Weakness, laziness, and stupidity are the only things that can be called vices. All else, in the absence of the above-mentioned, is virtue. – Joseph Stalin
Sorry about yesterday. I haven’t had a very good last two days. First I blow a processor Sunday night. Then Cartoon Network decides to switch Late Night Black and White to Saturday nights and put on an overnight block of early Hanna-Barbera, which I’ve called unmitigated garbage in front of the cartoon smarks before. Then I blow the replacement processor Monday evening after the stores are closed. Then Tuesday night, I hit the ATM for some cash and get into a fender bender, and I get the ticket even though the other person involved, myself, and the cop agree that it was no-fault (but the cop had to give a ticket to someone). Today, I have to drive into Chicago to take some stuff back that I purchased a couple weeks ago. My bad karma’s definitely in overdrive right now, and that puts me in a very, VERY bad mood.
Surprisingly, though, I won’t complain about Vengeance’s booking in the final events (pleasantly surprised, I’d say), and I didn’t bother watching Raw last night due to the fact that I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown about the computer. So while I’m getting Windows set up yet again, I’ll just chuck this one out to you, along with the comments I originally had for yesterday’s column. Although I will say one thing: I wonder how much giving Jericho the Unified Title is in the realm of patronizing and how much is in the realm of “We can’t think of anything else better because either Austin or Flex has to head into Wrestlemania with the straps and we don’t want to give them to him until Royal Rumble”.
THE PIMP SECTION
Gamble. Letawsky, although he didn’t mention the fact that I had the Benoit answer in last Wednesday’s news column. Cole and his international news. And the Raw duo of Mistah Keith and PK. PK, just a note: when someone bitches at your spelling, go after his, especially when he makes a spelling mistake in the same sentence (“coherent”). And the answer to this week’s trivia question is “too damn many”. Of course, I do have something against organized religion. That leads me nicely into my next topic…
UH OH, HE’S GOING TO TALK ABOUT BIN LADEN…
There’s a big fooferaw right now because it looks pretty good that Osama bin Laden will win Time’s Man of the Year. The protests are already vehement, and I can certainly feel for the folks at Time considering my experiences over the past couple months. Personally, I’ll protest if he ISN’T named Man of the Year. The award is given to the biggest newsmaker of the year, for good or bad, and that’s bin Laden. There’s absolutely no reason for anyone to bitch and moan about this. Hitler won it twice. Stalin won it. Hell, look who won it last year. The point is that there’s precedence for a newsmaker not of the most stellar of character to win the award. It’s not an award to honor the best newsmaker, and that’s something people don’t understand. Well, maybe I can pound it into your concrete skulls. The man was behind the most important story worldwide in calendar year 2001. That’s the main criterion for selection as Man of the Year, so he should win it, and screw all of you who want only feel-good stories. Reality isn’t like that. So lay off Time and move on to other things, like protesting about me not winning it. And speaking of the undeserving…
RESECQUIAT IN PACEM
College football died at the rough age of 115 on Saturday, succumbing to a season of mind-numbing dementia and heart failure by numerous teams. It was Saturday’s quadruple whammy that finally did the formerly beloved game in. Hawaii and BYU proved what happens when two teams with no defenses and gimmick offenses meet up and made people at the Rainbows’ stadium wonder if the scoreboard had the capability for a third digit. LSU beating Tennessee had the computers that ran the life-support system going wonky. But it was the Cornhusker Double that provided the fatal blow. There is no way that Eric Crouch should have won the Heisman or that Nebraska should be playing for the national title. I’ve been through enough torturous and convoluted mathematics in my time to know that you can make numbers mean anything, and the BCS is so devoid of meaning on its own that its numbers beg you to make something of them. Let’s just hope that this will make the senescent morons at the NCAA and major college football programs see that a playoff’s the only way to go. If it takes Nebraska winning the national title to do so, I’m rooting for them in the Rose Bowl.
And before you Nebraska weirdos start writing in, just take a look objectively for a second. You’ll realize that what I’m saying is true, especially about Crouch. I defy you to tell me he was better this year than Joey Harrington or Rex Grossman or Ken Dorsey or even Antwan Randle-El or Kurt Kittner, all of whom have NFL futures. And that’s just at the quarterback position. Crouch was lucky enough to be in the position where it was his team’s defense that lost a single game for them instead of him making the major mistakes. The Heisman is NOT an MVP award. It’s for the best player in college football. Eric Crouch is not that. And the ‘Huskers playing for the national title is a complete joke after that loss to Colorado. I saw a good portion of that game, and it was a laugher from start to finish. Of course, Colorado playing for a national title would have been a joke with two losses, but at least they won their conference, so there’d be less bitching from the likes of Oregon or Illinois, teams that suffered a loss because their conferences traditionally beat up on each other.
Read Chris Fowler’s analysis on espn.com (which was essentially read over the air by Dan Patrick on the Sunday night Sportscenter). The whole national championship picture turned on a Texas Christian interception late in the game on Friday night against Southern Mississippi. TCU’s win provided Nebraska (who beat them earlier in the year) with the difference in strength of schedule to overcome Colorado and Oregon. The national championship game in college football was decided by a single interception in a nothing game in Conference USA between two third-echelon teams (talk about “for the want of a nail”). Something is wrong with a system that allows this to happen.
Screw college football.
AND SCREW THE BEARS TOO
The loss would have been easier to take if the game had been interesting (no loss to the FudgePackers is easy to take). But it wasn’t. I kept taking looks while finishing up an article that doesn’t deal with wrestling (no, it wasn’t this column). Third dull game in a row for the Bears, and with Tampa coming up next week, things aren’t looking like they’ll change. God, I’d Van Gundy on them in a second if it wasn’t for the momentum. Kinda like the way I feel about the WWF right now.
AND SPEAKING OF THAT…
I’d like to address some people in my audience right now. You know who you are. You’re the ones who write me and ask me why I keep writing a wrestling-related column if I “hate wrestling”. I’d like to try to figure out the logical process by which you reach the conclusion that I hate wrestling. No, I hate what the WWF is doing right now, and I hate some of the people that the WWF happens to be pushing. In order for that to equal me hating wrestling, that means that the WWF right at this moment is wrestling and always has been wrestling. That not being the case should be obvious even to the dimmest among you.
Do you people honestly think that every single person who writes about wrestling has to be a cheerleader for everything involved with wrestling, and has to mark out at everything that can be remotely defined as marking-outable? That wrestling fandom has to be one gooey mass holding the same opinion of a product, and that opinion has to be positive? If you think that, you’ve become the Gooney Bird Rick Scaia or that idiot from one of the WWF magazines who wrote that essay (and I’m working on a counterpoint to that drivel right now). I choose not to. It’s a very easy choice for me. The WWF is putting on what I consider to be dreadful entertainment right now, even by its own abysmal historical standards. It is worthy of being criticized, and I do so. You don’t realize that I don’t have to say anything positive about anything if I don’t want to. The less positive aspects I see in WWF programming, the less likely I am to say anything positive about them. I don’t give points for effort.
I actually had someone write me last week and ask me what I do like about wrestling. That was a first. It actually restored my faith in some of humanity. It showed that someone out there understands the difference between negativity and hatred. It’s a basic difference defined best by Aristotle: negativity is potentiality, hatred is actuality. My potential has not been activated yet. Now let me demonstrate that to you further:
I like Chris Jericho; I hate the way he’s being used (except for Vengeance). Ditto Kurt Angle, Steve Austin, Steve Regal, and Chris Benoit.
I liked Duane Johnson’s heel character; I loathe beyond comprehension the fact that he’s playing the same act as a face and has been for two and half years, among other things.
I like Rob Van Dam; I hate the fact that he can’t cut a promo to save his ass.
I like Paul Heyman, manager and commentator; I hate Paul Heyman, businessman, self-promotionalist, myth-maker, and Howard Rourk impersonator.
I liked Jerry Lawler, wrestling commentator; I hate Jerry Lawler, tit and Lolita fetishist who has nothing better to do on a mic than try to get himself over instead of the match.
I liked Shaun Michaels as an in-ring performer; I hated Shawn Michaels as a backstage politician. Ditto Bret Hart. Double Ditto Mitsuhara Misawa.
I like Toshiaki Kawada and Jun Akiyama; I hate the puro-elitists who insist that they’re the be-all-and-end-all of wrestling. I hate Akira Taue; I detest the puro-elitists who try to sell me on him as the Second Coming when he’s nothing but a Japanese Kane.
I like when people make MP3s available for me to download; I hate when those people can’t do ID3 tags properly.
I had to throw that last one in, sorry.
I treat wrestling as a holistic continuum, not a series of discrete events. Each show is a part of a thread comprising all shows, past, present, and future. I treat the on-camera stuff as only the most visible part of the entire business (and that whole does include fandom). No single show can be isolated from any other, and what goes on screen cannot be separated from the backstage conditions that create what gets broadcast. You cannot be a wrestling fan without considering wrestling as a whole, and what you see on Monday and Thursday nights with the WWF is only a small part of that. What’s going on in the WWF right now, both in front of and behind the camera, stinks to high heaven. If you deny that’s happening, you’re so ignorant it’s not worth my time trying to talk to you about it.
The neo-marks out there and the marks who don’t want to advance to smarkdom are willfully living in ignorance and putting blinders on their taste, all out of their own fear that they might somehow “not like wrestling anymore” (you can tell who they are; they’re the ones who keep saying “it’s only wrestling”). Instead, they hide their heads in the sand and play cheerleader while the WWF gets away with feeding them a diet of unadulterated shit, for the simple reason that they can do that without fear of alienating the willfully ignorant. And these people want me to behave like they do? I’m not only immune to so-called peer pressure, I’d rather rip my balls off with long-nosed pliers than succumb to it. To quote Alan Parsons, “I don’t care what you do; I wouldn’t wanna be like you.”
Now remember the fact that I stated that the fans are part of wrestling as a whole. By encouraging the WWF to keep putting out what they’re putting out, you as fans become a part of the problem. Criticism keeps them on their toes and makes them understand that things aren’t working. But if you want to be uncritical, if you want the same old stuff like you’ve been getting, if you’re actually so devoid of taste that you enjoy what they’ve been putting on, go ahead. It’s your prerogative. It’s mine to keep the pressure up with this forum that I am very happy to have, to push for actual change where I think it’s needed, and in the WWF right now, I think it’s needed top to bottom. That doesn’t make me a non-wrestling fan; it makes me a more aware and astute one.
You know, I think I want to put in one final tidbit in the list above:
I like wrestling; I hate wrestling fans who settle for the status quo when it’s an inferior product.
Speaking of inferior product, let’s go to Smackdown. Spoilers, as usual, are from Rajah.
HOLD ON THERE A SECOND, COWBOY…
What do you mean it’s not up? Rajah always has the SD tapings up by about 11-11:30 CT. It’s after midnight CT, and still nothing. Excuse me, I’m on deadline here. I have to have something to put in here. Shit…
Well, we can use our imagination. Let’s see, Austin will probably get the opening promo spot and complain about the cage match, Jericho will respond, and that’ll set up our Royal Rumble main event. UT will squash, oh, Crash Holly for the Hardcore Title (or maybe Tajiri…hell, someone small). An impromptu midcard tag team will face the Dudleys. Some weird main event will take place. Just use your imagination. God knows that’s more than the WWF usually does.
I hate to throw it on Grut’s shoulders, but that’s what I’ll have to do, I guess.
ANY OTHER NEWS?
Well, no, not really. WWA show in Cardiff, but I don’t think anyone cares anymore. The whole Billy Silverman thing is so ridiculous to talk about that it shows the pathetic nature of the business of Internet wrestling that it’s being made up into a cause celebre by certain sites (the same major ones led by people who have an axe to grind against the WWF). Ashish already discussed the ratings; again, I tell you to see how long the bump lasts (two weeks is the usual). And, let’s face it, Masahiro Chono’s bulging discs and Kazuyuki Fujita’s achilles are of interest only to the aforementioned puro-freaks.
Well, here’s one item. Bob Holly wrestled a dark tag match on Monday night with Crash. However, there’s one little problem with that: he doesn’t have medical clearance and shouldn’t get it for three to four more months. I know the guy’s recovering from surgery and he’s itching to get back into it, but the one thing he shouldn’t do is take risks. He’ll have a career when he’s cleared; hell, Billy Gunn has a career, and he’s a Vince loyalist.
To hell with it. I’m too busy right now reinstalling stuff yet again. I’ll turn it over to Grut and reiterate my apology that I wasn’t here yesterday. Have a good one.
