Damn dangerous driving this morning! Ice layered with rain and snow -- saw more doughnuts and spin-outs than I've seen all year! The giant Christmas Cactus keeps rockin' on! (see picture)



Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
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 Winter decorates the Holidays with snow. Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: I'm "pouring wine" at a fund-raiser for the Hockaday Museum of Art tonight. (I can be more laid-back than I would be if I were designated a "bartender.") We are going to need a lotta funds, if what I'm thinking is what we're actually going to do! We got some wonderful xerox copies of letters to/from Winold Reiss and Louis Hill via the Hill Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota, thanks to curator Eileen McCormack.

Media Watch: The Narrow Margin (1952) a pretty good film noir by director Richard Fleischer -- TCM sez: A tough cop meets his match when he has to guard a gangster's moll on a tense train ride. Cast: Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, Jacqueline White. This thing is a rather unflattering, but accurate, snapshot of the early 50's USA, simply because they wanted to save some money and did a lot of location shooting in railroad stations, the streets of Los Angeles, and outlying once-small communities like Cucamonga. The also used real contemporary railway equipment for set-scenes. Even the "nice" characters are flawed by stupidity, cowardice, and resignation to a gray cruel world.
Fleischer's films tended to be Comic Book-like, which is a compliment coming from me. How his work rates as Art is a matter of personal opinion. Here's his Wikipedia Article. I sure wish that Tora Tora Tora had been finished by the fired Akira Kurosawa, instead of Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, and Toshio Masuda -- there might have been a little more meaning in that film, whose main point seemed to be "Oh man, we really f***ed up!" The action scenes and empathetic portraits of enemies are noteworthy, though.