CowboyLands

The wash of wind. The flat land stretching to the mountains. Sunset. 
Heavy work week. Nephew in trouble and I can’t do anything about it. No time to write. Barely keeping relationships intact. And then I dream. I dream of: 

Posted on May 16th, 2009 under Cowboy Moments, WestWays: Traveling in the American West. Tags: cowboy song, mojave desert, road trip, western mythos. Comments: None

Relationships in westerns???? At first the very idea seems incongruous–after all, they’re westerns for Tonto’s sake, not kissy-fests where people talk about feelings. But as part of the greater romance genre, they’re only leather chaps away from the bodice-ripping paperbacks* commonly called romances. So let’s get in touch with our get-in-touch-with-our-feelings side and talk about [...]

Posted on March 1st, 2009 under Cowboy Moments, Film Reviews, Men Were Men and Women Were Women, Movie Quotes, The Good the Bad the Fugly. Tags: bodice-rippers, cowboys are from mars and venus, leather-chap-rippers, what would a cowboy do. Comments: 5

If I’m going to battle a cold, I would want Ernest Haycox to write the story. 
The Whispering Range, by Ernest Haycox. Wherever the hell that mountain chain is, it also exists in my throat, which is as raw as the dark borderlands and filled with rustlers herding my healthy cells through secret byways.  
Night time: Coughs [...]

Posted on January 11th, 2009 under Cowboy Moments, Men Were Men and Women Were Women, Pulp Westerns and Paperbacks; Book Reviews, What Would Gary Cooper Do?. Tags: colds, Cowboy Mythos, Ernest Haycox, i am a wimp, robert stanley, whispering range. Comments: None

Every start of the year I find some time to write out a few goals. I prioritize and create little boxes for checking off when I’ve completed them* and otherwise make curlicues and asterisks and bold underlines. This blog was one such goal from last year (alas, the Web site is still under construction–anyone know [...]

Posted on January 1st, 2009 under Cowboy Moments, The Good the Bad the Fugly. Tags: cowboy, cowboy boots, new years 2009, resolutions, sparkle. Comments: 2

I asked him what his favorite western pulp novel was. (Brave, I admit–Clint Eastwood does not have a lot of time to make nice with visitors to his California ranch.)
In reply he did that squinty Clint thing (my heart simultaneously leaped and quailed–giving me heartburn later on in the day).
  
You know, I persisted, like Luke Short or Ernest [...]

Posted on December 18th, 2008 under Cowboy Moments, Cowboy Mythos, Film Reviews, Origins and Originals, The Good the Bad the Fugly, Wild Western Web. Tags: bad dreams, clint eastwood, cowboy, the good the bad the ugly. Comments: 2

There is something about the cowboy-riding-into-the-sunset image that is alluring. Countless movies end with the viewer/camera watching the swaying back of the horseback cowboy heading off into the glow of the setting sun, and a google image search will reveal kitsch and parody–it’s so cliché people don’t know what to do with a cowboy and a sunset [...]

Posted on December 9th, 2008 under Cowboy Moments, Cowboy Mythos, Men Were Men and Women Were Women. Tags: mark ferguson. Comments: 4

Cowboy boot hunting is a lot perseverance and a little luck. You have to have boot-mind. You have to have patience. You have to have a high degree of tolerance for cheap-ass mall-rat boots. You have to have a discerning eye, and the feel for boots within your fingers. 
Some of my jillion boots were picked up in [...]

Posted on October 6th, 2008 under Cowboy Moments, The Good the Bad the Fugly. Tags: boot hill, cowboy boot, tombstone, western fetish. Comments: None

To cowboy up means to get going. Get the job done. Get into gear. No matter what.
 Sundown Jim, by Ernest Haycox
Cover illustration by Jerry Allison
Pocket Books, 1958
from the collection of es
A good friend of ours has cancer–the late-stage, not-very-posterchild-like kind–and he and his wife have to cowboy up on a daily basis. I can’t always [...]

Posted on September 26th, 2008 under Campaign '08, Cowboy Moments, Cowboy Mythos, Pulp Westerns and Paperbacks; Book Reviews, What Would Gary Cooper Do?. Tags: cancer, Cowboy Mythos, cowboy up, marlboro man. Comments: 9

The Grand Canyon has been ruined by T-shirts, mugs, and calendars. It’s easy to dismiss the vast chasm if your eyes have been tricked by two-dimensional snapshots. But even the best photographer can’t capture that scariness that is the presence of the West. It’s big, and if you stir from the confines of the concrete [...]

Posted on September 21st, 2008 under Cowboy Moments, The Good the Bad the Fugly. Tags: cowboy moment, grand canyon. Comments: 4