Ulysses

Happy Bloomsday.

Bismarck's Voice

Now this is a curiosity. The sound quality is terrible, but hey, this was recorded over a hundred and twenty-five years ago.

Julian Beck, Judith Malina - The Living Theatre May 17, 1975

RIP Judith Malina.

Tynan Interviews Olivier

Kenneth Tynan was born on this date in 1927. Here he speaks with Laurence Olivier in 1966 about a life in acting.

Texas, Our Texas

Happy 169th birthday to the state of Texas.

RIP Mike Nichols

A founding figure of the improvisational comedy scene in the fifties, an innovative filmmaker in the sixties and seventies (then a more ordinary filmmaker in later years), lifelong friend of Susan Sontag (they met in college), a nice guy and a helluva talent. Here's an example of some early work with his comedy partner Elaine May.

Car Talk Guys on Arthur

RIP Tom Magliozzi, whose reach into the culture, along with his brother Ray, proved surprisingly deep.

Los Días de los Muertos

Los Días de los Muertos were celebrated over the weekend in Mexico. This year the event held a different significance for me. Here's a decent explanation of the phenomenon.

Mozart - Requiem

On the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings, this is what came to mind as appropriate music. It's a live performance of one of the best-known works of music expressing sorrow in the face of death. Hebert von Karajan conducts.

Laurel And Hardy - Putting Pants On Philip

On this date in 1927 the first official pairing of Laurel and Hardy was released on film. (They had appeared in a movie together once before but in separate scenes.) Their familiar characters were not yet set, so in this movie they never quite look like "Laurel and Hardy." As a historical artifact it's very interesting. Plus it's funny.

Frenk & Roy - President Kennedy

I can't find on YouTube a version of Sleepy John Estes's song about the death of President Kennedy that has decent sound (Estes's own version and Ry Cooder's cover have been pulled for copyright violations). So this one, covering Cooder's cover of Estes, will have to do. It's well-done, just hard to hear, so here are the lyrics.

Late one Friday evening everybody was sad
We lost the best president we ever had
But he's gone home, gone back home
He's staying away too long

Rode from town to town holdin' up for our rights
Some low down rascal took the President's life
But he's gone home, gone back home
He's staying away too long

Mrs. Kennedy got a mansion on the Island, stayed 9 months, all she'd be
She have another mansion, soon as she reach Washington, D.C.
But he's gone home, gone back home
He's staying away too long

Everybody votes, they don't know what's goin' on
If Goldwater get it, we won't have no home
But he's gone home, gone back home
He's staying away too long

While horses and cars all in a row
I think Mr. Kennedy have a right to this long white robe
But he's gone home, gone back home
He's staying away too long

November 21, 1963 - President John F. Kennedy's Remarks at Brooks Air Force Base

Fifty years ago today. It was a beautiful day.

Newsweek to Cease Print Publication

Presented as another example of the evolving media landscape, and thus in our world the cultural landscape. Newsstand copies of Newsweek appeared for nearly eighty years. When something that seemed to be a permanent fixture of American life disappears, it's worth noting. From the LA Times:

Newsweek's announcement marks a significant transition for the magazine, which was founded in 1933 and has been undergoing its own identity crisis and financial turmoil in recent years. Its problems are emblematic of the disruptions faced broadly by the print media industry, as readers shift online and away from the most valuable advertising. 

Battle of Culloden (1964) Part 1 of 7

This docudrama first shown by the BBC was apparently something of a turning point in how such films could be made, with actors in period costumes being interviewed by a TV reporter. The obvious anachronism is quietly ignored, which works in the end, and the focus on the poorest characters is often moving. If you have time, watch the whole thing.

NASA: Curiosity's Seven Minutes Of Terror

NASA's website is understandably overworked, so this is a link to someone's YouTube copy of the video. Cross your fingers.

Mark Twain in 1909

It just blows me away that stuff like this exists. This was film shot by Thomas Edison the year before Mark Twain died. It's available on the Internet Archive.

Chuck Berry, Poet

Yes, really, at least in the way that a song lyricist can be, such as Lorenz Hart or Bob Dylan. I hadn't heard of Stephen Akey before, but this article is good. H/t the New Yorker's Page-Turner blog.

Chuck Berry has had a hard life: reform school, two prison terms, financial exploitation, bankruptcy, racial discrimination, and much else. It is not his manner to rehearse his private grief in public, though the sly braggadocio of “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” and the crypto-autobiography of “Johnny B. Goode” trade playfully on his public image. Whether the pathos of “Memphis, Tennessee” derives from his own domestic sorrows is, strictly speaking, beside the point, though in a song this tender and touching, no supposition seems entirely extraneous. At any rate, “Memphis, Tennessee” is one of the greatest story songs in American music, all the more affecting for being so offhand and bouncy. 

Hi-Def Video From an RC Plane

The real point to this video is that it's homemade. A micro hi-def video camera was attached to a remote-controlled plane and these images were captured. The results are amazing. Deeper point: the future is here, now. And as a not so incidental side note, privacy in public places is now even rarer than it was. H/t SW.

The Internet is Killing Print - or Not

Fascinating. Since research suggest that people now spend more time online than with paper in their hands, why do advertisers still spend more on print? There actually is a reason.

This Graph Is Disastrous for Print and Great for Facebook-or the Opposite! - The Atlantic

Earliest Dickens Film - The Death of Poor Joe (1901)

A bit of history. This is a recently discovered film made sometime before March 1901 in London, and it depicts the death of the crossing-sweeper Jo (not "Joe" as in the official title of the film) from the novel Bleak House. To give some idea of how old this film is, Queen Victoria, monarch of Britain for most of the 1800s, had died in January 1901.