Professional Scrabble Players Replay Their Greatest Moves: Their Most Improbable, Patient & Strategic Moves of All Time

in English Language, Games | March 9th, 2018

If ever the cre­ators of the musi­cal The 25th Annu­al Put­nam Coun­ty Spelling Bee are cast­ing about for sequel-wor­thy source mate­r­i­al, we sug­gest they look no fur­ther than The New York­er’s video above, in which pro­fes­sion­al Scrab­ble play­ers replay their great­est moves.

The bingo—a move in which a play­er uses all sev­en tiles on their rack, earn­ing a bonus 50 points—figures promi­nent­ly.

It seems that top ranked play­ers not only eye their racks for poten­tial bin­gos, they’re con­stant­ly cal­cu­lat­ing the odds of draw­ing a next-turn bin­go by get­ting rid of exist­ing tiles on a three or four let­ter word.

And what words!

The desire to win at all costs leads top seat­ed play­ers to throw down such igno­ble words as “barf” and “mayo” in an are­na where rar­i­fied vocab­u­lary is the norm.

How many of us can define “stop­banks,” 2017 North Amer­i­can cham­pi­on Will Ander­son’s win­ning word?

For the record, they’re con­tin­u­ous mounds of earth built near rivers to stop water from the riv­er flood­ing near­by land….

The pros’ game boards yield a vocab­u­lary les­son that is per­haps more use­ful in Scrab­ble (or Banan­grams) than in life. Look ‘em up!

aeru­go

cape­skin

celom

engi­nous

gox

horal

jupon

kex

mura

oxeye

pya

ure­dele

varve

zin­cate

Don’t neglect the two-let­ter words. They can make a one-point dif­fer­ence between a major win and total and unmit­i­gat­ed defeat.

ag

al

da

ef

mo

od

oe

qi

xi

yo

Care­ful, though—“ir” is  not a word, as Top 40 play­er Jesse Day dis­cov­ered when attempt­ing to rack up mul­ti­ple hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal points.

Bear in mind that chal­leng­ing a word can also bite you in the butt. Bust­ing an opponent’s fake word play costs them a turn. If the word in ques­tion turns out to be valid, you sac­ri­fice a turn, as top 100 play­er, Prince­ton University’s Direc­tor of Health Pro­fes­sions Advis­ing, Kate Fukawa-Con­nel­ly, found out in a match against David Gib­son, a pre­vi­ous North Amer­i­can champ. Had she let it go, she would’ve best­ed him by one point.

Appear even more in the know by bon­ing up on a glos­sary of Scrab­ble terms, though you’ll have to look far and wide for such deep cuts as youngest North Amer­i­can cham­pi­on and food truck man­ag­er, Con­rad Bas­sett-Bouchard’s “fork­ing the board,” i.e. open­ing two sep­a­rate quad­rants, thus pre­vent­ing the oppos­ing play­er from block­ing.

Read­er Con­tent:

With Or With­out U: Pro­mot­ing a Scrab­ble Book to the Tune of U2

A Free 700-Page Chess Man­u­al Explains 1,000 Chess Tac­tics in Plain Eng­lish

Gar­ry Kas­parov Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Chess

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on March 20 for the sec­ond install­ment of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain at The Tank. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Mozart’s Diary Where He Composed His Final Masterpieces Is Now Digitized and Available Online

in History, Music | March 5th, 2018

We have a ten­den­cy to regard Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart’s music as hav­ing emerged ful­ly formed into the world, not least because we hear it per­formed almost exclu­sive­ly in a high­ly pol­ished state of near-per­fec­tion. That makes any glimpse into the process of its cre­ation all the more valu­able, and the British Library has now pro­vid­ed us with much more than such a glimpse: at its site you can now read Mozart’s own thir­ty-page musi­cal diary, a record of “his com­po­si­tions in the last sev­en years of his life” and thus “a unique­ly impor­tant doc­u­ment” in the his­to­ry of clas­si­cal music.

The British Library notes that, dur­ing the peri­od from Feb­ru­ary 1784 until Decem­ber 1791 that the diary cov­ers, Mozart “com­posed many of his best-known works, includ­ing his five mature operas, sev­er­al of his most beau­ti­ful piano sonatas, and his last three great sym­phonies, as well as sev­er­al famous less­er works.”

The pages you see above and below this para­graph come from his com­ic opera The Mar­riage of Figaro. “It was a tur­bu­lent time of his life, with finan­cial crises, fam­i­ly tragedy, and his ongo­ing unsuc­cess­ful search for a per­ma­nent court posi­tion.” Enthu­si­asts will have tak­en notice that those years also con­sti­tut­ed the last sev­en of his life, before his ear­ly death at age 35.

But the flame that burns twice as bright, to coin a phrase, burns half as long, and we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture some of the for­mi­da­ble musi­cal accom­plish­ments Mozart attained before even reach­ing ado­les­cence. But it some­how feels even more of a won­der to see writ­ings in the actu­al hand of the mature Mozart, at the height of his com­po­si­tion­al pow­ers. You can read the musi­cal diary he wrote in two dif­fer­ent for­mats: as a stan­dard web site with details about the viewed pages and his­tor­i­cal con­text from Mozart’s life pro­vid­ed below each set of pages, and a zoomable, page-flip­pable brows­er with option­al audio notes. If you’d like a sound­track to go with the read­ing expe­ri­ence, a cer­tain 127-hour playlist of Mozart’s music sug­gests itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear All of Mozart in a Free 127-Hour Playlist

Hear the Pieces Mozart Com­posed When He Was Only Five Years Old

Read an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Eye­wit­ness Account of 8‑Year-Old Mozart’s Extra­or­di­nary Musi­cal Skills

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

Leck Mich Im Arsch (“Kiss My Ass”): Lis­ten to Mozart’s Scat­o­log­i­cal Canon in B Flat (1782)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

An Animated History of Goth

in Music | March 5th, 2018

“Is your teen goth­ic?” Don’t laugh, it’s a seri­ous ques­tion. If your teen is a goth, there are a few paths avail­able to you, and not all of them good. Let’s con­sid­er some, shall we? You might, in the course of some research, come across a resource called the Par­ents Uni­ver­sal Resource Experts—or P.U.R.E.—which is not a par­o­dy Evan­gel­i­cal band invent­ed by DEVO. You will learn things like “the pre­dom­i­nant col­or of goth­ic cloth­ing is black” and “the goth­ic atti­tude is one of sad­ness and depres­sion.” So far, so total­ly unhelp­ful. This much is obvi­ous, but what should you do?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, P.U.R.E. goes high when oth­ers go low, and coun­sels that par­ents should accept their teen’s goth lifestyle, “espe­cial­ly if it is not harm­ing them.” Good advice. Even Oprah took the high road, sort of, in 1993, let­ting goth teen guest Jim calm­ly “shut down haters” who called him “depress­ing and weird,” one of the haters in ques­tion being his mom. Don’t try to change your goth teen, get to know them by learn­ing about the his­to­ry of goth your­self. Reach back to the his­tor­i­cal and lit­er­ary ori­gins with this video, dig deep in the crates with this under­ground playlist…

…or just get a quirky gen­er­al out­line of the basics in the Pitch­fork ani­mat­ed video above, which cov­ers the genre from its begin­nings before the inter­net, when it had a very spe­cif­ic set of ref­er­ences unlike such lat­er iter­a­tions as “90s Talk Show Goth,” “Mall Goth” and “Cyber­goth” (a sub­set which, on sec­ond thought, prob­a­bly war­rants an inter­ven­tion on the grounds of aes­thet­ic abuse). In the sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies, goth meant Siouxsie and the Ban­shees, The Cure, Bauhaus, The Damned, Joy Division—the biggest but by no means only names at the begin­ning of a dis­parate move­ment that arose nat­u­ral­ly from punk.

The Pitch­fork playlist above offers a thor­ough musi­cal overview of those ori­gins, reach­ing back to a true orig­i­nal, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, whose campy hor­ror schtick in “I Put a Spell on You” opened doors for Peter Murphy’s vamp­ing in “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” Lux Inte­ri­or’s spooky psy­chobil­ly deliv­ery, and for­mer gravedig­ger Dave Van­ian’s the­atri­cal per­sona. (The dead­pan teens in the video at the top cite Siouxsie Sioux and her band as the first goths, but many a fan will tell you it was The Damned). With­out the next cuts from the Doors and the Vel­vet Under­ground, we might not have had the Cure or Joy Divi­sion, among a few hun­dred oth­er goth and goth-like bands.

Then it’s the usu­al cat­e­chism of clas­sic goth rock any edu­cat­ed goth teen can rat­tle off at a momen­t’s notice: The Birth­day Par­ty, Soft Cell, Swans, Killing Joke, This Mor­tal Coil, Dia­man­da Galas, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Coil. But per­haps your teen has only picked up the baton where the playlist leaves off, with late­com­ers (and arguably not-goth-at-all-but-ew-emo band) My Chem­i­cal Romance, or with the post-goth (if you will) Karin Driejer’s project Fever Ray? If so, con­sid­er imme­di­ate­ly sit­ting your teen down and play­ing all of these key tracks. They may hate you in the moment, but will sure­ly thank you lat­er. (Miss­ing here is Nico’s Mar­ble Index, an album so bleak, most goths can’t even sit through it).

But per­haps you are your­self an elder (I kid) goth par­ent of a bud­ding goth teen? If “suddenly”—as Elec­tron­ic Beats’ Daniel Jones writes in “Find­ing the Right Albums for Your Goth Teen”—“there’s this hor­ri­ble, weird ver­sion of you who’s slight­ly taller and dis­plays enough of your own par­tic­u­lar quirks that you can nev­er quite tell if you’re being sub­tly made fun of”? Well, first, let me just say to you, hap­py 42nd anniver­sary of goth! You’re wel­come. Next, you should fol­low Jones’ advice. Bypass the 80s and 90s, he says: “Just give that teen some Cocteau Twins and Coil and tell them nev­er to be like Mor­ris­sey.” We’ve got it cov­ered above (no Mor­ris­sey to be found).

Then you must intro­duce your teen to con­tem­po­rary goth art like the sin­is­ter dada cabaret work of for­mer 60’s heart­throb Scott Walk­er, the har­row­ing noise of Pruri­ent, doomy, sludgy met­al of Neu­ro­sis or Sunn O))), and the cav­ernous­ly scary riffage of Ash Bor­er (“Can you imag­ine being a teen and hear­ing the beau­ty of ‘Rest, You Are the Light­ning’ at the exact same time you get your peri­od or first pubic? Prob­a­bly you’d grow up to be a pro-skater.”) Go on, embrace your goth teen, but prob­a­bly not with your arms. Do it with Walker’s “The Day the ‘Con­d­u­ca­tor’ Died (An Xmas Song).” Show your teen you mean busi­ness, and, as one YouTube com­menter sug­gests, “put this on next time you have a din­ner par­ty and just stare at your guests.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“A Brief His­to­ry of Goths”: From the Goths, to Goth­ic Lit­er­a­ture, to Goth Music

Three-Hour Mix­tape Offers a Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Under­ground Goth Music

Watch The Cure’s First TV Appear­ance in 1979 … Before The Band Acquired Its Sig­na­ture Goth Look

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

David Lynch Teaches Typing: A New Interactive Comedy Game

in Comedy, Computer Science, Film, Games, How to Learn for Free, Technology, Television | March 2nd, 2018

Typ­ing pro­grams demand some patience on the part of the stu­dent, and David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is no excep­tion.

You’ve got 90 sec­onds to get accli­mat­ed to the crud­dy flop­py disc-era graph­ics and the cacoph­o­nous voice of your instruc­tor, a dead ringer for FBI Deputy Direc­tor Gor­don Cole, the hard-of-hear­ing char­ac­ter direc­tor David Lynch played on his sem­i­nal ear­ly 90s series, Twin Peaks.

Things perk up about a minute and a half in, when stu­dents are instruct­ed to place their left ring fin­gers in an undu­lat­ing bug to the left of their key­boards.

That sec­ond “in”? Not a typo (though you’ll notice plen­ty of no doubt inten­tion­al boo-boos in the teacher’s pre-pro­grammed respons­es…)

The bug in ques­tion may well put you in mind of the mys­te­ri­ous baby in Lynch’s first fea­ture length film, 1977’s Eraser­head.

On the oth­er hand, it might not.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is actu­al­ly a short inter­ac­tive com­e­dy game, and many of the mil­len­ni­al review­ers cov­er­ing that beat have had to play catch-up in order to catch the many nods to the director’s work con­tained there­in.

One of our favorites is the Apple-esque name of the program’s retro com­put­er, and we’ll wager that fre­quent Lynch col­lab­o­ra­tor, actor Kyle MacLach­lan, would agree.

Anoth­er ref­er­ence that has thus far elud­ed online gam­ing enthu­si­asts in their 20s is Mavis Bea­con Teach­es Typ­ing. Take a peek below at what the vir­tu­al typ­ing tutor’s graph­ics looked like around the time the orig­i­nal Twin Peaks aired to dis­cov­er the cre­ators of David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing’s oth­er inspi­ra­tion.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is avail­able for free down­load here. If you’re anx­ious that doing so might open you up to a tech­ni­cal bug of night­mar­ish pro­por­tions, stick with watch­ing the play through at the top of the page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per & Fran­cis Bacon Influ­enced David Lynch’s Cin­e­mat­ic Vision

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her March 20 in New York City for the sec­ond edi­tion of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, a low bud­get vari­ety show born of a 1920 man­u­al for Girl Scout Camp Direc­tors. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

David Sedaris Creates a List of His 10 Favorite Jazz Tracks: Stream Them Online

in Jazz, Music, Radio | March 2nd, 2018

Image by WBUR, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

You can’t read far into David Sedaris’ writ­ing with­out encoun­ter­ing his father Lou, a cur­mud­geon­ly, decades-and-decades-retired IBM engi­neer with a stiffly prac­ti­cal mind and a harsh word for every­body — espe­cial­ly his mis­fit son, ded­i­cat­ing his life as he has to the qua­si-occu­pa­tion of writ­ing while liv­ing in far-flung places like Paris and rur­al Eng­land. Even now, solid­ly into his nineties, Sedaris père keeps on pro­vid­ing the six­tysome­thing Sedaris fils with mate­r­i­al, all of it — once pol­ished up just right — a source of laugh­ter for the lat­ter’s many read­ers and lis­ten­ers. But Lou has also giv­en David some­thing else: a pas­sion for jazz.

“My father loves jazz and has an exten­sive col­lec­tion of records and reel-to-reel tapes he used to enjoy after return­ing home from work,” writes Sedaris in one essay. “He might have entered the house in a foul mood, but once he had his Dex­ter Gor­don and a vod­ka mar­ti­ni, the stress melt­ed away and every­thing was ‘Beau­ti­ful, baby, just beau­ti­ful.’ ” He then goes on to tell the sto­ry of how his father once attempt­ed to train young David and his sis­ters into a Brubeck-style fam­i­ly jazz com­bo — a hope­less dream from the start, but one that has since enter­tained his fans around the world. (Not that Sedaris has­n’t pro­vid­ed some of that enter­tain­ment by per­form­ing com­mer­cial jin­gles in the voice of Bil­lie Hol­i­day.)

Appear­ing on a guest DJ seg­ment on Los Ange­les pub­lic radio sta­tion KCRW, Sedaris told of how his father intro­duced him to jazz: “I remem­ber see­ing the movie Lady Sings the Blues, right, and think­ing Diana Ross did such a good job. And my Dad say­ing, ‘Oh boy, you’ve got a lot to learn,’ and then him play­ing Bil­lie Hol­i­day 78s for me… and then him tak­ing it back even fur­ther and sit­ting me down to lis­ten to Mabel Mer­cer. He real­ly did give me quite an edu­ca­tion and it’s the music that’s stuck with me.” As for the first jazz album he ever heard, he names in a recent Jaz­zTimes inter­view Charles Min­gus’ The Clown, the one “with a close-up of a clown’s face on the cov­er” that still, in his esti­ma­tion, “looks so mod­ern and it sounds so mod­ern.”

When Sedaris’ offi­cial Face­book page post­ed ten of his favorite songs, he came up with an all-jazz list includ­ing the work of Nina Simone, Anto­nio Car­los Jobim, John Coltrane, and oth­er lumi­nar­ies of the tra­di­tion. (He did not, of course, neglect Bil­lie Hol­i­day.) A fan turned it into a Spo­ti­fy playlist, which you’ll find embed­ded below (and if you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here):

“I used to work in com­plete silence,” Sedaris tells Jaz­zTimes, but “about three or four years ago I start­ed lis­ten­ing to music [while I work], but not music with lyrics in it.” Much of the jazz he loves fits that descrip­tion, and he’s also, in com­bi­na­tion with the vari­ety of music-stream­ing ser­vices avail­able now, dis­cov­ered new jazz artists while writ­ing. Hav­ing put drink­ing and smok­ing com­plete­ly behind him — and hav­ing writ­ten about both of those expe­ri­ences — Sedaris retains jazz as one of the sub­stances that keeps him going. It cer­tain­ly seems to have worked for the man who brought the music into his life, whom Sedaris has imag­ined may yet out­live us all: “If any­thing hap­pens to me,” he says, “the one thing my father wants is my iPod.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Sedaris: A Sam­pling of His Inim­itable Humor

Be His Guest: David Sedaris at Home in Rur­al West Sus­sex, Eng­land

David Sedaris Sings the Oscar May­er Theme Song in the Voice of Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

The Best Music to Write By: Give Us Your Rec­om­men­da­tions

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch Jack Nicholson Get Maniacally Into Character for The Shining’s Iconic Axe Scene

in Film | March 1st, 2018

“C’mon you f#ck! C’mon death! Die! Axe mur­der­er! Kill!!”

That’s my best tran­scrip­tion of Jack Nicholson’s loopy warm up dia­log seen in the above clip, tak­en from “Mak­ing The Shin­ing.” Direc­tor Stan­ley Kubrick let his then 17-year-old daugh­ter Vivian wan­der the set dur­ing the mak­ing of this clas­sic film, and cap­tures a lot of the mag­ic that went on. This scene of Nichol­son warm­ing up, Method-style, is a brief high­light.

I’m tick­led that Nichol­son is in his own mad lit­tle world, while the crew at Elstree Stu­dios (where most of the film was shot), go about their busi­ness, occa­sion­al­ly swerv­ing aside–careful with that axe, Eugene! I mean, Jack!

This is, of course, a warm up for the now icon­ic scene where Jack Tor­rance chops his way into the bath­room where his wife Wendy is hid­ing. And has there been a bet­ter axe in the door scene since? Can any film do so now with­out ref­er­enc­ing Kubrick? I would say no.

If that piqued your inter­est, there’s even more behind the scenes footage kick­ing around YouTube, includ­ing Kubrick typ­ing away, Nichol­son schmooz­ing it up, Shel­ley Duvall point­ing out her hair is com­ing out from the stress of film­ing, Kubrick’s mom vis­it­ing the set, the ear­ly use of Steadicam and video assist, Kubrick being kind of a dick to Duvall, and much more, includ­ing this obser­va­tion from Nichol­son: “The aver­age celebri­ty meets in one year ten times the amount of peo­ple that the aver­age per­son meets in their entire life.”

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Stan­ley Kubrick Became Stan­ley Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by the Film­mak­er

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made His Mas­ter­pieces: An Intro­duc­tion to His Obses­sive Approach to Film­mak­ing

93 Films Stan­ley Kubrick Real­ly Liked

Go Inside the First 30 Min­utes of Kubrick’s The Shin­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

Jack Nichol­son Puts His Star Pow­er Behind “Green” Cars, 1978

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Free: The Best Books for Learning Modern Statistics

in e-books, Math | February 25th, 2018

A quick fyi: Dan Kopf, an eco­nom­ics reporter, has a tip that seemed worth pass­ing along. Over at Quartz, he writes:

As a for­mer data sci­en­tist, there is no ques­tion I get asked more than, “What is the best way to learn sta­tis­tics?” I always give the same answer: Read An Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­ti­cal Learn­ing. Then, if you fin­ish that and want more, read The Ele­ments of Sta­tis­ti­cal Learn­ing. These two books, writ­ten by sta­tis­tics pro­fes­sors at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, and the Uni­ver­si­ty South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, are the most intu­itive and rel­e­vant books I’ve found on how to do sta­tis­tics with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy… You can down­load them for free.

Find An Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­ti­cal Learn­ing in PDF for­mat here. And The Ele­ments of Sta­tis­ti­cal Learn­ing here. Physical/hard copies can be pur­chased respec­tive­ly here and here.

We’d also rec­om­mend sup­ple­ment­ing these resources (both now avail­able in our col­lec­tion of Free Math Text­books) with video-based class­es found on our list of Free Math Cours­es, a sub­set of our big col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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 Quartz

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Against All Odds: A Gen­tle Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics Host­ed by Har­vard Geneti­cist Par­dis Sabeti (Free Online Course)

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

Flo­rence Nightin­gale Saved Lives by Cre­at­ing Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Visu­al­iza­tions of Sta­tis­tics (1855)

What Made John Entwistle One of the Great Rock Bassists? Hear Isolated Tracks from “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Baba O’Riley” & “Pinball Wizard”

in Music | February 21st, 2018

Drum­mer Kei­th Moon was sure­ly the most kinet­ic mem­ber of The Who—which is real­ly say­ing a lot—but he was not the band’s best musi­cian, even if he is rou­tine­ly named one of the best drum­mers of all time. Moon knew the appeal of his play­ing often lay in the fact that it was like no one else’s: he described him­self as the “great­est Kei­th Moon-type drum­mer in the world.” Noth­ing in rock approached his untamed excess, mod­eled after the far more dis­ci­plined flights of his hero, Gene Kru­pa.

But if the band “can be said to have an instru­men­tal vir­tu­oso,” writes Chris Jisi at Drum! mag­a­zine, “it is John Alec Entwistle,” their true sol­id cen­ter (they called him “The Ox”) and the per­fect rhyth­mic foil to Moon, who “could sound like a drum kit falling down­stairs,” Entwistle says. The bass play­er not only kept time, he tells Jisi, since Moon didn’t, and fol­lowed Moon’s “mess of cym­bals” and “all over the place” snare drum, but he also filled in for a rhythm gui­tarist as Pete Town­shend slashed away.

He kept his bass riffs rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple, he had to, and he “added top end or tre­ble… to cut through the rest of the noise.” It works, for sure. He is right­ful­ly sin­gled out as one of the great­est rock bass play­ers ever for his phe­nom­e­nal skill and poise.

A less­er play­er try­ing to com­pete with Moon’s wall of drums and Townshend’s mas­sive pow­er chords might dis­ap­pear entire­ly. Entwistle always stands out. His com­ments about Moon’s play­ing might sound dis­parag­ing, but they come off in con­text as hon­est and accu­rate, as do his descrip­tions of his own play­ing.

Entwistle sug­gests he wouldn’t be the play­er he became with­out Moon and the rest of the band. “We con­struct­ed our music to fit ‘round each oth­er,” he says. “It was some­thing very pecu­liar that none of us played the same way as oth­er peo­ple.” In their best moments, some parts “slid togeth­er by mag­ic and were gone for­ev­er.” This is the essence, real­ly, of rock and roll, the serendip­i­tous tran­scen­dence that aris­es from wild­ly col­lid­ing waves of sound.

But such con­trolled chaos can require, espe­cial­ly in a band like The Who, one cool, well-trained vir­tu­oso who can­not be ruf­fled, no mat­ter what, whose per­fec­tion looks effort­less and who nev­er breaks a sweat. The eter­nal arche­type of that play­er is John Entwistle. At the top, hear Entwistle’s iso­lat­ed bass in a live take of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” (He comes in at 1:45, after a much-extend­ed intro). Below it, you’ll eas­i­ly pick out his every note in the stu­dio ver­sion. And fur­ther up, after anoth­er extend­ed syn­the­siz­er intro, hear him solo at 1:25 on “Baba O’Ri­ley,” also live at Shep­per­ton Stu­dios in 1978. (The stu­dio record­ing is above).

And just above, in one of his most ener­getic per­for­mances, hear him play a live ver­sion of “Pin­ball Wiz­ard” (start­ing at 0:36). And then catch one more jaw-drop­ping solo, just for good mea­sure, record­ed live at Roy­al Albert Hall.

Entwistle is some­times com­pared to Jimi Hen­drix, but in some ways, The Ox came first with his fuzzed-out sound. The mild-man­nered play­er “pio­neered the use of feed­back in music and smash­ing his instru­ment,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “with Jimi Hen­drix fol­low­ing suit after see­ing Entwistle do it.” For all his reserved Eng­lish cool­ness, Entwistle first pushed the bound­aries of loud­ness, “using 200 watts of pow­er when most bands used 50,” just one of the rea­sons, as you’ll hear in these tracks, for his oth­er nick­name: “Thun­derfin­gers.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Flea Such an Amaz­ing Bass Play­er? A Video Essay Breaks Down His Style

The Genius of Paul McCartney’s Bass Play­ing in 7 Iso­lat­ed Tracks

The Jimi Hen­drix of the Bass: Watch a Busker Shred the Bass on the Streets of New­cas­tle

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

Joan Didion Creates a Handwritten List of the 19 Books That Changed Her Life

in Books, Literature | February 16th, 2018

If you’ve read much Joan Did­ion, you’ve almost sure­ly come across an obser­va­tion or phrase that has changed the way you look at Cal­i­for­nia, the media, or the cul­ture of the late 20th cen­tu­ry — or indeed, changed your life. But if life-chang­ing writ­ers have all had their own lives changed by the writ­ers before them, which writ­ers made Joan Did­ion the Joan Did­ion whose writ­ing still exerts an influ­ence today? Con­ve­nient­ly enough, the author of Play It as It Lays, Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem, and The White Album once drew up a list of the books that changed her life, and it sur­faced on Insta­gram a few years ago:

1. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hem­ing­way
2. Vic­to­ry by Joseph Con­rad
3. Guer­ril­las by V.S. Naipaul
4. Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don by George Orwell
5. Won­der­land by Joyce Car­ol Oates
6. Wuther­ing Heights by Emi­ly Bron­të
7. The Good Sol­dier by Ford Madox Ford
8. One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude by Gabriel Gar­cia Márquez
9. Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky
10. Appoint­ment in Samar­ra by John O’Hara
11. The Exe­cu­tion­er’s Song by Nor­man Mail­er
12. The Nov­els of Hen­ry James: Wash­ing­ton Square, Por­trait of a Lady, The Bosto­ni­ans, Wings of the Dove, The Ambas­sadors, The Gold­en Bowl, Daisy Miller, The Aspern Papers, The Turn of the Screw
13. Speed­boat by Rena­ta Adler
14. Go Tell It on the Moun­tain by James Bald­win
15. Notes of a Native Son by James Bald­win
16. The Berlin Sto­ries by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood
17. Col­lect­ed Poems by Robert Low­ell
18. Col­lect­ed Poems by W.H. Auden
19. The Col­lect­ed Poems by Wal­lace Stevens

In 1978, when Did­ion had already become a new-jour­nal­ism icon, The Paris Review’s Lin­da Kuehl asked her whether any writer influ­enced her more than oth­ers. “I always say Hem­ing­way,” she replied, “because he taught me how sen­tences worked. When I was fif­teen or six­teen I would type out his sto­ries to learn how the sen­tences worked. I taught myself to type at the same time.” Teach­ing A Farewell to Arms, her num­ber-one most influ­en­tial book, she “fell right back into those sen­tences. I mean they’re per­fect sen­tences. Very direct sen­tences, smooth rivers, clear water over gran­ite, no sink­holes.”

Did­ion’s list also includes oth­er mas­ters of the sen­tence, albeit most of them pos­sessed of sen­si­bil­i­ties quite dis­tinct from Hem­ing­way’s. Hen­ry James, for instance: “He wrote per­fect sen­tences, too, but very indi­rect, very com­pli­cat­ed. Sen­tences with sink­holes. You could drown in them.” Con­sid­er them along­side the oth­er writ­ers among her favored nine­teen, from nov­el­ists like Emi­ly Bron­të and Joyce Car­ol Oates to poets like Wal­lace Stevens and W.H. Auden to fig­ures with one foot in lit­er­a­ture and the oth­er in jour­nal­ism like George Orwell and Nor­man Mail­er, and you’ve got a mix that no two aspir­ing writ­ers could read and come out sound­ing exact­ly alike. No sur­prise that such a set of influ­ences would pro­duce a writer like Did­ion, so often imi­tat­ed but, in her niche, nev­er equaled.

via Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 12 Mas­ter­ful Essays by Joan Did­ion for Free Online, Span­ning Her Career From 1965 to 2013

Joan Did­ion Reads From New Mem­oir, Blue Nights, in Short Film Direct­ed by Grif­fin Dunne

New Doc­u­men­tary Joan Did­ion: The Cen­ter Will Not Hold Now Stream­ing on Net­flix

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

What’s the Origin of Time Travel Fiction?: New Video Essay Explains How Time Travel Writing Got Its Start with Charles Darwin & His Literary Peers

in Literature, Sci Fi | February 15th, 2018

The idea of time trav­el is prob­a­bly as old as the feel­ing of regret, but the desire to go back in time is not the same as the the­o­ret­i­cal notion that it might actu­al­ly be pos­si­ble to do so. Where, the Nerd­writer won­ders above, did this idea orig­i­nate? And where did time trav­el nar­ra­tives come from in gen­er­al? Time trav­el, he argues, “as a device to tell sto­ries, is a rel­a­tive­ly recent phe­nom­e­non.” And time trav­el as a spe­cif­ic genre of lit­er­a­ture is just a lit­tle over a hun­dred years old.

An impor­tant point of clar­i­fi­ca­tion: We find instances of time travel—or at least a kind of parallax—in many ancient texts, where some char­ac­ters expe­ri­ence time dif­fer­ent­ly in dif­fer­ent realms and dimen­sions and can thus see the past or future in our world. In the Ramayana, a fig­ure named Kakb­hushub­di lives like the Watch­ers in the Mar­vel Comics’ universe—outside of time, observ­ing mil­len­nia pass­ing. (It is said he sees the same events hap­pen over and over, with dif­fer­ent out­comes each time.)

This is not strict­ly what we mean by time trav­el. Yet many ancient sto­ries do show humans going back in time, or going to sleep and wak­ing up in the future, through divine agency. In the Bud­dhist Pali texts, we learn that the Devas expe­ri­ence one hun­dred human years as a sin­gle day (an idea echoed in the Bible). In the Japan­ese leg­end of Urashima Taro, a man vis­its the palace of the Drag­on God, and when he comes back 300 years have passed. But the Nerd­writer is talk­ing about some­thing dif­fer­ent than these many nar­ra­tive instances of time dila­tion (hun­dreds of years before Ein­stein elab­o­rat­ed the con­cept), though the same devices appear in mod­ern time trav­el sto­ries.

A sig­nif­i­cant dis­tinc­tion, the video sug­gests, lies in the very con­cept of time. Many ancient peo­ple believed that time was cyclical—hence the many vari­a­tions on the same themes in Kakbhushubdi’s experience—or that time was mal­leable, sub­ject to divine inter­rup­tion and dis­rup­tion. After Darwin’s Ori­gin of Species and the rapid accep­tance of evo­lu­tion (if not nat­ur­al selec­tion), pop­u­lar notions of time changed. The mod­ern time trav­el genre begins with broad­ly Dar­win­ian ideas as a cen­tral premise. In the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion, evo­lu­tion meant inevitable, lin­ear progress, and thus was born a form of lit­er­a­ture called the Utopi­an Romance.

One such nov­el, Edward Bellamy’s 1888 Look­ing Back­ward, has the dis­tinc­tion of being the third-largest best­seller of its time, after Uncle Tom’s Cab­in and Ben Hur, with over one mil­lion copies sold. Why haven’t you heard of it before? Prob­a­bly because the book envi­sions a char­ac­ter who falls asleep and wakes up in a social­ist utopia 113 years in the future (the year 2000). It exert­ed sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on the many social­ist move­ments of the time, and “Bel­lamy clubs” sprang up around the coun­try, advo­cat­ing for the nation­al­iza­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty. Few Amer­i­cans, at least, have learned about the wide­spread pop­u­lar­i­ty of social­ism in the U.S. dur­ing the late 19th cen­tu­ry because… well, you tell me.

But Bellamy’s ideas are embed­ded in the genre, in work after work we are famil­iar with (take the par­o­dy ver­sion in Futu­ra­ma). In the mod­ern time trav­el nov­el, utopias “are no longer on a lost island or a dif­fer­ent world, they were in the future.” This obser­va­tion applies most read­i­ly to a more famous foun­da­tion­al text from 1895, H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, which bor­rows from Swift’s Gulliver’s Trav­els, but sets the action not in a dis­tant land but in the very dis­tant future, the year 802701. Wells’ “sub­ter­ranean work­ers, the Mor­locks, and the deca­dent Eloi” who prof­it from their labor, notes the British Library, do not dif­fer that much from humans of the past or the present—they have evolved tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, but are still sub­ject to exploita­tion and vio­lence.

Where Gulliver’s Trav­els can be read as a mis­an­throp­ic under­min­ing of notions of cul­tur­al supe­ri­or­i­ty, Wells’ nov­el sat­i­rizes the idea that human evo­lu­tion implies an improve­ment in human benef­i­cence. The book set a pat­tern “for sci­ence-fic­tion to cri­tique extreme devel­op­ments of class.” In both Bel­lamy and Wells, time travel—whether achieved by sci­ence or a Rip Van Win­kle sleep—presents an occa­sion for utopi­an or dystopi­an alle­go­ry. The time trav­el genre took on a new dimen­sion after Ein­stein, when the sci­ence of rel­a­tiv­i­ty replaced Dar­win­ian evo­lu­tion as the cen­tral pre­oc­cu­pa­tion, and para­dox­es and rules became cen­tral con­cerns. This shift high­lights anoth­er impor­tant fea­ture of the mod­ern time trav­el genre—its obses­sion with cause and effect, and there­fore with the very nature and pos­si­bil­i­ty of sto­ry itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.G. Wells’ 1930s Radio Broad­casts

George Orwell Reviews We, the Russ­ian Dystopi­an Nov­el That Noam Chom­sky Con­sid­ers “More Per­cep­tive” Than Brave New World & 1984

How to Rec­og­nize a Dystopia: Watch an Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Dystopi­an Fic­tion

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