Swift

There was discussion recently of Anthony Agogo being from Lowestoft but being billed as being from East England, presumably because Lowestoft is basically unknown. I personally like when people are billed from their actual hometown rather than just being billed from the nearest big city (Edge & Christian for example). What are some of the more obscure actual places wrestlers have been billed from? Bray, Co. Wicklow is just a small seaside town south of Dublin so it surprises me that Balor wasn't just saddled with Dublin. No idea if West Newbury, MA or Aberdeen, WA are small places or not but I've literally never heard of them outside of their famous hometown wrestlers. EDIT: Just had a quick look. They're all small based on population - West Newbury ~4k, Aberdeen ~17k, Bray ~32k

Murderville is based on a British show Murder in Successville. I haven't seen it (I believe someone has uploaded the episodes to YT) but it sounds a lot funnier actually. Successville is a town where a ton of celebrities live and they show up as murder victims/suspects (impersonated obviously) so you get an episode description like this - "The detectives learn that pharmacist Lindsay Lohan has been spray-tanned to death, before tonight's beauty pageant organized by businessman Russell Brand, a pageant in which Sleet and gym owner Vladimir Putin are judges, and psychopathic killer Kim Kardashian is a contestant." or this "A call to Lady Gaga's mansion over a case of topiary vandalism soon leads to the discovery of a murder and its time for new recruit Deborah Meaden to partner with DI Sleet and discover whether Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, Jay-Z, Boris Johnson or Nicki Minaj is responsible."

We watched the first three episodes with the Nanjiani episode being by far the funniest. The footballer one was ok, but honestly I was disappointed with Conan O'Brien. I thought for sure that he'd be all over the improv trying to make Arnett corpse but he was fairly subdued.

Yeah and I guess I'm not that bothered by stuff like podcasts or even video games. After all, films based on books have been around since day one. I guess it's just the corporate greed aspect of "how much money can we squeeze out of our existing content for the nerds to lap up now?" that is annoying me. A Grease prequel? Come on. I'm reminded of Patton Oswalt's "Remember Darth Vader? Here he is as a little kid" bit. In 20 years time, we'll all be watching the origin story of the chick with three tits from Total Recall.

Absolutely loved when Keith Flint shows up in Essex in AC: Valhalla. Not included in the video but there's a note in the location too that says something about his pet cat Charly saying Meow.

I was staying in an AirBnB over the weekend and they had a VCR with a bunch of VHS tapes. Haven't watched one in maybe 15 years so figured I had to. Mostly kids movies or stuff that I'd prefer to watch on a big screen in top quality, so I decided on something that has no pretensions of looking good - The Wedding Singer. I've never been a Sandler fan and before this the earliest movie I'd seen of his was Mr. Deeds or Anger Management. I was expecting some gross out juvenile flick with dick jokes or something, but this was actually a very sweet movie (albeit not something you haven't seen in a million romantic comedies) and maybe the best comedic Sandler performance I've seen him do. Steve Buscemi singing at the wedding at the end is the best.

I'm not usually one of those "pop culture is in the doldrums" kinda people but I'm a little grouchy lately - holy shit the last few posts in this thread have been about two reboots of 90s shows, a prequel to a 70s movie, the making of a 70s movie, a TV series based on a movie and a TV series based on a video game. I just looked up Gaslit thinking that was probably the only original thing here and even that's based on a podcast.

Wasn't Ember Moon released a few months ago? Did they bring her back as a trainer or just pay her to train Rousey outside of the company?

So what exactly is Hardy's contract situation then? As per the WON Rippa quoted - "Hardy is still under contract with WWE through 3/9 so AEW can’t make a legal offer to him, but the belief is that unless he goes back to WWE, which at this point doesn’t look like it will happen, he would be AEW bound" Why can't WWE just demand that he show up for work if he's still under contract? Was his contract always up to 3/9? If so, why even pull this stunt? Why not just work your dates til you're done?

Vince becoming more Mr. Burns like by the day.

This thread has gone quiet, so bumping just to mention Ghosts as I keep seeing ads for the US remake. For Canadians, the first two seasons are streaming on the CBC app. It's a lot of fun, but the standout episode so far has been "The Thomas Thorne Affair" where the Romantic poet tells the heroic story of how he died in a duel. And then one of the other ghosts chimes in with "That's not how it happened" and of course it didn't even cross our minds that some of the other ghosts would've been present for it. All of them gradually add their two cents in to tell the story. Very funny episode.

Man reads every Marvel comic book ever and writes a book about it - https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/jan/20/douglas-wolk-27000-marvel-comics-dark-reign-trump-iron-man-unbeatable-squirrel-girl

I enjoyed the first half of the film (the historical scenes and the getting the team back together stuff) but got lost in the plot around the time the turn happened. It was decent, nothing special, but it did leave me wishing for a movie where gods sit around observing humanity at various points in history. Directed by Herzog or Malick.

Not only an odd picture, but it totally looks like John Cena as Peacemaker.

I remember being so disappointed though when I first saw a street fight and it wasn't actually fought in some filthy downtown back alley a la Streets of Rage.

91-95 were my childhood wrestling days and WWF was the one I watched most and loved, but I did see some WCW, some USWA and the PWI type mags. I wouldn't have been able to identify the differences at the time, but looking back now I think I thought that the other promotions were a bit more grittier and sleazier. Guys like the Freebirds or Dirty Dutch Mantell just looked like gross dudes whereas most of the WWF guys were oiled up bodybuilder types. Plus you'd see more violence in the Apter mags than you would see in WWF. It gave the sense that the other promotions were a lot wilder.

I'm reading Kipling's collected schoolboy stories Stalky & Co. written in the 1890s and based somewhat on his own boarding school experiences. It's fun and absolutely mild, mischievous stuff but you wouldn't think it based on the contemporary reactions.

Why do ladies get to have all the fun?

I was a pop music fan and liked the Spice Girls in 1997 so if I'd watched it then I'd probably really have enjoyed it. I went into this viewing thinking I'd enjoy it too, at least for the various Brit cameos if nothing else, but unfortunately there was very little redeemable about the whole affair.

I'm not gonna watch the trailer, but just based on that thumbnail it appears to be LOUIS THEROUX IN SPACE! in which case I'm all in.

TOP FIRST TIME WATCHES IN 2021 (feature films only, based on Letterboxd rating) ***** - Orlando (Potter, 1992) ****1/2 - The French Dispatch (Anderson, 2021), Raw (Ducournau, 2016), The Mitchells vs. The Machines (Rianda, 2021), Spider-Man: No Way Home (Watts, 2021) BOTTOM FIRST TIME WATCHES IN 2021 (feature films only, based on Letterboxd rating) 1/2* - Cremaster 1 (Barney, 1996), Scary Movie 5 (Lee, 2013) * - Scary Movie 4 (Zucker, 2006), Spice World (Spiers, 1997), Hard Kill (Eskandari, 2020), Vita & Virginia (Button, 2018), Honor & Glory (Ho, 1993), Emanuelle, Queen of the Desert (Fontana, 1982), Racquet (Winters, 1979), Laser Mission (Davis, 1989)

Fuck, that was sickening I spotted it right away so it put a dampener on the ending for me.

Obviously we all know Jungle Boy's father is Luke Perry, but I recently discovered that his maternal grandfather (Alan Sharp) was a Scottish novelist and screenwriter (Ulzana's Raid, Night Moves, The Osterman Weekend, Rob Roy) Are there any other wrestlers with interesting non-wrestling ancestors?

The Osman book was only ok in the end. I didn't care for the reveal and some of the following actions didn't make a ton of sense. I read a P.D. James short story collection over Christmas (The Misteltoe Murder and Other Stories) and loved it. I'd only read one other work by James (The Part Time Job which ranks as one of the finest short stories I've read) but so far I absolutely adore her writing, it just seems so effortless and yet is intricately plotted. Finished up the year with All My Sons by Arthur Miller for a quick read. I'm anal I guess in that I like to end a book before the year is done rather than dragging it into next year and muddying my Good Reads stats. Speaking of Good Reads stats, 49 books read and 11,000+ pages which are both records for me. I figured the page count might be the case as I'd made somewhat of an effort to not be put off by longer books when choosing what to read next, but surprised by the amount I got through. It was a good year for reading after a somewhat slower, mentally interrupted 2020. Best book - The Club by Leo Damrosch, a biography of the aforementioned club of writers, artists and thinkers who would meet regularly in London to eat, drink and discuss topics of the day. Mostly focuses on Johnson and Boswell, but also has short biographies of Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon and Joshua Reynolds (all some of the foremost individuals of the day in their respective fields) along with others in their orbit. I could eat this stuff up. Worst book - Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker. A sort of prequel to Dracula - what if Bram Stoker experienced some supernatural events for real and wrote it into his famous novel? I had wanted to love this - an interesting premise, and set in familiar neighbourhoods of my hometown - but I hated it, and actually just gave up on it halfway. Poorly researched nonsense with obvious errors in geography, local history and local speech with modern Americanisms thrown in for good measure.

Watching an episode of Impractical Jokers last night (well, binged 6 episodes because Netflix was removing them) and thought I spotted John Silver in there. Sure enough...