Awesome...

Has there been a better double-promo in the history of Wrestling?

I would love to imbed it, but honestly I do that too often. So check out the above link.

JoMilkman help me out here, because I'm sure Ric Flair and Rowdy Piper had a good one or two. (By the way, I have to give that DVD back to you.)

Dancing Hippo

Should I get paid for this? (Warning: There's sound.)

16 pounds...

That's what i've lost over the past month and a half...not excessive, but I'm still impressed. I'm very easily impressed with myself.

Hey, I'm buying a new car soon. Been talking to Carl, who knows a lot of stuff about...stuff. Do any of you know anything about buying (new) used cars?

Say it with me now...

"Crap."

The following is from WWE.com:

Angle released
Aug. 25, 2006

Due to personal issues, Kurt Angle has been granted an early release from his contract. WWE looks forward to establishing a new relationship with Kurt in the near future.

The only Olympic gold medalist in WWE history, Kurt Angle arrived in 1999 and quickly became one of the most decorated champions in sports-entertainment history. "The Wrestling Machine" is not only a six-time World Champion, but also held the Intercontinental Championship and WWE Tag Team Championship; he also won the 2000 King of the Ring tournament. Recently joining ECW, Angle’s unmatched intensity was rivaled only by his technical and athletic in-ring prowess.

Rumors on the web are because he has neck issues, and maybe (hope this is wrong) he may be abusing painkillers to deal with it. (like I how i used "may" and "be" twice? you could tell I was wincing!). And he's having a tough divorce. (Women! Can't live with them, and can't live with them...thank you Dan Myung for that joke.) He's a great performer, but hopefully things'll work out.

Anyways, we at least have this champion:



ALL HAIL KING BOOKER!

kinda weird. they're calling him the wwe's first African-American champion. Kinda sad for two reasons. One, what took so long, and two, what about the Rock? I guess the Rock's dad was from Canada, but there really is no difference. It just means he was able to escape American racism..but since the Rock was born in America, I'm considering him black...even if he highly identifies with his Samoan roots.

Still...

I was watching the new "McMahon" dvd on Vince McMahon. It's intersting. The DVD has a great set of matches, some of his matches with Stone Cold, HHH, Undertaker. I thought there was a match with the Rock. Clearly McMahon cares about wrestling, about the product and about the fans. But it pains him a positive light, of course. If you want a better synopsis of the McMahon career, check out wikipedia. Warning some of the events are "kayfabe" or in character, so it's not always an accurate representation of his life...but still seems more complete than the DVD.

Some questions are left unanswered, some moments are left unaddressed. For instance, there was that very controversial steroid trial that Hulk Hogan actually testified on behalf of Vince McMahon. But McMahon, fearful that Hulk Hogan would capitalize on this in his rival company WCW, tore Hogan a new bunghole in the press. That created another rift between the two that was addressed in the DVD. For this information, you actually have to read wikipedia, or a message board, and then watch ANOTHER DVD, the Billy Graham story. It makes no sense to me. If you mention it in one retrospective DVD, why not do so in every DVD you produce about those players? They also don't address how this trial, and some public statements made by the WWE in the 80's and 90's exposed the sport as having "predetermined" results, and that irritated other promoters. But that isn't as intersesting to non-wrestling fans as the steroid trials.

What do they address? Surprisingly some things they do address. Like how a lot of employees hate some storylines as much as the fans, but it's Vince's vision. Sometimes you can say no, sometimes you can't. He does do a lot of behind the scenes stuff to help charities, other people, etc. But at the same token he can be very hard-charging and hyper-competitive to a point where some people suggested it can undermine his position. There was also an interesting tidbit about WCW, where some people named "McMahon" wondered if it was good for the company to buy out the competition, but only good for the McMahon-ego. I'll let you watch it and find out.

Anywhoo...I'm engorged on wrestling...

Hope all is well with you!

Is Russia really like this?

buying a car

i'm going to be buying a (used) car soon.

anyone who knows anything about cars willing to go with me and check them out?

Looking for friends...

Hey,

One of the three leagues I'm in is looking for another team. Are you down?

And to those of you who are in the league which draft was on Monday...I wasn't at my computer so don't make fun of my "choices".

Also, for those of you who know my fiancee's email, please send her a note to say wuzzup, because she's in a difficult surgery rotation, and any kind words would lift her spirits.

And happy birthday to Alan. Hope the sox-angels game tonight is a good one. And take a picture of Anaheim's stadium for me.

Peace!

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Fiance or Fiancee?

Why didn't anyone tell me that "fiance" is for males and "fiancee" is for females. Here I am thinking that people are suprised to see that my "fiance" and I are of different races, when actually people are surprised that my "fiance" isn't a "fiance" at all. ("The Crying Gammmme...") Someone should have told me sooner!

Is Robot Chicken Funny?

Decide for yourselves...


Maybe...


Meh...


Maybe...but because we grew up watching Voltron.

Wu Tang on NPR

Just looking up some Wu Tang info, and found this interview with the RZA on NPR. Man. Just listening to the musical bump,"Cream" brings back that same feeling of awe I had when I first heard the track way back when. Quite an interesting story. RZA, for being such a musical genius, had such an inquisitive mind and an unique gift for making tracks. Amazing!

Peace!

Edit:

Just listening to the interview a bit more...they play a clip from the soundtrack to "Ghost Dog", one of the most underrated independent or gangster related or or Jim Jarmusch or Forrest Whittaker related movie ever made. Have you seen it? See it!



Man what is Forrest Whittaker up to these days? I saw him on the Twilight Zone a while back. For some reason, whatever he's doing, even if the rest of the project's not great, I find myself watching him work. Can we give him a life-time achievement Oscar or something?

Edit:

Now the interview is getting long. Meh. Listen to it if you must...

On Notice!

Preposterone!

My female life partner is making me post this article online because I often ask her if I were to take a million steroids or testosterone, would I turn into a comic book super hero like Captain America. Apparently the answer is "no." Although she really should read Avengers #462. I'm just saying.

Anyways, from the NY Times...enjoy!

August 10, 2006
Does Testosterone Build a Better Athlete?
By NATASHA SINGER
TESTOSTERONE injections can make male rats more aggressive in marking their territories, cause castrated red deer to grow antlers, and induce female rhesus monkeys to screech like males. In studies on humans, testosterone injections have increased and strengthened muscles.

But does taking testosterone — a controlled substance whose possession is illegal unless prescribed for medical reasons — automatically improve athletic performance?

In sports, testosterone shots or creams are supposed to be magic bullets that spur athletes to train harder, run or bicycle more quickly, jump higher, swim faster, hit a baseball farther, recover sooner, and, let’s not forget, increased sex drive and combativeness. Certainly, the idea that taking doses of the hormone gives competitors an unfair advantage is behind the brouhaha over Floyd Landis, the 2006 Tour de France winner who French officials say tested positive for elevated testosterone on the day of his remarkable comeback during Stage 17. Mr. Landis has denied taking any performance-enhancing substances.

But some leading experts who study testosterone are not convinced that supplementing the hormone improves endurance or overall athletic performance. Unlike a hyper-caffeinated sports drink, the synthetic hormone does not provide an instant jolt, but works over time to bulk and fortify muscles.

What other effects taking testosterone may have on athletes is the subject of heated debate.

“A long-term buildup of testosterone would produce results,” said Allan Mazur, a professor of public affairs at Syracuse University, who has studied how the natural hormones of college athletes fluctuate before and after competitions. “But we don’t know the short-term effects of using testosterone on an athlete’s performance, or whether it even has a short-term effect at all.”

Secreted by the testes and adrenal glands, testosterone is the male sex hormone that generates and maintains secondary sexual characteristics like a deep voice and body hair. It also plays a role in body fat, and in muscle size, strength, and function.

Some athletes illegally use anabolic steroids, the muscle-promoting drugs or hormonal substances that are chemically related to testosterone, in the form of injections, skin patches, creams or pills. These steroids can stimulate muscle building. But they will not transform couch potatoes into pole-vaulters.

“Steroids are not going to take someone without athletic ability and turn them into a star athlete, or teach you how to swing a bat and connect with the ball,” said Douglas A. Granger, the director of the behavioral endocrinology laboratory at Pennsylvania State University. “But if you have a certain athletic presence, testosterone could take you to the next level.”

Steroids first became popular among American bodybuilders in the 1950’s after they began to suspect that gold-medal-winning Soviet weightlifters were using them, sports researchers said. But the American medical establishment did not believe that supplemental testosterone could promote muscle growth until the 1990’s when scientists began examining its effects, said Dr. Shalender Bhasin, a professor of medicine and chief of endocrinology, diabetes and nutrition at Boston Medical Center.

In 1996, Dr. Bhasin published a study in The New England Journal of Medicine on the impact of testosterone injections, given once a week for 10 weeks, on healthy adult males. The idea was to see whether testosterone might be used therapeutically in muscle-wasting diseases like AIDS. For volunteers who received testosterone, their triceps and quadriceps became larger and they had increased muscle strength during bench presses and squats.

“Synthetic steroids take you from being a natural normal male to being a supermale with muscles that are bigger and stronger,” said Dr. Donald H. Catlin, the director of the Olympic Analytical Laboratory, a drug-testing facility, at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Athletes love to take steroids because they work.”

But do bigger, steroid-enhanced muscles generate big winners?

“We assume that, if you are stronger, you will perform better, but that might not necessarily be true,” said Michael S. Bahrke, a steroids researcher in Ellison Bay, Wis., and co-editor of a book called “Performance-Enhancing Substances in Sport and Exercise.” “For football and baseball players, explosive muscle mass might relate to more power, but it is difficult to document that it leads to better performance.”

Larger muscles might even be detrimental for certain athletes. For marathoners, enhanced muscles could put more weight on joints than they can handle, leading to injuries, Dr. Bahrke said.

In addition to joint problems, taking steroids can cause side effects like oily skin, acne, shrunken testicles, sterility and male breasts. Synthetic testosterone can also inhibit good cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease.

But withdrawal, which can make some men deflate like used balloons, may be the most troubling problem. Taking steroids suppresses men’s own natural testosterone production. After athletes stop taking testosterone, the body may take weeks to months to return to normal hormone levels.

“In the meantime, you will have decreased muscles and decreased sexual function, such stressful withdrawal symptoms that many people go right back on testosterone,” Dr. Bhasin said.

Because of the possible side effects, doctors rarely experiment on humans by dosing them with testosterone unless it is for medical reasons. Without that kind of empirical data, scientists can only speculate on how testosterone may affect a person’s competitiveness and athletic ability, researchers said. But there are some intriguing observational data.

Observational studies of humans show that hormone levels may fluctuate during competitions. For example, Alan Booth, a professor of sociology and human development at Penn State, has conducted several studies with Dr. Mazur, and with Dr. Granger, in which they measured the testosterone in saliva samples taken from a variety of college athletes. Their studies found that many male and female athletes’ testosterone levels increased before competitions. After the competitions were over, among men, the winners’ testosterone levels tended to rise temporarily while the losers’ testosterone tended to drop.

The researchers cannot prove why the hormone fluctuated, but Dr. Booth theorized that post-game testosterone fluctuations may have originated during ancient tribal warfare, the kind of continuing life-or-death competition that would require long-term physical and mental readiness.

“If you win, you know you are going to be challenged again soon, so higher testosterone would keep you prepared for the next challenge,” Dr. Booth said. A dip in testosterone might make losers disinclined to fight further, he said. “Lower testosterone may keep individuals, who lost and got seriously wounded, from engaging in another immediate battle where they might suffer even more damage.”

But Dr. Bhasin said that such testosterone oscillations may play no role. Testosterone has been shown to rise a little in anticipation of exertion, like a treadmill run, he explained. “But the explanations of cause and effect between athletic performance and testosterone are very weak.”

Other researchers have speculated that taking testosterone may stimulate fine motor skills that improve athletes’ hand-eye coordination or help athletes recover from exertion by increasing the amount of oxygen in their bloodstreams.

Dr. Bhasin’s research contradicts some locker room myths. In his own study, the volunteers injected with testosterone neither experienced improved endurance nor exploded in ’roid-induced rage, he said.

“There have always been a lot of misconceptions about testosterone,” Dr. Bhasin added. “I’m very hopeful that clarity will emerge, but right now there is a lot of folklore.”

Wolf's Howl

The Fiance started to laugh when I suggested that we have our wedding at the Wolf's Howl petting zoo. She looked at me funny when I suggested she comes riding in on two wolves. She then threw me out of the room when I suggested I would be wearing wolf pelts.

Psf!

Women!

Quit Using My Name!

Terrorist plots always has some dumb mofo with my name. I was driving in and heard some guy say, "Why don't we just arrest some brown skin guy with the name Rasheed." Well, before the rest of America gets on board and drafts this into the new Patriot Act, let me just ay that I DO NOT in any way support terrorism. Quit using my name! Do not make me use a translation of my name, or worse, have me pick two random and crappy words to replace my Arabic-sounding name to avoid suspicion!

It's not fair....

Does anyone who shares a name with Timothy McVeigh or Ted Kazinski get suspicious looks? No! Shut up Carlos Mencia, I'm not Arabic, and I don't care if someone with the name Rasheed's a terrorist...I AM NOT A TERRORIST. I may be an educated black man, but I swear I am not a threat to America.

Why do people kill in the name of the Lord? When the neighborhood cat killed a mouse and brought it to my feet, did I say, "Thanks Mittens; you'll be blessed with a thousand virgins...Or boxes of catnip and kitty litter." Did I say that? No!

So quit f*$@%#! things up for the rest of us.

- Sincerely,

RASHEED HASAN

I mean,

ROD HAMMER

Because I...

Because I like Space Invaders...

And I like Monty Python...

Fantasy Football

I'm actually good at Fantasy Football. Baseball and Basketball, while I enjoy talking about those sports more, I never have time to check every day. But Football on the other hand... I'm not saying I'm going to win your league, but I'll definitely make a fine addition. I may make a dumb trade or two (screw you injured star quarterback!), but I'm down for joining and/or starting a league if you'd like.

Hit me up!

Did I do it again?

Did I post that Pablo Francisco clip in an earlier post? Oh well, I'll give you another embedded video then. This one of a dude beatboxing. He's not as good as Rahzel or my boy Tyken, but damn he's pretty good! Even though he basically copies Rahzel. Maybe he figured that his mostly white audience wouldn't have heard Rahzel do this routine before.

There's a 5 am in the morning now? %*#@!

Got up early to drive the fiance to the hospital for her surgery rotation/rounds/whatever this morning at 5:30. Go off and save the world honey! Or at least our little patch of Worcester...

So, since I'm up and trolling for videos to entertain myself, I thought I'd share some with you here.

Two are flash-thingies that you can go to the actual website to view, ok?

Let's start with three I can include here as imbedded videos.


(Above) Pablo Francisco is one of the funniest stand-ups around! Check out this video from the tonight show! He does things you may try to do when playing around with your friends (voices, parodies, etc), but you really can't do it with as much quality as he can. I tried to embed the Spikedhumor video, but I wasn't quite able to get the "embed src" code to work. I'll bone up on my html in the future. (hehe, i said, "up").


(Above) Who are these guys? "Ok, Go?" Is that name of the song or the video? Anyways... What a great music video! Reminds me I have to go to the gym when they open at 8.


(Above) For some reason I always remember this video from Tiny Toons when I was younger. I just think from a comedy perspective it's a brilliant parody of a They Might Be Giants song. In fact, I don't know what the original lyrics were anymore!

And here's a link to a flash video parody of Metal Gear Solid. Honestly, it's a little corny in parts.

And here's a link to a pretty amazing retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Sad ending, and has gore so it's not safe for work.

Team 2xtreme is back!

From impactwrestling.com:

"We can confirm that Jeff Hardy has signed a new deal to return to World Wrestling Entertainment. Reports suggest he will be tagging with his brother Matt Hardy for a Hardy Boyz reunion."

Woo-hoo! Outside of Harlem Heat and LOD, who had a better ring-entrance than this tag-team? Hogan's NWO and The Omega Powers don't count because they used his solo entrance theme. Speaking of which, can you imagine what NWO would have been like if they got Bret Hart on time like they wanted to? Would it have been as big?

Last question, if there was no Superstar Billy Graham to copy, would there be a Hulk Hogan?