November 3, 2006
Working feverishly on three fronts: I needed to get at least a dozen new True West Moments written and sent up to Denver, so Jeff can edit them and get them input into the teleprompter for Monday’s shoot. I roughed in a dozen yesterday, then whipped out another seven today, utilizing all of the questions I have been getting from viewers. For another idea I thought it might be fun to step out of a building and say, “Does this background look familiar? If you’re a fan of Westerns, it should. In fact, more Westerns have been filmed here than any other location. Let me give you a few clues:

Winchester ‘73, Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo, McClintock!, El Dorado, Dirty Dingus McGee, Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean, Joe Kidd, Death of A Gunfighter, The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, Hombre, Heaven With A Gun, The Badlanders, Monte Walsh, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tombstone, Young Guns II, I Married Wyatt Earp (remember that one with Marie Osmond?), The Gambler, Tom Horn, The Sacketts and The Villain, starring Kirk Douglas and Ann-Margaret.

And then there were the TV shows, like Have Gun Will Travel, Death Valley Days, High Chapparal, The Legend of The Lone Ranger, Young Riders, Little House On The Prairie, Father Murphy, Wild, Wild, West, Hart to Hart, Gunsmoke and even America’s Most Wanted.

Lots of foreign films were filmed at Old Tucson too, like Lucky Luke and Roshoman (1950)

And weird ones, like Four Eyes starring Judge Reinhold and Hawmps! (remember that one about camels out West?), and even Bells of Saint Mary’s starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman.

And, personally, that’s just the type of script I need a teleprompter for.

Robert Ray and I had to whip out an article for The Cowboy Chronicle today. Did a sweet little piece on women and sidesaddles. Found some great photos and wrote that sucker up and Robert tweaked it in, and we finished it at five and pdf’d it to the editor.

We’re also getting ready for Wild West Days in Cave Creek next weekend. Joel Klasky ramrodded a sandwich sign which we’ll put out next week. Increased the size of Marshall Trimble’s name and Joey Dillon’s name (and mine) for marque value.

Also, Joel and I got into it over the ad for Wild West Days that ran in The Republic yesterday morning. He was irritated that I was dissing the ad as being weak, after I had signed off on it, but my response was, and is, “I’m not blaming you. This is my fault. I hate the ad. It’s weak and I helped make it that way. This is what we get sometimes when we design by committee. How do we learn from this and not do it again?” Of course, many times we don’t see how an ad really plays until it is in the environment of seven other ads, all sucking oxygen away from our ad. In this case it wasn’t pretty. Worse yet, it was bland as hell.

Came home at 5:30 and met J.D. Went down to his spread and picked up three cat panels and hauled them down to my place. Went over design changes on the chicken condo, and made plans for our trip to Tucson on Sunday.

Jeff Hildebrandt is flying in tomorrow, then ’m going to the Coolwater Church on Sunday morning to see Jeff do his cowboy poetry thing, then we’re off to Tucson. Supposed to meet some writer friends for dinner at their fave Mexican place on Sunday night and then it’s taping all day Monday and back to Phoenix that night.

Still need to finish the Classic Gunfight art, write my editorial and do some Honkytonk Sue art. I read an interview with Norman Rockwell’s son the other day where he said his father, my hero Norman, was a terrible father, in part because he was a work-acholic, and painted seven days a week. Ouch! Is that me? I worry about this sometimes, but I also have other worries. Like what? Well, George Burns puts it best:

"First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down."
—George Burns