What is Best in Life

There are few things I think of as fondly as American Westerns, but the movies of Robert Altman sure come close. So when I heard he passed away at the age of 81 on November 20th, I thought it would be a good time to revisit his “Western” McCabe and Mrs. Miller. I use quotes with “Western” because, of course, McCabe and Mrs. Miller is not really a Western in the classic American sense. McCabe is no hero, Mrs. Miller is no lady and no one sits around a cozy fire drinking coffee; it’s far too cold wet and dirty for any form of coziness (in fact, sitting in front of a fire in the movie only makes the townsfolk smell a bit more “ripe”). What McCabe and Mrs. Miller is, is quite simply Robert Altman’s best movie (though this sentence could just as easily apply to Nashville and The Long Goodbye)
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Being a rambunctious sort, my past is full of tales of derring-do and mischievous insubordination. In this series I will examine specific instances of orneriness from my past so that you, the reader, might understand Isley’s special relationship with authority just a little bit better.
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