BomberPat

Fuck, that one hurts.

His stuff with Can is as good as anything ever recorded, and his never-ending improv tour was fantastic. I met him at ATP in 2007, and he was a real class act - wheelchair-bound at the time, but just super enthused to be around music and watching as much as he could.

I agree, I just don't trust them not to change their mind at the eleventh hour

17 hours ago, JNLister said:

Biggest weakness is that they don't always nail the difference between "winning the world title in a wrestling match is a work" and "being made world champion in the business is a competitive activity".

I haven't seen the film yet, but was talking to friends who had seen it, and that was their main criticism, and I think it comes down to directors not really knowing how to tell stories within the framework of a wrestling match without treating it as real; Cassandro was similar in basically presenting wrestling as real, and trying to tell years' worth of story across one match. 

17 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

He’s claimed to have witnessed, and tried to attach himself to a bunch of murders and high profile crimes over the years.

This is one of the reasons I think he might be schizophrenic rather than just a conspiracy theorist - I've known a few, and those who went down the conspiracy rabbit hole often did so with full conviction that they were personally being targeted or otherwise implicated in it all.

On top of that Arkansas is rife with Clinton conspiracies, that would definitely have indulged the worst of that, and then shoot interviewers played him for laughs and encouraged him and egged him on.

13 hours ago, Frankie Crisp said:

Imagine if Reigns goes over, though.

I think it's worth putting money on, tbh.

Sean Oliver tried to defend it by saying they did it to make fun of the Jericho situation, without addressing why it might have upset people, or how inappropriate their reaction was. 

He also believed that Chris Benoit was set up, because Daniel was actually Vince's son, and they had the family killed to cover all of that up, and that's barely scratching the surface. I honestly think he's a paranoid schizophrenic who was taken advantage of by the shoot interview mob.

yeah - some people here have suggested this is The Rock as heel authority figure, but I don't see it, and I don't see any scenario that doesn't end in Rock back being babyface by the RAW after 'Mania. Either he directly costs Reigns the belt, or does so accidentally, Reigns has Solo take Rock out on RAW the following night, writing him out long enough that he can return in time for whatever PPV they decide to do the match at. It may actually be more interesting to see Reigns turn face (which I think is in the works sometime after he loses the belt anyway) against heel Rock, but I don't see that being the direction they go in.

As for Rock as heel authority in general - the last thing WWE want is to be presenting the company itself as the heel again. It took them twenty years to get over that, and they're getting enough of it in real-life, it's in their best interests to babyface themselves as much as possible on TV. For people wanting to make this a Daniel Bryan vs. The Authority situation, none of that makes sense, and it's why this story doesn't make sense in the most fundamental way - Cody wasn't held back by the evil corporation, he wasn't robbed of his opportunity, he gave it up freely of his own volition, and then when he decided he wanted it back, the boss said, "yeah fair enough, you won the Royal Rumble after all". 

I once saw a Queen tribute band inexplicably play "Mr Blue Sky". Whenever you get stuff like that, a tribute act playing another band's song, or being a tribute to two different bands, it always feels like it was a compromise to convince one of the musicians to join.

16 hours ago, Loki said:

This is quite common - it’s the same thing as waking up just before your alarm goes off.

 It’s actually a trick your mind plays on you as it comes out of sleep where it reorders events.

 So what most likely happened is that your phone pinged which woke you up but in that state between sleeping and awake your mind reverses cause and effect.  It feels 100% real.

 

This is true and the most likely solution, but there's also the coincidence factor - the old, "oh, I was just thinking about this person and then seconds later they phoned me, how weird", when the reality is that you probably thought about them a hundred times and then they didn't phone you afterwards, but there's no reason at all that you would have noted or remembered that. How many times have you woken up and looked at your phone and not received a text immediately afterwards, or woken up and looked at your clock and realised that it's actually ages until your alarm? Bloody loads, but they're not worthy of note. It would be weirder if the entire time you had your alarm set for that time you never woke up right before it, given that's the time your body is accustomed to waking up. 

I always think similarly when I have to be up really early in the morning for any reason, I always feel like I wake up during the night more, but I think the most likely explanation is that I always wake up a few times during the night and get back to sleep, but because I know that this time I need to be up at a certain time, I'm more likely to check the time every time I wake up, so I'm just more aware of it.

I'm part of a group chat film-watching thing that started during lockdown, where everyone nominates a (usually bad) film on Prime or Netflix, and then one is picked at random to watch. Last night's was Double Team, the bonkers Tsui Hark directed Jean Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman vehicle. The movie is completely incomprehensible, weirdly tries to become The Prisoner about halfway through, Rodman vanishes for most of the film, and it culminates in a fight with a tiger and Mickey Rourke in a colisseum full of landmines. Five stars, no notes.

Anyway, there were no ads at all. 

1 hour ago, FLips said:

I think the whole thing is made worse by the reports that The Rock was only shoved into the main event because he bought his way in as part of his TKO deal. It's Hogan levels of bullshit politicking and it single-handedly nearly killed a two year Cody push that was almost killed last Wrestlemania.

I'm glad they've done a pivot but at what cost? Cody looks stupid, The Rock has been exposed as an arsehole, and Seth Rollins looks like a worthless secondary champ.

 

"At what cost" is entirely where I'm at with this. Is anybody in a better position now than they were when this mess all started? If the timeline going around is correct, and people knew that there was at least a plan in place for Rock/Roman as the main event yet they went with Cody winning the Rumble anyway, then did the pivot to Rock/Reigns, then seemingly back to Cody/Roman, who is benefiting from that? I like a bit of chaos and unpredictability in my wrestling as much as the next man, but you've got two clear potential stories here - Cody fulfilling his destiny, getting his revenge, and "finishing the story", or The Rock getting sick of Roman running roughshod over his own family and coming back to prove who the real "Head of the Table" is. If they fully committed to either one of those stories from the beginning, fantastic, they're both worthy Wrestlemania main events. But they didn't do that, they flip-flopped awkwardly between both of them. 

So now, assuming the match is Cody vs. Roman, then sure, maybe they've course-corrected to what a lot of people wanted, and it will keep the #WeWantCody crowd satisfied. Though if they're patting themselves on the back that they've done a "Yes Movement" there, it's a bit premature, given it was, what, a week of TV and the solution was, "oh yeah, he won the Royal Rumble, he can have the match if he wants it". Hardly Daniel Bryan fighting against all odds to earn his spot, is it? 

What's worse than that, though, is that they planted the very clear possibility of The Rock vs. Roman Reigns. If it was the plan all along to pivot back to Cody vs. Rock - which I don't believe for a second that it was - then you don't do it by teasing the prospect of another match that an awful lot of people are going to want to see. By making it a choice between both matches, all they've done is guarantee that they're going to be disappointing someone, when if they'd just committed to one match from the beginning, without floating the prospect of another, people would have got behind it. And the problem isn't just with this one match - it took them the better part of twenty years to get to a point where their fans are largely happy with what they are given, rather than questioning and rejecting everything, and they're risking throwing that all away, and for what? 

Admittedly, Wrestlemania builds are generally completely forgotten so long as the match and the highlight video end up looking good - "forget about Debra, she's a non-factor" - so maybe it's all nothing, but I doubt it. If we get a tag match, it smacks of The Rock coming back to fight Awesome Truth rather than holding off until the big Wrestlemania singles match.

Since going to two-night Wrestlesmania, WWE haven't yet really leaned into the possibility of telling coherent stories across both nights - Roman carrying two belts never translating into him defending one on each night - so I'm not convinced that they're going to do that here and have all the major players work a tag team match on night one. Partly because I don't see Roman Reigns or The Rock working two nights in a row, partly because they don't want to risk the prospect of any of those men getting injured on night one and costing them their main event, having to change direction again for night two, partly because you don't dilute the appeal of The Rock's return to wrestling by having him do it twice in one weekend even if he is physically capable of doing that. Now, it's a WWE under somewhat new creative direction, it's a theoretically McMahon-less Wrestlemania, and maybe they do think outside the box and do something like that, I just don't see it, nor do I think it's the right move.

The other thing with that tag team match is where does it leave Seth Rollins and his presumptive opponent? In the tag match, Rollins is the fourth most important man in the ring, and almost certainly there to take the fall, and that's not a position you want a "World Champion" to be in. It also means that he's a bit player in someone else's story, rather than doing anything to build to his own singles match on night two, unless they somehow find a way to crowbar Drew McIntyre or Gunther or whoever he's going to end up defending against into this presumptive tag match as well, just to make it even more of a mess, so that's someone else left looking like a spare prick. This, after a couple of weeks now of people on TV actively treating Rollins' title as a consolation prize, with no neutral or babyface voice of the promotion aside from Seth himself meaningfully arguing against that distinction. Now, I don't really give a fuck if Seth Rollins looks like an afterthought or not, but you'd think it's something that the promotion hoping to present him as a top star should care about.

tl;dr - nobody benefits from this build, everyone involved was in a better position at the Royal Rumble than they are in now 

She "retired" in the late '80s, but wrestles fairly regularly these days, especially for a woman in her 60s. I might be misremembering, but I think she had a serious health issue a few years back and basically said she wouldn't let it stop her doing what she wants, and that she wanted to keep wrestling until she physically couldn't. 

I expect they'll do a double whammy on that show - drop all the hints for Mercedes coming in, but then have Okada make his debut on the same show as more of a surprise

I think there was enough balance across the card at XIX; they weren't to know that Lesnar was on the way out within a year, they had Goldberg coming in, guys like Batista, Orton, Edge and Cena on the way up, as well as Guerrero and Benoit still being around, and Shawn Michaels might not have been quite full-time, but he wasn't as part-time as guys like Lesnar, 'Taker and Triple H became. So they could afford to do the big showcase matches like Rock/Austin and Vince/Hogan, while still at least believing that they were building up the next generation beneath them.

I'd say it was around 25/26 that it really started to change - that's when you're starting to get The Undertaker being a once-a-year attraction or not far from it, then 27, 28 and 29 are all built around The Rock vs. Cena, and after that you've got Lesnar back, Triple H going part-time, Batista at 30, Sting vs. Triple H at 31, Goldberg coming back in, and so on.

The most egregious for me was Wrestlemania 32. Shane McMahon booked to go toe-to-toe with The Undertaker in Hell In A Cell, The Rock fucking about, Triple H going thirty minutes in a main event that should have just been Reigns steamrolling him, Jericho going over AJ Styles, and bringing out Austin, Michaels and Foley to beat up The League Of Nations for no good reason - I remember that one particularly annoying me at the time, because they had a goofy heel jobber stable in The Social Outcasts who could have been fed to those guys for a cheap pop, rather than needlessly squashing established heels after a win. 

Lee Lard used to be a regular fixture at the hotel where I worked 90% of the wrestling shows I worked in Jersey, never went to see him though.

I saw a Rage Against The Machine tribute act a couple of weeks ago. I was thinking there were few bands less suited to the tribute act set-up than RATM, until they mentioned a gig with a Cypress Hill tribute band. They played all of Battle Of Los Angeles, and at one point did a "who remembers?" about buying it on CD, and asking people in the crowd where they bought it from, leading to him going, "oh yeah, HMV, who remembers HMV, yeah?". I don't know what it is, but I can't really picture Zack de la Rocha leading a crowd in fond reminisces of commerce.

My older brother was in a few bands when I was a kid, usually just different combinations of the same three or four blokes. Their drummer went on to be part of a reasonably successful death metal band, and guest with plenty more, while the bassist went on to play for ZU2, a U2 tribute act that used to play all over the world, he was getting gigs in Russia, South America, all over the place last time I spoke to him. No idea if they're still together, but they were one of my first gigs.

I mostly know Mojo from his collaborations with Jello Biafra - they did a fun cover of "Love Me I'm A Liberal" by Phil Ochs, which I actually knew before I ever heard the original. He was also inexplicably in the Mario Bros movie. 

Tove

The biopic of Tove Jansson, creator of The Moomins. All about her love life, her relationship to her art in terms of navigating being a serious painter but finding more commercial success from cartoons and illustrations that started out as idle doodles, and how her life and work intersect. She's someone I've read a lot about, so there wasn't really anything that could surprise me here, but also it means I could have very easily found fault in it and I really didn't, just a lovely little film.

and it's one for the Labour equivalent of this thread really, but Starmer's fucked it by trying to play the Tories at their own game on transphobia anyway. On one hand trans people hate him and the Labour Party for not doing enough for trans rights, for not censuring vocal transphobes within the party, for dialing back earlier commitments to protecting them, and for cosying up to churches that practice conversion therapy, but on the other hand, throwing them under the bus is hardly going to help him because Tories can still just say "lol what's a woman tho?" and people will still believe that he's cosying up to the evil transes, and the most extreme anti-trans nutters will go on making up conspiracy theories about him having a trans kid. 

Sunak has had the Commons laughing it up about the exact same punchline before. People aren't outraged that he'd say and believe something transphobic, they're outraged that he'd be so impolite to say it in front of an actual human being affected by transphobia in a very real way, rather than waiting to snicker about it behind her back. 

worst part is that I don't think it was a mistake. It'll get headlines, and people will be outraged, but a lot of the right-wing loons the Tories are banking on being the only people not completely abandoning them come the general election will say, "yeah, but he's not wrong, is he?". Transphobia is all the pricks have got left.

I find it mental how many wrestlers are bad at, or just don't get, tag psychology, because the first time I had the psychology of a singles match explained to me, instantly the way I visualised it was of thinking of the entire thing as a tag match with yourself. The heat/beatdown into a comeback is so much more visually apparent when that comeback is the hot tag and one person swapping places for the other, and the exchange of energy that comes with it. These days, I tend to think of a lot of wrestling matches in terms of motion and momentum, and a tag match just has more people in it that can be moving when the others aren't, so it can keep up that level of energy in ways that singles matches physically can't. 

yeah, I'm absolutely convinced Bret keeps up the Goldberg stuff because it amuses him way more than because he's bitter about it. He's a funny dude.

There's lightyears of difference between Fightful Select and the likes of Ringside News; the latter is an aggregation site that just wants the clickbait, Fightful tend to be pretty on top of things; they've been right way more often than wrong about major signings (to the point that I don't think they've got a signing wrong in recent years), clearly have inside sources at both major companies, and are careful about not reporting misinformation. If they're saying she has signed or is expected to sign, I'd believe it, as they're working on a lot more than just bullshitting something from an Instagram caption.

there was a really nice bit after Swerve namedropped Kofi Kingston, Prince Nana said something in (presumably) Asante as they're both Ghanaian. Would love to know what he said.

yeah, Flair was a formula guy because it's what it needed. And a lot of his formula is built around stuff that he can do with anyone, and relies on very little from the opponent - so if he turned up to an arena late, went straight from his car to the ring, and his opponent was a guy he'd never met before and who didn't speak English, he knows that he can still rely on the bump off the top rope, the running knee drop, the Flair flop, the begging off spots, all of that stuff that doesn't rely on the other guy knowing how to take it or having any particular skills. But it's the skill-set of a touring champion you see wrestle every once in a blue moon, not of a guy you should be watching on TV every week - I think Bret was probably the first, and maybe the best, to refine a formula down to weekly TV wrestling and knowing that the same audience watched your last four matches, maybe recorded them, and knows all your tricks.

It's also one of the reasons I think Flair and Hogan never properly worked in the WWF - they're both formula guys, but both of their formulas are built predominantly on selling for the other guy. There's key moments where they overlap - Flair begging off while Hogan does his comeback - but the majority of the match wouldn't work for a WWF audience, because they're used to seeing Hogan fight from underneath against big monster opponents then make his comeback in the final third, and Flair wasn't convincing in that role, nor was it where his formula fit.