Sound Effects Genius Michael Winslow Performs the Sounds of 32 Typewriters (1898–1983)

in Technology, Writing | June 12th, 2014

“When forced to leave my house for an extend­ed peri­od of time, I take my type­writer with me,” once wrote essay­ist-humorist David Sedaris. “Togeth­er we endure the wretched­ness of pass­ing through the X‑ray scan­ner. The lap­tops roll mer­ri­ly down the belt, while I’m instruct­ed to stand aside and open my bag. To me it seems like a nor­mal enough thing to be car­ry­ing, but the typewriter’s declin­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty arous­es sus­pi­cion and I wind up elic­it­ing the sort of reac­tion one might expect when trav­el­ing with a can­non. ‘It’s a type­writer,’ I say. ‘You use it to write angry let­ters to air­port secu­ri­ty.’ ” But Sedaris, one of the last high-pro­file hold-outs against elec­tron­ic word pro­cess­ing, wrote those words almost fif­teen years ago — even before air­port secu­ri­ty real­ly cracked down in our post‑9/11 real­i­ty. Sure­ly he has since picked up and pre­sum­ably learned to use a com­put­er. We now find our­selves in an age when type­writer usage has tran­scend­ed the sta­tus of an act of nos­tal­gia and attained the sta­tus of an act of rebel­lion; if you insist on using a clas­sic old Under­wood Rem­ing­ton, or an Invic­ta, or a Con­ti­nen­tal Stan­dard, or Olympia Moni­ka Deluxe, well, you must real­ly have a state­ment to make.

Yet I dare­say that for all their mechan­i­cal heft, free­dom from inter­net-borne dis­trac­tion, and thor­ough­ly ana­log aes­thet­ic appeal, type­writ­ers bring with them a num­ber of bur­dens. We have their dif­fi­cul­ty in clear­ing TSA lines, yes, but also their thirst for phys­i­cal ink and paper (“I can always look at my loaded wastepa­per bas­ket and tell myself that if I failed,” said Sedaris, “at least I took a few trees down with me”), and their noise — oh my, their noise. You can hear the vary­ing sounds of 32 mod­els belong­ing to many suc­ces­sive type­writer gen­er­a­tions in the video at the top of the post. They don’t come as straight record­ings, but as sounds repro­duced by mouth to per­fec­tion by that one-in-a-mil­lion mim­ic Michael Winslow, best known from the Police Acad­e­my movies as Sergeant Larvell “Motor Mouth” Jones. “The His­to­ry of the Type­writer Recit­ed by Michael Winslow” orig­i­nat­ed in the mind of Span­ish artist Igna­cio Uri­arte, who, accord­ing to Frieze, “has employed stan­dard office sup­plies such as Biros, high­lighters and jot­ters,” not to men­tion “the ubiq­ui­tous spread­sheet tool Microsoft Excel, per­haps soon fac­ing its own obso­les­cence.” This pro­duc­tion “telling­ly cul­mi­nates with the sounds of a machine from 1983, the year before the arrival of the first home com­put­er with a graph­i­cal inter­face.” Which leads one to won­der: can Winslow do hard dri­ve nois­es?

We’ll def­i­nite­ly add “The His­to­ry of the Type­writer Recit­ed by Michael Winslow” to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Woody Allen’s Type­writer, Scis­sors and Sta­pler: The Great Film­mak­er Shows Us How He Writes

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball”

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy: Stu­dent Brings Type­writer to Class

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.

Study 40+ Languages with Free Lessons from the U.S. Foreign Service Institute

in Language Lessons | June 11th, 2014

I spent this after­noon chat­ting with a trav­el writer about how we first allowed our­selves to start learn­ing for­eign lan­guages. That notion may sound a bit odd, espe­cial­ly to those of you liv­ing in coun­tries where every­one grows up trilin­gual. But Amer­i­cans — even Amer­i­can trav­el­ers — have strug­gled with the con­cept of mas­ter­ing lan­guages oth­er than Eng­lish. Some­times it has seemed mere­ly unnec­es­sary; at oth­er times, down­right impos­si­ble. But no mat­ter our nation­al­i­ty, our increas­ing­ly glob­al­ized 21st-cen­tu­ry lives have put to rest any and all excus­es in which we might dress up our lin­guis­tic parochial­ism. Tech­nol­o­gy has also done more than its share, giv­en the ever-grow­ing abun­dance of free and effec­tive lan­guage-learn­ing resources on the inter­net. Take for exam­ple, our pret­ty mas­sive list of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons. Or dis­cov­er this trove of lan­guage learn­ing resources from the U.S. For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute, a gov­ern­ment agency long tasked with teach­ing the widest pos­si­ble vari­ety of tongues to diplo­mats and oth­er offi­cials sta­tioned abroad. Though pro­duced sev­er­al decades ago, the lessons are still rel­e­vant .… and, more impor­tant­ly, they’re in the pub­lic domain.

Most of the down­load­ables avail­able for each of the over 40 lan­guages on the site include include text lessons in PDF form and audio lessons, suit­able for load­ing onto your mobile audio device of choice, in MP3 form. Nat­u­ral­ly, you’ll find a more robust store of FSI resources for the much-spo­ken Chi­nese, Span­ish, and French than you will for, say, Chinyan­ja, Lin­gala, and Sin­hala — but how often do you run across means of learn­ing that lat­ter class of lan­guages at all? I’ve found Japan­ese and Kore­an, my own East Asian lan­guages of choice, decent­ly rep­re­sent­ed; in fact, prepa­ra­tion for an extend­ed trip to South Korea this week has seen me go into study­ing over­drive, mak­ing use of every online resource avail­able. You can find more of them in our full list of free lan­guage lessons, where, if you’d like to learn any of the lan­guages men­tioned here — or maybe Ara­bic, Finnish, Swahili, or many tongues besides — you can get a pain­less start. We live in too big (and too inter­est­ing) a world not to take advan­tage of it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 47 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

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.

Glenn Gould: Off and On the Record: Two Short Films About the Life & Music of the Eccentric Musician

in Film, Music | June 11th, 2014

Cana­di­an pianist Glenn Gould was one of those child prodi­gies whose spec­tac­u­lar tal­ents were matched by some seri­ous eccen­tric­i­ties. As an infant, Gould report­ed­ly hummed rather than cried, he had per­fect pitch at age 3, and he grad­u­at­ed at the age of 12 from the Roy­al Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music in Toron­to. Unlike just about every oth­er musi­cian on the plan­et, Gould report­ed­ly didn’t seem to need to spend hour upon hour prac­tic­ing his instru­ment. Instead, he had the envi­able abil­i­ty to prac­tice in his head. His inter­pre­ta­tions of Brahms, Beethoven and espe­cial­ly Bach were hailed as genius.

Gould also tend­ed to dress in a win­ter coat and gloves no mat­ter what the tem­per­a­ture was out­side. This result­ed in Gould get­ting arrest­ed in Mia­mi for being a sus­pect­ed vagrant. While per­form­ing, he would fall into some­thing close to an ecsta­t­ic state, shak­ing his head and twist­ing his tor­so in a man­ner that raised more than a few eye­brows in the but­toned-down world of clas­si­cal music. But per­haps his most famous eccen­tric­i­ty was that, like Jazz pianist Thelo­nious Monk, Gould had a habit of hum­ming along as he played.

Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor made a pair of gor­geous­ly shot doc­u­men­taries about the pianist in 1959. Glenn Gould – Off the Record, which you can see above, shows Gould relax­ing at his lake­side cot­tage north of Toron­to. In the movie, we see that he leads a soli­tary life — his only com­pan­ions are his piano and his pet dog – where he can focus com­plete­ly on his music.

In Glenn Gould – On the Record, below, Koenig and Kroitor show Gould in the stu­dio try­ing to get a record­ing to match his pre­cise vision. It also focus­es on the har­ried record­ing engi­neers who strug­gle to record the music com­ing out of Gould’s piano and not his mouth. Both films released by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

Glenn Gould Offers a Strik­ing­ly Uncon­ven­tion­al Inter­pre­ta­tion of 1806 Beethoven Com­po­si­tion

The Art of Fugue: Gould Plays Bach

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.

Rik Mayall Voices the Animation “Don’t Fear Death” Just Months Before His Untimely Passing

in Animation, Life | June 10th, 2014

To para­phrase an acquaintance’s trib­ute to Rik May­all (leg­endary British come­di­an who died yes­ter­day at age 56), the cult com­e­dy The Young Ones turned a gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can mis­fits into Anglophiles before they’d ever set foot in Britain. I was one of those kids, stay­ing up late to catch the riotous­ly slap­stick show about four slack­er room­mates who mer­ci­less­ly abused each oth­er to insane degrees while attend­ing “Scum­bag Col­lege.” Fea­tur­ing musi­cal appear­ances by British alter­na­tive heroes like Mad­ness, Dexys Mid­night Run­ners, Motör­head, and The Damned, the show only ran for 12 episodes, but it had an enor­mous influ­ence on both sides of the Atlantic as a Mon­ty Python for absur­dist post-punk 80s brats.

May­all co-cre­at­ed and co-wrote the show, and his anar­chic gal­lows humor per­me­at­ed every episode. He lat­er went on to write and/or star in sit­coms Bot­tom and The New States­man, and had a beloved, if brief, role in the Rowan Atkin­son com­e­dy Black­ad­der. Short­ly before his death, May­all voiced the ani­ma­tion above, “Don’t Fear Death,” for Chan­nel 4. Writ­ten and pro­duced by Louis Hud­son and Ian Raven­scroft, this per­fect vehi­cle for Mayall’s snide sen­si­bil­i­ties explores “the ben­e­fits of being dead,” includ­ing nev­er hav­ing to “waste one more sin­gle, soul-crush­ing hour in your mind­less dead-end job.” Luck­i­ly for his fans, May­all avoid­ed that hor­ri­ble fate and instead cre­at­ed some of the most mem­o­rably obnox­ious char­ac­ters in British com­e­dy his­to­ry, although writer Lau­rence Marks tells the BBC he was “the antithe­sis” of those char­ac­ters, “a qui­et, polite, car­ing gen­tle­man.”

See May­all below do an ear­ly ver­sion of his Young Ones char­ac­ter in a clas­sic 80s stand-up rou­tine .

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Ani­mat­ed Film Tells the Life Sto­ry of Mon­ty Python’s Gra­ham Chap­man

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

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

Pablo Neruda’s Historic First Reading in the US (1966)

in Poetry | June 10th, 2014

Few pub­lic fig­ures of the 20th cen­tu­ry are as dear to the hearts and minds of Latin Amer­i­ca as Chilean poet Nef­tali Ricar­do Reyes Basoal­to — AKA Pablo Neru­da. He became famous for his writ­ing before he was 20 years old and he won the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 1971. In between, he wrote sur­re­al­ist poems, Whit­manesque epics and polit­i­cal man­i­festos. Fel­low Nobel Prize win­ner Gabriel Gar­cía Mar­quez called him “the great­est poet of the 20th cen­tu­ry in any lan­guage.”

Yet Neru­da was known almost as much for his pol­i­tics as for his writ­ing. After Franco’s forces exe­cut­ed his friend Fed­eri­co Gar­cía Lor­ca dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War, Neru­da shift­ed hard to the left. In the 30s and 40s, he pub­li­cal­ly sup­port­ed Joseph Stal­in at a time when his tri­umphs were obvi­ous and his crimes were hid­den. Neru­da even wrote a cou­ple odes to the strong­man. When Neru­da was sta­tioned as a diplo­mat in Mex­i­co City, he report­ed­ly helped mural­ist David Alfaro Siqueiros flee the coun­try after he led an assas­si­na­tion attempt against Stalin’s rival Leon Trot­sky.

So it isn’t sur­pris­ing that Neruda’s pol­i­tics would make him unpop­u­lar in some cor­ners of Wash­ing­ton. He was offi­cial­ly barred from com­ing to the Unit­ed States and he was report­ed­ly at the cen­ter of a CIA smear cam­paign. But, in 1966, the poet was invit­ed to the Inter­na­tion­al PEN con­fer­ence in New York City by Arthur Miller. When the play­wright beseeched the White House, Pres­i­dent John­son, dis­play­ing far more polit­i­cal courage than is imag­in­able today, grant­ed Neru­da a visa.

The poet was treat­ed like a rock star. He gave a read­ing of his poems with trans­la­tion, at the 96th St. Y. in Man­hat­tan to a packed audi­ence on June 11th of that year. You can lis­ten to it above, or down­load the audio here. After an intro­duc­tion by Archibald MacLeish, Neru­da begins speak­ing at the 9:00 mark.

When the New York Times asked what he thought of Amer­i­ca, he said, “Your coun­try – how shall I say it? – seems more pre­pared for peace than for war. Peace and poet­ry…”

Neru­da died in 1973, twelve days after a CIA-backed coup in Chile over­threw Neruda’s polit­i­cal ally Sal­vador Allende and installed Gen­er­al Augus­to Pinochet.

You can find oth­er poet­ry read­ings in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Me Bird” by Pablo Neru­da: An Ani­mat­ed Inter­pre­ta­tion

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

Read 10 Short Sto­ries by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Inter­views)

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.

Terry Gilliam, Guy Ritchie & Alejandro González Iñárritu Direct Soccer Ads for Nike

in Film, Sports, Television | June 10th, 2014

Even if you don’t hail from one of the world’s many soc­cer-lov­ing coun­tries (you know, the ones that don’t call it “soc­cer”) sure­ly you can get on board for the World Cup. Here in the Unit­ed States, I often hear “I just watch it for the ads” said about the Super Bowl. And if that game’s breaks show­case some pret­ty cool spots, then its non-Amer­i­can foot­ball equiv­a­lent offers an even high­er lev­el of pro­mo­tion­al spec­ta­cle. Last year, we fea­tured Brazil and 12 Mon­keys auteur Ter­ry Gilliam’s two ven­tures into the form of the World Cup com­mer­cial, “The Secret Tour­na­ment” and “The Rematch,” the first of which you can watch at the top of the post. They came com­mis­sioned by Nike in 2002, and six years lat­er the for­mi­da­ble shoe man­u­fac­tur­er put a pre­sum­ably decent chunk of its mar­ket­ing bud­get behind anoth­er fea­ture film­mak­er with a vision: Lock, Stock, and Two Smok­ing Bar­rels and Snatch direc­tor Guy Ritchie. The result, “The Next Lev­el,” appears below:

“The entire film is seen as if through the eyes of an ama­teur foot­baller fast-tracked into the big time,” says the web site of The Mill, the adver­tis­ing agency behind the spot. “We see what he sees in the thick of the action, on and off the pitch: the foot­work, the fouls, the goals and the girls. Film­ing in Lon­don, Man­ches­ter and Barcelona with per­haps the world’s small­est cam­era (SI 2K) took a month. The Mill pushed post pro­duc­tion to the extreme, ven­tur­ing into some unchar­tered FX ter­ri­to­ry, set­ting up a new data pipeline for the cam­era (used here for the first time in com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion) and to track shots pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered impos­si­ble.” These hyper­ki­net­ic, celebri­ty foot­baller-filled two min­utes cer­tain­ly do take the wish-ful­fill­ment aspect of sports fan­dom to the next lev­el, or at least a more lit­er­al one. The Mill and Nike would then step up to a three-minute pro­duc­tion with Ale­jan­dro González Iñár­ritu, he of Amores Per­ros and Babel, for 2010’s “Write the Future,” a med­i­ta­tion on how, in sports as else­where, one good move might lock in a des­tiny, or one bad move might shat­ter it:

The Mill calls it “one of our biggest jobs to date,” with “a stag­ger­ing 236 VFX shots made up of 106 foot­ball shots which includ­ed a CG sta­di­um com­plete with flags and ban­ners, crowd repli­ca­tion using Mas­sive, grass clean up and replace­ment, and full roto­scope of all the play­ers.” Impres­sive, sure, but some sure­ly feel that such a degree of labor and atten­tion placed on adver­tis­ing dur­ing tele­vised match­es takes away from the beau­ty of the Beau­ti­ful Game itself.  “Soc­cer is a lie,” says the dis­ap­point­ed would-be foot­baller pro­tag­o­nist of Eduar­do Sacheri’s new nov­el Papers in the Wind. “It’s all a farce … And yet … some­how … there’s still a ‘but.’” You may also con­sid­er the adver­tis­ing enter­prise a lie, but when it can bring togeth­er rare tal­ents from cin­e­ma as well as the rest of the cul­tur­al world for high-impact moments like these, well, some­how… there’s still a “but.” Just think back twen­ty years to anoth­er Nike ad, the one with the clas­sic turn by none oth­er than William S. Bur­roughs:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch “The Secret Tour­na­ment” & “The Rematch,” Ter­ry Gilliam’s Star-Stud­ded Soc­cer Ads for Nike

Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs Spreads Coun­ter­cul­ture Cool on Nike Sneak­ers, 1994

Video: The Day Bob Mar­ley Played a Big Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

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.

Free Audio: Go the F–k to Sleep Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson

in Audio Books, K-12 | June 10th, 2014

Pub­lished back in 2011, Go the F–k to Sleep, the play­ful chil­dren’s sto­ry­book meant for adults, became a big besteller. It topped Ama­zon’s best­seller list for a while. And, before you knew it, celebri­ties were giv­ing pub­lic read­ings of the book. Per­haps you’ll recall Wern­er Her­zog’s fun read­ing at The New York Pub­lic Library.

Samuel L. Jack­son did the hon­ors when the book was released in its offi­cial audio for­mat. Now that read­ing is free to down­load thanks to Audible.com. Unabridged, it runs a mere 6 min­utes. To down­load the audio, you will need to reg­is­ter with Audi­ble. We hope you’ll get a good laugh out of it.

[PS: If you’re inter­est­ed in oth­er ways to down­load a free audio book from Audi­ble, be sure to see their a 30-day free tri­al pro­gram. We have more info on that here.]

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Reads “Go the F**k to Sleep” in NYC (NSFW)

The First Children’s Pic­ture Book, 1658′s Orbis Sen­su­al­i­um Pic­tus

Bob Dylan Clas­sic, “For­ev­er Young,” Ani­mat­ed for Chil­dren

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

in Film, Music | June 9th, 2014

If you came of age dur­ing the 1980s, you might asso­ciate Led Zep­pelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” with junior high school dances — an awk­ward phase of life you’d just as soon for­get. For me, it’s hard to think of “Stair­way to Heav­en” and not cringe. But if you first heard the song in 1971 (when it was released) or soon there­after, per­haps you have bet­ter asso­ci­a­tions. That’s what film­mak­er Cameron Crowe was part­ly try­ing to get across in this delet­ed scene from his 2000 film Almost Famous. In the clip, a high-school boy tries to coax his moth­er (played by the great Frances McDor­mand) into let­ting him write for Rolling Stone. Cen­tral to his pitch is the idea that rock music is intel­lec­tu­al, that “Stair­way to Heav­en” is based on the lit­er­a­ture of Tolkien — some­thing that has been debat­ed by crit­ics and schol­ars. As for why the scene did­n’t make it into the movie, you’d think that it’s because of the song’s length. 8 min­utes is a long time for a film to go with­out any dia­logue. But appar­ent­ly it came down to per­mis­sions. Crowe told Com­ing Soon.Net : “Led Zep­pelin had already giv­en us four songs at a nice price but they said, ‘Stair­way to Heav­en’ we’re not going to give to any­body, and we had already shot a scene that was to ‘Stair­way to Heav­en’ so what was great was we end­ed up putting the scene on the DVD and say­ing ‘Put your record on NOW and score it your­self.’ ” You can try that at home and see if it changes your thoughts on “Stair­way to Heav­en,” for bet­ter or for worse.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dutch­man Mas­ters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Back­wards

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

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

Dimension X: The 1950s SciFi Radio Show That Dramatized Stories by Asimov, Bradbury, Vonnegut & More

in Radio, Sci Fi | June 9th, 2014

Enthu­si­asts of Amer­i­can radio dra­ma usu­al­ly place the for­m’s “Gold­en Age” as begin­ning in the 1920s and end­ing, almost at the stroke of tele­vi­sion’s mass adop­tion, in the 1950s. NBC’s Dimen­sion X, which ran in 1950 and 1951, came some­what late to the game, but it did more than its part to give “old time radio” a strong last decade — indeed, per­haps its strongest. Oth­er famous “seri­ous” sci­ence-fic­tion pro­grams had aired in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, but Dimen­sion X made its mark by adapt­ing short sto­ries by acknowl­edged mas­ters of the craft: Isaac Asi­mov, Ray Brad­bury, Robert Hein­lein, and even a non-genre-bound lit­er­ary mind like Kurt Von­negut. All of these world-cre­ators knew well the val­ue of imag­i­na­tion, and radio, in its way, stood then and remains today the most evoca­tive, imag­i­na­tion-dri­ven medi­um of them all. At the Inter­net Archive (cer­tain­ly a more con­ve­nient old time radio source than the boot­leg cas­sette tapes I used to have to buy) you can down­load all of Dimen­son X’s “adven­tures in time and space, tran­scribed in future tense.”

If you don’t know where in this spec­u­la­tive field of time and space to begin, we’ve high­light­ed a few Dimen­sion X episodes drawn from works of the most notable authors. June 10, 1950’s “The Green Hills of Earth”, based upon the Robert Hein­lein sto­ry of the same name, relates the life of “Noisy” Rhys­ling, a blind space-age trou­ba­dour who real­izes he must pay trib­ute to the plan­et he long ago left behind. The very next week’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”, one of Ray Brad­bury’s many works adapt­ed for the show, describes the apoc­a­lypse through the process­es of the self-main­tain­ing high-tech mir­a­cle house. June 17, 1951’s “Peb­ble in the Sky” takes its theme from the epony­mous Isaac Asi­mov nov­el that thrusts a 20th-cen­tu­ry every­man into a com­plex future of a galac­tic empire, a radioac­tive Earth, and manda­to­ry euthana­sia at age six­ty. And in Feb­ru­ary 11, 1950’s “Report on the Barn­house Effect”, only the show’s third broad­cast, we hear the tes­ti­mo­ny of a tele­ki­net­ic — one who, giv­en that Kurt Von­negut wrote the orig­i­nal sto­ry, it won’t sur­prise you to hear the gov­ern­ment imme­di­ate­ly (and hap­less­ly) tries to weaponize.

“The Green Hills of Earth” (Robert Hein­lein)

“There Will Come Soft Rains” (Ray Brad­bury)

“Peb­ble in the Sky” (Isaac Asi­mov)

“Report on the Barn­house Effect” (Kurt Von­negut)

Relat­ed con­tent:

Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio: The War of the Worlds That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

The Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series Fea­tures 24 Free Plays About Great Sci­en­tists and Sci­en­tif­ic Endeav­ors

Isaac Asimov’s Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sic, The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (1973)

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.

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

in Art, Literature | June 9th, 2014

Every true Renais­sance man need­ed a wealthy patron, and many Ital­ian artist-inven­tor-schol­ar-poets found theirs in Loren­zo de’Medici, scion of a Flo­ren­tine dynasty and him­self a schol­ar and poet. Loren­zo either spon­sored direct­ly or helped secure com­mis­sions for such 15th cen­tu­ry art stars as Michelan­ge­lo Buonaroti and Leonar­do da Vin­ci.

Among Lorenzo’s many artist friends was a painter who most­ly dis­ap­peared from his­to­ry until the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, when the redis­cov­ery of his Pri­mav­era and Birth of Venus made him one of the most pop­u­lar of Renais­sance artists. I’m refer­ring of course, to San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li, por­traitist of Loren­zo de’Medici, his father, and grand­fa­ther and also, it turns out, illus­tra­tor of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Com­e­dy.

In 1550, the so-called “father of art his­to­ry” Gior­gio Vasari record­ed that “since Bot­ti­cel­li was a learned man, he wrote a com­men­tary on part of Dan­te’s poem, and after illus­trat­ing the Infer­no, he print­ed the work.”  The painter also made a por­trait of Dante, Vasari tells us, and drew sketch­es for engrav­ings in the first Flo­ren­tine edi­tion of The Divine Com­e­dy in 1481.

It seems, how­ev­er, that Botticelli’s inter­est in Dante went much fur­ther than even Vasari knew. Some­time late in his career—after he had already achieved local renown in Florence—Botticelli promised his patron Loren­zo an illus­trat­ed Divine Com­e­dy on sheep­skin with a sep­a­rate image for each Can­to, some­thing no artist had yet attempt­ed. 92 of those illus­tra­tions sur­vive, in var­i­ous stages of com­ple­tion, such as the two above, “Pan­der­ers, Flat­ter­ers” (top–the only draw­ing in col­or) and “Giants” (above), both from the Infer­no.

These are two of the most ful­ly real­ized of the col­lec­tion. Accord­ing to art his­to­ri­an Jonathan K. Nel­son, “Bot­ti­cel­li com­plet­ed the out­line draw­ings for near­ly all the can­tos, but only added col­ors for a few. The artist shows his ‘learn­ing’ and artis­tic skill by rep­re­sent­ing each of the three realms each in a dis­tinc­tive way.” Many of Botticelli’s draw­ings for the Pur­ga­to­rio and Par­adiso sur­vive as well, but—like the books themselves—these are increas­ing­ly less detailed (and arguably less inter­est­ing). See “Dan­te’s Con­fes­sion” from the Pur­ga­to­rio above, his “Map of Hell” at the top, “Jacob’s Lad­der” from the Par­adiso below, and the remain­ing 88 illus­tra­tions at World of Dante.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Alber­to Martini’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1901–1944)

Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy

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