A western

If you searched this blog for the words "I have nothing to say," I'm guessing you'd get quite a few hits.

But I've never said nothing before in the form of a classic western, so here goes ...

Well, not quite yet. First I will point out that I'm kind of thinking of western movies.  Not Books.  I've read maybe a half dozen (6) western books in my lifetime and three of them were a series they made the movie "Appaloosa" from.  Not to be confused with the old Marlon Brando movie I'd never heard of until I asked my dad if he'd ever seen the movie "Appaloosa."

I called dad one day and after the traditional greetings were out of the way, I said, "Dad, I just saw a movie I think you'd like. It's called 'Appaloosa.'"

"Oh yeah, I seen it [sic]," he said. "Marlon Brando's in it, right?"

"No Dad.  It's Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris. I'm pretty sure Marlon Brando is dead, dead, dead!"

"Well I'll tell you this, greenhorn.  There sure as shit was a movie called "Appaloosa" with Marlon Brando in it. John Saxon was in it too."

"Wait," I said upon hearing the name of my all time favorite hero/actor friend (John Saxon). "I've seen a movie with Marlon Brando and John Saxon in it."

"Yeah - that's Appaloosa. Great film."

"I'm pretty sure the one with Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris was way way way better than that one."

"I'm pretty sure I've raised a complete imbecile," dad suggested. "You surely haven't seen The original Appaloosa, which I can tell you is way better than your newfangled Appaloosa with those modern day dandies, Viggo Whatsizname and Ed Milk Money."

"It wasn't a remake, dad." I knew because unless Marlon Brando and John Saxon had been in more than one western together, I had seen the movie dad was talking about.  Completely different story.

The new one was nearly flawless.  I say nearly because there's one thing that could have made it even better.  If John Saxon was in it.

When I was a kid, my favoritest show of all time was "The Six Million Dollar Man."

Mostly because Steve Austin was able to run at 60 miles per hour.  I just figured if I made the "na-na-na-na" sound enough, I could run that fast too.  The secret to running fast, I guessed, had something to do with moving your legs faster. I was fresh off suffering my humiliation in front of my whole family when the Six Million dollar Man came along and offered hope.  I had come in last place in a foot race. With SMDM (what the true fans called it) I saw a possible way to redeem myself.  If only I could get myself into a horrible accident where it became necessary to replace my eye, arm, and legs.

Oh and I needed about $5,999,987. I had a little safe with 13 Eisenhower silver dollars in it, but I would still need to come up with most of the 6 million somehow.  Then as soon as I was out of the hospital, I would demand a rematch.  I'd be screaming from my hospital bed, "Get all of the people from the picnic!  Now!  I am going to race them again! I'll show 'em."

Anyway, there was an episode of SMDM with John Saxon in it.  I didn't know his name was John Saxon until after the episode.  If I remember, he was some sort of a tragic figure in the TV show. He was a friend of Steve Austin's and his name was "Fred."

Steve Austin called his good friend "Fred." Sniff.

So I watched the credits at the end of the episode to find out the real name of this lucky fellow.  "John Saxon."  My hero.
From then on, whenever I saw him in something, I'd say, "Hey, there's John Saxon. You know, he played Steve Austin's friend, Fred once.  Besides, isn't 'Saxon' just the coolest sounding name?"

So one late weekend night years later when I was in High School, I got home and turned on the TV and there he was in a western. John Saxon and that overacting hack, Marlon Brando.

They were getting ready to arm wrestle, but first they had to bring out the scorpions.  They set one scorpion on either side of the table so that whoever lost the arm wrestling thing would get stung by the scorpion.  I don't specifically remember whose idea it was to arm wrestle this way, but I'm guessing whoever it was was a hell of an arm wrestler.

Let me just say if somebody wants to arm wrestle you, you're probably going to lose. If you think, "Well, I'm a pretty good arm wrestler," and you agree - and then they start setting up scorpions, you're definitely going to want to reconsider.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure John Saxon won the arm wrestling and Marlon Brando got stung by the scorpion because I vaguely remember 25 minutes of Marlon Brando stumbling around the room, knocking stuff over and dying of overacting.

But I think John Saxon cheated.  He probably borrowed his good friend's bionic arm.  It seems ridiculous, but if you turn the volume way up on that scene, you can hear a slight "na-na-na-na" sound. Dead giveaway.

But that scene, however unlikely, proves one thing. Appaloosa with Viggo Mortensen is way better than the one with Lee Majors' buddy John Saxon in it.

Any movie that somehow pivots around arm wrestling is going to be a terrible movie. Well.  Almost any movie.

I just looked up from stream-of-consciousness rambling to see that there are enough words here to call it good.  I never really got to the western style writing so it looks like that train has flown the coop.

It seems like I left a conversation with my dad kind of hanging up there.  Well I'm sure he's hung up by now and I bet he's still not seen the good version of Appaloosa with no arm wrestling into scorpions.