Watch the Opening Credits of an Imaginary 70s Cop Show Starring Samuel Beckett

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Samuel Beck­ett: avant-garde drama­tist, brood­ing Nobel Prize win­ner, poet, and…gritty tele­vi­sion detec­tive?

Sad­ly, no, but he had the mak­ings of a great one, at least as cut togeth­er by play­wright Dan­ny Thomp­son, cofounder of Chicago’s The­ater Oobleck.

Some 35 years after Beckett’s death, Thompson—whose cred­its include…

The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip

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No mat­ter what coun­try we live in, we’ve all fan­ta­sized about tak­ing our own great Amer­i­can road trip, con­sid­er­ing a vari­ety of the infi­nite­ly many pos­si­ble routes. The most obvi­ous would be dri­ving between Los Ange­les and New York, a dis­tance of 2,800 miles that would take a bit over 40 hours straight through.…

John Waters’ RISD Graduation Speech: Real Wealth Is Life Without A*Holes

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John Waters’ rol­lick­ing com­mence­ment speech at The Rhode Island School of Design offered up some good one-lin­ers and a few pearls of wis­dom, though phrased, quite nat­u­ral­ly, in an irrev­er­ent way. Ready for some sage advice on what real­ly counts as wealth? And what career choic­es will make you tru­ly wealthy? Mr. Waters has this…

How the Hugely Acclaimed Shōgun TV Series Makes Translation Interesting

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Many of us grew up see­ing hard­back copies of Shō­gun on var­i­ous domes­tic book­shelves. Whether their own­ers ever actu­al­ly got through James Clavel­l’s famous­ly hefty nov­el of sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan is open to ques­tion, but they may well have seen the first tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion, which aired on NBC in 1980. Star­ring Richard Cham­ber­lain and Toshi­ro…

Moebius Gives 18 Wisdom-Filled Tips to Aspiring Artists

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Jean Giraud, aka Moe­bius, was a com­ic book artist who com­bined blind­ing speed with bound­less imag­i­na­tion. He shaped the look of Alien, Empire Strikes Back and The Fifth Ele­ment. He reimag­ined the Sil­ver Surfer for Stan Lee. And he is an acknowl­edged influ­ence on every­one from Japan­ese ani­mat­ing great Hayao Miyaza­ki…