Medical Examiner: Cocaine Killed Professional Wrestler Curt Hennig:
I’m not surprised, just disappointed.
Category: Entertainment
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The Perfect Memorial
“Mr. Perfect ” Curt Hennig found dead:
I’ve been watching Curt Hennig wrestle since his last days in the AWA. I remember him teaming with Scott Hall before he became Razor Ramon. Then he came to the WWF as a heel, calling himself Mr. Perfect. That’s when I started rooting for bad guys.
One of the greatest matches I ever saw was at King of The Ring. I believe it was the final round match. It was Curt Hennig vs. Bret “The Hitman” Hart. This match blew away almost every match I had seen until then. As a matter of fact, I was watching that PPV with my then-girlfriend. She kept rooting for Bret Hart so much that I eventually had to put her in The Sharpshooter. She was a little too plump for the Perfectplex.
I even got to see him live at a couple of house shows in Philly. Not only was he phenomenal on TV, but he was even better live. I don’t remember who he wrestled. That’s how good he was.
But the unfortunate thing in all this was there were rumors that Curt Hennig partied hard. It was alleged that his partying was what led to his being released by the WWE this past year. I seriously hope that’s not what caused his death, but I’ll be surprised if it’s not. He also left behind a wife and children. My condolences go out to the Hennig family.
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The 2002 Trenchie Awards.
That’s right kids, it’s time for the 2nd Annual Trenchie Awards. The best and worst of my year, as voted for by me. Last year’s winners will be listed after each category.
Best Movie of the Year: Gotta go with “The Ring”. It seriously creeped me out. It also might have had something to do with seeing it at a drive-through at night in Deliverance County. Honorable Mention: Red Dragon.
(2001 Winner: Stigmata)Worst Movie of The Year: “Insomnia” wins hands down. Like I said on my message board this movie was so boring it should have been called “The Cure for Insomnia”
(2001 Winner: American Psycho)Best Album of The Year: “Killing the Dragon” by Dio. Just as good as his early solo stuff. Honorable Mention: “Happenstance” by Fozzy.
(2001 Winner: Horror Show by Iced Earth)Worst Album of The Year: Geoff Tate’s solo album. No offense Geoff but stick to Queensryche.
(2001 Winner: Stronger than Death by Black Label Society)Best TV Show of The Year: “24” wins hands down. Either season.
(2001 Winner: Murder in Small Town X)Worst TV Show of the Year: Scraping the bottom of the barrel for this one because it really wasn’t that bad a year for TV. But I gotta go with “Ultraman Tiga” on Fox Kids. When I heard a new Ultraman show was coming to the States I was psyched because I loved watching the original Ultraman when I was a kid. The new one just plain sucks. It’s still Japanese actors dubbed in English, but they made the dialogue into comedy, and it wasn’t funny at all.
(2001 Winner: The Joan Cusack Show)Best Wrestling Moment/Match of the Year: Tommy Dreamer vs. Rob Van Dam to unify the Hardcore and Intercontinental titles. I was sad to see the HC title go, but I’m an old ECW fan from back in the day, and this was a great match that almost rose to ECW standards.
(2001 Winner: Chris Jericho wins Undisputed Title)Worst Wrestling Moment/Match of the Year: Do I even need to say it?? Triple H getting it on with a “corpse” while disguised as Kane.
(2001 Winner: Having to see Chris Jericho in a Speedo)Best Video Game of the Year: A late entrant this year but the winner is Suikoden III. I have been obsessed with this Japanese RPG since I got it. Final Fantasy X was really good, but it was a little easy.
(2001 Winner: Twisted Metal Black)Worst Video Game of The Year: Way of the Samurai. Avoid this game at all cost.
(2001 Winner: Simpson’s Wrestling)Best Movie Line of the Year: John Ratzenberger as The Abominable Snowman in “Monsters Inc.” “He made himself a diaper out of poison ivy, wore it on his head like a tiara and called himself King Itchy.”
(2001 Winner: Lou Diamond Phillips in Bats. “Don’t tell me I’m up to my chest in bat shit.”)Biggest Dumbass of the Year: We have a repeat winner. For the second Year in a row is Charlotte radio station WXRC 95.7’s station Manager Dave Ligafelt. First, he changed the format from the only hard rock station in town to another classic rock station. This year he changed the format to 60s and 70s and called it “The Ride”. Thanks for disappointing metal fans for two years in a row.
(2001 Winner: WXRC Station Manager Dave Ligafelt)Most Inane Political Agenda of the Year: We had a lot to choose from this year. But the winner has to be easily offended California Atheist possible communist Micheal Newdow. You remember him. He was the guy who said his daughter was offended by “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and got it declared unconstitutional by the 9th Circuit Court. Turned out his daughter was a practicing Christian.
(2001 Winner: (tie) PETA for trying to get the USC Gamecocks to change their name and a Pennsylvania judge for overturning Mumia Abu Jamal’s death sentence.)Biggest Jackass Celebrity of the Year: Sean Penn for being Mr. Pacifist all of a sudden and saying that violence is not the answer with Iraq. This from the guy who punches out photographers for fun.
(2001 Winner: Rage Against the Machine)Don’t drink and drive tonight, and I’ll see you next year.
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Video game violence…again
Sounding the alarm on video game ratings:
It seems that our good friend Senator Joe Lieberman has his panties in a bunch about video game violence again. He even admits that the ultra-violent, sexual laden video games are a minority of the products out there.
According to the article, Lieberman said a new round of congressional hearings may be necessary to raise parental awareness of the issue. Why would there need to be congressional hearings to raise parental awareness?
The video game industry has the right to make whatever game they want. It’s up to the parents to be informed of what content is in their kids’ video games. For example, my 15-year-old son is begging me to let him play Grand Theft Auto 3. But, being the excellent parent that I am, know that in GTA3 you can have sex with a hooker and then beat her up to get your money back. That game has no chance in hell of ever being in my house. But Senator Joe thinks that Congress needs to inform parents of the violence in video games. Like congress doesn’t have other things to worry about.
Personally, I think M rated games should not even be sold to anyone under 17, but parents need to take the responsibility to know what games their kids are playing. Yet, as we all know, no one is responsible for their own actions anymore.
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Meet the new boss…
The Good news is Gore isn’t going to run in 2004. The bad news is Lieberman might. To me, there really is no difference between the two. They’re both about censorship. Think about it. Al’s wife Tipper was all about censoring music with the PMRC back in the 80s. Al was 100% behind her.
When Gore was running in 2000 he constantly spoke about how the entertainment industry needs to tone things down or face government reprisal. Yet, he took most of his campaign money from Hollywood bigwigs.
Lieberman is a member of the PTC. A group with similar goals to that of the PMRC, but more interested in television and video games than music. His group basically thinks they know what’s best for everybody and what programs everyone should be watching.
They were most recently in the news protesting the Victoria’s Secret special that was on. If Lieberman runs, I’ll do everything within my power to see that Bush gets re-elected. I don’t want the government telling me what I can and can’t watch.
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Jelly Donuts
Anyway, I caught the Fozzy show in Charlotte last night. For those of you that don’t know, Fozzy is a band fronted by WWF wrestler Chris Jericho. They do mostly covers of heavy metal classics. So we got to the club around 8. It was an all-ages show and they meant it. They had underage kids who were obviously WWF fans and people in their 30s like me who are classic metal fans. Some of the people in their 30s though were dressed like it was 1985. Even if I could still fit into my skin-tight snakeskin pants, I wouldn’t wear them today.
Sat at a table up in the balcony. I’m too old to be down on the floor anymore. But that didn’t stop me from having an obstructed view. People kept standing in front of me all night long. Once the show started I had a pretty good view.
The opening act was a band from South Carolina called Thread. They were pretty good if you’re into Creed type rock. The lead singer needs some work, though. His voice was great, but his moves were stiff on stage. He kind of danced like Elaine on Seinfeld. And his attire was very un-rockstar-like. They left the stage at about 9:45.
I went back downstairs and bought myself a Fozzy “We are huge rock stars” T-shirt. Fozzy took the stage at 10:30 and opened with a blistering version of Judas Priest’s “Freewheel Burning”. They did songs from their first CD like Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry, Dio’s Stand up and Shout and Krokus’ Eat the Rich. And they did songs off the new CD like Accept’s Balls to the Wall. They also did some songs that aren’t on either CD like “Wrathchild” from Iron Maiden, “TNT” by ACDC, and Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law”. I would say there were about a good 100 people in the club. Most of them up near the stage.
Halfway through the set WWF wrestlers Matt Hardy and Lita showed up. The fans, for the most part, left them alone or treated them with respect. You go Charlotte.
Of course, there was the one really drunk guy who was thrashing about like he was having a seizure, but he was “dancing”. He ended up knocking drinks out of people’s hands. He’s lucky he didn’t get the crap beaten out of him.
During a break in the act, one of the guitarists says “jelly donuts” for no apparent reason. That became a running gag for the rest of the night. At points, even the crowd was chanting “JEL-LY DO-NUTS”.
They closed out with Motley Crue’s “Livewire” at which point a mosh pit was formed in which their pig-like mascot Arthur started moshing too. They came back for an encore and did one of their originals “To Kill a Stranger” and then closed everything with the best version of the Scorpion’s “Rock You Like a Hurricane” I’ve ever heard. During that entire song, Matt Hardy kept making gestures like the wrestler named The Hurricane. WWF fans will get that and think that’s funny.
We didn’t stick around to try to get autographs or anything because it was midnight and I had to work today. But I did buy the new CD on the way out from Arthur himself. I may have gotten some of the song orders screwed up, but I’m doing this off the top of my head. It was a kick-ass show. I felt like it was 1985 again. I was banging my head and pumping my fist all night. This is how rock shows should be. If you get the rare opportunity to go see Fozzy in your town, don’t pass up the chance. You can check out their website at FozzyRock.com.
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The 2001 Trenchie Awards
For the first time and probably the last, I bring you the Trenchie Awards. The best and worst of my year.
Best movie of the year: Stigmata. I know it didn’t come out this year, but I saw it this year, so it counts. Honorable Mention: Memento.
Worst movie of the year: American Psycho. One of those movies where at the end you go “what the fuck was that???”.
Best album of the year: Horror Show by Iced Earth. This one was tough. I was also considering Poets and Madmen by Savatage and Beyond Good and Evil by The Cult. But Iced Earth rocked the hardest.
Worst album of the year: Stronger than Death by Black Label Society. This album was an extreme let down after the excellent Sonic Brew.
Best TV show of the year: Murder in Small Town X. This show was actually very suspenseful. The ending was a little anti-climactic and the winner, who was a NY fireman, I heard died in the 9/11 tragedy. Honorable Mention: Twenty Four. It’s not over yet, so it might make next year’s list.
Worst TV show of the year: The Joan Cusack Show. This was the most painful thing I’ve ever had to watch. My wife and I now rate bad TV shows on the “Joan Cusack Scale”.
Best wrestling moment of the year: Chris Jericho becoming the Unified World champion. Honorable Mention: the ECW reunion.
Worst wrestling moment of the year: Having to see Chris Jericho in a Speedo.
Best video game of the year: Not a banner year for video games, and I probably won’t get Final Fantasy X for a while, so I have to go with Twisted Metal Black. Not so much for the actual game but for the disturbing videos at the end.
Worst video game of the year: Simpson’s Wrestling. Continuing the long tradition of crappy Simpson’s video games.
Best movie line of the year: Lou Diamond Phillips in Bats. “Don’t tell me I’m up to my chest in batshit.”
Biggest dumbass of the year: Station manager Dave Ligafelt of Charlotte’s 95.7 WXRC for changing the format from hard rock to yet another classic rock station.
Most inane political agenda of the year: (tie) PETA trying to get the University of South Carolina to change their team name from the Gamecocks. A Pennsylvania judge reverses the death sentence for convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Worst sports moment of the year: Ray freakin’ Borque lifting the Stanley Cup after the Colorado Avalanche beat the New Jersey Devils in the Stanley Cup finals. Then having the balls to take it to Boston.
Biggest jackass celebrity of the year: Rage Against The Machine, who basically said in a press release that we had the 9/11 attack coming. Runner-up: John Travolta for hosting some Lifetime Channel concert.
My best personal moment of the year: Taking my new family back home to my hometown in New Jersey.
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Video Game Violence
So my friends at The Washington Post are at it again. No, it’s not about me this time, but you’ll see the connection if you’ve been reading this site. (Yeah, right.)
I read an article run in the daily newspaper that was run in the Post on 8/12/2000. The article was an opinion piece about how video game manufacturers are marketing their merchandising for M rated video games towards pre-schoolers. Now I thought it was just another article saying that the government should be the watchers of our children and not the parents until I saw this quote concerning ratings…
“More concretely, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) have introduced a Uniform Ratings Bill and are planning to hold hearings on it after the FTC report comes out. This bill would mandate an end to the current hodgepodge of rating systems and require that Hollywood, the video game industry, and music industry work together to create a single rating system. If the industries fail to come up with such a system, the FTC would be authorized to establish one.”
Notice a familiar name in there? That’s right kiddies. Our fair senator from Connecticut is not only concerned about pro-wrestling, but he seems to be meddling in the affairs of one of my other loves, video games.
Again, I say it is the parents’ responsibility to know what games your children are playing. Just like you should know what TV shows they’re watching. No excuses. And don’t give me any crap about how you’re too busy. You should always have time for your kids.