Jobber of the Week

It worked at 20. If Rock is at the show, I would expect him to be thrown in as a surprise. If Trump is the face, likely it will be a ton of heel distractions on Austin allowing him to come in and finisher Lashley. Why? Because it's a SWERVE~! On the other hand, if they turn on Trump they could always get Austin knocked out in a ref bump spot and have Rock run babyface interference instead. If the whole thing is a trainwreck and everyone involved is getting shit on from the start, expect Austin to just clean house on everyone as soon as Vince gives the say-so.

Women in particular don't care for Donald Trump, but we'll see if Lashley's total non-personality or Vince's heel act is able to keep them above the public tide.

Jesus christ, has nobody here played KOF? Leo is a clone of Rock Howard, at least as far as looks go. Altered to fit into Tekken's character designs, yes, but the similarities are pretty obvious.

Well, it didn't do great, but it didn't do bad. That's probably not too surprising because it's region free, and the Brits are extremely tired of having to import systems and software from the US. The European division of just about every country has difficulty getting things to Europe very fast due to the amount of translation work required to cover every language spoken in Europe. That in turns frustrates the lights out of everyone there who speaks English. This should, if nothing else, throw some weight into Sony's face about the power of region-free systems. Of course the irony is that they pissed off an equal number of Brits when they shut down Lik-Sang for PSP importing.

I'm going to go ahead and predict a wild crowd this year at WM. They've been booking the face/heel lines so clearly that it's almost guaranteed the crowd is going to rebel against the booking. Especially since PPV crowds seem either more intelligent or more desperate to do something wonky that'll get them remembered a year later. I'm fully expecting Batista to get buried by the crowd. I'm also expecting Lashley to be turned on due to his association with Trump, who will probably be getting "Fuck you Donald" chants and the like. The fact is while most wrestling fans don't like McMahon's in-ring character, just about everyone hates Trump's out-of-ring character. Anyone who believes himself to be such a serious important person as Trump does is going to get the shit booed out of him at a major wrestling show.

With the way Vince has been booked to look utterly powerless at the hands of the Trump/Lashley combo, I'm going to go ahead and say Umaga wins at WM with all sorts of interference and heel trickery.

The reason the original, what-the-hell-is-this TMNT for the NES is hated has nothing to do with difficulty, it has to do with being broken. The fact is certain turtles were less desirable than the others, which was wrong. Almost everybody started off with something like Leo or Don because of the range, but Raph had almost no range and the same amount of damage as the others, which makes him useless. If the guys with huge weapons did less damage and the guys with close range attacks did more, the game would have been balanced.

Intel has been flailing around and plummeting for a few years. They've got the performance crown again for now, but they've still got some issues. Keep in mind Apple ditched it's PowerPC partners for Intel specifically because all three consoles are working with IBM, and Apple got all pissy and sad about being IBM's fourth banana because Macs don't sell as well as consoles do. Also, Jobs looked like a fool promising everyone a PowerBook G5 at Macworld some years ago that never came into being, so he was pissed about that. Meanwhile, Intel had been snubbed by Microsoft a few times over the past year (specifically through Windows 64-bit) and so those two companies found that they were finally made for a match.

If they had only chosen Tampa, they would have not had such a large threat of storms even if they went roofless, many talent would be able to stay home since half the roster lives there, and they would have been closer to the gulf rather than out in the swamp. Tampa is also much more used to large draw sporting events, while Orlando is basically used to theme park visitors. If they wanted history, head south and go the friggin' Orange Bowl. Other than the TNA snub, this just doesn't make sense.

Beaches are a long, long way away. I could see a gator/swamp theme, though. That is the natural lay of the land out there, and the only other regional phenomenon is hurricanes and that would be considered inappropriate. Although they could use "Rock You Like a Hurricane" for a theme and probably get away without any PR damage. An amusement park theme isn't likely. They've done both WMs 12 and 16 (not to mention a crapload of regular TV) from a building right outside Disneyland and never mentioned it once. Not with a building as old as T&M. NBA used it and then dissed the hell out of by bitching about all the money they had to spend on additional electrical systems and so on. At this point, we probably won't even see another Vengenace-style show until they upgrade the building. A Mania is just impossible unless Oscar's tribute to himself manages to get forced through the taxpayers. Fuckin' A if they're going to put a stadium downtown, though. There's enough room in there for that and World Market without Grand Central and the freeway just shutting down? I think not. And to think the Spaghetti Bowl was just starting to improve again.

I don't know about you, but I don't think most of us really want a team. Mayor Goodman wants a team. And he wants to build a stadium, somewhere, even though this region is a sprawling city of endless suburbs reaching out to the edges of the valley. And nobody's really looking forward to how much tax payers would have to sacrifice to furnish Oscar's dream, either. Between the regular life of the people that live here and the tourism market, particularly the big chunk of LA that travels out here each weekend to use us as their playground, there just isn't enough facilities for a "real" stadium. And this event stretch Metro to their limits, as they were pulling out all the stops to make sure people knew the police were still enforcing the law (apparently a lot of SoCal gangs were expected to show up and make a mess or something.) We're not completely barren on sporting events, we have all the B-list stuff like rodeo and NASCAR (stock-car racing is basically the official sport here since no league wants to give us a team) and that's really the most we can support. The strip is successful enough on it's own to max out the capacity of what the city can provide without having to tack on another draw like sports. But good luck getting that message to city hall.

See, you just made the point. Show couldn't do very much, but considering his situation he did pretty good with what he was given. Undertaker can do way more, and often his matches are as flat-out boring as Show's because he simply DOESN'T do any more because he's "not feeling it" or whatever.

This show has absolutely nothing going for it other than Nikki Cox. Nothing. Jesus christ, they had a woman blow off the roof last season while Tad Hamilton's hair was perfectly still in the same shot. And while the casino is always shown south of Tropicana (except in the first two seasons where it's all over the goddamn place from Mandalay Bay to Aladdin), all their roof shots are from Treasure Island. If you come here and ask me where the Montecito is or if hotel security is really like that, I WILL HURT YOU.

Andre and Hogan had a series of matches prior to that one, going all the way back to the days when Hogan was a completely bland cocky heel who didn't speak. I think Hulk Still Rules has one that took place about five years prior in a sports stadium as an extra.

He started actually trying to work again after the brand switch, taking unprotected chair shots and learning new moves to try and fit in with the ECW roster, so I applaud him on a fairly well-done exit. Unfortunately, Vince always likes loud angry flaring-nostril personalities for his giant guys, and so the only time Show ever got any charisma pop was that "sometimes I just like to be a goof" feud with Kurt Angle, and the WM21 ad that featured him having endless problems trying to deliver a single movie line. I've always thought the guy has it in him for standup comedy, he has good timing and the company recognized it and used him for a bunch of late-night appearances. We have far worse acts in Vegas than a gigantic dude who walks on stage and starts telling jokes.

They STILL haven't figured out how they're going to handle the Blu-Ray crisis. In case you've fallen behind, manufacturers have been reporting for months that the laser diode for Blu-Ray drives is on low supply. People assumed it was because Sony was hogging them all, but it's because they're difficult to produce reliably in any great number. Combined with Sold-Out signs all over the nation, PS3 is really only launching this year in name only, and will have to try again sometime later.

And here I just thought I was banned on a webserver app level.

If you have an HDTV, go Xbox. If you don't, go Wii. Unless there's something you Just Gotta Have on either platform already. PS3 is taking a tremendously successful name and dragging in the mud with the bullshit that has caused Sony to slip in so many other markets. It's missing a component cable. Thus it "doesn't have an HD Period" any more or less than most HD receiver boxes. The real difference between HDMI and component is sound and video being carried through 5 cables or sound and video being carried through one big cable. That and HDCP, which is why Sony went with HDMI in the lesser PS3 in the first place. Yay for crappy copy protection techniques!

Neither of them look blatantly like wrestling shirts, though the first looks like the worst comic book logo ever.

Oh goodie, back to "Y 2 Cheap" promos. WTF DOES IT MEAN

As I was just going over this on another board, Blu-Ray is not proprietary, as there's a number of other electronics companies in it's consortium, including Samsung, Phillips, Hitachi, and LG. The complete list is here. But yes, I'm sure the publishers are just THRILLED that their software will reach less than half a million gamers, assuming they have that magic killer app that every system owner feels the need to have.

They've already slightly watered down the character. Not a full powerwash like they did to Cena but he's obviously a bit less gimmick and a bit more "bland guy who is just there" right now. Of course, if he were to go back into his full cocky "das cool" mode, he'd look like a ripoff of Armando at this point, so there's no choice to go back, only further forward.

Went to the Aladdin Hotel/Casino Presented By Planet Hollywood Hotel/Casino (what the hell?) for lunch today and they have a boxing ring set up on the upper floor near the buffet entrance. Tyson was training and it was drawing a crowd, although I felt sort of sorry for the guy because it's kind of sad that he's a free public spectacle now. There were some slot machines set up next to the ring and some people were gambling and not even bothering to raise their heads up from their machines to look at it. Anyway, he was doing his usual thing, standing mostly still and then throwing out high-speed punches out of nowhere. At the end he started getting kind of stiff and beating the mitt-guy's hands like a jackhammer. Keep in mind I have no knowledge of boxing, though, so even a total jobber practicing would probably be exciting. I don't know who the hell he's fighting, but he's obviously at the point where he doesn't want to fight but has to keep fighting because he's broke and fighting is the only thing he's got.

Looking at Shannon Moore lately, I'd say he's been spending more time getting closer to Jeffery than anyone else. What the hell happened there?

I'm not interested in either of those formats. I've got a good set, yes, but I'm not interested in rebuying everything in a new format, or paying a lot more for quality that I'd have to stare hard at to see. I mean if HD-DVDs cost $5 more than the DVD of the same film, then okay, but otherwise no.