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the Best in Kerouac & the Beats, Adventure, Politics, Music, Movies, Poetry & other Lifejoys

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Entries Tagged as 'Weird Things About Me'

Falling In Love in The Summer Of Love

July 30th, 2017 · 46 Comments · Grateful Dead, Kerouac and The Beats, Merry Pranksters, Weird Things About Me

Falling in Love in the Summer of Love . Yeah — it can still happen.  To anyone anywhere anytime.  Me mid-50s, she just over 40. We’d met a year earlier at a Prankster Family Reunion.  I thought she was stunning.  But she had this boyfriend.  It was one of those couples that didn’t seem to […]

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The Spilled Coffee Test

April 9th, 2017 · 9 Comments · Real-life Adventure Tales, Weird Things About Me

. . The Spilled Coffee Test . . .  . How to know if you’re happy and centered . . . Something I’ve being using for decades . . .  Very simple —  If I ding (or worse) my coffee cup (or whatever) and cause a spill on the table (or wherever) my split-second reaction […]

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac at The Beat Shindig in San Francisco

March 19th, 2017 · 15 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Merry Pranksters, Weird Things About Me

. . 15 minutes before this show I was lying on the ground behind the Cassady’s booth trying not to lose consciousness. . . . An hour into it I was running around the stage playing Gregory Corso on a football team.  The build from wounded wobbly to careening comedy is completely crazy. Everything had been […]

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The Dalai Lama in Central Park in 1999

February 26th, 2017 · 8 Comments · New York City, Poetry, Weird Things About Me

. Dalai-Rama! or The Light at the End of the Tunnel is the Twinkle in Your Own Eye! . In the days leading up to This Great Spirit Gathering in Central Park, The news reports were predicting 20,000 people or something. I was thinking, “This is going to be a LOT bigger than that!” I […]

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Finding Kesey

January 29th, 2017 · 13 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Merry Pranksters, Weird Things About Me

Finding Kesey . Following the November 2016 election I knew it was time to get my own house in order.  A year had been lost to a losing campaign, added to five years of On The Road domino-tumbling madness that had passed since my mother had passed in 2011, and there was a lot of […]

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Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac – reviews and reactions Part 3

December 10th, 2016 · 10 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Weird Things About Me

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac Reviews & Reactions — Part Three . Here’s the first round of incoming reviews. Or here’s a whole second round. .  I am bathing in the pages. Your book is a page turner of improbable adventures and characters — one crazy one after another.  The writing is high spirited and […]

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Hitchhiker Reactions

July 26th, 2015 · 8 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Real-life Adventure Tales, Weird Things About Me

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac  . Reviews, feedback, and other buzzes over the transom . . . . Brian Hassett had the presence of mind to pack a good old cassette recorder in his rucksack back in 1982 when he was alerted to the Jack Kerouac Conference being staged in Boulder, Colorado.  The real […]

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Pranksters in Wonderland

May 10th, 2015 · 19 Comments · Grateful Dead, Merry Pranksters, Real-life Adventure Tales, Weird Things About Me

. Somewhere in America . . . Pranksters are gathering . . . and in this case it was Wonderland. A dozen acres of wilderness hills and valleys, with a sunken natural amphitheater on the highest point of land in sight. 150 or so Pranksters came from across the land, traveling by every mode there […]

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Cat Stevens Yusuf concert review

December 2nd, 2014 · 25 Comments · Music, Weird Things About Me

If you’re a Cat Stevens fan — and you know who you are! — stop reading this. Close the link and go somewhere else. Anywhere. Keep your music and memories intact. Beautiful gardens are too hard to find in this world. . ============================================   Okay?  Nobody here who doesn’t want their bubble burst? Just makin […]

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Makin’ Movies — Carolyn Cassady, On The Road, and the Pranksters at Woodstock

September 21st, 2014 · 23 Comments · Kerouac and The Beats, Merry Pranksters, Movies, Real-life Adventure Tales, Weird Things About Me

. Here’s some early songs in sound and light . . . My tribute to the late great Carolyn Cassady on the one year anniversary of her passing … . Or “The Pranksters Invade the Woodstock Museum” . . . . Or here’s opening the Marry Prankster Reunion weekend in 2016 . . . . […]

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