Back from UTAH! The Deer off Woodland Drive greeted me yesterday evening. Lots of Hawks and Eagles along the route back and forth.

View outside my base camp in Ogden Utah, looking north and west towards the Great Salt Lake and historic Promontory Point.
Sitemeter Sez: New York, New York; Oldsmar, Florida; Marshall, Virginia; Middletown, New Jersey; Sango, Brazil; Paris, Ile-de-France; Scottsdale, Arizona; Kaysville, Utah; Westminster, Maryland; Stafford, Virginia; Salt Lake City, Utah; Springfield, Massachusetts; Cairo, Egypt; Whitefish, Montana; Oakland, California; Layton, Utah; Winter Park, Florida; Farmington, Michigan; Vancouver, British Columbia; Dublin, Ireland; Washington, District of Columbia; Oschersleben, Germany; Melbourne, Florida; Dallas, Texas; Pasadena, California, and Saint Louis, Missouri.

MORE New Mime Troupe History 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!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from 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 including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. 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. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: Mark Ogle's remarkable retrospective at the Hockaday Museum of Art, plus Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon's show is on the first level -- about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, it is a true labor of love by scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.
The Hockaday Museum of Art's Face Book Site (There's a link to the conventional website there.)

A statewide "town meeting" style videoconference about the USA's health care crisis. There were many advocates from different political views, and a few ignoramuses, but the consensus was clear: No more bankruptcies or losing homes because of injury or illness!

I was running the tech for guest speaker Joseph Lisle Williams when he presented a lecture at my college about surviving a bear attack in Glacier National Park 50 years ago. Don Dayton, the ranger who shot the bear and saved the young man's life was at the event too. If you want to read more about it, his sister wrote a blog about her brother and the lecture HERE.

The other month, I ran sound for Carol Buchanan's public discussion of her historical novel God's Thunderbolt -- The Vigilantes of Montana at the community college. Here's the link to a live-blog of the event.

What Was Happening In Utah (?): I saw/heard Joan Baez singing like an angel; Tower of Power pounding out the Funk, and Spira Gyra playing clean, clear, and entertaining Jazz. Last Saturday I went to THREE festivals -- The Saturday Farmer's Market in Salt Lake, The Scottish Festival in Payson, and the Utah Jazz Festival in Salt Lake. The mountains were still green from abundant rains, and I walked many miles 'way above 8000 feet.
On late night TV, I saw a BBC video from 1975 featuring Lynrd Skynrd on The Old Grey Whistle Test, a live concert program I saw when I lived in England at the same time it was recorded. They weren't my favorite group by any means, but they played Southern Rock as well as anyone did. Too bad so many of them have died -- most of the 'front line' has passed on. Guitarist Gary Rossington is the only one living among those four.
Like about a billion others, I saw and appreciated the live tribute to Michael Jackson -- some very fine music played and sung in his honor. It's sobering to think that the last time I caught up with Jackson on live TV was at James Brown's funeral a number of years ago on CSPAN. He looked sick and frail then -- I thought it was just a bad case of jet-lag at the time, perhaps I was wrong.
I saw a couple of oddball films on TV as well -- Lou Adler's Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1981) with young Laura Dern and Diane Lane in a movie which wasn't exactly great, but had a few moments of truth here and there. One of my favorite artist/filmmakers, Frank Miller, stepped in a pile of poo when he made The Spirit (2008). The only good thing about this terrible movie was the lack of racist 40's stereotype Ebony White. Perhaps Samuel L. Jackson as crime-master Octopus was a substitute. Better luck next time, Mr. Miller!

THAT'S The Spirit!

Will Eisner's great years of The Spirit were between 1945 and 1952 when he worked with Jules Feiffer, Jerry Grandenetti, and other great craftsmen, to refine his vision of movies-on-paper in weekly comic sections. Eisner's character P'Gell (above) was played by beautiful Eva Mendes in Frank Miller's film adaptation, but the flick had nothing substantial at it's core and failed miserably, IMHO.

Last post before my Utah trip. It feels like it's actually getting hot. I hope that Salt Lake isn't an oven, but they don't call it a high desert for nothing.

Sitemeter Sez: Suquamish, Washington; Washington, DC; Yotsukaido, Japan; Villers-le-Bouillet, Belgium; Cincinnati, Ohio (Bootsy? Patti? Freekbass?); ?? Australia; ?? South Africa; Cary, North Carolina, and Chandler, Arizona.

MORE New Mime Troupe History 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!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from 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 including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. 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. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: Mark Ogle's remarkable retrospective at the Hockaday Museum of Art, plus Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon's show is on the first level -- about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, it is a true labor of love by scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.
The Hockaday Museum of Art's Face Book Site (There's a link to the conventional website there.)

A statewide "town meeting" style videoconference about the USA's health care crisis. There were many advocates from different political views, and a few ignoramuses, but the consensus was clear: No more bankruptcies or losing homes because of injury or illness!

I was running the tech for guest speaker Joseph Lisle Williams when he presented a lecture at my college about surviving a bear attack in Glacier National Park 50 years ago. Don Dayton, the ranger who shot the bear and saved the young man's life was at the event too. If you want to read more about it, his sister wrote a blog about her brother and the lecture HERE.

The other week, I ran sound for Carol Buchanan's public discussion of her historical novel God's Thunderbolt -- The Vigilantes of Montana at the community college. Here's the link to a live-blog of the event.

Media Watch: So You Think You Can Dance? -- some excellent talent in the final dozen, but boy-oh-boy are they dependent on their choreographers. If a dance stinks, guess who loses votes? I have no favorites this season. There's a charismatic young blond woman named Kayla who has lost at least one partner, but there are eleven others who are graceful and dynamic too -- we'll see.

Jean Paul Bell wrote to me from Australia about my Mime Troupe Saga project. He is one special person -- part of an organization which brings humor to institutions like hospitals and senior homes, and another one that helps Afghan schoolchildren. We last met at Footsbarn's 35th Anniversary Celebration in 2006.

Off To Wherever!

A Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep at Logan Pass, Glacier National Park June 27, 2009 -- running away from gawkers like me.

Dry and warm -- cool nights, marauding deer going for flowers. I'm heading out for Utah this weekend. We visited Waterton/Glacier National Park(s) last Saturday, and got some great shots along the way:



Sitemeter Sez: Louth, Ireland (Dammit pal, COMMENT sometime -- who are you?); Erie, Colorado; Dublin, Ireland (Ahh -- that you, Eavan?); San Leandro, California; Lancaster, Massachusetts; Munich, Germany; Houston, Texas; Bombay, India (Movie person? I've sure slagged those older Bollywood films I've watched lately), and North Hampton, New Hampshire.

MORE New Mime Troupe History 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!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from 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 including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. 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. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: Mark Ogle's remarkable retrospective at the Hockaday Museum of Art, plus Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon's show is on the first level -- about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, it is a true labor of love by scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.
The Hockaday Museum of Art's Face Book Site (There's a link to the conventional website there.)

A statewide "town meeting" style videoconference about the USA's health care crisis. There were many advocates from different political views, and a few ignoramuses, but the consensus was clear: No more bankruptcies or losing homes because of injury or illness!

I was running the tech for guest speaker Joseph Lisle Williams when he presented a lecture at my college about surviving a bear attack in Glacier National Park 50 years ago. Don Dayton, the ranger who shot the bear and saved the young man's life was at the event too. If you want to read more about it, his sister wrote a blog about her brother and the lecture HERE.

The other week, I ran sound for Carol Buchanan's public discussion of her historical novel God's Thunderbolt -- The Vigilantes of Montana at the community college. Here's the link to a live-blog of the event.

Media Watch: Actually I've been listening to a lot of music by Mongo Santamaria -- Dizzy Gillespie's great discovery from the island nation of Cuba.

My Own Media: The Mime Troupe Saga continues with a new page about the first leg of our California tour in early 1975: http://theatrex.net/theatre/mt_pt6/index.htm

A double-exposure featuring Matthew Child, George Kugler (twice), and Katie 'Duck' onstage in Southern California. Digitized and colored version of a B&W photo developed and printed by Matt Child.

A little rain, a little sunshine, and life is good. The Farmer's Market has vegetables at last!

Sitemeter Sez: The Flash Gordon Gang -- Midrand, South Africa; Middletown, Connecticut; Staten Island, New York; Evansville, Indiana; Amboy, Indiana; Warrenton, Virginia; Park City, Utah; Newark, New Jersey; Bors, Sweden; Richardson, Texas; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Madrid, Spain; Gainesville, Florida, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

MORE New Mime Troupe History 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!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from 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 including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. 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. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: Mark Ogle's retrospective at the Hockaday Museum of Art had a wonderful reception. Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon's show is on the first level -- about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, it is a true labor of love by scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.
The Hockaday Museum of Art's Face Book Site (There's a link to the conventional website there.)

Last Friday, I was running the tech for guest speaker Joseph Lisle Williams when he presented a lecture at my college about surviving a bear attack in Glacier National Park 50 years ago. Don Dayton, the ranger who shot the bear and saved the young man's life was at the event too. If you want to read more about it, his sister wrote a blog about her brother and the lecture HERE.

The other week, I ran sound for Carol Buchanan's public discussion of her historical novel God's Thunderbolt -- The Vigilantes of Montana at the community college. Here's the link to a live-blog of the event.

Media Watch: Another old Bollywood movie starring ace actors Madhuri Dixit, Sanjay Duit, and Salman Khan from maybe the early 90's. Too bad it was a rather lousy version of Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897). Duit didn't play a psycho, like Rostand's Cyrano, but he WAS supposed to be a poet, who won the heart of a fair maid by his good heart and good words. A Netflix reviwer complained about the costumes -- so could I, but the overall moviemaking was just SO bad. I wouldn't know where to start.

Ch-Ch-Changes: Michael Jackson died yesterday -- he wasn't even fifty-one. All joking aside, he hasn't looked like himself for a long time. His physical frailty frankly scared me. I'm not going to speculate, but I'll be surprised if his fatal coronary wasn't directly related to the medical games he played with his body. The last time I saw him on TV was at James Brown's funeral a number of years back, where he shook hands with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as they all mourned the passing of a friend. M.J. did not look well, and I thought it might have been jet-lag, because he'd flown in from Bahrain.
That being said, he was one of the most talented performers to have ever mounted a stage. Tracing back, I liked his record Black & White in the early 90's, although the video didn't really make it with me; Man in the Mirror during the late 80's; The albums Thriller and Off the Wall when he first became a man, and more than half of the Jackson 5 recordings. We Are The World was a worthy effort, but I MUCH prefered Bob Geldoff's Do They Know It's Christmas. I happened to see Michael Jackson's 3D movie Captain E-O at Disneyland, around 1988, and had a very good time watching it.
May you be at peace, Mr. Jackson.

What was that about something completely different?

A redigitized portrait of Madhuri Dixit -- first-rate dancer and excellent movie actor. I heard that she lives in Denver, Colorado now, but she made a "comeback" film not too long ago for her loyal Bollywood fans.

Happy Summer Solstice! (see below) We've had some much-needed rain over the last few days too.

Sitemeter Sez: Atlanta, Georgia; Des Plaines, Illinois; Auckland, New Zealand; Suncook, New Hampshire; Frederiksborg, Denmark; Columbia Falls, Montana; Lima, Ohio; Tampere, Western Finland; Lumberton, New Jersey; Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Whitefish, Montana.

MORE New Mime Troupe History 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!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from 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 including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. 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. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: Mark Ogle's retrospective is going up at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon's show is on the first level -- about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, it is a true labor of love by scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.
The Hockaday Museum of Art's Face Book Site (There's a link to the conventional website there.)

Last Friday, I was running the tech for guest speaker Joseph Lisle Williams when he presented a lecture at my college about surviving a bear attack in Glacier National Park 50 years ago. Don Dayton, the ranger who shot the bear and saved the young man's life was at the event too. If you want to read more about it, his sister wrote a blog about her brother and the lecture HERE.

The other week, I ran sound for Carol Buchanan's public discussion of her historical novel God's Thunderbolt -- The Vigilantes of Montana at the community college. Here's the link to a live-blog of the event.

Media Watch: An old movie starring Amitabh Bachchan (1978) where he plays a character named Sikander. I can't fault the acting -- especially by the dancer/courtesan, but it didn't add up. Bachchan made so many GOOD movies like Amir, Abkar, Anthony, or even the dawg-assed violent Sholay in the early part of his career, that I think this one is best left to the completists.

Time and Timelessness

A digital sketch of a composition
I once printed on an intaglio press circa 1972.
Mysterious Stonehenge and the puzzles of Geometry stirred together by a young American art student after reading Gerald Hawkins' Stonehenge Revealed, which described how a mainframe computer analyzed the astronomical nature of this famous pre-historic monument, three or four years before I saw the place with my own eyes on Salisbury Plain while I was living in England.
Led Zeppelin's Battle of Evermore was playing on a nearby stereo:
The queen of light she took her bough
And then she turned to go,
The prince of peace embraced the gloom
And walked the night alone.
Oh, dance in the dark night,
Sing to the morning light.
The dark lord rides in force tonight
And time will tell us all.
Oh, throw down your plow and hoe,
Rest not to lock your homes.
Side by side we wait the night
Of the darkest of them all.
I hear the horses thunder
Down in the valley blow,
I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon,
Waiting for the eastern glow.
The apples of the valley hold,
The seeds of happiness,
The ground is rich from tender care,
Repay, do not forget -- no, no!
Oh, dance in the dark night,
Sing to the morning light.
The apples turn to brown and black, the tyrants face is red.
Oh, war is the common cry, lift up your swords and fly.
The sky is filled with good and bad
That mortals never know.
Oh, well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow,
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.
The pain of war cannot exceed
The woe of aftermath,
The drums will shake the castle wall,
The ringwraiths ride in black -- ride on!
Sing as you raise your bow,
Shoot straighter than before!
No comfort has the fire at night
That lights the face so cold.
Oh dance in the dark night,
Sing to the morning light.
The magic runes are writ in gold
To bring the balance back -- bring it back, bring it back!
At last the sun is shining, the clouds of blue roll by,
With flames from the dragon of darkness
The sunlight blinds his eyes.

It is Summer all right -- I'm complaining that we need more rain!

Sitemeter Sez: Someone from The Netherlands, searching for Josie Biereye; Madrid, Spain; Rollins, Montana (looking at Carol Buchanan's live-blog); Columbia Falls, Montana; Webster, New York; Singapore; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Grand Junction, Colorado; Cluj-Napoca, Romania; Oakland, California; Orange Beach, Alabama; Milwaukee, Wisconsin (One of the Cheney/Mills family); Portland, Oregon; Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Chesterfield, Massachusetts; Slough, UK (between London and Heathrow Airport), and Warm Springs, Montana.

MORE New Mime Troupe History 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!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from 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 including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. 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. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: The Plein-Aire Paint-Off is up at the Hockaday Museum of Art, fresh off the artists' brushes. Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon's show is on the first level -- about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, it is a true labor of love by scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.
The Hockaday Museum of Art's Face Book Site (There's a link to the conventional website there.)

The other week, I ran sound for Carol Buchanan's public discussion of her historical novel God's Thunderbolt -- The Vigilantes of Montana at the community college. Here's the link to a live-blog of the event.

Media Watch: A videotape made from a film shot by the Royal Ballet in 1959 -- featuring Margot Fonteyn at the height of her powers, just before she started dancing with Rudolph Nureyev. The director was Paul Czinner, and it is pretty well filmed -- Gawd only knows how many takes they had to repeat for all those medium, long, and closeup shots. Michael Somes is Fonteyn's co-star, but the men's choreography was pretty dull in the first two pieces -- Swan Lake Act III, and fragments of The Firebird. (By the way, it is Igor Stravinsky's birthday today.) I liked the third section best -- quite a large segment of Ondine by Hans Werner Henz. There were more parts for men, and the guys all danced, rather than just postured and held the lovely ballerinas. The production was rather old-fashioned, even for the late 50's. The costuming tended to favor heavy fabrics, and the scenery was somewhat confining and overwrought. Fashions in both Modern Dance and Ballet would favor more lightness and sensuality onstage, even when this film was first released. Nureyev's career would soon literally take off, and male ballet dancers would leap at the chance to follow him into the air. Quick, strong, and charismatic Margot Fonteyn was by far the most inspiring aspect of the entire picture, and instead of retiring at the end of the decade, as was her plan, she became an even greater star.

What are the neighbors up to, lately?

I snapped this shot of a Whitetail Deer while walking near Woodland Drive last Monday evening about sunset.