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-

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.

2Scott2Review: WWE Extreme Rules 2010

The internet seems to be generally underwhelmed by Extreme Rules, and I don’t understand why – I thought it was a good show, a nice rebound from a decidedly lackluster Wrestlemania. So, in an effort to correct this imbalance, I’ve decided that what the internet needs is my review of Extreme Rules. I’ve got a beverage, I’ve got some snacks, I’ve got Extreme Rules on the dish divver, and apparently I’ve got nothing better to do, so let’s do this.

The show opens with the WWE show opener, now safely sans-Hulk Hogan and sans-Ric Flair, followed by a video package hyping the show. I’m not sure how necessary this is, given that literally every single person watching at this point has either already bought the show or already gone out to a bar/restaurant to see the show, but WWE loves to get maximum use out of their video packages. I take the opportunity to enjoy some snacks.

Three minutes into the show we go inside the arena. HHH’s music hits but he doesn’t show. We then go backstage, where H and Sheamus brawl for a while, before Sheamus bashes H several times with a pipe. This angle was supposed to be done on Raw the previous Monday, but was derailed because Sheamus got stuck in Europe. I think it actually works better here, with H’s injury more proximate to the match. H is examined by trainers, and meanwhile ShoMiz comes out to the ring.

I’m a Miz fan. Ever since 2007 on ECW, he’s been entertaining as hell, and him with three belts is an amazing sight. Big Show with two belts looks like a normal man with one belt; Miz with three belts looks like most other wrestlers would look with eight belts. Miz says that they’re the greatest tag team in history, which was previously the gimmick of Jericho and Big Show, and also of Miz and Morrison, so it’s natural that Miz and Big Show make the claim. Miz puts over how Bret Hart is now obligated to announce live on Raw that they’re the greatest team in WWE history, another angle that got reshuffled because the roster got stuck in Europe.

Eventually Teddy Long comes out, and he and Miz go back and forth in a pretty good promo that would have been better if they hadn’t tried to talk over each other so much. Eventually we end up with ShoMiz facing a three-team gauntlet match – gauntlet match, that’s extreme! – where any team that beats them gets a tag-title shot on Raw the next night.

Wait a minute, a PPV match against the champions, for a No. 1 contender’s slot in a match on Raw? What is this, 1998? How’s this for a novel concept: If you beat the champions on PPV, you win the titles. Why not just have the gauntlet match be for the titles, or have the title match later in the night? Maybe this is another angle that got reshuffled and the gauntlet match was originally supposed to be on Raw last Monday, but the way this happened was just weird. Plus it completely telegraphed the ending – make the arrogant heel champs defend their titles in a gauntlet match and the result could go either way – maybe their arrogance is their undoing, maybe they connive and cheat and end up beating all comers and earning mega-heat from the crowd. But making the match for a No. 1 contender’s slot is basically a way of saying, “Go get a drink, the only thing you care about in the next fifteen minutes is the identity of Team #3.”

Team #1 is K-Kwik and Johnny Nitro. As usual, Backlash begins with a Wrestlemania rematch. This match is okay, but doesn’t last long. The match ends when Morrison refuses to release a headscissors on Big Show while hanging outside the ring and gets disqualified. Yes, the first match at Extreme Rules ends with a DQ.

Team #2 is MVP and Mark Henry. Henry, after a Decade of Dullness, finally blossomed as ECW Champion, and seemed poised for big things when he moved to Raw last year. Then, WWE Creative did nothing with him for six months, before sticking him in a team with MVP, another person who a lot of people expected a lot from before Creative lost his number. Now they get to job to the Tag Team Champs every so often, sometimes on PPV.

This match had a good storyline, where Big Show is on the floor recovering from John Morrison’s hold, leaving Miz on his own to fight off two men. Miz takes a lot of punishment. Big Show eventually recovers, but is dumped outside on the floor again when he comes in to break up a pin, allowing MVP to hit his finisher on Miz. At this point, I have to assume the ref blows his spot, because rather than continue tending to a disabled Mark Henry, he runs over to the other competitors where he watches clear as day as Big Show reaches through the ropes and knocks out MVP. Rather than calling for another DQ, the ref shoos Big Show as if he never saw the punch, then counts the pinfall when Miz covers MVP. The announcers even try to cover for him, saying “I’m not sure the referee saw that.” Good match in terms of storytelling, marred by the ref’s fuckup on the ending.

So now Show has been choked out by Morrison, dumped outside again, and Miz was just hit with MVP’s finisher, and here to pick the bones are the Hart Dynasty, TJ Wilson and Harry Smith. Two months ago their main schtick was to talk about how they were so much better than losers like Bret Hart and Davey Boy Smith; now they’re accompanied to the ring by Bret Hart with nary a word said. Sometimes it’s weird to watch wrestling with a memory.

The NuHarts knock Big Show off the apron, hit a springboard Hart Attack on Miz, and they’re the No. 1 contenders. This “match” was so short that I actually did a full blow-by-blow recap, and I did it in one sentence. Exciting if you’ve been waiting months to see the NuHarts finally triumph over ShoMiz, otherwise meh.

Next we have a backstage segment where Todd Grisham reports that HHH is injured, and Sheamus looks threatening. Some good heel spinning by Sheamus, where he talks about “If HHH is too scared to fight me,” while holding the pipe he just used to incapacitate him.

Next match is Punk-Mysterio, our second Wrestlemania rematch of the night. This match was one of the reasons why I bought this show, and it doesn’t disappoint. Punk-Mysterio was the second-best match at Wrestlemania, it’s only real drawback being that it was far too short. This match fixes that. Punk and Mysterio have a very, very good match here. Ironically, it’s during the wide shot before Rey’s entrance where you can best see that the Extreme Rules stage is a giant straight-edge X symbol.

Just as the bell is ringing, we get one of my favorite parts of the show. Michael Cole mentions how the wrestlers were stuck in Europe as a segue to thanking fans who bought the show in Europe. He says “They’re watching all over Europe tonight in places like the United Kingdom on Sky Sports, Canada, uh, of course Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, uh, all the other places around the world here tonight watching Extreme Rules, live.” So to recap, here’s Michael Cole’s list of places all over Europe:

• The United Kingdom
• Canada
• Uh
• Of course, Australia
• New Zealand
• Fiji
• Uh
• All the other places around the world

Michael Cole, thankfully not a geography teacher.

The only “extreme” stipulation here is that if Punk loses, he gets his head shaved. Punk and Mysterio trade short control segments, while Matt Striker tries to explain/sell Straight Edge to Cole and King. “It makes you feel wonderful when you’re pure, Jerry.” Punk’s facial expressions and body language as a heel are just awesome. His frustration whenever Mysterio kicks out, his selling of Mysterio’s offense, are incredible. About half-way through the match, Serena and Fake Kane interfere one time too many, and they get ejected from ringside. Finally, Mysterio hits a 619, but before he can get off the apron he is assaulted by a hooded Straight-Edge Society member from under the ring. Punk hits the GTS on an insensate Mysterio and gets the win.

There are conflicting reports as to the identity of the hooded Straight-Edge Society member, who reappeared on both Raw and Smackdown this week. Early reports, from people familiar with WWE storylines and plans said it was Joey Mercury, who has long been rumored to rejoin WWE as a part of the SES storyline. Later reports, from people in attendance at Extreme Rules who actually saw the guy, say it was FCW champion Alex Riley. Joey Mercury later made his re-debut in WWE in a dark match before this week’s Smackdown taping.

After an ad for Raw the next night and a shot of National Guard servicemembers in attendance, we move on to the Crime Time break-up match, Shad Gaspard vs. JTG in a strap match. I had no expectations for this match, as I’m not sure there was ever a Crime Time match I was a big fan of, but this was surprisingly good. Relatively short, but this was a pretty full show, and when you’ve got Punk-Mysterio, Edge-Jericho, Cena-Batista, another world title match, and a HHH match on the card, not to mention Randy Orton’s entrance and time to replay all those video packages before every match, Shad-JTG is not going to get a lot of time. If there was an Undertaker entrance to fit into the show, this match would have been bumped entirely.

Watching the match for a second time, the crowd is totally dead, they couldn’t care less, but I still find the match entertaining. There’s some vicious beating from Shad, and some fun use of the strap by both men. It’s not a five-star classic, but it’s better than any previous match I can remember involving either of there two.

Shad comes out first, wearing tights, which looks weird at first. JTG comes out next, and he kept the gimmick in the split-up. Shad I guess got the time-share in the Hamptons. Toward the beginning of the match, Matt Striker asks King about the strategy of a strap match, based on his years of experience in every type of match, and King doesn’t know how to respond.

JTG wins by secretly touching three turnbuckles behind Shad’s back, then hitting his finisher before Shad can touch the fourth. Not the most imaginative ending, but how many ways are there to touch four turnbuckles?

Up next is an ad for the KFC Double Down, which I paid PPV money to watch. In case anyone is wondering, the Double Down isn’t very good. Next, Todd Grisham says HHH has nerve damage, and won’t be able to fight Sheamus.

The next match is Randy Orton challenging World Heavyweight Champion Jack Swagger in an extreme rules match. First we need a five-minute video package to explain why we should care about this match, as if “Randy Orton challenging World Heavyweight Champion Jack Swagger” didn’t already accomplish that.

Matt Striker mentions on commentary that Randy Orton has had six world title reigns in his career so far. That’s the number that Steve Austin had in his entire career. Cole mentions that “everyone who’s ever cashed in Money in the Bank” has done so against an incapacitated opponent, confirming that TNA champion Rob Van Dam no longer exists in history. Sometimes it’s weird watching wrestling with a memory.

This match is fairly slow and plodding for a while, typical of an Orton match. Shortly after it starts to pick up a bit, Swagger takes a pair of headshots from a garbage can that are frankly hard to watch. I just saw Jack Swagger lose about 50 IQ points, while Striker excitedly yells, “Ooooohhhhh, brain pudding!” If in 10 or 20 or 30 years Jack Swagger can’t speak straight, or is in a wheelchair, or has Parkinson’s symptoms, or goes crazy and kills his family and texts his neighbor that the dogs are in the enclosed pool area before hanging himself from a weight machine, I’m going to remember this match. Those headshots are that brutal.

Orton jobs clean to Swagger after a gutwrench powerbomb, but gives him an RKO after the match. Sheamus comes out while Orton is making his way up the ramp, as if he was going to confront Orton over how he jobbed clean to Swagger but didn’t do that for Sheamus at the Royal Rumble. Instead Sheamus goes to the ring and demands that either HHH come out to fight him or the ref declare him the winner by forfeit. Backstage, Todd Grisham tells us that HHH will not be able to compete tonight, but is interrupted by H leaving the trainer’s room on his way to the ring to compete. Shocking, I know.

The storyline for our third Wrestlemania rematch of the night is that H has “nerve damage” in his left arm, which means that he holds that arm still, whenever he’s not using it like normal. The announcers can’t decide whether the nerve damage is causing HHH great pain, or numbness. H has no problem lifting Sheamus for a spinebuster, but then can’t lift him for a pedigree.

This match is a street fight, which is totally different from the previous match, which was extreme rules. I personally think it would have been better as a no holds barred match, or maybe just no disqualification.

Sheamus controls most of the match, taking advantage of H’s injury, and eventually kicks him in the head so much that H can’t fight back and Sheamus gets the pin. There is very little back-and-forth as H sells the injury. The match never really gets into a rhythm – whenever Sheamus beats on HHH, he steps back to admire his work, and whenever H beats on Sheamus, he stops to sell the injury. Very slow, very methodical. Not exactly boring, but neither is it entertaining. Maybe a big HHH fan would hang on his comeback segments and get sucked into the storyline of the match, but it left me cold.

After the match, trainers come put to help HHH to the back, and just when I was thinking, “Come on, Sheamus has to come back out and kick him again before the get to the back!” Sheamus came back out and kicked him again. Supposedly H is going to be off TV for a while now.

After about a hundred replays of that last kick to the head; a segment of trainers loading H onto a stretcher that lasts longer than any of the tag matches that opened the show; an ad for Judgement Day, which is now called Over the Limit; a plug for the band; and a backstage interview with Edge, it’s now time for Beth Phoenix vs. Michelle McCool in an Extreme Makeover Match for the Women’s Championship. An “Extreme Makeover” match means there’s a table of cosmetics at ringside. The only real reaction I have to this match is that I’m disappointed that Mickie James was released.

This match is pretty standard “garbage wrestling,” with the competitors hitting each other with weapons rather than trying to wrestle. In this case the weapons include a broom, a mop and bucket, ironing boards, and the aforementioned table of cosmetics. And that phrase “rather than trying to wrestle” makes it at least marginally better than most Michelle McCool matches. In fact, of all the matches at Extreme Rules, this is the one with the most weapons use. It’s basically weapons, weapons, weapons, weapons, Beth Phoenix reverses the Styles clash into her front slam, pin.

Next up, after an ad for the Wrestlemania DVD and a backstage interview with Chris Jericho, is the Edge-Jericho cage match, the fourth Wrestlemania rematch of the night. Watching this match live, I was bored to tears. It was slow, plodding, uneventful, and unending – it seemed to go on forever. Watching it a second time, early on the story is good – Jericho refuses to enter the cage until Edge beats him up outside and throws him in, then Jericho tries to climb up over the top whenever Edge isn’t holding him down. But after a couple of escape attempts, we get to the slow, plodding part. Edge hits Jericho, then both men sell for a minute. Then Jericho hits Edge, followed by both men selling. It’s supposed to raise tension, but instead it just bores me. They haven’t done enough to get me emotionally invested in this match before skipping right to the both-men-play-dead part. Also, the announcers keep trying to put over Edge’s achilles injury, but after the H match it just feels old.

At one point, after refusing to enter the cage, after trying to climb out four or five times, just a minute after trying to claw and scratch and squirm his way through the door, Jericho incapacitates Edge and actually leaves the cage through the door. He walks down the steps, but before actually stepping off the steps onto the floor he decides to go back into the cage and beat on Edge some more, which is so completely opposite from the entire psychology of everything Jericho has been doing up until that point that it turns the whole thing into kind of a farce. Two minutes later he’s back to trying his damnedest to escape.

Just when you think the match is going to pick up a bit with Edge’s comeback segment, it turns into a long drawn out Edge-tortures-Jericho segment, where Edge hits Jericho in the leg and then taunts him for two minutes before hitting him again. Finally Edge hits a spear and this match mercifully ends.

Don’t try this at home, watch the draft tomorrow, hey we’re in Baltimore, Cole plugs Over the Limit, and a video package replay cause apparently they have time to kill?, and it’s time for the main event, our fifth and final Wrestlemania rematch of the night, Cena-Batista Last Man Standing. This I thought was a great match, the best of the night. One of the better LMS matches I remember.

At the start, it takes until after the entrances and ring introductions and opening bell before the crowd remembers they’re not supposed to like Cena, so they chant “Cena sucks,” for about 15 seconds. It’s almost funny.

Cole mentions early on that Batista is a six-time world champion, and Cena is a nine-time world champion. Steve Austin was a six-time world champion in his career, and The Rock was a nine-time world champion. Cena and Batista are now the equals of the biggest stars of the Attitude Era, at least in terms of title reigns, and Cena at least seems set to far surpass them. As mentioned before, Randy Orton is also a six-time champion, with many more to come. Chris Jericho is also a six-time champion. Edge is a nine-time champion. And of course there’s HHH, the thirteen-time champion. That’s three Steve Austins, two Rocks, and a Hulk Hogan, all still adding to their lists of titles.

This match is a bit slow to start due to the match type – there’s a lot of Batista waiting while the referee counts, which at least makes more sense than the waiting for no reason in other matches. It doesn’t feel as slow as Edge-Jericho because at least there’s something happening, the referee’s counting. After a few minutes they get into more of an even back-and-forth fight, and then they go for some weapons. One guy lets out a single lonely “holy shit” chant attempt when Batista Irish whips Cena through a barricade. At one point, Batista is dismantling the announce table, and Striker starts saying, “This is the Batista I like! This intensity!” Batista stares for a moment, then throws a TV monitor at him.

At a certain point in the match, about the time of the F-U through the announce table I’d say, though possibly as early as the Irish-whip through the barricade, you think each move is the end, yet the competitors keep getting up. There’s a good four or five moves in a row that you think is the end, except the match just keeps going. Very well done by both men. The eventual ending has gotten a lot of flak, but I thought it showed ingenuity, and allowed the face to taunt his helpless opponent, which is always a good spot. It at least has the virtue of being unique. I just wish the tape hadn’t broken so much, the application ended up looking a bit clumsy.

All in all, a good to very good show. Match by match:

• ShoMiz vs R-Truth and John Morrison in one-third of a Gauntlet Match – Some decent action, but too short to be anything much.
• ShoMiz vs. Mark Henry and MVP in one-third of a Gauntlet Match – Good storyline, huge ref blunder, again very short.
• ShoMiz vs. The Hart Dynasty in one-third of a Gauntlet Match – Literally two moves.
• CM Punk vs. Rey Mysterio in a Wrestling Match – Very good match, these two work very well together.
• Shad Gaspard vs. JTG in a Strap Match – Surprisingly good. Short, but entertaining.
• Randy Orton vs. Jack Swagger in an Extreme Rules Match – Slow to start, picks up towards the end, but my main takeaway from this match is, Jack Swagger, protect your head!
• HHH vs. Sheamus in a Street Fight – Kind of slow, the whole injury storyline didn’t work any better than it ever does, the main highlight is how many times HHH gets kicked in the head at the end.
• Beth Phoenix vs. Michelle McCool in an Extreme Makeover Match – Better than most Michelle McCool matches, but that’s not really saying much. Nothing to this match other than the weapons, but at least it’s something. With Mickie James out of work and Natalya not wrestling, WWE literally doesn’t have enough women who can wrestle to put together a one-on-one match. So we get this match, literally Beth Phoenix wrestling with a broomstick.
• Edge vs. Chris Jericho in a Steel Cage Match – Very slow, very long, intermittently nonsensical. My least favorite of the night.
• Cena vs. Batista in a Last Man Standing Match – Very very good, best match of the night. Good action, big spots, innovative ending.

All in all a good show, and a full show – eight matches, even counting the tag team gauntlet as one match, and the last match ended literally two minutes before the three-hour mark. I highly recommend seeing it if you can.

Quick Review: A Plate of Meatballs

Since I blogged my dinner yesterday, I thought I'd do the same today. Tonight, I took some meatballs out of the freezer, put them in a pan with some tomato sauce, waited for them to get hot, and ate them.

Mmmmmmmmmm, meatballs.

Final Grade: A-

Quick KFC "Double Down" Review

So KFC has come out with their already-infamous "Double Down" "sandwich." (Straight quotes, then scare quotes there.) For anyone unfamiliar with this new item, it consists of bacon and three kinds of cheese (swiss, monterey jack, and cheese sauce) sandwiched between two chicken breasts, your choice of Original Recipe or Grilled. I got Original Recipe.

Now, in my mind a sandwich is stuff on bread, thus my use of scare-quotes above. I think if you've decided that the problem with sandwiches is the presence of bread, somewhere you're fundamentally misunderstanding what a sandwich is supposed to be. Bread is more than just a means to hold tasty stuff, it's integral to the taste and texture of the food. Just imagine taking a plain hamburger patty, slathering it with ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and cheese, and slapping it on a plate. It'd be a gooey, disgusting mess. Put that same combination on a bun, and you can open several different multi-billion dollar restaurant chains. So whenever someone tries to up the ante on a sandwich by getting rid of the bread, I'm skeptical.

The two chicken breasts in the Double Down are the same boneless chicken breasts KFC has been selling on their own for several months at least, so if you've had one you've already had 99% of this sandwich. And you already know one huge problem with this sandwich, which KFC has cleverly managed to turn into two huge problems: These breasts are dry as hell. Maybe on a real sandwich slathered in condiments that could be dealt with, but here not only is there nothing but a little cheese sauce to add moisture, but there's two breasts, with twice the dry.

Another thing you already know if you've had the KFC boneless breast is that this sandwich isn't nearly as large as you'd think: In terms of circumference it's smaller than most fast food burgers, about the size of the dollar burger from McDonalds. Obviously there's a lot of meat here, but not as much as the pictures make you think. This isn't a heart-attack-in-a-box, at least not any more than a Wendy's Baconator or a McDonalds Double Quarter-Pounder With Cheese.

Now that we've dealt with the breasts, let's get to the rest of the sandwich: Well, there isn't much else. Two slices of cheese and a slather of cheese sauce, and a strip or two of bacon. Honestly, eating this I forgot there was bacon on it except when it got caught in my teeth. These cheese was tasty, but even three cheeses wasn't enough to make up for the dryness of the breasts.

In the end I pulled off one of the breasts, and just ate one breast with the cheese and bacon. That was okay, if messy, but still a bit dry. How would I fix the Double Down? I'm glad you asked:

1. Get rid of one breast.
2. Put it on a roll.
3. Add more bacon, so you can actually taste the bacon.
4. Add either more cheese sauce or some mayonnaise, to help cover the dryness of the breast. Alternately, figure out how to cook a boneless breast so it doesn't wind up half-way to a hockey puck. But hey, how can KFC be expected to make a decent fried chicken breast, it's not like "Fried Chicken" is in the freaking name of your restaurant.

Final Grade: C-