Tag: shawn michaels

Necessary Evil 2019 (72-65)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 12 Comments

72 Kanye West: Yandhi

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You know what? I’ve got a funny feeling that this might not be my last chance to talk about him before this list is done, so I’m wary of squeezing out all my Kanye Juice before the real party starts. ‘Yandhi’ was the album that he was going to release as his follow up to last year’s ‘Ye‘ (I’m sorry, haterz/liberals, but ‘Ye’ was a pretty fine album, as were most of the eighty four records he released last year, let’s not let our reactions to his general behavior colour the history), but then it was delayed, then cancelled, then briefly revived with Ashton Kutcher playing the role of Kanye West, then delayed, then its name was changed to ‘Spunk Muffin and the Dudes With Attitude’, then it was cancelled again, then it was changed to ‘Jesus Is King’, then it was revealed that it wasn’t actually a name change but a completely separate record, then that record was delayed, then it was delayed again, until, finally, it was released, and Yandhi was cancelled, only briefly being released (seriously) as ringtones. Quite straightforward as Kanye West album launches go, really. I actually only sought out ‘Yandhi’ because I assumed it would contain intriguing scrappy demos of whatever tracks Kanye was working on for his next record (which at that point had been delayed so many times I assumed this would be the closest we’d get to a Kanye album this year), but it’s shocking to hear quite how complete a lot of songs on here are, and how realised many ideas are. New Body in particular sounds less than a tweak away from being a hit single, Nicki Minaj feature and all. Later, it was shocking how few of the songs and ideas on ‘Yandhi’ made it to ‘Jesus is King’. Like, pretty much none of it. Nicki Minaj? She’s gone. Hey, Kanye, maybe stay focused on one thing for more than three minutes? Might result in better albums? Perhaps I’ll get to debate this further later.

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Money in the Ranked part 3 (5-1)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

OK, we’re definitely finishing this fucker…

Part 1

Part 2

5: Wrestlemania 24

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How many words have I vomited onto my fingers then indelicately smeared across my keyboard in respect of Money in the Bank matches? Ten thousand? Fifteen? A million?? Probably closer to the latter*. A lot, I think we can agree.

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(*Or should I say, probably closer to the LADDER?!?! Yeah. A good, solid pun. My worry is the word ‘latter’ is probably not in wide enough usage for the fucking killer joke to really hit home. I know, it’s not fair, my burgeoning comic career is being badly hampered by my audience’s lack of vocabulary. Again. It’s like when my 12 night stand at the Comedy Club received scathing reviews (“If AIDs had sex with cancer, and frequently drank moonshine during the pregnancy, the severely mentally disabled child would be Alex Palmer’s stand-up set” – Time Out) because nobody understood my hilarious observation of how the word ‘Brexit’ kind of rhymed with the third person singular active indicative of the Latin word for ‘understand’. Screw you, plebs, my 45 minutes on the topic are killer and I ain’t dumbing it down.)

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Money in the Ranked part 1 (22-11)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

All 22 WWE Money in the Bank ladder matches ranked. Listen, I thought the title would work better than it does, just go with it, OK?

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The Money in the Bank (from hereon in referred to as ‘MITB’, because I’ve got a lot of writing to do and I am a very, very lazy man) ladder match is the best idea that WWE have had since Steve Austin’s turn to the dark side at the end of Wrestlemania 17 in 2001 signalled the end of the Attitude Era and drew the curtain on the last period which wrestling seemed in any way relevant or widely notable. It’s arguably the only good idea they’ve had in that 18 year period. Save perhaps having The Miz replace Ted DiBiase jnr. as the lead actor in ‘The Marine’ franchise from ‘The Marine 3: Homefront’ onward. Yeah, WWE make movies now. And yeah, they’re all terrible.

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There have seriously been 6 of these fuckers

The premise- 5-10 wrestlers battle to use ladders to reach a contract swinging over the top of the ring which allows them a shot at any title they choose at any time they want over the next 12 months- is simple but ingenious, and allows for great storytelling potential and the chance to quickly promote a wrestler into the main event picture. Of course, this potential is more often than not completely squandered, because WWE are generally incompetent and we’re not allowed to have nice things.

Ranking the matches is difficult, because save a handful of amazing bouts and a smaller, Jeremy Beadle sized handful of slightly poorer ones, they’re almost always a similar level of ‘alright, pretty good, I suppose’. However, I am perhaps the greatest blogger of my generation- the ‘Heart Blog Kid’ Blog Michaels, or ‘Stone Blog’ Steve Blogstin, if you will- so I knew I had the ability to do it. I had initially planned to write this list in the build up to the 2018 Money in the Bank pay per view, back when there had been exactly 20 matches, and it would have made so much more sense. Alas, now there are 22 and, to be completely honest, I can’t even promise to finish it in time for 2019’s event exactly two weeks from today. But it’s a cash cow that the WWE are unlikely to put down for a long time yet, so there’s always the chance of a top 24 in 2020. Or perhaps a top 26 in 2021. I mean, I’ve started it now and I’ve already realised it’s going to have to be two parts…

Let’s see how long this takes!!

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28 serpentwithfeet: soil

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

My mate Paul said he saw a serpent with feet one time. He says he saw it with his bare eyes, about thirteen foot long and around 350kg, dark olive brown with a white underside. I grew more sceptical as he sold me how this serpent with feet would feast on fish, gar and turtles, and was obviously cold-blooded judging by the amount of time this serpent with feet would spend lazing around in the sun. It was when Paul started excitedly pontificating to me of how this serpent with feet had incredibly strong muscles with which to snap shut its jaws, but relatively weak ones to open it, that I couldn’t help but intervene. Paul, I said, this ain’t no ‘serpent with feet’, you cretin, it’s a fucking crocodile. I’m not having you going around claiming to have seen a serpent with feet when all you’ve seen is some dumb crocodile.

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Paul dismissed me, saying this serpent with feet had a far wider, U-shaped snout than you’d expect with a crocodile. Also, this serpent with feet definitely inhabited a freshwater marsh, and he was a little offended that I didn’t know crocodiles tended to live in saltwater. Through gritted teeth, I said fine, but I wondered whether he’d considered that this serpent with feet might have been an alligator. He scoffed, asking me where alligator’s usually live. After a quick internet search, I replied North America and parts of China. Then how could I have seen one?? He laughed, I’ve never even been to North America or China!

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31 Robyn: Honey

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

I freaking love ‘Honey’. I just thought it important to let you know before I complain about it for 693 words.

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(*I intentionally left that number blank until I’d written the piece. 552 words: boom! Unfortunately, I then had to write this completely superfluous parenthesised section here, so I had to then check the new word count and log that in. 590. However, I then chose to write this little extra bit on the end, which further enlarged the word count. I just wanted you to let you in on the artistic process. It’s fucking exhausting, isn’t it? Then I remembered I wanted to write a ‘past glories’ bit. Then I had to write about that bit here. Had to)

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18 Charli XCX: No.1 Angel

~ Lex Leeson ~ 10 Comments

Celestial Incompetence

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Remember when I said that EMA was definitely the coolest person in the world? Then maybe you’ll also remember my boring and boorish balderdash about how important it is to always change your mind? Maybe you’ve read the former entry, but not the latter, so consider me an outrageous hypocrite? Perhaps you’ve read the latter but not the former, and will let the upcoming comment slide by without comment? Most probably, you’ve read neither, and are currently just massively confused by this ridiculously overinflated introduction? Don’t worry, the subeditor will remove this paragraph in the edit

Charli XCX is definitely the coolest person in the world. She’s a pop artist who knows exactly how a pop artist should look, act and sound. She writes some of the most perfect pop of the 21st century (occasionally leaving her songs unattended and letting lesser artists pilfer them), but also pop that sounds like it should exist in the 21st century.  She manages to subvert pop’s tropes and expectations with every song, while never once paying the genre anything less than the upmost respect. Even more cooly, she’s smart enough to know that such a mammoth task of pop revolution through disruption could never be a one person job. So she’s always eager to use her records as presentations of some of the best and more outlandish ‘pop’ from the genre’s less appreciated corners. On this ‘mixtape’ alone we’re introduced to notable names that might have otherwise passed us by, Starrah, Raye, the unGoogleable MØ… My attention was first brought to the fascinating story of Uffie, and I was at one point even considered the Cuppcake album for NE2017 (but… wow… I mean, I’m no prude, but… does she kiss he gimp with that mouth??)

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(… and here’s proof of how much I love her)

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