1. Lucien Carr (1925-2005), father of author Caleb Carr (The Alienist), was a Beat Generation figure who was pursued and stalked by an enigmatic older figure named David Kammerer (1911-44). Kammerer, a companion from childhood of another Beat, William S. Burroughs, met Carr in their native St. Louis when Carr was a 12-year-old Boy Scout and (allegedly) developed a predatory obsession with him.
Kammerer eventually followed Carr to NYC, where Carr was enrolled at Columbia University. On the fateful night of August 13, 1944, Carr and Jack Kerouac were drinking at the West End Bar. Kerouac, having departed first, ran into Kammerer and told him where to find Carr. Kammerer and Carr ended up in Riverside Park. Per Carr's account, Kammerer made a homosexual pass at him and then grew violent after being rejected. Carr stabbed him to death, weighted down the body, and threw it in the Hudson.
Having confessed to law enforcement, Carr was charged with second-degree murder but convicted of the lesser offense of manslaughter. (The "gay panic defense" seems to have helped.) Released from prison two years later, he transitioned into journalism and became a respected news editor at UPI.
Our old friend Beat is primarily about Burroughs and Joan Vollmer but features Norman Reedus as Carr and Kyle Secor as Kammerer. Kammerer's relationship with Carr is dramatized in Kill Your Darlings (2013), with Dane DeHaan as Carr and Michael C. Hall as Kammerer. Kerouac and Burroughs collaborated on a novel inspired by the killing, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, which was written in 1945 but not published until 2008.
2. The "coffee trial" refers to the embezzlement trial of Nexhmije Hoxha (1921-2020), widow of longtime Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha (1908-85), following the fall of communism in Albania. (Coffee was one of many things Mrs. Hoxha was alleged to have spent extravagantly on.) She was imprisoned from 1993-97.
The lustration process that targeted her somehow failed to bring any members of the Sigurimi to justice.
(h/t Aida Gashi)
3. Collective Soul (1995) and Collective Soul (2009) are albums by Collective Soul; the latter is also known as "Rabbit" and the former is sometimes dubbed the "Blue Album."
The band was well past its heyday by 2009, so the 1995 Soul is more significant: It contains the group's second and third Top 20 hits, "December" (US #20) and "The World I Know" (US #19). (They were preceded by US #11 "Shine" from 1993's Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid.)
(I like this one too.)
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