July 6, 2006
More big clouds, but no rain. Dave and Doreen Daiss came up from their Sonoita ranch today and said they have been getting much needed rain (several nights in a row). It’s an early monsoon season, Doreen told me.

Saw one of our last classic signpainters, Alan Scott, parked down by the old school at lunch time. Pulled off the road and told him we still want the new sign outside (“True West World Headquarters”), but we’re having a disagreement about who pays for it. Ha. I assured him we would still do it, probably in late fall.

Starting work on the gunfights of Caldwell, Kansas for the October issue. Rod Cook is helping me. Henry Beck is on the home stretch on his story regarding who actually directed the movie Tombstone. He, Meghan and I are meeting in the morning to discuss it. Meanwhile, Robert Ray has laid in a schematic the available gunfights and we have approximately 110 pages in the can for Volume III of Classic Gunfights. This one includes Custer, Davy Crockett and Butch and Sundance’s last holdup in Bolivia. Received a blessing from Dan Buck to run it. Virtually all of the images, research and information is from him and Ann Meadows. I went back and read it and it is quite thorough and impressive. Great job Ann and Dan! And thanks.

Kathy and I finally started watching the new season of Deadwood (stored on the Dish memory banks) and I must say, how can they get away with libeling George Hearst like they are doing? I mean, they are portraying Hearst as being worse than Swearingen (also a real guy but with smaller pocketed descendants I assume). Of course, George was a tough guy, but I never got the impression he was the Charlie Manson of the Old West. And if he was my great-grand-daddy I would be mighty pissed (and more importantly, I would have a much larger circulation on True West). I really don’t like the show as much as Kathy does (hard to believe, it being a Western and all). I think it’s because I can’t get past the lame stuff. It may be great writing, but it isn’t a great Western. It just looks wrong and sounds wrong so much of the time. I know, I know, David Milch is a genius. Well, let him write his surfer show. A Western Man don’t need him around anyhow.

I’m taking the doctor’s advice (less blogging, more jogging) and swam 12 laps, ran out to my car, and ran to bed, and went on two bike rides, all the while imagining my cholesterol plummeting like Ken Lay’s actuary table.

”A Southern Man don’t need him around anyhow.”
—Lynard Skinner, responding to Neil Young’s “Southern Man”