Grand Midway Hotel
January 2008
The super cool Mr.Beat Frisbee you hold in your hands was designed for the Kerouac Fests, hosted here within the Grand Midway Hotel. I had hundreds of them made! Mr.Beat artist Chris Yambar created the logo especially for our event! But during Kerouac Fest we were so busy and enchanted with the four-day weekend of non-stop artists that we forgot to give them out. So in honor of what is about to happen, I am sending them out freely as gifts to each and every one of you now. Enjoy!
The Beat Museum in San Francisco is creating a permanent display in their museum honoring our Kerouac Fests! Several of Adam Blai's light paintings will hang as large framed posters in the museum! Chris Yambar's work will be showcased! Photographs, and the annual coffee mugs we gave out, and even clips from the feature film Coolsville will be shown (the movie we've been creating surrounding the Kerouac Fests)! Chris, Adam, myself, and several others are all flying out. Even senior cinematographer Baird Bryant will be there! That weekend is also Beat legend Neal Cassady's birthday, so it should be quite a bash. John Cassady, Neal's son, is going to be with us for the fun! If you are anywhere near the West Coast make a mad rush to the Beat Museum and join the event. When? Feb 8-9-10, all weekend. Where? Beat Museum, 540 Broadway (at Columbus), San Francisco, CA 94133
If you miss that one, and are on the East Coast, famed jazz diva Phat Man Dee is coming out the following weekend from Pittsburgh to perform a romantic night right up the street at the Windber Hotel, Friday Feb 15. This should be a classic show as any of you know who saw her perform this past summer at our big jazz party. After the show she and her band will be transported to our hotel for the late night VIP party. If you'd like to stop in for some coffee or wine and the cool jazz antics to follow, feel free to come on down to the Grand Midway Hotel. We'll keep the light on for you.
Finally, just something to look forward to, John Cassady and I are working on a heavy-duty screenplay based on his legendary father's roaring thunderbolt life. There have been a few Neal Cassady projects in the works and this is one good one. You heard it here first.
To cap this note, I'll just add that the Frisbee you are holding is a guaranteed collector's item. They were the last of any items created for the Kerouac Fests. Hide them away with your Beatles' wigs! Or, bring it to the Beat Museum to get it even signed by the artist! Exciting works are imminent! Dare I say, Be there or be square?
-Blair Murphy
KerouacFest.Com
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Hi folks, Cool Hand here, sorry I havent posted yet on this topic, but when I got back to Virginia I got really sick. I didn't know if it was bronchitits, walking pneumonia, or just a really bad cold and cough, but my docs checked me out and they say a really bad cold and cough, These things are usually worse for me with my heart condition. Flowers and cards are being accepted, LOL. So what's a filmmaker to do when he is down. Edit your ass off. Thats right folks two new short films from Carmen Colantuono himself. One is the San Francisco edit to my already completed version of Bohemian Beat Baby. The beat triology of Paris, Greenwich, New York and San Francisco is now complete in the story.
The other short is entitled "Beat Queen" and stars Stephanie Conrad. The footage is from her interviews at the hotel, some San Francisco stuff and some of her work she has done with other films at the hotel. Steph is a class act and her charm and humor comes through in this short film. When I get some photos and more video from my friend Ginny I wll try to put together another short work on our times in North Beach.
I just wanted to say that the trip to North beach was yet another major highlight in my newly acquired beat life coming pretty close in enjoyment to the fantastic time I had with Beat Legend David Amram at the Grand Midway. I want to thank my Brother Blair , Adam and the folks at the museum for making this possible. I was thinking Id come a long way in a short time in this lifestyle. It was just awhile ago my friend Lisa gave me a copy of Dharma Bums . I knew of Kerouac since college, sorta left him for a long time while pursing a medical career then returned to him after my heart attack. Lisa said read this one. It suits your new lifestyle. From that reading to now having my photo in the Beat Museum. With that and my previous trips to Greenwich and Paris, I am now a triology Beat. No longer will I call myself a "neo Beat". I am just BEAT. I am the living legacy and continuation of Kerouac's Dreams.
I had so much fun traveling with Blair, Steph, Renee, Dyan and Meg. Thanks guys for putting up with my silly ways. Your Godfather is very proud of you all. Alcatraz was awesome. City Lights Books and Cafe Versuvio gave me the greatest feeling of enjoyment . Being in such places of beat history and Lore was making my head spin with excitement. Friday night at the bar Specs with John Cassady and friends was incredible. Just when I thought how could this get better. I sat in the same chair at the Cafe Trieste where Francis Ford Coppola wrote the screenplay for "The Godfather". At that same Cafe the next day while sipping lattes with my friends Lisa and Ginny in walks beat legend Lawrence Ferlinghetti. What a way to end the trip. I am sure we will be sharing more storys with everyone in the future and the next time I'm up I will bring all the new short films to show everyone.
-Cool Hand Jaemi
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This is how it started, posted about a year earlier, May 29, 2007:
This is an honor. Jerry Cimino, of the Beat Museum located in the historic North Beach of San Francisco, is exbanding his museum. He wants to create two new perminant displays within the museum. One, a section on the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac fests. The second, a section celebrating our humble Kerouac Fests! Pretty cool, huh? Go here to check out his museum:
http://www.Kerouac.com
So he's requested I send him a collection of the commemorative Kerouac Fest coffee mugs from each year, a copy of Baird Bryant's story, a Mr. Beat frisbee, photos, invitations, etc. Adam Blai's amazing signature photos of John Cassady and Baird and Jerry and some other cool cats at our fests will hang prominantly in the display section. We also discussed cutting some sort of loop out of the Coolsville footage to play on a television set continuosly in the museum. The idea is to show modern day Kerouac fans and two of the events in the country expanding on the Beat theme today.
We don't have a date set yet for the 'opening' of the new display. Jerry was talking about possibly this July or some time this Fall. There is an additional surprise brewing around July so that may end up being the timeframe. Maybe we'll pack up a mini-van and launch a roadtrip out there to add to the occasion. (I'm serious.) It is, after all, the fiftieth anniversary year of Kerouac's On The Road publication.
Stay tuned, Beat fans...
-Blair
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These are the framed light paintings Adam Blai just sent the Beat Museum for their Kerouac Fest display:
Baird Bryant with Projector 30x20
Chris Yambar with sparks from hands 20x16
Blair Murphy at bar 20x16
Jamie Elia in Kerouac Pose 20x16
Margaret Bashaar sitting on white fire 20x16
Michael Dennison in Canopy Room 20x16
Maggie McOmie 20x16
Also, Jerry Cimino at typewriter 30x20 and John Cassady with guitar 30x20 posters are being created. (But we lost the digital masters so we first have to find them!)
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By October 2007 Adam Blai wrote:
I would like to add two more pieces to the show so we include more of the Hotel cast:
1) Damien Youth (on fire in the upper room)
2) Sarah (sitting with lightining)
Things are looking up for being able to get everything framed very soon.
-Adam
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The display might launch at the Beat Museum February 8th weekend. Jerry and I have to confirm the date that works best, but that looks like it.
Adam just wrote: "Jerry has a grand and the prints are being framed. They will all be done in plenty of time. I'm paying off the remainder of the cost right after new years. We are talking about selling prints at the show also, which will benefit the museum and hopefully pay for my flight out there (hopefully taking Honore also). Thought you would be happy to hear this. See you soon I hope! -Adam"
Dylan and Renee and my little sister Meg all expressed interest in flying out to San Fran for the weekend as well. Flights are about $300? Maybe Wess and Bree, who are out there now, will tag along and join us. I'll probably get a room in the city for everyone for the weekend, and then stay later for some work down in LA after everyone leaves (also to visit Baird Bryant). I might cut a short reel of Coolsville to play as a loop for the museum opening, but my main focus is the Cassady screenplay right now. Jaime? You so come to mind and are welcome on this adventure if you want to jump in. You have to visit City Lights Bookstore some day, perhaps this is the trip. It will be great to see John Cassady again but in the West. Maybe we could all take a day trip down the California Coast to Hearst Castle for Sat or Sun day, and pass through Big Sur as well. It is a beautiful ride.
Blair
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October 31, 2005
Post subject: The Ghost of Weldon Kees (Patron Saint of Unsung Artists)
If you happen on foot below, or even by car to cross, the Golden Gate Bridge, please say a few kind words to Weldon. Tell him that he is loved, tell him that his life and his work were not in vain.
-Skot Jones
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Cassady died in early 1968, same time Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda were beginning filming Easy Rider with Baird Bryant as their cameraman (doing the LSD graveyard sequence). I was doing some research for the Cassady screenplay of their meetings in October/Nov '67 when they were putting their ideas together, when I realized -just now- I could call up one of the sources directly right this second. So I called my bud Baird Bryant up in California. I love talking to Baird!
"Heyyy brother, ha ha ha..." he always starts out. So we just yapped an hour about that season going into Easy Rider.
Baird was hanging out with Jack Nicholson at Jack's home back in the late '67 and early '68 season as they were friends. Baird was seeing Pat Quinn at the time, who played Alice in the movie Alice's Restaurant. Hopper and Fonda approached Jack. And it was Jack who brought Baird into the Easy Rider opportunity.
Baird said they didn't actually have a screenplay. "They had a tape."
I asked Baird to describe the scene, asking if Nicholson's place was extravagant, imagining he and Jack decked out poolside with huge parties going on there. "No", Baird replied, "His home was very modest. It was just Jack, his wife, and his baby." Some of the time, he continued, they were in local screening rooms checking out the footage Baird had just shot for a film called Freefall. Also, Jack was sometimes practicing his line for a role Roger Corman had just given him for a film called Dillenger.
I mentioned that I was about to deliver this screenplay to John Cassady in a month in San Francisco, actually on Neal's would-be birthday February 8. And how we were all also meeting at the Beat Museum (FOR THIS BIG WEEKEND). Then spontaneously I asked Baird if he'd like to fly up to join us if I covered his flight. It just popped out as if it were the appropriate thing to ask. Suddenly he was committing, "Why, I'd love to, brother. ha ha ha."
So, you are hearing it here first, great brother Baird Bryant of Souvenirs of the Beat Hotel, Easy Rider, and the Dalai Lama documentary Heart of Tibet, will be joining us as well. Wow, this is wild. An awful lot of cultural threads are pointing toward this weekend.
-Blair
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Baird has a great fun black and white photo of Gregory Corso that has not appeared in any books yet. Baird snapped it years ago in the streets of Paris the season he was hanging out with Burroughs and Ginsberg and even met Kerouac just before On The Road was about to be published. So he is going to have the Corso photo blown up into a poster to present that weekend as a gift addition to the Beat Museum's collection.
and
Chris Yambar just called and he is on the bus with the rest of us! He also has some great news to announce at the event about his Mr. Beat character.
and
Monkey Boy swings in. Dylan Fornoff just bought a ticket. So he will be with us. "So pack your crusifix," he grins.
and
Stephanie Conrad just called asking if she might join us for the weekend! She's getting her flight tickets right now. Jesus, our hotel rooms will be familiar...just like all of us squishing into rooms at the Midway.
and
I wrote Henry Rollins of Rollins Band and asked him if he'd like to join us, under the premise of doing one of Adam Blai's signature light paintings of him and it ending up in the Beat Museum as part of the permanent exhibit. He wrote me back a one word email reply..."no".
and
I sent John Cassady bottles of wine in the mail in honor of the New Year. They were wrapped in red carpet so they wouldn't break. He was away visiting his mother in England, but an email just arrived tonight, "I'm baaaaack..."
Blair,
I flew from London to San Francisco last Monday (and boy were my arms tired! Har har) to find your 3 bottles of New Year wine awaiting my arrival, thanks! That was very thoughtful of you, AND I now have haunted carpet samples from the Grand Midway Hotel to share with my anarchist buddies! Looking forward to your visit on the 9th. All best,
-John
and then Jerry of the Beat Museum sent this announcement out to thousands:
NEAL CASSADY BIRTHDAY BASH
We're doing it up BIGTIME for Neal's birthday this year! We're combining Neal's 82nd birthday with a fundraiser for our new 501(c)3 non-profit foundation. In addition we'll be hosting many special guests for a bang-up weekend party! Special Guests: Al Hinkle/John Allen Cassady - many more to be added -Nibbles! Refreshments! Music! ALSO: The Beat Museum on Wheels made two east coast appearances in 2004 & 2005 where we met hundreds of other Kerouac/Beat fans. Many of these people will be flying in from the east coast for this special Neal Cassady Weekend. Special guests include: Blair Murphy, host of Kerouacfest in Windber, Pennsylvania, Adam Blai, photographer of major note, Chris Yambar, comic artist and Beat aficionado who works for The Simpsons, Baird Bryant, Hollywood Cinematographer and many more.
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John Cassady greeted us, "Welcome to California!"
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At Skot Jones' request, we went to the Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning to consider the poet Weldon Kees, who was presumed to have jumped from it on July 18, 1955, when he disappeared. Among other works, Kees wrote, The Fall of Magicians.
YEAR'S END
The state cracked where they left your breath
No longer instrument. Along the shore
The sand ripped up, and the newer blood
Streaked like a vein to every monument.
The empty smoke that drifted near the guns
Where the stiff motor pounded in the mud
Had the smell of a hundred burned-out suns.
The ceiling of your sky went dark.
A year ago today they cracked your bones.
So rot in a closet in the ground
For the bad trumpets and the capitol's
Long seasonable grief. Rot for its guests,
Alive, that step away from death. Yet you,
A year cold, come more living to this room
Than these intruders, vertical and warm.
-Weldon Kees
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Best picture of the week! Chris Yambar on the streets!
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Visiting Alcatraz Island...
Later, in the San Francisco bars, Dylan tried Absinthe. Actually, we all did.
Our last day, the story goes, Chris Yambar woke in his hotel room bed to hear unusual noises. They were almost animal noises. Adam Blai was in the shower. And Honore Young, from the other bed, was flipping around making what sounded to Chris like these strange growling sounds. Chris sat silent, frozen for a moment, not knowing what was happening in the next bed, hearing something like, "Growlllluell, Yow! Rrrrr! Grr, Raaah! Nash! Roar! Arghhhh. Arrf ggggrr RAH! GrGrGr RAAHHH!"
Finally, Honore stopped hopping around, and looked to him, responding, "What? Aren't you a little baby dinosaur too when you wake in the morning?"
So next, Chris Yambar woke Renee Angle with surprise treats!
At one point John Cassady went out drinking. He was standing outside the Beat Museum when some total drunken stranger asked him if he'd take his picture in front of the big Neal Cassady mural. "Make sure you get it right...don't mess it up."
"Do you know who I am?" John asked him. The drunk guy didn't. So John informed him that he was standing with Neal Cassady's son. The guy flipped out, and they went out further drinking together!
Meanwhile, Chris Yambar came back to our hotel room with some delicious-looking extra pizza from his lunch that he was saving for a snack later. We were all reading in and around the room, and I really really really wanted to eat his pizza. But I knew I couldn't get away with it. Chris really wanted it for later. Suddenly John Cassady came back to the room and he brought that drunk guy with him! They were crazy men! Chris Yambar was outside. So I said to the new drunk guy, "Oh! You're gonna be the fall guy for this slice of pizza. I'm going to eat all this pizza and blame it on you!"
"I don't think that's a good idea," he yelped.
But I did. Yum! Man, it was good pizza. Then I handed the drunk guy a pizza crust and asked him to hold it for a moment and smile. He did. So I took his picture, holding the last of the pizza crust, as he smiled. Then I ran out to Chris Yambar and said, "Chris, look! That guy in there who just arrived ate all your pizza! Here's proof! I have it on camera!"
"What!" Chris boomed, and ran back in to grab him!
(Photo below)
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I can't tell you guys how wonderful it was to see you all out here.
It was very much like a mini vacation for Wes and I. Living out here for a few years, you start to forget the cool stuff that the city has, the things that made you move in the first place.
Thank you all. Can't wait to see you again!
-Bri
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We arrived back in Windber, PA, 3000 miles, just in time for the final event of this great week, the Phat Man Dee show! Here's the announcement I'd posted about it ahead of time:
Tickets are selling out fast! Jazz diva Phat Man Dee is coming back to the hotel! Both hotels! Scott and Tom, of the Windber Hotel, saw her sing this summer at our place, the Grand Midway Hotel, and hired her to perform at their new bar for Friday February 15 as the surpreme small town Windber Valentine Evening. Tickets will sell out. They go on sale next week. I will buy up a few for our group. It should be one wonderful sweet romantic jazz night. And then after the evening, she and her group will be staying at our place. So 2 AM or so there will be a private afterhours party for just our group and the select hotel VIP within the secret walls of the Midway. Maybe some food and late beers and red wine? I'll do my best with the heat. Cool cool cool. This should be a wonderful Valentine evening, candlelit and cozy with jazz and chocolate and cool friends.
Later, back here in the Midway, it won't be a performance, just a more intimate continuation of late-night conversation and wine. We have some new art works and new hotel decor to show off inside, including Dylan Fornoff's Sacred Heart mural. I imagine it will feel like a very familiar scene...cooking in the kitchen, surprise visits from old friends, movie footage splashed across the big screen, bohemia in a shared cup of coffee. So much happens in the hours after midnight when the rest of the world sleeps. I love the sexy, passionate world they created for the backdrop of that movie William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. There's always something insanely beautiful swimming in this breathing canvas like that. Can we simply imagine ourselves as being gift-givers of beauty for one another, and then passionately try to deliver those offerings? Can you be that big? Can you be that wonderful and big? 'Shoot forth thunder', as a tag line from that film advocates.
If we see you or not, here's wishing everyone a very romantic, warm Valentine's.
(Visiting poet Skot Jones drinking at the bar as the evening closed)