In Memoriam: Charles Bronson. Certainly not a death to wish for.
It’s September already? Gosharoonie, does time sure fly when you’re carrying the weight here for all the lazy bastard kids who are just getting back to school and do columns in order to avoid studying. Remember, kids, properly-configured firewalls and properly-used condoms will save you a lot of grief, both now and later.
I hate US holidays. Nothing, and I mean nothing, happens. So much of nothing is happening that I’ve already done my next column for Fleabag. It started off as something to be included in here, but then I realized I could get a few thousand words out of the subject, so out of here it went. There’s nothing on TV, nothing on the Net, and it’s been pouring rain here in Chi for the last two days. All CNN has is a tape of someone who’s supposedly Saddam going “We didn’t bomb that mosque, honest. It was an accident.” Uh, no. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were accidents; this was deliberate mass murder with political and religious ramifications. Look, Saddam, just be a gracious loser, bow out, go into exile with as much gold as you can carry, and party the rest of your life away. In return, we’ll make sure to do the same thing to Dubbaya next November.
What to talk about? College football? No, people know how much I don’t care about that. US Open? Not with the seedings on the men’s side holding true to form and the excess of Belgians on the women’s side. Wrestling? Nothing there either? I’m bored, I’m tired, and I’ve been through the emotional ringer over the weekend, so I’m gonna keep this short.
The Pimp Section, then.
THE PIMP SECTION
Williams judges, lest not he be judged.
Nason hasn’t been pimped for a while, so let’s pimp him.
Campbell does some NOAH stuff. And hasn’t Taue always been slow? He’s the Japanese Kane, really.
Brown does a nice retrospective on the British Bulldogs disguised as a video review.
Memo to Laflin: So Silent Hill 3 is a PS2-exclusive release? That’s funny, because I’ve got a copy sitting right here that installed and played perfectly on my PC. I’m going to beat this point into your heads until you give in, you know.
I went from being in Army Medical to a world-famous legend in the IWC, while Jeremy Botter did the opposite. You can easily tell which way is better by reading my stuff and reading his.
OKAY, ONE WRESTLING STORY
Quoth 1bullshit through Ashish:
It appears that WWE’s media ban, which started as mainly a way to shutout internet websites from covering WWE, has spread to mainstream media outlets as well. WWE has been very demanding when approached by mainstream media outlets, going as far as to demand complete control over all photos that the outlet takes among other things. This has apparently led to the media in general covering WWE even less than they already have been in recent years.
And what’s so strange about this? WWE is acting like any other media company does. Every movie and TV company attempts to control the amount of “outside” access that a film or show might have. Group press conferences only, exclusive access to stars handed out to favored columnists who are guaranteed to do a good write-up, the blending of news and publicity…these are standard tricks. Are we to be surprised that WWE is using them?
Let’s face facts: we’ve known for a long, long time what a tight ship Vince runs. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: back in the day when we still had three major feds to cover (you know, those long-lost days of three years ago), half the locker room in WCW and ECW had Keller on speed-dial, and the other half had Meltzer on speed-dial. Those places leaked like crazy. However, we never heard a peep from upset people in the WWF. Since the buyouts, legitimate wrestling controversies have been hard to come by. That’s why Willie the Worker was such a shock. Finally, some good shit out of the WWE locker room, we thought. It was the exception, whereas with WCW and ECW it was the rule.
So we know what rules we on the Net have to play by. So why the mainstream press as well? Probably because Vince is sick and tired of taking a beating in the print media for the shit he’s allowed to happen. And for a reason that directly connects to it: WWE is a publicly-traded company. The institutional investors who put in mammoth buy and sell orders and who own the greater portion of WWE stock that the McMahons don’t own tend not to read the Torch or the Observer (or 411, for that matter) in order to make an educated decision on how to rate WWE stock. The investors and the brokerages turn to the mainstream press, people like the Cody Monks and Ric Russos of the world who cover the wrestling beat for newspapers, or entertainment trade rags like Daily Variety. If something breaks there, it has financial ramifications. The only way for WWE to maintain a good image is to ensure that a good image happens in the first place and control the press stories about them and their people.
Isn’t it interesting that this policy is being implemented close to the opening of Flex’s new movie, when WWE is getting pissloads of requests for interviews with him, articles on him, etc.? What are they afraid of, I wonder? Could it be that Flex’s new movie kinda, like, sucks, and given the intertwining of WWE business with his movies, bad press for the film could mean bad news for WWE? There hasn’t been much out there in the movie news about this bomb, so we’re not going to have a situation where everyone’s heard shitty things about it. But once people start writing and stuff starts coming out in magazines about how this movie blows chimps, the Gigli’s up. So, if you can control the press for the first week or so, until the reviews percolate and word-of-mouth gets around, you’re frosty because you’ve already taken in a good portion of whatever box you’re going to get.
So, therefore, Vince is shutting down the mainstream press to protect his ass and Flex’s. That deserves some investigation.
I LOVE IT WHEN I’VE ALREADY ANSWERED THE IMPLIED QUESTION
Triple H and Stephanie McMahon have been trying to land acting roles in Hollywood recently, but have had little luck. The word is that Hollywood doesn’t really know who Triple H is and isn’t interested in putting wrestlers in acting roles right now. Triple H is said to have been surprised that he wasn’t accepted in Hollywood like The Rock and Steve Austin have been. – 1bullshit through Ashish, September 1st, 2003
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. – Me to Mr. Levesque, May 27th, 2003
YOU’RE A MORON: BECAUSE I NEED SOME COLUMN FILLER AND BECAUSE I CAN’T STAND PEOPLE LIKE THIS
Sometimes, there’s just a piece of mail that’s too painful and too funny to read. This one…well, her name is Donna. She’s got an AOL return address. And she writes in red. You already know you’re in a world of hurt even before parsing the contents…
thank you for reading my e-mail.
I don’t have a choice if I want to be sure I want to kill it.
Maybe you can help me.
I don’t have that much medication on hand.
Do you have any idea where I can e-mail Edge or Christian?
Why are you asking me? Am I some kind of goddamn Rolodex? Hmmmm, under “Copeland”, nothing. Under “Reso”, nothing. Nope, don’t have that info. How about if you write someone at wwe.com? They only f*cking work there.
I’m very disappointed in the breakup of Edge and Christian,
And how long ago did that happen? Over a year ago? Get over it.
then Christian cuts his hair.
Well, good for him. The less money Helene Curtis and Clairol get, the better.
The story lines are so very boring now, it seems when they had an angle that worked, for instance, I wish that Undertaker would go back to his old character, this bad ass stuff is so boring, I always seem to fall asleep during wrestling.
Huh? Is there an attempt at making a point somewhere in this sentence? Or are you really an idiotic ditz? I’ll go for the second option.
And which “old Undertaker” character would you like? There are a bunch to choose from. And didn’t he give up being the Badass a while back in favor of “Big Evil”? Of course, if you’re still depressed about Edge and Christian breaking up, you may not have noticed.
I think that Vince should get some new writers or bring the old one’s back.
The writers responsible for this living nightmare have been there for at least two years now. Or maybe you didn’t notice that, despite the fact that we’ve been continually mentioning people like Brian Gewirtz over that period of time. Damn that Edge and Christian break-up trauma.
Look, just because I happen to have a news column on a very popular wrestling website does not mean that I have to be asked inane questions like this. My time is a lot more valuable than to have to even look at this shit. I have guys who write in with novellas full of interesting points and counterpoints that I’d like to answer, but I don’t have time. I owe Charlie Owens a letter. I owe Corey Worrell a letter. I owe Andrew Ormberg a letter I owe Sean Fri a letter. I owe Aussie Bureau Chief Brett Wortham a letter (if only for mentioning Great Gianna Sisters; talk about a bad flashback). I definitely owe Antwon Jackson a letter in our continuing correspondence. All of these people are Old Friends or Regulars, and deserve to be responded to post-haste. Instead, I get buried under shit like this, eating up valuable free time.
The lesson here is: don’t waste my time with this crap. It just pisses me off.
ONCE MORE WITH FEELING
Okay, bunches of people have been asking me, yet again, about what tools to use for piracy. I’m going to keep it simple and not mention Usenet or IRC, so no more mails about that, guys. I’ve been doing this for a long, long time now, and I know about the positives and negatives. I’m gonna stick to P2P because it’s simple for noobs. This is entirely geared to noobs. Let them discover stuff like DirectConnect and WinMX after they get their feet wet.
First of all, to start off with, you only need two pieces of client software: Shareaza and K++. K++ will give you access to FastTrack (that’s KaZaA’s network), and Shareaza will do Gnutella, G2, eDonkey, and BitTorrent.
(Support and use K++ because of the bullshit that Sharman Networks did with the truly evil DMCA to try to get its Google search results suppressed. Fuck Sharman and their spyware-ridden piece of shit “media desktop”. You can always find a copy by doing a Google search for “K++” instead of “KaZaA Lite”.)
FastTrack, Gnutella, and G2 are the best of those networks for music. Gnutella tends to have higher-quality files, FastTrack a larger selection of downloads.
For software and movies, I’d stick to eDonkey and BitTorrent. You can find a good file list for eDonkey here. You can find a constantly-updated list of trackers for BitTorrent here. eDonkey is slow but sure, with a great selection. BitTorrent is very fast, but it doesn’t have a stable selection. It’s a definite “grab now”. If you’re scared of the AAs or the BSA, be reminded that both eDonkey and BitTorrent force you to share. However, you get some rare shit on either of them. Someone put up a torrent yesterday for the unreleased-yet-essentially-finished Half-Life for Dreamcast. And if you want to be Lucard for a day and have a GBA emulator, someone put up ROM rips of the new Pokemon Pinball games. I’m also download a copy of Matchstick Men as I’m writing this, and it’s still a week and a half from release.
That should be enough to get you started. The only thing other than these that you’d probably need are copies of Nero, Alcohol, and WinRAR. Pirated, of course. I’ll leave that as an exercise for you to complete.
Remember, if you’re afraid of getting caught, or you’re unwilling to learn how to do stuff, you have no business pirating.
And speaking of people who have no business doing stuff…
THE SHORT FORM
Remember, I have to watch Raw in order to do this column. You do not. So don’t bother with watching it. Read Keith’s shit, then come over here for the Short Form. It’ll be a great deal more satisfying than Raw. Personally, I only got into the mood for this by watching Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia. Not as blatantly propagandistic as Triumph of the Will, but there’s enough Nazi in it to put you in the mood to see Vince. And, oh, by the way, she used dubbed-in “USA” chants in the film. That should piss some of you off.
Match Results:
Jonathan Coachman over Jerry Lawler (Pinfall, Lima-ference): Now, stupid me, here’s how I thought it’d play out: Snow versus Lawler at Unforgiven, with the announcing duties for Raw and Heat on the line, with Snow going over by dastardly deeds. It’d give Lawler some time off from commentating (either a vacation or a return to active wrestling for a bit; hell, just getting him off the goddamn mic would have been a blessing), and give Ross a little time away from the desk to do the office stuff that he always says he’s neglecting. It’d give us Coachman and Snow in the booth on Raw, both as heels, with a smarmy Bisch around to lend a hand, if only for a short time (until Linda reverses it or another similar match is set up for Survivor Series). Imagine the better NWO booth takeovers without the NWO baggage. That’s what it could have been like. Fuck you, “creative”, with the rustiest, yuckiest chainsaw ever invented.
And Quoth Slick Rick: For $DEITY$’s sake, get Lawler to change out of that singlet. No one wants to see that.
Christian over Chris Jericho, Intercontinental Title Match (Pinfall, rollup): What the hell was the reason they even began the match anyway? It’s simple: duck to the outside, grab some chairs, Conchairto on Hebner, walk off. Instead, you’ve got the makings of a feud between the two most entertaining heels on Raw. Dear God, what is it with these people? They didn’t even capitalize on the fact that they’re former tag partners, so each should know each others’ moves, etc. At least it came down to Cheat To Win.
Molly Holly and Gail Kim over Trish Stratus and Ivory (Pinfall, Kim pins Stratus, nasty double-team high-impact thingy): The good news: only one blown spot. The bad news: it was Trish’s handstand, which was the set-up for the finisher. It’s the old acting lesson striking hard: don’t f*ck up your first entrance or your last exit.
Rene Dupree and Sylvain Grenier over Novocaine Helms and His Pet Fat Fuck (Pinfall, Conway-ference): You know, for a match that had only one wrestler that I actually like, it wasn’t too bad. The apres-match, though…why didn’t Grenier say “Rene, obtenez les tables!”? After all, we’re in Lafayette, Looziana. A good portion of the audience would be able to understand what he was saying, and the rest of it would have at least picked up the “tables” part. Attention to detail, idiots, attention to detail.
My Beautiful and Beloved and The Guy I Will Allow Her To Fuck For Now over Stevie Richards and Victoria, No-DQ Intergender Tag Match (Pinfall, My Beautiful and Beloved pins Victoria, Retard-ference): You know, I really didn’t need to see any of them tonight, except for Victoria. I just don’t want to be reminded about the fact that My Beautiful and Beloved is still caught between those two idiots. She doesn’t deserve that. She deserves me. Someone who would love her, care for her, cook for her, disappoint her in bed.
(Prior to this match, a prediction from Slick Rick: Heel turn by Maven tonight and we have our 4th “horseman”. My reaction: Oh, dear God, no, please. You want to piss away Evolution, that’s the way to do it.)
Bill Goldberg, Shawn Michaels, and Maven over Trip, Ric, and Randy, Save Trip’s Groin Match (Pinfall, Goldberg pins Orton, the usual): Did Maven even get into this match? I missed the first minute or so. By the time I got there, Michaels was playing rag doll. Thank God for Michaels, though, or this match would have been awful. God knows that Ross’ verbal fellating of Trip was bad enough.
Angle Developments:
Cancellation: Someone please explain to Austin the difference between the Highlight Reel set and his wife. Like, the fact that the Highlight Reel still has a place on Raw, unlike her.
Not Quite, Trip…: Nice to know that Trip reads me viz. audience equals sheep and about manufactured images. However, I definitely would not have pulled out the “you’re the disease and I’m the cure” line. That one line just blew the whole promo out of the water. And it was going so well up to that point.
A Shock To The System: Uh, far be it from me to tell Kane what he was doing was wrong, but it doesn’t really work that way. Wet or not, the clothing would provide enough insulation for Marissa’s Pals not to have suffered any trauma. You need skin contact for it to work, period. It would have been more effective, albeit a lot less gruesome, to hike Shane’s pant legs up, trap him, soak his legs and the steps down with water, and apply the cable to the stairs. You get a lot better conductance that way. And, of course, you always apply the positive terminal last, so he wasn’t even using proper safety procedures. Man, does OSHA want a word with Kane right now.
Memo To Randy Orton: Get a hold of as many Freebirds tapes from their time in Texas as you can. Start watching carefully what Buddy Roberts used to do. Do the same thing. You’ll be better off.
I’m breaking it off here. If you read my column at Flea’s, you know what I’m probably going to end up doing today, so I want to crash out ASAP and get some rest before the guy calls me. I’ll cobble something together when I get back.
