This was supposed to be the open thread for last week, but I forgot to post it in time. I know there are a few ECW fans out there of both the old and new versions, so what do you think about this change? Vince McMahon announced last week on ECW that they will be folding that brand in 3 weeks and start over with the “NXT generation”.

It’s obvious what the old school guys think about it. Taz buried it on Twitter, and Tommy Dreamer revealed that this was part of the reason he quit WWE. What’s your opinion?

www.myspace.com/obietrice / www.mossappealmusic.com – $$$(1/2)

Obie Trice’s time spent in the “big leagues” at Interscope Records is almost all but forgotten today.  A one time lyrical lieutenant in the Shady/Aftermath empire–non-platinum record sales garnered Obie’s release from the Dream Team roster of artist that Dr. Dre and Eminem built.

Ironically enough, its Obie Trice’s past that currently shapes his present as Special Reserve (an album of previously recorded material)–services rather effortlessly as a present day recording.

Read the rest of this post »

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

[[WARNING! THIS COLUMN MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS!]]

“This is a Christian land, and we a Christian people, but that’s not stopped the old gods from reminding us they exist.” Hilda, about winter, Northlanders #24.

I’m terribly bored, so I’ll make this quick. This is the column for comics released on 01/27, Donald313 noticed that in the DT!, Namorita’s adoptive father (or doctor, whoever he was), should have been blue skinned; the Best Book Of The Week was Superman: Secret Origin #4, and the Worst Book Of The Week was Ultimate Comics Enemy #1; it wasn’t bad, but I just abhor comics that use 22 pages to tell what could be told in 6 and draw out the story.
Read the rest of this post »

… and it took this segment on Raw last night with Edge to do it.

I don’t know what was different with this promo, but Sheamus seemed to be a lot mouthier than usual, and he got a lot of good lines in on Edge. I mean, his delivery is still a little bit stilted and robotic, but I finally bought into him as a wrestler. Still don’t buy into him as a champion, and it was obvious at Royal Rumble when the crowd popped for Randy Orton (the bigger heel) that fans don’t either.

Well, the worst-kept secret on the internet came true last night, but you have to either get through 2100 words or hit the END button on your keyboard to find out.

ECW Champion Christian retained over Ezekiel Jackson. And really, what would you expect. Jackson isn’t the player to take the belt before Wrestlemania, and yet like I mentioned in the prediction thread last week, I’m not sure who is the heel and who is the face between Jackson and Vlad Kozlov, but I just know that one or both have defected from William Regal. And really, they need to set up a Regal/Christian match for Wrestlemania where they finally give his lordship the belt and move Christian to one of the big shows, but they won’t because they STILL REMEMBER that Christian left for TNA all those years ago. Good match for each to express his own style, and Christian with the Killswitch to retain.

Read the rest of this post »

There was a lot of news towards the end of last week, so let me get to that before we start talking about Royal Rumble today (which I haven’t read yet).

The biggest news of the week, of course, were the arrests of Chris Jericho and Greg “Hurricane” Helms, but what was really amazing was that the story broke on TMZ, as well as the reaction from Randy Orton. This is a really interesting video:

He’s right… I don’t think either of these guys would be stupid enough to get arrested, unless they were drunk, play fighting in a gas station, and accidentally punching innocent bystanders. It’s amazing what the fire water will do to the white man. So, it came out later that nobody is pressing charges, and I guess they just have to let the legal stuff play out. The funniest part of the story is that Matt Hardy (the sober one) allegedly ran from the gas station while it was going on. Way to not look guilty there, Matt. Are you muling for your brother or something?

In other Jericho news, Fozzy’s released an album after a 5-year absence. So, Eric Bischoff got on Bubba the Suck Up’s show last week with Hulk Hogan for a “State of TNA address” and stated that Jericho is a great wrestler, but he could never headline anywhere. Jericho’s response on Twitter: AWESOME. “Bischoffs right I can’t headline in TNA…cos I’m not in my 50s.” Keep in mind that this was the guy who couldn’t make Jericho a star in WCW after Vince McMahon did… sour grapes, I guess.

Read the rest of this post »

The Dissector #147.

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

[[WARNING! THIS COLUMN MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS!]]

“Jesus, it’s huge. … I have never said that sentence before in my life. In fact, being a boat, it’s both huge and full of seamen. … You know, I’m starting to wonder if they’ve got a little bit of a point when they call me crazy.” Anna Mercury, Anna Mercury 2 #3.

I love being on time; welcome to the column for comics issued on 01/20. There is still time to vote for the 2009 Autopsy Awards; I know I have more regular readers than the very few that have voted, so please do vote. Speaking of awards, let me give Lt. Donald313 another badge, since he correctly pointed out that the DT! last week was that Vixen cannot take on the mass of the animals whose powers she mimics. That’s not how her powers work.
Read the rest of this post »

Well, if you saw it live, you probably scrubbed your eyes out with an SOS pad afterwards. If not, you’ve been treated to the censored version on DVD.

I think I recall saying when it was live that it looked like the biscuit dough in a can when you pop it open and it kind of flops around. WWE claims that she was wearing a prosthetic, but I guess only Mae and Moolah know for sure, and we know that Moolah’s not telling.

You book the Royal Rumble this Sunday. Here’s the card:

Michelle McCool (c) vs. Mickie James (WWE Women’s Championship)
Christian (c) vs. Ezekiel Jackson (ECW Championship)
Undertaker (c) vs. Rey Mysterio (World Heavyweight Championship)
Sheamus (c) vs. Randy Orton (WWE Championship)
30-man Royal Rumble match

You can either say who WILL win or who SHOULD win. It’s up to you. Leave your comments, and have at it.

I’m very surprised that BBC America has decided to release Top Gear Season 11 and Top Gear Season 12 together; for the longest time, there were no Top Gear DVDs available, a trend they finally broke when they released Season 10 last year. The result was a little disappointing, with badly-replaced music tracks, missing segments and no special features whatsoever.

It seems as though they’re trying, by degrees, to make up for that. Both of the new seasons, released on January 12, seem to have far fewer problems than  the season 10 DVD did, and while I haven’t watched the show (which, by the way, is brilliant and hilarious—it brings muscle cars and geek culture together in a way only the Batmobile can match, and is a bit like “Mythbusters” for cars) enough to examine things like the soundtrack thoroughly, it seems that there are no—nope, scratch that—there are far fewer, and far less random changes made to the source material. While the Top Gear Stuntman segments are still missing from the eleventh season, and it still has no special features at all, the news segments and the “Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car” segments are fully intact and the music is either the same as in the broadcast or much better-replaced.

The twelfth season is funny; it’s got more episodes, AND a few nifty special features (a commentary track, deleted scenes, expanded versions of episodes and segments). It’s starting to really look like what I would expect out of a Top

Gear DVD; frankly, it’s been really surprising to see the “base model” being the only item available on the market so far, given that the show revolves around the craziest, most expensive and feature-rich automobiles on the planet. It’s also clear that the hosts are pop culture junkies, so it’s not as though they don’t know full well how to best make a DVD an entertaining watch and a real value for the fans; it’s good to see that they’ve finally started to do so.

That isn’t to say that the DVDs themselves are entirely without fault; one good example is that if you watch only a little

bit of the disc and want to come back later, there are no helpful things like keywords or episode titles on the submenus; when you go to “Play Episodes,” you’re given helpful options like “Episode 1, Episode 2” and so on. Also, the Botswana special (the one that carries the lion’s share of the season’s special features) is actually a popular episode from season 10, and not at all from the season 12 DVD it’s released on. That’s good for longtime fans who have been disappointed that there haven’t been any special features on any of the discs, but it does seem…a bit random. Why not release it as a standalone, $10 DVD? Surely it would sell, and make the BBC more money in the process.

The show itself is almost completely beyond attack; like I said, it shares a lot in common with “Mythbusters” and is one

of the funniest, most enjoyable documentary-style programs on television. If you HAVEN’T seen Top Gear, start with season 12. It’ll cost a touch more than season 11, but it’s well worth it for the extra features and the extra episodes.

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

[[WARNING! THIS COLUMN MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS!]]

01/06-“Everyone should ride in the trunk of a car at least once in their lives. Not that it’s some profound rite of passage or an impetus to a great epiphany… it’s just that I’d hate to think I was the only schmuck that ever had to do it.” Dingo, Dingo #2.

01/13-“When a blackout happens, most people’s first thought is, “Better light a candle.” Mine is, “How many alarm systems just went offline?”" Catwoman, Catwoman #83.

COME ON PEOPLE!!! I know I have more readers, so go vote on the 2009 Autopsy Awards! Now that that’s out of the way, this is the column for books released on the weeks of 01/06 and 01/13; still trying to catch up. If I can have the one for 01/20 ready for next Friday, I’ll be caught up.

Read the rest of this post »

Review by: Angelica LeMinh

There is no telling what form, content, or curious package inspiration will come (w)rapped in. I own and acknowledge my status as a luddite, and it’s undecidedly hip hop to be suspicious of evolution (ok purists, insert your huffing and puffing), but my conversion to Lil’ Wayne came fast and furious (like my conversion to Twitter), after a long period of gulping the Haterade, and as a complete epiphany.

I couldn’t place Wayne, I couldn’t connect to his style, his voice, or his beats that all sounded like they were recorded using the “percussion” function of any elementary synthesizer. I mused that he must be a Scientologist (he calls himself an alien, they don’t exactly recruit peasants, it’s not a theory that doesn’t carry weight), and took the easy route of writing him off as part of the “downfall” of the art.

Read the rest of this post »

This video was taken down by YouTube today, but here is one that you can still access. Basically, this idiot producer from TNA got up in front of the Impact Zone last night before the show and told the crowd that they’re “cast members” in the show and that cursing on television is an expense for them in post-production. Then, a guy with real expertise schooled him on cutting the live audio on the January 4 show.

The video starts automatically after the jump.

Read the rest of this post »

As reported earlier, the show opened with a 4-sided ring, and I kind of wondered if they would mention it at all on the live broadcast or just kind of forget that the 6-sided ring never happened. Honestly, I never thought it was a big deal at all, but I wondered how guys could work in there without getting lost, especially in tag matches.

So, to explain this important decision, Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff went out to talk about this momentous occasion in TNA history. Evidently, the big publicity around Hogan’s PPV debut at Genesis (see the poster) was to hype something that Mike Tenay or Jeremy Borash could have done for us instead. The TNA crowd, of course, crapped on the whole thing by chanting, “We want six sides!” and Hogan basically tells them that their attachment has only taken TNA so far, and to compete with Vince, their rings have to look like his and they have to use all his old wrestlers. Well, Hogan never said that last part, but the TNA crowd continued to crap all over Hogan, so he had to resort to cheap pops to get back in their good graces. Then Bischoff essentially said what Hogan probably wanted to say, and that was the new ring symbolized change and TNA was going to change because it’s change that you can believe in YES WE CAN AND WHATCHA GONNA DO?!?!?”

At this point, I think it would be hilarious for WWE to dick with TNA by debuting a 6-sided ring for the Royal Rumble. I mean, that would be a riot.

I think this show points to another problem I have with TNA… most of their live fanbase is 35-year-old guys who live down in Mouseketeerland with their parents and go see TNA every week to get themselves on TV because they have no lives. In other words, the TNA fans in Orlando are a bunch of sarcastic fanboys who make their product look bad, even though their slavish devotion to the company fills seats. If Hulk Hogan doesn’t get them touring for Impact shows this year, I think he will have made a huge mistake. It’s one thing when fans rag on Vince for YOU SCREWED BRET after all these years, but it’s a totally different thing when you put together this marketing campaign that TNA is changing the game, and then your live audience basically makes their voices known on PPV that they don’t like what you’re doing.

Read the rest of this post »

There will be a Monday Morning Booker later on to go over the Genesis show, but after catching up on a few days of news, I just had to make some comments.

I guess one of the measurable signs of success of TNA’s Monday live Impact show from two weeks ago is that it raised their Thursday night rating last week. They’re now up to a 1.3 rating. In reality, WWE shifts 0.2 points on a weekly basis, so in comparison to them, it’s probably not as big of a deal. Still, there was an improvement, however slight.

Then I see Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff flapping their mouths about how great TNA is in comparison to WWE. It’s one thing to wage a PR battle against Vince McMahon, but it’s an entirely different thing to put on a product that is competitive to WWE week after week. As I’ve already said, TNA generated a ton of buzz over their January 4 show, but to me, it was all sizzle and little steak.

Take this quote by Bischoff, for example:

“I have a tremendous respect for Vince [McMahon] and, in a perverse way, like him,” [Eric] Bischoff said. “But at the end of the day, I think I’m better than him. I’m more creative than him and have a better feel for the business.” Bischoff then laughed. “It’s just that he happens to be a lot more successful than I am.”

I’m sorry, but doesn’t the measure of success mean that you are already better than someone else? You might say TNA is looking to improve, that the company is an upstart, or that they are younger and more talented, but at the end of the day, WWE is a billion-dollar publicly traded company that tours the globe, and TNA is on life support from Bob Carter running shows out of an amusement park.

Hulk Hogan is even more delusional. He says:

I was in the airport with one of the guys from the WWE and they said “the guys in the WWE are cheering us on like crazy.

0.2 is not a sign that the times are changing. Obviously, it’s a good sign for them, but they need sustained growth for the next year to even be in the same conversation as WWE. I don’t think most people know who TNA is… they probably thing it’s T&A the way it sounds. Likewise, I think most people still don’t realize that WWF became WWE many years ago. In fact, I think TNA’s problems still stem from nobody knowing who they are and having no brand name, and this video package proves it. For every time “TNA” is mentioned, “Hulk Hogan” is mentioned three times.

Celebrate your success, sure… have at it. Just don’t put the cart before the horse. Don’t think that Jeff Hardy (who’s scheduled to go to trial on drug possession in March) is your company’s savior. Don’t count on viewers remembering Orlando Jordan and Sean Morley. Don’t count on the work of Scott Hall, Sean Waltman and the Nasty Boys (all too out of shape to work) to help you. Don’t think that the veterans who have already made their money are down there for more than an easy road schedule and a nice Florida environment. Workers are workers… looking out for themselves because no one else is looking out for them. That’s the way the business has always been. Would you expect anything different?

Read the rest of this post »