NEW Web Site: Theater X-Net

Featuring: The illustrated story of Ida Rubinstein
Russian/Judaic Princess of Belle Epoch Parisian Theatre.

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

Weather: More snow over the ice -- slowww going on the way to work.

Wildlife: Two full-racked bucks were following the Whitetail doe this morning on Buckboard. There was no fighting or anything -- she might be their MOM!

Charity Alert: Click on The Hunger Site -- click to help somebody or something good.

In The Community: The Art Walk is this Friday! We got that 100 Years banner down without a problem yesterday, but the damn window sash which was underneath needs repainting, and it can't happen until the weather is right. Hockaday Museum's Website

Media Watch: Bush was on the radio this morning, speaking from the Naval Academy.
(Following rant was cross-posted on DailyKos.com)
Another excuse to get out of class was almost the first words out of his mouth.
My anger was palpable -- so much so I literally saw red in the gray morning light.
The roads were covered with ice and new-fallen snow in my corner of Montana, so I slowed 'way down, made sure my seat belt was fastened, and turned off my radio in order to save my life.
(King Sunny Ade was playing on my tape machine -- thanks for the mellow vibes when I needed them most.)


Juju Music by King Sunny Ade
and his African Beats from 1982.
Drums and guitars rippling together like sparkling water to my ears.

All my life I wanted to be the kind of person who could face facts, listen, and reserve judgement until the facts were in -- and then further suspend judgement to make sure my facts matched reality before I acted. Anger just cuts my intelligence off at the brain stem.
It seems that the words of the President of the United States should have importance. When they are lies, fabrications, and worse, the consequences are beyond dreadful.
What is still worse is that I don't want to even HEAR someone who's lying to me, and I have to read it later, or slowly take it in via media "filters." (like DailyKos or HuffingtonPost)
There is danger to the independence of my mind in this strategy, but it's better than crashing my car in anger (I didn't) because of the deer herd running in front of me this morning.
Clinton damn near sunk his own credibility by lying about his foolish sexual escapades -- Bush lies about things that concern everybody's health and safety, but DEMANDS that we waste our time paying attention to him, while his henchman loot our treasury.
Until I hear that those 14 supposed permanent bases and super-embassy in Baghdad are no longer part of our country's criminal occupation of Iraq, I refuse to even read his blather.

NEW Web Site: Theater X-Net

Featuring: The illustrated story of Ida Rubinstein
Russian/Judaic Princess of Belle Epoch Parisian Theatre.

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

Weather: A down-to-it winter snowfall in progress this morning -- all over Western Montana.

Wildlife: The Pheasants were out and feeding this morning, despite the deepening snow.

Charity Alert: Click on The Hunger Site turn your browsing into aid and relief.

In The Community: This snow is going to affect the Art Walk this Friday. Whatever falls now will still be on the ground then. As a matter of fact, I'm supposed to go to the Hockaday this afternoon and take a banner down -- hmmm, might be tricky, but all I really need is a ladder and a set of wire-cutters. We'll need to be dressed for the weather though -- that tall ladder is a monster-drag to handle, and we don't want to be outside any longer than necessary. Hockaday Museum's Website

Media Watch: Last Sunday I was channel-flipping while making my morning coffee. All of the sudden I saw BOOTSY COLLINS onstage in some justly-forgotten 80's comedy and I immediately put the remote control down. The music was fabulous, and there was a lot of it, but I couldn't make out who was in the band -- everyone seemed to be wearing shades, but not their "normal" P-Funk costumes.
I went right to "One Nation, the Semi-Official P-Funk Bulletin Board" and typed an inquiry about The Night Before, the flick in question, which starred Keanu Reeves in a role that makes Bill and/or Ted look smart.
Here are the answers from the Mob's well-versed fans:


Willam (Bootsy) Collins
and his Starburst Precision Mutron Bass
Classic 80s stuff...sorry ass, stereotypical film, but there's The Funk Mob as the Rat's Nest Band. George dons football shoulder pads, Bootsy sports an Uncle Fester type drape, DoWop looking all suave. And the music is the bomb, esp. for the 80s. Not available though on any release. I caught George on a BET show in the 90s, called in and asked him about that film...Bootsy didn't even remember doing it...and of course George, ever the Hustler, said, yeah, brother, you kind of cosmic. I just found those tapes. And you will be hearing it. LOL...shyt, that was about 10-13 years ago. Do that head thing...

Baby Boy, Way Over There, and Honk it (@ 7 minutes of screen time audio in the movie).

I like the "Absent" CD as a Family Series thang. I like it in that sense. That being said, that "Baby Boy" cut would've fit right in. By the way......the movie was shitty.....but The Funk turned it out! Too bad it was a such a sorry flick.

My brother has (had?) a VHS of that movie recorded off of TV from maybe 15 years ago. Very vague memories... I seem to recall Blackbyrd and Mudbone being there ...

Blackbyrd yes, Mudbone no.
Honk is da' jam! That was some nasty funk on there. Way Over There, Baby Boy...

GC, Bootsy, Byrd, Garry, Trey Lewd, Jessica Cleaves, and Lynn Mabry.
If I remember anyone else, I'll add accordingly.
Joe Harris...think he is from the Undisputed Truth.

Summary: So this version of Parliament/Funkadelic was George Clinton, William (Bootsy) Collins, Dwayne (Blackbyrd) McKnight, Garry (Doo Wop) Shider, Tracy (Trey Lewd) Lewis (George's oldest son), Joe Harris, and two of the Funk Mob's finest singers -- Lynn Mabry and Jessica Cleaves. The songs were Honk, Way Over There, and Baby Boy -- none of which are available as independent recordings.

NEW Web Site: Theater X-Net

Featuring: The illustrated story of Ida Rubinstein
Russian/Judaic Princess of Belle Epoch Parisian Theatre.

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

Wildlife: The Blue Jays and Magpies sneaked onto the deck for peanuts between snow flurries over the weekend. Huge Canada Geese took off and landed in the lake all day Sunday.

Weather: Middle Foy's Lake had a layer of ice everywhere except in the aereation pond Monday morning. The sun came out, but it was less than 20 degrees (F) most of the day.

Charity Alert: Click on The Hunger Site for an easy way to help out people, animals, and our environment.

Media Watch: NFL Football -- I like closely contested games. Chicago out-muscled Tampa Bay yesterday, then the NY Giants were beating up on the tired Seattle Seahawks, coming from behind to tie the game in the final minutes. New York's kicker missed a the field goal as time expired -- trouble was, he missed two more in overtime as well. After the Giant's third miss, home team Seattle somehow got their strength back and drove close enough to the goal line for a field goal attempt of their own -- and their kicker didn't miss. Since I've been following Philadelphia all season, like it or not, I'll mention that they beat Green Bay 19 to 14. Pregame madness was alright -- Shannon Sharpe has been pretty funny on NBC, the Fox crew is consistently goofy, Frank Calliendo's impressions are still good, and Jillian Barbarie has her voice back -- I'm sure she needed that day off on Thanksgiving.

Happy Birthday To Me: I got a DVD of Cream at the Royal Albert Hall from May of 2005.


Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton, and Jack Bruce
on a Fillmore/Winterland poster from 1968 by Lee Conklin (above)
Photo of Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, and Ginger Baker
in NYC, Nov. 2005 for a concert at Madison Square Garden
which reportedly grossed over $11 Million (below)

NEW on the Web: Theater X-Net

Featuring: The illustrated story of Ida Rubinstein
Russian/Judaic Princess of Belle Epoch Parisian Theatre.

Thanks to Toni Bentley, author of The Sisters of Salome who took a look at Ida's chronology, and wrote these very nice words: Dear Mike, OK the link worked this time and the website is simply wonderful! Really quite lovely and thrilling to click through. Thanks for doing it and thank you for sending me the link.
Toni's written a number of other interesting books and articles, as well as dancing for George Balanchine in the NYC Ballet: Toni Bentley's Website



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

Wildlife: The Raccoon pair visited us last night -- the cats were all staring out the back door, and when I looked out two sets of black-masked eyes were staring back at me from either side of the box feeder.

Weather: The inversion has passed, but a huge snowstorm is about to envelop the Western USA and Canada, well out into the upper Great Plains.

Charity Alert: Click on The Hunger Site every day -- they can handle it.

In The Community: The Kalispell Art Walk is a week from tonight. I'll be at the Hockaday Museum of Art helping to host our share of the event, where art galleries all over the downtown area stay open, serving food and drink, until about 9 PM to kick off the Christmas season, and have a mutual welcome-to-winter party. The People's Choice Awards for the Hockaday's Member's Salon will be announced that night as well. Hockaday Museum's Website

Media Watch: Who needs Mystery Science Theater 3000? I just got an early birthday present of a dozen dawg-assed movies on DVD. We watched The Wasp Woman (1960) last night, and no, it wasn't the inspiration for Desperate Housewives (W.A.S.P. s everywhere! Nothing but W.A.S.P. s!) -- it was B-Movie Queen Susan Cabot's last starring role. The other goodies were: Bucket of Blood, Little Shop of Horrors, The Terror, The Ape (both with Boris Karloff), Bowery at Midnight, Brooklyn Gorilla, and Devil Bat (all three with Bela Lugosi), Indestructable Man (with Lon Chaney Jr.), Attack of the Giant Leeches, Great Gila Monster, Dead Men Walk, and The Manster (there's gotta be a dud in every group -- I never liked that last film).

Welcome Toni Bentley! Take a look at: Theater X-Net

Featuring: The illustrated story of Ida Rubinstein
Russian/Judaic Princess of Belle Epoch Parisian Theatre.

I sent emails to all three of the authors who I quoted in my project. Toni Bentley, author of The Sisters of Salome wrote back to me -- she wants to look at Ida's illustrated chronology on http://theatrex.net but the URL I sent her via email wouldn't work. (Day-um!) I replied with some alternate ways of getting there -- including visiting this blog!
Sad to say, but Michael DeCossart, Ida's pioneer biographer, passed away a few years ago according to his publisher. I wonder if Vicki Woolf will contact me through her publisher too? She's a busy BBC actress who just might have a multi-level firewall between her and the general public. (I hope she's proud enough of her book to sneak a peek, though.)



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

Wildlife: A huge Redtailed Hawk was watching Buckboard Lane from atop the high-tension tower. Pheasant families were strolling through the neighbor's yards.

Weather: The cursed temperature inversion continues -- dark, cold, just above freezing, and trying to snow under low gray clouds.

Charity Alert: Click on The Hunger Site every day to help out a bit.

Media Watch: Turkey Day Television -- starting with NFL Football while cooking Thanksgiving dinner. The Detroit game was a one-sided blowout, which Altlanta won without much effort. The Dallas game was pretty hard-fought. The Denver Broncos were the better team, but Dallas found ways of fooling them, and then matching their physicality to hold the score to a tie at the end of regulation play. The overtime period was a hoot when the referee blew the first coin-toss, and they had to throw it again. Denver got the ball first, gave it to a fresh backup running-back who nearly ran the entire field, and then kicked an easy field-goal to win. The cast of MAD-TV made me laugh with their impersonations again during the pre-game show.
(I sure miss the Mystery Science Theater 3000 marathons that Comedy Central used to run on Thanksgiving.)
One TV interviewer I have a hard time with is Charlie Rose on PBS. (Tavis Smiley also turns me off most of the time, and vice-versa.) Last night, while in a vegetative state after cooking, eating, and cleaning-up, I watched columnist Maureen Dowd and musician Roger Waters on Rose's show.
Maureen Dowd has written an observational, hopefully humorous, book called Are Men Necessary?


The cover is a 50's style painting of a red-haired, red-clothed lady (resembling conventionally good-looking Dowd) standing in a subway car, surrounded by ogling men. Rose kept saying, "Let's talk about sex," but he never really started a conversation about Dowd's book. She cracked a couple of jokes, but seemed to eventually resign herself to Rose's ignorance. (I doubt Rose had even opened the cover of her book.) What WAS interesting were the times when she spoke out about the deceptions of our government which led to the horrible Iraq war.
Roger Waters was articulate as always when he talked about There is Hope, an opera he wrote over the last 15+ years. When asked if Pink Floyd fans might like it, he said "It definitely has my voice," with an amused smile. It IS an opera, and it's sung by operatically-trained singers. If Waters' audience of somewhat-discerning twenty-somethings and retro-rock fans warm up to something like this, I'll be VERY surprised.

NEW Website: Theater X-Net

Featuring: The illustrated story of Ida Rubinstein
Russian/Judaic Princess of Belle Epoch Parisian Theatre.

Wildlife: A whole flock of tiny little chickadees are haunting both the seed and suet feeders -- they used to stick around the pines in the front, but they're finally coming around to the back deck. Last night the Raccoons were prowling around the box feeder again, but they left plenty for the birds.



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

Weather: The damn fogbank is making it cold in the valley. There's sunshine up at West Glacier. Can you spell i-n-v-e-r-s-i-o-n?

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site -- Click to help out with several projects.

Media Watch: I'm off work until Monday, and I'm going to be cooking tonight and tomorrow. I'm watching a little more TV as a result. Last night TCM showed most of the original King Kong, plus a short biography of it's producer Merriam C. Cooper. It turns out that there were parallels between the characters in Kong, and Cooper's real-life adventures.
There was nothing said about the brilliant English writer Edgar Wallace's contribution to the movie, but after I asked around, I got this communication from Arthur Lortie: Recycling an old "article" of mine --

King Kong was created by:
1] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- in the novel "The Lost World", Professor Challenger finds a hidden plateau where dinosaurs rule. He brings a pterodactyl egg back to London which promptly hatches and runs amuck;
2] Willis O"Brian -- the special effects wizard, after completing the silent version of The Lost World, put together some test footage of a giant ape and other giant critters. David O Selznick bought this and decided to write a script around the footage.
3] Meriam C Cooper -- developed a plot from the test footage Since the plot has some resemblance to the Conan Doyle book, Selznick purchases those rights also. London is changed to New York.
4] Delos Lovelace -- finalizes the original script upon which the film is based.
5] David O. Selznick -- who put the whole thing together

But Wallace's contributions exist.
From the American Film Institute Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-1940:
In an interview with David O. Selznick (the producer), it states: "During the filming of the test reel, Selznick brought in popular English mystery writer Edgar Wallace to write a draft of the script based on Cooper's treatment. Selznick writes in a modern source: 'I had signed up and sent for Edgar Wallace and brought him to California, where unfortunately he died in consequence of getting pneumonia [on 02/10/1932]...I have never believed that Wallace contributed much to King Kong, but the circumstances of his death complicated the writing credits.'
Selznick persuaded Cooper to use Wallace because of his renowned speed and talent, but also admitted his desire to exploit the popular writer's name. In a July 1932 memo to Selznick, as quoted in modern sources, Cooper complains about giving Wallace a story credit as he believed that little if any of the script was attibutable to him. He did agree that Wallace's name should appear on the novelization of the screenplay, which was written by Delos Lovelace, because he recognized the value of Wallace's name and wanted "to use it". However, a modern source contends that Wallace contributed more than Cooper was willing to admit. Wallace's draft of the script, which he wrote between 1 Jan and 5 Jan 1932 does detail many aspects of the story as it was eventually filmed. In addition, Wallace indicates in his published memoirs that his script was received with great enthusiasm by Cooper and Selznick. It is not known how heavily Wallace relied on Cooper's treatment for his draft, however."
(The article goes on to discuss other writers involved in the script.)


There is more in Edgar Wallace's book, MY HOLLYWOOD DIARY, which consists of informal letters home to his wife. Specifically, see page 132 [25 Dec 1931 - Merian Cooper called and we talked over the big animal play we are going to write, or, rather, I am writing and he is directing. He has just had an approval from New York, and I am going to turn him out a scenario]; page 141/2 [29 Dec 1931 - An announcement has been made in the local Press that I am doing a super-horror story with Cooper, but the truth is it is much more his story than mine. I am rather enthusiastic about it, but the story has got to be more or less written to provide certain spectacular effects. I shall get much more credit out of the picture than I deserve, if it is a success, but, as I shall be blamed by the public if it's a failure, that seems fair.]; page 143 [30 Dec 31 - We had a long talk about the scenario, which is not yet written but only roughly sketched, and came to a decision as to the opening. We practically know how the story is going to run.]; page 147 [still same letter of 30 Dec - I am going to write the story of our beast play in collaboration with Merian Cooper, That is to say, I will give him a "bar line," a bar line being credit as collaborator, because he has really suggested the story, though I of course shall write it, and I am to be allowed to use the illustrations that we are having drawn. It ought to be the best boys' book of the year.
Now THERE's some English understatement for you!
He doesn't want to take a penny out of it as long as he has a credit line.]; page 154 [1 Jan. 1932 - After they had gone I went on working on the scenario and I have got 28 pages of it done, which is a good start. I can't do very much at a time because each sequence has to approved by 'Coop.'] ; page 163 [4 Jan 32 - I have nearly finished the beast scenario, and Cooper has the second part and is coming up to discuss one or two points which he thinks are important, but which are really unimportant since they can be altered terribly easily.]; page 164 [5 Jan 32 - Cooper and O'Brien came and we went right through the script, except the very last two reels, which are not yet written. . . . Cooper is very pleased, and to-day I am finishing the scenario and letting him have it.] ... and so forth. The last letter in the book is dated 7 Feb, and Wallace died on 10 Feb.

There is one last part to this story.
In November , 2002 I stumbled across a citation in NUCMC (National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections) that listed the Wallace script at the British Library Dept. of Manuscripts! The script had been sold to the Library by a private collector 10 years ago. I contacted them and they weren't even aware what they had. Two weeks later they reported that it had been stolen. So close ....
The manuscript, or a copy, showed up on ABE in 2004 for $25K but was quickly removed [or sold]

Arthur Lortie
16 Adams Street #3
Taunton, MA 02780-2504
USA