Beautiful mornings the last two days, but then dark gray clouds covered the sun most of the time. There was no rain or snow, just murk. Two yearling deer were feeding in the side and back yards this A.M.

More updates on their way: 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!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution in February too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: The Thousand Yard Stare on Ariana Huffington's blogsite. A video of Jim Soular reading his poem Gold Star Mother. Jim's stark realism is some of the best commentary about warfare that I know. Huffington Post -- Contagious Festival.

Media Watch: Superbowl XL was one of the worst-officiated games I've ever seen. Some of the penalties were called correctly, but some others weren't. The trouble was that they were mostly called against Seattle at critical times -- mistaken calls should be more random than that, and it left a bad impression. "My team" won, the Pittsburgh Steelers in this case, but I would have preferred a cleaner game.
I'm in the minority this year, but I liked the Rolling Stones' performance -- they made a lotta noise for six guys, played some good Rock N Roll for their second song, which was new, and did the most energetic live version of Satisfaction I've ever seen. Yeah, Mick Jagger was right -- they could have done Satisfaction at Superbowl I, but they were tired of it back then too.
Skating with Celebrities -- Experienced male skaters have ALL the advantages in this game. Nancy Kerrigan's partner could play hockey, but he couldn't cope with figure skates. (They are gone.) Bruce Jenner would be crazy to attempt any lifts or carries, so what's he going to do to compete with two experienced pairs skaters next week? Jillian was all bashed up, and Kristy Swanson seemed recovered from her chin-plant. I think this show will end up as Battle of the Blondes.


Kristy Swanson after skating practice...
Oops! Kristy Swanson in Wes Craven's Deadly Friend (1986)
A better than average combination of adolescent
whimsy and true horror.

Speaking of Horror Movies, here's one from India -- Kaal stars Bollywood hunks John Abraham, Ajay Devgan, and three domesticated Bengal Tigers. Shah Rukh Khan dances in a musical prolog. Devgan plays a re-embodied spirit named Kali Pratap Singh who oversees the death of stupid tourists in a wildlife refuge. Lowwww quality melodrama.

Snow melting to rain, alternating with sunshine all day. Coyotes and skunks overnight -- heard the former, smelled the latter.

More updates on their way: 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!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution in February too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: The Thousand Yard Stare on Ariana Huffington's blogsite. A video of Jim Soular reading his poem Gold Star Mother. Arianna asked for comedy and commentary. There is nothing funny about our country at war, but Jim's poetry is some of the best commentary about it I know. Huffington Post -- Contagious Festival.



Time Passages: Betty Friedan (1921-2006) First president of the National Organization for Women, and author of The Feminine Mystique which busted our society's callow marginalization of half it's citizens ... a phony bill of goods ... sold to women that left them unfulfilled, suffering from "the problem that has no name... A woman has got to be able to say 'Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own...

Media Watch: It's sublime-to-ridiculous time on the TV this weekend -- Taylor Branch, biographer of Martin Luther King is on C-SPAN right now, with a lot to say about King, his family, and the times we have lived through. Charles Osgood showed a couple of pieces about the so-called "Baby Boomers" on CBS Sunday -- one of which focused on tonight's Grammy Awards. The point was Rock & Roll is still popular, but other genres of music are even more popular now -- old news, old boy, and no tragedy whatsoever!
Superbowl Sunday -- number 40, A.K.A. Superbowl XL in Detroit, Michigan under a dome in a snowstorm. The Pittsburgh Steelers will face the Seattle Seahawks, with local hero Jerome Bettis running the ball for the Steelers starting about 4:30 P.M. MST. Rock & Roll synchronicity -- the Rolling Stones are performing at halftime -- much as I love that band, I wish Detroit's own Funk Brothers were doing an All-Motown Revue with a parade of young and old singers instead. Ya' can't always get what you wah-unt ...
"So, what's ridiculous about the Superbowl?" asks the NSA agent monitoring this website.
"People are actually buying TIVOs so that they can watch the COMMERCIALS and skip through the game!" sez I.
Last night there was even a network special about the Top 40 Superbowl Commercials -- in primetime, with additional commercials. My friend Brian W. Aldiss wrote that we live in a Science-Fictional world today, which makes a lot of traditional S-F redundant -- the evidence abounds.
When all else fails, there's BOLLYWOOD MOVIES!
Naach -- Good acting by male lead Abhishek Bachchan and female lead Antara Mali -- a dancer who has her own style. If there was a flaw, it looked as if the director was trying TOO hard to avoid cribbing Urmila Matondkar's Rangella. Sorry -- show biz stories are going to look like one another.
Main Hoon Na -- A strange hybrid of action, comedy, and romance in a single flick. Ms. Farah Khan, the director, is EXCELLENT and made the whole thing work scene by scene. (The plot wasn't credible in the least, but remember -- it's a Bollywood movie.) The whole cast performed well, especially superstars Suneil Shetty and Shah Rukh Khan. Sushmita Sen effortlessly played a beautiful, somewhat-older, chemistry teacher. (Shah Rukh's love interest) Zayed Khan was an alright juvenile leading man. The young Amrita Rao was very good as the female lead. During the credits, they showed little clips of cast and crew -- the associate producer held up an oversized check, and Shah Rukh Khan casually stepped up walked away with it. He earned his money, I must say, but I'm glad it wasn't my responsibility to pay him.
Musafir -- Produced and directed by CNN personality Dr. Sanjay Gupta a few years ago. It's a violent crime fantasy that is more sexist and salacious than your average Bollywood fare. Sanjay Dutt completely stole the show at the beginning (as usual) but we weren't in the mood to endure more of the movie's sadistic vibe, and turned it off.

A very snowy morning. I had to drive my way out of trouble when my car wouldn't stop at the bottom of a hill -- luckily I was able to enter traffic without discomfort to anyone. Before the storm began last night, a yearling deer was grazing through the front yard.

Yet another update at: 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!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution in February too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: My one video of Jim Soular reading one poem from The Thousand Yard Stare. is uploaded on Ariana Huffington's blogsite now. I am going to try and place the Gold Star Mother poem there instead. They didn't tell me (I didn't ask, either) that there was less than 15 MB available, so I couldn't load the two I had planned. Gold Star Mother is the shorter, and more timely, of the two. (It's online NOW!)Front Line Poetry
Check out the rest of the Contagious Festival at Huffington Post.

Media Watch: I was reading Asteroids by Curtis Peebles (2000, Smithsonian Institution Press) when I saw some things I hadn't expected to see in this kind of layperson's science book. The Department of Defense monitored collisions with large-scale meteors, comets, and asteroids and Planet Earth from the 1960's onward. The data was declassified in the early 1990's. Satellites capable of tracking flashes of light, and ground based low-frequency acoustic equipment which "heard" glancing impacts with our atmosphere, established a scary fact -- at least once a year an asteroid or spent comet explodes over the earth with a measured yield of 15 kilotons, and a dozen more explosions have yields measured in single kilotons annually. Luckily, these objects all bounced away, or disintegrated, like the interplanetary wanderer which caused the Tunguska Event on June 30, 1908. I witnessed one of these atmospheric collisions myself in the summer of 1965 at about 10:30 at night (MDT) -- it was as bright as daylight for a second all over Western North America, but nobody heard any sound.
We may have a couple of ideas, but humankind doesn't have a proven technology for diverting a space rock large enough kill us all if it actually struck the surface of our planet.

Now for something REALLY frivolous --
Three shows concerning ballroom dancing on TV last night! ABC's Dateline covered the fad as a good-natured news story. PBS started their series about a ballroom dance competition in Ohio ala the great Juliet Prowse shows over a decade ago. Marilu Henner acted as host, with a knowledgeable dancer as commentator informing overwhelmed viewers like me about whom and what I was watching. While the men largely stick to black suits, the women wear costumes which are cut up and decorated in all sorts of ways -- super-reflective sparkles festoon every gown and mirror the bright lights like tiny stars. Their makeup can be EX-treme -- I swore I saw fake eyelashes as long as an inch and a half. One thing that "stood out" was everyone's noses -- they all looked long and prominent because of slicked-back hairstyles for both sexes, up-looking postures, spray-painted makeup, and flashing teeth. 12 couples left to go, so they say, most with East European names.
Ms. Henner needed one of these makeup artists herself -- a combination of her hairstyle and lights distorted her features, making her look cross-eyed at times. She could have used a more flattering dress too. This series may already in the can, but I hope the producers made some adjustments after the first show.


(Right) A montage from America's Ballroom Challenge on PBS
(Left) Sheryl and Drew -- our favorites on Dancing with the Stars
All photos property of their copyright owners

Dancing with the Stars -- Stacy Kiebler and her partner kicked everybody's ass right at the start. They got three 10s from the judges. We still voted for Drew and Sheryl, who danced last, and got three 9s. Jerry Rice did as well as George Hamilton, but the judges gave "Hammy" three 8s. (His partner is a TERRIFIC soloist.) "Lips," the Soap Opera Lady got a 25, and it looks bad for personable, but slow-moving Tia Carrera.

A snowy morning, but it started to clear up as the sun rose. Two large Whitetail Deer were wandering around the worst intersection of my neighborhood -- steep hills, slippery roads, high shoulders. I slowed down to a CRAWL.

Yet another update at: 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!

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

In The Community: My videos of Jim Soular reading two of his poems from The Thousand Yard Stare. will be uploaded on Ariana Huffington's blogsite within 24 hours: Huffington Post

Time Passages: Coretta Scott King (1928 - 2006)
"Courage is not buried in the grave of the valiant."
Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services... Read the article by Robert Roy Britt -- After 145 years...

Media Watch: BOLLYWOOD MOVIES! The first was Shaadi No. 1, a stupid comedy that Sanjay Dutt couldn't even save. We put it aside and saw Dil Maange More, starring Shahid Kapoor, Ayesha Takia, Tulip Joshi, and Soha Ali Khan. A young guy falls in love three times -- monogamously in each instance. It's not credible in the least, but it was a fun flick despite it's problems. Young Shahid Kapoor is a good dancer, and shows some acting talent here and there, but his body language, facial mannerisms, and timing resemble Shah Rukh Khan's body language, facial mannerisms, and timing far too often -- whether that was his or the director's fault, I can't guess.

Why bother? -- The U.S. Constitution states that the President must inform Congress about the state of the nation once a year. Bush breaks constitutional laws all the time without apologies. Why couldn't he do us a favor and skip that speech this year when he had almost nothing truthful to say?


Capitol security goon Mike Weight arrests Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan prior to the State of the Union speech. January 31, 2006.
Her shirt reads: 2245 Dead. How many more?
Read What Really Happened by Mrs. Sheehan at:
Michael Moore's Blog
Daily Kos
Read a lotta Liberal reactions at The Huffington Post