The best gift I've ever received has to be a bike when I was younger, a pedal bike.

It was a sort of slick little road bike and I remember it was all like, it was so, it was all wrapped up,

it was so obvious what it was obviously because nothing shaped like a bike and I had a little ribbon on it and I was so

a guest. For that was a life changer and I'm still sort of big on cycling around my area now so, for that one change me a little.

Enjoy in every sip with red cups now back at Starbucks.

So with the daily wire bringing out terror on the prairie and making our own entry into the western field I thought this would be a good time to talk about westerns which is a genre that I just love.

I mean I watched it all the time growing up and I still am always captivated by a great western they don't make them like they used to anymore so it's great to see terror on the prairie out there.

But you know in the old days it was just a staple of the movies and of novels because in the old days we actually thought that the past was a good guide to the future and we wanted to preserve our traditions and our history and our sense, our idealism about the past.

But now we look to the future, I kind of trans human future and so we have all these superhero movies and there's kind of what we think the world is going to look like in a post human era.

I'm not so sure that's true but this is the instinct of the culture is what the culture is talking about.

What I love about the western, the western is part of a is a kind of genre like the samurai stories like the knights in shining armor that takes place on the very border of civilization which is considered to be in nostalgia the pinnacle of manhood and the reason it's the pinnacle of manhood is it's the last time that physical strength and violence can be used.

It's the first time that we use holy for the good so a man can be a man he can be tough he can be violent he can fight protect women and build a civilization where his kind will no longer be needed and that's the essential tension of the western that the hero is trying to make himself obsolete by getting rid of the violent forces that are out there in human kind.

It is traceable back to the Virginian a wonderful wonderful novel by Owen Worcester it's kind of an old fashioned novel but still it's terrific it was made into a wonderful film of pre-code film 1929 with Gary Cooper and and the movie is great too it was remade later on was not as good but the old movie is old but it really is good and the interesting thing about this is that Owen Worcester was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt's and he was kind of a you know kind of a little scholarly guy.

And when he wrote when he started talking about writing the Virginian Roosevelt said to him Teddy Roosevelt as I should say said to him make him make the western man a modern night and that is what he did and he that is where we kind of got this idea of the cowboy as a night and of course it doesn't much to do with reality but it is that sense that we have that I think all men especially have that there was a time when men were men when violence could be used for the good when might be a man.

And that was the time to really be a man and that's what a man really looks like and this then becomes this this genre in which this tension of civilization and violence are played out in the actions of brave men usually battling for a town or for a woman that one of the great classics of this is Shane and Shane shaped my life.

I read the novel Shane when I was a little boy five times I saw the movie again and again and again the movie with Alan lad you know it's a film directed by the great George Stevens it's a film from which we get the famous line come back Shane with a little boy calling after Shane and Shane is about the story of a gun fighter.

We don't really know who he is a mysterious man who rides into town as this family is having a fight with the old cattlemen they're the settlers who have come in and they're taking away the land of the cattlemen who need a lot of range to feed their cattle on and so the cattle are trying to chase off the settlers and they bring in a gun fighter in the movie played by Jack Polance and Shane rides out of the west and he just comes out of the west.

And he just comes out of the horizon basically in this little boy sees Shane coming and begins to idolize Shane and Shane stays with this family the star it's they're called and and a little boy is sort of torn between and in fact his mother as well a torn between these two kinds of men the father of the family the star family who is a good man a strong man a bruiser but a man who is dedicated to making the land.

To being a farmer to building the land building the town building the community building a family and yet he is outmatched by the gunman brought in by these cattle ranchers who want to run the the new world off and so there's this kind of tension even the mother of the family this absolute you know beautiful virtuous woman is attracted to Shane who is a gunman and of course that fight has to play out not just a fight between.

The gunman and the father but also of course the fight the between the good gunman and the bad gunman that's the essence of the western right as the essence of the western this violent man who has to make the world safe for non violent men so they can go forward this plays out in high noon just I think one of the great western movies ever made and that's Gary Cooper again and it's done in real time so it's kind of almost experimental and it's not going to be a real good game.

And it has a kind of liberal background it comes out of liberal thought and a lot of conservatives don't like it I love it it is directed by Fred's in the screen plays by Carl form and it's about a sheriff who has sent away the bad guys and he's cleaned up the town and now it's time for him to get married and start to become a farmer and raise a family and he's getting married to the spectacularly beautiful grace Kelly the first woman I ever loved and and I love her still and she is a quaker.

And she wants the violence to stop she wants to put away the gun and become a farmer but just now at high noon a train is coming to town and on that train is a bad man and his bad guys who the sheriff put away what's his name will cane is name is with the sheriff will cane put away this bad guy and they're coming for revenge and they're coming to kill it and will cane so it's going to the town's people insane you know this is like four or five guys coming into town to blow me away I need some help and nobody will help him.

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