Welcome to Friday Night Smackdown or Yeah, I Know This Post Comes 3 Weeks Late

It happened on a Tuesday, but it was a taping for Friday Night Smackdown...right before a LIVE broadcast of Tuesday night ECW on SciFi. It will all make sense in a minute.

I've had tickets for a live professional wrestling event 3 times in my life and this is the first time I've actually been able to attend. The first time, I was away camping for the weekend when I was 16 years old; I had 4 tickets for WWF Wrestling at the Boston Garden and couldn't find anyone to drive me...even for a free ticket. I didn't go. The second time was this past August...I just went in for gall bladder surgery...it was a Friday...Monday Night Raw went live on Monday and I was on my couch recovering and pissed off that I was watching from home and not from my Premium Club seat at the stadium. This third time, I was determined to go. Friday Night Smackdown and ECW together at the TD BankNorth Garden. It was a 3 hour show and our seats were AWESOME...right on the wrestler's entry ramp...up close and personal to the action and the pyrotechnics. Good thing I brought earplugs.

Although it airs on Friday night...Smackdown was first, and my favorite part of the evening. People that you see on TV that are larger than life were walking right past us...Rey Mysterio, Finlay, Katharine's personal favorite "Kane", The Great Khali, The Undertaker, Batista, and Hornswoggle! OK, well Hornswoggle is a "leprechaun" so maybe he's not larger than life, but he's one of my favorites. We were THIS close:

So, I've heard that the matches look fake at a live event...they don't always hit as hard as they want you to believe, but believe me...the action is real and looked to me better than on TV. The leaps off the ropes, the suplexes, the slams of the 400lb men onto the mat from the top turnbuckle, the smack with a steal chair during the Last Man Standing Match. And it's not just the men...the Divas are doing all the same flips, rolls, and throws...and they're TINY.

The pyro was awesome...we could feel the heat from the fireworks and the explosions.

The matches were fun to watch, the commercial breaks during ECW were a bit annoying...seemed like there were more commercials than wrestling for that show, but that's the way TV works. And at the end of the night, World Heavyweight Champion Batista walked his way around and slapped hands with all of the fans around ringside...pretty cool of him to do that.

They put on an excellent show; I'm amazed they're able to do some of the things they do night after night and not have three times the number of injuries. Finally, I got to see a live show...Katharine was there too, don't let her tell you different...she cheered loud for Kane (both times he came out).

And we'll be there next November when the Survivor Series comes to town...that will be fantastic.

What Did We Do Without the Internet?

As I looked through my window this morning and watched the snow fall yet again...I turned to weather.com to see what we were in for in terms of accumulation. Considering there's still over a foot of accumulation on the ground from the last storm, compounded by piles and piles of shoveled snow...this information is important and begs the question, "why DON'T we live in Florida?" But that's a post for another time. This is about the Internet.

So I realized, as I turned to weather.com for all my wintry weather answers...what did I do BEFORE the Internet. I actually recall sitting on my couch in front of the TV waiting and watching for The Weather Channel's Local Forecast on the 8s. They only showed the weather at 4:08, 4:18, 4:28, etc...you get the pattern. And at the time, I was in South Georgia, so knowing where the tornadoes were was IMPORTANT! Anyway...now I'm thinking...great; for quite some time now, I've had The Weather Channel and the Internet to keep me informed. But there wasn't always a weather channel. It used to be...I had to wait for Dick Albert and the Channel 5 news at 6pm to tell me what the weather would be for the next day or two. You didn't get updates by the minute or on the 8s then.

What the hell people did before that...I don't even want to think about it. The Farmers Almanac? The corner psychic. So I guess there has been progress in the world. I'll remember that the next time I buy a carton of milk at the store and it's sour immediately upon opening...leaving me without breakfast this morning to crank about the weather and the way it used to be.

Another Rock Band!

How many bands can one band member be a part of? It's too early to say WHICH BAND IS BETTER, they both have strengths and weaknesses, but I'm thinking that we could have a battle of the bands and find out! Considering I'm in both of them, it's a win win situation for me, and it could probably be easily concluded by looking at the number of fans each band has. So far, I think each of the bands has a van and a tour bus. The A-Team had a van and the Partridge Family had a bus...didn't help either of them. Both bands have yet to unlock San Francisco as a venue...we need more fans for that, and more fans requires a higher difficulty.

Before I can host a battle of the bands...I need to get a new guitar. We rocked SO hard that we literally broke the Rock Band Guitar! Thankfully, the manufacturer actually believes in customer service (a rarity these days) and is sending me a new guitar 2-day air for FREE, so I should have it for the weekend. Phew...I started playing the drums last night and need a little practice. That, and I played bass on HARD for the first time...it was hard.

So get ready...it's going to be RTFM vs. The Drunken Cupcakes...none of the other band members know it yet (well, they do now if they've read this far), but we're knee deep in competition already! Anyone want to place a bet?

Old Toys Vs. New Toys

Earlier today, I came across some of my old Star Wars figures from the 1970s and 1980s, and I was noticing how todays toys have so much more detail than my old toys did. I didn't care about detail at the time...I played for hours and hours, but check out this original R2D2 action figure that uses stickers for all of Artoo's textures next to one I picked up a year ago that looks like a tiny clone and actually beeps and burps like the real thing.

Yeah, it's true...it's sitting on top of an original Empire Strikes Back carrying case. You'd think that all of the originals would be worth something, but...no...they're not. Sometimes all this new details is cool...other times, it creates inaccuracies. For example...the new improved Darth Vader firgure is bulked up like a bodybuilder. Darth Vader was not a bodybuilder...he was...ahem...Hayden Christensen. Or if you prefer the original trilogy, like I do...he was David Prowse, Sebastian Shaw, and James Earl Jones...none of which were bodybuilders.