September 13, 2024
There is a rumor going round that I will soon receive a lifetime achievement award. And, if you are wondering, what the hell did I ever achieve that is worth a lifetime achievement award, you would not be alone. Here for your reading amusement are the "achievements" I am proud of and can actually admit to on this forum.
• I once twisted on the same stage with Chubby Checker.
• I saw the Beatles on their first American tour in 1964 for $7.50.
• In 1982 I faked my way backstage at the Phoenix Memorial Coliseum to meet Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.
• I received the Arizona Press Club award for best editorial cartoon in 1983. Because of this I was allowed to go after my own boss. In fact I was encouraged by said boss.
• I stood in the Rose Garden and filmed myself standing in the White House Rose Garden, much to the irritation of the Secret Service. And, by the way, it's tiny. Not the secret service, but the rose garden.
• I once stood in the lube room of Al Bell's Flying A when Cornel Wilde commented to me that I was up kind of early, and I said, "Yes."
• I helped raise two children who are not in prison, yet.
• I am still married to the same woman who gave me those children 40-some years ago.
• I got a movie deal with Columbia Pictures and Larry McMurtry wrote three scripts about a character—Honkytonk Sue—I created in my garage. Six scripts were written in all, and the movie, so far, has not been made. You might say, I failed to succeed.
• I spent some 600 hours developing a comic strip called Lippo & Paguna. I sent it out to every syndication company in the country and they all turned it down, because, as one of them finally told me, "Farm strips don’t sell." Once again, I failed to succeed, but I also learned that I should have called them first and asked them if they were interested in a "farm strip."
• Me and two crazy friends bought a dying magazine and spent $900,000 trying to turn it around. So far, so good.
• On October 19, 2013, I won an Emmy for a Channel 8 PBS show, "Outrageous Arizona" which celebrated the centennial of the state I love. I picked up the statuette, but a lot of people helped me, including my co-authors Marshall Trimble and Jana Bommersbach, art director Dan Harshberger, Scott Allen and Kelly McCullough at PBS and Buck Montgomery (who corralled a whole bunch of re-enactors who worked for free) and, of course, Ken Amorosano.
• Beyond that, I have never won any major award. No wait! I will receive the Will Rogers Golden Lariat Award next month in Fort Worth, Texas.
What is the moral to this story? I wish I had failed more. It really comes down to this: get knocked down five times, get up six. On some level failing leads to success.
"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
—Winston Churchill
That’s a lot of achievements!!!
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