Seeing as it was below freezing for most of the day I didn’t feel like going out. I have 6 more westerns to see out of that batch that I bought and so today it was the turn of Stagecoach, Man Of The Frontier and One Eyed Jacks.

Of course, Stagecoach is by far and away the most famous of them all. It was the film that catapulted John Wayne into the limelight back in 1939. Mind you, any self-respecting band of native Americans could have done us all a big favour. 60 Indians on horseback – fleet-footed Indian ponies at that – racing after a Studebaker (and in reality it should have been a Concord) stagecoach and 9 passengers with an all-up weight of three or four tons being pulled by 6 horses and not only could they not catch it, not a single one of the Indians had the intelligence to pump a pile of lead into the horses pulling the coach. But then, what would you have done with the remaining 1 hour 29 minutes and 30 seconds?

Mind you it was an exciting chase through the Utah and New Mexico desert across the foot of the Mokee Dugway across to Medicine Hat – a route that regular followers of my outpourings will have seen before.

One Eyed Jacks wasn’t anything like as bad as I expected it to be – in fact it was quite watchable. It starred and was the first film to be directed by Marlon Brando. After the film was released he complained bitterly that his film had been ruthlessly cut by the editing crew and it had destroyed the whole synthesis of what he was trying to achieve. He had a point but then again so did the editing crew – Brando’s version of the film was over 5 hours long! Imagine the “Director’s Cut” of that!

Gene Autry was another contender for the role of “The Singing Cowboy” (or “Cattleyouth as you have to say these days) and my mother, being the kind of woman that she was, made us sit through all of his films until we knew the lyrics off by heart. Funnily enough, I’d forgotten all about Man Of The Frontier (that’s not even a cattleyouth film seeing as it was set in the 1930s and is about the construction of a dam – a kind of Campbell’s Kingdom in reverse) until he burst into a rendition of “Red River Valley”.

And then it all came flooding back (well, we are talking about dams here). My mother proposed me to enter this talent contest when I was knee-high and told me to sing “Red River Valley”. But I was rebellious even in those days and was hurled off the stage and told never to come back, after merely singing –
I can sing all the songs by Gene Autry
But my singing is certainly vile
When I sing of the Red River Valley
Well the cowboys they all run a mile!

But we were talking the other day about coincidences in Hollywood. And one of the films that cropped up was of course the legendary Blazing Saddles. In that film the baddy was played by Harvey Korman and his sidekick was Slim Pickens. In One Eyed Jacks the baddy was Karl Malden who just happens to be the spitting image of Harvey Korman – you had to look twice to see any difference – and his sidekick was … errr … Slim Pickens. Yes – I reckon Mel Brooks owns the same Western collection that I have!

And that’s not all! In Stagecoach the coach driver was Andy Devine. And I’ve seen Andy Devine before – he was Roy Rogers’ sidekick in The Bells of San Angelo that we saw the other day. And in the 1966 remake of Stagecoach the stage driver was none other than Slim Pickens.

I did manage to get outside though and having found by coincidence a piece of gas pips that was of 32mm diameter I’ve assembled and erected my weather station. The anenometer goes round nicely and the rain gauge will have its work cut out as it’s snowing like hell outside.

In other news, you have all heard about the fraudulent election in Afghanistan – obviously Karzi has been taking lessons from the bushbaby and Florida. Despite the acknowledged widespread fraud, the parliament has shown some teeth by rejecting Karzi’s proposed cabinet more-or-less en masse citing ethicity bribery or money as the reasons for Karzi’s choice of most of them. However, the United Nations finds “the rejection of Karzai(sic)’s cabinet worrying“. So despite having tried to force the Karzi to work hard to outlaw corruption in Afghanistan, the United Nations – and hence the west – are dismayed that a corrupt and illegitimate puppet government would go so far reject nominees for posts where the nominee is either a fellow-tribesman or a significant sum of money has changed hands re the post. So a corrupt election “electing” a corrupt government led by a corrupt President with a cabinet stacked with corrupt ministers is acceptable to the west because it’s pro-western, yet a democratically-elected government next door in Iran is deemed to be unacceptable and a suitable candidate to be undermined, because the democratically-elected government there is anti-western.

The hypocrisy is staggering. You couldn’t make up a story like this!

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