Magnum

It's well known on here that I'm not the biggest fan of WWE these days, but the comments on here and Twitter piqued my interest and I've spent the last hour or so catching up with YouTube videos. I have to say, I thought the endings of Summerslam and RAW were some really good, well-done angles. Having Orton, Triple H and the McMahons as heels again just seems so much more natural! The biggest compliment I can pay it is it's the sort of angle that got me back into wrestling in time for the Attitude Era the last time I stopped watching for any sort of sustained period.

 

The new belt looks good, too. I can't see myself getting back into it properly, but I'll certainly be keeping an eye on those highlight videos over the next few weeks.

I loved Buffy when I was younger, but haven't had much desire to revisit it in the last 7 or 8 years (though that might have something to do with being sick of it after writing about it for my Media dissertation). It's not exactly compromising the quality of the list when we've already got soaps stinking it up, though.

A couple of photos from a trip to Copenhagen last week. When the old museum curator blokey at the Viking exhibit noticed me eyeing the sword and shield on the wall and asked if I'd like to hold them, I don't think he could have envisaged the extent to which it would turn me into Tom Hanks in Big:

 

 

 

Subtitled?

 

Yep.

Anyone who loves The Shield and hasn't already should really check out the French show Braquo. It's the only crime show currently running that comes close to the tone and excitement of its predecessor, IMO, and its protagonist is basically Vic Mackey with a tache and a houseboat.

Luther is great. It's ridiculous in the same way as Braquo is ridiculous (and The Shield could be at times), but I love it nonetheless. Stringer Bell is one of those actors I could probably watch reading a phone book, I'd probably even sit through a full scene of one of those Family Affairs episodes he was in. That woman who's trying to bring him down is one of the most loathsome characters on TV at the minute too, following in a distinguished line of absolute cunts who work for IA after Forrest Whittaker in The Shield and Vogele in Braquo.

Pragmatic stuff from Joey Ryan there, sounds like he understands the game he's in.

 

"PG Sux n Cena sux" attitude era clingers

 

That's right, I've been really vocal on this forum about my hated of Cena

 

 

Ditto, but The King's being intentionally facetious there, and I can't really be arsed to argue the semantics of it. I think the truth of the matter for me now is I don't really care enough about wrestling to invest that much time in it anymore, and I'm over the stage of getting annoyed about blown pushes or angles that don't really go anywhere. I'm probably a casual fan more than anything else now - I like wrestling as an easy watch that I can dip in and out of, but I'm not going to be spending any money on t-shirts or PPVs or live tickets anytime soon. The only people I really give a toss about in WWE are the ones who turn up for a month or so around Wrestlemania and then fuck off again, but with TNA, I can see the people I liked when I was a bigger fan of wrestling most weeks, and I can reasonably work out what's happening without having to swot up on months of Youtube videos or NXT highlights. So TNA suits what I'm after these days, but if most of the fanbase are like me, I can see why it might not be that profitable.

I'd hope it's not going to come down to WWE buying TNA - I really can't stand WWE these days and TNA is about the only thing that keeps me even nominally interested in modern wrestling.

Yep, I missed it too, but it's just redoubled my commitment to get the books over and done with before the next series so that it's once again safe to have both eyes and an internet connection. I posted a few weeks ago that I was finding it impossible to even google a GoT character or song without blundering into some spoiler, but it seems to me that the show's become so big now it's gone beyond that. The last fucking massive GoT spoiler I got was 2 comments down on a Youtube video of The Ultimate Fighter that someone linked in OT* (innocently, I've no doubt) last week - just some cunt posting 'X kills X with a X' on completely unrelated videos for the hell of it.

 

*That's a heads-up, btw - in case you're catching up on OT threads from the last few weeks, under no circumstances click on the Rampage Jackson 'Titties' video linked in there.

Her wig isn't particularly convincing is it? Not as bad as Daario Naharis' though.

Strangely though, it makes her about a million times more attractive than she looks with her own hair. You can all fuck off with your hate, Daenerys Targaryen bossily shouting at people in High Valyrian is about the hottest thing on TV these days But yeah, an anti-climatic wrap up there. I know it's hard to follow the sack of Astapor in the fourth episode, but they could've made the taking of the last two cities a lot more dramatic - even saving last week's Dany scenes for this week if need be, given they weren't especially needed in last week's episode. A minor quibble really, it's been a great series on the whole.

Unforgiven is probably the best film he's been in, but The Conversation is his acting masterpiece.

I'd go along with this. The Conversation is one of those films that I don't particularly enjoy, but appreciate on a creative level nonetheless. He's so un-Gene Hackman-like in it.I'm a huge fan of Mississippi Burning. The scene where he slaps Brad Dourif around the barber's shop while yelling 'DID YOU SMILE?!?' is one of the most satisfying I've seen.

I thought 2007 was decent - it was the first year I properly got into TNA, and the little Christian/AJ/Steiner/Tomko stable was my favourite thing in wrestling around that time. That and the LAX/3D feud and Bobby Roode's pound shop Ted Dibiase act probably kept me interested in wrestling at a point when WWE TV really started to go to shit without the Edge/Cena feud to save it. My least favourite period of TNA was probably that point between the end of the MEM and the start of Hogan/Bischoff. They started throwing loads of shit against the wall, but it was all shit that smelled really shitty to me - Matt Morgan, Hernandez in his horrible little green and white shorts, and serious Eric Young and a load of little Japanese blokes seemed to be getting all the TV time. Wrestling in general was just awful around that point.

Also, here is another question for you all. How long was Robert Baratheon King for? In the first episode of the first season, Jamie has not long slain the 'Mad King', right? Arent they at his funeral in one of the opening few scenes? So Robert took over from him? And then died a few weeks later? How much time was meant to have passed between Ned arriving in Winterfell and getting his head chopped off? Actually, how much time (roughly) is meant to have passed since the first episode to the point we are at now?

He was king at least as long as Joffrey's been alive. I think Tywin Lannister married Cersei to Robert shortly after he took the throne to cement the Lannisters' place in the new hierarchy. You also have to factor in that Robert's gone from an apparent fine figure of a man when he was leading the rebellion to a complacent fat mess over the course of his time on the throne. I reckon he was king for 15-20 years when we meet him in the first series.EDIT: The funeral that we see (if we're thinking of the same one) is of Jon Arryn, Robert's original 'Hand of the King' before Ned.

Again, I've never read any of the books, so this is just my own silly rambling and posturing, but does anybody reckon there is any possibility that Rob isnt actually Ned's son at all? And that he is actually a bastard child of King Robert Baratheon who for some reason unknown at the time, Ned took in as his own. The reason I was asking about whether Robb Stark or Jon Snow was older was because I was trying to see where Jon's birth fits in with the timeline. It could be that Jon Snow was King Robert's first bastard son, and that he asked Ned to take him into his care for fear of bringing shame on his family name, or that Jon mother died, and Robert was prepared to leave the baby to die, until Ned's moral compass kicked in and he took in Jon as his own. Whatever. Whatever the reason, somehow Ned 'adopted' Robert's bastard son. Anyone think there could be something to this? I can see John eventually making his way south, ending up crossing paths with Melisandr

And that's just trolling spoilers. It's way easy to forget yourself and blunder into something. Even Googling a character's name because you want to find out the actor or something will bring up the autocomplete. If you're worried about spoilers, you're playing with fire every time you click on a related -- supposedly spoiler-free -- discussion, or Youtube video, or anything at all.

A million times this. I blundered into a spoiler about Robb dying just by doing a google search for a 'Rains of Castamere' guitar tab, and even having the show liked on Facebook is a hazard. I took the leap into bookworld a couple of months ago, and now I've more or less caught up with the series I'm just going to blast through them over the summer so I can satisfy my inner geek with online discussion.

Was thinking last night, I never trusted that fucking Roose Bolton from when I first saw him. Knew there was something dodgy about him, probably because he has proper Tywin-eyes and manner about him.

Definitely. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the actor playing him is far too sinister looking and, for want of a better word, generally epic to just be a straightforward bit-part player. He (and the Boltons in general) come off creepy as fuck in the books from the start, too. I'm not even up to the Red Wedding in the books yet, but I've suspected a heel turn from him because of the way he's been made out from start.

I was applauding at the amount of guts she showed mouthing off to the Hound, who is one of the more puzzling characters I've seen on a TV screen. One minute he has no qualms about killing anyone, next minute he's saving Arya from the chaos from the wedding fallout. I vaguely recall him saying something a while back about getting a reward for her return- but all the same, he seems to have a soft spot for her.

The Hound's just a good bloke. I don't think it's entirely mercenary for him, because he was just as protective of Sansa over the last couple of seasons. As much as he makes out he's a miserable nihilist, it's pretty much always been his job to be a protector, and it seems to have become a bigger part of his identity once he gets a chance to be a protector to someone who's not a complete cunt. This series is swervetacular, so he might well turn out to be a twat as well, but at the moment he's in that small group with Dany, Snow, Arya and Tyrion for me as someone who just might give the arseholes some comeuppance eventually.

Fucking... Arya!!! Maisie Williams is a fab little actress, she is doing such a brilliant job.

 

Annoyed me how fucking slow and useless she was at letting Grey Wind out of the kennel, mind. Like a doomed blonde running up the stairs in a horror film.

Well, my instincts were right about a certain character having a bigger role to play (is that vague enough?).

 

To use a wrestling analogy, this series is fucking great at building some seriously strong heels. I really need to see some payoffs soon though, it's all getting a bit 'Triple H in 2000' at the minute...

* Russell Peters - one of the dullest, laziest, shittiest comedians I've ever seen. Yeah, let's have some more pointing at Indians in the audience. Fuck off.

 

Wait, there's another comedian called fucking Russell? How has this happened? It's not even that common a name these days, I don't think I've ever met a bloke called that in everyday life. I suppose Brand is OK on occasion, but the rest of them are irredeemably shit.

Sounds like a bit of an irony explosion on both sides, to be honest.

I actually felt last night was a return to form after what felt like an episode of Four Weddings last week. I thought the Theon scene was uncomfortable to watch, in a good way, mainly because of what we've found out about the torturer's penchant for flaying and the early suspicion that the two girls were going to be part of a horrible hallucination. He is a tit though, and although I don't enjoy seeing him get tortured quite as much as Keith does, he's definitely earned a bit of painful contrition.

 

I think the bloke who plays Lord Bolton is great. He's got such a slimy malevolence about him, he's like a cut-price Tywin Lannister, and I like the way he's hedging his bets with both the Starks and Lannisters. You just know he has the potential to be a real nasty cunt - I'm only at the end of the second book now so I don't know how it turns out (nor do I want to), but I have the feeling he has a potential to be a much bigger character.

A lot of my favourites have been mentioned already - Bennett, Mitchum, Drago. I'm a huge fan of this guy, though:

 

 

There was a thread a few weeks back about celebrities and fictional characters who'd make good wrestlers. Gaston would be a perfect wrestling heel. Vain. Cheats to win. A big unit, though not averse to playing the chickenshit heel when the moment calls for it. Best of all, he's 100% clean, achieving his blue-chip physique the old fashioned way, with about a million eggs a week.

Speaking of odd favourites, although I'm rooting for Dany to get the big win in the series, as far as individual characters go, The Hound is one I've enjoyed more than just about any other over the last series and a half. Very much looking forward to seeing how the animosity between him and his brother eventually pans out.

I really don't care for Bobby Roode's new haircut. He has such a great look, I can't see any advantage in making himself look like Val Venis when he was shit.