Brianland

. on the Hunter Thompson & The Beat Generation panel at GonzoFest July, 17, 2026 — photo by Erin Hemmer . On my recent July return to my beloved NYC, I stayed in the old hotel next door to where I basically grew up in New York — the north-west corner of Washington Square Park […]

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2025 on-stage photo by Rick Melnick . From Editor Simon Warner’s introduction . . . We are very pleased to unveil a new feature at Rock and the Beat Generation, a series of interviews gathered under the heading ‘Generation Beat’ which will focus on a number of transatlantic trailblazers who have carried the Beat torch into […]

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Traversing the Impossible . Fifty years ago this month my life changed forever and for the better. I had transferred a couple years earlier from a private boys school in Winnipeg into the public school system because, frankly, I wanted to be around girls . . . and out of the almost military-school-like life I’d […]

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Highlights of Golden Nights    By the laws of physics, taking a trip while you’re on a trip exponentially amplifies the experience. Here’s some of the peaks in the weeks with the freaks . . . The Black Dot “Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it […]

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. I’d never given Las Vegas a moment’s thought in my life.  I checked in with some cultural colleagues I’ve been jamming the arts with for 40+ years and none of us can remember the city ever coming up for any reason.  In fact, it was kind of looked down upon as this superficial wasteland […]

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On this weekend 17 years ago — in the heat of the Democratic primary of 2008 between Hillary & Obama — I started BrianHassett.com. Every month since then for 17 years I’ve written at least one new piece for the site. “17” has been a weird number that’s followed me around my whole life from […]

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The Day I Thanked Arthur Miller   One of the nice things about living in Manhattan — you often bump into and sometimes get to talk to really smart people on the sidewalk.  When they’re famous, mostly you just nod acknowledgment and smile — like seeing Robin Williams walking and playing with his son on […]

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. Sphere & Laughing in Las Vegas   photo by Jay Blakesberg for Dead & Company . This is the Acid Tests … in a two-billion-dollar spaceship! I’d been reading about The Sphere for years before it was ever built.  It sounded too wild to be true!  And of course I immediately thought how perfect […]

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. TOTALLY DRAMATIC . . It wasn’t just a big-screen spectacular — it was a nail-biting drama! An old brother of ’70s shenanigans flew from Winterpeg to my place in Southern Ontario because I lived on the Path of Totality for the 2024 solar eclipse. We had invites to a big acid test weekend with […]

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Imaginestock . photo by Christy Worsoe . Imagine, if you will, a place where music and love fill the air, and every person works for free to build a utopian kingdom. Imagine a secret island hideaway whose location is only shared to people who’ve earned an invitation by a lifetime of good deeds. Imagine a […]

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