Another piece of childhood biting the dust

Happy trails, Jimmy Snuka: “Superfly” has passed away.

There’s no sense in me writing yet another long-winded eulogy for a professional wrestler.  Jimmy Snuka wasn’t taken from the world far too young; he was 73 years old and certainly lived out a fairly full life, albeit probably wrestled a little longer than he probably should have, but such is often the case of professional wrestlers from the 80s and 90s who literally have nothing else to do but continuing to don the tights and get in the ring.

My last visit to the topic of Jimmy Snuka was marred with skepticism and questions of his honesty and intentions, as it seemed a little too convenient for his health to so rapidly begin deterioration as involvement in a third-degree murder/manslaughter charge began to creep up on him, but then again non-physical variables are certainly capable of manifesting physical ailments due to the limitless power of the brain to the body.

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Happy trails, Turner Field

Sandwiched in between two hectic weeks between two, two-week vacations were a lot of catching up on sleep, catching up at work, catching up on home maintenance, and my favorite, catching up on paying bills.  In spite of the fairly busy schedule with not a lot of free time, there was one thing that I felt very strongly about wanting to do: catch one more game at Turner Field.

Now I’ve made no secret of my general disdain for the Braves organization and their pursuit of cash-greener pastures in Marietta.  I’m still disappointed that the Braves failed to lose 100 games for the second straight year in spite of superior draft positioning.  And I still feel disgust every time I read anything about blatantly transparent greed and corruption involving the development of ScumTrust Park.

But this is a time to set all those loathsome feelings aside, and to take an evening to enjoy a place where I’ve spent countless nights watching baseball, at various points of my baseball fandom.

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When in doubt, Al always saves the day

Even 19 years since the last episode of Married… With Children aired, Al Bundy Ed O’Neill still comes out to save the day, debunking the momentum gathering rumor that there was going to be a spinoff show, helmed by Bud Bundy David Faustino.

Thank the lord.

A MWC spinoff sounded as good of an idea as the Atlanta Streetcar, which is to say completely terrible and a perfectly good waste of resources and time.  Especially with the extra intel that Al had shared during a recent interview:

Al and Peg are in Vegas — they won the lottery.

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A piece of me died

This past weekend, I made a terribly long overdue visit back up to Virginia to visit my family.  After my dad had picked me up from the airport, I suggested that we go out to eat so that we could have some awkward father-son time together.  Ultimately, we ended up going to a Korean joint for jajangmyeon, but on the way there, I could help but feel tempted to suggest the Old Country Buffet that was also on the route to the Korean restaurant, for old time’s sake.

It’s a good thing that such did not come to fruition, otherwise my dad would have witnessed his grown son shed tears – it was closed, permanently.  And as of March of this year, no less.

I knew that OCBs and their parent company were in trouble, because I remember reading posts back in February that documented the company’s financial struggles.  Subsequently, I remember being relieved when the Fairfax OCB was not on the original list of 74 underperfoming restaurants that faced the corporate axe.

Clearly, this is around the time I kind of fell off the internet grid, fell behind in the news, and went dark to the happenings of the world.  Despite surviving the first round of cuts, round two came an abrupt month later, and then all OCBs, as well as affiliate buffet restaurants were all subsequently closed down, with most notably, the Fair City Mall location, that upon its departure, takes a piece of me with it, to the commercial afterlife.

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I know “Bundy” and “failure” go hand-in-hand, but

For the love that is everything holy, please do not green light the Married With Children spinoff.

I know it’s easy for guys like David Fausti–Bud Bundy to get caught up in the potential payoff from resuscitating the cash cows from their childhoods like Full House did with Fuller House, but there’s pretty much no way that a MWC spinoff can possibly work in today’s society.

Fuller Blouse House worked because the show was originally so squeaky clean and family friendly, that it’s a concept that can be regurgitated at any point throughout the history of time, and it would be socially acceptable.  Sure, it’s a little too lily white, but the underlying premise of the show is built around family values and living like paragons.  The show can be remade any number of times, with current localization not requiring too much effort, as long as the show revolves around families trying to live like wholesome families.

Married With Children on the other hand, as much as I was a fan of the show growing up, there’s no possible way that the humor could possibly fly in today’s thin-skinned, overly-PC and anti-bullying society we live in currently. 

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Overthinking Fiction: Cody Lambert

My friend and I were talking about old television sitcoms like Blossom and Family Matters, and at some point, we got on Step by Step, and how pretty much the only reasons to really watch the show was the progression of Al’s hotness (Christine Lakin), and how distant cousin Cody Lambert was pretty much the best character of the show.

Naturally, my mind goes off on tangents, and it doesn’t take long for me to take something that I liked, like Cody, and overthink and dissect it to a point where it pretty much kind of ruins them.

But anyway, to those not familiar with Step by Step, Cody is the nephew of Patrick Duffy’s dad character, and the older cousin to the Lambert kids.  He’s older than all of the family kids, but not quite old enough to be considered a full-fledged adult, and he was basically the character that could relay to the children, their parents’ advice, when the kids would be obtuse about it.  And since Cody was the cool older brother figure to everyone, everyone listened to him.  Along the way, Cody found the meaning of life by deliberately depriving himself of sleep, and got into a massive bar-room brawl, all while spouting Valley speak and sounding like a bro before the term bro was even coined.

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The successor to jumping the shark?

Fuller Blouse House.  DJ Tanner Fuller, wrestling.  Professional wrestling.  Doing a head-scissors on a luchador.

I mean, Fuller House starts off already having jumped the shark.  The entire show jumped the shark before the first episode even started airing.

So when a show has already jumped the shark, what do you call it when it somehow manages to find another level of shark-jumping criteria, but you can’t exactly go back and unjump the shark, so that it can be jumped in a more appropriate place?

You call it DJ Tanner Wrestling.

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