Bird migrations are coming through at a faster rate -- the damn Starlings are decimating our suet feeder, though, and the Pileated Woodpecker left in disgust yesterday. We are seeing and hearing Red Wing Blackbirds, Stellar's Jays, California Blue Jays, Canada Geese, Red Headed Ducks, and Goldeneye Ducks.

Some Funky pictures coming to: 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 March too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Every Day Is Veteran's Day is now up in HuffPo's Contagious Festival. Click on Veteran's Day in the list, or try this link:
Front Line Poetry
(You need FLASH 8 to see the video.)

Media Watch: PURE GUILTY-PLEASURE TRASH -- Get Crazy (1983) from Alan Arkush, who made the excellent Rock N' Roll High School in 1979. (Arkush's The Temptations from 1998 isn't too bad, but not exactly factual either.) Ed Begley Jr, Fabian Forte, and Bobby Sherman are the villians in Get Crazy. Malcolm McDowell plays "Reggie Wanker," a jaded Rock Singer, Stacey Nelkin playe "Suzie," the little sister -- Lou Reed sings a song to her. There are so many cameos and bit players that it's easy to get lost. An actor named Bill Henderson plays a blues singer who tells God at his guitarist's funeral: If you don't make a place for him in Heaven, I'm gonna come up there and KICK YOUR ASS! The Turtles' great lead singer Howard Kaylan plays "Capt. Cloud," an acid guru, The Doors' John Densmore plays a drummer whose solo is so long that Reggie Wanker has time for an orgy in the dressing room. The artist Mary Woronov and her film-making partner Paul Bartel are all over the place too. There are more drug jokes than I could count, and some of them were even funny. There was a strange pimp-like character with glowing red dots instead of eyes showing under his broad-brimmed hat, distributing cocaine to the musicians, and spiking the water cooler with LSD. An obscure, sprawling L.A. group called Fear did a fast-punk version of Hoochie Coochie Man which was definitely OUT- THERE.
When Lou Reed is the most normal person in the movie, you've got a strange flick!


Joey Ramone (Jeff Hyman) stepped up and took over the wonderfully stupid and entertaining film on the left from actress P.J. Soles. (She actually handed it to him with glee.) The movie on the right is obviously a lot more vulgar, and it's stupidity often overpowers it's wit.

The Buck Deer was sprouting a pair of spiky antlers as the Whitetails loped along up the hill from Little Foy's Lake. We've had mixed, mostly-rainy weather in the Flathead Valley, but the snow continues to pile up in the mountains.

Some Funky pictures coming to: 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 March too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: 100 views by midday today!
Every Day Is Veteran's Day is now up in HuffPo's Contagious Festival. Click on Veteran's Day in the list, or try this link:
Front Line Poetry
(You need FLASH 8 to see the video this month.)

Media Watch: St. Paul Sunday had a fabulous string ensemble playing last Sunday morning on Montana Public Radio. Book TV had some irritations in store for me -- some author tried to denigrate Muhammed Ali's heroism because of the champ's association with the all-too human and fallible Elijah Muhammed. Sorry -- Ali's life has always been a story of rising above the forces which could have/should have held him down. Even Ali's own moments of bad judgement couldn't undo his accomplishments -- SUCKAH!!
More Book TV -- Francis Fukuyama was on for three hours. He spoke about the failures of the Iraq War, which is good, but he never really got around to addressing why he chose to become famous as a NeoCON buzzword hack. Here's my post from DailyKos:
Lost Opportunity with Fukuyama
I tuned in CSpan to see what color Francis Fukuyama's new leaf had turned. I discerned some humilty in place of the insufferable smugness he once projected, but despite all the information about who he WAS, I saw almost nothing about what he has LEARNED, since he gained fame as a pitch man for NeoCON buzzwords.
One of my suspicions was confirmed -- he was influenced by that sold-out phony Allan Bloom, scholastic pimp of "Closing the American Mind," double-speak creator of "The Western Canon," and it's false corollary "Dead White Males," plus the corrosive fallacy named "Political Correctness." (Which is always a fault of your OPPONENT.)
I've had nothing but contempt for Fukuyama -- as just another right-wing shill (with a flair for language) perverting public discourse, until he turned coat on his fellow NeoCON fantasists recently, as the real world burned our "buts."
I was tempted to call in, but the nature of the other calls made me leery of seeming like one more braying jackass. I couldn't have concealed my contempt for him, or gotten to a discussible point across without writing a reasonable question ahead of time.
"Are you sorry for being a Madison Avenue-style academic whore now , you bastard?" would NOT invite thoughtful introspection on his part, I'm afraid, but that's what I was hoping to hear somewhere in that show -- better framed, of course.
There were some intelligent callers, I must say, but too few. It looked like slow-pitch softball time.
I saw some of Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman (1989) on the Extreme Movie Channel last night. It was Shintaro Katsu's final movie in the series after 27 years of making them. The 2003 film by Takaishi Kitano borrowed the gray hair, and some "dark" comedy bits.


About a year ago I blogged about these five Raccoon pups eating out of our bird feeder. Well I finally scanned the picture, and here it is! Mama Raccoon was on the deck to the left and below this snapshot too.