When Eartha Kitt Spoke Truth to Power at a 1968 White House Luncheon

in History, Politics, Television | February 22nd, 2022

Actress Eartha Kitt amassed dozens of stage and screen cred­its, but is per­haps most fond­ly remem­bered for her icon­ic turn as Cat­woman in the Bat­man TV series, a role she took over from white actress Julie New­mar.

The pro­duc­ers con­grat­u­lat­ed them­selves on this “provoca­tive, off-beat” cast­ing, exec­u­tives at net­work affil­i­ates in South­ern states expressed out­rage, and Kit­t’s 9‑year-old daugh­ter, Kitt Shapiro,  under­stood that her moth­er’s new gig was a “real­ly big deal.”

As Shapiro recalled to Clos­er Week­ly:

This was 1967, and there were no women of col­or at that time wear­ing skintight body­suits, play­ing oppo­site a white male with sex­u­al ten­sion between them! She knew the impor­tance of the role and she was proud of it. She real­ly is a part of his­to­ry. She was one of the first real­ly beau­ti­ful black women — her, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dan­dridge — who were allowed to be sexy with­out being stereo­typed. It does take a vil­lage, but I do think she helped blaze a trail.

Eartha Kitt was a trail­blaz­er in oth­er ways too.

Cat­woman vs. the White House, direc­tor Scott Caloni­co’s short doc­u­men­tary for the New York­er (above), uses vin­tage pho­tos, clip­pings and footage to relate how Kitt dis­rupt­ed a White House lun­cheon the month after her Bat­man debut, tak­ing Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. John­son to task over the hard­ships faced by work­ing par­ents.

John­son was clear­ly under the impres­sion that he was swing­ing by the White House Fam­i­ly Din­ing Room as a favor to his wife, Lady Bird, who was host­ing 50 guests for the Women Doers’ Lun­cheon. The theme of the lun­cheon was “What Cit­i­zens Can Do to Help Insure Safe Streets.”

Chair­man of the Nation­al Coun­cil on the Arts Roger Stevens had sug­gest­ed that Kitt or actress Ruby Dee would be fine addi­tions to the guest list in recog­ni­tion for their activism with urban youth.

As Janet Mez­za­ck details in her Pres­i­den­tial Stud­ies Quar­ter­ly arti­cle, “With­out Man­ners You Are Noth­ing”: Lady Bird John­son, Eartha Kitt, and The Women Doers’ Lun­cheon of Jan­u­ary 18, 1968, Kitt had an impres­sive track record of vol­un­teerism.

She taught dance to Black chil­dren who could not afford lessons, tes­ti­fied before the House Gen­er­al Sub­com­mit­tee on Edu­ca­tion on behalf of the DC youth-led Rebels with a Cause, and estab­lished a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion in Watts where under­priv­i­leged youth stud­ied tra­di­tion­al African and mod­ern dance and “learned about per­son­al­i­ty devel­op­ment, poise, groom­ing, dic­tion, and phys­i­cal fit­ness.”

She was being vet­ted for a seat on Pres­i­dent John­son’s Cit­i­zens Advi­so­ry Board on Youth Oppor­tu­ni­ty, chaired by Vice Pres­i­dent Hubert Humphrey.

Sure­ly, a dream guest!

Mez­za­ck writes:

Hav­ing select­ed Kitt as a guest for the upcom­ing lun­cheon, FBI clear­ance checks were con­duct­ed on her and oth­er prospec­tive guests at the White House. The FBI cleared her through nor­mal chan­nels. Because of pre­vi­ous embar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tions involv­ing enter­tain­ers invit­ed to White House func­tions, inquiries also were made of Roger Stevens office to deter­mine if Kitt would “do any­thing to embar­rass” the White House, “and the answer was no.”

Call it embar­rass­ment for a good cause.

John­son was unpre­pared for spon­ta­neous inter­ac­tion as hard hit­ting as Kitt’s, when she stood up to say:

Mr. Pres­i­dent, you asked about delin­quen­cy across the Unit­ed States, which we are all inter­est­ed in and that’s why we’re here today. But what do we do about delin­quent par­ents? The par­ents who have to go to work, for instance, who can’t spend the time with their chil­dren that they should. This is, I think, our main prob­lem. What do we do with the chil­dren then, when the par­ents are off work­ing?

Fum­bling for an answer, John­son inti­mat­ed that the male pol­i­cy­mak­ers behind recent Social Secu­ri­ty Amend­ments that could off­set costs of day­care were “real­ly not the best judges of how to han­dle chil­dren.”

Per­haps Miss Kitt would like to take her con­cerns with the oth­er women in atten­dance?

Under­stand­ably, Kitt seethed, and con­tin­ued the con­ver­sa­tion by con­fronting the First Lady over the war in Viet­nam.

Direc­tor Caloni­co tog­gles between Kitt’s rec­ol­lec­tions of the exchange and excerpts from Mrs. Johnson’s White House audio diary, cob­bling togeth­er a recon­struc­tion that is sure­ly faith­ful to the spir­it of the thing, if not exact­ly word for word:

Kit­t’s words as recalled by Mrs. John­son:

You send the best in this coun­try off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They will take pot and get high. They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their moth­ers to be shot in Viet­nam.

Kit­t’s words as recalled by the speak­er her­self:

Mrs. John­son, you are a moth­er too, although you have had daugh­ters and not sons. I am a moth­er and I know the feel­ing of hav­ing a baby come out of my gut. I have a baby and then you send him off to war. No won­der the kids rebel and take pot, and Mrs. John­son, in case you don’t under­stand the lin­go, that’s mar­i­jua­na.

That last com­ment seems fun­ny now, and Calan­i­co can’t resist infus­ing fur­ther dark humor with a shot of a masked Kitt tool­ing around in Catwoman’s campy Kit­ty­car as the actress describes how the White House can­celled her ride home from the lun­cheon.

The next day’s news­pa­pers were full of emo­tion­al­ly charged reports as to how Kitt’s remarks had left the host­ess “stunned to tears” — a descrip­tion both par­tic­i­pants resist­ed.

With­in weeks, North Viet­nam launched the Tet Offen­sive, and John­son announced he would not seek reelec­tion.

Mean­while Kitt’s out­spo­ken­ness at the lun­cheon cast an instan­ta­neous chill on her career, state­side.

She spent the next decade per­form­ing in Europe, unaware that the CIA had opened a file on her, com­pil­ing infor­ma­tion from con­fi­den­tial sources in Paris and New York City as to her “loose morals.”

Her response to the most out­ra­geous alle­ga­tions in that file should make life­long fans of fem­i­nists who were bare­ly out of dia­pers when Halle Berry slipped into Catwoman’s skintight paja­mas.

Caloni­co is right to punc­tu­ate this with Kitt’s tri­umphant growl.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

David Byrne Answers the Internet’s Burning Questions About David Byrne

in Music | February 22nd, 2022

Is David Byrne the same as he ever was? Where is David Byrne’s big suit? Did David Byrne design bike racks? Above, David Byrne answers burn­ing (or, per­haps bet­ter said, Byrne-ing) ques­tions about him­self. This video comes from the WIRED Auto­com­plete Inter­view series, where famous peo­ple answer the inter­net’s most searched ques­tions about them­selves. Enjoy!

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 

David Byrne’s Unusu­al Forms of Visu­al Art: Bike Racks, Cor­po­rate Signs & Pow­er­point Pre­sen­ta­tions

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

David Byrne Launch­es the “Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful” Web Site: A Com­pendi­um of News Meant to Remind Us That the World Isn’t Actu­al­ly Falling Apart

What Made Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus a Revolutionary Painting

in Art, History | February 21st, 2022

The Birth of Venus, we often hear, depicts the ide­al woman. Yet half a mil­len­ni­um after San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li paint­ed it, how many of us whose tastes run to the female form real­ly see it that way? “I’ve always been struck by how Venus is strange­ly asex­u­al, and her nudi­ty is clin­i­cal,” says gal­lerist James Payne, cre­ator of the Youtube chan­nel Great Art Explained. “Maybe that’s because she rep­re­sents sex as a nec­es­sary func­tion: sex for pro­cre­ation, the ulti­mate goal in a dynas­tic mar­riage.” This, safe to say, isn’t the sort of thing that gets most of us going in the 21st cen­tu­ry. But this famous paint­ing does some­thing more impor­tant than to show us a naked woman: it reveals, as Payne puts it in a new video essay, “a dra­mat­ic shift in west­ern art.”

If you accept the def­i­n­i­tion of the Renais­sance that has it start in the 15th cen­tu­ry, The Birth of Venus’ com­ple­tion in the 1480s makes it quite an ear­ly Renais­sance art­work indeed. In that peri­od, “a renewed inter­est in ancient Gre­co-Roman cul­ture led to an intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic rebirth, a rise in human­ist phi­los­o­phy, and rad­i­cal changes in ideas about reli­gion, pol­i­tics, and sci­ence.”

In art, Bot­ti­cel­li bridged “the gap between medieval Goth­ic art and the emerg­ing human­ism.” In the Mid­dle Ages, Chris­tian­i­ty’s dom­i­nance had been total, but “the Renais­sance gave artists like Bot­ti­cel­li free­dom to explore new sub­ject mat­ter, albeit with­in a Chris­t­ian frame­work.” At the time, “the idea that art could be for plea­sure, and not just to serve God, was new and rad­i­cal.”

Bot­ti­cel­li’s “inclu­sion of a near-life-sized female nude was unprece­dent­ed in West­ern art,” and under­scored her ori­gin in not Chris­t­ian scrip­ture but Greek myth. With her “stat­ue-like pose” and alabaster skin, Venus “is unre­al, an ide­al­ized fig­ure not bound by actu­al laws,” but her shy self-cov­er­ing “makes voyeurs of us all.” Bot­ti­cel­li, in his reli­gious­ness, could have been “depict­ing Venus as an emblem of sacred or divine love,” but his genius lay in his abil­i­ty “to take a pagan sto­ry, a nude female, and make them accept­able to con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian think­ing.” Chaste and untouch­able though the god­dess may look in his ren­der­ing, knowl­edge of the paint­ing’s dar­ing, almost sub­ver­sive con­cep­tion makes it more excit­ing to behold. A bit of con­text, as Payne well knows, always gives art a charge.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Botticelli’s 92 Sur­viv­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1481)

Ter­ry Gilliam Explains His Nev­er-End­ing Fas­ci­na­tion with Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

How the 1968 Psychedelic Film Head Destroyed the Monkees & Became a Cult Classic

in Music | February 21st, 2022

The 1960s moved very fast. The Bea­t­les start­ed 1963 as four fresh­ly scrubbed mop­tops from Liv­er­pool. By 1968 they were hairy hip­pies dab­bling in drugs and mys­ti­cism. (And writ­ing some of the best music of all time, don’t get me wrong!). Then there were the Mon­kees. Cre­at­ed by Bob Rafel­son and Bert Schnei­der in 1966 as a lov­ing homage to the Bea­t­les 1964–65 Richard Lester films, it too quick­ly changed. By 1968, the show and the band had run its course. There was already no cul­tur­al space for four lov­able…any­things. And while many ele­ments killed the opti­mism and rad­i­cal hope of the 1960s–Vietnam, bad acid, Man­son, Alta­mont–hats off to Head, the cult movie that anni­hi­lat­ed The Mon­kees as a band, the band movie as a con­cept, and the con­cept of light enter­tain­ment as being on the side of the view­er. Obscen­i­ty, who real­ly cares? asked Dylan a few years before. Pro­pa­gan­da, all is pho­ny. That’s Head.

What’s inter­est­ing about the Head sto­ry is try­ing to fig­ure out the moti­va­tions of sev­er­al of the play­ers. The Mon­kees them­selves were tired of being seen as an ersatz band, although by all accounts they were. Rafel­son and com­pa­ny audi­tioned young actors and musi­cians and assem­bled the top four into the band/TV show. Most of the songs were writ­ten by Tin Pan Alley stal­warts like Neil Dia­mond or Car­ole King, or up and com­ing artists like Har­ry Nils­son. By being a fake band for two sea­sons of their show, how­ev­er, the Mon­kees had turned into a real band. But what they were turn­ing into was not the Mon­kees that the teens loved. Who had the appetite for destruc­tion first? The mon­ster? Or the mad sci­en­tists?

Hav­ing con­quered tele­vi­sion and the radio—-the Mon­kees had kept the Bea­t­les and the Stones out of the Num­ber One posi­tion in 1966-—Rafelson sought to con­quer film, and by doing so, offer up a mea cul­pa of sorts: yes, this group was a pre­fab­ri­ca­tion. Yes, we’re going to tear it all down. Inspired by exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ers like Stan Brakhage and Ken­neth Anger, Rafel­son, the band, and up-and-com­ing actor Jack Nichol­son decamped in ear­ly 1968 to a resort motel in Ojai, CA. There they smoked a lot of weed, and record­ed hours of con­ver­sa­tions. Nichol­son and Rafel­son lat­er dosed LSD and fash­ioned the tapes into a script.

Head is con­struct­ed in vignettes, jump­ing thru gen­res like a per­son with an itchy remote con­trol fin­ger. Vin­tage movie clips and crass com­mer­cials inter­rupt the action. The television—-which both sold hap­py pro­pa­gan­da along­side har­row­ing clips from Viet­nam to Amer­i­cans every night—-is not to be trust­ed.

“The band is con­stant­ly being chased, attacked, torn apart, caged, sucked up in a giant vac­u­um and impris­oned in a big black box that reap­pears through­out the movie,” crit­ic Petra May­er wrote in 2018, look­ing back at the cult film. “They can’t escape — not with phi­los­o­phy, not with force. They nev­er escape.”

A year ear­li­er the Bea­t­les had real­ized their own trap, and escaped thru the pos­i­tive mag­ic of Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. In 1968, the Mon­kees didn’t get the lux­u­ry. Self-aware­ness and self-destruc­tion con­tin­ues as an occa­sion­al career move by unhap­py pop artists-—Pink Floyd, Prince, Garth Brooks, David Bowie-—but the Mon­kees destroyed them­selves first, and most spec­tac­u­lar­ly. Head cost $750,000 to make, and made $16,000 back.

“Most of our fans could­n’t get in because there was an age restric­tion and the intel­li­gentsia would­n’t go to see it any­way because they hat­ed the Mon­kees,” said Dolenz. Rafel­son and Nichol­son made out okay. They would go on to Easy Rid­er and estab­lish their film careers. The Mon­kees? Not as much.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the one Mon­kee who spoke well of the film’s cult lega­cy was their most crit­i­cal mem­ber, Michael Nesmith.

“It has a life that comes from lit­er­a­ture,” he told inter­view­er Doug Gor­don. “It has a life that comes from fic­tion. It has a life that comes from fan­ta­sy and the deep troves of mak­ing up sto­ries and nar­ra­tive. But it was telling a nar­ra­tive, but the nar­ra­tive that it was telling was very, very dif­fer­ent than the one the tele­vi­sion show was.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Ver­sa (1967)

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Watch the Last Time Peter Tork (RIP) & The Mon­kees Played Togeth­er Dur­ing Their 1960s Hey­day: It’s a Psy­che­del­ic Freak­out

How a Fake Car­toon Band Made “Sug­ar Sug­ar” the Biggest Sell­ing Hit Sin­gle of 1969

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

“When The Levee Breaks” Performed by John Paul Jones & Musicians Around the World

in Music | February 18th, 2022

From Play­ing for Change comes this: “When The Lev­ee Breaks is a pow­er­ful, thought-pro­vok­ing and emo­tion­al­ly-charged clas­sic by Led Zep­pelin, from their Led Zep­pelin IV album. The song is a rework of the 1929 release by Kansas Joe McCoy and Mem­phis Min­nie about the Great Mis­sis­sip­pi Flood of 1927; the most destruc­tive riv­er flood­ing in U.S. his­to­ry.” In the accom­pa­ny­ing video above, we can see pow­er­ful scenes from the Kat­ri­na Flood of 2005–and Jones get­ting accom­pa­nied by “Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addic­tion, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks and over 20 musi­cians and dancers from sev­en dif­fer­ent coun­tries.”

Find more Play­ing for Change per­for­mances in the Relat­eds below.

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 

“Stand By Me” Sung By Musi­cians Around the World

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

How to Actually Cook Salvador Dali’s Surrealist Recipes: Crayfish, Prawns, and Spitted Eggs

in Art, Creativity, Food & Drink | February 18th, 2022

The sen­su­al intel­li­gence housed in the taber­na­cle of my palate beck­ons me to pay the great­est atten­tion to food. — Sal­vador Dali

Look­ing for an easy, low-cost recipe for a quick week­night sup­per?

Sal­vador Dali’s Bush of Cray­fish in Viking Herb is not that recipe.

It’s pre­sen­ta­tion may be Sur­re­al, but it’s not an entire­ly unre­al­is­tic thing to pre­pare as The Art Assign­men­t’s Sarah Urist Green dis­cov­ers, above.

The recipe, pub­lished in Les Din­ers de Gala, Dali’s over-the-top cult cook­ery book from 1973, has pedi­gree.

Dali got it off a chef at Paris’ fabled Tour d’Argent, who lat­er had sec­ond thoughts about giv­ing away trade secrets, and balked at shar­ing exact mea­sure­ments for the dish:

Bush of Craw­fish in Viking Herbs

In order to real­ize this dish, it is nec­es­sary to have craw­fish of 2 ounces each. Pre­pare the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents for a broth: ‘fumet’ (scent­ed reduced bul­lion) of fish, of con­som­mé, of white wine, Ver­mouth, Cognac, salt, pep­per, sug­ar and dill (aro­mat­ic herb). Poach the craw­fish in this broth for 20 min­utes. Let it cool for 24 hours and arrange the craw­fish in a dome. Strain the broth and serve in cups.

Green, the Indi­anapo­lis Muse­um of Art’s for­mer cura­tor of con­tem­po­rary art, sol­diers ahead with  a Sty­ro­foam top­i­ary cone and a box­ful of Fed-Ex’ed Louisiana cray­fish, mask­ing their demise with insets of Dali works such as 1929’s Some­times I Spit with Plea­sure on the Por­trait of my Moth­er (The Sacred Heart).

Green, well aware that some view­ers may have trou­ble with the “bru­tal real­i­ties” of cook­ing live crus­taceans, namechecks Con­sid­er the Lob­ster, the heav­i­ly foot­not­ed essay where­in author David Fos­ter Wal­lace rumi­nates over ethics at the Maine Lob­ster Fes­ti­val.

Green may seek repen­tance for the sin of poach­ing lob­sters’ fresh­wa­ter cousins, but Dali, who blamed his sex-relat­ed guilt on his Catholic upbring­ing, was uncon­flict­ed about enjoy­ing the “deli­cious lit­tle mar­tyrs”:

If I hate that detestable degrad­ing veg­etable called spinach, it is because it is shape­less, like Lib­er­ty. I attribute cap­i­tal esthet­ic and moral val­ues to food in gen­er­al, and to spinach in par­tic­u­lar. The oppo­site of shape­less spinach, is armor. I love eat­ing suits of arms, in fact I love all shell fish… food that only a bat­tle to peel makes it vul­ner­a­ble to the con­quest of our palate.

If your scru­ples, sched­ule or sav­ings keep you from attempt­ing Dal­i’s Sur­re­al shell­fish tow­er, you might try enliven­ing a less aspi­ra­tional dish with Green’s whole­some, home­made fish stock:

Devin Lytle and Jared Nunn, test dri­ving Dali’s Cas­sano­va cock­tail and Eggs on a Spit for His­to­ry Bites on Buz­zfeed’s Tasty chan­nel, seem less sure­foot­ed than Green in both the kitchen and the realm of art his­to­ry, but they’re total­ly down to spec­u­late as to whether or not Dali and his wife, Gala, had a “healthy rela­tion­ship.”

If you can stom­ach their snarky, self-ref­er­en­tial asides, you might get a bang out of hear­ing them dish on Dali’s revul­sion at being touched, Gala’s alleged pen­chant for bed­ding younger artists, and their high­ly uncon­ven­tion­al mar­riage.

Despite some squea­mish­ness about the eggs’ vis­cous­ness and some reser­va­tions about the sur­re­al amount of but­ter required, Lytle and Nun­n’s reac­tion upon tast­ing their Dali recre­ation sug­gest that it was worth the effort:

Cas­sano­va cock­tail

• The juice of 1 orange
• 1 table­spoon bit­ters (Cam­pari)
• 1 tea­spoon gin­ger
• 4 table­spoons brandy
• 2 table­spoons old brandy (Vielle Cure)
• 1 pinch Cayenne pep­per

This is quite appro­pri­ate when cir­cum­stances such as exhaus­tion, over­work or sim­ply excess of sobri­ety are call­ing for a pick-me-up.

Here is a well-test­ed recipe to fit the bill.

Let us stress anoth­er advan­tage of this par­tic­u­lar pep-up con­coc­tion is that one doesn’t have to make the sour face that usu­al­ly accom­pa­nies the absorp­tion of a rem­e­dy.

At the bot­tom of a glass, com­bine pep­per and gin­ger. Pour the bit­ters on top, then brandy and “Vielle Cure.” Refrig­er­ate or even put in the freez­er.

Thir­ty min­utes lat­er, remove from the freez­er and stir the juice of the orange into the chilled glass.

Drink… and wait for the effect. 

It is rather speedy.

Your best bet for prepar­ing Eggs on a Spit, which Lytle com­pares to “an her­by, scram­bled frit­ta­ta that looks like a brain”, are con­tained in artist Rosan­na Shal­loe’s mod­ern adap­tion.

What would you do if you dis­cov­ered an orig­i­nal, auto­graphed copy of Les Din­ers de Gala in the attic of your new home?

A young man named Bran­don takes it to Rick Harrison’s Gold & Sil­ver Pawn Shop, hop­ing it will fetch $2500.

Har­ri­son, star of the His­to­ry Channel’s Pawn Stars, gives Bran­don a quick primer on the Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry, Dali’s famous “melt­ing clocks” paint­ing (fail­ing to men­tion that the artist insist­ed the clocks should be inter­pret­ed as “the Camem­bert of time.”)

Bran­don walks with some­thing less than the hoped for sum, and Har­ri­son takes the book home to attempt some of the dish­es. (Not, how­ev­er, Bush of Cray­fish in Viking Herb, which he declares, “a lit­tle creepy, even for Dali.”)

Alas, his younger rel­a­tives are wary of Oasis Leek Pie’s star ingre­di­ent and refuse to enter­tain a sin­gle mouth­ful of whole fish, baked with guts and eyes.

They’re not alone. The below news­reel sug­gests that come­di­an Bob Hope had some reser­va­tions about Dalin­ian Gas­tro Esthet­ics, too.

We intend to ignore those charts and tables in which chem­istry takes the place of gas­tron­o­my. If you are a dis­ci­ple of one of those calo­rie-coun­ters who turn the joys of eat­ing into a form of pun­ish­ment, close this book at once; it is too live­ly, too aggres­sive, and far too imper­ti­nent for you. — Sal­vador Dali

You can pur­chase a copy of Taschen’s recent reis­sue of Les Din­ers de Gala online. 

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

What Makes Sal­vador Dalí’s Icon­ic Sur­re­al­ist Paint­ing “The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry” a Great Work of Art

Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

The Most Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Sal­vador Dalí’s Paint­ings Pub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful New Book by Taschen: Includes Nev­er-Seen-Before Works

Sal­vador Dalí’s Tarot Cards, Cook­book & Wine Guide Re-Issued as Beau­ti­ful Art Books

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How Quentin Tarantino Remixes History: A Brief Study of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

in Film, History | February 18th, 2022

For more than two hours, Quentin Taran­ti­no’s Once Upon a Time… in Hol­ly­wood builds up to the Man­son mur­ders. Or rather, it seems to be build­ing up to the Man­son mur­ders, but then takes a sharp turn on Cielo Dri­ve; when the cred­its roll, the real-life killers are dead and the real-life vic­tims alive. Such revi­sion­ist revenge is of a piece with oth­er recent Taran­ti­no pic­tures like Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds, which ends with the mas­sacre of Hitler and Goebbels, among oth­er Nazis, and Djan­go Unchained, where­in the tit­u­lar slave lays waste to the house of the mas­ter. Long well known for bor­row­ing from oth­er movies, Taran­ti­no seems to have found just as rich a source of mate­r­i­al in his­to­ry books.

Once Upon a Time… in Hol­ly­wood “cre­ates a new sto­ry using exist­ing char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions, and many of them just hap­pen to be real.” So says Kir­by Fer­gu­son in the video essay above, “Taran­ti­no’s Copy­ing: Then Vs. Now.” The film’s large cast of sec­ondary char­ac­ters includes such 1960s celebri­ties as Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee, as well as count­less oth­er fig­ures rec­og­niz­able main­ly to the direc­tor’s fel­low pop-cul­ture obses­sives.

Also por­trayed is Charles Man­son and the ragged young mem­bers of the “Man­son Fam­i­ly” recruit­ed to do his bid­ding, as well as are their intend­ed vic­tims of the night of August 8, 1969, most promi­nent­ly the actress Sharon Tate. It is she, Fer­gu­son argues, who ties togeth­er Once Upon a Time… in Hol­ly­wood’s var­i­ous threads of fact and fic­tion.

Leonar­do DiCapri­o’s washed-up actor Rick Dal­ton and Brad Pit­t’s black­list­ed stunt­man Cliff Booth, the film’s main char­ac­ters, are whol­ly Taran­tin­ian cre­ations. 26 years old and preg­nant with the child of her hus­band Roman Polan­s­ki (a ver­sion of whom also shows up in one scene), the ris­ing Tate shares a méti­er with Dal­ton, and when the Man­son fam­i­ly come for her in the film, they end up face-to-face with Booth (much to their mis­for­tune), “but unlike both of them, she is a real per­son, and what is depict­ed of her is, broad­ly speak­ing, true.” Using these char­ac­ters real and imag­ined, Taran­ti­no “takes a dark, fright­en­ing, and just crush­ing­ly sad real­i­ty and gives it a hap­py end­ing with bru­tal ret­ri­bu­tion.” For all the post­mod­ern bor­row­ing and shuf­fled sto­ry­telling that launched him into Hol­ly­wood, the man knows how to give audi­ences just what they want — and some­how to sur­prise them even as he does it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Deep Study of the Open­ing Scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds

How Quentin Taran­ti­no Steals from Oth­er Movies: A Video Essay

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… In Hol­ly­wood Exam­ined on Pret­ty Much Pop #12

Quentin Taran­ti­no Releas­es His First Nov­el: A Pulpy Nov­el­iza­tion of Once Upon a Time… in Hol­ly­wood

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

The Enduring Appeal of Schulz’s Peanuts — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #116

in Comics/Cartoons, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | February 18th, 2022

Animator/musician David Heat­ley, come­di­an Daniel Lobell, and academic/3anuts author Daniel Leonard join your Pret­ty Much Pop host Mark Lin­sen­may­er to dis­cuss Char­lie Brown and his author Charles Schulz from Peanuts’ 1950 incep­tion through the clas­sic TV spe­cials through to the var­i­ous post-mortem prod­ucts still emerg­ing.

What’s the endur­ing appeal, and is it strict­ly for kids? We talk about the chal­lenges of the strip for­mat, the char­ac­ters as arche­types, Schulz as depressed exis­ten­tial­ist, reli­gion in Peanuts, and whether the strip is actu­al­ly sup­posed to be fun­ny.

Some arti­cles we used for the dis­cus­sion include:

• “The Para­dox of Peanuts” by Bruce Handy
• “All Your Life, Char­lie Brown. All Your Life.” by Eric Schul­miller
• “A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas may work even bet­ter now than it did 50 years ago” by David Gross­man
• “10 Weird­est Char­lie Brown Par­o­dies Of All Time” by Phil Hall
• “Why Are News­pa­per Comics So Ter­ri­ble?” by Scott Mes­low

Also, RIP Peter Rob­bins (the day before we record­ed this). Here’s the 1982 Rerun com­ic Daniel Leonard reads us near the begin­ning. The biog­ra­phy that we keep refer­ring to is David Michaelis’ Schulz and Peanuts: A Biog­ra­phy. Yes, Don­di was a real (bad) com­ic strip.

Check out David’s new album and oth­er projects at davidheatley.com. Fol­low him @heatleycomics on Twit­ter and @davidheatley on Inst­gram.

Get Daniel Lobel­l’s Fair Enough com­ic at fairenoughcomic.com and read about the rest of his activ­i­ties at dannylobell.com. Fol­low him @DanielLobell on Twit­ter and @daniellobell on Insta­gram.

Read Daniel Leonard’s 3anuts, and buy Peanuts and Phi­los­o­phy, which con­tains one of his essays. Fol­low on Twit­ter @3anuts.

Here’s a 3eanuts exam­ple. Leav­ing off the last pan­el leaves us in despair!

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

3,200-Year-Old Egyptian Tablet Records Excuses for Why People Missed Work: “The Scorpion Bit Him,” “Brewing Beer” & More

in History, Museums | February 17th, 2022

Image via The British Muse­um 

We mar­vel today at what we con­sid­er the won­ders of ancient Egypt, but at some point, they all had to have been built by peo­ple more or less like our­selves. (This pre­sumes, of course, that you’ve ruled out all the myr­i­ad the­o­ries involv­ing super­nat­ur­al beings or aliens from out­er space.) Safe to say that, when­ev­er in human his­to­ry work has been done, work has been skipped, espe­cial­ly when that work is per­formed by large groups. It would’ve tak­en great num­bers indeed to build the pyra­mids, but even less colos­sal­ly scaled tombs could­n’t have been built alone. And when a tomb-builder took the day off, he need­ed an excuse suit­able to be writ­ten in stone — on at any rate, on stone.

“Ancient Egypt­ian employ­ers kept track of employ­ee days off in reg­is­ters writ­ten on tablets,” writes Madeleine Muz­dakis at My Mod­ern Met. One such arti­fact “held by the British Muse­um and dat­ing to 1250 BCE is an incred­i­ble win­dow into ancient work-life bal­ance.” Called ostra­ca, these tablets were made of “flakes of lime­stone that were used as ‘notepads’ for pri­vate let­ters, laun­dry lists, records of pur­chas­es, and copies of lit­er­ary works,” accord­ing to Egyp­tol­o­gist Jen­nifer Bab­cock.

Dis­cov­ered along with thou­sands of oth­ers in the tomb builder’s vil­lage of Deir el-Med­i­na, this par­tic­u­lar ostra­con, on view at the British Muse­um’s web site, offers a rich glimpse into the lives of that trade’s prac­ti­tion­ers. Over the 280-day peri­od cov­ered by this 3,200-year-old ostra­con, com­mon excus­es for absence include “brew­ing beer” and “his wife was bleed­ing.”

Beer, Muz­dakis explains, “was a dai­ly for­ti­fy­ing drink in Egypt and was even asso­ci­at­ed with gods such as Hathor. As such, brew­ing beer was a very impor­tant activ­i­ty.” And alarm­ing though that “bleed­ing” may sound, the ref­er­ence is to men­stru­a­tion: “Clear­ly men were need­ed on the home front to pick up some slack dur­ing this time. While one’s wife men­stru­at­ing is not an excuse one hears nowa­days, cer­tain­ly the ancients seem to have had a sim­i­lar work-life jug­gling act to per­form.” Most of us today pre­sum­ably have it eas­i­er than did the aver­age ancient Egypt­ian labor­er, or even arti­san. Depend­ing on where you live, maybe you, too, could call in sick to work with the excuse of hav­ing been bit­ten by a scor­pi­on. But how well would it fly if you were to plead the need to feast, to embalm your broth­er, or to make an offer­ing to a god?

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 4,000-Year-Old Stu­dent ‘Writ­ing Board’ from Ancient Egypt (with Teacher’s Cor­rec­tions in Red)

Try the Old­est Known Recipe For Tooth­paste: From Ancient Egypt, Cir­ca the 4th Cen­tu­ry BC

An Ancient Egypt­ian Home­work Assign­ment from 1800 Years Ago: Some Things Are Tru­ly Time­less

A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Orig­i­nal Col­ors Still In It

The Turin Erot­ic Papyrus: The Old­est Known Depic­tion of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (Cir­ca 1150 B.C.E.)

Won­ders of Ancient Egypt: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

P.J. O’Rourke (RIP) Explains Why You Can Never Win Over Your Political Adversaries by Mocking Them

in Comedy, Politics | February 16th, 2022

Don­ald Trump, as his sup­port­ers and detrac­tors alike can agree, is immune to humor. All the par­o­dy, satire, ridicule, and insult with which he was cease­less­ly bom­bard­ed dur­ing his four years as the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca had, to a first approx­i­ma­tion, no effect what­so­ev­er. If any­thing, it just made him more pow­er­ful. “There has been tremen­dous scorn for and fun made of Trump, and indeed Trump sup­port­ers,” says the late humorist P.J. O’Rourke in the clip above from a 2106 Intel­li­gence Squared event. But “when you are angry at the estab­lish­ment, and you see the estab­lish­ment not just dis­agree­ing with your can­di­date but mock­ing your can­di­date, there is an ele­ment that says, ‘They’re mock­ing me.’ ”

As a result, “every time you went out to make fun of Trump, you increased his sup­port, because peo­ple were feel­ing scorned.” The result of the 2016 elec­tion, which hap­pened the next month, would seem to have borne this out. “When peo­ple feel they are out­siders,” O’Rourke says, “you can­not con­vince them by mock­ing them.” This may, at first, sound some­what rich com­ing from a writer who spent half a cen­tu­ry turn­ing every­thing that so much as approached the world of pol­i­tics into joke mate­r­i­al. But O’Rourke did­n’t engage in mock­ery, per se; rather, he straight­for­ward­ly observed that which came before him. “Humor isn’t about being fun­ny,” he once said in anoth­er inter­view. “It’s about putting emo­tion­al dis­tance between your­self and the pat­terns of human behav­ior.”

I’ve long kept that obser­va­tion in mind, as I have so much else O’Rourke wrote and said. If any one thing made me a writer, it was all the fif­teen-minute breaks from my high-school job at the Gap I spent read­ing his books at the Bor­ders on the oth­er side of the mall. I took a rebel­lious plea­sure, at that age and at that time, in get­ting laughs from the work of a writer who was clear­ly not a man of the left. Or rather, a writer who was for­mer­ly a man of the left: a self-con­fessed 1960s hip­pie, he like many of the Baby Boom gen­er­a­tion under­went a polit­i­cal con­ver­sion after notic­ing the deduc­tions from his pay­check. “I’d been strug­gling for years to achieve social­ism in Amer­i­ca,” goes one of his oft-quot­ed lines, “only to dis­cov­er that we had it already.”

Yet O’Rourke was nev­er a doc­tri­naire right-winger. Forged at the Nation­al Lam­poon (for which he wrote the well known piece “How to Dri­ve Fast on Drugs While Get­ting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink”) he emerged as a 1980s lib­er­tar­i­an-lib­er­tine. In recent decades, dur­ing which he often appeared as a con­vivial polit­i­cal out­sider on shows like Nation­al Pub­lic Radio’s Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me, he shift­ed to the ter­ri­to­ry ref­er­enced in the title of his last book, 2020’s A Cry from the Far Mid­dle. In the video above he reads its intro­duc­tion, a dis­patch from a time of not just “moron pop­ulism and idiot par­ti­san­ship” but also a “griev­ous health cri­sis, lock­down iso­la­tion, eco­nom­ic col­lapse, and mate­r­i­al depri­va­tion.” Once a wise­crack­ing cor­re­spon­dent from the world’s trou­ble spots, he knew to bet that even in Amer­i­ca, “human nature will tri­umph over adver­si­ty and chal­lenge. And I don’t mean that in a good way.”

You can read O’Rourke’s obit­u­ary here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resem­bles the Rise of Fas­cism in 1930s Ger­many

Come­di­ans Speak­ing Truth to Pow­er: Lenny Bruce, George Car­lin & Richard Pry­or (NSFW)

Kurt Von­negut Pon­ders Why “Poor Amer­i­cans Are Taught to Hate Them­selves” in a Time­ly Pas­sage from Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese Wor­ries That Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness Will Lead Us into a Humor­less World, Rem­i­nis­cent of Orwell’s 1984

Bill Hicks’ 12 Prin­ci­ples of Com­e­dy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.