Still too cold for early Autumn. Sleet and snow yesterday, something nasty moving in today.

Sitemeter Sez: Los Angeles, California; Mililani, Hawaii; El Centro, California; Mountain View, California; Elmendorf Afb, Alaska; Vigo, Spain; Columbia Falls, Montana; Richmond, Indiana; Harrison Township, Michigan, and Saint Charles, Illinois.

The Mime Troupe Saga continues: 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

Many thanks to Toni -- she sent me an autographed copy of Winter Season; A Dancer's Journal (1982) for making a video of her presentation at Harvard University about Ida!




Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from 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: News and Events at Flathead Community College New website for the Hockaday Museum. (I'm working on my Autumn Salon artwork, with Katie Duck as my muse.)
Prom Night In Mississipi on the big screens tonight, kicking off the Flathead County Library's Big Read this year, focused on Harper Lee's great novel To Kill A Mockingbird, and the society which exists around its themes , even today.

Then and Now -- Disappearing Glaciers of Glacier National Park.

Tears and Laughter about our broken health care system HERE

Media Watch: Trash A Go Go -- the two dancing shows are going head-to-head in Prime Time. Now that Bug Man Delay is gone, I can watch Trash A Go Go I with a clear conscience. JabbaWocKeeZ was mostly good, but someone goofed around with their style. I saw a dozen ways the producers could have presented them better. They're weeding out other schlubs besides the gone-away human insect, so there's not much to report, except that I swear I saw porn-star Jenna Jameson in the crowd, flanked by black-clad bodyguards. I suspect the mixed-martial artist/bad dancer is her ol' man.
BTW -- I am NOT going to post pictures of Ms. Jameson here, but I'm not sorry to see her get time on mainstream TV, either. She may have a truly "dirty job," but the high demand for her work is proof that "somebody's gotta do it."
Trash A Go Go II had auditions in my old hometown of Salt Lake City. Ha Ha Ha -- there were a few contestants from Utah, but nobody from Salt Lake, where there are many, many dance schools, except a young lady who gigged with a burlesque group! (She didn't make it through the choreography round, though.) They ran another hour of tape from Las Vegas, the venue where they eventually choose twenty dancers out of almost two hundred for their final competition. (I might skip edited tears and yelling from Nevada next week for the REAL contest after that.)

An 2007 graphic for a Burlesque company in Salt Lake City:

There's over a million people in Salt Lake now -- plenty of room for Burlesque -- Gawd knows they have sleazier adult entertainment than THAT around town.

Send In The Clowns!

Theater/Theatre: My distant friend Stan "Jango" Edwards formally opened the Nouveau Clown Institute in Barcelona, Spain earlier this week. It is a fabulous location for an institution like this, which is very much needed to preserve and continue the Variety Arts. There are schools run by other theatrical masters too, but Jango is part of an international network of performers who have proven themselves repeatedly for audiences high and low -- they have earned the opportunity to have their say as well!

Stan Edwards in costume and whiteface, October 5, 2009 -- during the formal opening of Nouveau Clown Institute. Jango's old friend and patron Salvador Dali had a similar dream thirty-five years ago -- which was unfortunately frustrated by repeated breakdowns of the great artist's health during the last decade of his life.