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The 7 - Guest Columns - The Obtuse Angle: Mixed Bag on the Mojo Wire
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Wolfram J. Paulovich
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#1 Posted on 12.10.03 0436.14
Reposted on: 12.10.10 0439.15

THE OBTUSE ANGLE
Mixed Bag on the Mojo Wire
October 10, 2003

by Jeb Tennyson Lund
OnlineOnslaught.com/CitizenScholar.net

"CORRECTION: Because of a reporting error, an item in this column Sept. 3 incorrectly stated that Santa Clara County Bar Association member Eugene Karlov was called a "Nazi" by a fellow Bar Association member. Karlov was called a "communist." We regret the error."
— More Anguished English. Richard Lederer (ed.), 1993.


So it comes to late Wednesday night; I have to write this foul column, and Satan is screaming for a hot toddy as the Cubs and Red Sox inch their way toward possible championships. Meanwhile the vaunted Tampa Bay defense applies ointment to all its parts that were savagely violated by an underdog team piloted by an interception-throwing hick and commanded by Tony Dungy, a man whose face bears an eerie multicultural resemblance to Celine Dion. Good God, where did I put that pitcher of Bloody Marys?

October is the cruelest month. Perfectly good parts of trees die, turn unbelievably pretty and fall all over the place while the shit teems in the overflowing sewers of public discourse. October is the prince of political campaign months; and, as if next year won't be insult enough, we've been blessed with the vision of incomprehensible airheaded beefcake swept into titular control of the world's fifth-largest economy. Arnold, hoist a beer with me, then turn your back, I beg you. There'll be a lead stein rocketing toward the base of your skull, and if I didn't throw it — and it didn't sever the feeble brain stem that supplies the only neural commands keeping you alive — you can rest assured that the guy who did is willing to bar-fight you, you lantern-skulled man-mutant.

Jesus, why am I saying these things? I came significantly unhinged on Monday night. This must be it. The Bucs blew a sure-fire win in the same mechanically dispassionate way in which Al Gore strapped a thousand-pound weight to his political neck and dropped off a pier during Decision 2000. There is simply no excuse for these emotional hatchet-jobs continually happening to me, except for the fact that I live in Florida — the Fetid Crescent, the Cradle of Franchise. Homer Simpson made Florida more important than it should ever be when he called it America's Wang. At best it was once America's anus, but I think California clubbed us in the back with a chairshot to take that title.

Where are we, beneath all this disgust? Where was Raw? While anyone peripherally related to Oakland, Boston, Indianapolis or Tampa Bay was shredding their fingernails on Monday, Raw played to the rest of the nation, quiet, scurrying through the airwaves and almost glad to go unnoticed. Which it shouldn't have, because all things considered, it entertained. Yes, it entertained, when you scraped off the fleshy effluvium of so much bad talk about bad ideas. You've got to measure the Net instead of the Gross.

And at this point, part of Raw being entertaining is due to our own twisted sense of devotion and a junkie-like willingness to say that what we're into and what it does to us are worth it in the end. Like any addiction, Raw gives you your fix with all the sick attendant worries of full-bore commitment. There is the burn, the nausea, the deep-down ugly of you doing this every time you possibly can. There is the decay.

What price glory, eh? The price is the numbness. For all the moments of elation and dizziness, there are those that kill the senses. This Monday, Kane getting killed might have seared every primary nerve-ending in anyone who's paid attention to this long-term graphic plot- and character-evisceration.

I've read a couple of quips on message boards from the dowdy schoolmaster-type posters who always seem so disappointed in The Impatient Youth's shortcomings, and all of them have pretty much said the same thing, "I'm surprised you immature bitchy hell beasts made so little fun of Kane's car accident, and didn't totally hate it and throw a tantrum and then do doughnuts on my front lawn."

Now I'm the first person to fall all over myself in gooey adolescent love with a backhanded compliment from a faceless poster (who's just congratulated me on not doing the written equivalent of spitting up on myself). But I have to admit that the compliment was off-base. The proselytizing fucks who prowl message boards with the Message of "Chill out, young man" have taken such joy in finding passivity that they've accepted it without hearing The Word. The Word is submission, and The Truth is something no one feels anymore — just something they surrender to.

The Kane-Car segment made for a savage visual. So did the Dumpster of Fire. Hell, so did J.R. on fire. Those matters were never really in dispute: we never said that the WWE was coming close to greatness, but we dug the violent nightmarish spectacles. So it comes as no surprise that many posters concurred with the "Holy Shit!" verdict rendered by the live audience. If anything, that was a cool car crash. And if people don't dig car crashes with supermen in them, then the voting patterns in California need dire reexamination.

And why should we bitch about this segment? Really? Most people bitched at the Lighting J.R. on Fire segment because it was the first shocking segment. Then they bitched at the outcome of the Dumpster of Fire because the outcome sucked. And they bitched about the silly visuals of "Shocking" Ball-Shocking Minutes of Shock and The Kane and RVD Private Moment of Bondage Love that wouldn't have passed muster in the campiest San Francisco touristy gay club. People bitched because these moments added to the Kane angle the way a plastic umbrella adds to a supersized McDonalds movie-promotion commemorative cup.

We bitched. That's a whole lot of bitching, and a whole lot of misgiven programming. Is it any wonder why few are complaining now? They're exhausted already. No one is coming to their senses from an argumentative standpoint: they're numbing their senses in between scattered and dwindling highs.

At this point in the endless trip, the Kane car-death segment was the equivalent of having your car engine die, then partially explode... then having someone come by and fire a gun into the engine "to kill it." That's death on a tertiary scale. How many times are you going to cope with death past the first time? What are you going to do, yell at the guy with the gun? The car died twice. The guy didn't damage it. The guy's not your problem. Why complain? If anything, he just made sure it never came back to life as a Zombie Car. And, since you watch WWE TV, you know that cars coming back to life as Zombie Cars is something you probably need to worry about.

Car part aside, that's exactly what Kane is going to do next week or the week after. He's coming back. We've dealt with his death already, and nothing more is going to tug at anyone's emotions. Only it's not his character that's died this week: it's the will of the loyal opposition, the people watching at home who usually have enough remaining free will to say, "Now hang on a minute...."

Complimenting viewers who aren't pissing and moaning about this segment (and who instead are just saying, "Neat visual") is about the last thing the sanctimonious observer needs to do. If anything, feel pity, Brother Monkey. We've given up, given in and possibly given changing the channel some consideration. Do you see the sad joke in fans not even being able to get fired up about Kane anymore?

Kane isn't even a character at this point: he's the embodiment of a steamrolling Iron Will that's relentlessly overrun the audience's desire to react. Whatever you thought, wanted or loved about Kane is getting stomped into a template you may not recognize now but will soon have to learn before the screws come round again.

We were instructed to pity him for his psychological maladies, but those were scrapped. We were told to be shocked and dismayed by his treatment of J.R., but J.R.'s pretty much the only person who can remember it on a week-to-week basis. We were supposed to fear him, because he had to be restrained by security guards. They disappeared. We were told to worry for RVD, but RVD seems totally unperturbed. We were supposed to be shocked because Kane was consumed by fire; but he got out of that, and our shock regarding the escape has pretty much subsided. (I think the scratch on his arm healed.)

And apparently we were supposed to root for Shane, or Linda, or Shane and Linda, or Austin, or maybe Flossie the Wonder Pony, or somebody — but evidently Kane can be neutralized by vehicular homicide. Or maybe not. Is there a playoff game on right now? Don't I own a gun? Where are those goddamned Bloody Marys?

So back-slapping yourself into Tommy John surgery because the vocal WWE audience has calmed down is the sort of screw-headed attitude that Vince McMahon can only hope to foster. It's more comforting to the ever prevailing WWE shit-heels to think that the critics and the diehards have melted into their seats in grudging acceptance. They'd prefer to think we've discovered restraint and vowed to argue about Kane (and WWE as a whole) calmly and reasonably.

But no one watching with even basic cerebral activity has decided to be reasonable. Rather, there is really no reasonable way to argue the worth of new Kane developments: because they are, at heart, almost totally unreasonable. They're unreasonable in terms of basic sense and in relation to the last three months of plot development. Arguing with what's been done to Kane is like arguing with the deranged street person who won't take a dollar from you because you didn't have a quarter for him when he asked for one. Give up.

And we have given up.

If all The WWE bloodsuckers want from an audience is sagging wretched capitulation, it's a wonder they're putting on their own show at all, when they could easily become shills for such soul-eating extravaganzas as Good Morning, Miami and The NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw and His Never ending Quest to Shamelessly Flatter Any WWII Veteran Still Mobile Enough to Walker-Shuffle His Way to the New Non-Fiction Section of Barnes and Noble to Buy His Book. And they're probably the sort of scum-sucking rodents who'd tell Tom that he isn't a lipless wonder who couldn't write his own news even if all the nation concerned itself with was the consistency of his bowel movements.

But I've sidetracked terribly again.

Viewer surrender is not a laudable goal in television, and it ranks as an achievement only if you truly hate other human beings. It's a recession, a permanently ebbed tide. WWE viewers should want to sagely or maniacally argue about every angle, dispute each development and hope for change or continuance.

The moment we throw up our arms and concede, "Whatever you say, WWE," is the moment the WWE starts losing more potential revenue and the moment we start losing lots of potential fun, fury, elation, heartbreak and any or all of those things that constitute eager involvement.

And nothing strangles real involvement more than the gurgling and quasi-ejaculatory peptic bladders helming Raw commentary. Indicting Jim Ross with this crime is fitting, but hardly sufficient when dealing with his partner. The two of them have formed a comic-like Superhero Team of Self-Indulgence and Mediocrity, but it's one created by J.R.'s horrid creeping senility and fondness for thinking of women only in Old Testament terms getting sucked into the churning vocal hell of a narcissistic pervert bent on his own version of grotesque family entertainment.

We know we don't deserve this.

If Michael Cole and Tazz have proved anything, it's that the hackneyed formula of the smiling clench-buttocked good-guy as a play-by-play man and a snotty sexy and evil color commentator have gone out the window — even if Michael Cole is the corporeal realization of "clench-buttocked" and "jackass."

Tazz and Cole both call the matches mostly down the middle, suppressing gag-reflexes all the way. Cole still has reserves of righteous indignation regarding heelish antics, making him the sort of emasculated crusader that even the most desperate homeless hump might question as a leader. But Tazz never goes over to the dark side by praising heel wrestlers' aims. Instead, he focuses on noting the technical prowess of heels and making attempts to explain their motivation, while never advocating their motives or viewpoints. With Tazz, moral ambiguity and detailed thinking about sheer brutal force goes down easy, especially since it's coming from a neckless muscle-bound suit whose ethnicity might as well just be "Brooklyn." Tazz plays a good part, and it's a part that fits him perfectly.

The result is a boy-and-man tandem that points out ideal aspirations and behavior to the viewer and explains plot developments while also indicating what constitutes athletic excellence. We're given "the good way" to look at things but are left to travel whatever path we like, as informed individuals, knowledgeable about what makes for good wrestling.

Even though they're part of the machine, Ms. Cole and Tazz rarely make you part of the damnable grind. You get the sell, but it isn't often hard. They offer you the product to turn down or take on. Sure, they don't want you to turn it down, but they never make you feel like a Jezebel Damned Bastard Evil Evil Man With No Remorse for doing so.

Not to say that the Cole-Tazz situation is particularly revolutionary, but it surely points up the creative and dramatic bankruptcy of the J.R./Lawler duo. While the former tend to agree on most major issues, the latter are so friendly with one another that Raw commentary is starting to sound like the endless repartee of two hillbillies getting goofy and back-slappy drunk with each other, in front of the tube, for the 400th consecutive week.

Really, what is the point of employing Lawler anymore? He's so far behind on his credibility payments that the jackals are staking out his car and holding slim jims. The sentimental-return credit he received countless months back was immediately spent by the fact that he not only failed to fill the shoes of the man he replaced, he ignored them entirely.

Lawler's total inattention to matches could plausibly be mitigated by his being a nasty heel. But he doesn't bother with heelishness anymore because it might conflict with his ostensibly heart-warming (and mind-sickening) buddy-buddy patter with J.R. Any question of Lawler serving as the "Voice of the Heels" was answered on Monday when he came to the announce table wearing a Stone Cold Steve Austin t-shirt. And maybe some dimwit Pollyanna could see his wardrobe change as evidence of his fealty to the guy who will stunner anyone who attempts to change the announcing roster. Realistically, though, his partisan clothing sides him with J.R. and divests him of any reason to be at that table. He's a painful useless add-on — like getting a mouth sore after you already know you have Herpes. You shouldn't need him there, unless you're the sort of brain-damaged drooler who can't get the announcing message unless you hear two people saying the same thing.

The "announcers fighting together for their jobs" storyline (on top of a year of Lawler rescuing J.R. from ring action he should never have been booked in, in the first place) totally obliterated whatever remaining dramatic tension might have existed between the two. How can we buy into Lawler holding views on wrestlers and their actions that are diametrically opposed to J.R.'s value system when the two celebrate one another on a bimonthly basis? Voltaire made the statement, "I may not agree with what you say, sir, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," but I seriously doubt what he had in mind was a balding satyr mimicking virtually his every comment and then randomly tossing in the word "PUPPIES."

This worry might be moot if Lawler retained an ounce of skill, appeal or raw instinct as to what makes for good commentary or a decent human being. But at this point I wouldn't trust him to sell cases of bottled water a day before hurricane landfall, much less trust him to sell human drama between two men defining their characters in relation to on-the-fly booking and faked combat. And the only way to socially redeem this twisted swineherd-witted aging imp is to lock him in a clown car, set it on fire and push it straight into Lake Michigan — then play the incident in the media for all it's worth as "accidental human tragedy."

Jerry Lawler is a pervert, a hack and an irredeemable moron. The only way you could make a mainstream sports commentator as personally objectionable and professionally incompetent as Lawler would be if you pumped John Madden full of MDMA and psilocybin and somehow framed him for every priest-related sexual-misconduct rap in the City of Boston.

And the sick stupid thing is that most wrestling viewers could forgive a lifetime's sins if only his work were above reproach. I'm no different. Weekly, Lawler could sell Bφtschafter cigarettes to schoolchildren in between marrying various underaged members of rival wrestling clans, and I wouldn't make even a half-hearted attempt to raise an eyebrow if the payoff was him brilliantly calling matches. Conversely, I could excuse his current inattention to matches if his talking about wrestlers not in the match could somehow impart to them a greater character, sense of importance, dramatic impact, or worthwhile moveset.

Of course, I say these foul wretched things because I know that this will never happen. Jerry's rediscovery of competence is not even a remote option. He understands self-preservation at even a reptilian-brained level and will doubtless continue delivering one salient point per six weeks to meet WWE quotas. Thus we know that we will not see Jerry flapping his gums about something happening in the ring, something non-tits, something that has one goddamned shred of a passing relationship to what the show is allegedly about.

What we hear is all atomized verbal excrement. Lawler replacing Paul Heyman was like sending an armless man to pinch-hit for Barry Bonds and having Barry come off as the non-egomaniac. In this case, the replacement strikes out at every at-bat, and is hardly a deep threat. At best, he's a shallow one, and that's seeing him at his finest.

Anyone left cold or indifferent by what transpires in Raw storylines isn't going to have Lawler change his or her mind. Principally because Lawler is mindless. The fact that he's also pointless — as is much of what he's contractually obligated to comment on — needn't enter into it.

Surrender now. I'll see you all in Hell.




Jeb Tennyson Lund was carrying a hip-flask and chain smoking out of a cigarette holder long before that Terry Gilliam movie made booze and cigarette poseurs out of the goddamned lot of you.


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CANADIAN BULLDOG
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#2 Posted on 12.10.03 0742.38
Reposted on: 12.10.10 0743.08
As always, Jeb, well put, well said, well articulated. Excellent job. And that's coming from a huge Flossie the Wonder Pony mark.

The argument I most take to heart the Jerry Lawler one. He's no longer funny, he's unable to get angles across, and -- as you mentioned -- only a heel character could get away with that kind of behaviour. Even Bobby Heenan, on his worst day, had an uncanny knack for building the wrestlers up. Lawler has none of that anyone, and it's tough to remember when he last did.

Paul Heyman was, and is, the best replacement for a Jerry Lawler. I loved him on the mic; not only could guy sell the hell out of a shitty angle, but he would make you understand why you were supposed to care about it. The seemingly legit tension between him and JR was just gravy, and damned if it didn't keep Ross on his game as well.

Perhaps if the Raw commentary team were able to recreate the magic of 2001 again, Jeb wouldn't be as sidetracked on other matters

Again, great work.
ScreamingHeadGuy
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#3 Posted on 13.10.03 1940.12
Reposted on: 13.10.10 1940.43
Yeah, I feel just like that about the Kane situation. Meaning that I've just given up on it. I could drive a truck through those plotholes, but, well, why bother? It's just like your engine analogy (or like Homer falling down the cliff in the Simpsons episode when Bart plans on jumping Springfield Gorge).

As to the announcers, yes. I only wish I could get the Spanish feed.
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#4 Posted on 14.10.03 1105.24
Reposted on: 14.10.10 1106.04
Jeb, I gotta say, you're the crown prince of hyperbole. I loves my wrestling, I live it and I breathe it, I build my social and professional lives around it. But it seems you take it more seriously than I do.

Great work as usual, just a bit too overdrawn and dramatic for its own good. But enlightening just the same. Every time I read one of your columns my vocabulary expands by 10 words. I mean, proselytizing? Honestly, how old are you?

I mean that in a good way, tho.
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#5 Posted on 14.10.03 1736.59
Reposted on: 14.10.10 1737.28
Not as focused as your other stuff, Jeb. You wandered a lot and seemed hide behind your adjectives. But I did like the Jerry Lawler bitch-fest towards the end.

And people just don't use the phrase "back-slappy" enough...

Wolfram J. Paulovich
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#6 Posted on 19.10.03 1538.16
Reposted on: 19.10.10 1542.20
"Back-slappy." Always a good choice.

Thanks, everyone. I know I was relying on the adjectives a bit too much, but that's what comes from going a little Thompson-esque. Part of my point was the reasoning behind my conclusion, but I felt that my own personal anger was also just as strong a point. I mean to say, you get to a position where all the analysis in the world doesn't say it all — that part of the real problem is not only a misgiven structure or situation, but also that it just makes you so insanely disappointed and furious. I was trying to get at that frustration while also getting at the more logical bases for the problems. Either way, I had fun.

Plus, I do like an excuse for the gratuitous adjectives.

And Hogan's My Dad: glad you like the new words. I'll be 26 in 11 days.

(edited by Jeb Tennyson Lund on 19.10.03 1639)
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