griffinmills

I would reccomend Pitch Black as an example of a good Vin Diesel action movie with some thought but that is more of a Horror/Independent film than an action film I guess. As for Loss's article. I think the article is an accomplishment. Sometimes I feel like I am being talked down to while reading it. The thought that matches were overlooked by "everybody" or small asides like the one about Street Fight matches just rub me the wrong way. I do admire the work and effort put into the writing though. Dare I say **** to ****1/2 Just kidding, just kidding don't hit me! Great job!

It wasn't one of those Japanese anime type nosebleeds that means you are horny was it? Please say it was not!

Since we're all chiming in on this, anyone else want to make fun of the complete lack of needed punctuation in this post? Actually I was thinking how, back in '82, this local wrestler used to come out and whip a 2 day old bar towel around above his head like a helicopter blade. Dude was over like a mofo with that towel!

WMAC Masters. Wow, I should be ahsamed that I remember that. "NINJAS ENTER THE DOME!"

Although I agree that it is hardly unknown (there is a Criterion of it...) I'd say that most people only know it once you start reminding them of the "Time traveling midgets and the kid and Sean Connery and..." at that point lots of folks go "OH YEAH! I liked that movie." I used to watch it every time I went to my Grandparents house as they had that, Star Wars (A new hope) and The Wizard of Oz all recorded off TV. Seeing as how it was a farmers ranch there was little else to do (what? run and frolic outside? Nevar!) Although eventually a Wherehouse store sprung up near by that had EVERY WWF tape up to Wrestlemania 2 and so I spent my time watching and dubbing those when I could. Ahem, back to Time Bandits... I watched it recently myself (own it on VHS and DVD) and I got a whole new level of enjoyment out of it that my young self never did. I guess it is a bit too British for it's own (American perspective) good. That ending was always a big stumbling block for me as a kid. A hidden gem suggestion from me? Hrrm, does "Freaked" count? There is no reason for everyone to NOT know this film as it had Alex Winter and Keanue Reaves in it but I guess it was right after their Bill and Ted success so it probably got burried in a wave of "Bill and Ted suck now because it is two years later" hate. Randy Quiad rules this movie. "Twelve milk men on one route? No wonder they fight!" "Styro-foam cup..."

I can second that, smartmarks.com and forums.smartmarks.com both crap out when you have certain SBC IP's. Another way to test it is to use http://www.anonymizer.com/index.cgi at the top of the page you can type in IP's. Sometimes I can get to sites that have banned the random SBC DSL IP you get assigned. Generally a reboot of the modem will get you a new IP but leave it off for a few seconds to help insure it.

I got no taste so don't say I didn't warn you... I've been loving Eugene and Rico matches as of late. I enjoy the Eugene matches for all the oddball "references" and the simplistic stuff he has been pulling off to "frustrate" his opponents. Plus I dig his Macho Man hair. Rico seems to be having a lot of fun in his matches and not just because he is playing the flamboyant role but genuinely happy. He throws some oddball, non-standard WWE offence in to break up the monotony of neckbreakers and punches. Although I've seen a lot of Rico hate undercurrent around here so I'm probably going to get reamed for liking him. :-) One other guy that I love, non-WWE if I may, is Brazo de Plata (Super Porky) from CMLL. He is probably the "Hardest working to most Fat" wrestler I've ever seen. Plus his "Taint scrubbing sexy dance" intro with Azul Azul's "Bomba" playing in the background gets me every time. The real La Parka (CMLL again) has been kicking ass lately too.

That sounds like a decent idea actually, it could have fit in with the "RAW vs. SD" pseudo feud that was going on a while back. Many people have said that WWE has more or less given up on SD though so I doubt we would see something in that vein. For a lot of the more workrate hungry folks it would have had to of been a division more respectable than even the WCW CW division of yore and I doubt WWE could pull that off. WWE would be more likely to sell it as "Kid friend happy bouncy fun action!" This would seem to fit in with the younger crowd that the currently gimmicky heavy SD program seems liklier to attract. Would they have CW tag matches though?? Overall it seems an idea that would be great in the hands of more competent writers than the WWE is currently employing. Without Tag Teams how would the writers get all those "wacky partners who hate each other" to end up fighting!?

Curses, foiled again! What about it Mr Republic, is your consititutional fortitude up to snuff for weekly periodicals? I'd give you a half dime!

What kind of Max Occupancy are we talking here? I'm not disagreeing or arguing the point but without a number... It is a big difference between say a giant "Hooters" restraunt/bar and the corner "Moes Tavern" kind of place. Not to mention that Max Occupancy things usually seem a bit crazy when you read them, at least to me!

Sorry, basically I agree with you. It is funny stuff, reminds me of the "Old" Homestarrunner stuff I just have a hard time getting past your "this doesn't belong here" intro. Didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'd try and give more feedback but I'm probably being stupid enough at 5 in the morning as it is. I guess next time we should all try harder to just put our comments on the article and such while leaving our attitude on things like "where this belongs" or "should we care where this belongs" out of it. Thanks for answering my questions, I'm a bit amazed that this would be classified as "Hardcore Discussion" but I don't really participate here as much as you (mostly just read) so I must bow to your knowledge.

Caution, rambling extra-geeky post. It vaguely reminds me of when they moved IYH PPVs up to full price... I was all ready to stop ordering them but then they made the IYH PPVs longer so it was worth it. In this case they are trying to say that having a 500k stream is suppose to "make it worth it?" Maybe so, if that is one damn fine encoded stream. Let me see... Looking at the stuff at the Digital Archive Project (dapcentral.org) that is encoded in Divx or Mpeg4v2. Those are 650+ meg files for about 95 minutes of video. The WWE stuff is closer to 180 minutes and is high action and detail sports content, any Tivo/DirecTivo owner will tell you that you need way higher bit rate for such things. They would basically have to stream out 4gigs of data to achieve a really nice looking encoding, maybe whittle it down to 2gigs with a lot of luck. A quick google search has the prices of additional bandwidth being about $5 a gig, as low as $3 and as high as $20. WWE.com's DNS seems to indicate they are hosted on a SBC deal but I can't find any details on what SBC charges for additional bandwidth, could be around the $5 price. That means straight off it would cost them $10 to $20 bucks to host the file per person if they offered it at the increased resolution. If they could achieve a really nice looking 2gb encode then I could see this new price being fair. As it is I have my doubts. Now if they let you download and keep the episode for the new price it would be quite a deal, but they would basically be giving it away to all the online bootleggers and Bit Torrenters so that isn't going to happen. Although that does spark an idea. Currently there are Bit Torrent sites out there that you have to be a member to download the torrent. These usually log your IP address and require you to have a valid email account. If WWE could implement this, allowing only one download per name/Ip or whatever it takes to be secure and it would very much so offload their server punishment. So much so that they could offer quite large and quality encodes. Heck they could offer discounts for having a good seed ratio but you would still run into the problem where, now that someone has the file, they could make their own torrent and give it away for free... I guess they would need some DRM stuff to really make it work but it seems a heck of a lot more do-able then just charging full PPV price for a blocky webcast with bad sound!

When does the deluge of "this doesn't belong in X folder" end? Does it belong in the "old school folder?" I'm guessing it should go in the "Fantasy Booking and Columns" folder? It seems on one hand we have people moving threads about donkey kong into the WWE folder "so it will get read" and then on another hand we have people complaining that a gimmicky (but fun) smackdown recap should be moved out of the WWE folder. Being a lazy internet nobody I like coming to the WWE folder for all kinds of WWE related stuff to read. I don't expect everything to be %100, up to the moment, WWE related. If someone wants to mention Bradshaw getting fired from CNBC in the WWE folder that sounds fine to me but under the current scutiny it seems that it should not be allowed. Sorry if I'm not making great sense or over-reacting! It just dawned on me that I could very well be missing out on a running joke.

Excellent point. It is funny how a simple poor or lazy word choice can have dire consequences on peoples reactions. Some words just slowly lose or change meaning over the years. "Awesome" was once used to describe the face of a god, now it is less than a forgotten catch phrase for Bill and Ted! Basically becoming a worthless "marketing" word. I really like the movie analogy.

Is this how low standards are in WWE these days? **-*** star matches being called "very good"? I would say that is based on how one wants to attempt to quantify them. If he wants to say that... *=poor **=good ***=very good ****=great *****=perfect ...then that looks reasonable to me. For some people the stars can have huge gulfs between them like nothing gets more than ** or **1/2 and it is a pretty big deal for them to give out ****'s let alone *****. For others it is a per event basis, for example perhaps when reviewing Heat or Velocity a ** match might hit ***1/2 "for a heat match."

Oh thats utter bullshit.... thats it Vince needs to start a Campaige on Mexican tv and Buy out and absorb AAA so we can have La Parka! Well take it with a grain of salt, AAA is the organization that has wrestlers coming out to the "Degeneration X" theme and Michael Jackson's "Thriller." They also recently added a Brazo de Plata knock off called simply Brazo and have midgets dressed as the evil murderous doll Chucky but call him Chuky (managed by "monsthur" no less.) Oh, and they use a Hexagonal ring.

This column was a lot like the previous one. Good to see you are sticking with what you know by retaining the "school book-report" format. I'm wondering though, before I go into any feedback, is there an editor for these columns? I'm thinking these pieces would really benefit from someone giving them a simple once-over before posting them.

Well the quoted material seems to indicate something different and doesn't mention how each of the three criteria are weighed either. It did seem to me that the grades on Chavo and Noble were a little harsh but I there is always room for "error" when doing an opinion piece of this kind. Neat thread!

I can second that. I have experienced the reverse of the argument. I have friends who were specifically intrigued by the Undertaker character. Unfortunately he was fueding with Yokozuna at the time so those weren't the hottest matches to reel them in with. Although I'm sure my friends aren't as cool as everyone elses.

Wait, RSPW closed? What happend? I just checked google and see posts on their archive from april 26th... Sorry if this is a stupid question. Edit Ack, looked more closely... It has been dead since last year! What DID happen?

Ohlemmeseehummahumma, The Critic? Come on, heck it is even out on DVD. Not to mention I used to mail out free complete season VHS sets on The Critic newsgroup and helped write the FAQ for same. Heh, and it is Satan, I'm not very soft and smooth.

Found "conflicting" info on that online here...(original article, not quoted poster sorry about that) http://www.snpp.com/guides/lisa-3.html#3.3.1 Which has some dialog from an interview to give it some weight. Could be that the story has changed over the years though. Not sure I like the "Third Grade Book Report" format. By this I mean that everyone has seen these episodes and know the plot pretty damn well by now. At least they weren't overly verbose. Some small stuff like saying "do to" instead of "due to" is annoying, seems like needs an editor to help with that. Another example is the "dux de machine" line, that isn't even a phrase findable on google! "Deus Ex Machina" is though. At least he doesn't write "alot" instead of "a lot." He seemed to kind of misrepresent or just plain miss some of the episodes plots. Saying that the B-Plot in "Moaning Lisa's Blues" is about homer beating Bart in a video game is accurate but more accurately it was in the archetype of "Son eclipsing his Father while Father desperately tries to stay on top." For another (dork) representation of this see Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 39, The Icarus Factor. I really liked the insight and comment parts of the article though. Don't get me wrong. It feels a little padded out with the recaps. Also not much commentary on the quality of the DVD video/audio. Although if you go too far it turns into a Scott Keith review so... I don't know stick with it for now I guess. Could be a difficult format to follow if you have to recap something you don't like much I suppose. For a first effort it is C+/B-, good!

Didn't Flay win on the 2 hour special that had Kandagawa also beating Sakai? That seemed pretty non-biased or even biased against Flay since he already lost once to Morimoto. Heh, Morimoto even had his super fan kid there and he lost. I must agree though that it is somewhat rigged by there being people that may not have the properly developed palates on the panel. Where is "boss Robert DeNiro" for Morimoto when you need him? Heh. I like Alton on Good Eats but he is bugging me on this, especially the, "tell the chaiman I know Karate and Arrigato and other Japanese words so nyah!"

*Edited for accuracy. Too much quoted material to work IMO. :-) As for "15 year olds watching when 1 year old" it is almost a Zen like puzzle! In the vein of "a tree falling in the woods." If you watched wrestling when but you don't remember it, did you really watch it?

Oh man that could be pretty funny, with the real FBI telling him how he is all set up with a new home and stuff but Vince McMahon screwing everything up by intimidating the officers and enforcing Nunzios WWE contract appearances. Ring announcers telling everyone where his new home is and having to change it every week etc. Sure it would never happen in "real life" (FBI would take care of Vince pretty easy no?) but Vince would probably love to do it to get a little revenge on the federal government (see Ted, Billionaire for Vinces love of "revenge".)