Old Links

Atari’s new Ataribox console will be like an NES Classic. As much fun as it it to imagine an Atari revival this thing looks like it's going to be a huge failure. There are already a half dozen different Atari retro consoles on the market and it's not like anyone is dying to play Yar's Revenge again. Don't get me wrong, I loved my 2600 when I had it but Atari games aren't that fun to play these days. I'll play combat or boxing for a few minutes but that's about it. This thing has Ouya written all over it.

By the by, I know all these links are super old but I bookmarked them and never got around to using them last month. I'd like to say that this month I won't be just as busy and will have more time to blog but that's a total lie. I'll probably be lucky if I get to 10 posts this month.

Frank Darabont's Furious Emails to His Walking Dead Coworkers: 'Fuck You All'. The e-mails they have published here are pretty funny. It's obvious at the time Darabont was writing them he either thought he was getting fired or really wanted to get fired. It's amazing to think looking back on it now that Season 2 was pretty much DOA due to AMC's insistence on cutting the show's budget in half. Now a days its the biggest thing on TV. The showrunners could probably get an old space shuttle if they wanted to do a couple zombies in space episodes.

Star Wars' Firing Reveals a Disturbance in the Franchise. Lots of people wrote about this but the Hollywood Reporter probably had the best breakdown of the exact reasons Lord and Miller were fired from Han Solo. It's pretty interesting stuff and goes to show you Disney is not messing around with the Star Wars franchise. That's probably a good or bad thing depending on your point of view. We're probably never going to see a director go completely off the rails and turn in a crap movie but on the other hand there's no room for a real talented auteur to come in and carve out a piece of lore for him or herself.

Japan’s Most Ridiculous Wrestling Promotion Hits Somewhere Near The Big Time. DDT-Pro Wrestling is crazy pants. Like they have some ultra serious looking matches with some of the hottest young talent around and then they'll follow it up by putting a title on a table. Like literally a figuratively, the table's the champ now. I wish I could justify spending the cash on their subscription service but I'm already spending too much on other stuff every month. In the meantime I'll just have to keep following them on twitter, which is still pretty fun.

Mammoth Links

The top ten games to watch for after E3 2017. Lists like this remind me that I need to take a break from Overwatch for a while. Of course then Overwatch starts a new event and I'm all like "I NEED THAT NEW WINSTON DANCING EMOTE" and I'm back to where I started.

The Mammoth Pirates. This is a really interesting photo essay on dudes that hunt for Woolly Mammoth tusks every summer in Siberia. It looks like horrible work, and it pretty much destroying the natural environment but I'll be dammed if I don't think it's cool that there are guys literally harvesting 10,000 year old bones out of the frozen ground. I had no idea that was even possible.

The Untold Story Of WCW’s Glacier, And The Battle To Find Personal Happiness In Professional Wrestling. Warning, this is a very long article. Double Warning, it's also very very good so find a couple minutes in your day to check it out. Glacier was a sort of Mortal Kombat knock off wrestler who worked for WCW back in the late 90s, but the story isn't 100% about him. It's hard to describe but it's sort of a slice of Americana if Americana had to fight off skeleton warriors.

It’s so hot in Phoenix, planes are physically unable to fly. Turns out hot air provides less lift than cooler air and some smaller planes can't get enough lift to safely take off. Science is kinda heartless that way, it doesn't care if you have to get to Flagstaff by 2:30. It's hot, so you're staying put.

As a follow up, I once spent a couple weeks in Phoenix when it was in the high 110s, it might even have reached 120 that summer. It was incredible. You can barely catch your breath its so hot out. No one was outside doing anything, people were barely driving around. It was like a ghost town. Like a fool I tried to go for a bike ride one day, I got 2 blocks from the house and was like NOPE.

This is Progress

British Wrestling is really hot right now. I mean I'm not watching any but the fine folks that make up my twitter feed are crazy for it. Specifically they're crazy for this promotion Progress. The trailer for This is Progress, a kickstarter funded documentary on the promotion gives you a quick glimpse as to why people are nuts for it. Or maybe gives you a quick glimpse of the people that are crazy for it. I guess that's kind of splitting hairs.

Hopefully they get their cash, documentaries on wrestling are usually pretty cool even when they're trainwrecks.

Southpaw Regional Wrestling - Episode 1

Over the last couple years the WWE has really pushed to deliver more #content to it's subscribers and fans. Some of it has been really good but a whole lot of it has been complete drek. I'm not 100% sure what category Southpaw Regional Wrestling falls into yet. I think this is amazing but I'm not 100% sure. I feel like I could be convinced either way. Whatever it is it's definitely mesmerizing.

WWE Smackdown Live: The Review

My son and I went to WWE Smackdown Live last night. That's me in the circle holding a sign. I'm super famous now.

A couple months ago It came up randomly in a conversation with my son that the next time the WWE was in town he wanted to go. It was weird because he really doesn't have much interest in wrestling. Whenever I'm watching it he's usually got his face buried in his Kindle watching youtube or playing Roblox. So, when it was announced Smackdown was coming to town I jumped all over a couple tickets and we made a fun day of it. We visited the Space Needle first, checked out the EMP (Mo-Pop now), got a huge thing of french fries and some french fry only place at Seattle Center.

This was only my 3rd live wrestling show and the first one in about 15 years. I was expecting the experience to have changed a bit but it really hadn't. Same mix of drunk guys and families yelling at a bunch of sweaty dudes pretending to beat each other up. If you're into the pro-graps it's definitely worth your time and money to check it out. I had forgotten how loud everything is. The fireworks, the guys hitting the ring, the crowd. Oh man, the crowd. There were several time the crowd got really loud and tried to drown out the wrestlers while they were on the mic. The Miz in particular was having a lot of fun with it. Holy cow, that guy is fantastic at what he does. I think I had forgotten how much fun it was to boo someone in real life.

Anyway, we had a ton of fun. WWE puts on a good show. Key Arena is still a pretty good facility to check out small events like this (assuming you were in the lower bowl and not in the nose bleeds). Seattle Center has a lot of fun stuff to check out, it was more family friendly than I had remembered. All in all it was an A+ kinda day.

Sting Sprite Commercial

This commercial where 1999 WCW Champion Sting destroys some kid right after he drinks a Sprite is incredibly effective. It makes me want to both drink a sprite and plug the N64 back in so I can play a few rounds of WCW/NWO Revenge.

O-Links

Lou Pearlman, who created O-Town on Making the Band, died in prison. I absolutely forgot that this steaming bag of dicks was in prison. Also I almost forgot how much I loved Making The Band. Did you know Making the Band was older that American Idol and premiered the same year Survivor did? I can't believe it's been that long since we were introduced to the boys from O-Town. You see, they're from Orlando and they LOVE Motown. It works on so many levels!

WWE Hall Of Fame Manager Mr. Fuji Has Passed Away At Age 82. I guess it's just going to be stories about dead guys today. Mr Fuji was well knows as one of the greatest heel managers in the WWE but he was also a multiple time tag team champion and a WWE Hall of Famer. It's weird saying you loved Mr Fuji because looking at him through a modern lens his whole gimmick feels really racist. He's kind of like Junk Yard Dog or Kamala in that aspect. Guys that were full of talent and crazy popular but stuck in these really basic gimmicks due to their skin color. I mean he was from Hawaii for cripes sake. I guess it's only fitting that he managed Yokozuna who was really samoan.

Wrestling is weird.

22 Pictures That Prove the World is Full of Jerks. Oh man, this right here happens all the time at every grocery store I go to. The area around the checkout line is always really bad, like someone is doing the math in their head and decides screw it, I can afford those steaks and just leaves them right there. If I ever worked in a grocery store there's a 10% chance I'd end up murdering everyone.

KFC x WWE: Sando Slam

This KFC commercial debuted during Summerslam last weekend and I swear I can't even. I'm not sure if whoever wrote this is a genius or an insane madman. The Miz doing the running man in a chicken costume CGI'd onto a giant chicken sandwich is like the 6th craziest thing about it. Good to see Ziggler get a clean victory though.

Watermelon Links

This Is Exactly The Truck You’d Drive To Save Your Heroin Addict Friend If You Were Also A Heroin Addict And Had A Shit Ton Of Guns With You. Holy crap, look at these rednecks. Yesterday, this truck was stopped in the Holland tunnel by police because it had a cracked windshield and looked just a mite bit suspicious. Turns out there were “multiple loaded guns, knives and ballistic vests” inside and a crew of self styled vigilantes on a rescue mission to save a teenage girl from a drug den.

First off, thank goodness the cops stopped them. There's zero way this wouldn't have ended without some innocent bystander getting shot. Second, cops can pull you over for a cracked windshield? What is this Soviet Russia?

Indie Wrestlers Find Both Struggles And Triumphs On The Independent Scene. Great article on the increasingly popular independent wrestling scene in the states. I don't know much about these millenial hipsters but as long as they like PBR and Wrestling they can't be all that bad.

Turn A Watermelon Into A Keg With A Watermelon Tap. Oh man, I would get sooooo drunk off this thing. I mean, I guess you don't have to put booze in your watermelon keg but WHY WOULDN'T YOU!?!?

LUCHASAURUS!

Holy shit you guys, I am sooooo done with everything right now. The kids were a nightmare yesterday, I failed again at changing the oil in my car, we have ants everywhere in our kitchen, and work... omg work. I can't even. Maybe if I watch this wrestling dinosaur on loop for about an hour I can salvage the day.

Shower Links

William Regal Shared A Scary X-Ray And Advice For Young Wrestlers Taking Crazy Bumps. I'll never understand why people want to throw themselves through steel chairs and flaming tables for $25 at the local armory. Don't get me wrong, I understand why someone would want to be a professional wrestler but I don't understand why someone would be willing to take extreme risks all in the name of entertainment. Just Look at William Regal's franken-neck. Maybe take all that time it took to set up your 4 table drop from the rafters and work on your arm drags a bit more.

Silicon Valley writer: The show’s lack of diversity is accurate. I like Silicon Valley but not enough to torrent it like I do Game of Thrones. As such I've only caught the first season because an HBO free preview weekend lined up with a marathon of Season 1. It's a pretty funny show and I assume it's a fairly accurate representation of the real Silicon Valley. Sure I have no real reason to believe that, just like I had no real reason to believe Office Space was a fair representation of life in a cubical when I first saw it. It just feels real. That's a pretty big compliment for a show, right?

Anyway the take away here is that Silicon Valley (the place) is a city full of mostly white dudes. Probably a lot of Trump supporters there.

Indiana Jones Returns in 2019. Yay? I guess? Would it really have killed anyone if they had stopped making Indian Jones movies after The Last Crusade? Harrison Ford is like 107 years old. Sure he's in great shape for a man in his hundreds but didn't he break his ankle while they were filming The Force Awakens? I think Spielberg might be trying to kill him. Maybe he owes him money.

Finally, The Death Star Shower Curtain Of Your Dreams. Man, when did my dreams get so pedestrian? I mean it's a nice shower curtain and all but yikes. I guess it's all downhill from here.

re: Daniel Bryan

It doesn't matter if you knew him as The American Dragon or Daniel Bryan, Bryan Danielson was one of the best professional wrestlers of all time. He's retiring tonight on RAW. If you even have just a passing interest in pro-graps I'd suggest you check out the show. If nothing else it should be worth it for the spectacle. I'll definitely be watching with a giant box of Kleenex.

2016 Royal Rumble: The Review

Apparently my neighbors sacrificed their dog to the wrestling gods so that the 2016 Royal Rumble Could be amazing....

I've been having a lot of mixed feelings with the WWE lately. RAW has been pretty horrible for a while now and the the last few PPVs have been sort of "meh". NXT (the WWE developmental show) is still freaking amazing so I'm not about to ditch the network or anything but the main product has left a lot to be desired over the last year. I wasn't expecting much from the Royal Rumble this year but Sunday night was the kind of night where the DevilDinosaur household needed a win.

Early Sunday morning I looked outside my bedroom window, just to see how the lawn was dealing with all the rain and I noticed something on our fence. Turns out it was our neighbors dog hanging by it's leash. Our neighbors have a line that runs parallel to our back fence where they can tie up their dog and it looks like he had just enough slack to jump the fence but not enough to make it to the other side. He was very dead, hopefully it was a quick death.

I talked with the neighbors, or at least the sister of our neighbor who had just moved in. I'm not sure where the real neighbor was, the sister spoke broken English so I wasn't getting a lot out of her. She did tell me that the dog had been missing since last weekend. So, we've had a dead dog hanging in our backyard for about a week. I can see why he would be hard to find considering he was still attached to his leash. /s

After waiting a few hours a friend of the neighbors sister came over and tossed the extremely rigor mortised dog back over the fence. Finally it was time to start the Royal Rumble!

Triple H won, because of course he did. TNA legend and NJPW superstar AJ Styles made his debut. Chris Jericho somehow coaxed his dad bod into almost 40 minutes of Rumbling. Sami Zayn made his triumphant return to the main roster to toss his long time nemesis Kevin Owens out. The Wyatt family continued their feud with Brock Lesnar by ganging up on him and eliminating him. Most importantly Roman Reigns looked strong even in defeat.

I give the Royal Rumble a perfect 5/7 and the dead dog in the back yard an F minus.

Christmas Wish List: Good Pro Wrestling

Every day in December (work schedule permitting) I plan on posting one thing from my official DevilDinosaur Christmas Wish List (patent pending). Why? Because I can.

This one's pretty easy and it's something I've wanted to write about for a while but things have been really busy at work and home lately so I haven't found the time. I really wish Monday Night Raw wasn't a dumpster fire. That's not too much to ask for is it? I'm not one of those kids who grew up with the Monday Night Wars that wants everything to be chairs to the face, bra and panty matches and Austin 3:16 clones storming the ring in beer trucks but I really would like a reason, any reason to watch Monday Night Raw. There are so many great wrestlers in the WWE right now but the format of the show over the last few months has pretty much leg dropped me into apathy over the whole thing. At this point even when something "THIS IS AWESOME" happens I simply don't care.

Sure Pro Wrestling is fake and silly but when its done right it's pretty awesome too. Chikara founder Mike Quackenbush (above) explains the appeal probably better than anyone. I don't know man, I wish RAW could just give me a piece of what Quackenbush describes.

I guess things could be worse. NXT is still amazing, so it's not like there's nothing to watch. The only thing about NXT that's depressing is knowing that the WWE still treats it like developmental (which to be fair it is) so when wrestlers do really well they eventually get "promoted" to the wasteland that is the main roster. I guess I should start cheering for my favorites to fail?

That doesn't make any sense.

The Greatest Wrestling Entrance of ALL TIME

I know pretty much nothing about Scottish Wrestler Grado but I'll be damned if he doesn't have the greatest ring entrance I've ever seen. This particular entrance from Shug's Hoose Party (????) he channels a bit of Bill Goldberg from WCW but that's not what puts this over the top. It's the 1,000 Scottish wrestling fans singing Madonna at the top of their lungs.

I'm telling you I watched this like 20 times last night and I think I'll watch it 20 more tonight.

WWE Debuts of WCW Legends

Here's a fun list for anyone that watches or used to watch the pro graps (that's what the cool people call professional wrestling these days). One of the best things about the old Monday night War between the WWF (now WWE) and WCW was the surprise debut of a wrestler from the other promotion. you still see that on a smaller scale when WWE signs a guy from the indies but it's not quite the same.

On a related note, WCW legend Sting wrestled in the main event of last nights WWE PPV. It didn't go well. Sting took a couple bumps no 56 year old has any business taking. It's being reported that he suffered a serious, possibly career threatening, injury when WWE Champion Seth Rollins powerbombed him into a turnbuckle. I guess it's commendable that Sting was so game to make this a special match but someone in the WWE has to be able to step in and tell them to dial it down a bit.

Here's hoping he makes a speedy recovery, I like my pretend violence to stay pretend. Seeing guys get hurt, especially legends like Sting, is awful.

Underpaid Links

Dragon*Con 2015 Favorite Cosplay. As someone that's put together their fare share of cosplay galleries I can hands down attest tot he fact that Dragon*Con has the best Cosplay. This gallery from our friend Norman is as impressive as it is long.

Sasha Banks, The New Day, And WWE’s Black Revolution. Since Vince McMahon has run the WWF/WWE (30+ years) there have been only one black wrestler to hold the top belt. Plenty of black wrestlers have held the other title belts but the Rock (who some argue that in this context he isn't Black enough, whatever that means) is the only one to be the chosen face of the company. That's a pretty awful track record.

I Went Undercover to Find Out What It Takes to Be an Underpaid NBA Cheerleader. Over the last few years there have been a lot of stories about how being a professional cheerleader sucks. I don't doubt them one bit. However, if there are a thousand girls willing to take your job are you really underpaid? There's sort of a supply and demand thing going on here, if the job's not worth it you shouldn't take it. Maybe they should all unionize.

Hands-on with the iPad Pro, its keyboard, and its pencil. I give Apple a ton of flack, most of it stems back to how awful the original Mac was compared to the Apple IIgs, but the IIgs was buried while the Mac was pushed to the moon all because Steve Jobs didn't really like computers. Also Apple fanboys are the worst. Anyway, this new iPad Pro and the pencil thingy it comes with actually has my interest. I know they're not really doing anything that hasn't been done before but as an artist I really want to play with it. Sitting on the couch watching NXT drawing comics on my tablet eating a big block of cheese. That's the dream right there.

Botchamania 285

Hey kids, here's you quick reminder that Summerslam is this weekend. You can get it on the WWE network for just 9.99. In honor of that event allow me to present Botchamania #285. I'm not one of those super wrestling guys that gets all excited about spotting botches in a match BUT guys getting slammed into a table and the table not breaking is always funny.

Disastrous Links

Star Wars EW Pics. Woohoo, new pictures from Star Wars! Is it November already? Seriously it was 82 degrees inside my house when I went to bed last night. Save me mild Fall temperatures.

I Spent A Day With The Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet. Doug Murano is a pretty funny car writer over at Jalopnik who has a predilection for unique cars. Here's what happened when he spent a day with the ugliest car Nissan has ever made. Also of note, my car is in the shop again. Nothing like the engine dying on you while you're sitting in the left turn lane of a busy intersection. Thanks for nothing Germany.

‘Fantastic Four’ Grossed A Disastrous $26.2 Million On A $120 Million Budget. Yikes. You know what? I'm honestly surprised the movie made $26.2 Million. Is that sort of the baseline for any blockbuster now. Like as long as you spend over $100 million plus another $50 million on marketing you're sure to open at about 25? There couldn't be anyone that went to see it thinking it was going to be good, right?

I'm actually sad that the movie was re-shot and edited as heavily as it was. I'm sure that Josh Trank's original version was pretty terrible too but at least it would be a singular vision, not something the producers tried to slap together when the movie wasn't testing well with focus groups.

‘Arrow’ Star Stephen Amell Will Be Wrestling A Cosmic Supervillain And An Evil King At WWE SummerSlam. Hey Summerslam is in like 2 weeks. Anyone want to come over and watch a bunch of terrible wrestling? That guy from Arrow is going to be there.

Fantastic Links

What Happened Here? ‘Fantastic Four’ Feels Like It Has An Entire Reel Missing. By all accounts the Fantastic Four movie is terrible. If you were up on the twitters yesterday you might have heard something about it's director Josh Trank claiming that his vision for the movie was AWESOME yet the studio screwed it all up by demanding reshoots. What's left by most accounts is a disjointed movie movie with a plot that makes you say "huh?" and characters that make you think "why?"

To be fair to Josh Trank it does suck to be hired by a studio and then have them undercut you at every turn BUT when your vision includes Dr. Doom as a blogger maybe you should just admit that your vision is terrible. Also whoever decided The Thing doesn't need pants should be shot into the moon.

The 50 Most Cringe-Worthy Moments In Comic-Book Movie History. I'd say this is like the 40 most Cringe-Worthy moments in Comic Book Movie History. Some of this stuff, like finding out John Blakes real first name is Robin, was cool. The Catwoman basketball scene though... yeesh.

Surfing the Internet… from my TRS-80 Model 100. I don't know why you would want to ever do this but congratulations to the guy that pulled this off.

Porn Site to WWE Thanks for the Publicity Your Fans Love Our Moves Too! So if you're not following the WWE here's a quick recap. The women's division has been hot garbage for years, however the WWE has recently called up a bunch of kick ass female wrestlers from their developmental division and given them a chance to shine. One such group of ladies was recently dubbed the Submission Sorority... which just so happens to be the name of a rather popular porn series by BangBros. Nice work WWE.