A small flock of BIG Canadian Geese ringed the pond yesterday, and the Bald Eagles took turns watching for fish. "Big Boy" Eagle stood guard this morning.

See Michael "Kidd Funkadelic" Hampton: Theater X-Net

Featuring: 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!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution in February too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Lecture by Denny Kellogg at the Hockaday later today -- I'll be setting up the data projector for his Powerpoint presentation, plus bringing a microphone.
Hockaday Museum of Art

Media Watch: Dancing with the Stars had a surprise in store -- Tony & Stacy danced well in their free dance, but it was a LOUSY DANCE. I've been pulling for Drew & Cheryl all along, but I was scratching my head when it looked like their main competitors forgot they were in a contest.
HOW BAD WAS IT?
It was SO BAD the judges gave Jerry & Anna a better score on their free dance.
Jerry Rice steadily progressed from week to week, but those judges never warmed to his dancing.
Sunday is the season finale, and there's supposed to be ONE more judged dance.
I hope they are done with the flashbacks too -- hearing Barry Manilow forgetting his own song, and Bill Medley barely able to croak were hard to endure. Medley was a favorite of mine in the mid 60's when he led the Righteous Brothers, and I'd rather remember him singing well on TV shows like Shindig.


Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield on Shindig circa 1964
Carole Shelyne was the "dancer with the glasses"
Teri Garr also danced with this widely-watched ensemble for awhile
They were on the cover of Time Magazine in 1965

A huge immature Bald Eagle with a smaller white-headed companion next to the pond yesterday! Pileated Woodpecker(s) eating suet on the deck for the first time in almost ten years. (See picture below) The sub-zero temperatures are done for now, and we had over four inches of fluffy snow overnight.

Updated with Michael "Kidd Funkadelic" Hampton!: Theater X-Net

Featuring: 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!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution in February too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Lecture by Denny Kellogg -- he will discuss Herman Schnitzmeyer’s work and show additional photographs of Wyoming, Montana, and other photos from the Northern Pacific Railroad collection. Friday, February 24, 3:00 pm
I'll be setting up the data projector for his Powerpoint presentation, plus bringing a microphone -- this guy's a QUIET speaker.
Hockaday Museum

Media Watch: I completely missed Skating With Celebrities last Monday -- watched the Olympics instead. Their token grumpy Englishman, John Nicks, is Sasha Cohen's coach, and she skated a KILLER short program. Hey! Look at this -- there was no Celebrities show this week -- the finale is Monday the 27th! Skating With Celebrities
MY Olympic Highlights -- I have enjoyed the Japanese ice skaters, men and women. Their choreography and presentations have been pleasantly original. Silvia Fontana of Italy skated a hot dance number to a jazzy blues, but was second-to-last among the qualifiers. I think the music was a touch too tricky. I mention her because I liked the performance, and because she's married to John Zimmerman of Skating With Celebrities and was on Queer Eye with him a year or two back.
Speaking of GRUMPS! -- Local favorites Barbara Fusar-Poli and Maurizio Margaglio of Italy fell at the end of their ice-dance on Sunday. Barbara indulged in an icy, glaring, grumpfest for the next twenty-four hours that was right out of a bad soap-opera. They performed brilliantly on Monday, nevertheless, but it was alternatingly funny and terrifying to see their emotional jack-hammer ride.
I was VERY sorry to see the Canadian lady Marie-France Dubreuil fall so hard that she couldn't skate the next night.
An observation, not a complaint, about ice-dancing costumes -- They are "cut" like standard ballroom outfits, which means the women look half-naked. On the ice, they use a lot of skin colored nylon, though.
My wife is a skier, and we've enjoyed seeing the downhill events, including those scary stunts where they flip up in the air thirty feet or so -- better them than me! We try to endure the various skate and sled races, but we use the fast-forward feature quite quickly.


A Pileated Woodpecker at our suet feeder
Middle Foy's Lake February 21, 2006

Another minus 20 degrees (F) night, plus a power outage at 2 AM! We did see a Bald Eagle at sunset, even though that %$#@! boat was parked by the ice-hole.

Updated with Michael "Kidd Funkadelic" Hampton!: Theater X-Net

Featuring: 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!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution in February too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Lectures by Denny Kellogg -- he will discuss Herman Schnitzmeyer’s work and show additional photographs of Wyoming, Montana, and other photos from the Northern Pacific Railroad collection.
Tuesday, February 21, 5:30 pm; Friday, February 24, 3:00 pm
I'll be setting up a data projector for his Powerpoint presentations.
Hockaday Museum


Glacier National Park from my neighborhood,
overlooking Little Foy's Lake, before the deep-freeze hit us.

Minus 20 degrees (F) on my thermometer this morning. The ol' Big Sky is a cold, pitiless blue, and there's no warmth in the sun. Even the critters know that just 'starting your engines' is life's biggest challenge on days like this.

Updated with Michael "Kidd Funkadelic" Hampton!: Theater X-Net

Featuring: 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!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution in February too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Join the slow parade viewing The Thousand Yard Stare on Ariana Huffington's blogsite. A video of Jim Soular reading his poem Gold Star Mother.
Huffington Post -- Contagious Festival.

Media Watch: Dancing with the Stars must have listened to us! We gave two votes to Drew & Cheryl and three to Jerry & Anna, mostly because the judges were so snotty to the latter couple. "Lips" and her dull Dutch partner were voted off the show. Do not underestimate the popularity of an NFL hero. Stacy & Tony weren't a sharp as they were the last two weeks, so they're beatable in the near future -- keep your focus Drew & Cheryl!
We are still watching the Winter Olympics via videotape when the humor takes us. The shows are frankly a bit dull, and there's at least 20 minutes of obnoxious commercials per hour, not counting NBC's self-promotions.

The temperature is falling like a sky-diver on a cell phone this morning. There were over fourteen Whitetail Deer on the slope below the "Big F" in my neighborhood yesterday evening.

Updating TODAY: Theater X-Net

Featuring: 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!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution in February too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: The Thousand Yard Stare on Ariana Huffington's blogsite. A video of Jim Soular reading his poem Gold Star Mother.
Huffington Post -- Contagious Festival.

Media Watch: Is it any wonder that Bruce Jenner didn't make the finals in Skating With Celebrities? -- However, his last skate with Tai Babalonia was excellent. The two big experienced men skaters will toss their blond partners around next week via videotape -- they've actually been at the Olympics for awhile.
We are watching the Olympics via tape-delay from NBC ourselves. The cable coverage on USA Network is bitchy and negative. HOW BAD IS IT? It's SO BAD they have a whole hour of Dick Button grumping away in the afternoon to old video clips.
Bollywood Movies -- Hum Tum a silly comedy with ingenue Rani Mukherjee and leading man Saif Ali Khan. The less said about the story the better -- those numerous contradictions are painful, but the acting is good, and the location photography is excellent. There is one extended sequence in my old adopted city of Amsterdam, and the nearby environs of North Holland. Someone even let them film inside De Rijksmuseum!


(Left) Colorized ariel view of Amsterdam's "Centrum,"
De Rijksmuseum is centered at the bottom.
Those are CANALS with sidewalks and roads on either side.
(Right) Actors Rani and Saif at the backside of De Rijksmuseum,
which would be just "below" the photo.

Cold and sunny all weekend, and now it's starting to snow. We heard the Coyotes last week, and saw another gory deer carcass on the ice -- in front of someone ELSE's house this time.

Updating this week: Theater X-Net

Featuring: 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!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution in February too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: The Thousand Yard Stare on Ariana Huffington's blogsite. A video of Jim Soular reading his poem Gold Star Mother -- about a dozen visitors a day come by. The top two will have hundreds of thousands of viewers at the end of the month, but I'm still glad we did this.
Huffington Post -- Contagious Festival.

Media Watch: Frivolity Rules! "Hammy" George was voted off Dancing with the Stars. I think America's millions of football fans came to Jerry Rice's rescue. However, his partner is a fine, personable dancer, like Hammy's, and that may have made a difference. Lisa "Lips" Rinna has been working very hard, but all that plastic surgery creeps me out -- her partner, Louis Van Amstel is a rather cold technician too, but the judges like this couple. Rice will need to surprise everyone to have a chance next week.
America's Ballroom Challenge on PBS was reasonably fun. We are seeing some of these dancers doing guest-shots on ABC's Stars -- Tony Dovolani took second place in the overall judging on PBS, and he is the lucky man who has Stacy (Tina Sparkle) Kiebler as his celebrity partner. I'm supporting Drew & Cheryl, but DAY-UM! Tony and Stacy are good.
Book TV -- John Prevas' thoughtful discussion of Envy of the Gods: Alexander the Great's Ill-Fated Journey across Asia was the sort of thing that makes my weekend. Chris Patten was speaking at the often-reactionary Brookings Institution about Cousins and Strangers: America, Britain, and the Europe in a New Century. He was a stodgy, conservative Englishman, bred to run the old empire, but he knew what he was talking about, which is far too rare nowadays.
Bollywood Movies -- A dorky remake of Ellen Barkin's Switch. The original wasn't very good, and this Indian crib was only a pale copy. It had the WORST soundtrack I've ever heard in any Indian film. We accidentally recorded over part of it, but no matter -- this one's a waste of time.