After the previous night's rain, we had a hot, rather muggy day, modified by a pleasant breeze out of the North. Towards sunset, a towering mass of clouds rolled in from the Southwest. This storm carried more moisture, but also high-velocity destructive winds -- three tornados were spotted about thirty miles south of town. Our mountains usually retard the formation of funnel clouds, but there was too much energy packed into THIS front. Trees and limbs are knocked down and scattered everywhere this morning, and many people had no power last night. There are lots of missing shingles and damaged roofs.

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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
UPDATED! Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!

Charity Alert: Make a resolution this Summer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Arts in the Park begins setting-up TODAY! The Hockaday Museum of Art has hosted tens of thousands of visitors for nearly 40 long summer weekends at this event. The weather is cool and mostly overcast so far, which is different from last year, or even YESTERDAY! (see above) If we are lucky, we will have the finest weekend for weather of the entire year for us and our patrons -- let's go for FORTY THOUSAND visitors -- it's possible!

Media Watch: The Flathead Beacon -- a weekly freezine, supported by ads, is entering its third month of publication. The Missoula Independent has maintained itself the same way for the last 15 years, so there's no basic reason the Beacon can't. One thing I like about the Beacon is depth of it's local news coverage -- it isn't hard at all to outdo the lazy absentee owners of the local cagebottom in this respect, so maybe the competition will do everybody some good, and our previously established reporters can do their jobs again.
We have a visitor from Salt Lake City, and he saw a group of picketers at the courthouse with signs saying "Save KGEZ." He was curious, so I showed him Patrice O'Neill's film The Fire Next Time, which among other things, shows what a dishonest lying wag the owner of that hate-spewing talk-radio station happens to be. (Hell NO! I'm NOT going to pollute my blog with his name.) I just read how he lost another battle with the legal system too, but claimed it was a victory because he wasn't cited for contempt of court.

Gawd! Do you need a break? I do!


An extensively-reworked digitization of the March 15, 1938 cover of Look Magazine, with Flash and Dale posing to promote their upcoming Trip to Mars serial. The date of the magazine effectivly counters any speculations about Orson Welles' Halloween 1938 broadcast having anything to do with Universal's decision to send Flash and the gang to the Red Planet. Neither Dale's costume or situation were in the serial either. My DVD of 1940's Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe used this shot on its cover, but Jean Rogers modeled for this particular image, rather than Carol Hughes. Dale Arden is shown at her MOST passive -- actually unconscious, but I'm happy to say it never got THIS bad for her in the movie adventures. Dale might have succummed to drugs once or twice, but she was never such a rag doll!

We had RAIN yesterday -- lots of it, washing over the overheated, parched Flathead Valley and smokey West Glacier area. On my trip out to to Big Sandy, Montana and back (see below) I saw a full-sized Whitetail Buck with large velvet-covered antlers, Eagles, Hawks, a Great Blue Heron, an Antelope, Canadian Geese, and a Mountain Goat.

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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
UPDATED! Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!

Charity Alert: Make a resolution this Summer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: I returned Jeff Walker's artwork to it's owners, driving in tandem with the Hockaday's director. There were forest fires on the East side of the mountains, but we stated seeing real clouds -- with rain in them, which made our long day much easier to take. When we came back West through Glacier National Park, there were wonderfully wet thunderstorms pouring down rain all over everything. Kalispell itself was a bit hit-and-miss, but we still got lots of moisture, plus cooler temperatures.

Media Watch: Shaun of the Dead was pretty funny -- a bonehead comedy version of zombie movies by New Zealand film maker Edgar Wright. Both lead actor Simon Pegg and the director get credit for the script too. Pegg's performance was excellent!


Monday night sunset at Dry Bridge Slough
with Venus and the New Moon.

As Ann Miller sang in the 50's -- It's TOO DARN HOT! We are looking at about ten days of 100+ degrees (F -- and I mean F!) temperatures. My cats have been miserable.

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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
UPDATED! Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!

Charity Alert: Make a resolution this Summer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Another Sunday at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- a recent newspaper article by Candace Chase seems to have stimulated some local interest in our fine collection of Glacier National Park artists. (It's also nice and COOL in here.) One reason I'm grousing about the weather is because the Hockaday's annual fundraiser Arts in the Park is next weekend, and I'll be working outside in this devilish heat over four long days.

Media Watch: Harry Potter frenzy in the Mainstream Media -- the movie Order of the Phoenix is doing very well indeed at the box office, and the final book of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is due for release next weekend. Some gloomy pundits are predicting that reading among children will decline after Rowling's opus ends. I hope they are wrong -- the popularity of Harry Potter books demonstrates an ongoing need that isn't matched by any other medium.


The first Fantasy Blockbuster in the Mass Media was J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings during the 60's. The Harry Potter movies have been respectful to their source material, but I can't say the same about most reinterpretations of Tolkien's popular imaginative feat. Multi-book creations by other authors were common after the late professor's success, though, and many have been excellent. Reading still RULES!