The Crying Game

 October 31, 2023

   One of the curses of being raised by a Norwegian father is that I can safely say, I am not a big fan of showing my feelings. Much less, enjoying "a good cry." So, imagine my surprise when I encountered a "how to write good stories" book that stresses the fact that good storytellers always make us "feel something," sometimes even to the point of, you know, CRYING!

   "Oh, for crying out loud," as my Norwegian grandmother, Minnie Hauan Bell, would say if she heard me say this.

Minnie Hauan Bell on her wedding day

   So I am reading a book by Kate DiCamillo, called "Because of Winn-Dixie" and one of the paragraphs made me feel something that verged on tears. How can simple words do that? Perhaps the key word is simple. Simplicity seems to be part of the trick. Part of the game.

   How does this work? An unfeeling, wannabe storyteller wants to know.

"And I can go anywhere I want

Anywhere I want, just not home

And you can aim for my heart, go for blood

But you wold still miss me in your bones

And I still talk to you when I am screaming at the sky

And when you can't sleep at night you hear my

 stolen lullabies"

—Taylor Swift, "My Tears Ricochet," allegedly about losing the control of her songs to a bastard buyer, but also the lyrics are full of strong emotion, regardless of who it is about

That's What She Said & Are Movies Dead?

 October 30, 2023

   Got some old school babes on my mind. For the book, of course.

Daily Whip Out: "Fintastic Babe #1"

Daily Whip Out: "Jugs Iced Free Babe #1"

   I can do better, but that's what she said.

Are Movies Dead?

"The movies are, once again, not dead. Art forms are more like viruses than animal species: They don't become extinct: they mutate, recombine, go dormant and spread out again in new, sometimes unrecognizable ways which carry memories of older selves, encoded in their DNA. . .they are variously amazing, mediocre, corrupt, visionary and stupid, but their intrinsic qualities matter less than what we are able to make of them. They feed us lies, myths, propaganda and nonsense, which we alchemize into wishes and dreams."

—A. O. Scott, in the New Yorker

Amen.

 A Dying Way of Life

"I knew as I was growing up something was wrong. I didn't know what. . .I knew something was over and it was not coming back"

—Larry McMurtry

"I have to think one set of values and traditions was being strongly challenged by another set of values and traditions. That is, I grew up just at the same time when rural and soil traditions were really, for the first time, being seriously challenged by urban traditions."

—Larry McMurtry

"If I didn't love the place I'd hate it violently."

—Larry McMurtry on his hometown of Archer City, Texas

Sometimes We Don't Know Jack

 October 29, 2023

   Sometimes riding herd on a history magazine is a bit like a nighttime cattle stampede. It's hard to see where you're going at such a high rate of speed, and you hope all the other hands are doing their part to keep the herd together. All you can do is hang on for dear life and turn the herd slowly until the rampaging nitpickers—I mean cows!—slow into a trot then stop to chow.

   Or, something like that.

   Here's the deal. We often repost old articles out of the magazine and sometimes, a caption, will produce a Gotcha!

   We backtracked and found out this was a caption on a photo in 2017 and the person who wrote this erroneous tidbit is an editor who is no longer with the magazine. Still, it was an honest mistake. The editor in question probably Googled the photograph and got a bogus ID. Happens every day. Of course, we pride ourselves in being above all that and most of the time we have historians, editors and proofers who know better and should have caught it to get it right. And, of course, it hurts our street cred and we are working to make sure this doesn't happen again. Or, I should say, honestly, that it happens as little as is humanly possible.

   But, of course, this "Gotcha!" game has been going on for a very long time.

Daily Whip Out:

"Horseback Vaqueros Laughing at Gringo"

"Hey, Gringo, you don't know Jack!"

—Old Vaquero Saying

Old Sodbuster Sayings, Men Believing Women & Hunter's Moon II

 October 28, 2023

   Last night was a Hunter's Moon and my neighbor, Tom Augherton, called me near sundown and told me to get outside to catch the moon rising. So I did.

Hunter's Moon Over Ratcliff Ridge

And, here's a closer look.

Hunter's Moon II

   Meanwhile, down Sonoran way.

Daily Whip Out: "Barefoot Vaquero"

Now it's time for

Classic Sodbuster Sayings

"Rectum? Damn near killed 'em!"

—Classic Sodbuster Saying

Daily Whip Out:

"Old Sodbuster"

Poodle Skirts & Half Truths

"No, seriously, I'm 18."

"Sometimes I feel like the only time men believe women is when we're lying about being 18."

—Beth Stalling, in her Netflix special, "You didn't Like Me Then"

The 66 Kids In Tom Mix's Old House And Martha Graham's Sage Advice

 October 27, 2023

   Here's a shot of the 66 Kids Day of The Dead lunch, today. 

Stuart Rosebrook, BBB, Dan The Man

and Robert Ray

   Yes, these are the loyal and talented boys who are helping me build the 66 Kids brand, and we all met for lunch at Los Dos Molinos in South Phoenix to eat great food and plan our upcoming launch. The owner Carlos took this photo of us, along with the lovely—and quite dead—Lupita Mi Hija in the garden of the alleged former home of Tom Mix.

   I didn't realize until my tour of Missouri with homeboy Mark Lee Gardner, that the whole gunfighter ethos and look of the Wild West was essentially born with the rise of the Bushwhackers during the Civil War. And, they weren't just two-gun boys. These kids (and they were mostly youngsters) often carried four and even six pistols so they would have more firepower in horseback encounters with Yankee troops.

Daily Revised Whip Out:

"Birth of The Gunfighter In Ol' Missouri"

   Refreshed another image for my Jesse James book, yesterday. 

Daily Revised Whip Out:

"Bushwhacker From Hell"

   Sometimes I get down on my work and beat myself up pretty badly. This morning, Carole Glenn shared with me this quote:

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

—Martha Graham's advice to dancer Agnes de Mille

Walking Miracles Beyond The O.K. Corral

 October 26, 2023

   A big day for big memories. A date I remember as well as my own birthday.

Daily Whip Out:

"Gunfight at the O.K. Corral"

October 26, 1881

   Speaking of which, I had lunch with the current editor of the Tombstone Epitaph yesterday in Cave Creek and we yucked it up, celebrating 25 years working together on the history we love.

BBB and Mark Boardman at Tonto

   Mark not only does a great job at the Epitaph, but he also writes an excellent column in True West (Investigating History) and, in addition to that, he also reads behind me on CG (short hand for proof reads my Classic Gunfights and all of the features and departments). He is an expert at catching the moving target of historical facts in flux. Perfect example is in the next issue of TW, at the printers as you read this, we republished a CG from several years ago which I did on Isom Dart, the infamous outlaw. Because of a slew of new research, Mark caught a half dozen errors which needed to be updated. For one thing, his name was styled as Isam, not Isom. Ouch! Mark is our history insurance policy, writ large. A very valuable asset on our team.

   Meanwhile, on my morning walk. . .

Sunrise at the top of Morningstar. 

   Uno takes a break as the sun breaks over the Morningstar ridgeline. So serene. Also, these walks really get me started mentally. I always get inspiration and ideas while I'm trucking up the hill. Especially as I am trucking up the hill!

   Often when I get back to the house, Kathy will say to me, "Well, what miracle did you have on your walk today?" She is being facetious, but I have had some pretty powerful leaps of imagination on my walks, like this one:

Daily Walking Miracle Whip Out:

"With An Assist From Dan The Man"

   Get ready. It's coming like a freight train.

"Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow."

—Henry David Thoreau, in his journal on the power of walking

Disappointing History

 October 25, 2023

   As reported earlier, my good looking neighbor wants to hand deliver a homemade pie to the builder of this mega-mansion up on the Seven Sisters (her humble abode is offstage-right, in this photo). The scuttlebutt on the road is he's a 78-year-old, good looking bachelor.

The Huge Mansion On The Hill

   This morning I received this report from my neighbor, down the hill, who is married to a realtor, concerning the rumors: "No, not really. It was a foreclosure salvage and completion. The property went belly up in the last big recession in the early aughts."

Facts Be Damned!

   So, another juicy story gets ruined by the facts.  Here, in a nutshell, for all to see, is the overwhelming disappointment in "history." Most of the time what we want to be true, isn't. What we are hoping is not true, is, well, turn on the news, or more time appropriate "Doom Scroll" your way into the present horror show.

   Meanwhile, on the Kurt Cobain world stage:

Little Aussie Bastard Scores Cover Story

(In My Old Rag)

   Yes, Australian author James B. Mills has done a major feature on Nirvana and it will appear in my old newspaper, The Phoenix New Times tomorrow. And the article supposedly mentions that it was my son, Thomas Charles' first concert (after the opening act, Mud Honey, finished their set, T. Charles said, "Okay, let's go," thinking we just saw Nirvana!)      

   Details tomorrow.

"There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now."

—Eugene O'Neill

Olive Oatman YouTube Teaser & John Ringo's Last Drop

 October 24, 2023

   Got a new YouTube video going up this week and here is the teaser Dan The Man came up with.

Daily Whip Out: "Olive at The Needles"

   And, of course, if you read this blog, you already know the answer to that question.

   Also, tweaked a couple other whip outs that caught my eye in the studio. Thought they needed a couple more strokes.

Daily Reworked Whip Out:

"Return of the Raider"

Daily Reworked Whip Out:

"Caprock Rider"

Daily Reworked Whip Out: 

"John Ringo's Last Drop"

   I have a couple more, but I don't want to appear like I'm showing off.

   Too much.

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but rather their inward significance."

—Aristotle

26 Route 66 Gas Stations Meet Ed-werd Rew-shay

 October 23, 2023

   Here's a shoutout to a fellow cartoonist who currently has a big retrospective show of his art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

One young Okie cartooonist, 1951

  In 1963, on a trip home from LA to see his mother in Oklahoma City, Edward Rusche (pronounced Rew-shay) took a series of photographs of gas stations along the route home—Route 66. The young, ex-sign painter, took some 60 photographs and when he got back to LA he did an Anti-ambitious-reverse-engineering, leap-of-imagination kind of thing. He self-published a book (actually, almost a pamphlet) called Twentysix Gasoline Stations. The cover is simply those three words (yes Twentysix is one word on the cover) spread out with no image. Inside there is no text, just the photograph of each gas station in black and white. In the caption is the brand of gas and the name of the town, like this:

Union, Needles, California

(BTW, the price of regular at 36.9 per gallon is quite high for the time, about two cents higher than Kingman, which was always high! But this was Needles a well-known gouger town, )

   He priced these books for $3 each and had few takers. And, in addition, at his first art show he sold zero paintings. Then Dennis Hopper bought a painting for $1,000. Yes, this Dennis Hopper:

"Easy Rider"

Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on Choppers rounding the curve on old Route 66 at Hackberry in Mohave County, 1969

   Today Rusche is considered one of the pop giants of the art world (see the news of his retrospective at MOMA in New York).

Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas

by Edward Rusche, from the book

"Twentysix Gasoline Stations"

"I have eliminated all text from my books. I want absolutely neutral material. My pictures are not that interesting, nor the subject matter. They are simply a collection of 'facts', my book is more like a collection of readymades. . .It is almost worth the money to have the thrill of 400 exactly identical books stacked in front of you."

—Ed Rusche

    Believe it or not, my father, Al Bell, ran one of the gas stations

Ruscha photographed for the pamphlet.

BBB in front of the Ed Rusche photograph of the

 Flying A Truck Stop at McConnico (top, right)

   Supposedly Ed nixed 34 gas station photos that he found 

"too interesting." Perhaps this was one of them?

Al Bell's Flying A, on Hilltop

outside Kingman, Arizona

   In 1966, Rusche did a painting, perhaps inspired by the Amarillo  Standard station, above.

Standard Station, 1966

   Of course, this painting is a pop classic and just sold

for $54 million and change.    

   And, a first edition of his pamphlet, Twentysix

Gasoline Stations sells for $40,000.

Hitchhiker's Dismay

"I occasionally see a guy walking on the side of the road giving me a thumbs up. He's usually filthy but it's nice he appreciates my driving."

—Old Clueless Snowbird Comment

Confessions of A Honkytonk Drummer Revisited

October 22, 2023

   Sometimes I shock myself at how stupid and naive I was growing up and, yet, somehow I survived a ridiculous career choice.

   It was absolutely and without question the most naive, sexy, dangerous and absurd job of my life (not counting publishing).

Daily Whip Out: "A Drummer In Darkness"

   The best thing about it all is I have stories to tell.

Nympho Rodeo: Confessions of a Honkytonk Drummer
   It’s been more than 40 years since I played drums in a series of Country bands in the Old Pueblo (Tucson). It was a decadent time in a decadent town and I hesitate to admit it, but I was more than up to the challenge.

One of our heroes: Ernest Tubb

   Most of the bars and honkytonks I played in are long gone, but their names can still raise a big ol' smile on an oldtimer’s face: Grant Road Tavern, The Dunes, The Doll House, The Cedars, The Hi Ho Club, The Maverick, Nashville West, Choo Choos, The Oxbow, The Stumble Inn, the Body Shop, the Hayloft, the Longhorn, The Big T, The Embers, The Red Rooster and the Buckaroo, to name just a few of the places I played and attempted to commit adultery in.

Straight Out of My Hayloft Bar Sketches

circa 1978

   One of the constants in each of the bands I played it was this: Each of us thought we were the only reason the band sounded half-way decent. We had shitty gigs. We all hated each other. We all wanted to quit, or get in a better band. We were family. Actually a family of brothers, with the same fantasy driven ideas of the women we wanted to meet.

Members of The Opposite Sex

We Wanted to Meet

Bandstand X-Rated Vision
   From my little paradiddle roost on the bandstand, I’ve seen some serious neckin', standup noodlin’, dancin’ handjobs, limbo lechin’, hair pullin’ punchouts and ball-peen-hammer wielding exes. Some of it was breathtaking and some of it was jaw-dropping scary. But I did learn a bunch playing drums in a honkytonk. Among the lessons:

• When you’re in a band, some people think you’re special and others think you’re scum. And the main difference between the two is the latter are not too shy about telling you.

• Against all odds, sometimes the people who frequent honkytonks have pretty solid advice. One night at the Red Rooster on South Nogales Highway, a truck driver, who assured me he had a Phd, told me this: “Let me tell you something about ‘Thorny Relationships.’ You just need to take off the ‘T’ Hoss. Take off the ‘T.’”

• Honkytonk Band Law #76: The gigs that pay the most are usually the suckiest gigs.

• Guys who build bars always scrimp on the bandstand. Usually, it’s an afterthought, tiny and unrealistic for a four piece Country band.

• Sunday Jam sessions: This is where lackluster performers plink and pluck, croon and croak, their tiny talents on pathetic display. But sometimes there was a buffet and that made it all worthwhile to drummers who needed actual food.

• If you’ve never smelled the inside of a bar on Sunday morning, you’ve never lived. There’s this pungent, gagging mix of stale beer and booze, mixed with cigarette smoke and lysol, all ground into a pulp and covered with a glossy sheen. Veterans have told me it's a little bit like lime dumped on a ditch full of dead bodies.

• Band Fights always start between the two most talented and high strung players in the band. The one with the biggest ego usually starts bad-mouthing the other to all the other members until everyone is infected and upset.

• No matter how big or small the band is, there’s always one guy falling in love and another guy falling out of love. Not always, but sometimes the first guy is falling in love with the latter's lawful wife.

• The more important the gig, the more things goes wrong.

• In-house P.A.s are the worst. The doorman is invariably the sound man.

• The higher the ponytail, the lower the I.Q.

• Bass players work all the time. Nobody wants to play bass. It’s boring.

• Drummers don’t want to stay in back. They want to sing lead (Guilty as charged, your honor).

Really Hurtful Drummer Joke #66

• Almost every night, from venue to venue we got the same request: "Turn down."

• The second most frequent request we got is, "Play one the drummer knows."

• We played a wedding reception at a dog track on south 4th Ave. It was cheesy. We set up in the tri-fecta area and played looking out on the darkened track. There was a palpable tension between the guests at the party. Finally the groom jammed cake in the bride’s nose and she choked and tried to slap him. He laughed and grabbed her hands and did it again. As we broke down, I had to step over the groom and his father-in-law rolling between the tables, cursing and punching each other in the face. Sometimes I think about that bride and groom and wonder if they’re still happily married. I would take odds on one thing: I'll bet they are still married. It's a Country thing.

• “We’re so excited to be here...Testing 1-2-3-4...”

The Band Practice Conundrum
• The double-edged sword. When you work all the time you start to gell as a band, but you spend so much time together you don’t want to even see each other away from the gig, much less practice. So you rarely practice, and if you fall into this cycle, you never grow. If one guy bails on practice, everyone bails, happy that the first guy takes the fall and gets the blame.

Really Hurtful Honkytonk Joke #67
Q: How can you tell if the stage is level?
A: Drool comes out both sides of the drummer’s mouth.

Honkytonk Fevered Dreams
   She appeared out of a smoky haze. Spaghetti straps anchoring her floating, rocket ship bosoms. She was a headturning, knocked-out Country goddess and she knew it. As she picked her way to an empty table near the dance floor, every guy in the place craned his neck to get a glimpse. They all wanted her, but she kept looking straight ahead at the bandstand.   

   Meanwhile, I couldn't see her because I was staring at the rearends of three git-pickin' goonballs.

The Drummer's Curse:

Staring at Gitpicker's Butts

“Those of you who know me will easily recognize the painful truths in this story. To those of you who don’t know me, I completely understand. I wouldn’t believe it either.”
—BBB

Uno And The Mansion On The Hill Plus Squawking Harris Hawk

 October 21, 2023

   It's getting cooler. At least a little bit. 

   Meanwhile. . .

   Local Rumor Control Out of Control

Uno And The Mansion On The Hill 

   Took this photo yesterday at the top of Morningstar looking back at the Seven Sisters. See that mammoth mansion to the right of the saguaro, towards the top of the ridge? The neighborhood rumor is that a 78-year-old single guy built it and one of my favorite, good looking neighbors (she's been widowed five times) is threatening to take him a pie.

   Here's a better view, straight on:

One Massive Mansion On The Seven Sisters

   Looks like it's at least 10,000 square feet.

   Meanwhile, down in Sonora. . .

Daily Whip Out: "A Change of Plans"

   From a photograph Lynda Sanchez sent me recently. I dig this big, old-school guy jerking his mula around. If you ask me, the old vaqueros like this used to have a superior, muy magnifico style and at some point it went away or, it got taken away. Some of my history amigos think it's because the Mexican revolution was so deadly (estimates are that 1.5 million people were killed in the fighting) and that the old, macho styles associated with the carnage evoked too much pain. Not sure I completely buy that, but a sea change happened in terms of the Indio-vaquero styles that were created in Mexico, not Spain, and that is sad to consider, at least to me.

   I know that Mexico has the Charro culture replete with the Carreadas, or Mexican rodeo, but it is a pale shadow of the original vaquero look.

General Santos Banuelos, 1914

(where did this wonderful style go?)

   Shortly after I scanned this I heard a screech and looked out my studio window to see this percher on my back door viga.

A Harris Hawk squawking

at Uno in the back yard

   Uno ignored him and went about his business (literally doing his business). If I didn't know better, I think the hawk was scolding Uno for being so gross. "Clean it up, Dude. Clean it up! Gross!"

"Only time can heal what reason cannot."

—Seneca

Uno And Sudden Skeleton Attack Syndrome

 October 20, 2023

   Spotted this on Spur Cross Road yesterday and had to stop and take a photo.

Uno Spooked? Nah.

  Those two skeletons back there, going into a neighbor's driveway, are huge, maybe 15 feet tall. Yes, Uno has his leash on in case he developed a case of sudden skeleton attack syndrome.

Why Success Is Not All It's Cracked Up to Be

“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they dreamed of so that they can see that it’s not the answer.”

—Jim Carrey

Gene Autry and Smiley Burnette

One of them got rich, both of them got famous

"The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness."
—Sam Shepard

Olive Oatman for YouTube

 October 19, 2023

   Taped a new YouTube video today. I had to make a confession at the beginning.

   Some of the things I am about to tell you are going to be very hard to believe. I hope you can hang in there with me until we get to the end. I must say I had a hard time believing much of this research myself. That said, this is a tragic tale with some mighty big questions, which I state in the video and then we open with this image.

Olive and Lorenzo

shortly after her return to "society"

A Bold And Crazy Prophesy
   In 1848, a young, Latter-Day-Saints excommunicated prophet made a bold prediction that would change the life of a beautiful young girl named Olive Oatman.

   James Collins Brewster, 24, had visions of a promised land—The Land of Bashan—and his passionate message gathered adherents wherever he spoke: "Fear not, for I am with you. I will bring your people from the east and gather you into the west. The wilderness and the wasteland shall fall away and the desert will rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and the glory of Bashan shall be given to it."
   And where was this so-called Land of Bashan located? At the confluence of the Gila and Colorado Rivers, today known as Yuma, Arizona. Never mind that the area rarely gets more than 3.5 inches of rain a year, is mostly sand dunes and harsh desert with daytime temperatures reaching triple digits every day for months on end. Oh, and never mind that James Collins Brewster had never been to Yuma Crossing and spoke of the banks of the river being lined with pine trees.

The Oatmans Take Off

   On August 10, 1850, 93 Brewsterites, including the Roys Oatman family of 9, took off from Independence Missouri in 43 wagons headed for the Land of Bishan.

Enter Dr. Bugs

  As the Oatmans were deciding whether to venture on from Maricopa Wells, two riders came in from the west. One of them was a 25-year-old entomologist, looking for beetles. This son of a wealthy east-coast industrialist, he was a graduate of New York's College of Physicians and Surgeons. He related to Royce Oatman the fact that he—the doctor—and his hired guide, Sonorian Juan, had traversed the entire trail from Camp Yuma to the villages and they hadn't even seen any Indians, much less signs of Indians. This is where it gets tragic because Joyce Oatman probably pushed on based on this report.

The Strange Case of Dr. Bugs

   Dr. LeConte (his father styled it as Le Conte, but the son preferred it mooshed together) had traveled by sea to San Francisco in 1849, where he explored the rich areas around San Francisco, collecting specimens of beetles everywhere (at some point he sent home to his father, 10,000 beetles preserved in alcohol). Then, from the Bay area, the good doctor traveled down to San Diego, by stagecoach, where he explored a dry lake bed east of San Diego, then, along with another physician, the two explored the Colorado River between the Yuma Crossing and the Gulf of California.

And The Zinger is?

   I believe Olive had two children because the respected historian Sharlot Hall told a researcher, privately, in 1904, that Olive did in fact have two children with a Mojave husband and one of them sometimes visits Fort Yuma. And, I do believe Susan Thompson, even though she got the time spent with Olive after her release wrong. Her quote is devastating. She said Olive was a "grieving, unsatisfied woman, who somehow shook one's belief in civilization." I don't think that is a sentiment or a statement you can make up. It strikes me as painfully honest and true.

Daily Whip Out: "Olive Sheds A Tear"

   So, of course she didn't want to be rescued. She was leaving behind her family. And, in the end, she lost two mothers. A double tragedy.

   Oh, and what about the prophet Brewster's crazy claim about the Land of Bashan?

Ironies of Ironies
    Thanks to Teddy Roosevelt and the newly minted Bureau of Reclamation in 1902, The Yuma Project diverted Colorado River water to irrigate more than 58,000 acres along the river, all the way to the Mexican border. 

Daily Whip Out: "Bashan Reclaimed"

   The water turned the harsh desert into a lush tableland supporting 275 farms and 90,000 residents. Farming year round, today these farms produce $196 million in crops every year. The Yuma Chamber of Commerce claims that 90% of all wintertime leafy vegetables in the United States come from this area—an area once prophesized as the Land of Bashan.

Let's end this with a quote from Brewster:

"The wilderness and the wasteland shall fall away and the desert will rejoice and blossom as the rose."

Amen.

Steve Todd Mans The True West Table & Barry Corbin Does Tombstone

October  18, 2023

   This morning I got paid a visit from this crazy guy (the one in the chair):

   Uno loves Uncle Steve, who is our True West Festival Attender. I loaded him up with "overs" on the October issue because Steve Todd is on his way to Tombstone this weekend for Helldorado Days in the Town Too Tough to Die. And he will have extras of this highly collectable issue:

   The issue is technically sold out so be sure to get one from Steve who will be set up right across the street from a certain corral.

Steve Todd Represents the True West

   And, here we were at the 140th:

BBB & ST at The O.K. Corral

   I won't be down there, which. is too bad because I really wanted to see this guy:

Barry Corbin will be appearing in a

one-man show at Schieffelin Hall

    Endings are tough to do successfully. Just ask Sam:

The End of The Beginning

"I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster. The temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning. That’s genius."
—Sam Shepard