The cast party was a huge success!

We drove from Huntsville to Enchanted Springs Ranch in Boerne, TX, on Thursday in time to have lunch with Trent. When we arrived, he was already at lunch with the cast, and we got to meet a whole group of people, including Mel Tillis, Roy Clark and Joaquin Jackson, all of whom play in Palo Pinto Gold. Roy is waiting for a hip replacement -- I later heard that he had postponed it in order to take part in this movie. What a trouper! (The picture shows Roy autographing Trent's guitar, while Mel seems to be looking for a ride!)

Joaquin is the real thing: a genuine Texas Ranger, he is author of "One Ranger" and "One Ranger Returns".

In the afternoon, we watched while they shot closeups of Mel, Roy and others for some indoor scenes. The weather was overcast, very cold with occasional rain, so we were pleased that the shooting was indoors! Cesario Garcia, from ZForm Film & TV Production, then interviewed Mel and Roy and then Trent and Joanne for the local News TV station.

A crowd of about two hundred cast, friends and relatives showed up in the evening to enjoy the party. After we all had a chance to visit, eat and drink, Steve Schmidt opened the proceedings with several welcoming speeches. We were then treated to a show of video clips from the movie, followed by outtakes (hilarious bloopers) and a great slideshow of pictures taken by Scott Reed. You can see the slideshow on his site www.isyteimages.com. Scott is a brilliant photographer, and has some wonderful shots on this site. Follow the links "Palo Pinto Gold" and "Galleries -> Concerts -> Trent Willmon". The second link has some great shots of the video for Trent's current single "Broken In". (The picture shows Scott talking to Trent.)

After that, the music started. Josh Allen opened up for us and, after a few songs, Trent joined him. Numerous other artists, including Bethany Jackson and David King followed -- what a talented bunch! I have given up trying to remember everyone's names: there were just too many.

The highlight was when Mel and Roy put on a performance. They decided not to sing, but to have Mel tell stories (with some feedback from Roy!) If you ever get a chance to hear Mel Tillis tell stories, grab it. He is one of the funniest story tellers I have ever heard.

I particularly enjoyed one brief comment Roy made. He and Mel have had this double act going on for a number of years now (they have been friends for fifty years). Roy mentioned that he would watch Mel telling a story, and when he saw Mel's jaw start twitching as he stammered, Roy would fill in the word. Then Mel would change to a different word, just to fool him!

Having been up since about 5:45 AM, we left the party around 10:30 PM to get some sleep. By then, only the hard core remained, anyway.

A wonderful time with a crowd of wonderful people. We are all looking forward to a reunion when the movie premieres at the Palladium in San Antonio. The date is uncertain yet, but will be sometime between May and July this year. We'll keep you posted.

I Was A Palo Pinto Gold Walk Off

What an exciting couple of days!

Monday we drove to Enchanted Springs Ranch, Boerne, Texas to watch a movie shoot. Our GPS did a great job of finding what should have been the quickest route from Huntsville to Boerne, but for one major goof. It dropped us into the middle of the Austin rush hour traffic on I-35, adding about an hour to what should have been a four hour trip.

However, we chose Monday because they were shooting night scenes, so we didn't miss too much. We watched a couple of scenes of Palo Pinto Gold being shot with Trent Willmon, Joanna Goode and Anthony Henslee, following which we got to visit with the great folks at Enchanted Springs Ranch and Joanna's family. We finally tumbled into bed around 12:30, and crawled out again about 7:00 AM Tuesday.


Monday had been cold, but clear: Tuesday was cold and wet. So Tuesday's shoots were indoor scenes, specifically a couple of scenes shot in a bar, with Trent, Anthony and David King (who plays one of the villains). The other character in that scene is Doug, the bartender.

The production team got started setting up around 10:00 AM, and broke for lunch around noon. It was then that they realized the bar looked too empty, so they approached me to ask if I would be willing to play as an extra standing at the bar. After a few nanoseconds of deliberation, I said "Of course -- I'd be delighted to help you out!"

So they got their extra, and I had a lot of fun!


Afterwards, Steve Schmidt showed Billie, Trent and me a clip of the bar fight scene (an obligatory scene for a Western!).

I've seen a lot of bar fight scenes over the years, and this one is certainly up there with the all-time best. I'd watch the movie just for that one scene (even though I'm not in it!)

I can't remember when I met such a fun group of truly warm-hearted, loving people as the cast and crew of Palo Pinto Gold. David King is a mean-looking villain, and looks totally intimidating until you get to know him, but he's great guy, with a good sense of humor. He's heading for Hollywood this year, and I wish him all the best in his chosen tough profession. I didn't get to meet any of the other bad guys, but I'm sure they're also just as much fun as the good guys I met!

For me, this was a double first time experience. I've never seen a movie being shot before (like all movies, it's a closed set). And I've never appeared in one before.

Are you wondering what a walk-off is?

Well, you've probably heard of a walk-on -- someone who just walks onto the set, but doesn't say anything. I didn't do that. I did slightly less, because I was in the bar when the scene opened, but walked off later.

So I call myself a walk-off!

Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

We're off to the Rodeo!

The tickets went on sale today for Tim McGraw at the Rodeo on Monday, March 3. We've bought four -- Rick is bringing a friend (not the one in the photo!). The main attraction for us is that Trent will be performing at the Hideout after Tim McGraw has been on the main stage.

Before then, we also intend to see Trent play at the World Championship Barbecue Cookoff at the rodeo on February 28. Might even get to taste some of that good Texas barbecue ...

In other news, we intend to visit the set of Palo Pinto Gold next week, but have not yet fixed the day.

In case it looks like we're getting bored, we are also in Samurai Camp with Klemmer and Associates. This is keeping us pretty busy already with homework assignments in advance of the first Sam Camp weekend February 15 in Phoenix. From Phoenix, we leave for San Diego where we will be staffing at Klemmer's Heart of the Samurai, which Trent will be attending. From San Diego, we'll drive up to Ventura to visit Paul and Alisa and then return on February 26 from LAX. We then have about eight weeks of Sam Camp at home before the second weekend in Phoenix in April.

We don't believe in letting the grass grow under our rocking chairs yet.

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The Good News ... and the Bad!

(No, of course that's not me in the picture! It's Trent, taken about a year ago in El Campo at Muldoon's.

I was younger then ...)


First, let's get the bad news out of the way. No less than FIVE of my friends have died in the last month (I just heard about one today). To put it in perspective, only two of them were older than me. I remember my father saying that that one of the sad things about growing older is that all your friends keep dying ...

Now for the good news.

A couple of years ago I had a diagnosis of "possible" non-Hodgkins lymphoma. (A more complete story of that is on one of our web sites -- see My Story.) This week, after another visit to my oncologist, I had another CT scan, and today I got the results.

Guess what?

No sign of lymphoma!

In fact, after a full CT scan, his only recommendation is that I follow up with my urogolist because my bladder wall is slightly to moderately thickened (which it was a year or two ago). I knew I felt healthier than I have for several years, but it's great to have the confirmation.

In other good news, Billie's son, Trent Willmon, has started working in the Texas Hill Country on the movie Palo Pinto Gold. They are shooting early every morning for a couple of weeks and we hope to go out there to watch a shoot sometime soon. Trent's playing the lead, and has also written the music for the movie. Other members of the cast include Mel Tillis, Roy Clark and Kinkie Friedman as the Governor of Texas! Check it out on Trent's web site.

Maybe we'll have a film star in the family!

New Year's Resolutions

The picture shows Alan and Billie with their New Year's Day coffee at dawn on Galveston Island.

We are having such wonderful weather here! I just came back from a run and sat outside for a while in the shade wearing tee shirt and shorts. It's in the 70s!

One of my goals is to run my first marathon in the spring of 2013, so I've started training for it. Today was my long run -- 90 minutes -- and I managed to increase my pace from staggering to shuffling! Instead of an 18-minute mile I cut it to 17 1/2 minutes.

(I try not to remember the day I saw Roger Bannister run the world's first four-minute mile -- it just reminds me how slow I am! I wonder if he's still running? I do know that last year they had a special celebration for him at the Iffley Road track in Oxford where he set the record, and he was in attendance -- but not running.)

My short term goal is to run the Capitol 10K in Austin this March. Before then, I hope to speed up a bit and increase my pace from shuffling to plodding. My intent is to finish within my age (i.e. no more minutes than my age in years), as I did in my first 10K when I was 55. One benefit of growing older is that I can extend my times and still reach that target!

Another New Year's Resolution for me is to lose weight. Apart from anything else, I don't need to be dragging all that fat around with me when I'm running. Two years ago I used the USANA RESET program to lose thirty pounds, but over the years between I gained back twenty. So my goal now is to lose between twenty and thirty pounds before the summer. So far, after five days, I'm ahead of schedule after losing seven pounds.

In case you're wondering about all this activity, I plan to live to 120, with an option to 130! My children will all retire long before they get their inheritance (if I don't spend it all). Like somebody said, age doesn't matter unless you're a cheese.

One thing I have discovered is that the reason New Year's Resolutions generally fail is that I start from the wrong end. By this, I mean that I need to start from my dream, then work that into goals. My dream is to live a long, healthy life: to achieve that I need to take action now. So I set goals to reach that dream, rather than setting them just for their own sake.

Feel free to comment on this blog -- it's starting to look more like a journal now!

Second web site up!!!!!

I'm stoked!

I now have a web site promoting the First Step Internet Marketing program -- the one I used to learn how to do it! It's a much simpler, less cluttered site than the previous one, and I started work on it yesterday. Took me all of two half-days.

It turns out the hardest part is figuring out the content I want -- building the site is a snap. I imagine that it will get easier with each one now that I know how to do it.

You can see the site here.


In other news ...

I hope you all took some time off for the holidays -- I know we did. Scott and Rusty came by and visited on Christmas Day. Sally brought Michaela, Christian and Michaela's boy friend Juan to visit on December 27th. And we joined Scott and Rusty and several friends in Galveston December 29th.

We left Galveston in 70 degree plus temperatures New Year's Eve in time to experience the cold front that came through that night. It's a shock when we now get temperatures in the 20s at night and no more than 50 or so during the day. With a c.o.l.d wind blowing, too!


(The photo was taken New Year's Eve just after sunrise in Galveston -- we went to the beach to see the sun rise!)

The good news is that the weather should warm up over the weekend. Great, because we plan to go to Fort Worth to see Trent perform at Billy Bob's Saturday night.

Have a wonderful 2008!