Vamp

On 12/19/2023 at 6:24 PM, Matthew said:

Universal have confirmed plans to build a park in Bedford, UK!

This is great news, knowing how awesome they have it in Florida, so very excited for this.

It'll never happen. There was the theme park with the BBC licensed stuff that never happened and before that the theme park that was meant to be built in Uxbridge. 

Poor lad just wants to have sex with a chainsaw, who are we to judge?

He probably already has a better paid, less stressful post politics job lined up. 

It'd be hilarious if he was banking it all on England doing well in the football resulting in patriotic fervour and that converting into votes for his party. 

18 hours ago, The King Of Swing said:

I thought that World Wonder Ring Stardom was awful but Rossy Ogawa really out did himself with Dream Star Fighting Marigold.

Tajiri's old promotion Wrestling New Classic, sounded like the name of a tournament not a promotion. 

Wasn't Tajiri also involved in a promotion called SMASH, with nary a potato in sight?

I actually liked it for about 75% of the episode. 

The good:

*Neat concept

*The Doctor

*It built suspense well 

The bad:

* The references to other Moffat stories got a little heavy handed

* I don't normally mind a bad resolution in Doctor Who because I think that's actually part of the show. I think the problem is that Moffat's dialogue comes across as quite self satisfied while still presenting a bollocks resolution

* I find it kind of odd that this era of Doctor Who (with its arms open to all) is also so welcoming to a writer who has a habit of writing shit female characters (to me he lost a lot of credibility with how he wrote Irene Adler)

I dunno. I wasn't very sure about RTD taking over again because I felt like the show really needed flesh blood, but I think his approach so far of introducing goblins, superstitions and gods feels fresh. This episode didn't really convince me that Moffat has anything new to offer. It's also interesting that this episode looked like a Moffat episode in the worst way (dark, dingy, drab). 

It's gonna be an unpopular opinion but I preferred last week’s. 

Mac and Me didn't have the line:

"A mystery wrapped in an enigma, squeezed into a skirt that's just a little bit too tight…"

Mac and Me is better. 

See, I'd argue all of the worst arcs are Moffat's. The impossible girl arc is the worst thing anyone has ever written. 

4 hours ago, Factotum said:

Two things really and I'm not saying I'm right here or anything, just what I've felt.

I think a whole generation now see THE DOCTOR as some moral arbiter they should base their life around or something. That's weird and never what the character is. I think Doctor Who works when it has a mystery who's ethics are slightly questionable. He should be alien. Make it one off stories. I don't think arcs work in Doctor Who as much as we're told they need to have one. How many really paid off in the modern era? The best ending was Sean 1 and Capaldi's last series and that wasn't even an overarching ark, just a banging 2 parter.

I think the tone is also rather...silly now? I know as a show it has always BEEN silly, but that was more due to budgets etc. rather than stories. This all feels very JNT Doctor Who. That isn't just RTD, I feel Moffat went too far with that as well. I'm probably not making sense as I haven't sat down and thought about it, and it is all personal preference, but I prefer Doctor Who to be slightly edgy. I think Ncuti can do that but I fear he'll be lost among LETS HAVE A DANCING BALLOON or something.

See, I'd say a lot of that has always been in Doctor Who.

3rd Doctor was annoyed at the Brigadier for blowing up the Silurians. 4th Doctor decided he didn't have the right to kill the daleks off. Those are the 2 most obvious and probably influential examples. 

The 1st Doctor was probably a bit more alien, but pretty much all of the Doctors we've had since have followed Troughton's lead more than Hartnell's. And there's the general fan theory that the Doctor has been somewhat humanised by his companions, especially by Barbara and Ian. 

As for silliness, I'd argue the stuff with the Land of Fiction, the Chase, the Candy man, Delta and the Bannerman, have all been just as silly or even sillier than New Who. That wasn't just because of the budget. 

Let's celebrate the weird, wonderful and shite names of wrestling promotions. 

Do they matter? Probably not.

During the Chikara shutdown storyline there were a string of "Wrestling is" promotions. I never really liked "Wrestling is Fun." I get that it doesn't really matter but there's something about Wrestling is Fun that always felt a bit desperate to me. The idea that wrestling is fun seems like it should be self explanatory, and to make it a promotion name that you'd put on a poster seems a bit like you're pleading with people to come. "Wrestling is Fun! We promise. Look, it's our name, it must be true!"

There's the obvious example of TNA. 

5 hours ago, Ulf ist Gut said:

 

There were definitely bits from both episodes that were alright, the Doctor and Ruby certainly weren't at fault and there's an interesting underlying story ark there once you get all the cringe and fourth wall breaking out of the way. Hopefully the Moffat episode is a bit, I don't know if darker is the right word, but a bit less twee as at the minute the style of it all feels very jarring. I get why they went with the external partnership model but at the minute it feels like the difference between old Top Gear and The Grand Tour if you'll excuse the Clarkson comparison (I really did try to think of a better one I promise!) - it all just feels a bit exaggerated and try hard and makes it difficult to actually focus on and enjoy the story.

RTD's first series involved farting aliens and burping wheelie bins. He's also the man that wrote probably the darkest episode in Doctor Who in Waters of Mars. He's pretty much all the place in terms of tone.

Talking babies was too disconcerting for me. RTD throwing not so subtle digs at politics on both sides of the ponds felt very nostalgic.

Second episode was much better. Loved Maestro's scenery chewing performance which felt very JNT Doctor Who. The Pantheon stuff is very interesting and Ncuti sold the threat well. The Strictly cameo was fun. The twist felt like an attempt to get something trending. 

14 hours ago, Rob Lowe said:

I imagine a lot of Pro Israel voters got a stick up their arse and mass voted. You could say bots but surely then they would have won. Or Russia would cheat to win every year.

I watch every year and have never voted. A small group with a cause could make a big number.

We probably have one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe too, shame many of them are (apparantly) okay with whats happening in Gaza. Lets hope its bots.

 

I think that's pretty presumptive.

It's difficult to measure the Jewish population in the UK but the 2021 census suggests about 0.5% of the population identified as Jewish by religion (which is a problematic way of measuring it because not all Jewish people follow the Jewish religion but the other metrics are even more flawed). 

But even recognising that the number from the census is probably lower than reality, its pretty ignorant (giving you the benefit of the doubt here) to think that Jewish people around the world identify with Israel on any level, even more so their recent politics. 

9 hours ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

I don't usually fall for this sort of stuff when it comes to wrestling, and my favourite guys have often been smaller (hi, Daniel Bryan Danielson 👋) - but is anyone else struggling with the physical comparison between Drew and Punk?

Drew looks like he'd fucking murder him.

I mean, he probably will. No way Punk is getting through that match without picking up an injury. 

To be fair, the French crowd were far less annoying on the 2 count than when everyone else used to do that "2 sweet" bollocks. 

15 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Raw Day 1 from January of this year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_Day_1_(2024)

 

Championship Monday https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/wwe-raw-results-june-22nd-2020-winners-grades-video-highlights-latest-monday-night-raw

Smackdown’s 20th Anniversary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_SmackDown's_20th_Anniversary

And those one just ones I remember (you have you 500, 1000 shows, retro nights, 10, 20, 30th anniversary shows etc). And they weren’t charging premium ticket prices (obviously Championship Monday is the exception there as a Covid show).

Maybe it’s because one of those title defences is for a shit secondary title no one cares for (Not Priests fault, but it’s a nothing title. The Chelsea FC of world titles). Fact is when you are charging Wrestlemania prices for tickets, I expect juicier matches than that. Just looking and the show had 5 matches and ran under 3 hours. Again, if you’re charging premium prices I’d expect more.

But clearly people are content with that, so I don’t begrudge anyone who thought they got their moneys worth either watching or paying for a ticket. It’s just an opinion.

You do realise you picked out special episodes rather than normal TV episodes right? 

3 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

Don't panic, you can have more than 5.

That's what's wrong with this country these days. 

See, that's how someone as stupid as AJ should look. 

On 4/27/2024 at 7:14 PM, JLM said:

Was always going to be hard to top Backlash Puerto Rico, which was one of my favourite shows of last year. The card does look decidedly “OK”. I hope they have some good France-tailored ideas for the show to set it apart a bit. 

Tryna think who they could use in the Savio Vega spot. Bring back La Resistance? Alex Wright (Germany is close enough)?

Also, they probably should have done the Andre Memorial Battle Royal here. 

1 hour ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

He could easily afford to be more radical, I think.

Starmer hasn't got a radical bone in his body. 

18 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

5. Turn Buckingham Palace into Britian's biggest Wetherspoons.

Let's not give anything to that prick. 

1) What I say goes. No one is allowed to disagree with me. I'm trying to save a country here, I don't have time for petty arguments. 

The rest I'll figure out as I go along. 

Does the draft actually still pop a rating? 

It's a bit much to pull the "tribal" card when I'd wager a lot of AEW fans also think he's a colossal muppet for saying it. 

Ignoring the fact that it's a shit analogy (he'd have a point if he'd have said something smarter about how WWE is like Hollywood for enabling Weinstein but he didn't, because he doesn't actually care, he just trivialised a real issue to get people to go "oooooh"), why should I watch AEW now? Their owner had a chance to tell me and he didn't bother. 

That's why it was shit. Forget the fact that his own promotion is hardly squeaky clean, forget the fact that he compared innocent people that work there to a sex offender, forget the fact that it's the kind of argument that a Twitter troll would make, forget the fact that a man who has booked sex offenders just trivialised sex offenders to say something he thought was edgy, he also didn't put over his company while doing it.

To be honest, AEW fans should probably be more upset than anyone. 

I was a lapsed fan for quite a few years, so I'm going to go for recent matches that were important to this stage of my fandom. This means the list is going to very EVE heavy. Sorry. 

1) Aja Kong vs. Viper - Wrestle Queendom 1

So I fell out of love with wrestling for quite a few years. I think a good chunk of that was depression sucking the joy away from my passions. Not quite sure how I stumbled upon the fact that Aja Kong was going to be wrestling in London but I decided I definitely wanted to see that. The match wasn't my favourite one on the show, but it was the reason I went. And it was good fun.

2) Sammi Jayne vs. Charlie Morgan - Wrestle Queendom 1

I came for Aja Kong but this match reignited my love for pro wrestling. I still remember the passion in the crowd, the insanity of Charlie Morgan diving from a balcony, the moment me and a complete stranger turned to each other and went "what the fuck," and the sheer desperation for a woman I'd never heard of to win the title. I once, very awkwardly, told Charlie Morgan (after her first retirement) that this match helped me reconnect with something that depression had taken away from me. It was the reason I went back to EVE and became a fan. 

3) Jetta vs. Kasey - She-1

There's a lot of context to this one. The She-1 was a four show tournament held over 2 days. It was fucking knackering even as a fan. You'd stand up for two days in a sweat box. It felt like a third of the wrestlers who started the tournament didn't finish it due to injury. Jetta was the lovable loser. She'd lost all 3 of her matches at the previous She-1 and had lost 2 of her matches at this She-1. The longer this match went the more desperate people were for the time to run out. They weren't desperate for Jetta to win, that wasn't going to happen, they were desperate for Jetta to just hold onto the time limit. When she finally got over the line and picked up a solitary, meaningless point by getting to the end of the time limit people went bananas. Just a perfect combination of actual long term booking, a unique story to a match, and a seriously, seriously underrated live performer. 

4) Sting at Wembley

I was a big fan of Sting in my first stage of wrestling fandom. I was largely left cold by AEW at Wembley because, it turns out, stadium wrestling isn't for me. Still, seeing Sting live was special and felt like a weird sort of closure to my first stage of fandom.

5) Stadium Stampede Wembley

Bit worried that this might just come off like I'm having a pop at AEW but I am genuine when I say that I think this match was important because I found it a boring and miserable experience. It's nothing to do with the wrestlers involved, or AEW, it's just that sitting in a stadium watching wrestling isn't for me. It made me realise that what I love about live wrestling is its immediacy and a stadium can't do that. I also felt very anxious at this point, because I felt like I had both wasted my money and not spent enough. I feel like I'm lucky to have had that experience in London so that after it was all over I could go home and have a sulk in bed rather than go back to a hotel in the US or something. 

Wonder if they'd be tempted to do 2 weekends of WrestleMania. 1 in London, 1 in the US. 

Nathan Jones was great. Awful, obviously, but great. Had the look and had a weird sort of charisma to him. I'm not convinced that they couldn't have worked around his shortcomings and still had something if he'd have stuck around. Although he probably wasn't worth the bother. 

There's a (better) universe out there where he's a special appearance megastar.