Robert S

I have been rewatching that timeframe over the last years and the booking is so weird. Business might not have been great, but TV etc. was hot in 93 and in the earlier parts of 94. Around summer, it got completely shit. Not sure if it's a coincidence, but the steroid trial ended in late July 94, ergo Vince suddenly had much more time to focus on TV. And you got the "great" Luger vs. Tatanka feud ("you sold out, I saw you", "no I haven't", "yes, you have" ...), Undertaker vs. Undertaker (the angle started in June or so, and I guess they wanted to go there probably since they did Rumble 94, but still), Team Doink vs. Team Lawler, one unwatchable TV match after the other (I could swear that every Raw match either had Jeff Jarrett stalling for 10 minutes, Lex Luger (who I think mentally checked out after Wrestlemania X) going through the motions or Doink period), etc. Also while Jerry Lawler might be a good promo, I don't need a 10 minute King's Court segment every f'n week. And as you mentioned, it did not get better, Undertaker was stuck in one bad program after another (don't forget him vs. the world's sweatiest man) for the whole year of 95, the Million Dollar Corporation which should have been killed off at the latest after Wrestlemania 11 goes on for the whole year as well, the bring in some decent talent but put them in horrible gimmicks (Chris "Skip" Candido (incl. Sunny who was a main event talent stuck with an undercard gimmick) and Louie "Rad Radford" Spicolli are the first that come to mind; not sure if "Dean" Douglas should count because that was partly a PG version of his ECW gimmick; I guess Waylon Mercy was a neat idea, though I doubt that would have worked even with 89 Danny Spivey) and others are just used badly. WWF on paper did not have a bad roster in 94 or 95, but they used it so bad.

As long as consoles make good money (and I assume they do) that's not the movement I expect to see. Rather hardware and software architectures will get even more similar so that developing multiple platform games (or at least porting games) becomes cheaper, at least on the Microsoft and Sony front - I don't see Nintendo's business model (underpowered hardware that is sold - compared to the competition and the performance - overprized fueled by exclusive first part games) stop working as long as they are able to put out a new Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart or Smash Bros. once a year. What I mean: Sony is on the second generation using an x86 architecture, same for Microsoft. Even the bigger game developers nowadays use the same middleware or even full game engines. And the time will come when not even EA fill bother with Frostbite and go Unreal Engine - either that or they will try to sell (license) Frostbite (or whatever they will have by that point). Of course I might be completely wrong and in ten years there will only be cloud gaming (not that I really believe in that, I can't imagine how latency will even become low and stable enough for action-based games, at least not on a geographically wide-scaled basis).

Do you mean the wrestling character The Rock? I don't know, even as a face he was pretty much a dick to everyone.

Time to revive the IsTeddyHartInJail Twitter account.

I was mostly lurking back then but my impression was that the sleaze thread came and went and was barely a thing for at least a decade, was only brought up here for a side remark here and there.

Actually now it's "billionaire who should be in jail".

John Cena did an appearance on Colbert and there was no word on Vince or anything about that topic. And considering that the questions are pre-agreed on, you can't blame Colbert here. So yes, John Cena sucks.

Moment .... nope, no hits on Netflix and Peacock.

The Boy and The Heron is a Miyazaki film, I think the only connection to Guillermo Del Toro is that Del Toro introduced the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival. (or am I missing a joke here?)

Random question: I like procedurals. Does that make me a bad person?

If I would not be too lazy I would post the old meme. Step 1: acquire lot of studios. Step 2: ??? Step 3: $$$

After reading Josie Abraham's book on Vince and what she found out when looking into Vince's childhood and adolescence I would be careful in taking Vince's word about that. His personal history according to himself is full of exaggerations and transpositions (I don't think that's the right term, what I mean is that some stories that he told did not seem to be his own ones but things that he saw or heard of). I am sure that there was some physical and verbal abuse in his childhood, I am not sure about the sexual part and also if the abuse that he experienced exceeded what an average child of his generation had to endure.

Now would be the time for those people to stand up and at the very least testify in court. TKO would have to be really, really stupid to fire someone in this scenario. Disregarding the potential law suits, imagine the press they would get.

Reg. Boney M, one of the female singers' voice (Maizie Williams) was not used in studio recordings. Farrell and Williams did sing during live performances, though.

Frank Farian, best known as songwriter, producer and singer of Boney M. and basically being Milli Vanilli, passed away yesterday at the age of 82.

Depends on your definition of obscure. I have been to quite a bunch of central European towns that are hometowns of pro wrestlers that made it in the US, e.g. Lucerne, Switzerland (Claudio's hometown) - most not really obscure to a European though probably somewhat obscure for an American. Apros pos Claudio: I have driven past the Alpamare as in "Alpamare Waterslide" - a move Claudio uses - dozens of time (though never been inside). Did WWE ever announce Fabian Aichner's / Giovanni Vinci's hometown (a small town in South Tyrol, Italy)? Because I have been in that region quite often (mostly driving through, though).

There was the (acclaimed) series on Smackdown in 05 where they fought for Dominick's custodianship - I guess Rey is regretting now that he won that feud. Also a year after the apuesta match, there were a bunch of matches centered around the initial lWo.

Barnett as in Jim Barnett who turned 80 in 2004, had severe health issues and died in that year?

They can't for the next 9.5 years, right?

The English lyrics are an almost literal translation. The German chorus goes "Drah' di net um, schau, schau, der Kommisar geht um" which is Viennese dialect for "Don't turn around, look, look, the commissioner (Kommissar) is somewhere around here." (literally "the Kommissar is walking around" - I guess "the Kommissar's out and about" is a pretty decent translation). Not much diffent than "Don't turn around, ja, ja, der Kommissar's in town".

Considering Gunther is Austrian, please go for the original

A WAR six-man AND a WAR heavyweight tag match with big, fat guys beating the shit out of each other.

I hope Didier Deschamps is extra careful the next couple of days (so far there have been three people winning the World Cup als player as well as coach: Beckenbauer, Zagallo - who died a couple of days ago - and Deschamps).

Hmm... there's To Kill a Mockingbird and The Jury what else am I missing? Inherit the Wind takes place in Tennessee (the movie apparently does not even mention that state, the play though is placed in Tennessee). There is also The Chamber - I am sure I have seen that movie but I don't remember it (and the Rotten Tomatoes score is very much on the "rotten" side).

In 2023 I almost exclusively played stuff on Game Pass. Game Pass does not give you a list per year (of what you played for how long), but you can at least see for single games the total number of hours spent on it. So here is my list (sorted by hours): Chained Echoes (55 h) Phoenix Wright Trilogy (55 h) Loop Hero (36 h) Age of Empires IV (33 h) Formula 1 Manager 2023 (30 h) Ori and the Will of the Wisp (20 h) Ori and the Blind Forest (for whatever reason Game Pass does not list the time spent, but I think it was about the same as for the second Ori game) Persona 5 Tactica (11 h) Humankind (11 h) Fuga (10 h) The last three games I somewhat bounced off from. There were also a couple of games that I played less than two hours, also some games (e.g. Vampire Survivors and Flight Simulator) that I played in 2023, but played already a lot in earlier years, so I don't know how much I actually played them last year. I would guess both in the 20-30 h ballpark. I bought a PS5 shortly before Christmas, so this year will be way less Game Pass-centered, I would think.