More dangerous driving! Ice layers on the roads every morning from rain and snow falling all night. The college was especially icy because of the river and mists -- the crew has a hard time keeping up with things.

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.

Media Watch: NFL Football -- Dawg-assed visiting team San Francisco put the big hurt on playoff-bound Seattle, playing at home. The 49ers' defense only allowed one score until the last minute. The Seahawks underestimated their opponents for sure.
Real Books --Sailing from Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World by Colin Wells.
Constantinople/Byzantium was the center of a beleaguered Christian empire for a thousand years. This author spins three threads of it's long, convoluted history. I finished the first about reintroducing knowledge of Ancient Greek to Western Europe via Italy, despite the barbaric depradations of fellow-Christian Crusaders, and the valiant failures of pioneers Boccaccio and Petrarch. It was well worth trying again and again. Next is their long defeat against the Four Caliphs, Umayyads, Abbasids, Seljuk and Ottoman Turks as they led Islamic armies over what we now call the Middle East. To further compound the Eastern Empire's troubles, the Slavs invaded from Central Europe, repopulating the Balkans and points north. Greek scholarship eventually won out to some degree, even though the hapless Byzantine political leaders lost most of the time, and the physical seat of Eastern Orthodoxy fell under Islamic political rule after 1453. (Except for Mt. Athos, it's still that way.) The Russian Czars tried to gain hegemony over Eastern Orthodoxy, but it was too damned big for them -- St. Cyrill's alphabet triggered a mighty cultural achievement.

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.

Hairy and Downey Woodpeckers are feasting at the suet feeders. The Flickers show up a couple of times a day, in between the Magpies. There is a small flock of beautiful Pheasants which seem to travel eight at a time -- males and females. We are seeing Nuthatches as well as Chickadees -- they look almost the same, except the Nuthatches are smaller and have subtle yellows, oranges, and blues in their feathers. The Juncos eat right off the deck -- watch out for that stray cat, birdies!


Our big Christmas Cactus continues to erupt!

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: Museum workshops at the Hockaday Museum of Art all this week. I'm pouring wine at a reception on Wednesday night too. At the college, it's SLACKER Week -- all sorts of last-minute projects dumped at my door. It's nice to be needed, I guess. Over the Christmas break, we'll be participating in the annual Audubon Society bird count again.

Media Watch: Pros and cons of the Google Print Project on Book TV -- pretty contentious. The Internet has beseiged the walls of traditonal publishing for over ten years now -- kind of like the Trojan War. Is there any wonder why publishers and authors are suspicious of "nerds" bearing "gifts?"
American Football -- I'm a little sorry I said anything about the Indianapolis Colts -- they've lost three of their last four games since I said it might be their year to win it all. The University of Montana lost their playoff match last Friday. Maybe there will be fewer colds going around with one less outdoor game in this dark gray weather.
We had a "White Elephant" Christmas party for the Hockaday staff. My contribution was a pair of dawg-assed DVDs -- The Manster, made in Japan around 1959, and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe from 1940. (Carol Hughes plays a lab-assistant version of Dale Arden who TRIES to be feisty, but is very ineffectual due to rock-headed guards and exploding bombs.) Call 'em Black-and-White Elephants!


These animations are fun!
This screen-capture is from the wonderful
Tony LaBue's Flash Gordon website. He has pictures, credits, and even documentation about the MUSIC from these serials!