I've been a BAD BOY! Got a parking ticket outside the Hockaday Museum last night. The city is usually good about letting the staff off for these kind of things, though.

Updates are coming: 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!

Weather: It's a little bit colder and dryer -- I like seeing the sun, but I hope all these clouds will dump some snow in the mountains as they pass overhead.

Wildlife: Somebody was in a hurry this morning! As they zoomed around my left side there was a deer suddenly standing at the edge of the road. The creature backed away, but I could see the passing SUV rocking on it's suspension as it tried to recover from the near-collision. Thank goodness I was able to slow down and let him drift back into his proper lane without mishap.

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution! Click on The Hunger Site once a day.

Media Watch: The Rose Bowl was an unusually interesting college football game. Usually one team crushes the other, but last night a Quarterback named Vincent Young was able to win the game with his extraordinary individual efforts. USC was ready for his TEAM, but they just couldn't defend against Young's ability to pass or run when a previously-called play broke down. Since they never sacked him, he was always standing, and took advantage of every opportunity he saw.
NFL Playoffs -- Saturday Washington @ Tampa Bay; Winner plays Seattle or Chicago next week. Jacksonville @ New England; Winner plays Denver or Indianapolis next week. Sunday Carolina @ New York; Winner plays Seattle or Chicago next week. Pittsburgh @ Cincinnati; Winner plays Denver or Indianapolis next week. Who exactly plays whom depends on their relative win/loss records. Indianapolis and Seattle have earned home field advantage for the entire playoffs.


Some of the cast of Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938).
Universal reportedly decided to set the action on Mars instead of Mongo because of the media frenzy in the wake of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast. (Left) Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, and Frank Shannon reprise their roles as Flash, Dale, and Zarkov. (Center) Alex Raymond's original visualization of Azura, Witch Queen of Mongo and the Earth people. (Right) Beatrice Roberts as Azura, transplanted to Planet Mars and playing host to visitors from Mongo, like evil Emperor Ming and his bumbling enemy Prince Barin.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's back to work I go!

Updates are coming: 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!

Weather: A cycle of short snows and shredded blue skies is rolling over us.

Wildlife: The massive Rough Legged Hawks are still perched on high places around the neighborhood.

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution! Click on The Hunger Site once a day.

In The Community: We are short-handed at the Hockaday Museum, but at least we're organized. The director stripped the last three shows off the walls and pedestals, and I finished the touch-up painting yesterday. The next three shows are dribbling in, so we have places to put them now. Mollerway showed up and took Kristi Brothers' pottery away. WILL WE BE READY BY JANUARY 10?!? (Don't bet against us.)
Hockaday Museum of Art

Theater/Theatre: Katie, our choreographer from Mime Troupe days is still kicking it up in Amsterdam -- Magpie Music Dance Company
January 6 - Overtoom 301 - Amsterdam - doors open 20:30 - performance begins 21:00 - 7 EU/ 6 EU student discount
TRASHTOWN # 1
Dance: Katie Duck, Eileen Standley, Michael Schumacher and Vincent Cacialano
Music: Cor Fuhler - analog synthesizer, Wilbert de Joode – contrabass, Colin McLean - electronics
Light: Ellen Knops
Installation artist: Nico Lootsma
Trashtown is an ever-changing city built of trash. The imaginary city will come to life as Magpie Music Dance Company inhabits Trashtown.

TRASHTOWN # 2 - February 10 - OT301 Amsterdam
Events at Overtoom 301
www.magpiemusicdance.com
This project is made possible thanks to a generous contribution from the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst (Funds for the Arts)

Katie is also going to dance there on January 28th:
Sat 28 @ 21:30 MUSIC / DANCE 301
Katie Duck
Dancers: Katie Duck + Alexandra Manasse
Musicians: Andy Moor [guitar] + Colin McLean [electronics]
Plus late night DJ bar with Andy + Colin [dubstep / dancehall stylee].
Entrance 5 euro


A collage-on-the-fly featuring Katie (front), members of Magpie, and a greeting from Nico Lootsma to the Boekie Woekie bookstore in Amsterdam, which carries his Trashtown Magazine.

Happy New Year! I slept in on Monday because we are celebrating the holiday TODAY -- a great start for 2006, or any year.

Updates are coming: 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!

Weather: A soft snow this morning with blue skies and big cumulus clouds in the mid-afternoon. California has more rain than is good for the people who live there. (see below)

Wildlife: All our bird pals were feeding while we watched the Tournament of Roses Parade: Magpies, Blue Jays, Flickers, Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, Juncos, Finches, and Chickadees. The Bald Eagles showed up early, and a small group of Canada Geese explored the pond.

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution! Click on The Hunger Site once a day.

Media Watch: The Tournament of Roses Parade was absolutely awesome this year. We watched it commercial-free on HGTV, plus a behind-the scenes special which featured Raul Rodriguez, the designer of many of the best floats this year, and his partners at Phoenix Decorating Company.
That made the event so wonderful was the fact that everybody was out in a drenching 2 to 4 inch Pacific downpour -- braving the very contrary elements just to have a good time. Some colors ran on the floats, a couple of them needed towing, some instruments needed covering-up from the rain, but there was a lets do it spirit that came though the broadcast. The Rose Bowl isn't until Wednesday this year, so maybe the storm willl be over by then.
Here's some pages describing the floats of 2006:
Page One and Page Two
Here's an audio interview with Raul Rodriguez on NPR:
Rose Parade Float Designer
I stayed up a bit late finishing Larry McMurtry's The Colonel and Little Missie -- Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America. McMurtry makes a case for their popularity being equivalent to the strange phenomena of so-called Superstardom today, as if the status of star isn't a weird thing in itself. His short sketches of the people they knew and worked with coalesce into a biographical outline of their intertwined lives. I'd call the book a long historical essay.
One thing that Larry (Lonesome Dove) McMurtry knows about is the mythological power of the Legend of the West that has existed in the public imagination for almost a century and a half. William F. Cody lived the life of a plainsman until he was in his early thirties, and then was a show business icon until his death. Whatever the truth about his adventures on the western frontier might have been, the fact that he was a living ambassador from that chimeric place and time made him one of the most famous men in the world.
A very good friend of mine who makes her living as a trick roper once opined to me that "Annie Oakley wasn't a REAL cowgirl." I differed with her opinion, but it doesn't matter how anybody categorizes Annie Oakley nowadays. She was a remarkably skilled sharpshooter and showperson, and her own unique star hasn't dimmed over time.


Trick roper Karen Quest on Buckboard Lane's buckboard
Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley & the cover of Larry McMurtry's book
Karen Quest in Cowgirl costume at the NW Montana Fair in 2002
Take a look at her Cowgirl Tricks Website!

Happy New Year! We even get to skip Monday as a working day tomorrow.

Updates are coming: 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!

Weather: Warm enough to melt ice and snow for most of the last 24 hours. It may be safe to drive tomorrow.

Wildlife: The critters seem to enjoy the Holidays too. The Raccoons are raiding the box feeder again. The Deer are snooping around for spilled seeds. We heard the Coyotes a few nights ago, and so did my neighbor -- he swept the surface of the lake with a spotlight, but they were somewhere else. We saw that light again this evening, but it was just a Deer crunching along in the styrofoam snow on the lake. A lone Canadian Goose took a rest by the open water at midday.

Charity Alert: Resolve again to visit The Hunger Site once a day and click away.

Media Watch: More Holiday bits and pieces (mostly about music) --
George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars were on BET's 25 Years celebration. Snoop Dog was the MC of their segment, which was right, since he used their tracks behind his greatest hit records. Bootsy Collins played his awesome bass with the group again, but didn't sing. Kim Manning was singing and gyrating on ROLLER SKATES. She will be in the cast of VH1's Flavor of Love starting tonight. Flavor Flav's other Reality shows on this network have not only been outrageous, but more than a little humiliating. I'm hoping for the best concerning Ms. Manning.


Singer Kim Manning won a recent songwriting competition,
and appears on VH1's weekly Flavor of Love.
Besides her own career, she sings with George Clinton & The P-Funk All-Stars
Review: VH1's Flavor of Love is as phony and degrading as any other Reality show. Ms. Manning didn't initiate any of the gross self-humiliation that some of the other cast members put themselves through. In fact, she hardly spoke a word. Except for being nicknamed "Peaches," her dignity was largely intact at the end of the first episode. I'm frankly hoping that Kim will NOT continue for very long. Two other "quiet contestants" left with the first five, but Manning remained on the show with fifteen others. Hey lady -- the real LOSERS in this game are the ones who stick around for more degradation.
Previews show the usual fights and bleeped-over swearing common to this genre, plus other stupid stuff. Media masochist Brigitte Nielsen will appear in a "future" installment too. Whomever "wins" will just be sneered at and called "Brigitte's Substitute."
During Nielsen's last Celeb-Reality series with Flavor Flav, he turned to her and said Do you HAVE to be drunk to be with me? in a seemingly genuine moment of exasperation.


Brigitte Nielsen in Monte Carlo circa 1987
Detail from a photo by the late Helmut Newton
Larry King Live featured the children of Ricky Nelson, along with his great lead guitarist James Burton. Somehow the L.A. studio musician Glen Campbell was on too, although he was only a minor participant in Nelson's career. Ricky Nelson was undoubtedly Elvis Presley's most successful imitator/competitor. His parents' popular TV show, his good looks, and undoubted talent made an unbeatable combination.
James Burton was always nearby, playing tasty, if short, guitar solos. He later appeared as one of the Shindogs, along with Delaney Bramlett. He made quality records with Judy Collins, Elvis, Emmylou Harris, and many other acts. My favorite James Burton performance is Susie Q by Dale Hawkins, one of the few white singers on Chess Records. Credence Clearwater Revival's version may be more famous, but it's not nearly as FUNKY! (John Fogarty liked Ricky Nelson's music, and vice versa.)
Think Tank with Ben Wattenburg had a show about the great songwriter Irving Berlin, with his daughter as a guest. Born Israel Balin, he was one of the most important cultural influences of the early 20th Century. He dropped out of public life sometime in the late 50's, which might have been his own business, but an unfortunate result was that very few books were ever written about his remarkably productive life because he allowed nobody access to himself or his papers. He lived to be over a hundred years old, so there was a lot to tell. I hope the rapidly-dwindling number of people who knew him keep talking while they are alive!