Howling in the Park 
Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg in New York City, 1966.

Were the dinosaurs here 4,000 years ago? 
Matt Damon offers his thoughts on Sarah Palin and the 2008 presidential election.

SACRAMENTO, CA-

For a couple of months now I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts regarding the same-sex marriage issue, which is appearing AGAIN on the California ballot this November, despite anti-gay-marriage laws having been found illegal by the California Supreme Court in May.

And yes, I do realize that Californians showed their true colors back in 2000 by voting against gay marriage, so I understand why all of the fear-mongering has started up again regarding this issue. I’m sure they too thought they’d put this baby to bed when they won a 61 percent vote in support of marriage being between only a man and a woman. But here we are California, we’ve been given a second chance - and I think there’s a high probability that gay people will be able to rest easy about this issue (at least until next election season rolls around).

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CHICAGO, IL–

She called herself Hildegarde Swineherd whenever we met new guys who didn’t go to our school.

She had a certain brilliant irreverence, an unbreakable bullshit detector, an ability to spin a deranged yarn as though it were a mundane by-the-way.  We used to quip that all she had to do was say Hello and we would all start cracking up.  These qualities, in high school, seemed rare and valuable, though as I have aged I find they were actually more common at 17 than they are now.

We once had a menage-a-quatre.  It had begun as a menage-a-trois, but my best friend Alicia and I, who had picked up the older guy who was throwing a party we’d somehow ended up at, were astonished at the size of said guy’s penis–the biggest either of us has ever seen to date.  It would have been like meeting someone with five arms and keeping it to yourself, so one of us–I no longer remember which–got dressed quickly and ran out of his bedroom to where the rest of the party was taking place squealing, “Hilde!  There’s something you’ve got to see.”

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BOULDER, CO -

“Perdón,” I said, stepping aside to allow the strange woman to pass.  But when she blocked my way, I blinked at her.   Around us, crowds of people scattered in all directions beneath the Giralda minaret looming high above.  My head began to spin and I felt disoriented.  I needed to sit down.

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Lie Down in Darkness 
William Styron poses in his library in Rome in 1960 shortly after the publication of ‘Set This House on Fire.’

TNB TV
Please enjoy Tuileries, a short film from the Coen Brothers. It was featured in Paris, je t’aime (2006), a collection of vignettes set in the City of Lights.

ASTORIA, NY-

I did not grow up in a family that thought much of sports. We were library-book-reading, piano-practicing, Scrabble-and-Trivial-Pursuit-competing people. Occasionally my father played ping-pong, and he and my mother owned a pair of wooden tennis rackets that looked like they could have been used by the Gatsbys. There was a reason why the high school sport I participated in was cross-country running: it didn’t require a ball or an implement that you needed to whack at it with.

Thus, it is perplexing why, over the past three years, I have inexplicably but all-encompassingly become a Mets fan.

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MIAMI BEACH, FL-

We visited the Mountain Kingdom of Bhutan last year. Bhutan is nestled in the Himalayas and has a northern border with China and is bordered by India on all other sides. They actually have a post in the Government there called “The Minister of Happiness.”  The Bhutanese people really DO seem very happy.  (The happiness of the Indian people doing their labor and living on the side of mountains with no sanitation nor heat nor health care nor respect nor chance of citizenship is another story altogether.)

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TNB TV
Please enjoy the trailer for Religulous, directed by Larry Charles and starring Bill Maher. Out in theaters this fall.

What’s the splatter?
The late Jackson Pollock hovers over a canvas in his home studio.

TNB TV
Please enjoy Terrence McKenna’s urgent message to all creative artists.

Go Tell It on the Mountain
The late great James Baldwin poses with his beloved cigarette.

LOS ANGELES-

Okay, up front, I’m addicted to bad beer, even though I hail from the country of beer, the country of the oldest food law (das Reinheitsgebot (concerning beer)) but my K-Town Krushers, just like the Buffalo Bills, are so far undefeated. They have deposed of the Demolition, the Iron Lad Legacy, and the Bone Rangers. Next up – the Dooshaloosh. If the Bills go to the Super Bowl for the fifth time, I’ll buy a flat screen TV, eat three pies of Pepperoni pizza from King of New York (yep, the best) and drink Bud Light with Clamato juice (yep, comes only in cans).

It’s seven and a half weeks since I moved from Ann Arbor, MI to Koreatown. I’m not yet sure if that’s a common thing, but my first day here, I was offered a guitar on the street and bought it. Two nights ago, while walking my dog, a car pulled into the driveway ahead of me, and two guys got out (fifty-ish, tall) and one proceeded to open the trunk and asked if I wanted to buy a guitar. He had two, and I declined, and he put them back into the trunk. It’s a nice thing, that, and I hope my streak continues.

Dogs. There are none here in the neighborhood. Dograts it has plenty though, these ankle-biting fiercely yapping things people carry in shopping bags, and whose turds are everywhere. My dog’s poop is bigger than those dogs.

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BROOKLYN, NY—

I have way too much stuff.

You could call my home décor “Classic Pack Rat”. I love accumulating things; be they from my childhood, my world travels, gifts, or hundreds of thousands of impulse purchases ranging from antique stores to Targhetto.

I’ve been cleaning, purging, packing, moving-to-storage, living-out-of-a-suitcase, moving-out-of-storage, unpacking, purging, cleaning since last February when I put my Manhattan home on the market and subsequently moved to Brooklyn.

When I did a final tally of boxes before the movers came, I counted 147 boxes - stuffed with STUFF.

In these troubling economic times, it’s overwhelming to see what an amazing consumer I have been over the years.

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TNB TV 
Please enjoy this interview with the late great American author Kurt Vonnegut.

The Relics 
Please enjoy this painting by Gaston La Touche, completed in 1899.

Charles Dickens was a Southpaw
He was sent to work in a factory at the age of twelve, a hardship which colored his life and work.

TNB TV
Please enjoy this video presentation of David Bowie’s hit single “Let’s Dance.”

CHESTERTOWN, MD-

The sun is shining.

Clear and deeply blue skies are filled with canada geese on their annual pilgrimage to Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Blue crabs are at the azimuth of their season.  Beautiful and full.

Jeans, t-shirts, and flip flops are the fashion of this glorious season.

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