For The Love of Food

Besides being the third President of the United States and a snazzy dresser (love that coat!) Thomas Jefferson may have been one of the first 'foodies' to sit in the White House. I'm not a fan of the term, but what better way to describe a President who kept a concrete lined pond for fresh eels, and "supervised the growing of 170 varieties of fruit and 330 of vegetables, planting 27 varieties of kidney bean alone." Check out who else made the list of America's 5 Greatest Foodie Presidents in this week's Village Voice.

The Man History Forgot

We all know who Thomas Edison is, so why is Nikola Tesla such an unfamiliar name? Tesla was an inventor who's creations were just as groundbreaking as Edison's, but he never attained the same kind of notoriety as his competitor. Although rarely a source of actual historical information, I love Funny or Die's Drunk History, and the latest episode might be my favorite. In it we learn the story of Edison and Tesla's reported feud, as played by John C. Reilly and the amazing Crispin Glover.

The Golden Era

So much focus is placed on Germany's dark history, but what is often ignored are the astonishing cultural and intellectual feats that were made just years before Hitler's rise to power. This time period, called the Weimar Republic, lasted from the end of World War I to around 1933 when Hitler gained power. Weimar culture was vibrant, daring, and unnervingly modern. Artists who were scarred by what they had seen during the Great War, used their medium as a way of dealing with their pain, and in doing so they unleashed a type of realism that is rarely seen even to this day. My favorite works emerged during this short but productive time, and artists like Otto Dix and Christian Schad (works pictured above) were part of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement, whose work was gritty, dark, and purposefully ugly. Thankfully I don't have to travel all the way to Germany or Austria to see these pieces in person, as my favorite New York City museum, the Neue Galerie, exclusively caters to my obsession. From now through August 30th, the Galerie is exhibiting a collection of Otto Dix's work, the first such collection ever held in North America. Now put down your bratwurst, and get yourself over to the Neue for a taste of some real German culture.

Rogue Warrior

One of my favorite directors, the enigmatic Werner Herzog, has graced the pages of this blog before, but never through the form of a first person narrative. The narrative came about with the announcement of his first ever film school, Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School (quite a perfect title for a director who has battled the deadly terrain of the Amazon and Alaska, to name a few). It's homepage sums up the school's mission in Herzog's own words:

"The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted; it is for those who have traveled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects. In short: for those who have a sense of poetry. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream."

So naturally a writer over at Flavorwire decided to enroll in the school... but when he didn't have the cash to pay for it he just "Herzog-ed" it. Check out the full story here.

Just When You Thought Libraries Were Uncool...

NYU's Fales Library which holds a number of special collections, is currently working on beefing up their newly announced Riot Grrrrl Collection with the "papers" of Bikini Kill lead singer and noted feminist Kathleen Hanna. First of all, I can't believe there's a Riot Grrrrl Collection! That is probably the coolest thing academia has done in a while. Second, the fact that there will now be a part of that collection dubbed "The Kathleen Hanna Papers" made up of her zines, correspondences, and other Bikini Kill era tidbits is totally amazing. Most pop culture junkies agree that Bikini Kill was instrumental in creating the third wave feminist post-hardcore movement, and Hanna is still doing it (albeit more accessibly) with her band Le Tigre. I just might have to dust off my library card and make a trip to the stacks!

Via The L Magazine

The Man Of The Century

Imagine living to see your 100th birthday. Then imagine that during that lifetime you produced some of the most important anthropological work of the 20th Century. What a life that would have been right? Claude Levi-Strauss, French anthropologist and the “father of structuralism,” lived that life. Levi-Strauss’ approach to anthropology was so far removed from other thinkers of his time, because he looked at different cultures through a unique lens – instead of trying to pinpoint all of their differences, he “argued that history and experience were far more important in shaping human consciousness than universal laws.” By analyzing myth and culture, Levi-Strauss challenged many theories which reduced tribal behavior and society as primitive, and solely based on tradition. The NYTimes ran a great article about his life and work today, and what struck me the most about the article was Levi-Strauss’ interpretations of modern living: “With the fading of myth’s power in the modern West, [Strauss] also suggested that music had taken on myth’s function. Music, he argued, had the ability to suggest, with primal narrative power, the conflicting forces and ideas that lie at the foundation of society.” For a man who devoted his life to exploring humanity, and who at one point taught in a local high school in Paris where fellow teachers included Jean-Paul Satre and Simone de Beauvoir, he was incredibly in touch with the realities of the world.