Attended Buck Montgomery's Wild West Festival last weekend at Saguaro Ranch. Had a guy come up to me at our booth and claim he came into my office ten years ago and advised me to start using humor in True West magazine. He then claimed I said, "Why would I do that? History is serious." And then I started using humor in the magazine. Nice to know where I got the idea.
Lots of work to to. Someone in my zany family gifted me a book, "The Onion Presents Embedded In America: Complete News Archives Volume 16" and I was cleaning out my office this week, ran across the book, opened it at random and read these headlines:
Ridiculous Small-Business Plan Encouraged By Friends
Ramones Reunion Nearly Complete
Peruvian Shockingly Knowledgeable About U.S. History
Liberals Return to Sodomy, Welfare Fraud
Republicans Outraged By Inaccuracies In Metallica Documentary
I read in one of the many obits for Lou Reed that he grew up on Be-bop and while he was certainly a cynical dude, to my ears, I was subsequently mildly shocked to read this quote by the Godfather of Punk: "These are really terribly rough times, and we really should try to be as nice to each other as possible."
—Lou Reed
"I suddenly saw the whole country like an oyster for us to open; and the pearl was there, the pearl was there."
—Jack Kerouac