Thoughts on Netflix’s Physical: Asia

[Spoilers inevitable]

When I saw that Netflix’s Physical: 100 franchise has branched off into Physical: Asia, I thought that this was an interesting twist on the series, especially if it were going to be solely team-based and never branched off into individual competition.  The nationalistic lean of categorizing competitors based on country seemed like a real intriguing way to be more than just a bunch of individuals trying to outdo one another, for the goal of being the Top-1 of Physical.

After watching Physical: Asia, I have to say that I found it to be completely enjoyable, and I tip my cap to the show for creating a series and format that I found to be captivating and often eliciting tension and excitement for me as a viewer, while also being wholesome and applause-worthy in a manner that’s really basically only possible in shows produced outside of America.

It’s not because Korea won the whole thing, although that does please me, in spite of the obvious bias accusations that I’m sure I’ll touch on later, but as a whole, the show was exciting, compelling, seldom dull, and kept me on the edge of my seat more often than being able to sit there and simply relax while watching.

Frankly, I thought Korea had no chance of winning, solely based on the hypothesis that the showrunners wouldn’t want to be accused of favoritism, and find some convoluted manner to eliminate them while not making them appear weak.  But at the same time, seeing as how Japan was also a contending nation, I figured they had no shot at winning either, because fuck if a Korean-produced competitive television show would allow Japan to walk away victorious, but more on Japan a little later.

What was the most refreshing part about the show, to me, is basically the same reason why my wife enjoys The Great British Baking Show – in spite of the competition, everyone is still cool to each other, and there’s a lot of sportsmanship and general respect for one another.  Even between the Koreans and Japanese athletes, there’s not any genuine hostility beyond the obvious notion that when it comes down to it, neither of them wants to yield to the other.  But otherwise, everyone is all about high-fives, hugs and fist-bumps when they’re not actively trying to eliminate others, and the respect and sportsmanship among all competitors is refreshing to watch, especially as Americans who are so engrained in seeing absolute shitheads and the filth of the earth competing in reality television because controversy creates cash.

However, in spite of the praise I have for the show overall, I did think that there was some fishiness to the format, that I’m sure people on reddit and other fan discussion forums have probably pointed out:

Continue reading “Thoughts on Netflix’s Physical: Asia”

Welp, I guess it’s time to really become an AEW fan

The night before Thanksgiving, mythical wife and I were talking about how it might be nice for the girls to wake up and watch some of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; they might be entertaining by the giant floats, maybe they’ll see some characters they recognize like Bluey or Pikachu, and the real motive from mythical wife was that HUNTR/X from K-Pop Demon Hunters was performing but the reality is that my kids love the film as well.  A cursory search showed that we could watch it on Peacock, which was good because we did have a Peacock login.

That is, until the following morning when I booted up the projector and opened up Peacock, there was the lock icon on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Seriously?  A paywall for this?

But then I noticed that pretty much everything else had the lock icon on it.  Feeling a sense of dread, I clicked on the WWE tab, and sure enough, all of the wrestling content that I pretty much use Peacock exclusively for, all locked.  I double-checked the login to make sure that I was still logged in, and we were.  I logged out and logged back in, and couldn’t even make it to the menus I was in previously, because I was met with the plan options, and it’s apparent that Peacock had kiboshed the free tier that I was on previously, and it quickly dawned on me that short of RAW on Netflix which has been more mediocre than Kentucky Fried Chicken, I was now incapable of watching any WWE programming.

Thankfully for the morning of Thanksgiving, I could find some free livestreams of the parade on YouTube, so the kids could still see floats and characters, but it definitely left a sour taste in my mouth and started churning some gears in writing out this post in my head.

When the WWE sold and TKO came into existence, yeah, they made a whole lot of shitty business decisions that really fucked over a lot of wrestling fans.  But most of all that shit seemed to pertain to the live experience and I’ve long since cared about live events, and said that as long as they don’t fuck with my viewing experience, I’d be okay.

But then the E sold all their premium live events to ESPN, which held them hostage behind a tier-2 paywall that I didn’t have access to, so now I couldn’t see any of the big shows anymore, which definitely sucks.  But Peacock still would get all of the NXT shows which I always thought were usually better in the first place, plus they still had an extensive library of original content, so I would make do with just using RAW to keep abreast on the product.

And now Peacock has turned full heel and restructured their tiers to ensure that people like me no longer had a means to access WWE and NXT content, so again, my only remaining means of watching WWE product is now solely Netflix, and RAW hasn’t really been particularly good since it debuted and Hulk Hogan was still alive and got booed the fuck out of Los Angeles.

So, like the subject of this post says, I guess it’s time to go full tryhard fan mode into AEW, seeing as how I can still access their product reliably between HBO Max, where they run both their television and PPV products.  Or perhaps I can log in through a tv provider and get the AMC app and see if they’ll allow me to watch TNA.  Shit, I have a Roku, I could feasibly get NWA Powerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr for free there too.

But fuck if I’m going to pay even more money for 2-3 different streaming platforms just to watch WWE.

As I’ve said multiple times, the streaming wars have gotten so out of hand, that we’re rapidly approaching the precipice where the ensuing result is going to be a company to emerge from the ashes, where they’ll consolidate ALL networks through a singular service, for a single price, but all programming will be supported by advertising. 

And it will be called . . . cable2.

I don’t believe he didn’t know how poorly this would be received

ANF: US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy basically says the majority of airline passengers are a bunch of slobs, encourages people to start dressing better when they travel at airports

Honestly, when I read the headline to this story, I couldn’t imagine that it was headed in any other direction than mass defiance, triggering and straight up rage-baiting from the federal fucking government.  To which it’s kind of sad, yet entertaining, but really more sad, that the federal government would go to the trouble to immaturely rage-bait as if they were a low-tier Instagrammer trying to get shock views with a poor take.

There’s no way Sean Duffy wouldn’t have known that posting a video, calling out primarily everyone who goes to airports in sweats, pajamas or otherwise comfortable clothes, and essentially blaming them for the uptick in disorderly conduct incidents at airports and on airplanes, wasn’t straight trolling.  As if he himself actually ever goes to airports for any other reason than to do his job, but he’s most definitely not flying commercial, with the rest of the pleebs, when he probably flies private, when for his own personal needs.

I mean it goes without saying that Americans today, more than ever, hate being told what to do, but telling them how they need to be dressing, that’s a tier above as far as triggering the defiance of modern America.  The response from the masses have been predictable and not at all surprising.

I’m sure all the fights and incidents have nothing to do with the fact that over the last two decades, the airline industry has been stoking the flames of passenger dissatisfaction, with all sorts of bullshit shenanigans such as cramming more seats into planes, reducing leg room, personal space, charging for bags, charging for snacks, and of course, the escalations of fares in general with absolutely no justification for doing so other than to line the profits of companies that are already billion dollar companies, among other things.

It’s totally because people are rolling into airports wearing sweatpants or pajamas.  Yep, makes total sense.  Hey, perhaps if we’re being encouraged to go back into the golden age of airlines, why not allow smoking on flights again?  Why not fire all the male flight attendants, and make sure all planes are staffed by attractive stewardesses instead?

The more I think about this whole thing, the more I can’t believe that this was absolutely anything other than a classic rage-baiting troll job, except that it’s coming from within our own government.  Like some defiant shit influencer who wants to throw shade, except in this case it’s coming from a 54-year old man(-child).

Honestly, this is all probably part of a larger, more nefarious plot, in order to force more martial law into things that ordinarily never needed it.  Duffy rage-baits the traveling nation, many predictably start dressing up like even bigger slobs at airports in defiance.  Airlines have little choice but to enforce their own dress rules, leading to more irate customers, passengers, and causing more incidents.  The National Guard suddenly has to start showing up at airports, and funding somewhere more essential is depleted in order to support.  Hashtag ‘Murica.

Only illegal because they got caught

WSB: North Georgia VFW post busted for hosting “illegal” gambling, including slot machines and table games

Over the last weekend, I took #2 to a birthday party that was at some Dave & Busters-clone type of joint, where they had bowling, laser tag, arcade machines.  Additionally, they also had a section of the place loosely cordoned off with some velvet ropes that had pool tables as well as, slot machines.

I don’t really care enough to find out the entire legality of the ability to have slot machines in the state of Georgia, but the point remains that at a place clearly geared up to be friendly to all ages, which is to say a place where you can bring young children to and not get judged too much by asshole bystanders, this place still had a row of slot machines, in plain sight for kids to see and potentially watch, along with the gamblers who could be playing them.

So it’s a little puzzling to read this story about how some VFW post up in the sticks of Georgia was busted and raided because they had gambling there, because there are a number of Kroger grocery stores throughout the state who also have slot machines, legally, in addition to the number of joints that have them in plain sight.

If I had to guess, the real issue is probably that it’s not so much the fact that the VFW post didn’t report their gambling activities, it’s probably the fact that they probably paid no tax on their intake, as well as any of their gamblers probably weren’t paying taxes on any of their winnings, even though I highly doubt that a VFW hall is going to be a place where guys are routinely clearing $10,000+, the general cutoff where one should expect a notification from the IRS for exceeding.

It’s just funny to me, because gambling is an ever-increasing problem in my opinion, throughout the United States, and as gambling has permeated through the internet, and states are relaxing their buttholes and pulling the anti-gambling stick out of them, and the act is hardly restricted to just Las Vegas, Atlantic City or indigenous lands anymore, it’s becoming really problematic, I think.

Underground gambling undoubtedly has been going on since the dawn of civilization, but if I had to guess, it has probably gotten absolutely worse throughout the last decade or so with the relaxation of gambling laws, and the increasing availability of gaming in general.  Like, people who weren’t gamblers to begin with have a greater chance of being exposed and introduced and apt to become them, and with enough drive and addiction, it’s only a matter of time before they’re pissing away their social security checks at the local VFW because they heard that they could play some hold ‘em for cash.

When Shohei Ohtani got busted for gambling and he and MLB threw his interpreter under the bus, there was a great meme about how the golden boy could have gotten into this gambling scandal.  And all Japanese guys being degenerate gambling addict jokes aside, there was this one meme that I always remembered and still refer to this day:

Welcome back to SportsCenter presented by ESPN Bet, for more on the Ohtani situation, we go to our FanDuel MLB Insider Jeff Passan at our DraftKings Studio in Los Angeles, brought to you by Caesar’s Sportsbook.  Jeff, how could something like this happen??

That’s how I feel about the VFW gambling hall that’s supposedly illegal.  Sure, they probably weren’t paying any taxes on the cash money circulating around the joint, but at the same time, I can’t imagine anything remotely close to a casino’s liquid was sloshing around the joint.

Plus, probably all of them are veterans who have served the country in some way shape or form, leave them the fuck alone.  I’m not saying they should get full-on Armageddon don’t ever have to pay taxes ever again, but for fuck’s sake, turn the other cheek on some casual entertainment gambling, they’re not hurting anyone.

Instead, Uncle Sam gets to fuck over these guys a second time around, by shutting down their social gathering spot, and being colossal assholes in going after a small pissant operation, in the grand spectrum of illegal gambling operations throughout the country.

Way to go, Georgia.  Way to go, ‘murica.  Sure is great here

I can’t ever be mad about Freddie Freeman

Trust me, bro: Freddie Freeman becomes the only player in MLB history to have more than one walk-off homerun in the World Series.  That’s it.

When the day is over, I couldn’t give two shits over who wins the World Series.  Obviously, I would prefer it to be the Blue Jays, but as I’ve said before, the Dodgers are inevitable, and prior to the start of the series, I had flippantly predicted that it would be the Dodgers in five, and so far, my prediction is still in play.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto is pitching like a man possessed, with two straight complete games, playing like a man who was worth a $330M contract, and the golden boy Shohei Ohtani seems to have figured out playoff baseball, and over his last few games, has been hitting home runs in every single one and OPSing like 5.000 or so it feels.

Oh and make no mistake, the MLB media machine and all of its stage-six clingers are absolutely all the fuck over this Japanese invasion, and it’s getting to a point where I feel like I’m going to resent MLB so much I’d swear it off, by just how much weeb-worship they’re jizzing all over the internet like they’re watering a garden with a hose.  I get it, Yamamoto and Ohtani are playing phenomenally right now, but it’s not like nobody else in the history of Major League Baseball has ever caught fire in the midst of the playoffs and carried their teams to some hot streaks.

But MLB media has become more weeby than 76 anime conventions put together and they just can’t help themselves with how much spooging they’re doing over every little thing a Japanese player does, and there’s no length too great to stretch out in order to make all sorts of convoluted stats or combination of stats to fit the narrative that only Shohei Ohtani is the only person in history to accomplish, so they can cliché-ly end with “that’s it.”

Thankfully, last night was a reminder that there are stalwart baseball players in existence that aren’t from glorious Nippon, and that the Dodgers true captain is the one who bailed them out of an 18-inning purgatory with once again, calling game in the most dramatic of fashions, the walk-off home run.

Freddie Freeman became the ONLY PLAYER in MLB HISTORY to have multiple walk-off home runs in the World Series, now having done it in 2025 a year removed from when he walked off the Yankees last year. 

That’s it.

And I know that I’m rooting against the Dodgers just like the the vast majority of the world outside of Los Angeles and entire country of Japan, but there is no part of me that is capable of hating Freddie Freeman, even if he is on the team.  I am happy for his second walk-off homer in the World Series, and I’m happy for his family to have been able to witness him once again bail the entire team out and be Mr. Hero, the only one genuinely worthy of such, on a roster full of guys that MLB really wants to be Mr. Hero instead.

Despite the fact that he plays for the Dodgers, an act of heroism by Freddie Freeman, at least to me, is still kind of a big middle finger to MLB, their media machine and all Dodgers fans that overlook his own greatness because they’re all too busy drooling over Ohtani or Yamamoto or even Roki for no other reason than that they’re shiny Japanese imports.

Lest everyone forgets, Freddie, and Mookie Betts, were guys who had their own championship rings before last year, and knew how to win without a $1B payroll and malleable management to make a cultural shift to cater to players, and it’s not a far stretch to say that without their leadership and guidance, they wouldn’t have won last year, where Ohtani had to be carried across the finish line by Freddie Freeman who went gangbusters in mauling the Yankees all series long.

I still want the Dodgers to lose in the end, which doesn’t really seem like a likely possibility, but I’m at peace if Freddie Freeman snaps out of his general postseason underperformance, and it subsequently helps the Dodgers win, because like I said, it’s impossible for me to be mad about anything that Freddie Freeman does, because he’s just that good of a human being that even him playing on the most reviled of teams doesn’t change my appreciation of him one bit.

Praise for NXT Halloween Havoc

Over the last few year and change, there’s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding the state of the WWE following the company’s sale and eventual restructuring into being an arm of their new parent company TKO.  Questionable decision making as far as staffing, personnel and eventual booking choices, but more primarily how they’re killing the WWE with their flagrant price gauging, cost increases across the board on tickets, merch, and various other microtransactions, masterfully finding each and every nickel and dime to bilk out of wrestling fans.

I often said to my friends that I didn’t really feel impacted by much of it, because I had little interest in going to any live events; I’d been to Wrestlemania twice now, and numerous other ppvs when they were still called ppvs, and at the prices of tickets these days, I would way rather just watch from the comfort of my own home.  Over the summer, I went to NXT’s Great American Bash, solely based on the fact that it was at my favorite venue (Center Stage), but after paying $130 for almost literally the last row of the venue, only to be seated next to 1.75x of humanity, I almost want to swear off going to WWE shows outright, fearing a similar fate the next time I plunk down grown up money just to be in attendance.

Additionally, I would say to my friends that as long as TKO doesn’t fuck around with my viewing experience, then I don’t really have many qualms with how they’re operating the company.  But over the last few months, WWE PLEs have all been shifted over to ESPN++ to some new tier that I can’t get access too without actually having to pay money for it, so I’ve missed the last two major events.  NXT remains on CW which I don’t have access to in a streaming capacity, and I haven’t seen an episode of Smackdown in years because I don’t have the means to watch whatever channel they’re on now.  RAW on Netflix is still available to me, but the production of the show is really wonky and weird, and it’s hard to stay engaged when they’re being so flagrant with performing at 60% so that they can save their ammo for the next PLE.

In other words, TKO has been fucking around with the viewing experience, and it definitely sucks as a fan.  Not knowing what shows are on what platform, if I can even watch them or not, and if and when I can, there being paywalls in order to see things as simply as storyline promo packages and performer entrances.  Obviously, I’m not going to swear off wrestling by any stretch of the imagination, but I am entitled to air out my grievances about the state of the WWE when I find their operational conduct to be annoying.

All that said, I wanted to chirp a little bit about how much of a breath of fresh air NXT’s Halloween Havoc felt like, because it definitely felt like a positive reprieve from the suffocating corporate cloud that the main roster WWE has been feeling like over the last year.

It was on Peacock, which had the occasional commercial break here and there, but the show as a whole had a banger of main song that they spammed throughout the evening, and the replay showed all the promo packages, which helped a viewer like me who can’t actually watch NXT to the minute, to catch up with what to expect in the show.  The show itself was at a smaller venue in a part of Arizona that I’d never even heard of, but it looked like the type of show that I’d have definitely been interested in going to, because it wasn’t a mega arena, and it wasn’t in a clusterfuck of a place like Atlanta, and looked like a fun place to watch wrestling.

And of course, the matches were all pretty entertaining.  Call me crazy, but sometimes some matches don’t really have to have a convoluted storyline behind them, and you can really just take a bunch of entertaining workers and throw them in a match together to great effect, and that’s how I felt with the opening match of Je’Von Evans and Leon Slater vs. La Parka* and Mr. Iguana.  No real story, just an NXT guy teamed with a TNA guy against two AAA guys, and they tore the house down to open the show.

*What’s funny is that on this exact date, there was a Lucha show in Atlanta that advertised La Parka on the card, so I’m amused by the fact that one of these shows got the actual current La Parka, while the other got an imposter, or they’re up to like La Parka IV or V at this point, like the Villanos, but whomever NXT had that night was wayyyy too talented of a La Parka than what fans of his from WCW might have remembered.  Motherfucker was doing picture perfect Asai moonsaults out of the ring and press slams into gutbusters, a far cry from the dumpy fat luchador in WCW that swung a chair and strutted his way to the bank.

Mariah May Blake Monroe got to flex a little bit of her actual wrestling skill in her win against Zaria for the women’s North American title, and I’m pleased that she’s allowed to do some of the work that elevated her so much in AEW, and I really enjoyed Ethan Page’s match against El Hijo de Dr. Wagner, and despite being the heel, Vic Joseph’s commentary about how much of a fighting champion Page has been, it’s hard to not respect the work the man puts into the business.  But the match had some really brutal spots, and it was enjoyable from start to finish.

The Hardy Boyz vs. Darkstate was an entertaining disaster, even if I don’t believe in all at the long-term viability of Darkstate.  They’re like a Temu-grade Shield, with less charisma, but given the fact that the Hardyz are still TNA guys, it seemed likely that they were going to have give those NXT blets back sooner rather than later.

Honestly, it’s not that the Ricky Saints vs. Trick Williams match was necessarily bad, it’s just that other matches on the card were more entertaining and compelling, that theirs just kind of didn’t stand out in comparison.  Both are talented workers, but in the context of the evening their fairly vanilla wrestling match just wasn’t as exciting as all of the matches that preceded it.  Plus, the finish seemed really wonky and almost rushed, and when it was over, I was just kind of like, that’s it?

But let’s really talk about Tatum Paxley’s ascension to the top of the mountain, beating Jacy Jayne for the NXT Women’s championship.  Firstly, I do want to give my flowers to Jayne for a respectable run with the top prize; I know her win was a surprise, considering she beat the aura-filled Stephanie Vaquer, but I didn’t hate it, because she was a solid hand that was easily the most talented worker of Toxic Attraction, and I always like seeing hard workers get rewarded with solid pushes.

However that being said, the same could very easily be said about Tatum Paxley, whom I get some Liv Morgan-like, love of the game vibes from, and like Jayne, her hard work has been noticeable and palpable over the course of the last 12+ months, and I’m pleased to see her get this honor of getting to be the women’s champion.  I think she’s more athletic than Liv ever has been and works pretty cleanly in spite of her general level of experience, but her character work and portrayal of the weird but talented goth girl seems to have captured the audience, and I’d be lying if I didn’t stop and let the look linger on her; she’s cute as hell.

But when she won the title, I definitely got those similar vibes to her championship that I felt when Liv won the women’s title for the first time, or when Iyo won the World championship the last time; it was a sense of satisfaction that a hard worker was getting their justly reward.

Overall, Halloween Havoc was a breath of fresh air of how good the WWE is capable of operating in a manner that I wish were the norm all throughout the company, and not just in NXT.  It kind of reminds me of that period between 2016-2017 where NXT was just firing on all cylinders so well that it was clear that they were the best brand in the company.  Look forward to the next NXT event, that is until they’re spontaneously sold off to start showing on like Tubi or Fubo or some other rando platform.

Oh, Atlanta #897

Urbanize Atlanta: legendary gentleman’s club/piece of iconic real estate aka The Cheetah to become lame student housing for Georgia Tech

A long time ago, when I moved back out to the ‘burbs, I had a moment of feeling that I would miss living and/or working within the city.  There was a piece of me that felt some sort of importance to have proximity to the city in order to have a feel for the pulse of it, and that residing outside of it would make me lose touch with all the news and happenings within Atlanta city proper.

Sure, it is accurate to say that I’ve lost touch with the general, boots-on-the-ground minutiae of the city, but it’s still entirely possible to keep up with the general main happenings in and around the city by virtue of, the internet.  There are plenty of sites and outlets that do a good job of keeping me abreast to stuff like restaurants and events, not that I have a tenth of the extroverted desires to go out in the world anymore for the most part.

But when the day is over, I just don’t really give a shit anymore about needing to know much about what’s going on in the city like I used to.  I don’t miss going into the city, and I feel no real need to have a finger on the pulse of it anymore.  The pandemic only accelerated this detachment from things, but it’s like every time I do go into the city, I’m always surprised to see new things, and alterations to the general city skyline, primarily within a 2-mile radius around Georgia Tech; encapsulating Midtown, and the at some point-christened West Midtown neighborhoods.

In the past, I used to work pretty much right next to The Cheetah, right in Tech Square.  There was a break room that I used to sit in to eat my lunch that had a window that looked right out onto Spring Street, and The Cheetah, and not much else, because at the time there was only a giant-ass dead lot that was used for pay parking.

I’ve never really been one for strip clubs, since there’s little more of a turn off knowing that the broads prancing around trying to separate you from your cash, resent your existence by being there, and a headcase like me needs to have some degree of emotional connection in order for my wires to heat up.  But all the same, I always respected the existence of The Cheetah, as it was kind of an icon of the city, often in the same breath as other notorious locations in the city like The Clermont Lounge, Murder Kroger, Center Stage, Little Five Points, etc.

Plus, I really enjoyed it when I found a random $20 bill on the sidewalk while I was passing by, and it helped contribute to my very first iPad acquisition way back in the day.

But in spite of my general ambivalence for strip clubs, it did give me a case of meh-face when I learned that The Cheetah was next on the city’s chopping block in order to make room for more lame student housing.  Like, there are so many other dilapidated and/or useless plots of land remotely close to Georgia Tech that could make for land for student housing as opposed to sacrificing The Cheetah.  And it’s not like over the span of the last decade there aren’t like 5-6 other new student housing buildings that have popped up to house all these Georgia Tech nerds.

I dunno, it just leaves me feeling sour, knowing that Atlanta seems to slowly be sacrificing all of the little quirks and idiosyncrasies that made Atlanta, Atlanta, the way they keep cannibalizing shit with character for boring ass shit like moar student housing, egregiously priced condominiums, or corporate headquarters.  It’s like they’re going to run out of insufferably elevated words and names to use for all these soulless towers at the rate they’re going, and the last time I was in the city, for a wrestling show at Center Stage, there were literally two new apartment towers that had sprouted up that weren’t there just months prior.

When the day is over, I’m not going to lose any sleep over the demise of The Cheetah.  But it’s stuff like this that makes it easier to reinforce the notion that I don’t miss being in the city or needing to be close to the city, at all.  Almost all of the restaurants I used to like to go to are all gone, and little landmarks that I could always give people ten-cent tours over are all being razed for boring shit.  It makes me sad knowing that the city that I do rep is voluntarily forfeiting their character and charm, over the need for a bunch of useless and aesthetically soulless real estate that contributes very little to the long-term life of Atlanta.