Spritenaut 32

I had no idea who Edgar Wright was until yesterday. And I've seen most of his movies.

Interview with Hugh Dancy, with some talk about next season. Some spoilers, obviously. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/23/hugh-dancy-on-hannibal-s-brilliantly-batsh-t-finale-and-the-future-of-will-graham.html Hannibal appeared to be on his way to Europe in the last scene. I kinda wonder if that doesn't foreshadow some version of the "Hannibal" novel. In the novel, Lecter lived in Europe under an assumed name and eventually was the target of a Mason Verger revenge scheme. Kinda hard to think Fuller established the Vergers without planning to do something more with them going forward.

I wondered the same thing (whether she was complicit with Hannibal from the beginning), but, dramatically anyway, that makes no sense. If she was Hannibal's accomplice/lover, so what? She did very little to advance the plot. Nothing she ever did or said reaally maneuevered Jack or Will one way or the other, and she didn't appear to have any information to feed Hannibal. Will did quite good on his own feeding Hannibal info, though ultimately, that probably doesn't affect the outcome one way or the other. Even if Hannibal had been more taken in by Will, that night probably plays out largely the same. Hannibal's cautious enough not be completely caught off gaurd by Jack and Will. Rewatched the finale again this morning (missed parts of the middle when my wife had a problem with a cell phone and I got distracted figuring that out). Great ep. As said above, I feel dumb for assuming Jack and Will would outsmart Hannibal. Wonder where they go from here? Seems a little implausible Jack and Will keep standing in the FBI after running a rougue operation to entrap a guy that culminated in at least one death and possibly a couple more (guessing Jack and Will survive, but the other person (don't want to spoil it if someone hasn't watrched the ep yet).doesn't. Oh, and the killer is still at large and apparently fled the country. Re: the death this ep

Those Blueblood segments were great.

There are inept plans and then there's... whatever the hell that was.

Was Phantom Stranger any good under DeMatteis? He's probably my favorite 70's/early 80's writer and one of my 5 favorites ever. Really dug his philosophical/metaphysical bent. Haven't liked a lot of what he's written since JLA and his 'funny" period, though. Phantom Stranger seems like something the DeMattieis who wrote Defenders, Moonshadow, and the Dr. Fate mini could really run with. I meant to check it out and never did. Opinions? Also, to be fair to DC, one of the reasons they've cancelled so many books since nu-52 launched is that they've been willing to take more chances. They're greenlighting books for a lot of secondary characters that were longshots to sustain their own books. Does anyone really think Vibe, Phantom Stranger, Mr. Terrific, etc., have enough of a fanbase to sustain their own titles for years and years. Or Dial H for Hero? Or Frankenstein? Marvel is still the stronger line, creatively, but books like Frankenstein, I Vampire, Animal Man, etc. have at least kept me reading when I had little interest in most of the mainstream DC books and writers.

Eh, I liked Forever Evil quite a bit. All the tie-ins and delays made it seem like the story drug out for years, but that's the nature of company-wide events. Main book was quite fun, and they set a number of things in motion that I'm curious to see play out.

I think Vince has only had a handful of guys in the past 30 years as entertaining and charismartic as he is. You can't teach carny and most guys on the roster in any era haven't had the "it" factor to the degree he does. ...Which makes it all the more amusing to wonder how far he'd go in developmental. I can see young Vince jacking himself up on the roids and still being told that he wasn't big enough, or didn't have the right look for the main roster. Vince McMahon - NXT Superstar?

We have time......

What the hell is he doing, amyway? Was this a tv match (they don't tape house shows, do they)? It looks like he starts out mimicking Bully Ray, then just goes sort of batty.... Was this some sort of goof like the WWE guys do at house shows once in a while, or is this part of a serious match?

Nope, I probably woulda throttled Bryan during a radio show by now if I was Dave. I grew up on Mid-Altantic/JCP and JCP/WCW is the only promotion I've ever attended frequently. I was in college at the time and got to attend tv tapings and a few of the early PPV/supershow events through 93 when I got promoted at work and left the region. Basically, I knew someone who knew someone who worked for the company and got to meet a few backstage people and a couple wrestlers that way. Nothing special. I'm just a fan. Probably a combination of money and dislike for Dusty. Ron Garvin claimed in a shoot that he and Dusty didn't get along and Dusty intended to make him look weak and job jim out as much as possible. Ron was another one of those guys upset about their payments from JCP. What Arn and Tully claimed on the Horsement dvd is that their payment for GAB was only $1,500 apiece. JJ probably did get more. Road Warriors and Ellering were getting an awful lot more than most of the full-timers, even though they weren't exclusive to the territory. No idea what Garvin received from the AWA after he left, but it doesn't seem likely that they were able to pay him more than Crockett. I've heard people speculate he made less in the AWA, which might be why he left after a few months.

Story I heard (from someone involved with the company at the time) was that Dusty did indeed propose that Flair lose the world title to Steiner in 5 min. Flair thought that it was another effort to screw with him - he generally thought Dusty had tried to make him look like a weak champion - and went over Dusty's head to the Turner execs.and got him removed as booker. Supposedly, Fliar threatened to leave if he had to job to Steiner. There were other people lobbying for Dusty to be removed. He worked Starrcade because he he wasn't fired until after Starrcade. He was fired from the company because of the spike in the eye incident (Turner execs had just banned bloodletting on-screen), but it took the execs a while to decide the punishment. It might have worked. People forget how massively over Steiner was at the time. The pop when he won the tv title in '88 was what you would expect for a world title win. Vince wishes he could still get those reactions. On the other hand, Steiner played a pretty goofy character. I've always thought the more old-school fans would have crapped on the win. Edit: Corrected the typo pointed out below.

Brodus needs to be paired up with CJ Parker as an ambiguous ethnic team. If they're heels, they can go around asking people if they (Parker & Clay) are white or black. No matter what the person says, they can act outraged and accuse the person of racism. I smell money. Have Vince PM me so I can tell him where to mail my check.

One like for that just isn't enough. Since we can't like the same post multiple times, I may have to go back and find old posts of yours and "like" them instead. That panel is awesome. What is that from? I'm assuming the panel itself is real and someone just changed the words in the kid's last speech balloon,

No argument there. Plus what is the name supposed to even mean? Um, nothing? I always figured they picked a word that rhymed with Steiner and was easy to remember (by Big Poppa Pump and the audience). I think he means the Accolade. Sorry. My Mistake. I was a Big Poppa Pump fan back in the day and still think he and Booker T's singles push are my favorite things from late WCW, but, yeah, the Steiner Recliner looked terrible for the reasons mentioned above. Looking at footage of the Steiner Recliner, I'm reminded of that picture of TNA-era Sting applying the Scorpion Deathlock and basically standing up while he has it "locked in". Rusev's version of the camel clutch isn't my favorite, but I don't consider it horrible. While we're on the topic, why did Steiner even have a submission finisher? Dude learned one submission hold in his entire career and it became his finisher. Is there some unwritten rule in WCW that non-submission wrestlers (Luger, Sting, Steiner) had to have a submission finisher?

No argument there. Plus what is the name supposed to even mean? Um, nothing? I always figured they picked a word that rhymed with Steiner and was easy to remember (by Big Poppa Pump and the audience).

You really don't understand how the internet works, do you?

Given the "Chris Hero is fat" talk that came out of WWE developmental, the idea of them signing Steen is amusing.

Doesn't AoT end with a cliffhanger and an assumed second season to come? 25 eps is just right for me. I prefer shorter series with a definite ending to the shows like Bleach. 52 eps is ok. I don't know that I've ever watching an anime and thought it needed more than 50 eps. If I were to list 50 or 100 shows that I liked, only a couple - literally - went more than 50 eps. Off the top of my head, only Monster, Ruroni Kenshin, and possibly Bleach would make the list. All three of those could have been much shorter without losing much (Ruroni Kenshin could be reduced to the Kyoto Arc and the ovas and I wouldn't miss much. I'd like Monster more if it was about 35% shorter). How many eps of AoT are available on Netflix? I'm too used to multitasking to enjoy subbed anime much anymore and it looks like Funimation is just releasing eps 1-13 in a box set this summer (I thought they were releasing all 26 eps, but that was apparently either a bad listing Amazon has since removed, or I just made a mistake).

I have no idea where they go with this next week. Though it looks certain that Hannibal is going to clue Jack in - keeping Jack's reputation as ineffectual bumbler intact. In retrospect, I feel dumb for watching the season premiere and assuming that Jack would somehow morph into some sort of super agent, put the pieces together, and go bring the Chesapeake Ripper in. Having the Ripper out himself (if that's what happens) seems fitting somehow. I can't decide if Hannibal is doing this (assuming that's what he does) to further bring Will to his side, or if his relationship with Will is so strong that he realizes it could expose him, but he's going along anyway to maintain the relationship. Hannibal allowing himsel to be caught as the only way to maintian some sort of connection with Will would make a certain sense. It'd be the logical conclusion to events thus far. It seems like it should be clear even to Hannibal that contunied contact with Will is a dumb idea, since Will is obviously smart and intuitive enough to make the connection and bring Hannibal down. The smart thing to do would be to stay the hell away from Will Graham. On the other hand, Hannibal is an egomaniac who has "mentored" killers before, so maybe he assumes Will can be "seduced" into murder the same way his other proteges were. Dunno. Really curious to find out how this all shakes out.

Shoulda swiped one of those uber-fashionable jumpsuits while he had the chance.

Mechagodzilla or we riot.

Aaron "The Idol" Stevens looked like a can't-miss star when he was in OVW years ago. Of course, so did a lot of other guys and most of them failed when they got the call-up. I'm guessing the x-factor was Paul Heyman (Heyman was booking OVW at the time). I like Sandow. I thought he'd have a decent run in the midcard, but, unfortunately, it's an era where the company is stacked with talent and midcarders are mostly useless to them. Remember when there were rumors Sandow had become a Triple H guy and they were going to strap the rocket to him back? Crazzzyyyy. Meltzer even said the company was thinking about having Sandow win the Royal Rumble. Lol.

If he's that scared of clowns, why would he be working for TNA?

I don't think I'\d want to live in a world where you can't trust indy wrestling promoters.