Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc. 10.01.02

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It’s the place where they keep all the darkness you need

You sail away from the light of the world on this trip, baby


– Karl Wallinger, “Ship Of Fools”

Geez. The Bears blow it in overtime, the Panthers miss a chance at humiliating the PackQueers, f*cking Detroit does something the Bears couldn’t (beat Nawlins), XFL vet Tommy Maddox shafts the Browns (which must make BFM livid), the GayBoys decide to test the limits of how much schadenfreude we can express over the Rams, and the US blows the Ryder Cup. This has NOT been one of those good sports weekends, folks (with the exceptions of Nebraska finally having karma come up and bite their dicks off and baseball season ending…finally). Hell, there isn’t any good mainstream news to talk about. I mean, what do you want me to talk about? Gay bashings in West Hollywood? For God’s sake, you drunken idiot redneck yobs, get a challenge. Beating up gays in West Hollywood is like dynamite fishing at a trout farm. A driver gets stabbed on a Greyhound? You all know the John Ashcroft jokes I’m going to come up with anyway by now, so it’s not worth commenting (but if I really see f*cking metal detectors at bus stations, I think I’ll start pushing again for Keith to sponsor me for a residency permit). Oh, God, I need something to get the ol’ bile roiling. Ah, I have an idea. Let’s start off with…

YOU’RE A MORON: THE PEOPLE ANSWER

You are such a pethetic peice of shit. Like anyone cares about your retardedness. Ashish was sick and did he bitch and complain ALL FUCKING DAY like your retarded (“bipolar”) ass. Ofcouse not, you know why because nobody gives a f*ck about you or the peice of shit janitorial company that you and Hyatte both work for. So suck it up stokehead you can’t feel sorry for yourself your WHOLE life. – Rocky94260, AOLuser

Okay, “pathetic” is misspelled. Ditto “piece” and “strokehead”, assuming that was the insult he was looking for. Of course, as is well known, I do not work for a janitorial company. Ashish’s illness was transient; mine is chronic. “Feeling sorry for myself my entire life” is a symptom of bipolar disorder, which anyone with half a brain knows. He mailed this to me three friggin’ times. And, of course, Rocky sucks. Now that those clues to his complete cluelessness are demonstrated, let’s get to the meat of the whole issue. I think I’ll let some reader mail speak for me this time, f*ckwad…

Hey, my uncle is bipolar much like you, and he is protected under the ADA act, so I hope you get it, best of luck to you, I can’t first hand say how much it sucks to be bipolar but I know it can’t be fun. – MWFDalCON

I was diagnosed as bipolar a week ago from Tuesday. I’m taking Topomax (I think that’s it), but man, it’s f*cked up. My doses aren’t all the way up yet. I kept thinking I had symptoms of depression but my shrink said I’m bipolar. I’m certainly not a doctor so whatever. But at least now I know what’s up…I’m a software developer and my HR admin MADE me sign an ADA form. She said they had to have me sign it by law and that my job was guaranteed for twelve weeks while I was dealing with my “illness”. My employer is completely

understanding and very supportive…That really sucks that your employers are being like that. That’s one thing that concerns me; how people will perceive me if they know I have a “mental illness”. Not that it concerns me as in bothers me, but that I don’t want some one to think I’m not capable of a job because of it.
– A person who asked me not to print his name, and I’m honoring that request

Well, depression is part of bipolar disorder (hey, it wasn’t called “manic-depression” for nothing prior to the PC movement in psychiatry). Type 2 bipolar, like mine, is all depression, in fact (during your manic phases, you’re still depressed; it’s called hypomania). I’m glad that your employer is taking it this way. I wasn’t worried per se about what people thought when I told them I had a mental illness, mostly because I’ve lived with it for a quarter century now and gave up caring about it long ago. It’s ADA that prevents employers from taking advantage of your condition and making those assumptions about you. That’s why we have to fight for our rights as disabled people, especially those of us with psychological conditions. It’s not visible, and there’s too many people who think that if they can’t see it, it’s not there.

Hi I’m also Bi-polar and wonder if you knew where I could find more info on the americans with disablities act specificialy the info about mental disorders. Thanks. – Jake Sweet. Jake, do a Google on it. There’s a lot of great sites out there that deal with ADA. Try Earthops and the State of Nevada’s commentary (Acrobat file, folks, so you need the Reader) on reactions to ADA by a state government (most states act the same when it comes to ADA discrimination).

UCal Davis has a great section on what bipolar disorder actually is. Must reading for those dealing with bipolars.

Now let’s hear from the lawyers:

I’m an attorney who specializes in disability discrimination cases…I work for Virginia’s Protection and Advocacy System — each state has one — a state agency designed and intended to protect and advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities. If you have any questions about your employment rights, or, specifically, how to file a discrimination complaint, email me. – Jonathan Martinis

I’m an attorney. I’ve worked for employers and have had to deal with ADA claims, as well as some others. Most employers will want to deny you unless their attorneys make them accept your condition as qualifying under the ADA. In other words, their attorneys were brought in not to see if you qualified, but to see if there was any way they could, with a straight face, say you don’t. See the difference? Anyway, if your application and qualifications are 100% perfect, the attorneys will tell your employer that they have to take you or risk being sued. Otherwise, they will deny you. They of course won’t tell you whether your application was perfect or if they found a valid basis for denial, so you might as well get used to the

idea that you might need to hire an attorney. There are a lot of good ones that specialize in ADA claims.
– Matthew Crain

Oh, believe me, I made sure that I had all my ducks in a row before getting into this one with them. All I needed to start “go time” on my end was a firm diagnosis, which my shrink gave me a week ago Friday after he heard from me about the effect of Lamictal on me.

Now here’s an update on the situation regarding my employers: they graciously invited me back to work on Friday. I went back on Friday, six hours late. No, not as an upraised middle finger to them; the Damn Vaninator was still being fixed (no lights popping up on the dashboard anymore, brake lines replaced…all good to go). The point we’re at now is the moral equivalent of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”. They want a letter from my shrink and then to go see one of their choosing.

Now here’s the fun part: as part of their perpetual reorganizations, they reassigned my duties to those of a more technical nature that involve less interaction with other people. In other words, #6 on my list of eight measures of accomodation (“Possible reassignment to a firmer set of duties that appeal to my strengths or reduction of my current duties to lessen amount of stress”). Uh, unless I’m reading the law incorrectly, by showing that they are willing to provide measures of accomodation, they are admitting I am disabled, thus fulfilling one of the three requirements for ADA coverage (and only one is needed). However, I’ll play their game for now and see where it goes.

So, therefore, RockySucks, there are people who care about this. In fact, the only one who wrote me who said that he didn’t care was you. In other words, piss off and don’t read my column again, bitch.

SO WHAT ABOUT MY OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOR?

Jane Elkins, the person who tried to define what women see in Jeff Hardy, wrote me back after being in Mailbag last week and assured me that she is, indeed, a woman, having given birth to a son and in possession of lactacting breasts. I’ll take her word for it (as for the other part, Jane, well, I’ll take your word on that too, if you don’t mind). She asks me what attracts me to my Beautiful and Beloved, saying “I mean, if you put lipstick and a training bra on a flag pole doesn’t it have the same effect?” True enough. However, my proclivities tend heavily toward tall blondes with great legs, especially ones young enough to be my daughter courtesy of reckless adolescent behavior and non-use of condoms in those pre-AIDS days. Vive le difference, I guess.

I could just use that to segue into Raw, but I’m going to give a double shot of quote from the song that I did in the intro, which definitely counts as a warning to WWE:

Avarice and greed are gonna drive you over the endless seas.

They will leave you drifting in the shallows, drowning in the oceans of history.

THE SHORT FORM

Dammit, overslept and no time for Raw. So I’m just going to read Scott and PK, and I suggest you do the same.

I can do a few comments about the results, however, so consider this a Smackdown Somewhat Spoiled format a day early:

I can understand pushing the Island Boys. They need to make them serious threats in order to bring some life into the tag scene (sorry, that’s going to require a booker named Frankenstein at this point). However, using two guys that happen to be really over right now in Booker and Goldust to do it is yet another in the long list of short-sighted knee-jerk booking actions that have screwed WWE in the last year and a half. Here’s a hint, Steph: matches can be booked so that the loser can retain their heat. A little wacky heel miscommunication in this one couldn’t have hurt, with the IBs giving Rico a little tough love afterward. Rico’s seen as a smarmy bitch by the audience anyway, so there wouldn’t be any kind of change in ethos for the IBs. But go ahead and try to kill BookDust’s heat just to push the IBs. No one will care, because, frankly, there’s hardly anyone left except the core audience anyway.

See the paragraph above for Randy Orton, Lance Storm, and Christian. Why exactly were the Un-Americans brought to Raw? They’re not played out yet, especially with the Regal dynamic being included. Yet they’re broken up. Why? Is it the perception that the only people they work well in the ring with are each other? Okay, I’d love to see Regal/Storm as much as any old-school lover, but still.

See two paragraphs above viz. Buh Buh Ray Dudley. Give him a push, then sacrifice him to the mate of the Bitch of the Baskervilles. All of a sudden, Shawn Michaels’ DX1-era sign “Who’s Booking This Crap?” is taking on a very unintended meaning.

You know, I have this feeling that Steph’s left the booking up to a room full of chimps with typewriters. It’s the only explanation for any of this.

So, it’s “Spin the Wheel, Fuck the Wrestlers” next week. Sorry, I won’t be attending this one. It’s Bears/PackQueers on MNF, and it’s kinda mandatory. Just want to warn you about that when you see something like this next week (and for that matter, the other two times the Bears are on MNF this year). And don’t try to pull the “watch one, tape the other” thing on me. There’s this thing called “sleep”. I’m not putting in ten hours plus at my job, doing prep work on this column, then watching MNF, then watching Raw, then shit/shower/shave, then do another ten plus, not even for you people.

See five paragraphs above viz. Chris…No, I can’t say anything about Jericho. “Mistreatment” has become such an understatement regarding him that it’s now numbed me to the ways and means the guy gets f*cked on a week-in-week-out basis. Don’t counter with the “Unified Title” stuff. That was one of the saddest, weakest title reigns of recent memory. You know, I was hoping that Bisch’s presence would somehow trick Jericho into thinking he was back on Nitro and kicking ass on the stick every week. Silly me.

Longtime writer Beau Landaiche thinks that the “going commando” reference by Ross was a tip of the cap to “Friends”. Sorry, Beau, the phrase is a lot older than that and in common currency way before some overrated sitcom decided to get a laugh line out of it. Personally, I’ve been going commando for years on the basis that it’s one less piece of clothing to wash per day…of course, that’s probably more than you wanted to know.

THE PIMP SECTION

Hey, couldn’t fit it in any sooner without breaking the flow of the column.

Vanderhorst gives a few short but deep insights on the subject of WWE (non)booking.

Cole goes ’round the world with action you might not have heard about or care about.

Bower gets no love from anyone here. I might as well drop a little his way.

AND IN OTHER WRESTLING NEWS…

Just a short point, because I don’t have enough time…

Have you noticed that the entire wrestling world pretty much stops dead on Monday night? It’s like we focus all of our concentration on Raw and blow off everything else. Raw gets dissected like some minor point of religious doctrine and we play the part of 13th Century monks, while everything else gets blown off. It’s just not worth digging into news sites sometimes, because even the “reputable” ones (which is a stretch regarding 1bullshit, but still) concentrate on Raw.

Honestly, since the first week it ran, have we done a feature story (not mentions in news articles, but a feature…you know, the stuff in the right-hand column) on NWA: TNA? It’s all been WWE. Okay, so WWE has the advantage of being on free (well, mostly free) television while the Jarretts make you pop a ten-spot per week. It’s more apt for wrestling fans, especially the casual ones who have nothing better to do at work than surf wrestling sites to see what so-called “serious” fans have to say, to be watching WWE programming. So, in a sense, wrestling websites are playing to their largest audience by covering Raw so heavily.

This really isn’t any problem until we start to get editorial opinion in the way. 1bullshit is beyond hope; Ryder admitted in a chat I was involved in during the death throes of WCW that he’d never work for Vince, no matter how much money was thrown his way, and Scherer still has a chip on his shoulder over WWE’s treatment of his beloved ECW. The Torch has always had an undercurrent of anti-WWE feeling, which is coming out more and more lately. The Observer is trying so hard to be the New York Times of wrestling that no one’s allowed to express an opinion, except Da Meltz responding to something in the mainstream media that dares to criticize wrestling (and he has a propensity to put out the most ludicrous counter-arguments that the mainstream media position is actually strengthened; he’s like Vince in that way).

This is why the independent wrestling website is important, especially now. The ones that have survived and succeeded during the period of contraction we went through over the last two years, when the collapses of WCW, ECW, and the dot-com boom produced a triple whammy, have the same editorial policy that WidShish have always had here: go for it. 411 is lucky in the respect that WidShish have been damn good talent spotters in addition to being good editors. They’ve created, through trial, error, merger, and luck, a website that can communicate to any level of fan. Hell, it’s so diverse that the writers even disagree. I might roll my eyes at PK’s or Vanderhorst’s more egregious moments of markdom, while they roll their eyes at myself, Hyatte, and Keith playing “too cool for the room”. That’s why we get so many hits, folks. It’s not only the “names” here, it’s the diversity. We don’t have an editorial line or an agenda. What we do is present commentary on the news and events in wrestling (and other things) in an entertaining, intelligent, well-thought-out fashion.

Let’s face it, 411 is the site that other independent wrestling sites want to be. And we’re glad that you’ve responded to it so well. So, thank you for supporting us.

That’s all for me until tomorrow. Have a good one.