Hear Dramatizations of H.P. Lovecraft’s Stories On His Birthday: “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Dunwich Horror,” & More

in Audio Books, Literature | August 20th, 2015

Hor­ror writer Howard Phillips Love­craft was a man who lived his life in fear—of peo­ple of oth­er races and nation­al­i­ties, of women, of real­i­ty itself. In a recent New York Review of Books write-up, Charles Bax­ter some­what deri­sive­ly char­ac­ter­izes Love­craft as a dis­en­chant­ed ado­les­cent (and favorite of dis­en­chant­ed ado­les­cents), who “nev­er real­ly grew up. ‘Adult­hood is hell,’ he once wrote in a let­ter.” Yet his fic­tion depicts more than a tor­ment­ed adult world, but an entire uni­verse brim­ming with name­less ancient horrors—and occa­sion­al­ly named ones like the crea­ture Cthul­hu, whose like­ness he once sketched out in a let­ter to a friend.

The cephalo­pod-faced mon­ster crys­tal­izes Lovecraft’s dis­gust with real­i­ty in all its strange­ness and, for him, all its vari­ety. It’s a per­fect image of alien­ation (just this past week we saw tongue-in-cheek spec­u­la­tion over whether octo­pus­es are aliens; a plau­si­ble con­ceit) and presents us with an ele­men­tal uncan­ni­ness that char­ac­ter­izes his entire body of work. “Fic­tion like Lovecraft’s can be bru­tal­ly hyp­not­ic,” writes Bax­ter, “the young read­er, intel­lec­tu­al­ly unde­fend­ed and eas­i­ly shak­en enters the writer’s fear-drenched uni­verse and can’t eas­i­ly get out of it.”

The Call of Cthul­hu — Part 1

Whether you dis­cov­ered Love­craft as a young read­er or an old­er one, you may have found your­self sim­i­lar­ly entrapped by the hor­rors of his imag­i­na­tion. And you could count your­self in the com­pa­ny of not only her­met­ic, mis­an­throp­ic, death-obsessed young men in punk bands but also of media friend­ly, death-obsessed writ­ers like Stephen King and Joyce Car­ol Oates. And, of course, thou­sands upon thou­sands of hor­ror fans across the world, includ­ing a great many actors, writ­ers, and direc­tors who over the years have adapt­ed Lovecraft’s fic­tion as old-fash­ioned radio dra­ma of the kind the author him­self might have con­sumed while iso­lat­ed from the wicked world in his New Eng­land home.

You can hear some choice exam­ples here: at the top of the post we have Richard Coyle’s read­ing of the novel­la At the Moun­tains of Mad­ness. (You can also hear his read­ing of “The Shad­ow Over Inns­mouth” here.)  Next, we have a 1945 drama­ti­za­tion of “The Dun­wich Hor­ror,” per­formed by Acad­e­my Award-win­ning actor Ronald Col­man. And then hear the infa­mous “Call of Cthul­hu,” parts one and two, pro­duced by the Atlanta Radio The­atre Com­pa­ny, who have record­ed no small num­ber of Love­craft radio plays. Just above, lis­ten to a read­ing of “Behind the Wall of Sleep” from old-time radio sci-fi read­ings archive Mind Webs (which we’ve cov­ered in a pre­vi­ous post). Final­ly, below, lis­ten on Spo­ti­fy to the HP Love­craft Radio Hour Vol 1, a col­lec­tion of dra­ma­tized Love­craft sto­ries. 

Should you hap­pen to tear through these record­ings and find your­self in des­per­ate need of more to feed your Love­craft obses­sion, fear not; you would have a very hard time exhaust­ing all the options. The World’s Largest H.P. Love­craft Audio Links Gate­way, for exam­ple, deliv­ers exact­ly what it promis­es. Should that expan­sive data­base some­how leave out a read­ing or drama­ti­za­tion, you’ll per­haps find it over at the H.P. Love­craft Archive’s size­able col­lec­tion. And you must, if you’re a Love­craft fan, vis­it the H.P. Love­craft His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, who host plen­ty of Love­craft merch, and links to much more Love­craft audio, includ­ing albums inspired by his work and a pod­cast.

And on the off chance you knew lit­tle or not at all of Love­craft before read­ing this post, beware. You may, after lis­ten­ing to some of his weird tales of hor­ror, come away a devot­ed Love­craft cultist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown (Free Doc­u­men­tary)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

A Vintage Infographic of the Human Brain: The Wonders Within Your Head (1938)

in Biology, Magazines | August 12th, 2015

Click here to view the info­graph­ic in a larg­er for­mat.

From the Decem­ber 6, 1938 issue of LOOK mag­a­zine comes this vin­tage “info­graph­ic” show­ing “The Won­ders With­in Your Head.” It takes the human brain/head and presents it as a series of rooms, each car­ry­ing out a dif­fer­ent func­tion. Drawn a lit­tle more than a decade after Calvin Coolidge famous­ly declared “The busi­ness of Amer­i­ca is busi­ness,” it’s not sur­pris­ing that the cog­ni­tive func­tions are depict­ed in cor­po­rate or indus­tri­al terms.

Besides for this visu­al­iza­tion, the same edi­tion of LOOK fea­tured arti­cles on Jean Har­low, Joan Craw­ford, Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt, and the Tragedy of the Euro­pean Jews. Kristall­nacht, or the “Night of Bro­ken Glass,” had tak­en place a month before in Nazi Ger­many — anoth­er sign that the world was about to become a very, very dark place.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tree of Lan­guages Illus­trat­ed in a Big, Beau­ti­ful Info­graph­ic

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

4000 Years of His­to­ry Dis­played in a 5‑Foot-Long “His­tom­ap” (Ear­ly Info­graph­ic) From 1931

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

Hear Mahler’s 9th Played in 6 Minutes on the Squeezebox by “The Greatest Accordionist in the World”

in Music | August 10th, 2015

NPR called William Schim­mel “the great­est accor­dion­ist in the world,” and thanks to NPR you can hear Schim­mel at work, tak­ing Gus­tav Mahler’s sprawl­ing Ninth Sym­pho­ny and “squeez­ing this immense musi­cal can­vas down to just 6 1/2 min­utes.” That’s a feat in itself.

Trum­peter Wyn­ton Marsalis makes an appear­ance on the track, which comes from the new­ly-released album, The­ater of the Accor­dion: William Schim­mel. Enjoy.

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Audrey Hepburn’s Moving Screen Test for Roman Holiday (1953)

in Film, Life | August 8th, 2015

When you think of Audrey Hep­burn, you think of Roman Hol­i­day, the 1953 film that launched her career. How can you for­get Hep­burn as Princess Anne? Orig­i­nal­ly, the part was writ­ten for Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, then a major star. But some­thing hap­pened dur­ing the cast­ing that changed all of that. In his biog­ra­phy of Ms. Hep­burn, the author Bar­ry Paris writes:

Her Roman Hol­i­day test took place at Pinewood Stu­dio in Lon­don, Sep­tem­ber 18, 1951, under [Thorold] Dick­in­son’s direc­tion. “We did some scenes out of the script,” he said, but “Para­mount also want­ed to see what Audrey was actu­al­ly like not act­ing a part, so I did an inter­view with her. We loaded a thou­sand feet of film into a cam­era and every foot of it went on this con­ver­sa­tion. She talked about her expe­ri­ences in the war, the Allied raid on Arn­hem, and hid­ing out in a cel­lar. A deeply mov­ing thing.”

Lat­er, so the sto­ry goes, the direc­tor William Wyler watched the footage (shown above) in Rome and found it irre­sistible. He claimed: “She had every­thing I was look­ing for: charm, inno­cence and tal­ent. She also was very fun­ny. She was absolute­ly enchant­i­ng, and we said, ‘That’s the girl!’ ”

In watch­ing the footage, one thing will leap out. Hep­burn’s ado­les­cence was hard­ly suit­ed for a princess. Liv­ing in the Dutch town of Arn­hem dur­ing World War II, she expe­ri­enced the harsh Ger­man occu­pa­tion first­hand and suf­fered from mal­nu­tri­tion, acute ane­mia, res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems, and ede­ma by the war’s end. It was a for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence that lat­er made her a devot­ed activist for children’s rights.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­lene Dietrich’s Tem­pera­men­tal Screen Test for The Blue Angel (1929)

Mar­lon Bran­do Screen Tests for Rebel With­out A Cause (1947)

Bruce Lee Audi­tions for The Green Hor­net

Adorn Your Garden with Howard the Zinn Monk

in History, Random | August 5th, 2015

In Jan­u­ary, in the dead of win­ter, we got you think­ing about warmer times by high­light­ing the Noam Chom­sky Gar­den Gnome, a real prod­uct described as fol­lows:

Stand­ing at just under 17 inch­es, Gnome Chom­sky the Gar­den Noam clutch­es his clas­sic books, ‘The Man­u­fac­ture of Com­post’ and ‘Hedgerows not Hege­mo­ny’ – with his open right hand ready to hold the polit­i­cal slo­gan of your choos­ing. His clothes rep­re­sent a relaxed but classy ver­sion of reg­u­lar gnome attire, includ­ing: a nice suit jack­et-tunic, jeans, boots, tra­di­tion­al gnome cap, and glass­es. Addi­tion­al­ly, Noam Gnome stands on a base com­plete with a carved title – for any­one who may not imme­di­ate­ly real­ize the iden­ti­ty of this hand­some and schol­ar­ly gnome.

Now that it’s sum­mer, imag­ine Gnome Chom­sky hang­ing in your gar­den with Howard the Zinn Monk. Zinn Monk, get it?

First pub­lished in 1980, Zin­n’s famous book A People’s His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States tells “America’s sto­ry from the point of view of—and in the words of—America’s women, fac­to­ry work­ers, African-Amer­i­cans, Native Amer­i­cans, the work­ing poor, and immi­grant labor­ers.” It has sold more than two mil­lion copies over the past 35 years. And, as I write this post, it’s the #1 best­selling book in US his­to­ry on Ama­zon.

Howard the Zinn Monk isn’t quite sell­ing at the same brisk clip. But the web site justsaygnome.net might make you a Zinn gnome if you ask nice­ly.

In the mean­time, you can watch and enjoy this illus­trat­ed video: Howard Zinn’s “What the Class­room Didn’t Teach Me About the Amer­i­can Empire.”

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Why Sitting Is The New Smoking: An Animated Explanation

in Biology, Health | August 4th, 2015

Dur­ing the past year, sit­ting has become the new smok­ing. “Past stud­ies have found,” declares a 2014 arti­cle in The New York Times, “the more hours that peo­ple spend sit­ting, the more like­ly they are to devel­op dia­betes, heart dis­ease and oth­er con­di­tions, and poten­tial­ly to die pre­ma­ture­ly — even if they exer­cise reg­u­lar­ly.” What’s the sci­ence behind this alarm­ing claim? The ani­mat­ed TED-ED video (above) begins to paint the pic­ture. But it does­n’t get into the lat­est and per­haps most impor­tant research. Accord­ing to sci­ence writer Gretchen Reynolds, a recent Swedish study pub­lished in the British Jour­nal of Sports Med­i­cine sug­gests that when you sit all day, your telom­eres (the tiny caps on the ends of DNA strands) get short­er. Which is not a good thing. As telom­eres get short­er, the rate at which the body ages and decays speeds up. Con­verse­ly, the study found “that the telom­eres in [those] who were sit­ting the least had length­ened. Their cells seemed to be grow­ing phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly younger.”

Sev­er­al months ago, KQED radio in San Fran­cis­co aired a pro­gram ded­i­cat­ed to this ques­tion, fea­tur­ing med­ical and ergonom­ics experts. To delve deep­er into it, lis­ten below. Or click here.

Mean­while, if you have advice on how to incor­po­rate move­ment into your day, please share it with your fel­low read­ers in the com­ments sec­tion below.

And if your mind imme­di­ate­ly drifts to buy­ing a stand­ing desk, then check out our relat­ed post: Who Wrote at Stand­ing Desks? Kierkegaard, Dick­ens and Ernest Hem­ing­way Too

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Endangered Species (Including Cecil the Lion) Projected Onto the Empire State Building

in Art | August 2nd, 2015

Any­one with a Face­book or Twit­ter account last week could­n’t avoid hear­ing about Wal­ter James Palmer, the Min­neso­ta den­tist who alleged­ly went tro­phy hunt­ing in Zim­bab­we and killed Cecil the Lion, a local favorite who had been ille­gal­ly lured away from a pro­tect­ed wildlife pre­serve. I won’t say any­thing more about it, oth­er than that you can sign a peti­tion to get Palmer extra­dit­ed to Zim­bab­we and let him defend his actions to local author­i­ties.

Mean­while, back in New York City, two artists Travis Threlkel and Louie Psi­hoyos were get­ting ready to turn The Empire State build­ing into a Noah’s Ark of Endan­gered Ani­mals. And that’s exact­ly what hap­pened on Sat­ur­day night. Plac­ing “40 stacked, 20,000-lumen pro­jec­tors on the roof of a near­by build­ing,” Threlkel and Psi­hoyos pro­ject­ed an array of endan­gered ani­mals “onto a space 375 feet tall and 186 feet wide cov­er­ing 33 floors,” reports The New York Times. You can see pho­tos of the ani­mals over at the Rac­ing Extinc­tion Twit­ter stream. Touch­ing­ly, there was an homage to Cecil the Lion. A video from the Times appears above; anoth­er from The New York­er below.

To learn more about how Project Map­ping works, and to see oth­er exam­ples of Threlkel’s work, see the videos on this page.

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Brooklyn–Based Makers of Artisanal Water Let You Sip From America’s Great Cultural Waters

in Uncategorized | July 31st, 2015

The Tim­my Broth­ers, based in Brook­lyn, cre­ate hand­craft­ed water. It’s not just any water. It’s water that lets you trav­el to dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al times and places. Want to drink water that evokes mem­o­ries of Mark Twain’s Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er? Or the great jazz that came out of New Orleans? Well, the Tim­my Broth­ers have just the prod­uct for you.

If you’re in Brook­lyn, also con­sid­er mak­ing a side trip to Bea­con, NY where David Rees lov­ing­ly cre­ates arti­sanal hand­craft­ed pen­cils. You’ll nev­er look at pen­cils the same way again. :-)

via Digg

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1,000 Musicians Perform Foo Fighters’ “Learn to Fly” in Unison in Italy

in Music | July 30th, 2015

Despite break­ing his leg dur­ing a gig ear­li­er this sum­mer, Dave Grohl and the Foo Fight­ers have blitzed their way through Europe and Amer­i­ca, play­ing some­times 5–6 shows per week, in cities often large, but some­times small.

On Sep­tem­ber 16th, the band will make a pit­stop in my home­town, Moun­tain View, CA (pop­u­la­tion 75,000). So it does­n’t seem implau­si­ble for the res­i­dents of Cese­na, Italy (pop­u­la­tion 100,000) to ask the Foo Fight­ers to play a show in their small city, which sits right near the Adri­at­ic Sea.

And boy did they make the request in style. I get chills when I watch this, every time.

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Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins & Grace Jones To Star in Gutterdämmerung, “The Loudest Silent Movie on Earth!”

in Film, Music | July 28th, 2015

Once upon a time, Joe Strum­mer wrote and direct­ed Hell W10, a silent black & white film fea­tur­ing the music of The Clash. And the Pix­ies’ Black Fran­cis cre­at­ed a dri­ving, jan­gling sound­track for one of Weimar Germany’s finest silent films, The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920).

If the meld­ing of vin­tage and mod­ern aes­thet­ics appeals, then get ready for Gutterdämmerung. Direct­ed by the Bel­gian-Swedish visu­al artist Björn Tage­mose, Gutterdämmerung promis­es to be “the loud­est silent movie on earth,” with Iggy Pop, Grace Jones and Hen­ry Rollins play­ing star­ring roles. BEAT describes the premise of the film as fol­lows:

The film is set in a alter­nate real­i­ty where God has saved the world from sin by tak­ing from mankind the Devil’s Evil Gui­tar. As a result the Earth has been cleansed into a puri­tan world with no room for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll (boo). [Queue] Iggy Pop as the punk angel Vicious, who secret­ly sends the Evil Gui­tar back to Earth, unleash­ing all man­ner of sin upon mankind.

Things get even cra­zier when Hen­ry Rollins, as the puri­tan priest, coerces a girl to destroy the gui­tar, a quest that see’s her face the most evil rock ‘n’ roll bas­tards on the plan­et. Grace Jones plays the only per­son capa­ble of con­trol­ling all the testos­terone of all the no good rock ‘n’ rollers – obvi­ous­ly.

The direc­tor and cast set the scene a lit­tle more in the “launch video” above. To be hon­est, the video feels a bit like a spoof, mak­ing me won­der whether this is all a big put on. But they’ve cer­tain­ly set up a respectable web site where, each week, they’ll announce oth­er per­son­al­i­ties star­ring in the film. So, stay tuned…

via Pitch­fork

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Film, The Golem, with a Sound­track by The Pix­ies’ Black Fran­cis

The Clash Star in 1980’s Gang­ster Par­o­dy Hell W10, a Film Direct­ed by Joe Strum­mer

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics