Jack’s Day
Today we celebrate the birthday of novelist and poet, Jack Kerouac. Kerouac didn’t give the Beat Generation its name, but his image and influence on mid-20th century literature are immeasurable, and his On the Road novel continue to inspire the imaginations of young freedom-seekers all over the world. Kerouac followed in the footsteps of heroes [...]
Savage Nomads Now
My new single, “Savage Nomads” will be released on Tuesday. There are lots of ways to put music out there these days — I’ve used SoundCloud, BandCamp and Tunecore separately and simultaneously for years. Lately I’ve been releasing a new single every few months on Bandcamp, but I decided to to something different this time. [...]
Tell Me a Story
Making #Americana jazz again #eastsidestorytellin @theposteast.@eastsidestorytn #singersongwriter #rustbeltrootsrock #irishpunchingsongs #crashfolk A post shared by Joe Nolan (@mightyjoenolan) on Sep 21, 2017 at 12:52pm PDT Do you remember your dreams? Do you remember yesterday night? Here’s a song from our East Side Story Telling set. Have a good week. Tell someone a story… Please subscribe to [...]
I, Not I
Following up on yesterday’s post about the relationship between consciousness and reality — yeah, yeah, I’ll get back to the Satanic, Loch Ness, avant garde, performance artists next week — here’s a piece from Curiosity about modern day philosopher Daniel Dennett’s idea that consciousness — Descartes’ “I” — is just an illusion… There’s a quote [...]
X XXV
This year we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Spike Lee’s masterpiece, Malcolm X. Here’s Roger Ebert reviewing the film when it debuted in 1992… …Walking into “Malcolm X,” I expected an angrier film than Spike Lee has made. This film is not an assault but an explanation, and it is not exclusionary; it deliberately addresses [...]
Adios, Wicker Man
The British horror film The Wicker Man (1973) is one of my favorite movies in any genre. The flick is spooky throughout, but this story of a police officer investigating a missing child case on a remote island is also funny, artful, campy and sexy, and it features a ubiquitous soundtrack that makes this macabre [...]
Maid Made Mad
It mostly doesn’t work out when novelists become film directors. At best, authors seem to make bizarre cult classics: Tom McGuane’s 92 In The Shade comes to mind, and Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive has its memorable moments of coke-fueled camp. But both pale to the high weirdness and real-life violence in Norman Mailer’s Maidstone: From [...]
Happy Thanksgiving from William S. Burroughs
Thanksgiving is an important day: It marks the beginning of the traditional holiday season for most white, Christian Americans and it reminds all citizens of when we first began to call this land our home. These events have importance in and of themselves and should not be dismissed. However, the world is a more complicated [...]
THEY LIVE at 25
John Carpenter’s They Live (1988) doesn’t sound like a classic movie: A drifter wanders into Nowheresville USA — a Los Angeles neighborhood devastated by an economic recession. After witnessing some suspicious activity surrounding a strange church, the man discovers a box of special sunglasses which reveal that the reality he’s come to take for granted [...]
Hell Yes
I’ve sang the praises of Withnail and I on the blog before, but I was recently reminded of another, great, bizarre British comedy that also debuted in 1987. I’m not sure what was in the water that year, but it was something compellingly strange and relentlessly absurd. Looking at DVD’s online, I came across a [...]
