Since I was so rudely cut off, let’s continue from where I was yesterday, from the end of my speculative history of the Founders, Species 8472, and the Borg. So go back to yesterday’s column, read to the end, and then pick it up from there…
(and Memo To Semi-Regular Barry Petchesky: except for the speculative stuff like the material I’m just ending, all of my Trek complaints fall into the general distinction that the Killer Bs are unable to retrocon properly due to their own egos falling in the way. WWE just doesn’t bother with it anymore, so much so that when they do, it comes as a shock that they actually remember some of this stuff, viz. Flair holding the WWF/E title in the set-up for last week’s main.)
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11) Now they have an assault force that will go after Species 8472 and the Borg, with major invulnerability to both, in case the Founders want to pursue that line of thinking. With their domination of the Gamma Quadrant, they might change their minds.
I wouldn’t agree that the Founders’ main weapon is infiltration. Their way of dealing with conflict is to play one species against each other, and use infiltration as an expediting method. Look at the end of Season 3 of DS9. The Founders play the Federation, the Cardassians, and the Romulans for complete fools, all at the same time. They needed a little infiltration to do it, but they utilized the mistrust on all sides as their main method.
(Now, let me interrupt yesterday’s continuation by inserting a comment from Regular Andrew Ormberg:
On your last point about a Borg/Founder/8472 love triangle (which was incredibly cool), there’s one small flaw. From what I had gathered, the Borg had just fairly recently attacked 8472 when Voyager encountered them. The ass-kicking of a Steph-booked HHH match level that 8472 was laying on the Borg seems to prove this, as does their willingness to negotiate with Voyager (which is very against their MO). I don’t know if they ever set a timeline on when the war between
them started, but that was the impression I got. Other than that, it’s gravy- and would lead to a cool movie exploring where 8472 came from.
It never was entirely made clear how long this stuff had been going on between the Borg and Species 8472. I’m presuming it had been a longer period of time than the Borg let on to Janeway due to where the curves of Species 8472 kick-ass ability and Borg multiplication would cross. Yeah, the Borg cut a deal with Janeway. However, I think they were yanking her chain. I’d say that the situation between Borg and Species 8472 was more in a stalemate and Voyager got caught in the middle of a piece of action that favored Species 8472. The Borg could gain an efficient tactical advantage in that sequence of the war by making a deal with Janeway. It wasn’t desperation; it was just good tactics. And you’re sure as hell not going to tell Janeway that you’re going to use her ship as cannon fodder.
You want Steph-style Trip booking in Trek? Try the Borg Queen versus Janeway, with Janeway playing Trip. Jesus Christ, even in the last episode, two Janeways couldn’t find the f*cking opening to do the job. And people bitched about Trip not laying down for Flair.)
Jimmie Daniel, the guy who keeps me updated on TNA activity, wants to point out a few additional websites that concentrate on TNA, but, Jimmie, I don’t pimp the competition, so I’m not including the URLs. They do give some interesting info out, though.
Memo to Kevin Doten: I would much prefer to see a post-Voyager Trek series than Enterprise. Specifically, I’d like to see an honest-to-the-Prophets Star Trek: Elite Force, except give it a little IMF whiff. They’re the people the Federation sends in when things are too f*cked up and rules need to be broken. You’ve got all the necessary elements established in Trek to make it work: Section 23, ex-Maquis (the few who are still alive, that is), former Bajoran resistance fighters, excuses to break the Prime Directive and Temporal Prime Directive, pre-made compatriot enemies in the Tal Shiar and dissident ex-Obsidian Order people who can’t seem to let go (witness the bunches of former KGB people in the SVR right now who think it’s still the glory days), and the biggies: Species 8472 and a resurgent Dominion. Put Admiral McGyver…Janeway in charge of the whole thing (special guest appearances only unless Mulgrew’s out of a job again), throw in B’elanna, Nog, Icheb, and especially Garak, and go from there. Dead simple, which means that, like the dead-simple material in WWE, it’s going to pass without trace through the heads of the Killer Bs.
On that subject, Matthew Douglas decides to offend a group of people larger than wrestling fans:
Trekkies shouldnt be criticizing anyone whatsoever. Star Trek is responsible for shut-ins and social outcasts everywhere. I doubt you could get a Star Trek fan out of the house to go to a live WWE show on the off chance he or she could miss a TNG rerun or an episode of Enterprise. On the social food chain, Retards are higher than Trekkies, or at least they make more sense.
First of all, don’t call them Trekkies. They get whiny if you do that.
Second of all, I would say that my psychiatric condition is a lot more responsible for me being a shut-in and social outcast than the fact that I watch Trek; in fact, you can make a big case that the former causes the latter (what is cause and what is effect?). I get anxiety attacks in crowds, which is why I want to be comped for live events; I am not paying for me to go panicky. Besides, I blow off Enterprise all the time by conveniently forgetting to watch it by finding something more interesting to do. Cutting my toenails qualifies in this case.
And as for the food chain, it’s a matter of perspective. I’d say that, to more people, Trek fans have a better image than wrestling fans. Trek fans are seen as geeky and obsessive, but intelligent (they’re just misdirecting their intelligence). Wrestling fans are still seen by a large portion of the general public as being drooling inbred rednecks who are equally obsessed, and moreover can’t distinguish fantasy from reality (yes, people, there’s still a perception that we buy into kayfabe).
By the way, Matthew, did you catch that story a couple of weeks ago that the Oregon Department of Health is looking for fluent Klingon speakers to assist in their mental health plan? I don’t see the Oregon Department of Health requesting anyone who speaks fluent Steiner.
(No YAM for Matthew, BTW, because he brings up a good point that just happens to fall into the trap of only having one direction of perspective.)
Another Memo to Mr. Wallace: isn’t Oregon’s former senator Brock Adams, not Brady Adams?
Memo The Third to Gordon Flatt: Vince raiding established stars goes back to Hogan twenty years ago. It’s not something new (and it wasn’t something rare back then either). But what Vince did back then was take it slow. He still gave guys like Snuka and Muraco pushes at the same time Hogan was glomming the main event. What he’s doing now is not pushing the new along with the old to the same level he was with the older guys twenty years ago. Backlund leaving the Fed opened up worlds of possibilities, and Vince took advantage of them as best he could.
As per your assertion that Vince is afraid the old guys will walk and make instant competition, it won’t happen for one good reason: money. Big Gimpy, Michaels, Austin, etc., wouldn’t have a chance of making a fraction of what they are from the Jarretts or from establishing a new fed (if Fox would balk on being the money mark for Hogan during the boom, there’s no chance now of putting one together). Vince is the only game in town for the ultimate upper-carders. And I’m sure there are non-compete clauses for every one of those guys in place.
Memo The Fourth To Sam Hillier: My last name originated in Western Poland, which kept getting swapped between Poland and Prussia/Germany back in the day. When the area’s in Poland, it’s “Szulczewski”. When it’s under Germanic-speaking control, it’s “Schultz”. The best Polish etymologists, though, can’t figure out exactly what it means, if anything. “ewski” usually stands for “from a certain location”, but there’s no location corresponding to the remainder.
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And that’s what you missed yesterday. Mostly. Although I wish James Lawson had been able to write in his question about the possibility of swimsuit photos of Annika Sorenstam out there (answer: I don’t know, but if my mail’s any indication, there’s a pretty big demand).
You know, I just realized that the above was about one-fifth of my column from yesterday. Okay, I went batshit, but I never expected the Open Letter To Trip to run that long. Hey, it was at least wrestling-related content.
Now to today’s material…
THE PIMP SECTION
Memo to Hewitt: And you’ve got a purty mouth on you too.
(And speaking of They Who Provide Instant News Bulletins, Memo to Tom D’errico: I wouldn’t blame Widro for the incomprehensibility of the item he posted about the possible breakup of America’s Most Wanted. Blame Da Meltz, who, as usual, is trying to cram all of his inside info into one paragraph and only ends up cramming it up his ass.)
Be happy, Livingston, for you can still care about something involving wrestling. Albeit it’s Flair versus Steamboat from WrestleWar ’89, but it’s still something…wait a minute…Flair versus anybody in ’89. We all care about that. Never mind.
You know, I cannot believe that I’ve actually asked to get involved in one of those Grut Vs Daniels things. Not until the insurance thing gets straightened out and I’m back on the meds.
I agree with Dino‘s basic menu choices. Of course, I think that the four major food groups are pizza, drive-thru, caffeine, and nicotine.
IMPORTANT PEPSICO CAP UPDATE
I got a Jim Thome today. That’s a definite keeper.
HYPOCRISY AHOY
It’s one thing for someone to slam WWE for being an eentsy-weentsy bit opportunistic when it comes to the whole Free Tickets For Troops thing. It’s something else for me to slam them for doing so, since I’ve actually served. It’s a third thing for Christopher Bowen, who is on active duty, to do it:
Here’s something about those free tickets for the military: it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that WWE inc. is doing this for the free pub; I’m cool with that. But what really stinks is that they are doing it for the fact that Anheiseur Busch and Disney have already beaten them to the punch. In case you missed it, both companies are giving free admission to one of their parks for active military, which is cool beans for me (E-4, Active Duty, US Navy), since I’m stationed in Norfolk and can go to Busch Gardens for free. However, as I’m sure you’re aware of, Norfolk is basically the home of the Atlantic Fleet; that means that it’s practically crawling with squids. So why they wouldn’t do this type of promotion there (remember, WWE went through Richmond and Norfolk in March), but will do it in three other towns (only one of which is a military hotbed, unless there’s a big Army base in Mobile that I’m not aware of – you know better than I do) just reeks of something that someone brought up in some meeting after reading the newspaper. It probably wouldn’t have had an effect on me (I felt that the show was going to suck, and damned if I wasn’t right), but I know a lot of people that would have gone – in uniform, which is a good way to get your ass kicked in Norfolk – that didn’t want to pay the money to go. I put it best when talking to a friend, another WWE fan: if I can pay $15 to get front row tickets to a Norfolk Admirals hockey game (AHL), then why would I pay twice that to sit in the nosebleeds to watch bad wrestling and to watch Terry Bollea screw around with Vince McMahon over something that is 20 years old (which, ironically, they’re STILL doing – hell, Hogan wasn’t even AT the show)? That’s a lot of money on my salary, as you know. Anyway, I’m ranting, and figured you could use some of this in one of your newspieces.
You’re rambling a little there, but I’m getting where you’re heading.
1) The military freebie rationale for Raw came from your side of the aisle, and it’s the same one that Smackdown’s able to use: Pensacola’s forty-five minutes down I-10 from Mobile. The nearest Army base is Fort Rucker, which is all the way across the state. Agreed on the point you’re making, though: if they wanted to back up their “we support our troops” message with actual monetary risk while in this general geographic area, they should have done this in Columbus, Georgia. That way they’ll have Benning to deal with, plus some drive-ins from Anniston and Rucker. Or how about Savannah to give the guys at Fort Stewart something? Considering the sizes of Benning and Stewart, that’d be a helluva statement for them to make. Their audiences would be pure perk in those two places.
(And I apologize to the brother services for concentrating on the Army end of that. Include your own installations as necessary.)
1a) Last time I was in Norfolk, I couldn’t walk five paces without tripping over a squid. Not to mention the fact that all four services plus the Coast Guard have bases within an hour’s drive. I felt underdressed without a uniform.
2) It’s pretty common during times of “combat” for servicepeople to get comped by civilians, and it gets even worse when it’s a multibillion dollar corporation doing it for publicity. You can’t avoid being put into a position where you’ll be questioned about your wallet not backing up your words. WWE, as you noted, is in that position in this case, and they are found wanting. Reward for them doing this: high in terms of publicity and general feel-good (“Gee, they’re giving free tickets to the troops!”). Risk: low, because no one will ask the key question (“How many troops are able to take advantage of it?”) because it would smack of “How dare you question them supporting the troops!?”. Mindless patriotism must be a much stronger force than I thought.
3) Servicepeople are pretty good about taking advantage of free entertainment, from my experience. They’d go. WWE only required a military ID for the comp, but you know they’d love to have as many people in uniform attend as possible in order to create that all-important visual. Apparently no one there is clear on the lesson that you alluded to and that any military vet knows: you don’t wear your uniform to town unless you’re on duty, or the town’s so damn small that the base dominates it completely. I went through the latter at Fort Polk.
4) Been an E-4. Know the paycheck. Understand thoroughly. If I think that paying for a WWE live event (or even a PPV) is only slightly preferable to taking a Zippo to my money, I could imagine what you think.
5) Bringing up hockey, the same phenomenon that you’re describing with the Admirals also happens in Chicago. Thanks to the Wirtzes putting forward a crap product, a hostile atmosphere, and conditions ripe for wallet-hoovering with the Blackhawks, a lot of hockey fans have turned to the IHL Chicago Wolves for their fix. Tickets are cheaper, the atmosphere is more fun, and it’s a lot safer in Rosemont than it is around the United Center (albeit a great deal more Republican).
(BTW: Machinist’s Mate? The other services are a lot more straightforward with signature-block rank designations.)
Well, at least you don’t have to pay for this, unless the only way you get UPN is on cable…
SMACKDOWN SOMEWHAT SPOILED
So, how are they going to cope for the next couple weeks without that cornerstone of Smackdown, Nathan Jones? Let’s find out…
Oh, dear God, the Bitch of the Baskervilles being hooked up to a lie detector, even for testing purposes…I’m sure that we all have one question we’d ask her, and I’m sure that 98% of those questions deal with what Daniels calls Topic Ox Cock. And God knows those questions would probably be funnier than the entire Vince/Hogan skit they’re basing around this prop.
That being said, if Mister America is asked “Are you Hulk Hogan?”, of course the galvanometer’s going to give readings which indicate truthful. Mister America is not Hulk Hogan; he’s Terry Bollea.
This Week’s Tenacious Z Vignette has a set-up that you can see from the orbit of Neptune, so don’t bother looking.
Nothing much match-wise this week to consider a reason to watch, either. Pretty much a put-everything-on-hold-until-we’re-nearing-PPV-time calm.
The good news is that Angle will be back soon. But first we have to survive UT and TBS teaming up.
And for you, the audience, you have to survive another edition of Mailbag…
MAILBAG! AND I SWEAR IT’S NOT GOING TO BE AS LONG AS YESTERDAY’S!
411 columnists always get first shot in Mailbag. So, M. Parent, take it away:
Lastly, may I say that I find the mispronounciation of my first name to be rather annoying – someone should give JR some French lessons. Speaking of which, notice how La Résistance has been making efforts to improve their French accent as opposed to using their Québecer accent?
And they also ended up changing the spelling of said name on the chyron as well. And before Ross gets French lessons, can we teach him English? He’s difficult enough to understand in any language.
As for the accent part…well, I’m not as good with getting down regional French accents as I am with English and German ones. But, from what I understand…now correct me if I’m wrong, Syl, and don’t take offense if I’m right…the more snooty of Francophones, especially in academia, consider the Quebec dialect and accent to be signs of…well, being a le cou rouge, if you catch my drift? So, in a sense, all Grenier and Dupree are doing is poshing it up a bit. Full props if that’s what they’re doing, though; that’s called attention to character.
Memo To Matthew Michaels: Let’s just say I can summarize my feelings in that area as being “Do no harm to others, and make sure you do no harm to yourself, because you’re the only one who can make sure of both.”
Other than that, I’m going to break format a bit and start off with comments about the Trip Rant from yesterday, since that seemed to strike a lot of nerves. The best summary was by Aussie Timothy Byrne, who’s getting ready to move up to Semi-Regular (and your last analysis, which was very good, was at the end of the last column, but had to be cut from the make-up in this one in order for me not to have to roll over this column to next Tuesday):
Just reading through your discourse on HHH… I would summarise most of his point by the saying of ‘play the man, not the ball’. Rather than pointing to ratings (which he can’t) or house show attendances (which he can’t) or share prices (which he can’t) or merchandise sales (which he can’t) or ANY OTHER SINGLE STATISTICAL measure to show that the product is ‘better’ or
‘more successful’ withi him at the top of the card, he criticises the critics, rather than their criticisms…
I’ve never understood the ‘right to criticise’ argument anyway – in fact, my thoughts are the opposite from HHH – the WWE is like a sporting team we barrack for – we still go to the ‘games’, we still cheer for our ‘favourites’, we still take an obscure pleasure from being critical when
our ‘team’ is not performing. And what happens when a sports team hits a slump? There coach / manager gives a press conference. They apologise to the fans. They emphasise the positives, commit themselves to addressing the negatives, and say that hopefully they can turn things around. What have HHH, Bradshaw et al done. Criticised the fans for apparently not knowing good product when they see it!! HEL-lo!!
There’s another element to the “press conference” element that seems to be traditional in the US. I’m not sure about other countries’ sports, though. It’s the “owner’s vote of confidence” press release. Every time you see one of those, you know the coach/manager/whatever is toast. WWE, though, is an exception to that. Whenever Vince gives someone a vote of confidence, it means that person’s staying around, and that vote of confidence is usually given at a time when fans really, really don’t want that particular person around anymore.
However, I have to give a lot of credit to George Sirois, who keeps it short, sweet, and accurate, so he gets in here too:
This is the thing that kills me about the same old argument against Internet critics. If the shows themselves were written by nobody but wrestlers, that’s one thing. But the current head of RAW’s writing staff is a sitcom writer, and the man partly responsible for the Attitude era and the federation bitch-slapping WCW into oblivion was a talk radio host! Over half of the IWC’s complaints fall directly on the heads of the creative staff. Considering the creative staff being partly made up of wrestling fans who happen to be experienced writers, the IWC has plenty of experience as writers in their own right and – as wrestling fans – they have the right to be vocally pissed off about the product.
And, what the hell, The Priz! has some good stuff to share too:
The most damning thing about Trip’s comments are that he’s basically saying that people can only have opinions of the WWE or his in-ring work or himself in general that vibe with his opinions of himself. I’m about as musically talented as Slick Rick’s kittens with cymbals attached to their appendages, but I know when a song is good or not, because it’s MY opinion. Trip doesn’t have to like our opinions, but we also don’t have to like his “I’m in-TENSE” promos or blowhole-style water spitting. If he doesn’t like what we have to say about him, he can stay in Steph’s fish pond and off the Internet.
You go, boy. And speaking of go, yeah, I did like The Matrix Reloaded. Also, I like the implication that you made to me that Test has never got over his McMahon-SOP depush after the hot start with the Bitch of the Baskervilles and has been unmotivated ever since. Good perspective to see it from.
The Man Who Makes It His Duty To Make Gamble And I See The Light, Ralph Snart, goes off on a meat tangent as per death by ground sirloin:
Get ready for more shit. It seems that the same shit happened this past weekend in Greeley, CO (home of a ConAgra slaughterhouse)…. Seems that this past weekend (Saturday) some assclowns were cooking out and undercooked some burgers, and now grandpop has renal damage from E-Coli requiring dialysis (hopefully temporary). Family is freaking, looking hither and yon for somebody to blame and most probably, somebody to sue. One of my connections from a local hosptial (not the one that I work for) informed me that this family is trying to get the local media involved, and are also saying that the hamburger packet DIDN’T HAVE COOKING INSTRUCTIONS WARNING ABOUT UNDERCOOKING HAMBURGER! What rock have these people been living under?
First of all, the slaughterhouse in Greeley has been having a LOT of trouble over the last eight months in regard to bacteriological contamination. Management at my former place of employment is chock-a-block with ex-ConAgra, so we were getting the inside scoop about what was going on there courtesy of friendly keep-in-touch phone calls, including all details about what caused their multiple closures on this issue. This situation also had consequences for ConAgra other than bad pub. They’ve been trying like hell to get rid of all the old Swift slaughterhouses that they still have on their hands, and the situation at Greeley has FUBARed that permanently.
(Keller and Meltzer can take you into the locker room, but can they give you inside info from a slaughterhouse? No!)
As for the family’s idiotic insistence, please note the following words:
This product was prepared from inspected and passed meat and/or poultry. Some food products may contain bacteria that can cause illness if the product is mishandled or cooked improperly. For your protection, follow these safe handling instructions:
Keep refrigerated or frozen. Thaw in refrigerator or microwave.
Keep raw meat and poultry separate from other foods. Wash working surfaces (including cutting boards), utensils, and hands after touching raw meat or poultry.
Cook thoroughly.
Keep hot foods hot. Refrigerate leftovers immediately or discard.
This is known as the Safe Handling Statement. By law, it is required to be placed on all raw meat products at all levels, from wholesale to case, and it has been that way since the mid-90s. The wording is identical on every Safe Handling label, as are the graphics accompanying the words, so there’s no defense against not seeing it unless you haven’t bought meat in the last eight years or so (no insult to vegans intended). Most companies even put the Statement on stuff that it doesn’t have to be on, just to cover their asses. I practically had this f*cker memorized and only had to refresh myself on a couple words. For the family to say that it wasn’t on there is a very loaded statement. Having done a little consumer contact in my positions, that’s the first question we always ask when confronted with a complaint: “Do you have the original package?” If they can’t produce a relatively intact package without a Safe Handling Statement, they’ll be laughed out of court. So tough shit, grandpa, hope you love your dialysis.
The media will get involved, stupid people will be rewarded for their stupidity, and we will have to pay for it with increased prices to pay for the litigagtion and the NEW AND IMPROVED government regulations that will increase the cost of the products. Whatever happened to the law of Natural Selection, where the fittest survived and the unfit and stupid got eliminated from the gene pool?
It ain’t gonna happen, Ralph, so don’t worry. Yeah, the media will probably get involved, but it’ll blow over quick. The litigation is going to be damn difficult to accomplish since the industry’s covered its ass on this issue for so long. As for new regs, considering what’s already been done vis-a-vis raw beef and O157, there isn’t anything else to be done, not after the tightening and recertification processes all beef slaughter plants had to go through earlier this year.
The problem here is that there’s no one who’s going to come out in the press and say that it’s the family’s fault for not cooking stuff correctly because it’s going to come across as insensitive to gramps’ renal system. Well, tough shit. 70% of all foodborne illnesses can be directly traced to the home, whether in handling or preparation. If the public knew that fact, it’d be a little easier on the industry and the media would be a lot less likely to spread around FUD.
As for Natural Selection, I was going to mention that yesterday when it came to old girl and her dead kids, but considering my history, discretion is sometimes the better part and all that.
SulliSlug doesn’t normally belong in with the semi-regulars, but he deserves honorary status in this column and big, big, BIG props for saying that my Fop Rico idea already has an incredible blueprint wrestling-wise: Adrian Street. Now, not having had exposure to 80s Memphis, my thoughts on Rico would not have meshed with what I’ve read about Street as a reflex reaction. But thank you for seeing it, and thanks for liking the idea.
Semi-Regular DimensionXFear brings up a point from last night which a lot of people seem to be a little sore about:
There is one thing that’s really bothering me, though, and I really would like to get your thoughts on it in your next column. Maybe it was just me, but it nearly made me sick to see the WWE run a damn wrestling angle in the middle of “America the Beautiful” on the Memorial Day Episode of Raw. Now, wrestling has never been high-class in the least, but to think that Vince McMahon and his bastard off-spring would even fathom running some pathetic wrestling angle in the middle of a rendition of a patriotic song that was literally a dedication to the thousands upon thousands of Americans of all race, religion, sex and creed that had given their lives in order for us to have the luxury of living how we want, even if it means watching piss-poor programming on Monday and Thursday Nights? How dare Vince McMahon proverbially spit on the graves of our nation’s fallen heroes by having two Frenchmen come out during the middle of America the Beautiful and bombard us with all the typical foreign heel crap, only to have Austin come out and the main focus of the whole segment from honoring our fallen heroes to Austin’s horrible singing and Lillian pouring beer down her shirt to rile up the horndogs in the audience. It makes me sick, not only as a wrestling fan but as a human being that some people have such little respect for the men and women that kept them free that they would try and use patriotism on the one day out of the year that we take time out of our oh-so-busy schedules to “honor” our deceased veterans and grill hamburgers and steaks to make a buck? I truly hope McMahon will come to his senses and issue an upfront apology to all the fans that had the misfortune of tuning it to witness this travesty, but even that is like asking Triple H to drop the World Title clean to someone not in the former Clique. It’s a damn shame that a 15-year torrid love affair with wrestling has to finally come to an end because the memory of both my grandfathers got pissed on by a carny promoter and his sick, twisted idea of entertainment. As far as I’m concerned, they just lost a lifelong fan, and that’s all I have to say about that. Peace, man.
I’m very happy I wasn’t in the room when the whole “America the Beautiful” thing was being done; remember, I do have a column to do, and I use times like that to fill in the blanks on this puppy. It’s something I don’t bother watching out of habit because, given WWE’s predilictions, it goes one of two ways, and usually both: 1) Bathetic sentimentality and/or 2) Excuse for a rather gauche heel push. They not only did both, but tacked on Austin’s horrendous attempts at carrying a tune and a Lillian Garcia Chug-a-Lug. Normally, this wouldn’t be that tasteless, but, as you said, they’re connecting it to a holiday meant to honor fallen defenders (Veterans’ Day concentrates more on the ones who made it back). They’re also doing it during a time of military uncertainty, in which the country doesn’t know what direction an armed conflict is going to go in. I’d take it a little better if WWE was going to get something major out of it, but all that they got, and all that they planned to get, was a La Res heel demonstration and a gigantic tongue up the collective BDU-covered ass of the military (substitute appropriate duty trousers as need be for the Navy types among you).
As for having memories pissed on, well, I’m in a closer personal vessel than you are. Just taking the paternal side of the line, my grandfather, father, and myself all were in active service during periods of conflict (my grandfather during WWI, my father during Korea, me during the Gulf War). I don’t feel like I was pissed on per se by this. It’s so insignificant that it isn’t even the last drops that always seem to fall in your pants, much less a Huang Ho. It’s more of a level of insult that you can blow off rather than an in-your-face thing. I’m just going to put this one off to WWE being inconsiderate as usual.
Memo to Semi-Regular Rob Bemis: What I was recommending with la belle femme golfers was to add three slots to the field for the PGA, not take any away from the guys. Give those slots to the best LPGAers of the season (except for this year, when you put in the three heavy hitters), and get the pub and recognition that comes from the exposure at the only major you can really do this type of thing at. And the vulgarity in the Trip Tirade…well, it’s my style, and it’s easily excised, being mostly adjectives. I think I can get away with “vagina”, though.
Memo to Brian Mahoney: San Antonio, Houston…what’s the f*cking difference?
More Star Trek stuff, naturally, this time from deadshot42 viz. Jeffrey Combs:
Combs also played an Andorian on two episodes of Enterprise. Don’t know if you consider them “major” enough for him to join the Trifecta club, but the guy is an awesome actor none the less!
In Sports Entertainment, there are certain midcarders who are always there and who can adapt to any angle as need be, and who the entire audience loves. Look at, oh, Tajiri, Crash Holly, and Spike Dudley, just to name a few. Jeffrey Combs is Trek’s equivalent of that. And he’s terrific at it.
Playing an Andorian, unfortunately, does not qualify Combs for the Trifecta Club. They’re not major. As I said yesterday, I’m using a modified version of the pre-TNG definition of “major” that subsumes and expands that definition and takes account of the three post-Classic series. Any race that has appeared on TNG, DS9, and Voyager (and it must be all three) qualifies. The nine races I mentioned yesterday are the ones that fulfill the Trifecta Club requirements, plus the tenth one that totally f*cking slipped my mind because I’m stupid. Let’s get that revised list of Trek Major Races out there:
Human, Vulcan, Klingon, Romulan, Bajoran, Cardassian, Ferengi, Borg, Q, Betazoid.
Oh, that last one just kills me, because despite recently rewatching season 2 of Voyager, the fact that Brad Dourif’s psycho character Lon Suter was Betazoid completely passed me by. The good news is that, despite the revision, Majel still isn’t in the Trifecta Club (You think that wrestling fans have a mad-on for Steph? Nothing compared to the mad-on Trek fans have for the Widow Roddenberry). The better news is that no one called me out on it, so I can get away with a self-induced mea culpa.
And I have to throw Andrew Ormberg in here at the mid-hour, despite the fact that he’s a main-eventer…oh, hell, he constantly pulls double appearances in this sucker anyway…
I don’t know for sure if Jeffery Combs played 2 Weyuns and Brunt in one ep, but I do know for certain he played at least 1 Weyun and Brunt in one. And when did he play a human? Any other time than Sisqo’s Prophet visions?
Nope. But that doesn’t matter because of a proviso to my rule: Holodecks, hallucinations, chronological anomalies, and visions from the Prophets count, as long as the person is playing a discretely different character. This means that Nana Visitor loses her membership in the Club because she played Kira as a Cardassian and not a Cardassian who wasn’t Kira. It also means that no matter how hot she was as a Romulan, Marina Sirtis can’t put that on her CV. And despite what I said yesterday, Martha Hackett gets DQed for Seska. She gets credit under the Cardassian column for her rather than Bajoran, though.
Anthony J, bouncing off yesterday’s statements about Black Sabbath, asks me if I think the Doobie Brothers should be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’d say no using the same argument some (but not me) are using to keep Petula Clark out: not influential enough, too derivative.
Bradley Love loves my Links pimp and asks me a key question which I was going to bring up yesterday when I mentioned the program:
Seeing as though you’re a big Links addict, I was hoping you could answer me a couple of questions. I’m running a P4-2.4, 512Mb DDR and a GeForce 4600 Ti, yet the scene render times are obscenely inconsistent. Some shots will render very quickly, in a few seconds – other shots will take **minutes**. Have you experienced this? Any ideas on how to fix this? This is proving to frustrate me, and is slightly ruining my Links experience. I have tried the M$ website for support – no use whatsover, natch.
Everyone has experienced this, Brad. It’s called the NVidia Rendering Bug. It’s caused by Microsoft and NVidia talking past each other. It slows redraws on Links to a crawl even on powerful systems. And the solution came only two weeks ago, months after the program was released.
The latest WHQL-certified Detonator drivers, v44.03, solve this problem. I can testify to this. I was in the middle of a round at Latrobe, fall course, and the rendering was dog-slow as usual. I ducked out, installed these, rebooted, went back into the game, and no more rendering problems. Even f*cking Gleaneagles renders fast. Definitely a recommended download, since it also improves performance in virtually every other game out there (some people are saying there are bugs with these drivers and Metal Gear Solid 2, so be forewarned).
I can’t link directly to them because of the goddamn JavaScript pop-up license agreement, but just go over to NVidia’s website and grab them. Remember to follow deinstallation procedures for old Detonator drivers before installing these.
Second one – any ideas on where to get the Championship Courses add-on? I’m having no luck on K-Lite whatsoever, and I know you’re big on P2P software.
Bet your ass I am. Here’s a couple of ed2k links for the Championship Courses. Get a copy of one of the eDonkey network programs like eMule (here’s a direct link to the latest Sivka mod, my favorite; warning: this is an RAR file, so please have the appropriate decompression program handy) or ISO version
BIN version
By the way, on a related note, on Monday, KaZaA passed ICQ to become download.com’s most downloaded program ever. And the **AAs think they can stop P2P.
Oh, this is definitely a full-service wrestling column, huh?
And to end off, a new variation on a popular old theme…
YOU’RE A HOOLIGAN: DEFINE “SPORT”. DEFINE “WORLD”.
David May asks me a question about a sport other than golf…are there other sports?
I pity you Americans, I really do.
I mean, not only do you miss out on Eurovision (the campest, most rigged, most pointless competition ever)
Apparently you’ve never seen American Idol.
but on Wednesday, about 97% of the population will miss out on the biggest annual sporting event.
The only song that ever won Eurovision that deserved to win, or was actually good, was “Waterloo”. Period. Please, go on.
Despite what American TV companies and rednecks think, I think the UEFA Champions League Final is the biggest annual sporting event in the world. Simply put, who outside the US cares about the World Series, Superbowl and NBA Finals?
In one word: gamblers.
I consider myself an avid sportsfan but I couldn’t tell you the last Superbowl winners
Tampa Bay, as much as it pains me to say it.
and, despite, the huge fuss on every American site I visited, who has hit the most homeruns in a season.
The record in a season is 73, held by Barry Bonds. This season, as of Tuesday afternoon, Adam Dunn is leading the NL and majors with 18, including a granny in the 11th Monday. Delgado, Soriano, and A-Rod are tied in the AL with 15. Hope that helps you.
Here’s the problem that I have with the whole trans-national-league structure of European cup football: unless you follow the sport very, very closely, across the top national leagues, you have no idea which team is qualified for which tournament. There’s just too damn many tournaments and too damn many leagues to keep track of. Yeah, the Champions League is the top of the line, but it still gets caught in the mix. And then you’ve got another argument this year which compounds confusion for the less-aware: if it’s supposed to be trans-national, what the f*ck are AC Milan and Juventus doing in the final? Using an analogy to the closest thing American sport might have, the NCAA football bowl season, that’d be like Oregon and UCLA or Ohio State and Michigan squaring off for the national championship.
Football/”Soccer” truly is the world’s sport, played on all continents and followed fantantically on all bar North America
Uh, don’t say that. There’s this country called Mexico that happens to be part of North America.
and I think most of the world’s population could tell you who Zidane, Beckham, Michael Owen and Raul are.
Hell, I know who they are. Of course, when it comes to Beckham, there’s always the Posh Spice factor to contend with.
I think if you complied a list of the most memorable sporting moments from the 90’s or even ever, I’d bet most of those would be from football. Baggio’s penalty miss, Ronaldo’s no-show at the France 98 final, Beckham’s sending off, Maradona’s genius, anything Pele did, Zidane’s goal vs Leverkusen, United’s win in 1999 (1-0 down with 3 minutes left) and so forth…
No, and let me demonstrate. Let’s go pure Nineties and eliminate Vinatieri’s field goals in the AFC Championship and Super Bowl, the most exciting moments in any sport so far in the Oughts (you can be pedantic, so can I, and I don’t even like the Patriots; hell, wasn’t I the one who said that both of those games were fixed by Dubbaya?). Let’s talk about Kordell to Westbrook, Michael’s shot in Game 6 against Utah, Laettner at the buzzer, the Music City Miracle, McGwire’s 62nd, Dale finally winning Daytona, Tigger at the ’97 Masters, Was Brett In The Crease?…hell, Brandi Chastain’s training bra if you want to go to the pitch. I’ll put those moments up against those you mention any day. And I limited myself to one moment per particular sport (separating college and pros where needed).
It’s simply a matter of perspective and focus. The Immaculate Reception and the Hand Of God are both on the list of Most Exciting Moments In The History Of Sports, but Americans happen to be familiar with the former moreso than the latter.
I do agree with you on one thing, though: Pele is God.
So question is; why, apart from a few ex-pats (Irish, Mexican, Italian mainly) does America show apathy to the global game? It can’t be because it’s slow (I’ve seen NFL games take about 15 minutes to run down 4 minutes on the clock).
That’s mainly because teams are burning their time-outs for strategic purposes or have gone pass-happy in an attempt to catch up from a deficit. You want slow? Try the Foul Festival that is the last two minutes of any NBA game.
Also, there’s a difference between “slow in spots” and “slow in general”, the same difference there is between a Rob Van Dam match and a Big Show match. The latter is the perception of soccer in America. Hockey, which shares a low-scoring and strategic structure with soccer, isn’t seen as slow because the motion is compressed into a small space (and being indoors helps the perspective element). Hockey players are a blur on the white of the ice; soccer players are a comparatively stationary dot in a sea of green.
The complaints about soccer from baseball fans, though, always surprise me. They’re both games of slow pace and subtle strategy that’s not readily apparent to a viewer, with spasmodic episodes of scoring sandwiched in between the Void. Frankly, baseball bores me more than soccer, a lot more, and not because games last an unconscionable amount of time. It’s just sickeningly boring. Plus, based on the results of local experiments, baseball hooligans have a long way to go to catch up to their football bretheren.
Is it because it’s a “foreign” game (I came across an article where an American writer came up with a link between Communism and football*)?
That’s probably the closest explanation for general purposes that I can think of. The old-line sports people are very much Not Invented Here (you should hear how many sports talk radio hosts are actively hostile to soccer), and they tend to express a lot of what old-line sports fans seem to think (judging from the callers, who seem to be a justification for retroactive abortion, especially the ones in Cleveland). Those people dominate public perception and thinking about sports. Unfortunately, we’ve said for thirty years now that the attitude’s changing toward soccer, yet it hasn’t been seen except for special events. What needs to happen to convert the US over to soccer lovers is two straight World Cup victories, somehow involving defeats of Iraq, Iran, France, and, for the old-timers, Russia. We can’t embrace it because we haven’t made it ours, and we haven’t made it ours because we haven’t dominated.
* – Patti Smith had a story about this particular attitude. It was when she was doing factory work in New Jersey and was still trying to figure out if Jesus had indeed died for her sins. She’d brought a book of Rimbaud’s poetry to work one day, with opposite pages in French and English. Her boss saw her reading this, and started screaming at her that she was going to be fired for reading that book. When Patti asked why, the boss said that it was foreign (since half the pages were in French and all that), that anything foreign was Communist, and that she wouldn’t tolerate this Communist propaganda in the workplace. Patti, rightly, regarded her as a total cunt.
That being said, Americans (and Canadians as well in this instance) aren’t unreceptive to “foreign” ideas in sports. Last year, after the Olympics, everyone was begging the NHL to adopt some of the international rules that helped make Olympic hockey a must-watch even among non-hockey fans. Of course, you’re dealing with Gary Bettman, a complete cement-head, so that won’t happen.
Because its low scoring?
Not low-scoring but the way that it’s low-scoring. Baseball at least has the excuse that, despite it being a team sport, it’s one-on-one where it counts, and if a batter does his job one-third of the time, he gets fifteen million a year for being so great at the plate. Soccer doesn’t have that luxury. Let me put out the most pertinent example of this:
(Sorry, Dino, I apologize in advance for this, really, I do…)
FIFA should have called for the execution of everyone involved in the final of the 1994 World Cup, since that game alone set the popularity of soccer in the US back at least a quarter-century.
Look at the situation from the perspective of the time: Thanks to a judicious choice of host, the sport now has a foothold in the last major hold-out country. The home team made it past the first round, which brought some mass attention to the tournament. The games are filling up seventy-thousand-person-seat stadia, and there are even some Americans in the crowd. This has contributed toward an actual grass-roots buzz, and the Unwashed Yanks legitimately want to watch the final and see the game played at its ultimate level. This was it. One great game in the final, and the Americans would be hooked enough to break the door down once and for all. So what happens? The Brazilians and Italians come out and proceed to play the most boring, defensive contest ever seen by man or beast. In other words, the exact opposite of anything that might appeal to the American TV audience. The cries of “What the f*ck is this shit?” are probably still echoing in Sepp Blatter’s ears. There was just no way in hell an American sports fan was going to sit through regulation, overtime, and a shootout consisting of Not A Fucking Thing.
You want a way to get Americans more involved in the excitement of the game? Ban the offsides rule and let the guys shoot the lights out. You can shrink the net a little so we don’t have game scores that look like baseball results at Coors Field. You don’t have to increase the scoring, just increase the scoring opportunities.
And if you’re banning the offsides rule, also ban the pathetic overacting that happens any time incidental contact takes place inside the box. Seeing grown men lay on the pitch and writhe like they’re giving birth doesn’t increase the legitimacy factor of the sport very much. The officials should be instructed to do the following: on the first sight of overacting, the player automatically gets a yellow card and is told to stay in the corner of the pitch until he learns how to behave like a grown-up.
The offender also gets my new development: the Black and Blue Card. The game gets stopped, the rest of the players form a circle around the offender, the guilty party is forced to don a Liverpool jersey, and a half-dozen Man U fans get one minute with him (substitute Real/Barca, Inter/AC, B-Mun/B-Lever, Rangers/Celtic, etc., as desired, or if you’re trying to appeal to American audiences, Bears/Packers, Yankees/Red Sox, Lakers/Kings, or Raiders/anybody). That should teach him not to do that anymore. And, as we all know, the most important thing in sports is sponsorship, and the sponsorship opportunities for the segment would be golden: “This beating is brought to you by Advil…”
90 minutes long?
Despite the fact that three of the four major American sports only have sixty minutes of game time (and the other one has no set time), I don’t think the length is any factor. What is a factor is that Americans are conditioned to commercial breaks. It makes the game time seem smaller. Commercial breaks make even baseball seem tolerable. An American simply can’t focus on a sporting event for forty-five minutes plus injury time without a break, especially when the action appears to be slow (see above). It’s not a problem with the American attention span; it’s what Americans have been conditioned to expect from sports broadcasts. The exception that proves the rule is the Masters. Slap in an official’s time-out at the twenty-minute mark of each half, and you’ll have something.
Not enough stats?
Not every American sport is like baseball, where they keep stats for everything in the known universe. Bill James probably has an abstract buried somewhere of cock-size statistics, helpfully subdivided into major- and various minor-league systems so that some writer can definitively say that the guys in the Pacific Coast League are, on average, hung like moose. Unless you’re a fantasy geek, stats don’t really matter.
And what really doesn’t matter is any column that I write. So I’ll turn this irrelevance over to Grut and get back to what I was doing. Enjoy.
About Eric Szulczewski
