Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
Escape from Berlin
An evening pause: In honor of the fall of the Berlin Wall on this day in 1989, I post below Part 2 of a documentary on the history of the Wall’s construction and the many escape attempts by East Germans. Though the documentary does a poor job of explaining why East Germans desperately made attempt after attempt to flee to the west (a wish to escape from oppression and go somewhere where they could freely live their lives), it does include some incredible film footage showing the various escape attempts. Part 1 outlines the Wall’s initial construction, during which many people could easily break through.
Part 2, embedded below, describes the first deaths, when the communist East German government gave its guards orders to “shoot to kill.” Part 3 is even more fascinating, showing the effort by West Germans to dig tunnels under the 150 foot death strip in order to get friends and relatives out. Parts 4 and 5 show later attempts, when the Wall had become more impregnable, including one escape using an arrow (!) and another using two ultralight airplanes. Part 6 shows the Wall’s fall in 1989.
For twenty-eight years a government decided it had the right to imprison its citizens because they longed for freedom. In the end, all that government really achieved was to prove that freedom is better, and that good intentions — based on intellectual ideology and imposed on people by force — lead nowhere but hell.
Jibjab – Time for some campaigning
An evening pause: In celebration of election day. This might have been made for the 2008 election, but it is remarkably up-to-day now, three years later.
Judi Dench – Send in the Clowns
An evening pause: From a 1995 television profile of Dame Judi Dench, ending with her performance of “Send in the Clowns” from a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.
Sports images of the 20th century
Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova – Falling Slowly
Brian Malow – Nobel, Edison & the Speed of Light
Robot obstacle course
An evening pause: The robot obstacle course at the 2006 ROBO-ONE competition in Kawasaki, Japan. Very impressive, for a machine, though this does illustrate how difficult it is to artificially duplicate what life does so naturally.
Gene Pitney – Looking Through The Eyes Of Love
The Piano
The Haunting
An evening pause: Once again, for Halloween, this short but truly unnerving scene from Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), based on the story by Shirley Jackson. Captures what everyone imagines it would be like to sleep in a haunted house. And with no special effects at all.
Shirley Bassey – Two songs
An evening pause: From a 1964 music video, Shirley Bassey sings two songs, Cole Porter’s “I get a kick out of you,” followed by Ben King’s “I who have nothing.”
The Beatles performing Shakespeare
An evening pause: In honor of Shakespeare’s 400th birthday in 1964, the Beatles performed this short excerpt from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. How else could you see John Lennon dressed as a girl?
Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (mountains beyond mountains)
The Grateful Dead – Mountains of the Moon
A really big Tesla coil
The Hastings College Choir – Home on the Range
An evening pause: This beautiful rendition brings new life to a classic American song that sadly has become so familiar most people won’t listen to it any longer.
Ultimate caption fail
Round house in Brazil
Kate Rusby – Let me be
NASA satellite falls on car
Beauty and the Beast – Tale as Old as Time
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – Home
An evening pause: Having finally arrived in Tucson after four and a half days of driving, this song seemed most appropriate. I had previously posted a version taped live in a radio studio. Here they perform “Home” on television for Letterman. The energy is still infectious.
As they say,
Ah home!
Yes we are home!
Home is wherever there is you!”
Gerry & The Pacemakers – Ferry Cross The Mersey
An evening pause: From 1965, the Top of the Pops show. I’ve always liked this song, “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” but it is also fun to watch early television, with the band attempting to simulate playing to the original recording, while the kids on the dance fall make believe they’re dancing as they repeatedly sneak peaks at the cameras.
North Cliffs collapse in Cornwall
An evening pause: The collapse of a entire cliff side in Cornwall. You can see the aftermath two weeks later here.
Three Redneck Tenors – Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
Andrea Bocelli & Sarah Brightman – Time To Say Goodbye
An evening pause: As Diane and I head west today for our new life in Arizona, this song seems especially fitting.
The Look of Love
Hugh Laurie – All you gotta do is . . .
Placido Domingo – Furusato (My Country Home)
An evening pause: From a concert performed in Japan on April 10, 2011, only a month after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Stay for the end, to see the audience’s response.