Old Favourites

All I Want Is You – Barry Louis Polisar

Softball season has begun anew! I’m going to excuse William not making a post about this because it was a meaningless pre-season tournament and the results were inconsequential. In other words, we lost two games, tied one and I played like garbage. So like I said, inconsequential. Softball is still one of my favourite things and Saturday was no exception. Sure, we could have played better but there’s nothing better than that feeling of the grass under your feet, the sun on your forehead, the ball hitting your glove and then popping out, the cold glare of your teammates, the sound of the other team laughing at you…ah, softball. It’s magic.

This news is secondary to a new season of AMERICAN GLADIATORS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, that’s right, I plunked myself down on the couch and watched two sweet, sweet hours of Gladiator entertainment or as I like to call it, Gladutainment©. There’s no way that I can write about this show in a coherent manner, so let’s go to the ol’ bullets, shall we?

(By the way, I know I’m alienating most of our fanbase by writing about this show, but I don’t care. Just skip ahead or go read a book or something. Why are you here, anyway?)

* From the opening, explosive, genital disintegrating montage we can see that there are going to be eight new Gladiators (more on them later) and some new/old events. The only truly new event I saw was called Vertigo and while I thought it was an interesting concept (contestants race against a Gladiator by making their way across adjacent 30 foot tall poles that rock back and forth with the slightest push), it didn’t make for great television. Then again, it did introduce us to a new red-headed Gladiator called Phoenix. I’ll admit that Phoenix was awesome in her debut, going as far as to stop in the middle of the race to taunt the contestants. Now that’s some old-school Gladiator action. Also, she’s pretty hot and not just because she’s reawakening all those old Jean Grey fantasies I had as a youth. But she still can’t hold a candle to my Crush, who continued her dominance in Joust monday night and also made a fine showing in Pyramid and Gauntlet.

* The other new event that debuted was Rocketball, which was really a variation of one of my old favourites, Swingshot. The contestants are attached to a bungee cord and they press a red button, which shoots them up into the air and they have to put these balls into these large baskets. It’s not too complicated, but it is super fun to watch. Also, it looks like Atlasphere is coming back. ATLASPHERE!!!

* The other new Gladiators that debuted were the winners from last year. Monica Carlson is now Jet and Evan Dollard is now Rocket. Straight up, Monica really sucked as a Gladiator. She failed to catch her contestant during The Wall, got blown by several times during Powerball and didn’t look that great on the Pyramid either. Bad form, Jet. Evan fared much better, especially since the first event he got to do was The Wall, which as you all know, he dominated at last year. His contestant got up the wall really fast, but when you’re dealing with the Michael Jordan of The Wall, you’re screwed once you grab that first hand hold. Rocket is off to a good start.

* Everything is just…better now. Clearly, the budget has increased about tenfold. Everything is bigger (Hang Tough is finally back to its former glory) and the events are much improved. Assault no longer has the contestants searching through the sand for an arrow (huh?), though one contestant still managed to fire one of the new weapons backwards (huh???). The Wall is freakin’ huge now. The Eliminator seemed kind of clumsy to me, but they got rid of some stupid elements and added in some older elements that they never should have removed in the first place. Also, the contestants are at risk of falling into a ball pool now. Ball pools are awesome.

* Laila Ali and Hulk Hogan are back! Whoo…actually, I love Laila. I think she’s perfect for the show, but Hulk is just awkward to watch at this point. I said it last season and I’ll say it this season: The man clearly has no soul.

* The contestants were mostly boring except for this one black guy named Randee who did a wicked job on the eliminator and had a good personality. The other three guys were a loud mouth S.W.A.T. team officer (loser), a Filipino guy who performed well but who was overshadowed by his opponent…a guy with one leg. Now I’m all for creating compelling storylines for the sake of game shows and reality television, but this former Paralympic athlete made things kind of uncomfortable. You know that the Gladiators aren’t going to go after him hard, you know that some of the events are going to be near impossible for him to do, so why put him on the show? I think he’s an inspirational story, but it came off as a cheap ratings grab. Truly a blight on the good, dignified name of American Gladiators.

Mmm…okay, I think that’s it for now. Most of my good comments occur during the show and are gone the next day. You guys are lucky, SO lucky that I don’t just keep a running blog of this show. Hey, that’s actually not a bad idea. God, I love this show.

From the Nothing To Do With Nothing Department: Matt Groening’s Hellboy

Here is how a link is born.

1) I’m sitting at home watching pro-wrestling and after a match, one of the wrestlers starts singing a victory song. You know, that song that goes You’ve got to know when to hold ’em. Know when to fold ’em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run. Yeah, that song. I couldn’t remember the name either.

2) I go to my computer and Google the lyrics and up comes Kenny Rogers‘ The Gambler. Well, duh!

3) As I’m downloading the song, I read the Wikipedia entry about the song and learn that he apparently performed it on The Muppet Show.

4) One quick visit to YouTube and voila! Kenny Rogers performs The Gambler on The Muppet Show. It’s strange, because this song involves some lyrics about drinking and smoking and death and I thought The Muppet Show was for kids. Good for them to learn these things early, right? On a side note, this would actually make for a decent Rock Band song (as long as you don’t mind your bass player slitting his wrists out of boredom).

See? That made a lot more sense than me saying, “I was watching pro wrestling so here is Kenny Rogers on The Muppet Show.”

I play a lot of basketball games, so I can’t wait for this one. I feel bad for Diana Taurasi, even though she is fugly.

One night last week I was up around 2 or 3 in the morning on my computer and all the power went out. I grabbed a nearby flashlight and wandered over to the window in my grandpa’s room so that I could look out onto the street. It was scary, because the other neighbourhoods that were still lit were creating this eerie glow and I could swear that I heard movement on the streets. I didn’t want to flash my light out the window because anyone who saw 28 Days Later knows that that is just asking for a zombie attack. Also, I swear that I could hear some kind of alarm ringing faintly in the distance. I deduced that it was the Zombie Alarm©, unearthed at last for this fateful evening. Even with my softball bat clenched tightly against my chest, I did not sleep well.

I never found out what that sound was and as far as I can tell there was little to no zombie activity that day. Regardless, I’m glad I found this instructional video a few days later. As you watch this, you keep expecting the satire to kick in but it never does. This guy seems to genuinely believe in the usefulness of this video and God help us, he might just be the most important person who ever lived.

We’re getting a little old to be making such a big deal out of having sex.
Yeah…you’re right.
I’m just playing, man!
Oh, thank goodness. When you said that, I died a little inside.