Wrestling Watching Weekend

Hello and happy Sunday. I hope everybody’s having a good weekend. Mine’s been great especially since I decided to turn off my telephone because the thing was driving me nuts. Between the millions of telemarketers who seem to be out in full force right now, people calling me with nothing to say, and everybody else seeming to want my attention all at once, I couldn’t get a moment of peace. So I decided that I’m paying for voicemail for a reason, and that’s where everybody’s been going for the last couple days straight. It’s been awesome.

But Steve, what did you do with all that anti-social time you had on your hands?

Well, let’s see. I did laundry. Lots and lots of laundry. But that’s what happens when trees decide to grow into the drainage system at your house and your plumbing backs up and you have to use almost every towel you own to soak up the swimming pool that used to be your bathroom. But whatever, it’s all fixed up now and everything’s clean, so I’m a happy guy. I’m also a lucky guy since I seem to have gotten home just in time. Sure it sucked to be away for 5 days and then come back to that, but being away for 6 days and then walking into a mess like the one I awoke to the next morning would have been a lot worse.

But I did do more than laundry and housework. I also watched wrestling. Lots and lots of wrestling. I finally got to see both Taboo Tuesday and Bound For Glory among other things, and this post is more about them than about me and my domestic chores and self-imposed isolation, so here we go.

Bound For Glory was an awesome show. I don’t think I’d call it the best TNA show I’ve ever seen, but it was still fantastic. The only thing that hurt it was that some of the matches went a little short, but there was a reason for that since they had to change the entire main event angle around at the last minute because of the whole Kevin Nash thing, so really I can’t fault the company since they did a great job of making the best out of a bad situation.

It was cool to see Jushin Liger again. I don’t watch a whole lot of Japanese wrestling so I really haven’t seen much of him since his days in WCW. He can still go, and Samoa Joe is Samoa Joe and it seems impossible for him to have a terrible match these days. I’ve read a fair bit of complaining on the internet (surprise surprise) about how the match was way too short and that because they didn’t give it longer it didn’t live up to expectations. But like I said, I’m not going to be part of it. Was the match too short? Yes, but that by no means makes it bad. The action was there, the crowd was into it, and Joe’s entrance was pretty cool. Besides, it’s not like they were relying on that match to save what would have been an otherwise disappointing show.

I loved the finish of the Christopher Daniels vs. AJ Styles Ironman match. I’ve thought for years that somebody getting pinned in the last 3 seconds of a match with a time limit would be a cool finish, and this was as close as I can remember ever seeing to that. The match itself was solid too. I’ve talked to people who were expecting a different type of match out of those 2 and you can sort of tell when you watch it that some of the crowd did also, but I can’t think of anything that sticks out as wrong with it. It had a slower pace than some of their previous bouts, but there were still more than enough high spots thrown in the mix to keep the excitement going. And think about it. Doing 30 minutes of high impact stuff doesn’t make sense in the context of an Ironman match anyway. Why burn yourself out and risk potentially hurting yourself more than your opponent?

I know I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record here, but I have to say it. Monster’s Ball Match, also great. By the way, I wonder how many kids out there actually understand what I mean by broken record. but back to the match. Great hardcore action, and Jeff Hardy is absolutely insane. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, get a tape of this show and wonder along with the rest of us how that man isn’t dead or severely injured at this point.

After all this time, you’d think TNA would have figured out a way to keep the Ultimate X from falling down in the middle of matches on live TV. But if like me you would be tempted to think that, you’d be wrong. But it wasn’t simply the X falling down that ruined an otherwise fine contest, it was the reactions of the guys after the obviously botched finish that really did the job. I give TNA credit for taping a rematch for last Thursday’s prime time special, but instead of apologizing for what happened, they should have played it up as the total heel move by Petey Williams that it probably looked like to a fair number of the people watching. Reaching up and catching the thing as it falls down for the second time and getting the win is certainly grounds for a rematch on it’s own, so why draw attention to your shortcomings when you’re in the early stages of the biggest exposure and growth period in your company’s history? The audience isn’t made up of all smart fans anymore, it’s ok to try to pull one over on us now and then. We might make fun of you for doing it, but we really don’t mind, we understand who you’re doing it for.

Speaking of pulling one over on people, congratulations to WWE for actually convincing a few people to buy Taboo Tuesday. Although if you paid for that show based on the TV that lead into it, you could probably be convinced to do just about anything. Ok, I’ll just come right out and say it. If you laid down $30 of your own money for reasons other than morbid curiosity or the fact that you get paid to watch this stuff, you’re an idiot. But that being said, this show was a lot better in execution than it was on paper. Hmmm, execution, that sounds like a fine fate for the people responsible for booking WWE lately. But seriously, the show wasn’t that bad.

Joey Styles calling a WWE pay-per-view took a little getting used to. He’s a great announcer, but before today I could never have pictured him calling a WWE event. The ECW show he did back in June for them doesn’t count. But he did a great job considering the short notice and the fact that he and Jerry Lawler have never worked together, at least not to my knowledge.

The opening match was surprisingly good, especially for one in which the combined suckage of Gene Snitsky and Chris Masters makes up one team. I still love Snitsky though, even though I make fun. How can you not love that guy?

The legends match was a fun one even though nobody cares about Conway or Tomko and Eugene is starting to go down that same road. It’s generally nice to see legends, even if they do sometimes make you feel old. Sometimes it’s sad to see the shape some of them are in, but at least they get one more moment in the sun, and that has to count for something.

Is it just me, or did that not feel like Mick Foley’s big return match, or even like a feud that needs caring about? You know things are bad in WWE when they can make me not care about watching Mick Foley wrestle, especially after he’s been gone for so long. And you know something, I have a feeling that Mick Foley didn’t even really care about that Mick Foley match. but you know what’s frightening? Even when he’s half assing it out there, he’s still more entertaining than a fair number of the guys who are on TV every week, the ones who are supposed to be the future. Somebody kill me.

Cade and Murdock should not have lost the tag titles, and not just because WWE did the same thing last year with another team that they were trying to push. My main problem is that they need to be establishing a tag division, and taking the belts off of new guys that you’re trying to get over as a team and putting them on a couple of people who are essentially singles wrestlers doesn’t help.

I’m mentioning the Coach vs. Batista match for one reason, and that reason is Jerry Lawler, because he cracked me up when Vader came out. His exact words were “he hasn’t lost any size has he?” I love shoot comments that you’re not supposed to pick up on.

The last 2 matches, the Flair vs. Triple H cage match and the 3-way for the WWE title were by far the best of the night.

Flair in a cage is almost always good, and even though you can say a lot of bad things about HHH, he can still bring it when he needs to, and he definitely did in this one.

As for the title match, how can you go wrong with Michaels and Angle in the same ring? Not even John Cena, who appears to be getting worse instead of better the longer he sticks around, could have messed that up completely. This was a really well put together match with a good finish that didn’t hurt anybody. The champ stayed strong, and Michaels and Angle didn’t lose anything by not winning.

Ok, that was long. Thankks for sticking with it. One of us will be back later with something else. Until then, I’m off to eat something and watch a bit more wrestling.

Mayor: Sever Thumbs of Graffiti Artists

RENO, Nev. (AP) – Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has suggested that those who deface freeways with graffiti should have their thumbs cut off on television.

Goodman, appearing Wednesday on the “Nevada Newsmakers” television show, said, “In the old days in France, they had beheading of people who commit heinous crimes.

“You know, we have a beautiful highway landscaping redevelopment in our downtown. We have desert tortoises and beautiful paintings of flora and fauna. These punks come along and deface it.

“I’m saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb,” the mayor added. “That may be the right thing to do.”

Goodman also suggested that whippings or canings should be brought back for children who get into trouble.

“I also believe in a little bit of corporal punishment going back to the days of yore, where examples have to be shown,” Goodman said.

“I’m dead serious,” said Goodman, adding, “Some of these (children) don’t learn. You have got to teach them a lesson, and this is coming from a criminal defense lawyer.”

“They would get a trial first,” he added.

Another panelist on the show, Howard Rosenberg, a state university system regent, responded by saying that cutting off the thumbs of taggers won’t solve the problem and Goodman should “use his head for something other than a hat rack.”

Read the Fine Print!

Well, I was reading something in the paper today that makes me feel a lot better. I was starting to think a while back that I must have been a really stupid kid, because I didn’t get all the meanings of stuff that was in songs and stories for kids. I’d just remember the funny noises or the way the narrator sounded when they read something. Then I’d come across it later and go, “Woe, if that was intended for kids to find easy to understand, and I didn’t get it, then I must be really dumb.”

Now I’ve read that a study actually found out that when you’re reading to kids, they’re spending more time looking at the pictures than the text. Phew! Then I’m not stupid. This is normal!

But here’s where I get annoyed with either the people who did the study or the person interpreting it. They make a big production, almost to the point of saying “Ha ha you’re wrong!” out of the fact that reading to your kids isn’t as good as you might think because they’re not actually learning to read. Ok, did anyone actually think that 3-year-old Jimmy was learning to read when you sat down with him? No! He’s learning to enjoy reading! If people actually take this study seriously, they’re going to stop reading to their kids because they think it’s not helping them to read. And then what good did this study do?

Football’s Back

So this morning at 10am tickets to the CFL Eastern Division Championship went on sale for the Rogers Centre (or the Ted) in Toronto. The game’s got the Argos’ and whoever wins the Eastern Semi-final. I got my tickets finished at 10:02am and the closest I could get was 2nd deck, 8th row. Don’t get me wrong, they’re really good seats, but 2 years ago, that many tickets to a football game selling that fast in Toronto would have been unheard of. They’re actually expecting to sell out the place (over 50,000) for the first time for football since the 1997 season. The CFL has always been viewed as kind of a second rate product in Toronto but young people are starting to get back in to it in Toronto and it’s creating quite a buzz as proven by the sales this morning.

It’s the first time the Eastern Final has been hosted in Toronto since 1997, so it’s the biggest game here in quite some time. It should be a huge buzz around the city for the next little while as the Argos’ try to reclaim the Gray Cup again this year. Sunday November 20 at 3pm if anyone else wants to try and get seats…. but you won’t be sitting anywhere near as close as me! Suckers!

Wow, Some People Need Sleep.

I saw something yesterday that made me laugh. I came down to what passes for a bus terminal in this town and jumped on a city bus. Now, bear in mind this bus’s main job is to shuttle people from the downtown to the university, which takes maybe 15 minutes. I got on the bus, weaved through the people who were still looking for seats or standing and was lucky to find a seat between two people. As the bus took off, I noticed that the person on my right was snoring! I don’t just mean a little bit. He was snoring really loudly.

Now let’s think about this. I got on the bus at the main drop-off point where all the buses come in. I didn’t get on the bus in the middle of the route. This guy was already on the bus. How long had he been just riding the bus snoring? Second, there is so much noise on this bus. It’s usually a full bus and sometimes it doesn’t stop for people once it gets too full because they can’t physically cram anymore people on the bus. And this guy slept through it all. He never moved when I got off the bus either. And boy was he ever lucky to even get a seat to sleep on. I don’t know where he was intending to go, but something tells me he missed his stop. Wonder if he’s still there?

Vomit Comet, Venturing into the World of feeds

Well, we’re just going up in the world fast aren’t we? Earlier in the week, we got given the gift of trackbacks, and now we discovered that we can have a feed for this place. So since everyone and their blogging brother is jumping on the RSS/Atom bandwagon, we decided to test it out. I know nothing about feeds, so I’m just following the site’s instructions on how to put one up, so I hope it works. If you have a News-reader and like that sort of thing, give it a try by going here to subscribe.

It can do RSS or Atom. There are a few options of how to subscribe, so hopefully one works. If that link doesn’t work, they gave me a handy dandy link that I put up in our description section with our email addresses. If that link doesn’t work, let us know and we’ll have to figure out how to fix it, because frankly, I’ll be stumped. Hopefully it won’t be stump Carin day. Happy RSS-reading everyone!

Comment changes

Well, I got rid of the numbers, and gained an extra link. Oops. But on the bright side, we have trackback now, whatever that does. Now here’s the important part. Does it still work? Hope so. Can everyone still find the comment links and click on them and put comments in? If not, well, you know where our emails are. Drop us a line and let us know if you have any trouble.

ARAO: A Really Asinine Obligation

Ok, rant time again. Yee ha.

One of the newest places where I volunteer has a stupid policy they call ARAO. It stands for Anti-Racism Anti-Oppression. AT this point I can hear the peanut gallorie booing me off the stage and calling me a racist asshole. But wait wait wait!

Basically the policy says they can’t turn people down based on their race, disability, or any other difference they may have. That sounds cool, until you realize what it means. It means that even if they want to turn you down, if you have something different, like I happen to have, they feel obligated to hang onto you. I wanted to do this job where you go with people to appointments that might be stressful or require moral support. Because I can’t see where I’m going, they don’t think I can do the job. How they think I manage to do my day to day things I don’t know. So, instead of flat out rejecting me, they’re trying to scare me away from the job by telling me that the situation could be unsafe, or they might get sued if I don’t do it right, etc. If they didn’t think I could do the job, and didn’t really want to give me a chance, why didn’t they just fucking say so, and save me the grief of fighting the impossible fight of proving myself to people who don’t really want to listen.

Does something fall from the sky and smack you on the head yet? Why does this place *need* to write down in a policy that they shouldn’t discriminate?? Have they had a history of discrimination before? When will people realize that policies don’t fix problems? We need to change attitudes, and forcing companies to have token women, blacks, people with disabilities only puts faces on resentment. I know, I know, the inventors of these policies think, “Yeah, but if we can just get them into the companies, they can change the minds of the higher-ups and life will be beautiful.” Have these people actually worked as a token? It doesn’t work. If the boss really doesn’t want that person in their company, they can make their life hell and find ways to make them look bad, proving that these policies only keep the best person for the job from having the job.

The peanut gallorie rises again. “Just be thankful they’re giving you a chance at all and there is legislation in place to guarantee that chance.” But the chance is no good if it’s not genuine. It’s like saying that everyone who’s poor has the right to this little pot of money. But when they get to the pot, they find out it’s monopoly money. What good is that? They can’t buy things at the store with it, they can’t put it in their checking account, but oh the government says they gave them money. It’s the same with these stupid bullshit policies. They’re not real.

Let’s face it. The future freaks me out. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a job where I actually feel valued. I have found some volunteer placements where I felt like I had a chance. But when money’s involved, I’m afraid that the company will go for the cheapest and least labour-intensive option. Wouldn’t you? “Hmmm. I can hire this person who can read the print notices on the wall and all the print resources available to them, doesn’t need special software on the computer to make it usable for them, can drive, and will never ask me for anything except the occasional holiday. Or I can hire this blink with the same skills who I’ll have to throw a bunch of money into, they might ask for more stuff, and they might complain if they miss an important printed company memo. I choose…lemmy think…the first one.”

So I can see where some genius thought legislating companies into hiring people in the minority might have been a good idea. But what they forgot is you can’t legislate opinion. Human thought is still free, and it should be. Plus, if legislation was so effective, we could demolish the prisons and fire the police. Does that sound like a good idea to anyone? Didn’t think so.