Where do you roam
I’m currently entranced by the Shorpy 100 year old photo blog. Plenty of DC stuff there, which makes me pine for street cars and ugly buck-toothed women from the 1920’s. When in need of some light-hearted happy news, though, there’s the Bad Cop News blog.
It’s not just Friday that I spend on the blogs… My overloaded Google Reader is full up every day, and I’m grateful for the distraction. It’s either that or try to take my eyes out again, just to break up my day. Though, lately, I’ve been working my way through season one of Have Gun Will Travel at CBS.com. It’s a gun nut’s dream. The theme song, which we all remember from Stand By Me, doesn’t actually play until the end credits. We always start out with an extreme close-up on Paladin’s gun as he takes it out of the holster, points it at the camera, and either says a line from later in the show or waxes poetic about how special his gun is. Then we get on with the show. We usually open at Paladin’s favorite hotel in San Francisco where he’s hanging out and hasseling the Chinese bellboy and, typically, ends up stumbling across someone he can extort. A father who wants his daughter rescued, a jurist hiding from an escaped con, whatever. They’re always unsympathetic types, so Paladin says he’ll fix the problem…for, you know, a thousand bucks. Asshole.
Then Paladin takes the money and rides out and fucks everyone up. Though he tends to be brooding and chivalrous up until he has to blow people away. He’s supposed to be a man who abhors violence, but the show is so fixated on his fancy gun that you’re not paying attention to that. Sure, you always have to wait till the finale before he starts shooting, but, throughout each episode, he’ll draw his gun several times. Either to randomly show it off for no reason, or to inexplicably hand it to someone for safe keeping, or just to hold it for a bit, flip it around, then holster it again…seemingly outside of the script.
The black-white thing is fun. When at rest at his upscale hotel, he dresses in Colonel Sanders white and plays at being the gentleman. Then, when he takes a job, he switches to all black. So, despite all of the attempts to make him a proud hero, you can’t help but wonder if Paladin is really an agent of evil. He’s forced a thousand bucks out of some yahoo, he treats people like shit, he’s constantly threatening everyone, and he’s endlessly fondling his gun. There’s this undercurrent of bitter hatred for almost everyone he meets. Occasionally, though, he sympathizes with a criminal. Especially if they’re forced to do what they do out of desperation or mental illness.
CBS only has the first season so I’ll have to turn to Netflix for the rest, I guess. Six seasons, total, though it gets choppy after the third season. Still, though, that should keep me distracted from my day job for a month or so.