just let go.
i haven't had much to say in a long time and i'm fairly certain that none of the reasons that i started this even come here anymore. i graduated from college, thus finally escaping the place i had come to consider a prison for the last four years. i'm suddenly the top associate in the united states international banking center and i'm about to embark upon another travel adventure. there is only one thing i really want to talk about tonight, though. something truly amazing has inspired me to write again; something i had been thinking about for a long time has finally come to fruition. i am, of course, referring to the new american gladiators.
i hadn't had any particularly high expectations for the show. i've caught some of those reruns on espn classic in the past few years only to have my childhood memories shattered and ruined. nothing is ever as good as memories would lead you to believe. as a result, i didn't go into this remake with particularly good expectations. to be perfectly honest, i was walking into this situation with terribly low expectations after having seen the promos with the ridiculously glossed gladiators posing overdramatically as though they were characters from the movie 300. i'm not going to lie to you. the majority of this experience was pretty bad. the joust? it was just regular joust. the only difference was that they added fireworks at the beginning and a water hazard. pyramid? possibly the biggest waste of ten minutes i have ever experienced in my life. and i sat through those ten minutes in castaway where there was only water on the screen. no dialogue. nothing. just water. for ten minutes. yet, somehow, i found the pyramid more tedious than paying ten dollars to sit and watch water on a big screen for ten minutes.
it's not all bad though, i definitely wouldn't want to give that impression. some of the lady gladiators, or the ladyators, as i will henceforth refer to them, are actually not bad. Crush? Venom? definite potential. i guess the producers decided to take the road more often travelled and leave the Zaps and Ices of the past in their steroid-induced comas and go with a better-looking breed of ladyator. then they introduced us to hellga (no, that is not a misspelling, just a pun created by the producers to make her seem more badass). i saw her and thought, "my god! she is gonna break some lady in half! this is gonna be awesome!" hellga is a huge disappointment. pretty much everybody kicked her ass. she is clearly on the show only for pun value, which i do not appreciate. there are dude gladiators too. there is one named wolf, who is seriously just the ben stiller character from dodgeball. they have another named mayhem who i'm pretty sure is just the saxophone player from dave matthews band. he sucked at joust. he stepped on the other platform twice. TWICE! once within the first ten seconds of the joust. dude...seriously, get your head in the game, eyes on the prize, and other such sports cliches.
then it happened. i sat there for an hour. a whole hour watching the contenders rock climb up a wall, hit each other with ginormous q-tips over a small pond, and run up and down a stack of gym mats when it happened. the producers hit me with the money shot. the freaking eliminator. ohhhhhhhhhh, here it is. here it goddamned is. i am so freaking pumped. and for good reason; it seems as though the producers put all their money into this event. it started off simple enough, rope climb over a small wall just like in the original. i'm with you so far kids, let's see where this is headed. then all of a sudden...whaaaaaaaa? a pool of water! well now i am excited. swimming. mother effing swimming. they have finally decided to take this challenge nautical. but wait, there is more. upon arriving in the pool, the contestants are greeted by...holy shit, is that???...a wall of fire!!! son of a bitch. dive under the water you bastards! go! then, after underwater swimming under the wall of fire there is a cargo net. good old cargo net, never fails me, makes me a little nostalgic. and yet, the net seems to go on forever and i begin to think "son of a bitch, if there is not a zipline at the end of this cargo net i am never watching this again." the first contestant reaches the summit of the net and there is no zipline, but there is what appears to be an enormous spool from some thread. "what the hell do they do with that," i think to myself. the first lady walks up to the spool and bear hugs it and she begins to spin...END OVER END...down some prearranged track. son of a bitch! did that really just happen!?! then there was a handbike. and this lady contestant, who by this point, has left her competitor in the dust back at the net, is so friggin tired that she cannot hold onto the handbike and just plummets into the penalty pit. she climbs her way out of that and she is has to cross a balance beam to get to the pyramid. then she must climb up it where she will reach (finally) a zipline. she zips down and gets to an angled treadmill! just like i remember! yesssss! but the other lady has finally finished the cargo net and is beginning her giant spool rolldown thing. lady #2 also chooses to abdicate the handbike in favor of the penalty pit as lady #1 falls down the treadmill twice. could this be the comeback of the millennium? lady #1 continues to stumble as lady #2 balances her way across the beam and drags herself up the pyramid to the zipline. she reaches the halfway point of the zipline and her arms just give out, plummeting her onto the protective mats below. lady #1 has, by now, made it to the top of the treadmill, but! she loses her footing! but! she has managed to grab onto the top of the treadmill with her fingertips! wait! is she just hanging there? for real? she is just hanging there by her fingertips as lady #2 effortlessly passes her on the treadmill on her first try and wins. even as lady #2 celebrates her victory by laying on the ground looking dead in a puddle of her own sweat and tears, lady #1 is still hanging onto the treadmill. just let go.
best.ending.ever.
i hadn't had any particularly high expectations for the show. i've caught some of those reruns on espn classic in the past few years only to have my childhood memories shattered and ruined. nothing is ever as good as memories would lead you to believe. as a result, i didn't go into this remake with particularly good expectations. to be perfectly honest, i was walking into this situation with terribly low expectations after having seen the promos with the ridiculously glossed gladiators posing overdramatically as though they were characters from the movie 300. i'm not going to lie to you. the majority of this experience was pretty bad. the joust? it was just regular joust. the only difference was that they added fireworks at the beginning and a water hazard. pyramid? possibly the biggest waste of ten minutes i have ever experienced in my life. and i sat through those ten minutes in castaway where there was only water on the screen. no dialogue. nothing. just water. for ten minutes. yet, somehow, i found the pyramid more tedious than paying ten dollars to sit and watch water on a big screen for ten minutes.
it's not all bad though, i definitely wouldn't want to give that impression. some of the lady gladiators, or the ladyators, as i will henceforth refer to them, are actually not bad. Crush? Venom? definite potential. i guess the producers decided to take the road more often travelled and leave the Zaps and Ices of the past in their steroid-induced comas and go with a better-looking breed of ladyator. then they introduced us to hellga (no, that is not a misspelling, just a pun created by the producers to make her seem more badass). i saw her and thought, "my god! she is gonna break some lady in half! this is gonna be awesome!" hellga is a huge disappointment. pretty much everybody kicked her ass. she is clearly on the show only for pun value, which i do not appreciate. there are dude gladiators too. there is one named wolf, who is seriously just the ben stiller character from dodgeball. they have another named mayhem who i'm pretty sure is just the saxophone player from dave matthews band. he sucked at joust. he stepped on the other platform twice. TWICE! once within the first ten seconds of the joust. dude...seriously, get your head in the game, eyes on the prize, and other such sports cliches.
then it happened. i sat there for an hour. a whole hour watching the contenders rock climb up a wall, hit each other with ginormous q-tips over a small pond, and run up and down a stack of gym mats when it happened. the producers hit me with the money shot. the freaking eliminator. ohhhhhhhhhh, here it is. here it goddamned is. i am so freaking pumped. and for good reason; it seems as though the producers put all their money into this event. it started off simple enough, rope climb over a small wall just like in the original. i'm with you so far kids, let's see where this is headed. then all of a sudden...whaaaaaaaa? a pool of water! well now i am excited. swimming. mother effing swimming. they have finally decided to take this challenge nautical. but wait, there is more. upon arriving in the pool, the contestants are greeted by...holy shit, is that???...a wall of fire!!! son of a bitch. dive under the water you bastards! go! then, after underwater swimming under the wall of fire there is a cargo net. good old cargo net, never fails me, makes me a little nostalgic. and yet, the net seems to go on forever and i begin to think "son of a bitch, if there is not a zipline at the end of this cargo net i am never watching this again." the first contestant reaches the summit of the net and there is no zipline, but there is what appears to be an enormous spool from some thread. "what the hell do they do with that," i think to myself. the first lady walks up to the spool and bear hugs it and she begins to spin...END OVER END...down some prearranged track. son of a bitch! did that really just happen!?! then there was a handbike. and this lady contestant, who by this point, has left her competitor in the dust back at the net, is so friggin tired that she cannot hold onto the handbike and just plummets into the penalty pit. she climbs her way out of that and she is has to cross a balance beam to get to the pyramid. then she must climb up it where she will reach (finally) a zipline. she zips down and gets to an angled treadmill! just like i remember! yesssss! but the other lady has finally finished the cargo net and is beginning her giant spool rolldown thing. lady #2 also chooses to abdicate the handbike in favor of the penalty pit as lady #1 falls down the treadmill twice. could this be the comeback of the millennium? lady #1 continues to stumble as lady #2 balances her way across the beam and drags herself up the pyramid to the zipline. she reaches the halfway point of the zipline and her arms just give out, plummeting her onto the protective mats below. lady #1 has, by now, made it to the top of the treadmill, but! she loses her footing! but! she has managed to grab onto the top of the treadmill with her fingertips! wait! is she just hanging there? for real? she is just hanging there by her fingertips as lady #2 effortlessly passes her on the treadmill on her first try and wins. even as lady #2 celebrates her victory by laying on the ground looking dead in a puddle of her own sweat and tears, lady #1 is still hanging onto the treadmill. just let go.
best.ending.ever.