The Blog With No Name

In vague order (bear in mind there’s 217 episodes, most of which I’ve only seen once):

IOT Devil and His Due (everything)

IOT Road to Yesterday (good plot, Rowdy’s drunk act)

A Man Called Mushy (Mushy, Favor/Rowdy tension, Mushyates feelings)

IOT Town in Terror (sick!Rowdy)

IOT Roman Candles (Pete!)

IOT Sharpshooter (good Favor episode)

Rio Salado (poor Rowdy)

IOT Red Wind (Favor/Rowdy tension, Neville Brand!)

IOT Running Man (50 minutes of bad things happening to Rowdy)

Except that I’m just really not fond of “A Woman’s Place” (I’d rather not see our protagonists be that sexist, honestly–and Rowdy punches Favor in the face out of nowhere at one point (for trusting a woman doctor with another drover’s life) and I’d rather not see that either). At some point, I think I got a little tired of the kind of social commentary in fiction that mostly involves basically going, “See how bad it was back then? See how realistic we’re being by showing that?” Idk. Why not show me what a good alternative could be instead. I guess it’d be weird and maybe frustrating to have the lead characters just be idealized white knights too. But the thing is, the show does make them out to be like that half of the time–like in the season 1 episode “Power and Plow” where Favor and Rowdy stand up for a Comanche man and clearly denounce racism, maybe a little anachronistically. Maybe it’s the inconsistency which rubs me wrong. 

7. That’s “Incident of Fear in the Streets” from season 1. I love that one a lot too.

1966: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at 50

“Kicking off with a different loner”

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was released in Italy 50 years ago today, completing Sergio Leone’s hugely influential trilogy. The Dollars Trilogy? The Man With No Name trilogy? Whatever it completed, however it fits with the other films, Jokerside salutes the 50th anniversary of a classic that created and consolidated a sub-genre…

IT’S 50 YEARS SINCE ENNIO…

“Captain Favor, must have been a fine man, died a hero! Story goes, he got his whole company out before he went down. Miss Abigail just can’t stop pining for that man.”

“And Miss Abigail is his…?”

“Widow.”

According to IMDb, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly opened in Italy on 23 December 1966″

Happy Birthday, guys!

Rowdy tells a mercenary killer that if he’s after Mr. Favor, he’ll have to come through Rowdy first

Favor leaves the herd to go help Rowdy out in a personal fight

Rowdy yells at people who don’t address Favor as “Mr. Favor”

Favor gets angry & sad when Rowdy announces he’s quitting over a girl whom Favor thinks is taking advantage of Rowdy

“You make me wish I could reach for a hickory rod.”

Favor and Rowdy get into a fistfight, mostly consisting of rolling around in the dirt together

“When you’re always riding me, and you never say anything good even when I get things right, I don’t get sore at that. Because I know you’re just trying to make me better at my job.”

Any time Favor leaves the herd for some innocuous reason: “Rowdy, you want to come along?” “Sure thing.”

Any time Favor leaves the herd for some dangerous reason and doesn’t ask Rowdy along: “I’m going with you.”

Rowdy and Favor are captured and tied to a couple of trees, next to each other, shirtless, to be whipped (Rowdy looks nervous (trying to see the whip behind them); Favor looks pretty stoic (just watching Rowdy with concern/regret))

“As long as I have you for company, I’ll walk up to the devil himself.”

Some bad guys start beating up Favor; Rowdy comes running to his rescue but gets hit in the head with the butt of a rifle and goes down; Favor, with uncharacteristic emotion: “You hit him again, I’ll kill you!”

Rowdy gets sick and passes out; Favor runs to him, lifts him up

Feverish Rowdy calls out for Mr. Favor (who rushes over to him) and weakly apologizes for holding up the herd and causing so much trouble

Favor stays by Rowdy’s side while he’s sick, even though everyone’s afraid it’s contagious and deadly; watches him sadly while he sleeps; risks his life to get him medical aid and shelter, etc.

And to sum up the two of them:

Gil Favor – team dad, lonely leader older than his years (mid 30s), burdened with tough calls and the responsibility of his men, can’t show weakness (but will own up to mistakes), great deadpan, great baritone

Rowdy Yates – temperamental cinnamon roll, babyface of this cowboy band (early/mid 20s) but second in command, likes being liked, plays piano*, frequently smiling, frequently injured, frequently shirtless

I’ll start by saying that I am a bona fide slash fan. Some of my stuff is on AO3. However

It’s been a while since I’ve dropped some history here. I wanted to talk about something near and dear to my heart. Weapons. Specifically guns. So as per usual, this post will have mentions of the Confederacy, the Civil War, and all that junk. So if any of this bothers you, stop reading now.

So… let’s talk brass tacks, or in this case, guns. 

This is the Enfield rifle. In the early Civil War, this was the favored rifle of the Confederate Sharpshooter.  The 39 in (99 cm) barrel had three grooves, with a 1:78 rifling twist, and was fastened to the stock with three metal bands, so that the rifle was often called a “three band” model. The Confederates imported more Enfields during the course of the war than any other small arm, buying from private contractors and gun runners. It has been estimated that over 900,000 P53 Enfields were imported to America and saw service in every major engagement from the Battle of Shiloh (April, 1862) and the Siege of Vicksburg (May 1863), to the final battles of 1865

This is a video of the Whitworth..45 caliber rifle, an English design from the mid-1850s. Forty-nine inches in overall length, it fired a six-sided grooved bullet through a 33-inch barrel having a hexagonal bore with a rapid twist that gave phenomenal steadiness to the bullet’s flight. This is the preferred musket/rifle of the Confederate Sharpshooter.  With an open sight and firing from a fixed rest or the prone position, the shooter could place his shots in a twelve-inch diameter circle at 500 yards. With the 14 ½ “ telescopic sight mounted on the left of the stock, the rifle had a killing range of 1500-1800 yards, or about a mile. Even in the heat of battle they could fire individually and more carefully than the ordinary soldier with a Springfield rifle, they were equipped with hand-held mechanical range finders that estimated distance, and thus trajectory, based upon the target’s apparent height. 

The Whitworth was fired with a percussion cap. Its disadvantage was that it was a muzzle-loader, hence slow to load, and like all muzzle-loaders, needed cleaning every few rounds. What this means is that after every single shot, Goody would have had to reload and after the very first shot, the flash of the rifle and the poof of smoke would let god and everyone know where he was hiding. This will become important later.

Now, imagine shooting the above gun at a target nearly a mile away though a haze of black powder smoke, all while shell fragments are flying around you because the enemy wants nothing more than to kill you.  After all, as a sharpshooter, you’re as much a psychological weapon as a tactical one. Your job was target enemy officers and artillery batteries as well as color bares (because the enemy would rally around the flag and it’s an easy target). They were also the only shooters allowed to fire on their own without orders. 

Now imagine you are on the other side of that bullet. You just saw your buddy fall from a shooter so far away that all you see is the smoke. Artillery and other sharpshooters would target that. So now the shooter is getting hammered with canon fire and can’t move from position because he still has to keep shooting.

Which brings us to poor poor Goodnight Ribicheaux. 

An idea I briefly entertained last summer. I say briefly - I made over one hundred frames (=30s) by hand before I wisely stopped. Do enjoy the music.

True Detective X A Fistful of Dollars (titles)

Sometimes I don’t know where This dirty road is taking me Sometimes I don’t even know the reason why

Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez