For your listening pleasure, I present to you the
Zelda Rag, performed (with no prior practice) by Tom Brier. When that gets old, there's also a ragtime adaptation of the
horse race theme from the Ocarina of Time that is not to be missed. And if Zelda's too easy, you can try the theme from
Ghosts and Goblins. And, finally, an actual rag from Final Fantasy VI:
the Spinach Rag.
[more inside]
posted by kaibutsu
on Dec 26, 2010 -
22 comments
He's Now in the Great Screening Room in the Sky Dino de Laurentiis has passed on, aged 91.
Over 150 films produced. He gave
this young guy a
second chance after
this bomb. One of his movies had the
best Haniball Lektor/Lector ever. He worked with Fellini, Pacinio, Redford, Schwarzenegger, Bridges, (Jeff), Raimi, and Fonda, (Jane). Goodnight, sweet prince of cinema.
posted by jettloe
on Nov 11, 2010 -
53 comments
"The ability to convey the depths of despair, the heights of jubilation and the serenity of an abiding faith are all that is required to be known as “The Voice.” Unfortunately, very few possess the ability to do all that and what’s more unfortunate, we lost one of those few–possibly the best of those few–with the death of
Vern Gosdin at the age of 74."
[more inside]
posted by dawson
on Apr 29, 2009 -
7 comments
The stuff of legend, Van Halen's "No brown M&Ms" concert rider (most recently mentioned on MetaFilter
here) has made the rounds by word of mouth, and word of internet, for years. Now, the Van Halen 1982 World Tour backstage rider has been found. It consists of 53 typewritten pages and contains the M&Ms prohibition - which actually says
M & M's (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES) - as well as other interesting demands, excerpted at The Smoking Gun.
Via.
posted by amyms
on Dec 12, 2008 -
91 comments
As those of you on the wrong email lists can probably guess, Snopes is overflowing with
gang initiation rumors. What you may not know is that the New Jersey police
recently arrested someone spreading those stories for "causing false public alarm."
[more inside]
posted by tkolar
on Dec 7, 2008 -
23 comments
In
Tennyson´s epic poem
Idylls of the King, Lyonesse is the place where the final, epoch-shattering battle between
Mordred and
King Arthur takes place. In the older
Arthurian romances, Lyonesse is the
birthplace of Sir Tristan, and it is supposed to have bordered
Cornwall in the southwest of England. No historical evidence of Lyonnesse has been found, and the academic consensus seems to be that the
French author of the Prose
Tristan got his British geography catastrophically wrong, and that he really meant
Lothian in Scotland.
There
are,
however,
those who
believe that Lyonesse was a real realm which once reached from the
Scilly Islands to
Land´s End. The people of
Penzance and southwestern Cornwall certainly seem fond of stories about
sunken lands,
church bells in the deep, and
drowned forests. According to
family legend, the ancestor of the local
Trevelyan family was a sole survivor who rode across the causeway to Cornwall as Lyonesse crumbled into the sea behind him.
posted by the_unutterable
on Sep 27, 2008 -
14 comments
World Tales : See folk tales, myths and legends from around the world, brought to life by twenty Australian animators.
posted by dhruva
on Jan 2, 2007 -
7 comments
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, but do you know
Stekkjarstaur,
Giljagaur,
Stufur,
Thvorusleikir,
Pottaskefill,
Askasleikir,
Hurdarskellir,
Skyrgamur,
Bjugnakraekir,
Gluggagaegir,
Gattathefur, Ketkrokur and Kertasnikir? They're the
Jolasveinar, the impish "
Yuletide Lads" of
Iceland, and those are only some of their many names. During the thirteen days before Christmas, legend says that
they do their best to monkeywrench the celebrations with
hijinks like stealing sausages, milk, and candles, and peeping into windows and up skirts. The children of gruesome child-eating trolls
Gryla and Leppaludi, who were known for
snatching naughty children, the elves got their start in the 17th century. In the years since, their image has apparently mellowed, and now they leave children presents in their shoes and limit themselves to mild pranks.
posted by Miko
on Dec 22, 2006 -
21 comments
Little visual miracles. For more than forty years that most American of photographers,
Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters Lee Friedlander, has recorded
modern American urban life -- with its
jumble of
people,
signs,
buildings, and
cars, and
television sets. He likes to turn
a common blunder of amateurs -- photographing something nearby
with one's back to the sun -- into a
leitmotif.
His shadow plays the role of alter ego, sticking to the back of a woman's fur collar, clinging to a lamppost as a parade of drum majorettes passes by, reclining like a stuffed doll on a chair. Clever jigsaw puzzles, his pictures frequently reveal themselves to be
laconic, austere poems to what
Friedlander has termed "
the American social landscape',' meaning mostly ordinary places and affairs. "Friedlander,"
an exhibition of more than 480 photographs and 25 books covering decades of work, runs at MoMA through Aug. 29, before traveling to Europe until 2007. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Jun 14, 2005 -
8 comments
My Back Pages--Interesting in his own right
Eyolf Østrem still maintains the fan's fan tab, chords and music site, the standard by which all others are judged. I just revisited it the other night, while trying to recall how that little run in Dylan's version of
Delia went, and dang, if it didn't have the
back story of that ballad. I love this kind of stuff. The source of that account, John Garst, is the folklorist king of such research--he puts
John Henry at a railroad tunnel near Leeds, Alabama, just east of Birmingham on September 20, 1887, for example. Murder and heroic death ballad back stories are of extreme interest to me, so I decided to post a few more here:
Frankie and Albert,
Frankie and Johnny,
Casey Jones and
Stagger Lee. Did I say I love this kind of stuff?
posted by y2karl
on Sep 23, 2004 -
10 comments
Marley's 'Legend' turns twenty:
"Legend'' is unique because it's become more than just music. It's an idea, a lifestyle, a web of cultural touchstones spun in a delicate vortex. In the realm of musical-taste-as-statement-of-personal-identity, "Legend'' says: I generally care about world events. I favor cotton clothing. I think stress is bad. I want to stop injustice. I'm all for love. I wouldn't say no to the herb, if you get my drift.
posted by moonbird
on May 11, 2004 -
28 comments
Snooker legend dies A very sad day for snooker lovers. Bill Werbeniuk, the only man to split his trousers on live television during a professional snooker match, has died. And he liked a pint or thirty.
posted by skellum
on Jan 22, 2003 -
22 comments
