You’ve talked about what you’re going to do when Reagan dies for a while. Now, you’ve got it. Everyone’s going to be reading on Tuesday (more than usual). Heck, I just hope I’ll be able to load 411 on Tuesday morning…since I’m planning on it for a break in writing my civil liberties final. Heck, I’ll probably have most of it done by that point (or I’d better, since it’s due at noon on Tuesday).
Of course, you know what this means: you’ve got to deliver.
There’s usually no such thing as a “pressure situation” for a net writer. This is the exception to the rule. Put up or shut up. You’re promising controversy, and if you don’t deliver, you will be shit on.
Aw, hell. Who am I kidding? I’m probably the only one that remembers you promising big stuff for the Reagan In Memoriam. Too many short attention spans on this damn Internet. – The Pride Of Dartmouth His Own Self
You’ve been waiting for this longer than most of your readership’s been alive, haven’t you? – Fleabag
I originally wrote this for a BlackLog after hearing the news on Saturday. I was in the Damn Vaninator at the time doing a truly white trash thing: going out to deposit an unemployment check to cover a rent check and picking up some RC while I was at it (hey, it was on sale). So when I got home, I decided that, given the person involved, I would simply produce a list of bullet points, since he was responsible for the dumbing down of American politics to the point where people only listen to bullet points. I decided to expand the list with a few more things after thinking about it (hey, BlackLogs are a “in the moment” type of thing; thank God it never made it up (for some reason, BlackLogs and I don’t get along very well)). So here goes:
Traitor to the Democratic Party.
C-level actor with maybe two good roles in his career.
Sleeping around on Jane Wyman.
Whored for household cleaning products. Does this mean we should elect Billy Mays president?
Set the California state cops and National Guard against peaceful protests, turning them violent.
“There you go again.”
The October Surprise.
Iran-Contra.
The fact that we were f*cking with the Sandinistas because they dared overthrow “our” dictator. Marxist, my ass. The only Marx that Ortega and his bunch were familiar with was Groucho.
Ed Meese. David Stockman. Caspar Weinberger. Bob Poindexter. Ollie North. Ray Donovan. George Herbert Walker Fucking Bush.
One hundred forty members of his “administration” indicted or convincted on various and sundry charges. One hundred forty. And yet his followers claim that the Clinton Administration was corrupt.
Courtesy of Fleabag: “He even lies in repose”.
The former head of SAG shutting down PATCO and breaking unions in general. Hypocrite.
Helping to destroy the Middle East peace process that Carter worked so hard establishing.
The invasion of Grenada for no good reason, all because his Middle East “policy” got two hundred thirty Marines killed, also for no damn good reason.
Blowing off Queen Elizabeth during the invasion of Grenada (She takes her Commonwealth seriously, and Britain’s closest ally invading a Commonwealth country? She was not amused.).
Nancy, her haute couture addiction, and her f*cking astrologer (BFM compared her to Grandma from Preacher. I think she’s more like Jody, personally; she scares the living shit out of me more than Hitlary ever has.).
Defense spending so utterly ridiculous that it put the country trillions in debt.
Supply-side economics and the appropriately-named Laffer Curve. Yeah, it’s a real laugher, alright.
Able Archer 83, which scared the Soviets so much they were close to doing a nuclear first strike thinking that this was a disguise to do the same. And Operation RYAN, which showed how much they took a nuclear first strike seriously.
“We start bombing in five minutes.”
Claiming victory in the Cold War when it was Gorbachev who was really responsible.
The nauseating ultra-patriotic orgy that was the 1984 Olympics.
The 1987 stock market crash and the federal government’s lack of response.
Turning political messages into sound bites and substituting imagery like It’s Morning In America for substance, thus neutering the American public’s knowledge of its own political system and turning an entire generation of Americans apathetic toward who’s running their country.
Not acknowledging AIDS until 1987.
Destroying the Twenty-Year Rule by surviving Hinckley’s shots.
The rise of the Religious Reich.
The deification of him by retarded little sheep who didn’t live through those eight miserable f*cking years and the massive saccharine tribute to him that will come at the Convention, along with using him to whore for Dubbaya from beyond the grave.
Burn in hell, you motherf*cking cocksucker. Burn in hell.
That might have been the most satisfying In Memoriam I’ve ever done.
And now on to the rest of the column…
LADY MYSKINA, GAUDIO AT YOUR BREAST, SMARTY JONES DECIDED TO TAKE A REST…
Due to the extended In Memoriam, I couldn’t intelligently weave the weekend’s sports news into a header like I normally do, but I couldn’t resist the header on this section. Originally, I was going to try to pun Your French Open Women’s Champion’s name with Lady Miss Kier, but Deee-Lite only had one f*cking hit, so I turned to the Lazy Creative Writers’ Handbook, which states, and I quote, “You can never go wrong with the Beatles.” The rest came naturally.
So congrats to Myskina, although I’m pissed at her, because you know what I could do had Elena Dementieva won, just with the name alone. Shit, her winning the French would have justified mental illness all by itself. But the fact is that no one here in the States cared. I don’t think that anyone outside of Russia or Argentina cared about the French finals. Where the f*ck did all of these Argentine guys come from? Three of four semi-finalists? Coria’s the best of the bunch, and he screwed the chien on Sunday. And where the f*ck was Tim Henman’s national pride? Did he forget about the Falklands? He couldn’t win two lousy matches to teach the Argies again not to f*ck with the Brits? Prove that even outnumbered three to one, Rule Britannia and all that? Screw him. He’s a cock-tease. Always has been, and always will be until he win Wimbledon.
Of course, the biggest cock-tease of the weekend had to be Smarty Jones. After all, he’s hung like a horse. Three years in a row now a horse has won the Derby and Preakness, and then laid down and died in the Belmont. The reasons for this phenomenon are many and varied, and only some can be blamed on the Junta. I’ll defer to Fleabag on this one, who gave me the best explanation for the loss: Smarty Jones is a loser because he’s from Philly.
But all eyes were on Jack’s this weekend, not to mention all the cicadas in the known universe. The best field of the year so far outside of the Masters…they always come to Ohio because of the host. They also come to Bay Hill as well for the same reason, but Jack…he’s the ultimate golfer’s golfer. Going to the Memorial is like going on a tour of Rome and having the chance to meet the Pope. Not even non-Catholics would pass that up. And no one passes up this one. Shit, look at the leaderboard going into Sunday. Boring Ol’ Ernie in the lead (with the Number Two Ranking in the world all his if he wins), Freddie teamed up with him in the final pairing, K. J. La Choi swinging American*, Justin Rose trying to redeem Tim Henman’s utter failure for the Queen, Chubby Boy in the Top Twenty…and Tigger two off the lead after an uncharacteristically superb Saturday. People tend to forget that during Tigger’s period of dominance, there was one location where he was more dominant than anywhere else: Ohio. He won like ten straight tournaments that took place in Ohio, all those Memorials and NECs. He’s always a threat here, and the fact that this is Jack’s goads him to prove that he’s the best.
It wasn’t enough. Tigger was going along great until one errant tee shot at 11 on Sunday threw him into a tailspin. Meanwhile, Boring Ol’ Ernie found an opening, took it, and ran away. Freddie tried manfully to get back (including a clutch birdie putt at 17 that he wouldn’t make the other 99 times out of a 100 that he tried it), but, again, it wasn’t enough. So Boring Ol’ Ernie cashes in at Jack’s, winning one of the few important titles in golf that he hasn’t come away with before, and steals away the Number Two ranking from Veej. How did he get that? Simple. He’s played in fourteen tournaments on the PGA and Euro tour this year. He’s made thirteen cuts. He’s finished in the Top Ten in each of his appearances in Europe. He has two wins in the US this year. Is a third US Open out of the question? Is a second British? The former, no. The latter, yes. Tigger needs to get back on track, and he’s proven himself at the Cathedral before. I’m already ceding that one to him. Good performance by a truly great golfer.
* – This very Ralph Wileyesque pun/reference I think I have to explain considering how many of our readers here were spermatazoa during the Seventies. La Choy, the Chinese food arm of Hunt-Wesson, used TV ads in the long ago with the tagline “La Choy makes Chinese food…swing American”, with a very unforgettable jingle attached to it. The Seventies were the golden era of jingles.
MY TROLL ATTACKS YOUR SPIDER, THEN GOES AFTER YOUR FISH…
Eighteen days to US$300M, a new record, and still hauls in nearly US$40M in the face of the onslaught of The Passion Of The Anti-Christ. Bravo, Shrek. And now you’re only US$25M short of the all-time record for an animated film, which should be in view in another week. You must do this. Nemo must die, die, DIE I SAY! Overrated piece of shit.
Of course, when that happens, and it will, there are two guys who won’t be taking this sitting down, even though they won’t do it in the same room with each other, namely Mister Reality Distortion Field and Andre the Giant. They’re gonna be pissed that their little piscine pal was mashed into marine fertilizer by a troll and a wicked witch who sings Bonnie Tyler tracks. I have the feeling that the marketing for The Incredibles is going to be shoved down our throats so far and in such quantity that we’ll be shitting suburban superheroes from Thanksgiving through Presidents’ Day (and Katzenberg will counter with heavy-duty “stay at home, the weather sucks anyway” marketing for the Shrek 2 DVD, with the special “Jennifer Saunders Sings Jim Steinman” CD and the “Guess Prince Charming’s Sexual Orientation” DVD-ROM for kids). And there’s going to be one helluva catfight for the Oscar for best animated feature next year.
All of a sudden, Eisner’s decision to shut down the 2D studios looks pretty good. If 3-D can produce this level of cage match, screw shit like Home On The Range.
THE PIMP SECTION
Randle is, of course, correct. I’ve been referring to Wilson as The Ten-Buck Tramp for four years now, and Dawn Marie is the Twenty-Buck Ho in comparison to her, since she’s worth twice as much as Wilson on a bad day. I told you the Forum people were a bunch of retards. As for his YAM winner, just because you happen to be black and British doesn’t mean that you can correlate your experience to that of a black American. “Uppity” is an offensive term to African-Americans, and when that term was used in reference to Shelton Benjamin, me being a white American of a certain age automatically filled in the word “nigger” after it (and I wrote about that as well, and how I was offended by the use of the word in connection with Benjamin). And if I, the most ofay guy on Earth, could do that, certainly any African-American would.
Nute gives everyone a head job.
The B Show Extravaganza continues courtesy of Fried, Obal, and…where the hell’s Campbell, David Variant again? The boy would be late to his own funeral, I swear.
Nason Does Indies, and Indies don’t even tell him they love him afterward.
Coogs goes existential, which you should never do when contemplating a new TV season.
Geist gives everyone fantasy football tips.
Murrey does have my seal of approval. Even though he talks about a show I’ve never heard of.
Slayer does a show I’ve heard of, but don’t watch.
Bradford expresses better than anyone the inherent coolness of Waffle House.
Omega, regrettably, does not answer the question: What happens if spyware performs a partial birth abortion on Victoria? And, by the way, Jack, speaking as an honest scientist, you’re full of shit regarding the beginning of life. A fetus is potential, an infant is actual. Go back and read your Aristotle, boy. And the ridiculous partial-birth abortion law didn’t have provisions for the life and welfare of the mother. I said that last week. So why did you disagree with the decision? And, oh, about this line: Nowhere in the constitution does it say that there is a right to an abortion. Not explicitly, but it sure as hell is implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment.
Urciuolo delves into major irony territory, since Jack not only made the cut at his tournament but shot in red figures on Sunday, plus he also uses the words “Anna Kournikova” in a column about winning.
Fernandez and Presiloski have the red-hot pokers, and Scott Stapp plays the role of Edward II. And deserves to. Does this news mean I never have to hear “Higher” again? Please tell me yes.
Berenstein talks about Weezer…I really don’t give a f*ck about Weezer, but I’ll pimp him anyway.
Pank reports on the ignominious but fitting end to a once-great game company now owned by the bunch of Frogs without money and the name Atari.
Lucard finally gets to Number One, and, no, I’ve never heard of the game in question.
Morrison does the trade paperback review thing.
It seems that I never pimp the Plays With Dolls section, but PK always deserves a pimp. And if he puts the Round Table up by Wednesday afternoon, before I disconnect the computer and kill my Net account here, I’ll kiss his ass even more.
AND THE ADS ARE STILL HERE…
…so you know what that means. Actually, they’re getting worse. I’m getting about a half-dozen to a dozen letters a week telling me that they’re going to stop reading the site because of the intrusiveness of the advertising. Honestly, complain to FastClick. They’re the ones serving this shit.
Big, big Kudos to the guys at the Spyware Warrior Forum for pointing out to everyone the extent of criminal activity participated in by Enigma Software, makers of the bane of advertising on this site, SpyHunter. Slimeballs extraordinare, aren’t they? And in case you need more info about what flaming bags of shit they are, try here. Suzi’s Blog has a great list of other flaming bags of shit that promote anti-spyware programs that are spyware themselves. Consult it if you have questions.
One of the leading vectors for spyware is so-called free programs that contain this shit in order to “pay the bills”. No one deserves that kind of treatment. If you’ve got a question about whether or not a certain program contains spyware, head over here. It’s a nice alphabetized list of programs that do contain spyware and should be avoided at all costs.
Here’s a list of the programs you really need to help you get rid of menaces, and, more importantly, prevent them from occurring in the first place:
Spybot and AdAware. The ONLY two spyware removal tools to trust. Do NOT buy any spyware removal tools, because none of them work better than these two, and all of them except these two are suspect.
SpywareBlaster. Will nuke twelve hundred different potentially malicious ActiveX controls, and now has the ability to prevent a number of non-ActiveX methods of installing spyware for people who use Mozilla/Firefox.
SpywareGuard. From Javacool, like SpywareBlaster. It’s a real-time scanner for spyware. A decent first line of defense.
IE-SpyAd. Throws numerous ad-related URLs into IE’s Restricted Zone, where they won’t display or affect your system. Bookmark this one, since it’s the only one that doesn’t have an in-program update.
A few people have recommended also installing the Sun Java Virtual Machine, since it’s Windows’ buggy, half-assed implementation of the JVM that allows a lot of spyware to install (less so within the past month and a half than before). I’ve resisted putting it here because of a couple things: 1) The MS JVM was removed in XP SP1a due to the Sun court case and replaced with a Sun JVM, and I’m not sure how many people have actually patched. 2) The link above is an automatic download, and that does scare some people. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. I wouldn’t have put it here if it wasn’t. But I STRONGLY recommend that you visit here and update your version of Java.
I’m going to add another program here. It’s a little tough to work with for noobs if it goes buggy (you need to know a little something about your Networking settings in order to debug if something should go wrong). Protowall is a supplement to your firewall or NAT system. It hooks directly into XP’s networking system to block any and all traffic that comes from URLs on a list maintained by the program (all protocols, not just TCP/UDP). It’s mainly designed for anti-P2P purposes (which will appeal to a great many of my readers), but it contains lists to block spyware and ads. Its blocklist can easily be updated using its supplementary program, Blocklist Manager. I have Protowall running and a Blocklist Manager icon on my desktop, and I use Blocklist Manager to update the blocklist every couple of days. You will have problems getting to some sites unless you shut down Protowall temporarily, like ESPN or Sports Illustrated, but it does have a tray icon you can right-click and shut down in a few seconds. It’s the third layer of anti-ad material for me, with IE-SpyAd and AdSubtract running alongside it. Warning, though: it only works with XP. I’d recommend its predecessor, Peer Guardian, for other MS OSes, but it isn’t being developed anymore, and there were still bugs in it when development stopped. You can get Protowall and the Blocklist Manager (which will also work with Peer Guardian) at Bluetack’s site.
Of course, only download them from the links provided above.
With AdAware and Spybot, check for updates using their internal update function at least once a week. Run them at least once a week or whenever you think you might have problems. Remember, the new version of Spybot has browser protection capabilities, so have that run at startup and leave it running. Check for updates to SpywareBlaster once a week. It only needs to be run once initially in order to establish protection. Then, after it downloads updates, just click on the line that says “Enable Protection For All Unprotected Items” (definitely run that one, since they just put in another database update in the last couple days) and kill it. It doesn’t need to be active. For IE-SpyAd, bookmark the site and check for updates twice a week, since it has no kind of internal updater. Run the Blocklist Manager every couple of days to make sure that you keep up on the latest banned URLs. Since all it does is add Registry entries, it doesn’t eat up anything.
If you’re having trouble with spyware or a browser hijacker, or think that you do, head over to the SpywareInfo Forums, where the pros there can help you diagnose and get rid of stuff. I was promoted to Full Helper status on Monday and ended up joining ASAP, the Alliance of Security Analysis Professionals. Look for this symbol:
<IMG height=60 src=”http://maddoktor2.com/images/asap.gif” width=468>
and you can be sure you’re getting the help you need.
(By the way, if the graphic doesn’t work, I can’t explain it. It does on our HTML test page.)
RIGHT IN DER FUEHRER’S FACE
From 1bullshit Junior:
John Bradshaw Layfield reportedly caused a stir at this weekend’s “Passport to Pain” show in Munich, Germany. JBL did a Nazi salute in the ring and goose stepped to get heat from the crowd, and a fan who took it to heart ended up ejected from the arena for trying to attack the wrestler. This is illegal in Germany, but no word as of yet on any legal repurcussions towards JBL or WWE.
Having lived there for two and a half years (and not in my parents’ basement either, Herr Layfield, unless you consider the Army my mommy and daddy), I can assure you that, yes, it is actually illegal to do this kind of stuff, and they do take it seriously. Any kind of Nazi reference, except in a historical context, is illegal in Germany. The social attitude toward the Nazi past is quite simple: every rational German condemns it without question, and those people who want to be recidivists or who express sympathy toward Nazism are ostracized. They are very, VERY sensitive about the subject and don’t hesitate to remind everyone that it was a form of national insanity, that had rational thought been able to prevail in a very irrational time for a nation, that the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century, other than the election of Reagan, wouldn’t have occurred. The fan in question had a very typical reaction, as far as I’m concerned.
That being said, Bradshaw’s a f*cking idiot. He’s obviously not familiar with Germans, otherwise he wouldn’t have even thought of doing shit like that. I can’t believe that he would be consciously offensive to an entire nation, despite his diatribes against the IWC (a nation unto itself, as far as I’m concerned). In his pea brain, he probably thought something like “Hey, I need cheap heat because the whole rich Anglo versus beaner trash thing doesn’t resonate here. What could piss off Germans? Oh, yeah, Nazis.” without considering any kind of ramification. Goddamn, how hard is it to ask? Don’t these guys need approval from backstage to go out and do something anymore, and wouldn’t anyone backstage question what he wanted to do? Or did he just go out and do this as an ad-lib?
So, what’ll happen to him? He’ll have a warrant for his arrest put on him. That’s typical, of course. If he ever returns to Germany again, he’ll be arrested, booked, taken in front of a judge, and given a fine. The judge will look at this thing in context. He’s a wrestler, he’s an American, he’s not trying to promote fascism, etc., but his ass will be fined because he INSULTED AN ENTIRE FUCKING NATION FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER! And if I’m Vince, I don’t cover this one. He’s got those investments; let him pay out of his pocket for his own stupidity. Hope that your financial education includes playing the currency market, Johnny. Take advantage of a favorable dollar/euro exchange rate and it drops the amount in “real money”.
And you can help by making it hurt even more. Don’t buy GAB. That’ll reduce the size of his payout. Now you’re talking a language that he understands.
AND RIGHT IN THE JEFE’S FACE TOO
Also from Milord over at 1bullshit Junior:
Eddie Guerrero apparently snapped when the fans derisively chanted at him from the start of his match against Bradshaw. He was obviously not over with them, and this led to him turning himself heel in the bout. He grabbed the mic and cut a promo saying “Germany sucks†and flipped the bird at the crowd. From the reports that I received from the show and backstage, he did so not in a “heel†manner but rather in an “it really got to him and ticked him off†sort of way. He was said to be noticeably irate by the reaction he got when he came backstage and I heard that management was very angry by the actions he took out in the ring, especially considering he is the brand’s champion. Many people in the company feel that with the banged-up state of his body and the recent bout of shock he had after his PPV match with JBL, Eddie is really dragging right now and is very tired as he pushes himself to go on because he is carrying the title. Some are wondering if the rigors of being the champion are wearing him down and seeing him snap in the ring yesterday came at a really bad time and ended the tour on a sour note for WWE.
Okay, so who’s going to be the face in the match at GAB when it comes to German fans?
Have you ever wondered why Scherer is a complete f*cking hack? Look at that line above about “not in a ‘heel’ manner”. EDDY’S A FUCKING FACE, MILORD! WHY WOULD HE BE ACTING THE HEEL IN THE RING? AND WHY WOULD YOU CLAIM THAT HE TURNED HIMSELF HEEL IN THE MATCH IF HE DIDN’T INTEND HIS REMARKS TO BE HEELISH? Or is simply this another case of the noblesse oblige patronizing of the audience that you’re famous for (and for which I renamed him Milord four years ago)? Do you honestly think that anyone who reads 1bullshit Junior is going to believe that they’re going to turn Eddy heel at a house show in Germany, so you have to explain to everyone that he wasn’t? Why does a smart guy like Joey Styles put up with you as a business partner? Are we talking the equivalent of the Paul Heyman Donkey Photos here or something? And if so, at the point of orgasm, does he go, “Oh, my God…”?
Back to Eddy, though, since the story’s about him and all that. Now this one’s more understandable than the Bradshaw incident the previous night. Eddy’s still suffering the aftereffects of the shock brought on by his gusher of a blade job. He is really dedicating himself hard to working with the strap (geez, Milord got that right; a blind pig finds an acorn now and then). And then he has to undergo the ordeal of an overseas flight. If you’ve never done it, let me assure you that it’s tough on the body, especially West to East like this. When I moved to Germany, I had jet lag for three weeks, and I was in the best shape of my life. Eddy wasn’t. Your mind isn’t very sharp, your body clock’s f*cked up (try finding somewhere to eat at two in the morning, even in a huge city like Frankfurt, because you’re body’s telling you it’s dinnertime), and your judgment isn’t the greatest. Eddy found out that the Germans were totally confused by his gabacho act, and he became confused because it’s gone over everywhere else. So, in his mental weakness, he lost it.
I’d blame the environment and the particular conditions that he was working under moreso than a general “he can’t take the pressure” thing. These were special circumstances that aren’t going to be repeating anytime soon. He gets back to the States, the audience gets into him again, he doesn’t have to undergo a long flight and a huge time change, and he’ll be fine again. If they’re worried about his physical and mental condition, here’s a solution: give him a week off from the house shows and Smackdown, two weeks if necessary. Let him head to El Paso, rest up, swim, play with his kids, whatever. They have a lot of time until GAB. You need your World Championship Match promotion for the night? Just have Bradshaw come out and give an open challenge, with, oh, say, a hundred thousand dollars on the line if the open challenger can beat him. Then have Funaki come out and get squashed. There’s your promotion. There’s nothing anywhere that says that a world champion has to be at every single friggin’ house show and on every episode of Smackdown. For f*ck’s sake, you think they could have done that before the trip to Germany, knowing the rigors of such a trip, instead of forcing Eddy to show up to squash Danny Fucking Basham.
If they end up using this as an excuse to transition the title on to Bradshaw, I think I may pull a Scooter.
Well, those are the only things I want to talk about this week. So let’s head over to Raw…
THE SHORT FORM
Match Results:
Lita over Gail Kim (Pinfall, DDT): Sorry, but I ceased to give a f*ck the moment that Gila Kim dared to interrupt My Beautiful and Beloved. So I’m not going to go through any kind of “but why did the Number One Contender job?” trauma. But The Joe In Me paid attention:
I love how JR called Gail’s indian deathlock (I believe that’s what it was) a “classic” submission hold, yet could not give the actual name of the hold. And if Gail is pulling out submission holds that Lawler has “never seen before,” that REALLY shows how bad of a wrestler he really was, or how senile he is getting.
More about Lawler’s senility later.
Dave Batista over Shelton Benjamin (Pinfall, DAVEbomb): Well, I thought they’d give Benjamin the win here in order for him to be able to brag, “I’m the only one who’s ever beaten everyone in Evolution one-on-one.” It’d definitely give him the cred he needs to make it as an IC champ, which I think he’ll be as of Sunday. This match proves he’s ready. It was a slight mismatch of styles, but both guys, especially Benjamin, came through quite well. Good job.
Chris Jericho over Albert (Submission, Walls of Jericho): Oh, geez, just when I almost forgot that he got drafted by Raw, Ol’ Back Hair has to show up. And he didn’t even do a very good job of being threatening in the manner in which he needed to be in order to sell the Jericho/Tomko match on Sunday. Same old Albert.
Rob Conway, Sylvain Grenier, and later Kane versus Chris Benoit and later Edge, Handicap Transition/Pimping Two Title Matches For Sunday Match (Pinfall, Kane pins Benoit, chokeslam): I hate freak shows like this, I really do. It just fits too well into the whole ad hoc nature of this entire episode, not to mention the ad hoc nature of the PPV booking. So now we have Benoit wrestling twice…okay, that’s not a bad thing, but it is representative of how far the tag titles have fallen. Don’t blame Conway and Grenier for that, though; they f*cked the whole thing up courtesy of the Draft. And, by the way, crowd, who the hell were the “USA” chants for, Rob Conway? He was the only American in there at the time. And The Joe In Me not only echoed me on that, but amplified it:
So La Res comes out, and Sylvain Grenier treats us to a French rendition of the Canadian national anthem, but then Benoit comes out, cutting him off. My question is: Even in storyline purposes, WHY IN THE HELL would Benoit interrupt his OWN national anthem? The “E” can’t just expect its fans to forget that Benoit has been announced as being from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada for the last nineteen years, and they’re nuts if they do expect that of us. They need to be at least somewhat consistent: While Benoit may be living in Georgia now, he has called Canada his home for 36 years. It’s not too much to ask. If they wanted La Res to get heat by singing the national anthem that badly, then they should have thought of that BEFORE saddling another Canadian, and a face, with a handicap match against the team. Raw has been doing great lately, but they’ve still got a long way to go.
Oh, they just wanted to do the old Quebecers routine to spark some good memories among the few long-time fans they have left.
Nick Dinsmore over Johnny Nitro (Pinfall, double axe-handle off the top rope): Oh, yippie, two retards.
Shawn Michaels over Randy Orton (DQ, Batista-ference): Good match, but much too little to save this show from the realm of the completely boring. Not even the wonderful apres-match could help. That’s two hours flushed down the drain. Oh, one more thing. Memo to Jerry Lawler: a “trapezoid” is a four-sided geometric figure with two sides parallel to each other, and two pairs of non-right congruent angles paired at each parallel side rather than alternately like in a parallelogram. A “trapezius” is a muscle in the human body.
The Joe In Me continues the “Why The Announce Team Sucks” vein in these quotes:
You know, is it really THAT MUCH to ask for Ross and Lawler to show some GODDAMN CONTINUITY when calling their matches??? They JUST called a one-on-one match between Edge and Kane less than TWO MONTHS AGO, on one of the best pay-per-views of the year (according to them). I swear to Christ, one of them is not going to be on Raw next week, after that. God, I hate Ross. Seriously, I lose more respect for him every week, and pray that Coach takes over announcing duties.
Remember this: It took Ross FIVE MINUTES to realize that if Benoit challenges for the tag titles at Bad Blood, he has to pull double duty, and Lawler rightfully jumped all over him on that. Ross is a f*cking moron.
Or maybe he’s just doing a tribute to one of Oklahoma’s favorite non-native sons who’s lying a-moldering in his coffin in Washington right now. He started off as a sports announcer and ended with Alzheimer’s, Ross is ending off as a sports announcer with Alzheimer’s. There’s a valid comparison to be made here between the Raw announce team and the TNA announce team. Don West is a complete buffoon like Lawler, but Tenay is able to cover for his weaknesses. Ross isn’t able to do that with Lawler anymore. They should just take them out back and shoot them. It’d be more merciful for them and us. Just give it to Snow and Coachman, or better yet, Schiavone and Coachman.
Angle Developments:
Memo To The Guy In The Front Row: Shane’s busy at the office running the New Media division of WWE, and when he’s not there, he’s got a baby boy that he’d probably like to see grow up. After all, his dad was rarely there for him and Steph because he was traveling everywhere setting up shows and announcing for Vince Senior and then on his own after the buyout, and look how SHE turned out. It’s more important for little Declan to have his daddy than for you to see him bump his ass from here to hell and back. Selfish bitch.
That’s Pretty Much It: Very light on angle developments during the show, actually. The whole damn show was spent making matches for the PPV. Dinsmore/Coachman, Jericho/Tomko, the expansion of the women’s title match into a Fatal Four-Way, the tag title match…all of that superseded pure Sports Entertainment moments. This is how we knew Smackdown started to go downhill, when they were making up the majority of their PPVs on the show before the PPV. Is the same thing going to happen to Raw, just as it’s turned the corner and become watchable? I dunno, but I don’t have any faith in them staying the current decent course.
And that ends this one off. Remember, no column from me next Tuesday, no Smackdown Short Form this week, and I doubt I’ll be here to submit to the Round Table for this weekend’s Cellfest. I know who’s substituting for me in here next week, but I’ll leave you in suspense. So, it’s tomorrow over in Black, where I don’t know what the f*ck I’m going to talk about. But one thing’s certain: it will close the Nebraska Era of this column and leave the way open for the Kansas Era to begin. Until tomorrow, sleep tight, and if the bedbugs bite, you have horrible hygeine habits.
About Eric Szulczewski
