- The reason for the subtitle this week, "walking," is that I've been doing a lot of it over the past couple of weeks. My car is working even though it isn't in the greatest condition (and hasn't been really since I've had it). It's just that there's been some really good weather recently and I wanted to get out of the apartment but just didn't feel like driving that much. So, I started walking to some places. I did have to walk to the bus for something about a week ago (I'll get to that in the next blurb), but other than that I walked around the neighborhood and elsewhere, probably about 10 miles worth of walking, just for the heck of it. I'm probably gonna do more of it because I'm finding I enjoy it...as long as the weather cooperates.
- A week ago Friday, I went to my first Total Non-Stop Action (TNA) Wrestling event down at the Ice Haus next to Nationwide Arena. It was a house show (meaning it wasn't a televised event) and I took the bus to get there because I didn't want to park my car downtown (I hate parking down there on weekends and I especially hate having to pay so much just to do so). I took some notes from my time at the event which I'm going to share here, in bold and not necessarily in chronological order:
- I arrived at the arena around 5 PM, but had to wait until 6:30 to get into the building. I talked with a lot of fans outside the arena while I waited. Don West came out to hard sell some picture books for talent to autograph for $20. Boy, that's expensive.
- Before the show, I got to take a picture with TNA referee Earl Hebner. For those of you who don't know, he was involved in the Montreal Screw-Job for WWE back in 1997 (look it up on Google for more details). It became a minor point of interest during the show.
- From my seat I was able to get some pictures of the entranceway for the wrestlers to the ring as well as the ring itself.
- I don't think there's a bad spot anywhere in the Ice Haus to watch the action from. Guess I got lucky there as well as a lot of other people.
- It was almost a full house there, with some seats empty behind me, but for the most part the house was PACKED. That's pretty impressive for just a house show.
- TNA Knockouts Velvet Sky, Taylor Wilde, and Sarita are absolutely GORGEOUS in person and look much better live than how they come off on television.
- One of the matches was an 4-way X Division matchup between Homicide, Jay Lethal, Shannon Moore, and Douglas Williams. Jay Lethal was doing a lot of Ric Flair impersonations during the match which were absolutely hilarious.
- I'm noticing that the wrestling action and the moves in particular seem more crisp than on TV. I would have thought that the opposite would have held true. I guess times are a-changin'.
- TNA main-eventer AJ Styles seems to be watching the early matches from the balcony area with a small child. I think it was his son. They both seemed to be getting into the show. Styles seemed really into the matches from what I could tell. He must really be a great dad to want to share his passion for pro wrestling with his son.
- Abyss is now in full heel mode, teaming with Matt Morgan and Eric Young against Jeff Jarrett, Mr. Anderson (formerly Mr. Kennedy in WWE), and Kurt Angle in a 6-man tag team match. Kurt Angle is REALLY over here (meaning he's getting a ton of cheers coming his way)...I guess people in Columbus just love the guy.
- After the 6-man tag match, Jeff Jarrett, a wrestler and also the founder of TNA Wrestling, announced to the fans that today (June 18, 2010) is the exact 8th year anniversary of TNA's founding. Now, that's pretty cool that I got to go on the company's actual anniversary even though it's normally done at the Slammiversary pay-per-views every year.
- Throughout the show and before and after, Don West has really been hard selling the merchandise, especially during intermission.
- There were two official autograph sessions for fans before and during the show. The one to get Jeff Jarrett's autograph before the show was LONG, but the one for the Beautiful People (Velvet Sky and Madison Rayne) at intermission was LONGER. TNA is more popular here than I imagined.
- For the record, Rob Terry is a HUGE man.
- The main event was AJ Styles vs. Jeff Hardy. Jay Lethal, Mr. Anderson, Rob Terry and Douglas Williams came out to watch the match in the balcony with AJ's son. Jeff Hardy was also really over with the crowd and had a MONSTER pop. They tore it up during their match with a lot of high flying action and a lot of ring psychology being used. It was an awesome match.
- After the show, I was able to get my picture taken with Orlando Jordan, Sarita, and Douglas Williams. Williams and Jordan in particular were really cool to talk to. They had a $20-a-pop picture session with Jeff Hardy in the ring but I skipped out on that.
- Jeremy Borash, the ring announcer, suggested that a pay-per-view event for TNA might be in the future for Columbus in the next year or so.
- The days after the show were rather interesting for me, physically-speaking. I yelled so much at the TNA show that I had lost my voice at times for several days afterward. Mostly it was scratchy but I had to stop talking to rest my vocal cords. It feels like in the past couple of days my voice seems back to normal but keeping quiet was a chore at times. On top of that, I tried to use a Breathe Right strip for the first time last week. I got a sample in the mail so I tried it. Within an hour of putting it on, my nose started running and my right eye got extremely itchy and red. Now either my sinuses started to drain because of the Breathe Right strips or I'm allergic to said strips. I'm guessing the former, but either way I'm not sure I'm gonna be using Breathe Right in the future.
- I did catch the WWE's PPV last Sunday, Fatal 4-Way. There were a lot of surprises and title changes and they furthered the NXT Season 1 program they've been doing over the past couple of weeks. However, I felt sorta blah about the show itself. It may be due to the experience I had at the TNA show or that WWE relies too much on their informercial-like programming, but if WWE keeps going on automatic like they have been, TNA may catch them sooner rather than later.
- I also caught bits of two award shows last night, the Daytime Emmys and the BET Awards. The Emmys were a vast improvement over last year's broadcast, but the BETs just blew it away. The one thing I can take from the award shows this weekend is that it seems like Chris Brown looks like he's finally getting to where he needs to be. He had a blowaway performance at the BETs in honoring Michael Jackson that will probably be talked about for a long time to come. He really, REALLY screwed up doing what he did to Rihanna last year and what he did should never have happened, period. As horrendous as it was, it does seem like it's time to move on from it and go forward because life goes on. Personally I don't know if I can ever look at him or his music in the same way after what went down last year, but he is too talented to not be appreciated for what good music he has done so far. I just hope he keeps up on doing the right thing from now on.
- As a rule I don't regularly push or sell people on any service or product in my blogs, but I'm making an exception here today. A few weeks ago I discovered this website called Swagbucks. It is a site where people can earn "Swagbucks" toward prizes and stuff just by searching the Internet through their site, taking daily polls, shopping major websites through them, and taking random surveys. This is a completely legitimate site and people have earned Swagbucks for things ranging from posters to gift cards (Paypal, iTunes, Amazon, Macy's, etc.) to Nintendo Wii's, 80 Gig PS3's and 32-inch LCD televisions. They're partnered with other websites (WWE and TNA come to mind) with prizes you can obtain through using Swagbucks earned on their sites for some of their specific products. I've been on there regularly and I hope to earn some swag, so to speak, through this site. If you're interested in learning more about it or maybe signing up for it, I have placed a link in the column to the right underneath the links to my hangouts so that you can check it out for yourself. I do want to state now that it might take a long time to get some of the high-end prizes, but I believe the effort might be worth it. Oh, BTW, it is free.
- I found a couple other interesting things during my recent web surfing (don't worry, I'm not selling anything here). The first is a site called Uncyclopedia, which is like Wikipedia if it were done by comedians and sarcastic people. Type in "Ohio" in the search box and look at what it says about Ohio...it's rather humorous and interesting, to say the least. The other is something I found on the Huffington Post written by Paulina Porizkova regarding her viewpoints on the subject of fame. It's an interesting read on the nature of celebrity according to someone who's been there and done that.
- Before I wind this down, I want to talk about the upcoming holiday, the Independence Day/July 4th weekend. I'm sure most of you already have some kind of plans set for this next weekend. In Columbus, Red, White, and BOOM! takes place on Friday, July 2nd and there will be fireworks (the biggest in the Midwest, they claim) around 10 PM. Last year I went there by myself and I left before the fireworks started. This year I want to watch the fireworks. For those of you who don't have any solid plans I invite you to join me this year. Seeing as how parking downtown is going to be an enormous pain in the butt, I think taking the bus downtown and back to watch the fireworks would be the best idea. I'm getting on the bus in front of Emporium Square on the Cleveland Ave. side (Emporium Square is at the corner of Cleveland Ave and Dublin-Granville Rd/Rt. 161 on the northeast side of Columbus). If anybody wants to join me, you can park at Emporium Square and join me on the #1 Cleveland Ave. bus going downtown and back. Bus trips are $1.75 each way, but it'll be easier to get in and out on a bus than in a car on Friday night. I really don't want to go by myself but I will if I have to. I haven't been out with any of my friends for about a month now and I want to get out and do something, so I thought this might be that something. If any of you want to join me, give me a buzz on Facebook or give me a call.
- Song on repeat: "Say Say Say" by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. Can you believe it's been one whole year since Michael Jackson passed away? I can't believe it myself, but it is what it is. I picked this song in particular because, according to Billboard, this song is the most popular Michael Jackson song ever, beating out "Billie Jean" and even "Thriller." No, I can't explain it either, but in any case I like the song and I wanted to note the first anniversary of the King of Pop's passing in a meaningful way.
- SLP to the following: Ernest P., Dave, Jay, Al, Holly, Daryl, Betsy (congrats on winning an Emmy), Ernest W., Todd and Laura (congrats on your newborn, Jackson), Mike T., Steve (happy b-day), and Art (happy b-day).
I'm writing this VERY late at night because I can't sleep right now and I had a lot to cover. I hope that people want to take me up on my idea for Red, White, and BOOM!, but in any case if I don't see you or hear from you before the holiday, I want to wish everybody Happy Independence Day. Until next time, folks. Take care and God Bless.
DJ
