Archive for March, 2010

It’s been a heck of a week since my actual birthday last week, but the highlight, for sure, was early Saturday afternoon.  I had a great, intimate gathering with Chachi, Missy, my brother, my mother, and Grandpap.   A nice lunch at Cici’s and a Transformers-themed birthday.  Who could ask more?

Missy had a great write up with pics and videos of Chachi and I failing to transform Optimus Prime from my cake.  (ages 4+ my ass…)

Ashley discusses lesbian proms, Travis Barker’s latest drum student, Popeye, Austin Powers, and more!

You can check out the show below, or make sure to subscribe to us out on iTunes(audio. Video coming soon), Blip.tv, Youtube, and on your Roku box!

Be sure to leave a rating on any of those sites if you dig the show, and join up on the Facebook Fan Page and Group and follow us on Twitter!

Any comments or questions for Ask Ashley can be sent to ashley@ashleyafterhours.com!

This week, the Wrestling Mayhem Show welcomes the multi-talented Chris Maverick to Mayhem Studio! We discuss how he got into wrestling with the International Wrestling Cartel, attending a New Jack seminar, his time as a manager and commentator, and what all goes into his latest project, Cosmic Hellcats, and how you can help support it, and sexy women.

Sorg, DJLunchbox, Mad Mike, and wrestlefan move on to talk about Awesome Kong, who is finally released from TNA, Rob Van Dam’s extreme punctuality, Vince McMahon’s boat, Roddy Piper’s upcoming projects, WrestleMania, and much more.

This is Episode 211 for Tuesday, March 23, 2010. You can get the episode here on Talkshoe, Blip.tv subscribe to the audioor videoversions iTunes, look us up on Youtube, Roku, or Boxee, and as always, stay tuned towww.wrestlingmayhemshow.com for the latest! The Wrestling Mayhem Show is recorded live and can be heard/viewed from 8 PM to 10 PM Eastern on Talkshoe.comand Ustream.tv. Let us know what you think of the show, and your thoughts on the wrestling world by emailing us at goodtimes@wrestlingmayhemshow.com! Don’t forget you can find links related to the show’s news stories and more at our Delicious Links Page for Episode 211!

This week’s music is by local Pittsburgh, PA group, Thee Adora…who is now defunct. BUT you can check what they did at Myspace.com/TheeAdora. You can also check out members Ryan Phipps at his site, and Twitter, and Ethan Harrington at his site, and Twitter.

You can also check out our interview with Thee Adora from our old show, the WPAJ Interview.

It’s a week later, and I’ve managed to listen to is 1.5 times, and this was quite a different animal than Crush It. Rework starts by deconstructing business as we all know it, and suggests the way we should really go about things, or at least the ways in which 37Signals did it, and did it well.  We find how the philosophy behind large business practices like meetings and prolonged decision making that fail to actually get things done. We took apart the entrepreneurial misconceptions that I’ve picked up from “Startup” talk around the internet about finding someone to fund your project, and what it costs to be beholden to a process like that.

Rework tends to go for some shock statements.  For instance “Emulate drug dealers” sounds ridiculous for a business book at first, but upon reflection, you find that we’re discussing a shareware or trial model or some variation of either.  The focus is on light products that are easily mobile and have more focus.  Items like “ASAP is Poison” talks about how our communication can be broken at work. 

As someone looking to build something for himself, this book came in handy.  I had been looking at things from the entrepreneurial side, which became intimidating, and maybe it didn’t fit what I really wanted to do.  On a recent net@night interview, the writers mentioned that this was an intentionally short book to be reread easily.  I can certainly see doing that to mull over when I would actually have to consider looking at resumes and if to hire more people.  Like Crush It last week, there is an undercurrent of an idea that you’re doing something important to you, and to step up and just run with your inspiration.  You don’t sit on it. 

For those looking to break out on their own, I have to recommend Rework and Crush It as a sort of one two punch to get yourself motivated.  This as the nuts and bolts of thinking about your venture, and Gary V’s book as a cheerleader to destroy what you need to do.

More fun…

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and the state of Pennsylvania is coming between Ashley and her Guinness!  We also talk about the hottest Irish guys, Betty White, Sandra Bullock, Amy Poehler, Conan O’Brien, and much, much more!

You can check out the show below, or make sure to subscribe to us out on iTunes(audio. Video coming soon), Blip.tv, Youtube, and on your Roku box!

Be sure to leave a rating on any of those sites if you dig the show, and join up on the Facebook Fan Page and Group and follow us on Twitter!

Any comments or questions for Ask Ashley can be sent to ashley@ashleyafterhours.com!

Another week, another episode. This one was a lot of fun…

This week, the Wrestling Mayhem Show welcomes the CZW Tag Team Champions, The Best Around, comprisine of TJ Cannon and Bruce Maxwell.  We have a chance to talk to the duo about their first three years in the business, getting out of a speeding ticket, the Karate Kid movies, Stone Cold impressions, and much more.  We are also joined, for the first time live, by Big Freaky, who has had so much to say about Indy wrestling, he’s on to discuss with Sorg about recent negative experiences with the area shows they’ve attended.

Sorg, DJLunchbox, Mad Mike, and wrestlefan move on to talk about Monday Night War Week 2, WF’s Mom, Kevin Nash on Twitter, Bret Hart, and much more.

This is Episode 210 for Tuesday, March 16, 2010. You can get the episode here on Talkshoe, Blip.tv subscribe to the audioor videoversions  iTunes, look us up on Youtube, Roku, or Boxee, and as always, stay tuned towww.wrestlingmayhemshow.com for the latest! The Wrestling Mayhem Show is recorded live and can be heard/viewed from 8 PM to 10 PM Eastern on Talkshoe.comand Ustream.tv. Let us know what you think of the show, and your thoughts on the wrestling world by emailing us at goodtimes@wrestlingmayhemshow.com! Don’t forget you can find links related to the show’s news stories and more at our Delicious Links Page for Episode 210!

A Sunny Day in Glasgow
“Shy” (mp3)
from “IODA SXSW Opening Day Bash Sampler 2010″
(ioda)

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TOBACCO
“Truck Sweat” (mp3)
from “IODA SXSW Opening Day Bash Sampler 2010″
(ioda)

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Buy at Napster
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

It’s been since about 2001 when I last crowd surfed.  I started to refrain after I’m pretty sure I might have severely ruined someone’s night at a Club Laga show featuring ICP.  So it brought back some great memories, and was really cool to see the likely first live streamed crowd surf featuring Leo Laporte.

A little something I wrote for WrestlingMayhemShow.com…

I’ve been to plenty of independent wrestling shows over just the last four years.  Since discovering IWC with Boiling Point 2, I’ve been in the crowd for some great moments, for sure.  I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of some amazing shows behind the camera as well, but sometimes, just sometimes, you end up at a bad show, giving it a chance because you see some good names on the card.  This past weekend, I attended such a show in the nether regions of South Western Pennsylvania, and it inspired a list of common mistakes this, and other indy shows, consistently get wrong that turn people away, from the view of a long time fan.  A topic our friend Big Freaky is always leaving on the hotline….

• Length:  It’s about the audience.  If you think that a four hour show with 12 matches is tolerable for anyone to sit for, let alone a crowd full of elementary kids, in one case, you’re mistaken.  When half of your crowd leaves before the three good matches, they’re not likely to return the next time you roll through town…
• Build:  When going to a good indy show, you notice the first half builds to intermission.  Usually building to a lower title match, or special attraction match, stirring the crowd up into a frenzy.  In one recent instance, I saw a hardcore match involving five guys, followed by a fairly typical match with two muscle bound guys.   Not a bad match, but a badly placed match.
• Protect your own ass, promoters: See, my wife works in law.  She’s fairly adept at personal injury and liability cases, and finds some wrestling shows to be a minefield for these sorts of situations.  At one show, she had to find the promotor to point out that kids were jumping the guardrail to bounce around the ring during intermission while their parents took pictures.  That’d be fine until one of them, say, falls off the aprons, or tries to climb the tricky ropes.  This past weekend, after this hardcore match, mentioned above, there were NO guardrails, and no one reminding the children…yes…children…to not stand so close to the ring.  I had to shoo several of them away from the action during the course of the night.  The broken table, steel chairs, and tins were left littered around for several minutes before the next match.  I attempted to kick some of it under the ring, and keep two kids from taking off with steel chairs and splintered table shards, and had to tell a ref he may want to address the crowd of children with a chair and hitting each other in the heads with the tins.
• Promos:  Way too many.  Man.  This isn’t Monday RAW.  And no one on your roster is probably Triple H, no matter how big their nose is.  Aside from a good farewell speech, these always seem to drag on.

This isn’t about workrate.  This isn’t about guys being trained properly, or not.  It’s about retaining the audience.  And there were a few good matches buried in this week’s past show.

While, I’m not particularly a wine connoisseur, I’ve loved everything else that I’ve heard from Gary Vaynerchuk .  I’ve loved every appearance by him, whether it be on This Week in Startups, or his random videos on his own website.  So when I heard he was putting out a book on the things he’s learned, I know one thing…there better be an audiobook.

And there wise, finally after a while.  I had a chance to listen through the book over the last few days, and first of all, that’s a record for me.  For the first time, I’ve wanted to put aside all of my regular podcasts to listen to this one, instead.  I’ve read some dryly read, yet informative audiobooks since I’ve been introduced months ago, but like Total Money Makeover, this one is read by a passionate author, who, thankfully, has some on microphone experience.  This one was a bit like the “DVD Extra” of audiobooks.  Periodically, Gary would stop his reading to add a little something to clarify what he wrote, or how things have already changed in the past months since he turned this one in.

In this book, Gary goes over how you find something important to you that you can let everyone know about.  Building yourself as a brand, and using the social media tools out there.  More than a methodology and technique this book was more of a pep talk to get the hell out of your job you’re not happy with, and give a go at what you love to do.  His philosophy seems to sum up as, if you love doing it, you’ll put the ridiculous effort into building your brand and community to be as successful as it can be.  We’re taken down the paths of how to use the typical Twitter, WordPress, or Facebook, which many may already be familiar with, but it’s always interesting to see someone else’s take on these technologies and how you can build in a way you didn’t originally think of.  Gary splashes the book with examples of people having the potential to talk about the most mundane of interests and illustrating how there’s an audience for it that can be tapped.

Now, next on my read list happens to be Rework by the folks at 37Signals on their take of business building and thinking.  Some of the striking statements in just the ads and interviews include “fire the workaholics” and “Don’t not get sleep”.  This feels, at first, to fly in the face of Gary’s take on this.  So it will be interesting to see where the two may cross paths.  At this point, both seem like good candidates for relistening to from time to time just to simply motivate myself in my personal development.  I’ve been listening about the same time a a coworker, and turned to say “I want to go crush something right now”.  Say hello to Gary Vaynerchuk.  Your social media cheerleader.

For a while, I’ve heard great things about the TNA Live shows, and finally, we were graced with a tour date here in the Pittsburgh area.  As we’ve discussed on the show, the original venue of Rostraver Ice Gardens collapsed after the major snow storms, and we were redirected to the growing Ches-Arena.  The show was great, had a great mix of guys from TNA, and had me screaming with Paul (of What Music) and his crew for AJ Styles in the pro-Kurt Angle hometown crowd just for fun.  Wrestlers were all around signing autographs, and it was a great vibe all night.