Hoop Tree

I took this picture in Prescott a couple of months ago.
There was something about the juxtaposition of the hoop against the tree that pretty much blew my mind...

Dart Safety and the Purple Bikini

An excerpt from The Eight Fingered Criminal's Son
Dart Safety and the Purple Bikini
by W.Z Snyder
© 2008 William Snyder

Dart Safety and the Purple Bikini (1972)
When Cary Babinski showed up in my driveway I could barley see him for the onrush of late morning sunlight from behind. I had been hanging out in the garage, throwing darts. I spent a lot of time hanging out in that musty old garage that summer. Surfer Girl by Hawthorne’s own Beach Boys was playing on the baby blue transistor radio my father had sent me for Christmas.

“Hey Billy, can I play with you?”

Cary was nine and I was eleven.

“I don’t play, I hang out you little geek,” I unloaded on the goofy little kid.

Now I was plenty goofy myself and had experienced more than my share of derision from those my own age and even more from the older kids in the neighborhood so it was nice to have someone I could shove around once in a while. Cary sat on a sawhorse and watched me throw darts. I was showing off. I was picturing myself as Mingo from the Daniel Boone show throwing knives and hatchets. Mingo’s real name was Ed Ames and I'd seen him demonstrate his real life expertise with hatchet throwing on the Johnny Carson Show earlier that week.

“Let me throw the darts Billy.”

“You’re too young; darts are dangerous and you could get hurt. Then it would be my responsibility.”

“C’mon, I wanna’ play.”

“Shut up and watch the master you little dork.”

I let him retrieve the darts after I threw them. Feeling mighty confident after a few particularly good tosses, I was starting to picture myself in Mingo’s league. Mingo was without a doubt the coolest guy on the Daniel Boone show, cooler than Rosie Greer or Daniel Boone. He was a bad ass Indian dude who had been educated in England.

“Come on Billy, let me play.”

It was pathetic.

“OK.”

I had a bad idea. I picked up a flat yellow carpenter’s pencil and pulled Cary over to the dartboard.

“Now, put this pencil in your mouth.”

“Put the pencil in my mouth?”

“Yeah, like a cigarette.”

I was impatient.

“Ohhhh, your goanna’ knock the pencil outta’ my mouth like Mingo did on with the hatchets on Johnny Carson!”

The kid was excited.

I shoved the pencil into his mouth, backed up a few paces and picked out a dart.

“Yeah, that’s it Babinski, now hold still.”

The kid was shaking as I took careful aim.

“Are you sure you know how to do this Billy?”

“Sure I’m sure, now hold still.”

I was concentrating with everything I had. None too happy with what has going on, Kookie the Wonder Dog began to whimper at me feet.

“Shut up Kookie, I’m trying to concentrate.”

Beads of sweat began to form on Cary Babinski’s forehead as he attempted to stand still with his ear pressed against the dartboard. It was already hot. A prop plane buzzed low overhead. I took careful aim at the yellow pencil. The moist salty ocean air caused the metal and plastic dart feel slippery between my fingers. I squinted. I was one with Mingo. The smell of lawnmower gasoline, sawdust and spilled laundry detergent and the Pacific Ocean breeze filled my lungs as took a deep breath. In one motion, I released the air and the dart, hard and smooth. The dart sailed across the garage.

Thhhwwwwwack.

“ARGHHH!” Babinski bellowed in sheer terror.

You can read the rest in The Eight Fingered Criminal's Son. Check current postings to purchase the book...

snYder CoMics #12

On Dealing with Atrophy

I had trouble getting out of bed this morning. My back hurt. So did my knees and ankles – and my neck. My left rotator cuff was feeling a little funky too. I must have been moving pretty slow because my wife told me I was walking around like an old man. I’ve been walking around like this for a couple of weeks now and I have a dumbass waitress at Valle Luna Mexican Restaurant to thank. You see, the family went out for a relaxing dinner a couple of weeks ago and the dumbass waitress passed out the menus she deemed it necessary to grace me with the senior citizen’s menu.

“Really? Really” I asked, “You think I’m a senior citizen???”

“Well, the senior menu is for fifty-five and over.”

“YOU THINK I’M FIFTY-FIVE?”

For the record, I just turned fifty. Now I understood I was on the back nine and all but I had this ego fed vision of myself appearing much younger than fifty. I thought of myself as physically fit, agile, with cat like speed and the ability to hop chain link fences and the like.

I guess I got smacked upside the head with an epiphany and a half, courtesy of the bored waitress with a deadpan delivery, now didn’t I? The truth of the matter seems to be I’m a fifty year old dude who looks fifty – even fifty-five.

And so I’ve been grunting out daily ninety minute workouts at the gym, the result of which has been, according to my lovely wife, to make me appear even older.

One of my students asked why I was moving so slow. I told the class the menu story. They seemed to find humor in my struggle against the inevitable. A sweet little girl in the back of the room asked me if I was aware there was a sizeable bald spot on the back of my head and if I ever considered using the spray on hair product her grandfather uses.

My wife and students don’t seem to do much good helping me deal with the inevitable effects of atrophy, but waitresses with senior citizen’s menu’s are the worst.

Dumbass Valle Luna waitress.

snYder coMics #11 - WHEN PIGS FLY

I've run across a few people with goofy names over the years.

Extacy Queen, Liberty Bell and Ivy Wall are fomer students and Roy Beadknopf is a former classmate.

The Arizona Justice League of Photographers in Old Town Scottsdale

The Arizona Justice League recently got together for an early Sunday morning shoot in Old Town Scottsdale.

Of course the Banana was there too.

Clif the Lawyer pointed out that this was an interesting piece of art. Too bad the artists got the letters backwards.

The banana was lurking. The banana is always lurking.

Can't tell you why, but I dig doors on old buildings.

I was playing Peter Pan, trying to catch my shadow.

Couldn't resist the white against the blue Arizona morning sky.

The green and blue was working for me too.

Anybody else ancient enough to remember Roy and Dale and Trigger?

"In the name of everything that's good Clif, get the hell out of there!"

Cowabunga!

snYder coMics #10

Happy Easter...

Bill and Wayne’s Excellent Adventures in the World of Movies

CAT BALLOU


My father-in-law, Wayne and I had such a good time analyzing The Big Country that we’ve decided to declare ourselves amateur film critics.


Sticking with the western genre, sort of, we chose Cat Ballou as our second subject. Cat Ballou, a western/comedy/musical, starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin is an exceptionally unique film. One might compare Cat Ballou to Paint Your Wagon, also starring Lee Marvin. But then again Paint Your Wagon is first and foremost, a musical while Cat Ballou is first and foremost, a western.

Jane Fonda is captivatingly sizzling as a one time innocent school teacher who seduces four men to help her avenge the death of her father. Then again, maybe she is sizzlingly captivating.


Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye are quirky cool as the western version of a Greek chorus.

If you really want to talk quirky cool, let’s talk about Lee Marvin. Heck, if you really want to talk quirky cool, let’s talk about Lee Marvin’s Horse. The photograph above does an adequate job of explaining the quirky cool aspect, doesn’t it?

Marvin was presented with the 1965 Academy Award for best actor in response to his dual role as a drunken gunfighter, Kid Sheleen and his nefarious brother, Tim “Silver Nose” Shawn. It's not every day that the blowhards of the academy grant a best actor award for a comedic role.

Lee Marvin is one of the more interesting figures in film history. An ancestor of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee, Marvin served as a United States Marine in World War II. He received a Purple Heart wounds he received at the Battle of Saipan.

Marvin garnered unwanted national attention for his legal battle with Michelle Triola. The woman demanded half of the 3.6 million dollars Marvin earned during the six years she shared a bed with Marvin. This first great palimony suite ended with Triola being awarded absolutely nothing.

Upon receiving the Academy Award, Marvin said, “I think half of this belongs to a horse somewhere out in the valley.”

Captivating Sizzle or Sizzling Captivity...

snYder CoMic #9

snYder coMics #8

Go Teach Your Grandmother to Suck Eggs!

From left to right, here's former Boston Celtic and the first man to shatter an NBA backboard, Chuck Conners, Gregory (call me Atticus) Peck, and a blonde.


Let me tell you about an old movie that recently rocked my world, The Big Country.

What a great ride.

The film score is nothing short of epic. The cinematography is mind blowing. The riveting story blurs the lines between good and bad, weak and strong, courageous and cowardly. Charlton Heston, Burl Ives, Chuck Connors, and Jeanne Simmons make up an outstanding supporting cast.
The film includes a fight scene between Heston and Gregory Peck which may be the best ever filmed. The director’s use of wide angle shots is like nothing I’ve ever seen.

Gregory Peck stars as a sea captain who finds himself in the middle of a land feud in the old west. Peck is the quintessential American hero: courageous, strong, determined, hard working, soft spoken, and proficient with his fists, ready to take on any challenge. He’s not about talking; he’s about doing.

Burl Ives won the Academy award for best supporting actor as a tough but ethical old bastard embroiled in a bitter land dispute with a tough but not so ethical old bastard. It’s strange; I can’t help attaching Burl Ives to the voice of the sweet little snowman in the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. It was hard to get my brain around the cute little snow man cussing and beating the hell out of people.

There’s a Burl Ives line in the picture that knocked me right off of the couch, a line that will go down as one of my all time movie favorites.

Gregory Peck offers to clean a pair of pistols before a duel. Ives snaps, "Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs! I've been handling guns like this, flintlock and cap lock, since before you were born."

Teach your grandmother to suck eggs!

Teach your grandmother to suck eggs???

Ignorant and curious, I made it a point to do a little on line research. It turns out the phrase has been around a long time. “You would teach my Grandame to suck Eggs”, was first recorded in 1707.

I guess the point of the old saying is don’t tell somebody how to do something when he’s already proficient. I take it grandmothers were really good at sucking eggs back in the day.

I highly recommend The Big Country to any connoisseur of classic films. You can’t beat bigger than life music, photography, story, and actors; moreover, you get to hear Burl Ives say, “TEACH YOUR GRANDMOTHER TO SUCK EGGS.”

Here's Gregory Peck and Jean Simmons, not the guy from KISS, the stunning movie starlet who was married to Howard Hughes for a while.

Prescott Snow

A snow storm hit the last night we were in Prescott. Living in Phoenix, snow is a real treat. I grabbed my camera and a cup of coffee and took an early morning walk .

The town was so quiet, so peaceful, nothing but the sound of my running shoes crunching in the snow.

Kind of felt like I was walking on clouds.

Magic.

There was a high school basketball team from Santa Rita staying at the hotel. They played for the state championship Saturday night. I had breakfast with the coaches in the hotel lobby. The team's quest for the championship was successful. After celebrating at a local pizza joint, the boys went up to their rooms and a couple of the coaches headed out to Bucky's Casino. Upon returning to the hotel they conducted a room check. No boys. It turned out that the kids were behind the hotel building snowmen and firing snowballs at each other. Coming from the Tucson area, many of them had never seen snow.

Must have been quite an experience, winning the state championship and then experiencing snow for the first time at three in the morning.

I dig Prescott.

Magic.

Prescott Weekend

This is my gorgeous wife, Gail. Every year the two of us drive a hundred miles to spend our anniversary weekend in Prescott, Arizona. We always make it a point to make a few stops along Whiskey Row where local musicians play blues, classsic rock, and country.

As always, we made the most of our time. We spent an hour in Bucky's Casino braving the blanket of cigarette smoke and playing the penny slot machines. Gail lost ten bucks while I won five. Five bucks for an hour's entertainment for two ain't bad.

We had the opportunity to see Crazy Heart, Shutter Island, and Valentine's Day.

Crazy Heart was excellent. Good story. Jeff Bridges is the man - so much more than just the Dude. I've been inspired to grow a Bad Blake beard. Robert Duvall was very cool in a small but important part. The movie got me thinking about the creative spark, addiction, forgiveness, redemption, and Bridges' love interest, Maggie Gilinhall - I'm thinking she needs to put on twenty or thirty pounds.

Valentines Day was an absolute thumbs down, baby. I sat through two hours of cutesy Hollywood starts giggling and making goo goo eyes at each other, apparently trying to show the world how cute they are. Blechhh.

Shutter Island was interesting. I knew there was a twist going in, so I figured it out right away. The music was a little over the top. It's hard for me to give a true review because the movie experience was ruined by the idiot sitting next to me, not my wife - the guy on the other side. The schmuck smacked and slurped his pop corn nonstop for the first hour of the movie.

Gail and I had some great food and stayed at a beautiful hotel; best of all, we got to hang out together.

My wife did did a little Saturday morning shopping while I wandered the alley behind Whiskey Row.

Above is the back of the Hotel Saint Michael. Tough guy president, Teddy Roosevelt once stayed here; not in the alley, in the hotel.

This is the back of the Palace Bar, arguably the oldest saloon in Arizona. A lot of history went down in this establishment, a place where the Earp brothers drank, Little Egypt danced, and Steve McQueen made a movie.

I've been puttering away at a time travel story that takes place in Prescott.

Walking the alley way behind Whiskey Row somehow connected me with the history of the old territorial capitol.

Looking at the back ends of buildings has a way of taking me back in time.

This spooky old crow kept me company for a solid three blocks. He added atmosphere to the experience.

Whiskey Row Burned to the ground in 1900.

New buildings were under construction within a couple of weeks.

Some of the buildings have held up the last 110 years better than others.

This is Granite Creek where gold was first discovered in the early 1860s. The first makeshift buildings of Presott were constructed along Granite Creek. The winding stream borders the Whiskey Row alley at this point. The original Whisky Row backed up against the the Creek for several blocks. Drunken miners and cowboys had a tendancy to fall into the creek and drown after a night on the row, prompting the proprietors to move the row a block away.

snYder coMics #7

An Exerpt from The Spirit Guide Bar

An excerpt from The Spirit Guide Bar
“Christmas Lights”
By W.Z Snyder
© 2009 William Snyder

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, the day the Christmas lights go up. And this year, because I am 12, my mother has given me the go ahead to hang the lights myself. Somewhere in excess of two hours have been spent untangling the green cords. The lights have been checked and the bad bulbs replaced. The nails have been firmly driven into the wood trim since we moved into the place five years ago. Baby, believe me when I tell you I’m ready to hang some Christmas lights. With the lights urbanely draped over my boney shoulder, I step onto the aluminum ladder, envisioning myself to be some death defying Army Ranger, ascending the treacherous cliffs of Monte Cassino. Safely on the roof, I begin to work the light cord around the nails. My left hand slips on the grey roofing and gravity pulls me off balance. My adrenalin kicks in and my heart rate quickens as I regain my footing. The last thing I want to do is fall off of this roof and break my arm. Those Christmas paper route tips will be piling in next month and that bad ass banana yellow, three speed Schwinn Stingray is waiting for me behind the plate glass window at Phil’s Bike Shop. My heart rate approaches normalcy as I wrap the light chord around another nail.

“Good morning, Billy.”

It is Johnny Torres standing at the bottom of the ladder. This kid is one of a kind. At the ripe old age of 11, he has the voice of a 55 year-old truck driver. It’s really weird; the kid is undersized for his age but he possesses freakishly mature facial features. Appearing something like a kid version of Edward G. Robinson, Johnny Torres is the neighborhood wheeler and dealer. Every Sunday morning he sets out from paper machine to paper machine, dropping in 25 cents and cleaning them out, one by one. Then he stands in front of the church selling his stolen Sunday papers to the parishioners as they leave mass. In the past he’s offered to help me rake leaves or mow the lawn, out of the goodness of his own heart, then gone to my mother and demanded payment. This kid is trouble with a capital Torres.

“What do you want Torres?” I ask warily.

“Nothing. I don’t want nothing at all, Billy. What are you doing up there?” he asks with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“I’m stealing papers to sell at church. Now get the heck out of here, Torres.” I sneer in my most spiteful voice.

“I’ll help you. I don’t got nothing else to do, Billy.” he says, sounding something like Lurch from The Adams Family.

“Yeah, I don’t need you’re kind of help. Now get the heck out of here.”

The kid defiantly places the toe of his tattered PF Flier on the bottom step of the ladder.

“What are you doing down there, Torres?”

“I told you Billy, I want to help you.”

“And I told you Torres, I don’t want your kind of help.”

Torres takes hold of the ladder as I shout, “Don’t come up here. If you fall, you could sue my mother.”

“I won’t sue you’re mother. Just let me watch.”

It becomes evident that he plans on coming up no matter what I say when he tightens his grip and places a PF Flyer on the second step of the ladder.

Taking firm hold of the cold aluminum at top of the ladder, I shout, “I said don’t come up here, Torres!”

He takes a second step and quite brilliantly, I shove the ladder hard with both hands. Torres steps down and the ladder flips over him – pulling me forward, still hanging onto the top like some out of control pole-vaulter. It feels very much like I am flying - for just that split second before I come crashing, wrists first, to front lawn. There is the sound of bones in my wrists popping and snapping. Strangely, I feel nothing at all – for about a second and a half. And then the white pain explodes like a crashing freight train. I scream in window rattling anguish and the slightest movement makes the excruciating torture even more excruciating. My hands hang from my wrists like broken chicken necks.

Torres stands over me and asks in his freakishly low voice, “What the heck did you do that for, Billy?”

To which I reply, “Ahh, my arms! I broke my arms!” and then I remember, “There goes my banana yellow, three speed Stingray.”

My mother bursts from the screen door and promptly tells me to shut the hell up. She doesn’t believe me until the two-bit criminal from around the corner confirms in his Lou Rawls voice that I have indeed plummeted, palms first from the roof. He assures her that he indeed did hear the bones crack.

My mother screams at me for falling off the roof during the entire ride to the emergency room. Somehow the Munchkin version of Paul Robson has talked my mother into letting him come along. At the emergency room, I cannot, no matter how hard I try, get a word in edge wise as Torres explains in great detail how I fell from the roof. The doctor shushes me when I demand to be allowed to give my side of the story. The doctor is in fact quite fascinated with Torres’s creepy voice.

“Exactly how long has it been since your voice changed, young man?” marvels the doctor.

My voice ain’t changed.” Torres bellows.

“You mean you’ve always sounded like this.”

‘That’s right, doc.”

“This is absolutely captivating. Would you mind waiting right here while I get the other doctors?”

“What about my arm?” I demand.

I abscond from the emergency room with my broken wrist in a cast and my sprained wrist in a sling. The next day, there is a knock at the front door. It is Torres. He explains that, under the darkness of night, like some kind of demented Christmas light elf, he has taken it upon himself to hang the lights. When my mother asks if she can pay him, he says the charge is 10 bucks - cash. Upon collecting 10 crisp ones, he gloats that the doctor gave him a card and UCLA Medical Center is going to pay him 60 dollars to scrutinize his vocal chords. The good news is I won’t have to do any writing in school for at least a month. Of course the bad news is I’ll have to give up the paper route. Frank Louder graciously agrees to take over for me. Frank will collect my Christmas tips; there will be no banana yellow sting ray. Is there no justice in this world? All I can say is I hope you’re satisfied wherever you are, Mr. Johnny Torres.