You know, it may not actually be that obvious since a lot of people ID that tune as, “The Pina Colada Song.”
Was just rewatching Silverado on Netflix.
In the scene (around the 1:15 mark) where Emmet (Scott Glen) meets up with Ethan McKendrick, it seems (at first) that McKendrick has made peace with Emmet, letting bygones be bygones. But then Swan, one of McKendrick men, states that the horse Augie (Emmet’s nephew) is riding belonged to one of McKendrick’s men, named Lee (Emmet’s brother Jake had taken it off of one of the raiders, presumably Lee, that he’d killed when they attacked the settler’s encampment). McKendrick’s main man, Hoyt, says, “Shut up, Swan.”
Ethan McKendrick (and Hoyt) had figured out that the horse was one of his (or one of his men’s) and was going to set up Emmet as a horse thief. A hanging offense.
I don’t think that’s correct. At the very beginning of the movie, Emmet is attacked in a small shack. He kills the attackers, one of their horses runs off, but the other one stays. Emmet takes that horse with him (Paden rides it until he gets his own horse back), and that’s the one Augie is riding when he meets Ethan McKendrick.
McKendrick tells Emmet that things are square between them, and he’s not looking for revenge. When they tell Swan to shut up, it’s not to set up Emmet as a horse thief, they just don’t want Emmet to know that McKendrick sent the men who attacked him.
You’re right about the origin of the horse; I’d forgotten about that.
And your interpretation works as well; but I was recalling Emmet’s brother (or BIL?) saying Ethan McKendrick was slicker, smoother (I’m paraphrasing) than his father. So I read the scene that Ethan McKendrick would be just as happy to see Emmet swing from a gallows as a horse thief as kill him himself.
Also: Emmet was quietly furious once he realized what was up, and made sure to give the horse back to Ethan. The anger can just as easily be explained by either theory, or even both together.
A Horatio Alger story is a person who by perseverance and hard work, enters into wealth and power. But when you read an actual Horatio Alger story what you find is it’s the story of a guy who voluntarily works themselves so hard on a plutocrats behalf that the plutocrat rewards him by making him the night watchman at the local railroad depot.
In short, Horatio Alger stories are about interning your way into a crappy job.
OMG, this one is kind of embarrassing, guys.
I’ve been watching re-runs of RuPaul’s Drag Race, a show I’ve never watched before. But they’ve been running these marathons and I got sucked in. So in the last few days, I’ve seen about fifty of these things, and yesterday…it suddenly struck me…the identity of the dapper bald fellow who gives them their assignments at the beginning of the show. 
It seems I just don’t pay attention too well.
They rarely got rich, either. At best, they got enough to live on. And that was usually because of a lucky accident that brings them to the attention of the rich person.
The real message is to work hard and take advantage of any lucky break that comes your way.
And on the more cynical side, that that’s the best you can hope for if you weren’t born into wealth.
So change ‘voluntarily’ to ‘accidentally’, eh? Sounds better!
Sort of, but that’s not quite what happens in Alger’s novels. The hero of Alger’s most famous novel, Ragged Dick, is fourteen years old as the book starts and is working as a bootblack. He lives on the street. He smokes and drinks but unlike most bootblacks doesn’t steal. By showing various well-off gentlemen that he is honest and thrifty, he finally makes enough money to quit living on the street. He learns to read and write. By accident, he saves the life of a child from drowning. The child’s father is rich and finds him a job in his company. He moves from poverty to a middle-class existence.
Incidentally, there is reason to think Alger sexually molested young boys:
I’m going to win the thread here for densest person. You want to talk about an obvious thing I did not notice until now?
I have read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings many times. Not “a million”, but a lot and I just realized the other day.
Hobbit Chapter 1 - An Unexpected Party
Lord of the Rings Chapter 1 - A Long-expected Party
I never noticed he “sequeled” the first chapter titles in his book, but he did. This should have been massively obvious and stand-out to anyone, but I never really noticed.
I now have to wonder what other sequel-moments I missed that were obvious.
I’ve also read both works multiple times. I never noticed that, either. That’s genuinely neat. Thanks for pointing that out.
(But I don’t think it’s really that obvious, or that you and I are particularly dense for not noticing that - I personally just never paid that much attention to the chapter titles).
And the first chapter of Bored Of The Rings:
It’s My Party And I’ll Snub Who I Want To
I just saw the episode where Sheldon spends an evening with James Earl Jones. When they ring the doorbell and run at Carrie Fisher’s house, her number is “138”.
Speaking of that song, I was rewatching the 1973 film a year or so ago. I had seen it several times before but this was the first time I noticed something interesting about the staging.
If you listen to the lyrics, it seems like Judas is trying to warn Jesus of the danger he is in in a misguided effort to help him. The shots of Judas are staged so it look like he’s directly addressing Jesus who’s just off camera. But as the song goes on, different shots are added in and we see that Jesus is just a speck on the horizon from where Judas is. Judas is just throwing his warnings and advice out to the wing, knowing that Jesus won’t even hear them. He’s not really trying to advise Jesus; he’s just trying to convince himself that he’s doing the right thing.
In Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, the family doctor is a big fat man named Peabody.
A big fat man. Named “Pea-body.”
What if I told you “Dot” was named after the period in the “Warner Bros. Pictures” logo?
“Why, do you think it’s the sort of thing you’re likely to say?”
I thought I’d come to the (extremely) late realization that Adam Ant = adamant. Looking at Wiki, it’s not the case after all. According to the ant man himself , he chose “Adam” because Adam was the first man and “ants” because ants would survive a nuclear explosion. I like my theory better.
Huh. How 'bout that. I always assumed it was a play on the cartoon character Atom Ant, which Mr. Ant and I both are of an age to remember from childhood.