Where Were You?

This is a good song.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

"When. The fuck. Did he get a poncho?" I asked my darling friend Tristan Marsh as we sat one evening watching the primary installment of Sergio Leone's Man with No Name Trilogy and my very first Clint Eastwood Western ever. Why, off that dying soldier, Mr. Marsh calmly explained. This bit had not exactly registered in my brain, for you see, I was drunk. But I nevertheless learned a great deal from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. (Heck, it even made me reconsider the whole 'comma before the and in lists of three or more' punctuation debate after years of thinking I knew where I stood on that one.)

First of all, I learned that Clint Eastwood used to be attractive. Like really attractive. Like in the vein of Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. According to Tristan, he was the golden boy of something called "Rawhide." I also learned that shooting a gun and splitting the noose around your fellow con-man's neck in two is a pretty neat trick and general handy thing-to-be-able-to-do. Thirdly, that the Man with No Name has a name and that his name is Blondie. Blondie, that's right, call him anytime. He has a heart of glass, but one way or another he's gonna get ya, he'll get ya, even though (Perhaps you were unaware?) the tide is high. Atomic.

When Clint sauntered back on screen in his second-hand Southwestern fashions, I felt a little embarrassed at having missed such an important moment in the action, nay in cinema history. "Is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?" I snickered defensively.

There was a pause.

"Do you listen to a lot of Zappa?" the government protected coastal marshland inquired. Ha. I laughed and smiled enigmatically, "Once upon a time..."