And 25 Plus Years of Gore de Vol Later…

25 years… Yeah, that’s about right. It’s been a little over 25 years now that I’ve been maybe geekier than even some of my geek friends. But I say that, I should note, in a proud way.

I turned 13 in 1983 and my parents had recently moved into a small little (and for me, mostly useless) town that was just South of Richmond, VA. Unlike a huge chunk of the surrounding counties and towns, this place was serviced by a relatively small cable provider who, unlike the then giant (Comcast) in the Central Virginia area, carried programming out of Washington, DC. Seemed a bit odd even at the time. Neither channel 5 nor channel 20 were major players on the growing national cable scene. I just assumed that the cable company couldn’t afford bigger channels and kind of mentally wrote them off.

Then one night in late 1983 or early 1984 that changed…

I was always a night person. I always stayed up kinda late. On one of those late nights I was channel surfing for some odd reason. Maybe it was that whatever I normally watched was having an off night or was in rerun. I don’t know, just can’t remember. All I do know is that I surfed across WDCA Channel 20 and into an old b&w horror film that I’d seen before and remembered liking a bit. I put the control box down (calling it a remote control by today’s standards is just a joke) and settled in.

The movie went to commercial and I went after either a snack or a drink. I walked back into my room a couple of minutes later and found… something… on my television that wasn’t the something I had been watching a few minutes earlier. Rather than my bugged eyed monster flick picking back up where the action left off a few minutes earlier I was confronted by some strange looking vampire on a wobbly dungeon set going on about something while a bad church organ’s notes were fading out in the background.

I had no idea what this silliness was. Why were they screwing up my movie? Why were they wasting my time with this?

I was not a happy camper.

And then something… happened. I honestly don’t remember if it was something that made me laugh or some really interesting bit of trivia that he said about the film I was watching that I was previously unaware of, but I suddenly found the guy much less annoying. By the end of the show I even found myself liking the guy.

Next week I didn’t channel surf into the program that I now knew was Creature Feature with Count Gore de Vol. I went straight to channel 20 at the start time listed in the paper’s TV guide and was ready to enjoy another film hosted by the Count. This went on for several weeks before the TV listing was for some odd little film that I had never heard of before. I mean I had flat never heard of it before.

That gave me pause. I didn’t know what it was, most of my friends at school had certainly never mentioned it and it had never played on the good cable channels that aired all the classic horror films. Would I give up SNL for some nothing horror film that nobody had ever heard of and I had no idea if I would like the thing? Yeah, I would. Why? Because the guy hosting the film was easily as much fun as the film (if not more so) and, not that I had realized it yet, I was a fan of Gore de Vol more than I was of Creature Feature’s features.

To be honest, I don’t even remember what it was (more on that concept later) and all I remember about it is not liking it very much at the time. But Gore had me laughing like a fool at each and every break in that forgettable film.

That happened a lot actually. Creature Feature played some great old films in its time, but it also fleshed out its bones with what most sane people would consider some real stinkers. Early on I viewed Gore as the icing on the cake when they were showing some of the great old films from the classic age of horror, but my still developing (but occasionally slow) brain started to realize that this guy was the cake as much as the good films. He was just a pineapple upside down cake to go along with the good films’ rich chocolaty goodness. Even the shows featuring the bad films were cake, they just didn’t have that second serving of chocolate cake.

So, yeah, I was hooked and a loyal fan. And, and this may sound odd at first, I think I had become a bit of a student as well. Gore did something that was pretty damned unique in my (then, admittedly limited) experience with all of the grade g and lower horror films out there that were more often than not made with no budget, no time, no studio support, no quality equipment and, sometimes, no discernible talent behind or in front of the camera. He made them fun. No, he didn’t just make his skits fun and thus his part of the show fun, but he made the bad stuff in the film fun. Whether it was by interviews with people who knew what went on during a film’s creation, trivia that let the viewer at home know what was going on and how that sorta kneecapped what was the final product or whether it was making fun of aspects of the film in a lighthearted and very often loving way he made you understand that some of the bad old films had a charm to them that you weren’t going to see in them if you weren’t willing to look.

This is a guy who loved his job, seemed to love just about all the films that he showed (but not, I’ve now learned, The Beast of Yucca Flats) and could, by it seemed sheer force of will and the amount of joy and fun he was able to convey through that little TV screen to infect the viewer with, make you at least a little bit of a fan to some degree or another of the films he was a fan of. And, in the way he presented and hosted some of the films Creature Feature aired, you really did see the charm in some of the films that you would have otherwise have turned off.

I’d like to think that I would, as a proud horror geek, have gotten there myself. There’s a small DVD store worth of films that I know, love and enjoy now that most sane people would pass up and that’s actually been a good thing in my life. I’ve corresponded with, met and, in many cases, become friends with a lot of people because of conversations started about films like Oasis of the Zombies, The Vampire Happening, Manfish, The Devil Bat, Son of Ingagi, The Brain that Wouldn’t Die and other films that have titles that simply cause confused looks on most people when mentioned. And, interestingly, the people who I’ve met and become friends with don’t fit the negative stereotype of the type of “geek” that most people hold in their minds. They’ve come from all walks of life, they’ve all had their own interesting and different life paths and they’ve all been people that have enriched my life in some way or another.

So, as I said, I’d like to think that I would have gotten there myself. But I didn’t have to. I had Gore de Vol leading the way and showing me what fun these “bad” films often really were. And along the way he kept me constantly entertained. His show was filled with a parade of colorful characters, interesting trivia, enlightening interviews and the occasional Penthouse Pet. It was, in many cases then unknown to my 13, 14 and 15 year old mind, also crammed with more innuendo than you could believe could be packed into such small segments. All I knew at the time was I was always enjoying myself when Creature Feature was on. I was a full blown addict and anyone wanting to suggest a 12 Step program could go to hell.

And it seemed that I wasn’t the only one. Gore ran contests and promotions on his show that seemed to get huge responses from the DC area people and his Halloween bashes, giant parties held at huge locations around DC, seemed to draw huge crowds every time out of the gate. Man I wanted to go to those so badly that I was almost a brat about it. Never did though. Funny story about that later. But it’s safe to say that I was ready to go well into my late teens as a rabid fan and would be getting to those bashes on my own as soon as I could drive a car. Likely with or without a legal driver’s license…

And then they did it. My parents moved just after the start of school in 1986 and I was now without a cable provider that carried WDCA Channel 20. I went insane. I was a one teen letter writing campaign and bombed the local Comcast office with letters and calls. They had to pick up WDCA Channel 20. They just had to. There was no discussion in the matter. Somehow, unfathomably, they were unmoved by someone insisting that they had to get a TV channel on their lineup so that some really annoying kid could watch Creature Feature with Count Gore de Vol every Saturday night. Yeah, I can’t understand it either.

So, sadly for me, my association with the good Count had been finally and fatally severed by the financial needs of my parents and the unreasonable bean counting of the Comcast suits. Time to move on.

Didn’t quite work that way though. Elvira was well on her way to national fame and lots of people I met who liked cheesy sci-fi and horror were well acquainted with Commander USA from the USA Channel or Joe Bob Briggs and his Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel. People were talking about these hosts around the lunch table at school and I, of course, was there to say, “Yeah, but there’s this guy in DC who just blows them all away.”

And not only did I talk about him, but I swiped from him as well. That comment way up above about “more on that concept later” is about to get latered. As time went by, in between talking about my favorite horror host and outright stealing his gags when talking about films, I hit a point where I actually remembered more about Gore from the shows than I did some of the films. Hell, there were actually things that I remembered for years while being completely unable to tell you what film was on when Gore was doing his bit.

If there was any doubt about it before it was now dispelled. I was a fan of Count Gore de Vol over and above many of the movies he hosted. If you gave me the option of seeing a film uncut and uninterrupted VS seeing the same film cut, edited and hosted by Gore… “Good evening and welcome to creature Feature…”

Fast forward well over ten years. Hell, fast forward somewhere around fifteen years really. I’m having my at least twice a year discussion with someone about how much fun this guy in DC was while the general topic is cheesy horror films and, as a shortcut to explaining, hit the Google. As the net grew and more and more people got on the information superhighway you could be rest assured that someone someplace was putting just about everything somewhere on the web. I’d actually been lucky before and hit on some good pictures and even some video. Well, this one time something interesting popped up in the Google search. There was actually a site out there getting enough hits to be on the first page of the search called countgore.com. I clicked on the link and expected to find a really nice but kinda small fan site. What I found was Count Gore himself.

It seems that through countless new owners and the changing times where bean counters where becoming program directors rather than people who knew how to program a local station the good Count had gotten a fairly large stake through the heart only a year or so after I lost Channel 20. The new owners of the station decided that local programming was just so much nonsense and a waste of money. Hey, why be local, unique and supported in the community when you can be the same as 50,000 other stations across the country?

But, in classic b-movie vampire tradition, Gore went to ground, regained enough strength to crank that big ol’ toothpick out of his chest and returned with a vengeance. In 1998, he became the web’s first weekly horror host and he’s coming up on his 11th anniversary of the program as you read this now. (Well, unless you’re reading this some time far removed from June 29, 2009.)

And he has been a very busy little undead body it seems. Getting into everything he’s done for the horror host community and its fans would at least triple the length of this post. You can get the 411 by looking up his site or checking out the great doc (now on DVD) called American Scary. But it’s safe to say that Gore is as entertaining as ever and has been doing things that have allowed newer hosts like Karlos Borloff and Dr. Sarcofiguy to be introduced to new and old fans alike.

And the man gives his old fans the opportunity to get a great nostalgia kick. He owns all of the Gore de Vol material so any film that is in public domain that he still has the bits he did for the aired shows he can put together into a DVD that is, in pretty much most respects, the original show as it aired minus those things that break up the fun by trying to get you to buy something else that you really don’t need. And thanks to those DVDs and others I, or rather my parents, scared the snot outa my wife.

About two years ago now my wife and I had our first child. To say I was stressed and freaked would be understating it in a major way. At one point I think I actually stressed myself into a worse condition than what my wife was in right after the birth. So she looked at me, told me that we had some extra money that she wouldn’t hold against me spending on something that I might enjoy or might want to do and that I should go ahead and just do something for myself. Low and behold, Gore was having a sale on his website. For what was really a steal by any standards he was selling off 8 DVDs (16 shows) of the web program, 4 shows from the classic WDCA days, 4 DVDs known as the Legacy Series that are basically Gore’s best bits, an autographed glossy, a t-shirt (the one I’m wearing above) with the show’s old logo on it and a replica of the old Channel 20 Gore fan club card for what was really a nice price.

With everything else that had been going on I passed up on his DVDs before, but with my wife’s blessing I grabbed this fan pack in a heartbeat. Glad I did too. The web program discs are no longer being sold. There is a 5th classic program though and I did make sure that it was on my Christmas list last year.

Long story short (too late) they arrived and my wife and mother-in-law discovered that my wife was actually stuck being wed to a giddy 13 year old boy. I did a Creature Feature bender that would have driven most sane people stuck around me at that time to thoughts of my murder at their hands. But I was happy.

(Funny story alert from above coming in now.) I started with the Legacy series. Again, the movies may be good, but I figured out a long time ago that I was a fan of Count Gore’s more than some of the creatures he featured. Little did I know the effect that would have on my wife.

My parents, now with their first and only grandchild to coo over, were just about daily visitors at that time. They were over while I was playing the Legacy DVDs one day and the topic on the disc at that moment was the big Halloween bashes that Gore threw. I jokingly jerked my thumb in the direction of the TV and reminded my mom and dad that it was still the great tragedy in my life that they wouldn’t drive all those hours from just South of the Richmond area to DC just so that I could be there in person.

My father rolled his eyes and went on to tell my wife that they’d been hearing about this thing, this complaint about how they let me down so horribly by not taking me to some DC party to see some guy who dressed up funny and showed bad movies, for 25 years. 25 years he emphasized. Several times. And with great aggravation (jokingly) coating his voice. Yeah, my wife knew she had wed a nut for sure by that point.

Fast forward just shy of two years. I get an update email from Gore’s site about some little doc being screened at the AFI Theater in Silver Springs, Maryland on the 27th of June. The subject of the doc was one Dick Dyszel and his long career as Washington, DC’s Bozo the Clown, Captain 20 and, most important of all to me, Count Gore de Vol. The tickets were $10.00 a pop and, on top of the movie, there would be a chance to chat with the man of the hour and see some memorabilia from good old days of DC’s then locally programmed Channel 20.

My wife took one look at it and said “NO” in a very firm voice that made it clear that no argument would be allowed on the matter.

“No,” she said’ “I am not putting up with 25 plus years of you complaining about that like you did with your parents. Buy the tickets right now and we’ll stay the weekend with my sister up there. But I plan to be married to you for at least 25 years and I am not putting up with 25 years of complaining about not getting to go and see Gore de Vol in person and how it was all my fault like you’ve done to your parents since you were a teenager.”

So, despite a bout with poison ivy (that actually worked in my favor) early in the week and more road construction than I thought you could drive through in one trip that short, I found myself here on the evening of the 27th.

Great film. Great, great film. As much as I loved American Scary I found this one to be better by far in every way. I don’t know if that’s just because it was so much better or because I have been a fan of the subject of the film for so long, but it was just a great way to spend the evening in a theater and, from what was said, will be an even better filled out DVD later this year. Even the “poor” wives and friends that we of the Gore fandom dragged to the show were laughing out loud and loving it. Plus the Q&A was great (did learn something a bit odd and very funny about my favorite Forrest J. Ackerman interview) and I finally got to thank the man for how much entertainment and joy he’s given me for all these years. So, yeah, 25 years is way to long too wait for some things, but it was worth it.

However, thanks to dinner after the show I’m now committed to taking my wife to several dinners each year at the Tastee Diner in Silver Springs. It seems it’s the first really good “diner” food she’s found since leaving the Jersey zone.

http://www.tasteediner.com

The things my wife makes me suffer through…

“EVERY OTHER DAY IS HALLOWEEN”

“EVERY OTHER DAY IS HALLOWEEN”
Has World Premiere at AFI Silver Theatre

Saturday, June 27, 2009 at 8:20 p.m.

Silver Spring, Maryland, May 19, 2009—The Spooky Movie Film Festival is proud to announce the world premiere screening of C.W. Prather’s new documentary, EVERY OTHER DAY IS HALLOWEEN, Saturday, June 27, at 8:20 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, MD. 

This comedic documentary chronicles the career and legacy of Dick Dyszel, whose television alter-egos, “Count Gore De Vol,” “Captain 20” and “Bozo the Clown” helped raise generations of Washingtonians in the 1970s and 1980s (almost a half-million “Channel 20 Club Cards” were distributed during this time). But it was in the 1990s that Dick helped revolutionized the concept of entertainment-on-demand when he launched the first-ever streaming horror host show, “Creature Feature: The Weekly Web Program,”—predating Hulu, YouTube, and the iPod by years—which opened him up to the world.

“A nostalgic ode that makes you wish you had
your own Gore De Vol on your own TV!” 
-  BadLit.com

 More Here: 

http://everyotherdayishalloween.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/official-press-release-on-world-premiere-screening/#comments

Really, and such a simple name.

 The fine people in in charge of making signs for the state of Massachusetts really need to learn how to spell. It seems that the signs in Webster, MA directing people to one of their more famous lakes have been guilty of a glaringly obvious spelling error for the last few decades and only just discovered by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette a few years ago. 

The incorrect signs read Lake “Chargoggagoggmanchaoggagoggchaubunaguhgamaugg” whereas the correct spelling of this beautiful Nipmuc Indian word is of course “Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg” with a ‘u’ as the twentieth letter rather than the ‘o’ and an ‘h’ in the thirty-eighth spot rather than the ‘n’ that were incorrectly placed there by the obviously careless sign makers.

Really, it’s such a simple little name. How could they ever have messed that up? And what’s up with the locals? News reports on the sign indicate that the locals refer to the lake as “Lake Webster” rather than using its beautiful given name in all its Native American glory.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3291913.html

Lies, damned lies and Bush’s lies.

   Here’s an interesting bit of annoying news about he war on terror. We’ve been told for years now by the Bush Administration and Conservative talkers that we can’t close Guantánamo Bay because the worst of the worst are being held there. Strangely, they could never explain why they were quietly releasing so many of the “worst of the worst” over the years without even an attempt at a trial.

 

   But we have been told, and very loudly of late with Obama’s act of starting Guantánamo’s shutdown, that these worst of the worst can’t be released because so many of the released inmates have been picked up again “on the battlefield” where they had resumed their terrorist ways against us. Oddly, the spokesmen for the Bush administration were very hush-hush on the details about who these people being picked up again were. But they would tell us how many had been picked up.

 

   There was a tiny problem with that bit of information though. The numbers kept changing. No, they  didn’t keep changing by going up,  they changed by going up and down repeatedly. Depending on the speaker they could be in the low teens or as high as 68. Finally they stabilized about a year ago to 61 or 66 depending on the speaker. Still, names were as rare as a Loch Ness Monster sighting.

 

   Seems there was a reason why.

 

   The Seton Hall University School of Law has been doing some research and found out that the high numbers and the phrase “returned to the battlefield” were, to be nice about it, the products of severe exaggeration. Their interest was piqued by the fact that the numbers changed so much from speaker to speaker in the early days of this tactics use. What they found was a campaign to deliberately misrepresent the truth by the Bush Administration.

 

   Big surprise.

 

   Anyone paying attention over the last few years already saw the Bush Administration invent improved numbers of US Soldier’s battle related injuries in Iraq by quietly removing some battlefield injuries from the official list and then trumpeting the decreased number to the press. Here they did the reverse. Here they increased the scope of the definition of “battlefield” to inflate numbers.

 

    The Seton Hall University School of Law study found some of the names of the individuals cited as the ones who returned to the battlefield and the terms defined as their returning to the battlefield and the results were either laughable or infuriating depending on your mood. The Bush Administration had expanded the scope of “returning to the battlefield” to include being interviewed by a newspaper about their time in Guantánamo Bay or being included in a documentary about Guantánamo Bay.

 

   That’s it. If you were interviewed by the press about your release, if your image appeared in a documentary or news broadcast or if you were asked to write an editorial about what happened to you in Guantánamo Bay you were returning to the battlefield, threatening the lives of or troops, threatening American lives and continuing the war on terror against us.

 

   So, under the Bush Administration’s watch, we released hundreds of the “worst of the worst” without trial or charges against them and then that same Administration went on to tell us that many of these men had returned to the battlefield and once again become a threat to or very lives… by being asked about their Guantánamo Bay experience by their local press.

 

   They may have left office, but the stains that they left behind will continue to grow and and fester for years to come.

Monsters HD has Passed Away.

The following message appeared on the Monsters HD website this weekend:

MONSTERS HD – BORN: OCTOBER 2003 – DIED: JANUARY 2009
“TV’s first and longest-running hi-def horror and creature feature channel will cease operations and mad experiments this month. Thanks for all the screams and support over the years. Fear not – monsters never die…they always come back! Pleasant dreams fiends.”

Kung-Fu HD and a number of other Voom Network channels also passed away into the digital night with it.

Sucks to be a geek right now.

See more(ish) here.

http://www.monstershd.com/

http://fangoria.com/home/news/17-television/1075-monsters-hd-has-passed-away.html

1 match that showcases why TNA is clueless sometimes.

I was working this last Thursday night and had to DVR TNA Impact. I made a point of getting to it tonight so that I’d be caught up on the events for tonight and that I would be up to speed for the PPV. Not a bad show, but really a pretty weak one for the show heading into the PPV.

But one match derailed the whole thing for me as both a wrestling fan and as a critical observer. Beer Money, the TNA Tag Team Champions, lost their titles to Jay Lethal and Consequences Creed. Now, just having Beer Money drop the straps to Lethal and Creed in and of itself wouldn’t have bothered me. No, it was how TNA Creative wrote the title changes into the program.

With Beer Money you have TNA’s two best “home grown” heel talents. James Storm, once considered by many as the lesser half of America’s Most Wanted, has gone on since their break up and his heel turn to outshine his former partner in every way and perfect his arrogant, cocky, good old boy persona to the point where he can make an audience respond to him in any way that he wants them to. And Robert Roode… Robert Roode is one of the great, under appreciated heels in the industry right now. He’s taken a gimmick that started out looking like TNA creative wanted to clone “Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase (and then couldn’t make up their minds if he was Ted 2.0 or Diamond Dallas “Rags to Riches” Page 2.0) and created a heel so smooth, so great and so in control of the fans in attendance that I have no doubt that, if you could drop him into the NWA of the late 80s and early 90s, he could easily have become one of the Horsemen and been remembered as one of the great Horsemen. And both men know how to work inside the ring in a manner to bring out the best of the faces they’re against while drawing as much heel heat as possible.

So, of course, TNA books them as the Faces in Peril of the match. A quick recap for those who missed it.

Beer Money has a scheduled match where Roode faces off against one half of their PPV challengers Matt Morgan and Abyss in the form of Morgan. Morgan and Abyss are supposed to be, despite their recent booking, an unstoppable powerhouse team. The perfect set up for the match going into the PPV. Roode cheats to win on free TV and you either have the faces win on the PPV or lose to Beer Money so that they can go on to feud with the next team. Easy booking to do.

But TNA being TNA has to go and create a mess. Roode gets “injured” in the match and can’t continue. His knee is blown and he can barely stand on it. The match is ended and awarded to Morgan due to the inability of Roode to continue. A little strange I thought given that TNA has had matches continue before with a wrestler likewise injured. But I took it for what it was and decided that it wasn’t that bad a warm up for the PPV.

And then Creed and Lethal, two up and coming faces in TNA, come running to the ring. They announce that they’re going to cash in their “Feast or Fired” chances at the Tag Title Belts under the anywhere, anytime and any place rules. The match is started and the faces beat the crap out of Beer Money and win the belts.

WTF…

I don’t even know where to begin on the details of everything that was wrong here. Let’s start with the two obvious ones first I guess. You have a match that was stopped midway through because the ref says that one contestant can no longer continue and then that same injured man and his partner compete in a full match that isn’t stopped for the same reason we just saw the previous match stopped for just minutes earlier. Uhm… Okay…

I also have some issue with the concept of faces, the good guys, being written into the position of being what would have been pretty much exclusively the territory of the cowardly or opportunistic heels of old. I mean, you have two faces who see an injured man who can barely move and decide that now would be a good time to have a match with him and his partner? You have two good guys who decide that now would be a good time to double team one guy and beat on a borderline crippled man while their at it?

Dumb, dumb, dumb booking.

The match itself was actually rather good, but the vibe in it was total bass ackwards. During the match you had Storm valiantly fighting two men, moments resembling the classic face in peril hot tags (but done by the heel team) and Roode struggling to help his partner even at the cost of his own well being. At one point Roode actually gets into the action and pulls off some come behind moves before the double team of Creed and Lethal destroy him by, amongst other things, targeting the injury he had from the prior match. You know, that injury that stopped the other match just before this one started. After a few minutes of opportunistic actions, two on one double teams and targeting an adversaries injury the “faces” win the match and the titles.

Oh, and they also used a cheap shot to win.

Like I said above, it was totally bass ackwards. The heels were playing the traditional roles of the faces and the faces were working an almost full heel style. And not only did the dynamics of the match not really make sense, but the booking around the match doesn’t make any sense when related to a match like this.

Is this the beginning of a Beer Money face turn? It’s doubtful because there’s been nothing else to indicate that they would do this. And besides, you don’t face turn a heel team by having them beaten down, injured and taken advantage of by a face team. The logical motivation and reasoning that most fans would relate to is absent from the equation. Well, it could be there if the match was a heel to face and face to heel double turn, but…

Creed and Lethal aren’t going heel. They were treated like faces at the end of the match, acted like faces at the end of the match and embraced and cheered for their victory by the fellow wrestlers and fans after the match as though they were full on, 100% faces. Even the backstage segments afterwards were the typical face celebrations and interview bits. They were straight up faces and it would appear that they’re staying that way.

Oh, and they’re now weak champions. Why this works for heels is that heels can go on and lie, cheat and steal their way towards holding on to those titles in their next series of title defenses. Heels can use an opportunistic cheat like this and still safely come out looking like a weaker team than the former champions because you know that, unlike the faces, they’ll resort to cheating in their next matches and, if that doesn’t work, they’ll just up and walk away for a count out loss where they still retain the belts.

Faces can’t do that. Faces can’t go out there and be the weak, cowardly heel act and look like credible champions. Creed and Lethal look like two guys who double teamed a tired wrestler and beat up a cripple to win the titles. They look like weak, fluke champs right now. Beer Money, the heels, look like the guys who were screwed over by a team that knew that they were so inferior to Beer Money that they couldn’t beat them in a fair fight. But Beer Money are still the heels and Creed and Lethal are still the faces.

TNA creative didn’t think this thing through logically or sanely and it shows. They’ve devalued their face team as champs, made their heel team look like guys who the face team are afraid to fight fair and square and TNA made their officiating look even more clueless and random than they sometimes do thanks to their stopping a match because of a serious injury that apparently wasn’t serious enough to stop another match for two minutes later.

Nothing about this seems like it was given more than two minutes of thought. Nothing about this title change works towards increasing the storyline credibility of anyone involved and may actually lower it for some.

TNA seems like it treads water far too often and this is, to me, a perfect example of why. Too many times TNA creative seems to take two steps forward with characterization, concepts and execution and then they turn right back around and take two steps backwards. They did it again here. They took two guys that they were trying to build into a strong face team and made them weak champions while taking two heels that were becoming one of the greatest heel teams of their era and made them look like strong, valiant and even sympathetic fighting champions. And they made their officials look clueless and random in the process.

WWE can afford to make these mistakes a bit too often because WWE is so large that it can tread water where it’s at. TNA can’t. TNA has to grow and it has to stop taking the good opportunities that it has and booking them into sheer stupidity. I’m not going to be one of the chorus of voices who say that TNA won’t be around by next year if they keep this up, but if they keep this up they will be exactly where they are now and not one step forward from there.

Is Boxing Dead?

   That may seem like an odd question to most people, but if you’re an MMAfan you’ve likely heard that notion floated as a fact rather than a question. Boxing is old, slow, boring and all but dead. It’s being replaced by mixed martial arts as the big fight sport in town.

   Now, you can point to lots of things that make convincing, if purely anecdotal, evidence. Boxing isn’t carried on the networks like it was in bygone years, it doesn’t have any new huge stars that are the household names of past generations of boxers and the day after water cooler talk about boxing is diminishing while the day after water cooler talk about MMA is on the rise. The people in the press and on the web that are pro MMA also push the idea that boxing is now seen as a very limited form of fighting sport with no where near the appeal of MMA’s fast and furious action.

   Well to them I say, and I do say this as a huge MMA fan, bullshit.

   Boxing is every bit the entertaining fighting sport that MMA is. Does the limitations of “just punching” mean that there’s less action? Maybe. But the restrictions on what you can do often means that you have to fight smarter to be a top fighter. Boxing is like a chess match of sorts. You have to go in with a game plan and you have to have a strategy that allows you to impose your game plan over your opponent’s.

   The pro-MMA critics of boxing make the same mistake that the pro-boxing critics of MMA make. Many boxing fans disparage MMA because the fighters often go to the ground and then just “role around” for minutes at a time. They just, say the boxing fans, flail about while kicking and hitting at each other. The problem with that criticism is that it shows a complete lack of what is going on when you have two fighters who are well schooled in amateur wrestling and Brazilian Jujitsu. If you understand those two things and have any basic knowledge of them; you’re looking at two fighters who are making move after counter move after move like a very physical chess game. Two top tier fighters are working a mental game that’s every bit as difficult, if not more so, than the physical game.

   It’s much the same with good boxers. Two good fighters can put on a boxing match that’s every bit the metaphorical “clinic” that fans refer to good matches as. Good boxing is a science. A good boxer is as much brain and strategy as brawn.

   Even the often thuggish “Iron” Mike Tyson proves that rule rather than disproves it. Tyson was a beast in the ring when he had the proper trainers, managers and team around him. Once he lost the right people and began to become surrounded by the wrong people his fighting style changed. Tyson rarely had to depend on strategy in the ring because of his power, but there were a few fights where he displayed actual advanced knowledge of the sweet science. Once he lost the people that pushed him to be a fighter rather than just a brutish thug who depended on rushing in and overpowering his adversary he began a massive downhill slide as a fighter. Even after all of his problems he should have been a better fighter when he returned to boxing. Instead he was often beaten by boxers his age range or slightly older who were fighting smarter fights than him. When he started fighting based on power he broke and, occasionally, broke down in the ring. He became a “fighter” who cried to his corner men in the Lennox Lewis fight that “I can’t beat him” in between rounds.

   If more fighters get into boxing and become smart boxers; we have a recipe for great fights. And we’re seeing some really good up and comers out there now. Manny Pacquiao is a good example. He just destroyed odds on favorite Oscar De La Hoya a little while back. Good fight to check out if you can find it.

   But I’m sure you’re ready to say that most of what I’m saying is opinion and not hard facts. Well, I’ve got some hard facts for you. As of this writing a boxing card is the biggest sports related PPV of 2008.

Top 10 North American PPV buy rates, 2008

1. Boxing:Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao, Dec. 6, 1,250,000

2. UFC:Brock Lesnar vs. Randy Couture, Nov. 15, 1,010,000

3. Wrestling:WrestleMania, Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Paul “Big Show” Wight, March 30, 670,000

4. UFC:Georges St. Pierre vs. Jon Fitch/Lesnar vs. Heath Herring, Aug. 9, 625,000

5. UFC:Lesnar vs. Frank Mir, Feb. 2, 600,000

6. UFC: Quinton Jackson vs. Forrest Griffin, July 5, 540,000

7. UFC: St. Pierre vs. Matt Serra, April 19, 530,000

8. Boxing: Felix Trinidad vs. Roy Jones Jr., Jan. 19, 500,000

9. UFC:Chuck Liddell vs. Rashad Evans, Sept. 6, 480,000

10. UFC:B.J. Penn vs. Sean Sherk/Tito Ortiz vs. Lyoto Machida, May 24, 475,000

   And, as you can see, the #3 PPV card had a little drawing power help in the form of boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr.

   Boxing isn’t dead. Boxing isn’t slow and boring. Boxing is just getting the short end of the promotional stick right now and it’s getting unfairly criticised by a bunch of know nothing MMA fans in the exact same way that a bunch of the old guard fans of boxing are flinging their uninformed criticisms at MMA. Boxing is still an art form when done right and it’s a solid part of MMA’s standup game. To denigrate it just because you’re “an MMA fan” or just to try and convince yourself or others that  your favorite fight game is the greatest thing since sliced bread doesn’t make you an MMA fan. What it makes you is an uninformed idiot talking out of your backside.

   And, again, I say this as a huge MMA fan.

See you at the fights.

Forrest J Ackerman 1916 – 2008

R.I.P. Uncle Forry.

“Forrest J Ackerman, who influenced a generation of young horror movie fans with Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and spent a lifetime amassing what has been called the world’s largest personal collection of science fiction and fantasy memorabilia, has died. He was 92.“

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/12/forrest-j-acker.html

Can We Just Laugh At Them Now???

You’ve gotta love the chat-show-Right and the conservative news media. When Obama and Hillary were fighting it out over their party’s nomination the talking heads on the Right were bemoaning the “fact” that Obama’s success was proof that even Hillary was “too conservative” for the now fringe controlled Democratic party. His winning the nomination was, so they said, the nail in the coffin of the Democratic Party since it was clearly a party out of touch with Main Street America and in bed with the farthest Left nutjobs.

Then we had the actual election run up. The talking point was that Obama was the most liberal candidate ever run by the Democratic Party and his voting record was the most liberal of anyone who ever served in Congress.  Why, he was even more liberal than the last twenty Democratic candidates that the Right claimed was the most liberal human to have ever been alive!

And what Obama campaigned on was the greatest threat ever known to our country! Why it was, so the conservative talking heads said, unabashed socialism! Obama was running on a platform that was so shamelessly socialist that it put him just to the left of socialist Russia.

And then he won.

Suddenly the same talking heads that called the man the most left voting, socialist running and fringe candidate ever fielded by a political party were saying that his election victory was in fact a victory for conservatism. Despite almost a full year of their own words to the contrary; the new talking point that they pushed with completely straight faces was that Obama ran as a conservative. He won the election because he espoused conservative values and promoted a conservative platform for his candidacy.

Oooooooookay.

So now we flash forward to today. I’ve been listening to Fox News (I know, my first mistake.) on my XM today. What’s the talking point this weekend? Obama the liberal leftist fringe guy is abandoning his left leaning ways and snubbing the Left Fringe. How? He’s abandoned his liberal and socialist campaign promises that destroyed our economy with his election and he’s appointing conservative Democrats to his cabinet now that the ship has hit the sand financially so as to calm Wall Street and Main Street. He is being “dragged from the far Left” and toward the center by the state of the economy.

Ooooooookay.

Why are any of these guys still employed? How can anyone take these mouth breathers seriously at this point? I mean, even the biggest Kool-Aid drinkers that tune in to these guys must have their heads spinning just trying to do the mental gymnastics to keep up with this comedy. Two really big jokes here.

(1) The talking point that these guys have on Obama’s picks is that it’s a bunch of warmed over Clinton appointees. Obama is setting up The Bill Clinton Administration 2.0. Now most of these guys have books, archived editorial columns and/or recorded comments from the 90s. I don’t remember these wonder dummies calling the Clinton Administration a “Conservative” administration. I pretty clearly remember the exact opposite actually. I mean, they’re still bring up Clinton and the “ultra-liberal” things he and his administration did as the cause of the economic meltdown and social problems we have now. Well, at least they do when they’re not claiming that this is the “Obama Economy” every third sentence. But now the talking point is that these same guys were all part of a conservative Democratic movement and a sign that Obama is abandoning the ultra-extreme leftist platforms that he ran on (while running as a conservative) just a few short months ago. Oooooooookay.

(2) Are they on drugs? well, I mean besides Rush who we all know partakes from time to time. I mean, the only people who can make a string of statements like that and think it’s logical and coherent are usually stoned out of their minds. Seriously, try and say the whole thing and not laugh yourself silly at the stupidity of it.

The combined talking points of the last year: Obama was the most fringe left running candidate that the Democrats ever ran, but he won by running as a conservative. However, he’s now abandoning the fringe left that he ran to during the campaign in order to reassure Wall Street by appointing “conservative Democrats” to his future cabinet who were themselves a part of the ultra liberal leaning Clinton administration and are themselves responsible for the socialist policies that destroyed our economy and, skipping right over eight years of the Bush economic policies and twelve years of a Republican run Congress, brought us the disastrous “Obama Economy” that we now have.

it’s gotta be drugs. Even I wouldn’t have thought that this many of the Fox News crew and the chat show goons that have been joining the chorus were this shameless and hypocritical. Fox News and Clear Channel Communications needs to implement mandatory weekly drug tests pronto quick. It may be the only way that they can salvage what little credibility they ever had.

**** 38 ****

   It happened. It came and went and pretty much nothing fell off, broke down or started flashing its “Maintenance Required” light at me. Just about one week ago I turned 38.

 

   It was a pretty good three days. I took the time off from work to do some things so my actual birthday was fairly relaxed. I had a nice lunch with my parents, wife and 16 month old clone, I opened a few gifts and I finished out the course needed to make me legally able to hunt in Virginia. Kind of a big goal to get back into hunting. Have you seen the coast of quality meat these days?

 

   Since no one cares about the grey hairs, aches, pains and assorted issues that come with aging yet another year and taking yet another proverbial step towards geezerhood; I’ll just jump to the stash!

 

   Basically, I’m set for late night DVD watching for about a month. Well, it would have been a month once. Nowadays, thanks to the unreasonable woman I married thinking that or child will be scarred for life if he sees quality horror films before freaking 8 years of age, I may have about a years worth of viewing pleasure. But anyhow…

 

    One film that I can watch with Ian in the room is a cool ass war film called Tae Guk Gi. Buy this film. On to the horror stuff.

 

   My slightly early gift was the complete Nightmare on Elm Streets series in a metal embossed box with collectable bonuses. It’s even got 3-D glasses. After that came a flood of really nice DVD collections containing some great, some not so great and some so bad they’re good films in them. Werewolves, Vampires & Zombies (10 movies on 3 DVDs) is over 13 hours of schlock horror that should keep me quite happy for a long time.

 

   I got a very nice 2 disc Paul Naschy collection containing Curse of the Devil and Werewolf Shadow AKA Werewolf VS the Vampire Woman. The thing that sets this set apart from others is that they have the original Castilian soundtrack with English subtitles as a viewing option. That’s a pretty cool deal since both films were actually fairly well done but kinda killed by bad dubbing for American distribution.

 

   Bloodsucking Cinema is a nice little Starz documentary that I saw some time ago and is now on DVD. Nice little doc about the origin and evolution of the vampire movie. Not definitive, but very nice nonetheless. Got a nice 20 movie pack called Vampires & More from up north that covers films ranging form the 1922 Nosferatu to Oasis of the Zombies. Included in the rescue parcel was also an awesome Hammer Films double feature that included Countess Dracula and The Vampire Lovers.

 

   Count Yorga, Vampire followed up the rear just in time to save me from the pain and anguish of living with the death of my old VHS copy recorded off of the USA channel. That rescue came along with the historically important double feature of Count Dracula’s Great Love and Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks. I say they’re “historically important” because they’re from Elvira’s Movie Macabre series. One day when Ian is old enough, he to can learn of the amazing assets she had to contribute to horror history.

 

   One thing that showed up that my wife will actually let me watch with Ian in the room is 1955’s The Complete Adventures of Robin Hood Season One. Not a bad version of Robin Hood if you’ve never seen it. It’s the one with Richard Greene as Robin Hood. And lastly on the DVD list was Dragon Dynasty’s The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. A great film that I would recommend to anyone out there. Oh, and there was also the Carson Christmas DVD.

 

   My in-laws are flipping the bill for my hunting license this year as well, so I’ll be killing Bambi maybe as soon as the end of the month. I just have to hook up with the G-Man and set up a good day.

 

   So, yeah, much movie greatness this year. Still doesn’t help with the whole feeling of geezerhood thing though…