The Gaffer

Yeah Briscoe, Hangman and the Storm/Purrazzo stuff was the highlight of an otherwise quiet Colliders. I really hope they have the same zealous trust in Purrazzo as a long term project as I do because to me she's an absolute star in a way the crowd reactions aren't quite telling all the way at the moment. In terms of stature and attitude she could/should be their new Britt Baker, only one who is far better in the ring. 

Tell you what though, that Bounty Hunter fella leaves me cold. It's been awhile since a gimmick actually made me feel a bit embarrassed for the person portraying it. I got it in 2003 when Spanky became Smackdown's jobber-in-chief but that was sort of part of the deal and I mostly had that reaction because I was 12, started reading Powerslam, and thought he should have been pushed to main event by WrestleMania XX. 

He's just goofy as all hell. It's like a bloke playing dress up at a kid's birthday, but I don't think the gimmick's meant to be in on that aspect of it? Some of the reactions have been pin drop silent too even by Saturday night standards. 

10 minutes ago, BrodyGraham said:

The hubbub over The Crow remake is fucking ridiculous. I loved the original when I was 16, but it's aged terribly, bears little relation to it's source material and pretty much exists solely as an awkward memorial to Brandon Lee.

Does Sarsgaard look a bit weird to me a 43 year old man and not a moody teenager? Yes Garth. How does he look to the film's target market? Dunno Garth, ask the Goth kids down the park.

One thing I do know is that Alex Proyas can fuck right off. Imagine mocking someone else's film when the last thing you did of consequence was Gods of Egypt. Get to fuck!

Definitely agree with you on Proyas and people having a laugh off Skarsgård's look probably missing that it's probably going to appeal to a younger generation. 

I still love The Crow though. It came out at the perfect time and perfect age for me and is pretty close to The Matrix in terms of being a stylistic, moody shit sandwich of everything I found cool at the time. Unlike The Matrix, it's admittedly aged horribly, but I'll always have a soft spot for it and think the atmosphere of it is still genuinely stunning in parts. 

It's also got that bit where mid-revenge on his girlfriend's killers, he takes some time out to play guitar solos on the roof of his gaf in the pissing rain for a bit. 

It's like a new Rolling Stones or AC/DC album. It's just an excuse to tour the hits again, or in this case bring out part ten of his autobiography which covers the build up to the match in maddeningly intricate, touchy detail. 

51 minutes ago, CharlesTuckerTheThird said:

I've just seen the trailer for the remake of The Crow. I'm a huge fan of the original and the trailer had done absolutely nothing to inspire any confidence that the remake will be as good or better.

Does this exist yet? I'm getting nothing. 

Yeah, no, this Rock character is magnificent. Couldn't care less how actually insecure the man is. How much of it's a work. It's feeding beautifully into the on screen presentation either way, which is the only element of it I care about. It's 2024 and we've got a proper top tier, big time evolution of his gimmick that makes complete sense. 

Rock's awesome, Cody's winning whether he wants to or not, and the Rock/Roman program next year will be molten hot and something people actually want to see once the Bloodline knock seven bucks of shit out of the guy and he pivots back to mega face in a "For a minute there I lost myself" promo. They've lucked into the happiest of accidents here. A month ago seems like four years ago. 

Cody's going to end up actually delivering a baby by the time WrestleMania 41 rolls around. 

4 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said:

The other reason I dislike IDM apart from the use of the word intelligent is because it's an extension of the simplification that is lumping all dance music in to 'EDM' which does the opposite of what you say, because it's broad and shit.

Agreed, isn't EDM more of a stateside thing though that came much later? 

I think over there it is a bit of a lump in but I've always perceived it as that millon-a-night-residency, anaemic, "Wait for the drop" style club music for beautiful people. Tunes that always have vocal samples telling me watch out for the bass, but there's fuck all bass. 

So I definitely do take a certain classification from EDM, and it's one to avoid! 

Had a good whack off that playlist walking through town there. This is my favourite new find from it:

Probably an unpopular opinion - and I'll preface this by saying calling any genre of music 'intelligent' is obviously a bit naff - but subgenre classifications are a really handy way of identifying and sharing what you like, and most musicians are being mildly annoying when they complain about it. To quote Andrew O'Neill in his great History of Heavy Metal book, Lars mate your band has the word 'metal' in it.

Goth's pretty notorious for it too. It's full of baritone, mac coat misery merchants who'll go off on one if you drop the 'G' word. I kind of get it. But metal's the worst. Metal bands who try and say they're not metal can do one.  

Orton and Paul eating each other's slick offence and gurning for camera cuts for 10 minutes is the exact place, time and two guys for a Hollywood-WWE style match and I'm there for it. 

My nitpick's gonna be Swerve's new comic book style entrance graphics. They're at complete odds with the character he's portraying. Proper Super Cena circa-2009 stuff. 

Nice bit of background faff if anyone's looking to Sting theme their weekend a bit before Revolution:

21 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

I actually tend to find most people these days don't mock it as much as they used to.

Maybe because I tend to know people around my age who in one way or another, grew up with it, and are still interested in what's going on.

One mate I have who has zero interest anymore loves hearing about the old returns or people dying (that sounds weird) and on the whole, I find most people are interested. 

Yeah that's my experience largely as well. It's become just another fandom now, in a world where it's perfectly ordinary and even somewhat expected for grown adults to have one or two nerdy fandoms. 

For all the good fun in some of it - and it's not nearly as bad as it used to be - the biggest slagging I see the the idea of being into wrestling still get is on here. And it's not even close. 

On 2/26/2024 at 12:40 PM, Loki said:

Speaking of...

Every year like clockwork he rises from the dead, this time with bloody Holland in tow.

The two uncles at the wedding who come up to you at the bar and whisper if there's any sniff going about. 

26 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

What though? What am I watching or who am I engaging with where I know what they've done? That's the line. We all know. There's no mystery here. We just want to use that so we can watch men in pants roll around. If I stick a Russell Brand DVD on tonight, then I know. And I'd be choosing to ignore everything he may have done. If I buy a loaf of bread and the CEO of W*rburton's is a paedo, then I don't. I'll mask that in case I get sued. Other bread is available.

Did Houchen tell you to say that?

Russell Brand - okay, I'm sure there's a team of writers in there somewhere - but Russell Brand for all intents and purposes is a singular personality. The uh...brand...and all the revenue and interest it produces can be attributed back to that one guy and benefits mostly that one guy, so I don't think this is a great comparison. A better comparison is probably Hollywood as a whole. It's going nowhere, even if people psychologically probably should just get over their absolute need for moving pictures. 

I think the size of the WWE in particular will mean it's not always that cut and dry. And  to be honest your 'line' chiefly seems to come off as "I used to do what you guys do, now I don't, please hear about it loads." I'm not for a second disputing your merit or right to do that because the counterbalance is clearly needed, but it is what it is. 

Granted you could try and proselytize to as many fans as possible to ditch WWE entirely and watch the most moral vanguard indie out there, but you'd be howling into the void. The company is wrestling for all intents and purposes and that's why it's not cut and dry. Because the argument no longer becomes about watching Russell Brand, or listening to Gary Glitter, or eating a different brand of bread. The argument becomes about "Can or should you drop one of your primary interests/hobbies/form of escapism".

You've invariably tried to reduce it to the most base, stupid description possible to make light of that but it's still a massive form of escapism/joy/entertainment/bonding for millions of people. That's why it's not cut and dry. The industry you suggest they shouldn't support if they care about the welfare of the women in it is full of women who want the industry to be supported. That's why it's not cut and dry. And we can go back and forth over the credibility of a lot of these points, but the umbrella really is that it's not cut and dry. You've not 'figured it out', with the rest of us playing catch up because we watched the Royal Rumble. 

The industry is going nowhere and neither is people's enjoyment of it. Not supporting it is a discussion - and you should have it - but there's another discussion that can run in parallel to that. That's the discussion that - if we're being honest - the industry isn't going anywhere and so the main way it's going to have to make big changes positively is from within. And that people still engaged with the industry will be the prime movers and influencers in that. And that that sort of should happen because as much as wrong'uns still make money from it, thousands of really great people still feed their families from it too and don't particularly want your dreams of wrestling just popping out of existence like a soap bubble to come to fruition. 

Vice better be doing a 40 minutes on that Clubland fest. I'd go but there's not enough magnesium in the world that would get me over it, I think. Had a proper laugh at the clarification in Heather Small: The Voice of M People. 

Me and my mate went to watch a building get demolished and I finally got my 15 minutes "Local idiot has his say" moment from the local newspaper:

27 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

I'd like to donate and not join Paid. Is that an option?

Welcome to the Paidonts! 

To be fair I got automatic membership because Moo logs in like once a decade or whatever the fuck. 

I know nothing about rugby but - even though the match was in Dublin - Cork was covered in Welsh fans yesterday and they are throughly excellent people. 

25 minutes ago, air_raid said:

It’s THE stop between the Rumble and Mania. It’s supposed to be good.

Yep. I always associate a boom period with your February PPV being hot, as great angles trip and fall over themselves heading toward the big one. 

1999 - Better than 'Mania. Hot cage match main event and very decent Mankind/Rock blowoff. 

2000 - Better than 'Mania'. Foley's retirement match and a solid undercard. 

2001 - Better than 'Mania on any other year. One of the best B-Shows ever. 

2002 - Get rid of Hogan/Rock and it's better than 'Mania. nWo debut. It was shit, but still big at the time. 

2003 - Card on paper might actually be stronger than 'Mania. Rock/Hogan II and Bischoff/Austin are two money matches in this era. 

2004 - One match show, but what a match. It had the feelgood moment of the year, which an eleven hour WrestleMania that year in which Shawn Michaels and Triple H wrestled to a no contest in the main event failed to deliver. 

Then it's mostly shit. But yeah. This was one of my favourite PPV slots for many a year. 

Yeah Sting/Triple H was fine by me as well. The commentary was dodgy and it was full of the usual WWE-jingoisms to the point where it's basically just Triple H Vs. Sting if they could have done it in the middle of the invasion angle, but it was essentially just a segment in isolation consciously designed at the time to sell the Monday Night Wars series they were flagshipping the Network's original content with. It was sort of meant to be a big goofy walk in museum full of mud slinging, fronted by two old farts who didn't need it as a career making, respect earning booking. 

The triple cage match. Always. 

I genuinely think it's the most visually impressive looking wrestling gimmick match ever. The Slamboree match is perfectly respectable and somewhat of a minor miracle given the circumstances, but it's obviously lumped into WrestleCrap lore because of the Arquette stuff. 

Then you have Wargames 2000. If it doesn't bring a grin to your face that this thing made it to cable TV then you and me are probably very different kinds of people and yes, I'm confident in using this as a litmus test to prove it. A simulacra of everything wrong with 2000 WCW distilled down to its purest concentrate. It deserves to exist and I'm glad it does. 

Didn't know where else to put this - definitely not the good YouTube thread - but it looks like Hogan's onto the full, redemptive Christianity-as-lifestyle trip now. Was bound to happen eventually I guess:

Hope for the sake of Handsome Hangman's run that it is a work. It'd make sense, too. In-the-moment sensitivities and all that but surely it makes no sense at all to actually tell the cameraman stop shooting your real pain on a show where you're pretending to be in real pain all the time. 

Also, injury angles rule! Heels wearing protection they absolutely don't need and clobbering their opponents with it will never get old. Especially when they go full Ray from Trailer Park Boys man-in-the-chair on it and act completely incapacitated other than when they're scheming.