Apparently something important happened last night in America. What did I miss? Anyway, on to important matters…
I made a couple purchases off AliExpress that I thought would make for a couple fun Gimmick Table videos in short order, but also threw together a quick video denoting a recent Amazon purchase that I didn’t need to make. This video is the next one after the third and final Grab Bag, which also went in a different direction. Once I’ve got a feel for what the final video schedule for the month looks like, I’ll repost the State Of The Blog this weekend and likewise link it to the main sidebar.
With a clear focus ahead with regards to how we’ll move forwards in terms of video fodder, I can hopefully get some shit done in time to start working on material for next year, which includes a new review on New Year’s Day… which is the first in a long while and also a timely one of sorts.
A friend of mine also made me aware of a couple things that occurred in wrestling programming that they thought I should comment on for the sake of blog fodder. Things that, mind you, I already knew about because I’m subscribed to a couple wrestling Youtube channels that made light of these things in the first place, but I thought, “Eh, why not?” Sadly, when it came down to gathering thoughts, I was mostly… meh. One is a silly spot that people have differing opinions on and I’m like “whatever.” And of course, verbal spats over wrestling personalities of sorts on Twitter interest me about as much as… well… listening to these personalities in the first place discuss things that I have no interest in listening to in the first place.
As far as the so-called John Cena Classic is concerned… anyway, last week…
So… yeah, quick thoughts out of nowhere… enjoy your Wednesday, everyone.
Ooh, I almost forgot. First collection video in who knows how long goes up today… and it’s me cataloguing old VHS tapes to move to storage. Yay? I’m hoping to do one of these per week… maybe two if you’re lucky… but more than likely, I’m making you suffer through old reviews being republished for public consumption. What fun.
So I had to postpone a Sunday Gimmick Table to next week due to sinuses acting up, which affects my vocal delivery and thus affects my coughing fits… which sucked. On the bright side, I sat down and wrote a bunch of stuff. Stuff for potential video fodder of the Rambling variety.
Some of this stuff is retreads of old Bite commentary material, but almost all of it is designed to push back the Video Of Bad News another month. I’ve got some material recorded for that one, but not as much as I’d like and it seems like there’s a new wrinkle that has me revising or outright redo certain dubbing bits in the process.
Good news is that the day off resting means I can get back to working on these videos, since it’s Thanksgiving and that’s a day off work. Other than family dinners, I’ll be on my own for most for the day, so I can just spend the day doing quick video stuff as well as some bits of clean-up.
The review schedule is more or less set in stone, though what comes up is another story entirely. I do have an idea on how 2027 kicks off, but that’s for later down the road. We’ve got a lot of work to do before long.
Once upon a time, there was a former All American American named Jack… who did a period in WWE before he did a trip to MMA… and then he appeared in AEW with Chris Jericho’s Inner Circle before fucking off to do shoot interviews where he called Tony Khan an idiot.
And then he participates in Concussions R Us (a.k.a. Power Slap) where he slapped a dude hard and that made him a winner, at which point he celebrated by shouting out “FACK DEE TONY CONZ!”
And then he lost his next fight against a former Ring Ka King guy… and then he lost another fight against a guy who ruptured his eyeball.
Moral of the story? Don’t Fack With Dee Tony Conz!
So this past week was pretty rough, I’m not going to lie. Been saddled with a cold for most of it, which killed my voice as well as inflicted me with several migraines of sorts. Not exactly the sort of positive vibe you want in life, but with the help of some fluids and some meds, I’m slowly on the mend and feel like I can get some stuff done without difficulty.
So yeah, in case you didn’t get the memo, I’m putting off videos this week for the sake of recovery, but at the same time, I’m using what time I’ve got to start scripting the video of bad news. I actually did get some dubwork in before the cold session hit hard and part of my delaying that was less to do with recovery and more to do with not wanting a sudden vocal change between chunks. This is a big video and a big discussion I want to engage. If there’s one piece of business that I would like to get solid, it’s this one.
Sadly, I will not be watching the show today due to prior commitments. Another birthday to celebrate and also waiting on a broken dryer to be fixed up…. Actually a lot of things need fixing up ’round these parts, but hey, I’m sure it’ll be a fine show that won’t cause anyone any problems and that ol’ Uncle Dave will give Kenny/Willy a kazillion stars and declare it the greatest wrestling match ever or whatever the case may be.
All of this while you have Adam “Edge” Copeland on the roster, who actually did compete in the Greatest Wrestling Match Ever back in 2020 with Randy Orton. WWE told you so themselves. Would they lie?
“People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”
The above quote is from author Terry Goodkind’s book Wizard’s First Rule, which was something I came across and posted on this blog a decade ago. A quote that was pulled out of context, it had perfectly surmised the state of the world and especially our neighbors down south. Ten years later, that quote remains ever so truthful… especially in regards to our neighbors down south.
It isn’t just one thing. It isn’t just one person. It’s a variety of factors… and this quote can easily apply to anything today and it’s still truth. But this was a quote from a novel applied to a particular set of circumstances in said novel. It’s not supposed to be a life lesson or philosophy that the world should be following because… well…
Anyway, that’s my nugget of “knowledge” for the day.
This week may have been one of the most productive weeks as far as progress in the video archive is concerned. Honestly, I’m shocked by how much was done this past week alone, which I didn’t think was possible. Regardless, I’ve got a report on the matter.
The 2012 and 2015 video reviews have been uploaded to Youtube in their remastered states… by which I mean, new title cards and some slight edits to improve on some things. But otherwise, these are the same reviews that were posted in their respective years. I’ve also re-uploaded some old Dailymotion material, including a few wrestling game matches and some of the old video specials… although these had to be edited down to avoid content claims.
Right now, I’ve started work on getting the 2013 and 2014 reviews up and about, although this will be slow going because a lot of the raw project files have degraded to such a degree that they’ve become unusable. The original VEGAS file still works, but the footage used has pretty much crapped out. So I’m either left to go back and re-rip the original footage used in the first place, or I’m going to have to replace it with new footage… either way, it’s going to require some work. (And for curious parties, this is the same problem that pretty much curtailed the restoration of the vintage commentaries.)
In any event, the priority is to replace the old Dailymotion embeds with fresh Youtube ones and that boils down to a handful of reviews at most. Once those are done, the rest will eventually follow. If everything works out in such a way that we can get the remaining reviews online before the year’s up, fantastic. But I also don’t want this project to get in the way of getting fresh material up here too, which would be preferable. Once the reviews are done, I’ll see about getting some of the other DM-exclusive stuff over in some form or fashion. Baby steps, though…
That said, there is some fun stuff planned in the months ahead. It’s going to be lightweight for the summer months, but hopefully September will be when things kick off in a huge way. I’ve already recorded a couple things specifically for the occasion and there’s at least two to three more big projects in the works that I’m hoping to get ready before the busy season hits again.
I’ll see about doing one of these things again in a couple months. Of course, any further updates will be listed in the monthly State Of The Blog updates at the beginning of each month. Until then…
Ten years ago, on this very day, the third Ghostbusters movie premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre a week before it saw release in theaters everywhere…
Oh, no… I’m not talking about Afterlife, that came out years later.
I’m referring to the one directed by Paul Feig. The one with the all-female cast.
The divisive one.
Ten years ago, I wrote a bit on this thing shortly before this saw release and you can read that here if you’d like. But to make a long story short, I saw the trailer they put out for this thing, I thought it sucked, and I moved on with my life. It didn’t look like a good movie, the comedy bits were painfully unfunny, and there was no reason for me to waste time or money on something that I know I’m not going to like. How can I know this based on the trailer? Because the trailer is supposed to sell you the movie. If it convinces you to watch the movie, great. The trailer convinced me that I wouldn’t like this movie based on the comedy.
Then I heard the online noise because people were upset at the all-female cast and that became a blanket statement of “we don’t want men watching this thing.” Never mind that most fans were upset that they weren’t getting a third Ghostbusters movie with the original cast – which is what they wanted all these years and they somewhat got that with Afterlife. James Rolfe made a video illustrating this very point and the media nailed him hard because they thought “he didn’t want no women in Ghostbusters” or something stupid like that. Noted “alleged” comedian Patton Oswald made a scene over this without having seen the video, which showed how much of a tool he turned out to be.
And so when I heard that bit about not wanting any white men to watch, I decided, “You know what? If you don’t want me to watch, I will not watch.” Not that I needed the help – the trailer more than convinced me that this wouldn’t be worth my time – but if the people making this film do not want me to watch this film, then I won’t. And it became one of the few films on this list that I absolutely will not watch under any circumstances. Whatever curiosity I might have had or could have had for this film were easily sated with reviews from other content creators and most importantly, word of mouth from trusted folks who saw the film and flat out told me, “Yeah, this movie sucks. Go watch Bridesmaid instead.”
And then the movie bombed and the people involved blame white men for not watching the movie… you know, the same white men they wanted nothing to do with in the first place and said as much.
Ten years have passed and we’ve seen other films fall into the same trap; they feature a female protagonist, they say stupid things about not wanting male audiences, the male audiences don’t show up, the movie bombs, and they cry foul rather than admit they fucked up. Hollywood had adopted the wrestling mentality of blaming the audience for their own failings rather than admit that they’ve put out a shit product and alienated a portion of their paying audiences. Tell that audience to fuck off and they’d be more than happy to do so.
Ten years later and I still haven’t seen the movie. No real desire or incentive to do so. I did (and still do) feel bad for the cast who just wanted to make a good film and for a time, they did embrace the roles, taking some photos with sick children and things of that nature. I thought it cool that they did stuff like that and only wished that they had a better movie. Like I said back then, if they had just done a movie that was similar in tone to the original movie with the new cast, I would have been fine with that. I probably would have given it a watch on Netflix or whatever.
This thing, however? Not so much… and it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal because how many movies have I skipped out on because I’ve seen trailers and/or commercials for these things and decided it’s not for me? There’s quite a few. I lost count. And maybe some day, if it popped up on a streamer and I had nothing better to do, I’d figured… sure, why not? But since they told me flat out that they don’t want me watching their film… again, I’m more than happy to oblige if that’s how you feel about it. I’ve got plenty of other stuff I can watch or occupy my time with.
Because if you’re not going to value me as a viewer or potential customer, why should I reward you with my time and money? And unfortunately, that would be a question I find myself asking a lot of people these days. What happened to the days where humanity strived to be better? Or is that just a catchphrase we put on a T-shirt for ten bucks a pop at Walmart?
I am required to inform viewers that yesterday’s video presentation was not endorsed, approved, authorized, or even potentially viewed by the people behind A1 Sauce.
Furthermore, I am required to inform viewers that no animals were harmed in the making of yesterday’s video nor were they fed any portions of A1 Sauce at any point in time. Animals were fed their own nutritional and performance-enhancing supplements and then slept for the rest of the day.
Finally, I am also required to inform viewers that a fly was swatted during last night’s premiere and died immediately upon impact. We considered a funeral arrangement, but after considering the amount of noise being made by said fly, it probably had it coming and promptly tossed its remains in the nearest garbage can.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way… moar Sonic stuff in the next couple days before we take a week off and resume “something” in July… by which I mean the usual nonsense that gets posted up here.
Thank you and enjoy your usual festivities.
*If, for whatever reason, you missed last night’s eventful video – actually, that’s a lie; you didn’t miss much of anything, but said video can be viewed here.
