A classic Winter snowfall today -- this one is piling up rapidly, with snowflakes the size of coins. A Raccoon was sighted on the back deck at Dry Bridge Slough, along with Blue Jays.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Manchester, UK; Flushing, New York (Tennis anyone?) and Woodlawn, Illinois

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, 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!





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!

All-round good guy Jim Keefe wrote me to say: Enjoyed the comparison from strip to film. Fun stuff!
Put a link on the Yahoo adventure strip group as well.
Hope you get a lot of hits. THANKS AGAIN JIM!

Charity Alert: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road, The Collective Caravan, and Old West -- New Visions at the Hockaday Museum of Art. I had to get our Artist Wilderness Connection pieces ready to travel -- there's plenty of time to sign up for THIS year!

Media Watch: Allen Toussaint's 70th birthday was celebrated on Montana Public Radio the other night. He represents the best of New Orleans' Soul, Funk, and R&B. The DJ tracked through 1958's The Wild Sound of New Orleans , where Al Hirt got his big hit Java. Mr. Toussaint has produced or performed on dozens of my favorite singles and albums -- fluid rhythms, earthquake bass, soulfull singing, eccentric arrangements, and songwriting that is second to none for humor and bluesy fun. I first became aware of him on Lee Dorsey's records, but he'd already been part of so many other great sounds that I wasn't surprised when I learned more about the extent of his work over the years. Here are the lyrics to just ONE of his songs --

Yes We Can

Now is the time for all good men
To get together with one another
Iron out our problems
Iron out our quarrels
And try to live as brothers
And try to find the peace within
Without stepping on one another

And do respect the women of the world
Remember you all have mothers

Make this land a better land
Than the world in which we live
And help each man be a better man
With the kindness that you give

I know we can make it
I know darn well we can work it out
Oh yes we can,
I know we can can
Yes we can can, why can't we
If we wanna get yes we can can

I know we can make it a world
I know we can make it if we try

Oh yes we can, I know we can can
Yes we can can, great gosh almighty
Yes we can, I know we can can

Take care for the children
The children of the world
They're our strongest hope for the future
The little bitty boys and girls

Make this land a better land
Than the world in which we live
And help each man be a better man
With the kindness that you give

I know we can make it (I know that we can)
I know darn well we can work it out

Oh yes we can, I know we can can
Yes we can can, why can't we
If we wanna get yes we can can

I know we can make it a world
I know we can make it if we try

Oh yes we can, I know we can can
Yes we can can, great, gosh almighty
Yes we can, I know we can can

Now for my OWN Media:


I expanded Cellulose to Celluloid, featuring Alex Raymond's Witch Queen of Mongo (above). I also rewrote some comments and fixed some links. My Web hosting service was upgrading their servers, so I took the opportunity to make changes as well as check the functionality of my domain.

The snowpack keeps building up slowly! There's been some snowfall every day. Unfortunately, a couple of back-country skiers lost their lives in an avalanche nearby. It's been the worst year on record for these kind of fatalities. Stay in-bounds, in the resorts -- our narrow canyons are death-traps with this type of snow.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Cambridge, Massachusetts; Kirkland, Washington; Jamaica, New York (Yo Stozo!); Louth, Ireland (Love 'ya, Eavan!) and Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire UK.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, 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!





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!

All-round good guy Jim Keefe wrote me to say: Enjoyed the comparison from strip to film. Fun stuff!
Put a link on the Yahoo adventure strip group as well.
Hope you get a lot of hits. THANKS AGAIN JIM!

Charity Alert: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Nancy Cawdrey, The Collective Caravan, and Old West -- New Visions at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Check out the pictures!

Ch-ch Changes: (from an article by Gudjon Helgason) REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius ...has died. Fisher died in a Reykjavik hospital on Thursday of kidney failure after a long illness. He was 64. Born in Chicago in March 9, 1943, and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Robert James Fischer was a child prodigy, playing competitively from the age of 8. At 13, he became the youngest player to win the United States Junior Championship. At 14, he won the United States Open Championship for the first of eight times. At 15, he gained the title of international grand master, the youngest person to hold the title. Fischer dethroned (Soviet Grand Master Boris) Spassky in 1972 in a series of games in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, to become the first officially recognized world champion born in the United States.
As a champion, he used his eccentricities to unsettle opponents, but Fischer's reputation as a genius of chess was soon eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his idiosyncrasies.
"Chess is war on a board," he once said. "The object is to crush the other man's mind."
Now's the time to express MY point of view, obscure and unimportant as it may be. Fischer was as famous as any Rock Star in the mid 60's and early 70's. I had friends who IDOLIZED him, even though his personality flaws were plain to see. Let's throw down some names from those days -- Eric Clapton? Janis Joplin? Jimi Hendrix? Jane Fonda? (See Below) Bobby Fischer was as well-known as ANY of them to the general public.
I was on West High School's Chess Team, even though I had little aptitude for the game. Three of our members were first-rank champions -- Abbas Riazi, Alan Taye, and my friend Jim Neilson. The next four were all pretty good too. My two friends Steve and Craig worked at the game, and I went along for moral support. I won all my matches, but c'mon -- if you're counting, you'll see I was number ten. Competition was fairly non-existant down there. If we wanted to claim the State Championship, we could have, but there was no formal award in existance at the time.
I stayed in touch with Jim Neilson for many years, and was able to see the world of competitive Chess through his eyes. I even replayed some of the Fischer/Spassky matches in 1972 from the local newspaper, with Jim's inscisive commentary to guide me, but I never got into the memorization or technique it took to really play the game. I had many other things distracting me, and NEVER related to Fischer's neurotic, hyper-petulant personality. I always thought he might be mentally ill, even when I was in high school, but I was saddened to see him repeatedly break down in public the way he did. I'd rather have been wrong.
Fischer lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov. He dropped out of competitive chess and largely out of view, emerging occasionally to make erratic and often anti-Semitic comments, although his mother was Jewish. Fischer faced criminal charges in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. In July 2004, Fischer was arrested at Japan's Narita airport for traveling on a revoked U.S. passport and was threatened with extradition to the United States to face charges of violating sanctions. He spent nine months in custody before the dispute was resolved when Iceland granted him citizenship and he moved there with his longtime companion, the Japanese chess player Miyoko Watai.
Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion from Russia, said Fischer's ascent in the chess world in the 1960s and his promotion of chess worldwide was "a revolutionary breakthrough" for the game. "The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess," Kasparov told The Associated Press.
Spassky, reached briefly at his home in France, said: "I am very sorry, but Bobby Fischer is dead. Goodbye."


Theater/Theatre: What's going on in Amsterdam today?
January 17 Thursday OT301 Melt - Performance Trust and Magpie 21:00
January 18 Friday Lunch Lecture with the Trust Company SNDO 13:30-15:00 / OT301 Music-Dance301 Melt - performance Trust and Magpie 21:00 + Karaoke party after the performance
Trust Dance Company - Artistic Director - Hyeong-hee Kim Dancers: Yun-gyu Kim, Ye-jin Gwon, Jeong-min Ju, Jeong-hyeon Kim, Jae-yeong Park, Myeong-gyu SongMusicians: Dong-kun Kim, Eun-yung Shim, Hyeong-Mo AHN
Magpie Dancers: Katie Duck, Michael Schumacher, Vincent Cacalano, Makiko Ito, Sylvain Meret, Eileen Standley, Kyung sun Beak, Justin Morrison, Manuela Tessi
Magpie Musicians: Cor Fuhler (piano), Andy Moor (electric guitar), Michael Moore (reeds), Mary Oliver (violin), Colin Mclean (electronics), Wilbert De Joode (counter bass), Rozemarie Heggen (counter bass)
Light design: Ellen Knops
Art designer (posters and flyers): Isabelle Vigier

Chess & The 60's


I was more interested in Art and the human figure than the game of Chess. (R to L) Sir John Tennile's Red Queen from Alice Through the Looking Glass; Anita Pallenberg as The Black Queen in Roger Vadim's cinematic interpretation of Jean Claude Forest's Barbarella comic strip; M. Vadim's lovely wife Jane Fonda in the title role, with flashes of her nude body amongst the psychedelic background; Vadim previously made Brigitte Bardot famous for that sort of thing, and the beginning of Barbarella is one of his best sequences, as the character wakes up in weightlessness. Clean nudity -- as erotic or innocent as the viewer chooses it to be.

Another winter storm advisory, but nothing serious yet. It was foggy and miserable yesterday. Coyotes howling -- keep those little animals inside at night!

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Phnum Penh, Cambodia; Saint Paul, Minnesota; Nova Lima, Brazil and Albertville, Minnesota.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, 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!





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!

All-round good guy Jim Keefe wrote me to say: Enjoyed the comparison from strip to film. Fun stuff!
Put a link on the Yahoo adventure strip group as well.
Hope you get a lot of hits. THANKS AGAIN JIM!

Charity Alert: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Nancy Cawdrey, The Collective Caravan, and Old West -- New Visions at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Check out the pictures! Speaking of photos, I had another one of mine printed in the Inter Act section of the local paper last Tuesday -- local woman actors portraying famous women, who will be "interviewed" in an upcoming theatrical production directed by the dynamic Mary Reckin.

Media Watch: Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List -- a none-too-profound comedy. Freeman has a perfectly-modulated voice, which was the best part of the whole flick. Nicholson reminded me very much of Mickey Rooney. In fact, the manipulation and sentimentality of the movie reminded me of 40's/50's Hollywood. (NOT a compliment.)

Theater/Theatre: Trust Dance Company - Seoul Korea - lecture-demonstration 6th of January 2008 - 14.30 - 17.00 - BIMHUIS Piet Heinkade 3 Amsterdam - entrance fee € 5 -- The Musicians and dancers from the Trust Dance Company (Seoul Korea) will speak and show their traditional methods - instruments and collaborative work with music and dance
For more information about the Trust Week go to: www.katieduck.com


(Left) My friend Katie Duck with KD Holmes onstage with Alex Waterman (Right) on cello in New York City last November. Thanks to cyber-pal Justin Morrison, who was dancing in the same piece, but is out of the frame somehow. This picture is from FLICKR, on a page aptly-named Kick-Ass Improv.

Another snowy day in the Flathead Valley -- been about a week of this steady stuff. I saw a whole flock of wild Turkeys near the Conrad Mansion on Woodland Drive -- each one was about twenty five pounds (10 kg) and there were well over a dozen of them.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from San Antonio, Texas; Daytona Beach, Florida; Saint Paul, Minnesota; Plano, Texas; Vienna, Virginia; Minneapolis, Minnesota (Jim Keefe, I think); Reno, Nevada; Little Falls, New Jersey and the ancient city of Muscat, on the NE tip of the Arabian Peninsula, right where the "Persian" Gulf meets the Arabian Sea. The very severe desert beyond the coastal mountains of Oman is called the "Empty Quarter." The ruins of a legendary long-lost city were discovered right at the interior edge of those mountains, after everyone searched 'way out in the dangerous Empty Quarter for years.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, 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!





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!

All-round cartoonist and good guy Jim Keefe wrote me to say: Enjoyed the comparison from strip to film. Fun stuff!
Put a link on the Yahoo adventure strip group as well.
Hope you get a lot of hits.
Outre Space Cinema's vistors since Jim's good words and link -- Minneapolis, Minnesota; Bombay, India; Reading, Pennsylvania; Vincennes, Ile-de-France; ?? United Kingdom; Elyria, Ohio; West Hartford, Connecticut; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Manteca, California; Clementon, New Jersey; San Diego, California; Kansas City, Missouri; High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire UK; Calabria, Italy; Jersey City, New Jersey; Stavanger, Rogaland, Norway; Boston, Massachusetts; West Bloomfield, Michigan and Oslo, Norway. THANKS AGAIN JIM!

Charity Alert: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: The opening reception at the Hockaday Museum of Art went well -- about a hundred visitors braved lousy roads to meet Nancy Cawdrey. It was a very colorful night!

Ch-ch Changes: Sir Edmund Hillary just passed away, one of the first two men to climb to the top of Mount Everest, and survive. His legacy of helping the Sherpa people of the Himalayas honors his memory more than any medals or monuments. He always shared credit with climbing partner Tenzing Norkay at the bitter end of a colonial age when indigenous people were hardly acknowledged, if at all.

Media Watch: I couldn't resist posting the following on Daily Kos, my favorite political blog --
Hlllary has gone down the mountain ...
...and will NEVER be president of the USA.
What was all that hubbub about Hillary earlier this week?
HE was over 80 years old and a native of New Zealand -- Hell, he wasn't even qualified to be president.
(What's NZ lingo for snark?)
Kos himself also posted a link to a HILARIOUS satire on The Onion's Website.

And now for my OWN Media!
Visit Cellulose to Celluloid


Flagrant Self-promotional Illustration
(Click to see a larger image.)
Alex Raymond's version of Princess Aura and Prince Barin in 1935, about the time his fluid "middle" period" began in Flash Gordon. (Lower Right) Universal Pictures' version of our Spitfire Princess (Priscilla Lawson) and the klutzy movie Prince (Richard Alexander) in 1936. There's a copy of Raymond's collected Witch Queen sequence waiting for me at Borders Books right now. I'm kinda honor-bound to do some more comparisons between the strip and serials in the future, but they were pretty tenuous after the first effort. Wish me luck!

That long gradual snowfall left a slurry of micro-marbles on the pavements -- lots of spinouts. Moving that big honkin' crate through the alley was a challenge -- luckily we only had to deal with less than a hundred yards of ice, snow, and black muck from the cars. I wanted to have a bonfire instead, but cooler heads prevailed.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors Jakarta, Indonesia; Mars, Pennsylvania (no kidding!); Edmonds, Washington; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Marseilles, France (from John Kilby's site); Oakland, California; Seattle, Washington; Brampton, Ontario.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, 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!





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: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: A big opening reception tonight at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road; The Montana Collective Tour, and Old West, New Visions, featuring those artistic contrasts I talked about yesterday. We got the Call of the Mountains paintings back from the restorer, put 'em on the walls, and are ready to go! One question -- shall we clean up the beleagured floors BEFORE the event, or wait until half the county finishes tracking through the place tonight?

Ch-ch Changes: The dean of Jazz pianists Oscar Peterson passed away at the age of 82 a few weeks ago. I thoroughly enjoyed his regular BBC show in the 70's, when I lived in England -- Louie Belson was his drummer for that gig. Sonic Heaven!

Media Watch: The Oscar Peterson Trio on Montana PBS last night -- several live, often-funky albums back to back. One of my favorite Oscar Peterson records has to be Trio + 1 with flugelhorn master Clark Terry AND his eccentric singing. One cut named Mumbles was actually a HIT single in 1964. I was fond of Incoherent Blues as well. Siteen years later I saw Mumbles on a jukebox at Crompton's Roadhouse, and had a good time introducing it to the small Emigration Canyon crowd which frequented the place, including Bob McFerrin, the great Jazz singer, a few years before he broke out to become an international star. Thank you Dave (Crompton) for buying that jukebox!

And now for my OWN Media!


Visit Cellulose to Celluloid
Here's a full-color sample from my compare-and-contrast site. I put up a monochrome first draft a few weeks ago, but this one's better -- click on the image for a larger view. (Above) We see Alex Raymond's tempestuous Azura, Witch Queen of Mongo bowling over Flash and the Good Guys with a well-aimed gas bomb in 1935. (Below) Former Miss New York Beatrice Roberts, as Azura, Queen of Magic plays a similar trick in 1938 during Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars.

Persistant snowfalls, not like ten years ago when over ten feet accumulated in the valley, but anywhere from a few millimeters to a few inches the last few days.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Los Angeles, California (looking for Wini Shaw); Jamaica, New York (YO Stozo!) and West Orange, New Jersey.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, 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!





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: Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: A good idea from the director at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Artistic Contrasts -- featuring traditional landscapes, portraits, wildlife etc. contrasted with modern versions of the same genres. We all enjoyed interpreting the theme, and putting art from our permanent collection on the walls instead of storing them in the vaults.

Media Watch: The DVD of Daredevil was alright, but I liked the way it began more than I liked the development of the story or the way it ended. I haven't heard much about the private lives of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner since they paired up around the time this flick was made -- no news is always good news on that front. There was a DVD-ROM section that outlined the history of the Comic Book, and some of its artists, especially Frank Miller. It credited Bill Everett and Stan Lee as creators, which is mostly right, but I would have preferred seeing Jack Kirby's name too.


The Art of Daredevil
(Click to see a larger image.)
In a rather spontanious collage, starting from the top left and moving clockwise, we see Jennifer Garner as Frank Miller's Elektra 2003; Miller (pencils) with Wallace Wood (inks) in Wood's last job for Marvel Comics 1980; Wally Wood cover from 1965; One of Miller's last DD covers circa 1986; In the center is Wood's definitive Daredevil design from 1965; Left of that is Miller's FIRST DD cover 1979; The lower two covers were pencilled by Barry Windsor-Smith in 1969 and 1986. There are inks by Klaus Jansson, George Klein, John Romita, and Al Mingrom. That tiny logo picture in the corner of DD #51 is by Gene Colan. Other artists who have graced DD over the last 44 years include Carmine Infantino, Al Williamson, and John Romita Jr.