Summer is here, and I have to mow the African Veldt, uh -- my lawn today after leaving it alone for two weeks while I was on vacation. Thank goodness for timely rains while I was away.

Sitemeter Sez: Berlin, Germany; Columbia Falls, Montana; Belle Plaine, Minnesota; Kalundborg, Denmark; Austin, Texas; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Folsom, California ('zat you, Catherine?) Rexburg, Idaho; Kirkland, Washington (Day-um! I used to live there.) San Ramon, California; Birmingham, Alabama; Salt Lake City, Utah (Are they after me?) Madras, India; Monroe, Michigan; Encino, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Louisville, Kentucky; Provo, Utah (Hi, Ruth!) Livonia, Michigan; Louth, Ireland (My most constant reader, comment whydoncha -- let me know who you are!) and Manchester, UK.

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: Mark Ogle's remarkable retrospective at the Hockaday Museum of Art, plus Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon'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.) Oh yes -- don't miss Arts In The Park next weekend!

A statewide "town meeting" style videoconference about the USA's health care crisis. There were many advocates from different political views, and a few ignoramuses, but the consensus was clear: No more bankruptcies or losing homes because of injury or illness!

I was running the tech for guest speaker Joseph Lisle Williams when he presented a lecture at my college about surviving a bear attack in Glacier National Park 50 years ago. Don Dayton, the ranger who shot the bear and saved the young man's life was at the event too. If you want to read more about it, his sister wrote a blog about her brother and the lecture HERE.

The other month, 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: Before we start looking back, the L.A. Opera is doing Wagner's Die Walkure -- Magic! Incest! Murder! Curses! Betrayal! Passion! Lust! Rebellion! Not to mention TEN woman singers in the famous Ride of the Valkyries sequence. Me and Robert Duval will have the radio turned 'way up for that one. I can't see the Avant Garde sets or costumes through the radio, though. Let's try a photo from the production:

Hapless heroine Sieglinde and Valkyrie Brünnhilde are surrounded by Valkyries Gerhilde, Ortlinde, Waltraute, Schwertleite, Helmwige, Siegrune, Grimgerde, and Rossweisse. Siegfried is present in utero, and dreaded All-Father Wotan will soon put a stop to all the fun.
Photo by Monika Ritterhaus, from the L.A. Opera's Website

Ch-ch-changes: 40 years ago, the crewmen of Apollo 11 went to the moon. Leading the TV coverage on CBS were trusted newsman Walter Cronkite and transcendent Science-Fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, the latter renowned for his contibutions to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a new film at the time. The world lost Mr. Clarke a few years back, but Mr. Cronkite passed away just yesterday, as NASA was celebrating the Apollo 11 mission. S-F does not have to look back for greatness, there are giants, old and young, living today, and NASA is doing great work with its barely-funded unmanned interplanetary probes.
The news industry, though, has lost what once made it special -- namely trust. The callow propaganda and shallow infotainment that pollutes our airwaves may even be fatally poisoning our newspapers. Even in retirement, Walter Cronkite was called the most trusted man in America. If people are correct in saying that we will never see another like him, it will be very depressing, and a symptom of societial rot.

Recent NASA photo of the Apollo 11 landing site, with our Earth-junk still littering the place. Taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera -- see the link HERE.

Back from UTAH! The Deer off Woodland Drive greeted me yesterday evening. Lots of Hawks and Eagles along the route back and forth.

View outside my base camp in Ogden Utah, looking north and west towards the Great Salt Lake and historic Promontory Point.
Sitemeter Sez: New York, New York; Oldsmar, Florida; Marshall, Virginia; Middletown, New Jersey; Sango, Brazil; Paris, Ile-de-France; Scottsdale, Arizona; Kaysville, Utah; Westminster, Maryland; Stafford, Virginia; Salt Lake City, Utah; Springfield, Massachusetts; Cairo, Egypt; Whitefish, Montana; Oakland, California; Layton, Utah; Winter Park, Florida; Farmington, Michigan; Vancouver, British Columbia; Dublin, Ireland; Washington, District of Columbia; Oschersleben, Germany; Melbourne, Florida; Dallas, Texas; Pasadena, California, and Saint Louis, Missouri.

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: Mark Ogle's remarkable retrospective at the Hockaday Museum of Art, plus Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon'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.)

A statewide "town meeting" style videoconference about the USA's health care crisis. There were many advocates from different political views, and a few ignoramuses, but the consensus was clear: No more bankruptcies or losing homes because of injury or illness!

I was running the tech for guest speaker Joseph Lisle Williams when he presented a lecture at my college about surviving a bear attack in Glacier National Park 50 years ago. Don Dayton, the ranger who shot the bear and saved the young man's life was at the event too. If you want to read more about it, his sister wrote a blog about her brother and the lecture HERE.

The other month, 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.

What Was Happening In Utah (?): I saw/heard Joan Baez singing like an angel; Tower of Power pounding out the Funk, and Spira Gyra playing clean, clear, and entertaining Jazz. Last Saturday I went to THREE festivals -- The Saturday Farmer's Market in Salt Lake, The Scottish Festival in Payson, and the Utah Jazz Festival in Salt Lake. The mountains were still green from abundant rains, and I walked many miles 'way above 8000 feet.
On late night TV, I saw a BBC video from 1975 featuring Lynrd Skynrd on The Old Grey Whistle Test, a live concert program I saw when I lived in England at the same time it was recorded. They weren't my favorite group by any means, but they played Southern Rock as well as anyone did. Too bad so many of them have died -- most of the 'front line' has passed on. Guitarist Gary Rossington is the only one living among those four.
Like about a billion others, I saw and appreciated the live tribute to Michael Jackson -- some very fine music played and sung in his honor. It's sobering to think that the last time I caught up with Jackson on live TV was at James Brown's funeral a number of years ago on CSPAN. He looked sick and frail then -- I thought it was just a bad case of jet-lag at the time, perhaps I was wrong.
I saw a couple of oddball films on TV as well -- Lou Adler's Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1981) with young Laura Dern and Diane Lane in a movie which wasn't exactly great, but had a few moments of truth here and there. One of my favorite artist/filmmakers, Frank Miller, stepped in a pile of poo when he made The Spirit (2008). The only good thing about this terrible movie was the lack of racist 40's stereotype Ebony White. Perhaps Samuel L. Jackson as crime-master Octopus was a substitute. Better luck next time, Mr. Miller!

THAT'S The Spirit!

Will Eisner's great years of The Spirit were between 1945 and 1952 when he worked with Jules Feiffer, Jerry Grandenetti, and other great craftsmen, to refine his vision of movies-on-paper in weekly comic sections. Eisner's character P'Gell (above) was played by beautiful Eva Mendes in Frank Miller's film adaptation, but the flick had nothing substantial at it's core and failed miserably, IMHO.