Sorry, folks, but I haven’t been feeling well the last couple of days. So I think I’ll just leave this as a short one and try to get my energy back.
I will mention this, though: as I expected, the Bret Fanboys came after me in droves after last week’s screed. Regrettably, all the responses were either well-thought-out discourses which show a definite knowledge of the situation (albeit twisted in their fashion to show Bret in a positive light) or “OMG u da MEENIE!!!!111!!!! Bret is tha gratest BEST THER EVER WS BESTT THRE EVAH WILBE!!!!” type of messages, which left nothing in the middle ground that could have provided us with a wonderful revival of You’re A Moron. To all of you, I have a simple response: “La la la, I’m not listening.” And to the large number of you who wrote in to support me, thank you. You have good taste.
Let’s just get on with it…
THE PIMP SECTION
Some things here never change, as Lucard gets first pimp as usual.
I’ll put Schmidt up here for his debut. He’ll be getting more into books as time goes on, I believe.
Miss Ellie shows you how to make a quick bruschetta.
Misha doesn’t give any LUV to Dungeon Siege 2, which I happen to be playing and enjoying immensely.
Gloomchen once had a thing for Nelson.
Hatton has his friends over as usual, and then takes over the Marvel beat.
Stevens, though, is still sticking with the DC beat. Thank God for that.
Basilo has descended to new lows of sanity by actually noting that Saved By The Bell has a major continuity gap.
All Sutton had to say was this fact: the presence of Chow Yun-Fat automatically makes a movie great. Period.
Zarur observes the weekly destruction of once-great wrestlers on Heat, as usual.
Hollyric does the Canadian variant of the TNA broadcast, which is pretty much the same one as I cover wrestling-content-wise each weekend in the Short Form, so just read me instead.
Eagle pimps his new hip-hop release.
Paul talks about honesty. Since this is a subject that I’m unfamiliar with, I’ll leave it to him.
Gottfried doesn’t know the history of the song “The First Cut Is The Deepest”.
Hopkins 1) obviously never served in the military and 2) is completely full of shit.
HOW APPROPRIATE THAT IT WAS HELD IN NEW JERSEY
Well, another season of golf majors has come and gone, so you’ll get no more interruptions from columns on this end, sweethearts. That being said, I do have to pronounce judgment on the PGA.
It was ugly. I mean, it was really f*cking ugly. It wasn’t Carnoustie ’99 ugly, but, yuck. It wasn’t only the final round, either. The whole flow of the tournament made it out as to seem nearly plotted. Tigger shoots himself out of the tournament in the first round, then comes back to make it right on the cut line. In the meantime, Lefty decides to play a tournament that came out as obviously booked: destroys the field on Friday, lets the field back in on Saturday, tries and fails to put away the field on Sunday, then sinks a birdie at the 72nd hole on Monday to win. In the meantime, he’s being chased by a group that Central Casting couldn’t have put together more carefully, chock-full of winners of majors. Veej’s magical disappearing putter was a natural to be there. So was the Goose, trying to make everyone forget about the US Open. Davis has to be in there, of course, because he’s loved by everyone (except when he’s playing with Phil, of course). Understudying for Ernie Els was Thomas Bjorn, who’s supposed to show up at the British Open, disappear on the back nine on Sunday, and not show up on anyone’s radar for another year. In the role of “cagey veteran who’s lying there just waiting”, Steve Elkington was dragged out of mothballs, and, oh, gee, it just happened to be the tenth anniversary of his PGA win. And just for kicks, let’s have Tigger make an incredible comeback and be the clubhouse leader when play gets suspended due to weather and darkness…
…oh, is CBS and the PGA of America taking the heat for that one. We’ll discuss that and then get back to how the fix made this sucker disturbing. Every golf commentator worth his salt, and most of them who aren’t, went into a feeding frenzy on Monday morning about this. For those of you not watching, and shame on you, the issue is this: CBS and the PGA of America, long ago, set up the final group to go off at 3PM ET. Despite incredibly hot and muggy weather, which slowed down play, and the threat of severe weather in the area, it was decided not to move the tee times up because CBS HAD to have the PGA dovetail into their incredibly important interview with two-time Oscar ™ winner Hilary Swank on 60 Minutes. When the f*ck did 60 Minutes need a lead-in anyway? It’s been one of the most popular shows on TV for three and a half decades. And guess what happened? A half-hour rain delay before the final group could tee off took away any kind of flex time that they had in the schedule, and they ran right into the severe weather threat that took away the rest of the daylight. So the PGA of America announces that play will be suspended and resumed on Monday when the final group is on the 14th green and a total of sixteen golfers were left on the course.
I’m on the side of the commentators on this one. Everyone screwed the pooch on this. If the tee times had been moved up one hour, they could have got this in despite the delay. They might have even had time for a three-hole playoff, which looked like a real possibility. Instead, we got the Monday Coda. CBS has been flirting with death in regard to this one for years now. The situation at the Masters is even worse, with the final group teeing off at 3:30 ET, and they got lucky when Tigger was able to put away DiMarco in the playoff early. I’m sorry, you can get away with a 3PM tee-off in June or July, when there’s more daylight, but not in mid-August. Push the tee times back, please.
Now on to the fix. This one just came off too weird. Tigger was too dialed in to shoot that five over in the opening round. It was almost as if someone was trying to create an artificial suspense for Friday, a pretty dull day in the majors unless you’ve got something like Jack retiring. So there was that built-in question hanging over Friday. So, with everyone watching, it was time to build up the Legend of Phil. He shoots the lights out on Friday while everyone is twiddling their thumbs, and he builds up a four-stroke lead. Then on Saturday, he proceeds to lose that dominance, and, suddenly, the cream of the golf world starts to shoot well, especially Bjorn, who came out of nowhere to tie the course record. At the end of Saturday, two of the most popular players on tour would end up playing together on Sunday in Lefty and Davis, and Tigger was only six back, with the distance between loaded with successful players. It was now anyone’s tournament again.
So what happens? Almost everyone stinks up the joint on Sunday. Davis drops four strokes in the first seven holes (no sin with the way Baltusrol was laid out, but definitely horrible considering that the spotlight was on him). Phil moves back a little more. Veej’s putter starts betraying him, yet again. Elk stays steady enough to contend, though. So does Goose for that matter. And to complete the Animal Farm, Tigger decides to shoot a pretty good round and becomes the clubhouse leader. With the way everyone was playing, top score may have just fallen to minus two, meaning a playoff involving Tigger. And then, weather happens.
So why not keep that plotline going, someone thought? It wasn’t until Bjorn posted his three under in the second-to-last group that Tigger could leave New Jersey. But, damn, let’s have that temptation of a playoff still dangling in front of everyone still watching on Monday. Bjorn was in at three under. So was Elk. Lefty conveniently bogeyed 16 to put himself at three under as well entering 18. And then Lefty decides to bury his second shot on 18 completely in greenside rough. Note, please, that his situation could have been a lot more tense. If Bjorn hadn’t lipped his putt at 17, he would have needed the birdie to get into a playoff. But then Lefty decided to demonstrate why he may just be the best short player in history by blasting his chip to within a foot and a half. Game over.
The fact that this tournament turned into a Death March on Sunday only to have Phil Fucking Mickelson pull it out with a birdie on the 72nd hole on Monday has all the hallmarks of being fixed. After all, if you’re going to have Monday play, you’d better pull out something special. The last time Monday play happened at the PGA was in 1986, the year of Bob Tway’s Miracle Bunker Shot. And, yeah, that chip was Something Special, I have to admit. Of course, it was ruined by the sickeningly saccharine sight of Phil’s kids twirling around the green as if on sugar highs.
All in all, it was a “try again next year” experience. Of course, next year, the PGA takes place at Medinah. That’s my territory, bitches. The only person who does any fixing there is me. And since Tigger’s already won a major at Medinah, I think I’ll just proclaim him the winner next year and move on.
ANY WRESTLING NEWS?
No, but you really can’t expect there to be any. WWE’s already fixed for SummerSlam and they’re in “sell the PPV” mode. TNA’s just coming off what everyone is saying was a great PPV (I haven’t seen it yet, and don’t have time to if I want to get this column in), and they already have their two mains for the next PPV announced (Raven/Rhiyno and Daniels/Joe).
Okay, there’s always Frankie Kazarian asking for and getting his release from WWE. So what’s ahead for him? He departed TNA in good terms, although there’s no real place for him right now there. I suspect that he may be heading to ROH for a while until things clear up in TNA a little bit more. He could be joined there by his old tag partner MattMichael BentleyShane, who’s left TNA due to a contract dispute. However, I think he might end up in WWE. Doesn’t he have some relative there who might have a little stroke to get him in?
Ah, screw it. I can troll for hours looking for stories and find nothing noteworthy. So let’s just go to Raw and see what happened in Montreal…
THE SHORT FORM
Match Results:
The Big Show over Romeo and Antonio, Handicrap Match (Pinfall, TBS pins both, double chokeslam): Well, TBS is growing the beard back…look, what do you want me to say? The least innocuous thing I could say is that it filled time and gave some people camera time. If I actually tried to talk about the match, I’d start projectile vomiting.
Nick Dinsmore versus Rene Dupree, Retard Invitational (ND, Angle-ference): Well, at least Rene got an entrance in his home town. That counts for something, doesn’t it?
John Cena over Chris Jericho and Carly Colon, Another Handicrap Match (Pinfall, Cena pins Carly, F-U): Has “creative” figured out that you can pimp a PPV title match without having some kind of variation of said match every week for a month and a half? I’m sick of the concept more so than the bad wrestling exhibited by Cena. Dear God, I’m so glad this is ending…well, it isn’t, because I’m picking Jericho to win the title match at SummerSlam, and Cena has to go through the whole rematch thing with him. What did Jericho do to deserve being saddled with Cena?
However, KC Evers gave me a bit of a chuckle when he analogized the actions of Bisch, Jericho, and Carly to that of the Rougeau Brothers when they started to bill themselves as American. Any relief is a pleasure.
Edge over Val Venis (Submission, standing figure-four): And since this is Montreal, we have to expect some hot Canadian-on-Canadian action. And, actually, this match was pretty good. Morley can still bring it when he’s given a chance to. This was probably his longest match on Raw in five years. And it was incredibly refreshing to not have had the expected Matt Hardy run-in. They’ve painted themselves into a corner in the build of this angle, so having nothing happen this week was probably a good decision. Just let it play out at SummerSlam and then let it be.
The Proud Graduate Of Dartmouth His Own Self claims that there’s an “irony” to this being the last match prior to the Edge/Hardy tilt, but it must be “irony” of the sort promulgated by that other proud Canadian, Anal-Ass Moron-Shit. I don’t get any irony out of this unless it has to deal with the porn!Val stuff. Please explain, El.
Rob Conway over Novocaine Helms (Pinfall, flying elbow drop): Rob Conway isn’t going to be helped in his push by dull matches like this one. Get him a real opponent (hello, Shelton) and let him cut loose, then he just might get over. It’s simple, guys, so why don’t you just do it?
Hulk Hogan over Kurt Angle (DQ, Michaels-ference): Pity poor Kurt Angle. Stuck in an angle with the retard, then having to sell for Hogan in order to pimp the PPV match with Michaels. What sins has he committed to be saddled with such a fate?
Angle Developments:
Playing To The Crowd: Michaels knew that the promo style that he’d been performing since the Hogan feud began, hewing that fine line between ethos, wouldn’t work in Montreal. So he went balls-to-the-wall heel and did it brilliantly. Of course, I would have applauded any promo that worked the Bret Fanboys, but this one was very good, so it was like ice cream on top of the cake. If someone ever created a comp tape for young wrestlers on how to learn the art of the promo, Michaels would be one of the half-dozen guys that I’d put on there. He’s just been a model of consistency in this area for so long that we almost take him for granted.
Bravo, Someone Can Read A Map: For the first time in WWE history, Chris Jericho brought up the fact that he’s from western Canada while Montreal’s in eastern Canada. Before this, WWE has regarded the third-largest country in the world as some heterogenous unit, never mind the diversity and cultural differences between different areas of the country (especially when it comes to Quebec). Before that little mention by Jericho, it was “You’re Canadian, and that’s it”, ignoring the fact that Saskatchewan (not to mention Alberta) is a vastly different place from Quebec or the Maritimes. Maybe someday this fact can be explained to Bret Hart to show how asinine his demand for not wanting to job in Montreal was.
Coronation: So Ashley’s the winner of SkankFest 2005, huh? Damn, we gotta look at her face for a whole year? Jesus…that woman’s got a helluva honker on her. Plus, she’s a complete whore, not always a negative thing when you’re a Diva, but she’s going to get pushed down our throats like f*cking Hemme did. Personally, I would have preferred Elisabeth. At least she’s easy on the eyes, unlike this bow-wow. Well, it could have been worse. We could have been staring at Leyla’s atrocious dye job for the next year. At least it’s over, though. For another ten months.
That’s all for this one. I’m going to try to come up with something tomorrow in Moodspins (at the request of Fingers), and I’ll definitely have the Short Form in for the weekend, as well as participate in the SummerSlam Round Table. So until then…
