Monday Morning Backlash: Penny Candy – Reflecting on Edge and Personal Babbling

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Penny Candy; Reflecting on Edge and Random Personal Babbling.

I was going to write a bit with Edge’s top 5 funniest moments. Something lighthearted to remember a sadlt departing performer. After the pointless drama trolls caused by my last two columns, I just wanted to get back to the funny lists or witty random thoughts I generally get the best reactions from. But after watching probably a good 40 hours of Edge videos on YouTube trying to narrow things down to my favorite five, I just couldn’t do it.

For one thing, any such list would just be subjective. My fave five won’t be the same as anyone else’s fave five. The last thing I want right now is to start more silly pointless debating. Another problem is that, to be honest, I just couldn’t pick only five. I considered expanding it to a top ten but I still couldn’t narrow my favorite Edge moments down to even just ten. And the more footage I watched, the more I realized it was just making me depressed over how much I’m going to really miss seeing him on my TV.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still happy he had the strength to walk away before something really ugly happened to him. And I don’t want him to keep wrestling if it means risking his quality of life with crippling injury. But right now it’s just gotten too hard to watch him, because it still feels kind of surreal that he’s really leaving. It’s rare one sees a retirement, a real retirement, publicly done on Raw. We had Flair’s big goodbye, which he ruined by joining TNA and provng what a joke he’s become. We had Shawn’s understated but stil heartfelt goodbye last year, but Shawn retired because he didn’t want to stay past his expiration date, not out of an immediate health need. And no one really forced either of them to retire.

Edge really didn’t have a choice. He could walk away and retain the ability TO walk, or he could risk being Darren’s fishing buddy.

(500 points if you get that reference.)

So next week I’ll skip to the wrestler theme songs list as promised, but I just can’t bring myself to do the Edge list. It’s too depressing. So I’m just going to ramble for a bit to fill space.

For anyone wondering why this column is so late, (sorry to those hoping I was cancelled), it’s been…. a ridiculously stressful week.

Someone made a noise complaint to the city about the upstairs neighbor’s dogs, (entirely unfounded just to cause grief), but in calling the city to defend herself, she accidentally ratted out our landlord for having illegally converted basement suites. A building inspector was to be sent to check if the suites were up to code, so Fran and I all but crippled ourselves doing an emergency spring cleaning. It was a wasted effort, as the inspector declared the suites still illegal and ordered the landlord to dismantle them. We have til July 1st to find a new place to live on a disability income.

On the bright side I syppose, the inspector felt bad about basivally ordering a wheelchair bound dying woman be kicked out onto the street, so he’s bringng an outreach worker here next week to try and help us find a good place. Still, it was a lot of work and stress and I really didn’t have time to get to writing this.

Also this past week was some extremely unpleasant business with one of our pets. Three weeks ago we discovered a grape-sized tumour on our youngest rat, an albino named Shiny. We called around to 14 different local vets. Estimates for removing the tumour ranged from $250 to $500, and NONE of them would take her without cash up front.

If you don’t have a strong stomach, please stop reading RIGHT NOW.

We had no other options, so, Fran having taken pre-med back in Georgia and having that medical knowledge even if limited, we spent 5 days exhaistively researching what needed to be done. When my disability cheque came we cut into our grocery money to buy some medical supplies and a small dose of tranq from the nearest vet and performed gome surgery on Shint after putting her under.

This is what we cut out of her.

She survived the home surgery very well, and was eating and drinking when she woke up. We closed and bandaged her wound and 8 days later as of my writing this she continues to be healing up nicely. It was a terrifying experience though that I hope to all f**k (you’re welcome bob) I NEVER have to go through that again. Thankfully we got the entire tumour so there’s little likelihood of it growing back.

Alright, enough bitching about my hectic life, I’ll close with a few random thoughts about current wrestling goings-on.

– Sin Cara clearly feels more at ease on Smackdown. As Mistico he was THE highest grossing wrestler in the entire world and there was obviously a great deal of pressure on him to pay off big for the investment made in him. Honestly he ought have gone straight to Smackdown to begin with. The taped Raw from London notwithstanding, there’s a lot more pressure to perform on a live show. Tonight on Smackdown he was clearly much more at ease with no botches and a lot more fluidity. As he was thankfully brand-switched early in his WWE tenure, there’s still plenty of time to make the audience forget his first two matches and the botches therein.

– Orton’s promo opening Smackdown…. something about it didn’t sit right with me. I can’t quite put it into words but it had a lot to do with his demeanor. The smiling, the cracking a joke. It just didn’t feel like Orton as we’ve come to know him, and it was frankly a bit jarring.

– On the other hand Christian’s backstage promo about never having touched the world title until now and now feeling like he deserved to until now was effective and powerful. With Del Rio moved to Raw it’s pretty likely Christian finally gets a title ru, if for nothing more than a “Thanks for all your hard work over the last 15 years” reward. Then again, wth both secondary titles now on Smackdown, the possibility of both world titles on Raw may not be quite the non-issue one might assume.

– Mark Henry’s heel turn seemed abrupt, pointless and without any justification. Truth’s turn made sense and his follow-up promo cemented it as having a valid basis. Fat Dilbert’s turn just…. happened. There was no rhyme or reason to it. But sadly that’s hardly surprising.

– Not thrilled seeing Drew get buried by Orton on his way to Raw when he’s finally finding his stride. Seeing it immediately happen again to Colonel Miz-Tard only shows without Miz to hang onto he’s going to be lost in the shuffle on Smackdown and future-endeavoured by August. Hopefully on Raw Drew can shake off the mini-burial.

– I could not possibly conceivably care any less about the Rock’s birthday.

Alright folks, next week’ll be the theme song top 5. Any suggestions for after that?

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.