Right, yeah, you’re talking the piss.
Saw some of it. Looked pretty good.
That’s my review. Leave me alone.
All Out 2023 Review
AEW All In 2023: Proper PPV Review (Part 2: The ACTUAL Flipping Review)
Did you get that? ‘Flipping’, yeah? As in, the PG-friendly expression of mild annoyance you use when your whole body wants to say ‘fucking’ but you remember at the last minute that this is the only hour this month that the court says you’re allowed to talk to your three toddler aged children. But also, like, the review of the flipping flippy dippy wrestlers flipping themselves around? Yeah? Fucking genius. You bunch of cunts. No, please don’t take my kids away again, I promise I’ll behave!
Right no more bloviating this time. Quick recap of part 1:
[EDIT: I started writing this on Saturday the 2nd September. That night, or perhaps early Sunday morning, a new part to this story was added which is now going to require some furious editing:
Wish me luck]
Right, we’re all on the same page now.
just saved you reading about 4000 words. you’re welcomeAEW All In 2023: Proper PPV Review (Part 1: the Build Up)
Alright, so we’ve had all the niceties, I’ve given all you sick freaks a few thousand words and what it felt like to watch ‘The Biggest Event In Wrestling History™’ live in attendance, now let’s take a look at the actual show itself. Immediately, this means two things:
- The photos are going to be a lot better. But, I dunno, lacking some of that charm, you know warra mean? Not as legitimate somehow? Like, sure, you’ve got your complex autofocus tracking and your high-ISO capabilities, but where’s the heart, y’know? Hey, Isa, if you’re reading this, you’re the real star. And, also:
- There’s gonna be a lot more complaining. The Wembley show was an absolute triumph (as I write this intro, I still haven’t watched the PPV broadcast that I’m about to review), but most of the build-up, decsions and angles leading up to it were weak as The Weeknd covering that Skunk Anansie song for seven days straight. Shut up, that line worked perfectly. The card was borderline piss poor on paper, I would suggest that there were maybe (maybe) three matches that fit the historic hugeness of the event, and they were all rematches. OK, maybe four, but Grado v Jeff Jarrett was on the pre-show so I’m not counting it. Hey, I’m a wrestling fan, all we do is complain. If you’re ever forced to go undercover to infiltrate a terrorist group of fat, middle aged wresting fans, make sure you never say that you enjoy wrestling: it will blow your cover immediately.
In fact, I’ve written so many complaints, that I’ve had to split this post into two parts. Here, we’re getting general pre-show thoughts, then the events of Zero Hour before the main show began. Net, I’ll just review the matches, I promise… I kinda promise… and that post will come out over the weekend.
Because I don’t write about wrestling that much on a blog that mainly concerned with psychosexual fetishization of suicidal ideations music, so when I do I tend to write under the delusional idea that non wrestling fans might read it. Hence I often have to stop and explain what an ‘Irish Whip’, ‘Tope Suicida’ or ‘Singlet’ is. I’ll be forced to translate carny sentences such as ‘He ribbed the worker and their shizon with the gimmick before taking a bump himself, a total shoot’ into the proper English (‘He murdered his wife and their seven-year-old son before hanging himself at their residence in Fayetteville, Georgia’) to make sure the normies could keep up. Well, screw the normies: I’m preaching to the perverted in this post and assuming at least a base knowledge of AEW in this post. It’s going to get pretty scary, but we’ll all emerge from the other side as better people.
Wrestling Superstructures and Subcultures: the AEW All In 2023 Live Review
For the vast majority of human history, everyone was mainly just into the same shit, and had the exact same cultural references. You think in 5000 BC, when you and your fellow Sumerians were starting your little agricultural society based around the cultivation of dates, people would have much time for your niche appreciation of tomato crops? They’d be like “nah kevin we all about the dates right now fr”. It was essentially a monoculture though, so everyone would at least be aware of the tomato subculture, even if they weren’t fans themselves. Everyone went bananas for dates*, and everyone knew that some weirdos like fucking Kevin inexplicably preferred tomatoes. For thousands of years, we have had the superstructure and the subculture, with a clear distinction and easy to judge distinction between the mass support of dates and the dangerous, fringe interests such as tomatoes.
(*but, crucially, not bananas)
Which brings us, naturally, to professional wrestling.
There are statistics to argue that professional wrestling is as big – or even bigger – now than it ever has been. Or at least as big as it’s been in the modern era, biggest since 943 thousand people somehow crammed into the Atlanta Omni in the 50s to watch George Hackenschmidt put Toots Mondt in a headlock for 97 minutes. Live gates are huge, merchandise sales are huge, the world’s Problematic Fave WWE are making billions upon billions of dollars in increasingly morally dubious ways. Sure, TV audiences are a fraction of what they were during the first (Hogan) and second (Austin) WWF/E boom periods, but do you know why that is? Because no fucker actually watches TV anymore! I asked a Zoomer what their favourite TV show was, and they didn’t actually know what I was talking about, had never heard of a ‘TV’ before, and actually refused to speak to me any further because they’d assumed I’d made a transphobic slur. Wrestling on TV may only get fourteen people and one ferret watching every week, but it’s one of the only things that gets any sort of repeat viewings, so stations like Fox will still throw a billion dollars at them in the hope of securing at least a handful of people to show Dominos Pizza adverts to (also eggs. Ferrets love eggs. You should always do market research). Attendances, money made, CM Punk clout farming (the three most crucial elements to measure cultural integration), wrestling might be bigger now than any point in my or anyone reading’s lifetime.
But wrestling doesn’t feel big does it?
are you going to mention the event at any point?Freaks in a Field: Proper Journalist Kitty Aurora’s Festival Review
In the UK we get all kinds of music festivals when it creeps up to summertime. You’ll get your big heavy things like Download and Bloodstock, then you’ll get the indie poison of choice like Reading and Leeds or Parklife. Then there’s the original hippy gathering with millions injected into it; Glasto. Then you’ll get your niches like Bluedot.
But do you remember the original Woodstock? Probably not, you’re too young because so am I.
So what the UK is missing is an old school hippy fest with a twist…
Until now.
Continue reading “Freaks in a Field: Proper Journalist Kitty Aurora’s Festival Review”DISABILITY DECADE… Conclusion. The Final Truth
Yes, I know, this wasn’t all wrapped up in the time I originally planned. I was initially planning to call it the DISABILITY DECADE CELEBRATION WEEK, so thank goodness I didn’t promise that much. Did I actually say that it was going to be a week though? I can’t remember. Let me ask my subeditor.
DISABILITY DECADE CELEBRATION! A Chat With Proper Journalist Kitty Aurora
[I’m handing over this post 100% to the incomparable Kitty. Do they have explanations why it isn’t appearing until now?? Damns rights dey do!]
Pre face – This interview was recorded in April and intended to be released in early May. I’ve been asked to write the story of why it’s late since it’s more “Kit bull” and apparently that’s entertaining.
In early May I finally got sick of my house with its hole in the roof and black mold and decided to hand the keys back. With no plan. My landlords are not good people and that’s putting it VERY lightly.
Having no plan I got rid of 90% of my stuff – furniture, the lot gone into a skip or charity or wherever else.
Then I got on a coach to Brighton just so I didn’t have to think about Manchester problems for a few days. I took part in a photoshoot for a mental health campaign. I went in the sea. I sold nine of my paintings while sitting near the pier.
I then booked a train and gig ticket for Reading as I knew The Gulls and Cam Cole were doing a South West UK tour which I was ecstatic to go and see once again so I could once again put my head in the speaker and dance for three hours.
This has lead to opportunities I’ll keep to myself for the moment.
I then got a tent and the various bits to go with it and ran as a crew and roadie known as “The Gate Pixie” for a ska/punk festival in Oldham called Strummercamp which was an absolute blast.
As I write this I’m currently home/cat sitting for an artist friend of mine before I once again pack up the tent again for 5 days to head down to Stonehenge for the solstice.
LET’S GET IT DONE!DISABILITY DECADE CELEBRATION! My 2015 Memoir ‘Wee and Poo and the NHS’ Published for the First Time
This was a horrible mistake.
Not just because I was such an obnoxious writer back then. My own experience and feelings obviously still troubled me so much that I caked the whole experience under layers and layers of pop culture references, intentionally pointless tangents and terrible jokes. Seriously around a third of this book may as well be a fucking Family Guy episode, and you should never take such serious accusations lightly Later on, I obviously got a lot more depressed while writing it, and it actually improves markedly when I’m far less happy. In the end, I do think that it’s a really good book by the end, and if 40’000 words were cut it might be brilliant.
But it was mainly a mistake because reading through this book again was really traumatic. I don’t just go through the agonies and trauma of this one experience, but touch on the absolute worse moments of my life. It’s been horrendous for my to revisit it. I really feel this book finally getting published represents the end of something. I haven’t quite decided what that end is yet. This is such a startling outpouring of everything that I seriously don’t know what to do with myself. I lacerate myself and bleed all of myself into this. And it’s painful. And depressing. Fuck. I am considering what there is left of my brain to ever even communicate. My everything is now all out there. I know I’ve considered/threatened this before, but Necessary Evil 2023 will be the tenth year end list on this blog. And it mightbe the last.
Anyway, here it is, 130’000 (mostly…) unedited words. It’s out there now. And now I don’t know what to do.
You won’t enjoy this. Listen to those 101 songs instead, they’re all bangers.
i warned youDISABILITY DECADE CELEBRATION!! Ten Years Disabled
The last ten years have taught me two main lesson that I feel qualified enough to pass on.
The first is that you will adapt. You all have natural skills to adjust and work within almost any situation that life puts you through. If you ever catch yourself thinking to yourself or even expressing out loud that you could never imagine yourself surviving a certain event, or that you could never pick yourself up after some traumatic experience, or that you could never live with a certain physical condition that you try not to stare at as you pass someone in the street. Trust me, you almost definitely could. I’m a weak willed toxic mix of Generation X’s chronic apathy and the Millennials’ fragile narcissism. I wasn’t able to survive two days without my phone while it got fixed last week, so had to desperately insert my SIM into a friend’s spare phone just so I could WhatsApp my latest vacuous opinions to as many people as possible. I couldn’t survive anything. And yet here I am. Will you like you’re new circumstances? Maybe not. But you’ll survive. Your dumb body and your subconscious mind will force you to make the best of the situation, even if you’re not consciously trying to. You’ll survive.
The second lesson is that things get better.
are we gonna let the elevator bring us down?DISABILITY DECADE CELEBRATION! The 101 Greatest Songs of the Last 10 Years
Right, so I’ve just taken on another huge list without anyone asking? Cool.
And the overall quality of this list is… pretty mindblowing, as you’d imagine. It was a painful experience getting it down to just 101, and the strength of the competition has meant that proper Necessary Evil alumni like Sharon van Etten, Christine & the Queens and Lykke Li couldn’t fit in. And speaking of harshness, strictly (kinda strictly) only one entry per artist, which has meant that even some former Legit Boss winning songs failed to get in simply because the artist did an even better song in a different year. And remarkably few of the Necessary Evil albums of the year are represented.
And I’m not trying to spin any narrative here – these aren’t the 101 songs that I can link back to my disability in any way, I’m not saying that these next 101 songs were all important to my recovery, or that these 101 songs saved my life in any way (though they all did, as music can do that), just the scientific fact that these are 101 songs released since Mat 4th 2013 that simply slapped hardest.
At the very least, these 101 songs make up the greatest YouTube and Spotify playlists of all time, and the quality of these next one hundred and one songs is going to be headspinning.
Beginning with the least headspinning to the most, yeah? You know how this goes:
kick in the door, waving the coco
Necessary Evil 