Kermit the Frog Learns to Love Jazz Through “Visual Thinking” (1959)

in Music, Television | October 30th, 2012

Jim Hen­son launched his first tele­vised pup­pet pro­gram, Sam and Friends, when he was a fresh­man at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land. The show ran for six years on NBC affil­i­ate WRC-TV in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of Sam and Friends, Hen­son devel­oped the design of his flex­i­ble, foam-rub­ber pup­pets, which moved much more nat­u­ral­ly than wood­en mar­i­onettes. And they became the pro­to­types of the beloved Mup­pets that would make him famous. In the short film above from Sam and Friends, “Visu­al Think­ing,” an ear­ly ver­sion of Ker­mit the Frog has an exchange with a ston­er char­ac­ter called Har­ry the Hip­ster, who intro­duces him to an advanced form of visu­al think­ing that moves from sin­gle notes, to chords, to clas­si­cal pas­sages to jazz.

The sketch rep­re­sents a unique com­bi­na­tion of pup­petry and ani­ma­tion that would come to char­ac­ter­ize some of Henson’s most rec­og­niz­able work, such as Sesame Street. Although it’s in black and white and obvi­ous­ly not pro­duced for chil­dren, it’s very much in the style of the lat­er Hen­son, who main­tained a kind of beat sen­si­bil­i­ty through­out his career, whether work­ing in fan­ta­sy with The Dark Crys­tal or mad­cap pup­pet ensem­bles like The Mup­pet Movie. In the above sketch, Ker­mit and Har­ry work out the intri­ca­cies of jazz phras­ing by visu­al­iz­ing the notes in white squig­gles on the screen, which Har­ry eras­es by scat­ting them back­wards. Even­tu­al­ly, they’re over­whelmed and erased by jazz, in a kind of trib­ute to the form’s com­plex inde­ter­mi­na­cy. The sketch is one of the few ear­ly films to fea­ture Ker­mit, since the character’s rights are owned by Dis­ney. Pro­duced in 1959, the sketch was remade for The Ed Sul­li­van Show in 1966 and again for The Dick Cavett Show in 1971.

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:

Jim Hen­son Pilots The Mup­pet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Vio­lence” (1975)

Pup­pet Mak­ing with Jim Hen­son: A Primer

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Lawrence Krauss Presents “Secular Sermon” on Theoretical Physics and the Meaning of Life

in Physics | October 29th, 2012

Alain de Bot­ton, the writer who “has always tried to get ideas to impact on the way we actu­al­ly live,” start­ed The School of Life in order to offer an edu­ca­tion craft­ed “accord­ing to things we all tend to care about: careers, rela­tion­ships, pol­i­tics, trav­els, fam­i­lies.” At its cen­tral Lon­don loca­tion, you can enroll in cours­es like “How to Have Bet­ter Con­ver­sa­tions,” “How to Bal­ance Work with Life,” and, per­haps most crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant of all,  “How to Be Cool.” This seems like just the sort of insti­tu­tion which won’t con­front you with the sort of numer­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous, seem­ing­ly abstract math and sci­ence class­es that gave us grief in our reg­u­lar edu­ca­tions. Yet de Bot­ton and his School of Life co-founders under­stand that just because a sub­ject assigns aggra­vat­ing home­work does­n’t mark it out as irrel­e­vant. Accord­ing to Lawrence Krauss, Foun­da­tion Pro­fes­sor in the School of Earth and Space Explo­ration and Physics Depart­ments at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty and direc­tor of the Ori­gins Ini­tia­tive, physics could hard­ly have more to do with your dai­ly expe­ri­ences.

The School of Life brought Krauss to Lon­don’s Con­way Hall to deliv­er one of their sig­na­ture “Sec­u­lar Ser­mons.” (De Bot­ton, you may know, recent­ly pub­lished a man­i­festo call­ing for a reli­gion for athe­ists.) You can watch his 45-minute pre­sen­ta­tion free online and learn how sci­ence, as he tells it, both describes and offers an escape from real­i­ty. Using exam­ples from his field of physics, Krauss demon­strates how sci­ence, by zoom­ing in as close as pos­si­ble or zoom­ing out as far as pos­si­ble, puts our every­day con­cerns and quib­bles in prop­er con­text. What’s more, he notes,physics has it that we’re all made up of the same bits and pieces as every­thing, and thus every­one, else. Have you ever heard a more ele­gant argu­ment for the notion of uni­ver­sal con­nect­ed­ness? But this isn’t to say that Krauss mar­shals the fruits of such rig­or­ous study in the name of warm-and-fuzzy pro­nounce­ments. When you hear him declare how physics will make you under­stand that “you’re even more insignif­i­cant than you thought,” you’ll know just how far his sen­si­bil­i­ty lays from either warmth or fuzzi­ness. The life of a physi­cist, so I’ve heard, ben­e­fits from a lit­tle gal­lows humor.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Lawrence Krauss: Every Atom in Your Body Comes From a Star

Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Uni­verse From Noth­ing’

Lawrence Krauss on the Mys­te­ri­ous Allure of Extra Dimen­sions

Life-Affirm­ing Talks by Cul­tur­al Mav­er­icks Pre­sent­ed at The School of Life

Alain de Bot­ton Wants a Reli­gion for Athe­ists: Intro­duc­ing Athe­ism 2.0

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Hurricane Sandy Seen from Outer Space, in Timelapse Motion

in Video - Science | October 29th, 2012

Hov­er­ing some 22,300 miles above Earth, the GOES-14 satel­lite, oper­at­ed by the Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion, cap­tured images of Hur­ri­cane Sandy bar­rel­ing its way across the Atlantic yes­ter­day. The video above puts into ani­ma­tion a series of images tak­en over an 11 hour peri­od. Off to the left, you see the state of North Car­oli­na, which looks sad­ly small com­pared to the 900-mile-wide storm. For any­one liv­ing on the east coast, you might want to check out this resource that offers advice on what to do before, dur­ing, and after a hur­ri­cane. Stay safe, and we’ll see you on the oth­er side of the storm.

Note: Below you will find an alter­nate view pro­vid­ed by the NASA God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter. This ani­ma­tion brings togeth­er satel­lite obser­va­tions from Octo­ber 26 through Octo­ber 29 2012.

Bela Lugosi Discusses His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hospital in 1955

in Film, Random | October 29th, 2012

In 1955 Bela Lugosi was in a sad state. The once-hand­some, Hun­gar­i­an-born star of Drac­u­la had seen his career degen­er­ate over the pre­vi­ous two decades until at last he was reduced to play­ing a cru­el par­o­dy of him­self in some of the tack­i­est B hor­ror films ever made. Along the way he picked up a drug habit. In late April of 1955 the 72-year-old actor, des­ti­tute and recent­ly divorced from his fourth wife, checked him­self into the psy­cho­path­ic ward at Los Ange­les Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. A few days lat­er, in a hear­ing held at the ward, Lugosi plead­ed with a judge to com­mit him to a state hos­pi­tal. A Unit­ed Press arti­cle from April 23, 1955 describes the scene:

Although weigh­ing only 125 pounds and only a shad­ow of his for­mer self, Lugosi’s voice was clear and res­o­nant as he told the court how shoot­ing pains in his legs led him to start tak­ing mor­phine injec­tions in 1935. With­out mor­phine, he could­n’t work, Lugosi said.

“I start­ed using it under a doc­tor’s care,” he said. “I knew after a time it was get­ting out of con­trol.”

“Sev­en­teen years ago, on a trip to Eng­land, I heard of Metho­d­one, a new drug. I brought a big box of it back home. I guess I brought a pound,” Lugosi said.

“Ever since I’ve used that, or demerol. I just took the drugs. I did­n’t eat. I got sick­er and sick­er.”

The judge com­mend­ed Lugosi for tak­ing action to fight his addic­tion, and com­mit­ted him to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan State Hos­pi­tal in Nor­walk, a sub­urb of Los Ange­les, for a min­i­mum of three months and a max­i­mum of two years. Dur­ing his time in the hos­pi­tal, the old man plot­ted his come­back. In The Immor­tal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi, Arthur Lennig writes:

While at the hos­pi­tal, Lugosi had been giv­en the script of his next Ed Wood pic­ture, The Ghoul Goes West, a strange con­coc­tion in which a mad doc­tor goes out west to car­ry out his scheme to make super-crea­tures out of cow­boys and rule the world. The actor looked for­ward to this forth­com­ing pro­duc­tion, which he believed would begin about ten days after leav­ing the hos­pi­tal, and bran­dished the script as proof that he would start work. “It’s very cute,” he said to the reporters. It prob­a­bly was­n’t, but Lugosi no doubt believed that all the front page pub­lic­i­ty, how­ev­er noto­ri­ous, would aid in his come­back, a come­back that would even­tu­al­ly raise him above the low­ly ranks of Ed Wood’s shoe­string pro­duc­tions. Bela posed for a pho­to­graph with the script in one hand while his oth­er hand was dra­mat­i­cal­ly raised in an assertive fist.

The inter­view above was filmed on August 4, 1955, one day before the actor’s release from the hos­pi­tal. In the clip, Lugosi smiles and declares him­self “a new man.” Less than three weeks lat­er he mar­ried his fifth wife, an obsessed fan who report­ed­ly sent him a let­ter every day he was in the hos­pi­tal. The Ghoul Goes West nev­er mate­ri­al­ized, but Lugosi col­lab­o­rat­ed with Ed Wood on a cou­ple of oth­er projects, includ­ing a movie that some crit­ics would even­tu­al­ly call “the worst film ever made,” Plan 9 From Out­er Space. As his hope of a gen­uine come­back crum­bled, Lugosi drank heav­i­ly. On August 16, 1956–barely over a year after his release from Met­ro­pol­i­tan State Hospital–Lugosi died of a heart attack. He was buried in his Drac­u­la cos­tume.

Sev­er­al Lugosi films appear on our big list of Free Movies Online.

The Moth Now Streams its Brilliant & Quietly Addictive Stories on the Web

in Life, Literature, Podcasts | October 27th, 2012

The Moth, a New York City-based sto­ry­telling orga­ni­za­tion, is a rare crea­ture indeed. Found­ed in 1997 by poet and nov­el­ist George Dawes Green, The Moth was orig­i­nal­ly Green’s attempt to re-cre­ate sum­mer nights in his native Geor­gia, when friends would gath­er on the porch and tell each oth­er stories—a south­ern tra­di­tion Green missed in the north, sym­bol­ized by the moths he remem­bered as part of the scene. From its begin­nings in Green’s New York liv­ing room, the orga­ni­za­tion has grown into a mul­ti-media phe­nom­e­non, with live sto­ry­tellers on stage in New York and Los Ange­les, and on tour around the world, a pod­cast, and The Moth Radio Hour, air­ing on over 200 sta­tions nation­wide.

So who tells sto­ries at The Moth? An amaz­ing range of peo­ple, from actors, authors, and musi­cians, to every­day peo­ple with some­thing to say and the courage to say it in front of a crowd. In fact, if you feel like you belong in that last cat­e­go­ry, The Moth invites you to pitch them two min­utes of your sto­ry and sub­mit it for a chance to tell it live. Oh, one oth­er thing: The Moth stip­u­lates that all sto­ries must be true sto­ries and must be your sto­ries, not some­one else’s. How do they know? I sup­pose they’ve just got fine­ly-tuned BS detec­tors after 15 years in the sto­ry­telling busi­ness.

To give you an idea of what a Moth sto­ry is like (I almost wrote “a typ­i­cal Moth sto­ry,” but there is no such thing) have a look at the video above, with Neil Gaiman telling a dri­ly humor­ous sto­ry from his teenage years. Gaiman’s pre­sen­ta­tion is sub­dued, in his under­stat­ed Eng­lish way, and replete with delight­ful digres­sions and asides. An exam­ple of a more impas­sioned, urgent Moth tale comes from come­di­an Antho­ny Grif­fith, who tells the sto­ry of his rise to com­ic fame with his Tonight Show appear­ances while he was also nurs­ing his young daugh­ter who had can­cer.

As I said, there is no “typ­i­cal Moth sto­ry,” and that’s the appeal. Every­one who takes the stage has some­thing to say that no one else could, because it’s theirs alone. Both of the videos above are avail­able on The Moth’s Youtube chan­nel, which fea­tures dozens more live sto­ry­tellers (I’d rec­om­mend Dan Savage’s sto­ry among so many oth­ers).

Oh, but wait, there’s more! (Can you tell I’m excit­ed about this?). The Moth is now stream­ing audio of recent sto­ry­telling events on its web­site, with some avail­able for free down­load. Some here are not-to-be-missed. For instance, you should drop what­ev­er you’re doing (read­ing this sen­tence, I assume) and lis­ten to Damien Echols’ har­row­ing sto­ry of his 18 years on death row as one of the wrong­ly-con­vict­ed, and recent­ly freed, “West Mem­phis Three.” Still here? Fine. Then you must imme­di­ate­ly go away and lis­ten to play­wright A.E. Hotch­n­er tell his sto­ry about watch­ing a bull­fight with his friend Ernest Hem­ing­way. If nei­ther of these appeals, you’re prob­a­bly hope­less, but hey, what can it hurt to scroll through the exten­sive list of sto­ries stream­ing on The Moth web­site and find a few that speak to you? Invari­ably, this will hap­pen: when you start lis­ten­ing to Moth sto­ry­tellers, you’ll find it very hard to stop. It’s a pret­ty great non-prof­it rack­et they’ve got going: bank­ing on the old­est and most durable form of enter­tain­ment and human con­nec­tion.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

The Amazing Flights of Wingsuit Champion Espen Fadnes

in Life | October 26th, 2012

The 2011 video, Sense of Fly­ing (below), gave view­ers a remark­able look at Espen Fadnes fly­ing down moun­tain sides at speeds of 155 miles per hour. If you saw the video along with 2.5 mil­lion oth­ers, you per­haps won­dered: What could be going through this guy’s head? Well, now is your chance to find out. A new­ly-released video, Split of a Sec­ond (above), gets into the psy­che and moti­va­tion of the Nor­we­gian Wing­suit World Cham­pi­on. It also shows the extent to which this guy real­ly lives on a razor’s edge. Strap your­self in. Put on your crash hel­met. And enjoy the ride.

Watch Nosferatu, the Seminal Vampire Film, Free Online (1922)

in Film | October 26th, 2012

What, you haven’t seen Nos­fer­atu yet? But you’re in luck: not only do you still have a few days left to fit this sem­i­nal clas­sic of vam­pir­ic cin­e­ma into your Hal­loween view­ing rota­tion, but when the 31st comes, you can watch it free online yet again. An inspi­ra­tion for count­less vam­pire films that would fol­low over the next nine­ty years, F.W. Mur­nau’s 1922 silent fea­ture adapts Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, but just loose­ly enough so that it could put its own stamp on the myth and not actu­al­ly have to pay for rights to the nov­el. Jonathan and Mina Hark­er? Now Thomas and Ellen Hut­ter. Jonathan’s boss Ren­field? Now a fel­low named Knock. Count Drac­u­la, to whose vast and crum­bling estate Ren­field sends the hap­less Jonathan? Now Count Orlok — and unfor­get­tably so. We can post no more rel­e­vant endorse­ment of Nos­fer­atu’s endur­ing val­ue than to say that it remains scary, or at least eerie, to this day. I defy any sophis­ti­cat­ed mod­ern view­er to spend All Hal­lows’ eve with this pic­ture and not come away feel­ing faint­ly unset­tled.

Part of it has to do with sheer age: while some visu­al effects haven’t held up — get a load of Orlok escap­ing his cof­fin in the ship’s car­go hold, employ­ing a tech­nique trust­ed by every nine-year-old with a video cam­era — the deeply worn look and feel seems, at moments, to mark the film as com­ing from a dis­tant past when aris­to­crat­ic blood-suck­ing liv­ing corpses may as well have exist­ed.

This same process has, over four decades, imbued with a pati­na of men­ace every hor­ror film made in the sev­en­ties. Fans of the 1979 Wern­er Her­zog-Klaus Kin­s­ki col­lab­o­ra­tion Nos­fer­atu the Vampyre, a com­pan­ion piece obvi­ous­ly worth view­ing in any case, can attest to this. You might also con­sid­er incor­po­rat­ing in your Hal­loween night view­ing E. Elias Mer­hige’s Shad­ow of the Vam­pire, a satire of the 1920s film indus­try’s col­li­sion of eccen­tric old-world crafts­man­ship and sav­age com­mer­cial buf­foon­ery which imag­ines Orlok as hav­ing been played by a geni­une vam­pire. As for Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s rights-hav­ing 1992 adap­ta­tion Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la… well, its chief point of inter­est is still Gary Old­man’s hair­style.

You can always find Nos­fer­atu on our list of Great Silent Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis: Uncut & Restored

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Stephen King Turns Short Story into a Free Webcomic

in Books, Deals | October 26th, 2012

Pri­or to becom­ing a house­hold name, Stephen King did time as a high school Eng­lish teacher and a labor­er in an indus­tri­al laun­dry. These days, he could insu­late his love­ly Vic­to­ri­an home with crisp hun­dreds if such were his whim. Yet it seems he has­n’t for­got­ten what it’s like to watch every pen­ny, wish­ing there was enough fat in the bud­get for the pur­chase of one measly com­ic book based on an insane­ly famous author’s obscure short sto­ry…

Are gen­eros­i­ty and the remem­brance of past strug­gles moti­vat­ing King to dole out artist Den­nis “X‑Men Noir” Calero’s graph­ic adap­ta­tion of his short sto­ry, “The Lit­tle Green God of Agony,”  for the next sev­en weeks?

Or is he research­ing what it feels like to be an undis­cov­ered writer in the dig­i­tal age, anx­ious­ly dan­gling free con­tent on his web­site in an attempt to build read­er­ship?

Bro­ken into thrice week­ly install­ments to be deliv­ered over a peri­od of eight weeks, King’s sto­ry con­cerns one Andrew New­some, the sixth rich­est man in the world, and Kat Mac­Don­ald, the expo­nen­tial­ly less well-to-do RN car­ing for him in the wake of a debil­i­tat­ing acci­dent, anoth­er sub­ject to which King is no stranger. As of this writ­ing, the com­ic is only avail­able on the author’s web­site, though the King jug­ger­naut is so unstop­pable, the next move may well be a film, a tv minis­eries or a Broad­way musi­cal. Maine win­ters are long and cold. Per­haps even the mas­ter of sus­pense warms to the prospect of some extra insu­la­tion.

You can start fol­low­ing the “The Lit­tle Green God of Agony” here.

via Gal­l­ey­Cat

Neil Young Reveals the New Killer Gadget That Will Save Music

in Music, Technology | October 26th, 2012

In the open­ing min­utes of his new mem­oir Wag­ing Heavy Peace (I lis­tened to the audio book, and you can too for free), Neil Young talks about his mod­el trains, his exten­sive col­lec­tion of vin­tage cars, and not much about music per se — although he does high­light his entre­pre­neur­ial effort to save the music indus­try with a new-fan­gled audio sys­tem called Pure­Tone. 

For quite some time now, Young has lament­ed the decline of music dur­ing the dig­i­tal age. It’s not pirat­ing that’s the cul­prit. It’s the MP3, a for­mat that degrades the qual­i­ty of the music we hear. Speak­ing at a Wall Street Jour­nal con­fer­ence ear­li­er this year (watch here), Young com­plained that the MP3 can’t “trans­fer the depth of the art.” “My goal,” he con­tin­ued, “is to try and res­cue the art form that I’ve been prac­tic­ing for the past 50 years.”

Enter Pure­Tone, which has actu­al­ly been renamed Pono more recent­ly. The device/music ser­vice will hit the mar­ket next year, and it essen­tial­ly promis­es to let fans hear record­ings in super high fideli­ty, as if they owned the orig­i­nal mas­ter tapes cre­at­ed by var­i­ous artists. Not long ago, Flea, the bassist of the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, raved about the sound of Pono, telling Rolling Stone: “It’s not like some vague thing that you need dogs’ ears to hear. It’s a dras­tic dif­fer­ence.”

If that’s right, Young may do a great ser­vice for musi­cians every­where, and make a lot of mon­ey for him­self and oth­ers along the way. I mean imag­ine the num­ber of remas­ters that could hit the mar­ket in the com­ings years, start­ing with two by Bob Dylan — The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan and High­way 61 Revis­it­ed. A per­fect place to begin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

Calibre’s Open Source Software Makes It Easy to Read Free eBooks (and Much More)

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, iPad, iPhone, Software | October 25th, 2012

We at Open Cul­ture have dis­cov­ered a handy piece of soft­ware that will make it eas­i­er to use our col­lec­tion, 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. Cal­i­bre is a free e‑book library man­age­ment soft­ware that lets users con­vert e‑books from one for­mat to anoth­er.

Say that you’ve down­loaded Jane Austen’s Pride and Prej­u­dice in the open ePUB for­mat and want to move the book onto your Kin­dle. Cal­i­bre can con­vert the text into all of the major e‑reader for­mats, includ­ing Kindle’s pro­pri­etary for­mat. The pro­gram will then sync the text to your device and you’re good to go.

Cal­i­bre sup­ports e‑book for­mats used by major man­u­fac­tur­ers (includ­ing Ama­zon, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Sony), but if your device isn’t list­ed in the program’s list, Calibre’s “gener­ic device” option will most like­ly do the job.

The pro­gram also offers a default view­er for read­ing texts on your com­put­er, and books can be con­vert­ed from one plat­form to anoth­er, mak­ing it easy to move books from your phone to iPad to lap­top and beyond.

Cal­i­bre fills a niche for e‑book read­ers, pro­vid­ing a sim­ple way to man­age e‑libraries. The pro­gram also helps man­age and orga­nize online mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers and oth­er read­ing mate­ri­als. Click “Fetch News” and Cal­i­bre will scan select­ed online news out­lets and cat­a­log them in your col­lec­tion.

You can even buy books by using Calibre’s inter­face to search for the best price on a select­ed title.

You can down­load Cal­i­bre here and then start min­ing our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Find more of her work at .