Hondo by Louis L’Amour. We’re fans of Louis L’Amour round these parts. Guy was prolific. Hondo is my favorite Western novel of his. The story had an unusual path: L’Amour first wrote a short story that became the 1953 John Wayne film (a good flick!), then expanded the film’s narrative into the novel Hondo. The book follows Hondo Lane, a former cavalry officer who survived in Apache country by learning Apache ways. He stumbles onto a homestead where Angie Lowe and her young son are living alone, no husband in sight. Then the Apache warrior Vittoro enters the picture, and you get a story about love, war, and honor in the American Southwest. L’Amour’s prose won’t win any Pulitzers, but the man could spin a yarn. Great beach read! Make sure to check out the podcast interview I did with Louis L’Amour’s son, Beau L’Amour.
How 1990s Special Forces Guys Became Menswear Moodboard Staples. Charles McFarlane (who runs a great Substack called Combat Threads) has a piece in GQ on why photos of 1980s and 90s special operators (slim, mustachioed Delta Force guys in stonewashed jeans, fishing vests, and 1990s dad glasses) keep going viral on military moodboard accounts. He traces how special operators went from looking like your dad to the 21st-century tatted, bearded, jacked tactical guy and muses on the enduring appeal of the operator style from decades back. McFarlane thinks guys in 2026 like how it exemplifies a quieter, less-in-your-face version of masculinity — one capable of killing a bad guy while looking like an ordinary accountant.
Pxton Walkie-Talkies. I bought a set of these last year for the teenagers I lead at church, so we could play “fugitive” at the Gathering Place, Tulsa’s sprawling, genuinely impressive destination park built by our fair city’s resident billionaire. Playing fugitive is a popular Wednesday night activity for our youth group; we just played it again this week. One group acts as the police and coordinates their patrols over the walkie-talkies, while the other group plays fugitives trying to make it back to the boathouse from somewhere across the park — without getting caught. The Pxtons are cheap, but they worked great over the long distances you need for the game. They’ve also got a less fun, but useful use case: in a grid-down, phone-down scenario, they’ll let you keep in touch with family around the neighborhood. Make sure to check out our article on walkie-talkies.
Singin’ in the Rain. Last time I saw this flick was in music class at John Ross Elementary. The Cinema Humanities article we featured in O&E a few weeks back nudged me to give it another watch. Glad I did. It’s a funny, sharp critique of celebrity that holds up (“Dignity. Always dignity.”), and the cinematography felt shockingly modern for 1952. But Gene Kelly stole the show. His dancing has an athletic, virile quality I wasn’t expecting from a 1950s musical. I went down a Gene Kelly rabbit hole afterward and learned this was intentional. Kelly thought male dancing in movie musicals was too effeminate and set out to make it more masculine, muscular, and action-packed. He royally pulled it off. Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” dance routine was also incredibly physical. Doing backflips off walls and whatnot. It was so physical, in fact, that it put him in the hospital for three days. Talk about suffering for your art!
On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: What You See, Shapes and Making a Living Online: The Affiliate Link Boom and Bust.
Quote of the Week
Luck is the tide, nothing more. The strong man rows with it if it makes toward his port; he rows against it if it flows the other way.
—Orison Swett Marden
