July 1, 2008
I've been thinking quite a bit about my future in light of my recent health issues and I need to come up with a shorthand for the event, or events that happen after my "Wipeout." Maybe AW, for After Wipeout?

We need someone to do our "What's It like To Live There?" in the next issue (September). It's on Dodge City, Kansas. Do you know anyone who lives there? Or anyone who knows someone? Please have them contact me. Thanks.

Here's a piece of property I wouldn't mind owning:

"My name is Sherri Skinner and my family owns the Nellie Cashman Restaurant in Tombstone, Az. It is the original building that Nellie Cashman had her restaurant, the Russ House in during the 1880's. We have run the business for 23 years and have owned the building for 17 years. We are now trying to sell it. It has been for sale for some time but with the economy and lack of real estate knowledge on our part and the realtors we've chosen it has been difficult. I see that you do a lot of articles about preservation in your magazine, and since I've been trying to come up with some more creative ways to put the word out there that it is for sale I thought of True West. The building is a beautiful old adobe built in 1879. It would be wonderful if someone interested in preserving western history would buy it. It certainly doesn't need to stay a restaurant and since we are only asking $375,000, the possibilities are wide open. We have tried over the years to keep the building maintained, restoration is beyond our financial means. Please consider doing some type of story on this beautiful old building that is often overlooked by many when visiting Tombstone. We don't have gunfights or fake historical characters roaming around. We just try to keep it homey and comfortable like we think Nellie would have done. If you are interested please contact me, either through this email address or phone 520-457-2212."
—Sherri Skinner

Some of my cartoonist friends believe that Western Civilization peaked with Disney's animated classic Pinocchio and has gone down hill ever since. I believe someone told me Disney's artists racked up 250 years of overtime hand painting each cell and as a result of union efforts, Disney was never able to create such a masterpiece again.

On that topic, here's a sobering bit of commentary:


"Everything that can be delivered digitally will be, at a cost approaching zero, through a bandwith nearing infinity. Thus the dying out of Disney's august cel-animation houses, in which thousands of artisans hand-painted individual cels—like monks lovingly crushing grapes in the higher Dordogne—now seems predestined. So, too, the demise of the compact disc, the DVD, the home phone, the long-distance toll call and, possibly, the newspaper, the magazine, the book."
—Michael Hirschorn, reviewing "The Pixar Touch" in The New York Times

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
—George Carlin