November 30, 2006
Even colder today. How cold? When I went out to feed the chickens all the water in the bowls was frozen! This is unheard of in our part of Arizona. Waited until about eight to go for my morning bike ride. Encountered a jogger up at the end of Old Stage and I waited to see if he had a dog. When he got close enough he told me he "knew" my dogs and they'd be fine with his little dog, which evidently was out in the brush, nosing around (we couldn't see her). I told the guy that Peaches is a different dog when she's out on these runs and when we encounter dogs, Buddy runs up to play, but Peaches takes this as a chance to attack and really gets vicious. The jogger quipped: "Just like all women." We laughed, but as I rode on I encountered a female rider coming around the corner of the horse arena closest to us and she said, "Hey now!" in that admonishing way and we all laughed again.

Speaking of being anti-PC, evidently the media police are now digging up an instance where Michael Richards (Kramer on Seinfeld) used a comedy bit about Jews, and Richard's camp defends it by claiming that Michael is Jewish, but the media hawks maintain that his parents are not Jewish, and that he hasn't officially completed the paperwork to become a Jew. My question is: okay, if he had filled out the paperwork, would it then be okay? And if it is, can we fill out paperwork to become black so we can use the N-word with impunity? Someday people are going to look back on these ridiculous times with as much incredulity as we look down on the Salem Witch Trials or the Spanish Inquisition. Our capacity for the most absurd behavior never ceases to amaze me.

And speaking of bad jokes, I'm watching Rio Grande, the John Ford film that is the third in his cavalry trilogy and I was curious why this film, which came out in 1950, after She Wore A Yellow Ribbon would be in black and white. It seems like the wrong progression to me. Well, watching the Maureen O'Hara version, where she talks over the sound track she tells the story that after Yellow Ribbon, Ford wanted to do a picture about an Irish guy but no studio would buy it, until Herbert Yates at Republic Pictures said he would finance the picture, but only if Ford would first give him a Western so Yates could recoup the losses he would most likely take on the Irish guy film (Yates had no faith in the picture either). So Ford took all of his regulars and went back to Monument Valley and produced this black and white classic, and then did the film they really wanted to do, The Quiet Man. According to O'Hara both films made Yates a boatload of money. Funny. But also, Maureen tells about how if you were in John Ford's doghouse it was known on the set as "your turn in the barrel." This is from an old, nasty joke I heard first on the playground at Kingman grammar school. The gist of the joke is that a new sailer is on a ship and the veteran sailers tell him if he wants felatio, to go by this certain barrel at midnite and stick your Johnson in the hole in the barrel and get serviced. He thinks this is great until one night someone says, "It's your turn in the barrel." And if you think I am out of line for telling this I must remind you I've filled out all the appropriate Gay Sailor Blowjob paperwork.

"All progress has resulted from people taking their turn in the barrel."
—Old Sailor Saying