March 10, 2005
Very warm weather now. Low eighties in the afternoons. Mornings very nice and cool. Went for a bike ride with the dogs around seven. Weeds up by Barro's are five feet high! Unbelievable growth, especially when you consider the seeds have to wait, sometimes for years, to germinate. Going to be a very dangerous fire season come August, but in the meantime we'll just enjoy it.

At ten I drove down into the Beast. Dropped off a box of True West mags (April issue) at Bob Willis' house just off the 101 and Via Linda. This is for a big Lost Dutchman Mine Days celebration going on in the Superstition Mountains this weekend. From there I fought my way across Scottsdale on Camelback Road and landed downtown in Phoenix at 24th St. and Campbell at a new photography studio where John Beckett invited me and Marshall Trimble to come sit for formal portraits.

When I got there at 11:30, Marshall was just finishing up his session. John Beckett asked me if I had any crazy ideas for my photo shoot and I said I did. I related to him that when I was leaving the office one of my employees quipped sarcastically that perhaps John could shoot Marshall and I in a cheesecake pose like the babes in his ads (which he runs in True West and the GIs in Iraq and the prisoners in Perryville go crazy for and order all the time. And yes, it was Mike Melrose). I told John that I wanted to do a special gag shot of Marshall and I nude from the waist down, with our backs turned, looking back over our shoulders with a come hither look.

Both John and Marshall said they were game, so I went in the dressing room and took off my pants (both pair) and put on my new fringe jacket which covered everything, or at least shaded it significantly.

Marshall came out in a long, yellow shirt and boots with his guitar over his shoulder. We got into position, turned, hiked up our skirts, pushed out our booties and grinned, or more accurately—mooned the camera. The make-up lady, Julie Koeth, doubled over with laughter, and I think you will too when you see the end result (pun intended).

The guy who owns the studio, Aaron Aslanian came out as John was furiously clicking away with his high speed digital and said, looking at me, “You really must be comfortable in your skin.” I smiled and didn’t say anything, but I thought to myself, “Are you kidding?! I’m from Kingman! My mother is going to be mortified, Charlie Waters is going to embarrassed to even know me, so is my high school principal, if he wasn’t dead. Ditto for my English teacher.”

Only the most tasteful photos will be posted on John Beckett’s website sooner than later. I'll tell you how to get there when they are up.

"In almost any society the quality of the nonconformists is likely to be just as good as and no better than that of the conformists."
—Margaret Mead