What Would Wyatt Do?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The following entry was removed because of a music file complaint, even after I removed said music file. So I've re-inserted the text but won't waste time with the pictures or the music, and I apologize to all those whose comments were sadly deleted by music bastards.]

Westerns rock.


I watched the movie Appaloosa the other day, and it's not bad. It's not sublime, but it's not bad. In fact, very few recent Westerns have blown my doors off, but I dutifully watch them all anyway, because I just love the genre. 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James..., The Proposition, Open Range. Watched 'em all, and I'm pretty sure if I didn't love Westerns in general, I wouldn't have found them nearly as enjoyable.

All my friends and even some people who can't stand me know I worship Deadwood, the 3-season HBO series. By "worship," I mean it's my favorite television show ever in a looooong line of TV shows I really really love.

The '80s and '90s produced a number of Westerns that continue to earn love. Tombstone and Unforgiven are two of the best from that span, but several others are great as well, and I can't help but type the words Young Guns just so I can include it. Ang Lee's Ride Like the Devil, which is only barely a Western, is almost certainly one of the better movies you've never heard of. And Three Amigos, while not a perfect comedy, holds up surprisingly well 20-plus years later.

The West, as depicted in almost all of these films, was raw and struggled between forces of lawlessness and order.

George W. Bush loves Westerns. He especially loved High Noon, the story of a lone town marshal forced to stand off against a vicious gang. Not surprisingly, this is a genre of film held sacrosanct in the romantic hearts of gun-totin' NRA types all over our great land.

But here's a strange twist. In almost all of the movies I have listed, and in dozens of others, one key rule of law always seemed to stay constant in these otherwise lawless lands: No Guns Allowed In City Limits.

These mining towns didn't have many laws. They had to pick their battles very carefully. No stop lights. No speed limits. No laws against pissing in public. No open container laws. None of that crap. But here's one they thought was pretty important when it came to protecting the citizens of a township: No Fucking Guns!

So it's powerfully ironic that Tennessee now finds itself on the verge of allowing our citizens to do the one damn thing that even the wildest of the Wild Western towns on the edge of civilization knew not to allow. We're more backwards than Deadwood! Our legislators and the NRA thinks Wyatt Earp was a moron who stole freedom from its citizens. Yes, that's right, the NRA and Tennessee legislators are watching Tombstone and cheering for "Curly Bill" Brocious (played superbly by smarmy fucknut Powers Boothe, who's also in Deadwood), because that man and his red-sashed Cowboys must have had the right idea on how to keep order in a town.

I can think of maybe four times in the last 15 years when Tennessee as a comprehensive whole shamed me. But nothing, nothing at all, compares remotely to the embarrassment I've felt from the latest attempts to pass a law permitting citizens to carry a firearm into businesses that serve alcohol.

If "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions," then I'm not sure what the hell is paving this particular legislative road of Guns In Bars, but "asphalt" sounds like a good starter ingredient, because no matter how much I rack my brains for "good intentions" with this particular law, I can't think of any. I just know there's a lot of asses at fault.

Or, as my wife so beautifully put it the other day, "Only a bunch of legislators hiding behind metal detectors and armed security guards could pass a law with the excuse that armed citizens make society safer. I wonder when they're gonna get rid of those metal detectors and security guards and allow citizens to carry firearms into sessions of Congress?"

I read a Chattanooga Times Free Press article on this and found the reader comments very interesting. Some gun owner types are very well-written and have some compelling arguments. However, at the end of the day, I'll side with statistics, and here's mine: as someone who does not carry or even own a gun, I am roughly a bajillion times less likely to die via "GSW." Meanwhile, my uncle and other gun permit people, by cherishing that right to protect themselves and their property with deadly force if necessary, are also exponentially more likely to find themselves in the hospital or morgue because a bullet found its way into their flesh.

I might not ever be a big fan of Bristol Palin and the "abstinence only" movement, because I'm pretty convinced that, ultimately, fu -- er, makin' whoopee -- is a pretty cool thing, and it's pretty darn essential to the human race. But when it comes to guns and firearms, which by the way are neither natural nor necessary for the propogation of the human race, their idea has merit: you stick a gun in your house, and those bullets might go somewhere. You never stick a gun in your house, and bullets ain't likely to find their way in, either. Unless they're magic bullets...

But back to my point: If Wyatt Earp had a big damn problem with ordinary joes carrying their weapons into tow, and Wyatt was a bad-ass mofo, then why the hell should I have to apologize to Wayne LaPierre or whatever repressed soul is in charge of the NRA nowadays for standing in favor of the same laws as Wyatt and all those other bad-ass Wastern sheriff mofos??

You wanna spit on me, spit on them first. But they seemed to have a pretty good idea of how to keep order in a town. Maybe you might wanna go back and watch some Westerns and learn something.

"Chinese Democracy": The 17 Year Itch

Today's post does not contain a song, as any posted G n' R song would undoubtedly result in the shut-down of our blog, not to mention the repossession of our homes and children.

I bought Chinese Democracy, but my motive for doing so is elusive.

Sure, I was one of the millions who owned (and still owns) a copy of "Appetite for Destruction." I listened to friends' copies of Lies but never bought it. I hardly even sniffed in the direction of their legitimate follow-ups, Use Your Illusion (Parts I and II!).

So it's not like I'm much of a G n' R fan. "November Rain" was overrated, and the only thing Axl's involvement with supermodel Stephanie Seymour managed to accomplish was to totally kill her hotness. She was part of the Sports Illustrated "Big Three" in the '80s, along with Cindy Crawford and Elle Macpherson, but she jumped the supermodel shark with Axl. (And don't kid yourself; without Seymour in that video, it's not nearly as popular.)

My judgment on the album after the first listen: Not bad. This call still holds, more or less.

My immediate thoughts after a third and fourth listen: I had no idea Axl Rose was such a big Rush fan. Seriously, each listen brings our more Prog Rock and less Hard Rock. None of these songs have the masterful touch of Neil Peart's lyricism or his drumming, but Axl's voice is four notches away from Geddy Lee's -- some would say that's an improvement -- and the guitar work in places is impressive enough.

Understood that Rush holds no monopoly on progressive rock, or whatever the hell that particular genre of rock is called, but they're the band I know that does it best.

What made Appetite such a huge success was not its high IQ nor its layers of experimental sound. G n' R rocked the late '80s because they dumped a huge vat of make-up remover on the increasing glam-ification of the hard rock scene. They made hard rock ugly again. Ugly, raw, and catchy as hell.

Well, that version of G n' R might be somewhere in Chinese Democracy, but it's on life support and barely breathing. In its stead is stuff that, while not bad, ain't what I personally was looking for in an album by Axl and whoever else he could get to play on it.

As I close out Day Five of owning this CD, what keeps coming back is this: Why did this take 17 years? Peter Gabriel is infamous for taking eons between albums. Eons in his case being five or six years, which is how long he was going between albums until Up, in 2002, was a decade in the making. To me, Up was a colossal disappointment, in part because you can't help but ask what the hell took so long to make songs that feel less than inspired.

My expectations for G n' R's 17-year itch weren't nearly so unreasonable, so their output isn't nearly so disappointing. But is it really enough for such a wait for my conclusion on Chinese Democracy to be: "It's not bad"?

Well Dang, Shoot Fire!

BB Gun - Roger Alan Wade (mp3)
Pistol Grip - The Blakes (mp3)

The wife and I aren't what you would call gun-huggin', Charlton Heston-lovin', Bible-thumpin' conservatives. We lean left. If politics were a football field, my ball is probably on the 35-yard-line of the Liberals.

When I was in high school, I started on the 20 of the Conservative side, but I've been plodding down the field in three yards and a cloud of dust for 20 years now. It's unlikely I'll ever make it into the Liberal Red Zone, if you will, and I'm positive I'll never actually score points for either team. If anything, I worry that I'll get penalized here and there for being offsides or a false start and end up creeping back towards midfield by the time I hit my 50s.

But when I see news stories like the one we watched this morning on Good Morning America (video here), I tend to wonder just how liberal someone has to be to fall on one side of this debate as compared to the other.

The story is about Joe Horn, a 61-year-old man from Houston who hit most every branch on the Ugly Tree on his way to earth. He has no previous record of combative behavior or violence that we know of. But the man sure talked tough to a 911 operator while he fidgeted and squirmed knowing two men had broken into his neighbor's house. And the longer he talked -- waiting for cops who apparently weren't coming anytime soon -- the more he compelled himself to go outside with his loaded shotgun and enforce justice. I honestly believe ol' Joe Horn meant every tough-talkin' word he said and simultaneously didn't really know he meant it. Like my college roommate who always told other obnoxious drunk guys that he wouldn't hesitate to kick their asses. He kinda meant it, but he didn't really intend to do it... unless they chose to cross that line he'd created in his own mind.

So this old guy shot and killed these two immigrant burglars. I think most of America -- let's just say 75% for argument's sake -- is mostly OK with this outcome. Burglars don't deserve to die, and the punishment didn't fit the crime, but as the saying so eloquently puts it, you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. And sometimes those fleas are 61 years old and carrying a loaded shotgun out their front door. My favorite part in the lead-in is where Diane Sawyer says the two burglars weren't armed. All they had were tire irons. And I'm like, Madame Sawyer, if two menacing black illegal immigrants headed your direction with tire irons, and you weren't standing inside an auto body shop but rather outside the house they just burgled, would you consider them armed and dangerous, or would you be expecting a hug and a pedicure?

I'm not one of those goombahs who believe Texas has the right idea in wanting every adult with a heartbeat to walk around armed and ready to pull a trigger. Further, I can't even envision a future scenario where I own a firearm that loads with anything but Nerf bullets or paintballs, so my sympathy for Joe Horn and his odd moment of vigilante justice isn't because I could be in his shoes, nor is it because I admire his state's aggressive self-defense laws. But. These two dudes broke into a house in broad daylight. What kind of world do we now live in where everyone cowers in a corner, takes no responsibility for their neighbors or their neighborhood, and just lets bad shit happen? That's the culture we've created, the rules we've apparently embraced.

My grandfather, a Baptist minister, would open his doors to transients, hobos, and Mormons. He set up places in his barn for people without shelter for the night, people who were passing through, places for them to sleep. Baptist preachers in the South weren't exactly raking in Jimmy Swaggart bling 60 years ago, so feeding others on top of a family of eight was nothing to sneeze at. "You never know when you might be entertaining angels," he was fond of saying.

My grandfather, although a preacher, wasn't doing anything most of his neighbors wouldn't have done. It wasn't being a preacher. It was being a decent human being in a different time, with different cultural expectations and rules. If you don't believe me, go watch that new Kit Kittridge movie! But if he caught one of those people trying to steal from him -- or, I suspect, from the neighbors -- I also suspect my grandfather would have shot them. Angels in disguise wouldn't steal or abuse their hospitality.

So now, we shut our doors. We don't know our neighbors. We donate to charities better than any other country, but we don't see if someone across the street needs help. Or better, we watch them squirm in their odd lives and talk about them at dinner with the other neighbors.

The Good Samaritan is a nice fairy tale and all, but the world's just too dangerous to open your home, your car, your illusion of safety. Better to write a check to Red Cross and help the poor bastards that way.  

"BB Gun" is from Roger Alan Wade's first album -- yes, he has two -- All Likkered Up. He performed this song many times at Bud's in Chattanooga. "Pistol Grip" is from the Blakes' first full-length album. Both are available on both iTunes and Amazon.com's mp3 site.