Arnold Schwarzenegger this week dressed up as his Terminator character and surprised fans at various locations around Los Angeles, including Madame Tussauds wax museum. The funny stunt helps promote the July release of Terminator Genisys, but it all was for a good cause too.
The Terminator visit was to help promote the OMAZE campaign with donations benefiting After-School All-Stars, which provides after-school programs. Check out the funny video.
You will be able to see Schwarzenegger on the big screen in Terminator Genisys starting July 1, 2015. By supporting After-School All-Stars, you can win a trip to the movie premiere with Schwarzenegger himself.
One of the great albums for finding solace amidst middle-of-the-night anxiety is Frank Sinatra’s “In the Wee Small Hours.”
In our series “3 a.m. Albums,” we look at albums that are perfect for those nights when you cannot sleep due to sadness, loneliness, despair, or other reasons. We begin the series with an album that is appropriately named, In the Wee Small Hours, which is one of Frank Sinatra’s masterpieces.
Frank Sinatra recorded most of In the Wee Small Hours in the late night hours in early 1955, releasing the album not long after completion in April of that year. Often considered as an early concept album, In the Wee Small Hours received its main inspiration from the dissolution of the relationship between Sinatra and actress Ava Gardner, who Sinatra had married in 1951.
The ballads, arranged by Nelson Riddle, features more sparse instrumentation than on many Sinatra classics, allowing the heartache in Sinatra’s voice to bleed through your speakers above the sounds of the guitar, celesta, piano, and strings. The title song, which was new at the time, stands well next to the album’s classics like “Mood Indigo.” The song “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” remains one of the great opening album tracks of all time, setting the mood for the entire album.
Sinatra poured his tears, sweat, and blood into these tracks. The liner notes claim the album creates “the loneliest early-morning mood in the world.” Reportedly, Sinatra broke down crying after recording “When Your Lover Has Gone.”
The album has stood the test of time. The song “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” has stood the test of time, being covered by many singers, including a recent cover by another singer famous for his relationships, John Mayer. B.B. King has talked about listening to the album on many late nights (“I practically put that In the Wee Small Hours album under my pillow every night when I went to sleep”), and Tom Waits lists it as one of his favorite albums of all time, echoing the album’s artwork on his own The Heart of Saturday Night (1974).
When one thinks of Sinatra, the songs on In the Wee Small Hours may not be the ones you first think of as you run through songs like “Lady is a Tramp” and “Summer Wind.” But it is one of his original albums best heard in its entirety from start to finish rather than as a collection of greatest hits or live performances. And it is best heard at 3 a.m. as you face the demons in your own life, somehow finding comfort knowing that even Ol’ Blue Eyes knew (and somehow survived) the same type of heartbreak. Thankfully, he is there, giving words and music to your feelings like a friend buying you a drink in an empty bar at closing time.
What is your favorite 3 a.m. album? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Last night, Metallica‘s James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett kicked off game five of the NBA Finals with a metal version of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Members of the U.S. armed forces held a large American flag while the guitars wailed prior to the start of the game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors.
While my favorite version of the national anthem played before a basketball game remains a legendary performance by Marvin Gaye, this Metallica version was still pretty cool. Check it out.
This new video from Slate illustrates how a movie director can dramatize a monologue through the use of camera movement. In the video, Alisha Harris narrates several examples, including clips from movies such as Citizen Kane (1941), Night of the Hunter (1955), and Forrest Gump (1994).
[2024 Update: Unfortunately, Slate’s video is not presently available.]
It is that time of year where schools feature ceremonies where older and wiser people come to talk to the graduating students to tell them about life. Some are boring, many are good, but few are great and memorable. Even fewer touch people who did not even attend the graduation. One such great address came from the late author David Foster Wallace.
Wallace’s Commencement Address
On May 21, 2005 on a sunny warm day, Wallace gave the commencement address at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Some students had worked to help bring him to the school. But Wallace had been reluctant for several months about whether to accept the offer to speak.
Wallace had been anxious about speaking in front of a large crowd, referring to it as “the big scary ceremony.” He was still nervous on the day of his speech, but he ultimately gave one of the most memorable commencement addresses ever.
“This is Water”
Not surprisingly, in his address, Wallace avoided inspirational platitudes. Instead, he used the opportunity to try to get down to the core of living life as an educated person. At the same time, he admitted he had no “Truths,” but his speech was inspiring nevertheless.
The speech has been called the “This is Water” address because Wallace begins with a story about two young fish who encounter an old fish who asks, “How’s the water?” One of the young fish asks the other, “What the hell is water?”
Wallace then used the story to explore how humans naturally are self-centered creatures. He then explained how we need to learn to see obvious things that are around us. For example,
“[I]f you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider.
“If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
“Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.”
Of course, Wallace is much better at explaining it than I am. So, the whole speech is worth reading or listening to below.
In retrospect, some of the speech is haunting, because Wallace at one point talked about suicide in the speech. He would kill himself a little more than three years later on September 12, 2008. He was 46.
Wallace was surprised when his words spread around the Internet, as he had not even given Kenyon a copy of his speech. But the speech was transcribed from recordings at least twice (by a Kenyon student and a student from a neighboring college) and sent around the Internet. The speech was eventually published as This is Water. The audio is also available. Check it out.
The Miracle of Empathy
One thing I take from the speech is that Wallace is talking about learning empathy, although he does not use that term. It is true that education helps us perceive how others view the world and improves our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Despite Wallace’s own tragic end only about three years later in September 2008, his speech is inspiring and uplifting.
Of course, we learn empathy from a number of sources, including novels, memoirs, movies, and music. When you watch a great movie, think about whether it is enlightening you about empathy, and I suspect that you will find that many great films like Casablanca (1942) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) do just that.
Lucinda Williams: “When I Look at the World”
You may also think of songs that provide similar lessons in much shorter doses. Pretty much any blues song fits in this category. More recently, singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams touched on a similar theme in “When I Look at the World.”
Williams’s song that starts out with the singer taking a view of the world from her own perspective, as Wallace discusses. Then, she changes her perspective when she looks at the world.
Next time you think about yourself, take a look at the world and think about what lessons you can take from the writers, books, friends, movies, and music that surrounds you. “I look at the world / And it’s a different story each time I look at the world.”
What do you think of David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” commencement address? Leave your two cents in the comments.Fish photo via pubic domain at pdpics.
It is that time of year where schools feature ceremonies where older and wiser people come to talk to the graduating students to tell them about life. Some are boring, many are good, but few are great and memorable. Even fewer touch people who did not even attend the graduation. One such great address came from the late author 