Corey_Lazarus

What would be a better Pantera song by my band to cover: "Cowboys From Hell," "This Love," or "Strength Beyond Strength"? I think we're leaning towards CFH if we do a cover at all, and even then only up until the second chorus, but I'm still pulling for "Strength..." because it sorta fits with the newer shit we've been playing.

You need to see Zombie Chronicles if you think FF:TSW is the worst, man.

This Is Spinal Tap - Rob Reiner - 1984 A classic comedy/musical that I'm surprised hasn't been snagged yet. It's become entirely cliche to use the phrase "we go to 11," and the "lost backstage" section has been parodied by other movies and even professional wrestling (Chris Jericho used it in one of his more popular backstage segments in WCW). And come on: who here that has played a few live shows in a band hasn't had a true Spinal Tap moment? It perfectly satired aging rockstars, and also nailed the general lack of substance that was rampant throughout 80's hair bands. Plus, really, who doesn't love the songs? "Big Bottom," "Hell Hole," and "Stonehenge" are magnificent pieces of cheese.

It's heartier and more drama as opposed to the more laid-back comedy of JSBSB and Mallrats. I actually felt that Mallrats was the best of his movies for the longest time simply based on it being the most easily enjoyable.

More than that, this Styles/Angle feud = ratings.

The Douglas/Raven feud was really entertaining until the end. Hell, even the first match wasn't that bad, with Douglas looking the best he had in YEARS. Then came the hair vs. hair match. Douglas was so out of it then that the got gassed and puked in the middle of the match. The only upside was the post-match shaving, which drew a lot of sympathy heat for Raven (something that's always been relatively hard to do).

Somewhat accurated. The first tag team of the New Church was Slash/Tempest, but then Tempest left and was replaced by Brian Lee. Lee disappeared, and Kobain (because K's are kool) came in, but then disappeared just before Lee returned. Then Lee disappeared again, and Slash did shortly after, and thus The Gathering (Punk/Dinero) became the New Church. Douglas wasn't technically a member, but an ally of Mitchell since both had beef with Raven.

Sounds like you hate some dude who IS a Jew, and not that you hate Jews. Still, fuck you, you brain-dead prick. Your band sucks. I didn't say I hated Jews. I said I hated Jewish businessmen. There's a difference. Every one I've encountered fits into the stereotype. That's just one example. So yes, I'm brain dead because I see a group of people that genuinely fit a negative stereotype. Cool. Next?

You know, up until now I never realized Milla Jovovich was in that movie.

Yeah, as Malice. He had an entertaining clusterfuck of a match with Sabu over who would get the shot at Shamrock's NWA World title, and then a pretty damn solid Last Man Standing match with DON HARRIS of all people. He was showing more and more promise, but then he OD'd on heroin and died. Sucks, really.

As much as a bad stereotype as it is, I find it to be more and more true every time I have to deal with them for work: Jewish businessmen. All those jokes about them having annoying voices, needing glasses, wearing expensive clothing, and all the while trying to get you to lower the price/cost of something to the point of trying to get it for less than you got it for? Entirely true with every Jewish customer I've ever encountered. I have one, in particular, that I hate. Luckily he only calls about once every month and a half or so. He owns his own communications company about 20 minutes north of the company I work for, and whenever he calls in to place an order/check stock, he always asks the price. I don't mind that. It makes sense, especially since you're footing the bill. The C5e jack from the brand he uses, the cheapest brand mind you (and also the most versatile, and most popular) that we carry, goes for about $2 a piece, IIRC, and come in boxes of 50. He'll order 25 of them and then try to get a deal since he's "such a big customer" and is "buying so many of them." Most customers order from us more often than he does (we have several that come in daily, sometimes every other hour or so from open to close if their jobsite is nearby), and most buy more (jacks go quick, especially if you break them). I always have to tell him that in order to qualify for special pricing on most items, he needs to buy in massive quantities (jacks would probably be about 1000 or so; cable of any type - 5e Plenum or PVC, 3 Plenum or PVC, etc. - would be close to 30,000 feet; and anything else would be a very high quantity), and he starts throwing a fit about how he's one of our best customers and such. Whatever. I tell him I'll see if I can get him special pricing, joke about it to our branch's sales manager(s), and then sometimes even RAISE the price. I do remember one story my coworker told me that happened only a few months, or maybe a year, before I started working there. He called looking for maybe 100 jacks, and then when told the price and that it couldn't be lowered, he threw a complete fit, calling my coworker incompetent and saying that he was one of our best customers, and that if he didn't get the price break then he'd just go to a competitor (Graybar, probably, since they're the biggest supplier in the area). My coworker FLIPS on him (it takes a lot to get him really pissed, too, considering I routinely insult his son, wife, brother, nephew that I'm friends with, and Alzheimer's-affected mother), and just flat-out tells him that if we lost his business that it wouldn't affect our bottom line, because he's one of our worst customers, and that we have people that order THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS WORTH of materials every week from us. Apparently he's never been as big of a douchebag since. Except for one time when I completely flipped out and had to chain a few butts because he didn't understand the difference between an ST connector and an ST bulkhead. FWIW, I don't expect most to know the difference, but this is one of the few things I do know regarding fiber and fiber connectors. A bulkhead is a metal tube that fits into a plate that is bolted into a fiberbox (an enclosure that can either be mounted to a computer equipment rack or bolted directly to a wall, depending on the type), and you pass different strands of fiber optic cable through it so that you know which strand connects what. A connector is placed on the end of terminated fiber to go onto fiber panels so that the data sent over the fiber is received. Think of the bulkhead as the plumbing pipe that runs through your house, and the connector as the faucet at the end (sink, shower, toilet, whatever). So after asking for a price on bulkheads, he then asks how to apply a certain type of connector, and I immediately catch on. I ask him if he means the steel bulkheads or the actual connectors themseves, which are made of plastic 9 times out of 10. He said the plastic...and then started asking about different bulkheads again. I clarified again, and we got into a civil argument about the differences, which ended with him flat-out telling me that I don't know how to do my job. I put him on hold, smoke a cigarette, and then hand him over to my coworker (the one that flipped out on him from earlier). My coworker tells him the same thing I do, all the while this guy's field tech is in our offices waiting for the product. ...I fucking hate that man. When you learn more about what you sell than some of your customers know, and ALL of your outside sales team knows, and then are talked down to by the WORST customer you have (rude, often refuses to pay, threatens us with no longer using us, etc.), it flips a switch, especially when he blames you for wasting the time of both him AND his tech. I pretty much hate all but a handful of my customers. Some are just annoying, others are downright rude, but most of them are just idiots who don't know what they want/need. One guy always comes in and wants to return unused 5e cable (which, again, comes in boxes of 1,000 feet). We credited it back to him once before checking the remaining quantity in the returned box, only to find less than 100 feet. After that? We refuse returns from him unless we check them while he's there. He's stopped returning things he's bought from us...but has attempted to return items by companies whose products we don't carry, and have never carried. And we have to wait to bill his credit card for at least a week, because he wants everything for free and doesn't know how to keep his line of credit from bottoming out. His card's been declined quite a few times, and I think it took my office manager from threatening to ban him from the shop and warn rival companies about him to get him to pay what he owes us. Fucking assholes in the telecommunications industry, man. Almost all of them. There's a few cool ones, but the industry's at a low right now, so most of them have moved on to security and/or stereo systems. Coolest customer I've ever encountered has moved on to that, which is a shame because he was a good reason to just chill out back and shoot the shit. He was almost always high, hungover, or even still drunk, and was just a funny guy to boot. Wicked chill, he'd come in, we'd just crack jokes at each other's expense, and my boss(es) couldn't complain because I was conversing with a customer, and trying to get him to get more stuff (albeit half-assedly). There's another few cool ones, including a couple into old-school metal (Anthrax, Maiden, etc.) and punk (only guys who've ever recognized the Crimson Ghost on my arm), but most are assholes like the above 2 examples.

$5.76 for Marlboro 27s. Really, don't complain in Cali. We haven't paid less than $5 for name-brand smokes in YEARS.

I think the only person even close to Winston still live and kicking is Greg Nicotero, who's better at gore effects and not awesome animatronics like Winston was.

Well, I got some other gems lined up...and I think they'll increase in quality as I go on.

I remember seeing Evan Karagias when he looked, you know, like he had talent beyond botching every move he tried.

Forgotten awesome tag team in TNA: New Church. The first team to get over as heels, and as perfect a pairing of "Killdozer" Brian Lee (best...gimmick name...EVER) and anybody else could ever hope to be. Lee actually did good in his half as the flat-out brawler, and it's the best he's ever been in his entire career. The brawls with Tommy Dreamer in ECW weren't bad, but the New Church/AMW feud was the first non-X Division feud to get over with TNA fans.

I'm somewhat excited about it. I've checked out some of the Mission: Metallica shit they have on YouTube, and a couple of the demo snippets that play sound like pure Kill 'Em All-era shit. I'm looking forward to at least seeing if the songs are even, you know, decent rock as opposed to decent metal. Yeah, I've been following those clips as well and I've been pleasantly surprised with it thus far. And according to some reviews from a listening party, the songs on the album are structured much like those on Justice. So halfway decent then with no bass at all? You can hear the bass, it's just not as pronounced as on Kill 'Em All or even the Black Album (shut up, you can hear the bass on it, it's just a different tone). And I'd say the music itself, at parts, or very thrash-y, but that's just from quick snippets. If all you heard from St. Anger was the part of the title track where everybody kicks in, and bits of "Frantic," you could say the same thing, though, which slightly worries me. Oh well. And yes: the iCarly theme is catchy as shit. I actually like the line "So wake up the members of my nation." Whoever Nickelodeon hired to write that line is smart, but in a weird way, considering the show itself can be taken as either children's entertainment (even if I stand by my view that most of the Nick and Disney live sitcoms are better than your average network sitcom, especially in Nick's case) or a satire of those with Web shows that just happens to take place in a middle school. So, Rock And Shock announced the bands for this year. FRIDAY: Children of Bodom, Obituary, and Between The Buried And Me SATURDAY: GWAR and Mushroomhead SUNDAY: Insane Clown Posse Thus far, every post on the MySpace group thread about the announced bands has said to go Friday and Saturday and skip Sunday. That amuses me. Also, members of my band like just about every band announced so far, so this could be a big double-shot concert for Excyde if we all decided to split a hotel room and go (and/or try to get booked on either Friday or Saturday as an opener). The other guitarist LOVES Bodom, the bassist and drummer see Obituary every time they're in New England, the singer digs Mushroomhead more than somebody into old-school hardcore should, and my feelings for GWAR are known. Rock and Shock is gonna be fun this year. I just hope the guests announced are better than last year's, which was pretty much the Halloween remake's little kid who played young Michale Meyers and Shawnee Smith of the Saw franchise.

Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn - Sam Raimi (1987) Oh, come on! You know you love seeing Raimi torture his best friend (Campbell) by making him throw himself down stairs, against walls, through (sugarglass) windows, and covering him with gallons of colored karo syrup, all done during a record heatwave down south, all for the sake of hilarious gross-out horror! This is one of the movies that made Raimi able to do the Spider-Man flicks later in his career, and it's a true classic of underground horror. I'd love to watch this goofy masterpiece over and over again, and then argue with myself over whether the first 10 minutes are meant to be a quick synopsis of the first movie, or if the entire flick is just one big remake (HINT: it's the former, even stated so by Campbell and Raimi themselves during commentary tracks).

Here's the positive on Roode/Storm: Storm carries the ringwork, Roode can carry the promo's. I liked how, after they beat down LAX, Roode took a swig from Storm's beer, and then spit it out in complete disgust. Beer is the alcoholic beverage of choice for most people, and has a stigma of "working class drink" attached to it. Roode is filthy rich. It makes sense that he'd spit out the beer, disgusted entirely by it as Storm looks on, confused.

Santino. ...Santino... ...uhhh...Jericho/HBK? Mostly Santino.

I'm somewhat excited about it. I've checked out some of the Mission: Metallica shit they have on YouTube, and a couple of the demo snippets that play sound like pure Kill 'Em All-era shit. I'm looking forward to at least seeing if the songs are even, you know, decent rock as opposed to decent metal.

American Psycho - Mary Harron, 2000 One of the better novel adaptations ever filmed, IMO, and the role that sent Bale further towards the superstardom he enjoys today. Personally, I'd say this is Bale's best role, and a solid practice for becoming Bruce Wayne, as the Wayne and Bateman characters are remarkably similar: both pretend to be rich playboys but have a darker side, both keep themselves in top physical condition, and both have enemies unsure of their natural identity. That's where the similarities end, however, but Ellis's characterization of Bateman is transferred wonderfully to the screen. Harron's choice to take select scenes and film them is practically brilliant, as the question that remains is still in debate amongst fans of both novel and film: did Bateman kill all that he claimed to kill, or was it all just a means of mental escape from his boring day-to-day life?

My friend Amy, in an entirely joking manner, decided to give me scoops as she walked by me in the hall one day during...I think junior year, because I was single and had short hair. Yeah, must've been junior year. Anyways, a few of you might remember her, but in case you don't...here you go. It's her MySpace, but there's still some alright pics on it. For those of you unfamiliar with scoops, it's when somebody comes up to you and cups your genitals as a means of shock and humor. There's not much else to it, and when done right it can be fucking hilarious. So she scooped me in the hall, which was a fucking tease because she knew I thought she was the sexiest person I'd ever met, and I ended up having to fight a massive erection in the middle of chemistry class. Sucked. So then I see her in the hall later in the day. She starts laughing over earlier, we stop and crack a joke, and then I reach down...and scoop her right the fuck back. I walk away immediately afterwards, and all she can do is choke out laughter. She never let me live that down for the next, oh, 6 months or so. She brought it up the last time I ran into her, randomly, at a gas station my company has an account out when I was filling up the delivery van's tank before a run to Weymouth. She still remembered.

I drew a blank as to what I was going to choose, but I think it's fair game that I'm not going for quality, but rather personal enjoyment. I don't plan on winning this thing, but I do plan on pulling out some upsets here and there. Expect more classic middleground (not quite underground, but not quite mainstream) horror/comedy flicks, and some underground movies of any genre as well.

The angle had a ton of potential. Yes, even the MIA. What really hurt everything was a combination of politics, Russo not knowing how to deal with said politics, and just incompetent booking. An audience, especially a pro wrestling audience, can be trained to accept anything so long as it's well-presented. Kidman/Hogan had the possibility to do something never done before: Hogan, the ultimate icon in the industry, putting over a lowly cruiserweight (who, despite having very solid matches the two years prior, would ultimately prove why he was midcard at best, but that's besides the point). It could've worked, even with Kidman losing in incredible fashion during the blowoff. All Hogan needed to do was SELL for him, let Kidman even get a cheap pin/submission (hit him with a chair behind the ref's back, roll him up with feet on the ropes/handful of tights, etc.) on PPV after little-to-no interference and a few moments of back-and-forth action (no, Mike Awesome demolishing Hogan in a no-DQ match after Hogan threw Kidman around the ring for 10 minutes doesn't count), and suddenly you have somebody who now has the rub to be a star. But alas...everything that could be said about the Kidman/Hogan aspect of the angle has already been said, so it's not worth getting further into. Honestly? I feel the best handled aspects of the angle were the MIA and what would become the Natural Born Thrillers. Hear me out. The MIA started as younger, underpushed members of the roster, guys who worked hard to get where they were and were still shunted down the card in favor of more established names. But they wanted something different: they wanted to earn what they got, not just take it in a huge mess of a coup lead by two of the biggest on-air scumbags in WCW history. They weren't New Blood, but they most certainly weren't Millionaires Club. It worked...as a concept. But when Russo tried to turn MIA into DX Ultra Lite? It failed miserably. Chavo Guerrero Jr. was well-respected as a solid wrestler, a man who could own the Cruiserweight division. Lash LeRoux was an up-and-coming star that fans were taking to like few other WCW-originals. Hugh Morrus was a man fans knew of, but not as a serious character, but rather a pseudo-demented brawl who could hit a damn decent moonsault. The Wall was a green powerhouse, but he was willing to work to improve (and eventually did so in TNA as Malice before the heroin overdose that took his life), and could be the monster that WCW had lacked for over a year at that point when Paul Wight left for the WWF. And Van Hammer was...well, he was useless as anything other than the muscle in Raven's Flock back in '97/'98. But the point of the stable was, initially, a good one, as they rejected the New Blood's way, and were then at war with them. But a dumb stable name (seriously, even something like "the Third Party" or "Zero Brigade" would have been better than a dumb acronym), focusing more on humor than being serious (Russo's biggest fault), and bad feuds (save for the Team Canada feud, which I feel was handled about as well as it could have been) killed whatever semblance of a solid stable there could have been. Bringing in "Pappy," or whatever the old man was, was a bad move. Double ditto Tylene Buck, whose butterface and lack of a personality hampered the stable more than it helped it. I think the turning point, besides initially being affiliated with Booker's awful "GI Bro" persona (again, it doesn't matter if that's how he started his career, because there's a reason he dropped it), was the promo in which Hugh Morrus decided to drop the act and go under his "real name" of General Hugh G. Rection. What was wrong with staying as Hugh Morrus? What was wrong with simply saying you're refusing the moniker given to you by those from a lost wrestling era (again, an angle could be made where the MIA were against both the New Blood and the Millionaires Club) and saying you're name was Bill DeMott, and it was time to be serious (and not Sir Ius, the humorless knight)? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Russo wanted another Degeneration X, but he failed to realize what made DX so great: that it was workers with a damn decent sense of humor trying to make themselves laugh, and in the process give the fans somebody to love/hate. It also doesn't help that everybody in DX (save for Gunn) had three times the personality of EVERYBODY in MIA, but I digress. Mishandled angle/stable that was starting to get decent treatment later on during its existence, but it really just hampered about everybody's career that it touched. And the NBT, with Kevin Nash as their coach? It was beautiful in its simplicity. 6 rookie upstarts who believed they had the talent and superstar looks to be at the top without much experience, and were willing to do anything to get what they wanted...just like Nash had earlier in his career. It made sense for Nash to coach them, as he was less of an in-ring character at the time (for whatever reasons) and more of a mouthpiece, so for Nash to "give the rub" to 6 undeveloped guys was both helpful and entertaining. And it was even more perfect when they double-crossed Nash, much as he had done most of his former alliances, and then Nash joined the Millionaires Club to get to them. It was perfect in how simple it could be executed, but then Nash pulled his stroke, and the NBT were split up into different groups (Stasiak/Jindrak vs. Palumbo/O'Haire, the more talented members of either team tagging against the other; Reno went on his own as a Hardcore champion, to decent success; and Sanders, who was all-around awesome on the stick, and I honestly forget what he was doing after NBT fell apart, but I think it had to do with Jeff Jarrett). Of course, I could have my timeline confused, considering how hectic 2000 was for WCW, but I think I've got it at least somewhat accurate. I just remember the NBT starting off as a solid, new stable, and then deteriorating into shit without much of a good reason.