Knights of Badassdom: The Trailer

Hey kids, ever heard of the Peter Dinklage movie Knights of Badassdom? It was made WAY back in 2010 (some of it was shot in Spokane Washington!) and has been languishing without a release date for the last few years. Everything I've read about it looks great, but I haven't seen any footage until now. Still looks great. Hopefully I'll be able to see it in a theater sometime before my 50th birthday.

Lets talk about the WWE Network

Last week at CES the WWE announced a new streaming service that many have heralded as the future of television. Go ahead and click the link if you want all the details, if not allow me to summarize. For $9.99 a month you'll have access to a large portion of the WWE's catalog; Pay Per Views, DVD compilations old episodes of RAW and Nitro. All available on your tablet, PC, Roku, Xbox Live, etc. Essentially it's the Netflix of wrestling. Here's the kicker though, you also get live Pay Per Views such as Wrestlemania, the Royal Rumble and Summerslam.

Now I don't know when the last time you ordered a wrestling or even a UFC pay per view but they start at $50 and can run $70 easy. If you're a wrestling fan who orders just one PPV a year, you're a sucker not to sign up for the WWE Network. For the price of Wrestlemania alone you get 6 months of programming along with 5 other PPV events.

Ok, enough of the wrestling geekery. Here's what has net-nerds excited. The thought that other networks will follow suit. The holy grail of a la carte networks of course being HBO.. or ESPN I guess, if you're into Sportsball. Kids these days don't want to sit down in front of their TV and watch what's on. They're greedy little snots that want to watch what they want when they want and they only want to pay for what they watch. Which I guess is reasonable. The problem is that most channels (like ESPN) aren't built like the WWE.

The WWE owns everything it produces. Sure USA and SyFy and ION put their programing on the air but they don't actually own the shows. In contrast save for old episodes of PTI, ESPN owns nothing. In fact a lot of networks are in the same boat. There are a handful of shows they actually own and then everything else is owned by the production companies that produce the shows. For example If NBC tried the same thing using content they owned 100% they would have rerun after rerun of The Single Guy and ZERO episodes of Seinfeld.

Long story short, I'm not sure how much the WWE network really heralds a new era of a la carte programing as much as it heralds in a new era for the WWE. Quite honestly I'm not looking forward to a future where I have to pay a dozen different subscriptions for the same content you can get with cable for one price but I guess that makes me an old fuddy duddy.

The Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark

If you have an hour to kill I can think of a lot worse ways to kill it than watching this 1981 PBS documentary on the Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark. At least that's what I've been told. I mean I don't have an hour to kill. Last night the youngest kid fell asleep around midnight and the oldest kid woke up at 5am. I can think of a lot of things I'd like to kill this morning but an hour isn't one of them.

BTW, There should be a whole youtube channel dedicated to broadcasting old TV shows and movies with the old commercials included. A couple years ago I popped in a VHS tape of Star Trek II that I taped about 30 years ago. It was like opening up a time capsule.

BBTW, That copy of Star Trek II I have is the fabled ABC version that had a couple extra scenes that weren't in the theatrical release. I wonder what I could get for it on Ebay?

Winter Game of Thrones Season 4 is coming

The fine folks at HBO released a trailer for the 4th season of Game of Thrones last night. I've gotta hand it to them. They sure know how to put together a trailer. Right after watching it I loaded up A Feast for Crows on the kindle. I had to put it down almost right away because my kids are constantly screaming and crying about something, but still.

Go Outdoors, right now

The Group Therapy Tour: The Review

So with some prodding from my wife and the help of a buddy at work I actually went out and saw a rap show last night. It was the Group Therapy tour: Schaffer the Darklord, Adam WarRock and Tribe one plus local guests Beefy and Death*Star. Now for a bit of context I'm not really a "going out" kind of guy. My friend Mike laughed at me when I was amazed at how my drivers licence glowed under the blacklight when they took our money at the door. I'm pretty sure the last time I had been in a club that need to see ID was about 8 years ago and the last time I actually saw a concert was nearly 17 year ago.

editors note: the following is in no ways a review or analysis of the content of any of the performers songs. All of these guys are quote unquote nerdcore rappers and what they do best is take pop culture references (specifically geeky ones) and layer them over stories of fear, acceptance, love, regret, etc. Essentially sometimes a song about Magneto is more than just a song about Magneto. Either you love this kind of music or you don't.

The Show was at the Lo-Fi in kinda-downtown Seattle. It's a big club? small club? I don't know. Like I said, zero frame of reference. There were at least 100 people there, probably more, and while it was pretty packed in front of the stage I didn't have to wait in line for a beer or to go to the bathroom. For someone who literally had to take anxiety medication to go out it was a pretty ideal crowd to space ratio. It probably helped that we sat up in this balcony area overlooking the stage that was mostly empty all night. I'm pretty sure most people either didn't know about it or thought it was off limits.

Beefy opened the show. He sounded great, I'm guessing he hasn't performed in a while as he forgot some lines a couple of times. Whatever, he played like 3 of my favorite songs so I didn't care. Tribe One went on next, he killed it. He did the two songs I really wanted to hear (Devil Rhymeosaur and I'm kind of a big Deal) so I was thrilled. After a short break Death*Star played. I had never even heard of Death*Star but they were pretty entertaining. They were a bit looser than everyone else but they had great energy and a live DJ so they get bonus points from me. In a way they were sort of a perfect middle act.

After another short break Adam WarRock went on. Not to say anything negative about the guys that went on before him because I thought everyone sounded great, but man... it's hard to describe but the energy and skill he showed, he was just on another level. It was a really great set. My only nitpick is that I wish he had played more songs off his new album. I guess it's tough coming up with a set list that will please everyone when you recorded over 100 songs in a year.

Schaffer the Darklord closed the show. Earlier in the night Adam WarRock had mentioned that Schaffer is every nerdcore rappers favorite live act. I know why. Killed it doesn't even begin to describe how good he was. I've had to re-write these couple sentences about a dozen times trying to describe it. Some performers suck live, like you watch them on SNL and you're like "jeez this stinks". STD's songs didn't just sound like the albums they sounded better. The extra emotion and energy he brought to each song while still being able to actually rap everything coherently was ridiculous. Half way through his last song I just threw up my hands and had to look away. The way he was delivering every line was just filthy. It was really amazing.

TL/DR The opening night of the Group Therapy Tour was rad and if you live on the West Coast you should check it out.

EXTREME barbie jeep racing

Extreme Barbie Jeep Racing sounds like something you would come up with late Saturday night while getting drunk watching Sabado Gigante.... and it's about as glorious as your drunk Sabado Gigante watching ass could imagine.

I appreciate that they went to a spot with a little bit of snow. It really adds some legitimacy to the event. Also I assume like 4 of these guys died doing this, so I appreciate the sacrifice they made to entertain us for like three minutes.

100 Action Movie One Liners

Here's a video I'm pretty sure I meant to post before Christmas. It's a supercut of the 100 "greatest" movie one liners. I don't think I made it more than 2 minutes before I got bored. See if you can beat my time. Challenge your friends!