It had to happen eventually

Back when Extreme Championship Wrestling was still a thing, Tommy Dreamer had a feud with Raven that went on for a few years, where no matter what happened in the storylines, whenever they actually had a match against each other, Tommy Dreamer always lost.  It didn’t matter if Dreamer was in control of the entire match, or Raven would squash him, in the end, Dreamer did the job. 

It wasn’t until Raven had been poached by WCW because Paul Heyman couldn’t afford to keep any of the rising stars that he had cultivated, did Tommy Dreamer actually get his long-awaited win over Raven.  And even that was mostly because it was a convenient way to write him out of the storylines because he was leaving, but the point remains it took Tommy Dreamer over two years of jobbing before he finally got a win over his long-hated rival.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the University of Virginia finally defeated Virginia Tech in football.  They won the Commonwealth Cup for the first time since 2003.  As I was watching the score (I don’t watch games, because teams I favor tend to always lose when I do), and it was knotted at 30-30 in the fourth quarter, I couldn’t help but have this sinking feeling that maybe this was the year where the streak had to end.  But who really knew, because over the last few years, there had been quite a few nail biters where the good guys prevailed, including an improbable OT win just a year ago.

But then I saw that UVA went up 33-30, and when it came down to the final drive, it was either going to be a soul-sucking TD win for Tech, or probably a turnover when UVA would inevitably make Hendon Hooker actually have to throw the ball if they wanted to win.  When I saw that suddenly UVA was then up 39-30, I knew what had happened without having to dig.

Anyway, for quite a while, I’ve had this analogy in mind for the day when UVA actually beat Tech.  I think it really came to mind back in like 2014, when the two teams were 5-6, and they were playing not just for the Commonwealth Cup, but for bowl eligibility, and the game was a real nail biter that came down to the closing seconds and a defensive stand by the Hokies in order to win it.  But that was the first time I finally felt like the general invincibility of Virginia Tech over UVA was no longer a given, and I couldn’t help but feel that the proverbial doomsday clock of the Hokies’ dominance was really starting to tick.

Continue reading “It had to happen eventually”

I try not to wish death unto others

As we get older, sometimes we try to be a little more cognizant of the things we say, even in knee-jerk reactions or the heat of moments.  When I was a moody teenager who hated everything, I was pretty quick to wish death unto others, for the most minor and inconsequential of circumstances.  Cut me off in traffic?  I hope you blow a flat and crash to your death.  Take my parking space?  I hope you become collateral damage to an MS-13 drive-by.  Beat me in Street Fighter by chip damage?  I hope you have heart attack and keel over you fat cheap fuck.

Yeah, death is a little bit extreme when it comes to momentary lapses in judgment of gauging the value of life.  I’d really be kind of disappointed if I ever wished death unto another human being, and then it actually happened.  And although the chances of such are microscopically minuscule and would obviously be the perfect storm of freak circumstances and not because I mentally wished it upon them, it really does make me think twice about even absent-mindedly, wishing death unto others, especially for overall trivial matters.

These days, I just wish diarrhea unto people who piss me off.  Like, really bad liquid shits, that alter an afternoon, or ruin a night’s sleep; just a temporary dull pain with inconvenient side effects.  It seems like an adequate amount of comeuppance to mentally wish to inflict on other human beings who piss me off.  Take too long to order at Willy’s?  Clog up the self-checkout at Publix?  Aggressively whip around four lanes of traffic to ultimately end up one car length ahead of me?   Be the shitheads sitting in row 25+ on a flight that rushes up to row 23 to get off ten seconds sooner, and ruin the entire deplaning process?  Yeah, I wish diarrhea unto all these asshole motherfuckers.  The more severe shits depending on how insufferable their actions are.  One really bad episode, or nuclear shits that come back several times.

However, there are admittedly still some instances where my frustration bubbles over, and I still fantasize about some horrific death occurring, as much as I don’t really want to admit it.  One is very specific, to when the perfect storm of human beings all spawning on every single toilet in the gym/office when I really have to go; seriously I rarely feel as enraged as I do when I feel the need to relieve myself, but every single stall in the numerous bathroom options I have are all occupied, regardless of the fact that it’s sometimes very early in the morning at times in which I deliberately choose to workout, banking on the early time reducing the amount of people that are present.

The last time this happened, I wanted to a meteor to fall onto the building.  If I can’t use a crapper, then nobody should. 🙁

Continue reading “I try not to wish death unto others”

I guess someone had to jump off the cliff to pioneer some change

I’m at the gym and in between some dumbbell presses, I look up at the television and see a headline scroll across saying “Tesla Truck Breaks the Internet.”  And then suddenly, this thing shows up on screen, and my knee-jerk reaction is something that looks like a cross between the Pyramid Head helmet with wheels, and one of the numerous one-trick wedge-shaped robots from Robot Wars that won matches solely by wedging themselves under the competition and upending them.

But ultimately, my eyebrow scrunched and I mouthed “what the fuck” at what I was seeing, because it was without question the most radically designed automobile that I’ve seen designed that wasn’t CG from Test Track in Disney World.

Look, I get that I often fall into the category of being reluctant to accept change, and I often police myself to try and be open-minded to new and radical things that come to fruition these days.  But seriously, Tesla’s Cybertruck is pushing the boundaries of accepting change for the sake of change, or because they really think that they’re making something that is going to make a difference in the long run.

I mean, as an automobile manufacturer, I think Tesla is really cool.  My wife wants a Tesla Model 3/S/X like nobody else’s business, and from an environmental standpoint, it’s incredible that there’s a car that’s 100% electric, produces zero emissions, AND doesn’t look like a glorified Mario Kart, AND gets outstanding performance.

But the Cybertruck takes a lot of that equity and flushes it down the toilet.  Although the internet wasted zero time at all making the comparison, it really does feel like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer finds out he has a long-lost brother Herb, who’s a successful automotive mogul, but then entrusts Homer with designing the car of the future, which results in this abomination, and to make matters worse the production costs of it ended up bankrupting the company.  It’s like Elon Musk entrusted his long-lost American brother Jimbo Musk to create the pickup truck that Americans wanted, and they ended up with the Cybertruck.

Seriously, “special” is really the only way to describe the Cybertruck, but now without one of those pregnant hesitations before saying the word special, as if to imply that what you’re really trying to say is retarded, but can’t because it’s politically incorrect to be using the R-word these days.  Based on how difficult it is to delineate what side is front and which side is the back, it reminds me of the Tyco Rebound RC cars that could go in either direction and could even flip upside down and still function.

The bottom line is that I understand that someone needs to be the first, when it comes to attempting to break new ground, but I would’ve thought Tesla would’ve been a little more conservative when it came to trying to make waves than this.  The Cybertruck not only doesn’t even look like a truck, but instead it looks like the kind of imaginative fantasy vehicles that children draw on construction paper with crayons.  But actually rendered and built in reality, it’s a cringey abomination of a turd on wheels that really makes me wonder what Tesla’s strategy is; no press is bad press, or do they actually think this actually has a chance of exploding in the market?

Profit ≠ Championships

I feel like I’ve been in a little bit of a writing rut lately, but at the same time I never like to go too long without having written something at all.  When times like this, I tend to fall back onto topics that are easy for me to ramble about like wrestling, or in this case, baseball.

No, it’s not about the Astros and their cheating scandal, although it seems very foreboding for the franchise, due to the overwhelming amount of evidence that backs it up, not to mention the fact that former pitcher Mike Fiers literally tattled on them to the press.

I was reading this article about how a current president, CEO and investor stooge-slave of the Atlanta Braves, Mike Plant, is all optimistic about the future of the Braves and their future success, and as is often the case whenever I read bullshit like this, it makes my eyes roll, but at the same time, it occasionally inspires words to formulate in my head, and then through my fingers and then into a word doc.

Of course Plant is going to say a bunch of optimistic shit to quell investors.  Why would he say stuff like “ehh, the Braves are going to be a perfectly adequate .500+ team, but realistically speaking we don’t have the pitching to compete in the playoffs, nor the talent to carry us beyond the NLDS?”

Instead, he extols the positive bean counts of how well the attendance and television ratings were, and the sponsorship revenue, and the overall profits that the organization is raking in, but not turning around and spending on the team itself.

Somewhere along the lines, the Braves appear to have forgotten that success isn’t really measured in spreadsheets and profit, but in championship banners and Commissioner’s Trophies; and that succeeding with the latter typically results in massive successes with the former.  I would wager money that the Cubs blowing open the bank in 2016, the Astros ponying up in 2017, the Red Sox spending like they always do in 2018, and the Nationals paying their pitchers what the Braves spent on their whole team in 2019, result in way more ROI than the Braves have done, playing it safe and by their completely unnecessary corporate spending limits.

Continue reading “Profit ≠ Championships”

Oversaturation shouldn’t result in shortchanging everything

More often than I’d like to admit, I run into the scenario where I sit down with the intent to watch television, but then burn 30 minutes solely looking for something to watch, before deciding that what I do want to watch will exceed the time of day in which I want to be getting ready for bed.

Primarily, I use a Piss4 or XBONE to watch television, and between two consoles, I typically am skimming through Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, WWE Network, HBO Go, ESPN, TLC Go, or whatever network app the sports game I want to watch is airing on.  And then there’s PLEX where I’m connected to two different servers chock full of content that may or may not overlap with the shit available on all other mentioned media options.

The wife and I haven’t even plunked down for Disney+ yet.  That’s another trillion hours of content available if and when we do.

Needless to say, it’s easy to burn all my time searching for something to watch instead of actually watching something, because when the day is over, and I know that I’m far from the only person who feels this way, but there’s just too much god damn content out there, and not enough god damn hours in any day to watch all of it and actually stay on top of things.

Whether shows are being churned out, or acquired from overseas and distributed in America, it seems like every single time I turn on the television, there’s always a whole bunch of new shit that’s available to watch, and all I can really do is [add to list] everything and then continue browsing titles and watching previews in hopes of finding things that are so compelling, they’re capable of breaking the browsing cycle and be watched immediately.

But most of the time, things are just [added to lists] and then never get watched, not without a tremendous amount of effort and determination.

Continue reading “Oversaturation shouldn’t result in shortchanging everything”

AEW Full Gear: What is Kenny Omega trying to prove?

I really want to like AEW more, but I’m finding it really difficult to not see all the parallels between it and WCW.  Don’t get me wrong, AEW isn’t a bad product after six weeks, but given the hype, the mission statements and even more hype, it was envisioned to be this grand WWE-killer promotion, but honestly if I could be objective, isn’t even remotely close at this point.

The roster is bursting with potential, but there’s no denying that a lot of the talent is still really raw and unrefined, and could definitely use a lot of polishing.  Private Party is the first that comes to mind with two guys that have athleticism up the wazoo, but you can literally watch them talking and calling spots in the ring, and they rush all the time and are often seen waiting for someone to jump off the top rope or springboard, and it looks really sloppy to the smark’s eye.

Commentary is also really sloppy, as JR and Excalibur can’t stop plugging the global real estate company that actually has AEW.com, and nobody seems to have told them that.  Tony Schiavone is still “accidentally” saying “WCW” instead of “AEW” and after 30+ years in the business doesn’t know the difference between a running clothesline and a Buff Blockbuster.

It’s no secret the involvement of the promotion’s management, and how the Young Bucks, Kenny Omega and Cody Rhodes are executives, as well as primary talent.  But there are two sides right now, which is Cody Rhodes who is acknowledging this on screen, but at the same time is very much in the main event picture, having fought Chris Jericho for the AEW World Championship.  Also benefitting is Elite member Hangman Adam Page, who has probably had the most screen time of anyone on the entire roster.

However, on the other side, is the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega, who have basically jobbed themselves to oblivion.  I get that they’re afraid of being accused of whatever nepotism executives elevating themselves would be considered, but at the same time, these guys were gods in New Japan, but have rendered themselves to be glorified jobbers to the stars in their own federation.  And not just that, they’re also repeatedly taking losses from almost solely former WWE or TNA guys, which can’t help the perception that they were ever better than the competition.

Continue reading “AEW Full Gear: What is Kenny Omega trying to prove?”

I went to Wal-Mart and it didn’t totally suck

An interesting thing happened the other day: I went to a Wal-Mart and the experience did not completely suck.  Nor did it magically evaporate 30 minutes of my life that I’d wish for back once I vacated the premises.  I parked, entered the building, picked up my purchases, and I was back out the door in less than five minutes.

Thanks to these gigantic, orange obelisk-like technological marvels, Wal-Mart created a system where customers like me could pay for our stuff online, and pick up our goods at the store without the need to interact with the worst part about going to any Wal-Mart in the first place – people.

When mythical wife made an online purchase with a store pickup, and then asked me to make the pickup, my initial reaction was like OJ Simpson cringing in the courtroom; the idea of going to Wal-Mart is tantamount to being asked to go to Christmas mass.  It’s just something I really don’t ever want to do, but given the need to begin amassing as many diapers as we’re likely going to need, it was a necessary evil.  Frankly, if I had to go to a Wal-Mart in the first place, I went ahead and capitalized on the same deal mythical wife did, and placed an order myself, because we may as well get double the diapers if I’m going to make a single trip.

I assumed I’d have go to the dreaded customer service line where there would inevitably be a mix of people attempting to return something they obviously used but are trying to spin as being defective, someone trying to cash a paycheck and bitching about the unreasonable fee that they’re collecting to do so, or other schlubs like me picking up online orders, but probably weren’t even remotely close to being fulfilled.

Continue reading “I went to Wal-Mart and it didn’t totally suck”