Posts Tagged ‘Ed Sullivan’
“The tale is old as the Eden Tree – as new as the new-cut tooth – For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth.”*…
Mendacious politicians, duplicitous corporations, AI slop– it’s getting harder and harder to find authenticity, to get to the truth. Further to our occasional posts on misinformation in history, a look at Johns Hopkins University’s Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection of Literary and Historical Forgery, a tangible demonstration that humans have been creating fan fiction and fake news for millennia…
In “The History of Fake News From the Flood to the Apocalypse,” the course Earle Havens [see here] teaches at Johns Hopkins University, he presents undergrads with a formidable challenge. They have to create historical forgeries and then defend the authenticity of their deceptions.
Forgeries, hoaxes, and other types of literary fakery have preoccupied Havens, a rare books and manuscripts curator at the university’s Stern Center for the History of the Book, for many years now. As part of his curatorial brief, Havens oversees the Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection of Literary and Historical Forgery, available via JSTOR. It includes more than 2,000 items—rare books, manuscripts, and ephemera—and was the brainchild of Arthur and Janet Freeman, who amassed most of its holdings over a period of some fifty years. Johns Hopkins acquired the majority of the collection from the Freemans in 2011; it has continued to expand in the years since…
Sara Ivry interviews Havens: “Enchanting Imposters,” from @jstordaily.bsky.social and @saraivry.bsky.social.
* Rudyard Kipling “The Conundrum of the Workshops” (quoted by Orson Welles in his remarkable film F for Fake)
###
As we grab for a grain of salt, we might recall that it was on this date in 1964 that the Rolling Stones made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show performing Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” (and closing the show with “Time Is On My Side”).
The band’s appearance on the show generated over a million dollars in ticket sales for their fall concert tour, and despite outrage from conservative adults who disapproved of the Stones’ “unkempt” image, the group returned to The Ed Sullivan Show for another six appearances throughout the rest of the 1960s. – source
Slow news day…
Magnum photographer Martin Parr takes and collects photos of Boring…
BORING, Ore.—2000
..and photos that are boring…
A postcard from Martin Parr’s Collection: "Traveling on Beautiful Interstate 35," 2000
…and photos of the bored…
KOTKA, Finland—From the series "Bored Couples," 1991
See them all at Slate’s “Boring!” (photos, © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos)
As we meditate on the mundane, we might console ourselves that it was on this date in 1955– five months before Elvis Presley’s first appearance– that Ellas Otha Bates, better known as Bo Diddley, made his television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show… and introduced the mainstream American audience to the 4/4 wonder we would come to know as Rock and Roll. He performed his signature tune, “Bo Diddley”– which prefigured such classics as Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and the Stangeloves’ “I Want Candy,” among countless others. In the kinescope of the show (below), the studio audience can be heard clapping heartily along.
Diddley later recalled that Ed Sullivan had expected him to perform only a cover version of “Tennessee” Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons” and was furious with him for opening with “Bo Diddley”– so furious that Sullivan banned him from future appearances on his show. But the damage was done: as George Thorogood told Rolling Stone: “[Chuck Berry’s] ‘Maybellene’ is a country song sped up… ‘Johnny B. Goode’ is blues sped up. But you listen to ‘Bo Diddley,’ and you say, ‘What in the Jesus is that?'”
And now, the good news…
Eat Less, Live Longer…
The chart above (courtesy of the OECD, via Swivel) plots relative levels of unemployment against life span… and suggests that there may be a silver lining in the dark cloud of recession: there’s evidence that life expectancy increases during times of high unemployment.
Specifically, this data shows the relationship between unemployment and life expectancy for the USA between 1960 and 2006. The following series are shown:
* LIGHTER PURPLE: residual life expectancy – the difference between the actual and expected life expectancy, in lay-terms, how much longer people lived than they were expected to
* DARKER PURPLE: unemployment % – the unemployment rate for the year
For another dose of encouragement, see this Freakonomics post… and relaaaaax…
As we denominate our blessings in something other than dollars, we might recall that on this date in 1956, Elvis Presley sang “Don’t Be Cruel” in the first of his three appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show…
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?w=700)
You must be logged in to post a comment.