Happy Chinese (Lunar) New Year -- I still have some fireworks left over from the Fourth of July -- it's POW time! Alternating snow and sunshine, except at night, when moonlight shines in between the white skiffs. Our three-deer family visits us almost every evening as they go on gleaning through the neighborhood.

Updating again at: Theater X-net

Featuring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: I have taped FVCC professor Jim Soular reading a couple of poems from his book The Thousand Yard Stare. I will put the edited videos on the Internet next week, courtesy of Ariana Huffington and her open invitation for political humor and commentary. There is nothing funny about our country at war, but Jim's poetry is some of the best commentary about it I know.
Huffington Post

Media Watch: A lot of things have caught my eye, but I won't be able to write about them all.
Dancing with the Stars -- My prediction: Cheryl & Drew and "Tina Sparkle" will be the finalists. They are far and away the couples who dance the best. "Master P" Miller didn't even seem to try this week and was bumped out of the competition. He was pretty funny, though. They showed video of a side-trip he and Ashley made to her hometown of Salt Lake City. Miller said "Hey Brutha!" to a Mormon missionary, with just the RIGHT inflection in his voice, and a good-natured grin on his face -- he was well aware of how Mormon men customarily call each other "brother." He also spoke of the commonalties between Del Grosso's upbringing and his. There aren't that many, but I will follow Masters P's lead, and say that most people in the world are primarily concerned with doing the best they can for their families.
(Anyone who reads this blog knows that I was born and raised in Salt Lake, and have serious issues with the Corporate Mormon Church which runs the place. Today is not the day to revisit them.)
Tia Carrere has an engaging personality and tries hard. George Hamilton is an irrepressible clown, and his bad knee isn't showing. Jerry Rice's head finally seems to have caught up with the rest of his body. Lisa the Soap Opera Lady died her hair black and lathered on a darker skin color for her Paso Doble. The makeover helped hide those artificially distorted lips of hers. I know I'm having a hard time with that, but sometimes those "enhancements" just go wrong.
At the risk of seeming stuck in the Superficiality Zone, here's another couple of paragraphs about Dancing with the Stars. Their live music is much better now than it was earlier. On Friday, they presented a Salsa number with professional dancers, accompanied by an unnamed gentleman who sang with a high effortless voice that was sonic heaven in itself.
Perhaps there's something about a popular phenomenon like this show that reveals certain uncomfortable aspects of our culture. I rarely see semi-nude male ballroom dancers for instance, but after a few costume changes, there are no secrets left about the bodies of their female partners! No one likes watching unclothed women more than I do, or seeing the human body in motion, but when males begin to take risks with nudity, the social hammer comes down quickly, and that's not equitable or fair.
(In a closely-related field, ice skating artist Christopher Dean was on the losing side of more than a few assaults when he pushed on sensual boundaries as choreographer for the Duchesne couple a decade or so back.)
Well, there was one long wasted moment when guest stars The Pussycat Dolls did their dreary, derivative popular hit Don't Cha (Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?) with pre-recorded music. The lead singer had a live microphone, but I felt sorry for the other five women in the group who had no real roles except as booty-shakers. The old bump-and-grind is tedious if the performer doesn't control her dignity. Everybody knows that -- from Middle Eastern belly dancers to Burlesque queens. The Dolls' second number was a lot better -- the "Forgotten Five" had many more things to do, the song Sway was very good, and the lead singer performed superbly. Jerry Rice's partner came out doing a rapid-fire ballroom dance with a professional, and took the piece to a climax -- now THAT'S entertainment!


The Pussycat Dolls began as a group of dancers putting on a burlesque-of a-burlesque show. They became a silly cabaret act featuring Carmen Electra (Left), and morphed into a successful Pop sextette with Nicole Scherzinger, Carmit Bachar, Ashley Roberts, Jessica Sutta, Melody Thornton, and Kimberly Wyatt. (Right) Nobody knows the need for humor and truthful audience reflection in the game they are playing more than founder Robin Antin. (PC Dolls, get it?) Sway may be indicative of better things to come, I hope.

Next week they'll have Barry Manilow, who has publicly stated that he doesn't understand the appeal of his singing voice. He's a professional musician, and gives his audiences what they pay for, but I sure admire his guts in saying what I personally think about his act -- I like every element save one.
Book TV was OK yesterday, but it was DIRE today. Back to back right-wing propagandists ruined my Sunday television. Lies and self-serving "spin" are neither discourse nor information.
Yesterday one Book TV author made a very good observation (paraphrased): The policy of mainstream media is not to challenge people in authority themselves. They'll find another authority figure to say something different, but they don't address the facts anymore.
Turner Classic Movies showed three cartoons made by MGM in the late 30's based on the comic strip Captain and the Kids. Hans, Fritz, Mama, Grandpa, and Der Captain were adequately rendered, the great Friz Freling directed the films, but they still weren't very good, and are mostly forgotten today. These primal knockabout characters are so phenomenally enduring that there were two separate competing versions of the strip in the newspapers for almost 50 years. The Katzenjammer Kids are still in syndication, a century after they first saw print. Since they were blatantly derived from Wilhelm Busch's Max & Moritz, the roots of it's family tree run deep into the 19th Century too. Did you know? The Katzenjammers live in Africa, and they've been there longer than Tarzan!
Thank goodness for NPR -- over the last week I have been able to celebrate Mozart's 250th birthday vicariously with the rest of the world. There was a recital of brilliant Avant Garde piano music this morning, and funky saxophone-driven jazz going on for an hour this afternoon before they presented a special program about early 20th Century jazz piano master James P. Johnson. Montana Public Radio