Hit The One In The Middle

Rocky IV
United Artists (1985)
The fourth installment in the Rocky franchise, and the film that took the Philadelphia boxer to the Soviet Union to take on Ivan Drago, premiered across the United States thirty years ago today.

Despicable Pizza

Marketside Pizza
Wal-Mart (2015)

A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far Down The Turnpike

A new limited edition t-shirt is available from ProWrestlingTees.com that commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Raven vs Tommy Dreamer feud that put ECW on the map.

The shirt is designed in the style of the original Star Wars movie poster featuring Raven as Darth Vader, Dreamer as Luke Skywalker and Beulah McGillicutty as Princess Leia, which adds a bizarre dimension to her relationships with the two men.  Stevie Richards and The Blue Meanie are off in the distance as C3P0 and R2D2.

You've Got A Friend In Me

Buzz Lightyear cup
The cowboy isn't the only Woody in the playroom.

It's hard to believe that it's been twenty years since Toy Story first appeared in theaters.  While I didn't see it in theaters, the home video release has a special place in my heart.  I worked as a cashier at Wal-Mart for the 1996 holiday season.  We had TV / VCR carts set up at both entrances just past the shopping carts.  Toy Story had just come out on home video, so we had the tape playing on a constant loop.  On the days that I worked the express checkout lanes, I would hear Randy Newman sing "You've Got A Friend In Me" ten or twenty times a day at the beginning and end of the tape.  It became sort of an alarm clock to let me know that another 80 minutes of my shift had passed.

Next Time We Steal A Plane, I'll Let You Crash It

King Solomon's Mines
Cannon (1985)
The Cannon Films response to the Indiana Jones phenomenon was released thirty years ago today.  It was unfairly destroyed by the critics, but it's a hell of a fun adventure flick.  If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend checking it out.

What You Need Is A Shoe Shine

Nick Of Time
Paramount (1995)

This Johnny Depp action thriller premiered in theaters twenty years ago this week.  It bombed at the box office and still doesn't seem to have found its audience, but I think it's an under-appreciated gem from the mid 90's and a movie that's definitely worth watching.

A Love Song To An Empty World

Kauaʻi ʻōʻō
American Bird Conservancy (1987)
The Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird was native to Hawaii.  In 1987, photographer David Boynton recorded the song of the last of its species.  It was a male bird whose mating song went unheard, as there were no remaining female birds of the species left on earth.

The Insane Orange Waiter

benwarheit:

Things I like about this decal on a restaurant window: 

• The insane orange waiter.
• That he’s carrying his plates in the air like a strongman.
• The couple looks like this isn’t the first time he’s done this, but it’s easier to just let it happen at this point.
• The sign says PASTA as if he’s screaming it like a Frankenstein
• ...but he’s holding a plate of an entire chicken and a plate of wine glasses.
• There’s three wine glasses
• ...one’s for him.

That 70's Hawaiian Luau

This photo was published in the Standard Speaker forty years ago today.  My mother is on the left, my grandmother is in the center, and my aunt is on the right.

WWF Title Tournaments

The video catalog of World Wrestling Entertainment has no shortage of tournaments.  The first King Of The Ring tournament took place at a non-televised event in  Foxborough, Massachusetts just over three months after the first Wrestlemania.  Four months later, the WWF promoted the second pay-per-view in company history - The Wrestling Classic.  This show was centered around a 16-man single elimination tournament.  It featured only one non-tournament match, in which Hulk Hogan defended the championship against "Rowdy" Roddy Piper.

The next chapter in the history of WWE tournaments will be written in three weeks at the Survivor Series.  Seth Rollins was scheduled to defend the World Heavyweight Championship against Roman Reigns in the main event, and it seemed as if the undercard would include a traditional Survivor Series elimination match between the Wyatt Family and a team fronted by The Undertaker and Kane.  This all changed on November 4th, 2015 when Rollins tore his ACL, MCL and meniscus in a non-televised event in Dublin, Ireland.  The title is now vacant, and although the details and participants have not yet been named, the Survivor Series is being rewritten as a tournament to crown a new World Heavyweight Champion.

This is not the first time that a championship will be decided in a tournament.  In fact, it's not even the first Survivor Series to host a title tournament.  With this in mind, let's take a look at some of the WWF/E tournaments that were held to crown a champion.

South American Championship

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 01 Sept 1979

Maracanãzinho Gymnasium

As a child, I watched every Coliseum Home Video that I could get my hands on.  One of my favorites was The History of the Intercontinental Belt.  This is where I learned that Pat Patterson became the first Intercontinental Champion after winning a grueling, one-night tournament in Rio de Janeiro.  It was mentioned on WWF television and pay-per-view events once in a while, but it received perhaps its greatest attention during the Attitude Era when Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco appeared as Vince McMahon's "stooges".  By this point, it was common knowledge, even for many casual fans, that the tournament in Rio de Janeiro was fictitious.

If you're not a pro wrestling fan, your first reaction might be to point out that the entire business is fictitious, and you would be right, but that's not what I'm talking about.  The tournament in Rio de Janeiro - the matches themselves - never happened.  They just gave Patterson the title and they came up with a thin backstory to explain why, and they stuck to their story for the next 33 years.

Fast forward to April 1st, 2013.  WWE.com columnist Zach Linder dug deep into the archives and made a discovery.  In one of the best storylines featured on the website, his article explained that Pat Patterson, the reigning North American Heavyweight Champion, wrestled in a one-night tournament for the South American Championship that was held at the Maracanãzinho Gymnasium in Rio de Janeiro.  This tournament also featured a young Ted DiBiase, who Patterson defeated for the North American Championship earlier in the year.  The article explains that the tournament took place years before DiBiase would inherit his wealth and become the Million-Dollar Man.

The first round saw Patterson defeat Butcher Vachon and DiBiase defeat Frank "The Moose" Monroe.  Another first round match saw WWE Hall of Famer Johnny Rodz defeat a wrestler named "Gypsy Rodriguez", who I have never heard of outside of this article.  Additionally, the masked Mr. X (reported to be Nikolai Volkoff) and The Great Hussein Arab (who would later become The Iron Sheik) eliminated each other with a double count out.

Patterson got a bye in the second round, and he was reported to have interfered in the match between DiBiase and Rodz by smacking his rival with a pair of brass knuckles to allow Johnny Rodz to get the victory.  The well-rested future stooge then had a easy time defeating Rodz in the finals to be crowned the South American Champion.  Pat announced that he was unifying this new title with his North American Championship, thus making him the first Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion.

The article concludes with an image of the Berzerker declaring that this recap of the tournament in Rio was an April Fools joke, but damn it, I've waited for over 30 years for an explanation for the origin of this title, so I'm accepting it as canon.  It's also one of the most creative storylines I've seen come out of the WWE this decade.  I'd love to see them piece together footage of matches from the late 70's and early 80's and try to create a "highlight reel" for the events written about in this article, just to give a video presence to this mythical tournament.  It wouldn't be much different from the "tournament" that TNA has pieced together for their vacant title, except for the fact that people might actually watch the IC Title footage.

Wrestlemania IV

Atlantic City, NJ - 27 Mar 1988

Historic Atlantic City Convention Hall

(identified as Trump Plaza on television)

The seeds for what is arguably the most famous title tournament in WWF/E history were planted on NBC at The Main Event on February 2nd, 1988.  Ted DiBiase, who had been screwed out of a title by Pat Patterson in Rio de Janeiro, was now in a financial position to screw Hulk Hogan.  The Million Dollar Man paid a bogus referee to work the rematch of the Wrestlemania III main event.  As a result, Andre the Giant defeated Hulk Hogan via pinfall to win the WWF World Heavyweight Championship, even though Hogan kicked out at two.  Andre immediately sold the title to Ted DiBiase, who then became the 12th champion in the history of the company (a title reign that is not recognized by the WWE and the majority of wrestling fans, but that's another story for another time).  Jack Tunney declared the title vacant, and a 14-man tournament was set up for Wrestlemania IV.

To this day, this is my favorite Wrestlemania.  Even though there were quite a few wrestlers who were obviously not going to win, every match felt like a big deal.  At the time, I really expected Don Muraco to win the tournament.  He walked to the ring with "Superstar" Billy Graham and the music from Jesus Christ Superstar, but he was knocked out of the second round by Ted DiBiase.

I'm sure many fans believed that Hulk Hogan would win, and who could blame them.  He and Andre had an automatic bye into the second round, and he went over in the main event of every Wrestlemania up to this point.  The second rematch between the two ended in a double disqualification, which gave DiBiase a bye in the third round to head straight for the finals.

Looking back on this event, I'm disappointed that they didn't book Ricky Steamboat to go over Greg Valentine to set up a Wrestlemania III rematch with Randy Savage, but it didn't bother me as a kid.  Savage defeated "The Natural" Butch Reed in the first round, Greg "The Hammer" Valentine in the second round and The One Man Gang in the third round before finally defeating Ted DiBiase in the finals to win the championship.

The moment of the night was Hogan's facial expressions as Miss Elizabeth dragged him to ringside.  It begins with the most comical look of confusion you have ever seen on the face of an adult, and then transforms into an even more comical look of anger.  It was like watching a Popeye cartoon come to life.  Hogan's presence not only allowed him to end Wrestlemania in the spotlight, but it set up the next 12 months of booking with the run of the Mega Powers, which led to the Mega Powers exploding at Wrestlemania V.

European Championship

Germany - 20 Feb 1997 to 26 Feb 1997

WWF Xpress Tour and Monday Night Raw #199

To look at the first round brackets of this tournament, you might think that the WWF European Championship was a big deal.  This read like a who's who of talent from the late 90's.  It included The Rock, Triple H, Bret "The Hitman" Hart and Mick Foley.  It featured the current tag team champions, Owen Hart and The British Bulldog.  There was also Too Cold Scorpio, a four-time ECW Television Champion who had just recently signed with the WWF.  And oh, by the way, it also included Vader, a three-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion, and a three-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion... not that you'd ever know that from the way he was booked on Raw.  With all of this raw talent, how can you go wrong?

Well, to start with, the characters of many of these superstars had not yet developed.  In reality, The Rock didn't wrestle in this tournament; Rocky Maivia did.  This wasn't "the most electrifying man in sports entertainment."  This was the smiling, babyface "blue chipper" and "the son of Rocky Johnson" who Jim Ross raved about to a chorus of boos and "Die Rocky Die" chants.  This wasn't Triple H - the cerebral assassin, or even the member of DX.  This was Hunter Hearst Helmsley, the "Connecticut blueblood" who came to the ring accompanied by Mr. Hughes.  This wasn't even the Mankind who everyone came to know and love.  This was the guy who lived in the boiler room with "Uncle Paul" Bearer.  Bret Hart was the superstar that you think of when you hear the name, but his popularity was beginning to fade, and his heel turn at Wrestlemania 13 would happen less than a month later.  Vader was not the monster heel of WCW and NJPW.  He was "The Man They Call Vader" - a guy who was treated like a jobber-to-the-stars, not unlike the way that the WWF booked Dusty Rhodes at the start of the decade.  Too Cold Scorpio was not the high flying innovator of ECW.  He was "Flash Funk", who could best be described as the Poochie of professional wrestling.

Although these characters were not presented in their best light during this tournament, it didn't really matter because the only people who saw their participation in the tournament were the fans who were in attendance at house shows from the WWF Xpress Tour in Germany (I've heard that it may have aired on German television on Deutsches Sportfernsehen, but I haven't been able to find it).  The only match that could be seen by most of the world was the finals, which aired as the main event of Raw on March 3, 1997.

So, how does this tournament score a B+ when it has so much going against it?  The answer is: Owen Hart vs The British Bulldog.  Simply put, the final match of this tournament was one of the greatest matches in the history of Monday Night Raw.  It's a match that has become lost to history because it happened during a transitional period for the WWF.  It was almost perfectly sandwiched between the birth of Austin 3:16 (about eight months earlier) the Montreal Screwjob (about eight months later).  It happened at a time when Vince was experimenting with a number of ideas to win back the audience, including an ECW invasion, a number of awkward shoot promos, and a mix of aging veteran characters with fresh talent who hadn't found their character.  It also didn't help that the title was horribly booked in the years that followed, so its lineage was rarely discussed in a serious way.

You can find this match at the end of Episode #199 of Raw on the WWE Network.  The cheap shots at WCW taken by Vince McMahon and the Honky Tonk Man on commentary are a vivid reminder of just how far behind the WWF had fallen at this point, but the match is worth the $9.99 monthly fee for the WWE Network by itself.  If you haven't seen it, check it out.

Light Heavyweight Championship

various locations - 3 Nov 1997 to 7 Dec 1997

Monday Night Raw #234, 236, In Your House: Degeneration X

WCW attracted mainstream attention to Nitro with the addition of main event talent from the WWF, and with the New World Order.  They attracted the attention of professional wrestling fans with a roster of cruiserweight wrestlers that was perhaps the greatest collection of talent ever assembled in a single promotion.  From 1996 - 1997, the WCW Cruiserweight Championship was the centerpiece of a division that included Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio Jr, Dean Malenko, Ultimo Dragon, Juventud Guerrera, Silver King, Super Calo, Psychosis, Syxx, Chavo Guerrero, Billy Kidman and quite a few others.  Taking notice of this, Vince McMahon resurrected the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship and held a tournament to crown a new champion.  Unfortunately, it could have just as easily been called the Brian Christopher Welcoming Party, because nearly every moment of this tournament appeared to serve the sole purpose of building a character for Jerry Lawler's son.

The biggest tragedy of this tournament is that they really did have some talented wrestlers.  Aguila would go on to become Papí Chulo, and later Essa Rios in the WWF before returning to Mexico.  Super Loco (better known to everyone on earth as Super Crazy) was incredibly talented, and he had a hell of a feud with Tajiri in ECW shortly after this tournament.  They had a decent match (far from perfect, but good) on the November 3rd episode of Raw.  Jim Ross and Jim Cornette did their best to call the action and sell the fans on the new division in the company, while Brian Christopher argued that Jerry Lawler isn't really his father.  If that wasn't enough, they periodically cut to a split screen so that we could see Christopher's facial expressions as he watched the match.

The same song and dance happened when Taka Michinoku wrestled Devon Storm (Crowbar from WCW).  Brian Christopher did commentary at ringside, and he interjected himself into the match.  Gee, I wonder what the tournament final is going to end up being.

Speaking of Christopher, he defeated Flash Flannagan in an average match that heavily featured Jerry Lawler on the outside.  Throughout the match, he appeared to channel the physical mannerisms of The Red Rooster with the most obnoxious laugh you have ever heard in your life.

In the only quarter final match that did not feature Brian Christopher, his future tag team partner Scott Taylor defeated Eric Shelley in an absolute mess of a match on the 11/17/97 episode of Raw.  Taylor would go on to much greater fame as Scotty 2 Hotty.  Frankly, I have never heard of Eric Shelley outside of this match, but he apparently worked for a French Canadian indy promotion called Northern Championship Wrestling until his retirement in 2001.

The semi-finals had one match that gave fans of cruiserweight wrestling a glimpse of what could have been.  Taka Michinoku defeated Aguila in an excellent match on Raw that was thankfully free from an appearance from Brian Christopher.  The semi-final match between the future members of Too Cool was also free from an appearance of Brian Christopher, as it was used for a segment to put Kane over as a monster who attacked people randomly.  This caused Christopher to get a bye into the finals.  Perhaps Lawler called in one last favor from his favorite dentist.

Taka defeated Christopher in the finals at In Your House: Degeneration X.  Decent match, but nothing spectacular.  The feud with Brian Christopher and Jerry Lawler would continue for a bit longer, giving Lawler and Christopher more opportunities to refer to the champion as "Taka Michi-no-clue."

Following the tournament, the division would continue for the next 11 years in some form or fashion with varying degrees of success, but it never attained the heights of the Cruiserweight Division in pre-Russo WCW.  The title became a staple of Attitude Era weekend shows like Shotgun Saturday Night, Sunday Night Heat, Metal and Velocity.  Some of these matches featured indy talent, including a fantastic match between Taka Michinoku and "The Fallen Angel" Christopher Daniels, which had the crowd popping despite many of them having no idea who Daniels was.  It's a shame that they weren't able to participate in this tournament.

Survivor Series: Deadly Game

St. Louis, MO - 15 Nov 1998

Kiel Center

Whether it ends up being a classic or a dud, this is the event that the upcoming 2015 Survivor Series will forever be compared to.

The WWF World Heavyweight Championship had been held up after The Undertaker and Kane simultaneously pinned "Stone Cold" Steve Austin in a match for the title at In Your House: Breakdown.  A match was scheduled between Taker and Kane (with Austin as the guest referee) for In Your House: Judgement Day.  Austin attacked both men to end the match without a winner.  He was fired by Vince McMahon only to be signed to a new five year contract drawn up by Shane McMahon.  Much like Wrestlemania IV, a 14-man tournament was scheduled to crown a new champion.  As was the case with Hogan and Andre ten years earlier, The Undertaker and Kane would each receive a bye into the second round to face each other in a rematch.

What the tournament lacked in pro wrestling (nearly every match ended in some sort of screwjob, weapon attack or disqualification), it made up for in storytelling.  This event was the high point for the evil Mr. McMahon character.  In the weeks prior to the event, Vince selected Mankind as his chosen favorite to win the tournament.  He was gifted with the Hardcore Championship (a broken belt that began as a character gimmick, but took on a life of its own), and he was scheduled to face a mystery opponent in the first round, who ended up being jobber Duane Gill.  Mankind would defeat Al Snow in the second round, and he pinned Steve Austin in the third round with assistance from Shane McMahon, who had revealed that he was aligned with his father all along.

In a promo that was repeated in television and on the ppv numerous times, Vince McMahon explained that he had a problem with the people, so he therefore had a problem with the People's Champion, The Rock.  Rocky defeated The Big Bossman (who substituted for Triple H, and thus worked two first round matches in the tournament) in four seconds.  He defeated Ken Shamrock in the second round by intercepting a nightstick that Bossman seemingly tried to throw to Shamrock.  He went on to defeat The Undertaker by DQ, once again with involvement from The Big Bossman that appeared to be an attempt to screw The Rock.

The twist played itself out in the finals, which saw The Rock take on Mankind for the title.  The match ended with Rocky putting Mankind in a very awkward-looking Sharpshooter, and in a recreation of the Montreal Screwjob from the year before, Vince McMahon ordered Earl Hebner to ring the bell and award the match to The Rock via submission.  Bossman and McMahon were assisting The Rock all along.  In the Raw after Survivor Series, Rocky cut one of the greatest heel turn promos in the history of the business, citing that he never forgave the fans for the Rocky Sucks chants in his pre-Nation of Domination years, so he will represent the WWF as The Corporate Champion.

Although it had moments of being sloppy, the 1998 Survivor Series was booked brilliantly.  It resulted in perhaps the greatest heel wrestler of the 90's.  This tournament was the catalyst that pushed both Rock and Foley to being next-level, main event talent.  It set up The Corporation as a heel stable, and it was the starting point of the main event feuds between Rock, Austin and Mankind (and later, Triple H) that would carry the company for years to come.  If any single program could be called the game changer in the Monday Night Wars, the 1998 Survivor Series was arguably that show.  In the years that followed, you didn't hear the cheap shots on commentary against WCW like you heard in '96 and '97.  There wasn't any time to waste on the competition.  They had their own stories to tell.

The professional wrestling landscape is very different in 2015 than it was in 1998, but the situation facing the WWE is similar to what it was in the Monday Night Wars.  Although there is no rival company who can compete with the WWE, their ratings are down, mainstream interest is a fraction of what it once was, and much of the talent who they have relied on to carry the main event will not be available for the immediate future.  Time will tell if McMahon has any more rabbits to pull out of his hat.

That's A Scary Price

West Coast Video advertisement
The Philadelphia Inquirer (June 27, 1986)
A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge premiered in theaters thirty years ago today.  It flopped hard at the box office and, in retrospect, it stands out like a sore thumb in the Freddy Krueger film library.  It's not a bad flick, but I think it would have found a lot more success if it was its own movie instead of being a sequel to something else.  It might be an interesting project to see a remake that incorporates all of the plot points, but with a different monster and no association with any other horror franchise.

Trick Or F'n Treat

Predictions From The Flux Capacitor

The Weekender
Vol. 22 Issue 49 (October 21-27, 2015)

There's a fun article by Justin Adam Brown about the predictions that were made about 2015 in Back To The Future II that was published in The Weekender.  Click the images below to read them.  There's also a bonus article by Gene Axton about a Back To The Future themed art show in Scranton.

Click the following links to blow up the pages to full size:

• Cover
• Page 1
• Page 2
• Page 3

What's My Specialty

Specialty Sandwiches
Burger King (1979)
In the late 70's and early 80's, Burger King began marketing a line of specialty sandwiches to sell alongside the traditional burgers and fries on the menu.  Only the chicken sandwich remains available to this day, but there was a wide variety of sandwiches sold over the years on the long, sub-style sesame seed bun.

This is just a small sample of the different sandwiches Burger King released throughout the 80's and 90's on their long sub-bun.  I worked at Burger King when I was a teenager in 1995-96.  At the time, we sold three different International Chicken Sandwiches.  They were the American (with lettuce, tomato, mayo and American cheese), French (with ham and Swiss cheese) and Italian (with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese).

In 1980, the fast food chain ran their What's My Specialty promotion.  Guests of the restaurant would receive a game card like this one, and they would win free food by first scratching off the name of a famous person on the top.  Below this was a multiple choice of four potential answers to match the famous person to their occupation.  Winners would scratch off the box below the famous person's specialty.  The quiz game was very easy and was designed to give everyone who played a small food prize to help promote the new line of Burger King Specialty Sandwiches.

Video Games in Back To The Future

Today is October 21, 2015.  Every blog, message board, social media page, newspaper, talk show and office water cooler in the country is talking about Back To The Future II.

If you're reading this on the day that it was written, you are very likely sick of hearing about this movie for one day, and that's ok.  I'm doing nothing to promote this, so nobody's going to read it today anyway.  If you're seeing this at all, it may be because I post a lot of things you want to read in the future, and so you decided to go back in time and check out the archives.  Or, it could mean that this point in time inherently contains some sort of cosmic significance; Almost as if it were the temporal junction point for the entire space-time continuum. On the other hand, it could just be an amazing coincidence.

What isn't a coincidence is the video games that appear in Hill Valley in the Back To The Futurnaverse.

Wild Gunman
Nintendo - 1985


Perhaps the most often cited video game from the Back to the Future franchise, a Wild Gunman arcade unit sits at the Cafe 80's.  It is being studied by Elijah Wood, who went on to become Frodo Baggins, and John Thornton, who went on to become that guy who can go the rest of his life saying "I played Wild Gunman with Frodo Baggins and Marty McFly."

While the NES edition of Wild Gunman never had its own arcade unit, the 8-bit classic is actually based on a 1974 arcade game of the same name that used a 16mm projector,  The original was created by Nintendo visionary Gunpei Yokoi - the man who invented the Game & Watch series, the Game Boy and the traditional d-pad from the Famicom and NES (he came up with the Virtual Boy and R.O.B. too, but they can't all be hits).

As for the version that Marty played back in the Hill Valley 7-Eleven, it was one of the original 17 games that launched the NES on October 18th, 1985, and one of only 10 games for the NES that require the use of the Zapper.  While the technology isn't likely to impress the 8-year-old kids of 2015, I don't think any of them would mistake it for a baby's toy.  It's a fun gun game that anybody can pick up and play without a tutorial.

If you want to play it today, you'll need the cartridge and an NES with a working Zapper for now, but that may change very soon.  It's being released by Nintendo Europe on the Wii U Virtual Console tomorrow, so a US release is probably not far behind.

Pac-Man
Namco - 1980


If you blinked, you may have missed it, but the godfather of modern gaming makes an appearance at the Cafe 80's.  It sits at the opposite end of the restaurant from Wild Gunman, behind two exercise bikes, and under a sign that reads "PRICELESS ARTIFACT - DO NOT TOUCH".  That's a bit of a stretch.  An original Pac-Man arcade unit will cost between $500 - $2,000 on eBay in 2015, not counting the various knock off "Multicade" machines.

Incidentally, why would a business owner put a "priceless artifact" in a restaurant that seems to have no human employees to look after it?

If you asked someone to name one video game that virtually everyone in the free world has tried at least once in their lives, there's a pretty good chance that they would choose Pac-Man.  To this day, no matter where I am or what I'm doing, if I see a Pac-Man machine, somebody is making a quarter off of me.  It's a timeless classic that has challenged and entertained millions for the past 35 years.  Few other entertainment entities have had half as much success.

The rest of the video games that can be found in Hill Valley are in the display window of Blast From The Past - the antique shop where Marty finds a copy of Grays Sports Almanac.  I find that this store is the most realistic prediction of 2015, and the most fascinating part of the film.  In fact, the items in this store have inspired a group of collectors from TheRPF.com who are trying to collect everything that can be seen in the shop, but that's another story for another time.

You can't see it too well in this screencap, but there's a Pac-Man lunchbox in the window between Marty's arm and the bust of John F. Kennedy.  However, there are a few NES games (complete-in-box) that can be seen more clearly.

Jaws
LJN - 1987


While the 3-D shark from Jaws 19 gets all of the recognition, it's not the only appearance of the deadly great white in Hill Valley, 2015.

Jaws from LJN can be seen sitting in front of the VHS of Jaws 2 and on top of a Betamax. LJN had a large catalog of NES games that were inspired by major motion pictures (including a Back To The Future game that was released in 1989).  Unfortunately, most of these games are pretty bad, and Jaws is no exception.

A large part of the game has you controlling a character that dives off of a ship to shoot jellyfish and stingrays.  You also get to shoot at the shark, but in the words of The Angry Video Game Nerd, he dies "slower than hairs grow on a moose's scrotum."  This isn't just a step down from Pac-Man and Wild Gunman - it's a massive drop to the ocean floor.

Burgertime
Data East - 1987


The original Burgertime was released by Data East as an arcade game in 1982, and it is rightly considered to be a gaming classic.

One of the many food-inspired games of the early 80's (a genre of sorts that has a surprising number of fun games), Burgertime stars Peter Pepper, a chef who makes massive hamburgers the only way he knows how - by climbing ladders and walking across the ingredients on scaffolds.  Standing in his way are Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle and Mr. Egg - three very grumpy food items which are much smaller in size than the hamburgers, but equal in size to our intrepid chef.

The NES version isn't a perfect translation of the original, but it's not bad.  That being said, the music will drive you absolutely insane.




Now, if you thought Pac-Man was difficult to spot in Back To The Future II, the final game on this list is ridiculously difficult to see.  I assure you, it's there.  In fact, you've already seen a picture of it.  Look closely above the letter "A" in the Jaws photo.

Need some help?

That, my friends, is a copy of R.C. Pro-Am for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  If you don't believe me, have a look at this Continuity Polaroid from the now defunct Outatime.co.uk fan site:

I think maybe that I'm the one who needs some help.  But it's in the film, so...

R.C. Pro-Am
Rare - 1987


Rare is one of the most successful game designers in the industry, and R.C. Pro-Am was the first big hit.  I can tell you that every kid that I knew in third grade either had this game, or they frequently played it at a friend's house.

As a kid, it reminded me of a game that I played at Aladdin's Castle called Super Sprint, but when I play this game in 2015, I see the grandfather of the Mario Kart series.  It's got weapons and power ups, it has red speed boost arrows, and you earn trophies. Also, despite the missiles and bombs that you'll frequently use (if you're lucky), it's a non-violent game because you're racing remote control trucks.  We had to have something to distract Mom from the blood and guts of Castlevania.

R.C. Pro-Am was re-released earlier this year for Xbox One on the Rare Replay compilation.  Whether you opt for the modern console or the original recipe, this game is definitely worth your time.  If you haven't played it before, check it out.  If you have, I'm sure that you're already thinking about doing so right now.  Just don't travel back to 1987 and play against your younger self.  The consequences could be disastrous.

The Decade That Could Have Been

Thirty-five years ago, the Phillies won their first World Series Championship.  It was the beginning of a strange decade for the team.  Throughout the 80's, the team had one championship, two World Series appearances (1980 and 1983), three National League MVPs (Mike Schmidt in '80, '81 and '86) and four Cy Young Awards (Steve Carlton in '80 and '82, John Denny in '83 and Steve Bedrosian in '87).  Looking at these facts in isolation, it seems as if the '80s were a successful decade for the franchise, but the dropoff after 1983 and the losing seasons that followed have defined the era.  The 1980 Champions seem more like the end of the era that began in the mid '70s than the start of a successful decade.

Eight transactions took place in the 1980's that took the Phillies from a championship team to the cellar dwellers of the NL East.  Had the following events never taken place, it's likely that the team that began the decade as champions would have found prolonged success.

The purpose of this exercise is to examine those transactions and the Phillies lineup that would have been had those transactions not taken place.  It's not without a leap of faith.  There's no way to know that the players that the Phillies lost in the 80's would have performed equally well had they remained with the Phillies, but using that same logic, there's no way to know that they wouldn't have performed better in Philadelphia.  For this reason, I'm just looking at their performance as it played out in the real world and changing only the player's uniform.

Additionally, I'm not going to examine any hypothetical trades or missed opportunities with players that could have been signed.  A good example of this is Vince Coleman, who was taken by the Phillies in the 20th round of the 1981 draft, but didn't sign (he signed a year later when he was taken in the 10th round by the Cardinals).  All of the players that will be discussed in this entry were members of the Phillies organization and under team control, but were surrendered to other clubs.

So, flawed though it may be, here are eight transactions that the Phillies could have avoided to be a dominant club throughout the 1980s.

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• December 8, 1980
  The Toronto Blue Jays selected George Bell from the Philadelphia Phillies in the Rule 5 Draft.

The Phillies have had a number of great Rule 5 pickups, but this is one that burned them.  Had the team protected George Bell, they would have a left field bat that hit for average and power throughout the decade.  Bell hit over 20 homers in six seasons in the 80's, including his 1987 MVP season in which he bat .308 with 47 home runs and 134 RBI.

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• December 6, 1981
  The Philadelphia Phillies sold Bob Boone to the California Angels.

Giving Boone to the Angels and getting nothing of value in return was a petty move by the Phillies front office.  Boone was a key negotiator for the players union during the 1981 strike and it is thought that the team dumped their World Series Champion catcher in retaliation.  He went on to have seven productive seasons with the Angels and played a key role in the Angels winning the division in '82.

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• January 27, 1982
  The Philadelphia Phillies traded Larry Bowa and Ryne Sandberg to the Chicago Cubs for Iván DeJesús.

Any time you come across a list of the most lopsided trades in the history of the game, this deal is part of the discussion.  In his time with the Phillies, manager Dallas Green led the franchise to their first World Championship.  He was also instrumental in the team drafting several key players, including Sandberg.  The Phillies front office wanted DeJesús for some reason, and Green took the opportunity to demand that they include the minor leaguer in the deal.  DeJesús was anemic at the plate in three seasons with the Phillies and was out of baseball before 1989, while Sandberg would go on to have a Hall of Fame career and would go down as one of the greatest second basemen of all time.

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• December 9, 1982
  The Philadelphia Phillies traded Julio Franco, Manny Trillo, George Vukovich, Jay Baller and Jerry Willard to the Cleveland Indians for Von Hayes.

The infamous "5 for 1" trade is one of the most debated transactions in franchise history.  It would have been an incredible deal for the Phillies had they not included Julio Franco.  The trade was focused around Trillo and Vukovich, and the Indians insisted on getting Jay Baller, who they viewed as the next Goose Gossage.  Had they known the type of player that Franco would have developed into, they probably could have gotten away with including someone else in the deal (maybe even Larry Bowa). But the point of this exercise isn't to hypothesize about trades that could have happened, but to imagine the team we could have had if they didn't make the trade at all.

It has been argued that the Phillies still got the better end of this deal, but Franco delivered production from the middle infield at a time when that wasn't as common as it is today.  He stayed healthy, he hit for a high average (over .300 for half of the decade and never below .273), and Vukovich was effective over the next two seasons - particularly in 1984.

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• December 12, 1982
  The Philadelphia Phillies traded Mike Krukow, Mark Davis and C.L. Penigar to the San Francisco Giants for Joe Morgan and Al Holland.

This was a deal that helped the Phillies in the short term, but burned them in the long term.  Joe Morgan was a piece of the 70's Big Red Machine that reunited in Philadelphia, but he didn't do a lot in the Phillies 1983 NL Championship season.  Al Holland was an effective closer for the '83 and '84 seasons before drugs derailed his career.

Mike Krukow would go on to be an effective starter for the Giants for the rest of the decade, including a 1987 20 win season in which he finished third for the NL Cy Young Award.  Davis would go on a career rejuvenation out of the bullpen, and he capped off the decade with a 44 save season and a Cy Young Award in 1989.

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Let's pause here for a moment.  Had the Phillies avoided the four transactions above, the 1983 team would have included the following players at the major league level. 

1B - Pete Rose
2B - Ryne Sandberg
SS - Julio Franco
3B - Mike Schmidt
C - Bob Boone / Bo Diaz
LF - Gary Matthews
CF - Garry Maddox / Bob Dernier
RF - George Vukovich / Joe Lefebvre

Starting Pitchers - Steve Carlton, John Denny, Charles Hudson, Mike Krukow, Marty Bystrom, Mark Davis
Bullpen - Tug McGraw, Willie Hernández, Ron Reed, Porfirio Altamirano, Larry Andersen, Jay Baller 

In the real world, the 1983 Phillies would be known as the "Wheeze Kids" with a lineup that included 39 year old Joe Morgan and 40 year old Tony Perez.  The would go on to reach the World Series and lose to the Baltimore Orioles in five games, after which the team began a ten year downward spiral. 

In this parallel world in which the five transactions above never happened, we begin to see the rise of 23 year old Ryne Sandberg and 24 year old Julio Franco when he first entered the majors as a shortstop.  Both played a full season in 1983 and hit over .260 with glimpses of the brilliant careers they would go on to have.  George Bell (23) and Juan Samuel (22) would be late season call ups getting their first experience in the major leagues.  Following the 1983 season, Bell would go on to take Lefebvre's role in right field, while Franco would replace Pete Rose who had moved on to the Expos in 1984.  This would allow Samuel to move into shortstop.

On the pitching side, Mark Davis was the fifth starter for the Giants in 1983, but with a Phillies rotation that includes Steve Carlton and the eventual 1983 Cy Young winner John Denny, I can't say if he would have won a rotation job or if he could have pitched out of the bullpen (replacing the innings that Al Holland provided).  I think it's a safe bet that this team would have had a better chance against the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.

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• March 24, 1984
  The Philadelphia Phillies traded Willie Hernández and Dave Bergman to the Detroit Tigers for Glenn Wilson and John Wockenfuss.

Although Glenn Wilson was a good hitting outfielder who made the All-Star Team in 1985, the Phillies traded Willie Hernández at exactly the wrong time.  The left handed closer would go on to have a phenomenal season for the Tigers in 1984, going 9-4 with a 1.93 ERA and 32 saves in 33 chances.  He won the AL MVP and Cy Young Award, and helped lead the Tigers to the 1984 World Championship.

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• March 26, 1984
  The Philadelphia Phillies traded Gary Matthews, Bob Dernier and Porfirio Altamirano to the Chicago Cubs for Bill Campbell and Mike Diaz.

The Cubs really knew how to screw the Phillies in the 80's.  Philadelphia was the second stop in the Soup Farewell Tour in which he pitched for five teams in five seasons, none of whom had many reasons to miss him when he was gone.  The Phillies shipped their bountiful return from the Cubs to the Cardinals when they flipped Campbell and Iván DeJesús for three seasons of middle reliever Dave Rucker, who was released after the 1986 season.  I didn't mention Mike Diaz because he never played a single game in Philadelphia.  He was traded to the Pirates on April 27th, 1985 for minor league catcher Steve Herz, who also did not reach the major leagues.

In exchange for this domino effect of baseball stardom, the Phillies gave up Gary Matthews.  Sarge went on to have an excellent year for the Cubs, batting .291 and leading the league in walks and OPS and finishing fifth in the NL MVP vote (the year that Sandberg won).  He wasn't able to replicate that same level of success in his remaining three years with the Cubs, but he was serviceable, and a damn sight more valuable than either Bill Campbell or Mike Diaz.  Meanwhile, Bob Dernier was a quality center fielder for the Cubs for the next four years, winning a Gold Glove in 1984.  The Phillies brought him back when they signed him as a free agent after the 1987 season.

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The descent into mediocrity began for the Phillies in the 1984 season as they went from National League Champions to 4th place in the NL East with a .500 record.  Had the Phillies not participated in the seven transactions above, their 1984 lineup may have looked something like this: 

1B - Julio Franco
2B - Ryne Sandberg
SS - Juan Samuel
3B - Mike Schmidt
C - Bob Boone / Bo Diaz
LF - Gary Matthews
CF - Garry Maddox / Bob Dernier
RF - George Bell 

Starting Pitchers - Steve Carlton, John Denny, Shane Rawley, Charles Hudson, Mike Krukow
Bullpen - Willie Hernández, Tug McGraw, Porfirio Altamirano, Larry Andersen, Mark Davis 

This is where it gets really interesting, at least from an offensive perspective.  In 1984, Ryne Sandberg was the NL MVP who batted .314 with an .887 OPS.  He also won his second of nine consecutive gold gloves.  Gary Matthews finished fifth in the NL MVP voting after having one of the best seasons of his career, hitting .291 with 82 RBI and a career high 103 walks. 

In his first full season, George Bell hit .292 with 26 home runs and 87 RBI, while Julio Franco continued to develop, batting .286 with 79 RBI.  Add this production to the numbers put up by Mike Schmidt and Juan Samuel in 1984 and you have one of the best offensive lineups in franchise history. 

Pitching is another story.  Steve Carlton was serviceable, but this should have been his last season.  John Denny was also alright, but he wasn't able to replicate his success from the previous season, but Shane Rawley (acquired from the Yankees for Marty Bystrom and Keith Hughes) had a decent season and would steadily improve.  Having Mike Krukow in this rotation definitely would have helped, and with the potential of this offense, the 1984 season of Willie Hernandez would have locked down a lot of games.  I don't doubt that this incarnation of the 1984 Phillies would have been a playoff team, and their bats would have kept them in contention throughout the decade.

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• May 9, 1986
  The Philadelphia Phillies released Dave Stewart.

The last transaction on this list is the icing on the cake.  Dave Stewart had a pretty rough start to his career.  He made his major league debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers and had moments where he looked to be a promising young pitcher.  He was traded to the Texas Rangers in 1983 and had some troubles on and off the field.  The Rangers then traded him to the Phillies on September 13, 1985 at which point he was a reclamation project on a sub .500 team.  He would appear in a dozen games with the Phillies over the '85 and '86 seasons before being released just over a month into the 1986 season.

Had the Phillies remained patient, their faith would have been rewarded.  Stewart had one of the most impressive career resurgences in modern baseball history after being picked up by the Oakland Athletics on May 23, 1986.  He would finish the season with a 9-5 record and then go on to perfect his forkball and have four consecutive 20 win seasons.  He helped lead the A's to a World Championship in 1989 and was the World Series MVP.

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To wrap this up, let's look at our fantasy lineup for the 1987 season: 

1B - Julio Franco
2B - Ryne Sandberg
SS - Juan Samuel
3B - Mike Schmidt
C - Lance Parrish / Bob Boone
LF - Gary Matthews
CF - Milt Thompson
RF - George Bell

Starting Pitchers - Dave Stewart, Shane Rawley, Bruce Ruffin, Don Carman, Kevin Gross
Bullpen - Steve Bedrosian, Kent Tekulve, Willie Hernández, Mark Davis

This version of the 1987 Phillies would have been an absolute beast.  Having 20 game winner Dave Stewart and 17 game winner Shane Rawley anchoring a rotation with NL Cy Young Award winner Steve Bedrosian locking down 40 saves would have been an incredible experience. 

As good as the pitching would have been, the '87 Phillies offense would have been epic.  Let's just look at a few stats and imagine how they would have worked on the same ballclub, starting with the 1987 NL MVP:

• George Bell: .308 average - 32 doubles - 47 HR - 134 RBI

• Mike Schmidt: .293 average - 28 doubles - 35 HR - 113 RBI

• Juan Samuel: .272 average - 37 doubles - 15 triples - 28 HR - 100 RBI - 35 SB 

• Ryne Sandberg: .294 average - 29 doubles - 16 HR - 21 SB

• Julio Franco: .319 average - 24 doubles - 32 SB

• Milt Thompson: .302 average - 26 doubles - 46 SB 

• Lance Parish: .245 average - 21 doubles - 17 HR - 67 RBI 

That combination of consistency, speed and power throughout the lineup is more than enough to knock out the Cardinals in the NLCS and take the World Series trophy away from the '87 Twins.

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Granted, this analysis is certainly not an expert account of what would have been, but it's fun to imagine what might have been had the Phillies avoided eight transactions in the 80's.

The Higher Truth

Hemming - Chris Cornell

The Higher Truth Acoustic Tour
FM Kirby Center - Wilkes-Barre, PA
When I was in middle school and high school in the 90's, I had a Soundgarden Superunknown blacklight poster hanging on my bedroom wall.  I can't even begin to count the number of hours I laid back in my bedroom with my CD boombox and a pile of albums and listened to music while I stared at that poster with the lights off and the blacklight bar shining down on it from above.  It helped me to forget about the everyday stress of life so that I could relax and get out of my own head for a little while.  Soundgarden and Temple Of The Dog were always in the rotation of music that I would play on those nights.  Chris Cornell was my favorite singer then, and he's still my favorite singer today.

This tour was advertised a one-man acoustic performance of Chris Cornell playing guitar and singing hits that he recorded with Soundgarden, Temple Of The Dog, Audioslave and his solo work, including his most recent album, Higher Truth, which was released last month.  It wasn't a strictly solo performance though, as Mr. Cornell was joined by Bryan Gibson who backed him on cello and mandolin.  He also sang a few songs with a vinyl record providing the instrumentals, Andy Kaufman-style, which was very cool.

However, before I get into the main show, I don't want to forget about the opening performer: Hemming.

 

Hemming is a young woman from Philadelphia who the music contest show Make Or Break on VH1 not long ago.  I haven't heard of her before tonight, but I was blown away.  Her voice reminded me of Dolores O'Riordan without the Irish accent, and her songs have a lot of the same qualities that Chris Cornell brings to his music; a haunting, raw and beautiful sound.  Between the end of her set and the start of Cornell's, I stopped by the merchandise booth in the lobby to pick up album, which came out earlier this year.  She was there too, meeting fans and signing autographs.  I asked her to sign the cover of the liner notes, and she couldn't have been a nicer person.  I hope she goes on to great success because she most certainly deserves to.

The show was as close to perfect as any concert I've ever been fortunate enough to attend.  He performed twenty-three songs from the Temple Of The Dog album that was released over twenty years ago to Higher Truth, which came out just last month.  There were also five brilliant covers, including The Times They Are A-Changin' (Bob Dylan), Thank You (Led Zeppelin), River Of Deceit (Mad Season), Nothing Compares 2 U (Sinéad O'Connor) and Billie Jean (Michael Jackson).  The latter also appeared on Cornell's second solo album, Carry On, from 2007.

The songs off of the new album were all incredible, but my favorite two were Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart, and the song he closed the show with: Higher Truth.  It was the most powerfully moving end to a concert I've ever been to.  I had shivers go up my spine as his voice echoed through the building at the end.

In total, he performed 28 songs, and I swear it felt like it went by in the blink of an eye.  I could have stayed there all night listening to him sing and tell stories.  It was absolutely wonderful.

Here is the breakdown of his songs that were performed than night, and the albums that they're from:

Temple Of The Dog (Temple Of The Dog - 1991)

Hunger Strike

Wooden Jesus

Call Me A Dog

Badmotorfinger (Soundgarden - 1991)

Rusty Cage

Singles soundtrack (1992)

Seasons

Superunknown (Soundgarden - 1994)

Fell On Black Days

Black Hole Sun

Like Suicide

Down On The Upside (Soundgarden - 1996)

Blow Up The Outside World

Great Expectations soundtrack (1998)

Sunshower

Euphoria Morning (solo album - 1999)

Can't Change Me

When I'm Down

Audioslave (Audioslave - 2002)

I Am The Highway

Out Of Exile (Audioslave - 2005)

Doesn't Remind Me

Carry On (solo album - 2007)

You Know My Name (this was also the theme song to to Casino Royale)

Billie Jean (Michael Jackson cover)

Scream (solo album - 2009)

As Hope & Promise Fade (this was a hidden track that went by the title "Two Drink Minimum".  It was re-released on his 2011 live acoustic album - Songbook)

Higher Truth (solo album - 2015)

Misery Chain

Before We Disappear

Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart

Let Your Eyes Wander

Worried Moon

Josephine

Higher Truth

The only thing that kept this show from being absolutely perfect was the audience, who were absolutely obnoxious throughout Mr. Cornell's performance.  The show had a relaxed, chill tone, with Chris talking about the music and telling stories between songs.  It was a truly awesome experience to sit back and listen to the artist who I've listened to and admired since I was 14 years old talk as if he was sitting in my living room with his guitar, but it would have been much better if not for the jackasses in the crowd shouting out the names of songs they wanted him to perform.  I swear, I must have heard some idiot drunkenly screaming "Sunshower" while Chris was speaking at least 50 times during the show.  By the halfway point, it became pretty obvious from his change in tone that Chris was getting even more annoyed by that crap than I was.  He handled it with more grace that I would have.  If it were me, I would have refused to play Sunshower purely out of spite.  Thankfully, he is a more patient man than I am or else I would have missed hearing one of my favorite songs, but I wouldn't have blamed him for a second if he would have made an executive decision to cut it from the setlist then and there.