Philip Goodwin’s “Cruisers Making A Portage” perfectly captures how the past month has gone. A lot of heavy lifting and navigating of rough terrain. All to the good though.
• Craig Rullman and I will very soon launch a new online project, with design by Lynn Woodward, who created this site. Just by way of a teaser, I guess I’d say that it takes a lot of the themes and issues that have percolated up here at Frontier Partisans and takes them into the realm of a kind of activism.
• The Lost City of Z gets its DVD release on July 11, which means I’ll finally get to see it. It never came closer than Madras, which is about a 50-mile drive northeast from here, and I wasn’t able to do it. Ah well, I prefer watching movies at home anyway.
• Did get to the theater to see “Wonder Woman.” I guess I don’t get it. It was enjoyable enough, and it was fun to see Chief in action, though we never got any kind of explanation as to how he came to be smuggling through Belgium. Was he a deserter from the Canadian Army? How did he come by a Winchester Yellow Boy? According to the Interwebs, it’s recently been revealed that he’s actually Napi, a Blackfoot demi-god. OK then!
Gal Gadot has an absolutely dazzling smile. Chris Pine is hot (so my wife tells me).
I cannot understand why what is basically a kids’ movie is loaded down in the media with so much cultural freight.
• I am obsessed with Colter Wall’s Outlaw Ballad, Bald Butte. It’s going in the repertoire.
Steve Earle’s So You Wanna Be An Outlaw is mighty fine. The liner notes alone were worth the price of admission. The album is dedicated to the memory of Waylon Jennings and the deluxe edition features “Ain’t No God In Mexico,” a Billy Joe Shaver song that Waylon cut on the seminal Honky Tonk Heroes album in 1973. It also serves up a ferocious take on Waylon’s “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way.” A couple of Steve’s new songs carry that trademark 2/4 “eat shit bass” and the phased Telecaster — but it’s a Steve Earle album through and through.
And “Fixin’ To Die” is channeling Led Zeppelin more than Waylon Jennings.
• Speaking of fixin’ to die… Watching Netflix’s El Chapo. Doesn’t pack quite the same punch as Narcos, but it’s well done.
• The Son is the best show of 2017, so far. I’m very interested to see how AMC develops it in its second season.
• Autumn of the Black Snake, which recounts the war for the Old Northwest Territory, is a worthy effort. It’s great to see this highly-significant yet virtually unknown chapter of American history get some attention.
• Listened to Stephen Hunter’s G-man. It’s a worthy return to form.
• Forthcoming posts on Lt. Archibald Gillespie, USMC, and his adventures with Fremont and Carson in the taking of California; Robert E. Howard’s turn-of-the-century desert adventurer Francis X. Gordon; the unjustly overlooked Apache chieftain and badass warrior Chihuahua.
deuce says
That Steve Earle tune ROCKS. Yes, the Page/Zep lineage is there and that ain’t no bad thing atall, atall.
JimC says
Thought you’d dig that…
Keith West says
“I cannot understand why what is basically a kids’ movie is loaded down in the media with so much cultural freight.”
Because these days everything in the media has to be loaded down with cultural freight. Because everything is supposed to be about politics in some form. Me, I like good ol’ fashioned storytelling.
JimC says
And politics is a reality TV show. Interesting times…
deuce says
I enjoyed the WW movie, but it wasn’t flawless by any metric. This examination of plot-holes and other problems with it accords with my take:
http://www.pulprev.com/2017/07/7-writing-lessons-from-wonder-woman.html
Cheah is a published author himself and has some good insights.
john roberts says
Gotta admit, being named Chihuahua was a bad move. Now if his folks had just named him Pitbull or Rottweiler…
JimC says
Hah!
Breaker Morant says
I really liked G-Man also. Charles Swagger’s demons are almost heart-breaking in a way.
I will be driving across the Dakotas 4X in the next couple of weeks as we will be taking my 16YO daughter to an engineering camp at South Dakota School of Mines in Rapid City.
Trying to pick a book(s) that fits the trips. I have a couple of Gold in the Black Hills books-but I can’t find them. I have read so much Indian stuff lately that I want to shy away from that for awhile.
“Cattle Kingdom” (your rec) would fit the bill, but I can’t get it from the library in time and I don’t want to buy it. I do have Mari Sandoz’s “The Cattlemen” which is at the top right now.
I do have some more specialized stuff-an older book called “The Last Grass Frontier” on the cattle stuff in South Dakota. Maybe that one will move to the top, as I don’t know when I would read it otherwise. Sounds good for now.
Matthew says
Recently read Showcase Presents: Warlord which collect’s the first 29 of the comic Warlord by Mike Grell about a pilot who ends up in a fantasy land in the center of the Earth. This is Grell’s tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughs and to a lesser degree Robert E. Howard. (Possibly Harold Lamb since there’s a story involving Cossacks.) Really makes me hope DC releases a second volume.
I’m reading two non-fiction books: Cold Zero: Inside the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team which I’ve barely gotten in to. More interesting is Ninja, A Thousand Years of Shadow Warriors by John Mann. Mann wrote the book that the series Marco Polo was loosely based on. This covers the actual history of ninjas and not the pop culture version. (Ninja wasn’t even a term back then.) The shinobi as were essential spys/special ops personal in Medieval Japan. What’s interesting is that they come from the Iga and Koga regions which was
a mountainous part of Japan. (Well, Japan is mostly mountains.) There communities were far more egalitarian and democratic than the rest of Japan and the people fiercely independent and believing in martial valor. They feuded a lot too. From the description it reminded me a lot of Appalachia, though Mann compares it to the Swiss.
JimC says
There’s something about the nature of mountaineers that is consistent across the world and across time. That fierce, feuding martial spirit. Still awaiting my library’s copy of No Friend But The Mountains….
Matthew says
“No Friend” looks like an interesting book. There was also of course, the Scottish Highlands. Greece and Macedonia (Alexanders birth place) were mountainous.
Japan also had the yamabushi which were mystics who lived in the mountains and practice martial arts. There’s believed to be some crossover between them and ninja. There was also other warrior monks like the sohei.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamabushi
lane batot says
Talk about sink-wren awe-city…..I JUST came from seeing “Wonder Woman” on the Big Screen(I’m talking just a coupla hours ago just!), and man, do I disagree humongously with the lukewarm commentary about it above–I thought it was absolutely incredible; profound, even–way more than I was expecting it to be! The older I get, the MORE I appreciate the old Greek legends, and I love seeing them brought to life again for modern times–I ESPECIALLY appreciated the whole Amazon backstory to this tale. Some of the things said in this movie, like how not even gods nor goddesses can prevent mortals from CHOOSING what they do–yeah, this was NOT a simple super hero kids movie–for which I personally appreciate! Perhaps my almost dumbfound awe is because I so rarely go to the movies, so am not so jaded with big effects or rehashed themes as so many seem to be now. And I heard no snarky professional critiques on it either, beforehand, so it was all just my simple primitive opinion in viewing it. Damn, the fight scenes alone were SPECTACULAR! ESPECIALLY with the Amazons! I woulda liked to have seen more of the injun, too, but I feel I still got my wampum’s worth! And then some! Almost felt like crying(I said ALMOST, guys…..) with the realization there isn’t REALLY a Wonder Woman out there, somewhere……
JimC says
Very glad to hear that you enjoyed it so.
Ike says
Absolutely can’t wait to read your write up on “The Father of Recon”, Lt. Gillespie! Good to go!
JimC says
Heck of a story, that’s for sure.
Matthew says
I’m really looking forward to the El Borak post.
Paul McNamee says
Well, I don’t have much to offer the trap line this time around, nothing too frontier related. I did visit Valley Forge but that was settled farmland by the time of the encampment. 😉
I just started listening to the audiobook of TRUE GRIT yesterday. I plan to finish it and then watch both movies – which are waiting on my DV-R.
JimC says
that is a worthy project.
Traven Torsvan says
I did enjoy seeing Autumn of the Black Snake getting a glowing blurb from the Exile’s War Nerd (Surprised Gary Brecher aka John Dolan’s stuff hasn’t been mentioned here)
I recently started William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest which also deals with the same period and subject matter.
JimC says
Wells! GREAT story. Please consider doing a guest post on that.
I hadn’t thought of the War Nerd for many moons. He’s still at it?
Traven Torsvan says
Brecher/Dolan has a podcast now https://www.patreon.com/radiowarnerd
Btw here’s the author’s page for his book on Wells for any who are interested, he also wrote a historical novel about him as well.
http://www.williamheathbooks.com/william-wells-and-the-struggle-for-the-old-northwest/
Though if you are interested in a contributing post I’d be more than happy to write up something about John Gregory Bourke
JimC says
Deal! I’ll email you tomorrow .