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October 6, 2007
My father and both older
brothers had a strong TOADKEEPER
interest in Westerns. VILLON
The Toadkeeper in particular
did a detailed study of the When Villon went
history of the American West. off to explore The
He maintained what he called West (riding off
"The Western File", a manilla into the sunset
folder an inch thick, full of with a friend of
tracings of historical maps his in a large
and so on. converted schoolbus
with the phrase
When he was in This sort of "Beautiful City
his early 20s, obsessive note- Transport" painted
he assembled a taking no doubt on the side), he
plastic model seems alien to lugged The Western And ultimately
of a historical the post-web File along with lost it. The
six-shooter, generation... him... Toadkeeper
carefully never forgave
packing it with This was *many* him for that one.
model clay to decades before
give it some the web. (Or rather he
heft. did, but
And remember: the griped about
trouble with "you it behind his
can always look back once or
it up" is that it twice.)
never gets fixed
in place in your Villon (possibly
head. together with the
Toadkeeper) secretly
added a few things
to my father's
coffin: a fishing
pole, a paperback by
Louis Lamour...
There was one occasion
when the Toadkeeper was
in his early 30s, (I
was 16 or 17), and we
were walking through
the mall with my girl A name, a name must
friend at the time, he be assigned. Let us
was clearly in a say "Unicorn Wings",
relaxed state of mind, perhaps.
because he started
shooting people on the CASTING
far side of the mall UNICORN_WINGS
with an imaginary hand
gun, making his (Zero Boy could not
customary sound-effect. beat the Toadkeeper
on gun sound-effects).
She said: "Are you --
*shooting* people?"
We're talking mid-70s here, and
He was instantly she was an artsy/intellectual
embarassed, contrite... girl with an earnest desire to
and I never saw any keep alive the hippie dream --
playing at gun play which for her was about "being
from him ever again. a loving person".
Abandoning the Teenage girls: the unacknowledged
romance of the legislators of the world.
gun by an
effort of will.
This obsession with
Westerns was not
passed on to me.
I know something
about them because
they knew something
about them, but I An interest in Westerns
can't say I care in general was declining
much about them. as I was growing up -- Explaining
perhaps their time had why is the real
passed. trick.
Ann-Marie Hendrickson,
Bill Weinberg's WEINBERG
sometimes cohort at the
Moorish Orthodox Radio
Crusade explains that
she's developed an
interest in Gene Autrey
movies, and remarks on
the fact that they're
far more of a New Deal
Democrat artform than
she would've thought.
The Indian shoot-outs and so
on which were more popular
with more conservative
audiences were more the
province of the "A" pictures.
She theorizes that this
turn to the right may have
been the reason for the
forms decline.
This is something like
my theory that the
newspaper is a declining
form because the masters
of the media insist on
conservative news, and
the largely liberal
reading public doesn't
see any point in
encouraging them.
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