A soft wintery day. Plenty of sunshine, but the morning is cold.

Sitemeter Sez: Greenfield, Ohio (Hey! Hey! Tari DeWille -- can ya' make it to the Hilton Garden Inn on April 4? The Hockaday is having an auction then.) Jamaica, New York checked in too -- Stozo Da Klown's second Digi Donz CD will come out soon.

ROCK against Reaganomics 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!
NEW --Launching NOW! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and Cellulose to Celluloid, Flash Gordon in the Saturday Matinees and Sunday Comics -- UPDATED!





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: Keep that 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: The Hockaday Museum is doing our 7th Annual Auction of Miniatures at the Hilton Garden Inn on April 4, 2008.
All students are admitted FREE this year to the Hockaday Museum of Art, thanks to Pacific Steel & Recycling.
Check out Fall for Glacier too -- a fundraiser for several programs that make Glacier National Park even better!

Media Watch: I made my first contribution to Wikipedia -- adding a sentence about Ida Rubinstein recreating Sarah Bernhardt's interpretation of Marguerite Gauthier in La Dame aux Camélias.

From Wikipedia's La Dame aux Camélias Page:
Stage performances
Since its debut as a play, numerous editions have been performed at theatres around the world. The role of the tragic "Marguerite Gautier" became one of the most coveted amongst actresses and included performances by Lillian Gish, Eleonora Duse, Margaret Anglin, Gabrielle Réjane, Tallulah Bankhead, Eva Le Gallienne, Isabelle Adjani, and especially Sarah Bernhardt, who starred in Paris, London, and several Broadway revivals, plus a 1912 film. Dancer/Impressario Ida Rubinstein successfully recreated Bernhardt's interpretation of the role onstage in the mid 1920's, coached by the great actress herself before she died.
(The words in italics are my humble contribution -- anything for Madame Rubinstein!)

A characature of Ida playing Marguerite Gauthier circa 1923. The headline proclaims La Dame aux Camélias a "surprise." Rubinstein's loving homage to her friend Sarah Bernhardt ran for well over a hundred performances soon after the iconic actor's death. This drawing is certainly less than flattering to the High Patroness of our Blog, but written evidence attests that obsessive dieting and insomnia had serious effects on her famously good looks.


Kiss Me You Fool! (Click to see a larger image.)
Surrounding Ida are photos of Theda Bara playing Camille (1917), Cleopatra (1917), and other Vamp roles -- including the initial version in A Fool There Was from 1914. The two contemporaries cultivated similar public images during their careers. Theda Bara was born Theodosia Burr Goodman (1885 – 1955). She was the first Hollywood star associated with the term Vamp, and made dozens of movies between 1914 and 1920. Her career was over by the start of moviedom's sound era, but the archetype of the Vamp still lingers.