Another perfect day -- so it was a long day at work -- it was beautiful. Canadian Geese are migrating again.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Oviedo, Florida; Manchester, UK; Corona, California; Oslo, Norway (home of my ancestors); Brandon, Manitoba; Cockeysville, Maryland; Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario; Louth, Ireland (That you, Roseanne?) and Berkeley, California.
Hmmm -- there's a Big Sky Blogroll that lists this site.

Check out 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: Current shows at the Hockaday Museum of Art include 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.

Theater/Theatre: Oh Yeah! Olympia Dukakis starred in the world premiere of Another Side of the Island -- a reinterpretation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. This is exactly the kind of production I like to see onstage. The acting was excellent, especially the interaction between Dukakis as Prospera, and Ariel, played by Lynn Cohen.

My digital interpretation of Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis as the magical Prospera.
Co-stars Apollo Dukakis, and Olympia's husband Louis Zorich did very well indeed, as did local resident Davis Ackroyd, whose Alpine Theatre Project produced this show. His partners Betsi Morrison and Luke Walrath deserve to share credit for matching the words of their proud motto: Imagine. Create. Inspire.
Congrats to directors Gregory Hoffman, Margo Whitcomb, and Olympia Dukakis.
The show was about 60 percent clowning, which was alright with me anyway, but set up the moments of drama for deeper appreciation. One graceful adaptation was four magnificent singers as Prospera's Spirits -- their music was magic enough for any island. During the second half, they performed an elaborate number which cursed the villains with madness, followed by Dukakis' soliloquy:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Another group of wannabe villans were a trio of clowns led by Caliban, played by lithe, sexy Amanda Hastings-Phillips, looking like an airheaded contemporary "Mean Girl," but supposedly an "it." This riff worked just fine with "her" hilariously drunken castaways.

Media Watch: My informal Gina Gershon tracker picked up a funny video which has gone viral on the Internet --

Actor Gina Gershon Satirizes Former Beauty Queen Sarah Palin