Friday, November 21, 2014

I Want to Hang Out with The Fabulous Freebirds

Being born in 1984, the entire 80s is a dark period for me when it comes to WCW wrestling. I either remember or have rewatched numerous times the important matches from the WWE, but that era of WCW is a pretty big dark spot in my knowledge of pro wrestling history. Watching the WWE Network has been fantastic in that I have learned so much about that era of WCW. Maybe the most important thing that I have learned is there may not be a group of pro wrestlers that I would rather hang out with than the Fabulous Freebirds.

Although their ring work would never win any awards, these guys understood that wrestling is sports entertainment as they knew how to entertain a crowd. Although purists probably consider Buddy Roberts as a true Freebird, for my money, there was no greater combination than Michael P.S. (Pure Sexy) Hayes, Terry Gordy, and Jimmy "Jam" Garvin (who was also referred to as "Gorgeous" Jimmy Garvin).

Jimmy Garvin is the happiest person on the planet. They did a promo after wrestling to a time-limit draw, and all he could do was talk about how great a draw was. He admitted that it wasn't as good as a win, but it's still pretty damn good. Also, Michael P.S. Hayes was a guy I only remember late in his career when he had lost a step (or 30), but he was pretty great in his prime. Those two guys were originators in the field of West Coast Dance as they would take turns dancing as the other one just aggressively pointed at him. It was wonderful. Then Terry Gordy was one of the ugliest people ever, but a total bruiser. He was rightfully phased out, so Garvin and Hayes could follow their true destiny and become the hard partying rock stars of wrestling.

To simplify it, the best I can do is a comparison to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I can just about guarantee that Michael Hayes used the D.E.N.N.I.S. System, Jimmy Garvin used the M.A.C. and Gordy took the scraps. I guess this makes Buddy Roberts Rickety Cricket and DDP is Schmitty.

Guys, if you're reading this, I'm near the Tampa area, and my offer stands to party. I'll supply the booze, you supply the stories, and together, we'll have one hell of a time (And if you need chicks, we can go to a strip club, just don't tell my wife). 

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Everything You Need To Know About The Furious 7 Trailer

Two minutes and forty-two seconds. It doesn't sound like much time. It is less than 1/20th of an hour. It is only about 1/500th of a day. Overall, that little amount of time really shouldn't matter. Still, any individual second can count, and this weekend, I found something where every one of the 162 seconds matter. The Furious 7 trailer was released, and it is glorious.

Since I am on the verge of dying from anticipation, Lukewarm Jonah sent in his comprehensive breakdown of the Furious 7 trailer:

So I don’t think I’m overstating the fact that the most important event in human history just happened.  The Fast And Furious 7 trailer dropped.  I’m going to break down the trailer with as much detail and thought that a super fan like myself can.

The trailer starts out with Dom (Vin Diesel) talking on the CB radio to his crew.  The shot goes from him, to Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), to Roman (Tyrese) and we hear from Tej (Ludacris) who is asking Roman if he’s freaking out which he clearly is.  Now why is Roman freaking out so much?  I mean they’re all in cars, it’s basically where they live.  It’s no stretch to call them the greatest team of drivers ever.  Roman says he’s not freaking out but Tej calls him out and he and Brian O’ Connor (Paul Walker) have a good laugh.  Roman wants someone to walk him through what they’re supposed to be doing.  Come on Roman know the plan, I mean you’re probably just driving and pulling off a heist or something get those butterflies out of your stomach.  The red light goes off, some sort of rear door opens and we get to see everyone in some sweet rides.

Cut to an exterior shot of an airplane!?  What the hell?  They’re in an airplane?  In cars?  Now this I’ve got to see.  I mean they have a lot of experience in airplaning from the last movie, but I didn’t see any doomsday devices handed out.  O’ Connor says “Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better” to his boy Dom.  Dom says “Here we go” while Roman provides some comic relief by blessing himself.  What is going on here?  Holy shit they throw the cars in reverse and skydive out of a fucking plane, IN CARS!  Parachutes deploy and they make it onto the road no problem.  Tej sums it up better than I ever could, “Hell Yeah!”  I would just like to take a minute and point out that the trailer starts with the crew skydiving out of a plane in cars.  That’s the start, we’re just ramping up from here.

The crew is now driving on a road, all normal like, when they pull up on a bus.  Oh we’ve seen this before.  Clearly they’re going to be taking this bus down.  Are they springing someone from a prison bus?  Pulling off a big heist?  Who knows?  But we all know that if there’s one thing that Dom and the crew can do it’s pretty much anything they want involving moving vehicles.  But “Oh Shiiii….” Tej again has the perfect words for this situation.  The bus presses a magic button and guns come out of the side and start firing.  O’ Connor’s car is lit up with gun fire and he seems to pull off to the side.  But no big deal, reunited lovers Dom and Letty “Hook ‘em up” and fire gatlings into the bus and pull off the back with a little help from Tej’s magic button and the power of brakes.  Dom says Brian is up, but wait a minute I thought he pulled over.

Naw girl, he’s freaking surfing on his bullet hole ridden car while being pushed by Tej’s hummer.  So he hops into the bus taking some chump down in the process.  While it’s not shown, it’s safe to assume he takes down the other jabronis on the bus and shoots a lock on a door, pulls the hood off of some person, and surprise, it’s an attractive female.  Brian, being the all american good guy, tells her they’re going to get her out of there.  She has to jump onto the hood of Dom’s car and really seems to have no problem doing so.  She screams, but I assume Dom uses his super driving skills to chill her out.  But there’s a problem.  With all the jabronis Brian took down, there’s no one driving the bus and it flips!

The bus rides along the road on its side for a little bit before coming to rest.  Whew!  That was a close one.  Oh did I forget to mention that it comes to a rest over the edge of a cliff?  Because that’s exactly what it does.  O’ Connor hops out the door which is the part that’s hanging over a cliff.  He climbs up the side of the bus like a boss but the rocks are starting to crumble.  He breaks out in a dead sprint across the bus while it’s falling over the cliff.  Things look bleak, but Letty is racing towards the bus.  She power slides as Brian is still running across the falling bus.  He leaps and catches the spoiler on Letty’s powersliding car.  Holy shit looks like he made it out of this one safe and sound.  The bus falls off the cliff and all those kidnapping dickheads on board presumably fall to a terrible death.  And that’s the end of the trailer.  Or is it?  It’s not.  No all of this insane action has happened in about the first minute and a half.  How are they going to top all this?  Strap yourself in and get ready for a hell of a ride.

Dom’s on the phone with some limey who killed Han (Sung Kan).  The limey says that Dom doesn’t know him but he’s about to and the scene where he crashes into Han and walks away is shown.  The tea sipper is shown to be Jason Statham.  Dom tells his crew that it looks like the sins of London have followed them home.  Also of note, new rescued girl is with the crew now.

Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) makes his first appearance and you know business is about to pick up.  He explains that new foreinger is Owen Shaw’s “Big bad brother.”  Man, Dom and his crew have horrible luck.  It seems like every movie they keep running into someone bigger and badder than before.  I have a theory that Fast 8 will feature Owen’s brother Deckard’s bigger badder cousins, Nic Cage and Jean Claude Van Damme.  Also as you just read, Hobbs’ file contains the name Deckard Shaw, so it’s safe to assume that’s Statham’s character.  We get a couple seconds of Deckard being a badass against some randoms, just to establish how tough he really is.

Tej makes a statement that really sums up what’s going on “We’re being hunted.”  Look I don’t care how tough you are, how tough your brother is, you’re not going to hunt down Dom’s crew.  They show shots of Dom, Hobbs, and O’ Connor getting ready by having some sweet/giant guns and bullet proof vests.  It’s interesting to note that O’Connor is wearing an FBI vest, so at least O’Connor is back on the legit side of the law.  After this, there is a very poignant shot of Dom and O’Connor where Dom states “One last ride.”  Sadly, Walker’s death does mean that this is truly their last ride together.

Cut to shots of insane cars driving… in the desert????  I know it’s the desert because there’s a shot of sand and camels.  What have the guys gotten themselves into now?  Oh there’s an insane party going on with gold painted girls and quite possibly Little John DJing while a bunch of presumably rich people throwing their hands in the air like they just don’t care.  Cut to a shot of the crew dressed to the nines.  Tuxes, suits, dresses, they are straight crushing walking down stairs.

Cut to a shot of a car race, where Dom’s Charger can be seen.  I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that he wins the race.  Good news, there’s also a sweet shot of some booty as a chick bends over and drops the scarf to start the race.  Letty’s driving, then there’s some red and an explosion.  Gunfire in that red building, then cut to a shot of Dom driving his Charger.  Lots of Fast and Furious action going on here.  We see that Dom has a cut on his hand as he shifts, I assume from backhanding some bad guy too much.  The word vengeance hits the screen and we go back to the real star of the movie, Hobbs.

Hobbs utters possibly the greatest line ever spoken by anyone, “Daddy’s got to go to work.”  Oh and work he does.  His arm is in a cast which is very confusing.  My theory is that Shaw blindsided Hobbs just like he did to Han.  Only Shaw was driving a tank, Hobbs was just standing around, and he had just finished drinking a kryptonite smoothie.  Seems like the most logical way Hobbs could end up with a broken arm.  So it’s tough to tell if Hobbs rips the cast off, or just simply flexes and breaks it apart.  But the message is clear, Hobbs doesn’t let a minor setback like broken bones slow him down.  Now he fights some dude with a shaved head that at first I assumed was Shaw, but upon pausing the trailer, it looks like just some random jabroni that a smackdown must be laid down upon.  Hobbs makes this guy look like a punk even with one arm and punches him through a glass window.

We get a shot of Shaw looking tough with a gun, as a familiar voice, Kurt Russell, tells Dom something that sounds like, “This is a world that doesn’t play by your rules.”  Followers of Dom know that he has a code, and spoiler alert, we’ll hear more about that code later on in the trailer.  It’s not all “Show me how and drive and I’ll show you who you are.”

More quick cuts, Shaw shoots a gun, possibly at a sick red car that’s driving in a sick house.  Hobbs is firing a gatling gun, just like Roadblock in GI Joe.  Letty’s in a red dress, Dom’s in a tux with Letty in a red dress, kidnap victim is coming out of the water in a bikini as Roman and Tej look on.  A helicopter flies, O’Connor drives a car like a champ.  Dom and Shaw appear to have samuri swords in each hand as they fly at each other.  Shaw’s sweet ride is wrecked while Dom’s Charger seems to be in pretty solid shape.

The next shot has Shaw against the cement part of a street light with Dom winding up for a home run swing.  Sadly, it appears that Dom is swinging a crowbar and not a samurai sword.  He misses and explodes the concrete.  Smart fans will remember that Dom is especially deadly with wrenches, so it makes sense he’s a complete badass with a crowbar as well.  The trailer then shows shots of Tej, Roman, Letty, and the first shot of Mia (Jordanna Brewster) O’Connor’s wife and Dom’s sister.  She looks concerned, and I mean super concerned.  Kurt Russell’s voice speaks over these shots and tells Dom, “Like it or not, you and your friends are part of this now.”  Dom responds with the wisdom that cannot be taught or learned, it has to be God given.  “I don’t have friends, I got family.”  Boom!  Suck on that Shaw, you and your brother may have been blood, but you don’t have shit on Dom and his family.  Cut to a long shot of O’Connor and Roman in the background.  Furious 7, weird title, coming April 2015.

And that’s your trailer folks.  I’m writing this from my smart phone as I’m already camped out in line for the movie.  If you have any other questions please feel free to ask, because I feel that I’m the foremost expert on all things Fast and or Furious.

Monday, November 3, 2014

What Does Jose Canseco's Missing Middle Finger Mean For His Career?

News of Jose Canseco shooting off his middle finger has the whole world in mourning. It took me a while to gather my thoughts. Jose is a very emotional person, but emotional people need logical people to balance them out, so instead of the emotional take of me cutting my own middle finger off to donate to Jose, I have decided to take the rational take.

What does this mean for Jose Canseco's career?

Baseball
We will start with the obvious in discussing his baseball career. Jose assured the world that he could still hit 40 home runs in the major leagues if he was just given a chance. Most people openly laughed at this belief, and I was laughing too; I thought that number was way too low. Turns out other people thought it was too high. This made me think that he probably had it just right. This is the easiest one to figure out. Since he would hit 40 home runs with ten fingers, but now he only has nine fingers, he would still hit 9/10 of the home runs he predicted. So a team should definitely still sign him.
Conclusion: 36 home runs.

Writing
Jose Canseco is a published author who is known for his inventive spellings and sayings on Twitter. Now that he is typing while missing a vital finger, clearly he can't be as great as he once was, but I still believe him to be great. He's been going on a tweeting spree referring to Leila as his fiance which would imply that she is a man. Blowing off a finger can only end in one way for Jose Canseco's writing future.
Conclusion: All the misspelled words.

Mixed Martial Arts
Although Canseco's record may indicate that he has fallen short in the world of fighting, don't let these stat nerds fool you. Canseco fears no man, and if you think Jose will ever stop challenging Shaq to a fight, you have another thing coming. Obviously losing a finger will make things incredibly difficult for Jose, but don't ever count him out. Nick Newell has done incredible things while missing half of his arm. Since Jose is only missing a finger, I think I know how this story ends.
Conclusion: UFC Champion

So, yeah, I think things are going to turn out a-ok for Jose. Best of luck to him on a speedy recovery.