Brianland

. The Rule of Three — Comedians live by it.  Hockey players call it a hat trick.  Children learn about three blind mice, Goldilocks and the three bears, and how genies always grant three wishes.  The Constitution gave us the trio of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Christians talk of the Holy Trinity.  […]

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. One thing I learned during my lockdown Film Studies deepdive is just how subjective movies are.  I know all art is subjective, but maybe film is the most because of how it’s every art form blended together and being experienced at once. Something I picked up from a Tarantino interview — that a book […]

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In some of the best news in Beatlandia in many a year — it’s just been announced that (A) the Kerouac estate has signed the inimitable Holly George-Warren to be the official biographer of Jack — a role originally filled by Doug Brinkley back in the ’90s until he got lured away by some other […]

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Stay Stopped Smoking . For all my friends who struggle . . . These are the handwritten notes I’d read any time I was feeling an urge:  Whatever’s bothering you will NOT be made better by drawing smoke into your tender  living lungs. Drawing smoke into your lungs doesn’t make anything better. Don’t die for […]

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The Play’s The Thing 113 different Playbills that survived. An approximate history of my life in theater audiences . . . Some of the highlights . . . which you can see the Playbills of in chronological order starting at the top . . . Mousetrap — London — 1972 — the longest running play […]

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21st Century Beatniks versus Hieroglyphic Caricatures . There’s long been a debate about the word “beatnik” — originally coined by a sensationalist San Francisco gossip columnist in 1958, playing on the Yiddish suffix “nik” and the first Russian satellite launched in September ’57, colloquially known as “Sputnik.”  Jack and Allen & company hated the word […]

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(collage and poem by S.A. Griffin)   Lawrence Ferlinghetti is Dead, Long Live Lawrence Ferlinghetti!   Howling Allen Ginsberggot shot out of history’s atomic canonand never stopped flyingFerlinghetti prints the poem as news hysterical nakedand gets busted for publishing obscene odes the law fought the poem and the poem won without this greeting at such […]

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Here’s a beautiful inspiring story about proactively engaging young people in democracy.  And I mean young people under 18! It’s a story about generosity and generations, empowerment and inclusion, doing the right thing, and putting your good where it will do the most (as Ken Kesey used to advise). It’s told by a fellow Canadian […]

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From Blissfully Ravaged in Democracy: Adventures in Politics 1980 – 2020 From the chapter — “Fun & Loving on the Campaign Trail 2020 — A Prankster’s Primary”.   . The next day — Tuesday, February 4th, the day following the night of the Iowa caucus vote-counting debacle — I pulled off three rallies: Biden, Tulsi […]

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. George Walker:“Your election comments were brilliant and as good as anything by anyone I read anywhere.  You should be getting paid for this.  You nailed it all the way through.  Sometimes I would disagree with something you said, and then a couple weeks later I’d realize, ‘Oh yeah, Brian was right about that.’  And […]

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