From the Land of Cowboys to You; or, The Modern Buckaroo’s Guide to the World
Rugged individualism takes you far, especially if you’re a misanthrope. For the rest of us, it’s helpful to be nice to the neighbors, to let in the ConEd man to check the meter, and to obey street signs.
What has gotten my goat since Day One of Politics with the Sore-Loser Republican Party is how unobservant [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Reach for the sky!
Cowboy Shoot ‘em Up with Stagecoach ©2008 es
Hey, that’s good advice.
All movies and stories (all that are worth hearing) have the common theme of conflict that leads to resolution and the return. A theater play with no conflict at all resembles virtual reality. Where’s the fun in watching that? Might as [...]
Mythology and ritual are the same thing. Take a look at Phantom Empire, 1935 Mascot serial. This twelve-episode serial is the worst Western of all time. But buried beneath its trick riding and kid-style secret club is a message as deep as the secret underground queendom of Murania. That’s about twenty-five thousand feet, way down [...]
…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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
National Day of the Cowboy brought out all the panting western fetishists who love their cowpokes dearly, as well as the more serious side of cowboying, embodied by the rodeo riders and horsemen and horsewomen of the good old days–the 1980s, that is. “Proud Cowboys Still Tall in the Saddle” is the headline. The photos [...]