R.I.P. Bam Bam Bigelow

The wrestling world lost yet another of it's own at a far too young age when Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow was found dead in his apartment a few days ago.

I was saddened to hear of his passing this weekend, b/c while Bam Bam was never one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, I always respected him. The guy was like 350 pounds (if not more) and was able to do dropkicks, moonsaults and all other sorts of athletic moves guys his size shouldn't have been able to do.

Most of you may remember Bam Bam as the guy who fought former NFL superstar, Lawrence Taylor in the main event of Wrestlemania XI. But I remember him mostly for his classic matches against guys like Bret Hart, Taz and Rob Van Dam (let's also not forget his massacre of Spike Dudley).

But I actually have a personal story about Bigelow. Kayfabe in wrestling was broken to me for the first time by Bigelow. Kayfabe, to all those who don't know is basically: Wrestlers obviously pretend to hate each other for television, and they are supposed to keep that up in the presence of fans. But sometimes wrestlers "break" kayfabe, by hanging out with their "hated rivals" in public.

I was about 12-13 years old, and the WWE (then the WWF) held a wrestling show over at the gymnasium of Mount Saint Michael HS in the Bronx. My dad took me, my sis and my grandfather and we had a fun time [As a side note: I also remember this night well b/c one of the matches featured a young Triple H (then known as Hunter Hearst Helmsley) battling Doink the Clown. This was memorable b/c during the match, me and my sister started screaming at Triple H to do certain moves to Doink to beat him up, and Triple H actually looked our way and started to do the moves we were screaming out at him. That was just very cool and fun.]

But I digress. The point of the story was that the main event of the show was Bam Bam Bigelow vs King Kong Bundy. The match ended in either a Double-DQ or Double Count-Out (I forget), but then it became a tag team match when King Kong Bundy teamed with Mabel (you may now know him as Viscera) to fight Bigelow and Adam Bomb. These guys all kicked each other's asses all over the gym, and in the end Bam Bam and Adam Bomb won.

So after the event was over, we stuck around for awhile to get autographs from some of the wrestlers, and just as we got into my dad's van to leave we see Bam Bam Bigelow and King Kong Bundy get into the same car and drive off together! This was shocking to me, b/c these guys just beat the daylights out of each other and now they were friends giving each other a ride?!?

Then my dad explained to me "see, it's like I told you. Wrestling is fake (that I was aware of), these guys might be good friends in real life. They both live in Jersey, so Bam Bam is probably just giving Bundy a ride home. They don't really hate each other like on TV and probably hang out to get beers after the shows (this was a sort of revelation to me)."

So from that point on, I knew for sure that everything on the wrestling shows was fake (not just the pre-determined outcomes and stuff). This let me see wrestling in a whole new (and better) way. And I have Bam Bam Bigelow to thank for that.

So R.I.P. Bam Bam, you will be missed.

Catching up with Christmas and more

I skipped a bunch of stuff in order to get to my year-end awards, but I do want to catch up on some stuff that happened in December, so I'm just gonna jump right in.

The first full week of December I bought a few DVDs. I got Pirates of the Caribbean 2, 24- Season 5, and Animaniacs Vol 2. I purchased Pirates 2 specifically for the long college trip we were going on the next day. We were taking students from Felix's schools to the University of Connecticut, so we needed some good long movies to watch for the ride back and forth. So we watched Pirates going up, and X-Men: The Last Stand coming back (I brought both the movies).

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That weekend (specifically Sat. Dec 9th) we had Ariana's b-day party at the Brasiero Churrascaria on Central Ave. A bunch of people came (me, Ariana, Greg, Jessii, Henry, Alan, Phil, Ketrin, Pete, James, Joe, Patty and her friend from Austria), and we all had a really fun time. The food was excellent as always (actually it might have been even better this time). They just kept constantly bombarding us with food, it was great! My favorites were the chicken, pork and turkey wrapped in bacon.

And turkey wasn't the only meat wrapped in bacon this time! They had beef, and I think something else as well. And we all loved every bacon wrapped food so much, that for about a week (or longer for some), a bunch of us altered the names of our myspace accounts to "[Insert name here] wrapped in bacon" (so now you know the explanation to that in case u were wondering, lol).

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The following week was my final week of classes, so I was working on a huge paper, a take home exam (which was harder than I expected considering it was take-home), and a few workshop outlines. But I finished everything, and just to update everyone, I found out this week, that I got an A in both my classes! So go me!

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My aunt (Diana), her husband (Ivan) and her son, Mitchell arrived in NY that Saturday (Dec. 16th) and I picked them up from the airport. I spent a good amount of time with them the next few weeks. Mitchell is ten years old, and he loves to play video games, so we got along great as usual, lol. While they visited, we did bowling, went to the Palisades, and various other things, so that was cool.

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On the day right before vacation started for us (Dec. 21st) I went to a Christmas office party at a co-worker's house in NJ. I wasn't thrilled to go at first, but once I got there I had a great time. Felix brought all of his kids, and they all love me, so it was fun to hang out with them. And Sigrid brought her baby daughter, so everyone enjoyed having her around as well.

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The next night was Kristen & Gaetano's Holiday Cocktail party at Kristen's place. Tons of people showed up, so we all had a really fun time. Thanks once again to the both of them for being such great hosts!

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That week I also decided to return the DVD Recorder I had bought on Black Friday, b/c it didn't have the functions that I wanted. But while I was at Circuit City I bought another DVD burner, but this time for the computer. Then I went to Bestbuy to buy a "PC to TV" adapter, so that way I could edit my own DVDs to the way I wanted.

[Sadly I just returned the "PC to TV" adapter yesterday, as it did not fully work on my laptop. So now I need to decide whether or not to keep the DVD Recorder... we'll see].

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Christmas Eve was a good time. We hosted it at my house, and had my grandparents, and my aunt's family come over. We had a great dinner, watched some TV and played some games- including me showing them the Wii, which they all got a kick out of.

As for what I got for Christmas, it was a pretty laid back year this year, as I had bought a lot of stuff for myself during Black Friday. The highlight of my gifts was that Ariana got me both Guitar Hero 1 & 2, so that was awesome (and like I mentioned in my year-end post, I've been playing the games non-stop).

I got a Nintendo DS and a few games for Ariana. But we've both gotten a good amount of use out of it, mostly b/c one of the games I got her was Brain Age, so we're both having a lot of fun trying to outdo one another in that game.

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On Wed Dec. 27th, some of the crew met up to go to Wacky Wednesday at New Roc. It was me, Ariana, Jordan, Maryann, and James. Then Kristen & Gaetano met up with us for the bowling portion of the night. Goombah stopped by briefly as well.

The night started off a bit slow though, as we made the mistake of trying to go for the Go-Karts first. That ended up a disaster and cost us about an hour of our time, which sucked. But things picked up after that, we had a fun game of bowling. I tried to incorporate what I learned through the bowling game in Wii Sports (b/c I had been kicking ass and had even bowled a 206 in that game just a few days earlier). But alas, the game doesn't translate over well in real life, and I was absolutely terrible for the first few frames. I did a bit better as the game went along, but I was so far behind that I had no shot of catching up.

After that, we hit up the arcade. We played a ton of games, and we ended the night off with a round of Lazer Tag (which went well for some of us, but not for all). Me and Jordan kicked ass in the game, but sadly Ariana's gun broke during the second game, so that sucked.

But in the end we all had a good time, and we know how to better "work the system" to get the best bang for our buck the next time we do it.

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That Saturday night, Patty & Joe hosted a movie night at their place. A bunch of the crew showed up (Me, Ariana, Marisa, Henry, Ashley, Jordan, Maryann, Gaetano, & Kristen). We went "old school" with our first movie selection as we watched The Goonies (which, believe it or not some of our group had NEVER seen), and then we went to stupid comedy with Team America: World Police. So it was a pretty fun night.

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The next day was New Year's Eve, as well as my mom's birthday. So we celebrated with my family throughout the day, including having dinner at my grandparent's house, and then for our New Years celebration we went to the huge party being hosted by Jordan & Maryann at Jordan's place. About 16 people went, and we had an awesome time. We played Karaoke Revolution and Singstar throughout the night (I did pretty well in all the games, and even joked around singing The Darkness- I Believe in a Thing Called Love). Jordan & Maryann also cooked dinner for everyone, and it was absolutely delicious. We then rang in the New Year and a few hours later, as the group began to wind down, I mentioned to Jordan that I had brought my Wii with me (since I had brought it to my grandparent's place to use earlier in the day, and I didn't want to leave it in the car b/c the weather was bad), so I hooked it up around 3am, and between Me, Joe J, Jordan and his brother- Daniel, we played til 7:30am!

I especially got Jordan and Daniel totally addicted to the system. We played all the games but our favorites were the baseball and the bowling (although me and Joe had some great matches in the tennis). The ladies chatted as we played but eventually they had to pull the plug on the gaming, as Jordan and Daniel probably could have gone on all day and not have let us leave, lol.

So me and Ariana did not wind up getting home til after 8am, and I didn't go to sleep until 8:30am. But it was well worth it, b/c we had a blast.

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And that I believe catches me up for the most part (at least up til January). I'll post again later this week.

"ALL HAIL KING J-E!!"

So the latest season of the WWE Fantasy game came to an end in December. And if you've seen my myspace account in the last few weeks, you prob already know what happened. You just don't know HOW things went down.

Well it's a pretty amusing story (well to me at least), that was very much like how a wrestling story may go down. So I'm gonna copy and paste the post I put on our Fantasy wrestling website which will detail the happenings.

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WHO IS THE FREAKIN SWEET WRESTLING HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION?!?

At around 1pm today (Dec 18th), James called me at work to tell me that they wound up scoring the Naughty or Nice Diva Lingerie Contest from the PPV last night as a specialty match. And since Santa declared "everybody" was the winner, they gave all the divas specialty match PPV victory points, thus giving James the FSW Heavyweight title by a mere 8 points.

[Reading that sentence out of context or thinking as someone who doesn't watch wrestling, that must be one of the oddest sentences ever... lol]

I was at work, so I couldn't fully voice my frustration, but obviously I thought it was BS, especially after the board ruling they had made in Week 4 about lingerie contests and dance-offs.

So later on, I get home, and check the scores for myself, and to my surprise they have me on top as the winner of the League by 16 points! (As evidenced below)

1 Darth Asskicker 3265 326.5
2 Revenge 3249 324.9
3 Synchronized Spellers 3154 315.4
4 ""About Chaz-He can't swim" 3127 312.7
5 2... So Close! 3106 310.6
6 Damn You Week 2 2582 258.2
7 SBLOUNSKCHED!!! 2363 236.3
8 Regal's Phallus 2308 230.8
9 Vicious Voodoo 2296 229.6
10 Thorium Bar Brawlers 2272 227.2
11 Wolfpack is back 2022 202.2

And the weekly score I saw was:
1 ""About Chaz-He can't swim" 437
2 Revenge 435
3 2... So Close! 419
4 Synchronized Spellers 409
5 Darth Asskicker 399
6 SBLOUNSKCHED!!! 294
7 Vicious Voodoo 261
8 Wolfpack is back 252
9 Regal's Phallus 246
10 Thorium Bar Brawlers 228
11 Damn You Week 2 205

So when I saw these scores, I called James, b/c I thought he was just yanking my chain before just to rile me up. But he hadn't seen the changes, so when he checked them, he was pissed off. He had even printed out the page showing his victory by 8 points.

We figured out what they did is that they gave the Divas regular PPV match and win points, but took away the specialty match and win points (which was a difference of 24 points, so James went from winning by 8 to losing by 16).

This doesn't make sense either though!

In the end, my opinion is that they board needs to stick by their guns and just give the divas only 5 points each. According to the WWE Fantasy Rulings page:
" SCORING SPECIAL CONTESTS (ECW on Sci Fi, Week 4) Questions have been pouring in about why Trinity did not receive match points for the ECW Divas Halloween Contest. As of Season 8, the Board has ruled that only contests that can have a clear and defined winner by definite criteria will count as "specialty matches." For example, Strip Poker in Week 1 counted because there is a definite set of rules for the game and a winner could be determined impartially. The Bikini Bull-Riding Contest from SNME in Season 7 also would fall under this rule. However, in the case of Bikini Contests, Diva Dance-Offs, Halloween Costume Contests or any other contest where there is an impartial determination of a winner, it is unfair for Superstars, Extremists or Divas to receive Specialty Match points based on a subjective determination. We realize this may be an unpopular decision, but it was made in the interest of preventing impartial controversy. "

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So you can see my reasoning, and I think I'm right. Especially b/c if you take what "Santa" said in context at the PPV, when he was asking the audience to cheer for the winner, at the end he said "the winner is EVERYBODY!" meaning the AUDIENCE, not the divas. I think that right there is the definition of "impartial." (and dammit, Layla definitely got the biggest reaction so she should have won, if it was being fairly scored).

But you know what, if they're gonna screw me, then they need to do the job right and just give each diva the full 33 points. That'll give me full ammunition to come back with next season, when me, James and Chaz have our "Champion of Champions match" that will headline the Wrestlemania Fantasy Season.

But we'll have to wait and see the final determination after 4pm, b/c I also noticed they only gave Mr. Kennedy only 30 points total (and Undertaker only 54), when each should have gotten more (especially Kennedy) b/c Kennedy hit UT with a chair 9 times (plus one extra object shot later), and UT had at least 4 object shots himself.

But yeah, right now I'm just imaging how a title match ends and one ref declares the challenger the new champ, but then another ref runs in, says it was a cheap victory and declares the champ retains. But then the damn title gets held up until a later decision.

It makes for a fun Fantasy ending, I'd say.

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That was what I posted the first day. But when the final scores were made official the next day, there were no changes made in terms of the divas scores (they did update the Undertaker-Kennedy and other points though) so I officially won the season! It wasn't how I would have wanted to do it, but hey a victory is a victory.

James was obviously pissed and felt ripped off, and while I would normally be the "face" and be sympathetic, I decided to turn full on heel and rub the loss in his face. It started as just a little bit of ribbing on our myspace fantasy site, but I dropped the bomb when I sent him a very special "Merry Christmas" card on Christmas Day.

I've posted the "card" right below (you'll prob need to click on it to make it bigger to read what I put in it):

So with that, I've become full-fledged heel in our Fantasy group. I've always been the "face" being courteous and gracious to everyone in victory, but after winning the title 3 times and getting no respect from my peers (sort of like John Cena), I've decided to now rub it in all their faces (sort of like Triple H). While James has become the "heel turned fan favorite (think the Rock, Steve Austin, etc)," especially after being screwed that last week.

So the feud is heading for a payoff at Wrestlemania. It's gonna be fun.

(And hopefully being heel won't completely bite me in the ass, b/c the very few times I decided to gloat during any previous season, I would do TERRIBLY the following week, so we'll have to see how this works out for me, heh).

The next season starts on Jan 22nd. I'll let you all know how I do the week after.

Third Annual Year-End Awards

2006 was a big year for me. Lots of things happened (as it does every year), which is why I do these year end awards. So without further ado- here is my latest list:

Best Movie of the Year: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
1st Runner-Up: Crank
2nd Runner-Up: X-Men 3: The Last Stand, The Protector, and District B13 (TIE)

I'm totally agreeing with Henry's own best movie picks. For pretty much the same reasons. Borat was probably one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, and Crank was an awesome action movie that gave the crowd everything they could have wanted. Will it stand the test of time? Who knows? But I know I had a blast watching it in the theater with a group of friends and cheering at different things Jason Statham's character did.

Second Runner up was a three-way tie between three very cool action movies. I'm a huge comic book geek so I had to put X-Men 3 in there. I thought it was a very good action movie, but it could have used 25 minutes more in order to develop the plot more. Both The Protector and District B13 were foreign martial arts and/or Parkeur movies. The action in each of them was just jaw-dropping. The chase scenes in District b13 are insane, and the fight scenes in The Protector (especially the one near the end with Tony Jaa vs like 30 henchmen) will have you cheering and rewinding the DVD (once it comes out) to watch the scene again.


CD of the Year: The Living End- State of Emergency
1st Runner-Up: Foo Fighters- Skin & Bones
2nd Runner-up: Lostprophets- Liberation Transmission & Hoobastank- Every Man for Himself (TIE)

This was an easy one. From the moment the first track on the latest Living End CD started I knew it was gonna be a mainstay in my CD player for a long time. I picked up the CD the week it came out back in July, and it's STILL in my car's player. It's that freakin good. You should all go buy a copy.

The first runner-up came out of nowhere. It's a live CD of the Foo Fighters from their recent acoustic tour. I went to the show when it came to NY and it was awesome, and the CD is a great representation of how great that tour was.

Second runner-up was hard to call. Lots of artists that I like came out with new albums this year, but most of them were a bit disappointing. The Hoobastank album isn't as good as their original two albums, but I do like it and the same goes for the Lostprophets' latest album.


Book of the Year: 24 Declassified- Trojan Horse

I actually didn't get to read as much this year as I had been the past few years (due to me being a lot busier in the school's I work in). I read a few Star Wars books, but I don't even recall the titles to them at the moment. This 24 book was really well done though, and totally seemed like it could have been a season of the show. So it gets my vote.


Speaking of TV shows...
Best TV Show of the Year: 24
1st Runner-Up: Scrubs
2nd Runner-Up: Heroes

24 is going to keep winning this award every year if they keep having seasons like the last two. They really went out this season, killing off major characters left and right- proving that NO ONE is safe, which kept the drama and suspense at an all-time high.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I just recently discovered the show Scrubs. And boy I didn't realize what I was missing! Scrubs is one of the funniest shows I've ever seen. Something in pretty much every episode gets me to bust out laughing. And while some shows like South Park and My Name is Earl do deliver big laugh out loud moments, they're not as consistent as Scrubs is.

The final runner-up is my favorite NEW show. I actually didn't even know about Heroes until about a week before it was going to air. I saw some commercials on another channel and I thought "hmm... this looks like it could be interesting." And then I read some articles about it on ign.com and it sounded really cool. And even though it started off a little slow, it really picked up as each episode went by. And by the time the episode "Hiro's" aired, I was hooked. The show has a great ensemble cast, and the writer's of this show actually know how to introduce mystery's and drop you actual clues along the way. Heck, they even give you ANSWERS and PAYOFFS, unlike another largely popular show that got me really annoyed this season (COUGHlostCOUGH).


Video Game of the Year: Suikoden V
1st-Runner-Up: Guitar Hero 1 & 2
2nd Runner-Up: Lego Star Wars 2
Honorable Mention: Wii Sports

This award gets harder and harder for me as I wind up playing fewer and fewer games as the years go by, b/c I don't have the time to play as much as I used to. But I made a lot of time to play Suikoden V and it was well worth it. This game was just MASSIVE. I've beaten the other Suikoden games on an average of 30-50 hours, this one took me around 90+ hours to finish! I didn't even start the collecting of the 108 Stars of Destiny until over ten hours into the game, which is just insane. And the cool thing was, that as long as the game was, I was never bored. The action is really good, and the story was one of the best I've seen in an RPG in a long while (probably not since Star Wars: KOTOR).

I just got Guitar Hero 1 & 2 for Christmas, but I've already lost a good many hours to those games, which is why I've placed them as the 1st Runner-Up. I always wanted to learn to play guitar so I could jam to some of my favorite rock hits, but I never made the time to learn. Well this game finally lets me do that, without the extra time it takes to learn an instrument (although I wonder if my skills on this guitar would translate well over to a real one).

Second runner-up goes to Lego Star Wars 2 b/c the first one was really fun, and they improved almost every aspect of that game for the latest version. It's a really cool game to play, and me and Ariana have been having a blast with it, especially over this Christmas break.

And finally, I'm putting in an honorable mention of Wii Sports b/c it's got my whole family (and as of the New Year's party a few friends) addicted to it. It comes with five sports games in it, including: bowling, baseball, tennis, golf and boxing. The fun comes in the unique way you have to play the games (using the new Wii-mote controllers). Only reason, this didn't get an actual placing is b/c it's not really a full game. It's more of just an introduction to the Wii to teach you how to play, just in a really fun way. But seriously, even as it stands right now, that game alone is more than enough reason to buy a Wii. And I can't wait to play the new Zelda... I have a feeling that game may be next year's V.G.O.T.Y.


Normally at this time I'd present the "D'Oh! Moment(s) of the Year" awards. But as I said earlier, I had a pretty good year. So instead I now present to you my "Awesome Moment(s) of the Year' awards:

Awesome Moment(s) of the Year: Getting engaged to Ariana while we were on vacation in Puerto Rico
1st Runner-Up: My huge birthday party at Chelsea Piers Bowling and Red Rock West
2nd Runner-Up: Getting into and starting graduate school at Lehman College
Honorable Mention: My job's program being refunded by the Federal gov't and thus not being out of work.

I think the winner of this category is pretty self-explanatory. It was just about the biggest moment of my life, and will lead to many great changes in the coming years. I don't think I could be happier than I was in those moments. It's going to be quite a fun adventure getting prepared for married life, and I couldn't be more excited for it.

As for the 1st runner-up, if I hadn't gotten engaged this year, this probably would have won. I mean I knew my party would be fun (free bowling with all my good friends and going to the equivalent of Coyote Ugly afterwards, how could it not)? But oh man, did I have an even better time than expected. What made it an even bigger moment was that everyone told me that they had just as awesome a time as I did, and I think the consensus will agree it was the craziest birthday party of the year.

Second runner-up was also important b/c it bring about some changes in my life as well. I'm finally on track to becoming a professional school counselor! And the program seems to be a lot of fun so far. I was really upset for awhile with how everything turned out at Fordham, but who knows, maybe this was God's plan for me all along? It seems to be working out well so far, so I am really grateful to God for that.

Another thing I'm grateful for, is that my job's program was refunded by the federal gov't. We're SUPPOSED to have four years, but we'll see how it goes year by year. But at least we got funded for at least one more year, which was a blessing b/c it would have been crazy to be job hunting just as I was starting grad school. So things worked out well there.


And of course, last but not least. The award I always save until the end:

Concert of the Year: The Living End @ Avalon
1st Runner-Up: Foo Fighters Acoustic Show @ Beacon Theater
2nd Runner-Up: Dave Matthews Band @ Randall's Island

It was another slow year for concerts for me (I don't even think I made it to 12), but the ones I did go to really stood out, which made this year's award hard to decide on. I could give every other concert an honorable mention (especially the Lostprophets, Zebrahead and the second Living End shows).

The winner of this category was never really any doubt though, just b/c of the experience I had that night as a whole. I've already done an entire blog about it, so I won't go into detail again, but I defintely had a blast.

I also have a blog about the Foo Fighters show, so I won't say too much on that one either, other than they really surprised me with how good many of their songs are when done acoustically.

The second runner-up got that spot more for the overall experience at the show. First, I got to go for free b/c Stevo had an extra ticket (that's always a plus). Then we got to the show early and tail-gaited for a few hours which was a lot of fun- especially watching Stevo get drunk and come up with some classic quotes. And finally, the show itself was just really good, as DMB played just about everything I wanted to hear.


So overall, I had a great year. Lots of memorable moments, by myself and with family, loved ones and friends. I just want to thank all of you for being so awesome, and I'm blessed to have all my friends in my life. You all truly make it very interesting. :-)