The Sound of Subways Around the World: A Global Collection of Subway Door Closing Announcements, Beeps & Chimes

in Life, Technology, Travel | August 16th, 2021

The next L train is now arriv­ing on the Man­hat­tan bound track. Please stand away from the plat­form edge. 

Thus begins Brook­lyn sax­o­phone-per­cus­sion trio Moon Hooch’s “Num­ber 9.”

Any­one who’s tak­en the train into the city from Bush­wick or Williams­burg two or three times, you should be able to chant along with no trou­ble.

“Mind the gap!” is a sen­ti­men­tal favorite of both native Lon­don­ers and first time vis­i­tors nav­i­gat­ing The Tube with fresh­ly pur­chased Oys­ter Cards.

Res­i­dents of Mon­tre­al are just­ly proud that their Metro’s clos­ing doors sig­nal is a near twin of Aaron Copland’s “Fan­fare for the Com­mon Man.”

Civ­il engi­neer Ted Green has been doc­u­ment­ing the mass tran­sit sounds that cue pas­sen­gers that the sub­way doors are about to close since 2004, when he logged 26 sec­onds on the Pic­cadil­ly Line in Lon­don’s Rus­sell Square Sta­tion:

In 2003 I used the Rus­sell Square sta­tion dai­ly for a week and it’s the first announce­ment that caught my atten­tion… Back then the Pic­cadil­ly Line did not have on-train sta­tion and door clos­ing announce­ments, it had the beeps, but the sta­tions in cen­tral Lon­don had auto­mat­ic announce­ments from plat­form speak­ers aimed at the open train door. Once the Pic­cadil­ly Line received on-train announce­ments a few years lat­er, this announce­ment was phased out.

Over the course of a decade, the project has expand­ed to encom­pass announce­ments on sub­ur­ban rail, rail­ways, trams, and light rail.

His trav­els have tak­en him to Asia, Aus­tralia, Europe, and North Amer­i­ca, where curios­i­ty com­pels him to doc­u­ment what hap­pens dur­ing “dwell time,” the brief peri­od when a train is dis­gorg­ing some rid­ers and tak­ing on oth­ers.

Whether the canned record­ing is ver­bal or non-ver­bal, the intent is to keep things mov­ing smooth­ly, and pre­vent injuries, though pas­sen­gers can become blasé, attempt­ing to force their way on or off by thrust­ing a limb between clos­ing doors at the absolute last minute.

Green’s incred­i­bly pop­u­lar video com­pi­la­tions aren’t near­ly so har­row­ing.

As he told The New York Times’ Sophie Haigney and Denise Lu:

I think the appeal is the sim­plic­i­ty. You won­der, how can there be so many dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions of beeps? And then you lis­ten, and they’re all so dif­fer­ent.

The pan­dem­ic only increased his audi­ence, as locked down com­muters found them­selves long­ing for the sound­track of nor­mal life.

It’s the same impulse that led soft­ware devel­op­er Evan Lewis to make an app of New York City sub­way sounds.

For those who want to bone up on their lines, infor­ma­tion design­er Ilya Bir­man, author of Design­ing Tran­sit Maps, has script­ed lists of Lon­don Under­ground and New York City sub­way announce­ments.

And Brook­lyn-based Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tran­sit Author­i­ty work­er Fred Argoff’s zine Watch the Clos­ing Doors ush­ered civil­ians behind the scenes, some­times explor­ing oth­er cities’ sub­way sys­tems or, in the case of Cincin­nati, lack there­of.

Read­ers, do you have a fond­ness for a par­tic­u­lar under­ground sound? Tell us what and why in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ani­mat­ed GIFs Show How Sub­way Maps of Berlin, New York, Tokyo & Lon­don Com­pare to the Real Geog­ra­phy of Those Great Cities

How the Icon­ic Col­ors of the New York City Sub­way Sys­tem Were Invent­ed: See the 1930 Col­or Chart Cre­at­ed by Archi­tect Squire J. Vick­ers

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

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

Carl Sagan Answers the Ultimate Question: Is There a God? (1994)

in Religion, Science | August 13th, 2021

Some pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als asso­ci­at­ed with sci­ence court dis­agree­ment with reli­gious believ­ers; oth­ers cul­ti­vate suites of rhetor­i­cal tech­niques express­ly in order to avoid it. While Carl Sagan did­n’t shrink from, say, debat­ing a cre­ation­ist on talk radio, he always engaged with char­ac­ter­is­tic aplomb. But deal­ing with bel­liger­ent callers-in is eas­i­er, in a way, than respond­ing to an earnest, straight­for­ward­ly expressed curios­i­ty about one’s own reli­gious beliefs. In the Q&A clip above, tak­en from his 1994 “lost lec­ture,” Sagan receives just such a ques­tion: “What is your per­son­al reli­gion? Is there any type of God to you? Like, is there a pur­pose, giv­en that we’re just sit­ting on this speck in the mid­dle of this sea of stars?”

“Now, I don’t want to duck any ques­tions,” Sagan replies, “and I’m not going to duck this one.” Nev­er­the­less, he requests a tri­fling clar­i­fi­ca­tion: “What do you mean when you use the word God?”  Pressed by none oth­er than Carl Sagan to define God, few of us would pre­sum­ably hold up well.

Here the ques­tion­er changes his angle, draw­ing on Sagan’s own def­i­n­i­tion in Pale Blue Dot of the “Great Demo­tions,” those “down-lift­ing expe­ri­ences, demon­stra­tions of our appar­ent insignif­i­cance, wounds that sci­ence has, in its search for Galileo’s facts, deliv­ered to human pride.” And so, “giv­en all these demo­tions,” the man asks, “why don’t we just blow our­selves up?”

“If we do blow our­selves up,” Sagan asks, “does that dis­prove the exis­tence of God?” This is an intrigu­ing rever­sal, but Sagan does­n’t sim­ply reply to ques­tions with ques­tions. Sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge increas­ing­ly leaves us “on our own,” he says, which is a state “much more respon­si­ble than hop­ing some­one will save us from our­selves.” What if we’re wrong, and a deity does indeed step in to save us? “Okay, that’s all right, I’m for that; we, you know, hedged our bets. It Pas­cal’s bar­gain run back­wards.” The prob­lem lies with God itself, “a word so ambigu­ous, that means so many dif­fer­ent things,” and one used “to seem to agree with some­one else with whom you do not agree.” Despite its impor­tance, not least for “social lubri­ca­tion,” no term can be use­ful to truth that encom­pass­es so many dif­fer­ent per­son­al con­cep­tions — bil­lions and bil­lions of them, one might say.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Hear Carl Sagan Art­ful­ly Refute a Cre­ation­ist on a Talk Radio Show: “The Dar­win­ian Con­cept of Evo­lu­tion is Pro­found­ly Ver­i­fied”

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Ted Turn­er Asks Carl Sagan “Are You a Social­ist?;” Sagan Responds Thought­ful­ly (1989)

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Carl Sagan Tells John­ny Car­son What’s Wrong with Star Wars: “They’re All White” & There’s a “Large Amount of Human Chau­vin­ism in It” (1978)

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.

Watch an Exquisite 19th Century Coffee Maker in Action

in Food & Drink, Physics, Science | August 13th, 2021

Pourover…

Cold brew…

Sin­gle ori­gin…

Cof­fee snob­bery may seem like a recent phe­nom­e­non, but the quest for the per­fect­ly brewed cup has been going on for a very long time.

Behold the Con­ti­nen­tal Bal­anc­ing Siphon, above — a com­plete­ly auto­mat­ic, 19th-cen­tu­ry table top vac­u­um brew­er.

There’s an unmis­tak­able ele­ment of cof­fee mak­ing as the­ater here… but also, a fas­ci­nat­ing demon­stra­tion of phys­i­cal prin­ci­ples in action.

Vin­tage vac­u­um pot col­lec­tor Bri­an Har­ris breaks down how the bal­anc­ing siphon works:

Two ves­sels are arranged side-by-side, with a siphon tube con­nect­ing the two.

Cof­fee is placed in one side (usu­al­ly glass), and water in the oth­er (usu­al­ly ceram­ic). 

A spir­it lamp heats the water, forc­ing it through the tube and into the oth­er ves­sel, where it mix­es with the cof­fee. 

As the water is trans­ferred from one ves­sel to the oth­er, a bal­anc­ing sys­tem based on a coun­ter­weight or spring mech­a­nism is acti­vat­ed by the change in weight. This in turn trig­gers the extin­guish­ing of the lamp. A par­tial vac­u­um is formed, which siphons the brewed cof­fee through a fil­ter and back into the first ves­sel, from which is dis­pensed by means of a spig­ot.

(Still curi­ous? We direct you to Har­ris’ web­site for a length­i­er, more egghead­ed expla­na­tion, com­plete with equa­tions, graphs, and cal­cu­la­tions for sat­u­rat­ed vapor pres­sure and the approx­i­mate tem­per­a­ture at which down­ward flow begins.)

The bal­anc­ing siphon was to 1850’s Paris and Vien­na what Blue Bottle’s three-foot tall Japan­ese slow-drip iced cof­fee-mak­ing devices are to ear­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry Brook­lyn and Oak­land.

Does the fla­vor of cof­fee brewed in a bal­ance siphon mer­it the time and, if pur­chased in a cafe, expense?

Yes, accord­ing to Maria Tin­de­mans, the CEO of Roy­al Paris, whose 24-carat gold and Bacar­rat glass bal­anc­ing siphon retails for between $17,500 and $24,000:

The cof­fee from a syphon can best be described as “crys­tal clear,” with great puri­ty of fla­vor and aro­ma and no bit­ter­ness added by the brew­ing process.

More afford­able bal­anc­ing siphons can be found online, though be fore­warned, all siphons are a bitch to clean, accord­ing to Red­dit.

If you do invest, be sure to up the cof­fee snob­bery by telling your cap­tive audi­ence that you’ve named your new device “Gabet,” in hon­or of Parisian Louis Gabet, whose 1844 patent for a coun­ter­weight mech­a­nism kicked off the bal­anc­ing siphon craze.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Make the World’s Small­est Cup of Cof­fee, from Just One Cof­fee Bean

The Life Cycle of a Cup of Cof­fee: The Jour­ney from Cof­fee Bean, to Cof­fee Cup

Wake Up & Smell the Cof­fee: The New All-in-One Cof­fee-Mak­er/Alarm Clock is Final­ly Here!

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

Why Civilization Collapsed in 1177 BC: Watch Classicist Eric Cline’s Lecture That Has Already Garnered 7.6 Million Views

in History | August 12th, 2021

Eric Cline is a man of the Bronze Age. “If I could be rein­car­nat­ed back­wards,” he says in the lec­ture above, “I would choose to live back then. I’m sure I would not live more than about 48 hours, but it’d be a good 48 hours.” He may give him­self too lit­tle cred­it: as he goes on to demon­strate in the hour that fol­lows, he has as thor­ough an all-around knowl­edge of life in the Bronze Age as any­one alive in the 21st cen­tu­ry. But of course, his prospects for sur­vival in that era — or indeed any­one’s — depend on which part of it we’re talk­ing about. The Bronze Age last­ed a long time, from rough­ly 3300 to 1200 BC — at the end of which, ancient-his­to­ry spe­cial­ists agree, civ­i­liza­tion col­lapsed.

What the spe­cial­ists don’t quite agree on is how it hap­pened. Cline makes his own case in the book 1177 BC: The Year Civ­i­liza­tion Col­lapsed. The title, which seems to have been the result of the pub­lish­ing indus­try’s invin­ci­ble enthu­si­asm for nam­ing books after years, may soon need an update: as Cline admits, it reflects a con­ven­tion among schol­ars about how to label the tit­u­lar event that has just been revised, and has since been revised back. And in any case, the col­lapse of civ­i­liza­tion among the dis­tinct but inter­con­nect­ed Egyp­tians, Hit­tites, Canaan­ites, Cypri­ots, Minoans, Myce­naeans, Assyr­i­ans, and Baby­lo­ni­ans of the Bronze Age took not a year, he explains, but more like a cen­tu­ry.

This com­pli­cat­ed process has no one expla­na­tion — and more to the point, no one cause. Many flour­ish­ing cities of Bronze Age civ­i­liza­tion were indeed destroyed by 1177 BC or soon there­after. The “old, sim­ple expla­na­tion” for this was that “a drought caused famine, which even­tu­al­ly caused the Sea Peo­ples to start mov­ing and cre­at­ing hav­oc, which caused the col­lapse.” Cline opts to include these fac­tors and oth­ers, includ­ing earth­quakes and rebel­lions, whose effects spread to afflict all parts of this ear­ly “glob­al­ized” part of the world. The result was a “sys­tems col­lapse,” involv­ing the break­down of “cen­tral admin­is­tra­tive orga­ni­za­tion,” the “dis­ap­pear­ance of the tra­di­tion­al elite class,” the “col­lapse of the cen­tral­ized econ­o­my,” as well as “set­tle­ment shifts and pop­u­la­tion decline.”

Sys­tems col­laps­es have also hap­pened in oth­er places and at oth­er times. Giv­en the enor­mous inten­si­fi­ca­tion of glob­al­iza­tion since the Bronze Age and the con­tin­ued threats issued by the nat­ur­al world, could anoth­er hap­pen here and now? Point­ing to the cli­mate change, famines and droughts, earth­quakes, rebel­lions, acts of bel­li­cos­i­ty, and eco­nom­ic trou­bles in evi­dence today, Cline adds that “the only thing miss­ing are the Sea Peo­ples” — and even then sug­gests that ISIS and refugees from Syr­ia could be play­ing a sim­i­lar­ly dis­rup­tive role. Giv­en that this talk has racked up more than sev­en and a half mil­lion views so far, it seems he makes a con­vinc­ing case, though the appeal could owe as much to his jokes. Not all of us, he acknowl­edges, will accept the rel­e­vance of the sub­ject: “It’s his­to­ry,” as we reas­sure our­selves. “It nev­er repeats itself.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lifes­pan of Ancient Civ­i­liza­tions Detailed in a Handy Info­graph­ic: Are We Head­ed Towards Our Own Col­lapse?

The Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions Pod­cast Engag­ing­ly Explores the Col­lapse of Civ­i­liza­tions & Empires Through­out His­to­ry

The His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion Mapped in 13 Min­utes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD

Get the His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures: A Free Online Course from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

M.I.T. Com­put­er Pro­gram Alarm­ing­ly Pre­dicts in 1973 That Civ­i­liza­tion Will End by 2040

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.

Every Christmas, Peruvians Living in the Andes Settle Their Scores at Fist-Fighting Festivals

in Life, Travel | August 12th, 2021

As Chris Hedges dis­cov­ered as a bat­tle-hard­ened reporter, war is a force that gives us mean­ing. Whether we sub­li­mate vio­lence in enter­tain­ment, have paid pro­fes­sion­als and state agents do it for us, or car­ry it out our­selves, human beings can­not seem to give up their most ancient vice; “we demo­nize the ene­my,” Hedges wrote, “so that our oppo­nent is no longer human,” and “we view our­selves, our peo­ple, as the embod­i­ment of absolute good­ness…. Each side reduces the oth­er to objects — even­tu­al­ly in the form of corpses.” Each new gen­er­a­tion inher­its old hatreds, and so forth.…

Maybe one way to break cycles of vio­lence is with con­trolled vio­lence — using bare fists to set­tle scores, and walk­ing away with only bruis­es, a lit­tle hurt pride, but no last­ing wounds? That’s the idea behind Takanakuy, an Andean fes­ti­val that takes place each year at Christ­mas in the province of Chumbivil­cas, in the moun­tains of Peru. The region has a police force made up of around three offi­cers, the near­est cour­t­house is “a stom­ach-wreck­ing 10-hour dri­ve through the moun­tains,” notes Vice, who bring us the video above. Poten­tial­ly explo­sive dis­putes nat­u­ral­ly arise, and must be set­tled out­side the law.

Rather than rely on state inter­ven­tion, res­i­dents wait to slug it out on Takanakuy. The name of the fes­ti­val come from Quechua — the region’s indige­nous lan­guage — and means “to hit each oth­er” or, more idiomat­i­cal­ly, “when the blood is boil­ing.” But com­bat­ants have had upwards of twelve months to cool before they step into a ring of cheer­ing spec­ta­tors and go hand-to-hand with an oppo­nent. Fights are also offi­ci­at­ed by ref­er­ees, who do crowd con­trol with short rope whips and call a fight as soon as some­one goes down. Takanakuy is rit­u­al­ized com­bat, not blood­sport. Although tra­di­tion­al­ly dom­i­nat­ed by men, women, and chil­dren also par­tic­i­pate in fights, which usu­al­ly only last a cou­ple min­utes or so.

“Some tra­di­tion­al­ists dis­ap­prove of female par­tic­i­pa­tion in Takanakuy,” writes pho­to­jour­nal­ist Mike Kai Chen at The New York Times, but “an increas­ing num­ber of women in Chumbivil­cas are defy­ing con­ven­tion and step­ping up to fight in front of their com­mu­ni­ty.” Male fight­ers wear boots, flashy leather chaps, and elab­o­rate, hand-sewn masks with taxi­der­mied birds on top. Women wear ele­gant dress­es with fine embroi­dery, and wrap their wrists in col­or­ful embroi­dered cloth. “The ulti­mate aim is to begin the new year in peace. For this rea­son every fight… begins and ends with a hug”… or, at the very least, a hand­shake.

The fes­ti­val also involves much danc­ing, eat­ing, drink­ing, craft sales, and Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions. Suemed­ha Sood at BBC Trav­el com­pares Takanakuy to Sein­feld’s “Fes­tivus,” the alt-win­ter hol­i­day for the air­ing of griev­ances and feats of strength. But it’s no joke. “The fes­ti­val seeks to resolve con­flict, strength­en com­mu­ni­ty bonds and hope­ful­ly, arrive at a greater peace.” Lib­er­tar­i­an econ­o­mists Edwar Escalante and Ray­mond March frame Takanakuy as “a cred­i­ble mech­a­nism of law enforce­ment in an order­ly fash­ion with social accep­tance.” For indige­nous teacher and author and par­tic­i­pant Vic­tor Laime Man­til­la, it’s some­thing more, part of “the fight to reclaim the rights of indige­nous peo­ple.”

“In the cities,” says Man­til­la, “the Chumbivil­cas are still seen as a sav­age cul­ture.” But they have kept the peace amongst them­selves with no need for Peru­vian author­i­ties, fus­ing an indige­nous music called Huaylia with oth­er tra­di­tions that date back even before the Incas. Takanakuy arose as a response to sys­tems of colo­nial oppres­sion. When “jus­tice in Chumbivil­cas was sole­ly admin­is­tered by pow­er­ful peo­ple,” Man­til­la says, “peo­ple from the com­mu­ni­ty always lost their case. What can I do with a jus­tice like that? I’d rather have my own jus­tice in pub­lic.”

See the cos­tumes of the tra­di­tion­al Takanakuy char­ac­ters over at Vice and see Chen’s stun­ning pho­tos of friend­ly fist­fights and Takanakuy fun at The New York Times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peru­vian Schol­ar Writes & Defends the First The­sis Writ­ten in Quechua, the Main Lan­guage of the Incan Empire

Peru­vian Singer & Rap­per, Rena­ta Flo­res, Helps Pre­serve Quechua with Viral Hits on YouTube

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co

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

What Ancient Greece Really Looked Like: See Reconstructions of the Temple of Hadrian, Curetes Street & the Fountain of Trajan

in Architecture, History | August 11th, 2021

Ancient Greeks did not live among ruins. This is, of course, an obvi­ous truth, but one we run the risk of for­get­ting if we watch too many his­tor­i­cal fan­tasies set in their time and place as pop­u­lar­ly imag­ined. That West­ern civ­i­liza­tion as we know it today came to know Ancient Greece through the rav­aged built envi­ron­ments left behind has col­ored its mod­ern-day per­cep­tion — or, rather drained it of col­or. In recent years, a big deal has been made about the find­ing that Ancient Greek stat­ues weren’t orig­i­nal­ly pure white, but paint­ed in bright hues that fad­ed away over the cen­turies. What does that imply for the rest of the place?

We don’t have a time machine in which to trav­el back to Ancient Greece and have a look around. We do, how­ev­er, have the dig­i­tal recon­struc­tions of artist Ádám Németh. “My archae­o­log­i­cal ren­der­ings are accu­rate to the time peri­od, due to exten­sive research on ref­er­ences and reviews of sources found online, in libraries and in muse­ums, and also ongo­ing dis­cus­sions with archae­ol­o­gists,” he writes.

“My main goal, through recon­struc­tions, is to make his­to­ry inter­est­ing and acces­si­ble for every­body.” Even those more or less igno­rant of the ancient world can take a glance at his images of an intact and col­or­ful Tem­ple of Hadri­an, Curetes Street, and Foun­tain of Tra­jan.

All of these sites were locat­ed in the Ancient Greek city of Eph­esus, now a part of Turkey. Though it does­n’t draw quite the num­bers of, say, Hagia Sophia, Eph­esus stands nev­er­the­less as a pil­lar of Turk­ish tourism. Indeed, you can go there and exam­ine its actu­al pil­lars, none of which have come through the ages stand­ing any­thing like as might­i­ly Németh depicts them. Com­par­isons post­ed by Mari­na Ama­r­al on Twit­ter put for­mer glo­ry along­side cur­rent ruin, though even the Tem­ple of Hadri­an, Curetes Street, and the Foun­tain of Tra­jan as they are today have been pieced togeth­er into a some­what more com­plete state than that in which they were redis­cov­ered. Even real antiq­ui­ty, in oth­er words, is to some degree a recon­struc­tion. See more of Németh’s recon­struc­tions here.

via Mari­na Ama­r­al

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals Their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

Watch an Accu­rate Recon­struc­tion of the World’s Old­est Com­put­er, the 2,200 Year-Old Antikythera Mech­a­nism, from Start to Fin­ish

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

What Did Ancient Greek Music Sound Like?: Lis­ten to a Recon­struc­tion That’s ‘100% Accu­rate’

Watch Ancient Ruins Get Restored to their Glo­ri­ous Orig­i­nal State with Ani­mat­ed GIFs: The Tem­ple of Jupiter, Lux­or Tem­ple & 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.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Recipes in Deadeye Dick: Polka-Dot Brownies, Linzer Torte & Haitian Banana Soup

in Books, Food & Drink, Literature | August 11th, 2021

Author Kurt Von­negut incor­po­rat­ed sev­er­al recipes into his 1982 nov­el Dead­eye Dick, inspired by James Beard’s Amer­i­can Cook­ery, Mar­cel­la Hazan’s The Clas­sic Ital­ian Cook Book, and Bea Sandler’s The African Cook­book.

He writes in the pref­ace that these recipes are intend­ed to pro­vide “musi­cal inter­ludes for the sali­vary glands,” warn­ing read­ers that “no one should use this nov­el for a cook­book. Any seri­ous cook should have the reli­able orig­i­nals in his or her library any­way.”

So with that caveat in mind…

Ear­ly on, the narrator/titular char­ac­ter, née Rudy Waltz, shares a recipe from his family’s for­mer cook, Mary Hoobler, who taught him “every­thing she knew about cook­ing and bak­ing”:

MARY HOOBLER’S CORN BREAD

Mix togeth­er in a bowl half a cup of flour, one and a half cups of yel­low corn-meal, a tea­spoon of salt, a tea­spoon of sug­ar, and three tea­spoons of bak­ing pow­der.

Add three beat­en eggs, a cup of milk, a half cup of cream, and a half cup of melt­ed but­ter.

Pour it into a well-but­tered pan and bake it at four hun­dred degrees for fif­teen min­utes.

Cut it into squares while it is still hot. Bring the squares to the table while they are still hot, and fold­ed in a nap­kin.

Bare­ly two para­graphs lat­er, he’s shar­ing her bar­be­cue sauce. It sounds deli­cious, easy to pre­pare, and its place­ment gives it a strong fla­vor of Slaughterhouse-Five’s “so it goes” and “Poo-tee-weet?” — as iron­ic punc­tu­a­tion to Father Waltz’s full on embrace of Hitler, a seem­ing non sequitur that forces read­ers to think about what comes before:

When we all posed in the street for our pic­ture in the paper, Father was forty-two. Accord­ing to Moth­er, he had under­gone a pro­found spir­i­tu­al change in Ger­many. He had a new sense of pur­pose in life. It was no longer enough to be an artist. He would become a teacher and polit­i­cal activist. He would become a spokesman in Amer­i­ca for the new social order which was being born in Ger­many, but which in time would be the sal­va­tion of the world.

This was quite a mis­take.

MARY HOOBLER’S BARBECUE SAUCE

Sauté a cup of chopped onions and three chopped gar­lic cloves in a quar­ter of a pound of but­ter until ten­der.

Add a half cup of cat­sup, a quar­ter cup of brown sug­ar, a tea­spoon of salt, two tea­spoons of fresh­ly ground pep­per, a dash of Tabas­co, a table­spoon of lemon juice, a tea­spoon of basil, and a table­spoon of chili pow­der.

Bring to a boil and sim­mer for five min­utes.

Rudy’s father is not the only char­ac­ter to fal­ter.

Rudy’s mis­take hap­pens in the blink of an eye, and man­ages to upend a num­ber of lives in Mid­land City, a stand in for Indi­anapo­lis, Vonnegut’s home­town.

His fam­i­ly los­es their mon­ey in an ensu­ing law­suit, and can no longer engage Mary Hoobler and the rest of the staff.

Young Rudy, who’s spent his child­hood hang­ing out with the ser­vants in Mary’s cozy kitchen, finds it “easy and nat­ur­al” to cater to his par­ents in the man­ner to which they were accus­tomed:

As long as they lived, they nev­er had to pre­pare a meal or wash a dish or make a bed or do the laun­dry or dust or vac­u­um or sweep, or shop for food. I did all that, and main­tained a B aver­age in school, as well. 

What a good boy was I!

EGGS À LA RUDY WALTZ (age thir­teen)

Chop, cook, and drain two cups of spinach.

Blend with two table­spoons of but­ter, a tea­spoon of salt, and a pinch of nut­meg.

Heat and put into three oven-proof bowls or cups.

Put a poached egg on top of each one, and sprin­kle with grat­ed cheese.

Bake for five min­utes at 375 degrees. Serves three: the papa bear, the mama bear, and the baby bear who cooked it—and who will clean up after­wards.

By high school, Rudy’s heavy domes­tic bur­den has him falling asleep in class and repro­duc­ing  com­pli­cat­ed desserts from  recipes in the local paper. (“Father roused him­self from liv­ing death suf­fi­cient­ly to say that the dessert took him back forty years.”)

LINZER TORTE (from the Bugle-Observ­er)

Mix half a cup of sug­ar with a cup of but­ter until fluffy.

Beat in two egg yolks and half a tea­spoon of grat­ed lemon rind.

Sift a cup of flour togeth­er with a quar­ter tea­spoon of salt, a tea­spoon of cin­na­mon, and a quar­ter tea­spoon of cloves. Add this to the sug­ar-and-but­ter mix­ture.

Add one cup of unblanched almonds and one cup of toast­ed fil­berts, both chopped fine.

Roll out two-thirds of the dough until a quar­ter of an inch thick.

Line the bot­tom and sides of an eight-inch pan with dough.

Slather in a cup and a half of rasp­ber­ry jam.

Roll out the rest of the dough, make it into eight thin pen­cil shapes about ten inch­es long. Twist them a lit­tle, and lay them across the top in a dec­o­ra­tive man­ner. Crimp the edges.

Bake in a pre­heat­ed 350-degree oven for about an hour, and then cool at room tem­per­a­ture.

A great favorite in Vien­na, Aus­tria, before the First World War!

Rudy even­tu­al­ly relo­cates to the Grand Hotel Oloff­son in Port au Prince, Haiti, which is how he man­ages to sur­vive the — SPOILER — neu­tron bomb that destroys Mid­land City.

Here is a recipe for choco­late seafoams,  cour­tesy of one of Mid­land City’s fic­tion­al res­i­dents:

MRS. GINO MARTIMO’S SPUMA DI CIOCCOLATA 

Break up six ounces of semi­sweet choco­late in a saucepan.

Melt it in a 250-degree oven.

Add two tea­spoons of sug­ar to four egg yolks, and beat the mix­ture until it is pale yel­low.

Then mix in the melt­ed choco­late, a quar­ter cup of strong cof­fee, and two table­spoons of rum.

Whip two-thirds of a cup of cold, heavy whip­ping cream until it is stiff. Fold it into the mix­ture.

Whip four egg whites until they form stiff peaks, then fold them into the mix­ture.

Stir the mix­ture ever so gen­tly, then spoon it into cups, each cup a serv­ing.

Refrig­er­ate for twelve hours.

Serves six.

Oth­er recipes in Rudy’s reper­toire orig­i­nate with the Grand Hotel Oloff­son’s most valu­able employ­ee, head­wait­er and Vodou prac­ti­tion­er Hip­poly­te Paul De Mille, who “claims to be eighty and have fifty-nine descen­dants”:

He said that if there was any ghost we thought should haunt Mid­land City for the next few hun­dred years, he would raise it from its grave and turn it loose, to wan­der where it would. 

We tried very hard not to believe that he could do that. 

But he could, he could.

HAITIAN FRESH FISH IN COCONUT CREAM

Put two cups of grat­ed coconut in cheese­cloth over a bowl.

Pour a cup of hot milk over it, and squeeze it dry.

Repeat this with two more cups of hot milk. The stuff in the bowl is the sauce.

Mix a pound of sliced onions, a tea­spoon of salt, a half tea­spoon of black pep­per, and a tea­spoon of crushed pep­per.

Sauté the mix­ture in but­ter until soft but not brown.

Add four pounds of fresh fish chunks, and cook them for about a minute on each side.

Pour the sauce over the fish, cov­er the pan, and sim­mer for ten min­utes. Uncov­er the pan and baste the fish until it is done—and the sauce has become creamy.

Serves eight vague­ly dis­grun­tled guests at the Grand Hotel Oloff­son.

HAITIAN BANANA SOUP

Stew two pounds of goat or chick­en with a half cup of chopped onions, a tea­spoon of salt, half a tea­spoon of black pep­per, and a pinch of crushed red pep­per. Use two quarts of water.

Stew for an hour.

Add three peeled yams and three peeled bananas, cut into chunks.

Sim­mer until the meat is ten­der. Take out the meat. What is left is eight serv­ings of Hait­ian banana soup.

Bon appétit!

The recipe that clos­es the nov­el is couched in an anec­dote that’s equal parts scat­ol­ogy and epiphany.

As a daugh­ter of Indi­anapo­lis who was a junior in high school the year Dead­eye Dick was pub­lished, I can attest that Pol­ka-Dot Brown­ies would have been a hit at the bake sales of my youth:

POLKA-DOT BROWNIES

Melt half a cup of but­ter and a pound of light-brown sug­ar in a two-quart saucepan. Stir over a low fire until just bub­bly.

Cool to room tem­per­a­ture.

Beat in two eggs and a tea­spoon of vanil­la.

Stir in a cup of sift­ed flour, a half tea­spoon of salt, a cup of chopped fil­berts, and a cup of semi­sweet choco­late in small chunks.

Spread into a well-greased nine-by-eleven bak­ing pan.

Bake at two hun­dred and thir­ty-five degrees for about thir­ty-five min­utes.

Cool to room tem­per­a­ture, and cut into squares with a well-greased knife.

Enjoy, in mod­er­a­tion of course.

I was wear­ing my best suit, which was as tight as the skin of a knack­wurst. I had put on a lot of weight recent­ly. It was the fault of my own good cook­ing. I had been try­ing out a lot of new recipes, with con­sid­er­able suc­cess. — Rudy Waltz

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Should We Read Kurt Von­negut? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Watch a Sweet Film Adap­ta­tion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Sto­ry, “Long Walk to For­ev­er”

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

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

Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter of Advice to People Living in the Year 2088

in History, Letters, Literature | August 10th, 2021

A few years ago we post­ed Kurt Von­negut’s let­ter of advice to human­i­ty, writ­ten in 1988 but addressed, a cen­tu­ry hence, to the year 2088. What­ev­er objec­tions you may have felt to read­ing this mis­sive more than 70 years pre­ma­ture­ly, you might have over­come them to find that the author of Slaugh­ter­house-Five and Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons sin­gle-mind­ed­ly impor­tuned his fel­low man of the late 21st cen­tu­ry to pro­tect the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. He issues com­mand­ments to “reduce and sta­bi­lize your pop­u­la­tion” to “stop prepar­ing for war and start deal­ing with your real prob­lems,” and to “stop think­ing sci­ence can fix any­thing if you give it a tril­lion dol­lars,” among oth­er poten­tial­ly dras­tic-sound­ing mea­sures.

Com­mand­ment num­ber sev­en amounts to the high­ly Von­negut­ian “And so on. Or else.” A fan can eas­i­ly imag­ine these words spo­ken in the writer’s own voice, but with Von­negut now gone for well over a decade, would you accept them spo­ken in the voice of Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch instead?

First com­mis­sioned by Volk­swa­gen for a Time mag­a­zine ad cam­paign, Von­negut’s let­ter to 2088 was lat­er found and repub­lished by Let­ters of Note. The asso­ci­at­ed Let­ters Live project, which brings notable let­ters to the stage (and sub­se­quent­ly inter­net video), counts Cum­ber­batch as one of its star read­ers: he’s giv­en voice to wise cor­re­spon­dence by the likes of Sol LeWitt, Albert Camus, and Alan Tur­ing.

Cum­ber­batch even has expe­ri­ence with let­ters by Von­negut, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly read aloud his rebuke to a North Dako­ta school board that allowed the burn­ing of Slaugh­ter­house-Five. Von­negut’s work makes clear that he did­n’t suf­fer fools glad­ly, and that he con­sid­ered book-burn­ing one of the infi­nite vari­eties of fol­ly he spent his career cat­a­loging. In light of his let­ter to 2088, the same went for human­i­ty’s poor stew­ard­ship of their plan­et. Von­negut may not have been a con­ser­va­tion­ist, exact­ly, but nor, in his view, was nature itself, a force that needs “no help from us in tak­ing the plan­et apart and putting it back togeth­er some dif­fer­ent way, not nec­es­sar­i­ly improv­ing it from the view­point of liv­ing things.” This is, of course, the per­son­i­fy­ing view of a nov­el­ist, but a nov­el­ist who nev­er for­got his sense of humor — nor his ten­den­cy to play the prophet of doom.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

The Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Albert Camus’ Touch­ing Thank You Let­ter to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher

“Stop It and Just DO”: Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Advice on Over­com­ing Cre­ative Blocks, Writ­ten by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse (1965)

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Mar­garet Atwood, Stephen Fry & Oth­ers Read Let­ters of Hope, Love & Sup­port Dur­ing COVID-19

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 Pulp Fiction ’s Dance Scene Paid Artistic Tribute to the Classic Dance Scene in Fellini’s 8½

in Film | August 10th, 2021

An auteur makes few com­pro­mis­es in bring­ing his dis­tinc­tive visions to the screen, but he also makes no bones about bor­row­ing from the auteurs who came before. This is espe­cial­ly true in the case of an auteur named Quentin Taran­ti­no, who for near­ly thir­ty years has repeat­ed­ly pulled off the neat trick of direct­ing large-scale, high­ly indi­vid­u­al­is­tic movies that also draw deeply from the well of exist­ing cin­e­ma — deeply enough to pull up both the grind-house “low” and art-house “high.” Taran­ti­no’s first big impact on the zeit­geist came in the form of 1994’s Pulp Fic­tion, which put the kind of com­mon, sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic mate­r­i­al sug­gest­ed by its title into cin­e­mat­ic forms picked up from the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and Fed­eri­co Felli­ni.

Few clips of Taran­ti­no’s work could dis­till this inspi­ra­tional polar­i­ty as well as Pulp Fic­tion’s twist con­test at Jack Rab­bit Slim’s. In a film almost whol­ly com­posed of mem­o­rable scenes, as I wrote when last we fea­tured it here on Open Cul­ture, this one is quite pos­si­bly the most mem­o­rable.

Taran­ti­no has explained his intent to pay trib­ute to danc­ing as it occurs in films like Godard­’s Bande à part, the name­sake of Taran­ti­no’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny. “My favorite musi­cal sequences have always been in Godard because they just come out of nowhere,” he once said. “It’s so infec­tious, so friend­ly. And the fact that it’s not a musi­cal but he’s stop­ping the movie to have a musi­cal sequence makes it all the more sweet.”

But as these com­par­i­son videos reveal, Godard isn’t the only mid­cen­tu­ry Euro­pean auteur to whom Pulp Fic­tion’s dance scene owes its effec­tive­ness. “This scene is a direct steal from Fellini’s 8½ and there’s no real effort to hide it,” writes No Film School’s Jason Heller­man. “Aside from the loca­tion change, the moves and cam­era angles are almost the same.” In 8½ the dancers are Mar­cel­lo Mas­troian­ni’s besieged film­mak­er Gui­do and his estranged wife Luisa, played by Anouk Aimée. This occurs in anoth­er of the pre­cious few pic­tures in cin­e­ma his­to­ry com­pris­ing mem­o­rable scenes and mem­o­rable scenes only; the oth­ers include vivid spec­ta­cles out­lin­ing the mid­dle-aged Guido’s artis­tic strug­gle and voy­ages of mem­o­ry back into his prelap­sar­i­an child­hood.

Child­hood, writes poet James Fen­ton, was “a time of pure inven­tive­ness” when “every­thing we did was hailed as superb.” (In this sense, a young film­mak­er who makes his first Hol­ly­wood hit enjoys a sec­ond child­hood, albeit usu­al­ly a brief one.) In Fen­ton’s words, Wash­ing­ton Post art crit­ic Sebas­t­ian Smee finds a key to the elab­o­rate and enrap­tur­ing but at times bewil­der­ing 8½. With growth, alas, comes “the pri­mal era­sure, when we for­get all those ear­ly expe­ri­ences, and it is rather as if there is some mer­cy in this, since if we could remem­ber the inten­si­ty of such plea­sure it might spoil us for any­thing else. We for­get what hap­pened exact­ly, but we know that there was some­thing, some­thing to do with music and praise and every­one talk­ing, some­thing to do with fly­ing through the air, some­thing to do with dance.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Pulp Fic­tion’s Dance Scene, Explained by Chore­o­g­ra­phers and Even John Tra­vol­ta Him­self

Fed­eri­co Felli­ni Intro­duces Him­self to Amer­i­ca in Exper­i­men­tal 1969 Doc­u­men­tary

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Felli­ni + Abrams = Super 8½

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.

Take a Journey Through 933 Paintings by Salvador Dalí & Watch His Signature Surrealism Emerge

in Art, History | August 9th, 2021

Sal­vador Dalí made over 1,600 paint­ings, but just one has come to stand for both his body of work and a major artis­tic cur­rent that shaped it: 1931’s The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry, wide­ly known as the one with the melt­ing clocks. By that year Dalí had reached his late twen­ties, still ear­ly days in what would be a fair­ly long life and career. But he had already pro­duced many works of art, as evi­denced by the video sur­vey of his oeu­vre above. Pro­ceed­ing chrono­log­i­cal­ly through 933 of his paint­ings in the course of an hour and a half, it does­n’t reach The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry until more than sev­en­teen min­utes in, and that after show­ing numer­ous works a casu­al appre­ci­a­tor would­n’t think to asso­ciate with Dalí at all.

It seems the young Dalí did­n’t set out to paint melt­ing clocks — or fly­ing tigers, or walk­ing vil­las, or any of his oth­er visions that have long occu­pied the com­mon con­cep­tion of Sur­re­al­ism. And how­ev­er often he was labeled an “orig­i­nal” after attain­ing world­wide fame in the 1930s and 40s, he began as near­ly every artist does: with imi­ta­tion.

Far from pre­mo­ni­tions of the Sur­re­al­ist sen­si­bil­i­ty with which he would be for­ev­er linked in the pub­lic con­scious­ness, dozens and dozens of his ear­ly paint­ings unabashed­ly reflect the influ­ence of Renais­sance mas­ters, Impres­sion­ists, Futur­ists, and Cubists. Of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance in that last group was Dalí’s coun­try­man and idol Pablo Picas­so: it was after they first met in 1926 that the changes in Dalí’s work became tru­ly dra­mat­ic.

View­ers may be less sur­prised that Dalí did so much before The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry than that he did even more after it. Though he would nev­er return to the rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward depic­tions of real­i­ty found among his work of the 1920s, the dream­scapes he real­ized through­out the last half-cen­tu­ry of his life are hard­ly all of a piece. (This in addi­tion to plen­ty of work on the side, includ­ing a tarot deck, a cook­book, and even tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials.) To appre­ci­ate the vari­a­tions he attempt­ed in his art even after becom­ing pop­u­lar cul­ture’s idea of an “almost-crazy” Sur­re­al­ist requires not just see­ing his work in con­text, but spend­ing a prop­er amount of time with it.  Not to say that fans of The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry — espe­cial­ly fans in a suit­able state of mind — haven’t spent hours at a stretch in fruit­ful con­tem­pla­tion of those melt­ing clocks alone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed a Sur­re­al­ist Fun­house at New York World’s Fair (1939)

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

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

Sal­vador Dalí Explains Why He Was a “Bad Painter” and Con­tributed “Noth­ing” to Art (1986)

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.