Cold wind from the North brought a nasty zero degree (F!) snowstorm and dangerous drifts. We still had about 180 people at the Honors Symposium (see below).

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Monroe, North Carolina; Alexandria, Virginia; Honolulu, Hawaii (Hi Dave!); San Diego, California; Palm Bay, Florida; Olathe, Kansas; Nijmegen, Holland; Houston, Texas; Orange, France; Cagliari, Italy (Don't call no doctor in Caligari.); Roskilde, Denmark; Woodbridge, Ontario; Groton, Massachusetts, and Greenfield Park, New York

Check out: 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!
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: The Hockaday Museum of Art has Seldom Seen, from the Permanent Collection, First Nations Artists -- Contemporary / Traditional, Crown of the Continent, and Ace of Diamonds. Dan Fagre's new show about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park is a true labor of love by himself and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and now. HURRY! Things will be changing soon.

Tonight at FVCC's Honors Symposium we had Chinese Foreign Policy—China Shakes the World by Dr. Steven Levine, associate director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at The University of Montana.
The remaining lectures of the series include:
March 12 — “China’s Strategic Relations—Short Arms/Slow Legs” presented by Brigadier General Russ Howard, retired, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center, The University of Montana;
March 19 — “China’s Economy — The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” presented by Dr. Terry Weidner, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center, The University of Montana;
March 26 — “Communist China — The Cultural Revolution” presented by Major Kwok Chiu, United States Military Academy at West Point;
April 2 — “China Today” presented by Eric Pei, FVCC Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence; Visiting Professor, Liaoning University, Shenyang, China.

Concert Review: That "Band of Bandleaders" includes young women nowadays!
George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars by Gridhead from Charlotte N.C. February 28, 2009
It was an awesome show. A big Thank You to George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic for that performance. The house was packed. Kendra was the opening act and she absolutely killed it. Her set started a little after 9:30pm. Her backing band started out with Rico, Mike Hampton, Lige, and Danny. Steve Boyd and Garry joined them later in the set. She sung some old Funkadelic songs, plus did a few of her own. Her setlist is kind of sketchy in my mind, but here's what I remember:

Baby, I Owe You Something Good
I'll Stay
Let's Take It To the People
This World
Possession-Free Philosophy

Kendra Foster with my friend Michael Hampton.
I may be missing a song or two. Shider, Hampton, and Danny did some kick ass solos in her set.

The P-Funk personnel that I remember seeing on stage:
George Clinton
Garry Shider
"Boogie" Mosson
Mike Hampton
Lige Curry
Carlos "Sir Nose" McMurray
Shaunna Hall
Ricky Rouse
Ronkat Spearman
Frankie Waddy
Rico Lewis
Michael "Clip" Payne
Danny Bedrosian
Jerome Rodgers
Robert "Peanut" Johnson
Tracey Lewis
Poo Poo Man
Steve Boyd
Sativa
Kendra Foster
Kim Manning
Patty Walker
Belita Woods
No Horn players. There was also a male vocalist I didn't recognize. It may have been Paul Hill. I don't know.

P-Funk's set started around 10:30pm and ended shortly after 1:30am. The band was tighter than rusty lug nuts on a 57 Chevy. George was on stage for 90% of the show, which is something I haven't seen in a long time. The setlist once again, is sketchy in my mind. I was into the show and didn't think about the setlist until midway through.
-- They opened with Standing on the Verge, tore that up and went into
-- Pumping It Up
The rest of the setlist that I can remember, in no particular order:
-- Rumplesteelskin - that was the bomb right there. The band showed out.
-- Tear the Roof off the Sucker
-- U.S. Custom Coast Guard Dope Dog (George and Steve Boyd)
-- Up For the Downstroke
-- Maggot Brain (Reggae Version) - this was the highlight of the set for me. Several women near me were dancing like crazy to that version. As a matter of fact, a lot of people were dancing to that version. No disrespect to the original version, but they took us to church with the reggae version last night. Michael Hampton is truly a guitar god. Rouse was pretty laid-back. He didn't do all the "theatrics" like he did last year. I liked last night's Ricky Rouse much better. He's a helluva guitar player.
-- Red Hot Mama
-- Let's Take It To the Stage
-- One Nation Under A Groove
-- Bounce To This
-- Flashlight
-- Knee Deep
-- Sativa's Hard as Steel rap, Get Da f**k Out, and a rap by Tracey about a girl named Sherrie and catching the clap. ???
-- Sentimental Journey
-- Big Payback (Poo Poo Man)
-- Atomic Dog
-- They closed out the show with that rift from Hardcore Jollies
I wished they'd done some tracks from the Gangsters of Love CD. All in all a great show. An A+ for everyone in the band. The crowd was great and into the show...

Kim Manning singing Red Hot Mama -- Photos by Gridhead.
Ms. Manning's on tour with her OWN group:
(From the P-Board, where she posts as "Peaches.")
Hey Funkateers- I'll be on tour with Lantz Lazwell as soon as the Mothership drops me off- so spread the word and come out and party with my band. I promise will do a couple of p-funk tunes for you
Tues, March 3rd- Willits, CA at Shanachie Pub 8pm
Wed, March 4th- Chico, CA at Lost on Main with 2 me 9pm
Thurs, March 5th- San Francisco, CA at the Great American Music Hall-Feat Pam Parker,Bernadette, and Valarie Orth. 856 O'Farrell Street, 8pm
Fri, March 6th- Sacramento- Marilyns on K with Honey Spot 9pm
Sat, March 14th- Hollywood, CA at Cranes. 1611 El Centro, 90028 11:30pm
Sat, March 28th- Santa Monica at Rusty's Surf Ranch, 11pm, 256 Santa Monica Pier 11pm

Also , I will have a new project coming out soon- It's Called Baked Goods and is a EP and a DVD
Love and Light
Kim Manning

That new snow is melting fast! We had rain last night, which froze all over everything, so the morning drive was hazardous as HELL.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Dodge, Nebraska; Farnham, Quebec; Kissimmee, Florida (George Clinton? Stephanie Clinton?); Tewksbury, Massachusetts; Fairhaven, Massachusetts; Courcouronnes, France; Louth, Ireland (stuck around and caught up); Montreal, Quebec; City of London, UK; Winter Park, Florida; Chandler, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; Toronto, Ontario, and Bozeman, Montana.

Check out: 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!
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: The Hockaday Museum of Art has Seldom Seen, from the Permanent Collection, First Nations Artists -- Contemporary / Traditional, Crown of the Continent, and Ace of Diamonds. Dan Fagre's new show about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park is a true labor of love by himself and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and now. HURRY! Things will be changing soon.

This upcoming Thursday in FVCC's Honors Symposium is Chinese Foreign Policy—China Shakes the World by Dr. Steven Levine, associate director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at The University of Montana.
The remaining lectures of the series include:
March 12 — “China’s Strategic Relations—Short Arms/Slow Legs” presented by Brigadier General Russ Howard, retired, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center, The University of Montana;
March 19 — “China’s Economy — The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” presented by Dr. Terry Weidner, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center, The University of Montana;
March 26 — “Communist China — The Cultural Revolution” presented by Major Kwok Chiu, United States Military Academy at West Point;
April 2 — “China Today” presented by Eric Pei, FVCC Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence; Visiting Professor, Liaoning University, Shenyang, China.

Media Watch: Man On Wire (2008), an Academy Award winner for documentary film. I happen to know Phillipe Petit, the person at the center of the whole thing, who balanced the Oscar statuette on his chin. I hung out with him for about a week during the summer of 1983 in Denver, Colorado -- almost a decade after he became famous for wire-walking between the twin towers of New York's Trade Center for most of an hour. He had gone to Jacques LeCoq's school and knew Paddy, Rod, and Margret from Footsbarn Theatre. I thought the main power of the movie came from the audacity of Phillipe's incomparable feat. There was a lot of craft involved in pulling the scattered contemporary films together and creating credible reenactments of key events, though. I would have liked it better if the filmmakers would have sketched out the next 35 years of Petit's career, or even his community service "punishment" -- a wire-walk over Belvedere Lake/Turtle Pond in Central Park. One criticism I'd level at the film is that it ended too abruptly.

Pay No Attention To That Crazy Frenchman Up Above!

Click to see a larger image.
(L to R) Gregg Moore, Rod Goodall, and Patrick "Paddy" Haytor at the International Theater Festival, Denver, Colorado in 1983; Margaret Beyiere, Rod, and Paddy in Amsterdam, Holland 1976; Joe Cunningham and Margaret in Denver 1983. After getting big bucks for one high-wire performance, Phillipe Petit stuck around, doing street theater for spare change, while renewing friendships with his peers, and meeting prospective employers. He gave me a high-five one night at an outdoor party when I got an American keg working after so many Europeans failed. I became de facto bartender that evening, but I never understood why they wanted to drink that lousy Coors anyway.