Dan's sworn testimony

 

After Vicky saw this video, she tricked me into saying this, “Take the pie out of the freezer.”

But, I mean, it's not my fault, which I will explain later.

 

First, you need the context of our Thanksgiving meal. 

Vicky making her homemade stuffing:

 

 

Yum....homemade gravy:

Pounds and pounds of mashed potatoes:

 It was so delicious.  And I ate so much.  

.....and so did Vicky:

I was stuffed.  I never eat like this.  I went back for seconds.

 

But, then, when it was desert time, well, it's like I grew another stomach.  Take a look at this pumpkin pie and tell me if you can really blame me.  She made TWO of them.  TWO!

Now, before you even entertain the thought that I am a lazy lout who just watches football on Thanksgiving while his wonderful wife works away in the kitchen, I want you to know that all of the meal was a COOPERATIVE EFFORT!

 

My two jobs were to sit in the kitchen and tell Vicky that everything looked really good (and I performed magnificently):

 

 

and my other job was to put the turkey into the oven and take it out.  It was heavy.  This is a part of a Thanksgiving meal that often goes underappreciated, but once again I performed magnificently:

So, after this totally filling meal, I gorged on pie (for the record, Vicky sorta gorged too). 

 

Thankfully, Vicky found an article in the New York Times that proved, beyond any doubt, that I am not a pig but that I am, instead, merely responding to my genetically-based survival-of-the-fittest needs.  It's beyond my control.  Sadly, I am the victim of millions of years of evolution. 

 

So, that piece of pie I'm eating?  That's only one of them.  I ate another just like it.

 

Well, that's not EXACTLY true, because an hour later, just before bed, I sneaked into the kitchen and found there was still 1/4 of the pie left.  So, answering the call of my genetic evolution, I ate half of it. 

 

This morning, 12 hours later, while swimming at the pool I remarked how full I felt.

 

Vicky confessed.  She felt really full too.  She had gone into the refrigerator after she saw me eating the pie before bedtime and had finished it off.  

 

So we both agreed.  We would freeze the second pie she made and save it for Christmas, since she obviously doesn't have the self-control that I do.

And DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHE SAID?   She actually had the audacity to say that she knew I would change my mind and ask to have it unfrozen.  WELL I NEVER!

So I made the video above, making my commitment public.  The whole world will know that when Dan Graybill says to freeze a pie until Christmas he means to freeze a pie until Christmas.  No ifs, ands or buts.

That is until a few hours later, when I asked Vicky to take the second pie out of the freezer.

We danced on Thanksgiving in celebration of all we have to be thankful for….

Too bad Leisure World doesn't have an award for weird...

We'd win it.

 

It’s not enough that we tool around Leisure World on a tandem bike (only people here who have one) at 4:00 in the morning.

 

 

But we also do our tandem cycling in the dark while wearing green hats that some people here have said makes us look like the Flying Nun (a TV show in the late 60s starring Sally Field as a……ready for it…..flying nun).  

 

To add to our image as weird people, we are also now looking like Lloyd Bridges in the 50s TV series Sea Hunt when we go to the swimming pool here.  Lloyd Bridges, (the “Dude’s” father) starred in this TV series as as a deep sea diver.  

We found that the pool in Leisure World, at 3:00 in the morning during the winter, is too cold to be fun for us to swim laps.  

So bought wet suits.  

The good thing is that nobody is around the pool at 3:00 (surprise!) to laugh at us.

 

You can, though.  Feel free!  

Wile E. Coyote is still trying to catch the Roadrunner!

As children growing up in the 50s, a highlight of our week was spending entire Saturday mornings watching cartoons.  And one of our very favorite cartoons was poor Wile E. Coyote forever trying to catch the Roadrunner.  Every one of Wile E.’s complex plans was a dismal failure—meep meep.

We hung this 1950’s wall decoration in our cabin.  It was made by the Dolly Toy Company, which is now out of business. Dan collected this particular wall hanging when he had his part-time vintage toy business many years ago.  

It was hung partly in honor of Wile E. who never lost his enthusiasm to create new and brilliant (or so he thought) plans to try to catch the Roadrunner.  The other reason that the Roadrunner/Wile E. Dolly Toy wall hanging holds a place of honor in our cabin is because we have named our new e-Bikes “Wile E.” and “Roadrunner.”

Dan is Wile E.

And I am the Roadrunner.

Dan is forever chasing me through the deserts and pine forests while we are riding our e-Bikes, just like Wile E. was forever chasing the Roadrunner.

The real reason that he always rides behind me when we are cycling is very sweet.  He is protecting me.  He rides behind, further to the left of me on the edge of the road, so if there is a crazy driver coming up behind us, he would get hit instead of me.   

The past several days we have been at our cabin, cycling and hiking in the mornings and relaxing in the mountain sunshine in the afternoons.  The nights are in the high 30’s, but the days are perfect.  Boy, are we happily surprised that we can still enjoy the warmth of the sun in late November in the mountains!

Look who came through our yard (with her baby safely hidden in the trees) to say “hello” to us while we were sitting on our front porch this week.

We have found that riding our e-Bikes on dirt, rocky Forest Service roads is really a different activity than cycling with our road bikes, or even with Daisy, our tandem.  The e-Bikes are heavy (75 pounds), and if the front or back tire hits a rock or gravel at an odd angle, the bike will go cattywampus.  (Cattywampus = we fall). 

So it takes a lot of strength, concentration, and a bit of forward speed to keep these heavy beasts upright. And, obviously, there is a learning curve for both of us to stay upright on Wile E. and Roadrunner.

We have both fallen.  Dan is much more talented at dumping Wile E.  He feels it going down and jumps off.  I’m not so good….I hang on and go flying down on the rocks, with Roadrunner on top of me.

I fell two times in one day on Hardscrabble Road yesterday.  And I can attest---Hardscrabble Road is VERY hard!  

I got both of my knees bloodied up:

I’ve had horses for over half of my life, and I know what you do when you fall off a horse. You get back on the horse again…..and again!

So today, (the day after my falls), we headed up to the rim to our favorite pine forests interspersed with grassy meadows.  I got back on the horse, or, actually Roadrunner.

 

We love these bikes.  It is so intimate to be riding in the middle of nowhere all by ourselves, with only the sound of the birds and the wind in the pines.  As is typical for most of our hiking and biking excursions into the woods, we saw no one else once we left the highway.  We had a wonderful time exploring much further into the forests than we can when we hike.

 

We had a lovely hike a few days ago on the rim.  We could feel and smell the brisk, cool air of late fall.  The flowers have gone to seed and the grass has turned a pale yellow color.  But the sky is eggshell blue and the sun shines brightly.

Now, back to Wile E. and Roadrunner—the REST of the story:

Wile E. finally caught the Roadrunner.  Yesterday when I fell twice on Hardscrabble Road, Dan lifted Roadrunner off of me.  Thank you, sweetheart.  

Actually, I have found that it isn’t so bad to be caught by my Wile E!

Don't try to remake 1950s westerns.....you'll fail

I read recently that Mel Gibson is doing a remake of The Wild Bunch.

What an insane idea.  There can be no remake of perfection, and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is perfection.

More on this later.

Why do people try to remake old westerns?  With one exception, they have never done it well.

1950s westerns fit into my life in a powerful way.  My father really liked them.  And so, in the 1950s when I was a pre-teen,  he and I would go to see a western about once a week or so.  I never tired of them, and of course liked being with my father.   

Here are some examples of remakes that get an F:

1.  The Magnificent Seven.

One of the top 10 westerns ever made.  1960.   It was truly magnificent, with several stars, a moving story and absolutely awesome, and irreplaceable, film score.

It starred Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn (the Man From Uncle), and as the bad guy, Eli Wallach.  A star-studded cast if there ever was one.

The 2016 version was a PC project--complete with an Asian, Black, Latino, and Native American actors in the "Seven."  And the "enemy" wasn't a Mexican bandit and his gang, but instead was......wait for it....a white industrialist.  Oh jeez.

As mentioned, the original featured Eli Wallach as Calvera, the leader of the band that was terrorizing the village that the Seven went in to protect.  He was a great bandit.

Here is an interesting tidbit about the Seven and Calvera.  

The actors who played the Seven lived to an average of 72 years old.  Calvera lived to be 98.

Shows you that crime actually maybe DOES pay.

Can anyone hum the theme song to the remake?

I can.  Want to know what it is?  It is the theme song from the ORIGINAL, 1960, version of the film.   They must have realized that they couldn't improve upon the original soundtrack, but somehow thought they could improve upon the original movie.  FAIL.

Another interesting tidbit.  The original Magnificent Seven was based upon a Japanese movie called the Seven Samurai.  Same basic story.  

But I'd advise you to skip Seven Samurai.  It was a great story, and a good-enough film, but it was basically three hours of screeching.  Not just speaking Japanese, but screeching it.  If you watch it, wear ear plugs.  It is highly respected and highly rated, but I found it to be not nearly as moving and well-made as the John Sturgis film Magnificent Seven.  I also think it was about an hour too long. 

But that's just me.  What do I know?  As mentioned above, I only spent my childhood in the 1950s, with my father, going to westerns, and have seen hundreds of them. 

I also have a collection of about 450, mostly 1950s, westerns.  The 50s were the heyday of westerns.  

From 1985-1993 Cinemax (remember Cinemax?) had a channel titled Cinemax Western Roundup.  I was a fan.  I videotaped most of my 450 westerns during this time, and then, 25 years later, converted them to digital.  A labor of love, but they have a special place in my heart because of my father.

I had two favorites.  One was The Searchers (my all-time favorite western and all-time favorite film).  

The other is one of the top westerns of all time:  3:10 to Yuma.  This the second remake I'm going to rip.

2.  3:10 to Yuma remake    The original 3:10 to Yuma.

It was written by Elmore Leonard, an extremely talented writer who went on to write many books and screenplays about low-level gangsters (Get Shorty, Justified, Jackie Brown, etc.).

3:10 to Yuma was a film about a rancher who is desperate to feed his family because of a drought.  So he volunteers to escort a criminal (Ben Wade, played by Glenn Ford) to the 3:10 to Yuma train, in exchange for some money to keep his ranch from going under.  No one else would do it, because Ben Wade had a nasty gang who was trying to keep him from having to get on this train.  The rancher was no lawman, no gunman.  Just a guy whose ranch was going under because of lack of rain.  That's the beauty of this film.

And during the film, Ben Wade slowly changes his attitude toward this man who is not doing anything for glory but just for his wife and child.  At the crucial moment in the film, the train is leaving and the rancher has no way of forcing Ben Wade onto it and avoid the gang that will kill him.  At the last minute Ben Wade jumps into the box car with him.  Ben Wade does not want to leave the rancher at the mercy of his gang--he has developed a genuine respect for him.

On the way out of town, the rancher sees his wife and son along the road in a buckboard, as it starts to rain.  And the theme music starts.  Sung by Frankie Laine.

Oh boy, cowboy.  

Another aspect of this film for me is a powerful family memory.  On the way to the movie with my dad, in 1957, I realized that, for about the first time (maybe actually the first time), my sister Kathy was going with us.  This meant that my mom was home alone.

So I asked dad to stop the car, and I got out, and started to walk back to the house to be with mom so she wouldn't be alone.  I felt so bad for her.  As I started walking, my dad got out and told me that it was OK, that mom would be fine and that I could go to the movie.

Later that night, in my bedroom, when my parents thought I was asleep, I heard my father tell this story to my mother.  She never said anything about it, nor did he.  But I was so proud that my mother knew I cared about her in this way.

So, now the remake of 3:10 to Yuma, with Russell Crowe playing Ben Wade, and Christian Bale playing the role of the rancher.  

Blah.  Russell Crowe is a sharpshooter, and Christian Bale is totally unconvincing in his role as a desperate rancher.  He should have watched the original with Van Heflin as the rancher to get ideas of how to play the role.  

.....and (spoiler alert) at the end of the film, Christian Bale gets killed.  For real.  No sweet ending.  And Russell Crowe doesn't get to Yuma.  He whistles for his horse who gallops to the train and he escapes--Ben Wade is also a horse trainer for the circus, I guess. So not only is the rancher's wife and child worse off than if the rancher had just stayed home, but I don't believe it even started to rain at the end. 

The director (Anton Fuqua) should have gone to westerns with his dad, so he could understand what they are all about.

 3.  Now, just to prove I can be fair, there was one remake, True Grit,  that was better than the original True Grit.   On the other hand, although it is officially a "western," in many respects it is almost more of a comedy because of the skillful and unique writing in the book it was based upon. 

True Grit was written by Charles Portis.  Portis could use language in a way that was different, fun, and funny.  He didn't write many novels, unfortunately.  

In the original, the cast had two major players:  John Wayne and, as the bad guy, Robert Duvall in a very early role (and minor one in this film).  John Wayne won an Academy Award for best acting, but shouldn't have (and I can say this as an admitted John Wayne fan).  He was much better in several earlier films, including two where he should have won Academy Awards for best actor (The Searchers and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon).  It was given to him for True Grit because he had been ignored earlier in his career when he really could act.

The rest of the starring cast was weak:  Kim Darby, Glenn Campbell.  

In a supporting role (actually one extended scene) was one of the great character actors of all time:  Strother Martin.  He is most well known by a single line in the film Cool Hand Luke:  "What we have here is a failure to communicate."

The remake was done by the Coen brothers, who I am sure enjoyed the opportunity to highlight Portis' humor.  

In the Rooster Cogburn role was Jeff Bridges who was great.  And as LaBoeuf (pronounced LaBeef) was Matt Damon who was funnier than all get out.  This is an example of Portis' humor, though.  Who would name a character in a western LaBoeuf?  Damon portrays him as a precise-talking stuffed-shirt Texas Ranger.

In the final scene of the film, John Wayne charges four men in a terrific gunfight.  However, the scene was carefully constructed so that the closeups of Wayne were done while he was in the bed of a truck.  

However, in the remake, Jeff Bridges is really riding the horse.  That's quite a feat. 

The main person in the film and story is none of the men though.  Instead it was the young girl who sets out to track down an outlaw who killed her father.  In the remake she is played by a new actress:  Hailee Steinfeld.  It was her first movie role, at age 14.  She was terrific.  Her character, Mattie Ross, had no sense of humor.  Tough as nails. Sharp witted.

She set out on her journey to find someone with "true grit" to hunt down the outlaw that killed her father.   

In point of fact, in an irony that Charles Portis created, it was actually Mattie Ross who had "true grit."

You just gotta watch this scene.  It is a classic.

Here is the scene from the original True Grit.  It is also well done.  It is the scene with the aforementioned Strother Martin.  (as a coincidence, Strother Martin was also in The Wild Bunch).

It's all great fun, very funny in places.  And touching, especially with the theme music.

It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards.  It didn't win any.  That would probably have amused Charles Portis.  It should have won several. 

4.  Back to The Wild Bunch.

It starred five aging, over-the-hill actors playing five aging, over-the-hill outlaws. 

Besides a terrific story and terrific acting, this film wrote the book on gunfights and the cinematography of gunfights.  There are scenes that are almost unbelievable.  The director, Sam Peckinpah, was noted for the violence in his films, but the violence in The Wild Bunch is absolutely beautiful at times.

You've got to see it to believe it.  One member of the gang is helping the authorities destroy the rest of the gang.  Everybody is a lout.  Everybody is thinking only about themselves and will turn on each other on a dime.  They are awful to each other, to women, to townspeople, to everybody.

Except at the end.  "Let's go" they say as they go to try to rescue their friend.

They "go" all right--to the most amazing gun battle you will ever see, and by far the most amazing gun battle ever portrayed in a western.  It rivals the landing on Normandy Beach in Saving Private Ryan.  It lasts over five minutes, if you can believe that.  Here is a great depiction of how it was shot.  Last gunfight in The Wild Bunch.

The American Film Institute ranked The Wild Bunch as the 6th best western of all time.  It deserves its high honor (and for the record, the AFI listed The Searchers as the best western of all time--just sayin...).

Mel Gibson's remake is appearing, once again, to be a PC version.  Here is an article about it, written two years ago.    It does not seem anything has happened in the interim.  Good!

Drop it, Mel.  You are a great movie maker.  But don't try to remake greatness.  You'll fail. 

People--stop trying to remake old westerns.  Leave them to my memories of me with my father.  

Our family…..73 years to 3 weeks old

 And our grandchildren range from a senior in high school to a newborn baby.  

We have added our littlest grandchild to our refrigerator “Hall of Fame” at La Cabana de Montana, our cabin in Pine…..

….and at Nuestra Casa, our home in Mesa.

We are so fortunate to have such fun and loving children and grandchildren and all our family that we cherish and love so much.

Fall colors….in Arizona???

During the last two weeks while hiking in the National Forests surrounding our cabin we were treated to a very nice surprise—vibrant fall colors!

The leaves on the trees are falling.  The nights are in the low 40’s.  In afternoons it is sunny and 70 degrees.  We sit on the deck at our cabin together and watch the deer and elk leisurely walk down the dirt road in front of our home.  It is heavenly.

We had planned to stay at our mountain cabin for two weeks.  In the blink of an eye these two weeks have passed.   Tomorrow we head south to our lovely home in Mesa, Nuestra Casa.

When we return to our cabin, all the bright vibrant leaves will be blowing in the wind, or possibly buried under snow….

But high on the plateaus, our grassland meadows remain spectacularly beautiful this fall.

These meadows and forests will be calling us, and we will not be able to resist them.   We are excited to hike and cycle in these National Forest wonderlands, and experience their beauty through the changing seasons.

Another glorious years day on the rim with our Rad bikes

 

We had another glorious ride on the Mogollon Rim with our new Rad Rover electric-assist bikes.  

We found a series of roads (actually Vicky found them, as she is our navigator/leader/hike planner/map chick).

They were dirt roads with a lot of large rocks in places and with major puddles to ride around and with some areas that were straight shots where we could actually get up to......10 MPH!  (see photos above)

And some beautiful grass meadows in the forests.  Vicky (navigator/leader/hike planner/map chick) says we will be back to the area in the spring because those meadows will be filled with flowers.

Another draw to the area:  We saw no one else on any of the roads we traveled.  It's like we owned this world.  

Using the Rads is a physical workout.  For one thing, we have to load and unload them four times, and they are heavy.

And cycling on them is a workout.  One is not only pedaling, but also you have to keep a tight grip to be able to maneuver around the rocks in the road.  Using the electric assist is a learning experience because you don't want too much or too little.  You want to be pedaling most of the time, and using the assist to go fast enough to go over rocks safely.  If you are going too slow over and around the rocks then your front wheel can get moved sideways very quickly and you can lose control.  You have to be alert at all times, taking only quick glances at the scenery. 

It is more of an upper body workout than road cycling. 

It's so fun.  And it gives us much-needed variety in our days.  

Here is Vicky cycling on a relatively calm section (remember, she's 71 years old and doing this!):

 ...at the start of the video you can see her maneuvering around large rocks in the road

And here is my sweetheart, Dan, (remember he is almost 74 years old and doing this!):