Watch Dinner for One, the Short Film That Has Become a Baffling New Year’s Tradition in Europe

in Comedy, History | January 1st, 2014

There are myr­i­ad New Year’s Eve cus­toms world­wide. In Japan, toshikoshi soba noo­dles are eat­en to bring in the com­ing year. In North Amer­i­ca, find­ing some­one to share a New Year’s Eve kiss with as the clock winds down has become a boon to the roman­ti­cal­ly-chal­lenged. In Ger­many, how­ev­er, a dif­fer­ent tra­di­tion has tak­en form: every year on Decem­ber 31^st, TV net­works broad­cast an 18-minute-long black and white two-han­der com­e­dy skit.

In 1963, Germany’s Nord­deutsch­er Rund­funk tele­vi­sion sta­tion record­ed a sketch enti­tled Din­ner For One, per­formed by the British comics Fred­die Frin­ton and May War­den. The duo depict­ed an aging but­ler serv­ing his aris­to­crat­ic mis­tress, Miss Sophie, din­ner on the occa­sion of her 90^th birth­day.

Although four addi­tion­al spots have been set at the table, the nonagenarian’s friends have long since passed away, and the but­ler is forced to take their places in drink­ing copi­ous amounts of alco­hol while toast­ing Miss Sophie’s health. Hilar­i­ty, as it is wont to do in such cas­es, ensues.

Since its ini­tial record­ing, the clip has become a New Year’s Eve sta­ple in Ger­many. Although Din­ner For One has nev­er been broad­cast in the U. S. or Cana­da, the clip has spread through­out Europe to Nor­way, Fin­land, Esto­nia, Lithua­nia, Aus­tria, Switzer­land, and beyond the con­ti­nen­t’s shores, to South Africa and Aus­tralia. In Swe­den, a bowd­ler­ized 11-minute ver­sion of the clip has been pro­duced, where, for decency’s sake, much of the butler’s booz­ing was excised along­side its atten­dant comedic effect. In Den­mark, after the nation­al tele­vi­sion net­work failed to broad­cast the sketch in 1985, an avalanche of view­er com­plaints has guar­an­teed its sub­se­quent year­ly appear­ance. Although the cat­e­go­ry is now defunct, the clip held the Guin­ness World Record for Most Fre­quent­ly Repeat­ed TV Pro­gram. As for why the video’s gar­nered so much atten­tion? No one’s real­ly sure. The Wall Street Jour­nal’s Todd Buell posits that the sketch’s easy to under­stand Eng­lish com­bined with a Ger­man long­ing for secu­ri­ty and sim­plic­i­ty may have led to its icon­ic sta­tus. To me, how­ev­er, it seems that the fine­ly tuned phys­i­cal com­e­dy trans­lates read­i­ly beyond any lin­guis­tic bound­aries, and sim­ply hit the right note at the right time.

Above, you can view the orig­i­nal 18-minute comedic opus and cel­e­brate New Year’s day in the same way that much of Europe brought in 2014 (don’t mind the Ger­man intro­duc­tion — the video is in Eng­lish). In future years, you can always find Din­ner for One in our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

From all of us at Open Cul­ture to you, have a hap­py new year!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sci­ence of Willpow­er: 15 Tips for Mak­ing Your New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Last from Dr. Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal

The Ramones Play New Year’s Eve Con­cert in Lon­don, 1977

A New Year’s Wish from Neil Gaiman

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

The 15 Most Popular Posts from Open Culture in 2013

in Most Popular | December 31st, 2013

In 2013, we pub­lished 1300+ posts on a wide range of cul­tur­al sub­jects. Look­ing back through our logs we were able to iden­ti­fy the 15 posts that res­onat­ed most wide­ly with our read­ers. We hope you enjoy this recap, and share some of the items with friends. And we look for­ward to see­ing you in 2014. Hap­py New Year to you all.

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’: A lit­tle spat broke out between Chom­sky and Žižek this sum­mer. Chom­sky got the debate going after he accused Jacques Lacan of being a “total char­la­tan” and Slavoj Žižek of pos­tur­ing rather than offer­ing real intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance. Žižek replied sharply. Chom­sky rebutted. Žižek coun­tered again. Some scored it a draw.

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics: Through­out the year, our res­i­dent film schol­ar Col­in Mar­shall revis­it­ed the favorite films of some of the great­est film­mak­ers — Stan­ley Kubrick, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Woody Allen, and Quentin Taran­ti­no, to name a few. But it also made sense to take a more glob­al view of things, to sur­vey the films loved by 800+ direc­tors and film crit­ics. That’s what you can find here.

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981: In 2013, we fea­tured a series of iso­lat­ed tracks that offer unique insights into clas­sic songs. You might recall Kurt Cobain’s Vocals From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’, and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals on the Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shel­ter’. But your favorite was Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie’s unfor­get­table per­for­mance on Queen’s Under Pres­sure. You have good taste. Bowie fans should also check his list of his Top 100 Books.

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online: When Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize on the strength of her many short sto­ries, Josh Jones gath­ered for you 18 free short sto­ries writ­ten by the now 82-year-old author. They’re all free to read online. Dur­ing the year, we also put togeth­er col­lec­tions of 10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son, Four Sto­ries by Jen­nifer Egan, and 30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace. Be sure to enjoy them as well.

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online: Art cat­a­logues from muse­ums can be down­right expen­sive. That’s why we were excit­ed when The Met and the Guggen­heim put an archive of art cat­a­logues online for free. For no cost, you can read high­ly visu­al intro­duc­tions to the work of Alexan­der Calder, Edvard Munch, Fran­cis Bacon, Gus­tav Klimt & Egon Schiele, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, Frank Lloyd Wright and many oth­er influ­en­tial artists.

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix: Some of the world’s great libraries are also open­ing access to our cul­tur­al her­itage. Take for exam­ple the British Library, which announced this month that it has released over a mil­lion images onto Flickr Com­mons for any­one to use, remix and repur­pose. Culled from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry books, the images include a dizzy­ing array of “maps, geo­log­i­cal dia­grams, beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions, com­i­cal satire, illu­mi­nat­ed and dec­o­ra­tive let­ters, col­or­ful illus­tra­tions, land­scapes, wall-paint­ings” and more.

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme: To cel­e­brate Trane’s birth­day, we fea­tured a rare doc­u­ment from the Smithsonian’s Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Coltrane’s hand­writ­ten out­line of his ground­break­ing jazz com­po­si­tion A Love Supreme. In terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty, this post was just about tied with anoth­er great (but very dif­fer­ent) jazz doc­u­ment: Thelo­nious Monk’s List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig.

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip: Bach wrote his “Crab Canon” in such a way that it could be played back­wards as well as for­wards. But pre­pare your­self for the mind-blow­ing coup de grâce when math­e­mat­i­cal image-mak­er Jos Ley lays the piece out on a Möbius strip.

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion: Hem­ing­way nev­er wrote a trea­tise on the art of writ­ing fic­tion. He did, how­ev­er, leave behind a great many pas­sages in let­ters, arti­cles and books with opin­ions and advice on writ­ing. Some of the best of those were assem­bled in 1984 by Lar­ry W. Phillips into a book, Ernest Hem­ing­way on Writ­ing. We’ve select­ed sev­en of our favorite quo­ta­tions from the book and placed them, along with our own com­men­tary, on this page. Read­ers will also want to peruse these relat­ed posts: 18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time and Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934, plus F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936.

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18: In the ear­ly 2000s, Pink Floyd gui­tarist and singer David Gilmour record­ed a musi­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of William Shakespeare’s “Son­net 18″ at his home stu­dio aboard the his­toric, 90-foot house­boat the Asto­ria. This video of Gilmour singing the son­net was released as an extra on the 2002 DVD David Gilmour in Con­cert, and it’s pret­ty sub­lime.

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es: These days, it could nev­er hurt to make sure you have some good tech chops. Many of you under­stand that, and that’s why you jumped on Har­vard’s free, intro­duc­to­ry com­put­er sci­ence course. Taught by David Malan, the intro­duc­to­ry course cov­ers “abstrac­tion, algo­rithms, encap­su­la­tion, data struc­tures, data­bas­es, mem­o­ry man­age­ment, secu­ri­ty, soft­ware devel­op­ment, vir­tu­al­iza­tion, and web­sites. Lan­guages include C, PHP, and JavaScript plus SQL, CSS, and HTML.” You can always find the course list­ed in the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 800 Free Cours­es Online.

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed 16th-Cen­tu­ry Gro­cery List: Very few of Michelan­gelo’s papers sur­vive today, but we do odd­ly have the gro­cery lists that he had his ser­vant bring to the food mar­ket. “Because the ser­vant he was send­ing to mar­ket was illit­er­ate,” writes the Oregonian‘s Steve Duin, “Michelan­ge­lo illus­trat­ed the shop­ping lists — a her­ring, tortel­li, two fen­nel soups, four anchovies and ‘a small quar­ter of a rough wine’ — with rushed … car­i­ca­tures in pen and ink.” It’s a unique his­tor­i­cal item, cer­tain­ly worth check­ing out.

Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Lets You Fly Through 17th Cen­tu­ry Lon­don: Six stu­dents from De Mont­fort Uni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed a stel­lar 3D rep­re­sen­ta­tion of 17th cen­tu­ry Lon­don, as it exist­ed before The Great Fire of 1666. The three-minute video pro­vides a real­is­tic ani­ma­tion of Tudor Lon­don, and par­tic­u­lar­ly a sec­tion called Pud­ding Lane where the fire start­ed. Grab a small hand­ful of pop­corn, and sit back and enjoy.

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See?: In hon­or of Her­mann Rorschach’s birth­day in Novem­ber, we high­light­ed the orig­i­nal images used in his famous psy­chol­o­gy test back in 1921. And we invit­ed you to say what you saw in these images. The answers were often amus­ing, some­times per­plex­ing.

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975): In a 1975 inter­view, Simone de Beau­voir picked up on ideas she explored in The Sec­ond Sex. This reveal­ing clip can be watched along­side oth­er 2013 posts fea­tur­ing de Beau­voir and her part­ner Jean-Paul Sartre. See Lovers and Philoso­phers — Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Togeth­er in 1967 and Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view.

Bonus: Fill Your New Kin­dle, iPad, iPhone, eRead­er with Free eBooks, Movies, Audio Books, Online Cours­es & More: Just last week, we told you where to load up your new iPads, Kin­dles, and oth­er devices with free intel­li­gent media. If you missed it the first time around, it’s not too late to cir­cle back.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture in 2014. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Free Fun: Play Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Frogger & Other Golden Age Video Games In Your Web Browser

in Video Games | December 31st, 2013

While I was grow­ing up in the 1990s, my par­ents’ refusal to pur­chase gam­ing con­soles gave me no choice but to nav­i­gate the age of Nin­ten­do 64 with a dod­der­ing, near­ly decade-old PC. As my friends were enthralled by the then-daz­zling graph­ics of Mario 64, I was using my lum­ber­ing mastodon of a 486/66 mhz com­put­er as a way to re-expe­ri­ence some of the best con­sole games of years past. Hav­ing down­loaded pro­grams that turned my com­put­er into a key­board-con­trolled Atari, Nin­ten­do, Super Nin­ten­do, or Sega Gen­e­sis, and hav­ing sought out the web­sites that host­ed the game files, I was mol­li­fied by play­ing Pac Man (1980), Castl­e­va­nia (1986), and Aster­oids (1979), amongst dozens of oth­ers.

Ear­li­er this year, the Inter­net Archive set aflame the hearts of nos­tal­gic gamers every­where by open­ing the His­tor­i­cal Soft­ware Col­lec­tion, mak­ing clas­sics such as Karate­ka (1984) and Akal­a­beth (1980) freely avail­able and remov­ing the need to down­load any addi­tion­al soft­ware com­po­nents. On Box­ing Day, the gen­er­ous souls at the Inter­net Archive announced a fol­low-up: the Con­sole Liv­ing Room. For those wish­ing to relive the joys of ear­ly con­soles, sourc­ing clas­sic titles and down­load­ing emu­la­tion pro­grams to turn your com­put­er into a vir­tu­al con­sole is no longer nec­es­sary. Using noth­ing more than their brows­er (Fire­fox is rec­om­mend­ed), users can enjoy the full (albeit tem­porar­i­ly sound­less) expe­ri­ence of ‘70s and ‘80s clas­sics and rar­i­ties on the Atari 2600, Atari 7800 ProSys­tem, Cole­co­V­i­sion, Mag­navox Odyssey², and Astro­cade con­soles. Quick ses­sions of Don­key Kong (1981), Aster­oids  (1987), and Mario Bros. (1988) have nev­er been eas­i­er.

For a full list of games, includ­ing Dig Dug (1984), Frog­ger (1982), and Pac Man (1983), head over to the Inter­net Archive’s Con­sole Liv­ing Room. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, check out their ini­tial announce­ment.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Run Vin­tage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Soft­ware in Your Web Brows­er, Thanks to Archive.org

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

Long Live Glitch! The Art & Code from the Game Now Released into the Pub­lic Domain

Google Puts Over 57,000 Works of Art on the Web

in Art, Google, Museums | December 31st, 2013

In its art preser­va­tion­ist wing, the Cul­tur­al Insti­tute, Google hous­es an enor­mous dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of art­work span­ning cen­turies and con­ti­nents in what it calls the Art Project. Google’s col­lec­tion, writes Drue Katao­ka at Wired, is part of a “big deal […] it sig­nals a broad­er, emerg­ing ‘open con­tent’ art move­ment.” “Besides the Get­ty,” Katao­ka notes, this move­ment to dig­i­tize fine art col­lec­tions includes efforts by “Los Ange­les’ LACMA… as well as D.C.’s Nation­al Gallery of Art, the Dal­las Muse­um of Art, Baltimore’s Wal­ters Art Muse­um, and the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Art Gallery. And Google. Yes, Google.” Google is work­ing hard to defuse this “yes, Google” reac­tion, post­ing fre­quent updates to its col­lec­tion, already a mag­nif­i­cent phe­nom­e­non: “Imag­ine see­ing an image of the Fall of the Rebel Angels by Pieter Breuegel the Elder,” writes Katao­ka, “or Vin­cent van Gogh’s Iris­es, in high res­o­lu­tion.” Now, you can, thanks to Google’s aston­ish­ing­ly vast dig­i­tal archive.

In the Art Project, you can stroll on over to Por­tu­gal’s Museu do Cara­mu­lo, for exam­ple, which Google describes as “an unusu­al muse­um in a small town” off the beat­en path. There, you can see this macabre 1947 Picas­so still life or this 1954 Sal­vador Dali por­trait of a Roman horse­man in Iberia (above). Then head over to the oth­er side of the world, where the Adachi Muse­um of Art in Japan con­tains 165,000 square meters of Japan­ese gar­den: “The Dry Land­scape Gar­den, The White Grav­el and Pine Gar­den, the Moss Gar­den, and The Pond Gar­den.” It also fea­tures gor­geous paint­ings like Yokoya­ma Taikan’s 1931 Autumn Leaves and Hishi­da Shun­so’s adorable 1906 Cat and Plum Blos­soms. Dozens of small­er col­lec­tions like these sit com­fort­ably along­side such exten­sive and well-known col­lec­tions as New York’s MoMA and Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and Flo­rence’s Uffizi. See a tiny sam­pler of the Art Project in the video teas­er above.

Google’s col­lec­tion has great­ly expand­ed since its com­par­a­tive­ly mod­est 2011 roll-out. The com­pa­ny signed part­ner­ship agree­ments with 151 insti­tu­tions in 2012 and the Art Project has grown since then to include over 57,000 dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tions of famous and not-so-famous works of art. Most recent­ly, it has added work to the online col­lec­tions of 34 dif­fer­ent part­ner insti­tu­tions. Google’s announce­ment on its offi­cial blog takes a themed approach, pre­sent­ing ver­sions of sev­er­al trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) works that have just joined the Art Project. Trompe l’oeil is a gim­mick as old as antiq­ui­ty, and Google gives us sev­er­al exam­ples, begin­ning with the styl­ish, under­stat­ed Brazil­ian train sta­tion mur­al right above by Adri­ana Vare­jao. Below, see the ceil­ing of Italy’s Nation­al Archae­o­log­i­cal Muse­um of Fer­rara, a much more clas­si­cal (or Baroque) approach to trompe l’oeil that dis­plays some typ­i­cal ele­ments of the peri­od, includ­ing elab­o­rate geo­met­ric designs, lots of gold, and well-dressed fig­ures star­ing down at view­ers or float­ing off into the heav­ens. See more trompe l’oeil works on Google’s blog, and access their full dig­i­tal col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

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

Read an 18th-Century Eyewitness Account of 8‑Year-Old Mozart’s Extraordinary Musical Skills

in K-12, Music, Science | December 30th, 2013

‘Tis the very nature of par­ent­hood to view one’s chil­dren as excep­tion­al.

Anoth­er aspect of the con­di­tion is spend­ing time in the com­pa­ny of oth­er par­ents, some of whom have yet to mas­ter the art of self-restraint. Their babies are the most phys­i­cal­ly adroit, their tod­dlers the most gen­er­ous, their ele­men­tary school­ers the most culi­nar­i­ly dar­ing.

Pride in one’s chil­dren’s gifts is under­stand­able. A straight­for­ward brag or two is per­mis­si­ble. But after that, I’d real­ly like some cor­rob­o­rat­ing evi­dence, such as the Hon­ourable Daines Bar­ring­ton’s account of meet­ing a “very remark­able young musi­cian” whose father had been drag­ging him around the con­ti­nent on a 3‑and-a-half year con­cert tour.

Clear­ly, Johannes Chrysos­to­mus Wolf­gan­gus Theophilus Mozart (1756–1791) was a very accom­plished kid, but the term “prodi­gy” must have stuck in Friend of the Roy­al Soci­ety Bar­ring­ton’s craw, even after he’d attend­ed some of the boy’s pub­lic per­for­mances. Deter­mined to let sci­ence be the judge, he devised a series of on-the-spot chal­lenges designed to eval­u­ate the boy’s musi­cian­ship beyond the rig­or­ous prac­tice sched­ule imposed by his dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an father. (We all saw Amadeus, right?)

Bar­ring­ton’s detailed descrip­tion of these exper­i­ments would make a gim­crack Sci­ence Fair project for any lit­tle Ein­stein smart enough to get through 18th-cen­tu­ry typog­ra­phy with­out throw­ing a tantrum because the s’s all look like f’s (see the 18th cen­tu­ry text below). It might take a recre­ation­al math­e­mu­si­cian on the order of Vi Hart to tru­ly appre­ci­ate the com­plex­i­ty of the tasks that Bar­ring­ton assigned his young sub­ject (some­thing to do with hav­ing him play five con­tra­dic­to­ry lines simul­ta­ne­ous­ly…).

I can inter­pret the data with regard to some of Bar­ring­ton’s oth­er find­ings. Mozart, he wrote, not only looked like a young child, he ditched his harp­si­chord to chase around a cat and ran about the room “with a stick between his legs by way of a horse.” So it’s not the clas­si­cal peri­od equiv­a­lent of a stage mom lying about her kid’s age to bet­ter his chances at an audi­tion. Actu­al­ly, it’s always a relief to hear about these super-kids act­ing like… well, my kids.

Read Bar­ring­ton’s let­ter to the Roy­al Soci­ety — Account of a Very Remark­able Young Musi­cian — in its entire­ty here or below. And by all means share it with the worst offend­ers on your PTA.

via Rebec­ca Onion and her Slate blog, The Vault

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano

Great Vio­lin­ists Play­ing as Kids: Itzhak Perl­man, Anne-Sophie Mut­ter, & More

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Ayun Hal­l­i­day pro­vid­ed an hon­est account of home­school­ing her 12-year-old son in The East Vil­lage Inky #51 Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Every Appearance James Brown Ever Made On Soul Train. So Nice, So Nice!

in Dance, Music | December 29th, 2013

Are you ready for some Super Broth­er Music for the Soul?

Yes? How for­tu­itous! We just hap­pen to have 45 min­utes worth of James Brown Soul Train appear­ances from the early-to-mid-’70s to share. Get down!

It’s worth not­ing that Brown’s band, the JBs, were the only ones in the his­to­ry of the show who host Don Cor­nelius trust­ed to play live. The God­fa­ther of Soul ran a tight ship, fin­ing band mem­bers for sour notes and untidy cos­tumes, and it shows. The dance show’s stage was tight, but the per­for­mances here are even tighter, as lean and mean as those funkadel­ic Cur­tis Gib­son ensem­bles!

If your New Year’s Eve plans pale in com­par­i­son with the playlist below, can­cel them and stay in. Feel good. So good. We got you.

Hot Pants

Get Up (I Feel Like A) Sex Machine 2:36

Get On The Good Foot 4:06

Soul Pow­er 6:51

Make It Funky 9:53

Cold Sweat 11:07

Try Me 14:22

Please Please, Please 17:21

Say It Loud I’m Black and I’m Proud 17:57

Super Bad 23:53  (fea­tur­ing Soul Train Gang dancer Dami­ta Jo Free­man’s insane Robot)

Papa Don’t Take No Mess 26:18

My Thang 29:57

Hell 33:33 (the lit­tle girl shar­ing the stage is Brown’s daugh­ter, Dean­na)

The Pay­back 35:57

Damn Right, I Am Some­body 40:25 (with Fred Wes­ley & the JB’s)

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

James Brown Saves Boston After MLK’s Assas­si­na­tion, Calls for Peace Across Amer­i­ca (1968)

James Brown Brings Down the House at the Paris Olympia, 1971

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, includ­ing No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late  and the Zinester’s Guide to NYC. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The International Children’s Digital Library Offers Free eBooks for Kids in Over 40 Languages

in Books, Education, English Language, K-12, Language Lessons | December 29th, 2013

For all of the free lit­er­a­ture and essays avail­able online, a sur­pris­ing­ly small amount is geared toward chil­dren. Even less is aimed at chil­dren who speak for­eign lan­guages.

The Inter­na­tion­al Children’s Dig­i­tal Library offers chil­dren ages 3–13 free access to the best avail­able children’s lit­er­a­ture in more than 40 lan­guages. Librar­i­ans find and dig­i­tize books pub­lished around the world and present them in their orig­i­nal lan­guages.

The site acts as a meta learn­ing tool. It is designed to be easy for chil­dren to use by themselves—by sim­ply click­ing “Read Books,” a list of favorite titles pops up—but kids can learn how to search too, by their own age, types of char­ac­ters, genre, book length, lan­guage and geo­graph­i­cal region.

The home­page fea­tures rec­om­mend­ed and pop­u­lar titles, like Tyrone the Hor­ri­ble, writ­ten in Span­ish. Where trans­la­tion rights exist, the library works with vol­un­teer trans­la­tors to pro­vide addi­tion­al lan­guage ver­sions.

The library is a project of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Maryland’s Human-Com­put­er Inter­ac­tion Lab and there is a research com­po­nent to the project. Work­ing with chil­dren in New Zealand, Hon­duras, Ger­many, and the Unit­ed States, researchers are look­ing at how chil­dren per­ceive oth­er cul­tures out­side their own.

The library’s broad­er mis­sion is to make it pos­si­ble for chil­dren all over the world to learn to use a library sys­tem and read a range of qual­i­ty lit­er­a­ture. The inter­face aims as much at inter­na­tion­al chil­dren as it does immi­grant chil­dren in Amer­i­can cities and rur­al areas.

Books are avail­able for free and with­out an account. An account, how­ev­er, allows a child to cre­ate their own book­shelf of favorites that can be shared with oth­er users. A guide for teach­ers includes a train­ing man­u­al and tips for how to use the library to teach cre­ative writ­ing, library search skills and for­eign lan­guages.

You will find the Inter­na­tion­al Children’s Dig­i­tal Library in our col­lec­tion 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More.

More dig­i­tized chil­dren’s books can be found at the Library of Con­gress.

Adults, don’t miss our oth­er col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Clas­sic Win­nie-the-Pooh Read by Author A.A. Milne in 1929

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

The Clas­sic 1956 Oscar-Win­ning Children’s Film, The Red Bal­loon

Read 9 Free Articles by Hunter S. Thompson That Span His Gonzo Journalist Career (1965–2005)

in Literature, Writing | December 27th, 2013

Image  via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Most read­ers know Hunter S. Thomp­son for his 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Sav­age Jour­ney to the Heart of the Amer­i­can Dream. But in over 45 years of writ­ing, this pro­lif­ic observ­er of the Amer­i­can scene wrote volu­mi­nous­ly, often hilar­i­ous­ly, and usu­al­ly with decep­tive­ly clear-eyed vit­ri­ol on sports, pol­i­tics, media, and oth­er vicious­ly addic­tive pur­suits. (“I hate to advo­cate drugs, alco­hol, vio­lence, or insan­i­ty to any­one,” he famous­ly said, “but they’ve always worked for me.”) His dis­tinc­tive style, often imi­tat­ed but nev­er repli­cat­ed, all but forced the coin­ing of the term “gonzo” jour­nal­ism. But what could define it? One clue comes in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas itself, when Thomp­son reflects on his expe­ri­ence in the city, osten­si­bly as a reporter: “What was the sto­ry? Nobody had both­ered to say. So we would have to drum it up on our own. Free Enter­prise. The Amer­i­can Dream. Hor­a­tio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now: pure Gonzo jour­nal­ism.”

You’ll find out more in the Paris Review’s inter­view with Thomp­son, in which he recounts once feel­ing that “jour­nal­ism was just a tick­et to ride out, that I was basi­cal­ly meant for high­er things. Nov­els.” Sit­ting down to begin his prop­er lit­er­ary career, Thomp­son took a quick job writ­ing up the Hel­l’s Angels, which let him get over “the idea that jour­nal­ism was a low­er call­ing. Jour­nal­ism is fun because it offers imme­di­ate work. You get hired and at least you can cov­er the f&cking City Hall. It’s excit­ing.” And then came the real epiphany, after he went to cov­er the Ken­tucky Der­by for Scan­lan’s: “Most depress­ing days of my life. I’d lie in my tub at the Roy­al­ton. I thought I had failed com­plete­ly as a jour­nal­ist. Final­ly, in des­per­a­tion and embar­rass­ment, I began to rip the pages out of my note­book and give them to a copy­boy to take to a fax machine down the street. When I left I was a bro­ken man, failed total­ly, and con­vinced I’d be exposed when the stuff came out.”

Indeed, the expo­sure came, but not in the way he expect­ed. Below, we’ve col­lect­ed ten of Thomp­son’s arti­cles freely avail­able online, from those ear­ly pieces on the Hel­l’s Angels and the Ken­tucky Der­by to oth­ers on the 1972 Pres­i­den­tial race, the Hon­olu­lu Marathon, Richard Nixon, and wee-hour con­ver­sa­tions with Bill Mur­ray. But don’t take these sub­jects too lit­er­al­ly; Thomp­son always had a way of find­ing some­thing even more inter­est­ing in exact­ly the oppo­site direc­tion from what­ev­er he’d ini­tial­ly meant to write about. And that, per­haps, reveals more about the gonzo method than any­thing else.

“The Motor­cy­cle Gangs: Losers and Out­siders” (The Nation, 1965) The arti­cle that would become the basis for Thomp­son’s first book, Hel­l’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs. “When you get in an argu­ment with a group of out­law motor­cy­clists, you can gen­er­al­ly count your chances of emerg­ing unmaimed by the num­ber of heavy-hand­ed allies you can muster in the time it takes to smash a beer bot­tle. In this league, sports­man­ship is for old lib­er­als and young fools.”

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Rolling Stone, 1971) The Gonzo jour­nal­ism clas­sic first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine in Novem­ber 1971, com­plete with illus­tra­tions from Ralph Stead­man, before being pub­lished as a book in 1972.  Rolling Stone has post­ed the orig­i­nal ver­sion on its web site.

“Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail in ’72″ (Rolling Stone, 1973) Excerpts from Thomp­son’s book of near­ly the same name, an exam­i­na­tion of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty can­di­date George McGov­ern’s unsuc­cess­ful bid for the Pres­i­den­cy that McGov­ern’s cam­paign man­ag­er Frank Mankiewicz called “the least fac­tu­al, most accu­rate account” in print. “My own the­o­ry, which sounds like mad­ness, is that McGov­ern would have been bet­ter off run­ning against Nixon with the same kind of neo-‘radical’ cam­paign he ran in the pri­maries. Not rad­i­cal in the left/right sense, but rad­i­cal in a sense that he was com­ing on with a new… a dif­fer­ent type of politi­cian… a per­son who actu­al­ly would grab the sys­tem by the ears and shake it.”

“The Curse of Lono” (Play­boy, 1983) Thomp­son and Stead­man’s assign­ment from Run­ning mag­a­zine to cov­er the Hon­ololu marathon turns into a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly “ter­ri­ble mis­ad­ven­ture,” this one even involv­ing the old Hawai­ian gods. “It was not easy for me, either, to accept the fact that I was born 1700 years ago in an ocean-going canoe some­where off the Kona Coast of Hawaii, a prince of roy­al Poly­ne­sian blood, and lived my first life as King Lono, ruler of all the islands, god of excess, unde­feat­ed box­er. How’s that for roots?”

“He Was a Crook” (Rolling Stone, 1994) Thomp­son’s obit­u­ary of, and per­son­al his­to­ry of his hatred for, Pres­i­dent Richard M. Nixon. “Some peo­ple will say that words like scum and rot­ten are wrong for Objec­tive Jour­nal­ism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objec­tive rules and dog­ma that allowed Nixon to slith­er into the White House in the first place.

“Doomed Love at the Taco Stand” (Time, 2001) Thomp­son’s adven­tures in Cal­i­for­nia, to which he has returned for the pro­duc­tion of Ter­ry Gilliam’s film adap­ta­tion of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas star­ring John­ny Depp. “I had to set­tle for half of Dep­p’s trail­er, along with his C4 Porsche and his wig, so I could look more like myself when I drove around Bev­er­ly Hills and stared at peo­ple when we rolled to a halt at stop­lights on Rodeo Dri­ve.”

“Fear & Loathing in Amer­i­ca” (ESPN.com, 2001) In the imme­di­ate after­math of 9/11, Thomp­son looks out onto the grim and para­noid future he sees ahead. “This is going to be a very expen­sive war, and Vic­to­ry is not guar­an­teed — for any­one, and cer­tain­ly not for any­one as baf­fled as George W. Bush.”

“Pris­on­er of Den­ver” (Van­i­ty Fair, 2004) A chron­i­cle of Thomp­son’s (posthu­mous­ly suc­cess­ful) involve­ment in the case of Lisl Auman, a young woman he believed wrong­ful­ly impris­oned for the mur­der of a police offi­cer. “ ‘We’ is the most pow­er­ful word in pol­i­tics. Today it’s Lisl Auman, but tomor­row it could be you, me, us.”

“Shot­gun Golf with Bill Mur­ray” (ESPN.com, 2005) Thomp­son’s final piece of writ­ing, in which he runs an idea for a new sport —com­bin­ing golf, Japan­ese mul­ti­sto­ry dri­ving ranges, and the dis­charg­ing of shot­guns — by the com­e­dy leg­end at 3:30 in the morn­ing. “It was Bill Mur­ray who taught me how to mor­ti­fy your oppo­nents in any sport­ing con­test, hon­est or oth­er­wise. He taught me my humil­i­at­ing PGA fade­away shot, which has earned me a lot of mon­ey… after that, I taught him how to swim, and then I intro­duced him to the shoot­ing arts, and now he wins every­thing he touch­es.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Remem­bers Jim­my Carter’s Cap­ti­vat­ing Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Sherlock Holmes Is Now in the Public Domain, Declares US Judge

in Books, Law, Literature | December 27th, 2013

Chief Judge Rubén Castil­lo of the Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court of the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois has ruled that the char­ac­ters and sto­ry lines used in 50 Sher­lock Holmes texts pub­lished by Arthur Conan Doyle before Jan. 1, 1923 “are no longer cov­ered by Unit­ed States copy­right law and can be freely used by cre­ators with­out pay­ing any licens­ing fee to the Conan Doyle estate,” reports The New York Times. This gives con­tem­po­rary authors the abil­i­ty to write their own Sher­lock Holmes mys­tery sto­ries and keep con­tribut­ing to a rich tra­di­tion of detec­tive fic­tion. It would also seem­ing­ly put pre-1923 texts firm­ly in the pub­lic domain. (You can find The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes and oth­er relat­ed sto­ries in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions. ) Leslie S. Klinger, the edi­tor of The Com­plete Anno­tat­ed Sher­lock Holmes, who filed the civ­il suit, praised the judge’s deci­sion, say­ing “Peo­ple want to cel­e­brate Holmes and Wat­son, and now they can do that with­out fear.” Now it’s time for them to write some­thing that can hold a can­dle to what Conan Doyle cre­at­ed those many years ago.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

via Arts Beat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Arthur Conan Doyle & The Cot­tin­g­ley Fairies: How Two Young Girls Fooled Sher­lock Holmes’ Cre­ator

Arthur Conan Doyle Fills Out the Ques­tion­naire Made Famous By Mar­cel Proust (1899)

Watch John Cleese as Sher­lock Holmes in The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It

William Blake’s Hallucinatory Illustrations of John Milton’s Paradise Lost

in Art, Literature, Poetry | December 27th, 2013

When I saw William Blake’s illus­tra­tions for the book of Job and for John Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso at the Mor­gan Library a few years ago, I was first struck by how small the intri­cate water­col­ors are. This should not have been surprising—these are book illus­tra­tions, after all. But William Blake (1757–1827) is such a tremen­dous force, his work so mon­u­men­tal­ly strange and beau­ti­ful, that one expects to be over­pow­ered by it. In per­son, his draw­ings are indeed impres­sive, but they are equal­ly so for their care­ful atten­tion to design and com­po­si­tion as for their heavy, often quite ter­ri­fy­ing sub­jects.

Look, for exam­ple, at the play of pat­terns behind the fig­ures in the illus­tra­tion above, from an edi­tion of Milton’s Par­adise Lost. The fig­ure in the cen­ter depicts Milton’s grotesque­ly graph­ic alle­gor­i­cal con­struc­tion of Sin. In Mil­ton, this char­ac­ter “seemed woman to the waist, and fair,”

But end­ed foul in many a scaly fold
Volu­mi­nous and vast, a ser­pent armed
With mor­tal sting: about her mid­dle round
A cry of hell hounds nev­er ceas­ing barked
With wide Cer­ber­ian mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If ought dis­turbed their noise, into her womb,
And ken­nel there, yet there still barked and howled,
With­in unseen.

Blake spares us the hor­ror of the lat­ter image—in fact he gets a lit­tle vague on the details of the creature’s nether­parts, which were always dif­fi­cult to imag­ine, and empha­sizes the “fair” parts above (in the ver­sion below, the serpent/dog thing looks like a cos­tume prop). Milton’s descrip­tion always seemed to me one of the cru­elest, most misog­y­nis­tic ren­der­ings of the female body in lit­er­a­ture. Blake’s por­trait relieves Milton’s nas­ti­ness, mak­ing Sin sym­pa­thet­ic and, well, kin­da hot, a Blakean feat for sure. The char­ac­ters to her left and right are Satan and Death, respec­tive­ly.

Blake loved Mil­ton, and illus­trat­ed his work more than any oth­er author. And he illus­trat­ed Par­adise Lost more than any oth­er Mil­ton, in three sep­a­rate com­mis­sions (peruse them all here).  The first set dates from 1807, com­mis­sioned by Joseph Thomas. (The Satan, Sin, and Death scene above comes from the Thomas set.) The sec­ond set, from which the image at the top comes, was com­mis­sioned in 1808 by Thomas Butts. Blake patron John Lin­nell com­mis­sioned the third set of illus­tra­tions in 1822. Only three of the Lin­nell paint­ings survive—none of the scene above. In one of the 1822 illus­tra­tions (below), Satan spies on Adam and Eve as they canoo­dle in the gar­den.

Blake’s obses­sion with Par­adise Lost inspired his own cracked the­o­log­i­cal fable, Mil­ton: a Poem in Two Books, with its bizarre pre­am­ble in which Blake promis­es to “buil[d] Jerusalem / In England’s green and pleas­ant land.” One writer calls Blake’s Mil­ton “a lengthy and dif­fi­cult apoc­a­lyp­tic poem with a fas­ci­nat­ing hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry qual­i­ty.” The poem caused many of Blake’s con­tem­po­raries to con­clude that “he was quite mad.” But I think his work shows us a man with all of his fac­ul­ties, and maybe a few extra besides, although his paint­ings, like his weird­er poet­ry, can also seem like crazed hal­lu­ci­na­tions. He meant his var­i­ous Par­adise Lost illus­tra­tions to cor­rect ear­li­er ren­der­ings by oth­er artists, includ­ing a polit­i­cal satire by car­toon­ist James Gill­ray in 1792 and a 1740 paint­ing by William Hog­a­rth that today resem­bles the cov­er of a bad fan­ta­sy nov­el. See both of those ear­li­er ver­sions here.

via Bib­liokept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Spenser and Mil­ton (Free Course)

Find Works by Mil­ton in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks Col­lec­tions

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