The arena, or “Temple” they call it, is borderline cheesy, but dimly lit and barely passes as an underground fighting venue. In the first three episodes, I almost found it distracting how generic the audience appeared. The crowds were very small, and nobody even appeared as if they had ever watched wrestling before. Last night I watched episode 4, the crowd was way bigger and everyone was pretty amped up. It was almost as if someone had told wrestling fans that the show was going on. This show, on episode 4, finally appeared to be high energy.
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| That’s right….thats Danny Trejo.. |
The main character/villain is promoter “Dario Cueto” who looks as if he’s straight out of a bad soap opera. He is presented as wanting to give $100,000 as an award to a victorious wrestler, but obviously is just used as a setting to allow him a chance at turning evil. He doesn’t appear in the ring all that often and is only shown in “Grand Theft Auto” style vignettes between matches. These scenes are always amazing as they are hilariously over dramatic, and feel like you are watching a porno without sex.
There are several other sweet elements to this show. First off, the show appears to have totally fresh talent. It’s not like TNA where they cater to people who made it as jobbers in major promotions like WWE. Each show so far has done a great job at establishing new characters and taking time to give them background stories. Believe it or not, they actually attempt to give you a reason to care about these characters, something you NEVER see anymore. Each show features a few action packed matches and runs a series of different ongoing storylines.
Another unique element to the show is that they stress a level playing field. This basically means that women can fight men, and little people can fight full sized people. They don’t even portray it as being odd or disadvantageous, its all presented as normal which is hilarious. In episode two, you see Chavo Guerrero hit Sexy Star in the head with a steal chair.
Overall, I see wrestling fans being “on the fence” with how they feel for this product. With an hour time slot, you don’t get long epic matches, but you get fast paced excitement. There are no long standing side headlocks here. Instead you have a flurry of characters diving out of the ring and leaping from balconies. As a fan who is sick of the same old stale product, this show has sparked my interest in wrestling once again.
Halloween was pretty good this year. Honestly, we were sort of dreading it because last year was crazy, or at least it seemed that way. Like everything, its a learning experience. We learned from the things we did wrong last year. Here are a few rules for Halloween that we learned living in the city from two Halloweens at our house.
1) One piece of candy per kid.
-A lot of the times, you get caught up in handing out candy, you think you are pretty awesome, and the next thing you know, you are out of candy way too early.
2) Never let the kids see the stash.
-Keep your giant bowl full of candy inside the house and greet them outside with the candy in your hand. Don’t let them have any time to look at the different options. They have no choice. They get what you give them.
3) Keep different levels of Candy.
-This sound messed up, but its not. It makes total sense. Level 1 would be like Twix, Kit Kat, Snickers, etc. Level 2 would be like fun dip, pixie sticks, candy corn, and then the dreaded Level 3 would be Fancy Filled, Max Citrus, Atomic Fireball, etc. What’s that you say? You have never heard of these Level 3 candies? Nobody has..because they are disgusting. They usually come in a 5 pound bag for a few bucks. You keep the Level 1 candies for the kids you know and see in the neighborhood regularly. The Level 2 candy is for the other kids with costumes, and the Level 3 is for the kids with no costumes, the weird parents that are trick or treating, or the loser 15 year old kid still going door to door. Make them never want to come to your house again with a tasty Max Citrus.
4) Use the palm technique.
-Cuff the crappy candy in your hand so they cant see it and drop it in their bag, they won’t be able to tell what you just gave them.
Just a few rules to keep in mind to take control of your Halloween. No problems this time!
This year I answered the door as the legendary “Destroyer”, an old time Pro Wrestler from Buffalo.
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| This is the legendary owner of The Super Sweet Shirt Company paying tribute to Dick Beyer “The Destroyer”. |
So what’s with the title of this blog entry? Well the mask I bought from “The Destroyer” himself fit me a little weird. Nicole thought that maybe it looked a bit KKKish. I got super defensive and said “No way!”. So we did a little test, sending out pictures to some friends and asking them what they thought I looked like. I received feedback like “Underwear bandit” and “is he wearing underwear on his head?” Still no KKK references. I was in the clear, and Nicole said it was cool that I greet the kids as the Destroyer. The kids were sort of frightened, probably because I looked like I could pummel everybody and their parents. Later that night, a group of sassy young ladies came up, mocking my costume as I gave them Level 3 candy, and one said, “Is that a KKK mask” jokingly. They were laughing and they obviously knew that it was not as it looks nothing like one, minus the fact that its white. But, I was forced to take it off. Nicole said, “If one person is thinking it, then there are probably more.” She was most likely right, although I was momentarily angry, not at Nicole, but at the fucking KKK for ruining my mask! It still worked out though as I just put on my new felt Mobster hat and greeted the kids with a glass of whiskey on stones like someone straight out of Mad Men. It was way more comfortable of a costume to be in. Halloween this year……pretty cool.
Look out this week, I have a boat load of new items coming out for the Holiday. I know i said I was halting all new designs until the new year, but I totally lied! Get ready!
A few days ago I shaved off my beard….well sort of. I get bored easily with “looks”. In this case, I was bored again. So I started looking up dudes with sweet mustaches….shall we?
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| Adrien Brody’s mustache is amazing. |
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| TNA wrestler Joey Ryan |
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| My brother in law Bill has rocked this mustache since the entire time I’ve known him. |
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| My step-dad’s mustache in this old school picture is pretty sweet. |
So into the bathroom I went for a facial hair make-over. And out I came looking like this…
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| This may be one of my favorite pictures. For such a long time I had this image in my head, this memory, but it wasn’t until about a year ago that i was given this picture that let me actually see it again. |
Not only am I a fan of wrestling, but I am proudly a historian. I have a hard time watching today’s WWE because its just not good. They call themselves “entertainment”. I want wrestling. I love IMPACT wrestling because its as old school as we can possibly get these days. I don’t spend much time analyzing todays wrestling, but I constantly absorb information about the days when the sport was great. The days of World Class Championship Wrestling, the NWA, AWA, and even WCW. I loved it and I could read about these days forever. One wrestler I remember being captivated with was the great Bruiser Brody. His legendary matches with Abdullah the Butcher, his legendary tag matches with Stan Hanson, and reading about how he was a true outlaw in the sport.
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| Brody and Hanson. There wasn’t a tougher tag team that ever existed. |
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| Brody and Abby had some of the biggest battles ever. |
So I decided that it was time for a wrestling tribute shirt. I give you the Bruiser Brody Tribute shirt:
For millions of people, the most famous Sunday in sports is “Superbowl Sunday”. For me its “Wrestlemania” Sunday! This is an event many of us have been watching every year since childhood. Some of us (like myself) have traveled to different states to see the event live. I have attended two Wrestlemanias and have witnessed history. This weekend will be the first Wrestlemania that I host at our new home and I am pretty excited. Nicole most likely is not, but she understands the passion dudes like myself have for an event such as this.
I’m going to cook up some chicken on grill, kick back, and hopefully watch some great matches.
I took off Monday so that I wouldn’t have to work after Wrestlemania. I have decided to try my hand at brewing on this day. I picked up the last of the things I need so that I can do it. The liquid yeast I have has a shelf life, and the date stamped on it doesn’t allow me much time. I will start cooking Monday, hopefully I will be successful. This is really something I’d like to be good at. I discovered that we have a home brewing store in Buffalo. I went there over the weekend, it is totally awesome and will make it easier for me to pursue this hobby. I’m going to try and get some pictures from the process to add during the week!
supersweetshirtblog.com 