#111. NaNoWriMo 2.0, Repose of the Eidolon, Leopold's Concentration

Okay! It's just about that time again, and by that, I mean National Novel Writing Month, and of course I'm participating again, for the second year. Following the personal success of Colinaude, the Angry Avenger, I'm gearing up for its sure-to-be-riveting sequel, Repose of the Eidolon, which I hope will unfold much the same way as its predecessor, as daily chapters (and not like Leopold's Concentration, which I still haven't returned to (though not for lack of inspiration). So starting next month, I should be chatting here regularly again for those who happen to drop by. I haven't lost interest in wrestling since July, either, just the time to talk about it here, for anyone who might be wondering. Anyway, the Monk is back in business, so I hope to see you around. There's plenty to talk about, and that's exactly what I intend to do.

#110. WWE Draft 2005

Reactions to the draft:

RAW
John Cena
Who it benefits - John Cena, first and foremost. The Doctor of Thuganomincs can only benefit from a change of scenery and the chance to compete in what's perceived as the premier brand. He's still champion, and with Batista gone, the only heavyweight champion on a show once again. He got to compete on PPV cards in consecutive months, which is always a plus, especially in this era. He wrestled on a team with Hulk Hogan (who performed a "you can't see me" during the match as a sign of respect for the rising superstar in contrast to how the evening ended) and Shawn Michaels a few weeks ago, before those two icons violently split (a brilliant move, good for Hogan, who otherwise is a publicity stunt, and great for HBK, who could use a new storyline) last week to the tune of "Sweet Chin Music."
Who else benefits - Chris Jericho, who is being given, at last, another chance to wrestle, one-on-one, for a heavyweight championship. This arc has been building for months now, from Y2J's feud with Shelton Benjamin over how Jericho was losing his wrestling mojo to Cena's pointed comments that Fozzy's lead singer would rather rest on his laurels than put his money where his mouth is these days.
Who doesn't - No one. Smackdown has a new champion. Batista has been gaining considerable momentum. No need to cry. Except maybe Christian, whose anticipated feud with Cena was cut short.

Kurt Angle
Who benefits - Angle, from a change in venue, which he's been embracing, from starting feuds with Ric Flai and Hulk Hogan to the potential of another one with Triple H down the road, plus that rematch with HBK.
Who else benefits - The younger stars, like Carlito (who never got a chance to get a rub from Kurt in Smackdown). Pay no attention to the later failures at his last home (Luther Reigns and Mark Jindrak, both no longer with the company). This is a guy who can step in the ring with anyone and it'll seem perfectly natural, both in competition and just in appearance.
Who doesn't - smackdown, which left him on an unsavory note, which is unfortunate. He may not always have been a nice guy, but he's done great things on the brand.

Big Show
Who benefits - Smackdown, which had seemingly run out of things for the big guy to do. Matt Morgan was beneath him (and now gone, as it happens). Last year the brand tried too hard to make him larger than life again, but had nothing for him to prove. His feud with JBL came much too late, and the one with Team Angle never really made sense.
Who else - Raw, which could reinvigorate the mystique, if it chooses to, but...
Who doesn't - Show, for now, because his entrance was handled like a non-event, unlike just about every other major draftee. He has yet to make an impact. It could change, if Raw was interested.

Carlito
Who benefits - Carlito, for sure. He's definitely been treated like a big deal, from retaining the Cabana (while the Highlight Reel sticks around; both were around last Monday, which felt like a variety show, and not just because of the dueling talk shows) to capturing the Intercontinental his first night to teaming with Kurt Angle rather than Matt Morgan or Jesus. He's becoming another breakout star. And that's cool.
Who else - Shelton Benjamin. On the face of it, losing a title seems like a bad thing, but shelton's reign had gone on since last October, and hasn't been ripe in juicy moments. Dropping it became one. Whatever he does next will have to be better. That is, whenever he surfaces.
Who doesn't - Morgan, who loses his master and then his job.

Rob Van Dam
Who benefits - Carlito, who got immediate heat by beating on the injured fan favorite, who's getting a career breather from the recent ECW PPV (who said nothing good came from it for involved WWE stars?).
Who else - RVD's image, from his new speaking role. I didn't realize how much I was missing. Maybe he's not just Wrestling Gumby after all...
Who doesn't - Smackdown, which thanks to Rob's DL status never quite got to prove it could use him better than raw had before last year's draft. Let's hope things change.

Danny Basham
Who benefits - Both Bashams, who will either get more to do thanks to the traditional draft tag team splitting or eventually get back together and actually get to compete again (being part of the Cabinet was oddly unsatisying).
Who doesn't - Danny, because Doug has more potential.

Kerwin White (Chavo Guerrero)
Who benefits - Eddie Guerreo, who might (might) get in less trouble without his instigating cousin around on Smackdown.
Who doesn't - Chavo. He's got a brand new gimmick, but cruiserweights just don't get much to do on Raw. It could change, but Kerwin will be Kantwin soon enough.

Rene Dupree
Who benefits - The French Phenom of course! Whether he strikes it big as the next great cartoon heel or not, Rene still has a chance at a bright future. If nothing else, more people watch Heat than Velocity...
Who else - Facial hair! The second appearance of his new cartoon goatee proved he was wise enough to iron out the flaws. Between him and Viking H, thiss stuff is cool again! Also, Rob Conway, who has evidence that there's life after La Resistance right at home.
Who doesn't - Sylvain Grenier. Honestly, if Rene couldn't do it, Mr. No Charisma is not going to make it on Smackdown, and not even on Velocity. I'm surprised he hasn't already been cut.

SMACKDOWN
Chris Benoit
Who benefits - Smackdown. The Rabid Wolverine is the low-key Kurt Angle. He can make anyone look good, and he's finally broken out in the world title scene. In the immediate future, Orlando Jordan, who can hopefully start to prove to the naysayers that he's got something worthwhile to offer, thanks to the upcoming match at The Great American Bash. It's a chance for Benoit to legitimize an up-and-comer.
Who else - Smackdown's reputation as the brand for the highest quality of competition. Raw may have Angle, Y2J, HBK, and Benjamin, but Smackdown has Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Misterio, and Paul London, who put out in every match like it's a PPV and on th whole have longer to go in their careers.
Who doesn't - Benoit, who's clearly lost most of the luster he gained two Januaries ago. It's a good thing the guy's a workhorse.

Randy Orton
Who benefits - Batista, who now has at least another feud past JBL to look forward to. Orton is still just getting warmed up, and smackdown is prime pickings, from Undertaker to Booker T to Chris Benoit.
Who else - The legacy of Evolution. It did exactly what it set out to.
Who doesn't - Triple H, who can no longer get rubs from his pupils and thus must stand on his own again. Then again, maybe that's a good thing...

Mohammed Hassan/Khosrow Daivari
Who benefits - The gimmick, which might have better ground to stand on now. smackdown has known its fair share of controversy (Billy & Chuck's nuptuals). The alleged terrorist angle, which has gotten a lot of bad press, is actually a smart way to go. How else to educate on the roots of terrorism than to exploit the already-established feelings of unfairness Hassan is always going on about? Where else does it come from? Sure, you also have to be an ass, and Hassan is definitely that as well...
Who else - Hassan in the ring. His profile was ratcheted a great many point upon his entrance, immediately being plugged into the championship scenem no matter how brief the experience was.
Who doesn't - The gimmick. If it goes too far, it could sink him. The hubbub is already brewing...

Christian
Who benefits - Captain Charisma. With a change of address, he gets the much-needed chance to start over. He should do fine.
Who doesn't - Tyson Tomko, who is this much closer to his own departure, from budget cuts.
Who else - Booker T, who should have been getting the early goat from Batista, not Christian, but who instead had to settle for competing against Chris Benoit for a shot against U.S. champion Orlando Jordan (two things wrong with that; that title is so last year for Booker, and if a feud hasn't already generated between him and Oz, it probably won't, at least not for a while). Not the way to follow up feuding with Kurt Angle. Instead, Christian (last Thursday's main event), then back to JBL.

Batista
Who benefits - Smackdown. Raw gets to work with John Cena, and Smackdown has an unquestioned champion for the first time in a year. The extended (successful) feud with Triple H did much to legitimize Dave, and now he gets to further prove himself against a hungry roster which is, much like him, trying to make sure it's not overlooked again.
Who else - JBL, who might have found a natural opponent at last. Many of his feuds in the past year have been mostly perfunctuary, but finally established as a top tier star, JBL can let loose as a dangerous big man against a dangerous big man.
Who doesn't - Poor Big Show. What he couldn't get against Bradshaw he might have gotten against Batista...

Candice
Who benefits - Gawkers. Possibly Torrie Wilson.
Who doesn't - Um, raw gawkers?

Simon Dean
Who benefits - Dean, who might have better luck in the Blue World Order, or out of it. Maybe if he became something other than a jobber...
Who doesn't - Maven, who lost his master, then his job.

Steven Richards
Who benefits - Hey, it couldn't hurt his career, right?
Who doesn't - Chris Masters, who will have to find another rag doll with a glass nose.

Sylvain Grenier
Who benefits - Rob Conway. Flag poles.
Who doesn't - Sylvain Grenier. Flag poles.

William Regal
Who benefits - Regal's solo career. And hopefully he gains a speaking role again. The locker room, too. I'm sure he has much to teach it.
Who doesn't - Tajiri, Eugene, who both just lost their last meal tickets.

There's also the matter of the recent roster cuts, some notice of which I've made in the preceding reports. Charlie Haas is the biggest loss, but he also has the most to gain. He has the goods to capitalize on his new employment status with other offers, which he could use to enhance his craft and then return to WWE asa more valuable asset in the future. Akio is another I wish the best for. And then there's the potential of Brock Lesnar's return. I hold nothing against him, as regular readers would know (I don't think I have any, as it is), and all the comments he's made about his actions in the past year and change have made sense. I wish him the best, as always. As for Matt Hardy: go to TNA. It'll be for the better for all involved, and best of luck. Maybe you'll see Akio there.

That's all I'm going to bother you with today.

#109. The Economy, WWE Draft

I was having some rather heady ideas about the economy the other day, about how to fix it, and how alternatives don't do that. The best way, it seems to me, to bring the notion into the 21st century is to finally acknowledge that we're in the 21st century and alter the template as such. Instead, we've been dwelling on the same one that's only sorta been working for the past few thousand years, which has centered on scarcity, and how best to handle it. We've gotten a better idea of how to make interpopulation mechanics work, and as such, why not drag the notion of scarcity-based economics into a schema that uses this as an advantage rather than as a continuing albatross? The way it currently works employs the trickle-down theory, which postulates that to move goods you start from the top and distribute accordingly, with a few at the top controlling where things go and how. This is also known as privilege or business, and how that's supposed to work is that the person with the mind for it has the opportunity to use it, and we've even gotten to the point where you're supposed to be able to get there as much through inheritence as persistence. Those with neither, it would seem, constitute the overwhelming majority that watches as a few have plenty while others scrape by. This is the result of a competition-based mindset, where "only the strongest survive." It seems to be in our nature to want that as much as anything else, but it is also in our nature to improve ourselves, adn we have made strides in that direction, while the economy hasn't, really. While we embrace the rigors of law, which distributes basic civility, the matter of sustaining life itself is left in the old hands, which continue the stringiness of the old practices concerning how goods move around.

Just a few deep thoughts (or not) to help with my credibility. To sabotage that, I return to matters of professional wrestling. The draft lottery began last night on Raw, and as it turned out, the most unexpected as moves played out. Smackdown's WWE champion, John Cena, switched brands!

On the one hand, the cynic will say that this is a ploy, and that Cena will soon enough return to his native brand. On the other, we see Vince McMahon in all of his potential genius. Cena is a character who needs a little more than a taped show can provide. He needs freedom. The live broadcasts of Raw can give him that, and the new challenges on its roster can help him explode. If Vinnie Mac wanted to shake things up, he's already done that, beyond a doubt. This is the singlest greatest move yet in this new era, akin to the debut of the NWO in WCW a decade ago.

That being said, Cena's debut could have gone smoother. Chris Jericho's Highlight Reel was in theory a wonderful way to introduce the first draftee, but in reality Y2J and the Doctor did not have a lot of chemistry (it reminded me of WrestleMania 21's Piper's Pit, though this one was better overall), and it didn't help that John was sporting an awkward arrangement of jersey and t-shirt that made him look a bit foolish. Christian's subsequent appearance led to the return of Cena's rapping (which I never really missed, but he did it better last night than he used to when the gimmick first began), and the segment picked up, but no one seemed to be really enjoying themselves, and that's a crucial element. Maybe next week will work more smoothly. I have all the faith John will work out just fine, once he finds a new rhythm for a new show.

In a way, and now it seems almost obligatory, Batista looks like he will go to Smackdown, where I very much hope Randy Orton, upon his recovery, will follow. Those who were calling Dave and Brock Lesnar interchangeable a few years back will certainly have something to chew on. I was expecting Undertaker to be Eric Bischoff's big coup, and somehow I still expect him to be drafted, along with maybe Kurt Angle and maybe even Oz, Orlando Jordan, to continue the tradition from previous drafts of splitting up alliances. To complete the set, Charlie Haas or Michelle McCool, a recent diva many would like to see given the opportunity to actually compete, an impossibility of Smackdown. The further Thursday (soon to be Friday) acquisitions might be Snitsky (second coming of A-Train, in some ways), Eugene, and Mohammed Hassan and/or Daivari. Wild guesses, all.

On another note, Christy Hemme is getting the further chance to dance in the ring (no, not in the entrance meaning), despite the poor reaction she received the first time around. Yay for me! And yay for Victoria, who gets to do something again.

#108. WrestleMania 21, Comic Books, Craig Ferguson, Carrie Underwood, Bulfinch's Mythology

It seems that Luther Reigns met his end with WWE recently, which means Batista has officially won that contest, which I humbly put them in. He reached the conclusion that he was never used to his potential, and I agree, and we'll leave it at that.

Speaking of potential, I finally got around to watching WrestleMania 21, and it was a good show, maybe not one of the greatest, but it was solid from stem to stern. The first match was, of course, Eddie Guerrero versus Rey Mysterio, which was a good a match as it could be, better than some reports would have it, and things have only gotten worse between them since, which includes the unresolved heat that was explored at Judgment Day last Sunday. This is the Smackdown response to the great Raw, Jericho-Christian feud of last year, and it's an improvement, if I must say. This is a contest of equals, with more genuine emotion and less padding.

The Money in the Bank match followed, which Edge won, as he always seems to, by taking advantage of others and appearing at the end, when everyone else had already worn themselves out actually doing things and not resting, or whatever it was he was up to. That led into a feud with Chris Benoit, which the Rabid Wolverine dominated when things such as metal briefcases weren't in the equation, culminating in the Backlash match a month later, in which Edge won. To follow that up, he capitalized on a real backstage drama to earn another title shot for Batista's world's heavyweight championship, which Triple H got around to spoiling. There're a number of ways this can continue to play out, one of which would be that Edge goes on to feud with Kane while Hunter and Dave continue their spat, or the muddied waters continue intermingling, which in this case includes Christian, who may or may not be headed to Smackdown in the near future.

Randy Orton-Undetaker followed, and this was one for the history books. Orton has been seen as some as a familiar, both since Batista and not he was given the Royal Rumble and Mania spotlights, and because Orton's SummerSlam victory last year did not result in a lengthy championship run. It's not as if he's been knocked out of the upper tier. Far from it. He was given the chance to break Taker's winning streak, and he provided one of the Dead Man's best Mania matches in years. Heck, it might even be one of the best, period. Given that he became known as the Legend Killer, it seemed as if the hype might actually be on his side for a victory, even, and that would have been a heck of a boasting point, especially for a guy who's a "failure." So he didn't get the win. So what? He proved he was a worthy challenge, and that's as proud a feather for his cap as any other. If anything, Orton proved, once and for all, that he belongs exactly where he's found himself. When he gets back from this latest injury, I think it'll show.

Trish Stratus-Christy Hemme followed, and I found it a refreshening women's match. Hemme, for all the trash talk directed toward her over this bout, didn't do too badly. If anything, she's one of the better competitors I've seen in a WWE ring. Nowhere was the deliberateness that plagues most of these matches. Oh sure, she might have been deliberate, being a newbie in the ring as she was, but she sold everything as it should be, and not as most female competitors end up trying to, with overcompensation. Will she get a chance to build on this? Probably not, because, once again, the idiotic reception of a perfectly good thing will have spoiled its chances for a proper encore.

Kurt Angle-Shawn Michaels was excellent, better than HBK-Y2J from XIX. What more can be said about these two? They're among the best. Michaels went on to another great match with Shelton Benjamin on Raw, and a feud with Hassan and Daivari, bringing Hulk Hogan alongside him. The Arab Americans are now deeply involved in a feud with Benjamin and Jericho, as we wonder whether Jericho's passion for wrestling has left him along with diminished prospects (a brilliant storyline, by the way).

Akebono-Big Show was fine for what it was. Big Show got his posturing in, and a big power move, when he manhandled the sumo champion long enough to lift 'n' shift him, only for Akebono to prove soon after that this particuar sports works differently. Some of your less patient fans had a real problem with this one, as they did with Hemme, and they were going to no matter what.

John Cena defeated JBL, as was pre-ordained for the WWE title, in a fairly typical match for the Doctor. I've gotta see Judgment Day (which I'm getting to in a moment) to see what they two can do in an "I Quit" match. Then came Batista's nearly half hour war with Triple H, which didn't seem to impress many people, but I thought was worthy of the hype. I really need to watch this one in particular again, mostly because I was distracted the first time around and might have missed some important points, especially the ending. It was strange seeing Motorhead performing Hunter's theme song live, because I've only heard the song recorded. The lead singer wasn't quite as I pictured him, but I got used to that quickly. He didn't seem very enthused about all of it, but that might just be how he always is.

The other segments included the Hassan spot (plus Eugene!) and Hogan, then Piper's Pit. Good god does Piper have an ego, and did he make it more than evident during that particular segment. He made Steve Austin uncomfortable, and didn't give Carlito the proper opportunity, either. Ah, well! But as I said, it was a good, solid PPV, and the bonus DVD battle royal was fun, too. Good spot for Booker T, and unepectedly for Chris Masters as well.

And speaking of which, Judgment Day seems like it was, too. Oz had his first offical PPV match (his appearance in the Royal Rumble doesn't quite cover it), successfully defending his US title against Heidenreich, who is a character who won't quit. Maybe he'll even catch a break in the ring some day. Most reports indicated this was the weak match, but then, I've been considering myself ahead of the Orlando Jordan curve for more than a year now. He's getting there, slowly. Hopefully this is only a step in the right direction (and Rene Dupree can start getting some of the same juice). Carlito, with Matt Morgan, wrestled on the card, against the Big Show. How much more brazen can this guy get? Paul London and Chavo Guerrero finally got their match, which I'm eager to see. Booker T got one over Angle (in one of his more disturbing storylines), the DQ Mysterio-Latino Heat match, and Charlie Haas & Hardcore Holly's challenge of tag team champions MNM (Powerwrestling.com named Haas Wrestler of the Week over it), not to mention Cena-Bradshaw II.

A.J. Styles is TNA champion again, just in time for the promotion to lose its TV show (great, just when I've found it...). I'm sure it's nothing he did. Hopefully things'll work out.

In non-wrestling news, I seem to have picked up my first variant cover, for Green Lantern #1. I've got an Alex Ross cover, while standard editions sport regular artist Carlos Pacheco's work. I saw another variant there, too, for #638, with the secret revealed on the cover rather just merely on the last page, and refrained myself from splurging, on both accounts. I also picked up the heart-wrenching JLA: Classified #7. Yes, it's a heart-wrenching "bwa-ha-ha"/Super Buddies/I Still Can't Believe it's Not the Justice League issue. Shows you a thing or two about range, like Futurama revelled in until it was cancelled. Also, The O.M.A.C. Project #s 1 & 2 (for a not wholly different take on Booster Gold, among other things), Day of Vengeance #2 (finally! Ragman is back in the spotlight!), and DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy #1, which sports the first appearance of the new DC logo. I swear, last time I bought comics, I got some non-DC titles as well...

Back to TV now, Craig Ferguson is working out just fine on the Late Late Show. He's charmingly endearing, and his enthusiasm is contagious. There's plent I could say about recent cancellations, or even about the new fall line-ups, but I won't bother. Carrie Underwood may be the new American Idol, but Constantine and Nadia were robbed. Either was better, and both deserved to be in the final two rather than Underwood or Bo Bice. But like y'know, whatever...

I recently found employment and lost it again, and have since been scrambling all the more. It's disrupted my creative process a bit, but I've gotten back on track, and Bulfinch's Mythology, another victim, is the same case. It's a big book, but I'm not intimidated. I've just finished the Greek section. Finally!

That's all for now...

#107. TNA, Would-be Comics Writer

First news first. I've been wildly sidetracked from the Leopold project, and now it's more a matter of getting back and finishing than giving updates. Speaking of updates, it looks as if my personal website might finally be returning. Thanks to Webspawner, the new age of Mouldwarp might finally be upon us. I tried to transfer the file of the previous version to the computer I'm presently using, but as it turns out, either I can't or Trellix Web is finicky. I found out it was a paid service after visiting the product's site, something I didn't need to bother with previously because the software had been bundled in with my previous computer.

At any rate, that's a personal update. Last Friday I watched TNA !mpact! for the first time, and got to see Petey Williams in action. It was a fine match. The last match of the hour, however, was both the figurative and literal showstopper, as the Naturals took on and defeated America's Most Wanted for the NWA world tag team championship, with the help of Chris Candido in his final appearance in the promotion before his untimely death. This has never been a blog interested in speculating in the personal lives of professional wrestlers (which is one reason why I can't directly address the Matt Hardy-Edge-Lita drama), so I can say is that the one-time Bodydonna will be missed, as he was always an asset to sports entertainment, whether he was competing in WWE, WCW, TNA or any of the many smaller promotions out there. In this era that explores as much what professional wrestling has been as what it is capable of becoming, he was a signal entity within it.

TNA, as it turns out, in the meantime, is good television. It's weird to think that all the action it sees is one hour of free television a week, and one PPV a month. Obviously a lot of competitors go unused, at least as part of TNA, in this context. Fox Sports Network, which TNA pays to air its hour of programming on, is gracious enough to broadcast the show at a reasonable time, Fridays at 4 in the afternoon, and again several more times throughout the rest of the day, which makes the notion of WWE's abundance of scheduling, over several networks, all the more generous, which we can sometimes take for granted. Men like A.J. Styles, Monty Brown and Sonjay Dutt (whom I also saw compete, against Shocker, current contender for the X-division title) shouldn't have to wait so long for their share of the spotlight, but often it's not what we deserve that we get, but rather what we can afford, and that leaves plenty of room for growth. TNA seems to be managing its fledgling existence, with bumps here and there, fairly well. If there's room for another large-scale competitor again, as there was in the '90s, to WWE, TNA would do that spot proud.

WWE, meanwhile, is approaching another draft lottery. Last year's turned out better than some of the naysayers (including, unfortunately, the Monk) would have led you to believe. This year it appears Christian is a lock to make the jump, from Raw to Smackdown, being that he's already picking a fight with WWE champion John Cena. I guess I'm fine with that. Kane is another guy who could use a change of scenery, but I wonder how likely that would be, given his current attachment to Lita. Would both go, as a package deal? Unlikely, given Edge would be left behind (or maybe this would be one way to hush up some of that murmuring). Chris Jericho would be another fine choice from Raw's side. There's also word Randy Orton would be trading sides, but that's one I would rather not see, since I still want that epic feud with Batista.

Smackdown, meanwhile, is replete with possibilities that started out on Raw or were there just last year. Big Show could use a change of address (a feud with Triple H would do both men good, and he's already be rumored there anyway), Booker T might be ready to go back, having reestablished himself. Charlie Haas is a current fantasy for some to transfer, so he could feud with Shelton Benjamin, his former partner in the (Self-Proclaimed) World's Greatest Tag Team. But I really don't know what'll happen at the draft. And that's half the fun, I guess...Both brands are doing fine right now anyway, having finally shook loose the uncertainty of 2004 and the blocks that were built during it.

I found a comic book store near me, which is the first one I've now regularly visited in more than six years. It's bizarre to be able to say that, surreal. All I need are the funds to support this patronage. I've been working at breaking into the business, too, at the forums of Digital Webbing, honing my scripting craft and helping to realize the skills it takes to create a story worth reading. I'll talk more about this at some future time. I've probably already yacked on for long enough...

#106. Wrestling, Final Episodes of Andromeda & Enterprise, BattleStar Galactica, Will & Grace, Leopold's Concentration

A year ago I said Luther Reigns was worth a dozen or so Batistas...Am I still saying that? Well, what I can say is that Batista now has to prove that he really can improve on the Goldberg formula, become the loyal Brock Lesnar, the successful big man champion. He hasn't been pushed, seriously, as a singles wrestler until now, so Raw's most interesting days are here. Triple H may have found someone he was willing to let roost as champion in his stead, but that doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. Randy Orton is out to repear himself again (the way he ended up in Evolution is also the way his saga with that clique is ending), so that leaves the champion and the ego to clash so settle on the new rules of the clubhouse.

And all this time it looked like Smackdown was the show that was regressing. Instead, we find Raw continuing to wait on the next lightning bolt to strike. Oh sure, Mohammed Hassan is a fine new addition, and even if the fans don't like him, Chris Masters is an impressive addition, certainly better than Garrison Cade ever was. Simon Dean, if he ever gets down to wrestling, is an entertaining one. Shelton Benjamin continues to prove he's ready to be the next big thing. Chris Benoit, Shawn Michaels, they're settling in, and so is Edge. Raw is solidifying into a more complete, competent show, knowing just how to use all of its players. Even Y2J has something to do, and it doesn't involve Christian.

Christian, by the way, is pretty much the same case as Matt Hardy, as far as his potential is concerned. He has a personality, and a fine finishing move, but other than that, he's a glorified jobber. He brings very little heat as an actual competitor, and he's done that for a long time now. Hardy, I realize, was released for other reasons (as too was Rhyno, who was either hamstrung or never really had much to offer), but he might as well have gotten his walking papers for the sin of having no future. He's the more experienced Mark Jindrak.

On Smackdown, meanwhile, the roster is bursting to the seams with young bucks waiting for their chance in the spotlight, and it's harder to juggle on Thursday nights. How do you give everyone their shots and still maintain a modicum of momentum? When someone gets something lively to do, someone else doesn't, and since Raw has most of the established stars (and is using them in actual matches now), Smackdown has to play catch-up even though they're the ones with their act together, and have had it together the longest. It just doesn't seem that way. Smackdown is vibrant, it just doesn't have enough time to show it, unlike Raw, which is able to show pretty much all its cards on a weekly basis. You don't miss anything on Heat because that's a show for people either being used to fill that show or as a sideshow to give the new bucks an additional spotlight. Smackdown, meanwhile, outsources many of its stars to Velocity. Paul London toiled for months there until he was given the chance to compete for the cruiserweight title. It's the haven for tag teams and cruiserweights, Charlie Hass, the Bashams and Akio. If it was held in as prominent a timeslot as Heat, Velocity might even be making the waves is deserves to. It could actually be a second show, rather than just an overlooked treasure nothing really develops from. Who on Smackdown, or who watches it, really knew what London was up to, or why Haas and Hardcore Holly were worthy opponents of Eddie Guererro and Rey Mysterio a couple of weeks ago?

The rumor is there'll be another draft, to shake up the rosters again. It ended up working just fine last year, despite my concerns. Randy Orton is still rumored to Smackdown, which makes me wonder who will go to Raw in return. Some seem to think it'll be Booker T, or Big Show. Neither really has anything to gain (and neither does Orton, who deserves a nice, extended feud with Batista) unless Raw wants something new to do with Kane. Has Show ever feuded with him? And a feud between Show and Triple H would be epic. I'm not sure a lot has been done there, either. But Booker still has use on Smackdown. Would this be an opening for Marty Jannetty? He was rumored to have signed a contract after the Angle-HBK stint he pulled last month, and yet he hasn't appeared since. I half-expected Michaels to announce him as his partner for Backlash, but that's probably more fanboy than mark out right there.

Smackdown should retain the services of Carlito and Orlando Jordan. Mr. Cool has been doing fine keeping his name around despite his injured wing, which now seems healed, or should I say heeled. Hopefully he can pick himself back up in the ring now, and we can see more of what he's capable of. Same with Oz. So he's US champion. More rumors have it that he'll be fighting Rey-Rey next, which almost certainly means he won't be champion much longer. He hasn't really defended the title yet, which doesn't make this a particularly significant reign. I hope he has the chance to finally prove himself a capable wrestler, and not just accessory. One step would be to develop a finisher or two. All he needs is consistence ring experience. Maybe once JBL moves beyond the WWE title (I doubt he'll end up #1 contender; Booker's my pick), his cabinet can branch out. Hopefully not bottom out. The Bashams really need to capture a tag team championship.

Luther Reigns, meanwhile, still has a bright future in store. He's been working on his ability to fly solo, much more aggressively than Batista ever did, and if that ever works out, I'll still say he's worth a dozen or so Batistas. In the meantime, I'll enjoy Hassan and Daivari, thank you very much.

I haven't been keeping the Monk in touch for a while, and haven't even mentioned WrestleMania 21 yet. From what I understand, it's another show I'm just going to have to see for myself, which I intend to, when the DVD is released.

In the meantime, I get to enjoy the final episodes of two favorite series, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda and Star Trek: Enterprise. Both are highly underrated, because people let expectations get in their way. Star Trek started dying the day people started getting other interests to follow, and tried to continue their interest in Star Trek as well. They couldn't, and so they started ranting about how poor it was getting. Okay, so the studio didn't help by pumping out one more series so quickly when the last one failed to catch on (okay, the last two, even if one eventually developed its own cult). Resentment built, and interest declined, until Star Trek for cancelled for the second time in history.

I've been watching the latest new flavor, BattleStar Galactica, and for once I actually like it. The last new flavor I enjoyed was The X-Files. If there're any problems with BSG, it's in two casting missteps, and they're major ones. now, I have no problem with a female Starbuck. I could care less. But Katee Sackhoff, she's a problem. She's deadweight. And so is Jamie Bamber, otherwise known as Apollo. They don't ring like they should, like James Callis (Baltar) or Mary McDonnell (Roslin) or even Edward James Olmos (Adama), whom I think undersells, and I'm not sure if it's because of the actor or the character. But Sackhoff can't sell a poorly written character (or maybe it just seems that way because the actress is uninspired) and Bamber is too much of a nonentity. Grace Park as Boomer (x2) is a fine example of understated, and Tricia Helfer, for what she's done, is smoldering. Rich Hatch is sadled with an underwritten Tom Zarek. Because like any other show trying for such huge scope, this series can't carry it all.

But's it's got the good faith going on, so it doesn't matter. It sucks to see these double standards.

Anyhoo, I think I saw the first episode of Will & Grace last night in syndication, and it's bizarre to see these half-developed characters in play. I don't know if I would have continued watching past that premiere episode, but the ones that've followed were worth it. It's like having inspiration and waiting for it to gesticulate. In the meantime, do you take the inspiration for what it's worth, or do you go looking for something else and forget about this half-formed thought? Recently I've been engaged in trying to figure that out. How do you know when you've come across a diamond in the rough? How much do you really need to know to decide whether or not you're wasting your time and should rather continue on with your search? Can you blame someone for not seeing something you did? How far do you have to push before the bolder starts picking up its own momentum? Can you possibly come up with a universal calculation? Or are things really just random?

It's really hard to say, and I challenge anyone to.

Leopold's Concentration, by the way, has not been abandoned. I've got most of the rest of the story sketched out. I've been continuing to pursue other projects in the meantime. And it'd be grand if I knew anyone was paying attention.

#105. Leopold's Concentration is in Trouble (and Denial!)

After more than a week off, I finally got around to returning to Leopold's Concentration, and wrote the twelve chapter. I had originally planned on repeating the November challenge pound for pound, by completing the story within a month. Circumstances have changed, and so I will no longer try and pretend I can compensate. At this point, I'd be looking at a week or so of double output, and perhaps even triple output if I wanted to maintain the pace that would have put me, after the past week, with the final two installments written in the final two days of the month.

There's no rush. I had intended to plot the course of the rest of the story in the downtime, but nothing struck until yesterday, so I gave up that idea. I've always known where it's going, but the steps along the way have been improvisational. I added a new character, a major one, in 12, which just goes to show how much I knew of what was going to happen from chapter to chapter. Her name, in keeping with the main characters, is Padma Mahmoud, which has the same kind of syllabic repetition built in as Gerald Leopold and Virgil Oswald. I don't find her introduction to be an act of desperation, but rather a further depth to the reality the story sets out to explore.

I plug on. I will be done some time next month if nothing else gets in my way, which I hope it won't, because I feel like I'm finally back on track, with relatively clear paths to the conclusion. We'll see.

#104. Leopold's Concentration Won't End, Green Lantern: Rebirth, Nightwing, I Can't Believe It's JLA Classified, The Ultimates

I lost power for over 24 hours (which would make a really interesting post, if that was what I did with the Monk), starting from the second paragraph of the eighth chapter, and it's exactly that story I'm talking about. Consequently, while it was only getting colder in the apartment, I was sweating over whether or not those valuable pace-setters had been lost. I was happy to find out they hadn't, even though I'd decided at that point that I could have lost them and it wouldn't be that big a problem after all. Being an electronically-shackled writer (for the most part), I couldn't write anything while the power was out, so I wrote both the eighth and the ninth chapters yesterday (after the three-chapter marathon of Monday, I suppose I was already ready for it), and combined them into an 8+9 medley/monster, which worked out in terms of the story, since at this point the lines separating our two protagonists, Leopold and Oswald, are blurring.

Today I continued to break the mold by skipping over Oswald's turn and continuing on with Leopold's. He does have his name in the title, after all.

I mentioned I'd picked up some comics the other day and that I was going to say something about them. Well here we go. The first of them was Green Lantern: Reborn #3, where it turns out Geoff Johns reveals how Hal Jordan went insane more than a decade ago. He was taken over by Parallax, not figuratively, not in the Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader/"certain point of view" (can't wait to see Ep. III in May!) way, but literally. The creature Parallax, the embodiment of the yellow impurity and Fear itself, was another of the baddies the Guardians foolishly employed the Central Power Battery as a prison for. The other one they blundered with in this capacity was Sinestro, and Sinestro released Parallax into Hal.

So the lore of the Lantern becomes just a little more complex. It suggests a whitewash of continuity as concerning Hal Jordan since "Emerald Twilight" on the surface, but underneath Johns has provided the greatest twist yet for Jordan, and he's certainly had his share, as well as the entire Corps.

Moving right along, there's also Nightwing #103, part 3 of 6 in the Year One saga, where Dick Grayson's journey to manhood continues, which here involves a return to the circus and the debut, and origin, of the original Nightwing costume. Is it wrong to say Dick's personal journey is the most fascinating thing in comics, bar none? Chuck Dixon, returning to the title and the character he helped define nine years ago, is crafting, along with Scott Beatty, yet another milestone, one that seeks to flesh out rather than redefine things we already know. The path between his childhood and his adolescence, where Batman and Bruce Wayne take the place of his murdered family, is not something he easily understands, because there's nothing but trauma for him to sort out. He's the textbook case of growing pains. He just does it in tights.

Then we come to JLA: Classified #4, the third of three DC titles. It's the first chapter of "I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League," a sequel to last year'rs Formerly Known as the Justice League, which reunites the creative team of Giffen, DeMatteis, Maguire, and Rubenstein as well as their version of the Justice League from the late 80's, which means Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, and the like. Booster and Beetle, I'm very well familiar with. I followed them from Jurgen's Justice League to Captain Atom's Extreme Justice. They're favorite characters of mine. But I've never read the Bwa Ha Ha version. I wasn't able to get a hold of last year's story because my comic shops either didn't carry them or they sold out quickly, and I haven't tracked them down. But here was my chance to do so. I was not disappointed. This is unforced wit in its purest form. I couldn't help but laugh out loud at Richard Hertz's insistence to be called Dick. Mr. Hertz is involved in the ostensible plot of the story, which rings familiar to the Top Cow book Common Grounds (also a contest I failed in, but I'm now attempting to make progress without). Anyway, a highly enjoyable read. It's a shame that it's also a very good possibly that this will be the only issue I see.

The last title was The Ultimates 2 #3, a Marvel book. Up until the ending, I thought this lived up to every bit the hype I've heard of this title. A realistic approach, which is what the Ultimate reality is all about. The team the book is named for become guest-stars, which is another strange part about the issue. Hank Pym is the only member to take an active role in events. Maybe that's the point of the whole excercise. I'd love to find out, but I probably won't. But I might look up the first series, and wait for this one to end, to see where things go.

That'll be all for now.

#103. Leopold's Concentration Continues Onward

The fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters are up (after a mildly disruptive weekend pushed back the writing, but not the place-holding, for the first two of them) of the story. The sixth and seventh chapters feature quoted text, which ended up looking funny, at least at my end of the pike, which I wasn't expecting, but I won't be trying a new format for the gimmick, at least not yet.

I also picked up some comics this weekend, which I'll comment on soon.

#102. Leopold's Concentration is Good, Orlando Jordan

Fourth chapter of you-know-what is up, and I'm enjoying the writing process quite a bit once again, even if the experience and the story are so different from the last time. This installment features an intervention scene that might ring as a little clichéd, but is absolutely necessary in establishing Oswald and his life, as much as talking about pet behaviors is with Leopold. At any rate, I find it all really fascinating, and I can't imagine why...

Booya! Boo-ya! Oz just got his groove on! That's right, Orlando Jordan is United States champion having defeated John Cena for the United States championship last night on Smackdown. Yes, it required the interferrance of the Basham Brothers (co-secretaries of defense) and JBL himself, but the fact of the matter is, Oz has gold! His hard-earned work, as chief of staff and as ring lackey, has paid off. No, it's not unusual for someone to win a championship, or to defend it for that matter, without technically having done it fairly. Being associated with JBL, the particulars of Orlando's victory are no surprise, but the inevitability still tastes as sweet.

He's a guy who puts himself out there and makes his opponents look good time in and time out. Call it the Jericho Method. It's what Orlando was basically brought in to do, and this skill ultimately ingraciated him into a position to build a personality, a profile, he could not naturally build himself. He's been couched into greatness, and he's not there yet, but this is a huge step, and he's got nowhere to go but up. And the difference between someone like him and someone like Test (whom I still admire and wish the best of luck when he returns, wherever he returns), is that it's not just expectations he's building on, but himself. If you can't do that, then you're sunk. You're Eric Watts, you're Brutus Beefcake, you're Ahmed Johnson. But Orlando has the goods to fulfill the potential those who believe in him know he's capable of. No one sees the great ones coming, and Orlando has that potential. Even if he ends up being another Booker T, that's nothing to sneeze at. Booker is, after all, a five time (five time, five time, five time, five time) world heavyweight champion, even if it looks as if he'll never ascent to become a WWE version of one.

But Orlando can. He's just starting out. His obvious model is the man he defeated to become United States champion, John Cena. The man headed to WrestleMania next month in the classic journey to the heavyweight title started out as a punk with no gimmick and no momentum. gradually, he built one, and still lost mostof his matches. But he continued to refine, until he became someone no one could ignore. And he did it by constantly giving back. John Cena is not greedy. When it's good for him to win, he wins. When it's good for him to lose, he loses. He's made the United States championship something to talk about, whether he's fighting Rene Dupree, fighting just about everyone to keep it, fighting Booker T to win it back, losing it to Carlito Carribbean Cool right away, or allowing himself to lose it again just before the biggest show on the wrestling calender, thus forfeiting one of the greatest spectacles possible for a wrestle, holding the two heavyweight titles available to you. It's how Ultimate Warrior did it.

So unlike Warrior, who never seemed to quite understand what was good for him, and thus ruined a great career, Cena does. Call him the next Austin (as it seems so obvious), or the next HBK. And then look just behind him and see Orlando Jordan.

#101. Leopold's Concentration Continues, Job Hunting

The third chapter of Leopold's Concentration is up. Meanwhile, I've added another link to the righthand sidebar the Monk's new design afforded me, to a wrestling site I've referenced in the past.

Did I mention job hunting's a bitch? 'Cause it is...

#100. Leopold's Concentration, Wrestling

Second chapter of Leopold's Concentration is up, and it introduces the second main protagonist to the story, Virgil Oswald, and the joke about the footstool-shaped robot comes straight from the original version of Oswald's half. The shuttlecraft is named after the appropriate sci-fi genius/author.

There's a new look to the blog, and I looked up the Raw results (did I mention I actually get to watch Raw every week now, though with the side effect being I now know it's easy to fall asleep during the second hour?) from this past Monday, to find out Chris Jericho indeed has something huge in mind for WrestleMania next month, with five other superstars primed to join him, undoubtedly (or so I'm assuming) from both Raw and Smackdown. You'll notice I used the common word "look" to connect two disparate thoughts. Brilliant, I know...

And since I now can watch Raw, I can comment on the new calibur of the show. It's definitely improved since the last time I saw it, two summers ago. The Bottom Line highlight show doesn't really do it justice. Thw restling is better, and the blocking better, too. All it took was letting guys wrestle again, sparked by the acquisition of Chris Benoit. So it's ironic that Smackdown no longer has the same calibur wrestling it did two years ago. Not that it's a ton worse, or comparable to the low level Raw once had, but that it's lost some prestige. I think thing'll turn around soon, though. It's got the talent, it just needs these guys realigned a little, which shouldn't be too long from now.

#99. The Angry Avenger, Leopold's Concentration, Wrestling, Simon Cowell, Smallville, Lost, Alias

Having completed Colinaude, the Angry Avenger last November and seen how only a little pain was involved, I decided I could do it again. This time, it's a personal challenge. Leopold's Concentration is my next 50,000 word story, and the idea is to write it, like the last novel, within the span of a month. March has one more day than the one I wrote in the last time, but that's not really that huge a difference. The daily word count needed shaves off sixty words, and the first entry exceeds that anyway. That's the context. The content is actually a reworking of a story I wrote in high school, which the creative writing teacher seemed to enjoy well enough (and in fact, the three entries were probably the most well-received of my efforts that semester), and the elements are basically the same, but also radically different. There'll be nods to the original draft dropped along the way, and the first happens to be the protagonist's name. Here it's Gerald Leopold, whereas originally his name was simply Gerry, a nickname Leopold has had in the past, but no longer goes by.

At any rate, it should be reasonably amusing, and possibly thought-provoking as well.

A few things have gone on in wrestling since I last wrote, but Triple H and JBL are still the respective champions of Raw and Smackdown. Randy Orton is no longer in pursuit of Hunter; rather, now it's the 2005 Royal Rumble winner, Batista, who achieved his turn by cleverly nodding to the way Orton was booted from Evolution. He's poised to become WWE's own Goldberg, as most of his matches have been of the patented squashings Da Man was so famous for in his WCW heyday. It's a funny development, considering Goldberg floundered when he tried to make it on Raw a few years ago, and his feud with Hunter was wasted. Maybe things have changed. Maybe Batista is the worthy successor Triple H has been, uh, waiting for. We'll see.

JBL, meanwhile, is headed toward WrestleMania XXI with a bullseye in the middle of his pompous forehead. John Cena, in the grand tradition of wrestling's granddaddy of PPVs, is finally going to dethrone a longstanding, unpopular champion, and start his bold new era, which might lead to the Smackdown revitalization the Internet insiders have been clamoring for. JBL has been great, and Orlando "Oz" Jordan" has been seeing steadier action than ever before, but this ride's just about finished. Hopefully it gives Oz the chance to really shine, and not just act as the Designated Jobber (the win against Rene Dupree last fall notwithstanding). He deserves better. He deserves a JBL-like push. He's even got his vocals ironed out, as he demonstrated when ushering the WWE champion to his post-No Way Out celebration this past Thursday. Come on, give Oz his shot. Is that too much to ask?

And while you're at it, consider giving Paul London and Charlie Haas the pushes they deserve. They're making Velocity worth watching, but the one hour shows are not exactly the companion shows they could be. Hardly anyone sees this stuff. Give London his WM match against Chavo Guerrero. And let Haas wrestle then, too, even if he has to do it with Hardcore Holly. And Dupree, too, he's a superstar in the making, if only he's allowed to register some solo wins. The continuing matches against Cena are good, but let's move beyond that and get him on track to win the US championship. He deserves it.

Whatever's in the works for Booker T, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, and Big Show for WM, let's get on that, too. Surely you can't waste them, after the year each has had, even if they have had to wrestle in JBL's imposed shadow. The same goes for Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit on Raw. What're they gonna do? Even if Benoit fights Mohammed Hassan, as it's looking now, that still leaves Jericho. Does he get Edge? It'd be nice if Raw and Smackdown didn't leave so much fine talent so directionless, or embroiled in feuds that are sidetracks for the other guy, as Edge's with Shawn Michaels' is. If HBK is gonna face Kurt Angle at WM, tha leaves Edge wasting his time building up one feud when he could be spending it with his actual opponent. And if Randy Orton is to face Undertaker at WM, as is rumored, you've got a mere month to establish that, too. And what about Shelton Benjamin? Is Snitsky going to be his opponent? What about Kane? Does he get Simon Dean?

It's all very interesting, but the waiting sucks. I guess tha's called "anticipation." Right now it seems like it could be better than last year's, but there's so much uncertainty it's hard to really say.

I've been watching American Idol, and as usual Simon Cowell is the only judge worth listening to. I'm glad he made amends last night for some of last week's obvious mistakes, but it's already too late for the audience to salvage two huge mistakes of their own, that being the ouster of the first two males from this stage of the competition. Too bad, but this year has already lost some good ones to self-sabotage ("Here I go, here I go, here I go again..." straight to poor subsequent song decisions). This is the first year I'm consistently watching, mostly because of my sister, so I get to see a little more of the pain, beyond even more rotten audience decisions in later rounds of the competition, and unexpected pleasures. But then, more pain comes to me as my sister insists on the time-wasting Wednesday results show as well as Smallville (sucking story arcs faster than a speeding bullet) immediately before it, which costs me Lost and Alias. The former is okay, since I've resolved to purchasing the eventual DVD release, and the latter is somewhat, too, since the retooling this season has dulled my interest in it.

Still expecting, two months in, for 2005 to be a good year for me...

#98. Nightwing, Identity Crisis, Wrestling, Survivor

There's only one icon in comics that rose from sidekick status to replace his mentor. He's Wally West, and he's the fastest man alive, The Flash. Likewise, there's only one icon in comics that will never be treated as such. His name is Dick Grayson, and he outgrew sidekick status and did what even Wally could never dream of. He became his own hero. He became Nightwing.

Nightwing the comic recently hit the 100 issue mark, and it's the first issue I've picked up in a very long time. I found out that the other Grayson in comics, Devin K., is after all a worthy successor to Chuck Dixon on the title. She's retained everything that made the title great (and even gets Scott McDaniel to do covers for her), and has kept one of the most remarkable things about the title going: focus and continuity. If you began with the very first issue, you will not be left wondering if you're reading a new version of the character, a new interpretation. Nightwing, since he remains outside the superstar bubble, is being allowed to have his story told, exactly as every character in comics should be allowed to, the proper care and pacing to reveal a real person behind the comic book gloss. Dick has issues. He's had them since before he was ever Nightwing, before he was ever the first Robin. That's something #100 makes clear, and the continuity that the ensuing Nightwing: Year One storyline will no doubt emphasize. But since he's no longer Robin, and has actually moved on, and because he's a character so well established yet allowed to remain free from static purgatory, he's also the only icon allowed to grow, and not just grow up.

The naysayers will probably tell you the Blockbuster saga that ran for nearly a hundred issues (ending with #93, with ramifications continuing from there) puts Nightwing into a wannabe mold of Marvel's Daredevil. It's not true, though. Blockbuster was no Kingpin. As far as I know, the only definition Kingpin ever received as a character was that he was, um, a kingpin, a baddy who Matt Murdock paid heavy prices to fight and eventually defeat and usurp (Daredevil currently reigns as Hell's Kitchen's new Kingpin). Blockbuster, meanwhile, ran through a gamut of personal arcs. The first occured before he ever came across Nightwing. He has his own origin, and a modified one come the Mark Waid-penned "Underworld Unleashed" crossover event from about a year before the launch of Dick's first-ever series. And on top of that, he had issues he needed to work out, from his mother to the gross aftereffects of the events that made him a giant. He might have become a genius, but even he couldn't outlive all the vices that went with becoming a criminal mastermind.

Nightwing could never hope to defeat Blockbuster himself. That much was clear, and that it took nearly a hundred issues to finally complete the deed is testement enough to the fortitude of the series. There's not much rest for Dick. He has an entire supporting cast that, outside of Gotham connections, never existed before #1. Was there ever a chance that any created from that point was going to become as famous as a Commissioner Gordon, a Lois Lane, a Joker? Maybe, but even if there were, the series was never going to rest long enough to let them stay put, static, for very long. In a way, Nightwing's own title came along at just the right time. Heck, Gordon retired, didn't he? When would that have ever happened before? Some of the villains that he's come across have found their way outside his title (Lady Vic, for example), but others, like Torque, never lasted very long. Had Torque been any other icon's nemesis, he'd still be kicking around today. Even Hush, Doomsday, and Bane can't go away. Didn't Hush turn out to be the Riddler?

And speaking of which, Identity Crisis's assassin turned out to be...Jean Loring! I picked up #7, the final issue of the groundbreaking crossover event, yesterday and was shocked to learn it wasn't Ray Palmer, the Atam, as it seemed last issue, but rather his ex-wife, who went mad and accidently killed Sue Dibney, the Elongated Man Ralph's wife, in an effort to Ray interested in her again. A lot of what fans have come to expect from these types of events was completely circumvented by Brad Melzter, writer to artist Rags Morales (whom I first discovered on the late, lamented Hourman series from a few years back), including the final issue, which was more of a crescendo than a crashing finale, subdued and introspective, leaving all traces of the villains from past issues, including Dr. Light, behind, as well as a conclusive close on the effects of a revelation concerning Batman, aside from the continuing dawning it had on the aforementioned Wally West. What the event amounted to was an awakening, on par with Mark Waid's Kingdom Come, set in continuity and affecting the entirety of the DC universe without anymore than a few instances of devastation, far less in scale than anyone would have ever imagined it would take to do so. Almost the size of an atom.

Did I buy into the hype? You bet I did. Because this one deserved it. For all the talk that the heart of the hero has always been Marvel's forte, I can only argue the contrary. It's with DC, and it always has been. Marvel might pride itself in making heroes easily identified with, but the stories that hit closest to home are found in the house Superman built...

Abruptly now, let's switch tracks back to professional wrestling. The current issue of The Wrestler/Inside Wrestling has an article on none other than Orlando Jordan, which either speaks to his rising profile or that of JBL, who incredibly walked out of Armageddon still Smackdown's heavyweight champion. Who's going to stop the Champion of all Champions? This past Thursday it looked like it might be Kurt Angle (looking awkward applying the ankle lock to someone tall for a change), until the Big Show reared his ugly bald head once again. Show has been on a roll since he returned a few months back, and now that he has seemingly put Angle and his cohorts behind him, he can perhaps offer JBL his greatest challenge yet.

To do it, Show can use the F5, which he has recently taken to using. But there's also Brock Lesnar to consider. PowerWrestling.com recently had a news piece that suggested the Next Big Thing might be looking to make a comeback. What better way to do it than to outroot the poser who has been parading with his title for more than six months now? Has that been what the powers backstage have been planning all along? or do they want to to at last give Big Show his unadultered spotlight, a thing he has never had? Either way it's exciting just to think about it.

What's a little less climactic is Raw's decision to put off until another PPV who its world champion is. Instead of picking between Edge and Chris Benoit, Raw has added Randy Orton and Triple H, plus I believe Chris Jericho, into an elimination chamber match that will avoid the question as one of those vacancy developments. Maybe that was the plan all along, but this does give Hunter yet another chance to become champion, or Orton a chance to win his second in a fashion more suited for the Rock than for a champion presumably being pushed on his wrestling skills. Call me crazy, but Raw needs to develop a backbone. Doesn't Batista have a chance as well? And what are his qualifications? He's good shadow dressing? I recently picked up Taboo Tuesday and found out Christy and Carmella were not as good at that as perhaps the booking staff had planned.

I also got a chance to see how Shelton Benjamin captured the Intercontinental championship from Y2J. To my surprise, it was through a relatively uninspired match, odd for Jericho and hopefully not indicative of Shelton. I've seen him do better. Maybe I just need to pop the DVD in again and rewatch.

Daniel Puder won the Tough Enough competition. Woo! Take that, Miz! Puder is a guy with unlimited potential, most especially in the ring, but as a personality as well. I look forward to seeing him again.

What about those cruiserweights, though? I love Funaki and all. Great that he's finally received recognition for all the hard work he's put in all these years, but why are the rest of his ilk being treated so poorly? Paul London has been dropped like a sack of potatoes to Velocity while Billy Kidman has unceremoniously been paired with Akio and been allowed to stick around. I'd rather have London, thank you. And what about Chavo Guerrero? What happened to his big return, his feud with Kidman, and the push he enjoyed for much of the year? Gone, as quickly as Jamie Noble? I think I saw something about this having to do with how Paul Heyman is faring these days backstage. It's a dirty shame.

Heck, the new divas are getting more respect. I thought it was funny, though, that all Smackdown had to do to get them was give up Viscera. Darn, right? Ha!

How is Jeff Hardy doing in TNA? Well, he's still around, which is probably a good thing. Or he might end up like Raven, which would probably not be as much. Hopefully he does better than Jesus, who in addition to be fodder to put John Cena over another month as US champion also has a number of injuries he's going to have to contend with. Was he ever going anywhere anyway? At least Kenzo Suzuki has. He and Rene Dupree wrestled Eddie Guerrero and Booker T this past Thursday. Heidenreich, meanwhile, has continued his war against the Undertaker, setbacks and all. It's good to see the new blood sticking. Hopefully Carlito Caribbean Cool comes back soon in wrestling form, and Luther Reigns finally gets the one-on-one encounter with Big Show that's been teased for months. He did get one of several monstrous chokeslams dished out, though.

I was infinitely glad to see Chris win the latest Survivor, especially since he did it over Twila, the latest of a trademark line of unstable female contestants. She apparently never realized t wasn't her playing that got her to the final two, it was others playing her and canceling each other out that got her that far. Chris, on the other hand, persevered as long as Eliza, and like he said let the money start to talk in place of him. After the purported twelve season run of Survivor is over, it'll be interesting to see what kind of player had the best chance to win. The one who was willing to do anything, or the one who played a good game (Rich, Chris, Amber, Brian) but more or less won by accident, or otherwise not by personal striving (Vecepia, Sandra, Tina, Jenna, Ethan). Were female winners less likely than male ones to compromise themselves? Or did it just seem that way?

Anyhoo, that's about it for now. Enough rambling for today...

#97. The Angry Avenger, Boo, Wrestling, Identity Crisis, Green Lantern: Rebirth, Neil Gaiman, Red Sox, U2, Mister X

There are a few things to talk about this time around, but we can start with the NaNoWriMo experience. Writing "Colinaude, the Angry Avenger" was a learning process. As I've mentioned, I've never written a single story that long. I've been working on one story that will probably be at least that long, but it's taken years and I'm only halfway there. Being forced to write 50,000 words in a month (and seeing some 3000 of the 6000, which I believe was the final number, finishing well before the deadline, some even by midway) removed many of the excuses I've given myself and enabled a story to be developed as I wrote and not just thought about it (thinking about stories has never been a problem). And as I wrote, I found that the old maxim of the story taking over was true, almost by necessity at times. I always knew where things were ultimately headed, but how was a surprise, and I hope it all worked out reasonably well, even in this pitiable first draft (and yet, I hate the idea of rewrites, despite knowing some poor focusing can be fixed). I'd love to get this baby published now...

As I write this, by the way, I've got my sister's cat, purring away in my lap. We'll be moving in together soon, and the cat is a symptom of those winds of change. She's turned out to be a happy one, and recently a keyboard nuissance...

Remember Mohammed Hassan and Simon Dean, the so-called "house show heels" from my October 1 WWE Raw experience (results now being in PWI's latest issue, with Triple H and Nature Boy staring at each other on the cover)? Turns out they're real deals. I've even learned Hassan's past life, as OVW's Mark Magnus. Both have recently appeared on Raw, which is not usually the home of new talent, at least not success new talent (see the tortured history of Garrison Cade, but in contrast consider La Resistance and Rene Dupree). Maybe they'll even go somewhere, and if they do I can say I saw them in their WWE infancy with pride instead of ignonomy. OVW, meanwhile, is turning out to be a very efficient incubator, much as ECW and WCW unwittingly were for so many years. I don't know if this results in better quality long-run talent (would we really see a Chris Jericho, or Radicalz-level talent from there? remains to be seen), but it's been interesting seeing the homegrowns these past few years.

One of those is of course Orlando Jordan, currently regularly main eventing Smackdown as JBL's chief of staff and waiting for his first PPV match, any match. I'm liking Oz more and more, and last night had the realization that, physically at least, he resembles Rocky Johnson's boy uncannily (and wrestling background has nothing to do with this, or maybe it does) well. He could easily become a big star. That phrase went along with a lot of guys and gals WWE recently let go, including the poster boys for underachievement Test and Billy Gunn, and inexplicably Jamie Noble (did someone get ried of the rednecking? there could always be another gimmick, or no gimmick at all, given his talent in the ring itself, unless Creative otherwise felt he'd been tainted by the rednecking), but what they lacked was the kind of pure talent Oz exhibits almost weekly now as Smackdown's self-proclaimed greatest athlete, now sporting hair.

2005, without jinxing him, could easily be Oz's breakthrough year. The foundation was finally laid with this JBL association (members of whom now include the Bashams and a Diva Search cast-off, one of several to find their way to the blue side of the WWE divide, where ironically the very red JBL rules). The continual vote of confidence that he has enjoyed now since 2003 as the brand's unofficial road test for the big stars (Undertaker, Big Show, Brock Lesnar) is an unusual approach to breaking in a new star. Normally it would have gone down much like Lesnar, or The Rock, but it's become clear the fans don't like having their stars forced on them. They need to develop. Oz has gotten to have his cake and eat it too. We'll see how well that works.

There's also Luther Reings, who I was convinced recently would get a solo shot at Big Show for Armageddon, but instead he'll be going at him with Kurt Angle and Mark Jindrak. Angle, I had assumed, had been working at this Invitational thing so that WWE could introduce a major new player. It could still happen, next week, but I had assumed the loss of his gold medals would necessitate a PPV rematch. Maybe that'll occur later on, conclusion to the Open (Invitational, I can't remember which one he's using) and perceived follow-up. I can't help but wonder if a coup from some of WWE's competition, maybe even TNA, is in the works. How cool would it be to see someone like A.J. Styles make his appearance like that?

It would be at least as cool as Carlito, whose thug enforcer, I mean personal protector Jesus (Hey Zeus) is apparently going to be a wrestler as well. He proved this by beating on poor Charlie Haas, who hasn't met a challenge he couldn't be wailed upon from. Before Jesus it was Heidenreich, and before Heidenreich it was Luther Reigns. Speaking of Heidenreich for a moment, was his breakdown a chance to give him more development time? But getting back to Haas, he gets more airtime thanks to the Dawn Marie-Jackie feud than any feud he's had. His partner (not in that sense, thank you Jackie) Rico was among those who got the boot, apparently because of his age, much like that nutcase from Tough Enough earlier this fall (though ostensibly it was because he lied, which WWE just doesn't stand for, being full of integrity in its fake entertainment and all). Haas is another Oz. He's not getting the Shelton Benjamin experience. Then again, Smackdown is all about developing people, whereas Raw (selectively) is not. It was no surprise when Benjamin was given momentum to carry him into that move. If WWE is going to have any Jericho-Radicalz level talent on their hands in the near future, it'll be from Haas, Oz, and Benjamin, guys with talent first and charisma second, though the latter two do have their share of it. Jesus, meanwhile, gets to meet John Cena two Sundays from now in a street fight. Cena continues to slum it.

And why is Carlito injured already? Should probably check out powerwrestling again soon. Plus there's the Tough Enough guys (gals this week, actually) to consider. Am I unequivocably impressed with any of them? Maybe Daniel Puder. But not really. You're rarely going to find a major talent like this. I'm not sure TE has done that yet. Maven keeps getting work, and he's held up reasonably well in the few years since his victory in the inaugurial ball, but I remain skeptical about his ability to succeed without a simultaneous edition of the opportunity to give him a name boost. Someone please take Mike Mizanin. Pleeease. The guy's a punk. Even more egotistically self-serving than Ryan "Silverback/Vanilla Gorilla/Silverback Survey/Silverback Attack/Posing Man" Reeves, who didn't seem to realize there was more to wrestling than an identity. I think he was one of the stiffer recipients of a Big Show bodyslam, like Daniel Rodimer. Maybe we'll be seeing some of these guys again, or OVW will, but I don't really care to. Justice Smith even isn't too thrilling. Puder has been and remains the only hope here. He's sort of like Bob Backlund and Crash Holly's love child, physically, and he's the best sport of the bunch, by far. (That seems to be the only thing they've been testing, at least extensively.) Even if be doesn't win, he'll be the only thing of worth to come from this competition.

I take that back. We've gotten the Bashams back thanks to it, and the knowledge that Hardcore Holly remains intact. Woo!

Speaking of Woo! Batista nearly got out, but just when it looked that way he went back to the Evolution fold. Since Survivor Series Raw has had a revolving wrestler as GM, and last week it was Chris "I've finally gotten a new individual feud and it's with Edge" Benoit. To weasal Triple H into another week as world champion the writers left a triple threat match that resulted from Randy Orton's reign with an ambiguous ending, at least until next week. Depending on how things work out, Orton could begin wrestling again, and maybe even for the world title. Triple "Blade Trinity" H, meanwhile, might spend at least two months before reclaiming the title again, matching a personal best.

But I'm not giving him flak. This is the latest turn in WWE. It is not very popular right now. The champions, the wrestling, is turning to a lot of old approaches while the next era of excitement comes along. There's the gimmick wrestlers (Kenzo Suzuki, Hassan, Dean) and the champions who depend less on popularity and more on worth as in-ring material (even JBL, whom one of PWI's sister publications had to do a story on recently; no, he's no Sid Vicious, to get that out once again, thank you very much). No one's going to say Benoit or Eddie Guerrero would have been champion in any year before 2004. It's still a question whether they'll be champions again in 2005 or later. But the business is in hibernation. I for one have not lost one bit of interest. I'm a fan of wrestling, not of any one star within it over the rest.

NWA-TNA, meanwhile, is going really old school by bringing in the Outsiders, or so the several months behind PWI reported. How has that turned out? At any rate, TNA has got the wrestling exchange, okay wrestling spare change thing going remarkably well. Hopefully this Double J Fed eventually works out.

That's it for wrestling in this post. Back to comics related developments, I recently picked up the complete-to-date run of DC's Identity Crisis, the most recent watershed event, coming from Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales. This one, unlike events past, is about the story first and event second, and that's why it's generated such an incredible buzz in the industry. And it's all been justified. The recent death of Jack Drake, a character I followed while I was still a regular reader, in the pages of Robin, was an example of the impact not only promised but delivered, up to the sixth issue. Like any good mystery, this latest and perhaps greatest Crisis has been sprinkling in the answers and developments issues in advance. There had to be a reason why the Drakes, and the Palmers (well, ex-Palmers), were being featured so much. It's a shock for DC to be turning Atom into a villain. I've followed him for a long time, too. Maybe it's not what it seems. Maybe Dr. Light has come up with an ingenius (and found the means to be genius again) trap, a brilliant plan, despite only just having been reacquainted with the events that left him one of the more idiotic villains in comics (and that's saying a lot). Or maybe something else is going on.

This one's for fans of DC continuity, which is funny, since the last great Crisis was all about shuttering that off. Marvel, meanwhile, is continuing to push this Sentry character into its present, right out of its fictional (Wizard-assisted) past. And will anyone care enough about DC's Triumph to cry foul? I recently purchased the DC Encylopedia, which boats a listing of just about every character ever featured in a DC comic, but sadly not Chris Claremount's creator-owned Sovereign Seven. Even Power Girl's entry doesn't mention them. I haven't noticed if it mentions Triumph. And I'm not referencing the Insult Comic Dog when I say Triumph, either. This Triumph is a forgotten hero from the original Justice League line-up...

There's Green Lantern: Rebirth currently going on, which promises to bring Hal Jordan back as GL for the umpteenth time. Replacements John Stewart, Guy Gardner, and now Kyle Raynor will hopefully continue to float around, as they've done for thirty years now. Flash such a different property it's ridiculous. I read my first issues (concluding chapter to "World's End" and one from "The Kindly Ones") of Neil Gaiman's Sandman recently. His writing as I know it from American Gods in nicely intact, and I'd love to read more with the chance. I also picked up the first volume of the Mister X trade series currently being published. X is a forgotten 80's watershed moment, finally getting its due...

The Red Sox have proven they're really Yankees Jr. with me. They "forgot" to invite the unwanted Derek Lowe to a club celebration, making it clear they're willing to part with him like he was yesterday's garbage. Anyone still smarting from Nomar should have seen this coming. Sure, it took a whole team to win the World Series the way they did, but it also took bringing in Curt Schilling, Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez in with their built-in prestige and hefty paychecks. Anyone's expendible for a team just looking to win, just like any big name looks good. (Randy Johnson, I'm looking at you.) It's a shame Boston had to stoop to this to win. Maybe this is reactionary, voicing this now, this Yankees Jr. thought, but it's not a new one. I love Schilling. The guy made himself immortal in the Nation with his bloody sock. I love the utility players, the guys who stepped up their game like any good acquisition (I'm looking at you, Papi, Damon, and Larry Walker from the vanquished). I dunno. It's a weird sensation, to have followed this emotional season, gotten this incredible denouement, and be stuck feeling this way now. The list of free agents was absurd. It's not quite like the '97 Marlins, but I also have to wonder if the Red Sox can come back intact enough to compete like they did this year. The Patriots after 2002's big win lost a few players and had to skip a year, but did it again with a team mentality that wasn't lost. How much of the team mentality that got the Red Sox their win will be lost this off-season? D-Lo will tell you there's already something lost. And it hurts to follow that kind of stuff...

I think this will be one last note. I got U2's new disc, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, and after two listenings am still left on the undecided side. I'm not sure an album by them, other than All That You Can't Leave Me Behind, has ever fully satisfied me (though several others have plenty of high moments) right away. They're a band you sort of have to work with. That, past "Vertigo," none of the tracks are really jumping out at me is not really telling. I didn't truly appreciate Coldplay's "The Scientist" until I heard it separately. This is a good argument for the playlist culture that's been revolutionizing the music business, taking the radio format and making everyone their own personal DJ. But it also doesn't mean that is the best way for the industry to go. The artists with depth, who don't rely on a single song to be their musical mark, are always going to creat entire albums at a time. Albums are a way of saving music for posterity (and why we don't have music libraries, or music rental stores, I don't know), giving them shelf-lives past their original point of popularity. This cannot be lost. And I don't think a playlist is the way it's going to become, despite what people like the members of U2 think. You go to a concert to hear a continuous list of music. An album is conceptually a new concert waiting to happen, the birthing ground for new music in this day and age. It captures the original artist, who will not be around forever. Tradition can keep their music alive, but so can a physical remainder. Much like oral stories gave way to books, so has this developed.

Was I ranting incoherently again? It must be because I'm way past bed-time...

#96. Survivor Series, The Angry Avenger, Enterprise, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Survivor, The 9/11 Report

Survivor Series was this past Sunday, and weren't we in for a big surprise. JBL got the win over Booker T to retain the WWE championship. Wow. That puts his reign now as longer than Eddie Guerrero's, which is simply stunning, and beyond logic and reason. Here is a guy who has been unpopular in this push since the very beginning. He took two PPVs to capture the gold, then two more to get through the Undertaker. Conventional wisdom would have had Booker unseating him this time.

But wouldn't you know it? The ride continues. Yay for JBL! And yay for his chief of staff, Orlando "Oz" Jordan (nickname, as always, mine), who is starting to garner a little bit of his own attention, a development that began with Booker T's ascension to challenger status. While all that's really meant for Orlando is an improbably feud with Josh Matthews of all people (are they planning to push him as a wrestler, and if so, is Spanky spanking himself more so than ever now?), that still means he's gotten his first official feud. I was hoping for a rematch plugged into Sunday's card, just for shits and giggles, and maybe it was even done for Velocity, I wouldn't know. At any rate, his ship's finally sailing. And JBL, who vowed to never show his face on Smackdown again (though ironically that would have been contradicted by highlights of the match he lost to fulfill that vow), seemed primed to make good on that promise, er, threat. He just keeps going. Was Brock ever champion this long? I think so, but not much longer. One more month and Bradshaw will have matched The Rock's career best, if I'm not mistaken, which is probably the only way he could ever have been champion. He's no Rock in any other regard, except ability to create a fan reaction, which is possibly why he's still champion.

Lord knows there're plenty of reasons why he shouldn't be. One of them is the looming threat of John Cena, who has finally returned from filming of The Marine. Thank god, too. He still needs to develop his wrestling cred, and to do that he needs to make it to the top. Anything short and he'll go down as one of the greatest wasted potentials in wrestling history. But this is no big Test here. He should easily do that, within the next year. Maybe even by WrestleMania XXI. There are still three other men vying for the same honor of dethroning JBL, and those are Booker, Eddie, and Kurt Angle.

Angle's plans to become the Smackdown Triple H may have seen partial fruition with the adding of Mark Jindrak to Team Angle 2.0 (after Luther Reigns, who is fast becoming Batista 2.0), but he's still staying squarely within the pack, here. Maybe it's because of his continuing health issues that he's even gotten this quasi-stable (and I thought the minute Carlito's Jesus pal was mentioned as an "alternate" last week Angle wasn't going to be participating this Sunday). But he's still plugging away on Thursdays as one of Smackdown's most regular competitors. Whatever's going on there...is going on...

Speaking of Triple H, the meltdown of Evolution's grasp on Raw is now complete. Wow! Who knew it would take the addition of Maven to seal this deal? I thought it would have been Shelton Benjamin, but it looks like they're fully intending to make him a fighting Intercontinental champion. And good for him, too. He's not stuck interminably like Charlie Haas as a name and as not a viable competitor (and maybe there're reason for Haas's inaction beyond storyline, too). Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. But I really wish I'd had cable this summer/fall, to see Randy Orton's defection and the subsequent chinks being blasted in this armor. It still looks like Orton will be the guy to at last dethrone Triple H (for real this time), and maybe he's earning it (for real this time). As things stand in my personal life, I should have cable in time to watch that happen, or the immediate aftereffects.

Whatever happened to the tag team champions...Either brand's?...

I'm still plugging away at The Angry Avenger. Twice now I've had to post two entries on one day because the previous night saw my access to the spin-off blog controls nonexistent, while curiously I could still access the Monk. I don't know what's going on there, but it hasn't been that big an issue. Two more Mondays, two more Tuesdays, and I'll be done. Today's No. 16, which officially puts me over the hump, though since I've been keeping up with my wordcount, plus a little more, technically I'm already over. The story is surprising me. I've never written one continuous story this long, as I think I might have mentioned already. It's a heck of a challenge, but I've been doing well at it so far. I hadn't really been outlining early on, beyond knowing where I was going and what was needing to be done, but the other day I prepared the remaining chapter titles, which amounts to outlining the concluding half of the story.

If you haven't been reading, the story is about a hero going through one of those 24/Jack Bauer days, confronting his disposition as a hero, which is a fairly unique one as far as I can tell. So far he's only been living with it, but the drive home will find that confrontation as a part of the climax. That's the spoiler. In the meantime, he's been following leads on a particular case, which has mostly been purposely vague to this point, and will probably remain mostly purposely vague. The case isn't really the point. I'm writing about the character more than anything, with as many facets of this character as possibly to be explored. I'm not sure how wide of an audience there is for that. I haven't had a lot of luck finding an audience for my writing (and I'm not even talking about the continuing uncertainty of whether or not any at all has been reading the Monk all this time, including right at this instant). I'd love for that to change, but I can't foresee modifying my topics to facilitate that. It would feel like a creative cheat.

Anything else to talk about? Enterprise has been going strong this season, past the comprehensible hiccup that was the two-part season premiere. Brent Spiner's just-concluded run will go down as a classic moment for this series. But my opinions might not matter much. I'm still a big fan of Andromeda. That show's been a fascinating inversion of what we've known of it the past four seasons, which is the reverse of the case Earth: Final Conflict held in its own fifth (and final) season. If this is Andromeda's last, it's going out on a definite high note.

And Lost is still making a superb case for being television's finest hour. I've also been enjoying the current season of Survivor, and have been stuck reading The 9/11 Report for a very long time now thanks (or no thanks) to remarkable time constraints, the likes of which I never knew in college (and maybe that was a mistake...), and long passages of not-so-riveting exposition interrupting an otherwise good read. I actually slogged through all of the (oftentimes redundent) New York Times preliminary material...

#95. NaNoWriMo, Colinaude the Angry Avenger

Decided to go with a different story for Blogger's novel challenge, "Colinaude, the Angry Avenger." Please, by all means, check it out. And comment as necessary.

#94. Wrestling, Peter and the Starcatchers, Carlito, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Red Sox World Champions, NaNoWriMi, Roddy Bosset

Now, let's get a little Yesterday Part II action going on. Poor Dan Murphy, if he happened to have fallen through a blackhole and read our humble remarks at the Monk, was probably screaming that it was he, and not the irascible Harry Burkett, who actually sits there and writes the PWI 500. I'm not sure, but I might also have misrepresented Steve Austin as a 12 in 2002, when in fact he was a 13.

But I'd rather be wrong about trivial things like that (sorry, Dan!) than bungle a top slot in a PWI 500, as has happened at least twice very outrageously. You might recall my giving Bret Hart some smack in the past, but it's nothing compared to what the folks at PWI did to him in 1997 when they declared Dean Malenko as somehow being the pacerunner at the end of that particular grading period rather than "the best there is, the best there was, and the best there will ever be." This was when Hart made Austin, mind you. King of the Ring and Jake the Snake in 1996 might have seemed to make him, but people didn't really take Stone Cold seriously until he stood toe to toe with the Hitman, the Excellence of Execution. What's that Ric Flair always says? To be the man you have to beat the man? Well, that's what Austin did, a year before he did it against Shawn Michaels to become champion. All Hart had to do was surrender all pretenses of being a face. The guy was always a snarky little heel. C'mon. Do you remember that vengeful sharpshooter over Jerry Lawler, at Summer Slam 1993? The illusion was created out of thin air by two Yokozunamanias for Bret, plus a protracted feud with his even more dastardly brother, the late Owen Hart. (A footnote here, I recently purchased Austin's autobiography, The Stone Cold Truth, which I'll read after Dave Barry's co-written Peter Pan and the Starcatchers, and a number of other books, unless the spirit moves me to bump him up.)

And that wasn't the last time someone was robbed! But what made it even worse was that PWI couldn't even manage to put Bret in the top ten that year. He barely made the top twenty, coming in squarely at 20! The innanity! Clearly someone had lost favor in those offices, and all he'd need to win back the graces of the wrestling community was the holy trinity of horrors: his last night in the WWF, Owen's last night two years later, and the kick from Goldberg...

The second guy? None other than Chris Jericho, who in 2002 more than eclipsed Rob Van Dam, who incredulously was called the best in an "unexceptional" field. The ignomony! What does one have to do, be the first undisputed world champion in decades or something? Oh wait...And that wasn't even the first of Y2J's successes during that period. He won his very first heavyweight title not long before that, too, and after losing the championship scene went on to a stellar feud with Triple H, who somehow managed to wrestle about the same amount of time in that calender year and be graced with a top ten finish while Kurt Angle and Goldberg this year were denied as such for arguably equally successful or better all-around showings...

But let's move on to other matters. Carlito Caribbean Cool debuted on Smackdown a few weeks ago, punking John Cena not once but twice, the first of his dignity and the second of his U.S. title. This in Cena's hometown of Beantown! (And where is Cena gonna be to celebrate the Red Sox world title tonight? On the movie set of The Marine. Is it a little early for him to be pulling a Rock like this?) "I spit in the face of people who don't want to be cool." Yeah, this guy ain't too bad, as it turns out. He's a good wrestler, and he's actually got a personality (not that I'm saying oddly endearing karaoke machine Kenzo Suzuki of not having personality). He's a welcome shot in the arm. Let's see what develops.

Maven got his routine Tough Enough buzz going this past Monday, getting the win over the much put-upon animal that is Batista (Always on a Leash, should be his motto). If WWE continues these Tough Enough challenges indefinitely, Maven could even be heavyweight champion by 2009, when Conan takes over the Tonight Show!

And speaking of Batista, Gene Snitsky is succeeding where that Evolution pitbull has been consistently failing on Raw. He's a new brute possibly getting somewhere. That's another thing we'll see about.

The PWI debacle reminded me of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda this summer, running a poll to determine the top ten scenes through the first four seasons. The biggest vote-getters weren't bad (you should be able to find the list at its homepage, if you're interested), but the one I voted for, the ending to the second season's spectacular "Immaculate Perception," was nowhere to be found. Keith Hamilton Cobb, who many will still argue was the best thing that ever happened to that show, never had a finer moment than when he was called upon to have Tyr Anasazi try and fool Dylan Hunt into believing his son had died.

Part of what obviously screwed that scene's chances is that fans, current and bygone, are still delusional enough to think the show's best days ended at the end of the first season. Indeed, most of the scenes came from that season. Never mind the fact that its best period was early second season, and that post-"Ouroborus" was not half as bad as everyone automatically assumed it'd be and so thoroughly convinced themselves of sight-unseen, and that the third season was widely worth watching, and that the fourth season was even moreso...The fifth has begun, and as I understand it we're now in the final year. Ironically, we're finally having that Hercules vibe everyone was always so concerned about (star Kevin Sorbow's previous series). I'll die a fan of Andromeda.

Did I mention jubilation over the Red Sox??? The team finally got their heads screwed on properly in Game 4 of the ALCS, getting all of their considerable powers to actually work for them. If you want to know more, Stephen King is co-writing a book on this season, Faithful, to be published in December. Hopefully he'll have put Nomar Garciaparra into greater perspective than most of the knuckleheads I've haggled with since July 31, and earlier.

The comments feature should now be available. I found that if you click on the post-time by the author's name you'll be taken to a new page where you can find it. This might be useful when I insanely participate in the 50,000 word Blogger novel challenge next month. I've never written something that long, but I have to start somewhere...The story is entitled "Roddy Bosset," by the way, and I can't decide whether I'll be posting it here as I write it or at a sister blog...