Watch Vincent Price Turn Into Edgar Allan Poe & Read Four Classic Poe Stories (1970)

in Film, Television | October 22nd, 2015

Can you have a Hal­loween with­out Edgar Allan Poe? Sure you can — but here at Open Cul­ture, we don’t rec­om­mend it. So that you need not go Poe-less on this, or any, Hal­loween night, we’ve fea­tured not just his com­plete works free to down­load, but oth­er mate­r­i­al like the ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of “The Tell-Tale Heart” as well as ani­ma­tions of his oth­er sto­ries; Poe read­ings by the likes of Christo­pher Lee, James Earl Jones, and Iggy Pop; and Orson Welles’ inter­pre­ta­tion of his work on an Alan Par­sons Project album.

We also believe that you should­n’t have to endure a Price­less Hal­loween — that is to say, a Hal­loween with­out Vin­cent Price. Though he proved his ver­sa­til­i­ty in a wide vari­ety of gen­res through­out his long act­ing career, his­to­ry has remem­bered Price first and fore­most for his work in hor­ror, no doubt thanks in large part to his pos­ses­sion of a voice per­fect­ly suit­ed to the ele­gant­ly sin­is­ter. It also made him an ide­al teller of Poe’s inge­nious­ly macabre tales, which you can expe­ri­ence for your­self in the record­ings we’ve post­ed of Price read­ing Poe, a playlist which also includes read­ings by Price’s equal­ly ver­sa­tile Basil Rath­bone.

Rath­bone may also have got to read Poe, the work, but despite his huge num­ber of roles on stage and screen, he nev­er actu­al­ly played Poe, the man. But Price did, in the spe­cial An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe, the clos­est any of us will get to an audi­ence with the trou­bled, bril­liant, and ter­ri­fy­ing­ly inven­tive writer him­self. In it, Price-as-Poe takes the stage and, over the course of an hour, weaves into his per­for­mance four of his most endur­ing sto­ries: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Sphinx,” “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” and “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum.” Go on, join Edgar Allan Poe in his draw­ing room this Hal­loween by hav­ing Price bring him to life on your screen — it will guar­an­tee you a mem­o­rable hol­i­day evening.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe on His Birth­day

Watch the 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Nar­rat­ed by James Mason

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

Christo­pher Lee (R.I.P.) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and From “The Fall of the House of Ush­er”

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Clas­sic Album by The Alan Par­sons Project

Edgar Allan Poe Ani­mat­ed: Watch Four Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries

The Fall of the House of Ush­er: Poe’s Clas­sic Tale Turned Into 1928 Avant Garde Film, Script­ed by e.e. cum­mings

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Young Hunter S. Thompson Appears on the Classic TV Game Show, To Tell the Truth (1967)

in Books, Television | October 15th, 2015

Once upon a time, avant-garde com­posers, sur­re­al­ist painters, and Gonzo jour­nal­ists made guest appear­ances on the most main­stream Amer­i­can game shows. It does­n’t hap­pen much any­more.

We’ve shown you John Cage per­form on I’ve Got a Secret in 1960; Sal­vador Dalí do his Dalí schtick on What’s My Line in 1952; and a young Frank Zap­pa turn a bicy­cle into a musi­cal instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show in ’63. Now we can add to the list a young Hunter S. Thomp­son mak­ing an appear­ance on To Tell the Truth, one of the longest-run­ning TV game shows in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. The episode (above) aired on Feb­ru­ary 20, 1967, the year after Thomp­son pub­lished his first major book of jour­nal­ism, Hel­l’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs. (See him get con­front­ed by the Angels here.)

If you’re not famil­iar with the show, To Tell the Truth works like this:

The show fea­tures a pan­el of four celebri­ties whose object is the cor­rect iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of a described con­tes­tant who has an unusu­al occu­pa­tion or expe­ri­ence. This cen­tral char­ac­ter is accom­pa­nied by two impos­tors who pre­tend to be the cen­tral char­ac­ter; togeth­er, the three per­sons are said to belong to a “team of chal­lengers.” The celebri­ty pan­elists ques­tion the three con­tes­tants; the impos­tors are allowed to lie but the cen­tral char­ac­ter is sworn “to tell the truth”. After ques­tion­ing, the pan­el attempts to iden­ti­fy which of the three chal­lengers is telling the truth and is thus the cen­tral char­ac­ter.

Giv­en the whole premise of the show, Thomp­son, only 30 years old, was still an unrec­og­niz­able face on Amer­i­ca’s cul­tur­al scene. But, with the pub­li­ca­tion of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas just around the cor­ner, all of that was about to change.

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 @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Read 18 Lost Sto­ries From Hunter S. Thompson’s For­got­ten Stint As a For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

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When Frank Zappa & Miles Davis Played a Drug Dealer and a Pimp on Miami Vice

in Music, Television | October 14th, 2015

For all the neon-Fer­rari-and-raw-silk gar­ish­ness the show now seems to embody, Mia­mi Vice (1984–1990) paid uncom­mon atten­tion to cul­tur­al detail. Music, for instance, did­n’t get thrown onto its sound­track, but care­ful­ly select­ed to reflect both the mid-80s zeit­geist and the aes­thet­ic of a par­tic­u­lar episode. Any time you tuned in, you could hear the likes of Devo, Phil Collins, The Tubes, Depeche Mode, or the Alan Par­sons project behind the action. Some­times you could also see musi­cians onscreen, involved in the action, albeit musi­cians of a some­what dif­fer­ent kind: the inno­v­a­tive exper­i­men­tal com­pos­er and rock­er Frank Zap­pa, for instance, once appeared as “weasel dust” deal­er Mario Fuente.

That hap­pened on “Pay­back,” the nine­teenth episode of Mia­mi Vice’s sec­ond sea­son which aired on March 14, 1986, a clip of which you can watch at the top of the post. (Nat­u­ral­ly, the scene takes place on a boat staffed with armed thugs and biki­ni girls.) If, after the cliffhang­er it ends on, you sim­ply must see the whole thing, you may be able to watch the full episode on Hulu. The same goes for Novem­ber 8, 1985’s “Junk Love,” anoth­er episode from the same sea­son with no less dis­tin­guished a musi­cian guest star than Miles Davis.

miles on miami vice

“The idea is that Crock­ett and Tubbs arrest the own­er of a whore­house,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Mar­tin Schnei­der, “a dude named ‘Ivory Jones’ — played by Miles.” And while “most of Davis’ dia­logue is semi-incom­pre­hen­si­ble… you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the genius behind Bitch­es Brew croak, ‘Watch that big cab­in cruis­er, he has a thing about them.’ ” We’ve embed­ded part of “Junk Love” just below, which, since “Ivory is a scum­bag but col­lab­o­rat­ing with the local con­stab­u­lary,” offers “plen­ty of scenes of him hang­ing out with Crock­ett and Tubbs.” Add to this Leonard Cohen’s 1986 role as malev­o­lent French secret ser­vice agent Fran­cois Zolan, and you real­ize that Mia­mi Vice has turned out to cater straight to cul­tur­al­ly omniv­o­rous 21st cen­tu­ry view­ers: those who can appre­ci­ate Songs of Love and Hate as well as a neon Fer­rari, Freak Out! as much as raw silk, and Devo as much as Davis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith on The Mon­kees (1967)

The Paint­ings of Miles Davis

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Bob Dylan Appears in Rare TV Ad: Watch IBM’s Super Computer Offer a Literary Analysis of His Songs

in Music, Television | October 6th, 2015

To my knowl­edge, Bob Dylan has only appeared in a hand­ful of TV com­mer­cials over the decades, includ­ing most notably a bizarre ad for Vic­to­ri­a’s Secret back in 2004. Now you can add anoth­er to the small list. Last night, IBM debuted a new ad with the icon­ic singer-song­writer. And this time around, Dylan isn’t ped­dling bras. Rather, it’s IBM’s cog­ni­tive sys­tem called “Wat­son,” which promis­es to ana­lyze data for cor­po­ra­tions in all kinds of inter­est­ing ways. Says IBM:

Humans cre­ate a stag­ger­ing amount of infor­ma­tion. Poet­ry, equa­tions, films, self­ies, diag­noses, dis­cov­er­ies. Data pours from our mobile devices, social net­works, from every dig­i­tized and con­nect­ed sys­tem we use. 80% of this data is vir­tu­al­ly invis­i­ble to computers—including near­ly all the infor­ma­tion cap­tured in lan­guage, sight and sound. Until now.

IBM Wat­son applies its cog­ni­tive tech­nolo­gies to help change how we approach and under­stand all of this infor­ma­tion. Every­thing that is dig­i­tal has the poten­tial to become cog­ni­tive, and, in a sense, be able to “think.”

Wat­son can bring cog­ni­tion to every­thing and every­one. To evolve in this data-dri­ven cul­ture, every busi­ness will need to become a cog­ni­tive busi­ness.

To demon­strate its ana­lyt­i­cal pow­ers, IBM asked Wat­son to ana­lyze Dylan’s lyrics, and it con­clud­ed that the major themes of Dylan’s songs are “time pass­es and love fades”. It’s a con­clu­sion, I’m sure, that nev­er dawned on casu­al or ardent fans of Dylan’s music.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan’s Con­tro­ver­sial 2004 Victoria’s Secret Ad: His First & Last Appear­ance in a Com­mer­cial

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

Andy Warhol’s ‘Screen Test’ of Bob Dylan: A Clas­sic Meet­ing of Egos

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

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The Night Ed Sullivan Scared a Nation with the Apocalyptic Animated Short, A Short Vision (1956)

in Film, History, Television | October 1st, 2015

On May 27, 1956, mil­lions of Amer­i­cans tuned in to The Ed Sul­li­van Show, expect­ing the usu­al vari­ety of come­di­ans, tal­ents and musi­cal guests. What they weren’t pre­pared for was a short ani­mat­ed film that Sul­li­van intro­duced thus­ly:

Just last week you read about the H‑bomb being dropped. Now two great Eng­lish writ­ers, two very imag­i­na­tive writ­ers — I’m gonna tell you if you have young­sters in the liv­ing room tell them not to be alarmed at this ‘cause it’s a fan­ta­sy, the whole thing is ani­mat­ed — but two Eng­lish writ­ers, Joan and Peter Foldes, wrote a thing which they called “A Short Vision” in which they won­dered what might hap­pen to the ani­mal pop­u­la­tion of the world if an H‑bomb were dropped. It’s pro­duced by George K. Arthur and I’d like you to see it. It is grim, but I think we can all stand it to real­ize that in war there is no win­ner.

And with that, he screened the hor­rif­ic bit of ani­ma­tion you can watch above. At the height of the atom­ic age, this film was a short sharp shock. Its vision of a nuclear holo­caust is told in the style of a fable or sto­ry­book, with both ani­mals and humans wit­ness­ing their last moments on earth, and end­ing with the extin­guish­ing of a tiny flame. The most­ly sta­t­ic art work is all the more effec­tive when faces melt into skulls.

A Short Vision

Many chil­dren didn’t leave the room of course, and the web­site Conel­rad has a won­der­ful in-depth his­to­ry of that night and col­lect­ed mem­o­ries from peo­ple who were trau­ma­tized by the short as a child. One child’s hair–or rather a small sec­tion of his hair–turned white from fright.

It was as for­ma­tive a moment as The Day After would be to chil­dren of the ‘80s. The papers the next day report­ed on the short in sala­cious detail (“Shock Wave From A‑Bomb Film Rocks Nation’s TV Audi­ence”) and Sul­li­van not only defend­ed his deci­sion, but showed the film again on June 10.

The film was cre­at­ed by mar­ried cou­ple Peter and Joan Foldes, and shot for lit­tle mon­ey in their kitchen on a makeshift ani­ma­tion table. Peter was a Hun­gar­i­an immi­grant who had stud­ied at the Slade School of Art and the Court­laud Insti­tute and appren­ticed with John Halas where he learned ani­ma­tion.

(Halas is best known for the ani­mat­ed fea­ture ver­sion of Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm.)

A Short Vision would go on in Sep­tem­ber of that year to win best exper­i­men­tal film at the 17th Venice Film Fes­ti­val. (Peter Foldes would lat­er make anoth­er dis­turb­ing and award-win­ning short called Hunger.)

Once so shock­ing, A Short Vision fell out of cir­cu­la­tion. But a gen­er­a­tion grew up remem­ber­ing that they had seen some­thing hor­rif­ic on tele­vi­sion that night (in black and white, not the col­or ver­sion above.) For a time, it was hard to find a men­tion of the film on IMDB and a dam­aged edu­ca­tion­al print was one of the few copies cir­cu­lat­ing around. For­tu­nate­ly the British Film Insti­tute has made a pris­tine copy avail­able of this impor­tant Cold War doc­u­ment.

What we want to know is this: Did Steven Spiel­berg see this movie that Sun­day night in 1956? He would have been 10 years old.

A Short Vision will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via A Wast­ed Life

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lyn­de & the Orig­i­nal Cast of Bye Bye Birdie Appear on The Ed Sul­li­van Show (1961)

Ani­mat­ed Films Made Dur­ing the Cold War Explain Why Amer­i­ca is Excep­tion­al­ly Excep­tion­al

Dizzy Gille­spie Wor­ries About Nuclear & Envi­ron­men­tal Dis­as­ter in Vin­tage Ani­mat­ed Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Mick Jagger Acts in The Nightingale, a Televised Play from 1983

in K-12, Literature, Music, Television | September 22nd, 2015

Pity the man who has every­thing. Sat­is­fac­tion is but fleet­ing.

One won­ders if rock god Mick Jag­ger might know a thing or two about the con­di­tion. He does­n’t seem to know all that much about act­ing, as evi­denced by his turn in The Nightin­gale episode of Shel­ley Duvall’s Faerie Tale The­atre series.

No mat­ter. His art­less­ness is part of the charm. As the spoiled emper­or of Cathay, he makes no effort to alter his Mock­ney accent. He also keeps his famous strut under wraps, weight­ed down by his roy­al robes (and top knot!).

The 1983 episode cleaves close­ly to the Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen orig­i­nal that inspired it. To sum­ma­rize the plot:

The emper­or demands an audi­ence with a nightin­gale, after hear­ing tell of its song, but the toad­ies who com­prise his court are too rar­i­fied to locate one in the for­est.

A low­ly kitchen maid (Bar­bara Her­shey, on the brink of star­dom) is the only one with the know how to deliv­er.

But the emper­or is fick­le — it isn’t long before his head is turned by a jew­el encrust­ed, mechan­ics facsimile…a com­mon enough rock n’ roll pit­fall.

A large part of Faerie Tale The­ater’s mag­ic was the jux­ta­po­si­tion of high wattage stars and extreme­ly low pro­duc­tion bud­gets. There’s an ele­ment of stu­dent film to the pro­ceed­ings. The video­tape on which it was shot flat­tens rather than flat­ters. This is not a crit­i­cism. It makes me awful­ly fond of the big shots who agreed to par­tic­i­pate.

In addi­tion to Jag­ger and Her­shey, look for Angel­i­ca Hus­ton, Edward James Olmos, and Jagger’s then girl­friend, Jer­ry Hall, in small­er roles. There’s also Bud Cort of Harold and Maude, flap­ping around the sparse­ly dec­o­rat­ed for­est like a vis­i­tor from an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry, nay, plan­et.

A curi­ous enter­prise indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Andy Warhol’s 85 Polaroid Por­traits: Mick Jag­ger, Yoko Ono, O.J. Simp­son & Many Oth­ers (1970–1987)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will be appear­ing at the Brook­lyn Book Fes­ti­val in New York City this week­end.. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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A Wealth of Free Documentaries on All Things Japanese: From Bento Boxes to Tea Gardens, Ramen & Bullet Trains

in Television, Travel | September 11th, 2015

“I used to be OBSESSED with Japan­ese cul­ture,” wrote an uncom­mon­ly thought­ful Youtube com­menter. “I miss that part of me. Try­ing to search for it again. That’s when I was the hap­pi­est.” Many of us west­ern­ers — or real­ly, many of us non-Japan­ese — go through sim­i­lar peri­ods of affin­i­ty and avid­i­ty for all things Japan­ese. Some of us put it away with our child­ish things; some of us make Japan­ese cul­ture a life­long inter­est, or even the stuff of our pro­fes­sions. I myself got into Japan ear­ly, at some point found myself put off by the just slight­ly too obses­sive Japan­ese pop-cul­ture fan com­mu­ni­ty in the West (though I admit­ted­ly read that com­ment below a music video with four mil­lion views), and lat­er returned with a much more seri­ous intent to under­stand.

But to under­stand what? The Japan­ese lan­guage, cer­tain­ly, and Japan­ese film, Japan­ese cities, Japan­ese aes­thet­ics, Japan­ese tech­nol­o­gy — all the fruits of the cul­ture that stoke in the rest of the world both deep envy and, some­times, faint sus­pi­cion. Why do they per­sist in using writ­ing sys­tems that, despite their con­sid­er­able beau­ty, come with such aggra­vat­ing dif­fi­cul­ty? The com­pre­hen­sive sub­way net­works in metrop­o­lis­es like Tokyo and Osa­ka func­tion day in and day out with aston­ish­ing reach and reli­a­bil­i­ty, but why do their rid­ers tol­er­ate crowd­ed­ness even to the point of get­ting uncom­plain­ing­ly crammed inside the cars by white-gloved atten­dants? And why, despite the Japan­ese love for ele­gant design and advanced con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy, do their web sites look so jum­bled and con­fus­ing?

NHK World can put you on the road to under­stand­ing these and oth­er ques­tions with Japanol­o­gy, their series of Eng­lish-lan­guage doc­u­men­taries explor­ing the things large and small, all sur­pris­ing to the for­eign­er, that make up the fab­ric of Japan­ese life. BEGIN Japanol­o­gy, their series for the Japan-intrigued but not nec­es­sar­i­ly Japan-expe­ri­enced, has come to six sea­sons so far.

At the top of the post, you can see its episode on ben­to, those painstak­ing­ly pre­pared lunch box­es, sim­pli­fied ver­sions of which even those who know noth­ing of Japan have seen at gro­cery stores the world over. To learn more about ben­to’s place in Japan­ese cul­ture, pro­ceed on to the rel­e­vant episode of Japanol­o­gy Plus, NHK’s series for the even more insa­tiably curi­ous Japanophile. And cou­ple with an episode on Ramen above.

Japanol­o­gy Plus also ded­i­cates one of its half-hour pro­grams to the Shinkansen, com­mon­ly known as the “bul­let train,” that quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese mode of trans­porta­tion that, with its impec­ca­ble half-cen­tu­ry record of speed, safe­ty, and punc­tu­al­i­ty, has become the pride of the land. (I, for one, hold out hope that Oba­ma will make The Onion’s “Ambi­tious Plan to Fly Amer­i­cans to Japan to Use Their Trains” a real­i­ty.) But if you don’t feel quite ready yet to board a Shinkansen, much less learn about its inner work­ings, try the Begin Japanol­o­gy Spe­cial Mini series, which offers five-minute dis­tilled doc­u­men­taries on such icons of Japan as tea gar­dens, hot springs, and Mount Fuji. Watch­ing all these, I feel glad indeed that I’ve already got the tick­ets booked for my next flight over there. Do you have yours?

You can find Japanol­o­gy added to our list of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Japan’s Earth­quake Proof Under­ground Bike Stor­age Sys­tem: The Future is Now

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917–1931)

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Let’s Learn Japan­ese: Two Clas­sic Video Series to Get You Start­ed in the Lan­guage

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Stream Jim Rockford’s Answering Machine Messages: All Six Seasons

in Television | September 8th, 2015

The Rock­ford Files hit the air­waves in Sep­tem­ber 1974, and until the show end­ed in 1980, each episode began in the same way. Dur­ing the title sequence, you’d hear a phone ring, and then an answer­ing machine would start to play, “This is Jim Rock­ford. At the tone, leave your name and mes­sage. I’ll get back to you.” With each new episode, a caller would leave a dif­fer­ent mes­sage after the beep:

“It’s Nor­ma at the mar­ket. It bounced. You want me to tear it up, send it back, or put it with the oth­ers?”

“It’s Lau­rie at the trail­er park. A space opened up. Do you want me to save it or are the cops going to let you stay where you are?”

“It’s Audra. Remem­ber last sum­mer at Pat’s? I’ve got a twelve hour lay­over before I go to Chica­go. How about it?”

“This is the mes­sage phone com­pa­ny. I see you’re using our unit, now how about pay­ing for it?”

“I staked out that guy only it did­n’t work out like you said. Please call me. Room 234. Coun­ty Hos­pi­tal.”

“Hey Rock­ford, very fun­ny. I ain’t laugh­ing. You’re gonna get yours.”

The short mes­sages told you pret­ty much every­thing you need­ed to know about Jim Rock­ford. He’s a pri­vate detec­tive liv­ing pay­check to pay­check. He cuts cor­ners and bends rules when he needs to. He has friends among women, and ene­mies among men.  He’s a quin­tes­sen­tial pri­vate dick.

In total, 122 dif­fer­ent answer­ing machine mes­sages were left dur­ing the run of the series. (Appar­ent­ly, many fea­tured the voic­es of 1970s celebri­ties and pub­lic fig­ures.) You can play Sea­son 1 above, and the remain­ing sea­sons below.

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