Wrestling News, Opinions, Etc. 07.20.04

Archive

Okay, we had a major over the weekend, so if you’re a longtime reader, you KNOW what comes before anything else. If you’re not, let me just state right now that I’m a golf fanatic, and it takes priority over wrestling. That should reduce the number of hate mails that I always seem to get the Tuesday after each major, the “OMG WHY U NOT TALK AOUT WRESTLIONG U TEH SUCK!” ones with the @aol.com return addresses. I did have time to throw this in because my goddamn phone rang at 9:15AM on Monday. I answered it, “Good morning, Doc” and heard laughter at the other end of the line. Yep, I got called into work early again. Another twelve-hour day, huzzah. But I only need 48 3/4 hours to hit the hundred mark for the pay period, and that’ll be one nice helluva check. So let’s hit the links…

WIN A CLARET JUG WITH TODD HAMILTON

This is not a Ben Curtis situation to say the least. The guy’s won a tournament this year on tour. He came into the Open Championship with a high-enough ranking to put him into the Accenture Match Play if it was being held right now. He’s had a lot of success in the Land of the Rising Yen. He’s just a career mid-carder from Downstate who had the tournament of his life. So there’s not much of the “Who Dat?” factor that all of us were experiencing last year at this time.

The guy came into the final round in the lead, with Boring Ol’ Ernie and Lefty nipping at his heels, not to mention Tigger and the Goose close enough to do some damage if they could string something together. Four of the top six in the world ready to ass-f*ck you if you do a Van De Velde or a Bjorn. That’d be enough to make any golfer shit his polyesters. But the Toddster stayed cool, calm, and collected. He just wouldn’t flap at all. He let others make mistakes and let them force recoveries. Let’s take Boring Ol’ Ernie as an example. He double-bogeyed 10 on Sunday. Then on 11 came the third-most-famous shot of the tournament (after Ernie’s own ace at 8 on Thursday and the double-eagle on Thursday): his tee shot getting stuck in the branches of a bush. If you didn’t see it, it’s hard to describe. The ball was stuck waist-high in the branches of a small bush in the rough. Some great camera work by the TV crews. They cut it back from a commercial to a tight close-up of the ball, then slowly pulled back to show you exactly where it was. Yeesh. Boring Ol’ Ernie, though, just took out a long iron and whacked it out of the bush. He then followed up with a phenomenal third shot and a CLUTCH par putt to save the day. Otherwise, it would have either been a runaway for Hamilton or Lefty would have had to step up (which he couldn’t).

Hamilton, though, just kept plugging along making pars, but Boring Ol’ Ernie couldn’t close the gap. Until the tournament got really, really interesting at 16. Hamilton came through with birdie, putting him three up for the moment. If Ernie misses, that’s it. Three up with two to go the way Hamilton was playing? But he came through with a birdie of his own. Ernie then birdies 17 to take the lead down to one. Then Hamilton makes one of the few f*ck-ups of his round, blowing his tee ball and second shot on 18. Bogie for Hamilton, and all of a sudden the Boring One has a chance at a birdie putt to close out the Fucking Open Championship with three straight birdies and a come-from-behind second Claret Jug. Nope. Four-hole playoff starts at one.

Now I love the four-hole playoff format at the British. Sudden death depends too much on luck. For some tournaments, like the PGA and Masters, that’s good enough, because the courses are fair enough to allow for a recovery from a bad bit of luck. Not so the British Open rotation. These f*ckers are cruel, as nature intended them to be. They’re all barely-manicured sheep pastures with five-star hotels. Eighteen holes, like the US Open, is too much, especially for golfers that have to make the trip back for next week. But four holes? Perfect number, especially with the long hours of daylight in Scotland this time of year. And Hamilton just played steady, steady, steady, coming in with four pars while Boring Ol’ Ernie was the one to f*ck up, with a bogey at 17, the third playoff hole (the course giveth, and the course taketh away). And the Claret Jug heads to America again, with only Ernie and Paul Lawrie recently breaking up the long streak of Americans having to wonder exactly what “claret” is.

If you’re not a golf fan, this is the one tournament a year you should watch, exactly the same way you’re watching the Tour de France right now (no one outside of Europe is a cycling fan, folks). This is the way golf should be played, in the place where it was invented. The savage beauty of the courses, the skills that the best in the world (from all over the world, mind you) represent…it’s the one. Americans may still love the Masters more than the Open, but the Masters is more like High Mass at St. Peter’s. The Open is more like a pagan orgy with all the guys dressed in kilts and having their faces smothered with woad, the porn version of Braveheart. I know which one I’d rather go to on a yearly basis.

And I’d be remiss if I missed out mentioning the other tournament held this weekend, the only one named after a comic strip, the B. C. Open. Being up against the British, it gets no LUV from golf fans because of the weak field. Last year was an exception thanks to the Walrus taking it as the front half of his PGA Tour/Senior Tour Major double. However, correspondent Jim Carson had his eye on the ball, so to speak:

I know you’ll wax poetic about the Open Championship, and with good reason. But you should also include a few sentences about the PGA Tour event at Endicott NY. I know anybody who’s worth mentioning was at Troon, and the highest-world-ranked golfer at the B.C. was #48 Fred Funk. But with three or four holes left, there were seven guys tied for the lead. In the hunt were a couple of former tour winners who had seemingly Baker-Finched in recent years (Notah Begay and Robert Gamez) as well as a Japanese player who attracted a cult following of a dozen or so college-age guys in yellow shirts calling themselves Team Tanaka. Not to mention the winner was the recently-under-the-knife Jonathan Byrd, who graduated from Clemson, my alma mater.

Well, Gamez was Baker-Finching until about a year or two ago when he finally got over those injuries. Since then, he’s been having a decent career, although nothing like the promise that he was showing a decade ago when he threatened to become Tigger before Tigger. Begay just can never seem to get it together. Jonathan Byrd, though, is a damn good golfer when healthy. I wasn’t surprised at his win and am happy for him. But I was golfed out after the playoff and didn’t tune into the B. C. My regrets.

Now it’s on to wrestling…oh, wait, the Pimp Section first, naturally…

THE PIMP SECTION

Why didn’t Nute go with “Stroke Me” for the title? Billy Squire fans want to know.

The B-shows are rocking courtesy of Fried and Obal.

Shaffer takes on a very sensitive rebooking concept.

Hazard finishes up his epic rebooking concept, which has turned out pretty cool, actually.

Presiloski thinks I’m a workhorse. Well, I try. Actually, I do it at work to suck up to the boss so that he gives me a good review next year so I can get promoted back to where I should be. As for here, I have no clue as to why I do it. Not like I’m getting paid or anything.

Maybe Fernandez had better put me up on the Jukebox schedule. I just keep adding shit to it. It’s now five Word pages long. In ten-point type.

No, Hayhurst, I am the greatest living actor.

Urciuolo comments about the BCS changes.

Omega has a longer column, which is good news for everyone. Yes, even me.

Gamble does his column name in Welsh this week, yet no mention of sheep-f*cking in his column. Shame on you, Ron.

Just for the record, Melchor is a great writer. Just not better than I am, that’s all.

Laflin isn’t an addict. Where else can go you to get quality sports games? Even though ESPN Football’s better than Madden and Links is better than Tiger Woods.

Burnside has successfully invaded another zone. Hide your women and sheep.

Stevens, on the other hand, does not submit a wrestling column just to get back at Burnside.

MAYBE I SHOULD CALL THIS THE “ANTI-FUCK-WITH-YOUR-SYSTEM SECTION”…

Remember, this all started because the slugs at Enigma Software dared to advertise their piece of shit SpyHunter here at 411. So I’m responding every single column with proper anti-spyware information. And guess what? People are actually taking this to heart. They’re asking me for help if they’re infested, or they’re writing me telling me that their browsing experience is less annoying thanks to the stuff I’ve been putting up here three times a week for a couple months now.

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.

(On a side note, those SpyHunter ads started over at Reality News Online, and BFM, a contributor there, spotted them. He told the webmaster, gave him those links that I cited above, the webmaster read them, the blood drained out of his face, and he contacted his ad provider. No more ads for Enigma products on RNO, thank you. So guess what? If you provide the info, there are sites who will listen.)

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 thousands of 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.

So many people have asked about a free anti-virus program that I’m also going to recommend AVG. Totally free, and works really, really well, as well as commercial anti-virus programs. Frequent database updates, good heuristic detection, everything you want in an anti-virus package.

Another program that I’d like to add here is 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. And only download those programs; don’t fall for the ads that are shown here.

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” 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 there and ended up joining ASAP, the Alliance of Security Analysis Professionals. Look for their symbol, which I’m not going to try to link to anymore because someone at the other end keeps munging it.

The Ravin’ Cajun asks me to recommend a good client-side spam filter for MS mail programs running under Windows. Now, this is something I don’t have experience with because my ISPs have always had good spam filtering, plus, I use Thunderbird, which handles the remainder quite nicely, thank you. Other than recommending a switch to T-Bird, I’m a little lost as to what to recommend here. So, if someone has some suggestions, I’d appreciate it.

ANY NEWS AT ALL?

No. I’ve already commented on Flair/Foley/Hart, and I really don’t give a f*ck about Rikishi being released (plus it’s old news, and you know I don’t cover old news). I will comment about one thing: considering the past history of WWE’s political involvement, using Chris Harvard as their political correspondent seems oddly appropriate. He’s pre-concussed, and they booked him to lose a debate to Big Sump Pump. Well, if he gets some camera time out of his efforts at the Democratic Convention, that’ll be cool.

On to other stuff…

THE SHORT FORM

Well, I went out and bought a new VCR last week due to the timer mishap on the other one. So what happened? It ate the f*cking tape. I can’t win. So we have another week without the Short Form. Just remember this: the IWC backlash against Dinsmore has started, but I was against him from the start. People came to my point of view on Flex and Wife-Beater too. So I am a prophet of what you will come to believe. So f*ck all of you.

I decided to just print mail about it, so here goes, starting with the Proud Graduate of Dartmouth:

Stacy at ringside for a Helms match…before you get too pissed about her hanging around with Hurricane, just remember that it wasn’t too long ago she was with Test and Sump Pump. It’s an improvement. Besides, I like Helms…

That opening promo needed a face interruption, and much sooner than it came. Given that, though, I’m glad it was Regal. He needs to stop dressing so nice if he wants to really get over as a face, but his promo was solid, and his facial expression when he was being dragged away was excellent. Regal has the best facial expressions in the business, and his appearance was a reminder of that.

Of course, Regal as a face is a tough proposition, given that he’s such a great heel. However, there are five top-level heels on Raw, and Regal’s career is better suited by his being a face for the time being. Thankfully, Regal is a) close with Trip; and b) the beneficiary of a rub from Eugene (I know you hate the angle, but hating it and denying how over it is are two different things), so he gets what’s good for his career.

Yes, El, I am spiting you.

The Ravin’ Cajun keeps it short and sweet:

With that one line, “There’s no crying in wrestling!”, Trips became my promo god for the night.

Or he was channeling the spirit of Tom Hanks. If this makes him and Orton dress up in drag to take up residence in a women’s only facility, I’ll be happy.

KC Evers (no relation, maybe) makes a few random observations about the show:

Y’know….Triple H really oughtta update his video entrance. It still shows him in his 2000 form.

Hey look, they’re in Washington, DC! If McMahon ever decides to hold an official funeral for WCW, they could hold it in the MCI Center. I think it’d be appropriate. And anyone who watched Starrcade 1997 and 1998 would probably agree.

Trip’s losing his edge in the cerebreal assassin area. A real evil guy would keep Eugene latched on as a lackey for as long as possible. It’s like this storyline is suddenly being rushed on L Word Dana & Lara proportions.

Regal can sell tears. The man’s a f*cking genius.

Watching the Highlight Reel segment, I kept thinking, “yeah the Dudleyz WOULD be on SmackDown when we need them the most.”

Something for the Haley’s Little Things people. Realizing that Hurricane’s leg was close to the rope, Tomko hooked it for the pin, preventing Hurricane from being able to reach for it.

Last week, I had hope that Ric Flair would finally help end the Hurricane experiment so Helms could get some sort of push as a serious wrestler. So naturally, they gave the opposite with Superhero No Longer In Training Rosey.

Wow….guess Foley and Hart are back in the doghouse again. Although it was funny seeing the “Edited by Mark Madden” part.

The thought of Mark Madden editing anything and not getting it covered in donut crumbs and picante sauce is funny to me.

Will Bryant makes a musical observation:

I’m not sure if you’re bothering to follow the ‘Diva Search’ segments or if any of your regulars already mentioned this, but I noticed something oddly appropriate. The apparent theme for this search (or at least the music used during the one segment I saw) is a song by The Hives called “Walk Idiot Walk”. Didn’t know if you’d care or not, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

No, I didn’t know, but it is oddly appropriate.

Tad Dixon relates a great observation his wife had:

First of all, I wanted to share an observation made by my wife tonight as she glanced up from her book as I was watching Raw…

“That Batista guy looks like he’s got a trimmed pussy on his chin”

Needless to say, I choked on my soft taco from The Bell laughing so hard. Thought you might appreciate that one.

Man, that’s pretty hard to cough up a soft taco from Taco Bell. I’ve tried. But she is right…wait a second, how would she know? Do you make her trim that bush, Tad?

Also, wanted to share something with you that will probably not shock you, yet sicken you, as it did me. In speaking with my mom last week, who is a teacher and has ALWAYS voted Democrat in every election (except for Rep. Fred Upton, one of the few stand-up GOP’ers from MI), she mentioned that she will likely be voting for the Junta come November. After nearly crying, I asked her why. She said “I don’t think it’s a good idea right now to change horses in mid-stream.” HOLY FUCKING SHIT. What do I do? Try and convince her of the error of her ways? Kidnap her and tape her
eyes open and FORCE her to watch Fahrenheit 9/11, or just knock her out with a rag full of ether on election day?

My God, the Junta is so overtly EVIL, they have converted a good and pure soul like my mom. Jesus, Eric, the tail is starting to wag the dog for real.

The scariest part is that I used that exact phrase last week to describe the result of the low-grade sense of terror the Junta is trying to instill in the populace. As for your mother, nuke her from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure…oh, wait, that’s what I want to do to my mother.

And you can stay f*cked until tomorrow in Black, when I return to impart more of my quality wisdom. Let’s hope that I’m not coming off of a twelve-hour day like I did on Monday. It really puts a damper on stuff.