One day I’ll stop doing this countdown. I’ll just have to. It’s been going since 2007. This is the fifteenth year I’ve ranked. The tenth on this blog. There have been 694 posts. Most chillingly, my blog posts have been shared on LinkedIn six thousand times. That really makes you think, doesn’t it? A decent amount of people read my year end lists, but it far from justifies the amount of hard work I do on them, or the fact that I sacrifice my Christmas every year just to write them. Do I enjoy doing this? Does it bring me any sort of validation.? I don’t have a therapist, so who knows? And I partially think that all the therapy worship is some elitist bullshit that fails to appreciate how most people have neither the time nor the money to seriously pursue it. And anyway, therapy is largely about medicalise a social issue. And I’m not convinced depression exists. It’s simply a rational response to capitalism that society demands is dampened. “Men will attempt to overthrow imperialist class structures before they go to therapy”. Yes. At least, hopefully.
And you want me to ask a therapist about why I write this dumb blog that nobody reads?? Pandora’s Box up there mate, trust me.
We thought we’d done an amazing job, and the first contract was coming due. Steve was with him in Atlanta, and I said, ‘Tell Prince we’re going to organize a contract with him for another five years.’ And Steve (Farnoli, co-manager) calls me and says, ‘You’re not going to believe this. The kid says he’ll sign if you get him a major motion picture. It has to be not from a jeweller or drug dealer but has to be from a major studio, and he wants his name above the title.’ I can’t tell you what an impossible task that was.
Bob Cavallo, Prince co-manager 79-89
They really had done an amazing job with His first contract. Back in 1977, they’d somehow manage to successfully argue that one of the biggest production companies in the world bow to this snotty little, precocious 18 year old midget’s ridiculous demand that He be given complete creative and production control over His own music when signing His first ever record deal. Now He wanted a movie made. A major motion picture. And not one made by jewellers or drug dealers either. I imagine he initially demanded it not be made by cocaine addicts or rapists either, but this was Hollywood in the 1980s and some things are just literally impossible.
“Tell that little cunt to wipe that smirk off his face”
It can be easy to be fooled by retrospect nearly 40 years later. Of course Prince had a movie made about Him! He was one of the biggest stars of the 80s! That album sold twenty five freaking million copies! ‘Purple Rain’ was one of the highest grossing movies of the year! Motherfucker was a sure ticket! And, yeah, sure, now we know that, but remember that at the start of 1984 (omg this is literally 1984) Prince had released five albums: two commercial nonentities, followed by one of the most critically adored and influential albums of the decade... and hat trick of commercial nonentities, one decent seller and finally the breakthrough with ‘1999’, his first top ten album and first real suggestion of longterm commercial viability. He was hardly some unknown Minneapolis bum trying to convince bingo halls to give him fifteen minutes before the midnight game, but these five albums had spawned two top ten singles in total. Giving Prince a movie in 1984 wasn’t like giving Beyoncé a squillion dollars to race-wash Disney while she pretends her skin colour doesn’t make her a crucial part of the capitalist machine that’s exploiting Africa. It would almost be like if the success of Heatwaves lead to the next Glass Animals contract included a ten part HBO series starring the band playing themselves in a fictionalised biography of their upbringing in Oxford. It’s insane that this movie was made. It’s insane that one of the biggest companies in the world simply trusted in the intuition of one of their midlevel artists due to their simple trust in His artistic legitimacy. It’s insane how Prince just said “Trust me”. It’s insane that Warner Brothers just greenlit a seven million dollar movie. Its insane how right He was.
“If you make this movie, I’ll become the biggest star in the world and make you millions of dollars”. And he did. And they did.
I hate this idea that you’re the best. Because you’re not. I’m the best. I’m the best in the world. There’s one thing you’re better at than I am and that’s kissing ass…
I am the best wrestler in the world. I’ve been the best ever since day one when I walked into this company. And I’ve been vilified and hated since that day.
I thought I’d already written the final eulogy on CM Punk’s wresting career. His firebombing of goodwill and petulant kicking of the pricks surrounding his cot in the aftermath of All Out 2022 sounded the death knell of his comeback to the ring. Surely now, he had burned too many bridges, shown himself to just be too unstable a livewire, for any federation to continue to employ him, and likely for many major wrestlers to want to work with him.
So I look at it like this: November 13th 2022, Punk left this blog.
Necessary Evil 