SturmCRF

Seriously? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It's stupid as soon as anyone is actually pathetic enough to call you out on breaching some sort of unwritten rule by doing it, but it makes sense to a point. Everyone knows you probably like the band you've paid money to see, so it's a bit redundant to advertise the fact by wearing their shirt too, whereas wearing another band's shirt is a chance to advertise a lesser known band you like, demonstrate your good taste, or be perverse. There's something to be said for wearing a Muse shirt to a death metal gig, or going to see Ellie Goulding while clad in some disgusting Pig Destroyer T, even if that something is 'Piss off, no one thinks you're clever or is impressed by your eclectic tastes. Twat.' I'd say wearing a band's shirt to their own shows gets more acceptable the older the band are though, as the more of a history they build up, the wider the range of albums/line-ups/eras there is to be represented on a shirt, and the more scope there is to not be wearing the same 2013 tour shirt of a band who formed in 2012 as hundreds of other people. Most of my wardrobe is band shirts though, so I have overthought this.

When was the last TUF season that didn't have poor ratings and people talking about what a waste of time it was? Everyone's sick of the formula, and all too aware that any especially exciting prospects wouldn't get put through the whole process in the first place, but I still enjoy it to be honest. I also don't understand why people don't like Ronda Rousey. She's probably somewhat if not entirely nuts, but at least she's interesting. To be honest, I assumed she was bullshitting about thinking she'd been replaced by Tate. She knew full well that Zingano had been replaced by Tate, was confronted with the thought of having to spend weeks in close proximity to someone she couldn't stand, and pretended she thought she was getting kicked off the show to save face. Before sulking through most of the qualifying fights. Still, the standard of acceptable erratic behaviour for male fighters is sky high, so it'd be a bit of a double standard to hold it against her. Unless you're one of those people who hates every fighter, which is fair enough.

I'm 28, and mentally fast approaching the end of my teens.

I personally have no idea, but am also interested in the answer. And if someone knows what Satoshi Kojima's crowd participation catchphrase when he raises his arm in the corner means, that'd be grand too.

Anne Ramsey! Best Terrifying Old Lady In The World. She was in The Goonies, which I quite enjoyed when I eventually sat through it in its entirety, after fleeing in horror when I saw the first half an hour aged six. But more importantly, she was in Throw Momma From The Train. 'Owen! Your friend's had an accident. He's dead. Go bury him in the yard before he stinks up the place' might be the greatest line in all of cinema, and no one could have delivered it better.

So, Watford 6 Bournemouth 1, eh? Not 100% certain, but that might even be the first hat trick I've ever seen us score. From a worrying first half, that's a pretty acceptable result.

The second Esslemont book is much, much better. Still not as good as Erikson (and I didn't read the entire Malazan series for the prose by a long stretch), but a large improvement. It also covers some pretty major chunks of plot that only get passing mentions in the main series, so it's worth a look. I'm with you on loving the Karsa opening in House Of Chains. That, the underground sequence in Bonehunters and a couple of others that aren't leaping immediately to mind are the highlights of the series, and I reckon it's because they're where he treats the reader to a relatively self contained narrative for longer than 20-30 pages at a time before jumping to the next load of characters. I love the Malazan world, and in principle I love that he credits me with the intelligence to process all of it but in practice, and I say this as someone who's read 10,000 odd pages of it, the series could have benefited from being a bit easier to digest.

The best I've ever seen live was probably Bryan Danielson and Eddie Edwards vs KENTA and Taiji Ishimori for the GHC Junior Tag Titles in Coventry, when NOAH did their first UK shows in 2008. Danielson was heeling it up spectacularly, and the teasing of KENTA finally getting his hands on him was phenomenally done. I seem to remember it being about half an hour long, and including some kind of package DDT thing from Ishimori that I marked out for, regardless of whether it was guilty of being convoluted or Devaluing The DDT. They're too fresh in my mind to be sure, but either of Rampage Brown vs El Ligero or the harrowing hardcore match between Jimmy Havoc and James Davis from Progress Wrestling last Sunday would be well up there, too. Not sure about the worst, but any of a selection of undercard filler matches from the Monday Night Raws I've been to over here would be in the running. Honourable mentions go to Austin Aries vs Mark Haskins at the TNA tapings last year (I like them both, but seeing Haskins Brock Lesnar a Shooting Star Press was an unpleasant mix of embarassing and frightening), and Yoshinobu Kanemura vs Jay Briscoe from NOAH, which was shorter and less eventful than I was expecting from a Junior Heavyweight Title match.

I thought Swagger was excellent during his World Title run, the arrogant super athlete thing probably wasn't that much of a stretch for him to pull off, and it's a shame they depushed him so quickly. Now, he's just listless and boring. Colter shoulders most of the burden of getting their characters across, and either that's made Swagger lazier or they've explicitly told him he's now playing the muscle and should make little to no effort to inhabit the role of a border patrolling pseudo Nazi. For all the talk of WWE having too many failed sportsmen/bodybuilders with no passion for wrestling, he's the only guy I can think of where his disinterest is that obvious.

For full Death Of WCW points, they should have The Gut Chexus led by that one guy who had the worst match ever, who proceeds to start squashing everyone and cutting promos about how the TNA bookerman made him wrestle incompetently, but now he's going off script and taking over.

This is a genuinely impossible question for me to answer, because there was no clear cut point where I went from total belief in it to none at all. The first time I ever saw wrestling, Royal Rumble '91, I'm certain I remember my Dad pointing out how they were all stomping when they threw punches, so I was at least partially aware something was up at that point. On the other hand, British Bulldog was clearly a genuine hero, I truly believed Max Moon might win Rumble '93, and Papa Shango controlled occult powers that made black ooze burst from people's heads. Even as a teenager with internet access, in '98 I kind of bought into Austin and McMahon hating each other, and couldn't see how they'd book their way out of whichever PPV it was that ended with Stone Cold getting fired. I didn't think he was going to WCW or anything, but I had a shaky enough grasp of ratings and their importance that I expected him to miss several months at least. And above all, I still completely buy into the importance of Titles, and I think I'd lose interest in wrestling if I didn't. Despite knowing it's about the pay day, the merch sales and the approval of their peers, maybe over and above the prestige of winning a belt, seeing a wrestler I've invested in make it to the top still matters, as much as winning the World Cup or a UFC Title matters. Even something like Curtis Axel winning the IC Title on Father's Day crosses over into real life triumph and emotion enough that it's neither here nor there whether it was a result of Vince McMahon's rubber stamp rather than his athletic efforts.

I meant anonymous as in your being a mystery book-chooser until Jae posted this, I spend far too many hours of my life on this board not to have recognised you as a regular. And yeah, without going into much detail and ruining it for people thinking of giving this a look, the ending works very well.

Thanks, glad people liked the review. And cheers to the previously anonymous Unholy Dragon for picking this book. I wouldn't say it's a cold account necessarily, because the narrator isn't psychotic, and he's constantly questioning himself about how he reacts to all the slayings. He's selfish and a bit of a parasite, but basically a fairly normal guy who's trying to get out of this ordeal without either himself or his girlfriend getting chopped up, and is a more balanced individual than a lot of the people he comes into contact with. Frank's the only other character we get any depth on, and while he's a terrifying, monstrous human being with no real redeeming features, he gives a good enough account of his whole nihilistic worldview that judging him for what he does seems as futile as judging a rabid animal or a tornado for hurting people.

Not to be a wrestling game snob, but I'll only buy this if it has a Fire Pro Mode, where your disc quietly, respectfully climbs out of the tray, puts a copy of a brand new, all bells and whistles Fire Pro in its place, and frisbees itself into the sun.

Well thank fuck for that. It might have taken me about a week to discover it, but I got here in the end. Thanks, whoever mentioned it in passing on Prowrestlingonly. Much as I enjoy reading that board's in depth discussions of every wrestler who ever lived and occasional references to modern WWE, I'm totally underqualified as a wrestling savant and have no place actually posting there. Not that I post much here, especially about wrestling, but it's all about discussing everything else I enjoy with people who I already know share the invaluable human quality of loving wrestling on principle.