RIPPA

The Houston Chronicle is claiming that the Texans and Dolphins have a deal in place for Watson HOWEVER Miami wants Watson's legal issues "cleared up" before agreeing to the deal - which means there is no way the deal is happening

Well business is about to pick up

Sure - why the fuck not?

Allen Lazard is now on the COVID list too Randall Cobb is gonna get so many targets

So many broken links

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/32479861/chicago-blackhawks-report-president-stan-bowman-resigns

I missed that but it would explain why Dave randomly brought it up since when Bryan started recapping the NXT show for tonight Dave just butts in and goes "did you see the story going around on why MSK is booed?"

BLACK SABBATH (Mario Bava, 1963) SELECTED BY @Ultimo Necro If it’s the last Halloween Havoc then I’m picking the movie that named the greatest band of all time. A classic horror anthology. REVIEWED BY @Curt McGirt I have a long history with this film. First time I saw it probably had to be renting it from local video store Rentertainment, AKA The Best Video Store Ever (RIP). They had an enormous amount of foreign cinema listed by country, and the first time I saw it was in the OG Italian chapter order, so it had to be from there. Every place else, even on TCM, it is in the unfortunate domestic cut to pieces by AIP to eliminate violence and sexual themes, adding cheesy Boris Karloff wraparound intros, and they even replaced not only the title* but both the soundtrack and color processing! To avoid this I went straight to good old Soulseek** and poked around until I found an Italian version with subs. This is the one I am reviewing for you: I tre volti della paura, or The Three Faces of Fear. It's a classic horror anthology by one of the great directors of not only horror (particularly giallo films) but peplum, spaghetti Westerns, fumetti neri, and sex comedies, and one of the best cinematographers ever, Mario Bava. We'll take this by chapter, after a brief start with Karloff saying that vampires and ghosts exist and might be sitting right next to you. Then again those aren't the only threats to your life. Il Telefono/The Telephone This first segment is a masterpiece of drawing-room suspense and the first time Bava dipped his toe into the pool of giallo, the Italian term for a genre of slasher thrillers that began with paperbacks known for their yellow ('giallo' in Italian) covers. All the bases are covered here. We have a beautiful woman in distress, black-gloved hands fondling a knife, a mysterious killer, and an unexpected twist. A woman named Rosi walks into her downstairs apartment at the beginning, undresses and showers, then receives a series of phonecalls. At first nobody answers but then the caller reveals himself to be seeing her every move and desiring to kill her. There appears to be no way of seeing her at all until a tiny space in a blind is revealed. Rosi, scared to death, calls her former girlfriend to come and keep her company through this. Anyway, Bava was known as a master of setpieces and cinematography, and here we have a luxurious looking little apartment with ample lighting that belies the danger present... except for the constant ticking of a loud clock. The sexual themes mentioned above are Rosi having a lesbian lover, and other signs point to her being a former (and possibly current) prostitute. AIP removed those and even added characters and additional scenes to switch this up which is flatly dumb as fuck and offensive to an adult viewer (of whom there were, granted, few at the time for horror in the States). After the twist you can pretty much guess where this one is headed but the result is decidedly effective anyway. I'd give this one a B+ if we rate it like a school project. On to the next. I Wurdulak/The Wurdulak Now for something completely different, this is a gothic horror tale of the AIP Corman stripe that has Boris Karloff (again) and a twist on the vampire theme. Mark Damon (of wooden performance in Corman's House of Usher) finds a guy with a dagger in his chest in the mountains of some undisclosed, probably Eastern European country. He drives it to a nearby home and brings it to the owner only to find it has vanished from his horse; meanwhile a dude right there is stabbing a headless guy in the chest with a sword?! The family at the house and the other two talk together and it is revealed that the head of the household went out to kill an evil Turk that was victimizing everyone and if he wasn't back in five days he'd be turned into a Wurdulak, who feasts on the blood of the ones he most loves, and can only be killed by being stabbed into the heart. Karloff appears just after midnight on the fifth day with a stab wound to the chest, a pallid appearance, a forceful demeanor, and probably a thirst for blood. Again, you can probably guess where things go from there. The story is based on a family afraid of its benefactor and how he insinuates into their lives one by one to poison/kill/usurp them, and it does a bang-up job of it. The story itself is extremely atmospheric and has a feel of damp cold as soon as the "hero" enters the place of the homestead (I dare not say this is a town or even a village -- there is nobody else around besides the neighbor, and we don't even see his house). And the end of it is just mean. As in Pet Semetary mean. No wonder they ended up changing it in the AIP version to Karloff on a bike thus breaking the fourth wall (which is at the end of the film in this version) just to diminish the hit. And possibly the most offensive is that Sam Arkoff and company flipped all the chapters, so Black Sabbath started with the following, had "The Telephone" in the middle, and ended with "The Wurdulak". If it was anything else, I would have said they were right, but there is THIS one to wrap everything up, and it's a doozy. So we have increased the tempo, basically. Now it's time to visit the final story... La goccia d'acqua/The Drop of Water Wow. This one still floors me. It's about a young woman who looks a bit of a floozy and a drinker (and is cute as hell for a blonde -- just my type I suppose) who is called to dress and look over for the night a corpse of a recently deceased elderly woman. Except she has an especially wonderful and expensive looking blue emerald ring on her finger. And has been recently contacting mediums. Once again, you can put together the pieces. This has the best of Bava's love of color gels, with blue, green, purple, and all the clashes of the other colors of the surroundings merging into one lovely and terrifying collective while light pulses through the windows with pitch black overtaking it immediately. The silence and again, that pulse like the clock ticking from the first segment just magnifies the terror. And the twist at the end is total dead-on EC Comics "fuck you, you knew this was coming HAHAHA" awesomeness. I know I'm not saying a lot this time, but it is probably my stone favorite of any horror anthology segment. It's that good. And the absurdity of AIP STARTING with this instead of ENDING with this is beyond my ability to comprehend. Anyways, Happy Halloween. Watch this. And just wish for any rings in the upcoming holidays instead of stealing them, trust me. * This of course wasn't so bad of a thing because it gave a new name to a little band named Earth from Birmingham, England, who walked by the film's poster on the street and marveled that people like to be scared, thus making them decide to change their name to what else: Black Sabbath. ** Go figure, I told my best buddy I had to watch this, he asked for a link and I came up with this immediately. Looks twice as good.

WWE has officially switched from Topps to Panini for their trading cards Deal begins 1st Quarter 2022

The new Game Informer cover story is about the Saints Row reboot A quick skim of the article (and some of this might have been covered already) - tone will be somewhere in the middle between 2 and 3 - main character will be fully customizable - will have drop in/drop out co-op (exploration is untethered but if one player starts a mission, they both do it). You will also be able to "prank your partner" - location is called Santo Ileso which is inspired by the American Southwest. Will have 11 different districts - 2 of the "collectable" activities seem to be taking pictures of landmarks and collecting drug palettes - there will be something called Criminal Ventures which is all about "building your criminal empire" - soundtrack seems to be inspired by the setting - two radio stations will be a mariachi one and one that is a Latinx Club. You will be able to create a custom playlist from the music within the game.

Well moving to Saturday's has been Nick Khan's vision since pretty much he showed up on the job. The WWE doesn't care about PPV buys anymore so any lost "buys" there are, theoretically, replaced by actual ticket sales since the thought it folks are more willing to travel for a Saturday event where they can leave on Sunday (somewhat like the philosophy of the Vegas show). Also - and I am sure I am fucking up the details here - but I think NBC/Peacock indicated a preference to Saturday as there is more of a vacancy in programming on Saturday nights than Sunday. (Not to mention getting them away from the NFL for half the year)

I still don't fucking understand how "control" is considered, in Bioware's mind, is considered a Paragon choice. That pisses me off more than anything the actual ending did

If I had my way, everyone would get eliminated in Week 1 and then we would never speak about it again

You really need to start having more respect for your time

I am just gonna be over here talking about the WWE's PPV schedule In case you didn't notice (which I hadn't at first) - almost all the WWE PPVs are now on Saturdays The Feb and Oct dates are supposed to be Saudi shows hence why they weren't announced yet