Looking back on it all now, it's difficult to understand how no one figured it out from the beginning. Perhaps it's no different than Superman, in which even Clark Kent's closest friends can't see the hero before them. Everyone was so consumed, and rightfully so, with the events of the "Rocky Raccoon Revival," that no one ever stopped to ask, "Who in the world is Michael Sinclair?" Yet, his unconventional approach to loving and serving others, along with his unblinking honesty about his own struggles would not only tear down the walls of Easton Theological Seminary's ivory tower, but would also open up the hearts and minds of those in the surrounding community; resulting in a revival in the most unlikely place, led by the most unlikely person...
Tom Leonard, Jr. is a horse's ass. What's more, he's a tall and awkward forty-three-year-old failure stuck with a hopeless job in a hopeless city-oh, his issues are numerous. He failed early to attain the only goal he made for himself, that of being a novelist. His obstreperous, blow-hard father, whom Tom blames for darn near everything, suffers a stroke and now, after years of alienation, needs Tom's full-time attention. Sure, Tom's engaged to an angular, angry woman named Gennifer but he doesn't love her, and it would be hard to believe she loves him. His first marriage crumbled as a result of his wife, Gloria's, incessant infidelity, and he silently suffers for twenty years the rejection of his early friends and the beautiful Katie Harbor. Now his only son Elliot begins a successful writing career-working on, and completing, a debut autobiographical novel that not only details his father's myriad of misfortunes (like the day he was robbed at knifepoint while using a public toilet), but has parts lifted rather overtly from a very personal and unfinished memoir Tom Leonard, Jr. had penned two decades before. Elliot's creative process forces Tom Leonard to re-examine his past, his decisions, and the friends who left him behind (ah, there's the beautiful Katie Harbor again). Then, when Elliot's novel is finally published, damned if Elliot's vitriol didn't punch Tom right in the stomach. Good Rocky's Revival is Tom's defensive answer to Elliot's novel. It is told through Tom Leonard's humorously droll, heavily biased, and quite unreliable narrative. It bounces from the past to the present and back again: from his aching, graceless high school and college days to the testing conflicts with Gennifer Hopper and an encumbering, dying father; from his failed first marriage to the critical night he told Katie Harbor he loved her.
1970 signalled the end of an era. The Swinging Sixties came to a crashing halt as the world seemed to be changing for the worse. Ideological and generational rifts became deeper and violent protest more commonplace. Politicians dealt with realities, not dreams. The Vietnam War dragged on. As ever, popular culture mirrored it all with the death of Jimi Hendrix and the break-up of The Beatles. Yet these apparent crises produced a climate in which new ideas could develop, pointing the way to a decade when creativity and tumult went hand-in-hand. In Different Tracks, his follow-up to Changing Times: Music and Politics In 1964, Steve Millward charts the major events of 1970 and the reaction they provoked – from the increased militancy of the Black Panthers, the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Angry Brigade to the new ways of living advocated by foodists, feminists and futurists. At the same time he makes the connections to a thriving music scene where singer-songwriters such as Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake rubbed shoulders with innovators like Curtis Mayfield and Frank Zappa. He shows how James Brown defined funk, prog bands reached a peak of extravagance and the search was on to fuse rock with jazz, folk and classical music. Different Tracks is the second book in a trilogy spanning 1964-74. It will appeal to all music fans, especially those looking for fresh insights into a turbulent and dynamic epoch.
There is an epigram in this book from the Phil Ochs song, "Crucifixion", about the Kennedy assassination, that states: I fear to contemplate that beneath the greatest love, lies a hurricane of hate. On February 11th 1963, the Beatles recorded "There's a Place", a dazzling, unheralded tune which was included on their electrifying debut album, Please Please Me. This song firmly laid the foundation on which a huge utopian dream of the sixties would be built. Within that dream, however, also lay the seeds of a darker vision that would emerge out of the very counterculture that the Beatles and their music helped create. Thus, even as their music attracted adoring fans, it also enticed the murderous ambitions of Charles Manson; and though the Beatles may have inspired others to form bands, their own failed hopes ultimately led to their breakup. The disillusionment with the sixties, and the hopes associated with the group, would many years later culminate in the assassination of John Lennon and the attempted slaying of George Harrison by deranged and obsessive fans. In this incisive examination, author Kevin Courrier (Dangerous Kitchen: the Subversive World of Zappa, Randy Newman's American Dreams) examines how the Fab Four, through their astonishing music and comically rebellious personalities, created the promise of an inclusive culture built on the principles of pleasure and fulfillment. By taking us through their richly inventive catalogue, Courrier illustrates how the Beatles' startling impact on popular culture built a bond with audiences that was so strong, people today continue to either cling nostalgically to it, or struggle - and often struggle violently - to escape its influence.
Collects Tales to Astonish (1959) #13, Incredible Hulk (1968) #271, Rocket Raccoon #1-4, Marvel Preview #7, Annihilators #1-4 (Rocket Raccoon & Groot stories), Annihilators : Earthfall #1-4 (Rocket Raccoon & Groot stories). After the Guardians of the Galaxy disbanded, Rocket Raccoon settled into a quiet life with a steady job in a mailroom. But when a killer clown made of sentient wood attacks him at work, the trigger-fingered and quick-witted hero must journey to Planet X - home of his old buddy Groot, the giant tree-creature - in search of answers! The cosmic dream team is reunited at last! Then: Mojo, bloated entertainment mogul of the Mojoverse, battles Rocket Raccoon and Groot...onstage! It's a high-stakes campy cosmic free-for-all! Plus: get caught up on the early adventures of Rocket and Groot!
As a successful young urbanite, Bridget Fox experiences the typical joys and struggles of youthful New Yorkers, and she has happy expectations for her new family. But when her daughter Maeve is diagnosed with autism, Bridget's life as she knew it and her idealistic images of the perfect family are shattered. She tries to lean on her husband, her father, her best friend, but none can help her reconstruct her world as other tragic challenges begin to surface. But as she tries to choose between insanity and oblivion, Bridget discovers that matters are not nearly so simple-or so hopeless-as she once believed. Elizabeth Burns weaves the beauty and imagery of her poetic voice into a story of pain, humor, struggle and ultimate redemption. Bravely intimate, astonishing in its honesty, Tilt walks a path that most "normal" novels fear to tread as it follows the journey of a woman desperate enough to fall-and strong enough to survive.
It's Rocket Raccoon, the deadliest weapons expert in the galaxy! Before he lent his expertise to the war effort during Annihilation, before he saved the universe as one of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Rocket Raccoon was the Guardian of the Keystone Quadrant! Experience his original adventures with the Incredible Hulk and his anthropomorphic allies and enemies on his home planet of Halfworld!
Written by a twelve year old, "A Treacherous Treasure" continues the series - Rocky and Buff stick together in this exciting book series, The Great adventures of Rocky Raccoon, taking you from Hawaii to the deep dark swamps of Louisiana. Are you tough enough to swash buckle with Rocky and Buff?
Neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author of This Is Your Brain on Music Daniel J. Levitin reveals how the deep connections between music and the human brain can be harnessed for healing. Music is perhaps one of humanity’s oldest medicines as well as its most universal: from China to the Ottoman Empire, Europe to Africa and pre-colonial South America, cultures have developed rich traditions for using sound and rhythm to ease suffering, spur healing, and calm the mind. Despite this history, musical therapy has long been considered the remit of ancient practice and alternative medicine, if not outright quackery and pseudoscience. In the last decade, however, an overwhelming body of scientific evidence has emerged that persuasively argues music can offer profoundly effective treatment for a whole host of ailments, from Alzheimer’s to PTSD, depression, pain, and cognitive injury. It is, in short, one of the most potent and remarkably promising new therapies available today. A work of dazzling ideas, cutting-edge research, and joyful celebration of the human mind, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord explores the critical role music has played in human evolution, illuminating how the story of the human brain is inseparable from the creative enterprise of music that has bound cultures together throughout history. Music insinuates itself into our earliest memories; it is intimately connected to our emotional regulation and cognition; its shared rhythms and sounds are essential to our social behaviors. As neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin demonstrates in this mind-expanding follow-up to This Is Your Brain on Music—which revolutionized our understanding of the neuroscience of song—medical researchers are now finding that these same deep connections can be harnessed to create profound benefits for those both young and old.
"A cafe pops up and disappears. Books fly off shelves. Conversations with the dead are more alive than old friendships. A woman with wings teaches flight. A Vietnamese lesbian manicurist/artist teaches the beauty of creativity. A Brazilian hairdresser/poet demonstrates the power of love to heal. All provide strange maps that lead Jewel to leave her affluent neighborhood and a thirty-five-year marriage to begin an unimaginable life. What follows is a kind of odyssey of Jewel's circumstance as she journeys on a path of self-discovery, interacting with an variety of people, some relatively ordinary and others highly unconventional, as the mystery of becoming reveals itself. Later, Nadine, a seventeen-year-old girl, through profound emails with her best friend, discovers a thread of magic in her depression, hope in her hopelessness, activism in "the terrible Trump" era, teachers in mind-blowing places, and the gift of connection."--Back cover.
