godthedog

isn't the head writer supposed to the doing this, or am i missing something here? anyway, blahblahtheanswerisn'tmorewritersbutbetterwritersblahblah. they have to make good writers want to work for them, not just take whatever they can find. pay them better and stop treating them like shit, and the good ones will come to you. i recommend our very own Loss4words. or chris coey. one would be productive, one would just be fun to watch.

this is the same man who, coincidentally, also told foley that he would never be a star. no, i'm not comparing foley to renegade. flair just seems to be oblivious to the fact that his own judgment is very fallible, and using it as the basis for explaining why a human being killed himself is inexcusable. it depends on one's definition of a good worker. savage loved to plan out matches, sometimes obsessively (his WM3 match with steamboat was meticulously planned out over a period of months, with over 500 steps in it IIRC). there are people who don't care about this (like steamboat), and there are people who think that an essential part of being a good worker is being able to improvise (like flair). i personally think it's a mixed bag, as sometimes that kind of planning can cover for the other guy's weaknesses very well (re: his matches with warrior, and DDP's semi-famous match with goldberg), but if you've got another ring general there who is more comfortable with working on the fly, he's got to swallow his pride and wrestle your kind of match, which is more difficult for him to do.

there's a rich irony in misspelling the word "brilliant." not quite a "laugh out loud" irony though. more of a "puff your pipe contentedly as you read the rest of your copy of the New Yorker" irony.

the peak of TSM was somewhere in the middle of the 12,000-page "does god exist" thread. JotW made a very intelligently written argument about the pro- and anti-God positions being from different axiomatic systems, thus making it impossible for each to prove each other wrong. because each system operates by different bases, and without a common basis, you have no standard between the two for right or wrong. i wrote an intelligently written rebuttal that JotW's argument itself assumes an independent standard of right and wrong, thus defeating the argument. the moment only lasted two posts, but they were smart and civil and philosophical and beautiful. TSM's peak was either that, or the reign of whiskers.

definitely. TSM needs to hire this man for their main page, now. he is the future of wrestling journalism and commentary. ... okay, i was going to go into a long jerkoff grandstanding spiel about how this was one of the best 'net articles ever written, but i'm too tired. there's good comedy in the idea though. anybody else, feel free to use it.

He's better without worrying about getting him the ball. Listen, Shaq's dominant days are over. The Lakers should take Disco Dirk, Nash, and whoever else they can get for him now. He just isn't worth it. despite shaq being the only guy who could consistently score at will on the best team defense in the league, while kobe was shooting something like 4 for 20?

did you add a zero in there somewhere? i can't fathom eating 20,000 calories in one sitting. then again, i am anorexic, so my perceptions might be warped.

i think some rumbles deserve to be talked about within the parameters of your project, because they were so highly anticipated or they're so highly thought of or whatever, but i don't think all of them are relevant to the scope of what you're doing. the 2002 rumble doesn't have a huge reputation, everybody already knew what was going to happen, and is only important for historical reasons (namely the return of triple h). i don't think taking the time to review it would help you out any. the 2004 rumble, however, looked to be great on paper, had a lot of anticipation going into it, has become very highly thought of, and i think demands analysis. do a rumble because there's something special about it, not just because it's a rumble.

about halfway through it, and i'll just start typing comments out as they come to me. --cute little similarity between your writing and mine. i like the way you think. --i like the consistency in talking about austin's strengths (i.e., his energy and timing), which not only help unify the article, but strengthen your point about him by bringing up example after example, and in a nice literary way, defines him very clearly in very concrete ways. it seriously has the feel of building a character in a novel, and someone who's never seen austin work would still have a definite sense of what he's like. try to do this as concretely as possible with everybody. find those revealing details about each wrestler that make them memorable, rather than relying on the standard IWC generalizations and cliches like "we see sparks of greatness from two wrestlers who are known for being the standard bearers of excellence." that doesn't really give us something as definite to grasp on to, it doesn't make the writing come alive, and you're clearly capable of making the writing come alive. --in general, you're very successful in giving this article the "exhaustive sprawling epic" vibe, but some of the match choices aren't really necessary & slow the article down. i don't think the rock/austin rematch on raw the night after wrestlemania is worth talking about in this context; you state your case very well for being telling of the historical forces that are in place, but you say at the beginning that your focus is on the matches and the IWC's standard of rating matches. this privileges matches that are worth discussing in themselves and not because of something else. in this context, don't use a match as an excuse to rehash the history. in general, choosing to partly focus on matches that just "look good on paper" and are as forgettable as this one add unwanted fat to an already-lengthy piece, & i had to make an effort to avoid just skimming it and moving on the next match. --excellent point-by-point analysis of the nonpsychology in the angle/benoit submission match & why it made no sense. --a bit of purple prose going on here, but i like that sentence a lot. --you do a great job of justifying your judgments with examples like this, but examples like this are generalities in themselves and sometimes need to be justified. what were the believable nearfalls? pick specific moments to grasp on to in the matches that illuminate your point. it strengthens your argument, and it makes the review more fun to read, because half the fun of reading a match review is recreating the match in my head. --with benoit's two weeks of hell (from judgment day to the smackdown match with austin), you kind of mention in passing effects from matches that happened 2 or 3 days ago, but i think it deserved to be mentioned that benoit was doing all this in the span of two weeks. this is something extraordinary, especially within the scope of your article, because you're normally discussing matches that happened 2 or 3 weeks apart and rarely concerned the exact same person. you're covering six months in the history of an entire company, and a fifth of the article is devoted to the matches one man has in eleven days. that's pretty damn remarkable, & dwelling on that a little would've been a nice touch to unify the article. --again touching on austin, you very subtlely track the evolution of his character to good effect. going from to you're focusing on the matches themselves all the while, but as a reader i'm getting something good to grasp on to that helps me take in the article as a whole, and not just a series of match analyses. --watch out for that. --------------------------------------------- overall, i thoroughly enjoyed the hell out of this piece and stayed up til 2:30 in the morning just so i could finish reading it. once you get down to the meat of your project, it's a fascinating and quite engaging read. i do agree with rudo, in that you take too long to get to that meat. the longer you spend on airy generalizations like "I’ve seen some of my favorites held back by the inner political workings of the business, all to instead push someone else who’s a proven failure," the less professional you sound. although i wouldn't say the introduction is bad, it's certainly the weakest part of the piece. focus on the arguments, don't focus on the rhetoric. outline your project, state why you think it's worthwhile, state your goals, etc., then get right into it. that's the only major flaw i see in the piece. aside from the tweaking issues i already mentioned (strengthening examples, unifying the piece, etc.), you've got it down. you've clearly got an excellent analytical mind for the kind of analysis this project demands, you know how to argue, you've got a grasp on the prose that lets you state your case convincingly and compellingly. the writing never comes close to being sterile or dry, which is quite a feat, given the detail you sometimes go into. i eagerly await the next piece.

i see him lurking.

dirk looks disturbingly obese.

this is just retarded. a documentary doesn't have to "give both sides," it just has to be nonfiction. 'triumph of the will' is a documentary.

So They're crackpots. i quaver at the astounding force of your unerring logic. you have just soundly and unequivocally proven the american medical association completely wrong with your superhuman powers of reasoning and investigation. really. i'm in awe.

Are these the same people that decided a drug addiction was a "disease?" no, that's the AMA, not the APA. as i understand it, the former is made up of physicians, the latter obviously of psychologists. important difference. from the AMA's website: the scariest thing about this story is that my back looks exactly like mary kate's. you can count my ribs and everything. maybe i have an eating disorder.

last semester, i shot a cheap little student film that was called 'part one'. when i told people the title, they would invariably say, "well, that leaves room for a sequel, doesn't it?" and i would invariably say, "yeah, 'part one: two'." that's what this title reminds me of.

from a human standpoint, lennon easily takes it. he'd been done musically since the early 70s, but nobody deserves to die like that. from a "talent left to offer the world" standpoint, hendrix. he was still loaded with energy and ideas, still working on his craft, still going as hard as he could. he still had a LOT left in him, but i don't really have any sympathy for him, as he essentially did it to himself. putting the two criteria together, i'll go with jeff buckley as my final answer. died way too young in a manner that he didn't deserve at all, and he still had a ton of raw talent left to polish; he would have only gotten better.

manson: "i am the second coming." jesus: "no you're not." manson: "...am too." jesus: "are not." manson: "am too!" jesus: "are not." manson: "am not!" jesus: "are too." manson: "HA! i got you to say it!" jesus: "crap."

aerosmith - 'get a grip'. on tape. first cd i ever bought was 'janet.'

you're a retard. stop. you've never seen any of those. stop.

you guys talk as if jesus would make good conversation. you'd ask him important questions, and he'd just respond with oblique, cryptic shit that tells you absolutely nothing you don't already know.

bob dylan - "masters of war"

neither could the "better" spurs. the fucking LAKERS won more regular season games than the spurs. The Spurs had fifty-seven wins in the regular season. The Lakers had fifty-six. The Lakers were seeded higher because the Division Champion is automatically seeded no lower than second, not necessarily because they had more wins. Take the Eastern Conference, for example: the Pistons had fifty-four wins, and the Nets had forty-seven, but the Nets were seated higher because they won their division. oops. my bad. i need to do my research before i rail on a guy for not doing this research.

edwin, arkham globe, and maybe wrestling deacon. we could all watch 'the third man' together.

she is, but i had to tell her that it was bloomsday, and i had to tell her about the nora handjob story. so it's more because of me she told him than because of her english majorness. 'ulysses', by james joyce, is an 800-page novel that accounts the day of june 16, 1904 in the life of leopold bloom (among other people) in dublin, ireland. hence, june 16 of every year is celebrated as bloomsday. a friend of mine told me that, since it's the 100th anniversary, celebrations in dublin are going on for four months. joyce is a big deal with the dubliners. and with the dorks in the western hemisphere (especially ones with irish heritage, like myself). she does know him, they're friends. i'm not sure how she exactly responded, she just told me she felt like an asshole.

i thought it was okayish. i won't go on about the ending (which was HORRID), but it overall didn't know if it wanted to be a funny drama about real people struggling with religion through the hardships in their lives, or an exaggerated satire of new-age jesus freaks. they took some characters from the former (like jena malone), some characters from the latter (mandy moore, in a TOTALLY thankless, one-dimensional role, who serves no function whatsoever other than to be the evil bitch we're supposed to root against). some characters flip-flopped between the two. the pastor was a well-drawn character with tensions & depth & such...except when the script needed a straw man to point out everything that's wrong with fundamentalism, and he became a stupid little talking head. the satire was overdone and tried way too hard to be clever. the "message" was really preachy. good cast, though. i got a kick out of seeing patrick fugit, macaulay culkin, mandy moore, and heather matazarro's cleavage all in the same movie. i didn't recognize matazarro at all until an hour and a half into the movie, and then i went "wait a minute...THAT'S dawn wiener?" she and culkin have some really good chemistry. (dear god do i feel dirty for saying that.)