What Ruined my Day Today

It's not that Collin and I spent a bit of our morning at urgent care making sure that his sore throat wasn't strep.

It's not that I was up all night with his fever.

It's not that I'm now, bleary-eyed, trying to catch up on the homework I was supposed to finish while he was at school yesterday.

It's that I got an e-mail this morning from my medieval professor, aka thesis advisor, aka kind of cool dude with very distressing news.

In case you haven't figured out yet, I'm a super nerd. This is my favorite movie. (who said English majors liked ALL stuffy stuff? Sure Wuthering Heights rocks my world, but bring me Connor MacLeod any day).

Haven't heard of it?

Does this help make it seem any geekier? It should.

Well, I found out that this guy, The Highlander, THE HIGHLANDER, man!! Are you getting it? Well, he's in a version of Bewoulf.

I was so excited, I dropped what I was doing because I'm doing my seminar paper for Old English on film and representations of monstrosity. If I went on with what my thesis for that paper really is, you'd poke your eye out. Anyway, I thought, hooray! I can watch Highlander as Beowulf. He's got to be kick-ass, right?

In the back of my head, I knew, deep down, that the movie probably blows. Because, really, "Highlander" blows. It does. I know it does. It's totally lame. It's an 80s action flick about a Scottish immortal swordsman with a soundtrack from Queen. It's awful. Terrible. I think it rocks though. It's one of those cult classic things that you love, or turn off in ten minutes because you can't bear to waste another second of your life.

Anyway, my professor replied to my e-mail asking if it was a good a place as any to start "researching" and he shot my hopes down, and said that it wasn't even worth watching, just for fun. He said it was awful, terrible, and of no "cultural significance."

Of course, I replied that he ruined my day and that I really think the Highlander as Beowulf should be badass and that I will probably watch it anyway...or maybe not, because, as the Highlander says, there can be only one and maybe it should always be that way. (And yes, it's cool to say badass to him, and that, my friends, is badass).

Just looking at some of the screen shots, I'm already concerned. Why is Beowulf dressed this way? It's slightly anachronistic to say the least. I'm concerned for the plot if this is his costumery. Beowulf is set in approximately, the year 500 A.D. What do you think he'd be wearing? Just wondering. This does not look right to me.

Buzz cut? Motorcycle jacket? Interesting. Why? Modernizing him for what purpose? And, the woman seems to play a very pivotal role. There is a great deal of criticism that suggests a feminist take on the Queen, but not so much that I would put her on the poster. Something tells me there's some nooky for Beowulf in this version. Hmmm. I'm freaking you all out with my over-analyzation, aren't I? This is what "we" do. Take math, the answers are easier and don't generate twenty pages of circular analysis that no one but us seems to understand.

I may not be able to resist watching this culturally insignificant abhoration just because I love him so much as Highlander. The man knows how to swing a sword. Besides, a Frenchman raised in a zillion and one countries, most famous for butchering a Scottish accent in the Highlander must do a bang up job butchering Danish or Old English, right?