OK talkeed to joanna and got the mission. talked to carlitos; talked to joanna (convinced her to leave) talked to carlitos. I want to hire Big and LIttle Beard. But every time I enter the Atomic Wrangler I get the loading screen but then everything goes black and essentially the game freezes. I tried waiting 20 hours and this did not help. Is there a work around I am not aware of?

That sounds like your game is corrupted, as if the Atomic Wrangler is actually not loading properly. Not sure how to help with that one other than to have you reboot the game or try reloading it. I'm sure you've probably done the reboot by now, and I DO hate getting that 'reload' advice. Sorry...

For now I'd suggest just skip the wrangler its optional, in the mean time boot the ps3 in safe mode and restore the file system that may clear up the corruption in your save data.