Greetings and salutations and such from south central Kentucky, the quaint little town of Horse Cave to be precise.
It’s been an unsettled week, with half the area recovering from the windstorms that blew through here on Friday the 3rd, and the resultant loss of power in businesses and homes. My daughter and her family was one of those families, and they stayed with us here from Friday to Tuesday, when they finally got them back online. My mom also had no power but she got hers back on Monday. Fortunately, our power was only off for about 5 minutes during the whole thing. Weather wise, after the storm we’ve had some nice days, very warm for early March, but at the time of this writing it’s cooled down to a more seasonal mid-50s. It’s been a mostly busy week for me, since it’s high school basketball tournament time; at the radio station we’ve been carrying the broadcasts of games involving the local teams (Caverna, my alma mater, and Hart County high schools), as well as the boys’ regional tournament, which was held at Hart Co. high and didn’t necessitate travel. We’re also carrying every game of the state high school basketball tournaments, both boys and girls’, known colloquially as the “Sweet 16”. For me, this means being at the station from 9:45 am to around 2 pm central, then go back there for the evening sessions, from 4:45 pm to around 9 central. It’s a long day but at least I get paid. Went to the doctor on Wednesday, and everything checked out good as far as my usual blood test went; she did increase the dosage on one of my meds. With my new insurance, which has an unspeakably high deductible, we’ll see ho much I’ll owe for this.
Told ya this was going to be a mix of the personal and pop cultural, remember?
As far as stuff I’ve been watching, while I watched 11 movies in January, I only watched 4 in February and 2 in March so far. I still plan to go through those as a separate post, so stay tuned. Having finished the brutal Gangs of London, the two ongoing series I’ve been viewing are Poker Face, the latest episode of which was one of the best yet headed into the season finale, and Carnival Row, a Prime series with Orlando Bloom that I’m still on the fence about 3 episodes in. It’s a cockeyed mix of Victorian England and Fairy, I mean “Fay” tropes and while I’m not hating it exactly, it’s keeping me at arms’ length. Must be me, I guess. I’ve also been spending some time viddying old episodes of The Avengers on Prime; not only with Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel, but earlier, black and white episodes featuring Honor (“Pussy Galore”) Blackman as Steed’s partner Cathy Gale. These episodes have been solid in and of themselves, though they’re not as quirky as the Emma Peel eps, they still have some odd premises and witty dialogue. I really like Blackman, although she’ll never replace Dame Diana for me.
Last night's show was quite entertaining, I thought. Happy for Brendan Fraser but I have no intent of ever seeing that body shaming/torture porn film (thanks Zack Smith). Happy for Jamie Lee Curtis and Michelle Yeoh, too. However, last night also served as reaffirmation that my movie instincts are often way skewed: I found Everything Everywhere All At Once to be cluttered, chaotic, and silly, although it was not without wit and cleverness..but, sadly, the Hollywood Life Lesson it was trying to impart was lost on me. Awesome James Jean poster, though.
The real shocker, though- ordinarily (with only a few exceptions), I don't care for Lenny Kravitz's music. However, and I saw no shortage of invective thrown at it on the Twitter and other places, I kinda liked the slow sad song ("Calling All Angels", I saw that was the title, don't know if it's a Lenny song or what) he sang while the dead reel, I mean "In Memoriam" was playing. Travolta's tribute to ONJ was touching. Also, my god, the dancing on that "Naatu Naatu" song. Guess I'll have to check out RRR. I think I lost five pounds just by watching those guys go... on the other hand, the David Byrne/Stephanie Hsu (I swear, I liked her better in Poker Face than in EEAAO) was awful, Byrne's hot dog fingers notwithstanding. I thought Gaga was great though.
Having seen, and appreciated (different from actually LIKING, mind you) the well acted and beautifully filmed but nihilistic and offputting (to me) Banshees of Inisherin, it was fun seeing them break out a donkey (not the actual Jenny of the film) for some cute jokes with Colin Farrell. It bugged me seeing them have Farrell and Brendan Gleeson seated in the same row; if the seating directors had been clever they'd have put them on opposite sides of the auditorium.
Oh well. Good on the EEAAO people; it was important to get that recognition. Everybody and nobody seems to want to care about these Oscar awards ceremony telecasts, and I'm not sure if this one will be remembered, say, two years from now.. but I was entertained nonetheless, so in my world, I'm satisfied.
Musically, let it be shown for the record that the Year of Our Lord 2023 was the first time that I was moved by the documentary The Wrecking Crew to investigate the music of Leon Russell. Prompted by some Facebook thread, I decided to check out a few of Russell’s 70s albums. I cued up Carney and Will o’ the Wisp and found them a lot more entertaining than I was expecting. Leon was one of those artists who, by the time I started seriously buying and consuming music, had seen the end of his run on Shelter records come to, well, if not an end, it had certainly cooled off… left turns into jazz and country (we played Hank Wilson’s Back a lot in the Classic WLOC days) had derailed his career momentum. and he was working his way into redneck country territory, which suited his yowling voice but I have never been able to really appreciate the Hank Jrs. of the music world so what I heard, mostly that epochal record with Willie Nelson (who I do like in small samples) that was in the record pile of every good ol’ boy in the south central Kentucky area, did not impress me at all… anyway, what I’m saying is that the only record I ever bought with Mr. Russell’s name on it was his 1976 record with then-wife Mary McCreary, Leon and Mary Russell’s Wedding Album, bought on a whim one day on my 16th year on this planet. I liked a couple of songs on it but never was prompted to investigate further. Those two records, though, were a lot more tuneful and melodic than I expected (although Carney’s psych diversions were annoying) and I kinda liked them. So maybe I’ll cue them up again sometime, as well as the Asylum Choir and Stop All That Jazz albums, to see what else I missed.
On the occasion of John Cale (see above)’s birthday, I listened to a few of his albums, most notably Paris 1919, Fear, Eno collab Wrong Way Up, and the new-to-Spotify Honi Soit. While he stopped being quite as interesting as the 80s came around and his music became less inventive, he still did, and still does, fine work; his “cultured madman” schtick has endured well. It’s really interesting how his career, from Velvets to producing/sessions to solo career, has progressed. I’d certainly like to read a biography; don’t know if one exists. Guess I’ll have to look.
Iris DeMent’s new record Workin’ on a World was a good listen. Lyrically on the nose, but Iris has no fucks left to give so plain speaking was warranted, I think. The horns, a DeMent first, sounded really good on the title track especially. Don’t know if I’ll go back to this one as much as I do My Life or Infamous Angel, though.
Guess that’s it for this week. Still haven’t figured out how to enable payments while keeping older posts free yet, so you’re all off the hook for another week. I know it’s in there somewhere, though.
Thanks, as always, for reading.