June 30, 2008 Bonus Blog Post
Graduated to the next level of cardio rehab this morning. Nurse Beth added 10 wall push ups, 10 medicine-ball-behind-the-back squat thrusts, and 10 arm curls, each side. Felt good.

On the recumbent cycle I sat next to Little Floyd, the blind war hero who told me a story about Korea. He's Roman Catholic and one of his friends was nervous about going to confession, so Floyd told him to just say this: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned, I peeled a banana and ate the skin." The guy did just that and the priest came out and said, "Floyd, I knew it was you!"

Got into the office at 11 and went over a couple hangouts with Meghan Saar our managing editor.

Went home for lunch and had a big plate of vegetables and a very small piece of steak. Worked on six sketches utilizing sepia washes. I think I'm getting something going here:



Especially today's efforts which have a very nice subtlety:



Friday night in Prescott, I met Craig Hamilton (not my Kingman Kowboy Kousin, but a different CH) and his lovely wife Marianne, who I have been corresponding with via email but had never met. Turns out Craig was in Tombstone on October 26, 1981 at the Centennial of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and I took photos of him, but didn't know him at the time. Craig gave me his big Stetson Tom Mix hat and a folder full of great photos from his career. Here is a shot from the folder showing him and his wife on the streets of Tombstone in the 1980s:



Over the weekend Kathy and I finally sat down and watched Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece Ran (pronounced "Ron" and it evidently means "chaos" in Japanese). I've read about it for years but had never seen it. Kurosawa, who did Seven Samurai, which in turn was made into The Magnificent Seven, here retells Shakespeare's classic King Lear against a samurai backdrop. I really enjoyed the sweep of his film making, and his usage of long pauses between dialogue. He allegedly worked under the theory that those spaces in between are where greatness lies. Very Zen-like and I tend to agree. Very impressive.

"The past and future are real illusions. They exist in the present, which is all there is."
- Alan Watts, author of The Way Of Zen