Sitemeter Sez: Castelldefels, near Barcelona, Spain; Zwijndrecht, Holland; Marietta, Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana; Albuquerque, New Mexico and Topeka, Kansas.
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!
Many 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: Check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site. Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day.
In The Community: Our college is celebrating Earth Day -- lots of activities around the noon hour. The last Honors Symposium for this year is TONIGHT -- "Why Be Moral?" with Dr. Dane Scott from Missoula.
The Hockaday Museum of Art features abstractionist George Gogas, our annual Children's Show, and local High School Art Show.
Check out Fall for Glacier -- a fundraiser for several programs that make Glacier National Park even better!
Media Watch: Ridiculous! -- That idiotic right-wing talking-point fest on ABC last night was NOT a debate.
Sublime -- I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.
The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village. Marshall McLuhan, "Gutenberg Galaxy", 1962
There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening. The medium is the message. Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Media", 1964
In The Mechanical Bride (my personal favorite -- see tribute below) McLuhan mused that attempts to analyze Mass Media's assault on us all might be the key to wresting away some of its power for our OWN benefit.
Speaking of Mechanical Brides:
Sing Along!
(Cadence and melody similar to Aerosmith's later Walk This Way)
Her neon mouth with the blinkers-off smile
It's nothing but electric sign
You could say she has an image of a sort
She's a part of a carnival time
Secretly seen, those chrome-covered clothes
You wear cause you have no other
But I suppose no one knows
You're my plastic fantastic lover
Her rattlin' cough never shuts off
Is nothin' but a used machine
Her aluminium finish, slightly diminished
Is the best I ever have seen
Cosmetic baby plugged into me
I'd never ever find another
But I realize no one's wise
To my plastic fantastic lover
The electrical dust is starting to rust
Her trapezoid thermometer taste
All the red tape is mechanical rape
Of the TV program waste
Data control and IBM
Science is mankind's brother
But all I see is drainin' me
On my plastic fantastic lover!
Marty Balin 1966-67
McLuhan might have made a vain promise, or set a difficult goal, because Corporate Media mutated into a whole other creature since our humorous savant passed away in 1980. The Right Wing ironically co-opted the Far Left's Post-Modernism and transformed what was once called Mass Media into a propaganda network on the level of Pravda(Truth), Izvestiya (News), and Goebbels' Third Reich.
The joke used to be that there was no Pravda in Izvestiya, or Izvestiya in Pravda and vice versa -- too bad it was wasn't really a joke.
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