The Shopkeeper- An Unexpectedly Fun Western

When I first saw a short blurb about The Shopkeeper as a great new western from up and coming author James D. Best, I wasn’t sure what to think.  The description from the back cover, about an eastern dude (the eponymous shopkeeper) running into trouble in the west, did not inspire me with thoughts of grand frontier adventure.  None the less I picked it up as an e-book for a recent flight and gave it a shot.

The Shopkeeper is good.  Really good.  There are a couple of neat plot twists in the story, so I won’t say much about the plot, but rest assured it is highly entertaining.  The setting is a Nevada filled with mining camps, scheming businessmen, and corrupt politicians.  Despite the setting this is less a traditional western than a novel about cutthroat business in a largely lawless world. 

The Shopkeeper is a quick read, and well worth the time of a western reader looking for something new but still wanting to play in the setting. 

DC Comics' Missing Western Reboots

In an effort to resuscitate flagging sales by imitating a ten year old marketing gimmick from Marvel Comics, DC Comics has cancelled all of its long term, ongoing series and is restarting 52 of them, erasing decades of continuity and pissing off its remaining fans around the world.  For examples, Jonah Hex is being brought back as All-Star Western (suspiciously moved to Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum for the first issue).  One fun blog asks what happens to the remaining characters, and has a series of fun, fake covers for #1 comics that will never be.  Several westerns make the cut, including Bat Lash, the Justice Riders, and Weird Western Tales.  Check out the links as well as the pics.  There are some nice descriptions of the original comics and what might have been done with a fresh take.

Victor J. Banis’ Longhorns; or, Why a Married Man Likes Gay Cowboys

Yesterday I was out in the woods with my wife of 15 years, riding our mountain bikes through a rough, stony trail.  After a few hours of riding we were dirty, dusty, muddy, and mosquito bitten.  Burs from the long grasses coated our legs, and we kept wondering how many ticks we were picking up during slow slogs through fields.  We rounded a turn in the trail and poured down what turned out to be a deceptively long and steep hill, with plenty of loose rock and branches to trip us up.  “Yahoo!” cried my wife as we barreled down the hill.  “Why don’t we do this every day?”  Later that night over dinner and a bottle of wine I looked at her and said “Man, am I glad I married you.  I couldn’t live with a dainty woman.”  

Not surprising to me, today I finished Victor J. Banis’ classic gay cowboy novel, Longhorns, over breakfast.   

Longhorns is at its heart a great cowboy story.  A young Nasoni Indian, Buck, rides into the Double H ranch at roundup and finds work as a cowboy.  He is fun, gregarious, attractive, and brings joy to every life touches.  Buck also doesn’t shy away from letting the cowboys around him know that he wouldn’t mind a ride in bushes, if you catch the drift of his saddle blanket.  The cowboys in Banis’ world don’t worry too much about this, as they all have taken a poke or two in the woods on lonely nights, but generally prefer fillies to broncos.  The Double H segundo, Red, quickly takes a liking to the boy, and while they make regular trips behind the woodshed, Buck has his eyes firmly set on Red’s pard, a somber trail boss named Les. 

Buck turns out to be the best cowboy of the bunch.  He can tame any horse, ride faster, shoot better, and it turns out Buck can cook up a cowboy meal that can bring the boys back for seconds and thirds.  There is some sex in the book, of both the cowboy-on-cowboy and cowboy-on-soiled dove variety, but it isn’t wall to wall and for the most part isn’t terribly explicit.  Longhorns is mostly about men being men in each other’s company, eventually coming to terms with the notion that they are uncomfortable in the presence of women and can find what they need, all that they need, with each other.

Now I’m not a particularly manly man, but I get this.  What I want in my life is someone who can share my musings and adventures, not someone who waits patiently at the homestead for me to return.  Come with me and get dirty in the woods, and when we are clean and well fed our love is that much better. 

Historical novels have a hard time making this happen.  If they are true to history, the women folk will daintily knit and sew while them menfolk go a’roving.  Some writers string together an extravagant tale of how their female characters ended up as the rare gunslinging gal, but it is hard to pull of convincingly (thanks, Peter Brandvold, for giving it a try with Louisa Bonaventure, "The Vengence Queen” of the Lou Prophet novels).  For this to work, where you have two historical characters that live their lives together, adventure, explore, and share an occasional intimacy in a way that feels genuine, sometimes you have to have two dudes.  And those dudes have to get it on.

Rest easy, pard.  Reading something off of the Brokeback shelf won’t suddenly make you gay any more than all that girl-on-girl porn you secretly watch has made you a lesbian.  And if you like it more than you thought, well maybe you learned something about yourself in the process.  Stories about two cowboys in a tangled romance always make my heart sing a bit.  They remind me of times past, hiking some rocky trail to the heavens, stopping to take in a view, and slipping my arm around the form of the woman I love.

Love is love, pard.  Love is love.

Slap Bacon

"Slap some bacon on a biscuit and let’s go!  We’re burnin’ daylight!"

-Wil, The Cowboys, as quoted in the 2011 Daily Bacon Calendar

Chuck Full o’ Fun- Western Art of Laura Lakey

As one does when looking for cowgirls on the interwebs I stumbled across the artwork of Laura Lakey and her husband John.  Their art tends towards sci-fi and fantasy (they contributed a lot of artwork to the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 books, for example), but they also have terrific western art, particularly in the realm of the cowgirl.  Stop by their web site some time and enjoy.

Hurricane Irene Power Outage Cowboy Chili for Two

 Ingredients:

One rusted out, unusable gas grill that you regret buying from your friend

One grill grate from when you tried but failed to make the unusable grill usable

One fire bowl

One bag charcoal briquettes

One bunch of twigs for kindling (semi-dry)

Four mid sized logs (semi-dry)

One large pot

One small container of bacon drippings

Three tomatoes rescued from the garden before the 75mph winds, diced

One can beans from the back of your pantry

One onion, diced

One chili pepper, diced

One jalapeno pepper, diced

Two chicken breasts slowly going bad in your depowered refrigerator

One bottle Corona

½ pack of taco seasoning left over from Thursday’s dinner

Two cups of water

1-     Stare at the unusable gas grill.  Shake your head in shame.

2-     Prepare the fire bowl by dumping out the water, then pouring in the charcoal.  Light charcoal.  While the fire is still going add kindling and four logs, arrayed so that they can provide support for the grate as they burn.  Because the wood is wet you may want to liberally add bacon drippings which burns hot and gets your neighbors and family agitated.

3-     When the coals are burning red and the wood is spitting flame, place the grate on top of the wood.  Place the pot on top of the grate, and put a couple of tablespoons of bacon drippings in the pot.  Enjoy the melting and sputtering, then add onion.  Stir occasionally for five minutes.

4-     As onions brown, place the two chicken breasts on grate over the fire.  Turn occasionally.

5-     Add water and taco seasoning to the pot.  Stir.  When boiling, add chicken to the pot. Stir occasionally for five minutes.

6-     Add peppers, beans, and tomatoes to pot.  Stir occasionally for 40 minutes. 

7-     Drink beer while watching the pot boil and avoiding ashes flying in your face as the last of the tropical storms winds pick up.  If the pot starts to look dry, pour beer into the pot. 

8-     Check to make sure that chicken is cooked through.  Spoon chicken and chili into large bowls.  Either eat outside or light candles, because it is going to be a while until the power comes back on.