Badass of the Week

About five years ago I was in the middle of a brief obsession with Doc Holliday (really, though, can you blame me?) and while trolling the interwebs for obscure facts on Doc I found a profile of him on a web site called Badass of the Week.  Although Badass of the Week was not quite a year old at this point, the author was well on his way to crafting a writing style combining half-baked historical ideas, D&D and Star Wars references, and overwhelming profanity into weekly genius.  Every Friday, the site puts up another crazy biography of someone overwhelmingly badass man, woman, animal, Greek god, or machinery that makes your man parts hurt (even if you don’t have man parts).  For example:

“Here's an example of why you didn't fuck with Doc if you knew what was good for you.  At one point during his colorful career, Holliday owned and operated a saloon in Las Vegas, New Mexico.  One of the babes that worked there had a crazy ex-boyfriend who had just been discharged from the Army, and this guy wanted her to stop working as a Hooters Girl and getting ogled by a bunch of middle-aged perverts.  When she told him to go violent hump a chainsaw, he got pissed, went outside the saloon, and started shooting out this windows with his pistol.  Doc didn’t even fucking flinch.  He calmly put down the beer mug he was polishing, drew his Colt Peacemaker revolver, sauntered outside, and dropped the punk with one shot.  Then he probably went off and slept with the dead guy’s ex-girlfriend just to be a dick.”

Over the years Badass of the Week has profiled a number of mountain men, road agents, Indian fighters, and Indian fighter fighters, include Cherokee Bill, Geronimo, Liver Eating Johnston, Josey Wales, Osceola, William Barret Travis, Pancho Villa, Andrew Jackson, Captain Jonathon Davis, Crazyhorse, Hugh Glass, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Honey Badger(ok, the last one has nothing to do with westerns but really is the best thing on the interwebs).

Even better, it seems that a group of fans in lockup told the writer to stop being such a wuss and do more Old West entries.  Awesome.  Check it out every week!

Red Faction- Monkey Wrench Gang on Mars

Last year I wandered into a local video game store in a bad mood, and was looking for a game that would help me vent my frustrations with the modern world.  Yes, I understand the irony of using a video game for that, but bear with me.  In a rare case of judging a book by its cover, I was struck by the image on game box: a shadowy figure in a duster, carrying a rifle and a sledgehammer, on a stark desert background.  The game description, about a revolution by Martian miners against the Earth Defense Force, who had gone from liberators in a previous installment of the series to brutal occupiers, certainly looked intriguing.  I took the box to the front counter and asked about the game.  “Awesome”, I was told.  “You can blow up ANYTHING.”  I was sold.

Red Faction Guerilla was not at all what I expected.  First off, there were the moral challenges.  I tend to play role-playing games, which present many solutions to obstacles in the game, often with a “good” solution and an “evil” solution (or light side / dark side of the Force, Renegade / Paragon, Open Palm / Closed Fist, etc).  Red Faction made no such distinctions.  There are a lot of things that need to be smashed when destroying the occupiers, and you have to find your own way through the game.  For example, I took it upon myself to blow up a refueling station for the EDF vehicles that looked suspiciously like Hum-Vs.  Charging the gate wasn’t going to work.  I found canisters of explosives in an abandoned shack nearby, but I couldn’t carry them in.  Eventually it occurred to me to put as much explosive as I could into the back of a truck, attached a small bomb with a remote detonator to it all, then ram it through the front gate into the fuel tanks.  That’s when the moral challenges set in.  This game was more about car bombs, EIDs, booby traps, and sniper rifles than it was about big machine guns and the BFG-9000.  There was no scale to show how evil my character was becoming, nor where I fit on the line between freedom fighter and outright terrorist (although it did track the number of civilian bystanders who were casualties to my exploits); it was for me to remember faces of friends and co-workers in harms way in our various wars while I was drawn further into the game.

A soldier in Iraq playing an insurgent in Red Faction.  Too much irony.

And I was drawn further into the game, particularly the Red Faction’s motivations for the revolution.  There was a lot of ending the occupation, liberating Mars, etc, etc.  One crazy voice, however, decided that Mars needed to be purged of all outside influence.  This was Jenkins, or as I thought of him, Edward Abbey in Space.  Under Jenkins guidance, I found myself destroying construction equipment, demolishing bridges, going on rampages against billboards (thanks, Doc Sarvis!), and listening to Jenkins’ long, drawn out rants and philosophies about Mars.  It was, quite frankly, like listening to an audiobook of Desert Solitaire with explosions and gunfire in the background.  I found myself regularly blowing something up, running into the desert being chased by gunhands and flying gunships, and being reminded of Hayduke’s flight from the Search and Rescue Committee in The Monkey Wrench Gang.  After a few hours in the game, it became clear that Red Faction Guerilla was as close as I was going to get to Monkey Wrench Gang- The Game.  If you don't know what The Monkey Wrench Gang is, shame on you, and read this blog.

Doc Sarvis destroying a billboard.  He would love Mars.

Not as cathartic as a long run or a mountain hike, but sometimes you just want to play Hayduke and start smashing.  Mars First!




Boba Fett, Intergalactic Gunslinger

I realize that while I have not posted in some time, I do have a stack of half-written emotionally stirring blog posts that I am still wrapping my head around.  Since it may still take me a while to get these out, I thought I’d pass the time with some alternate takes on every nerd’s favorite intergalactic bounty hunter, Boba Fett.

Also, for the truly brave, you may like this very NSFW blog.

God Bless America and God Bless the Banjo

In Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach’s middle finger to the modern world, the pre-enlightened protagonist explains to the reader what he values in life.  To be out on the town with a beautiful woman, who catches the gaze of the people around him, to be seen by the best people, to be with the best people.  Well, readers, that was me last night. 

I went to a local Bluegrass show, a quadruple booking of regional bands.  The gig was held in the auditorium of a somewhat run down community center.  One web site listed it as a BYO show, which it turns out is different than BYOB- it means feel free to bring your own snacks, but we’ll have candy bars and bottled water in the lobby.  Our wine bottle stayed in the car.

Bluegrass shows are all strings, from mandolins to fiddles to banjos, guitars, and vocal cords.  There are no preening rock stars on Bluegrass stage.  The band literally shares the stage, moving in and out of the lead mike throughout each song in an egalitarian way.  God Bless America, and God Bless the Banjo.

By our count the average age of the attendees was around 50.  That is actually younger than the average age of the musicians, which was closer to 60.  Bluegrass shows tend to attract a mix of aging hippies, vegans, cowboy dreamers, retirees, and environmental activists.  These are the best people, and I was with them.

Seraphim Falls- Two Big Irish Guys Finish the Civil War

I haven’t posted a heck of a lot lately, because I usually write to chase off the demons and frankly a month a half of not working, lots of drugs, and yogic meditation does a lot to keep Old Scratch at bay.  I did find myself sitting down recently to pick some westerns off of my Netflix queue, including one I never heard of called Seraphim Falls.  I don’t believe that the script for the adaption of Blood Meridian is done yet, but whoever is writing it should take a look at this movie to see how a bleak, bloody western can be done.

Seraphim Falls takes a while to get into, largely because the action starts around eleven seconds into the movie.  Pierce Brosnan is shot in opening seconds of the movie, and spends roughly the first half hour being chased through the mountains by Liam Neeson and a band of hired killers.  Through this entire act, Brosnan’s dialogue consists solely of screams and groans.  It is a heck of thing to watch.

Eventually, the cause of the chase is revealed as a blood feud going back to the waning days of the Civil War.  As the chase goes for hundreds of beautiful mountain and desert miles, the distances close, and you start counting the remaining bullets on one hand, the emotional tension ratchets up.  Seraphim Falls, as it turns out, is a farm where good intentions turned to tragedy, leading to Neeson’s quest for revenge.  A seraphim is also a member of the choir of angels, which adds a metaphysical twist particularly when Angelica Houston turns up as a huckster, the Devil, or both.  Turns out that Scratch will tempt you when no matter where you run or how much meditation you do.

When the credits rolled I didn’t think that I liked Seraphim Falls.  My reaction was more in the line of “holy crap, what the heck did I just watch?”  With a little distance, though, it is pretty good if hopelessly bleak and blood drenched. 

Summer Love- Eurotrashing My Beloved Westerns

Consider this less a blog posting than a public service message- avoid Summer Love.  Billed as the first Polish Western, this is a meandering piece of wishful artsy garbage that makes The Last Rights of Ransom Pride look Oscar worthy.  The movie supposedly stars Val Kilmer, who is dead in the first scene of the movie.  Not dies in the first scene, but dead in the first and each scene in which he appears.  The film is an endless string of overly violent shots and odd accents.  One rare bright spot were the scenes with the beautifully rubenesque Katarzyna Figura.  She is the only actress with a speaking role in the movie, and she plays the town prostitute.  Of course, what else could a woman be?  Good Lord, Poland, stay out of the western and stick with the Witcher!

The Cowboy Yogi, Part 2- The Tantric Lone Ranger and Atmamya Kosha

In the last post I discussed classical yoga, the five Koshas, and the ability of the Rawhide Kid to exist daily in the Anandamaya Kosha.  Today, however, is all about Tantra.  Whereas classical yoga is about transcending the world, Tantric yoga rejects this dualistic philosophy and sees that world as something to be lived in, not transcended.  The physical world is something that we are intimately connected to, not something to be rejected or moved past.  Because of this, in tantric yoga philosophy there are two additional layers of the human experience that go deeper than the classical Koshas.  Once one has found the Anandamaya Kosha, the pure space inside where our perfect self lives, we can go further to the Cittamaya Kosha.  Here we start to understand where our perfect self exists in relation to the world.  Yet deeper, there is the pure awareness of Atmamya Kosha, where we realize that our perfect selves are not alone, and that we share a connection to the possible perfect selves, perhaps even the divinity, that exist in each of us across the world.  This is the enlightenment of the Lone Ranger. 

No matter the incarnation, whether in film, radio, or comic, there is a sense of urgency in the Lone Ranger’s actions.  This urgency is not a need for action, but a need to do on behalf mankind.  The Lone Ranger creed, devised in the old radio days of the character (and copied in this post) clearly lay out an almost holy responsibility to the greater world, suggesting an understanding of the deep connection between us all as found in the two innermost Koshas of Tantra.  Indeed, the Lone Ranger’s mask sheds his individuality in favor of integration with humankind.

The Lone Ranger has achieved a deeper awareness than the Rawhide Kid, moving past the Anandamaya Kosha through to the Atmamya Kosha.  By connecting to the wider world, his worth as a hero far exceed his talents.  While I will always take joy in the Rawhide Kid, it the example set by the Lone Ranger that informs my day, and my yoga practice.

Namaste.