The Muppets – Bohemian Rhapsody
An evening pause: A very talented actor once told me that a great deal of all comedy is based on contrast, on juxtaposing extreme opposites in unexpected ways.
Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
The Black Stallion
An evening pause: The central sequence from the 1979 movie, The Black Stallion, when the shipwrecked boy Alec succeeds in taming the shipwrecked Arabian horse. The combination of Carmine Coppola’s music and Caleb Deschanel’s photography in this sequence is unmatched.
Richard Feynman – The beauty of a flower from a scientist’s perspective
The Statler Brothers – Flowers On The Wall
How to make a potato gun
Crossing the Wabash Cannonball Bridge
An evening pause: Driving across the Wabash Cannonball Bridge going from Indiana to Illinois. The bridge is single lane, with a wooden deck, and over a hundred years old.
What’s really cool is how the driver is able to drive while holding his camera overhead through his sun roof.
Wrecking Crew Orchestra
Ennio Morricone: Gabriel’s Oboe and theme from Cinema Paradiso
Chet Atkins – Mr. Sandman
Celtic Harp Orchestra – Morrison’s Jig
An evening pause: Here’s some more harp, this time played in a way you’ve never heard it by the Celtic Harp Orchestra.
Anne Postic – Celtic Harp at Lorient in 2008
Kitaro – Cosmic Love
“The Grasshopper and the Ants” – Disney’s Silly Symphony (1934)
An evening pause: I do believe the grasshopper sings the national anthem of the modern liberal, at the beginning of this cartoon from 1934.
Mitch & Mickey – A Kiss At The End Of The Rainbow
An evening pause: From the movie A Mighty Wind (2003), a wonderful and funny pseudo documentary about the 1960s folk era. The folk team of Mitch & Mickey never existed, but this song is superb, made even more poignant by the story.
Mary Black – Thorn Upon The Rose
An evening pause: On St. Patrick’s Day, how about one of Ireland’s best singers.
No lose, it’s just the same
Tears of joy, tears of pain.
They’re hand in hand, they come as one.
Never see the Moon without promise of the Sun.
For all the roses, for all the blows.
I’d rather feel the thorn then to never see the rose.So when you give the handsome flower
Don’t forget the thorn upon the rose
Its cut is deep and its scar lasts forever
It follows love wherever love goes.
Dakuwaqa’s Garden – Underwater footage from Fiji
Cleopatra enters Rome
An evening pause: As today is the Ides of March, I am always reminded of Julius Caesar. With that thought in mind, here is a clip from the 1953 movie, Cleopatra, staring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, and Richard Burton. The movie overall isn’t very good, though the first half with Rex Harrison playing Julius Caesar is worth watching, partly because of Harrison and partly because it is very clearly inspired by George Bernard Shaw’s play Caesar and Cleopatra.
That first half also includes the scene below, when Cleopatra enters Rome, bringing with her her son by Caesar. A more classic example of late Hollywood spectacle would be hard to find. It is silly, absurd, impossible, and yet totally engrossing. And it was done with no computer effects. When Hollywood PR used to say a movie had a “cast of thousands,” they really meant it.
Gordon Lightfoot – If You Could Read My Mind
Kevin Olusola on cello
Rockwell Retro Encabulator
Les Paul and Mary Ford – How high the Moon
An evening pause: From the late 1950s, Alastair Cooke introduces Les Paul and Mary Ford, who then demonstrate some advanced music technology (and some smokin’ music) that would only become commonplace in the coming decades.
Cat walking upside down under the bed
Dominic Boudreault – The City Limits (music by Hans Zimmers)
Chicken Chicken Chicken
An evening pause: For anyone who has ever attended a science conference and listened to the presentations there, this presentation embodies that experience better than any I have ever seen. It was so good it won an Ig Noble award.
If you want to read the whole paper, you can find it here [pdf].
Dicken with Milah and Korben – Everything Counts
An evening pause: As my wife Diane said after watching this, “Gee, I wish I had had a cool dad like that.”
Ronald Jenkees – The Fast Song
An evening pause: How about some amazing piano jamming by Ronald Jenkees.
Pendulum waves
Mirusia Louwerse and André Rieu – Ave Maria
Under Pressure – David Bowie and Annie Lennox live performance
An evening pause: Yesterday I showed the rehearsal. Here’s their live performance of “Under Pressure” at the Freddie Mercury tribute, April 20, 1992.