Chapter 101

Up a bit before 10. I drank a lot of water and stretched my muscles now afflicted by a solid dose of DOMS.

It’s Wrestlemania weekend, and a subsidiary of WWE called NXT did a pair of shows that were very well-received, so I played one of them. All five matches were cool as shit: a Mexican guy and an Irish guy backflipped off tall ladders, a female tag team championship had a really gnarly spot in which a girl with bright orange pigtails dove between her partner’s legs through the ropes but missed her opponent and rammed in a fence, an enormous Australian fatso moved with surprising agility and did feats of herculean strength before ultimately losing, and then it was Finn Bálor, a guy I’d seen before, who has a finishing move that makes me cringe everytime, where he jumps off the top rope and lands feet first on his opponent’s torso or abdomen. I guess he just lifts his legs to alleviate the impact and rolls forward but holy hell does it look like it could kill someone. The main event was a crazy brawl, with chairs and a length of chain and a bunch of tools, but it was a bit long and at that point I was ready to do something else with my life. It didn’t help that I had no idea who those blokes were and the whole storyline that led to the grudge match. Still, a great show, normally I have a hard time watching a whole wrasslin event in one go before getting a bit bored and pausing it, but this one caught my attention throughout. Apparently the other show they did the night before is even better, I’ll have to check it out, though it’s a bit unfortunate that I know some of the results already.

I took a handful of the leftover grains that had been seeping in water to make my beer, mixed it with flour, sugar, salt and water, and made bread. Between two wrestling matches I kneaded the dough, then let it rest a bit, and baked the loaf. When it was ready, I had a slice, along the leftover khachapuri from yesterday. It was OK, I’m not the best at baking and my attempts at making bread haven’t been disasters but nothing to shout all over the city. A similar lukewarm result was with the new batch of hot sauce, I experimented with adding a bunch of stuff to the chili peppers that had been fermented in brine with coffee grounds: black beer, Kahlua, coffee, brown sugar, some reduced wort from yesterday’s beer. The result is very salty, for whatever reason. Ah well.

I also cleaned the kitchen, taking advantage of all the disinfecting solution I kept from the beer brewing process. I put on a mixtape by Onyx, a 90s east-coast hip-hop duet. Good beats, good flows, good punchlines. I haven’t listened to much of their stuff and should check out their back catalog.

In the afternoon the dog and I went to the bike shop to get some loose pieces tightened and to install a new back rack. The one I had was all rusty and one of the arms tying it to my frame snapped, so I yanked it off. A fat teenager installed it at no extra expense, then I rode back home. It was raining, so I wrapped the dog in a towel when I got home.

I opened a Contender Pale Ale, a seriously delicious China brew. Boxing Cat is a Shanghai-based brewery I used to patronize whenever I’d go to the metropolis and have a bit of time, now some of their products have semi-wide distribution and I can buy them at Metro. The Contender is an excellent thirst beer, and I happened to be thirsty. Then I put on the UFC, Mackenzie Dern got a first-round submission, Sam Alvey extended his losing streak and likely got his walking papers afterwards, a British featherweight named Arnold Allen won his eighth fight in a row in what’s got to be the most under-the-radar win streak ever, and in the main event, a focused Kevin Holland was still no match for “The Italian Dream” Marvin Vettori, who won a wrestling-heavy decision. It was a pretty good card but nothing crazy.

I steamed pastrami slices, made a sanwich, and watched a YouTube video about the ruined legacy of Game Of Thrones. It’s the 10^th anniversary of the show that was once considered the greatest in the history of TV, yet there is very little fanfare about it, due to how much of a floppy rotten wet turd the last two seasons were. I didn’t watch it until after Season 7 aired and the girlfriend wanted to rewatch the series from the beginning, that became “our thing” when she’d come over before we moved in together. I quickly became addicted and thoroughly immersed in the universe, I didn’t care for the dragons n’ shit (and that’s likely why I wasn’t interested at first) but as a huge medieval history fan I loved how “realistic” the fictional version of feudal England and the peripheral world was, not to mention the intricate details and the stellar storytelling. I then read the book series, re-reading the first two as I rewatched the first two seasons, and watched tens of hours of commentary on nerdy YouTube channels. But now? I don’t give a fuck. I’ll never watch any of it again, so PTSD ridden am I from how fucking retarded the finale was, and the two clownishly dumb seasons leading up to the end (even season 6 was quite stupid). And I have very little interest in the prequels and spin-offs that they are apparently putting together. Fuck Game Of Thrones, and fuck the two brainlets that took over the writing in the latter part of the show. It seems like I’m far from the only one who thinks like that, based on the hundreds of rant videos all over YouTube.

I did the dishes and a bit of cleaning, listening to the next albums as I make my way down that Top 500 list. Elvis Presley’s debut was OK I guess, if you look at it more as an important cornerstone of music history than “wow, this is good, and totally doesn’t sound like it was played by people who picked up their instruments yesterday for the first time”. Madonna’s Like A Prayer was extremely boring, aside from the title track. Typical pop music bullshit, one single, and then a bunch of filler.

I went to bed a bit before 10 and read for a few minutes before putting my head on the pillow.