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The Frontierado Holiday is coming up this Friday, August 7th! Balladeer’s Blog will be squeezing in some more seasonal posts until that grand event kicks off on the upcoming three-day weekend. Frontierado focuses on the myth of the Old West, not the grinding reality. |
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WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STARTED IN DODGE CITY – The Las Vegas in this article is Las Vegas, NEW MEXICO, not the more famous Las Vegas in Nevada. This lesser known Las Vegas held a degree of renown from the 1846-1848 war with Mexico onward. Its earliest history dated back to the 1600s. |
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On the 4th of July in 1879 the first train reached Las Vegas from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. At least half a dozen times a day trains would stop in the city and with all this new activity Las Vegas increased exponentially in size and pop****tion almost immediately. |
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With business of all kinds soaring, so too did crime. The summer of ’79 saw plenty of infamous gunslingers, gamblers and outlaws from Dodge City and other locales arrive in town on the railroad. Doc Holliday and Kate Elder, Mysterious Dave Mather, Dutch Henry, the Durango Kid, Arkansas Dave Rudabaugh, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, California Jim and many others made Las Vegas their temporary home. |
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Even the most casual observers of the American scene have noticed over the years that Democrats are so dead inside they use high-profile funerals as nothing more than political theater. They contemptuously hide behind the corpse they pretend to be mourning, figuratively holding it up as a s***eld against criticism and against responses to the deceptive claims they make and the outright lies they tell under the guise of noting someone’s pa***ing. |
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We all saw that ugly, divisive, hatemongering phenomenon again this past week. As I’ve often pointed out, Democrats have no ident**y outside of their political opinions and they think of themselves as “special” just for HAVING those opinions. When you are that empty inside you inject your partisan savagery into EVERYTHING, even fundamentally transforming funerals into campaign speeches using the dead person’s corpse as a podium. |
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MARTIN LUTHER KING’S NIECE IN PARTICULAR BLASTED THE DEMOCRATS’ ABUSE OF A FUNERAL FOR POLITICAL STUNTS – Click HERE |
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Readers just cannot get enough superhero blog posts, so since it has been two weeks since I last did one of these, here is a look at the Lev Gleason pantheon of superheroes. |
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BLACKOUT |
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Secret Ident**y: Basil Brusilof, MD |
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First Appearance: Captain Battle #1 (June 1941) |
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Origin: Once, when Dr Brusilof was in the experimental lab of the Belgrave, Yugoslavia hospital where he worked, a n**** bombing run blew up that lab. Basil gained superpowers from the accident and fought crime and the Axis Nations under the name Blackout. |
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Powers: Blackout’s body became coal-black from the explosion which gave him his powers. The mysterious black gases/ energies that his body generated gave him ma***ive super-strength, invulnerability and the ability to fly by shooting the gases/ energies from his feet like thrust from rocket engines. Similarly, from his hands he could shoot concussive blasts of those same gases/ energies. |
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In addition, this hero could see in the dark and his blackened body provided perfect camouflage for night-time attacks on the n****s. |
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Comment: This hero should not be confused with the Holyoke superhero called Blackout. |
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LONDON |
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Secret Ident**y: Mark (Marc) Holmes, radio newscaster |
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First Appearance: Daredevil Comics #2 (August 1941) |
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Origin: While covering the Blitz, suave newscaster Mark Holmes decided that his fellow Brits needed extra inspiration to maintain their spirit of defiance against the n****s. He adopted the costumed ident**y of London and battled Axis Agents plus criminals. |
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Powers: London was in the peak of human condition and excelled at unarmed combat. He also possessed the agility of an Olympic gymnast. In addition, this hero was a crack shot with the handgun he carried. |
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Comment: This superhero may SOUND run of the mill, but there’s just something about the name “London” plus the great font for the letter “L” on his forehead that makes him more appealing to me than other “regular guys in a costume” heroes. |
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On top of that, there’s the wartime morale appeal, especially with his Blitz-referencing catch-phrase “London can take it!” |
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Carmen Best, Seattle Police Chief and Martin Luther King Person of Courage, recently spoke out about the way Democrat politicians in Seattle have been furthering their war on the police (see links below) and yesterday added to her earlier comments by pointing out the terrorist warfare gear that was seized as it was being handed out to Democrat RIOTERS (not protestors – RIOTERS). |
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That equipment included EXPLOSIVES, SPIKED STRIPS, BEAR SPRAY and THE KIND OF LASERS BEING USED BY DEMOCRAT RIOTERS IN PORTLAND AND ELSEWHERE TO INFLICT SEVERE EYE DAMAGE ON LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL. Some of the eye damage MAY BE PERMANENT. |
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The lasers have already been used frequently in Portland, OR, against Federals who had to be sent in TO PROTECT FEDERAL BUILDINGS IN THE CITY. Most adults recognize that the Federal Government HAS ALWAYS been able to protect Federal Buildings in cities across the nation, but in recent weeks it has been especially necessary because Democrat mayors and/ or governors attack federal LEO’s because of Democrats’ obsessive hatred of President Trump. |
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Meanwhile Democrats continue to egg on the riots and the hatred of police by pretending these are “peaceful protests.” |
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As Matt Vespa noted (see links below), this latest Democrat meltdown/ war strategy “is over the deployment of federal agents into these crime-ridden h**** holes run by Democrats. In Portland, they’re trying to set the federal courthouse on fire, rioters are throwing IEDs at law enforcement, and they’ve blinded federal officers with lasers, some of whom may not regain their vision.” |
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I will say once again that my biggest regret in life is that I used to belong to the fascist organization called the Democrat Party. Join so many of us and #WALKAWAY from that repulsive organization that is waging war on the rest of us because they lost an election four years ago. |
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Getting back to Chief Best’s comments she addressed “two recent events (Sunday, July 19th and Wednesday, July 22nd) have included wide-scale property destruction and attacks on officers, injuring more than a dozen, some significantly,” she wrote. |
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“This weekend we know that several events are planned across the city that will foreseeably involve many of the same violent actors from recent days,” she elaborated. “There is no reason not to a***ume we will continue to experience property destruction, arson, looting, and attempts to injure additional officers throughout the weekend and beyond.” |
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Frontierado is just over a week away! The joyous day is coming when we can enjoy our meals of buffalo meat, Tumbleweed Pizzas, Southwest Fried Rice, corn on the cob, Cactus Salad, mashed potatoes and Western Spaghetti ! Later we can wash down some Deuces Wilds (Red or Black) and Cactus Jacks while playing Frontierado Poker or watching Silverado. |
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My most pop****r Frontierado articles over the years have been the ones about neglected gunslingers of the American West. Here are another man and woman whose lives were at least as interesting as those of the bigger names. |
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KID RUSSELL – How cool is it that an authentic, acclaimed international artist spent some of his younger years wandering the Wild West, even earning the nickname Kid Russell? Charles Marion “Kid” Russell was born in 1864 in St Louis, Missouri. As with Klond**** Kate Rockwell, most of this figure’s life story is outside the purview of this article. |
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Since Frontierado is about the myth of the Old West I’ll focus on the legends about Kid Russell’s wild, wandering younger years full of guns, ranches, saloons, cattle drives, bordellos and sketches drawn on any nearby flat surface, sketches that showed the nascent talent that would one day make Russell world-famous. |
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When he was age 16 Charles’ well-to-do parents gave up trying to force him to continue his schooling at an eastern military academy and let him move to Montana, where, clad in a brand-new buckskin outfit, he worked on a friend’s sheep ranch north of Helena. It took skill with a gun and a true survival instinct to live through encounters with rustlers, hostile cattlemen and their hired gunmen but Charles, already being called Kid Russell, thrived and felt more at home in this rough and tumble lifestyle than among his family’s hoity-toity friends in St Louis high society. |
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Nina Turner, the black woman who served as the co-chair for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign – which was once again sabotaged by the corrupt Democrats – recently compared voting for the senile and possibly demented Joe Biden to eating “a bowl of s****.” (Link below) |
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Her scathing remarks about the scandal-plagued, groping Biden continued: “It’s like saying to somebody ‘You have a bowl of s**** in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still s****.” (No word yet on how many Antifa (KLANtifa) bacteria were aroused by her imagery.) |
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Turner also pointed out “WHILE BERNIE SANDERS HAS ALWAYS STOOD UP FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS, JOE BIDEN HAS REPEATEDLY LET US DOWN.” Joe Biden has long been behind draconian legal measures against African Americans, often in concert with Hillary “The Human Herpes Sore” Clinton, who notoriously called African American males “super-predators.” (No, Hillary, career politicians like YOU are super-predators. And career criminals, too.) |
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Nina had courageously criticized Biden for exploiting his proximity to Barack Obama to try to pretend he himself was a good candidate for African Americans. |
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Even though there are signs here and there that audiences are getting fatigued with the oversaturation of superhero adaptations for the big and small screens, there still doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. |
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What better time for an OPERA version of Philip Wylie’s science fiction novel Gladiator, from 1930? Wylie’s work is often credited with inspiring the creation of Superman and every other superhero that followed. |
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Long before the overrated and overpraised Alan Moore wrote The Watchmen, this very first look at a superhero presented the figure struggling with the moral issues regarding the use of his superior abilities. |
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The central character uses his powers in World War One but afterward must cope with the limits of “super-powers” when it comes to dealing with political corruption and other problems that can’t be solved with violence. Or in which flexing his super-muscles would be counter-productive, maybe even ushering in a dictators***p. |
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In other words, the same type of stories which today are praised as “innovative” for “deconstructing the superhero mythos” WERE ALREADY EXPLORED IN THIS NOVEL NINETY YEARS AGO! |
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As a break from movie and television superhero tales I think an Opera format would be an intriguing and unexpected way of adapting Gladiator. Let’s face it – if it was done for television or movies today it would be criticized as “derivative” (irony of ironies) and “talky.” |
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That talkyness would slide nicely into a staged opera since, as I often point out in my examinations of 1970s Marvel stories, operas – like many comic books – are filled with lengthy expository monologues, but in song form. (There are countless “senses-shattering” origin stories and villain rants that are sung in operas.) |
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Think of this piece as a way of using the familiar superhero formula to encourage more people to “give opera a chance.” I love sharing my enthusiasms and I was very happy with the reception of those blog posts where I wrote about Ancient Greek Comedies to make them seem relevant. I want to try doing the same with operas. |
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COMIN’ AT YA! (1981) – Directed by Ferdinando Baldi, Comin’ At Ya! is often credited with starting the pointless and bizarre 1980s revival of 1950s-style 3D movies. The film stars Tony Anthony, famous to us Spaghetti Western fans for the movie series in which he played a gunslinger called the Stranger. He appeared in others, as well, some reasonably good and others, like Blindman, so bad as to be virtually unwatchable. |
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Tony’s standout feature is the way he always looks like he’s ready to burst into tears, which always set him apart from the countless tough guys in Italo-Westerns. That feature stands him in good stead in Comin’ At Ya! |
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De facto Third Party President Donald Trump continues to be the most helpful president for the working cla*** and the poor in decades. His four new Executive Orders will save – in some cases – FIFTY PERCENT on prescription drugs! Trump’s efforts to rein in Big Pharma have once again yielded positive results. |
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If you or any of your friends or loved ones have diabetes in particular, these measures will ease the burden on your monthly budget. Well, at least until Democrat judges intervene at some point in the future, then there will be a delay until higher courts overrule those abusive Democrats. |
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And if you have handicapped family or friends then President Trump is once again saving you big money. |
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The Democrats, meanwhile, continue their war on the rest of us with their riots and hatemongering. Absurdly, they also try to pretend there’s a danger of President Trump not accepting election results even though they have made the country more bitterly divided than ever before just because they refuse to accept the 2016 presidential election results. |
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Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the neglected Pulp Hero G-8. This continues a story-by- story look at the adventures of this World War One American fighter pilot who – along with his two wingmen the Battle Aces – took on various supernatural and super- scientific menaces thrown at the Allied Powers by the Central Powers of Germany, Austria- Hungary and the Ottoman Muslim Turks. |
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G-8 was created by Robert J Hogan in 1933 when World War One was still being called simply the World War or the Great War. Over the next eleven years Hogan wrote 110 stories featuring the adventures of G-8, the street-smart pug Nippy Weston and the brawny giant Bull Martin. |
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The regular cast was rounded out by our hero’s archenemy Doktor Krueger, by Battle, G-8’s British manservant and by our hero’s girlfriend R-1: an American nurse/ spy whose real name, like G-8’s, was never revealed. |
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13. THE SPIDER STAFFEL (October 1934) – When the Central Powers feel that the Allied bombers are inflicting too much damage they make plans for a counter-strategy. |
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With the bombers accompanied and protected by capable fighter pilots like G-8 and his Battle Aces the answer is obvious: use a gigantic tarantula to cast webs across the skies to snare Allied planes and thus destroy bombers and fighters alike. |