August 11, 2003
Got up yesterday and read the paper. California is going nuts with their recall election. Some 150 candidates including a porn star. Really bizarre and funny, but I can’t get too smug and uppity about it because whatever happens in California, we get ten years later.

At about four yesterday, Kathy and I closed all the windows in the studio and turned on the AC (it was the air-pad cooler that wasn’t working and in Arizona you need both). Moved my paintings over to the main house while it cooled down. Painted on the dining room table and got two very nice images going of Billy leaping through the McSween gate and of Peppin’s men, moving in for the kill on McSween in the darkened corner of his back yard. Good effects, about two-thirds done. Painted until around six.

Also, swam laps, took a nap, charged the battery on the ‘49 Ford (still won’t start), cleaned off the love seat in our bedroom (stacks of books, etc.). Had a steak, pasta and a glass of wine for dinner, then watched Project Greenlight. The two naive directors showed their rough cut movie to a test audience and were cockily predicting at 92 grade. When the screening was over and they ran the numbers the audience gave it a 42. Ouch! I can relate. In 1999 when we tried to relaunch Old West magazine as Old West Journal everyone in the office was so excited and we started predicting what the sell-thru would be. Nobody, myself included, guessed low enough. It came in at half the lowest estimate. Needless to say we don’t publish Old West Journal anymore. We had unrealistic, absurd expectations.

"In politics, absurdity is not a handicap."
—Napoleon Bonaparte