Wearing your ‘spensive clothes.
You all everybody.
You all everybody.
You all everybody.
Cool, Cocky, and Bad
Though I’m tempted to make this autobiographical, I know in my heart that I owe it to the greatest Intercontinental Champion ever to focus on him. That’s right, The Honky Tonk Man is the greatest IC ever…hands down.
I’m always gratified when the majority of my readers answer a poll question correctly. Not that all poll questions have a correct answer, but this one did. Still, it is widely known that I have the brightest readership in the blogosphere. Both of you guys are geniuses.
Anyway, one year, two months, and 27 days. That’s how long Honky held the IC belt. No one has held it longer. Even when he lost the title, it was to the Ultimate Warrior. Not “Warrior” as he was known after his return. No, no, no…The Ultimate Warrior. No shame in that.
LOSTer’n’a Easter Egg
Last week’s episode of LOST (“The Constant”) answered a lot of questions for me–I thought.  My idea was that the island is the nexus for all possible universes.  This would explain why Jack’s father is alive in the future and Kate is so protective of Aaron.  I think that in the universe they return to Jack’s dad never went to Australia, so Claire was never born, therefore Aaron couldn’t exist.  But Claire came to the island from a universe where she does exist, and Aaron was born there.  Via the island he was able to move from a universe where he does exist to one where he doesn’t, or at least isn’t supposed to.
I was really looking forward to getting more answers this week.
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Spoilers coming Continue reading “LOSTer’n’a Easter Egg”
More LOST Than I’ve Ever Been
I’ve been thinking a lot today about last night’s episoe of Lost. Why am I thinking about that? Why not? What would you have me think about?
Anyway, there are some spoilers here, so if you haven’t seen it yet stop reading. Feed readers sometimes don’t pick up on the –more– from WordPress (that ruined this week’s episode of The Wire for me), so be extra careful.
And I Ain’t Lost Yet
Billymac just got back from Vegas, and it sounds like he did pretty well at the poker tables. I’ve known and loved Billymac for years, and this is one reason why…
I like no, I LOVE, taking money from punk-ass kids that show up to a poker room wearing a track-suit, pulled down hat, wrap around sunglasses, and listening to their iPhones at the table.
My favorite stunt to pull at Vegas poker tables is to sit down and immediately start talking. I like to play up the fact that I’m a stupid hick. It’s not much of a stretch, and I’ve preparing for that role my entire life. That kid with the iPhone and glasses Billymac mentioned almost always falls for it, and I can usually take them for a while.
Invariably, a couple of people at the table realize after a while that I’m a somewhat intelligent hick.
Gotta Love the Holidays
Besides eating…
I’ve watched 12 episodes of Lost Season 3 in the last two days. Today we’re getting out…to play poker. Never played here before, so I’m anxious to see how easy the rooms are here.
Write It Down You Selfish Jerk!
After I posted my grandfather’s Thanksgiving thoughts last night, I spent the next few hours re-reading some other things that he wrote. I will definitely be posting more of it in the future. He was a great storyteller, and there are plenty of good stories in his memoirs.
TCH brought up something in the comments of that post that I think was pretty significant. We’ve all but lost the art of good, personal writing–letter writing was what he called it. I’m making a call right now with my small little voice that we do what we can to remedy this. If your parents and/or grandparents are still living, encourage them to chronicle the big events in their lives at a minimum, or to write an entire life story. You’ll be surprised how much entertainment and wisdom you can gain from their experiences, and you’ll probably make their day by just showing interest in their lives.
In the same vein, it’s worthwhile for all us to do the same. Blog software makes that easier than ever before (you don’t have to make the blog publicly available) but a pen and pad work just as well. I actually have everything my grandfather wrote scanned and converted to .pdfs, and it is cool to see it in his handwriting.
Some of the best stuff my grandfather wrote was about what it was like growing up in the 1920s and 1930s. It is really interesting to me because he grew up about 10 miles from where I did; yet his experiences were so different from mine. It is strange to imagine, but the way we grew up would be very foreign to the way kids are growing up today. Your personal description of the Atari 2600 or riding a bike with no helmet may actually interest someone somewhere down the line.
When I think of all the funny stories I have accumulated over the years, it is sad to think that they will all die with me. Maybe I’ll record them all, at least cleaned up versions of them, and no one will care. But maybe someone will. I should at least give them the opportunity to decide if any of it is worth the bother.
Three Things I Haven’t Let Go
When I first got hit with this meme by BillyMac, I thought the topic was “3 Things I Wouldn’t Let Go”. That one would be pretty easy–family, health, and some other random item.
But this is “3 Things You Haven’t Let Go”, which has a much different conotation. Maybe I’m inferring it incorrectly, and it’s vague enough for interpretation, but I take this as “3 Things I Haven’t Let Go (but probably should)”. Believe it or not, this is a part of my character I’ve really worked on over the past few years. I’ve really tried to develop “the ability to let that which does not matter truly go.” Despite my best efforts, I still have plenty options. After all, I am powered by spite.
As I’m trying to narrow it down to the top three, I’m realizing how much I don’t want to admit any of this publicly. It’s not the fear of baring my soul that’s holding me back–it’s the realization of how stupid they all are. All instances of forgiven, but not forgotten. In order of increasing ridiculousness on my part…
Las Vegas August, 2005
I was going out for a weekend with about 15 other guys. Soon after booking my ticket I saw that there were UFC fights that weekend, so I asked some other guys if they wanted to go. I could only buy eight tickets, and as soon as seven other guys said they were in, I bought 8 together. $100 per ticket before all the taxes and charges. Not a problem–these guys are all local and they all have jobs. I’ll get my money back this week, right? Wrong. But that’s not the worst part. Literally thirty minutes before the fights I met up with the final two guys who owed me for their tickets. They walked up with two other guys who I didn’t know, paid me for the tickets, and turned around and sold them for $200 each to the other guys right in front of me! Chuck Liddell is lucky he didn’t have to fight me that night.
Summer 1993
I was living in a dump of a house in Ft. Sanders with two other guys–$300 rent. We split the electric and basic phone service evenly, but if anyone had long distance calls they had to pay it themselves. The month he moved out, one of my roommates had $37 worth of long distance calls to his girlfriend in California. By the time the bill came, he was gone, and the other guy and I had to eat it. Sure, not a lot of money, but at the time it was, and besides it’s the principle. I never got the money back from him, but I did hit him in the back with a folding chair (part of the height of my pro-wrestling obsession) in Long Branch one night when he was playing pool. Surprisingly, it didn’t make me feel any better.
St. Patrick’s Day Rugby Tournament, Savannah Georgia, 2000
We had a pretty solid team, and were scheduled for a Sunday morning match. Of course we’d all gone out on and had fun on Saturday night. At game time on Sunday, we only had 12 guys there. We started the match shorthanded, and when the other guys finally rolled up, I was infuriated. I didn’t even want them to come into the game–my preference was to take an ass kicking and let them sit and watch it. After the match (we lost) I refused to shake their hands. I love all of those guys, but I haven’t let the fact that they didn’t show up for us that morning go. I could have stayed in Knoxville if all I wanted to do was drink beer and not play rugby. Under certain conditions and in the presence of certain people, this one still sends me into a mild rage.
See the common thread here? All cases of being let down by friends. So I guess that is my biggest pet peeve? Possibly.
Up next are:
SVD
Ivy
Taylor–fingers crossed she’ll relate this to public education
You Mighta Heard By Now, We’re Doin’ a Little Survey
There were some pretty interesting results from my last poll–at least I thought they were interesting. I asked readers to choose (one) between free markets, free religion, free speech, and free beer.
With 50% of the vote, speech won pretty handily. I’d assume that the 29% who voted for beer were being funny. It’s easy when the punchline is provided, no? 14% chose free markets, and 7% chose free religion.
Why is this interesting? Mostly because free speech won so easily–much more easily than I would have predicted. I think I know why.
If you give me free speech, I can use it to get the rest of them. Okay, to get free beer it helps to be as handsome as ten movie stars, but you get the point.
There’s a reason why freedom of speech is the first right guaranteed in the Constitution. If we ever lose it, all is lost.
*** Bonus points to the people who know why wrestling great Scott Hall is pictured in this post.
Please Fix Boxing!!!
I don’t mean that kind of “fix”. I mean “fix” as in “repair”.
I don’t watch boxing nearly as much as I used to. At one time I would have considered myself a fan. For the last seven years or so I’ve sort of ditched boxing for the UFC. The fights are more active and the outcomes less predictable. Boxing is losing lots of fans to MMA fighting.
Just in case, I TiVo’d Saturday’s Jermain Taylor / Kelly Pavlik fight and watched it tonight. Wow. The other fight HBO showed was between Andre Berto and David Estrada. I won’t give away the results to either, but if you can catch the replay they are both great, entertaining fights. It reminded me how great boxing can be.
Anyway, I think I know how to fix boxing. Some promoter besides Don King should offer former UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell a few million dollars to fight a big name boxer. He’ll take it, partly because he lost his last two fights and partly because the UFC doesn’t pay anywhere near that kind of money.
How does it benefit boxing? He’ll lose. Badly
Liddell is considered one of the UFC’s hardest punchers, but watch the two fights I’m talking about here if you really want to see some guys hit hard. Throw in the fact that his pure boxing skills are nowhere near those top notch professional boxers, and it hardly seems fair.
Boxing will gain a lot of credibility with younger fans, and the buy rate for the pay per view would be tremendous. I’d buy it.
