This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a “winner.”
Tag Archives: Eric Robert Nolan
Eric Robert Nolan interviewed by Spillwords Press
Hey, gang. I was quite flattered recently to be interviewed by Spillwords Press as part of the online magazine’s weekly “Spotlight on Writers” series. It was a brief interview, but I had a lot of fun with it — and I’m grateful to the editors of Spillwords for selecting me.
You can find the interview right here:
SPOTLIGHT ON WRITERS – ERIC ROBERT NOLAN
Spillwords Press is a terrific creative community. The site is “the home for all that live and breathe words, spilled or inspired, through literature of every genre, from writers and poets of every walk of life. A place where classic, modern, and contemporary writers and writings thrive.” I encourage all of you to peruse the site and consider submitting your own work. 🙂
Resources for talking to kids about coronavirus.
Here are a couple of really good resources for talking to kids about Covid-19 — especially the first one, produced by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. (It’s a set of one-minute videos that are simple and easy to understand for younger children.)
“Videos for Kids and Parents” (Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center)
“Facts about coronavirus” (National Geographic Kids)
“How to talk to your kids about COVID-19” (Mayo Clinic)
Photo credit: By Rachel Hendrix – NPGallery, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82441410
Monument to Mary Washington, Frederickburg, VA, circa 1912
So I found a historical photo that was too good not to share. What you see here is the grave of Mary Washington, George Washington’s mother, in my college town of Fredericksburg, VA.
It ought to look a bit strange to my college friends who remember the site. What is now known (officially, anyway) as Kenmore Park/Memorial Park was a popular walking destination for students at Mary Washington College. (This is the site of “Mary’s Rock.” And if you partied downtown and walked back to campus, chances are you walked past it.) This site is just off Washington Avenue. The Gordon Family Cemetery was behind the obelisk. (The cemetery is pictured at left here — see the low wall — as this picture is looking northwest.)
Look at how small and sparse then trees were in 1912. (They were pretty big by the 1990’s.) This is part of a group of public domain images here at Project Gutenberg. They vary in quality, but some of them are pretty neat.
Throwback Thursday: the Mary Washington College Aubade (1991-1994).
This Throwback Thursday is really just for my fellow Mary Washington College grads — what you see below are issues of Aubade, the school’s annual literary magazine, for years 1991 through 1994. (They appear chronologically.) For some reason I thought I remembered that the magazine was published more than once a year, but apparently I was mistaken. (College was a very long time ago.)
I submitted a poem here only once when I was an undergraduate, and it was rejected (probably with good reason). It didn’t bother me for long. I’d like to think that I was a don’t-sweat-the-small-stuff kind of guy even back then.
Aubade was really a terrific lit mag. You can judge for yourself by leafing through these right here over at the Internet Archive. The site’s layout and format makes it quick and easy — and they’ve got issues of the magazine from as early as 1971. Wow.
“Portrait of a Pandemic Bedhead.”
(c) Eric Robert Nolan.
Medium: Color photography. Genres: Dystopian horror, tragedy.
Bidding opens at Sotheby’s New York @ 7 PM EST — suggested opening bid is $.35.
Well, Buk it all!
I received my copy of “Buk 100: My Old Man, A Birthday Greeting” today, and it looks damned terrific! This is truly a first-rate chapbook that is professionally produced and filled with poetry and photography that would make Charles Bukowski proud. It looks beautiful. You can order your own copy right here to see for yourself, but you might want to hurry — this is a limited edition run of 100 copies, and they’re already half gone. (My copy is #44.)
Thank you again, Newington Blue Press, for allowing me to be a part of such a well crafted commemorative tribute to a legendary poet! It is an honor to see my poetry included here.
Throwback Thursday: “The Beastmaster” (1982)!
“The Beastmaster” (1982) was THE movie that captured the imaginations of grade-school boys in the 1980’s. There were summer afternoons when this was the single biggest topic of conversation.
I almost wrote here that the movie was an obvious knockoff of the far-better-remembered “Conan the Barbarian;” that is how I’ve always remembered it. But the Internet informs me that they hit theaters only months apart. Wikipedia also informs me that “The Beastmaster” was actually a commercial failure, and that its two sequels and its television adaptation (all in the 1990’s) were aimed at a subsequent cult following spawned by the original movie’s appearance on 80’s TV. (I’m pretty sure that’s how my friends and I saw it.) What the hell was wrong with 1982 audiences, anyway? Was it something in the water? “Blade Runner” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing” were also flops that year — and those were some the best science fiction movies of all time. Talk about pearls before swine.
Anyway, please understand — “Conan the Barbarian” was inarguably the better film. No matter how much it polarized critics and audiences, that dour, violent, R-rated movie was intended as a serious adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s literary source material.
“The Beastmaster,” on the other hand, was campier stuff that was firmly aimed at kids. (I was surprised to learn that it had its own literary source material, but its B-movie wackiness only followed those books very loosely.) It had a PG rating and was jam-packed with garishly grotesque monsters that would thrill a fourth grade boy — the animalistic berzkers were what really got under my skin; my friends were more unnerved by the … bat-people. (There is a simple but quite effective 80’s-era practical effect that show how these baddies digest a victim alive. You kinda have to see the movie to know what I mean.) Hell, even the witches were a little creepy, and witches were not high on our list of things that were scary. I honestly think the film’s success owes a lot to its successful incorporation of horror movie elements designed to impress the younger set.
“The Beastmaster” starred Marc Singer, who went on to star in another 80’s phenomenon, television’s “V” series. (I might have loved “V” even more than “The Beastmaster.”) The movie also starred Tanya Roberts, who was another quite popular topic among gradeschool boys in the 80’s. John Amos starred in a supporting role, and he did a really good job of it. A lot of my older friends will remember him as the grouchy Dad in the “Good Times” (1974-1979); 80’s kids might point him out as the owner of “McDowell’s” in 1988’s “Coming to America.”
I really am curious to find out how well “The Beastmaster” has held up over time. I was surprised to discover that there is a great copy of it here on Youtube. (Thanks, VHS Drive-In.) You can bet that I’m watching it this weekend.
Please, try to see his Sydow things.
That crazy moment when you think you see a picture of YOURSELF IN THE FUTURE, but it’s really just a 1991 Max von Sydow.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 