Precisely One Comment

My only comment regarding the election results is this: it is my profound hope that the President-Elect fulfills everyone of the innumerable campaign promises that he made, to the letter.

Aaarrrrggghhhh!

Vertikles critiqued this blog the other day and said that it looked like it had been created twenty years ago by an eccentric crank. I wasted no time in quickly whipping off a reply castigating him for his lack of taste and his indiscerning eye for the stylish. Having quickly dispatched of the unwarranted commentary, I returned to contemplating my next post. In the back of my mind, I was still stewing about his e-mail. He kept calling it a 19 point font. Hah! That shows what he knows. All of the text is actually sixteen pixels high. Still, he did come back to that point three times and in all of the years that I've known Vertikles (a number that makes nineteen look very small), he is nearly always correct about these details.

So, to appease my indignation, I quickly searched the text for '19px' and son of a gun, there was one spot in the code where body text was set to nineteen pixels. To understand how this could occur, you must realize that Blogger templates are a mashup of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Google voodoo. Furthermore, I was using a Blogger template that I had extensively modified (the attribution is in the source code, but I made so many changes that I didn't think it fair to either party to have the author's name on the page) and which had been written by someone with what must be delicately called poor code hygiene. Somewhere along the line, a 16 had been changed to a 19. So I changed it back.

And by Crom, now the page looked terrible.

I knew that all of the sizes were right, but the smaller text swam in white on the black background. Vertikles had also railed against my use of Raleway as the body font, but I rather liked it. Except that in the small size, it was all but unreadable. The nuances that make it interesting blurred together into a gummy mass. To make bad matters worse, the little things that annoyed me that I hadn't gotten around to fixing, like the spacing on the cast and inventory lists in the movie reviews, were even more obvious with the smaller font size.

Aaaaarrrggghhh!

So, some twenty hours of my life later, it's much nicer, at least in my opinion (and Vertikles would be wise to keep his thoughts to himself for a few weeks). I've rolled back to an earlier color scheme, made some tweaks to links when you hover over them, fixed the Crom-damned list spacing, and even changed the text font. Vertikles will still be displeased, but I don't care. I can't stand text fonts where you can't tell a lowercase 'L' from an uppercase 'I' or the number '1'. I also like editorial typefaces to have a bit of character (sorry), with a few distinctive characters. I had almost gone to something really trendy, but my predilection for pompous verbosity meant that the resulting deluge of sesquipedalian prose would be even more unreadable unless I chose carefully. In the end, looking through the Google fonts, as well as those that I have a web license for, I chose Museo Sans, which is quirky enough for my taste, while still being readable in a paragraph of text.

In the next day or so, I'll get around to another Amazon posting. The little gnomes who make the suggestions have been working overtime there and I have bumper crop of artificial stupidity to spring upon you. Until then, Tschüß.

Hey, Look at That!

The 2016 Wildlife Photography Comedy Awards have been given out. Check out the gallery to see all of the animals that didn't make the cover of National Geographic.

You Need a Large Dose

Jef Mallett's Frazz is the best thing in comics. Yesterday's was dead-on.

So what are are you waiting for? Crank it loud!

I Saw Beautiful Things Today

I served as a Poll Watcher today. This is a small and insignificant part of American politics, where each party can send observers to voting locations to watch that the election laws are being scrupulously followed to neither deny anyone their rightful vote nor to permit anyone to vote illegally. I spent roughly half the day in each of two locations, both of which had two precincts voting. One was on the edge of a prestigious private university and the other was in the most ethnically diverse region of the city.

And I saw beautiful things today.

I stood in the dark of a November morning and looked up at mighty Orion standing in the crystal clear sky.

I saw two college women waiting twenty minutes before the polls opened, so that one could attest to the other's residency in the precinct.

I saw a couple who had come from Somalia as refugees and who had been naturalized in July proudly wave their ballots over their heads as they walked across the room while everyone in the polling place, including the officials, stood and applauded.

I saw text messages from a friend monitoring another precinct telling me about a ninety-year-old woman and a 107 year-old man casting their votes.

I saw college students take their first step toward running this country by voting for the first time.

I saw couples of every gender combination hug and kiss after voting together.

I saw election officials white and black, liberal and conservative, do everything within the law to make it possible for people to register.

I saw people who couldn't produce the proper documentation come back, after having gone home to dig for what was needed.

I saw a middle-aged Hmong man smiling as though he would explode with joy after casting the first ballot of his life.

I saw people of all colors, national origins, and religions standing patiently together as they waited in line.

I saw two gay men proudly say that they now had the same last name as the poll worker looked them up on the roll of voters.

I saw two observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) watching American democracy, so that they can make recommendations and comments.

I saw two dozen people put aside their lives to calmly and patiently scan, sort, examine, and explain more than a thousand times all of the details needed to register and check in voters and to give them their ballots.

And when I walked across the street to an Arabic grocery to stretch my legs and grab a bottle of mango juice and some baklavas, the owner called me brother as we chatted about the beautiful weather.

Today, I saw the things that make me proud to be an American.

A Super Cool Good Guy

The Washington Post reports that a Cubs fan wasn't able to get a World Series ticket for game six, in Cleveland. While looking for a scalper, she saw Bill Murray and decided to get close to him, probably hoping for a selfie.

Suddenly, he turned around and handed her a ticket. Next to him. Five rows behind home plate.

The woman wasn't a supermodel. She wasn't famous. She didn't even ask him for the ticket. He just did a random act of kindness. And that's super cool.

As are the bunny ears she's giving him in this picture.

White Comanche

Cast

• Joseph Cotten
• William Shatner
• Rosanna Yanni
• Perla Cristal
• Mariano Vidal Molina
• Luis Prendes
• Barta Barri
• Víctor Israel

Inventory

• A deer being butchered
• Two attempted lynchings
• A bar fight
• An inept bounty hunter
• A wagon load of haybales, to be used as instant foxholes
• A cute little boy
• A bandage on the outside of a coat sleeve

Summary

Again, we have a Paella Western. It's a bit surprising that there aren't more of them, since the Spanish film industry was at least as productive as the Italians, you have an endless supply of actors to play Mexican roles, the terrain is favorable, and the Spanish army seemed to be for rent at very reasonable rates when you had a scene that required a number of military extras running around.

We begin with Johnny Moon, one of two characters played by Shatner, being ambushed by a band of men bent on hanging him. Fortunately for him, they prove to be incompetent at that, as well as at shooting. This is good, because Moon is on his way to a Comanche village to meet Notah, the warrior chief and his twin brother

Moon is kept waiting by his brother, who is out leading an attack on a wagon. Moon's come to kill Notah, whose raiding is what inspiring the locals to attempt to stretch Moon's neck. After the two share a little fraternal love, they are about to duel when a Comanche woman leaps in front and grabs Notah's arm. After Notah says that a woman saved him, Moon mentions that if Notah cut back on the peyote, he'd be faster, thus making this a mushroom paella. Moons tells Notah that he'll spend four days in Rio Hondo and Notah agrees to meet him to settle things once and for all.

On the way to Rio Hondo, Moon stops the lynching of one land baron's minion by the minions of another. This provides an opportunity to see Moon's speed with the gun and to provide some appropriate enemies. When he gets to town, the baron, named Grimes, whose minion he saved offers to hire him. Moon says he'll tell him in four days. Later that night, the other baron, named Garcia, shows up, conveniently setting up a lovely bar fight between his brother, who was one of lynchers, and Moon.

After dealing with the brother dramatically, but non-lethally, Moon discovers that his own brother raped the sole female passenger on the stage coach when she attempts to perforate Moon with a Navy .44. The Sheriff clears Moon by saying that he traced the tracks of the riders and that none of them could have been Moon's. When the woman, Kelly, confronts Moon in his room, we learn that the brothers are half-breeds born to a white father and Comanche mother. Turned away by both whites and Indians, Notah starts using peyote which gives him visions of a new Comanche empire with him as the emperor. Since this is the sixties, following a delusional druggie seems like a good idea, so he is able to build a cult.

The next day, we learn that Kelly has a curious habit of bathing in the middle of the desert. After conveniently dropping in on her during this excercise, Moon explains that he and Notah are going to finish things. Kelly returns the favor by pointing out Garcia's brother is about to ambush Moon. This time Moon removes the need for me to keep specifying whose brother I'm talking about by drilling him through the forehead. For inexplicable reasons, Garcia is not pleased by this turn of events and makes unpleasant comments about Moon, Kelly, and the Sheriff.

The Sheriff, smelling a range war, tries to recruit Moon, who blows him off. The next morning, both bands are in town, with Grimes' men in his saloon and Garcia's men riding into town. The sheriff tries to stop Garcia by talking to him, but Garcia simply shoots him and rides on by, so that the two sides can start blasting at each other from across the street. Moon saves the day by raising a dust storm. As the two sides thin each other out, he cleans up until only Garcia is standing. The Sheriff gets the drop on him, completely eliminating both bands and providing a convenient subsidy for the local gravediggers' union. As is the way with these things, Moon and the Sheriff bond over a slug of whiskey. Later, when he returns to his room, Kirk gets the girl. I mean, Moon gets the girl.

Meanwhile, Notah leads his band to slaughter a mining camp and then informs them that they will be going to Rio Hondo to slaughter the white folks. When someone points out that Rio Hondo is about Notah and his brother, Notah replies, in essence, that my problems are your problems. When the conscientious objector sneaks off in the night to warn the town, he is confronted by Notah's woman who, despite being pregnant, manages to out-ride him and ambush him. The two kill each other, but not before the Comanche warns Moon of the oncoming assault.

All of the townspeople leave town for the cemetery, conveniently leaving a free-fire zone for the upcoming events. Moon takes the two dead Comanche and sets them on a traditional pyre. Seeing this, the other Comanches stop to burn the bodies and free the spirits. Notah is nonplussed by this turn of events, but his band say that they will conduct the ceremony and wait for Notah to return. Or not.

The two settle things in the old way, which requires both men to ride shirtless, like Vladimir Putin, past each other, taking a shot on each pass. One wonders how long this has been the old way and precisely whose old way it is. Perhaps there was some sort of guidebook for how half-breed twin brothers settled disputes.

Joseph Cotton was a distinguished actor who had a long career, including his own television show, which appears to have been a courtroom anthology series. He appeared on both The Love Boat and Fantasy Island (twice!), thus marking him as a B-grade celebrity up until about 1980. His most famous role is as the lead character, Holly Martins, of The Third Man. It makes you wonder why he would do a movie like this, particularly since he was in the middle of the busiest stretch of his career.

Ironically, this came out right in the middle of Star Trek's run. It doesn't seem to have had any effect upon Shatner's career. It's rarely mentioned when discussing him, though.

Dialogue

"Miss Kelly, leave the sheriff out of what's between me and myself."

Story

The bits and pieces that aren't clichés wouldn't fill a half-hour. It's not completely terrible, since they didn't mess up anything and the parts are more or less in the right order, but no one will ever watch it twice.

Music

The opening theme is a jazzy big band piece that has nothing to do with a western, but which is catchy, nonetheless. The rest of the music is perfectly fine, if completely unmemorable.

Acting

Cotton does an excellent job as the Sheriff. The women do a decent job as the women in a western. Shatner is actually excellent as Johnny Moon. His Notah as a surfer messiah leaves a lot to be desired. It's like watching the episode Mirror, Mirror. He's trying too hard to distinguish between the two men.

Watching this made me wonder why Shatner didn't do more westerns. He rides a horse beautifully, he has the good looks and his speech mannerisms don't seem out of place for a loner cowboy. The fact that he's about the size of the typical stuntman couldn't hurt and I'm sure that with some practice, he could have learned how to throw a punch and fake taking one, so that all of the fights didn't need to be shot from odd angles.