Author: Nick Radford
Nick Radford
Nick is a noted poet, thespian and wrestler hailing from the Pacific North West. He is the author of Notorious Notes and can be read here every other Friday or Saturday.
Notorious Notes – Chapter 23: Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie 2020 Quarantine-y Here we are, blog number two of quarantine. I legit have not left my home for anything besides groceries in three weeks. I have not seen another human, aside from those in the immediate vicinity of my home or at the store, in three weeks. During this time, I have continued my workout routine of playing “Ring Fit Adventure” for 45-60 minutes per day. This continued with consuming the meals from my meal plan. I spend a lot of time playing the freshly released “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” and…
Notorious Notes – Chapter 22: Canceled Dearest readers, friends, colleagues, and everybody else – things are absolutely crazy right now. Wrestling shows as far out as two months (as of this writing) are being canceled. WrestleMania will be held with no audience and inside (essentially) a warehouse, and don’t even get me started on the real-world implications of businesses shutting down and people losing their jobs. It’s all a very bleak picture to be painting. So what can we be doing during this downtime? How can we be utilizing our time while we quarantine and wait for this to “all…
Wrestling is more than what we see on the surface. It, like those involved with it, contains multitudes. It has layers, like an onion. As an art form, wrestling seeks to explore the differences in good and evil, and the struggle contained within. But in exploring the black and white dichotomy, wrestling also becomes a mirror for the society we all live in. Superhero movies explore themes like equity and social justice, which has started bleeding into the wrestling world. This is one’s body of work. Notorious Notes – Chapter 21: Body of Work For allowing for more respect and…
Chapter 20: The Conga Line Streak is Broken This has been a test of the Notorious Notes emergency response system. Had there been an actual emergency, you probably never would have heard from me again. We now return to your regularly scheduled Notorious Notes. The Conga Line Streak is Broken. As some (probably actually none) of you may have noticed, my bi-weekly blog was due to come out last week but I unfortunately missed my deadline. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, so I decided to take an extra week off between chapters of this here blog in…
Chapter 19: A Fresh of Breathe Air As the frosty leftovers of the Snowpocalypse-That-Never-Was give way to the as-per-usual rainfall of the PNW. The driver continues to panic and al is right with the world. Meanwhile, January is nearing its end and we all know what that means. The Royal Rumble and all the indie knockoffs that come with it! As of this writing, WWE’s annual Rumble event has passed and the fallout is starting to lead us on the road to WrestleMania (or Indie Wrestler “Hire Me” Con). Our lovable and unreliable narrator is hot off the heels of…
Chapter 18: Spoilers (Nothing Bad Happens) The dead speak! And by that, I obviously mean that from the dead of winter comes the voice of the angels in the form of white, flaky frozen water falling from the sky. As of this Notorious Notes, the Seattle Metro Area is seeing its first signs of snow for the 2019-2020 winter season. Panic has already begun to strike deep into the hearts of the locals. Nothing Bad Happens. Discussions of disaster preparedness take prominence in water-cooler talk across the metropolis. Local grocery stores are running out of bottled water and canned goods…
Chapter 17: Holiday Break It is now a New Year. I can confirm this one simple truth because as I write this, I am cuddled up with blankets and coffee on New Year’s Day and nursing my yearly cold that tends to appear around the holidays on a holiday break. Due to the holiday season and the aforementioned illness, the first edition of Notorious Notes of 2020 is set to ring the New Year in with a whimper rather than a roar. It can’t be helped, so join me on this first bumpy ride into the whining twenties. The holidays…
Chapter 16: Course Assessment Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of Notorious Notes, I’m your host – Nick Radford. I’m here to guide you through the inner workings of my mind and how it relates back to professional wrestling as an art form. Seeing as this will be the final Notorious Notes for the year of 2019, I thought I’d do a little recap/reflection of how my 2019 has gone. Don’t worry, I won’t be keeping that game show-esque intro. I just couldn’t think of any other way to start my written version of a clip show. It was a…
Chapter 15: Love Is Real This past weekend was a pretty big one for the Pacific Northwest wrestling scene. After the big meal happened on Thursday, wrestling fans could continue gorging themselves on numerous wrestling shows. Friday featured 321 Battle in Seattle, WA. While Saturday had Without A Cause in Everett, WA. And Defy presenting night one of WrestleSummit back in Seattle. Finally, on Sunday, they capped things off with night two of WrestleSummit in Seattle. And DOA in Portland, OR. My social media was jam-packed full of people gushing about how great the pacific northwest scene has become. People…
Alright, I’m coming in hot on this edition of Notorious Notes. I’ve got Pokemon Sword in one hypothetical hand, a caffeinated beverage in the other, and my real hands are eager to talk about a matter that has been near and dear to my heart/the bane of my Reddit-surfing, twitter-lurking, Instagram-liking existence for that past few weeks: TOXIC FANDOMS. That’s right, since Pokemon: Sword and Shield came out this last week, and the fact that this blog is loosely tied to professional wrestling, toxic fandoms might be the most appropriate topic yet. What was it about Pokemon & That “System…