So I've been reading a lot of the John Carter novels recently, and it has really made me realize that for all of my posturing and bravado, I'm really not anywhere near as awesomely swashbuckling as I could be and probably should be and if for some strange reason I was held captive by a race of strange aliens I might not be able to fight my way to freedom.  This is a disturbing thought at best.  I mean, in the last week I've rescued exactly zero damsels in distress and slain no monsters or evildoers.  I guess you can chalk this up to me working a sixty hour week, but if I were more more of a true epic hero with fireballs for eyes and swords for hands I probably could have found a way to work some daring heroic deeds in there somewhere.  Now since it is always the job of an egotistical blowhard misanthrope to be continually trying to assert his superiority over the underlings of the world and push himself to the limit and possibly even take it up a notch, to the next level, to the max and to the xtreme, I have put together a short to-do list of things that I'll need to accomplish to become an awesome hero that will go down in the annals of human civilization and be forever immortalized in story, song and interpretive dance. 

Spend More Time Defending Andrea's Honor

The first step to becoming an incomparable intergalactic hero and man among boys is rescuing hot babes from the clutches of sinister villains at the last possible second and defending both their lives and their honor from whatever sick shit it is that people do to helpless maidens these days.  Since I can't think of any babes hotter than Hot Andrea and I'm pretty sure that she would kick my ass if I came to some other random chick's aid, I'll just have to find some way to put her into situations where she'll need rescuing and then execute my towering acts of superhuman bravery to satisfy myself in my own particular... idiom.

The obvious first suggestion would be to do stupid minor things like push her out into traffic and then swoop in and save her from an oncoming bus at the last second, but I don't think that would go over too well since I'd actually be rescuing her from the diabolical machinations of myself rather than from some arch-villain bent on world domination.  Plus I think the whole "run in front of an oncoming car at the last second" is better suited for rescuing cats, dogs, secret documents and children than it is for saving babes.  Babes require something a little more grandiose to really appreciate the heroism that went into it.  Now I could probably convince her to go jogging in the park at night by herself and then just follow her around so that I can come leap to her aid at an opportune time if some random dude tries to mug her, but then again there's a pretty good possibility that me sneaking around the woods at night following and keeping a close eye on some chick would just result in an uninvolved onlooker either calling the cops or Macing me.  So that's out as well.

The strategy that I came across is to introduce Andrea to a bunch of rich old guys with the hopes that they will try to woo her with tons of money and get her to be their trophy wife.  Since Andrea seems to really like planning weddings (she spends a LOT of time doing it, so she must like it right?) there's always the possibility she'll take one of them up on their marriage proposals in the hopes of finding a sugar daddy and then I can bust in at the last minute hero-style and break up the wedding in a daring display of bravery, sword-fighting with the groom, kicking the best man in the head, aving Hot Andrea from a loveless marriage while simultaneously dooming her to an eternity of poverty with me.  It's the perfect plan;  Not only do I make a grand sweeping gesture of my undying love and bravery and win the girl, but after I defeat Old Man McMoneybags in single combat I can also steal his wallet and improve my own financial situation at the same time.

Get a Signature Weapon and Learn to Use It

All the awesome swashbuckling hero-types out there have some sort of signature weapon, and it's generally a sword of some sort.  Now I'm well aware of the futility of swordplay in the 21st century and how a quarter inch of forged steel isn't going to be very effective at protecting it's user from a couple rounds of armor-piercing 9mm ammunition, but there's just something strangely romantic about dueling to the death with cold steel that isn't there when you talk about "pistols at dawn" or "halberds after breakfast".  I mean, you never hear tales about "the daring lone spearman wandering the countryside looking for adventure" or "the courageous noble pirate and his trusty pitchfork".  No, in order to be a true Errol Flynn-style rope-swinging boot-wearing babe-humping bastard I'll need to learn how to use a sword well enough to out-duel swordsmen who have been practicing their entire lives and be comfortable battling against seemingly impossible odds and escaping unscathed.

Now I had training with the katana blade when I was studying martial arts like fifty million years ago, and even have a blunt piece-of-crap daisho hanging in my living room, but I've always thought there was something just a little bit off about a white guy swinging around a katana like a drunken German swatting flies at a bratwurst festival.  It's just not right.  It's not traditionally a Western weapon and Westerners just look like ridiculous otaku poseurs with samurai swords strapped to their waists in the style of feudal Japan.  Better to leave the folded steel and the "rising sun" headbands to the dudes whose ancestors created the weapon and whose families studied its proper use for generations.  Applying that same logic to my generic white-bread background, I'm pretty much left with either the standard knight sword or the dueling rapier, either of which is fine by me.  As long as it's got a point and an edge, I'll be more than happy to hack some potential evildoer with it.

Now that that's decided, all that's left is to earn to use it well enough to battle hordes of pirates, brigands and potential Hot Andrea suitors.

Amazing Ben at the Battle of Hastings.

Do Some Daring Stunts of Bravado

Another rule for swashbucklers is that you should never walk when you can run, never step when you can leap and never climb when you can vault.  I'm trying to include this into my normal life so that when the time comes that I'll need to exhibit daring displays of heroism I won't stumble over my own feet and biff myself unconscious like some kind of uncoordinated dipshit loser who's never tried to stop a doomsday device at the last second before.

Generally it's pretty simple stuff -- when I leave my office in the afternoon I don't walk down the stairs but rather leap down the entire flight in a single jump.  In the mornings I vault over my desk to get to my seat rather than walk around like a loser.  When I'm crossing the street at a red light I don't use the crosswalk but instead I climb onto the roof of the nearest car and jump from car roof to car roof until I reach the other side of the street.  When I leave my apartment in the morning I don't walk down the flight of stairs to the ground floor but rather I open my bedroom window, lower myself so I'm hanging from the windowsill Prince of Persia-style and then drop down to the street below.  Just stuff like that is good practice for the future when I may need to use my athletic ability to make some mundane boring rescue attempt seem that much more impressive.  You would be surprised what stuff like that does though to add a little bit of adventure to your daily routine.

Going along with this, I think I'll need a good catchphrase to yell when I'm doing something brave.  Right now I'm sort of hung up on yelling, "It's time to kick some back!", when I swing from the door frame into my office because it's not only a statement of fact but it also indicates my unhealthy love of kicking people in the back.  As an added bonus people can feel that much more humiliated when I actually do kick them in the back, since they already knew it was coming and yet failed to do anything to stop it.

"It's time to kick some back!"

Get a Comic Relief Sidekick (optional)

Nothing makes you look like a hero quite like hiring some completely uncoordinated buffoon to stand by you and act like an idiot all the time.  Some goofball with a speech impediment or something who falls down all the time and is hopelessly pathetic in all manner of physical exertion can really take an average guy and make him look like he's Tarzan of the motherfucking Apes.  When you're as average as I am, you can really only benefit from having someone like this follow you around on your adventures.

Find Some Weird Monsters and Fight Them

Nothing says "hero" quite like slaying monsters.  Unfortunately nowadays they really don't make monsters like they did back in the middle ages so you're pretty hard-pressed to find some good beasts to slay.  Even then, all the PETA and science jerks would probably give you a hard time for slaughtering some endangered species or some stupid idiotic bullshit.  Still, it is the duty of every noble adventurer to slay dragons and other demons, so in my quest to be a swashbuckling hero I'll have to make sure I take the time out to discover new species of angry evil monsters and completely obliterate it from the face of the Earth.

Act Manlier

No hero worth his salt can succeed without a haughty laugh, a grim determined smile or a good hero pose or two.  Now not everyone has it, but pretty much everyone that's not a total metro girl can develop it in time.  It just takes a couple hours a day standing in front of the mirror testing out the different flexing positions and manly stances, figuring out which ones work the best for you and then remembering to do it immediately after you kill the bad guy and right before you say something witty.  It will also help to get one of those little tape recorders and work on your man-voice.  Just do your best Ash impression and eventually you'll get it.  It's guaranteed to make the women swoon for you, especially when you can come up with some heroic quips like, "well my dear, it looks like the world's a little bit safer tonight" or "gimme some sugar baby".  It might not seem like much, but it goes a long way to cement your legacy if you show some display of your ultimate Alpha male-dom than if you just cut down an evil shogun and said, "holy shit, talk about your all-time lucky shots!" in a cracked, high pre-pubescent thirteen year-old voice.

A good roguish "ha-HA!" will help to, especially if you can belt one out while you're using your blade to cut a rope that will make a chandelier fall down ontop of ten of the King's royal guardsmen in a comical and dramatic fashion.  Chicks love that shit.

Learn the Standard Swashbuckling Hero Skills

You ever notice how the epic superhuman badass heroes like Ash, Odysseus, Captain Kirk and John Carter are like experts at EVERYTHING?  It's a difficult gig to follow, but if you're going to be able to deal with any adventure that comes your way, you'll need to be able to handle yourself in several interesting and unique situations and equip yourself with knowledge that in your average day-to-day life would be completely fucking useless.  Just because one day you're might to be running away from a company of Cold War-era Soviet infantry with a super-hot babe and the only hope for your timely escape is going to lie in your ability to do something fucking crazy like rewire a toaster or recite the correct zip code for Grand Rapids, Michigan from memory.  Since I don't really have the time to learn everything in the world, I've decided to narrow it down to a couple specific skills that I'm likely going to have to develop to become an expert swashbuckler.

Horseback Riding

From the beginning of history the horse was the transportation of choice for the standard epic hero.  Now I know there's not a whole lot of use these days for skill riding horses, but you really don't want to risk it.  You never know when fate may teleport you through time or transport you to some backwards civilization where your entire survival will depend on your ability to ride horseback.  It's been such a time-honored hero skill for so long that it's impossible to ignore it.

The Recipe for Gunpowder

Basically you're going to want to learn all the standard MacGuyver shit, but if one thing has benefitted our heroes time and time again it's their ability to memorize the formula for gunpowder.  For all my romanticizing of swordplay in this article you better believe that if I wind up in some primitive South American village where everyone's equipped with spears and knives and trying to kill me and shrink my head I'm going to want to get my hands on some gunpowder-packed semi-automatic artillery and start laying waste to motherfuckers.  Sure, swordfighting is cool, but blowing the shit out of stuff is cool too, and knowing how to make gunpowder and/or explosives can give you an unfair advantage that not even the most epic of heroes could turn down.

Hurling

When I say hurling I'm not talking about that crazy Irish sport where you drink a keg of Guiness and hit bowling balls with sticks, but rather I mean the ability to chuck things at other things with pinpoint accuracy, like flicking a coin, having it travel two hundred yards and land in just the right spot that the super death ray aimed at your girlfriend's head reflects back at your arch-nemesis and vaporizes him.  Or like taking a hatchet and winging it across a crowded courtyard so that it cuts the noose around the neck of your best friend at the exact second the hangman pulls the lever to send him to his death.  Even like in Flash Gordon when he takes those stupid football-shaped psychadelic fabergé eggs and chucks them through Ming the Merciless' henchmen's heads while everyone listens to "WHAM!'s Greatest Hits" and Flash's girlfriend takes her top off.  You never know when you're going to need to throw shit at people or things, and when the time comes for you to hurl a tennis racket or a pool ball and knock a guy off a motorcycle with it you don't even want to begin to question your ability to do just that.

Aircraft Piloting

On the other XTREME from horseback riding lies the art of military fighter aircraft piloting.  I mean, if film has taught us anything it's that people get snatched up by aliens all the time and enlisted into intergalactic struggles, and I'll be damned if I'm going to get stuck doing bullshit accounting work for the Galactic Empire when I could be out there doing The Last Starfighter shit, blasting space bozos from the cockpit of some super-advanced starfighter.  Not to mention the opportunities I'd have to make James Bond-style escapes by hijacking a Russian MiG and tearing ass through the sky evading rockets and machine guns while doing coke off the flight stick.  No, aircraft piloting is DEFINITELY something you're going to want to learn to become a true hero able to escape from all possible scenarios no matter how ridiculous or improbable they may be.

This one might be a pipe dream for me though, since all my efforts to purchase and/or fly a military aircraft have been thwarted by a complete and utter lack of funding and by my aversion to joining the armed forces.

(Cue "Danger Zone")

Get Captured and Escape from an Inescapable Fortress

The final test of all your hero skills is to get captured trying something awesome and imprisoned in a self-proclaimed "inescapable" fortress, and then use your wits, brains and ability to get out again.  From that point on you can always just be like, "The name's Ben Thompson.  I'm the only man to ever escape from the Citadel of Doom."  Shit, if I pulled that shit off I'd get it printed on my fucking business cards along with a picture of the fortress.  Then nobody would doubt my mad swashbuckling skills or my awesome hero-ness.

If you don't hear from me next week, this is where I'll be.