Joe's Day

Friends and Family week continues as Joe Plum takes his turn at TRS.
Joe is my second longest friend in tenure and is a friend of mine for around thirty years, having met him right after Cherie and I were married and Joe was a teenager working at a neighborhood drug store/baseball card shop.

Joe's decided to take Fred's five questions idea, but add his own twist with Five Questions to be answered with my Top Three for each question.
I'm going to answer these as my favorite three, which may or may not be the "best" three in any category!
Here we go!
Joe: Your top three all-time Wrestling Tag Teams

TRS:
1: Midnight Express- Bobby Eaton & Dennis Condrey Version
2: Midnight Express- Bobby Eaton & Stan Lane Version
3: Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson
Honorable Mention: Hart Foundation- Bret Hart & Jim Neidhart

This one was an easy question, yet a hard question as I'll explain shortly.
The Midnight Express is easily my favorite tag team, but the Eaton/Condrey version and the Eaton/Lane versions are so close that I waver between each team as my favorite.
I didn't have actual video exposure to the NWA until after I was married (different cable systems) and that was two months after Dennis Condrey left the team, so my "first" Midnights was actually the second.
Usually, the first act that you see and enjoy winds up being the one you like best (which might be why I'm the only person I know that prefers Dick Sargent over Dick York as Darrin Stevens on Bewitched), so for years I would have picked Eaton and Lane.
However, in the YouTube era, I've been able to see Condrey and Eaton in action and the pure "heat" that Condrey/Eaton and, of course, Jim Cornette had with fans gives them a hairline edge over the terrific matches of Eaton/Lane.
Dennis Condrey was more of a pure heel than Stan Lane and that might be the difference.
Tully Blanchard ranks in my top five favorites of all time and his team with Arn Anderson might be my favorite pure wrestling team.
Tully and Arn didn't have the flashy double-team moves of Eaton and Lane and the pure hatred that fans had for Condrey and Eaton, but an argument can be made for them at the top as an all-around team.
Because of the circumstances with the Midnight Express, I added an honorable mention with the Hart Foundation as my favorite team before I was able to start watching non-WWF products.


Joe: Top Five Defunct Sports Teams

TRS:
1: Arizona Wranglers USFL
2: Kentucky Colonels ABA
3: Cleveland Crusaders WHA

Two defunct NHL teams could have applied for this, but since they technically still exist with the Kansas City Scouts tracing to the New Jersey Devils and the Cleveland Barons having ties to the Dallas Stars, so I eliminated them.
This was a very hard choice, but I gave the 1984 Arizona Wranglers a close decision over the Kentucky Colonels at the top mainly because I watched all the Wranglers games and the Colonels were a radio team only for a seven and eight-year-old.
I've written about the 1984 Wranglers before and the bizarre reasons that saw me root for three different teams in the three years of the USFL.
The Colonels rate second with all-time favorite Dan Issel and I wrote about my Colonels fandom as well.
The Cleveland Crusaders earned the third spot as my favorite WHA team.


Joe: Top Three Comic Book Villains

TRS:
1: Deadshot
2: Riddler
3: Captain Cold

Wow, another difficult question.
The Riddler was my favorite through childhood in the Batman comics and the brilliant Frank Gorshin portrayal in the Batman TV series, but my love of the 1980s comic- Suicide Squad introduced me to Deadshot, who I've written about here as well!
The layers of the Floyd Lawton "character" are many, Suicide Squad is a brilliant comic, and if more comics existed of Squad member Count Vertigo as a solo villain Count Vertigo might have made this list.
Riddler gets second and Captain Cold gets third as my favorite of a deep bunch of Flash villains over Count Vertigo.


Joe: Top Three 1980s Movies

TRS:
1: National Lampoon's Vacation
2: Major League
3: The Survivors

There were movies that I love that didn't make this list, I could likely make a top ten to twenty of these and there was a few that I thought of as "80s movies" that were actually late 70s films.
I kept this list to comedies.
I love the first Vacation and if it's on television, I almost always stop to watch.
Same with Major League and there are so many great quotes from both that I use often with Ryan and the "IFL Guys" (Real Tomato Ketchup, Eddie?).
The third spot goes to the badly underrated The Survivors with Robin Williams and Walter Matthau.
It's sardonic and dry, but if you watch this, get the underlying humor, and laugh like crazy- I think we just might be friends!


Joe: Top Three Defunct Fast Food/Chain Restaurants

TRS:
1: Burger Chef
2: Red Barn/The Farm
3: Arthur Treacher's

This one wasn't close, but I did have some problems closing this list out.
It seems that many chains that most people seem to think are dead still have a few stragglers around in locations that you may not expect.
Burger Chef was not only my first job, but they also had great burgers such as the Super Chef (Quarter Pounder), Big Chef (Big Mac), and the Philly Chef with peppers, onions, and mushrooms!
Burger Chef also was the first place with a "works bar" that you could fix your own sandwich with what you wished to place on it.
My personal favorite was the "Shawn Chef" which was fixed after hours with the Big Chef-style roll with Super Chef meats on each slab with the mushrooms, peppers, and onions from the Philly Chef!
Red Barn, which transitioned to The Farm before going out of business, had great burgers as well with the Barn Buster, Cheese Buster, and Big Barney and the local franchise here was the first place to offer an AYCE chicken and sides dinner.
Although the waitresses took orders for new plates rather than a conventional buffet ( and I look for some places to try this post-COVID), there wasn't a limit on food.
My favorite Chinese restaurant is in the location of the local Red Barn building and it literally is two blocks down the street. Sob.
Arthur Treacher's is still in existence with Wikipedia reporting that only seven locations still survive with one of the seven inside a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop.
Arthur Treacher's had a location in Breezewood, PA and that location was a regular stop of Cherie and mine's coming home (or going to) Ohio for many years.
It was much like a Long John Silvers, so if you like one, you would likely enjoy both.


Thanks to Joe for the questions and I hope you enjoyed the answers.
Back next time with another Friends and Family post unless there is breaking sports news.

Podcast:DC Comics

We talk DC Comics from the 70's,80's and early 90's with Chris And Reggie from the Cosmic Treadmill and Weird Comic History Podcasts!!

Cleaning out the inbox

Time to clean the inbox.

We start with a blog that I found that does reviews of 1970's and 80's DC comics named Chris is on Infinite Earth's.
Chris is reviewing tons of great comics from that age,including my guy Floyd Lawton or Deadshot.
Well before the Suicide Squad,you might remember my post on Floyd from 2013 and how he was perhaps my favorite villain in the DC universe.
I need to break out my collection sometime and look back the way Chris is doing right now.,but it's fun reading his reviews and all the fun memories from long ago....

Richard Deitsch writes the Media Circus columns at SI.com and he put together a massive list of terrific articles written in 2016 from both sports and the outside world.
I spent most of a night looking them over and grabbed a few of interest for the inbox....

The read of the night comes from Pamela Colloff of Texas Monthly entitled the Reckoning-the story of Claire Wilson.
The story of Wilson is what happened in her life fifty years after being wounded in the 1966 shooting from the tower at the University of Texas that killed 15 and injured 31 others.
Colloff had written about the shooting for Texas Monthly ten years earlier in a prize winning article "96 Minutes",but this article uses the shooting for background and focuses on the years following the shooting for Wilson.
I couldn't stop reading,just a tremendous piece of writing..

David Ng of the Los Angeles Times writes about O.J. Simpson,which seems to be a market all by itself,but Ng writes about something that hadn't previously been discussed as Ng writes about what Simpson's life is like behind prison walls.
It's an interesting look about the current life of Simpson,which often isn't discussed when dealing with the topic of O.J.Simpson...

Jordan Ritter of the Ringer writes about the talented former Jaguar receiver Justin Blackmon,who will likely never play in the NFL again after numerous suspensions.
Ritter goes deep into the background of Blackmon and goes to his hometown of Ardmore Oklahoma to see what the locals think of Blackmon.
Blackmon was such a talented receiver and really lost it all due to his battle with the bottle.
I really loved Blackmon's skills coming out of Oklahoma State and proves the one point that I (and many draft observers) make-the one thing that the franchises have over the rest is the ability to look beyond the film due to access to so many off the field items.,,

Stacey Gotsulias writes for the Hardball Times and her article on her late father was very touching.
Gotsulias reflects on her dad and her memories of spending time with the games and rooting for the Yankees.
It's the type of story that so many of us that are fans have with someone important in their life,but few can put it into the type of words that she does.

Justin Heckert of ESPN writes about the rarest game made by the original Nintendo-Stadium Events from 1987 and the value of what seems to be a pretty crummy game.
I never realized people actually collected video games,but it makes sense as everything has value to someone.
Stadium Events was rebranded as World Class Track and Field for those Nintendo mats that you "ran" on to move your avatar on screen.
Just like baseball cards,it's all about how few are made,not about how good the product is.....

We wrap with another loss from the Apollo years as the last man to walk on the moon passed away as Gene Cernan died at the age of 82.
Cernan,who was a Gemini veteran as well as Apollo,was one of the Apollo astronauts to somewhat stay in the public eye as he was an ABC News contributor for space and science.
Cernan was also noted for the difficulties that he had in his Gemini spacewalk that resulted in some training changes and doing things differently on spacewalks.
Cernan was very outspoken on issues that involved NASA and their decisions that ended manned space missions further than Earth orbit and could always be relied on for honesty when discussing issues involving our investment in space...

Podcast-Live from Avon-Listener's Request Episode

Live from Avon-It's a listener's request episode for topics and we say goodbye to longtime favorite Garry Shandling...

A man named Floyd

Many of you know that the author has been a superhero fan since childhood of both major comic companies (DC and Marvel), collected figures, and comics for many years.
I quit collecting comics because they have gotten too expensive (4.00 and up) for too light of a read (24 pages usually), too many "crossover" stories (having to buy multiple books that I might not normally read to get the entire story) and constant revamps and changes to the heroes and villains that I like, but I still love the genre' and buy "graphic novels" still with reprints of classic comics and my comic collection of too many to count is still intact.

My favorite hero growing up was the Green Lantern, but GL's Rogues Gallery (comic book term for villains that tend to battle a particular hero often) was pretty weak, so I also loved the Flash and of course, Batman, who each had rich Rogues Galleries to mine often.
I read some Marvel comics, but I've always considered myself to be a "DC Guy" and my collection shows it.
I have tons of GL stuff, including a very cool statue that the lovely Cherie bought me for one anniversary, but GL might be my favorite hero and despite many villains fighting for my favors since childhood, the winner is someone that I didn't even hear about until 1987.

Deadshot was a one-note character that appeared once in 1950 as he tried to usurp Batman as a hero while committing crimes, after being defeated, Deadshot was forgotten about until 1977 when he was returned to action with a distinctive outfit and a nasty attitude as the worlds greatest marksman.
Deadshot still did not show up often, so I had no knowledge of him, which is understandable in those times as he wasn't kid-friendly enough to reach the toy lines and wasn't used enough to be known unless you had that comic he appeared in.

However, in 1987 things changed-Hagerstown got its first comics shop and I was a buyer of whatever Batman was on the cover of and he was on the cover of this book called The Suicide Squad.
I bought it and went back the following week to buy the issues that I missed.
As I read The Squad, Deadshot became my favorite and some research helped me find his Batman appearances as well.
Deadshot became so popular that he received his own four-issue "mini-series", which was just reprinted in novel format and is on my XMAS list at Amazon.com.
Deadshot would stay through another mini-series and other incarnations of the Squad, but nothing was ever going to live up to the classic first run of the Squad, which I'll get into down the road.
I have even thought of re-reading the Squad run (No novel reprint yet) and if I do -that will be the Squad post time.

Floyd Lawton was born of privilege and as noted originally wanted to "be" Batman.
The mini-series explains his family background and just how he became so bitter and hated life.
I'd tell you more, but you never know, Deadshot Beginnings might wind up on your Xmas list!
That is how interesting the character is in my opinion.
Floyd doesn't want to commit suicide, mind you, but he is not against death as he takes reckless chances that make many think he has a death wish.
The assassin for hire that never misses (except against Batman, who informed Floyd in the 1st book I saw him that he "Pulls his shots" is certainly multifaceted and far from a standard comic character.

I don't buy current comics for the above reasons, but I must admit if the cost fell (fat chance) I could get back into at least a few and I'm sure Deadshot would be right at the forefront.
Give Deadshot a try this Christmas, I bet you don't regret it!!