Kaz Hayashi

8 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

What do they call Steptoe then?

Shawn Michaels?

TIL

The Garbage Couple 

I find it interesting that while the iconic Nevermind cover caused a few raised eyebrows, it was never truly clamped down on, when in essence, it’s a very young bairn swimming naked. Yet it’s apparently inappropriate for the same person as an adult, to recreate the picture naked.

 

When people at the polling station see this, they stare, frown with anger and shake their heads. 
I completely understand. I too am still annoyed Matt Hardy no showed in 2005.

15 hours ago, Guy Bifkin said:

Not one of mine (I'm shit at photos) but I have recently discovered and fallen in love with the black and white photos of Tish Murtha, the best of which is the amazing shot below.

That Youth Unemployment book her photos are published in, is one of my favourite ever books, to the point I own 2 of them. Fabulous book. I’ve always loved this pic due to the lad on the left being the spit of a good pal of mine. Great book and set of images, highly recommended.

Not cooking, well, I melted some chocolate, but I made a batch of crisp cakes with the nipper, as we do every month.

However, the point of this post is to say that strawberry flavoured coco pops is a thing now, and as she was the one who pointed them out to me as she sat in the trolley, it felt ridiculous to put off the inevitable.
Dairy milk chocolate, strawberry coco pops, mini eggs and broken giant milky buttons. Arguably the best thing I’ve posted in here.

And that was that. 
I really liked the Haru, and thought it was more enjoyable than the Hatsu.
The rest in spoilers... 

So on the back of that, we’ll be back in May and for any of you who are interested, it would be cool to hear from you. We’re pleased there’s been so much interest. Also, we really encourage you all to pick a 5 person stable as part of the Kachi Clash game. Get involved... It’s really simple, free, straight forward and a laugh. Anyway, really fun Basho.

Been ill in bed for a couple of days, decided to get up and have a paint using some new mixing methods. It’s a start and a technique I’ll build on.

18 hours ago, Chris B said:

Looking back, the guy was also looking at a lot of Mike Awesome gifs...

 

It wasn't Evil Eye. It was 'Internet Exchange', but on the same street as Evil Eye. I used to go into Evil Eye as well - loved that place. It was half an opium den, half an internet cafe. They had some stools and desks, along with a four poster bed and sofas. They sold cajun popcorn, which was amazing. They also sold a 'death shot', which was half Russian Black Vodka and half absinthe. Made me pissed from the legs up - I was doing fine until I got off the stool. 

I last went to Evil Eye around 6 or 7 years ago at a guess. They had some good import bottles just before the huge craft boom and their signature spicy Thai rice and noodles dishes were absolutely brilliant. I usually sat in the back courtyard, as the bed situation upstairs was too weird for me. Not sure if Neil was there at the time, didn’t see anyone waking though.

Did it close down?

I unintentionally let a random angry dog start a fight with David Blunketts guide dog, while he was holding its lead. The ordeal was almost shown on BBC news. Thankfully we persuaded them not to air it.

56 minutes ago, Cousin Jim Bob said:

 

Two issues with that from working in charity shops. First 90% of the customers are old people. 90% of the donations come from old people. 90% of the sales these places do is selling old womens clothes to other old women. Doris and Flo know the value of these clothes and are invaluable in pricing them properly and keeping these places in business. Once in a blue moon you might get a games console or decent bit of electronics but like I said its clothes that keep these places going and they care far more about getting the price right on a ladies Marks and Sparks winter coat than stuff that barely ever gets donated.

 

Secondly who cares if the staff are picking out nice stuff. 99% of people working in charity shops are unpaid volunteers. The managers will be on minimum wage. They will be getting decent deals on things but they are still buying the stuff.

Yeah I don’t disagree with any of your points, but that was the aim of the program and the message they were portraying on the show. It was after that I noticed ‘expensive’ charity shops. I’ve personally got no problem with them charging fair prices, but there’s a middle ground. Older people pricing clothes for older people absolutely makes sense. Jesmond is an upmarket wealthy student based area, that sells video games and designer jeans. So I’d counter argue and say knowledgeable, young volunteers are required depending on the area & market.

I’ve got no issues with them cherry picking if they’re paying for days item. A sale is a sale.

1 hour ago, Merzbow said:

Oxfam were an early adopter of the extortionate eBay prices, especially in their book shops. I worked in one a looong time ago and one of the first things they taught you was to look online if something looked like it could have some value.

There’s 2 overpriced Oxfam stores in Jesmond, Newcastle, which is an upmarket area with some wealth. They’re 50yrds away from each other. One is an over priced book store that sells vinyls, all of which start at £10 and I’ve seen a couple at £100. The other is a close store which clearly gets company/brand donations. At one point they had 30-40 pairs of Replay jeans, which they were charging £60 each for.

I remember a show on TV a while ago, where Alex Polizzi (I think) went to charity shops, to help them understand the value of their products, after Doris & Flo were selling PS3 consoles for a quid and owned up to cherry picking through donation bags for themselves. 
After 1/2 an hour of Alex saying, “You’re charging a pound, but that Power drill is selling for £40”. 
Doris: “eeeee never, eeee Flo, 40 pounds”. It all basically equated to the manager being told “Get some young volunteers who understand how to search for sold items on eBay and stop letting your volunteers bagsy the good shit”.

Received this in a twitter DM. Almost deserves its own thread.

Probs said this on here before, but I was at the WWF 1993 December tour, specifically at Whitley Bay Ice Rink. I’ve been hunting for a fan cam for years but haven’t found a thing unfortunately. I forever hold out unrealistic hope that WWE will release a bunch of ‘best of the hard cam’ from house shows.

Here’s the card, it’s a beauty, a mix of brilliance and absolute shite. Superb. The last 4 matches were great, especially HBK vs Savage, my memory tells me it was far better than the match that was recorded from the European tour.

Security confiscated my dads camera, so we only got 1 pic of 123 Kid battering Martel.

This could be a bit special.

11 minutes ago, chokeout said:

Whenever he's mentioned it always makes me think of this clip. Makes my arse go just thinking of him casually climbing up the overhang at the top

 

Fully agree. It’s how casual he is with it and how normal it all is for him, which is what puts him heads and shoulders above base jumpers and the like, when we’re talking about nerves of steel.

With those clips of adrenaline junkies who do pull ups on cranes etc, don’t get me wrong, it makes my stomach go, but what they do is like an event, they’re looking for a thrill and want people to notice, each to their own. But what Fred and his co do is far more ‘brave’ and ‘impressive’ in my opinion, he doesn’t give it a 2nd thought, he’s not doing it for thrills, he’s not looking for attention as such, his job was to climb up shit ladders, without any safety equipment apart from a flat cap, to the top of giant chimneys, several times a day. It’s his level of normal, that makes him so much more abnormal.

I remember seeing bits of his BBC documentary as a kid at school and those memories randomly pop in to my head from time to time. I appreciate he’s probably well know in certain regions, but he’s not really spoken about that often, and he’s easily forgotten about.
I fondly remember a couple of scenes of him as a steeplejack, up a massive chimney, laying pipe and boards, while sitting on a rope swing, talking about how difficult it was to smoke a tab that high up, so I decided to have a look for the episodes online and found a YouTube channel with the full BBC documentary and a few other projects Fred was involved with.

He’s one of the people you wished you could’ve had a pint with, and learned from. His engineering knowledge is incredible, and he really reminds me of my old grandad, with that passion & knowledge for a subject that he stumbled across, and became a self taught master of.

Episode 4 is great, he cuts the ribbon to open a Barnardo’s shop, with a gaggle of old ladies giggling at every word he says. At one point he says “I don’t like shopping, I’m Victorian, I went in to a shop and I got very upset like, you know”, as he’s stood in a shop.

I felt he deserved his own thread, but to open it up to more than Fred, are there any local heroes from your neck of the woods from years gone by, who people should be more aware of? 

I never saw this when I was younger and did in fact start smoking for a few years when I was 14. 
Thanks Warrior.

Can’t see anything other than Fury dominating. I think Joshua will clip him, but I don’t think he’s got what’s required to knock Fury out personally. I think Fury wins via stoppage in the final 1/4.

We’ve returned with ‘Sumo Drop’ to cover the March, Haru Basho, Sumo Tournament. Myself, Hog & Matt discuss news and results from this month’s tournament, in this case, day 1.

We’re also playing the Kachi-Clash fantasy game alongside it. Following the rules of the online Sumo game, each of us have created a stable of 5, and are awarded points based on our sumo wrestlers performances each day of the Basho. It’s a mini league, which is part of a larger game. 

If it’s at all of interest, you can checkout episode 1 here, covering everything from day 1. We’ll be back on day 8 (half way point) and again on day 15 to wrap the month up. It’s been added to our Sumo Drop playlist, where you can also find a beginners guide to sumo pod episode.

Cheers

Here we go, we’re back (if you’re interested). 
It’s March, so it’s time for the Haru Basho.

Main news heading in to day 1, is that the Yokozuna, Hakuho, has returned and is competing. Several others have also returned from a spell of absence from injuries and Covid, including the November Basho winner, the Ozeki, Takakeisho. He had a horrid time in January, he lost loads before dropping out mid-tournament. Many blamed it on a injury and his weight gain since November. Well, he’s back and apparently 37lbs lighter. We’ll see what difference that makes.

However, the other Yokozuna, Kakuryu (who has missed several tournaments for mixed reasons) has not returned this Basho. It’s believed he has given another injury based excuse for not competing, but is apparently eager to return next tournament. We’ll have to see how the Yokozuna deliberation council respond to that, but it’s not great.

Anyway, day 1 results (March 14th) are in spoiler tags. Remember, new matches occur every day for 2 weeks. We are running a pod, covering results, but were also playing Kachi-Clash. It’s a similar concept to basic Fantasy Football. You must create a stable of 5 sumos, 1 from each category (categories are based on rankings so you can only choose 1 Yokozuna/Ozeki for example). Once you have a team of 5, you gain points for their performances each day. You can’t make subs and you must stick with your choices once the game starts on Day 1. There’s 3 members on my pod, discussing the tournament and playing the game, we’ve all picked different sumo wrestlers in each category, so we’ll all face off against each other. Anyway, I’ll post links in the MMA Pod thread.

But yeah, very interesting results on day 1, including a few shocks. 

On 3/10/2021 at 11:17 AM, WeeAl said:

I'm always surprised that WWE is able to convince TV executives that they are DVR proof. I'd be even more shocked if they actually are DVR proof, and aren't just pulling the wool. 

That anybody still watches live wrestling programs, in this day and age? I can't get my head around it. 

Social media has a lot to play in this, not solely, but definitely a contribution to live viewership. I think a lot of people want instant gratification, and as long as there’s a live option, people want to be the ‘first’ to watch it and then tell others their thoughts. Whether it’s podcasts, twitter updates, live watch alongs etc, there’s a lot of people who watch live to either directly provide their thoughts & analysis, or be part of that conversation. Twitter/YouTube presenters such as Daze & CWrestling gain a lot of views and interaction due to covering live watch alongs. If they don’t cover it, will they lose out on interaction, views and possible advertising revenue? yeah, they arguably would.

So you’ve got those and the MANY like them, then you’ve got their followers who want to be noticed and be part of that conversation. Then you’ve got the copycat versions who have little to no platform, but who see the allure of it (followers/pay days).

People watch footy live and constantly update twitter about every throw in, it’s exactly the same with wrestling. So when you consider that, and the fact how many podcasts/similar there are, and how many people want to upload first, then add the people who want to be part of that discussion, then the numbers start adding up, not including people who just watch live for the sake of it.

I was more fearful of the Pyro they used at 1PW’s 4th anniversary show, when they shot frigging fireworks in to the crowd at Donny Dome.

I sat down and chatted with Boss Fight Studio regarding the Legends of Lucha line, updates on production and shipping, plans ahead, more lines, accessories, belts and so much more.

Also, completely free to enter competition on Twitter, where you can win the entire set of Wave 1 Fanaticos.
Enjoy
Cheers 

https://mobile.twitter.com/grapplearcade/status/1368507744651780104