A while back, we had some fun here examining the limits of pop culture in a post titled The Limits of Pop Culture. The impetus for that post was an anecdote concerning high school seniors (people born, roughly, in the early 1990s) who did not recognize the source of the words "Baby you can drive my car." If it took only 45 years for the Beatles to be somewhat forgotten, we wondered, what would happen in 1045 years?
Thanks to this impressive find, we no longer have to wonder.
[via Kottke]
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Paragraph of the Week
From Roger Ebert's blog post, Goodbye to All That:
I realize so clearly now that conversations are all about the flow, the timing, the music. Now that IBM's Big Blue has beaten a grandmaster at chess and promises to win at Jeopardy, I have a challenge that will grind it to a halt: I challenge Big Blue to tell a joke in a voice that has the tone and the timing, the words and the music, just right.
Friday, February 11, 2011
A Review of Sequitur: David Foster Wallace
The only thing I knew about Sequitur: David Foster Wallace before actually attending the performance of it last night at New York's Symphony Space was that it was some type of musical interpretation of some of the writings of David Foster Wallace. So here, in brief, is what this performance was: the reading of two short stories written by DFW accompanied by live music and, in one case, a complementary visual component.
First up was Everything is Green, based on the short story of the same name that is collected in Girl with Curious Hair. This performance was fairly straightforward, featuring a recorded reading of, to the best of my knowledge, the complete text of the story supplemented by the piano and what I'm pretty sure was a flute. The program guide states that the composer of the piece, Randall Woolf, was fascinated by the "outsider English" in which the story is written and that the music was meant to complement this argot.
By far the longer and more interesting portion of the evening was the night's second performance, Tri-Stan, based on the short story Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko, collected in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Mary Nessinger was the highlight of this show, as she brilliantly sang selections from the source text, nicely matching her performance to the tone of the written word, cleverly coalescing instances of heightened drama with winking asides to the audience. The music had a fuller sound, as a full ten musicians huddled on the crowded stage along with Nessinger and the conductor, Paul Hostetter. A nice sized screen positioned above the performers' heads was used to project a range of images, from the text being read by Nessinger to publicity shots of the various real-life sitcoms mentioned in the story and, even, shadowed images of gyrating co-eds during certain relevant points.
I'll be honest: I'm fretfully unfit to judge the musical merits of each piece. My ear isn't refined enough to fairly do that. I much preferred the second presentation, though, precisely because of its non-strictly musical elements. For one, the difference between a live and a recorded reading of the source texts is just huge. The projected images helped me follow the action, as it was simply hard to hear, at times, the readings above the musical accompaniment. But, most important, Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko--a mythical retelling of the tragedy of TV executive working before and during the rise of cable--is perfectly suited for this type of musical performance. Where the music distracted at times from Everything is Green, Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko, in all its mock-epic glory, was enhanced by the live reading and the images and the music.
All in all, these are two creative interpretations of two perhaps lesser-known DFW stories. I feel that I better appreciate the stories after seeing them performed, which, for me, was much the point of the evening. Also, I learned that, apparently, I'll attend anything that has the name David Foster Wallace in the title.
First up was Everything is Green, based on the short story of the same name that is collected in Girl with Curious Hair. This performance was fairly straightforward, featuring a recorded reading of, to the best of my knowledge, the complete text of the story supplemented by the piano and what I'm pretty sure was a flute. The program guide states that the composer of the piece, Randall Woolf, was fascinated by the "outsider English" in which the story is written and that the music was meant to complement this argot.
By far the longer and more interesting portion of the evening was the night's second performance, Tri-Stan, based on the short story Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko, collected in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Mary Nessinger was the highlight of this show, as she brilliantly sang selections from the source text, nicely matching her performance to the tone of the written word, cleverly coalescing instances of heightened drama with winking asides to the audience. The music had a fuller sound, as a full ten musicians huddled on the crowded stage along with Nessinger and the conductor, Paul Hostetter. A nice sized screen positioned above the performers' heads was used to project a range of images, from the text being read by Nessinger to publicity shots of the various real-life sitcoms mentioned in the story and, even, shadowed images of gyrating co-eds during certain relevant points.
I'll be honest: I'm fretfully unfit to judge the musical merits of each piece. My ear isn't refined enough to fairly do that. I much preferred the second presentation, though, precisely because of its non-strictly musical elements. For one, the difference between a live and a recorded reading of the source texts is just huge. The projected images helped me follow the action, as it was simply hard to hear, at times, the readings above the musical accompaniment. But, most important, Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko--a mythical retelling of the tragedy of TV executive working before and during the rise of cable--is perfectly suited for this type of musical performance. Where the music distracted at times from Everything is Green, Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko, in all its mock-epic glory, was enhanced by the live reading and the images and the music.
All in all, these are two creative interpretations of two perhaps lesser-known DFW stories. I feel that I better appreciate the stories after seeing them performed, which, for me, was much the point of the evening. Also, I learned that, apparently, I'll attend anything that has the name David Foster Wallace in the title.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
McBain's Action Movie
Making the internet rounds this morning is a video some have called an Easter Egg from the early years of The Simpsons. Remember McBain, the Schwarzenegger caricature? Some have claimed that the short snippets of his movies depicted in the show--watched by various members of the Simpson family--are all part of a larger McBain action movie in which the hero hunts down a corrupt senator and avenges his partner's death.
Problem is, these scenes aren't portrayed in chronological order. For example, the closing scene of this purported action movie below is actually from McBain's second-ever appearance, in the season 2 episode "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" This changes this compilation from an extremely clever hidden in-joke told by multiple generations of The Simpsons writers to just a slick editing job by the fine folks at College Humor.
Video is still worth watching, though.
Problem is, these scenes aren't portrayed in chronological order. For example, the closing scene of this purported action movie below is actually from McBain's second-ever appearance, in the season 2 episode "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" This changes this compilation from an extremely clever hidden in-joke told by multiple generations of The Simpsons writers to just a slick editing job by the fine folks at College Humor.
Video is still worth watching, though.
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