DANCE at the Hole In The Wall: 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!
NEW! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!
Charity Alert: Keep that resolution this Summer! Click on The Hunger Site every day.
Sitemeter Sez: People are searching for The X-Men; London; The Spiegel Tent; Jillian Barbarie, and Tanya Memme.
In The Community: Sunday at the Hockaday Museum of Art again! We will include John Rawlings' invitation to build a ceramic installation in Egypt's Museum of Modern Art in our Autumn Newsletter!
We've had a visitor from Idaho, two from California, and a pair of local residents. The weather is ideal for hiking, water sports, and other outdoor activities, so I'm not expecting very many people -- there's always the possibility that some of the million-plus tourists from Glacier National Park will stop by, and THAT'S why we stay open through the summer.
Media Watch: A series of films called The Drug Years was running on several cable networks, including VH1. The filmmaker's perspective was actually GOOD! Fallacies of pro and anti-drug partisans are apparent in this documentary, and stories by interviewees are well-told. Biases are apparent, but the context stays matter-of-fact most of the time.
I could tell you some stories too -- in fact, ANYBODY from my generation can see analogues of themselves somewhere in those films.
I read Conan the Warrior by Robert E. Howard while travelling. It consists of three stories from the early 30's by the actual author who created Conan. The cover is a battle scene by Frank Frazetta, where our bare-chested hero stands on a mountain of foes, slaying one enemy after another. Inside Red Nails has a heroine named Valeria, a female comrade-in-arms who resembles Marvel Comics' Red Sonja character. Across the Black River has Howard mixing up Jack London and H.P. Lovecraft in almost equal amounts. Edgar Rice Burroughs always lurks in the background -- that's what the pulp magazine editors wanted!
The Conan paperbacks were a huge hit in the 60's, just for the covers alone -- the stories were re-edited by L. Sprauge DeCamp, and Howard's sub-world was explored by multitudes of new fans. Unfortunately, their demand for new Conan stories led to less-than-competent sequels. DeCamp did some fairly good work completing Howard's unfinished tales, but I didn't like Lin Carter or Bjorn Nyberg -- and there have been WORSE since then!
I suppose I should mention unworthy political hack opportunist Arnold Schwarznegger -- he was a fixture in Comic Book bodybuilding ads during the late 60's. As Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia, his photos were used by many an artist for extreme muscular reference material. He really bulged-out before the mid-70's because of steroid use! (He claimed to have quit a few years before he made Pumping Iron.) When Arnold re-geared his career towards the movies, he grew his hair long, and re-took the Mr. Universe title in order to promote Dino DiLaurentis' Conan the Barbarian, which made him kind of a B-list star. Schwarznegger later made Conan the Destroyer with Grace Jones, and Red Sonja with Brigitte Neilsen. To tell you the truth, the only films of his I consider good are Pumping Iron and The Terminator. (Which put him on the A-List!) There are moments I like in his Conan movies, but I consider them Dawg-Assed -- each and every one.
This cover is from the Grand Comic Database, which freely permits images to be used for scholarly and non-commercial purposes. Red Sonja and Conan are the property of their copyright holders.
No comments:
Post a Comment