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Bob Boze Bell's Blog – November 2009 Archive (39)

The Brawl On The Mesilla Mall

November 30, 2009

For the past week or so, I've been studying famous battle paintings and I've noticed that the fighters in the portrayals always seem to be of two types: the heroic, chest-out defiant one (think Joan of Arc or Custer), and the fatally injured, but heroically posed woe-is-me-dying pose, complete with knitted eyebrows and a hand to the breast right out of some 1890s melodrama. These have never seemed very accurate to me. They certainly don't look like the fights I… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 30, 2009 at 12:26pm — 3 Comments

Battle of The Bands & French horn whippings

November 29, 2009

Had a nice, four day stretch at home to work on a variety of artwork. Began an ambitious splash-page painting of the Mesilla shootout (January CG) complete with clarinet beatings and French horn whipping (as opposed to pistol whipping). Lots of dust, lots of blood, lots of anatomical problems. Hope to finish tonight.

Also finished an overview of the Burnside rifles duel at forty paces, and by the way, I'm assuming that in a duel like this, the two stood… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 29, 2009 at 4:03pm — 1 Comment

The Orgasmic Birth of Billy the Kid

November 27, 2009

Time to catch up on some William H. Bonney clarifications. Last week, on the Kid's alleged birthday, I launched off on a series of statements that caught the eye of a certain scholar in Chalfont Saint Giles, England. Here are his corrections and the subsequent exchange:

"Actually Our Billy told the 1880 census taker (or the census taker, deciding discretion was the better part of valor, skipped that particular house and wrote down the first thing that… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 27, 2009 at 8:26am — 2 Comments

Finished Blazing Pols

November 25, 2009

Finished Blazing Pols at 3:30. Would have finished earlier but my computer kept beeping. When there are comments on my blog I get a beep and a link to approve them and yesterday's Brokeback Mountain post created a three ring circus of comment.

Here's the finished scratchboard:

Still didn't get those pistols quite right, but it'll have to do. A 1,200 dpi tiff went down to our art director, Dan… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 25, 2009 at 5:22pm — 4 Comments

Moderating and Moderation On This Site

November 25, 2009

We have been contacted by more than a few of you about coming up with some rules and regs on this site. We agree that there have been abusive visitors to the site and, while we don't like it any more than you do, we have debated how strong a hand to take in these matters. Here's what we came up with:

The True West Historical Society will be moderated by Trish Brink and myself.

In addition to those of you interested in our Western History, The… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 25, 2009 at 10:12am — 15 Comments

Jackass Anatomy

November 25, 2009

Worked all afternoon yesterday on the the Blazing Pols illustration. After some 35 sketches, finally got a decent looking drawing of a gunfighting elephant at about two:

Utilizing the old spreading-lead-on-the-back-of-tracing-paper trick, I transferred that sketch to an expensive sheet of Essdee Scratchboard ($22 a sheet) and laid in the fightingi elephant and the head of the dying jackass:…

Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 25, 2009 at 9:30am — 4 Comments

Brokeback Mountains And Molehills

November 24, 2009

According to the Hollywood Reporter "Westerns are hot this year." In addition to Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) coming out next spring, FX is "saddling up for Reconstruction, a period Western set in a Missouri town during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and centers on Jason, a proper East Coast gentleman who returns from the war a changed man and seeks refuge in a border state."

The producers, Joshua Brand and Peter Horton, evidently… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 24, 2009 at 10:00am — 29 Comments

Happy Birthday Billy!

November 23, 2009

Today is allegedly Billy the Kid's birthday. We say allegedly because it appears Ash Upson gave the date to the Kid when he co-wrote The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid in 1881. Upson had actually roomed for a short time at the McCarty household in Silver City when the Kid's mama was still alive and taking in boarders to make ends meet. After the Kid's death at the hands of Pat Garrett, Upson either remembered the Kid's birth date because they shared the… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 23, 2009 at 3:59pm — 3 Comments

Elephants Going Rogue

November 23, 2009

Had a very nice weekend. On Saturday night, Charlie and Linda Waters came down from Vegas for Dan Harshberger's birthday dinner at our house. The Waters brought three bottles of Argentina wine and I made Tacos de Bell. We had a grand time.

On Sunday morning, the Waters met Kathy and I, and our son Thomas Charles (yes, he's named for Charlie Waters) at the Matador at Second Street and Monroe deep inside the Beast. While we were all enjoying our huevos… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 23, 2009 at 10:00am — 2 Comments

Mega Hoax Is Mega Hilarious!

November 20, 2009

All of us who write books about Billy the Kid hope for the three Rs: that we will be respected, get rich from book sales and be fondly remembered for our efforts to get to the truth about Billy. Of course there have been over 1,000 books written about the Kid and as I like to brag, I didn't write all of them. Nope, not even half. I'm not exactly sure of the actual total, but let's just say I'm reading two new Billy books even as you read this.

But, I… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 20, 2009 at 12:00pm — 4 Comments

Dying Donkeys And Mega-Hoaxers

November 20, 2009

About a week ago I asked Carole Glenn to order a book for us on Amazon called Mega Hoax. I had heard through the Billy the Kid grapevine that a woman from Santa Fe named Gale Cooper has published an alleged expose on the digging up Billy project. We got the book on Wednesday and I saw it in my box when I got back from lunch. My managing editor Meghan Saar had already ear-marked all the pages True West is mentioned (this is especially funny considering that… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 20, 2009 at 9:30am — 7 Comments

Source Book Is In The House!

November 19, 2009

Our office copies of The 2010 Source Book arrived this afternoon and it's a beautiful thing. If you want to find anything related to the West this is the issue you need to have (hint: subscribers get it free). Inside is our Eighth Annual Best of the West Awards and I predict the following people are going to be very happy: Jim Clark, Steve and Marcie Shaw, Jay Dusard, Pat Kearney and Gary George, Waddie Mitchell, Charles Harris III and Louise Sadler,… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 19, 2009 at 4:22pm — 3 Comments

From Low Pants Lance to Happy Birthday Dan!

November 19, 2009

Saw my first Low Pants Lance. I was on my way to yoga last Tuesday when I saw this tall kid angling down the alley by the Career School next to Black Mountain Gym. As I drove by I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the back of his pants hung below the cheeks of his arse! He then jumped a wall so I got a real good view of the entire buttocks area. Amazing. I had seen photos of this phenom from New York City, but had never seen this extreme before, in the… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 19, 2009 at 11:00am — 2 Comments

A Killer Frost And Killer Republicans

November 18, 2009

When we first moved to Cave Creek in 1986, I took my sketchbook down into the creek bottom and while reclining beneath a huge sagauro did a series of sketches that ended up contributing to this pen and ink illustration:

The cave that Cave Creek is named for is in the embankment at left. Since these giants are in the creek bottom they are susceptible to more freezing and frostbite damage because the canyon… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 18, 2009 at 10:24am — 8 Comments

Love That Petrichor

November 17, 2009

We got some rain over the weekend, not much, but just enough to get that great desert smell. I just found out in a newsletter that Kathy gets called Bottom Line that "when the weather is dry, certain plants secrete an oil that is absorbed by rocks and soil. When it rains, the oil is released into the air as a gas, creating an aroma called petrichor."

Not Bad Weather

Another page from my quest to do 10,000 bad… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 17, 2009 at 1:00pm — 7 Comments

The Ghosts of Fandangos

November 16, 2009

Ever sit around and wonder where all the ridiculous myths and legends come from? You know, the ones where you kind of shake your head and go, "That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in my life. Who makes this crap up?"

Well, here's a good example. For Halloween this year (in Cave Creek) at Cody's Smokehouse & Grill (which officially opens in December at the location of a series of failed restaurants and bars starting with Fandango), the new… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 16, 2009 at 4:00pm — 2 Comments

True Grit, II

November 16, 2009

Just got more info on the remake of True Grit by the Coen Brothers. Steven Spielberg is producing along with Scott Rudin (who produced No Country For Old No Men). It looks like Matt Damon is going to play the Texas Ranger (Glenn Campbell in the original), Josh Brolin is being talked about as the bad guy Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall) and according to Variety, the Coens want Jeff Bridges for the gruff U.S. Marshal (John Wayne). They hope to begin… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 16, 2009 at 12:30pm — 8 Comments

American Valor And True Grit

November 13, 2009

Charlie Waters has just completed editing a multi-part series on Valor as it applies to our servicemen and women at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 54-part series started Sunday and you can read the stories of heroism at Americanvalor.net

Charlie adds, "We will add stories of the six Medal of Honor winners on Sunday, then start adding one new profile of a medal recipient each day to the site… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 13, 2009 at 1:30pm — 1 Comment

Medicine Lodge Hanging, Take Three

November 13, 2009

Rod Cook of Caldwell, Kansas is doing a new book on the area and its history. Rod really helped me out when I was doing a Caldwell Classic Gunfight on the fight there between cowboys and the locals. The marshal in Caldwell in 1884 was Henry Brown.

Rod liked the first scratchboard I did of the hanging with the darkness and he wondered if I could combine that starkness with the image I posted yesterday. I told him I would try.

Although Brown… Continue

Added by Bob Boze Bell on November 13, 2009 at 11:00am — No Comments