Birdman worked at the Elk Camp ski lift at SnowMass Ski Resort in the early 70′s.  There was comic relief  about 9 times a day, and some of the comedy came from famous television and movie stars.  The most hilarious was the day that Buddy Hackett careened off the top of the lift with a ski bum, engaged in a ferocious argument, and slammed into the skier, knocking both to the ground and a few other tourists.  Hackett got up, with his goggles wrapped around his neck, full of snow, and cursed the ski bum, waiving his ski poles in the air.  Jack, the lift operator ran over to calm things down, and a skier going up the next lift fell off his chair, attempting to watch the action, and slid down his partners legs, holding on 20 feet off the ground in front of the deck on the restaurant, loaded with tourists.  Jack found a ladder in a shed, leaned it against the lift cable, climbed up to the hanging victim, and helped lower him to the ground to the cheers of the watching tourists.  Buddy Hackett howled with laughter, and headed up the mountain.  A few weeks later, Birdman saw Lucille Ball attempt to get off the same lift.  She looked like a cave woman gathering lunch, with skies flying in every direction and slid into some tourists in a large pile.  The ski crowd at the deck enjoyed that pileup, with roars of laughter.  Birdman observed the following legends in the movie business.  Rock Hudson was seen in the early 60′s, walking around the base of Aspen Mountain, he looked like he just walked off the movie set of Giant, and still dressed to impress Elizabeth Taylor.  He wore a classic Bogner ski parka, which were highly coveted later on by the Telluride Ski Patrol, when the old style went out of production.  Birdman talked to  Buffy  and Jodie from the family TV series in the 60′s, in the infamous Red Onion Saloon, downtown Aspen.  They had gown up by then, and the conversation was quite interesting.  They no longer were little children, and were awed by the characters that hung for years in Beer Gulch, the famous Red Onion, where millions of pitchers of beer were gulped down to the Neil Diamond Tune, Cracklin Rose.  Birdman later saw Jack Nicholson wandering around Aspen near his West End home, and years later, talked to Jack in the Sheridan Bar in Telluride.  Birdman was amazed how many drinks old Jack consumed at one sitting, while he talked to local characters, Jack was an amazing character, and went through a gamut of facial expressions, that floored and scared everyone present.  Birdman also observed Clint Eastwood in Telluride walking in his famous long stride towards Colorado Boulevard, it reminded Birdman of his walks in ”The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”  He wore brown, hush puppy shoes, classic California walking shoes.  In Telluride, Birdman was hiking with a lang agent on Horsefly Mesa, and bumped into Darryl Hannah, who was walking a dog on a new adjustable leash.  She was unkempt, and looked like she had just crawled out of a sleeping bag from her tent.  She started whining about a road that a local developer had built too close to her 650 acres.  She started with one of those abrupt, conversation ending statements about the environment, with no real solutions.  Birdman could never believe how someone who owned 650 acres, given to them by their father,  Jerry Wexler, in the midst of multi millions of acres of National Forest land, could complain about anything.  She fit in well with locals in Telluride that whined about everything.   Bring a ghetto child to the mountains, and watch their eyes light up with joy and delight.  One of the most interesting Hollywood characters the Birdman witnessed in a panel discussion at the Telluride Film Festival, was Sterling Hayden, who talked about living the alcoholic life of adventure, and was a joy to see in person, the last of the era of Hemingway type men who drank, a brawler,  and hunted in Idaho and Africa.  Now we get Tom Cruise who is a sciontology, moron, how romantic and manly is that.  The days of Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Allan Ladd, and Gary Cooper are over, the end of an amazing era, in Hollywood screen history.  Now we get computer animation, not the real deal like the movies, Mogambo, King Solomons Mines, or Shane.  Birdman hunted pheasants for several years outside of Montrose from Telluride, with Mike Carroll who was a professional hunting guide in Kenya for 27 years.  Carroll had hunted with Robert Ruark, author of Uhuru, and Hemingways son, the African Game Warden, and shot the charging elephant for the beginning scene in King Solomons Mines.  He lived the dangerous and adventurous life of a hunter, in Kenya, where now you cannot step foot in a wild game area.  Carroll was known in Kenya to finish off charging leopards that can leap 70 feet through the air, with a sawed off 10 gauge Purdy shotgun.  One girly man B movie actor from Tour of Duty, e on a dove shoot with Birdman and was disgusted by everything, including the air he was breathing.  He lived in smog filled Los Angeles and complained about the hunting of everything, and the pollution in the mountains.  How swell to hear a whining actor, mental midget, who lives near the freeway where pollution from rubber tires makes the air taste and smell like a Gary Indiana tire manufacturing plant.  “We are living in the Age of Amateurs, celebrities who have taken over the public dialogue instead of the wise writers of old,” Mailer says in his last interview with his son in “The Big Empty” book.  Were also living in the age of B movie actors, without wisdom, who show up in ski towns way too often.  Hey, is anyone looking for a trophy home, in Aspen or Telluride, where Daryl Hannah slept naked and upset in her dreams about the environment?