Hey Dublin! (and the World at large) I'm running off to Fort Collins, Colorado for a ten-day "vacation" this afternoon -- Helena, Montana tonight, Casper, Wyoming tomorrow, and Fort Collins on Friday. Wish us good weather, Eagles flying, and lack of Deer running across the roads.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
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: Keep that resolution as Autumn settles in! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: I'll be back in time for the opening of Members Only! Autumn Salon at the Hockaday Museum of Art.

Media Watch: Noam Chomsky on CSPAN, talking about his book Empire and Survival --scary stuff. Our great linguistics professor does not really hate Amerika -- just the bad things done in our country's name. (Too bad there's so many of them.)
Ex-newscaster Sarah Chayes was speaking on CSPAN too, plus guesting around the Mainstream Media about her book The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban. She actually LIVES in that terrible place now, helping the common Afghani people cope with overlapping Warlords, Drug Lords, and the resurgent Taliban. I'm sad to see that times are getting more dangerous for her, and all well-meaning people there.
I taped Jean Cocteau's two most famous movies from TCM last night: Beauty and the Beast, and Orpheus. I will testify that those films were major aesthetic influences on my life.
Cocteau was a friend and patron of Ida Rubinstein. He was smittem by her beauty during Paris' Belle Epoch She later produced HIS first version of the Orpheus legend -- From Ida's Website: Orphée (1926) -- A mime-drama by Jean Cocteau, Music by M. Arthur Honegger, Costumes by Alexander Golovin, performed at the Paris Opera. (Based on original works by Roger-Ducasse and Alexander Ziloti in 1913-14)
Cocteau's movie was made the same year I was born, and is a visually stunning, but very uncomfortable parable about a man who becomes obsessed about a mysterious dark-haired woman who is literally his own death. I know Orpheus contains references to many things in Cocteau's world, but I don't know what they are -- try Wikipedia for a start.

Footsbarn in Action!


Rosanna, Rachelle, and Rhonna prepare for the great Puca Ritual.

As always, greetings to Dublin. The warm sunny Autumn weather here feels like the phenomena we call "Indian Summer" in America. We see Deer anytime of the day or night or anyplace lately, including our driveway.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
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: Keep that resolution as Autumn settles in! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

Media Watch: Monsters & the Curse of Frankenstein was mostly gossip. Say what you will about irresponsible Godwin, Shelly, Byron, and the wreckage they made of their families -- they were very creative people in a reactionary society which feared all creativity in the wake of the French Revolution. Mary W. Shelly's unhappy life resulted in not only the first Science Fiction novel, but her labors for Byron, and on behalf of her doomed husband as an editor, were indispensable in preserving some of the greatest English poetry of the 19th Century.
To me, one of the saddest aspects of her hard years trying to achieve proto-Victorian respectability was that it extinguished the inner fires which forged new visions for our world. She did it because of need, as a good mother, and I can only fault her society. Her only surviving son was noted as an unimaginative ultra-conformist by his contemporaries.
That's it for the book Monsters! The following notes are from other reading: Both Lord Byron's and Shelly's lineages ended before Queen Victoria's passing.
Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Frankenstein share a family tree with the Computer! Mary Wollstonecroft Shelly's half-sister Claire Claremont bore a child by Lord Byron. She was present during the "Haunted Summer" of 1816 when Frankenstein's monster emerged from Mary's imagination.
Byron's companion Dr. John Poldori created an irresistible but evil gentleman Vampyre that season, who was obviously modeled from the amoral peer in Poldori's Gothic novel of the same name -- the same literary archetype who re-emerged as Count Dracula and Lestat de Lioncourt.*
Byron's only legitimate daughter Ada Lovelace grew up to became a friend of the brilliant scientist Charles Babbage. She is often given credit as being one of the first computer programmers, based upon her writings that described applications for Babbage's seminal Difference Engine. She lived her entire life in a repressive aristocracy which punished her socially for whatever achievements she made. After she died from cervical cancer, her son was sent away by his father and perished at sea, extinguishing the Byron line.

*For the sake of clarity, I'm skipping any analysis of Sapphic vampire Carmilla in the excellent story by LeFanu circa 1872.

It's Footsbarn Picture Time!


(Right) Dr. Noilie nearly loses her mind in the wake of the "utter disaster" wrought by her Homo Haereticus experiment. (Left) Joe the Entrepeneur leads benumbed Vincent the Mayor aside.

The deer were checking out the same neighborhood garage sale we were visiting! A mama and her baby loped right in front of us as we left. The weather is pleasant and warm for the official first day of Autumn this year.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
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: Keep that resolution as Autumn settles in. Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Saturday at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- updating the website, and taking down a banner advertising the antique show, 'way down in Somers.

Media Watch: PBS' American Masters had a well-documented program about Andy Warhol. I attended one of those events where he "mass produced" himself for the lecture circuit by sending out a bunch of imposters around 1967. The University of Utah wanted their money back!
The documentary rubbed me the wrong way once or twice -- Jeff Koons would NEVER be my choice for Warhol voice-overs, and it isn't accurate to divide his life into pre-shooting and post-shooting halves -- just convenient. The name Joe Delasandro never came up once, although it was great seeing Paul Morissey, Billy Name, and other Warhol associates. (Why in the HELL wasn't Mary Woronov interviewed? She was on the scene at The Factory too, and went on to success without Warhol's gang. Screw them -- visit her website, if you haven't already -- she's fabulous!)

Leonard Cohen says: What I'll Give You Since You Asked ...


Masques On Parade, at the Hockaday Museum of Art.
My entry to the Autumn Salon of 2006 -- it is a digital watercolor composed from a half dozen photographs taken at Footsbarn's parade in Montluçon, France. Oh yeah, that's me holding it.

The weather cleared up alright -- until the afternoon. It rained hard until midnight at least. Good thing I was driving slow after dark in my neighborhood -- a rather foolish Whitetail sauntered right in front of me. You can't hunt around Foy's Lake, but a lot of animals die from collisions there.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
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: Keep that resolution as Autumn settles in. Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Almost 200 people braved the sloppy rain to show up at the Hockaday Museum of Art for Ed Gilliland's lecture and reception last night.

Media Watch: Another book about books and media -- The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. This tome is mostly gossip so far -- about Percy Shelly, Harriet Shelly, Mary W. (Godwin) Shelly, Claire Godwin, and we'll soon get to the prolifigate Lord Byron, Dr. Poldori, and Lake Geneva. The cover picture is Fuseli's famous Nightmare, the same image Ken Russell used to advertise Gothic, his less-than-excellent dramatization of Frankenstein's genesis.
Mary Shelly's famous book is not only a major Gothic Novel, but it's also the FIRST actual Science Fiction novel -- so says my friend Brian W. Aldiss in The Trillion Year Spree, to my complete agreement.
It's theme of unintended consequences still resonates deeply in human society, and overwhelms the ridiculous plot.

On a lighter note: Merrily we roll along ... roll along ... roll along!


Clara (front) and Eavan (back) "carting around" with Pierre's son and Sharon's son during Footsbarn's Celebration of Theatre at sunset. They not only worked dawn to dusk, but sometimes dawn to dawn.

The weather cleared up a little. Fall has still fallen. I wish I could identify those gray-brown ducks on our lake, but I never seem to have my spotting scope, an ID book, sufficient light, and the ducks all together at the same time.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
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: Keep that resolution as Autumn setles in. Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art features Ed Gilliland's lecture and reception TONIGHT -- it will probably be one of my last. I'm likely going to move to Fort Collins, Colorado soon, but I'm NOT going to give the Director my notice this evening and spoil a good time.

Media Watch: I'm reading a book King Kong; the history of a movie icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson by Ray Morton. about the making of King Kong -- not just the original, but ALL the misbegotten remakes and sequels. Mighty Joe Young has a special place in the Kong Kanon because it was a success, and helped launch Ray Harryhausen's career.
King Kong (1933) THE classic of dawg-assed escapist cinema. Merian C. Cooper deserves a lot of credit, but the whole genre of movie monsters running amok in modern cities comes from Willis O'Brien -- starting with The Lost World in 1925.
Son of Kong (1933) The author likes this thing more than it really deserves.
Morton rightly points out the connection between Kong and the Gojiro (Godzilla) franchise. Willis O'Brien even deserves credit for the ideas which led to the following Japanese gigglers:
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) Japanese men in rubber suits, wrestling on soundstages full of miniatures -- bust 'em up, boys!
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) Starring Godzilla, but written for Kong -- ahh, studio politics!
King Kong Escapes (1967) Yeah, but Toho Studios caught him again! The book delineates O'Brien's link to the two Gargantua movies as well -- one of G's rubber villains, Barugon, also fought Gamera, but we'll leave THAT alone for now!
RKO refused to authorize remakes while they had legal standing in the matter -- turned out to be a good policy. Look what happened:
King Kong (1976) Jessica Lange's career almost ended before it began. Morton tries to speak well of this flick, but he's full of Gorilla shit.
King Kong Lives (1986). An even WORSE sequel than the '76 remake, starring Linda Hamilton, who might have felt like following Lange's footsteps over a career-crippling cliff was a bad idea. (Thank goodness for the cult TV series Beauty and the Beast -- I don't think Hamilton would have had another crack at the Terminator without that particular break.)
King Kong (2005) by New Zealand's CGI-man, Peter Jackson. (Buy the video game, anybody can make up better stories than him!) Oh yeah, almost forgot, Naomi Watts played Fay Wray's character.
BTW -- Kong's Wikipedia Page is delightful!


Kong's Ladies' Klub -- (L to R) Naomi Watts, Linda Hamilton, and Jessica Lange. Fay Wray might have been unfairly typecast after her success in the original, but these actors have thankfully gone on to "bigger and better things."

More gray and rainy weather in the Flathead Valley. It cleared up a little in the late afternoon. The Autumnal Equinox is this Friday, but Fall has taken off it's shoes and made itself at home already.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
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: Keep that resolution as Autumn setles in. Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: My digital watercolor made from Footsbarn parade images, Masques On Parade, was formally entered into the Members Only! Autumn Salon 2006 at the Hockaday Museum of Art yesterday. Y'know? I ought to take a shot, inside the circusy frame, and post it here. I'll shoot a picture of me and my artwork tomorrow, since I'll be there (early) for Ed Gilliland's lecture and reception.

Media Watch: Trash-O-Rama! I read through Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Eternal Savage. It features Lord (Tarzan) Greystoke as a secondary character in this ridiculous tale of reincarnation and time travel in ERB's version of Africa -- starring handsome troglodyte Nu of the Niocene, his beautiful long-lost mate Nu-tal, and Oo the Sabertooth Tiger -- who dies early, but whose skull is carted around the whole damn book.


As Jimmy Castor used to say: We're going back -- 'way back! ...Cave Men, Cave WOMEN -- troglodytes! Three versions of Edgar Rice Burroughs' non-series potboiler with a cameo by John (Tarzan) Clayton as a British colonial landholder. Left to right: illustrations by P.J. Monahan (1915), J. Allen St. John (1927), and Roy G. Krenkel (1963).