Rodeo Nights, Phoenix, Arizona
February 5th, 2003

Pro wrestling federations can break your heart. I’ve only been living in Arizona for 2 1/2 years, and we’re already on the fourth promotion in that time. Our first love was Western States, but they lost their venue. We had a one-night stand with Mountain Strength, down in Tucson, but they never called us back. Then, there was South Western Wrestling, but they’ve done nothing since October (though apparently, they’re not dead…just sleeping).

We went into all three looking for storylines we could follow from month to month, characters we could grow to love or hate, T-shirts we could wear with pride – something we could give our love to. All three let us down, but like innocent puppies, we still keep looking. Which brings us to Impact Zone Wrestling, the latest suitor for our affections. This wasn’t the first show of theirs which we’d attended, but we held off writing about them, for fear of bringing down the TC curse. However, after Invasion at Rodeo Nights – curiously, the same venue I first saw Rage in the Cage – we feel they deserve a token of appreciation and encouragement.

It may seem curious to have started up a new federation when the wrestling fad has clearly passed its peak. For me, the end of the WWE (we’re not allowed to use the F any more, for fear of a lawsuit from a bunch of pandas) came when Hulk Hogan was brought back. Never has a man with so little actual skill been so heavily hyped. But IZW consciously avoids the sub-soap nonsense into which the WWE has sunk (gay weddings?!?), prefering to concentrate on actual wrestling. For that alone, it deserves support.

This night’s action started with J-Rod versus The Hawaiian Lion – the former was touted as having 2% body fat, but guess that must have been entirely concentrated around his middle. The Lion had come up from South Western Wrestling. This one wasn’t quite terrible, but there were way too many air blows – as one audience wag shouted, “It’s supposed to be a contact sport!” Having seen the Lion before, we know he’s competent: we’ll leave you to decide where the blame for this one should lie.

Next up was a bout between The Little Red Machine and The Shaolin Punk – the former’s Mexican, all-red gear led to some merciless ribbing from the audience, including comparisons with a tampon. This one was also a little sloppy, but very energetic. Although it didn’t look like they’d worked often together, they worked with each other and adapted well, even when things didn’t perhaps quite go as planned.

The womens’ bout is always a highlight, and is another way in which IZW kicks WWE’s ass; their women can actually wrestle, and aren’t just a glorified T&A show. Morgan (formerly Jungle Girl – a wise move) was facing Erica D’Erico for the position of #1 contender and a shot at Lexie Fyfe’s belt. Morgan had a significant size advantage, and we initially thought Erico would get punted all over the ring. Wrong. With some impressively athletic moves, including a huracanrana for the final pin, Erico got the win, and we look forward to see her take on Fyfe at a future event.

Next up was the interval, but before then was the little matter of the tag-title. Currently held by Hollywood and the Hardcore Kid, however, the Hardcore Kid was nowhere to be seen. His partner agreed to defend the title against the Killer Klowns, but this (understandably) peeved the Ballard Brothers – a Canadian duo, who’ve been favourites of ours since we first saw them, thanks to their Slapshot hockey shirts! [And hey, it’s a Commonwealth thing!] They had fought for a title shot at the last show, and won, but commissioner C.C.Starr over-ruled them, giving their slot to the Klowns, which did not go down well.

Wandered around the venue for a bit. Very Country and Western – could tell because the male toilet was labelled “Cowboys”. Seemed to be problems with the PA system, which kept cutting out and switching on at inopportune moments. Also not quite sure why we paid $5 more for ringside seats, since all the tables there seemed to have “reserved” signs on them and no-one seemed to be checking anyway. We ended up sitting a few rows back, but the view was fine. Ceiling could do with being a little higher too; these are tall men, doing acrobatic stunts off the top rope of a ring that’s perhaps eight feet off the ground…

First up post-break was a Battle Royale – elimination required a wrestler to be thrown over the ropes. $5000 was supposedly at stake, but simple arithmetic makes that about double the door receipts for the evening. It seemed like every minor IZW wrestler was in the ring and, as is almost inevitable with this kind of bout, there was way too much going on. When things calmed down, and you could focus, it improved, but without much idea of who was who, or why, it remained cold. The winner was Rage, notable for his ability to clean and jerk his opponents clear above his head.

Before the next bout, we got the most amusing part of the evening, as Team Elite (Frankie Kazarian and Derek Neikirk) insulted their opponents, the audience, and the venue with equal venom, setting themselves up beautifully as the villains for their contest against Native Blood (The Navajo Warrior and Ghostwalker). This was classic tag-team action with the bad guys teaming up for all manner of foul deeds while the referee’s back was turned. Of course, they couldn’t win cleanly, relying on intervention in the shape of a chair-wielding Mike Nox – interestingly, this was about the only instance of “hardcore” wrestling in the entire night. No-one was driven through a table, nobody bled or was set on fire. And it was no less entertaining for that, WWE please note.

The tag-team title was on the line as the Killer Klowns got their shot at Hollywood and, er, Hollywood, in a handicap match. The clown gimmick has never appealed and these ones were neither funny nor scary, though did manage “creepy” on a couple of occasions. I kinda tuned out during this one, but the ending was superb. Jack Bull turned up half-way through to pinch-hit as partner for Hollywood, then stiffed him and let the Klowns take the win.

While we were still gobsmacked by that, the real Klowns – hogtied – hobbled their way out to the ring, and the impersonators in the ring revealed themselves as…The Ballard Brothers. They’d got their title shot, and won the belts; maybe not quite fair and square, but left as champions regardless. However, I think it’s safe to say that this one will run and run…

The final match pitted current IZW champion Mike Knox against wrestling icon, Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka – the latter has been in the business since 1969, and was one of the pioneers in aerial moves, hence his nickname. He was ECW Heavyweight champion, WCW tag champion, fought in two Wrestlemanias for the WWF, and his leap from the top of a steel cage at Madison Square Garden in 1983 is a landmark moment, which directly inspired the likes of Mick Foley. Oh, and he’s also from the same Samoan family which gave us The Rock.

The guy may be in his late fifties now, and is obviously not quite at his peak, though I hope to be capable of half the physical stuff he did when I reach his age – he still wrestles barefoot! Nox treated Snuka with the huge respect he deserves, and in the end gained victory only through feigning injury (very convincingly – well, it fooled me totally, Chris wasn’t duped!). But in the post-match melee, Snuka still got to do his trademark Superfly Splash: see previous comments about “when I reach his age”…

The next bouts are at the start of March, and we’ll be there, though the prospect, touted by C.C.Starr, of a battle between MTV’s The Real World and Tough Enough leaves us totally stone-cold – or perhaps, Stone Cold 3:16. Still, we’ll be there regardless: having been hurt before, we’re now somewhat wary of opening up our hearts (and wallets!). But perhaps, this time, it will be true love.

Not sure whether the space-shuttle disaster will quite make it into the pantheon of “where were you when…” moments. But for the record, I was wheezing my lungs out on the treadmill when Chris told me to turn on the news (hey, going outside and doing strenuous exercise here is asking for trouble – it hit 30C on Friday, and that was still January…).

At the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious, it was something of a shock, though my first thought, knowing the first Israeli astronaut was on board, was not of mechanical failure. I would just like to claim copyright on the idea of it really being a terrorist attack, which gets hushed up so that someone like Steven Seagal can hunt down those responsible.

It may seem cruel to say this, but it probably does good every now and then to remind people of what a dangerous thing space travel actually is. The shuttle was travelling at over Mach 18, 200,000 feet up – about twenty times faster and five times higher than a commercial airliner – yet if it had landed safely, would doubtless have been relegated to 30 seconds at the end of the evening news.

There is nothing new or exciting about the shuttle or its missions – the International Space Station is nice, but to the average member of the public, it’s indistinguishable from the Skylab of the 1970’s, so is hardly anything to get worked up about. Or, indeed, open the wallets for, and as a result, NASA’s budget has been static or cut in recent years. 2002 saw it at $14.5 billion, which sounds like a lot until you realise it’s less than one-twentieth of what was spent on defence by America the same year.

This is why NASA is still using the shuttle – a vehicle which made its inaugural flight in the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency – and why no replacement is even off the drawing board, leaving the shuttle with another twenty years in service. By the end of that, it’ll be 40 years old; can you imagine how loud the military would be screaming if their chief aircraft were built in the 1960’s? And the likely long interruption to shuttle flights (2 1/2 years after the Challenger disaster) will only make things worse.

What is needed is some project that will capture the hearts and minds of people – not just in America, but around the world, and once again make spaceflight a non-trivial event. Something which can combine technology and resources from many countries, and unite people, so that they can look up at the sky with hope rather than in fear. I can think of no more fitting memorial for the seven lost astronauts than that.

Japanese Movie Posters
Chuck Stephens, Tetsuya Masuda, Kairakutei Black
Cocoro Books, $30.00

There can really be no argument: film posters are works of art, in a way that no other advertising medium can quite match. Hang a car advert on your wall, and people will look at you strangely, but a movie poster is simultaneously aesthetically pleasing, cool and a statement about your personality. Room with a View or Stewardesses in Heat? The choice is yours…

Bruce Hershenson’s collections of posters, mostly themed by genre, have done sterling work in gathering some of the best examples of such art, but are limited in scope, covering only the output of Hollywood. Just as great films are produced around the world, so it is for great artwork, and Cocoro Books’ collection of promotional material for Japanese movies is particularly welcome because it opens the doors to a world that is little known in the West.

The book is divided into seven categories: yakuza, sci-fi and monster, samurai, pink, horror, animation and new cinema. “Pink” is the Japanese term for erotic films, and the posters therein are eye-popping, simply because they are notably more explicit than anything permitted in America or Britain – along with the nudity, bondage and coercion seem common themes – making them perhaps somewhat questionable candidates for decorating your living-room.

Less likely to offend your maiden aunt are the yakuza films, featuring tough guys (and gals – in one case, even nuns!) looking…well, tough. The samurai section is not dissimilar; swords replace guns, but the emphasis is still on staring Very Intently. A number of the titles in the animation section may seem familiar, since it’s one area where Japanese cinema has made significant exports in recent years. But the poster for Ghost in the Shell is still different enough from the Western one to be striking.

However, my favourite section of all was the one devoted to the monsters, simply because these are films for which there is no real equivalent in the English-speaking world, as the woeful Hollywood Godzilla proved. Whether it’s the Tokyo Tower being destroyed by Mothra’s caterpillar, or what looks like a giant narwhal with a laser-beam coming out of its forehead (that’ll be Jigura, then), these provide a glimpse into a universe that is at once fascinating, frightening and surreal.

Each poster is accompanied by three or four lines of information on the film (studio, year, etc.), and trivia about it. Each section is also prefaced by commentary from Masuda and Black, talking about the genre’s history and place in society. These little mini-essays are teasingly short, and I would have welcomed their extension to greater length.

The book also operates as a catalog for Masuda’s store, @wonder, offering all the posters in the book for sale, at prices ranging from $20 for the new films, up to $150 for Sleepy Eyes of Death and the fabulously named Ship of Blood-Sucking Skulls. If the walls here weren’t already completely covered – with poster-tubed reserves waiting in the cupboard – there are a number I’d be very tempted to acquire.

Maybe instead I’ll just buy an extra volume of the book, so I can hack it apart and frame individual pages as mini-posters. But what, then, to do when we have Mothra on one side, and Son of Godzilla on the other? Better make that two more. Such cunning marketing, which requires the reader to purchase multiple copies of the book, can only be admired. Sigh… 🙂

For more information, see the publisher’s website – the book is also available from Amazon.

Spent last night at another prime slice of Americana – a monster truck rally at Bank One Ballpark, watching five-ton behemoths destroy cars, the surface (the baseball groundsman could be heard weeping over the sound of 1500-horsepower engines) and the already-flaky atmospheric quality in Phoenix. Only in the United States could this kind of wanton disregard for planetary ecology be considered family entertainment. Though it was way cool. 🙂

It does, however, shed some light on precisely why George Bush is so keen to invade Iraq. In the light of this, we offer the following, which summarises our feelings on the looming war better than we could. And, hey, anyone remember this guy called Bin Laden?

IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH

DEAR SIR / MADAM,

I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, AND CURRENTLY SERVING AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT MET NEITHER IN PERSON NOR BY CORRESPONDENCE. I CAME TO KNOW OF YOU IN MY SEARCH FOR A RELIABLE AND REPUTABLE PERSON TO HANDLE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS TRANSACTION, WHICH INVOLVES THE TRANSFER OF A HUGE SUM OF MONEY TO AN ACCOUNT REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE.

I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ. MY PARTNERS AND I SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE IN COMPLETING A TRANSACTION BEGUN BY MY FATHER, WHO HAS LONG BEEN ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN THE EXTRACTION OF PETROLEUM IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND BRAVELY SERVED HIS COUNTRY AS DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.

IN THE DECADE OF THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES, MY FATHER, THEN VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, SOUGHT TO WORK WITH THE GOOD OFFICES OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ TO REGAIN LOST OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN. THIS UNSUCCESSFUL VENTURE WAS SOON FOLLOWED BY A FALLING OUT WITH HIS IRAQI PARTNER, WHO SOUGHT TO ACQUIRE ADDITIONAL OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING EMIRATE OF KUWAIT, A WHOLLY-OWNED U.S.-BRITISH SUBSIDIARY.

MY FATHER RE-SECURED THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF KUWAIT IN 1991 AT A COST OF SIXTY-ONE BILLION U.S. DOLLARS ($61,000,000,000). OUT OF THAT COST, THIRTY-SIX BILLION DOLLARS ($36,000,000,000) WERE SUPPLIED BY HIS PARTNERS IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA AND OTHER PERSIAN GULF MONARCHIES, AND SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS ($16,000,000,000) BY GERMAN AND JAPANESE PARTNERS. BUT MY FATHER’S FORMER IRAQI BUSINESS PARTNER REMAINED IN CONTROL OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ITS PETROLEUM RESERVES.

MY FAMILY IS CALLING FOR YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE IN FUNDING THE REMOVAL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ACQUIRING THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF HIS COUNTRY, AS COMPENSATION FOR THE COSTS OF REMOVING HIM FROM POWER. UNFORTUNATELY, OUR PARTNERS FROM 1991 ARE NOT WILLING TO SHOULDER THE BURDEN OF THIS NEW VENTURE, WHICH IN ITS UPCOMING PHASE MAY COST THE SUM OF 100 BILLION TO 200 BILLION DOLLARS ($100,000,000,000 – $200,000,000,000), BOTH IN THE INITIAL ACQUISITION AND IN LONG-TERM MANAGEMENT.

WITHOUT THE FUNDS FROM OUR 1991 PARTNERS, WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE THE OIL REVENUE TRAPPED WITHIN IRAQ. THAT IS WHY MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES ARE URGENTLY SEEKING YOUR GRACIOUS ASSISTANCE. OUR DISTINGUISHED COLLEAGUES IN THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION INCLUDE THE SITTING VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, RICHARD CHENEY, WHO IS AN ORIGINAL PARTNER IN THE IRAQ VENTURE AND FORMER HEAD OF THE HALLIBURTON OIL COMPANY, AND CONDOLEEZA RICE, WHOSE PROFESSIONAL DEDICATION TO THE VENTURE WAS DEMONSTRATED IN THE NAMING OF A CHEVRON OIL TANKER AFTER HER.

I WOULD BESEECH YOU TO TRANSFER A SUM EQUALING TEN TO TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT (10-25 %) OF YOUR YEARLY INCOME TO OUR ACCOUNT TO AID IN THIS IMPORTANT VENTURE. THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL FUNCTION AS OUR TRUSTED INTERMEDIARY. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MAKE THIS TRANSFER BEFORE THE FIFTEENTH (15TH) OF THE MONTH OF APRIL.

I KNOW THAT A TRANSACTION OF THIS MAGNITUDE WOULD MAKE ANYONE APPREHENSIVE AND WORRIED. BUT I AM ASSURING YOU THAT ALL WILL BE WELL AT THE END OF THE DAY. A BOLD STEP TAKEN SHALL NOT BE REGRETTED, I ASSURE YOU. PLEASE DO BE INFORMED THAT THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO CO-OPERATE IN THIS TRANSACTION, PLEASE CONTACT OUR INTERMEDIARY REPRESENTATIVES TO FURTHER DISCUSS THE MATTER.

I PRAY THAT YOU UNDERSTAND OUR PLIGHT. MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES WILL BE FOREVER GRATEFUL. PLEASE REPLY IN STRICT CONFIDENCE TO THE CONTACT NUMBERS BELOW.

SINCERELY WITH WARM REGARDS,
GEORGE WALKER BUSH

The bigger they come, the harder they fail…

The last palindromic year for over a century is in the books, and it only remains for me to chuck my two cents in and announce the TC top ten. Hollywood executives are holding their breath – will Snow Dogs make the cut? I think it’s safe to say the answer is not quite going to shake the foundations of the studio system.

I saw seven of the year’s top ten grossing movies, down one from 2001 – the missed ones were Star Wars II (which I still might catch up with now it’s playing at the IMAX), My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Goldmember. Last year, two of the top ten made this list, this year’s it’s just one – slightly less than one, actually, for reasons which I’ll get into shortly, and making this more of a Top 9.9 than a Top 10, I suppose. The #1 at the box-office, Spiderman, cracked $400m in the US alone, marking Sam Raimi’s arrival in the super-mainstream. With him and Peter Jackson helming 2002 box-office behemoths, any bets on which former ‘video nasty’ director will be next? Dario Argento? Jorg Buttgereit? Guess we can rule out Lucio Fulci, at least…

It was, it seemed, a disappointing year, particularly for action movies. The more a film was anticipated, the less it actually seemed to deliver; two of the best trailers of the year, XXX and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, turned out to be leaden lumps of tedium with few redeeming features. Things didn’t get better with the new 007 flick, the third consecutive disappointing entry in that series, and even The Two Towers failed to live up to the standards of its predecessor.

Fortunately, peeping under the wire were a couple of pleasant surprises, not least the arrival of Jason Statham as a legitimate British action here in The Transporter. However, to avoid disappointment, I am consciously trying not to get over-excited for any of 2003’s releases, most notably Terminator 3 and The Matrix Reloaded. I figure if I expect less of them, it reduces the chance of unpleasant surprises.

A couple of words to Disney: you suck. You lobby to get the copyright law changed to protect Mickey, while shamelessly raping the public domain for the likes of Treasure Planet, and even pillage your own back catalog, whoring any beloved cartoon you can into straight-to-video sequels. Then, when you get your hands on the best animated film of the year (Spirited Away), you hide it in 151 theatres nationwide, with hardly any publicity – compare TP, which opened in over 3,200 with a marketing blitz, and still tanked.

And while we’re at it, can someone please give Christopher Walken some money? That way, we wouldn’t have to suffer the trauma of seeing one of the finest actors of our generation in stuff like Kangaroo Jack and The Country Bears Movie. Walken wins the Klaus Kinski “Fuck the script, send me the check” Memorial Award for 2002.

#10 – Equilbrium. Sliding in so low under the wire, I’d not even heard of it until the day we saw it, Christian Bale delivers a great performance in a setting that combines the best of Orwell, Huxley and Bradbury.

#9 – Signs. Would have been several notches higher, if not for an ending that would have got a failing grade in your Primary 3 English class. That this disastrous finale doesn’t flush the movie out of here entirely speaks volumes for the quality of the rest of it.

#8 – Jane White is Sick and Twisted. As previously, 2003 had its share of festival hits that, sadly, in all probability we’ll never see again. This maniacal riff on pop culture took homage to undreamt-of depths, in a wild ride through the TV landscape which is the third millenium. A career programming reality shows for the FOX network beckons those responsible.

#7 – Blade II. The year’s most unexpectedly-decent sequel was Del Toro’s gory-as-hell take on what is possibly the coolest comic character to hit the screen thus far. Face-splitting, autopsies, and more exploding vamps than you can shake an ultraviolet hand-grenade at, plus Donnie Yen (right) and Wesley himself. Woo-hoo!

#6 – Sum of all Fears. Never having read the book, I had no idea what to expect here, and the Ben Affleck/Harrison Ford thing passed me over entirely. What the makers delivered was the tensest movie of the year; once Baltimore was sacrificed, you got the feeling anything could happen, at any time.

#5 – Minority Report. It’d been a long while since Spielberg had made anything in the pure entertainment line, which is where his fame began, but this delivers the goods. Chalk up another Dick adaptation which bears little resemblance to the book but is still great on its own terms.

#4 – Spirited Away. Hayao Miyazaki is another film-maker who returned to form in 2002. After a few mediocre entries, he got back to what he does best: imaginative story-telling. He creates a wonderful parallel world of amazing characters and visual style.

#3 – Dead Dogs Lie. The best film of 2002 which you won’t have heard of (except here) sends three hitmen on a road trip. Less plot- than incident-driven, it had the sharpest dialogue of the year; here’s hoping someone picks it up for distribution soon. Or else we might have to. 🙂

#2 – The Ring. Just another crappy Hollywood rema…No, hang on, what’s this? It kicks the original’s turgid butt in just about every way, keeping the good and cranking the Creep Factor up to 11. Our son came home from seeing it and started asking if we had any covered wells on the property…

#1 – Nine Queens. Proving that there’s life in David Mamet’s style yet…if not perhaps in David Mamet… A script to treasure, unfolding with precise grace right up until the end. Bordering on a shaggy-dog story, I almost don’t want to see it again, in case it proves less fabulous second time around.