View from the Northern Border

Saturday, August 16, 2008

We need some rainfall -- no doubt about it. It is hot, but the place I'm renting is cool from all the foilage around it. Deer were jumping the rock walls at Conrad Mansion last evening.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Levallois-Perret, France; Buffalo, New York; Columbus, Ohio; Ballston Spa, New York; Toledo, Ohio; Clifton, New Jersey; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Topeka, Kansas; London, England; Doorn, Holland; Maplewood, New Jersey; Pompano Beach, Florida; Newport News, Virginia; Sammamish, Washington; Amarillo, Texas; Bolton, UK, and Blythe, California.

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.

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US Highway 2 through Northern Montana -- parallel to the Burlington/Santa Fe/Great Northern Railway tracks, also known as The Highline. It goes all the way from Seattle to Minneapolis, but after ten hours, I turned south at Culbertson to go to Sidney, which was MUCH greener.

Media Watch: Did I write about satellite radio on my trip last weekend? Too bad -- I'm writing about it now! The rolling windswept plains weren't much for scenery, but they served me well for listening to Jazz and Blues. Gary Burton was as good a host as he was before, playing some music by Carla Bley with a personal story about this great contemporary composer. Charles Mingus continues to satisfy the deepest depths of my soul, as he did when I discovered him for myself at the age of sixteen. John Coltrane and Miles Davis were just magical in their creativity. One special treat was Muddy Waters singing The Blues Had A Baby (And They Named It Rock & Roll) another was the Newport Jazz Festival recording of Got My Mojo Working from 1957 -- one more tune I enjoyed in my teenaged years, thanks to the Salt Lake Public Library.
The second hop between Sidney and Lewistown had its musical highlight with a performance of Puccini's La Bohème from 2003. I prefer the interplay between wild Musetta and Marcello rather than doomed Mimi and pathetic Rudolfo, but my vote doesn't count. Gloom seems to dominate Opera. It is very interesting to me that Arturo Toscanini conducted the premiere in 1896 -- his life overlapped mine slightly, and his very NAME meant Classical Music when I was a kid. In the 50's, Opera was often treated as an artifact of an indefinitely distant past, even though Puccini had passed away only three decades previously.
As sad evidence, Billy Budd (1951) by Benjamin Britten was on the radio the following day. Whatever the motivation for it, that English-language drama sounded like a second-rate comedy troupe's take-down of an opera -- the music is atonal, the words are cringingly melodramatic, or outright laughable, despite its tragedy and the subtext of repressed homosexuality. Gotta change the station -- Ahhhh, Duke Ellington does the trick! They still program a lot of Jackie Wilson on Channel 5 too -- one of the BEST singers who ever graced the airwaves.
One more fun anomaly came to my ears on the BBC -- a correspondent told about The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, a long-sought novel by Alexandre Dumas Sr. The great popular author was writing one more serial before he died, and quite a few episodes had been published in French newspapers -- well they finally found his lost manuscript, and some brave soul will attempt to finish the story.

You mean Three Musketeers Dumas?

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My favorite Constance -- Raquel Welch in a digital jam from a couple of modeling sessions, plus her excellent acting in Richard Lester's Three (Four) Musketeers.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Perfect summery weather -- however there's a lightning-caused forest fire southwest of us, along the fastest road to Idaho and Washington. I've seen almost a half-dozen spotty fawns around the area since I got back. Last Monday I drove up to Glacier National Park -- the Going To The Sun Road is in the midst of reconstruction, but it is still fun!

Roadwork in Glacier Nat'l Park on Monday, Aug. 11, 2008 -- they've taken all the old asphalt away, and have blown up a few overhanging rocks. This section, between the Loop and Haystack, will be repaved in September.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Dallas, Texas; East Lansing, Michigan; Ipswich, England; Louth, Ireland; Fort Worth, Texas; Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia; Fairfax, Virginia; Stratford, Connecticut; Reykjavk, Iceland; New York City, New York; Cascade, Montana; Tacoma, Washington; Charlottesville, Virginia; Silver Spring, Maryland; Seattle, Washington; Chicago, Illinois; Morgantown, West Virginia; Great Falls, Montana (stayed awhile); Charlotte, North Carolina; Rio De Janeiro, Brazil; Los Angeles, California; Cape Town, Western Cape; Oxford, England; Toronto, Ontario and Cardiff, Wales.

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

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Charlie and Nancy Russell's home (L) and art studio (R) in Great Falls, Montana. Part of the Charles M. Russell Museum in a pleasant neighborhood on the north side of town.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Three days on the road, but I finally made it home tonight! I saw many Rough-Legged Hawks, a Pheasant couple, Mule Deer, Horses and Cattle along the way. Sidney, Montana is a remarkably pleasant community on the North Dakota border -- Sandy and Leanne of the MonDak Heritage Center were very friendly and helpful to me. Lewistown was unusually stately for a Central Montana town, with a tidy business district, well-kept neighborhoods, plus plenty of shady trees and water -- many thanks to Corinna and Jeniffer at the museum! I saw ONE more in Great Falls this morning -- the Charles M. Russell Museum, which includes the old cowboy's home and studio.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Buenos Aires, Argentina; Whittier, California; Sudbury, Ontario; Fairfield, California; Kearny, New Jersey; Clarksville, Tennessee; Crawley, UK; Missouri City, Texas; Rotterdam, Holland; Mesa, Arizona; Meriden, Connecticut; Winston Salem, North Carolina (lookin' for the P-FUNK!); Sarnia, Ontario; Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Spring, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; Lake Havasu City, Arizona and Chattanooga, Tennessee (Choo-choo Ch-boogie!)

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

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: My mad dash to Sidney, Montana at the far East end of Montana for the Hockaday Museum of Art is DONE! The next two transport trips for Cawdrey's show won't be near as intense.
Our current exibits are 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.

Media Watch: Watched old movies as I winded down from the road or tried to sleep.

I put up with a couple of WWII movies -- one was a strange technicolor flick about Navy flight surgeons in 1940 San Diego starring Errol Flynn and Fred McMurray. Half the science they spoke about was probably classified during the next twelve months.
Guadalcanal Diary was a sad, jingoistic, approximation of one of the most critical military adventures in world history. The book, Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis, was written by what we'd call an "embedded" reporter today. The Landmark Books version I read in 6th grade left a lot of the desperation and horror untold, but allowed some reality to remain between the covers. The movie from 1943 was as numbing as novacaine, and wasn't particularly entertaining either. There were many better war movies made in those days -- even some fairly crappy ones were better than this.
This series of pitched battles over a forward airbase, hurriedly cleared by Imperial troops in the jungles of the Solomon Islands, and seized by the USA, resulted in massive losses of irreplacable troops and ordinance on the Japanese side, but practical training, hard-won intelligence, and successful templates for amphibious assaults on the Allied side -- but the back-and-forth took most of a year, and the US could have been defeated at several junctures, before its industrial might was fully mobilized.
The miracle of Midway loomed large, since a sudden lack of aircraft carriers provoked the Japanese attempt to extend the reach of their ground-based planes -- nobody guessed that America's methodical response would eventually doom the whole Empire.

I also caught parts of two Doris Day films in the morning -- a very early effort from the year I was born called My Dream Is Yours. It was pretty bad, although Bugs Bunny made an appearence, and Eve Arden was her always-excellent self. TCM also showed Girl In The Glass Bottomed Boat (1966) -- Doris Day was 42 years old, and no girl. She had a grown son who was producing first-rate albums for Columbia Records. Whomever produced this flick made it a peep show featuring undignified glimpses of her unclothed body. (Hopefully using a stunt double at crucial moments.) Her movie career was starting to fall apart because of changing times and bad management decisions. She had earlier stepped into Marilyn Monroe's final role in a dreadful remake of My Favorite Wife.

Doris Day in her mermaid costume from The Glass Bottomed Boat. To be fair, she was in excellent physical shape, and looked strong, vital, and healthy, whatever they made her wear. This insensitive, sexist movie was more victimization than comedy. The knockabout humor was sub-slapstick, and the jokes were too humiliating to be fun. Despite Doris Day's bad experiences as censorship faded, my generation was capable of accepting "older women" as "sex symbols." Carol Baker, Angie Dickenson, and Anne Bancroft come to mind. Jayne Mansfield was well-known, and would have had more popular success if her movies hadn't been so exploitive and bad. Mitzi Gaynor, Julie Newmar, and Cyd Charisse were on TV just enough for us to know they were around -- but the nightclub scene where they thrived withered as the 60's ended.
The movie-going public included millions of teenagers like myself who had grown up seeing Doris Day as a star from our moms' generation. The more discerning of us knew her as a fine singer, but her style of Pop was passe in 1966. (I grew to defend her fabulous music, and still do!)
Most importantly for our drive-in demographic, the LAST thing we wanted to see on our movie screens were nude and semi-nude pictures of our MOMS -- especially a mom who had projected such a sugary image over the years. Boat was sold as a supposed spy flick, and Doris Day as Honor Blackman seemed embarassingly wrong.

Exhibit A1 -- Honor Blackman circa 1966
My favorite of all of 007's female co-stars. Some actresses were better than others at being comfortable in their skin.

Monday, August 04, 2008

Another warm day, although it got down to about 6 Degrees (C) last night. Man, the night sky is FULL of bright planets this year.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Jacksonville, Florida; Aliso Viejo, California; Dundee City, Scotland; Binghamton, New York; Kaneohe, Hawaii (My friend Dave Fagiolli, checking out Rock Against Reagan); Longboat Key, Florida; Aurora, Colorado and Retsil, Washington.

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

Oh Canada Day in Whistler B.C. 2008 -- Civic ceremony featuring RCMP Mounties wearing red wool uniforms in 30 degree (C) heat; Theatrical paraders, including a walking Olympic Logo, plus pipers in the pub -- they got a prize at the ceremony, but were having fun elsewhere.

Ch-ch-changes: Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn passed away a few days back. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was a major event when it was published. I was in Junior High , but we were encouraged to read it -- just to help understand Russians as being different from Communists.
We were all hoping that the Cold War would thaw, but soon Kruschev was fired, Brezhnev pushed Kosygin aside, and the temperature went 'way down -- almost to Nuclear Winter. In that atmosphere, Dr. Zhivago might have been a romantic movie, but it was used to confirm Anti-Soviet prejudices. The publication of Gulag was used for propaganda too -- but the relatively few who actually read the book trumpeted its truths about humanity instead. Solzhenitsyn's exile did NOT play so well into the hands of idealogues, either.
By then I was in college, and it was awesome to see this legendary literary giant, on his own terms, in the body of an ordinary human being. We didn't always like what we heard, but we listened and learned.

Just my personal perspective, for what little it's worth -- RIP Mr. Solzhenitsyn.

Sublimity to Ridiculousness

...The (John) McCain campaign announced that the Senator will participate in the Sturgis Rally 2008 at Buffalo Chip in South Dakota ... it is hard not to notice the evocative, non-political sideshows that will literally surround McCain's speech. As the presumptive nominee takes the stage, the "Ringin' Wet & Wild" women's wrestling event will be taking place on the main amphitheater. Two hours before then, the "Miss Buffalo Chip Beauty Pageant - Bikinis on the Beach" will be staged at a different venue. That affair is described by ESPN's Jim Caple as "essentially a topless beauty pageant. And occasionally bottomless, too. 'During a drenching rain Wednesday night, the contest broke up into smaller groups and one woman wound up dancing naked on a bar top. Her boyfriend/husband saw her and angrily dragged her away as she struggled to put her pants back on and muttered something about how, "It's only this one week a year.'" How sweet. Sadly, the pageant also sees its share of domestic abuse, which even the event's organizers admit ... is a major problem.
Following McCain's speech, country stars Kellie Pickler and Kid Rock will be taking the very same stage for their own live performances. Then at 12:30 a.m., there will be the semi-finals of the "Miss Buffalo Chip Beauty Pageant," this time featuring Hawaiian Tropic Models.

Who else is going to Sturgis?

Bye Bye Suckahs!
Wait'll you see what I'M wearing for the beauty pageant!

Sunday, August 03, 2008

No rain -- a cloudless Big Sky. I'm watering my yard, and keeping the grass long, so that it LOOKS green. Roses are struggling, but the Lupines and Sweet Peas are doing fine. I made a quick trip to the Bigfork Festival of the Arts before work this morning, and shot a few photos.

Osprey hunting over the Flathead River near Bigfork, Montana.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Warwick, New York; Fort Worth, Texas; Tel Aviv, Israel; Salmon, Idaho (Where a REAL outlaw named Bigfoot was killed by a bounty hunter in the 1860's), and Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

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

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The Northwest edge of the Bigfork Arts Festival on Bigfork Bay and the Swan River -- the event winds further through the village along Electric Avenue. (Inset) Jeweller Liv Ensign and her boyfriend Toby, a theater tech who had just finished working Alice Cooper's concert in Kalispell. Liv's brother and mother had booths at the Festival, plus she and her sister were at Arts In The Park last week -- a much COOLER event, since most of it was shaded under trees.

Media Watch: I was reading about The Goon Show -- a hugely influential comedy show broadcast on BBC radio from 1951 through 1960. The main cast were Peter Sellers, Harry Newcombe, and Spike Milligan, who functioned as writer too. British Comedy was completely transformed by this phenomenon. Because of them, the world also got Beyond The Fringe and Monty Python, with a half a dozen more comedic geniuses. The book was published before Sellers' last heart attack and final tour de force Being There. Milligan and Newcombe were still alive as well, but the former was suffering from repeated nervous collapses. I hadn't known that Milligan wrote for Marty Feldman in the late 60's/early 70's -- I loved those TV shows, and laughed harder than I've ever laughed in my life at some of the bits. Milligan was excellent as an actor in Richard Lester's Three (and Four) Musketeers, with Michael York and Raquel Welch, among others. When I lived in England, we'd tune into Q6, Milligan's eccentric BBC programme whenever we were at home in time to see it -- the man was a true master.

Any excuse for a Rocky picture!

Young wife and mother Raquel Welch, circa 1967, about the time she became famous as a model and movie star. Her work got progressively better over the years, and I enjoyed her portrayal of the doomed ingenue in Three (Four) Musketeers -- done-in by the villainous Faye Dunnaway, no less. They should have KNOWN she was bad from Bonnie & Clyde!

I've been sampling some of our Bollywood movies from Vancouver recently -- many seem to rely on fantasies of a powerful criminal underworld and none-too-gentle police battling each other as ordinary Indian citizens were just trying to make ends meet. Unfortunately, there is too much nasty reality concerning those scenarios. American movies have relied on organized/common crime stories since the sound era began too, but what they say about our cultures isn't particularly inspiring.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

The Big Sky has been threatening rain, and I hope the mountains have been intercepting some, but the valley is dry. Two Deer charged down the hill together and thundered across the Dry Bridge about an hour before sunset.

(From SPACE.com 01 August 2008)
ABOARD A JET ABOVE THE ARCTIC OCEAN – 36,000-feet above the Arctic Ocean at a point between the uninhabited northern coast of Greenland and the Norwegian island group of Svalbard...onboard an LTU Airbus A330-200 long-range jet, racing the ... the moon's 139-mile wide shadow.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Manchester, UK; Jamaica, New York; Berlin, Germany (GoBama!); Somewhere, Japan; Phoenix, Arizona; Nesbit, Mississippi; Vittorio Veneto, Italy and Picayune, Mississippi.

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

A mash-up from self-declared exhibitionist Lady GaGa's intro to the TV public -- besides her oversized straight-haired white wig, she wore an outfit cut high above her hipbones, and used a headset mic which also shone a rectangular flourescent bluish-purple light on her mouth throughout the whole number. At the begining she sported a pair of high-tech specs which displayed her stage name -- the singing and dancing were excellent, and she wrote the song as well!

Real Books: More From Hollywood by DeWitt Bordeen -- a collection of short biographies, including one about Alla Nazimova and another about her nephew Val Lewton. This author was also the writer of Cat People and knew them both, so his personal perspective was interesting. Nazimova's comment "Val couldn't afford me," could only come from a private conversation. Lewton was as respected a filmmaker as Robert Wise among his peers, but he slaved for tyrants like David O. Selznik, Charles Koerner, and Dore Schary -- working himself into an early grave.
Nazimova was a first-rate stage actor whose talent was only shown on the screen in supporting roles when talkies blossomed late in her career. Yes, she was a prima donna in her private life, but gave much to the theater-going public, like Eleonora Duse did in Europe, plus introduced the roots of Stanislavsky's Method to America. They both followed the leadership of Sarah Bernhardt in running their own careers with style. I daresay Ida Rubinstein, High Patroness of this blog, wanted to rival and even exceed Nazimova's accomplishments, but made choices which took her career in other, though somewhat parallel, directions. The irony is that these larger-than-life personalities are almost equally forgotten.

Alla Nazimova as Salome in her big-budget flop from 1922 -- supposedly inspired by Beardsley's designs for Oscar Wilde's play. Rita Hayworth couldn't save a remake after WWII, and Ken Russell's attempt at the story largely failed too, so she's in good cinematic company. Ida Rubinstein crashed the theatrical gates for herself with this same role in Belle Epoch Paris with better luck, but in a much different society. Her reprise of Salome, just before WWI, with Wilde's original French dialogue, was somewhat anticlimactic. Read more in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

View from the Northern Border

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Saturday, August 16, 2008

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