Google Glitch Solved

January 4, 2012

Turns out the information we got yesterday from Google was not right. We put in a photo of the Duke into Google's new image search and got the information that the photo was from a movie called The First Rebel.

Here's how it evidently happened. Google searched the web and found this French DVD:

Someone at RKO, or in France, thought this image would be sexier than a real photo from the film (they were probably correct). So, that's how Google found the right image with the wrong info. I have a hunch this is going to be even a more thorny issue down the pike.

Here's a photo from the re-release War of the Wildcats (1959). It was first called In Old Oklahoma (1943).

The Duke's hat, the scarf and the shirt and the pants all line up with the publicity still. Interesting that they simply changed the name and re-released it under another name 15 years later. I wonder if the Duke got a cut of that? I kind of doubt it. In those days the studio system basically did what they wanted and all the actors were under contract (basically employees).

And, looking forward to the future, with the proliferation of mash-ups and appropriation of images for "art" I think this is only going to make search worse.

"So, it seems, the more information we get, the less we seem to know."

—BBB

The Duke Meets Google Magic

January 3, 2012

So we are hard at work on our icon issue and we found a photo in our archives of John Wayne with no information about which movie it is from. It wasn't one of the logical easy ones, like The Searchers, or Rio Bravo. It was much earlier. Could have been anything. Production was stymied, but not Meghan Saar.

Our intrepid editor dropped a jpeg of the John Wayne photo into a new program launched by Google this year. After a few seconds of grinding, the image info came bursting on the screen. The photo is from The First Rebel (1939).

Now that is scary-amazing.

What's next?

Kramer: "I was a rebel, Jerry."

Seinfeld: "No, Johnny Yuma was a rebel."

BBB: "Well, according to this photo this is The Duke from 'The First Rebel.'"

Yikes!

"Any new technological advances are indistinguishable from magic."

—Old Vaquero Saying

Sideways Rider

January 3, 2012

Went to yoga this morning (two for two in the new year). But, before I left, I whipped out a little study I call Sideways Rider:

Gave my daughter a Christmas present of stand-up comedy lessons (she lives in LA). She is very funny and I think she'll be inspired by some of the improvisational techniques. Kathy put Deena and I on the email list of the school and I got my first newsletter which is about how to emulate Jerry Seinfeld's technique. Amounts to putting a big, red X across every day you write comedy and the goal is to not miss an X. Kind of cool. May apply it to my art and Mickey Free.

At the same time, it's time I enjoy the path I'm on, as much as the goal of arriving. Ain't that right, Toni?

"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough."
—Toni Morrison

Clint Butte Finish

January 2, 2012

Amazing to me that I made it to Arizona's Statehood Centennial year. Actual birthday is February 14. Of course in March of 2008 I had a near miss. Anyway, I'm quite thankful and it's an honor to still be posting stuff right here.

This morning, after feeding Ken's horse Chato, i came back to the studio and finished Clint Butte:

Going to be the opening spread on our tribute to Mr. Eastwood in the March issue.

Is this the year Mickey Free breaks out? Sometimes I can see entire scenes built upon one line:

They met on the trail, but the smell of that big jack made the other horses crazy.

But, of course, one scene, does not a graphic novel make. How to get all of my ideas down on paper and make it track? I consulted with one of the best writer's I know. Here's what he told me:

The Ron Carlson Regimen

1. Bring the story to a boil

2. Find 9 weeks, solid, to work 3 to 6 hours a day.

3. Get the dream up above your head and pay attention (as if you are juggling).

4. Eventually, the angry tension between the macro-story and the mini-stories will break and reveal themselves.

Okay, I'm game. One more time. This hasn't been easy, but I'm heartened by the words of Mr. Pelly.

"There is no such thing as good writing. There's only good rewriting."
—Scott Pelly

Fave Quotes of 2011

January 1, 2012

It has become a New Year's Day tradition to cull my fave quotes of the past year out of my daytimer.

Favorite Quotes Culled From My 2011 Franklin Daytimer

"After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come."

—Nelson Mandela



"Happiness is not a place you arrive at but a manner of traveling."

—paraphrased from Margaret Lee Runbeck



"We falsely interpret the world around us. We ignore evidence that doesn't support our prior beliefs and we convince ourselves we know things we don. We think we know things we don't know."

—Errol Morris



"The closer you get to history, the more mysterious it becomes."

—Errol Morris



"All information is legend and experience is Show Biz."

—Richard Hell



"It's very Baptist. If you're going to give up sin, you got to sin."

—Dawn Rizos, a strip club owner, explaining the inordinate amount of strip clubs in Dallas (40)



"Art is anything you can get away with."

—Marshall McLuhan



"And so we turn the page over

To think of starting. This is all there is."

—John Ashbery



"There is no blue without yellow and without orange."

—Vincent Van Gogh



"In the future everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes."

—Banksy



"Life is like a B-movie. You don't want to leave in the middle of it, but you don't want to see it again."

—Ted Turner



"Studios look backward. Filmmakers look forward."

—Guillermo del Toro



"He who never leaves his country is full of prejudices."

—Carlo Goldone



"Nothing ever happens in Mexico until it happens."

—Porfirio Diaz



"Life is brutal, full of horror and violence,

Life is beautiful, full of passion and joy.

Both things are true at the same time."

—Darcey Steinke



"Truth is a point of view, but authenticity can't be faked."

—Peter Gruber



"Good and evil kill in equal amounts."

—Old Vaquero Saying



"Our tears fatten upon our memories of joy."

—John Updike



"A boy petting with his first girlfriend in the car as moonlight anoited her bare front with the shadows of raindrops still clinging to the windshield.'"

—Andrew Delbanco, quoting John Updike, from "Higher Gossip."



"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail."

—Edwin land



Kramer: "I was a rebel, Jerry."



Seinfeld: "No, Johnny Yuma was a rebel."



"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

—L.P. Hartley



"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."

—Voltaire



"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."

—John F. Kennedy



"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

—Pablo Picasso



"Horses are scared of two things; things that move. Things that don't move."

—Mark Miller



"I seem to do my best work when I should be working on something else."

—BBB



"It takes a long time to understand nothing."

—Edward Dahlberg



"I'm not a bad poker play, but I could be bluffing."

—Christian Slater



"When people are finding meaning in things—beware."

—Edward Gorey



"A true friend is someone who can tell you all his troubles, but doesn't."

—Old Vaquero Saying



"History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable."

—John W. Gardner



"Never trust a man with a riding crop and jodhpurs who doesn't own a horse."

—Old Vaquero Saying



"if you are successful in getting what you want it's called destiny. If you're unsuccessful it's called fate."

—Old Vaquero Saying



"Memory is the only way home."

—Terry Tempest Williams



"There are mighty few people who think what they think they think."

—Robert Henri



"I stopped singing and they gave me an award."

—Peter Frampton



"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Wall of Truth

December 29, 2011

Deena Bean got me five yoga sessions for Christmas and I attended my first one in a long time. Debbie Payne met me at the door with open arms and we hugged. The studio is about a block from the True West World Headquarters so that is sweet. Really felt good to go again.

We had a big pow wow on Tuesday regarding our Wall of Truth. Here are my notes for the meeting:

The Wall of Truth

• What we do is not a science, it is an art. And some of it is counterintuitive. A cluttered cover drives those of us who appreciate clean design crazy, but we have to learn what sells because it can mean an extra $6K to our bottom line, just by adding the right headlines to entice new readers. This is a first: the review and the trading up of better copy on the cover. Amazing. Thank you.

• This is a wall where the best ideas win. I believe when we all contribute and master the elements on this wall (what works, what doesn't), we will achieve market superiority and we will all succeed.

• All of us are smarter than each one of us. Everyone here can do something I can't do. Stay on task, for example.

• Warren Buffet ascribes his wealth to less than ten decisions he has made in his career. I can pretty much sum up my success at True West the same way. The first good decision I made was to hire Carole Glenn. And the second was to hire Robert Ray. And the three of us are responsible, directly, or indirectly, for all of you being here. These sound decisions i also believe are why we have survived all the bone-headed moves we have made in the past 12 years.

• The biggest predictor of happiness is a network of good relationships. And as long as we are talking to each other, trading good ideas and allowing the best ideas to win, we will be, productive and happy.

• The biggest problem all companies have is that we are all mildly delusional. The most successful people are mildly delusional status inflators. We think we're better than we are, we minimize our minuses, thus eliminating paralyzing self-doubt. It is important that we own this.

• 95 percent of American men believe they are in the top 50% when it comes to social skills. Women are more likely to be status deflaters. Women underestimate their IQ scores by an average of about five points. People not only overestimate what they know, they overestimate what they can know.

• We all seek limerence. The moment when we grasp a situation, solve a problem, or master a task, there's a surge of pleasure. It's not living in perpetual harmony that produces the surge. If that were so, we'd be happy living on the beach all our lives. It's the moment when some tension is erased. So a fulfilling day has its recurring set of rhythms: difficulty to harmony, difficulty to harmony. And it is all propelled by the desire for limerence, the desire for the moment when the inner and outer patterns mesh.

• This drive, this longing for harmony, is a never ending process—model, adjust, model, adjust—guiding us onward. Two-thirds of the decisions we make are going to be wrong. That's why it's important to keep correcting errors and learning. It's like walking. You throw yourself forward, which puts you out of balance, then your thrust your opposite leg out to counterbalance it. That's how we move forward, and more importantly, that's momentum (see below)

• There will still be frictions and conflicts, but if everyone feels like they have a voice, and if I have anything to do with it, you will, then the best ideas will win out. And the odds are in your favor that your ideas will be up here on the wall and in the finished product.

The Magic of History

"A feeling of immediate contact with the past is a sensation as deep as the purest enjoyment of art; it is an almost ecstatic sensation of no longer being myself, of overflowing into the world around me, of touching the essence of things, of through history experiencing the truth."—Johan Huizinga, historian

Car Experts

December 29, 2011

I'm going to run this photo in my editorial for the next issue of True West. Here's what I know about the photo. The driver is my grandfather Bob Guess. His wife, Louise, is in the back and the baby is my aunt Sadie Pearl. She was born in September of 1915 and her daughter, Tap Lou thinks Sadie looks to be about six months old, so the photo possibly was taken in 1916. The location of the photo is also up for grabs but Tap told me her mother was born in Lordsburg, New Mexico (as was my mother) and that they lived near Steins Pass (there is a truck stop east of Steins and Tap thinks they had a home near there).

Now for the automobile. Does anybody know the make and year?

"It happened on the strip where the road is wide. . ."
—"Shut Down", The Beach Boys

Dire Warnings

December 28, 2011

I woke up at midnite last night mulling an idea. As sometimes happens to me, I finally got up at two and went out to the studio to write the idea down. Actually, I typed it out in an email to myself at work.

Dire Warnings

To heed, or not to heed


The warnings were dire. Airplanes will fall out of the sky. Elevators full of people will plummet to their deaths. Remember the Y2K hysteria of 1999? That was the year we bought True West magazine and we were losing money. A lot of money. I picked up a trade magazine and it said, "This has been the worst year in magazine history."


What to do? We had to cut costs.


I sought the advice of a circulation consultant with the improbable name of Nina la France. She had just left Arizona Highways and was about to start work on a new magazine in San Francisco called Red Herring, already the darling of the dot com world.


We met at a fancy restaurant on Central Avenue in downtown Phoenix. I bought. Nina's advice was equally dire: 'You are a monthly, do not go below 12 issues a year. You may save some money in the short term, but the odds are you will never go back to 12 issues."


My partners and I decided we had no other choice and we cut down to 8 issues a year. Then came 9•11. We clawed our way back, adding two issues and then another. Still, as we sat stalled at 11 issues a year, Ms. France's dire warning haunted me.


The restaurant on Central is long gone as is the magazine Red Herring, a victim of the dot com crash.

Today, 12 years later, once again, the warnings are dire. The Mayans predict doom in 2012. Airplanes will fall out of the sky.

My prediction: the doom and gloom predictors will be wrong until they are right, and at some point they will be right. In the meantime, here is our 12th issue of the year in the 12th year of the millenium. It's a bonus. Subscribers will get it for free. There's a moral in here somewhere.

"Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway."
—Old Vaquero Saying

Family Face Time

December 23, 2011

The Deen is flying in tonight with her fiance Mike. They're landing at 11 from LA, getting out to the homestead at midnite. The Boy, Thomas Charles, will be picking them up and bringing them out. Great to have the family together for Christmas.

Of course, I miss my mom and dad and grandparents at this time of year. Here's another photo from the Tap Lou Duncan Weir collection of my mother Bobbie. Photo is from about 1940.

The dog's name is Bob, as in Bob Dog—named by Tap Lou by the way.

What's funny about this pic is that my daughter Deena got my mother's dimples and in this pic they resemble each other more than I realized.

And speaking of family, Charles Richard Waters turned 64 yesterday. He and I go back to third grade at Manzanita Grade School in Kingman. Here we are in a fifth grade class photo on the front steps of Manzanita.

And, I mentioned I have long used my kids as models. Here's proof, from a layout I did for New Times in the early eighties. That's Deena at bottom (the top image was taken from a Carson Mell photo).

"There are no strangers on Christmas Eve."

—Adele Comandini

Guess Clan Treasures

December 22, 2011

Just got some great photos of my my grandparents from my cousin Tap Lou Weir. This is my grandfather, Bob Guess, his wife, my grandmother, Louise and their first born daughter Sadie Pearl at Steins Pass, New Mexico. Love the hat.

And here's my mother, Bobbie Guess, stylin' beside a car on Jefferson Street at the foot of what would later become Radar Hill.

If you look closely, you'll see a kid running around the back of the car to the left of my mother. That, I believe is the future World Champion Steer Roper Billy Hamilton. He was trained by my grandfather Bob Guess. Here is a photo of him with my cousin Donna Duncan.

Donna led a tragic life and died much too early. There was a great sadness about her and a troubled mystery that no one in the family talks about. Donna was the first born daughter of Sadie Pearl, the baby in the first photo.

"Home is the one place you go where they have to take you in."
—Old Vaquero Saying

Puzzling Cover Success?

December 21, 2011

For some reason our December issue is outselling anything we have done in years (in some outlets we are selling double what we normally sell). Many on our staff didn't like the cover (too busy). Why, do you think this nondescript image of a gunfighter did so well?

"Personally, I think it's because you used Bob McCubbin's name on the cover under the headline 'Scalp Hunter.'"
—J. Weddle

Monster Growth Cactus Metaphor

December 21, 2011

We've got a kid who is getting married in March. This person of interest plans on using the back yard for the ceremony so Kathy got the landscapers out this morning giving them all orders to trim and clean. One of the things that is going to get pruned and cut down to size is a cactus that has totally gotten out of hand.

We planted it in 1986, or so. Here I am with my daughter Deena, with our dog Dusty standing next to it (actually, that's it behind us, at right):

The dog's long gone, the girl grew up and moved to LA and the cactus, well, the cactus grew and grew. Here I am standing next to it this morning. Wanted to document it before the landscapers took it down to size:

I think you'll agree, that is one monster cactus that got totally out of hand. A living metaphor, perhaps, for my interest in all things Western.

"There is a fine line between hobby and mental illness."
—Dave Barry

Westerns Channel Taping Today at Fort Whipple

December 20, 2011

My Westerns Channel producer, Jeff Hildebrandt, met me in front of the True West World Headquarters this morning at eight and we drove up to Prescott in the early morning fog. Here's the conditions at Humboldt, just before we got to Dewey:

We met the director of the Sharlot Hall Museum, John Langelllier, at 9:30 and drove out to the historic Fort Whipple where Al Sieber and Martha Summerhayes and General George Crook spent time:

This is, I believe, officer's row and the house in the foreground has a museum that features The Buffalo Soldiers on the upper floor, second window to the left. Here is the room with the crew setting up the shots. That's Steve, the director of photography on the left and Jeff, the sound man on the right. Yes that is the script in the teleprompter:

And yes, they are both hamming it up. Meanwhile, here I am with the teleprompter techie and the makeup person:

And here I am with the producer, Jeff Hildebrandt:

We taped three True West Moments for Black History Month in February and the spots will run on the Westerns Channel all month.

"I'm Bob Boze Bell and this has been a True West Moment."
—BBB

Not-So-Gentle Tamer #5

December 19, 2011
Went home for lunch and whipped out the final on Not-So-Gentle Tamer #5.



Utilized the cactus auditions I took yesterday.

"If there is a wrong way to do something, then someone will do it."
—Edward A. Murphy Jr.

I'm So Vain I Probably Think This Post Is About Me

December 19, 2011

Worked most of the weekend on finishing the Not-So-Gentle Tamers painting. I wanted to add some prickly pear cactus in the foreground as a symbol of the toughness of the land and the women who tamed it, so I took a walk to audition cactus.

I like the dead and dying cactus. May save this one for another painting.

This one is even better. Notice how the dying cactus is turning purple. Very cool. There is a virus or fungus that is killing prickly pear in our area. This next one is on my neighbor Muffy's land. Like the disparate shapes.

And this final audition shot is right behind my pickup in the following shot. I like the mix of prickly pear and succulent agaves.

All of these were shot with my iPhone. Pretty amazing (and depressing if you own Kodak stock). Oh, wait, Robert Ray assures me Kodak owns the patents on the digital photography used in the iPhone. Okay, I'm not as depressed.

Kathy gifted me a vanity license plate for my birthday today. I think she said she gave a donation to the centennial historical society. I've avoided getting one for fear of appearing too vain, but now that she bought it for my birthday, well, vain glorious it is!

Yes, I'm so vain, I probably think this post is about me.

Wildcat Watching

You might notice I'm wearing my UofA Wildcat sweatshirt. My son Thomas Charles and his girlfriend Pattarapan came out on Saturday and while she cooked me a Thai surprise for my B-day, T and I watched the Wildcats take on Gonzaga. The Cats lost but it was a good game. Fast forward to Sunday and we were watching the classic episode of Louis CK where he beds Joan Rivers, when Tommy stood up suddenly and said, "Holy mole! There's a wildcat on the patio!" Sure enough we ran to the door and a wildcat pranced across our back yard, easily climbed our five foot chain link fence and disappeared into the desert.

So two Wildcat sightings in one weekend. Not bad for a Medicare eligible senior.

"I was too old to be scared stiff and too stiff to sleep on the ground."
—P.J. O'Rourke, 64, on why he retired from the war correspondent game

Westward Ho Ho Ho!

December 16, 2011

If someone had told me even five years ago that my phone would take photos as good as my Nikon, I would have laughed at them. Well, I'm still laughing, but it is sweet that I can see a scene while I'm driving and snap off a couple phone photos while driving 75 mph (don't tell DPS or Kathy, who was sleeping when the following shots were taken). A week ago I was on the way to Vegas for Cowboy Christmas and as we approached White Hills on highway 93 I was marveling at the late afternoon shadows on a distant range. As you can see, I snapped this off right over the steering wheel:

And through the windshield, with the car jiggling and moving fast. I waited until I got up to the rock outcropping at left, then took a closer shot:

What I wanted to capture is that the shadows on the distant range stop halfway down and you have this blank spot where the washes fan out, leaving the range looking like it's floating above the tundra. This is a four o'clock shadow and I want to capture that effect in my paintings, so now I have great reference. Rather sweet.

Westward Ho Ho Ho!

I read in the Arizona Republic, that the Westward Ho Hotel in Phoenix opened with a lavish party 84 years ago yesterday. I have some history there. I went to work for New Times there, on the second floor in March of 1978, but just prior to that, in December of 1977, Kathy and I had our first date here, attending the New Times Christmas party where the Southern Tornado performed. I was on drums. The drums have been retired, but the relationship lives on. Here's an ad the Westward Ho ran in the Arizona Days And Ways Magazine, on February 11, 1962 on the 50th year celebration of Arizona statehood:

The Republic semi-centennial publication was a big inspiration for my True West centennial efforts. I looked through it quite often looking for links and stories we needed to cover. I own three of these. I found one in an antique store and was gifted the others. They are in a prominent place in my library.

"Half a hundred years ago, Arizona was granted statehood. It has been less than a lifetime—but more than an era."
—Eugene C. Pulliam, publisher, Phoenix Newspapers Ince, on page 1 of "This Is Arizona: Fiftieth Anniversary."

Centennial Issue Is In The House!

December 15, 2011

Carole Glenn came into my office just before lunch with a big smile on her face and handed me the March 2012 issue of True West, hot off the press from RR Donnelley in Kansas City. Yes, our office copies of the special Centennial Collector's Edition are in the house.

Here's a sneak peek at some of the centennial coverage:

And here's some of the artwork you've been seeing on my blog, being turned into Classic Gunfights:

Subscribers issues should start dropping in mailboxes in the next ten days. Issue goes on the newsstand January 3rd.

In addition to our centennial team here at True West, I have to give credit to our great crew at RR Donnelley. We didn't have enough tip-ons (cover sheets on top of covers to warn of last issue) for the print run, so one of their employees, Todd Spychalla, took it on himself to go xerox enough pages to facilitate the run. Thanks, Todd! Glad you are on our team.

"What one has to do usually can be done."
—Eleanor Roosevelt

The View From the new Pat Tillman Bridge

December 15, 2011

On our way to Vegas last Thursday, we stopped and walked out on the new Pat Tillman bridge and I took this shot looking at Hoover Dam. Love the landscape in that area (what's the name of that butte in the back?). Breathtaking view straight down.

It was on this date in 1928 that the Westward Ho Hotel opened in Phoenix. Kathy and I had our first date there in 1977, at a New Times Christmas party where the Southern Tornado played (I was on drums). That was a few moons ago.

"There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are peiople who put it back."
—Elisabeth David

A Stunning Confession by Marshall Trimble

December 14, 2011

I just received this stunning confession by Marshall Trimble on drinking and driving:

This is a word to the wise for all my email friends. I would like to share an experience with you, it has to do with drinking and driving. As you know some of us have had brushes with the authorities over the years. The other night I went out for drinks. After consuming too much to drink, and knowing full well that I was wasted, I did something I've never done before.

Believe it or not, I took a bus home. Yes, a bus. I arrived home safely and without incident.

This was really a surprise to me since I have never driven a bus before.

—Marshall Trimble

Clint Still Rocks!

December 13, 2011

Eight years ago today, I woke up in Valencia, Spain (we were visiting my son who was spending a year studying abroad from NAU, Northern Arizona University) and he and I walked to a small restaurant to get coffee. Saw a newspaper with the headline that Saddam had been captured in a spider hole on a farm in the town he was from. Famous picture of him having his teeth examined, which it turns out is an insult to people in the region (having your teeth examined in public) and the U.S. did it on purpose, if memory serves me correct, and it increasingly does not.

Rained most of the night. Still raining. Got up this morning to take a second stab at Clint as a butte. Whipped this out before I came into work.

"Clint Still Rocks." One concept too far?

"The world has always gone through periods of madness so as to advance a bit on the road to reason."
—Hermann Broch