General Chat topic

[The Thread Killer]

The Stand is really good. I think the Shining is also a really strong book from him if you can divorce it from the movie.

 

I love the unabridged version of The Stand, I re-read that every year or so. I have the hardcover version, so it's like carrying a cinder block around, but I like it.

[ohtani's jacket]

This is a fun thread that I didn't realise existed.

 

I go through cycles with my hobbies but here's what I've been into lately:

 

Films

 

Lately, I've only been watching genre pictures. I delved into Blaxploitation for the first time and was surprised by how well made a lot of the films were. I was expecting them to all be like Dolemite. I also began watching a lot of early Richard Harrison films because my mate showed me his Godfrey Ho films on YouTube and I was curious about his career. I've watched a few Shaw Brothers films too in recent weeks.

 

Music

 

I started exploring Japanese rock music after I found a couple of different lists of the best Japanese rock albums. I started with the Happy End and then got super into X Japan. My co-workers are amused by this since X Japan were big in the 90s. I traced some of their influences are started getting into Charged G.H.B and the UK82 scene, which led to exploring Crossover Thrash.

 

Sports

 

I'm following the NBA playoffs at present. I'm a Warriors and Celtics fan so I have a vested interest in both conferences. The All Blacks will play their first rugby tests of the year in June so I am looking forward to that, and I am a huge Roger Federer fan so I am looking forward to seeing him make his return on grass.

 

Comics

 

A mate of mine got me the Japanese manga Berserk a few months ago. It's a dark fantasy manga that is pretty mindblowing at times. I haven't read a ton of manga but I was into Berserk enough to read some 350 chapters within a month.

[Tim Cooke]

What are your top 10 (non-wrestling) T.V. shows of all time?

 

Game of Thrones

Simpsons (1st 7 seasons or so)

South Park

The Wire

Better Call Saul

Fargo

Bojack Horseman

Cheers

Archer

Band of Brothers

 

The Wire

The Larry Sanders Show

Arrested Development

Seinfeld

Curb Your Enthusiasm

The Thick of It

Fawlty Towers

Deadwood

The Simpsons (Seasons 1-6)

Better Call Saul

[Matt D]

TV (favorite ever, no order, and it changes often):

 

Dick Van Dyke Show

Babylon 5

Arrested Development

Perry Mason (57-66)

Cheers

The Muppet Show

Batman: TAS

Leftovers

Veronica Mars

What's your Line

 

Favorite shows on now:

 

Magicians

12 Monkeys

Fargo

Legion

Venture Bros

Preacher

Game of Thrones

 

Guilty Pleasures (as in I'd watch them without hesitation if they were on TV):

 

Lost

Welcome Back Kotter

Wild Wild West

Hell on Wheels

Leverage/Hustle

 

In general, I really dislike procedurals (legal/police/medical, especially CBS style). In 2018, I, more often than not, am looking for ongoing storytelling and character development and jokes that build on themselves over time. We only have so much time to watch things.

[Loss]

I think I'm some type of anomaly in that my health improves as I gain weight, but I encounter problems when I lose weight. I had kidney problems at my smallest point in adulthood, but now I don't. I'm absolutely obese according to the numbers, but I have perfect blood sugar and blood pressure and a resting heart rate of 50 bpm, so I guess all is well.

[PhilTLL]

1a. Trek DS9

1b. Trek TNG

2. King of the Hill

3. Jeopardy

 

I have an entire stupid website for tracking my music plays (http://www.last.fm/user/philtll), which will tell you I'm a Deadhead first and a lot of other things too. I try to hit at least 2 MLB stadiums a year. I go to fairly a lot of concerts.

[cactus]

This is fun.

 

My favorite TV shows in no order:

1. Simpsons

2. Extras

3. Breaking Bad

4. Curb Your Enthusiasm

5. Black Mirror

6. King of the Hill

7. Fawlty Towers

8. Only Fools & Horses

9. Bottom

10. The Man in the High Castle

 

Music:

 

This is a tough one. I love me a good singer songwriter like Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley and Nick Drake. I'm quite into punk/hardcore too. Ramones, Against Me!, Minor Threat and Code Orange are some of my favourite bands. I have soft spot for a bit of dad rock, 80s pop and shoegazing music. I'm currently obsessed with the new Childish Gambino track.

[GSR]

TV

I wouldn't be able to muster a Top 10 but a top four are probably:

 

1. Freaks and Geeks

2. The Office (US)

3. Blackadder

4. Curb Your Enthusiasm

 

I've never watched any of The Office (US) post-Carell episodes (bar the finale) as I struggled with the handful of episodes at the end of Season 7 after he'd left. I always envisioned Rainn Wilson pretty much having to carry the show in the final two seasons. It also got to the stage where certain characters became unbearable (Andy, Kevin) and as much as I liked Ryan in the early seasons, from a logical point of view, he long outstayed his welcome. I'm a huge fan of the Michael Scott Paper Company arc in Season 5 and thought Erin was a wonderful addition.

 

Loosely linked into the Michael Scott Paper Company, I've had a copy of The Wire for years now but never got past the first episode on several attempts. I probably should've avoided all the talk of it being 'the best show ever' and gone in cold, although likelihood is had I not heard that talk, then I wouldn't have picked up a copy in the first place.

 

I've adored Freaks & Geeks from the moment I finished the pilot and Sam got his dance with Cindy at the homecoming. I polished off the box set in under a fortnight, and that included a few days break between the penultimate and last episodes because I didn't want it to end! The cast are superb and even supporting characters like Harris, Gordon, Millie add so much to the show. The Nick/Lindsay relationship was one thing I didn't care for at first, but come the end of the season was wanting them to get back together. A great soundtrack accompanies it and my favourite episodes along with the pilot would be 'Carded & Discarded' and 'Smooching & Mooching'.

 

I've recently bought season one of the 'ESPN 30 for 30' documentaries (and now have season two on the way)

 

Music

My tastes are heavily influenced by the late John Peel, so favourite bands would be Joy Division, The Smiths, The Clash, The Undertones, Stone Roses and Half Man Half Biscuit. Pretty much anything punk, new wave, early Indie then! I've been listening to a lot of Magazine and XTC recently though. In regards to individual artists I like David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Marc Bolan and P.J. Harvey. The 'Britpop' era was when I heavily started to get into music and still enjoy Pulp, Teenage Fanclub, Radiohead (their early albums especially 'the Bends'), Elastica, Kenickie and more. Oh yeah, The Who and The Kinks too! I do dig into other genres and went through a big time Blues binge at one point (Blind Willie McTell, Leadbelly and the like), have got some jazz (primarily Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock) and also enjoy listening to Soul & Funk. A really eclectic mix of stuff all being told.

 

Sports

I used to be ridiculously into football (soccer!) but the game has changed dramatically from the one I grew up watching. The World Cup is just around the corner and I couldn't care less. The me of 1990 who was super hyped and watched every match he could wouldn't have thought that possible. Maybe it's because England aren't that good any more and the sheer number of average foreign imports to the Premier League have crippled English players progress? Maybe it's because I think the players are a bunch of overpaid primadonnas? I can't see us every having another Italia '90 or Euro '96 experience in my lifetime but am glad I have those memories. These days I would much rather watch the English Rugby Union team or a day of test match Cricket. I always try to watch the Athletics wherever possible and also enjoy the likes of Snooker and Darts.

[KB8]

My two favourite genres of music are probably hip-hop and country music, which...I mean, I'm not entirely sure how that happened but there it is.

 

The country music thing comes from something my old basketball coach had me do (this is about fourteen years ago now). My adrenaline before games was always sky high and I'd always start off really aggressively. Not that I was trying to assault people or anything, but I'd end up in early foul trouble because I was contesting things I shouldn't have been contesting, forcing steals, etc. I liked to get hyped up before games (with hip-hop). He suggested I try to relax instead, to take things a little slower. He suggested I listen to some country music pre-game, and whether it was a placebo effect or Willie Nelson's Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain actually did settle me down some, it worked pretty well. Eventually I branched out and listened to more, and now my basketball days are behind me but my country music days are not.

 

On sports, I follow football (soccer), basketball and football (American). I'm an Arsenal fan so football has been a stressful hobby for a few years now. I've always gravitated towards teams from California for some reason so I'm a Lakers and Chargers fan. That has also been pretty rough for a minute now.

[donsem43]

I became a cord-cutter a couple of years ago and that pretty much ended watching any TV shows on a regular bias. I'll binge watch something on a weekend or while I'm on holidays but that's usually it.

 

I mainly watch sports now, primarily hockey and baseball, although I don't stick to just watching my favourite teams (Leafs for NHL, Angels for MLB) I'll watch all different teams. For example, the Yankees/Red Sox series from this week was fantastic, playoff caliber baseball in April. I also watch a fair bit of motor racing but it's mostly niche type stuff like sports cars and rallying. I don't watch either F1 or NASCAR at all. There is actually a fair bit of sports car racing that have official streams for free on YouTube. In fact, I'm watching the Nurburgring 24 hours this weekend.

[Jimmy Redman]

I became a cord-cutter a couple of years ago and that pretty much ended watching any TV shows on a regular bias. I'll binge watch something on a weekend or while I'm on holidays but that's usually it.

 

I mainly watch sports now, primarily hockey and baseball, although I don't stick to just watching my favourite teams (Leafs for NHL, Angels for MLB) I'll watch all different teams. For example, the Yankees/Red Sox series from this week was fantastic, playoff caliber baseball in April. I also watch a fair bit of motor racing but it's mostly niche type stuff like sports cars and rallying. I don't watch either F1 or NASCAR at all. There is actually a fair bit of sports car racing that have official streams for free on YouTube. In fact, I'm watching the Nurburgring 24 hours this weekend.

Do you watch sprint cars at all? My dad used to race.

[donsem43]

The sprint cars that run mainly on dirt ovals? No, I never really got into them. I did really get into Aussie V8 Supercars when Speed Channel was around in North America. I wish they had an international streaming service.

[fxnj]

Anyone else dig videogames? Can't relate much to the TV talk and watching sports besides combat sports but I'm pretty big into gaming.

[sek69]

Anyone else dig videogames? Can't relate much to the TV talk and watching sports besides combat sports but I'm pretty big into gaming.

 

 

*waives hand*

 

Big gamer my whole life. First system was an Atari XE computer/game system, followed shortly by the NES. I was huge on the Nintendo side in the Nintendo/Sega console wars, I even still own my original OG Game Boy system in all its brick-like glory.

 

I kind of fell out of console gaming in the 90s, and got big into PC games. I ended up missing out on the PS1/Saturn/Dreamcast era when it was new and only had an Nintendo 64 for the wrestling games. Most of my time in that era was spent on Doom/Doom II/Quake type games on PC, along with EA sports games that were pretty easily moddable.

 

Got back in to consoles for the GameCube, then full blast with the 360/PS3 era. I've made up for lost time by going back and collecting all the systems and games I missed in the 90s, and with the purchase of my Switch last month I have pretty much every video game system from the Atari 2600 up to current era.

 

Gaming also led to importing, since a lot of games back in the 80s and 90s would never get released outside of Japan or wer stupidly rare/expensive in the US. Collecting wrestling games on N64 led me to discover Virtual Pro Wrestling 1 and 2, which in turn opened the door to Japanese wrestling since they had an AJPW license and had tons of other "it's easy to see who this guy is supposed to be, just tweaked enough to not get sued" wrestlers from other promotions. I had tons of classic Misawa-Kawada matches on VPW2 before I knew they had tons of classic matches in real life.

 

I still am big into wrestling games, I recently completed my Fire Pro collection, but I'm also big into fighting games. The pool hall my buddies and I used to hang out at in high school had a Street Fighter II arcade machine along with a Mortal Kombat I unit. Street Fighter was alright, but it's hard to underestimate how mind blowing the first MK game was at the time. The full motion video intros were astounding, and not at all low quality like you'd see on CD based consoles of the time.

[Edwin]

TV

 

I've never watched any of The Office (US) post-Carell episodes (bar the finale) as I struggled with the handful of episodes at the end of Season 7 after he'd left. I always envisioned Rainn Wilson pretty much having to carry the show in the final two seasons. It also got to the stage where certain characters became unbearable (Andy, Kevin) and as much as I liked Ryan in the early seasons, from a logical point of view, he long outstayed his welcome. I'm a huge fan of the Michael Scott Paper Company arc in Season 5 and thought Erin was a wonderful addition.

Dwight does indeed carry the post Michael Scott seasons.

 

Out of the post Michael Scott seasons, the final one is the only one really worth watching as. The other seasons, I agree with you are underwhelming.

 

However, my wife and I love Kevin. He gets more talking time in the post Michael Scott seasons and some of his lines are hilarious (Andy, Andy... You gotta hear this... I woke up at 4 AM by accident just in time for the paper to get deliver; GUESS WHAT... It's not a boy on a bike... IT'S A MAN IN A CAR!)

 

There's some YouTube videos where they theorize that Toby was the Scranton Strangler and Kevin wasn't really slow and was just playing it up to the cameras so he could get away with money laundering along with Oscar and Angela in accounting.

 

We also really disliked Erin and thought the show would have been better without her or Andy as they don't really add anything to the show.

 

Sports

I used to be ridiculously into football (soccer!) but the game has changed dramatically from the one I grew up watching. The World Cup is just around the corner and I couldn't care less. The me of 1990 who was super hyped and watched every match he could wouldn't have thought that possible. Maybe it's because England aren't that good any more and the sheer number of average foreign imports to the Premier League have crippled English players progress? Maybe it's because I think the players are a bunch of overpaid primadonnas? I can't see us every having another Italia '90 or Euro '96 experience in my lifetime but am glad I have those memories.

I still love football, but the Spanish giants (Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid) have pretty much been unbeatable on club level.

 

A lot of Italian fans feel the same way you do; i.e.; sheer number of average foreign imports have affected the progression of the Italians.

 

I'm heading to Italy and Spain at the end of the month on vacation with my wife and will be visiting the Allianz Stadium and San Siro in Italy and the Santiago Bernabéu, Wanda Metropolitano (Atlético de Madrid's new stadium), Benito Villamarín, Mestlla and the Camp Nou and am super stoked.

 

I'm an Arsenal fan so football has been a stressful hobby for a few years now.

I don't follow or watch the EPL, but Arsenal fans have really (REALLY) had a tough times they last couple of seasons.

[Matt D]

I'm kind of curious what everyone does for a living.

[Mad Dog]

I work in the claims department of an insurance company.

[fxnj]

 

Anyone else dig videogames? Can't relate much to the TV talk and watching sports besides combat sports but I'm pretty big into gaming.

 

 

*waives hand*

 

Big gamer my whole life. First system was an Atari XE computer/game system, followed shortly by the NES. I was huge on the Nintendo side in the Nintendo/Sega console wars, I even still own my original OG Game Boy system in all its brick-like glory.

 

I kind of fell out of console gaming in the 90s, and got big into PC games. I ended up missing out on the PS1/Saturn/Dreamcast era when it was new and only had an Nintendo 64 for the wrestling games. Most of my time in that era was spent on Doom/Doom II/Quake type games on PC, along with EA sports games that were pretty easily moddable.

 

Got back in to consoles for the GameCube, then full blast with the 360/PS3 era. I've made up for lost time by going back and collecting all the systems and games I missed in the 90s, and with the purchase of my Switch last month I have pretty much every video game system from the Atari 2600 up to current era.

 

Gaming also led to importing, since a lot of games back in the 80s and 90s would never get released outside of Japan or wer stupidly rare/expensive in the US. Collecting wrestling games on N64 led me to discover Virtual Pro Wrestling 1 and 2, which in turn opened the door to Japanese wrestling since they had an AJPW license and had tons of other "it's easy to see who this guy is supposed to be, just tweaked enough to not get sued" wrestlers from other promotions. I had tons of classic Misawa-Kawada matches on VPW2 before I knew they had tons of classic matches in real life.

 

I still am big into wrestling games, I recently completed my Fire Pro collection, but I'm also big into fighting games. The pool hall my buddies and I used to hang out at in high school had a Street Fighter II arcade machine along with a Mortal Kombat I unit. Street Fighter was alright, but it's hard to underestimate how mind blowing the first MK game was at the time. The full motion video intros were astounding, and not at all low quality like you'd see on CD based consoles of the time.

 

Good stuff. I was a Nintendo kid in the late 90's playing all the Nintendo 64 classics like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. Kept going like that into the Gamecube era and there were so many amazing games from back then. Melee, F-Zero GX, Thousand Year Door, Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker. I still love watching GX time attack videos and Melee tournament videos to this day. It's been great to have seen the meta for these games grow up with me and I really feel lucky to have grown up with such complex and incredible games.

 

Animal Crossing with the playable NES games ended up as a gateway drug into me checking out older stuff through emulation. NES classics like Super Mario Bros, Adventure of Link, and Punch-Out still hold a special place in my heart. I also dabbled in some PC FPS and RTS games during this period, but I considered Nintendo consoles my home.

 

I remember when the DS came and my 10 year old me was mind blown by the whole touch screen thing and I got pretty deep into some of those early games like Meteos and LostMagic, though I lost interest when the games stop using the touch screen. Wii era started out decently but Nintendo got complacent after the Wii Fit fad made them truckloads of money they lost me when their output declined. The Wii was amazing for modding and emulation, though, so I found myself still playing quite a bit of ROMs on it even as there weren't a whole lot of games developed for the console that interested me.

 

Big turning point for me came when I discovered Dodonpachi on MAME. I instantly fell in love with beautiful aesthetics, non-stop intense action, and brutal difficulty. From there I explored the rest of Cave's arcade output and other games in the bullet hell genre. Finally settled into playing Cave's ports on the Xbox 360 since then. I still play Mushihimesama Futari and have for many years.

 

Lately I've been branching out and playing lots of genres on Steam. Been pretty strongly considering buying a wrestling game as it would sound great to combine my two big hobbies, but not really sure what to play. I have to admit I am way more attracted to the newer games with their shiny high-def graphics, but I've also heard they aren't too fun to play.

 

If I made a top 5 games list it would go something like this for me

 

Mushihimesama Futari

Dodonpachi

F-Zero GX

Super Smash Bros. Melee

LostMagic

[fxnj]

I'm kind of curious what everyone does for a living.

I'm currently an English teacher in China. I previously tried to hired in Japan so I could attend AJPW and play Japanese arcade games, but I couldn't get a job so I figured working in China would be close enough. I also trade bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the side.

[Matt D]

I project manage the creation of online courses for a big international organization to train government employees of developing countries around the world. It's pretty enjoyable work, as all my co-workers are experts from all around the world.

[KB8]

I'm currently about twelve different things and that's basically my answer for when someone asks me what I do for a living. "I just do...sport stuff." I'm a PT, a football coach, I do performance analysis for football clubs, work as a strength and conditioning coach, and recently I started doing some exercise therapy for people with dementia. None of these are full-time jobs as I went back to uni to finish my degree (I was a full-time PT before that), and in September I'll most likely do a Master's in sports coaching. So yeah, what I do for a living is "sports and shit."

 

 

 

I'm an Arsenal fan so football has been a stressful hobby for a few years now.

I don't follow or watch the EPL, but Arsenal fans have really (REALLY) had a tough times they last couple of seasons.

 

 

It certainly hasn't been great, but three trophies in the last five years has been nice all the same. The club has clearly been preparing for life post-Arsene for at least a season now, though, and while I'll always be a little sad that his time as manager ended without the hero's farewell, there's some excitement over where things are headed now. It won't be turned around straight away, but at this point change itself is important. We'll see how it goes (especially if Arteta's appointed as the next manager, which I've thought would be the case for a while).

[Britwresdvds]

I'm kind of curious what everyone does for a living.

 

I'm a hypnotherapist.

 

Before that, I was a wrestler and promoter.

 

I've also worked at mental health day centres and secure units and done numerous other jobs, including two short stints as a sex text operative.

 

I've never stayed on the 'normal' career path for too long

[gordi]

I have a little business teaching conversation, travel, and business English to adults (here in Nara City, Japan, where I live) and I run occasional side hustles in event security and personalized tour-guiding. I love my work. I love my life.

 

My wife is a mid-wife at the maternity ward of the local prefectural Hospital.

 

We have two beautiful little girls, four and six years old. Who else has kids here? Who else is married?

 

As for video games, I still love Fire Pro and I play a match on Fire Pro World (the new one) on my PC about 4 times a week. I gave up playing Madden Mobile to free up time for family stuff and Armchair Booking. I like Japanese Strategy Role Playing Games. Disgaea is my favourite. I still bust it out on DS from time to time.

[GSR]

Dwight does indeed carry the post Michael Scott seasons.

Out of the post Michael Scott seasons, the final one is the only one really worth watching as. The other seasons, I agree with you are underwhelming.

However, my wife and I love Kevin. He gets more talking time in the post Michael Scott seasons and some of his lines are hilarious (Andy, Andy... You gotta hear this... I woke up at 4 AM by accident just in time for the paper to get deliver; GUESS WHAT... It's not a boy on a bike... IT'S A MAN IN A CAR!)

There's some YouTube videos where they theorize that Toby was the Scranton Strangler and Kevin wasn't really slow and was just playing it up to the cameras so he could get away with money laundering along with Oscar and Angela in accounting.

We also really disliked Erin and thought the show would have been better without her or Andy as they don't really add anything to the show.

 

Kevin was a strange one because when he was this simple, slow, demon basketball savant who played drums on the side I thought he was perfectly fine, the character just got more outlandish and ridiculous as the season's wore on. I think the wig and wearing boxes on his feet for Jim and Pam's wedding, and then screaming into Pam's breasts to try and get them to lactate when she was pregnant were the final straws for me.

I never cared for Andy one bit outside of his musical interludes and would have rather either Josh or Karen would have been the character they kept on from Stamford, although with the stories climax being Jim and Pam, I suppose Karen didn't have anywhere to go after she and Jim split. At least the character transferred, which was fully believable, as opposed to what happened with Ryan just hanging around for no plausible reason whatsoever.

I still love football, but the Spanish giants (Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid) have pretty much been unbeatable on club level.

A lot of Italian fans feel the same way you do; i.e.; sheer number of average foreign imports have affected the progression of the Italians.

I'm heading to Italy and Spain at the end of the month on vacation with my wife and will be visiting the Allianz Stadium and San Siro in Italy and the Santiago Bernabéu, Wanda Metropolitano (Atlético de Madrid's new stadium), Benito Villamarín, Mestlla and the Camp Nou and am super stoked.

Enjoy, I've been the Nou Camp before but that was many years ago now.

[Matt D]

We have two beautiful little girls, four and six years old. Who else has kids here? Who else is married?

 

 

Married. I've got a 16 year old stepson (he came along young. We're only 36), and a 5 (almost 6) year old daughter and a 7 and a half month old daughter. Factor in work and the long commute in and out of DC and life is fairly exhausting these days.