Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #15: Beer as Therapy
bart plantenga
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners
• Albert Camus
You gotta chortle in your beerhead at the maxim “Beer Is Cheaper Than Therapy,” a tongue-in-cheek saying fraught [...
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Music
The Spitters – Live at The Cooler, 1-24-98
Sir Andre Bemler
Just dug up this nugget - an entire Spitters show (almost 21 minutes long!) filmed live at The Cooler, a great 1990s downtown NYC rock club. This performance is from 1998 and features the post "boy-band" Spitters; Bill, Tim ...
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Essay
Original Beats: Gregory Corso and Herbert Huncke
City of Strangers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbY6KXPg6wY&feature=player_embedded
Often overshadowed by the Beat triumvurate of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac, Herbert Huncke and Gregory Corso were nonetheless integral to the Beat f...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #14: Beer = Food = Books
bart plantenga
Apparently I said “In NY the louder and crazier you sound, the more attention you seem to get,” and this was quoted in the Sunday Boston Globe about our Cambridge gig. Luckily they used a photo of Judy Nylon and not me. ...
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NEW
Jerry Rio’s Urban Eye: Times Square
City of Strangers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ome6yVU2fTE
Over the holidays, reader Jerry Rio sent me this charming doc about changing mid-90's New York: The Urban Eye. This 'video time-capsule' was made in 1995, when market forces, an...
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Subway Pome #57: Most Girls Wear Too Much Makeup
Sean Flaherty
“Somewhere in her smile she knows
That I don’t need no other lover” – from Something by George Harrison
Around eight
Saturday morning
the chilly wet October fog
makes it feel earlier than it is,
the bus depot
...
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NEW
Dong of the Dead
Jose Padua
The name of this poem is Dong of the Dead.
It is my attempt to cash in quickly
on the literary zombie craze by
writing the first literary zombie
porn novel in verse. I am writing it
while sitting in the back of a pickup
...
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Music
The Evening News!
Fluffy Schwartz
So, If you happen to be in Texas near Angelo State University this Tuesday night, you really should go hear the amazing Mr. Bonenfant. The concert is going to be fantastic & it will include him playing my solo clarinet ...
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Looking back: New York in the ’70s
City of Strangers
What always interested me about NY when I first came here in the late '80s was how, like London, it was essentially a working class city. The working classes lived in the heart of the city, and constituted a great deal of it...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #13: Without the Voodoo of Hope
bart plantenga
Hitching through mid-1970s Canada usually meant Canadian Border Services stopping you, inquiring how much money you had on your person. If it was under $25 they’d refuse you entry, which meant hitching the long way round ...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #12: Stroh’s Cans to the Head
bart plantenga
I suddenly have vivid memories of survival in Flint, Michigan, Motor City Jr., birthplace of GM. I was a stranger here because I rode a bike with books of poetry in my back pocket and some locals could smell this alienness ...
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Music
Don’t Miss Fred Frith, Live in Downtown Berkeley, this Saturday night!
Fluffy Schwartz
I am not joking when I say that in my mind, Mr. Frith is one of the most important guitar players in the history of the instrument. For me, it goes like this, Jimi Hendrix then Fred Frith in terms of people who have expanded...
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Music
Mr. Adams Live
Fluffy Schwartz
Steve Adams is playing at the Berkeley Arts Festival this Thursday night, run don't walk to hear him play! Steve is the real deal and a local gem. he will be appearing with Lisa Mezzacappa - bass, John Hanes - electronics ...
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Where the Exiles Go — The Canadian Literary Outlaw in a Conformist Culture
Mark McCawley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkoByHco_Ig&feature=related
For as long as I've been writing and publishing in Canada, the concept of a Canadian Literary Outlaw has always been something of a contradiction. Not that ...
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What I Did Today, Carl Watson's Issue
Ron Kolm
After contributing to an earlier issue of What I Did Today, Carl Watson collected three two-thousand word essays to go along with his already published one, to complete his own follow-up issue. Here’s Michael Randall’s ...
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