More updates on their way: 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 in February too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.
In The Community: The Thousand Yard Stare on Ariana Huffington's blogsite. A video of Jim Soular reading his poem Gold Star Mother. Arianna asked for comedy 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 -- Contagious Festival.
Time Passages: Betty Friedan (1921-2006) First president of the National Organization for Women, and author of The Feminine Mystique which busted our society's callow marginalization of half it's citizens ... a phony bill of goods ... sold to women that left them unfulfilled, suffering from "the problem that has no name... A woman has got to be able to say 'Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own...
Media Watch: It's sublime-to-ridiculous time on the TV this weekend -- Taylor Branch, biographer of Martin Luther King is on C-SPAN right now, with a lot to say about King, his family, and the times we have lived through. Charles Osgood showed a couple of pieces about the so-called "Baby Boomers" on CBS Sunday -- one of which focused on tonight's Grammy Awards. The point was Rock & Roll is still popular, but other genres of music are even more popular now -- old news, old boy, and no tragedy whatsoever!
Superbowl Sunday -- number 40, A.K.A. Superbowl XL in Detroit, Michigan under a dome in a snowstorm. The Pittsburgh Steelers will face the Seattle Seahawks, with local hero Jerome Bettis running the ball for the Steelers starting about 4:30 P.M. MST. Rock & Roll synchronicity -- the Rolling Stones are performing at halftime -- much as I love that band, I wish Detroit's own Funk Brothers were doing an All-Motown Revue with a parade of young and old singers instead. Ya' can't always get what you wah-unt ...
"So, what's ridiculous about the Superbowl?" asks the NSA agent monitoring this website.
"People are actually buying TIVOs so that they can watch the COMMERCIALS and skip through the game!" sez I.
Last night there was even a network special about the Top 40 Superbowl Commercials -- in primetime, with additional commercials. My friend Brian W. Aldiss wrote that we live in a Science-Fictional world today, which makes a lot of traditional S-F redundant -- the evidence abounds.
When all else fails, there's BOLLYWOOD MOVIES!
Naach -- Good acting by male lead Abhishek Bachchan and female lead Antara Mali -- a dancer who has her own style. If there was a flaw, it looked as if the director was trying TOO hard to avoid cribbing Urmila Matondkar's Rangella. Sorry -- show biz stories are going to look like one another.
Main Hoon Na -- A strange hybrid of action, comedy, and romance in a single flick. Ms. Farah Khan, the director, is EXCELLENT and made the whole thing work scene by scene. (The plot wasn't credible in the least, but remember -- it's a Bollywood movie.) The whole cast performed well, especially superstars Suneil Shetty and Shah Rukh Khan. Sushmita Sen effortlessly played a beautiful, somewhat-older, chemistry teacher. (Shah Rukh's love interest) Zayed Khan was an alright juvenile leading man. The young Amrita Rao was very good as the female lead. During the credits, they showed little clips of cast and crew -- the associate producer held up an oversized check, and Shah Rukh Khan casually stepped up walked away with it. He earned his money, I must say, but I'm glad it wasn't my responsibility to pay him.
Musafir -- Produced and directed by CNN personality Dr. Sanjay Gupta a few years ago. It's a violent crime fantasy that is more sexist and salacious than your average Bollywood fare. Sanjay Dutt completely stole the show at the beginning (as usual) but we weren't in the mood to endure more of the movie's sadistic vibe, and turned it off.
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