Bruiser Chong

I'm certain when we get confirmation, flags across the country will fly at half-mast. Which came first, the cancer or the over-the-top bitchiness?

The Rockers photo used for the Royal Rumble update is perhaps the gayest looking tag team photo of its kind possible. The close crop paired with Marty and Shawn facing the same direction makes it look like Shawn's holding Marty from behind.

You don't pay much attention to reviews, do you, Bob?

I'm seeing it knocked around the 'net for being a bit too sentimentally hokey. My main complaint was it took a bit too long to get to its point. I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't locked in to the movie for the last half-hour, though. I don't usually get emotional over most movies, but this tested it. My brother was outright crying. Smith continues to add to an impressive resume. I can't say a lot of his dramatic roles have much replay value for me, but he does excellent work with them.

I don't think it's bad, but it's just not fleshed out. Too many different ideas and not enough time spent exploring them. My point was that OutKast changed their style over the course of their first four albums. Dre rapped on all of them, but he expanded his horizons vis-a-vis what he rapped about. He caught shit for The Love Below, sure. But his guest verses from 2006 onward have been fantastic and discussing subjects he wouldn't have been touching in 1994 or even 2000. But fans are still digging it. That was my point. And for the record, while perhaps not an OutKast album proper, the worst album in their catalog is Idlewild.

No. Duke made in-ring appearances at seemingly every Boston Garden show in the mid-to-late '80s.

Nice try, what? Where did I say anything about people not dogging Dre for that album? In fact, where did I even MENTION that album?

It's pretty bad. I heard a good chunk of it on XM radio this weekend. But perhaps I'm not the right judge. Common's been pissing me off since he really amped up his conscious rapper persona post-Be. We could also attribute the shittiness of present-day Neptunes for the overall lousy product that is Common's album.

Not really. Rap fans wanted Dre to rap again because...he's a really great rapper. Crazy, huh? And it's not a case of wanting him, or other rappers for that matter, to say the same thing on every album. Few artists have changed up their style from one album to the next as much as OutKast, both musically and stylistically. Dre's guest verses over the last two or three years are evidence of his ability switch up his subject matter and garner praise from rap fans across the board.

My mom indulged me. She told me almost right away that it was fake, but that was more of a precautionary measure to make sure I didn't kill my brother with the piledriver. She often took me to rent wrestling videos, bought every WWF pay-per-view, took me to any house shows in the area, made sure I had all of the WWF Hasbro figures, bought me the WWF Magazine each month, and shit, even hooked me up with Hulk Hogan pajamas and a Halloween costume. She didn't particularly like everything about wrestling, but she watched all of the PPVs with me and had her own favorites throughout the years (DiBiase, IRS, Razor). My dad, on the other hand, hated it. He'd occasionally let me rent a wrestling video when my brother and I had to spend the night at his place. But him buying me anything wrestling related was a rare occurrence, and I took a lot of verbal abuse from him about my love for the hobby. Having my mom pander to my interest in wrestling offset just about anything my dad had to say about it, though.

Not really. I was wondering what ever became of the Milky situation. Now that I know, that's that.

I'd imagine the Thanksgiving "break" is what's holding up that review. They're usually pretty good about getting reviews of the more anticipated albums up quickly. I expect a favorable review. I'll reiterate that it's not a bad album; it's just not one I find myself revisiting a whole lot.

Did anything ever become of this? She got a new job and 86'ed the woe-is-me away messages shortly after this thread's last post. I think she also started seeing someone, so she was naturally in high spirits. That apparently didn't work out and (naturally) she hates her job she was ecstatic to get already. This all means the return of dramatic away messages in recent weeks. She's back to the away messages that sound a step or two off from suicide, though, she's played that hand numerous times already. She went to Key Largo for a week mid-November and shockingly, that did nothing to raise her spirits. She inquired everyone's plans for Thanksgiving Eve via away message and apparently had no takers, since she had some message up early that evening about how "fucking pathetic" her life was. All of this information has been gathered simply by looking at away messages, by the way. Do any of you guys air every little detail of your life in such a way? That shit would get taxing just to do.

I don't begrudge it simply for not being a hip-hop album. I understand that's not what Kanye's intentions were. Nor do I feel it's a tremendous loss that he isn't rapping. My main complaint vis-a-vis the lyrical content of the album is that the abandonment of rap doesn't allow anything more insightful to break through. There isn't many thought-provoking lyrics throughout the album that this sort of lyrical delivery would benefit. Those who criticize his rapping abilities often complain of the corny or trite nature of those lyrics. That content is still here, albeit in a much more telegraphed form. All this said, I don't hate the album. The first two singles have grown on me and "Amazing" is a great little song. I don't begrudge Kanye for trying something different, but the album does nothing to convince me he's better off heading in this direction as opposed to his first three efforts.

Yeah, his worst album.

Kudos to Bobby for calling bullshit on dubbing the Slammy's the 37th annual. His jab at Putski's short frame is priceless, too.

Maybe it's the panel or Gene as the moderator, but the last several episodes have been a general waste of time. There's little direction, which you could attribute to Gene. But then you consider Flair seems determined to continually lead the conversation astray to indulge his own exploits. Gene's visibly irritated by Flair in this latest episode and I can't blame him. Gene's trying to actually push along the show's topic and all Flair wants to do is talk about getting laid at the Marriott. I like Tazz, but he's utterly worthless on these shows.

I'm amused someone had the foresight to pack heat for a trip to Toys R Us, but more amused that he pulled it on a guy who ALSO had the foresight to do likewise.

Been a while since I bought a pair of sneakers, but that ended a couple of hours ago when I hit up the outlet mall that opened at midnight. Picked these up for $40 after discounts and all that: Also got a nice zip hoody sweater from Banana Republic and some other basics from random stores. No real long waits, so it was worth it. I came back into town to see people camped outside of Circuit City and Best Buy. Schmucks.

This MSG card sounds promising and I don't think I've ever seen this Hart Foundation/Rockers match. But I'll be the one to say it: Shawn and Marty's trunks are WAY too tight. Let's leave something to the imagination, boys.

How much longer do we have for TNT? I know it doesn't make it past 1986, but it seems like we talked about it being dead soon months ago.

I was killing some time in Best Buy this evening and came across the minimal Ghostface section. I understand "Bulletproof Wallets" is his worst album, but I couldn't pass it up at $7. Odd pricing, since the rest were at least a 10-spot.

I've heard eight of the 12 tracks slated to be on the official album and no way. Couple of decent tracks, but for the most part, it's uninspired crap. I'm not a huge fan of Love Below, but it was a lot more dynamic than anything on this is going to be. Kanye's a fabulous producer, but anyone could create the sparse backdrops he's got on this album.

I was confused by the Monsoon hate, too, but understand when looking at it from an impartial point of view. He wasn't a very good play-by-play guy in the most literal sense, though it was never blatantly apparent like with Vince. He also seemingly hated virtually all referees, often criticizing them when the situation didn't really warrant it.

Kanye's driving me crazy with this auto-tune stuff. Seems like a lot of hip-hop personalities are trying to recreate the magic of Dre's Love Below. None of them are working, though, and we just end up with a lot of ill-conceived experimental "rap" albums.