Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Wildlife: A Trumpeter Swan landed in Middle Foy's Lake and lingered for a few hours on Saturday. I got a few long-lens pictures too.

Weather: A nice mix of light rain, plus snow in the mountains.

Charity Alert: Rain forest preservation site and five others!

In The Community: Hey, I don't have to pack and unpack, and repack my car!
Senior Fellow at the University of Montana's O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Missoula Bob Brown will continue the Flathead Valley Community College's 2005 Honors Symposium as the series' fourth featured speaker March 28. Brown will lecture on "The Role of Public Education in a Free Society." The lecture will begin at 7 p.m. in the Learning Resource Center, room 123, on Flathead Valley Community College's Kalispell campus.
Brown was elected to the Montana House of Representatives in 1970 at age 23 and served two terms before being elected to the Montana State Senate in 1974 where he served until 1996. During his last term of office, he chaired the Education Committee and the Taxation Committee, was a member of the Montana State Board of Public Education and served as president of the Montana State Senate.
Brown was elected Montana Secretary of State in 2000 and was a candidate for Montana governor in 2004.

Media Watch: Peter Bogdanovich's Who the Hell's in It: Portraits and Conversations This book contained a wonderful pair of articles about Jerry Lewis and the late Dean Martin. You could also tell that he came to love Marlene Dietrich (Who wouldn't? She seemed like a very nice lady.) -- Hollywood Bombshells
Roberto Benigni's Life Is Wonderful sure reminded me of Jerry Lewis, and it turns out that the basic story idea was proposed by the latter forty years ago. Bogdanovich was also a pal of John Cassavetes, who made movies far differently than Lewis did.
One more word about Jerry Lewis -- the American public just plain ol' got TIRED of his films because they lacked the critical element of surprise that makes things funny. The too-few instances of acting that he's done for other directors makes me regret that he became such a do-it-yourself autuer of Le Cinema.
I think Woody Allen learned something about the importance of artistic variety from observing Lewis' mistakes that, say Jacques Tati didn't, and fooled the public for a generation or two. (Allen is VERY stylized as well.)
Jeffrey Sachs on CSPAN -- he was sadly articulate about how needless hyper-competition in the world is ruining everybody's prosperity. Book TV
Who put "Cringe" in CSPAN? Clerical criminal Jim Wallis of the KKKristian Koalition, that infamous bribery enterprise, was on After Words. Turds-for-brains ex-judge Roy (Ten Commandments) Moore is on next week. Self-serving lies are never "the other side" of any issue -- they are just lies.