Is there anything you really loved as a kid or as a teenager, that you look back on now and feel embarrased that you ever liked it to begin with?

...and if so, what the hell was it?

Not really. I'm afraid I am at the age now where things I loved as a kid I am allowed to love again how under the banner of nostalgia.

However, I shall ponder further!

I'm probably the same. There were probably years when I was but now I don't care. Like DS said you can get away with a lot but I've always loved slightly strange things anyway. I've never been afraid to admit that I never really grew out of my love of toys...

That Ant and Dec album... Yeah, I owned it and yeah, it's embarrassing now.

Not PJ and Duncan?

I spent a number of years being embarrassed to tell people I was a wrestling fan. Once it faded from the screens here in the UK, and before the WWE became "cool" again in the late 90s. I went through a period where I wouldn't talk about being a wrestling fan, and on the occasions people did dig it out of me, I'd always start the conversation with "I know what you are going to say, I know its a bit nerdy and naff, but yes, I do like wrestling" or something similar.

Then maybe a dozen years ago I thought "Why am I doing that? I like it because I like it. I don't like it for them, and I don't actually give a toss what they think". I suddenly had an epiphany that watching two blokes jump around and pretend to be hurt was no more nerdish or geekish than being into watching 22 of them run around a field kicking a bag of air and pretending to be hurt when they got tackled, and I should actually care even if it was.

I embraced my inner geek, basically.

And I have pretty much continued from there and taken that attitude with a much wider range of stuff now. I don't care what people think in my taste in music, books, movies, clothes, or anything much else. If I like it, that is all that matters. And I think its great when other people have the same attitude.

As much as it pains me to give Myron credit for anything one of the things I really like about him is that he's a perfect example of that attitude. It takes a lot of bottle and a great sense of humour - not to mention a thick skin - go walk about in Sheffield the way he has done in the past, and to embrace alternativeism (if that is even a word!) the way he does, especially in a conservative place like the British Civil Service. At the risk of inflating his ego too much, I admire him for it, and knowing him for as long as I have has made me realise that it would be a bloody boring world if we all liked the same thing!

I'd reply but I'm struggling to get my head through the door...;)

Cheers, DS. I agree exactly on what you say about who you enjoy it for. I think we must have all had something we started with the words you use above. It's self defence technique.

And I couldn't agree more on the football stuff. I always thought the same - how weird it is that certain sports get more respect. Football is, and will always be, a inflated Sunday morning game gone mad!

Well I figure I can be nice to you once a year. Don't get used it - you have a long wait now until the next time.

when I was young I was a huge Road Dogg fan.

Of course now i'm really embarrassed by that.

Steve, I'm the same, but not embarrassed by it.

So either I'm a dick for still having a good memory of him. OR, you shouldnt beat yourself up about it so much. I believe in the latter!

Excuse me, but you think YOU ought to be embarrassed about the guys YOU marked out for....

*Holds back from making a Chris Benoit steroid joke*

When Benoit was alive, I thought he was a great wrestler.

Holding back from making a steroid joke isn't the hard part.

Holding back from putting this picture up, is the hard part:







.....I am going to catch so much hell for this.

Anyway, I'm sorry. The point i'm trying to make is that it is horrible and it is offensive. And it's the feeling that anything with his likeness on it, from video games to DVD's taints my feelings of it, instantly.

Benoit: THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO TAP OUT!!

Hey, to play devil's advocate, maybe it wasn't Benoit's fault at all.

Maybe the ref just missed his cue. I think Chris was expecting he'd break the door down and award him the submission.

Personally I blame the wrestling industry for creating a false sense of fake-ness in real life conflict. It's not poor Chris' fault if he can't distinguish between the two and throttles his family to a violent blood-soaked end

When I read the title of this topic I was going to post something like "child porn" and think of a joke using Colin Blanchard or Vanessa George as the punchline.

But that would be in bad taste.

Oh by the way....



To answer my own question about things that i'm embarrassed that I ever liked...

Captain N, The Game Master.

The novelty of seeing something Nintendo related on television pretty much blinded everyone back then to the fact that the show was a hideous, badly animated, even worse written, and aggravatingly insulting piece of shit.

I look at how this show depicted Pit, Simon Belmont, and Mega Man, as well as nearly every video game it features, and I just want to kill it with fire and slap myself in the face for being so much of a dumbass kid that I sat and watched that garbage.


And speaking of Garbage...

Garbage Pail Kids stickers.

(Note: I believe in the UK, you guys called them "The Garbage Gang"?)

When I was younger, I thought they were funny, clever, hilarious, and I bought tons of them. I even had sticker books FILLED with them

....now I look back on them, and I can't even begin to imagine what the fuck was wrong with me and what I ever saw in those stupid fucking things.

And the movie that was made based on them... The less said about that, the better.

The Benoit thing was tragic and awful, but TBH if you piled up all the nasty, dubious, and awful things that individual wrestlers have done and allowed them to colour your opinion of the industry as a whole, you would never watch wrestling.

Same goes for football, music, movies, and just about everything else.

I guess some people just hold the decision to murder two people, one being their own defenseless child, and the other being a woman they've known for years to a different standard than that of 2000 acts of not signing an autograph, smacking a fan, abusing a drug or even fighting pitbulls. (even though that one might seem to be close, it still isn't)

I know I can't think of a lot of times in anything involving a particular sports star of any kind where a small child had the life choked out of him until he was dead.

But eh. Maybe that's just me. Personally, I don't care how good his career was or how many years he gave. Something like that, to me, throws it all away at once. I just don't think that all of the titles, home runs, or consecutive super bowl winning field goals in history could ever equal two innocent human lives.

No respect for Benoit from me. Not a shred. Not after anything resembling this, no matter what profession he had held. Even if his brain had been a milkshake at the time, a clear choice was still made. Even a drunken or drugged offense is still considered an offense. I feel the same here.

And personally I sincerely hope that he, way more than anyone else that ever committed anything less than flat out murder of the two most defenseless people than that of his own wife and tiny child, no matter what the attempted excuse may or may not be, burns in hell for eternity.

It's just me speaking for myself, here, perhaps. But to me it doesn't matter if he was a high school janitor or the greatest sports star of his generation, him and his career can go fuck itself. The murder of a defenseless woman and child overshadows any athletic accolade I could imagine.

Not to make anyone angry, or be argumentative on an old, old issue or anything, but over the years, my disgust over the matter had grown to the point where I personally just want to scribble a big X over his memory and move on, because the action calls for no less. I hold murder way, way over mere bad behavior. And I can't think of a lot of cases where it'd come to that more than the very very minority of a few true scumbags out there. I count him as one.

And in any of those cases, I'd feel the same about that person or persons as well, when the same single charge is applied. It's too difficult to try and hold his job and the murder of human beings seperate without feeling it's somewhat of an excuse or a way to deny it happened in someway with one clearly overshadowing the other, and for me to see his likeness in old video games or DVD's without me wanting to just spit on him AND his likeness.

Benoit didn't strangle me, so I don't really care either way. His memory or legacy doesn't really suffer much in my eyes. Yes it's tragic but at it wasn't me or doesn't affect me so tbh I don't care. I liked Benoit then, still a fan of his matches now.

Well, other people can feel how they want. I can't stop them. I wouldn't want to.

I'm just saying (and makin' it clear) the way I see it though, sure... I didn't know Nancy or his son personally either. But they were living people. And now they aren't. That's still not any less terrible to me, just because they weren't on my Christmas list or anything. And the guy that I know killed them...

Well, I can definitely say the first Smackdown vs Raw game to include him as a legend is the first game I won't buy. It's already difficult enough seeing him in the old ones.

At least in No Mercy I can completely clone someone else over him. And I in fact, already have. I also jump over old matches on DVD's. I feel no shame in instantly wanting his memory to be washed over as best I can.

Well,There won't be a SvR game featuring Benoit as a legend, don't worry about that.

Speaking of SvR I bought it for £23 last week. When I finish AC2 in a few days Imma get straight on it.

Awesome.

Although be prepared to get used to pinning. (Getting accustomed to it comes with time). And a fair amount of assorted glitches and wonky AI still. Replay is through the roof.

Wow. That is, like, the shortest boiled down version of a review ever.

I'm not defending Benoit's actions in any way, and I hold them in just as much contempt as you do.

However, I do think that in his case there were some mitigating circumstances which need to be taken into consideration. Not that they in any way excuse the actions, but the fact is that Benoit was not in sufficient control of his mental faculties to be able to make fully rational decisions or control his actions. That was through a combination of damage to the brain through physical trauma, and through the chemical damage dealt by the various drugs he had consumed during his life. He was a very messed up individual.

Now, there are a lot of messed up individuals around, and they don't go murdering children. Nothing can ever excuse that, and yes it does overshadow his wrestling career. But I can't be so cold to the facts of his illness that I can't also feel a shred a sympathy for him in that situation. Whatever drove him to that point, Chris was in a bad bad place that weekend, and its incredibly sad that the results were so tragic for him and his family.

I also can't allow myself to erase Benoit the wrestler from my memory. I'm afraid there are very personal reasons for that. Remember, I was at Wrestlemania 20 on the night he won the title. I popped so hard for the end of that match that it literally started to black out. It was an incredibly euphoric moment in my life which I shall never forget.

I think the reason for that was that just a few weeks before, my Grandmother had died. She was a huge wrestling fan for decades, and she was incredibly excited for me when i told her I was going to New York for Wrestlemania. As I walked in MSG that night, I looked up to the roof and whispered "this is for you Gran". And at the moment Benoit won the match, I think my yell was a release of all the tension and grief I'd been feeling.

I won't allow Benoit to spoil the memory of that night for me.

I'd still watch a Benoit match.

What he did on one night in his personal life when he wasn't in his right mind doesn't change years of dedication he had for the ring. Sure it's horrible but Benoit was still Chris Benoit his whole life, and a homicidal maniac for one night.

Honestly, I've been kicking around an e-fed character with Benoit as a pic base. Bearded and an Australian accent using a very extreme version of his rabid wolverine/canadian crippler gimmicks.

lol....

But I'm horrible myself.

Right, enough about him. Another thing I'm ashamed to have liked when I was a child... Hmm, can't think of anything right now.

There are some TV shows which, although I am not embarassed to say I liked, do sound really weird and hard to justify when you try to explain them to people.

Take Chorlton and the Wheelies, a series which ran in the 1970s here in the UK.

The series takes place in "Wheelie World", which is inhabited principally by the "wheelies", a race of creatures who locomote by means of wheels. They have three wheels each: two large ones at the front, and a smaller centred one at the back. The wheels are replaceable, and suitable wheels grow on vegetation found in Wheelie World.

The wheelie society is in conflict with Fenella the Kettle witch who lives in Wheelie World but separately from the wheelies, in Spout Hall, an oversized kettle. She has magical capabilities, including a form of teleportation which is her main mode of transport, and enchanted assistants including a talking book (called 'Claptrap Von Spilldebeans') and Reilly the Telescope, which advise her on magic spells. Minions include spikers (sinister looking objects like conker shells with baleful eyes, which roll everywhere) and toadies (pointed toadstools with similar eyes, which travel by bobbing through the ground as though it were water and who speak with a comedy Chinese accent). Fenella hates happiness, and uses her powers primarily to make the wheelies unhappy. She also has a very strong stereotypical Welsh accent.

The wheelies have adopted into their society a dragon, Chorlton, who appears in Wheelie World at the very beginning of the series, hatching out of an egg. Chorlton is perpetually good-natured and perpetually clueless. For example, he fails to perceive Fenella as a villain, and affectionately refers to her as a "little old lady".

Nevertheless, his presence negates the unhappiness magic she throws out, so the wheelies treat him as a hero. For some reason, Chorlton speaks in a strong Yorkshire accent.

God that sounds shite. I'll stick with the Chuckle Brothers for kids TV hahahahaha

I know of Chorlton. Riley has an episode of that on one of his DVDs.

Thing is, it was brilliant!

Its just the most bizzarre thing though, and even better if you watch it drunk - even if it perhaps wasn't the intended audience. Chorlton's accent alone, and the way he increasingly pisses off the witch to the point where she'd clearly love to rip his head off and piss down his neck, are fantastic.

I think the episode he has, someone gets spots on the because they're ill or something, and the witch ends up getting ill and getting the spots... Or something along those lines.

The witch sounds a lot like Norman's mum in Fireman Sam.

I'll have you all know that Chorlton was my favourite TV show as a child. I've seen episodes more recently and still love it today. The thing with it is that if you write it down it, like many things, doesn't sound great. But if you watch the show it's out of this world.

Ties in with the video games thread as Nier has a talking book...que memories of Chorlton!