Arctic Blast time in Montana -- sub-zero temperatures no matter whose scale you use, except maybe Lord Kelvin's. A light snow sat like styrofoam on everything, until the wind started. Sunday is sunny, but nothing's going to melt under these conditions. The snow blows back and forth like sand on the roads. Racoon tracks on the back deck. The Magpies helped themselves to the body of a Dove who crashed against our front window -- GROSS!

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: Make a resolution as the days get longer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: New shows opening at Hockaday Museum of Art next week.

Media Watch: NFL Football -- the playoff tournament is easy to describe at this point. Eight teams play this weekend. Four teams play next weekend. Two teams play in the Super Bowl after that. (Got that, Dublin? Whatever happened in that Hurling championship last summer?)
Other things showing up on the TV include -- G4 Network devoting three hours or more to an Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. Wait a minute, those people are usually into computer games! Hmmm -- their 'top ten' porno flicks sure look like dirty versions of popular gaming scenarios, and the sex toys get some attention. Wonder why? They can't hide the sad exploitiveness of that racket behind fuzzy pixels though. OMG! Right next door is VH1 trying one more Surreal Life series with D-List celebrities -- including porn king Ron Jeremy, self-esteem-impared Brigitte Neilsen, more has-been Pop stars, more busty women, more fakery and degrading conflict. 90 seconds = more than enough.
A couple more black and white rarities emerged from the past on the satellite/cable -- a Basil Rathbone potboiler from the mid-50's with character actors Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine. I can't remember the title, but I can't recommend the movie either. I'd previously heard about At Midnight I Will Eat Your Soul, made in Brazil about 1962, but that grim sadism was too much for me and I couldn't watch it for very long -- ugh.
Is there something on Book TV? Shit -- P.J. O'Rourke, former Lampoon writer, turned smug right-wing bootlicker. The USA has turned against Bu$hCo, and hopefully his whole brand of stupidity, since that boneheaded Iraq speech earlier this week. I hope O'Rourke's ship goes down too.
Changing the subject -- Queen of Blood (released 1966) is a colorfully dawg-assed vampire movie where an unconscious green-skinned, blood-sucking, Euro-60's model is being transported back to Earth by a buncha DUMB astronauts. She wakes up every now and then to feed on the international crew -- Dennis Hopper plays one of her first victims. Like Carradine and Chaney, bit parts paid Hopper's rent during some of the deep trenches of his career -- at this time he was slowly mending fences in the movie industry, and making alliances with Hollywood offspring like Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson. Easy Rider was several years in the future. Queen of Blood spliced in some Soviet-made special effects between the (chuckle) dramatic sequences, coincidently led by Basil Rathbone, who deserved a special straight-faced acting award for performances like this.


Novelist, satirist, and humorist Robert Anton Wilson died on January 11, 2007 from a debillitating illness. He was USA-born, but a long-time resident of Ireland. He was an admirer of Emperor Norton, the 19th Century San Francisco eccentric who printed his own money, and a guiding light of the American Underground, who readily inspired participatory lunacy like the Discordian Movement and Church of the Subgenius. His own fans pitched in to help last year, thanks to the Internet, when medical bills threatened to ruin him financially. He weathered that storm, but couldn't avoid the inevitable end. The whole world is poorer for his passing, but we can continue to celebrate his life and art. As the great man himself often proclaimed:
Hail Discordia and the All-Seeing Eye!