Every Time “Making Love” Was Uttered in a Woody Allen Film: A Four Minute Montage

in Comedy, Film | December 27th, 2013

Woody Allen once said that “sex with­out love is a mean­ing­less expe­ri­ence, but as far as mean­ing­less expe­ri­ences go it’s pret­ty damn good.” Most read­ers would be com­pelled to think that Allen’s slight frame, trade­mark horn-rimmed glass­es, and stut­ter­ing deliv­ery would pre­clude his char­ac­ters from achiev­ing much of any­thing in the sex­u­al realm. After all, how could the con­sum­mate neb­bish­es that Allen por­trays in most of his films pos­si­bly impress a mem­ber of the fair­er sex? Some­how, how­ev­er, in spite of their whing­ing neu­roti­cism, Allen’s geek incar­nates trans­form into gal­lants of prodi­gious pro­por­tions in almost every role. Those want­i­ng con­crete evi­dence may take a look at Take the Mon­ey and Run (1969), Annie Hall (1977), or Man­hat­tan (1979), among myr­i­ad oth­ers, and note that Allen’s char­ac­ters repeat­ed­ly end up with women who seemed to make a gross error in sex­u­al selec­tion.

Last month, we brought you a super­cut of Woody Allen’s stam­mers, com­pris­ing a 44-minute grad­u­ate course in Allen’s awk­ward man­ner­isms. Today, we con­tin­ue this tra­di­tion and bring you anoth­er Allen super­cut; this time, the mon­tage con­sists of four-odd min­utes of every occur­rence of the term “mak­ing love” in Allen’s films, begin­ning with What’s New Pussy­cat (1965) and end­ing in To Rome With Love (2012). Mer­ry Christ­mas!

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woody Allen Answers 12 Uncon­ven­tion­al Ques­tions He Has Nev­er Been Asked Before

Watch a 44-Minute Super­cut of Every Woody Allen Stam­mer, From Every Woody Allen Film

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Woody Allen Box­es a Kan­ga­roo, 1966

Akira Kurosawa to Ingmar Bergman: “A Human Is Not Really Capable of Creating Really Good Works Until He Reaches 80”

in Film, Letters | December 26th, 2013

In July of 1988, Ing­mar Bergman—retired from film—turned 70. He had every rea­son to believe that his best work lay behind him. After all, he had won three Acad­e­my Awards (and the Irv­ing G. Thal­berg Memo­r­i­al Award), two BAF­TAs, sev­en Cannes prizes, six Gold­en Globes, and a host of oth­er hon­ors. His oeu­vre includ­ed such seem­ing­ly unsur­pass­able achieve­ments as Wild Straw­ber­ries, The Sev­enth Seal, Fan­ny and Alexan­der, and too many more to name, and that year he pub­lished his mem­oirs, The Mag­ic Lantern, in which he con­fessed “I prob­a­bly do mourn the fact that I no longer make films.”

But no!, writes the Swedish director’s Japan­ese coun­ter­part, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, the “real work is just begin­ning.” At least that’s how Kura­sawa, then 77, felt about his “sec­ond baby­hood.” Kuro­sawa wrote the let­ter above to Bergman on his birth­day, pro­fess­ing his deep admi­ra­tion. The feel­ing went both ways. The typ­i­cal­ly self-dep­re­cat­ing Bergman once called his The Vir­gin Spring a “a lousy imi­ta­tion of Kuro­sawa” and added, “at the time my admi­ra­tion for the Japan­ese cin­e­ma was at its height. I was almost a samuri myself!” Read the full tran­script of Kurosawa’s birth­day wish­es to Bergman below (orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Chap­lin mag­a­zine).

Dear Mr. Bergman,

Please let me con­grat­u­late you upon your sev­en­ti­eth birth­day.

Your work deeply touch­es my heart every time I see it and I have learned a lot from your works and have been encour­aged by them. I would like you to stay in good health to cre­ate more won­der­ful movies for us.

In Japan, there was a great artist called Tes­sai Tomio­ka who lived in the Mei­ji Era (the late 19^th cen­tu­ry). This artist paint­ed many excel­lent pic­tures while he was still young, and when he reached the age of eighty, he sud­den­ly start­ed paint­ing pic­tures which were much supe­ri­or to the pre­vi­ous ones, as if he were in mag­nif­i­cent bloom. Every time I see his paint­ings, I ful­ly real­ize that a human is not real­ly capa­ble of cre­at­ing real­ly good works until he reach­es eighty.

A human is born a baby, becomes a boy, goes through youth, the prime of life and final­ly returns to being a baby before he clos­es his life. This is, in my opin­ion, the most ide­al way of life.

I believe you would agree that a human becomes capa­ble of pro­duc­ing pure works, with­out any restric­tions, in the days of his sec­ond baby­hood.

I am now sev­en­ty-sev­en (77) years old and am con­vinced that my real work is just begin­ning.

Let us hold out togeth­er for the sake of movies.

With the warmest regards,

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Via Cinephil­ia and Beyond

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick to Ing­mar Bergman: “You Are the Great­est Film­mak­er at Work Today” (1960)

Ing­mar Bergman Eval­u­ates His Fel­low Film­mak­ers — The “Affect­ed” Godard, “Infan­tile” Hitch­cock & Sub­lime Tarkovsky

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

Dick Cavett’s Wide-Rang­ing TV Inter­view with Ing­mar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Ander­s­son (1971)

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

How the Iconic 1968 “Earthrise” Photo Was Made: An Engrossing Visualization by NASA

in Astronomy, Photography, Science | December 26th, 2013

Let’s let NASA paint the pic­ture for you:

In Decem­ber of 1968, the crew of Apol­lo 8 became the first peo­ple to leave our home plan­et and trav­el to anoth­er body in space. But as crew mem­bers Frank Bor­man, James Lovell, and William Anders all lat­er recalled, the most impor­tant thing they dis­cov­ered was Earth.

Using pho­to mosaics and ele­va­tion data from Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO), this video com­mem­o­rates the 45th anniver­sary of Apol­lo 8’s his­toric flight by recre­at­ing the moment when the crew first saw and pho­tographed the Earth ris­ing from behind the Moon. [See the orig­i­nal pho­to here.] Nar­ra­tor Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visu­al­iza­tion of the view from both inside and out­side the space­craft accom­pa­nied by the onboard audio of the astro­nauts. The visu­al­iza­tion draws on numer­ous his­tor­i­cal sources, includ­ing the actu­al cloud pat­tern on Earth from the ESSA‑7 satel­lite and dozens of pho­tographs tak­en by Apol­lo 8, and it reveals new, his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion about the Earth­rise pho­tographs. It has not been wide­ly known, for exam­ple, that the space­craft was rolling when the pho­tos were tak­en, and that it was this roll that brought the Earth into view.

The visu­al­iza­tion estab­lish­es the pre­cise tim­ing of the roll and, for the first time ever, iden­ti­fies which win­dow each pho­to­graph was tak­en from. The key to the new work is a set of ver­ti­cal stereo pho­tographs tak­en by a cam­era mount­ed in the Com­mand Mod­ule’s ren­dezvous win­dow and point­ing straight down onto the lunar sur­face. It auto­mat­i­cal­ly pho­tographed the sur­face every 20 sec­onds. By reg­is­ter­ing each pho­to­graph to a mod­el of the ter­rain based on LRO data, the ori­en­ta­tion of the space­craft can be pre­cise­ly deter­mined.

This video above is pub­lic domain and can be down­loaded here. In 1972, astro­nauts took anoth­er famous pic­ture of the Earth, known as The Big Blue Mar­ble. You can watch a film (“Overview”) that com­mem­o­rates that pho­to­graph and explores the whole con­cept of see­ing the Earth from afar. And, of course, you should always see the Carl Sagan-nar­rat­ed film, The Pale Blue Dot, too.

via Metafil­ter/Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Won­der, Thrill & Mean­ing of See­ing Earth from Space. Astro­nauts Reflect on The Big Blue Mar­ble

Astro­naut Takes Amaz­ing Self Por­trait in Space

Astro­naut Chris Had­field Sings David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” On Board the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Werner Herzog Presents Two Visions of America in How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck (1981) and God’s Angry Man (1976)

in Film | December 26th, 2013

As an Amer­i­can, I admit that only an out­sider can view my coun­try with the great­est clar­i­ty. And as long as we want to look at the Unit­ed States through for­eign eyes, why not look through those of Wern­er Her­zog? Even aside from his wild­ly cre­ative body of work as a fea­ture film­mak­er — he made Aguirre, the Wrath of God; he made Fitz­car­ral­do; he made Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call New Orleans — Her­zog the doc­u­men­tar­i­an has offered up a host of his own rich and sur­pris­ing per­cep­tions. He’s trav­eled the globe, from the Less­er Antilles (La Soufrière) to Antarc­ti­ca (Encoun­ters at the End of the World) to south­ern France’s pre­his­toric caves (Cave of For­got­ten Dreams), look­ing intense­ly and com­ment­ing even more intense­ly on peo­ple, from cham­pi­on ski jumpers (The Great Ecsta­sy of the Wood­carv­er Stein­er) to Viet­nam pris­on­ers of war (Lit­tle Dieter Needs to Fly) to wildlife film­mak­ers eat­en by bears (Griz­zly Man). By com­par­i­son, most of us might con­sid­er places like the auc­tion hous­es and tel­e­van­gel­i­cal broad­cast stu­dios of Amer­i­ca com­par­a­tive­ly unex­ot­ic ter­ri­to­ry.

Not Her­zog, how­ev­er: when he watch­es a live­stock sale, he hears in the rapid-fire bab­ble of the auc­tion­eer “the last poet­ry pos­si­ble, the poet­ry of cap­i­tal­ism,” and when he watch­es a tele­vi­sion preach­er, he sees an appeal to “the para­noia and crazi­ness of our civ­i­liza­tion.” Here we have two fruits of these strands of Her­zog’s fas­ci­na­tion with his now-adopt­ed home­land of Amer­i­ca: 1976’s How Much Wood Could a Wood­chuck Chuck and 1981’s God’s Angry Man. Like many oth­er doc­u­men­taries of Her­zog’s, and not a few of his fic­tion films, these doc­u­men­taries deal with pur­suits so spe­cial­ized, obses­sive, or both that watch­ing them in prac­tice becomes mes­mer­iz­ing. The first wit­ness­es a series of auc­tion­eers as their obscure, qua­si-musi­cal pat­ter keeps one high­ly par­tic­u­lar gear of the econ­o­my spin­ning. The sec­ond, one even more con­cerned with mon­ey and with an orig­i­nal title of Creed and Cur­ren­cy, looks into the world of Los Ange­les’ flam­boy­ant, dona­tion-demand­ing, FCC-hat­ing, seem­ing­ly untir­ing reli­gious broad­cast­er Dr. Gene Scott. Do cow­boy-hat­ted rur­al busi­ness­men and man­ic tel­e­van­ge­lists accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent Amer­i­ca? Hard­ly. But inter­pret­ed by Her­zog, they show you the coun­try in a way nobody else could.

Find more great films in our col­lec­tion of 600 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

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

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Has a Beef With Chick­ens

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.

Charles Mingus’ “Top Secret” Eggnog Recipe Contains “Enough Alcohol to Put Down an Elephant”

in Food & Drink | December 24th, 2013

Image by Tom Mar­cel­lo Web­ster, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Just in time for a hard-drink­ing Christ­mas, the Vil­lage Voice brings us the “top secret” eggnog recipe from “Angry Man of Jazz” Charles Min­gus. Despite his gen­er­al­ly iras­ci­ble tem­pera­ment, Min­gus had a leg­endary “zeal for par­ties and drink” and “felt the yule­tide spirit—or spir­its, if you will—according to biog­ra­ph­er Janet Cole­man.” Min­gus passed his recipe to Cole­man over the phone, and she pub­lished it in Mingus/Mingus: Two Mem­oirs. The ‘nog, the Voice tells us, “calls for enough alco­hol to put down an ele­phant,” so if you hap­pen to be host­ing one, this might just come in handy. Humans seem to dig it too. Cole­man called it “a con­coc­tion so deli­cious and mind-blow­ing, you would do any­thing to make sure you saw him at Christ­mas.”

Charles Min­gus’ “Top Secret” Eggnog

* Sep­a­rate one egg for one per­son. Each per­son gets an egg.
* Two sug­ars for each egg, each per­son.
* One shot of rum, one shot of brandy per per­son.
* Put all the yolks into one big pan, with some milk.
* That’s where the 151 proof rum goes. Put it in grad­u­al­ly or it’ll burn the eggs,
* OK. The whites are sep­a­rate and the cream is sep­a­rate.
* In anoth­er pot- depend­ing on how many peo­ple- put in one shot of each, rum and brandy. (This is after you whip your whites and your cream.)
* Pour it over the top of the milk and yolks.
* One tea­spoon of sug­ar. Brandy and rum.
* Actu­al­ly you mix it all togeth­er.
* Yes, a lot of nut­meg. Fresh nut­meg. And stir it up.
* You don’t need ice cream unless you’ve got peo­ple com­ing and you need to keep it cold. Vanil­la ice cream. You can use eggnog. I use vanil­la ice cream.
* Right, taste for fla­vor. Bour­bon? I use Jamaica Rum in there. Jamaican Rums. Or I’ll put rye in it. Scotch. It depends.
See, it depends on how drunk I get while I’m tast­ing it.

If you’re drink­ing tonight, make sure you drink respon­si­bly!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Try George Orwell’s Recipe for Christ­mas Pud­ding, from His Essay “British Cook­ery” (1945)

Pre­pare Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al, Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe on Thanks­giv­ing

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

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

Try George Orwell’s Recipe for Christmas Pudding, from His Essay “British Cookery” (1945)

in Food & Drink, Literature | December 24th, 2013

British cook­ing has been the butt of many jokes, and seri­ous thought-pieces have been devot­ed to “why British food was so bad for so long.” While that arti­cle blames WWI for the decline of Eng­lish Cui­sine, the stig­ma long pre­cedes the 20th cen­tu­ry. In his unpub­lished essay “British Cook­ery,” for exam­ple, George Orwell opens with a quote from Voltaire, who wrote that Britain has “a hun­dred reli­gions and only one sauce.” This, Orwell writes, “was untrue” and “is equal­ly untrue today.” His “today” was 1945, before the best British cui­sine was Indi­an. And though he does defend his country’s cook­ing, and did so in anoth­er essay pub­lished that year in the Evening Stan­dard, Orwell also makes some crit­i­cal com­ments that con­firm some of the stereo­types, call­ing the British diet “a sim­ple, rather heavy, per­haps slight­ly bar­barous diet” and writ­ing: “Cheap restau­rants in Britain are almost invari­ably bad, while in expen­sive restau­rants the cook­ery is almost always French, or imi­ta­tion French.”

The essay is an exhaus­tive sur­vey of the British palate of the time, and it con­cludes with some of Orwell’s own recipes for sweets, includ­ing trea­cle tart, orange mar­malade, plum cake, and, last­ly, Christ­mas pud­ding. You can see the stained type­script of the last two recipes above, and read the full tran­script of Orwell’s “British Cook­ery” here (the recipes are at the end). Hav­ing no expe­ri­ence with the strange world of British sweets and pies, I’ll have to take The Guardian’s Alex Renton’s word when he tells us that “the Orwell Christ­mas pud­ding is noth­ing rad­i­cal.” Nonethe­less, I’m tempt­ed to try this recipe more than any of the oth­ers Ren­ton men­tions, even if I may not get my hands on real suet or sul­tanas. Read a tran­script of Orwell’s Christ­mas pud­ding recipe below.

CHRISTMAS PUDDING.

Ingre­di­ents:

1 lb each of cur­rants, sul­tanas & raisins


2 ounces sweet almonds


1 ounces sweet almonds


1 ounces bit­ter almonds


4 ounces mixed peel


½ lb brown sug­ar


½ lb flour


¼ lb bread­crumbs


½ tea­spoon­ful salt


½ tea­spoon­ful grat­ed nut­meg


¼ tea­spoon­ful pow­dered cin­na­mon


6 ounces suet


The rind and juice of 1 lemon


5 eggs


A lit­tle milk


1/8 of a pint of brandy, or a lit­tle beer

 Method. Wash the fruit. Chop the suet, shred and chop the peel, stone and chop the raisins, blanch and chop the almonds. Pre­pare the bread­crumbs. Sift the spices and salt into the flour. Mix all the dry ingre­di­ents into a basin. Heat the eggs, mix them with the lemon juice and the oth­er liq­uids. Add to the dry ingre­di­ents and stir well. If the mix­ture is too stiff, add a lit­tle more milk. Allow the mix­ture to stand for a few hours in a cov­ered basin. Then mix well again and place in well-greased basins of about 8 inch­es diam­e­ter. Cov­er with rounds of greased paper. Then tie the tops of the basins over the floured cloths if the pud­dings are to be boiled, or with thick greased paper if they are to be steamed. Boil or steam for 5 or 6 hours. On the day when the pud­ding is to be eat­en, re-heat it by steam­ing it for 3 hours. When serv­ing, pour a large spoon­ful of warm brandy over it and set fire to it.

In Britain it is unusu­al to mix into each pud­ding one or two small coins, tiny chi­na dolls or sil­ver charms which are sup­posed to bring luck.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell and Dou­glas Adams Explain How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

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

Pre­pare Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al, Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe on Thanks­giv­ing

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

Horror Legend Christopher Lee Presents a Heavy Metal Version of The Little Drummer Boy

in Comedy, Music | December 23rd, 2013

Every year, around this time, I give thanks that I no longer work retail. Sore feet and rude cus­tomers go with the ter­ri­to­ry, but Decem­ber (nay, Novem­ber) brings with it a ter­ri­fy­ing onslaught of Lit­tle Drum­mer Boys. I know folks who can’t abide Grand­ma Got Run Over By a Rein­deer, or the Singing Dogs’ Jin­gle Bells, but as far as I’m con­cerned, noth­ing has­tens a psy­chot­ic break faster than a few dozen pa rum pa pum pum pum rum pa pum pum pum rum pa pum pum pums.

It seems hor­ror leg­end Christo­pher Lee, famil­iar to younger fans as Star Wars’ Count Dooku, feels my pain..and rel­ish­es it. It’s a cliche for an aging actor to release an album of sea­son­al chest­nuts, but the 91-year-old Lee’s A Heavy Met­al Christ­mas is a thing apart. His take on The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy is the son­ic equiv­a­lent of Rose­mary’s Baby.

I can’t say that I pre­fer Lee’s to any oth­er ver­sion — they’re all tor­tu­ous in my book- but I’m at peace with admir­ing it in the abstract. A stunt? Maybe, but he seems whol­ly sin­cere in his video greet­ing below, wish­ing us all a very hap­py Christ­mas and “for the sake of the world and those peo­ple in it” a safe New Year.

Ayun Hal­l­i­day reveals the true mean­ing of of Xmas here. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Lee Nar­rates a Beau­ti­ful Ani­ma­tion of Tim Burton’s Poem, Night­mare Before Christ­mas

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

Orson Welles Records Two Songs with the 1980s Heavy-Met­al Band Manowar

The Rolling Stones “Shattered” Covered by Eddie Vedder & Julie Andrews (Ok, It’s Really Jeanne Tripplehorn)

in Music | December 23rd, 2013

Pearl Jam front­man Eddie Ved­der and actress Jeanne Trip­ple­horn (Basic Instinct, The Firm, Big Love) per­formed this delight­ful cov­er of The Rolling Stones’ 1978 hit “Shat­tered” at a recent fundrais­er for a non-prof­it called Heal EB. EB stands for Epi­der­mol­y­sis Bul­losa, a dis­ease that caus­es blis­ters (some­times poten­tial­ly fatal ones) to erupt on the skin after the mildest trau­ma. You can lis­ten to The Rolling Stones’ orig­i­nal record­ing here, and fol­low along with the lyrics here. Or, bet­ter yet, you can close your eyes and sim­ply imag­ine Julie Andrews singing these risqué‎ lines. Yeah, on sec­ond thought, do that. H/T Marc

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”: A High­light in Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

How to Get Great Deals on Great Books Through Audible.com

in Audio Books | December 22nd, 2013

Open Cul­ture has had a rela­tion­ship with Audible.com for close to six years, and, here and there, we’ve told you about their 30-day free tri­al, which gives you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to down­load a free audio book, lis­ten to it, and then decide whether you want to become an Audi­ble sub­scriber or not. (You can keep the audio book regard­less of the deci­sion you make.) I per­son­al­ly became an Audi­ble sub­scriber a long time ago, and while I’ve always enjoyed lis­ten­ing to audio books, I’ve recent­ly real­ized that an Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion can be a real deal if you’re a fan of big audio books and great lec­tures. Let me break it down for you.

If you sign up for Audi­ble’s Gold plan, you pay $158 for 12 books over a year. (You get one book credit/download per month … and you’re billed in install­ments month­ly.) That trans­lates to $13.20 per book on aver­age. That’s not a bad price (giv­en that main­stream audio books often sell for $30). But here’s where the Audi­ble plan becomes a great deal. Ear­li­er this fall, I re-read Joyce’s Ulysses and want­ed to lis­ten to a pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read unabridged nar­ra­tion of the nov­el that runs 27 hours. For the cost of one book cred­it — $13.20 — I down­loaded the entire audio book. Nax­os, the pub­lish­er, sells it for  £85.00, or $134.00. Audi­ble sells it to non-mem­bers for $104.00.

Here’s anoth­er exam­ple. For the hol­i­days, I’m lis­ten­ing to Mark Lewisohn’s new Bea­t­les biog­ra­phy Tune In: The Bea­t­les: All These Years. The well-reviewed book runs 944 pages in print and 42 hours on audio. The audio usu­al­ly retails for some­where between $53 and $63 — much more than the $13.20 you can snag it for on the Audi­ble plan.

If this sounds like a good plan for you, you can sign up for Audi­ble’s Gold plan via this link. You could also try out their 30-day free tri­al. And, of course, there’s always our col­lec­tion: 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. What­ev­er way you go, we wish you hap­py lis­ten­ing.

NB: Audi­ble is an Amazon.com sub­sidiary, and we’re a mem­ber of their affil­i­ate pro­gram.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin & Michael Collins Go Through Customs and Sign Immigration Form After the First Moon Landing (1969)

in Science | December 22nd, 2013

Click for larg­er image

I’m not say­ing Man of Steel depressed me, but I found myself pin­ing for Richard Donner’s sense of humor recent­ly as I watched Zack Snyder’s take on Super­man for the first time. I thought of a scene—Superman has to go through immi­gra­tion once he’s dis­cov­ered. They won’t let him in. He’s too high-mind­ed to resist, so he sleeps in an air­port wait­ing room for six months. Plen­ty of dra­mat­ic poten­tial there.

Less pre­pos­ter­ous but still absurd is the sto­ry around the doc­u­ment above, signed by Neil Arm­strong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins after they land­ed from the first manned trip to the moon. The three astro­nauts came down in the Pacif­ic Ocean and were tak­en to Hon­olu­lu on July 24, 1969, where they sup­pos­ed­ly signed the immi­gra­tion form, declar­ing a car­go of moon rocks and dust.

The form, NASA spokesper­son John Yem­brick told Space.com, is authen­tic. And, he says, it was a joke. He does not, how­ev­er, say exact­ly when the form was signed, either on the day the crew splashed down or some­time after­ward. They did not actu­al­ly arrive in Hon­olu­lu until the 26th. After their return,

The astro­nauts were trapped inside a NASA trail­er as part of a quar­an­tine effort just in case they brought back any germs or dis­ease from the moon. They even wore spe­cial bio­log­i­cal con­tain­ment suits when they walked out on the deck of the USS Hor­net after being retrieved. 

NASA trans­port­ed them to Hous­ton, quar­an­tine trail­er and all, and they emerged from iso­la­tion three weeks lat­er.

Astro­nauts these days most­ly just need a show­er when they touch down, although inter­net savvy Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion astro­naut Chris Had­field did recent­ly tell some cus­toms relat­ed sto­ries on a Red­dit AMA—maybe noth­ing so weird as the cur­rent space snor­kel­ing up there, but still a pret­ty great read.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Moon Hoax Not”: Short Film Explains Why It Was Impos­si­ble to Fake the Moon Land­ing

Michio Kaku Schools Takes on Moon Land­ing-Con­spir­a­cy Believ­er on His Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic Pod­cast

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

Find Astron­o­my Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 800 Free Cours­es Online

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