From the Land of Cowboys to You; or, The Modern Buckaroo’s Guide to the World
A Western definition:
Dude (dood) n.
Usually an Easterner, but it can be used to call anyone obviously unready for the West–such as if a person is wearing street shoes, too-fancy clothes, or unable to ride a horse or track game or make coffee in a tin can. A dude is usually mocked mercilessly (see The Virginian, [...]
Pioneer Woman is the reason I can’t lie when people ask if I am a real cowboy. I say no. There’s no getting around it.
I don’t live in the middle of nowhere (although there actually is plenty of alone time in NYC).
I can’t cut off calf nuts.
I don’t even eat calf nuts.
I don’t ride a [...]
Another appropriation of the Cowboy myth struck this past week. It was buckshot heard around the world, from the coastal waters of Somalia to a pop star’s son’s yearnings.
A showdown always brings out the best and worst, as is the case of the Somali pirate/ U.S. warship standoff that happily ended with the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, [...]
The taxman/woman brings oppressive reality. No, not all of my money is my own. My sweat is not my own. Then I tell myself to drop kick that checkbook and cowboy up–time to see what is going on in the Wild Western Web.
One phenomena that never fails to cheer me up is the strange world of western fetish [...]
What Americans and Europeans bought with every Buffalo Bill’s Wild West ticket, and what people purchase around the world with every pack of American cigarettes is a little bit of ourselves as we want to be–alluring, daring, legendary. With every MoMA “Into The Sunset” ticket it appears we also want to be alienated and disillusioned.
The New York Times isn’t above reaching for hyperbolic language like a grocery store rag. I couldn’t help discovering–OK everything even remotely related to the West gets shot to my e-mail like a .44 caliber bullet so I can read these things greedily as if they were pulp novels, of which I have over three [...]
A recent trip to Tennessee revealed many truths.
Carter House (1000 Bullets)
Truth 1: There was a lot of blood spilled in Tennessee in the Civil War, and it spilled copiously on soil that now holds playgrounds and parking lots, historical markers and suburban lawns. Stories of battles (in this case, the famous Battle of Nashville) seem to be at the [...]
In politics there is plenty cowboy derring do-do. On days–sometimes weeks–of arid blog-writing time (good for wrangling the novel and etcetera), I take heart when good friends send me snippets of the kind of stuff you can’t write, unless you’re Howard Breslin and and Don MacGuire, putting together a taut script for the psychological western Bad [...]
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 [...]
Now that Americans have to tighten belts, a small but important accessory becomes ever more integral to the psyche of the modern-day cowboy. Whether you seek utility or bling, you still have to be able to be able to keep your damn britches on. Buckaroos and Buckarettes, may I re-introduce…the belt buckle.
The Cowboy of the [...]