March 4, 2004
Foggy and soggy out. A light drizzle has been falling all morning. Still scrambling on cover. Robert Ray took the latest image down to Daniel last night and this morning “Harsh” e-mailed us four PDF versions of covers. We just got through critiquing them all, with the entire staff gathering around Abby’s computer and weighing in. A couple of typos (need a lower case t on The, as in The Alamo, no periods on subheds). Still not happy with the mush out brown above the masthead. Dan is working on that now.

Ah, fame rears its ugly/tempting head. Yesterday Mad Coyote Joe took me to lunch at Trader Bart’s up the street. We had a taco apiece and Joe interviewed me on how I make my tacos (with pliers of course). Joe is writing a new column for the Sonoran News. We talked quite a bit about his dramatic weight loss (he had that gastric bypass surgery and has gone from the 350 pound zone down to 195). When I told him he’s not the same person he was six months ago, Joe told me: “Yes, I killed the Mad Coyote Joe character.” This seems shocking and impossible, but it’s true. He’s no longer the hefty bar-b-que guy throwing strips of meat over his head (his patented tv move). Joe confided to me that when his tv show Sonoran Grill took off, “I had 22-year-old women coming up to me and pulling down their tops so I could autograph their melons. It was unreal.” He said this like I knew what he was talking about and that I had suffered this terrible burden myself. I had to tell him that in the history field there are attractive women but they mainly flash their genealogy research at me.

Joe also told me he was recently in a grocery store: “A woman came up to me and said, ‘So he’s putting out t-shirts now,’ as she pointed at the design on my chest. ‘Yes, I do,’ I replied. ‘No, I mean the big guy on tv,’ the woman said oblivious to who I was.’” Ah, scary stuff.

You can check out Mad Coyote Joe and his recipes at www.madcoyote.net

And speaking of fame and the scary power of tv, I have been inundated with e-mails and phone calls since the Discovery show on Billy the Kid, ran Sunday night. People I haven’t heard from in years have contacted me. Kingman High classmate Trudy Peart googled me after seeing me on the Westerns channel’s True West Moment. John Riskas, who created Boots niteclub in the early eighties and now lives in Atlanta e-mailed me. This is his comment:

“I'm burning a piece of steer on my Hibachi, and have the History Channel tuned in for background noise, then I hear a familiar voice, and there to all the nation, is you.”

Got an e-mail this morning from the former Kitty Zelisko (Danny Z’s wife number one) who now lives in Key West and rides Harley’s. I love her comment:

“So great to see your web page and know that you are doing well . . . an AUTHORITY and a SMARTASS!”

“Nine-tenths of our suffering is caused by others not thinking so much of us as we think they ought.”
—Mary Lyon, who, I’m guessing, thought quite a bit of herself