Sitemeter Sez: Burnaby, B.C. (Canada); North Liberty, Iowa; Amsterdam, Holland; San Francisco, California (reading one of my best posts), and American Fork, Utah (another curious reader about Punk Rock and KRCL-FM in Salt Lake about 25 years ago.
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 -- UPDATED!
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.
Media Watch: America's Best Dance Crew is down to four groups now. It has the same structural weaknesses of any competition show, but has been better than most so far. Buckethead clones The JabbaWockeeZ are doing very well. BreakSk8 continue to amaze me with their wheeling and dancing. Kabba Modern are young, athletic, talented, and witty. Status Quo are from the streets of Boston, and are AUTHENTIC in every way, plus fearless stunt-dancers. The weakness of this competition format is that all four of these groups deserve recognition and respect for what is unique in each of their acts. Nobody on that stage is a loser. BTW -- I thought using songs from Quincy Jones/Michael Jackson's Thriller suppressed the creativity of the groups. The more the songs were mixed-up, the better I liked the dancing.
A stray reader from Iowa took the trouble to place a comment on my blog claiming I had a "very foul mouth." Well, I say do say "fuck" sometimes, and coin phrases like "DE fuckin' grading" when I want to emphasize something. So does Neil Simon, and so do unnumbered other male and female writers. I have a very broad vocabulary, and do not wallow in gutter-talk by any means. When speaking of music, FUNK is a perfectly respectable word.
I will admit to being VERY dismissive of the TV show Your Mama Don't Dance, and hostile to it's concept. I'll acknowledge Iowa's vague, unhelpful, anonymous comment by expaining my perspective on what I saw. What made me angry was the fact that young professional dancers want to WORK, and they will do most ANYTHING to utilize their training. The show in question auditioned these vulnerable people and sprung their parents on them as surprise partners after the fact. Every one of the parents I saw were frankly inept, and their families' personal problems were none of the audience's business. What might have been good-natured fun for a few moments was agony to watch as onstage presentations -- the professionals were held down, the non-pros looked like they were suffering, and the judges looked pained to say anything about situations that didn't warrant judgement of any kind. I know it was the contestants' choice to be there, but it was humiliating for all concerned. I will never watch that show again, and offer no apologies for being appalled to the point of profanity.
Buckethead PRECEEDED Jabberwocky / Jabberwockies / JabbaWockeeZ
JabbaWockeeZ works as a unit, and the white masks help unify their pieces. Ace guitarist Brian Buckethead Carrol has used his white mask and isolation movements as visual gimmicks for almost twenty years. Here he is multiplied many times, ala' JabbaWockeeZ, playing in the band Praxis with Bill Lasiwell, my friend Bernie Worrell, and P-Funk All-Star Lily Haydn on violin.
Digital reinterpretation of images derived from photos by D. Oppenheimer and others.
