Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Saint George’s Day
This week we remember losing George Carlin on June 22, 2008. I’m a student of stand-up comedy — it’s been an important influence in my own performances and I have an entire library of books about comedy, comedians and funny cinema. The only thing more terrifying than walking onto a stage with only a guitar [...]
Back to Hell
I recently found Straight to Hell with Spanish subtitles on YouTube. Like Blue Velvet and River’s Edge, Straight to Hell was released in 1986. Three decades haven’t dulled this whacked-out western which married MTV to the wild west with a cast of rockers including the Pogues, Joe Strummer, Courtney Love, Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, Elvis [...]
River’s Return
In 1981, in a small California town, a teenager raped and killed his girlfriend. Afterwards he took his friends to see the body. About a dozen young people had seen the body and known about the murder before the murder was reported two days after the slaying. River’s Edge is based on those events. The [...]
Frank’s Wild Years
My last post celebrating Blue Velvet at 30 created a lot of fun comments and discussions on social media, and that made me glad that I’d bookmarked this great interview with Dennis Hopper. This chat covers Hopper’s work with David Lynch on the film, and looks back at the star’s storied, sordid, remarkable career. Stay [...]
Love Letter
This year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of David Lynch’s surreal skewering of suburbia, Blue Velvet. A 2002 documentary illuminated that story’s darkest shadows. Here’s IndieWire with the word… The 70-minute-long, 2002 documentary The Mysteries Of Love dives deep into the 1986 film, with interviews with key members of the creative team, including Lynch himself, [...]
Blooming Finnegan’s
Happy Bloomsday! On June 16 we commemorate the calendar date of James and Nora Joyce’s first romantic date. June 16 subsequently became the date on which the events in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses take place. Joyce was an early 20th century modernist, but his wildest visions have been celebrated as psychedelic masterpieces by underground countercultures [...]
Ecco Arlo
Today we celebrate the birthday of Arlo Guthrie who was born on June 10, 1947. Here’s Arlo at Woodstock singing Bob Dylan’s “Walkin’ Down the Line.” Stay Awake! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Music posts.
Ace of Hearts
If Elvis was a white singer who adopted a black style, Johnny Ace was a black singer and piano player who started a sensation of his own by adopting the style of the white crooners he heard on the radio. Today we remember Ace’s birthday on June 9, 1929. By the mid-50′s popular music was [...]
Creating Cthulhu
90 years ago, in the summer of 1926, H.P. Lovecraft wrote “The Call of Cthulhu.” The three part story mixes an essay structure with narrative elements, and Lovecraft himself didn’t consider it one of his best. But Conan creator Robert E. Howard considered the tale to be a classic, and Michel Houellebecq rates the story [...]
Radical: Muhammad Ali
I’m a huge fan of combat sports. Back in the day I’d occasionally post about fights here at Insomnia, but since the blog has zeroed-in on counterculture content, only an exceptional fighter might make an appearance. Over the weekend, we lost the great Muhammad Ali. Exceptional is one of the first words one might use [...]
