So WWE returned last night, and what a show they put on! It's been years since I've been to a show, mostly because WWE cancelled after Benoit(rest his soul) killed himself and his family. Highlights of the evening:
1) seeing the wrestlers do stuff when they're not on camera. Didn't see any slip-ups or things like that, but it's more like seeing them getting helped out the ring. The guys put on a great show. Even though I was up in the 2nd level, which was probably a good 50+ m from the ring, I could hear some of the slaps. Yes, it's very obvious that they angle their moves towards the 
camera (I was sitting on the opposite side so I saw a lot of backs, which didn't make the greatest photos), and few of them were a bit un-convincing on their hits, but it was still awesome to scream for your favourite wrestler.
2) the massive Canadian-bias for the wrestlers. Oh yeah, lots of Y2J chants (especially when Cryme Tyme did their "Christina" bit), and a huge pop for the Hart Dynasty. Hmmm, now I'm kinda regretting I didn't buy a Hart Dynasty shirt. I really don't need another T-shirt, and I might not wear it that often, but a star is probably measured by how much merchandise they can push. I was also very tempted by the Christian shirt because it looked classy. But $30 a T-shirt was a bit painful.
- Just a note here. They completely cut out the Y2J chant during the TV show. Bastards!
3) fireworks. You think it's impressive on TV, it's amazing live. I was suprised when ECW's fireworks started, and my camera jumped. But it was great.
4) Jeff Hardy. Before and after the match, he went around ringside and shook people's hands and took pictures with them. That's awesome. A few of the other wrestlers did the same too, but not quite to the extent of Jeff.5) I saw an entire episode of ECW w/o drifting off! Eh, well that's not entirely true I think. I don't recall all of the Regal/Dreamer match. But that might've been when I was trying to figure out my camera still. Finally decided to take the plunge and change it to manual, so I could play w/ the ISO. I think they're turning Shelton into a face, which will hopefully mean he'll get rid of that gawd-awful hair. Loved that there was a big Benjamin chant too.
6) I could see the big screen from my seat. Which was good because I couldn't see what they were doing sometimes. But see below's point 3 for the downfall.
7) Golddust still gets pop. His match was for Superstars. I guess they tape the rest of Superstars during RAW?The lowlights:1) sitting next to an obnoxious kid and his bitchy mom. The stuff that was coming out of this 7-9 year-old kid was unbelievable. He was yelling stuff like "kill him, kick him in the balls, you like boys". He even said "You from China, me no understand you" during an entirely Caucasian match. But the worst was during the women's match when he yelled "take off her shirt, pull off her pants!" Like WTF?! Sometimes the mom would tell him to stop saying something, and he'd just say "it's wrestling, I'm supposed to talk like that!". But when he did that during the women's match and she said nothing, I turned to the mother and went "did he really say take off her pants?!" She goes, "I told him to stop and I don't need parenting tips from you." When the kid asked her what we were talking about, she says "I told her to fuck off". And I was going to thank her for coming to the show and keeping his tone down. Well screw that. And of course when they leave, they kick me in the legs, and knock their popcorn all over me. There's a lot of curses I could lay on them, but I don't want a rebound. So I'll just say this, I fully expect their family to be in the headlines for some crime or another. Probably against a woman. There were 2 other 7-9 year-old kids sitting next to the obnoxious one, and they were staring at him sometimes because he was so freaking loud and yelling stupid things.2) having a staff personnel come by twice and accuse me of videotaping the event, and said I had to erase my memory card. For one thing, what the hell am I supposed to be able to see from where I was sitting?! In order to zoom in enough to catch anything, I would need a telephoto lens and a tripod (since the shakes at that zoom level are horrible) My camera has a 10x optical zoom w/ 40x digital zoom. While at max zoom I could see their face, the pixalization was horrible. Not to mention since they're moving at a low-light level, I need ISO 400+. Which makes pretty bad movies. When they were in the middle of an aerial move, I still got blurs at ISO 800. (got some interesting effects though).
Anyways, she's said since I had my camera up all the time, I must've been filming the event. Well w/ digital cameras, you can take 1000s of pictures, and since it's a sport event, there are tons of times when you have to take pictures of moves. The whole "take them now, delete the crappy ones later" effect. I also told her I'm a crappy shot so I need to take lots to get a few good ones. She still was yelling at me (mostly because it was so freaking loud in the arena), so I showed her the "awesome" shots I have... of a guy's back, someone's arm covering most of the ring, Jeff's tiny back to me, an out-of-focus shot of the ring (and what might be CM Punk on the mat). After that she was pretty apologetic and said she was going tell security that I wasn't lying (since she accused me of that when she came). After when I was watching the ring crew do take-down, while waiting for D to get out of the washroom, she apologized again to me.3) most of the wrestlers would only face towards the videocameras when they came into the ring. Pretty annoying when you're on the other side.
4) camera took a lot of before and after the "big moves" pics, but very few during the actual impact. I had it on auto-focus continuous shot, which according to specs would take a shot every 0.7 sec. Well, apparently still not fast enough. Also because when it's in that mode, it seems to take a while to start up, so I had a lot of after shots if I didn't start pressing before the move began(people lying on the mat makes a lousy photo). Also since I'm extremely unsteady, and my hands tend to stray, I was staring at the LCD screen a lot, and missed a lot of moves and several pins. Well, that's what watching it on TV's for. Also since Animethon, my CTS has really come back hard. Even on my left arm where I had the surgery. So I had to put the camera down a few times because my hand was going numb.5) I forgot to cheer a lot of times b/c I'm used to watching it on TV.
So was it worth the $37.75? Heck yeah! I hope they come back soon, although it might only be a house show. Depends on the attendance. There were some empty rows, but maybe it's just scalpers? Now, if only I didn't have to sit next to retards. D pointed out that I seem to always have my events ruined by @$$holes. How unfortunately true.
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Just some notes during the TV viewing. There was no audience audio when they showed the DX clip from RAW. We were pretty loud during it though. Also when's the Hardy vs. CM Punk cage match being shown? The apron still showed Smackdown, so I'm not sure when they're showing it. During Superstars, they did change the ring apron. Would they have given us a dark match? At the end of the night?! Not that we minded, but Jeff must've been exhausted. It was still a very good match too. For those who don't believe me, here's some pics. Jeff won too.
