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January 2011 Archives

Ok, ready for a break from talk about photography and near death experiences? How about some scholarly work?

I've been selected to speak at the Comparative Drama Conference in Los Angeles in March on a panel about Professional Wrestling and Drama/Theatre. I'm currently writing the paper I intend to present.

So here's where I need your help.

This is a survey to find out what a viewer's response is to certain wrestling moves. You don't have to be a wrestling fan. In fact, hopefully, I'll have as many people who hate wrestling as who love it, thus making the data more diverse. The video to the right is just over five minutes long and the survey shouldn't take more than ten minutes to complete tops. Please watch it and answer the survey below. Fair warning, there is some blood in it, so it might not be completely worksafe depending on where you are. I need a wide variety of responses here to get accurate data, so I'd love it if you'd help me out whether you're a wrestling fan or even if you hate it. Just copy the survey below and post your answers as a comment on this blog (you can log in with a Facebook account, or create an account on this website by clicking the sign-in link, or comment anonymously. Anonymous comments won't show up until I approve them later) or email them to me at mav+cdcpaper@elseworld.com, whichever is easier, or depending on whether you want your answers published here or not.

If you wouldn't mind, please repost and get your friends to fill out the survey as well. Thank you very much for your help on this and let me know if you have any questions. 

Survey

Demographics
Please list the following questions about yourself:

Gender:
Age:
How much of a professional wrestling fan are you? (1 - I hate wrestling, 2 - I don't care about wrestling, 3 - I used to like wrestling, 4 - I like professional wrestling, 5 - I am/was a professional wrestler)
Roughly how many years have you been a wrestling fan? (list 0 if you're not a wrestling fan)

The Moves
For each move in the video, rate on a scale of 1-5 (1 being least and 5 being most) whether you find the move to be believable/realistic, difficult to perform, dangerous to perform safely, harmful to the victim, exciting to watch:

Move 1 (Sitdown Backbreaker)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 2 (Stone Cold Stunner)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 3 (Springboard Kick)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 4 (Hulking Up)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 5 (Frog Splash)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 6 (Crossface)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 7 (
Corkscrew Moonsault
)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 8 (More Cowbell)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 9 (Styles Clash)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 10 (People's Elbow)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 11 (Dudley Death Drop)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 12 (Asai Corkscrew Moonsault)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 13 (Barbwire 2x4)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 14 (Boston Crab)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Move 15 (Tombstone Piledriver)
Believability (1 - unrealistic, 5 - very believable):
Difficulty (1 - easy to do, 5 - hard to do):
Danger (1 - not dangerous, 5 - very dangerous):
Harmful (1 - harmless, 5 - potentially deadly):
Excitement (1 - boring, 5 - amazing):

Extra Notes
If any move stood out to you as particularly exciting, stupid, painful or otherwise made a lasting impression, please let me know. Similarly, if you have any other comments, feel free to add them as well.
Hyrkanian-7.jpgFirst of all, for those who didn't see the last post, I was in a car wreck last week. I'm a little shaken up but mostly ok, and my mechanic thinks my car is savable, so that's the good news. But a lot of you sent me well wishes, so for that I want to thank you again. For those of you who didn't hear about it, or anyone who wants to read more and see pictures, I posted the whole thing here.

Anyway, now on to the fun stuff!

My latest set with Sarah went live on Zivity the other day. This is something I'd been looking forward to. Sarah called me the day before I was driving out to visit her and said "hey, I have an idea for a shoot wearing some of my belly dancing gear. Do you have a sword you can bring out here with you?" Well of course I do!

One of the great things about working with Sarah is that we've shot together so many times that we're just in tune with each other. So she was in one room getting dressed and putting on makeup and I was in the other room setting up the set. And of course, they matched up perfectly.

And the outfit is really hot, the second she walked out, before we'd shot a single image, I knew what I wanted to call the set. Ten points to whoever can figure out what the title means.

Anyway, we'd love to know what you think of the set, so check out "The Last Hyrkanian." Comments are always appreciaticed.

http://www.zivity.com/photographers/chrismaverick/photosets/70


Crash!!!

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IMG_1127.jpgI hate Pittsburgh winters. Sigh...

So I was in a car wreck today. I mentioned it on my twitter page, but here are details in case anyone is wondering. The roads were getting bad, so Steph (my fiancee) asked me if I could pick her up from work. I said fine and after wandering around my house for a while to find my wallet (cuz I'm awful about putting it in the same place) left. The roads were not great, but they weren't awful and they had salted my road (one of the worst two on the commute), and I have 4 wheel drive so I figured good, I'll be ok.

I got to the other crappy road. It's a hill after a bridge over some train tracks. I got to the end of the bridge and looked down and the road had some snow but didn't look awful. I figured I'd go really slow and turned my wheel to the left to start. I didn't even get a chance to take my foot off the brake. My car just took off sliding down the hill. 

Brakes: no effect. 

Steering wheel: no effect.

Started picking up speed and knew it was going to be bad. The road turns dramatically to the right half way down and I had no way to turn or even slow down. I hit a railing, go through it and straight into a brick wall. Three seconds later, my airbag decided to deploy. Ummm, yay for safety.

IMG_1126.jpg
So I curse out loud to myself for a few seconds, and then get out of the car happy to be alive. I get my cellphone and my wallet out of my pocket to begin calling cops, insurance, tow truck, etc. Before I can, a couple walking down the road stops to see if I'm ok. While I'm telling them I'm fine, a tow-truck pulls up. I'm amazed that they could have been there that quickly but he tells me he happened to be driving by at the bottom of the hill. As he's talking to me, a policeman comes walking up the hill (he couldn't get his cop car up the hill). He tells me one of the people in the houses had called 911 and he happened to be close. So I'm doing my police report and talking to the cop when another cop gets there, and my regular mechanic, comes walking up. I wasn't far from home, you see, and when he heard about a wreck he walked over to check on people. So he immediately recognizes me and my car tells me he's glad I'm ok and asks if I want the car towed to his shop. Wonderful. Things are at least starting to be ok. And then then one of the cops says something like "Oh my god, we better get out of the way." We all look up the hill and there's another car hurtling towards us out of control. So we all go off the side of the road and the second car comes down, hits the back and side of my car, damaging it further and also hits the wall next to me. Now my police report has turned into from a one car wreck to a two car wreck. (the cop informs me that if he hadn't actually hit me, that'd still be a one car wreck, but because there was contact they have to count it as two).

The cop and tow truck driver then tell us that it sucks, because they just repaved this road, and there's been a bunch of wrecks on it. If they hadn't repaved it, the potholes used to basically stop anyone who skidded down. Yeah, umm... that makes me feel better. On a good note, having a brick wall to run into stopped me from careening over the side of the hill, so that's good. 

IMG_1128.jpg
So I walked down and met Steph (who had to drive herself) at the bottom of hill and then we went and got some dinner. After eating we drove home, stopping by my mechanic (it's on the way) just as they were finally getting my truck there. My mechanic thinks it looks much worse than it is, and says he's pretty sure the engine is fine, and he can fix everything else, but it's all in the hands of the insurance adjuster now. They have to decide whether it's totaled or not and then we'll see what happens next. 

But anyway, at least I'm not hurt or dead. But I was just saying that I wanted more stuff to write about here than just photography. This is the last time I ask for that.

And oh yeah...   FUCK!!!!

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This page is an archive of entries from January 2011 listed from newest to oldest.

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