Beautiful Spring morning -- perfect for a long drive to the gutted copper mines of Southwest Montana. (More about that another day.)

Sitemeter Sez: Woodland Park, Colorado; Union, New Jersey; Hayward, California; Toronto, Ontario; Columbia Falls, Montana; Louth, Ireland (How's Roseanne and Rachelle?); Altrincham, Cheshire, UK; Salt Lake City, Utah (Punk Rock researchers); Apt, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, France; Washington, DC; Dallas, Texas; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Reims, France; Columbia Falls, Montana and Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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.





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: All day in the van taking Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road show to Anaconda, Montana for the Hockaday Museum of Art.
Check out Fall for Glacier -- a fundraiser for several programs that make Glacier National Park even better!

Media Watch: The movie 21 wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. There WAS a card-counting ring based at MIT that employed a number of professors and students. I can only wonder about the interesting things a movie based on an inside view of that enterprise could do. 21 was 5% beef and 95% stereotypical Hollywood Bullshit. Actors have to work too, but I can't say I enjoyed seeing talented Laurence Fishburn having to play a violent heavy again when he can do so much more.


Movie actress Kate Bosworth seemed to have more fun with disguises than the others in 21 -- this graphic refers to that flick, Superman Returns, and well-photographed, but boring, Blue Crush.

Validating my long-lasting appreciation for Comic Books, there are a half dozen flicks in line for release based upon sequential graphic stories. Alan Moore, the prolific author of V For Vendetta will see Watchmen go on the big screen with almost no input from himself. Let's just say he is less than pleased by his treatment at the hands of Corporate Media, much like the great Steve Ditko. The late Will Eisner's Spirit -- a Jewish detective who worked out of his hideout in Wildwood Cemetary during the Golden Age of Comics is being interpreted by Frank Miller, who has made the best comics-to-cinema translations so far. Jack Kirby's Incredible Hulk will tear up the screen again, as well as Marvel's second-tier cold-war hero Iron Man. The interesting Guermillo del Toro has a second Hellboy ready to go, and Angelina Jollie, who fearlessly takes on low and high concepts, is playing an action heroine whom I have never heard about. All this is OK -- Academy Award winners Anna Paquin and Halle Berry perform in the X-Men series, as well as Shakespearean aces Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, plus the excellent Hugh Jackman and beautiful ex-model Famke Jannsen.

AS Buck Owens once sang:
They're Gonna Put Me In The Movies!


The first appearence of Iron Man in Marvel's Tales of Suspense #39 dated March 1963. Industrial billionaire Tony Stark wore an electro-magnetic breastplate to prevent schrapnel from puncturing his heart. The rest of his armor came in handy when he was beating up Communists in Viet Nam, who had taken him prisoner in the initial tale. This "Super Capitalist" character was a psychological artifact of its creators: Writers Stan and Larry Lieber, penciller Don Heck, plus my energetic friend Jack Kirby, who acted as overall art director/designer during the onslaught of Marvel Comics in the 60's.
Image from GCD -- free for non-commercial and scholarly use.