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Knights V Cowboys

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04:56 / 01.08.03

Sorry, the postscript there being, of course:

Because they all rode on fucking horses.

[sigh]

A

05:30 / 01.08.03

I think that this debate really comes down to two questions:

1) Could a Winchester repeating rifle (that's what cowboys had, yeah?) fire a bullet through a decent suit of armour?

2) Did the average cowboy spend too much time on the hooch and in the cathouse to be of much use against a well-disciplined Knight?

08:36 / 01.08.03

Yeah, well I'm still undecided as to who is better.

Knight:
Pros
Pretty much invincible on a horse, chivalry, titled and landed.
Cons
Pretty much useless on his own two legs, titled and landed.

Cowboy
Pros
Guns and horses (good name for a band methinks), self employed, self sufficient.
Cons
uncouth, interested in cows, bad rep.

Both had great slanguage, sirrah, gadzooks, varmint, horn swoggler etc...

Oh, f*ck it I'm going to go with....

Knights, cos' they live in castles and get to wear chain mail!!!

So the next question I have is;
Astronauts vs Dinosaurs

09:49 / 01.08.03

Sir Gawain in Le Morte D'Arthur and Lee Van Cleef's character in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly would have a lot to talk about, I think.

..although I feel that, given the narrative lethargy of both sources, they'd expire from thirst before anything was actually communicated..

Imagine it; Gawain would blather on for half an hour, finally reaching what he considered to be some kind of grand point. Then there'd be a ten minute pause as Van Cleef contemplated his cheroot. Then he'd look up and say "Whada ya mean by that?". Gawain would set off on another verbal carnival of chivalric pomposity, and after another lengthy pause, Van Cleef would say "Isat so?". And so it would go on.

Which I think perfectly illustrates the basic difference between Knights and Cowboys. They may initially seem similar, but when it comes down to it, Cowboys are knights without the bullshit.

Cowboys don't need a retinue of men-at-arms or a ridiculously unwieldy selection of weaponry and armour. They don't need to spend hours pledging allegiance to people or reiterating their oaths of chivalry. In fact they barely ever need so speak more than eight words at a time.
But they still get the goddamn job done.

Also of course, as has been pointed out, Knights fight for feudal overlords. Cowboys fight for the people.

10:00 / 01.08.03

If knights are so damned impressive, how come there wasn't one in The Village People then, eh? eh?

10:12 / 01.08.03

I'm not sure whether this settles the argument or adds to the confusion

We're The Great Old Ones Now

10:23 / 01.08.03

Cass:

Finally. It never fails. Say something stupid enough and someone will come up with something brilliant just so they can spank you with it.

Knights vs. Cossacks! Which are you?

I'm a Cossack.

Anyway, aside from the fact that you were trampling my vodka-swilling lunacy beneath your iron-booted knightly feet, you made the point for me - this about exciting and telling differences in style and world-view. Cowboys vs. Horse Grenadiers has it, but it's not as exciting as Knights vs. Cossacks!

Xoc:

You are my hero.

Cash:

In no way does that make it better, except to point out that the dividing line between knight and cowboy is narrow. Which is he?

10:39 / 01.08.03

Which is he?

Okay, he's called a Knight, but I would accept that calling a 3 pronged digging implement a spade doesn't stop it from being a fork. But doesn't the fact that he's 'big in Germany' tell you something? Who was it who rampaged across Lithuania creating mayhem? The Teutonic Cowboys?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

12:16 / 01.08.03

No one rampages like us Cossacks.

However:

David was the perfect actor for the role of the agent Michael Knight, who was the hero with the leather jacket, the cowboy boots and full of cool sayings.

Cowboy boots? And how often have we seen Michael in a stand-off with the villain, high-noon stylee? Yes, I know that could also be a joust - although they tend to be accompanied by mexican showdown music and tumbleweeds rather than madrigals - but that could equally be part of my original point that knights and cowboys are too similar for this to work.

Here's an interesting thing, though: Kitt and Karr do behave like Knights; they smash into one another as a way of attacking (note the black vs. white thing going on). And while Michael has no trouble with breaking the law (a distinctly un-Knightly trait, but a very cowboy-ish one), Kitt is the soul of propriety. So have we got a Cowboy riding a knightly steed? And isn't that the point of the show?

12:37 / 01.08.03

I was afk while this whole thing was going on, but you dudburn carbetbaggers is talkin a lot of nonsense. Yer splittin the hairs on a pig's ass.

The Q = Original Cowboy

13:34 / 01.08.03

afwotam wrote: "Knight:
Pros
Pretty much invincible on a horse, chivalry, titled and landed.
Cons
Pretty much useless on his own two legs, titled and landed."

That is absolute rubbish......knights were incredibly adept at foot combat. Take a look through any 15th century fighting manual and you'll see a ton of joint locks, strikes and grappling moves. I would hazard a guess that most of their training revolved around foot combat.

14:12 / 01.08.03

Absolutely Helmschmied. As this 15th Century Austrian or Swiss fighting manual shows, they could fucking handle themselves mano a mano.

Sam, do you seriously think a Cossack could stand a minute in this House of Pain?

14:38 / 01.08.03

Give a Cossack enough vodka, and he'll stand anything.

Actually, I'm serious about this, I think Cossacks *were* Knights, weren't they? For the Czars?

Hmm. This page describes an archetypal "Cossack-knight" named Mamai. And this Russian Army page paints the Cossacks as a self-sustaining group of knightly orders... half an ethnicity, half a unit of cavalrymen. They describe the Zaporojie Cossacks as the last order of knights in the world.

----

I think Rizla might have the best point about Cowboy/Knight distinctions, though.

"Isat so?"

Heheheheh!

We're The Great Old Ones Now

15:05 / 01.08.03

You're kidding, right? Cossacks and wrestling...

I think cossacks were knights on the basis that if you're the ruler of a country filled with violent, drunken luncatics on horseback, it's considerably more fun to give them a job than it is to mess with them...

A

15:33 / 01.08.03

All's I know is- those Cossacks could motherfucking dance.

16:51 / 01.08.03

Yeah, here, this image comes off a long list of "weapons and armor" on http://www.cossackweb.com:

it's worth cruising around that site - lots of information & cool pictures.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

18:49 / 01.08.03

Interesting! And yet, when I think of Cossacks, I think of bearded loons in tight pants waving cavalry sabres and laughing the kind of laugh which gets you arrested in many Scandanavian countries (possibly because they have experience with what happens after Cossacks have finished laughing that kind of laugh).

Thus we have an opposition between Knights, who are noble, serious, genteel, and above all courtly; and Cossacks, who are rowdy, vibrant, quick-tempered, and above all elemental.

This is what's at the heart of the ninja/pirate thing, after all - a conflict of core values: boistrous buccaneering vs. elegant lethality. I was trying to identify another, and I can't find one in 'Cowboys vs. Knights'. Anyone?

18:39 / 02.08.03

As I suggested:

bombastic pomposity vs. down to earth straight talk

19:00 / 02.08.03

Dadgummit, you greenhorn muleskinners, I've had about enough of this. Buffalo Bill was as courtly as the Prince of Prussia and 'e sat down to tea with royalty over in yon England. Cowboys are the Knights, Ninjas, Pirates, and whatever else you can think of of the Wild West, and they have been known to venture abroad. For any quality you name, there is a Cowboy to match it.

Ruthlessness? The Man with No Name.
Robbery and derring-do? Jesse James.
Quiet competence? Emmet from Silverado.
And so on.

Any of you hotfooted sidewinders ever read any Larry McMurty? D'yall even stand up to make water? Welcome to the 19th Century, damn yer eyes.

22:31 / 02.08.03

C'mon, dudes, cowboys have so much more fun than po-faced knights tilting at windmills and singing sonnets for Eleanor of Aquitaine. Los vaqueros have it all (incl. optional moustache):
1. Big hats
2. Bandanas
3. Waistcoats
4. Chaps
5. Well worn jeans, despite the chaps
6. Sexy boots
7. Lariat!

and with No 7 they can do this:

8. Campfires, to sit at of an evening, warbling Cowboy Junkies songs, philosophising and farting, while effortlessly whipping up something cordon bleu:

Oh yes. I think so. Keep them dogies rollin'!

22:45 / 02.08.03

plus
they sure love their cows:

and their macho cowboy buddies:

and their fragrant but feisty frontier women (frustratingly few in prairie parts though):

who can be cowboys too:

Knights, pah! Fie upon your pointy sticks and tin helmets!

23:01 / 02.08.03

Darn tootin, Xoc. You set right yere by me and have some pemmican, chickory coffee, and a fine cigarilla. You could even fetch some of that Tennessee sour mash from Ol' Vicor's saddlebags, but let's just take a dip of it. We got a long ride to Tuscon and we don't want go dry afore we git thar. Cain't spend all our pesos in the saloons if'n we want to raise our own head of cattle some day.

23:21 / 02.08.03

Though I feel I should add that Cowboys are not better than knights or ninjas or pirates or whatever. I'm saying they are the evolutionary product of all those--the Cowboy contains all the properties of its forebears. If you really want to know, the Superhero's at the top of the food chain. But Cowboys are just more stylish.

11:38 / 03.08.03

the Superhero's at the top of the food chain.

fuck that.

I think the Man With No Name could take on the best of em, heat vision or no..

14:08 / 03.08.03

"The pellet with the poison's in the Flagon with the Dragon, the Chalice with the palace has the brew that is true"

Knights clearly.

20:09 / 03.08.03

Rizla, you might be right about that. I was just spitballing.

00:08 / 04.08.03

I have to agree.

I'm a little surprised at Rizla's backing of ye cowboys, though. Part of the appeal of knights (and, yes, there's little in the way of an edge between the two) is the fact that knights are wonderful and passionate yet don't quite cut the mustard. They are overly verbose, often romantically doomed and (if that's not enough) get butchered regularly in fights (kind of, um, like pirates). The Man With No Name could take columns of them out, but that's not the point, shurely?

A

01:19 / 04.08.03

Xoc- "If knights are so damned impressive, how come there wasn't one in The Village People then, eh? eh?"

I propose we start a Barbelith version of the Village People, containing a Viking, a Ninja, a Pirate, a Knight, a Cossack, and Zorro. We'd take the world by storm, that's for sure.

02:04 / 04.08.03

We'll if we're starting a boy band I want to be either the Lumberjack or Giant Killer Robot!

A

03:12 / 04.08.03

Who would win in a fight- Paul Bunyan, or a Giant Killer Robot?

08:52 / 04.08.03

I'm a little surprised at Rizla's backing of ye cowboys, though.

It was a tough decision.

But ya pays ya money, ya takes ya choice.

And I've watched a lot of westerns..

(a Barbelith mutant version of the Village People is a tremendous idea, btw - imagine the crazed dances that lot could come up with..)

11:30 / 04.08.03

Young man, there's a place you can go
I said, young man, when you're short on your dough
You can post there, and I'm sure you will find
Many ways to have a good time

They have everything for men to enjoy
You can hang out with all the boys...

A

12:01 / 04.08.03

My God, man! That's beautiful! That should be on a t-shirt.

Whisky Priestess

15:45 / 04.08.03

Xoc, did that take you five hours of dedicated research and tweaking, or are you just brilliant? Either way you have my respect.

But for me it's Knights all the way. They weren't so genteel as everyone seems to think, plus "Cowboys fight for the people?" My arse. Cowboys fight for themselves, their dead friend (optional) and the favours of the town whore in that order.

14:45 / 05.08.03

No, like all really good Hollywood heroes, Cowboys always claim to be in it for the money, but they always end up helping out the townspeople or the settlers.. (except in unique cases where they abuse that trust and turn out to be bad cowboys - see Red River or High Plains Drifter.)

Check out Clint reuniting that family and telling them to get the hell out of the way, and then taking the heat for killing the guards, in A Fistful of Dollars. Or all those pictures where John Wayne reluctantly takes on the bandits cos they're picking on good honest farming folk..

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