The damn bird-bath may be infecting our cats with Giardia. We have to figure out a way of watering the birds without the kitties drinking too. We don't leave out near enough seeds to feed the Deer, but I'm glad to say they don't look overly thin.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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!
NEW! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Make a resolution as the days get longer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Native American art and artifacts from the Northern Plains, and Blackfeet artists take center stage at the Hockaday Museum of Art this Friday. It looks like we'll have a video crew there as well, as we "open" the traveling "trunk" show.

Media Watch: AMC showed a "DVD" version of William Friedkin's The Exorcist -- meaning it was letterboxed with all sorts of gossip flashing on the screen beneath the picture the while the film was running. It was great fun if you left the sound off, but sure got in the way of the story otherwise. There are too many adverts on that channel anyway, so I'm not sure this trick will help them keep their audience. The wretchedly laughable Exorcist II (1977) followed -- I liked Bob Logan's Reposessed (1990) a lot better than William Peter Blatty's stupid Exorcist III from the same year. Logan's script was lame, but funny sight gags were plentiful.
Speaking of demons -- Jacques Tourneur's Curse of the Demon (1957) was on TCM over the weekend -- a delightfully direct horror movie where the Supernatural just walks up takes over Reality for awhile. Tourneur also directed many well-photographed and well-acted genre films like: Cat People (1942); I Walked with a Zombie (1943); The Leopard Man (1943); Out of the Past (1947); and Berlin Express (1948).


Tourneur wanted to keep Demon footage out of his movie, and he was probably right -- however, I like this particular movie monster. It was made in the mid-50's when dawg-assed flicks were in flower, and this Demon stood "head and shoulders" above the competition for cheap scares -- except for maybe the rompin' stompin' Godzilla.

Fairly steady snow -- it only builds up an inch or two at a time. The soft temperatures cause midday melts. Raccoon tracks came from across the street to the North -- Little Foy's Lake. Our two resident Eagles seem to be hunting together, and there's a little family group of Whitetail Deer poking under logs trying to get at the Pheasants' Sunflower seeds.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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!
NEW! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Make a resolution as the days get longer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Native American art and artifacts from the Northern Plains, and Blackfeet artists take center stage at the Hockaday Museum of Art this Friday.

Media Watch: NFL Football -- today's winners go to the Superbowl. These conference championships are often better than the supposedly "big game."
Some oddly interesting stuff on TCM's usually-drab Cartoon Alley -- Daffy Duck as a WWII commando fighting Nazi vultures -- with a rotoscoped Adolf Hitler; Bugs Bunny "missing his turn at Albuquerque" and being chased through the Black Forest by Marshall Goering. Bugs rides the same horse dressed as the same Valkyrie he played a decade later in What's Opera Doc?. He also meets Hitler, and scares both villains off by impersonating Joseph Stalin; In the early days of Television, before I was even in 5th grade, cartoons like these were included in the indifferent rotation given to children's programming. For artistic, commercial, political, and social reasons, many WWII cartoons, and others, were later weeded out of garden-variety TV. (My friends Bob and Parley Holman were particularly fond of these time-specific media indulgences.) One cartoon I can't remember seeing as a kid was originally titled Gremlins From The Kremlin, which TCM played between Bugs and Daffy. Madcap director Bob Clampett cast Der Fuhrer himself piloting a bomber, solo, over the Soviet Union, which then falls apart in the skies, due to innumerable tiny Russian-stereotyped Gremlins sabotaging his plane to the tune of Volga Boatman. I'm sure the Cold War was a factor -- a mask of Stalin causes 'Adolf' to freak right out at the end.
Book TV tweaked my imagination with Jeff Sypeck speaking about his book Becoming Charlemange, and made my stomach hurt with Politically Incorrect Shakespeare -- the latter being re-fried, decades-old, right-wing propaganda, meaning lies, about Demonic University Professors supposedly stifling our cultural heritage. ('Nuff Said!) The former was about grim mideavel warlord Karl Der Gross (LOVE that name) becoming a major fountainhead of Christian Legend as my ancestors slowly acquired Civilization. In reality, Emperor Karl played an important part in prompting Europe to climb out of it's Dark Ages pigstye, and legends of his reign inspired many people over the following centuries.
Real Books -- I'm reading The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum. I am NOT a scholar, but the expansive vocabulary of words and phrases in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets always led me to suspect many hands in their creation. I doubt that he was a sovereign playwright in the mode of Moliere, Shaw, or O'Neill, but there is NO EVIDENCE for any of my suppositions. From what I am reading, there seems to be scant evidence for ANYONE'S suppositions about the authorship of Shakespeare's major works. Enjoy good live performances, or read the plays and poems -- you can't lose.

This ain't Shakespeare!

It's Chapiteau Bleu at Footsbarn Theatre's 35th Anniversary Celebration! Father Seamus (Shame-us) and his Sinful Sisters have dismounted from James' Velocycle, and are taking up a collection for booze. The Sisters string up their knickers in the cafe/bar for their street-theater entreaties. (L to R) Sister Christina, Sister Faustina, Sister Rachelle, and Sister - nah - Father Seamus under a veil, hustling another Euro or two.

The weather is gray, with light dustings of snow. The iciness is not quite as bad as it was earlier, but the roads are far from safe.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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!
NEW! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Make a resolution as the days get longer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Nice opening reception at the Hockaday Museum of Art last night! The portrait show is very good, and it was fun seeing painter/gallery owner Marshall Noice and his family. He has always supported the museum, but this is the first show featuring his colorful semi-abstracted landscapes that we've done together for most of a decade. We have shown individual paintings in group shows, and hung his famous black-and-white photos of Glacier National Park, though. His daughter Rachel, who used to volunteer for us, showed up as well. We're going to host another reception for the general public tonight.
One of our new buildings at Flathead Valley Community College is still in a near-completion state as the semester begins next week -- my crew will be installing some multimedia equipment in two of the classrooms then.

Media Watch: There were so many movies with Harry Warren's music -- TCM was showing some of the more obscure ones last night. I mentioned Colleen in a previous blog entry -- the last teaming of Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell. It featured Joan Blondell and Hugh Herbert doing their crazy schtick, with some other good WB stock character actors, including ex-Mack Sennett foil Louise Fazenda and Goldie Hawn-precursor Marie Wilson. Stars on Broadway, the very lame Broadway Goldolier, and low-comedy In Caliente preceeded Colleen on the cable/satellite. All three had Busby Berkeley sequences of uneven quality, with specialties by the generally prosaic Bobby Connolly here and there. Hal Wallis -- who later gave the public what they thought they wanted with Beach Party movies, Elvis Presley movies, and Jerry Lewis movies -- started showing his homogenizing hand about this time. I don't think the public really wanted their favorite entertainers wearing out their welcome by repeatedly doing the drivel Wallis produced for them, though.
On a positive note, fans of excellent actors might appreciate seeing Frank McHugh, Dolores del Rio, Pat O'Brien, Edward Everett Horton, Adolphe Menjou, Joan Blondell, and then-husband Dick Powell, Leo Carrillo, and Glenda Farrell interacting with one another in these obscure flicks -- I sure do!


Dolores Del Rio (center) was the star of In Caliente. Winifred Shaw (upper left) led off singing The Lady In Red during Busby Berkeley's production number, before Judy Canova ruined it. Ms. Del Rio wasn't in the floor show at all, but I've fixed that oversight in this transformative collage.

Arctic Blast time in Montana -- sub-zero temperatures no matter whose scale you use, except maybe Lord Kelvin's. A light snow sat like styrofoam on everything, until the wind started. Sunday is sunny, but nothing's going to melt under these conditions. The snow blows back and forth like sand on the roads. Racoon tracks on the back deck. The Magpies helped themselves to the body of a Dove who crashed against our front window -- GROSS!

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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!
NEW! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Make a resolution as the days get longer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: New shows opening at Hockaday Museum of Art next week.

Media Watch: NFL Football -- the playoff tournament is easy to describe at this point. Eight teams play this weekend. Four teams play next weekend. Two teams play in the Super Bowl after that. (Got that, Dublin? Whatever happened in that Hurling championship last summer?)
Other things showing up on the TV include -- G4 Network devoting three hours or more to an Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. Wait a minute, those people are usually into computer games! Hmmm -- their 'top ten' porno flicks sure look like dirty versions of popular gaming scenarios, and the sex toys get some attention. Wonder why? They can't hide the sad exploitiveness of that racket behind fuzzy pixels though. OMG! Right next door is VH1 trying one more Surreal Life series with D-List celebrities -- including porn king Ron Jeremy, self-esteem-impared Brigitte Neilsen, more has-been Pop stars, more busty women, more fakery and degrading conflict. 90 seconds = more than enough.
A couple more black and white rarities emerged from the past on the satellite/cable -- a Basil Rathbone potboiler from the mid-50's with character actors Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine. I can't remember the title, but I can't recommend the movie either. I'd previously heard about At Midnight I Will Eat Your Soul, made in Brazil about 1962, but that grim sadism was too much for me and I couldn't watch it for very long -- ugh.
Is there something on Book TV? Shit -- P.J. O'Rourke, former Lampoon writer, turned smug right-wing bootlicker. The USA has turned against Bu$hCo, and hopefully his whole brand of stupidity, since that boneheaded Iraq speech earlier this week. I hope O'Rourke's ship goes down too.
Changing the subject -- Queen of Blood (released 1966) is a colorfully dawg-assed vampire movie where an unconscious green-skinned, blood-sucking, Euro-60's model is being transported back to Earth by a buncha DUMB astronauts. She wakes up every now and then to feed on the international crew -- Dennis Hopper plays one of her first victims. Like Carradine and Chaney, bit parts paid Hopper's rent during some of the deep trenches of his career -- at this time he was slowly mending fences in the movie industry, and making alliances with Hollywood offspring like Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson. Easy Rider was several years in the future. Queen of Blood spliced in some Soviet-made special effects between the (chuckle) dramatic sequences, coincidently led by Basil Rathbone, who deserved a special straight-faced acting award for performances like this.


Novelist, satirist, and humorist Robert Anton Wilson died on January 11, 2007 from a debillitating illness. He was USA-born, but a long-time resident of Ireland. He was an admirer of Emperor Norton, the 19th Century San Francisco eccentric who printed his own money, and a guiding light of the American Underground, who readily inspired participatory lunacy like the Discordian Movement and Church of the Subgenius. His own fans pitched in to help last year, thanks to the Internet, when medical bills threatened to ruin him financially. He weathered that storm, but couldn't avoid the inevitable end. The whole world is poorer for his passing, but we can continue to celebrate his life and art. As the great man himself often proclaimed:
Hail Discordia and the All-Seeing Eye!

Four snowstorms blew through the Western USA, but very little of it was left where I live because it melted or soaked away. An Arctic blast followed, and we're enduring sub-zero temperatures all weekend. I'll make sure to put out a lot of seed and suet for the birds! We were too far north to see Comet McNaught this week -- it hugged the horizon at 40 degrees, and we're 9 degrees closer to the pole. The mountains probably helped hide it from me as I searched in the bitter cold too. (Dare I say "It was all for McNaught?")

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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!
NEW! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Make a resolution as the days get longer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: New shows opening at Hockaday Museum of Art next week.

Media Watch: TCM played some more Busby Berkeley movies from the end of his run with Warner Bros/First National. The longer he sat in the director's seat, the more prosaic his work seemed to become. I don't like his MGM Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney films at all, nor do I like For Me and My Gal (Gene Kelly's movie debut). I find it ironic that someone who made jokes about turn-of-the-century theater had his biggest commercial successes with dreary re-vamps of the same cliches he made fun of. The Gangs All Here is a remarkable exception, though -- you can argue that Berkeley imitated himself, but he did it in Technicolor! I might also mention that his specialty numbers retained their edge into the 50's, but I was very sorry to read how his carelessness caused Esther Williams' broken neck in Million Dollar Mermaid, and some near accidents in Easy to Love. You might blame alcohol, and you might be right.
I watched a Richard Lester movie that I never knew existed -- It's Trad, Dad!, a British teen exploitation flick shot around 1962. I appreciated it being nearly 90% musical acts. The plot was so bare-bones and stupid that Lester wasted only as much time as it deserved. It's a pity he couldn't play this trick more often. His characters were sketchy, but comical. He used literally dozens of visual tricks to make the many songs interesting -- a little scrapbook of divergent thinking from the man I consider to be a major Godfather of Music Video. Here's a list of the singers and groups from the credits -- Helen Shapiro, Craig Douglas, and John Leyton all sang and acted a bit. The Brook Brothers were a suited-up, pomaded, song and dance duo who LOOKED like they were related, but I wondered about that very stiff trio called Paris Sisters. There were loads of U.K. bands playing antique Jazz: The Dukes of Dixieland; Chris Barber & Ottlie Patterson; Bob Wallis; Terry Lightfoot; a deadpan funny bunch called The Temperance 7, which reminded me of Geoff Stevens' New Vaudeville Band (Winchester Cathedral, anyone?) ; and Mr. Acker Bilk, who became an international star with Stranger on the Shore. There were some first-rank American Rock & Rollers in the mix: Chubby Checker; Del Shannon; Gary U.S. Bonds; a smokin' performance by Gene McDaniels; and Gene Vincent dressed in coveralls, leaning on a mop with dancers all around him -- trying to recover from the car crash which made his short life very painful, and killed Eddie Cochran outright. The movie ended with one of Sounds Incorporated's two sax players blowing a screaming solo -- I remember seeing them on American TV a few years after this film was made -- excellent instrumental Rock, showy and well-played -- always a welcome addition to Shindig.

Real Books: Finished Lord of the Rings for this season. I first read it 40 years ago, and lost count of how many times I've succumed to J.R.R. Tolkien's spell. My friend Brian W. Aldiss wrote some insightful criticism of this work in Trillion Year Spree, especially in comparison with Mervyn Peake's brilliant Gormanghast. Brian was correct, but Tolkien's wonderous magic still enchants me.

Ballantine's Lord of the Rings covers by Barbara Remington


Prof. Tolkien's personal appeal on the cover of Ballantine's Fellowship of the Ring convinced me to buy it at Sam Weller's Books in downtown Salt Lake City during the winter of 1966. While waiting for the bus home, I read the introduction, and let the endpaper maps guide my imagination to Middle Earth as I sat on a stool at the old-fashioned counter of Walgreen's Drug Store in a snowstorm. Like the professor, I had many duties I did not neglect, and didn't get to Mount Doom until early in the Summer, but I was certainly ready for the quest to finish by then. The Appendix rekindled my enthusiasm for Tolkien's fantasy world, though, and I followed Bilbo Baggins through The Hobbit with unflagging delight. I've been happy to participate in the phenomenon of Heroic Fantasy rising from our cultural unconcious to inspire further generations of readers and creators -- far beyond the ken of the scholarly acolytes who conjured it's spirit in the pubs of Oxford.

Two of the Bald Eagles seem to be paired up -- I hope they all find enough to eat. We are supposed to get several waves of storms this week, but they are dropping only miniscule amounts of snow. Have I told you what this moisture does to the roads? Oh yeah -- as Little Richard sings: slippin' and a slidin'

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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!
NEW! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Make a resolution as the days get longer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Updates on the Hockaday Museum of Art's Website.

Media Watch: We are re-watching TCM's Busby Berkeley mini-thon from the other night. I might as well list my favorites from this lot:
1) 42nd Street (1932)
One of the very few backstage musicals with an echo of truth.
2) Footlight Parade (1933)
James Cagney and Ruby Keeler dance together! The acting is excellent too.
3) Dames (1934)
Might as well have been called "Gold Diggers of 1934." Berkeley's pieces are pretty cartoonish, but Hugh Herbert and Zasu Pitts are hilarious!

4) Gold Diggers of 1933
I like Ned Sparks' crabby but warm-hearted character, plus a couple of production numbers, but it's a step down IMHO.
5) Gold Diggers of 1935
Except for Winifred Shaw singing Lullaby of Broadway, I can take or leave this bonehead comedy, although the actors do their jobs OK. Ruby Keeler is missing -- but she and Powell did three more films together: Flirtation Walk, Shipmates Forever, where Keeler looks physically ill, but Powell's first-rate acting bouys up the flick, and finally Colleen, with Joan Blondell, Hugh Herbert, and one of my LEAST favorite actors from the 30's, Jack Oakie.
Go into Your Dance (shown the other night) and Wonderbar feature Al Jolson, the guy whose stardom helped sell movies with sound to the public. Berkeley made another string of flicks with another New York comic actor, Eddie Cantor, for Sam Goldwyn's rival studio -- some of which belong in Berkeley's 'Top Ten.' However, the same can't be said of either of Jolson's two Berkeley movies. They occupy a very strange place in both showmen's histories -- crime and criminals, sex and alcohol abuse, and showbiz's seamy backside are primary elements of their plots.
Ruby Keeler takes a bullet meant for Jolson, and we're not really sure if Mrs. Jolson is dying or not in the dressing room during the finale, while her old man is out singing Go into Your Dance onstage. (The dialog SAYS they've called the doctor!)
In Wonderbar, the radiant Dolores Del Rio joins the Warner Bros./Busby Berkeley stock company for a few pictures. She stabs her philandering lover during their act, and Jolson not only covers up the crime, but stands aside to aid her real affections for Dick Powell. The movie is structured in long set-pieces, and entertainment of one form or another fills more than 80% of the running time, unlike most Berkeley flicks. This finale has Jolson Going to Heaven on a Mule, in his trademark blackface -- overblown in itself, plus demeaning, insulting, and almost unwatchable now. It was a substantial hit at the time it was made though.
Try this Busby Berkeley Website