Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: El Hijo del Fantasma made his WWE debut, Finn Bálor mysteriously disappeared, and Dexter Lumis proved that he’s a pretty good friend when he’s not stalking and murdering people.

If you’d like to read previous installments of the Best and Worst of NXT, you can do that here. Follow With Spandex on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter, where everything and everyone is terrible.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for April 22, 2020.

Best: I’m On To You, Dexter Lumis

I don’t think I realized it until I typed them in the same paragraph, but if Finn Bálor mysteriously disappeared and Dexter Lumis happened to be there to step up and take a spot in the main event, Lumis totally abducted Bálor, right? I know they/we want to blame Imperium, but clandestine murders don’t seem to be the modus operandi of a mat-worshipping jumpsuit cult. But a former mental patient with mommy issues? 100%. Bálor’s disappearance and the multiple parking lot kidnappings, there’s too much True Crime happening at NXT to ignore the concurrent rise to prominence of a guy whose gimmick is, “obviously a serial killer.”

Anyway, Lumis gets a victory over Shane Thorne, who is once again not represented by MVP because WWE can’t seem to keep track of what’s happening on what show even when they’re using the same wrestlers and running the same venue every day.

Worst/Best: When You Try To Remember What Day Of The Week It Is In Quarantine

Speaking of Imperium, they accept the fact that Finn Bálor died on the way back to his home planet and attack NXT Kinda Sorta Interim Tag Team Champions Matt Riddle and Timothy Thatcher. Imperium interrupted a Newlywed Game parody hosted by Byron Saxton to cement themselves as NXT’s biggest babyfaces.

Two things that I feel must be said:

• Timothy Thatcher proves that Pete Dunne and Matt Riddle have a weird, special chemistry you can’t just reproduce by putting somebody else in Dunne’s spot. Even when he’s standing there doing nothing, Pete’s got an on-screen charisma that Thatcher doesn’t have yet. He’s also got a visible intelligence that makes his frustration at Riddle’s antics enjoyable, as opposed to Thatcher, who comes across on TV as the Godless amalgamation of Drew Gulak and Ralphus. No shade to Thatcher, who is great, but he can’t be expected to come in cold and carry Pete goddamn Dunne’s weight in a tag team of accidental best friends.
• There are few things WWE does as hard to watch as Byron Saxton Personality segments. 3:16 Day was bad enough, and now we’ve got him dressing like WCW Mike Awesome and asking Ringkampf members to tell him the craziest place they’ve ever made whoopie? Jesus Christ, guys.

This Week In The Largely Unnecessary Interim NXT Cruiserweight Championship Tournament

Sorry, copied in the wrong URL there.

There we go. Up first in the Fuck You Jordan Devlin Tournament this week is Isaiah ‘Swerve’ Scott versus El Hijo del Fantasma, who now looks much, much better in a purple version of his fiercely inferior WWE mask. Can’t have the brother diving around looking like 1996 Billy Zane, I guess. Although now that I said it, I wish they’d give somebody a Cal from Titanic gimmick. Just a rich, entitled asshole who had the worst cruise ever.

Swerve picks up the win here to get on the board, as the NXT1 Classic works better if you keep it competitive. Swerve needs it more right now as he’s still trying to find his footing as a character, and Fantasma’s busy fighting off kidnappers or whatever anyway. I hope nobody from his Afghanistan unit he thought he’d left for dead shows up and ruins his chances of becoming champion. Just a hypothetical.

Then we’ve got Drake Maverick vs. Tony Nese. My feelings are best described with the following GIF:

On one hand, the match was a lot of fun and Drake Maverick is excellent as a determined underdog who’s the smallest, weakest, and most emotionally unstable guy in the room, but is fighting so hard to keep his spot, prove he’s worth it, and provide for his family. Matches like these show why it’s ridiculous to sign a guy like Rockstar Spud and keep him on the bench for almost his entire WWE career, only bringing him out to take virginal hotel room roll-ups in his underwear and piss his pants for the lulz. He was great at doing those things, too, but he probably could’ve used that creative currency on something that didn’t constantly make him look like an incelibate dork.

On the other hand, it’s still super concerning to fire a guy, make him keep working for you during a global pandemic, and write a fictional story about his real life fears of unemployment. And if his release was just a work to build sympathy, it’s super duper concerning to let dozens of people go in real life and keep one of them around on the down low so “isn’t it sad to be fired during the collapse of society” can be a slightly more believable under-card plot.

So, more succinctly, “hooray! … question mark?”

Best: Johnny Gargano Loves His Suddenly Evil Wife

Candice LeRae, empowered by a tube of black lipstick and some lavender hair dye, has two new weapons: Johnny Gargano as her personal ring announcer — she hails from “Calia-fornia,” apparently — and the “Wicked Stepsister,” which she uses to end Kacy Catanzaro’s whole career.

First of all, holy shit. Second of all, I’m so happy Catanzaro is back, both because of her tremendous upside as a performer, and because there might not be another person in the world more prepared to eat that entire move. She’s little, pliable, and more than willing to fall on her face from great heights.

And just to say it, no matter how dumb I thought the blow-off to Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa was, Candice LeRae being taken seriously as an NXT Superstar is a bright, shiny, silver lining. I still think she should be able to operate independently of Johnny, but repurposing him as a corrupted Ricardo Rodriguez in love is pretty funny.

Speaking Of Ending Whole Careers

Charlotte Flair wins her first defense of her second NXT Women’s Championship, once again defeating Mia Yim in a rematch “five years in the making.” The first Flair vs. Yim match ended in 50 seconds, so this competitive 10-minute version is much better. Yim has evolved, sure, but it’s especially fun to go back and watch 2014 Charlotte Flair, who looks like a completely different wrestler. It’s like comparing Ramblin’ Ricky Rhodes to the Nature Boy.

Charlotte’s return to NXT is stressful in the same way John Cena or Brock Lesnar matches are where you can see that they’re very good at what they do, but you get in your head about WWE’s decision making process and everything starts feeling less like a wrestler winning a wrestling match and more like a corporate mandate. That can play in a character’s favor, though, as Cena and Lesnar (and pre-Crisis Roman Reigns) matches always cause a lot of conversation, for better or worse. I say this because Charlotte’s facing Io Shirai next week, and I really don’t want that to end like I think it will.

Also On This Episode

Dominik Dijakovic astutely points out that the establishment Johnny Gargano wants to revolt against “put him in about 46,000 straight TakeOvers,” and vows to (and I’m paraphrasing here) pick him up over his head and knee him in the eyeballs. Next week’s show will feature Dijak vs. John Wrestling, Finn Bálor returning from the trunk of Dexter Lumis’ car to address whatever happened, the formal debut of Karrion Kross and Scarlett Bordeaux (whose show is made up of that smoke the Street Profits have been asking for), and Bad Moonsault defending the NXT Women’s Championship against Best Moonsault. Also, an NXT Championship match that will set fire to comments sections and definitely not make everything worse.

Best: Keith Lee Throws A Priest

Finally this week we’ve got the North American Championship match between Keith Lee and Damian Priest. Between this coming a week before a stacked card and the NAC triple threat that happened a week before the USA Network version of “TakeOver,” the North American Championship has become a real “night one” main-eventer.

Regardless, here’s Keith Lee throwing a 6-foot-5, 250+ pound man from the “crowd” onto the apron like a loose sack of crap:

I want to see Keith Lee wrestle Drake Maverick, just to see how far he could throw him. I bet he could hit the lights with a Spirit Bomb. Lee wins this one by fending off a shot from Priest’s night stick — when Lee caught it Priest really could’ve just let go with one hand and smashed him in the face with the stick with the other, but it’s a good visual — and wins with a pair of “Spirit Bombs” that are just normal powerbombs. I don’t think it’s a Spirit Bomb unless you Last Ride them up, sit out, and bounce the motherfucker.

As a reminder, Keith Lee should remain North American Champion forever, or until he decides he should be NXT Champion proper, whichever comes first.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Dave M J

So why should I boo Johnny Gargano basically being a teenage girl watching a boy band when Candice is murdering ladies again?

SexCauldron

Sindel variant Candice reminds me of when MC Hammer started dressing as a gangsta rapper

Birdman

Looks like Swerve hit Fantasma with a…

*Puts sunglasses on*

Kill shot

troi

Shane Thorne vs Dexter Lumis winner gets to be thrown off a building in a Schwarzenegger movie

Mac&CheeseMainEvent

*Triple H talks to NXT locker room before the show*

Triple H: “Hey guys, I know these are hard times going on here but I just want to make sure you all stay safe and healthy and if there is anything you are concerned about let me know.”

Tony Nese: “Any idea about these luchadors randomly abducting people and then never hearing back from where they went?”

Triple H: “As I said it is surreal times, now if you excuse me I have to help put a ring on top of the WWE headquarters.”

Caz

“tope from the Gates of Hell!” – Mauro with the nod to LU, and that’s whats I appreciates abouts him

FeltLuke

It’s only a matter of time before Candace, Dakota, and Raquel form a mean girl stable.

LUNI_TUNZ

Who does Drake Maverick think he is? Sarah Logan?

EvilDucky

I don’t ever want to hear Dexter Lumis speak. He should be a silent monster for his entire career

Taylor Swish

Thanks Mia. At least someone in Florida knows how to wear a face covering.

That’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of NXT. We’re not sure you ever actually read this part or do what we ask (or if you even scroll down through the top 10 comments of the week), but hey, it would really help us if you commented down below and shared the column if you liked or laughed at anything. The world’s tough, and that makes this kind of thing a lot easier.

Join us here next week for [vaguely gestures].

On May 2, 1995, two events that would prove to be noteworthy parts of indie music history happened: Yo La Tengo released their album Electr-o-pura, and coincidentally, Lucy Dacus was born on the exact same day. Matador is gearing up to re-release the album for its 25th anniversary (on September 4), so they tapped Lucy Dacus (who is also signed to Matador) to cover the album’s penultimate track, “Tom Courtenay,” taking the song in a more intimate direction than the original.

In addition to her cover, Dacus also penned a lengthy essay about the album. In it, she explains her history with “Tom Courtenay,” saying of the song, “‘Tom Courtenay’ was the first Yo La Tengo song I learned on guitar. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew who Julie Christie was and loved the line, ‘As the music swells somehow stronger from adversity / our hero finds his inner peace.’ I didn’t know what the needle had to do with anything, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was like any good poem, leaving space for me, between images. Now, I think the song may be about obsession with media, equating the allure of the movies and movie stars to drug addiction. Who knows, that’s just my take.”

Watch Dacus perform her cover above, and read her essay below.

“I was born on May 2, 1995, the day that Electr-o-pura came out.

Fourteen years later, I started high school and made a new friend who wore a leather jacket and boots, who expressed confident opinions about music that I had never heard. I devoured every recommendation they gave me in an effort to align my tastes. I wanted to be cool, or at least not uncool. I found out about The Stooges, Philip Glass, and Sonic Youth through my effort to win their approval. I loved it all, and my parents hated every new discovery. Cool was loud.

One day my friend brought me a stack of CDs, all Yo La Tengo, and told me to take them home, listen to them, burn them, and return them. I did what I was told. I liked those records from the start, and more with every listen. I’d lay in bed listening to one of their records, pause the song I was listening to when I got too tired, then push play upon waking.

I remember my confusion upon listening to Electr-o-pura for the first time. I referenced the tracklist on the back of the CD so I could learn titles, but the printed song durations didn’t match up to what I was hearing. I wondered if there was some manufacturing error and I wasn’t hearing the songs I was supposed to hear. ‘Flying Lesson (Hot Chicken #1)’ is listed as lasting just over three minutes when it’s actually 6:42. ‘Blue Line Swinger’ says it’s 3:15, but actually clocks in at 9:18. I know now from looking into it that Yo La Tengo intentionally misprinted the times, trying to combat short attention spans, hoping they would trick people into giving those long songs a chance. It tricked me, though I’m a sucker for long songs anyways. It’s interesting to think about how this move couldn’t be pulled today in a world of digitized music. And if people had short attention spans then, how short are they now? All to say, I liked that they were playful.

What kept me coming back to Yo La Tengo was their understanding of moods. I listened to bands that knew anger, bands that knew sadness, but I didn’t know of any other bands that could express a full life’s range of moods the way they can. From song to song, the music was anxious, celebratory, sorrowful, content, confused, etc. And even when they got loud or dissonant, it never felt hostile. The sounds could be harsh, even ugly, but they were joyful. Some songs could make me cry, but they were gentle, not malevolent. I was taking on someone else’s tastes, and in the process, discovering my own.

‘Tom Courtenay’ was the first Yo La Tengo song I learned on guitar. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew who Julie Christie was and loved the line, ‘As the music swells somehow stronger from adversity / our hero finds his inner peace.’ I didn’t know what the needle had to do with anything, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was like any good poem, leaving space for me, between images. Now, I think the song may be about obsession with media, equating the allure of the movies and movie stars to drug addiction. Who knows, that’s just my take.

Eventually when Matador asked to sign me, the fact that Yo La Tengo is on their roster was a major component of my decision. They’ve been putting out great albums every couple of years for over three decades, experimenting and exploring with what seems to be an uncompromised creativity. That is worth celebrating, especially now, when any opportunity for celebration is a blessing. Happy 25th birthday to Electr-o-pura, and thanks for the music, Yo La Tengo.”

The Electr-o-pura rerelease is out 9/4 via Matador. Pre-order it here.

Tory Lanez hasn’t let the coronavirus outbreak stop him from building his following. For the past month, he’s utilized the power of social media to keep his name buzzing with his Quarantine Radio livestreams on Instagram, which boosted his barely-promoted mixtape, The New Toronto 3 to No. 1 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart the week of its release. Now, he’s taking the show on the road — figuratively speaking — by joining the growing number of stars who have livestreamed their performances during the quarantine with his Social Distancing Tour.

Tory posted a whole trailer featuring clips from previous live shows to promote the “tour,” complete with stage dives, balcony climbing, and phone screens lit up (remember when it used to be cigarette lighters?) to convey the high-energy vibe of his live concerts. How he’ll translate that to a livestream remains to be seen, but thanks to partner app Big Room, it’s likely he’ll have a bit more production value than the average living room concert. Naturally, Tory plans on conducting a live chat during the concert as well, because that may be the main draw of his livestreams on Instagram and he knows it.

The Social Distancing Tour will livestream on YouTube Friday, May 1 at 4pm PT / 7pm ET / 12am BST.

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Because dealing with the pimples was bad enough.

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“We put a bunch of glitter in the air vents of my brother’s getaway car and turned the air conditioner on high.”

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A wholeeeee lotta new stuff to watch.

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Recent research suggests that summer conditions can help kill the coronavirus more quickly. But “don’t expect miracles,” one scientist said.

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Travel needs to be about more than just a basic want, especially now. It needs to have meaning. At least that’s how The Explorers Club — a group founded in 1904 to support the scientific exploration of land, sea, air, and space through education, research, and travel — sees it. The club’s membership boasts the biggest names in science and exploration, from Jane Goodall to Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin to Sir Edmund Hillary, and Tenzing Norgay to James Cameron.

To help facilitate “traveling for more” amongst us mere mortals, The Explorers Club has teamed up with the Discovery Channel to offer the new “Explorers Club Discovery Expedition Grant.” The $1-million grant will allow would-be explorers to “explore in the pursuit of scientific understanding for the betterment of humanity and all life on Earth, and beyond,” according to The Explorers Club.

We’re sure you’re wondering, is this even open to the average curious traveler or is it for The Explorer Club members only? Per The Explorers Club: “You do not need to be a member to apply for the grant, however, applicants are welcome and encouraged to apply for membership.” The grant will be a yearly offering and winners will have Discovery Channel and its platforms to talk about their findings to help spread the word worldwide.

You’ll need to head over to The Explorers Club grant application page to submit a “pre-application.” Your pitch must include what real fieldwork you plan to do while working/traveling in the following fields: “Biological sciences, archaeology, anthropology, paleontology, earth sciences, ecology, and astronomy, as well as exploratory projects that reveal new knowledge about the planet and its inhabitants, including regions undergoing significant environmental or cultural change.”

You’ll also need a one-page pitch, three-minute video, a list of collaborators on the ground, letters of recommendation plus (a lot) more found here. This may seem like a lot, but they’re not just giving away $1-million without valid reasons and resources ready to make this worthwhile for all parties. Still, if your adventure dreams are huge, this is a great way to make them a reality.

Just like he did in the Eastern Conference during the 1990s, Michael Jordan is burning a pathway through the NBA zeitgeist on a weekly basis through new episodes of The Last Dance. The latest debate to flare up online comes from former teammates Craig Ehlo and Ron Harper over what the game plan was for Jordan’s infamous series-winning jump shot in the first round of the 1989 playoffs.

Ehlo is cemented in history as the man whose arms are splayed up beneath Jordan, and who’s standing in stunned disbelief in snapshots of Jordan’s famous celebratory leap. According to Harper, though, that’s not how it should have gone.

In the third installment of The Last Dance, Harper, who would go on to become a teammate of Jordan’s for the titular 1997-98 season, argued that he asked Cleveland head coach Lenny Wilkens if he could defend Jordan on the final play of the game rather than Ehlo. When Wilkens turned him down, Harper responded with a concise “f*ck this bullsh*t.’”

But in a new interview with Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com, Ehlo says it was a “no-brainer” that he would guard Jordan in order to let Harper play help defense, which he was better at, and save his energy if the team needed him to shoot again the next time down the floor.

Then Ehlo takes it one step further: “Harp had never really talked about defense or guarding people. He wasn’t a bad defender, I will give him that much, but I think those years with the Bulls where he got those championships, he was definitely third or fourth fiddle, so all of a sudden he becomes this lockdown defender, apparently. I don’t really remember him during our time wanting to play defense that much. He kind of shocked me with those comments, saying he wanted to guard Michael.”

No one except the two men involved (and maybe Wilkens, who’d be fantastic to hear from on this) can know who said what in a playoff series 30-plus years ago. However, Ehlo had better length and mobility to contest what the Cavaliers knew would likely be a jumper, whereas Harper is more of a strongman on defense.

It’s easy for Harper to say now, based on how things played out, that he pleaded to defend Jordan all those years ago. But despite all the times this shot has been discussed by NBA fans since 1989, the question of whether it should have been Ehlo guarding Jordan never really comes up. That was his role on those Cavs teams, and it seems like maybe Harper’s frustration is what came through in The Last Dance, rather than a clear memory of history.