Freezing rain on top of all this snowpack -- stay off the fuggin' roads!

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Marseilles, France; Jamaica, New York; Dallas, Texas Nampa, Idaho; Comox, British Columbia and New Orleans, Louisiana (Could be my friend DJ Soul Sistah, or a visitor via Daily Kos -- I posted the words to Yes We Can there last night).

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!





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: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road, The Collective Caravan, and Old West -- New Visions at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Tom English is doing a still life workshop this weekend -- normally he specializes in landscapes, but something different is called for in THIS weather! I made a new website advertising Fall for Glacier -- looks like a good time, plus it helps several programs that make Glacier National Park an awe-inspiring and pleasantly educational destination. The hundreth anniversary of the founding of the park is coming up!

Media Watch: The late Luciano Pavarotti on the radio -- an opera recorded in 1977, at the height of his vocal prowess. A few months ago they played an electrifying Maria Callas performance from 1958. More! More! More!

Spacing Out Again! Visit Outre Space Cinema

Alex Raymond's Princess (now Queen) Aura in 1935, during the War with Ming sequence, which would run on and off for another half-decade. Queen Aura was reintroduced after the Witch Queen adventure, and she's obviously ill at ease with her husband's alliance with Flash Gordon against her father. Bad feelings from previous times erupt in a battle with Dale Arden, who has caught her former rival actually betraying their military plans to Emperor Ming. A lot of Flash's cohorts die as a result of this treason.
(Shades of the Scarlet Pimpernel!)


(Click to enlarge the image.)
Raymond and co-plotter Don Moore stopped using Aura as a conflicted character after these panels. The movies did a better job with her the next year. This somewhat salacious girl-fight was thankfully about the last sado-masochistic fetish in this VERY mainstream strip. Raymond's long-stoke Middle Period would extend through the following Water World chapter, deep into 1937, after which his assistant Austin Briggs' crisp detailing style started to dominate the artwork.

Slightly above zero degrees (F!), so maybe it's going to get warmer.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Santiago, Chile; Montrouge, Ile-de-France; Moscow, Russia; South Jordan, Utah; Miami, Florida and Louth, Ireland.

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!





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: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road, The Collective Caravan, and Old West -- New Visions at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Tom English is doing a still life workshop this weekend -- normally he specializes in landscapes, but something different is called for in THIS weather!

Media Watch: The late Oscar Peterson, jamming with Stephan Grappelli -- a whole album's worth on Montana Public Radio.

Theater/Theatre: Bindlestiff Family Cirkus Update
Staten Island Underground Festival
February 16, 2008 Snug Harbor Cultural Center
1000 Richmond Terrace Staten Island, NY

Kinko the Clown featured at New York Downtown Clown Revue
February 18th, 2008 The KRAINE THEATER
85 EAST 4TH STREET BETWEEN 2nd & Bowery, 1st FL
Showtime: 8 pm Tickets are $15, available at smarttix.com
Kinko promises a night of antics, pratfalls, Cirque du Soleil tributes, and trained rats.

Bindlestiff Family Cirkus Winter Cabaret Season
Sundays in March, 2008 Zipper Factory 336 W. 37th Street, NYC 10018
Info: 212-563-0480 http://www. thezipperfactory.com
Bindlestiff Family Cirkus hosts this annual show featuring world class acts, sideshow legends, daredevils, infamous clowns, and New York's finest entertainers. Each week features a new line-up.


Mistress Philomena of Bindlestiff Family Cirkus and Kinko in Action!
(Click for a slightly larger image.)
Redigitized composite image by ME,
from gig pictures found on FLICKR.

Still sick today -- minus 4 degrees (F!) outside, so I'm staying IN.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Salmon, Idaho (Known for the REAL Bigfoot, a mixed-race outlaw killed by a bounty hunter in the mid 1860's); Sydney, Australia and a neighbor here in Kalispell. (Hi Doug!)

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, 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!





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: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road, The Collective Caravan, and Old West -- New Visions at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Mini-thumbnails are in the test stage now. Tom English is doing a workshop this weekend.

Media Watch: FM Radio sure can be a good friend when you're sick. I heard a whole Prokofiev symphony right when I needed some beauty in my life.

Theater/Theatre: My friend Katie contacted me from Amsterdam -- she'll be working in Japan come February:

Katie Duck
February 4-6 workshop in Yokohama - KYUNASAKA studio
To register - http://kyunasaka.jp/
February 9-11 workshop in Utsunomiya

Beoff 1-7-10 Yoshino Utsunomiya 320-0838 Japan T:028-601-2620/fax 028-624-1084 - 3,000 yen for 1 day / 7,000 yen for 3days / observation 1,000 yen for 1 day
To register: www.beoff.org - info@beoff.org or
Lab.M www.labmdance.com - masako_noguchi@hotmail.com



(Click to see a larger image)
Part of the flier advertising Katie Duck's workshops and performances in Japan -- that's her jamming in the lower right corner with an unnamed violinist. She is an improvisational artist along the lines of Jazz greats Keith Jarrett or Anthony Braxton -- classically trained, but preferring spontaneous though structured compositions.

%$#@! cold weather -- I got sick yesterday, and took off work today to try and recover.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Jersey City, New Jersey and Key Biscayne, Florida.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, 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!





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: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road, The Collective Caravan, and Old West -- New Visions at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Mini-thumbnails on the agenda next for the website -- I'm trying out some ideas through the haze of fever.

In The Mail: I got an envelope saying "Good News" shoved through my mail slot. I opened it up, and there was a small comic book from Chick Publications inside. WOW! I like comics, as any visitor to this blog knows. The story started out with a middle-aged American guy, like me, dropping dead. The tract ended with him being cast into a lake of fire. Very inspiring. Yeah, the senders claim that Jesus can save me from that kind of fate, but I wish he could save me from getting insulting crap like this as well.

Media Watch: Trash A-Go Go's Carrie Ann and Bruno are hosting this schitzo show called Dance Wars, along with Drew Lachet. Why schitzo? It doesn't know what it's supposed to be -- entertainment or competition. The two also sit down as judges of their own "teams," choreographed and coached by others, for sure, but who's going to really be honest in that situation? (Their critical comments about the OPPOSITE teams were remarkably fair and accurate, though.) The recap of the previous week took the first third of the whole fuckin' broadcast -- padded beyond the point of sanity. The audience of relatives and hangers-on was noisy to a fault. The dancing/singing numbers were ordinary at best, and half-baked at worst, mostly because the contestant/performers were amateurs, despite the real talent resident in many of them. They will have to learn four routines in six days during the course of this show -- maybe seasoned pros could handle that pace, but it seems to be a recipe for stress and mediocrity in this case. Perhaps the need to wash people out trumps the producers' desire to present really good performances. I guess this counts as Reality TV, but it sure is absurd.

No dancers today after all that, how about Nature for a change of pace?


Moonrise -- Kalispell, Montana; January 20, 2008
(Click to see a larger image.)
Damn right it's as cold as it looks!
Photo by ME

Sing along with Stevie Wonder -- Happy Birthday to Ya' Martin Luther King! His famous dream IS slowly becoming reality, but there are powerful forces fighting against his ideals, and they rule my country right now, not to mention much of our world. It is an election year, and the allies of Justice might just win some critical battles. So there is hope on a sub-zero morning. Flickers, Juncos, and Cedar Waxwings sighted at Dry Bridge Slough.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Jamaica, New York (Happy B-Day to YOU as well, Stozo!); Winsted, Connecticut; Middletown, New York; Branson, Missouri; Wake Forest, North Carolina and San Antonio, Texas.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, 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!





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!

All-round good guy Jim Keefe wrote me to say: Enjoyed the comparison from strip to film. Fun stuff!
Put a link on the Yahoo adventure strip group as well.
Hope you get a lot of hits. THANKS AGAIN JIM!

Charity Alert: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: The college where I work is lucky to have Dr. David Scott on it's faculty. He was an active participant of the Selma, Alabama campaign, and personally knew Martin and Coretta King. His stories about Dr. King and the ongoing struggle for Justice in the wake of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 are mesmerizing.
Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road, The Collective Caravan, and Old West -- New Visions at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Mini-thumbnails on the agenda next for the website -- a formal design problem.

Media Watch: Montana Public Radio Morning Freeforms is celebrating Martin Luther King's legacy with spoken-word segments, and damn fine music. Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready is a favorite -- this song transcends it's overtly religious text. It has been reinterpreted by Bob Marley & The Wailers as One Love, but my favorite version remains the Chambers Brothers straight-out soul-rocker from the mid-60's. The late, great Mr. Mayfield also wrote and sang If There's A Hell Below, We're All Gonna Go! It wasn't a curse, but a call to action, and matching words with deeds. Another song playing on the radio contains the poweful refrain If we poison our children with hatred, then a hard life is all that they'll know. My point is that Idealism is not idle indulgence or romantic fantasy, but one of the duties in our lives. Accepting every crime foistered on your locality, or the wider world, as some kind of "inevitable reality" is the opposite of wisdom or even survival.

Hey! Let's celebrate the birthday of Huddie Leadbetter AKA Leadbelly too -- one of the greatest Folk Singers of all time. There are some speculations that he adapted many of his songs from popular music. If true, he wasn't the first or the last, but nobody has found the sheet music from where his greatest songs were supposedly derived.

Some send in clowns to change the tone, I choose to send in dancers:


(Click on the pic for a larger view.)
(Left) Alex Raymond's court of Emperor Ming at the dawn of his gracefully inked "middle period" circa 1935. (Right) Universal Pictures' version in 1940 -- temporarily hearkening back to the barbaric days of yesteryear, before censorship. The lady in the movie performed two dance numbers before Lady Sonja, Princess Aura II, and Dale Arden III crowded her out of Ming's throne room in the third (and final) Flash Gordon serial.