Howdy, folks – happy Memorial Day! Actually, most of you are probably enjoying cookouts, or family gatherings, or the beach right now – so happy Tuesday to you!
Just a couple of quick things before we get to the meat of the column: yes, the special edition of “Bright Side” that I talked about last week is indeed coming soon. Iain and I have been dealing with time differentials (US East Coast vs. Scotland), slow email, and busy writing schedules. I have Iain’s final response in my possession now, so it’s just a matter of editing down our 10,000 word debate into something that’s actually readable. The column should be up by mid-week. There’s some really good stuff in there: I hope you all take the time to read it. And feedback is absolutely encouraged: we want to get this conversation going amongst wrestling fans.
Speaking of feedback…
The People’s Front
Ross Williams thought maybe Taz was saying that Super Crazy had “cut his teeth” in ECW. That certainly made sense, so I went back and replayed that scene a couple more times, at high volume. And I have to say: no, it definitely sounds like “sucked his teeth”. And I still have no clue what the hell that’s supposed to mean.
Greg Smith is working on become a regular:
I’m not old enough to know about Bruno, but SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS??? Marriages don’t even last that long now. I can’t see anyone holding a title for more than a year, nowadays. With this Sports Entertainment Era, wrestling promotions see that the best thing to keep fans interested and bring new fans in is to have constant title changes. We’ve seen the crowd love Cena, and get tired of him because he’s had the title for too long. We’ve seen the ratings RISE TO THE HEAVENS when Edge ended his reign. (Maybe that was just because the Matt Hardy fanatics saw him with the belt, and their eyes exploded. Try changing the channel when you’re blind.)
I agree – there’s no way a heavyweight championship will be held by one person for anywhere near 7.5 years again. However I think that, under the right circumstances, one of the secondary titles could see an unusually long reign. RVD’s run with the TV title in ECW was rather successful, and the crowd never seemed to get sick of him (although some members of the IWC turned on him – but they turn on everyone that gets successful eventually). Personally, I’d love to see them properly develop Lashley’s character with a good long run with the U.S. Title. However, there’s just too many contenders in the upper-mid card for that to happen nowadays. (Granted, that’s not really a bad thing, when you think about it.)
A couple of readers wrote me concerning my criticism of Bobby Heenan’s outburst during Hogan’s entrance at Bash at the Beach. I’ll quote Matt Simon here:
Now, I remember watching that PPV, and I remember that line, much like everyone else does. HOWEVER, what I think is truly forgotten in all of this was that ever since Hogan had come into WCW Heenan had made a living out of bashing Hogan, calling him a lowlife and one whose true intentions were never clear.
I think you also need to remember that when the whole Hall/Nash invasion thing started, I believe that Hogan had been off of TV for a while, so Heenan’s whole schtick fell by the wayside. So, when Hogan came walking down the aisle before his turn, I always took Heenan’s comment as him staying in his Hogan-hating character, because there wasn’t yet that WCW=Good mentality.
If Heenan is to be faulted at all for his statement, it would possibly be for implanting the idea in the fan’s minds, but I think that effect was negated by Schiavone railing at the Brain for even bringing it up.
Fair enough. I didn’t see the PPV live, so my perspective of it is definitely influenced by hindsight. As such, it felt like Heenan was desperately trying to get himself over by being the only person to realize that Hogan might have turned already. But, knowing that it was just keeping with Heenan’s character, and was consistent with his attitude towards Hogan since the Hulkster had signed with WCW: well, mea culpa. Sorry, Brain – you’re still the man.
Screw the Wii
Now, for something completely different: PC World decided to rate the 50 greatest gadgets and the 25 worst tech products of all time. I believe I can guarantee you’ll be surprised by the #1 greatest: I know I was, but I guess I understand its rating. And anybody with an aol.com email address is going to be somewhat upset with what they voted the single worst tech product ever. (And, I’m greatly amused that the Apple Newton appears on both lists.)
The 50 greatest is here and the 25 worst is here.
I agree with most of their worst list: I had Windows ME on my last computer, and that thing NEVER worked right from the time we brought it home. RealPlayer and IE 6 seem to be ranked a bit high: like they themselves admit, the security issues in IE 6 are only so well known because so many people use it: nobody is trying to hack FireFox, so we don’t know what kind of problems there might be with
it. But hey – minor quibbling.
As for the 50 greatest… wow, that brought back some memories. The Atari 2600, the Commodore 64, the TRS-80 100 “laptop”, the Polaroid SX-70, the Speak & Spell (!!), Simon (!!!) — that was some seriously cool stuff back in the day.
They made one big omission though: what were they thinking when the left this off the 50 greatest list?
Pimptastic
Jeremy Botter gives you the inside scoop on all things WWE.
Jeremy Lambert goes into detail about TNA’s recent developments.
If feels somewhat silly pimping someone who has 1,000 times the readership I do, but Scott Keith’s Judgment Day recap is, quite honestly, the best thing I’ve read from him in several years. Of course, that may be due mostly to the fact that A) he finally started formatting his columns, and B) I agree with practically every opinion he had on the show. (Granted, he’ll never actually read this, so I could slam the crap out of him if I felt like it just to drive up the pageviews: but that’s not my style.)
Please visit the Weekly TV Pulse for a summation of everything in the TV section. At the very least, the guy who does the Soprano’s recaps is pretty cool.
Over in the movie section, Michaelangelo introduced a new rating system. In order to see how movies that are now considered “classics” stand up to it, he introduced “The 50 Club” – so named because a movie would have to get a perfect rating of 50 in order to join. Come see why I personally stopped 12 Angry Men from joining it.
On Friday night, I took my 4-year-old son to go see “Over the Hedge”. Both of us really enjoyed it: the climactic battle had us (and the entire theater) laughing out loud. So, while I have a slightly higher opinion of it than Eric, you should read his review anyway. He’s forgotten more about animation than the rest of us will ever know.
Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz reviews a movie that really should be better known by now.
Iain Burnside also has his Anti-Nexus (gee, he’s so contrary) reviews up. I ask you, where else are you going to find columns with lines like: “His style is the sort of thing you would imagine the illustrated version of Genesis to look like if it had been written by Ronald Dahl on a bad acid trip at midnight on Halloween.”
Gloomchen discusses why the various music communities keep arguing the same topics over and over again, until us non-music-geeks are just sick of it.
Daniels takes some well-deserved flak for his ridiculous claim that the closer is the most important position in baseball (hasn’t anyone read “Moneyball”?), and takes the media to task for obsessing on Bonds.
The Happy Fifteen (or so)
This here is where we celebrate that which is good about the theater of the absurd that is pro wrestling. Do you like snarky, pessimistic, condescending commentary from the IWC? You can look… well, just about everywhere else.
Love the concept? Hate it? Think I missed something important from last week? See something this week that you think should be here? Email me by Sunday evening.
Monday Night Raw
1. In terms of “people who make me mark out just for showing up onscreen”, Paul Heyman is in my top 5. (Hell, maybe my top 2.) His very entrance improved my mood tenfold, even before he opened his mouth and laid into Edge and Foley. And like Eric pointed out: the three of them did a 20 minute opening promo, which felt like maybe 5 minutes long. And the fact that Paul was able to goad Edge into accepting his challenge (very much against Mick’s wishes) by insulting Lita was a nice touch.
2. I also get the feeling that Heyman’s hands were involved in the development of RVD’s storyline, and his building frustration with the WWE not letting him do what’s gotten him over for the past 6 years. If this leads to a promo where he blasts WWE Creative for not allowing him more than five minutes to properly build the flow of a match: well, let’s just say I may need some Kleenex nearby.
3. Once again, I don’t care if everybody else in the IWC is badmouthing it: I am absolutely loving the D-X Reunion storyline. HHH’s use of “Two words?”, and HBK confronting him backstage: both very well-done, and both relatively low-key. Obviously, the audience knows what’s coming – but they haven’t been beaten over the head with it, and no one on-camera has yet said the phrase “D-X”. I’m digging it.
4. 10 years ago, Scott Hall appeared on Nitro – and quite literally changed the wrestling world forever. That phrase gets over-used in the industry, but that moment was one of the very, very few where it actually applies. Props to Vince for noting the anniversary, even though he had nothing whatsoever to do with the storyline or concept. I hope you realize he’s giving airtime to celebrating something that almost put him out of business. (Suck on that, you bitter knee-jerk IWC snarks.)
5. It’s not easy to hold my attention with a 5-on-1 beatdown, but the moves the Spirit Squad pulled out to punish HBK’s knees were quite innovative. I especially liked using the chair to stop Shawn in mid-superkick, and Kenny’s Pilmanizer looked awesome.
TNA Impact
1. I know it’s been done a couple of times, so the IWC is already acting like it’s overplayed: but this was my first time seeing The Tower of Doom done in person. And I have to say – that’s pretty damn cool.
2. I’m digging the Total Elimination-like move that Styles and Daniels pulled out halfway through their match with the Diamonds. And yes, I know it was a screw-job ending, but the Diamonds reaction after they won? With the dog pile in the middle of the ring? That is how you react properly to a big upset win. It actually served well to put over Styles and Daniels, since they certainly wouldn’t have reacted that way after beating The Naturals.
3. The James Gang gave their best promo in years. My two highlights from BG: 1) “Seven years ago, when I could actually button this shirt..” 2) “Team 3-D have wrestled all over the worl… all over Philadelphia!” And Kip’s D-Von imitation was just uncanny. One question: why did BG keep slipping into a “Catskills stand-up comedian” voice? Was he trying to be Bubba or Pat Cooper?
4. I have no idea what Neeley was talking about – Christy Hemme looks fine to me. Maybe her face looked a bit haggard, but really – who in the hell is looking at her face? (Unless you’re making note of her ginormous mouth – seriously, that thing takes up half of her face. Again – this isn’t really a bad thing.)
5. I enjoyed the main event, even though it seemed a bit short to me (the commercials in the middle didn’t help). Killing’s sequence of “back handspring, split, leg lariat” still looks impressive (if you like the flippy-floppy stuff, which I do), and Brown’s scoop-to-a-powerslam move looked pretty sweet too. I have to ask, though: does Monty Brown ever let his arms just hang down at his sides? He looks like he’s in constant need of a good neckrub.
(allegedly) Friday Night Smackdown
1. For somebody that everyone says is a legit “tough guy”, JBL certainly is willing enough to show ass on a constant basis. He’s never tried to build himself up as a monster heel, and has been the closest thing to the Honky Tonk Man in the WWE for a long time. Plus: a 2 minute squash to lose the U.S. Title? Wow. This is a guy that really isn’t fearful of keeping his heat.
2. Tatanka faced Simon Dean. Why is this is Bright Side item, you ask? Because my TiVo has three different FF speeds – so this match lasted approximately 8 seconds for me. There’s the key to staying positive, folks – just ignore the crap you know you won’t like. Trust me, you’ll live longer.
3. Mark Henry’s entrance will give me a legitimate reason to use the phrase “Academy Award-winning article Three 6 Mafia”, which is just too much fun.
4. Plenty of people have mentioned William Regal’s excellent use of facial expressions before. But why has nobody talked about the fact that nobody in the history of the sport has ever looked more natural in a three-piece suit?
5. I’m getting more encouraged by the week for the crowd pops that London and Kendrick are getting: I keep worrying that they’ll eventually land in a geographic area that just doesn’t care about them. And their sequences against Vito did an excellent job of how they’ll deal with larger opponents: plenty of high-impact and double-team moves. Both of them excel at playing Ricky Morton, so drawing crowd sympathy during the extended heat sequences will be second-nature.
6. So, they introduced Finlay’s Leprechaun. I’m half-Irish, so I was especially dreading this development. But I have to admit: if they try to establish the concept that he actually lives under the ring, only comes out when Finlay calls for him, can be used as a weapon by Finlay, and then gets (literally) kicked back under the ring apron afterwards? Okay, that’s already gotten into “so bad that it’s good” territory for me. I wanted to hate this quite badly – but I laughed my ass off after Finlay threw him back.
See? With some effort, it’s always possible to see the glass half-full. See you next week.
