Opinions, Etc 03.10.04

Archive

In Memoriam Triple-Shot:  Paul Winfield, Robert Pastorelli, and Abu Abbas.  Heart attack, OD, and It’s The Infidels’ Fault, respectively.


Living up to principles is never easy. It can involve difficult and painful decisions…Nowhere is freedom perfectly realised – and its enemies are not only those who terrorise and torture. They are also hunger, poverty, disease and ignorance. – HM Queen Elizabeth II, the 2004 Commonwealth Day address

See, even Brenda agrees:  vote Democratic in November.

And it’s another Wednesday missive from the guy who clowned Monroe so badly that he left…actually, I can’t take credit for that one.  He outraged himself out of his column.  That’ll be the last time you hear that name from me, though.  Let’s just get on with the show…

THE PIMP SECTION

Smilowitz!?  You’re alive!

Evocator opens the floodgates to degenerate puns about him knowing how to judge a handsome dick.  However, I did feel sad that he left out the fact that Handsome Dick Manitoba is most famous for one thing:  getting the crap beat out of him by a drag queen for not knowing when to shut up.

Misha can’t find anything to write about either.

Morse and His Merry Comics Band get their Best Artist of 2003 column out of the way, and it’s only March.  Although it wouldn’t be a pimp if I didn’t quibble about something, and that’s Maillaro’s statement about Mark Bagley:  “No one has ever drawn a better Spider-Man”.  Oh, let me bring up the names Romita (x2), Andru, McFarlane, Larsen…and those are the ones off the top of my head.  Kid’s gotta learn some history.

Platt fought a war with God, and lost.  And Lucard is soooo not Hadji.  Dr. Quest, yes, but not Hadji.

Conley discusses movies that you will never, ever touch in your lives unless you’re 1) brain-damaged or 2) desperate and out-jacked-off enough that anything out of the $5.88 bin at Wal-Mart will do for an evening of entertainment.

Cocozza doesn’t realize the easiest thing to give up for Lent is Christianity.  I did it, and stuck to it.

And, of course, BAXLEY!  The one quibble is that Johnny R and his festering turd of a software company couldn’t be cool if you dunked it in liquid helium.  The sad part is that the pathetic, avaricious, marketing-department-infected scumpond that is EA isn’t even Trip Hawkins’ number one reason to go “Jesus, why did I ever leave Apple?”

A MINOR SPORTS MEMORANDUM

I did NOT graduate from the university that will be representing the Horizon League in the NCAA basketball tournament.  I went to the school eight miles southeast of there, the private, expensive school with nearly seventy Nobel winners.  I just wanted to clear that up again because someone a couple weeks ago made that mistake in a letter to me (but to his credit, corrected himself with a follow-up, and thus saved himself intense embarassment).  But congrats to UIC anyway.  Jimmy Collins has built a great b-ball program over where the poor, stupid kids go to school, and he deserves a ton of credit.  As does another Chicago-area (in a broad sense) basketball legend, Homer Drew.  Gives the reins at Valpo over to his son, his son then uses the impeccable family rep for honesty and probity to try to resurrect Baylor, Homer comes out of retirement, and he’s back in the tournament…

…you know, as a Chicago sports fan, I’ll have to pay attention to the NCAAs a bit with UIC, Valpo, and DePaul in there (the latter’s definitely getting an at-large if they don’t win the C-USA tournament).  Maybe Notre Dame too depending on how the Big East shakes out.  My cousin graduated from SIU, and they’re in as an at-large.  And there’s always that team on the East Coast coached by the only Polack from the Southwest Side of Chicago more famous than I am.  Word life, this is basic bracket-nomics…

YOU’RE A MORON:  CANARD A L’ORANGE

Well, it’s Wrestlemania Week.  That’s usually the time of year when the closet wrestling fans come out of the woodwork, thinking it’s safe, and a lot of them end up going to a website looking for something to justify them coming out from under their rocks for that week.  Then they read my material and get pissy because I’m not fawning all over everything that’s being presented.  You know what that means?  Yep, there’s always a guaranteed YAM winner in the bunch.  Congratulations to Michael Redmond for being this year’s winner of the “Gee, Aren’t You Original” award for most misguided wrestling-related criticism during Wrestlemania Week:

Hi, I am a very frequent reader of the 411 wrestling website and always read the articles.

If you always read the articles on 411, then you always read my articles by definition.  So why did you become so shocked over the negative nature of the content?  I’ve only been doing this style of material here for two and a half years now (four years in toto).  If you always read the articles and you’re a “very frequent” visitor, surely you must have come across that before.

In other words, you’re lying through your f*cking teeth.  You’re one of the people I described above.  You’re brave enough to come out as a wrestling fan because of WM, but you need someone (to justify the risk of potential humiliation by your peer group) saying that wrestling’s all that and a bag of Doritos.  That ain’t me, oogums.

I have read your recent article and I must say one thing. You need to reconsider yourself as a wrestling fan. If you do not like the product, then dont watch it. Simple as that.

Ooooh, how blistering.  Like I’ve never heard that one before.  Hell, I get at least one letter every two weeks featuring this very theme.  It’s your arrogance about it that throws it into YAM territory, bucko.

I am tired of hearing reporter after reporter put down the company and not do their job.  Yea thats right.. not do their job.

Oh, I can’t WAIT to read what you think our “job” is supposed to be.  Are the words “sucking” and “up” contained in the description?

Part of the job of reporting is to report the good as well as the bad.

Which we do.  Even I do that.  Apparently you miss the consistently good things I say about numerous performers on the roster like Ric Flair, Eric Bischoff, Chris Jericho, Christian, Molly Holly, Jonathan Coachman, and many others.  I give credit where credit is due.  Your problem with me is that I have high standards and am not willing to compromise them, and am equally willing to say what I believe is wrong.  In other words, you want me to suck up.  Suck this, bitch.

Its a shame how society nowadays things move and change so fast.

Huh?  Where the f*ck did that come from?  Yet another YAM winner who orbits Neptune on a daily basis.

What do the WWE have to do to silence their critics.

I think I’ve made it clear what WWE can do to silence me.  It comes down to two options:

1) Hire me at a salary higher than Heyman’s getting.

2) A full magazine from a .357 Magnum in tight groups.

I mean every single thing on Raw that was good,

Are you talking about the Raw that was on on Monday?  There wasn’t a single thing on there that was good.

you had to try to pull out a small negative thing out of your behind and make a big deal out of something for attention.

Oh, this is great.  He’s using the “Eric S is being bitchy just for attention” rationale.  The most single discredited reason for criticism of me.  It’s now obvious that he doesn’t read me, despite his protestations that he does.  No, just to make it absolutely clear, I am bitchy because I’m a bitter, lonely psychotic who can’t stand his life.  I’ve made that abundantly clear.

Noone cares about your negative remarks.

No, but Noone did coin the phrase “something tells me I’m into something good”, and my hundred-thousand-plus readers agree.

That is not a good read.

Not according to said readers, who keep coming back to hear more from me week after week.

Fans of wrestling go to the website to hear both negative and positive as well as the ongoings of the company.

And who are you to speak for “fans of wrestling”?  I have a lot more credibility to speak for wrestling fans as a community than you do.  You know why?  BECAUSE I’VE GOT A FUCKING COLUMN!

I do not feel you are reporting the news accurately.

Ah, and there’s the rub.  I do not report the news.  I interpret the news.  I am op-ed, and always have been.  In fact, I was one of the first to do op-ed as a news column in the IWC.  What don’t you understand about the “Opinions, Etc.” part of the column name, jackass?

For example, you hated the Foley/Rock segment.

Well, ding, ding, Dora.  You finally got something right.

Let me ask you something.

If I told you no, would you stop this and shut up?

what would u do.

Not phrase a sentence like the title of a Prince song, for one thing.

Did you not see the crowd reaction and crowd responses.

Yes, I did.  Irrelevant.

Everyone was digging it.

And if you’ve supposedly read me for the frequency you state that you have, you would know exactly what I think of wrestling fans and their opinions.  “Irrelevant” is the kind version of what I can say in that vein.

There was nothing wrong with the segment

Other than being tasteless, boring, and insulting to the intelligence of a four-year-old.

but yet you have to write this whining article putting down everything imaginable.

That’s what I do, that’s what people expect me to do, and that’s why they love me.

You are entitled to your own opinion,

And as a writer, you are also entitled to my opinion.  That does not necessarily mean that I am entitled to your opinion.  I’ve made it clear many, many times that I don’t give a flying f*ck what you think.

but you are consistely a negative person.

Everyone on three…

one…

two…

three…

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!

I dont know whether you are not satisfied with your current lifestyle but really you need to relax and chill.

If you read me like you claimed you did, you’d know that I’m neurochemically incapable of doing so without certain medication.  And you wouldn’t be satisfied with your lifestyle if you’ve spent the last quarter-century being an undiagnosed bipolar.

Things are improving.

And you’re presenting Monday’s edition of Raw as proof of “improvement”.  The only proof of anything here is that you have no taste.

They have every major star helping out in some way.

Yeah, we all know that Trip’s helping himself and Michaels out to as much as they can get away with, Flex is helping out by pulling a noblesse oblige routine, Foley is helping out by destroying his legacy, Wife-Beater is helping out by servicing his own ego to ruin a big-money match, UT is helping out so that he can go over Lesnar mark-credibly again…shall I go on?

I dont know what more you could ask for.

The book, so someone with intelligence, taste, and a sense of history and continuity can stop this bullshit once and for all.

Years ago , when u say WWE was at its best let me ask you something how many main eventers were there.

I think it’s consensus that WWE was at its best between Montreal and the WCW buyout.  Main eventers then?  Well, f*ck, it’s the same guys you have now:  Trip, Michaels, Flex, Wife-Beater, Foley, UT.  The only new additions to that list are Angle and Eddy, and it’s only been in the last eight or nine months that Eddy’s become a main-eventer.

Now a days we have so many its sick we have like 12-15.

I count eight (see the above paragraph).  One of those eight doesn’t wrestle anymore, another’s doing movies, another can barely wrestle because he’s one bad back bump away from ending up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and another writes books for a living.  So that makes four.  Who the f*ck do you consider a main-eventer?  Booker?  Van Dam?  Cena?  Jericho?  Benoit?  All those guys got buried by Trip and/or UT (and in Jericho’s case, Flex) in order to satiate their egos.  Goldberg?  He’s gone after Sunday.  Lesnar?  Ditto.  Can’t main-event if you’re not there.

In other words, you’re so full of shit it dribbles out of your ears.

But everything is boring to you and stale.

Yes, it is.  That’s because it’s clear to anyone with a discerning eye, and not just to someone like me who acted on stage for twenty f*cking years, that “creative” either has zero ability to create interesting situations, or they’re being ham-strung by Vince and his half-out-of-the-carny mentality.

Forget the fact that when u liked WWE they had like HBK, Bret, Austin and Taker and thats it.

No, that would be 1996, not a very good year in terms of WWE.  Everyone was off watching Hall and Nash cause chaos on TNT every Monday that year anyway.  And the first time that I liked WWE, they had guys like Hogan, Savage, Steamboat, Valentine, DiBiase, Hennig, and Santana, among others.  Not even that could hold a candle to WCCW when they had the Freebirds, Adams, Adias, Hernandez, and various and sundry combinations of Von Erichs.

Every match consisted of a Godwin or a Viscera, or a Tatanka.

Tatanka was gone by that time, and Viscera was still Mabel.  Learn your history.

Thats what you miss? Thats when WWE was better.. ARE U KIDDING ME.

Did I ever say, in any of my writings, that I missed 1996 WWF?  The closest thing I ever said was “God, do I wish I had missed it.”

Let me explain to you something, and ill end with this.. Enjoy what the company is doing

You mean, force myself to enjoy something that I manifestly don’t like?  And then lie to my audience and tell them that I like it?  So, to get back to an earlier point, you want me to spout blatant propaganda and dishonesty and call it “journalism”.  All to satisfy your precious ego, because Big Bad Eric pissed all over your parade.

and if you truly are a WRESTLING FAN

No, if I’m truly a wrestling fan, I will do exactly what I’ve been doing:  praise them for what little they get right, try to encourage them to go in a better direction using those examples as guidelines, and be very, very clear about what they’re doing wrong.

you will stick with them through these rebuilding times as you like to call it.

I’ve never said that WWE was rebuilding.  I have said that what they’ve done over the past three years is nihilistic vandalism, with no clue about what to build over the ruins.

If your a sports fan of a team no matter how bad they suck or how much they lose you must stick with them and root for them. It dont matter if they are 162-0 or 0-162.  Thats a true sports fan.

That would imply that I’m a baseball fan, which I have said a number of times that I am not.  And you don’t have to stick with a team if they start to suck.  The number of Chicago Bulls fans, for instance, have gone down by an order of magnitude over the last five years.  Why?  They, like me, weren’t Bulls fans.  They were MJ fans.  I never made a pretense about being a Bulls fan, though.  Same goes with wrestling.  I am a fan of wrestling, and I am a fan of certain individual performers.  I am not a fan of WWE or TNA or any other fed as a collective entity.

And you my friend .. are the furthest thing from a wresting fan.

If you define “wrestling fan” as being dishonest to yourself about when something sucks, then I’m not only not a wrestling fan, I’m proud not to be one, because I don’t want to get lumped in with the mindless sheep/hypocrites like you.

You might as well find another topic to write about because you know nothing about anything.

You’re outnumbered a few hundred to one by the people who think I know everything about everything.

I think you insult us as wrestling fans and insult wrestling in general with your comments.

There you go again, speaking for everybody, when virtually everybody that you’re speaking for is reading this and laughing his ass off at what a complete tool you are.  And I don’t need negative comments to insult wrestling fans.  I come out and say it directly and personally.

Thanks for your time, maybe youll learn something

Yes, I did learn something.  I learned that morons never sleep, and that they must be LARTed at every opportunity.  Now go back into your hole and vanish, bitch.

AND AFTER THAT, I NEED A LITTLE WALLOWING IN SELF-PITY…

Damn, I hate deadlines.  I delay my column last week long enough to contribute that whole spiel about Disney and its shareholder meeting, rush to submit it, and then find that the best part of the story happened between submission and publication.  Makes me look like an idiot.

Okay, for those of you who don’t know, something that I said last week wouldn’t happen didn’t.  Michael Eisner lost his position as chairman of Disney, but still stayed as CEO.  Former Senator George Mitchell became the new chairman.  I was skeptical that 1) Eisner would stay after nearly half the shareholders told him that they didn’t want him on the board anymore and 2) Mitchell would be appointed to the chairman slot after getting No votes from a quarter of the shareholder electorate.  To reinforce that view of mine, Betsy Streisand of US News and World Report made a good analogy:  Steve Case had more support from Time-Warner shareholders than Mitchell did of Disney’s, and he was shoved out.  But neither Eisner nor Mitchell are out; in fact, reports today state that Eisner has a new contract worth seven figures in base salary despite only being CEO.  Jesus.

This half-measure isn’t satisfying anyone.  The media is still on Eisner’s case.  The dissident shareholders are just starting to gear up.  And now, another important voice is being heard.  Get this quote from the LA Times:

“It’s time to step down and let someone else come in for the future…New leadership is necessary. I think Michael Eisner did some great things for the company but there also are some not so great things.”

The person saying this is Diane Miller.  She is Walt Disney’s only surviving child.  So her cousin Roy isn’t the only Disney family member who’s upset about what Eisner’s done to the company.  The Disney family members carry weight with the shareholders, as in every other company whose founders imbued the company with a very dominant personality.  If one of the Hewletts said something like this about Carly Fiorina, she’d be jetting off to some hideaway on an unknown island with a few years worth of provisions.

And the heaviest voice, the big institutional shareholders, haven’t slowed down either.  The head of CalPERS told Time, “Disney needs to do more than say it changed the titles on the doors.”  The state treasurer of Pennsylvania said that the board shuffle was “cronyism at its worst”.  And then there’s the whole wild card in this situation.  No, I’m not talking about Comcast.  No matter how much sweetening they’re giving the deal, it still isn’t going through.  That wild card is one Steve Jobs.  He’s never been in a power struggle where he’s held the whip hand before.  Without Pixar, Disney’s core business goes to shit unless something radical happens, and given the closures of studios and the refocus of the company, the only radical thing that can happen is that they get completely out of animation.  Jobs, though, is preparing to use his leverage for anything he can to damage Eisner.  This quote from him is very telling:

“We feel sick about Disney doing sequels. If you look at their sequels like Lion King 1 1/2…it’s pretty embarrassing.”

Everyone knows the origin behind this statement.  Disney f*cked Pixar over concerning Toy Story 2, bringing up various clauses in the Disney/Pixar agreement in such a way that stated that sequels didn’t count toward the number of films in the obligation (thus forcing them into doing Cars for next year).  Disney also holds the rights to produce, without Pixar, Toy Story 3.  A reminder of the past along with a warning for the future…typical Jobs, I must say.

Flea and I were talking about this whole situation last week.  We were both in agreement that we didn’t want Comcast anywhere near Disney.  We were also in agreement that we didn’t want Jobs anywhere near the Disney board, which is probably the price he’d accept to sign a new distribution contract.  The guy is a destructive force of nature.  The only lesson he learned from his ouster from Apple by John Sculley wasn’t humility, it was the fact that you had to f*ck over someone before he f*cked you over.  To Jobs, Eisner is now one of those wounded lions that you always saw in those Disney animal documentary films, and Jobs is the jackal waiting to pounce for some fresh meat.  If you thought letting Ovitz into Disney was psychotic, Jobs would be worse.  In fact, he’s a distillation of Eisner’s worst tendency:  to place marketing and image over substance in order to claim that yours was a “premium” product.  Jobs always left the technical innovation and creativity at Apple to others and then spin things in such a way that they were his idea and that the public should be grateful for his presence and guidance.  Have a good look some time at the Macintosh Folklore page, which tells the story of the origin of the Mac from the perspective of the guys who did the actual work.  It’s scary to look at Jobs’ role.  He’s doing the same thing today at Apple and at Pixar.

This situation isn’t even being closed to being resolved.  It’s going to get more and more interesting, especially after Home on the Range ends up bombing next month.  Definitely stay tuned.

Hey, I prefer talking about Disney than talking about Martha Fucking Stewart, so deal with it.

DANIELS IS MY ZONE EDITOR.  DANIELS REQUESTS I COMMENT ABOUT SOMETHING.  DAMN RIGHT I DO IT.

Daniels pointed out an AP story that broke early on Wednesday to me and wanted a comment…

Republican Sen. John McCain allowed a glimmer of hope Wednesday for Democrats fantasizing about a bipartisan dream team to defeat President Bush.

McCain said he would consider the unorthodox step of running for vice president on the Democratic ticket — in the unlikely event he received such an offer from the presidential candidate.

“John Kerry is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years,” McCain said Wednesday when pressed to squelch speculation about a Kerry-McCain ticket. “Obviously I would entertain it.”

But McCain emphasized how unlikely the whole idea was.

“It’s impossible to imagine the Democratic Party seeking a pro-life, free-trading, non-protectionist, deficit hawk,” the Arizona senator told ABC’s “Good Morning America” during an interview about illegal steroid use. “They’d have to be taking some steroids, I think, in order to let that happen.”

McCain gained a reputation as a party maverick who appeals to independent voters during his 2000 race against Bush for the Republican nomination. This year, McCain has campaigned for the president and said he would continue to do so.

Unlike some other Republican senators, he hasn’t railed against Kerry, a fellow Vietnam veteran. McCain called the Kerry-Bush contest “the nastiest campaign so far that we have seen” and said he preferred campaigning for candidates instead of against their opponents.


Oh, that prospect is tantalizing.  McCain on the ticket?  I approve.  It immediately takes away any of the FUD that the Junta keeps spreading about Vietnam, which is pretty much all they’ve been able to smear Kerry on.  It also would show that the Demos are serious about changing some of the overt stereotypes about the party’s economic policy that McCain managed to spread in his denial-non-denial.  Look, I’m a Democrat, and I’m free-trade, hate tariffs, and want to pare down the deficit.  And here’s something that’ll sicken you conservatives:  I’m in favor of a flat tax.  I lived in Germany for two and a half years, remember?  I became used to ad veloram and didn’t find it burdensome.  So, yeah, if John McCain wants to come over, I’ll welcome him with open arms.

There are two questions that go along with this, though, that have to be answered.  The first is, would the Party approve?  Absolutely.  They know this one’s going to be another nail-biter.  No one on the Demo side has the ability to pick up independents and wavering votes like McCain does.  All of the negative PR hits that McCain would get from the neocon talking heads about being a “traitor” and so forth would be a damp squib.  What else are they going to go after him on?  Lincoln Savings and Loan?  The negatives are almost non-existent; the positives are not only there, but they would allow the Demos to admit that, unlike with the GOP, you don’t have to be an ideologist or fall lock-step into some nebulous party program in order to be accepted and listened to.  And the implied indictment of the Junta’s policies would provide an incredible amount of fodder.

The second question is, would he do it?  I think that every single time that he thinks about South Carolina in 2000, and what Karl Rove and his imagemeisters did to him there, his system starts to flood with bile, and he keeps thinking “I have to work with this bunch of putrid amoral slime?  I have to be in the same party as they are?”  It probably makes him sick.  Besides, he always has an out in case this doesn’t work.  He wouldn’t need to switch his party affiliation to Demo, just to Independent.  The voters in Arizona will keep sending him to the Senate no matter what.  He’s been a good representative of the people there, and the voters there know it.  So he wouldn’t really be jeoparidizing his career per se by becoming Kerry’s running mate.

All in all, I’d like to see it happen.  It probably won’t, but I’d like to see it.  It’d be better than any of my choices like Bob Graham.

A MERE FORMALITY

Yesterday, Dubbaya clinched the GOP nomination courtesy of a quartet of Southern primaries.  Yeah, like that was some kind of big mystery.  Who cares?  He’s out in November anyway.

Now, as for the other side, technically, Kerry still doesn’t have enough delegates, but he’s in.  I also wouldn’t read anything into the results from yesterday.  Remember when I said last week that the one thing that worried me about Kerry was his appeal in the South?  I can’t take anything away from these primaries because he was running essentially unopposed.  There’s no barometer there.  That’s the problem about writing this type of material at this point in time.  There’s nothing to really hang my hat on and say “this is this, this is that”.  That’ll only come after the conventions.  So that’s why this one’s short and sweet.

And memo to Biscuiti, Matt Isomer:  moveon.org and their affiliates are pretty good at what they do.  They have the wonderful ability to break down complex issues into easily-understood frameworks, and they also suggest solutions to problems that they find, ones that don’t rely on ideology or religion.  They’re good people to support.

AND YOU WONDER WHY WE NORTHERNERS THINK WHAT WE THINK ABOUT SOUTHERNERS

From the AP wire:

A Georgia woman who tried to use a fake $1 million bill to buy $1,675 worth of merchandise at Wal-Mart was arrested, and police later found two more of the bills in her purse.

A store clerk immediately noticed the bill was fake when 35-year-old Alice Regina Pike handed it to her on Friday.

Pike then tried to use two gift cards worth only $2.32 to buy the merchandise, but when that did not work she again asked to cash the $1 million bill. The store then called police.


I just don’t know what to say about this one.  Really, I don’t.  Did the stupid bitch think that the cashier had the $998,325 in change in the register?  Why did she think that a pair of gift cards worth two bucks would pay for sixteen hundred worth of merchandise?  What goes through the minds of people like that?

Of course, it HAD to happen in Georgia.  And, of course, it HAD to be Wal-Mart.  This, of course, directly leads to the statement that it was a shock that the clerk actually noticed the million-dollar bill was fake in the first place…

…no, I’m not going to give in this time.  There are enough redneck shit-kicker stereotypes floating around that the situation doesn’t have to be aggravated by some imbecile like this.  But you’ve got to admit that she’s the type who rednecks can look at and be happy they’re not as dumb as she is.

Ah, to hell with it.  That’s it for me this week.  I’ll be back for the Mother Of All Round Tables, where I now have to parse out what the Lesnar/Goldberg match will REALLY mean courtesy of Brock’s bizarre departure.  Keep reading.