How Strong Is The Backlash to AI?

 September 30, 2026

   First day of long-sleeved shirt weather since, oh, I don't know, six years ago? Seems that long, but even if it was only six months ago, we'll take it!

A cool, cool morning over Ratcliff Ridge

   I met a friend—a Bona Fide history nut like me—for coffee this morning at Local Johnnies and he showed me his ad campaign for a history event he is putting on next spring and he asked me what I thought of it. At first I avoided answering because what I had to say was so negative, but he pressed me on it and I finally confessed that it has zero authenticity for me because all the ads in the campaign were obviously created by AI.

   He took it well, but here's the real question: if your stock in trade is authentic history, AI sure has a way of undermining that!

   I know the creator of his ads will say I am just an old, prejudiced graphics dude from the past who is afraid of losing my gig because of the "machine."    

   The real question is how widespread is the backlash on AI? 

   Meanwhile, back in the trenches. . .

Daily Whip Out:

"The Great Western Takes Off On Her

Big, Bad Jack"

Daily Whip Out: "Dust Storm Bickerer"

Daily Whip Out: "Firewalker"

Daily Whip Out: "Old Perplexed Vaquero"

"By trying to grab it all, you retain nothing."

—Old Vaquero Saying

Daily Whip Out:

"Strange Bastard In Monument Valley"

   Okay, let's end on something a little more positive.

"When you arise this morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love."

—Marcus Aurelieus

Bad Seed: A Renegade Tree Goes Bad & Destroys Wall!

 September 29, 2026

   Chalk this one up to a "bad seed." We have a renegade mesquite tree in the breezeway that has absolutely refused to be swayed by the not-so-subtle-splints we have placed on it to stand up straight and grow right. Well, it rained most of the night and this morning we woke up to this:

Renegade Tree Destroys Adobe Wall

(yes, that metal splint with the rock under it

was my feeble attempt to get the tree to straighten up and grow right.)

Uno Inspecting All The Wreckage

Check out the severed face close to the chair.

Judy Darbyshire's last native face blown free

The Bad Seed Backstory

   When our house was first built back in the eighties, we had a wall building party and many of our friends arrived with tokens to place in the two adobe walls flanking our entry way. I remember Ed Mell brought a little toy car from the 1940s and a dentist brought a set of teeth. Here is how I described the wall's status back in 2023:

   As time went on items began to fall out, or wash away. A couple of my musician friends brought guitar picks which are long gone. Debbie Radina brought a cool siesta painting on hard board which has long faded to nothing. Someone, I can't remember now, brought a Spiderman figurine which has melted away. Judy Darbyshire brought two Indian head reliefs which partially have survived, the tree behind the second wall leaned into the wall and pushed out several layers of adobes, but half the head of one survives and the other one as well.

   David K. Jones brought a fruit jar with the Jones, Boze And Jeanne Radio Show on audio cassettes, placed inside. I thought this was ingenious and would survive the ages, but somehow, the jar has been penetrated with a significant hole in the protruding part of the jar and it appears insects have gotten inside and eaten the tapes (although I haven't looked because it's still in the wall).
   The other surviving wall art is a Chevy hubcap brought by a good friend of Jeanne Sedello (I'm embarrassed I can't remember her name but Jeanne will). End of 2023 comments. The Chevy hubcap, alas, has not survived. But a few items have. . .

Ed Mell's 1940s toy car survives!

A Set of Teeth and part of a Corona Extra

bottle survive!

   So what was the date of this wall building party? If we knew, we'd be able to document how long we have actually lived in our house. One person actually had a plaque made to commemorate the building of the wall, complete with the date. I thought it would survive, but, no, as previously mentioned, the tree took out the top three rows of adobes and with it the plaque, which I promptly stored in a place I could easily find and then reset it in the wall at some point when I had time to reinsert it. Well, that was at least ten years ago and I haven't seen hide nor hair of the plaque.

   Holding it up to the light in the studio, this is what it said:

 "When asked to their home on the day of Bob's birth.

 I felt I'd established my status, my worth.

 I came only to find the Bell's had the gall.

 To ask me to help them

 Construct this damn wall.

With Love, Lee Hill
December 19, 1987

 So, the mystery is solved. By the way, Lee Hill, a woman, worked with me at New Times. That damn wall has been standing for as long as we have been living here, which by my count is almost 40 years now.

"It's already over what's going on now."
—Loudon Wainwright III

   

How Do You Create A Classic Ending for A Classic Story?

 September 28, 2026

   Breezy and cooler out this morning. Just went outside and caught the proverbial Arizona "six-inch-rain" which is one drop every six inches.

Ratcliff Ridge this morning

   Visions of the desert blooming in my mind.

Daily Whip Out: "Cactus Shadows"

   We watched "American Gigilo" (1980) last night and I have to say, Lauren Hutton was smouldering and very, very charming. And, since I am watching the history of cinema, I knew exactly where Paul Schrader copped his ending from: The Pickpocket,1946.

Sunset Wolf at Poolside

    And, speaking of profound endings. . .

"The tunnel at the end of the light."

—Time magazine, commenting on the ending of Chinatown

Navajo Mystification, Saddam's Novel Plus Mexcian Cleavage, Por Favor

 September 27, 2026

   I think it's safe to say, sometimes we project behaviors and motivations on to Native Americans that are probably mystifying to them. 

Daily Revised Whip Out:

"Navajo Mystification"

   And, to be fair, I think we do the same to our leaders. Case in point:

  There is a new TNT show "High Value Target" which gives a first person account of a CIA agent, John Nixon, who interrogated Saddam Hussein after he was captured in a "Spider Hole" in a supporter's back yard back in 2003. At the time we were in Valencia, Spain visiting our son who was in an exchange program at NAU. We were staying in a condo by a lake south of Valencia and we were on our way to breakfast to eat paella when I spied a newspaper headline, bought the paper and had Tommy pose with it.

T. Charles With Spider Hole Headline

when Saddam Hussein was captured

      Looking back, the $25 million reward probably helped. In the new show, Nixon points out how isolated both Hussein and Bush were and how Saddam was working on a novel at the time of his capture. Ai Chihuahua!

Daily Whip Out:

"Old Vaquero Stands, Barely"

Daily Whip Out:

"Old Vaquero Remorse"

   I know what you're thinking: Dang, Dude, enough with the Old Vaqueros. Haven't you got any cleavage we could look at?

Daily Revised Whip Out:

"Mexican Cleavage By Request"

   Now for something Even More Rack Friendly:

My friends often put True West magazine in a better rack position when they encounter it on the newsstand but Dennis Corderman has taken that public service to the next level.

Dennis Corderman's Custom Rack Placement

at Barnes & Noble

"Discipline is loyalty to your future self."

—Old Vaquero Saying

Dog Digs Sunrise & Strange Bedfellows

 September 26, 2026

   A morning walk always gets me going.

Dog Digs Sunrise 

   Yes, sometimes on our morning walks, Uno will just stop and take in the grandeur of the morning light up on New River Mesa. Can you blame him?

Strange Bedfellows

Daily Scratchboard Whip Outs:

"Manet, Morgan Murderer, Costner & The Duke"

   Sometimes I like to channel my old art studio mate.

Daily Revised Whip Out:

"Little Miss Sashay"

(What would Edmundo do?)

   And, other times I just like to go all out gonzo.

Daily Whip Out:

"Wyatt Earp Saves A Damsel In Distress"

   Yes, in the late 1920s, Wyatt Earp and his common-law wife, Sadie, tasked a mining engineer, John Flood, with writing up a commercial story to sell to Hollywood. Someone in the biz advised them that Wyatt needs to save a woman from a burning building and so they included this dubious anecdote in his story to hopefully make it sellable.

John Flood

(A fool's errand)

"Oh, and keep walking. I have walked myself into my best thoughts."

—Soren Kierkegaard

Billy Logas Hangs Prominently In Kingman As He Should

 September 25, 2026

   If you are ever near Kingman, Arizona be sure to stop in the Powerhouse Museum and check out the very large poster featuring The Kingman King of the Quartermile:

Billy Logas Poster over the entrance

Yes, that is my painting of Bull Mountain in the background and of Billy and his Superstock Dodge blowing the doors off a Boulder City contender out on our remote Stockton Hill Road Quartermile Track, back in the day. The poster was designed, of course, by Dan The Man Harshberger. And that poster is to honor this guy, The Hilltop Hot-Rodder Himself:

Daily Whip Out: "Billy In Black"

   Billy "Leadfoot" Logas hailed from, where else, Logasville on east 66 where his dad had an auto shop.

Logasville sign near Black Bridge on old 66

"Buddy gonna shut you down. . ."

—The Beach Boys, Shut Down, Vol. II

Dawn of The New Tales From The Old West

 September 24, 3036

   I view this blog as my incubator. I write in here every day and even when I start with nothing it always turns into something no matter how obtuse or extraneous the beginning is. Which proves the old adage:

"Write every day without hope, without despair."

—Old Vaquero Saying

Big storm over Ratcliff Ridge

    And, it dawned on me today on my walk with Uno, that this platform is the template for all my future stories where I am not beholding to historical accuracy (Something I have been held hostage to for the last 27 years of running the magazine).

Daily Whip Out: "Dust Up 27"

   I grew up with a Mojave with the nickname of "Moon." I have always thought that was a very cool name for a character.

Daily Whip Out: "Killer Moon"

   My friend Mort Mortensen and I wrote a script for "Moon of The Mojave" about the Olive Oatman kidnapping and I think there is more to mine with this wonderful, zany character. Oh, and for the record, the real Moon was a very cool guy.

   I have long believed the righteous humor of the Indiginous peoples is the next wave of hilarity.

   I also believe in telling people who visit my studio where to go.

And, if push comes to shove, I agree with Moon's kin. . .

"How! Can I Help You Get The Hell Out of Here"

   And, finally, this is perhaps the greatest disclaimer in the history of tall tales:

"Not that it matters, but most of what follows is true."

—William Goldman, screenwriter for Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid

Lessons Learned And A Severe Case of Restless Leg Syndrom

 September 23, 2026

   Here's what I have learned, so far. Being creative is its own reward. Alfred Hitchcock believed that happiness was not pleasure or excitement, but emotional clarity, peace and the ability to create without interference. He called his happy spot "a clear horizon" with nothing to worry about, only the pursuit of creativity. I really, really like this.

   The first time I can remember seeing someone with restless leg syndrome was in Mr. Zubeck's math class at MCUHS in 1964. The leg in question belonged to Rick Ridenour and he just had his leg moving up and down to beat the band. Yesterday, after a doctor's appointment down in Scottsdale I dropped in to Chompies for lunch and as I sat waiting for my order, I noticed this guy at an adjacent table with his leg going crazy, up and down, up and down, over and over. When my order came, a turkey rueben on rye, I forgot about him for a minute or two, but then when I glanced over again he was still going strong. So, then I became intrigued. Will he stop when his food comes? No, he did not. Is he going to do this for the entire lunch? Yes, pretty much.

Mister Restless Leg Syndrome

(Yes, I blacked out his eyes and added the squiggles to show you which leg was going to town)

As For Succes

   In the end, it's not talent, it's endurance. Better late than never, so to speak. Someone else, who knew about success and fame, put it this way:

Fame Is A Disaster for The Creative Artist

"He couldn't handle his fame. . .he was a serious person. Quiet and introverted. He couldn't live with the public image of himself. People expected him to get up and be a clown on stage."

—Lawrence Ferlinghetti, on Jack Kerouac

A Cocksure Narrator And An AI Doomsday Prediction

 September 22, 2026

   There sure is a subtle strength in a grid of images. You know, like this:

Grid Happy BBB Images

On the other hand, there can be power in just one image:

Screen grab from Sullivan's Travels, 1941

Oh, and by the way, it's in this same film that the Coen brothers got the title for one of their movies:

Veronica Lake and Joel McCrae

The Authentic Voice of A Narrator

   What if a narrator was so cocksure of himself that it was funny and profound? What if there were footnotes to prove his idiotic version of history? What if there was more truth in his nonsense, than falsehood? What if he was the King of Fake News and didn't know it?

Daily Whip Out: "Uncle Guy Is Cocksure"

The Cocksure Chronicles

   It must be nice to have such perfect assurance of ones view of history and be so oblivious of the truth and so oblivious to your own idiotic presumptuousness.

   He's a modern day Archie Bunker. What would be a good name for this guy be, who I know so intimately?

• Uncle Guy Odenberry

• Nick Thornbush

• Canty Be-libel

• Connor Recanta

• Frank Vaca

• Blevin Cankisorius

• Body "Bonehead" Butley

• Justin Josephatt

AI Doomsday Prediction

A.I. tells fifty per cent of people that knee-high socks are in and the other fifty per cent that no-show socks are in, and everyone dies in the Sock Wars.

—The New Yorker

"Well, that went damn quick."

—Bonehead Butley, commenting on the rise of AI and the demise of mankind

A Loser In The Rearview

 September 21, 2026

   I give up. Such a loser statement, right? Not so fast. Check this out:

   The highest form of peace is to have no desire for admiration or even to be understood. My current goal is to do both. To simply let go of the striving. How in the hell did I get here?

   I'll tell you how.

   When I was a teenager I worked in my dad's gas station and one time I found myself holding down the fort, alone, in the office, sitting in a hardback chair looking out through the modern Phillips 66 floor to ceiling glass window at the expansive driveway with twelve gas pumps and a big sign that said, "Reg. 39.9". As I sat there, I heard a furious buzzing and noticed a very frustrated fly beating his tiny wings against the window, furiously trying to go through the glass and get outside to freedom. He wasn't alone. In the small planter at the bottom of the glass lay two dozen dead flies who obviously had attempted and failed at the same task. I don't know why, but I felt sorry for the little guy. All he had to do was back up two feet, go to the left and he'd go sailing right out the open door to freedom. But even when I got up and went over to him and tried to shoosh him out of his predicament he fought me tooth and nail and went right back at it even harder than before. I heard the driveway bells ring and went out and waited on a couple cars and when I came back into the office, I noticed the fly in the window had expired and had joined his other hapless insect-bros in the planter.

   "How stupid could a living thing be," I remember thinking at the time (in my defense I was a teenager). How pompous that sounds to me now, having spent the last six decades beating furiously against the glass of artistic and publishing success. 

   Then, the other day, I read this: "Sometimes, in order to go forward, you have to give up and go backwards. You can't advance, unless you turn around and get away from an immovable wall."  

   You know, just like that fly in the window at Al Bell's gas station on Route 66 back in 1963.

"Nothing can be gained without losing. Even the heavens demand death."

—Seneca

Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White

 September 20, 2026

   I was asked this question on a recent podcast: "Do the good guys still wear white hats?" And, my answer was, "No, sometimes the good guys wear a white breech cloth."

Daily Whip Out: "A Formidable Apache Foe"

      When you really study history it becomes very hard to find the white hats, which, in turn, inspired this little study. . .

Daily Whip Out: "Fort Bowie Patrol"

(from a classic photograph)

   With the glut of AI permeating everything from local ads to book covers—especially book covers!—it's interesting to note that it raises the bar in one metric, but signals "more crap" in the same motion. One fallout from this is that anyone in the arts game is going in the opposite direction. If  AI can do that, then we are going to do this. Case in point:

 

An Anti-AI cover of The Atlantic

   When anyone on the planet can access ChatGPT, then real artists are going to go the other way and do something that goes in the opposite direction: for The Atlantic it is hand drawn, crude art AND hand drawn headlines. Wow! Breathtaking in its authenticity, but perhaps Stone Age in terms of competency? The dilemma continues. . .

   Here's where I go:

Daily Whip Out:

"Mountain Lion On The Prowl"

   Excellent interview in the NYTimes this morning about a new movie I want to see starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell:

John and Sam: Wild Horse Nine, 

plus 

Daily Whip Out: "A Scout In Doubt"

   When he approached the ranch house he knew something was wrong. Unmentionables were scattered across the front lawn and he could smell death.

"There is more power in telling little than in telling all."

—Mark Rothko

New Times And Old Prejudices

 September 19, 2026

   I got back from my walk with Uno this morning and as I traversed the breezeway I noticed a delivered packet inside the gate addressed to "Robert Allen Bell" and I thought to myself, The only person on the planet who would use those three words together was my mother and she has been gone for more than two decades. So, I took the packet in the kitchen and got a knife and started ripping into the plastic bag and the next thing I notice is that there appears to be a white T-shirt inside. Say what? So I pulled it out and laid it on the kitchen table and this is what was on it:

A "Too New Times" T-shirt Design

(and yes, that is the Arizona Republic at top, right)

   Here's the backstory. Former employees of the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette (known collectively as the R&G) are having a reunion next month and would I like to design a commemorative T-shirt for the gathering? I told them I would give it a shot and immediately called my partner in design crime, Big D, and we jammed on ideas and ended up at the above design and copy. The guy at the bottom is a caricature I did of Bill Close, a feisty news anchor on KOOL TV back in the day when I did cartoons for a certain hippie publication. When I sent the proposed design to the powers that be in the R&G hierarchy, they deemed it, "Too New Times," as in the "hippie rag" I used to work for in the eighties, The New Times Weekly. 

   I called Big D with the bad news and just for grins he had one shirt printed and he was the one who sent me the shirt. Also, Dan Harshberger made the nod to my mother on the packet as an added humor bonus since he had heard my mom use it many times.

   So, I've got that going for me.

   If you would like your own R&G T-shirt you can get one right here:

I Want That Shirt!

"As an artist, we are reporters. Our job is to report what it's like to be alive right now."

—Robert Longo

One Wild Ride And Other Thinly Veiled Metaphors

 September 18, 2026

   Met my neighbor Todd on the road this morning and he told me El Nino has another 15 storms coming this season every bit as strong as the blaster we had on Wednesday. I told him, "Well, thank God it isn't human caused," and walked on.

Uno Under A Stormy Sky

   The end of Late Nite is here. And, by that, I mean all those shows that were born out of the Johnny Carson mold.

   Speaking of mold, here is a common site when you are seeking out true history. . .

Time Destroys Everything

   Once upon a time, The Arizona Republic had a mighty circulation of some 600,000 daily readers. It was the state's biggest newspaper and it ruled the Arizona-media landscape with 400 news reporters. Today it has perhaps 32,000 subscribers (I am one of them) and 70 reporters and it is a whisper of its former self.

   Get used to it.

One Wild Ride

   I'm referring, of course, to owning a magazine! And this will be the theme of my editorial in the next issue. Well, that, and this. . .

Classic Remington Bucker

   Being a lifelong Remington fan I just assumed he was always doing cowboys on bucking broncos, but when I pulled down my Remington Catalogue Riasonne and looked at all of his known artwork I found that for the first twenty years of his art career (1875-95), he doesn't do the classic cowboy on a bucking horse! He comes close, a soldier—not a cowboy—on a rearing horse ("A Sample Breed" 1891), then in 1892 ("A Pitching Bronco"), then in 1893 we get ("A Buck-jumper"), then in 1893 we get ("Turn Him Loose, Bill") and there's another one, ("Mounting A Wild One") in the same year, but it's not until 1895—twenty years into his illustration career—that he lands on ("A Running Bucker", above). It must be noted that this is a mirror match to ("The Sun Fisher") from the same year. Then, of course, Remington is off to the races and I haven't counted how many variations he and a ton of other Western artists have done of a cowboy on a bucking horse, but we know it is massive and we are going to run as many of them as we can in the next issue of True West.

N.C. Wyeth Bucker

   Speaking of which, I was down at Desert Ridge today and ran into Barnes & Noble to check out our newsstand rack position and there we are front and center!

   Sent this picture to our editorial and design team and got this reply from the author of the cover story:

   "Looks really good on the newsstand. Glad to see True West is holding its own with Halloween, the Middle East, alien life, and some kind of weird science. Can't believe that stack of National Geographic. Does anyone actually buy that mag?"

—Mark Lee Gardner

   I am watching the 15 part documentary "The Story of Film: An Odyssey" and it's really taking me to school. Thought I knew the history of film, but damn, I don't know Jack!

   But I do know this: Live like you are dying, because you are.

"Only dead fish go with the flow."

—Old Vaquero Saying