It's Memorial Day here in the US, which many like to call the unofficial start of the Summer. And this Summer, everyone's 3rd, maybe 4th, favorite 4-year sports-related background noise, The Summer Olympics, will be gracing our television screens once again. And as we wait for the torch to light up in Paris in late July, I thought to look back at a piece of media once considered lost: A cartoon created to promote the mascot of the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, a blue alien-looking thing named Izzy.
This was originally posted on ResetEra in December 2023 and has been edited/updated in some areas
Hosted by David Spade and DJ Funkmaster Flex, the show was marketed as a non-traditional award show, with some commercials touting "No podium, no speeches, only winners." The 2003 VGAs were held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 2nd, and would first air 2 nights later on the 4th. For this recap, there were 2 videos I found of the show. First was a Youtube video uploaded by PAPAGEORGIO84 that was incomplete and had no additional parts, though it did have a chunk of the preshow on it. The second was a video uploaded to Internet Archive by James E. Woods, with the entire award show in tact, but with the audio only coming from the left speaker. The Youtube video is of the original airing while the Archive video looks to be a later airing. Some commercials are NSFW given the content they contain, so I won't provide a link for them here, however they can be easily found by searching for said award show.
1994. It was the year the Major League Baseball Player's Association went on strike. It was the year USA held the FIFA Men's World Cup. It was the year that the creator of Eves, an Eevee doll that sits on my desk and serves as my avatar in several places, was born. And that Spring, it was the year that two NY teams, the Rangers of the NHL and the Knicks of the NBA made runs for their respective championships, both eventually reaching the Finals. Something that can realistically happen again 30 years later. As I'm typing this, both teams are in the 2nd round of their respective playoffs, both leading their series. Could it be possible that after 30 years we may see Madison Square Garden hosting both the Stanley Cup Finals and the NBA Finals? If you believe in odd coincidences, then the answer is yes. In 1994 and 2024, OJ Simpson was in the news, there was an earthquake in the area, there was a solar eclipse happening in the US, and the Rangers finished 1st in the NHL and the Knicks finished 2nd in the East. But what were the teams like back then, and how do they compare to today? Lemme break it down for y'all, starting with the Rangers.
Lemme tell you a little something about myself: My handwriting sucks. It was absolute garbage when I was younger and looks barely legible even today. Why am I telling you this? Because my awful handwriting made me hate writing stuff in general, whether it's writing some small notes at work or when I had to write essays for school. For a few years now, I've been trying to get into the habit of writing more via board game reviews on Board Game Geek. For the most part, its gone pretty well. As of this writing I've done 19 game reviews (including writing about 2 different versions of a game), 2 geeklists, and even a video game review on Video Game Geek. The thing is, I've currently suffering a burnout from playing board games, so I don't even know when I'll do another review or make another list. Plus there's a whole bunch of other things I want to talk about aside from board games. Last December, I decided to write about the 2003 Spike Video Game Awards on the video game forum ResetEra, and lemme tell you, it wasn't a walk in the park. Not only did I write a massive wall of text about the show complete with some pictures, I had to watch the event which, ugh, never again. Feeling satisfied with what I accomplished, I decided that while taking a break from writing board game reviews, I should do more retrospectives. In March, I wrote a 2nd retrospective. One that covered the time Pepsi tried giving away a billion dollars. It was a less painful task, but it was still a lot of work to watch and write while being informative and entertaining. Still, I completed it, and while it got less reactions, they were still positive so that was a plus for me. So why am I doing this if I've got ResetEra to post on? Well, there's a few other things I want to write about that I'd rather post on here instead of there. Personal stuff. Dumb stuff. Stuff that might not be allowed on the forums. I'll still be posting retrospects there, but I'll also be posting them here as well. In fact, I'll be giving the previously posted ones another lookthrough and post them here in the not too distant future.
This thing has honestly been a long time coming. I've waffled for years on whether I should get a blog to post some stuff on or not. Twitter then and Bluesky now still work, but now there's stuff I wanna post in length and the character limit just isn't gonna cut it (and I ain't giving Musk a dime so don't bother bringing up Blue.) There were a few names I considered for this place, including but not limited to "From the mind of PC", "PC's blog of randomness and cookie recipes", and "Always a Work in Progress". I thought that last one was pretty original, but the url checker proved otherwise. The name I settled on is based on how I always presented my works. Whether it was talking about a board game few only know of, an award show I wish I didn't knew existed, or anything in between, I would always present it to the public by saying "I wrote/made/did a thing." and it was the perfect thing to go on.
So welcome dear reader to "PC Wrote a Thing", a place where I hope to write about many, many different things. And believe me, I have ideas on what things I wanna write about. I just have to focus enough to write about them first.
That cookie recipe thing might still happen though. Maybe.
