September 22, 2003
Pain. Wrenched my back on Sunday morning picking up a stack of papers from the studio floor. I probably strained it on Saturday when I was carrying boxes to and from the Sharlott Hall Book Festival.

Really laid me low. Came home from Prescott early so I could get some artwork done, but couldn’t even draw. Tried several times but gave up. Took two aspirin and went to bed. Got up at four and tried to paint a Tranter and Smith & Wesson #2 pistol, but only got background in. Found a position on the couch that didn’t hurt and watched Ride With The Devil, looking for horseback rebel shots to use for the Younger-Pinkerton shootout. I forgot how good Ride is. It’s twice the movie Open Range is. Toby McGuire as “Dutchie” and Jewell, as a sexy widow, are both very good. Perhaps Toby was a tad too poetic for mainstream success. You can see how a young Bruce Willis or Clint Eastwood would have made it more “commercial” as an action pic, but for my money Toby is great. When Jewell is undressing him on his wedding night, she asks, “Are you a virgin?” And Dutchie stammers around, completely helpless, and then states emphatically, “Girl, I’ve killed 15 men!” As if that matters in the bedroom. The idea that he’s 19 and killed a platoon of men but never been with a woman says more about the Civil War and the Old West than most Westerns ever have or ever will. Sometimes life is very unfair, and the failure of this movie is one of them. We all need to buy it on DVD. Ang Lee will thank you.

Hope to make up for lost time today. My back feels slightly better and I took the dogs for a walk this morning. Finished “Goofs, Gaffs & Cons” a sidebar for True West Comes Clean, an article we have been working on all year to document the times when we printed fiction, or worse. John Boessenecker gave me several good gaffs.

Bob Brink is very unhappy with the ad we created for the Classic Gunfights book. We are taking another look at it today, to see how we can improve it. I wanted to do something very clean and simple, and maybe I got too clean, and too simple, or as we like to say, “Too hip for the room.”

”There’s no place where success comes before work, except in the dictionary.”
—Donald Kimball