Cowboys are Goddamn Superheroes
I dropped O Best Beloved at the airport brutally early this morning, and for those of you that don’t already comprehend the significance of that statement I’ve illustrated it with my usual graphic skill:
My geography, like my hands before the third pint, is a little shaky, so I can’t promise that I’m giving a 100% accurate rendering here. But I do know she had to go through Customs today and I didn’t, which means that it’s a lot of miles any way you slice it.
Unfortunately, wild stag parties were right out, on account of the last Guys’ Night ending in embarrassment when we realized that none of us could actually pick up the cute girl eying the group. Not a goddamn one of us was single. I haven’t been single since puberty, in fact (occasionally multiple, to the varying irritations of varying ladyfriends, but never single). Drinking alone lacked novelty and strip clubs are way more fun with O Best Beloved there to get excited too, so my first night of pro tempore bachelor living was shaping up to be a real bust when a Bob Wills song saved me. Inspired, I fired up Netflix, nuked some mac and cheese, and settled down to watch Westerns in nothing but a cowboy hat.
Well, okay, a cowboy hat and a blanket. It’s November here, for crying out loud. And some tea so that I could stay awake to write a Friday blog post later. And a teddy bear, because I get lonely without OBB. And…shut up.
So there I am in my cowboy hat et. al., watching classics like Stagecoach when it hits me — cowboys are superheroes. Like real superheroes, with mutant powers and secret aliases and even the dark and tortured angst that was supposed to be so original in the X-Men. Ordinary men setting aside the hope of a normal life in order to use their unique abilities for the betterment of a world that fears and ostracizes them, and demands they set aside their powers even as danger only they can prevent looms?
Sounds familiar.
This is, therefore, the obvious answer to every drunken late-night mumbling of “no, really, which superpower do you want most?” You want to be a goddamn cowboy. They can, in no particular order:
- Move at superspeed, enabling them to dodge not only bullets but individual pellets from “near-miss” shotgun blasts (pro-tip for mortals: those near misses don’t).
- Exercise low-level superstrength in everything from arm-wrestling matches to firing full-sized shotguns one-handed from the hip.
- Metabolize poisons (re: alcohol) almost instantly, converting the calories into stored kinetic energy for powering later super-punches.
- Either use precognition to tell when the ace of spades is the top card, or else use telekinesis to put it there. Either way, awesome.
- Power weapons with their own super-energy, allowing them to shoot long after running out of ammunition, set entire buildings on fire with a gunshot, etc.
- Communicate with animals, and re-energize them beyond their natural limits with their own cowboy powers.
- Telepathically control a woman, making her do everything from repenting her misspent years of whoring to drilling some guy in the back of the head even though she’s a Quaker pacifist. Seriously, what a dick move.
- Maintain a 3/8″ of stubble impervious to everything from razor blades to forest fires.
I could probably come up with more, but I’m busy converting energy for any super-punches I might need in the near future. O Best Beloved is gone all weekend, so don’t expect Monday’s post to be any more responsible!
Also, if you really think you’d rather have some other lame-ass superpower that isn’t being a goddamn cowboy, feel free to drop me a comment so I can tell you that you’re wrong. Or just watch you with appraising, steely eyes from beneath the brim of my hat. We’ll see. We’ll goddamn see.
Oddly, I had a similar realization not that long ago. It wasn’t quite so fleshed out, not quite so firmly on the Cowboy=Superhero side of things, but it was the same in the essentials. So I won’t be telling you that you’re wrong, because you’re right.
Heh. Color me amused.
Also, it strikes me that the “I want my super-power to be Cowboy” falls into the same category as wishing for infinite wishes. That could just be the wine talking though.
Nah, wishing for infinite wishes is subject to monkey’s-pawing: if granted, you get infinite wishes, meaning there can be no limit, meaning an infinite number of things, i.e. every possible wish, have to come true before your wish is fulfilled.
Wanting your superpower to be “being a cowboy” is just like wanting “a suit like Iron Man’s” or something. Multifunctional, but totally within the boundaries of the hypothetical.
I have no interest in fighting crime so my desired super power is teleportation. I would use it to:
1. Avoid airports so TSA/Mexican TSA couldn’t make me do silly things like throw out my Starbucks before boarding or check a bag with my duty free tequila in it instead of just letting me carry it on the plane.
2. Avoid walking to work in the cold.
3. Go for black mole and mezcal mojitos in Mexico City DF whenever the mood struck, because with great power comes great lunch.
The upcoming Cowboys & Aliens might just do the trick. Daniel Craig as a cowboy fighting aliens, with some superpowers of his own. Harrison Ford is also in it, but from the trailers, he is something less than impressive. Looks like fun, though.
I’d never heard of that until now, and now I can’t live happily until I see it!