August 4, 2004
We subscribe to several e-mail services that give a heads up on marketing ideas and motivation, better service, etc. This morning, Carole Glenn forwarded me the following:

To increase your responses, try using any of these ten words:
• Free
• You
• Announcing
• Introducing
• New
• Secrets
• How to
• Guaranteed
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The NEW office copies of the September issue just arrived and we formed a bucket brigade out the door to bring them in. The boxes are stacked outside my office for EASY access.

INTRODUCING Robert Chenal—our summer intern (NAU). This morning he helped me load up a whole bunch of photos and books for the new BBB display going up at the Cave Creek Museum. Lots of KSLX stuff, including a four foot high color photograph of me with a mohawk riding a surfboard on a fake wave with two radio FREE honeys. The historic display will premiere in September and is GUARANTEED to make you laugh and gasp.

I took Robert out to my studio to show him HOW TO get a handle on my ref morgue. He’s been sweating it out all afternoon. Him and Ron installed a new handle and lock in the door. Kathy got it this morning from Home Depot. While working, I had to tell him several times to take it EASY.

I didn’t know this but evidently the famous Dakotas apartments in New York where John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived got its name in an odd, Western way. Allegedly, when it was NEW in the 1800's, friends of the builder commented to him that it was so far removed from the center of New York that "it was like having to go to the Dakotas". Could that be true? It sounds almost too good?

Yesterday I mentioned the “Lewis” fire. I forgot to mention the “Jack” fire. And two weeks ago the “Magazine” fire torched 300 acres near here. Who started that fire? That’s EASY.

Speaking of hot, Rawhide is ANNOUNCING the event of the season this Saturday: Bring In the Clowns—Day 5. More than 100 clowns including silliest, corporate, clown clubs and independent clowns will be there. Sounds like MAGIC to me.

Went to SFMOMA (San Fran Museum of Modern Art) on Saturday ($10 each) and saw a big Pop retrospective featuring Andy Warhol, Lichenstein and others. Got very inspired by the big Warhols, especially the Triple Elvis which shows young Presley with a drawn pistol from a Western movie still, repeated three times. Very strong and simple. Red Liz, also from 1962, which is of Elizabeth Taylor was iconic and good. But the big one, literally, was National Velvet, 1963, with the multiple frames of a young Elizabeth Taylor in the famous horse movie, repeated at random across and down a giant canvas (over 11 feet high). Really impactful. Many artists, so-called, have tried to duplicate Warhol’s SECRET technique (basically black and white polaroids silk-screened onto a big, ol’ canvas) but they never quite pull it off.

We've got a new poll up. Have you seen the True West Moments that run on the Westerns Channel. YOU can click right here.

"Am I getting smart with you? How would YOU know?"
—Don Rickles