Jazzy G

This could have some big repercussions across the wrestling industry if it goes through, as there are legal challenges exoected. Here's a link to the CNN article, as opposed to one from a "rag sheet, brother". https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/success/ftc-bans-non-compete-clauses/index.html

Alexi's On Fire?

It started looking interesting, then suddenly takes this huge shift to bad jokes and I lost all interest.

Picked up a game called Torment on Vinted because I'm on a bit of a cryptic crossword thing at the moment . It's from 1995 and looks deceptively simple. You have 4 pads of different style crossword grids, some of which are easier than others, and a pile of about 200 clue cards. The clues aren't particularly cryptic or anything, but have very open answers. The idea is to try and get as many legitimate answers to the clues into the grid as you can, and there's a point system at the end. Obviously this means you have to make sure the answers you give fit the appropriate number of letters on the grid. I haven't had chance to play it yet, but know a friend who's interested in having a look so when our schedules line up we'll have a bash at it, and a few others I've acquired. I also counted my Top Trumps collection the other day, before a couple of others arrived. I'm currently at 93 sets.

@DavidB6937yeah, the people getting all upset about Jodie Whittaker being cast as the Doctor in spite of them loving Missy, and there having already been references to other Timelords having changed gender previously was ridiculous. I haven't seen as much for Ncuti Gatwa, but I'm sure it's there outside of my echo chamber. Plus he's great. @lanky316what a wonderful, well written comment.

Why do we dip bread in soup, but dunk biscuits in brews? Is cereal soup? Is a hotdog a sandwich?

Race Across The World was a good start. The new visual style is interesting, but it's still a great show. I like all the contestants, but my favourites are Shirley and Brydie.

I saw a great post about it somewhere that boiled down to "you know Juliet was oiginally played by a boy, right?" It really is an awful state of affairs when people get upset by such things. Didn't they kick off when a black actress was cast as Hermoine in that wizard play as well? The other, similar furore was when they found the earliest fossil of a British person a few years back, and when they reconstructed it with computers realised that they probably had dark skin because they'd come over from Europe/Africa originally. Mind you I'm one of those weirdoes who tells people if Jesus was to come back he wouldn't get into America because of the colour of his skin, and St George wouldn't be do very well in England because of his being Syrian. Technically as a non-binary person I'm "trans" as well, simply on account of not being the gender I was assigned at birth. All people want to do is exist, but the media and government make it all this horrible thing to try and protect their cushy little statuses. I got a pinbadge on Temu that sums it up well. It says "Equal rights for others doesn't mean fewer rights for you. It's not pie."

They need to get that extra gladiator back in Gauntlet as well. That could be all the difference. There are definitely gladiators who are good at certain games. Watching Fury smashing lasses off the top of that Edge thing, and just marmalising them in powerball and the ring immediately comes to mind. Nitro up the wall. The show definitely needs some refinement for the next series. I think I read somewhere that Bradley & Barney are back for the next series. Hopefully the writers can wind down the jokes a bit.

Lotus 3 is a banger I played it loads on Amiga. Kim Justice has a video out about Hugo The Troll which looks interesting. @FLipsis the save battery in the NBA Jam cartridge alright? I was gutted when I dug out my Megadrive copy of TE and it'd gone. Great game. I also love DK 94 on my 3DS, in spite of it only being the Game boy ROM. Nintendo missed a trick there by not having a Super Game Boy option with their original Gameboy games.

Apparently the losing finalists picked up injuries during the final. You can see one of them twisting their ankle during The Edge. If they'd been at 100% throughout I don't think it'd been as close as it was. That short filming schedule didn't do anybody any favours. Hopefully they take a little more time to film the second series. Rumour has it there's a celebrity christmas special coming as well. Who would be good on that? Do they trot out some of the older Gladiators for a crack?

I saw Smosh playing this. It looked like a lot of fun. I managed to get a copy of Joking Hazard for £9 on Amazon, but haven't had chance for a proper playthrough of it yet. The last one we played was First World Problems, which is one of the millions of Cards Against Humanity adjacent games available at the moment. It's your typical "prompt/response" game with prompts such as "I had to go to therapy because..." or "my girlfriend dumped me because... ", and such responses as "My ripped jeans got ripped, so I had to buy some new ripped jeans." it's not too bad. A couple of naughty cards in there. One of the prompts just says "Fuck...", and I almost won a round with a response of "*sigh* another dick pic" when the prompt was "I came home today to..." With the right group of people I have no doubt it could be a great game. I've got a copy of Funemployed on the way, which looks like it plays similarly to Apples To Apples. I also have another Big Potato game I haven't had a proper play of yet with people. I'll find the right friends ro have a crack of that as well at some point. I also managed to get one of those among us/mafia/secret werewolf type games in Blackburn's new Autism charity shop for £3 when a brand new copy was going for £25 in Waterstones. Finally, I suddenly seem to own a shit load of Top Trumps cards, and have more in the way. Some old, some less so. The most "interesting" ones are probably the "The Queen" set, the Harry & Meghan Royal Wedding set, and two sets called "the ultimate deck" which are ostensibly Top Trumps Top Trumps. Each card is a previous Top Trumps set, with the usual kinds of numbers (rarity, age, how informative they are etc). I also have the limited edition NHS hospitals ones, and the Key Workers ones which were both presumably rushed out during Covid. If ever I was going to make an interminably dull video series for YouTube, it would possibly be reviewing these.

It meant I only had to do 6 hours at Samaritans instead of 7. Which was good as I'm a bit knackered.

Have A Nice Play: A Tale Of Cum And Sweatsocks?

I bit the bullet and thought I'd dump my Kaiju thoughts here rather than stinking up the VHS/Betamax film or D-Mal's foreign films thread. I'm three movies into the list on the archive page I found, and they're interesting things. Godzilla (1954) The original giant monster movie (apart from the 1933 King Kong, The Great Buddha Arrives in 1934, and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms from 1953), and it's a heck of a ride. We don't actually see the big guy himself until about half an hour in, but we're made aware of his presence with mysterious shipwrecks, planes falling out of the sky, and myths about sacrifices to ancient deities. When the exploratory party make it to Odo island and Godzilla turns up on the far side of the island and they finally see him the effects haven't aged well, but it's still a great sequence. When he gets to Tokyo and starts tearing through their defences the chaos is palpable, the army turns up to little effect, he lays waste to the place, and because it's black and white it doesn't looks awful. Then when they just realise they need to leave him to it and he heads off there's a palpable sense of relief. The ethical discussion about using the oxygen destroyer to deal with him is pretty heavy, especially when Dr Serizawa sacrifices himself to make sure that the Oxygen Destroyer can't be recreated and weaponised. You can't help but feel bad for Goji either as he passes away. Well worth a look. If you don't fancy reading the subtitles the 1956 US Adaptation Godzilla The King Of Monsters with Raymond Burr is worth a look, but the dubbing and some of the shots they use to make it look like Raymond Burr was in the locations from the movie can get awfully janky in places. It still hits the main story beats from the original as well, though. Godzilla Raids Again/Godzilla's Counterattack (1955) Due to how well Godzilla did in cinemas, Toho decided they needed a sequel, so nine months after the release of the original we get this. There's a LOT of expository dialogue, and not a whole lot of monster, Things start with a pilot going missing, and a search party being sent for him. He's found on Iwata Island, and while they're trying to get out of there discover another Godzilla fighting against another giant monster. Upon returning to Osaka they encounter a Godzilla expert from Tokyo who's been trying to prepare other cities for potential Godzilla attacks. It's discovered that the new monster is Anguirus, a giant Ankylosaurus who was likely mutated/awoken in a similar fashion to Godzilla. Reports come in that Gidzilla is on his way to Osaka as well, so a solution is needed. The Oxygen Destroyer can't be used again as it's gone, and Dr Serizawa with it, taking all knowledge of how to make another one with him. Godzilla arrives, and they try to lure him away with something called the light bomb, which is them turning all the city's lightds off before detonating a lot of flares in the opposite direction in the hopes that he's drawn towards the lights. It almost works until some idiots crash a car in a factory and start a huge fire, and it attracts Godzilla's attention which results in him wandering back into the city and causing some havoc. Tanks and planes turn up.. It's not a badly done sequence. Anguirus turns up as well, and has a scrap with Godzilla, but it always just feels like they're just having a bit of a mess about, and not super malicious. Godzilla never uses his atomic breath, they just wrestle a bit, then after Godzilla chucks Anguirus into the sea he just buggers off home. Sensing further sequels they (Toho) decide not to kill him this time, but rather seal off the pass he uses to leave the island. He gets snowed in as well. It's still enjoyable, but is obviously a bit of a rush job. Rodan: Giant Monster Of The Sky (1956) We're in colour, and Godzilla is nowhere to be seen. People have been mysteriously disappearing in a mine in Tokyo, and further investigation reveals a lot of mysterious critters in the caves. Some are people dressed as insects in a style not dissimilar to a pantomime horse type thing. There are lots of bats. Eventually a couple are found dead, and it's theorised to be a double suicide until they develop the film from the man's camera and sicover a very off picture. They eventually realise that it's a Pteranodon that must have been hiding inside the mountain that they'd been mining. We don't see Rodan until about 50 minutes into a 90 minute runtime, but they do a great job building to it. He can fly at supersonic speed, and leaves a huge wind in his wake that destroys everything behind him. Also when he lands he can flap his wings to create hurricane strength winds. There's a lot of drama, and theydo a great job of presenting Rodan as a different kind of threat to Godzilla. This is obviously in a different timeline as well, since Tokyo is pretty much undamaged, as opposed to rebuilding from the Godzilla attack from a few years ago. The downside with the shift to colour is that the obvious models that are being destroyed and coming to battle against Rodan look really fake. I love the JASDF (Japan Air & Space Defence Force) planes, though. There's a huge twist as well when it looks like they have Rodan beaten, but I won't spoil it. There'll be a few other non Godzilla movies before the big guy turns up again.

The makers of The Apprentice still appear to be more into editing the show to make them all look useless. I guess it's an attempt to try and make the outcome of each task less predictable. It still feels like a case of which team does the least bad, rather than the best. Whether it's due to their running out of good candidates, or just picking rejects to try and create car crash TV remains to be seen.