No rain -- a cloudless Big Sky. I'm watering my yard, and keeping the grass long, so that it LOOKS green. Roses are struggling, but the Lupines and Sweet Peas are doing fine. I made a quick trip to the Bigfork Festival of the Arts before work this morning, and shot a few photos.

Osprey hunting over the Flathead River near Bigfork, Montana.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Warwick, New York; Fort Worth, Texas; Tel Aviv, Israel; Salmon, Idaho (Where a REAL outlaw named Bigfoot was killed by a bounty hunter in the 1860's), and Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

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: One day closer to my mad dash to Sidney, Montana at the far East end of Montana for the Hockaday Museum of Art. Our current exibits are Rails, Trails, and A Road -- honoring the 75th Anniversary of Going To The Sun Road in Glacier National Park, plus Ace Powell -- Ace of Diamonds and Native American Interpretations from our permanent collection.
Check out Fall for Glacier -- a fundraiser for several programs that make Glacier National Park even better!

Click for a larger image.
The Northwest edge of the Bigfork Arts Festival on Bigfork Bay and the Swan River -- the event winds further through the village along Electric Avenue. (Inset) Jeweller Liv Ensign and her boyfriend Toby, a theater tech who had just finished working Alice Cooper's concert in Kalispell. Liv's brother and mother had booths at the Festival, plus she and her sister were at Arts In The Park last week -- a much COOLER event, since most of it was shaded under trees.

Media Watch: I was reading about The Goon Show -- a hugely influential comedy show broadcast on BBC radio from 1951 through 1960. The main cast were Peter Sellers, Harry Newcombe, and Spike Milligan, who functioned as writer too. British Comedy was completely transformed by this phenomenon. Because of them, the world also got Beyond The Fringe and Monty Python, with a half a dozen more comedic geniuses. The book was published before Sellers' last heart attack and final tour de force Being There. Milligan and Newcombe were still alive as well, but the former was suffering from repeated nervous collapses. I hadn't known that Milligan wrote for Marty Feldman in the late 60's/early 70's -- I loved those TV shows, and laughed harder than I've ever laughed in my life at some of the bits. Milligan was excellent as an actor in Richard Lester's Three (and Four) Musketeers, with Michael York and Raquel Welch, among others. When I lived in England, we'd tune into Q6, Milligan's eccentric BBC programme whenever we were at home in time to see it -- the man was a true master.

Any excuse for a Rocky picture!

Young wife and mother Raquel Welch, circa 1967, about the time she became famous as a model and movie star. Her work got progressively better over the years, and I enjoyed her portrayal of the doomed ingenue in Three (Four) Musketeers -- done-in by the villainous Faye Dunnaway, no less. They should have KNOWN she was bad from Bonnie & Clyde!

I've been sampling some of our Bollywood movies from Vancouver recently -- many seem to rely on fantasies of a powerful criminal underworld and none-too-gentle police battling each other as ordinary Indian citizens were just trying to make ends meet. Unfortunately, there is too much nasty reality concerning those scenarios. American movies have relied on organized/common crime stories since the sound era began too, but what they say about our cultures isn't particularly inspiring.