Being personally attacked by people who don’t know a thing about you hurts. It sucks. I wonder, do you spend a fifth of the time you spend dumping on me doing something constructive with your life? I certainly hope so. You people are just like the people in High School who never took the time to get to know me, and judged me before I even showed up. – Wil Wheaton
TO MAKE UP FOR YESTERDAY’S NON-OFFENSIVE MATERIAL…
Okay…tripwire bombs, check. Claymores, armed. Aerosol carcinogens and mutagens, ready. Pit trap under the Welcome mat, dug and spiked. Now let those little bastards knock on my door tonight.
Welcome to Wednesday at 411, and Crappy Halloween. This is one of those holidays that I hate. I think it’s embarassing for anyone over the age of ten to dress up like something and parade around. I also detest the fact that children come to my door to shake me down for candy. Buy your own. You know, this is supposed to be a religious holiday, the eve of one of the most important dates on the Christian calendar, All Saints’ Day. Instead, it’s turned into an excuse for adults to get loaded, all the while looking like a complete moron, and kids to learn that begging gets you stuff. It’s the same kind of kiddie greed-fest that Christmas Eve has become, driven by the marketing departments of various and sundry companies. Don’t knock on my door looking for Three Musketeers bars; I’m playing conscientious objector.
TODAY’S PIMPS
Scott’s Award-Winning And Incredibly Famous Raw Rant. What else needs to be said? But if he doesn’t float your boat, try out PK’s Raw Report.
Letawsky gets the facts straight and presents them to you in a clear manner, unlike a certain other personality who’s trying to justify his existence now that his gig got pulled out from under him.
The Other Josh At This Site, Nason has got all the up-to-date info on the indie scene, so go read it so you can start dropping names of guys who’ll make the WWF eventually.
GARDEN PARTY
I couldn’t figure out which of my internal organs to rip out and dash on the floor while seeing Michael play in a uniform whose predominant color is not red, so I just sat down in front of the tube and cried for a while. I feel better now.
ERIC VERSUS ESPN.COM, AND ERIC WINS…
Every week on espn.com, Locke Petersheim of britannica.com does a column called The Annotated Dennis Miller, in which Dennis Miller’s more obtuse references are explained to the Monday Night Football audience. In this week’s column, Petersheim shows how a slip-up on one little word can piss off a certain well-known Internet wrestling columnist. Here’s the background. Dennis Miller used the words “Enrico Fermi” on MNF, so Petersheim decided to explain who Fermi was. Included in that explanation was this sentence:
Fermi co-invented “the pile,” the 25 foot by 20 foot uranium-powered nuclear reactor built under Soldier Field in Chicago in 1942.
WRONG!
One little word makes all the difference. Fermi’s nuclear pile, which was built in 1942 and was the first to obtain a sustained nuclear chain reaction, was not built at Soldier Field, the home of the Bears. It was built at Stagg Field, five miles due south and a mile due east of Soldier Field, on the campus of the University of Chicago. Today, that site is occupied by the univeristy’s Regenstein Library. An abstract statue by Henry Moore marks the exact site of the pile, between 56th and 57th Street on Ellis Avenue.
By the way, the nickname “Monsters of the Midway” also doesn’t belong to the Bears. That was given to the aforementioned Amos Alonzo Stagg’s University of Chicago football teams in the 20s and 30s, which produced the first Heisman winner, Jay Berwanger. The “Midway” in question is between 59th Street and 60th Street, extending from Cottage Grove Avenue to Jackson Park. It was the main thoroughfare leading into the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and is essentially part of the University of Chicago campus.
Who are you going to believe, some asshole from an encyclopedia website or a person with a degree in Physics from the University of Chicago, who certainly would know the history of Enrico Fermi?
AND LET’S GET SOME NOMINATIONS GOING…
Yesterday, I asked people to send me their nominees for the state with the worst pair of senators in the country. I put up New York, California, and Texas as possibilities in an effort to be bipartisan. I received some great ones in the mail today. Michael Zezas of New Jersey nominates his home state’s pair of Bob Torricelli and Jon Corzine. Let’s see, Torricelli’s friends with the Outfit, and Corzine’s a neophyte who spent $60M of his own cash to get elected. Corey VanDeest puts forward Minnesota, where Paul Wellstone, the Senator From Neptune, holds court along with spoiled brat department store heir Mark Dayton. D. Wattsoner, a self-described “Libertarian Republican”, surprisingly agrees with me on Texas’ yahoos, but comes back to form with his obvious nomination, Massachusetts. John Kerry still rankles some feathers for being the founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Ted Kennedy is simply Ted Kennedy. I have another nomination: South Carolina. Fritz Hollings in on my permanent shit list for being covered with the pocket lint of that Andre the Giant lookalike Michael Eisner and proposing the SSSCA, and Strom Thurmond proves the existence of the undead.
Mister Wattsoner also asks why I didn’t ask the converse: which state has the best pair of senators? That’s because there are so few that would qualify. If Rich Williamson wasn’t such a partisan puppet, Illinois would be on the list. In my current home state of Wisconsin, nobody has a problem with Herb Kohl, but I could see how some people wouldn’t like Russ Feingold. West Virginia, perhaps? Jay Rockefeller is cool, but a lot of people have difficulties with Robert “Pork Barrel” Byrd. The conservatives would put Oklahoma into the running, but, frankly, Inhofe and Nickels give me the creeps. Maybe Pennsylvania. Rick Santorum seems all right, and I’m sorta willing to believe that Arlen Specter making a fool out of himself at the Clarence Thomas hearings was not his normal behavior.
YOUR EXCUSE TO AVOID SMACKDOWN
Here’s those Smackdown and Heat results courtesy of Rajah…
Dark Matches:
D’Lo Brown over an unnamed opponent: D’Lo lives!
Mike Awesome over Sheldon Benjamin: Sure, the poor guy gets one half of the Prestigious Southern Tag Titles last night, then gets jobbed to Awesome the next. Glass ceiling for Guys With Two First Names!
Heat Matches:
Tazz over Spike Dudley: Remember a few months ago when Spike was main-eventing Raw? Now he’s jobbing to Tazz on Heat. Tazz was nice enough to give him some offense before putting him away with the katahajime.
Trish Stratus over Ivory: Trish’s variant of the Tornado DDT should be a must-watch.
Chuck Palumbo over Raven: ALERT! BILLY GUNN INVOLVEMENT! Looks like we’re going to see a Gunn/Palumbo tag team being formed out of this. And what sin did we commit to justify this kind of divine retribution?
Albert over Scott Taylor: Albert no-sold the Worm. That elevates him to prime face-hood in my book.
Smackdown Matches:
Test and Booker T over the Battling Bickersons, Reversal Of The Results From Raw WWF Tag Titles Match (Pinfall, Test pins Flex, Accidental, Sure, Yeah, Right Jericho Dropkick, New WWF Tag Champions): It’s Flex who acts like the asshole afterward, in case you were wondering. Sounds like a much better match than on Raw.
Buh Buh Ray, D’Von, and My Beautiful and Beloved Leggy Dudley (tm BFM) over Matt and Jeff Hardy and Lita (Pinfall, one of the Dudleys pins Matt, 3-D): We’ve all seen it too many times. My Beautiful and Beloved’s involvement does not change any substantives in the fact that this is Yet Another Hardyz/Dudz Match.
Angle cuts a long, whiny heel promo.
Kurt Angle over Kane, WCW US Title Match (Submission, AngleLock): Kane lasts a long time in the AngleLock, but that still doesn’t stop the fact that they’re trying to do a bad-ass sell on Angle by having Kane be the victim. The backfire is going to come very soon on that, I think.
Regal beats up Tajiri when Tajiri refuses a slot in the Alliance. I smell match between those two for later!
Christian goes for cheap heel heat courtesy of a couple of Cincy Reds.
As a reward for joining the Alliance, Steve Austin presents Angle with an Austin 3:16 cap and, oh, gee, the gold medals that Austin so courteously fished out of the water in Detroit. My God, they closed up a plot for once!
Christian over Bradshaw, WWF European Title Match (Pinfall, Greco-Roman Belt Shot, New WWF European Champion): Gee, that singles push ended PDQ, didn’t it? We didn’t even get to see what Bradshaw could make of it. Damn, I’m sick and tired of Christian. Of course, I was tired of him when he was 1/3rd of “Edge and…” And Teddy Long again proves himself to be the World’s Dumbest Ref.
Jericho/Flex is set for Raw, apparently for the WCW title.
Allegedly funny sketch involving a moron, a drunk, and a druggie, otherwise known as Angle, Austin, and Van Dam.
Rob Van Dam over Edge, WWF Hardcore Title Match (Pinfall, Five-Star Frog Splash): A repeat from Raw with the title stips reversed and the result reversed. Heat maintenance match, nothing more. Robert Bemis brought out a good point to me: Why doesn’t Edge have the Hardcore title after that clean win on Raw, 24/7 stip and all that? Because the WWF forgets about that stip when it’s convenient, I guess. He also takes me to task for not complaining about the whole Angle turn, me being a continuity freak and all. All I can say about that is that I was just happy to see that it was an actual main-eventer that defected, that Angle works better as a heel, and the whole show numbed my brain to such an extent that I didn’t give a rat’s ass about continuity.
Yep, Jericho/Flex on Raw, a point Jericho makes clear by plowing poor oogums through a table in the back.
The Undertaker over Steve Austin, WWF Title Match (DQ, Angle run-in): UT’s involved. Like I’m supposed to care. Pretty much standard violence here, nothing we haven’t seen a thousand times before. UT gets beat down by Austin, Angle, and Shane, so at least there’s a happy ending.
AND IN OTHER WRESTLING NEWS…
As Widro mentioned in his break, Raw went up .2 in the ratings this week to 4.1, thus giving us a real indication of how much the baseball game meant to the ratings last week. There was also a blowout on MNF, so that probably factored in a bit. In other words, don’t get your hopes up that they’ve bottomed out just yet.
Toldja Vince and Shane would be involved in the main at SurSer. The main event is official now, according to the Observer. The WWF will be represented by Vince, UT, Kane, Jericho, and Flex. The Alliance will have Shane, Austin, Angle, Booker, and Van Dam. My money’s on Booker coming up a good excuse for doing a match with Test in order to free that slot for Trip. Say, defending the WWF Tag Titles.
Chris Kanyon definitely has a torn ACL (for those of you who don’t know, that’s the anterior cruciate ligament, one of the two that go diagonally across your knee). He’ll be having surgery performed by Dr. James Andrews on Thursday in Birmingham, and is expected to miss three months. The knee was injured during his dark match against Randy Orton before Raw on Monday when Orton blew a face-to-face atomic drop and Kanyon landed wrong. Kanyon has already absolved Orton of any responsibility, claiming that it was just one of those fluke things. The sad part is that in order to miss him for the next few months, we’d have to have noticed he was there.
Hayabusa has regained some motion in his lower extremities, which is a good sign for an eventual recovery of his ability to walk. He’s also back to eating solid food. That’s exceptional news. Crappy wrestler and symbol of the degradation of FMW he may be, but being in a chair for life is something that I don’t wish on anyone.
Screw it, that’s all for me. I’m going to sit here for a while listening to Donald Fagen and start downloading Civilization III. Grut will be in tomorrow, and he vows to be sober and drug-free. Son, being fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life. Let the pros like Hyatte do that. Until next week, I like me, you like me, and I’ll get you to like yourself no matter how much you repulse me.
