{"id":167,"date":"2008-08-01T07:29:08","date_gmt":"2008-08-01T12:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=167"},"modified":"2018-10-31T12:08:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T16:08:31","slug":"where-do-you-roam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"Where do you roam"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m currently entranced by the Shorpy<\/a> 100 year old photo blog.\u00a0 Plenty of DC stuff there, which makes me pine for street cars and ugly buck-toothed women from the 1920’s.\u00a0 When in need of some light-hearted happy news, though, there’s the Bad Cop News<\/a> blog.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 It’s either that or try to take my eyes out again, just to break up my day.\u00a0 Though, lately, I’ve been working my way through season one of Have Gun Will Travel at CBS.com<\/a>. \u00a0 It’s a gun nut’s dream.\u00a0 The theme song, which we all remember from Stand By Me<\/em>, doesn’t actually play until the end credits.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Then we get on with the show.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 A father who wants his daughter rescued, a jurist hiding from an escaped con, whatever.\u00a0 They’re always unsympathetic types, so Paladin says he’ll fix the problem…for, you know, a thousand bucks.\u00a0 Asshole.<\/p>\n

Then Paladin takes the money and rides out and fucks everyone up.\u00a0 Though he tends to be brooding and chivalrous up until he has to blow people away.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Sure, you always have to wait till the finale before he starts shooting, but, throughout each episode, he’ll draw his gun several times.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The black-white thing is fun.\u00a0 When at rest at his upscale hotel, he dresses in Colonel Sanders white and plays at being the gentleman.\u00a0 Then, when he takes a job, he switches to all black.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There’s this undercurrent of bitter hatred for almost everyone he meets.\u00a0 Occasionally, though, he sympathizes with a criminal.\u00a0 Especially if they’re forced to do what they do out of desperation or mental illness.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Still, though, that should keep me distracted from my day job for a month or so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m currently entranced by the Shorpy 100 year old photo blog.\u00a0 Plenty of DC stuff there, which makes me pine for street cars and ugly buck-toothed women from the 1920’s.\u00a0 When in need of some light-hearted happy news, though, there’s …<\/p>\n

Where do you roam<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[403,215,181],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cult-culture","tag-cult-culture","tag-paladin","tag-shows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1096,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/1096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}