Classic Bite Commentary: July 28th, 2007

Commentary from 2007, a month or so after the Benoit double murder/suicide took place and caused a huge ruckus in the wrestling industry whose effects are still being felt today. You're not going to get much more than a blurb from this, because I had refused to really touch on the matter. I don't remember if I did ever touch on it with any great detail later on, but honestly, it's not something people like to touch on today.

Once again, current day thoughts and reflections are in bold, although don't expect much of that here.



If you're expecting a commentary on the wrestling tragedy of June, I'm sorry to disappoint but those expectations won't be met. Suffice it to say, you won't be hearing from me on the subject until the time is right when all the facts (and I mean ALL THE FACTS and not just speculation) have shown themselves through and the circus that is mainstream media dies down and finds another Paris Hilton issue to buzz around. Despite what has happened, I continue to watch wrestling at my usual leisure and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Despite HIS actions and HIS mentalities, I will continue to watch the classic matches HE participated in and enjoy them... possibly in a different light, but enjoy them nonetheless.

However, I would like to comment that the coverage and attention this has garnered within the mainstream media outlets is absolutely ridiculous. It's rather unfortunate that such a horrific event is basically treated as another case of "steroid abuse" or "roid rage" or whatever they can come up with... thank god the toxicology reports debunked that theory. I'm not going to say anymore than that. I'm done.

And with that depressing piece of business out of the way, I would like to welcome you to two months later... er, I mean the Bite. I had intended to debut this commentary under the auspicates of a new Webstation design, but instead it's the old one with black backdrops and everything. Well, time hasn't been kind as of late and I slumped on work. So the new design will be up in mid-August, along with what is basically a complete overhaul of content management. Hopefully, this won't translate to longer delays. This commentary is going to be short and sweet, although I'll make up for it in the next one in three weeks.

As of June, I've been working for a year. Amazing that I'm lasting this long, but let's not stop here. I'll be thanking my stars for this.

Also had a quick garage sale some time ago. Managed to clear out a few stuff including my GOOD lot of books and a few PC games. All in all, a time well had despite the poor turnout and depressingly cheap customers.

I recently picked up the paperback (cheap-ass) version of Make Love: The Bruce Campbell Way and I have got to say that this is a enjoyable, funny novel. There's lots of in-jokes and some nice Photoshop work done here and there, so if you're a fan of the man's work, pick this one up. You won't be disappointed.

A potential team-up between PBC Productions' Captain S and James Rolfe's Angry Video Game Nerd characters was teased with a trailer video. This should be an interesting project to say the least and it would certainly be interesting to see how the foul-mouthed gaming nerd would co-exist with the clean-cut mega master. As of this writing, no word on its progress has leaked out other than the trailer video.

(I actually enjoyed the Captain S/AVGN crossover and thought it was pretty good for a cheap-o production. It's too bad Captain S didn't continue onwards, because it's actually not a bad concept. Nowadays, I kinda wish I was living in an alternate reality where AVGN (the franchise, not the guy who plays him) is dead and buried while there's a Captain S movie in the works. Probably would have been a better movie, too. Oh well.)

This month also saw the premiere of Power Rangers anniversary episode, "Once A Ranger." Despite not following the series for the most part, I managed to sit through both episodes... mostly out of necessity over how much I have to change in relation to my own fanfic featuring Adam in some form or another. I'll be writing up a full recap sometime in the near future, but to sum it up, I felt VERY disappointed.

(My thoughts are summed up here.)

Just a couple days, I bought the Royal Rumble set off a friend for a couple hundred bucks with all contents included. The set features all twenty Royal Rumble events from the original event in 1988 to this year's Rumble. In addition, they added in these sweet cards which included actual film strips embedded in the cards. Nice touch for those who bought the whole package. Obviously, each Rumble is different in value (some are better than others and I can watch Macho Man smash that sceptor over the Ultimate Fruitcake's head ALL DAY LONG) but is overall a great buy if you can afford it.

Here's an article from InsidePulse which talks about the adventures of Indiana X-Box 360 and the Red Rings of Doom, a.k.a. another article bitching about the X-Box 360's frequent breakdowns and inability to function with a surge protector or power strip as some would call it. That last bit really grinds my shit - this next-gen console is supposed to have HD-graphics, enhanced Live support, and expandability for a HD-DVD drive and yet is susceptible to breaking down when it is plugged to a fucking power strip? Are you fucking kidding me? How the fuck did this happen? WHAT WERE THEY FUCKING THINKING???

And then there's the Wii, which I can say is a joy to play. There have been a couple instances where a game of Wii Sports was cut short and an error displayed saying the Wii couldn't read the disc and couldn't read it even after re-inserting the disc. I can attest to this because it happened at a friend's house who owns a Wii - I don't know if this happened to anyone else, but it's sure annoying. That same friend forked out a fortune for a PS3 and was pissed off that his controller was defected because it didn't rumble. When I told him that this was not a defect but something that just wasn't implemented, he promptly returned the system and bought the Wii instead. Amazing how someone could return a seven-hundred dollar piece of crap simply because the controller didn't vibrate.

(By the way, for anyone who cares, the Wii read the disc the next day and no signs of crashes occurred. Still it is funny.)

I remember simpler times when video games had primitive graphics but awesome gameplay; a time when you played video games because you wanted to beat the game or get a high score instead of unlocking superfluous extras that are easily found on the Internet; when game cutscenes comprised not of ten-minute unskippable cinematics with horrendous voice-acting 50% of the time, but of a picture with a few lines of text that you could skip with a press of a button; a time when video game soundtracks came from a console's weak-ass synthesizer instead of a full orchestra but was still EXCELLENT; a time when video games were stored on cartridges instead of optical discs, but still provided enough meat to get some longetivity... It might be easy to perceive this as another old-school gamer moaning and bitching about the current generation, hoping for a return to the glory days featuring the above statements. And you know what? I do hope for a return to the glory days because unlike those days, OUR CONSOLES DIDN'T BREAK WHEN YOU PLUGGED IT TO A FUCKING POWER STRIP AND THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS OF FIXING THE CONSOLE WAS BLOWING IN THE CARTRIDGE!!!!!

Ah, those were the days.

Later,
Dave