340. The Waltz from Gounod's Faust

You know it's not a terribly popular piece of classical music when the only clip you can find is the Monty Python sketch that uses it.

339. The Lincolnshire Poacher

A traditional English folk song, not to be confused with the numbers station of the same name.

338. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

337. Guernica

336. The Battle of Helm's Deep (from the movie of The Two Towers)

You know, except for that part where Legolas surfs down the stairs on his shield.

335. Fight Club (the book)

A classic in the unreliable narrator genre.

334. Chocolate Chip Cookies

When would you guess the chocolate chip cookie was invented? If you said 1930, you're right!

333. Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard

332. The Far Side

331. World War Z

Zombie war is hell.

330. Annie Hall

329. April in Paris

Here's the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong version.

328. Eris and the Apple of Discord

That's Stephen Colbert, not Eris, but you get the idea.

327. The Carnival of the Animals

Here's the swan movement, introduced slightly jarringly by James Bond.

326. The Molitor Stradivarius

A Stradivarius violin, made in 1697, that may have once been owned by Napoleon.

325. The Pirates of Penzance

The happiest art I could come up with off the top of my head...

For he is a pirate king, he is, hurrah for the pirate king!

I had no idea Kevin Kline had played the pirate king. I'm going to have to watch that version.

324. Angela's Ashes

Yes, this is like fifteen downers in a row. I think it's the beginning of winter that's causing this trend.

323. The Opening to Little Miss Sunshine

The introductions to each of the characters are just perfect. I particularly love the father giving his terrible motivational speech and the son doing pushups under his home-made Nietzsche portrait.

322. The Rosetta Stone

Back to monochrome.

321. Confetti Death

The blog has been very monochromatic lately, so here's some color without letting go of the morbidness.

320. Jane Eyre

According to Phoebe from Friends: You'd think she's a woman, but she's not. She's a cyborg. This book was very ahead of its time.

319. Home on the Range

The song, not the terrible movie. Also, this is the guy who wrote it. I would have guessed his beard was at least 50% bigger than that.

318. Shadow of the Colossus

A game that asks you to kill beautifully intricate monsters and then reflect on your motivations for doing so. This was the probably the most-cited artistic game in the brouhaha that arose after Roger Ebert blithely claimed "Video games can never be art."

317. The Rite of Spring

I was going to say that it's not often that an abstract piece of music causes a riot, but then I found this list of "classical music riots". Apparently it happens more commonly than I was aware of.

316. Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother

315. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

An extension of the golem legend, in which an aspiring magician helps smuggle the Golem out of Czechoslovakia to keep it out of Nazi hands. Surprisingly, although this is how the novel starts, it tends towards realism after that point.

314. The Golem of Prague

The legend goes that the rabbi of Prague created the golem to protect the Jewish ghetto against antisemitic attacks. Depending on the version of the story you hear, this either goes very well or disastrously. I like that the idea of monstrous, uncontrollable technology was around as early as the 1830s (and certainly much earlier in other stories.)

313. Baby Got Back

After posting this, I realized it looked like an unfortunate political statement. This is in no way meant to be a commentary on #312.

312. I Have a Dream

Wow.

311. Paris Street; Rainy Day