Championship matches are fake, but being champion does represent something. It's not a sport, but you have to be at least somewhat athletic and ideally incredibly athletic. People train their asses off to get in shape, both for aesthetics and to do incredibly difficult moves. It's fake, but real life plays a big part in storylines. What happens to Chris Evans plays no part in Marvel movies, but what happens to Phil Brooks will be referenced in an AEW promo, about CM Punk. And pro wrestling always has a long history of flirting with being "real" or very rarely, becoming real, with shoot promos and screwjobs and shoot fights (the latter two now confined to history). It's an art, and a live performance, but it plays in sports arenas, warehouses and bingo halls, not Broadway and nobody is going to win a Tony Award. It's the most diverse set of performers on the planet. Giants, little people, amputees, LGBT, people from every corner of the planet.
I've seen videos of someone with cerebral palsy doing this. But the #1 demand is to always to play to a mass audience, leading to some of the most clever and some ... not so clever .... representations of these folks. Really, it's basically the world's most populist artform.
One of my greatest regrets in the construction of this website was going for the easy solution on the text editor to save dev costs, because this thing honestly blows ass. No spell check in 2021. Sorry everyone. Anyway.
One of my goals in 2020 was to go to a wrestling show live. Obviously COVID said go fuck yourself nerd, but, you know, a deals a deal. I got to go to my first show in June, a NGW show (Party Bowl) in Knoxville TN. The card had WARHORSE on it which is why I wanted to go, but they put him in a lol isn't this funny midcard comedy match, which was eternally annoying because I wanted to see a WARHORSE match. Pineapple Pete was in it, which was cool, it's nice to see he's recovered from having his ass buried on Dynamite by Chris Jericho after a month of fun build. What was the point of that? Still one of the worst things AEW has ever done imo. Don't want to get into that whole thing, but, okay. The show was great. Very good shit. Derek and Cassie came-- Cassie did not enjoy it, but I told her before hand she wouldn't, and that she shouldn't come, but she did, and was immediately exposed to extremely smarky hardcore wrestling. Can't imagine what that was like for her, but, there you go.
I was then able to get basically front row seats to Dynamite in Charlotte at great personal cost, but it was... worth it?
I went with the sole desire to see Adam Page beat Kenny Omega and get a title shot for All Out 2021, but the story dead ended instead. To be honest, it threw me off for the rest of the show. Seeing Nick Gage wrestle Jericho was surely a once in a lifetime event, but honestly I was in such a state after Page got pinned that the rest of the event was a big fog. I did get to see Christian, that was cool, but I barely remember anything.
It was weird, it was like I was just being mentally bombarded with so much happening that I was disassociating or something, I don't know how to describe it.
When I saw the Pixies for the first time I was like star struck, but now every like 11 minutes I was seeing someone wrestle I truly adore and my brain was like, see ya kid. It was wild. Truly. It was absolutely sensory overload, not necessarily in a bad way, but definitely actually really.
I got to see Chaos Project which was honestly the best thing of the night but even now when I search my memory for the event of it its just a haze, like I was not even there. Weird way to spend $300 but. You know. I got to take my Dad, and that was nice. We don't have really anything in common except I dragged him back into liking wrestling after he introduced me to it in the 90's and he I fucked off after WCW died for 20 years.
Either way, both were good experiences, although to be entirely truthful to myself, I enjoyed the NGW show more. I was way more into the moment and just saw some really good honest wrasslin. I'm thinking about going back for the show next time. It is quite a drive. I don't know-- thinking about it.
Everything else in my life is completely status quo in the way where if I talk about it, its probably sad, so I won't get into it. Rest assured, not much is happening.
Just wanted to catch myself up on all of that.
So, I had to come to terms with that. I mean, I had to come to terms with that.
What I'm proud of, mostly, is that instead of having an incredibly emotional, angry reaction to it as I'm prone to do when my ego has been hit or I'm embarassed, I actually just played it cool and took a bow, exited stage left with my remaining composure intact and it's like it never happened.
To say I was disappointed would be something of an understatement, but boy, sometimes it's not always bad to be humbled I guess.
I made an entry on here a few months back about how I was aggravated that I can never seem to be on the same wavelength as the general public when it comes to my sense of humor or storytelling, and while that's true, it's a massive hindrance as a person who considers themselves an """ARTIST""" to be perpetually too weird, I honestly don't feel that same sting with this one. I don't know why, or what that means, I think maybe it was just such an embarassing move that I don't really necessarily feel "UNAPPRECIATED" so much as just glad that no one sent me death threats over it.
Anyway, uh, what I'd like to say is that I'm now more annoyed that I spent like 14 hours writing up this nonsense and making all these photoshopped pictures and now I got no use for it at all. Hm.
That's life!
Time is irrelevant in the Post-Crisis of Infinite Failures universe. It's not that it goes by fast or slow anymore, it just doesn't matter. My hair gets longer, my look becomes more ragged and unkempt, my work arguably gets worse and worse, but it doesn't matter.
This is the world of Community Season 4. It's gas leak year. It is both Last March and This March. The now, now, is the now, then.
There was the initial rush into quality. You needed a goal. I downloaded and read a Greek text and commentary of Mark. I wrote 15 episodes of my podcast. I learned to make Fettuccine Alfredo. I started kayaking. I got serious about working out again. I lost some weight. I gained some weight. I lost some weight. I gained some weight. I lost some weight. I've become a serious investor. I've become a meme investor.
But the rush to accomplish, achieve, HAVE-- it's all fallen away into not mattering. Even the women posting instagram power point presentations on how you shouldn't feel bad about not doing things has stopped. It's not that we're normal again, it's just now normal is this, it's a world where time, though ceaselessly pressing forward, just doesn't exist! IT ISN'T!
Some of my high school friends started a discord channel. It's like AIM. None of us have anywhere to go. Nothing to do. It's just idle bullshitting. Some of them of course have marriages and children, but at a certain point in the night, all you have is the internet and the same nonsense bullshit you talked about 16 years ago.
It doesn't matter!
There's a certain fear of attachment to it. Like at a certain point of course the train will start moving again. Slow, at first, then cacophony. What will that be like. Another bomb?
I've been experimenting with anxiety. Maybe a new look for me?
I applied to a job as a writer for Jack Box Games. I am both convinced that there is no way I won't get a call back for it and equally as positive I will never hear even so much as a no thank you. I found a typo after submission. I hate applying for jobs! I HATE IT! HAHA! ITS NOT FUN FOR ME! HAHA!
You have to, must, are forced into working up the hope that this time it will happen. You will hear from the job havers. It will occur. They will respond to you and love you and pay you. But then, again, the ringing silence from the Email that otherwise wants always to talk.
I remain optimistic despite my best efforts.
The truth is that I am deeply insecure about job applications. As a person who boastfully believes that he is impervious to psychological harm outside of the self, it is crushing to know the truth-- you have no control here. It is my greatest fear-- and I am not good at resumes. I am not good at them. I can lie to anyone about products, ads, sales, etc. etc. BUT ME? I DONT KNOW. I DO WORD AND EXCEL. PAY ME?
I listed this website as an accomplishment, and it is. This place is a triumph. It's our greatest thing. We made this out of N O T H I N G because we hate the internet and what it is.
I jumped back into Animal Crossing with Becky "Caluiflower" Pizza.
I have a complicated relationship with Animal Crossing New Horizons. I love it, and it was a DEEPLY NEEDED SOURCE of relief from the early days of Disease World, but now oh the troubles. So much of that game is built to annoy me personally, from the opening monologues of Dog to the TRIBULATIONS OF TRAVEL from the Dodos. It is an assault to accomplish anything besides running around, but then you see Becky's restaurant house and you remember the art of it. The zen of placing the objects and of experiencing the joy that others have had in experiencing that zen. I should post pictures of her home. It's an art unto itself.
And art oh ART. Orange Crush is a zine, an art magazine about Professional Wrestling, and it's so beautiful. Look at this. LOOK AT THIS.
Oh how I have fallen in love with professional wrestling. I love AEW. I love Impact. I've been watching TJPW, NJPW, Beyond, MLW, GCW... I just watched Bloodsport 3 a few nights ago... it's so good. I love Maki Itoh, Eddie Kingston, Lance Archer, WARHORSE, Hangman Adam Page, Kenny Omega, OKADA, VENY, Hikaru Shida, Matt Hardy, Japanese Deathmatch Legend and The Original Death Dealer Doctor Luther and Serpentico.
Wrestling is the greatest art on earth. It is performance art of the highest caliber. You can tell any story. And no one cares. That's almost the best part. The earth as a whole will never love wrestling again. You can do anything you want. No one cares. Cut your ear off like Foley, and they say "is Steve Austin still wrestling". It's beautiful. I love it. It's so good.
Bloodsport is amazing. It's ostensibly a wrestling promotion built around resurrecting the "FAKE REAL" carny trash origins of the sport. It's fake amateur wrestling. It's proto-MMA with predetermined conclusions. It's meta meta meta meta. It's a revival of a thing that wasn't the thing when it was the thing. THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY.
I could talk about this all day. It's the greatest part of there being no time. I can see everything. I have seen everything. I've watched mid 80's NWA. Almost all of 1990's WCW. It's wonderful. There is no time. Time does not matter anymore.
My last, I mean, dead, straight, LAST friend in Boone is moving away Friday. The END of friends. Friends are OVER now. It is COMPLETE. Isolation is now IRON CLAD and EVER MORE. But it's fine! This is where I'm at and where I'll be and where I was. It's perfect tense. An all surrounding constant always never and will be. I am one with the always and the always is with me. I am at rock bottom and the top of the ocean. It doesn't matter. It's all there never wasn't!
Hedge funds overshorted the stock, like 140% overshorted. So they borrowed 140% of the available shares. People bought the stock which made the price increase, so that when hedge funds had to buy the stock the price went up even further, and this cycle has continued. That's the basics. Very simply.
Well, over the weekend, it keeps coming out that these short sellers have been exiting their positions... but, that doesn't make sense, because there's hardly any shares available to buy. So what it looks like is happening is that short sellers have been counterfeiting shares of the stock. There's only 70 million shares of the company out there, yet there's over 100 million shares being traded. That's impossible.
So, if this is the case, the entire stock market is about to go into turbo chaos. If short sellers of other companies have just been making shares up to buy, then that means the entire market is propped up on magic. Which means-- well... bad things. Like "collapse" would be a good term for it.
Very interesting to see what happens. A little scary.