Boycott Dancing with the Stars! (See post from 11-06-2007) American Thanksgiving was steel-gray and cold, like the day before, and today.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Chemainus, British Columbia; Louth, Ireland; Macon, Georgia; Bydgoszcz, Poland; Somerset, New Jersey; Jonesville, North Carolina; Hmeenlinna, Finland; Dallas, Texas and Long Beach, California. (Investigating my "Boycott" schtick -- maybe a staffer for Trash A Go Go -- fix yer dumb system, dolts!)

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: I was decorating the Hockaday Museum of Art outside in near-zero temperatures (F). The staff inside had a warmer time of it -- I was also inside long enough to shoot a couple of pictures that are due to appear in the local paper.

Media Watch: Macy's Department Store -- uh -- THANKSGIVING Day Parade first thing Thursday morning -- I DO like seeing those huge balloons between the skyscrapers of New York.
There has been a lotta bogus history on the air because of the holiday. The Congregationalist "Pilgrims" had a celebration after their first year in the Plymouth Colony -- they also had harvest celebrations in the countries where they had lived before. They had their SURVIVAL to celebrate in 1621 -- damn near perished the first winter. The exaggerated legend of Squanto masks the sad fact that they were treacherously hostile to their neighbors. They also landed the same year when the first African slaves were sold in Virginia -- more of that messy rubble around our old foundations, eh?
Beowulf is out as a CGI movie -- read the primordial story yourself HERE, and leave those video-game pastiches on the couch where they belong.
Professor J.R.R. Tolkien always liked a good tale, and played a part in calling the 20th Century's attention to this echo of the Dark Ages:
(From Medieval Forum)On 25 November 1936, Tolkien delivered “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” to the British Academy, and it was published the next year in the Academy's proceedings. The essay was a redaction of lectures that Tolkien wrote between 1933 and 1936, “Beowulf and the Critics.” ...
This careful scholar avoided direct imitation of the Northern Classics in his own writings, but his heroes generally partook of Beowulf's daring, self-sacrificing spirit, and he owes a nod towards the water-dwelling Grendel clan for some aspects of Gollum. Tolkien's dragons tend to speak, unlike Wulfie's bestial worm.


An extensive redigitization of Frazetta illustrating Eowyn/Dernhelm slaying her OWN version of a Dark Ages dragon in Tolkien's Return of the King. It was good for the story when the otherwise too-powerful Ringwraiths, and their winged steeds, turned out to have exploitable weaknesses.