I was flipping channels last night and stopped on Conan the Barbarian.  I was just in time for favorite scene, too.  The barbarians are all having a pancake breakfast meeting and Conan waxes poetic about what is best in life.  Absolute best scene in the movie.  Mrs. Lizard King despises Conan the Barbarian.  I don’t know why.  She doesn’t even fully understand why.  She just hates him.  I tried to get her to watch the movie and she fell asleep.  No one believes me, but Conan really is a very good movie.  It has the sweeping, epic score of a Cecil B. DeMille bible picture.  The grand vistas of a John Ford picture.  Best of all, it has a giant snake.  A giant snake, people!

It also has love.  True love that threatens the very bonds of death.  At one point, Conan’s woman tells him, “If I died, I would come back from the deepest pit of hell to fight by your side.”  Now that is what a man wants to hear.  The closest Mrs. Lizard King has gotten to that is telling me, “If you die, I will make sure no one spits on you at the funeral.”  It’s a great sentiment, and I do appreciate it because I know there are people who will come to my funeral just for that purpose.  But it’s still not quite the same.

Conan hasn’t been issued on blu-ray yet, but I’m lucky enough to have a player that converts standard dvds to near HD quality.  I’m telling you, that’s the way to watch Conan.  If you’ve only seen the movie in standard def, then you haven’t seen it.

Here is the scene I was talking about.  The absolute best scene in the movie.

At the start of the scene, you hear one of the guys say, “My greatest fear is that my son will never understand me.”  Who the hell invited that guy to the barbarian pancake breakfast?  I don’t think real barbarians are that concerned over their sons understanding them or not.  And I’m not including Hagar the Horrible, so don’t bring him up.  Then, at the end of the clip after Conan speaks, you hear someone say, “That is good, that is good.”  It sounds like it’s the same guy who’s sons don’t understand him.  I think he’s some average schmo who crept in for the free breakfast.  I can see him nodding and going, “That is good, that is good.  Yep, gotta love the lamentation of women, uh huh.  Um . . . is anyone going for that last pancake?”

I might have watched a little too much Conan last night.  I had a dream that I was part of a barbarian army going up against a deadly race of alien monsters.  We had to beat them in order to save the universe, yada yada.  My sword was only made of heavy plastic.  But I was told if I hit the enemy with it enough times, then it would eventually kill them.  We go to meet the enemy.  The first one I encounter is one of those little “yip yip” dogs.  I smacked him a couple of times with the plastic sword and he settled down.  I told the commander that maybe we should just take this one prisoner.  “We take no prisoners, kill it!”  I told him I didn’t want to.  I thought it had learned it’s lesson.  “You don’t think it’s dangerous then?” he asked.  The little dog jumped up on  my legs a couple of times and I smacked him, again.  “No,” I said.  “I don’t think he’s dangerous.”

The next enemy was bedridden.  It was like he had mutated to become physically part of the bed.  Again, I had a moral issue with killing someone who couldn’t move from their bed.  My commander had no such conscience, so he started smacking the guy with the plastic sword.  I couldn’t bear to watch so I walked away.  In the background I kept hearing, SMACK!  OW!  SMACK!  OW!

Welcome to my dreamworld.  Not a pleasant place.  Not a particularly interesting place, either.