nostalgia

Weekend Flashback: first Swords and Sandals edition

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I feel like I jinxed this last week with my bragging of weather warm enough to wear sandals in the first week of spring. Tonight it is blowing a gale and downpouring buckets of rain. My palm tree shed its dry fronds all over the street two days ago – I guess it’s one way to meet a new neighbour as he helps get them off the roadway.
Ben Hur races Messala
Anyway, to inaugurate the sandals season, it has to be the one by which all others are measured: are they bigger than this?

Weekend flashback: chainmail chicks and boots galore

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This movie didn’t do very well. Partly because this movie poster promised a lot more Conan/Arnie than was there (so the word of mouth was ‘what a ripoff’) and partly because they didn’t give Brigitte Nielsen exactly the costume the fans were expecting, which was more along the lines of this eminently practical warrior garb – the chainmail bikini:

A source of minor joy

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is just discovering that the Ermine Street Guard exists. It’s so peculiarly British to take one’s weird hobby involving dressing up in strange outfits so seriously that one’s group ends up as a respected resource for academics pursuing a proper understanding of Roman military engineering and craftsmanship.

Even if they probably wouldn’t let me play with the onager

Onager

Weekend flashback – boots of revenge and high adventure

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To set the tone just right for the first non-meta post at the new digs, I offer you possibly the best cheese of the early 80s:

General: We have won again. That is good! But what is best in life?
Warrior: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcon on your wrist, wind in your hair!
General: Wrong! Conan, what is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!
General: That is good.
Is that some portentous cheese or what?