The Adventures of Sinbad: Episode 1 ReCrap

Nothing says "late 90s" like a shitty low-budget action fantasy TV show. The hammy performances. The cheesy costumes. The horribly choreographed fight scenes. The sub-PlayStation-caliber CGI. The essence of the halcyon days of my youth.

I know a lot of people look back fondly on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: The Warrior Princess, but that's because those shows actually had some talent behind them. I'll still catch the occasional Hercules rerun on Boom and enjoy the hell out of it. Even their less successful Action Pack siblings - Cleopatra 2525 (a strong contender for worst theme song of all time) and the criminally underrated Bruce Campbell vehicle Jack of All Trades - had their charms.

But what really brings me spinning like a chakram back to that magical era of Edgardo Alfonzo at second base are the really crappy specimens. BeastMaster. Highlander: The Series. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (exceptionally foxy female cast notwithstanding). Mortal Kombat: Konquest. Tarzan: The Epic Adventures. And of course, the absolute shittiest of them all.

The Adventures of Sinbad! 

The Wrestlemania 29 Drinking Game

I've always said that if you're going to watch pro wrestling, it helps to be either drunk or on something. So if you're looking to add a little more excitement to your Wrasslemania 29 party this Sunday, I've got you covered. 

Presenting: The 29 Drinking Rules for Wrestlemania 29!

1) Drink for all 2 counts.
2) 3 second drink for a 3 count.
3) The Hogan vs. Andre Rule: Drink for a classic body slam.
4) The Ric Flair Rule: Drink for foul play (grabbing the tights, feet on the ropes, thumb to the eye, weapons, interference, anything Flair would do).
5) Drink if someone executes their finishing move (or their opponent's).
6) Do a shot for a new champion.
7) Do a shot if someone gets slammed through the announce table.
8) Do a shot if someone turns heel or face. Double shot if Cena turns heel.
9) Waterfall for any bloodshed.
10) The Macho Man Memorial Rule: Drink for outrageous ring gear.
11) Drink for a botch.
12) Drink for all top rope moves.
13) Drink for all DDTs.
14) Drink every time someone smashes into the ring post or ring steps.
15) Drink for a ref bump.
16) Drink for pyrotechnics.
17) Drink for a celebrity guest.
18) Drink for old wrestlers.
19) Waterfall for a shitty backstage comedy bit.
20) Waterfall for a live musical performance.
21) The Edge's Tears Memorial Rule: Do a shot if one of the WWE Hall of Fame inductees cries.
22) Drink for any Wrestlemania cliche uttered by the commentary team ("The Grandest Stage/Grandaddy of Them All," "The Showcase of the Immortals," "Bigger than the Superbowl," etc.).
23) Do a shot if Vince McMahon makes an appearance.
24) Do a shot if JR makes an appearance.
25) Do a shot if Brock Lesnar breaks someone's arm.
26) Drink for racism.
27) Drink if the New York crowd resorts to vulgarity.
28) Waterfall if it starts raining or snowing during the show.
29) Drugs must be done during CM Punk's entrance (If you don't do drugs, do a shot). 

Follow these rules and you'll probably be blackout drunk before the main event. Because who wants to remember shelling out 70 bucks for pro wrestling, right? Enjoy!

A Primo Page from Breakfast of Champions

Take a wild guess what book I just finished reading. I'd been meaning to get around to it ever since I found a second edition copy for a buck at the Salvation Army near my old school. That was a buck well spent. 

Quick warning - I majored in English at said school, so I could easily bullshit forever on the myriad awesome little things about Breakfast of Champions. But I'll spare you and keep this short and sweet.

Known for its spot-on observations of human nature, loose self-aware style that makes no attempt to hide the wizard behind the curtain, and a whole hell of a lot of cartoonish illustrations, casual racism, and dick size stats, this is an easy recommendation for anyone who likes their literature to kick ass and shatter expectations. Read it! It's got a funny drawing of an asshole in it!

But the point of this post isn't for me to wax philosophic about why drawings of assholes make great literature. (They just do.) The point is that I had this idea to try and sell people on reading a great book by pulling about a page's worth of awesomeness from it and putting it on the ol' blog here.

Faces of the Pro Wrestling Heel # 2 - Showing Ass

There are about a million things that can add up to a great pro wrestling villain - being foreign, scaring children, punches to the junk - but there seems to be almost universal agreement that the one thing that makes a great heel is a willingness to "show ass."

"Showing ass." This is one of those expressions you come across somewhat often if you tend to read a bunch of nerds on the internet arguing back and forth about fake fighting, and yet there aren't any sources that I could find that offer a concrete definition of what exactly the concept means. That's probably because - like most of those insidery wrestling terms - the meaning of the phrase was likely only known to wrestlers and those in the business, until the popularity of pro wrestling exploded around thirty years ago, and these terms began being tossed around by fans who want to sound like they know what they're talking about even when they probably don't. 

Granted, I could easily fall into that same category, but my attempts to give the term a concrete definition have more of an academic basis - if we're going to talk about acting like a big enough asshole so that thousands of people will boo you and want to see you get your ass kicked in an academic way, we must define our terms, people. And this is a simple one to define, really - basically "showing ass" means if you're going to be a convincing asshole, you have to be willing to go above and beyond to look like one. 

Take, for example, Ric Flair. Yes, most of the time he acted like the coolest motherfucker on the planet, but even he wasn't above dropping to his knees and begging Sting to stop beating the shit out of him in pretty much every match they ever had (especially if it left a window open for a swift thumb to the eye). 

The reason for this is so that good guy Sting seems way cooler than Flair, even though Flair rocks jewel encrusted bath robes, massive pinky rings, and a beautiful feathered platinum mane. That's the essence of showing ass.

In fact, some of the greatest pro graps villains have at times indulged in a somewhat rare bit of self-aware meta interpretation of this trope, in which the bad guy will literally show his ass during a match. Ric Flair himself loves doing this. What better way to look foolish than to be running around with your bare ass out in front of an arena full of people and millions watching at home?

To better illustrate this phenomenon of literally showing ass, let us study this classic instance from the main event of Wrestlemania XIV, in which Shawn Michaels shows us how it's done.

Faces of the Pro Wrestling Heel # 1 - Screaming Red Velour

The Vault welcomes you to its new series celebrating the pro wrestling heel (the greatest gig in all of entertainment) through the use of hilarious out-of-context pictures. And we're kicking things off with an entry from The Miz and his slick Zap Brannigan style red velour jacket.
 

#1: Be sleazy as fuck, wear a preposterously stylish suit.

#2: Bluster directly into the camera. 

#3: Get laid out by the good guy, making sure the bottoms of your shoes match your ridiculous suit jacket for maximum comedic effect.

This has been Faces of the Pro Wrestling Heel # 1. Shoutout to MGFanJay of the awesomely old school Death Valley Driver Video Review Forums for these fantastic screencaps I stole.

The Top 10 Questions That Need to Be Answered In Season 5 of Breaking Bad

The fifth (and apparently final) season of Breaking Bad - the best show on television, shut up about Big Bang Theory or The Walking Dead or whatever the hell film waste you think is on its level - begins tonight. And if you're a fan of the show, odds are it's all you've been able to think about or talk about for the past two weeks at least.

That's because the story so far of Walter White's transformation into Heisenberg, the ruthless meth kingpin, has left us with a whole mess of unanswered questions. And Breaking Bad is a show that pretty much never introduces a story thread without resolving it. I mean, this is a show that had Walt spend a good portion of Season 2 building a crawl space in the family utility closet pretty much just so we could have this great shot in the third to last episode of Season 4. 

And let's not forget the other slow-burning gems that paid off big in the end, like the pink teddy bear in the pool, Walt's second cell phone, Skyler and "I fucked Ted" Beneke's relationship, and Hector Salamanca the kamikaze wheelchair pilot, among others. 

Because of that tendency to make everything significant, every little detail that has come up over the course of the first four seasons can seem to the obsessed Breaking Bad fan like it will be the key to the eventual downfall of Walt, Jessie, and everyone around them (because you just know they're all gonna go down in the end, and hard). With that in mind, I've compiled the following list of unanswered questions that I believe will factor into the final season in a major way.

Oh, and of course - if you haven't watched the first four seasons of the show, there are massive spoilers ahead, so don't say I didn't warn you.

The Vault Seriously 100% For Real Mourns The Macho Man Randy Savage. Am I Super Sad Right Now? OHHH YEAHHHH! :(

If you were a kid (or even alive) during the 1980s, you lost a hero today. The Macho Man Randy Savage has died. Madness! Randy Savage was one of the greatest pro wrestlers of all time pro wrestling made flesh and the real-life, non-Dos-Equis-commercial version of The Most Interesting Man in the World. He has been a fake fighter, shilled beef jerky, released a rap album, been in the Danger Zone, was Space Ghost's grandfather, got bitten by a snake on national television, and battled Spider-Man in a steel cage, among many other things few mortal men would dare dream about. And yet apparently, despite appearances, he was simply that - a mortal man. There will never be a more bombastically awesome human being on the face of this planet, and he will be truly missed.

Apocalypse predictors: I hope you get your wish in a few months (or tomorrow, whenever the current trendy doomsday prediction happens to be), because frankly a world without The Macho Man Randy Savage is a lot less worth living in. And if the world doesn't end - well we all know who to thank for sacrificing himself to save us.