Thursday Art Walk 12

Oh boy! I finished that piece guys!

"Legendary"; Permanent Marker on 8.5"x12" printer paper; 2018

And I'm working on another, but it's a bit more figural than the last few and I think I should only give you the vaguest of hints.

This is my blotter page. You can see "Legendary" bleed-through, but also, perhaps, some of the new piece!

That's about as vague as it gets. My only other hint is that it, too, is video-game related, though it's a bit tongue-in-cheek...

I'm going to go get ready to help my cool Friendos move soon, so this is me saying to you:

Go Enjoy/Make Something!
FC

Wednesdaymania 12

You know, it's been so long since I talked about wrestling without first putting up a memorial or something on my blog that I actually don't know what to say. I could talk about the fact that All-In is coming up!

The story of All-In starts with a throwaway remark and some very good wrestlers. Remember how I told you guys about the Bullet Club last week? Specifically Cody and the Young Bucks? In May of 2017, there was some discussion on a wrestling podcast when Dave Meltzer, one of the most respected (and reviled, by some) answered a question that while they were incredibly popular and social media juggernauts, he didn't believe that an independent promotion like ROH could sell 10,000 tickets.

The Bucks & Cody decided to prove him wrong.

And boy did they.

Without even giving a hint as to what the card (the list of bouts) would be, the tickets for All-In sold out in minutes. This was back in May of this year. All we knew was that a lot of very good wrestlers from AAA in Mexico, ROH in the US and NJPW in Japan (all considered to be lesser promotions) were going to be there. Then they announced that the NWA champion would be having a match!

And now that the show is coming right up (September 1), we finally have the card!

• Nick Aldis, the NWA World's Heavyweight Champion (easily one of the most prestigious belts in wrestling history) will face Cody Rhodes. Originally the match was going to be for the ROH World Heavyweight title, but Cody lost the belt. Eventually, he was able to weigh the worth of his ROH Championship Ring against Aldis' NWA Championship, so the match will be very interesting!
• Kazuchika Okada (one of New Japan's biggest stars) will face The Villain Marty Scurll in a singles match. This will be Marty's first heavyweight singles match, since he's a Jr. Heavyweight (which has been a source of controversy on the Being the Elite channel on YouTube).
• Joey Janela is facing the much-plagued Hangman Adam Page in singles, which should be hilarious, since Janela is playing a scuzzy heel, whereas Page is a beset and overwhelmed face (sort of, I mean, he kinda murdered Joey Ryan on Being the Elite that one time...).
• Mexico has sent some of their best in the 6-man Tag Match: Bandido, Fénix, and Rey Mysterio (!) will face The Golden Elite (the Young Bucks with Kota Ibushi). Kota & Rey are pretty damn big gets for this Pay Per View, with Kota Ibushi being one of the best Japanese wrestlers on the planet (as well as being Kenny's Kayfabe "Golden Lover") and Rey being REY FREAKING MYSTERIO!
• Christopher Daniels vs Stephen Amell is going to be interesting. Amell, of course, is from the show Arrow on cable, but Daniels is a 25-year in-ring veteran who has wrestled all over the world. The work the two have been doing on Being the Elite lately has been top-notch!
• There will be a four-way women's match, which is only disappointing because any combination of the four women in two singles matches would be amazing. Madison Rayne, Britt Baker, Chelsea Green, and Tessa Blanchard will put on an incredible showing, I'm sure.
• In the pre-show (Zero Hour), there will be a match between the Briscoes (who I'm not overly fond of since they're uber-conservative hatemongers in real life) and the other two thirds of SoCal Uncensored (SCU! scu...) Frankie Kazarian and Scorpio Sky. The match will be awesome as long as SCU wins, but I don't see the Briscoes being willing to job on this stage...
• Also on the pre-show is a 15-man battle royale called the "Over-Budget Battle Royale". The participants have not all been announced, but I'd be amazed if there weren't a few shockers. We only have 11 names as of today: Punishment Martinez, Brandon Cutler, Jordynne Grace, Brian Cage, Moose, Billy Gunn, Rocky Romero, Jimmy Jacobs, Marko Stunt, Colt Cabana, and Ethan Page. I hope Flip Gordon ends up in the Battle Royale, but the joke may be that he really isn't at All-In...
• The current ROH World Champion, Jay Lethal will face whoever wins that battle royale. If Flip is in it and wins it and then beats Jay, that would be amazing.
• Finally, the second Main Event (because why not have co-main-events on your first show?!) is Kenny Omega vs Pentagon aka Penta el Cero Miedo. This will be brutal. It will be terrifying. It will be AWESOME!

All of this will be happening at the (hopefully packed) Sears Centre in Chicago, Illinois. This could be, honestly, one of the best indie promotions ever.

I have to go, now, guys. Coffee waits!

Go Enjoy Something!

(On Fite Network, the ROH Honor Club streaming service, or [sounds like just Zero Hour] on WGN America starting at 6pm. The actual PPV begins at 7pm)

FC

EDIT: I'm not 100% sure, since I do not speak or read Japanese, but the auto-translate of a recent NJPW Facebook post seems to indicate that All-In will be available to watch on-demand on the NJPW Network? That would be awesome. And cheaper than joining a new service like Honor Club or Fite Network...

Talk About Tuesday 12

Prepare yeself for more mindless maundering. It's already 83℉ and it's only 11AM. I know, anyone along certain latitudes has been giggling about how poorly I'm taking the heat & humidity this year, but you've not yet heard me whine about snow. That will come probably starting in mid-November if theorists are to be believed. Regardless, the current temperature combined with the current humidity (59%) at this hour is hellish and I do not like it.

It's why I want to go somewhere else equally temperate but infinitely drier. Like Santa Fe. I doubt they have weeks of 60+% humidity with scorching upper 80s-mid 90s temperatures. Love the decades, hate the heat.

Anyway.

It's hot enough that the AC is running to little effect - the temperature has only dropped 1 degree in the last 10 minutes inside the house (bringing me down to 78℉). I've got SpaceHamster playing through Graveyard Keeper going in the background on YouTube. I've got my coffee. I've got an obnoxious headache. My water bottle tastes strongly of detergent.

Wah.

I kind of wish that I had the liberty to just... hide in my room and keep all the lights off and snuggle into my bed and listen to soft jazz while the cat hangs out with me. Maybe play some Pokemon Snap on the bubblebutt.

Unfortunately, the AC does not reach my room, so it's always 10-20 degrees warmer than the rest of the house. It's hard to hear jazz over the fan. The cat hates hanging out with me in my room unless I'm terrifyingly sick (which has thankfully only happened once). I don't have the bubblebutt tv hooked up with the N64.

Boo.

So my goal by the end of next month is to have my room cleaned up enough that I can hook up the tv, the VCR, and the N64. Maybe even the RetroDuo! I hope I can get that done, then show off the setup. Maybe give a step-by-step for interested parties who may have missed out on the relative peace and fun of the 90s. Then maybe I can review games that literally everyone my age except me has played. Like Goldeneye and Kirby 64...

I didn't have video games as a kid.

Regardless, it's gonna be fun to get all that set up!

I also need to figure out how to get my room set up to accommodate guests. I didn't have a lot of people hanging out here as a kid, so... I never really figured out what worked for having people over. I just kind of gave up and left everything everywhere. That needs to change, if only so that I can actually find my clothes and so that it's easier to pack everything up when I finally leave. It's kind of embarrassing to still be living here. I don't have a "real" job right now, though, so that's kinda how it's going to have to be until I'm self-sufficient.

Or until I'm chucked out. That could happen.

Le Sigh.

I got depressing there for a minute, guys, sorry!

Anyway, I'm trying to think of other things to talk about, like what I'm going to cook this week. I have 0 ideas. It's going to be hot all week, so cooking is about the farthest thing from my mind. If I actually get up earlier tomorrow, I might show off some toast. Maybe. It depends on what's in the bread cupboard and how I feel. If I still have this headache (dehydration, I'm pretty sure), then I'll probably just have coffee and nurse water the rest of the morning like today.

Honestly, I just really want to cook some fun stuff, like spaghetti, chili, even a meatloaf! Stuff you can use to keep yourself going during the week if you've never cooked, but you still want to eat. Maybe I'll be able to make a quesadilla or something... Yeah - actually, I'm pretty sure we have all the ingredients in the fridge right now!

Yes. I'll do my best to make a quesadilla this week. Before the ingredients go bad.

In other news, I'm still working on last week's art project and trying to find new colors. It's not easy - most of the permanent markers here are my mother's and she guards them jealously (understandable). The ones that I have gotten hold of have been... subpar to say the least. They're barely usable. That's the problem with these things - they work really well until they don't work hardly at all. Bleh.

I miss doing watercolor, tbh, but it's a lot more difficult to get my watercolors out than it is to grab my bag of markers.

I'm also unsure of what to do about Friday's movie. I honestly don't know how to discuss the movie we watched. It... was not the usual riffable film! Not going to give that away, but it was not very well-received and it's one of the only times I've seen a biopic be honest about the "artistic license" taken.

I'm holding out hope that tomorrow I don't have to write another death dedication - loving pro-wrestling can be hard, guys - because I want to write about something unrelated to death. That's not easy in the biz. Death is an ever-present shadow, waiting for just the right botch or just the wrong dose. On the other hand, without risking death, we lose pretty much every interesting move. No One-Winged-Angel, no Piledriver, no Dragon Screw, no Meltzer Driver. It's all arm-bars. You may as watch amateur wrestling.

Update: my mom just came home and handed me a new recipe to try. Hmm. Key Lime Poundcake with Key Lime Cream Cheese Frosting.... delicious. Apparently it came from a website, but I'm getting it third-or-fourth-hand. Delightful!

I have so many cookbooks. I need to start making these recipes!

Here's my only promise to you for this week:

If I cannot cook by Sunday, I will make a list of all the necessary accouterments for a kitchen.

I think that'll be all for me today.

Go Enjoy Something!
Like the beach maybe...

FC

Fiber Monday 12

Well, I think I'm just about done with the body of this cloth, guys. And it's already 81℉ outside, so don't expect me to wax poetic about the weather. This is a betrayal of my senses. Why is it also over 50% humidity?! Why is August so bad...

Anyway, here's our progress:

We're at 25 stitches, 25 rows.

If you're wondering why something that's 25 x 25 isn't square, now I get to tell you the truth.
Crochet stitches are not squares.
They're rectangles.
That's why knitting patterns cannot translate properly.

So next week, I'll be working on the border of this cloth. The body itself is finished!

The question is - do I go the easy route and just slip-stitch around or do I teach you guys 1.5 stitch? I'm probably gonna just go the easy route, since ss is a very, very important stitch to learn!

And yes, I'll try to make a glossary of terms for crochet, too.

For starters:
Ch = chain
Sc = Single crochet
Ss = Slip-Stitch

That's all for me this week!

Go Enjoy Make Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 11

I get hungry, sometimes, and when I do, I want to make something filling, tasty, and cheap as heck. I'm a cheapskate. Kinda by necessity, but I'm sure you all know how that is. That's life. Sometimes the green isn't kind.

A few days ago, I was ravenous. I didn't want a plain old sandwich. I didn't want grilled cheese. I wanted something that could really sink my teeth into.

Also, I wanted an egg. A fried egg.

I made a fried egg sammich, and now so can you!

For today's recipe, I gathered some pretty minor ingredients:

• Bread (I used butter bread, but any bread will do!)
• Butter for spreading on your bread
• Canadian Bacon (optional)
• Cheese (also optional, but I used Cheddar and it was marvelous!)
• Cooking Spray for the pan
• Egg (your choice, and you can do more than one if you want. I only wanted one)
• Ketchup (optional, but delicious. Chili Sauce or Honey Dip would've been superior, but use what you've got...)
• Salt & Pepper (optional, but helpful)

In the words of Steve1989MREInfo, let's get this out onto a tray (or, in our case, onto the countertop)

Alright!

You may notice I haven't got the Salt & Pepper or the Ketchup, but that's because I'm dumb.

Basically, things go down fast, so there may be some missing pictures, and I apologize for that, but it's hard to film things when you're trying not to burn lunch. (Yeah, this is a breakfast food, but sometimes you just want an egg sammich for lunch.)

Step 1: Spray your pan & butter your bread! This is just like when we did the grilled cheese sandwich, guys. You just slap some butter on the bread and put it, butter side down, in the pan. Turn the pan on to low and let the bread toast up!

Step 2: While your bread is toasting, you go right ahead and lay your cheese down. I used cheddar, but I know for a fact that Havarti, Swiss, and Muenster are fantastic choices. There are no wrong choices. You want a brie egg sandwich? Use brie. You want bleu cheese, ugh. Go for it. I won't stop you from destroying your taste buds. I won't even stop you if you want to end your relationship with your loved ones, your landlord, and the human race with Stilton... (I should, but I won't, because if you're using Stiltion I want no part of it...)

Cheese is good. Hot cheese is better. Let it melt.

Step 2.5: You're gonna have your egg & bacon off to the side, but maybe don't leave them on the plate you're going to use for the sandwich. Even though the Canadian bacon I used was precooked, it's still smart to use another surface. Get them off the plate so you can remove your slowly toasting bread when it's toasty looking (lift a corner with a spatula to get a look. If it looks like it's toasted to your liking, remove it from the heat).

I have these mental lapses sometimes.
Both ended up on a paper towel to the side.

Step 3: Now you want to take out your bread when it's good & toasted with melted cheese. As soon as that bread hits your plate (keep it open or the cheese will glue it shut, leaving you incapable of building your sammich!) you want to toss your meat into the pan. You can add more spray if you want. I highly suggest keeping that pan as lubricated as possible.

Melted cheddar, what could be better?

As you may have guessed, I kind of forgot to refresh the spray in the pan.

Keep it very low - you don't want to go more than about a 1.5 on a dial like this.
Burned eggs are wretched.

Step 4: After your Canadian bacon/ham/bacon/whatever gets some nice color on one side, flip it over and prepare a space for your egg. You'll see in a bit why I'm hammering home to, even in a non-stick pan, spray or butter the area for the egg. Carefully put your egg on the other half of the pan, away from your meat. (Otherwise, the meat will get stuck in the egg, making putting everything on the sandwich that much harder!)

Would you eat this? I would eat this. I did...

Step 5: Once you feel like your meat is hot enough, you can chase them around the pan and take them out. This is a great exercise to do while waiting for the white and yolk to set. I don't like runny yolk, so I had plenty of time for this game. The meat will likely be very slippery in the pan. That's good. Don't get too frustrated! You will prevail against the tyranny of escaping meats. I find that using either a fork or chopsticks works great for this. I had neither on hand and didn't want burned eggs while I wrestled with the silverware drawer, so I chased the Canadian Bacon around with my impeccably clean fingers and the corner of the spatula, pinching the meat between the spatula and edge of the pan before rapidly pinching, pulling, and flopping the meat onto the spatula. That sentence is almost guaranteed to make you smile while reading it out loud.

They're staggered here because they're too tiny to fill up a big slice of bread.
That's why we usually use English Muffins for this, but I'm trash at toasting those in the pan...

I promise, the meat rings in the back come out easily in the sink.
That's what cooking spray is for.
Also, now's the time for Salt & Pepper if you want them...
I forgot.

Step 6: Keep an eye on that egg! It will fight you if, like me, you want it flipped and 100% cooked through. Persevere. Even if the egg collapses in on itself like that scene from Inception, it will still taste fine. Also, keep it away from the center of the pan, as that's where all the heat is (if your pan is properly centered).

As you can see, it isn't easy to flip a fried egg. I need more practice.

Remember - more practice means more fried egg sandwiches!

Step 7: When your egg seems done enough to you (don't be afraid to poke a hole in it with the corner of your trusty spatula to check how firm/runny your yolk is!) it's time to take it out and slam it on your sammich!

Don't actually slam the poor thing. It's been through enough. Just shovel it on.

Step 8: Accessorize!

Ketchup. Because we had no chili sauce and even I'm not crazy enough to dollop gochujang on it.

And I'd forgotten my salt & pepper, so this is when I added them.
It was fine.

Step 9: Hooray! Put the top on your sammich and eat that beast!

It was much better than it looked, which should tell you something!

And that's how to make a delicious egg sandwich!

As for this week's spice, I'm going to go hot and tasty:

Good on pretty much everything!

Crushed Red Pepper is a fantastic spice. You can put it on pizza (many pizza places straight up leave it on the table for you), you can add it to soups for a kick, you can throw it in meat dishes to give some extra heat. It's amazing stuff! I don't know if there's anyone left on the planet who hasn't seen this ubiquitous condiment, but if you haven't yet seen it, that's it. It looks like off-white discs (the heat is in the seeds) and flakes of dark red leathery paper (that's the flesh & skin of the pepper, it's sweet and smoky).

We'll probably use this when I make chili. And I plan to make chili. God I love chili.

That's it for me today!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Casual Gaming Saturday 11

Game: Idleplex
Posted: Feb 2014
Produced By: jmtb02 (for Kongregate)
Genre: Idle, minigame, animal
Source: Kongregate.com

Idleplex is a fun game - it's been around for a while, and it's always fun to go back and play some more. Your goal is right in the description: "You're going to build the world's largest idle game mosaic...with goats."

They're not kidding (no pun intended, but yay! surprise puns!) - everything involves goats. You start with a single window with Extreme Brickout, a blue-backed version of the solo-Pong game Breakout, except there are no bricks to break. Huh. Also, your ball is a goat. Straight up, it's just a fluffy goat dropping out one or more cannons (depending on how much you've upgraded your board) and bouncing off of your paddle. You can buy more boards using money that you earn by playing the games, but as soon as you zoom out of the game board, it begins playing itself!

Essentially, you have several different games: Extreme Brickout (solo pong/breakout without bricks, your ball is a goat), Extreme Star Shooter (you shoot stars with goats fired from along a vertical axis), Extreme Animal Jumping (time your rectangles to jump over rolling goats), Extreme Lawnmowing (you are a lawnmower, sometimes goats fly out of the grass), Extreme Gardening (grow food for goats), and Extreme Poopmongering (all those goats eating food? They gotta poop. Collect it.), and you have to buy all the boards, upgrade them, and make that mosaic. The boards place themselves and tell you when they have upgrades you can afford, so that part's easy.

I like playing this game - I've never beaten it, though I have played it for years - so I'd like to think I know a thing or two about it, but to be honest, it's just as wonderful and mysterious as it was the first day I picked it up. Why goats? Why these games? Who is this jmtb02 person? Why does he like elephants?

In short, Idleplex is a fun game to fiddle around with while you're, say, waiting for your coffee to brew, or you need a break while working on the dissertation, or you just want to turn your brain off for a bit, or you like goats and poop jokes.

Find the game HERE

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Filmic Friday 11

Riffed films aren't for everyone. I learned that the hard way by trying to watch riffed movies at home with my parents present and was quickly alerted that it was "annoying" and "distracted from the movie". That movie was Arizona Werewolf. My parents are nuts. Nothing can detract from Arizona Werewolf, especially the fine folks of MST3K.

We didn't watch Arizona Werewolf last week.

No, we were instead treated to a version of the marvelous RiffTrax crew (many of the same people from that run of MST3K) riffing on a late 1980s Science Fiction masterpiece we call Space Mutiny.

This movie... it's so mad!

Space Mutiny is a film that was made in 1988 in South Africa, which would explain why there is literally not one person of color in the film. Apartheid was a bad time, and these guys should feel bad that they were helping fund it. It casts a subtle pall over the film. Fortunately, the movie is 100% incompetent, so it probably didn't do too well... it's a 2.1/10 on IMDB, so, that's a pretty safe bet.

One of the first things you'll probably notice if you watch this movie, whether riffed or not, is that all of the special effects are... familiar.

I don't know if you can see those effects on the upper left, but...

That's because they're not just "from the team that brought you Star Wars", they're directly stolen from episodes of Battlestar Galactica.

So is the plot (such as it is).

Here goes: The Southern Sun is a "generation starship", just like in Battlestar Galactica, and they've been floating through space for about 13 generations. Evil McBadGuy plans to take over the ship so that he can force a landing in pirate territory on a planet because he's never been planetside in his life and neither has anyone else. Reb Brown (remember Captain America?) stops him with the help of his real-life wife, who is playing a surly scientist lady who we never see doing science.

Lovely. Very lovely.

Most of what people remember about the movie come from the riffs, to be honest.

And yes, all of these weird touches are references.

Most infamously is the list of new names for Reb Brown, which were invented in the MST3K, but everyone who knows the riffs joins in. My favorites are Crunch Buttsteak and Big McLargeHuge.

Let's see... what else is there to say about the movie itself?

Cameron Mitchell is Space Grandpa...

Guy's got more booze in him than your average liquor store...

There are a bunch of scantily clad women who dance around and play with those balls that have the electricity inside them a bunch and who basically just reiterate plot points we've already seen and still don't care about.

Bellerians? More like Valerian. If it weren't for the costuming, everyone would sleep through their scenes!

And of course, we mustn't forget the epic space buggy chase scenes...

I could walk faster than these things "speed" through the space-warehouse (look at the windows!)

But perhaps one of my favorite gaffes from this movie is the egregious moment that one of the few female characters is killed, but when we return to the deck, she's sitting in her seat and even giving lines! As they said in the MST3K riff, "it was very nice of you to give that dead woman another chance."

Lt. Lamont, ladies & gentlemen...

If you're wondering why I'm not talking about the Live Riff we were watching, there's a reason for that. When you have a group of friends as rowdy as mine, and they're watching a movie they've seen a million times like we have, and we all know the riffs, you're going to end up with a lot of riffing bleed-over. It's hard to hear the riffs with people Roll-Fizzlebeefing and Don't Play Sun City-ing all over the place!

Still, the song at the end alone is worth picking up a copy of the live riff. "Mutiny of Love" is fantastic, and they did a great job with it!

That about does it for me this week, guys!
Go Enjoy Something!
Or David Ryder here will get up in your business...

MY NAME IS NOT BOB JOHNSON!

FC



Where the pics are from:
Reb's screaming face
Live Riff Crew
Poster
VHS Cover
Reb's Wife (Still found on Google)
Space Grandpa and Space Witch Babe
Space Buggies & the Amazing Resurrection Woman

Thursday Art Walk 11

Today is another gorgeous day. I'm doing something a little different with my art, and it's taking forever. Currently working on this:

WIP; Permanent Marker on printer paper; 2018

As you can see, it's taking a while, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. There are parts of the drawing that are a little off, but I think this is going pretty well. I have, however, run out of colors of permanent marker from my own stash. I'm raiding the household stash now!

But I'm also taking a break - I've been at this for over 4 hours! I need lunch.

I'll try to update this today if I finish!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Wednesdaymania 11

First things first, my condolences to the family of Villano III, who passed this week at the age of 66 from a cerebral infarction. I didn't see many of his matches, but you'd better believe I know the name. Watch wrestling long enough, and there will be a Villano somewhere in there.

Secondly, I want to offer my congratulations to Mick Foley for having a crocodile named after him by Terry Irwin. That's awesome, and it's wonderful that Foley has been helping animals so much on top of his work to help people!

Thirdly, I'd like to apologize for cutting Teddy Hart out of last week's post so viciously. I was wrong, and I am sorry. He's totes a Hart, guys. He's Bret's nephew. I need to research stuff better. Also, there's a New Hart Foundation and... uh...

They're really good, guys.

Finally, I'm going to let Mr. Hiromu Takahashi and Mr. Belt tell you the bittersweet news we learned this week in New Japan:

And yes, Hiromu drew that. He also directed it. If you're not having a good time trying to watch this vid on my blog, check it out on YouTube. It's worth it! (You may have some difficulty understanding, since it's in Japanese, and if you're like me, the in-video subtitles, while helpful, can be hard to read on some screens)

It's bittersweet because his reign was so short, but at least he's almost certainly coming back eventually!

Alright, this week's news has been concluded! Let's get down to business.

The 2018 G1 Climax was bananas.

Not only did we get the match that nearly ended Hiromu Takahashi's career (and life!), we saw some of the best work I've seen yet from people like Juice Robinson and the Tongans. And oh boy, the Tongans... they've been running roughshod over everyone. What started as fractious behavior from Cody Rhodes trying to make himself into the new leader of the Bullet Club became an all out civil war between the Tongans (who were founding members of the Bullet Club with Machine Gun Karl Anderson and Prince Devitt, both of whom are now in WWE as Karl Anderson and Finn Bálor) and the current Bullet Club, made up of Chase Owens, Cody Rhodes (I will always give him his father's name), Hangman Page, Kenny Omega, Marty Scurll, Matt & Nick Jackson, and Yujiro Takahashi.

A quick rundown on gimmicks:

• Chase Owens is called the Crown Jewel, which I think is a rib because he's the most mediocre gaijin (foreign wrestler) in New Japan. He's reliable, and he always takes the pin when Bullet Club needs to lose in a lesser match.
• Cody Rhodes (called Cody because Vince McMahon is a dick) is a smarmy douchebag who wants to control the Bullet Club and has been seen in the backstage segments as a manipulator who also wants to run for public office in America. His rivalry with Kenny Omega has been tearing the Bullet Club apart, which has lead to this civil war between the "Elite" and the "OG"
• Hangman Page is a cowboy in-ring, but in the Being The Elite series on YouTube, he's also shown to be slowly going insane because of dick jokes gone much too far. He's also possibly a murderer (having been shown "killing" Famous Dick Wrestler Joey Ryan in a jealous rage over who had the bigger, better "package"). Wrestling is weird.
• Marty Scurll, aka The Villain, is a British wrestler who dresses as a plague doctor coming out to the ring and who is often teased as being one of the smallest members of the current Bullet Club. He's a passionate wrestler and singer, but he's infinitely better in-ring than in-sing, if you catch my drift. Marty is actually a very accessible guy, and outside the ring, he's about as un-villainous as you can get, often championing mental health causes.
• Matt & Nick Jackson are the Young Bucks, ringleaders and megastars of the Elite. Where they go, money follows, because these two are amazing in-ring performers. I'm concerned that they're going to be jumping ship to WWE because they miss their families and that Vince & HHH will treat them terribly in a fit of pique, the way they have most of their New Japan acquisitions. They dress like absolute madmen, sometimes having costumes made entirely out of their own faces or wearing more tassels than the Ultimate Warrior and Macho Man Randy Savage combined. They're the defacto seconds in command in the Bullet Club. They also love to use more superkicks in a single match than Shawn Michaels did in his entire career and it's awesome.
• Yujiro Takahashi, aka the Tokyo Pimp, is right there with Chase for being the group's jobbers (guys who take the loss for the team), but he has much more personality from what I've seen. That's probably because Chase is still a very young man, but Yujiro has been wrestling since 2003 after a long amateur background. I'm now realizing that pretty much everyone in the Bullet Club is very young. Yujiro is only 37, and Hangman's only 27. That's the full range, right there, too. Anyway, as his nickname suggests, Yujiro often comes out to the ring draped in beautiful women who New Japan apparently hires from a strip club. The most famous (or infamous) of these is PIETER Tokyo Latina who often wears a bunny mask out to the ring.
• Kenny Omega is the leader of the Bullet Club, though he has recently rejoined his "Golden Lover" Kota Ibushi to form "The Golden Elite". He's incredible in the ring, and he's a cool guy outside the ring, too. He's also an enormous nerd, which really appeals to me... There are not enough good things to say about his skills - he speaks fluent Japanese, he wrestles like a god, he has a fantastic sense of humor, he has the poise of a model, he has a steel trap mind, and he's an all-around cool guy.

So now that you know the Bullet Club, I can talk about the match that I referenced last week - the Six Man Tag match between the Bullet Club (team of Kenny Omega, Yujiro Takahashi, and Chase Owens) and the Chaos team of Stone Pitbull Tomohiro Ishii, Switchblade Jay White, and Toru Yano. Of the second team, there's only one usual-jobber: Yano. It was pretty clear from the start that the double-jobbered team of the Bullet Club were going to lose, but at least we got to see the Tokyo Latina.

Remember that picture?

ピーターさん魅力的！ @muffin030ass #njpw #G128 pic.twitter.com/yONXndcUqz

— aj (@ffdpbfmv) August 12, 2018

Here's the breakdown:

The six men have gotten together to form a "rowing machine", which is when you grab a guy's legs, spread them really far apart, and then pull them in a rowing motion. It's silly, but that's the tone of the match.

The Bullet Club have the Chaos guys spread open in kind of a starfish pattern, and are doing the rowing machine. Tokyo Latina sees this and seizes her opportunity to get in the ring and get some attention.

She hops into the center of the group and begins gyrating.

Everyone loses their concentration. All pain vanishes. Chase gives her the OK symbol (which is an obscene gesture in Cyprus). Switchblade is openly grinning. Everything is marvelous. Except...

Kenny Omega is frustrated by the whole thing, because honey, there's a MATCH going on and I'm now the only one doing my job!

In the end, everyone's disappointed by Kenny, the only not 100% straight guy in the ring (his own admission is that he's probably bi), who ejects Tokyo Latina from the match.

The morale is so disrupted and low that Chaos wins.

I've got to say, though, that the whole G1 was great!

The Bullet Club OGs (the Tongans and Bone Soldier) would disrupt matches the Bullet Club Elite were having. This got so bad that the new person running NJPW, Harold Meij (the guy who was Senior VP of Coca Cola Japan), had Tama Tonga ejected. Apparently there's some legal action maybe being taken after Tama Tonga was seen littering. Japan is strict. Wrestling is weird.

As for the rest of the G1, the matches were really good, though I'm sorry Juice Robinson didn't win more. He's really come into his own since leaving WWE and his CJ Parker gimmick behind. The whole competition (which is a points-based tournament too complicated for my pea-brain) culminated in three of the best matches I've seen in a while:

A-Block Final was Tanahashi vs Okada. Tanahashi wins!

B-Block Final was the heartbreaking match of Golden Lover vs Golden Lover.
Kenny Omega vs Kota Ibushi. Ibushi wins, but they seem ok with each other.

And finally, the amazing and heart-stopping match that made our Wrestling & Toy Blog Friendo angry as heck because he is salty about the winner:

Tanahashi vs Ibushi. Ibushi, sadly, did not win.
But daaaaaaaaamn what a show!

The match was intense, insane, and I was begging for both men to ease up by the halfway mark. And then they went harder.

All in all, the G1 this year was a blast. If you ever get the chance to go to one of the shows (and there were shows going from July 14 to August 12 this year), do it! Just be aware that you might be there for longer than you think. The Final match lasted 35 minutes.

In total, the A Block singles matches alone lasted about 10 hours 50 minutes. (My calculations are 10:48:23, but I could have added incorrectly somewhere). The B Block singles matches took about 10:37:50. The Final was, of course, 35 minutes.

My point is, you cannot watch this tournament over the course of a single day. It's inadvisable to try and watch it over the course of a single weekend. Take a few days, watch one or two tournament days every day, and remember to hydrate and eat.

Again, all of these matches, the whole tournament in fact, are on the NJPW website, and you can sign up for their network for cheap. It's not exactly $9.99, but it's a good deal. (It's 999 yen last I checked), and they take PayPal now.

Am I a shill for this company? Kinda. They don't pay me, and they don't know I exist, but I love them. I love the wrestlers, I love the direction they're headed, and I love that I get to go see some of them this year! They'll be right in my home state doing a joint show with Ring of Honor (another company I love to follow).

I think that's got to be all from me. I've been up since 10am and haven't eaten yet. It's almost 2pm. Hm.

I'll let you go now :)

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Talk About Tuesday 11

It's an absolutely gorgeous day. It's not yet 70℉, it's about 60% humidity, and there's a pleasant breeze going. The perfect day for some jazz and typing.

If it weren't for the fact that over the last few days, this place has looked like the Amityville Horror.

Seriously! There have been dozens of fat, green-bodied houseflies droning around for the last few days, stomping on ceilings, trapped in windows, or otherwise being a bother. It's been really annoying. No fly tape in this house, so the removal efforts have mostly been based around the vacuum cleaner and a lot of cursing. There's a tiny paper cup from the bathroom sitting on top of a Post-It note on the entertainment center, so I'm pretty sure that was the source of the unending thudding last night - my father's work, I'm sure.

We have insect invasions, every now and then. I was worried that we'd have centipedes or earwigs this year, but I'll take the flies in trade! I despise both centipedes and earwigs. They're just... nasty. Flies are gross, but these ones don't bite, they're nonvenomous, and they don't slither out from the bathroom closet while you're trying to grab a washcloth or towel.

Ugh.

Aside from Flymageddon 2018, this week has gone better for me than for my SO. Poor Z's glasses broke, so I packed up a little superglue, an eyeglasses kit, and a couple donuts for the repair job. We ended up getting help from Film & Editing Friendo, since the screw had sheared off and the unscrewable end had stuck into the frame, and I had no appropriate tools for dealing with that. Among the three of us (one nearly blind without their glasses), we eventually superglued and clamped the poor specs into shape.

Needless to say, Z has ordered new glasses.

I think they're snazzy.

One of the stoves I've been using for Sunday's recipes, the electric one, has been replaced with a neat 5-burner model since the old oven died. Baking recipes in the future may be possible. Maybe. We'll see. I'm pretty eager to get my Ramen on with those new burners, though. I've never used a rangetop with that many zones! I'm not very familiar with electric baking (our stove is gas, so I'm used to blue-flaming all my food), so you and I? We'll be experimenting with all of this together.

Just don't blame me if your bread comes out like a rock. Mine does, too. I'm not a very good baker.

I'm a bit disappointed in how long it's taking me to work on the utility cloth, by the way. I thought it would take 3 weeks, max. Unfortunately, it could take up to 5 if I don't pick up the pace next Monday. I might wind up just doing a bound edge if I don't like the looks of the edging I was planning. We'll see on that, too.

As for Tuesdays, I'm still crawling along on my summery tale. I've finally gotten the main character out of the grocery store, so now I just need to get him home with his girlfriend to watch bad movies and relax. I'm totally not drawing from real life. None of these characters are based off of my friends and I.

I'm lying.

They are all my friends and I, and I'm not even hiding it right now. Not yet, anyway. That's what first drafts are for, though - getting the story out and hoping you like some of the sentences. No way is this going to be a one-year-story, though. I'm having trouble crawling past page 4. Still, at least I've got a little over 1200 words down. I'm not happy with all of them, and whole scenes may change, but hey, that's writing!

Wednesdaymania needs to lighten the heck up, guys. I'm hoping we don't lose more legendary wrestlers this week, since I still need to talk about why the G1 was  A M A Z I N G. And it was. It was incredible. I missed Hiromu Takahashi's presence, and I was sorry to learn yesterday that he's had to relinquish his title (he was the IWGP Jr Heavyweight Champion), but the video he directed to declare it is a riot. I'll put that in the blog tomorrow, no worries.

Thursday can be a struggle, to be honest, especially if I don't have time & space to work on something. I'm also probably not going to do another bubble drawing this week. It just feels like a "try something new" kind of week. We'll see how it goes.

Friday's film will be based off of a riffed film with a returning actor! Prepare yourself for more Reb Brown. That's all I'll say :P

Saturdays are also hard, since I don't like to talk about games I don't enjoy, and I haven't exactly been branching out with new games lately. The games I have been playing haven't been viable for August, since they're FALLOWEEN-style games (horror, directly Halloween-related, etc). I wonder if I'll be able to find any of the haunted house games that legit spooked me again. There was one where a scary reaper figure followed you around and you had to solve puzzles to not die. I had to turn the sound off because it made me paranoid. It didn't help that I had a porcelain doll in my closet at the time.

Can't sleep.

Doll will eat me.

Unrelated, but Sundays might kill me, too. If there's one thing I know about myself, it's that my patience and attention spans are equally short. I have a hard time focusing on most things, and I get frustrated easily and quickly. I've tried the counting thing, the breathing thing, and the smiling through it thing. They don't work. I lose my temper and am miserable to be around. Thankfully, Z finds it funny, most of the time.

I don't like being a temperamental dingus.

Sunday's blog subjects can be hard, because I have to focus on whatever I'm cooking, get photos, and make sure I'm not ignoring anyone I'm around. I didn't even have that much to do when I was making those oats, but I still wound up letting them boil over. I'll just have to keep practicing, and maybe someday, I'll be a better cook and a more patient person.

Or maybe I should just cut back on the caffeine...

Never.

Death Before Decaf.

...

Actually, that'd be a fine project for Thursday.

Hm...

Alright, I'll let you all get back to your lives, and I'll go chase down some Cyclorrhaphids. That should be enough to keep me busy for a while...

Go Enjoy Something!

May I recommend Kyoru Sentai Zyuranger on Shout Factory's Roku app (if it's still there)? It's the original Japanese Power Rangers. It's pretty hardcore.

FC

Fiber Monday 11

We don't always get what we want in life, and sometimes we don't get as much done as we want either. Today was a good example of this - I'd hoped to finish the body of this utility cloth today, but sadly, I've only gotten to 15 rows.

That's approximately 3.5" (or ~8.9cm)

Thankfully, there are no time limits on finishing things on this blog. I hope to have this project done in the next couple of weeks, but life happens.

There will be days when I have all the time in the world to work on things. There will be days when I have absolutely no time or patience. There may even be days when I get sick and can't do much beyond post pathetic messages on the blog.

But things will still get done. Life goes on.

I try to apply that outlook to most parts of my life, but we all have bad days, and I lose sight of how simple life really is sometimes. I overcomplicate things. Pretty much everyone does, I've noticed, at one time or another.

I've digressed.

You guys rock, and I'm always grateful that there are people out there on the internet watching me fumble my way through crochet, professional wrestling, art, writing, cooking, and gaming.

So thanks for paying attention to me.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 10

I was really hungry the other day, guys. I don't crave breakfast often - I'm a coffee and chill kind of person. I don't usually crave any kind of oatmeal, either, since I basically grew up on the Quaker Instant Apple Cinnamon in the 90s.

I really wanted some oatmeal the other day.

Unfortunately, I don't think we had any actual oatmeal in the house, so I went with steel-cut oats instead.

It's not unfortunate, guys. They were tasty.

If you guys want to make this, it's pretty easy - your only cooking ingredients are salt, water, and steel-cut oats! The rest of what I added was to give it some flavor.

I started to use the recipe on the back of the bag to make what I'm going to call porridge but probably isn't, but I'm a little behind on breakfast cookery, so gimme a break. The recipe was 1/4 tsp salt, 3 cups water, and 1 cup oats. Then I read the last sentence. 4 bowls. 4 bowls?! I'm a tubbins, but I'm not that gluttonous!

Or so I thought...

Now, being a bigger person, I quickly realized that 3/4 cup water, 1/4 cup oats and 1/16 tsp salt were not going to fill the void in my gut.

I basically halved the recipe. 1.5 cups water, 0.5 cups oats, 1/8 tsp salt. I eyeballed the salt.

I'd started to boil the water before I realized I hadn't actually photographed anything.
Oops.

This measuring cup had quarter measurements and I'm pretty sure it had ml measurements too!

And salt. Just plain old salt.

Once the water was at a nice boil, I grabbed a sturdy spoon and poured my oats into the water. I probably didn't need to immediately stir, and that's probably wrong somehow, but I did it anyway.

After a little stirring, I plopped the cover on and went to go work on Friday's blog.

That lid? Doubles as a frying pan. Sometimes I use it for hotdogs.

Crank that heat as low as it goes!

That flame? Barely lit. That's perfect.

If you're wondering where the cat was, she was in the basement availing herself of the basket full of fuzzy winter blankets because she's a nutcase.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so focused on my blog and the cat, though, because anyone who's made oatmeal or porridge will tell you that no matter how low the heat is, your food will find a way to boil over.

And so it did. Loudly. While I was trying to find photos from Commando in the next room.

Thankfully, paying more attention to the pot prevented further boil-over, but I think maybe it needed to be covered for far longer than it was.

Tasty, but very al dente. Maybe if I'd left it longer with more water? I don't know.

I did end up adding more water after a while because it was not filling out like I'm used to seeing with Oatmeal. Then again, I've never made this before - maybe steel-cut oats never puff out? Regardless, I was getting some serious smoothness going, so I decided to bite the bullet and chuck the goop into a bowl.

This stuff is not very flavorful on its own, but it takes little effort to improve it!

I had dragged out the light brown sugar and cinnamon, and the half-and-half creamer was close at hand from my coffee, so I decided to dress up my admittedly bland breakfast!

I have no pictures of this porridge after I mixed it all together, but I promise, it was good.

You could use maple syrup, fruit jellies or preserves or jams, fresh fruit, milk, cream, cinnamon & sugar, or any combination of those. That right there is two servings of porridge.

I have a few tips for anyone else trying this for the first time: don't freak out if your porridge develops a few patches of gunk that look kind of like phlegm. It's nasty-looking, but I'm pretty sure it's normal. Next time I make this, I'll leave the goop in. Also, pay attention to the pot the whole time. If it sounds like it's about to boil over, open the lid and mix it up.

As for our spice of the week, I'm taking a bit of a different tack here:

This isn't the brand I used. Pretty sure mine was Domino? Dunno.

Brown sugar comes in various varieties, each with its benefits. Light brown sugar, like I used in my porridge, has a richer, sweeter flavor than granulated or powdered sugar, but milder than Dark brown sugar. Dark brown sugar tastes closer to molasses. Any brown sugar is going to be much moister than white sugars, which is why they clump up. There's a few products out there to prevent clumping in your brown sugar. We used to have a little terracotta mouse, but apparently that's just not a thing anymore. Can't find evidence of them anywhere.

Anywho, brown sugar is tasty and sweet, and it's much richer than more refined sugars, so we tend to use less of the darker sugars than the lighter ones in baking.

Hm... I should see if my mom will show me how to make her brown sugar chocolate chip cookies someday...


That'll do it for me this week, folks!

Go out there and Enjoy Something!
FC