Over: Above and Beyond

Sunday night's WWE Pay-Per-View, Over the Limit, was actually really good.

Not Wrestlemania-good, or 90s Summerslam-good, but a full card of largely interesting and well-performed matches.

Spoilers ahead. Is if that's actually required for a wrestling show that was free on Sky Sports two days ago. Satellite TV subscription-permitting, of course.

I'm liking that WWE are now putting their pre-show 'dark' matches - that are usually not seen by anyone outside the venue before the TV show begins - on Youtube and Facebook. The Tag Team triple threat match before Wrestlemania 28 was a good example of this, and they've continued it with the Kane vs Zack Ryder demolition (I'd struggle to call it a match, really, despite it being longer than 5 minutes).

As much as I love Zack Ryder, he was never going to win this. Somewhere along the line his social media shooting star that took him to the lofty heights of United States Champion has fallen back to earth with a fairly massive bump. Not a job he should be having to do, although they have tried to build up Kane as a monster again.

Doing all the entrances for the 20-man People Power Battle Royal during this pre-show was a very good idea. It saved no end of time for the actual PPV and, if you were still wondering whether to buy it or not, knowing the likes of William Regal or, at the last moment, a returning Christian could have a chance of capturing the US or Intercontinental titles later in the evening could push you over the edge (not the limit, of course) to actually paying your money.

It was lovely to see the veteran Regal giving as good as he got, getting a real ovation that only Christian matched, if at all. Tyson Kidd also had a great showing, and The Miz is still getting dumped on from a great height.

The Kofi Kingston/R-Truth tag match vs Ziggler and Swagger was excellent. Dolph Ziggler never puts on a bad match these days, I think the only reason why he's not in the main event picture is because he knows how to sell so well, making everyone else's finishing moves look amazingly powerful.

Even the Divas Championship match between Layla and Beth Phoenix was great quality, with 10 minutes to play with they told a real story, and the action was better than we've seen in months.

Sheamus/Del Rio/Orton/Jericho added yet more spice to proceedings, with a great back-and-forth match that showed off all four men's abilities. The Miz got crushed in a comedy fashion, as he's probably become used to over the last few months (really?), but quite what he, Ryder and Ziggler are being held back for, I have no idea.

Christian and Cody Rhodes' match was short, but sweet, and the pop Christian got at the finish was one of the loudest of the night.

CM Punk and Daniel Bryan put on a half hour wrestling clinic for the all the world to see, as we all expected them to. It has been strange for the WWE title to not be contested as the main event for the last few PPVs - thanks to Cena/Rock, Cena/Lesnar and Cena/Laurinaitis - but this was a great match.

Half man, half biscuit Ryback bounced Camacho off the floor a few times, which was impressive to watch for all of two minutes as a cooldown for the main event, the WWE's top attraction versus some guy who used to be a bit of a wrestler 25 years ago, but not as good as his brother.

It looked like WWE was trying to recreate the wonders of Austin Vs McMahon, where finally the hero would get to make the boss taste his own medicine, and get handed a beating. Unfortunately, John Cena splits any wrestling crowd into boos and cheers, while John Laurinaitis simply isn't coming across as a character with anything like the venom and ruthlessness of Mr McMahon. So we had ourselves five minutes of laughs (well, chuckles maybe), of waiting for something to really happen.

And - spoilers aside - that was it? That was the main event? That was the finish to a PPV?

Oh, come on. Really?

All Brooklyn, No Brawler

A few things have come up recently that, with adequate participation, are severely threatening to enrich my life. How very dare they.

First there's the beginner-level salsa, or as the Hobbies and Interests section of the CV would put it: recently taken up Latin American dancing.

There's pen-and-paper roleplaying evenings, which aren't quite what I'd describe as a career prospect enhancer, but is enjoyable nonetheless. It's also much more fun than sitting around writing out my Starblaydia World Cup 60 squad and an accompanying roleplay.

Some small detail to go in the Hobbies and Interests section, in order to illustrate that I enjoy farting about in Photoshop and on the internet in general is that I did a Photoshop mashup that made it on to Empire Magazine's website. You can find my John Terry Vs Inception image here, about two-thirds of the way down with a link to my Twitter feed. Having a little tidbit like that can create a talking point, and lets people know I like sport, movies and using photoshop with practical examples.

"I enjoy music, movies and socialising," says a boring CV. Who doesn't like those things? Examples, man!

The final, most recent thing, is the Brooklyn Art Libary's Sketchbook Project for 2013. Provide them with a fairly nominal fee (which doubles if you want them to scan it and keep it online, too) and they send a sketchbook to you, a tad smaller than A5, with 32 pages.

All you have to do is fill it with... whatever you like. Then send it back to them, of course. The rest is up to the reader.

An artist is me! And a wrestling fan, too, if you get the title's reference. More on that in another post, though.

Idling in Arcadia

Another blog post, another board game that I've played for the first time. This is one of the benefits of going to a primarily board game club in Coventry on Monday nights.

Agricola is one of those games you can play two different ways. Either you can try and build yourself a little farm to your liking, irrespective of what everyone else is doing, or you can go for the points and the win, denying resources and opportunities to the other players for your own scoring benefits.

So, as with most games, it actually depends on who you're playing with to define your overall enjoyment levels with it. Build your house up, fence in different types of animals, grow your family as well as crops, pick occupations and improvements. It can be a little bit cutthroat in terms of who wants access to which resources and actions for the turn, but generally it's a very relaxed game and is a fun way to spend 14 turns of farming, sowing and harvesting.

The only problem is the price compared to other games of the type, but when you consider quite how many wooden tokens come along with it for the many available players, it's pretty obvious why this is the case.

The Lesser of Two Weevils

The selection dilemma at the heart of the English defence is a simple one - Ferdinand or Terry?

Do England select the lion-hearted, good old fashioned English Centre Half and trench warfare specialist who will put his body and soul on the line for his country, most notably during the national anthem when he's pretty much the only one of the eleven singing?

Or do they select the man with technique, class and positional sense to rival the likes of Paolo Maldini, who has twice broken the British transfer record in his career moves to Leeds and Manchester United and has been an England stalwart for over a decade?

Both of them are coming towards the end of their careers, both have been England captains in their time and both generally regarded among the world's best defenders. Unfortunately - if you've been living under a sporting rock for months on end - one is accused of racially abusing the other's brother.

'Obviously', says the media, it's therefore a case of which one of the two is picked. New England Manager Roy Hodgson has a crucial decision to make, they all say. 'They' being the football media who, if you actually pay attention to what they say, seem to know absolutely nothing about the game and are just after a good story. The answer to their probing, inciteful, not at all me being sarcastic question, though?

Take neither of them.

Remove the question entirely by bringing through some new players and give them a shot: Gary Cahill, Phil Jones, Phil Jagielka and Joleon Lescott all look capable of being international defenders.

So let's not rely on the creaking old bodies of these two over-thirties, who are far more llikely to either injure themselves or get themselves sent off through handballs and knees to the back than they are lift any silverware at international level. Rio can go back to his unfunny World Cup Wind-Ups show and Terry can go back to shagging  his mates' wives and resume his title of King Chav.

It's not like it'll really make a difference who we pick, after all - same results.

Did Cthulhu just pop your cherry?

Why yes, he did. My pen-and-paper roleplaying cherry, at least.

Last night I was down in Warwick at The Gaming Club for the first time to try some Call of Cthulhu, 1920s investigative style.

I'm not new to the idea of roleplaying itself, thanks to the various tabletop and computer games, MMORPGs, NationStates and similar that I've played over the years. Actually sitting down in a group with rolled characters and a DM guiding things was brand new to me.

The investigative group consisted of a writer, an Indiana Jones-type adventurer and an Amelia Earhart-esque character. What did they not have a lot of? Muscle. So that's where I decided to come in. Channelling Hardhead once more I rolled up a grizzled army veteran: Sergeant Neville Maitland-Jones. Hobbies included shouting and blowing things up, along with a fairly high skills in strength, weapons and combat, but little else. Seconded from the British Army to this investigation team for his more unorthodox investigation skills (primarily shouting and blowing things up, I expect). At the same time another player new to this game, Mark, rolled himself a Doctor Samuel Forrester as there's nothing quite like having an intelligent M.D. around.

DMing this game was Sean, evidently a true master of his craft. When deciding if the taxi Neville was in had a driver good enough to keep up with a speeding vehicle in a car chase, did we roll dice? Not at all, it was time to pull certain key blocks out of a Jenga tower as quickly as possible (to critical success, might I add). Could we see the license plate of the car? Only if you could actually spot it written on a piece of paper Sean held up as he ran away down the length of the room. For all the gimmicks though, if you did something ludicrously stupid in Sean's game, he'd punish you, making every decision a crucial one.

So when Neville decided to follow two men out of a high society party without telling any of his group, getting smacked over the head with a crowbar and knocked out in a single blow was almost inevitable. In reality, it only became inevitable when I rolled a critical fail on a D12 for the third time in half a dozen rolls. Thankfully, however, when Neville had come to I subsequently managed to talk my way out of it with some real-life blagging skills that actually seemed to impress our DM.

Everyone had the spotlight on them for their moment to shine (or in fact fail miserably, as I managed twice) throughout the game, as the main points were forgotten for tangents and side-quests and distractions aplenty. Apparently this game had been running for three session already and the first basic 'quest' (of many) was not even in sight!

I really enjoyed my evening of tension, drama, investigation and comedy, so will definitely be going back to the fortnightly sessions to continue the adventures of Sgt. Neville Maitland-Jones.

Carcassonne

Monday night's main game - one that I've only ever played on an XBox a handful of times one evening - was Carcassonne.

It was great fun and an interesting game all the way through. Though I took an early lead with some tactical road placements, I ended up fifth and last on 50 points, with the winner on 81. Not a bad showing, now some of the more strategic parts to it have become clearer.

That was followed by perhaps the longest demo game of Last Night on Earth in the world... ever! Mostly thanks to constant South Park references (which were almost entirely done in their Canadian accents, buddy). Humans were absolutely obliterated in the Escape in the Truck mission, despite finding the gasoline on Turn 2 and having two sets of keys five turns later.

After that came a couple of games of Martian Fluxx, both of which I won. I need to grab hold of Pirate Fluxx at some point, too, either that or Monty Python Fluxx - the two pinnacles of the Fluxx stable.

Tonight, though, is my first foray into pen and paper roleplaying. Away from the likes of text-based forum roleplaying in the form of NationStates and similar and into the realms of, well, proper roleplaying.

Should be good fun too. Especially as the restaruant they hold it in does fish & chips for a fiver on Wednesday nights - bonus!

Not the Sauce

Let's face it, I've watched far too much Strictly Come Dancing in my life (I could end this sentence here, of course) to be able to resist an offer to go to a Salsa class.

Rather than having to get the drive to go for the first time on my own, a "you should come along" offer makes things much easier.

Despite the fact I've never had a moment's dance training in my life - the only steps I've learned are in Photoshop tutorials - I figured I could give this dancing thing a go.

Absolute beginner? Totally. This ain't Dance Dance Revolution to perky J-Pop tunes like I've been used to, but perhaps those lost years spent jumping around on a giant control pad to over 9000 BPM songs put me in good stead for this.

Or I could have just been born with rhythm. Ish. I'm going to go with beginner's luck or good teaching.

Either way, I really enjoyed it, from learning the steps solo and with a rotation of six or seven partners, up to the free-form social side of 'just go for it' afterwards. Definitely more fun (and cheaper) than the gym, never mind having fun and learning a skill, which the gym doesn't do.

Definitely going again, too. I may not be any good at it (yet), but here's to learning something new. As far as something substantial goes, it can be popped down on the old CV, if nothing else.