October 8, 2007
Busy weekend. Worked most of Saturday on The Top Secret Project, adapting Freddy Remington's voice to Snippet Style Narraative. Sent it off. Waiting for the Top Secret Writer to do his thing. So far, nothing.

The Radina clan came out Saturday afternoon for steaks and hotdogs. Deena and her boyfriend Frank also joined us. Nice time. Deena stayed afterwards and read aloud from Chuck Klosterman's new book "IV". He's a very funny writer, and we laughed and laughed, especially at his alleged vertical leaping ability.

Worked again on Sunday on voice issues for TSP. Had fun, got a lot done. At 6:30 we motored into the Beast to have dinner at Ed Mell's house. Jazz great Cliff Sardi was there. He's now doing Cliff's Cafe on West Van Buren. Zany stuff. Can't wait to go there. Photographer and artist John Gipe and his wife were also in attendance. Ed's wife Rose Marie made excellent green and red chile dishes and capped everything off with homemade key lime pie. Ed's art collection is nothing short of spectacular, with Frank Tenney Johnson, Lon Megargee, Diego Rivera and of course several Maynard Dixons hanging everywhere. Always inspiring.

Got home late (10:30) and had to go right back in this morning to do volunteer reading for the Arizona Unit of Reading For The Blind and Dyslexic (which in my case is like reading to self my). They gave me Marshall Trimbles's book, "Arizona: A Cavalcade of History," and I thought it would be a cake walk, but they assigned me the first two chapters, which had this on the first page: "Arizona has three phyusiographic zones, and many contrasts within these zones. For example, the desert region of the western and sourthern part has islands of mountains includinig the Chiricahua, inalas, Galiuro, Santa Catalina, Santa Rita and Pinaleno ranges." And "Precambrian Age, Paleozois Age, the Mesozoic. . ." and thrown with an "atlatl, a spear-launcher. . .the Hopi use Hisastsinom. . . and Betatakin ("ledge house"}, Tohono O'odham. . . and Mogollon. . .Wupatki,. . .Tuzigoot and Sinaguas and Patayan. . ." It was really tough work and it took me more than two hours to get it right. I'm going to strangle Marshall when he comes out tomorrow to talk about his book deal with us.

And speaking of books, I had coffee with Jana Bommersbach afterwards (she was also a reader) and she told me about finishing her new book (top secret, can't tell). She spent four months in a cabin on a lake outside Brainerd, Minnesota finishing it. Going to be a best-seller, I can just sense it.

3:10 Hangs In
“Who knew? Per the weekend Movie Box Office (www.nytimes.com), 3:10 TO YUMA did $3.0 million last weekend (I think the report is always a week behind, meaning the weekend of 9/28-9/30), which puts it at no. seven for that weekend. Its grand total is $48.6 million, and it's the only movie five weeks out still on the top ten.

“THE BRAVE ONE, which came out a week later than 3:10 and eclipsed it, has now sunk below it in both weekend and total. 3:10 chugs along.

“These numbers are, for the ignorati, difficult to decipher, but it appears that 3:10 has more staying power than first imagined, whatever that means. I suspect the talismanic mantra ‘Russell Crowe’ has something to do with it. In other words, the word on Hollywood Blvd. is not, ‘let's make another Western,’ but ‘sign Russell Crowe.’

“As I was waiting in line at the Regal Gallery Place last Friday to buy a ticket for THE ASSASSINATION of you know who, the woman behind me said to her chum: ‘I want to see that movie that has Brad Pitt in it. It's a Western or something. He's Billy the Kid.’

“Speaking of Billy-boy: Johnny Depp as the Lincoln County gunslinger? That would be the producer's calculus. A gamble: Casey Affleck. Did you notice that Affleck's top hatted Bob Ford looked eerily like he'd just stepped out of Billy the Kid's tintype? The hat-faniacs may have gone up a tree, but I thought the result was beguiling.”
—Dan Buck

I'm having a difficult time shifting gears to work on woodcut style images, which is weird because I love doing them, but I keep putting it off. Gee, I wonder if the Old Vaqueros have anything to say about that?

”The difficulties we experience always illuminate the lessons we need most.”
—Old Vaquero Saying