"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Highlander: The Final Dimension

HIGHLANDER: THE FINAL DIMENSION (apparently also called HIGHLANDER III: THE SORCERER) arrived in late 1994 in the U.K., early 1995 in the U.S. It was only about three years after THE QUICKENING and already the producers were like, “I don’t know what you mean, ‘Planet Zeist.’ That’s not a thing that was ever mentioned in our movies.” And they made a new HIGHLANDER sequel that didn’t acknowledge any of that stuff – “a stand-alone alternate sequel to the original film,” as Wikipedia puts it. Of course, it takes place in 1994, so in my opinion it is for sure just an adventure Connor MacLeod had shortly before the ozone layer got real bad and he transitioned into the shield-building

From the dawn of 1986 they came…moving stylishly down through the decades. Movies, TV shows, cartoons, struggling to reach the time of the reviewing, when Vern will write about the franchise

industry and then years later was at an opera that reminded him he was from Planet Zeist.

But before they take us to Connor in the ’90s they fill in a piece of backstory that was skipped before. Turns out after his mentor Ramirez and then his wife Heather died back on the Highlands he wandered the world “searching for answers” until he “came to Japan, to the mountains of Niri and the cave of the sorcerer Nakano.” We see Nakano (motherfuckin Mako, CONAN THE BARBARIAN) forging Connor’s familiar sword. A ha*. Prequel.

And as long as you got Mako in your movie you gotta have him say some cool shit with that Mako voice. Either narration or, as in this case, dialogue that would work as narration. “Great danger lies ahead, Highlander,” he says. “From a far away land comes another, the most feared and evil among us. He keeps growing stronger every day, feeding on the power of other Immortals. Soon, there will be none left who can stop him. If he wins, the world will suffer eternal damnation.”

Nakano was right. The asshole’s name is Kane (Mario Van Peebles, JAWS: THE REVENGE), and he’s riding toward them with a posse of barbarians. They burn down a village of people who won’t tell them where Nakano is, so in my opinion they are not nice guys. For some reason Kane is looking for “the Highlander.”

Nakano (who not only forged Connor’s sword, but trained him in samurai sword skills and taught him to “respect the power of illusion”), wakes Connor up at night and tells him to leave, presumably so that Kane doesn’t kill them both and become the last one (besides all the ones who were still alive in the 1986 of the first film). Kane almost immediately wins his duel with Nakano, but at least Nakano’s severed head is still able to taunt him and – even better – his Quickening causes the whole cave to collapse on top of them all. Ha ha. Suckers. Built in booby trap.

So, hundreds of years later some company is digging tunnels in that mountain and they accidentally unleash Kane and his two buddies. Kane’s first words when he emerges are “Highlander’s out there somewhere.” I guess he didn’t take that time to reconsider his grudges. Like Earl Talbot Blake in Russell Mulcahy’s RICOCHET, he has no hobbies but revenge. He later explains, “Hate feeds you. It focuses the mind. Keeps you warm.” Then he chops off one of his buddy (Raoul Trujillo, APOCALYPTO, THE SWORDSMAN)’s heads for an extra power boost.

So we’re up to 1994. It seems that shortly after receiving The Gift of mortality by being the last remaining (and not buried) Immortal at the end of HIGHLANDER, Connor’s happily ever after was cut short by a car accident that killed his sword expert wife Brenda. He survived without a scratch on him, which might make you think he’s UNBREAKABLE. But no, the reality is that he was mistaken about getting The Gift, because he wasn’t the last one yet. (They never mention the whole thing about how he could hear the thoughts of everyone on earth and all that. Maybe that was a placebo effect.) The Game is still afoot on account of those three dudes he left buried in a collapsed cave hundreds of years ago. I mean, they deserved it. But they’re out there.

(Note: I guess this has to be a separate continuity from Highlander: The Series, where he is aware that Duncan MacLeod and six seasons worth of guest star Immortals are still around.)

When Kane kills his lackey, Connor senses The Quickening, figures out Kane is alive, and leaves his adopted son John (Gabriel Kakon) in Marrakesh while he goes “back to New York, the place of The Gathering” and changes into the classic part 1 outfit. There’s a goofy tangent where he gets jumped by five dudes in a snowy alley. They shoot him dead and he’s taken to the hospital, but since his wounds heal a doctor decides he’s crazy (?) and he’s locked in a mental ward for a while. This is the kinda pain in the ass thing that can happen to an Immortal in the big city.

He sees a TV report interviewing one Dr. Alexandra Johnson (Deborah Kara Unger in her movie before CRASH) about an archaeological discovery in Japan, so he flashes back to a woman named Sarah Barrington who he was in love with during the French revolution. But here’s the thing – THIS WOMAN IS ALSO PLAYED BY DEBORAH KARA UNGER (PAYBACK). That could be cool if it meant she was an Immortal, but no, it’s that thing where the same actress plays someone from the past to show they’re a reincarnation or some shit (see also BLACULA, CANDYMAN, etc.)

He gets attacked by Kane’s surviving pal, Khabul (Jean-Pierre Perusse, BLACK ROBE) and there are some very nice looking shots that show new director Andrew Morahan (another early music video director) and cinematographer Steven Chivers (HARDWARE, Gorillaz Featuring Mos Def and Bobby Womack: “Stylo“) take seriously their responsibility to fill Mulcahy’s shoes.

Also there’s a pretty funny product placement when Khabul gets beheaded and his Quickening passes through a bunch of cans of Mountain Dew.

A+ product placement.

An unnecessary but appreciated tie to part 1 is that an angry cop (Martin Neufeld, RENEGADES) finds the headless body and sees Connor in town. He knows him by his old alias “Russell Nash” and vows to prove that he really was “The Head Hunter” after all. (Good luck with that, pal.)

Connor goes to see an old buddy at his… I don’t know, judo gym or something, with trampolines and ropes that thankfully get to be used in a fight against Kane. Connor’s sword gets broken (that was a gift from Nakano, you dick!) so he returns to Scotland and the exact spot where he lived with his “bonny Heather” to forge a new blade from metal that Dr. Johnson found in Nakano’s cave. Which is pretty awesome. The good doctor shows up in time to watch part of a training montage involving sword practice on cliffs, rowing and jogging, all set to a warbly Scottish ballad (“Bonny Portmore” performed by Loreena McKennitt, I believe). Best of all (for him) she looks him in the eyes and intensely explains that she knows who he is, when he was born, that he can’t die and they just start kissing and it cuts to them in bed where she’s writhing on him like a stripper in a glam metal video.

Though released theatrically as a PG-13, the two added sex scenes on video make it arguably the horniest of HIGHLANDERs, with lots of him sucking on her boobies, a shot of him yanking her panties down, glimpses of both of their (or their doubles’) butts, and also a nicely lit barn makeout flashback with her lookalike or past life or whatever.

By the way, on the topic of flashbacks, they do a funny transition where they cut from Connor chopping a grapefruit to somebody getting it with the guillotine. And you realize oh shit, France at that time was the absolute worst place on earth for an Immortal to be hanging out. He must’ve really been into that lady if he stuck around.

One thing I don’t like about Kane: he talks in a pretty laughable raspy evil voice. Another: lots of that familiar brute-out-of-time humor, like he messes with three card monty guys on the street, and he goes to a hooker who hands him a rubber and he thinks he’s supposed to eat it. It’s actually pretty similar to the New York City fish-out-of-water antics of the Genghis-Khan-descended villain in Mulcahy’s THE SHADOW, which came out earlier the same year.

One thing I do like: they say he comes from China, and he wears Mongol-inspired furs and armor, but in my opinion Van Peebles does not seem that Asian. Maybe the best continuation of part 1’s mismatched nationality casting tradition.

You know now that I think about it the title THE FINAL DIMENSION has no applicable meaning that I can think of. But I know Kane is the alternate-titular Sorcerer, because he absorbed Nakano’s magic powers through intra-Quickening transfusion and now can turn into a bird or make you see things that aren’t really there. And he uses it to add some flair to the Kurgan-style misbehavior portion of the movie. He disguises himself as Connor (accurate down to the white shoes, while even the real Connor is wearing brown) and picks John up at the airport. Then he takes him on a joy ride and cackles while he pranks him with illusions that they’re going to crash into airplanes and trucks and stuff.

If you listened to my episode of the Suspense Is Killing Us podcast you heard me making fun of Angelina Jolie’s character in THE BONE COLLECTOR having a photo with “Me and Dad” handwritten on it. Like at one point she thought You know what, I have a Sharpie, I better write down that this is me and dad so I’ll remember who it is. FINAL DIMENSION has a similarly ridiculous photo with writing on it: Kane breaks into Connor’s place and he notices a framed photo of John – signed “To dad, love John.” It’s important, because that’s how Kane discovers that Connor has an adopted son. But who the fuck autographs a photo for their dad!? Maybe it’s a Marrakesh thing?

The final duel is in a pretty standard and not particularly visually arresting action location: a factory full of catwalks, steam, fire, and (shout out to Mulcahy) giant fans with lights behind them. This time as a threat as well as a decoration.

Some rock ‘n roll plays during the fight (apparently it’s an instrumental of Motley Crue’s “Dr. Feelgood”?), but it’s no Queen. Kane gets cut in half and reconnects his body, and it doesn’t shock Connor as much as it shocks Blade when Deacon Frost does it in BLADE. Connor ultimately wins with an oops-I-didn’t-realize-you-got-me-now-my-head-falls-off move, a nice tribute to the samurai influences of his sword.

So I guess now The Game is really over and he really has The Prize? It doesn’t really specify. But now he has yet another love of his life, and he goes back to his old place in Scotland. “I’m at peace. It’s finally over,” he says. But lightning strikes his sword. The ol’ leave-it-open-for-a-sequel lightning.

Some new variations they did in this one:

  1. The part where they can’t fight because they’re on holy ground is a Buddhist site instead of a Christian one.
  2. The opening narration is done by Connor on camera like he’s Ferris Bueller or somebody.

Director Morahan’s music video career started with “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham!, and included dozens of collaborations with O.M.D., Pet Shop Boys, Ozzy Osbourne, Van Halen, Tina Turner, Bananarama, Cyndi Lauper, Wang Chung, Spandau Ballet, Guns ‘N Roses and many others. This was his first feature, followed by MURDER IN MIND (1997), GOAL III (2009) and BOOGIE MAN (2018). He also directed the Ewan-McGregor-starring Tales From the Crypt episode “Cold War” (1996) and several broadcasts of operas (2014-2015).

I can’t say his take on The Highlander is as impressively stylish as parts 1 and 2, but it’s definitely slicker and more expensive looking than what will follow. It’s not ugly or lazy. There are some nice shots.

For good and bad, I think part 3 is the most competent and safest of the HIGHLANDER sequels. It’s pretty standard for an installment in an ongoing ’80s/’90s genre franchise: bring back the star, revisit locations and events from the first film, find a new villain that’s kind of a variation on the old one, add some new information to the backstory, make everything kinda the same but also kinda different from the first time. Like a Freddy movie would have to come up with new nightmare sequences, they have to come up with new Quickenings. And by the standards of commercial product (as opposed to visionary pop art) they mostly do a decent job of this task.

So you could say it’s the best sequel as far as being traditionally satisfying and minimally infuriating. But I definitely prefer the ambitious weirdness of the other, messier ones.


NEVER FORGET:

*Speaking of “Ah ha,” Morahan directed the videos for A-ha’s “Stay on These Roads” and “The Blood That Moves the Body.”

CONTEXT:

Other action movies released in 1994:

GUNMEN (also starring Lambert and Van Peebles!), ON DEADLY GROUND (with HIGHLANDER II’s John C. McGinley), THE CHASE, SURVIVING THE GAME (also with McGinley), NO ESCAPE, 3 NINJAS KICK BACK, THE CROW, BEVERLY HILLS COP III, SPEED, BLOWN AWAY, THE SHADOW (directed by HIGHLANDER I-II’s Russell Mulcahy), PENTATHLON, TRUE LIES, TIMECOP, TERMINAL VELOCITY, THE SPECIALIST, DOUBLE DRAGON, LEON: THE PROFESSIONAL, A LOW DOWN DIRTY SHAME, DROP ZONE, STREET FIGHTER

Other fantasy-ish movies released in 1994:

CABIN BOY, THUMBELINA, THE MASK, THE PAGEMASTER

THE CROW and Mulcahy’s THE SHADOW could both be called 1994 action-fantasy hybrids, and I think I like them better than HIGHLANDER III. But for what it’s worth I like it more than some of the other movies on these lists.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 at 10:14 am and is filed under Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

194 Responses to “Highlander: The Final Dimension”

  1. They made a big deal out of Highlander 3: The Sorcerer over here in the UK when it came out. Part 2 was this pariah that was never aired on TV, and even our video shop never featured a copy. You probably could only pick it up in occult stores behind the counter or from drug dealers. It was only spoken of in hushed rooms at the back of dodgy pubs. So this kind of became the defacto sequel, and if you leave out any of the DTV or animated sequels, the end of the Connor story.

    From what I remember it was pretty cool. I def remember the cut him in half and he’s still alive magic trick. I thought the red magic juju was slick as hell back then. Also, your link to Hardware doesn’t seem to work Vern.

  2. I’ve watched most of the theatrically released Highlander films, but for whatever reason only the first movie sticks out in my mind. I wasn’t even sure that I saw this movie until Vern described Van Peebles eating the condom, which was apparently the Proustian trigger I needed to realize that, yes, I’ve seen Highlander 3.

  3. This one right here is why I’ve been nice to 2 for so many years. It may not be the best of movies, but it at least has its own identity and (seems to) own its silliness.

    Not so here! A self-serious Pre-SUPERMAN RETURNS ‘we’re gonna do it right!’ sequel and a pre-FORCE AWAKENS ‘safe, for the fans!’ sequel. This movie is so damned dull and dumb. What’s more, I’m not sure I can think of a movie that keeps pointing out its own story inconsistencies but then doesn’t even give the vaguest of excuses for them.

    Such a lazy and bad movie. Give me Zeist any day. In fact, now that I’m going off on it: this may be my least favorite of the sequels. The next ones, that aren’t anime, are far, far worse but at least they aren’t dull and lazy.

  4. When this came out, my high school friends and I couldn’t decide what movie to go see. I pushed for this one and everybody hated it and decided I wasn’t allowed to pick the movies anymore

    The movie is pretty bad but I doubt anything they’d have picked would have been much better.

    The idea of only watching somebody else’s movie choices was not tenable. Luckily, high school was almost over and I soon got new friends. Everything worked out the way it was supposed to.

  5. I miss when you can put Mario Van Peebles on the top of a movie poster.

  6. I was always curious about how casting Lambert and Van Peebles for GUNMEN and Final Dimension came about. Like did they do one movie then say, “What the heck, let’s not waste this onscreen chemistry and do one more?” I don’t remember much about Gunmen, except that it felt as if it was shot from a script that got shopped around town for years. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it had been made even four, five years earlier.

  7. Falconman, I remember reading somewhere that Lambert lobbied to get van Peebles on HIGHLAND3R after having a really good time working with him on GUNMEN.

  8. I like how even recently this was listed as PG-13 on Netflix or Amazon or something when it was the unrated version. Which means somewhere in America, a mom sat down to watch this with their kid and was treated to the world’s longest sex scene (man, do I miss the cavalier way early 90s movies dealt with sex and nudity)

    Anyways, I guess I never noticed this was an early adopter of “Part 3’s that play it real safe and redo part 1 after a divisive Part 2”. Alot of times they’re improvements (Ocean’s 13 over Ocean’s 12, Back to the Future III over II), but alot of times they’re just as shitty (Hangover III, Jurassic Park III). Put me in the Highlander 3 over 2 camp, but mainly because I like my stories coherent and I’m a sucker for this cast (I really miss Mako and I think Van Peebles and Lambert should have been the next Wesley and Woody). Disclaimer: As much as I like Deborah Kara Unger, if they did this sex scene with Virginia Madsen from 2 I think we can agree this would be the greatest film ever made.

  9. CJ – That wouldn’t surprise me, since they have really great chemistry together in Gunmen. I’ve probably ranted on about it here since it’s one of my favorite movies – it’s truly one of the best unofficial “remakes” I can think of, has a killer cast, and probably Stephen Sommers’ best script. People give Sommers a lot of shit but I always got the sense he actually cares about his characters, which you can’t really say about Michael Bay or Oliver Megaton or whoever. Van Peebles and Lambert have a lot of affection for their characters and each other, and it really shows.

  10. Hey, guys? Highlanderland is a safe space, right? Because I have a problem, and because the only people I talk to are women, I think need to crowdsource some dudely advice (though your feedback is always welcome, too, Maggie). And since this is the sexiest HIGHLANDER, I guess this is the place to get it, because it’s a sexy problem.

    Okay. So many of you know I abandoned my beloved NYC a few years back out of a lethal cocktail of burnout, poverty, and depression. In addition to easy access to limited run movies, one of the casualties of the move was my love life. I didn’t meet a lot of women I connected when I was in my twenties in one of the most populous cities in the world, so I figured the odds of doing it in my forties in the burbs were negligible. So with the exception of a couple isolated friends-with-benefits situations here and there, I have been living a mostly monastic life. I thought I’d come to terms with it.

    Enter Isabella.

    Last year, I became an English tutor at a small but respected center in the wealthy town just next to mine. Isabella is the secretary. Upon seeing her for the first time, my thought was “Good lord, where have they been hiding her?” She was clearly very young, though, probably 22 or 23, so it never even occurred to me to be interested in her. Despite my babyface, which refuses to grizzle up no matter what I do to myself, I see myself as old and crusty and set in stone, like a gravestone marker almost too worn down by time to read. The idea wasn’t even worth considering.

    Somehow, we became friends, through almost no effort on my part. She texted me about work and then about movies and then about serious shit. And I started catching a vibe. I’m not great at catching vibes, being a fairly literal person who doesn’t tend to hide his motives in pretense, but this was fairly obvious. We started flirting. I felt guilty at first, but it was just over text, I kept all my comment PG-13 or below, and nothing was ever going to come of it anyway, so I figured it was all in good fun. I was delighted to have this lovely creature brighten my dull life with her mere presence. I never expected and barely wished for anything more.

    Well, it turns out your friend Majestyk is about twice as dumb as he thinks he is because she likes me. A lot. And she has let me know it. A lot. Sure, she says she’s got a boyfriend. She doesn’t call him that because putting labels on things is so 20th century, but whatever they are, according to her, there can be only one. But I’m not stupid. I know how boyfriends become exes, and it’s often because of guys like me who are in the right place at the right time.

    Boo fucking hoo, right? But here’s the thing.

    She’s not 22 or 23. She’s 19.

    I’m 41.

    That’s…that’s too many years, man. Isn’t it?

    What the fuck do I do with that? I know Immortals pretty much always have to fool around with much younger women, but there has to be an exception to the “Half your age plus seven” rule when you’re more than two centuries old. I don’t think the same rules apply to your average middle-aged honkey who’s at such a low point in his adult life that he’s started relating to teenagers as peers.

    So we had a talk. Got it all out in the open. We decide to just be friends so as not to fuck up her current relationship. I felt good about that. I even got to quote my favorite Prince song, “I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man,” when I told her I respected her wishes to not fuck up her current relationship.

    But that was my brain talking. My body isn’t listening. I don’t think hers is either. Yesterday she pumped up the sexual tension. She wants to hang out outside of work. The shit could get real at any second.

    What are the ethical implications here? I keep waffling. One second I’m ashamed that I’m not a better man who could maintain appropriate distance from the hormone-addled teenage girl who has a crush on him. On the other hand, society consider her mature enough to be able to make the decision to die for her country but not mature enough to to fuck me? That seems unreasonable. Besides, I’m not her boss or anyone else in a position of authority over her (or anyone) so is there really a power imbalance here? It sure doesn’t seem like it when she revels in the power she has over me. I can tell she enjoys twisting me in knots, and I can’t tell if she’s just having fun playing with fire or if she’s teasing herself too.

    My ladyfriends tell me it’s the latter. They’re split 50/50 on the ethics of the situation. Some say it’s fine because they know I’m not a creep and I’ll be careful with her heart. Others say that while I might not think I’m a creep, I’m still doing all the stuff creeps do.

    And that makes sense. I’d judge me harshly if I saw myself from the outside. But from the inside, all I see is a lovely, smart, funny woman who likes me, and it’s made me feel like maybe I don’t know everything. Like maybe there are possibilities out there I never dreamed of, because I was dreaming too small. I tell you, boys, these last few days have felt like that part in THE QUICKENING when the shield fell and blue skies appeared for the first time in years and years.

    I don’t want to go back to life under the shield, you guys. I want to be a prince of the universe. I want this kind of magic to live forever.

    But what of my scruples? Do I even have any? (Did I mention she used to be a model?) What say the collective decent dudes of the Outlawverniverse? Should I do the responsible thing and not encourage this behavior or should I just fucking live a little for once? That question sounds loaded in one direction but I’m eager to hear any and all opinions on the matter.

    I apologize for this diversion. We now return to your regularly scheduled Special Presentation.

  11. Man, I apologize for writing that long-ass personal screed and missing so many opportunities for Highlander references.

    “I like her but I don’t want to lose my head.”

    “We’ve thus far behaved ourselves on Holy Ground (the office).”

    “She teased me so mercilessly last night I felt The Quickening in my blood.”

    And so forth. I apologize for my negligence. I’ll do better next time.

  12. In terms of the age problem, I would just say ignore it. (Provided that this is not one of those states where you are not an adult until you are 21.) If you both want it, there is no problem IMO. Just some sexual tension between two consenting adults.

    All the other stuff: Sorry, can’t help you. I never was in such a situation.

  13. I’m awful at giving advice. I also do not think I’m qualified as I have not had a serious relationship since 2003. Since then just failed attempts and definitely nothing ‘physical’ happening since then. So my opinion/advice on the matter is probably crap.

    Seems the biggest thing you *seem* to be having an issue with is the age difference. I have an acquaintance who likes ’em younger (not illegal young! and everything is consensual!) and he had issues with them realizing that they are still young and are definitely not ready to settle down and it would end after a bit.
    He’s currently engaged to one of them and seems that will go through. Still, he went through a whole bunch of girlfriends who were mostly ten-to-fifteen years younger than him before he ‘got’ one that actually was a-okay with settling down even though her whole life is ahead of her and he does not (middle aged).

    Not knowing this lady I can’t and will not even try and speak for her so all I can say is that if you’re looking for long-term: you “MAY” not get it. If you’re just looking for someone to be with and date casually or whatever wording I’m supposed to use: sure. I mean you say you’re not rich so you can probably cross that off your concerns.

    If she’s legal and interested and you are too. Go for it.

    The age thing should be considered, I think that her still being in a relationship should also be. Yeah, yeah we’re all adults and many of strong relationship was forged with one leaving a current partner for another. So if you’re sure it’s nothing along the lines of thinking her current boyfriend is too immature or something, then proceed knowing the possible consequences.

    Last thing I guess, if you’re just looking for a booty call or something purely physical, not entirely sure it will be worth it in the long run.

    Again, I’ve had like one serious relationship and a bunch that failed to take off and I have Asperger’s and can’t read or understan people. So take or leave what I said.

    #forzeist

  14. I’m going to go the opposite here and say 19 is too young. She basicly just came out of high school. You’ve been out of high school for 20 years. Think of how different you are now than when you were in high school 20 years ago. Be friends, I don’t recommend being more. Whatever happens though I obviously wish you luck my friend.

  15. Stern: That’s what I was trying to go for when I did bring it up. Seen it happen too much that it’s good at first but the age difference, and the other’s lack of life-living, ends up being a problem when it comes to being a long-term thing.

  16. I’ve watched this most out of the sequels. It’s always struck me on how beautiful the Japanese/Scotland locales are. Developed a crush on Deborah Kara Unger as well.

  17. geoffrey: You’re more perceptive than you give yourself credit for. That was some compassionate, even-handed advice.

    Sternshein: I definitely see that side of it. Sometimes all the hormones get out of the way and there’s what alcoholics call a moment of clarity, and I’m ashamed of the thoughts I’ve had about this young woman. But then we start flirting again and the years between us don’t seem important. My most serious relationship was with someone several years my senior, which seemed like a really big obstacle at the time but in the end it didn’t matter one bit. We got together and broke up as individuals, not representatives our respective graduating classes. And we’re still best friends to this day. (She’s Team Isabella, by the way.)

    In any case, you’re right that a relationship with a woman this young would probably face many more difficulties. She would be more into it than I would, though. I’m not thinking of this as having long-term (or what a seemingly ageless immortal like myself considers long-term anyway) possibilities, on account of, like bonny Heather, she wants kids, and, like MacLeod, I can’t give them to her (for personal reasons, not physiological). But I’ve never been a guy who’s out there looking for The Prize. There doesn’t need to be only one. I’m looking for friendship and intimacy and that doesn’t mean exclusivity to me. I only ever want to be a good thing in someone’s life, however she wants to define that. I meant it when I said I could never take the place of her man. It wasn’t just a badass reference. But I don’t consider it a bad thing that relationships reach their natural end. We can still bring a lot to each other’s lives in our time together. Who dares to love forever anyway?

    Thanks for this gathering of viewpoints, guys. I haven’t been able to think about anything else for days so I’m sorry if my addlepatedness distracted from Highlander Week. You’re doing great work here, Vern.

  18. CJ: You’re a consenting adult everywhere in America by 18 (and younger in some of our less, um, enlightened states). You’re thinking of the drinking age, which is indeed 21 pretty much everywhere (because the federal government will cut a state’s highway budget if it doesn’t fall in line). So as long as I don’t take her to a bar, we should be good.

  19. Neal2Zod

    Hangover III is NOT a safe retread sequel in any way shape or form. It’s totally detached from the original’s premise and central gimmick and it’s a lot of really-mean-spirited fun to boot.

    Part 2, however…

  20. Mr M — as someone who has not always made very good decisions in this field, I would urge you to tread very, very carefully here. 19 is really young. A whole, whole lot of learning left to do, and very often a lack of realization about that. If you get into this (and it honestly sounds like you’re already in it enough that you’d have to really actively try not to get any deeper) you’re gonna have to be thinking at least a few emotional moves ahead of her every single step of the way if you want to avoid hurting her and making your life very messy indeed. You’re not her boss, but you do have the benefit of twice her experience with life, which absolutely makes both sides of this relationship your responsibility. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but you’re going to be dealing with your own complicated emotions, a head full of brain chemicals that very forcefully push you in one direction, and the fact that you’re absolutely too smart to avoid rationalizing your way into some very bad decisions if you’re not careful. To juggle all that and carefully steer a relationship in a direction which anticipates and protects the needs of someone who may not necessarily have the tools and experience to anticipate and protect her own needs is a very tall order. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I’ve fucked up plenty of relationships which required a lot less work on my part.

    It’s good that you’re thinking all this through beforehand, though. Much better than asking these questions in retrospect. But caring enough to try and do the right thing is one thing; actually pulling it off is another. You’re potentially looking at a very sustained high mode of difficulty already, let alone if you go any further.

    Of course on the other hand, maybe she’s better off with you, someone who at least has a certain level of savvy and self-control, than some other idiot 19-year-old. And maybe this will just be a fun, low-pressure step on her road to learning a little more about herself, and she knows what she wants and doesn’t need a bunch of 30-something movie geeks telling her what’s good and bad for her love life. There’s that possibility too. But you can’t count on it. You gotta be at the top of your game here, and if you don’t think you’re up for it, you still have time to bail out before you get in deeper.

  21. I actually prefer the HANGOVER sequels to the original. They gradually take on this nihilistic exploitation thriller aspect, like if Gaspar Noé made a studio comedy, which is more up my alley than the straight bro shenanigans of the original.

  22. Mr Maj

    Is she into you because you’re awesome or is she into you because you’re awesome… and she’s acting out/replicating childhood abuse?

    We’re sponges when we’re children and we spend the rest of our lives repeating whatever patterns we learned as children. It’s evolutionarily sound because, I mean, it didn’t kill us right? Unfortunately, that also means we’re prone to keep doing unhealthy and damaging things.

    If she’s replicating childhood traumas, then don’t do it. Both because it’s ethically queasy ground and because it’s likely to make your life hell. And if you don’t know if she’s replicating trauma… maybe you don’t know her as well as you want to think you do.

    You are both legally adults but even the ‘smartest’ 19-year-old in the world is going to be deeply naive in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of harm you could cause. But at the same time, most of that harm is growing pains and she’s going to get hurt no matter what because that’s how life works. The issue is, will she inevitably get hurt by being with you and then look back on it with shame and confusion because she can never be sure of your motivations.

  23. Those are all excellent points, Mr. S. I had always planned to do everything I could to follow the campsite rule, but you’re absolutely right that I need to consider whether I’m actually up for the task. What I think I’ve gleaned here is that engaging in this relationship further wouldn’t necessarily be UNETHICAL, but it would definitely not be SMART.

    It’s been an interesting week, guys. You think nothing is ever going to surprise you ever again, and then life is like “Hold my beer.”

  24. Tawdry: I have considered this as well, and I feel like a lowdown dirty dog when I do. I hope this isn’t just wishful thinking, and I’m no expert, but I don’t get abuse vibes off her. What I get are neglected only-child vibes, which is a type I tend to attract across multiple age groups. Her parents seem flighty so she had to take care of herself early, but she has decent relationships with them as far as I know.

    She admits she likes older men. I feel like there’s gotta be SOME daddy issues in there (she seems cognizant of this as well) but shit, man, I got daddy issues out the wazoo. I can relate.

    I really want to do the right thing. I hope I do. Thanks, Tawdry. That was real talk. My therapist was like, “Shit, go for it.”

  25. As maybe the only guy here who has been on the younger side of the age mismatched relationship spectrum… I really do wanna stress that the Schroeder’s-cat motivation of it all can leave lasting scars. She was only 6 years older than me, but I was basically a child when the relationship in question began and the way it ended, specifically her behavior during that period certainly left me with scars and trust issues.

    That said… I treasure the time I shared with her and will love that woman til the day I die. So, there you go.

  26. I can relate to all that. My longest relationship was with a woman almost nine years older than me. I was 21 and in my first serious relationship, she was almost 30 and separated from her husband. We were together for six years, had a rough breakup, got over it, and now she’s family.

    Obviously, she’s the one who’s Team Isabella.

    Hey, maybe I’M the one reenacting old traumas…

  27. It’s virtually impossible for you to not be reacting/re-enacting old traumas. But such is life.

    In my case, I was 23 and living at home with my parents. A college degree, but No job or job prospects. No car or license. Not a dollar to my name. I was very much a child. Meanwhile, she was an Ivy League educated lawyer who made like, $150k a year. So, major power differential. But it was really meaningful and awesome for about 4 years. She really helped me get a lot of my shit together before she decided she couldn’t mother me forever. And then I really grew up once she left…

  28. neal2zod – You’ve seen THE HOT SPOT haven’t you? Madsen gets naked in that one.

    Mr. Majestyk – If she’s of legal age then I don’t see any ethical issues with it, go for it.

  29. Do we have any females here? Feel Mr M could use your perspective.

  30. I was hyped for this because I LOVED GUNMEN and I was a fan of the series. My expectations were kinda high. Didn’t get to see it in theaters but I bought a copy of the unrated cut from my local bootlegger for like 5 bucks. Anyhow I wasn’t expecting it to be so much like the first.

    The callbacks were a surprise and welcome but I didn’t expect it to have such a crappy turn from MVP. He was coming off GUNMEN and POSSE 2 movies I really enjoyed which also featured my favorite rapper growing up. Mr. king aziatic nobodys equal. But his pseudo Kurgan was definitely somebody I couldn’t wait to see quickened.

    I haven’t watched it in over 20 yrs but as I said I did own it once and did remember enjoying more than what I’ve seen from ENDGAME which is the only HL I never finished cause I couldn’t stop laughing at Damon Dash: Master Swordsman! Despite it starring my 2 favorite immortals. I’d say it’s at least up there with the RENEGADE VERSION because as much as I didn’t care for the villain the Connor portions WERE good and well it had Mako.

  31. Don’t do it Mr. M! At least while she’s still with that guy. She’s so young and still learning that she may end up resenting you if anything really popped off. Plus the more you rock with her the more you’d probably realize how superficial the dynamic really may be. It’s one thing when you’re restricted to a couple hours of the day but when you see her that often you might start to get turned off by her lack of wisdom and experience.

    Last year after watching BvS and ROCKY II and having my first ever and last suicidal episode I decided to follow the advice of my favorite kung fu movies and wu-tang songs watching their training montages I realized the importance of mind, body and spirit and started working out and meditating.

    Remember all these years I’ve talked about wanting to pursue hip hop production? I have finally achieved the level of fearlessness and confidence to get there. Full disclosure this is me today: instagram.com/stoneyslick

    I am now what the ladies consider a “hunk”. I’ve got muscles wolook 10 to 12 years younger than I actually am (35) which is cool and will be even better once I get a tiger jacket like Rocky. So the ladies now approach me but to my credit they were doing that even before the physical transformation but now even more so. Enough of my egoistic rambling and here’s my point. Some shorty from my previous job (she was 23) kept giving me the choosing signals. We finally hooked up. She knew I wasn’t looking for anything but fun. She claimed she was about the same thing.

    Turns out she was bored in her first relationship which I didn’t know she was in. Looking for new dick (apologies in advance to maggie for my “manly” crassness) and I fit the bill. The thing is she started getting attached. And I did not know it at the time but she was engaged. It wasn’t just a typical boyfriend situation which would’ve still been foul but she straight up had homey invested.

    She still went on to marry the guy but never got over me. 2 years later turns out we have a mutual friend (another woman I once messed with in the past year or so) found this out and got my number and started blowing up my phone and spamming nudes. I had to block her and hope that she realizes she still has so much more world to see.

    Younger girls generally not always but generally act like high school broads in these scenarios. Logic doesn’t really exist in that dojo. So you could have a potential crazy can of worms scenario in the future if you don’t just nip it in the bud and K.I.M. like smif and wessun. Messing with a co-worker younger or older but especially younger does not yield great results IMO. The experience actually had implement a 26 and older rule for my future dates. Cause I need a bit more emotional maturity that could only come with age and experience. The heart wants what it wants but tread carefully cause in the end you’d probably be better off with her older sister.

  32. Brodie: glad to hear you’re doing better. I missed you ‘round these parts.

    Your Insta makes me feel bad that I fell way behind on being healthy in the last year…

    Anyways, I wish you all the luck in your endeavors!

  33. Mr. M, I know I’m new to these comments but I’ve been reading here for years and I’d say go for it. But only when the other guy is way out of the picture. I’m turning 40 this year and I haven’t been in a relationship for years now so I gotta think you gotta go for that brass ring when it’s in reach. The other regulars have offered up some pretty good advice regarding you moving forward with this and I’d recommend that you heed them. IF you do move forward. It’s a total roll of the dice, but wouldn’t it be exciting if you did pull the trigger?

    Vern, why don’t you have a review of CONAN THE BARBARIAN to link to? For shame. I’m not big on either of these franchises but maybe you should do those next.

  34. Jerome – I have a little index card in my top drawer where I write down the movies that I always refer to but don’t have reviews of. That’s one that comes up all the time. I should definitely get to it. I’d even be willing to rewatch the Momoa one.

  35. That joyride scene is actually a deleted scene from 1. Kurgan takes an old lady on the exact same joyride. This time it finally made it into the movie.

    The trailer played before The Crow still called it Highlander III: The Sorcerer. Oh well, at least now Highlander joins the ranks of franchises with a final chapter that is not the last sequel.

    I totally don’t remember the cut in half part. That’s one of my big questions!

  36. Haven’t seen any of these but may now give 1 a try and see where this leads.

    Majestyk – She needs to break up with her boyfriend first, or it’s unethicaL Given your age difference, it’s unlikely to last amicably, your prior counterexperience notwithstanding. Nothing unethical about the age difference unless you sense her judgment is clouded and you’re taking advantag, which can be correlated with age and don’t magically leap forward when one turns 18.

    I deliberately didn’t read the others’ comments so that my own would be uninfluenced.

    Good luck out there. Lust and the desire for human connection ain’t no joke!

  37. Majestyk, since I’ve been married for almost 30 years I can’t really give anyone advice on dating or relationships. But friends of mine who are involved with much younger women say that the age difference isn’t important if they’re mentally “grown up”. And sadly that mostly happens in their late 20s.

    Shani, I watched #1 last year and it did not give me an urge to revisit the rest of them.

  38. Broddie: Welcome back, my man! So glad to hear you’ve been on the road to self-improvement. So cool that you started making hip-hop after dreaming about it for so many years. I did the same thing at the tender age of 40, just working with samples and loops. Completely self-taught, no musical experience or knowledge whatsoever. I started out making weird sound collage things and now I’m doing full remixes. It’s a really rewarding pastime (I hear music differently now) and another thing that taught me never to put a limit on what can juice can be squeezed out of life if you just grip it hard enough.

    Sternshein: While I would love more female perspectives, up until now, all the people I’ve spoken to about this have been women. So far it’s 2/3 pro, 1/3 anti. About the opposite ratio we’ve got going on here. Which is interesting. It is significant, I feel, that most on the pro side had similar May-December romances in their youths and felt they were positive experiences.

    Jerome: You might be a latecomer but I think of you as one of the regulars now. You’re like Paul on CHEERS, except totally not like that guy at all. And you’re right, one can’t afford to look gift horses in the mouth in this life. I have a bad habit of talking myself out of everything good in life and I’m hoping that’s not what I’m trying to do here.

    But I think Mr. S really nailed it. I might go into this utterly pure of heart, but there’s a level off difficulty on the dismount that I fear I may not be up to. And if I suspect I’m not up to it, I should abort the mission. After thinking about all of the perspectives you guys brought up, I’ve more or less decided to do everything in my power to just be friends and not complicate either of our lives further.

    But then not five minutes ago I invited her over to my place today to hang out so I’m not really sure who’s driving this meat puppet I seem to be a hapless passenger in. It’s only for a couple hours before work, so we’ll both be sober and (fingers crossed) making good decisions. I’m hoping it will set a good precedent for future interactions.

    Hey, and Vern, you’ve stayed out of this mess but I want to thank you for making the kind of place where I can feel free to hijack a thread with some personal shit like this and nobody bats an eye. Everybody just jumps right in to help. You did a good thing here, bud.

    The main thing I remember about THE FINAL DIMENSION is that MVP goes into the cave talking in subtitles and comes out speaking perfect English. Did he get trapped in there with a tutor or something?

  39. Man I dunno. I think back on who I was at 19 vs now and it’s just a totally different person. I don’t even *like* who I was back then particularly much. You gotta do what you gotta do, and maybe she’s way more on the ball than I was back then, but seems like a bad idea to me man. Asking for heartache in my opinion. I hope you do good by you and by her either way.

    Anyway I feel like this is the sequel I’ve seen the least for some reason. I’ve seen ENDGAME and the second one like four times

  40. Hah my flailing infant son just knocked my finger into the “submit” button so I guess that’s where that comment ends. Anyway, this one doesn’t stick in my mind at all for some reason.

    I will say a CONAN review would be awesome. There are only two movie scores I put on to listen to just because I enjoy them- John Carpenter’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS score, and Basil Poledouris’ score for CONAN THE BARBARIAN.

  41. Mr. M, I’m thinking no one here wants to stop you living a little for once, even if we like having your mind on the movies.

    I appreciate that you want to do the right thing not just the legally permissible thing. And it sounds like you know what the right thing to do is now, and probably did all along. I respect that and still respect you for asking.

    I’ve been married to a (slightly) older woman for over 25 years, so I’ve wanted to excuse myself from contributing on this.

    What I will say is that for much of those 25 years I’ve worked in university departments where there’s a steady flow of grad students and young post-docs. Talking to young women is seductively fun, but in the end you need to close your eyes, still those other parts of your anatomy and listen to what you’re both saying. You need to both be learning.

    I tried to find a movie connection: Do you wanna be Bill Murray in LOST IN TRANSLATION or Woody Allen in everything he’s done since MANHATTAN including his life?

  42. I really have nothing to say about THE FINAL DIMENSION having never seen it, although I remember it as THE SORCERER. That said, if I’ve learned one thing from Highlanderland it’s that y’all are a lot more forgiving of Planet Zeist than I can find it in my heart to be. Clearly I need to grow.

  43. I think it’s every man’s fear these days to be seen as a Woody Allen.

  44. Man this board seems to have taken a drastic turn since yesterday.

    Mr. M – Now that I’ve been married a year and a half or so, I think the most important thing going on in our relationship is we never get tired of talking to each other. She truly is my best friend, and not in the way that everyone says that about their wife. Like, I would actually literally prefer to hang out and drink beer or watch a movie with her more than my best guy friend. Can you honestly see yourself not running out of shit to talk to with a 19 year old? And I don’t mean that sarcastically, I’m just curious. Because if you do, go for it by all means! But in my personal opinion, at age 40 I don’t even have anything to say to a 30 year old in real life without feeling like I live on a different planet from them. That coupled with the fact that she doesn’t quite seem to respect her current relationship makes all kinds of warning bells go off in my head. Do you want to be the next guy that she cheats on and are you going to be shocked or broken up when it happens? (Disclaimer: If you’re just looking for a hook up and don’t expect this to be real and don’t think there’s any chance you’re going to get beat up by her guy or have your life or career ruined, then go for it, I totally would!)

    Tawdry – I think you’re right – I think public perception was Hangover III was worse than the 2nd one even though I personally remember liking it a little bit more (even though to be honest I barely remember and don’t think I actually truly liked any of these movies). But yeah, despite going back to the setting of the first one, it wasn’t really a retread like Part II. (On a related note, I think Karate Kid III kinda has a reputation as a retread of the first one since it reuses the same settings, villains, and climax, but the plot is totally different to its credit).

    Griff – as a kid of the 80s and 90s, it was my civic duty to get my hands on a copy of The Hot Spot growing up. I mean, Madsen AND Jennifer Connolly? It was like the Holy Grail of nudity until Basic Instinct/Color of Night showed up.

  45. neal2zod – Yes, I remember watching THE HOT SPOT as a teen, personally I was more excited about Jennifer Connolly but Madsen was certainly a nice bonus too.

  46. Goddammit, Majestyk. You becoming a teacher, I would expect you to uncover a drugdealing operation controlled by the school principal. Instead you managed to get tangled up in a soap opera. Shit.

    If you need advice in battling corrupt schooladministration using bazookas, you let me know.

  47. I don’t see any reason why I can’t do both.

    Thank you for all the advice, you guys. It’s given me a lot to think about and I’m glad I did all this mental legwork. It makes me feel better about my motivations.

    But let’s just say I’m only a man. I’ve been sitting here alone and pissed off for too long. I’m going with Team Live A Little.

  48. As someone who barely can feel any kind of joy, I guess a good luck is in order. Both in love and kungfu fighting Evil Principals.

  49. Unlike a lot of people here, I can’t give you any advice in how to approach this relationship. I have severe social phobia, and have no relationship-history with anybody to give any input in the matter at hand.

  50. But I gotta got something of my chest. It is not very easy to relate to Majestyk’s narrative: ” I used to live in NYC, y’all and I got pussy by the week. Now I live in the burbs, I don’t get none no more.”

    Sorry if it came across harsh and I wish you the best in your endevour.

  51. I did NOT get pussy by the week. Far from it. I hope that wasn’t the way I was coming off My point was that, if I had middling luck with women in such a target-rich environment as NYC, then my luck was bound to be even worse in a more sparesely populated area. And up until now I was right. But you know what they say.

    Jurassic Park Life GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

    Discover & share this Life GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

  52. Vern, thanks for the insight into your process, but let me apologize for the review shaming. I’d had a few, and didn’t think about how pushy I might have come off as. Don’t do the Conans unless you really want to.

    I’m only being half-serious here, obviously.

  53. Look , it is easy for someone like me to get touchy whenever someone with even the littlest experience starting to show off, and I know you arenot showing off.

  54. As I previously stated, I have some social phobias. And I have never really learned how to properly socialize. And itmakes me to some xtent jealous.

  55. This is gonna sound rich given my current situation, but I do relate. I don’t go out very much, so I don’t meet many people, and if I do I rarely the get time I tend to require to make any kind of connection. I tell myself I’m better off alone, and most of the time I buy it. But I know the feeling of resentment at being so bad at something that seems to easy for so many. I’ve been living in that space for a long time and it made me not bother trying. Believe me, my current stroke of luck is so unbelievable that I fear there might be some Jacob’s Ladder shit going on here and I’m actually bleeding out in an ambulance right now. I’m doesn’t seem real.

    So don’t give up is what I’m saying. If it’s important to you, you can make it happen. Just focus on being your best self and don’t be afraid to try new things. Good shit happens when you put yourself out there.

  56. Thanks for being such a sport despite me being such a scumbag talking in some ways here. I am still stalking the dunes like Caine in Kung Fu and have yet to snatch an actual pebble.

  57. Vern, you really need to make a letterboxd because I really want to know what movies you see but don’t review.

  58. Jerome, I did not take that as review shaming. As recently as when I put together this review and saw that there was no review to link to I thought “Geez, I need to do that.”

    I heard some reference to the CAPTAIN MARVEL deleted scene that Griff completely on his own and not through the influence of Youtube nitwits decided he was offended by, but I didn’t watch it. Is it the more direct T2 homage I was disappointed they didn’t do?

    Sternshein, it would be too redundant, I review almost everything I watch. But I probly won’t review BOOKSMART and I saw and loved that last night.

  59. Forget everything I said.

  60. Crazy, unpopular opinion time:

    I’ve read the court transcripts and there is most definitely a monster in the Woody Allen case… and her name is Mia Farrow.

    I don’t think he’s guilty and I do think Farrow is entirely capable of brainwashing her own daughter into believing that horrible things happened to her. Just the way the family talks about Soon-Yi (a grown woman with a master’s degree who has been married to Allen for 25+ years) calling her things like “basically a retard” and slandering her as some type of traitor or enemy.

    Nothing about the case makes sense if the accusations are true. All of it makes sense if Farrow is a wicked and malicious person with a deep, perverse and personal vendetta.

  61. You’re fine, Shoot. You didn’t say anything wrong. Don’t worry about it.

  62. Tawdry, isn’t it possible both Mia and Woody are monsters?

  63. Fred:

    WhyNotBoth.gif

    I suppose that’s entirely possible. But my disgust with Farrow kinda hinges on the idea that Allen didn’t molest his daughter, one time only, in the middle a heated divorce, where he was under supervision around the children, and already getting massive negative exposure for the situation with Soon-Yi.

    I think the whole thing with Soon-Yi is grotesque… but to ignore the ensuing 25+ years of marriage robs Soon-Yi of agency and infantilizes her in a manner that’s completely unfair and potentially racist.

  64. Yeah, I can see that. Reading that Soon-Yi interview last years didn’t do them any favors. Taking solace in each other because of a shared trauma doesn’t seem like a healthy relationship either.

    Doesnt mean he did or didn’t molest Dylan. It just seems possible both Mia and Woody did bad things.

  65. Vern, I do not believe that review shaming is a thing that actually exists in this world. “I did it as a goof.”, as Ken Marino said in, THE NINE, I think? Maybe THE TEN, tho I think that’s a Ryan Reynolds movie. No, I think I got that backwards.
    , tho
    Either way, it occurs to me that my contribution to your websight has been ridiculously paltry compared to the hours I’ve spent (at my own day job) poring over your words and your archives. So when my next non-rent check comes around I’m mos def gonna one of your novels, prolly Niketown. I suck at keeping money on my debit card to the extent that getting Shudder (which is so, so cheap) is almost out of the question, so I can’t do the Patreon thing unless a literal couple of bucks (like two) would be a boon for you.

    I wouldn’t mind owning a Val Verde shirt, but you’ve talked about how little you actually make on that kind of thing. And as much as I enjoy it when someone gets my Nakatomi Plaza shirt, I don’t think it would happen nearly as much. Maybe that’s a good thing, tho! I’d appreciate all the more!

    I’m rambling now, so let me say that as much as I’d like some Conan stuff, I’d like to hear your take on REAL MEN, which is where my avatar comes from. It’s prolly the weirdest buddy cop movie ever, and has some Trans stuff that is kinda problematic on one hand but on the other is weirdly progressive for its time?

    Either way, keep doing you, and I’ll be here.

  66. +1 for Majestyk’s comments about going for it, you can do it, etc. It’s not that anybody can accomplish absolutely anything they want (that’s bullshit, sorry, Sly, Horatio Alger, etc.), but when you approach things with hope and Bob Wiley-style baby steps, you tend to have better experiences. I say this as one who tends heavily toward nihilism and cynicism, and it really is true in my personal experience that a cynic is a disappointed idealism and that cynicism is a protective mechanism to bat away sadness–just keep telling yourself you don’t care about something so the loss or non-attainment of it can’t hurt you. I keep telling my physical-world friends that I’m really not very different from a toddler in my basic emotional makeup and experiences, I’m just *slightly* more articulate in expressing my own meltdowns and hissy fits. Emphasis on slightly.

    Anyway, too-cool-for-school cynicism about love, pursuing hobbies, setting goals, bucket list things (whatever it may be for you) is the hipster equivalent of “yeah, well, I didn’t want to be your friend anyway, so there.”

    Anyway, I don’t know if Vern will ever make full-time money doing this writing, or if Majestyk or Shoot will find love (or whatever they’re after), or if I’ll ever stop worrying about money, or if I’ll outlive my parents who both died to young and fell into addiction and mental health problems, or if I’ll beat my chronic insomnia, or if we’ll avoid extinction in the next 30-200 years. But I know that we’ll all experience more joy and love if we exercise some agency in pursuing it and putting it out there with little baby steps (like Vern does with this sight and the way he mentors people with his example and his words), and that matters a lot to me. Cynicism takes hold of all of us at times (and me plenty, so I’m not judging), but sustained verbally expressed cynicism is not something to be celebrated or enabled, it’s just some toxic misery-loves-company shit. Something about getting busy living…

  67. Sorry for getting all preachy and We Are the World and shit, but it’s something I’ve been very slow to learn and accept, as I’ve hid behind ideas and arguments and nihilism when what is really going on is fear of loss or rejection, etc. That shoe may not fit others, but I didn’t think it fit me either til I realized it did, then it made a lot of sense out of my silly behavior in the previous years and makes a hell of a lot of sense of the way people talk past each other on the internet and get swept into various forms of propaganda and tribalism (including me going several iterations too deep in arguing about Brie Larson’s wokeness or whatever the fuck else stupid shit — not that I don’t have opinions there, but I mean, what the fuck, I need to go exercise or plant a tree or find better stuff to think/talk about). We spend a lot of time crafting our talking points and takedowns and getting smart on our preferred areas of supposed expertise (be it comic geeklore history or the merits of different tax code schemes) when that is really just the tail being wagged by the dog of our big strong emotions — fear, insecurity, desire for control, burrowing into our preferred herds.

  68. When is your review of Shadow going up? I’m going to see that on Tuesday.

    Also, the Captain Marvel clip is a more direct T2 homage. Also, the people calling her a villian are forgetting she is on the villian side at this point. They mostly hate that scene because they are dumb who hate opinionated women.

  69. Griff, I have always tried to treat you differently from other people who repeatedly derail every conversation by saying some outrageously sexist bullshit out of nowhere or whatever, because I feel like we’ve sort of watched you grow up here and know you aren’t doing it to troll and feel invested in trying to make it into teaching moments. More than once I’ve explained this to people annoyed by your “trolling.” But every time this happens you remind me you have no interest in growing as a person or considering any points, at least coming from me (other people are better at it). I don’t really know what to do because I generally don’t believe in sitting back and being silent when ignorant attitudes are expressed. But I will try just not to engage you anymore, because I always regret it. I didn’t even know that mansplaining denialism existed. Just please try to avoid making the threads about your ignorant attitudes unless I review a documentary about boobs in video games or something.

  70. I would LOVE to read a review of the video-game-boobs documentary. Hell, I wanna make the doc, just to read Vern’s take.

  71. Weird comment section where my half-hearted defense of Woody Allen isn’t the controversial statement.

  72. I probably agree more with Griff about boobs in video games than with Vern. But only if it serves the story lol

  73. You didn’t even know mansplaining denialism exists? Are you living under a rock? Why would a term as bizarre as mansplaining not be controversial? It seems to basically be saying “shut up, you don’t deserve to have an opinion if you’re a man”, feminists can’t just shit on men at every opportunity and expect everyone to just smile and take it.

    Well, I’m sorry about all this, I’ll try to stop derailing threads with political opinions, it’s clear we’re at an impasse here and politics is just a topic best I’ve avoided, I’ve said I was going to shut my big mouth before and I keep breaking that promise, but for real this time.

    I’m more left than you realize, but I have disagreements with some of the concepts and attitudes that have cropped up in recent years, but for many people, you included, it’s an all or nothing game where you either accept everything from the left side, no matter how absurd, or you’re treated as a heretic, there’s no room for nuance, discussion or debate.

    So, whatever.

  74. But griffsplaining totally exists.

    I really hate this movement of guys claiming men aren’t allowed to be men when really nothing has changed.

  75. Griff, we won’t argue this anymore, but if you’re open to learning please take a couple minutes to read this article with many examples of the phenomenon you don’t believe in. It was a joke word but it caught on because it perfectly describes a widespread phenomenon. It wasn’t something I had really put my finger on but since it got a name I notice it all the time, and it’s good to be aware of these sorts of things if being good to others is something you aspire to.

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2016/sep/13/mansplaining-how-not-talk-female-nasa-astronauts

  76. Griff/Vern

    Sorry. I’m late to the party and read comments out of order. I will respect Vern’s wishes and avoid further comment on specific political issues. At least that way Griff wouldn’t have to feel like he’s being censored in isolation because several of us will have to shut up.

  77. I’m just saying I’m going to try to stay out of it. I don’t mean to shut down discussion of politics or even going off topic. I just don’t like that the same cycle keeps repeating, with all of us arguing against Griff over the same sorts of things and nobody ever getting anywhere. I don’t think he likes it either.

  78. How about if the political conversation ever gets too heavy, somebody should just call my name and I’ll arrive in a burst of lightning to railroad the conversation with my love life?

  79. Wasn’t there talk of a Highlander remake starring Ryan Reynolds a few years back? That fell through right?

  80. Mr. M- Sounds like a plan! Even if I pretty much refuse to engage in political discourse of any kind on the internet. Any movement on the love life front, btw? If you don’t mind me asking, that is. It’s just way more exciting than the last five years of MY life.

  81. i almost died a few weeks back after a prolonged illness took a nasty turn (my odds at pulling through were about 50/50) and while i was in the hospital i did my usual thing of lurking around on here not really commenting all that much but just checking out the reviews and keeping up with whatever crazy shit was popping off in the comments etc

    all of my close friends have moved away over the years, i don’t have a romantic partner or any housemates, and my family live either interstate and overseas, so i didn’t have anyone to visit me or for me to really communicate with while i was in lockdown (for reasons too annoying to get into i could only contact the outside world via email using my HiMed Cockpit)

    so checking in on this sight each day to scope Vern’s writings and see what everyone was up to got me through some pretty scary shit and i just wanted to thank y’all for building and maintaining this community throughout the years and for fostering a place where a bunch of weary travelers can rest their bones and shoot the shit for a while without wanting to explode the entire internet in the process (thank fuck that Captain Marvel deleted scene they unearthed in Gehenna was still safely buried while i was in the can or i might not have made it through)

    sorry for dumping even more off topic garbage here but i figured if i was ever gonna bring this shit up it may as well be in the comment section
    of the third HIGHLANDER film where people have been sharing their feelings about life, love and the human condition and, for some baffling reason, movies you should seek out and watch solely for the purposes of seeing a specific actress naked.

  82. Felix they’re still trying to get that going though I doubt Reynolds is a factor anymore. Chad Stahelsky a.k.a. the more talented of the 2 JOHN WICK filmatists IMO is developing it as I type. Which considering the strength of that series is definitely something that I’m quite excited for. His main thing is that he doesn’t want to box himself in like Mulchahy ended up doing. He’s conceptualizing it as a wide spread narrative from the jump. Even toying with the idea of also using TV in addition to film again and everything.

  83. I get a woman’s sensitivity to being (perceived as?) looked down on in their professional and personal lives. The few industries I’ve worked in over the years have displayed it’s a mostly male-dominated world. Corporate banking in the 90’s was my first exposure to sexual/gender politics in an office environment. The few women who rose to middle or senior management were tough nuts. I saw them claw their way through the boys-club mentality of entitled fat pricks who couldn’t find their whisky-dicks with a hubble telescope.

    But once some of these women were in power, they clung to it and wielded their authority like a lioness protecting her cub. And boy oh boy you did not want to cross these lionesses. They could make a man’s working life just as hellish and oppressive as some of these men could. Depending on your confidence and sense of your own identity, you were facing an uphill battle against emasculation and general put downs from a woman who had to suppress most of her feminine qualities to buy into the bullshit that you need to be TOUGH to have influence and authority in the work force, as opposed to actually treating a man or a woman like they were a respected individual and part of a team. (This applies to men in authority also.)

    Also I think this current gender divide, of which “mansplaining” is a thing, is rooted in much deeper soul issues, like a person’s search for identity. And the rise of entitlement (in both genders) in this 21st century (“Just do YOU!”) is a huge driving force of energy for all the social media negativity around pretty much everything.

  84. Wow MIXALOT that’s crazy. I’m so glad you pulled through it brother. More proof that the entire Outlaw Vern community is packed with nothing but warriors. We fight on like Chev Chelios trying to keep his heart rate going no matter the obstacle. I swear I fucking love all you guys.

  85. Read The Guardian article, it’s bullshit.

    Being condescending is being condescending but the impression I get is that basically a man’s opinions are not wanted if he’s talking to a woman, no matter whether he means any disrespect or not, daring to not just agree with whatever a woman says no matter what is wrong, what kind of crap is that?

    Why have opinions become such a taboo? The left are such control freaks nowadays, you are only allowed to think a certain way, you are only allowed to have one single opinion on literally every single thing in the known universe.

    It’s utter nonsense, it’s mind control BS.

  86. I bet Vern for years to do the Highlander series and look what happens! What have I wrought?

    And Griff, the point about mansplaining is it’s not disagreement at all. It’s explaining to someone things they already know. Sorry for Fredsplaining there.

  87. RE: Ryan Reynolds HIGHLANDER remake. I remember reading a review of the script from back then and it sounded all kinds of awful. The immortals even used guns.

    And I’m not too fond of the term “mansplaining” either, because I know from lifelong first hand experience that “unqualified asshole tries to explain your job (or things that you know about in general) to you” is a unisex thing.

  88. And Mixalot: DAMN! I’m glad you made it!

  89. Yes, I’m glad to hear you made it through that ok, Mixalot.

    And guys…. I’m sorry for putting a wet blanket over our HIGHLANDER discussion and I really am going to just try to avoid politics, I value our discussions of movies and other fun stuff, I myself said that modern culture has overdosed on politics and I don’t need to be part of the problem.

    We’ve made it clear where we all stand and there doesn’t really need to be any more said, just know that though I may disagree with you guys, I still respect everyone, no hard feelings?

  90. Yes, Griff, you’re an asshole and that’s ok. It’s 5am and I’ve been drinking but you are still entitled to your opinion.

  91. But maybe, in the spirit of this song, you might realize that you aren’t the hero you think you are. You might just be Jack Burton.

  92. Griff – lifehack of the day – Stop liberally (!) attributing whatever you don’t like to “the left,” which is a falsely homogeneous fictional boogeyman that someone is trying to reify through sheer repetition. By your logic, “the left” has gotten Al Franken out of a job and Joe Biden a lot of pushback for his handsy-ness. I’ve learned to take the Nancy Thompson approach to social media and the broader millenial/post-millenial culture outrage media industrial complex: just turn away from it and ignore it, and it ceases to exist. It has entirely as much power over your psyche as you give it by reading it and frothing at the mouth about it.

    Mixalot – Glad you made it throught!! Hang in there! Fist bump.

  93. CJ – I am fond of the term mansplaining because I know so many blowhards who society has convinced that everything they say is gold, I’m glad there’s a word for it. And since I generally don’t insist on explaining how things work or giving advice, I’m confident I don’t mansplain. I’ve even caught myself doing it once or twice and apologized.

    I would bet money that nobody on this forum follows left wing twitter Or much of twitter at all except for @outlawvern.

  94. MIXALOT: Welcome back! Glad to hear you bucked the odds and persevered. Broddie’s right: We got some warrior-poets in this motherfucker.

    Jerome: A lot more interesting than it was a couple weeks ago, that’s for sure. Maybe too interesting…

  95. 1900-Mixalot

    Here-here! To a member of the old guard! I remember you from the early days of Outlawvern.com. Glad to see you’re doing alright. And glad to hear the comment section could offer you some solace in your time of need. Stay strong and keep fighting.

  96. Wow, came back to this after a few days…

    Mr M – I’d say go for it. My first proper long term girlfriend’s parents had a weird age gap. I actually met her Dad at his 80th birthday party. When he met my gf’s mother, she was a similar age in your example. He was much older, already married and had kids (so this old gf of mine had half brothers and sisters that were older than her Mum), but they went for it and are still together this day. To be fair, that was about 15 years ago. So…he’d be 95. They may not be together now.

    But even if it doesn’t work out brother at least you tried. And if the boyfriend comes for you, you’ll finally be able to whip out some Seagalian hand moves and do a badass quip when you flip him over a pool table and through a window.

  97. Speaking of old guard… how did the site used to work? We’re there really no comments until after the end of the geocities days? I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that I’ve only known some of the regulars since 2009-2010 when That switchover occurred. Did I just see y’all commenting on AICN? I feel as though this Board has been with me since I was in the middle of high school, not since the end of college. Am I forgetting something?

    Post-script: one thing I will never forget is the browser breaking

  98. Damn slippery fingers…

    One thing I will never forget is the browser-breaking potpourri threads! Those were a joy.

  99. In the pre-comment days we were really just reading the reviews and if we thought we had something to day, sent Vern an e-mail.

  100. Movie Bastard: He’s 20 years old, apparently built like a brick shithouse, and is a second-degree black belt. I’m 41, five-six, about a buck sixty-five, thrown like five punches in my whole life. I think I’d just take the beating no matter what (I definitely have it coming) but at least this way I’ll know I never had a chance.

  101. For now on I will only talk to Griff to explain anime and video games to him.

  102. There’s a difference between “explaining” something to someone, which yeah, can be rude if it’s clearly someone who knows it already and simply offering your opinion on something, which may differ from who you’re talking to.

    Jane says ones thing on some particular topic, Joe offers his opinion on said topic, when does it cross the line from normal human conversation to condescending? Because it seems to me that in the eye of radical feminist types the line is a man simply not always nodding and agreeing with whatever a woman says no matter what.

    Third wave feminism could be better described as female chauvinism, it’s evolved over the decades to where it’s not about seeing men and women as equals anymore but women as superiors, men have differing opinions from each other all the time, but it’s only seen as a problem when it’s between men and women? It’s specifically “mansplaining” instead of a gender neutral term for condescending assholes, which ya know, can be both men and women.

    It’s similar to the whole thing about “microaggressions”, how can you really tell whether someone has intended aggression behind something that is not obviously aggressive? It’s so subtle as to be invisible and was never talked about prior to the 2010s, almost as if it’s all just made up BS.

    Or basically it’s thinned skinned losers who cannot handle normal human interaction and insist everyone treat them with kid gloves at all times and always agree with what they say and do whatever they’re told because they think the world fucking revolves around them.

    It’s unhealthy catastrophizing to interpret so many things as some type of assault against you, it’s paranoia.

    There, I hope I’ve made my opinion on the topic of mansplaining clear.

  103. The term “microaggression” was coined in 1970 by a Harvard professor named Charles Pierce. That you managed to avoid learning about the idea til, apparently, 2010 is more indicative of how stubborn and unwilling you are to listen than it is of anything about society.

  104. Oh please, just because the term may have been coined longer ago, doesn’t change the fact that it didn’t gain widespread discussion until this decade, did anyone else hear the term “microaggression” prior to the 2010s?

    But it doesn’t matter how old it is, it’s still a flawed concept because again, how do you draw the line between what is and isn’t a “microaggression” when it’s supposed to be extremely subtle? Seems like it’s in the eye of the beholder to me, in which we should be teaching people how to grow thicker skins, not thinner.

  105. The irony of demanding everyone grow a thicker skin while simultaneously pitching a fit about the idea of microaggressions even being a thing someone thought of once, my god.

  106. The reason you don’t understand mansplaining is because you partake in it every single day because you are a mysogonist.

    So my wife is a vet tech and tells a person something about dogs. A man chimes in without asking “well actually…” and his information is wrong, that’s mansplaining. Or if a man knows she is a vet tech and starts explaining to her something she already knows becsuse he assumes she is a dumbass because she is a woman, that’s mansplaining.

    I am also tired of these wishy washy both sides people.

  107. Hi Vern and extended Vern fam.

    I usually don’t participate in talkbacks because of the guilt of not being one of Vern’s patreon supporters.
    I feel like I am lucky enough to read this site, try not to push my luck by commenting.

    Griff- I have written and deleted this paragraph dozens of times since March when your tirades on the Green Book and Captain Marvel threads, always afraid I would be sounding too harsh.
    Take away from this what you can.

    Griff – you can’t mansplain, simply because you are not a man: You are a thin skinned incel, still living in your parents basement, nodding along to Jordan Peterson, and I am guessing Dave Rubin and Ben Shapiro as they assure you that it’s the lefts fault that you will never feel a lovers touch.

    In the animated Highlander thread you mentioned; your home state of Georgia and how it is light years different than the socialist city of Seattle, pretty proud of those Confederate flags and I am guessing your states new abortion laws.

    Same thread you brought up how your ideas are probably better researched and as valid as AOC’s, who only got elected because she is a Latinx Woman.

    Your hysterics about her proposed tax rates was pretty funny too, are you super worried that the proposed new tax rates will impact your monthly allowance for video games and furry porn, or that new Japanese body pillow you have been saving up for so diligently?

    Because Jesus Christ pretty sure they won’t impact any of your personal earnings, which as an unemployed or under-employed Manchild: would probably be unaffected or even cut.

    Anyways, You want a good look at the thin skinned losers on the internet?
    Maybe take a look in the mirror.
    Something about Kid’s gloves.

  108. Go fuck yourself Windows, you don’t know shit about me.

    You assholes can only ever fall back on ad hominem attacks and strawmanning when you can’t debate your ideas logically because you know you’re wrong and only total idiots can’t see through your paper thin logic, so you get for emotions because you know you can’t win with logic.

    Thought we were better than that bullshit here but I guess not.

  109. Griff is outraged by the term ‘mansplaining’ despite seemingly not even knowing what it’s supposed to mean. Vern links to an article with an explanation of what it’s supposed to mean, Griff calls it ‘bullshit,’ still doesn’t understand, but doubles down on his outrage anyway. He also makes sure to write a clueless diatribe against the “left,” promises not to bring up politics again when he gets pushback, and then writes another diatribe the same day. Then he promises not to bring it up anymore AGAIN, only to write YET ANOTHER diatribe 12 hours later. This is like Griff bingo.

    To top it off, he hilariously rants against “thin skinned losers” who are constantly “catastrophizing” and paranoid and convinced everything is a personal assault against them. Griff said this. The guy who thinks straight white male gamers are the REAL oppressed class and who cannot shut up about how constantly outraged he is and how persecuted he is for not being left-wing enough.

    And now a literal, for real, “you’re only insulting me because I’m more logical than you.”

    Griff, you are a parody of a person.

  110. This idea some folks seem to have that the only good arguments consist of pure logic and that emotions are for the foolish is genuinely hilarious to me. Any first-year debate coach could tell you that a good argument has to appeal to both logic and emotion, because humans aren’t robots- attempting to deny that makes ya come off like some half-ass Vulcan cosplayer.

  111. Griff – cool dude, start tearing through my paper thin logic.

    If you want to dispel any of the personal attacks I aimed against you By all means but please start with a point:

    In the Highlander TAS thread you mentioned leftist propaganda in 90’s cartoons and how insidious it was, would ylu agree or disagree that the Reagan era Neo-conservatism that was written into childrens entertainment in the 80’s was as insidious?

  112. I’m not telling you anything about my personal life because it’s none of your business, asshole.

    You wanna get into personal attacks, we can get into personal attacks, what you did was a cowardly, low tactic and you know it, you know you’re a cowardly little pissant ass kisser who does what their told by authority, in this case the media and the garbage they push out.

    It’s childish, it’s not how you win a logical debate like adults, I’m more of a man than you are you little weasel fuckface, is that your real photo? Wow, like I said, you’re a goony pathetic little weasel dipshit.

    Doesn’t feel so good when it’s done to you, does it?

    And since you asked, no, I find the political stuff in Reagan era cartoons creepy as well, politics shouldn’t be in children’s media.

    Also, you think I was taking pride in the Confederate flags? Nope, was simply pointing out how different the area I live in is, I don’t support flying the Confederate flag, good job strawmanning.

  113. This must be that famous thick skin I keep hearing so much about!

  114. So you can viciously attack me but I can’t fire back? You can dish it out but can’t take it? When have I resulted to attacking anyone on a personal level like that? I’ve tried to take the high road and I get shit on for it, so go fuck yourselves assholes.

  115. Windows

    I don’t think you should avoid commenting just because you don’t Patreon. As an official $5-a-month supporter of Vern, I give you a pass.

    HOWEVER, I must come to Griff’s defense on this particular comment. The jokes about financial and social status are needlessly cruel. The parents basement/virgin/furry porn/love pillow zingers are less zingers and more classist Bullshit.

    The idea that Griff might be unemployed/under-employed speaks to a painful reality of modern society. It’s something I struggled with for YEARS after college. And something I only broke out of because -through sheer luck- a rich woman fell in love with me.

    I don’t agree with a lot of your points, but the way you’re making them is pretty shitty. Griff will never hear the legitimate hard truths contained within your message if you present it in the most openly hostile manner possible.

  116. Griff – It is my real photo yes, it’s about 8 years old, but that’s still my weasely little fuckface.
    I changed my avatar from Thomas Waits to an actual photo back when Vern held that Segal fest in LA back in ’14 I think..? In the spirit of being transparent.

    I’m currently the assistant manager of a liquor store in the downtown eastside of Vancouver,(google that shit if you are unfamiliar) you could have screamed that rant in my face and I wouldn’t even blink, it is nothing compared to the shit I put up with daily.

    You could not challenge my manhood, Griff.

    I never accused you of waving any confederate flags, but I am sure being the dangerous ideas guy that you are, that you’ll defend people’s right to wave them.

    Also eager to hear about your opinion on Georgia’s new abortion laws, since you love having an opinion on Women.

  117. *I don’t DISAGREE with a lot of your points.

  118. …and then I read the rest of the thread.

    Griff
    You said politics in cartoons = bad. You brought up Captain Planet. You brought up the episode about a kid with HIV. Then, when someone else elaborated on the episode you chose to bring up as a case study… you admitted that it wasn’t such a bad thing, in reality.

    Further, the one minute of “politics” in most of those 80s shows exists solely to legitimize the 21 minutes of mindless, corporate sponsored advertising to children. All the 80s shows you love – the 22 minute toy commercials – were only able to be made because Reagan deregulated television broadcasting requirements in 1981. Removing regulations against marketing to children under 10 (or 12… I forget which, but children all the same) and requirements that kids shows contain educational and enriching content.

    The previous regulations resulted in SCHOOL HOUSE ROCK. the deregulation resulted in GI JOE. Both shows have value, sure. But neither show is without politics both behind the scenes and in front of the, uh… camera/animation cell/whatever.

    So, with all that context, is the choice to run and 21 minute toy Commerical a decision, one with potential for political ramifications, or is it only a decision/political when it’s the 1 minute of anti racism PSA/gun safety awareness?

  119. Windows – I was uncomfortable typing those insults out and I want to apologize, whether you apologize or not, I just hope you understand how hurtful ad hominem attacks are, can we just avoid that shit? As Tawdry said, you’re not going to win me over with that, it’ll do the exact opposite.

    And Tawdry, thank you for the defense, you are someone I respect and can actually have discourse with, you are more likely to change my mind, you present good arguments.

    As for as cartoons go, remember, I’m a 90s kid, I grew up with stuff like ANIMANIACS, TINY TOONS, Batman TAS and the Nicktoon and Cartoon Network shows, stuff that we’re not just toy commercials like 80s cartoons which I’ve never really liked much, I know all about the story with Reagan and deregulation.

    Sometimes 90s shows would have a little social commentary which is fine, but there’s a difference between that and propaganda and propaganda isn’t just a left wing thing, certainly there can be right wing propaganda and it’s tacky either way.

    If I had to define what the difference between art and propaganda is I’d say art asks questions but doesn’t provide easy answers whereas propaganda is all about easy answers for difficult questions.

    Art makes you think, propaganda tells you what to think.

  120. Griff,if you were a woman Tawdry would have been mansplaining to you.

  121. BWAH-AHAHA-HAHAHA!

    (It might be helpful to point out that JLI-era Blue Beetle is my favorite super-hero, just for context’s sake. I’m not even sure Sternshein’s correct, but it cracked me up nonetheless.)

    Griff, my dude, it must be exhausting to be you. I bet you sleep like a baby every night. But you’re also gonna have a heart attack before you’re thirty if you keep stressing about dumb shit that you can’t affect. Stress is a killer, man, don’t underestimate it.

  122. Windows, I understand the frustration, but let’s not do personal insults here. That said, I really truly encourage you to continue commenting without feeling bad about the Patreon thing. I fully understand that not everyone can do it or even will want to do it, and I still want to hear from everybody. With the possible exception of this thread I really enjoy reading everybody’s comments, and when people make observations I hadn’t thought of or make me laugh or that kind of thing it’s another way of paying me back.

    I’m bummed about how this conversation has turned out, but luckily we have a review of HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME coming up and I can’t think of a better way for everybody to come together and teach the world to sing in perfect harmony and all that.

  123. In summary, go watch Blade II again.

  124. Tawdry you’re about one [*jaunty music begins* “This comment has been censored by The Left! Please direct any questions to your local re-education neighborhood captain. Thank you, comrade!” *end jaunty music*]- hair away from hillbilly heaven.

  125. It’s not mansplaining since Tawdry had no way of knowing whether I knew about that already or not, which would be true even if I was a woman, I’m also not offended by him explaining about that, just pointing out that I’m aware of what he’s talking about as an fyi, there’s no need for offense to be taken by that situation, human beings are not mind readers and nobody knows everything, yes, even women, it’s called normal human communication: “Hey, did you know that blah blah blah?” “Why yes, I did know that” is the normal response, not “STOP MANSPLAINING ME YOU COCKMAN OPPRESSOR!” (PCU is sure a fucking prescient movie, good grief)

    But let me try to explain where I’m coming from with my distaste of this stuff, let’s say all these concepts and ideas like mansplaining and microaggressions are true and valid, let’s say everything SJW culture has presented so far has been valid, but who’s controlling this stuff? Who comes up with this shit? Who watches the Watchmen?

    This idea that these concepts are put forth that you simply cannot question without being labeled a heretic, no room for debate, no room for discussion, if The Guardian says it, it must be true, is what overall bothers me, because while you may agree with all this stuff now, a day may come in which an idea is put forth that you find absurd, but whoops, too late, we’ve already established a culture of groupthink where you are not allowed to disagree.

    Is that what we really want? It’s like a 21st century left wing version of Victorian culture, as oppressive and totalitarian.

    Another comparison would be a Religious cult, all these phrases like mansplaining, all this newspeak, all these phrases that represent concepts that are supposed to replace traditional thinking, it’s much like how a Religious cult operates.

    There’s a Christian cult called hilariously enough the International House of Prayer, yes IHOP and one of the criticisms of them, some of the evidence that they’re a cult and not a regular Church, is they have all these phrases and terms unique to the Church, I’ve heard it said in an article about them you can listen to a conversation between two Church members and have no idea what they were taking about.

    Sounds like your average modern think piece to me.

    It’s just a creepy, cult like mentality, it’s too controlling, I want everyone to treat each other with respect as well, but hardcore brainwashing and cult like culture is not the way to do it.

    I think one of the fundamental battles being waged in modern culture is safety and security versus freedom, freedom has risks and consequences, sometimes you can get hurt, but you accept that because it’s better than to be a free human than not free.

    The left today are trying to file the sharp edges off of everything, but all they’re really doing is sucking all joy and passion out of the world, you need danger, you need excitement, everything’s becoming too buttoned down, too filled in, all the cracks are being patched up, but there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in, as Leonard Cohen said.

    Anyone ever read Brave New World? That is the future we’re headed to, a world of banality where humans were just soulless automatons with all true passion sucked out of everything.

    Basically, you can’t experience true joy without a little pain to compare it to.

  126. If I had known that being nice is against freedom I wouldn’t have told Windows to be nice to you.

    but I know you fucking cut and pasted that thing from before and I’m not falling for it a seventh time

  127. No, it’s new, though I might have reiterated a few points.

    Being nice is good, but it’s not something you can force, you really think it’s fair trade to live in a dystopian 1984/Brave New World style world where everyone’s thoughts and speech is tightly controlled but hey, at least no one gets their feelings hurt, double plus good!

    But it ain’t really about the “nice” part though, it’s about this idea that speech and opinions should be tightly controlled, who gets to control it? The Big Brother of Twitter? Again, who watches the Watchmen? People should be free to think for themselves, not Big Brother.

    It’s just not worth it if it means selling your soul, have you ever seen the 60s spy movie OUR MAN FLINT starring James Coburn? In it the bad guys are a group of scientists that invent a weather controlling machine and decide to take over the world not out of evil but because they believe themselves to simply be the best and the brightest of the world, sounds like your average Silicon Valley cult weirdo.

    At the end though, when Flint is about to destroy their machine, the scientists beg “we can turn wastelands into the garden of Eden!” “But all we have to do is take a bite of your apple? No.” and destroys the machine, killing those arrogant control freak fucks.

    There you go, that about sums it up, you literally can’t put a price on freedom, those who exchange freedom for security deserve neither as Benjamin Franklin said.

    I will not allow anyone to control what I can and can’t say and can and can’t think, you can state your case, you can make your arguments and if I think it’s valid I will agree with it, but when you try to *force* me is when we have trouble, that is what the left is trying to do now, *force* everyone to think a certain way and it’s just not right, authoritarianism is authoritarianism and it’s always bullshit, no matter what the flavor, left or right.

  128. I recently discover this White Nationalist podcast called “The Daily Shoah.” I love listening to it, the world the hateful, paranoid and bigoted hosts describes sounds like a liberal paradise and a veritable utopia. I *wish* everything they said were true. It’s all about how the Leftists have won the culture war and right-leaning straight white males are an endangered species.

    I wouldn’t recommend it to most people because it’s grotesque and stomach churning in the extreme, but maybe you should give it a listen Griff. Not because you’ll agree with the hosts – you’re not a Nazi or even an intentionally hateful person in my opinion – but because you’ll be repulsed. And after you’re repulsed, maybe you’ll see how the hosts are taking a lot of your talking points to their logical extreme, which unintentionally exposes many of the massive holes in the premises.

  129. I just can’t understand how any rational, sane human being can’t look at the modern left and say “Ok guys, you need to dial down this control freak stuff a bit”

    They’re preying on your emotions to shut down the logic centers of your brain, I don’t like sexism and racism any more than you do, but anti-sexism and anti-racism is the sugar coating for the poison pill of control, this is all about control plain and simple, they want to control what you say and what you think, the leftist identity politics stuff is just a smokescreen.

    What’s the next step going to be? Trying to control people’s Religion? Trying to control people’s ability to have families and raise children? The corporate media and the Silicon Valley tech giants do not deserve the power we are giving them, they WILL abuse it.

    Imagine a world where human beings cease to be human, I’d rather die a human being than live as something less than human.

  130. The idea that one is entitled to offer unsolicited advice and explanations is a problem. And the article gave examples of strangers on twitter jumping in. It’s not like a faux pas by a close friend.

    And to feel discriminated against that women don’t want to hear your explanation is something else. It’s privilege that you’ve been validated for so long, told anything you have to say is gold, that the idea of just saying nothing feels like oppression.

  131. Alright Fred, I’ll throw everyone a bone, maybe mansplaining is not a bad concept, fair enough, maybe it’s one of the “SJW” ideas I find I actually agree with, like gender being a spectrum for example.

    This may come as a surprise, but I am a supporter of trans people, I find the idea that gender is not a strict binary logical and I would actually consider myself a gender fluid person.

    Maybe that’s shocking, I certainly differ from most of the right when comes to that, though I don’t think referring to people by their chosen pronouns should be a matter of law, I think it’s polite to do so, heck I’m even ok with people using the bathroom of whatever gender they identify with.

    That’s a little more personal than I really wanted to share, but I want it to be clear what I’m about, I have plenty of disagreements with the right too.

    But there’s bigger issues at work here beyond something like “mansplaining”, I guess what it boils down to is I don’t trust the corporate world with the power to control people’s speech and thoughts, why should I? Why should you? The pursuit of profit at any cost is all they really care about at the end of the day, isn’t skepticism of corporations supposed to be a left wing thing?

    Freedom of speech is one of the most crucial freedoms there is and it has unfortunate consequences yes, something you have to tolerate what you may find offensive, but Freedom of speech is something you either have or you don’t and if you don’t tolerate “offensive” speech then you don’t have free speech at all.

    Tawdry – I’ve not listened to the podcast but I have read a little of the site it’s attached too, The Right Stuff, as well as a little of The Daily Stormer.

    Yeah, it’s repulsive stuff, but it’s gaining ground because people are afraid of what’s happening, they’re afraid of all this control and they’re looking for anything that they think can fight against it, so they’re fighting fire with fire, fighting identity politics with white identity politics, which is not identity politics you want people fighting with.

    I’ve talked about that before, but one of my issues with the modern left is it’s inspiring a dangerous and very evil backlash, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, this extreme polarization is creating two terrible monsters that whoever wins, we lose.

    The hardcore racism that those sites represent had been successfully banished from mainstream American society for decades, but it’s been gaining new ground in recent years, what changed? If modern left wing politics was so perfect and worked so well, why is it creating more and more Neo Nazis?

    People smell a rat and they know something’s up, trouble is not everyone is as levelheaded as me and they might go in an ugly direction, that is why Jordan Peterson is so great and should not be vilified the way he is by the left, even if you disagree with him, because he is still a much needed moderate voice.

    Basically start calling all the moderates Nazis no matter what they do and don’t act surprised when you get less moderates and more Nazis, when you make people feel like they’re in a hopeless situation, they start doing crazy, irrational things.

    To quote the Pink Floyd song from the Division Bell, which was a prescient album and this song featured Stephen Hawking: “All we need to do is make sure we keep talking”

    Keep talking, communication is key, but the radical left of the modern day have it clear talk is the last thing they want and when you remove people’s ability to talk, all they’re left with is violence.

  132. It’s interesting that you think Nazism in the US is new. I seem to remember being attacked and almost murdered by Nazi skinheads twice in 2006.

  133. Griff is definitely an incel. Follow Dr. Lobster’s advice and improve yourself and stop blaming the boogeymen of the left (who clearly control everything right now) for your problems.

    And stop using the argument that “if you call me a Nazi, you’ll force me to become one.” It’s embarrassing.

    But good on you for not being a transphobe. Not hating a person for who they are is literally the least you can do, but it’s nice.

  134. I didn’t say it was new, I said it’s managed to gain new ground in recent years and become more numerous, which is of course very bad.

    I’m terribly sorry that happened to you, I’m sure it was awful.

    As I said, I’m more left than you guys realize and it pains me to have to go against the grain on the left, I take no pleasure in it, I’ve gotten a lot of flak here and around the net, it is in fact a terrible burden to be discontent with the state of things, I wish I could somehow “see the light” and get on board.

    You guys really have no idea how difficult life is for me sometimes, it would be easier to submit.

    But I just can’t because I know that it’s not right, I just can’t compromise my beliefs, I can’t sell out, I feel like we’re making a bad mistake and being taken for a ride by allowing toxic ideas to flourish unchallenged.

    It’s totally absurd to me for example that the left, who used to be it’s greatest champions, would throw free speech under the bus, so absurd I have to call it out for the absurdity that it is.

    I can promise you, we’ll live to regret destroying free speech if we allow it to happen.

  135. I hate the super-scary super-oppressive modern left because of how paranoid they are, how guilty they are of catastrophizing everything, and how convinced they are everything is a personal attack.

    Also the modern left is literally trying to recreate a Brave New World, they are trying to mind control me, and I’d rather die than accept that woman are more likely to be condescended to than men.

    But oh well, fine, I guess I’m just too much of a free-thinker and I guess none of you can handle that. I’m tired of derailing movie discussions like this, anyway. I promise I won’t ever do it again. (Unless, of course, six hours pass, then I’ll be right back at it.)

    Signed,

    A Serious Person You Should Take Seriously

  136. Peabody – Why do you assume I’m a virgin? And more importantly, what does it matter?

    It’s hypocritical and a double standard to the extreme for the left to use “virgin” and “incel” as an insult, if women are supposed to be more than sex objects, then why is a man’s worth judged by if he’s had sex? Are we talking only heterosexuality here? What if a guy is gay? Is he still an incel if he’s had sex with a man but not a woman?

    What about asexuals? Are they losers for not having interest in sex? But oops, I thought they fell under the LGBT umbrella and we were supposed to respect them, so why the fuck are the left using “virgin” as an insult again?

    I think you guys are being awfully damn presumptuous and I think the truth would surprise you, but hey, it’s none of your damn business.

  137. P.S.

    I’m not saying nazi violence is *good*, but I am saying that it’s understandable and that it’s definitely the left’s fault. They coined the term ‘microagressions,’ what did you expect?

    And again, I’m very sorry that I alone know how to think for myself while everybody else has been hypnotized by the left. That is just my cross to bear.

  138. Alright then, new rule, I will not make any more promises to avoid politics, I will try to, but no promises because

    I mean, you’ll just have to forgive me I guess for that, happy now?

  139. I would not make fun of a man who was a virgin. I would make fun of a man who hates women because he thinks feminism has ruined his chances with them.

    But you’re right, I may be presumptuous, however your misogyny and blaming “the left” for your aggrievement is a big ol’ black pill incel move. But I hope I’m wrong.

    And I’m not unsympathetic to whatever problems you have. But they aren’t caused by the left trying to eke out some decency for historically marginalized groups.

    Jesus Christ, the dipshit president has children in cages, gave tax cuts to the richest people who barely pay taxes to begin with, is revoking trans rights, and tweets war threats with other nations, but somehow the left has gone bananas.

  140. I guess Nazi violence just happens for literally no reason whatsoever, it’s not “understandable” as in you can understand the reasons why something is happening, because “understanding” something means you’re condoning something, because understanding issues is never the first step to solving issues, oh no.

    Playing semantic games in order to create straw man arguments is not something that would ever happen on Outlaw Vern.com.

  141. Peabody, what you don’t understand is that Donald Trump was only elected because the modern left is too quick to call people ‘racist’ so all that is actually the left’s fault.

  142. Peabody – Well, I promise you, that’s not me, whether I am a virgin or not, I can assure you that I don’t blame my hypothetical virginity on anyone.

    How do you think the dipshit got in office? It wasn’t by him riding the wave of a backlash against a left that had gone bananas? Sleazy opportunist that he is, do you honestly believe Trump would have been able to win in any other year than 2016? It wasn’t even the first time he ran.

    He didn’t win for that reason alone but it damn sure didn’t help.

  143. “I guess Nazi violence just happens for literally no reason whatsoever, it’s not “understandable” as in you can understand the reasons why something is happening, because “understanding” something means you’re condoning something, because understanding issues is never the first step to solving issues, oh no.”

    Never mind, I am unsympathetic to your problems.

    What did the crazy left do to produce the backlash? A weakass healthcare bill? It couldn’t be a response to the black “probably a muslim and not born here” president. No, that’d be silly.

  144. To sum up, progress sounds real nice, but if it requires me to think or learn or do anything, you can forget it. Now here are 250 variations on the same post explaining why everybody else is the asshole

    And nobody can tell me I’m wrong because freedom of speech

  145. If I could teach you one thing today it would be that freedom of speech means the government can’t censor you. It doesn’t mean people can’t say some dickhead is being a dickhead.

  146. That’s not what it means, that’s the lie we’re being told to accept our rights being taken away from us, the government can’t censor you and neither can a corporation like Twitter, Google and Facebook.

    You guys really got nothing other than straw man arguments, don’t you? “So, what you’re saying is” bullshit.

    You just got nothing.

    You can’t address my arguments head on so you resort to putting words in my mouth and making up bullshit.

    Please, tell me why free speech is not a valuable freedom and should be left in the hands of unelected corporations and other unelected yahoos who would never, ever abuse that power, oh no, Big Brother only wants what’s best for us after all.

    You’re scared, you’re scared because you never imagined a world where the left wouldn’t be the unequivocal good guys, you hate the idea that the world was not as easy and black and white as you thought it was, where left = good and right = bad and that’s all there is to it.

    You’re not brave enough to go against what you see as the ultimate authority, the media, Hollywood, the universities, the people you entrusted to do the thinking for you so you wouldn’t have to, you’re terrified to think they may not have been the good guys after all and you just can’t handle the truth.

    I hate to break it to you, but we’ve been played, are you brave enough to not continue to be a sucker or do you want to keep on being a sucker?

    There are good ideas and bad ideas on both the left and the right sides, what we need is bravery enough to analyze these without partisanship and to try to restore balance to this insane world.

    This is the irony of it all, left wing and right wing people need each other, we need both of our talents to offset our weaknesses, there’s actually no reason for all this conflict, but fight we do because we can’t learn to ignore the extremists on both sides.

    But go on thinking the left are the unequivocal good guys, the vultures in it’s midst will gladly go on exploiting your ignorance and naivete for their own personal gain that only makes the world a worse place.

    You’re Keith David refusing to put the glasses on, I’m sorry to have go all Rowdy Roddy Piper on you guys, but I do because it I believe that deep down inside you are brave enough to face the truth if you want to.

  147. If you would actually listen and keep an open mind for a change, your attitude would change as fast as Keith David’s did when he finally put the glasses on, I guarantee it.

  148. “You can’t address my arguments head on so you resort to putting words in my mouth and making up bullshit.”

    Followed up by:

    “You’re scared, you’re scared because you never imagined a world where the left wouldn’t be the unequivocal good guys, you hate the idea that the world was not as easy and black and white as you thought it was, where left = good and right = bad and that’s all there is to it.

    You’re not brave enough to go against what you see as the ultimate authority, the media, Hollywood, the universities, the people you entrusted to do the thinking for you so you wouldn’t have to, you’re terrified to think they may not have been the good guys after all and you just can’t handle the truth.”

    Dude, seek help. This isn’t a political thing at all. I know healthcare costs a lot and it’s better this way because of the free market but seriously, see a therapist. Try a medication. There’s a big beautiful world out there and you may be able to find your place in it. You are not worthless and it isn’t hopeless. Give it a shot, bud.

  149. Vern, can you just “prove” Griff right and just ban him from posting already?

  150. I’m not usually one to shy away from a political debate, but frankly this isn’t more than a yelling contest. I am curious though, since I don’t meet people like Griff and JTS that often, what is it you think the left want? Make a better world for everyone or make life hell for you two?

  151. Pegs: This can be hard to parse in text but everything JTS has said has been outright parody. It’s pretty telling about the state of modern discourse that it’s nearly indistinguishable from some of the actual ideas being trumpeted on this board, which inexplicably produced digressions even more disruptive than mine.

  152. Damn, I should know better than to start reading from the bottom. Thanks mate. Sorry JTS!

  153. What a bizarre, fascinating thread. I guess I’ll add zero cents to Mr. M’s issue by saying I wouldn’t do it, but I don’t know you, and I don’t know her, and I don’t know shit, so good luck.

    As for Griff: dude, WTF? Why beat your head against the wall? Seriously, what are you gaining from this? It’s pretty clear to an outsider like me that you enjoy this kind of sparring, else you would have given it up days ago. You’re not changing minds here, and I’m sure you know that. You’re not coloring in a picture of yourself, unless it’s a picture that flat-out belies your previous statements. You’re not providing any actual information, contrary to your assertions that you’re the only one providing backup for your statements. It all seems pointless. Like, the kind of nonsense one does for…dare I suggest… the fun of it.

    But my favorite — and correct me if I’ve misunderstood, which is always highly likely — is the idea that the modern left has brought out the neo-Nazis. I’m reminded of that girl who got sexually assaulted. You know, that one girl? She basically asked for it when she dressed provocatively and danced with three different dudes? Yeah, that one. There’s plenty of blame — as well as plenty of good people — on both sides, everyone should know that.

    Anyway, Highlander II was one of the highlights of early 90s VCR-watching for me. What an inexplicable pile of weird and awesome and idiotic and fun.

  154. The way I see it is if freedom of speech truly had a gun to it’s head nowadays I don’t think the president would be able to tweet the asinine nonsense that his mind manages to conceptualize when he hibernates every few hrs.

    I think that particular liberty is gonna be ok. Which is fine by me since it’s truly one of the ones I’d realy go hard for if it was under serious threat.

  155. Maybe an inconvenient time to point this out, but… maybe They Live isn’t the best film to use for an *anti-Nazi* metaphor.

    I’m not saying carpenter intended it, but the film is more or less a narrative adaptation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Carpenter isn’t an antisemite, but the water table for antisemitism is so high that he repeated that cultural meme and made an entire movie out of it without realizing where it came from.

    Yes, the lizard people are quite clearly the evil Jews who control media and politics to keep the white man fighting his neighbor instead of recognizing the real, common enemy.

  156. Sternshein

    If Vern were to ban Griff, I would take it as a personal insult and never post on these boards again. I’d keep reading and probably keep my Patreon going, but I would step back from the boards in solidarity.

    Fortunately, No matter how much some motherfuckers wanna ice skate uphill, Vern isn’t like Willis. He strives for excellence. so, much like an ill-advised remake of Texas Chain-Saw Massacre, that is something that would never happen.

  157. *Ellis not Willis.

  158. Not that it’s hugely germane to the conversation, but technically THEY LIVE is based on a (not terribly good) short story by a guy named Ray Nelson. It’s only 6 pages and you can read it for free online if you’re curious (it’s called “Eight ‘O Clock In The Morning”), though the movie is a distinct improvement. IMO the anti Semitic reading of the movie doesn’t hold a lot of water, though I can understand how it could be interpreted that way. I tend to side with Carpenter’s own insistence that it’s about yuppies and capitalism. Fun fact, though- Ray Nelson is *also* the guy who invented those little propeller beanies children wear in movies set in the ‘50s.

  159. Re: Freedom of Speech, private companies have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. They can kick you out for not wearing a shirt, let alone what you have to say. Considering the stuff twitter and Facebook still tolerate I would say even they are safe havens for free speech. But please, go yell fire in a crowded movie theater to exercise your freedom of speech.

    Griff, we’ve been hearing what you have to say for months now. Is it maybe just maybe possible that the reason you haven’t won anybody to your way of thinking not because we haven’t given you enough benefit of the doubt? Is it possible it’s you, not us?

  160. I’m way too late with this comment, but I’m thinking that a lot of us here would feel more comfortable summoning Mr. M by saying his name five times while looking into a mirror.

    I dunno, maybe we could do either depending on which kind of comment we needed.

  161. One of my favourite things about HIGHLANDER: SORCEROR OF THE DIMENSIONS is the critic quote on the UK VHS (and I think DVD) exclaimed it was “a breakneck rollercoaster ride”, which I later discovered (without even trying!) had been cheekily clipped from the comment from the actual review which called it “a breakneck rollercoaster ride through genre cliches”. Which doesn’t sound that bad actually.

    Never minded this one, though seeing it as my first HIGHLANDER film was an underwhelming experience, and it’s my least favourite of the theatrically released films (never saw THE SOURCE as I’ve been making my way through the TV series over the past thirteen years and wanted to, er, “save” it for after).

  162. Another nice thing; there’s a professional artist called Stefan Duncan who is a big enough fan of HIGHLANDER (and part III specifically) that he painted a piece called BONNY PORTMORE and donated it to Adrian Paul’s Peace Fund charity after the two of them met at a HIGHLANDER convention!:

    Adrian Paul Raising Funds for Haiti

    Artist Stefan Duncan (who Adrian met at the Highlander Convetion in 2009) has donated his painting "Bonny Portmore".This beautiful item wil...

  163. Majestyk,

    This thread took about six weird turns, but to offer a bit of insight to your original gal probs:
    I too:
    -am a NY ex-pat, moved to smaller, sleepier city whist single in my 40s
    -Fumbled into relationship with younger co-worker (23, I thought she was like 28. Five years is a lot in ones 20s) who I assumed would have zero interest in me, who had other boyfriend.

    After a couple months, I put the fade on it.
    Two reasons:
    -Even though “he’s a boyfriend, not a fiancé” there seemed to be an awful lot of sneaking around for something so casual. It became incredibly apparent to me that feelings were going to get hurt, it was only a matter of time.

    -While having someone so young and comely interested in me was certainly an ego inflater, the fact of the matter was she was YOUNG. By that, I mean young acting. Like acting out when wanting attention, pouting when not getting way, constant competition to those she considered cooler than her/I, considering things not that important to be of earth-shaking importance, young person shit.

    BUT
    Like I said, I did appreciate the ego boost and the small shake-up of my current ennui and glumness. Because to be perfectly frank, I was stating to feel like a breathing marital aid for other people’s broken marriages, if you follow what my personal life consisted of up to that point…

  164. jojo: Are you me? I relate to all that. I seem to be very lucky, though, because though she has a lot of youthful energy and her emotions certainly run at a high pitch, she also has a lot of emotional wisdom for someone her age. Of course she enjoys young people shit that I wouldn’t touch in a million years but I’ve seen no evidence of pettiness or too-cool-for-schoolness. In many ways, she’s more mature than I am. We’ve gotten a lot closer since I first reached out to you fellas, and while I admit that I am sprung like a busted screen door and thus cannot be counted on to provide accurate assessments of literally anything at this particular moment, I’m also surprised by how much I admire her for her kindness, honesty, and positivity. Maybe my head is just gassed to the fucking atmosphere but at this point in time I think she’s perfect, physically and spiritually. If I tried to write a character like her, I’d be accused of fantasy wish-fulfillment. She’s too good to be true. I’d assume she was a spy designed by top psych ops scientists to be my dream girl, but I don’t any information or access worth stealing so I can only assume she actually likes me.

    The latest update is she’s taking a break from the boyfriend to figure out the situation. That is both exciting and terrifying for me. Exciting because of obvious reasons, terrifying because I know I can’t keep her. Eventually, there will come a limit on what I’m equipped to give her, and she deserves more than that. So much more. But what I CAN do in our time together, however long it lasts, is make her realize how special she is. Somebody should have made her feel worthy a long time ago and no one stepped up. I’m fucking enraged at the entire world for failing her. This injustice will not stand. No matter what else happens, I will make her believe in herself so sure she never has to settle for a loser like me ever again.

    I might be in trouble, you guys. Nobody save me, alright?

  165. Damn, you’ve become Dave Jennings from ANIMAL HOUSE!

  166. Bit of a footnote here — I just did a quick google about the recent claims here that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had called cauliflower “colonial.” Turns out it’s all bullshit. Well, sure, everyone here knew that going in, but in the event that you’re curious about the particular variety of bullshit it turned out to be: She said it was “colonial” for outsiders to come into a minority community and tell them to grow food they didn’t normally eat much, such as, “I don’t know, cauliflower.”

    Apparently this is a major story in the right-wing press. Long write-ups in the New York Post, Washington Examiner, Fox News, Infowars, Breitbart, and the National Review about how this she-demon has libelled cauliflower. Even non-American papers like the Daily Mail and the Toronto Sun. Slow news week, I guess.

  167. Matthew – Thank you for that explanation. I mean, that was pretty much what I assumed, but I appreciate the specifics.

    Majestyk – Did you just a pitch a two-way HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK?

  168. Im not saying THEY LIVE is bad or hateful. I’m saying, it’s built on the chassis of a cultural meme without recognition as to the insidious origins of said meme. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is based upon the same meme, but that generational cycle separates itself more fully from the Protocols. Meanwhile, They Live hits the beats directly and thus remains legible as a functionally – though not intentionally – antisemitic narrative.

    The fact that this happened without Carpenter intending to adapt the Protocols speaks more to the high water table of antisemtism within western culture than it does to any latent hatefulness in Carpenter or the film’s cult audience.

  169. Let’s be honest: “Secret society XY secretely runs the world and brainwashes the sheeple” isn’t really exclusive an antisemitic view. I’m sure there is a group of people who believe that THEY LIVE is about the Illuminati and another one thinks it’s about actual aliens, some other assholes probably apply it as a metaphor for muslim immigrants, etc, bla bla bla.
    But just the time of the movie’s production should give everybody a hint that this movie is really just about consumerism, Yuppies and stuff like that.

  170. I just straight up don’t buy this. I just looked up the Wikipedia summary for this nonsense and it looks to me like the only thing this book has in common with the movie is the idea of a secret conspiracy, so unless your take is that all conspiracy stories are secretly actually antisemetic, I don’t see what makes that reading of the movie any stronger than what Carpenter claims it to be.

  171. Tawdry – This is a really interesting (and uncomfortable) point that really never occurred to me about one of my favorite movies. Not being knowledgeable about the subject myself, my question is did The Protocols really invent the trope of a society controlled by secret invaders? Or could Carpenter and whoever have grafted different ideas onto the same pre-existing trope? It seems like such a universal idea / story premise that it’s hard for me to believe it was invented by racist propagandists before, like, some short story author or somebody.

  172. Woah. In this whole thread, the only post that got deleted was Vern’s own. Take that censorship-boogeyman.

  173. Thank God he didn’t delete the comment about the boobs in video games doc.

  174. Vern

    It’s hard to say if the Protocols invented the trope, especially because the pamphlet was itself plagiarized from several, earlier works, but The various parts were all written in the period between the first and second industrial revolutions, which is the first point where mass media and giant corporations that could rival the government really became a thing. And the use of media and corporate interest to usurp national identity is core to the narrative.

    The Protocols are largely about Jews trying to assimilate into Russian culture still being seen as interlopers due to the continued existence of The shtetls. And historically, perhaps with the exception of Roma, Jews were the only internationally known people without a ‘home nation.’ They were foreigners everywhere. This, plus blood libel and the Bible quote “let his blood be upon us, us and our children” give pretty good evidence that semi-human lizard people has always been a metaphor for European Jews.

  175. The Protocols were largely plagiarised from an anti-Napoleon III tract, right? So the conspiracy stuff isn’t intrinsically anti-Semitic. Though I suppose when you have (a) inhuman reptiles (b) controlling commerce and the media, that’s edging close to some nasty stereotypes.

  176. Or in other words, what Tawdry just posted.

  177. Again I can understand how this is *a* potential reading of the movie (but definitely disagree that it is an intended or fully supported reading) but also- why is it being claimed that the aliens look like lizard people? They absolutely do not, they look like blue skull-faces.

  178. Fair point. I guess it’s the lizardish eyes, and the fact that you mostly see them in black and white, which obscures the details of their skin? And my previous exposure to the V miniseries and David Icke pamphlets might be influencing my perceptions there too.

  179. It was taken from the Anti-Napoleon III Tracts, but the advent of the Industrial Age fundamentally altered the context and meaning.

    And to be clear, I’m not saying that THEY LIVE was ever, even for one second, intended as an antisemitic text. The interesting thing about it – beyond the cool potboiler action film on the surface – is that a film with so many clear analogs to the Protocols of Zion could be made without anyone realizing what they were doing. It speaks more to the deep seated nature and enduring popularity of such conspiracies and cultural memes than it does to Carpenter’s potential worldview. I mean, comments about the over-representation of Jews within Hollywood are *never* made in an off the cuff, isn’t that a strange coincidence context. And, I would argue, the fear of “Hollywood values” vs “real American values” comes from a rather insidious place most of the time. More than most, frankly

  180. Alright guys, I’m sorry.

    I’ll stop with the politics for real this time, I can’t make an ironclad promise but it’s clear that I really am just banging my head against the wall here.

    Just know that I was genuinely just trying to have a debate and offer some perspective, I was not trolling or trying to stir shit up for the hell of it.

    I’m sorry guys, maybe it *is* me and not you, I don’t know.

    I think why I am the way I am is because I was raised a very conservative Christian and when I arrived on the internet I had my prior worldview totally shattered, I learned that the world was not quite as simple as I thought it was and the best metaphor is it really was like taking the Red Pill and waking up from The Matrix, if you’ve never had an experience like that then you don’t know how difficult and life changing it is.

    Consequently I’ve had a very “question everything” mindset no matter the taboos ever since, a feeling that there’s even more “Red Pill” moments waiting about life, I got into conspiracy theory and other esoteric, Robert Anton Wilson type stuff, most recently I’ve gotten into right wing Youtubers.

    I’m just a very curious person, I’m a searcher, I don’t mean anyone any harm, I’m sorry if I’ve wandered into some bad territory because of it.

  181. Questioning can be good. Arguing, less so. I truly hope you’re able to find peace along with answers, Griff.

  182. I also grew up in a conservative Christian household, and I eventually veered away from what I found to be an oppressive ideology. I found what really opened my eyes and expanded my horizons wasn’t simply listening to other people who had the same background as me. It was much more productive for me to listen to people who had completely different experiences–women, people of color, members of the LGBT community. It became clear to me that my experiences and perspectives were extremely limited. If you’re really looking to understand the world, search out people who don’t look like you, that don’t have your same experiences, that have experienced life from a drastically different perspective.

    On a semi-related note, I’ve found is somewhat sad but also kind of funny to see so many of the alt-right online try to use the language of enlightenment and epiphany like “red pilling.” They’re basically saying, “The scales have fallen from my eyes! I’ve seen the truth through all the these distortions and lies of the modern world! And guess what? It turns out that all the hegemonic orthodoxies that benefited people like me for hundreds of years are right after all! Please continue to give people like me preferential treatment.”

  183. RBatty024

    That’s the funniest description of alt-right ideology I have ever heard. Bravo

  184. It’s hilarious RBatty. Like those hardcore MGTOW guys. What? You mean to tell me that men and women are inherently different? One is more logical while the other is more emotional? You don’t say! I figured that out when I was 10 between observing the adults in relationships around me and watching CHEERS reruns. Welcome to the party pal!

  185. I’m sorry guys, I made an ass out of myself…. again.

    And I apologize.

    I do need to expand my horizons and do some soul searching.

  186. Do that. But don’t stress on past Indiscretions too much. I’m pretty sure most of the commentariat has 10+ years on you and me. Life will beating you down and then you’ll get a couple of wins. And perspective. Not that you lack such things now, but the view gets clearer as we get older.

  187. Griff- I’d highly recommend you check out Contrapoints, if you’re into Youtube videos. I don’t think it’ll turn you into a pinko like me, but it might give some perspective. And she’s entertaining as hell.

  188. Vern – Sorry for bringing personal insults into the Dojo, I know that is not how it’s done at Outlawvern.com.
    I like posting here, and I love Highlander

  189. Griff, (Christ, you named yourself after a total asshole), my take is that the human race has maybe four or five generations left before we totally destroy our capability to live on this planet, and I don’t think we have the time or inclination to colonize another one. The big picture is we’re all fucked, no matter who’s in charge. Left and Right means nothing now so just have fun while you’re alive. And don’t have kids. And don’t tell me that climate change is some kind of lefty propaganda.

    And if you change your profile pic to an actual picture of yourself, I’ll do the same.

  190. And apparently I like passing out while commenting.
    For the record I love the original, and have fond memories of the Quickening and the first couple seasons of the series, remember being super disappointed with this after Gunmen, also Princes of the Universe is my favorite Queen song of all time.

    Griff – I apologize for how harsh I was in my first post, I don’t think you are an incel and to be honest we have a lot more in common than you think, but I won’t pretend like some of the things you say here don’t make me want to shove you into a locker.

    Tawdry – Nazi’s have been trying to claim They Live as theirs for a minute:

    They Live: John Carpenter's action flick needs to be saved from neo-Nazis

    Far-right antisemites have claimed Carpenter’s anti-Reagan 80s action flick as an allegory for Jewish media control. That couldn’t be further from the truth

    I can see where your argument is coming from but the ghouls in human form were portrayed as 80’s republican WASPS.

  191. Jerome, Griff is his real name.

  192. Here’s my rankings

    1) Highlander
    2) Highlander III- The Final Dimension
    3) Highlander Endgame
    4) Highlander II
    5) Highlander The Source (This ended up on the SyFy Channel)

  193. I really hate people are upset that YouTube is taking down white supremacist videos and holocaust denier videos. I am for free speech and all but I also think some people shouldn’t get that right. Fuck Nazi’s.

  194. Majestyk,

    I am indeed my own person, just one that felt qualified to comment on your present situation.
    Also, remember that I’m pretty much at the other end, so I’m able to make tidy little summation. I’m not sure how I would have responded in say February, as the whole thing was certainly a mental and emotional roller-coaster. But one that I believe ultimately enriched us both. I have no doubt that she’ll move onwards and upwards from this point, and when she’s my age, I will have become “that weird old guy I had a dalliance with. What was that all about??” As for me, well, I learned a thing or two about a thing or two. No avenue is completely closed. But just because an avenue is open, doesn’t necessarily mean I want to take it…

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