Brianland

Here’s part of the script I’ll be riffing from when I introduce the movie “Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place” at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac on Sunday October 13th.   Edit Update  —  Here’s video of the event . . . . Here’s the post-screening Q&A . . . ============================================ This is the original […]

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. Beat & Prankster fans rejoice! A new firsthand memoir has just been released of life with one of the Mount Rushmores of both the Beat Generation & the Merry Pranksters.  That doesn’t happen very often, and there aren’t many options left. Anne Murphy (who later reverted back to her birth name Anne Marie Maxwell) […]

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  Stories, videos and photos from the annual Kerouac hometown festival over the last several years I’ve been going. Edie Parker-Kerouac called and told me about the the initial commemorative dedication in July 1988 — which birthed LCK — saying that she, Henri Cru and “Big Tim” Moran were driving up for it, and that […]

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The Magic Genie’s Happy Place —  Saturday July 9th, 2022 . The matinee show (4PM) stemmed from a massive reorganization of all my performance pieces — many dating back to New York in the 1980s and ’90s.  A bunch of them still held up — and since nobody’s heard me do them in 20 or […]

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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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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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  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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A Festival of Festivals . I said somewhere on social media leading up to the Woodstock 50th that it should and would be experienced by people in different ways all over the world. “Friends not corporations create Woodstock.” There was no required location or situation. As Jerry Garcia said of the Beats — “… it […]

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    Midwest Tour — May 2019 . Thomas O’Shea House Party — Berea, outside Cleveland Ohio – Friday, May 10th, 2019 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac – the Marin Epiphany – from ch 26 – The Airplane Hanger in Marin The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac – ch. 3 – Dancin’ to The Boulder Boogie […]

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