Matt D

Is this a tvtropes thing now or is Sam just a wrestling fan from NC?

I think it boggled everyone's mind when they had Miz turn on Morrison and not the other way around. Morrison basically ended up the 2010 version of what Ziggler is today.

I kind of wanted, you know, more announcements.

I promised words and here they are. RVD is my least favorite wrestler ever, by far, because he just doesn't get it. His understanding of wrestling is diametrically opposed to mine. I think guys like Flair have an opposing view of what pro wrestling should be to me, but it's not diametrically opposed. It's still something I can appreciate and it still contains details which I love. With RVD, everything he does is against the things I care about in wrestling. He hits his shit. He'll not just no-sell his comebacks, but make sure to sell before that in a way that makes it all the more aggravating that he blows it all off so he can hit his shit. The worst, the very worst, is when someone works his back. Which brings me to this point: It's been suggested to me that any bad RVD match is not because of RVD but because the person working with him didn't work in the one specific way that a RVD match can work. Which makes him different than any other wrestler in the history of wrestling. He is the most limiting wrestler ever. He's a king of contrived spots, of no-selling his opponents' actions to get himself over, of working dumb. And now that he's older, it's absolutely obvious that he NEVER got it. He hasn't changed up his act. He hasn't started wrestling differently to make up for his physical decline like any wrestler who knew what he was doing ever did. It wasn't just that his athleticism brought him to the dance and made him stand out, it's that he just doesn't understand the art of professional wrestling at all. He just stumbles through it, high and careless. He's the worst, not boring or a heatsink like the Harris Brothers, or goofy and glaring like Sid. He's actively offensive in every way.

I'm not going to say a ton. First and foremost, I am not a poetry guy at all, so I burned through the poem and went back when I had to. My favorite parts of the book, as in the most readable, were the historical bits. Then, every now and again, he'd say something hilarious or actually clever in the commentary. I guess my main notion is that I kind of wish this was all real. If it was real, it'd be worth it. As it is, it's so much effort for relatively little payoff. It had to take an amazing amount of time and effort to write the poem and to link it all together, to move forward and backward in the writing, to really get into the head of Kinbote, to work out the history and how it intersected. I think the actual writing of the commentaries were probably pretty easy since it's like opening a floodgate and letting out every terrible, overblown first draft that you ever wished you could have. It's the writing equivalent of being a heel I guess, of just going out there and letting it go. It's hard to criticize specific things here because there are so many filters. The narrator/commentator is so dubious, but he's also extremely earnest, to the point of calling out his own desperate lie early on. It's hard to link the world of the early histories with the character we're left with at the end. I felt a real disconnect between that, as there's a skip of a couple of decades. It's more than that, though. If we saw too much of the transformation, then too much might have been revealed early. For instance, I think Shade's work as a formative piece should have been featured more in the historical bits but you get why that didn't happen. There are little easter eggs like Timon of Athens which would raise eyebrows if you hadn't worked it out yet. I think maintaining the mystery a bit longer came at the expense of developing certain parts of the book better, if that makes sense. In the end, it's wildly ambitious with moments of real joy, but it was a hell of a chore to read.

Words to follow later.

Crossbones kind of had a mini series feel to me.

Ha. I survived it. Eat that, Nabbie.

Well too be fair - I can't think of a single female reviewer period. (Excluding the woman for Entertainment Weekly whose name I am spacing on) Is there a female version of Roger Ebert? I don't entirely understand how the math goes on reviews, but I'd be kind of curious to go back and look at superhero movies on RT and look at a) the Male/female divide and B) how that then breaks up as rotten or fresh. Again, I don't want to stereotype (though I know I am) but in truth I think there might be some sort of correlation.

Grey hair is awesome compared to no hair.

Not to stereotype too much but I saw no female reviewers in there this morning for instance.

Neither here nor there, but in my head, the two movies I'm comparing Guardians to the most are Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean. I'm sort of amazed that Pirates only has a 76 on RT.

This is hard for me. The first two choices that came to mind were Buddy Rose and Nick Bockwinkel. Both of them are sort of the height of smart work, even if Buddy's was instinctual, combined with a whole lot of hard work, the ability to switch up what they do on a nightly basis, to work in a ton of different settings and roles, to portray both vulnerability and dominance, to tell amazing stories in their matches, to reach both the front row and the back row with amazing character work. There's something to learn and something to enjoy in every single thing they do. The problem is that I don't have a huge emotional connection to them that would make this work. Bockwinkel I barely ever saw a match of before three years ago and Buddy Rose I had only known from the blow-away diet era for most of my life. It makes things a little tricky for this experiment. Also, I can't really decide between them. It's goofus and gallant and both are great. Even Andre is sort of in this same boat since I didn't appreciate him at all when I was younger. I think guys like Finlay, and the unholy trio of Rip Rogers, Tracy Smothers, and Chris Colt would also sort of fall into this category. Certainly Lawler. Bill Eadie. Then you get the wrestlers I'd gravitate towards in the last year, Mocha Cota and Satanico and Negro Casas and maybe increasingly Fuerza Guerrera (and Taue too, I guess). Frankly, it's the Nick and Buddy problem times ten. Yes, I want to devour their entire body of work but they're just who I've been enjoying lately, and I need to look at them over a span of years, not just their years but my own, to see how I'm going to feel in the future. So who did I love as a kid? Bret Hart, who I met when I was 10 and resonated for years after. He's hurt because I was out of wrestling from 93-97 so I missed a ton of his prime when it comes to emotional resonance. Brian Pillman, but he's aged strangely to me. A lot of why I loved him as a kid doesn't really work for me anymore, even if there's still a lot to like. The Rockers. I've soured almost completely on Michaels and Jannetty is the kind of guy you like from a distance but only from a distance. He's nobody's favorite. Tito Santana, I still very much enjoy but I just don't think he's my favorite. For a while, I thought I was going to say Sting, because I'm so excited about seeing him now, not even as a wrestler but just as a presence. I didn't see any of his TNA run so that barely even existed to me. It's something I can get actual nostalgia about which is very rare in wrestling to me in 2014. I've had his song in my head for days. The Crow-One which isn't even how I best remember him. And who did I like as a teenager? Eddy, Benoit, Kidman, Malenko. Owen. the Hardyz. Very much the guys I felt like I was supposed to like. I've watched very little US wrestling from 98-2008 in the last few years. It's all been soured to me somewhat. I have great memories of Eddy still but it's a bit like Pillman. I just don't want to touch it. There's not a huge cross-section. Windham's in that cross-section, but I just didn't care enough about them when I was younger. So that leaves just a couple of wrestlers. Dustin Rhodes. I think I've never really been able to connect well with the Goldust character. I actually connect better with Stardust than any iteration of Goldust, and I also don't connect too well with the cowboy/Natural thing either. That said, I kind of grew up with Dustin and liked him a lot as a kid and I liked him a lot in 09 in ECW. And I like him more than anyone now, probably, but it just doesn't quite work. Regal's another guy like that. I think he's great. I probably sort of liked him as a teenager since I thought I was supposed to. He's got an amazing cross section of over the top character work and mat wrestling but he's also a guy I get excited to start a match with on youtube and I don't always make it. So I think in the end, my answer is Arn Anderson. I liked Arn a lot as a kid. I don't know why. I sort of loved the spinebuster. He was really the only heel I liked in 90-91-92. I liked him again as a teenager, especially to go back and watch whatever old footage I had access to. And now that I've been able to see his older footage as an adult, I like him even more. I don't think he's the best wrestler of all time, but he often has very focused matches, is probably better at mixing stooging and deadly efficiency than anyone ever, is one of the best southern tag team wrestlers ever and his promos are just amazing. I'm going to go with Arn.

BRYAN WATCH: Well, he sure hammered the table with intensity. If he just did Bill Eadie's offense instead of frigging corner dropkicks, he'd be fine.

Gregg has been watching too much Tyrant.

The person doing my hair two weeks ago laughed at me when I said "at least I'll have it for another couple of years." Laughed.

They're poor man's Kronik.

Miz is pretty carcinogenic

Since it's comicon week you almost have to assume that transformed thing is some sort of UNDERTAKER VS DEMONS or JOHN CENA IN SPACE project or something.

God damn RF shoots wasting ten minutes of every single shoot on the Von Erichs and how much they partied.

But really:

The Prowrestlingchannel has the free matches of a middling indy group with an option to subscribe (I haven't) and MaddyGTV carries the often festive AAW. I think there is one more, I gotta check.- RAF I found ACE, which might be the other one you're thinking of. GFL has free content... none of which will load. I read that as GLF and I was wondering for a second if it was just a big clock on the screen.