#i hope he brings this winning energy to jr worlds too

[eggplantgifs]

Rio Nakata wins the silver medal at the 2024 Japanese National Championships with a clean free skate to Pirates of the Caribbean

[kakiwrites]

astronomy

Genre: angst

Hajime iwaizumi x reader

Warning: cancer, y/n death

Synopsis: when you get diagnosed with cancer, you wanted to spend what little time you had left completing your bucket list with iwaizumi.

a/n: blame @tendousfingerbandagess for this idea. I was just listening to conan gray's new song 'astronomy' then prompted this idea. I want to share my pain with you all hehehe! Let's get started.

"we found that you have acute lymphocytic leukemia…" were the first and only words you heard from the doctor before blood suddenly rushed to your ears.

You were rushed to the hospital by your boyfriend, Iwaizumi, when your very high fever kept coming back every few hours. Hajime sat next to you as the doctor broke the news to you, trying to comfort you by running his thumb over your clenched knuckle. He hoped to ease you into the harsh reality that was brought upon you but you couldn't feel anything then. All you felt was the piercing cold. You didn't know if it was a symptom of your new diagnosis or because of the news itself.

"w-well, can you still treat it?" Iwaizumi asked for you, squeezing your hand to attempt and bring you back into this conversation.

"we can but it'll be painful-"

"what if I don't want to be treated?" you suddenly chimed in. that caused Hajime to turn to you with a shocked expression. No. You have to get treated. He can't lose you.

"w-what are you saying, (y/n)? Y-you can't be serious." Iwaizumi let out a humorless chuckle, praying that you would laugh along and reassure him that you were kidding. But you didn't do that. You sat straight in the uncomfortable chair, waiting for the doctor's response.

"Well, though it is not ideal, we can delay putting you on the transplant list but that will lessen your chances to survive. Chemo therapy is also on the table." the doctor replied professionally, his clipboard opened on your file to take note of your wishes.

"I want to delay both as of now. I-I just need time to think…" your voice cracked. You wanted to be strong. To show your boyfriend that you could handle it and that you'll be okay. But from the looks of your face, how you trembled beside him, iwaizumi knew that it was the exact opposite of what you were trying to portray. The doctor nodded his head before he left you alone with a confused and distraught Iwa.

"why?" Iwa's voice was barely above whisper as his glassy eyes looked into yours in sorrow. He wanted you to live. He already planned his future with you. How you would have two kids running around the small house you two would purchase to accommodate your family. But now, he wasn't so sure if that same dream of his will come to life. The only thing he could do now was pray that you'll survive and live through this.

"I want to live my life, haj," you replied. You shot him a sad grin before you took a deep breath and spoke once more. "I want to live my life to the fullest before I grow weak and have to sit in a hospital room and wait impatiently for the small chance that I'll find a donor or see any big progresses." you let out a watery laugh. Damn, this was harder than it looks. "I want to live my last stronger moments with you." tears ran down your cheeks at the end of your little speech. You looked back to see iwaizumi's tears flowing down just like yours did.

Iwaizumi brought your hand up to his quivering lips and placed a soft kiss on them. "then I'll help you. I'll help you live your life to the fullest." he placed another kiss on your knuckle, a sign of a promise he was willing to do anything to keep.

"okay, I'm done!" you called Iwa. You placed your pen down and waited for him to pop out from your shared bedroom.

Iwaizumi smiled and sat next to you on the couch, reaching a hand out to take the slip of paper from you. You gave it to him willingly. "have a road trip around Japan, adopt a puppy, try delicacies in each city we visit, bungee jumping, and star gazing. Wow, it looks like we have a lot of things to do~" he said, wrapping his arm around you and bringing you closer as his eyes skimmed through the list once more.

You nodded your head in agreement. Iwaizumi explained to his team that he wouldn't be there as often because of your diagnosis. They all agreed that your health came first and that they'll be fine hearing his critiques on their forms and diet from home. Just like that, he already sacrificed so much for your sake. He now asked you to write down a small little bucket list you could do together before you decide to settle down and get better. He promised to help you live your life to the fullest after all.

"When do you think is the best time to start working on this?" he asked, waving the list in his hand. You shrugged. You didn't want to rush him into finishing this and risk burning your boyfriend out. This was his time to relax and have fun beside you. "We should get packing then!" he took both of your hands and pulled you up from your seat, causing a giggle to bubble up from your throat. You tilted your head when his words sank into your brain. Pack? Right now?

"You want me to pack? Right now?" you asked skeptically. Iwa chuckled before leaning in and pressing a quick kiss on your soft lips.

"because we're going on that road-trip tomorrow, you idiot." Hajime watched your eyes lit up with glee before you skipped into your bedroom and packed your shared luggage.

Even in the devastating predicament you were in, you didn't stop being so positive and happy. That was one of the things he loved about you.

"We drive through the woods

Rich neighborhoods to watch

We joked as we looked

That they were too good for us

Cause socially speaking we were the same

With runaway fathers and mothers who drank

A tale old as time

Young love don't last for life"

You sat in the passenger seat of Hajime's car, a blanket keeping you comfortable while Conan Gray's astronomy blaring through the speakers. Iwaizumi couldn't help but bop his head behind the wheel while you sang along.

"damn, your voice sounds amazing." he complimented, causing your cheeks to feel hot. Iwaizumi chuckled before he turned and parked in the wide parking lot of the animal shelter.

"wait! Are we getting the puppy now?!" you squealed excitedly. Iwaizumi clicked his seatbelt off and hummed in confirmation. You never got out of the car that quickly before.

Fortunately, this was only the beginning.

For the next few days, you traveled around Japan with your new puppy, iwaizumi named (y/n) Jr., went bungee jumping together, and tried delicacies in each town. you had the time of your life.

But fun had to end.

On the last day of your third week, you started to feel waves on waves of fatigue wash over you. You just wanted to rest with Iwaizumi but you felt like giving in was only admitting that you can't handle it anymore.

So you forced yourself to get up.

It was hard to hide things from iwaizumi. He was always perceptive, especially now. He was there to help you live.

He needed you to live. Because he knew that he wasn't anyone without you.

"you okay? We can rest today if you want." he asked worriedly, walking over and assisting you to a seat. He went into the kitchen to fetch you a glass of water.

"no, I'm fine." you replied, trying to reduce your shaking as you take the glass and chugged the water. You could only hope that your headache will subside soon. "do you have anything planned for today?" you asked, feigning cheerfulness. Iwaizumi glanced back at you worriedly before he sighed, flashing you a small smile.

"well, we have stargazing on your list so I was planning to do just that." Iwa sat next to you and stretched his arm over your shoulder. You giggled before you closed your eyes and nuzzled into him, wishing to store the last bit of your energy that you felt was seeping out at a rapid pace.

Iwaizumi could hope that it wasn't what he suspected. That you were just having an off-day. That you were okay, just like the last few weeks.

But that was all he could do. All he could do was hope.

The night air was colder than usual.

You pulled your thick cardigan closer to your chest and squeezed iwa's hand, hoping that his warmth would seep into you. Hajime looked back at you worriedly. "you okay? Dammit, we should've stayed home-"

"i'm fine, haji, it's just colder than usual." you lied, nudging him, telling him to keep walking.

You felt like you used up all of your energy climbing up the small hill where a picnic blanket was set-up on the very top, a small stereo playing Astronomy softly. You couldn't help but gasp in surprise. Maybe that wasn't a good idea, the lack of air in your lungs already making you dizzy. The gasp hid the shallowness of your breath from your already anxious boyfriend who helped you get settled on the blanket under the stars.

"just... Sit tight." iwaizumi took a deep breath before he stood in front of you, made a fist and pretended he was holding a mic as he sang along to Conan's soft voice.

"We've traveled the seas

We've ridden the stars

We've seen everything

From Saturn to Mars

As much as it seems

Like you own my heart

It's astronomy

We're two worlds apart"

He took your hand and pulled you up on your shaking feet. he got down on one knee then took out a velvet box. Your hands flew to your mouth. This can't be happening.

"(y/n), it might look like we don't have time but i know you can fight back and win. I can wait until then. So (y/n) (l/n), will you marry me?" he muttered to keep his voice from cracking. Your smile reached from ear to ear, nodding your head rapidly at a loss of words. Iwaizumi slipped the ring onto your finger and was about to pull you close into a hug when the unthinkable happened.

Your feet buckled under you, unable to support your weight anymore. Your breath was ragged and loud. You tried to suck in air to no avail. What was going on?

Your ears ring while black dots start to spread through your vision. The last thing you remembered was your now fiance's blurry figure in front of you, desperately trying to bring you back to him.

Cold. The cold just seeps into you, suffocates you until-

You woke up to the blinding lights of the hospital. Your tired eyes moved to observe the room. You felt someone squeezed your hand. You turned to see a sleepy iwaizumi slouched in one of those uncomfortable hospital chairs, his hand gripping yours tightly. Hajime jolted awake the second you squeezed his hand back.

"(y/n)!" he exclaimed in relief, bringing his head down and kissing the ring on your finger repeatedly. Little droplets littered your hand. Iwaizumi was crying. "i-i thought i lost you... You wouldn't wake up for days a-and-" he sobbed. You pulled him into your chest, letting him nuzzle into your weak figure.

That small reassurance that you still had that small fight left in you helped iwaizumi sleep that night.

It was only the beginning of hell for you.

For the next few weeks, iwaizumi couldn't do anything but watch as your once strong figure rapidly grew weaker by the day. He had no idea had to stop it.

He needed a miracle.

He picked up his phone, dialed a certain number and waited for them to answer. If iwaizumi needed a miracle, this was the guy to call.

Another week went by, you were looking out your window in boredom when your hospital room door opened. thinking it was another nurse, you used all your strength to crane your neck to look at the person who entered. Your eyes lit up when you saw Iwaizumi enter with the Argentina setter, Oikawa.

"tooru!" you cheerfully yelled. Oikawa immediately rushed toward you. The man was about to pounce on you but iwa came to the rescue just in time and pulled the setter away from your bed.

"what are you doing here?" you asked, wiping away the stray happy tears that accumulated in the corners of your eyes.

"simple!" oikawa said as he skipped back to the door and opened it to reveal matsukawa and hanamaki with an officiant. "i decided to provide a little bit of a miracle." You turned to iwaizumi who glowed pink beside you. Was this really happening?

Your little "ceremony" flew by too quickly for your liking. You wished you could just cherish this moment forever. How all of the former members of the volleyball team came in and gave their congratulations and told little anecdotes they remember about the early stages of your relationship, like the time hajime almost beaten up oikawa for flirting with you in high school or how iwaizumi accidentally hit you with his spike when he was staring a second too long.

The noise slowly died down to the beeps of your heart monitor connected to you. Iwaizumi sat beside you and kissed your hand once more. "we're officially married now." he whispered, not wanting to break the soft ambience of the room.

"yeah..." you leaned back weakly in your bed. A wave of fatigue suddenly hit you. Maybe it was because of the eventful day you've had.

"You gotta live through this if you want to enjoy our honeymoon." he joked, causing you to let you a soft giggle.

"i love you, haj."

"i love you too, baby..."

"We have a code blue!"

Iwaizumi shot out of his seat to be met by a slew of nurses bursting into your room. His eyes snapped toward your limp figure. No. Nonono. This cannot be happening. You were okay. You were laughing along with everyone. You were joking around. You promised to live, to be strong.

Why? Why did you let go now?

"sir, Please step outside of the room." a nurse said to him, hauling the trainer out the door and into the hallway. Iwaizumi dropped into one of the empty seats outside, burying his head in his hands. He prayed to every god he could think of, to spare your life.

But unfortunately, his prayers weren't answered.

When the doctor came out of your room with a somber look on his face. He already knew what happened. His tears silently flowed down his cheeks as his brain blocked out the doctor's voice, ringing growing louder and louder.

There was only one festering thought in his mind now and it was growing bigger the longer he stayed in that hallway. It kept nipping at him when he went back into the room to see your now lifeless body.

You were gone and he will never see you wake up again.

It all moved like a blur to hajime. Your family was as equally as distraught as he was. They offered their support to which Iwaizumi refused to take. At night he would imagine that you would come bursting into the room and cuddle with you and every time, he would feel tears prick his eyes when he would remember that it didn’t work like that.

The funeral wasn’t any better. Iwaizumi would acknowledge the typical condolence message here and there. He went out of his way to make his eulogy speech a bit more personal for your grieving family members and friends. He couldn’t stop his sobs when he watched as your casket got lowered into your final resting place. The pain felt unbearable.

He stood in front of your new and clean tombstone, tears pricking the corners of his eyes as he held (y/n) jr. In his other hand. He let out a shaky smile, the smile he usually reserved for you. He was going to miss you.

"don't worry love, we'll meet again." he whispered hoping you would hear him one last time. It was going to be hard to move on but he’s going to do everything in his power to pull himself back up and come to terms with reality and maybe to keep your memory alive.

And that's all! This was a real whirlwind and I didn't really anticipate it being this long! Hope you guys enjoyed this! Thanks for @tetsunormous for getting mad at me for spamming and beta reading! Requests are open so please don't be shy to leave anything in my inbox! Love you guys 💖💕❤️

General taglist (don’t be shy to comment your tumblr @ below): @tokyoghoose @macaronnv @reogou @midnightangelfox @wumboho @seiijixcia

[impala-in-gotham]

SPN Finale Theory: Part Two

Finale realizations continued--taking off of Part One

Chuck’s Swan Song Finale 2.0 and Cas Omitted

Throughout the show Chuck is still trying to get the brother vs brother end using His own "blunt instruments" by bringing back Lucifer(s7-15) multiple times, giving Dean the MOC(s10), bringing in AW Michael(s13) and possessing Dean(s14). It never works because free will, love and family always wins.

So... all of s15, minus the last 2 episodes, were filled with all the character development we saw develop and arcs that were the product of "running their own race". THEN Cas dies.

Everything Cas represents fades away in ep 19. The last time we hear his voice is corrupted by Lucifer. (But it also canonically confirms Dean loves Cas.) How he changed Dean’s self-worth, renewed Sam’s hope, and Jack himself is all that’s left of Cas to help change the narrative and defeat Chuck once and for all. He died believing this would come to pass because he saved Dean.

You feel the disconnect happen in between Lucifer and Michael’s deaths and Jack becoming the new God. But even with Chuck the writers no longer in power, its reverted back to before Cas ever interfered. Family is back to only the brothers and the plot is back to hunting monsters. The ending for each brother mirrors the finales of the season before Cas meant something to them. Dean got a season 3 finale since Cas meant something to Dean first and Sam got a season 5 finale since Cas didn’t mean as much to him until s6.

Carry On:

Dean’s character has dwindled back down to his car, pie, rock music, and beer of s3. He even loves dogs again as if he’s pre-hellhound death trauma. Sam’s character has dwindled back down to the baby brother that no longer wants to hunt but there for emotional support of pre-s5. Even the damn journal's back and Jenny for some reason.

Dean’s s3 "at least then my life can mean something" mindset AKA before found family-Bobby reminds him it always did and Cas saves him returns. He dies by getting stabbed in the back mirroring how Sam died in s2 which led to Cas & the apocalypse to begin with. Dean desperately tries to accept it and begs to be told its ok for him to die. It’s as if s15 Dean that doesn’t want to die is battling with s3 Dean who always feared but expected he’d die on a hunt. Cas doesn't save him this time. Since Sam went on to apparently live a very hollow, apple pie life where he was mourning his brother the whole time it mirrors s5 Dean’s life with Lisa. Sam builds a family but his wife is just a stand-in, his son is a Dean jr, and all his memories surround the parents and brother he lost. Cas still doesn’t interfere. Sam also needs assurance to let go.

Even heaven isn't post-s5 accurate despite the claim that Jack and Cas built this to be the heaven Dean dreamed of and deserved. Sure, Jan. Cas is supposedly alive and well but it’s not known or is [Omitted]; however, what Cas represents is not in heaven either.

Everything about Dean’s heaven is pre-Cas or pre-apocalypse canon:

Pre-s4 cast of Bobby, parents, and Rufus are the only ones “known” to be in heaven. Leaving out post5 family like Charlie, Kevin, even Adam. Cas witnessed the grief and guilt their loss had on Dean, plus all 3 were already included in s15 (AW Charlie but still Charlie callback). Cas would have had them there, on or off-screen.

Despite Bobby being there as supposed found family, he’s also dwindled down to the Bobby of s3. He doesn’t even get up and hug Dean who he hasn’t seen since s8 which canonically doesn’t make sense for post s3 reunions for Bobby or Dean. You get reunited from death, you hug each other; its the Supernatural law of the land.

Harvelle's is thee bar and only actual setting in heaven instead of Dean's dream of Rocky's Bar circa s14. Which Cas not only knows is Dean’s dream, he stood in it. Cas never went to Harvelle's and the only time it was heaven-related was s5 as a part of Ash's heaven only. Dean never mentions it after.

The heaven beer is El Sol. The same in Dean's djinn dream(s3) AND in the Beautiful Room(s4). Not the beer that they've been drinking in the bunker for years OR the ones in Rocky's that are real-life Jensen's. And not because it's his favorite like in s3/4 BUT because it was his first/with his Dad....that's what we're going with? That's what Dean dreams about? No.

Despite heaven being new & improved, it's actually similar to s5 Dark Side of the Moon heaven. Baby just appears and Dean has to follow the road which can only lead to Sam. Which Cas does witness but...interesting.

In conclusion, episode 20 was unbelievable because it's an illusion of what Sam and Dean's life/fate/heaven would be without Cas changing the story and without Chuck being in charge of it. It's not real. It's a figment of what could have been post-Swan Song. This is exactly why you can watch up to season 5 then skip 10 entire years and still follow the finale. If anything its part 2 of Swan Song that Kripke wanted but didn't get. Jensen knew it. It deleted 10 yrs because it deleted Cas and everything that resulted because of Cas. I have no idea what all was Omitted but I have a feeling the finale was still this s5 nightmare, I’m just thinking maybe it was on purpose.

Cas/Misha persevered despite the 3-6 ep arc role he was supposed to have and continued challenging God's narrative for 12 years. This is why ALL of us that are screaming into the void, can't move on, and hated the finale just so happen to ALSO be Castiel fans or Cas/Dean Girls or Hellers or any fan that saw how Cas's entire arc was the driving force from s6-15. We know #CastielMatters/Energies because without him the show would have died with him as false-god Godstiel. We recognized the profound effect he had on Dean and Sam throughout their character development.

I didn't make any of this up THEY wrote this into being. They wrote the show. They wrote the characters. They wrote the parallels and the very specifically done set design/lighting. We just saw it through a lens that maybe you can't see without being more like Cas. An outsider, self-loathing, trying our best in a world where it’s easy to do our worst, have more faith in love than God, and maybe even be a little queer too. Yes, it was a story that started out as two brothers hunting monsters but they grew up. The whole show grew up and this is NOT how it ends.

[danwhobrowses]

AEW Double or Nothing 2021 - Review

It's that time of the year to put your chips in, Double or Nothing is back with a big card that includes a Stadium Stampede, Sting in Non-Cinematic action and AEW's first Triple Threat World Title match.

Unfortunately due to the UK having a weekend heatwave I was way too tired to watch this live, so I'm watching the replay on Fite- thankfully it's a Bank Holiday so I don't really have to rush this and I somehow managed to get through the morning without being spoiled.

Like my Wrestlemania review I will be putting in bold who I thought would win Also it goes without saying, Spoilers within

The Buy-In Not a fan of the 5-ish minutes of beeping as the camera synced up or the 12 minute wait overall but it is the Pre-Show. But we start with a lot of packages, in fact we had 2 packages of Bucks vs MoxEddie which was weird. 45 Minutes we get the crowd though and that just injects you with the energy.

Matt and the HFO starts with a backstage promo, bragging of his win and enticing Private Party by lowering his 30% cut to 15% if they win, then another Shida/Baker package...like, we could throw more matches we had an entire Countdown show for these packages on Fite and Youtube, you have the roster for it. Also the stage did invest a lot in the fan seats, not much of the set, kinda 50/50 on it because on one hand it's a shame we didn't have a grand set but on the other hand it had an ECW feel of being swarmed with (COVID safe) fans.

NWA Women's Championship: Serena Deeb (c) def. Riho (Submission via Serenity Lock) At about 50 mins of a 75 min buy-in we get our first match, and Riho and Deeb come out to big pops. I'm glad they noted that Riho has a win over Deeb too. Bell rings to a big cheer, after some back and forth Riho extends the handshake but Deeb slaps her, cementing a heel turn. Riho slaps back and fires up, knee to the corner and a diving crossbody for 2, she tries a sunset flip but Deeb almost gets the Serenity Lock. Deeb then decides to pick off Riho; Dragon Screw, launch pad into the bottom rope, Elbow into the thigh, she looks to set up the Romero Special but instead pulls on Riho's nose, then stomps her knees down. Abdominal Stretch and then a Cravat, but Riho snapmares out and chases Deeb at the corner, Deeb catches her though through the ropes with 3 rope-assisted chokes and the a spinning neckbreaker into the middle rope for 2. Deeb then pulls Riho up for a inverted Gory Special then driving her into the turnbuckle, she tries the superplex but gets knocked off, Riho hits the stomp but the knees buckle so she can't make the pin. She attacks with some strikes, headscissors, 619 but it's only 2, she tries the Dragon Suplex but Deeb locks in the Octopus Stretch, transitions into a sleeper but Riho gets a fantastic reversal of the bridging suplex for 2 again. Strung on the middle rope, Riho goes for the double stomp but misses and hits the ring apron, injuring the knees more, Dragon Screw on the rope, Twisting Neckbreaker for 2, she charges at Riho in the corner but Riho has her boot up, Riho tries to kick away but Deeb keeps hold of the leg, catches the other and Dragon Screws both of her legs, Powerbomb 1, 2, No. Deeb sets up the Detox but hits the back body press, she tries the Dragon Suplex but Deeb escapes, she gets it on the third attempt of the match, Double Stomp on Deeb's back while she was bent over but the knees give way again, she tries the running Meteora but Deeb rolls into the half-Crab in Maki Itoh fashion, Riho makes the ropes but can't escape the inverted Dragon Screw, she rolls out another Detox into a pin combination for a tight 2, but when she tries for the Crucifix Roll she can't wrap her legs and drops, leading to Deeb hammering the injured knee into the ground and cinching in the Serenity Lock, Riho taps out to a standing ovation.

I wish we lingered on the celebrations a bit more since we moved straight onto the fanfest thing with all the neat merch, but damn did that match go! That was a PPV quality match and just the thing to heat up the crowd, Deeb's vicious heel style still suits her especially against Riho's connection to fans as a babyface. This also sets up Rosa to be the babyface in her pursuit to reclaim the NWA title too, but yeah excellent match, it could've gone either way but I know that COVID would've restricted Riho's schedule to be the champ, otherwise a hot start.

A THIRD Bucks/MoxEddie package preludes Taz and JR coming to commentary to get the main card started. The main card has a bit of pyro though

Main Show We were kinda given away on the first match since you hear the entrance theme just as the Buy-In ends, no time for packages we're jumping straight into action.

'Hangman' Adam Page def. Brian Cage (Pinfall via Buckshot Lariat) Cage comes out with some Terminator gear and the FTW title, a low hum of boos for the Machine given how he is the heel. Hangman however gets a massive pop, a poster of 'Hangman is a Dream Boat' and 'He's a F***ing Horse' and the traditionally hilarious name plate joke being 'Horse with a Hangover' pads Hangman's time getting in the ring while Taz talks trash. The moment the bell rings Hangman is off the mark but gets shoved off by the stronger Cage, some Big Boots stagger but Cage throws him into the turnbuckles, he tries to set up a Pumphandle version of the Drill Claw but Hangman lands on his feet. Triangle Clothesline doesn't stun Cage long enough to pull Hangman out of the ring and into the guardrail, but Hangman comes back with a Suicide Dive. Cage catches the Diving Crossbody and powerbombs him into the ring post, another guardrail throw and Cage brings things back into the ring, every time Hangman tries to strike back Hangman uses his power, choking Hangman on the ropes, throwing him into the turnbuckle, Cage is having fun. That fun almost gets him though, after some showboating with bicep curls, Hangman reverses the Fallaway Slam into a Crucifix Bomb for 2, Hangman tries the lariat but Cage doesn't budge, he tries again but Cage responds at the same time, only Hangman falls from the impact though. Cage then tries a lariat but misses, leading Hangman to use his whole body to Lariat both of them over the ropes. Big Moonsault out of the ring hands the Hangman an advantage but as he climbs to the top rope Cage pulls back, looks to set up an Avalanche Drill Claw but Hangman fights out, Hangman tries a super Hurricanrana but Cage is too strong, Cage looks for the Avalanche Bomb but Hangman hits the super rana the second time, 1, 2, No. Hangman looks to set up the Buckshot but hits a boot through the ropes, Cage hits back with a Superkick that kinda doesn't hit him at all XD Cage sets up the Deadlift Suplex, but Hangman flips out of it and sets up a Powerbomb, Cage wriggles out, misses the Discus Lariat and gets hit with a forearm, Lariat floors Cage for 2. Commentary notes that Cage is dazed as Hangman sets up the Deadeye, Hangman clubs out though and hits the ripcord elbow, looks for a F-5 thing but Hangman floats out, Cage catches the big boot, Knee to the gut and a neckbreaker for 2. Cage does his corner combo but Hangman holds off the German, he hits an elbow but runs into Cage's F-5 that drops him into the ropes. Seeing the entrance ramp, Cage hits the Deadlift Suplex, hits an Avalanche Flatliner back into the ring and sets up his own Buckshot Lariat, but he staggers on the flip and Hangman hits the F-5 for 2. He tries the Buckshot but Cage ducks German, Powerbomb, Buckle Bomb, but Hangman gets the Jacknife Pin, 1, 2, NO. Cage hits the Discus, Spinning Liger bomb, 1, 2, NO. The crowd are getting super hot. And in that heat a reign of boos come about as Hook and Starks rush to the ring, the former distracting the ref as Starks throws Cage the FTW title, Cage though is having none of it, throwing the title back to Starks declaring that he can win it without. Starks is offended, aghast even, but as Cage turns Hangman tries to lift him for Deadeye, Cage escapes and throws Hangman into the ropes, as he turns to address Hook though Hangman holds on, Buckshot Lariat! 1, 2, 3!

And Breathe. Lord what a match. Granted the FTW shenanigans was a little bit of a damper but this sets up Cage's face turn away from FTW, and it protects him a little because they distracted him. A big Hangman win was definitely the best way to open the match with the crowds, Hangman grabs a beer and cheers to the roaring crowd as Taz voices his disappointment. Angered, Cage gets in Hook and Starks' faces, he goes to shove Starks but he notes his bad neck so he shoves Hook instead and leaves.

Yet another Bucks/MoxEddie promo...this time though it's because the match is on next.

AEW World Tag Team Championship: The Young Bucks [Matt & Nick Jackson w/Brandon Cutler] (c) def. Jon Moxley & Eddie Kingston (Pinfall on Moxley by Matt via BTE Trigger x4) Wild Thing (admittedly, while it was nice for Nagata I prefer his old theme) hits the crowd as the crowd get to their feet, Mox and Eddie enter the crowd like they're in the streets, carrying the Buck's fancy shoes with them. The Bucks comes in with a Red and Blue with liquid prints on their jackets (signifying 'drip'), but as the streamers pop Mox and Eddie attack. A good nod from commentary joking that the pop of the streamers signified 'Go' to Mox and Eddie as Mox fed Matt his streamers outside of the ring. While choking Matt with a scarf though the significantly blonder Nick escapes Eddie and gangs up on Mox, all get hit with a Suicide Dive from Eddie as the two take things outside of the ring. Kingston throwing streamers in front of KiLynn King while Mox soaks in a beer with the crowd. Both bucks get thrown in the Barricade as Brandon Cutler attempts to tend to them with Cold Spray, Kingston stalks him though so he rushes through the ring in hopes of getting to the ramp - only to run into Moxley's Rear Naked Choke - Kingston and Mox combo a Half-Nelson Suplex and Clothesline combo to finish him. The Bucks come back though as Matt pulls Mox out the ring, Nick blindsides Eddie and calls for the bell to ring, the match is finally started. Moxley deals with Matt as Eddie chops and Kitchen Sinks Nick. After a double shoulder block Mox alerts the ref to Matt entering the ring illegally, as the duo stomp at Nick in turnabout. After both hitting Nick in the corner Kingston hits a Drop Suplex? (I dunno what it's called he lifted him up but then dropped him face first rather than leaning back) and an STO. The Bucks recover momentum with a thumb to the eye thanks to Matt's distraction, Matt tags in and knocks away Mox, mid-rope dropkick while skinning the cat leaves Eddie alone for the corner combos; boot and enzugiri and then the bottom corner dropkick/kick to the back of the head, the Bucks then chide the crowd. The Bucks start getting into their groove with their usual combos, but when Nick mocks Mox it gives Eddie time to Flapjack him into the ropes, Matt tags in though before Eddie can reach Moxley and kicks away his leg before knocking Mox from the corner and pretending to Hot Tag from Kingston. It's your traditional hot tag stuff, clotheslines then the 10 clubs in the corner, powerslam then some Hogan-esque showboating, but Moxley catches Matt's legs when he goes to the ropes and hits a lariat. Throwing his brother in the ring, Nick tags himself in but lands into an exploder, both men tag out but Mox goes at both Bucks, dropkicking Matt into Nick, throws Matt, hits Nick with the Money Clip and Gotch Piledriver, Matt jumps Moxley but gets a piledriver too, Mox tries the Bulldog Choke but Nick breaks the hold, the Bucks try a double suplex but Mox twists out and into a double DDT. Both Bucks are in opposite corners, Nick gets hit by a clothesline but Matt gets his foot up, Mox hits the back body press and then Anderson comes out. The ref distracted, Nick goes to hand Matt the spray, but Eddie's got a glare like hell on the Bucks and scouts what they're doing, he dives at the blindsiding Gallows and Kazarian out of nowhere charges at Anderson, he warned the Elite that he would come for them. Matt does get the Cold Spray in Mox's face and hits him with the bottle for good measure, 1, 2, No. Mox is busted open now but Gallows and Anderson are ejected. The Bucks are pissed now, and hit Moxley with a Meltzer Driver on the rampway, wanting the countout as Don Callis (I only could confirm he was there up till now...) notes how he'd be happy with that. Moxley staggers around the ring, dazed but able to get back in the ring, inviting more from Matt. Matt goes for the open wound, stomps and punches, then the draped swanton for 2, the crowd chant for Moxley as the Bucks kick away at him for 2, then a Bulldog Choke by Matt, then an outside the ring choke from Nick

as Eddie tries to alert the ref. Mox tries to fight back but the Bucks team up to club down at him, they mock the Shield as they set up an assisted powerbomb, but as Matt does the OOOOAHHH he eats a boot from Moxley, German for Nick, German on both at the same time (Matt grabbed Nick trying to escape it), Eddie tags in for a big hot tag. Belly to belly on Nick, Enzugiri and DDT on Matt, he tries his submission hold but Nick hits breaks the hold by hitting Eddie's head, Eddie is not at all impressed - as am I for JR forgetting that Maki Itoh has the 'hardest head in the business' - Nick eats the big boot and Matt gets the chops, Nick though superkicks the back of Eddie's leg to regain momentum. Assisted Sliced Bread and a running Shining Wizard gets 2, Nick goes for the Swanton but the knees are up, Mox tags in but runs into a double Superkick, they set up More Bang for your Buck but Mox gets the Rear Naked Choke as Eddie holds Nick down. Nick escapes and just as Matt rolls out lands the 450, 1, 2, NO! Matt is furious, sets up the Meltzer driver but Eddie pulls Nick down, Mox gets the Choke again, they try their combo (I think they called it the Violent Crown) but Nick pulls Moxley from the ropes. Bucks try the Meltzer driver on Eddie but Mox pulls Nick into the apron, Mox throws Eddie one of the Bucks' Diors in front of the ref, but grabs the other three as the ref confiscates it, using one of the shoes he hits the Doomsday Device but Nick breaks the hold, rocks Kingston with a knee and sets up the superkick, Mox catches and sets up the Paradigm Shift, Nick rolls out and gets the Sharpshooter (JR correcting with the Scorpion Deathlock) as Matt tries to hold down Eddie. Eddie breaks the hold and hits Matt with the Backdrop Driver but eats a Superkick, Moxley hits the Lariat, Paradigm Shift, 1, 2, Matt breaks the pin. Moxley hits headbutts and tries to throw Nick out of the ring, but he lands on the apron and kicks at Eddie's leg again, that leads him to be choked but he's on the ropes so Mox drags him into the ring, Matt tries the superkick but Mox catches, but he can't stop both of them, double Superkick! But Mox rebounds to a double Lariat, he looks to get Nick with the Paradigm Shift but eats a Superkick, then it's just a Superkick party, Nick, then Matt, then both, On-NO! Not Even One! Moxley is possessed, staring at the Bucks, they hit another double Superkick but Eddie comes in, he flinches at the Superkick and gets one in the shin by Matt, leading to Nick hitting him with one in the face. The Bucks smell the end, BTE trigger! But Mox doesn't fall, BTE Trigger, BTE Trigger, BTE Trigger, and Mox finally collapses, 1, 2, 3. Callis comes down to celebrate as the Bucks mock in the camera.

3 Matches in and all have been bangers. I sincerely thought that Eddie and Mox's unorthodox nature would throw the cocky Bucks off for a short reign until Renee was due but I am not unhappy with what we got, stunning match where the Bucks simply won because they were a tag team, plus their position on the card - no way they were gonna have Hangman and then MoxEddie win consecutively. It's a shame that Eddie rarely wins a feud still but what a showing from all four men, shades of Revolution's tag team banger too.

As Commentary run down the rest of the card we learn that the Blade will be replaced by Serpentico and QT is replaced by Aaron Solow in the Casino Battle Royale due to injury, shame but I doubt they were gonna win. They at least storied up QT's one as him 'not wanting to risk injury'. Paul Wight comes down as guest commentator for the CBR as the rules are run down.

Casino Battle Royale - Jungle Boy wins the battle royale (Eliminated Christian Cage). The Clubs come out first with Christian Cage first out, Matt Sydal, Powerhouse Hobbs (looking extra lean now), the Bullrope-wielding Dustin Rhodes and Max Caster look to start off, Caster running down his opponents in rap - that 'had no Edge' comment for Christian was one hell of a deep cut, but also alluding to Sydal's flop last year - it at least got the crowd going. Bell rings and Hobbs and Christian pick up where they left off, Dustin goes for Caster while Sydal bounces off Hobbs. Dustin and Matt switch places for Sydal to have a mini-match with Caster, but Caster hits him with a low blow and dumps him out - I guess we won't see him do the Shooting Star Press. Caster though gets eliminated by Christian, he landed on the ramp first so there was confusion but he rolled to the floor to sell it properly, he may've hurt himself though because Christian did pop his head out the ring to check on him. The Diamonds are out next; Matt Hardy, but he and Kassidy wait at the tunnel to try and jump 10, Vance though boots Hardy and Powerbombs Kassidy so the two can sleep, Comoroto is out next and guns for Dustin, easily outmatching him as Serpentico makes his entrance dragged by Bobcat Goldthwait Luther. Serpentico doesn't last long against 10 though, who squares up to Comoroto, Spine on the Pine by 10 but he can't clothesline Comoroto over the rope, he lands into a Spear and gets thrown over to the apron, 10 looks like he was meant to headscissor but didn't grip well, as Comoroto is draped Dustin throws the Freakenbeast over as 10 falls with him. Comoroto though still cracks Dustin with the cow bell, their Bullrope Match is imminent, leaving Hobbs able to dump Dustin out. For 4 seconds only Hobbs and Christian remain in-ring (Hardy starts to enter at 1 seconds) for him to hit the Killswitch. Hearts are next as Kassidy chop blocks Christian when the crowds popped for a classic E&C/Hardys retreading; the Varsity Blonds though roar in together to get Matt and Kassidy, Colt Cabana comes in with Brodie's old ring jacket to hit the Dusty Elbow but the numbers are balanced by Bowens (Christian and Hobbs are sleeping now). And then Penta rocks up in a Joker-inspired gear which looks insane in the best possible ways, Cero Miedo superkick to Bowens, then just having it at anybody who looks at him. Cabana is eliminated off-screen by Kassidy when trying to deal with Hardy, Bowens is it with the Dropkick/Spinebuster combo from the Blonds before being dumped out, Griff is eliminated by Hardy after some blows on the apron as Pillman struggles with Penta. HFO try to clean up but Penta just goes at it with Matt now, the crowd chant for Brian Pillman as Jr tries to dump Kassidy, but the Spades are coming. Baltimora pops the crowd huge for Jungle Boy's entrance, immediately getting in Penta's face, two Singblades by Penta follows Quen's entrance to Gin n Juice Pillman Jr, Pillman's dumped by Private Party as Aaron Solow goes in for Matt Hardy, Evil Uno and Lee Johnson complete the 20, Uno at Hardy, Johnson to Solow, the latter two go to the apron and Johnson elbows Solow off but gets knocked off by Hardy - tad abrupt for me really. Uno is eliminated by Penta's Enzugiri but then Jungle Boy just LAUNCHES at Penta, headscissors him out while still holding the ropes that was insane, but Hobbs has slithered back in and just ran through Quen, patented Spinebuster on Kassidy and now Christian is back in the ring. Hobbs though is shrugging off any offence, Hardy is knocked away, JB is being choked out, he tries to splash Christian in the corner but Christian dodges, and after a labored attempt throws Hobbs over. 50 seconds until the Joker; Hardy Party vs Christian and JB, Christian is hobbling as the numbers advantage comes into play, 20 seconds both faces are just being stomped in the corner, 10 seconds and Kassidy is holding Christian down with his foot, 7 Seconds the Crowd Stand to see who it is; 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! Lio Rush, it got a tiny pop but, yeah...people were

hoping for something bigger. Rush is another Forbidden Door given his time on NJPW Strong and starts immediately with Private Party, Poison Rana on Quen, Spanish Fly on Kassidy, botches the first but hits the second rebound stunner on Hardy, the Man of the Hour is the only one standing. Rush looks to try and dump Private Party, they try the Silly String but Rush puts Quen back on Kassidy, he looks to add the weight but Hardy eliminates him, saving Private Party and kinda rendering the Joker meaningless, a half-hearted 'sorry, Lio' from JR too. Back to how it was before Lio came in, Hardy Party dealing with the faces, doing some 'Delete!' chants as Hardy hits JB with a Side Effect, JB though hits the rebound Clothesline so Quen attacks, JB is on the apron but Christian has come in, Private Party try the Silly String again but JB superkicks Kassidy off him and sweeps Quen for Christian to dropkick him, the turns have tabled! Hardy tries to establish veteran teamwork against Christian, Christian looks to agree then just throws Hardy out to a big pop. It comes down to Jungle Boy or Christian Cage, it really sells on JB's face what a moment it is. Christian tries for a quick throw over but JB goes to the corner, the crowd chanting his theme song, Flying Uppercut by Christian but JB gets his Enzugiri combo, rebound clothesline is reversed into a reverse DDT, Christian favors the knee but sizes JB up for the Spear, JB lifts him though and tries to DVD him off, but Christian shifts his weight back in-ring, Christian throws JB onto the apron, but JB latches onto Christian, trying the slow DDT-drag but now both are on the apron. JB tries to get in the ring but Christian grabs the hair, JB (sitting on the middle rope) leans back to kick him in the face, he knocks away one hand, goes to boot the other but Christian dodges, sets up the Killswitch but JB elbows out, goes to push him into the ring post but JB SWINGS AROUND IT and back into the ring. Christian tries the dropkick but JB headbutts him in the gut, tries the back body press AND HE'S OUT! JUNGLE BOY WINS!

The crowd erupts in Baltimora as Jurassic Express congratulate their stablemate, Christian returns and congratulates JB, telling him to make the most of his opportunity. I am physically sweating right now. Battle Royales are tough to get right unless it's called 'Royal Rumble', even then the CBR did fail in some places of not giving some younger talent enough time. Hardy eliminated a lot of younger talent which while it's a storyline sense because he's the Leech didn't sit too well, once again Evil Uno gets slighted but at least he didn't botch his elimination. Lio Rush as a Joker would've been fine but he came in, had a flurry and then got eliminated so nothing really changed, I know a lot were hoping for Daniel Bryan and lawd would it have blown the roof off but I am fine with a Forbidden Door entry, should've at least gotten one person - I had hoped the Joker would be the winner too. I really appreciate though that Christian didn't win, he still has his mini feud with Hobbs which is elevating the dude big time, and I don't think winning a royale to get a title shot fits for his 'Out-Work Everyone' Mantra and I was convinced he was gonna win after being the first to enter, Jungle Boy though is a thoroughly deserved winner, this dude was bouncing off all manner of things! He has been a proverbial bridesmaid in royales because of how good a babyface he is and while I doubt he'll beat the champion this can act as a similar saga that Darby had when Moxley was champ.

In prep for the Patriotism match Shawn Dean - a veteran himself - and the K9 for Warriors group while respecting the fallen and showing a number to support the Paws Act S.613, which will help Disabled Veterans get Service Dogs to combat Veteran Suicides. Blatant placement to make Cody the face aside, this act should be a thing. But of course, this leads to USA chants and a very American veteran's package which I thought was preluding Cody's entrance to start. I have...thoughts...but not ones I'm going to rant about.

'The American Dream' Cody Rhodes [w/Arn Anderson] def. Anthony Ogogo [w/QT Marshall] (Pinfall via Din's Fire) Ogogo enters to weak boos carrying the Union Jack, it seems that some fans have been handed mini-USA flags too. Ogogo's entrance is short because Cody comes in with the tron showing the American flag, Cody is VERY red white and blue, with some gold in there too, it's not Apollo Creed level but if you stuck that attire in a fighting game you'd tell that they were the American. The announcer really hammed up both men too, but while Ogogo's is worth noting since he is an Olympic medallist I don't think Cody's needed the 'he's the son of a common man and a father to be', I would actually have been intrigued to watch this match with an American because as a Brit this is super excessive and pandering. Cody hands his weighted USA belt to a kid in the crowd and at this point Cody's entrance has lasted 2x longer than Ogogo's did. A tale of the tape also kinda undermined Ogogo, 'The East of England'? He's from Suffolk just say Suffolk, England. The Bell rings and Ogogo goes straight for the hammer, Cody ducks and does the Boxer-hugging thing to stop punches. Ogogo tries another punch but Cody catches and tries to wrench it, being knocked away he does the drop uppercut but then runs right into the Guv'nor's Hammer, but Cody is a patriot, we all knew he would stand up from that. Olympic Slam hits 2 as Cody catches his breath, he dodges the corner charge and hits the powerslam but now both men's ribs are hurt. Cody knees at Ogogo's ribs, but Ogogo shows his athleticism, leapfrogs Cody then stomps him down. He tries for a punch but Cody grabs the leg to knock him down, Cattle Mutilation weakens the arms but doesn't get the submission as he rolls out the ring, Cody tries a dive but gets clubbed in the arm. German from Ogogo, kick to the gut, then kinda a heelish People's Elbow - he middle finger'd the crowd and did the wanker gesture then hit the elbow - but it's only getting 2s. Cody grabs the leg but Ogogo rakes the eye, corner European Uppercut and a Clothesline from Hell, as Ogogo talks to the ref QT suckers Cody but it only gets 2. Anderson chases QT with a chair to prevent him from interfering again, QT scurrying to the ramp to avoid the Enforcer. Ogogo misses the...let's call it The Empire's Elbow as Cody goes for the hands, Ogogo lifts him up though to a F-5/chokeslam kinda move for 2. He boots Ogogo in the face and looks for the lariat but Ogogo just sidesteps him and throws Cody into the ropes, Cody then quickly rushes to Arn for encouragement - for a brief moment I thought he got whiplash or his throat got crushed because that was a nasty rebound. QT is busted open, likely bladed by QT, as he tries for another punch, Cody though keeps kicking away, picking at each limb and then the Bulldog (ironic), Cody clubs at the open wound and hits the Cody Cutter, he puts him on the top turnbuckle but Ogogo punches him away, he gets down but gets back up on the turnbuckle so he probably forgot his position for a bit but he lands an impressive Frog Splash, the injured ribs means that Cody kicks out at 2. Cody hits a dropkick and puts in the Figure Four, QT tries to pull the ropes to Ogogo but it's too far so Ogogo rolls, Cody breaks the hold and goes to the ropes, headbutts blindly at Ogogo and sets up the Cross-Rhodes, but Ogogo snapmares him, Guv'nor's Hammer, Uppercut, but as he pins Cody's arm is under the ropes. Dominator, 1, 2, no...He tries the Pop-Up Guv'nor's Hammer but Cody elbows at his head, Din's Fire for 3. Cody jumps in the crowd to celebrate.

*sigh* Yes, let's not put over Anthony Ogogo in victory, not like Cody has a child he'll wanna take care of and thus be written out of tv. It went how I feared it would really, Cody shrugs off 3 gut punches that have KO'd him before AND AN UPPERCUT from an Olympic Boxer who KO's people for 10 seconds rather than 3 because 'Murica and Memorial Day Weekend, could QT have not moved Cody's arm from under the ropes? Or told Ogogo of that fact? I'm sorry but I didn't feel this, it doesn't ruin the PPV but this match should've ended on the first gut punch, but Cody is Cody, he doesn't lose clean unless he gets a win back and he's only ever done that once - I just hoped this'd be different. This feud didn't need the America vs UK stuff, but Ogogo really makes the valid points about the failings of America's healthcare system and how the foundation of America is built on underpaying and overworking the lower class while Cody's argument is 'my wife is black', but Cody is the face. This narrative also was hampered by the fact that Cody beat QT - the faction leader - previously too, so what was the point of putting his less-experienced student against Cody if he wasn't gonna win? As a match it was a good showcase to what Ogogo could do, but booking wise this only benefits the uber-patriots and Cody's ego, especially since he didn't even land a Cross Rhodes he used Din's Fire which hasn't beaten anyone in AEW nor does it affect any of the 'injured' spots alluded to in the match, the worst thing he got before that was a cutter, so sorry but no don't buy.

We move to setting up the TNT title match as it's noted that in a prior fans-only weigh in between Baker and Shida, Miro cheap shotted Jake the Snake.

TNT Championship: Miro (c) def. Lance Archer (Submission via Game Over) Archer charged in without Jake, scaring the announcer since he hadn't brought any jobbers with him, Miro next comes in with the TNT title colors. Before the match even starts though Archer dives at Miro, throwing him in the ring to begin the match. After some running corner clotheslines Miro tries to clothesline Archer, neither man budges though so Archer hits the big boot, he does his Old School Moonsault but only gets 1. Miro takes advantage outside the ring by hitting Archer with the barricade, but when trying to use Archer's hair as leverage Archer comes back, hitting Miro on the ring post, a table then a spinebuster through that table. Miro leaves the ring but Archer goes for the charge, he's caught though and belly-to-belly'd into Fuego del Sol and friends, Northern Lights back over the Guardrail and Miro takes advantage, he takes a bit too long to soak in his strength though as Archer crossbodies into his charge, Miro gets back the momentum with the leg lariat as he amps the crowd for some Yes Kicks - while holding Archer's hair - his third one though is caught and I think they called it a 'Hellercoaster' is hit, only gets 2. Archer goes up top, but misses the Moonsault, Matchka Kick, Samoan Drop, 1, 2, no. Miro sets up another Matchka but Jake the Snake is in, with the snake bag in hand, Miro drags Jake in and superkicks Archer, he then grabs the snake bag and throws it all the way back down the tunnel - rather he had stomped it first like Earthquake killed Jake's original snake. Eyes like Death Miro prepares to finish Jake off, but runs into a chokeslam by Archer, 1, 2, No. Miro's on the turnbuckle clubbing at Archer, Archer sets up the Black Out but Miro gets out, chopping the tree at the legs but then gets hit with a Pounce. As Archer attempts to enter the ring he grabs Miro with a chokeslam in mind, but Miro kicks the middle rope so it hits the nether region, suplex into the ring by Miro, Matchka and then Game Over is announced. Archer struggles before Miro can lock in and as Miro tries to cinch back it's proven that Archer's knees are in the way. Miro kicks at the kidneys then pulls back, Archer now laying on Miro as the Game Over fades him. Miro rallies the crowd as he gleefully celebrates his successful defense.

Nice little TNT title match, I think it did well to cleanse any sour palettes that the last match begot. Archer is sadly in the same case as Kingston where he does keep losing but at least here they had a pseudo-low blow to protect him. Miro's reign continues which is a positive though the snake stuff probably wasn't needed.

A promo for All Out returning to Chicago is made, Cody announcing it probably not the best call either, there are other EVPs, how about World Champion Kenny Omega?

AEW Women's Championship: Dr. Britt Baker DMD [w/Rebel 'Reba' Tanea] def Hikaru Shida (c) (Submission via Lockjaw) - TITLE CHANGE! The show wasted no time getting this started, no promo package at all. Baker came in to a huge pop clad in red and black as Reba feigned walking with a crutch. Shida arrives clad beautifully in white with the new Women's Title (Bigger is better but I still think it could be wider). While it didn't get a package it got an announcement, allowing the crowd to cheer both women, but the DMD chant was louder. Staring down each other, the match immediately explodes, clubbing blows from both but then Baker rolls for the Lockjaw, Shida escapes and tries the Tamashii but Baker dodges. Baker takes control and gets a snapmare pin, but then Shida powers out, stretching Baker with the Bow and Arrow, then a Bodyscissors, then a shoulder stretch, Baker escapes the dropkick though and catches Shida with a kick when re-entering the ring, she holds the hammerlock but gets thrusted into the turnbuckle, a fantastic rana from Shida and then a dropkick lands, Baker is thrown into the barricade as Shida sets up the Chair-assisted knee strike. Baker looks to reverse it into a Sling Blade but Shida dodges by jumping onto the apron, diving crossbody takes out Reba and Shida sets up the apron knee-lift, but Baker kicks Shida during her charge. Baker resumes control by attacking the head, stomps and punches, Shida tries to reverse into an arm drag but Shida then hits the curb stomp (the one where she holds the arms not the Rollins one), Reba brandishes a black and red sparkling glove as Baker prepares for Lockjaw but Shida rolls away, Baker hits the butterfly suplex for 2 twice and lays into Shida, Shida gets a foot up but Baker sweeps her face first into the turnbuckle for 2. Shida catches one of Baker's mock kicks as she starts to heat up, two hits in the face sets her off as she goes to town on Baker, sweeping her leg to club at her some more. Headshots into the turnbuckle, 3 knee strikes and a stretch at the nose, she looks for the Falcon Arrow but Baker sandbags and tries to roll away, but Shida rolls with and hits the normal suplex for 2, Tamashii to the back of the head - Reba unable to grab the leg - 1, 2, no. Shida tries Falcon Arrow but Baker hooks the leg to try a Fisherman's Buster, Shida escapes with some knees to the gut as they trade punches, Baker kicks the thigh but Shida hits the Enzugiri, low superkick by Baker and a Fisherman's Neckbreaker gets 2. Baker tries to get the Rollins-esque Curb Stomp but Shida catches her into the Stretch Muffler but Baker gets to the ropes, Superkick and Sling Blade gets Shida as her emotions are running high against the ref, Air Raid Crash for 2, she sets up for Lockjaw but Shida is crawling for the ropes, so Baker cleverly switches sides but can't get the Mandible Claw in, in Sasha Banks fashion she kicks the ropes to roll them both into the ring but Shida's on her feet, Baker looks like she yanked the hair to get off. Both trade yanking at the hair, Shida hits the German, a Sliding Lariat for 2. It may've been a botch because I think Shida was trying to do Colt Cabana's finish when you drop someone into the turnbuckle corner but it was easily sold as Baker wriggling out, instead we get a In and Out Superplex by Shida for 2, she lifts Baker to try again but Baker rolls her up for 2, Shida gets the Stretch Muffler so Reba distracts her with the title, scouting the crutch though Shida side steps Baker and Baker gets cracked by the crutch, 1, 2, No! Falcon Arrow, 1, 2, No! Shida sets up the Katana but Reba distracts her and the ref, Baker grabs the title, Shida takes it off of her, Baker superkicks, Curb Stomp on the title, 1, 2, NO! Tony cannot believe it! I can't either! Baker goes for Lockjaw but Shida rolls up for 2, jumping Knee strike by a wobbly Shida, Tamashii! 1, 2, No! Baker rolls Shida up, 1, 2, No! Baker has the Lockjaw, gets the Mandible Claw and Shida taps! Reba comes to the ring to show a new shirt and Tony embraces Baker.

It had to happen, but by god...what is this show? Palette completely cleansed now the women killed it. My only complaint would be how quickly Shida tapped - and that she tapped at all - but it does really sell the Lockjaw well. Shida though, I will have no disrespect towards her, she has delivered all freaking year AND she was responsible for the eliminator tournament, Hikaru Shida is an AEW Legend, full stop. As for Baker, as I said it was indeed her time, Shida had beaten everyone in the division and now Baker can be at the top of the mountain, we can also now establish a ton of new challengers for Baker, like whoever takes it from her will be instantly elevated, will it be Rosa, Conti, Anna, Riho, Itoh, Leyla, Abadon, Statlander, Yuka? There are endless possibilities to look forward to.

We pan to each of the Triple Threat members in preparation for their match; PAC is working out, Cassidy is chilling with his Best Friends and Alien with ice cream, and Kenny is playing with a ball with all the titles around him - Callis holding the Impact World title is a nice touch.

Tag Match: Darby Allin & Sting def Ethan Page & Scorpio Sky (pinfall on Sky by Sting via Scorpion Death Drop) The team I like to call ScorpEgo enter first with their posturing before a package by Darby signifies 'It's Showtime', skating down the highway he this time enters a 50s car Sting is riding. Sting enters first with his snow and a huge pop from the crowd, Darby soon after with the Sting-inspired paint. Darby gets in the ring, then dives right at Page (seems to be a theme this PPV) to instigate a brawl on the outside. Darby using his full body to crush Page by the guardrail before rabidly attacking him with the rail and then hopping on him like an animal while Sting and Sky (Scorpion vs Scorpio) go to the rampway. Sky rakes Sting's eye and hits 60 Year Old Sting on the rampway (the red carpet must be obvious padding) as Page crushes Darby between the apron, but Sting immediately gets back up as Sky poses on the poker chips and throws Sky off the stack and into Page. Sting takes off his sweater and there's the old ring attire, diving crossbody! The crowd goes wild! Sky gets thrown into the ring to start the match as Sting throws Darby into Sky, then again into Page, before hitting a bulldog. The duo isolate sky with an armlock and quick tags, Darby tries the armbar but Sky powers out, he looks to jump off the top rope but Page cuts the legs from under him, making an innocent shiteating gesture as the crowd boo him. In and out cutter by Sky puts the heels in control, Page toys with Darby as Excalibur notes on their shared history outside of AEW. Sky tags in to bend Darby with a backbreaker and a stretch, but Darby goes for the fingers to escape, only to be hit by Page's elbow drop after Sky tagged him in while still locking Darby down, Page mocks Sting before hitting a suplex, Sky tags in and sends Darby into the corner as Page rakes him, Darby tries to kick but Sky catches it and swings him for a Draping Neckbreaker but Darby flips over and tags in Sting. As Sting goes to clean up though Aubrey dismisses Sting, having not seen the tag due to Page's attacks against Darby, Sky drags Darby from outside the ring back into his corner and tags Page back in, Page mocks Sting by extending Darby's hand, picks him up for a gorilla press and JESUS CHRIST ETHAN! The dude throws Darby into the crowd, and you hear where Darby's legs clip the barricade that was close. It turns out that the people who caught him included Darby's brothers as Page just looks insane. Sting drags the limp body of Darby from the barricade as Aubrey is forced to start the count, Sting torn between protecting his successor and continuing the fight as Page goads him into bringing Darby back into the ring with him. He tries to lift Darby but he can't do it in his heart, the count gets to 9 as he drops Darby and looks to charge into the ring alone, but then Darby just darts back inside the ring on his own. Page drags Darby back into his corner, mocking Sting for too long, because when he sets up the Ego's edge Darby kicks Sky off the apron and uses the turnbuckle to lock his legs around, he scraps out and applies the backpack sleeper, pulling Page's arms under his legs so he can't reach Sky. Page breaks the hold by charging into the turnbuckle, but Darby replies with the flip stunner and finally tags in Sting. Sting clubs at Sky and whips him into Page, then whips him into the other corner for a Stinger Splash, then another to Page, he clotheslines Sky out the ring then hits a rolling 'code red' onto Page for 2 (it was more a sunset roll but still really impressive). Darby asks to be tagged for the Coffin Drop by Sky cuts the legs from under him, Page then winds Sting with some kicks, with Sting on the floor and Darby on the turnbuckle, Page throws Darby into Sting like a Swanton, maintaining wrist control to set up the Ego's Edge, it looks like he's gonna drop Darby on Sting but Sting pops up and gets the Scorpion Deathlock in. Sting is not legal, but Darby adds to the hold with the armbar, Sky though gets the heel lock in, so now both legal men are being

subjected to submissions by the illegal men, slapping at each other and gouging at the eyes as Aubrey tries to reclaim control. At 4 she pushes Sting away and Sky breaks the hold, Sting and Sky square up but Aubrey sends both to their respective corners. Page and Darby tag in to set up Sky and Sting - JR noting the Scorpion/Scorpio comment I said too, quit stealing my lines JR - Sky keeps chopping at the legs but Sting rallies, he tries the Stinger Splash but Sky goes for the In and Out Cutter, Sting catches it, Scorpion Death Drop, 1, 2, 3! Sting pulls Darby back into the ring to celebrate.

Really good match, Sting really showed his stuff and AEW did really well to mask any limitations he might've had. Sky and Page worked great too aside from that throwing spot which scared the shit outta me. I had ScorpEgo to win by neutralizing Darby because they were undefeated, there looked to be a Dark Order feud on the horizon and I did have a lot of babyface win predictions (in this I'm including Ogogo as a face, because he was) but I am not upset with Sting and Darby getting another win. I will say however that this needs to lead somewhere, and not just Archer interrupting Sting interviews it actually has to lead to something tangible, even if it's Darby getting a rematch so he can face Miro at 100%.

We get out World Title package now for the first of our co-main events.

AEW World Championship: Kenny Omega [w/Don Callis] (c) def. PAC & Orange Cassidy [w/Best Friends & Kris Statlander] (Pinfall on Cassidy via Crucifix Roll-up) PAC enters first, he doesn't go to the turnbuckle though and he's not with his Death Triangle buddies, OC though comes with his squad, a chekov's backpack and Statlander looking extra beautiful - her outfit seems to be an alien homage but I dunno which one, Kenny then comes out draped in gold; AEW title on his waist, TNA on his chest, and the AAA and Impact titles in his hands. Also Unbeaten in 638 days...we not including Impact where he lost in tag action? The bell rings and PAC tries to go for Kenny, but hides in the ropes before jumping OC. PAC and Kenny square off in the ring, trading blows off the rebound before wiping each other out with simultaneous crossbodies, OC struts back in, casually pins both men each time for 1, both men get up and try attack him while he gestures for the pockets, but OC ducks and hits a double rana. PAC leaves the ring leaving just Kenny but OC does the suicide dive on PAC and a tilt-a-whirl DDT on Omega, more emphatic cover for 2, he gestures the Orange Punch but Kenny goes in close, PAC returns and ejects Kenny with a Headscissors, then an Asai Moonsault before tending to OC in the ring. PAC tries to choke OC in the corner, Shotgun Dropkick to OC, then to Omega, then to both, now he chokes Kenny in the corner, Kenny whips PAC into OC but his running back elbow only hits Cassidy, he seats Cassidy on the middle turnbuckle and hits PAC with the You Can't Escape while hitting OC with the backstabber. Kenny continues his focus on PAC, dragging his face across the ropes then hitting the backdrop for 2, chops piss off PAC though and they trade blows, PAC asks if that's all he has so Kenny replies by shoving PAC into the turnbuckle with his boot, he talks shit to PAC but as he turns OC is doing a Last Supper rollup, only two! Kenny hits a Tilt-a-Whirl Backbreaker as PAC rolls out the ring, Kenny gets a gutbuster and mocks the Freshly Squeezed Chants with the thumbs up, he throws Cassidy to the ropes but he grips on, hits and elbow but PAC slides OC under the ring and then gets hit with Kenny's baseball dropkick then hits both with his diving tope. He pulls OC into the ring, sets him up for a suplex but gets countered into a Stundog Millionaire, he sets up the Beach Break but Kenny tries the sunset roll, OC sits down to pin him but they see-saw back and forth with pins, OC tries the Jacknife pin, Kenny gets each shoulder up but on the third PAC breaks the pin with a 450. Pac leapfrogs over Kenny on the springboard but gets hit with a Snap Dragon Suplex, two for OC as well, both opponents are on the ropes, V-Trigger for OC but PAC dodges and hits the German, blocks the Superkick but not PAC's boot, Kenny uses OC to block PAC's momentum and tries another Snap Dragon, but PAC wriggles out, he goes for a superkick but Kenny ducks and it hits OC instead while Kenny swings a Lariat. Another V-Trigger to OC this time on the turnbuckle, he sets up for an Avalanche Snap Dragon Suplex but OC is fighting, the crowd sense it as he lowers his hands, inching to his pockets, Kenny tries to torque back but he gets them in there, and is unable to get them out, in his struggle PAC leaps up and Avalanche German's Kenny, PAC rolls out the ring but OC hits him with a diving flip. He goes back into the ring for Kenny but gets a kick in the gut, Kenny unpockets him and hits the Tiger Driver 98, 1, 2, No. PAC is on the apron, ready to springboard on Kenny, but as he jumps Kenny catches him and sets up the OWA, PAC shifts himself though and tries to flip him, but Kenny catches him and does a bridging German Suplex for 2. Kenny pulls down the Knee Pad and strikes OC with a couple of knee shots, on the third OC puts in his pockets and then collapses, giving PAC time to recover, but Kenny hits a knee onto him, he rebounds off the ropes but OC pushes PAC out the way and hits the powerslam, PAC then hits OC with the Brainbuster, 1, 2, No. PAC is growing even more

brooding as he sets OC up for a delayed Superplex, but Kenny breaks it up - OC falls real hard off the apron though, he did not get any grips on that - and sets up the OWA again, but he's climbing the turnbuckle...he looks to finish PAC but he reverses into a sunset bomb, Avalanche Falcon Arrow but OC has stormed the ring, thrown PAC out to pin, 1, 2, NO! Callis choking in fear. Kenny's out of it and PAC and OC are in the ring, OC goes for his deadly shin kicks but PAC just low blows him like a BASTARD, all fair in triple threat rules. Twisting tope to Kenny then setting up for the Black Arrow, he hits it, 1, 2, Kenny breaks the pin! PAC goes for Kenny this time, sets him up for the Black Arrow, but this one he misses, Kenny sets up the OWA but PAC locks in the Brutalizer! The thing that KO'd Kenny last time weakens Kenny but OC comes in with a wild swing that's probably meant to be the Orange Punch, in the rebound from the ropes PAC is dumped out the ring, Beach Break! 1, 2, NO! PAC rushes back in and tries to low blow OC but he catches it, PAC goes for the powerbomb but OC flips out of it, Orange Punch! Kenny's setting up the V-Trigger though, OC dodges it, Orange Punch to Kenny! Callis has left the announcer's table, OC picks his corner, hits PAC with the Orange Punch again, 1, 2, Callis pulls out the ref. I hate ref pulls to be honest, I don't get why that stops a count, you could just tap from the apron, but it serves as a means here. Callis is arguing with the ref as KiLynn King stands out from afar, Callis turns and is met by a very bewildered OC. Callis flinches away but OC goes to the top turnbuckle, Kenny grabs his leg and climbs up, but OC headbutts him away, he tries to hit PAC with the diving DDT but PAC catches him, Northern Lights with wrist control, rolled over and now the Brutalizer to OC. Kenny stomps on PAC's head but PAC won't break the hold, OC is fading and there's no rules about breaking a hold, so Kenny attacks the ref. Spoiled for choice, Callis picks to throw the Impact title to Kenny, who cracks PAC with it, then again with the AAA Mega Championship, then with the TNA World Heavyweight Championship, and finally with the AEW world title, as he postures though OC hits an Orange Punch, he crawls for a pin and Aubrey darts in, 1, 2, No Kenny's rolled him, 1, 2, 3! The Bucks, Gallows & Anderson celebrate with Kenny as OC looks on in lament, probably could've stayed there a little longer.

Really good match, shenaniganry was expected of course and I feel like the finish could've been a bit more but OC did endure a shit ton of abuse earlier to warrant exhaustion, it protects him and PAC that it took so much to be inches from a win, for AEW's first triple threat for the World Title it was really good but honestly, nobody expected Kenny to lose and when they did it was 6 seconds before he did win.

An ad for Full Gear in St. Louis is set for a Saturday Night in November as JR and Excalibur talk about going back on the road. Tony announces that AEW Rampage will debut on August 17th and that they have signed a 'special analyst' and his name: Mark Henry. No Salmon Suit but a big pop for the World's Strongest Man, he'll be appearing on the Next Dynamite on Friday, the card will also have the Inevitable Bullrope Match, the Bucks will take on Death Triangle (PAC and Penta), Cody and Lee Johnson will face QT and Ogogo - where Ogogo will likely get his win back without Cody taking a fall - and Baker will have a Championship Ceremony. Two weeks from now as well Jungle Boy will get his title match.

Stadium Stampede: Inner Circle [Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, Jake Hager, Santana & Ortiz] def. The Pinnacle [MJF, Wardlow, Shawn Spears & FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) w/Tully Blanchard] (pinfall on Spears by Guevara via 630) MJF enters first in a white limo dressed for a street fight, cutting a promo on the camera that the Inner Circle should be scared because it's the end of the line. Judas hits though and the Inner Circle are seen abseiling down the Jacksonville arena Scoreboard - showing the Inner Circle logo, Jericho still in his arm cast as coherent Judas-ing is heard from the crowd. MJF is noticeably alone though as IC charge him, he flees to his limo, but there's a reason MJF was alone, the rest of the Pinnacle fly in on truck to ambush the Inner Circle, going for their obvious parallels. Sammy and Spears start in the ring as the camera struggles to keep up, Hager was gonna stick Wardlow's head in an oil drum fire as Santana gets thrown into a barricade wall. Guevara hits the cutter and boots Wardlow on the outside, this distracts him enough for Spears to roll away from the Shooting Star Press and hit the Blue Thunder Bomb on Sammy. Sheepishly, MJF slithers out the limo but Jericho has been waiting for him behind the car as they tee off on one another. As the tag teams climb the bleachers Jericho opens the boot to try and shut MJF in there, Jericho's cast is unraveling though as MJF knocks him away and grabs a fire extinguisher from the boot, blinding Jericho before running away. Jericho catches up as MJF asks to talk things out, punching MJF into a trash can, MJF retorts by throwing coffee in Jericho's face then hitting him with an old telephone (surprised the stadium still has those) while MJF makes a 'sorry can't come to the phone right now' joke. Raking the eyes MJF turns to face the camera, but Jericho then screams through a megaphone point blank at MJF to disorient him and sandwiches him with catering trays, he throws MJF towards a table but MJF slides under it, so Jericho crushes him in between it and whacks him with a Wet Floor sign. After another bin attack they run into another room which I guess had Jacksonville Jaguars staff (they said one was the coach), because they throw him some Pigskins to chuck at MJF, as well as a laptop. MJF rakes the eyes but misses the helmet shot, Jericho gets a roller chair and charges MJF out the door, over the rail and into a conveniently placed catering table. MJF goes for the arm but Jericho hits MJF with a flip of the white board, stalking MJF as he crawls away before charging him out the door. In the back room, Wardlow and Hager are throwing some MMA style punches, Wardlow catches a kick and throws Hager into some boxes, then shuts him an the freezer room, Hager though stops the door from shutting and kicks Wardlow away only for Wardlow to weaponize those big oil cartons, Wardlow sets up the F-5000 but Wardlow escapes and they both charge into the freezer room, a gruesome sight of a vertically bisected pig was not appreciated. Wardlow grabs an icicle like a shiv but Hager hits an Uranage onto a trolley of boxes before hitting his back with a plastic tray as they leave the freezer. Hager knocks Wardlow back with his strikes but hits a giant locker which Wardlow throws into him - the locker has a literal dent in it too - groggy, Hager talks shit but gets socked by Wardlow's punch, Hager throws up the middle finger so Wardlow gets a knee to the gut, Hager didn't hear no bell though and flips off Wardlow some more, leading to Wardlow spearing him through a gimmicked wall into the kitchen. Over to Sammy and he's searching for Spears, he hears a noise and the lights go dark, in the middle is Spears, the Chair Man, in the Chair Room. The brawl falls in Sammy's favour due to his speed and ability to use the chairs as a launch pad, but Spears pokes the eye and boots him off a chair to regain momentum. He tries to throw Sammy into a wall but Sammy pops the crowd by backflipping off the wall, kicking Spears and then kipping up it was ridiculous. Knee strike off a Forklift

then a dropkick through the Forklift's cockpit, he tries for the crossbody though and gets caught, Lawn Darted into a metal screen as Tony reminisces about Kevin Nash almost murdering Rey Mysterio. Seeing some tools Spears is spoiled for choice, he doesn't like the bolt cutters and grabs the chair, nonchalantly strutting until Sammy just bullets himself into a knee strike. They end up into the construction warehouse with a chekov's ladder, Guevara is hit onto the same Scissor Lift that he had the Infamous Matt Hardy match with as Spears looks for wires, Sammy though leaps out and chokes Spears with his own wires, prone, Sammy sees how tall those shelves are and sets Spears up, he climbs to the top but Spears rolls away, Sammy jumps down parkour style but runs into chekov's ladder. Spears then brandishes handcuffs and locks him against the shelving, giving him the finger and walking away. As Sammy struggles though he notices some bolt cutters. We move to the bar with that notorious brand 'Vodka' having bottles on the table. Santana and Ortiz are approaching FTR and Tully who are having a casual drink, Santana breaks a glass over some innocent bystanders while FTR throw away Jake St. Patrick and friend, all coming together to one table, where Tully sets out 4 glasses of the Vodka Brand. Seems this is our Hangman/Hager segment as they down the Vodka, the DJ stops though as we zoom in - It's Konnan! - the table flips and the brawl commences. Our first ever cover of the night comes when Ortiz hits Harwood with a tray for 2, before choking him with the same tray, Tully comes in with a pipe to blindside Ortiz but Konnan stops him and gets hit in the gut by Ortiz. Santana comes to group up on the horseman, Santana hitting him on the head with a plastic dinner knife, but FTR jump the duo; Santana is whipping Wheeler with his belt but Harwood is hitting Ortiz with a bin, Santana dives at Wheeler for two as Harwood and Ortiz are engaging in fisticuffs, Ortiz gets the upper hand and hammers him with a traditional wrestling trash can, Wheeler though comes in and throws bottles at Ortiz from afar, he's tackled by Santana which triggers the elevator which they sprawl into. Back to Wardlow and Hager and the War Dog is stalking Hager, Hager dodges a wooden tray being thrown on him and evades Wardlow with those buoy things before getting Wardlow with a punch, he's thrown into the famous golf kart though as they set up on the roof, Wardlow looks to powerbomb him but Hager low blows him, chokeslamming him through a bunkhouse. In the VIP area Jericho and MJF still brawl, MJF wrenches Jericho's injured arm but the veteran kicks him away, MJF hurts his own hand by punching a cut-out of Shahid Khan, which Jericho then weaponizes and pats on the head, MJF then swings a door into Jericho's face and increases pressure on the arm, Jericho though repays the favour and staples a thank you card onto MJF's head. A superman punch sets them up on the table and MJF hits a piledriver for 2, he grabs the hammer and aims for the arm but Jericho hits him with a mini-bin, he opens a cabinet to brandish his baseball bat and ping it on MJF's head, neck and stomach. MJF then goes through the glass of a door busting him open. Back to Spears and he's looking for Tully, but he's found the Inner Circle's 'motorcycle club' (that's a thing?) and gets chased down by them, exiting into the Trades Office. MJF is dragged to the rafters of Daily's Place, going through the crowd as MJF is atomic dropped into the railing. MJF though attacks the arm with the railing and removes the cast entirely, looking to throw Jericho off the rafters, Jericho escapes and hits MJF with a heavy spotlight, then Powerbomb through a box. Spears is arriving in Daily's Place too, he looks to his side and it's waiting for him: this time, Sammy's at the wheel of the Golf Kart and gets all of Spears with it. Sammy and Spears enter the ring - Sammy with a chair - but Spears lifts him up, Sammy escapes and hits an Enzugiri, gestures the audience but gets wiped out mid-launch with a chair shot! 1, 2,

No. Spears picks up his favoured weapon again, but Sammy gives him the middle finger, Spears cracks Sammy with the chair, 1, 2, No! Spears is absolutely perplexed how that didn't work, so he prepares the corner spot he did on the Pinnacle's debut. Dragging Sammy over is labored but it gives Sammy time to lift him for the GTH, now Spears is in position for the Chair stomp and gets it - although not as impressively - 630! 1, 2, 3! The rest of the Inner Circle come down to celebrate, embracing Sammy - who was responsible for losing Blood & Guts remember - as the crowd sing along to Judas. Pyro goes off as the Inner Circle do their usual middle finger. The music stops but the chanting keeps going, and our final image is the crowd finishing Judas with the Inner Circle.

Well that was as entertaining as the last, I do have minor qualms like how FTR just kinda disappeared, you'd think they'd come back given that we last saw them in the elevator, I think it would've been much more satisfying for MJF to have taken the pin as well. Sammy getting the win was absolutely correct in story but booking consistently does wrong by Spears taking the fall, he's already considered the weak link of the Pinnacle so taking the fall doesn't do anything to disprove that. At the very least though the Inner Circle send the fans home happy.

Conclusion My god, what a show. From the moment Deeb/Riho's match started to when Stadium Stampede ended it was one hell of a wrestling show, one of the best PPVs of the year for sure. AEW delivered in spades having at least two 5-Star matches in my opinion, in a rating I would give this 9.7 out of 10. Why not 10? Well, there were some minor tarnishes from the bloating of promo packages with the Buy In - the only reason you should have 1 match on a pre-show is if it's a big Battle Royale, the Buy In should be treated like Rampage, 1 hour of wrestling and build up to the PPV - since we could've fit at least 2 more 10-15 minute matches in there, Lio Rush's uneventful Joker entry in the CBR and Cody beating Ogogo after withstanding several of Ogogo's punches because patriotism. But frankly those are my only major complaints, otherwise it was a pulsating and emphatic show, even surprising us with a Jungle Boy win and Mark Henry joining as a Coach and Analyst. The Era of DMD begins, the Elite and the Inner Circle live on, Hangman gets back his spot, and Sting turned back the clock, what more can you ask for?

Absolutely All Elite.

[rochellena]

What makes Quentin different and lesser than the others? Why is this being done this way? Why won’t they ask the questions of him, they’ve asked of Alice and Eliot? Will I ever be ok?

So, I’ve been trying to find the words to explain what is upsetting me most about the way the Q story is being handled in s5. I won’t lie, there are some things that hitting the right notes for me (I’m easy person to win over. I won’t lie. My standards do not exist.), but at the same time, I keep coming back to how quickly this has been wrapped up. Julia was sad for about 5 minutes and Margo acts like she doesn’t know who this Q person was. I heard there had actually been a touching scene where Kady showed some grief, but it was cut, which is a shame --I always thought the Kady/Q almost friendship was interesting (I loathed that the only thing she could think of to bring to the finale fire was the autographed book that had been one of the final straws for breaking Q’s spirit. Anyway not the point, but boy I would love to do a whole write up about that), and with how detached Kady’s story is from EVERYTHING ELSE, it would have been a good way to incorporate her into this bigger story of mourning and grief (though it also just goes to show how much of the glue that Q was to these characters).

The only characters who actually seem affected by what happened are Alice and Eliot, which while not surprising, it kind of hurts a lot to see the memory of Quentin Coldwater reduced down to his two major romantic partners. And after the newest episode, it hurts more to see how these two have officially given up on him now too. These two that he fought so hard to save. I mean, you can even compare the s2 arc of saving Alice to the s4 arc of saving Eliot, and they’re almost beat for beat the same--the initial denial and hope that something can be done (going to the flying forest, helping the monster in hopes he’ll release El), some outside force assuring him that it can not be done as they’re dead dead (the questing beast and the monster), he believes it for about a half second before something happens (ghost|niffin!Alice haunting him, El breaking free from the monster for a moment) and then he gives every ounce of energy he has to saving them-- some of them silly (interpretive dances and talking to mummies), some of them painful (niffin!alice doing everything she can to emotionally hurt him, the monster constantly touching him and using Eliot’s body as a tool to keep Q in line), hell, he even visits Mayakovsky for help during each of these arcs. All of this to say, there’s no one who could deny that Q did not give up on Alice and El, never, and definitely not so easily or quickly. 

So to see these two people, the two that at different points of his life, he gave everything to bring back from death, it hurts. And that’s what it was, Niffin!Alice was not just another version of Alice. Our Alice died that day. Q brought her back, but she died the day she became a niffin. Now because she was a niffin, it was a whole different life, kind of like Fred becoming Ilyria on Angel. Niffin!Alice ended up having her own set of experiences (good and bad) and her own life, and the question of whether it was right for Q to strip that away from her to bring back our Alice was the entirety of their s3 story, but at the end of the day, the answer settled on yes, it was right to bring her back because no matter what she experienced as a niffin, the power she had, it only happened because a 23 year old girl was tragically killed. 

El was a little different, but at the same time, as time went on, we saw the Monster developing his own views and thoughts. For the first time since his creation, he was able to act on his own accord and he discovered he liked churros and television and touching and Starbucks and Quentin and those quiet moments in the forest under an old tree. I mean, that last moment of the monster, sitting under that tree, demonstrated that to get Eliot back, they had to eliminate this new existence. Again, this isn’t the same as niffin!Alice because even post-rehumaning of her, there was a part of her that enjoyed that other existence (but it was still the right thing to do) while Eliot was invaded and did not like it. But in the end, the similarities of what Q did, what Q gave up, and what Q destroyed to bring back the people he loved are present and strong. 

So, it brings me to this thing I’m really struggling with-- every one keeps saying that the reason they can’t/shouldn’t bring Q back is because it was his choice. But it was also Alice’s choice to go niffin that day. She admitted it; she let herself burn so she could destroy the beast. Eliot might not have known he’d get possessed, but he knew he was putting his life in danger when he pulled that trigger, but he did so he could try to protect Q. Just like Q doing what he did to defeat Everett (which there is so much stuff to support that this was NOT THE ONLY OPTION but that’s not the point here), Alice sacrificed herself to defeat the beast and save her friends and Eliot was willing to sacrifice himself to kill the monster and save Q. 

So why is Quentin’s choice the only one that sticks? Why his “sacrificial choice” more concrete than theirs? Why does it need to be respected? All three of them would sacrifice themselves to save the people they love. The question at the end of the day is though, would they like to save their friends and also be alive themselves? Alice and El (except for Q) both got to answer that question (and from what we know about this season, Eliot will become more sure on this part, much like Alice over s3 and 4): though it’s rough, though it’s painful and messy and dirty, life is worth something. But for Q, this isn’t a question that’s being asked. The idea that they can’t change time because it has to have happened for them to be alive now doesn’t hold weight when Q brought back Alice and Q saved Eliot. 

And this gets to the crux of my issue: If you ask that question, and the answer is yes, saving your friends is important but so is being alive, then everyone giving up on him and not reciprocating what he would do for them, is terrible and heartbreaking and basically an affirmation of his every negative thought--disposable, useless, unnecessary, unlovable, he breaks things. But if the answer is yeah saving my friends is important but my own life is not, then it’s canon confirmation that his death was a suicide, and then the question of choice becomes void, and they should be doing everything they can to save him a la What Dreams May Come. 

If they aren’t going to bring Q back (and I truly dgaf about bts stuff, as how this is all being handled rests squarely on the shoulders of the people writing it. And honestly if this is the result of JR leaving because he wanted more creative control, than they should have probably given it to him because he would have done a lot better by Q-- end snark), then it should be a bigger impact than 2 characters being sad, but accepting with very little pushback, and moving on. Or at the very least, give better reasons why beyond “it was his choice.” This is magical fantasy world where anything can happen and no one stays dead, give me something with meat. Q deserved better than that, and it’s really breaking my heart that in universe, no one else thinks so. 

[back-and-totheleft]

Taking the gloves off

“Natural Born Killers” is the movie Oliver Stone was born to make, and if that statement is a knife that cuts both ways, so be it.

A filmmaker celebrated and excoriated, recipient of a pair of best director Oscars for “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July” as well as the contempt of the political establishment for “JFK,” Stone has not exactly had a tranquil career. Yet nothing he’s attempted before is adequate preparation for the over-the-top savagery and carefully controlled madness that is “Natural Born Killers.”

The picaresque, satirical adventures of till-death-do-us-part serial murderers Mickey and Mallory Knox (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) and their road to international celebrity, “Natural Born Killers” is both audacious and astonishing, a vision of a charnel house apocalypse that comes close to defying description.

So unyielding violent and blood-splattered it took five trips to the ratings board to earn its R, “Killers” (which carries an advisory label unprecedented in its length and detail) is too consumed by carnage to be to everyone’s taste. But it is also, and perhaps more lastingly, a tribute to the power of film and the skill of a director who, for the first and perhaps the only time in his career, has taken the gloves off with a vengeance.

For all of Stone’s previous work can be seen as a prolonged attempt to pretend, with varying degrees of success, that he is an orthodox filmmaker. But after continuously trying to squeeze his crazed/visionary sense of the medium into Hollywood’s inelastic forms, of making at times awkward films that were equal parts conventional and maniacal, Stone has found subject matter that can tolerate his style at its most outrageous and disturbing. The effect has been liberating.

Screen violence poster boy Quentin Tarantino, whose Palme d’Or-winning “Pulp Fiction” seems almost tame compared to this, wrote the original script for “Killers.” But Stone, working with co-screenwriters David Veloz and Richard Rutowski, has so made this project his own that Tarantino has kept his aesthetic distance, settling for no more than a “story by” credit.

Like so many loners-on-the-loose films before it, “Natural Born Killers” opens in a bleak roadside diner. Mickey, a slight grin playing behind his rose-tinted granny glasses, is sitting at the counter deciding to “give the key lime pie its day in court,” while Mallory, in a skimpy halter top that reveals her scorpion tattoo, is dancing provocatively by the jukebox when some rough-and-ready locals slam through the door.

It doesn’t require much intuition to figure out that no good will come from this unforeseen meeting. But though the ensuing slaughter is inevitable, Stone, cinematographer Robert Richardson (a Stone regular) and editors Hank Corwin and Brian Berdan bring things off with so much visual panache we don’t know whether to be impressed or horrified. Or both.

While this kind of “Badlands on speed” opening is outrageous, how far Stone and company are willing to go is not apparent until the next set piece, when what might have been an ordinary look at Mallory’s tortured childhood is shown as a warped TV sitcom called “I Love Mallory,” complete with heart symbol, laugh track and a wisecracking, malignant Rodney Dangerfield startling as a sexually abusive toad of a father.

It is Mickey, forever after to be her knight, who shows up to deliver 50 pounds of beef and rescues Mallory from this pit. And the almost continuous murder spree that follows is intercut with juvenile protestations of endless love and a goony joining of vows that includes Mickey’s wistful determination “not to murder anybody on our wedding day.”

As unnerving as “Killers’ ” plot is, relating it can only hint at what the experience is like on film. For Stone, in a brilliant display of visual dexterity, has so heedlessly, even recklessly, piled image on top of image--color, black and white, tinted stock, video, double exposures, animation and more--that surrender to the onslaught seems the only option.

More than showing highlights of M&M's three-week murder spree and their 48 (or is it 52?) victims, “Killers” is intent as well on visually taking us inside their minds. This means that a constantly changing array of images is projected on any surface that is handy, everything from shots of animals having sex to Edward Curtis’ vintage ethnographic footage.

Equally eclectic, and just as essential in creating mood, is the “Killers” redoubtable soundtrack, containing more than 75 selections including Nine Inch Nails (whose Trent Reznor put it all together), Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Shangri-Las and the story’s poet laureate, Leonard Cohen.

Unusual for a film whose effects are so dependent on the bombardment of stimuli, the cast’s satiric acting is on target as well. Not only are Harrelson and Lewis all they should be, they are matched by both Tom Sizemore as twisted criminal investigator Jack Scagnetti and Tommy Lee Jones as a feisty prison warden. Best of the lot is Robert Downey Jr. as Wayne Gale, the blabbering Australian host of TV’s hottest show, “American Maniacs,” intended, he fondly admits, for “the nitwits out there in zombie-land.”

And the nitwits, “Natural Born Killers” amusingly and horrifically points out, are eating it up. Mickey and Mallory become the ultimate international media darlings, cover subjects for Newsweek and People and captivating fans like the wanna-be victim who holds up a hopeful “Murder Me, Mickey” sign during one of M&M's courtroom appearances.

It was, not surprisingly, the chance to examine the how and why of this kind of celebrity-hood that initially motivated Stone to make “Killers,” and, aside from his technical wizardry, that is the element that makes the excesses palatable.

For unlike any number of films, the excruciating violence and gore here is not done to titillate. The idea, witness O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers, is to mock our societal fascination with blood-letting, to hold up a cracked mirror and literally force a reconsideration of what we’re doing as a culture and where it seems to be leading. This nightmare world in flames that’s making you wince, Stone is saying, it’s the one we live in right now.

Does this all come off as planned? Of course not. “Natural Born Killers” lacks the rigor of the similarly themed, little seen Belgian film “Man Bites Dog,” and it has twinges of its own kind of sentimentality, especially in the scenes involving Russell Means as an all-knowing (is there any other kind?) tribal shaman. Plus, if you don’t find yourself on the film’s often warped wavelength, the nonstop violence will sicken and offend you.

But because of the frisson of directorial energy Stone infuses this film with, we can’t help but be affected by its sensory barrage. Watching “Natural Born Killers” is like sitting next to a wild man driving at 90 m.p.h. in order to convince you to wear a seat belt. You may wish he’d slow down a bit, but it’s hard to argue with the effectiveness of the tools at hand.

-Kenneth Turan's review of Natural Born Killers, Los Angeles Times, Aug 26 1994 [x]

[frontproofmedia]

Media Workout Notes: Devin Haney & George Kambosos Jr. Ready for Second Undisputed Down Under Showdown

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Published: October 13, 2022

MELBOURNE, Australia (Oct. 13, 2022) — Undisputed lightweight world champion Devin “The Dream” Haney first came to Australia in June with one world title. He returned home with all the belts and is intent on repeating his virtuoso performance against George Kambosos Jr.

Haney will defend the titles in enemy territory against Kambosos on Sunday afternoon (Saturday evening prime time in the U.S.) at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.

The two combatants faced off yesterday, but at today’s open workout, they were kept separate. Haney (28-0, 15 KOs) received a warm reception from the local fans, who witnessed him unifying all the titles just four months earlier at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium. Kambosos (20-1, 10 KOs) enters the rematch as the betting underdog and hopes to recapture the magic that propelled him to a stunning title-winning effort over Teofimo Lopez last year.

Haney-Kambosos 2 will be broadcast live on ESPN, ESPN Deportes and ESPN+ at 10:30 p.m. ET/7:30 p.m PT.

Undercard bouts — streaming live and exclusively on ESPN+ at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT — include twin brothers Jason & Andrew Moloney in separate contests. Jason Moloney will take on Thailand's Nawaphon Kaikanha in a final eliminator for the WBC bantamweight world title, while Andrew Moloney battles the Dominican contender Norbelto Jimenez for the vacant WBO International junior bantamweight strap. This is what the main event fighters had to say. Devin Haney "We've definitely made some adjustments, learned from the first fight. Obviously, we all know he's going to come with a different game plan. The same things that worked in the first fight may not work as good in the second fight, so we're preparing for it all." "We just have to see how the fight plays out. We're prepared to win by any means necessary, so that's our main focus is winning. If a knockout comes, then it comes, but my main focus is winning." "He definitely should've been humbled, but at the end of the day, his head got big. It got to his head." "I enjoy the process, every step of it. I enjoy the whole process, and I'm excited for the press conference tomorrow and the weigh-ins." "He's making up every excuse in the book. He said he wasn't going to, but now they're saying I was holding, it was this, it was that. Whatever you want to say, he can keep saying it. The talk doesn't matter. I'm going to go in there and do what I'm going to do regardless. No matter what referee is in there, no matter where the fight is at, it doesn't matter." George Kambosos Jr. "I feel a lot of energy, very relaxed, very zoned in. Like I said, I'm a fighter. I'm not trying to do anything else. It's going great, going fantastic. We're very focused. We're very zoned in and hungry for victory. That's all." "When I went back to that dressing room {after the first fight}, my mindset changed right away. I'm a challenger again. I wasn't upset. I'm in a familiar place, and this is where I've been most of my career. Doubt me? No problem. I love when they doubt me. I love when they think I have no chance. That's OK. We'll prove them wrong once again." "We've come with a fantastic game plan, so we're ready for whatever. If he brings whatever style, if he's the same style, if he brings somehow an Arturo Gatti kind of style, which I doubt very highly, let's see. Let's see on Sunday what he tries. Man to man, let's fight!" "I have a smaller team. I don't have too much of an entourage, but I got a team I'm very comfortable with. I'm taking it old school. I'm going back to what got me there." Follow the Top Rank YouTube Channel for daily fight week content ahead of Haney-Kambosos 2. Haney and Kambosos recently sat down for the first time since their June showdown. Click here to see what they had to say.

Saturday, October 15 ESPN, ESPN Deportes & ESPN+ (10:30 p.m. ET/7:30 p.m. PT) Devin Haney vs. George Kambosos 2, 12 rounds, Haney's Undisputed Lightweight World Championship ESPN+ (8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT) Jason Moloney vs. Nawaphon Kaikanha, 12 rounds, WBC Bantamweight Final Eliminator Andrew Moloney vs. Norbelto Jimenez, 10 rounds, Vacant WBO International Junior Bantamweight Title Cherneka Johnson vs. Susie Ramadan, 10 rounds, Johnson's IBF Junior Featherweight World Title Adrian Sosa vs. John Mannu, 6/5 rounds, junior welterweight (SWING BOUT) OFF TV (6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT) Hemi Ahio vs. Faiga Opelu, 8 rounds, heavyweight David Nyika vs. Titi Motusaga, 6 rounds, cruiserweight Amari Jones vs. Tej Pratap Singh, 6 rounds, middleweight Lorenzo Simpson vs. Marcus Heywood, 8 rounds, middleweight

(Featured Photo: Mikey Williams/Top Rank via Getty Images)

[patriotsnet]

What National Policies Did Republicans Pursue During The Civil War

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What National Policies Did Republicans Pursue During The Civil War

Path Dependency And Counterfactuals

To explain the failure of Reconstruction, I process trace different causal narratives, using both path dependence and counterfactuals in my analysis. As Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman argue, case studies can be valuable for understanding path dependence, as they enable detailed analysis of historical events in ways that are suitable for rare cases and allow for the study of interaction effects, feedback loops, equifinality, and sequencing. If path dependency is in effect, later events, such as the spread of violence, are highly sensitive to previous decisions; solutions that might have worked at the initial stage are less viable over time.

Counterfactuals help scholars assess causal hypotheses by making claims about events that did not actually occur. They are valuable when large-N or even comparative casework is difficult. Counterfactuals are particularly useful when the number of observations of a particular case is low and multiple variables are in play. It is difficult to make definitive claims from counterfactual analysis, however, even when there is a strong understanding of all the potential causal mechanisms in the system. Consequently, my findings are suggestive, not conclusive, particularly when applied to other cases.

Eisenhower Goldwater And Nixon: 19521974

Dwight D. EisenhowerRichard Nixon

In , Dwight D. Eisenhower, an internationalist allied with the Dewey wing, was drafted as a GOP candidate by a small group of Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. in order that he challenge Taft on foreign policy issues. The two men were not far apart on domestic issues. Eisenhower’s victory broke a twenty-year Democratic lock on the White House. Eisenhower did not try to roll back the New Deal, but he did expand the Social Security system and built the Interstate Highway System.

After 1945, the isolationists in the conservative wing opposed the United Nations and were half-hearted in opposition to the expansion of Cold War containment of communism around the world. A garrison state to fight communism, they believed, would mean regimentation and government controls at home. Eisenhower defeated Taft in 1952 on foreign policy issues.

Eisenhower was an exception to most Presidents in that he usually let Vice President Richard Nixon handle party affairs . Nixon was narrowly defeated by John F. Kennedy in the 1960 United States presidential election, weakening his moderate wing of the party.

Strength of parties in 1977 Party 29 0

Barry GoldwaterAmerican conservative

Nixon defeated both Hubert Humphrey and George C. Wallace in . When the Democratic left took over their party in 1972, Nixon won reelection by carrying 49 states.

Richard Nixon

African American Population Distribution 1890

African American population distribution and migration patterns can be traced using maps published in the statistical atlases prepared by the U. S. Census Bureau for each decennial census from 1870 to 1920. The atlas for the 1890 census includes this map showing the percentage of colored to the total population for each county. Although the heaviest concentrations are overwhelmingly in Maryland, Virginia, and the southeastern states, there appear to be emerging concentrations in the northern urban areas , southern Ohio, central Missouri, eastern Kansas, and scattered areas in the West , reflecting migration patterns that began during Reconstruction.

Pietistic Republicans Versus Liturgical Democrats: 18901896

Voting behavior by religion, Northern U.S. late 19th century % Dem 90 10

From 1860 to 1912, the Republicans took advantage of the association of the Democrats with “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion. Rum stood for the liquor interests and the tavernkeepers, in contrast to the GOP, which had a strong dry element. “Romanism” meant Roman Catholics, especially Irish Americans, who ran the Democratic Party in every big city and whom the Republicans denounced for political corruption. “Rebellion” stood for the Democrats of the , who tried to break the Union in 1861; and the Democrats in the North, called “, who sympathized with them.

Demographic trends aided the Democrats, as the German and Irish Catholic immigrants were Democrats and outnumbered the English and Scandinavian Republicans. During the 1880s and 1890s, the Republicans struggled against the Democrats’ efforts, winning several close elections and losing two to Grover Cleveland .

Religious lines were sharply drawn. Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Scandinavian Lutherans and other in the North were tightly linked to the GOP. In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially the Catholics, Episcopalians and German Lutherans, looked to the Democratic Party for protection from pietistic moralism, especially prohibition. Both parties cut across the class structure, with the Democrats more bottom-heavy.

Violence And Military Rule

Violence was common throughout Reconstruction. White supremacist groups such as the Klan emerged throughout the South and, through the use and threat of force, intimidated or prevented Black people from voting and paved the way for Democrats opposed to Black equality to gain power.

At its founding in Tennessee after the war, the KKK was initially dedicated as much to amusement as to violence. By 1867, the movement spread and had grown more unified, and for several years, Confederate war hero Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest became its commander in Tennessee. Even with Forrest’s leadership, the KKK is best thought of as a like-minded collection of local groups that initiated most of their violence without informing state or even county Klan leaders. Existing like-minded local groups also took its name, though, in some cases, they preserved their original ones, such as the Red Shirts, the Knights of the White Camelia in Louisiana, the Native Sons of the South, or the Knights of the Rising Sun in Texas. Their primary purpose was political change, not murder. As with most terrorism, the psychological effect of their violence was great. The Ku Klux terror colored nearly every aspect of Southern life and politics, often far beyond the immediate range of terrorist activity, argued one historian.

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The Trump Era: 20162020

Presidency of Donald TrumpDonald Trump

Businessman Donald Trump won the 2016 Republican primaries, representing a dramatic policy shift from traditional conservatism to an aggressively populist ideology with overtones of cultural identity politics. Numerous high-profile Republicans, including past presidential nominees like Mitt Romney, announced their opposition to Trump; some even did so after he received the GOP nomination. Much of the Republican opposition to Trump stemmed from concerns that his disdain for political correctness, his support from the , his virulent criticism of the mainstream news media, and his expressions of approval for political violence would result in the GOP losing the presidential election and lead to significant GOP losses in other races. In one of the largest upsets in American political history, Trump went on to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

In addition to electing Donald Trump as president, Republicans maintained a majority in the , in the , and amongst state governors in the 2016 elections. The Republican Party was slated to control 69 of 99 state legislative chambers in 2017 and at least 33 governorships . The party took total control of the government in 25 states following the 2016 elections; this was the most states it had controlled since 1952.

In 2017 Donald Trump promised to use protective tariffs as a weapon to restore greatness to the economy.

Fighting The New Deal Coalition: 19321980

Historian George H. Nash argues:

Unlike the “moderate,” internationalist, largely eastern bloc of Republicans who accepted some of the “Roosevelt Revolution” and the essential premises of President Truman’s foreign policy, the Republican Right at heart was counterrevolutionary. Anticollectivist, anti-Communist, anti-New Deal, passionately committed to limited government, free market economics, and congressional prerogatives, the G.O.P. conservatives were obliged from the start to wage a constant two-front war: against liberal Democrats from without and “me-too” Republicans from within.

The Old Right emerged in opposition to the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hoff says that “moderate Republicans and leftover Republican Progressives like Hoover composed the bulk of the Old Right by 1940, with a sprinkling of former members of the Farmer-Labor party, Non-Partisan League, and even a few midwestern prairie Socialists.

Republican Party Platform Of 1960

Preamble

The United States is living in an age of profoundest revolution. The lives of men and of nations are undergoing such transformations as history has rarely recorded. The birth of new nations, the impact of new machines, the threat of new weapons, the stirring of new ideas, the ascent into a new dimension of the universe- everywhere the accent falls on the new.

At such a time of world upheaval, great perils match great opportunitiesand hopes, as well as fears, rise in all areas of human life. Such a force as nuclear power symbolizes the greatness of the choice before the United States and mankind. The energy of the atom could bring devastation to humanity. Or it could be made to serve men’s hopes for peace and progressto make for all peoples a more healthy and secure and prosperous life than man has ever known.

One fact darkens the reasonable hopes of free men: the growing vigor and thrust of Communist imperialism. Everywhere across the earth, this force challenges us to prove our strength and wisdom, our capacity for sacrifice, our faith in ourselves and in our institutions.

Free men look to us for leadership and support, which we dedicate ourselves to give out of the abundance of our national strength.

Foreign Policy

The pre-eminence of this Republic requires of us a vigorous, resolute foreign policyinflexible against every tyrannical encroachment, and mighty in its advance toward our own affirmative goals.

National Defense

Economic Growth and Business

Labor

Lessons For The Global Economy

Lincoln would have well understood the challenges facing many modern emerging nations, particularly large and diverse ones such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Of course, the context is different. Today, the forces of economic disruption are generally external rather than internal. The source of turmoil is the rapid expansion of international commerce, finance, communications, and transportation, which is inexorably drawing industrialized and emerging nations together into one large global economy.

Now, as then, we also hear charges of worker exploitation, this time because multinationals have established manufacturing facilities in low-wage countries. And, in another echo of Lincolns time, there are calls for protectionist measures. These come not only from companies and workers in industrialized countries, who must compete with lower-priced goods from emerging economies, but also from companies and workers in emerging economies, who must compete against the industrialized economies more technologically advanced products.

One could benefit by looking to Lincoln and the Republican Congress that came to power with him after the election of 1860. Emerging economies today are unlikely to replicate their policies per se. But much can be learned from the principles that informed those policies:

Emphasize the good of the national economy over regional interests.

Tailor your policies to your own national situation.

Reaction To The Attack On Fort Sumter

With the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, followed by President Abraham Lincoln‘s April 15 call for 75,000 volunteers to put the seceded states back into line, public sentiment turned dramatically against the Union.

Historian Daniel Crofts thus reports:

Unionists of all descriptions, both those who became Confederates and those who did not, considered the proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand troops “disastrous.” Having consulted personally with Lincoln in March, Congressman Horace Maynard, the unconditional Unionist and future Republican from East Tennessee, felt assured that the administration would pursue a peaceful policy. Soon after April 15, a dismayed Maynard reported that “the President’s extraordinary proclamation” had unleashed “a tornado of excitement that seems likely to sweep us all away.” Men who had “heretofore been cool, firm and Union loving” had become “perfectly wild” and were “aroused to a frenzy of passion.” For what purpose, they asked, could such an army be wanted “but to invade, overrun and subjugate the Southern states.” The growing war spirit in the North further convinced southerners that they would have to “fight for our hearthstones and the security of home.” 

Black Exodus To Kansas

During Reconstruction freed slaves began to leave the South. One such group, originally from Kentucky, established the community of Nicodemus in 1877 in Graham County on the high, arid plains of northwestern Kansas. However, because of several crop failures and resentment from the county’s white settlers, all but a few homesteaders abandoned their claims. A rising population of 500 in 1880 had declined to less than 200 by 1910.

A page of photographs and a township map from a 1906 county land ownership atlas provide evidence that some of these black migrants still owned land in and around this small village. Their impressive determination in an area with few good natural resou rces has resulted in the only surviving all-black community in Kansas.

1 of 2

Standard Atlas of Graham Co. Kansas, Including a Plat Book of the Villages, Cities, and Townships. Index of families in Nicodemus. Chicago: A. Ogle, 1906. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

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Grant And The Government Debt

In the first two years of Ulysses S. Grants presidency, Treasury Secretary George Boutwell helped reduce federal expenditures to $292 million in 1871, which was down from $322 million in 1869. The cost of collecting taxes fell to 3.11 percent in 1871. Grant reduced the number of employees working in the government from 6,052 on March 1, 1869, to 3,804 on December 1, 1871. He also increased tax revenues by $108 million from 1869 to 1872. During his first administration, the national debt fell from $2.5 billion to $2.2 billion. The United States had debt prior to the Civil War, but it increased sharply during the war. One reason for the increase of debt was the selling of bonds to citizens to pay for the war efforts.

On May 19, 1869, Grant protected the wages of those working for the U.S. government. In 1868, a law had been passed that reduced the government working day to eight hours. However, much of the law was later repealed in order to allow day wages to also be reduced. To protect workers, Grant signed an executive order that, no reduction shall be made in the wages regardless of the reduction in hours for the government day workers.

Regional State And Local Politics

The Republicans welcomed the Progressive Era at the state and local level. The first important reform mayor was of , who was elected Governor of Michigan in 1896. In New York City, the Republicans joined nonpartisan reformers to battle Tammany Hall and elected Seth Low . Golden Rule Jones was first elected mayor of as a Republican in 1897, but was reelected as an independent when his party refused to renominate him. Many Republican civic leaders, following the example of Mark Hanna, were active in the National Civic Federation, which promoted urban reforms and sought to avoid wasteful strikes. North Carolina journalist William Garrott Brown tried to convince upscale white southerners of the wisdom of a strong early white Republican Party. He warned that a one party solid South system would negate democracy, encourage corruption, because the lack of prestige of the national level. Roosevelt was following his advice. However, in 1912, incumbent president Taft needed black Republican support in the South to defeat Roosevelt at the 1912 Republican national convention. Brown’s campaign came to nothing, and he finally supported Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

An African American Institution Of Higher Learningwilberforce University

A group of Ohioans, including four African American men, established Wilberforce University near Xenia, Ohio, in 1856, and named it after the famous British abolitionist, William Wilberforce. When the school failed to meet its financial obligations, leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church purchased it in 1863.

The articles of association of Wilberforce University, dated July 10, 1863, state that its purpose was to promote education, religion and morality amongst the colored race. Even though the university was established by and for people of color, the articles stipulated that no one should be excluded from the benefits of said institution as officers, faculty, or pupils on account of merely race or color.

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Economic And Governance Collapse In The South

When Reconstruction began, the South was economically devastated. One-fifth of white Southerners of military age, the core of the labor force, had died in the war, and even more had been wounded. Machinery and work animals also had been lost in the war. In addition, emancipation raised the question of who would harvest the crops, which in the past had depended on slave labor. By 1868, however, the plantation economy had begun to stabilize, and the planter class again began to prosper, but many poorer white Southerners faced competition from Black labor.

As dire as the economic situation was for the old order, it was even worse for the newly freed Black population. Slavery, with its rape, brutality, and family separations, had shattered much of the community’s social capital, and land, animals, and equipment were all in the hands of white Southerners. In response, Congress created the federal Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands to protect the rights of the formerly enslaved, administer justice, and help them negotiate labor contracts and lease lands.

Yet, the racial power imbalance was profound. White Southerners conspired to prevent the formerly enslaved from buying land or starting businesses. In addition, Democratic newspapers had far more circulation and influence than the new pro-Republican ones , and they dispensed a steady stream of vitriol against the Radicals, at times even publicizing orders for groups such as the KKK. Freedmen’s

Dwight D Eisenhower: Domestic Affairs

Although there were dangerous moments in the Cold War during the 1950s, people often remember the Eisenhower years as “happy days,” a time when Americans did not have to worry about depression or war, as they had in the 1930s and 1940s, or difficult and divisive issues, as they did in the 1960s. Instead, Americans spent their time enjoying the benefits of a booming economy. Millions of families got their first television and their second car and enjoyed new pastimes like hula hoops or transistor radios. Young people went to drive-in movies or malt shops, often wearing the latest fashionspegged pants for men, poodle skirts for women.

he Eisenhower years were not so simple or carefree

Modern Republicanism

As President, Eisenhower thought that government should provide some additional benefits to the American people. He signed legislation that expanded Social Security, increased the minimum wage, and created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He also supported government construction of low-income housing but favored more limited spending than had Truman.

Prosperity and Poverty

Even though poverty was widespread, poor people got little attention during the 1950s. It was easier to celebrate the abundance of a booming consumer economy. People who had lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s emphasized the economic security of the 1950s. It was not until the 1960s that affluent Americans rediscovered the poverty amid the prosperity.

Eisenhower and McCarthy

Republicans Dominate The 1920s

Roaring Twenties

The party controlled the presidency throughout the 1920s, running on a platform of opposition to the League of Nations, support for high tariffs, and promotion of business interests. Voters gave the GOP credit for the prosperity and Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover were resoundingly elected by landslides in , and . The breakaway efforts of Senator Robert M. La Follette in 1924 failed to stop a landslide for Coolidge and his movement fell apart. The Teapot Dome Scandal threatened to hurt the party, but Harding died and Coolidge blamed everything on him as the opposition splintered in 1924.

Those Racist Dixiecrats Create Mainstream Republican Policy

But their ideas formed modern GOPs core platform.

In a campaign ad, Democrat-turned-Republican Jesse Helms said racial quotas prevented white people from getting jobs. The lie of racial quotas persists in the GOPs rejection of affirmative action. Racial quotas are illegal.

Take the idea of special interests. Heres Helms view, as a Republican:

Are civil rights only for Negroes? While women in Washington who have been raped and mugged on the streets in broad daylight have experienced the most revolting sort of violation of their civil rights. The hundreds of others who have had their purses snatched by Negro hoodlums may understandably insist that their right to walk the street unmolested was violated. Television commentary, 1963, quoted in The Charlotte Observer.

But you would think that Ted Cruz would have a clearer understanding of the connections between the Dixiecrats and the Republican Party.

He loves Jesse Helms.

Looking to do your part? One way to get involved is to read the Indivisible Guide, which is written by former congressional staffers and is loaded with best practices for making Congress listen. Or follow this publication, connect with us on , and join us on Facebook.

Teaching The Newly Freed Population

Sea-island School, No. 1,St. Helena Island. Established in April 1862.Education among the Freedmen, ca. 1866-70. Broadside. Page 2. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress. Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-107754

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The New Deal Era: 19321939

After Roosevelt took office in 1933, New Deal legislation sailed through Congress at lightning speed. In the 1934 midterm elections, ten Republican senators went down to defeat, leaving them with only 25 against 71 Democrats. The House of Representatives was also split in a similar ratio. The “Second New Deal” was heavily criticized by the Republicans in Congress, who likened it to class warfare and . The volume of legislation, as well as the inability of the Republicans to block it, soon made the opposition to Roosevelt develop into bitterness and sometimes hatred for “that man in the White House. Former President Hoover became a leading orator crusading against the New Deal, hoping unrealistically to be nominated again for president.

Most major newspaper publishers favored Republican moderate Alf Landon for president. In the nation’s 15 largest cities the newspapers that editorially endorsed Landon represented 70% of the circulation. Roosevelt won 69% of the actual voters in those cities by ignoring the press and using the radio to reach voters directly.

Roosevelt carried 46 of the 48 states thanks to traditional Democrats along with newly energized labor unions, city machines and the Works Progress Administration. The realignment creating the Fifth Party System was firmly in place. Since 1928, the GOP had lost 178 House seats, 40 Senate seats and 19 governorships, though it retained a mere 89 seats in the House and 16 in the Senate.

Boutwell And The Treasury

George S. Boutwell: George S. Boutwell served as secretary of the Treasury under Ulysses S. Grant.

Following in line with the Republican Party national platform of 1868, Secretary Boutwell advocated that the national debt must be reduced and the United States return to a gold specie economy. Boutwell believed that the stabilization of the currency and the reduction of the national debt was more important than risking a depression by withdrawing greenbacks from the economy.

On his own, with neither the knowledge of President Grant nor other Cabinet members, Boutwell controversially began to release gold from the Treasury and sell government bonds in order to reduce the supply of greenbacks in the economy. As secretary, he opposed a rapid lowering of taxes and favored using surplus revenues to make a large reduction of the national debt. In 1870, Congress, at his recommendation, passed an act providing for the funding of the national debt and authorizing the selling of certain bonds, but not authorizing an increase of the debt.

[aion-rsa]

Toronto International Film Festival 2020 Movie Round-Up

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It really is a festival like no other. That’s something critics and journalists probably write every year about the Toronto International Film Festival. After all, TIFF (along with Venice) is considered the kickoff of awards season. Studios and independent distributors alike bringing their biggest hopes and brightest dreams to Canada, where a positive reception can make or break early Oscar buzz. However, in the case of TIFF 2020, there really has not been a film festival like this.

In the wake of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the entire press component, including our attendance to the festival, was virtual; the red carpet was permanently rolled up; and even the stars and filmmakers stayed away, giving rare publicity one press conference on zoom at a time.

In this environment, and with studios keeping their traditional highly marketed end of year wares in indefinite stasis, some worried that the show couldn’t go on. But as glimpsed in our notes on the handful of movies we screened during this year’s festivities, there remained as great a range as ever of cinematic stories and triumphant debuts. Some of these projects shined, and others revealed illuminating facets of talent we only thought we knew. Despite so much other anxiety in the world, Toronto’s show did, in fact, go on. Here’s why we can be glad it did.

Another Round

In the abstract, most people are smart enough to know they shouldn’t stare at the carnage left by a wreck. It’s unseemly and never leaves you feeling good about yourself. But that sensation of indulging what you should know better about permeates director Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, both for audiences and its protagonists. As Vinterberg and star Mads Mikkelsen’s reunion after the masterful The Hunt, their follow-up once again documents the fragility and unspoken lunacies of upper middle class life.

Take Mikkelsen’s Martin in Another Round. As a history teacher, he should know better than to think alcohol can fill the void of years of encroaching ennui. But when his old school buddies and fellow teachers buy into pseudo-science that claims keeping a buzz up at 0.09 BAC will wake you out of the doldrums, it’s drinks in the morning and evening. Martin leans on historic figures like Churchill and Grant to excuse his mistakes, but we all know where this is going. Vinterberg’s intelligence is that he gets there in an immersive and morally ambiguous, if not outright indifferent manner. The excellent ensemble cast, and Mikkelsen’s slick jazz ballet dance moves (really), also make this stiff drink go down all the smoother.

Concrete Cowboy

As the other artful indie that relies on real people from a real subculture to give its film texture (see Nomadland below), Ricky Staub’s Concrete Cowboy is fascinating whenever it’s about the actual culture of Fletcher Street Stables. A last holdout for a Black population of horsemen and women in north Philly, these stables are where honest to God urban cowboys still ride. And they pass like ghosts in a city that left their community behind nearly a century ago—and is now coming for the last few blocks.

That is the documentarian aspect of Concrete Cowboy that is, at times, engrossing. Unfortunately, it suffers from being background to a rather generic and aloof coming-of-age story that is the film’s center. Both Idris Elba, as the laconic father who hasn’t seen his son in years, and Caleb McLaughlin, as the wayward lad who’s been unexpectedly dropped on his doorstep, do fine work. McLaughin is especially good in a part which is outside Stranger Things’ nostalgic suburbia. But every narrative beat in his and Elba’s relationship arrives minutes or hours after you’ve guessed the whole familiar yarn. And it makes you wish the film belonged more to the horses and their real riders.

Get the Hell Out

In this day and age, it’s easy to feel like politicians have turned us all into monsters. People who once went about their day helping their neighbor are now ready to attack them over a bumper sticker, and cheer on the verbal theatrics in legislatures in seemingly every seat of government in the world. Wouldn’t it just be better if these pols had it out already? They finally do with maximum amounts of bloodlust in I-Fan Wang’s Get the Hell Out, a bizzaro horror comedy where the Taiwanese Parliament is infected with a zombie virus.

It’s an amusing premise that could make for terrific sketch comedy or a YouTube video, which is about how long Get the Hell Out works. Opening with a bugnut montage of MPs ripping at each other’s throats and spilling blood on the floor, the movie promises midnight madness, but you may be asleep much earlier with the often cliché-riddled script. The film attempts to make up for its narrative thinness by using stylish graphic introductions for characters, and freeze frames that wouldn’t be out of place in anime or video games, but all the hyper-kinetic energy here ends up being hyperbolic.

Good Joe Bell

If you lived only in social media threads where like-minded people discuss the need for inclusivity, you might convince yourself the world really has changed. But take a few steps outside of that safe space, and reality will inevitably rear its messier, and often tragic, head. And it’s a messy reality, indeed, that Jadin Bell (Reid Miller) and his father Joe (Mark Wahlberg) are forced to confront in Good Joe Bell.

A well-intentioned drama about a traditional American father in the Oregon heartland trying to understand and then honor his gay son, the movie casts Wahlberg in perhaps his quietest and most circumspect performance to date. But that is of course Joe’s parat of the tragedy: He mistakes silent resignation to his son coming out of the closet as loving support; and then after his son’s suicide following years of bullying, Joe attempts to make sense of his child’s life and death by again stepping out, now by walking from Oregon to New York in his son’s memory. It’s a noble gesture, as is the film, even as they both leave you wanting.

Written by Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana (Brokeback Mountain) and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men), Good Joe Bell is a sweet but emotionally distancing experience. Told in a nonlinear fashion in which vignettes of Joe and Jadin’s relationship are interspersed with Joe walking in his son’s name, the mounting awareness by Joe in the present, or despair of Jadin in the past, is consistently fractured and strangely muted. There are moments of grace, especially when the very strong Miller as a distraught youth can (or can’t) connect with his father. But as even Joe admits late in the picture, “I just made this all about Joe Bell.” That’s a problem when the movie’s stronger with his son.

I Am Greta

“I shouldn’t be here.” It’s a refrain teenager Greta Thunberg repeats time and again, whether she’s speaking before the UK House of Commons or the General Assembly at the United Nations. And yet, here she is: one of the most effective advocates for addressing the climate change crisis in the last 30 years. It’s a painful paradox that the all-too-young public figure struggles with in I Am Greta. She’s aware that nothing changes year after year, applauded speech after applauded speech.

The power of Nathan Grossman’s new documentary is not that it only chronicles Greta’s high points of speaking truth to power (though it does), but it also undercuts some of the nastiest criticisms lobbied at her by certain world leaders and their supporters. By following Thunberg’s journey from speaking with random disinterested Swedish adults on the side of a Stockholm street to standing before the world, we see how her message has remained as laser-focused as her love for her family, their dogs, and being a kid surrounded by stuffed animals and often sudden bursts of hyper energy.

She really shouldn’t have to be in these places and focused so severely with having the weight of the world on her shoulders. Really. As the film documents the growing stress this child is under while crossing the Atlantic in a boat that’s little better than a skiff, one is forced to question the healthiness of such pressure. But her ability to actually grab attention is as evident as the endless loop of world leaders, legislators, and one bodybuilder turned Governor of California line-up to extol their admiration… and then change nothing. That’s the real honest takeaway, though the doc errs on a cheery message in the last few minutes about how children will save us all. I suspect the real Greta might have her own doubts about those attempts at uplift.

I Care a Lot

Not since Gone Girl has Rosamund Pike been so perilously irresistible. All toothy grins and smiling eyes, Pike’s Marla Grayson enters every room in I Care a Lot as a ball of sunshine. But also like the sun, if you get too close to this woman, she’ll burn you alive—all while dipping into your savings account and selling the family home. That’s literally her job as a legal guardian: She takes care of people the state deems incapable of caring for themselves… and she’s made a hell of a mint doing it.

Read the full review here.

MLK/FBI

The FBI spied on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a simple fact, but the uncomfortable implications of the federal government attempting to undermine and eventually intimidate a Civil Rights leader are unpacked in full, disquieting detail via this Sam Pollard documentary. In this way, it’s a sobering record of the salacious details about King’s private life that the feds unearthed and a chance to remember perceptions of King during his lifetime.

As the film strikingly reminds viewers, during a public dispute between FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the Nobel Prize winning King, polls showed 50 percent of Americans believed Hoover when he called King “the most notorious liar in the country.” Only 15 percent of Americans believed King’s protestations. It’s a glimpse into how a figure now considered saintly in U.S. history could be smeared as a radical in his time when juxtaposed with the self-anointed gatekeeper of American values. It also helps understand why Hoover thought he had the right to anonymously tell King he should kill himself.

This sordid shadow conflict between one of the most influential leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and the feds is examined with the precision of an anthropologist’s chisel. But what’s most surprising about MLK/FBI is what it doesn’t show. Until the end of the film, the sources and interview subjects remain unseen and uncredited, while only the most sordid words from the FBI’s declassified documents tease the extent of King’s apparently numerous infidelities. Yet the film doesn’t ask to judge King so much as consider a broader portrait, bigger than the tabloid muck the FBI peddled, but maybe more complex and dimensional than what our marble statues also suggest. It makes him loom larger.

Nomadland

Frances McDormand’s Fern is a gateway into a 21st century heartache, representing thousands of similar stories of Americans who’ve turned to a nomadic lifestyle of transient existence and seasonal gigs. One of the most fantastic actors of her generation, McDormand is searing as the hardscrabble heroine, yet she is matched by a troupe of real-life nomads whom Chloé Zhao has populated her film with. Images of these displaced Americans persevering in the margins where they’d been pushed can at times make Nomadland feel like a modern day Grapes of Wrath, save McDormand’s version of Ma Joad travels only with her ghosts. And yet, the beauty of the movie comes from her visible enjoyment of that specific kind of company.

Read the full review here.

One Night in Miami

These are the benefits that come from Regina King and Kemp Powers—the latter drawing from his stage play of the same name—using extreme artistic license to put Ali (El Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and football star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) alone together for most of One Night in Miami’s running time. But while the situation may be fictional, the textures and paradoxes it reveals among these four real-life friends is luminously authentic. It’s also a feat more lasting than traditional biopics, which posit themselves as allegedly true accounts of a person’s entire life. Instead One Night in Miami prefers examining the legion of pressures facing Black artists and leaders who hold the double-edged sword of America’s undivided attention.

Read the full review here.

Pieces of a Woman

If movies could win awards for their first 30 minutes, Pieces of a Woman would be a shoo-in. With a single tracking shot that details the anxiety, terror, and (brief) joy of giving birth over nearly half an hour, the movie begins with a stunning piece of emotional whiplash and theatrical bonafides from its leads, particularly Vanessa Kirby as the expecting mother. But as her home birth goes awry, and the worst fear of every parent comes true, all the vital oxygen escapes Pieces of a Woman’s balloon, never to return save for a brief, devastating monologue.

Directed by Kornél Mundruczó, working from a screenplay by Kata Wéber, the movie remains watchable due to the strength of its ensemble performances. As the anchor, Kirby is sure to be a frontrunner in the Oscar race, while Shia LaBeouf does fine supporting work as her partner Sean. My personal favorite performance, however, belongs to Ellen Burstyn, who’s late in the picture speech is the single other time the movie sizzles—even if it’s out of absolute fear of this wrathful, denied grandmother-to-be.

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Yet performances alone cannot carry a movie, and beyond that early opening salvo, Pieces of a Woman is a movie left adrift, unsure of where to go, or how to keep the viewer engaged with getting there. It wants to be a chilly intellectual melodrama in the vein of latter day Ingmar Bergman. Instead it’s just chilly.

Shadow in the Cloud

Yes, there is a gremlin in Shadow in the Cloud, and like the claustrophobic verticality of the movie’s setting, its presence is always felt like a breath on the back of the neck during a stormy flight. Granted this makes for a more effective first act than second (there is no third). Yet when the film turns into an all-out creature feature with more pulp than an orange grove, there’s still enjoyment to be found for horror fans who always wanted to know what would happen in one of these old school gremlin stories if the monster got through the glass.

Read the full review here.

The Water Man

David Oyelowo is another actor who tried his hand at directing this year via The Water Man. Decidedly family friendly in his first behind-the-camera effort, Oyelowo offers a sweet and gentle children’s adventure story that will land right in the sweet spot for distributor Disney’s target audience. It’s a ghost story for all ages, and like the best spectral yarns from your youth, it is about setting the imagination free to look beyond its backyard.

Oyelowo has a supporting part in the film as a second-guessing father, but The Water Man belongs to the impressive Lonnie Chavis as Gunner, his sensitive son. Gunner is a kid more inclined to sketch his graphic novel than engage with his father, but after realizing his mother (Rosario Dawson) is ill, Gunner and cool girl next door, Jo (Amiah Miller), set off into the woods to find a local legend: to find the Water Man, who’s discovered a way to cheat death. More classical Walt Disney than modern day Guillermo del Toro, there’s still just enough shadow in Oyelowo’s direction to give The Water Man shading. And in those dark pools, young ones can carry much out after the closing credits.

The Way I See It

So much of our collective memory of the men who’ve occupied the Oval Office in the last 50 years is shaped by the invisible hand (and eye) of the Chief Official White House Photographer. Most Americans don’t know the job title, but ever since the Kennedy administration, we’ve known the work. Lyndon Johnson standing next to Jackie Kennedy while being sworn in on Air Force One; Richard Nixon shaking hands with a spaced out Elvis Presley; Bill Clinton blowing hot air into the saxophone in front of Boris Yeltsin; and everything from Barack Obama playing Spider-Man with a young boy to being wound tighter than piano wire while watching the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

More than any other president, Obama’s tenure was defined by a cornucopia of history-making photographs taken by one man: Pete Souza. An old school photojournalist who’d been freelancing around D.C. for decades, Souza made his bones as a White House shutter fly during the much more private second term of Ronald Reagan. But even in his younger days, Souza dreamed of one day getting to go on the full ride of a presidency as its visual historian… little could he suspect he’d do that with the first Black President of the United States.

The Way I See It showcases some of Souza’s most famous images and unpacks the stories behind them, just as Souza unpacks his own life story and career. Directed by Dawn Porter, this documentary offers an astonishing bit of whiplash by transporting us to the Obama Years—an era which feels like four years and a lifetime ago. Warmly nostalgic, the movie ultimately acts like a wonderful exhibition for Souza’s artwork while rarely diving deeper than museum placards with bite-sized information and background. Thus the film is mostly a chance for Obama lovers to get wistful, and for Souza to hone his own political attack ad against Donald Trump by reminding us how much better the world used to be. Which… fair.

The post Toronto International Film Festival 2020 Movie Round-Up appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[cb-143]

Hi ♡, May I please get a bbsc ship with bts, nu'est and wanna one? Thanks, good luck with your blog <3  I’m 1,68 m with long dark hair and even darker eyes, almost black. #1 thing about me is that I’m a mix of introvert and extrovert. I’m very open-minded and positive. “Treat others the way you’d treat yourself.” I tend to take care of others before myself. I study/work hard too, which is good, but I sometimes become too distracted by it and forget to sleep and eat. I’m a perfectionist but not to an extreme. I believe that life is easier when you share your positivity to others. If someone I like asks me for a favor, I’d do it without a second thought. I love travelling and hope to visit many places to explore their culture and try their food. I just want to be bffs with my significant other. All in for skinship. However, I’d ask for nothing but loyalty and comfort in relationship. My hobbies including relaxing, daydreaming, listening to music (ALL TYPES) and playing video games (i get pretty competitive when it comes to games)

Hello @thebreathbeforethekiss! Thanks for requesting once more ♥

BTS:

Boyfriend:

Jimin -  As already established, Jimin would make sure that you remembered to take care of yourself, thus staying all healthy and happy as well – he’d eat with you, take naps with you, just spend as much time as possible with you to stay sane. Jimin also loves your positivity and helpfulness. He’d always be very affectionate with you, wanting to be as close as possible, holding your hand, cuddling you, etc.

Best Friend:

Taehyung – You’d hang out a lot just playing video games together. You’d have weekends you’d spend alone with one another, ditching Jimin, just to play games. Of course you’d take little breaks in between to sleep, eat, drink something, and just chill out for a bit. But your friendship with him would be fun, both due to his personality, and him just loving your positive personality. You’d easily become one of his best friends because he felt happy and safe around you.

Sibling:

Namjoon – You’re both very open minded. You’ve learned to work together, and to work hard. Before a test you’d probably study together; getting lost in some discussion about whatever topic, not even relevant for the upcoming test, but you’d always end up there. You’d also generally help each other whenever something was up.

Crush:

Jungkook – The poor baby would fall in love with you at first sight. You fit his ideal type so well, not only your height, but also your hair, your personality… in Kookie’s eyes, you were the most beautiful person he had ever seen. Even though he’s just as competitive at video games, if not more, he’d let you win on purpose when playing with you, just to see you be all happy.

NU’EST

·         Boyfriend: 

Minhyun –  he might sound a bit nagging sometimes, but Minhyun would make sure that you take care of yourself. He would try to help you in any way he can; he’d bring you food or remind you of it whenever he has the chance. If your work is too much he’d try to help you with that. He loves how caring you are, but it should not mean that you forget to take care of yourself.

Minhyun might be a bit shy in the beginning of a relationship, so the fact that you just want to be bffs with your significant other would bring him some relief. It would make it easier to feel comfortable for him. It would make up for a relationship full of comfort and loyalty to one another.

·         Best Friend:

Ren – Both of you are such open minded people! You two would relax a lot together as well as listen to music along the process, however you also like to explore a bit from time to time. It might not be as big as traveling together to a different country but you do like to go somewhere together from time to time as a trip.

Ren also finds it easier that you’re a mix between being an introvert and extrovert as this is also for him. He likes that you two can relax together listening to music and recommending songs to one another, but also go out and be more extroverted. This makes you two get along so well as friends.

·         Sibling:

JR -  You two are so, so alike. First you’d do anything for the persons you care about, having the “threat others the way you’d treat yourself” motto. You’re both super hard working and perfectionists and not to forget you both like video gaming. As you two share so much similarities, you two would also share a peaceful sibling relationship. Even during gaming it’s quite peaceful, because JR is lacking the same level of competitiveness as you.

·         Crush:

Aron – Your bright positive smile was basically what made Aron already fall for you. He loves how amazingly positive you are and even more how you share your positiveness with those around you. He’d want to take care of you as he hates seeing you neglect yourself. He’d actually cook food specially for you, making sure that you would eat it.  As much as he want to take care of you he also knows that you would take care of him in the same way. This made him fall head over heels for you.

Wanna One:

·         Boyfriend: 

Daehwi – He would be so happy that your such a positive and excited person. It matches his upbeat personality super well! Whenever one is happy and excited about something the other one will get super excited as well. If one of you is a bit stressed or sad the other one would cheer that person up. Daehwi is a bit like your vitamin, ready to give you all the energy you need that day. You two want to take care of one another and appreciate it whenever the other person takes care of you.

Daehwi loves learning about new cultures and trying their food together. Whenever he has the chance, he will make sure that you two will go traveling together. The both of you just want to experience new things. 

·         Best Friend:

Jihoon – Jihoon is so happy that his best friend is both introverted and extroverted. It makes him able to relax together while playing some music or playing video games together. Though you both are super competitive in playing videogames so I’m wondering if this will keep on being something that is relaxing after a while of playing.

 It amazes him always how hard working you are, but whenever he sees that you’re starting to get to absorbed in it he would try to distract you a bit. He’d start sharing his ear pod to get you out of your bubble that separates you from the rest of the world.

·         Sibling:

Daniel -   You two would have such a cute sibling relationship! You are both such happy and smiley persons. Daniel loves food. He tries to, ones in a while, travel somewhere with you. You’d for example go a weekend and then try the local food with you! He’s also so caring about you as his sibling and would therefore bring your food up whenever you’re so busy that you forget it. He actually won’t even leave until he knows that you’ve finished you’re food. Daniel also likes video gaming and this is one of those other things that you two would do together as a family bonding

·         Crush:

Jinyoung – Jinyoung is a shy person in the beginning, so opening up to someone is not easy for him. However you make him feel so comfortable. You’re so positive that it is almost like a little light, radiating warmth that makes him forgot about shyness. It makes him fall head over heels for you. He likes it so much how much you want to take care of people around you, because this is how you could take care of him. He just wants loyalty and comfort just like you.

~Min Elli & Admin Chan

[optimistredsox]

HOU @ BOS, ALDS Game 4, 9th October (5-4, loss)

It’s taking a while to wrap my head around the season. I’m still not sure I’ve managed it. I mean, there’s a lot to take away from the game itself on Monday, good, bad, and ugly. But for the last game of the year, I’d like to manage some sort of broad view of the year as a whole. That can wait, I suppose. I mean, there was a lot of the year in last night’s game, to be honest. Exciting plays and frustrating plays from Raphael Devers, overall inconsistency when what was needed most was consistency. As with all of 2017, there were moments that the Sox thrilled, and moments they made me slap my face in horror. Watching Pedey struggle up to first for the last out… man. I’ve written up 166 games this season, and trying to come up with the sense of sadness that hit me watching that I find hard to quantify or even qualify.

The Red Sox were not the best team in the American League this year. In my heart of hearts, I know that. But, and this is where all that hope came from, at their best, they could totally beat all the teams that were better than them. The Astros deserved to win that series, because they played better than us. And, like, maybe half the Sox starting lineup needs surgery or something. But they were not unbeatable. Hell, we nearly evened the series and never had a starter get out of the fifth. It was an unlikely scenario, because it relied on the Sox playing like they did in August, which they hadn’t done since, well, August. We might’ve won this year, it would’ve been a jammy win, but it coulda happened. Compared to last year’s performance in the ALDS, that’s saying something. We didn’t have a chance last year.

So it was nice to have a chance, even if, had we got through, I would’ve thought we were getting away with something. I remember being so upset in 2008 because a) I had a nagging feeling that the Rays, having won the season series, had our number that year and b) we would have totally fucking beat the Phillies in the World Series. In 2010 I was upset because I just so fucking loved that team, man. My favourite non-playoff Sox team of the last 35 years. This year… I loved so much, but there was so much to get frustrated by. Listing those things, even just remembering them, makes my heart feel heavy. That weight, along with the heaviness that come with the rest of the postseason continuing on without us, makes it hard to look at the bright sides. But that’s what I’m here for, so the final straws to grasp at for 2017, both Monday’s game and the season as a whole:

Raphael Devers’ inside-the-park home run  was easily my highlight of the game, but also one of the bright sides looking forward to 2018. He was a joy to watch and in some ways carried the team during the latter half of the season. Yeah, he had some rough spots, including in game 4, but the sheer joy of raw talent and energy that he bursts with is just awesome.

Andrew Benintendi followed a sad trend that included Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Jackie Bradley Jr where, as excellent as he was, wasn’t quite as excellent as we hoped or even needed. But he woke up game 4, put the Sox ahead, and gave a glimmer of hope that we’d send the game back to Houston. He hit a two-run homer against Justin Verlander (in an unfamiliar relief appearance), which is an exceptional feat in itself. But his potential, and his ability to come up big in that spot, make me very excited for his future.

Xander Bogaerts had a rough season, by his standards. His play at short felt a little unfocused, and his play at the plate was not what we’re used to seeing from him. He’s still young. I think he’s his own worst enemy. But I think he’s going to set himself straight, and come back stronger next year. Also, he went deep in the bottom of the first in game 4, and his homers tend to be quite pretty.

Mookie Betts never got into his groove. I reckon his injuries were more of a factor than was let on by him or the team. And yet in spite of that, he was one of the top ten players in baseball. While his bat flailed on occasion, his glove rarely faltered. A joy to watch.

Jackie Bradley Jr is one of my favourite players. Again, I think there’s a bit of his own-worst-enemy going on there, but his play in centre is a joy, and when he does connect with the bat, the ball goes very far. Again, I think he’s got a bright future.

Chris Sale faltered at the final hurdle(s), but good lord was he something to watch this season. With the bats due an upswing next season, he might get the run support he deserves. With a slightly tweaked workload, perhaps we won’t see that downturn in 2018.

Christian Vazquez, always dominant behind the plate, proved to be an asset at the plate. If that isn’t just a one-off, if that’s a sign of things to come, that is exciting.

We’ve got a pretty good bullpen on paper still. That’s never a sure thing one season to another, but it’s a start. One less thing to pull your hair out over.

I’m curious to see who replaces Farrell. I was not as down on him as some others were, but I can’t bring myself to be outraged at his firing. I really want Dave Roberts, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen. I’m crossing my fingers that it’s someone awesome. I can’t deal with another Bobby-V situation. 

I’m excited about 2018. I think you should be too. 2017 showed that we can win without David Ortiz, though it always felt a little harder. 

On a personal note, I wrote up all 166 games this season. I wasn’t sure I would manage that sort of commitment. 

Genuinely cheering for the Astros to win the pennant now. Fuck the Yankees.

Until next year (unless some really amazing Sox news comes up in the off season).

[anycontentposter]

Brian Austin Green Interview: PUBG Mobile #Fight4TheAmazon

The world can appear impossibly huge, however it actually isn't; it's fragile and can be terribly harmed by humanity's disturbance . Such a scenario is playing out right now in the Amazon rain forest in Brazil. Big swaths of rich plant are being burned down by corporations, and the federal government of Brazil is not doing anything to stop it, presuming regarding blame ecological NGO groups for the fires, developing an entirely ridiculous conspiracy theory . The Amazon jungle does a remarkable quantity of operate in canceling the world's natural carbon footprint, however burning down many miles of stated jungle will just speed up the rate of manufactured environment modification, to state absolutely nothing of the cultural catastrophe that originates from ruining a considerable part of every living and any environment animal in it.

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Related: Fans Host Charity Event to Donate DC &&Marvel Toys to Children's Hospital

On this task, activists and stars Brian Austin Green and Megan Fox are the suggestion of the general public relations spear. The #Fight 4TheAmazon project represents a best cross-section of Hollywood glamour, computer game action, and an exemplary cause. The very best method to contribute is through an Omaze sweepstakes that permits individuals to go into to win a Tesla Model S and a $20,000 prize money .

While promoting the #Fight 4TheAmazon project, the Beverly Hills, 90210 star talked to Screen Rant about his issues over the future of the world, and how the status quo requires to move far from oil and towards eco-friendly sources like wind and solar. The existing status quo is not sustainable; the earlier the rich corporations are required to alter their focus towards securing the world instead of injuring it, the faster we can start to fix –-- or a minimum of reduce –-- the damage we've currently done.

The #Fight 4TheAmazon project is a continuous motion to raise awareness for this worldwide problem. Both Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green will be amongst the individuals in a star PUBG Mobile match, which will be live streamed on Twitch.tv/ PUBGMOBILE on December 9.

I reside in Far Rockaway, New York, which was terribly harmed by Hurricane Sandy. I do these interviews with individuals in L.A., whose homes are on fire, while in New York, we're simply waiting on another cyclone to come and clean us away for great. I've talked to individuals in Australia , and they're having some bad fires, too. Perhaps the most significant ecological catastrophe right now is in the Amazon rain forest. It's still on fire today, being damaged as we speak.

I do not believe individuals understand what a huge part the Amazon plays worldwide. I do not believe they understand simply how crucial it is to have that area on the Earth, and what that forest offers, and what it makes with CO2 and what it makes with becoming part of the environment itself, how crucial of a task it plays in the totally free world, in what we have and what is needed for us to endure.

In that video on the site, your partner, the skilled and incredible Megan Fox, calls it the beating heart of the Earth, which is not an exaggeration, I believe.

No, it's not. The quantity of carbon ... One of the greatest things we're battling in the environment crisis is the emission of carbon. That alone is being treated in big part by the Amazon. And the Amazon being burned, and not having the ability to belong to our battle ... It's so essential.

There are a lot of corporations that are uncontrolled and they're simply damaging the environment, actually as we speak, and they're making a lot cash. How do you combat something like that? How do you alter their minds? How do we reverse this self-destruct course that humankind is on?

I do not understand. There's so much cash included in that. I believe, what we do is, as mankind, as humans, we continuously inform individuals on what the Earth requirements and what our part on it is. And gradually, a single person at a time, you make individuals familiar with what can be performed in their location. Ultimately, individuals will try to find alternate kinds of power and fuel. And these big corporations will lose organisation, they'll begin losing cash and bleed enough to go, "It's time to leave this video game." Ideally, at that point, something brand-new actions up. We have business like Tesla that are actually blazing a trail because. We have all these solar business that continue to establish and develop brand-new types of power and energy. We have all these wind farms, and we have ocean turbines, and we have all these manner ins which we can produce brand-new power. We simply need to continue to execute them and continue to grow those types of energy. The more individuals we can make conscious of what is going on and what modifications they can do, it'll assist, however it's gon na have to be on an international scale.

I truly hope that within our life time, we reflect on oil and our reliance on it as though it were the dark ages, some forgotten age that we're humiliated to have actually belonged of.

We state we actually hope, however we require it. We're type of at the point now where there's no reversing. It needs to advance. That's one of the reasons I initially got included. I was initially included with Generosity, attempting to assist with the tidy water crisis. It was something that I might see completion of within my life time. I believed, that's an actually fantastic cause to be part of, and something where I might actually make a distinction. Now we're at this point where it's like, worldwide, you require so much more than that. The tidy water crisis is necessary, however it's such a little part of what we require to do. We require to begin looking. Things require to take place on a much grander scale than that. There are activists, like Leonardo DiCaprio, who has actually been a substantial impact because. I so regard and honor the work he's done, however you've got individuals like Ed Bagley Jr., who, given that I was a kid, has actually been an activist for other types of power and utilizing innovation. There are other individuals like that who are so fantastic, and they've truly prepared and led the way for what can be done. Now's the time where things have actually to be done. It's not simply a vision any longer. It's something that needs to occur, or we leave absolutely nothing to our kids and our grandkids. I do not wish to belong to that. And I understand my better half does not wish to belong to that. And a great deal of individuals I understand do not wish to belong to that: leaving something to their kids that isn't much better than what we had when we entered into this world. It would be a pity. I believe it's our task and our responsibility ... You understand, our kids, that generation is a lot more knowledgeable about what they're doing than we were as kids. And now's the time to eliminate. We have the power of our generation, the generation after ours, and the generation after that. Now's the time, worldwide, to actually attempt to do that.

I believe that leads into your cooperation with this actually hip video game that everyone's playing, PUBG. More particularly, PUBG Mobile. How did your advocacy and the video game converge?

So, this project began prior to Megan and I got included. Global Green and Omaze and PUBG Mobile generally determined a method to integrate what they do best. Due to the fact that they are as huge as they are, PUBG Mobile has access to all these individuals. They remained in a world that a lot of individuals are associated with, with mobile video gaming and all that. Omaze is this astounding business that's actually proficient at developing enjoyable methods of raising cash and doing that. It simply made sense for what they do when they teamed up with Global Green. The element of bringing myself and my spouse in to assist promote it, and to assist truly get eyes on it, it ended up being everyone going, "Okay, how do we utilize our platforms in the finest method to raise awareness?" This celebration that we're doing December 9, with Twitch TELEVISION, that's another element of it. The entire thing is one huge push. And PUBG Mobile has actually been incredible, and Omaze has actually been fantastic, and Global Green is an incredible company, so we actually wish to assist them as much as we can with resources to fight what's going on in the Amazon and the defend that, and simply begin there and ideally grow.

You discussed your kids, and I've sort of half-joked that I'm too careless to have kids, however it's like, for my generation, the authentic worry is genuine, that any world delegated our kids will not be one worth residing in by the time they mature. It's a exemplary and excellent battle you and Megan are combating.

Thank you, thanks a lot.

I need to ask. Have you played? Are you a huge PUBG person?

No. Me and the household, we arrange of moved far from TELEVISION and computer game and iPads and computer systems and iPhones. We attempt to get our kids outside and have them be as linked with the environment as possible. When I was a kid, that's what I had. I had the exterior and a skateboard when I was a kid. If I was thirsty, I 'd consume from a pipe that I discovered, you understand? There was that sense of, like, when the sun turns up, you go outside, and you play outside up until the sun decreases. Those were my weekend days and my summer season days. We truly desire our kids to have as much of that as possible. We desire them to play outdoors and swim. They're actually huge today with the next-door neighbor kids playing "ding dong ditch," which is remarkable since, as frustrating as it is for us grownups, it's truly cool that the kids enjoy that! That was a big part of maturing for me. And they're playing frisbee and riding skateboards and bikes and doing those outside activities. That implies a lot to myself and Megan, which's a huge part of our household and what we do. When weekends happen, we're like, "Okay, what the activity going to be? What are we gon na do? Are we gon na go to a zoo? Fish tank? The museum?" We've got to discover an activity. We can't simply remain at house. There's excessive going on the planet to sit in the house and enjoy TELEVISION.

Going outdoors fuels the creativity. As much as I like TELEVISION, it does not always scratch the itch in the very same method.

You understand, I believe there's a time and a location for all things. I believe TELEVISION and motion pictures ... When the sun decreases, and due to the fact that of daytime cost savings it gets dark early, we've got time inside your home. Then it's like, all right, let's go on Apple TELEVISION and select a motion picture, and all of the household sits down and see that. Let's not sit in front of the tv and watch, you understand, brainlessly up until we fall asleep or get in a vegetative state! (Laughs) So we look for other kinds of home entertainment. We likewise play a great deal of parlor game as a household, we play a great deal of ... One of the huge video games we play, particularly throughout breakfast and supper, we attempt to all relax the table together and play the animal thinking video game.

Ooh, what's that?

So, a single person creates the name of the animal, and everybody else needs to ask concerns to determine what the animal is that you're thinking about, so it's great. It's an enjoyable method to engage with everybody and laugh together. And it's something that my partner is really far better at than I am. I'm finding out with the kids, and it's great for us, and it's excellent for households to do. We head out to consume frequently, and see the whole household on their ipads and iphones, and no one's speaking to any person. That's simply not fine for me. That may be fine for some, however it's not all right for me and my kids and my household and my relationship with them. To each his own, however that's how we are!

And you've got the podcast , which is still going strong?

Yeah, yeah it is! We've done 2 years directly now. We've done this live podcast, which started more as simply a podcast, however this year, due to the fact that of the reboot and all of that, it sort of handled a life of its own and became this occasion that we weren't initially setting out to do, however we did it! We wound up making this weekend out of it for fans of 90210. Individuals flew in from all over the world, and we held the podcast at Torrance High School, where we shot the initial program. That was West Beverly High. I had a lot of cast members from the old program. Douglas Emerson, who played Scott, and Joe E. Tata, who played Nat, and Ian (Ziering) existed, and Gabrielle (Carteris) existed, and Christine Elise existed, and it was a truly great time. We all simply sat and talked and had enjoyable, and we had these actually fantastic bundles for the individuals that were fans of the program to come. In some bundles, they got to explore around in a cars and truck with the executive manufacturer and among the authors of the program, and they got to go to areas from the program and talk with them in the vehicle. We had all these actually unique things. Some individuals got to visit the school of the school. It was actually enjoyable. We wound up doing the entire thing with 100% of the profits going to generosity.org and to colorectal cancer awareness for Luke. It ended up being a truly terrific method to raise cash for those structures and to admire the program and have a good time with fans. I do not understand if we'll do it once again since it was a great deal of work (Laughs), however the podcast has actually been actually enjoyable. We do not have any business sponsors, so Derek, my partner, we simply get on the phone together and we record on Skype.

That's so cool. I indicate, there's a lot of celebs who have their causes that they defend, however for you and Megan, it feels so real, that issue for the future.

I do not wish to remove from any person. I believe there are a great deal of individuals who have causes that suggest a lot to them, and I believe that's terrific. This one, for Megan and I, with our kids and our household, it simply actually proves out and makes good sense. It touches a specific part of us. Prior to this project started, this was something Megan and I were actually active in. It's truly troubled us, and we sat with out seven-year-old kid while he's wept throughout news video of the fires in the Amazon. To be have the ability to state we're part of this, and for him to understand precisely what it is, and understand what we're defending, it indicates a lot to us. For future generations, and for our household. There's an actually tie to it for us. It's a huge honor for us to be part of it, it truly is.

And it's been an honor to speak with you! This has actually been an actually deal with for me, I'm such a big 90210 fan. I finished high school in 2009, however I seeing 90210 when I remained in high school ... Which is most likely why I have something of a fetish for those huge 1990s scrunchies, however that's an entire other thing.

I would not state that aloud excessive! (Laughs)

More: Jeopardy! James Holzhauer Donates to Cancer Charity in Alex Trebek's Name

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Read more about this at screenrant.com

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[neoraven]

NWA TNA Episode 1, June 19th 2002

17 years ago NWA TNA started the weekly PPV experiment. I went to every single one. Now I'm going to watch them for the first time since I was there.

(this review brought courtesy of Toby Keith and the red white and blue)

In 2002, I was a teenager set adrift by 9/11 and the alienation from starting high school. For better or worse, every week I started going to National Wrestling Alliance - Total Nonstop Action shows on Wednesday night. I loved WCW and was bitter about the botched invasion going on, and here was a new WCW in my backyard.  It looks like there were 111 weekly PPVs, I'm not sure exactly how many taped ones / clip shows ended up happening, but I never missed one for injury, illness, or even vacation for the better part of two years. It was basically my ECW, for someone who was too young to follow ECW when it first aired.

I'm not really sure what the format of these is going to be. It's kind of a recap + live blog + review,  I'll give matches the standard 0-5 star ratings with 1/4*'s possible, so it's really a 20 point scale. I'm going to hopefully figure out a better way to get screen captures going forward. Also, these first couple were taped in Alabama, not at the TNA Asylum in Nashville. Hopefully if my memory holds up, I'll be able to give some live notes and memories from being there for some of these. I have an old hard drive of pictures taken that I hope I can recover. I won the "Best Fan of the Night" and "Best Sign" contests a couple times to get to go backstage, and I also generally hung out before the shows and after the shows to talk to the wrestlers coming and going like a groupie. Later on, I was even on the TNA "Street Team" helping to market TNA and hand out flyers/ads during Smackdown tapings.  I was also the moderator for the brief TNA Online Message Board, which I truly wish I had screencaps/archives somehow of all the…wildness there.

NWA TNA #1 June 19th 2002

Don West is the first person out of the gate, introducing Ed Ferrara after pyro and a brief introduction. Ed's all about TNA and introducing the girls dancing in cage as some sleazy music plays. Appropriately, he throws it to Mike Tenay, all business at ringside. TNA chants kick us off. Don West's hawaiian shirt is a thing of legend, and it's distracting me from Tenay's long explanation of the "Gauntlet For The Gold".

Jeremy Borash eventually is in ring announcing a parade of legends. Harley Race, Dory Funk, Jr, Jackie Fargo, Bullet Bob Armstrong, Corsica Joe & Sarah Lee, Bill Behrens, Ricky Steamboat. "All Our Base Are Belong To Us" shirt spotted in the stands. The Dragon compares the belt to every major championship in pro sports, the Stanley Cup, etc. He will special referee the finals of the match, and that brings out the one and only - Jeff Jarrett. His TNA theme "My World" is a lowkey banger that nevertheless completely haunted my life for 2 years. His big mouth earns him the first spot in the match. Ken Shamrock is here after that, and he joins Jarrett in burying the Battle Royal match. Finally, Scott Hall saunters through the crowd in a strip club(!!!) t-shirt as his awesome theme "Marvelous Me" plays. To round up, Ken Shamrock's theme wasn't great. "Hey Yo" sign spotted.

Goldylocks is backstage with Total Nonstop Action and the original midget killer "Puppet the Psycho Dwarf". Oh no. He's gonna spill some midget blood. Jeff Jarrett angrily kicks over a tiny music stand in the background hilariously. Then we go to the girls in cages and honest to goodness our first wrestling match -

6 Man Tag Team X Division Showcase AJ Styles, Low Ki, and Jerry Lynn vs The Flying Elvii (Sonny Siaki, Jimmy Yang, and Jorge Estrada)

An X Division showcase awaits. The legends surround a tiny monitor backstage. The generic faces' intro music is bland. The flying Elvii have a nice little knockoff theme at least. Siaki has Big The Rock Energy while the other two mug. The Elvii refuse handshakes and all hell breaks loose. Triple dropkicks and flying splashes to the outside. Styles reverses a back suplex into a phenomenal forearm, and I'm not going to attempt to catch every move. As an aside - Total Nonstop Action has taken a full 18 minutes on air before someone punched someone. Siaki and LowKi is a pretty appealing matchup. The former does a crisp Samoan Drop. Styles and Yang get in and have a very crisp, quick flurry of moves together. Jerry Lynn crushes a cradle Piledriver, and Siaki runs in and hits his neckbreaker finisher. LowKi accidentally brains AJ, and Yang capitalizes with the Yang Time for the pin. Considering who went on to hold the X Title, this is an odd result, but commentary was generally putting over how the mismatched team was going to compete in the X Title Round Robin coming up.

The Flying Elvii in 7 minutes, Yang Time pins AJ Styles **3/4

Midget Showcase Teo vs Hollywood

Hollywood starts it before the bell. From the promo, I thought this was a triple threat with Puppet. Hollywood kicks out of the "Tadpole Splash" from the top rope. Ed Ferrara says in response to Teo's claims to be a ladies' man - "He's the right height". Teo finishes Hollywood with an ugly swanton.

Teo in 3 minutes, Swanton?, 1/2*

Now West and Ferrara are in the ring hyping the Lingerie Battle Royal next week. The New Francine, Miss Joanie, Shannon (Daffney?), Alexis Laree (Mickie James!), The Incredible Sasha, Erin (Baltimore Cheerleader?), Elektra from ECW, Miss Taylor Vaughn, Darisa Da?? I didn't catch her name as Ed starts rambling about a kid in a candy store. Maybe I'll catch all the names if they're introduced with title cards next week. Francine grabs a mic and calls Ed "pudgy" and says none of the women compare to her. Elektra stands up to Francine and starts a catfight.

Goldylocks is in the back with Mortimer Plumtree. His character peaks with his name. He manages a tag team that bullied him in high school for reasons that are never explained. He leaves to walk "The Johnsons", Richard and Rod, to the ring.

Tag Team Match The Johnsons w/ Mortimer Plumtree vs Psychosis and James Storm

The latter is an odd pairing for a few reasons. I honestly didn't remember James Storm started off without Chris Harris and America' Most Wanted. He even has the prop guns firing blanks in the ring, which was always a nice touch. I feel like this is where I mention that the Johnsons are in full body suits and masks that make them look like walking penises. In other news, Psychosis is going without his trademark horned mask. Alicia from WCW is on the stage scouting the match. There's a fella in an XFL jersey in the stands. What year is it? "Buff your(sic) still the stuff" sign spotted. Ferrara "These Johnsons just look good". They hit simultaneous clutching suplexes to take control of the good guys, but Mortimer interferes to let one of the Johnsons hit their finisher on Cowboy. Post match, the ref pays off the lady watching the action.

The Johnsons in 4 minutes, Samoan Drop into Neckbreaker, *

Stan and Bo Dupp harass Goldylocks in the back until they run into the brothers' shared girlfriend in a quick nothing segment.

Borash introduces 1993 Rookie of the Year and Winston (yes, cigarettes) Cup Points Leader Sterling Martin. K-Krush is out to save us from the race car drivers. He's getting booed, but this would be a face promo anywhere other than Huntsville Alabama. K Krush "Damn you, and Damn Alabama" Brian Lawler is out to save the NASCAR dopes from the angry black man. He cuts an angry promo about "your kind" while the crowd howls in racist jeer. It's a pretty ugly segment considering "Grandmaster Sexay" Lawler is still clad in his Too Cool black rapper cosplay outfit.

Backstage, Jeff Jarrett is choking Jackie Fargo.

Tag Team Match Christian York & Joey Matthews vs The Dupps w/ Fluff Dupp

For better or worse, now I know their girlfriend/cousin's name now. After the crowd roared for the pasty white NASCAR duo, commentary is really going in on how these two wrestlers are completely fucking stupid and southern. The Dupps' intro is very boring twangy banjo crap, and they're not much better in the ring. Matthews hits a move called the Virginia Necktie that looks pretty nice. I think the non-Dupp team is working face, but it's hard to tell who the crowd is popping for. The Dupps win with some cheating and Fluff interference.

The Dupps in 4 minutes, Crotch shot, 1/2*

Before the Gauntlet For The Gold, we get a Toby Keith music video. He is singing "Angry American". Jeff Jarrett walks out and pushes Toby Keith off his little stupid stool and the crowd goes wild and honestly, I screamed in joy and Jeff Jarrett turned face for my money when he says "Nobody wants to hear that damn song, and take your Angry American Ass OUTTA HERE".

The Gauntlet For The Gold 20 Man Battle Royal for the NWA Heavyweight Championship Of The World

Buff Bagwell runs down for number 2 and the bell rings. Maybe it was for the main event finally starting but honestly the crowd goes pretty wild for Buff Bagwell laying hands on Double J. Buff hits a couple signature moves, but gets tossed before the next entrant. Ragin' Cajun Lash Laroux Is 3. He falls victim to The Stroke and is eliminated fast. "Somebody pissed in Jeff's Cheerio-s this morning!" Here comes Screamin' Norman Smiley at 4. The second largest pop of the night so far comes for the Big Wiggle. Jarrett tosses him anyways. Apolo comes down at 5, getting more offense than the previous entrants combined. K-Krush is 6. His signature axe kick gets tremendous boos, they hate him. Slash w/ James Mitchell is 7. Del Rios is 8. He is some kind of bodybuilder and it shows. Slash bites his way out of a belly to belly suplex as the announcers stress everything is legal. Justice is 9, I think this Is the future Abyss, but I can't swear to it. He hits a Black Hole Slam and now I'm 99% sure. Konnan is 10, yelling "Arriba La Raza" on his way to the ring. Abyss sells Konnan's facebuster a la HBK vs Hogan and I love it. 11 brings out Joel Gertner "I'm gonna be with 5 girls in Huntsville because I don't settle for less" He gives an X-rated introduction for the man they call Bruce of the Rainbow Express, led out by Lenny Lane. I'm not gonna bother listing all of the homophobic euphemisms the announce team runs through explaining who the Rainbow Express are. Rick Steiner is 12. He dumps Slash and Abyss with a couple impressive shows of strength. Malice is 13, dealing out chokeslams. Bruce, K-Krush, Del Rios,  Konnan, and Steiner go out quickly thereafter. Scott Hall is 14. Toby Keith? is 15. He suplexes and tosses Jarrett. Not that anyone cares, but Toby Keith leaves through the middle rope to chase Jarrett and is never officially eliminated. 16 brings Wildcat Chris Harris. Vampire Warrior, former Gangrel, runs down seemingly early as an entrant with no music? The on screen countdown timer disappeared during the Toby Keith situation. Dangerous Devin Storm, aka Crowbar, is probably 18. Steve Corino comes in at 19, the only former NWA Champ. Ken Shamrock is out at 20. "Hall was framed" sign spotted. Brian Christopher/Lawler is number 20 and I realize now that Toby Keith was not an official entrant. Brian clears out Chris Harris, Vampire Warrior, and Crowbar mostly by holding the top rope down when they ran by. He dumps Corino shortly after. Christopher and Apolo get dumped by Malice next. Then the cameraman somehow misses Malice back body dropping Scott Hall over the top, leaving Malice vs Ken Shamrock to go to a  pinfall or submission.

Malice vs Ken Shamrock, Special Referee Ricky The Dragon Steamboat

Malice gets some advice from Father James Mitchell at ringside.  After going back and forth, Shamrock gets an awesome cross arm breaker reversal of a choke slam. After a long tease of tapping, he gets the rope, maybe with James Mitchell pushing it a little toward his client. A big boot leads into the Ankle Lock and Shamrock refuses to break it on the ropes, after even a 7 count, leading to heated words with Steamboat. Shamrock wins with a Belly to Belly to a big pop despite his heel tactics. Cue pyro, and hoisting the tiny gold belt.

Ken Shamrock wins a 5 minute match following a 33 minute battle royal, Belly to Belly. **

The match was a little too long, even with Jarrett speeding up the beginning by tossing the opening entrants as fast as possible. Speaking of Double J, he fights with legends and security backstage before emerging with a microphone. He punches the legends after moaning about the battle royal until Toby Keith and Jackie Fargo come back out to book Scott Hall vs Jeff Jarrett next week, the show ends with them brawling up the ramp.

That wraps up episode 1! They have some marquee singles matches next week in addition to crowning the first X Division champ, I'll see you then to wrap up the two first Alabama shows before settling into The Asylum.

[omfgtrump]

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!

Welcome to 2019.

If you thought the first two years of The Don’s kleptocracy were scary and unhinged, hold on to your seats, because you ain’t seen nothing yet.

There is the Mueller investigation closing in (hopefully with an indictment of Don Jr. just around the corner!)

The Don was named person number 1 in the Michael Cohen case where campaign finance laws were broken.

The newly elected N.Y. State Attorney General, Letitia James, ferociously pursuing The Don’s criminal business organization.

The democratic majority House of Representatives is beginning numerous investigations, including The Don’s brazen violations of the Emoluments Clause.

No to mention the chaotic stock market with the possibility of a recession around the corner-partially due to those easy to win trade wars.

A childish government shutdown, which economically burdens 800,000 federal employees because the big baby in The White House wants his wall.

Are you exhausted yet?

The only wall that is going to be built is the wall that is closing in around The Don, is the wall encroaching on him. (Can we get Mexico to at least chip in for that one?)

As others have noted, The Don is like a wounded animal and there is nothing scarier then the desperation of a wounded animal.

As a result, The Don’s grandiosity and belief that the “A plus” president never loses (aren’t we all so “tired of winning!”) will unleash a torrent of deflection, distraction and vitriol that will be more over the top than ever. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions, The Don’s Malignant Narcissism, which leads to disdain and disregard for anyone but himself, will create a scorched earth policy: he will do anything to survive. It will be crazy and it will be ugly. So hang on.

So what do we as involved citizens do to cope with all the despair and anxiety this will create?

My new year’s resolutions (besides eating less sugar!) are the following:

Do more dancing, singing, and laugh much more.

After seeing the remake of Mary Poppins, I went home and watched the real-deal original and delighted in Ed Wynn’s hysterical antics in “I Love to Laugh.”

In other words, find outlets for yourself in order to release the tension and anxiety. Find ways to get the poison The Don projects on to the world out of your system. Hug your loved ones more. Take up weaving. Run. Climb stairs. Do jumping jacks. Should I venture to say try Yoga, laughing Yoga? When the pressure gets too great just scream. Take pleasure in small things. Hang up pictures of the extraordinary new women and people of color carousing the walls of Congress, who bring energy, hope and inspiration.

Watching the Republican uproar over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing made me smile. Her response to their outrage of her rooftop dancing in college imitating a scene from the 1980’s movie “The Breakfast Club” was to dance in the hall in front of her congressional office to Edwin Starr’s antiwar anthem “War,” and taunt: “I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous. “Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too!” You go girl, as they ain’t seen nothing yet!

Then there was Mike Pence swearing in the new bi-sexual female Senator from Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema. Sinema was very confused because during the swearing in Pence looked very uncomfortable and kept saying: “Mother, where are you?”

Now that we have a sense of what we need to do to deal with the toxicity, let’s return to the craziness.

In his first cabinet meeting, with his devoted group of sycophants surrounding him, we were ushered in to the new crazy by the presence of the Game of Throne’s-like poster of The Don which said “The Sanctions Are Coming.” This was a play on words from the “Game of Throne’s “The Winter is Coming.”

To be honest, when I saw the poster I burst out laughing. But my laughter turned to gloom when I realized that in reality, the Game of Throne’s poster, was more apt; but instead of “The Winter is Coming,” I realized that it read “The Winter is Already Here!”

During a 90 minute free association ramble to his cabinet, The Don said some pretty whacky things, so much so, that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said The Don’s actions during the meeting were enough to invoke the 25th Amendment

Here are a few of the highlights:

When reflecting on our involvement in Afghanistan he devalued the President of India, Modi, by saying that India’s involvement was pretty much useless and mocked their involvement in building a library, which according to The Don “took about 5 hours.”

Rumor has it that he whispered the following to his new Acting Secretary of Defense.

“Why waste your time building a library. Reading is such a waste of time. Boring, so, so boring! I am sure I have read all those books anyway. I think I have read more books than all of the people in this room combined and frankly it was a total waste of time. Nothing in them I already didn’t know.”

Then he turned to Education Secretary Betsey Devos and said: “Maybe we should take the money we spend on libraries in this country and put it to the wall. Now that’s a brilliant idea, don’t you think?”

Trump went on to lie, lie, and lie by claiming there are more than 30 million undocumented immigrants.

That number is about three times greater than experts’ estimates. Pew Research Center estimated there were 10.7 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as of 2016.

In a brazen and craven attempt to create an imaginary crisis, The Don also lied about thousands of terrorists entering the U.S. through the southern border, when there is no evidence of this. Thank you Fox News’ Chris Wallace, for confronting  Sarah “Huckstabee” Sanders attempt to continue promulgate these lies.

He said that because terrorists from Afghanistan attacked Russia, the Russians went to war with Afghanistan. Actually, this is a pretty crazy one as it turns out that The Don is spouting Putin’s new revisionist history about The Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan. It was Russia who went in to Afghanistan that brought terrorists to their country in reprisal for their invasion.

Then a little free association:

Why isn’t Russia there? Why isn’t India there? Why isn’t Pakistan there? Why are we there? We’re 6,000 miles away? But I don’t mind… I think I would have been a good general.”

General Bone Spurs at your command.

More on generals:

The Don: “I had a meeting at the Pentagon with lots of generals. They were like from a movie. Better looking than Tom Cruise, & stronger. And I had more generals than I’ve ever seen, & we were at the bottom of this incredible room. I said, ‘this is greatest room I’ve ever seen.'”

Take that Tom Cruise. LOL.

Hope to the rescue.

The democrats, led by their fearless general, Nancy Pelosi, have hit the ground running and immediately passed resolutions to re-open the government. Then they plan on passing H.R. 1, known as “For The People Act,” a comprehensive package of revisions to current political practice that House Democrats are looking to introduce in the opening weeks of the next Congress. H.R. 1 will attempt to: establish nationwide automatic voter registration; promote early and online voting; end partisan gerrymandering; expand conflict-of-interest laws; increase oversight of lobbyists; require the disclosure of presidential tax returns; strengthen disclosure of campaign donations; set up a system of small-donor matching funds for congressional candidates; and revive the moribund matching-fund system for presidential campaigns. A plan for repairing the Voting Rights Act will move along a separate track.

Just promise through all the madness to come that you find time to laugh!

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[henrytcasey]

The Night Trashy Tim Tapped

OH! THAT-CHERRR IS GARRRRBAGE! OH! THAT-CHERRR IS GARRRRBAGE!

As the Evolve Champion, Timothy Thatcher was the purest villain in professional wrestling. And because of what pro wrestling has become, the crowd gave him the exact reaction that a heel should want: abject and sincere hatred. And it freaks some people out.

Some have told me they’re surprised about how much the Evolve crowd hated Thatcher. Getting boos is one thing, but the unanimous lack of respect inspired by this muscular Californian demonstrates that he works on another level. Sure, he got elevated to the title soon after he joined Evolve and held the title for longer than some might like, but there’s more happening here.

We live in a time of mixed heat, where fans appreciate Brock Lesnar’s freak physique, abiding mystery and overall singularity. Kevin Owens gets applause for his time spent on the independent circuit, his cool moveset and mastery of the microphone. Even when Seth Rollins is a heel, fans are in awe over his flippy shit.

Even the independent scene is filled with Cool Bad Guys. On paper, the Young Bucks, Adam Cole, and Cody (all members of The We’re So Cool Bullet Club) are baddies. Yet none of them get treated as the villains by anyone, even in Japan, the land of fans supposedly rooting and booing by the numbers. They get the chants of “Too Sweet!” Fans want to do the Wolfpac Salute (also called the “Too Sweet!”) with them. Their superkicks cause riots. And unless they’re booked to be the good guys, it makes for really messy stories, or a lack thereof.

In a way, Thatcher works above all of those prominent wrestlers because he does nothing exciting. He only provides a convincingly brutal but incredibly dry in-ring style, to a point where I can’t say more than that.

Thatcher doesn’t do social media or meet & greet merch sales either. His character, if you could call it that, is in absentia.

Thatcher gives the Evolve audience so little (beyond his straightforward, no-frills, no-fun, almost San Antonio Spurs-ian style of wrestling), that I can’t help but over-analyze what he does offer.

His only accoutrement, until recently at least, was the phrase Ring Kampf on his gear. Kampf loosely translates to Fight, but since Ring Fight doesn’t really say much, the gear provides more obfuscation of his character.

Someone looking to make conclusions where they are not might remember that Kampf is one of the two words in the title of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, so that might mean something. It doesn’t, or at least not like that. Ring Kampf is a faction of a bunch of German wrestlers plus Thatcher, and they all have a look reminiscent of … yeah.

So because Thatcher’s style is so minimalist, in an era where fans are used to heels with more characteristics, Evolve turned up the heat by pairing him with Stokely Hathaway. Hathaway, who needed a new client after he managed the now-reviled TJ Perkins until TJP made it to the WWE main roster.

Perkins, by the way, is a clear example of how a character will fail if they straddle the line between hero and villain sloppily. Sure, he does flippy moves, loves video games, and fights bullies, but he’s smug and egotistic. Further, some hate him for his history of tweeting Men’s Rights Activist ideologies.

Hathaway, though, adds delusions of grandeur to the screen when Thatcher appears. We know to boo the daylights out of Stokely, but we also respect his facial expressions and his ability on the microphone. During his time with Thatcher, he kept bringing up his client’s epic reign, which was 596 days-long when Evolve 79 began. It didn’t see day 597.

Thatcher went into the weekend of Evolve 78 & 79 (Feb. 24 & 25) with two scheduled title defenses: Fred Yehi at 78 at Joppa, MD, and Zack Sabre Jr. at 79 at Queens, NY. But unfortunately, the former was already doomed.

Evolve pre-announced that Evolve 79 would feature a match where the loser of Thatcher / Yehi would fight in a Four-Way Freestyle match featuring Chris Dickinson, Anthony Henry, and Austin Theory.

While he’s one half of the Evolve Tag Team Champions, Yehi made so much sense for this match, especially with his experience fighting some of those guys in other promotions. Further, Thatcher just sounded wrong for a match comprised of guys so farther down on the card than he, the Evolve champion.

Yehi’s loss didn’t suggest Sabre Jr. would win, but it was frustrating. Yehi, who is introduced as “angry, pissed off, and short” is amazing in the ring, mixing submissions, unexpected strikes and a manic energy together. Watching his match and being sure he had no chance was unengaging. Dude could also benefit more from a title win than Zack Sabre Jr., as the Brit is one of the most-well-known independent wrestlers today.

Not only is Zack Sabre Jr. the Pro Wrestling Guerilla champ, but his notoriety rose with the WWE Cruiserweight Classic last summer. He went in as an established name, and one of the few at that, and left with more fame than before.

But while Thatcher / Zack Sabre Jr. is a big match because of ZSJ’s star power, I went in expecting him to lose. Death, Taxes and Tim Thatcher’s reign, I thought, were sacrosanct. Wouldn’t you want Thatcher’s reign to end at an Evolve event during the big, upcoming WrestleMania weekend series of shows?

So, you know the quoted chant that I led this piece with? That chant, which might have been made by the fans on the spot, was sung in the key of “Oh, Zack Sabre Juuuuunior!” And of course, that’s sung in the style of The White Stripes song “Seven Nation Army,” an insanely popular song in sports arenas across the world and in ZSJ’s home country.

That chant spun out of the standard “That! cher’s! Garbage!” chant that follows Tim everywhere. Is the chant what spawned the nickname name Trashy Tim, or was it the other way around? Is calling Thatcher garbage a derision of his plainness, or a sign of respect for how pure his villainy is? I like to hope it’s the latter. That in a time where too many blur the lines, Thatcher is the one true evil.

That might not be it, though. Thatcher as the dry, dominant champ doesn’t always work, though. When I saw him in person for the first time, defending his title against Drew Gulak at Evolve 67, the crowd sort of died around him.

Maybe the gymnasium they were performing in was too muggy, as we were all drenched with our own salty sweat. Knife-edge chops against chests resulted in mid-air splashes.

Maybe the crowd was too wiped from one hell of a show, which included a great matches such as Tommy End vs Matt Riddle, Chris Hero vs Cody, and Cedric Alexander vs Zack Sabre Jr..

No matter why that match fell apart (maybe Gulak and Thatcher are too similar in their grappling style) maybe experiences like it created the hate from the fans. Creating the sense that Thatcher is bland and that bland isn’t worth it.

Fortunately, Sabre Jr. and Thatcher built and delivered a solid match for the crowd at Evolve 79 in La Boom and those watching at home. The match blended speedy and powerful strikes with signature submissions just right, and the crowd took to it. The tension of Thatcher retaining sparked the fire of that chant, which the crowd volleyed back and forth with its inspirer:

OH! THAT-CHERRR IS GARRRRBAGE! OH! ZACK-SABERR JUUUU-NNNIOR! OH! THAT-CHERRR IS GARRRRBAGE! OH! ZACK-SABERR JUUUU-NNNIOR! OH! THAT-CHERRR IS GARRRRBAGE! OH! ZACK-SABERR JUUUU-NNNIOR!

The chants filled the room and took the moment to another level. Almost to that point of John Cena vs CM Punk at Money in the Bank 2011. Not that high up, but close.

And then when Thatcher eventually tapped out to Sabre Jr.’s laboriously-long-titled submission (Hurrah! Another Year, Surely This One Will Be Better Than The Last; The Inexorable March of Progress Will Lead Us All to Happiness), I didn’t buy it.

I kept asking the people around me how it would be reversed. But Thatcher tapped, his time was over.

The crowd was apoplectic when Thatcher tapped out. Not just because this was something they wanted and may not have expected, but because Stokely Hathaway was having a nervous breakdown in the aftermath. Stokely clutched the title tight, and tried to refuse Thatcher taking it from him, to give to Sabre Jr.

The moment was pure delirium for more than just the crowd and the end of Tim’s reign. I was over-the-moon happy for ZSJ on a personal level. Repeated encounters I’d had with the guy left a very positive impression upon me, but he grew even higher in my opinion by taking a humane political stance.

In the aftermath of Shitbird President Trump’s xenophobic executive order against immigrants, Sabre Jr. released a shirt for sale that reads “This Wrestler Armbars Facists”) and gave all of his proceeds ($2,400 as of March 1) to the ACLU. I bought one immediately, and felt an even stronger bond with the Brit.

After winning the title, Sabre Jr. took the mic and declared (somewhat randomly) that pro wrestling should be a place for everyone. It was of course a good thing to say and a nice high-note to end the night on, but it took our focus away from the title change from Thatcher to ZSJ. Also, the placement of that line, between the finish and the setup for future matches with other wrestlers, took away.

As trashy as Timothy Thatcher may be, he’s no bigot, and neither is anyone in Evolve, so it rang a little oddly, ricocheting off the walls at zany angles, not raising the room to a higher plateau. The fervor of the room stayed at this level, though. That was the boiling energy of the end of Thatcher as champ. That the people would no longer be cursed by his plainness.

What Evolve does next with Thatcher is unclear, but it certainly ended on a fantastic moment. The title change also sets up a big-time main event for WrestleMania weekend, with ZSJ going up against fellow fan-favorite ACH. It’s also an interesting friend vs. friend match, as the end of Evolve 77 showed the bond between them and Chris Hero, who addressed ACH as “Albert.”

ZSJ also plans to fight in New Japan this year, which makes him an even more valuable champ for Evolve. He can bring the title to the east and give Evolve that prestige by successfully defending it there.

And as much as I will gripe that it shoulda been Yehi, he didn’t leave La Boom empty handed, but with a feud against the white-hot Matthew Riddle. A feud that could lead to Yehi being back in contention for the Evolve title.

A Yehi win would have also been explosive, but that’s the great thing about a truly detestable villain: you don’t always need the right hero to topple them.

[aparecium-hq]

Welcome to Aparecium, Kimmy! You have been accepted for Rose Weasley. You bring a very unique approach to Rose, and we’re looking forward to see how this new, less reserved version of Rose you’ve created in the wake of her life changes interacts with her cousins especially. Check out the new member checklist, and jump right in.

First choice character: Rose Weasley

What drew you to them? The kind character who has enough and goes through hell for everyone and then sort of snaps is a trope that i like

Character Basics

Birthday (Age): October 5th, 2006 (21)

Gender (Pronouns): Female (She/Her)

Sexuality: Bisexual

Blood Status: Halfblood

Hogwarts House/School: Ravenclaw

Occupation: Professional Quidditch Player

Faceclaim: Samantha Logan

Any requested changes? I chose a different fc just because I was feeling her more for the character. Like her resources seem to fit more of what I was going for. Also, I kind of made Rose a little more impulsive than what her teaser suggested, though I do definitely think she played her life like a game of chess in the before. Before her heart was broken and she made the impulsive decision to choose herself.

Biography:

Popularity had always been her double edged sword. When Rose was growing up, she was loved by her peers for being the kind one. She had never been the pretty one, the charming one, or the most well-spoken – she was kind and she was smart and there was no room for anything else. However, some would say she was also the fun one. She was always up to whatever amusement the students had conjured despite her role as both prefect and head girl. She had even been known to cover up some of the most legendary parties from authority figures. Yes, Rose had always been the kind of girl that people loved but the tabloids hated.

As a child, the tabloids somehow always found a way to make her look bad, even before she was old enough to go to hogwarts. When she was nine years old she looked more boy than girl, her dark curls shorter than even Hugo’s; Witch Weekly called her Ronald Weasley Jr., at thirteen with her hair past her shoulders, they crucified her for having a rat’s nest for hair. At fourteen when puberty started and her skin erupted with acne, a particularly rude journalist used her picture as an example of what skin shouldn’t look like. when she turned fifteen and mastered beauty charms, for a few months witch weekly had nothing but praise for her appearance. It wasn’t until a few months later during Christmas that they falsely accused her of getting work done. She knows that the media will always find something to pick at, but she’s become more than a little obsessed with looking good. Beauty has become her armor and her reflection as comforting as a good game of quidditch.

She didn’t play for her house team. In fact, she was all set to take an internship for the Wizengamot. She had more NEWTS than necessary (a side effect of being highly competitive and the one sided competition she had with her mother) and no real passion for academics. She loathed revising, and she didn’t want to sit down and read a book ever again (unless it was a trashy novel). Quidditch was always just a weekend stress reliever, a game she liked to play to escape from revisions and the only thing she wanted to do during holidays. And yet, it surprised them all when she impulsively took a sick day from her internship to attend tryouts. The row she had with her mother when she told them she was leaving her job at the ministry was legendary. However, when Hermione saw how happy her daughter was, she took advantage of her complimentary season pass and made it to almost every single game. Her father still hasn’t forgiven her for refusing to play for the Chudley Canons, but he’s almost (if not more so) supportive than her mother.

In some ways the decision to break free from her pattern of choosing the safe predictable way, was her breaking point. It was a conscious decision to actively stop being the perfect child, to stop being the shoulder to lean on. She had always been the kind one but it was a result of people-pleasing and always doing the right thing no matter how much it cost her. After all, she had chosen her best friend and what should have been a clear, safe choice for a partner only ended in heartbreak. The realization that even the most predictable of choices could end up in flames allowed her to abandon the notion that she had any control whatsoever.

Her decision to be true to herself and stop being a pushover has led to some backlash. She’s lost many friends over the years, yet for each friend she loses she feels lighter. It’s one less person with expectations, one less person to please. She’s still working on balance. On how to be kind to herself without being an asshole to everyone else, but she’s happy with who she has left in her corner. They’re the people she wants around when the inevitable happens and Magical Integration reveals itself to be far more dangerous than what the public has been led to believe.

Character Questionnaire

How does your character feel about their family?

Rose loves her immediate family. She does. She would fight anyone and everyone who wrongs her parents or her brother. But she’s always had a strained relationship with her mother. In the early years she did her best to become her, but there were some fundamental differences to their personalities – namely that Rose loathed academics and her mother loved them. Her father may be her favorite person. And Hugo, well he’s her little brother and while they may not always get along, he’s the one person she wouldn’t turn away if he needs someone to lean on.

What does your character value in a friendship?

Rose values giving as good as you get. For so many years her friendships had been one sided. It was always her doing the heavy lifting, but now all she wants is someone who will lift her up just as much as she does them. Though recently, Rose hasn’t been doing a lot of lifting and it’s only fair that she doesn’t have that many friends in her corner anymore.

How would a stranger who has just met your character describe them?

Beautiful with the tiniest bit of trying too hard. A stranger would not know them as a brilliant quidditch player, they would only see who she is on the surface. A beautiful girl whose face is marred by a constant scowl. Some strangers may find the urge to tell her to smile, but they would be met with a middle finger in the air.

Para Sample

Rose doesn’t cry. Or at least she didn’t use to. Crying was reserved for special occasions – her favorite quidditch team winning the world cup, weddings, and funerals. So crying in the middle of Diagon Alley as it poured buckets on her was a rarity and a tabloid scandal waiting to happen. But she was finding that she just didn’t have the energy to care anymore. Everything in her life was beginning to feel like a lie – a facade. Her internship at the Wizengamot, her now dead relationship with Scorpius, and the betrayal of feeling as if her cousin Albus must have known even before she did and refused to tell her. She thinks that last one might have hurt the most.

She had always valued her relationships, always took care to be exactly just what the other person needed. Not that it had done her any good in the end. The thought made her cry harder, body wracked with tears as she stood from the bench and saw her reflection in the store window – red rimmed eyes with hair flattened onto the sides of her face. She looked just as messy as she felt.

Rose might have looked sad, but what she was feeling wasn’t sadness. It was anger. She felt it bubbling up inside her and flowing out through her tear ducts. She was shaking with it. And it took all of her power not to scream in the middle of a family-friendly location. She needed to get home – take her perfect little apartment and cut up anything that might have belonged to her now ex-boyfriend and perhaps make a small bonfire. She had promised to remain friends, but how could they? She had done everything right. Everything.

She apparates home and instead of setting fire to everything that reminded her of him she makes a call to her office. “I can’t come in today,” she says as she hurriedly stuffs her quidditch kit into a bag. “I don’t feel well,” she says as she takes her broom and takes the portkey that’s been haunting her for days and activates it.

She makes it to the quidditch pitch and unlike in London it isn’t raining here. It’s bright and sunny and the crisp air allows her to breath again. She lines up with the rest of the quidditch hopefuls feeling better than she has since the morning. She isn’t quite smiling, but her tears have ceased. She wants this. Needs this. She’s done being what other people need. It was time to get what she needed.