Category: The Bite Commentaries (2024-2026)

The current Bite commentary series, touching on the stuff that isn’t always fun and with a sharper tongue than usual. I try to do at least one of these a month, but not always.

THE BITE COMMENTARIES #15 – Star Trek Through Apathy

Star Trek is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. The original series first aired in 1966 and has been on a roller coaster ride of sorts since that time, having seen multiple motion pictures, feature films, and animated projects under its belt. It has ridden the wave of fan support that produced a multitude of side material such as novels, comic books, interactive games, action figures, starship models, and other things. And it currently has a hit show on the Paramount+ streaming service. It should be a great time for Star Trek.

“Oh, but here comes crusty old Dave to rant and rave about how the current product sucks and how he misses the old days.”

Well, you’re half right. I do miss the old days when I actually looked forward to new Star Trek shows and movies. You’re kinda wrong about the show sucking, though. I’ve yet to see Starfleet Academy – never been big on young adult fare and me being a not-young adult anymore doesn’t help matters either – but I’ve heard generally favorable things from those who have. It’s hard to be invested in a franchise whose future seems to be in a state of flux, what with all the rumors surrounding ownerships and mergers. Will there even be new Star Trek after this current crop ends? Should there even be new Star Trek at this point?

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THE BITE COMMENTARIES #14 – The Malaise Of Modern Wrestling

So the Royal Rumble happened last month, emanating from the benevolent and progressive kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is the first time that WWE has held the Royal Rumble event outside of North America, where citizens of the benevolent and progressive kingdom of Saudi Arabia bore witness to the usual extravagant event that had already been paid for by the prince.

Normally, around this time, I would post some thoughts on the Rumble event under the Royal Ramble banner of this blog… but this year I’m going to do something a little bit different. See, a funny thing happened this year that I didn’t think would ever occur in all my years of watching wrestling. The Royal Rumble came and went… and I completely forgot about it.

Perhaps this had been due to the fact that last year’s event was held in February rather than its usual end of January slate, but the fact remained that I was rather busy that weekend and when I got on my computer late Sunday, I noticed that there were news bits on the Rumble and that’s when I went “Oh wait. That was today.” It’s not even a matter of forgetting it was taking place early (other side of the world, after all). It was a matter of forgetting that it was even a thing.

It was at this point that I realized… wow, I missed the Rumble. And I didn’t care.

What happened?

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THE BITE COMMENTARIES #13 – John Cena Gives Up

Yes, we’re talking about this a month after the fact. And yes, the dust has settled a bit. And yes, there will continue to be discourse surrounding the end of John Cena’s legendary WWE run. And I had not really planned on giving this subject matter much more thought than the one post I did last month… but a couple things occurred that caused me to give this more thought than necessary and this, along with a message that came my way a short while ago, sort of dawned this epiphany of sorts as it relates to this whole deal.

Unfortunately for those hoping for another voice in the “John Cena Shouldn’t Have Lost” or “John Cena Shouldn’t Have Given Up” camp, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. In fact, I’m going to highlight something that you folks SHOULD have figured from the very beginning of this whole Last Time business.

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THE BITE COMMENTARIES #11 – The Force Undead

So, if all goes according to plan, today’s post should publish on the very same day that, ten years ago, the first Star Wars film of the Disney ownership era as well as the start of a new Star Wars sequel trilogy – The Force Awakens – hit movie theaters to usher in a new era of Star Wars that is new and different… although you wouldn’t have been able to tell from watching the movie.

At the time of release, people considered it to be a return to form after the polarizing prequels. For some, it felt like Star Wars again… for others, it felt too much like Star Wars; to the point of almost being a carbon copy of the original film from 1977.

And then The Last Jedi came along and pretty much shat the bed that The Force Awakens set with its dogged insistence in subverting your expectations; something that has become a meme over the years in and of itself. Regardless of your opinion on the film – and I’ve made my feelings perfectly clear – the fact is that the second chapter of the new trilogy was a divisive film and brought about an air of uncertainty among the Star Wars faithful. And then Solo came along… and finally, The Rise Of Skywalker ended the sequels and any subsequent hope for further annual Star Wars feature films, relegating the franchise to limited series runs on Disney+.

What began as a sign that things were going to be okay… turned out to be anything but… and when one revisits The Force Awakens ten years removed from its initial release, with all these other films out there and everything that has happened, is the movie as good as it was? Has it aged poorly? Was it ever that good to begin with?

The answer is… complicated.

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THE BITE COMMENTAIES #10 – Sith At 20

This past May marked the 20th anniversary of the third Star Wars prequel film, Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith, which finally paid off its long-running story of how Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side and eventually became Darth Vader. And if you want to me to tell how I felt about the film at the time, I thought it was the only really good film out of the prequel since everyone died. And I wasn’t the only one who thought that because a bunch of people I went to see the film with thought it was the only really good prequel out of the bunch because everyone died.

Now we all know that statement is a bit of a fib. Not everyone died, obviously; this isn’t Rogue One, for cryin’ out loud. But the cast of characters that were introduced in prior prequel films were either killed off or cast aside to make way for the characters that people actually cared about to come along and have the adventures they had back in 77 and the circle would be complete or some deal like that.

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THE BITE COMMENTARIES #09 – Mortality, Crohn’s, And Crud

A little over a year ago, I revived the Bite commentary series, which was a thing I did back in the old DTM Webstation days and a bit further in the old DTM Blog. We’ve done eight of these in 2024 and I haven’t really had the urge to do another one until fairly recently. Not due to lack of interest, but I generally reserve the Bite commentaries for stuff that require a deep more thought and introspection than the usual fluff that I post around here. Unlike the old commentaries where I just talk about random stuff, I usually want to focus on one single thing and gather a bunch of thoughts on that.

Up until now, there hadn’t been much to bring up in that regard… but now I found something to talk about… and it’s something that I probably should have touched on a long time ago. But it is also something that I very rarely touch on around these parts because it falls outside the purview of this little web space, which is focusing on stuff that either amuse me or annoy me. For the most part, I try to keep things light here and rarely have a need to get truly serious about things.

So a couple words of warning; the obvious being that there might be some disturbing subject matter being touched on and discretion is strongly advised… but also, there’s a lot of copy and pasting being done from prior posts sort of being melded together to give you a fuller picture of my mental state because I simply don’t have the heart to retype the same words over and over again… and I simply want to focus on the healing from hereon out.

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THE BITE COMMENTARIES #08 – Memories Of The DTM-Cast

This coming Tuesday is the end of an era… so to speak.

This coming Tuesday on New Year’s Eve, thirty minutes past midnight, the DTM-Cast – this strange little audio project that has been an on-and-off thing since 2013 – will be posting its final episode. As a matter of fact, as I am writing this, I am in the process of reading my closing thoughts on the show. And it is a show that I implore you folks to listen to.

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THE BITE COMMENTARY #07 – The Four Year Wait

The following post is a post about politics on a blog that normally does not discuss politics because it’s something that this blog does not like to talk about, but I guess we need to talk about this because sometimes I need to let out that borderline misanthropic side that absolutely hates humanity for its constant stupidity. If you would rather not read about such things, then skip this post and move on to… just about anything else on this blog. There’s going to be a new review up later today on an old Atari game that’s more entertaining and happy than this post. Otherwise, please bare with me as I ramble about a recent political event.

So… I guess that’s in the books, huh?

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THE BITE COMMENTARY #06 – 25 Years Of Classic Game Room

2024 is the year that Classic Game Room celebrates its 25th anniversary.

Well, it’s more accurate to say that twenty five years ago, Classic Game Room was born… to say that there is any celebrating of the occasion would be a bit of a fib… at least, on the part of Classic Game Room.

For what it’s worth, Mark Bussler – host and creator of CGR – is still around. He still has a CGR website that still talks about CGR and showcases CGR content. But he’s more focused on this music-making and publishing ventures, which make more money than the CGR videos do… fair enough from a business standpoint… but still sad to see in the long term.

I’ve been wanting to do a thing on CGR’s 25th anniversary… and truth be told, I had started on this a while back after having watched the CGR 20th anniversary video release that seldom few people know about because it’s a paid collection of CGR reviews – some of which may or may not have made it to the CGR Forever streams that were a thing for a while. I actually started writing this piece earlier this year, with the intent of finishing it and posting it last month. Other stuff came up and this was ultimately forgotten about, but I suddenly remembered that this was a thing and… well, I have thoughts on Classic Game Room, the journey of the show, my enjoyment of it, and well… other such things like possible futures or lack thereof.

Needless to say, I’m going to bounce around all over the place in this supposed narrative. I’m also going to be quite salty in some regards, which may result in some choice words being used that I would otherwise refrain from using. If you don’t mind any of that stuff… well, do dive in.

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