Allen Ginsberg & The Clash Perform the Punk Poem “Capitol Air,” Live Onstage in Times Square (1981)

in Music, Poetry | July 31st, 2014

The Clash had been called sell­outs ever since they signed with CBS and made their 1977 debut, so the charge was pret­ty stale when cer­tain crit­ics lobbed it at their turn to dis­co-fla­vored new wave and “are­na rock” in 1982’s pop­u­lar Com­bat Rock. As All­mu­sic writes of the record, “if this album is, as it has often been claimed, the Clash’s sell­out effort, it’s a very strange way to sell out.” Com­bat Rock’s hits—“Rock the Cas­bah” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go”—are catchy and anthemic, respec­tive­ly, but this hard­ly breaks new styl­is­tic ground, though the sounds are clean­er and the influ­ences more dif­fuse. But the true stand­outs for my mon­ey—“Straight to Hell” and “Ghet­to Defen­dant”—per­fect the strain of reg­gae-punk The Clash had made their career-long exper­i­ment.

The lat­ter track, a midtem­po dub take on the pathos of hero­in addic­tion and under­class angst, fea­tures a cameo spo­ken-word vocal from Allen Gins­berg, who co-wrote the song with Joe Strum­mer. Far from sim­ply lend­ing the song Beat cred—as Bur­roughs would for a string of artists, to vary­ing degrees of artis­tic success—the Gins­berg appear­ance feels pos­i­tive­ly essen­tial, such that the poet joined the band on stage dur­ing the New York leg of their tour in sup­port of the album.

But before “Ghet­to Defen­dant,” there was “Capi­tol Air,” a com­po­si­tion of Ginsberg’s own that he per­formed impromp­tu with the band in New York in 1981. As Gins­berg tells it, he joined the band back­stage dur­ing one of their 17 shows at Bonds Club in Times Square dur­ing the San­din­ista tour. Strum­mer invit­ed the poet onstage to riff on Cen­tral Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, and Gins­berg instead taught the band his very own punk song, which after 5 min­utes of rehearsal, they took to the stage and played.

Just above, hear that one­time live per­for­mance of “Capi­tol Air,” one of those anti-author­i­tar­i­an rants Gins­berg turned into an art form all its own—ripping cap­i­tal­ists, com­mu­nists, bureau­crats, and the police state—as the band backs him up with a chug­ging three-chord jam. Gins­berg wrote the song, accord­ing to the Allen Gins­berg Project, in 1980, after return­ing from Yugoslavia and “real­iz­ing that police bureau­cra­cies in Amer­i­ca and in East­ern Europe were the same, mir­ror images of each oth­er final­ly,” a feel­ing cap­tured in the lines “No Hope Com­mu­nism, No Hope Cap­i­tal­ism, Yeah. Every­body is lying on both sides.” Many of these same themes worked their way into “Ghet­to Defen­dant,” writ­ten and record­ed six months lat­er.

Here you can hear the Com­bat Rock album ver­sion of “Ghet­to Defen­dant.” (The track appeared in longer form on the record’s first, unre­leased, incar­na­tion, Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg). Ginsberg’s con­tri­bu­tions to the track, which he intones as “the voice of God,” match his free-asso­cia­tive dark humor against Strummer’s nar­ra­tive con­crete­ness. Off the wall hip­ster lines like “Hooked on necrop­o­lis,” “Do the worm on the acrop­o­lis” and “Slam­dance the cos­mopo­lis” become ellip­ti­cal ref­er­ences to Arthur Rim­baud, Sal­vado­ri­an death squads, and Afghanistan before Gins­berg launch­es into the Bud­dhist heart sutra over Strummer’s final cho­rus. The effect is com­ic, hyp­not­ic, and dis­ori­ent­ing, rem­i­nis­cent of the sam­ple-based elec­tron­ic col­lages groups like Cabaret Voltaire and Throb­bing Gris­tle con­struct­ed around the same time. It’s such a per­fect sym­bio­sis that the song los­es much of its impact with­out Ginsberg’s nut­ty offer­ings, I think, though you can judge for your­self in the live, Gins­berg-less ver­sion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

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

The Modern-Day Philosophers Podcast: Where Comedians Like Carl Reiner & Artie Lange Discuss Schopenhauer & Maimonides

in Comedy, Philosophy, Podcasts | July 30th, 2014

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps, Phi­los­o­phy Bites, Phi­los­o­phize This!: we’ve fea­tured quite a few enter­tain­ing and edu­ca­tion­al fruits of the still-new dis­ci­pline of pod­cast­ing’s incli­na­tion toward the very old dis­ci­pline of phi­los­o­phy. But the pod­cast has proven an even bet­ter fit for come­di­ans than it has for philoso­phers. Even if you’ve nev­er down­loaded an episode in your life, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly heard about the medi­um-legit­imiz­ing suc­cess­es of intel­li­gent, con­ver­sa­tion­al, high­ly opin­ion­at­ed, or oth­er­wise uncon­ven­tion­al fun­ny­men like Ricky Ger­vais with The Ricky Ger­vais Show, Adam Car­ol­la with his also-epony­mous pod­cast, and Marc Maron with WTF. Yet nobody dared to explic­it­ly cross pod­cast­ing’s comedic and philo­soph­i­cal strengths until last year, when Dan­ny Lobell launched Mod­ern Day Philoso­phers (web site — itunes — sound­cloud).

Lobell, him­self a pio­neer in not just philo­soph­i­cal com­e­dy pod­cast­ing but com­e­dy pod­cast­ing, and indeed pod­cast­ing itself, began his com­ic-inter­view­ing show Com­i­cal Radio a decade ago. “As pod­cast­ing grew in pop­u­lar­i­ty,” he writes, “many celebri­ty come­di­ans start­ed doing sim­i­lar shows to the one I was doing. [ … ] Before I knew it, what I had once felt was a unique and impor­tant under­tak­ing now no longer seemed like it served a pur­pose in the uni­verse for me.” This dark night of the soul saw him move from New York to Los Ange­les, this cra­dle of so many pod­casts comedic and oth­er­wise, where he turned his atten­tion back toward the sub­jects he neglect­ed in school. He paid spe­cial atten­tion to phi­los­o­phy, but strug­gled to under­stand the mate­r­i­al. “I real­ized that my friends, stand up come­di­ans, would make great study part­ners. I’ve often heard us referred to as the philoso­phers of our day which I fig­ured sound­ed like a good enough excuse to approach them.”

And so Lobell has pro­duced 40 episodes and count­ing fea­tur­ing philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sions con­duct­ed with some of today’s sharpest comics, many of them star pod­cast­ers in their own right. One recent con­ver­sa­tion finds Lobell in con­ver­sa­tion about John Cage — a philo­soph­i­cal fig­ure too often dis­missed as pri­mar­i­ly an artist — with the cere­bral, chance-ori­ent­ed, and some­what askew Reg­gie Watts (top). (The pair­ing makes espe­cial­ly good sense, since Cage influ­enced Bri­an Eno, and Watts has pub­licly dis­cussed Eno’s influ­ence on his own act.) A few months ago, Lobell talked the sui­cide-mind­ed Arthur Schopen­hauer with the once-sui­cide-mind­ed Artie Lange (mid­dle). And he even brings in elder states­men of com­e­dy to talk about mat­ters eter­nal, such as Carl Rein­er on reli­gion, prayer and mem­o­ry as reflect­ed upon by Mai­monides (above). Each episode con­tains a healthy con­sid­er­a­tion of not just the work of the philoso­pher in ques­tion, but that of the come­di­an as well. Per­son­al­ly, I can’t wait to hear what Yakov Smirnoff has to say about his fel­low Russ­ian artist-philoso­pher of note, Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky.

H/T Mark Lin­sen­may­er, a founder of Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear Roland Barthes Present His 40-Hour Course, La Préparation du roman, in French (1978–80)

in Literature, Online Courses, Philosophy | July 30th, 2014

A key fig­ure in such aca­d­e­m­ic areas as semi­ol­o­gy, struc­tural­ism, and post-struc­tural­ism, and author of such the­o­ret­i­cal clas­sics as Mytholo­gies, The Plea­sure of the Text, and S/Z, Roland Barthes is famil­iar to stu­dents across the human­i­ties. His pro­lif­ic out­put encom­passed books on lit­er­ary the­o­ry, phi­los­o­phy, lin­guis­tics, anthro­pol­o­gy, and the­o­ret­i­cal essays on pho­tog­ra­phy, music, fash­ion, sports, and love. In addi­tion to his wide-rang­ing writ­ings, Barthes lec­tured in the U.S., Switzer­land, and at the Col­lège de France, where he was elect­ed Chair of Semi­ol­o­gy in 1977.

Barthes’ 1978–1980 lec­ture course at the Col­lège de France—titled The Prepa­ra­tion of the Nov­el—has been pre­served in an Eng­lish trans­la­tion by Kate Brig­gs. Speak­ers of French, how­ev­er, can hear Barthes him­self deliv­er the lec­ture series in audio archived at Ubuweb. Lis­ten to the first ses­sion from Decem­ber, 1978 at the top of the post, and hear the fifth, with some musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, above.

Deliv­ered short­ly after pub­li­ca­tion of the sem­i­nal texts men­tioned above, these lec­tures, writes edi­tor Nathalie Léger in her intro­duc­tion, “form a diptych—the two parts can be accessed inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er, yet each one is indis­pens­able to the oth­er.” The last two lec­ture cours­es Barthes taught at the Col­lège de France, both, Léger writes, rep­re­sent not a sys­tem­at­ic the­o­ry, but “the pere­gri­na­tion of a quest,” explor­ing “one ques­tion and one ques­tion only: that of lit­er­ary utopia.” Such prob­ing inves­ti­ga­tions pro­pelled Barthes’ entire career, and opened up new crit­i­cal paths for a great many thinkers who dared to trace his wind­ing intel­lec­tu­al steps and often intense­ly per­son­al explo­rations.

La Pré­pa­ra­tion du roman will be added to our list of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Fou­cault Deliv­er His Lec­ture on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” at UC Berke­ley, In Eng­lish (1980)

Susan Son­tag Lec­tures On Lit­er­ary Pornog­ra­phy (1964)

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

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

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Restored with a Soundtrack Featuring Freddie Mercury, Adam Ant & Pat Benatar

in Film | July 29th, 2014

At the 1984 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, dis­co trail­blaz­er and Oscar-win­ning com­pos­er Gior­gio Moroder unveiled a restored ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent epic Metrop­o­lis — the first time that the ground­break­ing movie had been restored since it pre­miered. Though Moroder labored for years with some of the lead­ing archivists in the world to cre­ate the most com­plete ver­sion of the film to date, his adap­ta­tion also stream­lined the movie’s sto­ry­line, added sound effects, col­orized the movie’s mono­chrome pic­ture and, most con­tro­ver­sial­ly, added a synth pop sound­track fea­tur­ing music by Pat Benatar, Bil­ly Squier, Adam Ant and Fred­die Mer­cury. You can watch it above.

The result­ing film, as you might expect, is a pro­found­ly odd col­li­sion between pop and art. Lang’s pun­gent imagery exists uneasi­ly along­side Moroder’s MTV treat­ment. Crit­ic Thomas Elsaess­er in his BFI book­let on the movie called Moroder’s ver­sion “some­where between a remake and a post-mod­ern appro­pri­a­tion.” And though the songs are uni­form­ly cringe-induc­ing – to say that they didn’t age well is a big under­state­ment — Moroder’s ver­sion still works.

The rea­son that Lang’s movie influ­enced film­mak­ers from George Lucas to Ter­ry Gilliam to Stan­ley Kubrick is because of its visu­al bril­liance, not because of its sto­ry. The script, penned by Lang’s wife and future Nazi Par­ty pro­pa­gan­dist, Thea von Har­bou, is stuffed full of allu­sions to Franken­stein and Ger­man folk­tales along with plen­ty of maudlin melo­dra­ma. But Lang’s high mod­ernist visu­als – evok­ing both the Bauhaus move­ment and Hen­ry Ford’s new brand of indus­tri­al­ism – tran­scend­ed the movie’s sto­ry, becom­ing a last­ing vision of total­i­tar­i­an dystopia.

In 2010, a painstak­ing­ly researched “com­plete” ver­sion of Metrop­o­lis came out, clock­ing in at almost three hours. It might be an achieve­ment of film preser­va­tion but, com­pared to Moroder’s ver­sion, it shows how bloat­ed and mean­der­ing Von Harbou’s script was. Moroder’s more svelte ver­sion might be cheesy, but at least it’s fun. The great film crit­ic Pauline Kael described Lang’s movie as “a won­der­ful, stu­pe­fy­ing fol­ly.” Moroder’s ver­sion is a fol­ly on top of a fol­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Metrop­o­lis Restored: Watch a New Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece

Fritz Lang’s “Licen­tious, Pro­fane, Obscure” Noir Film, Scar­let Street (1945)

Free Film Noir Movies (34 Films in Total)

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

Experience James Joyce’s Ulysses in Virtual Reality, Using the Oculus Rift Headset

in Literature, Technology | July 29th, 2014

If, like Vir­ginia Woolf, you could nev­er read James Joyce’s Ulysses from start to fin­ish, then here’s anoth­er way to expe­ri­ence the mod­ernist clas­sic. Vir­tu­al­ly rather than tex­tu­al­ly. Accord­ing to The Cre­ator’s Project, “an Irish film­mak­er named Eoghan Kid­ney is design­ing a vir­tu­al real­i­ty video game that uses an Ocu­lus Rift head­set to put the play­er in the shoes of Stephen Dedalus as he mean­ders through Dublin on June 16th, 1904.”  On his Fun­dit page and in the video above, Mr. Kid­ney (not to be con­fused with Leopold Bloom’s burnt kid­ney break­fast) gives us an exam­ple of how the “In Ulysses” project will work:

My “In Ulysses” project is anoth­er way of expe­ri­enc­ing the book — this time, using the vir­tu­al for­mat. It will be a vir­tu­al real­i­ty videogame that will allow a user to inhab­it the char­ac­ters of Ulysses and expe­ri­ence the den­si­ty of Joyce’s lan­guage in a fun and acces­si­ble way.…

As a user of “In Ulysses” walks along a vir­tu­al Sandy­mount Strand, the book will be read to them — they will hear Stephen’s thoughts as they are writ­ten — but these thoughts will then be illus­trat­ed around the user in real-time using tex­tu­al anno­ta­tions, images and links. A user can stop walk­ing (there­fore stop­ping Stephen walk­ing) and explore these illus­tra­tions, gain­ing insight into the book and adding to the enjoy­ment of it.

“In Ulysses” has already raised €4000, enough to fund its pro­to­type. No tar­get date for its release has been announced. And, from what I can tell, the con­sumer ver­sion of the Ocu­lus Rift won’t be released until next year. So, like any good read­er of Ulysses, you’ll need to have a lit­tle patience.

H/T Eric O.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find Ulysses in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

Vir­ginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Pod­cast

Read Ulysses Seen, A Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of James Joyce’s Clas­sic

James Joyce Reads From Ulysses and Finnegans Wake In His Only Two Record­ings (1924/1929)

Watch World War I Unfold in a 6 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1914 to 1918

in History | July 29th, 2014

World War I began 100 years ago, on 28 July 1914. The ini­tial trig­ger, the assas­si­na­tion of Arch­duke Franz Fer­di­nand of Aus­tria, pro­duced some­thing of a “domi­no effect,” where Euro­pean pow­ers, bound by pre-exist­ing inter­na­tion­al alliances, chose sides and fell rather obvi­ous­ly into a cat­a­stroph­ic war. It start­ed as a Euro­pean war, pit­ting Allied pow­ers against Cen­tral pow­ers. But, soon enough, it became inter­na­tion­al, involv­ing a long list of coun­tries from Africa, North and South Amer­i­ca, Asia, and Aus­trala­sia. The trench war­fare that became such an impor­tant part of World War I ensured that the bat­tle lines moved ever so slow­ly, at least until the final stages of the war. That grind­ing qual­i­ty gets cap­tured remark­ably well by Emper­or­Tiger­star’s lat­est YouTube video, “World War I: Every Day,” which shows “the chang­ing front lines of World War I every day from Aus­tria-Hun­gary’s dec­la­ra­tion of war to the armistice of Novem­ber 11, 1918.” It also includes the chang­ing front lines in Africa and the Pacif­ic. (A leg­end, below, will help you sort out the var­i­ous dif­fer­ent play­ers.) When you’re done watch­ing “World War I: Every Day” (above), you’ll per­haps want to spend time with Emper­or­Tiger­star’s pre­vi­ous video, “World War II in Europe: Every Day,” which doc­u­ments an even blood­i­er war unfold­ing at a dra­mat­ic pace.

Leg­end:

Maroon = Cen­tral Pow­ers and annexed lands.
Bur­gundy = Areas mil­i­tar­i­ly occu­pied by the Cen­tral Pow­ers.
Red = Cen­tral Pow­er pup­pet or client states.
Brown = Cen­tral Pow­ers in an armistice.
Pink = Cen­tral Pow­er gains for that day.
Dark blue = Allied pow­ers.
Blue = Cen­tral Pow­ered lands mil­i­tar­i­ly occu­pied by the Allies.
Blue-grey = Allied pow­ers in an armistice.
Light blue = Allied gains for that day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

British Actors Read Poignant Poet­ry from World War I

Frank W. Buck­les, The Last U.S. Vet­er­an of World War I

Learn How Crayons Are Made, Courtesy of 1980s Videos by Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers

in Art, Design, K-12, Life | July 28th, 2014

Some things are dif­fi­cult to improve upon. Take crayons. The new gen­er­a­tion may be clam­or­ing for shades like “man­go tan­go” and “jazzber­ry jam” but the actu­al tech­nol­o­gy appears unchanged since Sesame Street detailed the process in the ear­ly 80s, in the love­ly, non ver­bal doc­u­men­tary above. Not a prod­uct place­ment in sight, I might add, though few can mis­take that famil­iar green and gold box.

Those who pre­fer a bit more expla­na­tion might pre­fer Fred Rogers’ hyp­not­ic step-by-step guide, play­ing in per­pe­tu­ity on Pic­ture Pic­ture.

By the time the indus­try’s giant goril­la got around to weigh­ing in, the wood­en col­lec­tion box­es and ana­log coun­ters had been replaced, but oth­er­wise, it’s still busi­ness as usu­al on the ol’ cray­on-man­u­fac­tur­ing floor. Don’t expect to find the recipe for the “secret pro­pri­etary blend of pig­ments and oth­er ingre­di­ents” any time soon. Just know they’re capa­ble of crank­ing out 8500 crayons per minute. For those play­ing along at home, that’s enough to encir­cle the globe 6 times per cal­en­dar year, with a full third owing their exis­tence to solar ener­gy.

There’s a Home­land Secu­ri­ty-ish vibe to some of the dia­logue, but the Life of an Amer­i­can Cray­on, above, does our native assem­bly lines proud. Proud­er than the Amer­i­can slaugh­ter­house, any­way, or some oth­er fac­to­ry floors, I could name. The work­ers seem con­tent enough to stay in their posi­tions for decades, hap­pi­ly declar­ing alle­giance to this or that hue.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip Glass Com­pos­es for Sesame Street (1979)

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

How Ani­mat­ed Car­toons Are Made: Watch a Short, Charm­ing Primer from 1919

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

Greek Myth Comix Presents Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey Using Stick-Man Drawings

in Comics/Cartoons, Education, K-12, Literature | July 28th, 2014

The next time some know-it-all moral­ist blames any num­ber of social ills on vio­lent video games or action films, ask them if they’d rather kids stick to the clas­sics. When they invari­ably reply in the affir­ma­tive, you can smug­ly direct their atten­tion to Greek Myth Comix’s aston­ish­ing info­graph­ic detail­ing the mul­ti­tude of grue­some killings in the Ili­ad. Homer’s epic unflinch­ing­ly describes, for exam­ple, in graph­ic detail, the death of Lycon, who in Book 16 has a sword thrust through his neck: “noth­ing held but a piece of skin, and from that, Lycon’s head dan­gled down.” And if you’ve held on to your lunch, you may be inter­est­ed to know the gris­ly cir­cum­stances of the oth­er two can­di­dates for “grimmest death.” Just below, see a sec­tion of the com­ic cel­e­brat­ing “stand out per­for­mances in bat­tle.” Can Zack Snyder’s King Leonidas match kills with Homer’s Achilles? Only one way to find out….

The Ili­ad graph­ic is great fun—as well as a suc­cinct way to ren­der mod­ern scolds speechless—but Greek Myth Comix doesn’t stop there… Oh no! Fans of Homer’s Odyssey will not be dis­ap­point­ed; Books 5–7, and much of 9, 10, and 12 also get the “comix” treat­ment. The art­work is admit­ted­ly crude, but the text comes from a much more author­i­ta­tive source than 300, no dis­re­spect to Frank Miller. Lau­ren Jenk­in­son is a “Clas­si­cal Civil­i­sa­tion and Lit­er­a­ture teacher, writer and, appar­ent­ly, artist,” and her online adap­ta­tions are intend­ed pri­mar­i­ly to help stu­dents pass their GCSE (OCR), the British sec­ondary exams whose near­est equiv­a­lent in the States might per­haps be the SATs.

But Greek Myth Comix won’t only appeal to strug­gling stu­dents in the British Isles. Edu­ca­tors will find much to love here, as will lovers of mythol­o­gy in gen­er­al. Online access to the site is free, and you can pur­chase copies of the comix in PDF—either indi­vid­u­al­ly, in bulk, or in poster-size res­o­lu­tion. The site’s full archive has oth­er good­ies like the above, “What Makes a Home­r­ic Hero?” And with such recent updates, no doubt Greek Myth Comix has much more in store for those strug­gling to enjoy or under­stand Homer’s bloody-mind­ed epics, and those who sim­ply love their myths in com­ic form as well as ancient lyric.

via HolyKaw

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

What’s Next for the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? PhD Comics Intro­duces the Search for Extra Dimen­sions

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

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

Ubu Roi: Alfred Jarry’s Scandalous Play Strikingly Adapted for Television (1965)

in Television, Theatre | July 28th, 2014

“Mer­dre,” the very first word spo­ken in Alfred Jar­ry’s Ubu Roi, needs no intro­duc­tion. When it first opened — and closed — on stage in 1896, it did­n’t have to do much more than that to get its audi­ence worked up. As soon as this hyper-vul­gar satire of the pow­er­ful came to its delib­er­ate­ly undra­mat­ic end, a “riot” broke out, his­to­ry books invari­ably note. Some­thing in Jar­ry’s tale of the sav­age, infan­tile, and all-desir­ing roy­al­ty of the title touched a nerve, and the Sur­re­al­ist and The­atre of the Absurd move­ments that fol­lowed would strive to keep on touch­ing it. But the strange, low-mind­ed Ubu Roi and its sequels would, while no longer liable to prompt fisticuffs, retain a kind of pow­er over the next cen­tu­ry and beyond. That lega­cy is vis­i­ble even in French polit­i­cal dis­course, where the insult “Ubuesque” tends to get thrown around to describe a cer­tain impul­sive, self-sat­is­fy­ing kind of pub­lic fig­ure.

Jean-Christo­pher Aver­ty’s tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion of Ubu Roi above first aired in 1965. Its con­tent, pre­sum­ably by then famil­iar enough to the view­ing audi­ence, no longer shocked, but its aes­thet­ic choic­es still look strik­ing today. “I can almost guar­an­tee you will nev­er see anoth­er film that looks even remote­ly like this,” says The Sick, the Strange, and the Awful. It “dis­pels any types of cam­era pan­ning, zooms and even mov­ing the cam­era at all,” plac­ing, “at any one time, three, four, six dif­fer­ent mini-scenes onscreen, all inter­act­ing with each oth­er in bizarre ways. Char­ac­ters will pass things to each oth­er, and the item will change size depend­ing on where the cam­era is. It’s visu­al­ly dis­ori­en­tat­ing, and cool as hell.” The sim­ply attired char­ac­ters against back­grounds reduced to their most basic ele­ments (when not just a black void) retain the the­atri­cal­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al, but it all comes togeth­er visu­al­ly with the kind of opti­cal effects that had only recent­ly become pos­si­ble. Jar­ry’s dar­ing pre­saged the era of any­thing-goes the­atre; only nat­ur­al that his work would go on to explore the lim­it­less visu­al pos­si­bil­i­ties opened at the dawn of the video age. But if it start­ed any riots in mid­dle-class French liv­ing rooms, his­to­ry has left them unrecord­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

Un Chien Andalou: Revis­it­ing Buñuel and Dalí’s Sur­re­al­ist Film

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Touching Moment When Nicholas Winton (RIP) Met the Children He Saved During the Holocaust

in History, Life | July 27th, 2014

Note: This post was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on July 27, 2014. Mr. Win­ton sad­ly passed away today (7/1/2015). He was 106 years old. Read his obit­u­ary, which doc­u­ments his amaz­ing deeds, here.

Pro­cras­ti­na­tors take note.

Some teens of my acquain­tance have been agi­tat­ing for a meet­ing with a Holo­caust sur­vivor. These encoun­ters, com­mon enough in my child­hood, are grow­ing less so as those with first­hand knowl­edge enter their gold­en years. Bear in mind that Eva Lavi, the youngest per­son named on Oskar Schindler’s List, is now 76.

Sir Nicholas Win­ton is def­i­nite­ly an inspir­ing fig­ure, and not just for his remark­able longevi­ty. From late 1938 until the start of the war, he man­aged to res­cue 669 Czech children—most of them Jews.

Win­ton made no pub­lic men­tion of his hero­ics, until 1988, when the BBC obtained his res­cue scrap­book and used it to coor­di­nate a mas­sive live on-air sur­prise dur­ing the pro­gram That’s Life (see above).

I plan on using the 60 Min­utes episode below to intro­duce my teen friends—most of whom stout­ly declare they’d have hid­den Anne Frank with­out a sec­ond thought—to a man whose actions speak loud­er than words.

via Holy Kaw

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

Alice Herz-Som­mer, the Old­est Holo­caust Sur­vivor (Thanks to the Pow­er of Music), Dies at 110

Rudolf Braz­da, Last Man to Wear the Pink Tri­an­gle Dur­ing the Holo­caust, Tells His Sto­ry

Anne Frank: The Only Exist­ing Video Now Online

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