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3 hours ago, Matthew said:

On the death march through Wembley Park, there was a family there, mother, father, son, daughter (just in case anyone needed clarifying what a family is), the daughter was flagging a bit, the mother turned around to her and said “scissor me baby”, and proceeded to do the scissor hand gestures. The daughter was no older than 12. Unreal parenting there.

This is what a round trip through the true blue British heartlands will do to you.

3 hours ago, JLM said:

Yeah a dad in front of us had to try and cover for Mox  (kid mist have been about 9 years old) by telling him  Penta had put spaghetti all over Mox’s head. The lad thought it was hilarious and also had a big Scissor Me sign and foam finger thingy. Think the violence is less child appropriate than the Scissor me merch really. 

Hah. "Is that spaghetti!?" was genuinely my first thought while watching that spot. Glad I didn't say it outloud to anyone.

I'm so pleased with the finish. Of course, I would have been thrilled by a heel turn, too, but there's something especially wonderful about AEW closing this massive show on such a heartwarming note. Before all the Punk shenanigans and backbiting, AEW was a company coloured by its sense of camaraderie and a different outlook on machismo and hypermasculinity. Choosing to end the show in a way that leant back into that, a finish that says, "this is who we are, what we do and the feeling we're going for" rather than just "here's a narrative reason to watch next week" was brave and, I think, a good call.

19 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

They've got a roof. 

Wembley - Does the Roof Close? / Will I Get Wet If It Rains?

Just as a heads-up for people who don't know the roof situation: if you're near the floor and it rains, you're going to get wet. The weather report for tomorrow looks pretty similar to what it was today in North London - decent temperature but consistent showers - but those "showers" today were a fucking deluge, complete with the kind of lightning storms that could see Samoa Joe back in a poncho come show time tomorrow. Bring your coats.

5 hours ago, Fatty Facesitter said:

Gooners - what's the craic with Gabriel and his mysterious benching today? Anything more in that apart from a one off? 

Arteta's been on one about unpredictability and versatility all preseason, so I think it was just tactical, sacrificing our least progressive defender to get another forward on the pitch while playing against the lowest of low blocks. For FPL purposes, I'd be pretty surprised if he's not straight back in for our trip to Selhurst Park next week and then beyond that. 

5 hours ago, johnnyboy said:

Two blue kits?  Ridiculous.

This reminds me of how irrationally annoyed I get when Chelsea play in their home kit when they're away to Man City. Why I care, I don't know, but it really bugs me.

As much as the Saint-Maximin fee complaints are nonsense, it'll be funny to see the FA and Premier League backtrack on their decision to welcome in the Saudis now they're actively building a competitor. If the Premier League TV deal money gets impacted even slightly, suddenly everything at Newcastle's going to be run through the wringer, pretending all the while it's because they've suddenly developed a conscience.

I enjoyed Taz on commentary, deadpanning "some people will wonder why he's called Big Bill".

On 5/31/2023 at 6:26 PM, westlondonmist said:

I don't really understand how a season being 12 points ahead and pissing it away could be more fun than this one. 

As an Arsenal fan this year, maybe I'm well-placed to answer that one. Most fans on the outside (some on the inside too) focus on the ending, but a lot of us are still very happy with what we saw this year. More goals than we've ever scored in the PL, tied for most wins we've ever managed with the Invincibles, entertaining football with a young, likeable team, some amazingly dramatic wins home and away, and a stupidly long time on top of the table. Falling in the final stretch really doesn't sap away all the joy we experienced from August to March. I imagine it's very similar for those 90's Newcastle fans. Sure, this year Newcastle have been really good, but you're never going to accumulate as many good memories in a top four race as you will in a title charge.

3 hours ago, Fatty Facesitter said:

Jungle Boy is giving it the “I just want to be the best professional wrestler I can be” verbiage and complaining about MJF and how he conducts himself…and they’ve shot Perry’s interview next to a massive swimming pool. It’s an odd juxtaposition when you're trying to build someone up as babyface with a sort of 'he's one of your own!' mentality. Don't get me wrong, he's earned his pennies and he can spend on it on what he likes, good on him - it's more how AEW have shot and edited this particular piece that I'm critiquing.

I've not watched AEW much in the past few months, so I don't know how the characters may have shifted in that time, but yeah... that Jungle Boy promo screamed "impending heel turn" to me. Looked like a bit of a rich prick, had Christian speaking for him, talked about how Christian taught him how cold the world could be: if that's not the vibe they were going for, they need to be careful. It's all too easy to lose the shine off a babyface. Also agree about Darby's comment being crass and tone-deaf. Although, did he say dollar store toilets? I guess that's a haunting image.

As a Gooner, obviously I'm delighted at the outcome, but I fully agree with Ryan Mason that Jota should have been sent off. It's such a weird disconnect we have in football where, if you mistime a tackle and connect with someone's ankle badly, it's a straight red, but if you mistime a challenge and connect hard with someone's head - either with your boot or with your own head - it rarely results in a sending off or often even a foul. Mistime a 50/50 on the ground and everyone's up in arms, mistime a 50/50 in the air and it's waved away as "just a clash of heads" or the like. With all the evidence on brain injuries from heading alone, having these kind of challenges ignored is something football needs to correct. 

6 hours ago, Gus Mears said:

They've made no effort whatsoever to stay in Oakland. The stadium has been run down to the extent it has sewage going through the dugouts and the Mets broadcasters had to be put in some side cupboard during a recent road trip because a possum had taken up residence in the booth and started shitting everywhere.

'Focused on securing a new home to the club' I.e demanding local authorities pay for an entire new stadium while spending the least money on payroll in baseball and pocketing every spare cent.

I'm an A's fan, so this is awful news. The top part of the quote above feels a bit harsh, because there was certainly a lot of effort from a lot of people to try to find a way to stay in Oakland, but sadly the bottom part of the quote is completely true. The ownership wanted everything for free, and nothing Oakland could offer was ever going to be enough.

6 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

Yeah this was like the plot to Major League but without the team winning. Shite stadium, shite attendances and shite team. 

It's actually unreal how true this is, and that it's been allowed/encouraged by MLB is a disgrace. How we've been allowed to put out an entire team that costs less than Max Scherzer while raking in money from revenue sharing feels genuinely criminal. You can hardly blame people for not going to games while this has been going on though. Honestly, I haven't even been able to watch them on TV for the last 18 months or so because there's just no effort to be competitive. The team this year looks good for 120 losses barring some miracle talent breakthroughs. Asking people to pay an owner who treats them with genuine disdain to watch a team designed to lose badly is a big ask. It's only a few years ago, though, that our average attendance was basically double what it is now, not wildly different to that of, say, the White Sox. And no-one was realistically calling for them to be shunted out of Chicago. The whole thing is just brutal.

I'm going to have a decision to make if this move goes through. This ownership? Vegas? Ugh. But supporting a new team? Sigh. All bad options. 

6 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

MLB The Show 23

Yes lads!  Playing on series X and it’s swish as fuck. Only started the Road To The Show and the first few Diamond Dynasty bits. So used to playing with a great squad it was difficult making the switch back to bronze players!  But yeah, great stuff!

If you do a few Moments on the WBC program, you can get a few diamond players quite quickly, if that helps. If there's one thing The Show's not great at, I think, it's hiding too much away behind convoluted menus. 

It also has a version of 'The Boys Are Back in Town' that weirdly censors the word 'fight', so every time you hear it, it's like the lyric is actually "and if the boys wanna fuck, you better let 'em". 

My first gig was the Goo Goo Dolls, on their Dizzy Up the Girl (the album with 'Iris') tour. It was fine.

My best is a tie between R.E.M. in Hyde Park in 2005 and a slightly strange one from a few years back, Songs:Molina at Bush Hall in 2018. If you don't know, Jason Molina was a brilliant singer/songwriter who performed as/in Songs:Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. And he died in 2013. So Songs:Molina is compromised of his former MEC bandmates and a guest singer (that tour was the guy from Strand of Oaks), and they just play Jason's songs, as a sort of celebration/commemoration. Now, I saw Jason Molina live in various guises over the years and he was always brilliant, if a bit prickly with the audience sometimes (because he hated people constantly yelling requests for old songs). But this, it seems mental to say, was somehow even better. Hearing those songs I never thought I'd hear live again, in a room full of people who loved the guy, felt like the closest thing to a religious experience I've ever had; like the guy we all missed was still with us because we were there to remember him and share in what he meant to us. It was just really lovely.

Worst gig? Bob Dylan at Brixton Academy in 2005, probably. The songs were almost unrecognisable, the sound mix was horrible and he looked, naturally perhaps, like he didn't give a shit that this obviously wasn't what people wanted. My mate was talking to some guy who claimed to be at that infamous 'Judas!' gig years ago, and he walked out all angry, furious at what Bob was doing to his own songs. That bit was pretty funny at least.

4 hours ago, RalphyV2 said:

Sounds right up my street, pottering about aimlessly not really doing much is what I enjoy doing and am good at, count me in

Actually, Ralphy, having read some of your posts in other threads, I'll share this. A few years back I was receiving/engaging in a whole host of mental health treatments. Lots of therapy and loads of group sessions exploring all kinds of ways to de-stress and get my head straight. It was an important and necessary process for me - definitely long overdue - but also extremely stressful and frustrating. I'd try mindfulness, guided meditations, things as simple as colouring-in and countless other methods suggested to me, and I'd invariably get down because all these things that seemed to help everyone else couldn't help me. The one thing I found that actually allowed me to chill out and relax during that extremely stressful period was Stardew Valley. It's a gem of a game, so sweet and low stakes. I literally have no idea if there's any sort of endgame or what "completing it" would look like, but I sunk hundreds of hours into quietly tending my farm and it's probably one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had gaming. Obviously it might not be the same for you, but I just thought I'd throw that out there. 

My biggest disappointment is Jay White being booked in matches in which he's going to spend half his time on the outside. (For real, though, it's a bit of a bummer he's looks so lost in the shuffle here.)

20 hours ago, Cod Eye said:

I need a team to "support" though, but I've no idea who anyone is. So come on lads, suggest me a team to support, please!

Just a few thought/suggestions on this:

* watch highlights. MLB.com is a really remarkable resource. It's been a little while since I've watched regularly, but they always used to do daily recaps that would have highlights of the days best plays in really bitesize, consumer-friendly capsules. Same with YouTube nowadays. There are a million little videos you could watch of things like "best pitches in baseball" or "best defensive plays" that will showcase the best of the sport while also displaying the variety across the league. There are a ton of things that might capture your attention or put you off certain teams. It sounds trite, but maybe you love/hate a team's home/road colour schemes; maybe you like the look of a home stadium; maybe you like/dislike the local commentary team; maybe you fall in love with a particular pitcher's stuff. A personal pet peeve is the camera angle some teams use for their hard cam behind a pitcher. There are so many little things that can quickly add up to a preference.

* sign up for a fantasy baseball league next season and see how it develops. It may seem daunting if you're new to the sport, but fantasy baseball is much easier and much more fun than fantasy football, and you learn a ton while playing. It also makes it much easier to keep up with a sport that you might not often have the chance to watch live every day.

* consider the city. Maybe it's somewhere you're more likely to visit, maybe it's somewhere you'd aspire to visit.

* don't think that you have to pick a team immediately and stick with it. You can if you want, but I'd say feel free to let a fandom form. Naturally, once you form that fandom, you're locked into forever and desertion is unconscionable, but in these very early stages? Shop around and see what connects.

But, yeah, preferably not the Yankees.

-edit-

* if available, maybe play something like The Show on Xbox/PS. A lot to learn in terms of players/stadiums on there too.

3 hours ago, Merzbow said:

I was lucky when seeing Charli XCX earlier in the year, proper dreading it but didn't realise it would be full of bears that look remarkably like me..

Charli XCX was actually my worst for that feeling. In 2015, on her 'Sucker' tour, the audience felt like it was all 14 year-old girls in mesh tops and chokers. It felt like a convention run by the gross people who market Playboy clothes to kids.

Is Mox a lock to win his side of the bracket? A big part of me fancies a Bryan vs. Darby final to break up the infinite regress cycle of champs and guarantee new one going into that show. You get the veteran/youngster dynamic, the interloper/original dynamic and some interesting pathways for an MJF programme. I even kind of like the idea of MJF costing Darby the title (or trying to) because he has to be the first of the four pillars to reach the "pinnacle".

Is Pac the promotion's first-ever double champ? If so, good for him. I'm surprised they didn't take the opportunity to give Orange Cassidy his first belt though. 

It is going to be so depressing tonight when, in a moment so fraught with intrigue and possibility regarding the future of AEW, Jay Lethal's music hits.

If you're in a decent-sized venue, the idea of having to queue up at the end to unlock your phone and leave sounds like a massive ballache to solve something that's barely a problem.

I'd say it's 90% like pre-Covid. At a few of the gigs I've been to, the band/artist have signs up requesting that people wear masks, and you'll get a minority who oblige. Some places are also card only at bars/merch. Other than that, though, it's pretty indistinguishable from the way back when of 2019.

I still wear my mask at all these things. It's not ideal, obviously, but one bonus is that it muffles my singing so I'm less anxious about bothering people.

Just a little bit of spleen-venting here, but I wonder how people feel about NXT's commentary at the moment? I know a lot of people here disliked Mauro, and I remember that one of the chief complaints was that he was always yelling, but Vic Joseph is driving me mad with it. I feel like he is yelling everything. Sure, he doesn't say "mamma mia!", but it's almost like he's delivering every sentence with that level of emphasis. It's like ALL CAPS, ALL THE TIME. And Wade and Beth are guilty of it too, like they're being told that they need to constantly be screeching at fever pitch for any of it to be exciting. It's really off-putting. 

Honestly, I'd be delighted if AEW opened Dynamite with a video reel of the main event where they cut to a huge movie explosion/building collapse when the countdown hits zero. I'd like their attitude to be, "you know what we were going for, we're proud of the story we told, so fuck it... we're pretending the bomb spot delivered completely and that's that". I feel like I'd have a happier time suspending my disbelief in that way - in a way that lets them continue with that beautifully told story - than I will with whatever panicked patch job they end up producing under pressure. 

Also, never in a million years did I imagine I'd enjoy a 2021 Sting match so much. 

Does anyone still play Pokemon Go? I only started fairly recently and I've got a bunch of field research tasks that need me to add friends and send gifts etc. My trainer code is 9922 2162 2271. An add would be much appreciated. Cheers in advance if you're willing.

When I came here on Sunday morning, I held off posting about how much I hated the Boneyard match because I didn't want to be a black cloud when everyone seemed so positive. To me, though, it felt like the epitome of why we're sometimes embarrassed to be wrestling fans. If someone who doesn't like wrestling caught me watching that, I'd be mortified. So I watched it and it filled me with dread for what the Firefly Funhouse match would be. What a hugely pleasant surprise that was though.

On paper, it's a lot of things I hate in seeing in wrestling. Supernatural nonsense drives me nuts. When Undertaker showed up behind AJ on the digger just 24 hours earlier, it annoyed the living shit out of me. But this was just so wildly ambitious and meta and crazy and different. It was like they hired David Lynch to produce the segment. And I think it felt okay because it was so detached from normal wrestling. Obviously wrestling requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, but there's a certain framework we base that on and a limit to how much it can be stretched. Undertaker and AJ are fake fighting fighting in a graveyard? I'll allow it. Undertaker magically teleports? A bit far for me. The Funhouse match, though, just wasn't a wrestling match at all. It was a vignette. And as insane and weird as it was, I can see a way out of it where they just act as if it was an effective promo; Bray Wyatt making a convincing case against John Cena, causing a bit of a dark night of the soul moment for John and leading to another, more typical match. That's somehow easier for me to square than The Undertaker winning a fight using magic and burying AJ alive. Who knows though? Different strokes for different folks and all that. Either way, it was an unexpected and unusual delight.