Tag: blets

Twenty blets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I got an eBay alert on a very specific search query, which doesn’t happen very often, so when I got it, I peeked eagerly to see if this was something that might be attainable.  T’was an official Figures Toy Co. replica of the WCW Television Championship blet that I had mild interest of getting if I could get a decent price for it.  And seeing as how I am whittling away at my short list of remaining blets that I might actually want, it has climbed up the priority.

The best part about the listing is that it was from a Canadian seller, so no matter what the dollar amount was showing on the listing, the CAD next to it meant that I would basically be paying 79¢ to the dollar which meant I was rich, bitch, in comparison.  I low-balled the guy, mostly already deciding that I was going to buy it now no matter what but I had to try, and when they declined the offer, I went ahead and just hit Buy It Now to cut the suspense and not miss out on another Figures Toy Co. original.

So with the acquisition of the WCW TV title, this brings my personal collection of replica blets up to a cool twenty, 22 if you count the two women’s tag blets that I’m holding onto for my daughters until they inevitably decide that they want them for themselves.  Literally ten (12) more blets than I once said that I would get, since ten was a nice round number.

And because I never made a post about it because one, I never had the time to, and two, it is technically a Pakistani bootleg because there are no official replicas made anywhere, I also got a replica of the NWA Television Championship, ironically because I was tired of being unable to get a WCW one, that I went after its predecessor since it was available at a ridiculously low, bootleg price.

Now I have both TV titles, and get to deal with the first world problem of once again having to reconfigure my blet rail, to accommodate the two new additions, knowing that there are still other blets out there that I’d want and acquiring them would require more adjustments then too.

The best part is though?  Of the last five blets that I’ve purchased, they’ve all come from money made by doing surveys.  The NXT United Kingdom blet, two WWE Women’s Tag Team blets, the NWA and WCW Television championships – not a single cent of these came out of my pocket, and came from money earned by doing silly surveys for cents at a time, over the span of the last year.  

And I still have a substantial amount left, enough to purchase even moar blets, as they maybe come to fruition.  After all, there are still more unicorns for me to hunt down, and knowing me, I’ll probably bite on a good deal fallacy when Black Friday rolls around and WWEShop drops a lot of their blet prices to more reasonable numbers.

2 Under 2: the endgame for the girls’ blets (#069)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that I would’ve had any objection to have had a son, I low-key was hoping for a second daughter, for the explicit purpose that I could purchase a set of women’s tag team championship blets for my two daughters to become the lifelong tag team partners they were meant to be.

Anyone who’s seen the modest gender reveal video my wife and I did with a balloon filled with blue or pink confetti, when we popped the balloon and pink confetti rained over my kitchen, you better believe that within at least 3-4 minutes, my mind was already thinking about the tag team blets that I would have to inevitably get for my girls.

It took a few months, but I just so happened to be vigilantly on watch when the day came where the WWEshop dropped these specific blets to the price threshold I was awaiting them to hit before pulling the trigger.  I couldn’t have been more excited when they arrived, and not just because they made mythical wife’s eyes roll like Marble Madness.

Y’see, there actually was an endgame in mind for these blets, and I’m going to share it here, because it’s really going to be a toss-up if my brog lasts long enough for my kids to eventually read this, and that’s even if they’re even remotely curious to want read about dad’s online dear diary for the better part of what will probably be like 35-40 years old by the time they might be curious.

Continue reading “2 Under 2: the endgame for the girls’ blets (#069)” →

It’s almost as if I spoke the TBS blet into existence

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I found out about the existence of the TBS Championship from one of my friends who texted me, making a snide sarcastic remark about it, as if assumed that I had heard about it when it was unveiled.  Despite the fact that I’ve insinuated no less than a hundred times that I don’t have the time or capacity to watch let alone follow most wrestling things these days, his approach hasn’t changed, but I don’t care, because it’s through messages like this that give me any shred of knowing what’s going on in the business all the same.

Regardless, let me tell you how giddy I was to excitedly quickly Google “tbs championship” and see what this new blet was, and just how much satisfaction I received when it turned out to be basically exactly what I had sarcastically photoshopped back in May, when the news broke that TNT was going to shove AEW programming off of the network and onto TBS in favor of the NHL rights that they had acquired.

I mean seriously, it’s verbatim what I had “designed” with the exception being that the logo is plated in gold-brass instead of actually using one of the “wacky” colors of that the TBS logo is available in, because wacky variety equals the comedy that TBS declares itself to be.

But let us show for the record that I had basically called the inevitability of the TBS championship back in May, and by it coming to fruition, it further cements my self-proclaimed status as an Oracle of professional wrestling, as if that’s something to be proud of.

I will say though, good on AEW to make a women’s championship, because it is one of the few times in which they can say they beat the WWE to the punch, by implementing a mid-card title for the girls.  Sure, they don’t have women’s tag blets yet, but frankly they don’t have the roster depth to justify it yet, but they definitely have enough individual talents to warrant having a secondary blet for the women.

Now by making it a women’s blet, it kind of eliminates the possibility of a unification match with the TNT champion, since even AEW walks on eggshells at the idea of men versus women, but considering their edge-lord want to to do all the things that WWE won’t do, I don’t think it’s entirely off the table either for the time being.

But anyway, with the introduction of the TBS championship, it brings the number of blets available on AEW programming up to like 37, since they feature all the blets from Impact, the NWA, New Japan on top of their own, and if new blets keep being thrown into the mix, we’ll get to the point where the six-man tag champs will feud with the ten-man tag champs, and nobody will come out of the tunnel without a blet eventually.

This hilarious meme captures the danger of the potential that exists if television networks are the basis for them, and all joking aside, the Turner family has like 15 networks under their umbrella, and as long as Turner bullies AEW onto other networks, it’s only a matter of time before we might actually have the TCM blet, the truTV blet, and the Cartoon Network blet.

And I might actually eventually want some of them, for my own collection. 

Blet Money, a year later

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I will always maintain that one of the better things I’ve ever incorporated to my brog, would be the On This Day plug-in that lets me narcissistically look back at the posts I made on the day in all prior years where I’ve posted.  Presumably, fewer things are going to inspire words to write other than myself, and every now and then I’ll see an old post that will inspire me to write pretty immediately.

That being said, a year ago on this day, I wrote about how I’d earned a not-insignificant amount of money from noting but doing internet surveys, earning anywhere from 29¢ to $1.58 a survey, sometimes taking a minute, sometimes 20, but covering a vast gamut of topics, whether I had any business opining about them or not.

Sometimes I had idea of what the surveys were collating information about, but there were tons of times where I had absolutely no reason to be taking these surveys, but it was supposedly $1.58 for 8 minutes of survey, so sure I’m now an IT manager for a large enterprise company sharping opinions about cloud deployment and SaaS whatever.  I treated it like LAIRE from Role Models, where I was role playing as things that I didn’t really have any substantial knowledge of.

Anyway, it’s been a year where I was humblebragging over $401.  I’ve been continuing on doing what I was doing then, and since then, the above is what I’ve currently got in the PayPal account designated for this little endeavor: literally one thousand more dollars than I did a year ago, for doing rando internet surveys for pocket change at a time.

I should also point out that this was originally done to earn money to buy wrestling blets with, and this amount seen above is after I’ve purchased two blets for myself (NXT UK, NWA Television), as well as a pair of WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships for my two daughters.  In all, I’ve made a fair amount more than what’s in this PayPal account, and I don’t see much reason to stop, as long as I’ve got the ability to earn something, when I’m doing nothing, which isn’t always, but I can make some here and there at least once a day.

Recently, I was spying on eBay one of my unicorn blets that happened to pop up: an original Figures Toy Co. Ring of Honor world championship blet, which is something that I’ve wanted for a little while now, but I didn’t want to spend $600 to meet the buy it now price the seller was asking.  I floated a few low-ball offers to test the water, which were predictably auto-declined, but I was hoping to wait until the end of the selling window and maybe float in $500. 

Unfortunately for me, there was someone who was willing to walk in the door and just pony up $600, and just like that the blet I wanted was gone.  Who knows when the next time this specific blet shows up again.

The thing is though, I was mentally prepared to unload this $500, but thanks to anonymous money bags, I didn’t.  But as far as I’m concerned, this $500 is truly disposable, and it’s almost like I want to do something reckless with it.  Sure, I could be the bigger person and donate it or give it to someone who could really use it, but I never claimed to be a saint, and I kind of do feel like gambling it in some degree.

And since I’m not about to go to any casinos any time soon, my mind has been very curious about dabbling my toes into the marketplace, and seeing what investing is like, because I know dick from butt when it comes to it.  I just know that I’ve always been fascinated with films like Boiler Room, the Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short, and I see a very realistic chance to take a little bit of risk with some truly expendable money.

I asked around, and didn’t get much excitement or real fun-sounding options, but $500 isn’t necessarily too small to take a chance on.  All the same, if I don’t find something intriguing enough soon, the feeling will fade, and I’ll just sit on it until the day my unicorn blet shows up again.

Anyway, what started out as blet money has grown into something a little more substantial, and with the potential to take the plunge with something a little more high stakes than internet surveys.  All I know is that the time I’ve spent writing all this bullshit, I could’ve been making a $1.80 on what I like to call, over-max surveys, when for a short period, there’s suddenly a number of surveys that exceeds the usual maximum $1.58 threshold, and my eyes get big and excited at the thought of making a whole thirty more fucking cents.

A fate worse than death

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few months, among the few things that I still do pay attention to outside of my own little world, professional wrestling is still there.  Normally, I’d cite sources or link to the things that inspire my writing, but frankly the brog’s sense of time is pretty warped as it is, and my zero readers will have to take my word on the things that I’m talking or referring to.

But long story short, over the last few months the WWE has been firing an alarming amount of talent and personnel, AEW has been more than happy to pick up the crème of the crop, and there’s all sorts of panic and wild rumors flying around scuttlebutt and I’m taken back to 1999 when I wish wrestling chatter on the internet could all collectively stfu because it’s kind of ruining everything when everyone’s so astute to backstage happening.

Among the fallout, Triple H, whom most are aware is the head cheese when it comes to anything NXT-related, has been given the lion’s share of the blame when it comes to the fate of the short-lived Wednesday Night War, when an arriving AEW was met by a nationally-televised NXT.  After about a year and amidst a pandemic, NXT decided to move to Tuesdays, in a move widely seen as hoisting a white flag and surrendering.

And supposedly, Triple H is the fall guy in this scenario, and as a result of it, regardless of the corporat-ese used to describe it, has been basically demoted and alleviated of the reigns of NXT.  Vince McMahon and one of his lifer-stooges, Bruce Pritchard will take over the production of the show, which basically means that NXT is going to be run a lot like RAW and Smackdown, which for the better part of the last 2-3 years has been the very definition of mediocre and hardly watchable.

Needless to say, this is basically a fate worse than death for NXT, which is restructuring under new management, naturally accompanied by, a rebranding, complete with new and questionably horrid logo.

A long time ago, I read some adage about how fewer things attempt to smokescreen mediocrity more than a rebranding, and from the looks of things, this is going to be a textbook instance of something once good, headed down a very slippery slope, with the rebranding and restructuring of NXT.

Continue reading “A fate worse than death” →

Thanks, I hate it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I like baseball.  I like wrestling belts.  You’d think a collaboration between the WWE and MLB to release team-themed replica wrestling belts would be a layup for a guy like me, right?

If you think so, you couldn’t be any more fucking wrong.

An obvious cash-grab for starters, but all I see when I think about the fact that there are going to be 20-30* belts that will be put into production starting in the 2022 season, all I see are 20-30 blets that stand in the way of the WWE getting off their lazy asses and actually making replicas of the only fucking WWE blet I want left, the NXT UK Tag Team Championship.

*why anyone would want a replica belt for teams like the Rays, Rockies, Reds, Marlins or Orioles is completely beyond me, but homers are homers for a reason

For the record, I don’t just hate these MLB-WWE collab belts, I hate every other belt out there that’s not an actual active or historic belt.  I hate all the shitty tribute belts that WWE makes that takes existing plates and slaps them onto some overly-designed shitty straps themed to a hall of famer, and calling it a tribute.  I hate Xavier Woods’ and Tyler Breeze’s shitty YouTube show belts that have come into existence ahead of the only active fucking belt without a replica available.  I hate when they take some shitty stinky brown leather and wrap it around an Attitude-era World championship and call it a Mankind tribute.

But both MLB and the WWE really like money, and it really is low-hanging fruit to make these and watch them sell a justifiable number of them to warrant the decision to produce them.  I can’t hate on the business of it, I just hate that these things are definitely going to stand in the way of what I actually want.

And frankly, given the news over the last months of NXT kind of being rumored to being shifted back into a true developmental territory, who’s to say that any of the NXT and NXT UK blets will even get to be sold for much longer in the future, especially if they’re deactivated and removed from television.

Only hardcore blet-heads like myself may have noticed that for about four days, the WWEShop released the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship Replicas that’s still listed as available in the Euro store, but was already taken down from the American site, which initially had me curious that they took it down in order to have a brand new blet available at promotional discount, but seeing as how it hasn’t been brought back, it makes me wonder if it’s more the possibility that the blets will be deactivated on television, and therefore not needing replicas to be sold online.

As far as the NXT UK Tag blets, I’m beginning to think that they’ll never even be made in the first place, because perhaps the division as a whole might get folded up, if the talking heads surrounding Vince McMahon in Stamford see them as a risky ROI.

At least I’ll have an Atlanta Barves blet available to me with the cash I’ve been sitting on for literal years, waiting for the one blet I actually wanted.

2 Under 2: It’s all worth it (#056)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know it might seem like a lot of the things I’ve written since the arrival of #2 might seem a dour and with a negative lean.  Sleep deprivation, temperamental screaming babies, having almost zero time to decompress and catch my breath, yes there’s no denying the tremendous amount of work and effort that goes into raising kids, especially under these specific circumstances of having two under two.

I’ll be the first to admit, as much as I might regret or feel ashamed of it, of how often I’ve lost my cool, get frustrated, and generally get fried, because I’m human and this is reality of just how hard things can be.

But then there are moments like this specific photograph, of where my oldest is giving my youngest a gentle kiss, after knowing her new sister for all of five days, and all my anxieties, stress and negativity washes away like beads of water off a waxed surface.

One of the biggest concerns mythical wife and I had about having a second child, especially so soon after the first, was the potential for jealousy and the resulting behavior from the first.  We can talk about plans and ideas all we want to try and help mitigate things, but we wouldn’t really know what was going to happen until the day came where we introduced the kids to one another.

And much as my first has often times met or exceeded my expectations, she appears to have welcomed and accepted her little sister with no complaints or objections.  If anything at all, it’s mostly fascination and curiosity at her smaller doppelganger, but no real signs of aggression or animosity, yet.

The above sight was something that instantaneously melted my heart and took my emotions to a place that is seldom seen, which is how I know it’s genuine and perfect, and that in the end, no matter how much stress, hardships and bullshit I might go through or think I’m going through as a parent, this is all worth it.

May my daughters accept each other as not just sisters, but as the lifelong tag team partners I hope they will become, with the blets to prove it.