Broke & Hungry in Austin Part 2: The Hideout Pub

Well, ladies and gentlemen! We're fresh off the start of the second month of the year, and that can only mean one thing:

It's time for another edition of #BrokeAndHungryATX!!

Last month Brandon and I ventured to a Mexican restaurant for their happy hour with mediocre results. So this month we decided to go with the more traditional happy hour at a local pub. The difference between the two experiences was stark: night and day, even. I wanna get to the report card, but first, a brief description of The Hideout Pub. 

Check out their website. I love how they just declare: We're cheap so you don't have to be. 
Their website asks: "why pay a lot?" And I respond, "Why, indeed?" But cost is only one of the factors that #BrokeAndHungryATX looks at. 

So let's take a look at all of them!


Cost

The Hideout Pub doesn't lie when they say their happy hour prices are cheap. With well drinks at $2.50 each and $1.75 Lone Stars there's no reason you can't catch an inexpensve buzz in their cozy bunker. I certainly did. 

Food's another issue, though. They do have food specials for happy hour, but it seems like their big food special day is Wednesday, which didn't apply to us. I think the only special offered on the Tuesday we visited was $2 tacos. We didn't get those, though. We got their trio plate (tortilla chips with queso, salsa, and ranch dip and I added guacamole) and Brandon ordered a Hideout burger.

All told, between the two of us we had 2 well bourbons and 1 Lone Star, a $10 appetizer and a $12.50 burger. Our tab was $31.11, to which we added the $5 tip, bringing our total cost for the excursion to $36.11.

Hideout Pub's grade for COST: B

Taste

The Hideout Pub truly delivered on taste. The well bourbons were really good--not great, but for $2.50 I don't need great. The queso and guacamole were both good, and Brandon enjoyed his burger. All in all, more than adequate pub fare. Great quality for the cost.

Hideout Pub's grade for TASTE: A


Atmosphere

The Hideout Pub has a seriously cute bunker-theme going on. The lighting is dim and there's wood and metal everywhere. Thematically, it's just exactly what you would think a grown-up secret hideaway should be. And it wasn't short on entertainment: there were multiple screens playing a diverse assortment of television and movies along with a well-stocked jukebox and dart boards and arcade games.

All that was missing was a stack of coloring books and a few boxes of crayons.

The clientele, at least on the day we visited, appeared to be mostly regulars and mostly folks around our age (30s-40s). The bartenders and wait staff seemed comfortable with everyone. It felt like a clubhouse: comfortable.

Hideout Pub's grade for ATMOSPHERE: A


Returnability

If you've been following along so far, I think you should be able to guess the grade I've assigned to Hideout Pub for returnability. Come on, don't be thick. Good prices, yummy food and cozy atmosphere can only mean one thing.

Hideout Pub's grade for RETURNABILITY: A

Me & Brandon at the Hideout Pub

You can read Brandon's review of the pub here!
As always, please follow me and Brandon on twitter! I'm @LiteraryGrrrl and he's @HMMADNESS. We love to connect on social media and are always on the lookout for new happy hours to try, so if you have any suggestions tweet us!

Otherwise, see ya next month!

Broke & Hungry in Austin Part 1: Fonda San Miguel

Welcome to the inaugural post in this year-long blog series I'm affectionately calling "Broke and Hungry in Austin TX!"

This is a joint venture between me and my boyfriend Brandon (Read his take on #BrokeAndHungryATX here). Through this monthly blog series we get a regular date and a damn good excuse to explore more of the taverns, pubs, and restaurants that are all over our fair city! And YOU, dear Reader, get the pleasure of reading about our low-budget adventures!

How's THAT, huh? You're welcome.

So here's how it works: every month this year, on the first Tuesday, Brandon and I will hit up a different happy hour. Our goal? To see if we can eat and drink and be merry within our budget, which is $45. NOTE! At least $5 of that forty-five is earmarked for the tip, so for all intents and purposes our budget is really $40.

Doesn't sound that hard, huh? Have you had a date in Austin lately? I LOVE Austin, and one of my favorite things about this city is the truly remarkable variety of awesome bars and eateries, but they can be pricey. On the other hand, I know, I JUST KNOW, that there are low-cost gems to be found here. And our goal is to unearth some of these through this blog series.

Without further ado, let us get to Part 1 of this blog series, in which we explore FONDA SAN MIGUEL.

You will Fonda San Miguel at 2330 W. North Loop. It is renowned locally for its interior Mexican cuisine and all-night happy hour on Tuesday, which is what we sampled. During their happy hour, Fonda San Miguel offers wines and house margaritas for $5, and has a menu of appetizers sold at half price.

Me and Brandon each ordered a frozen house margarita, and got two appetizers to share: queso and chicken quesadillas.

Here's where I start grading. I will grade each happy hour that Brandon and I try on four criteria: cost, taste, atmosphere, and returnability. The meaning of cost, taste, and atmosphere should be obvious, but returnability may not be. What I mean by returnability is simply how I feel about our likelihood to return to the establishment, for another happy hour or whatever. This may have everything to do with one or another of the other criteria, or nothing at all. It's just a feeling.

COST

Fonda San Miguel's happy hour fully lived up to its reputation as far as affordability. With 2 drinks and 2 appetizers, our bill totaled $23.50, to which we added the $5 tip, so we ultimately spent $28.50. Guys, that's not bad at all. Everyone who lives in Texas knows that it can be hard for two hungry people to even eat at Whataburger for less than that.

Fonda San Miguel's grade for Cost: A

TASTE

I'm gonna be real with you. The margarita was just meh. Frankly, I was disappointed. Sure, I've had worse margaritas, and these weren't BAD, but c'mon! This is Texas. Bland margaritas shouldn't even be allowed. Leave the boring margaritas to the states without Latinos.

Boring margarita is boring.

The food was better than the margaritas, but still it was nothing exciting. Worse, the queso was the kind that's thick and stringy--think molten string cheese. I understand that that is a legit style of queso, but man is it hard to operate. You've gotta cut it up, and then scoop it onto the tortillas and it just wants to slide around. And then if you're me you wind up using your fingers like some low-class gringa.

Crazy-ass queso

Fonda San Miguel's grade for Taste: C

ATMOSPHERE

Where Fonda San Miguel's truly excels is in its atmosphere. Simply put, this was one of the absolute cutest restaurants I have ever set foot in. Quirky art adorns the walls; a giant statue of a dragon greets you as you walk in; subdued, colorful lights create a playfully intimate tone. What's better: the place is spotless. Even the bathroom is spotless.

Shana vs The Dragon

Fonda San Miguel's grade for Atmosphere: A

RETURNABILITY

So far Fonda San Miguel has earned 2 As and a C. So what are its chances for a high grade in returnability? Not fucking likely. 

I realize that sounds bitchy, but I'm just being honest. The folks at Fonda San Miguel are doing their absolute best, and they're delivering on all their promises. The happy hour menu is very, very attractively priced. I just think this was a mismatch for Brandon and I. I don't think we're Fonda San Miguel people. 

But that's okay,  because we have the rest of the year to experiment with different happy hours around town! We'll figure out where we fit in!!

Fonda San Miguel's grade for Returnability: D

You're welcome to follow me on twitter: @LiteraryGrrrl Brandon is @HMMADNESS. We love to connect and make new friends! If you have suggestions for happy hours for us to try in future installments of #BrokeAndHungryATX leave a comment below or chat us up on Twitter!

Jessica Jones is my Spirit Animal

I'm giving this post a subtitle:

AKA Why it's so Important that Jeri Hogarth is an Evil Dyke.

Hang on! I can explain.

First, some business. This article will be discussing the new Netflix original series Jessica Jones, featuring the Marvel superhero of that name. On November 20 Netflix premiered the entire first season of the series, to widespread critical acclaim and endless fangirl slobbering (half of that mine.) 

There have been many, many, many good reviews and articles written about the series so far. This one does a good job discussing the show in relation to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, including the movies. This one is a beautifully done critical look at just the second episode of the season (I recommend keeping an eye on that blog and reading the articles on every episode). This is a powerful article all about how the show represents misogyny. I've read articles about how Jessica Jones discusses PTSD, why rape apologists need to watch the show (and what they can learn from it), and on and on and on.

Clearly, Jessica Jones is onto something.

This show means a lot of things to a lot of people. It means so very much to me. It's just so very brave in the way that it takes an unflinching look at a lot of very dark realities. But when I decided to write about the show, I thought I would focus on something Jessica Jones does quietly. Because in this particular instance, it's what isn't said that is so important.

I'm talking about Jeri Hogarth, of course.

The Jessica Jones character (and associated story) wasn't created for the Netflix series. She started as a comic book character, and, of course, the comic is where all the secondary characters first breathed life as well. Only some of the characters were a bit...tweaked...for the television show. When Jeri Hogarth was first conceived, his name was Jeryn Hogarth and he was a straight white male.

Why was Jeryn changed to Jeri for the netflix show? I don't know, and I don't care. What impresses me so much about the character, is the ways in which her different character traits are and aren't played up.

So let's take a moment and address Jeri Hogarth's character traits.

Aspects of Jeri Hogarth's character that are played up in the show:

1. Cunning
2. Narcissism
3. Wealth & power
4. Cutthroat lawyer-y-ness
5. Intelligence
6. Confidence
7. Reluctant respect of Jessica Jones

Aspects of Jeri Hogarth's character that are NOT played up in the show:

1. The fact that she's a lesbian

Seriously. Jeri Hogarth is a lesbian. Not only that, but during the season we see her having an affair with her secretary and dealing with the subsequent messy divorce from her wife. And despite all of that, the fact that she's a lesbian is not a topic of discussion. Her sexuality is not a plot in the storyline. How Jeri handles her business and her relationships is a plotline, but not the fact that she sleeps with women. Because why the fuck should it be?

It's 2015. Jeri Hogarth is not the first openly lesbian character in a TV show. But the writers of Jessica Jones managed to do something with this character that is so breathtaking and rare: they portrayed a powerful lesbian woman struggling with her personal life in a way that doesn't focus solely on the gender of her spouse.

 This is so important and so unusual that I want to make that point again, a different way:

Viewers of Jessica Jones watched Jeri Hogarth cheat on her wife, file for divorce, get attacked by her wife, and ultimately watch in horror as her mistress killed her wife, but the discussion was never about the fact that Wendy is a woman and has a vagina.

Ladies and gentleman, this is the way to write gay characters. As characters. Because when we see Jessica and Luke get it on, the discussion is about Jessica and Luke not about their genitals. That's fucking parity. And that's fucking beautiful.

Reading Jonathan Franzen, a Sort-Of Review of The Corrections

I'm always incredibly late to the party.

This year (2015) I finally read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, a book that came out in 2001 and immediately took the Literary world by storm.

I didn't wait 14 years to read the book because I hadn't heard of it. I was aware of it. Books that are as successful and highly praised as The Corrections are difficult to ignore.

In fact, I thought about The Corrections a little too much for a book I intended never to read. I picked it up countless times at book stores and libraries, fingering the pages, eyes roaming the cover, thinking "Maybe? No." Before putting it back down.

I just couldn't bring myself to read it. Why? Because of 2 things I had read about the book and its author: (1) The Corrections is a literary masterpiece, and (2) Jonathan Franzen is a pompous windbag.

I have no idea if Mr. Franzen is as much of a douchebag as twitter asserts. Just for fun, I suggest you google "why the internet hates Jonathan Franzen" and read some of the articles that come up.

What follows is a review of sorts. It's not so much a review of The Corrections itself as it is a review of my experience of reading a Jonathan Franzen novel. (Oh yes, I'm that self-involved.) In list form, because lists.

(1) The cover of The Corrections is a case study in the culture war between literary fiction and genre fiction.

You might think that the book's cover art is fairly simple and innocuous, but you would be wrong. The picture is of an American family sitting down to what is presumably a holiday meal. The family is white and probably at least middle class, as evidenced by the Sunday best that the two young boys you can see are reluctantly wearing.

(I'm comfortable assuming that this is a holiday meal because of the gorgeous turkey that is proudly presented by the matriarch of the depicted family. Turkeys are understood as the cultural centerpiece of American holiday meals, despite the fact that not every family chooses to have one.)

Book covers are designed to entice readers to buy the book. In order to do so, they attempt to create a feeling of kinship between the readers and the book, as well as the book's author. The symbolism used in the cover art, therefore, is not accidental.

JONATHAN FRANZEN is emblazoned across the top third of the cover, in larger typeface than The Corrections. The picture of the family-at-holiday-mealtime takes up less than 25% of the cover space, and is pushed down to the bottom of the cover.

Between the title of the novel and the picture is a blurb from the New York Review of Books:

"You will laugh, wince, groan, weep, leave the table and maybe the country, promise to never go home again, and be reminded of why you read serious fiction in the first place."

Where to begin?
Setting the author's name in larger typeface than the book title suggests that the author is a larger draw than the book itself, and thus more important. So, from the outset the reader is being told that Jonathan Franzen is a Super Important Dude.

Mr. Franzen's  name is so large on the cover that it dwarfs the picture beneath it. But that's not all. The position of his name in relation to the picture, as well as the size of his name in relation to the picture, are both meaningful and problematic:  unless you're white, middle class, and exclusively read literary fiction, in which case this cover just reinforces your pre-existing world views.

But I'm not talking to those people.

This cover associates Jonathan Franzen, as an author and public figure, with the middle class, middle class culture, and middle class ideals. But, since his name lords it over the rest of the cover art, it also elevates him above those very people and ideals. He is both of the privileged class and better than the privileged class, and from his vaunted position, he is qualified to judge the rest of the people in it.

The blurb from the New York Review of Books serves to assure the reader that he/she has a place at the holiday table. He/she is being told explicitly that "yes. You are one of us." The reader is acknowledged to have a background similar to those in the picture (and, presumably, to that of Jonathan Franzen himself). The holiday meal depicted on the cover is referred to as Home. This book, therefore, is being presented as a shared experience.

But it's not just The Corrections that is being shared. Also implied as shared between the readers of the novel and the book's author is the middle class American experience, and all that that includes: material comfort, stability, an above-average education that includes college, parents that probably don't love each other but probably also don't beat you, and boredom.

Oh, and Serious Fiction. Mr. Franzen writes Serious Fiction and his readers and cohorts exclusively read it.

There are others, of course, who aren't invited to Mr. Franzen's shared literary experience. Those who are too poor, maybe, or too uneducated, to read Serious Fiction. Who are they? Readers of genre fiction, of course. And I am one of those people.

Hence my long-time reluctance to pick up and actually read The Corrections.

(2) I absolutely fucking loved The Corrections

I so hate to admit this, after having so thoroughly dissected the book's disgustingly elitist cover art. But it's true. It will likely end up on my end-of-year top ten list.

(3) I will likely read Mr. Franzen's newest and even more controversial novel Purity. 

31 Days of Halloween: Hellraiser

Well, I finally fucking did it. I watched Hellraiser.

In my first blog post of this month-long series in which I reviewed A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, I told you all about how my boyfriend Brandon (aka Horror Movie Madness) and I spend the month of October. For us, October is full horror movie immersion month. You see, I'm horror movie deficient, and Brandon has decided he will cure me of that. 

It's fun, and I super enjoy it, but long ago I told Brandon I only had one rule: no Hellraiser.

"I will not watch Hellraiser," I told him all those years ago. "Not in a box, not with a fox. Not on a train, and not in the rain."

Brandon, being a kind and loving boyfriend, agreed to my terms. But he was curious, so he asked why. I explained to him that many years ago, in circumstances I can't remember, I stumbled into a room in which someone was watching the movie. I caught ten to fifteen seconds of it, and it scarred me for life.

It was that fucking chattering Cenobite. I saw him grab a woman by the head and shove his fingers in her mouth. It looked to me like he was attempting to rip her jaw off, or perhaps he was miming forced oral sex. I couldn't really say for sure which, but it turned my stomach.

Anyhow, fast-forward to today. This is our third year of October horror-movie lessons. I've already conquered the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of 1000 Corpses. I've seen most of the eighties slasher flicks and the classic seventies religious-cult movies. I thought it was time that I climb Mount Hellraiser and get it out of my system.

Besides, I always thought it was a little weird that I've read (and enjoyed) many of Clive Barker's novels and couldn't bring myself to watch the movie adaptation of his story that he, himself, directed.

So I watched Hellraiser today. And this is my assessment.

It was good.

Ha! I have more to say than that, of course. But just right off the bat: Hellraiser was exactly as scary as I expected, but not to the point where I couldn't enjoy Clive Barker's story. The man is just as much a genius of the genre as Stephen King, and I wouldn't say that lightly.

There are only a handful of characters in Hellraiser: Larry, a remarried widow of considerable financial means that derive from an unspecified origin; Larry's new wife Julia, his brother Frank; and his daughter Kirsty.

It's revealed early in the movie that Frank is a philandering cad who may or may not live off his brother's money, and who slept with Julia on the eve of her marriage to Larry. Frank is also, not surprisingly, the person who hunts down the demon-raising puzzle box and summons the Cenobites. They variously torture and pleasure him, as is their wont, and banish him to Hell-with-a-capitol-H.

When Larry cuts his hand and bleeds on the floor of their family home, the blood somehow nourishes Frank, who begins to rematerialize in his earthly form. Frank then reaches out to Julia, telling her that if she feeds him the blood of more innocents he would come back to life all they way. Julia, recalling their one wild rendezvous, agrees to help.

Time out.

This entire movie is predicated on the fact that Larry is apparently so boring in bed that his wife would literally kill random innocent people in order to once again fuck her brother-in-law. Good God. How sad.  Poor Larry is surrounded by horrible people. Except for Kirsty. She is eventually the one to re-banish Uncle Douchebag Frank to Hell and drive away the Cenobites. Of course, she didn't do any of that soon enough to save her father's life, but, oh well.

This is a Clive Barker story, remember. There may be a simple plot line but that leaves plenty of room for art, however terrifying it may be, and for psychology. 

A common theme throughout most of Barker's stories is the conflation of pleasure and pain, disgust and desire. Those themes are found throughout the movie. There are images of sexually-titillating fingers-in-mouths in the clips of Julia and Frank's One Wild Night early in the movie, images that are twisted and recreated later when Kirsty accidentally summons the Cenobites and Chatterer grabs her head and shoves his fingers down her throat.

As much as that scene disturbed me years ago (and again today), I was impressed by how it sort of bookended the earlier scene. It's like it put a ghoulish period on the end of that sentence.

I'm glad I watched Hellraiser. But, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I don't think I'll be watching it again.

I will leave you with this image, because it is cute, and cute conquers scary.

For another take on Hellraiser, read what Brandon thought of it!

31 Days of Halloween! A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

October is a special month for my boyfriend and I. Every year that we've lived together (3 so far) we have spent the month of October watching a slew of horror films. Because that's what you do when you're dating a man whose screen name is "HMMADNESS." (That stands for Horror Movie Madness in case you didn't figure it out.  

Right before our first October as a cohabitating couple, Brandon presented me with a truly ambitious list of some 60-odd flicks.

"We won't necessarily get through all off these," he said to me. "But I'd like to try to get to as many as we can."

See, I haven't seen a whole lot of horror movies in my life, and Brandon felt pretty strongly about educating me in this arena. My eyes wide, more than a little daunted, I said:

"Sure. Of course."

That first October, I watched the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the original Halloween. I saw many if not most of the Friday the 13th series. And I made it through House of 1000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects, somehow. We watched some old, black-and-white horror and some cheesy independent horror. No, we didn't get through the whole list. But we did make a mighty dent in it. And Brandon succeeded in laying the foundation for my horror movie education.

At the end of our first October together, I was a sincere Jason fan, and I had a better idea of the kind of horror that gives me nightmares. 

Now, a couple years later, we're approaching October a little differently. Brandon is having me take a more active role in choosing which movies to watch. This year, we thought it would be fun to focus only on what is available through Netflix. That will make it more random, and open up more independent film possibilities.

First up, I chose A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.

I have already seen some of the NOES flicks. I had taken my daughter Meredith to see the remake of the first movie in the theater when it came out. And, since Freddy is Brandon's favorite movie monster, he had already shown me the original NOES as well as the third film in the series and Freddy vs Jason. But he had avoided watching the second of the series with me, because he himself is NOT a fan of it. Like many people, he considers this film to be too much of a departure from the original story to really fit in well with the rest of the series.

So we approached this viewing as something of a lark. I looked forward to what I had heard would be a lot of unintended homosexual innuendo, and we prepared to drink whenever one of the characters made fun of Jessie and whenever someone died or we got a glimpse of Freddy's claw.

And you know what? We did laugh at what turned out to be a TON of unintentionally silly dialogue ("Are you mounting her nightly?" For real? What high school guy talks like that??). And there were moments when I was honestly confused about what the movie was trying to convey (I'm looking at you, spontaneously combusting parakeets), but all in all I really liked Freddy's Revenge.

I liked Freddy's Revenge for a very specific reason: it managed to be a fun slasher flick even while it broke every convention of slasher flicks. That's not a small feat.

Freddy's Revenge came out in 1985. At the time, Friday the 13th and Halloween dominated the horror market. They were--and still are--beloved slasher flicks that not only follow slasher flick conventions, they helped to create them.

You can say these with me because we all know them:
(1) The final girl is always the good girl (defined generally as the one who doesn't get laid on screen)
(2) Teenage debauchery is mandatory, and
(3) Teenage debauchery leads to murder and mayhem
(4) Parents? Whoever heard of parents?

I'm sure there are more. And I'm sure there are more nuanced versions of the ones I presented, But I'm not HMMADNESS.

What Freddy's Revenge does is say "FUCK YOU!" to these conventions. And it doesn't suffer cinematically for doing so.

For starters, the "Final Girl" in Freddy's Revenge is a guy, Jessie, who is possessed by Freddy Krueger and made to kill his friends and coach (and very nearly his sister). That, alone, is a bold gesture and is largely responsible for the movie's reputation for homosexual innuendo.

Jessie has a girlfriend, of course: Lisa, who is both smarter and stronger-willed than he. And since she manages to stop Freddy-working-through-Jessie from killing her it can be argue that she is ALSO the final girl. But even that would be a break from convention. What other slasher flick had two final girls?

Also, there is next to no teenage debauchery in Freddy's Revenge. Lisa throws a party in the movie, and that sets the scene for most, but not all, of the slashing. But the joke is, her parents are home, and are actually PRESENT at the party for most of it. No one gets laid, although Jessie and Lisa do some heavy petting. That, though, is interrupted when Jessie feels Freddy start to come out. The viewer knows Freddy is starting to come out because Jessie's tongue turns black and grows about six inches.

Elongated, disgusting tongues seem to be a recurring theme in NOES movies. What the hell is up with that??

Anyway, the movie ends with Freddy banished, Jessie alive but with a notable case of PTSD, and Lisa seemingly none the worse for her close encounter of the nightmare kind.

I give Freddy's Revenge a 7 out of 10.

I really did like it. It's not the work of cinematic genius that the first and third movies are, but it's a lot of fun. And I cannot overstate how brave I think it was for the writers and director to make the decision to NOT follow the genre's conventions. At the time, Jason was it. He was everything. And it would have been a lot easier for them to make Freddy a Jason copycat. Why not? Wes Craven was not a part of the team anymore, and they certainly weren't scared to make creative decisions that did NOT follow his vision (attempting to bring Freddy out of the dream world and into reality).

But they didn't. They followed their own rules and made a slasher film that was its own unique product, and, I felt, a lot of fun.

Now go read Brandon's take here.


Or watch this 30-minute fan-made film featuring Freddy taking on the Ghostbusters. (Please forgive the Jared cameo. This was made before we all knew the awful truth about him.)

Athena, the Wrestling Goddess takes the NeXT Step

(Scroll to the bottom of the post to read about Athena's NXT debut!)

(I wrote this in September of 2015 as an homage to Athena when she announced she was making the move up from the indy wrestling scene to NXT.)



Sound of knuckles rapping on a door.

"Good evening, sir." I flash the bewildered stranger a winning smile. "Can you spare a moment? I'd like to tell you about The Goddess?"

He scowls, then:

Sound of door slamming in my face.

"I'm not a pagan!" I shout. "I'm talking about the Wrestling Goddess."

The door opens. Half of a man's face is visible through the opening. 

I smile. "Let me tell you about how the Wrestling Goddess has changed my life."

Athena, aka The Wrestling Goddess, wrestled at the very first wrestling show I ever attended: The Show Goes on in February of 2012, a presentation of Anarchy Championship Wrestling in Live Oak, Texas. That was also the very first wrestling show I ever saw, as I had previously never watched professional wrestling in any form or through any media. It hadn't been long since I (finally) finished my master's degree. I fancied myself an academic. I fancied myself a lot of things, actually, but a pro-wrestling fan was not one of them.

In a very real sense Athena, The Wrestling Goddess, changed all of that.

I was introduced to a lot of talented wrestlers at that first show, and I witnessed a lot of very good matches, but it was Athena who made a lasting impression on me. Here was a beautiful, powerful, and eminently talented young woman who commanded respect both from the fans and the other athletes. I was hugely impressed, and, three years later, I continue to be.

I have recently learned that Athena is moving on. She won't be The Wrestling Goddess anymore. What she will be called I don't yet know. (Update: Athena is now known as Ember Moon!) What I do know is that she will still be making an impact in the wrestling world, she will still have the respect and admiration of wrestling fans, and she will always be The Wrestling Goddess in my heart.

That's all I really wanted to say. Pretty soon the whole world will be talking about Athena. Except, of course, they will be calling her by whatever name she's been given. I guess I just wanted to have my say about the Athena I've known before her transformation is complete.

Now I'm going to turn this retrospective over to my boyfriend Brandon, the man who turned me on to professional wrestling in general and The Wrestling Goddess in particular. He has a lot more to say about Athena than me, mostly because he has had the good fortune to watch her in action for several more years than I have. He's also very historically minded. He is going to tell you a whole bunch about Athena's rise to the top of the indy wrestling scene here in Texas, with a special focus on her work in Anarchy Championship Wrestling. ACW is the company that reignited Brandon's childhood love of professional wrestling, and it also played a huge role in shaping the wrestler that The Wrestling Goddess has become.

Without any further ado, please visit Brandon's blog Pinned Down Plus and read all about Athena's colorful and extraordinary career as an indy wrestler in Texas. I'm sure you will enjoy it! While you're there read some of his interviews with other wrestlers on the scene. (Go! Click! Read!)

Update: It has been reported that Athena has made her official NXT debut! She wrestled October 10 2015 at an untelevised live event in Winter Haven, Florida apparently under her actual name, Adrienne Reese. Read more here. 

Update to the update! Ember Moon is set to make her televised, official NXT debut at #NXTTakeoverBrooklyn on August 20, 2016!!

You can follow the wrestler formerly known as Athena on twitter @WWEEmberMoon