TNA Bound For Glory 2014

Well, kids… here we are… again.

I wrote about this show back in 2015, which was a year after this show took place and I opened the post with the words, “TNA Bound For Glory 2014 has no real, viable purpose for existing. It is simply there.”

TNA was in a real, precarious state at this point. xxx The end result was sending a number of TNA second-stringers to a Wrestle-1 show in Japan, tape the show, and then package it as a Bound For Glory so they can charge their loyalist TNA fans premium PPV prices to watch. Now for those who don’t know what Wrestle-1 was, it was a promotion in Japan that was founded by legendary Japanese wrestler The Great Muta in 2013. Yes, the promotion that was hold TNA’s equivalent of Wrestlemania was a little over a year old.

Imagine WWE holding a Wrestlemania in Japan, but rather than staging it in the Tokyo Dome with all the pageant, pyro, and ballyhoo one typically associates with the event, they held it in a shitbox theater hall barely holding 400 people… AND it’s a co-production with another minor league Japanese promotion… AND none of the matches have any relevance on the WWE product because they already taped episodes of RAW and Smackdown to air for the next three months. It’d be pretty embarrassing… and yet that’s what happened with TNA.

One would presume to compare this to the eventual empty arena shows that the various promotions would hold during 2020, except you had prevailing circumstances that made those shows what they were. TNA was just in a bad state of affairs and whatever show they had intended to book on this Bound For Glory show would play out on free TV via episodes of Impact that very few people were watching… which is probably for the best that they had a taped show fill in for what was supposed to be their big premiere cornerstone event that even fewer people knew existed, let alone fork down actual money to watch.

So I had already seen this show and did a musings on this ages ago. A buddy of mine had sent a DVD recording of this thing and wanted me to share some thoughts on the show. I told him I’d do it on the condition that he would order that year’s BFG and we could watch it together. Something I’m sure he would have done anyway since he was still watching TNA… the poor bastard. But regardless, I wrote some thoughts and… well, those thoughts can be read here if you wish.

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Review #1367 – Black Belt (Master System)

Yeah, a cold struck me down, but I’m not out… I do need to reshuffle some videos around. But hopefully, the big Sunday video won’t be an issue… the big Monday episode, on the other hand, might be. Fiddle sticks. We’ll let you folks know tomorrow.

Star Trek Turns 60 Today… anyway.

And for those Trekkies clamoring for a Star Trek: Legacy, our ol’ buddy and former Xbox head Don Mattrick has some sage advice for you folks.

“Buy an Xbox 360.”

Star Trek: Legacy was also available for Windows, but I can’t find that one… and I’m not sure if it’ll still work today given that it uses Games For Windows DRM that is never good.

In the meantime, go watch some old Trek to celebrate… and try to avoid tonight’s BIG SWING!

Another Change Of Plans…

Today was supposed to be the return of the Mailbag. That’s been delayed to next Monday due to a sore throat that isn’t quite affecting my vocal output yet, but I’ve wanted to spend the time doing dubbing for more important projects, such as those videos due next week.

Also, WordPress has graciously saved my activity streak that I apparently missed… even though I did post a video yesterday… and today… I have no clue how this works, but the posting streak has been maintained, I guess… who knows how this stuff works?

Anyway, tomorrow’s review cycle should continue unabated, as should the video output for next weekend, which is going to be heavy… either way, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

Sunday Gimmick Table #61 – Classic Games 3-in-1 Game Board From Dollar Tree For 2 Dollars

It amazes me that at no point did I consider a reference to Tommy “Sammy ‘Adam Smith’ Salazar” Tallarico and his backgammoning escapades… oh well. Here’s a thing to fill a Sunday until next week’s special Sunday presentation… which is indeed special.

DTM Archives Collection – Nice Code Week I (Sept 2018)

For those who missed it the first time around, here’s a compilation of the Nice Code Week event from September 2018, where I’ve sampled at least five games conceived by Nice Code.

Some may recall something similar gracing the old Dailymotion page, but this includes an additional bonus video that was intended for a sequel event that never came to pass. So we’re including it here… but don’t get too excited; you’ve seen some of this before.

Rubbish

No video today due to foreseen circumstances, which makes this the first schedule bump of 2026 since… February-ish. Well, it’s been a good run, I suppose.

New Gimmick Table this Sunday along with the usual rash of review fodder, though I’ve pushed the “Bad News” video over to the 14th because it’s not ready yet.
Sorry, folks.

Thuy

Today marks twenty-five years to the day that the world lost Thuy Trang.

Best known for her portrayal of original Yellow Ranger Trini Kwan in the first two seasons of Power Rangers, along with a couple bit parts in other movies, her life was tragically cut short in a car accident. The news of her passing didn’t hit until September 10th… a day before the attack on the World Trade Center.

I never got around to doing a “proper” tribute back in the day because I was still in the midst of figuring this webpage business. I wrote a couple things here and there; most of which never saw the light of day until recently. But I never did a blurb on Thuy’s passing. Truth be told, the news was difficult to process when I first heard about it… and then September 11th happened.

Always a terrible thing to lose a beloved and gentle soul… made even more wretched when that loss becomes an afterthought in light of a much bigger tragedy.

The story of Thuy Trang is that of resilience. Her family fled Vietnam and fought to keep their daughter safe from those who wished to throw the sickly child overboard. Refugees who eventually made their way to the United States, where Thuy learned English and pursued civil engineering as a career before pivoting to acting, where she eventually got the Power Rangers role.

Baring my soul here, while most of you were crushing on Amy Jo Johnson back in the day, I was crushing on Thuy. I don’t know; I had a fondness for the Asian ladies and there was something about her natural beauty that I found particularly attractive. When Thuy was gone and replaced with Karan, young me was unsurprisingly sad and wanted to find out more about her post Power Rangers-life… which basically amounted to a horrible Crow sequel and a bit part in a Leslie Nielson spoof film… and then nothing.

There were a couple headshots that would pop up here and there… but I wouldn’t hear anything regarding Thuy until her passing… and chances are the first time I heard about was after 9/11.

An episode of Time Force was dedicated to her memory; I forget which one, but it involved Circuit. And of course, Once And Always also had a dedication to both her and JDF, who passed away recently.

Wanted to do a brief little blurb on Thuy for a while now… better late than never to say how much we miss her… and how a young talent was taken from us so early in life before it had a chance to blossom. Chances are she would have been thrilled with the current convention scene.

The Lotus Is Rancid…

So someone made a Spider-Man fan film a couple years back that was supposed to be more comic accurate than any of the feature films. It covers a very familiar – and quite frankly, very tired – subject matter that has been touched on a couple times in these features. It’s perhaps one of the wall-crawler’s most famous moments… that eventually got undone, but that’s another story.

I never knew about this until I came across a couple Youtube things talking about how this is one of the worst Spider-Man things ever made… now think of the ground that covers.

After a while, I found the film in question. I sat down and watched the film. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s the worst thing, or even ONE of the worst things to happen to Spider-Man. I could think of much, MUCH worse. And I don’t want to slag on this film too much because it is literally a bunch of amateur actors and filmmakers doing a movie based on a beloved superhero. Sometimes, you have to cut a little slack when it comes to these fan productions, especially considering the spoils of high-quality material that Trek fans were used to during the Golden/Silver/Bronze Age Of Star Trek Fan Films.

And in fairness, I didn’t completely hate this thing.

But instead, I was just really, REALLY bored.

I don’t want to turn this into a full review – I might save that for later down the road. But here’s what I want to know… a long time ago, a bunch of kids got together and planned to make their own secret Spider-Man movie. It’s something I’ve talked about in the old blog and will occasionally make mention of. To the best of my knowledge, nothing came of it and nobody made mention of it. It’s something that seems to have been completely and utterly forgotten.

So my question is this?

Is THIS Lotus thing the secret Spider-Man movie that’s been teased all this time? Is THIS what those folks who took shots at the Studi’HOS (their spelling, not mine) wanted to make all those years? I don’t know if that’s the case. Honestly, I’m not sure anyone even remember that to be a thing.

I can tell you one thing. If this was indeed the payoff to all that build and secret Spider-Man movie hype, then my only reaction would boil down to two words.

“That’s it?”

Anyway… just a random thought.