WARNING: SPOILERS. HAPPENING. BELOW. DON’T READ IT IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW.
1:00 lmao this is the rowdiest shit I’ve ever heard. They did such a great job with this scene, especially the one on the left.
6:00 did that random guy just say he owns the Long Branch??
8:10 I take it they aren’t fond of Yankees.
11:45 shit I’d mount up and be the fuck out of there pronto.
14:25 if the burro meant that much to him he should have never left it unattended after a situation like that… I sure the fuck wouldn’t have.
16:32 I mean come on, this Weed fella is a wimp. It’s lame. He needs to grow some nuts.
20:06 NOW he’s gonna move along? NOW HE’S GONNA MOVE ALONG?!?!??!!!
21:18 I swear this guy’s dumber than a box of shit, honestly they can kill him but just leave the burro alone.
22:00 at least he’s got some smart people looking out for him in this ONE instance, but I think his character is ridiculous… no way he made it that far in his travels without getting killed. It’s just straight up unrealistic.
23:08 wait, what!? Well, fuck me!!!
23:45 MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!! Now that’s old west justice right there, baby!!!!!!! I don’t see a damn thing wrong with it.
WARNING: SPOILERS. HAPPENING. BELOW. DON’T READ IT IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW.
1:00 oh wow, is this episode about one of Matt’s past love interests? That’d be kinda nice.
1:11 is that her?? She’s a looker.
1:20 wow this is heavy, so Doc’s wrapping up her arm while the hotel manager’s talking about people previously attempting or committing suicide in the hotel’s history. Wow man, I didn’t expect them to touch on a topic like this!
3:42 lol he patted that guy’s horse on the ass!!!
4:25 well I don’t like her as much as Miss Kitty but it’s good to know he’s at least shagged a bitch before!?
4:50 she didn’t botch it, she just wanted attention. Seems like Marshal Dillon likes ’em either crazy or risque.
6:10 oh Miss Kitty ain’t gonna like that at all, and as far as I can tell, Matt ain’t really on board with it either. I don’t rightly blame him. A shifty broad showing up again after all those years is just weird.
6:20 send her over to the Lady Gay for God’s sake.
6:35 “There’s no such thing as a gray cat.” That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
7:20 lol this is what Miss Kitty wears to bed? Good Lord… glamorous much??
13:15 this is the first woman he’s actually sent over to work at the Long Branch as a dance hall hussy. I should be celebrating this epic moment, but alas… lmao, it feels like an empty victory.
14:10 yeah, it’s definitely worse than being a saloon girl.
15:20 I mean Kitty’s right about everything she’s saying, but I think she’s got Matt pegged all wrong on this one. He’s gonna nail that chick and I ain’t talking about in the bedroom either. He’s not interested in her.
16:25 ROFLMFAOOOOO this SCEEEENNNE. Roflmfaolololol. LOL!!!!!!!!! Oh man Kitty’s mad.
21:25 can’t get one over on Marshal Dillon… what a man!!!
23:30 kiiiinda hoping he shoots her, and I bet Miss Kitty wouldn’t mind either, bwhahahaha!!! I guess that opener at Boot Hill was kind of a spoiler if you think about it.
WARNING: SPOILERS. HAPPENING. BELOW. DON’T READ IT IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW.
0:30 no Boot Hill opener on this one. Some of them didn’t have it. Maybe these were the ones that deviated from the radio show scripts.
1:20 it’s so weird how I thought about the whole Johnny Depp/Amber Heard fiasco when I read this title, and this scene is all about this guy describing how when a man gets prodded and pushed too far “Ain’t you got a right to rise up and strike against him?” Kinda spooky. Sounds like he’s describing a situation between two men, but still. “Ain’t he responsible for his own hate and meanness, ain’t he partly to blame for making you want to kill him?” Sooo weird. And who the hell has ever heard of “Amber” as a surname anyway? Sounds like the universe talking, to me. I don’t really believe in coincidence.
2:28 I meeeean, basically everyone in this show has publicly declared that they were gonna kill somebody at some point, so nah Chester, I’d say there’s a chance he means it.
5:15 sometimes Marshal Dillon makes me feel all wild inside.
10:00 fricken weirdos.
14:08 that’s a little dramatic.
14:50 I can tell this guy can hardly take his role seriously, it’s just so ignorant and extremist.
20:50 lol… couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy!
There just aren’t enough hours in the day to watch Gunsmoke.
WARNING: SPOILERS. HAPPENING. BELOW. DON’T READ IT IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW.
0:07 oooohhhh, Marshal Dillon… is your backside a sight for sore eyes!
God he’s so beautiful. He’s so gorgeous. When I started out watching Gunsmoke, I had no idea I’d be so smitten with James Arness.
1:44 I’m sorry, but if this is the “boy” he was referring to in the intro, I don’t fricken like him at all and I’m not gonna have an ounce of compassion for him. They’re lining us up to hate this character, there’s no way they aren’t. Maybe the intro was about somebody else.
2:25 he does have a cute mouth though.
Nothing is better than Gunsmoke.
3:30 “All the Shortys and the Curlys and the Slims”… like pure poetry. His voice is like music to me.
I wonder if they listened to the corresponding radio show/episode before they filmed each one?? Or if they just went off the words on the paper script and never tried to get a gauge from the radio show? I think it’s preferable if they didn’t concern themselves with the way the radio show episode went and put their own spin on certain things.
4:11 so like… when was he gonna tell her that, exactly??
4:28 I love how he guides her ass down onto the chair… *nanarub* I’m gonna have to watch that again.
Oh God he’s so fuckin’ hot.
5:20 I love how he just blinks at her compassionately… *lustful yearning*
6:04 “I’d be obliged if you’d come and lay the pipe on me directly, Marshal.” *dancing banana*
6:20 oh come on, he knows every last motherfucker in Boot Hill, he knows where that guy’s buried.
8:30 damn, this lady’s annoying.
14:00 wow, he needs to throw that dumb bitch in jail.
20:26 I kinda hope she gets caught in some crossfire.
21:00 those ARE some nice pants though.
23:11 OMG MARSHAL DILLON GOT SHOT.
24:00 I wanna get soooo naked with Marshal Dillon. I can’t wait to see him in color!!!
24:45 yeah no shit you were lady, now why don’t ya quit yer yammerin’ and let the good marshal scoot on along to the Doc so he can NOT DIE?!?!?!?!
25:00 another episode that just ends right after Matt gets shot, no scenes at the Doc, no reassuring he’s totally fine, just ends like everything’s cool, lmao.
25:30 sounds like they’ve changed the pitch/speed of the closing theme and made it sound a bit… happier. Definitely more spiced up. It’s very pretty.
It’s the 65th Anniversary (2020) Edition box set of every episode (and special commercials) of Gunsmoke, ever.
All 635 episodes on 143 DVDs.
That’s right…
I get to start from EPISODE ONE, BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So a quick product review…
First of all let me just say, this box set was made with a lot of love and care.
I don’t think it could have been designed better, they did their level best.
The packaging is very nice, it’s gotta be one of the biggest box sets ever.
I would say this box set was a quality control nightmare, and I commend every person who put these sets together one by one.
I want these DVDs to be protected and last FOREVER, so I got a 160 capacity semi-hard shell CD storage case, which worked absolutely beautifully for this purpose.
I checked every single DVD and made sure it played as I was unpackaging the boxset and putting the DVDs into their cushy new home.
Every DVD was in fine working order, there were no duplicates, there were none missing. Other than a few discs that had gotten free inside the case, there was nothing out of sorts.
There was ONE disc that had strange dirty areas on the label side, and I spotted a huge finger print on the reverse side of one other disc. Other than that, they were flawless.
Sooo many DVDs. Insane. It’s an absolutely massive show and I do legitimately wonder if there’s ever been a larger box set ever made.
The one thing I’d have to suggest is to release future box sets in one of these semi-hard shell zipper cases straight away instead of in the hard plastic cases that are customary for DVDs. It’s VERY nerve wracking to remove each of the DVDs from the original case, and I recommend grabbing the DVD on each end so that you put balanced forced on the whole thing rather than from one side only… one of those discs could very easily crack otherwise. None of mine did though, I took my time and was very careful. But I’m relieved to have the separate sleeve/holder bag so I never have to put those precious DVDs through that strain again.
What a wonderful box set, I’m not kidding, I am absolutely over the moon about this.
The box set is the ONLY way to watch the ENTIRE series, as it stands at the time of writing.
Even if it were to be available in whole on a streaming service… I am just not a fan of depending on services, and “the cloud” and all these other third parties in order to be able to watch my favorite content.
I want to OWN it.
I believe that this box set is absolutely a worthy purchase for any Gunsmoke fan.
I tried not to like the show… LOL, I tried to find fault with it, I tried not to enjoy every episode I randomly selected. I tried not to fall down the rabbit hole, but I just couldn’t avoid it. I fell in love with Gunsmoke…
And it’s fucking on.
So begins my journey through this legendary show.
This evening, I begin from episode one.
There will be no commercials. There will be no streaming. There will be no buffering. There will be no unwanted interruptions.
What lies ahead in this journey is pure pleasure, many laughs to be had, tears to be shed over poignant plotlines…
And lots of drooling to be done over the sexy cowboy men and wild western ladies that I’m about to have the honor of laying eyes on.
As I was checking each and every DVD, I noted a few things…
The thing I was most excited about was that legendary first color episode. When I got to it in season 12, I was amazed. It was far more beautiful than I expected it to be.
I noticed that the characters looked like an 1800s photograph come to life. It’s not only in color, but it’s in some of the most beautiful, warm, vivid coloring I’ve ever seen.
The red hair is luscious, the blue eyes are piercing, and the sets and scenery look like they truly are right out of the late 19th century. “Impressive” doesn’t even begin to describe the quality of this show on every level.
The sound and picture quality of the DVDs is excellent, the captions seem to be very satisfactory to my snobbish expectations from what I’ve seen so far.
If any Gunsmoke fans ever find this commentary, I want you to know I feel our kinship. You may dislike my verbiage and you may not agree with the things I say, but we’re family. Bottom line.
I’m about to watch the very first episode over a righteous dinner…
On one level I think he’s probably grateful to them because without fans, he wouldn’t have lived such a good life.
I assume he’s lived a good life, I imagine he has.
He’s rich and famous, it’s probably cushy.
On the other hand, part of me feels like he probably thinks his fans are idiots. And I get it, I’m definitely an idiot sometimes.
But I think there’s something empty in it. It must be weird to have pretty much everybody have heard of you, heard your name, heard your music, but nobody actually knows you.
We don’t know Bob from Adam. We have no idea who the guy is. At all.
And I would hazard a guess that probably nobody really knows Bob.
There might be one or two people in the world who actually know Bob Dylan, like the REAL man.
You could really say that about anybody.
I think everybody is too far up their own ass to REALLY KNOW others.
That’s not always true, but if you ask me… do I feel like anybody really knows me? I would say like a couple people. Maybe.
So I imagine it’s probably the same for him.
It must be strange to have all these people know about you, but not know you at all.
There is his entire body of work that you could psychoanalyze…
But so much of creative art is funneled in from the aether.
It’s not something you make up yourself usually. True, inspired art is… from elsewhere.
Because of that, I struggle to say that we really could know Bob from his music/lyrics.
You’d be closer to knowing him from his books, and there aren’t that many of them.
When Bob lays his head on his pillow at night, I don’t think we could ever guess what he’s thinking about.
He’s not thinking, “Oh my God, I’m Bob fkn Dylan.”
He’s probably thinking about what everybody else thinks about…
What happened that day, or what emotional real estate is being taken up in his life.
He’s probably thinking about family or himself, but not in the context of being famous.
Back to what he thinks of his fans…
He probably feels like it’s another person that everybody’s thinking of when they think of Bob.
He probably feels detached from it, as well he should be. We don’t know him at all.
I also wonder how impeded his experience of knowing other people has been. That’s an even bigger issue than what he thinks of his fans.
I don’t consider myself a “fanatic” of anything. I’m an appreciator.
Think about it…
Bob has been famous for 60 years, some people don’t even live that long.
He’s been famous for a lifetime.
He was really young when he became so famous.
Immediately in this world when you get any type of notoriety…
Even if you’re just wealthy and you’re not particularly famous, you can’t trust anyone.
To think he’s been having that experience since he was so young…
What has that done to his ability to know people?
Cuz it was so long ago when he wasn’t famous, didn’t have anything that everybody wanted…
Does he even remember what it was like to deal with people from the standpoint of NOT being Bob Dylan?
If he does, it probably sucked anyway.
Not to be pessimistic about the human condition, but it pretty much sucks.
Life is great, but it’s also a joke.
Other people are so full of crap.
There are some certain ways in which I feel bad for Bob and anybody in that position…
Like Michael Jackson… he was lonely.
I remember a scene of MJ in a Las Vegas hotel and there were crowds below…
And they were just going crazy trying to catch a glimpse of him.
You could just see that even in the midst of all of those people supposedly being so into you…
You’re still alone and perhaps even more alone than you would be as a regular person.
Has Bob been deficient in actually knowing people?
Just because of the celebrity and the legend of who he is?
I would imagine that not everybody is starstruck.
I’m sure there are lots of people who could talk to Bob Dylan and not be fixated on who he is.
I’m sure there are people who could genuinely conversate or chill with him and not be weird.
I’d imagine it would be very rare to have a pure, unbiased experience with other people.
Not everybody’s a fan of Bob Dylan, I get that.
Who doesn’t like Bob Dylan though? Aside from the riff-raff…
Pretty much everybody has heard a Bob Dylan song and thought it was pretty chill.
There’s just like nobody who hasn’t been touched by that.
You’d have to go to some remote tribe on an island somewhere to find somebody who’s never heard about Bob Dylan.
How often does he have an unbiased experience with people?
Even when you’re just wealthy and not famous, people still want to kiss your ass…
Everybody wants something.
No matter what, you’re probably almost never gonna find anybody who’s gonna be real with you.
Fame and wealth aren’t the only things that make people treat you differently.
Any kind of status, beauty, it all conditions the way that people treat you.
Imagine the hassle of being Bob Dylan.
You couldn’t go anywhere without being disguised because people would recognize you.
It would be a security risk.
It would be scary, you would think.
You couldn’t go anywhere because people would be potentially crazy and stuff.
It’s not just his interpersonal dealings with people, it’s also normal experiences…
Again, Michael Jackson wore disguises so he could go out places.
You’d have to do something like that to observe the world from an unbiased standpoint.
But maybe Bob doesn’t really care about having a normal experience.
Especially at his age, he’s probably crossed that bridge a long time ago.
I wonder if part of him resents his fans?
I wonder if it’s a love/hate type thing.
In one way, they’ve given him so much. And these people do love Bob, the idea of Bob.
Cuz again, we don’t actually know him. He might suck as a person.
I don’t think he does, I think he’s probably pretty cool, but we don’t know.
The fans have given him a good life because of the support they’ve given him.
I’m sure he’s grateful for that, but…
Maybe he could be resentful in some ways because it’s also potentially taken a lot from his life experience.
Having to deal with not being able to go out in public like a normal person. Not being able to have an honest interaction with other people.
He’s certainly not had a normal life. And if he ever did, it was so long ago, God only knows if he even remembers it.
God only knows if it sucked or not.
I just wonder how he feels about it. Does he feel like he missed out on certain things because of the fame?
There are certain experiences that I have been curious about…
I wonder what would it have been like if I could have done this or that?
It’s a normal human thing to have those kinds of feelings.
I wonder if he just doesn’t care about this aspect of things?
Every single person has a lot on their plate in the first place.
Not everybody cares about certain stuff.
I appreciate Bob’s fans, cuz dude…
They’re some dedicated people.
Bob shouldn’t be salty about how obsessed people can be with him.
It’s kind of a compliment, you must be pretty interesting if people feel that way about you.
Let people have their fun.
It just makes me smile because…
As much as I have a problem with humanity, I also love some things about it.
I love how human it is to just be obsessed…
It’s so human to do those things, and I don’t hold it against ’em.
So this is piggy backing off of my other recording about how I want Bob to basically write smut.
But like, Bob style smut. Because it’s hot and I want more.
But here’s my thing.
If you know about that super mega freaking creepy (in my opinion) letter that Bob apparently wrote to Joan Baez’s mother…
I think it was really just to Joan Baez under the guise of being to her mother…
Because that’s even more warped and sick and twisted in that context because of what it said.
And I’m sure you can find this letter online, it was in Joan Baez’s book, “And a Voice to Sing With.”
It was just like… sooo creepy though. Like, not hot. Just creepy.
And one of the reasons I wanna talk about this is, first of all…
When Bob gives us smut? Please, Bob, don’t do it like that. Cuz that’s not cool.
What perplexes me about Bob is the writing style.
I get that Bob came up in the days of typewriters, it wasn’t computers, it wasn’t on the internet.
The typewriter is kind of like an instrument in and of itself.
And in that way I can see how somebody might develop multiple writing styles, almost like different characters.
But I noticed the Joan Baez letter was all lowercase, terrible punctuation and grammar, almost like Bob was writing in a certain voice. Like a character.
It was also kind of like the same way that “Tarantula” was written.
And my mind is just flooding, rivulets of thought up in here.
Fuckin’ Tarantula, I’ve gotta make an entire recording about Tarantula because…
Well do I even need to explain why Tarantula deserves its own recording?
So that was like a massive troll, Bob was clearly trolling with that, but here’s what bothers me…
Again with the ghostwriting theory…
What if Tarantula and the Joan Baez letter…
The lowercase clusterfuck writings, what if those are the REAL Bob Dylan?
And all of the lyrics and books, what if those really were ghostwritten and the real Bob Dylan is Tarantula?
Is that not a terrifying thought?
Cuz I mean, think about it…
Back in the ’60s at the beginning of his career, there were pictures of him with typewriters.
He was on typewriters in various scenes in the documentaries, so we know he was writing something, but…
What if he was just tormentedly pounding out Tarantula in those pictures?
What if that’s what he was writing? Where are the pictures of Bob Dylan writing throughout the years?
If you’re that prolific, you’d think you’d have a typewriter connected at the hip or something.
Somebody who is supposedly as prolific as Bob Dylan has been…
You would think there would be a bunch of pictures throughout the decades of Bob writing stuff.
Like writing on napkins and stationery, writing with typewriters…
Like what the hell does Bob write on? Is Bob writing?
And this man. The freaking enigma of Bob Dylan is endless.
There’s Chronicles Vol. 1, Philosophy of Modern Song…
It just seems like Bob has all of these different voices and it’s unusual.
I theorize it has to do with typewriters basically being an instrument…
There wasn’t a screen, your device wasn’t connected to the internet to open up a world of distractions.
You were alone with a blank page and mechanical keys, and you had to reach into your imagination and come up with things.
Maybe he exhibits all of these different writing styles because of the era he came up in.
Typically people only have one writing style. Especially in the era of the internet.
You can recognize people by their writing styles even if they try to change it up…
If you’re observant and skilled enough, you can recognize people through the written word.
You can still sense the person behind the writings, or at least I can.
That’s one thing I find really interesting about Bob.
He seems capable of writing in all these different voices…
But then again, books are typically proofread and edited, maybe the rough drafts look a lot different than when they’re published.
Maybe it all starts out looking like Tarantula before the editors get at it.
Like I was talking about with the liner notes of “World Gone Wrong”…
Those are not completely perfect on a punctuation/grammatical level.
I think that’s a little closer to what Bob Dylan’s writing is actually like.
In PhMoSo, the punctuation is very interesting, sometimes there are almost run-on sentences.
I can relate to some of those oddities because I write in the same way.
Whoever edits Bob’s books seems to keep some of these elements intact…
Which I really appreciate, I really like that a lot. It’s a quirk.
I write a lot and I have certain ways of doing things. My usage of punctuation is not by the books.
I’m aware of that and I know how to do it the right way, I just don’t care.
To me, it’s stylistic… it’s art, it’s a mode of self expression.
This is the way it looks good to me.
And that’s why I write that way.
I’m just curious about what Bob’s rough-drafts look like…
How cleaned up are the end products that we see?
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