The Rolling Stones Sing Jingle for Rice Krispies Commercial (1964)

in Music, Television | November 10th, 2011

Kel­log­g’s first start­ed mar­ket­ing Rice Krispies way back in 1928, and, ever since, we’ve grown accus­tomed to whole­some adver­tis­ing cam­paigns that fea­ture the car­toon mas­cots Snap, Crack­le and Pop. (See ad from 1939.) For a brief moment in 1964, all of this whole­some­ness was put aside when the J. Wal­ter Thomp­son ad agency worked with the Rolling Stones to cre­ate a hip­per, more inspired jin­gle. The result­ing com­mer­cial aired briefly only in the UK…

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!

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Kim Kardashian Gets Divorced; Salman Rushdie Writes Limerick

in Literature, Poetry, Television | November 3rd, 2011

Per­haps you know the back­sto­ry; per­haps you don’t. This week, socialite and real­i­ty “star” Kim Kar­dashi­an announced that her 72-day mar­riage to Kris Humphries will end in divorce. In response, the tabloids buzzed … and famed author Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Chil­dren, The Satan­ic Vers­es and The Moor’s Last Sigh) took to Twit­ter and offered up a nice lit­tle lim­er­ick. It starts with the blue sec­tion and moves up the page…

Fol­low the author at @SalmanRushdie, and us at @openculture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Salman Rushdie on Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

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The Fabric of the Cosmos, Exploring Mysteries of Physics, Kicks Off with Live Webcast Tonight

in Physics, Television | November 2nd, 2011

The­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Bri­an Greene returns to PBS, this time pre­sent­ing The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos, a four-part look at the “mind-bog­gling real­i­ty beneath the sur­face of our every­day world.” The first seg­ment, “What Is Space?,” airs tonight at 9pm. Then come the remain­ing install­ments — “The Illu­sion of Time” (11/9), “Quan­tum Leap” (11/16), and “Uni­verse or Mul­ti­verse?” (11/23). If you can’t catch the episodes on TV, they will be streamed online too at video.pbs.org.

Bonus: At 10 pm east­ern time tonight, PBS will host a live, inter­ac­tive web­cast with Bri­an Greene and some spe­cial guests: renowned the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Leonard Susskind (watch his the­o­ret­i­cal physics cours­es online) and Saul Perl­mut­ter, win­ner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Togeth­er, they will “explore how sci­en­tists are piec­ing togeth­er the most com­plete pic­ture yet of space, time, and the uni­verse.” Get more details on the live event here.

Unre­lat­ed bonus: Tonight, at 6 pm east­ern time, MoMA will stream online “The Lan­guage of Objects,” a con­ver­sa­tion fea­tur­ing Ken­neth Gold­smith, poet; Ben Green­man, author and edi­tor, The New York­er; Leanne Shap­ton, illus­tra­tor, author, and pub­lish­er; and Cin­tra Wil­son, cul­ture crit­ic. Get more infor­ma­tion and watch here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Marshall McLuhan on the Stupidest Debate in the History of Debating (1976)

in History, Music, Politics, Television | October 13th, 2011

In Sep­tem­ber 1976, Jim­my Carter and Ger­ald Ford squared off in a pres­i­den­tial debate, and the fol­low­ing day, the leg­endary com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist Mar­shall McLuhan appeared on the TODAY show, then host­ed by Tom Brokaw, to offer some almost real-time analy­sis of the debate. The first tele­vised pres­i­den­tial debate was famous­ly held in 1960, and it pit­ted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon. Six­teen years lat­er, pun­dits and cit­i­zens were still try­ing to make sense of the for­mat. Was the tele­vised debate a new and vital part of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy? Or was it a care­ful­ly con­trolled act of polit­i­cal per­for­mance? For McLuhan, there was still some ide­al­is­tic sense that tele­vised debates could enhance our democ­ra­cy, assum­ing the mes­sage was suit­ed to the medi­um. But McLuhan came away dis­il­lu­sioned, call­ing the Carter/Ford spec­ta­cle “the most stu­pid arrange­ment of any debate in the his­to­ry of debat­ing” and chalk­ing up tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties (watch them here) to the medi­um rag­ing against the mes­sage.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

Mar­shall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Think­ing

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Sir Ian McKellen Reads Manual for Changing Tires in Dramatic Voice

in Film, Television | October 13th, 2011

Sir Ian McK­ellen shows why he has been nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award not once, but two times. The actor (Lord of the Rings, King Lear) reads a tire repair man­u­al in dra­mat­ic voice  … and, of course, pulls it off — shades of Peter Sell­ers per­form­ing The Bea­t­les in Shake­speare­an mode and Richard Drey­fuss giv­ing a dra­mat­ic read­ing of the iTunes End-user license agree­ment. And, oh, let us not for­get Christo­pher Walken’s hilar­i­ous read­ing of Lady Gaga’s Pok­er Face.

H/T @matthiasrascher

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!

Ian McK­ellen Stars in King Lear

Sir Ian McK­ellen Puts on a Daz­zling One-Man Shake­speare Show

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

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Steve Jobs Narrates the First “Think Different” Ad (Never Aired)

in Apple, Media, Television | October 10th, 2011

One last Steve Jobs’ remem­brance seems com­plete­ly fit­ting for our site. You’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with Apple’s famous “Think Dif­fer­ent” adver­tis­ing cam­paign from the late 1990s, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the leg­endary TV com­mer­cial that fea­tured 17 icon­ic fig­ures: Albert Ein­stein, Bob Dylan, Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., Richard Bran­son, John Lennon, Buck­min­ster Fuller, Thomas Edi­son, Muham­mad Ali, Ted Turn­er, Maria Callas, Mahat­ma Gand­hi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitch­cock, Martha Gra­ham, Jim Hen­son, Frank Lloyd Wright and Pablo Picas­so.

Most of these “crazy ones, mis­fits, rebels and rule break­ers” have been fea­tured on Open Cul­ture through­out the years (click the links above), and what make this ad spe­cial is that Steve Jobs nar­rates it him­self. The orig­i­nal TV ad — the one that made it on air — had Richard Drey­fuss doing the voiceover…

Find more Crazy Ones in our col­lec­tion of 275 Cul­tur­al Icons.

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Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Comedy Classic

in Comedy, Film, Television | October 6th, 2011

Yes­ter­day was the 42nd anniver­sary of the first broad­cast of Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus. The orig­i­nal BBC show aired for only five years, but its impact on pop­u­lar cul­ture has been last­ing. To cel­e­brate, we bring you the 1982 film, Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. The image qual­i­ty isn’t the best here, but the humor shines through. The movie com­bines live sketch­es, filmed in 1980, with excerpts from a two-part 1972 Ger­man tele­vi­sion spe­cial, Mon­ty Python’s Fliegen­der Zirkus. High­lights include: “The Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks,” “Nudge Nudge,” “The Lum­ber­jack Song,” “Sil­ly Olympics” (fea­tur­ing the “100 Yards For Peo­ple With No Sense Of Direc­tion” and the “200-Meter Freestyle For Non-Swim­mers”) as well as one of our favorites, “The Philoso­phers’ Foot­ball Match.” Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl has been added to our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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George Harrison in the Spotlight: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

in Music, Television | October 3rd, 2011

This week, HBO will air George Har­ri­son: Liv­ing in the Mate­r­i­al World, a two-part doc­u­men­tary ded­i­cat­ed to The Bea­t­les’ gui­tarist who long played in the shad­ow of John and Paul. While George slips back in the spot­light, we should high­light his vin­tage inter­view with Dick Cavett. Record­ed 40 years ago (Novem­ber 23, 1971), the con­ver­sa­tion starts with light chit-chat, then (around the 5:30 mark) gets to some big­ger ques­tions — Did Yoko break up the band? Did the oth­er Bea­t­les hold him back musi­cal­ly? Why have drugs been so present in the rock ‘n roll world, and did The Bea­t­les’ flir­ta­tion with LSD lead young­sters astray? And is there any rela­tion­ship between drugs and the Indi­an music that so fas­ci­nat­ed Har­ri­son? It was a ques­tion bet­ter left to Ravi Shankar to answer, and that he did.

The rest of the inter­view con­tin­ues here with Part 2 and Part 3. Also, that same year, Cavett inter­viewed John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and we have it right here.

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