"Love, Marital Aids and Forgiveness"
or
"The Longest Beat Post Ever"

I.

The history of love, The Beat and Dave Frank will have begun five years ago this November, a little more than two years before the Crunk Party and roughly a year following my institutionalization.

From a 2003 post by Will:

"Dave Frank is the man I hate to love. I'm not at all kidding when I call him a Gary or say he's the biggest tool I know."
-Will

"I can't put my figure on what kind of idiot Dave Frank is exactly. He's like a posing poser who hates the posers. It's like 'The personality traits I stole from someone else are cool, but yours suck. And not just cuz its different.'"
-Prosp3ct

"[I]f any one ever figures out Dave Frank, I am afraid we are going to have to kill them and their family lest this information get out [and] the universe implode."
-Lee

"As I just wrote on my blog, the world has a mixed opinion about Dave Frank. God sees both sides of the issue."
-Silliman

"Every day I drive past a gas station called 'Prospect Service Station.' Even though I have never met Prosp3ct, not do I know his real name, he seems the kind of fellow who would get 'The Cute' seal of approval. I am not so certain the same could be said about Dave, however."
-Sarah Hempel

But, as we all know, the love grew, and I often feel what Silliman described the summer before the Beat Class of 2006 entered its senior year.



II.

1.) I know it's been called for before, but does someone who is less lazy than me want start a Beat wikpedia entry? I promise to participate in resulting hijinks.

2.) Does someone know how to start an online Beat photo album where anyone of us can add shit? Maybe you can do it on flickr, I don't know because I don't have an account.

I can do a photo blog or whatever, but I didn't know what was the best way. There's tons of Beat pictures and memorabilia on facebook, this blog and spread around the internet (and inside Beatnik bedroom drawers which often share space with Eastern European pornography collections).

It would be nice to have all that stuff available in one place for posterity and women seeking marital aids.

3.) Can we update the links to the blogs that don't work? Obviously this is contingent on there being new blogs to replace the old ones, but send Will the link if you got one.

4.) Is there any other Beatniks or known associates (i.e. Luke, Hugger, Green) who have blogs we should link to?

5.) Could Will or whoever put up a picture of the house where the list of current Beat residents now is? Or/also maybe make a list that has each year the Beat was alive with the guys living there at the time.

6.) Can anyone think of an epigraph to be included in an award-winning account of The Beat that will be written by a precocious graduate student during the literary revival of the mid-21st century?

7.) August, I got your call Friday but was at work and then was walking around Virginia City yesterday and I don't get coverage there because my phone sucks. I'll call you today.


III.

This reminds me that it's time for all Beatniks to forgive each other.



It's very late in the West.



"Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland where you're madder than I am/ I'm with you in Rockland where you must feel very strange."

-Ginsberg