I challenge Sakai

Wednesday Night Music Club: Thought that I’d give a local band some love tonight. I really think that Vedera deserves to break into the mainstream. They’re easily the best local band that I have seen and seem to have every component of a big act. Heck, with a cute lead singer and good songs they have most of the marketplace beat. Why they aren’t being played on MTV is besides me. Probably because no one is played on MTV anymore.

Sorry if the American Gladiators post didn’t turn out quite the way I expected it to. It’s tough to do play by play on a show that you start actively disliking halfway through. At least The Pick Up Artist was consistently funny that made it great to review. It also didn’t help that I started the night by watching all two hours of The Biggest Loser. There is something about watching extremely fat people exercise that I find surprisingly entertaining. It’s so bizarre to be lazily lying on the couch while wondering if the person on tv is about to have a heart attack.

The Biggest Loser is a strange show for a variety of reasons. For a weight loss show you really don’t learn much about how to lose weight other than exercise and don’t eat crappy foods. I also have a slight issue with what one of the trainers said last night. Jillian said “I love to see people puke, I love to see people pass out” with regards to exercise. That sounds way too much like a bad high school football coach for me. I thought it was pretty much universally agreed that working out until your body decides that unconsciousness is the best option is a horrible thing to do. Yes, you need to push yourself to the point where you want to quit and then keep on going but not to the point where the ambulance arrives.

Also, I really want to know how they edit this show. You are putting unfit people through really intense workouts, which means that every muscle should be aching. I want to find out how the contestants even walk the second day much less put in hours of cardio. I know that I feel sore when I start up an exercise program for these people it must be a lot worse.

Still, if you like to watch people stand on scales this show is for you. Some people get to be happy about changing their bodies and others somehow gain weight while on the show. That’s an accomplishment in its own right.

I also have something to add on American Gladiators. I had a serious problem with the way the show is presented. Basically, it is trying the sports entertainment approach with a focus on the entertainment and that really strikes me the wrong way. I can understand it with wrestling because it is an accepted fact that what you are watching is fake but this show is a competition and at the back of yoru mind you want it treated as such. My other problem is that they are trying to be funny by being over the top but they blow it by telling everyone that they are over the top.

My counterexample is Iron Chef. Everything on that show is overblown; the sets, the chairman, the entire idea of a Kitchen Stadium and the incredible show of unveiling the secret ingredient. As bizarre as the entire thing is though everyone plays it straight. They know that it is silly but it is treated as serious. That makes it funny (and the original Japanese version was hysterical at times because it seemed as if cooking was a life or death struggle). The spectacle catches your eye, the competition keeps your focus. American Gladiators misses the point completely.

Bring back Zap

I take offense to the comment on the last post. I have never claimed to be a “good” reviewer. You’re talking about someone who a) can barely write a complete sentence, b) has no comprehension of even the concept of paragraphs and c) once had a friend threaten him with physical violence if he didn’t figure out the difference between there/their/they’re. Hell, I paid forty bucks to go see Weird Al in concert. If you’re looking at me for cogent criticism you’ve come to the wrong place.

But maybe I was mistaken. From the back of the room it looked like he broke a string (not a bad thing) at the end of the first song. If he didn’t then I’m sorry for the misstatement. I still think his set left a lot to be desired but the fun part of music is that people can have divergent opinions and both be correct. As always, I don’t care what people write in the comments but yowza, that was a little harsh.

On to a much more important issue: the relaunch of American Gladiators. Here’s my play by play of Monday night’s episode.

We start with Hulk Hogan cutting a promo. Most people who know me as a wrestling fan would think that I would be psyched to see the Hulkster on television. Except that I hate Hulk Hogan. Every hardcore wrestling fan hates Hulk Hogan, who was an egotistical bastard who would never give up his spot while more worthy wrestlers toiled in the undercard. I got tired of his act twenty years ago. Don’t really need to see it again.

Let’s meet our Gladiators: Titan, Venom, Wolf, Siren, Justice, Fury, Mayhem, Crush, Militia, Stealth, Toa, and Hellga. There are apparently two l’s in Hellga for a reason I can’t quite put my finger on at the moment. I am rather upset that they couldn’t find a role for Nitro from the original series. If he could do celebrity bullriding you’d think he could still swing a pugil stick. One of the male contestants is a rad tech. I used to work with those guys back in the day. Not a tough job but you lack fear in that position. The other guy is an engineer for Boeing. It’s a rather brainy group of contestants.

First event is the Gauntlet as they are taking on Titan, Mayhem, Toa and Justice. Goal is to run past all four of them in a row while wearing a backpack for no apparent reason. Rather boring event on the male side as it consists of guys running and getting hit with blocking pads. With controversy at the end as one of the Gladiators wasn’t playing fair. They should have learned from the original show, dump the bad pro wrestling aspects pronto. No one cares about the Gladiators as characters. The women go up against the female gladiators and Hellga, who I really think we need a ruling on. We are talking East German swimmer here.

(First random comment: the play by play announcer sounds like the guy who used to do Robot Wars. Probably ok given that this show is basically Robot Wars with humans.)

Next event one of my old favorites, The Wall. Basically rock climbing while being chased (an event Laser used to kill at. Bad Sign #1 for the show: when the rad tech reaches the top of the wall he does a victory scream that is so staged that you can tell that someone told him to stand there and act like he had won. People can notice this fake stuff a mile away.

Ladies do Joust, the fabled q-tip battle. We’ve lost the original scaffold and now the platforms are above water for no reason other than it looks vaguely cooler. Bad Sign #2 for the show: We don’t keep a camera angle for more than three seconds. It’s like watch American Gladiators crossed with Blair Witch, you get a headache just by watching the show. I counted 15 different cuts in a 27 second bout.

New event with Earthquake, which is the old conquer game suspended in the air. Last time they did that it was torn knee ligament central. Actually, this is the first event that looks pretty cool just because there seems to be some skill and strategy involved. They also brought back Hang Tough, maybe the worst game ever. It’s people swinging across rings with usually most people having no clue how to actually do this. They’ve greatly reduced the number of rings though making contact between the contestants almost a certainty.

(Second random comment: Please don’t have the contestants talk. Or if you do, stop giving them lines to read. This is sad. I’m just going to fast forward through the talking parts. Yep, someone’s going to make a comment on that line…)

Finally, after suffering through a show that is making me regret wasting my youth we get Assault. The greatest game ever invented. Dodge tennis balls fired at 100 mph while trying to hit a target. It’s brilliant in its simplicity, much like a spider’s web or an Adam Sandler film. Crappy weapons for the contestants, though. A slingshot? What the hell? Also, I really regret that they got rid of the bombed out village set that they used to use. It made no sense given that they were inside a television studio but it added to the “Oh what the hell, if it looks cool let’s use it” sense of the original show. How else does one create Atlaspeheres?

(Third random comment: I demand Atlaspheres! You can not have American Gladiators without the human hamster balls.)

Mercifully we get to the Eliminator, which seems to be designed by the creators of Ninja Warrior without the sense of style. Or at least they used the rolling log though no one seems to know how to use it. It’s basically a lot of running and climbing with no interaction from the gladiators. Oh how I long for the days when the contestants would get creamed by medicine balls. Also, what is the logic of having contestants swim then try to run up a sloped treadmill when they will obviously have wet feet?. Other than watching them slip for a minute in pretend drama?

Wow, that was an hour of my life I’m not getting back. When I say something like that you know it’s bad. Hell, I would watch the reruns on ESPN Classic every once in a while. This show is simultaneously taking itself too seriously and not seriously enough. You have high production values for a show where parts are obviously preplanned. Not the events but all of the talking bits before and after. Then you have the Gladiators with their pro wrestling personalities except that we are talking about guys who would be wrestling in the high school gym as opposed to the big stage. It doesn’t have the fun of the original in any sense of the word. Unless Billy Wirth makes a surprise comeback as a contestant I think I’ll be skipping this.

Ready to challenge Turbo in the Gauntlet...

Hey, it’s my two favorite things. And the Stanley Cup. Thank you, tip your bar staff, I’ll be here all week…

(Thanks as always to my friends at Deadspin for finding this picture. It’s like someone took a picture of one of my dreams, though admittedly in my dreams Lindsay is wearing a Blackhawks jersey.)

Attention Super Dave and anyone else who might be able to raise some capital quickly. There is a car auction going on right now in Dublin where we can bid on one of the four existing KITT’s. Yes, we can buy the car from freaking Knight Rider. It even has that blinking red LED on the hood working and all of the interior lights and buttons for things like oil slicks and turbo boost. While they claim that the car does not speak I feel that with some additional work I can remedy that, though I don’t know if I’ll be able to get the dude from St. Elsewhere to voice all of the tracks. We could probably settle for Howie Mandel so at least it would still be from the same show. (David Morse would be cheaper but much more disturbing). They also state that the car isn’t street legal but I don’t really see that as an issue. Who the hell is going to pull over Michael Knight? Not unless being awesome is now a crime. So who is with me to put up the $200K they’re asking for?

(Crickets (or possibly Cricket) chirp)

Bummer. What’s worse is that while driving to work on Monday I saw a car with a Missouri license plate that read “LT SABR” and I so wanted to use that one. Now I’m going to have to settle for “DRK SIDE” or “SITH RLZ”.

Staying on the geek front, and boy have we been spending a lot of time there in the past week, in what might be the most incredible programming decision ever ESPN Classic has obtained the rights to American Gladiators and are now showing the original episodes nightly. And they started by having a marathon on Saturday of pretty much the entire first season. What’s sad is that not only could I name all six of the original Gladiators (intense Nitro, tough guy Gemini, completely worthless Malibu, vaguely attractive Sunny, surprisingly non-athletic Lace and probably a dude Zap) but I even remembered the names of some of the contestants. Namely bad ass Billy Wirth, who was introduced as a writer from New York while completely ignoring the fact that he was an actor, stunt man and champion decathlete. I still remember Billy getting into a brawl with the gladiators during Powerball.

I guess I view this as proof of how good my memory is and how boring my life was in high school. I can’t really blame myself for my entertainment choices when I was sixteen but wow, when you watch the show again you realize just how horrible it was. Bad hair, horrible acting (even from someone who was brought up on pro wrestling) and competitions that always seemed to be bordering on silly (the battles with the giant Q-Tips are still some classic television moments). The show got better in later years as they got rid of the pro wrestling elements and brought in some awesome events like Swingshot and the Wall. Oh and Atlaspheres because there is nothing better than watching people run around in giant hamster balls.

Still, of all the things that ESPN has in its tape library this is what we feel is the best option for six in the evening? Really? Is this considered classic sports? If it was G4 or Spike or the Game Show Network I would understand but ESPN Classic? Talk about giving up on the channel. Might as well just call it the “Poker, Stump the Schwab and whatever tape is nearest to us” channel.