It's Season 2, and we are entering our Super Hero Era!

It starts with Zorro.

The 19th Century didn't just have rapidly changing food, fashion, fighting and all new ways to do crime - with the rise of the novel as popular entertainment, the crime fighters also changed.  And so did the adventure story.

Sure Zorro may have been created in the 20th century, and inspired a rash of 20th century urban heros (Hullooooooooo! Batman), but he rides through Spansih California, and gives us Americans a better peek into the land we took over and made the place we would make... Movies ABOUT Zorro.

So saddle up and come along for the first in our Zorro series - and what will likely be a multi-return visit to the earliest American Super Heroes - in their Cowboy Era.

Vamonos Tornado!


As always - you can reach us on the internets.
Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)
and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PM
Schedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone
&
Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

The movie WIld WIld West - Great idea, the steam punk era set in a slightly alt (and completely plausible) history.  Props - great.  Cast - all the big names of the day.

The excection?  A stinker.
But don't worry, you don't have to watch the movie because we did it for you.  And we won't be doing it again.  That aside, there is all the luxe you'd expect of the the mid-19th century, along with the frontier rought and tumble.  And Germans, we finally get Germans in their rightful frequency!

And of course the question - is new, emerging tech ALWAYS hijacked, and turned to Nefarious Profiteering and Crime?

If you are up for a discussion of historical fun & some critical movie criticism... come along.


As always - you can reach us on the internets.
Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)
and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PM
Schedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone
&
Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

Not Depressing or Less Depressing than Expected...

Regardless, Letitia Wright kills everyone who does her wrong.  Or at least gets to see them die.  It's a revenge flick, but first with suffering.  And yet strangely, the glory isn't in the gore.  Rather it's in the fight - and coming out the other side.  

Want to know what it was really like to travel in a 19th Century Stage Coach in the high coutry of the Southweat?  Well, this gets you part way there.  No Smell-O-Vision (yay!) and you miss out on the choking dust and the bouncies - but you do get a little of the closed in nature, and the fact that you never want to see anyone waiting by the road.  That's never a good sign.

But if you can hang on for a not sucky ending, saddle up pardner and come along for the ride.

As always - you can reach us on the internets.
Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)
and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PM
Schedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone
&
Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

Bass is coming to the end of his trail.
And it has to do with the ghost that has taken up residence inside his head - Esau.

That insidious speech:  I, the Evil Guy - am not so different from you, The Good Guy who has messed up a bit along the way in the pursuit of good.  

The thing where cruel people doing cruel things to make their personal life better is somehow equated with good people trying to reduce cruelty in the world.  And those people dedicated to making things less cruel, becasue they are suckers for redemption fall for this bit of hogwash.  And let it eat at their brains.

And this is where we find Bass.  Fighting his way out.  Trying to do good, and not go down that sticky black hole.  Godspeed Bass.

As always - you can reach us on the internets.
Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)
and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PM
Schedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone
&
Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

So you're a good guy.  You know you've made some mistakes along the way - and you SOMEHOW got away with it.  But you've made your way most of the time following the rules, dealing Justice - and bringing folks to Justice, or bringing Justice to folks.

But our man Bass - it's all off kilter now.  He's lost his way, and Justice somehow is no longer the way to redemption.  In fact, it seems to be feeding Evil.  
What's a man to do when a ghost takes up residence in your head - and no one can understand that the world seems off it's center?

What's a man, a law man, a Freedman to do?
Go a little mad it seems.  Come along for the the ride and the hunt.  Stay for the history commentary.

As always - you can reach us on the internets.
Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)
and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PM
Schedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone
&
Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

The 19th Century contains so much of what the modern age is - and we get to see some of the stranger aspects in this episode…
The Medicine Show or Carnival with spiritualism, menageries and mountebanks. 

And then the merging of the ancient work songs with the modern era - to create the soundtracks we now live with.
And of course, the beginnings of traveling to go some place - just to see it. 

The idea that the world is a big giant place filled with wonders we have never imagined coming to a town or a room near you - where “you” is just a regular person - rather than a fabulously wealthy person… That is a huge legacy of the 19th Century. 
As is the frontier lawman - which is why we are hanging out in the world of Bass Reeves.


We slosh around in a few metaphors... and Esau (Barry Pepper) rises boack to the top like the scum he is to start haunting our man.

As always - you can reach us on the internets.
Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)
and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PM
Schedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone
&
Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

So is Bass Reeves the inspiration for the Lone Ranger - or not?  Or does it not matter that much in the end.
For as much as people like to look back on the past, on the 19th century as simpler times with more direct paths and clearer values... 

Turns out it was not.  There were fewer distractions sure, but there were still hard decisions that had to be made, becasue people were just as much out for themselves then as they are now, and perfectly willing to justfy it then... just the way they do now.

In the midst of that - Bass is trying to sort out - how do I be the Good Guy?

As always - you can reach us on the internets.
Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)
and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PM
Schedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone
&
Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

If you already miss Donald Sutherland, or want to see him in a role where he's doing his best Donald Sutherland, come join us in watching Bass Reeves.
David Oyelowo had this story he wanted to make and share... and for some reason Hollywood wasn't ready to do a story that rotated on the axis of a black lead Lawman.
But with the success the 19th century stories around Yellowstone  the same money decided this was worth a shot.

So WE - with you - get to follow along on the story of the first Black U.S. Deputy Marshal west of the Mississippi.  
So come along to this complecated world that is shot so gorgeously in the area where Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma come together.  And see all the new problems and coalitions and choices and ideas that are all happening in this wild and vibrant place and time.

Ride smart & shoot straight and come along for the adventure

As always - you can reach us on the internets.
Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)
and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PM
Schedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone
&
Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

And now for "Something Fun"

Technically not in the 19th C last round... too early
And now we blow right by the 19th C and end up in the 20th C.

What is WRONG with us?  Well, after all the death and blood, it's time to watch no blood and all the jokes.  Mel Brooks takes on the The Western as an institution, as well as the Hollywood Production codes, which had just been axed in the early 60's to be replaced by the voluntary rating system we see today - G, PG, & R (General, Parental Guidence & Restricted)

But before those were solidified, Mel Brook went out to the Back 40 and skewered all the tropes, and made decades of people giggle at boundary pushing naughtiness.  And you'll get to see how the "prim and proper" plus cowboy mythology is still painting us today - even if just by giving us stuff to rebel agains or fight over.

Saddle Up!

As always - you can reach us on the internets.
Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)
and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PM
Schedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone
&
Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)

So we've come to the end of Shogun - a story that both haunted and informed us in our younger years.  

Racist, Orientalist - as a book, YES!  But this version. as far as I'm concerned redeems the Entire Venture. 
And as a 1970's work written by a former prisoner of war during the Japanese Occupation during WW2, writing a book trying to get into the somewhat legendary history of Japan - it did what James Clavell wanted, it introduced Japan as a complex society to America and Britain and it's still sprawling empire at the time. 
Writing is hard, editing is much much easier.  Clavell's 1st try - needed some work, but somebody had to bust open the doors.  And Shogun did that.

Now - how did the Blackthorne/Anjin-san story actually end?  Unclear.  But that's fine with me.
Now let's all cheer for whatever H. Sanada has up his sleeve and hope it comes with All The Costumes.

And don't forget to join us next week for something fun!

As always - you can reach us on the internets.
Jamie Lewis (plagueofstrength.com & IG @plagueofstrength)
and his NEW YouTube Apprearances on Carved Outta Stone Wednesday AM or Friday PM
Schedule Details: instagram.com/carvedouttastone
&
Greta Hardin (The History of American Food podcast & @THoAFood all over)