All posts by Eric Robert Nolan

Eric Robert Nolan graduated from Mary Washington College in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. He spent several years a news reporter and editorial writer for the Culpeper Star Exponent in Culpeper, Virginia. His work has also appeared on the front pages of numerous newspapers in Virginia, including The Free Lance – Star and The Daily Progress. Eric entered the field of philanthropy in 1996, as a grant writer for nonprofit healthcare organizations. Eric’s poetry has been featured by Dead Beats Literary Blog, Dagda Publishing, The International War Veterans’ Poetry Archive, and elsewhere. His poetry will also be published by Illumen Magazine in its Spring 2014 issue.
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Check out MWC Alum Steve Miller’s virtual silkscreen art!

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Here’s something I’ve been meaning to post for a while now — I am the proud owner of two “photographic virtual silkscreens” by the talented Alexandria artist Steve Miller.  I mentioned these prints on the blog when Steve sent them to me, but I never posted photos.

Steve is an old friend of mine, and a fellow graduate of Mary Washington College.  (No absurd “UMW” appellations will appear on this blog.)  As I’ve mentioned here in the past, some of my favorite memories of college were partying with the gang at Steve’s room in “The Tunnel” between Mason and Randolph Halls.  (I was a nervous and hyperactive freshman in the Fall of 1990; Steve and a few other upperclassmen there took me under their collective wing, and taught me to chill out and listen to the Beatles like a respectable Virginian young man.)  Steve is the tall guy in the shades in our group photo below.

But Steve was also a great friend because he’s one of the first true artists I had in my peer group.  He was a great creative influence, and taught me to dig good music, laid back friends and offbeat, unusual art.  I’d like to think it made me a far more well rounded young person.  To this day, whenever I hear The Allman Brothers (whose work was gospel to our crowd), I think of The Tunnel.

Steve’s work with virtual silkscreening was my introduction to the medium.  It’s cool and trippy; I love the vibe it brings to my place.

Check out Steve’s site here:

http://virtualsilkscreens.com/

 

 

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A few quick words about “Last Shift” (2014)

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“Last Shift” (2014) came highly recommended.  It didn’t quite meet my consequent expectations, as aspects of it seemed amateurish — I felt there were problems with plotting, pacing, structure and even sound editing.  (I just couldn’t always discern what was said by the voice on the phone.)

But it was still good enough for me to rate it a 7 out of 10, thanks primarily to an interesting premise, a solid lead actress, and some genuinely scary moments.  Juliana Harkavy does just fine as a rookie cop working alone on her first shift — on the titular last shift of a police station being shuttered after a new facility opens elsewhere.  She carries the movie well as demonic shenanigans ensue at the haunted site, even if, at times, it seems she needed better direction about her character’s mood and reactions.

And the scares were there, which means this does qualify as a successful horror movie.  One, for example, results from an extended sequence involving a dropped flashlight — it’s creative and effective despite its simplicity.  Another scare results from what seems to be a direct homage to “Poltergeist” (1982) — but it might be even creepier here.

This is a decent enough fright flick; it’s worth checking out.

 

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“Sunrise Over Cadillac Mountain” (photo)

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Let’s see if I understand the story here … if you reach the top of Maine’s Cadillac Mountain during autumn or winter, you can see the sun rise over the United States for the first time that day?  Hot damn if that isn’t a great excuse for a road trip.  I’ve been hoping  to take a long journey to Maine with a couple of buddies of mine in New York — this would be a perfect destination.

Mount Desert Island, where the mountain is situated, is so far north that I figure it must be easy to just hop on a boat and hit Nova Scotia.  That’s a place I’ve always wanted to see, ever since we studied it in Geography 101 at Mary Washington College.  I might have gotten a “D” in that class, but Nova Scotia’s beauty was still not lost on me.

 

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Photo credit:  By Bandan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.

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“Wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire.”

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“Without waiting for his father’s questions he ran across the road and began to walk at breakneck speed down the hill. He hardly knew where he was walking. Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours of maddening incense before the eyes of his mind. He strode down the hill amid the tumult of sudden risen vapours of wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire. They streamed upwards before his anguished eyes in dense and maddening fumes and passed away above him till at last the air was clear and cold again.”

— possibly my favorite quote from James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”  I wanted to feature an Irish writer today, and Yeats’ “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” is already always plastered all over my social media.

 

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“You see, I’m Irish — but I’m not a leprechaun!”

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“You wanna fight?  Then step up and we’ll get it on!”

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

And Happy Throwback Thursday, too.  House of Pain’s “Top O’ The Mornin’ To Ya” dates from 1992.  It actually has a pretty nifty “Return of the Jedi” reference, for you Star Wars fans who currently rule this little thing called the Internet.

And the song is memorable to this comic book fan for being a great intro track for Colin Farrell’s Bullseye in 2003’s “Daredevil.”  I actually am the rare (or possibly unique) individual who really likes that movie.  I bought it on DVD, and I’ve seen it more times than I care to publicly admit, given its ignominy.

 

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Lionel-Noël Royer’s “Caesar and Vercingetorix” (1899)

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If anybody could enlighten me about how to post a high-resolution image on WordPress, so that the “click to enlarge” function may be used by visitors, I’d be as grateful as one of Caesar’s subjects, really.

I used to be able to do it!  Did I … forget?

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“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”

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Today is the Ides of March.

I suppose that Marc Antony’s speech from “Julius Caesar,” below, is the Western World’s definitive treatise on sarcasm?

I haven’t read it in its entirety since 10th grade English at Longwood High School.  In doing so now, I’m surprised at how many pop cultural references to it spring to mind:

  1.  The entire speech is beautifully riffed by the eponymous blade-wielding arch-villain in Matt Wagner’s incredible “Grendel: Devil by the Deed” (1993) as follows: “Friends, Romans, city folk — listen to me or I’ll lop off off your ears.  Let’s bury your Caesar and then let’s appraise him.”
  2. I’m guessing that Charles Bronson’s “The Evil That Men Do” (1984) is a reference to the third line?
  3. In at least one episode of “The X Files” in the 1990’s, the Well-Manicured Man angrily refers to the traitorous Syndicate as “these honorable men.”
  4. In one of his later novels (2002’s “The Bear and the Dragon,” maybe?) Tom Clancy describes a pregnant Chinese factory worker as being “made of sterner stuff.”  (I can’t remember which book, but for some strange reason I can remember that line.  Weird.)

 

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

 

— from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”

 

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Publication notice: Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine’s 2016 anthology

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I’ve just received some very nice news from Editor Samantha Rose over at Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine.  The magazine has selected a recent poem of mine, “My mother’s apartment,” for its 2016 anthology.

I really am honored.  The anthology is planned for release in Autumn; I’ll be sure to post updates about its publication as information becomes available.

 

 

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“To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those who voted on the other side.”

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My poetry, 1992 through 2015

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Care to class up your weekend with some expertly constructed poetry by a genuine artist?

Then you’ve come to the wrong place.

Want to slum it up with a few rhymes by the New York Shanty Irish? Then eat your corned beef and drink your coffee, and check out my page.

 Click here: My poetry, 1992 through 2015

 

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