...
(pause)...
.I mean, you can complain all day that pro wrestling is fake, but how do you stage something like that? I can watch that move over and over again.
.The man put the Undertaker through an announcer’s table. He could have done it with a run-of-the mill move, but he went for a running power slam and man did it look impressive!
Really...
Hats of to Batista for that one! Here’s hoping Shawn Michaels will be around for a couple more big events. Better luck next time, HBK!
My folks had a couple of paperback copies of Ayn Rand books in the house when I was a kid. I remember seeing paperback copies of and on the high shelves in the high bookshelves of our home library. My first real exposure to the work of Ayn Rand was in 1990 during my senior year of high school. I was taking a miserable course called "Contemporary Issues in Literature" or something like that.
It is something of a miracle that I passed the course given my complete lack of enthusiasm for most things at that point in time. It was the first class of the day and it is absolutely the truth when I say that I spent much of this class catching up on my beauty sleep. Most of our class time was spent doing something that I think was called "sustained silent reading.
" This basically meant that the teacher really didn't have to teach that much. We were assigned a number of books to read that year and I don't mind saying that I really didn't appreciate most of them. was really good, but I hated the way the teacher had tried to explain and analyze the book.
I didn't care how many times she had read the book — I felt like I knew more about Holden Caulfield than she did! We read , which I thought was fairly depressing and whiny at the time. Then we read , which was something of a Cold War armageddon-ish yarn (I had already read Steven King's The Stand a few years before and that was pretty much the definitive apocalyptic tale in my mind).
Somewhere in there, we were supposed to read Solzhenitsyn's , but I must confess that I never really got around to that one. But I did read by Ayn Rand and I was really taken by it. I was 17 years old and disenchanted with almost everything around me.
..Was there anything not to like about it back then?
Anthem definitely had a futuristic, science fiction feel to it and this certainly caught my interest as I had been enjoying the work of authors like Alan Dean Foster, Ben Bova, and Arthur C. Clarke for most of my high school days. The politics behind the story weren't completely lost on me, either. I often tell the "baby boomers" that I discuss politics with that I consider myself to be as much of a child of the Cold War as anyone who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis. By the time I was a kid, we didn't "duck and cover" any more…Our teachers would just tell us in some detail what would happen to all of us if the bomb landed on the local military base. Fun stuff.
Anyway, the point is that the anti-collectivist theme of Anthem was not so objectionable to me after living through eight years of Ronald Reagan. For me, Anthem struck a particular chord in how the character dealt with acute, institutionalized alienation. Alienation and the struggle for identity were themes that I really identified with at that point in time.
It would be much later that I learned a different way of explaining and analyzing alienation as a phenomenon. At the time, I accepted that the needs of the individual were paramount and that collectivism was, as such, highly impractical to say the least. Some years later, reading my first bit of Guevara would undo all of that line of thinking.
Anthem stuck with me as an outstanding work for some time. I remember telling other people about the magnificence of the book and even returning to the text to look for quotes and information at different points. Politics weren't so important at the time because, as I noted above, my political beliefs and opinions had already been shaped for me by eight years of Reagan (plus a few years of George HW Bush as well). But despite my favorable opinion of Anthem, I didn't bother to delve much farther into Rand after reading the book. I worked at a library for several years and books by and about Ayn Rand passed through my hands with fleeting interest. I especially remember the day we received a new book featuring a critique of Rand's life and work.
The cover was orange and it featured a picture of Rand wearing a huge brooch in the shape of a dollar sign. The contents described Rand as a champion of capitalism which was new information to me (maybe I should have paid more attention in my literature class). I was just starting to become interested in politics by that point and I was beginning to put some pieces together.
I was drawn to the liberal end of the political spectrum by the start of my undergraduate years and I began to look at Rand with some skepticism. I was still interested, though. It would be a while before I read much on Objectivism and Randian thought , but basic tenets such as Rand's emphasis on logic and reason and her rejection of metaphysics and religion seemed largely agreeable to me.
Over the years I read a little more by Rand, including a collection called . Thomai bought a super-deluxe edition of Atlas Shrugged as a gift for me one Christmas, but I am sorry to say that to date I have not succeeded in putting so much as a dent in it.
So what about music? I started my high school years listening to The Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival. By the time I started college, I had moved on to The Misfits and Sex Pistols. But certain tastes, like Kiss and Rush remained constant throughout these years. I think my interest in Rush picked up considerable around my junior year in high school after I rented a VHS copy of " ." I made a copy of the video, adding it an eclectic VHS mix tape that included the videos " " and the Exodus/Slayer/Venom show " " (I still love Venom!
...
You just can't outgrow some things no matter how crazy they are!) Anyway, seeing the Rush concert video motivated me to pick up some of the studio albums that had featured songs from the live show. " " and " " included some of my favorites like " ," " " and " .
" " " was also featured on "Exit...
Stage Left" and I really enjoyed the song with all its drama and imagery, although I found the message behind the lyrics to be somewhat perplexing. I would later come to learn that "The Trees" as well as "Closer to the Heart" were credited as featuring "Randian themes" by some. Towards the end of high school, I picked up a copy of " .
" I remember seeing television commercials for "Signals" when it was first released back in 1982. I was 9 years old back then and I thought the dog and fire hydrant scene on the cover was funny. Almost 10 years later, I was able to appreciate the album it at another level.
Rush stuck with me (or maybe I should say that I stuck with Rush) as I entered college. By this point, I had become interested in a lot of competing genres and styles and I think it was around this time that I started listening to music in cycles. By the time " " had come out, I had been away from Rush for a while. I bought a second-hand copy on cassette one night during one night during one of the "long, lonely summers" before I met Thomai. This was one of the summers before we had started to date, and it was a period in which I was very uncertain of what I was going to do and where I would go in life. I still remember the night rather well.
I remember walking to the car and putting the tape in the car's tape deck. It was kind of late and I was alone. I remember driving down what seemed like a very dark road listening to " ," the opening track from the album.
I couldn't help but identify with the lyrics as song poured out of the speakers and filled the air around me:
When we are youngWandering the face of the earthWondering what our dreams might be worthLearning that we're only immortal —For a limited time I have noticed that my interests tend to run in cycles. I have a lot of interests and a lot of "favorites." Every so often, I might read a whole lot on one particular subject and then, as quickly as my interest builds I shift to another topic.
I am like this with Russian and Chinese history, reading a spate of books on one of these subjects over the course of weeks to months, then shifting back to the other, maybe picking up another unrelated interest in between and then returning back to Russian or Chinese history for a stretch. I am the same with comics, television, sports and . I have never really looked for a pattern or a relationship to seasons or events in my life.
..It's just something I have just come to accept.
I am especially this way when it comes to music. I will often go for several weeks concentrating on work by one artist or another until my interest shifts to something else. But as quickly as the tide rolls in, it rolls out again and I'm on to something else.
For many, many years now, has been a recurring favorite in my listening rotation. About two or three times a year, I enjoy a steady diet of Rush material, from their earliest days through some of their more recent fare. If I made a soundtrack for a movie about my life, there would certainly be a few Rush songs in there representing some of the better moments thus far.
But as much as I have loved this music over the years, I have grown to have some reservations regarding the philosophy which apparently guides the band. Much of this has come in the last decade or so as I have grown older and more politically aware. Since I am currently in the midst of my semiannual Rush fixation, I thought this might be as good of a time as any to reflect a little on my affection for the music and my thoughts on the politics behind the band.
I am sure I don't have the time or patience to write a thorough exposition and analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of this rock and roll icon. I'm not up to writing an amateur dissertation here — I'm just waxing philosophical. Think of it as "blogging out loud.
" The first Rush song I ever listened to — and I mean really listened to — was "Tom Sawyer." I'm sure that's probably true for a lot of people. I was about 13 or 14 and I taped a bunch of songs off the radio, most of which were apparently rather forgettable.
I think I might have been sick and I was home from school on a weekday. I listened to the tape at least once a day for a really long time and the only songs that I really recall from that particular mix were "Tom Sawyer" and "Break on Through" by The Doors (the latter song would lead to a fascination with the doors a short time later). I mean, I am sure I had heard a lot of Rush before that particular day, but to have finally captured a song off the radio was kind of a big deal for me back then.
I was really taken by the music itself ("prog rock" is what they call it, I guess) and the lyrics — the meaning of which were not really clear to me back then (and still aren't today) — were equally captivating. 
Eventually, I got around to buying " " on cassette and soon after, I got " " for $4.
99 from the local K-Mart. In the spirit of full disclosure (and unnecessary detail), I will confess that my mom actually bought it for me and that I had promised to pay her back for it, but I never did and she seemed to forget about the debt after a relatively short time. I guess I still owe her five bucks.
Anyway, I still remember looking at the big owl on the cover of "Fly by Night" as I fiddled and fumbled with the removal of the long, plastic anti-theft casing. Whenever I bought tapes back then, I would usually spend about 20 minutes trying to pry the plastic casing off with a screwdriver before I realized that a wire-cutter would get the job done a lot faster. "Fly by Night" was such a great album.
It was years before I appreciated the grandeur of "By-Tor and the Snow Dog," (which happened after I finally listened to the live version on " " at the repeated urging of a coworker from one of my part-time jobs while I was in high school) but most of the other tracks made strong impressions on me almost immediately. I was already familiar with the title track from one of the local "album rock" (that's what they used to call "classic rock") stations and that was all well and good, but "Anthem" (more on the significance of the song's title later) and "In the End" were almost instant favorites of mine. I remember playing "Anthem" for my dad on the way to school one morning and he was less than impressed.
That's okay...
I gues it's not exactly cool for your parents to like your music. 
Years later, I had Thomai over to my house on a date and I recall sitting in my room and playing "In the End" for her on my electric guitar. I played the soft part intro and then I stood on a chair and turned on the distortion to belt out the heavy part. She was very impressed.
She is, I think, the only person whom I have ever truly impressed with my guitar playing. I wonder if she still remembers that night..
.
And then there was " ." This album changed everything in a big way.
I don't remember exactly when I bought it, but I do clearly recall listening to it back when I was working a part-time job at a fast food restaurant, so I would have been 16 or so at the time. I was already familiar with lengthy, over-the-top masterpieces thanks to Led Zeppelin albums like " " and " ." The fact that Zeppelin was able to fill an entire side of " " with just one song, a live version of "Dazed and Confused," had really impressed me.
But the Rush song "2112" — lasting a full 20 minutes and 33 seconds and comprising the entire first side of that album — really blew my mind. Of course, this particular song was a story; a true epic tale for the ages. Most people who are familiar with the album know the gist of story: A sterile and bland future world ruled by an authoritarian clique is rocked with controversy when a young man discovers a long-forgotten relic.
The relic is a guitar which the man tunes and plays happily. In his excitement, he takes the guitar before the rulers and attempts to show them how the music from the guitar can change the world for the better. The rulers dismiss the man and his discovery, and in doing so they dash his dreams for a happy life.
Deciding that he cannot live in such a cruel heartless world, the man commits suicide. A planetary war ensues in which the rule of the clique is threatened and the final act, while somewhat ambiguous, leaves plenty of room for the listener's imagination to take it from there. At 16 years old, much of the political overtones were lost on me.
The theme of the rebellious spirit striking out against feelings of alienation and repression was understandably appealing to me as an angst-filled teenager. The music on the album was a fantastic range of heavy rock, ballad-like interludes and musical narratives. Even these days, I still listen to "2112" quite often.
In fact, "Soliloquy/Grand Finale" is still one of my favorite rock pieces of all time. My first copy of "2112" was a cassette and the older Rush tapes didn't include the full liner notes that were available on LP versions. I don't have the old cassette version any more, but I am relatively certain that it didn't have any liner notes at all; just a shot of the main cover image and the track names.
It wasn't until many years later that I picked up "2112" on LP from a second hand record store on High Street in Columbus. It was then that I held the full gatefold LP cover in my hands and read the words which had gained Rush so much notoriety from some and heaps of scorn and infamy from others: If you're old enough to remember the late 1980's/early 1990's (and you were in the U.S.
at the time), then you probably remember the public access television explosion. Local public access channels were jammed with amateur producers and "talent" of all sorts, covering subject matter from the obscure to the mundane. The public access sensation was more or less the basis for the film "Wayne's World" and because of the success of the film, public access cable gained a shred of credibility for a very short period of time.
Hell, I even joined a friend in taking the "Community Producer" course at the local cable access channel back in 1992 or so in hopes of launching a comedy show of sorts. Thankfully, the show never made it out of the "concept" phase which was probably a good thing because most of our "concepts" were pretty bad. But somewhere there is an awful, awful public access show from 1992 that features my name in the credits as a camera operator.
It was my final project for the "Community Producer" course. Don't bother looking for it.
 There's still a bit of bad programming on the local public access channels where we live. I suppose this is also true in bigger cities as well, but I am sure that it is not at the level that it was 15 years ago. As far as our current selection of public access shows in Dayton goes, you can choose from a terrible show on wine-tasting or incredibly bad, boring shows on local politics. Occasionally, there is a 1970's "documentary" on the Illuminati or some other kind of conspiracy theory. These shows are always fun in a creepy sort of way. The local access channels also feature dreadfully boring shows about local city attractions and history, most of which feature embarrassingly bad "talent" and poor audio and video. I could provide the names of the shows I am thinking of, but I don't really want to give them any press. Most of these studio shows are pretty formulaic, featuring the same desk, chairs, curtain and scenery ("scenery" typically refers to 1 plastic plant). And really.. .it's like death to try and watch more than 5 minutes of them. The call-in shows are really the most entertaining of the bad shows, because there's a least a little suspense in waiting for a crank caller to curse on air or say something really disgusting. It becomes annoying when the on-air "talent" try to stay ahead of the callers and hit them with one-liners before hanging up on them. The absolute power of controlling a telephone (with real, live callers) becomes just too much for these guys to handle.
There are some good things to have come from public access television in the U.S. I suppose my favorites are probably pretty obscure. I have previously mentioned my affection for the show , which I think has something of a cult following in the Midwest. There's also Pirate TV which I think is produced out of Dayton' s . This is really one of my favorite shows on television. Each episode is about an hour's worth of oddities which include music videos, cult film movie trailers, commercials and clips from long-forgotten shows of the 1980's, toy commercials, clips from Japanese game shows and all kinds of other weird stuff. I am completely serious when I say that I think that Pirate TV is one of the only shows on television worth watching. I wish they had a web site or that there was some kind of info somewhere on the web to share, but all I can offer are my rave reviews.
 | | Nikos Konstantinidis: Protector of the good, |
In the U.S., I think interest in public access television is definitely waning due to the rise of blogging and YouTube. But my friend Panos has shared that Greece is fortunate to boast a bumper crop of vintage public access-like craziness. Consider the work of , who believes that the DNA of Greeks is different from the DNA of other humans. He also believes that in 2012 the Greeks and their ancient culture will dominate the world, giving peace to all the living creatures with the help of something called the . Awesome. Then there's the work of religious oddballs like and far-right wingers like the . seems to be a bit nutty as well. But it seems that takes the cake. Apparently he was bitten by a stray dog in 2006 and he used his television show to declare that the attack was orchestrated by the Antichrist. Now who wouldn't be fascinated by this guy? And he's got the backing of the Church — or at least a representative of the Church — in the esteemed Father Modestos. Christos kai Panagia!
It's good to know that Greece has picked up where the U.S. left off when it comes to televised insanity! 
Thanks to Panos for sharing his Wikipedia articles.
Recommended viewing from YouTube
Dimosthenis Liakopoulos
Anestis Keramidas They say that admitting your problem is the first step on the road to recovery. So here I go: I am in the throes of a powerful obession with professional wrestling. I have mentioned this , noting that the Memphis-based and Lexington-based promotions were tremendous sources of entertainment to me in my pre-teen years. Since then, my interest has been mostly sporadic — until now, that is. After leaving Lexington, I watched WWF now and again and I know I spent at least one summer during college renting and watching all the Wrestlemania and WWF videos that were available up to that point. After college, my interest became even more fleeting and I would usually limit myself to watching some old-school videos about once a year for a couple weeks at a time. But this time, it's different. For about four months now, I've been enjoying a steady diet of pro wrestling every night after work and on the weekends. It started back when I snagged a set of 5 ICW DVDs from an online auction. Then I ended up watching a new installment of Smackdown! one Friday night and I became totally hooked. Since then, I have been watching Smackdown!, RAW, and ECW with some regularity and I have been catching up on the recent WWE pay-per-view events by picking up old DVDs of the shows at local secondhand stores. I even went out in a level 2 snow emergency to pick up a couple of DVDs a few weeks ago. I'm even planning on catching this year's big show, Wrestlemania 23. It's really that bad, folks. I don't want to give anyone the impression that I'm really proud of all this. There's plenty to be embarrassed about. WWE isn't really your simple, light-hearted fake violence any more. It used to be that the arenas in Kentucky and Memphis would fill up with pre-teens who paid $1 or $2 admission to see hours of big match-ups; just fight, after fight, after fight. But these days, it's a completely different industry. All the salacious, over-the-top story lines along with the marketing, hype, sex and gore in today's WWE shows are really something of an annoyance to me. But the great thing about watching them on DVR/DVD is that I can just skip to the good matches and cut out all the crap in between. A good match between a and a that includes some acrobatics, some bad acting and some cartoon violence is all I'm really after at the end of the day. At this point, I feel compelled to share a little about my favorites from all these years of watching pro wrestling. It will be a little easier if I make two categories here: "Old School" refers to everything before the "WWE 'Attitude'" era (which I missed completely, by the way — No matter; "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Goldberg and Mick Foley were never really interesting to me). "New Stuff" is basically a group that includes stuff from 2003 to now, as material from this era seems to be the easiest to find in secondhand stores right now. Lawler was the man when I was a kid. As a face, he ruled the CWA territory for years, engaging in some of the most memorable feuds of the day with folks like Jimmy Hart, Bill Dundee, Randy Savage, and Nick Bockwinkel. His old matches with Bockwinkel are still a lot of fun to watch. Lawler was a lot more exciting as a face than he was as a heel. I got to see Lawler wrestle at Rupp Arena in Lexington in the early 1980's. I still have the program, but I don't recall much about the event. : Mr. Perfect had one of my favorite "finishing moves" of all time: The "Perfect-plex" ( ). I got to see him wrestle the King of the Ring in 1993 and everyone around me was laughing at me because I kept yelling "Perfect-plex" him NOW!î Mr. Perfect's feud with Ric Flair (one of the best wrestling "bad guys" ever) and Razor Ramon led to one of my favorite tag-team matches at all time in the 1992 Survivor Series. Perfect was paired with "Macho Man" Randy Savage and although the match ended in a disqualification, it was still great to see Perfect escape Ric Flair's " " by nailing him with a chair. I just caught an old match between Hennig and Nick Bockwinkel for the AWA Title. The match was featured on the " " DVD and it was the highlight of an otherwise crappy compilation. : Savage was a huge personality it Lexington before he ever uttered "Oooh YEAH" on a WWF show. I've already said this a few times, but his big steel cage match with really made a huge impression on me. I still remember how it felt to see him miss that huge elbow drop off the top of the steel cage. That was, of course, back when I thought it was all real! His WWF years were pretty good, but if you've never seen Savage's early years, it's worth checking out. One DVD compilation features a one-time pairing with Jerry Lawler in which the pair go up against King Kong Bundy and Rick Rude. It's a classic! : I guess he's not wrestling right now, but I just recently caught his ladder match against Christian on the DVD. It was amazing! : I guess I am still not sure if he was a face or a heel in his feud. with Kane. I think he's a heel right now, but he's still fun to watch. Looking forward to that "Money in the Bank" ladder match at Wrestlemania! : What a great bad guy! If I was to categorize wrestlers by philosophy, I'd rate him as something of a nihilist. : Hey! Shouldn't Shawn be listed under "Old School? ' I mean, is he still around these days? Yep. And still pretty exciting, too. A long time ago, a friend of mine explained that pro wrestling — like all great stories — was about two things: suffering and redemption. Kind of an interesting take on it, eh? Don't worry, folks... Sooner or later, my fascination with pro wrestling is bound to subside again for a little while. Until then, I'll just enjoy the ride. At least I'm not into NASCAR, y'know?
Keywords: High School, Ayn Rand, Ladder Match, Old School, Ric Flair, Community Producer, Bank Ladder, Cold War, Pirate Tv, Bank Ladder Match
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