Presidential Debate

Did I just hear Dubya say "We cannot send mexed missages..." Did he actually (attempt) to say that?

Latest ITR

Contemplating wrestling deaths can be kind of a downer... but Baby Killer (and Future Dead Man) Gene Snitsky almost makes it fun. Sure he popped Lita's bun out of the oven about six months early. But how can you stay mad at a guy named "Snitsky"? Kane and Lita's baby MIGHT have gone to Wrestling Heaven, except the couple were clearly Devout Catholics (opposed to birth control, at least), and we all know dogma dictates that Kane's unbaptized son can only go to Wrestling Limbo. Still, that hasn't stopped the Canadian Bulldog from collecting an EXCLUSIVE~! Transcript from some of the other denizen of Wrestling Heaven (and more!) in an all new Inside the Ropes.

ITR (Online Onslaught)
ITR (The W)

Bulldog's Bimonthly (Bi-yearly?) Media Review

Wow... it's been a while since I've done this, much less blogged at all, so I'm gonna try and tackle a few things I've seen/read in the last little while.

Skipping Christmas
This was the last John Grisham book that I hadn't read yet. As I mentioned a few weeks back here, thanks again to apprentice extraordinaire Johnny ITR for sending this to me as a b-day gift!

Anyways, this one is a REAL departure from Grisham's other work, legal or otherwise. I expected as much going into it, but I really wasn't sure what kind of voice he was going to take in this lighthearted story about a couple who decides to, well, skip Christmas when their daughter is out of the country.

He has a very interesting voice in this one, much more poetic and almost Dr. Seussish in its repetitiveness. In the fact, the first few chapters seem to drag on for a loooong time repeating the same points over and over again. But as the story gets going, it really does a novel little tale of small town America. I can definitely see why they decided to make this into a movie (the upcoming Christmas With The Kranks), although... Tim Allen? Come on.

Anyways, it's hard to judge this one against his other books because they're so different, but I'm definitely glad I got a chance to read it. A very quick read as well, I should had.

And now that I've completed the whole damn collection, my personal favorite Grisham books:

1. The Runaway Jury (the movie truly doesn't do it justice)
2. The King of Torts
3. The Partner (I'm SHOCKED no one ever decided to turn this one into a film)
4. A Time To Kill (the film version was just about perfect in its loyalty to the novel)
5. The Chamber
6. The Summons
7. The Last Juror
8. The Firm
9. The Pelican Brief
10. A Painted House
11. The Client
12. The Brethren
13. Skipping Christmas (only because it hardly fits in with the rest of these guys)
14. Bleachers (as I mentioned a while ago, I really didn't enjoy this one)

I think that covers all of them. Am I missing any?

Lost In Translation

Everyone told me I needed to see this one. So last weekend, with nothing to do one night, I rented it. LORD was I ever disappointed!

This film is slowwwwwwwwww. Soooooo slowwwwwwwww. Drags on and on and on and on and on. How slow is it? I probably could have TRAVELLED to Japan in the time this thing took to play out. Ok, maybe not. But you get my point. Soooo sloowwwwww....

Bill Murray is okay in this as the aging movie star going through a midlife crisis, but he's not spectacular the way so many people have touted this. And I'm sorry, but Scarlet Whateverhername is, the woman all the papers are declaring as the next 'it' girl -- I just don't get the attraction. She's nothing special at all, acting skills or otherwise.

I certainly could have lived out a happy existence never having seen this one. Maybe something got lost in the transl.....nah, too easy.


And... there was one other movie that I was going to review here, but dammit, I've forgotten thename of it. Shows you how good it was (terrible). Just thinking of Lost In Translation must have dulled my senses. Oh, well. Until next time...

Latest ITR

You know what? OO might have gotten it wrong yesterday... even the best of us get duped sometimes, so today, you really oughta check out the Canadian Bulldog's always-exclusive, always-insider details on what REALLY went down at SD! tapings this week!

Inside The Ropes (Online Onslaught)
Inside The Ropes (The W)

Rest In Peace Ray Traylor

Wow.... unlike a lot of the deaths of the past year and a half, this one seemed to come out of nowhere. Didn't seem to associate Big Boss Man in the same class of drug users as Hercules, Hawk and so on. And hopefully, that's not even the case at all. From everything I had read about it, he seemed to be a good family man, active in his community and charity work (wasn't he the guy who started off the WWE auctions? I think he was.)

I wasn't a HUGE Bossman fan, though I admit, I had one of his T-Shirts (it was a really cheesy one, with his logo across a jail cell door. I really did think he'd be Intercontinental champion one day, especially around 1991 when he was chasing Curt Hennig's belt. He was certainly over enough to warrant holding that title at the time. Prior to that, I thought his feuds with both Hulk Hogan and Ted DiBiase were pretty damn good.

I remember his screwed-up debut in WCW (compared to... oh, pretty much everyone else there) where Bobby Heenan quipped "Wow, he looks like a big boss, man!" so that even the dumbest of fans out there could say "Oh, THAT'S who he is!". The series of names he went through there -- The Boss, The Guardian Angel, Big Bubba; I'm sure I'm missing a few as well -- just never fit him because he was Big Boss Man. Period. The character fit him to a T.

His promos during his Corporation run were pretty good, too, in a morbid kind of way, especially the stuff with Al Snow and Big Show. I remember watching them and thinking "Now, THAT'S a heel for you."

Anyways, it is really sad to lose another wrestling star. Rest in peace, and serve up some hard time in heaven, punk.

Cool Skills Game

Check this one out, and tell me you can honestly clear more than a couple of levels without doing it all reallllly slowly....

PWI 25th Anniversary

Has anyone picked this up yet?

I've got to admit -- from the time I was a kid, up until maybe six or seven years ago, I bought so many of the PWI family of magazines that I probably financed Bill Apter's vacation home. But ever since those magazines became passe (after the evolution of the Internet, WOW Magazine, etc.), I really haven't bought any. The closest I come is sneaking a peek at one in a bookstore every once in a while. But the quality has gone waaaaaay downhill from the glory days.

Yet when I saw the 25th anniversary one today, I decided what the hell and picked it up. I was very surprised by the dry humor it had -- how the magazine was able to laugh at itself and also have some fun at the expense of wrestlers that were featured over the years. For example, there's a "Then and Now" type section that shows how Dustin Rhodes, Kevin Nash, Bob Holly, etc. looked at different stages of their career. Then they show Lance Storm, looking exactly the same in both pictures. Cute.

The REAL bonus, though, is that they replicated the entire first edition of PWI with Dusty Rhodes and Mil Mascara on the cover and included the reprinted magazine with the anniversary issue. It even has all the original ads for guns, guitar lessons, trading cards, etc. Very cool!

Anyways, in my opinion, for about $12 Canadian (36 cents U.S.), it wasn't a bad deal at all.

Latest ITR

The Canadian Bulldog is ALWAYS a repository of exclusive, insider news. But this week is a rare treat, as the D-O-G digs deep into his Wrestling Databanks to pull up some of the most fascinating wrestling trivia, past and present. Some of the intriguing tidbits include: a history lesson about the WWWWWWWWF Era's Longest Reigning Champion, the truth about the Youngest Ever Champion, a surprising revelation of wrestling's Littlest Champion, and the escalation of smack talk in a snarky little catfight to see who will win the OO's Funniest Man Title. If you didn't know these things, well then, your ass better read Inside the Ropes.

ITR (Online Onslaught)

Thanks To The Apprentice

My trusty (and very generous) apprentice Johnny ITR was kind enough to send me something for my b-day off my Amazon Wish List. He got me Skipping Christmas, the very last book missing from my John Grisham collection (and, as I understand it, it's been made into a movie as well). I've already starting reading it, and it's incredible.

Thanks again, Johnny. You rock!

Gmail Invites

Looks like I've been given an additional two (2) Gmail invites today. First two people to email me at bulldog@onlineonslaught.com get 'em. No questions asked....

Live on PPV....

So check this out. Over on the Online Onslaught message board, we're planning a "pay-per-view" featuring various posters. I got in on the action early, challenging Raw Satire columnist Matt Hocking to a "match", putting the services of Johnny ITR on the line for 30 days vs. His Darline Stacy (doesn't seem like a fair tradeoff, but hey, he accepted.)

Anyways, check out the exchanges between Matt and I here, especially when we get into the rap-off on the third page or so of the thread. Funny stuff.

First day of school

Wow....

So my little boy started kindergarten and, of course, it was not without incident. However, he had nothing to do with the incident in question.

You see, he was zoned to go to a school closer to us, but three months ago, they called us and said kids from our street were being bussed to another, smaller school. That was fine with me -- it's actually a better school from what I hear.

We got busing instructions last week, and so he waited with his mother at the corner near our house. This is where it gets weird. For some reason, the WRONG BUS, the one for the original school he was going to go to, showed up at our bus station. You probably see where this is going already, but it's stranger yet because the bus wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the street anymore.

He gets on the bus without incident and is sent safely to school.

THE WRONG SCHOOL!!!

So they settle him into that school's kindergarten, despite him not being registered at the school. About half an hour later, the original school called to see where he was. The whole thing was sorted out within an hour, and he was eventually taken to the right school. To his credit, my boy was FINE the entire time, and didn't seem to be phased at all. He even wanted to go home on the school bus, even though he'd been given the choice to be driven home by us.

Thankfully, he was dropped off to the right address/street/city/province, etc. Oh, and he had lots of fun at school, apparently.

Feeling old....

So I officially turned 31 yesterday (as opposed to unofficially, I guess). For the first time in a LONG time, I'm actually feeling my age, as if the one-day difference aged me considerably.

I'm very reflective of things this year, and I know I've got a very challenging year ahead of me. Perhaps moreso than ever.

But I'm thinking about the good things today, not the bad ones: I have a wonderful little boy who's about to enter his first day of kindergarten tomorrow (yeah, here comes that "old man" feeling again), and his future is a bright one. I think about his happiness a LOT these days, and how badly I want him to continue to be happy, healthy and well-adjusted.

I have a job that I still enjoy quite a bit, despite being there for 5 odd years now. It remains challenging, and fun, and for the most part, I'm surrounded by good people.

I have my health, as trite as that sounds, and I know how important that is. I have a good network of family and friends around me that I know I can count on.

So really, things could be a lot worse. Like I said, this will be an interesting year ahead of me.

Unforgiven Thoughts

Wow....

I'm going with a thumbs down for this one, not because it was TERRIBLE or anything, but more because it could have been so much better.

Quick side note: We went again to our favorite movie theater in North York to watch this. Some near scraps with a few of the audience members which always makes for an entertaining night. One jerk a few rows back kept yelling "Get up, Jericho, get up!" as if Y2J could hear them from Portland, so I decided to (loudly) debate anything he said. Good times.

William Regal and Chris Benoit Vs. Ric Flair and Batista
Probably shouldn't have been the opening match, but not a bad choice nonetheless. Flair was in rare form and it showed. A very underwhelming finish, and the decision to put Benoit and Regal over was a mild surprise to me.

Trish Stratus Vs. Victoria
Boring for the most part. Nothing terribly awful, but they're certainly capable of doing much better. And Victoria going over Tyson made zero sense, if only perhaps to set up the dreadful...

Tyson Tomko Vs. Stevie Richards In Drag
This was perhaps, the worst 10 minutes I have ever seen of PPV wrestling. And I saw Heroes of Wrestling live when it aired. Consider THAT!

Chris Jericho Vs. Christian
It wasn't as brutal as some of the other ladder matches in recent years, but it certainly was well-done. And what do you know -- I was the only one on OO to vote for Jericho going over in this one? EASILY match of the night.

Shawn Michaels Vs. Kane
The inexplicably lame Lita stuff aside, HBK is looking like the "Hefty Boy" these days. That didn't detract from his performance though. Not a terrific match, but decent enough.

Rhyno/Tajiri Vs. La Resistance
Why did (a) this match go on second to last and (b) La Resistance go over here? Just shaking my head at that... what a colossal waste of time. Are they secretly hoping they can continue this feud over WrestleMania or something?

Triple H Vs. Randy Orton
The first 6 hours of this match were painfully boring and the crowd responded (or, I guess, didn't respond) in kind. It heated up towards the end, and at least they made the right decision by putting HHH over. Project Orton SO wasn't working. Give him another try in say six months, and who knows? Just not now.

Well, so at least I got a last-minute birthday present by having Randy Orton dethroned...

New Merchandise

I'm pretty proud of how this one turned out.... looks like something a three year old could have made

Latest ITR

DDP and Stone Cold are hard at work, WWE's got a PPV coming up, and Bulldog's got ALL the exclusive dirt for you!

Inside The Ropes (Online Onslaught)
Inside The Ropes (The W)

Soliciting Wardrobe Advice

So I recently cleaned out my closet and noticed I have approximately 3,000,000 business shirts/suits/jackets/pants, etc. (perhaps a slight exaggeration) that I never wear to work. Not because I don't like them or they don't fit, I just don't know how to properly match them together.

I'm not color-blind or anything, but I certainly don't have a great sense of fashion. I know the basics (white shirt goes with anything, don't wear black or navy blue with brown, etc.), but I'm trying to find a website out there that can tell me more than the basics.

My workplace basically requires me to dress in a suit and tie Monday to Friday, so it's something I want to work at so that I have more variety than the usual six outfits I put together (especially because I own so much more than that).

I feel I've got enough clothing to last me a while; its more that I need some advice on what I should be putting together with what.

Anyways, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!!

Latest ITR (Retro Edition)

The Canadian Bulldog is On Assigment,so he has supplied us with this insightful look at Hulkamania and Poffonomics, courtesy of his 1985 archives!

ITR (Online Onslaught)
Also re-running this week on the main page of OO is the History Of The World, Part 1 column as part of the 'Best of 2004'. Wow!