For one fleeting moment, Jackie Gayda didn’t suck total ass. This must be what Einstein felt when he first realized E=MC2. – Regular Andrew Ormberg
Equally hilarious is Bischoff’s saying “You know what Salt Lake City is known for? Being the single most boring city on the planet!” – Regular The Joe In Me
As much as Jackie’s nipple was right, Bisch was wrong. He’s obviously never been to Zurich.
In Memoriam: Michael Kamen, one of the greatest producers/arrangers of our time. Versatile, could work in any medium, did films, rock, you name it. He definitely will be missed by anyone who loves music.
Goddamn, another fourteen-hour day…three in a week. I don’t need this shit, I really don’t. That’s why I ended up blowing off this column until Wednesday evening. I was hoping it’d be Wednesday afternoon, but I couldn’t get away until late. In the meantime, I have a migraine, my shoulders are killing me, and I don’t know what planet I’m on. I hate to think what I’d be like without Klonopin right now. In fact, I just popped one with a couple of Tylenol. So let’s get on with this farce before I have to label this column “Junk News, Huzzah”…
THE PIMP SECTION
Jesus Christ, Ashley‘s alive. Who’d have thought?
Biscuiti, Matt Isomer has the time on his hands that I don’t. He’s got two new columns up over in Music, here and here. As for “awfully white of you”, the more common variant, and the one I’ve heard more often, is “mighty white of you”, and I found this particular reference:
The phrase has an entry in Eric Partridge’s “Dictionary of Catch Phrases American and British,” which says it’s of 20th-century origin (hmm, that seems late to me). “Orig. Southern US, it soon became gen. US, and has been heard in UK since the 1930s, often with an understood implication of its origin. Of the US usage, Prof. John W. Clark, 1977, has noted that it was, at first, used seriously–‘like a white man, not like a Negro. Now used everywhere, by everyone to anyone, but always jestingly (and sometimes sarcastically), and with full consciousness that it is a provincial expression–and NOT racist’. . . . [British usage:] Sometimes, in the Services, parodying the legendary British Empire builders, ‘Sir, you’re a white man!'”
That should answer that.
Yeah, sure, I’ll pimp Baxley and Lucard too while I’m at it. If Music can get some pimps thrown from me, so can Games.
SO NOW WE KNOW WHO TO BLAME
From 1bullshit:
Lex Luger ended up in TNA was done almost entirely as a favor to Sting. The entire locker room was very surprised when Luger was brought in. Sting asked TNA to do him this favor as he really wanted to help Luger get back into wrestling. Sting even arranged for Luger’s flight to from L.A. to land in Atlanta so he and Luger could drive to Nashville for the show together.
Look, Christian charity is one thing, but sometimes you can take it a little too far. “Yeah, Larry, you’ve got that whole drug thing hanging over your head, and there’s the implication that you caused your girlfriend’s death. But I’ve moved beyond that and I’m sure everyone else has. So I’ll use my pull and get the Jarretts to give you a slot. Everyone will welcome you with open arms because, hey, we’re all wrestlers and we’re all brothers, right?” Didn’t go off as well as you thought, huh, Borden?
GEE, ANOTHER STUPID STATEMENT FROM 1BULLSHIT
It is generally a negative when the RAW rating drops following a PPV. – 1bullshit in regard to Raw’s slight ratings drop
Uh, that’s the way it used to be. The problem is that ratings have seen drops on post-PPV Raws for some time now. Usually the drops are slight, like the .1 between last week and this week. So what exactly does this mean?
Simple. Nothing compelling happened on the PPV to entice people to tune in. There were two Raw belts up for grabs at SurSer; neither of them changed hands, and one of those belts was for the women’s title. No major turns were performed. No new alliances were forged. Nothing happened of any consequence, and that includes Wife-Beater’s departure (Gee, Austin fans, a little disappointed that the casual audience didn’t tune out in droves because your boy wasn’t on the show? Guess he wasn’t as important as you thought, huh?). What SurSer promised us for Raw was exactly what we got on Raw, and that wasn’t much except for more of the same.
On the other hand, Smackdown’s SurSer content provided a heck of a lot of attraction to tune in. We have the Cena/Benoit alliance/rivalry and how Happy Fun Brock will react to it. We have Vince being able to crow about putting the Undertweener in his grave. We have the cross-appearance of Kane to deliver the “eulogy”. If Smackdown’s rating goes down, then WWE should worry a bit about SurSer’s effect.
You’d really expect less significant changes for Raw than for Smackdown, though, since Raw has Armageddon coming up, while Smackdown has to wait until Royal Rumble for anything to happen. Of course, Raw will have a good portion of RR’s significant events; in fact, since Raw’s next PPV after that will be WM, those events will be more significant than the ones at SurSer were for Smackdown. The PPV split has made this kind of phenomenon almost expected.
So, in other words, don’t read into the Raw ratings too much. This was a shared PPV that was biased toward Smackdown on the SE side due to the split PPV situation.
(Of course, the aforementioned Andrew Ormberg disagrees with me, citing the pushing of the CW strap match to Heat and the fact that the Smackdown SurSer match curtain-jerked. Well, there must be balance. Raw had to close its angles while Smackdown had to open theirs.)
And speaking of Smackdown, did they take advantage of that focus?
SMACKDOWN SOMEWHAT SPOILED
Okay, Cena does a negatively-focused rap against Vince and Sable. Count him as a full-fledged face. Damn, at least keep the guy tweener for a while until we can get used to it.
Rey-Rey and Jimmy Yang not pulling out the cruiser spots? Might be worth watching for the novelty aspect.
Why would Paul Heyman be fazed by someone being whipped, even a tag team? As I’ve explained many times, the only logical explanation for why Justin Credible got a turn with the ECW championship was that he had pictures of Heyman with a donkey.
What’s sadder, Our Lord and Savior having to face Nathan Jones, or the bookers trying to give Bob Holly a rub off this situation?
The best news of all? The Guerrero breakup starts here. Finally.
MAILBAG!
Full props to David Orr for sending me nice, clear pictures of Jackie Gayda’s nipple. Although you’d think that being Cook County Treasurer would take up too much of his time for him to spend doing vidcaps of jobbers’ valets’ aureoles.
Nipples, unfortunately, beat out even the Pride Of Dartmouth, Elliot Olshansky, for the God Slot anytime:
Like you, I hate Ohio State, and thus, can’t STAND that they’re No. 2 in the BCS. But Michigan is No. 9 in the BCS, one spot below Texas Christian. Since there are three two-loss teams above TCU in the BCS, a Michigan win over the Fuckeyes will, in all likelihood, knock TCU out of the BCS top 8. So, what’s the higher value: Ohio State getting their asses kicked, or the underdog TCU making it to a BCS bowl? Personally, I can tolerate an OSU win in favor of an underdog, but I won’t be too bummed to see those guys get their asses kicked. I guess the best scenario is for Michigan to kill OSU, and for Texas, Tennessee, or Georgia to lose, keeping TCU in. What do you think?
Well…I’m conflicted. I want to see the BCS die a hideous death, and TCU’s the only available hatchet at this point (God knows I would have preferred it to be Northern Illinois). I also have friends who are Michigan fans who absolutely love to crow over a win against the Fuckeyes. So this is quite the quandary. I do like the scenario you posit with one slight modification: I’m sure that SEC fans would love to see some clarity show up in the title picture in that division, and to have Tennessee and Georgia both lose simplifies everything in that regard. Texas losing? Cool by me. Their fans are almost as annoying as Huskers fans (who are nowhere near as annoying as Fuckeyes fans, I have to admit).
You also have to remember that TCU only needs to finish in the Top 12 to get an invite to a BCS bowl; it’s automatic if they’re in the Top 6. There could be a bowl committee with a wild hair up its ass who’ll pop them an invite out of spite. Most likely scenario for that: if USC is in the championship game, the Rose Bowl might just go, “Well, we don’t have access to the top Pac-10 team, so let’s bring in TCU to face the Fuckeyes.” And then if TCU wins that one, everyone goes home happy.
Memo to Chris Domenicucci: You’re right about the women’s division. One of the big reasons for its lack of respect is Lawler’s unwillingness to get them over as anything but a pair of tits. I may not like Cole very much, but I’ll give him one thing: if the women’s division was on Smackdown, he and Tazz would be building the competitors up to a point where they might be taken seriously.
Regular Cabbageboy316 says this about the current zinging strings of LUV backstage on Raw:
The whole Jericho/Trish/Christian/Lita angle is the best angle at the moment, though I’m perplexed as to where this is going. What is truly fascinating is that for the first time in a long while there are actually some 3 dimensional characters on wrestling! Jericho: dickhead heel inside the ring, much more sincere around Trish outside of it (or is he?). Christian: another dickhead heel inside the ring, yet used his favor to keep Lita on the roster. And where does Matt Hardy fit into any of this, if at all?
Well, if we’re lucky, this could involve a five-way at some point, but I doubt it. I can’t figure it out either. They’re doing a very well-calculated slow exposition on this angle that could go any number of ways. The most obvious thing is a heel turn by Stratus and a face turn by Christian (who gets Hardy for instant competition, and some reflective glory on what they and their respective partners used to do in the ring). Here’s a decent idea: hot-shot the IC strap to Hardy at Armageddon and do a Christian/Hardy Ladder Match at Royal Rumble.
Geoff Chappell likes Jericho/Stratus (I’m still taking a wait-and-see on whether they’ll actually turn her heel), but does ask me something that’s close to my heart:
I’m going to end up taking the sub 10 year olds regardless, but have you screened the new Looney Tunes flick yet? Your fellow Chicagoan Ebert rated it highly. I was curious if he was going to be a Nemo like night at the movies or a My Dog Spot or Inspector Gadget type night.
Downloaded and ready to play, but I haven’t had the time to devote to watching it. I’ll probably end up seeing it tomorrow. I don’t expect great things out of it, but Steve Martin’s always good for a laugh.
Chris Wingert asks me this:
Hey, there’s one thing from last night’s RAW that no one, that I’ve seen, point out was that Lawler was in full heel commentator mode last night. King and JR are supposed to be good buddies but Lawler had JR so angry that JR told him to kiss his ass. Did you notice this too?
I don’t think Lawler was in full heel mode. He was in “playful heel” mode, going off of the fact that JR’s good buddy Wife-Beater was out of the picture and tweaking him to antagonize him. Lawler’s made such a ridiculous fool of himself that he’s no longer capable of going full heel anymore. Maybe he could do it in Memphis, but that’d be like what we’ve seen with Flair playing heel recently in the Carolinas: no one’s buying it.
And, finally, Marc LoGrasso, who’s close to Semi-Regular status, asks this about a certain Smackdown world champion and the fact that I call him Happy Fun Brock:
I think the nickname is great, but I feel the need to ask you where it originated. It conjures up memories of a transitional skit (to steal your term from today’s column) from Saturday Night Live, which was a commercial for the Happy Fun Ball that did nothing but had a warning list longer than most collegiate textbooks.
It isn’t my nickname for him. It’s been floating around for a while now, and I just use it. The SNL parody commercial is exactly where it came from, specifically the line “Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball”, which is oddly appropriate for Brock. Here’s the full disclaimer from the parody commercial, in case you’re curious:
Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Fun Ball.
Caution: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.
Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core, which if exposed due to rupture should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.
Do not use Happy Fun Ball on concrete.
Discontinue use of Happy Fun Ball if any of the following occurs:
* Itching
* Vertigo
* Dizziness
* Tingling in extremities
* Loss of balance or coordination
* Slurred speech
* Temporary blindness
* Profuse Sweating
or
* Heart palpitations
If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.
Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.
When not in use, Happy Fun Ball should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration.
Failure to do so relieves the makers of Happy Fun Ball, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company, Global Chemical Unlimited, of
any and all liability.
Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
Happy Fun Ball has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Happy Fun Ball comes with a lifetime guarantee.
Unfortunately, I don’t come with a lifetime guarantee, and I’m already past death. So I’ll break this off until next week. See you whenever and wherever I do something next (dammit, Fleabag, I’ll try to come up with something). Until that time, enjoy whatever it is you do more than I do.
About Eric Szulczewski
