May 6, 2005
Got up at five, picked up Mike Melrose at six and we got through the beast without much trouble, rolling into the Old Pueblo at about nine. Stopped at El Indio, of course, and had the huevos rancheros ($10 cash, went dutch). Both the waitress and I tried to teach Melrose how to pronounce "huevos" which he mangles into "Who-ah-wave-ohs." I pointed at him and said to the hispanic waitress "Es estudiante de Espanole," and she visibly brightened, and seemed to think he was cute (which is more than I can say). For the rest of the meal she kept coming back and saying things to him in Spanish, which drove him crazy and made my day.

We rolled into Tombstone at about 10:30 and ran smack dab into Timothy Fattig, which seems to be a tradition. After shaking hands, I asked him what the status of his book is. For some reason Timothy answered in a Scottish accent, sounding a bit like that deranged custodian character on the Simpsons. The rumor is that Tim's publisher, Michael Hickey, has withheld the book because Tim made peace with Allen Barra and Hickey hates Barra because of a dustup on a certain website and now Hickey won't let Tim sell his own book. As absurd as that sounds, that's the rumor, but I wanted to find out from the author himself. As we walked along the boardwalk at Fourth and Allen, Fattig's Scottish answer sounded something like this:

"Well, me book is grounding the waves, Mate. Und the poobleesher es playing der games, but iss rocking-wall, der fine."

As we turned the corner, Melrose said to me: "I didn’t know Fattig was Scottish." I told him he isn't, that it's possibly just Tim's way of being funny. We decided he had succeeded quite well in that department.

Met the Irish film crew at 11 and we knocked out the BBC commentary in about an hour. More on that later.

Got home at about 8:30. Long day. Went right to bed. Big weekend. My daughter turns 25 tomorrow.

"We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."
—Lee Iococca