Another warm day, although it got down to about 6 Degrees (C) last night. Man, the night sky is FULL of bright planets this year.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Jacksonville, Florida; Aliso Viejo, California; Dundee City, Scotland; Binghamton, New York; Kaneohe, Hawaii (My friend Dave Fagiolli, checking out Rock Against Reagan); Longboat Key, Florida; Aurora, Colorado and Retsil, Washington.

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: One MORE day closer to my mad dash to Sidney, Montana at the far East end of Montana for the Hockaday Museum of Art. (Got an email about it from a fellow blog-watcher.)
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!

Media Watch: Eklavya (2007) -- starring Indian mega-star Amitabh Bachchan in the title role of a self-sacrificing bodyguard, devoted to a Royal family who seemed to forget that India was a democracy. Sanjay Duit took it on himself to remind them as an "Untouchable" police chief. Excellent Jackie Schroff was a villain, and Bollywood hunk Ali Saif Khan shared the lead. The Rajasthan locations in Bikaner and Jaipur were mostly real, and magnificent.

British Columbia Vacation Rambles

Oh Canada Day in Whistler B.C. 2008 -- Civic ceremony featuring RCMP Mounties wearing red wool uniforms in 30 degree (C) heat; Theatrical paraders, including a walking Olympic Logo, plus pipers in the pub -- they got a prize at the ceremony, but were having fun elsewhere.


Ch-ch-changes: Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn passed away a few days back. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was a major event when it was published. I was in Junior High , but we were encouraged to read it -- just to help understand Russians as being different from Communists.
We were all hoping that the Cold War would thaw, but soon Kruschev was fired, Brezhnev pushed Kosygin aside, and the temperature went 'way down -- almost to Nuclear Winter. In that atmosphere, Dr. Zhivago might have been a romantic movie, but it was used to confirm Anti-Soviet prejudices. The publication of Gulag was used for propaganda too -- but the relatively few who actually read the book trumpeted its truths about humanity instead. Solzhenitsyn's exile did NOT play so well into the hands of idealogues, either.
By then I was in college, and it was awesome to see this legendary literary giant, on his own terms, in the body of an ordinary human being. We didn't always like what we heard, but we listened and learned.

Just my personal perspective, for what little it's worth -- RIP Mr. Solzhenitsyn.

Sublimity to Ridiculousness

...The (John) McCain campaign announced that the Senator will participate in the Sturgis Rally 2008 at Buffalo Chip in South Dakota ... it is hard not to notice the evocative, non-political sideshows that will literally surround McCain's speech. As the presumptive nominee takes the stage, the "Ringin' Wet & Wild" women's wrestling event will be taking place on the main amphitheater. Two hours before then, the "Miss Buffalo Chip Beauty Pageant - Bikinis on the Beach" will be staged at a different venue. That affair is described by ESPN's Jim Caple as "essentially a topless beauty pageant. And occasionally bottomless, too. 'During a drenching rain Wednesday night, the contest broke up into smaller groups and one woman wound up dancing naked on a bar top. Her boyfriend/husband saw her and angrily dragged her away as she struggled to put her pants back on and muttered something about how, "It's only this one week a year.'" How sweet. Sadly, the pageant also sees its share of domestic abuse, which even the event's organizers admit ... is a major problem.
Following McCain's speech, country stars Kellie Pickler and Kid Rock will be taking the very same stage for their own live performances. Then at 12:30 a.m., there will be the semi-finals of the "Miss Buffalo Chip Beauty Pageant," this time featuring Hawaiian Tropic Models.

Who else is going to Sturgis?


Bye Bye Suckahs!
Wait'll you see what I'M wearing for the beauty pageant!

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.