Clarence Clemons, The Big Man & His Big Sound Will Be Missed

in Music | June 18th, 2011

Clarence Clemons, the sax­o­phon­ist who played along­side Bruce Spring­steen for four decades, passed away today at 69. The Big Man and his sound will be missed.

Above, a sim­ple mourn­ful reminder of what we’ll be going with­out: First up, a soul­ful solo from “Jun­gle­land,” per­formed in Mil­wau­kee back in March 2008. And then a return to the ear­ly days, a youth­ful per­for­mance of “Thun­der Road” record­ed at the Capi­tol The­atre, Pas­sa­ic, NJ (1978). Clarence takes over at the 6:12 mark.

H/T to David Rem­nick for bring­ing this vin­tage clip to the suface.

A Year of the Moon in 2.5 Minutes

in Astronomy, Video - Science | June 16th, 2011

If you were stuck some­where far away from yes­ter­day’s lunar eclipse, here’s some con­so­la­tion cour­tesy of NASA. The Sci­en­tif­ic Visu­al­iza­tion Stu­dio at the God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter has com­piled this two and a half minute video from over a year’s worth of data record­ed by the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO), which has been orbit­ing the moon at 50 kilo­me­ters above its sur­face for over a year.

The results are pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar, and might ren­der the pain of miss­ing a chance to watch the moon turn red a lit­tle more bear­able, espe­cial­ly for all you heart­bro­ken Can­cers (we’ll get through this.)

via Wired News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD)

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Un Chien Andalou: Revisiting Buñuel and Dalí’s Surrealist Film

in Art, Film | June 16th, 2011

The New York Times has post­ed A.O. Scot­t’s 3‑minute look back at the 1929 short film Un Chien Andalou. Scott describes the sur­re­al­ist clas­sic, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between painter Sal­vador Dalí and a very young first-time film­mak­er Luis Buñuel, as an “old dog with an end­less sup­ply of new tricks.” The short­’s pro­ces­sion of seem­ing­ly absurd, uncon­nect­ed images, he adds, does not fol­low the log­ic of nar­ra­tive but rather the “log­ic of dreams.”

Even though its most famous (or infa­mous) images — a sev­ered hand, a hand cov­ered with ants, and most final­ly a hand slic­ing into a wom­an’s eye­ball with a razor blade —  seem less shock­ing now than they did 80 years ago, Un Chien Andalou is still a plea­sure. Our real­i­ty has changed since the 20s. Our dreams, less so.

You can watch Un Chien Andalou in its entire­ty, along with L’Âge d’Or, anoth­er Buñuel/Dalí pro­duc­tion, in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Movies. But pro­ceed with cau­tion: About 25 years ago, I slipped a copy into the fam­i­ly VCR, expect­ing a cute car­toon about an Andalu­sian dog. I’m still recov­er­ing.

Relat­ed:

Sal­vador Dali (and Oth­er VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

A Tour of Earth from Outer Space (in HD).

in Astronomy | June 15th, 2011

A new way to see the world. Give NASA sev­en min­utes, and they’ll show you the Earth­’s most impres­sive land­scapes — as seen from space, in HD. The coasts of Namib­ia, Tunisia and Mada­gas­car, they’re all on the itin­er­ary, along with Sici­ly, Chi­na, Iran, and Utah. Plus you will see a giant hur­ri­cane over the Atlantic ocean. Not to be missed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Endeavour’s Launch Viewed from Boost­er Cam­eras

NASA Cap­tures Giant Solar Storm

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

The Sounds of Jerusalem

in Life, Music | June 15th, 2011

Ophir Kutiel, aka Kuti­man, burst onto the dig­i­tal scene with The Moth­er of All Funk Chords in 2009. Now he has resur­faced with a new video. This time, it’s a musi­cal jour­ney through Jerusalem, a mashup that weaves togeth­er the sounds of local musi­cians, cre­at­ing a visual/aural com­po­si­tion that lets you tap into the unique sound of a city that lives part­ly in the past, part­ly in the future, always waver­ing between opti­mism and despair.…

Steve Martin Releases Bluegrass Album/Animated Video

in Comedy, Music | June 15th, 2011

Once again, we’re remind­ed of Steve Mar­t­in’s many tal­ents — come­di­an, movie star, New York­er writer, play­wright, magi­cian, and, yes, ban­jo play­er too. In June 2009, Mar­tin hooked up with the Steep Canyon Rangers, an Amer­i­can blue­grass band, on Gar­ri­son Keil­lor’s A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion. (Lis­ten to mp3 here.) Lat­er in 2009 and ear­ly 2010, Mar­tin made more appear­ances with the band, per­form­ing (among oth­er things) the first song ever writ­ten for hymn-deprived athe­ists. Now comes a new CD, Rare Bird Alert, which fea­tures 13 tracks, includ­ing “Jubi­la­tion Day” (watch ani­mat­ed video above) and King Tut, a blue­grass ver­sion of his 1978 clas­sic. Enjoy…

The Ayn Rand Guide to Romance

in Life, Philosophy | June 14th, 2011

Can Ayn Rand tell us some­thing about achiev­ing a deeply sat­is­fy­ing rela­tion­ship? It’s hard to imag­ine. She was noto­ri­ous­ly churl­ish, dumped friends and allies who did­n’t give her works pos­i­tive reviews, and cheat­ed on her hus­band with a man 24 years her junior, then even­tu­al­ly expelled the young Nathaniel Bran­den from her intel­lec­tu­al cir­cle. And heck, she even made her hus­band wear a bell on his shoe, to warn her about his com­ings and goings.

But, no mat­ter, you have to sep­a­rate the phi­los­o­phy from the per­son … or so many acolytes of flawed thinkers have argued. Right fans of John Edwards? All three of you? So here you have it, The Self­ish Path to Romance, a love man­u­al based on Ayn Rand’s Objec­tivist phi­los­o­phy. The video almost screams par­o­dy, but it’s appar­ent­ly not. You can snag a copy of the book on Ama­zon here…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

In Her Final Speech, Ayn Rand Denounces Ronald Rea­gan, the Moral Major­i­ty & Anti-Choicers (1981)

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Ayn Rand Argues That Believ­ing in God Is an Insult to Rea­son on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dartmouth Graduation

in Life | June 13th, 2011

The stars shined upon the Ivy League schools this grad­u­a­tion sea­son. Tom Han­ks at Yale, Amy Poehler at Har­vard, Den­zel Wash­ing­ton at U Penn. These kids have it good, but nowhere near as good as the Dart­mouth grads. This week­end, Conan O’Brien rolled into Hanover, New Hamp­shire and dished out plen­ty of jokes:

Par­ents, if your child majored in fine arts or phi­los­o­phy, you have good rea­son to be wor­ried. The only place where they are now real­ly qual­i­fied to get a job is ancient Greece. Good luck with that degree.

You know, New Hamp­shire is such a spe­cial place. When I arrived I took a deep breath of this crisp New Eng­land air and thought, “Wow, I’m in the state that’s next to the state where Ben and Jer­ry’s ice cream is made.”

To this day I can­not help but won­der: What if I had gone to Dart­mouth? If I had gone to Dart­mouth, I might have spent at least some of my col­lege years out­side and today I might not be aller­gic to all plant life, as well as most types of rock. If I had gone to Dart­mouth, right now I’d be wear­ing a fleece thong instead of a lace thong… If I had gone to Dart­mouth, I’d have a liv­er the size and con­sis­ten­cy of a bean bag chair. Final­ly, if I had gone to Dart­mouth, today I’d be get­ting an hon­orary degree at Har­vard. Imag­ine how awe­some that would be.

And a lit­tle wis­dom for life, which, hon­est­ly, holds entire­ly true.

For decades, in show busi­ness, the ulti­mate goal of every come­di­an was to host The Tonight Show. It was the Holy Grail, and like many peo­ple I thought that achiev­ing that goal would define me as suc­cess­ful. But that is not true. No spe­cif­ic job or career goal defines me, and it should not define you. In 2000—in 2000—I told grad­u­ates to not be afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, dis­ap­point­ment will come. The beau­ty is that through dis­ap­point­ment you can gain clar­i­ty, and with clar­i­ty comes con­vic­tion and true orig­i­nal­i­ty.

Many of you here today are get­ting your diplo­ma at this Ivy League school because you have com­mit­ted your­self to a dream and worked hard to achieve it. And there is no greater cliché in a com­mence­ment address than “fol­low your dream.” Well I am here to tell you that what­ev­er you think your dream is now, it will prob­a­bly change. And that’s okay. Four years ago, many of you had a spe­cif­ic vision of what your col­lege expe­ri­ence was going to be and who you were going to become. And I bet, today, most of you would admit that your time here was very dif­fer­ent from what you imag­ined. Your room­mates changed, your major changed, for some of you your sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion changed. I bet some of you have changed your sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion since I began this speech. I know I have. But through the good and espe­cial­ly the bad, the per­son you are now is some­one you could nev­er have con­jured in the fall of 2007.

You can find the com­plete tran­script of the speech here. And don’t miss Conan’s vis­it to Google last sum­mer, which was full of good laughs…

Guns N’ Roses Meet Two Cellos: Monday Mashup

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | June 13th, 2011

You may rec­og­nize Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser, aka 2CELLOS, from their rock­ing arrange­ment of Michael Jack­son’s Smooth Crim­i­nal ear­li­er this year. This time, the clas­si­cal­ly-trained musi­cians have done them­selves one bet­ter, with a fre­net­ic, hard-hit­ting take on GNR’s “Wel­come To The Jun­gle” that would give Slash him­self a run for his hard­core cred.

2CELLOS are cur­rent­ly tour­ing with Elton John, and you can pre-order their debut CD, which includes cov­ers of Nir­vana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” and U2’s “With or With­out You.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gui­tar Prodi­gy from Karachi

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

230 Cultural Icons: A New Collection

in Film, History, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Psychology | June 13th, 2011

Time to roll out a new media col­lec­tion — a big col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons. Here you will find great writ­ers, daz­zling film­mak­ers and musi­cians, bril­liant philoso­phers and sci­en­tists — fig­ures who have changed our cul­tur­al land­scape through­out the years. You’ll see them in video, or hear their voic­es in audio.

The list cur­rent­ly fea­tures 230 icons, all speak­ing in their own words. The col­lec­tion will inevitably grow as we add more mate­r­i­al, or as you send sug­ges­tions our way. For now, how about we whet your appetite with 10 favorites? Then you can rum­mage through the full col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons here.

(Note: Down the road, you can access this col­lec­tion by click­ing “Cul­tur­al Icons” in the top nav­i­ga­tion bar.)

Sal­vador Dali - Video – Sur­re­al­ist artist appears on “What’s My Line?” (1952)

John­ny Depp - Video – The ver­sa­tile actor reads a let­ter from Gonzo jour­nal­ist Hunter S. Thomp­son.

Anne Frank - Video – It is the only known footage of Anne Frank, author of the world’s most famous diary, and it’s now online.

Pat­ti Smith — Video — The “god­moth­er of punk” recalls her friend­ship with artist Robert Map­plethor­pe.

Quentin Taran­ti­no - Video – Pulp Fic­tion direc­tor lists his favorites films since 1992.

Leo Tol­stoy – Video – Great footage of the last days of the tow­er­ing Russ­ian nov­el­ist. 1910.

Mark Twain – Video – America’s fabled writer cap­tured on film by Thomas Edi­son in 1909.

Andy Warhol - Video – In 1979, Warhol cre­at­ed pub­lic access tele­vi­sion pro­grams. In this episode, he chats with Bian­ca Jag­ger & Steven Spiel­berg.

Tom Waits - Video – The raspy singer reads “The Laugh­ing Heart” by Charles Bukows­ki.

Vir­ginia Woolf — Audio — Record­ing comes from a 1937 BBC radio broad­cast. The talk, enti­tled “Crafts­man­ship,” was part of a series called “Words Fail Me.” The only known record­ing of her voice.

Get the rest here. Don’t miss us on Face­book and Twit­ter!