NJPW WrestleKingdom 15 Preview & Predictions

It's almost the end of the year and that means one very important thing: WrestleKingdom is upon us!

We're just five days away from NJPW's WrestleKingdom 15 folks, and as always it looks like a tremendous lineup.  Beginning last year, this annual Tokyo Dome tradition was expanded to two nights, and that's the case once again.  Last year the story was about the IWGP Champion facing the IWGP Intercontinental Champion on Night Two, this year the G1 winner Kota Ibushi lost the briefcase to Jay White but Champion Tetsuya Naito granted Ibushi a title shot anyway.  Thus we'll see the double title defended on two consecutive nights (Alright, it's been a year, can we split these belts up again?).  As with last year's Dome shows, Night One seems on paper to have more MOTY candidates, but we'll see.  Strangely the proper PPV lineups on each night only consist of six bouts.  But of course the benefit of that is that we won't get any filler matches and everything will get adequate time.  Let's get into it.

Night One

IWGP Jr. Heavyweight #1 Contender: Hiromu Takahashi vs. El Phantasmo

This should be an incredible opener, pitting the former IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion and 2020 Best of the Super Juniors winner against the winner of the 2020 Super J Cup.  Hiromu returned in spectacular fashion a year ago to take the title from Will Ospreay, delivering the second-best match of the year in my opinion.  I'm sure these two will do their best to equal or surpass that match.  I think Takahashi is a lock to win here and challenge his nemesis Taiji Ishimori on Night Two.

Pick: Takahashi

IWGP Tag Team Championship: Dangerous Tekkers vs. Guerrillas of Destiny

Tama and Tanga returned to Japan after a months-long COVID-necessitated absence, and climbed right back to the top of the ranks, winning the World Tag League and writing their ticket to the Dome.  One team they didn't beat though, the champions Zack Sabre and Taichi.  This should be a pretty excellent tag title match that sees GOD win back the straps.

Pick: Guerrillas of Destiny

Parents' Night In: Wonder Woman 1984

We're doing things a little differently this episode, with an audio-only review of the new Wonder Woman film, WW84!  Justin and Kelly will give an honest and fair assessment of Patty Jenkins' latest Wonder Woman opus, including our thoughts on the story, the performances by Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal, the 80s tone that brought us back to the innocence and campiness of the iconic Superman movies, the cartoonish CG effects, the poignant social and political themes that are still relevant in 2020, and more!  Join us for a deep dive into Wonder Woman 1984!

 

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Disclaimer- Some contents are used for educational purpose under fair use. Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

Parents' Night In #51: A Christmas Carol (1984)

Merry Christmas and welcome to another PNI, where we watch and discuss our favorite film version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the 1984 made-for-television film starring George C. Scott, David Warner, Roger Rees, Suzannah York, and Edward Woodward.  This film has been an annual staple in our house for years, and we love Scott's naturalistic, matter-of-fact portrayal of the miserable cheapskate Ebenezer Scrooge, who finds joy and human connection after being visited by various Christmas spirits (we're enjoying a couple Christmas spirits of our own, if you know what I mean..).  So pour yourself something nice and join in the holiday cheer with Justin & Kelly as we watch A Christmas Carol!

 

Snippet of opening theme music composed by Nick Bicat.

Parody lyrics:

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WWE Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2020 Preview & Predictions

Hooray, it's the final WWE PPV of the shitshow known as 2020!

This Sunday, five days before Christmas, is the usually superfluous Tables, Ladders & Chairs PPV, where the company more or less treads water before Royal Rumble season starts and The Road to WrestleMania begins.  Yes there have been some good December PPV matches, but they're usually few and far between, and the end-of-year PPVs are generally fairly skippable.  This edition looks that way as well, particulary given how poorly most of these matches have been built up.  Let's take a look...

RAW Tag Team Championship: The New Day vs. The Hurt Business

As successful an act as The New Day has been these last five-and-a-half years, it might be time to fully split them.  They've done all that can be done, with ten Tag Titles in all over the course of their run.  Kofi and Xavier winning these belts at this point doesn't mean a whole lot, especially since Kofi is a former WWE Champion.  With that in Mind, let's give Shelton and Cedric a run with them.

Pick: Hurt Business

Parents' Night In #50: Elf (2003)

Happy Holidays!  Welcome to Christmastime 2020!  Justin and Kelly are back to watch and discuss the Will Ferrell comedy Elf, directed by Jon Favreau and co-starring Zooey Deschanel, James Caan, Mary Steenburgen and Bob Newhart.  Kelly fell in love with Elf when it first came out, but it took the cynical Justin a few viewings to really appreciate its family-friendly innocence.  We'll talk not only about the film itself but also about experiencing Christmas as children vs. as adults, how old we were when we stopped believing in Santa Claus, and we'll answer the question "Which Christmas movie defines you as a person?"

Pour yourself some (spiked) egg nog and join us for some holiday fun as we watch Elf!

 

Parody lyrics of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town":

Oh, get ready to laugh

Get ready to grin

Her name is Kelly

And mine is Justin

Welcome back to Parents' Night In

Come hang out with us

You'll be on Cloud Nine

We're kickin' right back

And drinkin' some wine

Please subscribe to Parents' Night In

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Top Ten Things: Beatles Songs (John Lennon Edition)

Welcome to our third and final Top Ten Things pertaining to the songs of The Beatles!  I've saved my favorite for last, as today I'll be talking about the best songs written by the Beatle everyone thinks of first, John Lennon.  Check out the George and Paul lists if you haven't already...

John was sort of the unofficial leader of the group over their first few years, the oldest and most irreverent of the three original members (Ringo didn't join until 1962), and initially the strongest songwriter.  Despite the band having to clean up their image when Brian Epstein signed on as their manager, trading in leather jackets and greaser haircuts for suits and their trademark mop-tops, John always retained a bit of the bad boy image and attitude he originally brought to the table.  Unlike other pop stars of the period, John presented himself in interviews with candor and a zany sense of humor, and would later become politically outspoken and controversial, one of the first popular musicians to really get involved in activism.

As for his songwriting, I consider John the most creative of the band, always thinking outside the box and coming up with envelope-pushing ideas.  Where Paul's songs tended to be more inviting and structurally conventional while introducing new orchestration, John's tunes often had an edge to them, along with a dark surrealist bent.  Many of his greatest compositions played with words to evoke bizarre mental imagery; he could seemingly find inspiration in almost anything and turn it into a memorable song lyric.  For my money John's songs stole the show on most of The Beatles' albums, particularly from Revolver through the White Album; nearly every favorite of mine on those four records is a John song.  Sadly after the White Album John began to distance himself from all things Beatles, and his contributions to their last two records were somewhat reluctant.  But when you add up all the iconic Beatles songs over their world-changing run, John scores the most points in my book.  He may not have been the strongest overall musician in the group or had the best voice (Paul takes both of those honors), but I'd say he was easily the most imaginative member of the band.

Here now are the greatest Beatles songs written by John Lennon.... 


Honorable Mentions


In My Life

John described this song as the first serious lyric he ever wrote, a bittersweet meditation on his childhood that included nods to absent friends (Stuart Sutcliffe for example).  An introspective song bordering on anthemic, "In My Life" showed remarkable maturity and thoughtfulness beyond John's 25 years.



Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite

Inspired by an 18th century circus poster John bought at an antique shop, "Mr. Kite" got its lyrics almost verbatim from said poster, but musically the track is hugely groundbreaking.  To achieve a circus atmosphere John and producer George Martin played an organ break in the middle of the song, and in the outro Martin had the tape cut into footlong sections and thrown in the air, then reassembled at random to achieve a dreamlike, surrealistic quality.  On the band's most psychedelic album, "Mr. Kite" may be the most psychedelic song.



Dear Prudence

Written for Prudence Farrow, who became so immersed in Transcendental Meditation she often refused to come out of her hut for days at a time, "Dear Prudence" became a life-affirming anthem about experiencing the world fully and not getting lost in oneself.  Built on a delicate finger-picked guitar line, the song builds to a beautiful emotional peak (George's lead guitar melody near the end chokes me up every time I hear it); in execution "Dear Prudence" ended up so much more powerful than the simple bit of friendly encouragement it began as.  This one has grown on me leaps and bounds over the years.

NXT TakeOver: WarGames 2020 Preview & Predictions

NXT WarGames is this Sunday and I miss it being the night before Survivor Series so I could enjoy a whole weekend of team gimmick matches.  That was the stuff.  Back when I used to watch WWE....

Anyway, this year's lineup looks solid as usual, and as has been the case basically all year I have no real idea what's going on with NXT so I'm taking a stab in the dark with these predictions.  Let's go.

Tomasso Ciampa vs. Timothy Thatcher

I know these two have been feuding for a while and that this match should be highly technical, and thus good.  I guess I'll pick Ciampa to win.

Pick: Tomasso Ciampa

Dexter Lumis vs. Cameron Grimes

Both of these names are terrible; I dunno who in WWE is in charge of picking the names they saddle these poor folks with, but that person should be canned immediately.  Dexter Lumis sounds like the dork in science class whose notes you cheat off of, on your way to a half-assed C-minus.  Cameron Grimes sounds like a spoiled trust fund baby who ties a cardigan around his neck and plays racquetball with his fiancee.  Neither of these names remotely inspire fear, or even curiosity.  Pick better names.

Pick: I'll go with Johnny Country Club over there, Cameron Grimes

Top Ten Things: The Rocky Films, Ranked

Welcome to a special installment of Top Ten Things, here at Enuffa.com!  This edition is so special in fact that we only have eight things to rank.  Don't ask....

Today I'm here to talk about the Rocky film series!  The brainchild of struggling actor/screenwriter Sylvester Stallone, Rocky came about as a fit of inspiration in 1975, after Stallone watched no-name fighter Chuck Wepner shock the world by going the distance with the legendary Muhammed Ali.  He found the story of a million-to-one underdog a compelling mirror of his own journey in the film business, and pitched the idea to producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler at an audition.  They were intrigued and asked him to write a script, which he hammered out on lined paper in the span of three days.  Stallone's inspiring tale of a club fighter getting a once-in-a-lifetime shot at the Heavyweight Championship instantly captured their imagination, and the film was greenlit.  Limited to a tiny $950,000 budget, the production was a whirlwind affair, shot over four weeks, and no one was prepared for the cultural milestone the finished film would become.  $225 million and a Best Picture Oscar later, Rocky the film was as incredible an underdog story as its protagonist, and it quickly spawned a series.  The Rocky franchise is now eight films deep including the Creed spinoffs, with no signs of slowing down, and more amazingly, possessing of some of the sturdiest legs of any film saga.  After 44 years and counting, you simply can't knock this franchise off its feet.

But which installments are the best?  Which are the worst?  How does one rank these stirring, inspirational films spanning over four decades?  Let's hit the heavy bag and see if we're ready to go the distance.  Too many boxing metaphors?

8. Rocky V

The much-maligned fifth chapter earned most of its derision.  One of only two Rocky films I consider bad movies, Rocky V unfortunately didn't even reach "so bad it's good" territory.  I respected the filmmakers' endeavor at something different after taking the "Rocky as superhero" thing as far as it could go in Rocky IV.  They tried to take the series back to its gritty roots, having Rocky lose his fortune (through one of the most convoluted financial plot devices in film history) and move back to his old Philly neighborhood.  Suffering brain damage after his grueling Drago fight, Rocky is forced to retire from boxing but instead becomes a trainer to up-and-coming fighter Tommy Gunn, who then ditches Rocky for a hotshot promoter and wins the championship.  Rather than build to an in-ring climax between Rocky and Tommy, the film instead has them fighting in an alley behind the neighborhood bar.  The attempt to eschew the Rocky formula while not really eschewing it just made for a muddy, uninteresting, drab film, and worse, at the time it seemed the Rocky franchise would go out with a rather embarrassing whimper (Originally Rocky was going to be killed during the street fight; thank god that didn't happen....).

Parents' Night In #49: Friends - The Ones About Thanksgiving

Kelly & Justin are doing things a little different for Thanksgiving.  We're on a break.....from movies!  And we're talking about our favorite Thanksgiving-themed episodes of the legendary sitcom FRIENDS!  We'll cover The One Where Underdog Gets Away, The One With All the Football, The One With All the Thanksgivings, The One Where Ross Got High, and our favorite, The One With the Rumor, guest starring Brad Pitt!  We'll talk about the episodes themselves, how and why we well in love with FRIENDS, how some of the show's humor would play in 2020, our favorite FRIEND, Matthew Perry's personal struggles, Elliott Gould's overenunciation, flavored potato chips, how FRIENDS was one of the first sitcoms to introduce flashbacks where the same actors played younger versions of their characters, Kelly's Thanksgiving song, and most importantly our new disgusting invention, The Fart Jar!  Seriously, you gotta hear this.....

Hang out with us, crack open a beverage, and have a bit of turkey and stuffing (and Justin's favorite, mashed potatoes), and let's talk about our FRIENDS!

 

Snippet of The Rembrandts' "I'll Be There for You" used under Fair Use Doctrine.

Parody lyrics:

This is PNI (You should Like and Subscribe)

This is PNI (As we watch and imbibe)

This is PNI (This is Parent' Night In)

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