Frank Zappa’s Experimental Advertisements For Luden’s Cough Drops, Remington Razors & Portland General Electric

in Music, Television | December 15th, 2015

Frank Zap­pa was kind of a con­trol freak. But the way he tells it in a 1968 Rolling Stone inter­view, if he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have had much of a career. In the mid-six­ties, he took over the mer­chan­dis­ing and adver­tis­ing of his albums. “We wouldn’t have sold any records if we had left it up to the com­pa­ny,” he says, “They fig­ured we were odd-ball. One shot nov­el­ty a‑go-go. But we weren’t. We had to show them ways they could make mon­ey on the prod­uct.”

It’s that entre­pre­neur­ial atti­tude and abil­i­ty to take over that makes Zap­pa one of the most suc­cess­ful cap­i­tal­ists in exper­i­men­tal music. In 1967, he even found­ed his own ad agency, called Nifty Tough & Bitchin’, and made print and radio ads for Hagstrom Gui­tars, Pan­ther Com­bo Organs, and Rem­ing­ton Razor Blades. (He also record­ed a bizarre radio ad for Remington’s elec­tric razor with Lin­da Ronstadt—see a fan-made video below).

That same year, ani­ma­tor and film­mak­er Ed See­man hired Zap­pa to score an ad for Luden’s Cough Drops. You can see the pre­dictably weird results up top. Accord­ing to See­man, Zap­pa “request­ed $2,000 plus a stu­dio for a day with a wide vari­ety of instru­ments plus a guy to do cough sounds.” The ad went on to win a Clio award for “Best Use of Sound.”

After the ad wrapped, Zap­pa tapped See­man to shoot 14 hours of footage over two years for a film project Zap­pa intend­ed to pro­duce called Uncle Meat (not to be con­fused with the album of the same name). The film was nev­er com­plet­ed, and Zap­pa only released the footage on video in 1987 (it has yet to see a DVD release).

The growth of the award-win­ning ad into a rare cult film—that doesn’t real­ly exist in any final form—goes to show how Zappa’s musi­cal tal­ent for free asso­ci­a­tion extend­ed to all of his cre­ative endeav­ors. Every­thing he touched took root and grew into sev­er­al oth­er branch­ing projects, all of them fas­ci­nat­ing to vary­ing degrees. He joked that he was in it for the mon­ey, but the mon­ey he made in com­mer­cial ven­tures seem­ing­ly gave him the free­dom to pur­sue any idea that popped into his head.

See­man, who became a great Zap­pa admir­er, went on to edit footage from Uncle Meat into a “40 minute impres­sion­is­tic col­lage” set to Zappa’s “Who are The Brain Police” that Dan­ger­ous Minds describes as meld­ing “Zappa’s cyn­i­cal world view (per­haps prophet­ic) with a spook­i­ly psy­che­del­ic sound that cre­ates a per­fect para­noid whole” (see an excerpt above). Zap­pa didn’t do much more ad work after this com­mer­cial­ly cre­ative burst, out­side of the pro­mo­tion of his own records. That is, until two years before his death from can­cer. In 1991, Zap­pa appeared in the iron­ic anti-ad for Port­land Gen­er­al Elec­tric in which he says he told the com­pa­ny “I refuse to sell your prod­uct.” Four years lat­er, we saw the release of a posthu­mous Zap­pa best-of. Its title: Strict­ly Com­mer­cial.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In One of his Final Inter­views, Frank Zap­pa Pro­nounces Him­self “Total­ly Unre­pen­tant”

Stream 82 Hours of Frank Zap­pa Music: Free Playlists of Songs He Com­posed & Per­formed

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

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

A Fascinating Case Study by Oliver Sacks Inspires a Short Animated Film, The Lost Mariner

in Animation, Psychology | December 15th, 2015

In Feb­ru­ary, Oliv­er Sacks announced that he was suf­fer­ing from ter­mi­nal can­cer. And, by August, he was gone — but not before show­ing us (if you read his op-eds in the Times) how to die with dig­ni­ty and grace. All of this I was remind­ed of again today when I stum­bled upon a recent ani­ma­tion inspired by Sacks’ work. Called The Lost Mariner, the short film offers an ani­mat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of a chap­ter  in Sacks’ 1985 book The Man Who Mis­took His Wife for a Hat. The chap­ter (also called “The Lost Mariner”) presents a curi­ous case study of a patient known as Jim­mie G. who, suf­fer­ing from Kor­sakof­f’s syn­drome, los­es the abil­i­ty to form new mem­o­ries. To see how Tess Mar­tin made this award-win­ning short, you can watch the mak­ing-of video below.

via @OliverSacks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Oliv­er Sacks’ Last Tweet Shows Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Oliv­er Sacks Con­tem­plates Mor­tal­i­ty (and His Ter­mi­nal Can­cer Diag­no­sis) in a Thought­ful, Poignant Let­ter

28 Tips for Writing Stories from Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway & F. Scott Fitzgerald

in Literature, Writing | December 14th, 2015

Most writ­ers find their indi­vid­ual voice only after they sojourn through peri­ods of imi­ta­tion. Though it’s an excel­lent way to appro­pri­ate exper­i­men­tal tech­niques and move out of com­fort­able ruts, imi­ta­tion can only take us so far. But more pre­scrip­tive guide­lines from famous authors can offer ways to refine our indi­vid­ual styles and visions. Advice, for exam­ple, from such a clear and suc­cinct the­o­rist as Kurt Von­negut can go a very long way indeed for aspir­ing fic­tion writ­ers.

Anoth­er rea­son for appre­ci­at­ing great writ­ers’ how-to guide­lines accords with the injunc­tion we often hear: to read, read, read as much as pos­si­ble. Learn­ing how William Faulkn­er con­ceived of his craft can give us use­ful insights into his nov­els. What did Faulkn­er think of the writ­ing enter­prise and the social role of the writer? How did he come to for­mu­late his impres­sive­ly dense style? What was his view of learn­ing from oth­er writ­ers?

We can answer the last ques­tion by ref­er­ence to sev­en writ­ing tips we pre­vi­ous­ly com­piled from lec­tures and Q&A ses­sions Faulkn­er con­duct­ed while serv­ing as writer-in-res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia from 1957 to ’58. The first tip? Take what you need from oth­er writ­ers. To that end, we offer sev­en writ­ing tips each from four Amer­i­can greats (or 28 tips in total). As writ­ers, we’re free to take or leave their guide­lines; as read­ers we may always find their philoso­phies of keen inter­est.

William Faulkn­er: 

Take What You Need From Oth­er Writ­ers

Dur­ing a writ­ing class on Feb­ru­ary 25, 1957, Faulkn­er said the fol­low­ing:

I think the writer, as I’ve said before, is com­plete­ly amoral. He takes what­ev­er he needs, wher­ev­er he needs, and he does that open­ly and hon­est­ly because he him­self hopes that what he does will be good enough so that after him peo­ple will take from him, and they are wel­come to take from him, as he feels that he would be wel­come by the best of his pre­de­ces­sors to take what they had done.

Faulkner’s advice can help tremendously–at least in a psy­cho­log­i­cal sense–those writ­ers who might have qualms about “steal­ing” from oth­ers. You have per­mis­sion to do so from none oth­er than per­haps the great­est Amer­i­can mod­ernist writer of them all.

Faulkn­er also said “the young writer would be a fool to fol­low a the­o­ry,” a piece of advice we might bear in mind as we peruse famous writ­ing the­o­ries. “The good artist,” he said, “believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice.”

See the full list of Faulkner’s sev­en tips here.

Ernest Hem­ing­way:

Faulkner’s mod­ernist foil and some­time rival Ernest Hem­ing­way had some char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly prag­mat­ic advice for bud­ding writ­ers. Like many writ­ers’ tips, some of his advice may do lit­tle but help you write more like Hem­ing­way. And some of it, like “use a pen­cil,” is per­fect­ly use­less if you’ve already found your pre­ferred method of work­ing. One guide­line, how­ev­er, is intrigu­ing­ly counter-intu­itive. Hem­ing­way coun­sels us to

Nev­er Think about the Sto­ry When You’re Not Work­ing

This is one thing Faulkn­er and Hem­ing­way might agree on. In an Esquire arti­cle, Hem­ing­way describes his expe­ri­ence dur­ing the com­po­si­tion of A Move­able Feast, one Faulkn­er char­ac­ter­izes in his writ­ing advice as “nev­er exhaust your imag­i­na­tion.”

When I was writ­ing, it was nec­es­sary for me to read after I had writ­ten. If you kept think­ing about it, you would lose the thing you were writ­ing before you could go on with it the next day. It was nec­es­sary to get exer­cise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was bet­ter than any­thing. But after­wards, when you were emp­ty, it was nec­es­sary to read in order not to think or wor­ry about your work until you could do it again. I had learned already nev­er to emp­ty the well of my writ­ing, but always to stop when there was still some­thing there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Read all of Hemingway’s 7 writ­ing tips here.

F. Scott Fitzger­ald:

Despite his rep­u­ta­tion as an undis­ci­plined and messy writer, Fitzger­ald has some of the most prac­ti­cal tips of all for orga­niz­ing your ideas. One of his more philo­soph­i­cal pre­scrip­tions takes a sim­i­lar tone as Hemingway’s in regard to the pri­vate world of the imag­i­na­tion:

Don’t Describe Your Work-in-Progress to Any­one

Fitzger­ald offered this piece of advice in a 1940 let­ter to his daugh­ter, Scot­tie, writ­ing,

I think it’s a pret­ty good rule not to tell what a thing is about until it’s fin­ished. If you do you always seem to lose some of it. It nev­er quite belongs to you so much again.

This seems to me a good piece of advice for hold­ing on to the mag­ic of a cre­ative­ly imag­ined world. Try­ing to sum­ma­rize a good sto­ry in brief—like try­ing to explain a joke—generally has the effect of tak­ing all the fun out of it.

Read Fitzgerald’s 7 tips for writ­ers here.

Edgar Allan Poe:

Final­ly, we reach back to the 19th cen­tu­ry, to the father of the Amer­i­can goth­ic and the detec­tive sto­ry, Edgar Allan Poe, who had some very spe­cif­ic, very Poe things to say about the art of fic­tion. In his essay “The Phi­los­o­phy of Com­po­si­tion,” Poe focus­es on how to achieve what he vague­ly called a “uni­ty of effect,” the qual­i­ty he desired most to pro­duce in his nar­ra­tive poem “The Raven.” Per­haps the clear­est piece of advice Poe offers in his trea­tise is:

Know the End­ing in Advance, Before You Begin to Write

You will like­ly find oth­er authors who advise against this and tell you to write your way to the end. Bear­ing in mind Faulkner’s disclaimer—that we would be “fool to fol­low a theory”—we might at least try this prac­tice and see if it works for us as it did for Poe. As he described it, “noth­ing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elab­o­rat­ed to its dénoue­ment before any thing be attempt­ed with the pen.”

Keep­ing the end “con­stant­ly in view,” wrote Poe, gives “a plot its indis­pens­able air of con­se­quence.” Poe’s advice applies to short works that can be read in a sin­gle sit­ting, the only ones he gen­er­al­ly allows can achieve “uni­ty of effect.” Nov­el-writ­ing is dif­fer­ent. I don’t know if it’s nec­es­sary to ful­ly know the end­ing of a short sto­ry before one begins, but Von­negut coun­sels writ­ers to “start as close to the end as pos­si­ble” when writ­ing one.

See Poe’s full list of 7 tips here.

Should you desire more writ­ing advice, you’ll find no short­age here at Open Cul­ture, from writ­ers as diverse as Stephen King, Toni Mor­ri­son, Rober­to Bolaño, H.P. Love­craft, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Ray Brad­bury, and many more. Whether or not we decide to take any of their advice, it always opens a win­dow onto their art of cre­at­ing fic­tion­al worlds, which can seem to many of us a cre­ative act akin to mag­ic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Rober­to Bolaño’s 12 Tips on “the Art of Writ­ing Short Sto­ries”

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

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

Just 45 Straight Minutes of Nick Offerman Quietly Drinking Single Malt Scotch by the Fire

in Food & Drink | December 14th, 2015

Dia­geo, the dis­tiller of sin­gle malt whiskies includ­ing Lagavulin and Oban, has teamed up with Nick Offer­man (actor, author, wood­work­er and scotch enthu­si­ast) to cre­ate a new video series called “My Tales of Whisky.” Appar­ent­ly the video series will be made in dif­fer­ent styles, with dif­fer­ent kinds of sto­ry lines. This one is pret­ty straightforward–just Nick sit­ting in front of a fire drink­ing sin­gle malt scotch (Lagavulin) for 45 min­utes straight, sim­ply star­ing and say­ing nary a word. Tonight, maybe you can grab your own favorite liba­tion, stare right back, and try not to blink.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens, Who Mixed Drink­ing & Writ­ing, Names the “Best Scotch in the His­to­ry of the World”

Dewars Chan­nels the Ghost of Charles Bukows­ki to Sell Scotch

The Scotch Pro­nun­ci­a­tion Guide: Bri­an Cox Teach­es You How To Ask Authen­ti­cal­ly for 40 Scotch­es

Werner Herzog Creates Required Reading & Movie Viewing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

in Books, Film | December 14th, 2015

“Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read… read, read… read,” Wern­er Her­zog once said. “If you don’t read, you will nev­er be a film­mak­er.” The direc­tor of Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitz­car­ral­do, and Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call New Orleans has­n’t dis­tanced him­self from that pro­nounce­ment in assem­bling the cur­ricu­lum for his Rogue Film School, which we first fea­tured last year. Her­zog’s uncon­ven­tion­al crash-course in auteur­ship may promise to cov­er “the art of lock-pick­ing, trav­el­ing on foot, the exhil­a­ra­tion of being shot at unsuc­cess­ful­ly, the ath­let­ic side of film­mak­ing, the cre­ation of one’s own shoot­ing per­mits, the neu­tral­iza­tion of bureau­cra­cy, and gueril­la film­mak­ing,” but it also demands that its stu­dents hit the books.

Here, from the Rogue Film School’s about page, we have its required read­ing:

• Virgil’s “Geor­gics”
• Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Hap­py Life of Fran­cis Macomber”
• J.A. Bak­er’s The Pere­grine (New York Review Books Edi­tion pub­lished by Harper­Collins)

And its sug­gest­ed read­ing:

• The War­ren Com­mis­sion Report
• The Poet­ic Edda, trans­lat­ed by Lee M. Hol­lan­der (in par­tic­u­lar “The Prophe­cy of the Seer­ess”)
• Bernal Diaz del Castil­lo, True His­to­ry of the Con­quest of New Spain

Like a more stan­dard film school, Her­zog’s pro­gram also has a required film-view­ing list, which includes a few of my own favorite direc­tors (though with noth­ing by Her­zog him­self, not that any stu­dent igno­rant of the man’s work would want to enroll in the first place):

• The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre (1948, dir. John Hus­ton)
• Viva Zap­a­ta (1952, dir. Elia Kazan)
• The Bat­tle of Algiers (1966, dir. Gillo Pon­tecor­vo)
• The Apu tril­o­gy (1955–1959, dir. Satya­jit Ray)
• Where is the Friend’s Home? (1987, dir. Abbas Kiarosta­mi)

Once these mate­ri­als have filled your head with visions of big-game hunt­ing, rebel­lion and counter-rebel­lion, Roman agri­cul­ture, ven­tures into ter­ra incog­ni­ta, com­ing of age in the third world, and the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry, will you then find your­self able to make a film? Only if you take these lists as but a start­ing point, and keep on read­ing, read­ing, read­ing, read­ing, and read­ing, as well as watch­ing, watch­ing, watch­ing, watch­ing, and watch­ing. And what about oth­er triv­ial mat­ters, like financ­ing? In more of Her­zog’s own, direct words (though sure­ly said in jest): “Rob a bank, for god’s sake!”

Note: The image used to high­light this post on Twit­ter and Face­book was tak­en by Erinc Salor, and it’s avail­able by Wiki­me­dia Com­mons.

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:

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Favorite Films

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Wern­er Her­zog Gets Shot Dur­ing Inter­view, Doesn’t Miss a Beat

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Read by His Great-Granddaughter, Monica

in Books, K-12, Literature, Radio | December 14th, 2015

In Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries where Christ­mas is cel­e­brat­ed, A Christ­mas Car­ol, Charles Dick­ens’ sec­u­lar Vic­to­ri­an tale of a Grinch restored to hol­i­day cheer, usu­al­ly plays some part.

How many chil­dren have been trau­ma­tized by Marley’s Ghost in the annu­al rebroad­cast of the half hour, 1971 ani­mat­ed ver­sion, fea­tur­ing the voic­es of Alis­tair Sim and Michael Red­grave as Scrooge and Bob Cratchit?

Per­son­al­ly, I lived in mor­tal fear of the cowled Ghost of Christ­mas Yet to Come from Scrooge, a movie musi­cal ver­sion star­ring Albert Finney.

Adap­ta­tions have been built around every­one from the Mup­pets to Bill Mur­ray.

And in some lucky fam­i­lies, an old­er rel­a­tive with a flair for the the­atri­cal reads the sto­ry aloud, prefer­ably on the actu­al day.

It’s a tra­di­tion that Charles Dick­ens him­self observed. It must’ve been a very pic­turesque scene, with his wife and all ten of their chil­dren gath­ered around. (Pre­sum­ably his mis­tress was not includ­ed in the fes­tiv­i­ties).

Even­tu­al­ly, the torch was passed to the next gen­er­a­tion, who mim­ic­ked and pre­served the cadences favored by the mas­ter.

Dick­ens great-grand­daugh­ter, nov­el­ist Mon­i­ca Dick­ens, who nar­rat­ed a con­densed ver­sion of the clas­sic tale in 1984, above, was schooled in the fam­i­ly inter­pre­ta­tion by her grand­fa­ther, Hen­ry Field­ing Dick­ens, who said of his famous father:

I remem­ber him as being at his best either at Christ­mas time or at oth­er times when Gad’s Hill was full of guests, for he loved social inter­course and was a per­fect host. At such times he rose to the very height of the occa­sion, and it is quite impos­si­ble to express in words his genial­i­ty and bril­lian­cy amid a bril­liant cir­cle.

Before the read­ing, Ms. Dick­ens shares some charm­ing anec­dotes about the orig­i­nal pub­li­ca­tion, but those with lim­it­ed time and/or a Scrooge-like aver­sion to jol­ly intros can skip ahead to 7:59, when Big Ben chimes to sig­nal the start of the sto­ry prop­er.

Her read­ing orig­i­nal­ly aired on Cape Cod’s radio sta­tion, 99.9 the Q. The read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

A Christ­mas Car­ol, A Vin­tage Radio Broad­cast by Orson Welles and Lionel Bar­ry­more (1939)

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

Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge” Read by Estelle Parsons

in | December 12th, 2015

Hear Flan­nery O’Con­nor’s sto­ry “Every­thing that Ris­es Must Con­verge” read above by Acad­e­my Award-win­ning actress Estelle Par­sons, who became known in her lat­er years for play­ing an over­bear­ing moth­er like the story’s Mrs. Chest­ny in the TV sit­com Roseanne. The 1964 sto­ry appears in the short sto­ry col­lec­tion that shares the same name. You can find oth­er read­ings of Flan­nery O’Con­nor sto­ries here:

• Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’
• Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion’ (c. 1960)
• Hear Flan­nery O’Connor’s Short Sto­ry, “Rev­e­la­tion,” Read by Leg­endary His­to­ri­an & Radio Host, Studs Terkel

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

George Saunders Demystifies the Art of Storytelling in a Short Animated Documentary

in Literature, Writing | December 11th, 2015

An inter­est­ing thing hap­pens when you read cer­tain of George Saun­ders’ sto­ries. At first, you see the satirist at work, skew­er­ing Amer­i­can mean­ness and banal­i­ty with the same unspar­ing knife’s edge as ear­li­er post­mod­ernists like John Barth or Don­ald Barthelme. Then you begin to notice some­thing else tak­ing shape… some­thing per­haps unex­pect­ed: com­pas­sion. Rather than serv­ing as paper tar­gets of Saun­ders’ dark humor, his mis­guid­ed char­ac­ters come to seem like real peo­ple, peo­ple he cares about; and the real tar­get of his satire becomes a cul­ture that alien­ates and deval­ues those peo­ple.

Take the oft-anthol­o­gized “Sea Oak,” a far­ci­cal melo­dra­ma about a dead aunt who returns rean­i­mat­ed to annoy and depress her down­ward­ly mobile fam­i­ly mem­bers. The stage is set for a series of buf­foon­ish episodes that, in the hands of a less mature writer, might play out to empha­size just how ridicu­lous these char­ac­ters’ lives are, and how jus­ti­fi­ably we—author and reader—might mock them from our perch­es. Saun­ders does not do this at all. Rather than dis­tanc­ing, he draws us clos­er, so that the char­ac­ters in the sto­ry become more sym­pa­thet­ic and three-dimen­sion­al even as events become increas­ing­ly out­landish.

All of this human­iz­ing is by design, or rather, we might say that empa­thy is baked into Saun­ders’ ethos—one he has artic­u­lat­ed many times in essays, inter­views, and a mov­ing 2013 Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty com­mence­ment speech. Now we can see him in a can­did filmed appear­ance above, in a doc­u­men­tary titled “George Saun­ders: On Sto­ry” by Red­g­lass Pic­tures (exec­u­tive pro­duced by Ken Burns). Cre­at­ed from a two-hour inter­view with Saun­ders, the short video at the top offers “a direct look at the process by which he is able to take a sin­gle mun­dane sen­tence and infuse it with the dis­tinct blend of depth, com­pas­sion, and out­right mag­ic that are the trade­marks of his most pow­er­ful work.”

In Saun­ders’ own words, “a good sto­ry is one that says, at many dif­fer­ent lev­els, ‘we’re both human beings, we’re in this crazy sit­u­a­tion called life, that we don’t real­ly under­stand. Can we put our heads togeth­er and con­fer about it a lit­tle bit at a very high, non-bull­shit­ty lev­el?’ Then, all kinds of mag­ic can hap­pen.” The rest of Saun­ders’ fas­ci­nat­ing mono­logue on sto­ry gets an ani­mat­ed treat­ment that illus­trates the mag­ic he describes. If you haven’t read Saun­ders, this is almost as good an intro­duc­tion to him as, say, “Sea Oak.” His thoughts on the role fic­tion plays in our lives and the ways good sto­ries work are always lucid, his exam­ples vivid­ly inven­tive. The effect of lis­ten­ing to him mir­rors that of sit­ting in a sem­i­nar with one of the best teach­ers of cre­ative writ­ing, which Saun­ders hap­pens to be as well.

I would love to take a class with him, but bar­ring that, I’m very hap­py for the chance to hear him dis­cuss writ­ing tech­niques and phi­los­o­phy in the short film at the top and in the inter­view extras below it: “On the rela­tion­ship between read­er and writer,” “On the tricks of the writ­ing process,” and “In defense of dark­ness.” Praised by no less a post­mod­ernist lumi­nary than Thomas Pyn­chon, Saun­ders’ sto­ry col­lec­tions like Civil­WAr­Land in Bad Decline, Pas­toralia, and In Per­sua­sion Nation get at much of what ails us in these Unit­ed States, but they do so always with an under­ly­ing hope­ful­ness and a “non-bull­shit­ty” con­vic­tion of shared human­i­ty.

You can read 10 of Saun­ders’ sto­ries free—including “Sea Oak” and the excel­lent “The Red Bow”—here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Impor­tance of Kind­ness: An Ani­ma­tion of George Saun­ders’ Touch­ing Grad­u­a­tion Speech

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

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

Hear Sun Ra, the Avant-Garde Jazz Legend, Play on a 1966 Batman and Robin Album for Kids

in Comics/Cartoons, Music, Television | December 11th, 2015

In the mid 1960s, when the Bat­man TV show was in full swing, a New Jer­sey toy com­pa­ny released a chil­dren’s record of Bat­man & Robin songs. Called The Sen­sa­tion­al Gui­tars Of Dan & Dale, Bat­man & Robin, the album fea­tured, as WFMU’s Beware of the Blog notes, “one of the great­est uncred­it­ed ses­sion com­bos of all time, includ­ing the core of Sun Ra’s Arkestra and Al Koop­er’s Blues Project.” Anony­mous­ly, Sun Ra played on organ, Jim­my Owens on trum­pet, Tom McIn­tosh on trom­bone & Dan­ny Kalb on gui­tar.

Oth­er than the well-known Bat­man and Robin themes (above), the kid’s album was cre­at­ed around music that had fall­en into the pub­lic domain–e.g. Chopin’s Polon­aise Op. 53, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Sym­pho­ny and the love theme from Romeo and Juli­et. Over at WFMU, you can hear var­i­ous tracks, includ­ing Bat­man’s Bat­marang, Bat­man and Robin Over The Roofs, Flight of the Bat­man, The Rid­dler’s Retreat, Jok­er is Wild, Pen­guin’s Umbrel­la, and more. Enjoy.

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via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

Hear Sun Ra’s 1971 UC Berke­ley Lec­ture “The Pow­er of Words”

A Sun Ra Christ­mas: Hear His 1976 Radio Broad­cast of Poet­ry and Music

The Evo­lu­tion of Bat­man in Cin­e­ma: From 1939 to Present

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Master Sushi Chef

in Food & Drink | December 11th, 2015

I think we’ve all had moments when, bel­ly­ing up to our favorite sushi bar, we’ve watched the chef in action behind the counter and thought, “I won­der if I could do that?” Then we see a doc­u­men­tary like Jiro Dreams of Sushi and think, “Well, no, I prob­a­bly could­n’t do that.” Still, you don’t have to live, breathe, and dream sushi your­self to get some­thing out of prac­tic­ing the craft, and if you want to get a han­dle on its basics right now, you could do much worse than watch­ing the video series Diaries of a Mas­ter Sushi Chef.

Hiroyu­ki Ter­a­da, the mas­ter sushi chef in ques­tion, first learned the basics him­self at home from his father, then con­tin­ued his stud­ies in Kōchi, on the Japan­ese island of Shikoku, then made a name for him­self in Amer­i­ca, at NoVe Kitchen and Bar in Mia­mi.

More recent­ly, his fame has come from his Youtube chan­nel, which, in line with his rep­u­ta­tion for com­ing up with uncon­ven­tion­al dish­es, fea­tures videos like this con­ver­sion of a Big Mac into a sushi roll — kids, don’t try this at home. But do watch some of his instruc­tion­al videos, which cov­er such tra­di­tion­al top­ics as how to pre­pare sushi rice, knife skills, and how to fil­let a whole salmon.

If you real­ly want to start from square one, Ter­a­da has also put togeth­er a four-part minis­eries on mak­ing sushi at home from gro­cery store ingre­di­ents. When you get those teach­ings down, you have only to prac­tice — and prac­tice, and prac­tice, and prac­tice some more. From there, you can also move on to Ter­ada’s roll-spe­cif­ic videos, which teach how to make some of his more elab­o­rate cre­ations: the crazy salmon roll, the uni tem­pu­ra mon­ster roll, even some­thing called the meat lover’s roll. Would Jiro approve? Maybe not, but the Mia­mi nightlife crowd cer­tain­ly seems to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Right and Wrong Way to Eat Sushi: A Primer

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.