— it’s the latest poetry collection from Down in the Dirt magazine and it just arrived in the mail. It’s a surprisingly large tome, it’s got an awesome cover, and it looks great!
Tag Archives: Eric Robert Nolan
In brightest birthday, in darkest night …
I got a new hat as an early birthday present — and, whaddaya know, it just so happens that it matches a ring I own. It’s almost as though they were standard issue for some sort of … galactic peace-keeping corps or something.
Next I need to get a bright green coffeemaker as my power battery.
Throwback Thursday: the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” comic adaptation (1982)!
When I was in the third grade, Marvel’s 1982 adaptation of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) might have been the most beloved comic book in my collection. And that’s saying a lot — there were a couple of issues of “Sgt. Rock” that I probably would have killed to protect.
“Raiders of the Lost Ark” was a quite decent adaptation of what I still revere as my favorite movie of all time (though it’s probably tied for that distinction with a certain unpopular film that I will not name here). It makes sense that the book was so well crafted — this Internet thingamajig tells me that it was scripted by none other than comics great Walter Simonson.
I’m a little confused by some of what I’m reading online … yes, this was originally published as a three-issue arc. (I had a couple of those.) But it was also released as a complete book (with the cover art that you see below).
Postscript — I learned a couple of years ago that Marvel also released a two-issue adaptation of “Blade Runner” (1982) the same year. The artwork looks pitch perfect. Sooner or later, I need to get my hands on that.
“The Writer” appears in Down in the Dirt magazine’s newest anthology!
I got a really nice surprise today — Down in the Dirt magazine has included a poem of mine in its latest poetry collection, entitled Outside the Box. The poem is “The Writer,” and it was selected for the anthology following its appearance in Down in the Dirt’s May 2020 issue.
You can order Outside the Box right here over at Amazon.
Thank you, Editor Janet Kuypers, for allowing me to share my voice in this collection!
The Roanoke Times features “Friends, Americans, Countrymen.”
I’m happy to share here that The Roanoke Times published “Friends, Americans, Countrymen — Lend Me Your Fears.” If you follow this blog, you’ll recall that this was my satirical piece aimed at Donald Trump (riffing on Marc Antony’s speech in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar).
You can read it online right here.
This joke isn’t just a classic. IT’S CLASSICAL.
Have you heard my joke about Oedipus?
He didn’t have a girlfriend, exactly.
But he had a significant mother.
THE TRUMP IS OUT THERE.
Fun fact — “alien DNA ” and “demon sperm” were both plot devices on “The X-Files” (1993-2018). The former was part of a background story arc throughout most of the show’s seasons; the latter was the subject of a Season 6 episode entitled “Terms of Endearment.” (Aside from being a great episode, it’s notable because it stars horror icon Bruce Campbell.)
Stella Immanuel may be an irresponsible quack, but she really knows her sci-fi television.
This is a wise landlord.
The consensus online is that this is a typo — they probably meant to say “NO PETS.”
But you can never be too careful.
Throwback Thursday: “The Lone Ranger” (1949 -1957)!
No, I obviously don’t remember “The Lone Ranger” during its initial run between 1949 and 1957. (At least I hope that’s obvious — I’m a couple of full decades younger than that.) But I absolutely do remember this show’s reruns from when I was a baby … maybe around 1976, if I had to guess? I would have been about four years old. (I was five when my family moved out of that house in Queens, New York, to rural Long Island.)
I know that people who claim early childhood memories are often viewed with skepticism — I get it. (And I think many of us are more prone to confabulation than we’d like to admit.) But I’ve actually got a few memories from when I was a toddler — and this is one of them.
I can remember my Dad putting “The Lone Ranger” on in the tiny … den or living room or whatever, to the left of our house’s front door and hallway. You see the part in the intro below where the horse rears up at the .31 mark — and again at the 1:53 mark? That was a verrrrrry big deal to me as a tot.
Go ahead, tell me I’m nuts. I can take it. You and I live in an age in which conspiracy theories have gone completely mainstream. If I share something online that seems implausible to others, I figure I’m in a lot of company.
Anyway, I pretty much forgot about The Lone Ranger after that. There was a 1981 television movie, “The Legend of the Lone Ranger,” that was remarkably well done — especially for a TV movie at the time. I remember being pretty impressed with that — its plot-driving scene where the good guys get fatally ambushed was unexpectedly dour.
But I never bothered with the infamous 2013 film. I occasionally enjoy movies that everybody else hates — something that earns me a lot of ribbing on Facebook — so maybe I should give it a shot. Hell, the trailer makes it look decent. And HBO’s “Westworld” has really whetted my appetite for westerns … which is weird, because “Westworld” is decidedly NOT a western — that’s sort of the point of its central plot device. But still.
Tell me I’m wrong.
Don’t all photos of George Orwell invariably make him look like a very polite man who is really eager for your approval?
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 