WOW! How do ya like that! I finally did four posts in a month! It took nearly a full year, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of this blogging stuff.
It would seem Christopher Nolan's latest flick, Inception, has inspired quite a few people out there. And why wouldn't it? It was a good movie and it's really easy to parody. The latest victim of the Inception mash-up bug is none other than the 1984 classic Ghostbusters.
What can I say? Anytime you can make Ghostbusters serious, ya know ya got talent! Personally, I feel the Dumb And Dumber/Inception mash-up was funnier (Let's face it, that one's even harder to make serious!).
Still, I'm waiting for somebody to really take some initiative here, so I'm putting out a challenge:
WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE DO A THREE STOOGES/INCEPTION MASH-UP!!!
Come on aspiring filmmakers. You know you want to! Now that the challenge is out, maybe somebody will really get creative!
Well, that's all for today. I hope to be back next time with some new comics for the viewing public, and perhaps maybe even a couple of Super Bowl Ads from the past! Until next time, I'll catch y'all later!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
BEHOLD: THE SHARK!!!
Hello blogsphere! I'm back and ready for some action!
You know, I got a lot of feedback about my Shockmaster post from last February. The most asked question I got about that one was Who the hell thought this was a good Idea? (Ole Anderson apparently). The other question I got asked a lot was Why would the wrestler agree to do such a ridiculous gimmick?. The answer is quite simple really. It's their jobs. The gimmicks aren't always the greatest, obviously, but if one wrestler says no, there are a thousand others out there that would be more than happy to do it just because it means getting a steady paycheck. I bring this up because there once was a wrestler who firmly believed that beggars can't be choosers, and that feeding his family was his top priority when it came to his profession. And that man was the late John Tenta.
Most people remember John for his WWF stint as Earthquake, where he had main event runs with Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and the Ultimate Warrior. He would also win the World Tag Team Championships with partner Typhoon (Fred Ottman, the future Shockmaster). John would later surface in WCW as Avalanche, where he had a main event run with Sting. Things seemed to going great for Tenta, save for one problem: Eric Bischoff didn't like Tenta very much. So after a solid start, it was time for a gimmick change.
Which brings us to this polished turd...
That's right. He became a member of the Dungeon of Doom! Or, as most longtime fans refer to it, Kevin Sullivan's Circus of the Absurd. A little backstory here. When Hulk Hogan first came to WCW, the initial success was phenomenal. After a couple of months though, Hogan began to wear on WCW fans, who more accustomed to action rather than spectacle. WCW, in their infinite wisdom, thought that the best way to make the aging Hulkster look unstoppable was to feed him a whole stable of monsters that he could more or less destroy with ease, Thus creating the Dungeon of Doom. This practice wasn't new to wrestling, as Devastation Inc. ruled over the World Class territory a decade earlier. The problem here was that the monsters Hogan was facing were so ridiculous that fans couldn't take any of the seriously, such as the Yeti, a horny mummy, Lochness, an 800lb. blob, and the Shark, a man fish.
As the Shark, Tenta painted teeth on his beard and spoke about wanting eat all "Hulkamaniacs" out there. He even sacrificed his tiger tattoo (an homage to his Alma Mater, LSU) by having it changed to Shark. Naturally, WCW dropped the gimmick after a couple of months, never even bothering to reimburse Tenta for his tattoo. With long term planning like that, is it any wonder WCW went under.
After his run as the Shark ended, with a memorable promo in which Tenta yelled out "I'm not a shark! I'm a man! My name is John Tenta!", Tenta hung around WCW until the spring of 1997. He would return to the WWF in 1998 as Golga, a member of the Oddities, but was released the following year. He made a one night return at Wrestlemania 17, competing in the Gimmick Battle Royal, and spent the rest of his in ring career in Japan.
In 2003, he wrote the forward to Wrestlecrap: the Book, which is pretty much where I learned the answer to that oft asked question Why do they do it?. Sadly, John Tenta passed away in 2006 after a long battle with cancer. Whether he was heel or a face, John Tenta will always be remembered as one of wrestling's best big men inside the ring, while being one of wrestling's kindest outside of it.
Well, that's all for today. I can't say when I'll be back, but hopefully it will be next week. In the meantime, y'all take care now, and I'll catch everybody next time!
You know, I got a lot of feedback about my Shockmaster post from last February. The most asked question I got about that one was Who the hell thought this was a good Idea? (Ole Anderson apparently). The other question I got asked a lot was Why would the wrestler agree to do such a ridiculous gimmick?. The answer is quite simple really. It's their jobs. The gimmicks aren't always the greatest, obviously, but if one wrestler says no, there are a thousand others out there that would be more than happy to do it just because it means getting a steady paycheck. I bring this up because there once was a wrestler who firmly believed that beggars can't be choosers, and that feeding his family was his top priority when it came to his profession. And that man was the late John Tenta.
Most people remember John for his WWF stint as Earthquake, where he had main event runs with Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and the Ultimate Warrior. He would also win the World Tag Team Championships with partner Typhoon (Fred Ottman, the future Shockmaster). John would later surface in WCW as Avalanche, where he had a main event run with Sting. Things seemed to going great for Tenta, save for one problem: Eric Bischoff didn't like Tenta very much. So after a solid start, it was time for a gimmick change.
Which brings us to this polished turd...
That's right. He became a member of the Dungeon of Doom! Or, as most longtime fans refer to it, Kevin Sullivan's Circus of the Absurd. A little backstory here. When Hulk Hogan first came to WCW, the initial success was phenomenal. After a couple of months though, Hogan began to wear on WCW fans, who more accustomed to action rather than spectacle. WCW, in their infinite wisdom, thought that the best way to make the aging Hulkster look unstoppable was to feed him a whole stable of monsters that he could more or less destroy with ease, Thus creating the Dungeon of Doom. This practice wasn't new to wrestling, as Devastation Inc. ruled over the World Class territory a decade earlier. The problem here was that the monsters Hogan was facing were so ridiculous that fans couldn't take any of the seriously, such as the Yeti, a horny mummy, Lochness, an 800lb. blob, and the Shark, a man fish.
As the Shark, Tenta painted teeth on his beard and spoke about wanting eat all "Hulkamaniacs" out there. He even sacrificed his tiger tattoo (an homage to his Alma Mater, LSU) by having it changed to Shark. Naturally, WCW dropped the gimmick after a couple of months, never even bothering to reimburse Tenta for his tattoo. With long term planning like that, is it any wonder WCW went under.
After his run as the Shark ended, with a memorable promo in which Tenta yelled out "I'm not a shark! I'm a man! My name is John Tenta!", Tenta hung around WCW until the spring of 1997. He would return to the WWF in 1998 as Golga, a member of the Oddities, but was released the following year. He made a one night return at Wrestlemania 17, competing in the Gimmick Battle Royal, and spent the rest of his in ring career in Japan.
In 2003, he wrote the forward to Wrestlecrap: the Book, which is pretty much where I learned the answer to that oft asked question Why do they do it?. Sadly, John Tenta passed away in 2006 after a long battle with cancer. Whether he was heel or a face, John Tenta will always be remembered as one of wrestling's best big men inside the ring, while being one of wrestling's kindest outside of it.
Well, that's all for today. I can't say when I'll be back, but hopefully it will be next week. In the meantime, y'all take care now, and I'll catch everybody next time!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE VERY EXPENSIVE!
Hey folks, just a quick update today. Now that I'm cleared to go back to work, my schedule has picked up a bit. So instead of the wrestling post I had planned for this week, I'm posting this little gem that I discovered on youtube last month.
A little history here for those who don't know about this show or simply don't remember it. Doug was a cartoon that aired on Nickelodeon, and later ABC, during the 1990s. It featured a boy with an over-active imagination named Doug Funny, who lived in a crazy town called Bluffington where everybody was a different color and worshipped a rock band called the Beets. It was an odd but endearing show that ran for quite a while. The people who did this video put a lot of effort into it and did a pretty good job of working in a bunch of references. The scene where Roger shows up was particularly funny.
Well, that's all for this week. Hopefully, I'll be back next week with a wrestling post that you can really "sink" yous teeth into. Until next time, I'll catch y'all later!
A little history here for those who don't know about this show or simply don't remember it. Doug was a cartoon that aired on Nickelodeon, and later ABC, during the 1990s. It featured a boy with an over-active imagination named Doug Funny, who lived in a crazy town called Bluffington where everybody was a different color and worshipped a rock band called the Beets. It was an odd but endearing show that ran for quite a while. The people who did this video put a lot of effort into it and did a pretty good job of working in a bunch of references. The scene where Roger shows up was particularly funny.
Well, that's all for this week. Hopefully, I'll be back next week with a wrestling post that you can really "sink" yous teeth into. Until next time, I'll catch y'all later!
Friday, January 7, 2011
WELL, BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!
Well folks, I'm back. I haven't been busy or anything. The reason I haven't been posting lately is because I've been sick. For weeks now, I've been promising to talk about the USO show I did at MCAS Miramar last month, and I guess it's high time I make good on that promise, especially since that call is part of the reason why I've been laid up for so long. You see, the conditions in that airplane hanger were so frigid, that I caught pneumonia! For weeks, I just chalked it up to asthma and thought nothing of it, but it turned out to be a bit more serious than that and as a result, I had to stay in bed for a couple of weeks.
As for the show itself, it was a tough one. We worked for nearly two weeks putting it all together and just getting generally roughed up. The stage itself was quite a sight when it was all over with, but I would say the performances were a big let down for most. Katy Perry isn't a good live performer. Without ProTools and an Autotuner, there ain't a whole lot left. Nikki Manaj (I don't know if that's how her name is spelled and I don't care) is also a terrible performer. She was botching cues left and right and was just being genuinely unpleasant backstage. I had to hide underneath a step unit used for the opening number that was supposed to have rap number by Minaj, but on the night of the show she just stood there. Wouldn't give an inch. Later on in the evening they had to restart "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" because Minaj kept blowing her lines. For those of you who watched the show, that was the second take of the song, and it was really obvious that the servicemen in attendance weren't letting her off the hook for screwing up. In all, Heart were the only good band that performed at the show, and they totally blew the roof off the joint.
Like I said, it was a tough show to do and it definitely left an impression on everybody who worked on it. The craziest thing about this show, however, had nothing to do with the performers or the crew. It was all the former classmates I ran into who were working as production assistants for Chloe Productions. I've only kept in touch with a few people from San Diego State since graduating, so I wasn't really expecting to run into anybody so soon, let alone eight former classmates. It was great to see them though and great to see that more than a few of us are working in the field we studied for. Life as a stagehand may be a bit more difficult than that of a production assistant, but it's far more profitable. I have no regrets about staying home after graduating.
But now, it's time to move on to my other profession, the one that doesn't pay the bills. I now present to you my first comics of 2011.
According to my Mom, this actually happened to my Grandma about 25 years ago. Whether it's true or not remains to be seen, as I just don't have the heart to ask my Grandma if it really happened!
Anyway, that's all for this week. Hopefully I'll be back next time with a new wrestling post, one that'll have many of you "swimming" for higher ground I'm sure. Until next time, I'll catch y'all later!