OSJ

Meltzer won't be happy as I've just sent him a long note requiring responses. If you're going to go with foolishness like 3/4 of a star, be prepared to defend such knuckleheadery with a detailed explanation.

How is it that Cody has such a great mind for the wrestling business except for the part about matches that he's in? My biggest fear about AEW appears to have quietly stolen up on us while we were paying attention to great matches the slimey spectres of egomania, nepotism, and general old school carnyism had quietly manifested themselves throughout the executive vice-presidential team: The Bucks are once again the greatest tag-team in the universe, Cody Rhodes, ostensibly the face of the company gets himself a drunken biker tattoo in about the most conspicuous place possible and begins to book himself as unbeatable, the apple has not fallen very far from the tree, likely the only thing that prevents him from getting his own plane is the fact that they don't travel. Now that he has no one telling him to behave himself, Kenny Omega is totally free to do all the things that he enjoys: Making grotesque faces, admiring himself on the monitor, using finishing moves in the middle of a match and then not following up, thus rendering the move meaningless, in general acting like the nerdy goof that deep down inside he actually is. Khan has a shit-ton of his dad's money to throw around and as we've been able to track his wrestling fandom, there's nothing to imply that this is a phase he's going through; no, this is a guy who has always wanted to run his own fed and now he can. He's already made the first move of doom, (appearing in an on-screen role), look for him to insert himself into a major angle sooner rather than later). Continuing down the primrose path of a boy and his wrestling company we can see "legends" signed to contracts regardless of their (in)ability to actually work. Steve Borden is a "legend" to a certain group of people who were of a certain age when he spent most of his time sitting up in the rafters of the Omni or showing up at the ring to point at folks with a baseball bat. The facts are this: He's a year younger than I am (62) and certainly in much better shape, however, while folks have fond memories of his work in TNA, they seem to have forgotten his disastrous comebacks elsewhere. While he seems to be a good dude and I wish him well, the fact of the matter is that no one of his age with the amount of punishment that his body has taken should be seriously contemplating working even a light schedule as a professional wrestler. StIng is a major accident just waiting to happen and when it does, it won't be pretty for anyone involved. As long as we're on the subject of guys who refuse to act their age, once again AEW makes a big deal out of signing Christian. I simply don't get it... The man is more Jeff Jarrett than Jeff Jarrett. If you have a TV Title, US Title, European Title, Western States Heritage Title or something like that to give your mid-card guys something to squabble over, you immediately give this prestigious belt to Christian so he can defend it on live TV at least once a month. The reality is this, as he approaches fifty, I think we can take a view of his career and draw certain conclusions. I don't think I've ever seen a bad Christian match that was his fault, for that matter he's pretty good at dragging a fairly decent match out of some real choads, it just happens that there are some goofs who are beyond even Christian's abilities to get anything decent from. So that brings us to the faces of the company going forward: Hangman Page, Orange Cassidy, and Darby AlIin. I worry about the validity of a cowboy character in 2021, I hope I'm wrong because I like everything about this guy. I'm just afraid that the clipboard-carrying suits with their focus groups won't like him and will add to the difficulty of securing a good TV spot. Orange Cassidy... Okay, this was hysterical the first time we saw him. It was sort of silly and annoying the second or third time around. The gimmick moved into Henny Youngman territory the next time we saw it, now it's on the level of catchphrases like "I'm Rick James, bitch!" or "Where's the beef?" He's 35 oor thereabouts so there's no reason to think that he won't be doing this shtick for another twenty years. They have some other folks signed who have very interesting possibilities, but I'll cover them in another post.

No, AEW is doing it the right way, very limited use of color for the ladies, just for feud blow-offs or other special situations. Someone in the vast array of people with their hands on the book understands that "less is more". Now if only that philosophy could be manifested throughout the show then you'd really have something. AEW's biggest problem right now is that they are too big for their TV time. There just isn't enough time to build compelling angles with their cast of thousands. I completely get why they will sign anyone with talent just to keep them from being ruined in McMahonland, the thing is that they are rapidly approaching 2000 WCW where you have guys sitting at home doing crossword puzzles pulling a nice paycheck because creative simply can't squeeze everyone into the TV time that they have unless they want to do a twenty-man battle royal to open the show every week.

There's an action figure of Penta? Take my money now! I will admit to being the guy that takes his figures out of the box/card/what-have-you so that they may be strategically displayed around the office. As much as I try to expand to the living room (where there's SO MUCH shelving), Kathy's having none of it. :-( . Oh well, I remember a time when books (other than those on the nightstand) were not allowed in the bedroom and now there are three bookshelfs in there, so it is just a matter of patience and picking your spots (like now, when she's bought this wheeled planter so the fake bonsai can be wheeled in and out of the living room based on the amount of sunlight available). Yeah, if we're to have so many plants in the living room that it looks like a fucking jungle and the cats don't bother with going outside because as far as they're concerned they are outside it certainly won't hurt to add some action figures to the mix...

And now for something completely different. Being a contrarian by nature it is a rare thing when I agree on a popular choice award in any sort of media. However, let's look at science fiction's Hugo Awards (named to honor a gentleman who couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag, but was sensible enough to found magazines wherein those who could do it far better than he had the necessary forum to display their wares), anyway, while the Hugos have frequently earned my displeasure by being awarded to the wrong book, they are to commended for never having made a howlingly bad choice, and recently displayed a level of taste and guts that restores my faith in our species by doing the unthinkable by ignoring the dozens of military sf books spewed out like the vomit of a teenager having their first meeting with Jose Cuervo and presenting the award for best novel of 2015 to a woman and what's more to a woman of color! The book in question is The Fifth Season and the author is N.K. Jemisin. While the aforementioned award presentation is certainly a feel-good moment in regard to our fellow hairless apes it was to be topped the following year when the Hugo voters opted to present the award to Jemisin's sequel, The Obelisk Gate. Now going back to the very inception of the Hugos in the early 1950s, one thing has remained a truism, sequels are to be ignored. For that matter books that appear to be plotted to have a sequel(s) should also be ignored. Victims of this draconian (il)logic include (among others) no less than Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, and Dan Simmons. So just like that three of the finest prose stylists that the field has ever produced get the stinkeye from the voters honoring this unwritten and poorly thought-out rule. The aforementioned gentlemen couldn't sway the voters to take a chance and possibly offend the shades of goofy old duffers wearing propeller beanies and bow ties; it took Nora Jemisin to break down this wall that had stood since 1951. Just to make sure that these books got their due recognition, the voters did the right thing again and gave the award to the third book in the trilogy, The Stone Sky. I doubt that we will ever see such a phenomenon again, all three parts of a trilogy honored as the best individual novels of the year in which they were published. Do I agree with these selections? Oh, absolutely! N.K. Jemisin is one of my top ten current authors along with Robert Reed, Caitlin Kiernan, Neil Gaiman, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, John Scalzi, D.P. Watt, Joe Abercrombie, Tamsyn Muir and Albert Cowdrey (wow, there's some recs for you!) Anyway, if you're shy about committing to a trilogy, you can always dip your toes in the water and start with Jemisin's collection, How Long 'til Black Future Month? Anyway, do yourself a favor and checkout some N.K. Jemisin, you'll be glad you did!

Missed this. So sorry to hear this, I just sort of assumed he was showing up at various Japanese indies and kicking ass and taking names. Yeah, if he more or less quit in the mid-nineties, he'd have just been in his mid-forties, an age when lots of guys are just figuring it out.

Did the bestiality charges get dropped or do they still have to go before a judge?

The Best of Walter Jon Williams $45.00 Okay, I'll admit to copying the entire starred review from Publisher's Weekly, why? Quite simply, they nail it... Almost... It's odd, Walter Jon Williams and I don't know each other despite sharing publishers, living in the same state, having many mutual friends etc. I have tremendous respect for the man's writing, it's just when I'm pressed for a recommendation that I get all tongue-tied and mumbling... You see Williams is one of those authors who never does the same thing twice. Yes, there are giveaways to assure you that you have indeed acquired a WJW book, make no mistake about that. A lover of the language such as Williams is going to shine through stylistically no matter what genre he's working in. This collection is a great place to start if you're unfamiliar with the body of his work, it will give you some paths to follow. On the other hand, if you're a WJW fan this can be a useful tool to ensure that you haven't missed anything. FWIW, the publisher of Subterranean and I talk pretty frequently, yes, we're competitors, but more importantly it is a friendship that goes back over thirty years. I do recall a conversation where the subject touched on "desert island authors", you know, you can have all the books of ONE writer, who will it be? It's one of those silly, unanswerable questions as you have to think of factors such as body of work, quality and quantity and so on. I know that along with heavyweights like James Joyce, Cormac McCarthy and Jorge Luis Borges that genre authors Gene Wolfe and Walter Jon Williams were in the discussion based on both quantity and quality of work. Anyway, this is one of those books that is long overdue, $45.00 may sound like a lot, but if you amortize that amount you get $3.75 per story and it is starting to look like a bargain. Of course you can count on the book being picked up by the Science Fiction Book Club to say nothing of a mass-market paperback next year. There are some books that can be waited for, this is not one of them ... With the publication of his debut novel, The Privateer, in 1981, Walter Jon Williams began one of the most varied and prolific careers in contemporary popular fiction. His work encompasses cyberpunk (Hardwired), military SF (The Dread Empire’s Fall series), humor (The Crown Jewels), even disaster fiction. But much of Williams’s best work takes place in the shorter forms, as this generous volume, filled to overflowing with award-winning and award-nominated stories, clearly proves. With one exception, The Best of Walter Jon Williams reflects its author’s affection for—and mastery of—the novella form. That exception is “The Millennium Party,” a brief, brilliant account of a virtual anniversary celebration unlike any you have ever imagined. Elsewhere in the collection, Williams offers us one brilliantly sustained creation after another. The Nebula Award-winning “Daddy’s World” takes us into a young boy’s private universe, a world of seeming miracles that conceals a tragic secret. “Dinosaurs” is the far future account of the incredibly destructive relationship between the star-faring human race and the less evolved inhabitants of the planet Shar. “Diamonds from Tequila” is a lovingly crafted example of SF Noir in which a former child actor attempts a comeback that proves unexpectedly dangerous. “Surfacing” is a tale of alienation featuring a research scientist more at home with the foreign and unfamiliar than with the members of his own species. Finally, the magisterial “Wall, Stone, Craft” offers a brilliantly realized alternate take on a young Mary Godwin, future creator of Frankenstein, and her relationships with the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, culminating in the creation of a monster who would “stalk through the hearts of all the world.” These stories, together with half a dozen equally substantial tales, are the clear product of a master craftsman with a seemingly limitless imagination. The Best of Walter Jon Williams is the capstone of a truly remarkable career. It’s the rare sort of book that the reader can return to again and again, finding new and unexpected pleasures every time out.

Just back from a two-hour doctor's appt. To say that my primary care-giver is meticulous would be a grotesque understatement, to make matters even more fun he had a third-year med student undergoing training, so everything got done twice. What was truly maddening is that I am scheduled for my second Covid shot Wednesday, now maybe this oversimplifies things, but I made the seemingly logical suggestion that since as long as I'm at the clinic and the vials for the shots are RIGHT THERE and we have not only my primary care physician, but his nurse and a third-year med student all pouring over my charts and trying to sound like they're actually doing something constructive, it seems like it might not be a bad idea to give me my Covid shot and cross me off of Wednesday's list, saving me a second trip to the clinic and opening a spot for someone else... You would think that I suggested lighting a bonfire in the lobby and prancing around waving dead badgers and weasels in efforts to summon the Virus Demons. Apparently, disrupting the carefully-thought-out schedule (which allows for me to be called in today at noon for a 3:30 opening, because I obviously have nothing better to do with my time than bail out someone else's fuck-up), is one of those things of which we mere mortals do not get to speak. Schedule changes are left to the three giggling receptionists, who to their credit carry on as though they've been huffing nitrous all day and find the mildest bon mot to be a thing of such vast hilarity that one must use tissues to stop the tears of laughter and inhale deeply to gather one's strength to answer the telephone... Nice work if you can get it...

Think it may well be a combination of the two-fight deal and more money. I really don't see Joshua beating Fury once, but the idea that he could beat him twice is just silliness. I suspect that we see a close fight in the first match-up, close enough to stimulate interest in fight #2. Fight #2 is a nasty blow-out that silences anyone foolish enough to say that Fury isn't the man at heavyweight currently.

Well another poster asked if we had a thread for book recommendations and while they come up all over the place, we haven't had a specific place for recs. Now we do; let's call this a consumer reports for books if you will... I always use this criteria: If it's worth reading, it is likely worth owning a copy, (that said, I am one of those weird bibliophiles who thinks nothing of dropping $100+ on a worthwhile tome as I just did on Harlan Ellison's Can and Cantankerous. So there... I've just demonstrated how to use the thread. ? The book I referenced is (sadly) the last collection of stories published during Harlan's lifetime and one can never go wrong with Ellison, be it short stories, essays, columns, or a combo of any or all, he was always a treat to read and the aforementioned book is available in a variety of editions so you don't NEED to spend $100+ on a copy unless you're into the whole first edition thingie...

We do now... ?

FIFY

Why is this a problem? I call it "getting my money's worth".

You would think that there might be... Maybe starting with a "p" and an "h"? Nah, that would be too easy...

Let's not sleep on Jushin "Thunder" Liger (57) and El Samurai (55). The number of luchadores is just simply ridiculous. I'm totally with the Rev in that I really don't start paying attention to a wrestler until they hit thirty, and don't take them seriously until they pass thirty-five. This is the source of my long-standing disagreement with Dave Meltzer on the WON HOF criteria. Yes, it IS certainly possible to assemble a body of work that merits HOF consideration before 35. Equally possible, nay, likely probable is the likelihood of not really putting all the pieces together until age 35. We used to think that baseball players peaked between age 27-35 and we've come to see that just simply isn't true. In he case of wrestling which is much more of a subjective thing, in fact getting more with less, it is really about working smarter, not harder. Tanahashi may be the t best case study we have as he's worked with the same opponents for a number of years and has had to adapt to keep things fresh. To do so over a decade is difficult, to do bleso over twenty-five years is amazing, pushing thirty years is simply incomprehensi. s

Tenryu has this gift for making pretty much anybody a punk.

This has nothing to do with whether you belong to the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, Green Party, or as I do, the All-Night Party... But isn't it a pleasant change of pace to have a POTUS smiling with something positive to say even if the topic is deadly serious as opposed to scowling and snarling like someone just stiffed him with the tab for a bachelor party. I'm back to enjoying the morning news again and feeling sorry for my mates in the UK.

Best belated birthday wishes, Paul! May you receive whatever Bat or Spider goodies you need for your collection!

There is no Marvel project which can't be improved by the addition of the Blazing Skull, just sayin'.

C'mon, Paul Lynde prancing around as "Uncle Arthur" was hysterical.

Damn, I was really hoping he'd hang around long enough to get 700HRs

Let me just echo: Stay safe!

Before I quit drinking 32 years ago that was probably my normal walking around BAC.