Tag: nostalgia

Saved by the Bell Rema-Governor Zack Morris???

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because nothing from our childhoods are ever allowed to stay dead and buried, NBC has apparently decided to dig up the remains of Saved by the Bell and resurrect the property as a rebooted spinoff for their inevitable shitty streaming service.  Given the fact that the vast majority of shows that I grew up watching have all been rebooted, spun-off of brought back in whatever shameful and cringey manner, this is no surprise, and further exemplifies the sheer pain and suffering of the death of creativity, especially in the television entertainment business.

I pray to god nothing ever comes to fruition with Married With Children, because then I’d really be sad and upset.

Honestly though, this is probably one of the less surprising… I wanted to use the phrase “revitalizations,” but nothing about this general concept seems remotely revitalized, but for all intents and purposes, it is one of the less surprising corpses dug out of the grave to trot back out.  Aside from AC Slater, just about everyone else from the SBTB crew hasn’t really done much noteworthy work with their careers in a while, and I’d imagine they all jumped at the idea of getting to cash in on the low-hanging nostalgia fruit for some easy paychecks.

In some regard, as disappointed as I am to hear that they’ve finally caved and agreed to reprise, I can’t really say that I’m at all that surprised.  I guess it really is only a matter of time before everyone caves, because when the day is over, everyone’s gotta eat, integrity or legacy be damned.

But seriously, I didn’t really think it was possible for a show to jump the shark/DJ Tanner Wrestling before the show even begun airing, but SBTB or whatever they’re going to call this reboot, has.  And it only took five words from the official description to achieve this distinction:

When California governor Zack Morris

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Where I really wonder what NXT is doing with championships

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a few days since NXT UK TakeOver: Cardiff, and I still can’t really get over the ending to the main event between Walter and Tyler Bate.  It’s not the fact that Walter defeated Tyler Bate to retain the WWE UK Championship, it’s how he won the match that still has me feeling perplexed and amused at the same time: Walter won the match with a clothesline, after everything else in his arsenal failed to keep Bate down for the count.

I mean, it was still a pretty good clothesline that Bate sold like the champion he really should be, but the fact of the matter is that Walter hadn’t really ever bust out a clothesline in general in the WWE until about now.  I guess the question is if he’s going to be using that as his signature move instead of the power bomb and/or big splash, to help reinforce the move, or if it really was an isolated case of an ordinary move succeeding at rendering a guy unconscious enough to end the match.

It reminded me of this classic wrestling match I saw once, where it was Rick Rude before he ever became Ravishing, versus some guy I don’t remember, and with Gordon Solie on commentary.  The conclusion of the match came when the opponent was momentarily distracted by something, leaving him open to an ordinary axe-handle smash from behind, before Rude hit him with an ordinary snap suplex, and pinned him 1-2-3.  All while Solie bemoaned the impact of a regular suplex and verbally sold that the match was over once he hit it.

Walter winning with a regular clothesline made me feel like I was thrown back into the early 80s with a finish that came from what is ordinarily a common move, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a deliberate throw back or if it was the seed to something that will continue to grow.

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The Twenty-Year Club

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Going into the wedding, there were two pictures that I had pictured in my head that I was determined to make happen during the reception.  I didn’t tell anyone about them, I didn’t try to organize and plan a specific point during the reception when they were going to occur, but I kept the idea in my head, and planned on making them reality when it was time for the reception.

Despite how harmonious everything ultimately ended up during the wedding weekend, the reality is that I had three pretty defined groups, representing for lack of a better term, my side of the guest list.  Family, my friends, and then my groomsmen.  This isn’t to say that my groomsmen are not my friends, frankly as far as I’m concerned, they’re just a little bit more, and more like additional family than they are just friends.  However, that being said, it was with my two groups of friends in which I had two particular photos that I wanted to take during the reception.

I’m fortunate that I was able to make them occur, and they were among the photographs that I was looking forward to seeing the most after the wedding.  The significance of these particularly desired shots was simply the fact that among all the players involved in these shots, I had reached the point where I had known all of them for (nearly) twenty years; two-zero.

I’m doubtful that I am I going to ever really be the guy on social media with thousands of followers and a number next to “friends” that is anything over like 200.  I’m far too guarded, paranoid and too much of a shut-in to just willy-nilly friend every single person in site, not to say that those who do are any lesser than I am; it’s just not me.

But the people in my life that I do call friends, these are typically the people that I will do so, for a span of time that’s more accurately compared to severe jail sentences than quick and meaningless short relationships.  Friendships with me are always more likely to be long-haul endeavors than just relationships out of conveniences, which isn’t to say that I’ve had my fair share of those, not that there’s anything wrong with those either.

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lol the Knicks­­

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As I’m sure I’ve probably said before in my brog, when I was a kid, I used to love the New York Knicks.  Starter jacket, baseball cap, Ewing jersey, always played the Knicks in NBA Live and NBA Jam, etc.  The worst moments in my sports fan life back then were when the Knicks lost to the Houston Rockets in the 1994 NBA Finals, and then when they lost to the Indiana Pacers in the 1995 playoffs when Patrick Ewing missed a fucking finger roll.

Needless to say, I eventually learned what just about everyone who ever follows the NBA eventually learns: there’s no team that symbolizes failure more than the New York Knicks.  Back in the day, it was the torture of having a competent team make the playoffs every single year, but then losing via the existence of Michael Jordan, or because simply they’re the Knicks.

Despite the fact that I only follow the NBA as much as ESPN and the news covers it occasionally, it doesn’t take a blind person to not see that the Knicks are still pretty much the living embodiment of failure in the NBA, except now they’re a shitty team that doesn’t even make the playoffs, and no matter what moves they make or whom they acquire in free agency, they can still never get over the hump and even sniff what a playoff chase even smells like.

To my understanding, the Knicks have tried tanking 350 times over the last two decades and at a quick glance, have finished under .500 like 18 out of the last 20 years.  Twice, they finished with 17 wins, which is futility that has to have effort put into it, because practically three-quarters of the league gets into the playoffs, it takes a conceited amount of effort to actively not make it.  Yet in spite of all these shitty seasons, the team can still never cash in on the draft, and they just continue to suck year after year.

The whole lottery system is something that I actually do love about the NBA, because it does actively attempt to deter teams from tanking, because unlike in MLB and the NFL, the worst record does not automatically guarantee the first pick in the draft.  Subsequently, the lottery has pretty much existed to troll the Knicks into having one additional layer for them to fail through, and it’s never been more prevalent than just this past lottery.

The big story in basketball over the span of the last two calendar years has been the saga of basketball phenom prodigy, Zion Williamson, from his rise in a South Carolina prep school, to his mandatory year in college, which ended up being the reviled Duke Blue Devils, the controversy of the sports century when his foot exploded out of his Nikes, injuring him, to his inevitable position as the very obvious first pick in the upcoming NBA Draft.

As Zion posted highlights after highlights for Duke, the NBA gave a college try for the first month of their own season, before the pretenders then immediately began a tanking spree, with the hopes of having the best odds in the lottery, which would increase their chances of getting the first pick, which was obviously going to be Zion Williamson.

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Pour one out for the real Silver King

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If most people heard the name César Cuauhtémoc González Barrón, they’d have no clue to whom that was.  Frankly, if most people heard his ring name, Silver King, they’d probably have very little clue to who he was, either.  Then again, I am some lowly brogger living in America, and I’d wager to say that those who lived in Mexico, the names probably would definitely trigger more recognition than it would anywhere outside of the country.

Silver King passed away on May 11, 2019, inside the wrestling ring, while performing at a show in London, England.  Reports say it was due to a heart attack, but there’s still no official cause of death released, officially.  He was wrestling fellow luchador, Juventud Guerrera when this tragedy occurred, and it’s definitely a sad day in professional wrestling when one of the boys goes out so suddenly and unexpectedly.  Silver King was 51 years old, which definitely classifies as “way too soon,” especially considering he was still actively performing literally up until his death.

Although his career legacy is vastly greater and more colorful when you look at his accolades in Mexico and pretty much anywhere outside of the United States, I always remembered him the most from his time in WCW, when unfortunately he and many other Mexican wrestlers were primarily a part of the company to be jobbers and/or the guys to warm up the crowds, usually by jobbing.  But I’ve always had an affinity for the jobbers of wrestling, because most of the time, superstars are boring and one-dimensional, and it’s only by the strength of the guys doing the jobs to them, do they even look good.

I remember just about all of them from WCW; Silver King, El Dandy, Damien, La Parka, Psychosis, Villano IV and V, Hector Garza, Ciclope, Lizmark Jr. and Juventud Guerrera.  And it’s not just out of convenience to fit my narrative, but Silver King always stood out to me, because he was one of the few Mexican expats on the roster, that wrestled without a mask.  Furthermore, he was always a little on the tubby side of stout, yet in spite of his bulk, he was still as agile and high-flying any other luchador, which just added to the ironic entertainment value he brought to WCW.

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This is what will get me back to real gaming

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Call a spade a spade: creators of Left 4 Dead, now going under Turtle Rock Studios, announce zombie co-op shooter entitled Back 4 Blood; insist that it is not a sequel to Left 4 Dead

Turtle Rock can insist all they want, there’s little reason for anyone to believe that Back 4 Blood isn’t basically, Left 4 Dead 3.  The internet has already gotten their hold of the unofficial designation, and it’s going to be declared as such until it’s unofficially official.

That being said, it’s about fucking time there’s been a sequel to Left 4 Dead 2.  L2D was getting to the point where it was basically just like another one of Valve’s iconic games that fans have been begging for a sequel of in Team Fortress 2, and no amount of fan-made maps or campaigns would be able to fill the void that was official, canonic content that everyone demanded more of.

In spite of their claims and insistences, which I’m guessing is kind of their way of trying to temper expectations and hedge their bets, the bar that’s set for Left 4 Dead 3 Back 4 Blood is going to be monumental.  There are few games in the history of video games that I played more than both L4Ds, and despite the fact that I haven’t really played a console game for the better part of the last two years, I could very easily see myself coming back to it, for a sequel to the beloved “zbs” that was indicative of playing L4D, probably 340 out of 365 days of the year, for at least 3-4 years.

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Not sure how I feel about a Hulkamania biopic

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Source: Netflix to develop a Hulk Hogan biopic with Chris Hemsworth playing the role of Hulk Hogan

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this.  My knee-jerk reaction is “oh fuck no, how dare someone try to profit on my nostalgia??”  But when I take the time to read about the details of this project, there are more reasons to feel like it might not be as terrible as I initially would assume it would be.

Namely the fact that Hulk Hogan himself is overseeing the whole thing, and that it’s going to be distributed by Netflix.  And Netflix is pretty solid when it comes to creating original content that doesn’t always suck beyond belief; and it’s funny that I hold more stock in the fact that Netflix is helming this over the fact that Hulk Hogan is consulting over his very own biopic as reasoning it might not be terrible.  As much as I love the Hulkster, the guy hasn’t always been the bastion of good decision making throughout his career and life.

Don’t get me wrong, my optimism for this is kind of at like a… 40 out of 100, in that I think there’s only a 40% chance that this is going to be any good.  Netflix or not, it’s probably going to be a trainwreck all the same, because although Hogan and Netflix are involved with this, it’s worth mentioning that one of the producers in this is still Eric Bischoff.

Look, nothing against the man himself, but as history has shown, combining Hogan and Bischoff has led to a notable amount of failures.  They basically tanked two separate wrestling federations when they got together, and who knows how many other business ventures they’ve sabotaged, inadvertent or deliberately.  It’s no secret that both could probably benefit from the payday of a Netflix project, but if this is the only reason why they’re doing it, it’s doomed to fail before it even gets off the ground.

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