Eagle in the morning! A quick fly-by right over the back deck. There was also an enormous male Pheasant strutting his considerable stuff in the front of the house as I was backing out my car to go to work -- my Calico Cat Jasmine is TERRIFIED of large birds ever since she was chased by a flock of wild Turkeys a decade ago, and she was nearby -- holding very still, with her green eyes wide and fearful.
By the way -- the weather wasn't quite as hot yesterday as it was on Tuesday.

Funk Master Bernie Worrell at: Theater X-Net

Starring: 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!
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Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

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

Sitemeter Sez: Jonesboro, Arkansas sailboarded in just long enough to snap up Diana Dors' PHOTO -- the popular English pinup from the late 50's and early 60's.
It was an illustration for Jericho, a detective show set in that time, which is running on PBS' Mystery now. Look HERE if you missed it. (See more artifacts from Pre-Beatle Britain below.)
Some folks are still cruising for "tanya memme nude" -- Google sent them to me again, only they went to the WRONG page. Scroll down if you just can't live without knowing those photos exist. (May, 2006)

Media Watch: I've been reading a book about American Musical Theater -- there's a lot to say about the subject, and some things which stand out 40 years after the book was published. As I was dressing this morning I saw part of a movie from 1943 starring Eddie Cantor, Dinah Shore, and Edward Everett Horton. It was about a roadshow setting out to entertain the troops in WWII, but in it's own silly way, it was also about how show business and popular art changes with time.
Scandal (1989) was on one of the "indy" film channels, despite being a mainstream effort in it's day. It starred John Hurt, Ian McKellen, Bridget Fonda, and Joanne Whalley-Kilmer. It was a VERY fictionalized account of the John Profumo affair (LINK), where a Tory cabinet minister was caught regularly shagging a professional lady named Christine Keeler, who was also doing a Soviet intelligence officer. Her friend Marilyn (Mandy) Rice-Davies and she became internationally famous when they implicated their procurator Stephen Ward in public testimony which caused the fall of the MacMillan government, bringing in Harold Wilson and Labour, and revealing "Swinging London" to the entire world.
I think the Beatles Phenomenon later that year was a kind of catharsis after this event, but it was a very complex thing -- transcending class and British society, as many things underwent transformation -- a bigger wave than any of the ripples I've mentioned.


(L)Mandy Rice-Davis (born near my ancestoral home in Llanelly, Wales) enjoying the glare of flashbulbs in "Swinging London"; (Top) Christine Keeler at one of those COLD English seasides; (Bottom) Ms. Rice-Davis in a news shot; (R) Ms. Keeler during her session for Lewis Morley's best-selling poster.