Geekklesia

On the 237th anniversary of American Independence, my wife (who I lovingly refer to as the Princess Bride) and I saw The Lone Ranger.  I had very high hopes for this film, based on the articles I had read and the trailers and other promotional items available.  There were a couple of things I wasn't crazy about prior to the film (like the scene with Silver in a tree wearing the Lone Ranger's hat, and Tonto saying "Something very wrong with that horse"), but for the most part, I was excited. In a previous post, I discussed the idea of the Western as an "American Fantasy genre," (an idea I credit to the guys at the Strangers and Aliens podcast) and I consider the Lone Ranger character as a highly venerated member of that pantheon.   A little history is in order at this point. The Lone Ranger began life on the radio. in 1933, on radio station WXYZ in Detroit, The Lone Ranger debuted. It was part of a trio of radio adventure series developed by Fran ...

While the previous entries in this series were specific characters in their own right, I am featuring a character that I am not totally in love with mostly because I like the series he's featured in and would love to see the series rebooted. The Ghost Corps is a group of 'free-lance diplomatic' operatives (translation: spies) at work in the Orient in the years between the World Wars. The radio series focused on an agent, KC Smith and his aide, Mohammed Ali, who were stationed in Egypt (the series places them variously in Cairo and Alexandria). Smith is identified as an American who had also served for a time in the French Foreign Legion and was a master of disguise and languages. Ali is a stalwart friend who possesses skills as varied as swordsmanship and ventriloquism. Together, they made a formidable team. I could see Smith and Ali interacting very easily with the other characters mentioned in this series of posts. In fact, as I've mentioned before, on...

As I pointed out in my review of the OTR series , Rocky Jordan is an American expatriate restaurateur from St. Louis, now the owner and operator of the Cafe Tambourine within the native quarter in Cairo, "within sight of the Mosque Sultan Hassan." The series was highly reminiscent of the film Casablanca , with actor Jack Moyles playing the part of Rocky Jordan, who can be described as perhaps "a poor man's Rick Blaine." But I'm not sure that characterization is actually fair.  Rocky Jordan, while similar in many respects to Bogart's Rick Blaine, was a different character. The radio series made Rocky a much more well-rounded character than what appeared in Casablanca : we learn that Rocky is from St. Louis, but for some unspecified reason, he cna never go back; at one time, he operated a version of the Cafe Tambourine in Istanbul before settling in Cairo; he has a reputation for somehow being implicated in murder cases; he has a love-hate relationshi...