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So my wife surprised me with Wrestlemania tickets, and a hotel for the whole weekend. It just dawned on me that virtually every indy fed will have a show in the area that weekend. So, um, who's having a show where? I figure there's a Ring of Honor show. Any chance any of the New Japan bigwigs show up (Okada, Kenny Omega, Naito, etc.?) Will Pete Dunne be on the NXT show, or a Progress show? It's my first Wrestlemania in over 30 years of fandom. I'm so excited to go with my son. Can't believe it.

Hey guys, in the chance I'm busy with fam tomorrow, I hope y'all have a very pleasant Christmas, etc.

That laugh...

La La La Rowan won a big lawsuit when someone dropped a giant ball of oil on him.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Rowan’s midsection in that photo really makes me think it’s about to say “Hellooooooooooo!”

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2018! Hope it's all good.

Also, Asuka rules. She should stay undefeated for a 1000 years.

How many stars did Meltzer give that?

Anybody figure Raw will be interesting tonight, or will it just be meaningless filler* because it's likely nobody will be watching? The idea of watching WWE on Christmas night feels a bit weird to me so not sure I want to tune in. * I mean more meaningless than usual.

Ahh, the good ol' days. Kill a dot 3 times. Get a party invite and friend request.

Happy holidays and Merry Christmas to my weird internet home and family.

It always worked for Lux Interior... Just sayin'...

They've announced Omega and Tanahashi for sure. http://rohwrestling.com/news/breaking-kenny-omega-will-compete-supercard-honor-xii

The Wrestlecon shows in downtown New Orleans: http://www.wrestlecon.com/tentative-schedule/ Then the WWN shows are a bit of a drive, out in Kenner. http://www.morethanmania.com/morethanmania.com..events.html ROH and NXT are running against each other on the Saturday night. NXT is at the Smoothie King Center and ROH is at UNO Lakefront Arena. Tickets for all of these have already gone on sale, but there's lots still available. In fact I'm not sure that anything has completely sold out.

Rowan's street cred went up 1000% with everyone who didn't already know he wrestled in Japan lol

Saw it again, and I’m pretty much all in on loving it, having read too many pieces about the movie and committed to carefully and specifically watching only the movie they aimed to make. The teenagers nearby were really into it, and my dad—15 when this all started—liked it a lot too. This is a big generalization, but I wonder if most of the backlash coming from men more or less my age—29–has to do with being what I’ll call the prequel/EU generation. That is, Star Wars was Dark Horse and Thrawn and KOTOR and maligned prequels—and a thousand other things—so we were both skeptical of new canon and paradoxically endlessly aware we could find SOMETHING somewhere we liked. So, we turned reactive and grew very attached to our own private canon. (Of course my demographic also trends regrettably towards being insane online Nazi fetishists, so that has to be factored in.) This is too many words for how insufficiently I've thought about this. Anyway, a couple things I noticed this time (about which I’m honestly, totally unbothered) and one other thing: 1) When did Rey learn how to swim, growing up as a scavenging desert rat? 2) Why didn’t Kylo force-grab his own lightsaber during the end of the throne room fight? Catching the one Rey tossed him proved he could free his hand. Further, dude didn’t use the Force at all during that fight. I can only conclude he wanted to show he doesn’t actually suck at the dueling part. 3) One of the teens sitting behind me, when it’s revealed Rey is confessing her depressing spelunking adventure to Kylo, whisper-shouted “Mmmmmm get it girl,” and it was probably the funniest line of the movie to a theater that was pretty generous towards the scripted comedy.

My ten-plus-one favorite games of the year, in no particular order except for the first one, which is the best of the best: Super Mario Odyssey:They finally made an actually good 3D Mario platformer again! What puts this over the top is the effective use of music, from "Jump Up, Super Star!" to some random J-Pop during the ending sequence. Pyre: It's NBA Jam except that when your team wins, the dog or demon or flying harpy person on your team who you've become extremely close to leaves you forever in order to foment a rebellion that you are personally invested in seeing succeed. So what I'm saying is that the stakes are higher than simply beating Pippen and Rodman in a game of two-on-two. Everybody's Golf: It's more Hot Shots Golf except with more unlockables. That's good for my top ten in any year. Hidden Folks: It's Where's Waldo with the best sound effects in a game maybe ever, for real. Also, I miss Where's Waldo. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: It's not as good as everyone says it is, but it's still pretty good. I mean, I put like two hundred hours into it. The DLC actually makes me less high on it, though. I'm probably burned out on Zelda for a good five years. Still a great game, though. Mario and Rabbids Kingdom Battle: It's better than X-COM, and hear me out on this, because it's actually fun to get across a battle map in Mario and Rabbids and having my shot chances at a simple 100%/50%/0% eliminates all the "I had three people with 90%+ chances to hit miss and then they all died" stuff that I know is a perfectly common example of probability, but which feels unfair. Fire Pro Wrestling World: It's more Fire Pro, but bigger! That's good for my top ten in any year. Picross S: Pictogram puzzles are the right level of challenge for me, so any set of well-put-together Pictogram puzzles is going to rank highly on my list. Great for pre-bedtime play, too. Pro Evolution Soccer 2018: The physics and collision detection in this game are excellent. Also, it doesn't play in such an arcade-style way anymore. It feels like a proper sim and got me to quit FIFA for awhile (except for on Switch, where I did, in fact, pay sixty dollars for the gimped portable FIFA 18 release that is still the best portable soccer game of all time). Horizon: Zero Dawn: I still need to go back and play the DLC, but this was the best action-adventure open-world game where you had to scale a bunch of shit this year. I hate these fuckin' terms, but the world-building was excellent, as was the lore and fuck me, I feel like I should wash my mouth out with soap. Also, it actually has engaging combat on very hard and ultra-hard, combat being a weak link for pretty much every other high-profile action-adventure game that came out this year. Injustice 2: This is the fighting game for guys in their mid-thirties with slowly-eroding reflexes who still want to do cool combos and shit and also don't really like to play online against sixteen-year-olds with twitchy fingers and too much time on their hands to practice so instead the game gives a bunch of single-player stuff to do that doesn't get old. So me. This game is for me.

Now he's wrestling in his 60's, problem solved.

I'm up to chapter 7 in the Pillman book (he's about to join WCW), and it's spellbinding so far. Keep in mind, I say that as someone who doesn't give two shits about football (what most of the early chapters are about), but it's fascinating anyway. I would have read more, but it was pushing 4 a.m. The book is fantastic. Get it, everyone!

Buy her a puffin.

I would say that is true of most wrestling podcasts, whether it is a person you like or don't like.

I have Working Together on vinyl and it's fucking amazingly great. Has a different Beatles cover even (Get Back) Ike Turner was an abusive piece of shit, but good Christ could that man play the bass.

Settle down Hollywood Shibata....

Thanks for the good wishes, both you and @The Natural! She came home today with a bunch of antibiotics to take over the next several days and she needs to go back up there Tuesday to have an x-ray. If there's still fluid present they'll drain it, but it's an out-patient procedure hat takes "under an hour". Yeah, there's definitely a portable oxygen generator available (made famous by Piney Winston on Sons of Anarchy), thing is there's a catch, (isn't there always?) Medicaid will pay for either the rather large "portable" home generator system and supplementary cylinders . It's "portable" in the sense that it has wheels and should I be low on thirty foot hoses I can actually drag the damn thing from room to room. The really portable system that you've seen on tv is possibly the better way to go, but here's the thing, Medicaid will pay for one system only; and no, you don't get to try one out for thirty days to see how you like it, you decide which one you're going to use for a year. With the more portable system, I have to check and make sure there aren't any hidden costs such as batteries not being covered as the batteries for the thing are a unique type that are totally useless or anything else, and cost $180.00 (yeah, there's no collusion and price gouging going on here, perish the thought.) Since my machine failed yesterday, I'm very receptive to the idea of making a change, I just need to make sure what the out of pocket costs will actually be and that I'll have cylinders as a back-up. Yeah, my machine just shut off yesterday for no apparent reason and since I don't drive and our driver is in the hospital I was how you say, FUCKED. I called the med supply company and was told by the perky young thing that answered the phone that she'd put in a work order, I asked what did that mean in terms of response time and was told perkily, "We almost always clear our work orders in 24 hours!" I replied "I don't think you quite grasp the situation, you see this machine produces oxygen, which I need to breathe, a window of much over an hour and the response time becomes somewhat moot as I can't answer the door when I'm dead. Now I could call an ambulance and have them send y'all the bill as our contract stipulates that I pay you guys on time and you guys will service my machine as needed, as it isn't working at all, I would have to say "as needed" would be right now." The truck was there in ten minutes, in the meantime I kicked the thing, I mean why the hell not, (it wasn't going to hurt anything ) and wouldn't you know it, that sumbitch fired right up. The service guys who came with a brand new machine mumbled something about not being sure what to do now that the machine was working again ... I said, "Well, let's think this thing thru... You can fill out the work order stating that you swapped out a new machine for the obviously defective one or you can write up "left customer with defective machine and instructions to kick it if it shut down again." Which will be looked at more favorably when you get your quarterly review? "Where would you like your new machine plugged in, is this outlet okay?" "Why yes, that will be just fine..."

Thoruf spelled backwards is ... Furoht.?

Rowan wrestling in coveralls is a good idea. Rowan being out in the sun is probably like putting a fork in the microwave.

Yeah, that only works in your favor if you're Shawn Michaels.

It's almost always the kiss of death when you get pigeon holed as a comedy guy, but New Day buck the trend pretty solidly and hopefully Rusev can as well and maybe get a decent face run close to the top. He deserves better than the fate of guys like Sandow. I mean Sandow deserved better too, but ya know WWE gotta WWE.

Motherfucker should be charged with felony assault

They had to do that because the page in question secretly had the anti-life equation on it.

He carries a big stick. A ball and chain too....

Flair Flop. Woooooo!

Per Meltzer - the plan is for the women’s rumble to have 30 entrants

I am grading and it’s the worst.

I cannot wait for the "Zemo? Oh, he hung himself with his own shoelaces in prison last week," blow-off in Black Panther.

Hideo got his send-off in Largo last night.

I wish... Kathy was just admitted to the hospital with fluid in her lungs. It's not exactly walking pneumonia but it's pretty close to that symptom-wise and I don't have enough oxygen cylinders to make the trip to the hospital and back so I can't even be with her. This just sucks. Fortunately I'm stocked up on cat food, so the little guys will be okay. Apparently they're going to load her up on antibiotics and keep her there for a couple of days (which makes little sense as she can take pills at home just as easily, but no doubt they want to run up the Medicaid bill.) Oh well, at least I can amuse myself in the kitchen by making foods that are normally forbidden such as green eggs and ham for breakfast (one of my specialties that Kathy doesn't find to be the least bit amusing), and salt and pepper shrimp for dinner (made with ghost peppers, mmm, good, but I'm the only one that can stand the heat...) Green eggs and ham, here we go...