redfiona99

I have mostly been watching the Nordic Skiing World Championships.

Which have been awesome.

Now one of the reasons for this is that the Oslo crowd is amazing. They've been two or three deep even on a work day, and on a weekend they're about five deep out in the forest and about ten deep nearer the stadium.

They have been making one heck of a noise. They've been making home athlete volumes of noise for everyone, and I'm sure that the decibels they put out for the Norwegians break health and safety. But that's the thing, they cheer like mad for everyone. The guy in last, the woman in the middle the winners. The Olso crowd are wonderful.

The other reason is the athletes. There's been such sportsmanship. I mean there always is in Winter Sports (reason 956 why winter sports are great) but it's been intra-team and inter-team and it's been lovely (as seen here - http://brightnshinythings.tumblr.com/post/3529450645/bjoergen-and-kowalczyk-continue-to-be).

Also lovely are the Norwegian royal family, who are doing their collective nuts every single finish.

It's not all been love and light, in between Peter Northug saying that the Swedes are always great the week before a major championship, and terrible at the championship and the Norwegian press suggesting there is something funny about the Austrian ski-jumping suits, but that's about as bad as it's got.
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One of my favourite of the various moments of cuddly awesome actually came from the Bobsleigh, Luge and Skeleton worlds, in the men's skeleton. Martin Stukurs had come down in a brilliant time, about half a second quicker than anyone else. The first person to congratulate him wasn't his brother, or his coach or any of the other members of his family. No, it was one of the German team.

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Wrestling:

How do you solve a problem like Wrestlemania?

Because so far, I am not interested in the matches. The only thing that interests me is the possibility of a CM Punk versus Randy Orton match.

Neither world title match is really catching my eye, and I doubt I'm alone in that. The Miz vs Cena match is being overshadowed by Cena vs the Rock, and Edge versus Alberto del Rio has meh written all over it. I want to like del Rio, or hate him or something, but mostly whenever I see him I want to say 'go away'. It's not even the good 'go away', it's the go away of I am about to be bored stupid.

Then you've got HHH versus the Undertaker. I'm one of the 2.3 people who actually liked the pantomime of threatened violence, because it's quite hard to explain 'you're good and I'm good, wanna fight?' and have it fit with 'I am scary and undead' and 'I am suffering from delusions, again ' I am awesome'. I'm cheering for the guy with the Johnny Cash entrance music, but I am aware that that is the only reason why I care.

I bring forth a Paul Heyman interview with the Sun - http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/wrestling/heyman/article762131.ece

There have also been promises of video blogs from him.

Also, rumour has it that 'Snow (eh oh)' by the Chilli Peppers or whatever it's called is going to be the WM theme song and while it's an odd fit for wrestling, this makes me really high-pitched and squeaky.

Have just seen most of TNA's 'Sacrifice'. May well explode with glee over AJ v Samoa Joe. Which given that I was pretty gleeful even before that (so many of those matches were good) is great.

More coherent comments tomorrow. I missed the middle hour which I hope to catch on the replay.

Funniest thing thing is that earlier in the day I'd caught some old TNA AJ Styles v Loki and that was damn good too. The submission/choke hold of Loki's that might be called the Hanging Dragon is one vicious looking manouvre.

Trying to decide whether to watch Unforgiven tonight. There's the promise of Cade and Murdoch, but even cowboys can't tempt me that much.

Before I start on that, just 1 question to those of you who know about ECW - is there more hatred towards WCW, or was it just not politic to complain about WWE on a show WWE were paying for?

( Anyway )

The only problem with the fun-ness of this PPV was that it kind of showed up the lack of fun-ness of other recent WWE PPVs. Now I promised after last year's WM that I would be nice about WWE so this isn't me bashing them, this is con-crit that they aren't going see ;)

Problem 1 - people cared about these matches, okay for special reasons, but they cared about matches where there wasn't a belt involved. What was the last RAW feud that people cared about where there were no belts involved? (Not rhetorical, feel free to answer) The last SD one I can think of is Eddie v Rey Rey and that's because instead of it all being posturing and grrr, there's emotion attached as well.

Problem 2 - let's look at the Crusaders for a minute. Who did RAW have? Bischoff who's not a wrestler, Coach who is not a wrestler, Edge who no one gives a damn about (sorry Edge), Maven, Snitsky who, well, what is the purpose of Snitsky, Tomko ditto, Christian who is at least entertaining, Regal who rocks (but isn't totally WWE), the French Fries and I think that's it.

SD had Angle (who is good), JBL (who I am fond of), Carlito (who I am fond of), Orlando Jones (who occasionally show signs of being interesting), Matt Morgan and the Bashams. Have I forgotten someone?

If we ignore the ones that have been imbeded for quite some time, the new guys don't seem to have much purpose. Sure you've got Carlito and Piper's Pit redux, which is fun, and La Res who have functional characters going (though who knows what they're going to do with them when there's finally a split) but the others haven't got characters (stuttering is not a character, it's a gimmick that was stale and old before Bubba Ray stopped using it) and it's not like ROH where you can get by on being a great wrestler alone, this is sports entertainment and these guys are being seriously let down by the writing.

So basically, IMO, WWE would be a lot better if the writers got their fingers out and started to write decent plots and characters and basically did their job to a reasonable standard.

Part of me wants to stay up and watch the PPV just for the Orton v HHH match, or rather the potential for me to die the death of a thousand OTP type squeakings, which probably isn't going to happen but I live in hope.

The other, rather more sensible, part says no because I'm doing something with my Nan tomorrow and therefore need to be awake.

Also I am planning that which can only be described as crack fic, utter crack fic. Even more than usual.

It's been thundering and lightning here. Which is cool. Especially if the really heavy thunder coincides with the Undertaker's WM XX entrance. Talk about atmosphere.

All of which translates to wheee I've finally managed to watch all of WMXX. And if I thought Benoit holding up the World Championship was the coolest thing ever, I have to say him and Eddie standing next to each other both hands aloft with a world championship belt beats it hands down. It makes me happy.

I'm going to have a bruise the size of a tennis ball on my arm tomorrow from ju-jitsu. But I had fun getting it. I should also be getting my PC Healthcheck for the laptop. Which is good, because if that goes kaput I am screwed next year. Not totally, but enough. My printer is already kinda of not functioning but I've got a spare so hopefully things will work out.

I finally got to hear the new Libertines song. Actually I could have waited and caught it on MTV2 but that would have meant I wouldn't have got a copy of Lars Friedriksen and the Bastards 'To Have and Have Not' which is the best punk song of the past five years.

I'm always really torn when it comes to the Libertines. I mean, they're not that bad, they're quite good actually, but the music press shove them down our (the listening public) throats and they're not as good the press say they are.

But as I say they are good, in fits and starts, and the whole of 'Don't Look Back Into The Sun'.

And I'm attracted to the more soap opera-like elements to their story.
Full explanation here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1271605,00.html

The short version is cute singer guitarist 1 (Carl - http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/redfiona99/Libertines/Carl2.jpg and http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/redfiona99/Libertines/Carl1.jpg) is refusing to speak to cute singer guitarist 2 (Pete - http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/redfiona99/Libertines/Pete.jpg) until Pete gives up heroin. Pete meanwhile is refusing to quit until Carl talks to him.

And they're both given to statements like this "I want to give Pete a message of love. Please come back home."
And pictures like this - http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/redfiona99/Libertines/Libertines1.bmp and http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/redfiona99/Libertines/libs2.bmp

All pictures stolen shamelessly from NME.

( I think these are still spoilers. )

So yes, I really liked it.

The main reason being I wanted to rewatch the HBK v HHH match. And damn, it was as good as I remember.

I realise some people may disagree but HBK's got something, I don't know what, but he's got it. And it really isn't a PPV without HHH bleeding. The PPV I'm borrowing from my cousin at the minute (AKA until I give it back and or he pinches it back) is the Royal Rumble 2000, and does the man bleed tomato juice or what.

Anyway, I ended up paying attention to the crowd and JR and the King more this time. And the crowd was pretty wow, you could feel the Go Shawn vibes coming off them. And when he started winning, that was wow too.

I realise that I have been known to complain (a lot) about Jerry Lawler, and however much I may be a Tazz and Cole fan on the announcing front, for a match like that, you've got to have JR calling down fire and brimstone and all the forces of hell on the heel.

I think I was worked up enough to agree with him. Triple H is evil. (yes I was having a gloriously fannish moment. :) )

The last time I got so worked up about a repeat viewing of a match was Benoit v Austin on SD like June or July last year. The match with the ten German suplexes, if anyone knows which one I mean.

So, yeah, I've got a red raw throat and happy about it.