Thursday, June 14, 2018

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 239

š¯…£ I like knives but I'm not a knife pervert š¯…£
Photo Credit: Sabatier
It's Twitter Request Line time, everyone! I take to Twitter to get questions about issues in wrestling, past and present, and answer them on here because 140 characters can't restrain me, fool! If you don't know already, follow me @tholzerman, and wait for the call on Wednesday to ask your questions. Hash-tag your questions #TweetBag, and look for the bag to drop Thursday afternoon (most of the time). Without further ado, here are your questions and my answers:

Honestly, why screw with a classic? A nice, sharp, kitchen knife that cuts through produce the way it should is anyone's best friend. You get that nice chop on the vegetables and whatnot, and it makes you feel like you've done something before you've even started cooking. Have you ever tried to get together a good mis en place? It's a pain in the tuchas. Getting everything chopped and prepared for cooking is a feat in and of itself, and nothing makes you feel like a kitchen knight more than the cutting apparatus. Using any automatic means saves time and effort, but it doesn't give you the same satisfaction.

In all sincerity, I long for those days. I don't know if I've written extensively on TWB before about how the worst thing ever to happen to NXT was moving Takeover from Wednesday to Saturday, but man, it has taken a chunk out of the allure of the company. Getting to sit down for a neat two hour supershow in the middle of the week was not only novel, but it almost ensured that I (I know, I know, selfish anecdotal evidence) would be able to see it without violating the kind of social lives that parents such as me have. It was unobtrusive, and thus a welcome gesture from a company that only makes welcome gestures for a select few people who happen to be in its own front office. Moving Takeover to Saturday nights, however, really just helped homogenize NXT to the rest of WWE, and not in a good way. Granted, the match quality and show flow haven't gone away, but I always felt more at home watching a Takeover happen on Wednesday rather than Saturday, y'know?

When people talk critically about wrestling, I feel like facial expressions don't get enough love. You can tell a lot of story with the face you make. Granted, bad facial expressions may or may not take too much away from a match. You could have two circa-2011 Davey Richardses dead-facing the entire match, and as long as the work backed it up, okay, it's probably fine. However, great facial expressions can set great workers from the merely good. Look at Ric Flair's entire career. Alexa Bliss probably owes half of her critical cache to how she contorts her face. Most recently, Bobby Roode showed how much a great expression could add to a story when the terror crept over his visage looking at Braun Strowman totally foil his trap. Body language is in a similar boat. These things may not get as much play as selling or whatever vague criteria one sets aside as "psychology" in critical circles, but they're important.

To be completely fair, I don't have a whole lot of free time anymore anyway. I mean, the output on TWB hasn't been great lately because I don't have time to write, and the time I have at home to glean inspiration for writing has started to whittle away. But yeah, if I just cold turkeyed on wrestling, I'd probably just fill that free time with more PokƩmon. Failing that, I'd probably just watch more sports on television, or if the mood really struck me, would actually get involved in politics. Or not, mainly because I'm lazy but also because getting involved in the kinds of politics I'm into wouldn't be good for my family life. It's not that my family disagrees with me (my wife is cool with my raging leftism), but the shoot day job might not be. Maybe it's for the best that I do the wrestling thing.

I got one for you. The Toronto Maple Leafs are due, and they have pieces in place. The NHL rarely is a league where a superstar goes without winning a title, even if it takes awhile like with Alexander Ovechkin and the Capitals. Plus, the Leafs feel like a much more aggressive franchise; they'll go hard in the next few offseasons to get Cup-winning supporting talent around Auston Matthews to get them a Cup. The other candidate is Atlanta, where the baseball team and the Falcons both are in positions to contend. However, I feel like the Leafs are better suited to win in the short-term than either Atlanta team on the cusp.

First off, congratulations! Second, I wish someone told me that actually getting involved in wedding planning instead of just letting her set all the preferences was beneficial. It's not that we had a bad wedding; I loved it! It's that maybe I could have had some input to get more stuff added, like a better beer selection or some other amenities. I don't know. My engagement was relatively stress-free. I hope yours is too.

SMASH - Low Blow - It's his bread and butter. It may be a bit rude, but it would fit him to a tee.
DOWN SMASH - 634 - The signature double low blow (although more like a low blow with both arms instead of a low blow on two people in this case) would actually come up with some rocket boost behind him to launch the opponent into the air. At the right amount of damage, it would send the recipient blasting off the screen.
SIDE SMASH - Spear - However, at the point of impact, Yano would EXPLOOOOOODE, sending the recipient flying and leaving himself looking like a Looney Tunes character after holding a detonated bomb.
UP SMASH - Sake Blaster - He grabs a bottle of sake and throws it down as hard as he can, causing upward thrust. This causes damage both ahead of him with his body mass and below him with the projectile bottle being thrown down.
FINAL SMASH - Tomohiro Ishii - In the same vein as Bowser's Final Smash, Tomohiro Ishii just shows up and starts wrecking people with no regard for human life while Yano relaxes in the background with his feet up.

If I'm being honest, whenever I go to Wendy's, I'm getting a burger. It's probably the best cheap option on the East Coast, although with rising prices, it's starting to approach Shake Shack prices rather than In N' Out/McDonald's. That being said, Wendy's has the best nuggets in fast food, and maybe overall the best chicken. The pink slime stuff is good, and the real quality chicken actually tastes like it could come from a chicken joint. So yeah, I fucks with the Spicy Chicken Sandwich, even if not on a regular basis.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , ,