It goes without saying that there are going to be spoilers galore here. Short of saying it was a fun movie and I enjoyed it a lot, it’s going to be difficult to really talk about the film without there being any spoilers.
So, it was a fun movie, and I did enjoy it a lot. This was the first film that I saw in a movie theater in over two years, and I couldn’t have picked a better film to go out and feel like a human being, albeit masked one, for an evening again.
Nearly three years after it debuted on television, it was finally released as a replica, and I managed to wait it out until it was nearly $120 off its retail cost to snag it at a price point that I could digest: an NXT UK Tag Team Championship replica blet.
I can finally put this chapter of my collection to rest finally, and go back to pondering on whether or not I’ll ever consider getting moar blets for my ridiculous collection.
The funny thing is that had the UK Tag blet come out sooner, there would probably have been a good chance that I wouldn’t be up to 23 replicas in my collection. It’s because it was never available, that the itch for new blets was never sated over the last three years, and how I ended up with probably 4-5 more blets than I probably would have considered getting.
Seriously, I wasn’t really that interested in the NXT UK blet, but I ended up getting it anyway, because it was on a ridiculous Brack Friday sale price, and I bit on the sale price fallacy. Plus, I had gotten really into the NXT UK scene, and wanted to have any blet to represent the brand in my collection.
Same goes for the WWE US Championship, the only reason I ended up buying it was that it was on a Wrestlemania sale price, and I wanted to spoil myself to a little retail therapy to soften the reality check that fatherhood was proving to be.
The NWA and WCW Television blets are prime examples of just wanting new blets for the sake of having new blets to add to the collection, and I probably never would’ve ever searched for them ever if my collection were in a state of satisfaction, but I gave them the old college tries and eventually tracked them down and plunked down for them.
And frankly, the Ring of Honor World Championship, I probably never would’ve made it a unicorn blet in the first place had I had gotten an NXT UK Tag replica to sate the itch earlier. But once I found out that official replicas of it existed, I knew that I had to have one and some Pakistani knockoff would not suffice.
Lest it not go unmentioned, #22 was also recently acquired, being a white strap WWE Intercontinental championship, which has the dubious distinction of being the first time I’ve basically bought the same blet twice, seeing as how I already had a black strap WWF Intercontinental championship. The plates are nearly identical in both, and for lack of better term, the only real difference is the strap color. But it was yet another sale price fallacy, and seeing it nearly 45% off made it very easy to pull the trigger.
Which brings us to the long-awaited UK Tag blet that I’ve wanted for three years. Now that I have it, in a previous life I would say that my collection is complete, but as I’d already mentioned before, with the gaudy John Cena US Spinner back on the market, I’m only a waiting game away from having #24. But once that one is acquired, I actually really can say that I don’t know what I’d want afterward, however I won’t say that my collection is complete this time. There’s always a blet, or an idea for a blet, to make it happen again, where I plunk down hundreds of dollars for these useless toys, no matter how cool I can make them look, all hanging from my wall.
But as it stands, my wall is pretty much full, and nothing short of a massive reconfiguration (a second row) is going to give me the room for expansion that I need to go beyond 23 blets. Never say never, though.
As I wind down my second paternity leave, I feel pretty much not much from the dread of returning to work, and a lot of anxiety at the uncertainty of what life is going to be like in the coming weeks. I went into this paternity leave feeling burned out and exasperated from the combination of a job that I’d soured on plus the rigors of parenting two under two. I conclude my paternity leave feeling burned out and exasperated, except this time there is no work to blame for the overflow of stress and in fact, I’m going back to it.
I had hoped that taking the working part out of the equation would alleviate a lot of pressures of daily life of parenting, but things just didn’t really work out that way, much to my disappointment. A vast combination of parenting factors, such as sleep issues with #2 that are wildly inconsistent and persistent, #1 entering a very precarious stage in her life where basically everything is a hair trigger to a crying meltdown, the fact that I have basically little to no help on a regular basis, and have spent an inordinate amount of hours doing double duty on both kids at the same time.
Most every day over the last twelve weeks has had at least one instance where I get upset or exasperated, and by now I’m often feeling so over parenting and as I’ve said numerous times, just want a single day where I can not have to be a parent so that I can appropriately recharge, but know it’ll never happen because my circumstances are precarious and difficult for anyone to really handle plus I don’t trust anyone to do all the ungodly amount of chores and tasks I do on a daily basis as well as I do.
Make no mistake, I feel like shit and am endlessly guilty admitting to all of this, but inherently therein lies just how difficult the journey of life with two children under the age of two is, and made more difficult in the midst of an endless pandemic where we can’t send #1 off to daycare or have a larger pool of people to trust with child care that isn’t the family that lives 3-10 hours away from us.
But at the same time, I’m not going to sugar coat it, lie and say everything is fine, because it most definitely isn’t. Parenting is hard. Parenting two kids is even harder, especially when I’m having to do it on my own as often as I do. Multiply that by difficult behaviors, a lack of sleep, no breaks or times to unwind, and you have me. Obviously, it would be arrogant to think that I am a genuinely unique instance as dads throughout history have undoubtedly matched my circumstances if not worse countless times, but I sure as shit don’t know anyone who is or has, in my little bubble of life.
I don’t have enough help. My wife and I do not have enough help. The state we live in, in the country it resides in, isn’t doing enough to help us much less themselves, based on the rise of Omicron and the endless existence of coronavirus. Child care is expensive and bleeding us, especially since the last six weeks of my leave were the unpaid portion of it. I really didn’t want to go unpaid for six weeks, but the needs of my children still come first, and seeing as how we still have no fucking clue to what’s going to happen once both mythical wife and I are both working, there is no light at the end of the tunnel right now.
I want to enjoy the last moments of this leave with my second child as I did with my first, but it’s proving to be difficult to do so. Time is never on our side, and I am always against a clock somewhere for some reason. Again, it sucks balls writing all of this out and admitting to just how upset I’ve gotten more than I like to admit, but shit, life has been hard, and there’s no reason to deny it. One of these days, I hope that it won’t be as much so, but I’m definitely struggling to navigate things beyond a few hours of each day at a time.
Maybe in the near-to-distant future, or later on down the line when this post shows up on my On This Day, I’ll re-read posts like this and cringe at just how stupid I sounded, because life then will be so much better, or hopefully not, still be in this depressing state in the future. But true to the brog, this is where I am at in this juncture of time, and shit ain’t easy. And with going back to work on the near horizon, it probably won’t be getting any simpler any time soon.
Over the weekend, my father-in-law was giddy with excitement over the news of Oklahoma quarterback, Spencer Rattler, transferring to South Carolina, via the seemingly most common words at the end of every college football season, the transfer portal.
Firstly, I can’t not hear that phrase and not imagine that the transfer portal is portal stage from Mortal Kombat II, where college ballplayers all show up and mingle around, with hopes that they’ll land at another school where they can either play for a contender, start, or go anywhere where they can hedge their bets and put up gaudy numbers in preparation for a future NFL draft.
Secondly, when the transfer portal really began becoming a thing within the last 4-5 years, I actually hated the idea of it. It basically turned into the equivalent of free agency for college athletes, and further fed the narrative that these athletic ringers all give no shits about education at all, if it already wasn’t clear enough but purists and romantics like me can hope.
But it really began picking up steam when the most notable cases were players who were just seemingly looking to gravy train their way to powerhouse programs, and were just kind of this rich getting richer circle jerk among notable contending teams. But then it seemed like every Tom, Dick and Harry players were jumping into the portal to try to land somewhere else, regardless of if it made sense or not.
Like Justin Fields who went from Georgia to Ohio State; that made sense. Fields was blocked by Jake Fromm, and he was a phenomenal talent that needed to go somewhere where he could flourish. Jalen Hurts and Kelly Bryant transferring out of Alabama and Clemson respectively made sense, since both of their schools had benched them for the hot new freshmen. But then you have cases like Josh Jackson, who was mediocre at best, transferring from Virginia Tech to go to Maryland where he vanished into obscurity.
The point is, commitments from players have all but become meaningless in the grand spectrum of college ball, because over the last few years, there’s been little reason why anyone would stay anywhere for more than two years, for any reason. As far as I was concerned, the transfer portal wasn’t really something that was healthy for the game, in general.
All the same, with Rattler joining the Gamecocks, it does open the door for some intriguing storylines next season. I haven’t really paid any attention to any sports over the last year or so, but from what I can interpret, a large part of him choosing South Carolina had much to do with Shane Beamer, a former coach at Oklahoma, being there, and him wanting to play for him again.
Continue reading “How the transfer portal can break college football”
It’s really no surprise though, considering how often chicken shit is spun into palatable, digestible chicken salad in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I started watching Hawkeye recently, and three episodes in, I have to say that it’s not the worst property ever turned into a show or movie.
Let’s be real here, it’s not uncommon knowledge that Hawkeye is one of the lamest Avengers in the history of the Avengers, and by himself among the lamest IPs of the Marvel universe. When it became apparent that just about everyone in the phase one of the MCU was going to get some degree of spotlight, one of the most common queries was probably, “even Hawkeye?”
And most likely in the spirit of equitability, we have a Hawkeye series, which is kind of ironic seeing as how the longform storytelling of a television series seems far preferable to a standalone film, and it’s hard to believe that of all the guys to get a prominent spotlight, Hawkeye would be among them.
But if there’s anyone who is aware of the stigma of the lameness that is Hawkeye, it’s the show itself, all the way from the writers, show runners and characters themselves. As a whole, everyone seems very aware that Hawkeye is lame, to where it’s so far been kind of a theme of the show itself, and by doing so, actually earns a little bit of credit and endearment from watchers like me just waiting for the show to even sniff jumping the shark or wrestling with DJ Tanner, to get ready to point the finger and say I told you so.
By doing such, the show seems to earn a little bit of bullet protection from harsher criticisms, and it doesn’t hurt that the show really isn’t that so much about Hawkeye as much as it’s about Clint Barton the man, and his former alter-ego in Ronin, as well as sharing the spotlight with Kate Bishop, who serves to be the personality sidekick that Barton need to not give into the lameness so often.
I’m only three episodes in, but it hasn’t been all that bad. The show moves at a steady pace and doesn’t feel too drug out, and regardless of what the title of the show is, all MCU television series are all concurrently working towards larger storylines, so it’s only a matter of time before some hard hints, or a cameo or appearance from another property crops up to make viewers react like they’re NBA players watching a dunk contest when it becomes apparent of what is in the works.
As I’ve said before (I think), in MCU we trust, because if this is any indication, those writers and show runners really know how to make even the lamest properties tolerable. The Netflix crew demonstrated it by making Iron Fist watchable, and now the Disney+ squad has made even Hawkeye tolerable. That, is pretty impressive, and makes me not feel pessimistic about the remainder of the series.
Source: Endeavor Group Holdings purchases nine minor league baseball teams, among them the Atlanta Braves’ AAA, AA and High-A minor league affiliates in Georgia and Mississippi
Since few people other than me really gives two shits about Minor League Baseball, how it works is that scattered all across the country are minor league baseball teams, with wacky names, goofy promotions, and smaller ballparks, who affiliate themselves with the 30 Major League Baseball organizations, where the baseball players of tomorrow work on their game and hopefully grow into useful players for the parent Major League club.
However, in a number of exceptions, there are occasionally some minor league teams, that are outright owned by their parent clubs. The Yankees, Cubs, Cardinals, Giants are examples of teams that one one or more of their affiliates. The Braves, own four of their affiliates: Danville (rookie), Rome (High-A), Mississippi (AA) and Gwinnett (AAA). Presumably, ownership of affiliates grants higher control and micromanagement of these clubs, and probably among the highest of priority is geographical lockdown of clubs, so that they never have to play musical chairs with their minor league clubs for when affiliation contracts expire.
But over the last two years, and most definitely not at all helped by the pandemic, minor league baseball has been in somewhat trouble, as far as its future is concerned. Even before the pandemic, there was lots of discussion of cutting large swaths of teams from MLB affiliation, and even rejiggering the whole holistic organization of minor league systems. If I had to guess, money is at the root of all this, considering the mass whistleblowing that had been occurring about how minor league players and personnel make less money than your average McDonald’s worker, and how cogs in a machine that earns billions annually, can allow this to happen.
All the same though, it appears that the Braves and several other franchises have decided to cut their obligations, even at the potential expense of control, and sell off their minor league affiliates. Make no mistake, these are entirely financial moves, and if I had to guess, the teams who have sold franchises probably all feel that the future of minor league baseball is too murky and uncertain for them to want to risk carrying the financial obligations of having their own minor league organizations. By selling them off now, they are basically betting that these teams will more likely suffer mediocre earnings if not outright fail in business, than becoming the next Dayton Dragons and sell out every game for 18 straight years.
The perception is definitely cold and callous, and to a degree sad for baseball fans and purists alike. No matter what, money controls everything in baseball as it unfortunately influences most everything else in everyday ordinary life.
However, there is very bright and silver lining to this. I don’t know who Endeavor Group or their slave companies who will ultimately operate these teams are, but now that these minor league franchises are all cut free from their parent organizations, the world is now their oyster when it comes to promoting these squads.
So in my last bitchy dad post, I mentioned that some really great news came my way, that I couldn’t really feel happy about because I was too busy being a bitchy dad at that moment in my life. But to any of my zero readers who read my shit with regularity might’ve seen a post a little while back that mentioned that I was in the hunt for a new job.
Well, I succeeded. An offer came my way, that I’m 99% certain that I’m going to accept, because it’s a higher title than where I’m at now, a fairly substantial raise from what I make, and if/when the day comes when we have to occasionally go into the office, it’s actually a closer drive than my current job, and I wouldn’t have to get on a single highway.
All things considered, it’s a win in every aspect.
So why am I writing about it as if there was some sort of questionable catch?
The thing is, there really are none. At least from most normal standards. The only reason I’m not completely gung-ho about the whole opportunity is that in spite of all the wins, this wasn’t my first pick in my job search.
Continue reading “I sometimes think only I can find the negative in a really great deal”
