Thursday, August 1, 2019

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 270

Pictured: A Burger Man
Photo Credit: TH
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 280 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:

I'm a burger man, so I like a lot of different variations and combinations of roll, meat, cheese, topping, and cooking method. For the cooking, the best method is grilling. Griddles and cast iron pans are good, but nothing says summer like a grilled patty over open flame. I prefer American cheese, although it's a closer race than one might expect. It melts just right and has the right amount of salt. Muenster cheese is a fine and close second. For a bun, I prefer a hamburger bun that you get in the eight-packs at the store, toasted lightly. Toppings, it's caramelized onions and Nance's sharp and creamy mustard. In absence of the latter, a dijon mustard does the trick. Obviously, I eat mostly any burger put in front of me: bacon cheeseburgers, burgers with an egg on top, burgers that are made with black beans and not beef, burgers with guacamole, whatever. But the burger I described above has a certain comfort to it.

Luther Vandross did not die for me not to recognize his genius of putting a burger on a griddled Krispy Kreme donut. The man was not only a velvety-voiced legend of R&B, but he was a culinary visionary. The Luther Vandross burger is in the pantheon, and I respect the hell out of him for shortening his own life to give the world his gift.

Have Joe's legit bona fides ever been proven? Even if they have, I'm not sure I'd bet against Hunico in any situation of locker room MMA. Like, I'd even put money on him against Brock Lesnar, who has held a major title in UFC. That's how legit I think Hunico is.

Protected user @earthdog asks:
Summertime Edition: I was shocked by your feelings about sauerkraut. What are your top 5/bottom 5 summertime Picnic/Cookout foods?
TOP FIVE
1. Cheeseburger - It's not a summer cookout without the cheeseburger, c'mon.
2. Deviled Eggs - I used to resist, but man, I've been eating them lately and they're the creamy counterpart you need for all that meat.
3. Chicken Wings - Sure, they're not as glamorous as the fried Buffalo counterparts, but a good wing grilled and then slathered in BBQ sauce is the perfect appetizer.
4. Italian Sausage - It's a staple in gravy, but when you grill it, it has this nice chew and unctuousness that you don't get when it's simmered in the red stuff.
5. Watermelon - The ideal dessert is cool, refreshing, and slightly sweet. It's the only good melon.

BOTTOM FIVE
1. Macaroni Salad - It's a waste of perfectly good pasta to slather it in mayo and barely anything else.
2. Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast - Look, I eat this when I'm trying to lose weight, not when I'm having a good time, okay.
3. Egg Salad - It's not only a waste of good eggs that could be going into deviled eggs, it also turns way quicker than other salads.
4. Tossed Salad - Again, it's not that it's bad, it's just diet food. Get it away from the grill.
5. Turkey Burgers - About the only burger I won't eat. Something about ground turkey is just... no.

Baseball teams in general have developed a cowardice that has taken brazen form this past offseason and season. I mean, it shouldn't have taken until spring training for Bryce Harper to sign, and it shouldn't have taken until June for Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel to get teams. This trading deadline has been the most boring because no one wanted to make a bold move. Owners want to scrimp, and they tell their more-than-willing lackeys in the front office to batten down the hatches rather than fire the cannons. It's sickening. Some teams will still spend money to contend in this climate, but the Mariners seem not to be one of them. Fear not though. It might take like five years, but the Astros showed that you can tank and make summers miserable for your teams fans for years on end but maybe in 2026, if the world hasn't ended due to climate catastrophe, the Mariners might just be good enough to contend!

Breath of the Wild is not just the best Zelda game, it's the best video game of all-time, period. Well, at least the best game I've ever played. It is the pinnacle of the 3D Zelda oeuvre that Ocarina of Time kicked off, and it has just the most stuff to do. I spent like two months picking that game apart because it was so fun to play and there was so much shit. The only way they could improve on it is if they put more enemy encounters in it, but hey, nothing's perfect.

Here's where I shock you. It's not Ishii. He's had a great tournament, no doubt, but I feel like at least two of his matches at the time being (I won't be able to watch Night 12 until later today) have been a little excessive. Like the Jeff Cobb match took too long to get started, and the Juice Robinson match lingered a little too long at the end. However, there are two wrestlers that I consider to have been all-killer, no-filler so far. Well, three, but Toru Yano scratches an entirely different itch than Shingo Takagi and Jon Moxley have. Takagi and Moxley though, they have been the best at combining the spectacle of excess along with making sure they fill out the time allotted without any real lulls. No one in the tournament, not even Ishii or KENTA or Hiroshi Tanahashi, has been as enjoyable to watch as Takagi and Moxley.

I may be the exception, but I've usually been in and out at the DMV. Lucky, I guess.

1. Giving your kids "the talk" - Society has conditioned people to think of sex as this taboo thing instead of a necessary human function not just for procreation but for pleasure. Think of how much better this world would be if media and traditions treated oral sex as something to be enjoyed instead of something to speak of in hushed terms. So as much as it should be a thing that you do without trepidation, talking to your kids about sex ends up being awkward and weird, especially when you end up finding out they've known more than you for at least three years now.

2. Being stuck in traffic - Especially if you live on the East Coast or in an urban landscape, traffic will suck so much time out of your day, your week, your year, all in the service of getting to and from your vampiric job. The eight-eight-eight paradigm gets thrown off kilter because your job requires more than eight hours thanks in no small part to traffic during your commute. The worst part is that it leaves you powerless to act, especially if you're stuck more than 100 feet from an exit. You just inch along before you can find a release valve, and even then, you either need a good GPS on your phone or a knowledge of the area to get yourself home while avoiding gridlock.

3. Asking for a raise - Much like with sex, society makes knowing your own worth a difficult thing. When you ask for a raise, you are all of a sudden in your mind at least throwing away your job security for a larger share of the pie that will ultimately still be less than what your work is worth to that company. Overcoming that fear can be paralyzing. Trust me, I know.

4. Arthritis - Usually, this isn't a kid thing, which is good. When body parts on a kid hurt, it should be for good reason. Of course, that should hold true for adults too, but man, when you get older and you wake up with pains in places you didn't think possible? Yeah, it doesn't make life feel worthwhile.

5. Wiling away a slow day at work - Work sucks unless they somehow make it so that you're just at work as a formality but you're really there for some kind of party. That being said, when work is busy, well, you don't feel the pinch. But when it's slow? You have to tick the clock away while not doing anything and feeling the watchful eye of a supervisor that is looking at your productivity and wondering what they're paying you for. Then they come in and yell at you if you're on the Internet or playing solitaire, because you're there to work, not play. But what if there is no work? It's a vicious cycle, and it's even worse if you work retail and thus don't have the ability to use a computer but still have to stand around and either wait for a customer or go fucking fold shirts.

6. Dealing with a racist/fascist relative - It always seems to be that the uncle who says the n-word despite being White or praising Donald Trump is the one that your family will favor over you speaking up against them, because they don't want people to "argue over politics." Your choices are "speak up and have people with whom you have to spend holidays mad at you" or "be quiet and listen to an asshole spew hateful shit." The choice is not easy for most people.

While I am jaded but supportive for the most part of him now, I was a huge Punk fan back in 2011. You can check the receipts on this blog even. I thought that not only would he be the next big thing, but that he would bring some sort of critical prestige to wrestling while doing it. And when he was tanked by Paul Levesque and Co., I was mad as hell. Those times were simpler, and I somewhat miss them.
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