187. The Walrus and the Carpenter

186. Peanuts

Nothing like children facing adult problems to make us think about the absurdity of our lives.

185. Err

An art exhibit in which the organizer asked factories to produce an intentionally flawed version of their product. Read more about it and see some interesting execution here.

184. The Mouse Problem

A Monty Python sketch about the media's portrayal of society's reaction to people with different lifestyle choices. Not their funniest bit, but probably their best social commentary.

183. The Wave (Die Welle)

A German movie about how fascism can arise secretly in a society -- in this case, in a class of high school students who don't understand how it could happen to them.

182. The Allegory of Painting

181. The Music Man

We got trouble right here in River City.

180. The Giver

You ever notice how few books there are about how great the future is going to be? This is yet another book about how humanity's going in the wrong direction. And this one's for kids!

179. The Piazza del Campo

The site of Siena's famous (and extremely dangerous) horse race.

178. Bridge Over Troubled Water (the song)

The album of the same name is also good.

177. The Soldier and Death

A Russian folktale that's a classic trickster tale. The story itself is inventive, and it's very well realized by Jim Henson's workshop. This one's particularly worth a watch, especially if you only remember it as that episode of The Storyteller with the goblins who fail to cheat at cards.

For those with a Netflix account, it's available to watch instantly; for everyone else, watch it here.

176. The Happy Prince

I wanted to give a shoutout to Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, but The Importance of Being Earnest was too obvious. (It'll get picked later when I'm out of ideas.) For now, here's a short story about a bird and a statue.

175. A Fine Balance

In my World Cultures class, we read a series of books whose theme seemed to be "Things are a mess everywhere." This was the India edition. Things were a mess in India in the seventies and eighties. Good thing they got all that sorted out.

174. Blackbird

Listen.

173. Hiawatha

This poem is probably MUCH longer than you think it is, and the lines you know from it are not the opening lines; they're about 20 pages in...

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

172. Pinkie

I couldn't bring up The Blue Boy without mentioning his companion, Pinkie. These two have been called "the Romeo and Juliet of Rococo portraiture."

171. The Blue Boy

There's a nice (if apocryphal) story behind this picture. Gainsborough's rival, Joshua Reynolds, wrote:

"It ought, in my opinion, to be indispensably observed, that the masses of light in a picture be always of a warm, mellow colour, yellow, red, or the green colours be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to support or set off these warm colours; and for this purpose, a small proportion of cold colour will be sufficient. Let this conduct be reversed: let the light be cold, and the surrounding colour warm, as we often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters, and it will be out of the power of art, even in the hands of Rubens and Titian, to make a picture splendid and harmonious."

When your rival says something like that, you rightly see it as a challenge; hence the unusual choice of color scheme.

170. Clair de Lune

Known in popular culture as the song that plays in Ocean's 11 after the heist while the gang watches the fountains. Listen here.

169. The Franz Kafka Memorial

Like Kafka's work, I think it's fair to say I don't quite get it. But it certainly means something.

168. Gone With the Wind (the movie)

Adjusted for inflation, this movie made $2.98 billion. That's quite a lot for a movie that's nearly four hours long.

167. Casablanca

166. Another Travelin' Song

I'm a bit behind on my posting, but I felt I needed a traveling song for my day in the air.

165. Finding Nemo

Speaking of things that made me cry... I think this is probably the most embarrassing example.

164. Two Cathedrals (The West Wing episode)

As my brother knows, I'm fond of saying that The West Wing has too much talking and not enough, you know, things happening. Two Cathedrals is an episode that manages to fit in both some actual plot development and strong emotions. It made me cry, but of course, that doesn't mean a whole lot. I cry at nearly anything.

163. Chess

A game that manages to have simple rules and complex strategy without resorting to randomness. That's art in my book.

162. Cloud Atlas

A book about a transmigratory soul, told in six interlocked stories set in widely varying time periods. You'll either love it or hate it.

161. Cleopatra's Needle

a.k.a. The enormous obelisk in Central Park, the one that makes you say "What in the world is that thing doing there?" Apparently it's one of a triplet. There are also Cleopatra's Needles in London and Paris. These things were originally erected around 1450 BC. To put that in context, the Western Roman Empire fell approximately 1500 years ago. At that time, these obelisks were already 2000 years old. This one held up remarkably well until it was taken to New York, where pollution and acid rain promptly dissolved the hieroglyphs.

160. Rondo Alla Turca

Of course, now I can't hear this without also hearing the Donkey Conga sound effects that go with it. "Who chose the space-themed sound effects? Aaron?!" Oh, well. Here's the unadulterated version.

159. The Port Coton Pyramids

None of that water lily nonsense. This is a nice manly Monet.

158. (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay

A perfect early-summer song. Also, the first posthumously released song to ever be a number-one single in the US.