Here at BCB After Dark, the hangout for early risers, night owls, new mums, and Cubs fans overseas, we’re starting a new week. Please enter and join us. There’s no admission fee. Even if it’s freezing outside, it’s warm inside. Seize any table that is vacant. Please bring a drink of your own.

As long as it doesn’t violate the site’s policies, you can discuss anything you need to get off your chest about baseball, music, movies, or anything else at BCB After Dark. Everyone is welcome to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the day, but the late nighters are urged to start the celebration.

I questioned you last week regarding the likelihood of the Cubs acquiring right-handed closer Kenley Jansen through trade. You were against it by a margin of 39 percent to 24 percent. The remainder of you found it to be “meh.”

This is the section where I’ve included the movies and the music. You can skip that now if you choose to. You’re not going to offend me.

Over the holidays, the renowned pianist Les McCann passed away. Specifically, it is December 29. There’s still time to honour him tonight; I missed it since I was kind of unplugged throughout that period.

This image shows McCann performing on piano and singing during the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival alongside saxophonist Eddie Harris. Here’s McCann performing “Compared to What,” one of his signature songs. This protest song has a lot of swing to it.

In the BCB Winter Western Classic, you cast your votes, and you decided to let The Searchers, who had 79 percent of the vote versus Ride the High Country, be the top seed and move on to the third round. Although The Searchers is at the top of many of these lists, Ride is still a wonderful film.

The battle begins tonight with High Noon, the number-two seed. It will play A Fistful of Dollars, the #18 seed that defeated McCabe & Mrs. Miller in the opening round.

#2 seed, High Noon (1952). Fred Zinnemann is the director. starring Katy Jurado, Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Thomas Mitchell, and Gary Cooper.

It’s incredible to think that the origins of a classic Western like High Noon were just low-budget contractual obligations. The majority of the credit should go to actor Gary Cooper, who spearheaded the motion picture’s production, and screenwriter Carl Foreman, who transformed the narrative into an indictment of the blacklist. Cooper won the Best Actor Oscar as compensation for his perseverance. Foreman’s reward was to be banished to Britain. (Prior to that, he was nominated for Best Screenplay.)

I wrote about High Noon’s history here three years ago, but I don’t really want to get into detail at this time. We’re evaluating it as a film, not as a historical document, after all. If you would like to read it again, you can. In short, however, Foreman was writing High Noon when he was being blacklisted, which led him to transform the script into an allegory about the blacklist. Even though Cooper was an ardent conservative and anti-communist, he supported and cherished the script. Besides, Cooper loved the concept of making people report out their pals much less than he did the communists roaming around Hollywood.