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.

The heavy, deeply-packed snow was melting away when we got hit with another winter storm. It is STILL winter in Montana. Driving was hazardous, but the Honors Symposium at the college still had over 200 people in attendance. (see below)

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Jamaica, New York; Brooklyn, New York; Granite Falls, North Carolina; Houston, Texas; Antelope, California; Killeen, Texas; Bangkok, Thailand; Oakland, California; Cary, North Carolina; Louth, Ireland; Lake Bluff, Illinois; Findlay, Ohio; Edinburgh, Scotland and Toronto, Ontario.

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.

My friend Scott Wheeler, retired professor of European history and United States military history at West Point took on the subject Historical Roots of Chinese Worldview. He outlined differences between European and Chinese traditions, sketched a brief timeline of the dynasties, and encapsulated the major ideas of Confucius, Mencius, Xun Zi, and Zhu Xi in The Great Learning. He even got in some basic Buddhism in his description of the T'ang Dynasty. Good work, Scott!

Winterscape by Ma Yuan circa 1200 A.D. --
a near-contemporary of Zhu Xi.
Next is a lecture entitled, “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. (Mar. 5) 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: Yeah, I saw the Academy Awards broadcast last Sunday -- I was glad they tried to do things differently. It was too bad they failed so many times -- my wife wondered if the tech designer planned those wandering-camera segments for large-scale HD screens and forgot that most people still use 3 by 4 TVs.
Hugh Jackman might have imitated the late, great Peter Allen a bit too often -- I think his experience as "Boy from Oz" limited him last Sunday. He sang MUCH better after his voice warmed up, and especially when Beyonce Knowles made her own sweet musical sounds. I would have liked the song-and-dance stuff much more if the jokes hadn't had been so bleepin' lame.
I was rooting for Slumdog Millionaire -- I even endured the Golden Globes for that movie's sake. They told their story well, which every movie should do. It was remarkable that the filmmakers could use fantasy to utilize such ugly, but real, situations as the backdrop for a beautiful movie. Rahman's Jai Ho! was an excellent choice for best song, and I enjoyed seeing him perform.

Dancer, Dancer in the Hall -- Who's the REAL Star after All?

The best actor in the Flash Gordon serials was Charles Middleton as Emperor Ming (upper left). The newest page in my strip/serial comparison features the arch-villain, and also the dancing women who occasionally graced the feature, providing sort of a 'censorship barometer.' The image above was drawn by Alex Raymond in 1935. See the rest of the page HERE.

The late winter weather has been fairly gentle, so we went to Canada to find some cold temperatures. It was around zero degrees (F!) when I stood in line to buy thermal underwear at the Hudson Bay store on Banff Avenue.

Banff National Park from a roadside lookout over the Bow River, February 15, 2009.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Berlin,Germany; Cleveland, Ohio; Breaux Bridge, Louisiana; Mountain View, California; Bombay, India; Porto Alegre, Brazil; Louth, Ireland; Saint Martinville, Louisiana; Sterling Heights, Michigan; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and Calgary, Alberta.

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!
NEW 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.

Media Watch: Dreams From My Father (1994) by now-President Barack Obama on DVD while traveling in the car -- read by the author. Our president has a talent for accents and idioms that I wasn't aware of before.
The details of his story came alive when his warm voice evoked Hawaii, Indonesia, the urban USA, and finally Nairobi, plus the Luo region of Kenya, by vividly describing the lives of the people who LIVE in these far-flung places. His keynote speech from the 2004 Democratic Convention was also on the CD, as well as an excellent Prologue and Afterword.

Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States of America, January 20, 2009. Taken from live TV in my office. I have previously quoted his speech from that day on this blog.

A little bit of melting and drainage was welcome, as was the bright full moon!

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Tucson, Arizona; Helena, Montana; London, Kentucky; Copenhagen, Denmark; Rochester, New York; New York City, New York; Cluj, Romania (again); Wethersfield, Connecticut; Grafton, Wisconsin, and Newark, New Jersey.

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!
NEW UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Flash Gordon in 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.

Media Watch: The Mistress of Spices starring Aishwarya Rai (2005), an English-language production, filmed in Baker's Beach, Golden Gate Park, and The Presidio in San Francisco, the Isle of Man, London, England, and Oakland, California. The original novel was by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and I hope it was better than the film, which wasn't consistent about being mystical or romantic. Rai's character, Tilo, had to follow "rules" which were too dumb to be compelling, and we viewers' willing suspension of disbelief was abused badly. The acting was generally very good -- especially Anupam Kher, who plays lots of fatherly roles in Indian movies. The camera work was excellent, and the feeling of reading a book was strong. There were too many holes in the fabric of the plot, though, and it fell apart at the seams. (At least it wasn't a dawg like Last Legion!)

F-F-F-Flashes: A man contacted me who I hadn't seen since 1984. J.A. Anderson was a charter member of the Salt Lake Mime Troupe, and somehow he found my web pages at http://theatrex.net -- the photo below was published in the Salt Lake Tribune during April of 1973, and was taken at a commercial development called Trolley Square, created from former metropolitan bus garages. I started making videos with them soon after this picture was shot, and the experiences we shared together changed all our lives.

The original Salt Lake Mime Troupe: Mr. Anderson is at the far left, and then there are nine more -- Top Row: Evy Tessman, Patsy Droubay (still my friend), and Stephanie. 2nd Row: Wendy Loring, Franklin Tomorrow, and Matt Child (still my friend). 3rd Row: Becky, Katie Apenzellar/Berger AKA Katie Duck (long story, and still my friend), finally Steve Rasmussen (an interior designer I knew well into the 80's). There were a few others who weren't in this picture -- like my friend Paul Blackwell, Jeff, Duffy, and Wendy's corps of Modern Dancers who performed an animated Pop Art painting.

Lots of puddles and ice dams from the messy ice storm yesterday.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Lubbock, Texas (reading about Buddy Holly and old Rock and Roll, I bet); Cluj, Romania; Louth, Ireland; Dubai (Hi Hi Hi, Chris, Roseanna, and/or Rachelle); United Arab Emirates; Stavanger, Norway, and Farmington, Michigan.

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!
NEW UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Flash Gordon in 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.

Media Watch: Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) by Gaetano Donizetti on the Met Opera broadcast today -- sonic heaven if you like Bel Canto opera. (Me! Me!)
Text in Italian by Salvatore Cammarano after Sir Walter Scott's novel The Bride of Lammermoor; Conductor: Marco Armiliato; Lucia: Anna Netrebko; (Bravo! Bravo!); Edgardo: Rolando Villazón; Enrico: Mariusz Kwiecien; Raimondo: Ildar Abdrazakov;
Housecleaning is easy with I Love Crazee Lucy! on the radio.
(There's no sex in THIS sextette.)
Chi mi frena in tal momento?
EDGARDO:
Who restrains me at such a moment?
Who disrupts the course of anger?
Her misery, her terror
are proof of remorse!
But, like a wilted rose,
she hangs between life and death...
I am vanquished... I am shocked!...
I love you, thankless one, I love you still!
ENRICO:
Who restrains my fury,
the hand that reaches for the sword?
But for the unhappy girl there rises
in my breast sounds of sympathy!
She is of my blood! I have betrayed her,
she hangs between life and death...
Oh, that I am not able to stifle
the remorse in my heart.
LUCIA:
I hoped that my life,
had ended all my fears...
But death has not come to help me,
I live still, to my torment!
The veil has fallen from my eyes,
earth and heaven have both betrayed me!
I want to weep, but I cannot...
Even tears have forsaken me.
RAIMONDO, ARTURO:
What an awful moment!
All words fail me...
Heavy clouds [veils] of terror
seem to hide the sun's rays!
Like a wilted rose
she hangs between life and death...
Whoever is not deeply moved by her
has a tiger's heart in his breast.
ELISA, CORO, RAIMONDO, ARTURO:
Like a wilted rose
Like a wilted rose ...

Spoiler: Everybody DIES! Well, most of 'em, anyway.

Here's a weird case -- (Quoted from The Associated Press)
BOSTON — A street artist famous for his red, white and blue "Hope" posters of President Obama has been arrested on warrants accusing him of tagging property with graffiti, police said Saturday. Shepard Fairey was arrested Friday night on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art for a kickoff event for his first solo exhibition, called "Supply and Demand..."
... The museum said Fairey was released a few hours after his arrest...
Here's what makes it weird --
(The image used in Fairey's red, white and blue "Hope" posters of President Obama) is the subject of a copyright dispute with The Associated Press. Fairey argues his use of the AP photo is protected by "fair use," which allows exceptions to copyright laws based on, among other factors, how much of the original is used, what the new work is used for and how the original is affected by the new work.

Right Wing Political Retribution?
A transformed digital portrait of entrepreneur/guerilla artist Shepard Fairey, and his iconic HOPE poster, admittedly derived from a fraction of an AP news photograph, which coincidently included movie star George Clooney at a Washington hearing sitting alongside then-Senator Obama. The photo was old news, and forgotten, before Fairey reinterpreted it, a circumstance which may change with AP's lawsuit. YOU can make a similar transformation at ObamIcon.Me
Whatever anyone thinks about Fairey's artistic merits, he sure tuned-in to a major resonator in our society, and his imagery helped make a change. (BTW -- I ain't payin' ya' NOTHING for this picture, Shep!)