“COME ON, YOU DANITES” … THE MISSOURI MORMON WAR (1838)

MASCOT COWBOY 1The Latter-Day Saints aka Mormons, faced very real oppression and bigotry because of their faith. In Missouri in the 1830s the Church’s opposition to slavery added to the usual mistrust and suspicion that Mormons faced. The series of Mormon “Wars” were not truly large-scale wars (with the exception of one).

The Mormon Wars bore more of a resemblance to Range Wars of the American West, which is one of the reasons I’m covering them during Frontierado Season. I’m not claiming either side was entirely innocent. Only political propagandists and immature fools pretend conflicts are clear-cut “good guys vs bad guys” situations.

FOR MORE ABOUT WHY I FEEL MORMONS AND DANITES FIT IN WITH FRONTIERADO CLICK HERE

MISSOURI MORMON WAR (August 6th – November 1st, 1838) 

Missouri Mormon WarAUGUST 6th, 1838 – This was Election Day in newly-formed Daviess County in Missouri. One of the candidates, William Peniston, called Mormons “horse-thieves and robbers” and warned them not to vote. A band of 30-some Mormons DID show up to vote on August 6th and were blocked by roughly 200 Anti-Mormons.

Legend has it that a cry of “Oh yes, you Danites, here is a job for us” (sometimes claimed to have been “Come on, you Danites!”) rallied those Mormons who belonged to the armed sect of Mormon “Knights” called Danites, from the Book of Daniel. 

In the resulting clash the outnumbered Mormons drove off the Missourians who were illegally trying to stop them from voting. Continue reading

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SUPERHERO PANTHEON OF FOUR STAR PUBLICATIONS

As always in these superhero-crazed times, readers let me hear about it when I go too long without a post like this. Here is Balladeer’s Blog’s look at the neglected superheroes from Four Star Publications.

GrenadeTHE GRENADE

Secret Identity: Bruce Corbet, reporter

First Appearance: Captain Flight Comics #5 (December 1944)

Origin: Nazi agents accidentally killed Daily Star reporter Bruce Corbet’s brother Danny while searching for Bruce’s notes regarding a top secret War Department development. Since the Nazis killed Danny with a hand grenade he adopted the nom de guerre the Grenade and donned a costume to seek revenge.

Powers: The Grenade was in the peak of human condition. He was as agile as an Olympic gymnast and excelled at unarmed combat. In addition he sported hand grenades which he could hurl with deadly accuracy. 

Comment: I’d have added some knock-out grenades or harmless smoke grenades to the explosive grenades this hero carried with him, just for some variety.  A beautiful lounge singer was the Grenade’s love interest in his civilian identity. Continue reading

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DARK INTRUDER (1965) – LESLIE NIELSEN IN A HORROR STORY

dark-intruder-2DARK INTRUDER (1965) – This thoroughly enjoyable piece of Forgotten Television was a failed pilot for a series. Supposedly the network passed on it because they thought it was too scary and gruesome for tv viewers of the time. Instead they released this 59-minute black & white gem to theaters as the second title for double features.

The story is set in 1891 San Francisco with Leslie Nielsen himself starring as Brett Kingsford, an occult expert and investigator. If this had been picked up as a series the title was going to be The Black Cloak and apparently would have been a forerunner of The Norliss Tapes, Kolchak and Spectre. In my opinion the period setting would have given The Black Cloak the edge, though.

dark-intruder-4Brett Kingsford maintains a quasi-secret identity. On the surface he’s known in San Francisco as a bon vivant and ladies’ man and when the police want to consult him over something supernatural he dons various disguises to rendezvous with them. That way nobody in his usual social circles is made aware of his connections with the cops.  Continue reading

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CAMPUS DEMOCRATS CALL A STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN “WHITE SUPREMACY” AND DEMAND ITS REMOVAL

Education or indoctrination gifBalladeer’s Blog has often covered the way in which Democrats have reduced America’s educational institutions to “churches” of irrational thought and political intolerance. And just when you may think Democrats can’t show their ignorance, hatred and divisiveness any more clearly, the Democrats of the Student Union at the University of Wisconsin in Madison stepped in to take the lunacy even higher. They want a statue of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator himself, removed since they claim it invokes White Supremacy. (Link below)  

Orwell on historyDemocrat mobs have recently dragged down or vandalized even statues of African-American civil rights icon Frederick Douglass in their ugly madness. Well, Douglass was a Republican and we know that Democrats believe that African-Americans must obey them and NEVER belong to a political party of their own choosing. 

FOR MORE OF THESE TYPES OF INCIDENTS READ ON … Continue reading

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PISTOL PETE – NEGLECTED GUNSLINGER

Frontierado is Friday, August 7th! 

Pistol Pete

Pistol Pete

PISTOL PETE – Frank “Pistol Pete” Eaton was another of those real-life figures that some people mistakenly think are fictional characters. The elementary alliteration and the association of the name Pistol Pete with the mascot of the Oklahoma State University sports teams are part of the reason. That mascot was named after and was designed to look like the real-life Pistol Pete.

Eaton was a man who LIVED what would eventually become a cliche of Wild West fiction:  the quest for revenge over the murder of a loved one, no matter how many years it takes. 

In 1868 young Frank was eight years old and living with his parents in Twin Mounds, Kansas. Frank’s father had served in the Union Army during the Civil War and was being harassed by several former Confederate Army men who had ridden with Quantrill’s Raiders for a time. One day six of those men shot our hero’s father to death right in front of him, setting the course for the rest of the young man’s life.  Continue reading

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MARTIN LUTHER KING PERSON OF COURAGE ENDORSES TRUMP

Leo TerrellHere at Balladeer’s Blog I am still enthralled by the ongoing political realignments here in the U.S. The old Democrat vs Republican paradigm has become meaningless and unworkable. I would love to see viable Third Parties emerge, but in the meantime came this. (Link below) 

Civil Rights Attorney and Martin Luther King Person of Courage Leo Terrell recently joined the chorus of black voices condemning the Democrat Party for its hatemongering and race-baiting:

Donald Trump never called racist till running against DemocratsI have 30 years invested as a Civil Rights attorney, public school teacher as you mentioned, and I’m frustrated and disappointed in the Democratic Party and the left. I mean, it really started a couple of weeks ago when Joe Biden made that comment, that awful comment, that insulting comment that if you vote Republican, you ain’t black.  

Trump, Rosa Parks and Ali“I’m a Civil Rights attorney. That statement was condescending and insulted every African-American, and every American, and then you follow up with a series of protesting, which is perfectly okay, but the failure of a Democratic Party to call out the rioting, the looting, the murder is just something that I, as a Civil Rights attorney could no longer sit and just basically stay quiet.”

“… If the presidential election was held today, I would vote for #DonaldTrump. America Is more important than party loyalty.” Continue reading

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FOOL KILLER FORTY-SEVEN: JUNE 1911

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT, CLICK HERE

Fool Killer timelessPART FORTY-SEVEN – Among the Fool Killer’s targets in the June of 1911 issue of James Larkin Pearson’s publication:

*** “The Four Hundred,” the contemporary term used for the moneyed and privileged of New York City. (Coined by Ward McAllister) Pearson and his version of the Fool Killer detested them and viewed them the same way we of today view the corrupt Democrat and Republican career politicians plus the corporate and Silicon Valley robber barons.  

*** Dancing schools. As I often point out, Pearson’s Fool Killer had qualities that would annoy BOTH the political left AND the political right of today. Many right-wingers would disapprove of their hostility toward the robber barons, while many left-wingers would disapprove of the strange religious zeal which lay behind Pearson’s hostility toward dancing and dancing schools, which he found “sinful.”

*** Husbands who did nothing but drink booze, play cards, smoke, swear and chew tobacco. Drowning was his preferred method of killing such men.

*** High Society women of New York, for their latest folly. It had become (very briefly) fashionable to walk the streets with a small calf (yes, a small calf) on a leash instead of the fru-fru poodles they had been walking with til the present. Today on Social Media we see that there are still imbeciles who will do ANYTHING just because they’re told other people are doing it.

*** Frederick Forest Berry, for authoring The Torch of Reason, because of the way Berry used reason to criticize religion and belief in God.

*** Danville, VA Police Chief R.E. Morris, who, after serving for 6 years, turned out to really be an escaped fugitive named Edgar Stribling (Pearson accidentally spelled it “Stripling”), a convicted murderer who had been on the run for 13 years. Continue reading

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MAVERICK (1994) – MOVIE REVIEW

Mascot new lookFRONTIERADO IS COMING UP ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 7th! As always the Frontierado holiday (now celebrated on 6 continents) is about the myth of the Wild West, not the grinding reality. It’s just like the way medieval festivals celebrate the era’s romantic aspects, not “the violence inherent in the system” (for my fellow Monty Python fans). Here’s another Balladeer’s Blog review of a seasonal movie. 

MaverickMAVERICK (1994) – Richard Donner directed and Mel Gibson starred in this excellent tribute to the 1950s and 1980s Maverick television series. The original series starred James Garner as slick-talking gambler/ gunslinger Bret Maverick AND, in old-age makeup, as “Pappy” Beauregard Maverick, the gambler and con-man patriarch of that family of rogues.  (No relation to the real-life Maverick family of Texas, for whom “maverick” cattle were named.)

Maverick was just as often comedic as dramatic and nicely anticipated the many deconstructions of Old West mythology that were to come in the decades ahead. Sometimes the program was daringly farcical as in episodes like Gun-Shy, a spoof of Gunsmoke, and Three Queens Full, a Bonanza parody set on the Sub-Rosa Ranch (as opposed to Bonanza‘s PONDErosa). The storyline featured Maverick encountering a Ben Cartwright-styled rancher and his three less-than-straight sons, hence the episode’s title.

The original series centered on Garner’s Bret Maverick (and later other Maverick family members) vying in cardplaying and con-games with assorted rival gamblers, gunslingers and con-men. Efrem Zimbalist Jr – in his pre-FBI years – played Dandy Jim, one of the recurring members of Maverick’s Rogue’s Gallery of foes. 

Elaborate schemes and multiple double-crosses often kept viewers guessing who would come out on top til the very end, since Bret sometimes ended up on the losing side. 

The constant betrayals and double-crosses were part of the charm of the television series and were perfectly captured by the 1994 big-screen adaptation of Maverick. This thoroughly enjoyable film is often dismissed as just another of the pointless movie adaptations of tv shows that began to flood theaters back then, but that is far from the truth.

Maverick 2Mel Gibson portrays Bret Maverick since by 1994 James Garner was too old for the role. Jodie Foster co-stars as rival gambler Annabelle Bransford and the iconic James Garner provides memorable support as a lawman. 

NECESSARY SPOILER: Many people that I’ve discussed this movie with said they avoided it or stopped watching it once they realized Garner was not portraying a member of the Maverick family. In reality – as we learn near the very end – he IS. He may have been too old to play Bret this time around but he reprised his role of Pappy Beauregard from the original series. Pappy is just POSING as a lawman and his son Bret obligingly plays along without blowing his Pappy’s cover. Continue reading

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PULP HERO G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES: STORIES FOUR THROUGH SIX

Skeleton PatrolBalladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the neglected Pulp Hero G-8. This continues a story-by- story look at the adventures of this World War One American fighter pilot who – along with his two wingmen the Battle Aces – took on various supernatural and super- scientific menaces thrown at the Allied Powers by the Central Powers of Germany, Austria- Hungary and the Ottoman Muslim Turks.

G-8 was created by Robert J Hogan in 1933 when World War One was still being called simply the World War or the Great War. Over the next eleven years Hogan wrote 110 stories featuring the adventures of G-8, the street-smart pug Nippy Weston and the brawny giant Bull Martin. The regular cast was rounded out by our hero’s archenemy Doktor Krueger, Battle, G-8’s British manservant and by our hero’s girlfriend R-1: an American nurse/ spy whose real name, like G-8’s was never revealed. 

Midnight Eagle4. THE MIDNIGHT EAGLE (January 1934) – After an absence of one story G-8’s archenemy Doktor Krueger is back! A gigantic Eagle flies the skies over No Man’s Land and is wreaking havoc with Allied pilots, clawing them out of the skies with its enormous talons. Even our hero and his Battle Aces barely survive their first encounter with the airborne menace. Continue reading

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SENILE JOE BIDEN FAILS AGAIN!

Joe Biden faceJoe Biden, the Clown Prince of senile, possibly demented, DEFINITELY corrupt career politicians, always brings the crazy AND the laughs. Joe sounds like he’s drinking again – probably to drown his sorrow over how wonderfully the economy is rebounding from the Covid-19 hit. Or maybe because of the way many of his Union allies were accused of sexual misconduct recently. Whatever. Thank you to the BERNIE BROS who alerted me about this video: 

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