10 Macho Man Randy Savage Youtubes in lieu of an obituary

(from Where’s Randy Savage)

Professional wrestling is “kinda like” a lot of things. It’s kinda like ballet dancing in that it can only be practiced by people who are so dedicated to their craft they’re prepared to slowly destroy their bodies. It can be compared to reality TV because it’s all about convincing people that the obvious fraud they’re watching is real. It can be compared to pornography because it makes two millionaires for every 2,000 individuals it leaves battered, broken and dead. But I wanna talk about what it has in common with snooker.

Danny Brown – Outer Space

Is “rapper threw a plastic bottle at some other rappers” really what passes for Twittersphere rap watercooler chatter in 2011? Jesus Wept. Danny Brown says he doesn’t throw plastic bottles, and if you can’t believe a man who looks like someone trying to get their life back on track after three years of heroin addiction by interning at Toni and Guy who can you trust?

Reks – Rythmatic Eternal King Supreme

ILB’s always felt a loose brotherhood with Americans who blog about (association) football. There’s something admirable about the purity of thought that leads a man to dedicate his online real estate to the lengthy and passionate discussion of a sport he never saw a game of until his teenage years, if not later.

Working Girls: Or How Mick Foley Proved Wrestling Fans Were Smarter Than Most Feminist Bloggers

The professional wrestling term “working” has hundreds of vague definitions, but perhaps the most accurate is “attempting to convince people that the scripted actions they’re seeing are legitimate.” So when a wrestler grimaces in pain at a punch that went absolutely nowhere near his face, he’s working. When Jerry “The King” Lawler and Andy Kaufmann brawled on the David Letterman Show in the early 80s, they were working. In the late 80s, The Iron Sheik and “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan were arrested for drug possession. They were fired from the WWF not for this crime, but because they acted as if they were co-workers when speaking to the police, rather than feuding rivals. They were not fired for committing a felony, but because they weren’t working.

The ten most important lines on “Goblin”

The wonderful thing about Odd Future is that they serve as a refreshing counterblast to the staid hip-hop landscape that we are currently enduring in hip-hop in 2010. One could easily argue that if B.O.B. and Wiz Khalifa are Pink Floyd or Emerson Lake and Palmer, then OFWGKTA are certainly the Sex Pistols in 76. And one wouldn’t have to stretch too far to picture Tyler The Creator as the John Lydon of the operation, its figurehead and its one true poet. After “Goblin” leaked earlier this week I knew there would really be no other way to pay tribute to this album, this man and this movement than by throwing out my ten favorite lines from it and explaining what they mean to me and to the future of rap.

So hey, I listened to that Beastie Boys comeback joint

So I held off on watching this video for a good… month maybe? I forget when it dropped, all I know is that when it did I knew I didn’t want/need to watch a Beastie Boys video in 2011. I mean, I still remember the trauma of listening to “To The Five Boroughs”. Even the most dyed-in-the-wool Springsteen obsessive will admit that the spree of post-9/11  “I Heart NY” releases were more “necessary” than “good”, but even with that proviso “To The Five Boroughs” is a fucking chore, like “Encore”’s grandfather.

New revenue streams

ILB is now on Tumblr. This blog will be the home of lengthy wankhat thinkpieces, while the Tumblr is basically me posting wrestling matches and minor comedy works and going “hmmm”.

Richard Keys and Andy Gray get back to what they’re good at

Apologies for the radio silence, we’ve been down on the content farm bringing crops in elsewhere over the past few weeks (read: this blog doesn’t bring in any money so be grateful).