If it bleeds, we can kill it...

The first intense movie I watched with my dad – rated R for violence, F-words, jokes I didn't fully understand yet – was Schwarzenegger's 1987 film called Predator. I was a little younger than Michael and it blew me away. (Back then we rented movies as VHS tapes from storefronts with names like 'Dollar Video' that sometimes had an adult section behind a curtain. The good ol' days.) In Predator, Arnold's best-in-the-world team of pro soldiers is wiped out by an unbeatable enemy. Or so it seems. The bad-guy killing machine is an ugly mo-fo of an alien shaped, oddly enough, like a big human. But then there's Arnold. Naturally, Ahhnold goes native, all-in, all-warrior to face the thing, head-on, do-or-die, despite the odds, camouflaging himself in mud (but not enough to hide his overdeveloped muscles), and then, in his warpaint, he whips up a bow, arrows, spears, rope, and booby traps with a knife (Rambo was good at that shit, too). I was so engrossed in the film I wouldn't have noticed if a swimsuit model walked by, or the cutest girl in school (a tossup then, as I recall, between Gina and Shane). What's my point? Do I need one? Why can't I just babble about a movie? Actually, my point is this: I've listed mantras here before, motivational bits, and there's one from Predator I haven't included because it's cheesy, but I gotta tell ya... it's oh-so-good: "If it bleeds, we can kill it." I just can't deny this has an alternative meaning to me and a place in my list of phrases that fire me up. Arnold says this after his team fires hundreds of rounds at the alien, which they can't see because it's cloaked and invisible – they are technologically outmatched for sure – so they don't even know what they're up against, it keeps picking them off and vanishing, but they find a florescent substance on a leaf that can only be their enemy's blood. This is when Arnold says, in his glorious accent: "If it bleeds, we can kill it." Awesome. There ya go. Any sign, any hint of headway, progress, don't give up. Keep going. If you can nick it, cut it, chip away at it, you can finish it. Press on. Back to basics, guts, will. Find a way. Get it done. Because Arnold says so.

The movie also introduced me to a favorite song, Long Tall Sally by Little Richard.