Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc. 01.08.03

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We’ve tried potions and waxen dolls, but none of us can find any cure – Peter Gabriel, “Moribund the Burgermeister”

Amazing how Ol’ PG anticipated Katie Vick and Big Sump Pump’s magical syringe back in 1977, huh?  And, of course, you can always make the Trip-“Sledgehammer” connection if you want to drive this one into the ground.  But I’m not that way.

And it’s yet another Wednesday Games Without Frontiers (look, I said I wouldn’t use the Trip-“Sledgehammer” thing, not that I wouldn’t try to drive it into the ground in other ways).  I think I began this whole Peter Gabriel skein of thought last week, and I just can’t get out of it for some reason…

…actually, I’m doing this on about four hours’ unconsciousness or so because I couldn’t f*cking get to sleep.  That’s mainly because I had to bust my ass to do three days’ worth of work due to 1) my back yesterday and 2) my cheap-ass PHB who wouldn’t fork out for Saturday overtime for me so that I could actually keep on top of things.  Well, that motherf*cker’s going to pay for that, and sooner than he thinks…

A SORT OF OPEN SECRET

If you were reading me way back during my Shooters days, you know that I chronicled One Man’s History Of Unemployment, aka Eric’s Job Hunt.  A lot of people thought that one was cool, but I decided not to bring it back during my next job hunt for a simple reason:  the sequel is rarely as good as the original.  However, I’ve alluded to a third Job Hunt in the column with mentioning a few interviews now and then.  Well, the old maxim “It’s easier to get a job when you have a job” paid off.  That trip to The Middle Of Fucking Nowhere, Iowa is now turning into an extended stay (and kudos to the one reader who actually figured out where I’ll be working).  Better pay, far lower cost of living, a better job situation, no aforementioned PHB, mid-grade gasoline at the same cost as regular…what’s not to like?

Oh, yeah.  What’s not to like is that I’m going to be living out of a motel until I find an apartment, and Net connections are few and far between up there.  That means that I’m going to be taking a Hyatte-length sabbatical until those things are straightened out.  And I’m going to be taking it sooner than I would have liked, because they want me to start on Monday the 27th.  So I have two weeks’ worth of columns left until I’m off.  Believe me, they didn’t give me much time on this one; I just received the offer letter yesterday.  I’d prefer not to have a break in service, much as I did when I moved from Kenosha to where I’m at now, but that’s not possible.

So, the wish here is that I hope to be online as quickly as humanly possible on my regular schedule, and I hope you do miss me when I’m gone.

A MINI-PIMP SECTION

Haley has a fan in Bill Dearth, who only sends me hate mail.  I think that’s a little bit unfair, don’t you?  But Haley pimped me, so he’s a great guy.

And, Syl?  You’ve got to turn that letter you sent me into a column, if only for the effect of watching Scott Keith’s head spin like Linda Blair when he reads it.

AND THEY’RE BOTH RIGHT

A number of readers wrote in to me telling me what Victoria’s entrance music is.  Actually, there’s two versions out there, creating a “99 Luftballons”-like mini-confusion (and readers chimed in with both to clue my aging ears in).  Both versions of the song are by lesbo-techno Russian teen pop girl band (and I can’t believe I just wrote that) Tatu.  The English language version of the song (the one Victoria uses) is called “All The Things She Said” (and, yes, Kenneth Cather, the video is f*cking weird).  The Russian version of the song uses the translated title “I Lost My Mind”.  The remix of the music tracks and vocals on the English version creates a better all-around song, but the Russian version reminds me of a cross between J-Pop and Pat Benatar…oh, God, that’s scary enough, but scary in a good way.

SMACKDOWN SOMEWHAT SPOILED

Reflections courtesy of the Observer, because Da Meltz was the only one to have them up when I was doing this puppy:

Hmmm, Little NunziGuido is using a variant of the Stratusfaction, and BillHugh DeMorrus uses the sit-out powerbomb ala Batista as a finisher (both of these matches might be on Epilepsy this week).  Look, we all know that nothing in wrestling these days is original, but having a full set of identical finishers for each brand?  Talk about blurring the line.

Looks like Gail Kim’s going to be a WWE regular.  There’s one problem:  the lack of women wrestlers on Smackdown as opposed to Raw.  Give her her transfer papers, quickly.

Yep, folks, Smackdown is going to start with that dynamic match that everyone’s been salivating puddles on the ground to see:  TBS versus Rikishi!  Something tells me that I’m going to be getting some sleep tomorrow night.

Matt Hardy and Shannon Moore come pretty close to confirming what I always thought about both of them.  Maybe they can reuse the set from the Billy and Chuck wedding.

This may be the ultimate case of rookie pressure that I’ve ever seen:  Haas versus Edge and Benjamin versus Benoit.  Okay, so maybe I can blow off the first thirty minutes or so.

And that’s pretty much it, as most of the show is big-time SE in prep for RR.  That’s only to be expected, though.

BOY, THERE’S LESS THAN NOTHING TODAY…SO ON TO MAILBAG!

And speaking of that, here’s Sixtwentysix:

Yes, we the readers get it, It was a slow wrestling news day. However I’ve noticed your column reminds me of someone’s bad Livejournal.

Could you just get another column somewhere else in 411 that is NOT the WRESTLING news section? Maybe they could get a general recycled news column about shit most people read at CNN.com or ESPN.com section. That would be nice. I’m unsure but I’m assuming you are from Chicago since you talk about the most tedious and rehashed things known to man. Since moving to Chicago five years ago I’ve noticed that people here do that. Midwestern effect I guess.


Everyone on three…one…two…three….NEWWWWWWWWWWWW-BIE!  And get the f*ck out of my city, jagoff.

And here’s d.shields1 to continue on this vein:

Hey man,
You may not like WWE, but we DONT want to know your pesimistic thoughts all the time.

TRY WRITING SOMETHING GOOD ABOUT WWE.


Uh, no.  Next.

And who better to be next than Big Daddy his own self?!:

So Chris Yandel questions the actions of NHB in posting the Stasiak comments? I have but one observation (aside from the grammatical errors and run-on sentences): when you write a paragraph that uses the word “honestly” five times in the span of six sentences, you’re being anything but honest.

Oh, so true.  The pure lack of integrity on all sides of the Stasiak issue is mind-boggling.  That’s what good about 411, people:  we tell the truth.

Why did Trip wear Hulk Hogan’s orange skin to the ring last night? When I flipped back and saw him, I almost thought that the blue and green diodes in my picture tube had blown. After last night, I will no longer refer to Levesque as Trip or HHH; in my book, he is now officially known as “Orange Juice.”

Maybe he had the skin on loan-out, or maybe it was the combination of the baby oil and his usual crappy lighting.  That’s the only thing I can think of, because he looked reasonably normal backstage while Flair was admiring his lube job.

SFVis420, a regular correspondent, gives me props for pimping the Niners and then gets a great comment in about Raw:

…man, I watched all of Raw for the first time in a while (last time I watched, I flicked back and forth, always reading a magazine when I had Raw on).

I usually have a book.  Right now, my Raw reading of choice is Anne Rice’s Blackwood Farm.

Good God…if this show gets any worse, I won’t even read the recaps.  A super pose down???????  If people want to see that, they can watch it on ESPN.  And really, who didn’t see the end coming??  Maybe Vince will come back and say “Triple H, I’m sick of your airtime running my company into the ground.  I’m gonna turn you into the second Brooklyn Brawler.”  Then again…probably not, after all HHH is sticking it to Vince’s whore of a daughter.  Still, Vince needs to do something, and if that’s give booking duties to Eric, then do it.  Maybe if Eric isn’t worried about Vince cutting down his ideas, he’ll stop letting HHH have all the spotlight (hopefully he realizes HHH doesn’t have the appeal that Hogan did when he allowed Hogan control).  Something has to give though.

The problem is that we’ve been saying “Something has to give” ever since the Invasion started to go down the toilet (which was about one minute into the Booker/Bagwell match).  Nothing’s given yet.

Jeff Hansen revives an important issue:

God I hate Michael Vick now. And why the f*ck can’t they rig the seeding so we can at least get that Falcons-Bucs rematch now instead of later or never?  I thought Dubya was rigging everything?

He did by having Vick bitch-slap the FudgePackers.  Even he hates them.  And I’d love to see a Falcs/Tampon Bay NFC final.

I am like *totally* rooting for Christian in the Rumble, although I would benefit more in Stablewars if Lesnar won, which he will.

That would require that Angle hold the belt until WM, which I can see happening due to lack of creativity on the part of the bookers.  You’re right, though; Lesnar is a lock thanks to Raw.  When Jericho and Michaels both cut promos about how great it would be to win RR, that dooms them, although both will make the final six and then end up concentrating on each other.  I see a mutual elimination for those two.

JayPayDay asks why people hate Flex all of a sudden.  I’d like to give credit to myself for finally being able to burrow through the concrete brainwashed minds of the masses, but I can only deem myself worthy of partial credit.  I think it’s mainly because familiarity breeds contempt, and Flex has been using the same routine, both face and heel, for about four years now.  Hogan was able to stretch out his routine a little longer, but attention spans have decreased in the last ten years.

You also mention that it was okay for Austin to leave.  Actually, no, it wasn’t.  What pissed people off was the way he did it.  No notice, a boilerplate bullshit reason involving Debra, and his antics afterward alienated a lot of his former fans…well, those that hadn’t been alienated by his first pissy-wissy walkout.  As I’ve said many times, I don’t want him back, but his name’s been dropped so many times that the fans are expecting the glass to break at any moment.  The whole problem with the Austin situation is that WWE couldn’t spin it like they did Bret’s departure, which kicked off the Attitude Era nicely.  But that would have required someone of the talent and stroke of 1997 Vince Russo (not the guy on TNA today, the guy back when he was good), which they don’t have.

Jed, who’s also a frequent correspondent, chimes in with speculation about next week’s Titanic Confrontation (so-called because the writers will sink it):

I don’t think they’ll give an on-screen kayfabe justification for Bischoff getting booking power. In fact, I think Vince will come “angry” at Eazy-E for letting Sump Pump, the 3-Minute Nap and others run amok without control, thus firing Eric, and setting up an Eric & Steph vs. Vince feud, to culminate at WM with the Slamboree ’98 match that never happened: Eric vs. Vince in a workrate classic. It’s the last way Vince has of humiliating anything involving WCW, by beating down his old nemesis, and you can bet he’ll think it’ll get ratings. Besides, finding a kayfabe reason for Bisch to get power is something to hard for the writers (i.e. the BOB, the Golden Troll (Trips) and her lap-monkey Brian) to plot.

I kinda agree with that assessment, but the last thing I want to see is a Bisch/Bitch team-up after all the work that’s been put in to differentiate the brands.  It would also cause mammoth continuity difficulties regarding the Bitch of the Baskervilles, who’s thought of by the audience as Daddy’s Little Girl Clone.  The only way to pull off a Vince/Bisch match at WM that would work inside that framework is for Steph to turn on Bisch, which would be another in the continuing series of her self-aggrandizement.  If you look at it from any angle, it would suck.

That enough wrestling talk for you, Sixtwentysix?

And now on to a moment that we may have all been waiting for…

YOU’RE A MORON:  CAN IT REALLY BE HIM?!

Adam Welsh was 100% on target with a prediction he mailed me last week:

I just finished reading the best of “You’re a Moron” and damn near busted a nut from laughing so hard. Jesus, what is it about you that attracts so many braindead shitheads? Anyway, I agree
with most everything you said, except for one thing.  When Jason Gallo said he was done emailing you, you said that the sounds of champagne corks popping all over the IWC was deafening. Hell no! If anything, Mr. Gallo’s promise to never pester you again is cause for a period of mourning. Sure, the guy’s a clueless f*ck, but he provided more than enough entertainment value with his idiotic “ranting” (and probably made your job a hell of a lot easier to boot). So I say, let the anti-Gallo campaign commence! With any luck, one of his “friends” (LOL! Like that f*cker has friends) will let him in on what’s going on, and he’ll humiliate himself for our amusement once again. Here’s hoping.


Your hopes may have paid off, Adam.  It was a big surprise to receive a mail from “John Gallo”, who, like a coward, is using a certain free mail service with the handle jasongallo2002.  Let’s all be the judge to see if it’s the real thing or a pathetic impostor:

First of all, this was a single letter.  Gallo’s MO was multiple letters in short intervals.  Doesn’t look good so far…

Hi Cocksucker!,

Okay, that’s a very Galloesque start.  You’ve made up for the lack of multiple letters.

Boy, you can’t get enough of me, can you?

I had quite enough of you back in July, thank you.

A friend recently pointed out to me that you dedicated an entire column to some letters I sent you months ago.

That’s some friend you have.  What’s next for your friend, giving you West Nile virus?  Oh, and I didn’t devote an entire column to you, just part of one section, which makes you look more insignificant than you are.

You apparently re-printed them once again to make me look bad,

No, I reprinted them to crown you as Moron of the Year.  Consider it a great honor considering that you had to go up against Kotex, a troll of very little brain yet high skill.

but In turn did just the opposite.

Really?  Let me quote Jake Gnosis, an “intelligent Airborne Ranger” who wrote in after the Moron of the Year column:

In light of the fact that, in most of your reader’s responses, it is the general opinion that the aforementioned morons must be in the age range of 10-15, I would like to present a far more disturbing possibility.

These two dirtbags could, quite possibly, be fully grown, vaguely functioning adults.  I can just see them, coming home after a hard day’s work at the canning factory, sitting down at their grimy PCs and savagely, illiterately and thoughtlessly critiquing opinion pieces on the web, finishing up with a vigorous masturbatory session at a low-budget free porn site.  I imagine they wrap up by drifting off into the sleep of the just with their power fantasies of black belts and .45s.

Doesn’t that just send shivers up your f*cking spine?  I just hope to God the Marine Corps doesn’t get a hold of those halfwits.  Thanks to your column, sir, I am going back to work, full-time, on my plans to develop a working, high-yield contraceptive bomb.


Very good plan, Jake.  I’ve been out for too long to get a hold of some high-quality weaponry, but you’ve got access to the good stuff.  Back to the possible Gallo…
 
What does It say about you that you’re devoting just about a whole “column”

Again, it wasn’t a column, it was part of one section of a column.  Get your terminology right for once.

(I use that term loosely)

It’s not the only thing you use loosely, is it?

to some stuff I wrote last year?

Jesus Christ, it’s the first week of January and all of a sudden July becomes “last year”.  How about using the more accurate term “six months ago”?  “Last year” makes you sound like you’re continuing the downhill slide into idiotdom.

It confirms to me what I always thought about you:  That you’re a Mentally-Ill,

Yep, as any regular reader could have told you.  I went public about my mental illness a couple months after you were blessed by me, after I received a proper diagnosis.  So therefore the term is not an insult, as you intended it to be.

Untalented,

I think that most people in the audience would disagree with that assessment, even the trolls.

Little prick

Wrong again.  As I’ve said, perfectly average for your typical white guy.

with no balls.

(Looking down and checking)  Nope, both of them are still there.

Oh, and since you know were I live, why don’t you and your girlfriend John King come and pay me a visit sometime?

Because, as I said, it’s a waste of our time and money to do so.  Besides, we couldn’t find a flight to Connuecit.

C’Mon John, don’t hide behind the “I’d kick your ass back In the day, but now I’m too
mature” excuse.


Mistah King never said anything like that.  He, like me, thinks that you’re a total waste of our time to go after.  And calling someone out is the sign of an insecure little bully wannabe who is…well, a mentally ill, untalented little prick with no balls.

Your just a plain pussy-ass punk- ass bitch!

I’m pretty much convinced that this is the real thing.  Using his letter to insult John King again…how predictable.

I’ll be waiting

Presumably with your alleged friend, the second-degree black belt in Tae Yank Pud.

If you 2 ever decide to grow some balls and do your talking face to face Instead of hiding behind your laptop.

Desktop, actually.  And why should I risk projectile vomiting by having to look at you?  By the way, whatever happened to your petition to get me “thrown off the Net”?

Okay, so let’s go over the pros and cons of whether this is the real thing:

Pros:  Horrid use of grammar and spelling, hiding behind a free mail service, cliched insults, calling myself and John King out, the delusion that he actually has friends, egotism that I should honor him with an entire column.

Cons:  No multiple letters in a short period of time, no threat to shoot myself and John in the face, no mention of him being in a police academy and thus being able to get away with shooting John and myself in the face, pretty much admitting that he’s an adolescent by his comments about John being “too mature”, no threat to get me thrown off the Net.

This is a tough one.  I’m almost convinced it’s the real thing, but I still have certain doubts.  How about you people out there?  Think this is the real Moron Of The Year or not?

Ah, that’ll be it for this week.  I gotta head to work, where I’m going to give them that little surprise on Friday.  Fuck ’em, they deserve this for underpaying me.  They’ll miss me when I’m gone, and hopefully you will too until next Wednesday.