Being sick is harder at work, when you have to function. I managed, but it sure wasn't fun. I cheered up considerably when I heard from my friend Clara McBride in Paris -- she works with an improvisational group called The Improfessionals, among her many projects. She's also been making films.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Abingdon, Maryland; Preston, UK; Boulder, Colorado; Clifton, New Jersey; Brooklyn, New York; Ottawa, Ontario; Riihimki, Southern Finland; Stockport, UK; Sacramento, California; Zanesville, Ohio; Paris, Ile-de-France (That you, Clara?); Budapest, Hungary; Reno, Nevada; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Chatham, UK, and Baltimore, Maryland.

New revisions 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 including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!


Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. 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. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art's Autumn Salon, with 116 pieces on display. We also have Crown of the Continent and Ace of Diamonds gracing our walls. Looks like the art run to Eastern Montana in December was revised again.
I'm gathering some CDs together for my lecture next week on Black Music in the U.S.A.
It's Art Walk tonight, but I'm not risking my recovery by going anywhere, or spreading this damn cold.

Media Watch: Montana Public Radio was celebrating the life and music of John Lennon tonight. He was my favorite Beatle in general, and my favorite solo artist from the group -- yes, he could be self-indulgent, like the rest of them, but his high points acheived great heights indeed.

Iceland's Peace Tower commemorates John Lennon with light,as it holds Wagner's Waulkuries at bay in the darkness. Thank you, Yoko!

Ch-ch-changes: The great 1950's model Bettie Page has suffered a heart attack, and her odds of making it aren't very good at her age. There are many reasons to buy her products at www.bettiepage.com NOW, especially helping her out when she needs it.

First-rate model Bettie Page did all her great work for an industry that literally flited with illegality. Although she worked for legitimate publishers and photographers, some of her employment resulted in a congressional supoeana, and official destructon of many of her films and pictures. It turns out that most everything survived one way or another, and if you are THAT obsessed, you can get your own copy of even the most distasteful products which featured this talented lady. In her later years, when she acknowledged her career, she only signed the things she did that had merit, though.

Speaking of the 50's, Forrest J. Ackerman passed away recently at 92. He built bridges between Science Fiction/Fantasy publishers, movie makers, writers, illustrators, and their fans, especially by editing the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. I still have copies of his less-successful venture Spacemen, with lots of Buster Crabbe photos. Less well-known was his involvement in the first (abortive) attempt to make an animated film out of Lord of the Rings -- he's mentioned by name in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. His greatest contribution to modern society was probably the early patronage of young, struggling Ray Bradbury. His editorial tastes often tended towards the shallow and vulgar, but fans like me had a lot of fun because of his efforts to make a buck off his beloved Sci-Fi field. The publishers of Famous Monsters later did magazine-sized comic strip anthologies by first-rate artists, like Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, and even reprinted The Spirit by Will Eisner.

I have this very magazine, and several of its brothers. The romance of space travel and its hard cold practicality were always an awkward fit -- Flash Gordon was featured in several issues, but not THIS one. Ask me if I care (I don't) -- Jean Rogers as hypnotized Dale Arden, Larry "Buster Crabbe as Larry "Flash" Gordon, and Priscilla Lawson as the overly passionate Princess Aura.