Jobber of the Week

Fuck, he's younger than I am. D:< ?!? THIS THREAD IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT PIX kthxgoal

Casino Royale is one of the earliest Bond books, which would imply that the actor would have to look rather young. But the producer has already said Judi Dench returns as M, and she's not getting any younger, so who really knows, really. There's been a strong suggestion that they're going to slam the reset button on the continuity they've built thus far, so it's possible they could go with a younger Bond and an older MI6 crew.

Nintendcats is going to blow the roof off any virtual life simulation you've seen this far. I can't wait to talk to my virtual cat and be ignored, just like my real ones.

Nintendo has a reliable killer app for handhelds with Mario but his problem is he's only recently actually getting a NEW adventure. It's been about porting all the way back since Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins. That's sad. PSP's games don't have that kind of reliabile track record, but at least they're regularly getting games. GTA, Burnout, SOCOM, SSX, the new Prince of Persia series, Ys, etc.

Ah, I forgot about that one. Sort of. Sad as it is to say, I think they're turning Cena into a younger, edgier Hulk Hogan. In 2003 I was saying the guy had the ability to become the next Rock because he sort of lived his gimmick, but they've seperated the two and he's becoming a pure gimmick now. Winning matches against a stacked heel deck unless they cheat to win, going on about doing it for the fans, etc etc. This all seems familiar. As far as I can tell this "Chaing Gang Soldier" stuff is just "Hulkamaniacs" with a new name. I think at this point the best thing they can do for him, to put him back on track, is run top guys through him until they find someone who works best with him, and have him drop the belt to that person, and begin "the chase." Basically find a guy who the crowd will buy as his rival for some time. Bring back his old persona along the way as he goes on a quest for vengeance against whoever it turns out to be who takes the belt away. This is what they did with Rock and Austin, who were fighting each other all the way back when both guys were at IC Belt level. By the time that Rock threw Austin's WWF Title belt into the river, like Austin had done to Rock's IC belt so long ago, the feud was stuff of legend. The Cena/JBL chase that led to his title win didn't do this, because JBL is only as good as his opponent and because they really only had a month to chase, Bradshaw was busy with Big Show just the month before. The high-point of the feud was when a title belt was blown up with dynamite in a trash can? That's not a very good feud. So Cena needs a guy that people will want to see him struggle back to fight with and he needs to evolve to his original theme. I don't think Kurt Angle is the right villain, because he always looks like a goofball in the end and Cena looks smarter than him in promos even when Angle is ahead in the score. The search continues. His match was Jericho was pretty sound as far as WWE match territory goes. The bulldog into an F-U reversal was very fluid but not realistic (he couldn't see where Jericho was but scooped him up and spun him into position?), and that's kind of the best you can ask for right now unless the match is some combination of Angle, Michaels, or Benoit. It's how Hogan managed to survive the 1990s without ending up as forgotten. The fans got tired of 12 years of being told to take their vitamins, so they bridged that into "Well screw the fans, brother!"

Lex Luger lied directly to Vince's face to get a handshake deal then appear on Nitro and look what happened to him: Raw turned partially into a wrestling-related news program in 2003 to air Luger's 911 "oh my god she took too many drugs she's on the floor send help" calls. That blew the doors off "G-O-Double N-E" as the biggest McMahon burial ever.

Hey guys, WM 15, 16, 17, and 18 were already made in DVD release. They've been pulled off since then, but oh well. I own all of those but 15, so if necessary I'll just switch any blurred discs with the real complete versions. That said, I would not buy it until there's some discount code on one of the online retailers that makes it easier to swallow the price tag.

By the way, for those who don't want to register to NYT:

Google is starting to lose it's over-ness: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/technology/24valley.html But anyway, on the subject, Google Talk really isn't anything new. It's just a Jabber client (a more free-form IM interface) in Google clothing.

It hasn't even shown up in this city until tomorrow, which is pretty sad since Penn & Teller live here.

He probably doesn't deny the beauty (I do, I can't stand her personally) but thinks it's ridiculous that the mask in some way hides it. If they were making her wear pants, I'd understand.

A lot of that can be said about the people here. While some smarks have been cynical for so long that they wind up lashing at something without giving it a fair chance, this isn't a deadlifting competition so being able to move something really heavy isn't enough to earn any accolades. It's true of the business as a whole, look at Mark Henry if you don't believe it. I understand a lot of this. The "Y2J" thing really needs to be put to rest already, and his routine has watered down to typical WWE mid-carder stuff. He still has a lot of charisma, though, and that counts for a lot. Okay, here's actually where we get into a pretty good issue that's been happening a LOT: Guys who have a lot of charisma but are forced into a mold by the writers. Some net writer (CRZ, I think? Maybe someone else) once brought up a Diesel promo in the mid-90s where Nash got up in McMahon's face about his time as a champion. This was back when McMahon was an announcer and they were only just beginning to admit in the storyline universe that he was really the guy that pulled the strings at WWF. So, Diesel cuts this promo in the ring about how upset he was that Vince kept making him smile for the cameras, and the press. And how he wasn't a guy that was naturally going to smile, but Vince kept getting upset and telling him to. There's a bit of art imitating life in this promo, because McMahon really does seem to like his fan favorite champions to smile and be all-around good guys. Their characters (which draw the fans in) suffer as a result. They slowly lose control of their character. And their character, in the case of Cena and Stone Cold and most of the best characters, are an extension of their own personality in the first place. It happened with The Rock. He used to wear flashy shirts, complain at the crowd for finishing his catchphrases ("This ain't sing along with The Rock!") talk about himself like he was God's gift to women and the wrestling world, etc. He'd imitate and belittle his opponents. The "I DID IT.. FOR DUH PEOPLE.. I DID IT.. FOR DUH RAWWK" promo where he imitates Rikishi, Austin, Angle, and others is still priceless. But then Rock stopped wearing the fancy shirts, usually just wearing gym shorts and his latest shirt from ShopZone, and the Elvis sideburns went away. He started becoming more bland and became an all-around good guy. I guess you could say he started smiling more. He became his old Rocky Maivia character with more catchphrases. His old character was unpopular because he was just a Good All-American Boy who smiled a hell of a lot, and people were sick and tired of that. When he turned heel again in 2003 and started making fun of opponents (calling the Hurricane the Hamburgler) and telling the crowds to kiss his ass, he was more over than ever. Pretty soon he was back to smiling. They did the same thing to Brock Lesnar once he won the WWE Champsionship from Angle, and now they're doing it to Cena. John Cena's current gimmick was an extension of his own idea. That Halloween party you mentioned with the Vanilla Ice outfit, was allegedly his idea. The writers found out that he has a legitimate interest in rap and used that as an extension of his heel character, and with the right catchphrases and flashy moves, it looked like a sure-fire Austin or Rock character in the future. But now they've watered it down. When was the last time Cena gave a rap on the way to the ring? He used to be really disrespectful towards his opponents ("This ain't no three way dance, this is me servin' two bitches") and end his raps with one of George Carlin's Dirty Words, making a set up like"I just don't give a.." and then let the crowd say the unspeakable word for him. Does he do that anymore? Not that I've seen. Those WORD LIFE knuckles are or were really popular, does he still use the brass knuckles anymore? I don't think he even uses "Word Life" or "Thuganomics" very much anymore. Only after the "Chain Gang" thing has been beaten to death in one night. He's in smiling mode, just like Rocky & Brock before him. So, basically, that's why Cena isn't so popular here as he used to be, and it's got a bit to do with crowds slowly turning on him. By the time Rock faced Hollywood Hogan at WM, he had been in Do-Gooder mode for so long that even having Hogan drive a Mack truck into his ambulance didn't get him any sympathy from fans.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3143142

Rather than attack your spelling like HTQ did, I'll address your points directly Lesnar got respect not just because he was strong, because there's a lot of guys in the locker room these days who are very strong, so many big men that the originals like Undertaker are starting to look medium-sized. The reason Lesnar became respected was because he learned a whole arsenal of big-man moves. Too many big guys wind up being a Kevin Nash clone where they rely on endless clotheslines, sidewalk slams, and headbutts when in control of the match. Brock, at his peak, was hanging with Eddie Guererro and keeping up with him and not being exhausted or run out of moves. There's a lot of boxing analysts and experts who aren't in the physique to brawl, you know. Who knows why the crowd was booing Cena, it probably didn't have anything to do with his wrestling skills, though. He was getting attacked by the crowd before he had a chance. Also, the same crowd exploded for Hulk Hogan later, and he makes Cena look like a wrestling god when it comes to credibility. Do the hosts on ESPN look like serious athletes to you? Same thing. Roger Ebert isn't making movies but a lot of people want to know if he thinks a movie is good or not. Again, same thing.

Agreed. I wouldn't mind if they brought back D-X, though. HHH, Shawn, Edge, and Carlito would make a pretty good heel stable, with Edge being sort of up there (they can bring the title shot angle back again) and Carlito the bottom of the food chain.

We have that here in Canada. It's called winter. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, looking at your avatar/title, you better get used to non-winter all year long if you really want to live in this city. Not just in temps, but also in roads. Highway I-95, particuarly the stretch that heads into the northwest corner of the valley from downtown, is under construction all the goddamn time. Driving back and forth on it, even just hours apart, is like driving on a completely different freeway every time you go on it. The project isn't even set to be done until late 2007, I think, but they're working on it constantly. There is either a genius or a total madman behind the wheel of this highway renovation. One night, I headed home to find heavy equipment (as in tractors that drive around on heavy treads) covering the farthest left lane on either side of the road, sitting over the center divider. They were using these big tools to knock down the concrete center divider. One with a boom arm to either try and pick up the concrete and break it, or just swinging it back and forth and knocking it over. Shortly behind it, a similar vehicle with a large drill arm was grinding the pieces into smaller rubble. The next morning, what did I find? They rebuilt an entirely new concrete divider, half a lane over from where the last one was. The freeway has been expanded, redirected, moved over, repainted, and diverted in so many different directions that in many stretches you'll find old lane marker paint streaking off in some random direction. Keep an eye out to make sure that nobody around you becomes so absent-minded that they mistake these old lane markers as current lane markers and drift into you. Also, on city streets there's an incredible tendency to see entire lanes blockaded off with orange cones yet see nobody actually working on the street. This is a partly from the roadwork guys working late at night in the hottest times of the year, but sometimes cones will come and go and absolutely nothing happened for the duration they were sitting there. A taxi driver told me the city has to keep so many orange cones out at one time to keep the company that supplies them happy. I don't know if that's true, but they place enough orange cones and barrels out that it may very well be.

Cryptic title indeed. We're talking Mike Sc levels here. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If it was MikeSC levels it would look like this: >> Guess who's shooting off his mouth again?

Considering she's done jack shit since getting hired.... The one 4 out of 5 men forgot the next week?

Bischoff/Cena skits all month long didn't do anything to keep half of DC from popping nuts for Jericho. No matter how many times Angle re-enacts the Olympics and how many Bischoff promos are made, I somehow think Oklahoma City, the crowd that actually jeers for JR matches for cryin' out loud, will be all that enthusiastic about a white boy rapper calling himself a thug. That sort of thing plays better on the coasts than it does in the heartland, just like how Eddie is the most over guy in the company on the west coast.

Christy is as worthless in the ring as the other three. I'm fine with this because it means that the Hurricane doesn't have Stacy sucking his heat away.

Jericho would go to Smackdown, being fired from Raw and everything. This would be all right, actually, since Batista is 90% sure to drop the title for his grudge match with Brock (if he even keeps it this long, but if they want both guys to look unstoppable they'll need to keep it on him until Rumble.) While I'd like to see Jericho and Eddie fight over the belt, I doubt it'll happen.

Eh, I want an angry Austin/Hogan program over a respectful one, just for the ultimate dressing down of the Hogan character that Austin will probably launch into early on during the feud: "Look at 'cha. You got your little doo-rag on. You've your sunglasses. You got your boots with your little mug on 'em, hey look at me when I'm talking to you, you son of a bitch. You got what looks like the dead body of Big Bird wrapped around your neck. You got a T-shirt just so that you can rip it off. Am I supposed to be scared? Is that supposed to impress me that you can tear a t-shirt in two? Is that supposed to excite all these people? Because if you think that gets 'em fired up wait'll you see what they sound like when I whip your ass from pillar to post." Of course, by that point, the crowd would be in "What?" mode, which kind of kills Hogan's promo style dead.

Not really, he charged in from the stage without much showboating and both guys started punching away. Matt took Edge down and strangled him, but then shortly after that the spear through the ropes spot happened. The way both guys landed they seemed like their heads hit whatever little padding was beyond the rubber, Edge smacking his forehead and Hardy hitting the back of his noggin. There wasn't any immediate medical assistance, work or shoot, to give the impression of a concussion, but that was when the glazed over look began and his offense fell to a halt. I think Edge tried to take over the match for a bit to waste time for Matt to screw his brain back on, but nothing changed and somebody decided to just end the whole thing. Either one of the guys, or more likely the agent speaking in everyone's earpieces.

About the time that one of the newsletters said that Vince declared in a meeting that shock TV is dead, then Shawn went out and shat on the necro angle in a promo with Bischoff.

YEAH DUDE CHRIS BENOIT IS B-LEVEL CHAMPION AGAIN! AWWWWWESOME, MAN!