Can't get off the couch
Man, a sunny Seattle summer Saturday beckons, it is almost noon ... and I can't get off the couch. There's so much on TV right now from the good to the bad-but-entertaining, I can't make myself get up.
*TV Land has a Good Times marathon today, and they're already up to the episode where J.J. gets tangled up in a gang war and gets shot. How JR getting shot on Dallas gets remembered as the premiere television shooting of all-time instead of this cliffhanger is beyond me. Even better, they were only in the second season when they ran out of ideas and had to resort to this sort of plotline gimmick.
*NFL Network is running through all the 2004 half-hour team highlight shows today. First one that I stumbled on was the Colts. Funny thing is, their highlight film starts in week two. They must have lost the tape of Game 1. And after approximately 18 minutes of playoff highlights against the Broncos (vintage Peyton Manning -- rolling to about six touchdowns against a suspect defense on turf under a dome), they spent about four seconds on the loss to the Pats before seguing back to "but it didn't detract from a great season blah blah blah ..."
I've been meaning to mention for this awhile now -- The NFL Network is absolutely phenomenal. There's always something worth watching. And I've only had satellite TV since May, so I've been watching during the slowest time of the year for the NFL, so I'm sure it is killer during the season.
*And most importantly, CMLL Lucha Libre is on Galavision right now. High-flying little guy Mistico, Dave's World's favorite luchador, is taking a fierce beating in a six-man tag team match, and the rudos (Lucha for "bad guys") just went and ripped up his mask, which in Lucha is a sign of disrespect roughly equivalent to spitting on someone's mother.
And ... oh man. Low blow, right in front of the referee. Mistico's team wins by DQ. Small consolation to Mistico, who is writhing around on the mat. Mistico grabs the mic and calls out the guy who hits him and sounds pissed. Keeps saying "mano a mano," so I'm guessing he's challenging the perp to a one-on-one match.
These six-man matches are generally conducted under captains rules. Basically, it is a 2-ouf-of-3 falls match. Each team has a captain. You win a fall by either defeating the captain or defeating both of the remaining members of the other team, meaning a match could take up to nine pins/submissions/DQs to decide. And, there are two referees in the ring, both of whom seem to be vaguely siding with one team without being overt about it.
It sounds like a gigantic cluster, but somehow it all works. The concept wouldn't fly in American wrestling, where fans basically expect someone to get shot out of a cannon every five minutes or so, but it is entertaining nonetheless.
Either way, whenever a fall ends in the non-captains getting pinned, 99% of the time the pins/submissions tend to happen simultaneously or within seconds of each other, which is just one of those implausible wrestling things you have to accept, like "why do they always bounce off the ropes and come bounding back towards their opponent?" It just is. Similarly, the spike piledriver (like the Undertaker's) is considered Lucha's ultimate forbidden move. Automatic disqualification, and they bring out a stretcher and immobilze the victim and all that. In American wrestling, a spike piledriver doesn't guarantee a three-count. Maybe American wrestlers just spend more time in the gym working on their neck muscles to minimize the impact of such a devestating move.
So most of the luchadors come out to the ring to some variation of salsa music or patriotic sounding songs. But one wrestler just entered to Whole Lotta Love. That was random. And his name is El Terrible, too. I'm not making that up.
*Oh and hey, Fox is giving us the Mariners and Indians today. Very exciting. Steve Lyons just referred to Edgar Martinez as "the ancient Mariner." No sign of Scooter yet.
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