From the Land of Cowboys to You; or, The Modern Buckaroo’s Guide to the World
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 [...]
Life must have been easier in the 1950s. Within half an hour, it was possible for a good guy to vanquish a bad guy, be a role model for youngsters, and look good in a holster.
Have Gun Will Travel reads the card of a man.
A knight without armor in a savage land.
His fast gun for [...]
…the strange Thunder Riders gallop across the desert. Their tracks lead back to the mysterious mountains–where no one has ever come out alive…
Plastic Hero in Red ©2008 es
by guest blogger batboy42
The rules of life are different for a hero, no matter how hard he tries to remain with the old neighborhood.
He’s walking like a hero [...]
Plastic Hero © 2008 es
Anything can look heroic–it’s all in the way the lights and camera work. Maybe that’s why cowboys in movies don’t say too much. All candidates on Campaign Trail ‘08 have to keep talking, but the more they talk, the less heroic they seem. It’s a problem, buckaroos and buckarettes. I think they [...]
I was in love. He was the blue-eyed rascal, the master of the one liner. He was, by turns, cool and hot–matched by his partner who was hot and cool. The two of them wore their dusty britches like uniforms of hip scoundreldom, and they grasped six-guns in sure fingers. I didn’t even mind the [...]
In times of moral confusion, I turn to my collection of a gajillion western paperbacks from the 1940s and 1950s*. Their bold colors and bolder titles (such as Action by Night, Gunsmoke Justice, Dig the Spurs Deep) bring me back to my center. Good/bad. Right/wrong. Yes/no.
The one-two punch of pulp writers, who must have banged [...]
What are the most likely things to be smuggled out of Mexico?
Drugs.
Guns.
Cacti.
Saguaro Vista, Arizona. copyright es 2004
X-mas Kitsch
Especially those funny-looking cartoonish cacti. The bright green ones with the long arms that look like Gumby with spikes. On menus, you might see them wearing sombreros. The one bit of flora that [...]
I’ve been unwilling to saddle up the presidential cowboy analogies for some time–Dubya too easy of a target–but THANK ALL THAT IS COWPOKE for recent presidential candidate news.
Barack Obama resists the cowboy hat–all I can see him as is the lawyer/Dude from a big city, or maybe as a laid-back (yet pistol-packing) James Stewart in Destry Rides [...]
A recent sojourn to Idaho revealed another essential cowboy truth–cowboys still exist. You just have to know where to look for them.
Oliver’s in Pocatello: Deep into a thick omelette and excellent coffee. Along the counter are seated several men, all with sneakers and jeans and polo shirts or button-down shirts and baseball caps (the new [...]
How to follow up the menace of Jack Palance in Shane? Only by providing a cowgirl sexpot, thanks to a Batboy42 comment, which I, with my itchy trigger finger, mistakenly deleted. Bad Bucko.
The star of Republic’s 1944 Zorro’s Black Whip, Linda Stirling thrilled young boys with her sultry, glamorous derring-do.
First off, there’s no Zorro. Nope. [...]