March 20, 2008
Sometimes I listen to my wife and sometimes—I'm ashamed to admit—I don't. As we woke up this morning and had coffee and half a banana, she gave me two excellent pieces of advice: "You and Paul seem to be hopelessly trapped in Act I of the Mickey Free project. If you ask me, you had better run the entire story in the excerpt you are working on, or you're wasting your time."

Truer words were never spoken. And, I had intended to run just the backstory in the 24-page-excerpt and end with a cliff hanger. Not now. Thanks favorite wife.

I also asked her what she thought of my Plugged In copy I had submitted last night to the Arizona Republic (I copied it to her and she had already told me in an email she liked it but being the needy, insecure Bastard I am, I was fishing for more approval).

Here's the copy I submitted for this Sunday's Plugged In commentary in The Arizona Republic:

March Madness Meets Project Runway
My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Klotch, was quite conservative and wore long, straight skirts, well below the knee, as I recall. Of course, the sixties flushed that old school fashion right down the tubes. Well, here we are, a half century later, and who wears long skirts worthy of Mrs. Klotch's fashion sense? Why all the March Madness B-Ball players, of course. Mrs. Klotch, meet Mr. Clutch. I don't know about you, but it's so nice to see so many young athletes dressing like my fifth grade teacher.

Bob Boze Bell
Executive Editor, True West magazine

After she told me what I wanted to hear, I told her I wanted to do an illustration of Mrs. Klotch and Mr. Clutch. She told me that in her opinion, this is a lateral move and anything that takes me away from Mickey Free at this point is a total waste of time

Fortunately she went for a walk. Here's the sketches I did culling from a recent article on Valley prep stars, and poaching from three MCUHS high school annuals:



I didn't have a photo of Mrs. Klotch but got plenty of long dress reference out of my collection of old Kingman High School annuals (technically Mohave County Union High School, or Mucous as the sarcastic set likes to sneer).

And by the way, the prom queen in the upper right is Ruthie Peterson from the 1958 annual. OH, and the RSVP list for the Exits Exit has now topped 400. Charlie Waters is meeting with the Kingman fire marshal tomorrow at noon to go over our options. At this point we are considering two shows.

I guess it's a miracle that I ever finish anything. Gee, I wonder what Mr. Gardner has to say about this?

"A painting is never finished—it simply stops in interesting places."
—Paul Gardner