"1923" Like It or Lump It

 

Just like everybody, I've been watching the various shows created by Taylor Sheridan.

His shows are "Yellowstone", "1883", "The Mayor of Kingstown", "Tulsa King", "Lioness", "1923", and "The CBS Evening News With Taylor Sheridan".

His shows are taut dramas with a lot of action, including punching, kicking, biting, shooting, and stabbing.

His shows also feature the most creative use of the F-word ever since Tony Soprano stopped believing in the New Jersey diner.

Everybody curses in a Taylor Sheridan show. Mom, grandmothers, priests, policemen, Girl Scout troop leaders. Everybody.

Mom:  "Did you do your F-wording homework you little mother F-word?"

Kid:  "F-word yes. Get off my F-wording back! F-word. Do we f-wording have  any F-wording Oeros?"

Dog: "Bow F-ing wow!"

"1923" is the sequel to "1883" and a prequel to "Yellowstone". Or as they describe it: "A Yellowstone origin story". It follows the grand and glorious Duttons and their cattle ranch in Montana and the people they have to punch and shoot to keep it because everybody wants their land and their land is important because it is their land.

When we last left Montana, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill found their land in Montana because they liked it, they loved it, and they wanted some more of it.  

Their show, "1883", was a good old-fashioned trip to the West, kind of like the old show "Wagon Train" except it had a lot more F-words.

Tim and Faith were the leaders of this wagon train which included their sons and one hot-to-trot daughter. [SPOILER ALERT] The hot-to-trot daughter becomes the Yellowstone narrator after she is killed by "the people that were here first" despite the fact she sounds like an Ole Miss co-ed who just read a Sylvia Path book.

In "1923", Tim and Faith are long gone, and taking their place are Han Solo and one of the old ladies from "Calendar Girls".

Han and the old lady raise the remaining Dutton boys as their own. One of them, Spencer, goes over there to France during World War I and somehow becomes a big game hunter in Africa afterward because some of the tigers have become man-eaters. How this happened, nobody really knows.

Back in Montana, Han is dealing with some Scottish shepherds who have the gall to want to feed their sheep.  One of the shepherds has a real hard Scottish accent which is difficult to understand, but don't worry, the word he says most often rhymes with "buck".

On top of that, a shady, rich, British tycoon named James Bond has turned up in town and he wants to, if you can believe it, make money on something other than cattle.   He gets the big idea that people will come to Montana to ski.

James Bond is also a freak if you catch my drift. This makes him double bad and means the Duttons will need to kill him. [SPOILER ALERT] James Bond finds what on "Yellowstone" is called "the train station". It is the place you dump bodies who you happen to kill because they needed killing. It is in a part of Wyoming which is not incorporated into a county and therefore you can do what you want. This has been determined as legal by the Supreme Court in the famous Dead Former Yellowstone Employees vs Dutton case.

The old lady has written a truckload of letters to Spencer in Africa begging him to come home and fight for Yellowstone because the Scottish Shepherd had ambushed Han Solo and he was hit.

In the midst of all of this, is a side story featuring an Indigenous Girl who is abused by everybody in the Catholic church. She does the only thing she can do (kills everybody) and goes out on the run. This really doesn't have anything to do with the Duttons except the Indigenous Girl may be the grandmother of the Indigenous Man John Dutton dealt with.

While Spencer is in Africa, he meets one of the semi-royal snots of England who has a really hot body and a ten-cent brain. She is engaged to another royal snot but she is so infatuated with Spencer and his conversational skills (various grunts), she runs off with Spencer.

She finds the letters from Montana and soon her and Spencer are heading back to Montana from Africa which in 1923 took forty years. 

Season Two of "1923" is Spencer trying to get home, the Indigenous girl on the run, Han Solo trying to get better, various minor characters getting shot, a 1923 brain operation without anesthesia, a wolf in the house, and lots of snow.

Plot:  "1923" has a pretty good plot especially if you have watched "Yellowstone".

Acting:  Okay. Han Solo did a pretty good job although I expected him to ask for Chewie.  The Old Lady went out to the front yard a lot and screamed. James Bond was very slimy. The Sheriff of the county was the Terminator, so that ought to count for something.  The guy who was Spencer was good at mumbling. The Hot English girl was okay, but very dumb. 

Violence:  A lot. If there is one thing Taylor Sheridan can do is stage a shoot-out.

Nudity:  A lot of bosoms for a TV show on a "network". 

Sex:  Some outdoor love making. Some mommy and daddy time. Some "Fifty Shades Of Grey" Montana style.

Verdict:  Despite all of the violence, sex, bosoms, and cursing, "1923" was pretty good show. I thought it was better than "1883" and much better than the last two seasons of "Yellowstone".  Liked it. 

 

 

 

Old Enough

 

Over the past few years, there have been a few things on Facebook that annoy me.

I mean, besides all of the political arguments people get into.

New Flash!  People can have different opinions than yours!  Who would have thunk it?

Over the past three presidential election cycles, it has been proven that we are a 50/50 country.  50 percent of the country thinks Trump is Hitler with a better-looking wife and 50 percent thinks Trump was sent directly from the Lord himself.

People now express themselves through memes. The memes have a snotty tone and are often not safe for the office, car, church, loading dock, prison, or ball field due to what we used to call "dirty words".

But I'm not here to discuss memes and the breakdown of American culture which is the fault of Trump, Biden, elitists, FOX News, MSNBC, Hollywood, popular music, and talk radio. 

No, I'm annoyed at people of my generation, the older folks among us, who want to bond with our past.

For example, there is a meme that has made the rounds on Facebook showing two car keys.  One is a rectangle and one is oval. The meme says, "Who is old enough to remember when you needed 2 keys for 1 car?"

I guess I was supposed to lean back in my chair and think "I remember that" and suddenly be transported back in time to when I was tooling around Marietta, Georgia in my car listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" on the radio. (Wait a second, that was yesterday.)

The whole point is to remember how things were way back when and share them with young people.

You:  Yeah, we used to have two car keys for one car.
Young Person:  Sir, this is a Wendy's

I belong to several Facebook groups about growing up in Cobb County. The most common post is: "Hey, who remembers Gary McKee?" This happens about every other month.

Gary McKee was the popular morning DJ at WQXI-FM. The last time he was on WQXI-FM, Bush was president. The first one.

I liked Gary McKee. He was a great way to wake-up in the morning. He had Willis The Guard, Yetta Levitt, and The Birthday Monster.  The Birthday Monster would sing "Happy Birthday" in a monster voice. Or maybe it was Yetta. It was a long time time ago. You had to be there.

One of the Cobb County groups will have some of the most inane topics and threads.  Here's a couple with the Topic highlight followed by the responses.

 

"Hey, who remembers that Stop sign on Sewell Mill Road?"

 

"I do."

 

"I must have missed that one."

 

"Must be nice to have a road."

 

"Good times."

 

 "Hey, did anybody ever use a spoon?"

 

 "I did."

"We didn't have spoons growing up. We used to eat chili with our fingers."

"I used to go out with this girl that went to Wheeler who thought she was all that because her family brought down spoons from Iowa or wherever she was from.  I found out the hard way she used to stuff her bra with toilet paper.  I loved her so much"

"Good times." 

 

 

"Hey, who remembers this guy?  (A picture of either Captain Kangaroo, Richard Nixon, or Leonard Nimoy)" 

"I remember him. I think."

 

"He was in my homeroom at Wheeler."

 

"My dad used to work for him and had to break-in the Watergate complex with a bunch of Cubans  for him. His supervisor was named Mr. Greenjeans"

 

"Good times." 

 

My favorite post of all time said, "Who remembers the Martine Drive-In that was next door to Town and Country Shopping Center and across the street from Duncan's donuts? Me and my boyfriend used to do some freaky-deaky thangs in his Cutlass 442. Good times".

 

 

I don't remember the Martine Drive-In.  I remember the Martin Drive-In.  It has swing sets and the Manis family would pile into the 1962 Plymouth Valiant and watch the latest the pagans in Hollywood had to offer.  I remember we saw "The Sound Of Music" there which is just the type of movie you want to take a bunch of feral boys from East Cobb to see. 

Looking at this post, I was thinking "Duncan's Donuts"?  You mean "Dunkin Donuts"?  I could just imagine this poor person going through life thinking this great American franchise was called "Duncan's Donuts".  (But it would be a good name for rock band.)

I was going to make my typical Facebook wisenheimer remark when I noticed the person who posted the thread was a tad bit older than me and maybe I should cut the person some slack because that's what people who are old enough to know better do.

 

So I didn't comment. But, come on, "Duncan's Donuts"?  I deserve a medal.