The Man in Blak

Martin Lawrence by a country mile. Not only was his act lame and uninspired on his own television show (whoever dreamed that little gem up should be forced to wear their balls as a bowtie), but he's managed to stay consistently awful throughout his laughable movie career. I mean, I'll put up with almost anything when it comes to movies, from Daddy Day Care to Cheaper By The Dozen...so you have to know that it's bad news when my eyes twitch and I start screaming obscenities whenever National Security flashes on any nearby television screen.

Of course, you could say that his return to help Foley is uncharacteristic in the first place, given the fact that the basis for The Rock's character is that he's a wee bit self-absorbed (and the fact that I think he was a heel when he left). Though there is evidence of Rock standing up for Foley - Rock was the main man on the mic for the "Locker Room Walkout" if Triple H didn't reinstate Foley (who had lost the Pink Slip on a Pole match) in 2000.

Sweet jesus. The WWE goes back and takes advantage of some great continuity (something that many of you bitch about them never doing) between the Rock and Foley, and everybody simultaneously loads up their rifles and fires away like they had just put the World Title on Tank Abbott. Whether you like it or not, that segment is one of the most memorable segments from the WWE's peak in social popularity. There are mark fans that I talk to that don't remember who's holding the United States Championship on any given week, but damn near remember every moment from "This is your life." They've reduxed Montreal a gazillion times, and they've redone or referenced Austin/McMahon a gazillion times, but this segment is relatively untapped and it fits into the storyline perfectly. The character motivations are clear. The Rock came back as a personal favor to Mick Foley and, because he respects and appreciates all of the stuff that he did for him and the business, he's going to do a special tribute to help remind Foley of how important he was to the business. Foley is essentially doing a farewell tour here and, for those people that only remember him as fat book-shilling Commisioner Foley, it might be a healthy reminder to some of the newer fans of why Foley is considered a hardcore legend in the first place. As for Evolution, it gives them a "special moment" to destroy, furthering their disrespect for the Rock 'n Sock connection. Or, if Evolution is somehow not involved, it gives Rock and Foley one last moment in the spotlight before they ride off into the sunset at Wrestlemania. In either case, it's easily the best hard-sell for an emotional angle on what is supposed to be the "biggest Wrestlemania of all time."

Except for that whole "gameplay based on an updated version of the No Mercy engine" thing, sure. Though it should be said; DJV is fast. Almost too fast. If you decide to get it, it will definitely take some time to get used to the gigantic speed increase over No Mercy.

If you have No Mercy already, then "no." If you don't have No Mercy already and you don't play a lot of multiplayer, then "no." If you don't have No Mercy already and you do play a lot of multiplayer...then "no", simply because I've found it at multiple places for $20 or cheaper.

Pencil in a write-in vote for Bionic Commando, which is a game that is absolutely screaming for a next-generation redux. There were a gazillion other choices, however - the NES still has one of the best libraries in console history and at least 20 other games entered my head...like: Base Wars, Life Force, G.I.Joe - Atlantis Factor, Baseball Stars 2, Mega Man 3, Castlevania, Super Mario Bros. 3, Dragon Warrior 3, The Legend of Zelda, Pirates, Metal Gear, and Contra. Just an amazing amount of great games to pick from.

No shit. X-Men is easily "Worst 10 Games of All-Time"-worthy, let alone being among other proud NES abortions like Bible Adventures and Deadly Towers. YOU TAKE THAT BACK

Part of the reason for that is because the pre-XP Windows Disk Defragger was considerably slower and less efficient, as well as a habitual liar on defragmentation percentages on some machines. The new Defragmenter is decent and it certainly gets the job done, but there are a lot of utilities out there (like Power Defrag or, more famously, Diskkeeper) that one-up it.

No idea, but I'll second that one. I forgot all about him and Shaved Bear. Sheesh. *hands in his TSM Veterans Club membership card*

*re-reads post* Sorry, I misread what you were saying. I thought you were the one arguing that he was working that style, with the comparisons to Vader and Samoa Joe (Hence, why I said "you can argue sloppy"). My mistake. S'what I get for quickly glancing over your post after writing the longer one.

It's not like the Dudleys were peaceful, law-abiding mormons in ECW. They're stale because they're exactly the same characters they were ten years ago. The WWE has figured this out and put them where they can actually be of use to the company - opening the show and firing up the live crowd. I don't see a problem with this.

Uh, stiffness is stiffness. The difference is that, while Samoa Joe is booked to be a stiff fucking monster and paired up in the ring with people who are willing to take that abuse, Rob Van Dam doesn't have the luxury of choosing between people who don't mind working that way, especially when many of them probably aren't even trained to take a kick like that correctly. There's maybe ten wrestlers in the entire WWE who'd be willing to get in the ring with Samoa Joe and take what he dishes out. You can argue sloppy, but don't try to sell "good stiffness" versus "bad stiffness." It's all the same thing - the difference lies in the booking and whether the other wrestler is willing to take it (after all, a black eye "legitimizes" the business, doesn't it?)

1. It's been said before, but it's worth reiterating - don't forget that Savage was a part of that match. Savage is severely underrated in his workrate and, in my opinion, he basically carried much of this affair. 2. Much of the quality behind the Savage/Warrior match doesn't even lie in the workrate, but - instead - in the booking and plotlines involved. There's no compelling ground work or chain wrestling, but there's a lot of animosity coming to a head. Both guys have plenty of charisma, Savage can sell like a madman and, thus, they were able to play to their strengths within that match. That's why I really kind of dislike snowflakes, personally, because one guy's **** match is another man's wrestlecrap nominee (see: NWA-TNA's first Ultimate X disaster). Savage/Warrior and, say, Benoit/Malenko at Road Wild are both excellent matches, but for different reasons. Just because Warrior has participated in some well-booked events doesn't make him Bret Hart. RVD certainly isn't the best worker on the planet, but he holds his own very well and, in terms of moveset, is different (and, hence, more interesting) than many of the WWE workers. So he does some flips. He's a showboat, a self-confident guy - that's his character. Of course, curtain jerking for almost a year straight has made him make a caricature out of that character, for the purposes of getting a good opening response from the crowd. Plus, let's not forget that WWE officials have asked him to nerf (tone down) a lot of what he does in the ring. His selling is about average, with most of the WWE roster - sure, he had an abomination of a match with Benoit where he neglected some very obvious legwork, but the rest of his work hasn't necessarily been offensive, especially when you consider the other luminaries that are being pushed before him. You can choose to not like RVD - that's perfectly fine, of course. But when you compare RVD to one of the biggest one-note gimmicks of all time, you're making a truly unfair comparison and inviting a lot of criticism to come your way.

Er, I got nothing. There's been reports about versions of Firefox / Firebird being hella unstable, though, so - unfortunately - I'd have to point the finger at that, given what I've heard. But that's all I got.

Incidently, I guess that "TSM Raw chatroom" idea really took off, didn't it?

No, that's Anglesault.

Hof, you fence-riding weenie. How can you abstain on an frickin' internet poll?

Er, the UK one looks like it was done in Microsoft Paint in about 10 minutes. At least the US cover has the quasi-throwback WWE logo lock, which is a nice touch to his character. I'm not saying it's good (my retinas have, thankfully, stopped bleeding from the orange), but it's a shade better than a powder-blue cover with an awful pic of Cena on the front. Some unsuspecting idiot could walk by the UK cover and think that Mark Wahlberg was playing a member of the Village People. I do agree, though, it's fairly obvious that this is way too early for Cena.

Er, well, you're half right. Cable/Broadband connection typically use static IPs, which are IPs that never change, but dialup uses dynamic IP addresses, which are IPs that change every time you dial up to your ISP. You fucking asshat. </mandatory flame>

Vega (claw) (Street Fighter) vs. Ken Masters (Street Fighter) - I'll vote Vega, just so that we (hopefully) won't have a Ryu/Ken matchup in the finals. Iori Yagami (King of Fighters) vs. M. Bison (Street Fighter) - Okay, enough of this Bison crap. Seriously. Iori Yagami. Sagat (Street Fighter) vs. Ryu (Street Fighter) - Nice to see the original Street Fighter matchup. This one goes to Ryu Ky Kiske (Guilty Gear) vs. Terry Bogard (Fatal Fury) - Hey, Kiske with the upset. Not this time, though. Terry Bogard

It could. DivX isn't a player, but a different compression format for video. Therefore, if you're playing a file and you can only hear the sound, there's a good chance that it's DivX. You can download the DivX codec right here.

I wonder what this means for Windows XP, since it's built off of the same NT/2000 operating kernel.

As in, I'm not even sure that, if Foley lays down for Orton, it will really solve anything. They gave Rocky Maivia the IC Title very quickly and the fans absolutely shat all over that...and Orton ain't exactly the Rock.

Lanegan leaving doesn't bother me, but Oliveri is a huge hit. He's been Homme's number one guy since the Kyuss days, and that should be a big hint that something is wrong in Queensland right now. Maybe it's the fact that he brought in Dave Grohl to work on the last album? Or that the last album sucked in comparison to the first two?

Bingo. Smarmy RNN-era Randy Orton was a smark (and fan) favorite, but there's absolutely no credibility behind this "Legend Killer" schtick. So he pushed Foley down some stairs. His push is so transparent (much like Rocky Maivia's initial push) that the fans are rightfully puking it back up. The scary part is about to come, though. I think the huge backlash will come if he goes over Foley at WM, methinks.