Month: July 2014

July 30, 2014 /

In a Divas division stocked primarily with vacant hotties, Paige and AJ are finally telling an honest catfight story. Most of WWE’s divas are delightful performers, but as actresses they lack depth of character. They are straightforward male fantasies – cheerleaders, bimbos, silly pretty girls, etc. – all of which is fine, a perk for wrestling’s target audience, but this sort of character struggles to ascend beyond the confines of the male gaze into literary…

July 25, 2014 /

Fully embracing his inner Hamlet… Ok interweb, have fun with this one.. #lifewouldbebetterif I turned heel. @twitter feed crash in 3….2….. — John Cena (@JohnCena) July 25, 2014 Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to step aside for Roman Reigns or vindicate Bray Wyatt. That is the question!

July 23, 2014 /

Well now, this is rather interesting: Disgusted. @TheDailyShow talks of blah blah blah… Propaganda. Moving on. — LANA (@LanaWWE) July 23, 2014 So WWE apologizes for Lana’s insensitive remark about the plane crash, meanwhile Lana herself dismisses the controversy with a swift tweet, and manages to sneak in a dig at Jon Stewart. Propaganda, ouch! The truth hurts! Wouldn’t it be fair to describe what he does over there at the Daily Show as “agitprop”?…

July 23, 2014 /

John Cena had this to say on Twitter just now: You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villian.True or not I am and have always been me.Thru crisis or triumph #nevergiveup — John Cena (@JohnCena) July 22, 2014 I can see he recognizes his own hero problem, which I have written so much about. To be a heel or not to be a heel, that is the question! And earlier,…

July 22, 2014 /

Just a few thoughts that arose from the results of Battleground, because things are moving so quickly that RAW has already changed everything! I was happy to see Rusev dominate that knucklehead Jack Swagger. Hopefully this will keep Lana’s mean girl foreign policy lectures in the mix a while longer. And really, how could she not allude to the plane crash in Ukraine? Lana’s whole purpose as a character is to comment on this stupid…

July 20, 2014 /

I really just want to add an addendum to my last post about my frustrations with the Bray Wyatt character. I caught in the replay a segment I had missed from Smackdown, in which Bray Wyatt accused Chris Jericho of having promised to always be there for his fans, and then abandoning them. To which I say, really dude? This is the best they can do with a character they build to such grand heights?…

July 19, 2014 /

Imagine the narrative complexity of the fatal fourway that awaits us at Battlground on Sunday. Any man can pin any man and become the champion. At first it will start more or less as two against two. But then it will start to break down, there will have to be a parallel storyline outside the ring. Cain will most likely turn on Randy Orton, that much has been telegraphed. There will be battles within battles.…

July 15, 2014 /

Lana is a character who can fill a stadium with ironies that refuse to resolve themselves. She lectures us, America, about our tendency to always solve our problems with violence, that we are saviors who cannot save ourselves. She likes to tell us that our country is crumbling, warns that pride always comes before the fall. Mean girl as she is, she’s not wrong about these things. Then, inverting her lecture into a ruthless satire,…

July 10, 2014 /

The WWE Network turned up a gem: HBK vs. the Undertaker at Wrestlemania 25 in 2008, smack in the middle of the epoch when I lost track of wrestling. We didn’t even have cable for a while there. HBK came down from above surrounded by heavenly white pyro and choir of angels music, exquisitely dressed in a white western outfit looking at first like a flamboyant man of God and then perhaps like God himself.…

July 1, 2014 /

A markish confession: the biggest reason I’ll never turn on John Cena is his entrance music.  What can I say?  I’m a sucker for a vaguely ethnic-sounding intro with a hook featuring horns.  The trilling guy who says something in Spanish I can’t quite catch is pretty rousing as well.  So the trilling guy and the horns do their thing, and I’m all primed to be excited about whoever comes out on stage. I will…