April 3, 2007
On Sunday, Kathy and I drove into the Beast and picked up Mike and Phyllis Hawkins to go see "Curves of Steel: Streamlined Automobile Design" at the Phoenix Art Museum. Great cars, mostly from the late 1930s. Very artistic and stylish. More so than one might expect and it really illustrates how WWII derailed auto design for decades.

Afterwards we drove over to Taco Villa for lunch. I had the barbacoa special and two Modelo Especials, as did Mike who tried Pepe's Especial and Phyllis had the huevos rancheros and Kath had a bean burro enchilada style. We bought ($60 cash, includes tip).

Poor Buckey Blake. He wanted to do a cool Billy the Kid sculpture that everyone who loves Billy would dig and he had the permission from the mayor of Fort Sumner to put up his art piece on the anniversary of the Kid's death and then. . .



Well, Fort Sumner has a new mayor, and now Buckeye needs to get permission from him and the town council. And, here's the key part, the project deals with Billy the Kid. So? So you are going to draw the weirdest-weirdness you can even fathom, no matter what you do. And, it's Fort Sumner, where everyone has a "unique" concept of what and where Billy actually resides in death, and put the two together and you get comments like this:

"I can't take my kids to the cemetery and see a dead man like that. It's too creepy."

"Why's he wearing a suit? Billy wouldn't be wearing a suit. He'd have on his guns and be wearing cowboy boots."

"This is not something we need in our town. it's disrespectful. Maybe if it was a statue of Billy with a rifle."

I called the new mayor, Juan Chavez, this morning and had a nice talk with him. He's a decent guy, but anytime you've got the Kid, you got problems. The town council is going to vote next Monday on Buckeye's piece being allowed to be installed at all. And resistance is being voiced all over town (see quotes above). I told the mayor that we were excited about the project and were intending to send a film crew to cover it. Cactus Productions out of Cody, Wyoming has already signed on for the shoot. So hopefully, we can carry the day over there. I may even have to call in the big guns, my aunt Jean Linn and her husband Bud who own several farms in the area.

Meanwhile, On The Jesse James Front
Today is the 125th anniversary of the assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford...the event, not the movie (which only seems that old...). Here's a link to an interview Allen Barra conducted with Ted Yeatman and TJ Stiles.
—Mark Boardman

http://www.americanheritage.com/people/articles/web/20070403-jesse-james-wild-west-outlaws-civil-war-younger-brothers.shtml

Onion Headline de Jour
Report: One In Five Women Training To Be Yoga Instructors

"If you do not make yourself happy, no one else can."
—Alan Cohen