Since Tomorrow is 2012

In honor of it being New Year’s Eve, we would like to look back fondly on some of the great albums that celebrated their 20th or 40th year anniversary.  That’s right, we are looking at you, Nirvana’s Nevermind, Pearl Jam’s Ten, Red Hot Chili Pepper’s BloodSugarSexMagik and Metallica’s Metallica (for their 20th anniversary) and Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV.  We are spending the day listening to these albums, letting them sweep us away all over again.

Happy 2012 everyone.

The Revolutionary Hydra’s “Light From the Christmas Strands”

As a way of saying Merry Christmas, we’d like to offer you this song by The Revolutionary Hydra, who are now famous for being a band of Ben Gibbard pre-Death Cab for Cutie.

Letter Writing Alliance

We here at Arthur love writing, and we are happy to look for any excuse to do so.  And as much as we love technology, sometimes it is good to get back to something more retro.  So today we are all over the Letter Writing Alliance, which will even find you a penpal.  It is exactly the sort of thing we have been looking for.

Sunday Book Bazaar

Here at Arthur, we use any traveling we get to do as an excuse to book shop in different locations.  One of our new favorite book-buying locations is the Sunday Book Bazaar in Old Delhi, India (Yes, that India.  The subcontinent.) covered recently by a fellow book fiend.  It sounds like the Sunday Bazaar is basically New York City’s The Strand combined with Lansing’s East Side Wednesday Farmer’s Market, which basically is another way of expressing how awesome it is.  Next time we are in town, we will have to check it out.

Stephen Greenblatt and Lucretius

Guess we are just all about the Renaissance this week, because today we are reading a review of Stephen Greenblatt, English theory hero, and his new book, The Swerve.

Masterpieces of Renaissance Portraiture

Try to be shocked: we are museum nerds, especially of the art variety.  We are so totally jealous that we cannot check out “Masterpieces of Renaissance Portraiture,” because it is in Berlin.  This show has the masters: Sandro Botticelli, Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo Lippi and infamous Da Vinci himself. Plus, it features work from a variety of museums, like Britain’s Royal Collection, the National Gallery (in London), the Louvre (Paris, natch), and the Uffizi (Florence). It would be like seeing some of the greatest hits of the biggest art museums just by going to this one.
So if anyone would like to buy us a plane ticket to Berlin, let us know.

Banned Book Week

Tomorrow is the beginning of banned book week.  We love anything celebrating books, but especially when censored/challenged book because they contain information that challenges people. 

We hope you will join us in celebrating by reading a challenged book.  If you are looking for suggestions, there are lots of challenged books.

4 Artists Challenging Immigration Laws

We have already established our love of political art over here at Arthur, so we were totally intrigued about these four artists who are working their creative magic to promote immigration reform.  The posters featured here are amazing.  We especially love the work of Ernesto Yerena.  Keep up the great work.

Frederick the Great Poet

We clearly are poetry fans over here at Arthur, but even we could not have guessed what a treat it would be to discover that Frederick the Great (yes, that guy, who ran a country called Prussia) wrote erotic poetry.  For those of you not down with your 18th century European history, Frederick ruled Prussia until 1772.  Historians call him great because he took a small Germanic country and made it a major European power.  He was a patron of the arts and liked philosophy, which explains why he took up poetry.  He was such a philosophy fan he even was pen pals with Voltaire (yes, that guy, who wrote a book called Candide.)

Anyone else a fan of leaders turned poets?  We loved Elizabeth I’s poetry, but are not such fans of Mao’s work.

In Defense of Autotune

We here at Arthur love an argument well…well, well-argued, frankly.  We especially love it when it’s a well made argument about art.  So here is a defense of the hated autotune with additional discussion about authenticity.