An evening pause: There is an old saying that all story plots can be summed into one of the following three categories: Man vs Man, Man vs Nature, and Man vs Himself.
Vonnegut gives us a far better summary.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
An evening pause: A very well known piece of music from one of the most popular composers of the post-World War II era that you’ve probably never heard of, Leroy Anderson.
Any New Yorker who grew up in the 1960s will immediately recognize it as the theme music used for CBS’s afternoon and late night movie presentations, where they would squeeze two hour movies into 90 minutes slots that were really only about 60 minutes after commercials. (My first impressions as a child of many of Hollywood’s great movies was noticeably distorted because of this.)
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who notes,
Talk about an eclectic Evening Pause. “Csardas” was written by Italian, Vittorio Monti, in the early 20th century. “Gypsy Airs” was composed by Spaniard, Pablo de Sarasate, in the late 19th century. Both compositions are inspired by Hungarian music. And the orchestra is North Korean.
The band was organized by North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un. This performance was from 2012. From the link this interesting tidbit:
In December 2015, Kim Jong-un sent the band to perform in a series of shows in Beijing to improve relations between China and North Korea; these would have been the band’s first performances outside of North Korea. However, the band left Beijing on a scheduled flight to Pyongyang only a few hours before their performance was scheduled. China’s Xinhua news agency stated that all of the band’s performances had been cancelled due to “communication issues at the working level.” The Korea Herald reported that North Korea had cancelled the tour because China had requested that North Korea’s missiles should not be shown during performances.
An evening pause: Performed live 2004, when such joyous concerts were possible.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
A banned race in Hollywood.
Blacklists are back and Hollywood’s got ’em: Warner Brothers has decided its next Superman will be super-woke and must star a black Superman.
More important, the studio has decided that in order to make the film the “super-woke” concept they envision it must only hire blacks to make it. Not only has the studio hired a black writer to write the script, it is insisting that the director and crew must be black also.
The Hollywood Reporter proudly makes note of the fact that they are looking for only black people to do it all, and are looking for a black director. The piece unabashedly excludes the film’s producer J.J. Abrams as a candidate purely because it would be “tone-deaf.”
Nor is that all. Hollywood also wants the focus for all its future superhero films to be “diversity” and racial oppression rather those evil and quaint old concepts of “truth, justice, and the American way.”
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An evening pause: The main them form Mikis Theodorakis’ score from the movie Zorba the Greek (1964).
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: I honestly don’t understand how this works, and the video doesn’t really explain it. It is quite amazing nonetheless. More information here if you want to dig about to figure it out.
Hat tip Cotour.
An evening pause: How about we end the week with some beautiful music played beautifully by a beautiful woman.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: This live television performance from sometime in the 1960s, and was almost certainly performed by lip-sync to the recorded album. That audio for this video has been remastered.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: A short film that describes the world our children and culture are working hard to give us.
An evening pause: For those who grew up in the 1960s. Everyone else is sadly deprived.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: While there is a bit of barnum in this guy’s work, the final “paintings” are quite astonishing.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
An evening pause: Performed live in 1965. This Willie Nelson performance shows him in his early days, before the beard and long hair and cowboy persona. His voice has also not mellowed into what would later become a truly unique sound.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: This is a little longer than most evening pauses, but trust me you will enjoy deeply every single second, so much so you might even want to watch it twice.
This earlier video by Rober shows how he developed this glitterbomb to catch doorstep package thieves. He has now taken that relatively minor engineering prank to a much higher and righteous level.
