50 Years of Changing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Animated GIF

in Music | January 13th, 2015

Last sum­mer we time trav­eled back to 1964 and showed you the very first TV appear­ance of David Bowie. Here, we found Bowie, only 17 years old, pre­sent­ing him­self as the spokesman for “The Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Long-Haired Men.” Long hair was­n’t wide­ly accept­ed in the Eng­land of 1964, and, with a touch of humor, Bowie was tak­ing a stand. “I think we’re all fair­ly tol­er­ant, but for the last two years we’ve had com­ments like ‘Dar­ling!’ and ‘Can I car­ry your hand­bag?’ thrown at us, and I think it just has to stop now.”

Bowie’s obses­sion with hair nev­er went away. Cre­ative hair­styles would come and go through­out the years. And they’re all on dis­play in an ani­mat­ed gif, which Helen Green pub­lished on her Tum­blr last week to cel­e­brate the musi­cian’s 68th birth­day.

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 Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

7 Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Stories and Poems

in Literature, Writing | January 12th, 2015

There may be no more a macabre­ly misog­y­nis­tic sen­tence in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture than Edgar Allan Poe’s con­tention that “the death… of a beau­ti­ful woman” is “unques­tion­ably the most poet­i­cal top­ic in the world.” (His per­haps iron­ic obser­va­tion prompt­ed Sylvia Plath to write, over a hun­dred years lat­er, “The woman is per­fect­ed / Her dead / Body wears the smile of accom­plish­ment.”) The sen­tence comes from Poe’s 1846 essay “The Phi­los­o­phy of Com­po­si­tion,” and if this work were only known for its lit­er­ary fetishiza­tion of what Elis­a­beth Bron­fen calls “an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing corpse”—marking deep anx­i­eties about both “female sex­u­al­i­ty and decay”—then it would indeed still be of inter­est to fem­i­nists and aca­d­e­mics, though not per­haps to the aver­age read­er.

But Poe has much more to say that does not involve a romance with dead women. The essay deliv­ers on its title’s promise. It is here that we find Poe’s famous the­o­ry of what good lit­er­a­ture is and does, achiev­ing what he calls “uni­ty of effect.” This lit­er­ary “total­i­ty” results from a col­lec­tion of essen­tial ele­ments that the author deems indis­pens­able in “con­struct­ing a sto­ry,” whether in poet­ry or prose, that pro­duces a “vivid effect.”

To illus­trate what he means, Poe walks us through an analy­sis of his own work, “The Raven.” We are to take for grant­ed as read­ers that “The Raven” achieves its desired effect. Poe has no mis­giv­ings about that. But how does it do so? Against com­mon­place ideas that writ­ers “com­pose by a species of fine frenzy—an ecsta­t­ic intu­ition,” Poe has not “the least dif­fi­cul­ty in recall­ing to mind the pro­gres­sive steps of any of my compositions”—steps he con­sid­ers almost “math­e­mat­i­cal.” Nor does he con­sid­er it a “breach of deco­rum” to pull aside the cur­tain and reveal his tricks. Below, in con­densed form, we have list­ed the major points of Poe’s essay, cov­er­ing the ele­ments he con­sid­ers most nec­es­sary to “effec­tive” lit­er­ary com­po­si­tion.

1. Know the end­ing in advance, before you begin writ­ing.

“Noth­ing is more clear,” writes Poe, “than that every plot, worth the name, must be elab­o­rat­ed to its dénoue­ment before any thing be attempt­ed with the pen.” Once writ­ing com­mences, the author must keep the end­ing “con­stant­ly in view” in order to “give a plot its indis­pens­able air of con­se­quence” and inevitabil­i­ty.

2. Keep it short—the “sin­gle sit­ting” rule.

Poe con­tends that “if any lit­er­ary work is too long to be read at one sit­ting, we must be con­tent to dis­pense with the immense­ly impor­tant effect deriv­able from uni­ty of impres­sion.” Force the read­er to take a break, and “the affairs of the world inter­fere” and break the spell. This “lim­it of a sin­gle sit­ting” admits of excep­tions, of course. It must—or the nov­el would be dis­qual­i­fied as lit­er­a­ture. Poe cites Robin­son Cru­soe as one exam­ple of a work of art “demand­ing of no uni­ty.” But the sin­gle sit­ting rule applies to all poems, and for this rea­son, he writes, Milton’s Par­adise Lost fails to achieve a sus­tained effect.

3. Decide on the desired effect.

The author must decide in advance “the choice of impres­sion” he or she wish­es to leave on the read­er. Poe assumes here a tremen­dous amount about the abil­i­ty of authors to manip­u­late read­ers’ emo­tions. He even has the audac­i­ty to claim that the design of the “The Raven” ren­dered the work “uni­ver­sal­ly appre­cia­ble.” It may be so, but per­haps it does not uni­ver­sal­ly inspire an appre­ci­a­tion of Beau­ty that “excites the sen­si­tive soul to tears”—Poe’s desired effect for the poem.

4. Choose the tone of the work.

Poe claims the high­est ground for his work, though it is debat­able whether he was entire­ly seri­ous. As “Beau­ty is the sole legit­i­mate province of the poem” in gen­er­al, and “The Raven” in par­tic­u­lar, “Melan­choly is thus the most legit­i­mate of all poet­i­cal tones.” What­ev­er tone one choos­es, how­ev­er, the tech­nique Poe employs, and rec­om­mends, like­ly applies. It is that of the “refrain”—a repeat­ed “key-note” in word, phrase, or image that sus­tains the mood. In “The Raven,” the word “Nev­er­more” per­forms this func­tion, a word Poe chose for its pho­net­ic as much as for its con­cep­tu­al qual­i­ties.

Poe claims that his choice of the Raven to deliv­er this refrain arose from a desire to rec­on­cile the unthink­ing “monot­o­ny of the exer­cise” with the rea­son­ing capa­bil­i­ties of a human char­ac­ter. He at first con­sid­ered putting the word in the beak of a par­rot, then set­tled on a Raven—“the bird of ill omen”—in keep­ing with the melan­choly tone.

5. Deter­mine the theme and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the work.

Here Poe makes his claim about “the death of a beau­ti­ful woman,” and adds, “the lips best suit­ed for such top­ic are those of a bereaved lover.” He choos­es these par­tic­u­lars to rep­re­sent his theme—“the most melan­choly,” Death. Con­trary to the meth­ods of many a writer, Poe moves from the abstract to the con­crete, choos­ing char­ac­ters as mouth­pieces of ideas.

6. Estab­lish the cli­max.

In “The Raven,” Poe says, he “had now to com­bine the two ideas, of a lover lament­ing his deceased mis­tress and a Raven con­tin­u­ous­ly repeat­ing the word ‘Nev­er­more.’” In bring­ing them togeth­er, he com­posed the third-to-last stan­za first, allow­ing it to deter­mine the “rhythm, the metre, and the length and gen­er­al arrange­ment” of the remain­der of the poem. As in the plan­ning stage, Poe rec­om­mends that the writ­ing “have its beginning—at the end.”

7. Deter­mine the set­ting.

Though this aspect of any work seems the obvi­ous place to start, Poe holds it to the end, after he has already decid­ed why he wants to place cer­tain char­ac­ters in place, say­ing cer­tain things. Only when he has clar­i­fied his pur­pose and broad­ly sketched in advance how he intends to acheive it does he decide “to place the lover in his cham­ber… rich­ly fur­nished.” Arriv­ing at these details last does not mean, how­ev­er, that they are after­thoughts, but that they are suggested—or inevitably fol­low from—the work that comes before. In the case of “The Raven,” Poe tells us that in order to car­ry out his lit­er­ary scheme, “a close cir­cum­scrip­tion of space is absolute­ly nec­es­sary to the effect of insu­lat­ed inci­dent.”

Through­out his analy­sis, Poe con­tin­ues to stress—with the high degree of rep­e­ti­tion he favors in all of his writing—that he keeps “orig­i­nal­i­ty always in view.” But orig­i­nal­i­ty, for Poe, is not “a mat­ter, as some sup­pose, of impulse or intu­ition.” Instead, he writes, it “demands in its attain­ment less of inven­tion than nega­tion.” In oth­er words, Poe rec­om­mends that the writer make full use of famil­iar con­ven­tions and forms, but vary­ing, com­bin­ing, and adapt­ing them to suit the pur­pose of the work and make them his or her own.

Though some of Poe’s dis­cus­sion of tech­nique relates specif­i­cal­ly to poet­ry, as his own prose fic­tion tes­ti­fies, these steps can equal­ly apply to the art of the short sto­ry. And though he insists that depic­tions of Beau­ty and Death—or the melan­choly beau­ty of death—mark the high­est of lit­er­ary aims, one could cer­tain­ly adapt his for­mu­la to less obses­sive­ly mor­bid themes as well.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

H.P. Love­craft Gives Five Tips for Writ­ing a Hor­ror Sto­ry, or Any Piece of “Weird Fic­tion”

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

The Big Ideas of Stephen Hawking Explained with Simple Animation

in Animation, Physics, Video - Science | January 9th, 2015

Full dis­clo­sure: On my 7th grade report card, a sym­pa­thet­ic sci­ence teacher tem­pered a shock­ing­ly low grade with a hand­writ­ten note to my par­ents. Some­thing to the effect of it being her opin­ion that my inter­est in the­ater would, ulti­mate­ly, serve me far bet­ter than any infor­ma­tion she was attempt­ing to ram through my skull.

Thank you, Miss Coop­er, for your com­pas­sion and excep­tion­al fore­sight.

There are times, though, when I do wish I was just a teen­sy bit bet­ter informed about cer­tain buzzy sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries. Hank Green’s infor­ma­tion-packed sci­ence Crash Cours­es are help­ful to a degree, but he talks so damn fast, I often have the sen­sa­tion of stum­bling stu­pid­ly behind…

Which I am, but still…

Alok Jha, the author and ITV Sci­ence Cor­re­spon­dent who nar­rates the brief ani­mat­ed guide to some of Stephen Hawking’s big ideas, takes things at a more encour­ag­ing pace. His deliv­ery reminds me of Alain de Bot­ton’s, and that alone is enough to sooth me into believ­ing I stand a chance of some­what grasp­ing such quan­tum con­cepts as black holes, grav­i­ta­tion­al sin­gu­lar­i­ties, and Hawk­ing radi­a­tion.

As long as I don’t lose myself in non-sci­en­tif­ic flour­ish­es like the cat in a box anchor­ing some of Hawking’s equa­tions or a sweet homage to ET, I may be able to keep hold of this tiger’s tail. Or at least nod with some­thing resem­bling inter­est, the next time a sci­ence-obsessed teen is shar­ing his or her pas­sion…

The video above come from The Guardian’s Ani­ma­tions and Explain­ers video series. And it was cre­at­ed by Scriberia, a Lon­don ani­ma­tion stu­dio.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Hawking’s Uni­verse: A Visu­al­iza­tion of His Lec­tures with Stars & Sound

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Free Online Astron­o­my Cours­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Masterpiece Stalker Gets Adapted into a Video Game

in Film, Video Games | January 8th, 2015

Of all the movies out there, Andrei Tarkovsky’s mad­den­ing­ly oblique mas­ter­piece Stalk­er (1979) doesn’t seem like a like­ly choice to be adapt­ed into a video game. Yet it was.

The movie, Tarkovsky’s last in the USSR, is dense and enig­mat­ic with none of the nar­ra­tive pay-offs that you see in most films. The sto­ry cen­ters on a region called the Zone, which after some unnamed dis­as­ter, has the pow­er to ful­fill your great­est wish. Nat­u­ral­ly, the area has been ringed off by the author­i­ties with razor wire and armed guards. At the film’s open­ing, a guide, called a Stalk­er, takes two clients, a writer and a sci­en­tist, into the Zone. And yet after near­ly three hours of mean­der­ing and philo­soph­i­cal mono­logues, none of the char­ac­ters make a wish nor are any wish­es grant­ed. The end. But the rea­son the movie has such a fer­vent, cultish fol­low­ing is not for its dra­mat­ics. Instead, the film’s pow­er is found in the cumu­la­tive effect of its hyp­not­i­cal­ly slow pac­ing, its spir­i­tu­al long­ing and its gor­geous imagery. You can watch the film online here. Find more Tarkovsky films here.

And there’s the uncan­ny fact that Stalk­er seemed to pre­fig­ure a glob­al dis­as­ter that struck sev­en years after the movie pre­miered. It is just about impos­si­ble to look at those eerie pho­tos of irra­di­at­ed ghost towns with­in Chernobyl’s 30 square kilo­me­ter exclu­sion zone and not think about Stalk­er.

Enter Ukrain­ian game devel­op­er GSC Game World, which explic­it­ly con­nect­ed the dis­as­ter with Tarkovsky’s movie when, in 2007, it released S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shad­ow of Cher­nobyl, the first in a whole series of games. (The title might just fea­ture the most tor­tured acronym this side of the USAPATRIOT Act, stand­ing for Scav­enger, Tres­pass­er, Adven­tur­er, Lon­er, Killer, Explor­er, Rob­ber.) On first blush, the game and the movie seem to have lit­tle in com­mon aside from the name. There are rel­a­tive­ly few machine gun bat­tles or zomb­i­fied mutants in the film. Yet Gabriel Winslow-Yost argues in The New York Review of Books that there are more sim­i­lar­i­ties than might be first appar­ent.

As games, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series are remark­able.… While they all have the ele­ments of a stan­dard action game—guns, mon­sters, mis­sions, traps, loot—much of the player’s activ­i­ty is odd­ly in keep­ing with Stalker’s spir­it, some­times even man­ag­ing to expand upon it. […] Watch­ing Stalk­er, one is occa­sion­al­ly brought up short by remem­ber­ing that it was not filmed in Cher­nobyl, so per­fect an ana­logue does that event seem for the film’s images of tech­nol­o­gy and nature, beau­ty and dan­ger in strange alliance. The games, at their best, can seem like a sort of mir­a­cle: a dead man’s mas­ter­piece, come home at last.

Stalk­er was based on a novel­la called Road­side Pic­nic by Arkady and Boris Stru­gatsky. Winslow-Yost points out the games are actu­al­ly more in keep­ing with the source mate­r­i­al than Tarkovsky’s film. “The stalk­ers are numer­ous and mer­ce­nary. The ele­ments of the Zone are many, and named, if not quite explained—there’s ‘Mos­qui­to Mange’ and ‘Burn­ing Fluff,’ ‘Full Emp­ties’ and ‘Black Sprays.’ In the film most of these are not present—Tarkovsky leaves in only one, the ‘meat­grinder,’ though his Stalk­er is clear­ly ter­ri­fied of many more.”

The games proved to be so suc­cess­ful, espe­cial­ly in Rus­sia, that they were turned into nov­els. No word if any­one has both­ered to buy the film rights to those books. If you want to see what the game looks like, there’s a video of it above.

But the real ques­tion is what oth­er art house land­marks are going to get remade into video games? A ver­sion of Sec­ond Life inspired by Yasu­jiro Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry? A mash up of Grand Theft Auto and Jean-Luc Godard’s Week­end? Last Year at Marien­bad as a first-per­son shoot­er?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Steven Soderbergh Creates a Big List of What He Watched, Read & Listened to in 2014

in Film, Life, Literature, Television | January 8th, 2015

Image by Nico­las Genin

Our vast media land­scape feels gross­ly over­sat­u­rat­ed with adver­tis­ing, pro­pa­gan­da, and all man­ner of redun­dant noise. But the dis­cern­ing eye, and ear, per­ceives just as much qual­i­ty out there as crap. “Retired” auteur Steven Soder­bergh, as fans of his will know, is just such a dis­cern­ing cus­tomer — and an exact­ing, high­ly orga­nized one at that. Soder­bergh has sworn off direct­ing film, turn­ing his atten­tion to tele­vi­sion by direct­ing the Cin­e­max series The Knick as well as—reports Indiewire—“pro­duc­ing, edit­ing, and lens­ing Mag­ic Mike XXL,” the sec­ond install­ment of the Chan­ning Tatum-star­ring male strip­per saga.

One might think all this work would keep Soder­bergh busy from dawn to dusk, but he’s a man who “gets more done in a day than most do in a week.” A con­sum­mate con­sumer of cul­ture high and low, Soder­bergh assid­u­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed his watch­ing, read­ing, and lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences for the entire year pre­vi­ous. His list includes TV shows like Veep and Louie, and heav­ier fare like True Detec­tive and House of Cards. He read Don­na Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Karl Ove Gnausgaard’s labo­ri­ous Prous­t­ian nov­el My Strug­gle (books one through three—in two months). In addi­tion to recent films like Gone Girl, Soder­bergh watched Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey three times and Jaws twice. He even found the time for Die Hard With a Vengeance.

The above rep­re­sents but the tini­est sam­pling of Soderbergh’s vora­cious diet. You can see the full list, includ­ing his album pur­chas­es here. As Indiewire right­ly observes, the list is “a lot to wade through.” Even more so the incred­i­ble range and diver­si­ty of cre­ative works con­tained with­in. Soder­bergh main­tained a sim­i­lar log for 2013, which you can see here. Scan­ning these may inspire you to step up your input, or maybe just to pull a man­age­able num­ber of selec­tions for future reading/viewing/listening of your own.

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Soder­bergh Posts a List of Every­thing He Watched and Read in 2009

Watch Steven Soderbergh’s Cre­ative Mashup of Hitch­cock and Gus Van Sant’s Psy­cho Films

Steven Soder­bergh Cre­ates Silent, Black & White Recut of Raiders of the Lost Ark to Explain the Art of “Stag­ing”

Steven Soder­bergh Writes Twit­ter Novel­la After His Retire­ment From Film­mak­ing

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

Jimmy Page Tells the Story of “Stairway to Heaven”: How the Most Played Rock Song Came To Be

in Music | January 7th, 2015

Walk into any gui­tar store, any­where in the world, and you’re like­ly to hear the strains of one, or both, of two songs: Guns n’ Ros­es’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en.” (Some gui­tar shops sup­pos­ed­ly banned the lat­ter sev­er­al years ago.) Why are these so pop­u­lar with bud­ding play­ers? Per­haps it’s because they have two of the most mem­o­rable gui­tar intros in rock his­to­ry.

But only one of those intros might be lift­ed almost whole­sale from anoth­er song, at least if you ask the estate of Randy Cal­i­for­nia. Heirs of the late gui­tarist and co-founder of the band Spir­it have claimed for years that the del­i­cate acoustic melody that opens Zeppelin’s song came direct­ly from California’s tune “Tau­rus.” The law­suit is ongo­ing, and maybe not with­out some mer­it.

But all that aside (and what song, after all, doesn’t at least ref­er­ence anoth­er?), “Stair­way” is a phe­nom­e­nal piece of song­writ­ing, with its Celtic folk under­tones and orches­tral crescen­dos. So how, apart from some bor­row­ing, did Zep­pelin gui­tarist Jim­my Page come to write it? You can hear the sto­ry from the man him­self above. Page talks about the use of recorders in the song’s “exposed acoustic” intro to give it a “slight­ly medieval feel.” Giv­en the num­ber of Lord of the Rings ref­er­ences in Robert Plant’s lyrics, this seems only fit­ting. Mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist bass play­er John Paul Jones came up with the idea for the recorders, Page tells us, and played them him­self. (Page would have gone with “the tex­ture of elec­tric piano”).

Page offers many oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing tid­bits on the moody, lay­ered “Stair­way.” To hear what it sound­ed like at first, before the sto­ried album version’s cav­ernous pro­duc­tion, lis­ten to the ear­ly acoustic demo above. Page and Plant com­posed the rudi­ments while vaca­tion­ing in Wales at a cot­tage called Bron Yr Aur (now a famous pil­grim­age site for fans). Record­ing ses­sions took place in 1970 and 71 at Bas­ing Street Stu­dios in Lon­don and Headley Grange in Hamp­shire, where the band lived at the time. Zep­pelin debuted “Stair­way” live at Belfast’s Ulster Hall on March 5, 1971, with Page play­ing his many parts on a Gib­son dou­ble-necked gui­tar. You can hear that first per­for­mance, and the some­what tepid audi­ence response, in the muf­fled record­ing below.

Accord­ing to John Paul Jones, the crowd was “all bored to tears wait­ing to hear some­thing they knew.” Nonethe­less, “Stair­way to Heav­en” became the band’s “most request­ed song ever played on Amer­i­can radio” and was “includ­ed at every sub­se­quent Zep­pelin show.” Though it may be the most over­played song of all time, “Stair­way” has cer­tain­ly earned it sta­tus as a rock ‘n’ roll mile­stone. As Page says at the top, the record­ing cap­tures the band in their most inspired moment, a time when they did “noth­ing but eat, sleep, and make music.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

Delet­ed Scene from Almost Famous: Mom, “Stair­way to Heav­en” is Based on the Lit­er­a­ture of Tolkien

Zep­pelin Took My Blues Away: An Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Zeppelin’s “Copy­right Indis­cre­tions”

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

Isaac Asimov Wrote “Gross” Limericks — Lots of Them

in Poetry, Sci Fi | January 7th, 2015

Isaac Asi­mov — he’s best known for his mas­ter­ful works of sci­ence fic­tion.  He was also a pro­fes­sor of bio­chem­istry at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty. A com­mit­ted human­ist. And some­one who enjoyed writ­ing lots of dirty lim­er­icks. Some­where on his list of 500+ books, you will find Lech­er­ous Lim­er­icks (1976), Lim­er­icks: Too Gross (1978), A Grossery of Lim­er­icks (1981), and Asi­mov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Jokes, Lim­er­icks, and Anec­dotes (1993). In two of these vol­umes, Asi­mov sparred with pop­u­lar poet and Dante trans­la­tor John Cia­r­di, each writ­ing dirty poems, and try­ing to mas­ter a rather strict poet­ic form that began in ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry Eng­land.

Most of the lim­er­icks are indeed a “gross.” Many are crude. Some would be con­sid­ered down­right offen­sive by 2015 stan­dards. But, if you want a taste of what Asi­mov served up, you can try out these tamer ones from Lim­er­icks: Too Gross.

The haughty philoso­pher, Pla­to
Would unbend to a sweet young toma­to.
Though she might be naive
Like you would­n’t believe
He would patient­ly show her the way to.

A cer­tain young fel­low named Scott
Once jumped his young bride on their cot.
He intend­ed no shirk­ing.
But from sheer over­work­ing
A dry run is all that she got.

If you want to see Asi­mov at his tamest, you can also check out his book Lim­er­icks for Chil­dren.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Isaac Asi­mov Imag­ines Learn­ing in the Elec­tron­ic Age … and Gets It Quite Right (1989)

Steven Spielberg & Alfred Hitchcock Face Off in an Epic Rap Battle (NSFW)

in Comedy, Film, Music | January 2nd, 2015

In a throw down between direc­tors Steven Spiel­berg and Alfred Hitch­cock, who do you think would win?

The pio­neer­ing crowd pleas­er?

Or the mas­ter of sus­pense?

If Peter Shukoff and Lloyd Ahlquist, the mak­ers of Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry refuse to say, I will: nei­ther of them.

Instead, it is action direc­tor Michael Bay (as embod­ied by a bewigged Shukoff), who emerges vic­to­ri­ous, drop­ping into the pro­ceed­ings via heli­copter, to spit that moviemak­ing is all about the “motherfuc&in’ mon­ey”! Artis­ti­cal­ly, he may not have much cur­ren­cy, but there’s no argu­ing that the Trans­form­ers fran­chise has indeed endowed him with the “socks made of silk mon­ey.”

Oth­er unan­nounced com­peti­tors include Stan­ley Kubrick, ped­al­ing down a long hall­way on an ersatz Big Wheel, and Quentin Taran­ti­no, sum­moned, no doubt, by a Hitch­cock taunt that no one will ever pick Samuel L. Jackson’s turn in Juras­sic Park as their favorite Samuel L. Jack­son role.

It’s vul­gar, and NSFW sans head­phones, but as legions of ado­les­cent boys will pas­sion­ate­ly attest, it has its moments. Watch­ing the behind the scenes, below, remind­ed me of all the plan­ning that went into this episode, from spe­cial effects make up to research and green screen. If the end result is not quite to your taste, at least you can rest assured that it’s by design.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

23 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

Ter­ry Gilliam Explains The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Thomas Edi­son and Niko­la Tes­la Face Off in “Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Werner Herzog Plays Himself in Cartoon That Satirizes Obama’s 2008 Election & Race in America

in Comics/Cartoons, Current Affairs, Politics | December 29th, 2014

The Unit­ed States has two impor­tant cul­tur­al means of self-examination—the work of for­eign observers and of domes­tic satirists. In the for­mer cat­e­go­ry, we have the long­stand­ing exam­ple of polit­i­cal the­o­rist Alex­is de Toc­queville and the much bleak­er, con­tem­po­rary vision of Wern­er Her­zog. As for the lat­ter, we have ven­er­a­ble lit­er­ary heroes like Mark Twain and more pop­ulist, con­tem­po­rary voic­es like Chris Rock, Stephen Col­bert, and car­toon­ist Aaron McGrud­er, cre­ator of the com­ic strip-turned-ani­mat­ed series The Boon­docks. In 2010, the Sea­son 3 debut episode of the bit­ing Adult Swim show brought these two tra­di­tions togeth­er, as McGrud­er took on the elec­tion of America’s first black pres­i­dent by imag­in­ing a Ger­man documentarian—Herzog—who exam­ines the nation’s response through inter­views with the show’s char­ac­ters.

The clip above will give you an idea of the gen­er­al tone. Her­zog plays an exag­ger­at­ed ver­sion of him­self, com­plete with stereo­typ­i­cal­ly Ger­man expres­sions of exis­ten­tial despair. The Free­man fam­i­ly, the show’s cen­ter, rep­re­sents an also-exag­ger­at­ed range of respons­es from black Amer­i­cans to Obama’s elec­tion. Huey, the young black rad­i­cal (“retired”), express­es a deep, cyn­i­cal skep­ti­cism. His broth­er Riley has a total dis­re­gard for the social and polit­i­cal import of the elec­tion, con­fi­dent instead that a black pres­i­dent will give him a license to do what he wants. And the broth­ers’ grand­fa­ther Robert, a Civ­il Rights vet­er­an, dis­plays an unqual­i­fied opti­mism and nos­tal­gic pride for his activist days. The full episode also sat­i­rizes a cer­tain ill-informed rap­per with a char­ac­ter called Thug­nif­i­cent and cer­tain super­fi­cial white pro­gres­sives (“Oba­ma Guy” and “Oba­ma Girl”). And, of course, bel­liger­ent reac­tionary Uncle Ruckus gets his say.

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By the time of its air­ing, the episode was already near­ly two years late in its com­ment on the events, mak­ing it feel, wrote the A.V. Club’s Todd Van­Der­W­erff, “like an instant peri­od piece.” Per­haps now it seems down­right pale­olith­ic in the timescale of polit­i­cal com­men­tary. Mak­ing this kind of cul­tur­al cri­tique seem rel­e­vant out­side of the imme­di­ate moment is a chal­lenge writ­ers on The Dai­ly Show con­front, well, dai­ly. But here, the con­tent holds up, not only because Her­zog has a way of mak­ing every­thing time­less, but also because “the episode takes us back to… the way [Barack Oba­ma] man­aged to make almost every sin­gle one of his sup­port­ers believe that he was going to do what THEY most want­ed him to do and not what he had actu­al­ly promised to do.” In many ways, the coun­try is still recov­er­ing from a bru­tal hang­over after this post-2008 elec­tion high.

Whether the pres­i­dent is ful­ly to blame for encour­ag­ing false hopes—and fears—is high­ly debat­able. In any case, the char­ac­ters’ out­sized expec­ta­tions or expres­sions of apa­thy or vir­u­lent out­rage mir­ror many of the respons­es of both lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives. But it seems that both the left and right shared at least one hope: that the elec­tion of the country’s first black pres­i­dent would put an end to its old­est, deep­est, most per­sis­tent ill. “At the end of the episode,” writes Van­Der­W­erff, “most of the char­ac­ters seem dis­ap­point­ed that Oba­ma didn’t com­plete­ly rewrite the space-time con­tin­u­um, that Amer­i­ca still strug­gles with race.” An under­state­ment per­haps even in 2010, the phrase “still strug­gles with race” is even more so today, for rea­sons both obvi­ous and less so.

That the Unit­ed States—despite the con­tin­ued efforts of a great many activists and some few legislators—is still riv­en with deep racial divides, and that these rep­re­sent the per­sis­tence of a his­tor­i­cal lega­cy, should not be mat­ters in much dis­pute. A mul­ti­tude of aca­d­e­m­ic analy­ses on “stag­ger­ing dis­par­i­ties” in polic­ing prac­tices, imbal­ances in the jus­tice sys­tem, and pro­found wealth inequal­i­ty and dis­crim­i­na­tion in hous­ing and employ­ment bear out the claim. How we talk about these issues, who is autho­rized to do so, and what can be done about it, on the oth­er hand, are mat­ters of con­sid­er­able, seem­ing­ly unend­ing debate. It has always seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic that many comedians—from Richard Pry­or to Chris Rock and Louis CK—have achieved much of their main­stream suc­cess by telling hard truths about the state of race in Amer­i­ca, truths few peo­ple seem to want to hear. When those mes­sages come from non-enter­tain­ers, for exam­ple, the back­lash can be swift and vicious.

But this is noth­ing new. From the can­dor of Shakespeare’s jesters to Swift’s poi­son pen to, yes, The Boon­docks, humor and satire have served as vehi­cles for what we would oth­er­wise sup­press or repress. (No need to be a Freudi­an to acknowl­edge the point). In this episode, the satir­i­cal tar­get isn’t only Obama’s sup­port­ers and detrac­tors at home—though they get their due. Herzog’s edi­to­r­i­al intru­sions also sat­i­rize some woe­ful­ly naïve, ahis­tor­i­cal expec­ta­tions of a glob­al, or at least Euro­pean, com­mu­ni­ty. As the Her­zog char­ac­ter puts it in his sec­ond ques­tion to Huey, “now that it looks like Oba­ma is going to win, as a black African Amer­i­can Negro, are you mere­ly excit­ed, or are you extreme­ly excit­ed that every­thing is going to change for­ev­er.” Van­Der­W­erff reads Huey’s apa­thet­ic response to such grandios­i­ty as an expres­sion of McGruder’s view that ide­al­ism is “both an unsus­tain­able tragedy and the only ratio­nal response to a world that’s hope­less­ly screwed.” But in the face of unbri­dled ide­al­ism, Huey’s hard-bit­ten real­ism is ton­ic: “Hope,” he says, “is irra­tional.” So also, per­haps, is despair.

Watch the full episode here and read a com­plete sum­ma­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

Steven Spielberg’s Oba­ma, Star­ring Daniel Day Lewis as the Pres­i­dent

David Rem­nick on Oba­ma

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

The Tate Digitizes 70,000 Works of Art: Photos, Sketchbooks, Letters & More

in Archives, Art | December 22nd, 2014

Pho­to­graph of Nigel Hen­der­son via Nigel Hen­der­son Estate

If you’re like me, one of the first items on your itin­er­ary when you hit a new city is the art muse­ums. Of course one, two, even three or four vis­its to the world’s major col­lec­tions can’t begin to exhaust the wealth of paint­ing, sculp­ture, pho­tog­ra­phy, and more con­tained with­in. Rotat­ing and spe­cial exhibits make tak­ing it all in even less fea­si­ble. That’s why we’re so grate­ful for the dig­i­tal archives that insti­tu­tions like the Get­ty, LA Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Nation­al Gallery, and the British Library make avail­able free online. Now anoth­er muse­um, Britain’s Tate Mod­ern, gets into the dig­i­tal archive are­na with around 70,000 dig­i­tized works of art in their online gallery.

“Sketch of the bus stop” from the estate of Josef Her­man

But wait, there’s more. Much more. A sep­a­rate dig­i­tal archive—the Tate’s Archives & Access project—offers up a trove of mate­ri­als you’re unlike­ly to encounter much, if at all, in their phys­i­cal spaces. That’s because this col­lec­tion dig­i­tizes lit­tle-seen “artists’ mate­ri­als, includ­ing pho­tographs, sketch­books, diaries, let­ters and objects, doc­u­ment­ing the lives and work­ing process­es of British born and émi­gré artists, from 1900 to the present.” These include, writes The Guardian, “the love let­ters of painter Paul Nash, the detailed sculp­ture records of Bar­bra Hep­worth, and 3,000 pho­tographs by Nigel Hen­der­son, pro­vid­ing a behind-the-scenes back­stage look at London’s 1950s jazz scene.” Thus far, the Tate has uploaded about 6,000 items, “includ­ing 52 col­lec­tions relat­ing to 79 artists.” At the Tate archive, you’ll find pho­tographs like that of painter and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nigel Hen­der­son (see top of the post) and also paint­ings by the high­ly regard­ed Pol­ish-British real­ist, Josef Her­man (right above).

“Squared-up draw­ings of sol­diers” via The estate of David Jones

You’ll find pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es like the 1920–21 Squared-up draw­ings of sol­diers by painter and poet David Jones, above, one of 109 sketch­es and two sketch­books avail­able by the same artist. You’ll find let­ters like that below, writ­ten by sculp­tor Ken­neth Armitage to his wife Joan Moore in 1951—one of hun­dreds. These are but the tini­est sam­pling of what is now “but a drop in the ocean,” The Guardian writes, “giv­en the more than 1 mil­lion items in the [phys­i­cal] archive.” Archive head Adri­an Glew calls the col­lec­tion “a nation­al archival trea­sure” that is also “for the enrich­ment of the whole world.”

Let­ter from Ken­neth Armitage to Joan Moore via the The Ken­neth Armitage Foun­da­tion

The remain­der of the dig­i­tized Archives & Access collection—52, 000 items in total—should be avail­able by the sum­mer of 2015. While view­ing art and arti­facts online is cer­tain­ly no sub­sti­tute for see­ing them in per­son, it’s bet­ter than nev­er see­ing them at all. In any case, mil­lions of pieces are only view­able by cura­tors and spe­cial­ists and nev­er make their way to gallery floors. But with the appear­ance and expan­sion of free online archives like the Tate’s, that sit­u­a­tion will shift dra­mat­i­cal­ly, open­ing up nation­al trea­sures to inde­pen­dent schol­ars and ordi­nary art lovers the world over.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

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