Well … it WAS snowing in Roanoke a little while ago. And it was coming down pretty hard too. Then the sun came out and it vanished completely.
Campbell Avenue at Market Square.
Tag Archives: Roanoke
Slava Ukraini.
I never noticed this before — there is a Ukrainian flag flying at the Roanoke Valley War Memorial.
I scream for ice cream.
So I noticed recently that there’s a new ice cream joint on South Jefferson Street. (At least I think it’s new; it takes me forever to notice anything.)
It looks auspicous. I might just go looking for a tall chocolate milkshake into which to drown my sorrows.
Outside the Virginia Museum of Transportation, Roanoke, Virginia.
October 2024.
A New Yorker walks into a Chick-fil-A. (Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.)
It’s those damn weird ketchup packets! They’re too hard to open! Squeezing them as hard as I could always worked out well before!!
Not today.
It looks like I had lunch with a certain former president on one of his bad days. (And you know he’d dodge the bill.)
Just once I’d love to leave the house without embarrassing myself in public.
Retail Ruins.
The Sears people were a proud mercantile empire that dominated much of the 20th Century. The civilization’s ruins still evoke the opulence of a past age.
The Little Gallery on Market Street, Roanoke, Virginia
October 2024.
Nope, no northern lights for Nolan.
Why do these things never work out for me?
I have friends in Charlottesville who posted a bunch of really nice pictures — and I’m seeing posts from elsewhere in Southwest Virginia too. It’s just too overcast here in Roanoke, maybe … and then there are the lights from the city which would diminish the effect.
Roanoke channels Alfred Hitchcock.
A cacaphony of birds announces its presence on Salem Avenue in Roanoke, Virginia. October 2024.
“Salem’s Lot” hits differently if you’ve ever lived in a town named “Salem.”
Yep — we’ve got one in Southwest Virginia; it’s right next to Roanoke, and I lived there for a little while.
The people there are awesome. There are no vampires. And the only weird, alarming newcomer in town was me.
Anyway, the new “Salem’s Lot” was damned good. I loved it. This movie successfully channeled the dark energy that made Stephen King’s 1975 novel such a feast for horror fans — how the vampires are portrayed. They are at their scariest when they are mindless, Satanic minions of a mysterious overlord — and perversions of their former human selves. (I love the “Blade” movies to no end, but their chic, cool, articulate monsters just aren’t as frightening.)
The directing was slick, the storytelling was rapid, and the newly tweaked plot elements worked for me. The acting was good too. If you are a genre fan, see if you can spot Pilou Asbaek (the mean-ass, ambitious pirate king from “Game of Thrones”), among others.
This was loads of creepy fun. I recommend it.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 