RIP Satoru Iwata

"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. In my heart I am a gamer."

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata passed away on July 11th. This news goes beyond the company, it has greatly affected the game industry and its longtime and new fans. There has never been a company president that was so public and involved in their product like Iwata. He and chief game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, are such an integral part to Nintendo's success. Whoever will be named his successor has an impossibly big gap to fill.

Nintendo has been both a big and small part of my life. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Game Boy were my first video game console and handheld, respectively. I lost interest in the NES system but I stuck with the Game Boy. Anyone who has ever met or know me knows that I've always had a Nintendo handheld game device on my bag or in my purse. When Erika visited Vegas last month, she asked if I still played Pokemon. I said I did and I brought out my 3DS from my extremely heavy purse to show her, and she laughed that she will always remember me for always having [a handheld game device] with me.

This is the line of game devices after my my uncle gave me the Game Boy as a Christmas present all those years ago:

• (2) Game Boy
• Game Boy Color (Pokemon Gold/Silver edition which I foolishly traded off at Game Stop)
• (2) Game Boy Advance (I stole a second one from KMart but I felt immensely guilty afterwards that I threw it in the dumpster)
• Game Boy SP
• (2) Nintendo DS
• Nintendo 3DS
  

It's not total brand loyalty (I never got the Game Boy Micro), but it shows how much I needed to have one. I may be back to being a casual gamer but I can't go a long period of time without carrying or playing the 3DS. In fact, Vince and I stayed up pretty late this morning to complete a quest in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.

You will be missed, Iwata-san.

WARNING: FANGIRL MODE ON

** checks WWE.com and Tumblr **

** DIES **

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Ok, all kidding aside...  I thought this Body Series would continue to show the rest of the guys. Imagine my surprise when they mention in the end that the Ravishing Russian Lana would be the next Diva to be featured in next month's series. That's pretty interesting considering that they could've started it off with Seth "Crossfit Jesus" Rollins, Cesaro, John Cena, or any other Superstar with a more cut and defined physique. Starting off with Ambrose over their World Heavyweight Champion Rollins? That says a lot.

Godammit WWE. Tumblr exploded over the "12 Rounds 3: Lockdown" movie news AND Ambrose being featured in the Body Series this week. And what's Ambrose doing? Feuding with Bo Dallas again for Smack Down! tonight. 

"CE-SA-RO! CE-SA-RO!": Monday Night RAW (7/6/15)

Despite Brock Lesnar wrecking a car (along with Jamie Noble and Jamie Mercury), witnessing another incredible U.S. Open Challenge match with Cena vs Cesaro, and all of this taking place in Chicago, IL, the smarkiest city in the world, this was another very disappointing episode of Raw. Vince and I were playing Monster Hunter 4: Ultimate on our 3DS while we had Raw on in the background. We glanced up once in a while to see what was going on and we grew largely uninterested and frustrated each time. 

• Big Show vs Ryback with interference from Miz? Great. I still don't understand why Miz is involved.
• Rusev, who looks like he's recovered from his broken ankle, severely injures Dolph Ziggler, and he had to be taken out on a stretcher as a worried Lana accompanies him.
• Seth Rollins being a chicken-shit heel and abandoning J&J Security again? Yawn. When is Kane coming back from vacation?
• Sheamus vs Roman Reigns with interference from a fake Bray Wyatt, plus a returning Randy Orton to feud with Sheamus afterwards? Woo.
• Paige vs Brie with Nikki and Alicia Fox on ringside? That's new.
• And Dean "OMG He got a haircut" Ambrose vs Bo Dallas? That was a random squash match and it did nothing for both of them. I still BO-LIEVE!

The best part of Raw was the last hour, where John Cena's U.S. Open Challenge was thankfully saved for last. A bitter Kevin Owens (who lost his NXT title to Finn Balor at the Tokyo, JP house show) is now determined to take the title from Cena. That is, until Cesaro showed up. This was probably the best story line that was developing last night because Cesaro has a grudge with Owens for interrupting their match last week. He kicked Owens out of the ring to take another shot at the title. This was such an incredible match that showcased each other's display of strength and varying move sets. We all know Cena won't lose the title on TV but this match convinced everyone that Cesaro was THE GUY to beat him. Cesaro lost clean to Cena but he won the Chicago crowd over.

I thought that Creative would have more time to build good stories that would to lead to an exciting Battleground PPV or post-PPV Raw. Sadly, we're not getting that. This is one of the lows that Vince and I would go through with WWE; where you get frustrated with the booking or writing and decide to take a break from it or not watch it, though I still go out of my way to watch Raw and Smack Down! myself.

Big Show said on a recent podcast with Chris Jericho that he felt sad on how much the industry has changed. The stories they were trying to tell all have to happen on a weekly basis on TV. It's not something that can be written and building up for months anymore. Battleground is now a week away, so I hope they pull some damn surprises in the go home shows.

Oh, and also...

PUSH CESARO

Calm down, Tumblr!

I originally created a Tumblr for http://vince-sheila.tumblr.com/ as another fun way to microblog on what Vince and I do, while Blogger remained as my primary personal blog for my lengthy and not-so-coherent posts. After getting a few notes for some posts relating to WWE, I made a note on Tumblr that this is not a wrestling reaction blog and that I will try really hard to refrain from mentioning such things. Of course, I broke that when I noted that the last WWE Live show in Vegas this year updated their talent appearances to include Dean Ambrose (dammit!) and when I noted that WWEShop.com suddenly got new Dean Ambrose shirt designs. I didn't even add any tags to it but it still showed up.

For the most part, I didn't understand how anyone would get addicted to Tumblr, until I discovered what "tag lurking" was. It was the quickest way to browse anything in Tumblr related to your search. In my case, looking up "#deanambrose" and "#dean ambrose" yielded VERY weird results for me, ranging from Ambrose/Reigns and Ambrose/Bella shippers (yikes), to NSFW imagine blogs (YIKES), and this one blog that absolutely resents the beautiful Renee Young for not being open about dating Dean Ambrose (Well, she's not; Renee Paquette is dating Jonathan Good). Tumblr was pretty much a condensed search result engine and I found myself checking it on a daily basis, like Reddit.

Today, I got to truly see what makes Tumblr (and Twitter) enjoyable; the collective live reaction when something is revealed, and how quickly it gets picked up.

I laughed at the "OMG HOLY SHIT FINALLY!!1!1!" reactions from different Tumblr accounts because I felt the same way. Last August, Ambrose took time off for about a month to film the movie after being curbstomped by Seth Rollins (this was the Vegas show Vince and I went to) and there has been virtually little to no updates on it since then. When Ambrose stole the police paddy wagon back in May, it seemed to have reignited the discussion reminded the fangirls that there was still no "Lockdown" news and the fans were even bugging the actors and director on Twitter for updates. This was such a big surprise.

I haven't seen such a huge reaction to a WWE movie headlined by one of its own Superstars since John Cena starred in the first "12 Rounds" and "The Marine." Randy Orton was in the "12 Rounds" sequel and I didn't hear anything about it either. I've only seen excerpts of "The Marine" when it aired on FX years ago and even back then, Vince and I were just shitting on how predictable the movie was. WWE movies seem to border on either being passable or cheesy bad, and that's if it's being viewed with really low expectations, so I'll have to wait and see what the consensus is on this before watching it myself.

In the meantime, I'm just going to smile like a dork for a whole week since WWE is also featuring Ambrose as their first Superstar for their Body Series this Thursday. This monthly series consists of studio quality pics and a short video of a featured WWE Diva/Superstar working out. Natalya, Paige, and Eva Marie were the first Divas to be featured. So... There will be pics and video of Ambrose... Working out.

**fangirl mode activated**

Independence Day Weekend

Friday: We did a bit of grocery shopping and I did a comic book run. We ran into Andrew and Joanna at the Maximum Comics. Later, we met up at Buffalo Wild Wings for Christine’s Birthday celebration. We had wings, shots, and the deliciously sinful Dessert Nachos.

Saturday: We worked out at the gym for a bit in the morning. Then, we brought our squirt guns and bought some last minute supplies at Trader Joe’s and went to Christine and Anthony’s place for a BBQ Pool party. Had some Vegan burgers and hotdogs and smores! We ended the night by going to the park to see some fireworks. Went home and played some Heroes of the Storm before going to bed.

Sunday: Vince played Batman: Arkham Knight for nearly 12 hours! I watched the NJPW Dominion PPV.

These 3-day weekends always feel so short.

S.A._JCFan // SA_JCFan // sa_jcfan

These are variations of a user name I created when I got my first computer and internet access way back in 1997. Among the first websites I discovered was www.jimcarreyonline.com, a fan website that helped me managed my obsession with Jim Carrey. I contributed so much news to the website that I eventually became a News Correspondent for the first few years. I was even being trained by one of the site's founders to help manage the growing website and the forums. That fandom was such a big part in choosing my now silly-sounding user name. When the forum and the news team got bigger, I quietly stepped away from the "job" and became a lurker.

So why did I like Jim Carrey? He immediately became my favorite actor after I watched Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and The Mask and I watched his appearances on episodes of In Living Color on FX. I followed his work and watched almost all of his movies. I found him to be silly, charming, and handsome. His political views and beliefs never really affected me until he started dating Jenny McCarthy, and when he started being very vocal about it, I was becoming less and less of a fan. I didn't watch any of his movies after he distanced himself from "Kick Ass 2." And he was noticeably getting less movies roles, save for a few TV appearances.

And then, I saw this shit yesterday on Gawker:

What. The. FUCKING. HELL?

Is he still on this anti-vax crusade, even after breaking up with Jenny McCarthy? The comedic actor who I used to have a silly crush on when I was a kid was now this... unfunny and delusional man. I mean, fine, I may not agree with his views and I'll give him credit for standing up for what he believes in. His heart's in the right place and he clearly wants to do more philanthropy work. He just comes off as both knowledgeable and misguided. It disgusted me so much that I admitted aloud, "That's it. I'm done with Jim Carrey," much to Vince's delight. He joked that I should change my username to "SA_DAFan" since I'm a fan of Dean Ambrose. Funny enough, Erika also joked that I should change my name to "SA_WWEFan" since she was surprised that I got intro wrestling and lost interest in Jim Carrey.

I'll still keep the user name though because it's a silly and personal story to share. And my current favorite is now Chris Pratt :D

"You know what we need? More Dean Ambrose shirts!"

After the Money in The Bank PPV and during Monday Night RAW and Smack Down!, Dean Ambrose was seen wearing his wife beater shirts again instead of his "DA" muscle shirt that he's been wearing for the last few months. That was his third shirt from wweshop.com. The first being the ugly "UNSTABLE" text on white and the second being "Dean Unstable Ambrose" as a parental advisory label on black (which is a callback to his indy and FCW designs that read "Explicit Mox/Ambrose Violence"). Anyways, I actually wondered if he was going to be getting a new shirt design. He could've simply chosen not to wear it that week.

And then Sunday night, WWEShop.com suddenly updated their new product listing. Not only did Ambrose get a new shirt design, he got 5 new shirt designs released all at once! And a (badly photoshopped) header image!

wweshop.com just quietly released 5 brand new Dean Ambrose t-shirt designs. What's going on?! #wweshop #deanambrose

A photo posted by sheila antonio (@sajcfan) on Jun 21, 2015 at 10:21pm PDT

This is BIG deal. Kevin Owens had 3 new shirts released when he signed on the main roster. And Samoa Joe was immediately signed to WWE after they saw how his one and only shirt sold out online on the night of his NXT debut. I remember reading last year that WWEShop.com had record breaking sales over Thanksgiving weekend and that their best-selling item was a Dean Ambrose hoodie. The fact that WWE went and released several new designs for one wrestler WWE Superstar is again, a very big deal. Seth Rollins, the WWE Heavyweight Champion, hasn't had a new shirt released since winning Wrestlemania and his current design is just a rehash of his first "SR" design. Meanwhile, Roman Reigns got another shirt design with a catchphrase he never says (i.e. "One Versus All." "Hit Hard. Hit Often." "I Bring The Fight.") but it still sells well. Either Ambrose is getting another big push or they're just trying to gauge how much money they can make from Ambrose again. He was so much fun to watch during his Bourbon Street instagram tour and he was the poster boy for the Money In the Bank PPV.

Part of me wants to impulsively pre-order one of the new Ambrose shirt designs but what's stopping me is the fact that none of the designs look good to me. I waited a while before buying the "DA" shirt because I liked that more than the "Dean Unstable Ambrose" design. I don't like either of the "Ambrose Stole My Heart/Title" designs because it looks boring. The two "Ambrose Asylum" designs, especially where it just features his crazy eyes and "Unhinged And On The Fringe" on the back, are freaking awful. The "Dirty Deeds" is the only unique looking shirt that isn't black but I'm still not interested in getting it.

Now I'm wondering which shirt would Ambrose would wear tonight O_O

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Looks like I got my answer. Ambrose was seen wearing the "Ambrose Asylum" design with the "Unhinged And On The Fringe" (ugh) back design in the dark match after Monday Night RAW. He didn't wear it during his match with Kane. I'm a bit sad that he didn't have a backstage segment like he did last week so it looks like he'll be midcarding for a while.