Old media
I’ve found myself enjoying the TV show Justified quite a lot. I’ve mentioned how Boyd Crowder is one of the best villains ever. Well, I think Quarles is just as good. His odd demeanor, looks and peculiarities make for good acting.
I’ve also been reading these things called books since I got my Kindle Fire. I can’t remember the last time I just sat down and read a book. I’ve been picking the nits out of my wookiee suit while reading Enemies Foreign and Domestic, which is like the internet gun nut bible or something. And I’ve been reading more in general, grabbing unread physical books off the bookshelf.
So, the blogging around here has been half-assed. Well, more half-assed than usual.
As you were.
April 3rd, 2012 at 8:53 am
Mags Bennett was bad; Quarles is bad and creepy. I predict he’ll be killed (or appear to be killed) in the last episode of the season.
We are down to the last two episodes (tonight and next week) so we’ll just have to see.
April 3rd, 2012 at 9:04 am
Prolly no need to tell you this, you haz good Googlefu, but there’s a ton of great books free online from O’Henry to Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft but I don’t know if they’re Kindle-compatible.
Have Gun, Will Travel is free on YouTube and The Rifleman on hulu.
April 3rd, 2012 at 9:12 am
Quarles is one scary, huskey-looking melon farmer even when he isn’t gobbling goofballs by the bottle. I’m with John – I think he’ll get written out at the end of the season.
April 3rd, 2012 at 9:18 am
Yeah, except for Boyd, bad guys tend to get killed of at the end of the season. Though Dickie Bennett is an exception. Mr. Elston Limehouse has the potential to be a major league bad guy too. I wonder if he’ll be back.
April 3rd, 2012 at 9:19 am
Don’t you mean quarter assed unc?
April 3rd, 2012 at 9:26 am
+1 on Justified. Also a reunion show for Band of Brothers actors with Buck Compton, Joe Toye, Bill Guarnere and Skip Muck.
April 3rd, 2012 at 9:47 am
Matthew Bracken has been posting for years on Free Republic under the UserID Travis McGee. He’s always seemed like a truly squared away guy, but I’ve never read any of his books.
Maybe you could give us a quick review of Enemies Foreign and Domestic once you finish it.
April 3rd, 2012 at 9:49 am
Well, in the book, he references FR but calls it FreeAmericans.
April 3rd, 2012 at 10:13 am
Justified and Wednesday Night At The Range are the only two things I miss on Cable TV.
April 3rd, 2012 at 11:11 am
When the hell is Limehouse going to cut someone already?!?
April 3rd, 2012 at 11:12 am
Try Unintended Consequences by John Ross for a great read and “gun nut manifesto” if ever there was one. It is out of print now, but there is a high quality scan of it online with a little digging.
April 3rd, 2012 at 11:56 am
Justified is the bomb digity. Before the first season premiered the wife and I had been seeing commercials for it at the movies and said we were gonna watch it.
Well we DVR 4 or 5 episodes before we get around to watching it. Watch the first and then proceed to watch every single one we have recorded in a marathon session.
When we watched last Tues, my wife was in a huff because she can’t fast forward time to watch the next episode lol
April 3rd, 2012 at 1:17 pm
You guys are so lucky. For some reason my wife hated Justified. She’s not a bad seed either. She likes video games, action movies, and shooting stuff. I don’t get it. But since we usually watch TV together and otherwise she has guy-taste I had to give her one gimme, and Justified was it. I sure miss his hot ex-wife. Oh, and that smokin’ hot blonde he was with the first season. Hmmm.. a pattern is emerging… maybe she was justified in not wanting to watch.
April 3rd, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Part of the reason I like the show is that we see some of the smarter baddies as real people. Not the ones who cannot think ahead more than three minutes, but some. Mags is a stone-cold killer – but she is trying to help her family, it is just too bad about anyone else. Mt. Limehouse, I think, is much the same – except I also think he might want to be law-abiding, just cannot see any other way to protect his community effectively.
And yeah, wassisname will go down, either killed (highly likely) or convucted of murder. When not just the LEOs but the Mob and the local mini-Mob are all after your head…
April 3rd, 2012 at 4:20 pm
They always get kill’t at the END of the season because they need a season-long narrative ramp-up to insensify the killin’. It’s all about the narrative story arc, and to jump it you need an on-ramp or a ramp-up. You gotta have a ramp, just ask Evel Knievel.
April 3rd, 2012 at 4:32 pm
If you like the show, try reading the Leonard books that Raylan appears in; The whole series is based on the short story ‘Fire in the Hole’, which was a short story in a collection called ‘When the Women Come Out to Dance’, which has since been reissued with the Raylan short story as it’s overall title.
Then there’s three or four Leonard novels where he appears as a character, as well as the more recent “Raylan’ which Leonard gave to the showrunners to pillage before it’s release this past spring. They used a few of the plot strings this season already.
The writers really have an ear for dialogue just like Leonard writes, it’s such a pleasure to listen to.
QUARLES: “One of these days, I’m going to kill you. You’ll be walking down the street and I’ll put a bullet in the back of your head, and you won’t even see it coming.”
RAYLAN: Fires a shot into the ceiling, clears the bar patrons out. “Why not now?”
April 4th, 2012 at 10:11 am
Actually, I think it was “Why wait.”
Besides, It was in the glass, not the jar.