The Weather And The Delay

Noting the weather forecast up here after a bunch of snow hit, Friday is looking a bit warmer, Saturday hits us with showers, and Sunday goes into a deep freeze… and we’ll be a week away from Daylight Savings, which always a fun time, he lied.

Health-wise, I’ve been better. Got a bit more sleep this week, which is nice. I’ve even gone to bed before midnight, which is rare for me these days since I often take unwanted hours-long naps during the evening… fine for the weekend when I want to burn midnight oil on personal projects. Not so fine when you want, you know, sleep. The dog is better at sleeping than I am and she often gets spooked with all sorts of weird noises. Not all bad, I suppose.

In other news, it looks like Peace Keepers is going to be another evening upload tomorrow, as there’s a couple extra bits of footage I need to grab before putting aside the Switch for other projects. That Ataribox needs a bit of love.

WCW Monday Nitro (Feb. 26th, 1996) – Good Show, Crap Main Event

Opening match see Sting defeat Big Bubba (a.k.a. the former Big Bossman is he big, Ray Traylor) with a crossbody in a pretty fun opening match, which is followed by the Road Warriors challenging Sting and Lex Luger to defend their titles in a Chicago Street Fighter at the upcoming Uncensored PPV… which is in Tupelo, by the way… the farthest thing from “Chicago” as you can get. For those who have seen the Monday Night Wars DVD, this is where the clip of Eric Bischoff giving away RAW results is taken from. You’ll note that I don’t make mention of these happening all that often because I try to blank out on commentary… and part of that has to do with Mongo, who started off tolerable and sometimes even good, but had since degraded into unintelligible twat that it’s almost sad. It’s probably for the best that he eventually transitioned to wrestler in a couple months.

Lex Luger defeated THE RENEGADE via Torture Rack with an assist from Jimmy Hart, which causes Sting to come out and cry foul. The Renegade is no longer wearing any facepaint, but still maintains some Warrior mannerisms. It’s too bad the guy stuck with this Warrior rip-off gimmick and never bothered to remake his image because I’d imagine he would have had some modicum of success for being his own man rather than being a rip-off… maybe he wouldn’t have taken his own life as a result… yeah, I’m being grim here. Sorry.

Road Warriors defeated Harlem Heat to cement their status as challengers for the tag titles. Good match for what it was and this is followed by our main event, which features Hulk Hogan, Macho Man, and the BOOTY MAN (Ed Leslie’s 48,882,802th gimmick change after being Zodiac… his sudden turn from the Dungeon Of Doom being explained that he was actually a SPY for Hogan… so that whole thing with Starrcade ’94 and them fighting for the World title was a ruse? My brain hurts more than it deserves to be hurt – why are you stupid, Nitro?! WHY?!! Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah…) facing off against Ric Flair, Kevin Sullivan, and Arn Anderson – the last one being the recipient of a Hogan legdrop as the Huckster gets his win back, JACK!

The show ends with Hogan helping Liz put handcuffs on him so that he can get pummeled by Flair and friends. An absolutely wretched main event to close an otherwise serviceable Nitro.

So quick note before we close up: there’s no Nitro Musings next week because Nitro didn’t air next week, so we’ll be continuing two weeks later. However, Nitro musings will resume on Wednesdays rather than Thursdays for the simple reason that 1996 was a leap year (every fourth year, February has 29 calendar days) while 2026 is not. That way, we can continue the gimmick of “On This Day 30 Years Ago…” that these Nitro posts have adopted.

With that said, there is going to be something to fill the void, but you’ll have to wait and see…

The Late Shift Is A Bad Movie Based On A Good Book

30 years ago on this day, HBO released a little film called The Late Shift, a television film adaptation of the Bill Carter-penned book of the same name chronicling the David Letterman/Jay Leno battle over the Tonight Show after the departure of longtime host Johnny Carson. I recently got the chance to read the book for the first time in years and for what it’s worth, it’s a superb chronicle of all the details surrounding this rather convoluted mess of a situation as a result of pure, unadulterated arrogance and incompetence on the part of NBC… something that would be just as readily apparently over a decade later with the Conan O’Brien situation.

As for the film in question… well, you can watch the movie on Youtube; there’s at least a couple uploads of it that you can check out for free… although I would implore you not to do it and just go for the book. Naturally, there’s only so much you can do to adapt a book into a 95 minute film, but more to the point, the movie is just plain bad.

Why am I celebrating the film’s thirty anniversary if I’m calling it a bad film? Well, I can think of no other time in which it would be appropriate to talk about this film that it doesn’t feel… what? Timely? Something to that extent… but really, with all the noise of late night of the past year – the Colbert cancellation and Kimmel suspension – I can’t help but think of the days when late night’s worst controversy was Jay Leno holding onto the Tonight Show by staying in the lobby while Conan O’Brien fumbled. And while I had missed out on the initial Tonight Show noise in the early 1990s, at no point did I figure that I would get to live this nonsense live and in living color.

And at some point, should HBO or whoever decides to give this late night scene another movie of sorts, I pray that it is yards better than the utter tripe of a film that is The Late Shift.

Basically, it boils down to the portrayal of its two biggest stars; David Letterman and Jay Leno, which comes across as comically bad to the point of farce or parody. I know that Jay had a huge chin, but maybe the make-up crew probably overdid it a bit with Daniel Roebuck, who looks more like a poor man’s Jay Leno cosplayer than he does a poor man’s Jay Leno… and his performance here is obnoxiously overexaggerated Italian stereotype and less funny man trying to be a good guy by waiting in the lobby. As for John Higgins’s take on Letterman, other than the obnoxious red hairpiece, he almost kinda, sorta looks the part, but again, the performance is what turns me off on the whole deal. I can see why Letterman himself didn’t care for the film.

Ironically, the noteworthy performances of this film are the secondary characters. Kathy Bates puts on a good showing as bullish producer Helen Kushnik – even if the portrayal is tame compared to the real deal – the late, great Treat Williams is slick and suave as Michael Ovitz, and hell, I even felt some sympathy for some of the network people, even if they were – technically – the antagonists and instigators of this whole deal… well, except for Howard Stringer; he’s wonderful… and also wonderfully played by Babylon 5 regular Peter Jurasik.

The Late Shift is the sort of thing that deserved to get run over with a steamroller… or dropped from a high-rise building and exploding into a blissful red mist upon impact… or simply smashed with a hammer… it’s essentially one big 90-minute Stupid Human Trick in slow motion… even Big Jaw deserves better than what he got here.

This whole deal is obnoxiously bad. Stick with the book.

Review #1286 – Rival Turf (Super NES)

Beating the rush with Rival Turf, for when Final Fight at home isn’t good enough, you can play the somehow even lesser version of Fight Fight At Home at home… and this one has 2-player co-op!

This week has us venturing through the localized ports of the Rushing Beat trilogy, which will also include subsequent titles Brawl Brothers and The Peace Keepers. Despite my claim of a trio of mediocre brawlers, Rival Turf is probably the only game to really fit that descriptor… which is good because I’d hate to play three of these things that are out and out bad.

DTM COMICS – Stupid Shit Dave Meltzer Says

You know… I normally wouldn’t make a big stink out of anything tenured Wrestling Observer Newsletter writer Dave Meltzer says online because I think it’s a tired trope of sorts… but sometimes the people who make their video clips for the F4WOnline Youtube channel don’t always present Uncle Dave in the best of light at times and after seeing this clip, I was… inspired, shall we say… with the following piece of business.

Sometimes, it’s hard to detract the detractors when you give them so much easy material to work with.

Y’know?

Rival Turf review up later today.

Should be fun.

Review #1285 – River Rescue (Atari 8-Bit)

Another dip into Antstream, you say? Will wonders ever cease? Of course, they will, but until then, we’ve got River Rescue, a game that makes me wish I were playing River Raid, instead. But the Xbox Game Pass has that and the stream there is kinda shit… even though it’s powered by Antstream, which generally runs okay at home… not so much off my phone, which doesn’t surprise me.