WWE is bringing one of the show brands to Maine this weekend, with a show in Bangor on Saturday night - which I'm going to - and a show in Portland on Sunday night. They're also bringing their Raw brand to this corner of the universe.

Let's compare the cards, shall we???

Smackdown brand appearing in Bangor (9/19) & Portland (9/20):
CM Punk
Christian
Matt Hardy
John Morrison
Finlay
Kane
R Truth
The Great Khali
Michelle McCool
Melina
And Many More!!!!

Raw brand appearing in Saint John, New Brunswick (9/18); Moncton, New Brunswick (9/19); Halifax, Nova Scotia (9/19):
John Cena
Randy Orton
MVP
Mark Henry
Ted DiBiase/Cody Rhodes
The Miz
Kofi Kingston
Jack Swagger
Evan Bourne
Carlito
Primo
Santino Marella
Kelly Kelly
Mickie James
And Many More!!!

DOES ANYONE ELSE WHO IS A WRESTLING FAN NOTICE A DISCREPANCY AND BLATANT MIS-MATCH OF CARD LINEUPS???? Dinky hick towns in Canada are getting the Raw brand with people like Cena, Orton, Legacy, Evan Bourne and the ever-so-hot Mickie James.... while the shows in Maine are getting the 2nd rate Smackdown brand with the top 'stars' of Great Kahli, John Morrison, Matt Hardy and Finlay?!?! What the heck?? How come Canada is getting the better performers and we here in Maine are left with the nothings on a show like Smackdown that we can't even see in Maine because barely any stations in this state carry MyNetwork TV? I'm sorry but this all makes me very irate as a long-time wrestling fan.

So, while I am no where's near caught up on putting my wrestling tape collection onto DVD, I am at a point this weekend where I have run out of blank DVDs after I do 1 or 2 this weekend. So I'm sure that I'll have some time this weekend to get caught up on a lot of other things like my blogging. Which has been neglected while I have been preoccupied with doing my wrestling tape stuff. In the meantime, I've had some thoughts on it though...

I came up with a small thought the other day of trying to do a contest involving wrestling somehow. Some how incorporating in my tape collection. But I couldn't think of a good way to do it, or even know what to offer. Heck, an unexpected car repair bill the other month put my finances into wack and I still have the WWE show in Bangor a week from today that I will be going to. So I wouldn't even know what to offer. And then when I thought more about it...who would even take part in the contest? Melinda I know you would. But probably not anyone else. I don't know of anyone else on here who's really a wrestling fan at all.

I've been reading a lot of different blogs AT work FOR work purposes. Primarily it's been fashion-related blogs because of one of the things I'm regularly doing for work. And it's made me have a lot of thoughts on blogging, and even came to light why I've had such an issue with blogging in the past year or two or so. It isn't so much writing something that's controversial that people I know will be angry at me with. Because when a person has an OPINION on something they're entitled to it. And people need not do their homework for it because how a person perceives something based on their own personal experience and honest opinion that they create without resorting to hatred or vengence or spitefulness is just that ... it's their opinion. People can speak their minds freely to a certain extent, but some out there apparently are firm believers in censorship when something doesn't agree with them. SO WHAT IS MY BIG PROBLEM I'M HAVING WITH BLOGGING?

Seeing the other crap that people write in the blogging universe that people actually read. Some people will read my blogs and think what I write is crap. Well, they're entitled to their opinion if they'd like. One of my thoughts is.... this week so far (before this post) I've only posted 2 entries. But yet I've had 19 views (and 1 comment - from Melinda). So someone or some people ARE reading this crap. :) See, I mentioned earlier that at my job I end up reading a lot of fashion blogs. Trust me - there are dozens and dozens and hundreds and thousands of different fashion blogs out there. Women (and men) who do nothing more than proclaim themselves a "fashionista"...

NOTE: probably the word that I hate next to "hubby" and "wifey" is "FASHIONISTA". WTF!

...and then reproduce photographs of models and runway models that they take from websites like Style.com. Then they write about how "gorgeous they think some woman looks", or "how beautiful an outfit is," or "how cute they think some dress is" or how they "wish they had something to go with these awesome shoes". Hey, to a certain section of the internet-going public out there maybe this is all interesting stuff to read and I know this is true because these HACK-ly written fashion blogs will actually have dozens and dozens of readers at each of them. People who actually follow the blog and keep up with the updates! Imagine! Hey, it's all and good. They're accomplishing something by attracting regular readers to their blog. They might be writing about stuff I think is frivilous and utterly boring...

FYI: I think most of the models I see in these runway photographs look one notch above zombie in horror movies. They're for the most part unattractive, the outfits look horrendous, so where's the beauty that's supposed to exist in these "fashion runway model photographs"!? Someone explain that to me?!?! I work with, have friends who are, and simply see people around my town who are vastly more attractive than these so-called models. Some women I work with are pretty! Some of the people on my buddy list on here are pretty! But for me to look at a fashion runway photograph and find one model who I think is pretty is like looking in a haystay for a needle. Or better yet, looking in a needle stack for a strand of hay! (wrap your minds around that one)

....and they attract readers and get blog attention that's good and etc etc etc. Hey, there's a blog out there for everyone! Blogs on every topic! I may not like these fashion blogs at all, but hey good for them! I'll admit and here's where my problem comes in....is that I'm jealous. I admit it that I'm jealous. I try writing in my blog about various and random stuff. Even if it's just reviewing some movie I see at the theater or a movie I get on DVD from Netflix. But yet...how come my blogging seems to fail?

Currently I only have 3 readers to my blog on Myspace here. By "readers" I mean people who subscribe. Alan I can almost always count on to read my blog. Joyce used to read my blog but she has better things to do these days mainly because she is married and has some kids at home to tend to. Same thing for Kelly though she used to keep more up on things before she found the man of her dreams out there in Ohio with James and since then I still think she's forgotten about her friends. Or at least me. Melinda hasn't subscribed to my blog but she seems to know when I post a new one and usually the person who comments the most. But even among these 4 it doesn't make sense how I've gotten 19 views on 2 blogs this week (for example).

Ok, so I think the fashion blogs online I've come across are frivilous, badly written, are nothing but HACK material and are just plain CRAP. I know there are people out there that think my own blogs are crap - in particular two people I work with that I'll only identify as "J" and "G". And no, those are not referring to my initials. I'll admit that my blog can be crap as well and isn't going to interest the world the same as I dont think the fashion blogs interest all the world either. So my problem has always lay in the idea that those blogs get readers and lots of commentators and so forth. But my blogs? I get Alan reading them and commenting on them. Same for Melinda. Which I appreciate both. But how come "my crap" isn't getting more readers or commenters? Even when I've tried to post on Blogger/Blogspot.com? Only twice has there ever been something good out of someone actually reading one of my blogs on there before.

I think I've just come to the conclusion that its a losing battle. No matter what I try to write to attract viewers, it ain't gonna work. No matter what I can think up to do for a stupid contest, it ain't gonna work. No matter how much I try to write and hope that people will 'subscribe to-' my blog and make comments (not necessarily positive but at least proper and polite constructive criticism....) that people aren't going to subscribe to and comment on my blogs. Alan and Melinda, true. But that's about it. So I've come to realize that my blog(s) will never be what I'd like them to be. They'll never be as popular as the hack-job crap blogs out there. And while I can admit that my blogs could be thought of as crap by people...while people will read other crap they aren't reading "my crap". :)

So what I just need to do is just be blogging for myself. Write about what I'd like to and not worry. Post where I'd like to and not worry. If people read them then fine. If people subscribe to them then fine.

And I think this weekend while I have time to sit down and do some blogging to catch up on things I can begin with these changes.

So I'm still in the process of going through my vast VHS tape collection of wrestling stuff from years past and working at putting them to DVD. For safe keeping and long-term preservation. (Since DVDs will last longer than tapes that can deteriorate). I've been meaning to keep an updated list of my progress to keep track of which VHS tapes I put to DVD so that I don't duplicate any. Also I've wanted to keep an updated list of all wrestling VHS/DVD videos in general so I know what I have, and what I need to look for in the future on Amazon.com or eBay or something.

I just went through tonight my DVDs that I've created and observed that I have infact made 2 copies inadvertently of 2 different videos. One set I must have created a year or so ago. And the other set I just made recently within the past month. So now I have two copies of "WWF Wrestle Fest 1991" and "WWF Wrestle Fest 1994", each. I'm gonna keep the newer of the disks. But I'm considering what to do with the two previous ones I made in the past.

How large of a collection of wrestling tapes do I have? A quick look at the stack of them on my desk after retrieving the remainer of them from storage at my parents' house this past weekend, I quickly scanned them over and counted up a number of tapes. And the way I estimate.... if I were to do 3 VHS-to-DVD videos each week, then roughly by Christmas... of 2010 I'd be done. 3 videos a week for just about a year?! And that's the amount that I have left to do??? Wow. Talk about a lot of wrasslin' to be watching. Of course I won't keep up 3 a week as there's other stuff to watch, and other stuff to do, period.

And some I probably won't end up doing as the time to do the VHS-to-DVD transfer won't be worth it considering the material. I mean I have tapes of like 4 or 5 ECW wrestling shows from 1999, and a few tapes of those at that. Cheapo old-fashioned WWF/WWE videos that are only like 60 minutes in length that were bought on the cheapo tape rack in the years past (Best of Raw Volume 1? Confirmed Hits? I know for a fact some of these I didn't purchase myself so they must have come to me as gifts....)

I've had some incredible good great awesome news come to me recently. Still not sure what to make of it all, but it could mean something fantasticly awesome for me in the coming year.

All I can say is ... GOTCHA.

Why is it that when I post up a movie review of some movie I see at the theater or on DVD from Netflix that I review that people don't seem to give two craps about? Or I post a story about my cats that no one seems to read or bother commenting on? But the second I write anything remotely personable all of a sudden it seems to get multiple views? What's interesting is that one of the last "personable" blogs I wrote that a person I had in mind writing it hoping that of anyone that they'd "get it"....that no only did the person not get it, but they even made a positive remark about it. For the most part I have tried to write things that would interest other people or even to write "for" other people.... But yet I've been wrong in doing that. I've tried to get myself to 'write for me' and not for 'other people'. Basically I should write for the sake of writing what I'd like to write about, and not worry so much that people really aren't reading my blogs. The only one I can count on to positively read my blogs is Melinda. So I'm really going to be making some changes to my blog and how I do things.

Life is a learning experience. And every day I am learning more and more about me and the world around me and it's all for the better.

(+): decent performances by Mark Wahlberg, Danny Glover; movie's pace was good; ok action sequences
(-): predictable storyline; anti-climatic ending; felt like a repackaged "Fugitive"
(?): for a movie that was destined for tension, where was the tension and gripping suspense?

Mark Wahlberg stars as retired military sniper/sharpshooter Bob Lee Swagger. After an incident displayed in the film's opening scene, Swagger retires to life in the wilderness content on leaving that part of his life alone. But a threat against the President is given, Swagger is convinced to come out of retirement as an adviser to prevent the threat. Analyze various scenes for probabilities, chance for an assassin's success, and guidance in making the President's apperance a success. But when a shot does ring out, Swagger finds himself immediately at the end of a conspiracy set-up. On the run and injured, Swagger wonders whom he can trust and sets out to find exactly whom set him up.

Immediately before I inserted the movie into my DVD player I felt like I was going to watch a "Fugitive"-like movie. And for the most part that's how it felt. Our hero character is set-up for a crime, all evidence seems to suggest he's guilty, but of course we as viewers know of the innocence, and the remainder of the film involves chases, discoveries, carefully planned attacks, and the big showdown in the end between the hero looking for retribution and the truly guilty parties looking to silence the person(s) who are looking to expose them.

I think Wahlberg did better in the role than I was expecting. But then again how many times are we to believe that our hero character in an action film is so highly expertised in hand-to-hand combat and military tactics. Granted I know he was a skillful sniper shooter, but there were times later in the movie where he does fist-to-face, knife slashing, butt-kicking moves that I wasn't really expecting. I am still questioning the reason for the guy who was actually shot next to the President to have been the target of this whole set-up. Not that all my questions need to be answered in a movie, but when the plot of this movie is an attempt on the president and the guy next to him is shot by the bad guys, it would only serve logical to explain at some point 'why'. Maybe they said so and I was just too tired to observe.

A bit formulatic with little surprise or twists in the storyline, but overall not a bad action movie. "Marky Mark" is not too bad of an action.

My rating:
********** (7/10)


(+): decent death scenes for an indie film - including "Death By 69"; cinematography was above average for an indie film; attractive female actresses and dastardly-portrayed guys
(-): script was lousy; acting was horrid; too many twists and turns made the ending a bit bloated or too-much; the rape scene was difficult to watch
(?): if you expect the movie to be cheesy and campy it's ok, but if you're expecting it to be serious....how can you when the movie is called what it is and the killer wears a bowling bag over his/her head?!

BBB. What do you get when you combine (b)oobs, (b)lood, and (b)owling? This independent horror movie made from the Canadians up north. Two groups of teens meet at a local bowling alley for a competition, but as tensions mount up a fight breaks out. Afterward one of the females is violently raped in the bowling alley. The next night the two teams appear again to settle their score (get it? bowling? score? haha). However a maniacal killer is hell bent on revenge, as members of both teams begin being picked off one by one in vicious, bloody, gory ways by the killer who is disguising him/herself with a bowling bag as a mask. Who is the killer? And will anyone live to morning to survive?

Oh my goodness. Where to begin. Immediately you have to know that this movie isn't meant to be serious. I mean...just look at the title. Gutterballs. The killer wears a bowling bag on their head? It's almost too ridiculous and silly to even have a picture of here. That being said the movie .... wasn't half bad. The acting left a lot to be desired. There was an excessive amount of swearing, but then again "teens" today are tending to use a lot of foul language as though it were natural. The death scenes were better than what I was expecting from an independent, low-budget film. It does feature probably the most uniqute, never-before-seen death scenes. It is adequately labeled as .... "Death By 69". That's all I am going to say. The camera-work (cinematography) was above what I was expecting, which made the movie watchable. The script was silly and laughable, the acting was borderline bad, the death scenes were good, and the special effects were adequate. This movie almost felt like it could have been made in the 1980s and maybe that was the purpose. A few surprise twists and turns made things interesting toward the end. Although the movie was extremely predictable. If you are a fan and have seen many of the aforementioned 1980s horror movies then you know what's going to happen and how things are going to end by the end. Let me say that again: this movie is predictable. The ending did leave me a bit confused, however. Perhaps a few too many twists?! While the movie could be considered bad by some, it was all right to me. If you expect and understand that this movie is going to be somewhat cheesy, campy and meant in a way to be silly and not the least bit serious, then it met its purpose.

My rating:
********** (6/10)

So I thought I had a fun little idea of doing for a new contest of sorts. But wasn't sure if there was any interest in it. Sure enough there is none as no one bothered to say anything. Its great to know that I can count on friends and non-friends alike to not read my blogs at all.  Oh well. Live and learn I guess. Like water off a duck's back I've already forgotten it and it doesnt really bother me at all. Sometimes ideas come and go like a faint breeze in the wind or something.

Ok, now you know I'm talking nonsense when it's clearly late at night. Or is it that late at night I get talking nonsense. Ok. Point proven.

I came up with a possible interesting and fun (?) contest to maybe start soon and run for a while. Basically it would involve Netflix....movies.....and guessing ratings of movies. If I were to do such a contest (w/o giving away full details just yet) would anyone be interested in such a contest? The prize eventually to offer later in the year would be some sort of gift subscription to Netflix (i.e. 6-mos or 12-mos.) If anyone would be intersted, drop a line. If I think it might be worth my time, I could initiate the contest soon. Got a question? Feel free to ask.

(+): action, reasonable FX, Sienna Miller was nice to admire, adequate movie length
(-): lack of characters that made up the giant action figure collection, storyline was uninspiring and excite-able, too much material was unbelievable and not thoroughly explained
(?): where was the pro-American patriotism?, if this movie was named something other than GI Joe would I have liked it better/worse?

When I heard that they were going to make a movie based on the popular action figure (yes, call them action figures and not dolls people!) of GI Joe, like many people I wondered why it took so long. If there was ever a toy that was perfect for a movie it would have been this more so than Transformers or Barbie or something else. Heck, they've made a movie on He-Man before! And Double Dragon! And Super Mario!!! So we finally get a movie on GI Joe in 2009.

Oddly enough, I did something right for this movie that I haven't done in quite a while. I actually got to the theater on-time. I didn't realize at first that the second showing was for 9:15, so I got to the theater by walking down main street and got to the theater by 8:45 anticipating it was going to show at 9pm. So I had a bit of a wait ahead of me. So much so in fact that I was the first person waiting for this movie in the hallway outside the doors of the screen. Once it was let out, theater employees were in to quickly sweep through the floors and we were let in, I actually had a choice of where to sit this time. As opposed to the past several times of going to a movie and getting in after many people already had their spots picked out. As it turned out I ended up having several people I knew sit nearby. Two co-workers walked down the aisle by me and sat about 3 rows ahead of me. In nearly the row just in front of me a few seats over to my right sat 3 people I went to high school with - one guy who was a guy who tried to be a funny person while being a bit of a pompus ass, another guy who was reasonably nice, and a woman who was at first dating another guy who was on the wrestling team with me but then became single and was quite a catch that I never got up the courage to ask out on a date and years later returned to the area and got a job back at the high school and ended up getting married to the 2nd guy I just mentioned. Honestly I wasn't really interested in seeing any of the 3 of their little group so I did my best to ignore them as though I didn't recognize them. Through all of this was almots a subtle hint of how the movie would end up going.

I admit that when I was a younger kid I had GI Joe action figures. One of my favorite things to do was to save up a few bucks from my allowance each week and get to the store and buy a few new figures. It almost became a contest between me and my cousin Greg who would bring up his collection from downstate when he'd visit and we'd hang out watching wrestling videos we'd rent at the store, stay up late staying overnight at my grandparent's house, drinking mountain dew, eating doritos and using our action figures like wrestling figures. So I was quite familiar with many of the characters of Joes that could have been featured in the film.

The film starts off with a marine group led by Duke who are hired to transport a top-secret briefcase holding warheads featuring tiny nano-creatures that were engineered to devour metal very much like termites that go through wood. Coming under attack by an unknown group led by the Barronness (Sienna Miller), they're only saved by a group of other soliders with just as poweful high-tech weaponry. Duke and his surviving platoon members are then introduced to the secret military organization known as the Joes. The evil organization later known as Cobra then is able to successfully steal back the warheads, which causes the Joes to go on the attack and attempt to save the world from oblivion.

Trying to make sense out of this movie was like trying to make sense out of a Rubix cube. The more you attempt to do so, the more it gets confusing and harder to do. I would agree with critics who labeled this film as basically mindless action entertainment. The storyline was both simplistic to understand but yet too simple to be understood. There didn't seem to be much character development in terms of the individual characters. It seems like they just started off the movie, introduced the characters and then at random times throughout the rest of the movie they did spontaneous flashbacks to explain how... Snake Eyes became such, Storm Shadow became who he is, the past of the Barroness and Duke, and others. For the large selection of various GI Joe action figures there were (hundreds almost) they really only chose a few to be in the movie, which was disappointing. Even with the flashbacks I still don't really feel like I understood any of them and their past to really care about the characters in the present-time. Part of the story was already blown for me when I knew well in advance one of the actors in the movie who was playing the part of the soon-to-be evil Cobra command leader. So there were few surprises in the movie for me, and much of what happened either was beyond predictable or too transparent not to see coming a mile away.

The movie had its moments here and there. A time or two when I smiled or briefly chuckled. And there was certainly its share of action, explosions, guns blasting, and physical stunts to keep me watching the screen. But yet it was lacking in several more areas. For one thing, my expectations for the movie were failed. If this was a movie about GI Joe the action figure, where was the all-American patriotic sentiment in this movie? Why were there so few characters that actually used to be among the hundreds of action figures in the movie when they could have fit in more? I seriously think back to the movie and almost wonder if it would have been better off dropping the whole GI Joe tagline and named the movie something else. I know the action figures and toys had a lot of cool weapons and vehicles they made for the figures to use and hold. And the idea of a lot of them was that the technology was semi-futuristic. But a lot of what happened in the movie was slightly far-fetched, too futuristic for what should have been a "GI Joe"-movie, and unbelievable. GI Joe action figures were a lot about machine guns and such. So what's with the Iron Man-like suits, particle blasters and robotic fish?

The movie itself was ok and did fulfill his promise of being a big-time action film. But my expectations were certainly not met. And several things did not make sense and were unbelievable. One of them being one of the Wyans brothers in one of the primary roles. The guy from the Scary Movie(s) and White Chicks was in a primary role in GI Joe? Are you kidding me?

Has anyone seen any of the Rambo movies? First Blood I, II, III or the somewhat newer Rambo movie that Stallone just did within a few years ago? That's the type of movie that I would have expected this to be. A straightforward, machine gun blaring, shoot-em up type of movie. Instead GI Joe tried to be something it shouldn't have been, as far as I'm concerned. A reasonable pop-corn eatin' end-of-the-summer action flick. But nothing more.

My rating:
********** (5/10)

Going to go see the new GI Joe movie at the theater tomorrow night.

Wonder if I'll end up going alone or if there'd be someone who'd be interested in seeing it too....