You pissed on the economy. You shat on the law and wiped your ass on the truth. You ought to be peeled, salted, driven through the streets by mental patients with spiked planks, and then used as a toilet and jizz-catcher by baboons in heat. At best.
– Warren Ellis, through Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan
Sounds like a good suggestion to me vis-a-vis Dubbaya.
TV wrestling is phallocentric soap opera for retards and intellectually lazy intelligent people who get off by cultural slumming. – Ibid.
Yeah, that just about covers it.
In Memoriam: Gordon Jump. At least he’ll know whether or not Maytag appliances really ever break down, and if turkeys can actually fly.
And now I’d like to kick the teeth in of the moving company I hired. They had to cancel on me, so I had to spend another few hours on the phone trying to get another mover (which explains why this column is so goddamn late. Aargh. I’m not sure if this is a sign from some otherworldly power or if it’s simply karma (I got a job, therefore let’s make it as much hassle on me to actually start it). Maybe I’ll satisfy the need by finding Gregg Easterbrook of espn.com and kicking his teeth in for making fun of the University of Chicago Physics department (don’t piss off nerds; we can and will fight back, smartass).
This epoch needs an enema.
THE PIMP SECTION
Grut Versus Daniels. Think of it as Red Vs. Blue without having to buy a DVD to get the good stuff. Or to have to pirate it.
Cole answers more of those pesky little questions that you’ve been asking.
Zucconi not only has a retrospective column up, but it’s a great retrospective column. Why? Because I do a guest shot in it. Not to mention the fact that he’s one of the only guys who can get away with properly using “SWANK” in a wrestling column.
In that vein, Biscuiti, Matt Isomer has published a nice little riposte to the…what was Chris Isomer’s term for it, “Mississippi Mind Fuck”?…of a column I gave to his site a couple weeks ago.
Haley focuses his Little Things on Unforgiven.
Taylor, meanwhile, focuses on the Iron Man Match.
Okay, anything newsworthy for me to comment on? Trip taking a hiatus…we all knew about that. Why it should be a news break on the left-hand side beats the shit out of me. Ratings drop? Well, it was a good Monday night game with national appeal. And I’m still waiting for tonight’s Enterprise to finish downloading. It’s always a race to see whether or not it finishes by 7 PM Central. So let’s just go into default mode so I can get something in: S-Cubed and Mailbag…
SMACKDOWN SOMEWHAT SPOILED
An Angle/Cena program? Okay, I’m there, baby. This is going to be one helluva set of promos, and a terrific blow-off to boot.
Albert no-sold the Crossface? Okay, I’m now outta there, baby.
Cruiser Special is going to be Tajiri/Rey-Rey? Okay, I’m back in.
A promo’s going to close the show? Okay, I’m back out.
Damnit, “creative”, can you keep me in there for more than one segment? And, no, promising me a match between Vince and Steph for No Mercy isn’t going to do it. You should know that by now. Neither will Happy Fun Brock/UT, so don’t go pimping that either.
MAILBAG!
Some minor furor over my comments concerning Fark and Something Awful yesterday. Drew Curtis himself wrote me, asking me “where that came from”. To put it basically, it wasn’t against Drew, his wife, or his kid. It was mainly against the moderators there. Here’s a few of the reasons why:
1) One of the moderators essentially banned Slick Rick for no reason, and neither the moderators nor Curtis would give him a straight answer on why. Slick Rick’s a TotalFarker. He’s paying for premium access. Imagine if you forked over cash to access 411, and Watters or someone got a wild hair up his ass about you, proceeded to ban you from the message board, and not have the respect to tell you why. Now imagine writing Ashish and asking why, and getting blown off. Neither Watters nor Ashish would ever do that, and we all know it.
No one f*cks with Slick Rick or any of my other Regulars.
2) The moderators play a continual game of liberal-baiting, doing things like posting glowing taglines about Ann Coulter. Then, they proceed to delete messages from people who dare criticize that stupid, vapid bitch and her cronies.
3) If you say anything about September 11th that doesn’t hew to the Fark line that they’re martyrs, etc., you get banned. And that includes non-trolls.
4) The repeated bans on Aarkieboy for Photoshops that are, by his standards, tame, because some conservative moderator felt the images were a little too “graphic”. In truth, Aarkieboy’s use of gay-related images offended those moderators because they felt that his Photoshops were “legitimizing” homosexuality.
4a) A moderator deleting a great Photoshop that used Goatse Guy’s hands. Nothing else, just his hands. The moderator felt that the implication of the image was “obscene”, seeing as it was from Goatse Guy and everyone got the joke of the hands’ use.
5) In general, message deletions and banning for any message that might be regarded as controversial or troll-baiting. The standards used on Fark makes AOL look like free-speech advocates. It’s a very repressive atmosphere.
6) East Coast Bias.
These are just some of the reasons I don’t post there, and am no longer reading the site.
Regular Corey Worrell takes the same view from the opposite side:
Alright, Eric, I gotta ask. What’s with the Something Awful hatred? Fark, I can understand, because they suck a mighty dick and are unfunny as hell. But I’ve been an SA goon since early 2000. What’s up?
P.S. Fark and SA members tend to absolutely hate each other. So while you thought that the butt-munching comment was your insult, the real insult was calling us “brothers”.
Two reasons for that:
1) I took the side of the late, lamented SPEWS during the SPEWS/SA war recently, and thought the behavior of the SA people on Usenet was reprehensible and childish.
2) The people at Fark and SA may not like each other, but Curtis and Kyanka are buddies, and Curtis supported SA in the above issue.
Hope that answers that.
Memo to the Man Whose Mission Is To Keep Myself and Zach Singer Grounded In Reality, Ralph Snart: Ralph, I don’t think that anyone’s complaining about the length of the action in Iraq. There are too many other things to complain about regarding Iraq than that. Besides, no matter what the Junta says, the war’s still going on. Guys are still getting killed over there. It’s not an all-out conflict anymore, and that’s what really worries Americans (or what should really worry Americans). Your issue is a straw man. The fact that Dubbaya is a complete liar and hypocrite should be what’s focused on.
In this vein, a lot of people, including Semi-Regular Rob Bemis, took me to task for my pat on the back to Ted Kennedy. Look, it was only in terms of the fact that he bitch-slapped Dubbaya. He’s an embarassment to Demos and I freely admit that, but he did the right thing in this case by pointing out to the public what a complete waste of oxygen the man the Supremes appointed President is. Jesus Christ, the liberals didn’t write into me bitching me out for giving a pat on the back to Trent Lott last week, so give it a rest.
That takes me to Regular KC Evers (no relation to Lance, maybe) and this query:
The thing that still irks me about the whole Les Res schtick…especially after last night where the injured troops were yelling at them like they were traitors of some sort…is that the basic gist of them being heels is that they disagree with (among other things I’m sure) the Iraqi Invasion and how our nation has come off as bullies. What’s odd is that there are AMERICANS who feel the same way. So are they heels in logic as well?
No, of course not. But there are people out there like WWE who love to couch things in terms of black and white and utilize the demonization of dissent for their own benefit. There are a whole bunch of people out there who would love nothing better than for the Patriot Act and its bastard children to criminalize not following Dubbaya’s party line. It fits in with their contempt for American society and their playing off some people’s beliefs that if you say anything bad about the Gummint, you’re a traitor. It’s tragic that the extremists are the ones who make the most noise.
And another Memo to Regular Sean Fri: I would rather see Flex disappear from our national consciousness completely. Barring that, I’d prefer that he keep doing movies (that I don’t have to see), but be separated from the deals that everyone has to cut with Vince to gain his “services” and start calling himself Duane “The Rock” Johnson or something.
And yet another Memo to Regular Cabbageboy316: I don’t think Scherer was knocking me when he wrote that thing about how WWE treated the injured troops. It’s just another sign that he’s so retarded that he can’t see exploitation for what it is. Milord’s like that, you know.
Regular James Lawson brings up a damn good point:
I don’t know if anyone has brought this up, but it occurred to me while working this morning that Goldberg is in a really bad position.
With Triple H leaving, look at the heel roster on RAW: After Jericho and Kane, the only other credible heels are Christian and Test. Why do I get the feeling that A) Triple H will use this as an excuse to either put the title back on him or transition it to one of his buddies. B) Vince McMahon will use the fact that he is a low drawing champion to possibly dump his contract or shove him down the card. C) All of the above.
Test isn’t even that credible, plus he’s trapped in his Mobius loop of an angle with Big Sump Pump. Right now, the plan seems to be to feed Kane to Goldie and have Jericho f*ck with Wife-Beater for a while, while Christian tries manfully to do something, anything, with the IC strap until Booker gets back. Trip’s egotistical dominance of the upper-card heel ranks have been very detrimental. The whole wedding thing was coming months ago. It should have been an ideal situation for an opportunity to build someone up as a credible challenger to Goldie. But Trip just couldn’t stand it, and effort has been channeled in the wrong direction. Goldie/Trip is a given for SurSer. What they’ll do with the belt is anyone’s guess. But I certainly wouldn’t vote against your Option C.
Memo to Mike McCabe: Vince is at Flex’s movie sites because production companies have to get Vince’s approval for Flex’s services, and they normally give him an Executive Producer title in return. So Vince has an interest in the movie’s production because his name’s going to be in the credits.
Memo Again to Douglas Sudia: By “Ground Zero”, I meant that I was going to be living at Ground Zero of Nebraska football fandom, while Pankonin’s isolated by distance. It didn’t have anything to do with post-nuclear holocaust apocalyptic wastelands (i.e., the rest of Nebraska outside of Lincoln and Omaha).
Memo yet again to Jason Mis: Victoria’s theme song is “All The Things She Said” by TATU. It went to Number One in a whole bunch of countries, thus showing there’s still some musical taste out there. It can be found on their recording 200kph In The Wrong Lane, and can be easily found for download in the usual places.
Aussie Bureau Chief Brett Wortham called my attention to the fact that, in Australia, Raw will be moving from its Tuesday slot (which meant only a few hours’ delay from US broadcast) to a Friday night slot, and moving channels as well, namely to the same channel that Smackdown’s broadcast on. He asked me who I thought got the worst of that deal, WWE or Fox. Unlike you, Brett, I’m thinking WWE got the worst of that one. If viewing patterns in Australia are similar to those of the US, Friday and Saturday nights are the least-watched nights of the week. This is Fox’s punishment to WWE for WWE’s bullshit negotiation tactics. Also, I’m certain that they’ve always been packaged together, but when you’re dealing with a broadcaster with as many outlets as Fox, Fox has the flexibility to put Raw on one of their channels and SD on another. We can analogize the situation to that here in the US. WWE dealt with Viacom for its programming, and they ended up putting Raw on one of their outlets (the ex-TNN), Smackdown on another (UPN), and Heat on a third (MTV, until it was recently moved to Spike).
Semi-Regular Sam Hillier needs to recover from a cold (it’s still that time of year in Australia), but he’s got a decent observation considering a certain semi-retired wrestler’s preoccupation with beer:
I find it amusing that stone cold celebrates his substance abuse problem and gets cheered for it. If he came out and got someone to toss him a needle so that he could shoot up would that still be cool?
I’m still waiting for one of the ring crew to start throwing joints at the ring when Van Dam celebrates a victory. “Oh, don’t worry, we’re not glamorizing drug use, because they’re filled with oregano.” Just another example of WWE’s hypocrisy concerning abuse, I guess. For every Eddy Guerrero, there’s a Brian Lawler, and for each one of those, there’s Scott Hall, who’s been rehabbed at wrestling companies’ expense so many times he gets frequent user discounts at Betty Ford and Hazelden.
As per your other issues, Waking Life isn’t my cup of tea, and I’m certain that the Australian public is as enthused about seeing the Brisbane/Collingwood Grand Final as American baseball fans are of seeing the f*cking Yankees in the playoffs and World Series. However, I do have a copy of AFL Live 2004. Don’t ask me why, I just have it.
I’ll leave the final slot to Disq0Duck, who brings up continuity and thus earns an uninterrupted reprint:
I have a few Raw thoughts that I’d like to share. While I have always liked the writing on Raw (I gotta admit, some of those segments are very well timed and you an tell that these guys know how to write. But not within the context of wrestling, I’m talking pure comedy), the thing that’s always bothered me is the continuity. And this is not just with historical events, but stuff that happened a few weeks ago!
#1 Why would Goldberg want to toast beer with someone who he’s been accused of ripping off (circa 1998, since they were both bald and wore black tights, many jumped to the conclusion that Goldberg was an Austin knockoff), and not only that but someone who he challenged to a shoot fight on national TV? And spears the guy who made him? Did Bischoff ever really do anything to Goldberg besides book that one tag match a few weeks ago? Yet Bischoff even said he was trying to motivate him. He should have said the same way Austin tried to motivate Kane. It looks like Bischoff’s motivation results in titles and Austin’s motivation results in destroying innocent people’s lives.
#2 When did this Co-GM rule go from “we must agree on everything” to “we can each make our own rules, but we can’t over-rule them, just add to it” Back when Austin brought back the IC title, Bischoff had to come out and give his blessing, which he did (and there are many other things they did like that around that time). Fast forward to this past Sunday, and Bischoff made the tables match 3 on 2, and Austin didn’t like it, so he put the belts on the line. (Again, more examples like that)
#3 The most obvious “Austin can’t touch anyone unless he’s physically provoked” Now I won’t talk about the Raw match where he hit Bischoff until next week. I have faith in them (well very little, but still some) that they’ll use that as a storyline next week. But the issue is this. Why does Austin have to get the better of every little confrontation he has? Don’t ask me, but I think the more likable babyface is the one that “shows his ass” (I think that’s the term) and then rises to the occasion and overcomes odds at the PPV when all the chips are down. (See: Mick Foley) However the idiotic fans keep popping for him and Austin remains over, and always gets the better of everyone every time he is on camera. I’m sorry, but I always thought it was better to have the HEELS find the loopholes and get the better of things, not some jolly old red neck.
Oh well, but I’d like set up a little scenario that can get Austin fired (assuming the writers can use some continuity). Jericho lays out Austin with a chair shot or whatever, knocks him out cold and near killing him. This is a blind attack so Austin has no way to fight back from this obvious provocation since he’s down and out. The next thing he does is takes his limp hand, and makes Austin strike Christian, thus attacking him without being provoked.
Finally, I’d like to point out one last thing. Has anyone else noticed that the Test and Steiner feud that everyone hates has one slight difference than all other feuds that took place at the last PPV, and that is this one has not involved the Odd Couple GMs at all! At least not that I remember.
That’s it for me. I have to finish up packing, so I’m going to be really distracted until all this shit ends. Right now, we’re looking at a definite column for Tuesday and none for Wednesday, since I’m going to be driving to Nebraska after I get this shithole cleaned out and up. After that, everything goes back to a semblance of normal. Until then, I know who’s replacing Bower and you don’t.
