Brianland

You wake up one day and your whole life changes just by the chance seeing of a picture. Much the way it might with a chance spotting of a poster on a bookstore wall. As Jack says, “My books are my children.”  And as Mama always preached — pregnancy can happen in an instant. Unlike […]

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The Beats, The Beatles & The Brotherhood . . This month I met a fellow Toronto-area author, John Arnone, who’s just written a book about The Beatles and Canada — Us and Them: Canada, Canadians and The Beatles.  In fact, in keeping with our Canadian heritage, we met after a ball hockey game and then […]

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Here’s a little taste . . . My “script” notes for the first dramatic portrayal of Jack . . . . Pull My Daisy (released Nov. 1959) One of the Big Five to focus on MY THESIS HOW THIS IS THE GREATEST BEAT GEN CREATION. Filmed in their prime . . . . Kerouac’s best […]

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. 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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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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  How History Could Have Been Different Kerouac’s and Otherwise   . It was a quiet day in Facelandia when my Beat / Deadhead friend Steve Silberman posted: “Social media is amazing sometimes. In response to my posting a Cape Cod Times article about Kerouac’s time there, a woman posted a previously unseen photo of […]

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. Neal Cassady — by Carolyn Cassady (courtesy of the Cassady fam) . From Dean Moriarty . . . to Dead immortality, The street-kid who read . . . was a legend in bed, But more than the lays . . . he inspired a blaze In the hearths of the writers . . . […]

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. . Jack fights back from off the Beaten track still alive at 100 as if any of us ever wondered if THAT would happen  after his track star sprint  — through the pages of history, seeing around corners like Neal at the wheel, knockin over grammar cops and blowin past the door stops to […]

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The Home of The Scroll & The Girl Newly uncovered photos and corrections to history. “Bill felt completely at home on the rooftops of Manhattan.”Joan Haverty-Kerouac on Bill Cannastra I knew I loved this guy! 🙂 . To all in Beatlandia — Pretty much nobody’s ever seen these buried Beat family photos in a hundred […]

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