Author: dtm666

I ramble about things.

State Of The Blog – February 2022

For the second month in a row, we’re doing another longform State Of The Blog… although I wouldn’t expect this one to be long winding as the other one. Still, for future plans and the likelihood of those happening, here’s the gist.

Video Game Reviews
Tuesday will kick off the 2022 run of reviews with Dragon Warrior II on NES at 9 p.m.. A lot of time went into trying to polish up the footage for this thing, hence the late start. Following that, three more reviews will be posted on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, also at 9 p.m. EST. After that, the plan going forward is to adopt a three-review-a-week format, so every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday will feature new reviews. Some weeks will be Monday-to-Friday five reviews, usually denoting special occasions. The long game is to eventually hit 1000 reviews by the end of the year. We’re currently at 840. Do the math. Place your bets as to whether I’d actually make it that far.

PPV Musings
Wrestling PPV Musings will continue to be published every Wednesday and the majority of them have been written ahead of time, with the only exceptions reserved for whatever current shows are going on. I even have stuff ready for the first couple months of 2023, so this is one area that I don’t foresee any issues with unless something comes up that merits my attention. (I doubt that.)

Slideshow Movie Reviews
For the three people wondering, yes, Slideshow Movie Reviews will be making a return sometime in March and will adopt a weekly schedule for at least the short term. I have about ten of these dubbed, half of which comprise a cult favorite series from years past. I’ve also got a couple written reviews planned for the future involving a couple other films, but I don’t want to say more than I need to.

Phantom Posts
Not much to say in this regard. I’ve posted a couple Dynamite musings from the latter end of 2021, which you can check out in the AEW tab.

Video Commentary Restoration
Sadly, work has stalled as of late. Part of it is due to time constraints, part of it is due to content ID concerns, and part of it also involves technical issues that makes restoring some of these older files a bit more difficult. This has also affected the restoration of certain reviews as well. If there’s any significant update, I will let you folks know, but for now, things are going slow.

That’s about it for now. See you all next month… or check out the other stuff in the meantime, of course.

AEW Dynamite (Jan. 19th, 2022): Is Vince Russo Writing Cody’s Promos?

Not gonna lie. This last Dynamite show was not one of the stronger shows that AEW has put out. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a bad Dynamite show or anything that would set me off the rails, but compared to the usual output, I would definitely place this in the lower tier entirely skippable segment of Dynamite episodes, where there was some good stuff, but nothing you’ll remember the next night.
I did enjoy the Jon Moxley promo that opened the show and when the first words to come out of his mouth is telling some heckler to go fuck himself without getting bleeped on the live feed, I smiled. Really heartfelt words from Jonathan Good about facing demons and dark cloudsas the crowd sat in silence and apt attention, only reacting when needing to. And of course, he goes full Mox about being thirsty and only drinking blood. Good to have you back, Mox.
On the other hand, that Cody promo…
Okay, honest question here… did Cody secretly hire Vince Russo to write his promos because this seems like the sort of thing he would do? Talking about backstage stuff, using “insider terms” like “turning heel” or “real life friends” to try and give the impression that “this is real shit” but come across as even faker than the fake shit that’s supposed to be fake? Because this sounds like the sort of thing that Russo would write for promos to try and nab the casual audience he thinks likes this sort of stuff, when all they want is background noise while they’re doing something else. Good lord, this was deathly dull… and it’s a shame because Cody is usually a good talker, but his talking points as of late have been turn-the-channel dull.
Other than those two bits… eh. I like that CM Punk/Shawn Spears match; that went about as long as it needed to. Everything was just… eh. Oh well, better luck next time. Apparently, Friday’s Rampage was somewhat better, but I wouldn’t know because I don’t know how to watch Rampage on my TV that isn’t on a shitty TSN app.

WWE New Year’s Revolution 2006

Last year, WWE debuted a new PPV to the calendar; New Year’s Revolution, which was the first WWE PPV held in Puerto Rico. A year later, WWE would hold their second annual New Year’s Revolution in the exotic land of… Albany, New York.  Well, it certainly is exotic.

Fun fact: I have never watched this PPV before. I have seen a couple matches from it by virtue of DVD compilations and such, but never the full show.

Continue reading “WWE New Year’s Revolution 2006”

WWE New Year’s Revolution 2005

So let’s dive back to 2005… which began with WWE needing to crown a new World Champion on their RAW brand… except they really didn’t because… well, we’ll get into the background in the actual musings, but with WWE’s New Year’s Day PPV having come and gone, I figured it’d be a good time to revisit their brief run of PPVs that weren’t the Royal Rumble.

I’ve already talked about this show years ago and I’ve provided the above link for the sake of context and comparison.

The first New Year’s Revolution emanated from Puerto Rico, which marks the first time WWE held a PPV in that country. You’d figure that would be a neat annual tradition to hold a PPV there every year, but the following year’s edition would be held in some random American city. Oh well.

Continue reading “WWE New Year’s Revolution 2005”

AEW Dynamite (January 5th, 2022): Tee Bee Ess

Yeah, it’s a new era as AEW Dynamite moves to TBS… and so we have a generic banner for these Dynamite musings. Hell of a show, too. Good enough for me to want to write a quick musings on it and not save it for a phantom post down the road.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (January 5th, 2022): Tee Bee Ess”

WWE Day One (January 1st, 2022 PPV)

And so here we are. A new year is here and who better to kick off the year with a bang than WWE with their New Year’s Day PPV?

Allegedly the brainchild of CEO Nick Khan – responsible for such wonderful WWE moments such as Miz getting eaten by zombies, Vince McMahon’s egg stolen by Austin Theory, as well as the near hundred releases due to “budget cuts” during their most profitable months ever – the idea is for WWE to hold a PPV on New Year’s Day going forward.

But before we get that far, let’s check out this show first, which is billed as a “premium” live event instead of a PPV. Yeah… “premium.” Whatever you say, pal.

Continue reading “WWE Day One (January 1st, 2022 PPV)”

State Of The Blog – January 2022

Hey, y’all. I thought I take time out of my day to put together a little extensive state of the blog that will feature some immediate and long-term plans for the future of this webzone. There’s quite a bit to digest, so I hope you can indulge me by taking time out of your day to read this little post.

I think it’s safe to say that the past couple years have not been too active on the blog. A lot of this has to do with some personal life changes that have been brought about due to external sources. I’m not just talking about the prevailing circumstances we’re living in – though I will not lie and say that that didn’t factor into it – but I’ve been also dealing with some other things that I would rather not disclose online. As a result, things have not gone according to plan and I feel immensely let down. I could imagine the few who follow this space and actually look forward to stuff that doesn’t quite materialize as intended.

I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I should probably re-iterate here for clarity; everything I do here is done primarily as a hobby. There’s no ad revenue, no Patreon, no sponsorships, or anytthing of the sort that drives any sort of income. I do this of my own free will, time, and without getting a cent from it. It has become something that has allowed me to express my thoughts in a way that doesn’t feel restricted. There are times when this hobby starts to feel like a job and when it gets to that point, that’s when I have to take a step back and slow down.

This has resulted in unannounced periods of inactivity among the various outlets that I maintain, where there would be weeks without content. Hell, there’d be weeks where I wouldn’t even touch the blog or various tools. I want to try and rectify that for 2022; not only for the sake of content, but also for my own personal sanity, as it were.

So here’s the plan… as it were:

– First off, the first three weeks of January will be largely inactive. During this time, the only thing that will likely see regular updates are the Wednesday PPV Musings and with the exception of the WWE Day 1 musings coming up this Wednesday, a lot of these are already in the can and will publish automatically when the time comes. I do still plan on having the first episode of the DTM-Cast in 2022 on January 16th in a couple weeks, but that’s probably the only thing I could think of that will be planned ahead of time.

– With that in mind, the first review of 2022 will be posted on January 21st and will be a review of Dragon Warrior II for NES. This will kick off a couple weeks worth of big reviews, which will include the remaining Mega Man X games that were supposed to close out the year as well as the Metroid games that have been teased. The plan for the short term is to do three reviews a week for a couple months until we hit April 8th, which is Review A Great Game Day. We’ll see how the scheduling will go afterwards.

– I am planning on bringing back a couple features that have fallen off the wayside in the past year. Things like Slideshow Movie Reviews, Mega Man Maker Wily Challenge videos, and others are a couple examples, but there’s also a need to revive written features such as Power Rangers Reflections. I have some of this stuff nearing completion and hopefully in the following three weeks, I’ll be able to focus on getting that material ready to go by February at the latest.

– One final note: regarding the re-up of video commentaries and old reviews to the blog… these have taken a backseat for now, primarily due to technical issues regarding the rendering of these videos which have considerably slowed things down in this regard. This affects the commentaries moreso than the videos and I’m trying to get that sorted out whenever I can. None of this has to do with Content ID issues – although said Content ID had prevented the lost Spider-Man commentary from seeing the light of day on Youtube, which meant being hosted on Dailymotion, instead. As soon as there is an update regarding this, I’ll let you know.

And that’s about all that comes to mind at the moment. I want to make a point to turn these State Of The Blog posts into a monthly feature, so that we can keep track of stuff that goes on and such. And this would invariably include the repost of vintage content – whether it’d be old videos or even old written material from the old Webstation days.

Baby steps, however. Baby steps. Let’s get through this month before we go any further down the road.

Thanks for reading,

Later.