Let's Stop Driving.

Enough is enough.

On Tuesday morning as I was getting ready for work, my mom told me about a terrible tragedy. A car accident occurred Monday evening in Damascus that claimed the life of Ryan Didone, and has another teenager fighting for her life. Ryan Didone was the son of Tom Didone, a police officer who worked closely with my father (Joseph A. Mattingly) as members of the underage alcohol program in Montgomery County. Chances are, if you were busted at a drinking party in the late 80's or early 90's, they were among the officers who made your night suck.

As many of you already know, my father was also killed in an automobile accident, back in 2003. But they aren't alone. There are about 45,000 transportation-related fatalities a year in the United States. Not fender-benders, not injuries, deaths; 45,000 of them. Of those 45,000 deaths, approximately 42,000 were a result of motor vehicle collisions. The remaining 3,000 include aviation, boating, heavy/light rail, railroad and railroad trespassers (people standing in the way of trains), and others.

But back to the focus here, 42,000 people die every year while driving on, biking on, or walking near roadways. Cars kill people. And despite dramatic advances in technology and information, they haven't really stopped killing people. Air bags, seatbelt laws, anti-lock brakes, these have all been around for over a decade now, and there has been no noticeable decrease in the number of people getting killed by car accidents. And I use the phrase "getting killed by" rather than "dying in" intentionally. Car accidents deserve the same level of villainy associated with heart disease and bears; not completely unavoidable, but very preventable.

I'll probably be making several posts over the next....well, over the rest of my life, arguing that the United States needs to take the lead in reducing our dependence on motor vehicles, with the intent of eliminating them altogether.

I'm not going to go into the whole discussion right now, but I do want to handle one point right off the bat. I've talked to several people about this viewpoint of mine, and often one of the first arguments against it that comes up is, "People won't want to get rid of their cars." In the past, I've accepted this as a likely hurdle, and one that would be difficult to overcome. Now, however, I'm realizing that it's perhaps the most foolish hurdle of any. People will initially want to keep their cars, yes, that's true. But I think that most people are smart enough that when they think about it, they'd rather be alive and ride a fancy metro system than be dead and own a Mazda Miata. It's a tough sell, but I think I can pull it off.

1996 Royal Rumble Match

The 1996 Royal Rumble was right before the Monday Night Wars truly began, and featured many of the big time stars who would make WCW a factor for the next 5 years. Diesel (Kevin Nash), Razor Ramon (Scott Hall), and the 1-2-3 Kid (Syxx, X-Pac) all make an appearance during the Rumble match (though only two of them are actual participants...you'll have to watch to see what I'm talking about).

Below is the link for the 1996 Royal Rumble match. The star power overall is very good, but towards the end, it becomes pretty clear who's going to win the match (at least, if you're a wrestling historian like myself, it does). It's also fun to see some of the stars of the future in their formative years in the WWF (Stone Cold Steve Austin as "Ringmaster," Triple H as "Hunter Hearst Helmsley: the American Blue Blood").

It'll seem like you've only got part 1 of the match, but when part 1 finishes, the page will automatically refresh itself and load part 2. Enjoy.

Royal Rumble Match: 1996

Old Wrestling PPVs

Listen, if you're anything like me (and if you're happy with your life, chances are you're nothing like me), you've got a soft spot in your heart for old wrestling pay-per-views. I'm talking about the classic Royal Rumbles, Summerslams, Survivor Series, and of course, the grand-daddy of them all, Wrestlemania. But you're also interested in some of the classic WCW pay-per-views, like Starrcade, The Great American Bash, and Fall Brawl.

Sometimes I go scouring the Internet for clips of these old wrestling PPVs, and sometimes, I come across the whole entire event, or at the very least, an entire Royal Rumble match. (Those are very good days.) So, I'm going to start posting links to the full wrestling pay-per-views that I find, but only when I can find those full events (or full Royal Rumble matches). If it's just one clip, I'll leave that for another time; maybe I'll put together a "greatest matches" post for a certain wrestler, and include clips of each of those matches.

A heads up, though: These full pay-per-views tend to be split up into multiple clips, so when I post an "event," it'll probably actually be several separate clips. I'll post them in order for you, though, so you can click them one-by-one to go through the event, or open them all at once in new tabs, and then just progress through the tabs with the clips completely buffered. That decision I leave up to you.

I'll have the first event posted later today or tomorrow.

So I've Been Playing....Smackdown vs. Raw 2007

As you've probably gathered from my post about my Rock Band 2 band, I've got a soft spot for wrestling. Mostly, that gets manifested in watching old pay-per-views and relating stories to other old school wrestling fans. But, from time to time, it also manifests itself in other media. I saw that awful movie Ready 2 Rumble. I've looked around for MIDI files of old wrestling entrance themes. And I like a lot of wrestling video games.

Recently, I realized that it's been a long time since I played one that I really liked. I believe the last one was Wrestlemania 2000 for the Nintendo 64, which, interestingly enough, came out around the year 2000. It was just the right balance of complex and simple. You could create your own wrestlers, and many moves and outfits of former and other-brand (WCW) wrestlers. The gameplay was fun, and this'll sound foolish, but they had the Royal Rumble, and that's more fun than any other match in any wrestling game. Hell, with the old Super Nintendo games (WWF Royal Rumble and WWF Raw), it was the only match we ever played.

Fast forward to 2008, and it's been a while since I got around to playing any wrestling games. So I went into a local Gamestop and said, "I've got an Xbox 360. What wrestling games are out there?" They directed me to the Smackdown vs. Raw franchise, tossing in their compulsory recommendation to pre-order the upcoming game new. But they definitely recommended the older ones as well (I think Gamestop actually make a much greater profit on used games anyways), and I elected to get the 2007 iteration.

The game is solid. The controls are not intuitive, but the game offers a quick rundown of the buttons during the load screen before regular matches. Additionally, when you're in some kind of specialty match (steel cage, ladder, etc), the loading screen tells you what special buttons are used in that match (how to climb the cage, how to move the ladder, etc). With the relative complexity of the controls, I was surprised at how quickly I was able to get comfortable playing.

The season mode is alright, though it's got its share of weaknesses. You tend to feel a little detached from the action, because commentators and other wrestlers only refer to you as "the superstar" or "the champ" or "the contender." I understand that it's part of the limitations that come along with allowing you to select any superstar (including created superstars); I just think it'd be better served by having a more immersive experience, even if it means you can only select a few superstars. (By the way, the upcoming Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 release is following that exact format. It limits you to a few wrestlers, but has a much more personal season experience).

There's another unique feature called GM Mode which I really enjoy, but I'm going to get into that in a future post. It's got enough to it that I don't want to shrink it down to a paragraph.

The create-a-wrestler feature was initially daunting, but after putting some time in to learn the in's and out's, I'm much happier with it than I originally thought. The ways you can adjust the shape of your created wrestler are a little over the top, but when you're trying to get a guy to look exactly like the Honky Tonk Man, it comes in handy.

Overall, I'm not disappointed with the game. It's got enough features and game modes to keep it pretty fresh. And for a guy like me who has an unhealthy interest in unlocking achievements in Xbox 360 games, there are plenty of challenges to take on. It's a fun game, although I don't expect that it'll be as big a part of my social life as WWF Raw was.

By the way, if anyone wants to get together for another Raw party, all I need is a couple more Super Nintendo controllers.

That Dr. Pepper Song

Some of you know that I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to find the name and artist of a song I heard in a recent Dr. Pepper commercial. It is also often used at sporting events to get the crowd going, and I believe was first used in that manner for the Chicago Bulls teams of the mid-1990s.

Anyways, the song is called Sirius, and it's by Alan Parsons Project. In its original context, it's also used as an introduction to a popular song by the band called Eye In The Sky. Not surprisingly, they're the two highest rated tracks by Alan Parsons Project on Rhapsody. Also, is anyone talking about this site? It's awesome. You can listen to anything they've got on a whim. It's the site I linked to when I wanted you to listen to a song off of a 5-song special release CD from the Dave Matthews Band. I'm gonna do some more research, but best I can tell, this site is just sweet.

Socialism rules!

Yeah, that's gonna bring traffic to this blog, but maybe not the kind of traffic I want...oh, who am I kidding, any traffic is good.