Time:
“Fairytale of New York,” The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl
This song came into being after Elvis Costello bet The Pogues’ lead singer Shane MacGowan that he couldn’t write a decent Christmas duet. The outcome: a call-and-response between a bickering couple that’s just as sweet as it is salty.
Update: Looks like the video I’ve linked to has been taken down, so here’s a more recent version on the “official” Pogues YT channel.
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…At which point, Sylvester the cat looks up from his long fruitless vigil outside the mouse hole in the baseboard and sighs with feeling to the narrator, “You’re not jutht whithlin’ Dickthie, brother.”
“Gift Wrapped” is like every Looney Tune or Merry Melody — a mere six minutes long. But with Christmas movies that’s a good thing. The western and the musical may be dead, but the charmless Xmas movie is now a genre all of its own and doing gangbusters. Do they teach it in film school? In fact, it’s really two genres: there are intentionally charmless Christmas movies like Bad Santa 2, and then the accidentally charmless ones, like that Ben Affleck flick where he’s some heartless yuppie who rents a bluecollar family for the holiday season so he can enjoy the authentic down-home Yule he’s never known. In such pictures, the great American Christmas, once the ne plus ultra of e pluribus unum, appears on celluloid an utterly exhausted seam.
So, besieged by such horrors, I thought I’d retreat to short-form holiday entertainment, or alternatively short-form holiday entertainment within long-form non-holiday fare. Any thirty seconds of “Gift Wrapped”, for example, is more rewarding than all three-and-a-half hours of Bad Santa 5 or whatever it is: six minutes of pure Looney Tunes pleasure in which Sylvester determines to land the only Christmas present he really wants — Tweety. The film opens with Granny slumbering upstairs and the impatient cat sneakily unwrapping his gift. It’s a rubber mouse and he’s not happy about it. “Why couldn’t I get thumthin’ practical?” he complains. “Like a real mouse.”
Mark Steyn, “A Frizzy Christmas”, Steyn Online, 2018-12-15.
Foundation for Economic Education
Published 22 Dec 2020Support Out of Frame on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OutofFrameShow
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As we enter peak holiday season, most people have their shopping done by now, but as always, many are scrambling last-minute for their purchases. And if you aren’t one of those early-birds fortunate enough to procure a PS5 or Xbox Series X, you can guarantee that you won’t be able to find one unless you’re willing to pay $1,200 to a scalper.
Many are understandably frustrated. How is it fair for people to buy up the consoles at $500 and sell for nearly double or triple the cost? “There ought to be a law” against that kind of thing — right?
Well, in short, there’s nothing wrong with scalping — and a few economic lessons will help explain why.
Scarcity is real and so is time-preference. Scalpers (and even bots) show that demand for some goods is so high that people are willing to pay several times the list price — which could provide a lot of information to Sony and Microsoft on how many consoles to produce and in what parts of the world. They could factor that information into the future, so there would be less problems with availability, but most retailers make this information exchange impossible.
______________________________
CREDITS:Produced by Sean W. Malone
Written by Jen Maffessanti & Sean W. Malone
Edited by Paul Nelson
Asst. Edited by Jason Reinhardt
“Imagine” didn’t go over wild with the parents, who mumbled along unenthusiastically. To be honest, I’d prefer John and Yoko’s peacenik dirge, “(Happy Xmas) War Is Over”, though that might be a little premature and anyway that song suffers from the disadvantage of mentioning Xmas. On the radio you can hear “Frosty” and “Rudolph” and James Taylor’s new post-9/11 version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”, but anyone with young children finds themselves exposed to a strange alternative repertoire of unseasonal favourites. My friend Tammy emerged from her daughter’s kindergarten concert in a rage: not just no Christmas carols, but no “Jingle Bells”. The only song she recognized was Lionel Bart’s spectacular melisma pile-up from Oliver!, “Whe-e-e-e-ere Is Love?”, which is not designed to be sung en masse. “They sounded like they were dying,” she fumed, before going off to beard the school board, who explained that “Jingle Bells” had been given the heave-ho on the grounds that it might be insensitive to those of a non-jingly persuasion.
On balance, I prefer the approach of the London Borough of Brent, one of Britain’s sternest loony-left councils but far more sporting than the Scrooge-packed school boards across the Atlantic. Back in the Eighties, Brent decreed that it would permit municipal performances of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” as long as they were accompanied by a couple of non-heterosexist choruses of “I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus”. That’s a lot less vicious than replacing the entire seasonal repertoire with obscurantist dirges for solstice-worshippers. Anyone can St-Nix “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”, the hard part is finding something to put in its place.
There are very few good Hannukah songs, never mind Kwanza or the Islamic festivals of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The reason for the dearth of Hanukkah songs is that for most of the last century the Jews were too busy cranking out Christmas songs — Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas”, Mel Torme wrote “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts roasting on an open fire)”, Jerry Herman “We Need A Little Christmas”, Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” and “The Christmas Waltz”, Johnny Marks “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer”, “Have A Holly Jolly Christmas”, “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” and a zillion others. As far as I know, the only Christian to offer to return the compliment was stiff-necked Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah (whose “Come To The Manger” has been recorded by Donny Osmond). Senator Hatch confirmed to me during his short-lived presidential campaign in 1999 that he was working on a Hanukkah song. I don’t know whether he’s finished it, but I would have to say on balance that, musically speaking, the Christians got the better end of this deal.
Mark Steyn, “Imagine Christmas”, Steyn Online, 2019-12-23 (originally published in The Spectator, 2004).
Uploaded on 15 Dec 2015
The Monkees perform “Riu Chiu” from Episode 47, “The Monkees’ Christmas Show”.
H/T to Kathy Shaidle for the link.
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 13 May 2014It’s a comedy! It’s got errors! It’s a comedy of errors!
This is Shakespeare’s comedy of crossdressing. I thought it was hilarious. This movie version is the 1996 one, and it’s really good.
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Viva La Dirt League
Published 14 Dec 2020Rowan thinks its a good idea to play X-mas music in the store for the entire Christmas period … and the staff aren’t happy
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Coltrane’s late style emerged in his 1960s quartets. Now leading and writing for his own group, and newly clean of drink and drugs, he was finally able to pursue his vision and the possibilities of the music to the limits of form and expression — and ultimately beyond both. The further he went, the more ambitious and less accessible the music became, until it was incomprehensible to almost all of his audience and even to some of his closest collaborators. In the logic of modernism, further means better. But “faster” and “louder” aren’t necessarily better, so why should “further” be the supreme critical value? To judge Coltrane’s late-style art is, in an important sense, to judge modernism itself, and especially American modernism.
Dominic Green, “John Coltrane and the End of Jazz”, The Weekly Standard, 2018-08-26.
But sometimes I’ll find myself looking at the posts of a Facebook friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend and I see these random aggregations of misspelled words. They have the occasional capital letter or punctuation mark thrown in, as though the writer knew they were supposed to include those, but not how or why.
And I find myself wondering “What’s it like inside their head?” I mean, you’d probably be going through life slightly angry, thinking everybody was secretly laughing at you behind their hands, that there was some arcane code of keyboard use you were violating. The whole internet would be like one of those fancy restaurants with too much silverware and you never know which implement to use to eat which dish.
Tamara Keel, “I’ve always wondered…”, view from the porch, 2018-08-24.
Sabaton History
Published 17 Dec 2020At the end of July 1943, Hamburg burned. A fleet of British heavy bombers had dropped thousands of incendiaries over the city, turning it into a hearth of unprecedented dimensions. Numerous major fires merged together into a single storm of fire. Structures combusted under the immense heat, as strong winds drove the inferno through the streets at rapid speed. Craving for more oxygen, the firestorm sucked human bodies into the flames and immediately incinerated or mummified them. Thousands of others died slowly of carbon monoxide poisoning in their shelters. By the end of the raid, 60% of Hamburg had been burned out and more than 35,000 of its inhabitants were dead. But while the Germans were shocked to disbelief, for the British the firestorm has worked as intended. And this was just the beginning.
Support Sabaton History on Patreon:
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Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Brodén, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Karolina Dołęga
Sound Editor: Marek Kamiński
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory
Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.comColorized by:
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/Sources:
Imperial War Museums: C3677,HU 63075, HU 63089, MH 27517, CL3400, MH 24747,CL3395, MH 24764, CH 6386, CH 6386, CH 6275, CH 15879, C 3371, CH 18371, C 3918, C2367, HU44269, C 4748, PST 14359, C 4973,
Bundesarchiv
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Icons from the Noun Project: Arrow by 4B Icons, Bomb by P Thanga Vignesh, fire building by dDara, Skull by Muhamad UlumAll music by: Sabaton
An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
Atun-Shei Films
Published 8 Sep 2020A brief history of early motion picture technology and artistry, from the magic lantern to Georges Méliès. Presented in glorious 3-D!!!
To fully enjoy this video, you will need a pair of red/blue anaglyph 3-D glasses. They can be acquired cheaply at a number of online vendors, and you can even make them at home by coloring sheets of clear plastic with permanent markers: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Own…
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Twitter ► https://twitter.com/atun_shei~REFERENCES~
[1] William Godwin. Lives of the Necromancers (1834). Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/…
[2] Paul Clee. Before Hollywood: From Shadow Play to the Silver Screen (2005). Houghton Mifflin, Page 12-21
[3] Chris Bennett. “The Psychedelic Phantasmagoria Shows of the 18th Century” (2018). Cannabis Culture https://www.cannabisculture.com/conte…
[4] Clee, Page 39-47
[5] Clee, Page 84-85
[6] “Dissolving View Magic Lantern Slides.” Magic Lantern World https://magiclanternist.com/2016/09/2…
[7] “A Color Photograph Pioneer Comes to Light” (2018). The European Synchrotron https://www.esrf.eu/home/news/general…
[8] Clee, Page 83
[9] Clee, Page 85-95
[10] “Freeze Frame: Eadweard Muybridge’s Photography of Motion” (2000). National Museum of American History https://americanhistory.si.edu/muybri…
[11] “Sallie Garner at a Gallop.” IMDB https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2221420/…
[12] Laurent Mannoni. “Etienne-Jules Marey: French Physiologist and Chronophotographer.” Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema https://www.victorian-cinema.net/marey
[13] Clee, Page 107-109
[14] Harald Sack. “The Kinetoscope and Edison’s Wrong Way to Invent the Cinema” (2020). SciHi Blog http://scihi.org/kinetoscope-edison/
[15] Clee, Page 127
[16] Clee, Page 139-141
[17] James Travers. “Georges Méliés Biography: Life and Films” (2017). FrenchFilms.org http://www.frenchfilms.org/biography/…
[18] Clee, Page 158-159
Colby Cosh, “Q: Where’s Cosh?”, ColbyCosh.com, 2005-02-21
Myron Magnet, “Free Speech in Peril: Trigger warning: may offend the illiberal or intolerant”, City Journal, 2015-04.
Sabaton History
Published 10 Dec 2020August 1914. Europe marched to war. Heavy boots resounded in unison over the pavement, while proud banners flew overhead the soldiers. Their leaders had promised them a short war. In a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, each man would return home as a hero. Cavalrymen in embroidered coats, white gloves, and plumed caps rode ahead, surging towards the front in search of promised glory. But the perceived enthusiasm, eagerly exploited by the propaganda, was not widely shared. Instead, it was the gloomy atmosphere, full of fear and doubt.
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Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Brodén, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Karolina Dołęga
Sound Editor: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory
Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.comColorizations by:
Klimbim
Cassowary ColorizationsSources:
Imperial War Museums: HU 68424, HU 68463, HU 68487, Q 81765, PST 2734, Q 81840B, Q 93521, Q 53472, Q70232, Q 115391
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
National Archives NARA
National Army Museum
Rijksmuseum
Bundesarchiv
Library of Congress
Picture of Three Emperors courtesy of Anna Moscowriuo
Pictures from French Manufacture of Weapons and Cycles courtesy of mediatheques.saint-etienne.fr
Picture from the Battle of Bulair courtesy of Dupnitsa Municipality, Historical Museum
Pictures of the French departure to War, courtesy of 66emeri from Wikimedia
Picture from the Battle of Mons courtesy of Champagnepapi22 from Wikimedia Commons
Map of Europe courtesy of Altenhof from Wikimedia CommonsAll music by: Sabaton
An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
Fourth, beboppers had attitude: “Instead of smooth and hummable melodies designed for dancing, the beboppers created angular tunes with unexpected accents and irregular phrases — and they expected people to listen, rather than jitterbug, to these songs and the solos that followed. The boppers emerged as jazz’s first ‘angry young men.’ They saw themselves as artists first and entertainers second, and they demanded that others respect them and their music accordingly.”
Some of the new jazz was undeniably brilliant, and many of the bebop and hard bop recordings that have been remastered and reissued only seem to acquire more appeal with age. Albums like Parker’s Now’s the Time, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Dexter Gordon’s Go, Sonny Rollins Vol. 2, and Coltrane’s Blue Train are timeless, bristling with energy, jaw-dropping improvisation, and deep spirituality. But when they cast their spell, they laid complete waste to the pop-jazz tradition. Bebop offered challenges musicians thought they could never get from traditional swing bands, as well as an improvisational ethic that provided an escape from the tough work of writing strong melodies. Some of the players saw this: In 1949 drummer Buddy Rich fired his band because his players “just want to play bop and nothing else. In fact,” Rich added, “I doubt they can play anything else.” Louis Armstrong, whose centennial is being celebrated this year, once referred to bebop as “crazy, mixed-up chords that don’t mean nothing at all.” Before long swing had become a joke. Producer Quincy Jones recalls in the documentary Listen Up that as a young musician he once hid backstage from bebop trumpeter Miles Davis so Miles wouldn’t know he was in the swinging band that had just left the stage.
Suddenly, jazz was Art. Gone were the days when 5,000 people would fill the Savoy Ballroom to lindy hop to the sunny sounds of Ella Fitzgerald or Count Basie. Bebop was impossible to dance to, which was fine with the alienated musicians in Eisenhower’s America. (You can bet this era will be well represented by beatnik [Ken] Burns [in his then-unreleased Jazz documentary TV series].) Even bebop’s own founders weren’t safe from the ideological putsch: when Bird himself made an album of pop standards with a band backed up by a string section, he was labeled a sellout. Then Elvis, to simplify matters greatly, reinvented swing for a new generation, and the Beatles arrived with sacks of great new melodies, and jazz was over as a popular music. Remarkably, beboppers and their fans still blame the drop-off on American racism. Miles once called pop music “white music,” and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in a documentary about the Blue Note label, offers that “whites couldn’t appreciate anything that came from black culture.” Yet whites were as responsible as blacks for making stars of Ella, Basie, and other black swing artists. Only two kinds of music were allowed on the radio following the news of FDR’s death: classical and Duke Ellington.
Mark Gauvreau Judge, “Out of Tunes”, Chicago Reader, 2000-08-31.
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