Lanza uploaded his review late so I uploaded my commentary late. Don’t come at me with “his was done three days ago” either. I’m taking off my shoe and I will throw it. Do you want the commentary or not?
This will be a bit more thorough than the review I did for this episode. I did watch the show, even though that review doesn’t really show it. There is also a fairly in-depth reprise focusing on the idea of “hate and heat”.
The word I would use to describe Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now is “mirage”. I’m not going to lie: I wanted to hate this book. I did not like the book, I wouldn’t go that far, but my thoughts on it are more complicated than I originally thought they’d be. One of the issues with New Thought work is that it’s not always easy to say it’s capital-W Wrong. There are things wrong about what Tolle says, absolutely, but it’s not wrong in a way that responds well to a clear takedown. Tolle references people who call what he’s written gobbledygook. In my opinion, it’s not so much that it’s uninteligible as that it prescribes a philosophy of ignorance.
Getting this isn’t straightforward, and I am not going to do an exhaustive breakdown with citations here, so if you haven’t read the book you will have to trust me. Overall, the problem is that though Tolle’s descriptions of why things go wrong can be compelling, there is no insight offered into these events. The response is always to simply be unaffected by it, something that is completely impossible in a lot of situations.
There’s also something to be said for Tolle’s style, which is structured to lull you into certain patterns of thought. But we’ll get to that.
I recently saw a series of posts by Daniel Kibblesmith on bluesky about a kind of Luddite-ism where Napster has caused a bad shift in consumption habits that have made it harder for artists to make a living: the expectation of free, etc. I also recently ran into an article I wanted to read which was successfully paywalled (i.e. sites are getting wiser to archives). These two things made me want to work out my thoughts on free culture and artists making money.
I am a writer with zero success. I have published things but nowhere near enough, or high profile enough, to ever rest laurels on. I say that to make the point that my perspective on this is going to be different than someone who is paying their bills with art, and I get that. I also want to be in a position where I’m doing that, though, so it’s not as though I’m insensitive to the idea that free work can be bad.
Another so-so episode of Dynamite last night. Nothing really grabbed me on it. Next week I’ll try to lock in a little bit more, but I still haven’t really even found an act to latch onto. Even guys I like are involved in a lot of nonsense. And yeah, I know I’m being a downer right now. I’ll talk about it after the review.
Here is my commentary on the Voices of Wrestling Thursday Dynamite Review posted today, December 5, 2024. If you’re not aware, you can listen to this by checking out the VoW Patreon, which I’m going to trust you to be able to find. I’m not gonna shill every week but I figured I should at least point out exactly what I’m reacting to once. The host is the inimitable Joe Lanza; I’d have a specific nickname for him but they stopped doing that bit like a year ago.
Anyway, I have done a review of this event on my own where I give thoughts on suspension of belief, and I refer to some of these thoughts in the commentary so it’s worth checking out first.
Spoiler ahead for something that happened after the broadcast ended.
This episode of Dynamite is a great example of why I don’t like AEW. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the show and I still thought it was godawful. Now look, I admit that I’m in a bad mood for other reasons today, but usually, good wrestling can brighten my mood. I didn’t feel like we got a lot of it here, and it’s for one main reason: suspension of disbelief.
To be specific, I was not suspending my disbelief for any of this shit.
Why not? Well, let’s go through the show and I’ll point it out to you.
If you have to tell me about how you’re
above all this
are you crouching down to say that
or are you just fucking lying?
The only thing I’ve really committed to
Is showing less of myself
As a sort of companion piece to my article Is the AEW Continental Championship Really Necessary?, I’d like to just go through a few different types of rankings/orderings that I’ll be using as we go forward, both here and elsewhere. I’m unfortunately a sucker for these kinds of setting-the-table posts so you’ll have to get used to it. At the very least, it’ll prevent me from having to delve deep into this every time I want to reference these concepts.
Check this article out on Voices of Wrestling: Is the AEW Continental Championship Really Necessary?
We wrestling fans spend a lot of time yapping about titles. Don’t get me wrong: I love yapping. The number of titles in All Elite Wrestling is especially a big topic. Usually, it seems like people think AEW has too many titles. Now, I’m not sure that I agree entirely, but it’s definitely worth thinking about. So let’s pick one and see if we can justify its existence.
How about the AEW Continental Championship? After all, it’s Continental Classic season and this fairly new belt is up for grabs. Does the Continental title really deserve its spot?