Chris B

Being announced the same week as it was revealed they censored a dancer's "Protect the Dolls" t-shirt, and a month after they dropped Drag Race UK, I think it's understandable that a lot of people don't trust the BBC around trans issues at the moment.

Plus mirrors just confuse children, as they keep swiping on them trying to watch TikTok.

You'd think being the first wrestler on a new show would lead to more.

Two (presumably inter-promotional) angles that never went anywhere that I don't think have been mentioned: Jeff Jarrett attacking Hulk Hogan in NJPW, bloodying him up with a guitar shot. Atsushi Onita and The Sandman getting into it in ECW. I remember the Onita one seeming like a big deal very briefly - there was an assumption that we'd get a no-ropes exploding deathmatch or something.

I honestly think it's one of the most important films of the 20th Century. I also saw Digger over the weekend, and thought it was neither a disaster nor a masterpiece. It was fine. You're not missing out that much if you don't see it. You didn't make a mistake if you do see it. I do think it was a brave move to cast John Goodman in the film considering he would have knocked the ball out of the fucking park if he'd played Digger. I thought Cruise was just okay. With Goodman in the role, it'd have cost a lot less money and probably made less. But I'd have liked it more.

A short film of mine has finally been put online and free to watch. It was made in a small café in Tottenham as part of a project where seven different filmmakers made shorts. I wanted to do something real-time, and in mind of something like Before Sunrise. The two performers (CJ Halse and Cathy Conneff) are both fab. It did pretty well in festivals, which is a weird thing in itself - basically, you have to pay for each submission, and they can get quite expensive. Since I was going basically on no budget, this got into the ones I could apply to. It got a pretty high acceptance rate, and won a couple of awards. Most of the festivals were pretty small, but it's been shown in the US, Morocco and Barcelona, which is very cool to know. So yeah, I'd love to get some eyes on this. I wrote, edited and directed it.

My general headcanon is that Tony Khan doesn't mind a bit of interference. He's a promoter - there are matches where he cares about it, but overall, he's up for whatever makes an exciting show. But there's times he'll make clear not to do this.

I saw someone talking about people confusing 'detailed' with 'good'. And I think that's exactly what happens.

These things are complicated.

The Cornell rape story has been in my feed a lot recently, and it's leading to a lot of women asking men to do more. Especially around challenging misogynistic banter and the like. I read this article and really liked it, and there didn't seem an obvious place to share it. And we live in a patriarchy, so as a strangely-pooing, increasingly wrestling-ambivalent but bloke-heavy board, I figured it might be a useful thread to have as we all try to navigate our way through the patriarchy and not being dickheads. So, yeah. Patriarchy, rape culture, misogyny, etc. Let's figure out being good people and how we can influence others or do good where we can. The piece I'm talking about is by a sex writer, who does some really good stuff on feminism along with her erotica (so you can follow up the shot of this article with a gangbang fantasy chaser a couple of posts down). The point that really stood out to me was around backing other people up when they challenge people - and that's definitely something I've felt left out to dry on in the past, as well as supported at other times, and being supported went a lot better. https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/how-to-be-difficult/

I'd just gently correct him when he says it - 'CYMK, not CMYK'. If he reacts to you doing so, just say you don't want him to get it wrong in front of a client or someone who might get weird about it.

S2I think the bleak strips are a genuine work of art. And, at times, feels like an acknowledgement of the ways capitalism makes life harder for people. It hits a reality that I really don't see portrayed elsewhere. Which is a warning over this strip, Fixed Odds Betty, that was shared on Reddit today. It has ruined my day and yet I find it incredibly funny.

Two different points. 1 - The issue isn't that WWE said he wasn't working for them - it's that they didn't say anything for a year, and once he started with AEW, they effectively told the Visa issuers that he was committing fraud. They didn't care about it until he signed with a competitor. All of this being stuff they never cared about before (and, worth remembering, they don't have employees). 2 - The "profiting" is a different thing. Some social media accounts that seem to be WWE affiliated have started calling for AEW to be investigated over steroids etc. Pretty sure that's what Bixenspan is referring to. I have time for Bixenspan. Back when I was trying to bring more attention to the Ashley Massaro affidavit, he was the only journalist that went into it before it became too big a story to ignore.

It's the fact that they tried to fuck with his visa is the point. Edit - the thread gives more context. In the early days of AEW, WWE snitched on him to immigration, which could have caused him to be banned from the US. Absolutely awful shit to pull.

I'm hesitant to put this in the Pac thread, just because it's so anger-inducing, but fuck me. What absolute ghouls those cunts are.

There may be a reason for this. Pretty quickly, when the news broke that he died, I saw a couple of people posting on Bluesky talking about his reputation for being creepy and pressuring around young women - one guy said he was his handler at a convention, and he was assigned one to avoid him being alone with women. Same guy said multiple comedians had questioned him being booked, telling him Haskins had a reputation for using his profile to pressure young women. Might be nothing to it, but it would explain people not being in a rush to book him on the show.

See, I really don't think so - I think it was the kind of thing that was the entire point of the film. I found it genuinely fascinating and compelling that it was something that relied on 'real-world' information that we had that the inhabitants of the film didn't have. I saw it as partly a film about Brexit, and partly about the weirdness and poison of nostalgia - they're harkening back to something that's subverting a supposedly good thing - but because their world stopped in 2002, they never learned the truth. I think it came across as repulsive, but I thought it did so in an interesting way, at least.

Because his heel turn ended up being so disturbing, it's easy to forget how funny it was at times. While a bunch of people were convinced he wasn't being full heel yet, there was the brilliant angle where he faked an ankle injury. He then went out on the following show, making a big deal about how he always told the truth and wouldn't lie to the audience - then attacking Swerve and immediately desperately explaining that he had to lie because Swerve hadn't left him a choice. He was being an absolutely hilarious dickhead, acting like a face but being heel, before he got injured for real for a couple of months.

The way he was able to reinvent what people thought of him so many times was amazing. His style wasn't really the kind of thing WWE went for for a long time, and by the time he got there, he was quickly stuck in the cruiserweight box. When he realised they weren't going to take it seriously, he not only left WWE behind, but he became a credible guy to slot into the main event at any time. And now, I think he'll be near the top of the list of 'should have held a world championship'. He was a convincing, terrifying bastard who made you grin while watching him. That he was able to be that character so consistently, while never losing sight of what a deeply silly thing pro-wrestling is, meant that he could do funny and silly stuff while never looking like a joke. He came across like he could beat the shit out of anyone, while giving them one of their best matches. And it feels like 'oh, he was really good at pro-wrestling' is short-changing him. Considering some of the places he worked and people he was around, he seems to have kept grounded and just been a tremendous guy. It seems like he was as lovely to know as he was fun to watch.

Only ever heard good things about Pac from fans and wrestlers. One of my favourites of the last decade. What absolutely shit news.

Considering how hot I find both Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza, it really shows how bad Drive Away Dolls was that I haven't got round to this one yet. Drive Away Dolls also wasn't helped by Love Lies Bleeding coming out at a similar time, which did the queer noir thing SO much better on every conceivable level.

Not sure where else to put this, so figured might as well start a new topic because eesh, the Jake Hager thing. If you haven't seen it, he's pulled a Rey Mysterio at SlapFight, where he got slapped so hard he started bleeding from the ear and the eye, and has now had to go under emergency surgery. Apparently Dana White has said it's the worst injury he's seen in all his time in UFC, and as much of a cunt as he is, he's seen a lot. I've put the picture in spoiler, not so much because it's outrageously gory, but because it just invokes understandable squeamishness. I mean, PowerSlap is a stupid idea anyway, but Jake has to take some kind of prize for stupidity just for his career choice now being to let people hit him so hard in the face that his eye pops a bit. As someone who hasn't been following much of this at all, is it likely to be banned at some point?

To be fair, we used to have 7 tories. At least 6 of them no longer plan to vote tory.

My partner primarily refers to it as the forum 'of strange pooing men'.