Yet another goddamn day with nothing going on. You see, unlike other news columnists here, I actually like talking about wrestling news on occasions…okay, not much, but you know what I mean.
This happens once a month. It’s the Internet News Writer’s equivalent of menstruation. Week before a PPV plus the WWE Information Black Hole equals The Void. It’s really tough to come up with stuff to talk about that doesn’t expand on the News McNuggets offered to us by the Torch/Observer/1bullshit. I mean, who wants to talk about Nathan Jones being kept off television in order to keep his angle with UT intact? Who wants to talk about Nathan Jones in the first place?
Look, Smackdown has been offering a safe haven of fun lately, but now that Vince is on there on a full-time basis, the Critical McMahon Mass has been reached and there’s no dampening rods in place to stop the chain reaction from exploding. So our fun with Smackdown may be over. Our fun with Raw died from Ebola virus a long time ago. Anderson said we should talk about TNA and puro and lucha and indies for a while, but there are those of us who are reclusive and cheap and spend more on medication each month than food, thus limiting options to whatever comes across the broadcast airwaves. And the people who can supply me with said stuff…I am not giving away my address in public. One fan already figured it out, and I don’t need others to do so.
You know, I don’t have an appointment with my shrink until next Tuesday. I’m hoping that I can hold out until then.
The good news is, I stopped for a couple McRibs yesterday. They are available for a limited time only, you know.
THE PIMP SECTION
Grut and Daniels discuss the merits of Ultimo Dragon, the Drunkards of Doom, and mice testicles.
Anderson is not only back, but he gives us half a pre-written column and half a column that was solicited from us, the staff. Since I’ve never seen Barely Legal, I didn’t bother responding. But the way Anderson did this…well, he’s my hero. It’s in tribute to him that I always pad the Wednesday column with Mailbag in order to make it look like I’m actually doing some work.
It’s always a pleasure to pimp NoSoul, since we’ve got that one degree of separation with Hyatte and all that.
Quasi-Pimp here: If Ashish thinks that giving the ratings update crap to Darren Hewett will stop me from making ass-rape innuendo in this column viz. that issue, he is sadly mistaken. There’s a reason it’s called the Largest Undefended Border In The World, you know. Frontiers do not stop the necessity to use Ass Cream ™.
Now for the non-wrestling stuff…
THE LIES OF TEXAS ARE UPON YOU
(This one’s been one of my biggest requests for political commentary, so I need to do it in order to satisfy a good portion of the audience.)
So Democratic lawmakers in Texas have high-tailed it out of the state in order to prevent a quorum for a vote regarding reapportionment of representation that would give the GOP a huge boost in The Home Of Dubbaya. They’ve even gone to the point of crossing the border into Oklahoma to avoid the Texas State Cops, which, under normal conditions, would be for Texans the equivalent of the aforementioned ass-rape.
Let’s get the non-partisan issues out of the way. I think it’s fun. There’s a long tradition in government called a “pocket veto”. It’s a delaying tactic, usually used on controversial issues, to let a bill go past its sell-by date in order to kill it without having to make a public stand against it. The TexDemos have taken this two steps further: they’ve pissed out of state and did it in a very public manner. And all they have to do is stick it out until tomorrow, when the reapportionment bill dies.
Now, for the partisan stuff. The GOPers are doing things like putting pictures of the representatives on the sides of milk cartons (the traditional method for publicizing missing children), and spreading around decks of playing cards with their pictures on it ala Iraq. Not dirty pool, but an extension of the fun. So, no problems there.
Then one of the most evil men in Congress has to get his two non-cents in. Tom DeLay is the House Majority Leader, the most powerful Republican in the larger cameral of the bicameral legislature, not to mention the Martin Bormann to Dubbaya’s Hitler. He’s a person who even hardcore Republicans hate because of his didacticism and general asinine behavior. He’s the one behind the whole reapportionment scheme in order to extend his power base. He’s calling the Demos “cowards who should stand and fight”.
What DeLay is missing, other than most of his functioning brain cells, is the point, other than the one on the top of his head. DeLay says, “Texans deserve representation that reflects their values and beliefs. Fifty-six percent of Texas voters cast their vote for a Republican congressional candidate last fall, yet Texas sends more Democrats than Republicans to Congress. We’re trying to change that.”
Hypocrisy Alert! Five hundred thousand more voters in 2000 voted for Al Gore than for Dubbaya, but DeLay sure as hell isn’t going to mention that.
(Don’t get into another Electoral College debate with me, please. DeLay’s mentioning popular vote, so I’m keeping it on that level.)
Also, DeLay doesn’t seem to understand the rules about his own workplace. House seats are apportioned by attempts at equal population per district, not by popular vote. I don’t have to look that far to see how this one works. Illinois has a tradition of sending more Demos to the House than GOPers even when the popular vote goes the Republicans’ way. This is due to a quirk of demographics. Cook County once contained the majority of Illinois’ population, and is heavily Democratic. The rest of Illinois is heavily Republican (this isn’t necessarily the case anymore due to the expansion of the Chicago suburbs in DuPage, Will, Lake, and Kane counties and the migration from city to suburb). Voters in Cook County show up at the polls at a lower percentage than Downstaters. The result of this is big wins for the respective parties in each of their districts, with GOPers getting the majority of the vote but more Demos getting into Congress. So tough titty on that issue.
There’s also the fact of how reapportionment is performed. It’s a long-standing decision by the Supremes that reapportionment should be done in a manner that ignores political partisanship and other factors. Let me give another close-to-me example of that. After the 1990 Census, Illinois went through its reapportionment. The new Fourth House District ended up looking like the rounded end of a paperclip. Why did this happen? Because someone in Springfield looked at a demographic map of Chicago and saw the two major concentrations of Hispanic populations in the city: the Mexicans on the South Side, and the Puerto Ricans on the Near North Side. So, they provided a bit of connective tissue between the two neighborhoods and concentrated the Hispanic population into one voting bloc in one district. The Supremes put the kibosh on this one as fast as possible, despite the argument made that Chicago wasn’t “represented in an ethnically-proportionate manner”. The map was redrawn, and Chicago still ended up getting its Hispanic congressman, Luis Gutierrez. Turns out that Lil’ Looie has been one of Chicago’s most effective congressmen over the years, so all’s well and good.
But there’s a term for this type of behavior. It’s called “gerrymandering”, and that’s what DeLay’s trying to do. It’s illegal and, in this case, blatant. Zach Singer, The Only Man More Liberal Than I Am, summarizes it well: THIS is the kind of backbone-showing, take-no-prisoners approache the national party had better show, or fascism, here we come.
What the Demos in Texas are trying to do is morally correct, despite their methods. I approve on one end, but mildly disapprove on the other due to the fact that it could be a PR disaster…
Oh, Jesus, I’m starting to talk like the Gooney Bird. Let’s move on.
THE BLUE TEES OR THE RED TEES?
For the non-golf-fans among you (and for the benefit of BFM, who asked me about this), I’ll explain the situation:
I believe it was John McEnroe who said that the woman ranked Number One on the tennis tour couldn’t beat the man ranked Number One Hundred. But this isn’t an issue of whether one of the Williams sisters can beat Andre Agassi (probably not, but it won’t be love-love). In golf, this isn’t true anymore.
Annika Sorenstam is more dominant on the women’s tour than Tigger is on the men’s. Like Tigger, she’s being called the greatest golfer ever of her gender while she’s still playing. She’s the only woman ever to shoot a 59 in a tournament, something only a few men have ever done. Given the evident provided by Silly Season Made-For-TV events, she is probably the first woman since…well, hell, Babe Didrickson that can hang with the boys. And she’s pretty hot too.
She has been given a sponsor’s exemption to play in a PGA event next week, the Colonial, down in Fort Worth, Adjunct Of Oklahoma. This has been long-rumored to happen, almost as long as Goldberg’s WWE arrival. She is going to play on equal terms with the men. She can’t bang out Tigger-esque drive distances, but she has the length of some pretty good male players.
If Martha Burk hadn’t exposed the fact that golf is a He-Man Woman Haters’ Club, this incident sure as hell has.
It all started with Vijay Singh. In an interview, he said one of the stupidest things a golfer has said to a reporter since Curtis Strange’s “watermelon and fried chicken” remark about Tigger’s Masters banquet menu after his first win at Augusta. What he told the reporter was this:
“I hope she misses the cut. Why? Because she doesn’t belong out here…If I’m drawn with her, which I won’t be, I won’t play.”
(This shows that dumbass quotes aren’t the exclusive province of baseball players, like the Colorado Rockies pitcher who recently said that he was terrified of gays and would completely avoid someone he knew was gay. And why does it seem to be pitchers who say that kind of stuff? Look at John Rocker a few years ago.)
Now, of course, Veej is trying to spin this one. Yesterday, he told other reporters, “If it was an attack on Annika at all, I would like to apologize to her…I actually said if I miss the cut, I’d rather she miss the cut as well. I hope she missed the cut because I don’t want to have a woman beat me.” The first reporter, naturally, stands by his notes. But that isn’t the issue. There’s still the matter of testosterone in the second quote. “I don’t want to have a woman beat me.” Veej, you’ve won two majors. Are you truly that insecure about your game that you’re afraid of a woman doing better than you?
Naturally, this has polarized the golf world. Yet again. Every time an issue comes up that might change one facet of the game (other than better equipment, weight training, nutritional supplements, tutoring at a younger age, or anything important), the stupidity pops out of the woodwork. Let’s get some other quotes:
“The event reeks of publicity, and she should qualify for the tour first.” – Nick Price, defending champion at Colonial. Look, Nick, your victory last year was a fluke. You’re in that awkward stage where you think you can play the regular tour while waiting for your 50th B-Day to get your ass on the senior circuit. If you didn’t have majors’ exemptions, your ass would have been in Q-School. Think about the converse: if Tigger was given a sponsors’ exemption to play in an LPGA event, would, say, Se Ri Pak tell everyone that he should have to go through Q-School? Dumb.
“I want to see her play well so people can see how much separation there is between us and the ladies’ tour.” – Scott Hoch. That’s a great example of talking out of both sides of your mouth. You’ve covered your ass, Scott, and done it quite well. Please note, Hoch is high on the list of players to never win a major, and it’s been due to the fact that he tends to suffer esophageal spasms on back nines on the final day. That’s why he’s “Hoch, Rhymes With Choke”.
Surprisingly, though, the voice of sanity in this happens to be Tigger, who never says anything about controversial issues, and who has played with Sorenstam in those Silly Season events:
“I think it will be more fair to her if she could play four or five tournaments — then you could judge on those results. I’m sure if she did play four or five, she’d get on a roll … In one tournament a lot could go wrong for her…I hope she makes the cut. I would think it was a fantastic performance — no doubt about it.”
In other words, give Annika more sponsors’ exemptions and see if she does a good job. If she kicks ass, it’s going to be great for golf, period. More people will start paying attention to the LPGA and see that there are some great women players out there, and it’d be just in time with the women having their second major of the year the first week of June. There’s also the issue of kicking it up a notch. Annika is so dominant that Se Ri Pak and Karrie Webb are the only players at or near her level. The only players she can get a challenge against are men.
Plus, this issue is the flipside of the Augusta situation. Colonial is an invitational. They can invite whoever the hell they want. They’ve invited Sorenstam, and she’s accepted the invitation.
How did we wrestling fans feel when Chyna started participating in matches that only involved other men? There was a lot of uneasiness, and Chyna was made to be an exception given her build and fitness. But we got used to it. Intergender tag matches are commonplace and accepted by the audience now. We all know that Jazz could easily beat the shit out of Stevie Richards any time she wanted to, and that Victoria can do the same with Teddy Long. We have no problem with it. Who’s to say that this can’t happen in “legitimate” sports?
This is no Ann Meyers or Manon Rheaume type of publicity stunt. This is a legitimate demonstration of how the best woman in the world can perform against a select field of men. Personally, I want to see this happen. I want to see her make the cut on a very, very tricky course. I want to see if Sorenstam’s exposure will have the same result on young women that Tigger’s had on young boys, especially young minority males, thinking that golf’s cool, or the fact that young women of color are taking up tennis thanks to the Williamese. What I want is for the future of a sport I love to be strong. And that’s what the PGA ikhwans should be thinking as well.
I’m going to end the non-wrestling with an issue that’s driving me totally batshit…
ACTS OF DESPERATION, OR DESECRATION
We’ve seen the Road Warriors come back. We’ve seen Hogan go through a set of bullshit that makes whiteboard writing look like Dumas. We’ve seen Steiner and Goldberg appear on Raw like they were the Miracle of Fatima. All of this reinforces the feelings that the IWC have vis-a-vis WWE being desperate as hell in trying to capture an audience. The IWC is so fixated on wrestling, though, that they can’t concentrate on one day back from Smackdown, namely a certain UPN series that’s on at 8PM EDT tonight.
For those of you who don’t watch Enterprise (in other words, smart Star Trek fans), let me explain how they’ve done severe damage to Trek continuity, something that Trek fans absolutely freak over. This is as opposed to wrestling fans. We take things like turns and contradictions in stride (viz. the seeming contradictions of Kane’s history, although it can actually be explained in kayfabe terms, thanks, ironically, to Katie Vick). It’s part of kayfabe and suspension of disbelief. We understand this and accept it. Wrestling fans don’t really care about a history or timeline that’s not entirely internally consistent.
Trek fans don’t. And seven days ago, the “creative staff” at Viacom’s Milking Station did irreparable damage to the Trek timeline. All in the name of attracting an audience. Let’s start listing some of the ways that Trek and WWE seem to be alike before getting into the exact forms of abuse:
1) Try to establish something on its own as the first thing: To what must have been the surprise of Vince and “creative”, Kurt Angle got over on his own. But, except for Christian (who happens to be a locker room favorite), no one’s been given the chance since due to accident or purposeful consideration. You can blame Trip. You can blame Steph. You can blame Gewirtz. But the ultimate blame lies with Vince. Enterprise tried the same thing in its first half-season, but nothing was getting over. They were Trek Mid-Card, and everyone knew it.
2) If things don’t work as planned, bring in minor nostalgia factors: WWE brought in Nash, Steiner, and now the Road Warriors. Enterprise brought in the Ferengi. It’s established that Picard is a student of every ship called Enterprise (presumably including Enterprise Prime), but he didn’t know who the Ferengi were the first time he encountered them. Pay attention to that reason; it’s going to be used again.
2a) Minor nostalgia factors also include actors from previous Trek series. Enterprise has brought back Rene Auberjoinois from DS9 and Ethan Phillips from Voyager playing other roles (although Phillips has appeared in Ferengi drag before). It didn’t work.
3) If that fails, bring in Q: Voyager did this in order to get over. Shawn Michaels is the closest thing to the Q Continuum that WWE has.
4) If that fails, bring in the Borg: We are Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, and The Rock. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. I’ll discuss what Enterprise did last week in very great detail later.
5) If that fails, try a refocus: Enterprise will try this at the end of the season, including giving Jolene Blalock a new catsuit in order to still try to attract fourteen-year-olds of all ages. WWE screwed the pooch on every opportunity to do so over the past two years. The Invasion, the separation, now separate PPVs. Nothing’s worked.
6) If that fails…: Who the hell knows? Wait for the alleged fan cycle to upturn? Pray that someone’s tits work like Jeri Ryan’s did for Voyager?
But not even WWE has gone as far and as desperate as the crew at the Trek office did last week. In forty-three minutes (plus commercials), they proceeded to violate the most important rule of Trek Time Travel: Bend but not break the Temporal Prime Directive. Let’s see how each series handled this:
Classic Trek screwed around time travel twice in the series and once in the movies, with little damage (thank you, Gary Seven, for minimalizing the damage in the most important case). NextGen simply solved an effect-to-cause paradox. DS9 got away with this one once, when Sisko and Dax proved to be critical to the development of the Federation. Voyager may have done a whole boatload of time travel episodes, but the only damage was caused by character and plot convenience (the Doctor’s mobile emitter, a Trek equivalent of a necessary turn to keep a character fresh), not to mention total confusion regarding one of its first season cause-effect-cause paradoxes, which fans ignored because the episode sucked donkey balls.
Enterprise, in less than two seasons, has introduced an oblique time-traveling threat and solved a major future-history problem, not to mention the Ferengi difficulties. That’s bad enough, but the inconsistencies presented in “Regeneration” produce cause-and-effect problems that WWE would love to do so that their audience can ignore them and they can hit the Ultimate Reset Button. Let’s go through Enterprise‘s, one by one, okay?
We have to start here with a Proposition Zero, because it affects everything:
0) Don’t tell me that Archer and Phlox didn’t keep logs about this incident for future reference. If they didn’t, T’Pol sure as hell did (it would be logical to do so). That means that Picard, who is a student of every ship called Enterprise (presumably including Enterprise Prime), didn’t know who the Borg were the first time he encountered them. Told you we’d get back to that one.
0a) Can they weasel out of the NextGen “first contact”? No. Janeway specifically tells Q in Voyager‘s episode “Deathwish” that Q introduced the Federation to the Borg. Janeway always chooses her words very, very carefully.
1) The Borg frozen on Earth are from First Contact (movie, not NextGen episode). That means that they traveled back in time to prevent Zephram Cochrane from developing warp drive, thus preventing first contact with the Vulcans, thus preventing the Federation. These Borg, therefore, are 24th Century Borg stuck in the 22nd Century, and they are still connected to the Collective.
1a) The First Contact interference can be explained easily by it only involving the Enterprise-E crew and a drunk fantasist who no one believed (as stated directly in “Regeneration”). But the Borg should know about the existence of Earth from that incident.
1b) They can’t get away with saying the Collective doesn’t exist. Phlox experiences the standard “I can hear millions of voices” thing.
2) Since the Collective does exist, the Borg that were frozen immediately would have spread knowledge of Federation 24th Century technology to the Collective. They would adapt as quickly as possible to this situation, including assimilating battle tactics. This means that the modified Borg shuttle should have treated Enterprise Prime like an M1A1 would have treated a US Civil War cavalry charge. Bye Bye, Archer, it’s been good to know you.
3) Given the Borg’s nature, how is it that Archer, Reid, et al, were able to blast almost a dozen Borg to pieces before they adapted to the phase pistols? We’ve seen Starfleet people get off no more than two shots with more advanced phasers and phaser rifles before adaptation. Remember again, these are 24th Century Borg that have assimilated 22nd Century humanoids. One shot, maybe, and that’s it.
4) If Phlox’s radiation treatment worked so well against combatting the Borg nanoprobes, wouldn’t he have written it up in his log? If so, why would Crusher and Voyager’s EMH risk dangerous surgery to remove Borg nanoprobes (and implants) from Picard and Seven Of Nine, respectively? Just soak them down with radiation, and voila. Don’t say that the nanoprobes adapted to the treatment, because these are 24th Century nanoprobes, which presumably would have been pre-adapted to this. If Enterprise Prime wasn’t destroyed, the crew would have been assimilated. However, given the wooden level of acting by most of the cast, the difference wouldn’t have been discernable.
5) Voyager’s Borg adaptions were of the same kind as Enterprise Prime’s. So how come the entire crew of Voyager, with two centuries’ more engineering knowledge, took weeks and required Seven Of Nine to rid their ship of Borg material, while it took Enterprise Prime days and no Borg help to do so? Trip has more knowledge of Borg systems than Seven, with two hundred years’ less technological knowledge and not having been part of the Collective?
5a) For that matter, why the hell doesn’t Archer even consider keeping the Borg technology in place and trying to understand what it does? Voyager used adapted Borg technology on a weekly f*cking basis (engine modifications, the Astrometrics lab, Borg star charts, etc.; even nanoprobes became a deus ex machina for a while). This could advance Terran space travel by a hundred years in one shot.
6) So, T’Pol, it’s going to take 200 years for the Borg to come from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant? With transwarp conduits, which can traverse vast amounts of space instantaneously (as per the 30000 light-years Voyager travels in the final episode of that series)?
6a) Even if the Borg don’t have transwarp conduits at that point, either the First Contact Borg or the “Regeneration” Borg would have transmitted that knowledge to the Collective. Therefore, the Borg have that knowledge. And they can’t use it? Come on.
Please note that all of these statements and questions are working off established knowledge in the Trek Canon. All of this could be easily extrapolated to Trek History. If a little bit of thought had been put into this by the Trek “creative staff”, they would have realized that this episode was completely impossible to justify, even given Trek’s “I don’t give a f*ck” attitude about time paradoxes. This is absolutely painful to anyone who has ever loved Star Trek.
Also, please note that all of this was done in forty-three minutes. From the time it takes from the opening promo to the entrances for the Hourly Transition Match. Thirty-seven years of established history, gone in forty-three minutes. Imagine Vince cutting a promo that said that no WWWF/WWF/WWE champion since Bruno Sammartino didn’t exist; that’s what this is equivalent to. And I know that if Vince could get away with it for one of his satanic purposes like trying to draw a larger audience, he’d do it in an instant.
I am never, EVER, going to complain about gaps in WWE continuity again. Compared to the Trek Production Office, they’re amateurs.
Let’s see if it’s Amateur Hour again this week, shall we?
SMACKDOWN SOMEWHAT SPOILED
Isn’t four days after Mothers’ Day a little too late to Say It With Flowers, Hogan? And before you ask, yes, I called my mother. Hope that those of you with mothers did as well, otherwise you’re ungrateful bastards.
So Vince has decided to put a hit out on Mister America. The FBI, Mattitude, Cena…all the usual Smackdown Suspects involved, any of whom might provide some modicum of entertainment facing Hogan. So who gets the shot? If you’re reading this column, you already know damn well who it is. If you spend your cash on this PPV, and you’re not writing a column about it…oh, how I’m tempted to say You’re A Moron, but I reserve that for special occasions.
Other than that, nothing special. This is a pimp show for the PPV, and nothing happens on them. We already witnessed one painful example of this with Raw on Monday; this should be less painful, but still agonizing.
MAILBAG!
Memo to BFM: You had to send me that picture of Kordell, didn’t you? Look, I have little hope about the Bears’ season this year, and this has totally destroyed it. The good news is that he’s apparently had good practice on his moves to head over to Boys’ Town for a night out.
Let’s go next with more comments from The Only Man More Liberal Than I Am, Zach Singer, who found this little note about the man who nominated Dubbaya for a Nobel Peace Prize courtesy of a Norwegian news site:
Yesterday’s TV2 documentary “State of the Realm” traced a line between the Storting and the gay watering-hole in Oslo known as “Enka”. In the spotlight was Progress Party MP Jan Simonsen. It was the last straw for Progress Party chairman Carl I. Hagen, who has told Mr Simonsen that he will not be allowed to continue as the party’s legal affairs spokesman. From yesterday’s documentary Mr Hagen learned among other things of allegations that Mr Simonsen had helped his close friend Ivar Berge (28), manager of “Enka”, to get the gay club a licence to sell alcohol. Mr Berge has a previous German conviction for being an accessory to prostitution for which he was sentenced to four years in prison. Mr Berge was convicted of obtaining clients for 12 prostitutes on 340 occasions. The Rogaland county branch of the Progress Party will meet on Thursday to decide whether Jan Simonsen should be expelled from the party.
So, all you Republicans, if you think that Dubbaya getting nominated for the Big One is a good thing, look at the guy doing it and see if he upholds the family values that your party promotes.
And then Zach heads to Oakland for this little tidbit:
Some teachers in Oakland are rallying behind two students who were interrogated by the Secret Service. That followed remarks the teenagers made about the President during a class discussion…It happened at Oakland High. The discussion was about the war in Iraq. That’s when two students made comments about the President of the United States. While the exact wording is up for debate, the teacher didn’t consider it mere criticism, but a direct threat and she called the Secret Service…”When one of the students asked, ‘do we have to talk now? Can we be silent? Can we get legal council?’ they were told, ‘we own you, you don’t have any legal rights,'” teacher Larry Felson says.
Anyone who is still in favor of the Patriot Act, read this. This is the consequence of what happens when legislation like this is passed. Remember this fact: in a totalitarian society, academia is not safe. Under Hitler and Stalin, scientists had to promote the party line despite all evidence to the contrary, otherwise it was a bullet to the head. Does anyone other than Ashcroft want to see this happen? You want a reason to vote Demo next year? How about the fact that if Dubbaya is reelected, this law won’t be overturned?
Regular James Lawson wants some advice:
If you don’t mind, I would like your advice/opinion on something. I have been working for Winn-Dixie grocery stores for seven years and have been working as a vendor receiving assistant since July of last year. Recently, the company has decided to change the job code on the vendor receiving manager, which will do away with my job. This would put me in limbo with an unsure chance of moving up in the company.
My question is, do I want to give up $10/hour, medical benefits, and a 401k I’ve invested for five years for a new job that might give me a shot at management in less than a year? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Look, with my track record of employment since I left a cozy government job, I’m the last person you should ask for advice on that subject. That being said, I’d recommend staying put given the job market these days. He Who Dares often ends up on the losing end these days vis-a-vis employment. Stick it out, then reassess in a while when the situation clears up. Bird in the hand and all that.
I’d like to do stuff by The Priz!, but half of it blows Smackdown and I’ll get nasty letters. However, I do have to use this quote: Saying that SARS is “under control” has got to be up there with saying that only gay males get AIDS back at the start of the epidemic.
I quoted this because it leads wonderfully into this one from Patrick Merjo: Just in case no one may have mentioned it…Booker may have SARS.
Terrific. SARS has now become trendy. It’s the viral equivalent of Sony Playstations or Game Boy Advance SEs, Asian imports that Americans think are cool. Look, Patrick, there are hundreds of different viruses that could cause Booker’s condition. “Flu-like symptoms” are today’s catch-all for saying “he’s not feeling well, but we can’t track down the exact cause and he’ll be better in a few days anyway”. It’s not SARS, for Christ’s sake.
Also, let me bring up this fact which a lot of kids might not know: the original name for AIDS was GRID, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. That name got changed after more data came in.
Regular Andrew Ormberg just got a new big-screen TV which he’s creaming his jeans over, and I’m envious. He also notes a strange fact about the Canadian broadcasts that Keith hasn’t mentioned:
Another note of those damn logos (what do they call them, bugs?), up here in Canada we not only have the US logo, but often the Canadian network logo SUPERIMPOSED on top. It’s really bad for Raw, with the WWE and TNN logos, plus the TSN logo in the upper right.
Well, that still leaves the upper left available. Any chance that Widro and Ashish can call up TSN and see if we could buy that for sponsorship?
He continueth:
Gillberg as Akeem? I guess if “Indeed” and “What?” can be over as catchphrases and observing the (albeit limited) success of Ultimate Warrior and Honky Tonk Man, I guess it could work.
A bunch of other people liked that too. The thing is, I was serious about it. I like Duane Gill, and this angle is going so badly due to Rodney Mack that it would spark something great. I’d start it off by having Gillberg win a White Boy Challenge and have Long realize he’s a playa.
Again:
What was with the annc talk of Harvard’s facemask being an illegal weapon? It’s not like Chris does a lot of headbutts, or even one. I do like it, and wish they’d make a better deal of it, like a 2003 D’Lo’s Chest Protector. D’Lo should still be wearing that TODAY. It was cool and I used one for my N64 Wrestlemania 2000 CAW.
If it was less blatant than a facemask, I’d say yes. However, there are very, very few wrestlers who can pull off that trick of making it work with today’s SE emphasis (ignoring lucha tradition). Kane is one of them. I’m not sure if Harvard’s ready to carry that off. If anyone should try a pervasive international object routine, it should be Randy Orton following the family tradition.
Ditteau:
I still don’t get your hatred of Hurricane. Sugar Shane “Vertebreaker” Helms has been one of my favs since 3count. Wazupwitdat?
My distaste of Shane Helms goes back to the way he was packaged in WCW. You were in your late teens at the time. I was in my mid-30s. There’s a kind of lack of appeal in that age range for boy bands, and it totally soured me on Helms forever (and the gimmicks he’s had since 3Count haven’t helped; again, they don’t appeal to me). I’m going to discuss this issue a little further in a guest shot I’ll be doing in one of Matthew Michaels’s music columns.
Regular By Acclimation Derrill Guilbert goes into software piracy:
I’m looking for just a few things particularly, Office XP, and a coupleothers. I’m nervous about etiquette, as I am anywhere I am new, so I wantedto ask you before I went and pissed the group off. Is it cool to hit, say, alt.binaries.cd.image, and request things?
It’s bad form, really. What I’d do in place of Usenet is hook yourself into the eDonkey P2P network. Get yourself a copy of an eMule mod (I recommend Sivka), then head over to ShareReactor or ShareLive and tag what you want to download. It’s slow, but the popularity of the network has grown by leaps and bounds, and there’s a LOT being shared among users. It’s also fire-and-forget, which means you won’t really notice the slowness unless you’re an “I Want It Now” type.
This brings me to a subject that should concern everyone involved in this sort of activity. If you use any file-sharing program, please note that the **AAs have stepped up their probing heavily lately. Fortunately, the IPC (Internet Piracy Community) has reacted quickly. Intrusion Counter-Measure programs are starting to crop up. If you do any file sharing using any program, pick up a copy of ZeroData Bad IP Block List, which can automatically be incorporated into SPFP, is a great place to start your blocking. I switched from ZoneAlarm to SPFP (obtained via the eDonkey network) in order to use it. However, it does need to be updated due to new netblocks that need to be squashed and a recent site outage. Get both and use them.
Promoted to Regular is Joshua Crawley, who proceeds to note that misery is company:
This isn’t any wrestler’s judegment… it’s judgement day for the fans!!! because only God knows if we can survive this, and if we do, we must deserve heaven.
Why does such a shitty PPV have to fall on my birthday?
Because life is a series of cruel actions against all of us.
Full credit to Jed S for doing a great comparison between Iraq and the Invasion. Too long to print here, but magnificent.
George Metcalf makes a great observation:
I had the oddest case of deja vu when I was watching Ric Flair and the Triple H last night. I was reminded of Ralphus with Ric Flair playing the part of the snaggletoothed one. It started to gel when I was watching the match between Flair and the Hurricane. Flair was/is being played as comedy. He’s an accessory to Triple H who looks out for him for some unexplained in storylines reason. When he was tellign Flair to cool it after the match I could swear that this could easily have been Jericho and Ralphus. I’m sure there are many other correaltions between the two as Flair is a belly shirt away from being Ralphus 2K3.
And as a sidenote, wouldn’t Ralphus in the WWE be a great thing? Ralphus and Gillberg, tag team champs, would be the greatest tag team to grace Raw since…since…Booker and Golddust. They’d certainly be better than LOD or 3MW, right?
I’d love to see Ralphus back in any capacity. However, Ric Flair hasn’t reached that level yet. Vince is walking a tightrope when it comes to Flair. He wants to use him in more of a comedy capacity, but he fears the backlash from fans who would think that he’s desecrating the greatest pro wrestler of all time.
Ralphus and Gillberg, tag champions…not only better than LOD and Three-Moron Warning, but also better than the Dudleys at this point.
Anthony Volpe continues reflecting on WWE’s idiocy:
As for the LO(a)D, I’m in total shock that Hawk and Animal came back to Raw let alone the WWE in any capacity. Not too long before the Backlash PPV, the Road Warriors wrestled an indy match against Maxx Crimson and Mark Mest. From what I was told, Hawk was so drunk that he fell FIVE TIMES from the top turnbuckle during the match… Twice trying to give the Doomsday Device. At least during Raw, Hawk can blame RVD for ducking.
If this isn’t proof that the WWE is f*cked beyond human comprehension (let alone the comprehension of whatever species we’ll evolve into in 200,000,000 years), I don’t know what is. Hell, I’m surprised they didn’t make Blassie WRESTLE.
That thought crossed my mind. If the Dudz were still heels, would they have made Blassie do a table shot like Mae Young? As for the Doomsday Device, I’m glad they had Van Dam booked to no-sell it by ducking, because the last thing I wanted to see was that to be the finish.
Memo to Peter Bras: Not good enough to make YAM. Try again.
Brigitte asks the following:
I recently heard on the radio specifically Power 106 that The Rock is taking on a new project for a movie and that they are looking for teen boys to play rocks brother or nephew. Do you have any infomration on this or know where to look? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
Let’s see, you’re writing to me on an issue regarding You-Know-Who. You haven’t read this column for long, have you?
And I’d like to close with a major pimp for ChicagoWrestling, a great website about my local indy scene. Larry Sternshein, one of the main guys over there, contacted me about starting to try to cover the local indy scene, which is producing some worthy mutations, including a budding lucha scene to appeal to the large Hispanic community. If it’s not too late, Larry, contact me about the next show you’re going to and I’ll try to make time to join you.
That’s it for today. Sorry about being late and all, but better late than never. I’ll be here for the Round Table this weekend, then back on Tuesday to bitch and moan about JD and Raw. Until then…
About Eric Szulczewski
