Skummy

I have a friend who worked on the 5 Star Wrestling game, and they were all laid off with less than a day's notice and owed a ton of money. They were a complete shambles, no management experience and minimal programming experience, just winging it by relying on overworked and underpaid staff and daddy's credit card. The company was officially liquidated last year, but basically the money their "sister company" pissed away on trying to run a wrestling promotion shut the whole thing down. The promotion side of things still owes Rey Mysterio somewhere in the region of £50,000, I believe.

Finale:

I really digged that episode. Richard E Grant was having the time of his life. After a bumpy start, and some characterisation that I don't think has worked all that much for me, the last episode or two have really fallen into "Marvel does Doctor Who" territory, and I've enjoyed it.

A couple of things that were really minor in the grand scheme of things, but that just happen to be a couple of my biggest pet peeves;

I'm finding it really difficult to articulate, but my main criticism from that episode is why Loki? It felt you could have slotted pretty much any villain into that story and it would play out the same, if not better. A literal Asgardian God pulling "this can't be real" reactions doesn't work for me, and it didn't seem to rely on anything unique to his character. Maybe that will change as it goes on, but so far I'm not sold.

I didn't hate WW84, but it wasn't good by any measure. Just a clunky, disconnected plot and deus ex machina after deus ex machina, which made it feel like a superhero movie from before the MCU started to figure out the formula. Other than some really dubious stuff raising questions about consent, it was a sort of enjoyable bad movie, whereas Man of Steel I actively hated watching, and Batman vs. Superman I think might be my least favourite film I have ever seen.

I love it, and really need to rewatch it. Though I think my favourite Herzog movies (documentaries aside) are probably still Fitzcarraldo or The Enigma Of Casper Hauser - possibly because the latter was the first of his films I saw, though, and I have a soft spot for it. The man's a genius, either way. I watched it last night, and it's appalling. No character development, abysmal pacing, just piss poor in almost every sense, and at least an hour too long.

Every year there seems to be a dissection from a musical theory perspective of why we lost, and while I never really understand it, I think that's probably the lesson we need to learn. I don't think it needs to be a big name performing, because with very few exceptions the acts put forward by other countries aren't exactly household names overseas either. While it's easy to blame politics for not getting any points from the juries, I don't think that holds weight for the public vote, nor can you really blame Brexit for the UK not getting any votes from Australia or Israel - at some point we have to accept that we're doing something wrong. Nothing we send ever sounds either all that much like genuine "British pop music", but rather like someone has tried to manufacture a facsimile of it by committee, so it doesn't stand out the way the French entry always does as being very identifiably of its country of origin, but nor do we ever send anything that's quirky, camp Eurovision fodder with fun staging and effects. Honestly, I think we could do a lot worse than send some of the Drag Race UK contestants. A lot of it just typifies how we approach Eurovision in general, with a kind of sneering sense of being above it all, yet so desperate for them to love us that while we treat everyone else's entry as a bit of a joke, we're utterly po-faced and serious about our own. It's always a bit embarrassing hearing Graham Norton talk up how much the country's hopes are behind a singer who, a week ago, none of us had ever heard of, and a song we've never heard.

Tuareg people are a traditionally nomadic people of the Sahara, and their traditional music is really fascinating. But where it gets exciting is bands like Tinariwen, who play what they call "Desert Blues" - basically adapting their music for electric guitar, and blending with a rock/blues tradition. Tinariwen are the most well known of the genre, and rightly so, as they're fantastic - they've collaborated with Warren Ellis from The Bad Seeds/Dirty Three, Stephen O'Malley from SunnO))), Micah Nelson, Mark Lanegan, Kurt Vile....lots of cool people. A lot of their stuff is really heavy, but in totally different ways to what we'd normally consider "heavy" in rock and metal genres, if that makes sense. Mdou Moctar I know less about, but he's at the groovy psychedelic end of the genre. This is the title track from his new album, just superb stuff; It's just fundamentally cool.

the version of Televators is absolutely gorgeous, it's one of my favourite releases this year - and I've actually been tracking new releases for the first time in forever. Mdou Moctar's new album was released today, and there's a couple of brilliant tracks on there. Between him and Tinariwen, I think modern Tuareg music might be some of the genuinely coolest music in the world.

Tick tock, it's tough guy o'clock

I went for Kendrick Lamar, because I remember being really impressed by the album on release but I don't think I've listened to it since. I'd be happy with Thriller, though, as I've never really done a deep dive into MJ albums. Kid A and Dark Side Of The Moon I've heard way too much over the years!

Yeah, it was released as an EP before the album - though my first memory of The Darkness was MTV2 playing "Get Your Hands Off My Woman", which I think was a much better song, but never had the mainstream success. I loved them at the time, then went off them pretty quickly, and if I heard them now would probably appreciate them with a bit of cosy nostalgia. That Tatu song is great, irrespective of any of the surrounding controversy and PR guff, just a brilliant pop song. I really like YKYR, but can't really justify it making this list. Wilco are a band I like some stuff by, but have never got my head around some of my friends that idolise them, because they seem to have the odd good track here or there, but most of it just blends into one. This was seems to be here for the timing of the release more than the song itself being anything special.

I adore Jagged Little Pill. There's basically no way I could approach that album with any kind of unbiased, objective take. It's ridiculously of its time, but I don't have a bad word to say about it.

My Fire Pro stream was a frankly preposterous thing to do, so thanks to all the EWBers who checked in on my nonsense. I kind of divided my time between half-arsed commentary and general chit-chat, depending who was around and how engaged people were in the chat. I don't really want to plan anything more complex than that, but it was fun while it lasted, and killed a lot of downtime for me, so I'll probably keep it up. I'm running a Twitter thread keeping track of the stupid tournament I'm doing, from here on down: Thanks to everyone who helped me navigate how Fire Pro rules work, because they threw some spanners in the works. Rather than continuing the same tournament, I've simmed the outstanding matches, and will book a new deathmatch tournament with no time limits, made up of everyone who qualified in this round. I will aim to stream that the same time next week.

I noticed the second sample, not sure where that one's from. The story about the guy never taking off his mask is definitely Mr Wrestling 2, because they mention him meeting Jimmy Carter while wearing it.

Somewhere around 7pm BST tonight I'm going to be streaming a simmed Fire Pro tournament because I've got nothing better to do. Never done this before, no idea what I'm doing, not expecting it to be a success in any way whatsoever, but feel free to drop in. www.twitch.tv/patrickwreed

I've recently listened through all of this, and I absolutely adore it. Brilliant stuff. I've just listened to the first episode of Three Bean Salad, the new podcast by Mike Wozniak, Ben Partridge of Beef & Dairy Network, and Henry Paker. It's nothing groundbreaking in concept - they're given a topic and asked to talk about it with zero preparation. The first episode is "Posters", and it's the first thing I've listened to in a long time that had me genuinely laughing out loud while out walking this afternoon. Discussion of Henry's teenage fantasies, speculation about what posters a teenage Mike Wozniak had on his bedroom wall, and an anecdote about a Santana gig, all brilliant stuff.

It's so good. There's a soundbite about Mr. Wrestling 2 on there, too.

yeah, they've passed 5.4 now, so absolutely guaranteed to hit 5.5, and I'm sure they'll pass their 5.8 million bonus challenge of topping the first Kickstarter by the end of the telethon, especially if they have another surprise or two lined up. Exciting stuff!

Yeah, I think we're due one more announcement to get over that final hurdle. Maybe just some of the movies they intend to riff, but I think there's at least one more cameo/return coming - I'm holding out hopes for The Mads, though I think Kevin Murphy is probably more likely. It's been great to see Rifftrax offering rewards to try and help them out, but I think that pretty much rules out the possibility of Mike doing an episode even more than it was already extremely unlikely. They shared the designs for jumpsuit patches of all the hosts, each with the number of episodes they've riffed on them, and Mike's is the only one not changed to a "?" to reflect that there's a new series coming. They've passed $4.8 million now, so I could see them hitting $5 million by the end of the day, and I think the only way they don't hit their final goal is if whatever announcements they have left are extremely underwhelming - and I'd assume they know well enough to have saved something good for the end.

Apparently the idea was that the in-universe commercials would have been Dr Strange trying to communicate with Wanda, and I really like that idea, but 100% agree with the reasons for not going with it.

I think we'll see a lot of groundwork in the upcoming movies for Fantastic Four, for sure. Eternals and Guardians Of The Galaxy could both easily provide set-up for something like Galactus or Silver Surfer, while any number of the Earth-bound films could slowly introduce Reed Richards & co or Latveria. The exciting part for me about introducing these franchises like Fantastic 4, Spider-Man and X-Men into the MCU is as much in the villains and concepts they can introduce as the central characters. As someone whose baseline for Marvel comics is very firmly set in the '90s, a lot of the Marvel movies felt to me like they were really let down by the villains involved. That the door can be open for Kingpin, Magneto, Galactus, the Venom symbiote, Sentinels, Dr Doom, and so on, to become part of MCU is quite exciting.