February 12, 2008
T. Charles called from Peru on Sunday and we had a nice, but quick chat. Last time he called we talked for 53 minutes and it cost us $120. He's teaching English and basketball to the kids.

The rooster problem is even bigger than I first thought. Out of the six new Silkies we got, I finally realized, three, not two, are males. Need to find them a home ASAP before the testosterone kicks in high gear. The little suckers are already jumping up on the backs of the old hens, Bea-52 and Bea-53, and, well, acting like males do whenever starlets or coffee table legs come into view. It's kind of humorous to watch because they are so small they look like sparrows mounting a condor. If you've ever been around roosters, you know it won't be funny for long.

Did get four eggs. Had them for lunch. Yummy.

You Go Grandma!
Speaking of the Grammys (Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I Got Love In My Grammy), I was knocked out by the performance of Tina Turner who ripped up the stage on Sunday night and showed the youngsters (Beyonce mainly) how it is done on her searing version of Proud Mary. She's got to be close to seventy. They cut to a shot of John Fogerty, who I believe wrote the song for his old band Credence, but his smile said it all: "Honey, you own that song."

We're working on a big Buffalo Bill spread for an upcoming issue and I mentioned I got some very cool images from the Buffalo Bill Museum when I was in Cody last month. Here's one of them:



He was one good-looking Dude, no?

The new issue of Entertainment Weekly has a piece on the new Bad Boys of cinema, Daniel-Day Lewis and Javier Bardem. Inside they comment on the fact that there will probably not be a franchise coming out of No Country or There Will Be Blood: "No Chigurh Rising. No There Will Be Blood II: Oil Be Back.

Now that's funny. Oil Be Back. I'd actually pay to see that.

Six Degrees of Billy The Kid
If you haven't heard, there is a new catchphrase spawned from Blood—"I drink your milkshake." The line comes in the last scene when Daniel-Day Lewis describes his ability to take oil from an adversary (i.e. using a long straw). The writer, and director, Paul Thomas Anderson, admits he took it straight from a transcript of the 1924 congressional hearings on oil-drilling which became known as The Teapot Dome Scandal. What most don't know is that the person who testified using the milkshake metaphor, was none other than Albert B. Fall from New Mexico (and, who, because of the scandal, ended up being "the fall guy" and yes, that's where the term comes from). Anyway, Fall had a life before he fell, and that was as a lawyer in Las Cruces, New Mexico where he successfully defended powerful rancher Oliver Lee and his ranch hand Jim Gilliland on murder charges. The two cowboys had been arrested for the murder of Albert Jennings Fountain and his young son, by the legendary lawman and killer of Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett. In the subsequent trial, attorney Fall and Garrett sparred on the witness stand. In turn, when Garrett was murdered in 1908, Fall was retained to defend Pat's killer, Wayne Brazel, who Fall also got off.

So, you see, there is a direct line from Daniel Plainview to Albert Fall to Pat Garrett to Billy the Kid. Kevin Bacon ain't got nothin' on the Kid.

"Strong people are made by oppostion like kites that go up against the wind."
—Frank Harris