The Spyglass Chronicles: 08/01/16

Posted: August 1st, 2016 | Filed under: Cinema, Community, Music, Spyglass Chronicles | 3 Comments »

“Wild Night” Van Morrison (It’s Too Late To Stop Now, Vol. III)  The kid scores a fake ID, borrows a disco shirt from his older brother, heads into his first Saturday night out and about, and walks into the hot new bar in town. Morrison’s voice cracks,

“Ooooewuoooo Oooooooooooh Weee!!!!! Wild night is callin’.

VM’s Spring/Summer ’73 tour with the very hot Caledonia Soul Orchestra is Van Morrison at his loosest and best, scatting, soaring and swooping through melodies as only he can. 300 new minutes worth of live tuneage from that tour have just been released as “. . . It’s Too Late To Stop Now . . . Volumes II. III. IV & DVD.” Easy to understand why these versions weren’t included in the original volume. A burp here, a clank there, Morrison consumed by the music like a celestial mass sucked into a black hole, but so damn what?

Which is obviously what Morrison finally thought when he authorized this release forty years later. This is not some ersatz money grab, full of outtakes. The music is righteous.

Holly Houston Interview. Louisville Magazine. The local attorney/ activist/ Woman About Town dropped the F Bomb in one of her As to the zine’s Q & A. (Spelled as most mainstream mags are won’t to do, “f***ed.”) A reader, someone obviously on the sphincter transplant list, wrote a letter to Ed complaining. At the end of the reader’s screed, she asked, “My grandchild asked me what “f***ed” meant. What should I tell him? Please share this with her.”

Ever feisty, Ms. Houston answered for print.

“Tell him ‘What we’ll be in if Trump wins.'”

“Life Stinks” Mel Brooks film on cable. The 1991 movie stinks. Proving even the most talented of artist/ performers can clunk it up sometime. Badly.

Barack Obama. Democratic National Convention. Responding to Sanderistas, who were being ridiculous, “Don’t boo, Vote!”

“Raspberry Beret” Hindu Love Gods. Makes sense that the short-lived side project of Warren Zevon and his REM buds would cover this Prince tune. It’s Zevon sardonic.

She wore a Raspberry beret/ The kind you find in a second hand store/ Raspberry beret/ And if it was warm she wouldn’t wear much more

Elizabeth Ording vs. Kim Davis, et al. Ms. Ording, it appears, wants to marry an animal of some unidentified species or another. So she filed a lawsuit against America’s most notorious County Clerk, Kim Davis, after her application for a marriage license was refused. Chalk up a W for Rowan County. But don’t be surprised if, when walking along Sun Street in Morehead, you don’t see a woman french kissing a dog or a cat or perhaps a salamander. Out of wedlock.

Big Mama Thorazine. The Flea Circus. Missed the show, but love the artist’s name. Most clever in these parts since Hank Sinatra played the bars in the 70s.

“Rave On” Buddy Holly. A well ah ell ah well is there any song more scintillating than this one, when it blasts from your dashboard like a mentholated shockwave on a scorching summer’s day? Correct answer: No!

There’s been plenty of conjecture since the plane went down about what Holly would have wrought, had he not died young? We’ll never know. But it’s for sure he’s one of the definers of  the zeitgeist of the time.

Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale) “Love and Friendship.” This film, derived from a relatively unknown early work from Jane Austen, is among the laugh out loud funniest of the year. With easily the pithiest dialog, much of it uttered oh so properly by Ms. Beckinsale’s conniving character, Lady Susan.

“I had a feeling that the great word ‘respectable’ would some day divide us.”

“Americans really have shown themselves to be a nation of ingrates, only by having children can we begin to understand such dynamic.”

“Facts are horrid things.”

From the Mouths of Babes. Whole Foods. The two young girls, eating some lunch with their chatting moms, were 7, 8, 9 years old. While the adults were engaged in mundane conversation, the girls eyes were glued to the TV, which was on CNN with election coverage. The girls intently read along with the scrawl, mouthing the words.

One turns to the other, with wisdom decades beyond her tender years, “This is going to be such an intense election.”

— c d kaplan

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