In August of last year, Australian-born choreographer Lloyd Newson and the London-based dance troupe DV8 Physical Theatre debuted Can We Talk About This?, a work that examines the way in which such events as the death threats against Salman Rushdie and the murder of Theo Van Gogh have altered the climate of freedom of expression in the west. While some reviewers have praised the the production as courageous, Michael Billington of the left-wing Guardian dismisses the spectre of Islamist revenge with this little piece of spineless weasel-logic:

The idea that people are afraid to speak out about Islamist extremism is disproved by the very existence of this production.

Yeah, and by the existence of the books of Salman Rushdie and the films of Theo Van Gogh. Here’s a short video promoting DV8 Physical Theater’s production of Lloyd Newson’s Can We Talk About This?.
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The Open Road was a series of short travelogues filmed between 1924 and 1926 by British cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene using an early colour process called BioColour. Watch the remarkably high-quality footage in the recently-restored The Open Road London.
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In tonight’s Tippity amusement, filmed live at the the Steppe Inn, a private bar located at the back of the British Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolian trio Shanz-Elsen Tsul helps the clientele knock back their Gin and Tonics with a drum machine-assisted performance of the traditional Mongolian song I’m Momentarily Out Of Ideas For Tips Music.
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In tonight’s Tips music American songwriter Buddy Miller, along with Emmylou Harris on backing vocals, sings a beautiful song from the 2004 album Universal United House of Prayer called Wide River To Cross.
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From his 1996 album Country Love songs (personally autographed copies available here), here’s Robbie Fulks’s country stomper She Took A Lot of Pills (and Died).
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Oh no, little dinosaur, please don’t go.
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The late John Wayne, in his starring role as the eponymous hero of the 1952 Warner Bros. feature film Big Jim McLain, provides our vicarious pleasure of the night, as he punches a country club communist in the face.
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In tonight’s Tips music real fine American songwriter John Hiatt performs a song from his 1990 album Stolen Moments called Real Fine Love.
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In tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips the late Nancy Walker, a seasoned Broadway performer who is perhaps best known for her later role as Mrs. Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, sings a song from the 1941 Cole Porter musical Let’s Face It! called You Irritate Me So.
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Clench your brittle fists, enlarge your already bulbous nose with more overproof rum, and stagger incoherently towards your perceived enemies onshore as you listen to The Clancy Brothers’s rousing performance of the 19th century short-drag sea shanty Haul Away Joe.
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Enoch Powell was a Cambridge professor, a poet, and a classical scholar fluent in Greek, but he will go down in history as the British Conservative MP who in 1968 delivered the historic and highly controversial “Rivers Of Blood” speech in which he warned that British immigration policy was “a great betrayal” that was creating a “transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.”
In “Rivers of Blood”, independent British film producer Denys Blakeway intersperses archival footage with contemporary interviews to create a surprisingly un-PC and commendably balanced — or, as some on the left would call it, “cowardly, manipulative and politically irresponsible” –– look at Powell’s speech and the issues it addressed. Here are three substantial excerpts from Rivers Of Blood, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
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In our Saturday night Tips music, gap-toothed rascal Dan Baird of southern rockers The Georgia Satellites sings a song about, how you say, energetic frustration called Keep Your Hands To Yourself.
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In tonight’s musical amusement en route to the Tips, vaudevillian Edward Israel Iskowitz, aka Eddie Cantor, says Cheer Up, Smile, Nertz!”.
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Hark, hearest thou a team of tiny flying robots playing the James Bond Theme?
h/t
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In tonight’s musical amusement en route to the Tips, Miss Kitty Wells and an unidentified male singer — might be Culley Holt – take us back to a gentler, more traditional time when people didn’t break all their wedding vows in one fell swoop during a wild weekend in Vegas, they broke them slowly, measuredly, One By One.
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In the BBC documentary A Tudor Feast, historian Ruth Goodman and three archaeologists undertake the difficult work of preparing an elaborate meal using authentic recipes from the Tudor Period, and using only the original techniques, ingredients, and kitchen implements that were available in 1590. Broken into four fifteen minute(ish) segments, here’s A Tudor Feast, parts I, II, III, and IV.
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Tonight’s Tips music comes in the form of one of the best farming songs extant: here’s the late Stan Rogers singing The Field Behind the Plow.
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In tonight’s Tips music, shamelessly filched from Word Around The Net, Philadelphia punk rockers The Obama Supporters The Dead Milkmen sing Everybody’s Got Nice Stuff But Me.
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Hank the nonpareil, still wafting across the ether 61 years later, says Hey, Good Lookin’.
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Dead men can’t speak, but they sure can sing: From the 2004 album Real Gone, here’s Tom Waits’ poignant trans-corporeal dispatch Green Grass. Think “Danny Boy” a couple of octaves drunker.
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