the luminous blog: 2005-10-30

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Saturday Sports on TLB

First, an anniversary to celebrate - today marks the 46th one as far as the formation of the AFL goes, which comprised 8 teams at its inception in 1959 and now... oh, right, now is in a sad state of non-existence. Ow. (The AFC is merely a division of the NFL - FYI, non-sports aficionados!).
Also on this date: in 1887, Ottawa College (ORFU) defeats Montreal Football Club (QRFU) to win the Dominion championship. (Of course - if Montreal was already renowned for its *Gentilles Alouettes* more than for its brawn, they had no chance in hades to win a thing indeed!). In 1933, the Chicago Bears' 30-game unbeaten streak ends to the Patriots - 10-0. At the opposite end of this spectrum, in 1982, the Cleveland Cavaliers lost their record 24th straight game (Drew Carey really meant Cleveland *sucks* on his theme song there - rrrrright?). Speaking of cities with losing track-records - New Orleans' Saints won their first NFL game ever on a November 5th - in 1967. The final score was close enough though; 31-24 over the Philadelphia Eagles. They haven't won all that many since - now, have they? For the fans of more, ah, *cerebral sports* out there - in 1992, Bobby Fisher beats Boris Spassky to win the Chess title in Belgrade today... *Boris The Bear* would have stood a better chance against Bobby... Way to go Bobby! You're the best! Never met a Bobby who wasn't, actually... Bobby Doerr... Bobby Orr... Bobby Kennedy... Bobby Soxer... hmm, skip that last one now!
Next up... for the person that, for some obscure reason believed me to be a Montreal Canadiens fan - take a peek at *this* pic... (a little something they sell as quality t-shirts in clothing shops that matter - a little something that I personally improved upon thanks to the wizardry of Microsoft Picture It! :)

Next up - this week-end's match-ups... luminous style! Boston Burns Pittsburgh yet again - part of the Curse of Cam Neely upon Mario The Not-So-Magnificent One (what - you thought only Babe Ruth could curse Boston - and Boston players could not curse the opposition in return - especially when said opposition plays dirty and ENDS YOUR CAREER? No way - turnabout *is* fair play!). Buffalo bounces Montreal - in the second of a home-and-home series (the Habitants are party-poopers on the road - but at home, the CH stands for choking before their hometown crowd!). Another DC battle - Dallas vs Colorado actually - ends inconclusively (yes - I am predicting a tie! Take that to your bookie!). And, on Sunday, in the NFL, two teams previously mentioned here will butt heads and helmets; the Chicago Bears and the New Orleans Saints. Expect another spectacle of mauling and martyrdom as the Bears take that one...

// posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ @ 9:42 AM 9 luminous comments

Friday, November 04, 2005

Last luminous blog post about wrestling - ever!!!

(Picture: Copyright WWE 2005 - sue my luminous derrière McMahon - come on!)

Flair won his big cage match Tuesday... as I had predicted. (Actually, I had cursed the WWE to bankrupcy in the advent of a Flair loss... but it is irrelevant now.)
Each time I see Flair, I think of WCW. And each time I think of WCW - I think of the company's flagship group - the Four Horsemen. Author and founding father of the group J.J. Dillon is right when he says that the two are synonymous. And, when I think of the Horsemen... well, I can't help but to wonder about the whereabouts of one Mongo McMichael - the Horseman that was the most everyman-like of the bunch in the late 90s (aside from Arn Anderson himself, that is!).
Mongo is a sad tragic story - though there are sadder and far more tragic to be found too (Horsemen rejects Brian Pillman and Curt Hennig are BOTH DEAD. And there are plenty more tales of horror in that business - "wrestling tragedies"abound, aye... with surely much more to come. Mongo, though, strikes a chord... because he was such a big teddy bear of a man in the end and not at all the ruffian and the brute that his appearance projected; most of us can identify with that!).

What follows is a little something I penned a while ago ~ for a social media audience... NOT the best readership there is, but you know - it'll do!

Man... I thought HORSEMEN member Steve Mongo McMichael was stupid to have allowed himself to hurt so much because his DUMB BLONDE OF A WIFE had left him... Mongo was one of the 4 HORSEMEN - alongside RIC FLAIR - an honor and a privilege that alone should have made him impervious to such harm, as his ego should have ballooned up out of control... Hey, the man was part of an ELITE...! Not sufficient for him it seems, as Mongo quit wrestling... gained so many extra pounds... was a total WRECK after his dumb blonde - DEBRA - did leave him... It was very sad to see when he made his next public appearance at a Cubs game - how unrecognizable he had become. (Sort of a male version of Kirstie Alley - but with a good reason to put on the pounds and be down!). And I thought "how silly of him - I will never make THAT mistake!" DEBRA then hooked up with another wrestler... who wound up stating that she GAVE NEW MEANING TO THE EXPRESSION DUMB BLONDE. That wrestler was Double J, Jeff Jarrett, another Horsemen reject who then took the dumb blonde Debra to the WWE anyway... Once there, Double J started tag-teaming with one OWEN HART - with Dumb Debra as their manager (though she hardly managed at all to walk and chew gum at the same time even... but that is another story.) DEBRA proved to be a FATAL JINX when Owen Hart died a most freakish death BREAKING HIS NECK FALLING FROM THE CEILING INTO THE RING (only in the WWE...) and, next, Double J left the WWE in a most distraught state - and has since been ostracized by the WWE, in fact... DEBRA remained there though and eventually became the love of one STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN... Know what happened? STONE COLD was smarter than MONGO (who is a big guy with dark hair and a soft heart - sort of like me) - because STONE COLD did not let her break his (allegedly stone cold) HEART... instead, HE BEAT UP DEBRA AND LEFT HER... one of his many bouts with THE LAW as it is... In effect, SHE received what she dispensed; having treated Mongo like dirt - and, just like Mongo was because of HER, SHE was so distressed and such a wreck that she quit wrestling altogether too; what goes around... comes around. She lamented about it on CNN - on a segment devoted to the ravages concussions cause among athletes; turning those guys into monsters (alas, that was all about a much-worse case; that of yet another former Horseman, comrade-in-arms of Mongo that I don't want to even NAME here...)

Dumb Debra was a female wrestler but just barely; more a bimbo than anything else... hardly missed by anyone. Her kind is easily replaceable and not that classy - though they call them "WWE DIVAS" - they are only good to parade around... and pose for Playboy like Sable did... Chyna... Torrie Wilson... Oddly enough, the most bimboesque of them all, very blonde too (and Canadian) Trish Stratus has NOT posed for Hugh Hefner's rag of a mag... yet! WCW's Stacy Keibler neither. Many others have, however - home-made talents from the wretched WWE as well as brought-over talent from ECW and WCW. I feel somewhat sad for Torrie Wilson, who has more class (barely) and she did start out in WCW after all... The things WWE has made her do since she was brought in there...! WCW went bankrupt because of the sleazy WWE - and it is sad that the WWE made of her what they made of all the other bimbos - she deserved a tiny little bit better fate than that... WCW was the home of the Horsemen - the house that Flair built... the home of family-oriented entertainment, as Bill Goldberg stated many times (he and Christian-convert wrestler and sometimes actor Steve Borden a.k.a. Sting both; not to be confused with the singer and sometimes actor Sting now) and it was traditional wrestling entertainment with very clear boundaries of where it could or would go - but it fell down as quick as if it had been built upon the sand for flimsy foundations...

It is said in the Good Book that once one becomes a child of God, one must cast oneself aside from questionable crowds (I paraphrase). Well - I have had it, that is for damn sure - a long time ago as a matter of fact! The elder gentleman that Flair has become had to lower himself again - fight inside a steel cage against a much bigger and somewhat younger opponent that once was his "best friend" and who professes to have always idolized him... This guy is actually my exact same age! I should have been the one given the chance to befriend my former hero - not him! This "best friend" had struck his elder with a sledgehammer, thus causing the rift between them... imagine that: a sledgehammer! And then a screwdriver, driven into the forehead to draw blood! With such examples as this, no wonder youngsters are such runts without an ounce of gratitude nowadays. No wonder there is no respect! The saddest part is that this is almost acceptable - to strike so violently an older man one professes to admire - in comparison to past match-ups and feuds pitting father against son... father against daughter... uncle against nephew... brother against brother (ironically enough, the late Owen Hart versus his brother Bret... Owen was really treated like dirt by the wretched WWE, every way you look at it). Add the sleaze and redundancy factors... I have ample cause to boycott the crappy product - FOR LIFE! I have writing to do - no more time to waste watching cable crap for me! Quote the raven (not the wrestler) - NEVER MORE!

Labels: Ahh - American Thanksgiving... the real deal, Disambiguation Again, violence

// posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ @ 11:18 AM 0 luminous comments

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Don't cry for Dubya, Argentina...

Dubya is in Argentina today - so are thousands of demonstrators protesting his visit there, the families of American soldiers killed in Iraq... and a horde of diarrhea-stricken policemen who were assigned to form a fortified security ring around the top hotels for the 34-nation summit in Mar del Plata - the hotels, of course, where Bush and several more world leaders will be staying... The policemen had bad lasagna a day ago at their favorite place for such dishes, apparently - no conspiracy required here, hence! (Although "the preferred eating grounds for the 700-strong police squad patrolling the city was closed by city inspectors following the incident." Hmm...). Over all, security for the summit is astounding enough, with 7,000 police and military personnel comprising it - terrorists need not even try!
A common goal of reducing poverty is on Dubya's agenda on this outing truly "down south"... "Bush says nations can band together to create jobs through free trade" however Dubya faces stiff and stern resistance from other nations in the Americas - namely Argentina, Brazil and Panama. (I love it that Brasil -the Portuguese spelling has an "s" not a "z"- keeps on rolling with its resolute anti-American stance... or plain old distrust of the good old USA! Still, in other areas, they are as Americanized as Canada and plenty more all over the globe... The last nail in THAT coffin was when I discovered that Brazilians went with the all-american appellation "Smurfs"... over the accepted Portuguese translation of "Schtroumpfs"... "Estrumpfes"...! Gee... I mean, how much more subservient to American culture can you get than THAT?!? But that is another story indeed... I am digressing yet again... shame on me!).
Back to the main story thus... and that is all about a Western Hemisphere trade agreement - the thing that Dubya & crew have dreamed of but have never gotten realized. And it likely will not get realized either - with protesters in the thousands and opposers such as leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez awaiting Dubya in the seaside resort of Mar del Plata, Argentina, for the summit that begins Friday. Ominous words were issued by the leftist as a matter of fact - words that leave no doubt to his anti-Dubya sentiment... "Chavez has indicated he plans to lead a "final burial" of Bush's plan for a giant free trade area that would include all countries in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba." (Always "except Cuba" in there - the USA and I do have that in common - we forgive (well, the USA allegedly do) but we never forget! And so, the embargo is still ON... The ghost of Che Guevara wouldn't have it any other way either...). One has to scoff though at "Bush's plans to eradicate poverty" - which are right up there with his war on Terror, I am sure... What else could Dubya tackle now, in terms of "abstract opponents", hmm? Famine? Pestilence? Death? Dubya, Rumsfeld, Condoleeza and Cheney against the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse! Steel cage match - I'd pay to see that! However, a special guest-referee is needed here - to spice things up! But who could it be... Kofi Annan is too... anemic! Osama Bin Laden?!? We know whose side he would take upon his entering the cage... Same would go for Tony Blair if he was chosen (twice more so in fact!). Maybe a non-political entity -in the International sense- is required here... and I elect Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin! *lol*
But enough with the wrestling analogy/spoof... these are serious matters here to point out... poverty is a serious issue. So is what is happening still in Iraq - and across the Middle-East. The above picture, if it encourages one American soldier stationed in Iraq - well it will be mission accomplished for this luminous blogger, at least! The troops there have passed the mark of 2000 in their casualties - if I was among the families of the dead soldiers, especially since we just came off the Day of the Dead celebrations and all... I would remind Dubya of my discontent... remind him that he is not the only one who "allegedly forgives" - but never forgets! Chavez is probably the one who invited them over in the first place though - and to do just that! The famed Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona will also join the U.S. soldiers' families in the protest rally... Goodie!

// posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ @ 7:24 AM 4 luminous comments

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

All-Souls Day... on a hump day... hmm... what would grandpa think of that... and what would grandma say!

Benito Mussolini. Genghis Khan. Al DiSalvo (who was not the Boston Strangler). Sir Winston Churchill. Sir Alec Guinness. Sir Laurence Olivier (three sirs - I'm out!). Attila The Hun. Napoléon Bonaparte. Lizzie Borden. Jack The Ripper (whoever it was). Ted Bundy. Jeffrey Dahmer. Adolf... need I go on?
All of these and countless more are to be found -somewhere, in some misshapen ethereal form or another- in the Great Beyond... in the Land of the Dead! Verily, on a day like today, we should pause and realize that even though the planet is near over-population as it currently is (and never has it been so close to it as it is nowadays) - the Dead outnumber us by such a margin that our numbers -among the living- are dwarved in comparison! Aye, it is a good thing that there is no semblance of similitude between today and the cinematic Day of the Dead... That would be a losing cause for our side! But that is another story...

Of course, not all of the dead are "bad guys" - a great many gooder-than-good guys are found among their illustrious ranks - from the recently departed Karol Wojtyla and Mother Teresa to Sharon Tate, Rachel Corrie, Marla Ruzicka, Marie-Soleil Tougas, Lady Di... And add to that the innumerable everymen and everywomen that are our dearly departed - our kins who were never famous but who were unquestionably the true stars in the movies of their lives... as also stars in the eyes of all those that they touched during their passage on this Earth. These are the ones we REALLY should be thinking about today - the ones that matter the most. They who have crossed over and still love us, as we love them - the ones who have now seen the Light truely and know the Truth. May God grant them permission to help us out a bit, all of us still alive on this mudball called Earth - all of us among the Living...!
About "hump day" though...

// posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ @ 9:28 AM 4 luminous comments

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Sainthood, anyone?

TODAY is All-Saints Day... eh? And the Day of the Dead is TOMORROW... always a gap between All Hallows Eve and the Day of the Dead... so that we don't have 2 horrific days BACK-TO-BACK! Smart Christian thinking there, eh? I thought so!
Note, also, another November date of significance on the Christian calendar - the 24th, the Day of all Vietnam Martyrs... With so many good souls floating around in November, the evil spirits that were summoned for Halloween by wayward mindless fools in search of "kicks" (or bumps... in the night? Ok now - no double entendre here folks!) shall be scattered in no time at all! Certainly the Ancient Celts could never have imagined that their All Hallows' Eve and Samhain (pronounced Sow-in, by the way folks!) would get separated by a day celebrating sainthood amongst the faillible - that is, us, the weak mortal flesh! Mayhaps that is because they had little in terms of saints to celebrate, themselves, to begin with? Lugh was one good choice - and though I like the name and basic, ah, powers of that one (hey - Luminous Lugh, my harbinger!) I am not so sure of his sainthood... or that he even existed! Another good candidate would be Cuchullain - and, again, as with Lugh, the question is if he is more myth than anything else... I suppose arguments could be made about the validity of St. Bob Cousy, St. Bill Russell or even St. Larry Bird (!) - okay, now I am being whimsical here!
One thing that the Celts and I can agree on through the centuries is this: "the Celts believed that past and present were closely linked, allowing ancestral spirits to join them" - and, as a historian, I sure do believe the exact same thing! Aye, sir! It is quite amazing indeed that Halloween -which dates back to 700 B.C. to the rural society in northern England, Ireland and Scotland that the Celts were- pretty much became widespread all over the world - with notable exceptions! The spread of the pagan ritual of Samhain has proven to be durable; but the Christians made it a day to celebrate saints who had no day of their own! So, everybody wins - isn't that sweet? In this day and age, win-win situations are so rare and few... one stands a better chance to run into a no-win situation more often than not...!
The picture, by the way, is one of those saintly souls meeting its Maker... a truly luminous visualization of what it could be like - don't you think? ;) Blessings!

// posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ @ 7:33 AM 3 luminous comments

Monday, October 31, 2005

Happy Halloween - and Samhain! Celebrate the feast day of St. Wolfgang too now!

Ah, those luminous sidebar features here, on TLB! _Dictionary.com_ displays a wicked sense of humor by having, today of all days, the word of the day being... immolate! How appropriate for Halloween - quite in the... ah... spirit of things! _Twisted History_ reminds us that Octocer 31st is the anniversary of the passing of one notable among spooky notables - Harry Houdini! In 1926, famed magician & occultist Harry Houdini died in less-than-mysterious circumstances really - and his occultism consisted of holding séances with a slew of fake mediums and charlatans, in the vain hopes of reaching his mother dearest who'd long crossed over to the other side... Frankly, if Harry needed his mom's cooking so badly - he should have made sure she wrote down the recipes in her living years! Harry and Elvis both had this motherly love thing very close to heart... expect lots of Elvis sightings tonight, by the way... Some Harry sightings as well - however, that would be Harry Potter... alas! Although Harry HOUDINI promised to re-emerge from the dead... and so, his fans and widow have had many a séance too, trying to reach out to him this time and, in effect, ease his spectacular comeback... to no avail so far. Maybe tonight's the night though...? Who knows...?
Halloween brings out the party animals in people - it also brings out the worst in people! (Party-animalism, if such is a word for it, would already be the worst in many conservatives' eyes though... but that is another story!). Look at the .twisted. evidence: in 1956, Britain & France felt the urge to BOMB Egypt in an effort to convince the Middle-Eastern country to simply reopen the Suez Canal (open sesame never worked anyway... still, the French, usually meek individuals, and the English -gentlemen as they are- could have just ASKED... maybe?). In 1963, the hellions/aliens connection I made in yesterday's TLB post seemed to find some corroboration as a disc-shaped UFO plummeted into Brazil's Peropava River - on All-Hallows' Eve! E.T.'s trick-or-treaters...? Hmm... Worst of the worst in human nature is the instinct to kill though - and in the Orwellian Year 1984, on this date, the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated - by two Sikh security guards of all people! Some guards... I wouldn't hire them.
In a far less dramatic way, All-Hallows' Eve 2001 proved (in some bizarre and disputable way) that animals are affected too by spooky nights such as this one - that year, in Anchorage, Alaska, a local biologist quipped the most astonishing conclusion any biologists could come to regarding... moose. 'Halloween is a scary time for moose,' he said, to explain why two trick-or-treaters suffered minor injuries when a bull moose appeared out of nowhere and ran them down. Hmm... what would be the moose's reaction to the Day of the Dead, a mere 48 hours later then...?!? That sure is scary...! Think of all the questionable individuals who are to be found among the dead...! More on that - in 48 hours!
Finally... today is the ideal day to have a scary story read to you or to have one to read - correct? You shall find one here. A horror tale that is about to celebrate an anniversary too - and a tale of true horror, for it is horror found in the least suspicious of places... and in a most ordinary form. No outlandish bloodsucker, misbegotten deformed creature or tormented apparition can be as effective in making your skin crawl and scare you witless as the monster you will find here.
You have been warned! *lol* And forewarned...

// posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ @ 9:09 AM 1 luminous comments

Sunday, October 30, 2005

as all-hallows' eve approaches...

... do you really think for one minute that that_ fabled night is the only night in which ghouls, goblins, ghosts, hellions (and aliens as well?) - leprechauns, trolls, banshees, witches (especially witches) - chupacabras, wraiths, vampires and werewolves get down and dirty? And the rest of the year, they avoid getting nasty like the plague...? What for? So that they can get Christmas presents from Santa (or is it... Satan?). Highly improbable... These wretched types are naughty 365 days a year - and TWICE ON SUNDAYS, if only out of spite for the Christian community! (I say that, but of course many of these creatures of the night might be harboring ill-feelings towards other faiths - or hoping for presents for Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, for all we know... eh?). However... All-Hallows Eve aka Halloween is an excellent excuse to forget that a great many of these critters might actually truly exist... by watching bad movies made about them, ironically enough! Hollywood and Halloween go together like... a pimp and, ah, "servicewoman" - likely... my luminous suggestions for "seasonal celluloid offerings" follow... in living color! As Mrs. Addams used to say... Happy Halloween!

And, also as all-hallows' eve approaches - I find myself sleeping during the day... and awake at night pondering philosophical questions rife with existential angst... oh my God - what does that mean?!? Surely nothing to be anxious about... hmm? Surely not any reason to go see a shrink...! Ha - those who know me well, know what my opinion is when shrinks are concerned! *lol*

// posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ @ 9:22 AM 2 luminous comments

Two more films to show the true horrors in America today;
no, folks, 'tis not terrorists or serial killers that we talk about- it is the American Witch!
NOT WICCANS, NITWITS - NOT NATURALISTS WHO HANG OUT IN BOTANIA... COME ON!!!
Hexing, swearing, jinxing, vexing, bewitching b!tches...
And their male counterparts! (The Lochs - warlocks!) THEY ARE THE ENEMY! Worse than any other movie monster ever known to film buffs - because they look so... innocuous!
Beware of those who blend in, I say - this halloween and, mostly,
throughout the year!

Hmm... Maybe a third film would be best suggested here:
Rosemary's Baby!

And a fourth: SPELLBINDER. (Google it!)

Listen to the Zombie now - he knows what he sings about!
(And, at least, he SINGS! Unlike others like him who merely
SHOUT their inaudible and atrocious so-called lyrics -
which is the reason why he's the glaring exception
that reaffirms the rule
and makes it onto TLB PRIME...!
Besides - he was spotted wearing an Edgar Allan Poe t-shirt!!! That counts for something... Does it not?!?)