Beatnik Cave

No, it wasn't. O'Malley's in Weston is good as pubs go, but it's not a beatnik cave . It's housed underground, in what was once a brewery, so it has stone walls and a stone ceiling, and its breath is dank and ancient. As we descended the concrete steps that smelled like urine (actually ammonia to keep back the mold) I pictured an underground dive full of existentialists wearing black, reading poetry and performing interpretive dance to bongos. Just like in the Audrey Hepburn movie Funny Face. But no, the crowd was young, sun-tanned, and rowdy. They didn't want to probe the edges of artistic expression, only the edges of each other, and they wanted to get their buzz on.

"Exploding from alleyways and ivory towers! Living by their code of rebellion and mutiny!" That was the blurb on an old movie poster I saw, for a movie titled "The Beatniks". I especially like the part about exploding from ivory towers.

Maybe beatniks culture will make a comeback. We have William Shatner doing interpretive readings of Sarah Palin's tweets, accompanied by bongos, on the Tonight Show. This is not the first time Shatner has shown up unexpectedly for Conan O'Brien. One of the best moments on TV in the last decade has to be the time that John Tesh, Abe Vigoda and William Shatner suddenly rode across the stage on a bicycle built for three on Conan O'Brien's 10th anniversary special. The choice of Abe Vigoda to round out the trio was pure genius, is all I can say.