BomberPat

13 hours ago, Jon-Carr_92 said:

I want to see a match between that Progressive Liberal guy Vs Sam Adonis. For the uninitiated, he lived in the UK for a few years mainly doing All Star and recently has got over as a top mid card heel in Mexico coming out with a US flag with a photo of Trump on it.

I've never been hugely keen on politics as a defining factor for a wrestler; if nothing else, it limits your appeal to different audiences. Doing a Brexiter gimmick might get you booed in London and cheered in Sunderland, to think of an inane example. Unless that's what you're going for, a gimmick where you might not know until you get out in front of the crowd whether they like you or hate you isn't a good idea - and if it is what you're going for, chances are you'll piss off a fair few promoters and other wrestlers.

That said, Trump for heat in Mexico is class. A lot of the American lads in Mexico started doing it during his campaign - Brian Cage would wear Trump T-shirts. Cheapest, easiest heat going, in a country where being American pretty much automatically makes you a heel anyway.

The Progressive Liberal just seems way too on the nose and obvious for me, even by reductive wrestling gimmick standards. Even just the name is awful.

11 hours ago, dopper said:

According to Tyson Kidd's Twitter, Smith Hart - eldest child of Stu & Helen Hart died today.

He had been ill for a while with cancer and went into a hospice last month.

Bret's 60th birthday today too.

Bret can't catch a sodding break, can he? Did Stu Hart fall victim to a gypsy curse or something?

2 hours ago, Uncle Zeb said:

I want to be a fly on the wall every time Vince sees a report referring to just "a man with a CNN logo on his head."

I've yet to even see one make reference to the fact he's the husband of a Trump cabinet member.

Ha, I hadn't even thought of that. The President of the USA is Tweeting WWE content, with Vince McMahon in it, and he's not even getting a name-check. Must be driving him mental.

As for no reference being made to Linda being in Trump's cabinet, it just shows what non-entities the McMahons are to the wider world.

6 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

I thought it was well done. Fuck me though, Bobby Lashley is a terrible promo. He only had one line.

It's a decent video package, especially for an anniversary show. But it's never a good idea to remind the audience of what they're not seeing, especially when half the people in that video are working for the competition.

Nothing like a video package reminding you of all the wrestlers you won't be seeing on the show to get you hyped!

3 minutes ago, Onyx2 said:

Coincidentally, I read a great piece today speaking to why evolution will tend to a bipedal form. It's a gargantuan read but well thought-through.

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/2496

I'm not doubting the science, but there's a few things that jump out at me;

Quote

Therefore, rough humanoid shapes are statistically more likely than non-humanoid on Earth-like worlds.

In what sense? "Rough humanoid shapes" aren't statistically the most likely, or the most common, on Earth, so why assume they would be on Earth-like worlds?

I agree with the points it's making about parallel evolution, about why certain forms will likely always evolve because they are the most efficient for purpose, but the assumption that humanoid shapes are "more likely" doesn't work for me. I get that what's implicit in that statement is "intelligent life" but, again, how do we define intelligence?

The underlying message is that the rules of physics would apply on any other world, so life would develop in a way not drastically different to on Earth, but the underpinning assumption is that man is the dominant species and in some way an "end goal" that evolution has been working towards. To me, that's a dated anthropocentric view that sees us as the pinnacle of species. There's no guarantee that evolution would follow the same paths to reach a humanoid form on a planet identical to Earth; when you factor in potential environmental and atmospheric differences (which the post does touch on), I think it's a fool's game to suggest that humanoids are the likely end result.

Genuinely seems that being some kind of deviant/reprobate is a requirement for being a WWE announcer.

You'd assume so - Jarrett's on good terms with AAA, and they have an existing working relationship, so it's not like they need Konnan as a go-between for booking luchadores, and Konnan can't be drawing them any money at this point. I just find it mad that they'd have AAA and The Crash both represented in one match, unless I've massively overstated the animosity between the two promotions.

It's a classic Hogan formula for the match, too, to have him work against a bloke bigger than him so he can be the underdog fighting back against the odds. I can see why they'd have gone with it from an in-ring perspective, but the whole Iraqi sympathiser angle carried so much more weight with Sarge than if it had gone to anyone else.

On the Steiner conference call...there is a statue of Ric Flair.

That tag match seems absolutely bonkers. Aside from the Lucha Underground issue - this is a company that insisted on having one of their referees blurred out when they appeared on Impact - you have AAA and The Crash represented on the same show? I'd wonder if The Crash have been included to appease Konnan in his demands to not work with AAA talent, but surely he can't have that much pull at Impact? And AAA can't be happy working with Crash, surely? The contract Penta 0M has been offered with Lucha Underground allegedly includes the caveat that he can't work for any promotion that Konnan is involved with - if AAA/Lucha Underground are that dead against Crash, and Konnan in general, this match is an absolute minefield.

Quality line-up of games for it, too.

Earthbound, Final Fantasy 6, Secret of Mana, A Link To The Past and Super Mario RPG is pretty much just Chrono Trigger short of being a perfect list of SNES RPGs - throw in Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Yoshi's Island, Star Fox, Mario Kart and an unreleased Star Fox 2, and you're laughing, really.

@Patrick_W_Reed on Twitter; mostly the same sort of guff you'll see me post on here; rambling about wrestling at greater length than Twitter is really designed for, raving about Twin Peaks, and the odd bit of politics.

patrickwreed on Instagram; mostly shit selfies and in-jokes with mates, though sometimes pics from wrestling shows I attend and whatnot.

I also run the Twitter account for @CIWW_Wrestling, for what it's worth.

I assume the Anthem offices are full of boxes of unsold 8x10s of Jeff.

I doubt CHIKARA will change dates - they've run opposite BOLA a few times now, and have been running that weekend longer than PWG have, as it's a bank holiday weekend in the US.

I already suspected that CHIKARA would be reluctant to use many of the "WWE UK" names, as they would be running the risk of them getting pulled from the card at short notice for WWE commitments - otherwise you'd think British Strong Style would be a dead cert for a UK Trios tournament, particularly as CHIKARA are on good terms with them anyway.

I'd definitely think BOLA is likely to write out a lot of the bigger UK names, but I don't think CHIKARA will go so far as to change dates to avoid it.

BOLA's a bigger deal, and has more WWE eyes on it. William Regal tends to attend them, and probably other WWE types scouting as well. Getting booked for BOLA is pretty much an indication that you've "arrived" on the indies.

How do people feel about double bookings/cancelled bookings?

Travis Banks was announced for CHIKARA's King of Trios as part of the CCK trio, but has just been announced for PWG's BOLA on the same weekend. Looks likely that he'll be pulling out of Trios to work BOLA.

To me, that's disappointing - I'm a firm believer that a wrestler should honour their bookings, and that it's only fair on promoters and ticket-buying fans to do so, but at the same time, I can understand why a wrestler would take a "better" opportunity over one they're already booked for.

In this case, I doubt anyone bought tickets for Trios specifically because Travis Banks was going to be there, so it'll be disappointing, but it's not like a big draw headliner has pulled out and pissed people off who bought tickets to see them. But I feel for CHIKARA - they're the ones that, presumably, will be left scrambling to find a replacement, and looking like dicks if they don't deliver.

I doubt we'll see Wally Brando again, sadly, but I have to agree he was the best, with Albert giving Gordon a photo of Mount Rushmore coming a close second.

I don't think anyone knows how Lucha Underground contracts work.

I can't access Reddit at work, so haven't got round to checking it, but I've heard there's some mad theories coming out of the Twin Peaks subreddit. It's a show that lends itself to that kind of obsessive fandom and attention to detail, and concocting fan theories, so I'm not surprised.

The driving shot jumped out at me too - I hadn't considered how close it was to NIN, that's a nice touch. Though Lynch loves a dark driving shot, doesn't he? Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks both had them too. On another Lost Highway/Stuff David Lynch Likes note, apparently Gordon Cole was whistling a Rammstein song in an earlier episode too.

How do you feel about the Secret History book, by the way? I read it before the new series started, and I was really disappointed. Too much time invested in alien conspiracies, and trying to tie the Twin Peaks mythos into a broader context, wrapping it up with historical events and every conspiracy theory you can think of, and I didn't like that at all. It felt like it cheapened the mythos by trying to contextualise, and make it part of something bigger. I don't really want the lore of Twin Peaks to be something understandable, I want it to be weird. And the more it becomes part of a world bigger than Twin Peaks, the less weird it is - because, going back to my earlier point, small towns are weird.

18 minutes ago, CavemanLynn said:

I don't assume they'll be hominid or grey-like, but certainly any attempt at communication would show a parity of development within our understanding of physics, if not using the same base elements

Within our understanding of physics, yes, but I don't think that means there would be a parity of development in what constitutes communication or intelligence. I keep repeating this, but we don't fully grasp what intelligence is. Is it cognition, the ability to understand complex ideas, is it pattern recognition? An octopus appears to be intelligent, but has a nervous system entirely unlike ours. How do we quantify its intelligence, let alone attempt to communicate with it?

To assume communication is possible with an intelligent species from another planet is to assume that they have evolved similar neural frameworks to ourselves - and we have absolutely no idea how likely or unlikely that would be, because we have no framework to understand how evolution would work anywhere but Earth, and under the exact conditions it has already occurred on Earth. There are literally countless variables that have impacted the evolution of intelligent life on this planet, which we've had the opportunity to study for the span of human existence; who knows what curveballs got thrown into evolution elsewhere, if there is anything to evolve elsewhere. We don't know if intelligence, as we understand it, is something likely to evolve, or if sentience is a freak accident.

Again, I think that if we encounter a species from another planet that's intelligent as per our understanding, and particularly if they're capable of some form of communication, to me that's a massive win for the Intelligent Design theory - it suggests that evolution is somehow guided toward an end goal, that intelligent species capable of evolution are nature's blueprint to work towards. I don't believe that for a second, but if alien life had evolved in that fashion, I do believe it would do more to cause us to question the framework of our scientific beliefs than it would cause people to question or denounce their religious beliefs.

I like that crop circle idea! My point about ants was, to get even more pretentious about this, the idea of mankind as the "dominant species" is an anthropocentric one. We believe we are, because that's what we see. But to go back to my example of ants, there are one million of them to every one of us. They exist in almost every ecological niche imaginable, and are an astonishingly successful species everywhere they exist. Who's to say that an alien species wouldn't recognise them as the most dominant species on Earth, not these big lumbering giants wrecking the environment, and who's to say they'd be wrong to do so?

Now I'm remembering an old 2000AD Future Shocks comic where intelligent aliens visit Earth with a message of peace, only to be trodden on in someone's back garden.

3 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

My favorite episode so far, it was the birth of BOB! But what I'm enjoying more about this 18 part movie is seeing the Coffee and Cherry Pie fans squirm in discomfort.

Ha, I fall somewhere between both camps. I love Lynch at his weirdest (Inland Empire aside), but Twin Peaks needs its Coffee and Cherry Pie. A huge part of the appeal of Twin Peaks is that it's a goofy soap opera, not just that it's weird. And the weirdness of Twin Peaks doesn't just come from the supernatural, and from episodes like yesterday's, it comes from the fact that small towns are weird.

Twin Peaks for me is the same concept as Blue Velvet, it's the unpleasantness hiding beneath the veneer of small town America - and you need to see enough of the veneer for that to work. For me, this series didn't really start getting good until it started moving more into Twin Peaks itself, because then you started to get the balance in place between those two elements.

Now, here's some lengthy pretentious thoughts on the last episode and, broadly, the series as a whole;

I enjoyed it. Absolutely bonkers, and incredibly self-indulgent, but an extraordinary bit of TV. I can probably make a stronger case for it as a great bit of filmmaking than I can for it as an episode of a weekly TV series, mind.

The assumption is that alien neurology and psychology would have evolved in the same way that ours did. We have absolutely no way of knowing if that would be the case, or even if - assuming that "Earth-like" planets are out there harbouring intelligent life - the intelligent race would be mammalian. If the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out, mammals never would have moved out of their niche as little squirrel-type things to become the dominant land-borne race. Maybe, elsewhere, the intelligent species would be reptilian, or aquatic, or avian, or just about anything else. And, hell, who's to say we are the dominant species anyway? Maybe ants are the real rulers of this world, and we're just apes with a superiority complex.

Again, we don't know if the evolution of intelligent life on Earth is the norm, or a freak occurrence. We don't fully understand what intelligence is. We do know that there are countless points in our evolutionary history where if the climate had been slightly different, where if certain catastrophic events had not occurred, life likely would have moved in entirely different directions.

I find it astronomically (no pun intended) unlikely that evolution on another planet, even one functionally identical to Earth, would have followed the exact same pattern as ours, and resulted in intelligent hominids, with recognisable civilisation, with the same propensity towards drawing connections between phenomena (the root of any religious or superstitious belief), and the same use of language to develop storytelling. To me, that would be a stronger argument for religious beliefs or for intelligent design than against, because it would suggest that nature is working to a blueprint.

@ClassicsGuy - rather than banging out about the attendance figures of shows that have already happened, can you give me one reason why, in the future, I would want to give money to a business that has taken money two years ago for a product that they have failed to produce and then not only refused to refund or apologised, but actively ignored/blocked contact from anyone complaining? A product that they're still advertising for sale on their website?

Or, indeed, why I would want to give money to a company who thinks they can mislead fans and performers into believing that they're doing a charity show when, in reality, they're exploiting the name of a respected friend to many of those wrestlers for promotional purposes and pocketing the takings?

Can you give me one good reason why I would want to give money to someone engaged in such shady business practices, rather than any number of wrestling promotions where the promoters actually give the impression that they give a shit about their fanbase? "They drew 1000 people in Blackpool and had the Knights' kids" doesn't really cut it. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what people's problems with this company actually are.

Like Astro said, it would make no difference. I've been routinely amusing myself with arguments on evolution with a particular Young Earth Creationist on the Guardian website - his arguments are so circular; basically "the world is only 6000 years old, therefore evolution can't have happened because the timescales science says it requires aren't possible". They back up one wrong theory with another, like a shitty theoretical house of cards.

If these people could be convinced to change their mind in the light of new evidence, they'd have changed their minds hundreds of years ago.

Thanks guys I did ramble on a bit, so I'm glad to know it was appreciated!

I meant to add that the real greats, and the real innovators, are the ones who manage to adapt from one style to the other and make it work seamlessly, rather than leaving these gaping holes in internal logic. I'm thinking Rey Mysterio in adapting lucha techniques to the US style, for example.

22 hours ago, ClassicsGuy said:

It's really unfortunate that a few people didn't get a particular DVD and the promotion's customer service probably could improve, in that respect. At the shows if you actually attend them, the merch team couldn't be more friendly or helpful.

 

A particular DVD in tribute to a deceased star who did more for that company than just about anyone, certainly more than a promoter booking names so he can get them to sign his title belt collection, and who was respected, I daresay loved, by his colleagues and the fanbase. Who the promotion feel they've "earned the right" to stick his name on "tribute shows" without a penny going to his family, or any relevant charity?

I don't think it's overblown for that to piss people off, and I couldn't give a shit if they're on "extremely sound financial footing" - an asshole with money is still an asshole. And if they're on sound financial footing, they shouldn't have any trouble producing a product they promised customers in good faith. That's not an excusable mistake that we can happily write off with "oh well, at least they're booking more British talent now", that's a company taking customers' money and failing to produce the product after nearly two years, while still clearly having the money and means to do so. That would be inexcusable from any company in any line of business, it's irrelevant that it's a wrestling promotion we're talking about.