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The patron saint of this blog, Van Morrison, was born 60 years ago today in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Long one of my heroes, Van continues to tour steadily and make great records without any sign of stopping, and not unlike one of his few peers, Bob Dylan.
Here's a nice piece from the BBC News site.
And here's a Windows Media File of a live performance of Van singing "Listen to the Lion" in 2003:
Download 01_listen_to_the_lion.wma
Like me, some people love Rush Limbaugh. Others hate him with a vehemence that continues to surprise me. Actually, nothing about the American left really surprises me anymore, but when I hear cliched criticisms of Rush from people who dote on Al Franken or Jon Stewart or Michael Moore or anyone on CNN (who always use pictures of Rush that are 10 years and 100 lbs. out-of-date), I just tune out.
The first hour of Rush's show on Tuesday, August 23 was Rush at his best (or worst, to some of you).
Read it - all of it, for proper context - or, better yet, click on the blue bar and listen to it, here. (Update on Sep.1: It looks like Rush took this page off the free side of his web page. I recommend that you look at what you can get on the free side and give his show a listen if you haven't done so lately.)
Last year's Miller Award (only a few of you will get that one) for worst movie of the year was a three-way tie between National Treasure, King Arthur and Birth.
This year's frontrunner is The Dukes of Hazzard. The filmic dopes responsible for this meadow muffin took what was a spendidly corny TV show, whose best parts were the slapstick between Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrane, and turned it into a merely awful movie. Few jokes, woefully miscast Duke boys, as much as I love the legendary Mr. Knoxville who was shamefully overlooked by the Academy for his groundbreaking work in Jackass, and an unexcusable misreading of the Hogg-Coltrane dynamic, the former role being played with wonderfully gorgeous hamfistedness by Burt Reynolds, fatefully doom the whole enterprise.
The only good parts were the awesome car chases and the incomparable Willie Nelson as Uncle Jesse, the only role well-played, -written and -casted. The guy who played Enos was OK too, I guess.
One good result of the Hazzard hype is the CD reissue of the Original TV Soundtrack, which is, like the show, splendidly corny. Though it features Willie, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Doug Kershaw, the real highlights are the vocal stylings of John Schneider (Bo), Catherine Bach (Daisy), Sorrell Booke (Hogg) and James Best (Roscoe), also known for his role on The Andy Griffith Show as the guitar-pickin' Jim Lindsey.
But the cake-topper is Tom Wopat (Luke) butchering The Band's "Up on Cripple Creek," a sample of which can be heard by brave-hearted souls here.
It's only the vastly different ways in which conservatives and liberals, to be overly simplistic, view the world that keeps the debate alive over whether the mainstream media is liberal, but the small details continue to, justly, in my mind, make it less a debate than a settled fact.
The following, cribbed from James Taranto's always-great "Best of the Web" column for OpinionJournal.com, just makes me angry:
Life Begins at Conception--if You're a Panda
"A 13-year-old giant panda gave birth to a cub at San Diego Zoo, but a second baby died in the womb, officials said Wednesday."--Associated Press, Aug. 3
"A cancer-ravaged woman robbed of consciousness by a stroke has given birth after being kept on life support for three months to give her fetus extra time to develop."--Associated Press, Aug. 3
