Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beatnik Film Stars Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, Shot by Robert Frank

in Film, Poetry | October 11th, 2012

Sure, you could expe­ri­ence the Beat sen­si­bil­i­ty on film by watch­ing The Beat Gen­er­a­tion. But why set­tle for that high-gloss Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er fea­ture treat­ment when you can get an unadul­ter­at­ed half-hour chunk of the real thing above, in Pull My Daisy? Both films came out in 1959, but only the lat­ter comes from the lens of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Frank, he of the famous pho­to­book The Amer­i­cans. And only the lat­ter fea­tures the uncon­ven­tion­al per­form­ing tal­ents of Allen Gins­berg, David Amram, Del­phine Seyrig, and Jack Ker­ouac. That Ker­ouac him­self pro­vides all the nar­ra­tion assures us we’re watch­ing a movie ful­ly com­mit­ted to the Beat mind­set. “Ear­ly morn­ing in the uni­verse,” he says to set the open­ing scene. “The wife is get­tin’ up, openin’ up the win­dows, in this loft that’s in the Bow­ery of the Low­er East Side of New York. She’s a painter, and her hus­band’s a rail­road brake­man, and he’s comin’ home in a cou­ple hours, about five hours, from the local.”

Ker­ouac’s ambling words seem at first like one impro­vi­sa­tion­al ele­ment of many. In fact, they pro­vid­ed the pro­duc­tion’s only ele­ment of impro­vi­sa­tion: Frank and com­pa­ny took pains to light, shoot, script, and rehearse with great delib­er­ate­ness, albeit the kind of delib­er­ate­ness meant to cre­ate the impres­sion of thrown-togeth­er, ram­shackle spon­tane­ity. But if the kind of care­ful craft that made Pull My Daisy seems not to fit with­in the anar­chic sub­cul­tur­al col­lec­tive per­sona of the Beats, sure­ly the premis­es of its sto­ry and the con­se­quences there­of do. The afore­men­tioned brake­man brings a bish­op home for din­ner, but his exu­ber­ant­ly low-liv­ing bud­dies decide they want in on the fun. Or if there’s no fun to be had, then, in keep­ing with what we might iden­ti­fy as Beat prin­ci­ples, they’ll cre­ate some of their own. Or at least they’ll cre­ate a dis­tur­bance, and where could a Beat pos­si­bly draw the line between dis­tur­bance and fun?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bob Dylan and Allen Gins­berg Vis­it the Grave of Jack Ker­ouac (1979)

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Cov­er for On the Road (And More Great Cul­ture from Around the Web)

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

Codecademy’s Free Courses Democratize Computer Programming

in Computer Science, Education, Online Courses, Technology, Web/Tech | October 11th, 2012

There are good and bad online instruc­tion­al plat­forms for every­thing: some lan­guage cours­es work bet­ter than oth­ers and some approach­es to teach­ing music are more effec­tive than oth­ers.

This is just as true for com­put­er pro­gram­ming, where, like every­thing else, an abun­dance of free cours­es and tuto­ri­als from MIT, UC Berke­ley, Har­vard and Stan­ford offer inter­ac­tive tools for learn­ing web devel­op­ment and com­put­er pro­gram­ming. You can find a long list of free comp sci cours­es from these great uni­ver­si­ties here.

One new site that is get­ting par­tic­u­lar­ly good reviews is Codecad­e­my, a free online learn­ing sys­tem for learn­ing every­thing from HTML Basics  to Python in a “user active” style—meaning that users can use tuto­ri­als to design projects of their own choos­ing. It’s also easy to track your progress.

What sets Codecad­e­my apart from oth­er pro­gram­ming tuto­ri­als is that all stu­dent work can be com­plet­ed with­in a web brows­er. No soft­ware down­load­ing or installing is required. Respond­ing to crit­i­cism that the site did­n’t ini­tial­ly offer enough cours­es, Codecad­e­my has added numer­ous cours­es in 2012 and launched a Course Cre­ator pro­gram. This is a boon for users inter­est­ed in learn­ing how to teach. Codecad­e­my does not put user-cre­at­ed cours­es through an approval process and gives course cre­ators a link that they can dis­trib­ute as they wish. Codecad­e­my does, how­ev­er, screen the cours­es and selects which to fea­ture on its own site.

Enrollees in its Code Year pro­gram receive a pro­gram­ming les­son in their email inbox every Mon­day, start­ing with the fun­da­men­tals of JavaScript and then mov­ing on to HTML and CSS. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple signed up at the begin­ning of the year (includ­ing the White House and New York May­or Michael Bloomberg). If you were one the enrollees, it’s still not too late to keep that New Year’s res­o­lu­tion.

Find Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. Find more of her work at .

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Reunite in Exotic Marrakesh, 1994

in Music | October 11th, 2012

Wah Wah:

In 1994 Jim­my Page and Robert Plant col­lab­o­rat­ed on a new musi­cal project for the first time since the death 14 years ear­li­er of Led Zep­pelin’s drum­mer, John Bon­ham. The reunion result­ed from an invi­ta­tion to appear on MTV’s hit series Unplugged. But Page and Plant want­ed to steer clear of nos­tal­gia, so they exclud­ed for­mer Zep­pelin bassist John Paul Jones from the project and named it Unled­ded.

The result­ing album and DVD fea­ture an assort­ment of Zep­pelin songs that were rein­ter­pret­ed with the help of an Egypt­ian ensem­ble, an Indi­an vocal­ist and the Lon­don Met­ro­pol­i­tan Orches­tra, but per­haps the most inter­est­ing part of the project was a trio of new songs record­ed with local musi­cians in Mar­rakesh, Moroc­co. Those per­for­mances, shown here, were the result of a col­lab­o­ra­tion with tra­di­tion­al musi­cians of the Gnawa minor­i­ty, whose sub-Saha­ran ances­tors were brought to Moroc­co many cen­turies ago as slaves.

“We’d nev­er met the Gnawa when we went there,” said Plant in a 1994 inter­view, “but they were very patient, and smil­ing is a great cur­ren­cy.” Gnawa music is tra­di­tion­al­ly per­formed for prayer and heal­ing, and dif­fers from oth­er North African music. “They play a kind of music which is much more akin to the music of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta than it is to do with Arab music,” Plant said in anoth­er inter­view. “It’s haunt­ing, seduc­tive, and quite allur­ing.”

City Don’t Cry:

The Truth Explodes (Yal­lah):

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of ‘Kash­mir’

Comedian Tig Notaro’s “Truly Great” Cancer Stand-up Set Now Available on Louis C.K.‘s Website

in Comedy, Life | October 11th, 2012

Until a cou­ple months ago, it was kind of an open secret that Tig Notaro is one of the smartest, fun­ni­est female comics work­ing today. Notaro had a fierce­ly loy­al fan­base, a No. 1 pod­cast with writ­ing part­ner Kyle Dun­ni­gan (Pro­fes­sor Blastoff) and made reg­u­lar appear­ances on some of the usu­al com­e­dy cir­cuits, live and tele­vised (Com­e­dy Cen­tral Presents, The Sarah Sil­ver­man Pro­gram). She was doing pret­ty well, but had nowhere near the pro­file of, say, Louis C.K. Then some­thing extra­or­di­nary hap­pened. First, her life fell apart, and then her career blast­ed off: What changed? She got can­cer. Just the lat­est twist, a brush with death, in the life of a “mas­ter of the art of coun­ter­in­tu­itive com­e­dy.”

The can­cer, of course, was bad. But the four months lead­ing up to her diag­no­sis includ­ed a series of improb­a­bly awful events that could send the aver­age per­son into a depres­sive coma: she con­tract­ed pneu­mo­nia, then a near-fatal bac­te­r­i­al infec­tion, then her moth­er died sud­den­ly, then she went through an emo­tion­al breakup. All fol­lowed by… can­cer. So what’s the upside? Well, she is can­cer free now and appar­ent­ly doing well after a dou­ble mas­tec­to­my. But what made an impact pro­fes­sion­al­ly was the way she han­dled the com­pound­ing of per­son­al crises: she kept show­ing up, mak­ing great com­e­dy. And last August, instead of can­cel­ing an appear­ance at the L.A. club Largo, Notaro went onstage on the day she was diag­nosed with stage 2 breast can­cer, and deliv­ered a poignant, dead­pan mono­logue: “Hel­lo, I have can­cer. How are you?”

Louis C.K., who was there that night, tweet­ed that Notaro’s act was among the “tru­ly great, mas­ter­ful standup sets” he had seen in his 27 years in the busi­ness. Lat­er on his web­site C.K. wrote:

I was cry­ing and laugh­ing and lis­ten­ing like nev­er in my life. Here was this small woman stand­ing alone against death and sim­ply report­ing where her mind had been and what had hap­pened and employ­ing her gor­geous­ly acute stand-up voice to her own death.

C.K.’s noto­ri­ety sent Notaro trend­ing all over the inter­net, but the per­for­mance wasn’t made pub­lic, which only increased inter­est. Now, the uncut record­ing of that night has been released as her sec­ond com­e­dy album, Live, and it’s avail­able on C.K.’s web­site for the small price of $5.00. You can hear a short pre­view of the set above.

These days, Notaro’s first album Good One is No. 2 (in com­e­dy) on iTunes, she has a book deal, and is begin­ning a reg­u­lar gig on Com­e­dy Cen­tral. Reporters come call­ing fre­quent­ly. Notaro spoke to NPR’s Fresh Air a cou­ple days ago and told her sto­ry of that night. C.K. fol­lowed up in the same pro­gram with his ver­sion of events. Notaro’s inter­view is clas­sic her—she’s a nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed sto­ry­teller who seems to rise above mis­for­tune with envi­able poise and wit.

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.

Watch a Water Droplet Bounce (That’s Right, Bounce) in Super Slow Motion

in Random | October 11th, 2012

Which wise sage said “Life moves pret­ty fast. If you don’t slow down and look around, you might miss it”? I can’t quite recall. It does­n’t mat­ter. But the Phan­tom v7.3 Dig­i­tal High Speed Cam­era sug­gests that there’s some­thing to that adage. The cam­era shoots up to 6688 frames-per-sec­ond, and lets you look at every­day phe­nom­e­na in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way. We’ve shown you pret­ty cool footage of what a vibrat­ing cym­bal looks like while cap­tured in super slow mo. Now we give you a glimpse of some­thing you don’t see very often — water bounc­ing.

via @Wired

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They won’t regret it!

Thelonious Monk, Live in Oslo and Copenhagen (1966)

in Music | October 10th, 2012

A lit­tle present for what would be Thelo­nius Monk’s 95th birth­day today — 100 grand min­utes of Monk per­form­ing live in Oslo and Copen­hagen in 1966. In the spring of that year, Monk brought his leg­endary quar­tet (tenor sax­o­phon­ist Char­lie Rouse, bassist Lar­ry Gales, and drum­mer Ben Riley) to Scan­di­navia to per­form two tele­vised shows. The record­ing, saved for pos­ter­i­ty thanks to YouTube, fea­tures some Monk clas­sics: Blue Monk, Epistro­phy, Round Mid­night and oth­ers. Sit back and enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Advice From the Mas­ter: Thelo­nious Monk Scrib­bles a List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig

A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz by Can­non­ball Adder­ley (with Louis Arm­strong & Thelo­nious Monk)

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz & The Cre­ative Process

Braque in Bulk: Costco Gets Back into the Fine Art Market

in Art, Business | October 10th, 2012

In 2006, Louis Knicker­bock­er, a meat dis­trib­u­tor from New­port Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, bought a Picas­so draw­ing online. The price looked too good to be true, $39,999.99. But why have con­cerns when the piece was being sold by the rep­utable art deal­er, Cost­co. That’s right, I said, Cost­co! Said Knicker­bock­er: “They just sell the top qual­i­ty — what­ev­er you buy at Cost­co, whether it’s a wash­ing machine or a vac­u­um clean­er.”

The Picas­so draw­ing end­ed up falling under sus­pi­cion, and Cost­co exit­ed the fine art mar­ket. But now, six years lat­er, they’re back. Accord­ing to The New York Times, Cost­co recent­ly opened a Fine Art sec­tion on its web site and start­ed sell­ing lith­o­graphs by Braque, Matisse, and Warhol, most­ly in the $1,500 range. Per­haps because of The New York Times pub­lic­i­ty, these objets d’art are now all sold out.

The next time you’re fill­ing your cart with 10 pounds of cof­fee and 1728 bot­tles of water (you need to hydrate after all of that caf­feine, you know?), pay anoth­er vis­it to the Fine Art sec­tion. They may have the deal of the cen­tu­ry wait­ing for you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Hear Paul Auster Read the Entirety of The Red Notebook, an Early Collection of Stories

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | October 10th, 2012

Nov­el­ist, screen­writer, poet, and trans­la­tor Paul Auster has carved out a place for him­self over the past sev­er­al decades as a decid­ed­ly writer’s writer, a Brook­lyn Borges of a sort, whose metafic­tion­al tales are often intri­cate­ly con­struct­ed sto­ries with­in sto­ries (with­in sto­ries). Auster is also known for writ­ing and co-direct­ing (with Wayne Wang) 1995 sleep­er indie hit Smoke, a film about the denizens of a Brook­lyn cig­ar shop. As with much of Auster’s fic­tion, a cen­tral char­ac­ter in Smoke is a bro­ken-heart­ed, soli­tary writer (played by William Hurt). Auster’s 2002 nov­el The Book of Illu­sions is cen­tered around a sim­i­lar char­ac­ter, a writer deep in mourn­ing. On April 11, 2001, Auster stopped by the Kel­ly Writ­ers House at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia to give a read­ing from The Book of Illu­sions. Below, you can hear him read the first two pages of the nov­el:

Samuel Beckett Directs His Absurdist Play Waiting for Godot (1985)

in Literature, Theatre | October 10th, 2012

Samuel Beck­et­t’s absur­dist play, Wait­ing for Godot, pre­miered in Paris in 1953, at the Théâtre de Baby­lone, under the direc­tion of French actor, Roger Blin. Many oth­er direc­tors staged the play in the years to come, each time inter­pret­ing it in their own way. All the while, Beck­ett com­plained that the play was being sub­ject­ed to “end­less mis­un­der­stand­ing.” How­ev­er, when an actor, Peter Woodthrope, once asked him to explain what Godot is all about, Beck­ett answered quixot­i­cal­ly: “It’s all sym­bio­sis, Peter; it’s sym­bio­sis.” Thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion, Sam.

Beck­ett nev­er gave a clear expla­na­tion. But per­haps he offered up some­thing bet­ter. In 1985, Beck­ett direct­ed three of his plays — Wait­ing for Godot, Krap­p’s Last Tape and Endgame — as part of a pro­duc­tion called “Beck­ett Directs Beck­ett.” The plays per­formed by the San Quentin Play­ers toured Europe and Asia with much fan­fare, and with Beck­ett exert­ing direc­to­r­i­al con­trol. And do keep this in mind. Beck­ett paces things slow­ly. So you won’t hear your first sound until the 2:00 mark.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

The Quantum Physics of Harry Potter, Broken Down By a Physicist and a Magician

in Books, Science | October 10th, 2012

If you con­sid­er your­self a Har­ry Pot­ter fan, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly read read all sev­en of J.K. Rowl­ing’s nov­els and watched all eight of their film adap­ta­tions. The ques­tion of where to go from there has many pos­si­ble answers. Some true believ­ers plunge straight into, and often con­tribute to, the vast body of unof­fi­cial read­ing mate­r­i­al that is Har­ry Pot­ter fan fic­tion. Oth­ers turn to the schol­ar­ship sur­round­ing Pot­ter and his world, a field that includes such stud­ies of vary­ing seri­ous­ness as The Sci­ence of Har­ry Pot­ter, Har­ry Pot­ter and Phi­los­o­phy, The Values of Har­ry Pot­ter, Look­ing for God in Har­ry Pot­ter, and If Har­ry Pot­ter Ran Gen­er­al Elec­tric. In the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to lec­ture above, quan­tum physi­cist Kris­ter Shalm explains, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, the quan­tum physics of Har­ry Pot­ter.

Shalm thus faces two tasks: to explain the rel­e­vant facts of quan­tum physics in a man­ner under­stand­able to the lay­man, and the even more for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge of relat­ing the rel­e­vant facts of Har­ry pot­ter in a way that won’t com­plete­ly alien­ate the unini­ti­at­ed. But pulling this off in an enter­tain­ing fash­ion would seem to land right in the wheel­house of a man who bills him­self as “The Danc­ing Physi­cist” and states his mis­sion to “make some of the mind-bog­gling con­cepts in quan­tum mechan­ics more approach­able” by col­lab­o­rat­ing with “a magi­cian, musi­cians, and dancers.” That magi­cian, a cer­tain Dan Trom­mater, turns up in this lec­ture to com­ple­ment Shalm’s phys­i­cal angle with a mag­i­cal one. Togeth­er, they illus­trate for us how Dra­co Mal­foy’s tele­por­ta­tion tech­niques resem­ble what quan­tum physi­cists do in the lab on a reg­u­lar basis, and what rel­e­vance Schrödinger’s famous cat has to that fate­ful prophe­cy that either Har­ry Pot­ter or Lord Volde­mort would ulti­mate­ly die. (Luck­i­ly for me, Shalm does­n’t reveal which one; I haven’t read the books myself yet!)

Relat­ed con­tent:

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Ele­ments.

Har­ry Pot­ter Pre­quel Now Online

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