Eoae

There's gotta be more to the Hurt Business breakup, right? Either Cedric and Shelton had some sort of issue with Lashley or did something to piss off Vince? They went from tag team champs and part of a hot stable to jtts who don't get angles, promo time, or even entrances in the space of a couple weeks. Odd. Didn't watch much of the show. Tuned in late and tuned out for good when the Nia silliness thought. Years ago, Metlzer or someone made a comment about WWE hiring failed Full House writers. That's probably an insult to Full House.

I'm gone from zero to 100 on Biomutant based solely on the fact that it looks pretty. Really hoping it's good. Speaking of games back from the seeming dead, Lost Souls aside emerged from radio silence yesterday with a a long gameplay trailer. I'd forgotten this was supposed to be a thing (the trailer was released four years ago, irrc. It looks like Devil May Cry meets Final Fantasy, so I'm intrigued. Should be more info released Thursday. In addition to State of Play, Sony is doing a presentation a China event (I'm not sure what China Joy is? Gaming convention? Haven't had time to google it). Hoping for a release date. Based on the little info I've seen, the China Joy presentation might be more interesting than the State of Play. Sony says State of Play focuses on Rift Apart & two indies. Kinda assuming Returnal is one of the indies. Heard some mumbling about Returnal. Still under embargo so no one can say too much, but the muttering has been quite positive.

I saw the Flair commercial for the first time last week and thought it was exactly the sort of cheesy endorsement I imagined a a flamboyant wrestler 30 years past his prime would do. If they ever remake The Wrestler, Randy the Ram should definitely try to land a gig with CarShield at some point. I'm still not sure what CarShield actually is (some sort of insurance plan?) and I've seen the Ice-T CarShield commercial at least a few dozen times. I think the idea of edgy gangsta rapper Ice-T doing product endorsements and playing a cop on tv for 15 years melts my brain too fast for the point of the commercial to sink in.

I don't consider myself a luddite, exactly. Though it is worth noting that we still get discs in the mail from Netflix/DVD.com (in addition to the streaming plan), so maybe I resemble that remark.

There's also a State of Play coming on the 29th (Thursday). 15 min of Rift Apart gameplay are going to be shown. No word on what else will be featured.

I'm mostly bewildered by people who can't leave their game consoles alone long enough for system updates to install or games to download. I don't remember ever being so eager to play that I couldn't do something else for a couple of minutes or an hour while the console does its thing. Like supremebve said, even if said console lets you play a game or stream something else while it downloads and installs, it's just going to drain resources and slow down the process.

I always thought Sid was a worse fit in the Horsemen than Mongo was. For that matter, I think Dean and Benoit were worse fits, personality-wise. Mongo is/was a charismatic guy who liked to talk and fit the Horsemen's "We do what we want. We work hard, then we play harder" ethos. Sid didn't and fairly grim, humorless Iceman Malenko and Benoit didn't either. I also never really thought those three had a lot of chemistry with Flair. I don't think it's that much of a hot take, but my mildly warn take is that Wyndham should have been the last Horsemen. Creative was out of fresh ideas for the group by then, and most of the members after that were bad fits for one reason or another.

Catching up on the local news this morning and it's hard not to be disheartened. Our state got over 50% of eligible residents vaccinated fairly easily, but progress has slowed to a crawl (# of daily shots administered is down to a fraction of what it was beginning of the month) and local social media is full of anti-vaxxers. Trying not to draw too many conclusions from that because of the usual caveats (it's social media, it's a fairly small # of people commenting, people opposed to something are more likely to respond than people who are for it but not as passionate, etc.). Governor wants 70% of people vaccinated before he drops mask order (we're currently in the 50-55% range), but I feel like that will be a tough sell. To his credit, the governor is working hard to get out in the community and reach people who aren't likely just to call a vaccination center and make an appointment. I feel like I may end up bitter at the sheer number of people who are going to keep us from getting out of this mess. I feel like the path forward is going to have to be schools, workplaces, hospitals, etc. making vaccination mandatory, but that idea is already highly politicized so who knows.

Have they not learned anything from previous attempts to get Black over? They already tried "spooky, vaguely sinister" and it failed. So, of course, they go back to the well with another overwrought segment that mostly made Black seem pretentious. If this doesn't end with Black petting a cat while he explains his way-too-complicated plan for world domination to James Bond, I'll be disappointed. Can we at least get a cinematic match between Black and Kevin Owens where Black picks up the pin after an orbiting space station zaps Owens with a laser?

Houston Methodist has become the first hospital in the country to order employees to get vaccinated or be terminated. Good. Hopefully, this starts a trend. One of the local hospital systems is considering this. They recently started making non-vaccinated employees wear a badge that identifies (in big red letters) that the person has not been vaccinated. I'm told at least a few people have gotten vaccinated rather than wear the scarlet letter.

Um, me. I almost never use gaming consoles for streaming, blu rays, internet browsing, etc. Probably something like 1% of the time, if that. I have other devices for those activities, and figure it will cost me less to replace a blu ray player than an Xbox Series X so why put more wear and tear on the gaming console. It probably has something to do with age. I'm not ancient, but I'm nearing 50 and have been kinda slow to embrace downloading games, join the streaming revolution, etc. I grew up with gaming consoles that were just gaming consoles and tend not to even think of my PS4 and Xbox as multi-media devices.

Ion - and whover owns them - runs shows into the ground. It seems to be their programming strategy. For a long while, Criminal Minds and Blue Bloods marathons were on several days a week. It seemed like Blue Bloods was always on some channel or other. Been noticing NCIS: New Orleans in heavy rotation on a couple different channels. Ugh. I like procedurals, and they generally have high replay ability for me, but I've always found NCIS: NO to be a chore. Bad writing, lack of cast chemistry, too much cast turnover, etc. I've never thought NCIS or NCIS: LA were good, exactly, but most season are at least watchable.

Now I'm curious what Kallisto thought would happen if he got his way and split from the group.

First time seeing the Factory, but I liked what I saw. The new guys have good looks and presence, so I hope they get pushed down the road. AEW has too many heel stables right now, and the Factory seems like the lowest rung on the ladder (I mean, QT Marshall is their leader). Comoroto seems to be a beast with some in-ring skill and a great look. I mean, he looks like someone tossed Mandy Pantinkin and Bruiser Brody in a blender and wrapped what came out in a giant fut coat. How can he miss? I like the Pinnacle and the Elite well enough, but I'm not a superfan. Would be ok with the Factory merging with Team Tazz and getting a push.

Nope. I'm not naive. Former employees have said they felt pressured to look a certain way or go to certain lengths to maintain their look. I'm not in the room for the conversations, but it's probably safe to assume some of that still goes on. I think the problem with Dave's comments in this specific instance is that Dave didn't bring this up as part of a story. Unless I missed it, he didn't say that the company asked Charlotte to get surgery or that she felt pressured into it. He brought up something that had already been reported, then segued into a sidebar about how the image-conscious WWE treats female talent, and left it to us to draw a conclusion. Fair enough, except that the person he's speculating about is denying the insinuation and seems rather fired up over it. If Dave reports this as "Sources tell me Vince told Charlotte to get surgery" then it's (tabloid) journalism. If Dave is speculating that Charlotte is getting surgery because of outside pressure, and he's wrong about that, then it's just some dude with a microphone invading her privacy. In any case, I don't think Charlotte's medical history is fair game unless she makes it fair game, so we'll have to agree to disagree about that (I feel the same way about male wrestlers. If Roman Reigns wants to jump Dave over anything Dave has said about his physique or looks, he's well within his rights). Anyway, time to move on so this is my last comment on this subject.

I don't think "dental surgery" is the important part of the story. Dave commented that this was part of a Charlotte makeover, then segued from that into a discussion of how the company puts pressure put on female talent to maintain their looks as they age,. If I wasn't supposed to conclude that the either the company was either pressuring Charlotte to get surgery or that she's so insecure about her position that she feels she needs to go under the knife, then I have no idea what he was getting at. I don't think Charlotte angrily responds or we talk up the story if Dave says "Charlotte is having dental surgery and will be out a short time" then starts talking about Baron Corben or the company's quarterly earnings report.

It's probably worth noting that we've already spent more time discussing Charlotte's supposed plastic surgery than we've ever spent on John Cena's rumored hair transplant or any other male star's cosmetic surgeries (well, maybe Buff Bagwell's calf implants). I doubt Dave meant any harm, but this is a repeating pattern with Dave. On the one hand, he rails against Vince's obsession with youth and looks for the women. On the other hand, he occasionally comments on female's wrestlers looks, weight, cosmetic surgeries, etc. in such a way as to give the impression he thinks that those topics are fair game for him. Which I don't think they are. Another example: Around the time Asuka hit the main roster, Dave brought up her stomach. When Alvarez called him on it, his defense was something along the lines of "Oh, Asuka's never been ripped, but she has less definition than usual and Vince is going to have a problem with that." I think he might has actually said "Asuka has a gut", but it's been several years and I don't remember. I mean, the segment started out as Dave and Bryan discussing an Asuka match, and somehow took a right turn. Also, Dave never said Vince had an issue. He brought up something, then got defensive when called on it and used "Well, Vince is probably the one with the hangup" as a defense (it's also silly that anyone thinks Asuka is heavy because she's not extremely ripped like, oh. 0.1 percent of the population, but that's its own kettle of worms). I've joked before that Dave does a very good impression of a normal human being, but, honestly. I'm not quite joking when I say that. He can be very awkward and not particularly self-aware when the conversation gets away from in-ring in-ring matters.

And that's any of our concern how, exactly? When Dave said dental surgery, I assumed he meant "necessary" dental surgery. I mean, I'm surprised more people who get punched in the face for a living don't need time off for dental surgery. Then he took the conversation in a different direction and I started wondering how much he actually knew and how much was supposition. Given Charlotte's reaction, I assume the "complete makeover" is Dave getting a little bit of info and reading too much into it. Even if he's right (and I do think he has a general point about the company's perception of female workers as they get older), it's none of his or his fanbase's concern. I dunno. Dave has a history of making comments about female workers that aren't out-and-out offensive, but tread into subjects and viewpoints better left alone. I still remember him sarcastically congratulating Layla El for managing to stay on tv past age 30. Maybe I'd be more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt if his online persona wasn't such a troll. @Hagan, I dunno where you work, but if one of my employees walk up to a co-worker and asked where he or she got their plastic surgery done (without the employee bringing it up), they better hope the conversation doesn't get back to me. I imagine the best case scenario is that'd I'd refer them to HR. At a minimum, that sort of comment seems like the jumping off point for a harassment complaint.

So I'm beginning to love my Xbox Series X, which is odd because the Series X catalog thus far is not really doing much for me. PS5 is sorta earning it's keep with some noteworthy exclusives (Miles Morales, Pathless, early talk about Returnal has been good). Series X has... um, Falconeer. Call of the Sea (which is coming to PlayStation in April or May). But.... I really like the console from a hardware perspective. And I'm having a blast with the backwards compatibility. I didn't own an Xbox One until I bought the Minecraft LE earlier this month. So the XOne catalog is sorta new to me. The AAA titles are cool, but I'm having a lot of fun with some of the under-the-radar releases like Voodoo Vince Remastered and Welcome to Elk. But... the best thing so far about my Series X is that it's (almost) the best possible X360 console. I wish more titles were backwards compatible but, between nearly 600 b/c title and alll the other games that were remade, remastered, ported, or just released on both Xbox 360 and Xbox One, most people are going to have a huge 360 library at their fingertips. And. so far, every b/c title I've tried runs almost flawlessly. i generally prefer to play games on the hardware they were intended for, but it's sorta dumb not to take advantage of the hefty performance upgrades the Series X offers. MIcrosoft is supposedly working on making more old titles backwards compatible. i don't expect to get my wishlist (El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, Ninja Blade, the Cave shooters which were mostly never released in the US, a few others), but I appreciate the effort, even if little comes of it.

Posts like this are why Rippa needs to give us the “confused' emoji back.

It had a very short run on Sci-Fi (might have been SyFy by then). Didn't last long, so I'm guessing it bombed. IRRC, Sci-Fi/SyFy aired it in four hour blocks, which isn't the best way to watch the show since once you miss a few eps, you might as well just quit and watch it via DVD or On Demand.

This blurb could have aged better:

Glad no harm was done. I did something 25 years ago or so and I still remember it vividly. Driving down a two-lane street on a warm March day after a snow. Practically all the snow had melted except for one very small patch on the road (I remember it as being the size of a car floor mat). I was driving too fast and lost control as I hit that patch of snow. Did a a couple 360's and ended up in facing the wrong way in my own lane. There was oncoming traffic in the other lane but fortunately they were a bit down the road & I didn't really come that close to hitting anyone. Shook me up for quite a while afterwards.

Yesssssssssss!!!!!!!