George Lang from Second Call Defense presented a very nice offer during the WAAM radio show I was hosting for my friend Matt Clark. I’ve done quite a lot of radio but this was the first time I was the host, which took a bit of getting used to. Its one thing to be a guest as George was, it’s another to be the pace setter watching all the commercial stops and working with the producer on the other side of the glass. But it was fun, as I expected it to be and as always quite revelatory. The entire broadcast can be heard at the following link, which I’d suggest listening to again and again because of all the information presented. I dedicated the show to the use of personal firearms for self-defense spending the first half talking about my personal experience in the matter, then put George on to discuss Second Call Defense, which is to my mind as important as the bullets you put into a gun used during a self-defense situation. George covered a remarkable number of legal ins and outs during his segment which was worth listening to all by itself. I have included the script I was working with to provide some guide to the broadcast. The times include commercials which have been removed from the following recording. George offered a free month of Second Call Defense subscription to anyone who types OVERMANWARRIOR into the redeem code on their website—which was a pretty good deal.
Here are the plans and pricing. The box requiring the redeem code is on the next page while filling out the payment information form.
Radio Show WAAM Saturday June 13, 2015 1 PM WAAM Talk 1600 734-822-1600
5 min — Matt Clark’s secret mission
8 min — Previous show and buying a .500 Magnum after realizing that society is already over the precipice. Clinton emails, Lois Lerner corruption, Benghazi cover-up, drug violence, open borders, ISIS terrorism, power grab by the Justice Department law enforcement over localized police, Common Core and two generations of poorly educated children, the weakest foreign policy of United States global presence in over a century, bomb scares at the White House, Justice Department cover ups, and men who want to be women and vice versa—the world has fallen over the edge.
10 min — What I wanted to be when I grew up—a gunsmith.
17 min — Soft break
20 min — Treat at the bottom of the hour, old song from T.G. Sheppard and Clint Eastwood from a more civilized time – the 1980s.
The reason 80s music and movies still resonate so powerfully in our culture.
o Reaganomics and individual empowerment.
Dirty Harry represented by Clint Eastwood embodied traditional America with the encroaching progressivism culminating in the movie Sudden Impact.
30 min — Hard break
35 min — Song “Go ahead and Make my Day.”
38 min — Introduction of George Lang and his company Second Call Defense.
47 min — Soft break
50 min — Continuation about Second Call Defense. Possibly take a phone call or two.
58 min — Exit to the top of the hour
As George pointed out during the broadcast George Zimmerman could have saved himself a lot of headache if he had used Second Call Defense during the Trayvon Martain shooting in Florida. Using a gun in home defense or in a stand-your ground situation is only part of the story. Because of the way laws and modern politics work, the burden of proof falls unfortunately on the shooter to validate their innocence. When talking to the police after such an unfortunate incident, it is best to give the police as little as possible to turn around and use against you in court during a criminal or civil trial. Some of those court hearings can be so painful that you might almost wish you hadn’t used a gun—which is the reason for all the progressive legislation—to nudge Americans away from the Second Amendment. There are entirely too many people involved in self-defense shootings every year that lose everything because of the legal entanglements that occur after. The very best thing to do in such a case is to turn all the legal work over to Second Call Defense and keep your mouth shut—even if you’re innocent of all guilt. The system works against gun owners, so you’ll need some help, which is why George Lang is involved in Second Call Defense to begin with. It’s a much-needed service for firearm use; just as the NRA is needed as a lobby against a gun grabbing government. They are both very important and go hand in hand in this modern age of a lawyer driven society primarily against gun rights.
As I reported in my broadcast my decision to purchase the .500 Magnum was for all the reasons that the SWAT guys used a .50 caliber sniper rifle to stop the crazed gunman who opened up on a Dallas police station just hours before my show. They used the big, powerful round to disable the getaway van by putting two shots into the engine block. The .500 Magnum has the same type of stopping power, which in the world we are living in, is needed. There is no reason to take risks with personal safety, so I am choosing the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum as my choice for family defense. But, those big bullets aren’t enough to protect a firearm user from the diabolical reaches of the classic political class and their need for a straw man to prosecute in the wake of a shooting. Their need for a straw man should never be underestimated. As a firearm owner, you need protection from them as much as you do the goons, the punks, and the creeps George and I were talking about. It’s a vicious world out there, and I have to thank George for making it easier for listeners of the Clarkcast to get protected with a free month by using the redeem word, “OVERMANWARRIOR.” Take advantage of that offer, it is some of the best insurance that you can have for yourself
I’ll be hosting for Matt again on Saturday, June 20th at 1pm. On that show Gery Deer will be with me to talk more about guns, knife throwing, and bull whips. Be sure to tune in for more voluminous entertainment and interconnecting knowledge.
At an annual dinner conducted by the participants of the Annie Oakley Western Arts Showcase there was much discussion about the new location in 2014 at York Woods in Ansonia, Ohio—just north of Greenville. The reviews of this new site were very favorable, but I wasn’t so sure when we were driving there for the first time. York Woods was founded in the mid 1800s and today is the site of the Greenville Steam Thrashers—a group dedicated to maintaining antique farm equipment. Once we arrived I said to my wife that this country was so much God’s that you felt like you could reach up and scratch his beard. It was amazingly remote and full of character. It was the first location of our annual Western Arts Showcase which has now been going on for well more than a decade that could justify a circus tent for our shows. Here is a video of the event:
We had the idea by seeing what kind of tent the drama group had up and for the first time considered that we should hold our future shows in just such a tent. In previous years our shows were in the Coliseum at the Darke County Fairgrounds about 10 miles to the south. Several times during the day weather threatened to alter our outdoor show, so it put in our minds the need for adjustments in the future if the York Woods site continued to be the destination.
We hoped that it would because there are things we could likely do at York Woods that we would never be allowed to do at the Fairgrounds, such as using firewhips and live ammunition for portions of our shows. I typically don’t perform for the exhibitions due to the many restrictions and my lack of interest in living within too many boundaries. I admire those who do, but I’ve always thought that our shows should incorporate more live fire—as was seen in one of my favorite movies, Bronco Billy. At York Woods the Annie Oakley Committee actually had shooting contests on site which greatly enhanced the event for the crowd. The Fairgrounds was in a fairly dense population area, but out in York Woods, there wasn’t much by way of residential living for at least a mile—maybe two. The farmland was vast and very open giving a truly ideal location for improvements to the Western Showcase.
We could continue to do the shows outside as we have for years, and just work around the weather, but it may well be time to have our own circus tent. Where space was always in short supply at the Fairgrounds, there was no shortage of space at York Woods giving our group for the first time some creative ability not seen before—so a small circus tent is something that we should pursue in the upcoming year.
To do this we are looking for corporate sponsorship that could pay for some of the costs and would be proud to feature all benefactors prominently. There are opportunities here that are unexplored for both parties, the Western Showcase participants and advertisers—so discussion would have to take place to make sure everyone gets what they want.
Interested parties should contact my friend Gery at:
As for my the movie Bronco Billy, it has always been a dream of mine to do for kids what the Clint Eastwood character in that film wanted to achieve. In that film Bronco Billy was operating his life upstream of the current in society and was functioning by a traditional set of rules that were grossly outdated even by the 1970s standards. It has always been a dream of mine to step into a circus tent like the one shown at the end of that movie made of American flags.
Americans for too many years have felt guilty for their history, their art, and their success. The tent at the end of Bronco Billy was a kind of statement of honor in preserving all those things. But it wasn’t real. Bronco Billy was just a movie character and the story was fictional. When the shooting was done, the tent was scrapped, and packed away forever forgotten, except on film. Well, 35 years after that film became a favorite of mine, I’m in the strange position of knowing really the only people left in America who have the ability to put on a show like what Bronco Billy did in that film. Gery Deer is the closest thing alive to Clint Eastwood’s fictional character in that movie and is the reason he and I have had a friendship that has went on for over a decade now.
The people in Gery’s shows are some of the most genuinely good people I have ever met and the gifts they have to offer the world extend well beyond the yearly shows at Annie Oakley’s festival each year in Greenville. But you have to start somewhere and it would appear that the York Woods location is the perfect spot for such an audaciously American fantasy. There were enough crowds at York Woods to fill the stands of a small circus tent and resurrect not in Las Vegas, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, or Orlando, Florida the lost arts of the cowboy, but Ansonia, Ohio the literal birthplace of Annie Oakley herself–one of the best trick shooters anywhere and a person all women should think of as a role model. Annie Oakley used to say, “Aim at a high mark and you’ll hit it. No, not the first time, or the second and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect. Finally, you’ll hit the bull’s eye of success.”
I read those words on the back of the brochure the Annie Oakley Committee passed out to visitors of their festival as I watched our group perform their knife throwing exhibitions, and whip tricks and thought of the possibilities if firearms and other—more audacious elements could be added to the show in York Woods in the future. And I couldn’t help but think of that Bronco Billy circus tent which has been bouncing around in my head for more than three decades now. There is no reason to aim high in this case because we have the firepower at many levels of hitting this target—a new target that was presented through a change that could very well be for the better.
These days it doesn’t matter if a show is ten miles outside of a town that is already many, many miles away from the rest of civilization. This is actually a plus, especially when the performers also have the ability of bringing the show to the rest of the world through “media.” Gery is a television producer—and he is also the producer of the only real Wild West Show left in the world. There are a few theme park types of acts out there, but nobody has the ability to pull the most talented people in the industry in for a real honest to goodness Wild West Show like Gery. All he needs to pull off the chance of a lifetime is a circus tent and a few sponsors.
I know that especially lately, each new movie that comes out; I have had grand things to say about them which weaves back through my life to points of origin that are not only sentimental, but deliberately placed there by the important people in my life who raised me. Part of being alive as opposed to half-dead or socially subdued is that you feel things. And I feel things, lots of things—because I have never turned my mind off to the world. I love movies, I love music, I love visiting places, I love food, I love family, I love books, I love comic books, but probably more than anything in my life besides family, I love bullwhips, and I was elated to discover recently that one of the great whip makers with ties to Western Stage Props had made three bullwhips for the upcoming Disney film The Lone Ranger. I was happy to hear that Joe Strain from his business The Northern Whip Company had supplied the whips for the grand revisit to the Old West by The Lone Ranger because it would not only help my friends in the bullwhip industry who make large parts of their livings off sharing their unique skills with the public, but that the modern makers of The Lone Ranger were going to pay tribute to the use of the whip in the classic stories that took place from the 1930s to the late 1950s. Not only would the new Lone Ranger from Disney pay direct tribute to the classic silver bullet mythology, the tenacious horse named “Silver,” the “William Tell Overture,” a very ambitious rendition of Tonto played by Johnny Depp, but they were even going to put a few whip scenes in the film, which used to be a standard in westerns.
I watched every television episode of The Lone Ranger at some point of my life at least once. I used to watch it with my grandfather when I was a very small child. CLICK HERE FOR MORE. When I was a kid it was a combination of The Lone Ranger, Disney’s Zorro, John Wayne westerns, and Clint Eastwood westerns that I watched with my family as entertainment before there was ever a Star Wars, or an Indiana Jones. In most of those old westerns, a bullwhip was the secondary weapon of choice on many occasions. So I grew up with a tremendous reverence for the bullwhip as have many of my friends from the bullwhip world who are seen scattered throughout this article in videos of their own displaying their love of a uniquely American art form. In fact the only place in the world where the bullwhip holds even more reverence than in America is in Australia. It is there that the whip maker who made the two whips seen hanging from my holsters in the picture above resides–Terry Jacka.
In the typical Lone Ranger stories, the hero Texas Ranger Reid is gunned down with a group of fellow Rangers and left for dead by a group of thugs who wish to inject crony capitalism into their local business operations. (Do not confuse this with pure capitalism which I support adamantly) To do so, they gun down the legitimate law so that they can make easy prey of the people they wish to exploit. It’s a classic theme that can be seen in virtually every western made and no matter how many hundreds of westerns I have seen, I never tire of the message. It is a theme I resurrected in my novel The Symposium of Justice in 2004 which essentially was a modern western set in the current time, and featured the marketing slogan “Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip.” I enjoyed tremendously the opportunities writing that novel gave me, the ability to do some stunt work for the World Stunt Association, make public appearances, and even do some consulting work in feature films, CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. I understood why my bullwhip friends enjoyed traveling the country doing tricks for audiences and performing in large shows. But from 2007 to 2009 I was getting the overwhelming feeling that something of a real Lone Ranger was needed in the actual world and I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. As I looked around at the diminishing crowds at some of the western events I attended and my friends with their commitment to traditional western arts were looking more antiquated each year by audiences who were rapidly losing an understanding of the typical values displayed in film westerns, I had noticed that a similar evil that was clear in the old Lone Ranger episodes was sucking the life out of the world around us, and I wasn’t content to just write about it in books, and show up on movie sets earning acclaim from top actors, directors, and producers just because I had a unique talent. I felt an overwhelming desire to not just talk about it, or write about it, but to actually fight for the values of the Lone Ranger in real life.
The whip trick video was featured on The Blaze by Glenn Beck’s new enterprise during its opening weekend. CLICK FOR REVIEW. Just a few days later I did a personal interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer where I spoke out openly against the tax increases proposed by the school and I did whip tricks for the reporters knowing full well what would follow. I knew that the established order of things would attempt to paint me as a radical traditionalist who was so in love with the “old days” that I couldn’t see the wonderful benefits of “progress” as it has been brought to America by intelligentsia, CLICK TO REVIEW. At the time, I had been involved in many personal fights with others, one on one, or otherwise, and had no problem with direct conflict. But as I was writing The Symposium of Justice and telling the story of Fletcher Finnegan, who was a modern masked outlaw named “Cliffhanger,” I had a persistent nagging desire to prove a theory that I had constructed in the book which had to be proven for the follow-up novel, which is how one man can take on a giant statist organization and survive. In my novel, it was the heroics of Cliffhanger that inspired good people in the town of Fort Seven-Mile to join together and form Cliffhanger’s Fighting Legion, to fight tyranny all the way to the powers that pulled the strings of political puppets beyond the reach of Washington D.C. Fletcher Finnegan was my modern version of The Lone Ranger, a masked man who instead of a silver bullet, used bullwhips to bring justice to the world. But for me, that wasn’t enough. I wanted to strike at the heart of the evil, not just the reaction to it, which had always bothered me about every western I had ever seen. It was one thing to fight evil and stand for the good, but what was the cause of the evil? To answer that I had to go on a dark quest of my own.
The bull whip video had started me down a road for justice and soon after I was doing many radio broadcasts, granting interviews to the AP, and speaking on television. As I had been working with several local Tea Party groups, I had grown concerned that my work with the whips might draw bad publicity for them so I backed off some of my public bull whip presentations relying instead on my speaking ability to perform the pursuit of justice. At this point I was already deep into my experimental theory which I am about to reveal the result. Over the next couple of years I found that like the Lone Ranger, I had put on a kind of social mask to protect the people I cared about in the Tea Party movement, and traded business attire as my mask, keeping the whip hidden from a media that was looking for every opportunity to paint me as an extremist radical that wanted to destroy the lives of children—instead of saving them.
What I learned during this endeavor is exactly what I set out to understand. Government statists spread their evil by creating anti-concepts. If the American western was about creating in the mind of viewers a “concept” about tradition, and value, then the anti-concept was about destroying that value. This was the cause of the declining popularity of the American western and why my bull whip friends were finding declining interest in their art form over the years. This anti-concept theory is being taught in public schools to metaphorically deliver the souls of millions of young people to the slavery of a giant Cavendish gang represented in reality by statist governments all over the world. Before I started all this activity the biggest fear that small government activists had was retaliation, particularly from labor unions set up like parasites in government institutions such as public schools, and IRS agencies. These unions got what they wanted by acting identically to the gangs of the Old West who robbed trains, stole cattle, and harassed settlers. They used force, or the threat of it, to take what they wanted and imposed fear on their victims so they could maintain their regional power. These statists functioned from misleading facts through the formation of the “anti-concept”—by stripping away values from society. The way to destroy a concept is with open attack, using the threat of force, or by subversion, by undercutting the value of an argument. For instance with the public school mentioned, they failed to recognize the need for their tax increase was caused by their mismanaged finances. They associated the value of education to money equaling goodness for children even though the facts had nothing to do with that reality. If someone challenged that premise, the union would show up in collective force to protest the school board sending a message to the community that if anyone stood in their way, they’d be vandalized, personally harassed, their children would be tortured in various degrees, and they’d be turned into social outcasts. Because of this threat, nobody challenged them, even the so-called wealthy elite who understood clearly what was happening but were unable to do anything about it for fear that their businesses would come under attack by union thugs and social radicals. What the unions were doing was no different from what the Cavendish gang did in The Lone Ranger. They used fear to impose their statist will on the innocent.
It is one thing to think such a thing, but quite another to speak out against it. After all, nobody wants to be called a mean, selfish, or a diabolical menace to the fibers of an interconnected society which is how the villains in this case had destroyed the concept of goodness. They had subverted entire communities into sitting on their hands and not speaking out in fear of being considered socially as an outcast—or even an outlaw. I theorized in The Symposium of Justice that the way to beat these types of villains was to challenge their premise with the question “why.” When the statist enemy cannot answer, which they never can, they then turn to force. This is where my hero Fletcher Finnegan/Cliffhanger used his bullwhips to impose justice on those who tried to use force to remove the concept of goodness from society. My problem was that I knew such an idea worked in small combat situations with fewer than ten combatants at a time from personal experience. But I wasn’t sure if the same could be applied to statist government all the way to the top of the food chain which is what my next novel in the series is all about.
When I did the Enquirer interview Mike Clark asked me if I knew what I was doing in bringing my whips to the front page of Cincinnati’s largest paper. I knew as he asked the question that I was looking at a future Judas, a betrayer who would pretend to be a friend just like the villain in The Lone Ranger who led the Texas Rangers to their deaths in the canyon trap set by the Cavendish gang. But this time, I would use the bait to my advantage—and I did. I knew that if the threat of personal harm was removed from the unions’ arsenal of weapons that they’d be defenseless against me because they certainly couldn’t answer any questions regarding “why.” When I have my Terry Jacka whips, nobody is going to bring personal harm to me with any melee weapon. For those hired thugs who don’t care to use a firearm, the decision of that kind falls into a level of thuggery that our current statist society still recognizes as bad, so it doesn’t happen often and that is when firearms are needed for defense. But for all other circumstances, no gang of thugs can bring harm to a person who can use bullwhips in the fashion that I do. By presenting my whips to the unions all across the State of Ohio through popular media, I had taken away the weapon that all statist organizations use to impose their will, the threat of force. This allowed me to give many dozens of interviews to the media against unarmed opposition because the statist representatives of public schools could not answer the “why” and they could not stop me with force. So they were unable to stop me and this remains the case to this day. Without thuggish force, without bringing harm to others, they have no ground to stand on. The way to beat them time and time again is to ask them “why” which they can never answer, and then to let it be known that physical force, social intimidation, and extortion will not serve them. When they learn that, their game is over. They cannot win with facts of any kind.
When I say, “Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip” this is what is meant; that statist villains have had their most important weapon removed from them—the ability to apply force. This is why whips were so popular in the early westerns like The Lone Ranger and Zorro, because they represented the “concept” of justice in a way that does not involve killing your opponent. The whip allows the wielder an ability to disarm those who wish to use force against others. The bull whip cuts like a knife, is far faster than a pair of nunchucks, and much more versatile than a sword, staff, or baseball bat. In short, a person who learns to use the bull whip anywhere close to the kind of people shown in the videos on this article know in their mind that nobody can harm them in one-on-one or group combat. That self-assurance is a measure of freedom that allows goodness to be seen clearly, and solutions to statism are then solved.
As The Lone Ranger puts on his mask in the new Disney film, I’m taking mine off. I am no longer concerned about what anybody thinks about my use of the bullwhip as I have made my point. For me, the bull whip is a symbol of justice because it prevents those who wish to steal away righteousness from the innocent eliminating the ability to invoke any fear to do so. It forces statist opponents to take the next step which involves more lethal force and in this way the “ground” to combat is controlled by the whip holder, because they know what their opponent is going to do since their options are so limited. Before that next step, which obviously the Clinton’s have no problem utilizing, CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW; decisions have to be made on how the public perception of such an action can be justified. Most statist enemies lack this type of arrogance, or network to pull off such a feat, so they are paralyzed when threat of force is removed from their social holsters, and that is invoked by the bull whip.
There are many great whip makers in the world for my money; Terry Jacka is the absolute best. Right up there with him is Joe Strain and my old friend Paul Nolan who was seen in the video on the pillars at sunset with his wife and friend T-Rex. A lot of whip masters don’t talk about it, but when they put a whip in their hand the power they feel is not one to inflict pain and suffering on other people the way some statist slave master might think. What they feel is the power to defend themselves from any melee force that might attempt to enter their barrier of protection. Speaking personally, when you see a whip artist standing at the center of a two-handed Queensland Crossover, or other two-handed routine, they know they are standing in the middle of spinning knives that can cut to shreds anyone who tries to penetrate that parameter. When I wear my Jacka whips with the long 12” handles pointing out like Samurai swords on both sides of my hip I do so to have quick access to them off my quick release holsters, which were specially designed for me by Gery Deer. I know when I walk around with them that I have complete control over my life because the whip keeps anybody who might wish me harm from entering my parameter of individuality, and that is a wonderful feeling.
It is in this spirit that the bull whip was used in the Old West mythology as a symbol of justice instead of pain. The greatest of them all was Lash LaRue who was known as The King of the Bullwhip. He was another of my favorite western protagonists. So it brought me great delight to see that Disney had purchased three whips from The Northern Whip Company to be featured in the new Lone Ranger film. I would love to see a film where whips are used in them to the level that Lash LaRue or Zorro did, but I’ll be very happy to see a scene or two with the Lone Ranger bringing about a bullwhip to implement justice in a way that only bullwhip masters understand.
As for me, the bullwhip is an important part of my life, and I am taking the social mask I put on for a brief time off. The justice I seek doesn’t require a mask, because in the hands of a bull whip master, there is nothing to fear. It would be my hope that I could share this self-assurance with as many people possible so that they too could learn such a skill that would free them from the tyranny of fear that so cripples such vast majorities with the constant threat of personal harm while in pursuit of honor.
Check out Joe Strain’s bull whips for yourself. I’m sure he will have replicas of the ones he made for The Lone Ranger available soon.
Another great champion of the bull whip sport is Adam Winrich. He is a wonderful whip maker, but spends most of his time these days doing professional gigs. He also has dozens and dozens of instructional videos on technique some seen here on this article.
Then of course there’s Chris Camp who laid the foundation for many world record endeavors and stays busy as a whip professional traveling the world with his family for many corporate clients.
And if you want to take some classes on how to get started in a nice comfortable bull whip training studio that is just a short drive north of Cincinnati, contact my friend Gery Deer. It’s the only one of its kind in the world. Most of the names mentioned have attended Gery’s Annie Oakley Western Showcase event each year in Ohio during the last weekend of July.
But the first step is in deciding not to live in fear, then learning what can be done about it. Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip, and for each of us, there is nothing more important.
I enjoyed my visit with Zuri Hall and Nathalie Basha on the noon time program Living Dayton to promote my new book Tail of the Dragon. I was very impressed with the production quality and the executive producer handling of Rhonda Roberts to perform their brand of a daytime news/lifestyle program on Channel 2 in Dayton every weekday from noon to 1 PM. The show is a nice mixture of national and regional news mixed with lifestyle segments dotted throughout each episode. It had a living newspaper feel that Zuri and Nathalie are the heartbeats giving it life. I had been looking for a good television program to do the kind of interview that Zuri and I did on October 9th, 2012, that captured the mood and feel of the Great Smoky Mountains as shown in my new book. Living Dayton was the perfect forum with just the right mix of news—which is my background, and personality interaction that is so common with creative arts like book and movie promotion. To see the clip from the episode of Living Dayton click on the link below which goes to the Living Dayton website, or watch the clip that I took some creative liberty with to create a video advertising Tail of the Dragon.
As I was interviewing with Zuri I thought about the gradual transition that I had undergone in the last two years, from a political activist trying to make sense of an impossible situation centering on political theater that put me on TV often and gave me a lot of opportunity to do a lot of talk radio. But much to my frustration, no amount of logic injected into the debates would ever go anywhere. The political system at its core is essentially corrupt, and cannot be saved directly. Over the last couple of summers my long time friend Gery Deer had been trying to talk me into using my other creative talents to reach more people without getting pulled into the black hole of politics. And in many ways, the reason I wrote Tail of the Dragon was to take what I had learned in political activism and apply it in a story that articulated properly the very complicated news stories of our day, because out of all the interviews I had ever done, they end up lost to most people because taken as isolated issues, they are never portrayed correctly upon the tapestry of living that is quite involved, interconnected, and difficult to understand. The best vehicle for grappling with the kind of issues that I am interested in is a novel, and this is how Tail of the Dragon came to be.
Thanks to Zuri in a lot of ways, I can say that this interview was one of the most pleasant that I’ve ever had. I had several realizations during the interview that occurred at the point in discussion talking about the kind of road that the real Tail of the Dragon is, where I realized that I was stepping into a new door, professionally. Even though I had done dozens, maybe hundreds of interviews in the past on other projects and issues that I’ve attached my name to, this was the first interview that I had done over a body of work that I’ve produced designed to attack the big themes, where I could sit back and not be personally attached to the subject matter intimately. It was very nice to sit on a couch with a competent hostess and discuss themes without having to have my name on the line to succeed or fail a political issue like I experienced in my various levy campaigns—where it was my name alone that stood between antagonizing anger, and financial success. As I sat on that couch speaking with Zuri, I realized that I liked it—a lot.
I enjoyed the emotional distance being an author gives to the subject matter and this interview afforded me the proper distance I have been creatively craving for a very long time. Doing that interview with Zuri made me want to write more books so that I could give more such interviews, because the depth of the communication was so much more robust than what I’ve experienced in the past with more targeted, and more emotional issues. It was quite a pleasure to go through all the work it takes to write a novel, to get it published and go through all the production tasks, to have it culminate in an interview with Zuri Hall on a couch reflecting the past of Phil Donahue mixing with the future of these two hospitable hostesses. And when you come upon such doors, you turn the knob and go inside.
Rich Hoffman
If you like my work at this site then check out my books shown below, along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find them. Clicking the pictures below are your doors to even more adventure:
I know that especially lately, each new movie that comes out; I have had grand things to say about them which weaves back through my life to points of origin that are not only sentimental, but deliberately placed there by the important people in my life who raised me. Part of being alive as opposed to half-dead or socially subdued is that you feel things. And I feel things, lots of things—because I have never turned my mind off to the world. I love movies, I love music, I love visiting places, I love food, I love family, I love books, I love comic books, but probably more than anything in my life besides family, I love bullwhips, and I was elated to discover recently that one of the great whip makers with ties to Western Stage Props had made three bullwhips for the upcoming Disney film The Lone Ranger. I was happy to hear that Joe Strain from his business The Northern Whip Company had supplied the whips for the grand revisit to the Old West by The Lone Ranger because it would not only help my friends in the bullwhip industry who make large parts of their livings off sharing their unique skills with the public, but that the modern makers of The Lone Ranger were going to pay tribute to the use of the whip in the classic stories that took place from the 1930s to the late 1950s. Not only would the new Lone Ranger from Disney pay direct tribute to the classic silver bullet mythology, the tenacious horse named “Silver,” the “William Tell Overture,” a very ambitious rendition of Tonto played by Johnny Depp, but they were even going to put a few whip scenes in the film, which used to be a standard in westerns.
Gery told me that this was the same set that used to host the Phil Donahue Show prior to moving to Chicago in the 1970’s where the famous Ayn Rand interview took place that I have exhibited at this site. It was interesting to see the set where Donahue started in a day when he built himself into a national name from this same stage.
The Overmanwarrior 