An evening pause: The silliness couldn’t be greater.
Hat tip Peter Fenstermacher.
As always, I welcome suggestions from anyone for evening pauses. If you have made them before, please feel free to send me more. You know how to reach me. If you’ve never suggested any but want to, comment here (without including the suggestion-that would give it away) and I will contact you myself.
An evening pause: Judy Holliday and Broderick Crawford from the 1950 classic, Born Yesterday.
Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.
An evening pause: I can think of nothing more appropriate to begin the new year with than this performance. Nothing.
Hat tip hondo.
By the way, with the New Year I am in desperate need of more Evening Pause suggestions. If you’ve sent me suggestions in the past, you know the email address. If not, post a comment here saying that you have a suggestion (without mentioning what it is) and I will email you for it.
The uncertainty of peer review: A science journal has published a fake study that supposedly proved that kissing a child’s “boo-boo” has no medicinal value.
In their study, the authors claim to be members of the Study of Maternal and Child Kissing (SMACK) Working Group, which they say is a subsidiary of Procter and Johnson, Inc., the maker of “Bac-Be-Gone ointment and Steri-Aids self-adhesive bandages.” Procter and Johnson, which is not a real consumer goods company, is an obvious mash-up of Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, two consumer packaged goods companies which sell health care items like bandages and ointments. The only contact information for the study’s authors disclosed in the research paper is a Gmail address. Bac-Be-Gone ointment and Steri-Aids also do not appear to be actual products available for sale. Additionally, many of the academic research references listed at the end of the study–including one article entitled “So what the hell is going on here?”–also appear to be fake.
The journal, the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, claims on its website that all papers published by it are copy-edited and peer-reviewed. In this case I suppose the reviewers worked for Comedy Central .
An evening pause: Something for the party week between Christmas and New Years. Stay with it, because this orchestra really does know how to enjoy itself.
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: Funny, and they demonstrate that it is possible to play the Canon in D as a tango, bluegrass, gypsy, and practically any musical style you can imagine.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
An evening pause: As we move into the heart of the Christmas season, this piece from the 1974 Bob Hope Christmas Special will allow us to remember a time when the idea was to express some good cheer and good will, not whine about oppression because someone said something we didn’t like or agree with. Note that a few of Hope’s jokes at the beginning are very time sensitive, as this was aired just after the 1974 elections where the Republicans got badly beaten. Hope, who was Republican, still had no problem cracking jokes at his own party’s expense.
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: Recorded live, September 5, 1967, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Having some fun with the old folk ballads.
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: A very short pause, but one that I think is appropriate today with the success of the grassroots tea party movement in forcing John Boehner out as House Speaker.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: This hilarious parody of BBC science documentaries, which are not much different than many American PBS science documentaries, captures perfectly the typical empty-headed interviewers that I myself have sometimes had to deal with during too many of my television and radio appearances. They are not only often ignorant of some basic science, they are also ignorant of their own ignorance. They think they know a lot, and thus are easily confused and defensive when suddenly confronted with that ignorance.
I especially like her description of “the famous Greenwich Marillion line.”
Hat tip to Danae.
An evening pause: Rather than waste your time watching the childish reporting of the presidential campaign on cable news, watch this short satire of NPR instead. It sums things up nicely, poking great fun at liberal news coverage.
Sadly, most of the conservative coverage has been as childish.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Heh. The sad part is how true it all is. Only one option produces wealth and prosperity, but humans seem determined to choose every other possible option instead, even though they all guarantee failure.
Rudolph Hoess, family man and commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, has been desperately trying to restore the camp’s reputation after some damaging remarks by one of its doctors, Joseph Mengele, were caught on tape and posted online.
Dr. Mengele, who oversees medical services at the camp, was recorded casually speaking of a girl who was suffering complications as a result of HitlerCare. The girl, Eva Mozes Kor, complained of fever, trembling, and swollen limbs that resulted from a series of five free government-funded injections. Mengele is seen on the tape laughing off the matter saying, “Too bad she is so young. She has only two weeks to live.”
To Hoess, such behavior is unacceptable. “I want to be clear,” said Hoess, “that I find the tone of Dr. Mengele’s remarks inappropriate, and that he has been properly reprimanded. Furthermore, I wish to emphasize that nobody on the staff at this concentration camp in any way profits from the clothing, valuables, cash, and gold fillings that are reallocated from our guests. While some evidence, which was tragically burned, may have indicated an occasional impropriety, we nevertheless pride ourselves in offering compassionate care at this facility, no matter what.”
Read it all. His outrage at the way the video was obtained will tell you who the real villains are in this story. How dare someone slander the reputation of these fine individuals!
An evening pause: It could be argued that all classical music would be better played in this manner.
An evening pause: Tonight’s pause is a bit different, in that it has a newsy aspect to it, illustrating the uncertainty of knowledge that makes science so difficult. It is also incredibly entertaining and funny, almost like the 1960s TV show Candid Camera. Would you be fooled like these people were?
Hat tip Phillip Oltmann.
An evening pause: For anyone who has ever listened to NPR, it will be hard to distinguish the satire here from reality, since the skit so well captures public radio’s often empty-headed blather disguised as profound intellectualism, framed by a strong desire to promote anything the government wants done.
Hat tip to John Harman.
An evening pause: Hilarious video on the banality of much of youtube and our modern culture from Akilah Hughes.
An evening pause: From The Big Store (1941).
Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.
An evening pause: Really clever and funny routines, especially the last third, when she turns an audience member into her ventriloquist dummy.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: Time for more silliness, with a bit of gentle humor making fun of those among us who are most philosophical.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: A classic comedy scene from Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977). What especially makes the scene work is how realistic he portrays what it was like to stand in a movie line in New York in the 1970s.
Another hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.
An evening pause: Lou Costello probably works for the federal government these days.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
