BUHNING HAMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Wristo clutchoski, wristo clutchoski, wristo clutchoski. Hamburger.

CageMatch Report x2

I suddenly realized that I never blogged about the CageMatch from two weeks ago, so you get a twofer here.

Last time, we had Banana Breakup defending against 4DDI. The video is here. Check it out and return for discussion.

Didn't really have a genius idea for this one. Couldn't figure out what to do with a name like "Senior PGA", until I tripped over the "senior vs junior" idea, and then decided to fill space by showing the "experience" of the senior team, and their Photoshopped wins around the world. I did like ending it with the "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" song.

This week had Senior PGA against 4DDI. Watch it here.

Once again, a name that's hard to build a storyline around, so in the Flaneur tradition, I used the name itself as the focus, namely the question of what "4DDI" stood for. It's fairly well-known around the theater that the guys in 4DDI intended it to be "Four Douchebags Doing Improv", but that Zach rightly thought that it wasn't the type of name you could market or advertise, so they were verboten from using "Douchebags", officially changing it to "Dudes". So I spent the bulk of the video playing with that, dreaming up various ways to censor the forbidden word, the punchline being that John Reitz would go ahead and say it anyway (if out of context). The boys of 4DDI were kind enough to participate in the pretaping, with special props to Kyle Chorpening for getting naked for CageMatch...again.

Oh, and the "POJ" thing was just some unexplored sexual maneuver that cropped up in Senior PGA's previous show, and amused me intensely, so I threw it in there as a sort of obscure inside joke.

Stills, as usual, are here.

Join us next time.

The Wrestler Review

Went to see The Wrestler with Tommy Dynamite today. Jennings had told me weeks ago to get in my car and drive however long it took to see it right away, but this was my first opportunity to attend it here in Chapel Hill. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.

I liked it. I thought the portrayal of what it's like to be in the world of independent wrestling was amazing--they really did their homework, and were dead-on (except for three minor points that didn't really matter, namely that Marisa Tomei never would've gotten backstage so quickly/easily at a big event, nobody should ever make a gig that big, and I've never heard of anybody getting a solo dressing room at a small event.) They really did capture the thrilling/depressing feel of what it's like to be in front of a crowd at a high school card, and then wandering back to your car past kids' crayon drawings while dragging your rolling suitcase behind you long after the fans have left and the high has left you.

I thought that the Rourke's portrayal of The Ram was amazing. I've met guys like him; former big stars now on their way down, having lost the big bucks and their youth and now ready to sacrifice anything just to please the fans. I can identify with that as well; I think we were supposed to hope The Ram would agree to go with Cassidy at the end and not walk through that curtain, but maybe it's my own wrestling sickness that just made it obvious to me what had to be done at that moment: the crowd were there to see The Ram take on The Ayatollah, and when your music plays, you've got to hit the ring. I was also nodding my head when The Ram was mounting the top rope for his finisher, and looked over to the empty spot in the curtain where Cassidy had fled. She's gone, all you have for sure is the ring and the show, gotta dive off the top and let the heart attacks fall where they may. He had to do it.

The opening sequence with the historical clippings was amazing; somebody put in a lot of effort to replicate the look of Pro Wrestling Illustrated and its ilk. The Nintendo wrestling game moment was perfect. I could've done without the hardcore segment with Necro Butcher. Not that I don't like garbage wrestling, but I didn't think it advanced the plot in a useful fashion. If they had gone the route of showing that the former golden boy of wrestling had no choice but to take whatever booking he could, and was pressured into doing hardcore, that would've been good. Maybe in a director's cut?

I actually don't think I can judge whether this was an Oscar-level movie or not. I think I'm too close to the material myself. As far as replicating the real inner workings and atmosphere of smalltime wrestling, yeah, bang on, that was amazing. The story was touching, but I think I'm too close to that as well. Besides, I'm no movie artisan or supreme critic. But I did enjoy myself, and that's what's important.

Wrestling Moves

Hi there wrestling fans. A clip of Mascarita Dorada has been making the rounds lately. This guy's always been pretty amazing, but that was a really good clip. Lucha Libre generally presents its "minis" better than traditional American "midget wrestling" which tends to be shown as a freak comedy act. (Although ya gotta wonder what Monito was thinking when he agreed to this spot.) I've always been a particular fan of the amazing talents of Mascarita Sagrada. I mean, the guy's about four feet tall, and he dove off a cage, for chrissakes!

Anyway, while midget wrestling in the US has generally been a joke at best and an offensive act at worst, there are some independent presentations that seem to be pretty positive. This looks like an interesting portrayal of one such group.

This post wasn't supposed to be about minis or midget wrestling, actually. I meant to show off some of the amazing moves people are coming up with, so here they are:
The Double 450
Omega Driver
Rollback Driver
An Amazing Counter
The Space Flying Drop
Anything Takuya Sugi does
And, what I think we can all agree is The Greatest Wrestling Sequence Ever

addendum:
After posting this, I discovered a longer video that includes the Double 450 mentioned earlier. Turns out there were a lot of amazing tagteam maneuvers in that match, which make it a must see.

The Green Mist

So when I was a kid, I watched Mid-Atlantic Wrestling whilst living in the middle of North Carolina. One of my favourite wrestlers was a scary guy with his face painted, who went by the now-amusing name "The Great Kabuki". That's the equivalent of calling an American wrestler "The Fabulous Sitcom" or "The Wonderful Ballet" or something, but back then, I though "The Great Kabuki" was a great name for a badguy wrestler from Japan.

Anyway, I liked Kabuki because 1) he wore a cool piece of headgear that his manager would almost nonchalantly pull off slowly to reveal his "hideously scarred" face, 2) he worked them nunchucks somethin' fierce, and most importantly, 3) he could blind and even hospitalize his opponents by blowing a poisonous substance into their eyes, a mysterious weapon of the Orient known as "The Green Mist". To a kid, this was amazingly cool. How I wished I too could learn the secrets of the Japanese warriors and blow the Green Mist!

Years later, an amazingly talented wrestler by the name of Keiji Mutoh came over to America, where he became famous as The Great Muta. Muta was billed as Kabuki's son, and he learned the secrets of The Green Mist from his evil father. I would've loved Muta anyway, with his acrobatic moves and lightning-quick elbow drops, but blowing the mist made him my new favourite.

You can see two fun examples of The Green Mist from Muta here and here. The former has a nice wide spray, and Ric Flair sells it like he's dead. The latter has a nice bit of mist, and then Muta finishes off his opponent with a nice Shining Wizard. (BTW, I'm not sure, but I *think* that the guy who gets misted in the second clip is Kabuki himself!) You can see a nice little interview segment with Kabuki's manager Gary Hart (no, not that Gary Hart) here, followed by a dustup in the ring with Jimmy Valiant. "Get your Asian in the ring!"

And here's a weird little bonus. The Great Kabuki in a music video for a Japanese band???

Spock's Surprised Bread

Long ago when I had cable, I was addicted to the British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway. It was always entertaining, had crazy games, and some wacky talent in the form of people like Paul Merton and Tony Slattery. There was one particular episode that has stuck in my head for all these years, featuring two comedians that *weren't* Whose Line regulars, and thus were hard to track down. Well, I finally found the particular clip I've remembered all these years, and it's right here. Enjoy it with me, won't you?

The segment has two guys being given a suggestion of an object that they have to build the scene around, and then Clive tells them they have to do it as the characters of Kirk and Spock. The guy doing Spock isn't particularly thrilling, but the guy playing Kirk, Jim Meskimen, is hilarious. He really nails the Shatner timing and sound. Ever since I originally saw this ten years ago, I still occasionally find myself wandering about and muttering, "Why Spock, I'm...surprised you eat bread."

Different Perspectives Project

Just after Christmas, Kit sent me an email that read thusly:

Since I know we all love wasting free time, I had an idea while looking at an art exhibit advertisement in South Carolina. The exhibit was somehow pairing the elderly with college kids to do some sort of photography thing (not sure what), and the exhibit was called "Different Perspectives, One Vision."

Oh, hells yeah, I said to myself.

The concept is this:
We pick a group of 4-8 related words, and we all spend the next week taking a photograph to fulfill each word. Then we each put our pictures together in a prearranged layout (for comparison purposes) and compare (post?) the results. I'd say the photos have to be taken by us THAT WEEK (i.e. not last spring). This will get us all looking around for awesome pictures as well as exercise our brains finding interesting ways to show the items.

THE FIRST CHALLENGE (we'll decide what to do with them next, but first, get this done by Sun Jan 4:
PlayStation Controller Buttons
1) Square
2) Triangle
3) Circle
4) X

Take four pictures (or take a lot and choose the best four), each depicting a different one of the four above buttons. Layout of the pictures is just like the side of the controller: in a diamond with square to the left, triangle on top, circle to the right, and X on the bottom.

So here we are on Sunday, Jan 4, and here is my submission.

Edit: Here are the submissions of Mr. FitzSimons and Mr. Scronce.

Good Eats

My buddy Jackson cooked up a particularly delicious meal for me on Friday. Here we have a pork chop in wine sauce, baked beans, mustard, and Potato Cakes a la Jerry Golliher. DEE-licious! Best meal I've had in months.