The weather is gray, with light dustings of snow. The iciness is not quite as bad as it was earlier, but the roads are far from safe.

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: Nice opening reception at the Hockaday Museum of Art last night! The portrait show is very good, and it was fun seeing painter/gallery owner Marshall Noice and his family. He has always supported the museum, but this is the first show featuring his colorful semi-abstracted landscapes that we've done together for most of a decade. We have shown individual paintings in group shows, and hung his famous black-and-white photos of Glacier National Park, though. His daughter Rachel, who used to volunteer for us, showed up as well. We're going to host another reception for the general public tonight.
One of our new buildings at Flathead Valley Community College is still in a near-completion state as the semester begins next week -- my crew will be installing some multimedia equipment in two of the classrooms then.

Media Watch: There were so many movies with Harry Warren's music -- TCM was showing some of the more obscure ones last night. I mentioned Colleen in a previous blog entry -- the last teaming of Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell. It featured Joan Blondell and Hugh Herbert doing their crazy schtick, with some other good WB stock character actors, including ex-Mack Sennett foil Louise Fazenda and Goldie Hawn-precursor Marie Wilson. Stars on Broadway, the very lame Broadway Goldolier, and low-comedy In Caliente preceeded Colleen on the cable/satellite. All three had Busby Berkeley sequences of uneven quality, with specialties by the generally prosaic Bobby Connolly here and there. Hal Wallis -- who later gave the public what they thought they wanted with Beach Party movies, Elvis Presley movies, and Jerry Lewis movies -- started showing his homogenizing hand about this time. I don't think the public really wanted their favorite entertainers wearing out their welcome by repeatedly doing the drivel Wallis produced for them, though.
On a positive note, fans of excellent actors might appreciate seeing Frank McHugh, Dolores del Rio, Pat O'Brien, Edward Everett Horton, Adolphe Menjou, Joan Blondell, and then-husband Dick Powell, Leo Carrillo, and Glenda Farrell interacting with one another in these obscure flicks -- I sure do!


Dolores Del Rio (center) was the star of In Caliente. Winifred Shaw (upper left) led off singing The Lady In Red during Busby Berkeley's production number, before Judy Canova ruined it. Ms. Del Rio wasn't in the floor show at all, but I've fixed that oversight in this transformative collage.

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!