A while ago, I asked commenters to list five songs they thought I should listen to / that they would recommend to me, and that I would listen to them and write about my reactions. There were a huge lot of them, so we’re going to do this in stages.

Caetano Veloso, “Tropicália“: This was actually interesting because I have heard of Veloso previously but only in his context as an activist – I’ve never sought out any of his music. And it’s nice: Latin-style folk with some rock influences, but that sentence doesn’t really do it justice – it’s very much its own thing. (At least I didn’t call it “worldbeat,” give me points for that, right?) Not my thing exactly but it was a nice experience. pass with affection

Caladan Brood, “A Voice Born of Stone and Dust“: Man, this is stereotypical modern metal: a ten-minute long song about a set of fantasy novels (which exist only because somebody decided to write about the gameworld from his GURPS campaign, I shit you not), with someone singing through their esophagus about undeads. And then it just keeps going. And… yeah. pass

continue reading "The Five Songs Project, Results Post #2: C"

A while ago, I asked commenters to list five songs they thought I should listen to / that they would recommend to me, and that I would listen to them and write about my reactions. There were a huge lot of them, so we’re going to do this in stages.

二手玫瑰 － 官封弼马瘟—苏阳: Well, that was weird as hell. Started out as this neat bluesy Chinese song (or possibly Korean or Thai? I’m not sure, I think maybe Korean but non-Japanese kanji all sort of blur together for me, sorry) and then duck quacks start getting used as percussion and then it just gets weirder from there – yes, weirder than “a duck quack song.” Entertaining for a single listen anyway.

ABBA, “When All Is Said And Done“: I mean, it’s ABBA, what can you say? Either you love ABBA or you’re a bad person, basically. This song is actually one of my favorite ABBA songs just because it’s never been one of their top tier, it’s not what anybody thinks of first when they think of ABBA, never will be, but this was my mom’s favorite ABBA song when it was playing on the cassette deck in the car on our drives when we went on summer vacations and that translated down a generation, I guess. already own it

continue reading "The Five Songs Project, Results Post #1: A-B"

Voting is now open for the 2013 rec.sport.pro-wrestling Awards. You can vote HERE.

Following the nominations period, we have compiled all of the nominations into pulldown menus to make voting faster and easier (since the pulldown menus should include most, if not all, of the most popular candidates for each award), while still allowing for write-in votes for those who don’t see their favorite choices as nominees. The result is a vastly streamlined voting process.

We’ve also used TECHNOLOGY to let you save your ballot and return to it later, if need be. Finally, we’ve also given fans the opportunity to include their own commentary on their voting choices for each award or just The State of Wrestling in General in 2013.

The deadline for entering votes in is February 14, 2014.

So we are well into 2014, and commenters have had their chance to answer as many questions in the 2013 Not the King William’s College Quiz, and have mostly done fairly well. A few questions I thought were gimmes just got missed, a few I thought were stumpers got answered quickly, that sort of thing. Which means that next year it has to be even harder!

Answers below the cut.

continue reading "The 2013 Not Quite The King William’s College Quiz – ANSWERS"

The King William’s College Quiz has come and gone for another year, and of course its insistence that quiz-takers “know a lot of things” of course just makes the whole thing harder than it really needs to be. Therefore, once again we bring you the Not Quite The King William’s College Quiz, which we promise is not quite as hard as its namesake and panders to nerds shamelessly. Probably the latter is more important to nerds.

(P.S. Although still probably much easier than the real KWC Quiz, this should be much harder than last year.)

continue reading "The Not Quite The King William’s College Quiz, 2013 Edition"

…is here. Head-to-head categories, twelve slots (nine left at this point), standard draft (currently scheduled for evening of Friday the 25th). Pretty straightforward, all things considered. If you like fantasy basketball (“it’s like fantasy football, but you don’t have to let it consume your damn life”), then join up and so forth.

UPDATE: Yahoo software is silly with joining renewed leagues, so if you want to play, just email me and I’ll send you an invite.