This was an interesting show, and in my view extremely kinky, too. What a hodge-podge of values. Athlete superstars 3000 years ago. Whew. I think I probably would have enjoyed it, what with the virgins and all. I bet that female Borg is a virgin, and would do pretty well in these games, even the Pancroteon. I would sure be watching that one, if she entered, where the contestants are all naked. I wonder if they had a mud version.

Tarzan, of course, would triumph in every contest. As are you, I happen to be reading TOA. Although ERB wrote "Princess" first, I always reagard TOA as his masterpiece, and find myself still moved by some of the love stuff, being as it is the springboard of his romantic plots in the books. The passage where Jane is thinking about Tarzan, after Clayton does his Tangor-like bashing of the ape-man is one of my favorites:

"Slowly she turned and walked back to her cabin. She tried to imagine her wood-god by her side in the saloon of an ocean liner. She saw him eating with his hands, tearing his food like a beast of prey, and wiping his greasy fingers on his thighs. She shuddered.

She saw him as she introduced him to her friends -- uncouth, illiterate-- a boor; and she winced.

She had reached her room now, and as she sat upon the edge of her bed of ferns and grasses, with one hand resting upon her rising and falling bosom, she felt the hard outlines of the man's locket beneath her waist.

She drew it out, holding it in the palm of her hand for a moment with tear-blurred eyes bent upon it. Then she raised it to her lips, and crushing it there buried her face in the soft ferns, sobbing.

"Beast?" she murmured. "Then Heaven make me a beast; for, man or beast, I am yours."

This passage, to me, actually gets better after one has read all the books, and knows how pure and powerful is the love between Jane and Tarzan. It represents the unqualified love of a woman for a powerful man; and the love of one honorable creature for another. It also sets a tone for all the loves which ERB has in his books. I alway find it an extremely powerful and moving passage. It is representative of the absolute values, including unrestrained love, which are characteristic of ERB's heroes, and certainly captured this reader, for about the fifth time.

Tarak; man or beast, Tarzan will always be for me, too.