Westerns

So I was having a conversation with a coworker yesterday about, as these things inevitably go, books (for a depressingly large number of people, “reading books” = reading smutty romances) and movies. I mentioned that I had been, in my day, a viewer of Westerns. “I don’t think I’ve ever watched a western” was the reply. Which isn’t unexpected–most people’s only exposure to the genre these days is their half-senile grandpa endlessly watching Gunsmoke on TV–but there are quite a few really good movies that are forgotten because, well, no one watches Westerns these days.

Of course, there are the A-list movies–John Ford’s elegies to the US Cavalrymen and the 50s-coiffed women who loved them, Bud Boetticher’s slightly grimier, rough-edged Randolph Scott collaborations, the wide vistas and heroic statures of Anthony Mann’s oeuvre. Oh, and also The Magnificent Seven, I advised her to just start there. There are also the B-westerns, which are in my reckoning, good stuff that didn’t have the money, acting chops, script, or adeptness to make it to the high list, but still, at bottom or for one reason or another, is good stuff.

Unsurprisingly, I have several recommendations. Also unsurprisingly, most of them star Audie Murphy.

Ride a Crooked Trail tells of a man thrust into heroic circumstances from which he could escape, but who chooses to step into the role and who grows into more than he ever dreamed he could be. It’s also got a cute kid and a dog.

Gunsmoke (1953) gets my vote also because, heh, when the brash young hero wins a whole ranch in a card game, he also wins its mortgage, payroll problems, and employment gap. (Also: 1950s-era bustiers.)

Ride Clear of Diablo is also great, but I haven’t reviewed it. Alas. It’s got Dan Duryea giving his hyena-esque best, which is at least three hyenas better than you’d get from anyone else in the business.

Outside of Audie Murphy, there’s also Dana Andrews’ contributions to the genre, such as Canyon Passage, and, well huh. He didn’t do that many Westerns of note, after all. Anyway, Smoke Signal was a solid little B-flick, so there’s that. And anyway, if you’re watching a Dana Andrews movie, you should watch some of his film noirs.

Face of a Fugitive stars Fred MacMurray, who was also extremely good in Westerns–cf: Quantez and Day of the Badman.

I’m out of time. They’re good movies, not among the greats, you still should watch ’em.

Oh, and Wind River and Tremors count as modern westerns and are pretty good, too.

Music Monday – Back in the Saddle

It shouldn’t be possible to end a five-day-long vacation more tired and burnt-out than you started it, but somehow, somehow…

(We did get some good bouldering in on one day of the week, though. That was a lot of fun.)

Hm. It’d be nice if I could take a .44 with me, but oh wouldn’t management be upset.

And the little old ladies would probably cry.

Ew.

Ah, there we go.

Don’t ask me where I’ been, I’m back….

nemorensis

“They do not bow to men or to kings. They kneel to you. They treat you as though you are a god.”

Alberich shrugged. There the matter would normally have stayed. He spoke little of his own deeds, knowing there were men enough who spoke of them for him, for good or for ill. But to this woman he answered: “No. To them I killed a god.”

Elissa stared up at him. “I had not known there were still gods. Do gods live?”

“This one did,” he said, smiling.

“How do you kill a god?”

He smiled no longer. “It was done.”

“What was the cost?”

Alberich looked down at her. None questioned him; none bought or bade him. But, to this woman, he answered in his slow, soft voice. “I became a man.” he said.

QuikReviews: M. L. Wang, Martha Wells

Blood over Bright Haven – M. L. Wang – the author of this book makes a definite point, but not the one that he/she thinks she/he is making. A male protagonist would have survived.

Witch King – Martha Wells – it’s a queer author who can take a setting and milieu that Conan the Barbarian could comfortably inhabit or at least tour–a seething world of fetid jungles rank with mud and sunken barges; flooded, cursed and forgotten cities; empty cities depopulated by the vicious mage-conquerors; a forgotten world of (very strangely egalitarian) grassland barbarians–and could simultaneously take two main characters who are respectively, a body-hopping, life-drinking, magical revenant from the Underworld, and an immensely powerful and practically immortal air-spirit-commanding witch, both of whom are famed, feared, and dreaded war heroes of the past age….and make all of the above milquetoast, boring, and underwritten. Also, everyone is gay to the degree one wonders where the next generation is going to come from. While there’s definitely downsides to the one-battle-per-chapter formula of the pulp epics that founded the genre….it sure as hell beats the “each chapter is a conversation” format that dominates now.

Rated: Honestly what this book reminds me of the most is those LiveJournal fanfics that you’d occasionally find back in the day, where someone with talent and intelligence would spin off an idea on their own private blog for their own curated audience, and just nail absolutely everything about that idea–but only for a very, very short amount of space, rarely more than a chapter, generally no more than a snippet. Anyhow.

Irrelevant PSA: MacroFactor and MacroFactor Workouts

This may not be relevant to the majority of my audience, but (and please pardon the fact that this entire post sounds like an ad, it’s hard not to when you’re….trying to hype up a product. Unfortunately I am not getting paid for this post):

MacroFactor is a very powerful and user-friendly diet-tracking and diet-coaching app. It’s specifically designed for strength/physique athletes (read: lifters and bodybuilding-type lifters), and has a sophisticated algorithm that interacts with the individual users and sets flexible goals that match your actual activity levels to your eating targets to your target weight goals. It’s the work of the Stronger by Science team, who themselves are competitive weight lifting athletic types.

I’ve used MacroFactor for about two and a half years. I’ve used food/calorie trackers on and off for about eight years–MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, and S Health, mainly. MacroFactor is by far the best. It’s a paid app, but unlike the other “free” apps I listed, it’s user-forward: it doesn’t paywall any utilities or have any user tiers that lock or unlock functionality based on how much you can pay. Over the last two years I’ve been able to drop twenty pounds and maintain at that level of weight loss with no affect on my energy, overall strength, or overall mental health. (The last three pounds are, um, probably not going to come off until after the holidays, lol.)

MacroFactor also enables you to track your micronutrient, water, caffeine, alcohol, and fiber inputs; it also–one of my favorite new features–has an AI photo logging feature for when you’re eating food prepared by someone else. The photo recognition is fairly solid, and the feature does pretty well overall when you can give it supplemental information, such as weights or hidden ingredients. The MacroFactor team is also extremely responsive to user input. A couple of months ago they rolled out a new app logo. This raised enormous outcry from the users, who liked the previous one. The devs promptly created an option for users to switch to whichever logo they liked.

OK, so all that hype is to lead up into: there’s a new companion app being launched by the same team, MacroFactor Workouts. The new app is launching sometime in early January 2026. While it’s not going to be a magic solution for all ills, it’s intended to be an individually personalized, progressively-overloading coaching program with enormous customizability and flexibility.

And the workout app is price-bundled for the first year with the diet app for basically free if you subscribe to the diet app before January 1, 2026. I consider it highly worth it.

So. PSA.

The Wooden Man – Harry Connolly (trilogy/omnibus)

I really didn’t like it.

I don’t like stories that are ugly and hopeless, where everyone-but-the-hero is a helpless and useless victim with no ability or chance to act, fight, flee, learn, or think. I dislike stories where there is a pervasive despair and evil that can’t be fought or faced effectively by [anyone-but-the-hero] and therefore is only, in-universe, confronted by other, lesser evils (ineffectively) until our Hero arrives and is the only one who can solve the problem. Honestly, I should have taken a hint from the fact that the first book’s plot revolves around children who burn to death and turn into worms.

This series is technically urban fantasy, but it’s really horror-action fiction meshed with the kind of mystery thriller that the Jack Reacher series is. If you think that description sounds intriguing, then you very well might like these books.

Why is it not really urban fantasy? Well, the werewolves are decidedly unsexy, there are no leather jackets, zero motorcycles, and a complete absence of smutty romance or even romantic tension for the most part. The hero bangs an involved party in the first book and moves on, the same way Jack Reacher would; there’s not a hint of sexual tension in the second book, and I leafed through the third without verifying if the ex-girlfriend survived–indications point to “no,” as has been the case with any character who is not-the-main-character trying to survive, escape, fight back, or merely exist in this universe.

From a technical perspective: the books are solidly plotted and for the most part, well-written. The action leans more into “misery porn” than “breathtaking,” and the ultimately responsible parties in both books 1 and 2–the cosmic monsters which have been summoned to Earth and which madden and destroy, not to mention eat, mind-rape, set on fire, and use your corpse to feed more of its own kind, have extremely unsatisfying conclusions. Is the point that humans are the real monsters? When everyone is being mind-controlled into it, I don’t think that’s valid.

I didn’t like it, but if you like cosmic-tinged action horror with an urban mystery thriller protagonist leading, you might.

Rated: At least the MHI universe allows guns to work if you use enough of them. And you get paid when you take the monsters down…