'Murica!!!

 

(Click here, it's worth it)

A Girl's Best Friend

 

Blue Bikini Equestrian

 

Equestrian Month Extravaganza, brought to you by SI

 

Codee! On a Steel Horse She Rides

 

Multi Bikini Day

 

Girl. Horse. Bikini.

 

Does the West stay wild all the way to the Pacific?

 

A Cowgirl Cultural Conglomeration

 

Welcome to February, Chaps!

 

Desert Vista

 

Walking the Desert Streets

 

Wrestle You Way Into the New Year with Toni Storm

In the spirit of total transparency, I started staging posts to cover all of 2024 way back in the late summer of 2023, because I loved the notion of filling my blog in it's 12th year with more posts than ever before.  A lot of that was finding the random pictures I've collected and putting them on posts.  I found this collection of someone I believe is a professional wrestler, in a vaguely western themed photo shoot, and decided to kick of the year with this.  So enjoy.  Or not.  The last few years have been a crap shoot.  God may not play dice with the universe, but he sure does play Russian Roulette with you.

Codee!

Gunslinger Gals: Pinups!

Did you have to do it, Slap?  Did you have to make a post that is just pictures of hot sexy topless retro vintage  pinup cowgirls with guns, just to see what would happen with search engines?

Sure did.

 

On Reading Jory Sherman’s Sidewinder While Ordering Chinese Food

On a trip through the Raleigh-Durham airport yesterday I found a used book store in Terminal B, and even more surprisingly it had four shelves of westerns.  With just a few minutes to look before boarding I spotted a copy of Jory Sherman’s Sidewinder.  A vague memory that some blog had given it a good review came to mind, I plunked down my $4.50, threw the book into the backpack that passes as my briefcase, and boarded my flight.  I bypassed Sidewinder, though, and read comics on my Ipod and half of Peter Brandvold’s Dust of the Damned (review forthcoming, I hope).

Today after a long day of work I stopped on the way home at a chinese takeout place.  Knowing it would take a few minutes for my order to come together I reached into my backpack and found Sidewinder.  The girl at the register laughed when I ordered my General Tso’s Bean Curd (what, there are no vegetarian cowboys in China?!?).  Taking a seat, I flipped open the book.

Chapter one, page one, paragraph one.  Already there is a square jawed hero.  No, really, he is described as having a square jaw.  The rest of the page is exacting descriptions of two characters.  Our hero, Brad Storm (seriously?), is given more visual description in this first page than the Kid was given in 327 pages of Blood Meridian.

On to chapter two, in which our hero beats nine kinds of shit out of a rattlesnake.  I think.  That happened really fast and I’m not sure exactly what happened to chapter one.  I go back and reread all of chapter one.  I’m back to chapter two and the snake is still dead and the hero is dying.

Is this the book that got such a good review?  I look at the cover.  Yeah, I think this is it.  I hope the writing picks up.  Wonder what’s taking the food so long?  I like how the delivery guy has his collar flipped up like a bad boy from an 80’s movie.  Is that woman cooking the same woman who took my order?  No, she’s older.  Oh, there’s the cashier, she’s sitting behind the counter playing with her phone.  I’ve really found some good comics for the Ipod.  Wonder if the cook’s married to that delivery guy, they seem to get along.  Can you believe that woman at the other Chinese place by the yoga studio is having another kid?  Amazing.  I don’t have any kids.  She’ll have two.  She seems so young.  Oh yeah, I’m reading this book.

There’s some woman, and she knows how to handle a gun.  Sherman really knows a lot about guns.  I wonder if he knows how to develop characters without direct exposition?  I bet this woman is the wife of the main character and she gets kidnapped.  Let’s read the back cover.  Yup, she gets kidnapped.  Huh, what’s that say:

"Jory Shreman is a national treasure"- Loren Estleman.  

Estleman.  That guy can write.  Didn’t I listen to The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion on my morning walk?  Yeah, I’ll have to listen more in my evening walk.  He writes a lot of good books.  So does F.M. Parker, I should dig some of those out.  Like that trilogy of interconnected novels all taking place in parallel during the Mexican American War?  That was cool.  Amazing how Riders of the Purple Sage turned out to be such a crisply written, proto-feminist, erotic read.  Man I love that book.  Can’t believe Mrs. Slap loved it, too.

Always trust the opinions of Mrs. Slap.

Man, this food is taking a while.  Had to go hunt up extra bean curd.  Where was I?  Chapter four.  Four?!?  Are you fucking kidding?  Okay, now there’s an Arapaho and a Navajo who are helping out the poisoned hero.  Wow, that’s some bad dialog.  Did this come right out of the 1950’s crazy racist Injun dialog book? 

There’s the table with a stack of free magazines.  I should read one of those.  Maybe I’ll leave the book here.  No, someone’ll just throw it away.  People really seem to like this guy’s writing.  I wonder why?  If I review it on my blog and he reads it will he be pissed?  Last time I published an article someone told me to never read the comments.  Then I read the comments.  One day I’ll publish my novel and people will hate it.  That sucks.  Got to finish it first.  First comes my yoga certification, then I’ll finish the book.  Where’s my food?

I really should be reading something better than this.  Ed Erdelac sent me a copy of Merkabah Rider, what, a year ago?  And I still haven’t read it.  I bet it’s better than this.  

Ah, my bean curd.  Smile at the Chinese girl, she’s laughing at your bean curd.  That’s fine, I don’t have to read any more of this book now.

Calendar Troubles

As astute readers may have noticed by now I am a fan of pirates as well as westerns.  For several years now I have purchased the Hot Pirate Babes calendar from photographer Tiger Lee as my at home (ie to dirty to have a work) calendar.  His calendar is full of pinups of women in pirate costumes with great Photoshopped backgrounds, with plenty of interesting pirate facts to keep me entertained throughout the year.  Alas, Mr. Lee announced recently that due to an increase in work he would not be able to put out a calendar for 2013.

Left to find cheesy entertainment outside of pirate land, I looked for an appropriately western themed calendar.  The best that I could do is a “Farmer’s Daughters” calendar by Johnny Crosslin, with images that look like this…

Sadly, this may be too porny for even this cowpoke to hang on the back room wall. 

Bikinis and Cowboy Hats

For years I’ve been seeing cheesecake shots of well shaped women wearing bikinis and cowboy hats.  It’s a strange combination, one that I never quite understood.  I like bikinis.  I like girls in cowboy hats.  Why didn’t the two go together?  I just didn’t understand.

Then I spent a day on a tropical beach, one that was nearly deserted because getting there required a mile long hike through a jungle.  Next to me, under a palm tree, her head propped up on her CamelBak, lay Mrs. Slap in a straw cowboy hat and a black bikini.  Trust, dear reader, that I am now a believer.

Image copyright Mrs. Slap Leather.  Don't even think about using it.

Cowgirls Espresso

I have never had the opportunity to go to a bikini coffee shop.  I suppose that we New Englanders are too stodgy for something like that.  I would love to give Cowgirls Espresso a chance, though.  They have five locations in Texas, California, and Washington, and claims that there are thousands of people interested in opening franchises across the planet.  I’ll believe that when I see it.  They have apparently expanded out past the cowgirl theme, and now have Military Mondays, Cowgirl Tuesdays, Bikini Wednesdays, School Girl Thursdays, and Fantasy Fridays.  Oh my.  Anyone been there?  How’s the coffee?