Happy Holidays! It's the eighth day of Channuka, Christmas is on Monday (Oy vey, I hope that day of the week doesn't jinx it!), and New Year's Day is a week later. It's nice to think about the nice warm tropics during Kwanza too. I'll toss up at least ONE blog from home before I come back to work on January 3, 2007. There were three small Whitetails standing on the hillside overlooking the junction of Foy's Lake Road and Buckboard Lane -- the middle-sized one had at least four points on either side of his rack of antlers. Males aren't usually smaller than the females, unless they are yearlings.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Make a new resolution as the days slowly get longer to click on The Hunger Site.

In The Community: Alright! The Minnesota Historical Society is sending the Hockaday Museum of Art fifty pages of Winold Reiss' correspondance about his formal and informal art schools in Glacier National Park from 1931 to 1938. Many thanks to Hampton Smith, their Reference Librarian.

Media Watch: My reaction to the minor, but loud, Miss USA/Miss Teen USA media flap is a personal indictment of the organization which "handles" these newly-minted celebrities. First of all, the members of their massive professional entrourages should be fired for attending those adults-only nightspots with their underage charges in tow -- violating the contracts of their clients, and exposing them (in many ways) to a predatory press who delights in tearing down the reputations of attractive young women. Second, having well-documented promiscuous horn-dog Donald Trump acting a ANYBODY'S judge is a prima facae dirty joke -- surely they could have appointed a less notorious, more appropriate, spokesperson to relay their corporate decisions to the media. These "Beauty Queens" have been criticized for bad choices, but I think their (and their parent's) worst choice was trusting in a so-called system that flagrantly exploits youth and beauty for someone else's profit. I think another business model is needed -- the cost of being famous seems to be getting too high for too many "objects" of public attention.


Now for something completely different!


I personally wish a safe and happy Holiday Season for EVERYONE!
Here's a somewhat-distant shot of Masques On Parade, as seen from the branches of our Christmas tree at the Hockaday Museum of Art. This scene is especially dedicated to Eavan and Clara as they are visiting La Chaussee to party with Footsbarn Theatre.
(They are in the foreground of Masques.)

I thought it was just a rumor, but instruments recorded wind gusts of over 160 MPH (200 KPH) on the ridgetops of Glacier National Park Friday night. Thank goodness we didn't feel any effects down in the valley to the west of the park here. There were seriously destructive winds in my old neighborhood near Seattle, Washington -- many tall trees fell down, and killed some individuals. Power was knocked out for over a million people in the Puget Sound area. I mention it because we were part of that same storm system -- again. We've shared some nasty weather with the West Coast this winter! In the clear, cold early afternoon sunshine on Sunday, I saw a Bald Eagle eating a fish on the lake. A Deer family was snooping for Sunflowers while my little cat Buttercup stood six feet away on the back deck -- they looked each other in the eyes, sniffed, and went about their business.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution as Winter settles in. Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Flathead Valley Community College had it's annual Christmas party. I was able to go because Art Walk was two weeks earlier, instead of the same night. My boss synthesized a game show called Who Wants To Be A Genius? which was one of the best participatory events I've ever seen in these circumstances. I had a small cameo part as big-voiced "Howie" from Deal Or No Deal. Next year we'll host this "do" in our own building. Speaking of which, the Hockaday Museum of Art is on it's way towards it's OWN addition to the century-old Carnagie Library building which houses us.

Media Watch: Cecil B. DeMented by John Waters was on IFC. I think I've blogged about this film before, but it was shown between jumps to Sunset Boulevard and In A Lonely Place on TCM. All three are movies about the movie industry. C. B. DeMented definitely counts as minor John Waters, but there's a discernably unique spirit in this particular production. I don't have any trouble praising or dismissing Melanie Griffith's acting, and I think she's excellent in this film. (Sam Waterson and Kathleen Turner were also good in Waters' equally preposterous Serial Mom.) A bit of inside humor I missed in previous viewings was gun-toting, gold-bricking Teamsters going after non-union idealists on C.B.'s crew -- fictional porn star Cherish temporarily saves everybody's lives by taking refuge in a skid-row theater, which happens to be showing her movies, and enlisting the assistance of her moaning, ecstatic fans. It's worth noting that Tracy Lords shot two movies with Waters, the making of which gave her a "leg up" out of the sex-movie trade, and led to a much more rewarding career in the entertainment industry at large. Patricia Hearst played the mother of one of C.B.'s crew -- I wonder what she thought about being in a movie whose main plot-point was Melanie (Honey Whitlock) Griffith's kidnapping? Honey's "mainsteam" movie also resembled Cherish's "pornographic" film, with minor exceptions of course. There were many jokes about celebrity and stardom, which both Griffith and Waters know something about, but they were mostly sad jokes.
One kind of misbegotten movie derided by C.B.'s possee has gotta be George Cukor's lugubrious My Fair Lady, also shown on TCM this weekend. Production values aside, it deprived posterity of a visual transcription of the great Broadway hit which made Julie Andrews a star. The chemistry between her and Rex Harrison had to be astonishing, but Audrey Hepburn, for all her talent and beauty, was cynically inserted into the flick as a voiced-over clothes horse. Andrews showed the whole world how excellent an actor she was in The Americanization of Emily. She also showed the gawdamn bean-counters how overwhelmingly popular she could be in Mary Poppins and Sound of Music. Love 'em or hate 'em, Julie Andrews is GREAT in musicals!
Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard is sometimes called a black comedy -- maybe it is, but it also counts as a 50's film noir. What Kenneth Anger called "the evil star system" squirms in front of the viewer's eyes as Wilder turns the underside of Hollywood's rock over for a brief moment. C.B. DeMille was very much alive at this time, and I wonder what he thought about the way his name was used in this film. I also wonder if he still socialized with his ex-compatriots Eric Von Stroheim and Gloria Swanson. I will take this opportunity to mention that Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical version of Sunset Boulevard was a triumph on Broadway for first-rate movie actress Glenn Close not too long ago.
In A Lonely Place was made by Humphrey Bogart's production company, and took a couple of risks, considering it was a post-WWII film with an expensive major star. Since it's in black and white, and tells an unpleasant crime story featuring a talented, but violent Hollywood writer (Bogart) it qualifies as yet another film noir. Co-star Gloria Graham was young, beautiful, and sexy -- her husband at the time was also the director of this movie, Nicholas Ray, who made sure the audience knew just how lucky he was. After the show, TCM told a story about Graham divorcing Ray, and marrying his son. Prolific filmmaker Nicholas Ray has been described by others as a "Multi-sexual Hollywood creature." He had a none-too-savory role in the blighted career of Natalie Wood, and goodness knows what else. (As if goodness has anything at all to do with sociopathic power-mongering.)
Another story TCM could have told was how Humphrey Bogart had a wife in the 40's who drunkenly bragged all over Hollywood how she was going to murder him. Bogart wasn't particularly promiscuous by movie star standards, and began his famous lifelong romance with Lauren Bacall after he was safely out of the power of the scary ex-Mrs. Bogart. His character in Lonely Place was a mean drunk, who, though innocent of one certain murder, was a clear and present danger to the ingenue who loved him at first, but learned to fear for her life as she witnessed his repeated rages. Whose life was imitated by who's art? I can't leave this discussion without mentioning Alfred Hitchcock's proto-noir movie Suspicion. It is much less gritty, but has a similar vibe, with another stellar movie actor (Cary Grant) as another contemptible leading man.


Time Magazine's Person of the Year is YOU -- particularly the vast population of the world who interact online. I choose to treat their choice as a marketing ploy, much like 1967's 25 and Under. It's worth a load of laughs, though, and I'm glad to join in the fun -- here we go! This is the second time in 40 years that the cover of Time has been devoted to ME -- here's a montage of "real" Time covers interspersed with versions featuring my OWN face, from High School and the 21st Century. I even entered it on Huffington Post's Contagious Festival.
Time Magazine's logo and content are property of their copyright holders. This graphic is satirical comment, protected by US law, and is not to be confused with any actual Time/Warner productions.

More dangerous driving! Ice layers on the roads every morning from rain and snow falling all night. The college was especially icy because of the river and mists -- the crew has a hard time keeping up with things.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution as Winter decorates the Holidays with snow. Click on The Hunger Site every day.

Media Watch: NFL Football -- Dawg-assed visiting team San Francisco put the big hurt on playoff-bound Seattle, playing at home. The 49ers' defense only allowed one score until the last minute. The Seahawks underestimated their opponents for sure.
Real Books --Sailing from Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World by Colin Wells.
Constantinople/Byzantium was the center of a beleaguered Christian empire for a thousand years. This author spins three threads of it's long, convoluted history. I finished the first about reintroducing knowledge of Ancient Greek to Western Europe via Italy, despite the barbaric depradations of fellow-Christian Crusaders, and the valiant failures of pioneers Boccaccio and Petrarch. It was well worth trying again and again. Next is their long defeat against the Four Caliphs, Umayyads, Abbasids, Seljuk and Ottoman Turks as they led Islamic armies over what we now call the Middle East. To further compound the Eastern Empire's troubles, the Slavs invaded from Central Europe, repopulating the Balkans and points north. Greek scholarship eventually won out to some degree, even though the hapless Byzantine political leaders lost most of the time, and the physical seat of Eastern Orthodoxy fell under Islamic political rule after 1453. (Except for Mt. Athos, it's still that way.) The Russian Czars tried to gain hegemony over Eastern Orthodoxy, but it was too damned big for them -- St. Cyrill's alphabet triggered a mighty cultural achievement.

Damn dangerous driving this morning! Ice layered with rain and snow -- saw more doughnuts and spin-outs than I've seen all year! The giant Christmas Cactus keeps rockin' on! (see picture)



Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution as Winter decorates the Holidays with snow. Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: I'm "pouring wine" at a fund-raiser for the Hockaday Museum of Art tonight. (I can be more laid-back than I would be if I were designated a "bartender.") We are going to need a lotta funds, if what I'm thinking is what we're actually going to do! We got some wonderful xerox copies of letters to/from Winold Reiss and Louis Hill via the Hill Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota, thanks to curator Eileen McCormack.

Media Watch: The Narrow Margin (1952) a pretty good film noir by director Richard Fleischer -- TCM sez: A tough cop meets his match when he has to guard a gangster's moll on a tense train ride. Cast: Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, Jacqueline White. This thing is a rather unflattering, but accurate, snapshot of the early 50's USA, simply because they wanted to save some money and did a lot of location shooting in railroad stations, the streets of Los Angeles, and outlying once-small communities like Cucamonga. The also used real contemporary railway equipment for set-scenes. Even the "nice" characters are flawed by stupidity, cowardice, and resignation to a gray cruel world.
Fleischer's films tended to be Comic Book-like, which is a compliment coming from me. How his work rates as Art is a matter of personal opinion. Here's his Wikipedia Article. I sure wish that Tora Tora Tora had been finished by the fired Akira Kurosawa, instead of Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, and Toshio Masuda -- there might have been a little more meaning in that film, whose main point seemed to be "Oh man, we really f***ed up!" The action scenes and empathetic portraits of enemies are noteworthy, though.

Hairy and Downey Woodpeckers are feasting at the suet feeders. The Flickers show up a couple of times a day, in between the Magpies. There is a small flock of beautiful Pheasants which seem to travel eight at a time -- males and females. We are seeing Nuthatches as well as Chickadees -- they look almost the same, except the Nuthatches are smaller and have subtle yellows, oranges, and blues in their feathers. The Juncos eat right off the deck -- watch out for that stray cat, birdies!


Our big Christmas Cactus continues to erupt!

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution as Winter decorates the Holidays with snow. Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Museum workshops at the Hockaday Museum of Art all this week. I'm pouring wine at a reception on Wednesday night too. At the college, it's SLACKER Week -- all sorts of last-minute projects dumped at my door. It's nice to be needed, I guess. Over the Christmas break, we'll be participating in the annual Audubon Society bird count again.

Media Watch: Pros and cons of the Google Print Project on Book TV -- pretty contentious. The Internet has beseiged the walls of traditonal publishing for over ten years now -- kind of like the Trojan War. Is there any wonder why publishers and authors are suspicious of "nerds" bearing "gifts?"
American Football -- I'm a little sorry I said anything about the Indianapolis Colts -- they've lost three of their last four games since I said it might be their year to win it all. The University of Montana lost their playoff match last Friday. Maybe there will be fewer colds going around with one less outdoor game in this dark gray weather.
We had a "White Elephant" Christmas party for the Hockaday staff. My contribution was a pair of dawg-assed DVDs -- The Manster, made in Japan around 1959, and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe from 1940. (Carol Hughes plays a lab-assistant version of Dale Arden who TRIES to be feisty, but is very ineffectual due to rock-headed guards and exploding bombs.) Call 'em Black-and-White Elephants!


These animations are fun!
This screen-capture is from the wonderful
Tony LaBue's Flash Gordon website. He has pictures, credits, and even documentation about the MUSIC from these serials!

"Spike" the Whitetail buck visited us again. (See his picture below!) The very air is condensing into ice crystals on the roads and sidewalks under this cold, cold fog.



"Spike" scrounges around our old Sunflowers on December 7, 2006.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: 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! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution as Winter decorates for the Holidays with snow. Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: We're going to have to give the Minnesota Historical Society some money to research the Winold Reiss School. It WILL be cheaper than going there myself -- something like this also puts a price tag on how well one communicates with strangers. Hockaday Museum of Art

Media Watch: Thursday Night Football was two groups of men fighting on a frozen tundra at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Would have been just as bad at the other team's field in Cleveland, Ohio.) My TV looked like it was frosting up just by tuning in, or was that ESPN's cameras? Speaking of which, that same network is showing the University of Montana/University of Massachusetts AA College Football Championship game tonight about 120 miles away in Missoula, Montana.
The History Channel ruminated at length about the Seven Wonders of the World -- ancient world, that is. The Gizeh Pyramids are all that are left today, and there are disputes about whether the Hanging Gardens were in Babylon or Nineveh. An earthquake knocked the Pharos down, but we just might recover some of it one day. The Mausoleum and Temple of Diana may have a fragment or two lying around, but we know their sites, as we know the location of Zeus' temple in Olympia. The Colossus of Rhodes seems to have the most questions about it.
Damn! Did Christian Emperor Theodosius the Great really strip and destroy Zeus' statue at Olympia? That was a mean, heartless thing to do. He probably paid his largely-Barbarian armies with the loot -- those same armies which later sacked Rome and almost took over the Eastern Empire during the reigns of his two worthless sons.
A century earlier, Diocletian ended the Olympic games, claiming that their homoeroticism affronted the Gods -- old Zeus must not have had any pull any more.