Okay, this’ll be a quickie due to some weird exigencies that kept me up way past my bedtime here in the Cardboard Forest. Let’s start with one of them:
YOU’RE A MORON: WE DON’T HAVE TO CARE
Bra-f*cking-vo to Ameritech for screwing up the scheduled appointment they had to activate my phone line yesterday. Now I’m going to have to be without a phone for another week. Too damn bad that I needed it later today for an important call. These are the same f*ckwads that control the phone lines over a dozen and a half states, yet can’t transfer your account from one state to another (some FCC bullshit, I think). You’ve got to cancel your active line, then establish new service. They’ve managed to screw the pooch every single time I moved from one state to another in their service area. Illinois to Ohio, didn’t cancel my line in Illinois. Ohio to Wisconsin, didn’t log in the service activation in Wisconsin, which forced me to go through the whole process from the beginning. Wisconsin back to Illinois, this little event. There’s only one silver lining: I hear Verizon is worse.
THE PIMP SECTION
Go to the main page. Read everything. It’s all good, trust me.
The Fortune 500. The greatest argument against capitalism ever created. By the way, SBC/Ameritech is 27th, ten places above AOL/Time-Warner but twelve places below AT&T. Those are two companies that gave me GOOD customer service with cable modem and digital cable (although what the hell’s up with Toon Disney, AT&T?). AT&T’s bandwidth cap really blows, though.
Ryder Rentals. Talking Rain Diet Ice Botanicals (try the Key Lime flavor). OxiClean. Tylenol. Jack Daniels (try mixing it with the Talking Rain Diet Ice Botanicals, or if your move went the way mine did, try mixing it with OxiClean). I couldn’t have done it without you.
SMACKDOWN THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS
It’s the New Era Part 2, as Vince now gets pissy that one of “his” guys didn’t get the shot against Trip at Backlash. What sort of whining will we get from our favorite perpetually-in-mid-life-crisis billionaire this time?
You know, speaking of that, what exactly is going on with billionaires in mid-life crisis? There seem to be a lot of very visible ones out there these days. Larry Ellison is the first one that comes to mind, naturally. I wouldn’t be surprised if future archaeologists found the latter-day Fuehrerbunker buried deep beneath Oracle HQ. But what about Ted Waitt? Have you caught the new Gateway commercial? He’s driving a truck with a cow as his co-driver, and they’re singing Devo’s “Whip It”. This is supposed to want me to buy a computer from Gateway for what reason? Look, folks, Gateway uses the shittiest OEM parts, their processors are ridiculously slow, and customer support is a joke. Roll your own, folks. That’s the way I do it.
How the hell did I get off on that tangent? Back to SD…
No new set. Well, they did just change it a few months ago.
Vince does get pissy about the UT/Trip thing. He pulls out the equivalent of a Foley Magic Contract with the nonsensical statement that whoever won the coin toss would name the Number One Contender. Jesus, throw Flair a bone, will you? Oh, that’s right, he did. A bone by the name of Austin.
How wonderful of Flex to ruin a perfectly good Angle-Jericho heel-on-heel promo. And how very, very nice of him to pimp Hogan for the title shot. And how thoroughly sweet of Vince to let Hogan have it. Okay, that clinches it. I’m never watching this damn show again.
Well, we were all waiting for that Albert turn, huh? Thrills the living shit out of me, let me tell you. Now have him team with Billy and Chuck so he can revert to his “Bossman’s Bitch” persona.
The Edge/Angle feud would be wonderful if it was on Raw, a show that I’m actually going to watch, rather than on Smackdown, the nature preserve of wrestlers that I detest, like Christian and Page, who are fighting yet again, I see. Yeesh.
Guess that little rumor about the WWF starting to pimp red-and-yellow Hogan merchandise in preparation for a reversion turned out to be true. Wonder if wwf.com will have another editorial about non-affiliated websites getting incorrect information?
What the hell does the WWF have against Tajiri?! Losing the title to Kidman is one thing, but losing Torrie moments later? It’s shit like this that brought on Pearl Harbor, you know, and speaking of nine-figure-cost cinematic bombs, The Scorpion King opens very soon at a theater to avoid near you.
Welcome back, Bob Holly, and wasn’t it nice of the WWF to feed you Maven on your return? Be sure to send Vince a gift box from Hickory Farms this Christmas for that.
Your homework assigment for Thursday night will be to determine what the larger figure of these two is: 1) The number of times Flex no-sells in his match against Jericho or 2) the number of ways Jericho is further humiliated.
AND IN OTHER WRESTLING NEWS…
1bullshit is informing us that Raw scored a 4.8 rating this week. Okay, on the count of three, everyone: “You were right, Eric.” Thank you, everyone. Now just remember to check long-term trends, not artificial bumps. That being said, it’s a good preliminary indication that they blew it with the Draft by front-loading SD as much as they did. The audience isn’t buying Raw as being star-powered enough to keep the casual audience. That audience knows that if they want a fix of what they consider the “real WWF” (i.e. Sports Entertainment), they’ll have to tune into SD. Austin alone won’t save that show, people, and maybe this’ll finally deflate UT’s ego.
1bullshit is also reporting that the Sonny Onoo, et al, racial discrimination lawsuit against WCW will be expanded to include Turner Sports as a defendant. When the WWF purchased WCW, they did not assume legal liabilities from the previous regime, so what was WCW really isn’t involved in this per se. Turner Sports and Turner Broadcasting will be the main defendants. The Atlanta Business Journal, which 1bullshit ripped this news off from, is stating that the plaintiffs are looking at millions in compensation. After the lawyers get their share, Sonny will be lucky to be able to pick up a Slurpee at 7-11.
The Smackdown announce team looks like it’s going to be Michael Cole and Tazz, with Marc Lloyd as color man. I knew you couldn’t live without me mentioning that, so there.
As I said, this was going to be a quickie. Have a good one and enjoy Grut and Flea. Until next week, blah, blah, blah.
