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.
So wordpress’s classic editor is being phased out and people are forced to use the block editor. While some people don’t mind the block editor, I prefer the Classic. It fits my needs nicely and doesn’t feel like a convoluted cluster fuck. So for those who feel the same way and have a premium WordPress plan, I had a conversation with a AI assistant that provided assistance in this matter that proved to be helpful. No more fucking blocks. Thanks.
Right, so there’s supposed to be a Crocodile Dundee: 40 Years Later post here today. That’s being pushed back to Thursday for a one-off thing before the rest of the series (all two of them) are slotted for the next couple Tuesdays. What’s stalling this one was the obvious Mother’s Day festivities, which involved fried chicken and cake… her preferred foods.
And then I went for a walk because I felt a bit bloated… and then I laid in bed for the rest of the day and by the time I woke up, it was one in the morning. I slept through the whole evening… which I hadn’t planned on doing.
I feel like it’s been like this for a few weeks now. I’d go on with my day, I’d have a dinner or so, I’d pass out, and then all of a sudden, hours will have passed. There used to be a time when I’d only take hour long naps and that’d be enough to get me by. Feels like my body is playing catch-up for all those insomnia filled late nights in my earlier years.
I suppose I should be happy that I’m getting more rest… I’d be much happier if I could choose when to get that more rest.
Also, while we’re at it, I wish these winds would die down and the heat would come in sooner. I’ll probably regret that when the summer season hits, but I tried to take a walk and the wind was ridiculous. Not so much the breeze, but the coolness. It irritates me.
Anyway, that’s it for me. Old video outtake from last decade is coming up later today for the blog visitors.
I don’t have a sad clown face… so you’ll have to make due with PGSM-era Usagi-chan’s face getting squished by teacher… which is almost the same thing. It more than befits the “wonderful” piece of business that took place this past weekend that I am less than thrilled to declare now because it involves pure, unadulterated human error and stupidity… on my end.
So I was clearing out some flash drives and memory cards, moving some old camcorder footage over to a back-up hard drive. The way I found myself working was I’d copy the files over to the new drive and then format the card. Yeah, well, in a state of machination and stupdity, I clicked on the wrong thing and ended up formatting the hard drive.
That hard drive had a bunch of VEGAS project files for future video fodder.
The lesson of “always make a back-up” doesn’t help when the back-up drive is the thing getting wiped.
Now the good news is that some of the key elements were restored using a file recovery software… not everything because I’m an idiot, but enough that I can salvage what’s there. The key thing on the VEGAS front is that none of the “big” projects were on the drive – Order Of Ecclesia has dodged that lethal bullet and is up and running for Friday. However, there’s a bunch of camcorder footage that HAS been lost to the annals of time, some of which I have copies of elsewhere since they’ve been included in other video projectiles, but others that, sadly, have been lost the annals of time and space.
Moral of the story – stay awake, stay aware, and don’t go into a routine in a machine-like manner.
Hello, sorry for the late post. Had Easter dinner with the family. Largely enjoyable fare; turkey and such… and then I went to bed with a stomach ache… which, to be fair, was already a thing due to something I may have eaten the day before. And there’s a plumbing issue that needs to be resolved on Tuesday, so that’s fun.
Was going to do a video update today, but decided not to bother. Not in the mood and it’s a bit late. The video schedule on the State of The Blog should be up to date, though. Or we could change it again… maybe.
