S.K.o.S.

Yeah, "shamus" is the only 50s lingo so far where I didn't know what it meant (as opposed to, let's say, "dish" to refer to a woman), and it's been used by like three separate guys. I'm about a third of the way through. It was pretty impressive how quickly I stopped thinking "this is a book from 60 years ago, things were different back then" and just straight up got into it and started enjoying the narrative.

If that holds up, then Jones will have main evented the last four Toronto shows, which I don't really understand. Unless there's some kind of hometown connection, you should be showcasing a variety of fighters in any one city.

These critics have clearly been swayed by bribes from Lacelle

UPDATE 5 OF 21 - through June 5 Standings 1 [↑ 2] pipGofern - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 2 [↑ 3] Suicide King of Spades - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 3 [↑ 4] Lacelle - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 4 [↑ 6] The Natural - 2 points (0/2, tiebreak n/a) 5 [↑ 14] Chaos - 2 points (2/0, tiebreak 0.189) 6 [↑ 15] -MJ- - 2 points (2/0, tiebreak n/a) 7 [↓ 5] Ligerbusa - 4 points (2/2, tiebreak n/a) 8 [- 8] hobo joe - 4 points (0/4, tiebreak n/a) 9 [↑ 10] DreamBroken - 4 points (4/0, tiebreak n/a) 10 [↑ 12] The Erotic Terrorist - 4 points (4/0, tiebreak n/a) 11 [↓ 9] JRGoldman - 6 points (6/0, tiebreak n/a) 12 [↓ 11] jaedmc - 6 points (2/4, tiebreak 1.003) 13 [↑ 20] Mike Zeidler - 6 points (4/2, tiebreak n/a) 14 [↑ 33] Cameron Swift - 8 points (4/4, tiebreak 0.032) 15 [↓ 1] The Z - 8 points (2/6, tiebreak 0.147) 16 [↑ 24] Death From Above - 8 points (2/6, tiebreak n/a) 17 [↑ 19] The Damn Yeti - 8 points (2/6, tiebreak n/a) 18 [↑ 28] Kevin Wilson - 8 points (2/6, tiebreak n/a) 19 [↓ 16] Super Ape - 10 points (8/2, tiebreak n/a) 20 [↓ 7] SorceressKnight - 10 points (4/6, tiebreak n/a) 21 [↑ 23] Rippa - 10 points (2/8, tiebreak n/a) 22 [↓ 18] Dr. Bathroom - 10 points (2/8, tiebreak n/a) 23 [↑ 26] Niners Fan in CT - 10 points (4/6, tiebreak n/a) 24 [↓ 13] Hoffman - 10 points (4/6, tiebreak n/a) 25 [- 25] ivpvideos - 12 points (2/10, tiebreak n/a) 26 [↑ 34] caley - 12 points (6/6, tiebreak n/a) 27 [- 27] Ultimo The Great - 12 points (4/8, tiebreak n/a) 28 [↓ 21] blitzkrieg - 12 points (6/6, tiebreak n/a) 29 [↓ 22] Elsalvajeloco - 12 points (4/8, tiebreak n/a) 30 [- 30] Paco - 12 points (6/6, tiebreak n/a) 31 [↑ 36] RossWB - 14 points (6/8, tiebreak 0.014) 32 [↓ 31] MushroomJones - 16 points (6/10, tiebreak n/a) 33 [↓ 17] The Veeg - 16 points (12/4, tiebreak n/a) 34 [↓ 32] Sublime - 18 points (6/12, tiebreak n/a) 35 [↑ 37] CSC - 20 points (10/10, tiebreak n/a) 36 [↓ 29] Raziel403 - 20 points (10/10, tiebreak n/a) 37 [↓ 35] Control - 22 points (12/10, tiebreak n/a) Box office 1 [- 1] The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - $188,957,297 (28 days) 2 [- 2] Godzilla - $179,093,006 (21 days) 3 [- 3] X-Men: Days of Future Past - $174,401,266 (14 days) 4 [- 4] Neighbors - $132,600,495 (28 days) 5 [NEW] Maleficent - $93,846,968 (7 days) 6 [NEW] A Million Ways To Die In The West - $22,989,970 (7 days) Rotten Tomatoes 1 [- 1] X-Men: Days of Future Past - 202/220 = 92% (14 days) 2 [↑ 3] Godzilla - 180/246 = 73% (21 days) 3 [↓ 2] Neighbors - 141/193 = 73% (28 days) 4 [- 4] The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - 133/250 = 53% (28 days) 5 [NEW] Maleficent - 86/169 = 51% (7 days) 6 [NEW] A Million Ways To Die In The West - 57/170 = 34% (7 days)

Jeez, now they're saying Shelley is injured, so Taichi will be a semi-finalist.

I had thought Taguchi was already eliminated! It looks like I was working from bad info. According to both http://www.puroresufan.com/njpw/ and http://keepingthespiritalive.tumblr.com/post/87888382670/njpw-bosj-xxi-day-6-results-for-june-5-2014, Kenny Omega was leading Block B with 8 points going into the final show. But now somehow he has 6 points. Shenanigans! edit: Looks like it stemmed from an incorrect result given in the Kenny Omega vs. Nick Jackson match from June 5. I've been told that New Japan had the result wrong on their own site, and the sites I linked were just copying that information.

FYI the highest anyone had it on their RT list was fifth. And those people were you and Chaos. And yeah, you'd think Oblivion would be the perfect predictor of how it'll do at the box office. Maybe with a bit of a bump because it's summer.

Everyone has one match left in the BOSJ group stage. I dorked out and tallied up what needs to happen for each participant to be able to advance to the semi-finals. Spoilered for length. edit: Realized that I forgot there can be draws! *table flip*

Apparently he cheated on his wife and New Japan will be suspending him for it after the tournament. So with people paying more attention to him than usual, he's gone full heel, doing things in every match that really should get him disqualified - but I don't think that makes for good matches, it's really just a bunch of weapon shots and mask-ripping. He won his first three matches and was the only undefeated guy in the tournament at that point, but the rest of the pack has caught up with him now.

Ha, why not...

Try Desperado vs. Kenny Omega from June 3. Not MOTYC quality by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly better than average. Also I haven't seen it, but you would have to assume Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Taichi from June 4 would have a spot where Taguchi swiveled his hips and then immediately took a microphone stand shot to the groin. Five stars!

I've never actually seen a Graves match, or a Sterling James Keenan match for that matter, but there certainly seem to be an awful lot of people who think he's a blight on humanity.

What about Neville? It won't happen anytime soon because they'd have to get the NXT title off him, but if you come at it from a "we need someone to replace Rollins" point of view, I think he'd work out really well. The only thing is that I'm not sure if he's quite tall enough. Might look a little silly if he's way shorter than the other two guys.

Like in Stratego. They ran a neat variation of that angle for quite a while in IWA-MS where Chris Hero, who was obviously a top guy, could never win in one particular city. I forget where it was exactly, but it got to the point where they'd be putting him against guys like Trik Davis in that city and he'd still lose.

It's a bit of a headache, but I had to go through it a couple of times before with Adjustment Bureau and G.I. Joe 2. I've still got the work from those past years lying around somewhere so I can just copy whatever I did back then. Just in case some people haven't seen this before, the rule on it is as follows (quoting from the first post in this thread):

Aaargh that means I'm gonna have to do all kinds of spreadsheet nonsense to tally people's points once we get to mid-July. Thanks for the heads up though. In theory - could someone take a movie that hasn't come out yet and swap in for Jupiter Ascending? Now it would have to be a straight swap - no adjusting order - but could that be an option? Granted I am pretty sure I didn't put Jupiter Ascending on either of my lists but just curious I'm going to say no. You couldn't just swap the places of any two other movies that haven't come out yet, so this is pretty much the same logic. Everyone's lists are locked in at this point. People shouldn't have the opportunity to improve their lists just because a movie happened to get its release date postponed.

Aaargh that means I'm gonna have to do all kinds of spreadsheet nonsense to tally people's points once we get to mid-July. Thanks for the heads up though.

So um, Abdullah the Butcher is now on the hook for $2.3 million dollars. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-wrestler-hannibal-wins-2-3m-hepatitis-c-lawsuit-1.2663253

The RT blurb pretty much says it's not all bad - great Angelina performance, great special effects, but then the rest of the movie (like the plot) sucks. I guess those first two things were what people paid to see.

I think he does that in every match. Like on free tv matches too? Yikes. With the reaction it gets, it seems like too big of a move for that.

If you hadn't heard, "What If" was originally called "The F Word" (the f word is 'friends' har har), and it's still being called that in Canada. Saw a big ad display up for it in the movie theatre last night. I guess the obvious recent example of something like that would be Avengers being called "Avengers Assemble" in the UK, but it's pretty rare for a movie to have two different titles in Canada and the U.S.

Cena-Wyatt was the obvious MOTN. Not saying Evolution-Shield was actively bad, but I think that was the Shield's worst ppv match ever. Big E needs to figure out something new for a big spot because he's done that spear to the floor in like three of his ppv matches now. And yeah, Batista with the periwinkle leg warmers on his arms was something else. Also enjoyed the "Harper's Bizarre" sign.

Regardless of what the movie's about, I see that screenshot and just can't click play fast enough.

UPDATE 4 OF 21 - through May 29 Standings 1 [↑ 5] The Z - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak 0.545) 2 [↑ 16] pipGofern - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 3 [↑ 20] Suicide King of Spades - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 4 [NEW] Lacelle - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 5 [↓ 1] Ligerbusa - 2 points (0/2, tiebreak n/a) 6 [↓ 4] The Natural - 2 points (0/2, tiebreak n/a) 7 [↓ 6] SorceressKnight - 2 points (0/2, tiebreak n/a) 8 [↑ 23] hobo joe - 2 points (0/2, tiebreak n/a) 9 [- 9] JRGoldman - 2 points (2/0, tiebreak n/a) 10 [- 10] DreamBroken - 2 points (2/0, tiebreak n/a) 11 [↑ 12] jaedmc - 2 points (0/2, tiebreak n/a) 12 [↑ 17] The Erotic Terrorist - 2 points (2/0, tiebreak n/a) 13 [↑ 18] Hoffman - 2 points (2/0, tiebreak n/a) 14 [↑ 19] Chaos - 2 points (2/0, tiebreak 0.093) 15 [↑ 21] -MJ- - 2 points (2/0, tiebreak n/a) 16 [↓ 2] Super Ape - 4 points (4/0, tiebreak n/a) 17 [↓ 3] The Veeg - 4 points (4/0, tiebreak n/a) 18 [↓ 8] Dr. Bathroom - 4 points (2/2, tiebreak n/a) 19 [↓ 11] The Damn Yeti - 4 points (2/2, tiebreak n/a) 20 [↑ 34] Mike Zeidler - 4 points (0/4, tiebreak n/a) 21 [↑ 26] blitzkrieg - 4 points (4/0, tiebreak n/a) 22 [↓ 14] Elsalvajeloco - 4 points (0/4, tiebreak n/a) 23 [↑ 31] Rippa - 6 points (2/4, tiebreak n/a) 24 [↓ 22] Death From Above - 6 points (2/4, tiebreak n/a) 25 [↑ 32] ivpvideos - 6 points (2/4, tiebreak n/a) 26 [↓ 24] Niners Fan in CT - 6 points (2/4, tiebreak n/a) 27 [↑ 35] Ultimo The Great - 6 points (0/6, tiebreak n/a) 28 [↓ 13] Kevin Wilson - 6 points (2/4, tiebreak n/a) 29 [↓ 27] Raziel403 - 6 points (2/4, tiebreak n/a) 30 [↓ 15] Paco - 6 points (4/2, tiebreak n/a) 31 [↓ 28] MushroomJones - 8 points (0/8, tiebreak n/a) 32 [↓ 29] Sublime - 8 points (2/6, tiebreak n/a) 33 [↓ 30] Cameron Swift - 8 points (4/4, tiebreak 0.39) 34 [↓ 25] caley - 8 points (4/4, tiebreak n/a) 35 [↓ 7] Control - 10 points (4/6, tiebreak n/a) 36 [↓ 33] RossWB - 10 points (2/8, tiebreak 0.087) 37 [↓ 36] CSC - 10 points (6/4, tiebreak n/a) Box office 1 [- 1] The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - $188,957,297 (28 days) 2 [- 2] Godzilla - $162,431,557 (14 days) 3 [NEW] X-Men: Days of Future Past - $129,469,103 (7 days) 4 [↓ 3] Neighbors - $120,885,720 (21 days) Rotten Tomatoes 1 [NEW] X-Men: Days of Future Past - 190/207 = 92% (7 days) 2 [↓ 1] Neighbors - 141/193 = 73% (21 days) 3 [↓ 2] Godzilla - 178/244 = 73% (14 days) 4 [↓ 3] The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - 133/250 = 53% (28 days)

He's French-Canadian, and people do the ole chant at Habs games. That's, um, something to start from, I guess.