Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc. 05.27.03

Archive

You see, there is only one constant, one universal. It is the only real truth: causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect…Causality. There is no escape from it. We are forever slaves to it. Our only hope, our only peace, is to understand it, to understand why. “Why” is what separates us from them, you from me. “Why” is the only real source of power. Without it, you are powerless. – The Merovingian

I remember that for one hundred years, we have fought these machines. I remember that for one hundred years, they have sent their armies to destroy us. And after a century of war, I remember that which matters most: we are still here. – Morpheus

This message was sponsored by Powerade and the Coalition In Favor Of Getting The WWE Booking Staff A Fucking Clue.

Let’s get right into it…

THE PIMP SECTION

I may as well keep putting this shit on top, because it’s harder and harder to fit it in between transitions.

Big-Ass Memo To No Holds Barred Radio: Until you put me on an episode, stop spamming me, because I’m not going to go into any details about your shows until you do. Don’t care, don’t want to care. I’d rather plus WrestleThis, who has given me the respect I deserve in the past. They haven’t put me on, but they’ve never f*cking spammed me.

Jason Hanes has a comment about a certain columnist here that I’ve gone after in a mild way:

Can we get rid of this Darren Hewett guy already? If I wanted to read half-assed cut and paste news updates, I’d go read that idiot Richard’s news posts on rajahwwf.com

Then again, I’ve been of the opinion since Hewett started that he and Richard are the same. Occasionally sounding holier than thou, when all they do is cut and paste whatever “facts” they have off of other sites.

Now, don’t go after Darren. If there’s holier-than-thou material from his cut-and-paste jobs, it’s coming from the source he’s cut-and-pasting from. Since most of his material comes from 1bullshit, it’s no wonder there’s that kind of material in there. That’s why I’ve asked him to cut that shit out before posting. I don’t want 411 to sound as irrational as 1bullshit.

Memo to Jason Masters over in the Video Games section: Links kicks Tiger Woods’ ass ten ways to Sunday, and there’s no excuse anymore for console pussies to ignore it, since Links 2004 is headed to an X-Box near you.

Also, head over to the Music Section. Matthew Michaels keeps putting me into his columns over there. Glad to think that someone here believes I’m a good writer.

Everybody pimps NoSoul. Well, f*ck NoSoul. I’m ten times funnier, ten times more talented, ten times better looking, and ten times less Canadian.

Bower is still allowing you unwashed proles the chance to actually have some power in RantWars. Enjoy it while you can, before the professional humiliators take over.

Robinson‘s got his groove thing on, so why don’t you groove on over there.

And Nason, because no one else seems to pimp him.

Now on to the rest of the fun…

MEMO TO MR. PAUL LEVESQUE

Hi, Trip. How’s Steph?

I see that you’ve come out with that old saw about Internet wrestling writers not being valid critics of your line of work because they’ve never been in the ring. You do realize that this is a charge that’s been handed down since before there was an IWC. In fact, it’s been slung around since Internet wrestling was pretty much restricted to RSPW and Chester the Molester’s Prodigy chats. I wish you’d have come up with a new charge, because then it wouldn’t be as easy to write this. In fact, I could have ignored you and laughed it off. But, because you’re reviving this old line of bullshit and, let’s face it, because you’re you, everyone with column space in the IWC is responding to you. What you’re doing is saying, “Well, Roger Ebert’s written a couple of screenplays, so he’s qualified to talk about movies, but we’re not entirely sure about the other movie critics.”

Let me be the next lemming.

Unlike other people, I’m going to work off your proposition. Fine, let’s accept the line of reasoning that people shouldn’t criticize wrestling because they haven’t been in the ring. Now, let me bring up the fact that there’s more to wrestling than just what happens in the ring. It’s easily summarized in one word, Trip: entertainment.

Entertainment. It’s a word you may have heard before. It’s the third word in the company that you work for’s name. No, Trip, WWE does not stand for World Wrestling Egotism. That’s just your view.

Do you believe that, using your own criterion, a guy who writes plays knows what entertainment is about? Then meet Joshua Grutman, huzzah.

Now, let’s take an Internet wrestling columnist who spent twenty years on stage being an entertainer. Would you say that he’s qualified to comment about entertainment? Hi there. So, again, by your criterion, I am qualified to talk about entertainment. Therefore, I am qualified to talk about the entertainment aspect of WWE programming.

Since everyone reads me, I know that you know that, when I criticize WWE programming, it’s mostly the aspects of entertainment that I go after. And what I find these days is that WWE programming, by and large, isn’t very entertaining. There are many reasons for this.

Let’s deal with the performers first, since that’s the area you seem to be trying to stay out of these days. “Dull” is the first word that comes to mind, especially when it concerns Raw. Pot jokes get stale very quick. Please inform Rob Van Dam of this fact. Booker T is getting stale. Rodney Mack is such a joke that he won’t have the chance to get stale. Brock Lesnar has set the land speed record for becoming stale. Smackdown is using its high-quality wrestling as proof that WWE is still in the wrestling business, but the guys doing the work aren’t getting the push they deserve, with the exception of Kurt Angle. Instead, on the entertainment side, we get Mister America and Albert’s back hair and Nathan Jones’ violent streak. Look, if Cartoon Network wasn’t broadcasting f*cking Pokemon and repeats of Courage opposite the last hour of Smackdown, I’d turn away. Raw, meanwhile, is such a complete disaster from the entertainment side that it’s impossible to pin down just a few examples, not to mention that if you turn to Cartoon Network, you get stuck with a full hour of Pokemon.

By my count, and using my judgment as a person you consider qualified to talk about entertainment, there is a grand total of one person on both rosters who I feel can break away from a gimmick and transition directly from the ring to legitimate acting, with a few potentials in that area. That person, by the way, is not Mister Johnson; he may be starring in movies, but he sucks as an actor. It’s also not Mister Williams, despite his guest star appearances on shows. The person I’m talking about is named Christopher Irvine. Jericho can definitely can hold his own as a sitcom second banana until he gains enough experience to star, with the possibility of dramas down the line. Given time, Christian, John Cena, and Chris Nowinski could possibly do the same. I’d even give your pal Mr. Hickenbottom a chance at pulling this off, and he’s the only one who I think can do drama right off the bat. He’s got the intensity for it.

Notice, please, that you are not on this list.

Of course, you could have the greatest f*cking actors in the world, and it wouldn’t matter one bit if they don’t have the material to work with. No one has good material. You don’t need to look at know-nothings on the Net to see this. The ratings tell the whole story. Stagnation. Nothing to draw in a casual audience, nothing to make them stay if they are drawn to the show.

Also, WWE is using the same old philosophy: reserve the lion’s share of the entertainment material for guys who can’t cut it in the ring but have or had some sort of charisma value (how Jericho, Christian, and Matt Hardy escaped the Lack Of Quality Control Department is beyond me). You don’t need to look at know-nothings on the Net to see this. The ratings tell the whole story. Stagnation. Nothing to draw in a casual audience, nothing to make them stay if they are drawn to the show. Becalmed as much as the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, and for the same cause: tunnelvision filtering on an outdated, irrelevant mindset that’s simply wrong for the times.

Get this, Trip: we don’t like WWE flashing back to its perceived glory days. We don’t want to see Hogan and Vince playing footsie with each other. We don’t want to watch you and your pals party like it’s 1995. We don’t want to view Austin and Bischoff pretending to be Austin and McMahon. We’re watching because we love wrestling, and we’re watching because of inertia.

The person directly responsible for this dilemma happens to be your fiancee. Do you know how much that opens you to the charge of influence peddling, especially when it’s quite apparent the results of three, probably more, PPV main events were changed, all in your favor? The fact that you, despite not being entertaining (and in retrospect never having been entertaining even at your best, because you’ve been carried by everyone from the rest of DX to Austin to Michaels to f*cking Novocaine Helms), remain at the focus of Raw? The fact that the only person you’ve dropped your strap to since you were presented it was your best friend? The fact that you got a guy over forty with knees over ninety as an opponent in a main event of a PPV? You could be trapped in a disused missile silo in between episodes of Raw having taken the Trappist vow of silence unless you have to cut promos, and you would still be open to this charge. But the only disused missile silo you’ve trapped yourself in is Steph’s vagina. And you seem to be blissfully unaware of all of this.

The bad part of all of this is that she’s the boss’ daughter, and she’s not going away. Bookers have been turfed for f*cking up on one-tenth of the scale she did with the Invasion. She did the impossible: she made Ole Anderson’s Black Scorpion debacle look like Eugene O’Neill. What kind of brainstorm did it take for you, her, and your future father-in-law to implement an angle where you f*cked a fake corpse?

Those situations are only emblematic of the problems WWE is facing in the creative department. If your hormones didn’t make you blind to the fact that your intended has the entertainment judgment of a pile of rotting cheese, maybe you could use some of that intelligence of yours (and you are smart; I’m not arguing that) to improve the situation and not just improve your own position on the pecking order. You don’t need the Darwinian crap anymore; Vince trusts you enough to marry his only daughter, not to mention give booking ideas to the writers. So lay off. Let other people into your rarified atmosphere.

Let’s face it, Trip, the only reason you’re putting out this statement is that critical mass has been reached and you’re finally beginning to notice the feeling against you. In other words, we, collectively, have hurt your ego, so you’re using your ivory tower to try to hurt ours. Your “Internet people shouldn’t criticize wrestling” translates so easily into “Internet people shouldn’t criticize me” that it’s pathetic. Denial sucks, Trip; believe me, I’ve tried. It’s counterproductive and causes harm in both the short-term and long-term.

You know, I’ve defended you in the past. I’ve even defended you in the present. When the Idiot Brigade came out last week and said that you should have laid down for Flair in what was assumed to be Flair’s Retirement Match, I defended that booking (the Idiot Brigade, of course, accepted the same booking when applied to you and Foley, meaning that there’s been a change in attitude toward you since then.). Three years ago, I said that you were approaching what I call the Summit of Mount Perpetually Over, where a wrestler who’s planted his flag will get a massive audience reaction to anything he or she does, and will always be a main-eventer. But you took a Sisyphean tumble when you got hip-deep in the river of shit known as Backstage Politics. So who is at the Summit of Mount Perpetually Over? In the WWE, only three people (you could make a case for Mister Calloway being the fourth). One is the guy you wrestled against last week. Another is Hogan, who managed to set up residence in the River Shit without it affecting his position on the Summit. And the third, as much as it pains me to say it, is Mister Johnson. Again, your name isn’t on that list. But once upon a time, I had you as a comer to that point. Of course, you’d say, you’re in good company; Austin isn’t on there either. He was until that asinine heel turn, though, and he might be again. You’ve hit the glass ceiling, the one people claim that you put up so that no one below you can approach your heights.

Sorry, Trip, but we’ve exposed your weaknesses. Your talent in entertainment was marginal at best from the Terra Ryzin days. But since your injury (and many say long before that), you did the same thing that Mr. Johnson did: you decided to eighth-ass it in the ring because you think you’re over on the entertainment side. Since you’re not over and no promo can help you in that area anymore (apparently, you can’t hear the crickets chirping during your entrance over that god-awful Motorhead song), your weaknesses as a wrestler become apparent. That leaves you open to our criticism in every key area of wrestling, since you now suck as a wrestler, suck as a promoer, and can’t keep that prominent proboscis of your out of the book.

It doesn’t take someone’s who’s been in the ring to realize this, Trip. In fact, it takes someone who’s never been inside the ring. We can be objective about it. It isn’t another guy in the locker room we’re talking about, or anyone we palled around with on the indy circuit. They’re just people who happen to be using their God-given athletic talent and trying to entertain at the same time. We retain our objectivity to some degree or another.

We will not be cheerleaders for the industry and for you until we see something good coming out of this undifferentiated matter. If ever. We don’t have to be in the ring to be able to criticize the crap that your company is pumping out. We just have to have good, rational judgment and know what we like.

If you don’t buy that, here’s the deal, since you’re so adamant about your position: I’ll face you in the ring, and you can write this column for a few weeks, both days. We’re both going to suck, but maybe we can understand each other better, and maybe you can appreciate what an IWC Celebrity Columnist goes through, and why he or she has the right to bitch and moan.

So, when’s the match set?

Yours, Eric.

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OY VEY

Chicago, Illinois (AP) — Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed the nation’s first statewide ban on ephedra Sunday.

Look, it’s bad enough that, thanks to confiscatory, almost Canada-like, taxes, I have to go to Indiana to buy cigarettes and not feel as if I’d been given a rim job by a Dirt Devil. Now I have to do the same thing if I want a truckers’ high? I don’t give a f*ck how many stupid high school athletes who can’t read a goddamn label have to croak on the stuff; I want my freedom of choice of what alleged diet supplements I plow into my body to get a buzz.

And what about Stacker 2!? They’ve just lost one-third of their entire product line in Illinois! This could have a big economic impact on WWE, you know. So as wrestling fans, you should care about this kind of thing. WWE doesn’t need one of its major sponsors to take a major hit. GNC has taken all ephedra supplements off the shelves.

(And a big Yah Boo Sucks To You to Brian Urlacher for getting involved in that self-serving press conference. If this bill actually had some merit, you wouldn’t need to haul out the most popular athlete in Chicago for the Bullshit Session in order to put a public face on it.)

You know, I’ve been through this shit before on a semi-personal level, in 1995. That’s the year when ground beef became Public Enemy Number One thanks to two people: some adolescent cretin working at a Jack-In-The-Box who couldn’t follow the cooking instructions for burgers that he was taught when he was hired, and some stupid bitch in Michigan who ended up killing her two children because she also didn’t know how to cook a hamburger properly.* We went through hell. Despite the fact that only 3% of meat-related foodborne illness can be directly traced to the wholesale level, it was the wholesales and the inspectors who watched over them who were made the scapegoats. And it’s getting worse. Any plant dealing with slaughter of bovines was forced by USDA recently to tighten up their so-called “zero tolerance” criteria pertaining to coliform bacteria, engendering a great deal of frustration and extra expense for them.

So now it’s the turn of ephedra, at least in Illinois (and Illinois is a vanguard in regulating or deregulating what you can or can’t do with your body: we were the first state to totally get rid of sodomy laws). When the primary focus should be on personal responsibility, or responsibility in loco parentis or parentis itself for people not of legal age, vis-a-vis ingestion of dietary supplements, it’s on the chemical.

(It could be worse; Dubbaya’s Evil Brother Who Shall Burn In Hell actually signed a bill banning sale of all diet supplements to people under 18 in Florida. Let’s hope that there’s a lobby for the supplement industry that will take notice of that.)

And that requires a law, apparently. Guess so. You’ve got some nasty combined forces in this case: greedy consumer pharmaceutical companies, overzealous sports freaks who want to take shortcuts, and the general abandonment of the concept of responsibility, personal or otherwise. Since we can’t control ourselves in the area of popping pills that might be bad for you, let’s have the law do it for us. This drives me nuts. This time, though, it does focus on something tangential to the wrestling business (at least the business of WWE), so I can spout off here without someone pulling the Off-Topic Card on me (although with me, the Off-Topic Card is three entire suits of a deck).

By the way, I don’t take ephedra. It’s the principle of this whole thing I’m against. It’s all about responsibility here, not about chemical interactions. This is the same way I feel about pot (And those ads that we Americans see during Raw…let me tell you, they have a boomerang effect. Every time I see one of those “don’t smoke” or “don’t toke” ads, I want to light up. And with the “don’t smoke” ads, I usually do.). You wanna do it, fine by me. But if something should go horribly wrong, don’t blame what you’ve taken. Blame the stupid idiot who took it.

(Full credit to Craig Taylor for anticipating this rant. It was almost like reading tomorrow’s mail. As for BSE being found in Canada, my understanding of BSE is that the prions in question aren’t necessarily decharacterized and made harmless by processing the offal for feed through other animals. Proteins crossing species barriers can alter composition without changing type, stay intact, and in the case of prions, go right for the brain.)

(* – Some people are going to regard this statement as a .7 Barbara Olsen, so let me go into detail about why this stupid bitch was responsible for croaking her kids. This situation happened in July (for our fans in Australia, please substitute “Janaury” for July). Old girl is planning a picnic for her and the brats that day. She goes to the grocery store in the morning and buys a couple pounds of ground chuck, along with her other comestible purchases. She proceeds to leave everything she’s using for the al fresco in the trunk of her car (for other English-language-speaking countries, please substitute “boot” for trunk). The ground beef proceeds to sit in a hot trunk during the middle of summer for six hours. So now she and her kids get to the picnic site. Dumb bitch opens up the ground beef and proceeds to marinate it with teriyaki sauce. Very flavorful, yes. However, it also has the tendency to turn ground beef virtually the exact same shade of brown it appears when it’s fully cooked. So, she plops the teriyaki burgers on the grill and proceeds to undercook them, since she can’t tell whether or not they’re cooked because of the goddamn teriyaki sauce. The undercooking doesn’t kill certain pathogenic bacteria in the meat, her kids eat it, and proceed to contract a fatal case of coliform intoxication.

Old girl then starts crying at every meeting of every congressional committee she’s invited to, saying that the meat industry killed her kids. Unfortunately, this being the middle of the PC ’90s, no one had the balls to stand up to her and tell her that she was directly responsible for the deaths by being a shitty cook and brainless twat. The result: heavy-duty monitoring of all beef slaughter and ground beef products and at least three big ground beef companies put out of business (or taken over by rivals) because of E. coli-related situations. Also, a pain in the ass for anyone involved in the industry, since it’s now possible to raise the red flag on anything, have USDA overreact, and have to spend beaucoup on “improvements” that are unnecessary.

Hope that clears that up.)

ONLY A FINITE AMOUNT OF MEMORY

Kenny Perry had a weekend that any golfer would cream his jeans over. Justin Leonard went into the 18th hole on Sunday needing only a birdie to shoot 59, golf’s equivalent of the Right Hand Of God. And no one’s going to remember anything because of a woman who already has a place at the locale that Leonard was trying to get to.

So Annika didn’t make the cut.

So what? It doesn’t matter.

I watched the rounds on Thursday and Friday (the benefits of doing a little freelancing), and I saw crowds, other golfers, and even the commentators at a pitch of excitement beyond even the 1996 GMO. Just when golf was beginning to come down slightly from its post-Tigger fever, along comes Annika to inspire more of the younger generation. Anything good for the health of golf is aces in my book.

It still could have been dismissed as a freak show until she carded that one-over on Thursday. One birdie, two bogies, fifteen pars, as consistent a round as you’re going to see from a pro. She hung, people. She hung with the boys, on their terms, in their tee boxes. Only her one bad stretch on Friday took her out, and every golfer’s experienced a bad stretch of holes in a round. And she did it under a microscope that could see quark structures.

The only thing I can compare this to is Jackie Robinson, but not in the way that the PGA is now going to be desegregated. Most people say that the integration of baseball would have taken a major step back had it not been someone of the character of Robinson who crossed the line. The last thing either situation needed was someone who’d lose their cool and someone who’d play up to his or her game in the most difficult of situations. All those doubts were taken care of in the distaff case on Thursday at the 10th, when, BOOM!, right down the f*cking middle of the fairway.

(By the way, both pro baseball and pro golf remained segregated for roughly the same amount of time. Nice extension of the analogy.)

The next step? Go as far as possible. Add three slots to the PGA later this year. Give the slots to Annika, Karrie, and Se Ri. See what they can do in standard pairings, or even group them together for the first two rounds. Then keep it going. Keep those three slots and give them each year to the #1-#3 players on the LPGA tour. Remind people that the PGA doesn’t only consist of the PGA Of America, but that there’s an LPGA Tour and foreign PGA tours out there. If women playing with men can bring about a more heightened awareness of the diversity of golf out there, good for everyone.

You da woman, indeed.

AND IN HOLIDAY WEEKEND SPORTS I DON’T CARE ABOUT…

Ducks/Devils in the NHL finals…I hadn’t noticed. BFM keeps getting me to try to convert to the Gospel On Ice, but I keep telling him there are logistical problems, like the fact that the Wirtz family loves to make the Blackhawks as inaccessible and elitist as a high-level British gentleman’s club. If you can’t watch the team on local TV, they don’t exist.

Nets versus Mavs/Spurs for the NBA title…the Lakers aren’t in it? Yeah, I know there’s a subsidiary feel-good story with the Admiral’s last opportunity to get a ring (okay, to join the two others he’s got, so there’s no Ray Bourque Thing going on), but it’s not enough. Wait until next season; maybe LeBron James continuing to suffer by having to live in northeast Ohio might be enough to stir the glands.

The Eleven Hundred Miles Of Left Turns in US Auto Racing? Oh, please. The Indy 500 used to be must-watch until the CART/IRL separation drained it of any legitimacy, no matter how hard they’ve been trying to get it back and how many mini-rapproachments there have been. And the other 600 miles are NASCAR.

French Open’s started up. Wake me up for the women’s semis. The men’s early draw should put me in a coma quite nicely.

Despite the fact that I don’t give a f*ck about baseball, I do give a f*ck about freebies, especially when they’re related to the All-Star Game, which is taking place in the Ancestral Homeland this year. PepsiCo is sponsoring an under-the-cap thing where if you get a cap with the name of the first player to hit a home run during the All-Star Game, you get another cap, namely one for your head, plus a chance to win 2003 World Series tickets. I already have a Wild Card piece, which means I win one hat regardless. I’ve also kept some strategically-important names around JIC, so go Juan Gonzales or Shea Hillebrand. If I should win the tickets, the f*ckers go up on eBay ASAP. Like I want to go to the World Series.

Of course, there is one more thing to root for vis-a-vis the All-Star Game, and that’s for Fuck You, US Cellular, It’s Still Comiskey Park to retain a certain rep it’s had recently viz. fans making asses of themselves on the field. If they go after Bud Selig, no jury in the world would convict them.

Nothing to do but to wait for the US Open and see if Funny Cide can conquer Belmont. Or I can watch Raw.

THE SHORT FORM

Match Results:

Booker T over Test (Pinfall, scissors kick): Oh, dear heavens…My Beautiful and Beloved, now officially stuck in the middle of a feud between two of the biggest pools of raw sewage on the WWE roster, and that’s really saying something considering who they have on there these days. She must be rescued somehow, and with the disintegration of the Test/Sump Pump tag team, La Res has been cut off as an escape route. The best thing I can think of right now is for her to revert to Ms. Hancock and team up with Nowinski. Actually, that wouldn’t be too bad.

Val Venis over Stevie Richards (Pinfall, Money Shot): Never thought I’d be typing that name again. I do have to question the wisdom of putting Sean Morley back in the nude. He seemed to be doing a halfway-decent job as Chief Morley. Obviously, the Chief part had to go, since that was played out. So why not a general rebel role against Bisch for the firing? At least it’d save us from dick jokes about Victoria.

Of course, Slick Rick spotted a deeper meaning in Ol’ Choppy Choppy’s promo:

Memo to Val Venis: A quick review of Google reveals that “Victoria’s Dirty Little Secret” has something to do with “toxic PVC packaging”. Which appears to have been a part of her outfit this evening.

Goldust over Christian, Non-Title Match (Pinfall, snap powerslam): It did surprise me on how well those two worked together, I have to admit. It does go to show that Raw, despite everything, does have some craftsmen who are willing to put it on the line for what would be considered a “nothing” match. Yeah, there was major angle development vis-a-vis Christian, but it still was nothing on a scale of importance to the big picture. Quality job by both guys.

Rodney Mack over Buh Buh Ray Dudley, White Boy Challenge (Submission, Harvard-ference): So, next week, D-Von will be Mack’s opponent in the White Boy Challenge…look, they’d do it and you know it. However, Harvard’s involvement…maybe they’re going to do a “pretty fly for a white guy” thing with him, just like I recommended they try with Spike. The thing is, Harvard can take advantage of all the inherent weirdness of the general idea and run as far with it as possible.

The Joe In Me had a really scary thought regarding a tangent to this situation:

I figured something out about the Intercontinental Title Battle Royale. I think the reason that they threw Booker T in there, even though he was never champion, was not just that Teddy Long wanted a black man in the battle royale, but that if it wasn’t Booker T as the black man, it would have been former IC Champ AHMED JOHNSON. So I think that “creative” did the right thing here. Of course, Ron Simmons would have qualified, but he doesn’t make things much better than Ahmed, except for the fact that no one would come out of the match injured with Simmons in there.

Please, I just ate.

Sylvan Grenier over Rob Van Dam, Flag Match: Did Ross really call the American flag the Stars and Bars? Maybe in a Harry Turtledove book, JR. Of course, this was Mobile, where there are some people who refuse to acknowledge that 1865 actually happened.

As for the match itself…well, don’t blame anyone for the hinkiness. I wish that there could have been more of a singles showcase rather than the standard Van Dam spot-fest, because Grenier is supposedly the better of the two when it comes to soloing. Of course, the choice of which member of La Res would wrestle was obvious considering that Patterson’s pushing (certain parts of his body into) Grenier. Let it be. Should be an interesting tag match at BB, though. Expect La Res to go over so that Vince can get as much out of this anti-Frog thing as possible.

Trip over Flair ‘n Shawn (Pinfall, Pedigree post Flair demi-turn): Well, nice to see Randy Orton back and the Evolution angle going again. Yay.

Angle Developments:

Well, That Lasted A Long Time: Okay, we can chalk up last week to Ric Flair Appreciation Night In Flair Country. Now, who’s responsible for spreading the Retirement FUD? Da Meltz? Keller? Chester the Molester in one of his “I Wish” modes? That being said, glad to see that it isn’t the end, and considering Michaels’ attitude (those were legit tears; Michaels is a decent actor, but not that good), he’s going to sell for Flair like a mofo. The sad part is that they think that the HitC match is going to be the attraction now. In fact, why not switch it? Trip and Nash just go at it so we can ignore it, then main with Flair/Michaels HitC?

Now if this becomes Flair’s retirement match, that’ll be a helluva lot more special.

In fact, the entire Bad Blood card is looking goddamn good except for that main. This is coming close to being worth watching. Of course, if Test/Sump Pump gets on it, the wallet gets put away.

And You Think Neo Can Dodge Bullets: We almost had another Austin/Bischoff match for a PPV. Thank God for plans that short-circuit ahead of time.

Armed Farces: Slick Rick got a little cynical with the free tickets announcement:

Nice touch on the free tickets for Military. I’m going to predict that Scooter will find some way to take that as a negative.

Scooter also never served, so I wouldn’t expect him to understand. Hell, even Canada’s army deserves a lot of credit for bravery under fire over the years, so we can appreciate their sacrifices as well. This freebies for the military thing isn’t a first for WWE, though. During Desert Shield and Desert Storm, WWF provided PPV programming for free to Armed Forces Network. I saw SurSer ’90 over in Germany courtesy of this generosity, for instance. We were too drunk to care about the Gobbledygooker, but, as I’ve said a number of times, the debuting UT prompted a big “What the f*ck is that?!” reaction.

Mr. Austin, VH1 Divas Is Calling…: I didn’t watch this part because, hey, I have this column to do at the same time in a different room. However, I’m getting a lot of quick mail about the duet, so I’m very, very glad I missed it. The Ravin’ Cajun, though, greatly admires Leather Lungs Lil:

I gained a little more respect for Lillian last night. Of all the people I’ve seen Austin have a beer toast with, she seemed to down more than anyone else rather than spit it out, including Austin. Just a thought.

Sartorial Splendor: Now that La Res has changed outfits, the yellow is starting to work. The pads, the epaulets…they’ve gone from “faggy” to “nice touch”. Glad to see that someone listened to me when I said that they needed new outfits, stat.

Big Fucking Deal, They Both Do 1d6: Since I was making popcorn during the Jericho/Goldberg thing (except for Jericho’s opening), I’ll let Slick Rick vent about his hatred for Goldberg:

I’d love to find out tomorrow morning that Goldberg thought he was tough enough to take actual
pure-capseiscin pepper spray and wound up uh… unable to compete indefinitely. Don’t f*ck with the pepper. I’ve cultivated everythign from Aniheims to Habeneros in containers. Trust me. Capseiscin will f*ck you up no matter how big you are.

I still remember that botched superkick. I still remember Bret Hart. The sooner Goldberg gets put out, the fewer actual wrestlers will be crippled. Hell, lock the stupid bastard up in a garage with a bunch of limos. He’ll bleed to death soon enough.

Special Non-Sequitir Section, or, Give Slick Rick His Own Fucking Column Already: I have no idea why I’m including this in Angle Developments, but Slick Rick sent in something so good during Raw that it needs to be printed:

Having an apartment full of a litter of kittens from a cat you foolishly adopted, not knowing she was expecting, is sort of like having an on-going ECW match in your home. Allegiences are constantly changing. Combatants attack each other for no logical reason, and since the little bastards aren’t all that coordinated, you get to chant “you f*cked up” at them alot.

Seeing two kittens launch themselves at each other off different pieces of furniature and collide head-first in midair, shake it off, and go at it again is priceless. Too bad I have to take all but two of them to the pound next week. (landlords)

MAILBAG!

Thank you to the eight or so people who wrote in informing me of the exact timing of the black Sabbath back-catalog, since I didn’t have time while knocking this puppy out last week to Google the discography. Sabbath’s first album was released in the US in 1970, which would have made them eligible for R&RHoF consideration in 1995. Please note, though, that this is exactly what I said:

“Sabbath wasn’t eligible for R&R HoF admission until 1996, I believe. The criterion is 25 years after first release, and I’m reasonably sure that Sabbath put out their first disk in ’71, Ozzy’s hesitation or not.”

So, in other words, going simply by my occasionally dizzy-ass memory, I came damn close to the actual date, and considering the fact that they churned out three albums into the US market in ’70-’71, details are there to be twisted. Thus, no schadenfreude potential exists. As for whether they should be in there, my feelings are simple: if Zep’s in the R&RHoF, Sabbath should be too. Period.

Now, on to the other stuff. There is a second category of people who get the God Spot other than Regulars, and that’s Old Friends. So, Charlie Owens, you get the honors:

1)I really, really, REALLY want to hate the Hunter-Flair match. I do. I can’t. For one reason: HE HIT THE FLAIR FLIP! The very last Nitro match, the match everyone thought would be Flair’s last, he went into the corner, and he almost landed on his head. I thought that was sad. His last match, one of his trademark spots, a move that makes Flair Flair, and he can’t hit it. But
Monday, he nailed it. I can’t hate the match. Hunter shouldn’t have put himself over Flair, no one wants to see him and Nash stink up the Cell, but I will say nothing bad about that match.

Best of all, he did the Flair Flip as a transition move, of all things, and made his next attack seamless from it. What we got last Monday was the perfect Flair Retirement Match, and I’m still giving a lot of credit to Trip for buying into this as much as he did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no one wanted Trip to go over, but Trip had to be booked to win due to the damn strap being on the line, and no one wanted to end this match with a Nash saunter-in. This is the second time that Trip’s made his opponent look good in a retirement match, the first, of course, being Foley. Maybe Trip should be restricted to facing wrestlers performing in their last regular match from now on.

2)Your idea about Goldust going with Flair to the ring has one minor little flaw: NO ONE IN THIS DAY AND AGE GIVES 1/10TH OF ONE SHIT ABOUT DUSTY RHODES. Flair we remember because he was GOD. Dusty we forget because he was a fat mess. All the fans would’ve seen was a fairly over midcarder walking to the ring with Flair, and all the history Ross would’ve spouted wouldn’t
have helped. And if they do start doing a “We’re in Charlotte, tell Ric to get his gear on” thing ala Lawler and Memphis, in the immortal words of one Mr. Falkenberg, that’s not a bad thing, that’s……a GOOD thing. *big smile*

It’s a very good thing. I just don’t want the legacy to be pissed on. And as for the Goldust idea, that’s just the smark in me coming through again, wanting things to be even more special for Ric. And what would be more special than getting one final knock in against FatDust for the shit Rhodes pulled on Flair all those years?

3)Zach the One-Legged Wonder: This is too good for them to not use. C’mon, Eric, if he doesn’t suck in the ring (and I’ve been burned twice with Nate Jones and Steiner; I want to see him in a match before I hop on the bandwagon) they HAVE TO push him to the moon. HAVE TO. He’s the ultimate
inspirational story: A guy who didn’t let a little thing like losing a leg to cancer stop him from fulfilling a dream. So he’s beating up McMahon, after all the shit we’ve been fed since the InVasion, *I* want to beat up Vince McMahon. The only downside to this is he’s got Hogan leeching off his heat, but there are ways around that.

I just feel a bit queasy about that. If he’s able to pull it off in the ring, that’s one thing. But if he’s not and they continue to use him, that’s exploitation. And it’s a very fine line judging between the two, considering the performances of the aforementioned Mr. Jones and Mr. Sump Pump. I don’t have any confidence that they can pull this off in good taste. Just another thing we can beat up Vince for, I guess.

Regular Phil Watts also has some comments in the Zach vein:

Tenacious Z. I fear for the worst. From the looks of things, they are going to push him as the ambitious, virtuous, ultimate babyface, the same exact role that they gave to a certain Dwayne Johnson. Even worse, if we even think of giving this guy the same reaction that we gave Mr. Johnson, they will portray us as HEARTLESS and IGNORANT. It’s as if we HAVE to cheer for him–OR ELSE! My attitude is this: I don’t HAVE to cheer for anybody! If I feel like getting behind someone, I will cheer for them. If you tell me that I have to cheer for so-and-so, that’s a surefire way of turning me off! And if it happens with Tenacious Z, it’s going to get UGLY…and I don’t think Vince will be able to handle it.

Well said. Back to you, Charlie:

4)I never figured you for a Star Trek dork. Then again, I never figured Christian to win the IC Battle Royal and celebrate by going to his local barber with a picture of Jeff Jarrett in his “chosen one” days and saying “I want to look like this guy!” so what do I know?

I think I’m more of a continuity dork than an ST dork. It’s just that if you want to argue continuity about something today, you have to find the proper venue to do so and become knowledgable about it so that you can argue from a strong standpoint. And Trek and its bizarre fans are right there to provide all those.

But what led to the specific complaints was that I’m a Borg mark. I think you should know, Charlie, how much I identify with them.

(Memo to James McTyre: No, Republicans aren’t the Borg per se. They do have free will, but they’re under pressure to comply. Besides, I have faith that, in their minds, there’s a Unimatrix Zero wherein they have rational thoughts. And as for the fact that Dubbaya shows up on the video screens during the Architect portion of The Matrix Reloaded during the talk about war and hidden agends, nice touch by the Wachowskis.)

5)Your honest opinion: If they could hire D’Lo Brown back as a one-shot, and put Mack over him at Bad Blood, should they, and would it help his heat? I’m starting to like the guy, although the weird ass dyejob on the eyebrows confuses me. If they had just jobbed Brown to Mack at the beginning before his unceremonious FexExing out of the WWE, I don’t think he’d be getting all
the general apathy he’s getting right now. And thank the fates for Peanuthead; Mack should NEVER speak again. He sounds like he got shot in the throat.

Part of Rodney Mack’s problem is that he was a throw-in sub for D’Lo in order to continue the angle (which has turned out quite well despite his presence). I don’t think the substitution as played any differently would have helped his situation very much, though. He can’t cut a promo (as we all saw last week), and he’s dull in the ring, and that helps kill his credibility from the mark side. If they’d been able to reboot the angle with Shelton Benjamin, it would have been a different story. Would they have done that? Yeah. Service a midcard angle on Raw by destroying the Smackdown tag division? Sounds like a WWE move to me.

As for D’Lo doing a one-shot and having Mack go over him, I’d say no. It wouldn’t help Mack’s heat, it wouldn’t give him any legitimacy since D’Lo’s been gone too long for that, and it still wouldn’t solve the problem of who the hell to feud him with, because the natural choice would be D’Lo and he’d be back in TNA. I still think that the best thing for this angle at this point would be to bring Spike inside Teddy’s stable as “the white boy with a difference”.

6)No knocking Molly. Ivory, sure, she’s boring. Jackie, aside from the rack, she’s also a little bland. Molly can go, however, and should’ve been at JD.

Agreed, but they haven’t done anything with Molly since getting her away from the prude angle, and that’s too damn bad, because she can go. How would you feel about transferring her to SD, reteaming her with Cousin Crash, and pull the Annika Card by saying that women can have Mattitude too?

And speaking of that…

7)The whole Annika/Vijay thing can be summed up in four words: IT’S GOLF, WHO CARES? If I want to watch white people walking around, I’ll go to the local WalkAmerica next year.

Hey, we agreed to disagree about golf a long time ago, Charlie. And you know that I’m so ofay that golf is a natural thing for me to be attracted to.

8)Rico as a “bad ass pussy”………interesting. But he can do that on his own; if Hurricane needs a tag partner, don’t they still have Nova under contract? And why was I thinking that Rico storming off would’ve been cooler if they had played “I Will Survive” instead of his boy band Knockoff?

I don’t know if Nova’s still under WWE contract. I know he’s been doing some indy dates, so I don’t think so.

I still think that a Rico/Fop angle would work better as an adjunct to Novocaine Helms (Semi-Regular Andrew Brown approves). It’s not that Novocaine needs a tag partner; it’s that he can help get Rico over in this new persona by giving him a huge dose of cred with the marks. They’re more likely to accept a face fop character if he’s seen to have the approval of the other guy who dresses like a fruit loop, but who seems to be popular with the audience for a reason which still escapes me. The two can go OOT any time they wish and get away with it. And it wouldn’t be Billy/Chuck or Lenny/Lodi; it would be two flamboyant, somewhat effeminate, guys, who happen to have the ability to kick ass. It would also provide a good boost to the Raw tag scene, provided they survive the Black Hole known as Three-Moron Warning.

As for “I Will Survive”, if they could get Gloria Gaynor to do it live at SummerSlam, oh, yeah.

9)The whole “who is a former champ and who isn’t” thing: Both you and Keith don’t “get it”. (I miss that campaign, somewhat) WCW, for all events and purposes, doesn’t exist unless it helps the WWE. That’s why Hogan had never beaten Piper until Judgement Day (WWE mindset:”SuperBrawl? What was that?”) and why Booker wasn’t included in Austin’s list (“5 Time Champ? It’s just a
catchphrase, it doesn’t really matter.”) Play along, you two. Join the collective. You will be assim…….great, your Trekitis is apparently catching.

I know about WWE’s selective memory about what elements of WCW and ECW continuity are included in WWE continuity. However, this revival would have actually served a purpose. It would have expanded the candidates available, and given us two more possibilities of matches that “fans want to see”: a Booker/Trip rematch from WM, and Trip/Goldberg. It would have worked better including the WCW title holders than excluding them.

Stuart Yarnall went a little further:

If Austin was saying any ex world champion could be the guy HHH defended against, shouldn’t he have been able to include Tommy Dreamer a former ECW champion?

No. What I was thinking of were the people who held the Big Gold Belt, the one that Trip carries around and considers part of Clique collective property. Now that’s a real world championship.

Charlie, it’s great for you to write in. You’ve always been one of the most intelligent guys I’ve ever known in the IWC, and it’s an honor and privilege putting this one in. For me.

And speaking of Old Friends, I forgot to thank Sharon Austin, one of the greatest distaffs to ever work in the IWC, for passing along that comedic Dubbaya resume. God bless you.

Regular Sean Fri goes into a perceived sin of omission on my part:

There seems to have been a few people in your column and others noting a similarity in the relationship between SCSA and Eric Bishoff and the dynamic between Bugs and Daffy in some Warner¹s Bros. Cartoons (specifically the “Hunters Trilogy,” as you pointed out recently). I find it odd that you haven¹t taken a swipe at expressing an opinion on this, but you know what? Let me.

Please do, and I’ll explain why: Bisch and Austin doing this routine is a desecration to the memory of Chuck Jones. This is the man that I assign the 1.0 scale on my In Memoria to, after all. I don’t comment about it because I don’t want to think about it.

I just don’t see it. I mean, you could shoehorn Bishoff’s personality into a Daffy archetype if you wanted to, but not without a little bit of trouble. Daffy’s a loudmouth, totally self-absorbed, and committed to collecting props for being the duck he thinks he is – all of which is pretty much Bisch. But Daffy is also constantly giving the lie to his uber-Duck self image by constantly disproving through his actions the opinion he has of himself. That’s why “Robin Hood Daffy” and “The Scarlet Pumpernickel” work so well ­ Daffy is trying to convince everyone around him of his heroism while displaying a total lack of heroic qualities. Bischoff hasn’t really
committed to showing us what a loser he is. For him to be funny in an all-out, Daffy way, we would have to know that there¹s no way he can win, even while he¹s telling us he never loses. He’s just too competent to be Daffy.

I’d say that the events of “The Scarlet Pumpernickel” are close enough to Bisch in one regard: both demonstrate a huge lack of creativity in thinking. Daffy goes with the Scarlet Pimpernel cliches to write a film, and can’t come up with an ending. Bisch goes for the same old solutions to solve his problems: bringing back Austin, sending out Three-Moron Warning, playing antagonists off against each other. Unfortunately, in order for Bisch to prove what a loser he is, he’s up against two walls: Austin (experienced general manager who took Nitro to its peak versus someone there just to humiliate him; humiliation is not loss) and Vince (who already gave him an ultimatum due to “uncreative” thinking).

I know Bugs Bunny. I¹ve met Bugs Bunny. And Stone Cold is no Bugs Bunny. His willingness, even reliance, on using violence to solve his problems goes in direct contrast to Bugs’ comedic hero principle of using his wits to win. Every time Bugs has become even the slightest bit malicious (like in the early short, “The Wacky Wabbit”), his character loses something. Stone
Cold, however, built his character on malice.

At least the guys at Termite Terrace had the excuse of Bugs’ character being fleshed out. But that was a prolonged process. Freleng was using Bugs as a pure antagonist as late as 1944 (see “Hare Force”). Ditto Clampett in “Buckaroo Bugs”. Tashlin was doing it in 1945 (“The Unruly Hare”). That’s only five years after “A Wild Hare”, with limited appearances. WWE has no excuse. Austin’s been doing the same shit since, at the earliest, 1997 (with the possible exception of his heel turn), on a near-weekly basis.

Words from the Master, Chuck Jones: “All of the directors who worked at Warner Bros. followed certain rules, the first of which was that Bugs must always be provoked rather than being the aggressor. This is the second rule: his wits are his basic weapon; he tries to avoid physical conflict when possible, believing that all contretemps can be solved with intelligence and
humor. He despises the use of any Rambo-like destructive device.” (Chuck Redux, Warner Books, 1996) Doesn¹t really sound like SCSA, does it?

It also doesn’t explain Bugs’ actions in “Duck Amuck”, where he clearly uses non-wit weapons against a very helpless Daffy, who’s done nothing wrong to provoke the break-the-fourth-wall assault he receives.

Jones also used the same policy for the Roadrunner. When RR got nasty, it was in the post-Jones Rudy Larriva material.

Most of the inches I¹ve seen devoted to the comparison revolve around the
yes/no exchange (or something to that effect) that reminded viewers of the
“duck season/rabbit season” bit. Although it¹s a testament to Jones’ influence on the American Collective Unconscious to think that Bugs and Daffy invented the old switcheroo, that bit was a staple of vaudeville looong before “Duck! Rabbit, Duck!” Curiously, though, no one opined that
Steve and Eric were turning into Bud and Lou.

That’s because Abbott and Costello were funny. Austin and Bisch weren’t.

Not that I would mind SCSA and Bischof adopting the characters of Bugs and Daffy. Hell, I’d LOVE it! It would be ten times more entertaining than what they’re doing now! All I’m saying is, just because they teased something that they probably weren’t even aware that they were teasing
doesn’t mean that they have anything to do with Bugs and Daffy.

1) I don’t want to see them convert into Bugs and Daffy for one good reason: there isn’t a writer near the caliber of the late Michael Maltese or the late Tedd Pierce to provide the material.

2) That’s another reason I didn’t want to get into it. I know, and you know, that it’s a stretch of an analogy. The only people who would waste time analyzing something like this would be the Torch.

And I do remember you mentioning your regular restaurant service to Chuck and his wife Marion when they were in NYC. Brilliant and incredibly nice. You rarely run across someone like him today.

BFM’s pal Dale, an author of six books in the same general category (unauthorized portraits of media phenomena), comments about Phil Farrand and his Trek Nitpickers’ Guides:

Read the column and wanted to comment about the Farrand books. My understanding is that he stopped doing the books because the publisher got worried about possible lawsuits. Since a couple of the other non-official Trek books did get hit with “cease and desist” orders, I’m not completely surprised if that was the case. Certainly Fox was going after anyone that tried to publish something based on one of their shows (a friend of mine was just about to sign a contract to write a X-Files episode guide book when the plug was pulled due to Fox sending their
lawyers around). That doesn’t mean that Farrand got hit with a lawsuit, merely that the publisher was sweating it out and finally decided not to risk any problems somewhere down the line.

There was a major controversy in Britain a number of years ago concerning an unofficial Avengers episode guide that went up against ITC’s policy, so Fox and Viacom aren’t alone in these kinds of actions. For popular cultish TV shows, they’ll try to do clampdowns on anything that doesn’t come from them. But, Dale, how did he get away with four books, especially since the-then-Paramount gave him the heads-up to do them (they’ll approve most stuff that’s non-canonical if it helps them maintain public exposure in areas that they have no desire to enter into)? I’d put it down to boredom and alienation from then-current Trek.

I like certain elements in Farrand’s books, but I have to say that I got tired of his tone after a while. He seemed to be exactly something that he made fun of early on in one of the books – a fanatical Trek fan that had no life outside of the show. He just seemed TOO nitpicky, and lack a
sense of humor about what he was writing as well. Pretty unimaginative for the most part as well, since he refused to try and find solutions to the “nitpicks,” which is actually where the fun of nitpicking really comes into play.

Some nitpicks were too difficult to solve, like a lot of the ones I did about “Regeneration”. But you’re right about Farrand’s sanctimonious tone. Messianic about NextGen, dismissive of everything else. Did you catch his “Picard is God and Sisko is the Anti-Christ because he tried to humiliate Picard” blurb in his DS9 Nitpickers’ Guide review of “Emissary”? That’s his ultimate sanctimonious statement.

In fact, Getting A Push Semi-Regular Heath Peek comes through on the Inside Story of the X-Files Nitpickers’ Guide…

I can elaborate on the X-Files book some… Farrand’s co-writer on the X-Files book (Kimberly) was a very close friend of my wife. That book originally started out as a website that she ran. The popularity of the 1st Trek Nitpickers’ Guide convinced her that she could do the same for X-Files and make a quick fortune. She pulled the website, collected the notes and contacted the publisher of the Trek book.

Originally my wife was to be the co-writer, along with Kimberly. She pulled out because she felt that she didn’t know enough about X-Files to do a good job. (I’m ignoring other facets, like Kimberly’s neurotic obsession with X-Files and her constant ‘hinting’ for a ‘party’ between her, my wife and myself, getting in the way of any conducive working arrangement) After all the drama of one co-author jumping ship and Kimberly getting in a bit of hot water for continually putting off the work of actually *writing* the book, the publishing company just took Kimberly’s disks of the website, paid her share and had Farrand format the contents into the same style as the Trek books.

The X-Files book tanked. But we have an autographed copy. Yippee! :-P

About a half-year after the book came out Kimberly disappeared and we haven’t heard from her since.

And I definitely don’t want to know about the Bischoff Gold Club activity that happened in Lynchburg, Heath. Leave some things up to the imagination.

Regular Andrew Ormberg also had a Phil Farrand Close Encounter, and says that he’s still alive as of a year or so ago. He’s also got some good Trek comments:

The problems you discussed about Enterprise are the same worries I had when I heard the
concept of the show. You need to be really careful and have a couple hardcore Trek fans as consultants to make sure you’re not screwing things up, or at least minimize it.

I think the Killer Bs just don’t give a damn. They’re going to do whatever the hell they want to with Trek, then give it a patina of continuity legitimacy to satisfy the casual fans (hmmmm, the same audience that WWE wants to appeal to, ignoring the fact that it’s the hardcore audience who are now making up a near-majority of the viewers, which is probably the same situation with Enterprise).

Gotta say I loved you crediting the ratings for Rock’s Voyager appearance on Martok and Weyun/Brunt! Wasn’t there an episode where Combs played Weyun 6 (who was defecting to serve Odo) and Weyun 7, and in the same episode playing Judicator Brunt?

That sounds familiar, but I have to refresh my memory on DS9 (and wait until the DVDs come out for each season so I can pirate the episode portions, like I’m doing for Season 3 right now). If Combs didn’t do it, I’m sure he would.

(What surprises me is that neither Combs nor Hertzler are part of the Trifecta Club (actors who have portrayed members of three major Trek races). This was started after Star Trek: The Motionless Picture, when the late, incredibly great, Mark Lenard added Klingon to Vulcan and Romulan. I expanded the definition of “major race” somewhat: any race that appears in all three incarnations of modern Trek is major. That means that a member of the Trifecta Club would have to play three of nine different races: Human, Klingon, Vulcan, Romulan (the traditional four), Ferengi, Cardassian, Bajoran, Q, and Borg. That adds two members to the Club: Tim Russ (human, Klingon, and, of course, Vulcan), and Suzie Plakston (Vulcan, Klingon, and Q). Both Combs (human, Ferengi) and Hertzler (human, Klingon) are one short, although considering Combs, I may be wrong about him. I may also be wrong about Martha Hackett, who’s also one short.)

As for the ratings, I’m firmly convinced of that fact. Screw Mr. Johnson.

I’ll slip David Creighton into the Regulars section in order to keep a continuous Trek flow going:

Founders vs. Borg is a freaking nasty fight. Even if you assimilate a Jem’Hadar you can’t overcome Ketracel White addiciton, it’s genetic, you even risk infecting your collective! So at best you get short term use out of them. And you can’t assimiliate a founder! They’re liquid life-forms. But the founders’ main weapon, infiltration, is useless against the Borg!

Thank you, David. You just filled in the one gap in the line of reasoning I had about the Founders, the Jem’Hadar, the Borg, and Species 8472. Now, assume this as follows and see if it makes sense:

1) The Founders are the original inhabitants of Fluidic Space. Duh.

2) Species 8472, non-native to fluidic space, saunters in, kicks ass, and believe they exterminate the Founders (the Founders would be much more vulnerable in an environment identical to their body structure).

3) Some Founders escape and make it to the Gamma Quadrant.

4) The Founders create the Jem’Hadar as an assault force designed to go after Species 8472. They design the Jem’Hadar to move in Fluidic Space, which explains why they’re so damn fast in our space.

5) At the same time, the Founders create the Vorta to be their frontline eyes, ears, and command relays. The Founders aren’t going to risk what few numbers they have left to lead a fight into Fluidic Space, where they’re vulnerable.

6) The Jem’Hadar, at this point, are only controlled by genetic imprinting to serve the Founders and the Vorta. The Vorta are genetically imprinted to obey the Founders.

7) The Jem’Hadar move into Fluidic Space and assault Species 8472. Now Species 8472 is aware that some Founders live, so they’re going to track them down and finish the job. But they can’t defeat the Jem’Hadar, who have been programmed to exploit Species 8472’s weaknesses. Lots of losses on both sides, which is why the Jem’Hadar are designed to mature within a few days.

8) Now the Borg show up to go after Species 8472. They get preoccupied with each other and ignore the Founders. Even worse, the Borg, with its single-minded purpose of eliminating Species 8472, ignore the Jem’Hadar, the only race that can deal with Species 8472.

9) The Founders now have to take action on their end. The Jem’Hadar are vulnerable to assimilation. That’s when they come up with Ketracel White, a drug that will play havoc with the Collective, essentially preventing assimilation, and with the knowledge of the Jem’Hadar on how to defeat Species 8472, this would tip the balance of the war. The Founders need that balance in order to buy some time. White has the side effect of keeping the Jem’Hadar more under control than with genetic imprinting alone.

10) The Founders kill all Jem’Hadar without White addiction, and replace their numbers as fast as possible in order to assure that they’re defended. Also, they use a phenomenal amount of energy to create Founder children, who are designed to find out every bit of information that they can about other species and report back. Intelligence is both defensive and offensive, of course.

11) Now they have an assault force that will go