Click images for desktop size: "Listen Mr DJ" by Anonymous Yesterday I didn't get to go on my anticipated bike ride.
A few days ago I tested the bike out and it worked beautifully. Yesterday it just died. It beeped some sort of error message. I don't speak machine well enough to know what it was saying.
Fussed with a lot but tried to avoid taking it apart. Noticed some places I needed to grease but accomplished nothing else.
So my puppy and I walked our chores.
Then later on we walked to the Dog Park. Just my giant dog my puppy and me. According to sources its only 2 and a half miles to the dog park. Felt like over 3 to me. Maybe I'm getting older . . . I used to be good at that sort of thing, judging distances, measurements and stuff. Tired legs and botched vision could mess up my perceptions enough.
The Dog Park was empty which sort of defeats our purpose. We could chase balls in the yard. My puppy disagrees. She's one of those, "Its the journey not the destination" types.
Maybe I should wait until I get goggles to go e-biking. I got more junk in my right eye. Very irritating.
I think its because I've still got residuals to the Bells Palsy. The blink reflex isn't what it should be so I keep getting junk in it. It keeps ruining my vision, makes it hard to judge just where my vision is going to end up.
While I was doing some house cleaning, well, I always keep some fringe film on while I work I listen, stop and watch if it sounds interesting, while I work.
I watched "Hi Yo Silver" like that. It was decidedly very cool.
"Hi Yo Silver" is the 62 minute abridged version of the 1940 "The Lone Ranger" serial. I now need to see the whole 210 minute version.
Great moments abound here. Not least is the opening where the top billed star is "SILVER THE WONDER HORSE". He gets a
Click images for desktop size: "Jeremais Laments . . ." by Rembrandt a leadoff title card where he rearing and clawing at the air wearing a remarkable Mexican silver saddle!
It just gets better. I was never a huge Lone Ranger fan but this little movie really makes a fictional character transcend prose and brings him into myth and legend.
Income Tax was implemented during the Civil War. The bad guy kills and steals the identity of the Federal Tax Collector for Texas. He starts a reign of terror, recruits his own army, and steals LEGALLY from the poor cattlemen and Texas dirt farmers.
The Texan's organize their best and brightest into a militia, the Texas Rangers. The bad guy hears about this and ambushes them, massacres them.
An indian, Tonto, comes across the scene. Only one of the three dozen men clings to life. Tonto rescues him and takes him to a cave where he nurses him to health.
It has to be said here, Tonto is the coolest character in the movie. He's actually tougher and smarter than the Lone Ranger. He not only saves his life he uses the Ranger's rabid thirst for revenge to create the Lone Ranger's persona.
Also notable is that in the film the good guys treat Tonto with respect and deference while the bad guys hurl every imaginable racial epithet at him and about him.
(On a kid note Tonto does some oh so nifty things. Like stopping a wagon train to stick a knife into a giant tree. He puts his ear to the tree and clamps his teeth around the knife blade. He explains to the ignorant cowboys that "the roots of the tree grow deep. The tree hears many things. Tonto asks to share the tree's wisdom. Thirty riders coming fast." No wonder I always wanted to be an Indian.)
The Lone Ranger becomes a character like Batman. A good man warped by a blind need for revenge. He's near unbalanced but because he fights for justice we forgive and accept. Batman relied on a teenager, Robin, to keep his fragile grasp on reality. The Lone Ranger depends on the wise stoicism of Tonto to help him and his sanity survive. Pretty deep for a kiddie flic but right there on the surface and told in a way that kids would understand and grasp.
There's an appearance by the "wisest man in Washington" Abraham Lincoln, nicely blurring the line between fever dreams and history. Shockingly the filmmakers use the assassination of Lincoln in an unexpected way, showing how his death impacted individuals. With a stroke they manage to not only cement the illusion that this a true story but they also manage to draw a tensile connection for every kid to his elected officials.
The Lone Ranger gets a group of four other men together. They help him in his mad quest to rid Texas of evil. They also all die, one by one, in glorious heroic ways.
Click images for desktop size: "Anime" by Sohryu Each time one of them dies the Lone Ranger steals their bodies and buries them in the cave he uses as his home and headquarters. A macabre constant reminder should he ever feel his madness begin to relent.
There's a lot of plot and action. This is also awesome as the masked Lone Ranger is played by legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt, the greatest rider and horseman in the history of motion pictures. He was also a swell fighter.
Of course good finally triumphs. The Lone Ranger seems to rise from the dead. His madness should have been calmed but it continues. He trumpets that evil still exists and that he MUST seek it out and destroy. He promises/threatens that should the Great State of Texas ever again feel the heel of oppression he will return.
Rah!
When I coached in Texas I have to admit that they are the only people I've met who are fervid about their homes. I was once talking about the quality of Texas football when I was politely but firmly corrected that I was talking about WEST Texas football. I like pride.
Pride is an assest I spent a lot of time trying to instill in my players Not just on the field but in their lives and their life within the community. To see a little movie so effortlessly create those chest swelling moments and to do it transparency and to make it enjoyable is sobering and uplifting.
Myths and movies like this reflect and instill that kind of innate birth right pride. I love that because the pride it instills is based a bit on madness and that madness is devoted to equality, fairness and freedom. YOW!
I need to find the complete serial!
Now I need to go see what I can stick in my eyes today . . .