Watch 950 Weather Reports Presented by David Lynch, Straight from His Los Angeles Home

in Film, YouTube | January 22nd, 2025

Los Ange­les is hard­ly a city known for its var­ied weath­er, but if one lives there long enough, one does become high­ly attuned to its many sub­tleties. (Grant­ed, some of the local phe­nom­e­na involved, like the noto­ri­ous San­ta Ana winds, can pro­duce far-from-sub­tle effects.) The late David Lynch, who spent much of his life in Los Ange­les, was more attuned to them than most. For a time, he even post­ed dai­ly YouTube videos in which he talked about noth­ing else. Or rather, he talked about almost noth­ing else: much of the appeal of his weath­er reports, 950 of which you can watch on this playlist, lies in his unpre­dictable asides.

In addi­tion to announc­ing the date (in a slight­ly eccen­tric form, e.g. “June one, two-thou­sand and twen­ty”), read­ing the tem­per­a­ture in both Fahren­heit and Cel­sius, and remark­ing on the pres­ence or absence of “blue skies and gold­en sun­shine,” Lynch would some­times men­tion what was on his mind that day. “Today I’m think­ing about tin cans,” he declared in his weath­er report for Octo­ber 11th, 2020. A cou­ple of months lat­er, he was remem­ber­ing Per­cy Faith’s theme from the San­dra Dee and Troy Don­ahue vehi­cle A Sum­mer Place, which to him encap­su­lat­ed the “roman­tic, won­drous feel­ing of the fifties” at that decade’s very end.

The weath­er-report­ing Lynch showed an aware­ness of his audi­ence as well, occa­sion­al­ly pre­sent­ing them with a hand-drawn Valen­tine’s Day card or expres­sion of thanks for view­ing: “What a great bunch you all are, those of you who come each day to check out the weath­er.” But as Ali Raz writes in the Believ­er, one views Lynch’s weath­er reports “not to learn about the weath­er but to watch Lynch per­form — even though, pre­cise­ly because, he doesn’t per­form in any actor­ly way. Instead, he per­forms him­self.” And he’d been doing it in that form longer than many real­ized, hav­ing begun his reports as a call-in seg­ment on Los Ange­les radio sta­tion Indie 103.1 FM in 2005, then post­ing them as videos to his own web site.

Lynch returned to weath­er reportage on YouTube dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which made the at-home set­ting fash­ion­able. His videos inspired some of their view­ers, who pre­sum­ably had more time on their hands than usu­al, to do the hard work of exe­ge­sis. One user of the David Lynch sub­red­dit found the weath­er reports key to under­stand­ing Lynch’s work, specif­i­cal­ly through “the idea of aware­ness. What does it mean to look at the world around us?” In his films, “this is accom­plished by sur­re­al­ism, vio­lence, and a gen­er­al sense of the unset­tling or men­ac­ing. But those are vehi­cles for the idea of aware­ness, not its essence.” His Weath­er Reports show that “aware­ness does­n’t have to come through an extreme men­tal state, but could be part of our dai­ly life,” in times of blue skies and gold­en sun­shine or oth­er­wise.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Wide-Rang­ing Cre­ative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Dis­cov­er His Films, Music Videos, Car­toons, Com­mer­cials, Paint­ings, Pho­tog­ra­phy & More

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

David Lynch Tries to Make a List of the Good Things Hap­pen­ing in the World… and Comes Up Blank

How David Lynch Got Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion? By Drink­ing a Milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Sin­gle Day, for Sev­en Straight Years

Hear the Best of Ange­lo Badala­men­ti (RIP) from 1986–2017: Fea­tures Music from David Lynch’s Blue Vel­vet, Twin Peaks & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Download a 417-Megapixel Panorama of the Andromeda Galaxy—A Decade-Long NASA Project in the Making

in Astronomy | January 21st, 2025

Using the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, astronomers have cre­at­ed a majes­tic 417-megapix­el panora­ma of the Androm­e­da galaxy, locat­ed some 2.5 mil­lion light-years away from our plan­et. Tak­ing more than a decade to com­plete, the pho­to­mo­sa­ic cap­tures 200 mil­lion stars, which is only a frac­tion of Andromeda’s esti­mat­ed one tril­lion stars. Accord­ing to NASA, the 2.5 bil­lion pix­el mosa­ic “will help astronomers piece togeth­er the galaxy’s past his­to­ry that includes merg­ers with small­er satel­lite galax­ies.” On this NASA web­site, you can down­load a copy of the mosa­ic, and learn more about the explo­ration of Androm­e­da.

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!

via PetaPix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent 

NASA Releas­es a Mas­sive Online Archive: 140,000 Pho­tos, Videos & Audio Files Free to Search and Down­load

Sun Ra Applies to NASA’s Art Pro­gram: When the Inven­tor of Space Jazz Applied to Make Space Art

NASA Enlists Andy Warhol, Annie Lei­bovitz, Nor­man Rock­well & 350 Oth­er Artists to Visu­al­ly Doc­u­ment America’s Space Pro­gram

NASA Dig­i­tizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion: Stream Them Free Online

Carl Sagan Sent Music & Pho­tos Into Space So That Aliens Could Under­stand Human Civ­i­liza­tion (Even After We’re Gone)

Watch Design for Disaster, a 1962 Film That Shows Why Los Angeles Is Always at Risk of Devastating Fires

in Current Affairs, History | January 16th, 2025

“This is fire sea­son in Los Ange­les,” Joan Did­ion once wrote, relat­ing how every year “the San­ta Ana winds start blow­ing down through the pass­es, and the rel­a­tive humid­i­ty drops to fig­ures like sev­en or six or three per cent, and the bougainvil­lea starts rat­tling in the dri­ve­way, and peo­ple start watch­ing the hori­zon for smoke and tun­ing in to anoth­er of those extreme local pos­si­bil­i­ties — in this instance, that of immi­nent dev­as­ta­tion.” The New York­er pub­lished this piece in 1989, when Los Ange­les’ fire sea­son was “a par­tic­u­lar­ly ear­ly and bad one,” but it’s one of many writ­ings on the same phe­nom­e­non now cir­cu­lat­ing again, with the high­ly destruc­tive Pal­isades Fire still burn­ing away.

Back in 1989, long­time Ange­lenos would have cit­ed the Bel Air Fire of 1961 as a par­tic­u­lar­ly vivid exam­ple of what mis­for­tune the San­ta Ana winds could bring. Wide­ly rec­og­nized as a byword for afflu­ence (not unlike the now vir­tu­al­ly oblit­er­at­ed Pacif­ic Pal­isades), Bel Air was home to the likes of Den­nis Hop­per, Burt Lan­cast­er, Joan Fontaine, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Aldous Hux­ley — all of whose hous­es count­ed among the 484 destroyed in the con­fla­gra­tion (in which, mirac­u­lous­ly, no lives were lost). You can see the Bel Air Fire and its after­math in “Design for Dis­as­ter,” a short doc­u­men­tary pro­duced by the Los Ange­les Fire Depart­ment and nar­rat­ed by William Con­rad (whose voice would still have been instant­ly rec­og­niz­able as that of Mar­shal Matt Dil­lon from the gold­en-age radio dra­ma Gun­smoke).

Los Ange­les’ repeat­ed afflic­tion by these blazes is per­haps overde­ter­mined. The fac­tors include not just the dread­ed San­ta Anas, but also the geog­ra­phy of its canyons, the dry­ness of the veg­e­ta­tion in its chap­ar­ral (not, pace Did­ion, desert) ecol­o­gy, and the inabil­i­ty of its water-deliv­ery sys­tem to meet such a sud­den and enor­mous need (which also proved fate­ful in the Pal­isades Fire). It did­n’t help that the typ­i­cal house at the time was built with “a com­bustible roof; wide, low eaves to catch sparks and fire; and a big pic­ture win­dow to let the fire inside,” nor that such dwellings were “close­ly spaced in brush-cov­ered canyons and ridges ser­viced by nar­row roads.” The Bel Air Fire brought about a wood-shin­gle roof ban and a more inten­sive brush-clear­ance pol­i­cy, but the six decades of fire sea­sons since do make one won­der what kind of mea­sures, if any, could ever sub­due these par­tic­u­lar forces of nature.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

NASA Cap­tures the World on Fire

When Steve Busce­mi Was a Fire­fight­er — and Took It Up Again After 9/11

Take a Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, the Man­sion That Has Appeared in Blade Run­ner, Twin Peaks & Count­less Hol­ly­wood Films

Aldous Hux­ley Explains How Man Became “the Vic­tim of His Own Tech­nol­o­gy” (1961)

Take a Dri­ve Through 1940s, 50s & 60s Los Ange­les with Vin­tage Through-the-Car-Win­dow Films

Behold 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Firemen’s Coats, Rich­ly Dec­o­rat­ed with Myth­i­cal Heroes & Sym­bols

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting from Start to Finish: Every Episode from 31 Seasons in Chronological Order

in Art, Television | January 15th, 2025

Bob Ross the man died near­ly thir­ty years ago, but Bob Ross the arche­typ­al TV painter has nev­er been more wide­ly known. “With his dis­tinc­tive hair, gen­tle voice, and sig­na­ture expres­sions such as ‘hap­py lit­tle trees,’ he’s an endur­ing icon,” writes Michael J. Mooney in an Atlantic piece from 2020. “His like­ness appears on a wide assort­ment of objects: paints and brush­es, toast­ers, socks, cal­en­dars, dolls, orna­ments, and even a Chia Pet.” Here in Korea, where I live, he’s uni­ver­sal­ly called Bob Ajeossi, ajeossi being a kind of col­lo­qui­al title for mid­dle-aged men. It’s quite an after­life for a soft-spo­ken pub­lic-tele­vi­sion host from the eight­ies.

Ross quick­ly became a pop-cul­tur­al fig­ure in that era, star­ring in semi-iron­ic MTV spots by the ear­ly nineties. But over the decades, writes Mooney, “the appre­ci­a­tion of Bob Ross has mor­phed into some­thing near­ly uni­ver­sal­ly earnest.” It helps that he has “the ulti­mate calm­ing pres­ence,” which has drawn spe­cial appre­ci­a­tion here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry: “More than a decade before most ther­a­pists were telling clients to be mind­ful and present, Ross was telling his view­ers to appre­ci­ate their every breath.” This med­i­ta­tive, pos­i­tive mood per­vades all of The Joy of Paint­ing’s more than 400 record­ed broad­casts, and they even deliv­er the sooth­ing effects of what YouTube-view­ing gen­er­a­tions know as “unin­ten­tion­al ASMR.”

Now you can watch almost all those broad­casts on a sin­gle YouTube playlist, which includes all of The Joy of Paint­ing’s 31 sea­sons, orig­i­nal­ly aired between 1983 and 1994. (The videos come from the offi­cial YouTube chan­nel of The Joy of Paint­ing and Bob Ross.) Despite hav­ing end­ed its run well before any of us had ever imag­ined watch­ing video online, the show now feels prac­ti­cal­ly made for the inter­net, what with not just its ASMR qual­i­ties, but also the paraso­cial friend­li­ness of Ross’ per­son­al­i­ty, the instruc­tion­al val­ue and sheer quan­ti­ty of its con­tent, and the high­ly con­sis­tent for­mat. Every time, Ross paints a com­plete pic­ture from start to fin­ish: usu­al­ly a land­scape fea­tur­ing mighty moun­tains, free­dom-lov­ing clouds, and hap­py lit­tle trees, but occa­sion­al­ly some­thing just dif­fer­ent enough to keep it inter­est­ing. And so the man Mooney describes as “prob­a­bly America’s most famous painter” lives on as a beloved YouTu­ber.

Relat­ed com­ment:

The Bob Ross Vir­tu­al Art Gallery: A New Site Presents 403 Paint­ings from The Joy of Paint­ing Series

What Hap­pened to the 1200 Paint­ings Paint­ed by Bob Ross? The Mys­tery Has Final­ly Been Solved

Expe­ri­ence the Bob Ross Expe­ri­ence: A New Muse­um Open in the TV Painter’s For­mer Stu­dio Home

The Joy of Paint­ing with Bob Ross & Banksy: Watch Banksy Paint a Mur­al on the Jail That Once Housed Oscar Wilde

Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work Reveals What It Would Look Like to Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing on LSD

Watch a Mas­ter Japan­ese Print­mak­er at Work: Two Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Relax­ing ASMR Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Nirvana Before They Were Nirvana: Watch Their 1988 Performance Recorded in a Radio Shack

in Music | January 13th, 2025

Here’s a strange home video of Nir­vana when they were unknown, play­ing inside a Radio Shack in the band’s home­town of Aberdeen, Wash­ing­ton. The video was record­ed on the evening of Jan­u­ary 24, 1988, after the store had closed. In those days the group went by the name of Ted Ed Fred.

Only the day before, the band had record­ed its first demo tape at a stu­dio in Seat­tle. Gui­tarist and singer Kurt Cobain asked his new friend Eric Har­ter, who man­aged the Radio Shack, to video­tape the band play­ing “Paper Cuts,” one of 10 songs from the demo. Along with Cobain, the video fea­tures Nir­vana co-founder Krist Novosel­ic on bass and Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums.

The video below includes footage of Har­ter talk­ing about the Radio Shack video and giv­ing a copy of the tape to Cobain’s griev­ing wid­ow Court­ney Love, who is shown with her friend Kat Bjel­land of Babes in Toy­land. At one point, Har­ter men­tions a “Ted Ed Fred” con­cert at the Com­mu­ni­ty World The­ater in Taco­ma. To see a full video of that show, which was staged the night before the Radio Shack tap­ing (and only hours after the demo ses­sion), click here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

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:

The First Live Per­for­mance of ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’ (1991)

Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” Played By Musi­cians Around the World

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’

Nir­vana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life in 1988

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

The World in a Cloverleaf: A World Map from 1581

in History, Maps | January 8th, 2025

In 1581, the medieval car­tog­ra­ph­er and Protes­tant the­olo­gian Hein­rich Bünt­ing cre­at­ed a sym­bol­ic map of the world that adorned his book Itin­er­ar­i­um Sacrae Scrip­turae (Trav­el Through Holy Scrip­ture). Hand-col­ored and shaped like a three-leaf clover, the map put Jerusalem at its cen­ter, high­light­ing its cen­tral role in Chris­tian­i­ty, Judaism, and Islam. From that cen­ter flowed three continents—Europe, Africa, and Asia—each sur­round­ed by swirling waters teem­ing with ships, mer­maids, and sea mon­sters. Then, off to one side, we find a bar­ren “Amer­i­ca,” oth­er­wise known as the “New World.”

The three-leaf clover design like­ly sym­bol­izes the Chris­t­ian trin­i­ty, while also pay­ing homage to the clover design found on the coat of arms of Bünt­ing’s native home­town, Hanover. Beyond the map fea­tured above, Bünt­ing also designed some oth­er notably uncon­ven­tion­al maps. Take, for exam­ple, a map where Europe takes the form of a vir­gin queen, or a map of Asia that’s shaped like the winged horse Pega­sus. You can view a copy of the Itin­er­ar­i­um Sacrae Scrip­turae online.

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!

via Ian Brem­mer

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Explore the Here­ford Map­pa Mun­di, the Largest Medieval Map Still in Exis­tence (Cir­ca 1300)

When a Medieval Monk Crowd­sourced the Most Accu­rate Map of the World, Cre­at­ing “the Google Earth of the 1450s”

Europe’s Old­est Map: Dis­cov­er the Saint-Bélec Slab (Cir­ca 2150–1600 BCE)

Francis Ford Coppola Picks His Favorite Criterion Movies & Gives Advice to Filmmakers

in Film | December 26th, 2024

Upon step­ping into the hal­lowed Cri­te­ri­on Clos­et, stocked with hun­dreds of that cinephile video label’s finest releas­es, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la speaks of a direc­tor who “believed in a film he want­ed to make, and used his entire for­tune, because the financ­ing sys­tem of the time would­n’t finance it. And it came out and it was a big flop, and he died sort of pen­ni­less, not real­iz­ing that this film he put every­thing up for” would “be con­sid­ered today the mas­ter­piece that we con­sid­er it.” The auteur in ques­tion is Jacques Tati, and the film is Play­time, though one imag­ines that Cop­po­la’s own recent expe­ri­ence with Mega­lopo­lis was­n’t so very far from his mind.

“I think he’s the only film­mak­er, oth­er than present com­pa­ny, who took a big hunk of what wealth he had earned in his life and put it up to make a film that nobody else would make,” Cop­po­la con­tin­ues. But when you do that, “usu­al­ly it with­stands the test of time.”

His long career has afford­ed him many a les­son in the unex­pect­ed turns a pic­ture’s after­life can take. Take Rum­ble Fish, his sec­ond S. E. Hin­ton adap­ta­tion of 1983 after The Out­siders. He intend­ed it as “an art film for kids,” but “the kids at that time did­n’t total­ly get it right away, and I thought it was a very big fail­ure and was very upset about it, because I sort of loved the film.”

Only lat­er did Cop­po­la find out how influ­en­tial this seem­ing dud had been in Latin Amer­i­ca, where young peo­ple “went to this one the­ater to see this weird movie called Rum­ble Fish, which they had no idea what it was, but it some­how struck them, and it inspired a whole gen­er­a­tion to become film­mak­ers and nov­el­ists.” But he’d nev­er have been in a posi­tion to make it — to say noth­ing of The God­fa­ther, The Con­ver­sa­tion, and Apoc­a­lypse Now — if he had­n’t heed­ed the words of Dance, Girl, Dance direc­tor Dorothy Arzn­er, who hap­pened to be his direct­ing teacher at UCLA. Doubt­ful about his poten­tial to become a film­mak­er, he declared his inten­tion to quit try­ing. To which Arzn­er respond­ed: “I’ve been around, and I know you’ll make it.” Indeed, Cop­po­la made it in the movies — and, more impor­tant­ly, he con­tin­ues mak­ing movies today.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Four-Decade-Strug­gle to Make Mega­lopo­lis

Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Films: The God­fa­ther, Apoc­a­lypse Now & More

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names His Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Wes Ander­son Vis­its a Paris Video Store and High­lights the Films He Loves: Kuro­sawa, Truf­faut, Buñuel & More

The Cult of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion: The Com­pa­ny Ded­i­cat­ed to Gath­er­ing & Dis­trib­ut­ing the Great­est Films from Around the World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Bob Dylan Reads “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” On His Holiday Radio Show (2006)

in Music | December 24th, 2024

Allow me to name just a few of the peo­ple I want to hear host­ing and curat­ing radio shows—former Sex Pis­tols’ singer John Lydon, for­mer Clash front­man Joe Strum­mer, for­mer Woody Guthrie imper­son­ator Bob Dylan.…

Luck­i­ly for me, this ain’t just fan­ta­sy base­ball; at var­i­ous times, and with vary­ing lev­els of com­mit­ment, each of these tastemak­ers has host­ed a pro­gram show­cas­ing their own favorite artists. In Dylan’s case, the com­mit­ment was pret­ty sub­stan­tial. His show, Theme Time Radio Hour, ran for almost three years—once a week from 2006 to 2009—on satel­lite radio.

Each episode cen­tered on a gen­er­al theme, hence the title, but the selec­tions were all over the place—more or less what you’d expect from Dylan: an eclec­tic col­lec­tion of folk, blues, gospel, soul, coun­try, mod­ern pop, and rock ‘n’ roll mixed with old-time radio jin­gles, nov­el­ties, and pro­mos, and the host’s odd­ball com­men­tary and hokey humor. Record­ed while Dylan was on the road, then edit­ed togeth­er with pho­ny “lis­ten­er calls” and emails, Theme Time Radio Hour aimed, Dylan said, “to expand the musi­cal taste” of his lis­ten­ers. That it did, even in its most tra­di­tion­al episode, name­ly the hol­i­day spe­cial on Christ­mas and New Year’s, or as Dylan calls it, “a Yule­tide extrav­a­gan­za.”

In his 2006 Christ­mas broad­cast, above, Dylan bounces from Bob Seger to the Sta­ples Singers to Lord Nel­son, “uncrowned king of Soca,” and Mabel Mafuya, who plays “a Mara­bi style, sort of like South African rag­time.” The wide vari­ety of well- and less­er-known artists—all play­ing Christ­mas music—combined with Dylan’s wry inter­jec­tions, makes for delight­ful­ly weird lis­ten­ing. But when it comes time for his own con­tri­bu­tion, he goes for the obvi­ous and recites Clement Clarke Moore’s “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas.” You may not have thought much of this the first time you heard it, much less the mil­lionth. But in Dylan’s read­ing, the stock­ings sound like they were hung with care in some dim, smoky beat­nik cof­fee­house and the sug­ar plums dance to the fin­ger-snap­ping bop rhythms of jazz poet­ry while a harp­si­chord plays “O Tan­nen­baum” in the back­ground.

It’s a very cool ren­di­tion, in oth­er words, of a very corny piece of writ­ing. Through­out the spe­cial, Dylan dis­plays a real knack for suss­ing new sounds and angles from old, tired hol­i­day clich­es. His exten­sive knowl­edge of hol­i­day tunes may place him in the com­pa­ny of John Waters and the many oth­er “men who love Christ­mas music” pro­filed in the doc­u­men­tary Jin­gle Bell Rocks! Whether he is a col­lec­tor or just an avid lis­ten­er, I do not know, but by the time you’ve fin­ished lis­ten­ing to his 2006 Theme Time Radio Hour Christ­mas spe­cial, you will find your appre­ci­a­tion for the hol­i­day genre thor­ough­ly expand­ed.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan’s Thanks­giv­ing Radio Show: A Playlist of 18 Delec­table Songs

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

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

A Simple, Down-to-Earth Christmas Card from the Great Depression (1933)

in Life | December 15th, 2024

The Smith­son­ian sets the scene for this Christ­mas card sent in 1933, a few years into the Great Depres­sion. They write:

Despite the glum eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, the Pinero fam­i­ly used a brown paper bag to fash­ion an inex­pen­sive hol­i­day greet­ing card. They penned a clever rhyme and added some charm­ing line draw­ings of Mom, Dad, and the kids with the mes­sage: “Oh, well—in spite of it all—here’s a Mer­ry Christ­mas from the Pineros.” On Decem­ber 19, 1933, they mailed it from Chica­go to friends in Mass­a­chu­setts, using a one-and-a-half-cent stamp. For a min­i­mal out­lay of cash, they were able to keep in touch with friends and com­ment on their reduced cir­cum­stances with wit and humor.

This hand-let­tered poem is a delight­ful exam­ple of light verse, a whim­si­cal form of poet­ry intend­ed to enter­tain or amuse, even if treat­ing a seri­ous sub­ject in a humor­ous man­ner. In the poem, the Pineros sug­gest that they had strug­gled eco­nom­i­cal­ly for some time, but now, due to the con­tin­u­ing Depres­sion, oth­ers shared their finan­cial plight, which enabled them to be more open and can­did about their sit­u­a­tion.

Like many fam­i­lies, the Pineros prob­a­bly had lots of bills for neces­si­ties includ­ing rent, gro­ceries, util­i­ties, milk, and ice. Because not every fam­i­ly had elec­tric refrig­er­a­tion in 1933, many relied on reg­u­lar deliv­er­ies of ice to keep their per­ish­able foods cold. These bills for milk and ice were sep­a­rate; they were not part of the gro­cery account. Local dairies sup­plied milk and oth­er prod­ucts on a dai­ly basis. Both the Ice Man and the Milk Man would cometh, as long as they were paid!

It’s a his­tor­i­cal case of when less is indeed more…

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via The Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold! The Very First Christ­mas Card (1843)

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

Langston Hugh­es’ Home­made Christ­mas Cards From 1950

Sal­vador Dalí’s Avant-Garde Christ­mas Cards

Binge-Watch Classic Television Programs Free: The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, That Girl & More

in Television | December 12th, 2024

Ear­li­er this week, we fea­tured the 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke’s per­for­mance in Cold­play’s new music video, full of visu­al ref­er­ences to the sit­com that made him a house­hold name in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties. And a house­hold name he remains these six decades lat­er, though one does won­der how many of those who appre­ci­ate his extreme longevi­ty — both cul­tur­al and bio­log­i­cal — have ever seen an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I myself only caught the occa­sion­al late-night rerun in child­hood, but how­ev­er much he indulged his char­ac­ter­is­tic goofi­ness, the thir­ty-some­thing Van Dyke in the role of com­e­dy writer Rob Petrie always struck me as the very image of mature adult­hood.

Whether or not you saw it in the first place, you can now watch The Dick Van Dyke Show’s five sea­sons free on Youtube, start­ing with the first here. They’ve come avail­able at a chan­nel called Film­Rise Tele­vi­sion, on whose col­lec­tion of playlists you’ll also find such pil­lars of mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion as Drag­net, The Lone Ranger, Bonan­za, and That Girl.

Hard though it may be to under­stand for any­one who came of age under the fire­hose of on-demand con­tent these reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled enter­tain­ments became ver­i­ta­ble cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions when they orig­i­nal­ly aired on major net­works in the fifties and six­ties, with an influ­ence that extend­ed far beyond their already con­sid­er­able view­er­ship.

The mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion grew up regard­ing shows of this kind as hokey but suf­fi­cient­ly amus­ing diver­sions when noth­ing more irrev­er­ent or post­mod­ern hap­pened to be on. At worst, they felt like infe­ri­or pre­de­ces­sors of the then-cur­rent sit­coms and dra­mas we were watch­ing in prime time. But then began the long “gold­en age” of pres­tige tele­vi­sion, with its new lev­els of aes­thet­ic and nar­ra­tive com­plex­i­ty, which changed our very con­cep­tion of tele­vi­sion.

Today, watch­ing The Dick Van Dyke Show or any of the oth­er hits with which it shared the scarce air­waves feels almost exot­ic, like trav­el­ing to the past: a for­eign coun­try, as L. P. Hart­ley famous­ly put it, where they do things dif­fer­ent­ly — and a few of whose cit­i­zens are, for­tu­nate­ly, still around to enter­tain us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

99-Year-Old Dick Van Dyke Sings & Dances in a Touch­ing New Cold­play Video, Direct­ed by Spike Jonze

RIP Nor­man Lear: Watch Full Episodes of His Dar­ing 70s Sit­coms, Includ­ing All in the Fam­i­ly, Maude, The Jef­fer­sons, and More

757 Episodes of the Clas­sic TV Game Show What’s My Line?: Watch Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Louis Arm­strong, Sal­vador Dali & More

Dick Van Dyke Still Danc­ing at 96!

Revis­it Turn-On, the Inno­v­a­tive TV Show That Got Can­celed Right in the Mid­dle of Its First Episode (1969)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.