Scott’s Blog of Doom

Contrary to the title, there were hardly any black people in this show.

Anyway, this one was another in an endless series of gangster shows with the Oz connection, so I checked it out after 24, and I wasn’t really blown away or anything.  The shifts in tone were a bit too abrupt, as it was looking like a light-hearted mob comedy to start (”The Irish are always stereotyped as being drunken brawlers.  It just makes you so mad that you want to get drunk and punch someone.”) and then turned into a rather morose drama with drug addictions and kidnappings, and then wrapped up with lead Irish kid Tommy turning into Michael Corleone.  I really liked the Snow Patrol song at the end and thought it was well done, but this is definitely a show that needs to find its voice, and I don’t think NBC is gonna give it that chance before scrapping it.  I’ll probably stick around until they decide, however, because I love me my mob dramas.

The SmarK 24/7 Rant for Tuesday Night Titans - October 4 1985

- Special hosts this week: Roddy Piper and Bob Orton.

- First guest: Bobby Heenan, who finally gets some respect on this show. Piper thanks Bobby for getting rid of Andre. So we get an interview with him after the match with Studd in Toronto , as he offers words of warning to King Kong Bundy. Heenan and Piper react with snores and laugh off the idea of Lou Albano managing Andre. Piper, oblivious to time management, keeps talking until the ad break cuts him off in mid-sentence.

- UPDATE! With Lord Al Hayes. The hype for the Wrestling Classic begins, as someone can win a Rolls Royce, if you order the show on this new-fangled system called “Pay Per View”. Sounds like a scam to me, it’ll never fly.

- Next guest: Jimmy Hart, who is a really nice guy according to Piper. He now has apparently intimidated the sound guys into playing applause instead of the usual boos. A rather historic moment here, actually, as Bobby and Jimmy announce a trade: King Kong Bundy to Heenan for Missing Link & Adrian Adonis & cash. I’d say Heenan got the better of that trade, but the cash was enough to make Piper excited when whispered in his ear, so I’d say it’s about even. Jimmy promotes his involvement with the upcoming Wrestling Album, and sings “Eat Your Heart Out, Rick Springfield”, but again gets off by poor time management from Piper and thus we’re robbed of the live performance.

- Next guest: Lou Albano. Piper derides his Manager of the Year award win and trades one-liners with him. The clip this week is Hillbilly Jim getting carried out after getting laid out by King Kong Bundy. Piper and Orton shed some tears over Jim and Piper points out how stupid it was for Jim to try to save Albano when he had a broken leg. And he finally times his monologue to end with the ad break instead of during it.

- More with Albano, as we visit his kitchen and learn about real Italian cooking (”Here, have some wine.” “Oh, well, if you insist…”) and introduces Piper to the joys of spaghetti laced with hot sauce. Hilarity ensues.

- Next guest (as Piper is still hanging onto a sausage from the previous segment) is Junkyard Dog, who finds their culinary misadventures pretty funny. Piper shows a clip of JYD squashing a young Steve Lombardi, and they do a weird, nonsensical interview with Piper dropping insider terms and playing with his sausage. What?

- Next up as the car wreck continues rolling down the track, Uncle Elmer and Cousin Junior. Elmer plugs his wedding and makes fun of Piper’s spaghetti stains, and we get a clip of Elmer and Junior squashing Barry Orton and Jerry Adams. Junior is awful and finishes Adams with a mule kick and butt splash. Piper, still trying to unload the sausage, gives it to Elmer as a wedding gift, but no luck.

- Piper wraps things up by mocking his guests and tries to get Jimmy Hart out to finish his song, but his time management skills still suck and Jimmy is cut off again.

Well, that was certainly…uh…different.

I’ve previously gushed about The Departed, so it’s heartening to see the movie that was actually the best picture of the year win Best Picture this year, and FINALLY Scorcese gets the Oscar after getting shafted in 1990 with Goodfellas.  I was actually kind of worried that Little Miss Sunshine would score the upset (although I liked that movie too, but C’MON) but things turned out as they should after all. The rest of the show was kind of predictable and I nearly wretched at having Al Gore’s propaganda piece shoved down my throat all night, not only by winning Best Documentary but also Best Song AND another segment just dedicated to letting Gore talk about global warming!  Look, the best scientists that money can buy today can barely even tell us if it’s going to rain tomorrow, don’t give me this line of crap about how they can somehow magically predict climate changes for the next hundred years, because they can’t. 

Other than that, a fairly entertaining show, outside of junk like the Tribute to America montage, which was almost bordering on Jon Stewart’s prediction that next year they’ll do a Tribute to Montages montage, and things moved along at a pretty good pace unless they were giving away self-congratulatory awards to Hollywood executives no one else outside of the business cares about. 

The SmarK 24/7 Rant for World Championship Wrestling - July 13 1985

- Your hosts are David Crockett & Tony Schiavone

(more…)

Oh man, when you come home from a concert soaked in beer, bleeding, and bruised, you know you’ve been to a kick-ass rock and roll show.  It’s such a relief that Buckcherry is back and rocking again, because obviously there’s still a market for drunken idiots banging their heads and songs about bikes, bitches and drugs.  And I mean that in the best way possible, because this was probably one of the wildest and most fun shows I’ve ever been to, and that includes a show where Vince Neil was seemingly trying to out-drink everyone in the front row.  I think even the band was a little shocked at how intensely into the show the crowd was, as they barely had enough security to control the crowd-surfing.  Ticket sales had originally gone so fast that they had to move the show from a bar setting into a convention hall, and there ended up being about 1200 people packed in last night, and they just ripped through a set with everything for everyone there — by the time they finished up with “Lit Up” I thought half the crowd on the floor was going to be dead from exhaustion and alcohol poisoning, but then they actually did an encore (which they haven’t been doing for this tour) and pulled out “Crushed” from the first album for those still hanging in there.  The highlight was obviously “Crazy Bitch,” which featured an extended jam with bits of “The Stroke” and “Fire” mixed in, plus Josh telling us about the difference between a regular chick and a “crazy bitch”, and the show focused mainly on the new CD to play off all the new fans they’re picking up as a result.  At any rate, I don’t think anyone went home unhappy, and hopefully they’ll swing through again later in the year, in an even bigger venue.

Via the Observer site…

“–The 3/5 Saturday Night’s Main Event on NBC is off the books. NBC pulled the show today although they are still planning on doing one in June.”

PWNED!  Love to see how they’ll spin this one.