Satellite mosaic Planet Earth in January -- Thanks to Phil Plait's site

Even at this size and resolution, I can see the Great Salt Lake and trace my way northward towards Montana. I can also spot the mountains to the east, where Park City is hosting the Sundance and Slamdance film festivals right now.

What does SLUG have to say about these festivals?

Let’s start with Slamdance, which features new filmmakers:

Condensed from a review of Roller Town by writer Johnny Logan
In his feature film directorial debut, Andrew Bush brings in an interesting satire of disco, roller-skating and the (late)  ’70s. Roller Town takes place in a part of the past where everyone roller-skates and everything is awesome … brings out some great satire and excellent comedic relief, but there are a few spots in the film (which was written by Bush, Little and Vrooman) that feel like three friends got together and dumped their inside jokes into a screenplay.

Gratuitous digital graphic of Raquel Welch as a Roller Derby Queen in "Kansas City Bomber." James Caan's "Rollerball," and Linda Blair's "Roller Boogie" didn't add very much to the genre either.

That being said, the film has some remarkable comedic moments and several very well done supporting role performances … Oh, and stay through the credits—they get interesting.

What about the Sundance Festival? — Oh my goodness, those movies look (bleepin’) depressing! Here’s one that might brighten up a dark theater, but don’t count on it:

(Condensed from a review of About Face by writer Jimmy Martin)
One of the great aspects of the Sundance Film Festival is the variety of documentaries in the programming. Whether it’s an entrenched war documentary or a simple glimpse at the history of an unfamiliar subject, attendees are delightfully bombarded with various engrossing options.
Portrait photographer turned director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders points a video camera instead of his usual photography setup at a group of the most celebrated models in “About Face” to discuss the history of the profession … Christie Brinkley, Jerry Hall, Isabella Rossellini … (to name a few) … offers an unexpected darker gaze into the elitist world of fashion …

Check out more of SLUG Magazine’s festival coverage HERE

Ch-Ch-Changes

Direct — directly from my heart to you!

I've heard this album on rare vinyl -- buy it on readily-available CD

Direct — directly from my heart to you!
Oh, you know that I love you
That’s why I feel so blue

First-rate singer Etta James passed away from Leukemia last week, and Johnny Otis, the brilliant bandleader who discovered her talent, died at the age of 90.
Miss James is probably most famous now for her classic single At Last, covered by A-list talent Beyonce Knowles, who had been portraying Etta in a movie about Chess Records. There is more to know about her than I can even begin to say.

Oh I think, I will love the man always
I think, that I will love the man always
Yeah, we’d be so happy together
But you’re so far away

(Quoting) “Johnny Otis discovered many legendary Rhythm and Blues singers such as Esther Phillips, Willie Mae “Big Momma” Thornton, Etta James, and the Robins (who later evolved into the Coasters), all of whom were at one time featured vocalists in his band. He also discovered Sugar Pie DeSanto, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Jackie Wilson, and Little Willie John. He produced, and with his band played on the original recording of “Hound Dog” with “Big Momma” Thornton. He produced and played on Johnny Ace’s “Pledging My Love”, and produced some of Little Richard’s earliest recordings. On his own Blues Spectrum lable, Johnny recorded and played with Rhythm & Blues pioneers such as Big Joe Turner, Gatemouth Moore, Amos Milburne, Richard Berry, Joe Liggins, Roy Milton, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Charles Brown, and Louis Jordan. Johnny played the drums on Charles Brown’s first major hit “Driftin’ Blues” in 1946. He also recorded with Illinois Jacquet, and Lester Young. One of the many highlights of his long career was when he performed as a drummer with the great Count Basie Orchestra.”
Read more about this great man at http://www.johnnyotisworld.com/index.html

One of the many things Mr. Otis did was give the late, great Blues violinist Don Harris his nickname “Sugarcane” Harris, and he achieved fame by singing (Little) Richard Penniman’s song Directly From My Heart To You with the Mothers of Invention –

Well I need, I need you by my side
Oh I need — Yes I need you by my side
Oh I love you little darlin’
Your love I could never hide

Johnny’s son Shuggie Otis is an acknowledged master of the Blues as well, plus sits on the bridge of P-Funk’s Mothership as a Vulcan Ambassador!

You just KNEW I was going to talk about Mars again, didn’t you?

Planet Mars, as photographed by the Rosetta space probe in 2007. (Mosaic by Emily Lakdawalla on the Planetary Society Blog.)

Besides the CO2 icecaps, there are clouds in the thin atmosphere, and a tiny little dot above the green belt that happens to be Phobos, the slightly larger of Mars’ two moons.

Fantastic Mars and Martians

Illustration of Otis Aldebert Klein's "Outlaw of Mars" circa 1963, and Pixar's contemporary Martian airship from their "John Carter" movie.

I see some influence in these two images, but coincidence isn’t totally out of the question. Klein’s imitations of Edgar Rice Burroughs were published in the early 1930s, and reprinted during the paperback boom of the early 60′s. I wrote better fan-fiction than Otis Aldebert Klein’s when I was in 7th grade, but that’s not bragging. In fact, I STOPPED writing imitation Burroughs tales because I could see how embarrassing  those efforts could be — because of my frustrating attempts to plow through Klein’s Outlaws of Mars and Planet of Peril.

Speaking of Edgar Rice Burroughs

Towards the end of the 1960′s, I glanced through a somewhat lurid fan-fiction version of Tarzan and the Forbidden City of uncertain age and origin. The author was obviously smitten by Queen Atka of Ashair — the purple prose describing details of her sensual form and luxurious trappings adorning her anatomy seeped into the ultraviolet, and I needed protective lenses before reading any more. Those passages weren’t exactly pornographic, but obsessive for sure. Queen Atka was a villain too — irredeemably distant and cruel, unlike H. Rider Haggard’s charismatic She Who Must Be Obeyed, or Burroughs’ conflicted La, High Priestess of Opar, his first and best “lost empire” creation, or adaptation, or stolen idea, as you please, from the third Tarzan adventure.

H. Rider Haggard was a Pulp Fiction King, and E. Rice Burroughs always admitted his influence. This particular version of "She" starred beautiful Ursula Andress -- a Drive In Movie Queen of the 60's. It was an abject failure, but not because of Ms. Andress.

I’ve already mentioned that Tarzan and the Forbidden City was the only example of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ enormous output of books circulating widely during the 50′s. Burroughs died in 1949, and his customary distributors went out of business about the same time. This artistic orphan had an intricate publishing history, though — It was originally a 1934 radio play called Tarzan and the Diamond of of Ashair, ghost-written by Rob Thompson, with Burroughs as de facto Executive Producer. In 1938, it was printed in Argosy Magazine as The Mystery of the Red Star of Tarzan — with extensive re-writing by the magazine staff, which came to light when ERB Inc. published Tarzan and the Forbidden City as a hardback book later that year (Number 20 in the series). It was ironically the first Burroughs book published in paperback form, more than a decade before that medium made his name great again (and unearthed long-buried Otis Aldebert Klein).

My first exposure to "Tarzan" in print during the 1950's -- Publications by Whitman with artwork by Don McLoughlin (cover) and Jesse Marsh, who illustrated the interior of this version of "Tarzan and the Forbidden City." (Thanx to ERBzine)

Whitman not only published Dell comic books featuring Tarzan, but also the once-famous “Big Little Books” that exploited popular characters from movies, radio, and newspapers. John Coleman Burroughs, who drew John Carter of Mars as a syndicated strip before the end of WWII, ghosted a story called The Giant of Mars as one of Whitman’s “Little Books.”  Tarzan and the Forbidden City was also a part of this low-cost series, and I believe that the abridged Whitman hardback I read in 3rd or 4th Grade was an intentional commercial descendent. It boasted endpapers and interior illustrations by Jesse Marsh, whose work was very familiar to me because of — Tarzan‘s Dell Comic Books !
Among the Tarzan series, it most resembles the Hollywood movies that annoyed Burroughs, except for his bank balance, and acted as an isolated oasis in his publishing drought of the 50′s because Burroughs shopped this sprawling yarn around to every market and medium he could find.

If you think it is high time, and that THAT is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out … (You’re quoting Elizabethan Theatre.)

Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!

Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!

Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!

E-Portfolio for Michael Evans

Check Out the Dance Histories Section !

The Sun has had a major storm, and it is causing spectacular Auroras over both poles, but it is overcast where I live, so I can’t see them, even if they showed up over these latitudes. The deer are ranging away from their normal cover to graze, so it is easy to see them in the early evenings.

Redigitized NFL cheerleaders in Patriots' colors -- The Giants have no cheerleaders.

In two weeks the New England Patriots will meet the New York Giants in Indianapolis for the Superbowl XLVI (That means forty-six — love those Roman Numerals). I followed last year’s playoffs more closely because of those amazing games by the ever-underdog Green Bay Packers, and although they only lost ONE game in the regular season, and had two weeks off before hosting their next game, with home-field advantage throughout the tournament — they lost their first playoff game this year. The Packers were likely banged-up and exhausted after all those previous victories. The NFL playoff games I’ve seen so far were marked by viscous and effective defensive playing. Both New York and New England have teams who are made up of veterans with Superbowl rings — especially their quarterbacks, who’ll try to survive in the bulls-eye of each defensive squad.

Enchanted Baroque Opera

The Metropolitan Opera broadcast this week was The Enchanted Island (2012), a new work created from pastiches of Baroque operas. Pastiche comes from the same root word as Paste, as in Cut and Paste, which makes the idea very appropriate for our digital age. Music by Jean-Philippe Rameau, George Fredrick Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, André Campra, Henry Purcell, Giovanni Battista Ferrandini, and Jean-Féry Rebel, with William Christie as the conductor. Jeremy Sams is librettist, from an idea by Peter Gelb. The plot builds on an old melding of Shakespeare’s  Midsummer Nights Dream and The Tempest by John Dryden in the XVIII Century.

Redigitalized David Daniels as Prospero, Joyce DiDonato as Sycorax, and sexy Danielle de Niese as the stuff dreams are made of in the new/old opera "Enchanted Island."

David Daniels, Luca Pisaroni, Joyce DiDonato, Danielle de Niese, Lisette Oropesa, and great-hearted Placido Domingo all have tuneful roles in this patchwork piece, which was first presented on New Year’s Day of 2012. The English lyrics and ridiculously intricate scenario didn’t get in the way of dozens of beautiful melodies by some of the finest composers of the Baroque Period.

What Hath SLUG Wrought?

Who REALLY has the cheapest drinks in town? Does anybody really REMEMBER who had the cheapest drinks in town?

I received the snail-mail SLUG, and was immediately struck by how much BETTER most of the articles looked when they were laid-out in magazine form, compared to the admittedly clean and functional Internet version. The income-producing ads and reader-producing features visually played as formidable team-mates on every page.
I’m going to throw down MY impressions on some double-pagers that caught my eye: Suited lawyers and tattoo artists; An Ethiopian Restaurant and “Local First” beers; Princess Kennedy playing around with Bond Girl imagery, but trying to deliver some very sober facts about owning handguns — contrasted with Roller Derby and a creative venue calendar; Fanciful cartoons of columnist Mike Brown, along with busted skateboarders in a bail bonds advertisement; The excellent interview with Paul Rachman covers two pages in print, with pictures from his Lost Rockers project; Outlaw filmmaker Damon Russell’s relatively short interview looks great framed with gritty B&W photos and facing a colorful full-page gallery ad; Turn the page for a great read about Lynn Hershman Leeson and the Women Art Revolution, which looks equally good online; A wintery photo on one page — a cartoon illustrating bike-riding through snow on the other page; Another snowy skateboard photo as image and essay, along with the laugh-inducing Dawn of the Shread full-pager;

Illustration: Ryan Perkins -- for the excellent article about winter bike-riding by Esther Merono. She recommends plastic bags, several pairs of cheap gloves, and great care. Snow has challenges, but riding on ice-covered roads is NEVER a good idea IMHO.

The cover story about “Bones Brigade” is well-integrated with related full-page graphics by major sponsors; Most compelling of all is the inspirational two-page spread about graffiti artist Tempt One, stricken by MS, but experimenting with his eye-writer; Blue Boutique wishes everyone A Sexy New Year with a blonde model in a “Lingerie Barbie Doll” / “Mirror Ball” image — ironically she faces a great rundown about a Horror-Art collective called Zero Friends; A gallery stroll mixes well with SLUG Mag staff picks of new/used CDs from the venerable Graywhale chain of local stores;  Now THIS looks like SLUG — Beer making supplies, a head shop, booze reviews, Ask A Cop, a sexy realtor, tattoos, and Brad Collins’ Raunch Records/Clothes/Etc.

The online SLUG is superb at posting current reviews from the film festivals that are drawing crowds in and around Park City, though! CHECK OUT SLUG’S FESTIVAL COVERAGE .

The second installment in the Craft Lake Artist Workshop Series — held at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in the UMOCA Studio:

Partial image from http://www.slugmag.com/events.php?id=469

Holly Jones will be teaching us how to make cut-out chandeliers. Each participant will be painting, decorating, and wiring their own chadelier to take home. The workshop begins with a short tour of the UMOCA Exhibits. $5 materials fee — first 5 people craft free — we always encourage using Trax, the Temple Square stop drops you off just a few steps away. For more information: info@craftlakecity.com

If you think it is high time, and that THAT is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out … (You’re quoting Elizabethan Theatre.)

Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!

Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!

Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!

E-Portfolio for Michael Evans

Check Out the Dance Histories Section !

Orbiting the metaphorical world of Salt Lake/Utah Valley is the satellite enclave of Park City, Utah — Planet Zion has a number of moons named Alta, Sundance, Brighton, et cetera, where the life-forms hike in the summers, and ski/snowboard/snowshoe in the winters. In mid-January there are festivals devoted to movies too. Inhabitants of these worldlets love socializing — with good food, good drink, good music, dancing, and the good things that follow the pursuit of happiness.

From a cabaret drawing by M.E.

I observed Park City change from a decaying mining camp to the nexus of many sprawling mountain communities on the east side of the Wasatch Mountains. At the age of 15, I played the jukebox next to Bucket A Go Go on Main Street, but not the 45 RPM single by Buzz & Bucky of the same name, and also golfed with my father and brother at the brand-new Park City Resort, above the crossroads at Mount Aire Cafe. For awhile, it was notorious for the C’est Bonne, an adult entertainment club, which more or less introduced professional strippers to Northern Utah, but the late-summer Park City Art Festival pushed that image aside, starting in the early 1970′s. Soon afterward, a mid-winter Park City Film Festival struggled to establish itself — generating a lot of good will with the public, but always on a precarious financial  footing, until Robert Redford lent his talents to the project and renamed it the Sundance Festival.

A "Night of the Thumpasaurus People" at Park City Resort, partying like it was 1999 -- which it WAS!

I’ve enjoyed some grand times in and around Park City, and attended the festivals more often than I can specifically remember. I’ve written about one particular instance in 1999 and invite you to read the articles HERE and HERE — They are mostly about Funk Legend Bernie Worrell and the extended P-Funk family, but there are some asides about the Bleh Witch Project, and a very nice lady named Grace Qi who works in the IT business now.

SLUG Magazine is on the film festival scene THIS year!

Condensed from SLUG Mag #277:

Film Festival Circus: An Interview with Paul Rachman by Jeanette D. Moses 
For the past 17 years, Paul Rachman has made the trek to Park City every January to be a part of what he describes as the film festival “circus” that overtakes the small mountain town. His ties to the film festival community run deep … Rachman helped found Slamdance Film Festival in the mid-’90s … Lost Rockers, the current feature length documentary that he is working on … will be next on his list … The film tells the story of eight musicians who Rachman says, “were on the cusp of super stardom and then fell through the cracks.” There is Jake Holmes who wrote the song “Dazed and Confused,” … There is Gloria Jones, the soul singer who … fell in love with Marc Bolan of T. Rex and moved to England to be with him … It also features Chris Robison, who … wrote, recorded and released some of the first gay rock records … Bobby Jameson, David Peel, The Lightning Raiders and Cherry Vanilla are also covered. “It’s a very different type of rock documentary. Music documentaries are usually about the stars, the big scenes, the big albums. This is about people who didn’t make it, but were awesome,” says Rachman.

MY $0.02 — David Peel and Cherry Vanilla

I totally enjoyed David Peel and the Lower East Side’s first album Have A Marihuana — bought several copies as gifts, and they were huge hits at many a college party in 1969-71.
Via Facebook, I’ve become acquainted with Peel’s bandmate Harold C. Black, who readily tells about life as a street musician in New York City, with Tiny Tim (before he was tiny), and the blind percussionist Moondog.

(Top to Bottom) Billy Joe White, Harold C. Black, and David Michael Rosario (David Peel) -- re-digitized from a publicity shot for their second Elektra album "The American Revolution" -- Art direction by the brilliant William S. Harvey

These guys signed with Elektra Records for two albums and made friends with John Lennon, who signed them to Apple — they made an album called The Pope Smokes Dope, which was talked about much more than it was heard.

Kathleen Dorritie of New York was known to me and the wider world as legendary Cherry Vanilla — a Rock Music publicist associated with David Bowie’s Main Man company, and an outrageous performer in an era that specialized in outrageousness. Her poetry book Pop Tart Compositions was part of the 70′s Zeitgeist too, and she’s made a long career as a writer, performer, manager — plus a muse to many a musician.

Redigitized impression of Cherry Vanilla in performance circa 1976

If you want some scoops from the lady, and pleasures via her own mouth, she’s offering her autobiography Lick Me — How I became Cherry Vanilla on her very interesting web site.

Too Funky — Too Funky In Here

Artwork from Marcel Visser's 3 CD collection on Disky Records

CD #1 features: 1. Creative Source Harlem (Don’t you give your money to that lying, sneaking man) 2. African Music Machine Tropical (Actually a down-in-the alley instrumental jam) 3. Soul Searchers We the People (The great Chuck Brown of Washington D.C.) 4. Natural Four Nothing Beats A Failure (But a TRY) 5. Honey Cone Son of a Preacher Man (The group who made Mr. Big Stuff famous) 6. Brother To Brother In The Bottle (Brian Jackson & Gil Scott Heron’s poignant masterpiece) 7. Johnnie Taylor Who’s Makin’ Love (To Your Old Lady while you were out making love …) 8. Sandpebbles Forget It (Nasty instrumental) 9. Holland Dozier Holland Can’t Get Enough 10. Chairmen of  The Board Try On My Love For Size (Yeah, I get it — these two cuts very possibly have Bernie Worrell and/or members of Parliament/Funkadelic) 11. Laura Lee I Need It Just As Bad As You (Cheese with that whine, lady?)  12. Ike & Tina Turner Funkier Than A Mosquita’s Tweeter (Songwriter Anna Mae Bullock ISN”T whining) 13. Bar-Kays Be Yourself 14. The Moments Clap Your Hands (It’s a shame every night can’t be like Saturday night) 15. Maceo & All The King’s Men Thankyouforlettingmebemiceselfagain (When Sly’s song was new — King’s was the studio where they recorded this) 16. Soul Searchers Ahley’s roadchip (Super FUNK) 17. Eddy Senay Hot Thang (And it’s HOT) 18. Timmy Thomas Ebony Affair (Black & Proud) 19. Masterfleet Man & Child (Social commentary you can DANCE to) 20. Eddie Fisher Get Down With The Feeling (Maybe there are influences from Kool and the Gang and the Ohio Players, but it’s so damn good)

If you think it is high time, and that THAT is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out … (You’re quoting Elizabethan Theatre.)

Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!

Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!

Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!

E-Portfolio for Michael Evans

Check Out the Dance Histories Section !

OK — I followed my own advice and read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and Warlord of Mars. This de facto trilogy was originally published between Mid-1912 and Early 1914 as three separate serials in The All Story Magazine. They later came out in book form during 1917, 1918, and 1919.

Wrap-around cover from the first edition of Warlord of Mars -- touting the previous two novels. Many thanks to ERBZine for the scans of antique artwork used in my treatise!

I think it is important to note that Son of Tarzan, the FOURTH installment of Burroughs’ dominant series of Tarzan stories was published as a hardbound book six months before A Princess of Mars. ERB’s rollicking tales set Under the Moons of Mars may have initiated his career as a Pulp writer, but the public favored Tarzan over all his other creations. In 1918, First National Pictures released a movie called Tarzan of the Apes starring Elmo Lincoln, beginning a very popular film franchise that endured ups and downs throughout the XX Century, and spawned successful adaptations in additional media too.
Pixar/Disney’s upcoming film John Carter marks the 100th anniversary of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ introduction to the world of Pop Culture, and the first time a MAJOR studio has taken a chance with his archaic and anarchic vision of Barsoom — the red planet we call Mars.

Mercator projections of the Red Planet: (Above) From Percival Lowell's sketches from Earth-based telescopes; (Below) Derived from satellites orbiting Mars itself.

When Burroughs first began writing his Barsoomian romances the biggest name in Mars exploration was Percival Lowell, an American astronomer who strongly advocated for the prospect of not only life on Earth’s neighbor, but a high civilization that constructed planet-wide irrigation canals. Here is a link to Lowell’s book MARS (1895). Sketches and later astronomical photos showed definite polar caps, and dark areas contrasting with light areas in roughly stable patterns. The images above show that although Earthbound observations were fuzzy at best, they weren’t totally wrong.
There was never any repeatable scientific evidence for either Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli’s “channels,” or Lowell’s canals, but it was still a lot of FUN to speculate about life on Mars — H.G. Wells ascended Jules Verne’s literary throne with his novel War of the Worlds in 1898, and the Red Planet became a popular playground for the imagination. The name Edgar Rice Burroughs eventually  joined  Wells and Verne atop the step-pyramid of Pulp fame, along with H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Wallace, climbing up via word-play on the dry orchre sea-bottoms of Barsoom, or in boat-like fliers cruising its skies, with two moons careening overhead.

(L to R) Cover by top-rank painter N.C. Wyeth; Artist J. Allen St. John began a long association with Burroughs by illustrating the third Tarzan novel -- notice Barsoom's moons Thuria and Cluros in his drawing from 1920.

I can’t recall reading anything by Burroughs after about 1970, although I collected many of his various illustrators, but that means at least forty years have elapsed since my last visit to ERB’s Blood-Red Planet. So what did I think after reading those initial explorations of Barsoom?

A Princess of Mars, was compelling — when I initially read it, and even now. It made me want to see what would happen next. The action was dizzying, and when it slowed down just a little, after John Carter wed Princess Dejah Thoris, a stray thread from the middle of the story led to a cliff-hanger ending, and separation from his true love.

Gods of Mars was the first book of this series I read as a youth. I borrowed an old hardbound copy from a neighbor. There was a palpable sense of exploration in the text, and its many references to John Carter’s previous adventures fed my curiosity enough to seek and find some more Mars books — awaiting readers on the shelves of the Spencer Branch Library, located right next door to where I would later attend Junior High School.

A slight diversion

I had already read Burroughs’ Tarzan and the Forbidden City – featuring a comely heroine, nasty villains, outsized monsters, an underwater temple, a lost civilization ruled by an exotic goddess-queen, with an invincible hero making everything right by the end.
Strangely enough, this minor potboiler was the only example of Burroughs’ 50-odd books which saw widespread circulation during the Eisenhower years, because it was licensed to Whitman / Western who printed the Tarzan comic books. The book industry had changed very much after WWII, and his former publishers went out of business around the time of his death in 1949.

Back to Mars

Because of Whitman’s orphaned volume, though, I was primed for the  Pulp Fiction joy-ride promised by Gods of Mars, and followed John Carter through a long string of battles, predicaments, escapes, and captures — with more monsters, unknown races, hidden cities, a resourceful female ally, an old friend, an enemy-turned-friend, heaps of slain enemies, and a few surviving villains — all culminating in a return to his Martian home, where he finds his princess gone, plus most of her family missing too!
Before Gods of Mars is done, Carter leads a fleet of airships back to the south polar region from which he spent half the novel escaping, and battles three other armadas before seeing Dejah Thoris, but the bad guys recapture her, and it’s cliff-hanger time again! I think that my lack of exposure to A Princess of Mars helped maintain my capacity for surprise throughout this not-too-graceful sequel to a much better book.

As it was, I eagerly checked A Princess of Mars out of the library mentioned above, and had a thoroughly good time absorbing that unique quirky yarn — I might have even re-read Gods of Mars before tackling the third book.

Today we use the cliche lather, rinse, repeat for repetitive formulas, and I could say the same about Warlord of Mars, but while going through puberty I totally enjoyed those familiar rhythms of violent action, fantastic creatures, strange lands, and weird pseudo-science.
Burroughs played with his literary dynamics like speedy Heavy Metal guitarists would later entertain similar teenagers. He was a much more confident writer by the time he concluded his mad barbaric arabesque, with his interplanetary lovers reunited in triumph after their bloody quest between South Pole and North Pole on Planet Mars. I enjoyed the metaphorical ride of rereading this three-part Pulp Epic, even if it originated in the years when my long-dead grandfather was a lad.

Prominent Western artist Frank Schoonover's illustrations of 1917-18 were quite literal, but Burroughs' words painted better pictures in his readers' minds.

Criticisms? Are you kidding? If anybody pauses to think while reading these things, the spell dissipates quicker than dry ice. When I sat down as a kid to make my own drawings of Barsoomian subjects, it became quite clear that there was no real logic behind any of that stuff — St. John’s best illustrations relied on strategic vagueness for their power.

Big Time Burroughs

Paperback books created a Post-WWII media revolution, and all of the sudden EVERYTHING written by Edgar Rice Burroughs was published in this form as the 1960′s began. One thirtieth of all softbound sales were titles by Burroughs in one year, according to Time Magazine.
What it meant to me and my friends was that we could share our enjoyment of these formerly arcane entertainments much easier than before, and personally delve into entire series’ that Burroughs wrote about Mars, Venus, or At the Earth’s Core, if we so desired.
The actual character of Tarzan emerged from Johnny Weissmuller’s shadow too, simply because people could buy the original books at corner stores, sporting well-designed artwork by a variety of creative modern illustrators.

(L to R) Art by: Robert Abbett; Roy G. Krenkel, pen & ink; Roy G. Krenkel, painting.

Burroughs’ unique gift for storytelling was based on pacing and amazement. Plots emerged, grew, and intertwined like Art Nouveau tendrils. As long as he kept a reader baffled and playing along, he prospered. Some of his ideas were better than others, of course. Contradictory or ridiculous details and indifferent characterizations were serious flaws in his work, but I think he was at his very best creating fantastic sub-worlds with broad facile strokes of language. I invite you to make up your own mind:

Online Versions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom Novels:

A Princess of Mars ; The Gods of Mars ; Warlord of Mars ;
(John Carter’s initial blood-soaked trilogy);
Thuvia, Maid of Mars ; The Chessmen of Mars
(Adventures of Dejah & John’s offspring);
Mastermind of Mars
(An totally-unrelated WWI officer wakes up on Barsoom);
A Fighting Man of Mars
(An intrepid private soldier from Carter’s armed forces);
Swords of Mars
(ONE MORE TIME! John Carter, Dejah Thoris, plus an inhabited Martian Moon);
Synthetic Men of Mars
(Sequel to Mastermind);
Llana of Gathol
(Interlocking short stories featuring Carter and his granddaughter);
… and a half-baked posthumous collection called John Carter of Mars:
Skeleton Men of Jupiter  — a magazine story by the old man himself;
Giant of Mars  — ghost-written by John Coleman Burroughs for a Whitman Better Little Book, originally entitled John Carter of Mars — the title of Jack’s syndicated Comic Strip.

If you think it is high time, and that THAT is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out … (You’re quoting Shakespeare)

Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!

Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!

Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!

E-Portfolio for Michael Evans

Check Out the Dance Histories Section !

Detail from P-G's official poster with Phobos over the Grand Canyon of Mars

The Russian rockets carrying the space-lab, with many international experiments on board, failed after the first step towards landing on one of the tiny moons of Mars. Speaking of the Red Planet:

Grizzled warrior Taylor Kitch seems to be suitably smitten by beautiful princess Lynn Collins in this digitized mashup of images from the upcoming "John Carter" move.

I’ll take any chance to have fun with Old-Time Mars — the mythic Wild West of Science Fiction from days before War of the Worlds and onward. (See below for more Barsoomian lore.)

“SCIENCE !”

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2011; A partial list — World’s lowest density material — less than one milligram per cubic centimeter; A brain-machine interface that’s bi-directional where you can actually feel the computer-generated world around you; NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entered the orbit of Vesta — the second largest body in the main asteroid belt; NASA’s Kepler Mission announced the discovery of the first planet with two suns, just like Tatooine), the first two known Earth-sized exoplanets, and quadrupled the number of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system; Heartbeat-powered nanogenerators could soon replace batteries — you may never have to recharge your phone again; UC Berkeley neuroscientists demonstrated using advanced brain-imaging techniques to turn activity in the visual cortex of the human brain into digital images; 100,000-year-old art kit found in South Africa; Online gamers solved the spatial challenge of determining three-dimensional structures of proteins in three weeks; The hunt for the Higgs boson neared its conclusion, and NUMBER ONE has to be faster than light neutrinos — which would be one of the biggest scientific paradigm shifts in history.

Out of the operatic past

The Metropolitan Opera broadcast was another excellent archival performance — Bellini’s Norma (1832) from April 4, 1970 featuring Richard Bonynge, Marilyn Horne, and the late, great Joan Sutherland in her debut at The Met. This thing was a Bel Canto extravaganza with absolutely gorgeous singing, but it had one of the stupidest excuses for a plot I’ve ever encountered. Maybe it was supposed to be an Anti-Medea, but that’s the only detail I can bear to reveal.

More Sublime

This is what I heard before the opera — Read the whole NPR article HERE

Digitized Damiano Bigi and Clementine Deluy perform Pina Bausch's choreography.

The film Pina is Germany’s official entry at the 84th Academy Awards — and a collaboration between two famous Germans of the postwar generation. The filmmaker Wim Wenders captures the groundbreaking modern-dance choreography of the late Pina Bausch, in what many critics are calling a groundbreaking use of 3-D film …
… “Dance — include me out. It was not for me,” Wenders says. “And the first time I ever saw the Pina Bausch company perform, my girlfriend really, literally dragged me.” Wenders came prepared for tedium.
“And then I found myself on the edge of my seat, crying like a baby after five minutes, and crying through the entire thing,” he recalls, amazement still in his voice after 27 years. “I was hopelessly, helplessly crying, and didn’t know what was happening. It was like lightning struck me.”
… “Pina Bausch showed me in 40 minutes more about men and women than the entire history of cinema.”
…  He worked with 3-D experts for more than a year, and by June 2009 he was ready to shoot rehearsals and show Bausch the results … And then, just a few days before the cameras were to roll, the choreographer died. It was a horrible surprise to nearly everyone; she had been diagnosed with lung cancer less than a week earlier and had, with her usual reticence, kept it to herself.
“I immediately canceled the film, because we had wanted to make this together for 20 years,” says Wenders. “And the fact there is a film after all, I strictly owe to the dancers.”

Full Disclosure: My friend Katie Duck was a long-time associate and friend of Pina Bausch.

THIS was pretty darn good too !

Lee, Neil, Kelly, and "Charlie Bird" at Crush Wine Bar 01-12-2012

The roads were kind of clear, so I took a drive to Whitefish to hear Kelly West and her excellent band worrying those ol’ blue notes in new colors.

Ultra-LOW Culture

Thanks to Internet Magic, I have been able to see some odd entertainment that hasn’t been available since the early days of television. I only knew about Captain Video second-hand, from MAD Magazine‘s satire Captain TVideo (which applied to many other cheap, inept Space Operas) and scattered written descriptions — which told of missed cues, shoddy sets, and segments of old Western movies tossed in as “Captain Video’s Secret Agents.” Well, they were neither lying nor exaggerating !

(L to R) The Dumont Network presented Jackie Gleason as well as Captain Video (Dumont manufactured TV sets); Hitch-hiking St. Pete in Ub Iwerks' "Air Race"

Cartoons too old and moldy for theaters flooded pre-school TV for almost a generation — run and re-run without regard for racism or vulgarity. The example above is a quote from Willie Whopper’s Air Race (circa 1933) by talented animator Ub Iwerks, who tried in vain to make a career outside the black hole of Walt Disney Studios. That IS the angelic St. Peter thumbing a ride in the clouds during said race and giving the bad guy THE BIRD after a rude rejection. The last time I saw this cartoon was 1965 ! (Later in his career, Ub Iwerks was involved with the robotic spectacles Abe Lincoln and Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland.)

"Buck Rogers" was the first syndicated Space Opera -- I followed Murphy Anderson's version in the newspaper during 1957-58, and enjoyed his work on "Adam Strange" in DC Comics through the early 1960's.

Although there were several Space Operas in circulation during the 50′s, my earliest recollections were Space Patrol and Flash Gordon — both Buster Crabbe’s Universal movie serials and the ill-conceived TV series starring Steve Holland. If Tom Corbett — Space Cadet, Rocky Jones, or Captain Video were ever shown in my home town, I was too little to remember seeing them.

After the 1950′s

More conceptions of Warlord John Carter and Princess Dejah Thoris -- ERB's pulp yarns, newly-published in paperback form, were big hits during the 1960's and 1970's.

Online Versions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom Novels:

A Princess of Mars ; The Gods of Mars ; Warlord of Mars ;
(John Carter’s initial blood-soaked trilogy);
Thuvia, Maid of Mars ; The Chessmen of Mars
(Adventures of Dejah & John’s offspring);
Mastermind of Mars
(An totally-unrelated WWI officer wakes up on Barsoom);
A Fighting Man of Mars
(An intrepid private soldier from Carter’s armed forces);
Swords of Mars
(ONE MORE TIME! John Carter, Dejah Thoris, plus an inhabited Martian Moon);
Synthetic Men of Mars
(Sequel to Mastermind);
Llana of Gathol
(Interlocking short stories featuring Carter and his granddaughter);
… and a half-baked posthumous collection called John Carter of Mars:
Skeleton Men of Jupiter  — a magazine story by the old man himself;
Giant of Mars  — ghost-written by John Coleman Burroughs for a Whitman Better Little Book, originally entitled John Carter of Mars — the title of Jack’s syndicated Comic Strip.

If you think it is high time, and that THAT is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out … (You’re quoting Shakespeare)

Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!

Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!

Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!

E-Portfolio for Michael Evans

Check Out the Dance Histories Section !

So far, we’ve had a fairly mild winter where I live. I’ve seen male Deer with their antlers, which normally would have fallen by now, but I don’t know if weather has anything to do with that in the least! We have snow, but the levels are below normal — however the roads are still very treacherous over the windblown passes around here.
Last year, I coincidentally tuned into the NFL Playoffs as the Green Bay Packers began a very long undefeated streak that lasted through the Superbowl, and well into the 2011 Season. They’ve only lost one game this year, and earned some time off before they have to play again. It’s a tough sport, and I wish ALL the players on every team well. Wildcard Winners: Denver, New Orleans, NY Giants, and Houston. Next Weekend: Denver at New England; New Orleans at San Francisco; Giants at Packers; Houston at Baltimore. There are slight home field advantages, but wildcard teams don’t get them after the first week of the playoffs.

Real Books

I picked up something called the Quality Paper Back Companion to Shakespeare — a very thin collection of fairly brief essays. The largest section is devoted to reprinting A Funeral Elegy, which is an Elizabethan poem VERY wrongly attributed to Shakespeare, and debunked less than a decade after the (mis)attribution hit the peer journals.

Footsbarn Theatre in the Festival of Fools Parade of 1977 -- Webmaster Michael is marching at the right, holding a taxi horn overhead. Will Shakespeare has been a member in good standing of this company since 1976 -- especially in high-spirited playwriting sessions. Also in this picture are Paddy, Margaret, and Daniel.

What Did Shakespeare Read? by Leonard Barkan was a lively description of basic education in the Bard’s day. Another little gem is a quote from the late Bernard Levin’s Enthusiasms, further reviewed below:

… If you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony …  had short shrift, cold comfort, or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool’s paradise – why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare …

The New Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames (also allies of Footsbarn) displays a longer fragment of Levin’s righteous rant. HOWEVER, this poster may lead one to mix up phrases written by Shakespeare with pre-existing ones employed by him. A spokesperson of the Shakespeare’s Globe Exhibition wrote: I believe the intention is to give examples of the wide range of expressions used by Shakespeare in his works which have entered everyday English and are still used frequently.

Music Mix

When I was with Footsbarn, I had the pleasure of working within the British genre of Pantomime one Holiday Season. The origins of this theatrical form are too convoluted to trace right now, but suffice it to say that it relies on retelling popular Fairy Tales in extravagant ways, and is usually presented at Christmastime. Ballet eventually echoed this idea with Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.
Opera has a similar phenomenon — Hänsel und Gretel (1893) by the real Engelbert Humperdinck, with libretto by Humperdinck’s sister Adelheid Wette,  was broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera (translated into English) — The music is excellent, but I don’t care at all for that mean, scary thing. It is supposed to be for children, but it is brutal and psychologically scarring. The Grimm brothers of Germany interpreted so many of the Fairy Tales they collected as punishment stories. France’s Perrault wasn’t near as admonishing, and could actually be whimsical with the material he gleaned from similar folk tales of Europe.

From "Hansel & Gretel" by unconventional Norwegian Kay Neilson circa 1930

Wiki says: … the opera was first performed in Weimar on 23 December 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss. (That’s cool! I’m listening to Thus Sprach Zarathustra, written by Strauss right now!) Wiki also credits Gustav Mahler with conducting an early performance of this neo-classical Panto-like specialty. There was stiff Christmas competition when the piece was still relatively new — Victor Herbert’s Babes In Toyland, and the mighty Wizard of Oz, a long-running stage play that preceded the MGM movie of 1939.

Lifting Ahead to the XXI Century

Salt Lake UnderGround has a new issue online, featuring some profiles of very amazing people — Influential Alternative Artist/Musician Bob Moss (recently passed away), Graffiti Artist Tony Quan, aka Tempt One (disabled by MS), and very much living Filmmaker Paul Rachman (co-founder of the Slamdance Festival).

January 2012

An overview of SLUG’s events reads thus:
X – Dance 2012 Thursday, January 12th – Sunday, January 15th, 2012 World’s Top Action Sports Films Screen at The Depot; Underground Gypsy Cabaret Friday, January 13th The Underground Gypsy Cabaret returns to Salt Lake City’s Bar Deluxe Friday, January 13, 2012. January Localized Friday, January 13th  January Localized at Urban Lounge; SLUG Games 2012: Dawn of the Shred Saturday, January 14th  The twelfth annual SLUG Games Ski and Snowboard seires; SLAMDANCE Friday, January 20th – Thursday, January 26th, 2012;
Wasatch Roller Derby Saturday, January 21st  2012 Season Opener!  Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony Saturday, February 4th  DUH DUH DUH DUUUM! And — also the concert shown below — OOH YEAH!

Maceo Parker, a man whose music transcends Funk & Jazz -- TONIGHT on the now-outlawed drag strip known as State Street. (Photo courtesy of Rodney "Skeet" Curtis, my friend and Maceo's bass player for over a decade !)

Speaking of Maceo Parker — there was a time when he was the lead saxophone player for James Brown, about two and a half decades worth of time. He also recorded albums with the JB’s, and under his own name. His sidemen included his brother Melvin Parker on drums and Bernard Odom, creator of the up-front bass style that defines Funk. Mr. Parker also moonlighted with the Parliament/Funkadelic Mob, coming to the fore in Chocolate City and continuing to contribute deep into the 1980s. He formed his own band in the wake of Brown’s incarceration, and runs one of the best shows on The Road.

Disky Communications' Return of the Pusherman "Hustlin' Soul" -- CD #3

Maceo and All the King’s Men (Kush Griffith, Jimmy Nolen, the above players and more) are on the third CD of Marcel Visser’s collection of Funk classics. I don’t use the term “classics” lightly — Shaft and Superfly are both on this disc. Aaron Neville represents New Orleans with high class, and his brother Arthur steps out in the Meters’ monster instrumental Look Ka Py Py. Lee Dorsey sings Allen Toussaint’s magnificent Night People, backed by the composer and the Meters.  Lou Rawls wasn’t explicitly associated with Funk, but EVERYTHING he did honored the genre. Chuck Brown’s Soul Searchers appear alongside masters Bobby Womack and Ike & Tina Turner. My favorite is a hard-hitting jam from Memphis, Tennessee by Linda Lyndell — What A Man What A Man What A Mighty Good Man! I ruefully laugh about the rap-remake with En Vogue and Salt N’ Pepa because it was a hit twenty years ago!

If you think it is high time, and that THAT is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out …

P-Funk All-Star Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!

Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!

Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!

E-Portfolio for Michael Evans

Check Out the Dance Histories Section !

I was going to include some real scientific information about our neighbor the fourth planet in my last post, but a hundred years of Barsoomian princesses kind of pushed everything else aside. Let’s revisit that fictional place for a moment — those snazzy Mid-XX Century fliers will be different in the John Carter movie, but there will still be gargantuan antique architecture, two moons, lots of flesh, and flashing blades!

"Fighting Man of Mars" by R.G. Krenkel -- 50 years after the Barsoom series began.

Summarized Science from the Planetary Society Blog:
It is mid-autumn in the southern hemisphere of Mars — Rover Opportunity needs to maintain a 16-degree northward tilt to its panels through the upcoming Martian winter (which lasts an Earth year). European Space Agency’s Mars Express survey of the north pole was successfully completed last month. The Mars Webcam has been down lately, though.

Mars Odyssey: Noctis Vista West of Valles Marineris lies a checkerboard named Noctis Labyrinthus, which formed when the Martian crust stretched and fractured, releasing subsurface ice and water, causing the ground to collapse. This westward view combines images taken during the period from April 2003 to September 2005.

NASA’s Mars Odyssey is now the longest-lived spacecraft ever to operate at Mars, and it’s still photographing geological features from orbit. (See Above) NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is keeping an eye on Mars’ weather — their latest report is of “tumultuous” weather across Mars, where “dust storm activity once again picked up with full force.” Somehow, Opportunity doesn’t see much of this action, and had only “partially cloudy skies.”

A Quantum of Solstice

I had a cold over the Christmas/New Year holidays, so I did a lot of reading — including 101 Quantum Questions (What You Need to Know About the World You Can’t See) by physicist Kenneth W. Ford. I do not comprehend the mathematics required to understand Quantum Mechanics, but this book attempts to illuminate a century of sub-atomic scientific discoveries in a more-or-less conversational style. Mr. Ford has a genial personality, and provides a lot of context — especially human observations about the people who crafted a whole new body of knowledge that only advanced statistics can properly explain.

I also participated in the Audubon Society bird count -- these wild turkeys were grazing below a bird feeder. (Those things help a lot, folks!)

Deep Simplicity (Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity) by John Gribbin, the British science writer who introduced Schroedinger’s Cat to laypersons of the world. Gribbin has a way of casting a spell on a reader so that he/she sticks with derivations and extrapolations of mathematical concepts as he writes about fundamental simplicities at the core of things that aren’t simple in their apparent actions. His subjects include Biology, Culture, Technology, and Physics in this book. The experience of each chapter was pleasurable, and even profound, but I can’t reconstruct his chains of reasoning — which is why I used a word for magic. I never quite remember the critical details within each chapter after the ride.

Alt Wein, as Fritz Lang used to say

The Metropolitan Opera played an excellent and delightful archival broadcast: Johann Strauss II — Die Fledermaus (1874) — Recorded January 20, 1951 in an English translation credited to Broadway/Hollywood writer Garson Kanin. Strauss’ music is first-rate, with some of the most justly-popular melodies of all time integrated into a drunken homage to King Champagne.

(L) Marguerite Piazza in concert; (R) Patrice Munsel from the Met's 1951 production.

Conducted by Eugene Ormandy; Rosalinde: Marguerite Piazza; Adele: Patrice Munsel; Prince Orlofsky: Rise Stevens; Eisenstein: Charles Kullman; Alfred: Richard Tucker; and Dr. Falke: John Brownlee. (He’s The Bat referred to by the title, although his name means Hawk.)
Garson Kanin wrote an entertaining well-paced comedy based on the old libretto — how accurate or inaccurate it was, I hesitate to guess, but the audience laughed a lot, and so did I, even though it was staged in New York when I was barely two years old.
I remember the names of Piazza and Munsel from early TV, but can’t recall any vivid images of them. Eugene Ormandy, though — I grew up hearing his work on records, and especially on KWHO-AM, a long-lasting classical music station in my home town. Toscanini was dead, and somehow Bernstein was considered controversial, so for awhile Ormandy seemed to dominate America’s attention as far as large-scale symphonic music went. Leopold Stokowski was a major popular rival in the early 50′s, but I was only in elementary school, and had many trivial things on my mind, although I loved Classical Music.
About ten years ago, I saw a full-length ballet based on Die Fledermaus — Viennese Waltzing, modern solo movements, and a dandy classical duet at the climax. It was produced at Salt Lake’s Capitol Theater by Ballet West. The mischievous Bat really added layers of meaning to his role!

Speaking of Fritz Lang

I happened to see a very well-restored version of Lang’s Girl on the Moon (1929) over the Internet. This great master of cinema would soon take his talents to Hollywood, and leave Science Fiction behind him. Johann Strauss was very much a living memory in Lang’s Old Vienna, which quickly faded away after WWI and the end of the Hapsburg Empire. Its great Jewish community that produced artists like Lang, Schiele, and Klimt, would also suffer greatly in World War Two.

Rocketry was a budding science at the time, and the Germans would become very good at it, with access to Robert Goddard’s science, and money that Goddard never could get in the USA. Big breakthroughs would come after WWII, though, when Tsilochovsky’s calculations were put to use by the Soviet Union, and their own cadre of German rocket scientists.

SLUG Mag Preview:

The Underground Gypsy Cabaret is a unique night created to feature local and touring underground musicians and an assortment of dance, cabaret, burlesque and circus performers. Throughout the night, the audience will experience a variety of exciting and exotic performers that include belly dancers, contortionists, aerial and trapeze artists, burlesque, magic and illusion, juggling, fire dancing, sword swallowing, and more, all to live music …

Featured performers include Master of Ceremonies Jeremy Young, underground goddess Pamela Offret, the breathtaking aerial artist Hope Phoenix, belly dance beauties Amanda Borba and Kelsey Covington, the entrancing fusion of the Lunar Dance Collective, the macabre sorcery of Crepsley the Magician, the sensual strength of pole artist Xandra Motley and many more spine-tingling acts.
The music for The Underground Gypsy Cabaret is driven by Utah’s own underground acoustic Gypsy edge band Juana Ghani …  at once lively and dark, always teetering on the edge of sanity and taunting Imagination’s greatest landscapes.
Bringing the night of Friday the 13th to an ecstatic climax is Salt Lake City’s vagabond … Hectic Hobo … the fun that everyone wants to have but doesn’t dare.  Opening the Underground Gypsy Cabaret will be … jazz band HaywireOutfit. undergroundcabaret.blogspot.com

Live and move, and have our being … fight the good fight!

Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!

Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!

Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!

E-Portfolio for Michael Evans

Check Out the Dance Histories Section !

Comic actress Marie Wilson greets the New Year about when I was born -- She starred as "My Friend Irma" introducing Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

100 Years of John Carter and Martian Princesses

Princess Dejah Thoris -- as portrayed by Lynn Collins; J. Allen St. John; and Traci Lords, who was the FIRST actor to play ERB's Princess of Mars in ANY movie!

Come March 2012, Disney/Pixar will release Edgar Rice Burroughs’ breakthrough story Under the Moons of Mars as a big-screen movie called John Carter (named after its berserk warrior-hero), directed by Andrew Stanton with writing assistance by Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon. If all goes well, it will initiate a series of further films, like Burroughs’ biggest success — Tarzan of the Apes.

Dejah Thoris & John Carter (L to R) by Ross/Arreola 2012 and Schoonover 1917.

Michael Chabon is a good novelist who understands the Pulp Genre very well. The art direction is Comic Book Movie Contemporary, but still respects the XX Century source material. I’m hoping that leading man Taylor Kitsch will project the charisma necessary to make John Carter‘s conquering hero role workable and engaging. Lynn Collins is appropriately beautiful, and I really like seeing her Martian Princess swinging swords in her own defense. Casting veteran actor Willem DaFoe as Green Man Chieftain Tars Tarkas demonstrates that these filmmakers appreciate the character’s importance.

Burroughs' Green Men of Mars were over ten feet tall -- Original spot-illo from 1912; Frank Schoonover's Thark warriors circa 1917; Pixar's Tars Tarkas circa 2012.

As someone who drew and re-drew Barsoomian creatures as a teenager, I highly approve of Pixar’s relocation of “tusks” on the Green Men. Following Burroughs’ descriptions TOO closely made for some unresolvable visual problems. It was tough enough for me to make Green Men twice as tall as the humanoid characters in my compositions, but Pixar manages quite well with modern media!

Barsoomian Airship and White Ape circa 1930; Mounted Green warrior attacking a Princess and Hero circa 1925 -- Images by J. Allen St. John.

The pictures below show some supporting creatures and contraptions in the XXI Century’s version of Barsoom:

2012 versions of Airship and White Ape -- Images used for review purposes only.

Burroughs suffered through a string of lousy jobs in the early XX Century before he turned his hand to writing and discovered his talent for bombastic storytelling. He was explicitly inspired by Percival Lowell’s speculations about Mars as a planet criss-crossed by canals, constructed by an ancient civilization as its former seas dried up over the ages, with two moons hurtling through the cold nights. Burroughs populated this world with his own crazy multi-limbed creatures, and a variety of egg-laying people of different hues. Despite the incessant warfare that ravaged Barsoom, its inhabitants lived for hundreds of years.

Detail of Frank Schoonover's frontispiece for McClurg's reprint from All Story Magazine in hardbound book form -- "A Princess of Mars," first published in 1917.

Although Carter was an Earthman, he didn’t remember his childhood, possessed interplanetary powers of teleportation, and was able to breed with his alien Princess when all was said and done. (The author was well-aware of Theosophy, and liberally borrowed Madame Blavatsky’s concepts of Astral Projection in many subsequent tales. A reflection of New Orleans’ Marie Laveau even showed up when Carter returned to the Red Planet.)

Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins are much more co-equal as protagonists in 2012, but they still do justice to XX Century 's John Carter and Dejah Thoris.

Online Versions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom Novels:

A Princess of Mars ; The Gods of Mars ; Warlord of Mars ;
(John Carter’s initial blood-soaked trilogy);
Thuvia, Maid of Mars ; The Chessmen of Mars
(Adventures of Dejah & John’s offspring);
Mastermind of Mars
(An totally-unrelated WWI officer wakes up on Barsoom);
A Fighting Man of Mars
(An intrepid private soldier from Carter’s armed forces);
Swords of Mars
(ONE MORE TIME! John Carter, Dejah Thoris, plus an inhabited Martian Moon);
Synthetic Men of Mars
(Sequel to Mastermind);
Llana of Gathol
(Interlocking short stories featuring Carter and his granddaughter);
… and a half-baked posthumous collection called John Carter of Mars:
Skeleton Men of Jupiter  — a magazine story by the old man himself;
Giant of Mars  — ghost-written by John Coleman Burroughs for a Whitman Better Little Book, originally entitled John Carter of Mars — the title of Jack’s syndicated Comic Strip.

Barsoom's "Thuria, Mad Queen of the Night," -- a slightly-colorized photo of Phobos, taken from a satellite circling Mars. Unfortunately a Russian mission to land a probe there never made it beyond Earth-orbit, and will burn up during January 2012.

When I was a teenager, Richard Lupoff discovered a couple of books written by Edwin A. Arnold a decade before Burroughs’ first sale that looked an awful lot like IMPLICIT inspirations too — Lt. Gulliver Jones and Phra the Phoenician. I was lucky enough to read both of them, and agreed with Lupoff, despite the objections of Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc.

Arnold's retitled "Gulliver of Mars." by St. John's disciple Frank Frazetta (detail).

Without the influence of H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, I doubt the world would have enjoyed Tarzan either. ERB did not create his Pulp Culture masterpieces in a vacuum.

Live and move, and have our being … fight the good fight!

Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!

Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!

Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!

E-Portfolio for Michael Evans

Check Out the Dance Histories Section !

The Legendary First Christmas Card (1843)

Another Flash Gordon in the comic book shops!

Zeitgeist from Dynamite Entertainment, written by Eric Trautmann and Art Director Alex Ross, with finished art by Daniel Indro.

(L to R) Flash Gordon introduces himself to Dale Arden by saving both their lives bailing out of a beleaguered airplane; Dale and Flash on the cover of Zeitgeist #1 – packin’ heat, with Hitler and Ming in the skies of Manhattan.

Look at all those Zeppelins on the cover — Yes, Dr. Freud was still alive in those days! Airships were seriously tested for long-distance transportation after WWI. Roald Admunsen led an expedition over the North Pole in a dirigible. After the enormous Hindenburg burned up while landing in New Jersey at the end of a Trans-Atlantic passenger cruise, these visually-impressive vehicles sat on the sidelines of Aeronautic Technology.
Ross’ series is set in an alternative 1930’s, with Adolph Hitler acting as an agent/proxy for Emperor Ming of Planet Mongo. There seems to be Lion Men, Hawk Men, and at least one other form of Mongo-life traipsing around Planet Earth as mad Dr. Zarkov launches his rocket to Mongo, kidnapping college athlete Flash Gordon and bewildered cartographer Dale Arden in the process. I know one man who believes that Hitler was in league with space aliens anyway, because of German rocket technology, so this idea isn’t a total surprise to me.

Panels and scenes from the very first episodes of “Flash Gordon” -- both in the movies (1936) and Sunday comic strips (1934)

Ross pictures Dale Arden as a dark brunette, just like creator Alex Raymond did. Universal Pictures made Jean (Dale Arden) Rogers a platinum blonde — using the same formula with which they dyed Buster (Flash Gordon) Crabbe’s hair. Nobody knows the reason why – perhaps to distinguish Dale’s “good girl” character from “bad girl” Princess Aura, or maybe to echo Jean Harlow’s successful “Blonde Bombshell” look. Your guess is as good as mine.

(L to R) Dr. Zarkov, Princess Aura, Blonde Dale Arden, Emperor Ming and his courtiers in the 1936 serial.

Miss Rogers dyed her hair black in the 1938 Universal serial (Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars), and she was every bit a pretty as she was in 1936, although Hayes Office censorship showed its heavy hand much more when compared to the gleeful barbarity of the first chapter play. There wasn’t much overlap with the comic strip of 1938 either. As a matter of fact, Flash Gordon’s creator Alex Raymond isn’t even mentioned in the credits of the Mars serial!
The “bad girl” in Flash’s Mars adventure was Azura, Queen of Magic – derived from 1935’s Azura, Witch Queen of Mongo in Raymond’s comic pages. Universal had stolen a number of plot points from Azura‘s saga before, but they adapted her name and some vague connections to cave-dwellers for the second go-round. Unlike Raymond’s aggressively passionate Witch-Queen, though, Universal’s Queen of Magic was cold and almost asexual.

Beatrice Roberts as elusive Azura of Mars (1938) -- POOF!

The third Universal Pictures’ Flash Gordon serial featured Dale Arden as a brunette again, only she was played by petite Carol Hughes. Princess Aura was a “good girl,” with reddish-brown tresses, based on her counterpart in Raymond’s Sunday feature. (He got credit for his work, too!) The “bad girl” was a treacherous blonde double agent – freely adapted from Raymond’s Lady Sonja.
After WWII, the Flash Gordon franchise went through “them changes” – Alex Raymond quit the strip in 1944. Austin Briggs took over for a little while. King Features hired ace draftsman Mac Raboy to draw the Sunday page, and eventually turned the daily strip over to Dan Barry’s crew of pencilers and inkers.

Out-of-this-world brunette version of Dale Arden ala' Margaret Brundage circa 1935.

When the Universal serials became a hit on the new material-hungry medium of TV, King Features planned a series of newly-made episodes to meet the demand. They reportedly changed the name of Universal’s first serial to Space Soldiers in order to free-up the name Flash Gordon for a new show. Unfortunately, somebody contracted the job with Intercontinental Television Films Inc. – the result being a painfully obvious low-budget no-humor self-parody, shot in rubble-strewn West Berlin, that sullied the whole Space Opera genre. (Which is saying something – a lotta laughable dreck was made in the 50’s!)
American actor Steve Holland would sell millions of books in the next decade as James Bama’s model for the Doc Savage series paperbacks, but his Nordic good looks didn’t help him much against those wretched scripts. Actress Irene Champlin deserved much better than that pitiably dowdy Dale Arden.

The Universal serials circulated around local TV stations through the late 1960’s. Mac Raboy died in 1968. Dan Barry & Company took over Flash Gordon on Sunday. Al Williamson tried to resurrect Alex Raymond’s vision of Flash Gordon in King Featues’ comic books, but then successfully revived Raymond’s Secret Agent Corrigan in the newspapers.
A group of active Science Fiction fans spent a few years, and some miraculous money, masterminding an amazing satire of the whole Flash Gordon mythos. Writer/Director Michael Benveniste made a screenplay incorporating two generations of wit from wise-acres  talking back to movie screens and TV sets. The movie utilized the behind-the scenes talent of Bjo Trimble, Tom Reamy, Mike Minor, Greg Jein, Rick Baker, Jim and Dave Allen.

Jason (Flesh Gordon) Williams comforts Suzanne (Dale Ardor) Fields after going down in the well-used parachute together (1972)

Flesh Gordon (… not to be confused with the original Flash Gordon) circulated as a Cult Classic throughout the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, especially on the Midnight Movies circuit. It entertained millions of viewers, especially Baby Boomers who loved to watch rowdy send-ups of now-familiar cliches. HOWEVER — there was more to the story.

Bad Girls – (Above) Alex Raymond’s Witch Queen of Mongo. (Below) Flesh Gordon combined Princess Aura and Queen Azura into the character Amora, Queen of Magic, played by Mycle Brandy, who abducted our hero for a romantic ride in a swan - ship through a starry Zodiac rife with visual jokes.

Co-director and producer Howard Ziehm was heavily involved with the sex-film industry in Southern California. I have no idea how Benveniste and other SciFi fans linked up with him, but much of Flesh Gordon’s cast came from the sometimes-illegal field of pornography, like Suzanne Fields, Mycle Brandy, and Candy Samples.
Movie houses loosened their rules concerning nudity and sexual content in those days, and some real hardcore films appeared in places where nobody ever expected them. It didn’t take too long before state and local lawmakers squelched THAT trend, and blacklist-barriers between mainstream filmmaking and XXX movies went up again.
Flesh Gordon was seized by the L.A. Vice Squad – they went through the whole thing frame by frame and returned everything that didn’t exceed their interpretation of the law. (Ziehm’s name must have been written in brown on somebody’s list.) There is still a stigma on this movie, and many restrictions on where it can be shown, even though it barely earned an “R” rating.

Max Von Sydow as Ming, and Orella Muti as Princess Aura (1980)

Despite writing a lot about films, I’m not a historian, so I can’t verify my feeling that Dino Di Laurentis’ almost-good Flash Gordon (1980) was made because of the remarkable mileage achieved by Flesh Gordon (1972). It was probably a coincidence, and owed something to Star Wars, but there are plenty of wise-guy similarities. Sam Jones sure resembled Jason Williams too!
Al Williamson did a fine graphic novel based on the 1980 movie, but Flash Gordon was known to the public mostly as a VERY flat TV cartoon series for another generation, despite some good graphic novels and newspaper strips by Bob Fujitane, Gray Morrow, and Jim Keefe among others.
A couple of years back, the SyFy Network commissioned an inter-dimensional, rather than inter-planetary, concept of Flash Gordon for cable TV, but I wasn’t at all pleased by the results. They hired a lot of brunette women to play various roles, and a few scattered scenes surprised me, but that’s all the positivity I can muster for that sad misguided case.

No Need to Re-Invent the Wheel

An erotic satire of Space Operas was already doing very well in the 1960’s — although it didn’t happen in America, or with any help from Science Fiction Fandom. Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella was an international hit in European comics. His stuff was too racy for the USA, but that was OUR problem. Frank Springer drew Phoebe Zeit-Geist for the emerging U.S. Underground, but we were unfashionably late.

(L to R) Jane Fonda; "Barbarella" by Forest; Anita Pallenburg as "The Black Queen"

Roger Vadim released a movie version of Barbarella in 1968, starring his wife Jane Fonda, and Keith Richards’ girlfriend Anita Pallenburg. The ages-old quest of a hero traveling through a strange and dangerous land was redone with a spacefaring heroine. Echoes from Flash Gordon abounded. Vadim made Brigitte Bardot a star a decade earlier, and Forest’s Barbarella was definitely BB’s clone. In retrospect, the movie was visually engrossing, but it would have benefited from a brisker pace – especially with the dialog. Fonda is an excellent actor, even in her early career, and one of her scenes with David Hemmings was hilarious, but the film could have mined some more wit from Forest’s material. I’m sorry it didn’t end as well as it began.

Live and move, and have our being … fight the good fight!

Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!

Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!

Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!

E-Portfolio for Michael Evans

Check Out the Dance Histories Section !

Footsbarn Theatre's marquee tent lost its canvas to a windstorm in Central France on December 16, 2011 -- If you wish to help, click the link below.

My extended Anglo-French family, Footsbarn Theatre, have had a tough year, and now this catastrophe strikes — I personally am going to join FRIENDS OF FOOTSBARN.

Sing It Loud — Soprano and Proud!

Madama Butterfly (1904) was broadcast “live” from the Metropolitan Opera over Montana Public Radio. Orchestra leader James Levine must still be in really bad shape, because his friend Placido Domingo was guest-conducting. I wrote about this depressing melodrama not too long ago — stating that Western Culture treated the fictional Cho So San in her wig, makeup, and kimono, as a mythical fantasy, like Brunhilde in her armor, for many generations, except that women in Japan really dressed that way, and no women except opera singers EVER wore horned helmets in Germany. The plot treats the occupation of Geisha as somehow disreputable too, which is false, but this is not an essay about Japan.

By any measure, Anna May Wong was a beautiful woman and fine actor!

California-born third-generation American Anna May Wong (1905 – 1961) was the first international Asian movie star. She dropped out of high school to work for the young movie industry, and achieved stardom in The Toll of the Sea (1922) — same basic plot as Madama Butterfly, except set on mainland China.
Her next major role was as an exotic sexually-charged character in Thief of Bagdad (1924) — these two extreme roles of tragic innocent or corrupting seductress haunted the rest of her movie career with a welcome exception or two, like Daughter of Shanghai (1937), but not many. She played a fabulous villain in Piccadilly (1929), a gritty edged British film, but her character bears the name Sho Sho. (How original did they dare get?)

Deco-styled Anna May Wong with bobbed hair.

There was another dimension to her career, though — she was so radiantly beautiful that she became a fashion icon at the dawn of what we call Mass Media. Many films would hire Wong for brief sequences, simply as “eye candy,” and then use her image to coax audiences to the box office. This trick worked over and over again. (MGM repeated it with vastly-talented Lena Horne in the 1940′s) but Wong wanted better treatment than that, and spent years abroad where she secured her international stardom and status as a first-rate actress. Anna May returned home to Hollywood and did the popular but humiliating potboiler Daughter of the Dragon (1931), with the great Sessue Hayakawa (of Japanese descent) playing the racist Sax Roehmer’s Fu Manchu — she then co-starred with Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932), as a professional reward. There is so much more to say about this brave outspoken pioneer of the cinema — start with Anna May Wong’s Wikipedia Article, but don’t stop there!

A “Moveable Type” of Feast

I just finished The Book in the Renaissance by Andrew Pettegree — a wonderful overview of the first two centuries of printing in Europe. Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in the mid-1400′s wasn’t really a commercial success at first, but it evolved, and even though Pettegree tries to avoid the shopworn cliches (a printing term) about the wide distribution of books spreading the cultural changes known as the Renaissance, this new technology and its products were major factors in distinguishing the so-called Middle Ages from our so-called Modern Era. The ever-growing amount of printed materials in Latin, Greek, and actually-spoken languages (vernacular), plus an increasing percentage of literacy in the population of Europe provided the means of spreading knowledge over distance and, most importantly, to the following generations. Pettegree concentrates on The Book as a business, though.

Albrecht Durer's High-Renaissance Rhinoceros (NOT used in Pettegree's book)

I enjoyed reading about how Ausberg, Wittenberg, Paris, Antwerp, Basel, and Venice becoming major publishing centers. The author also reveals evidence about the incredible amount of pamphlets, broadsheets, schoolbooks, and advertisements that were necessary to keep these presses in business. Many books are only known because discarded or unbound pages were used as padding in the bindings of books that survived those times. Martin Luther and his disputations with Catholicism caused a seismic shift and expansion of the whole phenomenon of printed books circa 1520.
I had a good time reading about trashy entertainment, like Amadis of Gaul, a very popular Knight-Errant, as Action-Heroes were known back then. Reading Amadis too much drove Miguel Cervantes’ fictional Don Quixote to lose his wits and go riding off across Spain in hundred-degree heat for satirical adventures that are still read and loved today, four hundred years after the Renaissance morphed into an ill-defined Modernity.
Pettegree makes one important point about excessive devotion to so-called Classics — when it came to medicine, the writings of Hippocrates and Galen were worthless, and likely caused harm to a continent repeatedly beset by Black Plague and other epidemics.  He also demonstrates how England was very late to the printing party. There WAS a lively industry going on by the Late Elizabethan period, thank goodness, which is how we know Marlowe, Shakespeare, and a few more great London dramatists.
Pettegree’s final words include the wry observation about his survey: Ironically, it has been the next great information revolution — the Internet — that has allowed this work on the first age of print to be pursued to a successful conclusion.

Another Golden Age Original Leaves Us – RIP Joe Simon

It is impossible to really sum up the importance of Joe Simon in the history of Comic Books. He was a writer, artist, editor, and publisher/packager who not only contributed to many genres, but also created a number of them – helping keep this once-marginal art form in existence after the first bloom of costumed superheroes faded around the end of WWII.
Simon’s long partnership with Jack Kirby is probably the most notable chapter of his history – together they created Captain America, but the list of successful, but now-obscure, features they did in tandem exceeds a baker’s dozen by quite a bit – they were really hot for about 20 years, and cooked up a lot of ideas!
My knowledge of Simon’s work began in the 1960’s when Jack Kirby was at the height of his fame as de facto art director/designer of the Marvel Comics Group. As a fan, I perceived him as a figure in the shadows of Kirby’s past, but I was just a dumb kid. He was still involved with the Comics field, and I gained a lot of respect for his abilities while learning how the art form developed – largely by reprints from Harvey and DC Comics.

The Fly* circa 1959, Blue Beetle circa 1939 -- Art by Joe Simon w/Jack Kirby*

There aren’t many people still living who actually helped create the now-major entertainment genre known as Graphic Novels in the USA. They weren’t alone in the world by any means – Japan, the Philippines, South America, and Europe took turns leading the way over the generations, but the hard-scrabbling kids in the New York pulp-publishing industry sure played their part!

Don’t Take No Wooden SLUGS!

Let’s talk about modern publishing for a bit — SLUG Mag’s inner back cover was a full-page ad for a service called Party Utah. There were links to all sorts of events and places that are not usually part of SLUG’s alternative network — competition, in other words. There are about two million people living in Northern Utah, and everything can’t be alternative can it? Let’s see — booze, breasts, bare legs — yeah, you’ll see some of those same things in SLUG too.

Got Goth?

Madelyn Boudreaux wrote a very nice article and interview about an artist I’ve never heard of before – which is one of the best reasons to read SLUG Mag.

“I am part of the scene. I don’t know what backstage looks like. The party is at the front of the house!” explained Voltaire … he notes that he enjoys being out on the floor and makes himself available to attendees because they “keep me from having to get a real job.”

The Black Unicorn Crew: Brian Viglione, of the Dresden Dolls and cellist; Melora Creager of Rasputina: David J. of Bauhaus: and Aurelio “Voltaire” Hernandez.

(Above) … When a fan described his music as “the audio equivalent of Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of an Erupting Volcano While Drinking from a Chalice Filled with the Laughter of Small Children,” Voltaire found his title and decided to do everything requested, including the title track, “an acoustic cover of a song Iron Maiden forgot to write ..”

Ms. Boudreaux also writes: … Despite the fact that he’s gorgeous, intelligent and bitingly funny, what stands out is his delight in getting to make a living doing what he loves.
“I never expect anyone to like what I do. I write songs I would want to hear. I write books I would want to read. It always pleasantly surprises me and boggles my mind when people enjoy what I’ve created,”

I highly recommend reading the entire article HERE, and invite you to visit Voltaire.net for more about this creative and inspirational man!

Going for Baroque (Again):

Jango Edwards and Johnny Melville parade onward! (see below)

Live and move, and have our being … fight the good fight!

Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!

Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
Check out Parade of Fools for the latest on their movie!

Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
— Then buy one from SLOWTRAIN!

E-Portfolio for Michael Evans

Check Out the Dance Histories Section !