May 25, 2005
I woke up with an idea on how to massage the August cover story package. Got into the office and went over the idea with Robert Ray, Meghan and Trish. Jane Bishoff came in at 10 and we worked on making it fly. Got some very good stuff going.

Gus designed six postcard ideas for CGII and they will go up on the website next week. And speaking of Blaze Away! The 25 Gunfights Behind the O.K. Corral, I got this request from yesterday's journal entry:

"If you get a chance to do the aerial photos of the J Ringo burial site I would like to get a copy of the photo. My wife's great great grandfather was "Coyote" Smith and the tree was just across the creek from his ranch. It would be really great to have an aerial view of the area."
—Jim kooistra

My pleasure. Now the pressure is on to the get the right location. I’ve only been up there once and I hope I can recognize it from the air.

Javelinas attacked us last night. The dogs were fenced in, but the three big, overgrown rats just came right up to the gate and snorted around with their big, fat snouts. Of course, Peaches and Buddy were going crazy, shrill barking and doing backflips. Man, those javes are obnoxious, plus they smell foul.

This report from the Tom Bomb up in Flag
So last Friday I went to a five keg forest party with special guest Phil Bunkman (I Hate You When You're Pregnant). The party kind of sucked because it was mostly high schoolers but there were hundreds of people there and a bon fire. They brought a generator out so bands could set up and play. The first group was some [poopy] punk band and then Phil played. It was pretty cold so I didn't think he would do his usual routine of wearing a speedo but boy was I wrong. The first thing he said was, "I'm about to get really cold" and just stripped off his clothes. It was a great Phil show as expected but the craziest thing was that besides us 20 or so older people who were Phil fans, everyone was the frat boy type. So you have Phil in his speedo screaming, "I'm sleeveless! I'm f------ raw! I look just like a f------- god! I'm sleeveless and I'm number one, what would Jesus do if he could see these guns!" and one car over you have these future frat boys blasting ghetto rap. At one point one of the Phil fans got on the mike and said it was ridiculous that they were listening to music because we had live music right there. They screamed back, "Your music f------- sucks!". It was quite the culture clash.

I love it that he refers to himself and his friends as “older people.” And I can totally relate to the frat-boy put down. Been there, many times. Here you are, putting it all on the line and some boorish idiots not only miss the point but are ready to kill you. For some reason, in my mind, this all applies to the war in Iraq, although I haven’t seen any gator lines over there, yet.

"If your project doesn't work, look for the part that you didn't think was important."
—Arthur Bloch