The Making (and Remaking) of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Arguably the Greatest Rock Album of All Time

in Music | October 9th, 2014

Rock ‘n’ roll has a sad tra­di­tion of genius­es who’ve suc­cumbed to men­tal ill­ness and addic­tion. Some of them have, para­dox­i­cal­ly, pro­duced some of the best music of their careers dur­ing peri­ods of decline. We’d have to men­tion Pink Floyd’s Syd Bar­rett, Moby Grape’s Skip Spence, Big Star’s Chris Bell… all of whom record­ed strange, inti­mate, and heart­felt solo albums after leav­ing their respec­tive bands. Then, of course, there’s Bri­an Wil­son, whose 1966 Pet Sounds re-invent­ed pop, and laid the ground­work for Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. (Wil­son is said to have been inspired by Rub­ber Soul). We may know Pet Sounds as a Beach Boys release, but it was real­ly Wilson’s record. In the video series here, “Behind the Sounds,” we get a unique lis­ten in to the cre­ation of the album by way of ear­ly takes, lots of stu­dio chat­ter, and pop-up video style fac­toids in the Pet Sounds cover’s Coop­er Black font over behind-the-scenes pho­tos.

At the top, hear behind the sounds of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” Just above, hear the mak­ing of “I Know There’s An Answer,” and below, hear Parts 1 and 2 of the cre­ation of “God Only Knows,” the lush, self-effac­ing bal­lad whose harp­si­chord and French horn intro clear­ly inspired the orches­tra­tion in songs like “Pen­ny Lane” and “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.” See videos for the rest of Pet Sounds’ songs at the “Behind the Sounds” Youtube chan­nel.

Pet Sounds has been named the great­est album of all time by NME and Mojo mag­a­zines and ranks at num­ber two in Rolling Stone’s 500 Great­est Albums of All Time, right behind Sgt. Pepper’s. Wil­son wrote the songs with lyri­cist Tony Ash­er dur­ing a time when he was pulling away from his sun­ny surf-pop group and expand­ing his reper­toire of stu­dio tech­niques in unprece­dent­ed ways. The songs can sound super­fi­cial­ly like breezy Beach Boys pop, but reveal them­selves as com­plex, baroque orches­tra­tions that hold enough instru­men­tal sur­pris­es and lyri­cal sub­tleties for a life­time of lis­ten­ing. It’s a record both thor­ough­ly of its time and thor­ough­ly time­less.

Unlike many a trag­ic rock com­pos­er, Wil­son has sur­vived and recov­ered (many times over) into old age, record­ing and tour­ing on and off with the Beach Boys and open­ing up about his dark­er times. And unless you’re spend­ing this week under a rock some­where, you’ll catch the BBC’s star-stud­ded video re-make of “God Only Knows,” just below, cir­cu­lat­ing all over the ‘net. Both a pro­mo for the more than two dozen musi­cians involved and a ben­e­fit sin­gle for char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion BBC Chil­dren in Need, the glam­orous pro­duc­tion fea­tures Wil­son behind his piano, look­ing state­ly and healthy. For more on the mak­ing of Pet Sounds, see this 2002 BBC doc­u­men­tary, Art That Shook The World: The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. And please, amidst this flur­ry of Pet Sounds good­ies, don’t for­get to lis­ten to the album itself, best appre­ci­at­ed, says Wil­son, with “ear­phones, in the dark.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd Get Bri­an Wil­son Out of Bed and Force Him to Go Surf­ing, 1976

The Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er Demos: The Mak­ing of a Bea­t­les Clas­sic (1966)

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

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

Longform’s New, Free App Lets You Read Great Journalism from Your Favorite Publishers

in iPad, iPhone, Magazines, Media | September 23rd, 2014

If you have man­aged to keep your atten­tion span intact dur­ing this dis­tract­ing infor­ma­tion age, then you’re almost cer­tain­ly famil­iar with Longform.org, a web site that makes it easy to find some­thing great to read online, espe­cial­ly if you like read­ing infor­ma­tive, well-craft­ed works of non-fic­tion. Last week, Long­form enhanced its ser­vice with the release of a new, free app for iPhone and iPad. It’s the “only 100% free app that fil­ters out the inter­net junk and deliv­ers noth­ing but smart, in-depth reads.” And, draw­ing on mate­r­i­al from 1,000 pub­lish­ers, the app lets read­ers “cre­ate their own cus­tom feeds of high qual­i­ty, fea­ture-length jour­nal­ism,” and then read it all on the go. It’s a mis­sion that cer­tain­ly aligns with ours, so we’re more than hap­py to give the new app a plug.

Sign up for our dai­ly email and, once a day, we’ll bun­dle all of our dai­ly posts and drop them in your inbox, in an easy-to-read for­mat. You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you!

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

in Language Lessons | September 22nd, 2014

Say the name “Yan-san” to any­one who’s stud­ied Japan­ese in the last thir­ty years, and you’ll prob­a­bly get a reac­tion of delight­ed recog­ni­tion. It means that, inside or out­side the class­room, they stud­ied with Let’s Learn Japan­ese, a series of edu­ca­tion­al videos pro­duced by the Japan Foun­da­tion. The first “sea­son,” if you like, came out in 1984, the time of an enor­mous Asian eco­nom­ic bub­ble that made the world’s future look Japan­ese, send­ing the lan­guage straight to the top of every inter­na­tion­al busi­ness-mind­ed stu­den­t’s to-do-list. (Sound famil­iar, cur­rent strug­glers with Man­darin?) Its hero, a young man of delib­er­ate­ly ambigu­ous nation­al­i­ty named Yan — the Japan­ese all address him with the every­day hon­orif­ic -san — turns up in Japan for a few years of life in Tokyo and works at an archi­tec­ture firm, helped along by his host fam­i­ly the Katos, his eager­ly team-play­ing co-work­ers (one of whom intro­duces him­self, in Eng­lish, with the phase, “We are friends — okay?”), and a vari­ety of help­ful cit­i­zens and pro­fes­sion­als all across the Land of the Ris­ing Sun.

This may sound like dull stuff — the stuff of run-of-the-mill lan­guage-learn­ing videos — but Let’s Learn Japan­ese raised the bar for this sort of thing, in terms of not just pro­duc­tion val­ue and teach­ing effec­tive­ness but sheer rewatch­a­bil­i­ty. In addi­tion to Yan-san’s life among the Japan­ese peo­ple, Let’s Learn Japan­ese also offers instruc­tion­al seg­ments led by Mary Althaus, still a pro­fes­sor at Toky­o’s Tsu­da Col­lege, and imag­i­na­tive illus­tra­tive skits per­formed by the inde­fati­ga­ble trio of Mine, Kai­hō, and Sug­i­hara. In the more advanced Sea­son 2, released over a decade lat­er in 1995, they’ve become the eeri­ly sim­i­lar Kodama, Andō, and Koy­ana­gi, and Yan-san has become a grad­u­ate stu­dent with girl­friend trou­bles. Hav­ing watched all 52 episodes sev­er­al times through, I can vouch for both its enter­tain­ment val­ue and its effec­tive­ness. (It also spurred me to start vol­un­teer­ing at the Japan Foun­da­tion, Los Ange­les.) So can the for­eign­ers who give a hero’s wel­come to star Nick Muhrin (who, last I heard, still lives in Japan) when they run into him. I know I’ve learned enough to buy Yan-san a drink.

You can find more use­ful Japan­ese-learn­ing mate­ri­als to sup­ple­ment all this in our archive of free lan­guage lessons. It includes resources rang­ing from the For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute’s dig­i­tized text­books and tapes to pod­casts like the life abroad-ori­ent­ed Japanesepod101 [iTunes Free — Feed] and the ani­me-geared Japan­cast [iTunes Free — Feed]. 皆さんがんばって！

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Learn Japan­ese Free

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

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear David Foster Wallace Read His Own Essays & Short Fiction on the 6th Anniversary of His Death,

in Literature | September 12th, 2014

Yes­ter­day, of course, marked the 13th anniver­sary of the hor­ri­ble attacks on the Twin Tow­ers and the Pen­ta­gon. Today marks the 6th anniver­sary of David Fos­ter Wallace’s death by sui­cide. The two events are relat­ed not only by prox­im­i­ty, and not because they are com­pa­ra­ble tragedies, but because Wallace’s work, in par­tic­u­lar his 1993 essay “E Unibus Plu­ram: Tele­vi­sion and U.S. Fic­tion,” has become such a touch­stone for the dis­course of “post-irony” or “the new sin­cer­i­ty” since 9/11, when Van­i­ty Fair edi­tor Gray­don Carter and oth­ers pro­claimed the “end of irony.” But the cul­tur­al con­scious­ness has shift­ed mea­sur­ably since those heady days of fer­vent affir­ma­tion. In a recon­sid­er­a­tion of Wal­lace on irony, Bradley War­shauer writes, “he wasn’t wrong—but he is obso­lete.” Our nation­al discourse—as much as it can be defined in broad terms—may have, some argue, swung fur­ther toward sin­cer­i­ty and sen­ti­men­tal rev­er­ence than Wal­lace would have liked. And he may have been much more an iro­nist than he liked to believe.

Wal­lace, writes War­shauer, was “a wannabe sen­ti­men­tal­ist who was too absurd­ly tal­ent­ed and prob­a­bly too obsessed with the arti­fi­cial­i­ty of fic­tion to be the sort of ‘anti-rebel’ that he him­self talked about.” While he may have roman­ti­cized the high-mind­ed fig­ure who “stands for” things in uncom­pli­cat­ed ways, Wal­lace him­self was com­pli­cat­ed, prick­ly, and just too hyper-aware—of him­self and others—to be seduced by easy sen­ti­ment, what Som­er­set Maugh­am called “unearned emo­tion.” While his work pulls us still toward deep­er lev­els of analy­sis, toward con­tem­pla­tion and cri­tique, toward seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tions of val­ue, it does not do so by eschew­ing irony. In the descrip­tive force of his prose are the eva­sions, par­ries, asides, cir­cum­lo­cu­tions, and jar­ring­ly odd jux­ta­po­si­tions of the iro­nist, the satirist, and—what might be the same thing—the moral­ist. “The inher­ent contradiction”—the irony, if you will—of Wallace’s stance, Washauer argues, cit­ing 1999’s Brief Inter­views With Hideous Men, is that he him­self “was addict­ed to iron­ic detach­ment.” But, of course, it’s not so sim­ple as that.

Today we bring you sev­er­al read­ings by David Fos­ter Wal­lace of his own work. We begin at the top with “Death is Not the End” from Brief Inter­views, that col­lec­tion of “weird metafic­tion” that couch­es raw and painful con­fes­sions in lay­ers of irony. Below it, from that same col­lec­tion, we have “Sui­cide as a Sort of Present,” a piece that, in hind­sight, offers its own poten­tial mor­bid­ly iron­ic read­ings. Just above, hear Wal­lace read the short sto­ry “Incar­na­tions of Burned Chil­dren” from the 2005 col­lec­tion Obliv­ion, full of sto­ries Wyatt Mason described as “tight­ly withhold[ing]… hid­ing on high shelves the keys that unlock their trea­sures.” Replete with tiny mech­a­nisms that can take many care­ful read­ings to parse, these sto­ries are fine-art stud­ies in iron­ic lan­guage and sit­u­a­tions.

One may class David Fos­ter Wal­lace as a mas­ter iro­nist, despite his crit­i­cal stance against its overuse, but this reduces the full range of his mas­tery to one mode among so many. His work embraced the voice of irony and the voice of sin­cer­i­ty as equal­ly valid rhetor­i­cal means, alter­nat­ing between the two in what A.O. Scott once called a “feed­back loop.” “The View From Mrs. Thompson’s,” the essay Wal­lace reads above from 2005’s essay col­lec­tion Con­sid­er the Lob­ster, is a piece he wrote just days after 9/11. Writ­ten quick­ly as a com­mis­sion from Rolling Stone, the essay records his tren­chant obser­va­tions of the reac­tions in Bloom­ing­ton, Illi­nois between Sep­tem­ber 11–13. It’s a piece that show­cas­es the ten­sion between Wallace’s sin­cere desire for imme­di­a­cy and his almost uncon­trol­lable impulse to amused detach­ment. And hear­ing Wal­lace com­mem­o­rate the trag­ic events we remem­bered yes­ter­day high­lights the sad irony of memo­ri­al­iz­ing his own death today.

You can hear many more of David Fos­ter Wallace’s read­ings and inter­views at the David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Project, and be sure to stop by our siz­able col­lec­tion, 30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

Read Two Poems David Fos­ter Wal­lace Wrote Dur­ing His Ele­men­tary School Days

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

The History of Rock n Roll in 10 Songs: A List Created by Legendary Rock Critic Greil Marcus

in Music | September 8th, 2014

Rock crit­ic and schol­ar Greil Mar­cus has just released a book with Yale Press called The His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs, and it appears to be an unusu­al take on a very hack­neyed sub­ject, as Mar­cus admits in the video trail­er above: “Every­body knows the his­to­ry of rock ‘n’ roll,” he says, “What if it was just about a few songs?” “Unlike all pre­vi­ous ver­sions of rock ‘n’ roll,” writes Yale, “this book omits almost every icon­ic per­former and ignores the sto­ried events and turn­ing points that every­one knows.” This is not entire­ly true—you’ve got your Bea­t­les, you’ve got your Bud­dy Hol­ly, but you’ve also got… Joy Divi­sion. And a num­ber of oth­er sur­pris­ing, off­beat choic­es that don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly sound like rock ‘n’ roll his­to­ry, but cer­tain­ly tell it their var­i­ous ways. “At any giv­en moment,” Mar­cus says above, any of these songs “could con­tain the whole his­to­ry […] the whole DNA of rock ‘n’ roll.”

Some of the choic­es seem like per­son­al quirks. Noth­ing to get too bent out of shape about, if that’s your ten­den­cy, but odd nonethe­less. The Flam­ing Groovies would not be a band I’d choose as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of garage rock, if that’s what they rep­re­sent. Their song “Shake Some Action” above may be bet­ter known for some from Cracker’s work­man­like cov­er on the Clue­less sound­track than as a gen­uine hit in its own right. But the sin­gle sure had a cool cov­er.

It also has some excel­lent gui­tar work and a per­fect­ly dis­tinc­tive tone that Mar­cus can’t for­get. Its lyrics are by turns vapid and creepy, which, now that I think of it, per­haps makes this a per­fect track to define much of rock ‘n’ roll his­to­ry.

No one best­ed post-punk dar­lings Joy Divi­sion when it came to boy­ish good looks and relent­less despair. In an oblique rock his­to­ry sense, they were piv­otal, tak­ing the obscu­ran­tist min­i­mal­ist exper­i­ments of bands like Wire and mak­ing them viable options for an entire genre of music. Mar­cus choos­es “Trans­mis­sion” instead of the much more pop­u­lar “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” which has become almost a musi­cal rite of pas­sage for cer­tain bands to cov­er. This was the last sin­gle the band released before singer Ian Cur­tis killed him­self. “It’s sort of fit­ting then,” writes Con­se­quence of Sound, “that this would be both one of the band’s most pop­u­lar songs and also pave the way for New Order, specif­i­cal­ly in terms of its sound and direc­tion.” Lit­tle live footage of the band exists. See them above in 1979 on UK retro tele­vi­sion pro­gram The Wedge (orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast on Some­thing Else with the Jam).

Mar­cus’ third choice is not real­ly what we think of as rock and roll, but it’s a close cousin, and with­out doo wop, we’d have had no Lou Reed. 1956’s “In the Still of the Night,” writ­ten by Fred Par­ris and record­ed by his Five Satins in a Catholic school base­ment, was a hit in the 90s for Boyz II Men on the R&B and Adult Con­tem­po­rary charts and reli­ably appears in films about the fifties. Mar­cus also refers to a ver­sion record­ed by the Slades, a white vocal group. The pair­ing illus­trates the famil­iar fifties prac­tice of white groups record­ing black artists—and often out­selling them, though cer­tain­ly not in this case—for pre­sum­ably seg­re­gat­ed audi­ences.

Etta James’ 1960 soar­ing lament “All I Could Do Was Cry” again seems a world away from rock and roll, with its lush stu­dio string sec­tion and spa­cious, spare pro­duc­tion. The song lacks the bite and growl of “At Last!” from the same album, but Mar­cus makes a weighty allu­sion in refer­ring to two dif­fer­ent ver­sions. By includ­ing Beyoncé’s take on the song, the list hauls in the his­to­ry of Chicago’s Chess records and Knowles’ out­stand­ing per­for­mance as James in 2008’s Cadil­lac Records, a film that takes us from Mud­dy Water­s’s elec­tric blues to Chuck Berry’s hybrid crossover sound.

Yes, we have Bud­dy Hol­ly, but we don’t have “Peg­gy Sue” or “Not Fade Away.” Instead Mar­cus gives us the B‑side to the posthu­mous­ly released “Peg­gy Sue Got Mar­ried,” a song called “Cry­ing, Wait­ing, Hop­ing.” Orig­i­nal­ly record­ed by Hol­ly alone in a Man­hat­tan apart­ment and mixed with stu­dio back­ing tracks by pro­duc­er Jack Hansen in 1959, the song had noth­ing to do with Holly’s fame in life—hence the bad vocal sync in the video above. The band’s play­ing an entire­ly dif­fer­ent song. Mar­cus chose this as sym­bol­ic of the Hol­ly mythos after his death, which spread across the ocean to Mersey­beat bands like the Bea­t­les, who often cov­ered this song and record­ed it live on the BBC. Like the musi­cians who played on the first record, they aren’t just cov­er­ing Hol­ly, writes Mar­cus, “they’re con­duct­ing a kind of séance with him.”

Speak­ing of the Bea­t­les: every­one knows their “Mon­ey (That’s What I Want),” but did you know that the song, per­formed in 1959 by Bar­rett Strong (above), was the first hit for Berry Gordy’s Motown records (then Tam­la)? A direct link between Amer­i­can R&B and the UK vari­ety, “Mon­ey” was a sta­ple for British inva­sion bands in the ear­ly 60s.

I had nev­er heard of The Brains before read­ing Mar­cus’ list. That’s not say­ing a whole lot, but I had also nev­er heard Cyn­di Lauper’s 1983 hit cov­er of their minor hit “Mon­ey Changes Every­thing,” or even the rare Smiths’ instru­men­tal ver­sion, ardent fan though I am. So chalk that up to a musi­cal blind spot, if you will, or take it as evi­dence of the song’s out­lier sta­tus. Hear the 1978 orig­i­nal above. Mar­cus has said else­where of its raw, cyn­i­cal hon­esty that “there’s no oth­er way the decade could end.”

“This Mag­ic Moment,” the 1960 hit by Ben E. King and the Drifters, sounds like the per­fect choice of song for nos­tal­gic boomers, not so much for jad­ed rock writ­ers telling a new sto­ry of rock ‘n’ roll, but there you have it. Mar­cus also refers to a ver­sion by “Ben E. King with Lou Reed.” As far as I can tell, no such record­ing exists, but we do have a ver­sion by Reed alone. Hear it above.

The only way per­haps to dis­cuss this ninth “song” in any rock ‘n’ roll con­text is by way of Lou Reed, it so hap­pens. Reed’s “thor­ough­ly alien­at­ing” Met­al Machine Music con­sists of 64 min­utes of feed­back and dis­tor­tion caused, some leg­ends have it, by Reed record­ing the sound of his gui­tar lean­ing against a cranked-up amp. Artist Chris­t­ian Mar­clay does him one bet­ter. “Gui­tar Drag” is exact­ly what it adver­tis­es, the sound—and video, above—of a gui­tar dragged behind a truck. Rep­re­sent­ing the pure noise of Met­al Machine Music and the gen­er­al destruc­tive­ness of rock ‘n’ roll, it also re-enacts the absolute­ly hor­ri­fy­ing 1998 drag­ging death of James Byrd, Jr, one of the low­est moments in Amer­i­can racial his­to­ry. Does this dis­turb­ing piece of sound/video art aes­theti­ciz­ing a racist mur­der, chill­ing and grue­some beyond words, belong on any list about rock ’n’ roll his­to­ry? Greil Mar­cus thinks it does.

We return to famil­iar, if cloy­ing ter­ri­to­ry with “To Know Is to Love Him,” an ear­ly hit for Phil Spec­tor and his Ted­dy Bears in 1958 (above)—written not about a crush but about Spector’s deceased father after the words on his head­stone. Next to the quaint­ness of this record­ing, Mar­cus also lists Amy Winehouse’s 2007 cov­er (below). Maybe he hears them at once, both songs haunt­ing each oth­er. Writ­ing on the song in The Guardian after Winehouse’s death, Mar­cus says “it took 48 years to find its voice.” It’s a sto­ry of two incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed, and trag­i­cal­ly dis­turbed, rock ‘n’ roll char­ac­ters, and one of the pain and loss that lie behind even the most bub­blegum of hits. See Yale Press’s web­site for more on Mar­cus’ The His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

100 Years of Rock in Less Than a Minute: From Gospel to Grunge

Revis­it The Life & Music of Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe: ‘The God­moth­er of Rock and Roll’

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

Foodie Alert: New York Public Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restaurant Menus (1851–2008)

in Archives, Design, Food & Drink, History | September 4th, 2014

To be a New York­er is to be a gourmand—of food carts, local din­ers, super­mar­kets, out­er bor­ough mer­ca­dos, what­ev­er lat­est upscale restau­rant sur­faces in a giv­en sea­son.… It is to be as like­ly to have a menu in hand as a news­pa­per, er… smart­phone…, and it is to notice the design of said menus. Well, some of us have done that. Often the added atten­tion goes unre­ward­ed, but then some­times it does. Now you, dear read­er, can expe­ri­ence well over one-hun­dred years of star­ing at menus, thanks to the New York Pub­lic Library’s enor­mous dig­i­tized col­lec­tion. Fan­cy a time warp through din­ing halls abroad? You’ll not only find sev­er­al hun­dred New York restau­rants rep­re­sent­ed here, but hun­dreds more from all over the world. With a col­lec­tion of 17,000 menus and count­ing, a per­son could eas­i­ly get lost.

You may notice I used the word “gour­mand,” and not “food­ie” above. While it might be a gross anachro­nism to call some­one a “food­ie” in 1859, the year the menu for the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Hotel (above) was print­ed, it might also import a cos­mopoli­tan con­cept of din­ing that didn’t seem to exist, at least at this estab­lish­ment. More than any­thing, the menu resem­bles the var­i­ous descrip­tions of pub food that pop­u­late Joyce’s Ulysses. Though much of it was deli­cious, I’m sure, for heavy eaters of meat, eggs, pota­toes, and bread, you won’t find a veg­etable so much as men­tioned in pass­ing. The fare does include such hearty sta­ples as “Hashed Fish,” “Stale Bread,” and “Break­fast Wine.” The design mar­ries flow­ery Vic­to­ri­an ele­ments with the kind of font found in Old West type­sets.

1939 was a good year for menus, at least in Europe. While New York insti­tu­tions like the Wal­dorf Asto­ria prac­ticed cer­tain design aus­ter­i­ties, the Mai­son Prunier, with loca­tions in Paris and Lon­don, spared no expense in the print­ing of their full-col­or fish­er­mans’ slice of life paint­ing on the menu cov­er above and the ele­gant typog­ra­phy of its exten­sive con­tents below. A ver­sion was print­ed in English—though The New York Pub­lic Library (NYPL) doesn’t seem to have a copy of it dig­i­tized. One Eng­lish phrase stands out at the bot­tom, how­ev­er: the trans­la­tion of “Tout Ce Qui Vient De La Mer–Everything From the Sea.” Oth­er menus for this restau­rant show the same kind of care­ful atten­tion to design. Click­ing on the pages of many of the NYPL menus—like this one from a 1938 Mai­son Prunier menu—brings up an inter­ac­tive fea­ture that links each dish to close-up views.

In a post on the NYPL menu col­lec­tion, Buz­zfeed specif­i­cal­ly com­pares New York menus of today with those of 100 years ago, not­ing that prices quot­ed sig­ni­fy cents, not dol­lars. A 1914 Del­moni­co “Rib of Roast” would run you .75 cents, for exam­ple, while a 2014 rib eye there sells for 58 big ones. Of course then, as now, many restau­rants con­sid­ered it gauche to print prices at all. See, for exam­ple, the din­ner menu at New Orleans’ St. Charles Hotel from 1908 below. We may have an all-inclu­sive feast here since this comes from a New Years Eve bill, which also includes a “Musi­cal Pro­gram” in two parts and a list of local “Amuse­ments” at such places as Blaney’s Lyric The­atre, Tulane, Dauphine, “French Orera” (sic), and the 2:00 pm races at City Park. Mati­nees and 8 o’clock shows every day except Sun­day.

The six­ties gave us an explo­sion of menus that par­al­lel in many cas­es the break­out designs of mag­a­zine and album cov­ers. See two stand­outs below. The North Ger­man Lloyd, just below, went with a funky chil­dren’s book-cov­er illus­tra­tion for its 1969 menu cov­er, though its inte­ri­or main­tains a min­i­mal­ist clar­i­ty. Below it, see the strik­ing first page of a menu for John­ny Garneau’s Gold­en Spike from that same year. The cov­er boasts a nos­tal­gic head­line sto­ry for Promon­to­ry News: “Gold­en Spike is Dri­ven: The last rail is laid! East meets West in Utah!” Put it on the cov­er of a  Band or CSNY album and no one bats an eye.

See many, many, many more menus at the NYPL site. With the steady growth of food schol­ar­ship, this col­lec­tion is cer­tain­ly a boon to researchers, as well as curi­ous gour­mands, food­ies, and rabid din­ers of all stripes.

via Buz­zfeed

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Fea­tur­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

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

Conspiracy Theory Rock: The Schoolhouse Rock Parody Saturday Night Live May Have Censored

in Animation, Comedy, Media, Politics, Television | September 2nd, 2014

You’ve prob­a­bly seen “Illu­sion of Choice,” a 2011 info­graph­ic detail­ing how six media con­glom­er­ates “con­trol a stag­ger­ing 90% of what we read, watch, or lis­ten to.” (The enti­ties named are GE, News Corp, Dis­ney, Via­com, Time Warn­er, and CBS.) Anoth­er “Illu­sion of Choice” info­graph­ic from last year doc­u­ments how “ten huge cor­po­ra­tions con­trol the pro­duc­tion of almost every­thing the aver­age per­son buys.” Are these webs of cor­po­rate con­nec­tion kooky con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries or gen­uine cause for alarm? Do the cor­re­la­tions between busi­ness enti­ties cause polit­i­cal cur­rents that under­mine democ­ra­cy and media inde­pen­dence? It’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial to think so giv­en the amount of mon­ey cor­po­ra­tions spend on lob­by­ing and polit­i­cal cam­paigns. It’s not even par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial to say so, at least for those of us who aren’t employed by, say, Via­com, Time Warn­er, GE, etc.

But point­ing fin­gers at the cor­po­ra­toc­ra­cy may have not gone over so well for famed com­e­dy writer Robert Smigel in 1998 when his recur­ring ani­mat­ed “Sat­ur­day TV Fun­house” seg­ment pro­duced the “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock” bit above for Sat­ur­day Night Live. A par­o­dy of the beloved School­house Rock edu­ca­tion­al ‘toons of the 70s, “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock” fea­tures a disheveled gentleman—a stereo­type of the out­sider crackpot—leading a sing-along about the machi­na­tions of the “Media-opoly.” Fig­ured as greedy octopi (rem­i­nis­cent of Matt Taibbi’s “vam­pire squid”), the media giants here, includ­ing GE, West­ing­house, Fox, and Dis­ney, devour the small­er guys—the tra­di­tion­al networks—and “use them to say what­ev­er they please and put down the opin­ions of any­one who dis­agrees.” The seg­ment may have raised the ire of GE, who own NBC. It aired once with the orig­i­nal episode but was sub­se­quent­ly pulled from the show in syn­di­ca­tion, though it’s been includ­ed in sub­se­quent DVD com­pi­la­tions of “Sat­ur­day TV Fun­house.”

Now “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock” is cir­cu­lat­ing online—ampli­fied by a Marc Maron tweet—as a “banned” clip, a mis­lead­ing descrip­tion that feeds right into the sto­ry of con­spir­a­cy. Edit­ing a sketch from a syn­di­cat­ed com­e­dy show, after all, is not tan­ta­mount to ban­ning it. While the short piece makes the usu­al com­pelling case against cor­po­rate rule, it does so in a tongue-in-cheek way that allows for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some of these alle­ga­tions are ten­u­ous exag­ger­a­tions. Our unwashed pre­sen­ter, for exam­ple, ends the seg­ment mum­bling an inco­her­ent non sequitur about Lorne Michaels and Mar­i­on Bar­ry attend­ing the same high school. For his part, Michaels has said the seg­ment was cut because it “wasn’t fun­ny.” He’s got a point—it isn’t—but it’s hard to believe it didn’t raise oth­er objec­tions from net­work exec­u­tives. It wouldn’t be the first time the show has been accused of cen­sor­ing a polit­i­cal sketch.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Elvis Costel­lo to Frank Zap­pa

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981: A Quick 100th Birth­day Cel­e­bra­tion

School­house Rock at 40: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

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

Everyday Economics: A New Course by Marginal Revolution University Where Students Create the Syllabus

in Economics, Online Courses | August 22nd, 2014

In 2012, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabar­rok, two econ pro­fes­sors at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, launched Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty (oth­er­wise known as MRUni­ver­si­ty) which deliv­ers free, inter­ac­tive cours­es in the eco­nom­ics space. Dur­ing its ear­ly days, MRUni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed cours­es on The Great Econ­o­mists, Devel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics, Inter­na­tion­al Trade, and The Eco­nom­ic His­to­ry of the Sovi­et Union. And now it’s cre­at­ing a some­what uncon­ven­tion­al new course called Every­day Eco­nom­ics. The course tries to show how eco­nom­ics impacts peo­ple’s day-to-day lives. And, rather suit­ably, MRUni­ver­si­ty is invit­ing its stu­dents — every­day peo­ple around the globe — to vote for top­ics the course should cov­er. It’s what’s called a “stu­dent-dri­ven” course.

The course is being built in stages, and you can already watch lec­tures (above) from the first sec­tion, taught by Don Boudreaux. It cov­ers Trade and Pros­per­i­ty broad­ly speak­ing, and gets into top­ics like The Hock­ey Stick of Human Pros­per­i­ty and How the Divi­sion of Knowl­edge Saved My Son’s Life.

The next sec­tion, to be taught by Tyler Cowen, will focus on Food. And right now MRUni­ver­si­ty wants your input on the top­ics this sec­tion might focus on. For exam­ple, you might rec­om­mend that they explain “Why is tip­ping so preva­lent in restau­rants but not in oth­er parts of the econ­o­my?” You can make your sug­ges­tions here.

What oth­er top­ics will the course cov­er as it unfolds? It’s all still TBD. But, again, you’re invit­ed to help shape the syl­labus. Big­ger pic­ture sug­ges­tions are being sought here.

For more cours­es on the Dis­mal Sci­ence, don’t for­get to peruse our list of Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es. It part of our meta col­lec­tion called, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Launch­es, Bring­ing Free Cours­es in Eco­nom­ics to the Web

An Intro­duc­tion to Great Econ­o­mists — Adam Smith, the Phys­iocrats & More — Pre­sent­ed in New MOOC

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

Take a Free Course on the Finan­cial Mar­kets with Robert Shiller, Win­ner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

A Serious Stephen Colbert Gives Advice on Love & Life to Teenage Girls

in Comedy, Life | August 8th, 2014

Rookie’s nev­er less than wor­thy “Ask a Grown Man” series pro­vides a forum for mature males like actor Jon Hamm and radio per­son­al­i­ty Ira Glass to offer thought­ful, straight­for­ward advice and expla­na­tions, born of per­son­al expe­ri­ence, to teenage girls (and oth­er inter­est­ed par­ties).

The most recent edi­tion adds depth, and could just as accu­rate­ly be titled “Ask a Lev­el-Head­ed 50-Year-Old Father of Three, Who’s Been Hap­pi­ly Mar­ried to His Children’s Moth­er for Years.”

Lurk­ing just beneath Stephen Colbert’s hawk­ish Col­bert Report per­sona is a fair-mind­ed, seri­ous fel­low, who’s unem­bar­rassed to weigh in in favor of parental author­i­ty when a 19-year-old fan com­plains of her dad’s oppo­si­tion to sleep­overs at her boyfriend’s place while she’s still liv­ing at home. Per­haps she should’ve asked a grown man whom expe­ri­ence hadn’t equipped to see things from the oth­er side of the fence, as Col­bert fore­sees that his answer won’t “go over great with every­one.”

Sure­ly, though, his late moth­er would approve.

Per­haps this seg­ment should be called “Ask a Grown Man Whose Unequiv­o­cat­ing Moral Com­pass Is Incon­ve­nient­ly Close to Your Dad’s, But Whose Posi­tion Allows Him to Offer Insights With­out Los­ing His Tem­per or Going Off Mes­sage.”

Colbert’s children’s extreme­ly low pro­file in the media’s line up of celebri­ty off­spring reflects well on those charged with their upbring­ing. Were his 18-year-old daugh­ter to take issue with the old man’s mus­ings on Twit­ter or Snapchat, she’d have the lux­u­ry of doing so in the way of the aver­age Rook­ie read­er, rather than some obses­sive­ly observed near­ly-grown baby bump.

As to how to tell whether a boy—or anyone—likes you, Col­bert says “they want to hear your sto­ries.”

As one view­er not­ed, “ask a grown-up, get grown-up answers.” Word.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

Stu­dent Asks Noam Chom­sky for Dat­ing Advice

Niet­zsche Dis­pens­es Dat­ing Advice in a Short Screw­ball Film, My Friend Friedrich

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, zine pub­lish­er, and moth­er of a teenage Rook­ie read­er. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

11-Year-Old Martin Scorsese Draws Storyboards for His Imagined Roman Epic Film, The Eternal City

in Film | July 30th, 2014

Mar­tin Scorsese’s mean streets are as long gone as graf­fi­ti-fes­tooned sub­way trains, the real Max’s Kansas City, and Yogi Berra’s pen­nant-win­ning Mets. But while the 1973 film that broke open his career is now over forty years old, Scors­ese hasn’t looked back, nor has he stayed trapped in the rough milieu of New York gang­ster films. He’s adapt­ed Edith Whar­ton, told sto­ries of the Dalai Lama, Howard Hugh­es, hand­fuls of rock and blues stars, and cin­e­mat­ic hero Georges Méliès (sort of).

Last year’s The Wolf of Wall Street fur­ther cement­ed Scorsese’s rep­u­ta­tion as a direc­tor with more breadth than almost any of his con­tem­po­raries. But it would per­haps be a mis­take to call Scorsese’s genre-hop­ping an evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­ment. The series of sto­ry­boards here for an imag­ined widescreen Roman epic called The Eter­nal City— drawn by 11-year-old Scorsese—show us that his vision always exceed­ed the cramped Lit­tle Italy streets of his youth.

Young Scors­ese described his Cecil B. Demille-like pro­duc­tion as “A fic­ti­tious sto­ry of Roy­al­ty in Ancient Rome,” and though he didn’t give us char­ac­ter names, he made sure to spec­i­fy the film’s actors, cast­ing Mar­lon Bran­do, Richard Bur­ton, Vir­ginia Mayo, and Alec Guin­ness, among oth­ers. As for Scorsese’s own role, The Inde­pen­dent notes, “it is strik­ing that he has giv­en him­self a big­ger cred­it as pro­duc­er-direc­tor than any of the stars.” Repro­duced in David Thompson’s series of inter­views, Scors­ese on Scors­ese, the draw­ings’ impres­sive lev­el of detail demon­strate a pre­co­cious eye for shot com­po­si­tion and the dra­mat­ic per­spec­tives that char­ac­ter­ize his mature work.

The direc­tor of such metic­u­lous­ly com­posed films as Taxi Dri­ver and Good­fel­las has had much to say about the impor­tance of sto­ry­boards to his process. (We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his hand-drawn sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver.) They are, he’s said, “the way to visu­al­ize the entire movie in advance,” to “show how I would imag­ine a scene and how it should move to the next.” And while many direc­tors would make sim­i­lar claims about this essen­tial pro­duc­tion tool, Scors­ese cher­ish­es the craft as well as the util­i­ty of the sto­ry­board. “Pen­cil draw­ing is my favorite,” he remarks. “The pen­cil line leaves lit­tle impres­sion on the paper, so if the sto­ry­board is pho­to­copied it los­es some­thing. I refer back to my orig­i­nal draw­ings in order for me to con­jure up the idea I had when I saw the pen­cil line made.”

Can we look for­ward to Scors­ese look­ing back, just once, to his plans for The Eter­nal City? He’d have to recast, of course, but giv­en how con­fi­dent­ly he sketch­es out each of his films on paper, the 71-year-old direc­tor might find much to work with in this youth­ful cin­e­mat­ic vision of antiq­ui­ty.

View the sto­ry­boards in a larg­er for­mat here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Saul Bass’ Vivid Sto­ry­boards for Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus (1960)

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