Some thoughts on The Hunger Games, the movie this time

Once I'd finished writing up my thoughts about the Hunger Games books, I went ahead and watched the movie. I have to say I wasn't overly impressed.

The major flaw of the movie is the same one I see in a lot of movies based on books: The movie never felt like a coherent story of its own, it was just the book on super duper fast-forward. Most of the important bits from the book are there, in some form, but they've been trimmed for time almost to the point of losing their meaning, and they go by so quickly that I have no idea how anyone who hasn't read the book will have any clue what's going on. All the scenes are there but nothing gets the time or attention it deserves. The entire alliance with Rue lasts ten minutes onscreen. The time Katniss and Peeta spend in the cave is just over nine minutes. The fire attack is less than one. Scene after scene it's the same thing: get the gist of it onscreen and then move on to the next one.

The loss of Katniss's internal monologue really hurts the story as well. So much of what's going on is only going on in her head, how she's feeling, what she's planning, especially in the arena where there can be no external dialogue because she's trying to hide silently. There's no real way around that when you're turning a first person narrative into a movie, but it still hurt the story. The filmmakers efforts to mimic the first-person perspective consisted mainly of trying to confuse the audience in a few places when Katniss was confused: Blurring the shot when she's knocked out by the explosion, or using extreme-closeup shakycam to turn a fight or a run through the woods into an incomprehensible mess.

One advantage to ditching the first-person is that the movie can have scenes that aren't from Katniss's perspective, and does so to great effect. There are several scenes between Gamemaker Seneca Crane and President Snow, and scenes in the Gamemakers' control room, that help move the story along. And a scene from District 11 after Rue dies that helps setup the situation we'll find there during the victory tour in Catching Fire. Several times the movie cuts away to Caesar Flickerman hosting the coverage of the Games so he can supply the audience with information that came from Katniss's internal thoughts in the book.

The filmmakers captured the look and feel of the world very well, I thought. District 12 looked wonderfully drab, except of course for the three incredibly beautiful movie stars who live there. The Capitol was a bit of a mixed bag, the first shots of it, the long view from the train and the shots of people in the streets, weren't as impressive as I was looking for, but the interior shots in various buildings looked very good. The arena looked good as well.

The acting was another mixed bag. I thought Jennifer Lawrence was good as Katniss, she communicated Katniss's mental state in a way that helped make up for the lost internal monologue. Josh Hutcherson is very bland as Peeta. Liam Hemsworth doesn't really do much more than pout a lot as Gale. The supporting cast is better: Woody Harrelson is very good as Haymitch, though the movie doesn't really touch on the more serious sides of his character. Lenny Kravitz is good as Cinna, for the minute or so he's on screen. Donald Sutherland is sufficiently creepy and slimy as President Snow.

Overall, while there were things I liked about the movie, it skipped so quickly through almost everything it did that it was ultimately unsatisfying. Though I see it made $155 million dollars this weekend, so what the fuck do I know?

Final grade: B-

Some thoughts on The Hunger Games

I've had The Hunger Games series on my mental to-read list for a while now, but I never actually got around to them until the movie came out. I could feel myself getting sucked into the movie hype, and if I'm going to read a book I generally like to do so before I see the movie, so the other night I sat down and read The Hunger Games.

I don't mean that I started the series the other night, I read it the other night. These are not thick, meaty books that take time to devour. I read one reviewer compare them to cotton candy, and that analogy seems very apt to me - enjoyable (overall), hard to put down (in places), but ultimately not very fulfilling. The books are written from the first-person perspective of a 16-year-old, targeted for an audience a few years younger than that. Writer Suzanne Collins either accomplished this with expert precision or just isn't a very good writer, because the writing style of these books reminded me very strongly of stories written by classmates in junior high school.

Let me get straight to my biggest problem with the series: I'm big on endings. A large part of my enjoyment of a story hinges on how good the ending is. A bad ending means that an otherwise enjoyable story was a huge waste of time. A great ending can save an otherwise mediocre story, in fact if the story is structured so that it builds to a great ending, then accomplishing that ending means that the story building to it isn't mediocre at all. An unfortunately, the ending is where The Hunger Games series completely fails. The first book is very good, a gripping plot and engaging characters, and by about the middle of the book I no longer found the writing style distracting. The second book, Catching Fire, I also enjoyed, though the weaknesses that would come to full bloom in the third book, Mockingjay, are present to a smaller degree in Catching Fire. This is when large parts of the story become focused on Katniss vacillating over things rather than making decisions and taking action. This is when Katniss laying in bed recovering from things becomes a recurring story trope. This is when the first-person narrative structure, which helps the reader identity so strongly with Katniss in the first book, starts to become a bit of an impediment. First-person storytelling isn't very satisfying when the narrator starts to become less and less involved in the story, as major plot developments start happening off-screen and Katniss/the reader only hears about them as third-hand rumors long after the fact. The second book also suffers a bit from repetition, as the major driver of action in the second half of the book is a re-hash of the first book. But all of these issues were extremely minor in Catching Fire - had Mockingjay been as good as the first book, I would have been a big fan of this series.

Unfortunately, Mockingjay was a huge letdown for me. Part of this is the issues that began in Catching Fire - Huge swaths of Mockingjay are taken up by Katniss recuperating from various injuries and breakdowns, which is a realistic depiction of how a sixteen-year-old thrust into the middle of a war might react but is not very entertaining to read. As she is further sidelined and marginalized from the front lines of the main conflict, so is the reader. Once she finally goes back into action, that action is meaningless - first on purpose as it's simply another propaganda shoot, but even when she goes on her "secret mission" she accomplishes nothing but getting her squad killed and has no effect on the war.

In the end Mockingjay takes the story that started in The Hunger Games - about someone used and manipulated by a tyrannical government who manages to overcome and survive through her own skill and determination - and turns it into something very bleak, about someone used and manipulated by everyone, even the good guys, even her closest allies, whose spirit is broken and gives up trying to fight it. There's a perfectly valid, if bleak, story that Collins is telling in Mockingjay: that one power-hungry child-killing dictator will simply be replaced by another; that one regime of propagandist liars will simply be replaced by another; that the public at large will never, ever know the truth about anything and even a revolution will never change that; that ultimately nobody can really change the nature of things; that even the strongest of people eventually give up trying to fight these things, give up even trying to tell people the truth about them. But to begin a series with The Hunger Games, to fan the flames of populist revolt in Catching Fire, and then to end Mockingjay on that note was a huge letdown to me. Call me simple-minded, but I like more satisfying endings in my escapist fantasy. At least not having our viewpoint character beaten down and defeated in every way. She could have at least kept fighting, at least try to tell people the truth about Cain, instead of simply give up. Even the one thing she set out to do at the start of The Hunger Games is taken from her by the end of Mockingjay.

The reason the ending bothers me so much is because there really is a lot to like about the series - Katniss is a great character. I've seen people say she's not sympathetic, that she's too cold, and I couldn't disagree more. She's been shaped by her experiences, but she clearly has a good heart, otherwise she wouldn't even be in the Games. And why is a character cold and unsympathetic just because she's learned to survive in her world? The action sequences are well told, and Katniss's strategy in the Games is interesting to read. The development of the Katniss-Peeta relationship in the first two books I also really liked, though here again the second book retreads some ground already covered by the first. The plucky underdog leading a rebellion against a tyrannical dictator is a classic story, and the buildup to it in the first two books is good even if the payoff isn't there in the third.

In the end, The Hunger Games is the worst kind of story to me - a great buildup with a bad payoff. This is the worst kind of story for me as a reader, because it means for the next few weeks when my mind is on the story, and really from now on whenever I think about it, I'm going to keep rewriting the ending in my head, trying to bring the story to a more satisfactory conclusion.

I can't say for sure that Suzanne Collins wrote a bad story with The Hunger Games series. But ultimately she didn't write one I wanted to read.

Final grades:
The Hunger Games: A
Catching Fire: A-
Mockingjay: D
Overall series: C-

WWE Raw thoughts, 2012-03-19

This was a surprisingly good raw, I thought. Maybe it's just because I'm trying to focus on the positive and Rise Above Hate.

The opening promo by Punk was probably his best promo as a face. I'm still not a fan of the storyline, but it was sold well by both guys. Jericho's line "But your sister..." was pretty awesome. What I found really interesting though was the juxtaposition of the Punk promo with the Rock video segment, because of a discussion I was having with someone earlier today about "vulgarity" in wrestling.

I've often criticized Rocky and other Attitude guys by roughly paraphrasing their promos as "I'm cool cause I said 'ass.' Tee-hee, get it? 'Ass!'" and he thought this was inconsistent with my amusement at this story, wherein John Cena's mother reacts to Rocky's singalong about her with the line, "If you're starving for sex that badly, then go fuck yourself!" Of course, what I'm criticizing about those Attitude-style promos isn't the use of naughty words, but the reliance on extremely tame not-quite-vulgar language as a crutch to distract from how bland and uninteresting the promo really is, just like storylines use SHOCKING SWERVEZ!! to substitute for genuinely interesting stories.

This was on full display on the show tonight. CM Punk used "vulgarity" in a very effective way to help sell the intensity of his feud and put over how pissed he is at Jericho. Then soon after that we had Rocky saying "ass," because saying "ass" makes 12-year-olds giggle. Language is a tool like any other, it can be used skillfully and effectively to build a storyline, or it can be used clumsily just to get a cheap reaction.

- Rocky wasn't on the show much tonight. Just the prerecorded video segment, only about 30 seconds in front of the live crowd, no live promo. Are they worried about the reaction he'd get from the Philly crowd? Or do they think his promos suck as much as I do? I can't imagine that's true.

- John Cena-Mark Henry was a very good match. Kind of short and formulaic, but well worked by both men. In my dream world Big Mark is still inducting fools into the Hall of Pain.

- Daniel Bryan-Zack Ryder was another short but good match. Bryan and AJ continue to be very entertaining together. The Ryder rally seems like a good use of the crowd that's already there waiting to get into the arena anyway.

- I'm assuming that they wouldn't put the Ryder stuff on TV if he wasn't going to end up on Teddadore's Army. So that leaves two more spots on the face team - who is left to fill them? Great Khali? Hornswoggle? Ezekiel Jackson? The Usos? I'm still hoping for Miz, personally.

- The Aksana-Vickie Guerrero brawl was pretty awesome. Good showing for both of them. Vickie is always great, until they try to change her role.

- The Randy Orton promo was a whole lot of nothing, but it was cool to see them resurrect the old interview position.

WWE Smackdown thoughts, 2012-03-16

I've got no internet so I'm typing this on my phone. Google's Android browser seems to hate Google's Blogger interface, so I'll keep this relatively short.

Very 'meh' night on Smackdown. Sheamus vs. Chris Jericho was fine, but nothing special. MOTN was probably Big Show squashing Drew McIntyre, face Big Show dominating people is fun and Drew sold it really well. Mark Henry squashing Yoshi Tatsu wasn't even substantive enough to be fun.

- Santino cowering in fear from Kofi's pyro was a great bit. The Rudos of Raw vs. Teddadore's Army is still my favorite feud going into Wrestlemania, though I remain unimpressed with Team Long so far. I like Kofi but he doesn't set my world on fire, and unless they're going to be having a Verbal Debate I could care less about R-Truth. (Man oh man, I would pay money to see an R-Truth vs. David Otunga verbal debate.) They have three more spots on Team Teddy, I hope they fill it out with some interesting folks, like Zack Ryder, Hornswoggle, the Funkasaurus, a surprise return, or a face-turn.

- The best character work going on right now in WWE is the Daniel Bryan-AJ storyline. It would be so easy to go overboard with something like this, and play Bryan as an over-the-top angry abusive piece of shit. Playing it more subtly like this is far more effective, IMO. Bryan was suuuuuuper creepy in that first promo segment. This storyline was the best thing on the show, until AJ and Nikki Bella tried to wrestle a match. OMG that match, I think they both botched about 90% of the moves they attempted. I don't remember AJ being that bad in the ring last summer when she was teaming with Kaitlyn and Natalya.

- They showed surprisingly little of the Rock-Cena stuff from Raw. I'm glad they did because I thought it was crap, but I wonder what their reason was for downplaying it like that?

WWE Raw thoughts, 2012-03-12

Sigh. After the first hour of tonight's show, I thought it was shaping up to be a really great episode. Oh how wrong I was. Tonight reinforced my feeling more than ever, I completely agree with what John Cena said a few weeks ago: The best part of this year's Wrestlemania will be when it's over and Rocky is gone again and John Cena and Raw can both go back to doing things that have a chance to be entertaining. Jesus I am so fucking sick of the Rock on my TV.

The ironic thing is, I was pleasantly surprised how well the Cena rap bit went. Cena dressed up as 2005 John Cena, right down to how he carried himself, was actually kinda cool. Finally, after a year of hyping the Rock, finally they did a nostalgia bit from a time I actually have some nostalgia for. The rap itself wasn't great, though I was, as I said, pleasantly surprised by how little misogyny and homophobia was used in the rap, especially compared to Cena's raps about Rocky last year. So, kudos to John Cena for that.

Then came Rocky's bit. Sometimes I think I go a bit overboard when I say that Rocky's entire act is nothing sexist and homophobic jokes, with a bit of "I'm cool because I said 'bitch.' Tee-hee, 'bitch.'" thrown in. But god damn if tonight didn't show me to be 100% fucking correct. Rocky is officially at the same level of disinterest as Randy Orton during his Three Years of Suck. I came closer to turning off Raw tonight than I ever have before, the only reason I didn't was because I thought there was a chance Cena would come out to interrupt at some point and I didn't want to miss that.

My main takeaway from all of this is that I think I may finally understand the Cena haters. The Rock has enlightened me, because I find myself kind of angry about how much I dislike Rocky. Like, I've been watching and enjoying this show for seven years, and now this guy has shown up out of nowhere and essentially taken over the show and fucking ruined it. I'm angry that he's taken something I used to enjoy and turned it into something I don't like at all. I'm angry that the man who ruined the show for me is hyped by the show itself and lauded by other viewers as exactly the opposite, that the things I enjoyed were supposedly shite and this new thing I can't stand is supposedly the best thing evar. And I imagine that's kind of how some people feel about John Cena.

- Let's get the rest of the bad out of the way so I can finish with the good stuff: Jericho cutting a looooong promo about Punk's alcoholic father and how he's going to make Punk an alcoholic? Not necessary. I hate when wrestling tries to do overly personal shit like this. Why can't they just fight over who's really the best wrestler in the world? That promo they had two weeks ago was so good, I was completely sold on the feud at that point. Now I'm just uncomfortable. I really think sometimes that WWE writers are so used to building to a PPV every three weeks, when it comes around to Wrestlemania and they have so much extra time they don't know how to stretch a feud that long. With the exception of Long-Laurinaitis, and Orton-Kane due to Orton's injury delaying the start of that feud, every feud running into Wrestlemania was at a better place two weeks ago than it is now. The writers just don't know when to quit.

- H-Taker II(I): I could not give less of a shit about this match.

- Sheamus-Dolph was a good little match, but by far the best thing about it was the interview with Daniel Bryan and AJ in the stands. They two of them continue to play their relationship so freaking well. The was AJ looked down and away after saying Bryan wasn't rude to her? Freaking perfect. These two work so well off of each other, kudos to whoever decided to pair them up. I'd love to see them as a face couple eventually. Yes that contradicts what I said last week about Kaitlyn running an intervention to get AJ away from this controlling, manipulative douchebag. I can desire to mutually exclusive things. I contain multitudes.

- Everything about the Teddy Long-John Laurinaitis feud is incredibly entertaining to me. Santino Marella is awesome at everything he does. Mark Henry is completely awesome at everything he does. David Otunga, I'm still more of a fan of him in a sweater vest with a sippy cup than I am of him in the ring, though I guess he has to make the transition at some point. Even Aksana I'm liking way more now as more of a traditional babyface/girlfriend character than six months of making Teddy Long jittery. And the way Johnny Ace sold that shove tonight, where he basically ended up ass-over-teakettle in Michael Cole's lap, that was outstanding. That deserves some kind of fucking award for heel stooging.

- The fact that they've made The Rudos of Raw vs. Teddadore's Army a 12-man match instead of a 6- or 8-man match just shows you how many guys they have no clue how to fit onto the card when three of the top four spots on the card are taken up by folks who aren't part of the main roster - four of the top six spots if you count Jericho. Plus, they're really short on faces to fill out a six-man team. The heel team is going to be five former world champions and David Otunga, while Santino will probably be the biggest star on the face team.

- Finally, the Funkasaurus is back! Oh how I've missed his funky visage. Though I preferred his old finisher, that flying crossbody was way swanker than just another big splash.

WWE Smackdown thoughts, 2012-03-09

Santino, Santino, Santino. Santino Marella is a revelation. His push the last month has been amazingly entertaining. He is the most entertaining part of WWE's most entertaining angle right now. And he's having good matches, his cage match with Jack Swagger was clearly MOTW this week, with Swagger playing an adequate straight-man to Santino's antics. I really, really hope they keep Santino near the top of the midcard for a while. I don't think it's out of the question for him to even move up the card, with good in-ring work and great character work, why not?

One other quick note on that cage match: Wow it looked like Vickie really nailed Swagger with that cage door. He managed to have his head in just the right spot to get brained by the steel bar on the edge of the door instead of the flexy chain-link mesh. You don't really see headshots like that in WWE anymore, thankfully, though Jack Swagger has a history on the receiving end of them.

- Teddy Long is still totally owning this GM storyline. Johnny Ace is a great stuffed shirt character, but I love T.Lo with a bit of attitude. He's also now undefeated in in-ring competition, having twice defeated the Raw GM: Eric Bischoff at Survivor Series 2005 and John Laurinaitis tonight.

- AJ is now my favorite participant in the Sheamus-Daniel Bryan feud. Her expressions during promos are fucking golden. Bryan's promos are still really good, but they're not as good as her reactions. The way she looked abashed and ashamed when Bryan told her to shut up was spot-on perfect. I really hope that when they eventually decide to break them up, they do a whole storyline where Kaitlyn does an intervention or something.

- Not my favorite part of the feud: New and improved Sheamus, now with more misogyny! Daniel Bryan is a pathetic little pipsqueak, BTW don't be a bully be a star! Oy tonight was not a good night for Sheamus.

- Mark Henry beat the hell out of Ezekiel Jackson. I'm a big fan of Mark Henry beating the hell out of people.

- Whatever they're doing with Drew McIntyre, I wish they'd do it already. I'm a fan of the guy, but this whole trying to save his job thing is getting old.

Oh, look what just happened again.

Yesterday, when writing about the supposedly "radical" idea that the US legal system in inherently racist, I referred to the Oscar Grant murder case. Oscar Grant, a black man, was a passenger on San Francisco's BART transit system who had been accused of being involved in a fight on the train. BART police officers responding to the incident violently restrained Grant, and once they had him restrained, lying face-down on the ground with another officer kneeling on his neck, Officer Johannes Mehserle, a white man, drew his service weapon and shot Grant in the back. For the crime of shooting an unarmed, restrained man in the back, Officer Mehserle was convicted of "involuntary manslaughter" and sentenced to two years in prison, minus time served.

I cited this case as an example of racism in the legal system. One can only imagine the sentence if a black man shot an unarmed and restrained white man in the back. I said at the time that it was kind of a cheap shot, but wait a minute, look what just happened again:

Trayvon "Trey" Martin, 17, of Miami was visiting relatives living in a gated community in Sanford, Florida. He had just left a local 7-11 after buying a snack and was on his way home around 7:00 PM on February 26. George Zimmerman, a 26-year-old member of the local neighborhood watch, saw Martin and called police to report a suspicious man in the community. He tailed Martin in his car. He had a loaded pistol on him. The police told Zimmerman they would handle it.

For some reason, Zimmerman didn't obey. Minutes later, a number of local residents called police to report a fight. A gunshot was heard. Martin died 70 yards from the house he was staying in. Zimmerman was arrested and then released. He was carrying the pistol legally and has claimed that he was acting in self-defense.

...

"Zimmerman, an adult, had a gun. Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old, had Skittles. No way you can say self-defense," said the family's attorney, Benjamin Crump.

We'll see what, if anything, eventually happens to Mr. Zimmerman. But don't get any radical ideas about racism existing or anything.

"Radical"

So the latest garbage to spew from the twitching undead corpse of the Breatbart defamation empire is an effort to "vet President Obama." On the theory that after spending two years as a US Senator and presumptive presidential candidate, six months as the primary target of the Clinton political machine, six months as a major party nominee for President, three months as President-Elect, and two years as actual President of the United States, no one before has ever thought to look into his background.

Their latest revelation is that once, twenty years ago, when he was a student at Harvard, he introduced Harvard professor Derrick Bell at a rally on campus. I don't really have any substantive response to any of that, Breitbart didn't even deserve substantive responses back when he was still alive, but I was struck by a passage in this article from the Heritage Institute. The author has discovered that that self-same Professor Derrick Bell, or at least someone with the self-same name as Professor Derrick Bell, visited the White House in January 2010. In his post he describes Prof. Bell and his views several times as "controversial," but doesn't explain any of those views until the final paragraph, which includes this statement:

Bell is widely credited with pioneering the field of Critical Race Theory, a radical school of legal thought that holds that the American legal and political systems are inherently racist.

"Radical."

Hmm.

Is the US legal system inherently racist? Well, consider this:

• What percentage of prison inmates in the US are African-American?
• What percentage of death-row inmates in the US are African-American?
• What percentage of white cops caught on video murdering African-American men are convicted? Okay, cheap shot, but come on.
• How do the sentences given to white and black defendants accused of similar crimes compare?
• How do the conviction rates of white and black defendants accused of similar crimes compare?

Is the US political system inherently racist? Well, consider this:

• What percentage of Senators are African-American? Oh, I know this one: Zero.
• What percentage of all Congressional representatives are African-American? 7.7%
• How many African-American senators have there ever been in the history of the United States? Six.
• What percentage of US Presidents have been African-American? 2.2%
• What percentage of US Supreme Court justices have been African-American? 1.8%

And yet it's considered radical to suggest that the US legal and political systems are inherently racist? Really? I thought it was common knowledge that the US legal and political systems were inherently racist.

But I guess not in ConservaWorld.

WWE Raw thoughts, 2012-03-05

It occurs to me that I haven't written anything on here since the Rock made his epic return last year, so let me sum up my thoughts on the recent wrestling career of Mr. Dwayne "Rocky Maivia" Johnson: Fuck the Rock. This is supposed to just be about last night's Raw, so I won't spend the entire post outlining how utterly boring and uninteresting Rocky is, or his overreliance on misogyny and homophobia, or how he ruined Wrestlemania last year. Maybe I'll delve into those subjects in later posts, but for now suffice it to say, Fuck the Rock.

Instead I'll begin by giving the man some unexpected kudos: He wasn't bad last night. Those first two video packages were pretty good - though I was accused of harboring an irrational hatred when I pointed out that even when Rocky was in the building live, he still appeared via prerecorded video packages. But dumping the Cena merch in the harbor was pretty funny. The time travel bit was good too. The third video was kind of a big mess of nothing, and the first two certainly weren't without their faults, but they were certainly Rock's best promo work since he was Eugene's friend. Good job, dude.

Then we get to the live promo. Which wasn't horrible, as I had previously theorized having someone else there to help direct traffic in the promo at least prevented him from spending twenty minutes talking about twitter. He came out, he had a message to deliver - he wanted to tell Cena his height and weight, apparently - and he delivered it. It was good because finally he wasn't being a goofball, finally he wasn't wasting time talking about genitals and farts and breakfast cereal and Chinese food - he was actually angry at Cena and he threatened to rip his throat out. His delivery still ranged from okay to holy shit bad, but there was finally content. He finally gave a promo that was part of a feud and not just a way to burn off TV time.

And then, of course, he has to say that he's going to make Cena his bitch. Really, Rock? One promo, Rock. One fucking promo. Can you get through one promo without calling someone a bitch? Just one? Zack Ryder may be hobbling around on a cane to sell his back injury, but Rocky is the one using a crutch.

Cena wasn't a whole hell of a lot better last night, the less said about that empty arena... thing, the better, and his increasingly tortured attempts to explain why he wants to fight the Rock are stupid. Cena was good in the back-and-forth, though.

Anyway, there were other things on the show:

- I already mentioned Ryder, so let's talk about him coming out to call Eve Torres a ho. Actually, let's not. I am so fucking tired of misogyny on WWE TV right now. But as soon as she sees him, Eve breaks down crying, then tearfully chases him down in the back and kisses him. So first she was Zack's girlfriend, then she wanted to just be friends, then she was manipulating him to get publicity for herself, then she was a liberated woman trying to make it in a man's world (which naturally made her the heel), and now she's tearfully chasing after him? This Eve Torres storyline changes more often than George Lucas's interpretations of the original Star Wars trilogy, every time you turn around there's something else it turns out the story was really about the whole time.

- Speaking of shite promos, R-Truth gives some of the best promos on television. That two seconds at the end of his in-box promo was the best thing on Raw this week.

- By far the best storyline going into Wrestlemania is this Teddy Long-John Laurinaitis feud. And really, the hottest superstar going into Wrestlemania this year is Santino Marella.

- I have two questions: Who assigned Shawn Michaels as the special guest referee for H-Taker II(I) and why did they do that? For a feud built on the guy who won the last match demanding redemption from the guy who lost, this is far from the most nonsensical part of the build, but that really did come out of nowhere.

- Other stuff happened, but I didn't really care about any of it.

So there was a CT-Sen Democratic debate last night...

MLN has the video. I came away from this debate the same way I went in, I'm still basically behind Chris Murphy until something changes my mind. All three seem fine on the issues, for the most part.

Tong and Bysiewicz spend a lot of time reciting canned attacks on Murphy that are tangentially related to the question asked. The worst example being when Tong literally said in response to one Murphy statement, "That's not what Chris said at the last debate, I don't have a response to that but here's a long rebuttal of what he said last time." I get they have to take shots at Murphy because he's ahead, but it felt really forced.

Chris Murphy saying a primary would be a bad thing is really stupid. Didn't we learn anything from 2006 and 2008?

They keep going on about their plans. This is my plan, I have a plan, That's not really a plan, My plan is better than his plan, etc, etc, etc. News flash: You're running for senate, not president. No plan from any of these people is going to be worth a damn thing after Jan 1, 2013. Seriously, who thinks we're going to enact a financial transaction tax in this country because the freshman senator from Connecticut has one in their plan? I don't care about any of these people's plans, I want to know how they'll vote on things that will actually come up for a vote in the Senate.

Susan Bysiewicz says she admired the role Olympia Snowe played in the health care reform debate in 2009-10? Seriously? Olympia Snowe, who spent a year dangling her vote in front of Democrats on the end of a stick but who would up being less open to compromise than Joe freaking Lieberman? By the end of that process Lieberman was changing his policy positions daily just to piss off liberals, but he still wound up being a more gettable vote than Olympia Snowe, who never broke from the Republicans' unanimous lockstep opposition to health care reform at any time on any vote. I think Bill Tong just jumped to number 2 on my depth chart.

And a quick aside to close, if you're watching the CT senate race you'll want to know what exciting candidate is back for another run!

WWE Smackdown thoughts, 2012-03-02

Two posts in a row?! I used to do this back when I posted here, here's some random thoughts about last night's episode of Smackdown:

- Dolph Ziggler bumps entertainingly, but nobody in WWE sells anything better than Mark Henry selling Big Show's knockout punch. Tat is a thing of freaking beauty.

- BTW, though neither of them is going to get into a big match at Wrestlemania, Henry and Big Show are still having the MOTW every week.

- I can't get over how awesome AJ has been in helping sell this Daniel Bryan storyline - her fear whenever Bryan talks about her being threatened, or whenever another wrestler so much as looks at her, is great. But even better is how the more douchey Bryan is in his promo, the more turned on AJ looks. I don't even watch Bryan during his promos anymore, I just watch AJ's changing expressions.

- The Sheamus promo to open the show was nothing. He should skip that whole mess and just beat people up.

- I am thrilled beyond thrilled that they seem to be doing Randy Orton vs. Kane at Wrestlemania. I was terrified that they were going to shoehorn Orton into the title match with Bryan and Sheamus. Plus Kane and Orton had an awesome match together on Smackdown last summer. Granted that was face Kane, generally face Kane is entertaining and heel Kane sucks. But maybe it'll be good, and at least Orton won't ruin the title match.

- I like how the show has to become more focused now that they're doing the hard sell on all the Wrestlemania storylines. And of course by "more focused" I mean no fucking DeBiase-Hunico match.

- I said this before, if this Laurinaitis-T.Lo thing does lead to an eight-man or ten-man tag at Mania, assuming Team Laurinaitis is the four guys who came out to support him on the PPV and Team Long is lead by Santino Marella, I hope they use these team names: Team Laurinaitis should use the group name Alberto Del Rio used back in the fall when he was rounding up people to beat up John Cena: The Rudos of Raw. And Team Long should use a group name based on what Santino calls him: Teddadore's Army.

This is what it's like to be a huge nerd

This originally began as a comment on the Blog of Doom, but now that I got this whole thing fixed, I guess I caught the posting bug again. Will it continue? Who knows! History suggests no!

So on Oscar night, I was reflecting on how much more interesting the awards were back when I watched more movies. Back in the 90s I used to go to movies all the time, and I'd see three or five at a time. I'd see practically everything playing that I had any interest in, and some stuff I wasn't really interested in. But in 2011, I saw exactly two movies in the theater - The Muppets and Harry Potter 8. And they weren't exactly nominated for a lot of big awards.

(As an aside, WTF was with not performing the Best Original Song nominees? Other than curiosity as to whether or not Billy Crystal hosting was still as good as I thought it was ten years ago, the "Man or Muppet" performance was the one thing I was really looking forward to on the show.)

So the thought occurred to me, yes I used to go to a lot of movies and now I go to few, but exactly how many more more movies per year was I watching at my peak? This called for quantification! This called for data! So I went on Box Office Mojo and went through the top 200 grossing films of each year and counted how many I had seen in the theater. Turns out my peak was 26 films in 1998. So question answered, but now I had a data set of every year I've been alive and how many movies I saw in the theater in each of them. I made a graph of it:

And since it didn't occur to me to note them all on my first pass-through, I went through the top 200 of each year again, to verify my data and to note down the films themselves. So now I have a complete list of every movie I've ever seen in a theater. I can tell you that in my life I've seen 201 movies in the theater, and that the 200th movie I ever saw in a theater was Harry Potter 8. The 100th was one of the 22 I saw in 1999. I can tell you that in the six-year period between 1997 and 2002 I saw a total of 105 movies, and that in the entire rest of my life I've only seen 96, and that at my recent pace it'l be at least 2014 before the rest of my lifetime catches up with that 6-year period.

Data makes everything awesome.

FLAME WARZ!

First post in almost two years, and I find that Blogger has gone to hell in the meantime - they lost my URL, they lost my blogrolls, but I can't take time to worry about any of that because I'm in a TOTAL WARZ! across all of social media, and it cannot be contained!

Since the Blog of Doom won't let me post images (because I'm not a part of their system) (I can't post links there either - this is liberating!) I've come back to my first home in the social media world to post my reasoned, considered, logical response to the inestimable Mr. Bad_Subject:



I think that should settle the argument.

A Manifesto In Search Of A Name

On the ESPN two-guys-yelling-at-each-other-about-sports program Pardon the Interruption, they have a segment called "What's the Word?" in which the hosts are asked to select the perfect single word to describe various subjects. Let's try one together:

What's the word for a political philosophy centered around promoting maximum individual liberty for all people?

I have to admit, I'm stumped. If we've learned anything this week, it's that the answer is absolutely not "Libertarian."

For years, I've called myself a "small-l libertarian." I used the word libertarian because my political philosophy is based on the belief that an individual's liberty should be limited only by the need to avoid infringing any other individual's liberty. And I used the "small-l" modifier because, as we all know, the big-L Libertarians believe nothing of the sort, they merely want to enable corporations to do whatever they want and could care less about the liberty of anyone who isn't a CEO, though they occasionally pay lip service to some civil liberties issue that's too egregious to get away with ignoring, like the drug war or gay marriage, just to try to distinguish themselves from big-R Republicans.

The latest case in point is Rand Paul, who is such a lover of liberty that he don't think people should be free to buy lunch or ride the bus, let alone have an abortion or get married. By all rights the word "libertarian" should define the exact opposite of nearly every policy position Rand Paul espouses. Yet not only is Rand Paul called a libertarian, but he's called a libertarian precisely because of these positions. "Rand Paul wants to limit people's freedom to marry, limit people's freedom to collectively bargain for better working conditions, wants to eliminate people's freedom to end a pregnancy, and doesn't think it's the government's place to ensure people have the freedom to buy lunch or find a job or use a public building. What a libertarian!"

Reluctantly, I've finally had to admit that the battle has been lost. The Libertarians have defined the word "libertarian" in the public mind, and there's nothing us libertarians can do to change it. But I'm left with the question of how to describe my own beliefs. Now that "libertarian" has been defined to mean "let businesses do whatever they want and screw people over as much as they can," what name do I use for my own liberty-based philosophy?

What's the Word? A political philosophy centered on individual liberty is called _______.

I'm open to suggestions.

2Scott2Review: The Evolution of Everything by Mark Sumner

The Evolution of Everything is not what I expected it to be, but for what it is it's very good.

The book grew out of a series of essays originally published on Daily Kos, which were a mixture of bits on the history of the theory of evolution and examinations of various other subjects using evolution and selection as a lens through which to analyze them. When I learned that this concept would be expanded into a book, and especially when I read the promo blurb for the book, I was expecting a lot more of the latter part of that mixture, with perhaps enough of the former to tie it all together. In the finished form, the book is in fact the reverse: an expanded examination of the development of various aspects of evolutionary theory, with relatively little of the broader examination that I was expecting. Perhaps The Evolution of Evolution would have been a better title.

Throughout the book, the focus is squarely on evolutionary theory, including but not limited to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. Sumner dispels the misconception that evolution was an idea that originated with Darwin, and places Darwin's ideas in the larger context of general scientific thought at the time, explaining why the first theories about evolution came about when they did. He covers earlier ideas such as Lamarckian evolution, and traces the development of later misunderstandings of Darwin's ideas, such as eugenics, social Darwinism, and the modern anti-science Creationist fervor. There is comparatively little of the broader application of selection and "survival of the fittest" (a phrase nearly as misused and misunderstood as the word "theory" BTW), and what there is mostly comes out of the original Daily Kos essays. That disappointed me.

Sumner does a very good job of explaining the science so a lay person can easily understand it, without dumbing down the subject matter. The comparison I make in my head is to Michio Kaku's book Hyperspace. Kaku's introduction to string theory is far more technical than The Evolution of Everything, and as a much longer book is able to provide a more in-depth exploration of its subject, but both books find the right balance of making their ideas easily understandable without making the explanation simplistic. This isn't Evolution for Dummies, this is Evolution for the Un- (or Mis-) Informed. I like to think of myself as a scientifically literate person, but I learned a lot from this book, particularly about how various theories related to each other and how other discoveries set the table for evolution and natural selection.

Now I'm going to make every author cringe: This is a rather short book. (CRINGE!) I know authors hate it when readers complain about books being "too short," because writing a book is an equally trying process whether the finished product is 200 pages or 400 pages, and because authors are trying to produce quality not quantity, and it's a bit gutting to expend that much effort trying to make a book engaging and interesting and entertaining and informative, and then for someone to slam it based on page count. All I can say is, try to see it as a compliment: if the book wasn't engaging and interesting and entertaining and informative, I wouldn't give a shit about there not being enough of it. Part of it is also based on my expectations: After the background on natural selection is finished, just when I'm thinking that the book is finally going to get to the Everything part, it ends. So don't blame me for complaining about the page count, blame the marketing people who made up covers for The Evolution of Everything and then used them to bind The Evolution of Evolution. 

Final Grade: I'm really conflicted about what to put for a grade. I'll put it this way: As an introduction/explanation of evolution and natural selection, this book is a solid A-; better as an introduction I think, a bit thin on detail for someone already familiar with the subject. And I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel, The Evolution of Everything Else.

WWE Smackdown 2010-05-14 - Not-Quite-Liveblog

I basically did this last week, except I didn't post it live. I'm about 20 minutes behind to start, I'll catch up as we get commercial breaks. Whenever I have a thought, I'll post it.

- Oh, great, we open with ANOTHER rerun of the Drew McIntyre - Matt Hardy beatdown. Was that only last week? Cause I've already seen this video package at least six times.

- Smackdown is in Buffalo, New York. I haven't had any buffalo wings in a while. Mmmmm, buffao wings.

- Christian and Kofi know each other's wrestling styles because they were both in the 27-man MITB clusterfuck? Great insight there, (whiever is yelling in the ear of) Todd.

- Scott Norwood callout by Striker. I guess I should have expected that. Have I mentioned that Matt Striker is the best thing on commentary since JBL?

- BTW, spellcheck of earlier thought:

• Kofi = Kori, Kodiak, Sofie, Sofia, Korrie.
• MITB = MITE, MITT, MITZI, MITTY.
• Clusterfuck = clustered, clusters, cluster, lackluster.
• Spellcheck = spell check, spell-check, spellbound, spellbinder, spelldown.
• Whiever = whoever. :)

- So does this count as an Intercontinental Title reign for Kofi?

- So I guess the whole "Teddy long on probation" thing is still going on, even if Vince can't be arsed to show up on Smackdown.

- Christian-Kofi was a good back-and-forth match, I thought. Somehow it just wasn't as good as it was trying to be.

- Shad Gaspard vs. Jesse Guyver? This should be just as good!

- Ah, they're rerunning the clip with Rey's family and Eddie Guerrero's son Dominic.

- And now rerunning Edge-Orton from RAW. Feels like that was six months ago because of how many times I've seen the clip.

- MVP-JTG? There-s so much going on in that team - the utter failure to do anything with MVP, the uselessness of breaking up Crime Time just to stick JTG in another team, the incongruity between MVP's life redemption background and JTG's role in a team called Crime Time. So much to unpack in that team.

- Wow, Trent Baretta and Caylen Croft still exist! And they're called the Dude Busters now. Lots of ECW folks showing up on TV lately.

- Ooohhhh! Our Savior is on! Everybody put your hands to the screen - ten minutes ago. Unless you're on DVR like me.

- These twenty-minute Swagger promos are interesting, not sure it's getting him more heat but he has the mic skills to pull off 20 minutes in the ring alone and still keep it interesting. Also like the tactic of taking a commercial break in the middle of the promo to make it seem even longer.

- Did I mention before that I have absolutely zero interest in heel authority figures? Plus, I thought she resigned as GM of Raw?

- I would be shocked if this was actually the first 2-on-1 Women's Title defense.

- I almost wish I wasn't spoiled on this match so I could experience the true shock and horror of Layla as Women's Champion. At least they mentioned her last name. She's also the second Diva Search winner to win a title.

- And now I'm caught up live.

- Rey Mysterio is wearing sleeves but no shirt.

- Rey-Punk was good again, but it's starting to get worn. I hope Judgement Day is their last match for a while.

WWE Smackdown livebloggish thoughts - 2010-05-07

I'm watching Smackdown (almost) live for the first time in a few months. After this awful week, particularly today, particularly today from 4:15 to 6:15, I could use some entertainment and some levity. Can Smackdown provide some? Let's find out...

- Geez, how often do they change the Smackdown theme music? About as often as I watch Smackdown, it seems.

- Matt Hardy shaved the sides of his head so he looks like RVD now. I wonder if that's intentional.

- "You heard what Teddy Long said!" Damned skippy! T.Lo is the man! "Josh, I gotta roll." Always the best, now the only, General Manager in WWE. What ever happened with the whole probation storyline? Did that just go away when Vince didn't feel like showing up on Smackdown anymore?

- Luke Gallows wrestles in camouflage pants and a tank top. Another who looks less like a wrestler than does any NXT rookie.

- So at whatever the hell they're calling Judgement Day now they're going to have the match I originally thought they were having at whatever the hell they're calling Backlash now: join the SES vs. shave Punk's head. I'm obviously rooting for Punk, but I'm not optimistic.

- Ever since he turned heel, every single time Punk talks, it's golden. Fucking awesome, every time.

- A Michelle McCool match. This makes me glad I'm not quite live yet - I can fast forward through this.

- Dolph Ziggler's face is the color of Sheamus. The rest of his body is the color of HHH. And my disinterest in Dolph is greater than the sum total of my disinterest in HHH and my disinterest in Sheamus.

- Holy shit! A Prince Nana call-out on Smackdown! And they didn't edit it out! I love Matt Striker on commentary, he's the best they've had since JBL. Like how he calls it the World's Heavyweight Championship like Gorilla Monsoon used to.

- Ziggler-Kofi was surprisingly entertaining, considering Dolph Ziggler was in the match.

- Now they re-run the video package they just ran an hour ago, which itself is just a re-run of the end of last week's Smackdown. People wonder, how can WWE put on five hours of television every week? Cause an hour or two of it is reruns and recaps.

- And now I'm caught up live, can't fast forward through the commercials.

- Cody Rhodes has another ridiculous fake tan. Christian too. What is it with wrestlers and comically awful tans? Trust me, that's not what made Hulk Hogan as popular as he was.

- It occurs to me that this is really more of a liveblog. If only I had posted it at 8:30 and updated it with each bullet. Oh, well. Maybe the next time I watch something live.

- Christian and Kofi are fighting for the Intercontinental Championship, meanwhile Jack Swagger is WHC. I'm really pulling for Big Show in that match, but again I'm not optimistic.

- Oh, Joy. Another video package. Followed by an ad for the Wrestlemania DVD, which is essentially another video package. Then after the commercial break, it's time to rerun the Drew McIntyre firing from the beginning of the show. It's video packages all the way down.

- "When I was taking on the world and winning, where was Big Show?" Um, back then, Big Show was WWE Champion. Don't think you've got him beat there, kid.

- Why are commentators always surprised when people come down to join them on commentary? You'd think the third chair and third headset would be a clue.

- I've always liked face Big Show. He's a very likable, charismatic guy, when they let him be. He was great on commentary tonight.

- I love how, after Big Show chokeslams Swagger through the table, the referee runs over, waving his arms for him to stop. One, Swagger is twice your size, and Big Show is twice his size, so WTF do you expect to do to stop them? Two, dude, Swagger is already lying insensate amid the ruins of a table, and Big Show is already walking away. You're just a bit late with your exhortation for them to stop fighting.

- God, that title looks so small when Big Show is holding it. I remember when Rey Mysterio wore that belt, it was basically full-torso body armor. When Big Show holds it it looks like a trinket.

All in all a good show, minus the reruns, video packages, and divas match. Maybe I'm being generous because the last wrestling shows I saw were Impact and NXT, but wev. I liked it. I'm glad I decided to watch Smackdown tonight, I needed some entertainment after today. Maybe I'll even watch it again next week.

WWE NXT thoughts - 2010-05-04

An obstacle course? Seriously? I've been saying since they started that these stupid "challenges" every week have basically turned NXT into the Diva Search. But look at what the "obstacles" are on the "obstacle course" -

• Monkey bars - This is actually one of the more sensible obstacles. Pretty standard obstacle course obstacle, though you'll have to explain to me what monkey bars ability has to do with with either wrestling or being a WWE performer (different skillsets that sometimes don't overlap as much as you'd hope).
• Climb a rope ladder and ring a bell - Rope ladders are also often an obstacle course standard, though this rope ladder looked particularly insubstantial, especially when a 260-pound man is trying to climb it.
• Run up the arena steps - Okay, run up stairs, pretty normal.
• Drink a soda - Um, what? This is officially the dumbest thing they've asked the rookies to do, surpassing the American Gladiators q-tip fighting and hawking programs in the stands. Making the wrestlers drink a soda quickly is not a skill they need to wrestle well, not a skill they need to do all the other things involved in being a WWE performer, and is incredibly boring to watch. The only saving grace here was the absurdity of having Referee Charles Robinson there to officiate the wrestlers trying to chug a soda, but that wasn't enough to make this entertaining.
• Run down the arena steps - Not quite the challenge of running up the steps, but okay, they have to get back down to the ring somehow.
• Juggle for five seconds - What? Aside from all previous arguments about what any of this has to do with being a WWE performer, the obstacle course is a race. You're trying to finish it quickly. You're trying to beat the times of the other competitors. How exactly do you juggle for five seconds in less time than someone else? This was completely nonsensical, almost enough to be dumber than the drinking, but I still call that one dumber because at least the juggling only lasted for five seconds.
• Spin around a bat - Um, what? I don't get what this has to do with anything, plus some people spun more times than others.
• Push an equipment cart up the ramp - This only makes sense by comparison when it immediately follows the drink, juggling, and bat.

So there you go, an obstacle course, only half of which is comically nonsensical. And we had to watch this obstacle course eight times. They got rid of a show with Christian, William Regal, and Yoshi Tatsu and replaced it with this.

- I really don't get what they're doing with Bryan Danielson. Well, I get it, but I don't get it. They've turned him into Colin Delaney. They can't have him win NXT if he's 0-20. Well, they can do whatever they want, but I think this whole "Daniel Bryan losing streak" was a much better idea in people's heads that it's turning into in reality. I just hope when they finally give him a win it's not some weak rollup against The Miz.

- I actually kind of like Michael Tarver's character. I know we'll probably never see him on TV again after next week, but he does unwarranted arrogance well. I also liked how, at the end of his match with Daniel Bryan, when he finally won a match, he looked completely dumbfounded for a few seconds. Like he had no idea what the hell had just happened, he was so unfamiliar with winning matches. And his [nXt] t-shirt: Genius.

- All of a sudden out of the blue Justin Gabriel has a beef with David Otunga. um, okay. This show really is incredibly random.

- I'll say this for the NXT Rookies: They all wrestle in wrestling tights. So they start off looking more like real wrestlers than people like John Cena, Rey Mysterio, Shawn Michaels, K-Kwik, Johnny Nitro, Great Khali, Carlito & Primo, etc. None of them even wear long tights. I'm old-school, I appreciate people who wrestle in wrestling tights.

TNA Impact thoughts - 2010-05-03

So I watched TNA Impact for the second week in a row. First time that's happened, ever. Maybe they really are doing something right.

- The first thing they do in the show is announce the show is moving back to Thursday, starting next week. So the new Monday Night War didn't quite last as long as the last one did. At least TNA threw in the towel quickly rather than run their company into the ground trying to compete with WWE. Though it's another reason why I think they should move Smackdown back to Thursdays. Nobody watches that show on Fridays, not only would more people watch in Thursday but they could knock TNA off of their night again.

- Speaking of which, still with the WWE rings? Ric Flair called his WWE ring his most prized possession, live on TNA TV. Meanwhile Bryan Danielson can't even call himself Bryan Danielson. Do folks like RVD and Jeff Hardy agree that a WWE Hall of Fame ring would be their most prized posession? Cause anyone who agrees with Ric Flair should be trying to get a WWE ring, not wasting their time in TNA.

- Black Naitch was pretty cool overall. Though I did notice, when Hogan came out and beat everyone up (did the former world champion just get taken out by one punch from a 60-year-old man?) and made about fifteen matches pitting all the brawlers against each other, Jay Lethal was left without a match, and indeed he didn't even appear on the rest of the show.

- Brian Kendrick is in TNA now? Still with that funky jacket he was using as The Brian Kendrick towards the end of his WWE run. Is he another who is with TNA primarily to get away from WWE's drug testing? That's at least three.

- TNA did something WWE was never able to do - they made Ken Kennedy promos boring. Even when he couldn't stay healthy for two weeks in a row, Kennedy's promos were always entertaining in WWE.

- Just when a fairly entertaining three-way tag match gets going, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall come out to interrupt. Because the Dudleys weren't slow and awkward enough already. I was momentarily glad to see the MCMG beat them down, until they promptly got beat down themselves.

- Overall, there were more people I didn't recognize on the show this week, which I think is good. It's not good when the show is entirely WWE rejects, they need to mix in TNA guys, which they did this week.

TNA Impact thoughts - 2010-04-26

Just watched this week's Impact cause I was curious to see RVD as champion, and I had some thoughts.

- The show opens with an RVD promo where he explains that the reason he's not with WWE is because of their Wellness Policy. We're apparently supposed to boo WWE because of this, and cheer TNA because they let the wrestlers drug it up, I guess by the same logic that makes CM Punk a hated heel because he doesn't abuse addictive substances. (A Punk-RVD feud would be EPIC, BTW.) My main reaction is that I'm surprised the Wellness Policy actually works / has enough teeth that it would be a reason for someone to avoid WWE. Maybe WWE folks aren't on as many drugs as I thought.

- WTF is with everyone fighting over their WWE Hall of Fame rings? If TNA TV were to involve WWE HOF rings at all, you'd think it'd just be to throw them in the gutter and exclaim "These ain't worth shit, now I'm in TNA!" If WWE HOF rings are so prized, why am I watching TNA instead of watching the future WWE HOFers on Raw?

- So Ric Flair has stolen JBL's gimmick as a "wrestling god"? And holy crap he got old in the last two years. He even flubbed his promo a few times.

- It's still weird to me that Hulk Hogan isn't using Hulk Hogan's theme, or even some TNA bastardization of Hulk Hogan's theme like they did with Christian, Booker T, Dudley Boys, etc.

- Speaking of which, how many people in TNA right now are WWE rejects? I don't think there were more than a handful of men's wrestlers on the entire show who weren't former WWE talent, and the vast majority of them are involuntarily not WWE employees. I guess that's why the ended the TNA Originals vs. carpetbaggers storyline - not enough originals left.

- All of that said, the show is markedly better than it used to be, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. I actually watched the whole thing, and didn't spend the whole time lamenting what a disaster the show was, like I usually do with TNA. But I'm not going to be a regular TNA viewer, I'm a WWE viewer. It took putting Hulk Hogan in charge and giving RVD the title just to get me to watch TNA on DVR five days later. Whatever TNA fans were enjoying about TNA for the last several years was not something that attracted me, so now that TNA has changed to get me to upgrade my opinion to "not a total disaster," are TNA fans still entertained? I obviously can't judge that, but I wonder.