Mustang football: Iola faces another Pioneer League power.
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THE IOLA REGISTER Locally owned since 1867
www.iolaregister.com
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Finding the funny in the American Western By RICK DANLEY The Iola Register
There’s a certain type of American male for whom the Hollywood Western acts upon his system like a comfort food. It’s consolingly basic, composed of the same ingredients every time, and is — aside from a handful of artful exceptions — relatively easy to digest. Looking across the Atlantic in the post-war years, Andre Bazin, the godhead of French movie criticism, praised the Western as “the only genre whose origins are almost identical with those of the cinema itself ” and whose scripts, because of their archetypal simplicity, “have often been a subject for parody.” In this opinion, he might have been anticipating at least one facet of the talk Scott Eyman will deliver this Saturday at the 23rd annual Buster Keaton Celebration. Eyman, one of the country’s
Buster Keaton in “Go West” top film scholars, will discuss — in “Buster Keaton and the Landscape of the West” — the silent comedian’s place
in the history of that most solemn of genres. And while Bazin, in his airless, continental way, is
a useful interpreter of the genre, Eyman is a more entertaining guide: “Every comedian takes a run at the Western at some point,” explained Eyman in a recent phone conversation with the Register. “Martin and Lewis did it, Bob Hope did it, Abbot and Costello did it — and that’s because the genre is so imprinted on the American subconscious. We all know the rhythms of the Western, we all know the tropes of the Western, and so you start off on second base. You don’t have to spend a lot of time outlining narrative. You can just do funny variations on things that have always been heretofore played straight.” In 1918, Roscoe Arbuckle directed and starred in a short called “Out West,” which features a young Buster Keaton, his stoic persona still largely unformed. “What’s striking about it See EYMAN | Page A5
PROTESTS ROCK CHARLOTTE
Ed Munder, “That Hypnotist!” will perform Saturday at the Kincaid Free Fair.
Kincaid Free Fair fun lies ahead KINCAID — For more than 100 years, the small hamlet of Kincaid swells dramatically one weekend a year, usually in late September. This year is no exception, as organizers prepare for the weekend’s Kincaid Farmers Free Fair. A schedule chocked with events for festival-goers of all ages is crammed into the three-day event, starting this evening with a free bean feed at 5 o’clock, children’s cash grab at 6, pedal tractor pull at 6:30, and a performance by Mark Twain impersonator Ken Church at 7:30. Church is well known in these parts. He’s the sno of Lilia Churchg, a resident at the Moran Manor. The Churches See KINCAID | Page A5
Justices dubious of state’s school funding plan Demonstrators and law enforcement clashed during a series of protests Wednesday, following an officerinvolved shooting Tuesday of Keith Lamont Scott by police in Charlotte, N.C. THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER/JEFF
SINER/TNS
State of emergency declared in NC By JAWEED KALEEM The Associated Press
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (TNS) — North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency in Charlotte Wednesday night after violent new protests over the police shooting of a black man erupted, leaving one person shot and critically wounded. The shooting Wednesday night occurred as protesters waded into the streets and began streaming toward downtown hotels as police in riot gear fired tear gas and attempted to block their progress. See PROTESTS | Page A5
Quote of the day
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Vol. 118, No. 227
75 Cents
— Winston Churchill
By JOHN HANNA The Associated Press
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ highest court was openly skeptical Wednesday that the cash-strapped state provides every public school student a suitable education, though one justice suggested a way to fix the problem without the big, across-the-board funding increase desired by many educators. The state Supreme Court heard arguments from the state and four local districts in a lawsuit filed by the districts in 2010. The six-year legal dispute has pitted the seven justices, six of whom were appointed by Democratic or moderate Republican governors, against GOP conservatives controlling the rest of state See FUNDING | Page A3
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