We've had a number of real snowstorms since the last post -- its that time of year again, and they are welcome. Whenever the ol' Big Sky is clear enough to see Planet Mars, the temperature is too damn cold to enjoy it. That exploding comet is fairly dim now.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Connersville, Indiana; Denver, Colorado (A shout-out to beautiful Tari DeWille!); Cape Coral, Florida; Louth, Ireland; South Jordan, Utah; Jamaica, New York (That you, Stozo?); Huntington, Utah; San Diego, California; Georgetown, Guyana; Walldrn, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany and Cincinnati, Ohio.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art is closed until January 2 -- I've been there doing walk-throughs, and hanging one of the next round of shows. The website has been getting updated too.

Media Watch: Bollywood movies are good on winter nights, even if they may be bonehead comedies -- Sanjay Duit or Madhuri Dixit are excellent in almost any role. Last weekend there was an ambitious opera by Prokofiev based on War and Peace. Darn thing lasted for most of four hours! This week it was the lackluster Hansel & Gretel by Engelbert Humperdink -- not the English lounge-lizard crooner, but the German composer.

Spitfires Preview: Beware Planet Mongo's Queen of Magic!

Azura, Witch Queen of Mongo, as she was introduced by Alex Raymond in 1935. (Those birds aren't doves of peace.)

The so-called Legion of Decency not only censored Hollywood, but supressed most of the Mass Media from the mid-30's until the mid-60's. Former beauty pagent contestant Beatrice Roberts later concealed her charms under a velvet fur-trimmed cape as the Martian version of Azura. Before the Hearst Syndicate (King Features) fully accommodated the censors, there was year of fabulously-drawn Flash Gordon Sunday pages which competed strongly with Harold Foster's non-lunkheaded Tarzan. Raymond's long, sinuous ink lines are the hallmarks of this high-barbaric epoch of newspaper comics.

Merry Christmas! Planet Mars is still glowing bright -- it is both the Morning Star and the Evening Star, and I declare it the XMAS STAR this year. When I said its getting farther from Earth for awhile, I meant at opposition. HAIL! It's on the other side of the Sun for months at a time. We are getting a little snow -- enough to scare drivers into going slow, I hope. Wandering deer are activating the garage light at night.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Bellevue, Nebraska; Marlton, New Jersey; Scarsdale, New York; Jamaica, New York; Hamilton, Montana and Washington, District of Columbia USA.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art is closed until January 2 -- I'll be there later this week getting a jump on hanging some BIG pictures for the next show, because there will be a deivery of a touring exhibit right after we open. The college is all shuttered down until the New Year, but then we'll be hittin' it HARD!

Media Watch: Kinky Boots was a well-acted movie. The plot rang a couple of false notes, and almost ran aground near the end, but the good spirit of the thing carried it through.

Spitfires Preview: Dale Arden's Censored Spitfire Past!
Two panels from the second Flash Gordon Sunday page (1934). In the first panel, A panicking Dr. Hans Zarkov throttles Flash Gordon, but does not see Dale Arden running up, brandishing a wrench.


Watch out for Wenches with Wrenches!
The second panel obviously follows an implied or expurgated scene where she clobbers the mad scientist on the left (far) side of his noggin -- giving Flash a chance to get to his feet and knock the crazy sonuvabitch outta commission. Dale showed some spunk and self-reliance in the original scenario, but Flash Gordon's many creators imprisoned her in the role of "Damsel In Distress" far too often. Zarkov was later rehabilitated in the comic strip, and became an avuncular co-hero in the movie serials.

Planet Mars was the biggest, brightest object in the morning sky. Planet Earth and this big red rock are drifting apart for the next generation, instead of coming close enough for an interplanetary handshake every two years, like they've done for the last little while.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from tiny Tamworth in Staffordshire, UK; Louth, Ireland (Gotta be Eavan Brennan!); Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Dundee City, UK; Madrid, Spain; Salt Lake City, Utah (Searching for Wanda Day. I hope they Google'd Theater X-Net for her pictures); Cincinnati, Ohio (Bootsy Collins is doing his James Brown Tribute Concert TOMORROW night) and finally Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Reading about Ringo Starr and Frank Frazetta.)

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: A long day yesterday at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- when we do a group show, it takes a while for everyone to come in and get their work. We cleared Donna Gans' gallery in one afternoon, though! I also had to take a couple of older paintings over to the Abbrescia Gallery for cleaning/restoration -- work that's done by the square inch.

REAL Books: H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath -- a romp through his Dunsany-esque cosmos, with Randolph Carter in the role of a conquering hero instead of as a victim of blasphemous curiosity. Read it online HERE. My friend Brian Aldiss calls Lovecraft "an atrocious writer," and Colin Wilson's opinion was the same -- it makes me laugh that both of them wrote books and stories expanding on his themes. Brian even won an award for The Saliva Tree, which owed much to The Color Out of Space. Aldiss' vivid portrait of the Suffolk marshes was far beyond Lovecraft's skills, but the Providence recluse was undeniably able to weave a certain literary spell.


The Two Queen Azuras
(Click the pic for a better view)
I'm in the midst of updating Spitfires of the Spaceways. Here's a comparison of Alex Raymond's Azura -- Witch Queen of Mongo from the Flash Gordon comic strip in 1935 (above), and Azura -- Queen of Magic from Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars in 1938 (below).

H. P. Lovecraft was still alive and writing when Alex Raymond drew Mongo's Queen Azura as a hot but sadistic femme fatale who outright lusted after Flash. The Martian Azura was frigidly cruel in Beatrice Roberts' portrayal a few years later. Censorship was extremely powerful in 1938, so this Saturday morning serial was as sexually repressed as a traditional East Indian movie. Ms. Roberts entered two Miss America Pagents a decade earlier, and won the Evening Gown competition both times. She was noted for affairs with Robert (Believe It Or Not) Ripley and Louis Mayer, so she possessed a sensual dimension that nobody would have ever guessed from THIS role. Raymond worked from live models after Flash Gordon achieved success, so there were people who actually sported the physiques he delineated in his classic Space Opera.

Light snow falling at 10 PM last night. A Deer meandered through one of the neighborhood alleys, all lit up by Christmas lights -- GOOD! -- I saw it in plenty of time while I was driving on an icy side street.

Sitemeter Sez: A visitor from Danbury, Connecticut was searching for Joss Stone -- I speak well of her. I like a singer who is known primarily for singing, rather than anything else.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Changing shows at the Hockaday Museum of Art, and getting another one ready to tour the state. Goodness, gracious, CRATE scads o' pictures!

Media Watch: I found myself thinking about Dusty Springfield after responding to the Joss Stone search (above). She passed away a few years ago from cancer, after reviving her singing career to some extent. The first great wave of Progressive Rock, which started around 1967, began to put her stardom on the proverbial shelf in the USA. Her stable of British Pop Singers who raced each other up and down the charts eaked out a few more successes with Petula Clark, and Lulu's solitary American hit. Dusty Springfield even scored with Son of a Preacher Man, but Windmills of your Mind, although it was both played on the radio and designated a hit by the industry, was an example of the middle-brow schlock which made my generation turn away from Springfield and her stablemates. (Pet Clark sailed on the Titanic of Finian's Rainbow into Pop Oblivion.)
OK, so I'm telling my view of her story in reverse -- for many years I counted myself a Dusty Springfield fan. I loved certain singles of hers, and wore out my copy of her Greatest Hits album. I thought it was hilarious the way she played the Pop Star game, first as a faux-Folk act with The Springfields, wearing blue denim, a wiglike bob, and singing Silver Threads and Golden Needles, then sporting St. Laurent frocks, a blond bouffant and gobs of masscara after she made a little money, or her management did. Patti Labelle and Nona Hendryx called her "authentic" and "approachable" in their tribute on the BBC award show, and she may have been in private, but she was all calculated Show Business to the American Public -- one cog in an international music-making machine that included P.J. Proby, Adam Faith, Cilla Black, Sandi Shaw, young saxophonist/bandleader David (Bowie) Jones, and dozens of others. Progressive Rock dealt in a lot of hype too, but it pushed London's Denmark Street syndicate aside for a little while.
Hmm -- I should say which Dusty singles appealed to me the most, besides two of the three listed above: Wishing and Hoping (Great Bacharach & David tune, plus a dandy arrangement stolen from them); I Only Want to be With You (I wish all Pop Candy tasted this good -- Samantha Fox and Annie Lennox have also covered this song exuberantly); You Don't Have To Say You Love Me (Magnificently overdone re-worded Italian schmaltz -- greasy broken-hearted cholesteral for the ears. The song was shopped all over Europe. I heard an earlier version, sung by a man, in an Italian James Bond spoof, running on a silly Dick Tracy device which resembled a modern cell-phone video screen); The Look of Love (Bacharach & David again, with a hoarse, somewhat squeezed vocal. I was better pleased by Sergio Mendes' version a few years later -- I preferred hearing Springfield's voice as a trumpet more than a flute.)

Funky News: (from Bootsy Collins' MySpace site)
Say it Loud, an Instrument 4 every Child!
That is what I feel Mr. James Brown really wanted for our creative Artists and Workers of our land. That is one reason why we are honoring him this Sat. Dec. 22nd -- show starts at 8:00PM. Here are some of the Players that will Pee on the show, BucketHead, Triage, FreekBass, IceCream, Lil' Boosie, Chuck D, The Soul Generals -- James Brown's band featuring his son Daryl on guitar, Tommy Davidson & Michael Colyar the Comediens, Danny Ray -- James Brown 's personal MC for the last 50 years.
Vicky Anderson & the Bobby Byrd Band, DJizzle, Zion Planet 10, all the City Officials, James Browns Daughters Deanna Brown, Venisha Brown who looks just like him an will sing and dance like her Dad on the set -- to close out the show the Original JB's.
Rhythm Section: Jab'o & Clyde the funky drummers -- and they brought Catfish Collins and myself Bootsy Collins out of P-Tirement especially for this show. We have to do this for the greatest entertainer of our time for me, maybe because he picked me to play Bass with him when I was just 17 years old! My momma said "Bootsy can only go if you takes his brother Catfish," so here we are now giving our King of King Records his props.
If anybody is interested in coming and or helping out go to:
www.madisontheateronline.com for more details.
You can also stop by www.bootsycollins.com
Hope to see all my funkateers there.
They came, We funked um!
Bootsy!!!


(Lower Left Corner) John (Jabo) Starks was James Brown's tireless "go to" drum-master through the late 60's and into the mid 70's. Clyde Stubblefield, who calls himself "The Funky Drummer," EARNED his title by performing the Class-A solo on Cold Sweat in 1967. When that same track was re-used in the 90's for Sinead O'Connor's I'm Stretched On Your Grave, he was quoted in Rolling Stone as saying "... (Brown) just gave drummers Hell!" Time is a healer, and it is good to see them
playing together in honor of their old boss,
who died almost a year ago.

Snow business this morning! Light and non-sticking in the valley, but deeper and dangerous all around us.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Redmond, Wahington; Jamaica, New York and Concord, North Carolina.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: All that stuff is going to come DOWN at Hockaday Museum of Art -- Seems like just eight weeks ago when we put it all UP. I'm not complaining, it is GOOD that we install over a dozen shows a year. The college's Honors Symposium is sketched out for next year: Lessons Learned: The Role of Humanities in a Free Society -- Ivan scheduled a variety of events concerning History, Literature, Religion, Art & Design, Poetry, Ethics, and Music.

Media Watch: I saw some more of that odd BBC awards show from last year, which I mentioned earlier on my blog. Singer Joss Stone was calm, professional, and delightful in her tribute to the late Dusty Springfield. The finale featured George Martin conducting the second side of Abbey Road with Queen's drummer Roger Taylor as the "Spotlight" performer. There were some excellent guitarists recreating the solos, and two young singers, male and female, doing lead vocals. A choir solidified the voices, and an orchestra held down the back, as in the original record. Mr. Taylor was VERY busy playing through the WHOLE thing, which was something that Ringo Starr never had to do.
Ringo used to be slagged for his musicianship, even at the height of the Beatles' popularity. It was never fair. I'll bear witness to two occasions. One was George Harrison's Concert for Bangledesh, where he matched studio ace Jim Keltner stroke for stroke. The second was Roger Taylor's obvious work and effort in duplicating Ringo's one and only bit of recorded "flash" during The End, where everything is held together by his distinctive bass-heavy drums and easy (for him) cymbal tirades in between the hard strokes. It was an effective round of skins that set up McCartney's histrionics well, with some much-needed humor. Mr. Taylor's own dynamics were NEVER that mischievous. Ringo's style was inimitable, and part of the Beatles' success, in that his warm, disarming personality showed up in his playing as well as the rest of what he did in the group. Those great records would have lacked a particularly charming vibe if he hadn't been there.
No elite drummer, or studio wonk that I'm aware of had anything like Ringo's aura -- Ginger Baker would have withered beneath the onslaught of those three Liverpudlian egos on the front line, Kenny Jones might have shared Pete Best's fate, since he largely "sat back there." Notice how the Rolling Stones flourished with unflashy but STRONG Charlie Watts on the throne. The study of group dynamics is such an inexact thing!


Make Beautiful Hair Blecch!
Or should I say Ringo in the Eye of the Tiger(s)? The Beatles were so popular the media even made money laughing at them. Mad Magazine helped revive the artistic career of Frank Frazetta in 1964, who had worked for Mad's Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein ten years previously. He'd recently left the employ of Al (L'il Abner) Capp, and was trying to pay his bills working for legendary tightwad Donald A. Wollheim, painting Edgar Rice Burroughs covers (background). Many well-heeled customers sought Frazetta's services when this portrait of Ringo Starr (foreground) made such a "splash." I also think those hot-selling Burroughs reprints helped attract interest too -- one out of every thirty paperbacks sold that year were by E.R.B.

No new snow flurries yet, but unsettled skies. There's tantalizing patches of blue, but that is the color of intense COLD this time of year. We want snow in the mountains, but our roads to be clear.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Louth, Ireland and Wolfsburg, Germany.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: See Karen Leigh's Glacier National Park Christmas ornament at Hockaday Museum of Art's webpage. Since those lodges are closed during the winter, and they are subject to early snows, they traditionally celebrate Christmas in August at several National Park venues in the west. Karen's was made for the conventional season, and is hanging at the White House with other Park Service honorees.

Media Watch: A series about WWI on something called the Military Channel. One chapter told about the horrors of the Middle Eastern Front, where the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany and eventually collapsed, despite winning many bloody battles and committing horrendous war crimes, because of insurgencies in the "holy lands" of Arabia and Palestine. I mention this nasty era of World History because we've never resolved the consequences of it, and those same resultant issues are biting our collective asses right now!
A stupid Jack Black movie (OK, is there any other kind?) with an ironically funny "pep talk" based on the twisted riff Satan is in all of us. Silly, but true, sh*t like: He's that little voice inside you that tells you to...(do many stupid things).
That WWI series was absolute proof that our species doesn't need any f*cking mythical monsters or devils prompting us to wreak hideous evil on the world.
Montana PBS is playing a John Lennon special as I write, honoring the anniversary of his cruel and useless assassination in 1980 -- lots of excellent music by many people, including Lennon himself. Here's a link to the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland. If you want to express a hope for peace, send a message!


Yoko Ono unveiled the Imagine Peace Tower near Reykjavik, Iceland, on Oct. 9 2007, what would have been John Lennon's 67th birthday. This redigitized image shows it repelling an attack by Rackham's Valkyries, as a tribute to my ancient Viking ancestors countering their brutal warlike traditions by hosting this artistic gesture.

Ch-Ch-Changes: Ike Turner (November 5, 1931 – December 12, 2007) just passed away. I happened to be lucky enough to see the Ike & Tina Turner Revue at the University of Utah in 1971. Tina was fabulous, the Ikettes were superb, and the horn-heavy band was tight and thrilling to hear. Ike was one powerful bandleader, and he played a clean rhythm guitar that night while a young man who strongly resembled Matt (Guitar) Murphy played bluesy leads to one side. Ike Turner was a small, but INTENSE man who radiated pure presence from near-center stage. When he sang, he sang very well.
Lawrence Fishburne's portrayal of him in the Tina Turner bio-pic What's Love Got To Do With It may not have been physically correct, since the actor is much bigger, but Fishburne captured Turner's smouldering intensity right enough! Read the Wikipedia about him, for a start. There was more to him than his faults -- which adds up to a whole hell of a lot to say.

From the TIMES: Tina Turner declined to comment on her former husband’s death. “Tina is aware that Ike passed away earlier today. She has not had any contact with him in 35 years. No further comment will be made,” said her spokeswoman, Michele Schweitzer.

The roads cleared off thanks to temperatures JUST above freezing, and that devil's bargain, salt on the pavement.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Jamaica, New York; Portland, Oregon USA and Dundee City in the U.K.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Redesigning the Hockaday Museum of Art's webpage again -- I'm going to include long-ago former director's Karen Leigh's recent fete at the White House soon. She teaches at my college too -- excellent watercolorist.

Theater/Theatre: Here's a review of Katie Duck's recent New York performance:
From an article by Wendy Perron on Tuesday, Dec 04, 2007 for Dance Magazine

... Katie Duck is the Zorba the Greek of improvisation: earthy, feeling every mode of sensuality, preposterous, irresistible, polymorphously perverse. Watching her dance is like watching her body think. She is responsive to every situation and obviously enjoys getting into trouble.
This piece with K.J. Holmes and Justin Morrison is sort of a round robin of quasi-sexual encounters, punctuated by nicely ridiculous utterances. There was an acknowledgement on the one hand of how inherently absurd performing is, and on the other how inherently physical-bordering-on-the-sexual it can be. It’s about bodies moving, bodies being attracted to each other.
True to her mercurial (yet also somehow grounded) self, she performed a haphazardly erotic duet with Morrison, but later confessed her love (in mock Shakespearean tones) to Holmes.
In the best improvisation you can’t tell what’s planned and what isn’t, but it all seems to flow, and this was true here.
At the end, Duck is out in dark space alone, while Holmes and Morrison are up on the altar inching toward each other. The lights fade as they get very very close to kissing.



At the end, Duck is out in dark space alone...
OK, reading about Katie named as just DUCK brings this image to my overly-literal mind. That's her in the colorful center. One of these days somebody's gotta tell the story of WHY she calls herself Katie Duck. I know 90% of it, but I'm NOT writing it down without her permission and input.
BTW -- check out the Duck's Breath Website too.

Hoo-WEE! Driving on these slick roads is no fun. I had to avoid Woodland Drive because it was just too dangerous for my peace of mind.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Haus, Bavaria, Germany (Perhaps Christian AKA Wellington Wigout -- searching for Stozo Da' Klown); Hanoi, Viet Nam (Looking for Ida Rubinstein -- didn't visit her website, but found her nurse photo. Methinks there are still Francophiles around that former colony); and Katie Duck's dance partner/ web master Justin Morrison in San Diego, California.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Updating the Hockaday Museum of Art's webpage. I went to the Audubon Society meeting last night to hear about the Christmas Bird Count this year (December 30), and see coordinator Dan Casey's slides.

Media Watch: The airwaves are full of Evel Knievel's funeral yesterday. He's called a cultural icon, and I guess he was, in the broadest meaning of the word. I'm surprised that he was only 69 when he died, but considering his multiple injuries and crazy life, I guess it made sense. He was shameless self-promoting huckster on top of being a fearless stuntperson, otherwise I never would have heard of him. I remember my very first look at Knievel on Dick Clark's American Bandstand around 1969. (Huh? Who is THIS guy?) He was promoting a never-to-be jump across the Grand Canyon, but the focus of his appearence was slow-motion footage of his crash at Caeser's Palace the previous year. Me and my family watched him breaking every bone in his body on national TV. He credited his survival to his crash helmet. When he appeared at the Utah State Fair that fall, there was a full house waiting to see him jump a line of vehicles and a check for thousands of dollars waiting in the box office. Not too long afterwards a movie came out purporting to tell about his life -- it starred George Hamilton, and wasn't too bad, although it wasn't much more than a dorky lightweight comedy with some stunt footage. Somebody who knows something will have to complete his biography -- he might have been a carny, but he was a remarkably famous one.

THESE folks are the REAL DEAL


Justin Morrison (center) with Katie Duck and Magpie Music/Dance, freely redigitized by ME from a video on http://katieduck.com

Our first real snowfall this winter -- It is TIME for this stuff, so I'm not complaining. Plenty of Deer tracks, but no sightings recently -- anyway I don't want to see bodies hit by sliding cars anyhow.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Heidelberg, Germany (Looking for Lada Edmunds Jr. -- NBC's main Go Go Dancer on Hullabaloo); Salt Lake City, Utah; New London, Connecticut (looking for Joan Merwyn); Lehi, Utah (BOTH Utahns were looking for Kipling's God of Our Fathers poem); Caldwell, New Jersey; Trnava, Slovakia; Louth, Ireland (Izzat YOU, Eavan?); Portland, Oregon and Castro Valley, California

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Slight redesigns going on at the Hockaday Museum of Art webpage. The FVCC party was modest and fun, except that I didn't get home until 10:30 PM that night after working from 8:00 AM onwards at both jobs.

Media Watch: Nobel Prizes are more in the news this year because of Ex-Vice President Al Gore sharing the Peace Prize for An Inconvenient Truth. The other 2007 winners are: Physics: Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg "for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance." Chemistry: Gerhard Ertl "for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces." Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans, Oliver Smithies "for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells." Literature: Doris Lessing "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny." Peace: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" Economics: Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin, Roger B. Myerson, "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory"
Science deniers tried to keep Inconvenient Truth out of schools, but have failed so far. Here are highlights of a news article about the issue -- From David Adam of England's Guardian newspaper:
Mr Justice Barton said that while the film was "broadly accurate" in its presentation of climate change, he identified nine significant errors in the film, some of which, he said, had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration" to support the former US vice-president's views on climate change. The judge made his remarks when assessing a case brought by Stewart Dimmock, a Kent school governor and a member of a political group, the New Party, who is opposed to a government plan to show the film in secondary schools. The judge ruled that the film can still be shown in schools, as part of a climate change resources pack, but only if it is accompanied by fresh guidance... The "apocalyptic vision" presented in the film was not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change ...he had viewed the film and described it as "powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced", built around the "charismatic presence" of Mr Gore, "whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change".
Despite his finding of significant errors, Mr Justice Barton said many of the claims made by the film were supported by the weight of scientific evidence and he identified four main hypotheses, each of which is very well supported "by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]."
This particular article left out Justice Barton's positive findings, summarized thus: ...that climate change is mainly caused by human-created emissions, that global temperatures are rising and are likely to continue to rise, that unchecked climate change will cause serious damage, and that governments and individuals could reduce its impact.
Here are Barton's nine errors (italics), with comments (bold) by ME, whatever they are worth: The film claimed that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" - but there was no evidence of any evacuation occurring. But the ocean levels are STILL rising. Where are those people going to go, huh judge? It spoke of global warming "shutting down the ocean conveyor" - the process by which the gulf stream is carried over the north Atlantic to western Europe. The judge said that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was "very unlikely" that the conveyor would shut down in the future, though it might slow down. These are the guys who share the Nobel Prize -- and the conveyor 'slowing down' is disastrous too! Mr Gore had also claimed - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed "an exact fit". The judge said although scientists agreed there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts." Faulty debating manners perhaps, but the connection is THERE, and the judge says so. Mr Gore said the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to human-induced climate change. The judge said the consensus was that that could not be established. See desertification below. The drying up of Lake Chad was used as an example of global warming. The judge said: "It is apparently considered to be more likely to result from ... population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability." The Sahara has been expanding all our lives, and the damn global temperature has been getting warmer at the same time -- ignore this factor at your peril! Mr Gore ascribed Hurricane Katrina to global warming, but there was "insufficient evidence to show that." Hotter waters meaning stronger hurricanes is a scary hypothesis, which needs to be stated though, before evidence pro and con can be gathered. Mr Gore also referred to a study showing that polar bears were being found that had drowned "swimming long distances to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm." Arctic ice is melting like crazy -- studies about the logical effects on wildlife are underway. The film said that coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution, was difficult. But heat is a factor too. The film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist." Nobody knows how much sea-level will change in a big meltdown, and the movie's INTENTION is to raise an alarm!



Doris Lessing is MY personal favorite of all the Nobel laureates this year. The Golden Notebook is a brutally honest look at what we call human relationships, or as Ms. Lessing brutally states it: "The Sex War." This novel is NOT for the faint of heart!

Candles for Hannukah are Dee-LIGHT-ful! The clouds are blowing away, and the temperature is dropping back to near-Zero (F!)

Sitemeter Sez: Visitor from Sarasota, Florida (Searching for that pandering hack-for-hire Chris Hitchens -- you'll read nothing but curses about that double-dealing putz here.)

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: STILL updating the commercial "shopping cart" web pages at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- CSS practice is fun, but that limitation on image height is challenging. Buy some gifts from the Museum Shop, so we can put it through its paces! FVCC party tonight -- but I'm working as much as I'm playing.

Media Watch: December 7th still means something in the USA -- the attack on Pearl Harbor and WWII changed our whole world. Here's what Wikipedia says about one "what if" : Several Japanese junior officers, including (Captain) Fuchida and the chief architect of the attack, Captain Minoru Genda, urged (Admiral) Nagumo to carry out a third strike in order to destroy as much of Pearl Harbor's fuel storage, maintenance, and dry dock facilities as possible. Some military historians have suggested the destruction of these oil tanks and repair facilities would have crippled the U.S. Pacific Fleet far more seriously than loss of its battleships. If they had been wiped out, "serious [American] operations in the Pacific would have been postponed for more than a year."
Nagumo, however, decided to forgo a third attack in favor of withdrawal for several reasons: (given in article)
At a conference aboard Yamato the following morning, (Senior Admiral) Yamamoto initially supported Nagumo's decision to withdraw. In retrospect, however, Nagumo's decision to spare the vital dockyards, maintenance shops, and oil depots meant the U.S. could respond relatively quickly to Japanese activities in the Pacific. Yamamoto later regretted Nagumo's decision and categorically stated it had been a great mistake not to order a third strike. My take on the matter: GOOD -- our side needed a mistake on their part! The assault on Midway would have had VERY different results if the US had been unable to supply the forces necessary to exhaust and destroy the Japanese carriers when the preposterously unthinkable chance occurred. Things were desperate enough in the Pacific anyway, and the Empire damn near beat us on several occasions.

What's that line again about Something Different?



Photographer William Brooks in an extensivly-filtered digital collage (by ME) with his camera matted into a fashion photo from his website Scilux Studios (see column at left).

Light another candle for Hannukah! A holiday is a holiday, but an accurate transliteration of the proper Hebraic name is impossible -- ain't no vowels in the written language anyway.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Dhaka, Bangladesh (Enquiring about Dave Brothers -- they'll get to read about the Church of Jayne Mansfield); Anchorage, Alaska; Jamaica, New York; Hokkaskyl, Finland; Ward, Arkansas; Perryville, Missouri; Honolulu, Hawaii; New Haven, Connecticut and MySpace USA.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Updating the commercial "shopping cart" web pages at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- CSS practice now.

Media Watch: The U.S. Presidential Horse Race is on! Soft Soap and Soapy Smith-style media consultants rule the airwaves, thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court who sanctioned media bribery back in the 90's. One Republican candidate, Willard (Mitt) Romney, who trembles in fear of the well-heeled evangelical Right Wing, just said:
Freedom requires religion... Historical examples to the contrary are almost infinite in number. ...just as religion requires freedom -- a completely FALSE equivalency! ...Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs... Do I dare think we agree on something? ...and commune with God... Uh, whose version of God? Another false equivalency, I'm afraid. ...Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone... Rank propaganda in this context -- freedom of religion especially means freedom from religious domination. Like this paragraph from the Constitution of the United States of America says:
Article VI. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Anyway, Romney's objects of fear and supplication hate him anyway because of his OWN religion. It's sad to see him cringing at the feet of sworn enemies, but what is worse is that he wants to be their front-person in destroying the constitution of our country.

Now for something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!



A digital re-creation of a flier similar to those Dave Brothers used to hang all over the Wasatch Front -- starring Jayne Mansfield, born Vera Jayne Palmer (1933 - 1967), advertising his VERY satirical "church" broadcasts on 106 FM in the late 70's/early 80's. (BTW -- this blog also gets a lot of searches for one of her husbands, bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay.)

A RAINBOW in the mid-morning! I'll take the break in the weather -- Happy Hannukah!

Sitemeter Sez: A visitor from Tallahassee, Florida -- might be my friend George Clinton or his wife Stephanie, who runs the office.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Even MORE new stuff on the website of the Hockaday Museum of Art.

On The Road: (From the P-Funk Board Room)
12 Galaxies 11.23.07 San Francisco, Ca. -- It was a very special night in the city by the bay. The long overdue visit from the 420 Funk Mob was upon us ...

The 420 set started with a liquid thump attack from Lige Curry and his six string bass that would've made Bootsy proud! Here's the set list: 1.Intro Funk Jam; 2. Welcome to the World of DRUGS; 3.This Is Your Brain on DRUGS; 4.She Always Picks Me Up; 5.Don't Mess With Me; 6.Can You Get To That 7.? 8.I'll Stay (featuring ZootZilla); 9.Helter Skelter; 10.Clip Raps to the Crowd; 11.Mellow Instrumental; 12.Eric McFaddin Cut; 13.Mr.Wiggles/Do That Stuff Medley; 14.Running Away; 5.Standing On The Verge; 16.StarChild; 17.You
It was nice to see and hear the 420 Mob. When they started doing Funkadelic's I'll Stay, ZootZilla had found his way to the stage. The crowd was really into it. Clip has really tapped in the Powers of the Funk! You don't want to miss this act when they come to your town. There was a Pro-Recording Company in the house. For $10 you could get a great recording of the entire set! The sound quality was excellent. All of the local Funk heads were there: Gina Hall, K-OS, Illenstein, Rickey Vincent, Big Rob, Satellite, the ever so colorful Solid Swank. There was even a PFUNK1 sighting!
When In Doubt, VAMP! Or at least adlib...

...don't forget about me (Lamar was there too) allow me to make some corrections:
3. Down In The Dumps; 5. Small Town Ways; 7. Southern Man (yes, a Neil Young cover. Clip: "we ain't takin' requests"); 11 & 12 were both McFadden tunes, if i'm not mistaken. Final track (after Starchild) was Never Ever. Yeah, good shit!

The 420 Funk Mob and P-Funk All-Stars were in Atlanta, GA the NEXT DAY!

Band sounded pretty hot. Hopefully I'll post a couple of pics from behind the stage. The backstage was a trip. I'd say security was slightly overzealous. Now I've hosted several Gospel related events at the same venue to none of that negative fanfare that was back in there Saturday night. Its usually soooo chilled at the Civic Cneter that a mugg could walk into the backstage offa the street. Not this time.

I could be wrong but IMHO they were a 'lil scared of the Mob. I mean it was classic seeing all of the ushers/security out there in 3 piece suits only to have Shider walk past in the nappy, LOL. Big ups to all the Atl Pee crew you know who you are. Talked extensively with Danny and P-Nut, the new Secret Army thang is waaaaay out there free form funk.

We missed the Chuck Brown set, heard some of the Go-Go groove coming thru the walls back there. Now this was a PARLIAMENT crowd. The diehard maggots were somewhat sparse in the crowd. I did not actually get a chance to see the set from the front on, but Michael Barnette was out there texting me air chance he got and this is what he was telling me.

Apparently, some folks were saying GC wasn't gonna show about 20 minutes into Funkentelechy or Bop Gun. They took off. the Mob got on stage shortly after 10. 11:40 was the cut off at this union venue so I am already tryin' ta figure out what this is gonna be?

Hard to get a full frontal assault from the side of the backstage but Barnette sez it was way on point. After the usual intro the band hit the Slop. GC 'snuck' on the stage to very little fanfare and immediately begin to hit and piss this predominantly black audience off with Str8 FUNKADELIC. Man this chyt was grooving and according to Barnette some boo birds came out. In my heart of hearts I wish he'd have kept that groove and ran them muggs up outta there!!!!!! Sheeeeeeeit y'all came to see the FUNKS now get offa your asses and jam!!

I Got a Thang rocked hard and then he hit em with some Red Hot Momma. Michael says it was the oldest P crowd he's seen and G would not let up early on with those nastay raps and thangs. One lady was heard saying she did not believe this BS, and can't wait to see Maze next week to make up for it. If you ain't ready for the FUNK, take your dead a**e to the house!!

The Dr. then gave 'em his usual we gone play somn y'all know now, but did not appear to be too enthused about it. In fact, Michael says he mumbled somn into the mic about them wanting that 'top forty chyt'.

And so it went. Aqua Boogie rocked the house, then Give Up Funk/Downstroke. As far as I recall then came Flashlight and it was over @ 11:53.

Kendra, no Trey or Ronkat but GCIII was up there.

...Sounds very similar to CC Hall in DC a month ago. I was luvin it. Can't remember them hitting Funkadelic with that kind of passion in.... ever. My first shows were 75' and they were already pro Parliament by then. Only thing close is a 420 show. This was Funkedelic though. Kinda made me feel like the ghosts of Tawl and Tiki were in the house. Majority of the crowd in DC was into it though.

...Yeah I Forgot About Red Hot Mama..That Sheet Was Raw !

...these muggs had no idea what time it was. They wanted Flashlight bad. Its almost like they put constrictions on what he'd have rather done. But the Parliament stuff rocked too. You could tell he wanted to do that Funkadelic tho' and was really into it.


A new friend: William Brooks -- this is an image called Cornucopia from his website, Soul Caller

Warming up -- a little too much, in that rain on frozen ground is unpleasantly messy, and I sure hope the roads don't glaze over at night -- might find myself ice-skating to work!

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Seattle, Washington; Bad Reichenhall, Germany; Terre Haute, Indiana; Worcester, Massachusetts; Edinburgh, Scotland; New York City, New York and Boston, Massachusetts.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: 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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: NEW stuff on the website of the Hockaday Museum of Art.

Media Watch: Leon Fleisher, Steve Martin, Diana Ross, Martin Scorsese and Brian Wilson were honored by the Kennedy Center over the weekend -- the show is due to be broadcast on December 24th. My totally impertinent thoughts:
Leon Fleisher -- A concert pianist who lost the use of his right hand to a neurological disease, but put himself through years of risky operations and therapy to play with both hands again at the high artistic level he demanded of himself. He also promoted compositions which emphasised the left hand by Gunther Schiller and others. Admirable for sure!
Steve Martin -- Funny guy! I saw him looning out on Saturday Night Live when I was right off the plane from Amsterdam in 1978. The next thing I saw when I woke up was Chuck Barris' Gong Show. (Today's Amerika just ain't the same.) I liked his movie All of Me with Lily Tomlin, but I'm pretty indifferent to the rest of them.
Diana Ross -- The Supremes were one of the BIGGEST groups in the world during Rock Music's second flowering in the mid-60's -- they even shared the cover of Time Magazine in the spring of '65. My favorite record of theirs was 1966's You Can't Hurry Love. The Supremes ' success was a team effort, though, and even though she was a major player on the team, I thought her work diminished as the team changed around her, especially when she went solo. Her movies were OK, and so were her records for awhile. I personally think her greatest achievement during the 70's was in resurrecting awareness of the great Billie Holiday. I would think better of her if she'd sing with Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong in order to do justice to the great Supremes legacy, but I have NO say in that matter.
Martin Scorsese -- He's made some excellent movies, and blundered more than once, but nobody's perfect. I admire Taxi Driver and Casino, and thought he did alright with Bob Dylan: No Direction Home. I've seen The Last Waltz quite often, and blogged at length about it. It's too bad he loused up so bad in his attempt to film Nikos Kazantzakis' Last Temptation of Christ, one of the greatest novels of all time. The book alone should have shut up hacks like Pat Buchanan, but Scorsese's movie just wasn't good enough to stand on its own against right-wing schoolyard bullies and their agenda to enshrine ignorance as a national value.
Brian Wilson -- Pop genius, who I have also blogged about. His re-assembly of SMile was an act of emotional courage which has few parallels. He leads a group once known as the Wondermints, who are excellent beyond the ability of words to describe. He was also central to the success of the Beach Boys -- what started out as a mixture of Four Freshman harmonies, Dick Dale "Surf" guitar music, and Rhythm & Blues in Hawthorne, California became something altogether
different. He was rightfully sued by Chuck Berry for stealing the tune for Sweet Little Sixteen and using it in Surfin' USA, and competed toe-to-toe with heavyweights like Phil Spector in the Pop charts. He genreously wrote a song for the Ronettes which turned out to be one of his best -- Don't Worry Baby. He also held his own during the British Invasion, but all that hard work led to a long series of nervous breakdowns, aided and abetted by drugs, a dysfunctional family, and an unscrupulous ex-psychiatrist.

Theatre/Theater: Katie Duck has left the building uh -- country! She is enroute to her next workshop in Madrid, Spain: 6-9 December at Studio Tres. Contact: irene@estudio3.org for information.
From Estudio3's Website (translated by Yahoo's Babel Fish):
DANCE: TECHNIQUE, IMPROVISATION, COMPOSITION This factory is directed to musical dancers and interested in extending its dominion of the space of the Performance by means of a Inter-disciplinary artistic activity. The heating and the exercises will be directed to see how the eyes, the ears and the thought work in coordination with the movement, the sound and the time. The improvisation sessions will be developed around the concepts of pause, fluidity and exits, centering the attention in the joint of the body, the dance, the memory and the presence. The objective is to generate a situation in which dancers and musicians can increase their confidence in their capacity for the live dance, articulating subjects of composition without using previous materials. Katie Duck: Dancer, coreógrafa and pedagoga. She has comprised of the company Salt Lake City MIME Troupe. From 1976 she lives in Ámsterdam and she has crossed Europe like performer of single, duetos with Carlos Traffic and improvisations with local musicians. In Italy she formed the company GROUPO, with which she presented/displayed the productions Ruttles, The Orange Man, Brown eye Green eye and Mind the gap ... professor in the Dartington College ... composition, improvisation and technique in the AHK of Amsterdam ... she has worked with musicians and artists who share their passion by the dance performances, music and text. She has worked next to TristanHonsinger, Michael Moore, Derek Bailey, Alex Maguire, Michael Vatcher and many other artists ... the Fijnhout Theater, the Muiderpoort Theater, the Melkweg Theater and the Frascati Theater ... Magpie Music Dance Company. 6, 7, 8 and 9 of December from 10 to 15 hs.



Magpie Music/Dance featuring my friend Katie (center, etc.) improvising with Justin Morrison, Michael Schumacher, and Andy Moor from a video on http://katieduck.com