Contentious C

GRONK.

Other than how Buckner actually screwed up.

And now they get to celebrate what stiffing Walmart employees and suppliers for years bought them.

Now THAT was a kick.

EDIT: Never mind. Dumb question answered by finishing the match. Enjoy, I guess?

The Punisher season 2 begins with a very domestic look at Frank. The Domestic Punisher. Sounds like a porn for the couples market.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ That's what.

So I watched more stuff; I continue to be an idiot. I decided to revisit the two most famous matches of the original Super J-Cup, Sasuke's awesome pairings with Liger & Benoit. I don't think I'd seen either of these in close to 15 years. I feel like I got them both wrong, and I feel like maybe a lot of others do, too. Liger vs. Great Sasuke is such a good example of prime Liger (I have yet to find a version of the allegedly superior 7/8/94 rematch streaming anywhere). On this night, Sasuke might have spent the most time working great matches, but I think Liger turns in the single best performance. I think when I first reviewed this, my big worry was that the arm work goes nowhere, which was...well, incredibly stupid. Of course it goes nowhere; not every match involves breaking a body part. That only works in VPW2 for the N64. But all the early control and submission spots they work through do such a wonderful job of setting the stage for what's coming. It's worth noting that the J-Cup was, according to Wikipedia, Sasuke's idea. That sets off Liger's domination in this match as a great message to a guy who failed the NJPW entrance exam four years prior. "You don't belong here. You never belonged here. All you toads from FMW and M-Pro and everywhere else have been eliminated by now. You can't hang with us, even if you can jump out of the building, and I'm going to make sure everyone knows it. Go back to your dinky promotion and pretend your male cheerleader gimmick is cool." Liger just goes full on rudo and tries his best to snap Sasuke in two. The funny thing is, Sasuke sells the arm great - he's still clutching the damn thing after his Asai moonsault to the floor, before they move on to the bigger spots! Me = idiot. I think all the big spots in this are actually better than the ones in the Final; maybe it's because it's Liger, and there was no (or less of a) language barrier, and they do a nicer job of settling into the big bombs at the end, with less need for setting them up or transitioning into them a bit roughly. Everything looks a little crisper, even if it's all the stuff you'd expect them to do. Of course, the one caveat to that is the finish, but even then, Liger just rolls with it in the greatest "chicken salad out of chicken shit" bit of improvisation we're likely to see. The blown springboard just makes his point for him, that Sasuke is a poseur, until Liger gets pinned and isn't going to the Final in the tournament he's effectively hosting. ______ Sasuke vs. Wild Pegasus hasn't quite held up, I don't think. The Doc/Kawada match over in Budokan probably was better that night. It seems like Benoit & Sasuke had a hard time getting on the same page until they decide to go for broke. The early time-killing grappling looks pretty loose, where Sasuke seems like he's standing there, letting Benoit do what he wants. And they run the same lariat transition something like five times in the match (including the first two being the exact same rope-running sequence that leads to Sasuke eating the lariat), making it fairly evident that they weren't quite able to communicate effectively. Once they take everything to the floor and start trying to murder each other, it's pretty great, though. Benoit's springboard elbow to the outside is something I could watch over and over and still not quite grok how he did it. He bounces, then he's just suddenly airborne and clobbering Sasuke. The only spot that could have gone better is the big flying dropkick, where Sasuke's bump was just unnecessary. It's too bad - for Sasuke's ability to walk when/if he's 60, anyway - that Benoit didn't try to move that to somewhere where there was still padding; the shot straight to the concrete and how badly Sasuke limps afterwards is just...ugh. More cringe-inducing than eye-popping. There's 'wow' crazy and then there's just crazy-crazy. But overall, I'm not sure this match tells as much of a story as the semi-final. What it does make apparent, though, is how prone to bias fans were (or are). I don't think for a second this is as good as the 2 Liger/Ohtani matches from 96/97, nor is it as good as the 1/96 Sammy/Ohtani match (though I need to rewatch all 3, at some point). The Ultimo Dragon/Rey Misterio match from WAR is also better for sheer, spot-for-spot wow factor. But, there was that point in time where the goal of watching something was to cram as much footage into one unit of transfer as possible, and shows like this made it out to a lot of people. This has the legendary status it has because A) Meltzer said so, and B) it penetrated the market effectively when doing so was exceedingly difficult (compared to now). It's that show that says, "Oh, everyone's seen that," and, since the bulk of fans won't take the time to contextualize matches that are effectively better, it's easy to point to a match like this one and think of it as one of the best 5 or 10 matches in the company's history. At least then, more people participate in the conversation, and the consensus hardens accordingly. Maybe it's still that high in the echelon. But, I doubt it. It's great, and it's close, but it's outside of that range for me. Hopefully as more stuff ends up online, some of those conversations will change. ______ But, often the conversations don't change. Great example of this is El Samurai vs. Koji Kanemoto from the 6/5/97 BoSJ final. I'd never seen this before. What a disappointment. The first half of the match is at least entertaining, and there's a palpable hate between these two (it feels sometimes like that was all Kanemoto was good for, and the only person who didn't realize it was him). If they'd stuck to that formula, instead of what happens in the last third of the match, it might've been better. But wow, when the big spots rain, it's like raining cinder blocks. The reverse rana is another 'sick rather than amazing' moment, and you wonder what part of Sammy's childhood he can't remember anymore after that. Hopefully it was, I don't know, being stung by a bunch of bees or something. And then of course they just keep hammering the crap out of each other without doing nearly enough to respect the accumulation of nutso garbage they'd thrown each other's way. Add to that how sloppy the actual spots themselves are (the reverse DDTs just look awful), and one wonders how this was ever thought of as "great", let alone some kind of all-time classic. It's really a simple notion to see how matches like this work (or don't). Imagine it's clipped. Imagine that one big moment is taken out, and it's cut back together so that the transitions on offense still make logical sense. Is it a better match without that one famous thing? This is a cut-and-dried case where, yeah, the match would have been significantly better without tossing something so big out there, since it gets glossed over so quickly. Yet another case of "someone shilled this, and other just echoed the message". This is barely even a "good" match.

Isn't that roughly in perpetuity?

IMDb says No Holds Barred was directed by Tom Wright, who somehow directed an episode of The Wire. (It was season 2, so those of you who hate that season can go, "Oh, that makes sense" now.)

I've taken to calling Ohio 'North Kentucky' on the few visits I've had for various family things in the last 5 or so years. But calling it 'East Indiana' would be a step too low.

I was actually thinking about Rusher last night before I fell asleep. By the end there, should he really still be "Rusher"? More like Shuffler? "Walker" is too obvious of a joke...although, Rusher Kimura, Texas Ranger sounds like a show I would watch.

And thus comprises the only hour *I* ever spent on FF8.

Perhaps it belongs in a thread called, "Best Movies Co-Directed by Cocaine"?

That's still a character that's heavy on the confused and pissed-off tones you described, though. I sort of think of that role as if the character from River's Edge had grown up to be a lawyer. And his dad was Satan. Plus, imagining him saying, "Mother fucker! Food eater!" to Pacino is hilarious.

Really? Every single one? You clearly never walked in on your 300-lb. college roommate cooking food naked, then.

Roughly as soon as they're born is preferable, in point of fact, so...yeah, particularly confusing.

There isn't really a dedicated thread for college bad behavior (aside from football, I guess), and this thread, as often as any other, is a quiet wish that someone foolish would shut up, so why can't people in charge at Michigan State just shut up already? I mean, what in the everlasting fuck.

Well, if you do, you'd get a chance to tell John Huston what you thought of his movie.

I can't decide if debt reclamation companies should suffer in their own circle of Hell, or if they are their own circle of Hell. Probably a false dichotomy.

Well, that's just rubbish. The only value to having seen so many of his movies is the occasional reminder of what constitutes a bad movie. Though I am surprised he made not one but two movies with Gus Van Sant. ... What? You were expecting me to read that and say, "Whoa"?

I'm really interested to see Night on Earth, for that matter, but yeah, A Face in the Crowd is my April Criterion buy, guaran-goddamn-teed.

That definitely cuts both ways, though. The drivers in Baltimore are profoundly deranged and will run a light that's redder than fake blood in a Giallo film. I had one fucking asshole in a truck almost take my foot off by doing just that, and as he sped by, clearly not giving a fuck that I had the Walk signal, his girlfriend or whoever was in the passenger seat saw me and laughed, like *that's* the natural reaction to almost hitting someone with 3000 pounds of fiberglass and steel weaponry. So I punched his tailgate as I crossed the street behind him. Every other person who saw the exchange sounded out a chorus of "Oh Shit!"s and I just kept walking, never looked back even as I heard the guy park his truck and get out. And that's the story of the time I probably should've been shot in broad daylight, and somehow wasn't.

Family Guy is allegedly phasing out gay jokes. I'm confused. They've been phasing out jokes for 15 years, haven't they?

So this was probably, what, mid-90s? Or a little earlier/later? That would have been exactly the stretch of time David Simon was writing about when writing The Wire. But, if you were walking 3 blocks from the Convention Center to a package store, I probably know the store you're talking about. If it was due north from the center, past the light rail stop, then yeah, that's one of the uglier blocks of the whole city, and I'm totally certain it's much better now than it was whenever you saw it. But that little stretch is still a shithole - a package store next to the closest thing to a classy strip club in the city (at least outside of Fells), with a sports bar over top of that and about 4 different types of ethnic "food" that would probably make you heave your guts out. It's also only a block at most from the 7-11 I was talking about. If the place you were talking about was in any other direction, they've probably bulldozed it by now, because I don't remember any other stores that close to the Convention Center. I can also vouch that Johnny's story sounds, if anything, like it's tame. I suppose that's marital bliss for you. I had little to no reason to ever visit the red light district - never been in a strip club in my life, not about to start, and my life's been fucked-up enough without ever doing drugs, so no, Tabe, I did not fly the guy to the planet with all the cocaine - but I had to go to a church nearby once for one of the Baltimore Rock Opera Society shows. I walked there, and, for whatever reason, I ended up taking Calvert St. up to the church, roughly around 7 PM for an 8 PM show. I hit Charles St, the east/west "main street", and some dude comes up to me instantly and says, "Hey brother, you're early!" I don't even think about it and say, "Yeah, I am", and I wonder, "How did he know?" Then one glance to my right tells me he's talking about something totally different. Oh, that.