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