The Running of the Bulls Mundo Style

September 2, 2011

Picked up Kathy Radina at Sky Harbor's Terminal 2 last night. She had been flying for 22 hours from Germany. It has been 10 weeks but she still recognized me. Tommy and Pattarapan were with me and they wanted to stop for drinks at a hipster place on North Seventh Ave. which is in the old Ye Old Sandwich Shoppe building, not far from Ed Mell's studio where I spent six years. The irony, of course, is I did Ye Old's logo and ate many a sandwich there in the mid-1980s. Although it's the same building, or house to be exact, it's hard to recognize back today.

Two days ago, the guy who is putting on the Running of the Bulls in Cave Creek, Phil Immordino, came into my office to talk to me about the event. He puts on golf tournaments in his real life but he has been dabbling in the running of the bulls for some time. He had his first running of the bulls event in Mesquite, Nevada several years ago and he did one at the old Rawhide in Scottsdale a couple years ago. He's doing this one in Cave Creek at T.C. Thortenson's Buffalo Ranch which is right up the street. In fact, he came in to see about using our parking lot for overflow parking. The event is going to happen on the weekend of October 14.

It's amazing how much world press this gets, every single time (see blog post from Britain about this).

I told Phil about my son Thomas running with the bulls in Spain and that the excitement of the event is that they run them right down the street of the town, but Phil told me there is no way to do that in the States, the insurance problems with that are just too great. Thanks to the legions of lawyers here, Americans are just too litigious.

Ain't that the truth.

I've had a couple fan requests to send signed photos, so rather than send my old ones where I look 6, Robert Ray took three photos, including the newest photo of me by Lucinda Amorosano (the Monument Valley shot from last week) down to Color Mark, which is where we get our professional photo prints made.

That's my publicity photo from Swea City, Iowa, circa 1955. I don't know why but I didn't get many speaking engagements with this image.

And here I am in Ed Mell's studio circa 1986:

Fast forwarding, here's me in Monument Valley last Thursday:

Well, thanks to the digital-phone-photo tsunami, Color Mark is out of business. Robert then said, "want me to take them to Walgreens during my lunch hour and print out a batch?" I said, of course. He came back fuming. They wouldn't let him print them. I took a thumb drive and went in myself and the woman would not allow it. When I protested that the photos were of ME and didn't that count for something, she admitted they have been sued and had to make a large payment and unless I could produce a written release from the photographer who took the photo (the second one of me on the stool is by Ralph Rippe who lives somewhere on the east coast now) they weren't printing them.

Now, I'm not mad at Walgreen's, I'm mad at the lawyers. I don't know the details of the suit, but I can guess there was probably some Yahoo poaching a purloined photo of Tiger Woods and printing out a batch to sell for profit (and screwing the photographer), and I get that, but we have gotten so ridiculous and litigious it's just crazy.

Anyway, our good friend Mundo has the answer: "How about this, we get a bunch of lawyers, dress them in red pant suits and high heels and let the bulls chase them. I'd pay to see that!"

Amen. Here's the rough sketch for the poster:

The Running of The Bulls Mundo Style:

"First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
—Shakespeare