BOOZE AND SHOES

I remember being about 4 or 5, storming from my room with my shirt off ready to beat the absolute shit out of this humongous bear that my folks won for me from those Ring Toss games at Circus Circus. Flying elbow drops off of the armrest of the couch, to legdrops full of hate, to me triumphantly raising my arms while holding my dad’s brown leather belt that I pretended was the WWF World Title. Forget being a doctor, because I planned to win the strap at Wrestlemania when I grew up. Or at least win the tag straps with Macho Man at the very least.

I’m 24 now. Obviously I’m not winning the belt anytime soon, because a) I’m 5′6, and b) I have the physique of E.T.

I’ve also realized that becoming a professional wrestler has to be by far, one of the most life draining occupations one could find employment in.

When Owen, Chris, and Eddy died, a little bit of my fascination with Professional Wrestling went along with it. I mean, I feel a bit guilty to support these men that find themselves on the road for 2/3’s of the year, abandoning their families and systematically destroying their bodies for the sake of my entertainment. If any of you have seen The Wrestler, it’s a pretty accurate portrayal of the life of an average professional wrestler. I also find it a bit saddening that all wrestlers can really do for the most part is to stay connected to the business, seeing as they’ve committed most of their productive adult lives fake fighting and suffering the physical & mental repercussions that go along with their profession.

I went on to discuss my tape trading past in a previous post, and a lot of the tapes I got my hands on had the legendary Mitsuharu Misawa on them. He died over the weekend, taking from all accounts a routine back suplex from his opponent. I’m not gonna pretend like Mitsuharu Misawa was my friend, and go on about how he’s affected my life in this really meaningful way, because he hasn’t. I can’t say much about him, other than the fact that he entertained me greatly and really changed the way I watched professional wrestling. If any of you are bored enough, I recommend watching a highlight video on Youtube or something, because the stuff that he did in AJPW in the ’90s I believe will change the way you view professional wrestling as well.

I got my hands on the new Wii Motion + last week, and I’ve spent a good amount of time with it & Grand Slam Tennis. I know I discussed my distaste for how videogames are slowly moving towards making motion controls a standard experience while playing, but I have to say that I’ve had an absolute blast so far with the new Wii technology, and Grand Slam Tennis is a game that I feel all Wii owners should play. At times I feel that the Motion+ becomes uncalibrated if you tend to move the Wiimote a lot, but that could just be me. I am way too used to waggling out of control with no faults because a barebones Wii control really isn’t that sensitive. To add to this point, Grand Slam Tennis requires you to be calculated with your movements, and the way it tracks your motions is eerily accurate. I’ve had a blast playing online with players from different countries,  but at times the lag becomes unbearable. Not sure as to why this is, but overall I highly recommend playing this game.