Brianland

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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. Satori in Lowell   — The Intentional Nothingness of Everything . Every year the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival is five blissfully crazy days of non-stop events from early morning to late night — from David Amram performances and other concerts to movie screenings and art shows to walking and bus tours to guest speakers and […]

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. 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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“The Taming of The Shoobeedoobie” . . “Next stop, Shakespeare’s Globe,” says the driver downstairs on the red double-decker bus winding its way through the narrow South Bank streets of London. I went early so I could do the official tour of the theater, and of course the guide was extremely well-versed, among other things […]

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I just came across this in the files.  Glad I did.  Kinda cool. They’re not really traditional 5–7–5 haiku — they’re what Kerouac called Western Haiku — “simple 3-line poems that make a little picture” — written while I was living with and inspired by Carolyn.  There certainly was something about that woman that inspired.  She […]

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The White Knight and The Queen     Ya know how our favorite Beats were not exactly role-model parents? How there aren’t a lot of heart-warming parent-child stories in Beatlandia? Well, … there is one.   Carolyn Cassady and her son John were sumpthin else. Honestly I’m tearing up just now picturing them together. It […]

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Another giant has fallen — another angel taken flight. Carolyn Cassady has just left us to join Neal and Jack on that great road trip in the sky. Her son John, the light of her life, was there by her side till the end. After a year’s refusal of entry into the U.K., just 3 […]

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 The Northport Report     Whale, we had another Jackfest — dancing with Big Sur by the Sea, My Brothers! — this time in Jack’s wave-lapping hometown of Northport, the idyllic little living Rockwell harbortown where he went to dock near the darkness of the city but still remain a slip away. I’m just back […]

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An excerpt from  “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac” The Adventure of the Boulder ’82 On The Road Conference — Finding Kerouac, Kesey and The Grateful Dead Alive & Rockin’ in the Rockies     I guess I haven’t mentioned who all was here yet . . .  This was the biggest gathering of Beats […]

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Beat Movie Guide (dramatizations  —  not documentaries) Last Updated:  Feb 19th, 2023 With not one, not two, but three movies based on Jack Kerouac books coming out this year (2013) it makes sense to make sense of the world of cinematic dramatizations based on Beat works. Since real people are given different fictional names in […]

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