Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Le Morte du Monster
Godzilla, the King of Kaiju, died on Monday. The actual monster will likely live on in big screen iterations for generations to come, but we’ve lost Haruo Nakajima, the actor who played the massive dragon who became a symbol for the dawn on the nuclear age in the creature’s very first feature in 1954. It’s [...]
Rum Hunter
In a recent post I looked-back on Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide which happened 12 years ago. More importantly, 2017 marks what would have been Thompson’s octogenarian celebration. Honoring Gonzo at 80 here’s a great doc featuring Hunter, Jan Wenner and others telling the story of Hunter’s The Rum Diary… Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I [...]
Professor Ginsberg
You probably know Allen Ginsberg as a poet, but you might also dig his photography or maybe you know about his devotion to Buddhism. Like his hero Walt Whitman, Ginsberg contained multitudes and even managed to add teaching to his resume from the 1970s and into the 1990′s during which time he lectured at schools [...]
Osiris Rising
I spent the morning writing a review of the 1970, psychedelic classic Performance. For me this is one of the few films from America’s mid-century cultural revolution that still lives up to its shocking reputation. Most people associate Performance with its cinematographer and co-director Nicolas Roeg. Even if you are a die-hard fan of outre, [...]
Nomadus Americanus
After this week’s news about the death of Sam Shepard and my memorial post yesterday, I’ve been reading a lot about the man. I came across a quote from Shepard saying that he only felt at home in his pickup truck — I remember him saying something similar in the Shepard & Dark documentary, and [...]
Lost Shepard
Earlier this evening I had just finished a yummy dinner of homemade soup with Japanese noodles, miso/lime broth, chicken, carrots, seaweed, and some hot red peppers I bought at the farmers market on Friday evening. I had a great workout this morning and then proceeded to knock the hell out of a to-do list full [...]
Suburban Savior
One of the videos I posted to the blog last week somehow lead to my discovering this BBC rock doc featuring Boy George’s personal musicological tour of Britain’s 1970s music scene — the music of his teen years highlighting the bands and the tunes that influenced Culture Club in the 1980s. Here’s a bit about [...]
Brave Old World
Aldous Huxley was born on July 26, 1894. 38 years later, in 1932, he published his landmark dystopian science fiction novel, Brave New World — the book is celebrating its 85th birthday this year. In 1980 NBC brought the book to life for television audiences via a 3-hour miniseries that featured Harold and Maude star, [...]
Lion for Reel
I got back to Nashville late on Monday night after a week at the Sedona Summer Colony in Arizona. I spent last week writing songs, jamming with musicians and talking about movies, art and writing with artists and thinkers from around the country. It was an illuminating, immersive experience in a singularly beautiful setting and [...]
Sedona Songs 5
I woke up super early on Thursday, and after getting up at about 4AM I went back to sleep before starting my day at about 8:45. The time change has me a bit off, and the Arizona heat/humidity/light factors are sometimes just the opposite of what they are in Nashville. That said, we had another [...]
