The MVC is getting so much pub, the Selection Sunday camera shot may show a bloated Southern Illinois squad half-heartedly picking at a pricey buffet laden with lobster at the Chicago Ritz Carlton. – Brian Murphy, one of espn.com’s Page 2 Retards
Driving distances from Carbondale, Illinois to the following cities:
St. Louis: 104 miles
Nashville: 205 miles
Memphis: 214 miles
Louisville: 233 miles
Indianapolis: 264 miles
Cincinnati: 332 miles
Chicago: 333 miles
So why would the guys from SIU go all the way to Chicago? Oh, that’s right, Brian Murphy is a ‘tard and can’t be bothered to look on a map to find Carbondale. He sees Illinois and thinks Chicago. Or maybe he just can’t abide to change interstates, and it’s a straight shot up I-57. Hey, my cousin graduated from SIU, and I visited her there a couple times (in fact, the first time I got drunk and high (and the second time I got laid) was in Carbondale). I know where the hell it is. Besides, Murphy doesn’t know what Mike Mizanin is doing right now and I do, which by default makes me even more superior to him.
Oh, between him, Patrick Hruby, and the Idiot Bill Simmons, I don’t know why I bother going there, folks. I really don’t.
Five out of eight on my Oscar picks…not bad. You could technically call it six out of ten since I also made mention of Score and Cinematography in the process, and that’s a passing grade. Missing Best Actress was a tradition with me, and I did equivocate on that, saying that I was going a bit against the chalk there by going for Huffman but making Witherspoon my other obvious choice, and providing reasons for Witherspoon to win (Dead Celebrity Factor). My failures in Picture and Supporting Actor are linked. I wrote my predictions right after the nominations, and Crash‘s momentum from the SAGs didn’t stall, which I believed it might. However, if Crash had such momentum, how come it couldn’t pull Dillon over the top? That’s a head-shaker on par with the Cinematography award, which Brokeback seemed to have cinched. The only explanation for that one is something I said in my predictions, namely that the Academy members would see Brokeback as a director’s film. Well, you can’t deny that they did.
As per moi, suddenly and for no reason, I am desired by companies. Within the space of two hours, I got two face-to-face interviews. One’s in Houston, one’s in South Dakota. You can guess which one I favor. I’ll be in Houston on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, then turn around and start driving to South Dakota on Sunday for a Monday interview. What that means is no Tuesday column next week, and probably no Short Form this weekend (since I don’t really have time to download and watch Impact before I need to leave). So, if you don’t see anything from me for a week and a half, I haven’t vanished. I’ve just been busy trying to locate employment. Just wanted to tell you that.
Yes, yes, yes, I understand the political ironies inherent in both. After all, South Dakota just effectively banned abortion (although that’s going to be tied up in court for a long time), and Houston…well, that’s the Belly Of The Beast, isn’t it? I mean, look who one of the damn airports is named after. Well, there’s always the phone interviews I have set up with a couple other companies this week.
Just wanted to mention this: 1bullshit Junior triumphantly spouted their story about Coachman’s talk-show gig during the Big Dance as some kind of exclusive. I knew about it a week ago thanks to a fortuitous set of circumstances. I didn’t write anything about it because I don’t give a shit about Coachman. So don’t pimp it up to the skies like it’s something special, Milord. We just have more discerning taste here at Inside Pulse. After all, we don’t print stories about Cyndi Lauper doing Brecht on Broadway or, even worse, Jeffykins working with TNA again.
I don’t think I’ll talk about Jannetty again either. With his MySpace blatherings, I’m more convinced than ever that this is a work. Burnside asked me if wwe.com’s ever posted a worked statement in the way they did this one, and I’d have to say that I can’t think of any specific statement (mostly because I rarely if ever go to wwe.com). However, consider the way they used the site during the Edge/Hardy feud, and it isn’t that difficult to conceive of them using their website and others in this type of manner. Besides, think about this for a second: in the statement at wwe.com, they said that they were severing all business ties with Jannetty. But in his MySpace thing, Jannetty said that he and WWE are trying to work out his parole problems together. That doesn’t sound like much of a severance, does it? Also, consider Vince’s Raw promo. What did Vince say about him “never appearing in a WWE ring again”? Come on, we all know what happens when Vince says during a promo that someone’s never going to ever appear again. So, he’s going to show up as soon as those “problems” (if they exist) are corrected and will be at Michaels’ side. Enough said.
On to the plugs, pimps, and pussy…
A PRE-PIMP
Okay, deves, here is a link to the Candice Michelle Playboy photos. So masturbate to your heart’s content and your penis’s contents. This is, of course, allegedly a link to said photos; Neeley said they’ve been floating around for months. However, you don’t have to wait for the magazine, and there are no pages to get sticky.
THE PIMP SECTION
Lucard is full of ship.
Hevia recycles. Why don’t you?
Hatton and his weirdo friends play Pederasto, the game for all the family.
Price and I actually have something in common: we’ve both killed deer with our vehicles. Oh, yes, I have. It was while I was in Nebraska, if you care to know.
Basilo debates the Coke/Pepsi dynamic. By the way, I prefer Coke to Pepsi, but Diet Pepsi to Diet Coke. Talk about wishy-washy.
Wallace has actual manly drinks on display and fantasy-books Wrestlemania.
Games!Pandich has come to bury Sony, not praise them, yet ends up doing the latter anyway.
O’Reilly says that Oblivion has gone gold and will be out by the end of the month. I won’t believe it and won’t give a shit until I’m downloading a torrent of the PC version. Fuck all consoles.
Memo to Goober: There’s a reason why Tigger won at Doral other than the choke job that David Toms suffered on 18 on Sunday. Not only was he defending a title (something he’d done successfully sixteen times before this), but next year, Doral becomes a WGC tournament, and Tigger regards those as uniquely his own. So this is a case of prematurely pissing in the corner to mark your territory.
Speaking of that, KC Evers (no relation) asks this:
In a world where Tiger Woods doesn’t exist, who becomes the Greatest Golfer of the Current Generation?
Define “Current Generation”. If it’s guys around Tigger’s age, the answer is definitely Sergio Garcia. If it’s everyone playing right now, that’s tougher. You can’t ignore Veej’s accomplishments. He’s done it all over the world and over a reasonably sustained period. Boring Ol’ Ernie’s done it as well, but he’s got Greg Norman’s problem of choking in majors. Monty’s won eight Orders of Merit, but he doesn’t have a major or a victory on American soil. There’s just way too many guys in that stratum below Tigger to choose only one. If you force a gun to my head, then it’s Veej.
Paul discusses the cultural disconnection between quality and quantity when it comes to music.
Stevens contemplates the deceased comic book characters that haunt us so.
And a welcome to our new Galactica guy, Bob Reiss. I could still do it better than he does, but I’m busy enough as it is.
THE VOID
Kane’s movie See No Evil has a release date of May 19th. Good for him. Too bad that no one’s going to see it. That’s the week that another little film you may have heard of called The DaVinci Code comes out. So you can just imagine the scene at your local googolplex on the night of the 19th. Eight of the theaters with DaVinci, all completely loaded, with tons of hot chicks lusting after Tom Hanks, and one with See No Evil with maybe a half-dozen lonely guys who couldn’t get dates and/or are masturbating to the sight of loads of blood spilled.
“Ah, Eric,” you say yet again, defiantly disobeying me when I told you not to speak, “we can always see it the week after. It’ll get some audience then.” Nope, sorry. X3 comes out the next week, and that’s direct competition for the same audience demographic as See No Evil.
Let’s hope that it does well on DVD.
UNIMAGINATIVE PROGRAMMMING
So, 1bullshit Junior says that the Samoa Joe DVD contents have been semi-finalized by TNA. Yep, it’s exactly what you think: a total repackaging job. It’s essentially every PPV match that Joe’s been in in TNA up to That Phil Collins Song (and expect the Ultimate X Match to make the final card), plus a Greatest Hits package of his Impact squashes. In other words, it’s the same old song from TNA, with the interesting matches already available on DVD by that time. They want you to part with more of your money for stuff that, if you have interest in TNA in this area, you already own.
This, folks, is why I don’t buy wrestling DVDs. I own the Flair and Benoit sets, period, and I have no desire to buy any more of them, especially if I’m borderline on purchase and are able to get them for free (I was able to download DVD images of Blood Sport, which means I have everything except the packaging, so why bother buying?). I don’t mind supporting companies when there’s reason to, but I’m not going to support a blatant money grab like the Joe set. TNA isn’t known for their extras packaging, and I sure as hell am not going to fork out the cash to see Joe squash Jerrelle Clark in a one-minute match that I ignored when it was broadcast on Impact.
If someone has a body of work that wasn’t readily available, then mixing that content into a DVD with better-known and more-available work makes for a good package. Daniels’ DVD set is like that; it contains stuff from his days in Chicago and Japan, which you just can’t find at PWTorrents (except on the uploaded DVD, of course). Joe, however, had his most notable work for two companies, TNA and ROH. ROH releases its own DVDs, so that stuff’s available. And TNA releases their PPVs on DVD on a few months’ delay. Therefore, there’s lots of Joe out there, and most of his career’s covered.
So who’s the market for this DVD? Stupid people who will buy anything wrestling-related. And as anyone can tell you, marketing to the stupid is not the way to make money.
MORE BULLSHIT FROM 1BULLSHIT JUNIOR
One thing that Milord and Big Johnson are addicted to is the need to put intense amount of hype into every article teaser on their site. Witness this one: “WWE handing out the dividends in time for Wrestlemania”. Now, this would make you think that somehow, the issuance of stock dividends by World Wrestling Entertainment is linked to Wrestlemania, one of their prime earning periods. In point of fact, it’s not. Yes, the dividends are being released on March 31st, and, yes, that’s a couple days before Wrestlemania. But one has nothing to do with the other. March 31st is the last working day of a financial quarter. Issuing dividends on that day means they can be written off against that quarter rather than against the next quarter.
In point of fact, there is a mild linkage between the two, but it’s not what you think. As I said, Wrestlemania is a prime earner for the company. Dividends count as a debit. So what’s being done here is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Apply a debit to one financial quarter, and it makes the next one look good in comparison, especially when you have a windfall rolling in, which is what Wrestlemania is to the bookkeepers. This way, they get to say something like “earnings went up yah-dah-dah percent over the previous quarter”, and the higher yah-dah-dah is, the better WWE looks to the analysts and the institutional buyers who know nothing about the wrestling business and therefore don’t realize, unlike us, that yah-dah-dah is artificially inflated by Wrestlemania.
Actually, I shouldn’t be talking about this subject. I usually defer to Fleabag on issues like this. As a former WWE stockholder, he always has some choice words to say about Stamford and their financial practices. So, I’ll sign off of this issue and leave the obscenities to him.
MUCH ADO ABOUT LESS THAN NOTHING
The IWC flew into a tizzy over the weekend with the news that, instead of wrestling on the second of the two heavily-promoted 1PW shows in Britain, Christian filmed an injury angle and left the country. Was he hurt? Was he pissed off? Has Success Spoiled Jay Reso? Oh, the speculation was rampant. However, Big Johnson found out what is now claimed to be the real reason for what happened. Apparently it was nothing more mundane than a scheduling conflict.
You see, originally, these shows were scheduled for Friday and Saturday, and Christian planned his schedule based on this presumption. Then, he found out only when he got his plane ticket that they’d been rescheduled for Saturday and Sunday. Was that going to be a problem? Yes, it was. You see, Christian’s shooting a movie right now in Toronto, and he had a 7AM Monday call. Since Christian’s now hoping to pull a Flex and parlay wrestling celebrity into an actual acting career, he didn’t want to be late for his call and develop a rep as “difficult and unreliable” among the people who populate The Drammer. So, he got his return flight rescheduled for early on Sunday, which would allow him sufficient time to get from Doncaster to Toronto and make his call. They shot the injury angle to cover for him.
That being said, I’ve got to give it to Christian. Two transatlantic flights, a show, and a video shoot in less than 72 hours, and he still made a 7AM set call the next day? Shit, I get tired from a couple of two-hour flights alone. And going overseas? When I moved to Germany, I had jet lag for three weeks. In fact, I get lagged when we go to Daylight Savings Time. Anyone who can do what he did, I admire.
What these guys do, though, I don’t admire…
THE SHORT FORM
Match Results:
Ric Flair over Shelton Benjamin, Intercontinental Title Match (DQ, Mickey Jay Is A Whiny Bitch Sometimes): Good little match here, actually. Benjy looks like he’s finally ready to take his final exam for Heel 101. Of course, he’s really being helped in that regard by Flair, who’s never had any compunction about assisting a young guy in his first real steps toward superstardom. There’s only one thing that could make this feud complete: Flair MUST offer Mamma a ride on Space Mountain. If Mamma accepts, though, that could turn Benjy face again, not to mention create one of the strangest tag team trios in the history of wrestling. Not even WCW sunk low enough to give us a tag team composed of Buff Stuffs Gerbils and another wrestler who was sleeping with Judy Bagwell. However, with this trio, it’d work.
Trip over Kane, Wrestlemania Rewind Rematch (Pinfall, Pedigree): When was the last time that Trip was involved in a match in the first quarter of the show? When was the last time Trip was a participant in a one-on-one Angle Advancement Match where the angle in question didn’t involve him? I’d say this was a New Trip we were looking at, except for one thing: back around Wrestlemania 15, Trip still jobbed on occasion.
Shane McMahon over Shawn Michaels (Pinfall, knockout punch); Vince McMahon over Shawn Michaels (Pinfall, rollup): Well, skulldruggery is an old and honored tradition in wrestling. Whether it’s pills in a beverage, ether-soaked rags, or laxatives in a burrito, dr00gies have a long and storied history in sports entertainment. We’re glad to see those traditions being maintained. Hell, it did give us an excuse to see Shane in a match before SNME, and that’s always a good thing.
Ken Doane over the retard, How WWE Ruins Perfectly Good OVW Wrestlers Match (Pinfall, top-rope leg drop): Good work, boys. If I get a face-to-face from that phone interview I have with that company in Columbus today, I’ll take a side trip and drop off the check at OVW. And Memo to Ken Doane: I really, really hope that I f*cked your mother twenty years ago, because I’d be proud as punch to call you my son.
Slick Rick, though, wants to dwell on the negative:
I certainly hope that the “Battle of the shitty gimmicks” we just witnessed doesn’t morph into the “feud of the shitty gimmicks”.
Hey, if the retard gets beat by the other four, I’ll claim paternity on all of them.
Lita over Maria Kanelis (Pinfall, DDT): Well, that solves that little last-minute problem we had with the last rankings. A problem, by the way, that I caused. So I’d like to apologize to Fingers and the rankings committee right now. Hey, I can culpa my meas with the best of them if necessary.
John Cena over The Big Show, Wrestlemania Rewind Rematch (Pinfall, F-U): Just to show you how much I gave a shit about this, I turned over during the match to Cartoon Network to watch Futurama. And I don’t even like Futurama.
Angle Developments:
Acceptance Or Rejection?: Oh, heavens to Betsy, Vince just blathered on and on without any real point except for the fact that the expected TBS-Kane/Carly-Gym Bunny tag title match at WM was made. And, yet, there was Shane, standing not one meter from a microphone and saying not a damn word. Come on, Vince, we want to hear Shane cut a promo. He’s great at that, dammit. And the short little backstage quasi-whine didn’t make up for that. Bastards.
As Night Follows Day: As soon as we found out that Carly and Gym Bunny were otherwise occupied at Wrestlemania, the next obvious conclusion was that Smackdown would get the other three slots in MITB. And that’s exactly what happened. Fortunately, most of us assumed that this would happen anyway. We’ll just have to wait until Friday to see exactly who’s going to be in it. Unfortunately, Rey-Rey and Benoit, who’d be perfect for this, is engaged. Fortunately, so are Orton and High-Quality Speaker Boy, so we don’t have to suffer through that. I’ll criticize and snark after the final group is complete.
Well, That Went Down The Drain Quickly: Ignore the fact that Steph came out and admitted she was preggers and no word was said about the father (nice finesse; just ignore the whole thing and pretend that she’s done something that allegedly only one woman’s ever done before). What was in that capsule? I presume that it’s going to make Michaels delirious and/or sleepy (I’m writing this during the commercial break after the skit; turns out, of course, that it did). If so, then it’s almost certainly banned under the Drug Policy. So, if I was Vince, here’s what I do: after the match with Shane, declare Probable Cause based on the “slurred speech and stumbling” rule, get him to piss in any available cup, then next week suspend him for thirty days. Hey, if they’ve got it in place, might as well kayfabe with it. And it gets Vince out of the Wrestlemania match to boot.
A Simple Query: If they’ve turned the Ten-Buck Tramp face, does that mean Chloe’s a face too? If so, why was she wearing that stupid Stetson in the locker room?
Amontillado: Sherri Martel in the Hall of Fame? Cool by me. She set the standard for how a woman can move past the role of a valet into the role of an active manager, and was a good wrestler to boot. Definitely a pioneer. But not even that good news can counteract the fact that Overrated is going to be inducted by Wife-Beater. That puts both Wife-Beater and Hogan in Rosemont at the same time, and brings up the spectre that we thought we had banished to the nether hell it had come from initially. Can Vince resist the temptation to bring us that alleged “money match” in order to spruce up what’s a pretty bleh WM card right now? If he tries it, I will make arrangements, and this time, Vince has a bullet with his name on it too.
Incongruity: Let me just again mention the fact that every single male in the audience in Birmingham was sitting on their hands when Cena entered, despite Lawler’s “deafening ovation” remark. Every time they cut to the audience during Cena’s entrance, the chicks were cheering while the guys were sitting there, stone-faced. But it was one of those cuts that provided a rather unfortunate moment. Was that a black guy with a “Chain Gang” sign? In Alabama, for f*ck’s sake? Do you really, really want to remind us of that?
And that ends this for me. If I don’t see you until next weekend for the Triple Threat Short Form (Smackdown, SNME, Impact), then I’ll bid you a fond one until then. If I do get in a Short Form this weekend, then I do. It’s my life, after all.
