The weather's still too damn cold for this time of year, with bloody localized snow flurries. That small herd of Deer still haunts South Woodland Drive, and the Osprey are still trying to live on fingerling fish out of Dry Bridge Pond, and fighting each other a bit.

Sitemeter Sez: Oakland, California; Sherman, Texas; Columbia Falls, Montana; Amsterdam, Holland; Dublin, Ireland; Oakland, California; Baltimore, Maryland; San Marcos, California; Santiago, Chile; Washington, District of Columbia; Columbus, Ohio, and Alameda, California.

MUCH more 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: Montana On The Move, New Artists, and The Auction of Miniatures are up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art, but we've put up a portrait exhibit in its place, including Larry Johnson's photos of local characters. Dan Fagre's show has come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

Media Watch: Trash A Go Go 'Chuck'ed Julianne Hough and her singer-boyfriend. He really wasn't very good, but I think Jewel's old man is worse. Unfortunate Melissa may be too injured to continue, but she and Tony Dovolani are going to give it another try. There's a tall guy in the pro competition who looks remarkable when he dances, otherwise he looks remarkably like a man from Mars. Speaking of which, Mr. Thicke, the guest singer on the results show, was total Kitsch. I kinda liked the busy Beethoven 5th Symphony goof-around, but the fake soul song was gawd-awful. (I wonder if he's related to 'bleh' Canadian comic actor Alan Thicke?) It was good to see Edyta dancing with a real dancer, though.
I like seeing/hearing President Barack Obama's press conferences -- nice to know a smart guy is trying to deal with the reality of the world, but I still wish he'd named his puppy 'Bark' Obama.

Where was I? Oh Yeah!

My friend Karen Quest plays a stilt-walking cowgirl named Lucky Starr, who stands head, shoulders, and more above all the the others! I videotaped her on the grounds of the Puyallup Spring Fair near Seattle, Washington last week.
(Photo from www.cowgirltricks.com)

The weather stayed on the cold side, with occasional snow flurries. A small herd of Deer haunts South Woodland Drive, and the Osprey are trying to live on fingerling fish out of Dry Bridge Pond.

Sitemeter Sez: Colorado Springs, Colorado; New York City, New York; Dortmund, Germany; Kassel, Germany; City of London, UK; Castle Rock, Colorado; Naperville, Illinois; Gainesville, Florida; Anchorage, Alaska, and Staten Island, New York.

MUCH more 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: Montana On The Move, New Artists, and The Auction of Miniatures are up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art, but we're moving everything down to the Hilton next Friday to sell it all, and putting up a portrait exhibit in its place, including Larry Johnson's photos of local characters. (Starting later today.) Dan Fagre's show has come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

Media Watch: I saw two versions of the Bollywood crime drama Don -- the original (1978) starring Amitabh Bachchan, and a remake (2006) with Shah Rukh Khan. Hmmm -- looks like the latter actor is doing Don 2, due for release in 2010. I liked the '78 movie much more -- the ridiculousness of its plot was redeemed by the supporting cast, and several ingenious touches during certain scenes. There's a sprawling messiness in classic Bollywood that I find charming. Refining that energy in modern times tends to expose logical flaws, even though the filmmakers try to compensate with technological sleight-of-hand. Bollywood is best at sentiment and romanticism, in my opinion, and I thought the '78 movie carried off these elements better. The large, looming prescence of Bachchan made things more convincing too.
I like Shah Rukh Khan quite a lot, comparing him favorably with Cary Grant, which is high praise indeed. Prolific Amitahb is much like India's James Stewart, and can play rough guys very well when the script calls for it. Khan wasn't a near as compelling as a sociopathic gangster. BTW -- ex-male model Arjun Rampal was excellent in the '06 film, as well as Kareena Kapoor as one of Don's early victims, but the original actors were awesome too!

Arjun Rampal as a sympathetic high-tech cat burglar in 2006's version of Don, filmed among the high-rise buildings of Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. He was a fairly good villain in Shah Rukh Khan's production Om Shanti Om the next year.

The wind turned cold on Thursday, and the weather tried to snow in the valley -- it was white above 1000 meters. I exchanged some fabulous emails with author Toni Bentley about her Ida Rubinstein presentation at Harvard University's 100 Year Celebration of Ballet Russes' debut in Paris. The High Patroness of Our Blog was the ONLY dancer who got her own slot in the seminar -- super-luminaries like Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova did not. Toni is always very fair to Ida's memory, but she writes as an ultra-disciplined former ballerina, which Rubinstein never was, and tells the truth. (Follow the links below)

Sitemeter Sez: Chandler, Arizona; Dayton, Ohio; Hainesport, New Jersey; Winter Park, Florida; Birmingham, Alabama; Summerville, South Carolina; Columbia Falls, Montana (Hi, Christy!); Mobile, Alabama; Copenhagen, Denmark; Mexico City, Mexico; Madrid, Spain; Eatontown, New Jersey; Bors, Sweden; Puteaux, Ile-de-France; Evansville, Indiana; Fort Worth, Texas; Oakland, California; Hiwassee, Virginia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Stockbridge, Georgia; Singapore City, Singapore, and Brooklyn, New York.

MUCH more 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: Montana On The Move, New Artists, and The Auction of Miniatures are up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art, but we're moving everything down to the Hilton next Friday to sell it all, and putting up a portrait exhibit in its place, including Larry Johnson's photos of local characters.
Dan Fagre's show has come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

The college has had many special events since I got back from Seattle, including Chef's Table and Lunafest earlier tonight. I spent a lot of hours turning tapes into DVDs this morning too.

Media Watch: A video of Jai Ho, with references to the original Bollywood dance in Slumdog Millionaire, only performed by the Pussycat Dolls, with English lyrics. I hope they aren't over-reaching. I prefer them light and humorous -- am hoping that the recent tour with Lady GaGa maybe made 'em a little goofier.
Trash A Go Go is getting fun, now that we're mostly outta the schlub-zone. I generally liked the results show because it was loaded with entertainers, more than I can name. The less I see/hear the group Celtic Women, the better I feel, but even THEY didn't overstay their welcome. I enjoy seeing new professionals, but making a contest out of the selection process doesn't please me. I knew Lawrence Taylor would go next, simply because he was so unenthusiastic. The cowboy and country singer can't last, because of their inabilities. I'm still favoring Cheryl and Gilles. It was terrifying to read that an armed stalker, targeting teenaged contestant Shawn Johnson, was captured in the Dancing with the Stars building. The alternative would have been worse, of course, but no kid should have to worry about things like this just because they are successful at a young age.

A digitized sketch of beautiful and talented Nicole Scherzer, current lead singer of The Pussycat Dolls, modified to resemble images I saw in their Jai Ho video.

Real Spring weather for Earth Day 2009! We have a wind from the north, but it's warm for a change. The Ospreys (Fish Eagles) are settling into the Flathead Valley, and all over the Pacific Northwest.

Sitemeter Sez: Woking, UK; Lyon, France; Limerick, Ireland; Salem, Massachusetts; Oakland, California; Hackensack, New Jersey; Denver, Colorado; Aurora, Oregon; Rockaway, New Jersey; Louth, Ireland; Rochester, New York, and Little Neck, New York.

MUCH more 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: Montana On The Move, New Artists, and The Auction of Miniatures are up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art.
Dan Fagre's show will come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

The award-winning movie Fuel was shown to a couple of hundred people at the college for Earth Day. Public turnout was great. We had many events going on, and will have more running through Saturday.

Media Watch: I caught some of Wagner's opera Siegfried while navigating the freeways around Seattle last Saturday -- treachery upon treachery, and a singing dragon to boot! There was a duel between bass-baritones when Wotan and Albrecht argued just before Siegfried slew his monster. This scion of incest by two of Wotan's children then took the magic ring and conquered the fires surrounding Wotan's daughter, the Waulkurie Brunhilde. They made love as only tenors and sopranos can. (These squirmy fantasies say a lot about Wagner's social class and royal patrons.) Love Potion Number Nine will take Brunhilde's hero away next week, but she'll make everybody pay -- Gotterdamerung!

Fafnir the Dragon, from Fritz Lang's vision
of the Siegfried story circa 1924.

It has been a fun bomb-out drive to the West Coast, and I'm heading back to Montana in about an hour. I visited my friend, choreographer / dancer Katie Duck this weekend in Seattle -- the closest we've been in proximity for 30 years. I also shot video of stilt-walker / trick-roper Karen Quest, who was working the Puyallup Spring Fair. (pictures later)

Sitemeter Sez: Rochester, New York; Little Neck, New York; Toronto, Ontario; Frankfort, Indiana; Los Angeles, California; San Francisco, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Broken Arrow, Oklahoma; Glasgow, Scotland; Denver, Colorado; Lansing, Michigan; Pereira, Colombia; Portland, Oregon; Oakland, California; Madrid, Spain; Chicago, Illinois; Whitefish, Montana (was that YOU, Dunnigan?); Rock Hill, South Carolina; North Fort Myers, Florida; Orem, Utah (uh, oh -- I'm going to visit there this summer); Farsta, Sweden (Stockholm area); Long Beach, California.

MUCH more 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: Montana On The Move, New Artists, and The Auction of Miniatures are up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art.
Dan Fagre's show will come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

Media Watch: A Seattle public-access channel showing dawg-assed dreadfuls in the late hours -- EXCELLENTly bad flicks like Mr. X; Gigantis the Fire Monster (sequel to Godzilla); and even Wild Women of Wongo, one of the worst of the worst -- from a sub-minor league that includes amateur filmmakers like Arch Hall Sr. and Cash Flagg. The hotel TV also showed Comic Book films like Spider Man II (pretty good), and Ultra Violet (almost good). Speaking of the latter movie, and model Milla Jovovich, I also saw pieces of Fifth Element, which made her an S-F movie star, as well as the stoopid Doom starring ex-wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson who is now a genre star too.

A digital sketch of model / musician / actress Milla Jovovich in the movie Ultra Violet. (Ultra-violent, get it?) Nude images of this beautiful, ambitious, artist and mother abound on the Internet, if ya' just hafta look. She's at her best doing high-fashion and cosmetics, but I'm glad she has the sense of humor it takes to slum around the S-F/Comic Book genre. Her music isn't bad at all, either.

Neighborhood Deer are still eating green in the twilight. There was a cold wind out of the North all week, but the grass is still growing fine.

Sitemeter Sez: Long Beach, California; Bellevue, Washington; Montreal, Quebec; Amarillo, Texas; Petaling Jaya, Malaysia; Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin; Sana, Yemen; Paris, Ile-de-France; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Okinawa, Japan; Albany Creek, Australia; Saint Louis, Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland; Brighton, England (again) and Louth, Ireland.

MUCH more 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: Montana On The Move and New Artists have their joint reception tomorrow. The Auction of Miniatures is up NOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- get over there and bid!
Dan Fagre's show will come down for awhile, but will go up again in May -- it is about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, and is a true labor of love by Fagre and other scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.

A Week of Mondays at the college in the wake of Spring Break. I edited that video advertising our Earth Day celebrations, though.

Media Watch: Trash A Go Go dropped the lousy dance-off idea again -- hopefully forever. Derek and Kim did the re-do. Cheryl and Gilles were still the best, although the ^%$#@! judges graded them down on a higher standard -- the latter couple were SUPERB again last Monday. I always speak well of Carmen Elektra -- she's funny, and entertaining, and choreographed a pleasant neo-burlesque number which outdid many a piece by more prestigious practitioners. Steve-O is gone, and Lawrence Taylor can't be far behind.

Theater X-Net has quite a lot of new material!

Another piece of artwork from Spring 1973 in my studio on 1st South, near the University of Utah. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was brand-new. I had David Bowie's Hunky Dory (Ch-Ch-Changes) on an 8 track tape in my Volkswagen. Model Mary (above) was in the Dance Department, and so was my friendly neighbor Lisa Katz. Soon, both me and my camera would be there too, pioneering portable video.
Speaking of Dance, I am going to visit my friend, choreographer / dancer Katie Duck this weekend in Seattle -- it's the closest we've been in proximity for almost 30 years. We first met while I was renting the 1st South Studio (above). I'll also spend time shooting video with stilt-walker/trick-roper Karen Quest, who is working the Puyallup Spring Fair.