ultra vires (10. 401)

Though it might be a big ask and imposition to encourage people to listen to this very excellent podcast from Rachel Maddow what with the holidays and the historical echo of the January Sixth Committee having just adjourned for the final time, it is decidedly worth one’s time and attention, regardless of polity, to explore how America nearly experienced a violent insurrection and backed fascism over eighty years ago and picking sides for World War II. The title of the series, well summarised in this tune by Woody Guthrie, refers not to arch-conservatives but rather a justice department official going beyond his scope of practise with a duty to warn.

8x8 (10. 400)

gadgetbahn: displacing solid public transportation networks with amusement park rides won't address underlying traffic problems 

senior superlatives: the most interesting fonts and typefaces of the year  

👍: the ten best films of 2022  

seneca falls: the altruistic act that is said to have inspired It’s A Wonderful Life and other festive adventures in audio with Josie Long  

fæðingarsaga: listen again to an eleven-year-old Björk Guðmundsdóttir recite the Nativity Story in Icelandic  

as it was: some the most popular songs of the year  

shot sage blue marilyn: the most expensive works of art trading hands this year  

chief twit: abiding by results of a poll, Elon Musk announced he will step down as CEO of the social media platform as soon as a replacement can be identified

поручик киже (10. 399)

Premiering on this day in Paris as the composer’s first commission for a film soundtrack, the suite to accompany the eponymous Lieutenant Kijé (a Soviet comedy released in the US as The Czar Wants to Sleep about a non-existent officer under the eighteenth century Emperor Paul I, unpredictable and unpopular, the historical figure assassinated by his own elite guard) by Sergei Prokofiev quickly became his most popular work and became a standard of international concert repertoire. Elements and recognisable leitmotivs of the experimental five-movement have been incorporated into many film scores and popular songs of the Cold War era—particularly “Troika” as among the archetypal Christmassy songs.

shibboleth (10. 398)

With the blessing of the regional governor, far-eastern Irkutsk is soliciting help from the public to help uncover Ukrainian spies by asking them to pronounce (see previously, catching up some three hundred days later) place-names under the assumption that only loyal locals could say correctly. The social media campaign invites one to test a friend with one word. This theatre of the absurd—the age old question of accent and dialect confirmed and confounded with very modern QR-code—seems to me not terribly effective since the majority of Ukrainians also have a good command of Russian phonetics.

and if you want to be free, be free (10. 397)

Premiering on this day in 1971, as our faithful chronicler informs, the romantic black comedy by Hal Ashby and Colin Higgins relates the narrative of Harold Chasen, an adolescent obsessed with the macabre, staging elaborate fake suicides, driving a hearse and attending the funerals of random strangers to the dismay of his wealthy, socialite mother, who goes to great lengths to try to make him more respectable, and Dame Marjorie Chardin, a seventy-nine year old he meets at a funeral mass, who counters his morbid demeanor and teaches him joie de vivre for the first time as their relationship develops into a more intimate one. The film’s soundtrack is provided by Yusuf Stevens. Producer and writer Higgins had expressed an interest later the decade after his work attained cult status after its initial mixed reviews in both a prequel, Grover and Maude wherein Maude learns how to break into cars and fence stolen property and a sequel, Harold’s Story about his life after meeting Maude though neither were pursued though was adapted into a Broadway stage play, a French made-for-tv-movie and a musical version.

schnappschüsse vom krieg (10. 396)

Born this day in 1922 and still taking pictures, Michelantonio “Tony” Celestino Onofrio Vaccaro immigrated back to the US to avoid being conscripted in Italy and despite already having an impressive photographic portfolio just out of high school his first draft assignment as a photo-documentarian with the Army Signal Corps didn’t pan out and was instead assigned as a scout, fighting in Normandy, Luxembourg and Germany—though still affording opportunities to shoot images, evocative impressions of the front captured in 1944 and 1945. After being discharged, Vaccaro remained in Germany, contributing to the Army newspaper Stars & Stripes and recording life post-war in Frankfurt. Returning to America in the early 1950s, Vaccaro took assignments with Look, Life and Flair magazines as a society photographer, marrying a model for fashion house Marimekko, and after a decades’-long stint teaching at Cooper Union published a selection of his extensive wartime archive, under the imprint Entering Germany: Photographs 1944 – 1949. Click here for a gallery of Vaccaro’s diverse subjects.

7x7 (10. 395)

munro: better known for his violent Tom & Jerry shorts, Gene Deitch (previously—not the best counter-example) an acclaimed, award-winning animator 

thirty by thirty: environmentalists and delegates reach a landmark agreement to conserve nature and protect the rights of indigenous peoples 

incite a riot: January Sixth committee recommends a range of charges to be levied against Trump  

santaland: department store Christmas monorails—via the Everlasting Blört 

scootch over: on the quarter-century anniversary of the premier of Titanic, director James Cameron wants to put to rest a roiling debate  

a slice of the cosmos: an interactive map of the observable Universe from Johns Hopkins University  

lichtspiel opus i: the Avant-Garde animation of Walter Ruttmann

reflect upon your present blessings—of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some (10. 394)

For the 1843 first printing of the novella by Charles Dickens—see previously—Open Culture treats us to a accomplished recitation of the work as the author himself would have delivered it, by Neil Gaiman, through studying the hand-edited copy he used for public readings. The Victorian morality tale relates the profound redemption, on Christmas Eve, of a bitter miser with the aid of supernatural intervention. The narration begins at about the eleven minute mark.

New York Public Library · Neil Gaiman Reads "A Christmas Carol"