Some cold nights with frost in some locations. The calendar SAYS it's Late Spring.

Sitemeter Sez: Gurgaon, India; Needham, Massachusetts; Renton, Washington; Albany, Oregon; Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia, and Cerritos, California.

MORE New Mime Troupe History 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!
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 Plein-Aire Paint-Off is up at the Hockaday Museum of Art, fresh off the artists' brushes. Dan Fagre and Lisa Keown's show is on the first level -- about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, it is a true labor of love by scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.
The Hockaday Museum of Art's Face Book Site (There's a link to the conventional website there.)

The other week, I ran sound for Carol Buchanan's public discussion of her historical novel God's Thunderbolt -- The Vigilantes of Montana at the community college. Here's the link to a live-blog of the event.

Media Watch: Analog broadcast TV's supposed to go bye-bye after today. We'll still have it around here with low-power stations. There's only one network affiliate with a digital signal in this isolated area.

Congrats to NPR's Performance Today for their coverage of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition this year.

Montana Public Radio played Duke Ellington's important 1956 performance of Crescendo in Blue during drive-time today. It was from the restored live tapes which constitute Ellington at Newport (Complete). Paul Gonsalves' incredibly long and brilliant sax solo with Duke and a rhythm section is still unsurpassed. I heard an Afro-Beat International program not too long ago about Boston native Gonsalves' familial and musical roots in the Cape Verde Islands and New England whaling ships.

I finished the video of Toni Bentley at Harvard, and won her enthusiastic approval. Next, I'll add some new photos to Ida Rubinstein's Website, thanks to Toni's scholarship.

Ida Rubinstein (High Patroness of our Blog) as Spring, in the painting Femme avec des Fleurs by Romaine Brooks circa 1914. In her lecture, Bentley made a joke about a drawing showing Ida's legs nearly emerging from right below her bosom. This painting isn't quite as obsessive, but Rubinstein WAS lean and high-waisted, with very long limbs.

Perfect Spring weather -- warmth followed by rain on THIS side of the Rocky Mountains, but snow on the eastern side. Welcome to Montana.

Sitemeter Sez: Pico Rivera, California; Kaysville, Utah; El Cajon, California; Gttingen, Germany; Louth, Ireland (Hey There); Pittsboro, North Carolina; Edmonds, Washington; Perryville, Missouri; Zagreb, Croatia; Lausanne, Switzerland, and Los Angeles, California.

NEW Mime Troupe History 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!
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 Plein-Aire Paint-Off is up at the Hockaday Museum of Art, fresh off the artists' brushes. Linda Tippetts had to drive home through snow (see above). Dan Fagre and Lisa Keown's show is on the first level -- about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, it is a true labor of love by scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.
The Hockaday Museum of Art's Face Book Site

The other week, I ran sound for Carol Buchanan's public discussion of her historical novel God's Thunderbolt -- The Vigilantes of Montana at the community college. Here's the link to a live-blog of the event.

Media Watch: The Last Winter (2006) Directed by busy Larry Fessenden, who also co-wrote and co-produced it. Ubiquitous Ron (Hellboy) Perlman was an unpleasant crew chief in a doomed Arctic outpost, and I recognized journeyman actor Kevin Corrigan too. Fessenden did a cameo as a guy who was dead most of the time. The stunt-ravens from Britain got the best lines, and almost everybody croaked. I kind of like Fessenden's offbeat vampire flick Habit (1996), but thought this one was pretty derivative and uncompelling, despite being shot in Alaska and Iceland.

(Click for a larger image)
A multi-media re-creation of Katie Duck (L) and Debra Ryals (R) dancing under the theatrical lights at the Aspen Highlands Lodge just before New Year 1974-75. There are more of these painterly memory pics at http://theatrex.net/theatre/mt_pt5/index.htm