#it could yet get some of the old mojo back if there’s an abrupt change of course

[daisyachain]

Haven’t posted enough of late. MAGP listening experience has been pleasantly noncommittal. I’m in no danger of getting back into it. Works with a formula are a certain kind of catnip to me when I enjoy the formula, because then I can eagerly set my clock and wait for each beat to fall into place. Redwall, MAGPOD original, Furuya Nagisa manga. MAGPOD worked best for me when it was:

So I was going to my job, a rare occupation which logically has to exist, but which doesn’t have enough of a market to open many slots

When I received some kind of reminder of a) my emotionally cold parents, b) my ex with whom I had a committed relationship, c) a childhood friend with whom I have little in common

I completed my relationship-triggered detour and continued to my job and/or then returned to my overpriced and run-down home with black mold (British)

A mundane incident caused me to go on another detour, putting me in a worse mood due to the unearthing of some uneasy emotions earlier

Something went wrong that I chalked up to the break in routine

I failed to return to safety until a second thing went wrong, by which point it was too late

I, myself, enjoyed the formula. Trivia tidbits about weird jobs, estranged relationships, bad housing. The horror relied on a sense of realism to become scary; the thing that made it get to me was how likely it all seemed. The glacial pacing contributed to the effect. By grounding the work so heavily in an extremely boring daily routine, each whiff of the supernatural had an outsized impact. The sense was of a very, very slowly tightening noose. The breaks are few and far between: in s1, it’s Martin’s spider outburst, Sasha’s Michael encounter, and then the finale that mark the only events. Each one stands out in the stark minimalism of the fore/afterwords. [old woman voice] I remember when it was an event to talk to more than one character. You gotta make ‘em wait

MAGP, on the other hand, doesn’t take time setting up a status quo in its statements or in its plot. The audio drama parts introduce subplots right off the bad without much buildup—each character has their assigned schtick, which, fine, storytelling 101, but crucially it transforms an atmospheric attempt at a Twilight Zone type thing into a mid-tier network drama. The horror becomes more cliche’d, turning to tropes like the scary mascot (boring) rather than the in-between zones where Magnus flourished. Seriously. Between the 2012 deviantart nonsense of the needle man and the 314th ranked creepypasta Bonzo, the audience is informed of the need to feel weird rather than just allowed to interpret it. Compare the far more abstracted horror of the s1 two-parter Confession/Host, where the grounded storytelling of muddled events leaves you feeling like you’re the one who can’t tell up from down. The safe rituals of life perverted are a lot creepier to Moi than The XFiles Comedy Episode creatures of MAGP. I genuinely would’ve thought that it’s meant to be a parody if it weren’t for the fact that Bonzo is apparently our arc villain. Good grief. Maybe they’re trying to do something Savile-analogous? There are a lot more creepy ways to go about it while still being tasteful

Regardless, Magnus original flavour didn’t reinvent the wheel. For 4 good seasons it was a purveyor of ghost stories in the classic horror style, adapted surprisingly well to the anxieties of the developed world (eroding relationships, drudge work, housing crisis). MAGP neglects what Magnus did well while doing poorly what almost every other serialized piece of media in the world does at least as well, if not better (episodic work dramedy). Rip. Alas.

[closetofanxiety]

Show review: THE ULTIMATE THRILL RIDE

Epic clashes on the grandest stage of them all! Surprise returns from beloved figures! Title changes! And VIDEO PACKAGE AFTER VIDEO PACKAGE AFTER VIDEO PACKAGE! Let’s look back at Wrestlemania 33: Orlando Furioso!

Neville def. Austin Aries via pinfall

I didn’t see this match. I missed most of the pre-show, to be honest. I really watched too much wrestling over the long weekend. I went for a walk instead, actually three separate walks on Sunday. It’s the first nice day we’ve had all year here in southern New England, and I took full advantage of it. I mean, it fucking snowed on Friday and Saturday. So, anyway, Neville won. The cruiserweight division is full of talented men with almost zero connection to the audience. It’s only a matter of time before there’s another Swoggle winning the title and it gets retired again. There will be a lot of blame to hand out then, but I’ll blame Vince. It’s usually a safe bet.

Mojo Rawley wins the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal

Rawley joins Cesaro, Big Show, and Baron Corbin in the winners’ circle of this particular honor, although unlike them, he needed an assist from New England Patriots tight end and human game of beer pong Rob Gronkowski in order to win. I missed almost all of this, because after my third walk of the day I went to Starbucks. You have to give yourself little gifts. It helps keep you normal. That’s my advice, although why anyone would take life advice from me is a mystery. I mean, I’m not living in a refrigerator carton or anything, but I’m exactly the kind of person who might as well not exist at all. Much like this battle royal, in fact, crowded as it was with wrestlers for whom no storyline or narrative currently exists: Sami Zayn and Dolph Ziggler tossed in among lower-midcard-for-lifers like Curtis Axel and Epico. What a fate. What a bleak way to further the preshow, which is really just “the show” when you think about it. 

Dean Ambrose (c) defeats Baron Corbin via pinfall to retain the WWE Intercontinental Championship

I did watch this perfectly serviceable matchup that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the first hour of a fair-to-middling Smackdown episode. The Intercontinental Championship is almost an insult at this point. The WWE giving you this belt is like your boss putting you on a performance improvement plan at work. It’s to “enhance your capabilities” but it’s like a dunce cap. This was defended on the pre-show, on free TV: the USA Network broadcast it before the start of Wrestlemania proper. Honestly, Epico had a less humiliating day. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.

AJ Styles defeats Shane McMahon via pinfall

This was a pretty good match, I guess, although the thing I liked best was the ref bump: AJ Styles really looked like he kicked Mike Chioda square in the fucking head. That was beautiful. Occasionally you’ll see a ref bump where the official basically gets lightly jostled and then pretends to be out cold for two minutes, but this was a ref bump you could put your full faith and credit in. Good ref bump. Anyway, a good match. I saw people online saying “Match of the Year,” which I guess is indicative of the environment of Plaudit Inflation in which we’re currently living. This will almost certainly be the best match of the year to feature Shane McMahon. But I’m tired of the McMahon family in general, and sick of seeing them on TV. AJ Styles should have been in the main event, not the curtain-jerker. Still. At least they haven’t put the Intercontinental Championship on him yet. Kiss of death. Rating: Three Ultimate Thrill Rides.

Kevin Owens defeats Chris Jericho (c) by pinfall to win the United States Championship

A solid match here, although it lacked the raw emotion of Owens’ best matches, and the extra spark of brutality you’d expect from a match that was ostensibly the culmination of a bitter falling out between two “best friends.” This story was all about the buildup, with the blowoff leaving a little something to be desired. A fine match, though, perfectly acceptable as a Raw main event. If that’s damning with faint praise, it’s because I expect a lot from these guys, who are two of the very best. This was better than Jericho’s lackluster match with AJ Styles at last year’s Wrestlemania. Faint praise again, I guess. Rating: Two and a half Ultimate Thrill Rides.

Fatal Four-Way Elimination Match: Bayley (c) defeats Nia Jax, Charlotte Flair, and Sasha Banks to retain the Raw Women’s Championship

They got rid of Nia early, which was crucial. Nia can’t do very much inside a wrestling ring. From that point, the big expectation was for Sasha Banks to turn heel and betray her weird hug-prone friend Bayley, a possibility they had been advancing on commentary for weeks, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Charlotte pinned Sasha, somewhat unexpectedly, sucking the air out of the arena. Bayley won with a flying elbow from the top rope in tribute to Macho Man. I buy that Sasha was a huge Eddie Guerrero fan as a kid, but Bayley’s supposed childhood love of Randy Savage is puzzling to me. She was born in 1989, how much Macho Madness was there really from the mid-1990s onward? Were there a lot of kids in like the year 2000 saying “I want to be just like ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage”? Maybe there were. I was not a kid by then, so I didn’t spend a lot of time talking to kids about their favorite wrestlers. But when I was a kid I liked Savage a lot. I seem to have wandered from this match, which had its moments but was kind of lackluster. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.

Fatal Four-Way Ladders Match: The Hardy Boys defeat The Club (c), Enzo Amore & Big Cass, and Sheamus and Cesaro to win the Raw Tag Team Championships

Big surprise return from Team Extreme! Listen, I’m never going to adopt the WWE spelling convention that insists we identify them as the Hardy “Boyz.” First of all, the mid-1990s are over. Second of all, they are grizzled middle-aged men. It was fun to see them back. Genuine pop from everyone watching at my house. I’m not sure how much of the “Broken” gimmick they’re going to be able to do; Kevin Dunn hurriedly cut the cameras away from Matt as he was doing the “delete” thing, but that could be standard Kevin Dunn incompetence. Anyway, this match was fun, with a truly insane Jeff Hardy Swanton Bomb from the top of the ladder capping it off. Astonishing to think they had a ladder match for the Ring of Honor tag team belts just the night before this. Them North Carolina boys are tough, I’ll tell you what. I have gripes and grimaces to share about this kind of thing overall, but for now it’s fun to see these dudes back in the WWE for the first time since 2009. And I’m relieved Enzo and Cass didn’t win the titles. God, I am tired of them. Rating: Three and a half Ultimate Thrill Rides. 

John Cena and Nikki Bella defeat the Miz and Maryse via pinfall

This was a weirdly lowkey match, most of it focused on the Miz working over Cena with brawling-type offense, until the Queen of Strong Style Nikki Bella got the hot tag AND CLEANED FUCKING HOUSE, hitting a sick tope suicida on the Miz and whaling on Maryse. Maryse basically did nothing in this match. Mike Chioda took more bumps than Maryse during Wrestlemania. Anyway, the real winners of this match were you and I, because we got to see John Cena propose to Nikki Bella (he used her real name, EXPOSING THE BUSINESS!!!) in the ring. Cena actually sounded like a human being during this segment; it was very sweet and came across well. Some people booed. You’re going to boo love, my friends? If so, for what will you cheer? Rating: Three Ultimate Thrill Rides for the match, Seven Ultimate Thrill Rides for the proposal.

Non-Sanctioned Match: Seth Rollins defeats Triple H via pinfall

I love a good non-sanctioned match. What a weird holdover term from the territory days. What body are we to believe “sanctions” matches, and is it different from the body that permits a “non-sanctioned” match to be televised to a worldwide audience? This was also very old school in terms of the match itself, which was focused almost entirely on Seth Rollins’ ailing knee. The crowd was very quiet for this perhaps, despite the insistence of Jim Cornette et al, people don’t really want to watch old-school wrestling matches in 2017. It was OK, but it felt very slow. Rollins won, which was the right decision. Stephanie got knocked through a table, prompting the biggest pop of the match. The best part for me was Triple H’s hilarious entrance, where he came down the ramp AS A BAD-ASS BIKER ON HIS BAD-ASS THREE-WHEELED MOTORCYCLE surrounded by indie wrestlers dressed as highway patrolmen, also riding motorcycles. One of the great visual flourishes of the territory days was the spectacle of the hated villain being led to the ring by a phalanx of stone-faced Southern cops protecting the wrestler from enraged fans, a scene that sent the unmistakable message This Is For Real (even though it was obviously not), one of those sweaty, smoky aspects of wrestling that’s lost forever. Triple H, weirdly sentimental about wrestling history, tried to revive that aura of county civic center danger, and it came across like a campy musical version of “CHIPs.” I loved it. Rating: Two and a half Ultimate Thrill Rides. 

Randy Orton defeats Bray Wyatt (c) via pinfall to win the WWE Championship

I had been pretty excited for this match, but it felt weirdly truncated, with a truly abrupt finish. They were running long (the goddamn show ended at midnight) so maybe these guys were told to keep it short. One thing that kept happening is that every time Bray would do his Exorcist bend-over-backwards thing, the lights would dim and images of giant worms, maggots, and cockroaches would appear on the ring canvas, apparently because Bray was possessed by his late sister, Abigail. “He’s channeling the full power of Sister Abigail now!” JBL yelled, referring to an imaginary ghost. Even the power of an imaginary ghost was not enough to prevent Randy Orton from hitting his finisher “out of nowhere,” but actually out of somewhere: out of the midst of a rushed, unsatisfying match. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.

Brock Lesnar defeats Goldberg (c) via pinfall to win the Universal Championship

This was a fucking blast. I was a total skeptic coming into this, but they did it just right: five minutes of these two big boys pulling out the crowd-pleasingest parts of their arsenals, German suplay after German suplay after German suplay from Brock, verses spear upon spear from Big Bill. It was like watching two rhinoceroses collide on the savanna and fight over rights to a watering hole. Magnificent and brutal. Big Bill threw himself around that ring with abandon, including maybe the best “Oops I missed the spear now I’m hitting the ring post” spot I’ve ever seen on a WWE show. Good for Big Bill. Good for Bork, who is now the indifferent holder of a championship belt. This was fun. I have not liked much of the Goldberg stuff, but this was fun. Rating: Four Ultimate Thrill Rides.

Naomi defeats Alexa Bliss (c), Carmella w/James Ellsworth, Becky Lynch, Mickie James, and Natalya to win the Smackdown Women’s Championship

This was in the Death Spot between the Bork-Bill showdown and the main event, and the crowd was not overly hyped. There was also an abortive Pittbull concert at some point. Maybe prior to Bork-Bill? Anyway, this match was kind of a cluster, with a lot of disconnected action and a vibe of being made up on the fly. My favorite part was when Becky Lynch - sporting truly abominable dreadlocks for some reason - hit Ellsworth with an exploder suplex. The rest was meh. Mickie James had #Problematic ring gear, unless she’s Native American (she may be). Alexa Bliss was good in her role as despicable brat-fetish heel. Naomi, the hometown girl, won via submission. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides. 

Main Event: Roman Reigns defeats the Undertaker via pinfall

Maybe the best part of this match is that they brought Jim Ross down to do commentary on it, indicating it was almost certainly the last Undertaker match. The match itself was about as good as it was going to be: Roman is a really good wrestler, but the Undertaker is 52 years old and long past the point of keeping up in a wrestling ring. He tried hard. Lots of kickouts of finishers, etc. The drama felt forced, honestly, as did the whole buildup, like at some point in February they just decided they were going to have the Undertaker fight Reigns and then even later said, “Hey, this is it for ol’ Taker.” After he lost, Taker took an extended curtain call, which was nice. I have never been a fan of the Undertaker as a performer, but his popularity and contributions are undeniable. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.