Four snowstorms blew through the Western USA, but very little of it was left where I live because it melted or soaked away. An Arctic blast followed, and we're enduring sub-zero temperatures all weekend. I'll make sure to put out a lot of seed and suet for the birds! We were too far north to see Comet McNaught this week -- it hugged the horizon at 40 degrees, and we're 9 degrees closer to the pole. The mountains probably helped hide it from me as I searched in the bitter cold too. (Dare I say "It was all for McNaught?")

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: TCM played some more Busby Berkeley movies from the end of his run with Warner Bros/First National. The longer he sat in the director's seat, the more prosaic his work seemed to become. I don't like his MGM Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney films at all, nor do I like For Me and My Gal (Gene Kelly's movie debut). I find it ironic that someone who made jokes about turn-of-the-century theater had his biggest commercial successes with dreary re-vamps of the same cliches he made fun of. The Gangs All Here is a remarkable exception, though -- you can argue that Berkeley imitated himself, but he did it in Technicolor! I might also mention that his specialty numbers retained their edge into the 50's, but I was very sorry to read how his carelessness caused Esther Williams' broken neck in Million Dollar Mermaid, and some near accidents in Easy to Love. You might blame alcohol, and you might be right.
I watched a Richard Lester movie that I never knew existed -- It's Trad, Dad!, a British teen exploitation flick shot around 1962. I appreciated it being nearly 90% musical acts. The plot was so bare-bones and stupid that Lester wasted only as much time as it deserved. It's a pity he couldn't play this trick more often. His characters were sketchy, but comical. He used literally dozens of visual tricks to make the many songs interesting -- a little scrapbook of divergent thinking from the man I consider to be a major Godfather of Music Video. Here's a list of the singers and groups from the credits -- Helen Shapiro, Craig Douglas, and John Leyton all sang and acted a bit. The Brook Brothers were a suited-up, pomaded, song and dance duo who LOOKED like they were related, but I wondered about that very stiff trio called Paris Sisters. There were loads of U.K. bands playing antique Jazz: The Dukes of Dixieland; Chris Barber & Ottlie Patterson; Bob Wallis; Terry Lightfoot; a deadpan funny bunch called The Temperance 7, which reminded me of Geoff Stevens' New Vaudeville Band (Winchester Cathedral, anyone?) ; and Mr. Acker Bilk, who became an international star with Stranger on the Shore. There were some first-rank American Rock & Rollers in the mix: Chubby Checker; Del Shannon; Gary U.S. Bonds; a smokin' performance by Gene McDaniels; and Gene Vincent dressed in coveralls, leaning on a mop with dancers all around him -- trying to recover from the car crash which made his short life very painful, and killed Eddie Cochran outright. The movie ended with one of Sounds Incorporated's two sax players blowing a screaming solo -- I remember seeing them on American TV a few years after this film was made -- excellent instrumental Rock, showy and well-played -- always a welcome addition to Shindig.

Real Books: Finished Lord of the Rings for this season. I first read it 40 years ago, and lost count of how many times I've succumed to J.R.R. Tolkien's spell. My friend Brian W. Aldiss wrote some insightful criticism of this work in Trillion Year Spree, especially in comparison with Mervyn Peake's brilliant Gormanghast. Brian was correct, but Tolkien's wonderous magic still enchants me.

Ballantine's Lord of the Rings covers by Barbara Remington


Prof. Tolkien's personal appeal on the cover of Ballantine's Fellowship of the Ring convinced me to buy it at Sam Weller's Books in downtown Salt Lake City during the winter of 1966. While waiting for the bus home, I read the introduction, and let the endpaper maps guide my imagination to Middle Earth as I sat on a stool at the old-fashioned counter of Walgreen's Drug Store in a snowstorm. Like the professor, I had many duties I did not neglect, and didn't get to Mount Doom until early in the Summer, but I was certainly ready for the quest to finish by then. The Appendix rekindled my enthusiasm for Tolkien's fantasy world, though, and I followed Bilbo Baggins through The Hobbit with unflagging delight. I've been happy to participate in the phenomenon of Heroic Fantasy rising from our cultural unconcious to inspire further generations of readers and creators -- far beyond the ken of the scholarly acolytes who conjured it's spirit in the pubs of Oxford.