Howdy, Pardners!

Welcome to my new blog—my 21^st overall and my 13^th currently online. This one’s about cowboys. Not REAL cowboys so much as pop culture cowboys. Unless we really look into history, we don’t always remember that the real “wild west” was a lot harder to survive in than most movies, books and TV shows have ever made it out to be.

No, what we think of as the old west is a true American mythology that has built up over the past century and a half beginning with the earliest dime novels that lionized scoundrels and gunfighters and in the process unknowingly created legends. 

With all due respect to the hard-working, hard-living men, women and children—white, black, Asian, Mexican and, of course, Native Americans-- who quite literally pioneered the frontiers back in the day, RIDING THE POP CULTURE RANGE will be about the legends, the myths, the heroes and villains that have burned their way into our consciousness. John Wayne will be here. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Randolph Scott. But also Lee Van Cleef, Giuliano Gemma, Klaus Kinski and Terence Hill. The Lone Ranger, The Black Rider and the Hooded Horseman will be riding along with us, as will all those dang KIDS! Kid Colt, the Outlaw Kid, the Two-Gun Kid, the Rawhide Kid, the Cheyenne Kid, the Apache Kid, the Ringo Kid and all the rest! Plus Johnny and Jane West, the Maverick Brothers, Paladin, Sugarfoot, Smith, Jones and Rowdy Yates! A Westerns, B westerns and Z westerns will all be well-represented eventually. You’ll find comedy westerns like The Paleface and Blazing Saddles as well radio sagebrush sagas like The Six Shooter, Gunsmoke and Riders Radio Theatre!

We hope you’ll all stop by on a regular basis and tell your friends about us. We’ll keep some beans and bacon on the fire for ya, pardners.