Corey_Lazarus

UFC = most bought PPV event around today. "Mind of Mencia" = pulling in ratings that South Park re-runs do on a niche cable network. Hrmmm...Rogan's w/ UFC, Mencia has his own show...hmmmm...

When the work day is dead and the boss ain't in, I YouTube matches. GHC Heavyweight Tag Team Titles: Mistuharu Misawa & Ogawa -VS.- KENTA & Naumichi Marufuj Decent tag match. I liked the story I saw here, as it started off with KENTA and Marufuji proving that they were at the same league as Misawa and Ogawa, and Ogawa holding them at bay while Misawa rested in between tag breaks. Really, this match built Ogawa. I don't even know the story behind it or even the date, but Ogawa was made to look like the star here by essentially controlling the match. Starts off with KENTA and Marufuji trying to prove they're worth a damn to the legend Misawa, and then Misawa trying to prove (and successfully so) that he can keep up with his younger, faster opponents. Bryan Danielson & "Die Hard" Eddie Edwards & Bison Smith -VS.- KENTA & Akitushi Saito & Ricky Marvin Dunno the date of the show (2/12?), but it was billed on YouTube as Bryan Danielson's first Pro Wrestling NOAH match. Solid match, but this and the other match had two things I really don't care for in tag matches: one-sidedness. I don't mind the build-up to the hot tag, but I do mind when one team dominates save for a few sparce comebacks by the other team that either lead to the finish or just make it so it's not a complete squash. Good to see Eddie Edwards getting good publicity (I remember when he was just a local indy guy with baggy pink pants, feuding with no-name's in NECW), though. He's gonna be a fucking star one day. He can bump, sell, wrestle very solid...I'd say he's more likely to become a Jericho-style star rather than Alex Shelley is, as far as today's indy workers. Marvin constantly attacking Bison while he's legal and Bison's on the apron was entertaining, as was a few of the clothesline trade-off's between Bison and Saito. Danielson...he was actually pretty "meh" in this match. Hit a NICE suicide dive to KENTA, bending him backwards over the guardrail (pretty sick fucking spot), and the Cattle Mutilation he got Marvin in was vicious (looked like Danielson was flapping his wings, which made the move look even more vicious and must've legit hurt like a bitch). KENTA was also pretty "meh" in this one, looked a lot better in the other match.

Part of me likes her better bald. Then again, I also have had a huge hard-on for bald chicks since I first saw Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3 when I was, like, 9...so yeah. Natalie Portman? Hot bald. Sigourney Weaver? Hot bald. Britney Spears? Jury's out, but leaning towards hot bald.

RE: stealing jokes = downloading movies ...no, they're really not. Downloading a song/film is like stealing a candybar from the local grocer. Making your whole set filled with nothing but other people's jokes and claiming them to be your own is like unwrapping that Snickers bar and putting it in a plastic pouch that says "I SWEAR I made this shit up, it's not a fucking Snickers, even though it looks, smells, and tastes just like a Snickers."

The movie's fucking terrible, but the charisma of Rock carries it. The scene in particular has his character campaigning for president at the TNA Asylum (which I still feel OWNS the ImpactZone in terms of heat and overall feel), and then he gets his ass kicked by BG James, The Truth, and...I think Jarrett.

What do they sound like? I'm at work and can't play their tunes.

Only one I can think of is Cemetery Man. Oh, I also haven't gotten past the first 10 minutes of Day of the Dead 2: Contagium, but that's because it's horrible. I just haven't had the time to sit down and watch Cemetery Man start to finish, and I don't wanna break it up, so it stands there in its plastic wrapper...Ruper Everet wants me to watch him kill zombies and fuck a dead chick...

It was Piper parodying Michael Jackson, Bad News Brown, and supposedly making a non-verbal statement about his personality (half crazy, half sane). The match was "meh" at best, but Piper made everything worth watching because of his antics. You know, I've been noticing that about my top 4 favorite wrestlers (Raven, Piper, Roberts, Foley): their matches are usually just sorta there, but they're (the matches and the wrestlers) memorable for everythign they put into it.

True. M-Dogg 20 and Josh Prohibition were the stars of the Best of Backyard Wrestling series. Both trained after high school and did the indy's, most notably CZW and XPW (the latter of which where they were tag team champions, and actually there's a damn decent match of them vs. Damien 666 and Halloween). I'm surprised TNA hasn't picked up Josh Prohibition. He's got the CM Punk vibe with a bit of Piper thrown in, but he's not really that great in the ring. M-Dogg makes Amazing Red (pre-knee injury) look like Abismo Negro by comparison, and that's a good thing.

TNA just needs logic. That's...it, really. "We want Christian to hold the NWA title until Destination X when Joe beats him for it." Okay, cool. How do you get there? "Uhhh...we have Angle turn on Joe and join up with Christian and Steiner, then we have Styles turn face again after Rhino beats him in the blowoff to side with Jerry Lynn against Sabin and, errr, Jay Lethal..." ...that's not happening...but it wouldn't surprise me if it did. Is it that hard to have people on the staff whose job it is to talk with Russo and Mantel and Jarrett and remind them of what's worked in TNA, what hasn't worked in TNA, and the history of certain characters? All it takes is somebody to ask 'why" during the booking process to get a better show, really. Re: in-ring stories It's not hard to tell a story in the ring, even if you're just doing a spotfest. Let's say it's Senshi/Sabin, and Senshi's working over Sabin's left arm BAD. Now, when it's time to hit the Cradle Shock...Sabin can't get Senshi up for it because his left arm hurts so bad! Makes sense, right? So either Sabin loses or finds another way to beat Senshi. It's little things like that that would make the X-Division that much better. That and maybe, oh, changing the rules ever-so-slightly for X-Division matches to TRULY differentiate it from the Heavyweight division besides "these guys do backflips."

Supposedly he had never heard of Pirates of the Caribbean or Johnny Depp's character and was completely confused by Burchill's gimmick. And THAT'S why WWE creative is in the shitter: the man who has the final say in EVERY aspect of the company doesn't even know what's going. It'd be one thing if both Pirates flicks did mediocre at the box office...but they're major fucking blockbusters. Super Crazy in a comedic role? Strangely, I see that working. He's charismatic in the ring, a solid worker...I think it could work. Maybe not full-on Nacho Libre-style, but it could work. Nitro punished for Melina being a bitch...riiiiiiiight. Nitro's one of the only TE kids that proved he's worth a fuck. And they PUNISH him for his girlfriend's actions? Fucking lame.

Metallica going the TSO route? Hrmmm...interesting, but it's not Metallica.

Destruction - Thrash Anthems My introduction, outside of a track here and there, to a classic thrash metal band. Just released, and I gotta say: I dig it. A lot. Not as much as, say, Exodus or Slayer or Municipal Waste, but it's not bad at all. Fun thrash metal, and it's easy to see how modern-day thrash-oriented metal bands like The Haunted, Susperia (blackened thrash), and Darkest Hour draw references to older bands like Destruction. Dirty Rotten Imbeciles - 4 of a Kind Thrash icons and pioneers. Inventors of the blast beat. I couldn't find any of their earlier albums, before they tried their best to become a metal band, but this isn't bad at all. Very similar to M.O.D. and other crossover bands, and I really want to find the earlier albums and EPs. Not just from DRI, but other thrash bands, especially Corrosion of Conformity (since their swamp sound is decent, but runs on boring, even if Pepper's voice fits it perfectly). The Distilers - Sing Sing Death House It's amazing how every Distillers song I've heard is off of this album. My friend Sarah got me into them back in '02, and I've never bothered to buy an album until recently. Good punk. It's a shame that the follow-up to this is borderline emo, since Brody showed such amazing promise with this album and even delivered on it a good bit. "I Am a Revenent" and "City of Angels" are big standouts, though the whole album flows cohesively. Similar to The Offspring's Smash in terms of overall quality, but not as varied...and that's actually a good thing. The Murder City Devils - The Murder City Devils Another band my friend Sarah got me into. I bought this for "Boom Swagger Boom," which is my favorite song by them, and I'm going to be getting more MCD albums. If The Doors were a wild punk band, they'd be the Murder City Devils...and I only say that because of the organ used in most of their songs. Gloomy, often depressing, but always fun punk.

I'd imagine so. I can't think of a single Foo Fighters single from "Learn to Fly" on that hasn't pissed me off to some degree (even "Best of You," which I actually like, was grating when it was played constantly). Has there been a better comedy-oriented band than Gwar? I can't think of one. Zappa doesn't count because though he had a great sense of humor, most of his appeal came from how great the music itself was.

Using that logic, nobody outside of maybe Randy Orton and a few of the old-timers are "WWE homegrown," since just about everybody first achieved some level of fame via other companies. If you disclude Samoa Joe, then you also have to disclude AJ Styles (NWA Wildside, RoH), Christopher Daniels (various SoCal indies, RoH), Homicide (CZW, JAPW, RoH), Alex Shelley (RoH), Austin Starr (since I'm sure he's Austin Aries, aye?; RoH), Sonjay Dutt (CZW), Ron Killings (WWF, XPW), and thus you're left with...pretty much just Abyss (who wrestled for IWA Puerto Rico as Prince Justice), and maybe Sabin and Williams (who both worked Detroit/southern Canada indies). No company worth a damn has EVER started up with nothing but 100% purely homegrown talent. But the reason that Daniels, Styles, Truth, and Joe will be looked at as TNA talent (I'll agree to an extent with Joe, as his true fame came from the quality of his matches in RoH) is because they first got their true big break in TNA. Same reason why Austin, Foley, Hogan, and HBK will forever be looked at as WWF/WWE talent: they worked elsewhere beforehand, but first got REALLY big with Vince McMahon. I think TNA's niche should be what it was their first year: a combination of smart mark IWC fans (due to the quality of the matches and importing/exporting talent from around the indy scene and the world) and casuals who miss the height of the Attitude era.

And would also never appear on MTV.

in Pan's Labyrinth. Such a fucking douchebag throughout the whole movie, and I'm glad del Tormo did something smart and didn't do a cop-out Disney ending. Even if he was the reason , I still smiled when he fucking died, especially HOW he died and how everything he aimed to do in the whole movie just exploded right in his face and killed him. Everybody but Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Then again, the whole movie was horrible, and I wanted everybody to die BUT him, so hey. The Mayor in The Toxic Avenger. Such a complete scumbag, and the way he died is more memorable than why he died (generic crooked politician as far as WHY he died, but HOW - Toxie punches into his stomach and rips out his liver - is memorable, albeit not the most memorable death in the movie). Uncle Les and Vera (Mum, in the final stage of infection) in Dead Alive (Brain Dead). Everybody that died BUT in Meet the Feebles.

PRO's: Atmosphere. As just about everybody's said, this is essentially a live-action version of Def Jam Vendetta. And it WORKS. The atmosphere is wonderful, from the split entrances (one an actual entrance curtain, the other just a set of steps going over stacked drywall and pallets) to Fabian (who I believe is GQ Money from XPW, which means he BETTER bring back the Clockwork Orange attire) going nuts on the pull-down mic...it just works so well. Talent. WSX essentially features a "who's who" of spot-tastic indy talent, with some over-the-hill talent that has some name value still in stock (Justin Credible, Syxx-Pac, and Vampiro) to lend SOME shreds of credibility. And there's enough variation in the talent and over-the-top gimmicks to pretty much differentiate everybody from one another. Flow. The show flowed freely with no downtime, not even Youth Suicide's introduction where he just walked around with his bucket o' tacks and his stupid Capone hat. CON's: Editing. Really...did we need to cut to a different angle - half of them not even of the talent in the ring - every 3 seconds? I started counting between each cut, and I never got to over 4. NEVER. That's fine and dandy when capturing different angles of the same event, but not when you cut randomly to some stupid ugly dude in the front row wearing a Supreme shirt jumping up and down going "YEAH!!!!" Talent. The pro is also the con, but for a different reason. I don't see the talent really worth watching getting enough time to truly display their abilities. Matches. If the show was even just a half hour longer, we could get another match or two in, or make the two being shown a little bit longer. That might go against everything MTV stands for (making their audience watch the same thing for more than 20 minutes), but if they want to attract ANY wrestling fans...that's the way to really go. Commentary. Kris Kloss works. He's so fucking terrible and over-the-top, and such a bad parody of Joey Styles, that he just WORKS. But this Bret Ernst...laaaaame. No charisma, looks like that comedian who Randall made throw-up by dissing LotR in Clerks II, and forces the heel commentary too hard. Forcing it isn't the bad part, but forcing it without any semblance of humor or emotion is. Guest commentary is fun, but it'd work even better if the musician(s) acting as guests spoke more (especially if they know their wrestling a little bit). Overall, WSX is a horrible show. It's like XPW, but without the ultraviolence and with the over-the-top cartoonish Tom & Jerry violence. Not too bad, and I won't mind watching it (which I haven't been able to say about anything WWE in over a year, and even Impact is starting to bore me pretty bad now).

Solid flick. Something along those same lines but played VERY different would be $la$her$. It's a Canadian b-grade horror flick about a Japanese reality TV show that has 6 cast members run away from three "slashers" (three men in stupid costumes that slice and dice them), and it's big claim to fame is that it's shot as if it were a full-on 90-minute episode of the show, with the only cuts being hidden (so that it seems like all you see is one smooth shot for 90 minutes). Series 7 is a solid flick, and it's kinda scary in a way. I mean, the whole premise is that the government actually sponsors the show (I believe as a means of population control, and likely even mind control), so everybody over the age of, I think, 16 is 100% eligible to be a contender. Edited extremely well, and acted just over-the-top enough to make the characters seem real.

I've been catching up on seasons 1 and 2 thanks to DVD. I first saw the show with a couple of the Vogler ep's in season 1, and I've been seeing random season 2 ep's here and there thanks to USA. This show just may be the greatest show in the history of television (that isn't Rocko's Modern Life, that is).

Hammerfall/Rhapsody: Meh...I fucking hate power metal. Outside of some Iced Earth and Helloween, I really cannot stand power metal. I don't care for either Hammerfall or Rhapsody, since they essentially embody what I dislike about power metal: songs about orcs and fairies and Tolkien that aren't even meant to be a complete joke, with some generic pseudo-80's throwback riffing and solo's and a singer that, more often than not, sounds like James LaBrie getting kicked in the nuts (and LaBrie sucks). No real venom, I just hate power metal. It's not like I want them to fucking die, not like Tool or Dragonforce (bar-none the WORST power metal band there is) or (insert random emo band). I just...stay away from it as much as possible. Saxon: Well...didn't Bruce Dickinson sing in this band for a while? I'm almost positive he did, or maybe that was Samson...yeah, that was Samson. I respect them for their influence on the NWOBHM style (since almost every sub-genre of metal owes more to NWOBHM bands than they actually do to Black Sabbath, stylistically), but...just not into 'em. Sorta like Venom: songs are alright, but I like the bands they've influenced more than I like them. Re: TOOL Yeah...I'm done ranting on them for the time being. I've managed to avoid them just enough so that I've stopped caring (the joys of an iPod, staying in the front office where the radio isn't, and not hanging out much with my Tool-obsessed fans...though that's for other reasons, namely because most of them are drunken douchebags that do nothing but play poker, smoke pot, and listen to lame power metal, ska, and pseudo-prog like Tool). I have, however, heard that they're planning a second US tour for later this year, possibly the summer. And I'm telling my girlfriend the moment she hears of this that I'm not going, because if I do I'll need to get 100% obliterated drunk, and me drunk with a band I fucking despise playing for hours on end means I'm getting arrested and/or breaking somebody's jaw.

I've seen Unearth once, back when they were still supporting The Stings of Conscience (their debut, which was released in late '02/early '03, IIRC) on the '03 Headbanger's Ball tour (the only decent one, and even then it was bogged down by Lamb of God and Killswitch Engage being lame and boring as fuck), and they fucking amazed me with their live presence. I'm seeing them open for Slayer (this makes it my...sixth time seeing Slayer in as many years, I think) at Lupo's on 2/16. Hopefully Slayer nixes "Eyes of the Insane" out of the setlist, because that was a crowd-killer when they debuted it at the Unholy Alliance tour back in July. I wonder who the opener will be here, because it wouldn't make sense to just throw on Unearth and Slayer...most shows usually have at least three bands...so yeah. I'm contemplating going to see Municipal Waste on 2/4, which is a Sunday, but it's in Boston (I try to stay away from Boston shows, even if the best lesser-known bands play there rather than anywhere else in MA besides MAAAAAYBE Worcester) and I should just save my money up.

It's not so much because you have a different opinion, it's more or less because you come onto this board - populated by elitist fans of pop, metal, and hip hop - and then try to start a serious topic about a band that most of us here feel have either sold out or were never that good to begin with. You don't see Limp Bizkit threads abound, do you? They're on the same tier as Mushroomhead...only Wes Borland and John Otto are better musicians than anybody in Mushroomhead. And "mallfag" is a term used for two kinds of people: fans of "mallcore" (very similar to "fashioncore," the term comes to describe the bands most often associated with the mall-ratting vermin that stick around Hot Topic and the food court, wearing neon green bracelets with their black bondage pants that are three sizes too big (or too tight, should they be fat), and is almost always a bastardized version of real metal/punk/hardcore), and those who just stick around the mall all day. I referred to you, jokingly might I add (though I'm not so sure now), as the first definition. You're right. Let's stop categorizing all forms of rock. Well, then, we have to stop categorizing all forms of music. And all forms of sounds. And then all forms of senses. Hell, why not just stop categorizing all forms of fish? Whale sharks, anglers, shellfish...they're all the same, right?! Nope...and that's why we have so many different terms for different styles of music: because they're DIFFERENT and we need words to DESCRIBE THEM. Welcome to TSM. Hahahaha...used a joke I made against me...hurrah!

Yeah actually I did know that, but I was talking about major releases that most people would know about otherwise I would also mention Mushroomhead's "Mushroomhead" "Superbuick" and "M3". You just sound like a person that hates a band when they earn mainstream appeal, as if you found the band and now they sold out because other people actually know about them. Then you have to move on to another band most people haven't heard of and since you have such an ear for music you found them before everyone else and the cycle repeats. Have read the TSM top albums of 2006? Or any of my other posts in the Music folder? Ever? I'm a fucking opinionated prick, ESPECIALLY when it comes to heavy music. In terms of fans of heavy music, the most elitist/opinionated is Tack, then myself, and...yeah. Not even worth going into that whole board dynamic. So I'll just take that last paragraph, your "lambasting" of me, and dissect it to give you some info on the good ol' L-A-Z so you realize I'm not just some D&D playin' middle-aged fuck who works at EB Games and hates all new (nu-?) "metal." Only if it's undeserved, or if the band changed their sound in order to garner mainstream appeal. Alright, I hate this fucking argument. Are there people really so pathetic and egotistical that they'll stop liking a band, even if the quality of the music hasn't changed, simply because that band now has a fanbase? Likely so, but they're few and far between, and I doubt most of them would even know who half of the "underground" bands garnering a following even are. Little pointers: the only band I'm a decent-sized fan of that went from "unknown" to "mainstream" while I've been a fan of theirs has been Shadows Fall. I like their debut album Somber Eyes, though I feel the production of it and Phil's vocals are a little weaker than they should be; their Century Media debut, Of One Blood, is a favorite of mine, and Brian's voice really adds some energy whereas Phil's just didn't gel well with the music, at least to the degree that Brian's does; Art of Balance has a few decent tracks, but is what I like to refer to as their "sell out" album because the music was simpler, weaker, and more commercially acceptable, and it also happened to contain the two tracks that had music videos play on MTV2 in decent rotation; War Within has turned out to be what I feel is their tightest album, and is also what most Shadows Fall fans call their "sell out" album (though this is mainly due to the singles taken from it), even though the songs sound like a blend of Balance's simplicity and production and Blood's almost Gothenburg/old In Flames aura; Fallout From the War is just "meh" with some generic pseudo-trash tunes that really don't even need to be heard, be you hardcore Shadows Fall fan or not. So...how does this make me one of those assholes that doesn't like a band when they go mainstream? Because I don't like Slipknot and know that they had an album out before Ross Robinson made them rip off Mushroomhead and play a generic Fear Factory/Sepultura-lite style filled with even more nonsensical, meaningless lyrics than your average KoRn album, and more F-bombs (the ultimate sign of a lyricist's lack of overall talent, IMO) than a rap record? Ooooh, wow, you dress in stupid fucking costumes and yell "FUCK IT ALL, FUCK THIS WORLD"! I should respect a band that requires three drummers (one good one, and two pieces of shit) to do the work that one good drummer should be able to do? Yeah, fuck that, and fuck you for immediately assuming I'm just a know-nothing prick because I don't like Slipknot or Mushroomhead's new album. Fuck YOU, because all you've proven thus far is that you're nothing but a fucking mallcore-listening true blue poseur. Go listen to some fucking Cro-Mags and DRI and then come talk to me.

<elitist prick>Pfft, you don't even know that their first LP was Mate.Feed.Kill.Repeat.! M@LLF@G~!</elitist prick> That said...s/t was "meh" outside of the first 4 songs ("(sic)," "Eyeless," "Wait and Bleed," "Surfacing," and "Spit it Out"), with the bonus track being the best song on the whole album. IOWA has been, so far, their best effort, since not only is every song tight and displays some actually decent songwriting ability (albeit the generic Hatebreed kind), but it's also pretty fucking heavy and shows that Mick, Jim, and Joey know how to play their instruments. Volume 3: The Subliminal Verses is one of the biggest piles of audible shit I've ever heard. Really...how is it their best? By having annoying tracks where Corey's voice doesn't fit the music at all, or by having overly radio-friendly guitar riffs (the one thing I actually RESPECTED about Slipknot was that their riffs usually weren't too radio-friendly and sounded like they'd be breakdowns in death metal albums more often than not, but that was gone for v3), or maybe by appealing to a whole new batch of mallcore-listening fucks known not as mallgoths but rather emokids? That album solidified my hatred for Slipknot. And I heard the single off the new Mushroomhead, and it blows ass. XX was good with its blend of thrash, industrial, and psychadelia, but XIII was "meh" at best. Replacing JMann with this new dude wasn't even what made it bad: the music itself was boring and uninteresting.