Re: Entertainment Joys

[bomaye]

This was everybody's reaction after the end of Minoru Suzuki vs Hiroshi Tanahashi at tonight's New Japan Pro Wrestling show.

Suzuki had him beat but opted to try to end his career instead by destroying his (IRL wrecked) knee. Ref finally called it after he held him there for like 7 minutes cranking on it.

(Tana's had a fucked bicep for two years now and now his knee was starting to go, us in-the-know-fans have been begging them to put him on the shelf so he can heal but the Japanese way is to go until your body falls apart so every time we were like "okay so this is the time he gets injured and rests up" they never do it. Then they finally did it against a guy whose nickname is "The Man With The Worst Personality In The World" and he laughed like a supervillain at the end of it. Shit's awesome)

Also my guy SANADA debuted some sick new ring gear. I need that skull on the back of his vest pretty much on everything I own

[bomaye]

Guys, brace yourselves, I know this is going to affect you deeply







Cody finally snapped and kicked Kenny out of the Bullet Club

All's not lost though







Ibushi came out and ran off the Bullet Club and now the Golden Lovers are back together. People were crying over this for real

God Bless America and God Bless Kenny Omega

Meanwhile in America



One of the GOAT WWE matches of all time on their minor league show involving this guy (and she got involved too)

What a time to be alive

[bomaye]

Shinsuke Nakamura won the Royal Rumble last night.

Truly this is the best timeline.

[bomaye]

I found a youtuber who screams at the top of his lungs at all the 800 One Piece plot twists and cries during all the tons of tragic moments

It's wonderful

[waxingjaney]

More fun with mecha:

[Enail]

Damn, Black Panther was great!

[Datelessman]

Damn, Black Panther was great!

"Black Panther" was AMAZING.

[bomaye]

Black Panther Lightning is doing some pretty decent shit with superhero TV (I haven't seen BP and probs won't for years, I haven't even started Phase II yet )

Favourite thing about Black Lightning is it's reverse Peter Parker, dude doesn't want to be heroing and already gave it up years ago to be a high school principal but everyone around him is really weird about it. His ex-wife thinks he was an addict but when their kids are in trouble it's a-okay to do it, his Whister/white tech-guy almost treats him like he's supposed to save the world and glosses over his misgivings about the escalating scale of being a hero, regular people believe in him too much so they put themselves in danger thinking he'll save them.

Second favourite thing is his fighting style is sort of like Cole from the video game Infamous. He manipulates electricity to do a lot of cool shit.

Third favourite thin is musiccccccc. They took cues from Luke Cage on Netflix (or maybe it's just a regular thing for shows with black-heavy casts?) so all the music is nice.

Fourth favourite thing is the production values and they're taking themselves more seriously than the other CW superhero trash shows I watch (even though one of the principal show producers for all of them is attached). That could be gone already (I'm only on episode 4 of the 6 releases so far) but they're so far keeping themselves separate from the other Arrowverse shows (which doesn't mean a lot, Constantine was retroactively added to it after the show was cancelled and Supergirl was added to it later, the show runners are keeping it separate for now but not ruling it out) and I think it's because theme and style are very different, again close to a netflix show longeform show rather than an episodic procedural with overarching season subplots.

Fifth favourite thing is that they took an existing obscure as fuck character and did something interesting with him

[Sahrimnir]

Last night, Netflix suggested a romcom called "When We First Met". I really enjoyed it and its take on the "friend zone". Also, time travel shenanigans.

[bomaye]

The Roseanne revival was funny as fuck.

[Hielario]

Recovery of an MMO Junkie is aaawesome! Almost makes me want to play a MMORPG, dammit!

[bomaye]

Moriko is ultimate awkward waifu

[Werel]

Time, the great equalizer between siblings with different nerd power levels. My cool-kid little brother just texted me asking whether he should read the Icewind Dale trilogy or the Drizzt trilogy first.

[bomaye]

Text him back asking if he likes atomic wedgies or swirlies more

[bomaye]

Jerry "The King" Lawler shooting a fireball at Joey-Ryan-Dressed-As-Andy-Kaufmann...'s dick.

Probably nothing better than pro wrestling, tbh

[bomaye]

Two major takeaways from WWE's portion of Wrestlemania weekend



SHINSUKE'S ENTRANCE

And

Our underdog Johnny Gargano



In the dying moments of Johnny Gargano vs Tommaso Ciampa's brutal unsanctioned match,a feud built on Tommaso jealously turning on his best friend and tag team partner Johnny and continually popping up to cost Johnny everything (big wins in Championship matches and eventually his job), as Johnny is about to drive a broken crutch into his Tomasso's head to finish him off, he has a moment of weakness for his former friend and the camera cut to a close-up of Tomasso's face

And it looks exactly like Johnny's signature emoji.

[bomaye]

So if you have HBO, I would recommend the Andre the Giant documentary. You don't have to be a wrestling fan to get something out of it, the director who was commissioned to make it wasn't a wrestling fan and it turned out a lot of the stuff we wrestling fans thought about Andre was mythology he created around himself. He was a freaky-sized human being in a carnival and con-man business and there's sad stuff about his personal life and carrying around his acromegaly/giantism and it's just generally a strange and interesting life he led

[Werel]

So if you have HBO, I would recommend the Andre the Giant documentary.

Oh hey, I just watched that and really enjoyed it. Not a wrestling fan, knew nothing at all about Andre before seeing it (other than that he had a posse), but as a biography/character study it was pretty compelling.

Surprised at how moving the end was, too.

Spoiler:

Watching that last match with Hogan, the way he was barely able to move, and Hogan was working so hard to make him look good, and make it appear like there was actual physical competition going on, while taking so much care not to hurt his dying friend, Jesus. And the fact that he "never wanted to do the bad guy stuff," but he had to go out as a heel in order to give his protege/buddy a leg up and officially signal the transition to the wrestling culture of the 80s, and get boo'd on the street for the last few months of his life before dying all alone in a hotel room. Fuck. What a mythos.

[bomaye]

Spoiler:

The Hogan match was in '87, he lived until '93, wrestled until '92 actually. It wasn't his last match, and he did turn back into a good guy a few years later, they just kind of glossed over those last few years because his last relevant years were spent as a bad guy and his last real years were spent being immobile or injured.

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