Now Streaming Free: The Best of The Grateful Dead’s “Fare Thee Well” Concerts in Chicago
A quick note: Thanks to NPR’s First Listen site, you can now stream for free (but only for a limited time) The Best Of Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years Of The Grateful Dead. This new double record, featuring 16 tracks recorded during the Dead’s farewell shows in Chicago this summer, will be officially released on November 20th. But you can get a sneak peek right here, right now by clicking the play button on the audio player below.
Tracks includes “Box Of Rain,” “Shakedown Street,” “Truckin’,” “Scarlet Begonias,” “Fire On The Mountain,” “Not Fade Away,” “Touch of Grey” and other fan favorites.
As with all Dead shows, you can also find raw recordings of the entire three Chicago concerts on the web. Just revisit our July 7th post to stream those too.
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Read More...The Power of Pessimism: Science Reveals the Hidden Virtues in Negative Thinking
These days, you don’t really hear many people making the case for pessimism. Quite the contrary, positive psychology is now en vogue. And its founder, University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Martin Seligman, has written bestsellers with titles like Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. But maybe, as Alain de Botton suggests above, there’s an argument to be made for pessimism – for having a sober, if not negative, outlook on life. And maybe there’s science that validates that point of view.
This second video, created by New York Magazine, summarizes the research of NYU professor Gabriele Oettingen, attributing to her the belief that “pessimism can be a better motivator for achieving goals than optimism,” seeing that optimism tends to lull us into complacency and slacken our desire to achieve important personal goals, like losing weight.
Couple that with this: a 2013 study released in Psychology and Aging, a journal published by the American Psychological Association (APA), concluded that “Older people who have low expectations for a satisfying future may be more likely to live longer, healthier lives than those who see brighter days ahead.” The lead author of the study Frieder R. Lang, PhD, added: “Our findings revealed that being overly optimistic in predicting a better future was associated with a greater risk of disability and death within the following decade.” “Pessimism about the future,” it seems, “may encourage people to live more carefully, taking health and safety precautions” that sunny optimists might not otherwise take.
I should add this caveat: scientists don’t necessarily find virtue in pure, unadulterated pessimism. Rather, they find benefits in what they call “defensive pessimism.” This is a strategy, as summarized by The Wall Street Journal, where people “lower their expectations and think through all the possible negatives that could happen in order to avoid them.” Frieder R. Lang, author of the Psychology & Aging study mentioned above, told WSJ, “Those who are defensively pessimistic about their future may be more likely to invest in preparatory or precautionary measures, whereas we expect that optimists will not be thinking about those things.” Similar virtues might be attributed to “defensive optimism,” but we’ll have to wait and see what the inevitable scientific studies have to say about that.
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Read More...Poignant and Unsettling Post-Mortem Family Portraits from the 19th Century
The 19th century witnessed the birth of photography. And, before too long, Victorian society found important applications for the new medium — like memorializing the dead. A recent post on a Dutch version of National Geographic notes that “Photographing deceased family members just before their burial was enormously popular in certain Victorian circles in Europe and the United States. Although adults were also photographed, it was mainly children who were commemorated in this way. In a period plagued by unprecedented levels of infant mortality, post-mortem pictures often provided the only tangible memory of the deceased child.”
Though unusual by modern standards, the pictures played an important role in a family’s grieving process and often became one of its cherished possessions — cherished because it was likely the only photo of the deceased child that families had. During the early days of photography, portraits were expensive, which meant that most families didn’t take pictures during the course of everyday life. It was only death that gave them a prompt.
The practice of taking post mortem pictures peaked in the 19th century, right around the time when “snapshot” photography became more prevalent, allowing families to take portraits at a lower cost, when everyone was in the full swing of life. Hence obviating the need for post-mortem photos. You can learn more about this bygone practice by visiting the Burns Archive or getting the book, Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America.
via Dutch Nat Geo/ Science Dump
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Read More...
Read the Entire Comic Book Adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Two years ago, we highlighted for you the beginning of a promising project — Julian Peters’ comic book adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s 1910 poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” At the time of our post, Peters had only completed the first nine pages of his adaptation. And, about those first pages, our Josh Jones had this to say:
Dante is where “Prufrock” begins, with an epigraph from the Inferno. Peters’ first page illustrates the agonized speaker of Dante’s lines, Guido da Montefeltro, a soul confined to the eighth circle, whom you can see at the top of the title page shown above. Peters’ visual choices place us firmly in the hellish emotional realm of “Prufrock,” a seeming catalogue of the mundane that harbors a darker import. Peters gives us no hint of when we might expect new pages, but I for one am eager to see more.
Happily for Josh … and the rest of us … we can now find out where Peters took the rest of the project. The adaptation is now complete. 24 pages in total. All now on display on Peters’ website here.
If you’re not familiar with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I’d strongly encourage you to revisit a post in our archive where you can hear “Prufrock” being read by T.S. Eliot himself and also Sir Anthony Hopkins. There you can learn more about Eliot’s modernist masterpiece.
Note: Julian is looking for a publisher to help put his comic book in print. If any publishers want to chat with him, you can find his contact info on his web site.
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Read More...iTunes Terms & Conditions Adapted into a Graphic Novel: Read It Free Online
In the past, we’ve brought you the creative work of R. Sikoryak. An illustrator who teaches at the Parsons School of Design in NYC, Sikoryak has a penchant for creating comic book adaptations of literary classics. Take for example Dostoyevsky Comics where Batman stars in a comic book version of Crime & Punishment. Or Waiting to Go, which marries Waiting for Godot with Beavis and Butt-Head.
In his latest project, Sikoryak veers sharply away from literature toward language that is much more technical. Now, on his tumblr, you can find iTunes Terms & Conditions: The Graphic Novel.
Adding a new page every day, Sikoryak is creating an illustrated version of the “complete, unabridged legal agreement.” You can currently view the first 49 pages. Click here. Go to the bottom of the page. Then start scrolling up as you read.
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Read More...Listen to Ira Glass’ 10 Favorite Episodes of This American Life
Even when one is a longtime, jaded denizen of a major city, celebrity sightings can still induce a thrill. During my tenure in New York City, I ran across my share of famous names, though I’ve never been one to bother a stranger, world famous or no. This almost changed when I ran past Ira Glass one evening and found myself sorely tempted to chat him up. I’m sure he’d be glad I resisted the urge, but having heard his voice on the radio every week for well over a decade… well, I felt like I knew him.
Since 1995, Glass has hosted This American Life, perhaps the most popular public radio show ever produced and—before its hugely successful spin-off Serial—the most popular podcast in the U.S. The show is quickly approaching its twenty-year anniversary (its first episode aired November 17th; hear it here), and in honor of that milestone, we revisit another: the show’s 500th episode, which aired in 2013. For that occasion, Buzzfeed visited with Glass for a revealing interview.
Though he responded to episode 500 with typical understatement—saying it felt “more like an odometer rolling over than anything else”—many fans of the show, myself included, felt a great deal more enthusiasm, as did Los Angeles’ KPCC, who brings us the list below of Glass’ top ten episodes (including one two-parter). Glass noted that his top picks also happen to be fan favorites as well. You can hear all of his favorites at the links below:
- Notes on Camp
- Harper High School One and Two
- The Giant Pool of Money
- Somewhere in the Arabian Sea — “I love how funny and human-sized everyone is in this show. It’s a surprisingly funny show about the war on terror,” Glass writes.
- Switched at Birth — Glass: “The structure of this show — where the whole episode you wonder how a mom could know for decades she was raising the wrong baby and finally, she answers it in the end — is perfect.”
- Break-Up — “The standout story is Starlee Kine’s essay on breakup songs, which includes an interview with Phil Collins that’s so menschy and real, it changed how I saw him forever.”
- Babysitting — “Especially the interview with Myron Jones, which is the best interview I’ve ever done, mainly because he had so much grace and humor talking about his past. Any question I could think of, he’d come back with an amazing story, which is rare.”
- My Big Break — “David Segal takes a turn in the middle of this story that’s one of my favorite reveals in any radio story ever.”
- Harold Washington — “How can you go wrong when the central figure in your story is funny and cantankerous and bighearted and idealistic and utterly pragmatic and on top of all that, totally charismatic? If you don’t know who Harold is, be prepared for a treat.”
- Heretics — “Carlton Pearson, like Harold, is someone they should make a movie about, for lots of the same reasons. An idealistic preacher whose idealism costs him pretty much everything: the church he runs, his reputation, his fortune, nearly his family.”
As a special treat, Glass also shared with Buzzfeed the document at the top of the post, a page of ideas for alternate titles for the show originally called Your Radio Playhouse. Before renaming the show in March of 1996, Glass and his crew considered such titles as the uninspiring “American Whatever,” weird “Mouth Noise,” and goofy “Ira Glass and his Radio Cowboys.”
I kind of wish they’d gone with the latter, but it’s hard to imagine the show we know as This American Life could ever have been called anything else. (See it penciled in almost as an afterthought above.) The show’s title perfectly sums up the breadth and scope of a program that tackles everything from the trivial to the highly consequential, often back-to-back in the same themed hour. Though Glass would surely balk at such high praise, I think his show has done more to help Americans know and understand ourselves over the last twenty years than nearly anything else on radio, TV, or the podcasting world.
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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
Read More...Musician Plays Signature Drum Parts of 71 Beatles Songs in 5 Minutes: A Whirlwind Tribute to Ringo Starr
Kye Smith, a drummer based in Newcastle, Australia, recently hauled his drum kit to a nearby rooftop (an homage to The Beatles’ 1969 rooftop gig?) and started banging out a pretty wonderful tribute to Ringo Starr, playing drum parts from 71 Beatles songs in 5 quick minutes. Smith moves chronologically, playing the songs in the order they were released (not recorded). We start in 1962, move through 1969, and even momentarily visit 1995. On his Facebook page, Smith had this to say:
Way before I found out about punk rock or even knew what a snare drum was I spent my childhood playing vinyl records at my grandparents place spinning artists such as Slim Dusty, ELVIS PRESLEY and The Beatles.
This chronology called for some special treatment and got me out of the studio and onto the rooftop of The Great Northern Hotel — Newcastle, Australia for a pretty stunning view of Newcastle, New South Wales in the background.
Thanks to everyone at The Great Northern for letting me make some noise up there and to Eluminate for helping me shoot it and lug heaps of gear up 7 storeys of stairs!
Below the jump, you can find the list of songs that appear in the video, complete with corresponding time stamps. And keep in mind that Smith, as he mentions on Youtube, is “available for studio and live work and will be opening up some slots for drum lessons shortly.” Contact him here.
PS: If you can name one of the drum parts that was originally played by Paul McCartney, you get bonus points.
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Read More...The Worlds of Hitchcock & Kubrick Collide in a Surreal Mashup, The Red Drum Getaway
If you read Open Culture even casually, you know we love Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and videos that make us see film in a new way. It only makes sense, then, that we’d jump right on Adrien Dezalay, Emmanuel Delabaere, and Simon Philippe’s The Red Drum Getaway, which mashes Hitchcock and Kubrick up into a four-minute shot of distilled cinematic collision. “Jimmy was having a rather beautiful day,” reads the video’s preparatory description, “until he bumped into Jack and things got weird.”
“Jimmy” refers, of course, to Jimmy Stewart as seen in the work of Alfred Hitchcock. “Jack” refers to Jack Nicholson seen in the work of Stanley Kubrick — which, of course, means Jack Nicholson of The Shining. Strange enough, you might think, that those two would ever encounter each other, but what might happen if the gang of droogs from A Clockwork Orange also turned up? Or if poor mild-mannered Jimmy found himself at the aristocratic, NSFW fetish party from Eyes Wide Shut?
When an auteur successfully taps into our subconscious minds, as Hitchcock and Kubrick so often did, we describe their work, in a complimentary sense, as “dreamlike.” But art that feels like a dream can also feed material to our nightmares, and as The Red Drum Getaway more closely intertwines these two disparate cinematic worlds as it goes, it begins to resemble the most harrowing filmic freakouts any of us have ever endured. It makes a perfect setting for Jack, who, as we know, has already gone insane due to his own alcoholism and the goading of the spirits who haunt the Overlook Hotel. And as for Jimmy, surely Vertigo put him through enough of the surreal to prepare him for the psychedelic end of 2001.
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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.
Read More...Postage Stamps from Bhutan That Double as Playable Vinyl Records
The tiny, Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has a unique national aspiration that sets it apart from its neighbors, China and India. (And certainly the United States too.) Rather than increasing its gross national product, Bhutan has instead made it a goal to increase the Gross National Happiness of its citizens. There’s wealth in health, not just money, the Bhutanese have argued. And since the 197os, the country has taken a holistic approach to development, trying to increase the spiritual, physical, and environmental health of its people. And guess what? The strategy is paying off. A 2006 global survey conducted by Business Week found that Bhutan is the happiest country in Asia and the eighth-happiest country in the world.
It’s perhaps only a nation devoted to happiness that could throw its support behind this — postage stamps that double as playable vinyl records. Created by an American entrepreneur Burt Todd in the early 70s, at the request of the Bhutanese royal family, the “talking stamps” shown above could be stuck on a letter and then later played on a turntable. According to Todd’s 2006 obituary in The New York Times, one stamp “played the Bhutanese national anthem,” and another delivered “a very concise history of Bhutan.” Thanks to WFMU, our favorite independent free form radio station, you can hear clips of talking stamps above and below. Don’t you feel happier already?
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Read More...Amazing Miniature Sculptures of New York City Landmarks: CBGB, Katz’s Deli, Vesuvio Bakery & More
If you’re near Pasadena, California, stop by the Flower Pepper Gallery and see Facade, the new exhibition featuring the work of visual artist Randy Hage. For decades now, Hage has been fascinated by the beauty of aging structures in New York City. This led him, beginning in the late 1990s, to start photographing aging storefronts in the city, “with their hand painted signs, layers of architecture, wonderful patinas and intriguing history.” Later, he decided to preserve their memory in miniaturized, hyper-realistic sculptures (like the ones now on display in Pasadena through November 18th). In the video above, see just how perfectly Hage manages to recreate New York storefronts in miniature. Here’s another famous-but-now-defunct facade you might recognize:
To take a closer look at his work, visit Hage’s Instagram page where you will see mini sculptures of fading New York institutions like Katz’s Deli, CBGB, McSorley’s Old Ale House, Vesuvio Bakery, and more.
via SuperSonic Art/BoingBoing
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