December 23, 2008
Woke up to thick fog. Very Long Beach like. We used to go visit the Glenn Bells in Long Beach in the sixties and I remember my father driving on the freeway, going sixty, bumper to bumper and you couldn't see three cars ahead. No seat belts, of course, and I remember feeling totally out of control. And I wasn't even driving!

Went home for lunch and worked on a Billy study:



Decent clouds, need to execute the rifle and Billy's face a bit better in the final. Meanwhile, whipped out a noodle doodle just for the fun of it:



Not sure what it means but it's definitely a bird abstract. Ha.

I was channel surfing last night and ran across "Junior Bonner" on the Westerns Channel. What a time capsule for Prescott in 1972. Big scene at the train station and there's nothing beyond it. Of course, it's all developed now. I also noticed the rodeo poster above Steve McQueen's head said, "Stay Cowboy." Well, the cowboys didn't stay, because everybody else came (just like in the plot). The opening scene of McQueen driving through the foothills towards Prescott is all big box stores now. Ironically, Curly's land office is closed (Reata Pass Steakhouse below Young's Farm, which is also closed, because it's being converted to homes). While most everyone in the movie looks goofy in their seventies duds (even Ben Johnson looks a tad fruity), Steve McQueen is timeless. He still looks as crisp and cool as he did in his day. Amazing. When his character, Junior Bonner, gets beat in the steer wrestling competition, and the guy who beat him apologizes, Junior rides by and says, "Happens all the time, Dude." The line still works, and is maybe even better, in 2008! Another scene that made me cringe is when the rodeo announcer (I think it was Ben Johnson as well) tells the audience that Junior's old fart dad, Abe Bonner (Robert Preston), is the oldest competing cowboy in the rodeo, "He's sixty years young."

Two years younger than I am now. Ha.

"Pay attention when an old dog is barking. To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old."
—Oliver Wendell Holmes