Waiting on the Sidelines

The Josh Wells Weekly, Episode 310

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Telling jokes at Tommy Fox’s in Bergenfield, NJ. Fun times as always!

Random Thought

I think the saddest part about war is that children have to suffer. Human suffering in general is a bad thing, but there’s something extra cruel when you consider that kids are also affected, suffer, and are sometimes murdered because of war. That doesn’t seem fair. An adult can move around, flee, fight back, whatever. A child is a purely innocent bystander who has nothing to do with the bullshit war they find themselves surrounded by.

I think this should be enough to make the entire world turn pacifist but for whatever reason, the powers-that-be just keep that war machine cranking along. And sometimes they can do a good job of selling us on the wars. They’ll tell us it’s necessary for our security, our protection, our survival, or our future. People buy in and that always sucks because once the people buy in, the momentum becomes harder to stop.

With that being said, I do think it’s the idea of children suffering that can sometimes break through and help people realize that the war effort just isn’t worth it anymore. And that seems to be happening now in Gaza. The temperature’s changed. There’s been an anti-genocide movement for a while now, but it felt like it was harder to talk about it in public till very recently. Suddenly, we’re seeing pictures of real children starving to death and that strikes a chord. More people are finally realizing that this whole shit is fucked up and evil and needs to be stopped.

I’m beyond having a discussion about this with anyone. Who’s wrong, who’s right, Who cares? Enough is enough. I’ll watch adults kick, shoot, and stab the shit out of each other if that’s what they want to do with their free time. Soldier vs soldier, have at it, as long as all the combatants are willing. But what’s going on in Gaza has gone too far. It went too far a long time ago. The death count of innocent people is ridiculous and beyond a reasonable number for the kind of vengeance gov’t/military officials in Israel were looking for.

I’m sad that it’s taken the starvation of children to change the conversation globally. I wanna yell, “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” to the politicians and world leaders who have just now suddenly found the strength to talk about it. But I also wanna commend them because at least they’re standing up and trying to do something about it.

The sad thing is that it’s too late for too many people. The best-case scenario is that the world does somehow get it together and put an end to this thing and even if that happens tomorrow, so many people have already lost so much. So many innocent lives have already been lost. Can you still be considered a hero if you watched from the sidelines waiting for one side to run up the score just a little more before calling it what it is?

Movie I Watched Recently

Happy Gilmore 2

(Netflix)

That last thing I wrote felt heavy. I feel like I gotta acknowledge that before attempting to transition into writing about a silly movie. So, this is it. This is the transition.

Happy Gilmore 2 is a lot of fun. This movie is probably everything you would expect it to be. It’s funny (it’s probably the most I’ve enjoyed a Sandler comedy in a long time), it’s star-studded, and it offers a lot of fan service. The casting and cameos are ridiculous. If I knew anything about the current golf scene, I’d probably be even more impressed because there’s a bunch of current golfers in this movie. Of all the golf guys, John Daly probably crushes the hardest.

The plot is silly, as it should be. I might have been disappointed if this sequel took itself too seriously. Not that it completely lacks seriousness either. It has some nice emotional touches, and a very sad thing does happen in this movie.

Overall, it’s a silly good time. If you’ve seen the first one and/or you’re a fan of Sandler (especially his earlier movies) then I think you would enjoy this movie very much.

I don’t even know if this picture does the entire cast justice, but it probably comes the closest of the pics I’m seeing on Google images.

TV show I’m currently watching

Jeopardy!

Jeopardy recently had their season finale and a lot of times, the season finale isn’t anything too special. It’s just another game. The only kinda exciting thing is whoever wins that last game gets to be champ during the offseason. It’s like they get an unofficially longer run as champ.

However, the stakes felt a little higher than usual this time because 16-time winner Scott Riccardi was defending his streak and for me personally, I thought it’d be fitting and cool if he won the last game of the season and got to pick it up at the beginning of the next season as a 17-game winner.

But that didn’t happen. What happened instead is that Scott found himself in a dogfight that came down to Final Jeopardy (he had the lead but it wasn’t insurmountable) and in the end, he got the answer wrong and ended up losing (it gives me little joy, but only a little, to know that I knew the correct answer to that Final Jeopardy btw, but I digress…)

So, now the next season of Jeopardy will begin with this dude, Jonathan Hugendubler, defending his 1-day streak and coming in as a real dragon slayer. I try not to root too hard for any one person on Jeopardy, but this felt like one of those times where rooting for Scott felt like the right thing. But I also love upsets, and this was possibly the most dramatic way to stage an upset in Jeopardy.

We’ll also see Scott again in the Tournament of Champions.

Album of the Week

The Revenge of Alice Cooper / Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper recently reunited with the living members of the original lineup of his band for the first time in a long time. I’m not the biggest Alice Cooper fan however I had to give it a listen because Alice is a legend and also, Ozzy’s passing was a reminder that I gotta appreciate our elder rock heroes while I can.

This is a pretty good album. It felt like they were leaning into the whole horror-rock thing that they’re sorta famous for early on but eventually this album started to sound like a bunch of dudes flexing their 1970s rock muscles which is also fine by me.

They don’t reinvent the wheel. There’s nothing new here. But if you make it this far, I feel like you got the right to just get in there and have fun and if it sounds like something else that came before, well maybe it should. Legends like Alice Cooper should remind us how cool rock and roll has always been. This sound is what the foundation is built on and Alice Cooper (and the band) played their role in making sure that foundation was strong.

Alice Cooper has been a thing in rock and roll for over 50 years. I’m glad he’s not trying to switch it up and do something different. He could read poetry over snare drums and tell us to deal with it, and we would because he’s Alice Cooper. But instead, he was like, fuck it, this album is gonna rock and sound like most of the other stuff. That should be celebrated. Alice Cooper should be celebrated.

Alice Cooper is 77. I remember when I was younger, and I used to think old people weren’t cool, but Cooper is undeniable proof that old people can be cool.

Book I’m Currently Reading

Homesick For Another World / Ottessa Moshfegh

Just wrapped this up and it was overall a cool collection of short stories, very short actually. I don’t think any of them ever exceeded 20 pages and if they did, they were few and far between. Most of the stories are weird and most of the protagonists are strange and flawed and maybe not good people at all. There is a lot of moral gray area in these stories. I’m not even sure if I can categorically say there’s any good guys in any of them, just main characters, some of whom think they’re good guys and some of whom know they aren’t.

There’s also a lot of vague endings. My brain had to do some of the work to imagine my own plot points for some of the stories. But that’s okay, I don’t mind an occasional challenge for my imagination. It might be going dull from social media and our fast, distracted world so in a way, I thought it was kinda unique and beneficial to be left with a little wiggle room to try and come up with my own conclusions.

You can get your fill of morally complicated/corrupt characters and vague endings in more than one language.

Random sports thought of the week

I haven’t been watching a ton of sports. This is usually my down time. Not on purpose, it just sorta happens post-NBA and pre-NFL.

I did watch the Minnesota Lynx beat the New York Liberty Wednesday night in the WNBA. If you would’ve asked me a couple of weeks ago who I think will win the championship this year, I would’ve almost certainly said the New York Liberty. But the Lynx have been looking really good too. They won this game on their homecourt, and NY was missing Breanna Stewart so I don’t think this one game should be the ultimate determining factor in who wins it all this year. But I do think the Lynx winning does give their case more substance.

If you forced me to pick right now, I’m still gonna go with the Liberty. But the Lynx are fun and also, they probably have the coolest uniforms and name in the whole league (a lynx is a cat AND it has an ‘x’ in it. It don’t get much cooler than that).

I am still on the Caitlin Clark bandwagon. She’s been dealing with an injury though most of the season and maybe the best story about the Indiana Fever is how well they’ve performed when she’s not available. Hopefully she gets healthy before the playoffs. If that’s the case, Fever will be tough to contend with.

I’ll still keep my NY Liberty pick though. That feels like the safest bet.

I always feel like the most dangerous teams are the ones who look like they’re having fun.

Random pro wrestling thought of the week

I’m really into this Naomi heel turn. I feel like she’s killing it right now. She spent all these years being this babyface character who was all bright colors and not much else. Her character just always seemed inoffensive and that was about it. But now it feels like something’s been unleashed. It feels like something real. I’m also a sucker for the “no more Mr. Nice Guy/Ms. Nice Lady” routine. She had been playing that role for so long, this whole thing feels like a payoff for all of it.

She’s also been overlooked for years. She had to contend with the Women’s Revolution, and it felt like she never played a main character in any of that. The closest she came was when her and Sasha Banks unceremoniously quit WWE and even that sorta felt like she was just being Sasha’s wing-woman, that maybe that wasn’t the move for her.

And then when she came back, she didn’t even really get that cool ‘welcome back’ push that a lot of returning stars get. It was like she found herself stuck in the middle of the card where she had always found herself before.

But not anymore. Gimme more of this Naomi. Keep her as champion for a while. I don’t care if she never wins clean. Let her cheat every time. Let her be the villain she was never allowed to be. And when fans or pundits look for justification, just remember that this is what happens when you overlook someone for being nice for too long.

Hell yea. This image goes hard.

My Top 5 Favorite Happy Gilmore 2 Casting Decisions

1- Bad Bunny

2- John Daly

3- MJF

4- Haley Joel Osment

5- Eminem

Weekly Quote

“Why be boring? Have some fun. Rock shows should be like movies: I don't go to a movie hoping it'll change my life.”

-Alice Cooper

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