Wildlife: That hungry Kestral pearches near our feeders and scares all the other birds away.



Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!

Web Site News: New comments from James Donlon. Thanks for the corrections!

Weather: Mild Autumn days -- those gorgeous leaves are steadily sluffing off.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Six charities -- clicking is easy as easy can be.

Media Watch: One Nation Under A Groove was best when it covered the earliest days of George's barbershop, Doo-Wop, and Soul-to-Psychedelia. To tell you the truth, George's tales of his barbershop are the funniest ones I've heard, in my opinion. Hearing the Original P -- Calvin, Grady, Fuzzy, and Ray sing around a barber chair was worth tuning in all by itself! It's too bad that Ray Davis left us all earlier this year -- he was a fine bass singer, who even gigged with the Temptations for awhile. 1973's Shakey Ground was the nearest moment we have to mixing Parliament/Funkadelic with Motown. I can't cover everything I saw and heard in one blogging session, but I wish they hadn't relied on that BBC film from a decade ago -- it ended with a snippet of a live version of We Want The Funk, only the vocals were labored and out-of-tune. Guess what? These guys made the same funkin' mistake -- that's EXACTLY the wrong snippet to play under the closing credits.
The P-Funk Mob are the ones who suffer when people hear bad music on their TVs. They almost always sing well in concert -- if they have a bad night, it's an exception. When they did a less-than-great show in Los Angeles earlier this year the after-effects included most of their fall tour being cancelled, possibly because all the national promoters and press were at that single L.A. gig. The next night in San Francisco was spectacular, but the power-brokers weren't there to see it, or spread the good word.


George Clinton and Robert (P-Nut) Johnson up front in concert
"Giving up THE FUNK" while Lige Curry grooves on the bass in back

Wildlife: Jasmine, my beautiful Calico Cat, is terrified of big birds since she was chased by a flock of wild Turkeys eight years ago. Merry Gold, our fourteen-pound Tiny Tiger-Cat, somehow decided to stalk the Pheasant family -- he didn't learn THAT behavior from Jasmine. They just moseyed out of his range and kept grazing.



Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!

Web Site News: I ordered Ida Rubinstein's two biographies via Interlibrary Loan today. I looked at their prices, and they cost about a hundred bucks each if you buy them. I also found a website with great Leon Baxt (Baskt) artwork:
The Russian Avant Garde
(I speculate that he might have been in love with Ida -- but the whole city of Paris was in love with her too. Still, something amazing happens above and beyond the artist and model when they share aesthetics.)

Weather: A mild Autumn day -- those gorgeous leaves have about a week left.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Six charities -- click away.

Media Watch: I'm recording One Nation Under A Groove at school tonight. The satellite TV is still disassembled at home.
Hundreds of people are involved with the story of Parliament/Funkadelic. I wonder how many names are going to drop in this film?

Wildlife: Those two Raccoons were on the deck again last night, helping themselves to spilled bird food. I scared them back from the door with my flashlight beam, but they just sauntered underneath to lick some more leavings.



Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!

Weather: It got almost warm today. I shouldn't have left my car outside last night -- scraped a millimeter or more of frost off of every dam' window this morning.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Six charities can be helped with clicks.

Media Watch: I've been ripping up wall-to-wall carpeting so that we can lay down a wooden floor. Everything's disconnected, so we've been re-watching Bollywood movies on the VCR while we work. It was fun watching Suniel Shetty (Bad Guy) and Sanjay Doot (Good Guy) beating up each other again in Rudrakesh. They are a couple of big guys as far as Indian movie actors go.

Wildlife: We have had a couple of visits from a Kestral in our back yard -- she was chewing on a slow-flying Finch the first time.



Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!

Web Page News: New corrections from Cedric Curtis, long-time lead guitarist of Friends Roadshow -- great memory for names!
I'm looking at getting a proper domain for my pages too. There's too much in the archives to fit within Cyberport's personal webspace allocations.
I've also started a new project -- a 'modest' website devoted to Ida Rubinstein, an energetic young Jewish lady from St. Petersburg who joined Ballet Russes and became a sensation during Paris' Belle Epoque preceding WWI. She remained a force in Parisian Theatre for three more decades.
Read the Wikipeadia about her: Ida Rubinstein
About twelve years ago, I found an old yellowed newspaper page on the fringes of an otherwise undistinguished garage sale in Spokane, Washington -- it was from the American Examiner, and was copyright 1913 (Great Britain Rights Reserved). It had two large pictures of this elaborately costumed person from the Paris theatrical scene, a couple of spot illustrations of her, and a very strange story/interview by someone named Alan Dale, who seemed to have anything but an open mind about his subject. (Her name was given as Ida RUBENSTEIN, too.)
I am able to contribute those photos, illos, and the oddball article to Rubinstein's scholarship on the web. Luckily, there's at least two biographies about her in print now, where there was only a few scattershot blurbs a decade ago, so I can summarize the outlines of her whole career. I'm not really concerned about her private life, although it has some real significance in her case. She loved other women, and her social circle included some very famous women who lived their lives on their own terms, a fact which has inspired a number of web writers. My choice is to concentrate on her artistic achievements though -- and she had many.

Weather: Fairly nice days, fairly chilly nights, with just a trace of ice on the birdbath in the mornings.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Six charities can use your clicks.

Garage Sale Booty: Voices of the Loon, an old LP of wonderful bird calls that we didn't hear on our lake this year.

Media Watch: NFL Football -- Donovan McNabb's injury has got to be affecting the Philadelphis Eagles' game. They can't keep trying to play "catch-up" from multi-touchdown deficits. Dallas was ready to pounce on their weaknesses, and sure beat 'em bad! I don't know how they are set up at backup quarterback, but McNabb needs an operation.
PBS' Independent Lens is showing One Nation Under A Groove starting on Tuesday:

Wildlife: Big black Cormorants have been either migrating through or taking up residence on Middle Foy's Lake.



Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!

Weather: Near-frost this this morning at my house -- frost elsewhere.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site A half-dozen charities could use your clicks.

Media Watch: Bend It Like Beckham (2002) on satellite TV last night. It was directed by Gurinder Chadha, who recently did Bride and Prejudice with Bollywood superstar Aishwarya Rai. Her cast for Beckham are all capable actors, if not as stellar as Ms. Rai.
I like BOTH movies, but they have similar flaws (from my point of view) -- The tangle with Jess, Joe, and Jules would have be much better if it would have been a one-way crush on Jess' part, with Jules protecting innocent Joe from the consequences of false, but perceived intimacy with his players, while Joe tried to spare Jess' feelings while keeping her on the team. What romance there was in the movie wasn't really coherent, and was a serious flaw. Strong, affable Papa-ji (Anupam Kher) had every right to punch not-completely-innocent Joe in the nose. Jules' mom (Juliet Stevenson) was just plain badly written, much like the male lead in Bride. Stevenson looked as if she was doing a parody of Jennifer Saunders' Edina character from Absolutely Fabulous without the necessary humor, and as Spike Lee says: "Bad acting is the director's fault."

Gig photo -- Norton Buffalo & The Knockouts
F.O.E. Club, Kalispell, Montana; September 30, 2005


Tyler Eng, first-rank drummer for Norton Buffalo
(formerly with the Greg Kihn Band)

Wildlife: TWO Blue Jays are hanging out near the feeders now.



Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!

Weather: Oops, it's Autumn now, not Indian Summer -- the snow line is just over our heads.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Click to help a half-dozen charities.

In The Community: Ground-breaking for our new buildings at Flathead Valley Community College -- I shot some video of the ceremony last Friday, and I'm editing it RIGHT NOW!

Media Watch: Football season is starting to get interesting -- Oakland finally won a game. (Maybe they kept their penalties down for a change.) The Packers came from 'way behind and made Monday Night Football a contest, although they lost. The Philadelphia Eagles not only overcame a points-deficit on Sunday, they STOMPED Kansas City in the second half -- good going for Donovan McNabb! Mad TV's Frank has been pretty funny on Fox's preview show. Jillian hasn't been quite as droll as she's been in the past, but she's dressing sillier.
We have been fans of the show Sell This House on A&E. The same crew made a new show called Move This House, but I'm afraid that turkey's not going to fly. Everybody faces the task of sprucing up a place for sale or rent or some dam' thing, so it's easy to relate to Sell This House -- Tanya Memme and Roger Hazard are engaging personalities too. The magic doesn't quite work in the new show when Roger is hired as somebody's interior designer. There is a germ of a good idea in figuring out what old things to keep, use, store, or discard during a move, but it wasn't developed enough to be interesting to me.


A rare double rainbow in the western sky at 8 AM yesterday.
The sun was peeking through a tiny slit between low storm clouds
and the Rocky Mountains for about ten minutes.