Wildlife: A Redtailed Hawk soars above the hillside up from the junction of Lakeshore Drive and Buckboard Lane almost every day. I saw it perched on a dead tree next to Little Foys Lake this morning.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Bumped our heads on the clouds all day -- dark, low, and drizzling.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- help them with another click please

Garage Sale Booty: A Mickey Mouse telephone from the early 70's that really works -- rotary dial and all. A "Teenage" how-to-dance book from 1952. The author is Betty White. (Not THAT Betty White.) The title of one chapter is "The Lindy, or Rock and Roll."

Media Watch:
Sublime -- Sarah Brightman's DVD Live In Las Vegas -- slightly different from the show we saw in Spokane, as to be expected. Longer, with some new songs -- always good, but also some padding of the show here and there -- not necessarily an improvement.
Ridiculous -- Elvira's Haunted Hills, also on DVD -- filmed in Transylvania, with the remarkable Richard (Riff Raff) O'Brien. Coulda/shoulda been a funnier movie. Cassandra Peterson makes me laugh, when she's commenting from the OUTSIDE of a flick, but there's many problems when she's INSIDE a movie. The character Elvira reminds me of Bugs Bunny, which is a positive criticism.

Wildlife: A huge bird flew over Middle Foy's Lake yesterday evening. A couple of small Cowbirds harrassed it from above, so I said "Eagle Alert!" WRONG -- it was a harmless Blue Heron. He landed at the top of a pine tree, and looked back over the lake as if to say "What'd I do?"



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Plenty of sunshine -- it's starting to look like June.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- help them with a click please.

Media Watch: OK, I'll admit to watching Dancing With The Stars on ABC, and having fun with it. Bachelorette Trista Sutter and overly-intense Dutchman Louis van Amstel went away first. Hardworking model Rachel Hunter and Jonathan Roberts are doing well, even though she is about an inch taller than he. Versatile soap-opera actor Kelly Monaco and Alec Mazo are the best-coordinated couple, but the judges slam them hard. Former NKOB Joey McIntyre and snappy Ashly DelGrosso get better every time. (Note: The Blockheads were fairly good dancers.) Personable, but clumsy, boxer Evander Holyfield shouldn't have been on the show at all. He and his unfortunate partner, the elegant Edyta Sliwinska, seemed to have fun last night before the audience voted them off. John O'Hurley, the comic actor who's at least my age, has been superb -- but he over-mugged last night. His partner Charlotte (Shar-lott-uh) Jorgensen is a good teacher, and ought to slap some of that silly out of him. Dancing With The Stars' Website
I saw a documentary about Juliette Lewis touring with her rock band on VH1. (Much like Gina Gershon does -- remember when I wrote about seeing them both acting in the excellent movie Picture Claire?)
This film, the recording, and the touring looked like they were NO FUN for Lewis. Sometimes these career tangents seem to take on a parasitic life of their own.
BTW -- Gershon's once-buried movie, Prey For Rock and Roll, finally saw daylight on the cable/satellite movie channels. Gershon gigged on the toilet-bowl club circuit as a musician when it was first made, trying in vain to promote a film which lacked a distributer back then. She and her band were a minor success, though, and the video which was shot during that gruelling experience fit together well enough to sell as a cable TV series.
NBA Playoffs -- Detroit played a rousing game on their home court and beat San Antonio. Seven-game sports series can have their moments.

Wildlife: We saw a long-eared Griebe swimming on Middle Foy's Lake yesterday -- it means our nesting pair is back again this year.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Sun and rain, sun and rain -- I'll take both.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site is trying to give 2.7 million bowls of food this month, but they're not even halfway to their goal yet.

Garage Sale Booty: A hand-autographed picture of John Lithgow, and the cast of the very silly TV comedy Third Rock From The Sun. Lithgow owns a vacation home in nearby Lakeside, and is actually a fine, accomplished actor. (I like Kristen Johnson too.) It's a bad idea to hold actors' roles against them -- just watch how well they do their WORK.
A hardbound edition of A Summer Book by Tove Jansson, Finnish author of the great 'Moomin' stories.
A half-dozen almost-new plastic water-catchers for fifty cents.

In The Community: I saw Renata Reiss and her son Henry one last time at the Hockaday yesterday. They are flying home this morning. Those newspaper articles I mentioned brought dozens of people to the museum on Sunday and Monday -- days which are usually slow. My friend Vanessa Peck came in several times -- she loves the Winold Reiss portraits! Hockaday Museum of Art
Hmm -- there's a Hockaday member's meeting tonight at the Chamber of Commerce building. Maybe I oughta go as a spectator for a change.

Media Watch: I finished watching the DVD version of the Buck Rogers serial from 1938 last night.
Buster (Flash Gordon) Crabbe played Flash's space-opera predecessor, in what must have been a confusing production for the myriad fans of Nowlan and Calkins' pioneering spaceman. Visually, there was no mistaking Buck Rogers for Flash Gordon in the newspapers. Alex Raymond's elegant draftsmanship overpowered his competitor's crude doodles, but the inventive, rolicking wild-west adventurousness of Buck Rogers was only IMITATED in the panels of Flash Gordon, and every fan of action movies, books, and comics knew it.
The leaden hand of Ford Beebee weighs heavily on this formulaic merry-go-round -- these chapter serials are literal sideshows relative to the carnival of 30's Cinema. There are opportunities for humor, surprise, and suspense, but they sit in the mind of the viewer of today, unexplored by filmmakers who weren't very imaginative. I may be accused of favoritism, but Crabbe's three other Flash serials all show more exuberance, despite Beebee's ubiquitous prescence.
The only time I saw these particular chapters on television was in 1967, when I was in high school, at the beginning of my career as a comics enthusiast. Even though I wanted to like them, there wasn't much to grab my attention -- they seemed too derivative of the oft-seen Flash Gordon serials, without any fundamental differences to make them special. Unfortunately, Buck Rogers was the LAST chapter serial our local TV stations played in their early morning/late afternoon slots. I enjoyed them while growing up, and I didn't mind studying them as a young adult, despite their weaknesses, but an era passed away right before my eyes, even though it was made up of pre-WWII reruns.
Constance Moore played Wilma Deering, the female protagonist in Buck Rogers. Although she is often criticized as 'passive' or 'un-sexy' in this role, there ARE moments where she is actually alluring, with her fine figure on display beneath that dumpy riding costume and flight helmet. (Accurately reproducing Wilma's uniform in the comic strip.) She even takes off her gilded "shower cap" at least once, sporting a thick mane of curled, dark blonde, neck-length hair. Late in the serial, she also fights effectively -- kicking some serious ass, and swinging a mean ray gun -- while busting Buck (and herself) out of Killer Kane's deepest dungeons. As far as a 'platonic' relationship with her male leading man goes, the final scene of the serial shows Wilma ready to lock loins with him -- or at least enjoy a passionate smooch -- once the cameras stop rolling. Her body language is unmistakable, and the script even declares their mutual intention to embrace!
Ms. Moore was a hard-working big band singer when she wasn't making movies in the Mid-20th Century. Whatever anyone may say about her now, she was an experienced entertainer who knew her craft.
Here's a well-written essay about Buster Crabbe's serials: FLASH GORDON AND HIS UNIVERSAL SERIAL COMPATRIOTS A Critical and Sentimental Perspective - by Tom Aldridge

Fair Warning: I'm going to add some new pages to A Tale of Two Movies -- There's more to say about movie spaceships and re-used footage from Just Imagine.

Wildlife: We have a CHAMPION! A Red-Headed Duck mom proudly escorts a dozen lively chicks around Middle Foy's Lake, and sometimes parks them in a long row on the log by our bedroom.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Alternating sun in the AM, with rain in the PM. We are just barely able to plant a garden.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site is trying to give over 2 million bowls of food this month.

Media Watch: The Big Bang, by Simon Singh -- I saw him on CSPAN a few months ago. His book is a decent chronicle about major aspects of scientific history, especially when they relate to Cosmology.
Singh paints a sympathetic portrait of steady-state advocate Fred Hoyle, who ironically coined the term Big Bang while trying, in vain, to discredit George Gamow's 'dynamic universe' theory.
I enjoyed Hoyle's S-F novel The Black Cloud when I was in fourth grade. I was also too old for his style of storytelling by fifth grade. He was a lousy novelist, I must say, but seems to have been a witty, engaging person, and a great scientist, who could have been even greater by admitting defeat when one or two of his many useful theories were proven wrong.
NBA Finals -- San Antonio absolutely dominated Detroit in the first two games. I know those events are past history now, but it looks bad for the champs as they head home to Michigan. (Last year's losing coach, Phil Jackson, is building a fancy house near Flathead Lake, but has signed with the L.A. Lakers again.)

Wildlife: I have seen more Whitetail Deer from the road in the last week than I saw all last month. The male Pheasant continues to eat from the box feeder on our deck every morning.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: The sky was blue on Friday morning, but a boiling black storm blew in from the south, and dropped a cloudburst on us in the afternoon. We still see alternating rain clouds and sun.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site A simple click helps a lot.

In The Community: The local newspaper sent a reporter and a photographer to our opening reception last Thursday, and published their story on the front page of the Sunday edition. They were interested in K. D. Swan: Splendid Was The Trail, a collection of Forest Service photos from the early 20th Century. Theresa, the USFS ranger who helped us the most with this particular show, lent welcome hands and valuable assistance on just about the busiest night I've seen at our museum. Kalispell's Daily Inter Lake
That Winold Reiss exhibit sure monopolized my time last week -- Mr. Wheeler's lecture on Friday afternoon was a real challenge, especially after we moved the venue to the theater upstairs at the KM Building -- but everything worked out well. Hockaday Museum of Art
Speaking of the old Kalispell Merchantile Building -- I joined my boss, Linda Grady, and the Reiss family for a drink and eats at the KM's new bar/restaurant "Red's" the previous night, after we finally locked up the Hockaday.
(I think its short for Red's Wines and Blues, but don't quote me.)
They had a full house, live music, and very slow service as a result. I saw people there from many walks of life, and from all over the Flathead. A few attendees from our earlier reception were there. Strangely enough, the Sunday paper printed an article about THIS place too.

Media Watch: I watched some dawg-assed movies on video tape when I finally had some time off: The Ring -- Fairly good recent flick, but derivative, with a less-than-stellar ending. Wild, Wild Planet -- An Italian trash can special from 1965, with all sorts of 60's hair, miniskirts, and cool fiberglass runabout cars. Devil Doll -- One of Tod Browning's creepy efforts from the mid-30's, with Lionel Barrymore and Maureen O'Sullivan. It had some pretty good matte work for the times. They also built some gargantuan props for scenes where "miniature" actors had to climb up "normal" stairs and furniture to perform their nefarious deeds.
None of these movies were as fine or funky as George Melies' Voyage To The Moon from 1902 -- with french-accented narration instead of title cards. This fifteen-minute, theatrical bit of whimsey owed as much to H.G. Wells as to Jules Verne, and they were both alive when it was made. (I wonder if they ever saw it?)