WE'RE SMOKIN' -- gagging on forest fire smoke actually. No matter which way the wind blows, it will drag a few tons of particulates along, until it rains -- a lot.

Remembering my friend Georgio 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
UPDATED! 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!
Read my latest Spitfires in Context essay.

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

In The Community: Videotaping and editing, installing classroom equipment -- I'm a busy boy! At my other job, I'm photographing some African artifacts, like the example below from the Internet.

Media Watch: I joined Facebook today. I will explore what purposes it might serve for wider communication -- MySpace didn't really thrill me, but it helped maintain contact with a couple of interesting people with whom I might have lost track. Now that Rupert Murdoch owns Dow-Jones will I get "friend requests" from Wall Street too? I already get more than enough %$#@! spam from porn hucksters, although it's not supposed to be allowed. Yeah RIGHT, Rupert!


Beaded Ndembele dolls from South Africa -- I am photographing a number of their close cousins, and some other objects from humankind's Mother Continent.

Forest fire smoke was drifting over the valley from two points west, and down from Marias Pass to the east of us yesterday. A smelly haze sits over everything this morning, reddening the light.

Remembering my friend Georgio 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
UPDATED! 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!
Read my latest Spitfires in Context essay.

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

In The Community: Videotaping and editing yesterday -- the community college's new theater is getting ready for their first productions, and we want to get the word out about them. We were also pulling cable elsewhere in the new building, and will pull more today, plus install classroom equipment.

Theater/Theatre/Media: I had a couple of long phone conversations with dancer Matt Child and his wife, the actor Caroline Noh. They'll be visiting England next month, after dealing with Amerika's loused-up medical system in early September. Michael Moore's latest movie Sicko struck a special chord for them. Caroline was in the original Rocky Horror Show stage company, and still has contacts with Richard O'Brien. I told Matt about my new updates on Theater X-Net concerning the late George Kugler, and he promised to send me a xerox of our LA Times review from 1975.


Matt Child, George Kugler, and Katie Duck (foreground) performing the piece Competition in Southern California, Spring 1975 -- about the time we got that rave review in the LA Times and left the USA almost immediately afterwards.

Hey! It is about 10 degrees (F) cooler today -- those %$#@! forest fires are still burning east and west of us though, so the air stinks, and there are angry red trails of smoke in the Big Sky.

Remembering my friend Georgio 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
UPDATED! 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!
Read my latest Spitfires in Context essay.

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

In The Community: I went to the Hockaday Museum of Art to gather some contributions for the Salvation Army yesterday. We weren't open, but there were THREE people catching up on their paperwork while it was quiet. HOW QUIET WAS IT? It was so quiet, I didn't know they were there until I walked into their various rooms picking up orphaned stuff I was supposed to get a month ago.

Media Watch: I never cared much for Michaelangelo Antonioni's movies -- Vanessa Redgrave's bony shoulders didn't give me much of a thrill in Blow Up, and the goddamn film didn't have a real ending. I actually hated Zabriskie Point, except for the use of Pink Floyd's Careful With That Axe Eugene -- it was pointless beyond the contemporary accusations of nihlism, and I thought it was mean-spirited too. I really doubt that he understood or even thought much about Youth Culture in the 60's, except as fodder for exploitation. There were filmmakers who appreciated him, on a technical level at least. He just died at the age of 94.


Blow Up might have been an international hit, but not among the Drive-In crowd in the USA. Antonioni didn't really GET what was going on. He beat the audience with his Fellini-like schtick, rather than revealed what happened around us. Although their scene was irrelevant to the scenario, it was fun to see two of England's greatest guitarists, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page together in the Yardbirds. Ironically, Beck had been fired many months before the film was released. They also NEVER destroyed things onstage, except in this movie. (The Move and The Who wrecked equipment and props in real life.) Their rewriting of The Train Kept A-Rollin' as Stroll On unfortunately sucked, and didn't help the downward spiral of the group's popularity at all.
(L to R) Page, Chris Dreja, Beck, Keith Relf, and Jim McCarty -- Paul Samwell-Smith was already gone. The Yardbirds made the charts again with Little Games and Ha Ha Said The Clown later that year, but faded away in 1968. Peter Grant and Page remade the old corporation as Led Zeppelin in 1969. The Train Kept A-Rollin' started the show on Zep's first tours.

The Western sky shows the tell-tale plume of a forest fire. Another nasty one blocked Highway 2 to the East of us. This constantly hot weather is just plain unhealthy.

Remembering my friend Georgio 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
UPDATED! 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!
Read my latest Spitfires in Context essay.

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

In The Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art is catching it's collective breath, with a few events in August, and no new shows until September.

Media Watch: Ingmar Bergman passed away this morning -- he was one of the guiding lights of Art and Cinema in my young life. I was deeply influenced by The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Silence, Through A Glass Darkly, The Virgin Spring, and The Magician. Max Von Sydow sure did some excllent work for him! Bergman did movies another favor by introducing us to Liv Ullman as well. I freely admit to liking other directors more -- but DAMN he was good!
Bill Walsh, the American Football genius died of cancer -- I do not use the term lightly. He turned the San Francisco 49ers from perennial losers into the second-best franchise in NFL history. Without him they degenerated back to their last-place ways.

Now For The LIVING!


Lady Miss Kier will sing, dance, and spin Seattle into a frenzy on Wednesday -- wish I could be there. She'll make the whole town feel THE FUNK!

Thursdays clouds meant thunderstorms alright, but not until about 1 AM. (Woke everybody up.) Those Osprey are catching fish at the slough regularly -- that's good, we can spare as many planted trout as those hungry birds can catch before they migrate south.

Remembering my friend Georgio 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
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!
Read the latest Spitfires in Context essay.

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

In The Community: Some new revisions on the Hockaday Museum of Art's website. I'll be working there at noon today. I stopped by on Saturday to drop some stuff off, and there was a commercial tour bus parked outside with about 50 passengers swarming around the museum!

Media Watch: Alberto Contador of Spain won the Tour de France -- TV is harping on the scandals involved in the race, which are serious indeed. It is a wonderful event, and fun to watch -- when whole communities are involved, like it was when I lived in Europe, and how it is developing in the USA now, it's as good as Football!
I drove up to the Whitefish Mountain Resort to see Elvin Bishop -- and brought him a copy of the review I wrote for his show in 2000. (Read it HERE)
Bishop had almost the same band -- which was excellent, and played the opening spot again. His music is real Roots-Rock, moving blithely between blues, funk, pop, gospel, and even a little pop & jazz. It is always a satisfying experience to hear such bright, self-confident and timelessly soulful singing and playing.
The headliner was Lou Gramm, who had enough radio hits to fill his entire 90-minute show just as the lead singer of Foreigner, a major arena band from the 70's/80's. His music was really well-crafted, but it DEMANDED amped-up vocal cords to carry off the arrangements, and Gramm's every bit as old as I am. He started out with a first-rate version of Double Vision, but fell down later with a run of love-to-hate songs -- I've Been Waiting... to Cold as Ice. He picked himself up and won the crowd back, but I wish there was some musical way to play WITH this kind of Pop-Rock so that it could age and mature as well as Bishop's. I enjoyed Foreigner's blend of American and British Rock aesthetics, and would hate to see those elements lost under the treads of time.


Chicago's Butterfield Blues Band in 1966 -- I was in High School when I read an interview with the Yardbird's Jeff Beck recommending them. I followed his suggestion, and became a very enthusiastic fan! (L to R) Billy Davenport, Mark Naftalin, Michael Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Elvin Bishop, and Jerome Arnold. Mr. Bishop doesn't look too much different forty-plus years later -- his hair may be graying, but he's still lean, and smiles most of the time.
(Digital adaptaion of an original photo by Elektra Record's prolific William S. Harvey.)