#35 And So I Watch You From Afar: Megafauna

First, before I talk about the latest euphoric audio assault by Belfast’s finest noise merchant, I’d like to take a moment out of 2024’s Necessary Evil to just pay our respects to the beautiful, talented and influential megafauna that we’ve lost these past two million years or so.

These good megafaunas have had a tough time recently, with 80% of all mammals that weigh greater than a thousand kilograms dying off in the last fifty thousand years. Pour one out for our fatty bombatty brothers. Yeah, we still mostly have our elephants and our rhinos and our elephant seals. And our motherfucking bisons, boy!! Have you seen a bison?? I don’t think we’re ready to accept how huge those big boys are! I’m not counting the big fishes, like the blue whale, because they’re always hiding down there, I’ve never seen one in a zoo, and fish are boring. But I think we have to accept that we have sadly lost the best and brightest megafauna. We’ve lost all the dinosaurs, for fuck’s sake!? That’s nuts! And, if we’re being honest, we lost a lot of Earth’s stability when the dinosaurs went: ain’t no genocide in Gaza if Deir al Balah is partially populated by motherfucking titanosaurs!! Oh, what’s that, America? You want to aggressively and violently suppress the world until it accepts your neoliberal world order? Well, try telling that to the giganotosaurus, yeah? The ichthyosaur will fucking eat all your submarines, son! However, like I said before, fish are boring.

Anyway, heads bowed, please:

Hadi Hayel Shehdeh Abu Dahruj

An Embarrassingly Late Review of All In 2024

Yeah, it happened again, And I went again. Then the week after, I had an OISC Level 3 exam for the highest possible accreditation in immigration law. Oh, and between those two things I watched the Magnetic Fields perform ‘69 Love Songs‘ in full over two nights at the Albert Hall, so there’ll probably be a blog post related to that at some point.

“But Alex”, I hear you squeal, though it’s difficult for you to speak through painful wheezes, as you sitting up in indignation is the most exercise you’ve done in eight months, you fat fuck, “Wasn’t it pretty stupid to arrange a trip down the London mere days before the most important exam of your life?” .

And I reply: “Of course it was. But this is professional wrestling, everything to do with it is as stupid as shit”.

Last year I wrote an intimidatingly bloviated three parts and more than sixteen thousand words on the event. This year, there’s going to be one part, there’s going to be significantly less than 16k words, and we’re all going to come out the other end much happier people, I promise.

Even though the 2024 All Innit was a vastly superior show to its predecessor, and must rank amongst the greatest professional wrestling shows ever held in the UK.

whose blog?

Legit Bosses – The 160 Best Songs of 2023

In their 1972 book ‘Psychology of the Arts‘, Hans and Shulamith Kreitler tried to explain the reasoning behind why certain people react in certain ways to certain pieces of art. However, they deemed that to fully explain it, your knowledge of each person would need to “extend over an immeasurably large range of variables, which would include not only perceptive, cognitive, emotional and other personality characteristics, but also biographical data, specific personal experiences, past encounters with art, and individual memories and associations”. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, luckily, I’m here to just tell you what the best music of 2023 was, so all that effort behind your own personal psychosis can be sidestepped altogether. Think of it as my new year’s present.

no spoilers on what number this particular classic finished

And there’s one hundred and sixty this year. Maybe one hundred and sixty one. Because there was a lot of great tunes released in 2023. While limiting the Necessary Evil list to just 40 albums still meant there was space for at least one ‘meh’ album and one absolute stinker, over the past week I’ve actually had to really edit this list down to prevent it being ridiculous. And yet here we are: 160. Maybe 161.

I’m also going to be giving shout outs to particular golden moments in certain songs – similar to what I did in 2018 – and for each of those I’m going to be using a picture of one of the greatest moments in the short history of All Elite Wrestling, because… well… I get the horrible feeling that company is cooked and I hope to look back on this list in five years time and laugh at how pessimistic I was.

Can I finish this before 2024 and maybe have some days off before I go back to work?? Let’s seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

[Edit: No. No I cannot. Not even close.

You’ve got some playlists though, will that make you happy?? Here’s the countdown on Spotify and on YouTube, minus the unavailable songs on whatever platform]

I REMEMBER NOTHING, SO THERE’S NOTHING TO REGRET

The Biggest Moment of 2023

https://www.redbubble.com/i/hoodie/larry-by-SWITCHSHOP/152034883.VR8OC

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.

CM Punk’s ‘Pipe Bomb’ promo, 27/06/2011

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.

November 18th 2023? He’s back

i’m trying to run a fucking business here

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!

“Oooh, look at that cheeky smile! What have you done??”

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 welcome

AEW 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:

  1. 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:
  2. 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.

christ, really need to get started on this

The Biggest Moment of 2022

“I’m here to try and elevate everybody”

With no thought of the massive psychological damage it would cause to middle aged children and the dread it would impose on their already suffocating sense of mortality, with no consideration given to the fact that it was Christmas 2021, like, yesterday, 2022 is soon coming to an end. In previous years I have trailed the year’s Necessary Evil’s list of the year’s best music by naming the year’s best in comparatively unimportant sectors such as films and video games. 2022, however, saw an event so momentous that it renders all other debate on art or even the wider human condition comparatively meaningless, and so I owe it to my legions of fans, I owe it to the internet, I owe it to the culture itself to mention it. Not only that, but I’ll have to try and explain its importance to non wrestling fans, which might actually beyond my ability.

I’m not saying that this was the only thing that happened in 2022, just that all other stories pale somewhat in terms of significance and longterm repercussions. We all enjoyed the Conservative Party exposing the Capitalist lie that money indicates real value as some of the richest people in the country incompetently accused each other of being incompetent with such incompetence that it’s likely to freeze and/or starve a large section of their constituents. Lol! I am literally rolling on the floor laughing. I am a ROFLcopter. This isn’t new though, and of all the talk about opinion polls and potential general election losses, the ruling class fighting amongst themselves while the lower classes suffer is hardly new, will result in no revolution, and the best possible scenario in this country’s broken political system is the other party get in and basically continue the same shit. Sure, The Queen died, and in doing so revealed the longstanding lie that the UK is in some sense a developed country separated enough from its colonial history and repressed shame to be capable of rational thought. But will there really be any longterm ramifications of a gross head of a gross imperialistic state being replaced by a perhaps more gross son in a shamefully gross role? Come back to me when Charlie boy uses his accession press conference to bury the whole Royal Family and throw the whole system into doubt. In fact, have Charles Windsor come to me himself after that. I’d kiss his ugly face. Kings have press conferences, right? OK, we also had Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, after which Twitter had so much fun that Elon Musk decided he had to stop it. Because of… a weed meme or something…? Honestly, it’s hard to know with that nincompoop, he has the brain development of a thirteen year old Trust Fund kid, and so is extremely hard to understand as an adult. These things also happened, and I’m not ignoring them. The war in Ukraine also happened, which I am ignoring, because it’s difficult to make jokes over. Not necessarily for taste reasons – when has that ever stopped me before? – more that it’s a conflict with absolutely no good guys that any glib comment is likely to support fascism and imperialism in some form if just by association.

Hey! Speaking of ‘no good guys’! Speaking of… fascism…? No, I stretched the segue too far, should have stopped after the first one.

Go into business for yourself

37 JPEGMAFIA: LP!

2020 #16, 2019 #34, 2018 #44

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars!! Pe-ggy! Pe-ggy! Pe-ggy! The latest astonishing collection by hip-hop’s premier avant garde electronica pushing Communist! You know what that means? That’s right: some of the most progressive and experimental music currently being made by any artist, in any genre, in the entire world. Oh, but most importantly, loads of wrestling references.

It also means that, unfortunately, there’s little space between the much appreciated wrestling call outs to actually talk about Peggy’s music. But do you need any more explanation on how he’s such a generational talent? A thousand articles by writers far more talented than me* have already written lengthy pieces and conduced many interviews that shed light on why you should be deeply ashamed if you’re not already on the Peggy Train. ‘LP!’ (always a fan of exclamation marks) retains a lot of the more melodic and slightly less abrasive styles that he presented on his recent (amazing) EPs, but uses it to only squeeze his music into more unique places. It’s a fucking banger.

Continue reading “37 JPEGMAFIA: LP!”

Rumble in the Bumble pt.5

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

I think we can all agree that the one photo on my profile page has been pretty fucking successful.

jOvGoFpUSKKUNpOOeUSExA

So far, it’s already played it’s part in persuading an abnormally beautiful German to at least dip her toes in my waters (until being understandably disgusted by the mouldy surface scum of professional wrestling bobbling along the stream) , it’s convinced three people to swipe right on my profile- people who Bumble refuse to reveal to me unless I pay them money- and then, just yesterday, there was this woman!

MUBpUf74TEqDw92um26EEA_censored

Yeah, that’s right- I actually matched with someone! I liked someone else’s face/bum/tits/’personality’, and she in turn liked my… blue face and ’50 Shades of Grey’ quote… If she gets in touch in the next ten hours then it is on, baby!

Continue reading “Rumble in the Bumble pt.5”

Rumble in the Bumble pt.4

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

I know I promised that I wasn’t going to do another one of these until next week, but over the period of about nine hours yesterday Bumble dragged me on a roller coaster of emotions, potential and of reaching ridiculously over my limits as a physically attractive entity*. I have to assume that you’ve all read Shawn Michaels’s esteemed memoir ‘Heartbreak and Triumph’? Well, that could well be the title of this episode of my delve into the grottiness of online dating. Except that there was very little triumph involved. ‘Heartbreak and Heartbreak’ might work a little better. Except that repeated word is a little functionally unnecessary, isn’t it? Yeah, the book of yesterday on Bumble would be called ‘Heartbreak’. Do you see where this is going?

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(* though… maybe… really below… my mental attractiveness…? I don’t want to be cruel… Well… maybe I do, just a little, but as will soon become brutally clear I really need to claw back some self-respect out of this hideous situation)

What’s that? You think I’m far too obsessed with wrestling? Really?? Let’s see if that comes into play.

Continue reading “Rumble in the Bumble pt.4”