Hey Dublin! (and the World at large) I'm running off to Fort Collins, Colorado for a ten-day "vacation" this afternoon -- Helena, Montana tonight, Casper, Wyoming tomorrow, and Fort Collins on Friday. Wish us good weather, Eagles flying, and lack of Deer running across the roads.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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 as Autumn settles in! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: I'll be back in time for the opening of Members Only! Autumn Salon at the Hockaday Museum of Art.

Media Watch: Noam Chomsky on CSPAN, talking about his book Empire and Survival --scary stuff. Our great linguistics professor does not really hate Amerika -- just the bad things done in our country's name. (Too bad there's so many of them.)
Ex-newscaster Sarah Chayes was speaking on CSPAN too, plus guesting around the Mainstream Media about her book The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban. She actually LIVES in that terrible place now, helping the common Afghani people cope with overlapping Warlords, Drug Lords, and the resurgent Taliban. I'm sad to see that times are getting more dangerous for her, and all well-meaning people there.
I taped Jean Cocteau's two most famous movies from TCM last night: Beauty and the Beast, and Orpheus. I will testify that those films were major aesthetic influences on my life.
Cocteau was a friend and patron of Ida Rubinstein. He was smittem by her beauty during Paris' Belle Epoch She later produced HIS first version of the Orpheus legend -- From Ida's Website: Orphée (1926) -- A mime-drama by Jean Cocteau, Music by M. Arthur Honegger, Costumes by Alexander Golovin, performed at the Paris Opera. (Based on original works by Roger-Ducasse and Alexander Ziloti in 1913-14)
Cocteau's movie was made the same year I was born, and is a visually stunning, but very uncomfortable parable about a man who becomes obsessed about a mysterious dark-haired woman who is literally his own death. I know Orpheus contains references to many things in Cocteau's world, but I don't know what they are -- try Wikipedia for a start.

Footsbarn in Action!


Rosanna, Rachelle, and Rhonna prepare for the great Puca Ritual.