SturmCRF

Average Death. The drum pattern alone is better than most songs. An Iteration is great too, but Big Shell and Real Folk Blues are my joint second favourites.

All my anticipated albums for the year are out, so ready to settle on a favourite. Every Time I Die ran it close, but my album of the year is Ultrapop by The Armed. Not often a new album comes out with one song I'd immediately put in an all time top ten and two that'd go in a top 100. Anyway, I'll leave the reviewing to you. This reminds me that The Apple Drop is very good and I need to listen to it again.

Gared O' Donnell, the singer from Planes Mistaken For Stars, died yesterday. Amazing band that I'm really grateful I finally got round to getting into five years ago, and saw live in London a couple of years back. All their stuff is good, but they really hit their stride on their last two albums, Mercy and Prey. I'm at a weird point in my life where almost nothing makes me cry these days, but I listened to 'Penitence' by them yesterday and was on the verge. Listening to a fifteen year old song where a man who's just died in real life imagines saying goodbye to his family and apologises for all his mistakes will do that, especially when the song's that incredible. One of the most genuinely difficult to describe bands I can think of, they sound totally singular and it was mainly down to his voice, which started gravelly and got gravellier from there. I guess they come under post hardcore, but that covers so much ground it's not much use. Just do yourself a favour and listen to Mercy.

Along similar lines, I guess, I was watching Dynamite with my girlfriend last night and during the Billy Gunn match, the subject of steroids came up while we were marvelling at a nearly 60 year old man being in such great shape. She's wholeheartedly got into wrestling since meeting me last year, mainly AEW with a bit of NJPW, and has read Jim Smallman's history book, but doesn't have the insane reserves of pointless nerd knowledge I've built up in 30 years of being a fan. So, I was explaining the Ass: Origins story as far as him being fired from his agent/trainer job in WWE for preparing too enthusiastically for a bodybuilding competition, and had to acknowledge that, as far as I knew, AEW didn't drug test (correct me if I'm wrong, but if they do it'd be the first I'd heard of it). Which is not ideal, and it'd be great if they did, but it got me thinking that what might be more beneficial than testing for steroids etc. is creating an environment where wrestlers aren't pressurised into doing them. They've demonstrated so far that, if you can project as a star, wrestle good matches and get over with the crowd, you can look like Darby Allin or a Young Buck (this is where someone who can spot these things tells me they're juiced to infinity) and still get a major push. And if you have to take time off, for whatever reason, you can rest assured you'll get a huge, featured comeback to a major pop, instead of going in the boss's black book of unreliable talent. That sort of culture seems like a better deal than rigorous wellness testing that still seems to mysteriously miss anyone above a certain level in the hierarchy, although some form of drug testing may obviously still be worthwhile, even at the cost of a slightly less vast Ass Gentleman.

Looking back, he was kind of a giant, Kenta Kobashi move stealing incel. In defence of the totally well adjusted teenager who was writing for him, the narrator usually kept at least a bit of ironic distance from his actions.

My favourite Wrestlemania 2000/No Mercy CAW was Carl Sturm, (concept - what if me, but Kevin Nash?) and he then graduated to being an e-fed character (what if ECW Rhino, but more misogynistic and with the vocabulary of an eighteen year old who writes a lot of English literature essays?) CRF is the initials of a line from the second Glassjaw album.

Can't believe this was posted an hour ago and still nobody has made enquiries into whether or not you will stop.

The Carmelo cash in was done well if you take it in isolation, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Why use it on the North American title? It's like someone using MITB to become Intercontinental Champion. I suppose you can handwave it and say that he's a heel now, so saw some easy prey and took his shot, and they did sew a bit of tension with Swerve, but it's still pretty stupid. Bron and Ciampa are having a gruelling title match soon, just show some patience and get the big belt. Also, while I'm complaining, Mandy Rose was disturbingly orange. Maybe the red lighting didn't help, but that woman looked irradiated.

Oh yeah, she spoke pure nonsense but she did it with seamless confidence, she's a pro wrestler through and through.

Rewound it twice to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, but Mandy Rose definitely said "Where were you guys when my face was batteredly and beatened?"

Delighted for Big E, and that I watched it unspoiled after getting wind that they may be desperate enough to do something interesting on Raw for once. Also very happy that he won the proper WWE title, not that artificial, almost historyless brand split prop that Roman's dragging around.

Bit of a copout there keeping it to the WWF title, the WWE title is the same lineage and then we'd get into some huge stars like Cena, Lesnar, Mahal.

I did. What the fuck was that?! I never watch BTE because I imagine it will be badly mic'd high school banter and Jacksons talking about trainers - and it literally is! Fair play to Tony Khan for making it clear early on that nothing like this would ever make it to TV.

I'm not going to forget today in a hurry. I woke up at 3:30AM UK time, saw an email confirming I tested positive for Covid (I'm fine, I'm double vaxxed and already feeling better than a couple of days ago), so thought I might as well stick on Fite TV and see Rampage almost live. That whole thing was like an out of body experience, the crowd noise, the promo, CM Punk could actually start a cult and I wouldn't be surprised, I might even join. As comically shitty as the MITB 2011 followup was, with the Nash and the Del Rio and the HHH, nothing could actually have lived up to the pipe bomb promo short of giving CM Punk significant creative control over the company. He made such a convincing case that the whole enterprise was rotten, and the last ten years have mainly been a whole lot of proving him right. AEW, more than most of us could ever have dreamed, is the closest thing possible to a wrestling company run on the principles of that promo. Young talent gets built up, the wrestlers get to organically convey character through their words and actions rather than someone else's hack job sitcom script, titles are treated with importance, the fans aren't held in complete contempt. Whoever dropped the line about leaving out cookies and Pepsi on CM Punk Eve and wasn't sure who to credit it to, I'm going to do the same and recycle it here, because it makes me grin every time, and this whole morning, from the insanely early start to the wrestling, minus the Covid, has been like a surreal portal back to the sort of excitement I felt as a five year old at Christmas.

I dunno, the preachy, evangelical, hypocritical MMA fighters he's (hopefully) parodying are at least as offensive to me in the wild as edgelord comedians, it's just hard not to find it charming when Miro does it, because Miro rules.