est in a long line of John­ny-Come-Latelys, eager­ly bel­ly­ing up to the Hamil­ton trough.

Before Shawkat imbued him with her trade­mark edge, Drunk History’s Hamil­ton exud­ed the befud­dled sweet­ness of Shawkat’s besot­ted Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment cousin, Michael Cera, who orig­i­nat­ed the part in a video that gave rise to the series, below.

That one’s far slop­pi­er, and not just in terms of pro­duc­tion val­ues. The inau­gur­al nar­ra­tor, Mark Gagliar­di, was ren­dered a good deal more than three sheets to the wind by the bot­tle of scotch he downed on a sag­ging brown velour couch.

Amer­i­ca would not want to see its cur­rent sweet­heart, Hamilton’s play­wright and orig­i­nal lead­ing man, Lin-Manuel Miran­da in such a con­di­tion.

Where­as Gagliar­di seemed dan­ger­ous­ly close to need­ing the buck­et Waters thought­ful­ly posi­tioned near­by, a whiskey-fuelled Miran­da seems mere­ly the tini­est bit buzzed, sit­ting cross legged in his parent’s liv­ing room, flesh­ing out Hamilton’s sto­ry with bits he didn’t man­age to cram into his Pulitzer Prize-win­ning musi­cal, such as a bewigged Tony Hale (aka Buster Bluth) as James Mon­roe.

On the oth­er hand, he does describe the Reynolds Pam­phlet as “Dick 101” (and failed to recall Face­Tim­ing var­i­ous friends post-record­ing) so…

You’ll need a Com­e­dy Cen­tral sub­scrip­tion to view the com­plete episode online, but Shawkat’s ear­li­er Drunk His­to­ry turn as Grover Cleveland’s “It Girl” wife, Frances, is free for all, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Alexan­der Hamil­ton” Per­formed with Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage

Alexan­der Hamil­ton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poet­ry Evening

Watch a Wit­ty, Grit­ty, Hard­boiled Retelling of the Famous Aaron Burr-Alexan­der Hamil­ton Duel

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Only Surviving Behind-the-Scenes Footage of I Love Lucy, and It’s in Color! (1951)

in Comedy, Life, Music, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | November 25th, 2016


The endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of come­di­an Lucille Ball’s 6‑season sit­com, I Love Lucy, has result­ed in so many full-col­or col­lectibles, occa­sion­al view­ers may for­get that the show was filmed in black and white.

More ardent fans may have tuned in for the spe­cial col­orized episodes CBS aired a cou­ple of years ago, but the only exist­ing col­or footage of Lucy and her hus­band and co-star, Desi Arnaz, was cap­tured by a stealthy stu­dio audi­ence mem­ber.

The ubiq­ui­ty of smart phones have made unau­tho­rized celebri­ty shots com­mon­place, but con­sid­er that this reg­u­lar Joe man­aged to smug­gle a 16mm movie cam­era into the bleach­ers of pro­duc­er Jess Oppen­heimer’s tight­ly con­trolled set. This covert oper­a­tion on Octo­ber 12, 1951 shed light on the true col­ors of both the Trop­i­cana night­club and Ricar­do apart­ment sets.

Oppenheimer’s son, Jess, even­tu­al­ly obtained the footage, insert­ing it into the appro­pri­ate scenes from “The Audi­tion,” the episode from which they were snagged.

The Har­po Marx-esque Pro­fes­sor char­ac­ter Lucy plays is a holdover from both the pilot and the vaude­ville show she and Arnaz cre­at­ed and toured nation­al­ly in 1950, in an attempt to con­vince CBS that audi­ences were ready for a com­e­dy based on a “mixed mar­riage” such as their own.

In addi­tion to Arnaz’ unbri­dled con­ga play­ing, the home movie, above, con­tains a love­ly, unguard­ed moment at the 2:40 mark, of the stars calm­ly await­ing slat­ing, side by side on the sound­stage.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bat­girl Fights for Equal Pay in a 1960s Tele­vi­sion Ad Sup­port­ing The Equal Pay Act

Watch the First Com­mer­cial Ever Shown on Amer­i­can TV, 1941

Watch Dragnet’s 1967 LSD Episode: #85 on TV Guide’s List of the Great­est Episodes of All Time

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Free: Watch 92 Episodes of the Surrealist Cartoon, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Featuring Björk, Thom Yorke & More

in Comics/Cartoons, Television | November 15th, 2016

Head over to AdultSwim.com and you can watch online 92 episodes of Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Not famil­iar with the show? Here’s how Vox frames it:

One of the most decep­tive­ly influ­en­tial series of the past sev­er­al decades, Space Ghost took the char­ac­ters from a junky old Han­na-Bar­bera series and insert­ed them into the mid­dle of a talk-show set­ting, where they could have the most pos­si­bil­i­ty for utter strange­ness. Celebri­ties dropped by to be inter­viewed, while the rest of the show’s back­stage shenani­gans played out with an utter­ly straight face, even though one of the major char­ac­ters was an evil pray­ing man­tis named Zorak. Was it ter­ri­bly sophis­ti­cat­ed? No. But it invent­ed a whole new pro­gram­ming bloc — Adult Swim — and proved sur­re­al­ism could sell in late-night TV.

Con­se­quence of Sound is also quick to note that Space Ghost Coast to Coast “brought an impres­sive line­up of musi­cal guests to the table, includ­ing Pave­ment, Dave Grohl, Thurston Moore, David Byrne, Thom Yorke, Willie Nel­son, and Space Ghost’s “wife”, Björk.”

You can catch Björk and Radio­head­’s Thom Yorke in the clips above. Watch all episodes here. And spend a moment think­ing about the show’s ani­ma­tor, Clay Mar­tin Cro­ker, who recent­ly died at the all-too-young age of 54.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book Plus Archive

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Free Com­ic Books Turn Kids Onto Physics: Start with the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

The Pulp Fic­tion Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Sto­ries That Enter­tained a Gen­er­a­tion of Read­ers (1896–1946) 

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The Power of Conformity: 1962 Episode of Candid Camera Reveals the Strange Psychology of Riding Elevators

in Comedy, Life, Psychology, Television | November 7th, 2016

Watch tele­vi­sion cre­ator Allen Funt pre­dict flash mobs in the 1962 episode of Can­did Cam­era above, filmed some forty years before Harp­er’s mag­a­zine edi­tor, Bill Wasik, found­ed the move­ment with anony­mous­ly e‑mailed instruc­tions for a coor­di­nat­ed pub­lic action.

The stunt, enti­tled “Face the Rear,” was pulled off by a hand­ful of “agents”—a phrase coined by Improv Everywhere’s founder Char­lie Todd to describe the pok­er-faced par­tic­i­pants con­jur­ing a secret­ly agreed upon alter­nate real­i­ty to con­found (and not always delight) its tar­get sub­ject, along with unsus­pect­ing bystanders.

Com­pared to the grand-scale the­atrics that have trans­formed an upscale mar­ket into a scene from La Travi­a­ta and infil­trate sub­ways world­wide with thou­sands of pants-less rid­ers every year, this prank is quite sub­tle in the exe­cu­tion.

It suc­ceeds on our tac­it under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes prop­er ele­va­tor behav­ior when oth­ers pas­sen­gers are present. Left to our own devices, we can sing, dance, and let the mask of pro­pri­ety slip in any num­ber of ways. Once oth­ers enter? We share the space and face for­ward.

But what if every­one who enters inex­plic­a­bly faces the back wall?

What would you do?

As hypo­thet­i­cals go, this one’s not near­ly so weighty as con­sid­er­ing whether you’d have fol­lowed the script of Stan­ley Milgram’s obe­di­ence exper­i­ments or put your own fam­i­ly at risk by hid­ing Anne Frank.

Still…

For the sub­jects of Can­did Cam­era’s ele­va­tor gag, the pres­sure to suc­cumb to group think quick­ly over­ruled years of learned phys­i­cal behav­ior.

And nor­ma­tive ele­va­tor phys­i­cal­i­ty def­i­nite­ly springs from social cues, as John Dono­van, host of NPR’s “Around the Nation” said, in an inter­view with Lee Gray, author of From Ascend­ing Rooms to Express Ele­va­tors: A His­to­ry of the Pas­sen­ger Ele­va­tor in the 19th Cen­tu­ry:

I know a psy­chol­o­gist who works with teenagers who have autism who—he uses encour­ag­ing to learn skills that will allow them to be inde­pen­dent in the world to get out on their own. And one of his lessons with some of the teenagers is what to do in an ele­va­tor because he says that the typ­i­cal kid that he works with, when the door is opened, and he’s been told that he should step inside, will step inside and face the back wall because nobody has told him that every­body else in the ele­va­tor is going to turn around and face the front doors…

Can­did Camera’s stunts were always framed as com­e­dy, though its cre­ator, Funt, was well versed in psy­chol­o­gy, hav­ing served as child psy­chol­o­gist Kurt Lewin’s research assis­tant at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty.

In an arti­cle for the Archive of Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion, writer Amy Loomis iden­ti­fied five premis­es into which the aver­age Can­did Cam­era gag could fall:

  1. Revers­ing nor­mal or antic­i­pat­ed pro­ce­dures
  2. Expos­ing basic human weak­ness­es such as igno­rance or van­i­ty
  3. Using the ele­ment of sur­prise
  4. Ful­fill­ing fan­tasies
  5. Plac­ing some­thing in a bizarre or inap­pro­pri­ate set­ting

“Face the Rear” was a case where con­for­mi­ty born of an unex­pect­ed rever­sal in nor­mal pro­ce­dure yield­ed laughs, at the gen­tle expense of a series of unsus­pect­ing sub­jects, whose solo rides were dis­rupt­ed by a bunch of Can­did Cam­era oper­a­tives.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Footage from the Psy­chol­o­gy Exper­i­ment That Shocked the World: Milgram’s Obe­di­ence Study (1961)

The Lit­tle Albert Exper­i­ment: The Per­verse 1920 Study That Made a Baby Afraid of San­ta Claus & Bun­nies

This is Your Brain on Sex and Reli­gion: Exper­i­ments in Neu­ro­science

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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Hear 20 Minutes of Mark Frost’s New Secret History of Twin Peaks, the Book Fans Have Waited 25 Years to Read

in Audio Books, Books, Television | October 31st, 2016

We live in a good time to be a Twin Peaks fan. Amid the buzz of a third sea­son of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s inno­v­a­tive­ly sur­re­al prime­time dra­ma pre­mier­ing on Show­time next year, we’ve enjoyed the emer­gence of con­tem­po­rary Twin Peaks-relat­ed mate­ri­als (David Lynch’s hand-drawn map of the tit­u­lar small-town set­ting, the Japan­ese cof­fee com­mer­cials he set there) as well as new­er Twin Peaks-themed projects from oth­er cre­ators (an Atari game, an ele­men­tary school play). And now we can read Frost’s nov­el The Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks, billed by its pub­lish­er as “the sto­ry mil­lions of fans have been wait­ing to get their hands on for 25 long years.”

The nov­el­’s “362 pages cov­er what hap­pened to some of the peo­ple of that icon­ic fic­tion­al town since we last saw them 25 years ago, but the time­line starts as ear­ly as the 1800s with the jour­nals of Lewis and Clark,” says fan site Wel­come to Twin Peaks. It also “also offers a deep­er glimpse into the cen­tral mys­tery that was only touched on by the orig­i­nal series, and will include over 100 four-col­or illus­tra­tions and pho­tographs.” The near­ly ten-hour audio­book ver­sion fea­tures the voic­es of orig­i­nal cast mem­bers like Michael Horse as Deputy Hawk, Russ Tam­blyn as Dr. Lawrence Jaco­by, and most Twin Peaks of all, Kyle MacLach­lan as FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er.

In the video and audio clips at the top of the post, you can sam­ple The Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks’ audio­book expe­ri­ence and get a sense of how it dif­fers from that of a nor­mal audio­book — and how the text itself dif­fers from that of a stan­dard nov­el. It takes the form not of a straight-ahead nar­ra­tive but a thor­ough FBI dossier, the print ver­sion of which Mered­ith Bor­ders of Birth.Movies.Death. describes as “an attrac­tive mul­ti-media hodge­podge, with Xerox­ed mani­la fold­ers and sticky notes, arrest reports, book cov­ers, pho­tos and sketch­es and maps and news­pa­per clip­pings.” The longer excerpt here delves into the sto­ry of Josie Packard, the wid­owed own­er of Packard Sawmill and a par­tic­u­lar­ly mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ter in a cast of mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ters. Not to give too much away, but her past involves a fash­ion empire, a Hong Kong drug tri­ad, and a “leg­en­dar­i­ly beau­ti­ful pros­ti­tute.”

As always in Twin Peaks, the more you learn, the stranger things get. But a true fan wants just that, and they can have it and then some by pick­ing up their own copy of the book or audio­book, the lat­ter of which they can get for free if they take audio­book provider Audi­ble up on their 30-day tri­al offer.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

Ele­men­tary School Stu­dents Per­form in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Online Every Presidential Debate Since 1960–and Revisit America’s Saner Political Days

in History, Politics, Television | October 17th, 2016

On Wednes­day night, Las Vegas will mer­ci­ful­ly host the final pres­i­den­tial debate. And it promis­es to be anoth­er rated‑R affair. You’d except noth­ing less from the can­di­date who’s going to “make Amer­i­ca great again.”

If you want a spec­ta­cle your kids can actu­al­ly watch, then shut your TVs and trav­el back into Amer­i­ca’s past. Cre­at­ed by PBS and Microsoft, the web site watchthedebates.org lets you watch every tele­vised pres­i­den­tial debate since 1960. They’re gen­er­al­ly sub­stan­tive, all rat­ed PG, and cer­tain­ly a lit­tle nos­tal­gia-induc­ing.

Above you can watch Kennedy and Nixon go at it in the first tele­vised debate (1960). Head over to www.watchthedebates.org for more.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

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