Tony's Take: Meeting the Man Himself

Be prepared, because this blog is about to get a whole lot more interesting. My friend Tony has decided to contribute a few of his thoughts after watching Top Shot. I'll be posting his takes over the next couple of days, and hopefully he'll join us for the rest of Season 4. As you'll soon find out, Tony has a bit of a different writing style than I do, but diversity is the spice of life. (Please don't be offended)

Greetorials fellow internauts!  For those who read this blog frequently, you know me as Chris’s friend Tony.  He introduced me earlier as a guy who did not watch the show, then later mentioned me in a post as a guy who used to not watch the show, but now watches the show.  As soon as I watched the first episode of the first season I was hooked.  I plowed through seasons 1 and 2 in about five days on Netflix, and I caught up on Season 4 in one night.  I still haven’t seen season 3, so don’t spoil it for me.   

Seriously… don’t. 

I don’t know much about guns or hatchets, but I do know one thing: A person who knows their way around a firing range is automatically the bee’s knees as far as I’m concerned.

You may be wondering “Hey Tony, if you don’t know anything about guns, why do you like watching Top Shot?”   

Well, kind anonymous reader, it’s a very simple answer.  You don’t need to know about guns to know about competitive chaos, and that’s what this show thrives on (with doses of welcomed comedy sprinkled throughout).  The characters are almost always entertaining, and for whatever inexplicable reason, I automatically latch on to the hopes and dreams of certain contestants from the first time I see them talking.  These are all reasons that have nothing to do with the elite levels of shooting skill that are displayed (you don’t need to be a rocket surgeon to know that the center of the target is better than the hill in the background). 

I don’t know if Chris has mentioned it on this blog, but he’s the editor of our school’s newspaper.  I’ve been begging him to give me 500 words to unleash an unedited fury upon the world.  He always responds with dumb answers like “Fill out an application,” or “No.” 

Luckily (for me, not you my fair readers) Chris has given me an opportunity to contribute to this blog almost completely unedited.  So I’ll start by immediately testing the boundaries:

F---.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, Chris wants me to give my thoughts on seasons one and two, followed by season four up to this point.  From that point we’ll see what happens.  Maybe I become a recurring character on this blog.  Maybe I disappear.  Maybe I change Chris’s password, take it for myself and ride this tweetmobile to superstardom in the blogosphere.  Who knows? All I know is you won’t want to miss it.   

Check back tomorrow for a super-rewind as I share my thoughts from season one.

Follow Tony on Twitter @thREALtonybader

How to get your friends to watch Top Shot

You may recall I mentioned my friend Tony at the end of my last Top Tweets post. He told me if I mentioned him on the blog he would start watching. Well last night at around 12:30 a.m. we fired up Netflix and watched the first episode of Season 1. I then went to bed. He messaged me on Facebook at 3:30 p.m this afternoon telling me he had finished the first season and was starting in on the second!

Colby has been tweeting that Top Shot needs more viewers to stay alive for a fifth season. Get your friends together and start watching. There are plenty of different way to do it. Netflix has the first two seasons available for instant streaming, as does the Top Shot website on History. The Top Shot website also has all of Season 4 as does Hulu (as of this writing). Not sure where to find Season 3 right now, but if anyone knows hit the comments. So get a friend to sit down with you and watch one episode, the rest should take care of itself.

Hopefully, I can convince Tony to do a little guest post on how he has enjoyed the show as a first time viewer, and I'll keep you updated if he starts watching along for the rest of Season 4.

Follow me on Twitter @cswiets

Top Tweets Vol. 6: Welcome to the Atl(atl)

Man. What an awesome episode. I had a feeling I might have been jumping the gun a little the other week  when I said this is my favorite season, but I think those qualms are being laid to rest. I'll go into this more when I do my analysis later this week.

Also, quick side note, I apologize for skipping out on posts this weekend. Spring break mayhem once again intervened, but I'm back at school to push through seven more weeks of academia before getting tossed out into the real world. Which is just a long way of saying that posting should be pretty regular for the rest of the season.

After a few dull weeks, Colby finally busted out some good tidbits about the behind the scenes action of this episode. Here are some of his top tweets:

• If you need some shells for your 3.2" Bag Gun, you can follow in the footsteps of Top Shot and special order them from Billet Aluminum.

• Tonight's expert for the bag gun, Rick Pohlers, hit the bullseye on his first test firing.

• Colby, unfortunately, did not get an opportunity to fire the cannon.

• According to Colby the Bag Gun had the loudest and largest concussion of any weapon to yet be featured on the show.

• In the team challenge, the bag gun was reset after each shot so neither team would have an unfair advantage.

• Although not shown on the air, there was a time limit placed on the team's to prep, load and fire the Bag Gun.

• Not really anything that provides any additional insight but here is my favorite question and response of the night (paraphrased): Tweeter: Why is it always so windy? Colby: Because it is.

• I've seen a lot of people asking about what contestants put in their backpacks on the Top Shot Facebook page, and Colby was able to provide an answer: "Backpacks:Eye/ear pro, water, layers, alt. footwear. You never know what the challenge will require or what the weather will do. Be prepared"

• I, like many viewers, was confused when the camera seemed to show Chris Cheng's atlatl dart hit the four ring, but was counted as six. The United States Practical Shooters Association (USPSA) rules state that if a hit breaks the plane of two rings, the higher ring is scored. Thank you to Stephen Ramsey of Ramsey Marketing for clarifying.

All in all, a pretty good batch of info this week. Stay tuned for my recap tomorrow and my analysis on Thursday.

Also, my friend Tony said he would start watching the show if I mentioned him in this post. So there, mentioned, start watching.

Stay up to date on my latest posts by following me on Twitter: @cswiets