… gonna play that gag where I pretend to be a North Korean agent.
BECAUSE THE GREAT GREEN DRAGON OF NORTH KOREA WILL BE UNDETERRED AND WILL VANQUISH ITS AMERICAN OPPRESSORS.
And because there can be no possible unforeseen consequences for a joke like that.
This is the same guy who has assured me repeatedly that the National Security Agency does not monitor my blog. Let’s see how cavalier he is about the possibility now.
I m going to be up all night thinking about this video.
See the link:
I have been enlisted by my friend Maryanne to find a cool and original name for her new puppy — something with Gaelic, Latin or folklore origins.
I blanked out, but my writer friends came through with flying colors.
Finder-Of-Good-Things Wednesday Lee Friday passed along to me this website, which she said was indispensable for writers. And, MAN is it cool! Check it out:
Thanks, Wednesday!
A friend of mine sent me a note saying she’d be busy today because her children had a “day full of recitals.”
I at first read “a day full of rectals,” and concluded she was being entirely overscrupulous where her children’s health is concerned.
I NEED READING GLASSES.
So I’m quoting classic 80’s comic books to friends yesterday, because that is precisely what a healthy, well rounded 41-year-old does.
I googled a page-shot for Bruce Wayne’s iconic “Yes, Father,” pledge, and it FINALLY occurred to me that Frank Miller’s “Batman: Year One” contains a parallel to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”
The bat flies through the window and perches on Thomas Wayne’s bust; the raven flies through the window to perch on the “pallid bust of Pallas.”
If memory serves, I first read “Year One” in 1992. And I just got that.
1) Portrait of the Artist as a Jung Man
2) The Po’ Man’s Poe
3) Pay No Attention to the Nerd Behind the Curtain
4) All Auden, All the Time
5) Eric Robert Nolan: Sleep With Me and I’ll Write a Poem About It
6) The Boy Who Cried Wolf
7) Eric Robert Nolan: Slow In Writing Sequels
8) The Poetry of Andy Kaufman (I’m Still Alive and This Is My Nom de Plume)
9) Nolan Country For Old Men
10) Nolan Ventured, Nolan Gained
11) Eric Nolan: Preternaturally Garrulous (I’ve been told that I overuse both words.)
12) The Writing of Eric Nolan: More Wolves and Birds than a God Damn National Forest
13) Wait … That Guy Who’s Always On Facebook ALSO HAS A BLOG?!
14) Just Say Nolan
15) That 90’s Guy
16) British People Are Mean To Me
17) Nerdiopathy
18) I Know Why The Caged Nerd Sings
And we’ve yet to see a feature film or television series for Stephen King’s stunning, seminal “The Dark Tower” series?
“Under the Dome” is precisely my least favorite Stephen King novel. And I have read “Dreamcatcher” (which was quite good in places) and the somewhat-too-disturbing novella, “Rage.”
What’s next? A TV series based on Tom Clancy’s “Teeth of the Tiger?”
Sorry for being cranky today — this cold is kicking my @$$.
They need to make a “Gunslinger” film, at the very least, and have it star Clint Eastwood. I don’t care about his age, and we’ll forgive his chiding of invisible presidents. He simply IS Roland Deschain.
“The Lass Of Cessnock Banks”
On Cessnock banks a lassie dwells;
Could I describe her shape and mein;
Our lasses a’ she far excels,
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
She’s sweeter than the morning dawn,
When rising Phoebus first is seen,
And dew-drops twinkle o’er the lawn;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
She’s stately like yon youthful ash,
That grows the cowslip braes between,
And drinks the stream with vigour fresh;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
She’s spotless like the flow’ring thorn,
With flow’rs so white and leaves so green,
When purest in the dewy morn;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her looks are like the vernal May,
When ev’ning Phoebus shines serene,
While birds rejoice on every spray;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her hair is like the curling mist,
That climbs the mountain-sides at e’en,
When flow’r-reviving rains are past;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her forehead’s like the show’ry bow,
When gleaming sunbeams intervene
And gild the distant mountain’s brow;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her cheeks are like yon crimson gem,
The pride of all the flowery scene,
Just opening on its thorny stem;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her bosom’s like the nightly snow,
When pale the morning rises keen,
While hid the murm’ring streamlets flow;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her lips are like yon cherries ripe,
That sunny walls from Boreas screen;
They tempt the taste and charm the sight;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her teeth are like a flock of sheep,
With fleeces newly washen clean,
That slowly mount the rising steep;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her breath is like the fragrant breeze,
That gently stirs the blossom’d bean,
When Phoebus sinks behind the seas;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her voice is like the ev’ning thrush,
That sings on Cessnock banks unseen,
While his mate sits nestling in the bush;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
But it’s not her air, her form, her face,
Tho’ matching beauty’s fabled queen;
‘Tis the mind that shines in ev’ry grace,
An’ chiefly in her roguish een.
1780
Thanks to Burns Country for the text: http://www.robertburns.org/works/12.shtml
It wasn’t “Star Wars” (which I still consider fantasy) and it wasn’t “Alien,” which I wasn’t allowed to see in 1979.
It wasn’t even the various “Planet of the Apes” films, the Godzilla films, or the original “War of the Worlds” movie.
This comic book, which I somehow got a hold of at around age eight or nine, contained a story called “I’ll Remember You Yesterday.” It was a time travel story in which an explorer visits the future to find humanity destroyed and the planet colonized by aliens. Using clues from the future, he returns to the present to find and destroy the original alien colony, thus eliminating their beachhead and saving the human race. He died a heroic death, causing an avalanche that buried both him and the alien vanguard.
Ignore the content on the cover, even if it is quite well drawn. That story was “Alligator Alley,” and it was the lead story in the issue. It was about … hippies, and … sex, and people turning into alligators.
Despite those rather intriguing plot elements, it totally fell flat with this nine-year-old. It was too chatty, and it had a confusing climax with some sort of humanoid … alligator king. Breasts were everywhere. At least every other panel featured breasts. I’m pretty sure it should have been entitled “Breast Alley.” But I was nine, so … heroically machine-gunning aliens was far more entertaining for me. “You’ll never conquer Earth!! NEVER!!!”
Despite the loads of comics that I still own, this one has been lost to the years.
Someday when I am wealthy, I will have a framed copy of the story panels in my parlor. (I will have a parlor, people.)
“The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.”
James Baldwin, “Another Country,” 1962
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 