A really cold wind is blowing from the west this morning.

Sitemeter Sez: Songnam, Korea (looking for info about my friend Katie Duck); Lenox, Massachusetts; Essen, Germany; Smyrna, Tennessee; Auckland, NZ (checked out my Buckethead Electric Ladyland Illo); NYC, New York; Amstelveen, Holland (Katie-connection again); Salem, Wisconsin; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Jamaica, New York; Buffalo, New York; Oshawa, Ontario; Palouse, Washington; Los Angeles, California; Seattle, Washington and Mansfield, Pennsylvania.

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 Auction of Miniatures is on the walls! (We'll be moving it on April 3.)
All students are admitted FREE this year to the Hockaday Museum of Art, thanks to Pacific Steel & Recycling. Check out that free public preview party on March 27th. (I'll be doing tech for the Honors Symposium at the college with Dr. E.B. Eiselein.)
Check out Fall for Glacier too -- a fundraiser for several programs that make Glacier National Park even better!

Media Watch: Bop Girl Goes Calypso -- a real dawg-assed black and white bottom of the bill exploitation flick from 1957. It starred Judy Tyler (born Judith Mae Hess), who teamed up with Elvis Presley in the excellent Jailhouse Rock later that same year. She had been fired from the seminal Howdy Doody TV show along with Bob (Captain Kangaroo) Keeshan and other cast members because they asked for more money. She was too talented to stop, or even slow down, and started working elsewhere immediately. Bop Girl was more or less her screen test, and it succeeded as a ridiculous, but high-spirited, romp around fictional Los Angeles night spots, even including a Go Go Club! Whiskey anybody?

Judy Tyler and Elvis


That cartoon in the corner represents Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring, Judy Tyler's character on It's Howdy Doody Time. Ms. Tyler unfortunately died in a late night car crash in Wyoming, along with her new husband, while driving from LA to NYC after finishing Jailhouse Rock. It's been reported that Presley couldn't bring himself to watch that film because he was so saddened by his friend's death. After he lost his mother a year or so later, while he was in Germany, he never performed outside the USA -- missing out on audiences who loved him even more than America did. He sure felt some deep emotions before his isolation behind his entourage blighted his life.

More about the Bop Girl movie! (As if you really wanted to know.)


Bop Girl Goes Calypso featured a number of denizens from the L.A. music scene. (L to R) Co-star Bobby Troup, photographed alongside his wife Julie London, wrote the classic song Route 66, and the silly Girl Can't Help It. Mary Kaye's name is now associated with a famous style of Fender guitars. Her trio did a couple of numbers in the movie. She and her brother were members of the famously musical Hawaiian Royal Family. Siblings Carol and Antonino LoTempio, AKA April Stevens and Nino Tempo, appeared right at the beginning of Bop Girl doing a popular 50's riff where the tenor saxophonist (Nino) removed his jacket during a solo. Bill Hayley & the Comets also filmed the same trick in another junk-movie. (Go Johnny Go, with Chuck Berry and Alan Freed, I think.) Hustler Les Baxter wrote most of Bop Girl's music -- he was also Yma Sumac's producer, and managed a "folk singing" group called Les Baxter's Balladeers which included the young David Crosby.