September can be so nice, if you're not under a hurricane. Bless the people who are beset by southern storms this year.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from the USA and the World, only they are undergoing maintenence right now. I've added Big Sky Blogroll to my Friendly Sites list.

Check out ROCK against Reaganomics 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!
NEW --Launching NOW! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and 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 his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: 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.

In The Community: Current shows at the Hockaday Museum of Art include Rails, Trails, and A Road -- honoring the 75th Anniversary of Going To The Sun Road in Glacier National Park, plus Ace Powell -- Ace of Diamonds and Native American Interpretations from our permanent collection. I am doing tech for the Shroud of Turin forensic chemistry lecture at the college later today.

Media Watch: Puccini's Madama Butterfly, with it's grim colonial-era story, and painfully beautiful arias on Montana Public Radio via the San Francisco Opera.

Digitally-interpreted Patricia Racette as Cio-Cio-San in the San Francisco Opera's production of Madama Butterfly. This opera was a cultural cliche as I was growing up in the 50's, when many neighborhood fathers spent time in Japan and silken kimonos were common household souveniers. The popular song Love is a Many Splendored Thing was derived from Puccini's Un bel dì vedremo (One fine day we shall ...) Unfortunately, this work of high musical art plus Gilbert & Sullivan's tuneful, but silly, Mikado reinforced bigotry and ignorance rather than knowledge in Suburban Amerika. To tell the ugly truth, common U.S. servicemen mostly knew their host nations via servants and/or prostitutes, often rejecting any other perspectives. Opera icons "Butterfly" and "Brunhilda" were considered cultural cartoons in the same class as "Bosko" or "Betty Boop" when it came to cheap laughs. Hopefully, things have changed -- the use of Cio Cio San's name, and Madama reflects a rediscovery of this piece as music rather than sentimental fiction.
I am also working on a video made at Bull Head Lodge, once the summer home of Charles M. Russell. It has been in other families' hands for about four generations, and this is just a discrete peek out it's window onto Lake McDonald. Once the place was a formal tourist attraction, but it hasn't been that way since Russell's death in the 1920's. A group of scholars met there last week, thanks to the owners.

The ladies are still wearing their Summer clothes -- with jackets in the early AM, heavier shoes, and even occasional boots.


Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from El Cajon, California; Tullahoma, Tennessee; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Los Angeles, California (looking at Lisa Rinna's charicature, I hope it isn't her or her ol' man!); Somewhere in the U.K; Loudon, New Hampshire; Clermont, Florida; Moscow, Russia; Dublin, Ireland (Maybe Eavan?); Seoul, Korea, and Appleton, Wisconsin. Hmmm -- there's a Big Sky Blogroll that lists this site, and sends readers my way.

Check out ROCK against Reaganomics 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!
NEW --Launching NOW! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and 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 his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: 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.

In The Community: Current shows at the Hockaday Museum of Art include Rails, Trails, and A Road -- honoring the 75th Anniversary of Going To The Sun Road in Glacier National Park, plus Ace Powell -- Ace of Diamonds and Native American Interpretations from our permanent collection.
I am doing tech for a presentation on Forensic Science and the Shroud of Turin tomorrow at the college.

Last week I visited nearby Whitefish for its gallery stroll. I saw Donna Gans' new paintings at the Jest Gallery, and John Rawlings' sculptures there as well. I went to the Stumptown Art Studio, Two Medicine, and Sammarah galleries before I snapped this Crescent Moon on upper Central Avenue.

Media Watch: Richard Wagner sure wrote some nice melodies! Montana NPR played Lohengrin the other Saturday, which helped while I was painting walls at the art museum. The premiere in 1850 was reportedly overseen by Franz Liszt, and led to the double-edged patronage of "Mad" King Ludwig of Bavaria. The latter makes sense because of the absurd, swan-obsessed plot.

A mix of an unpublished Lohengrin poster with Placido Domingo in the role of the homicidal vassal of the Holy Vessel.

Another perfect day -- so it was a long day at work -- it was beautiful. Canadian Geese are migrating again.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Oviedo, Florida; Manchester, UK; Corona, California; Oslo, Norway (home of my ancestors); Brandon, Manitoba; Cockeysville, Maryland; Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario; Louth, Ireland (That you, Roseanne?) and Berkeley, California.
Hmmm -- there's a Big Sky Blogroll that lists this site.

Check out ROCK against Reaganomics 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!
NEW --Launching NOW! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and 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 his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: 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.

In The Community: Current shows at the Hockaday Museum of Art include Rails, Trails, and A Road -- honoring the 75th Anniversary of Going To The Sun Road in Glacier National Park, plus Ace Powell -- Ace of Diamonds and Native American Interpretations from our permanent collection.

Theater/Theatre: Oh Yeah! Olympia Dukakis starred in the world premiere of Another Side of the Island -- a reinterpretation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. This is exactly the kind of production I like to see onstage. The acting was excellent, especially the interaction between Dukakis as Prospera, and Ariel, played by Lynn Cohen.

My digital interpretation of Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis as the magical Prospera.
Co-stars Apollo Dukakis, and Olympia's husband Louis Zorich did very well indeed, as did local resident Davis Ackroyd, whose Alpine Theatre Project produced this show. His partners Betsi Morrison and Luke Walrath deserve to share credit for matching the words of their proud motto: Imagine. Create. Inspire.
Congrats to directors Gregory Hoffman, Margo Whitcomb, and Olympia Dukakis.
The show was about 60 percent clowning, which was alright with me anyway, but set up the moments of drama for deeper appreciation. One graceful adaptation was four magnificent singers as Prospera's Spirits -- their music was magic enough for any island. During the second half, they performed an elaborate number which cursed the villains with madness, followed by Dukakis' soliloquy:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Another group of wannabe villans were a trio of clowns led by Caliban, played by lithe, sexy Amanda Hastings-Phillips, looking like an airheaded contemporary "Mean Girl," but supposedly an "it." This riff worked just fine with "her" hilariously drunken castaways.

Media Watch: My informal Gina Gershon tracker picked up a funny video which has gone viral on the Internet --

Actor Gina Gershon Satirizes Former Beauty Queen Sarah Palin

A little rain in the morning, warmish because of the cloud cover, and a beautiful late Summer day afterward.

A matriarchal flock of young Wild Turkeys on South Woodland Drive, Kalispell, Montana -- September 2008.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Bradford, UK; Maynard, Massachusetts; Denver, Colorado; Rochester, New York; Stevensville, Maryland; Delray Beach, Florida; West Hartford, Connecticut; Canton, Ohio; Danville, Kentucky; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Manchester, UK and Calais, France.

Check out ROCK against Reaganomics 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!
NEW --Launching NOW! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and 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 his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: 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.

In The Community: Current shows at the Hockaday Museum of Art include Rails, Trails, and A Road -- honoring the 75th Anniversary of Going To The Sun Road in Glacier National Park, plus Ace Powell -- Ace of Diamonds and Native American Interpretations from our permanent collection.

Deleware Senator Joe Biden, candidate for Vice-President of the USA, spoke in Kalispell, Montana last Sunday. There was some inevitable politic-ing and speech-ifying, but he was refreshingly conversational most of the time. The message was pretty simple: Barack Obama is an outstandingly effective public servant, and his opponent is just plain wrong about the most important issues facing our country and the world. Biden is confident that he himself is capable of being President, but he believes that Obama is America's greatest politician in more than a generation. (L to R) A couple of my friends waiting at the rope line for an eventual hug from the senator; Biden in action; My section of the hall -- I counted almost a thousand people in the place.

The mornings are a little too cool -- almost 1 Degree (C) sometimes -- dammit, give people's gardens a break! A small clutch of Wild Turkeys are grazing Woodland Drive, and the spotty Fawns are still around. The Ospreys are due to migrate soon.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Fort Walton Beach, Florida; Saint Paul, Minnesota; Vienna, Austria; Montgomery, Alabama; Calgary, Alberta; Bristol, U.K; Kaysville, Utah; Fremont, California; Haarlem, Holland; Rossford, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; Troy, Michigan; Austin, Texas; Montreuil, Ile-de-France (Paris); San Francisco, California; Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina and Lansing, Michigan.

Check out ROCK against Reaganomics 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!
NEW --Launching NOW! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and 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 his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: 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.

In The Community: Current shows at the Hockaday Museum of Art include Rails, Trails, and A Road -- honoring the 75th Anniversary of Going To The Sun Road in Glacier National Park, plus Ace Powell -- Ace of Diamonds and Native American Interpretations from our permanent collection.

A digital mashup from my old haunting grounds, De Paradiso in Amsterdam, September 3, 2008 -- (Front L to R) My friend Michael Hampton, acquaintance and ally George Clinton, plus Ricky Rouse. (Rear L to R) Bennie Cowan, M. Hampton, Lige Curry, Shauna Hall, Belita Woods, Garry Shider, Frankie Waddy, Ron Spearman, Gene Anderson, Kendra Foster, Kim Manning, and Richie Nagan.
(From photos by VCTS & Groot Mokum on Flickr)
Concert Review: George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars in Holland
Witnessed by DaGoonerFunky
Amsterdam 9-2:
This was a extra concert, but not sold out. So a limited crowd! The Mob had just arrived and just finished their soundcheck. They were very tired when they hit the stage and it took us (the crowd) and the band a few songs before the sound was ok and everybody was tearin' da roof off. My first thoughts were "Wow, Sativa looks different?"; when I got closer to the stage it was Belita Woods who looks 20 years younger these days. I was impressed by Byrds "replacement" Ricky Rouse who is a great guitarplayer and got a P-attitude, so I would say "he fits" da PFAS. He started "I Got A Thing" (yes!) and GC also forced the PFAS to do "All Your Goodies Are Gone". All improvisations, GC callin' of the songs and the band would follow. After 4,5 hours I went home for a quick sleep to be ready for
Amsterdam 9-3:
Sold out this time. Place was packed and the gear of PFAS worn out last night. So goose flash - even at this moment - when they played Cosmic Slop like 1983 and GC got his ass on stage. Excellent, funk and loud. This time other classics after Cosmic Slop: "The Goose" for about 10 mins was a special highlight. Rico handed his sticks to a guestdrummer - I heard he is from a local reggeaband - so "Maggot Brain" ended up inna dready way. Clip asked "were's da weed, and they were offered many joints while they audience wasn't allowed to smoke Laughing security didn't dare to ask the Mob to stop smokin' Laughing
This show was a little shorter, after 4 hours I was on my way to my home again, to prepare for
Tilburg 9-4:
Modern venue, different PA. At my position not able to hear much of the guitar army, but still. Highlight was "Standing On The Verge", "Pumpin' It Up", "Hydraulic Pump" (long version) and "Bustin' Loose". Like they used to play it back in the mid 90's. After that GC demanded "If Anybody Get;s Funked Up". They all were like "WHAT?" and started to get into this song the best they can. After 3 mins it was smokin' and the whole venue sang their harts out. When they ended the song GC said "I scared the sh*t outta them didn't I? We haven;t play those songs for years" Laughing
Many newbie's in the audience, so it stayed a bit flat till they end. Nice to see Clip in the audience with his mike during "Atomic Dog". Some folks didn't dare to even look at him. Anyway, great show to end my three on a row PFAS nights.

My opinion? Its always GREAT to see the mob. They make me smile, they the best medicine for illness. And great musicians. I would describe them as the best band ever.
Sure, they lost quality along the way. Byrd is missed just as other originals like Boogie and Andre Foxxy, Greg Boyer, Skeet etc. On the other hand Kendra is so close to PFUNK, she got my total approval from now on. She's a Funkadelic. RonKat also. Shanna isn't spot on, just like Kim who seems to be a bit lost on stage. PooPooMan is great too.
I've been very "close" to the Mob (even had a chance to record with them), but this time I decided to go back to my roots: as a fan. I briefly spoke with Greg Thomas (who seems to be in charge musically, together with Garry), that;s all. No backstage hangin' out.
Oh...I saw 40% of the Mob in a Amsterdam coffee shop (house) at daytime Laughing
I'm looking forward to see them next year again. This must be my 40thiest time I saw the Mob LIVE. Let's hope they keep the FUNK up for long time.

Oh line up:

-Franky, Rico and a new chap on drums (Foley)
-Lige on bass
-Danny on keys
-Mike, Ricky, Shanna, RonKat, Gary on guitars
-Greg & Bennie horns and keys & backin' vocals
-GC, Gary, RonKat, Belita, Steve, PooPoo (Gene Anderson), Kendra, Kim, Paul Hill on vocals ....forgot his name on percussion (btw respect, this guy is totally into it for the entire show Cool (Richie "Shakin" Nagan)

-www.myspace.com/octavepussymusic-