The Big Sky is clear and blue, most of the fields are green, and it sure resembles Spring. Red Headed Ducks are swimming in pairs on Middle Foy's Lake. I have also seen a solitary Merganser, and the first of many Yellow Head Blackbirds. May Day is manana, but I won't be blogging on the out-and-back to Big Sandy, Montana.

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 Spring finally gets into gear to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art is re-hanging nearly everything for a two-week preview of the 4th Annual Spring for Glacier Auction on May 25, 2007 in Glacier National Park. Hmmm -- why did I use the third person? I'll have my hands on everything, including Jeff Walker's new show. Our crew may be small, but we help each other.

Media Watch: Book TV had a couple of scholarly shows about Jamestown, Virginia. Founded in 1607, it was the first permanent English settlement in North America. Twelve year old Pocahantas really did save the life of Captain John Smith. Her father Powhattan really forebore exterminating the English invaders when he could -- maybe because of trade goods like copper, and the hope of acquiring firearms. The history of Virginia has been critical to the history of the rest of what is now the United States of America. I refuse to watch that blowhard propagandist Chris Hitchens, singly or on a panel, so I skipped most of CSPAN's coverage of the L.A. Book Fair. Even though there are several sides to any story -- lies and self-serving distortions do not advance a discussion, whatever it may be. Saying that, his panel was supposed to be about Religion. What is the Right Wing Western Taliban think they are saying by presenting their case through an abusive alcoholic bully like Hitchens?
I went out and saw a movie in a real THEATER -- Next, based on The Golden Man by Philip K. Dick, with comic-book fan Nicholas Cage (Nick Coppola adapted his stage name from Luke Cage, Powerman) in a comic-book movie. It wasn't the worst film based on Dick's paranoid but all-too-discerning stories, but it wasn't high art either. Hollywood had a little fun with it's seeing-the-near-future angle, and it moved fast enough to keep it's bamboozlement factor intact. Julianne Moore's make-up, or lack of make-up, was noteworthy at times. It's refreshing when an actor lets down their guard, but that stuff sure beats the hell out of a person's skin! Cage's love-interest was played by Jessica Biel who is about half his age -- exercise has given him a convincing body, but make-up sure helped bridge the gap!

Speaking of Comic Books/Movies:


Over a poster of C.B. DeMille's Madam Satan (1930), I have pasted digital images of Kay Johnson* as our masked-ball heroine, Harry Lucey's bizzare comic-book villain of the same name from 1941, and Irv Novick's cover of Pep Comics #16, where Madame Satan marauded as a back-feature for less than a year. Soon afterwards, Lucey started drawing a high-school gag strip called Archie, which soon dominated it's entire publishing company, and is STILL popular. *Ms. Johnson's costume party was supposedly held in a dirigible tethered to a skyscraper in New York. Her director specialized in parting the Red Sea etc.